"Oh, Billy! was that you?" demanded Dora.

"The lone pirate!" gasped Dorothy.

"And all those whiskers----"

Short and Long laughed weakly. "That wig and whiskers I had last Hallow E'en; don't you remember? I saw you girls a couple of times, too."

"And we saw you and thought you might be one of the robbers, after all."

"That's all right; I didn't do any robbing, except of your boats," said Billy. "But there were two fellows over on the island who I believe _did_ rob that store."

"No!" cried the girls.

"Yes."

"Oh, tell us all about it," urged the girls again, just as eager to hear the particulars as though it were a story out of a book. And it _did_ sound like a story; only Billy Long was much too much in earnest to make it up. Besides, he had learned a lesson during his weeks of "hiding out."

"I was scart--of course I was," he said. "What fellow wouldn't be? That detective from the store said they'd put me in jail till I'd told--and I'd been tellin' him the truth right along.

"So I got up early that morning to go fishing. I knew where the white perch were thick as sprats. I got Mr. Norman's boat; but I knew he wouldn't mind. And I went over to Boulder Head. As I was starting to fish I heard two men talking just in the mouth of the old cavern. They were quarreling. I guess they must have been foreigners; I couldn't understand all they said. But I got enough of their broken-English talk to understand that one of them had hidden some money in a tight-covered lard can, and part of the money the other fellow claimed."

Dora pinched Dorothy, and looked at her knowingly. But it wasn't until afterward that Dorothy understood what her twin meant by _that_.

"So I got interested in them, believing that they might be the real burglars, and I forgot the boat. When they went away and I went back to the boat, the old thing had filled and sunk. You never could row that boat to the island without bailing her out a couple of times; and I ought to have dragged her ash.o.r.e.

"So I couldn't get the boat up, and I thought I'd stop there. I had some fishing tackle, and matches, and some crackers. I camped in the cave for a couple of days, and had fires, and cooked fish. But, my goodness! fish gets awful tasteless when you don't have any salt and pepper.

"There were berries," continued Billy, "and I managed to get along.

Then, I washed out my old bait bucket and at night I went down to the pasture of that park superintendent and milked his old mooley cow. I got along.

"One of those men was always hanging about in the woods, though, and that kept me scared. But I tried to watch him. Didn't know but he'd go to the place where he'd buried the money in the lard can. But he went off after a while and I didn't see him again.

"Then I tried to climb that cliff to get some berries, and I slipped down and twisted my ankle. I guess I'd have starved to death there if Mother Wit han't found me and got me down."

This was all Billy's story; but when the twins got out of the house, Dorothy demanded of her sister:

"What did you pinch me for? What did you mean?"

"You're so slow!" cried Dora, with some disgust. "Those two foreign men Billy heard talking about the money were Tony Allegretto and his friend that the police drove off the island. They weren't the burglars at all!"

CHAPTER XXI

IN PRACTICE AGAIN

All the time the twins had been forbidden to row in the new sh.e.l.l the crew had been getting on very badly. Professor Dimp was hopeless, and Mrs. Case could not find two girls to take the twins' places who worked well with the other members of the crew.

Dora and Dorothy could only walk on the bank of the lake and watch the crew struggle to make the time that was its former record. Hester Grimes and her particular friends scoffed at the practice. Hester and Lily paddled almost daily in their canoe, and they seemed pretty sure of being chosen to represent the girls of Central High in the canoe race instead of the Lockwood twins.

Aunt Dora wished to know why Dora and Dorothy were not giving so much "precious time," as she expressed it, to athletics as formerly, and the twins had to tell her.

"Humph!" was the old lady's comment; but perhaps she did not feel all the satisfaction that exclamation implied when she saw how down-hearted the girls seemed when she walked with them again along the gravel walk that skirted the waterfront of Colonel Swayne's estate.

The girls' eight-oared sh.e.l.l was out and the crew were practicing. One of the new girls caught an awful crab and the sh.e.l.l came near being swamped.

"Mercy me!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Aunt Dora. "Is that the best they can do without you girls to help them?"

This rather amused the twins, despite their sore-heartedness; but their aunt really began to "take up cudgels" for them. She objected to the punishment Gee Gee had meted out to her nieces.

"I didn't like the looks of that four-eyed teacher, anyway," declared the old lady, with some asperity. "I'm going to see about it. Your father would just let you be driven from pillar to post--he's got no s.p.u.n.k. What you Lockwoods need in this town is a woman in the family!"

Dora and Dorothy thought this was only a threat. But Aunt Dora actually appeared at Central High the next morning and obtained an audience with Mr. Sharp, the princ.i.p.al.

Whatever she said to him bore fruit in a quiet investigation on the princ.i.p.al's part into the pros and cons of the canoe b.u.mping that had brought the Lockwood twins to grief. He heard the testimony of eye witnesses of the collision--something that Miss Carrington had not done.

All that he said to the severe teacher will never be known; but Bobby heard him say for one thing:

"Loyalty--even in school athletics--is a very good thing, Miss Carrington. You will admit that, yourself. And these girls are loyal students. I think they have been punished enough, don't you? Besides, I fear the testimony you chanced to hear was prejudiced. This Hester Grimes has been in trouble before for giving untruthful testimony against a fellow-cla.s.smate. Am I not right?"

"And very honorably she admitted her fault afterward," Miss Carrington declared.

"True. But let us not punish these two girls any longer; for Miss Grimes may have a change of heart again--when it is too late."

It was with rather ill grace that Gee Gee ever owned up that she was wrong, even on minor points. She therefore simply called the twins to her desk after school, and said:

"It has been represented to me that you are needed in these rowing contests for the good of the school. Personally I believe that athletics is occupying the minds of all you girls too much. But as your conduct during the past fortnight has been very good, I will remove the obstacle to your rowing with your schoolmates again. That is all."

There was what Bobby called "a regular love feast" at the boathouse that afternoon. It was not practice day; but when Professor Dimp heard of the return of the Lockwood twins to the crew he was delighted.

Public interest in Billy Long and his possible connection with the robbery of the department store had rather died out by this time. The friends of Short and Long had rallied around him, and he was not arrested. When his ankle was better he hobbled to school on crutches; but the boys missed him greatly on the ball field.

Billy told his chums that he was sure the two men he saw had hidden money somewhere about the caverns of the island; and not only were the boys of Central High interested in this "buried treasure," but their sisters as well.

"I tell you what," said Bobby Hargrew, on the Beldings' porch one evening when Laura had been having one of her "parties"; "let's organize and incorporate 'The Central High Treasure Hunting Company, Limited,'

and go over to Cavern Island and just dig it up by the roots till we find Billy's treasure in a lard kettle."

"Sounds terribly romantic," said Jess Morse.

"We had a scrumptious time over there at the other picnic," said Dorothy.

"I vote for another Sat.u.r.day at the caverns, anyway," said Chet.

"Me, too," added Lance Darby.

"Well, you folks can guy me all you want to," said Short and Long, who was getting about with a cane now instead of his crutches. "But those fellers talked of money, and of burying it in a lard can."