“If you ever get the true facts you will see that some person is at the bottom of this.”

“Sam, most likely!” declared Tom, entering into the spirit of the discussion and reassuring himself.

“No,” said Mr. Neale, coming in, his arm around the shoulders of the colored man they had just named, “no—Sam isn’t at the bottom of it.”

They looked at Sam. He was weak and shaken, and slumped down in a chair, rather limp and groggy.

“I found Sam out by the gate,” Mr. Neale explained. “He had been knocked out, actually, by a blow. He was on his way here, he managed to tell me. He thought he saw something light-colored near the house and he stopped by the gate. But whatever—whoever—it was, disappeared behind the house and he stood a moment wondering. Then he heard the voice in the house, here, and wondered whether to come in or to wait. Before he guessed what was happening, some one was behind him and struck him. That is all he remembered.”

“No ghost did that!” exclaimed Nicky.

“I don’t—know,” Sam said weakly. “They tell, on the island, that ghosts have terrible power. I never did believe much in it, but—I don’t know—now!”

“Well, I do know!” declared Mr. Neale defiantly. “Your part of the map is gone, of course!”

“Yes, sar—yes——”

“Of course! Does that seem like the work of a ghost?”

“It might be!” Sam said uncertainly. He drank the water Nicky had brought him, and seemed to be pulling himself together, but his age-old instinct of fear was beginning to triumph over his education.

“At any rate,” Mr. Gray summed up, “whatever and whoever did these things, the result amounts to this: neither Sam nor we have any clue to the treasure——”

“You wouldn’t let that stop you, would you?” demanded Nicky.

“I wouldn’t, if Father would let us go on,” Cliff stated.

“Nor I,” agreed Clarence Neale. “We can remember the map closely enough—we know the longitude—we could even cable Nicky’s uncle and get the original if necessary——”

“But we don’t remember the latitude on Sam’s half,” said Cliff. 

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