t."

"Oh, I guess you'd have managed all right with the guides," said Jack.
"You always try to make out that I do more than I do, Jim. You must be
trying to give me a swelled head."

"No danger of that, I guess," said Burroughs, laughing. "You're pretty
level-headed, young man. By the way, I heard you had some trouble lately
with a man called Broom. Anything in that?"

Jack's face darkened. Jim was bringing up a painful subject. But Pete
Stubbs spoke up for him.

"Trouble?" he said. "Well, I guess yes, Mr. Burroughs! You heard about
how Jack broke up the plot to wreck the train and rob it when he and Tom
Binns were on a hike together?"

Jim nodded.

"Well, Broom was mixed up with that gang in some fashion. Then,
afterward, we found that he was really after Jack. You know all about
Jack's queer life up at Woodleigh--about Old Dan and all that?"

"I know that Jack never knew much about himself--his real name and who
his mother and father were. You're still trying to find out about all
that, aren't you, Jack?"

"You bet I am!" said Jack, his face lighting up at the thought. "And I'm
going to do it, too!"

"Well, this Broom," Pete Stubbs went on, "was trying to find out where
Jack had gone from Woodleigh. He didn't know that our Jack was the one
he was looking for, or we don't know what he'd have done. So he had a
double reason to be after him, though all he knew was that Jack might
give dangerous evidence against those pals of his who were mixed up with
the train business."

"I see! He was really playing against himself, without knowing it,
wasn't he?"

"Yes. That was the funny part of it. Well, Broom and some other crooked
people got an old gentleman and his daughter to trust them. The old
gentleman, whose name was Burton, was looking for a boy, his brother's
son, who was kidnaped when he was a baby. We think it may be Jack, and
we're going to try to find out. Broom made the Burtons think that he
could find the boy they were looking for, and he got a lot of money out
of them."

"Gee, Pete, that sounds pretty interesting! Was that how the trouble
came with Broom?"

"One of the ways, yes. When we were down at the shore a little while ago
they tried to get hold of Jack. One night there was a pretty bad storm,
and that was the night they picked out. Jack and I, with Mr. Durland and
Dick Crawford, went out to rescue the Burtons, who had been left on
their yacht, and when we got back some of us caught Broom an