am going to take the line, double it, and
lower Billy to the shore myself. Somebody can go back to the park and
hire that launch that is to let there, and bring it around to this cove.
The man will come with it. The rest of you can go through the cave and
meet us on the shore, or go back to the park landing."

And so it was arranged. Laura, with the expenditure of considerable
ingenuity and muscle, got Billy safely to the foot of the cliff, and
then worked her own way down by the rope without cutting her hands. She
made a sling of her dress skirt in which to lower Billy, and had she not
been a very strong and determined girl she would have dropped him.

The adventure broke up the walking party for that afternoon; but Short
and Long, after being three weeks away from home, in hiding, was
returned to his father and sister, and the doctor was called to attend
him. He was too weak and confused, as yet, to tell his story.

CHAPTER XX

BILLY'S STORY

The Lockwood twins were among the first of Short and Long's school
friends who called at the cottage the following morning for news of the
injured boy. The physician had kept even the department store detective
at a distance. The latter was an officious individual who would have put
Billy in jail at once had he had the power to do so.

The regular police, however, seemed to have their doubts about Billy's
complicity in the burglary of Stresch & Potter's store, and they kept
away from the house, only the patrolman on beat inquiring how he was. As
they had promised, either Mr. Belding, the jeweler, or Mr. Hargrew, the
grocer, was ready to go bail for Billy Long, if he was arrested.

Of course the boy denied the accusation made against him. As little
Tommy had said, he was certainly at home all the night of the robbery.
Whether any court would accept Tommy's testimony was another thing.

Billy admitted helping the surveyors in the lot behind the department
store. He understood they were surveying for a railroad siding, not for
a new street. Information of such engineers might be had at the offices
of one of the railroads entering Centerport--if the surveyors had not
been the burglars who later broke into the store and burst the safe.

"But those fellows were surveyors, all right, all right," declared Billy
Long, weakly. "And they were not the fellows I saw afterward----"

"After what, Billy?" demanded Dora Lockwood, eagerly.

"Yes; do tell us all about it," urged