ut that's it!" exclaimed Laura. "How is Billy to disprove the
accusation if he runs away and makes it appear that he is guilty?"

"Don't we see that?" demanded her brother. "That's what we want to get
at Billy for. We want to catch and bring him back and make him face the
music. Then we'll all prove him innocent and make these Smart Alecks
take back what they've been saying about him. It's a shame!" cried Chet,
again.

"It _is_ a shame," agreed Laura.

But just then both the Lockwood twins burst out with:

"Maybe he _did_ come over to the island."

"Huh! What for? To hide?" demanded Lance.

"Perhaps," said Dorothy.

"Maybe to find the robbers himself. Perhaps they are hiding here," said
Dora.

"Likely," grunted Chet.

"We saw somebody hiding back yonder at the foot of Boulder Head,"
declared Dorothy.

"So we did! The lone pirate!" cried her sister.

"'The lone pirate'?" repeated Laura and Jess, in unison. "Who's that?"

The twins told them what they had seen----the bewhiskered man who had
hidden behind the boulder. But the boys scoffed at the idea of the
stranger having anything to do with the men who robbed the department
store safe, or anything to do with Billy Long.

"No," said Chet, wearily, "He's gone somewhere. But we don't know where.
And if the police catch him it will go hard with poor Short and Long."

CHAPTER III

TONY ALLEGRETTO

Now, "Short and Long," as the boys called him (christened William Henry
Harrison Long) was a jolly little fellow and extremely popular at
Centerport's Central High School----not so much with the teachers and
adults of his acquaintance, perhaps, as with his fellow pupils. He was
full of fun and mischief; but to the boys who knew him to be perfectly
fair and honest, the accusation now aimed against him seemed
preposterous.

It was true that his father was a poor man, and Billy Long seldom had
any spending money. Naturally he was always on the outlook for "odd
jobs" which would earn him a little something for his own pocket. He had
been seen carrying the chain for the mysterious surveyors who had been
in the vacant lot behind the department store that was robbed the
Tuesday night previous to the opening of our story; but _that_ should
not have made trouble for Short and Long. He did not let many such
chances escape him when he was out of school.

Billy was the short-stop on the Central High nine and as Chetwood
Belding and Lance Darby were important memb