I do not mean to say
I could not trust you, Alice, but the plan must be made known only to
those who have to act in this matter. Rest assured, dear child, that I
shall do my best to make it successful."

Alice sprang up at once. "My father told me to follow him some time
ago," said she. "I have been too long of doing so already. I _do_ hope
you will succeed."

So saying, and with a cheerful "Good-by!" the little girl ran down the
mountain-side, closely followed by Toozle and Poopy.

As soon as she was gone, Henry turned to his companions and unfolded to
them his plan,--the details and carrying out of which, however, we
must reserve for another chapter.

CHAPTER XXIX.

BUMPUS IS PERPLEXED--MYSTERIOUS COMMUNINGS, AND A CURIOUS LEAVE-TAKING.

"It's a puzzler," said Jo Bumpus to himself,--for Jo was much in the
habit of conversing with himself; and a very good habit it is, one that
is often attended with much profit to the individual, when the
conversation is held upon right topics and in a proper spirit,--"it's a
puzzler, it is; that's a fact."

Having relieved his mind of this observation, the seaman proceeded to
cut down some tobacco, and looked remarkably grave and solemn as if "it"
were not only a puzzler, but an alarmingly serious puzzler.

"Yes, it's the biggest puzzler as ever I comed across," said he, filling
his pipe; for John, when not roused, got on both mentally and physically
by slow stages.

"Niver know'd its equal," he continued, beginning to smoke, which
operation, as the pipe did not "draw" well at first, prevented him from
saying anything more.

It was early morning when Bumpus said all this, and the mariner was
enjoying his morning pipe in a reclining attitude on the grass beneath
Alice Mason's favorite tree, from which commanding position he gazed
approvingly on the magnificent prospect of land and sea which lay
before him, bathed in the light of the rising sun.

"It _is_ wery koorious," continued John, taking his pipe out of his
mouth and addressing himself to _it_ with much gravity--"_wery_
koorious. Things _always_ seems wot they isn't, and turns out to be wot
they didn't appear as if they wasn't; werry odd indeed, it is! Only to
think that this here sandal-wood trader should turn out for to be
Henry's father and the widow's mother,--or, I mean, the widow's
husband,--an' a pirate an' a deliverer o' little boys and girls out o'
pirate's hands,--his own hands, so to speak,--not to