n Blossom. I am bound to find the raft
again if it is still afloat, and am going to keep on down the river in
this boat until we catch up with it.

"I shall be here long enough for you to answer this letter; and send me
some money, please, and tell me all about everybody. Give my dear love
to Elta, and tell her I wish she knew Sabella and Don Blossom. She is
just the kind of a girl, and he is just the kind of a monkey, a fellow
likes to know.

"Now it is late, and I must turn in, for I am working my passage on
this boat, and Solon and I must take the place of a mule to-morrow, and
till we can earn money enough to buy one. So good-bye, from your
affectionate son,----WINN."

While the boy was writing, Cap'n Cod went ashore, and when the former
took his letter to the post-office, he met his host there with two
letters in his hand. They followed Winn's into the box, but he did not
see the address on either of them. If he had, he would have been more
troubled than ever, for one was addressed to the Sheriff of Dubuque
County, and the other to his own father.

The old man had seen and recognized the skiff that he had built for
Sheriff Riley as it lay tied to the wharf-boat, but had thought it best
to keep this discovery to himself until he could communicate with its
owner. By cautious inquiries he learned that the skiff had been left
there by a young man calling himself Brackett, who had gone on down the
river, but was expected back in a day or two. Cap'n Cod would have
telegraphed to Sheriff Riley but for the fact that the wires had not
yet been extended to Mandrake. So he wrote and begged the Sheriff to
hasten down the river by first boat.

He also wrote to Major Caspar, expressing his sympathy, telling him
that he was now travelling down the Mississippi in his own boat, the
_Whatnot_, asking for full particulars concerning the lost boy, and
offering to make every effort to discover his whereabouts.

On the morning of that very day, just before his departure from
Mandrake, Billy Brackett had also written and mailed a letter that read
as follows:

"MY DEAR SISTER,--I am up a stump just at present, but hope to climb
down very soon. In other words, your boy is smarter than I took him to
be. He has not only managed to hide the raft, but himself as well, and
both so completely that thus far I have had but little success in
tracing them. I have reason to believe that he and I spent some time
very close to ea