goodness and
honesty and bravery, that I should have been perfectly willing to trust
him; though I was a bit suspicious of the Sheriff's friend, Mr. Aleck
Fifield."

"It's not the Sheriff's friends you need be suspicious of, my lad, but
his enemies," interrupted Mr. Riley; "and I wonder if you haven't
fallen in with them already. As I now understand this case, you came
down the river on a raft until you reached the island near which I
found you. What became of your raft at that point?"

"That is what I would like to know," replied the boy.

"What!" cried Billy Brackett. "Do you mean to say that you don't know
where the raft is?"

"No more than I know how you happen to be here instead of out in
California, where I supposed you were until five minutes ago. I
haven't set eyes on the _Venture_, nor found a trace of her, since the
first morning out from home."

"Well, if that doesn't beat everything!" said the young engineer, with
a comical tone of despair. "I thought that after finding you the
discovery of the raft would follow as a matter of course; but now it
begins to look farther away than ever."

"But in finding me," said Winn, "you have found some one to help you
find the raft."

"You?" said the other, quizzically. "Why, I was thinking of sending
you home to your mother; that is, if the Sheriff here will allow you to
go."

"I don't know about that," said the officer. "It seems to me that I
still know very little about this young man. Who is to prove to me
that he is the son of Major Caspar?"

"Oh, I can speak for that," replied Billy Brackett.

"And I suppose he is ready to vouch for you; but that won't do. You
see, you are both suspicious characters, and unless some one whom I
know as well as I do Cap'n Cod here can identify you, I must take you
both back to Dubuque."

"Captain Cod," repeated Billy Brackett, thoughtfully. "I seem to have
heard that name before. Why, yes, I have a note of introduction from
Major Caspar to a Captain Cod, and I shouldn't wonder if you were the
very man. Here it is now."

"I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir," said the veteran,
heartily, after glancing over the note thus handed to him. "It's all
right, Sheriff. This is certainly the Major's handwriting, for I know
it as I do my own, and I don't want any better proof that this
gentleman is the person he claims to be."

"Would you be willing to go on his bond for a thousand dollars?" asked
Mr. Riley.