ybody was pulling
his leg, but could not be sure.

Only Miss Ford sat silent.

CHAPTER IX

THE HOUSE OF LIVING ALONE MOVES AWAY

When Sarah Brown and Richard, followed by the Dog David, reached the
Mitten Island Ferry, after travelling slowly by moonlight, they were
surprised to see a great crowd of people banked up on the Island, and
one man in the uniform of a policeman, standing alone on the mainland.
About ten yards from land the ferryman sat in his boat, rowing gently to
keep himself stationary in the current.

"You'll 'ave to come to shore now," said the policeman, in the tone of
one exhausted by long argument. "'Ere's some more parties wanting to
cross." He turned to Richard. "Look 'ere, mate," he said. "I'm 'ere in
the discharge of my dooty, and this ferryman is obstructin' me."

"Deah, deah," said Richard.

The ferryman said: "If the King of England--why, if the two ghosts of
Queen Victoria and Albert the Good--was waiting to cross now, I
wouldn't come in for them, not if it was going to give you a chance to
set foot on Mitten Island."

The crowd across the river, divining that a climax of defiance was being
reached, shouted: "Yah, yah," in unison.

"Is either of you parties an 'ouse'older on Mitten Island?" asked the
policeman of Sarah Brown and Richard.

"I am," said Richard, to his companion's surprise.

"Can you give me any information regarding the whereabouts of a
cherecter known under any of these names: Iris 'Yde, T.B. Watkins,
Hangela the Witch, possibly a male in female disguise, believed to
conduct a general shop and boardin' 'ouse on Mitten Island?"

"There is only one shop on Mitten Island," said Richard. "And one
boarding house. All in one. I own it. I can recite you the prospectus if
you like. I have a superintendent there. I have known her all my life. I
did not know she was believed to be a male in female disguise. I did not
know she had any name at all, let alone half-a-dozen."

The policeman seemed to be troubled all the time by mosquitoes. He
slapped his face and his ears and the back of his neck. He succeeded in
killing one insect upon the bridge of his nose, and left it there by
mistake, a strangely ignoble corpse. Sarah Brown suspected Richard of
some responsibility for this untimely persecution.

"That party is charged with an offence against the Defence of the Realm
Act," said the policeman,--"with being, although a civilian, in
possession of a flying machine,