were an ally of Logan
Black's, just as you believed me to be his ally, and as he believed you
and me to be working together. It may interest you to know that
smuggling has been one of his side lines. There is, somewhere
hereabouts, a cave in which smuggled goods are stored. These coasts
have a sinister history, Mr. Cleggett. It is possible that your canal
boat--I beg your pardon, your schooner, Mr. Cleggett--played some part
in their smuggling operations. At any rate it is evident that Logan
Black transferred to the hold of this vessel the incriminating evidence
against him, contained in that oblong box, when he learned that my
agents were watching Morris's. The Jasper B. has been lying in her
present position for a long time. In the event that a sudden get-away
from Morris's became necessary, it was an advantage to Logan Black to
be able to leave without being hampered with this matter. No one, for
many years, had paid any attention to the Jasper B., with the exception
of the old truck farmer, Abernethy, who used sometimes to fish from her
deck, and----"

"Truck farmer!" cried Cleggett. "Abernethy?"

"Truck farmer," repeated Wilton Barnstable.

"Is not Abernethy an old sea captain?" asked Cleggett.

"Why, no, I believe not," said Barnstable. "At least I never heard so.
He is well known as a small truck gardener in this neighborhood. It is
true that he comes of a seafaring family--indeed, it is his boast.
But, in a community where nearly everyone knows a little about boats, I
believe that Abernethy is remarkable for an indisposition to venture
far from shore."

"I can scarcely believe it," breathed Cleggett.

"He does not understand boats," said Barnstable. "That is the reason, I
take it, why he has always fished in the canal from the deck of the
Jasper B."

"Abernethy is a gallant man," said Cleggett, rather sternly. "And even
although he may have had little actual seafaring experience, the
instinct is in him! The inherited love of a nautical life has been
latent in him all along. And at the first opportunity it has come out.
He has shown his mettle aboard the Jasper B."

"I do not doubt it, if you insist upon it," said Wilton Barnstable,
politely. And from revolving his thumbs benignly towards himself he
began to revolve them urbanely from himself. The reversal was imitated
at once by Barton Ward, but Watson Bard was slower in putting this new
coup into execution.

"The resemblance between th