daylight,
and more than one of his sympathizing neighbors followed him a little
later. There was no doubt at all that a thorough search would be made of
the bay and the island, and so Mr. Foster wisely remained at home to
comfort his wife and daughter.

"That sort of boy," mourned Annie, "is always getting into some kind of
mischief."

"Annie," exclaimed her mother, "Ford is a good boy, and he does not run
into mischief."

"I didn't mean Ford; I meant that Dabney Kinzer. I wish we'd never seen
him, or his sail-boat either."

"Annie," said her father, reprovingly, "if we live by the water, Ford
_will_ go out on it, and he'd better do so in good company. Wait a
while."

Summer days are long, but some of them are a good deal longer than
others, and that was one of the longest any of those people had ever
known. For once, even dinner was more than half neglected in the Kinzer
family circle. At the Fosters' it was forgotten almost altogether. Long
as the day was, and so dreary, in spite of all the bright, warm
sunshine, there was no help for it; the hours would not hurry, and the
wanderers would not return. Tea-time came at last, and with it the
Fosters all came over to Mrs. Kinzer's again, to take tea and to tell
her of several fishermen who had returned from the bay without having
discovered a sign of the "Swallow" or its crew.

Stout-hearted Mrs. Kinzer talked bravely and encouragingly,
nevertheless, and did not seem to abate an ounce of her confidence in
her son. It seemed as if, in leaving off his roundabouts, Dabney must
have suddenly grown a great many "sizes" in his mother's estimation.
Perhaps that was because he did not leave them off too soon.

There they sat, the two mothers and the rest, looking gloomy enough,
while, over there in her bit of a brown house in the village, Mrs. Lee
sat in very much the same frame of mind, trying to relieve her feelings
by smoothing imaginary wrinkles out of her boy's best clothes, and
planning for him any number of bright red neck-ties, if he would only
come back to wear them.

The neighbors were becoming more than a little interested and even
excited about the matter; but what was there to be done?

Telegrams had been sent to other points on the coast, and all the
fishermen notified. It was really one of those puzzling cases where even
the most neighborly can do no better than "wait a while."

Still, there were nearly a dozen people, of all sorts, including Bill
Le