y desire to set about it, that they were
almost sorry when he said, "Easy, easy, boys! One thing at a time!
Don't let us forget, in our haste to be after _this_ business, that we
have other important matters on hand. We have to find Gloy, and we
have to meet the lads of Lunda at Havnholme this afternoon. We haven't
much time on our hands, if Gloy has to be found before we go to receive
his ransom."

"Strikes me," muttered Gibbie, "that we are in a mess about Gloy."

"It's puzzling, but it will all come right," was the chief's reply,
spoken in his usual cheery style, which cleared the cloud from Gibbie's
brow, and sent him home believing as implicitly as before that Yaspard
would find a way of making things come straight. "He always does," the
brothers agreed, as they softly stole up to their room, leaving the
Viking to paddle himself across the voe.

At breakfast next morning Mrs. Harrison asked in some surprise what
they had done with Gloy, for she had expected her nephew would
certainly be brought to her house. She was not a little disturbed on
hearing of his disappearance, but the factor said, "There's nae harm
come to the lad. Ye need not be frightened. It's plain enough some
boat has come by, and the men have insisted on his going wi' them.
For, mind ye, yon geo is a dangerous place if a high tide happened tae
set in."

He would not listen to his boys' arguments against such an explanation.
Neither Gloy's declaring himself still "The Prisoner," nor Pirate's
honesty as policeman, could shake Harrison's belief in his own theory
of the matter. "You'll see I'm right," he ended with; "but I wad like
tae ken what way young master is going tae redd it up wi' the lads o'
Lunda. My word! he will hae a bourne keschie o' crabs to sort wi'
them, if he canno' tell what's come o' their maute." [1]

While Gibbie had been answering questions and their parents had been
talking, Lowrie was fidgeting in his chair, trying to gather courage to
tell the yet more startling incident which occurred during the midnight
trespass on Trullyabister.

At last he managed to say, "Faither, I never could hae thought that Mr.
Neeven was a--was a bairn-stealer and a wumman-stealer."

James Harrison stared at his son, as well he might, and one of the
older girls cried out, "What in a' the world have ye got in your crazy
head, Lowrie?"

Then Lowrie told all he knew about the mother and baby prisoned in the
haunted room, and his fathe