Page:Bedford-Jones--Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril.djvu/101

 "Crazy as a Junebug, but harmless, only you tread on his toes good and proper. His name is Ketcham, but he thinks he's a descendant of that Virginia Dare, so the kids around here call him Buffalo Dare and run after him yelling, 'You ketch him; I'll skin him.

"Buffalo Dare!" exclaimed Legs, popping his eyes.

"Does this man ever row around in a boat?" asked Hardy eagerly. "Does he ever go over to Knott's Island?"

"He never rowed nothin' but a herring," returned the landlord, chuckling at his own jest. "Row nothin', and I've seen him every day fer years. He eats here on a meal ticket his brother pays for. He's harmless, so they don't put him in the bughouse. Just gets daffy when the kids pester him about that Buffalo business."

"But, say, Hardy," interposed Legs, not fully recovered from his start, "I bet he is the same man, though."

"Couldn't be," objected Hardy. "The fellow seen on the island was short and smooth-faced and black; this crazy loot has red whiskers."

Legs was about to push the subject further