Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/196

176 has cheated him, so it must be coming from outside. He is bound that he will prove yet that he wasn’t fooled in that affair last summer, and we can’t tell just how far that folly  will take him. There are other things, too, big and little, down to foot-tracks in my potato patch. But the last one is that yacht out there; she has gone by the Island three times  already today, and I don’t like her looks. She may belong to some harmless, dirt-common  millionaire, and then she may not. I know all of that kind of vessel that sails in these waters  and she’s a new one to me.”

He adjusted the glass again and looked long at the moving speck and the wreath of smoke  that trailed across the sea.

“I don’t like her,” he repeated, shaking his head, “and I’ve sent a message to that officer telling him so.”

Billy had a look at the vessel also, but could make nothing of her. To him she might have been any one of a thousand pleasure boats that  plied those seas in summer time.

“Well, there is nothing to do but wait,” the Captain said at last, as the yacht disappeared  and he closed the glasses into their case with a snap.