Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/20

4 trifle too short. He carried a bag of tools and was whistling gaily some intricate tune of  trills and runs as he walked along. As he turned to look out to sea, Billy saw that he  had a pleasant face, cheerful, intelligent and  rather sensitive. He stood for a minute, though without seeing Billy, then walked on  again, swinging his bag and piping his music  in the very best of spirits.

A bobolink was swinging on the branch of a bush that leaned over the wall. The gay black-and-white fellow was a new bird to  Billy, so he stopped to look at it more closely. Certainly it was the bird that caught his attention not the unaccountable rustle that he heard immediately after, for that sound he  might never have noticed save for the strange  thing that followed.

For the rustle was repeated; then a hand rose over the wall, slipped across one of the  big lichen-covered rocks and rapped upon it  sharply with something metallic. The boy ahead of him stopped dead, hesitated a second, then turned slowly toward the sound. Billy could see now that there was a man there behind the wall, crouching among the  bushes, some one rather small, narrow-shoul-