Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/186

 much trouble, is it?" said Arthur, in tones of disgust. "We meant to have him arrested if he didn't talk pretty smoothly to us, and yet we find you and him here as thick as a couple of thieves."

"Now, what's the sense in going on like that?" demanded Roy. "If I am satisfied with his story, I'm sure you ought to be. Willis is all right. The minute he learned that I wasn't Rowe Shelly, he woke me up in the middle of the night, put me into a boat with two good men to row it, and sent me over to the city. He was as anxious to be rid of me as I was to find you. Now see if you can't treat him decently when he comes back."

How Willis would have hugged himself if he could have heard Roy Sheldon say this! There was not the faintest suspicion in the boy's mind that the superintendent had been guilty of treachery, and that he had sent him on board the White Squall intending that he should be "shanghaied" and carried so far away from America that he would not get back for six months or a year. If Roy had mistrusted that there was anything wrong, his