Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/187

 fears on that score would have vanished when he saw Bob and Tony driven forward to do duty before the mast, and their boat given up to the mercy of the waves. He thought they had unwittingly brought themselves and him into serious trouble. That was all there was of it.

I never heard just how Willis went to work to put himself on a friendly footing with the detective, but my impression is that he told him the whole truth, and offered Babcock a bonus if he would back up anything he might say in the hearing of Roy and his friends. At all events that was what the detective did. When he entered the reading-room he took a photograph from his pocket, and after spending a minute or two in comparing it with the face of the boy before him, he stepped up and handed it to Roy.

"So that's the way I look when I haven't a black eye and a lame arm, is it?" said the latter, as his gaze rested on the picture. "I know something now I never knew before."

"What is it?" asked Joe.

"That I am the handsomest and most