"Don"t I, though!" exclaimed Tom Edwards, smiling. "Why, I used to tie up a hundred bundles a day when I worked in a dry-goods store in Boston. Put out your wrist, captain, I"ll show you what a counter-jumper can do."
And Tom Edwards, with vast satisfaction, did up Hamilton Haley like a package for the express.
They had not fired a shot-and the bug-eye was theirs. The cruise of the Brandt was at an end.
Next day, with Henry Burns recovered sufficiently to be about and on deck, the two craft started northward, keeping close in touch with each other. The skipper of the Z. B. Brandt was Jack Harvey; and he had a mixed crew, made up of one or two of the Brandt"s men that could be trusted, and Edward and George Warren. The Mollie still obeyed her helm directed by stalwart Will Adams. Back they went over the waters they had travelled, running by daylight only, until they reached the upper waters of Tangier Sound. There a welcome police-boat relieved them alike of the Brandt and her former skipper and mate and crew.
A week later, there filed into a court-room in Baltimore a sun-burned, weather-beaten looking party, conspicuous among which were Jack Harvey and Henry Burns and Tom Edwards, and consisting otherwise of the Warrens and Will Adams. They confronted two men there, long notorious for wrong-doing among the dredging fleet. It was the beginning of the end for Captain Haley and for Jim Adams, mate. They were held for trial. That trial, months later, had its natural conclusion. The doors of the state prison closed upon the pair for a long term of years.
And, in the meantime, two days following the preliminary hearing in court, a train rolled into Benton, bearing a party of youths at once joyous and serious. One of these, Jack Harvey, had parted for the time being from a friend whom he had met in adversity and whom he had come to love as an elder brother. That friend was Tom Edwards, no longer clad in oil-skins and weary of life, but well dressed and well fed, and eager to be back to the world of business from which he had been so rudely spirited away. And it may be truly said that there were tears in the eyes of Tom Edwards, as Jack Harvey, grasping his hand to say good-bye, gave it a grip as though he were turning the handle of Haley"s winch.
There was someone at the train to meet Henry Burns, as well as the parents of the Warrens. It was a slender spinster, Miss Matilda Burns, who had the care of the youth. She wiped her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief, as she tried to look sternly at her nephew.
"Henry Burns," she said, "where on earth have you been all this time? You haven"t written me those two letters a week that you promised. I believe you"ve been off somewhere, away from that farmhouse of Mr. Warren"s, where you were going."
"Yes"m, I have," responded Henry Burns.
THE END.