"I fear his tender care of me has been a speculation."

"You do not believe he is your friend?"

"I fear he is not."

"Some enemy may have traduced Tom Pearce."

"No; the words that aroused my suspicions fell frown his own lips."

"And what do you fear?"

"You must learn from other lips."

"Who will tell me?"

"If you are to know at all, you must learn my fears from the lips of my enemies."

"How shall I do that?"

"Are you willing to serve me?"

The detective was silent. He was certainly charmed and lured by this beautiful child of the shore, but could he afford to undertake to be the champion of a barefooted girl, though she did own a strangely beautiful face?

"If you serve me I will serve you."

"What can you do for me?"

The girl's eyes gleamed as she answered:

"Let me but know that these men are my foes, that I owe them no gratitude, and I can give you information for which the government would pay thousands! and even to-night in serving me you would also serve yourself."

"Will you tell me how?"

"One of the bosses is to visit the shore to-night."

"Aha! there is where the whale blows."

"Yes."

"Who does he visit?"

"Tom Pearce."

"What is his purpose?"

"I only guess."

"What do you guess?"

"Am I to speak more plainly to you, or can you not discern?"

"Have you ever met the man?"

"Yes."

"You fear him?"

"I do not know yet; you may find out."

"What do you suspect?"

A moment the girl was silent, but at length she said:

"I suspect I am to be sent away!"

"You mistrust your reputed father?"

"I do."

"And this man comes to-night?"

"Yes."

"You would offer a suggestion?"

"Are you prepared to take advantage of my information?"

"I am."

"Watch them: learn their purpose!"

"Where do they meet?"

"In my father's cabin."

"Lead me there."

"I will."

The detective decided not to go off in the yacht that night. He preferred to be "taken in tow" by beautiful little barefoot, and strange adventures were the outcome of his change of plans.

The detective and the girl traversed a mile and a half of the beach and then struck inland, and soon came in sight of the glimmer of lights gleaming forth from a fisherman's shanty.

"They meet there. You know how to act, and I can give you no 'points' when it comes to 'piping.' Good-bye for the present."

The girl glided away and the detective proceeded toward the cabin only to encounter a series of thrilling, extraordinary, and startling adventures.

CHAPTER V.

Spencer Vance had become greatly interested in the beautiful Renie during the walk along the beach. He had become deeply impressed with the purity, yet weirdness of her character. He had pressed the girl for some reminiscence of her early childhood, but she had no recollections beyond the sea and the fisherman's cabin where she had lived with old Tom Pearce and his wife.

Her supposed father had for years rowed her every morning across the bay to the mainland, where she had attended the village school, from whence she had passed to the high school, at which her reputed father had supported her for a couple of years.

Mrs. Pearce died suddenly one day after a few hours' illness. Just before her death Renie was alone with her in the room. The woman had been unconscious, but she momentarily recovered consciousness and summoned the girl to her bedside and attempted to communicate some parting intelligence, but alas! she only succeeded in uttering a few disjointed exclamations, suggestive, but not directly and fully intelligible. The half-uttered exclamations only served to confirm certain suspicions that had long floated unsuggested through the girl's mind, and her disappointment was bitter when the icy hand of death strangled the communications which the dying woman was seeking to make.

The girl had formed a sort of attachment for Tom Pearce. The man was a good-natured, jolly sailor sort of a fellow, and, as intimated, had always treated the girl with the utmost kindness and consideration.

It was thus matters stood up to the time of the detective's strange meeting with the girl upon the beach.

As the girl pointed to the house and concluded the words which close our preceding chapter, she glided away, and left the detective to "work his own passage".

During the walk along the beach Renie had been a little more explicit in explaining her immediate peril, and our hero was prepared to more intelligently enact the role of the eavesdropper.

The cabin of Tom Pearce, the boatman, was an ordinary fisherman's hut, built in the midst of white sand-hills, with a few willows planted on a little patch of made earth, and serving as protectors against the fierce summer blaze of the sun.

The detective crept up to the cabin, and climbing upon a rear shed which served as a cover to several boats and a large quantity of nets, he covered himself with a fragment of old sailcloth, and secured a position from where, through a little opening which in the summer was left unclosed, he could see into the main room of the cottage. He could not only see, but could as readily overhear any conversation that might occur.

Glancing into the room, he saw Tom Pearce, whom he had seen many times before on board several of the boats that sail over the bay. The fisherman, or rather smuggler, was seated before a table on which stood a ship's lamp, reading what appeared to be an old time-stained letter, and after an interval he muttered aloud:

"Well, well, I don't know what to do! That girl is dear to my old heart, and I'd rather die than any harm should come to her; and again I don't like to stand in her way; while according to this letter from the old woman, written nigh on to thirteen years ago, I've no right to let her pass from my possession."

The mutterings of the old man were interrupted by a loud rap at his rickety door.

"Come in!" called the old smuggler.

The door opened, and a roughly dressed man strode into the