“Suppose, instead of going on like that,” said Riddell, getting up the blades of his sculls with a huge effort, “you show me the way to do it properly!”

“What’s the use of showing you? You could never learn, I can see it by the looks of you!”

After this particularly complimentary speech Riddell rowed ploddingly on for a little distance, Tom whistling shrilly in the stern all the way in a manner most discouraging for conversation.

But Riddell was determined, come what would, he would broach the unpleasant subject. Consequently, after some further progress up-stream, he rested on his oars, and said, “I’ve not been out on the water since the day of the boat-race.”

“Aren’t you, though?” said Tom.

A pause.

“That was a queer thing, the rudder-line breaking that day,” said Riddell, looking hard at his young companion.

Tom apparently did not quite like it. Either it seemed as if Riddell thought he knew something about the affair, or else his conscience was not quite easy.

“In course it was,” replied he, surlily. “I knows nothink about it.”

Riddell, for a quiet, nervous boy, was shrewd for his age, and there was something in Tom’s constrained and uncomfortable manner as he made this disclaimer that convinced him that after all the mysterious letter had something in it.

It was a bold step to take, he knew, and it might end in a failure, but he would chance it at any rate.

“You do know something about it, Tom!” said he, sternly, and with a searching look at the young waterman.

Tom did! He didn’t say so! Indeed he violently denied that he did, and broke out into a state of most virtuous indignation.

“Well I ever, if that ain’t a nice thing to say to a chap. I tell you, I knows nothink about it. The idea! What ’ud I know anythink about it for? I tell you you’re out, governor. You’re come to the wrong shop — do you hear?”

Riddell did hear; and watching the boy’s manner as he hurried out these protests, he was satisfied that he was on the right tack.

It had never occurred to him before. Perhaps the culprit was Tom himself; perhaps it was he who, for some reason of his own, had cut the line and caused all the mischief.

If that were so, what a relief and what a satisfaction it would be! Riddell felt that if Tom himself were the wrong-doer he could almost embrace him, so great would be his joy at knowing that no Willoughby boy was guilty of the crime. But it was too good a notion to be true, and Tom soon dispelled it.

“I tell you,” continued he, vehemently, but looking down so as to avoid the captain’s eye. “I tell you I aren’t done it, there. It’s no use your trying to fix it on me. Do you suppose I wouldn’t know if I’d done it? You blame the right parties, governor, do you hear? I ain’t done it.”

“I never said you did,” replied Riddell, feeling he had by this time got the upper hand in the argument, “but you know who did.”

“There you go. How do I know? I don’t know, and I ain’t done it.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” said Riddell, “the lines could have been cut and you not know it? Don’t you sleep in the boat-house?”

“In course I do — but I ain’t done it, there!”

“Don’t be a young fool, Tom,” said Riddell, sternly. “What I want to know is who did do it.”

“How do you suppose I know?” demanded the boy.

“Who did do it?” again repeated Riddell.

“I don’t know, there!” retorted Tom. “I never see his face.”

“Then some one did come to the boat-house that night?” said Riddell.

“How do I know? Suppose they did?”

“Suppose they did? I want to know who it was.”

“I tell you I don’t know. It was pitch dark, and I ain’t seen his face, there; and what’s more, I don’t know the chap.”

“But you let him into the boat-house?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Tom, whose strong point was evidently not in standing cross-examination. “That’s where you’re wrong again. You’re all wrong.”

“You knew he was there, at any rate,” said Riddell.

“No, I didn’t. You’re wrong agin. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. How could I know he was there, when I worn’t there myself?”

“What! did he get in while you were away?”

“In course he did. Do you suppose I goes to bed like you kids at eight o’clock? No fear. Why, I don’t get my supper at Joe Blades’s till ten.”

“Then you found some one in the boat-house when you went there, after supper, to go to bed?”

“There you are, all wrong agin. How do you suppose I’d find him when he got out of the window?”

“Then he came in and went out by the window?” asked Riddell.

“Why, you don’t suppose he could come down the chimbley, do you?” retorted Tom, scornfully, “and there’s no way else.”

“You had the key of the door all the time, of course,” said Riddell.

“In course. Do you suppose we leaves the boat’us open for anybody as likes to come in without leave?”

“Then it was seeing the window open made you know some one had been in?” continued the captain.

“Wrong agin! Why, you aren’t been right once yet.”

“Do you mean you really saw some one there?”

“How could I see him when he was a-hoppin’ out of the winder just as I comes in? I tell you I didn’t see him. You couldn’t have sor him either, not with all your learnin’.”

“Then you’ve no idea who it was?”

“Ain’t I? that’s all you know.”

“Why, you say you never saw him. Did you hear his voice?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Has some one told you? Has he come and told you himself?”

“No, he ain’t. Wrong agin.”

“Did he leave anything behind that you would know him by, then?”

The boy looked up sharply at Riddell, who saw that he had made a point, and followed it up.

“What did he leave behind? His cap?” he asked.

“His cap! Do you suppose chaps cut strings with their caps? Why, you must be a flat.”

“His knife, was it?” exclaimed Riddell, excitedly. “Was it his knife?”

“There you go; you’re so clever. I as good as tell yer, and then you go on as if you guessed it yourself! You ain’t got as much learnin’ as you think, governor.”

“But was it his knife he left behind?” inquired Riddell, too eager to attend to the sarcasms of his companion.

“What could it ’a been, unless it might be a razor. You don’t cut ropes with your thumb-nails, do you? Of course it was his knife.”

“And have you got it still, Tom?”

Here Tom began to get shy. As long as it was only information that the captain wanted to get at he didn’t so much mind being cross-examined, but directly it looked as if his knife was in peril he bristled up.

“That’ll do,” said he gruffly; “my knife’s nothink to do with you.”

“I know it isn’t, and I don’t want to take it from you. I only want to look at it.”

“Oh, yes; all very fine. And you mean to make out as it’s yourn and you was the chap I saw hoppin’ out of the winder, do yer? I know better. He weren’t your cut, so you needn’t try to make that out.”

“Of course it wasn’t I,” said Riddell, horrified even at the bare suspicion, still more at the idea of any one confessing to such a crime for the sake of getting a paltry knife.

Still Tom was obdurate and would not produce his treasure. In vain Riddell assured him that he made no claim to it, and, even if the knife were his own, would not dream of depriving the boy of it now. Tom listened to it all with an incredulous scowl, and Riddell was beginning to despair of ever setting eyes on the knife, when the boy solved the difficulty of his own accord.

“What do you want to look at it for?” he demanded. “Only to see if I knew whose it was once.”

“Well, I ain’t a-goin’ to let yer see it unless you lay a half-a-crown down on that there seat. There! I ain’t a-going to be done by you or any of your scholars.”

Riddell gladly put down the money and had the satisfaction at last of seeing Tom fumble in his pockets for the precious weapon.