"The scoundrels!" burst out Joe. "We've got to spoil their wicked game."
"That's what we have. We'll tell the police, or some one in authority."
"But before we do," broke in Joe, "tell me about my father, though I begin to suspect now," and there was a look of sadness on his face.
"I presume you pretty well know what is coming," said Blake, slowly, "now you have heard what those men said. The whole amount of it is, Joe, that your father is suspected of having been in league with those wreckers—that he helped to lure vessels on these same rocks."
"My father a wrecker!" cried Joe. "It can't be—I won't believe it!"
"I didn't want to either, when I heard it," said Blake, "and maybe, now that I've told you, we can work together and find some way of proving him innocent."
"That's it!" cried the son. "Oh, if he were only here to help us! I wonder why he went away?"
"The lighthouse keeper said," began Blake, "that your father left because he feared to be arrested. And the day after he went away an officer did come for him," and he proceeded to relate what Mr. Stanton had said.
"I don't believe it!" cried Joe, when the account
