Chapter Twenty A RESCUE - AND A NEW PRISONER!
　　THE next day Julian was awake early and went up the rope to the cliff-top to see if the Sticks wereabout. He saw them coming up the steps that led from the dungeons². Mrs. Stick looked pale andworried.
　　"We've got to find our Edgar," she kept saying to Mr. Stick. "I tell you we've got to find our Edgar.
　　He's not down in the dungeons. That I do know. We've yelled ourselves hoarse³ down there.""And he's not on the island," said Mr. Stick. "We hunted all over it yesterday. I think whoever washere then, took our goods, caught Edgar, and made off with him and everything else in their boat.
　　That's what I think."
　　"Well, they've taken him to the mainland then," said Mrs. Stick. "We'd better take our boat and goback there and ask a few questions. What I'd like to know is - who is it messing about here andinterfering with our plans? It makes me scared. Just when things are going nicely too!""Is it all right to leave here just now?" said Mr. Stick, doubtfully. "Suppose whoever was hereyesterday is still here - they might pop down into the dungeons when we're gone.""Well, they're not here," said Mrs. Stick, firmly. "Use your common sense, if you've got any -wouldn't our Edgar yell the place down if he was being kept prisoner on this little island - andwouldn't we hear him? I tell you he must have been taken off in a boat, together with all the otherthings that are gone. And I don't like it.""All right, all right!" said Mr. Stick in a grumbling⁴ tone. "That boy's always a nuisance - always insilly trouble of some sort."
　　"How can you talk of poor Edgar like that?" cried Mrs. Stick. "Do you think the poor child likesbeing captured! Goodness knows what he's going through - feeling frightened and lonely withoutme."
　　Julian felt disgusted. Here was Mrs. Stick talking like that about old Spotty-Face - and yet she had alittle girl down in the dungeons - a child much younger than Edgar! What a beast she was.
　　"What about Tinker?" said Mr. Stick, in a sulky tone. "Better leave him here, hadn't we, to guard theentrance to the dungeons? Not that there will be anyone here, if what you say is right."92
　　"Oh, we'll leave Tinker," said Mrs. Stick, setting off to the boat. Julian saw them

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