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Gertrude W. Morrison
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Title: The Girls of Central High in Camp
The Old Professor's Secret
Author: Gertrude W. Morrison
Release Date: May 9, 2009 [EBook #28740]
Language: English
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[Illustration: A PARTY OF PARENTS AND FRIENDS CAME TO SEE THE
CAMPERS START. _Girls of Central High in Camp_ _Page 49_]
THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH IN CAMP
or
THE OLD PROFESSOR'S SECRET
by
GERTRUDE W. MORRISON
Author of The Girls of Central High,
The Girls of Central High on
Lake Luna, Etc.
ILLUSTRATED
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING CO.
AKRON, OHIO NEW YORK
MADE IN U. S. A.
Copyright, 1915, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Where, Oh, Where? 1
II. Plans for the Summer 12
III. Visitors' Day 20
IV. "Lonesome Liz" 29
V. The Start 39
VI. Prettyman Sweet Makes a Friend 50
VII. The Barnacle 61
VIII. Up Rocky River 72
IX. The Camp on Acorn Island 80
X. Getting Used to It 92
XI. Liz Sees a "Ha'nt" 102
XII. The "Kleptomaniantic" Ghost 114
XIII. The Search of the Island 121
XIV. "More Fun Than a Little" 128
XV. The Barnacle Has a Nose 137
XVI. Where the Barnacle's Nose Led Him 144
XVII. A Perfectly Unsatisfactory Interview 152
XVIII. An Eventful Fishing Trip 159
XIX. The Young Man With the Gun 170
XX. Laura Keeps Her Secret 175
XXI. The Sheriff With His Dogs 182
XXII. Where Professor Dimp Comes in Big 189
XXIII. Liz on the Defensive 196
XXIV. The Barnacle Trees Something at Last 201
XXV. "Quite All Right" 207
THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH IN CAMP
CHAPTER I
WHERE, OH, WHERE?
Field day was past and gone and the senior class of Central High,
Centerport's largest and most popular school, was thinking of little
but white dresses, bouquets, and blue-ribboned diplomas.
The group of juniors, however, who had made the school's athletic
record for the year in the Girls' Branch Athletic League, had other
matters to discuss--and in their opinion they were matters of much
greater moment.
"Boiled down," stated Bobby Hargrew, "to its last common divisor, it
is 'Where, oh, where shall we spend our vacation?'"
They had decided some weeks before--Bobby herself, Laura Belding, Jess
Morse, the Lockwood twins and Dr. Agnew's daughter, Nellie--that a
portion at least of the long summer vacation should be spent in camp.
The mooted question was, where?
"No seashore resort," Nellie said, with more decision than she usually
displayed, for Nellie was of a timid and peaceful disposition.
"No," agreed Laura Belding. "We'll eschew the three S's--'sun, sand,
and 'skeeter-bites.' That is the slogan of the seashore resort.
Besides, it costs too much to get there."
"That's an important item to take into consideration, girls, if _I'm_
to go," said Jess Morse.
"I thought you were a millionairess?" laughed Bobby. "Where are the
royalties from your play?"
"Those won't begin till the producer puts the play on next season,"
returned Jess, who had been fortunate in writing a play for amateur
production good enough to interest a professional theatrical manager.
"Well, we've got to have _you_, Jess," said Bobby (otherwise Clara)
Hargrew. "For we're depending upon your mother to play chaperon for
the crowd, wherever we go."
"Let's find a quiet spot, then," said Jess, eagerly. "Mother wants to
write a book this summer and she says she would love to be somewhere
where she doesn't need to play the society game, or dress----"
"Back to the Garden of Eden for hers!" chuckled Bobby. "Eve didn't
have to dress--that is, not before _Fall_."
"Aren't you awful, Bobby?" cried one of the Lockwood twins--but
_which_ one it was who spoke could not have been sworn to by their
most familiar friend. Dora and Dorothy looked just alike, dressed just
alike, their voices were alike, and they usually acted in perfect
harmony, too!
"Well," pursued Laura Belding, "if we are going to spend the first
weeks of the summer vacation in camp, we must decide upon the spot at
once. Are we all agreed that we shall not go to the salt water?"
"Oh, yes!" cried her particular chum, Jess, or Josephine, Morse.
"None of the troubles of the seaside boarder for ours," Bobby
announced, hurriedly groping amid the rubbish in her skirt pocket and
bringing forth a crumpled newspaper clipping. Bobby insisted upon
having a pocket in almost every garment she wore (it was whispered
that she wore pajamas at night for that reason) and no boy ever
carried a more heterogeneous collection in his pockets than she did.
"See here! here's one seaside visitor's complaint," and she intoned in
a singsong voice the following doggerel:
"'Why don't red-headed girls get tanned?
Why does a collar wilt?
Why is the sea so near the land?
Why were the billows built?
Why is the "crawl-stroke" hard to learn?
Why is the sea bass shy?
Why is the nose the first to burn?
Why is the stinging fly?
"'Why do mosquito nettings leak?
Why do all fishers lie?
Why does the grunter-fish always squeak?
Why do they feed us on clam-pie?
Why does the boardwalk hurt the feet?
Why is the seaweed green?
Why can't a bathing suit look neat?
Why won't straw hats stay clean?
"'Why----'"
"Stop it!" shrieked Jess, covering her ears. "How _dare_ you read such
preposterous stuff?"
"'Whys to the wise,' you know," giggled Bobby.
"I vote we refuse to allow Bobby to go camping with the crowd unless
she positively refrains from quoting verse on any and every occasion,"
drawled Nellie.
"Hardhearted creature!" cried Dora Lockwood. "Poor Bobs couldn't live
without that 'scape-gap."
"By the way, girls," Laura Belding asked, briskly, "are we going to
let any other girls join this camping party--or is it to be just us
six?"
"Who else wants to go?" demanded Bobby, quickly.
"Lil Pendleton----"
"Always that!" ejaculated Bobby, in disgust.
"Why, Bobby!" cried Dorothy. "I thought you and Lilly kissed and made
up?"
"Oh, yes--we did," grunted the smaller girl. "That is, we kissed. Lil
was already made up."
"Now, Bobby!" admonished Laura.
"That's horrid of you, Bobby," Nellie declared. "You are
incorrigible."
Yet they all had to laugh. Bobby Hargrew _was_ just a cut-up!
"I'm worse than the long word you called me, Nell," said little Miss
Hargrew. "But we're not going to have any such spoil-sport as Lil
Pendleton along."
"But Chet and Lance say that Prettyman Sweet has begged so hard to go
camping with _them_, that they're going to take him--just for the fun
they will have at his expense, I s'pose," said Laura.
"That's why Lil wants to go camping," Dora said. "She's got such an
awful crush on Pretty Sweet that she wants to do everything he does."
"That dude!" scoffed Bobby.
"He and Lil make a good pair," said Jess.
"Wait a minute!" cried Dorothy Lockwood. "Where are the boys going to
camp this year, Laura?"
"On the shore of Lake Dunkirk, somewhere."
"Say, Mother Wit," cried Bobby, addressing by her universal nickname
the leader of the crowd of Central High girls. "Wouldn't it be fun to
camp near--That is, providing the boys are all nice."
"Well, beside Chet and Lance and Pretty Sweet, there'll be Short and
Long, Reddy Butts and Arthur Hobbs, anyway. I don't know how many
more," Laura said. "But you know that Chet and Lance wouldn't have any
but nice fellows in their crowd."
"Barring Pretty," said Bobby, "they are all good chaps--so far. We
wouldn't mind having them for neighbors.
"And why can't we?" she added, suddenly. "Why, girls! Father Tom has
recently bought into the Rocky River Lumber Company and that company
owns Acorn Island."
"Acorn Island? Great!" declared Jess.
"That's the big island in Lake Dunkirk, you know," explained Laura to
the Lockwood twins, who looked puzzled.
"Acorn Island is just the finest kind of a place for a camp," said the
enthusiastic Jess. "It's just like a wilderness."
"Right! The company isn't going to cut the timber on the island till
next winter. Father Tom says so."
"I've been to picnics on Acorn Island," said Nellie Agnew. "It _is_ a
beautiful spot."
"Acorn Island it is, then," cried Bobby. "Hurrah! We'll spend our
vacation there!"
She almost shouted this declaration. The girls had been lingering to
talk in the high school yard and were now at the gate. Nellie suddenly
tugged at Laura's sleeve and whispered:
"Look there! _what_ do you suppose is the matter with Professor
Dimp?"
Bobby spun around at the word, having heard the sibilant whisper. She
likewise stared at the rusty-coated gentleman who had just passed the
gate, having come from the main entrance of the Central High
building.
"Gee!" exclaimed the slangy Bobby. "What's got Old Dimple now? What
have _I_ ever done to him--except massacre the Latin language?--and
that's a 'dead one,' anyway!"
The Latin teacher--the bane of all careless and ill-prepared boys and
girls of the Latin class--was a slightly built, stoop-shouldered man
who never seemed to own a new coat, and was as forgetful as a person
really could be, and be allowed to go about without a keeper.
He often passed the members of his class on the street without knowing
them at all; the boys said you might as well bow to a post as to Old
Dimple!
But here he had taken particular notice of Bobby Hargrew; indeed, he
stopped to turn around and glare right at her--just as though she had
said something particularly offensive to him as he passed the group.
"Goodness!" murmured Jess. "If you're not in trouble with Gee Gee,
Bobs, you manage to get one of the other instructors down on you. What
have you done to the professor?"
"Nothing, I declare!" said Bobby, plaintively.
"If you'd murdered his grandmother he couldn't look any harder at
you," chuckled Dora Lockwood.
The professor suddenly saw that he had disturbed the party of
schoolgirls. He actually flushed, and turned hurriedly to move away.
As he did so he pulled a big, blue-bordered handkerchief from the tail
pocket of his frock-coat. That pocket was notably a "catch-all" for
anything the poor, absent-minded professor wished to save, or to which
he took a fancy. Once Short and Long (otherwise a very short boy named
Long) dropped a kitten into the professor's tail pocket and the
gentleman did not discover it until he reached for his bandana to wipe
his moist brow when he stood up to lecture his Latin class.
However, it was nothing like a kitten that followed the blue-bordered
handkerchief out of the voluminous skirt-pocket. A crumpled clipping
from a newspaper fell to the walk as Professor Dimp strode away.
Bobby Hargrew's quick eye noted the clipping first, and she darted to
retrieve it. She came back more slowly, reading the printed slip.
"What is it, Bob?" asked Jess, idly.
"Why, Clara!" exclaimed Laura Belding, "aren't you going to give it
back to him?"
"Look here, girls!" ejaculated the excited and thoughtless Bobby,
looking up from the newspaper clipping. "What do you think of this?
Old Dimple must be secretly interested in modern crime as well as in
the murdered ancient languages. This is all about those forgeries in
the Merchants and Miners Bank, of Albany. You know, they say a young
fellow--almost a boy--did them; and he can't be found and they don't
know what he did with the money obtained by the circulating of the
false paper."
"My! Our Aunt Dora lost some securities. She just wrote us about it,"
Dorothy Lockwood said, eagerly.
"And he wasn't much but a boy!" murmured Nellie. But Laura said,
sharply: "Bobby! that's not nice. Run after Professor Dimp and give
the clipping to him."
"Gee! you're so awfully particular," grumbled the harum-scarum. But
she started after the shabby figure of the Latin teacher and caught up
with him before Professor Dimp had reached the end of the next
block--for Bobby Hargrew had taken the palm in the quarter mile dash
at the Girls' Branch League Field Day and there were few girls at
Central High who could compete with her as a sprinter.
When she returned to the group of her friends, still eagerly
discussing the plane for their camping trip, her footsteps lagged.
Laura noticed the curious expression on the smaller girl's face.
"What _has_ happened you, Bobby?" she demanded.
"Why! I'm so surprised," gasped Bobby. "I must have done something
_awful_ to Old Dimple. When he saw what it was I handed him, he
grabbed it and just snarled at me:
"'Where did you get that, Miss Hargrew?'
"And when I told him, he looked as though he didn't believe me and had
to search his pocket to make sure he _had_ dropped it. And he looked
at me so fiercely and suspiciously. Goodness! I don't know what I've
done to him."
"He's odd, you know," suggested Mother Wit.
"That's all right," said Bobby, somewhat tartly; "but what the
mischief he wants to bother himself about where we go camping----"
"What do you mean, Bobs?" demanded Jess, while the other girls all
looked amazed.
"Why he said to me just now," answered the disturbed girl, "'you girls
better keep away from Acorn Island. That's no place for you to go
camping.' And then walked right off with his old clipping, and without
giving me a chance to ask him what he meant," concluded Bobby
Hargrew.
CHAPTER II
PLANS FOR THE SUMMER
Bobby Hargrew came to school the next morning with rather a sour
face for her. "What's the matter, dear?" asked Nell Agnew,
sympathetically.
"I wish I were a bird," grumbled Bobby.
"So you could soar into the circumambient ether and leave all mundane
things below?" queried Jess Morse, with a chuckle.
"No," said Bobby, in disgust. "So I wouldn't have a toothache. I was
up with one of my old grinders half the night."
"Have it pulled," suggested Laura.
"Say!" cried Bobby. "That's the easiest thing in the world to say and
the hardest to do. And you know it, Mother Wit! You can have an old
toothache that will make you feel like committing suicide; and when
you get to the dentist shop you wish you _had_ committed suicide
before you got there," and jolly little Bobby began to grin again.
"Suicide is a serious matter," said Nellie, gravely.
"Surely, surely," the cut-up replied, dropping her voice to a gruesome
pitch. "Listen!
"'Beside a sewer a man lay dead,
A dagger in his side;
The coroner's decision read:
"He died of suicide."
'Now if this man at home in bed,
Had in this manner died,
Then could the coroner have said:
"He died of homicide"?'
"Never joke about serious things, Nell."
"Hush, Bobby!" commanded Laura Belding. "Tell us, do, if your father
has agreed to let us go camping on Acorn Island?"
"Of course," replied the younger girl. "And he says there is a cabin
there that can be made tight for ten dollars. It's all right to camp
under canvas; but if a big storm should come up he says we'd be glad
of that cabin."
"Great!" announced Jess Morse.
"The cabin shall be your mother's particular shelter," said Laura.
"Eh, girls?"
"If she is kind enough to go with us," said Nellie, "she should have
the very best of everything."
"She can have _my_ share of the wood ants and red spiders," chuckled
Bobby. "But it's all right, girls. Father Tom says we can have the
island to ourselves. And believe me: this bunch of girls of Central
High will sure have a good time!"
Which was a prophecy likely to be fulfilled, if the past adventures of
these same girls were any criterion of the future.
For more than a year now the girls of Central High, together with
those of the other two high schools of Centerport and the high schools
of Lumberport and Keyport--all five--had been deeply interested in the
Girls' Branch League athletics. In following the various games and
exercises approved by their instructor, Mrs. Case these six girls
introduced above, had engaged in many and varied enterprises and
adventures.
In "The Girls of Central High; Or, Rivals for All Honors," the first
volume of this series, Laura Belding ("Mother Wit") was enabled to
interest one of the wealthiest men of Centerport in girls' athletics
so that he gave a large sum toward the preparation of a handsome
athletic field and gymnasium for Central High.
The second volume is entitled: "The Girls of Central High on Lake
Luna," and the third is "The Girls of Central High at Basket
Ball"--the titles of which tell their own story.
"The Girls of Central High on the Stage," the fourth volume, tells of
the writing and first production by her mates of Jess Morse's
successful play, while the fifth of the series is entitled: "The Girls
of Central High on Track and Field; Or, Champions of the School
League."
Laura, Jess, Nellie, the Lockwood Twins and Bobby were girls of
dissimilar characters (that is, if we count Dora and Dorothy as "one
and indivisible" like the Union of the States). Laura's brother
Chetwood, his chum, Lance Darby, Billy Long, and some of the other
Central High boys were usually entangled in the girls'
adventures--sufficiently to give spice to the incidents.
So, all considered, it was only reasonable that the girls should have
eagerly agreed upon the site of their summer camp--Acorn Island. They
knew that the boys would probably have their own camp on one shore or
the other of the lake, and within sight of the island.
Chet, who seldom failed to walk home with Jess and carry her
books--unless the gymnasium called the girls after the school
session--and Lance, who filled like office of faithful squire to
Laura, joined the girl chums on this afternoon.
"Got it all planned, have you?" Chet said. "I hear Acorn Island is
going to be overrun with a gang of female Indians right after
graduation."
"We have got to go up there to keep watch of you boys," laughed his
sister. "But it's nice of Bobby's father to let us camp there."
"Pull--sheer pull," grumbled Lance. "We fellows tried our best to get
permission to camp on the Island."
"Well," said Jess, demurely. "You can come to the island visiting. It
will be perfectly proper. My mother says she will go to chaperon us,
now that she knows there is a cabin there."
"And Bobby's father is going to send a couple of men up from
Lumberport to make the cabin tight and fix things up a little for us.
We'll pitch our tents on the knoll right by the cabin," Laura said,
eagerly.
"Pretty spot," agreed Chet. "We'll probably have our camp in sight of
it and the lake between the south shore and the island is only about
two miles broad."
"Oh! we'll have a bully time," his chum agreed.
"Say!" Chet said, suddenly, addressing Lance Darby. "What was
professor Dimp saying to you about camping? I heard a word or two.
Something about going to the island?"
"Why! I forgot to tell you about that," returned Lance, quickly,
while the two girls cast enquiring glances at each other. "Old Dimple
is certainly an odd stick."
"As odd as Dick's hat-band," agreed Chet.
"And no-end forgetful. He's been worse than ever lately. There
certainly is something worrying him."
"You boys," laughed Jess.
"Something worse than boys," Lance returned. "It's a shame how
forgetful he is. Say! did you hear what he did at Mr. Sharp's the
other night?"
"No," said the others, in chorus.
Lance began to chuckle. Mr. Franklin Sharp was the principal of
Central High, and was very much admired by all the pupils; while
Professor Dimp, because of his harshness and his queer ways, was the
butt of more than a few jokes.
"It was night before last when it rained so hard," resumed Lance. "He
was there going over Latin exercises or something, with the Doctor.
Mrs. Sharp asked him to stay all night, when it came on so hard to
rain, and the old Prof thanked her and said he would.
"Mr. Sharp went into his office to do something or other and left Old
Dimple in the library for a while. The family lost track of him then.
Right in the middle of the hardest downpour, about eleven o'clock,
the front door bell rang, and Mr. Sharp went to the door.
"There was Old Dimple, under a dripping umbrella, his pants wet to the
knees, and his pajamas and toothbrush under his arm----"
"Oh, Lance!" ejaculated Laura. "That is too much to believe."
"Fact. He'd gone home for his nightclothes. I got it from our hired
girl and she got it from Mrs. Sharp's maid. So, there you have it!"
"But you didn't tell us what the old Prof was saying to you about
camping," reminded Chet, when the general laugh was over.
"Why! that's so. And it was odd, too, that he should take any interest
in what we fellows were going to do this summer."
"What about it?" Jess asked.
"He wanted to know if we were going to pitch our camp, too, on Acorn
Island? He seemed to know you girls were going there."
"How odd!" murmured Laura and Jess, together. And the latter added:
"Bobby said he seemed mad when he found out _we_ were going to Acorn
Island."
"Well," drawled Lance, "he seemed sort of relieved when I told him we
fellows were going to camp on the mainland."
"Funny he should trouble his head about us out of school hours at
all," Chet said again.
His sister made no further comment upon the professor's queer actions.
Nevertheless her curiosity was aroused regarding the old instructor's
sudden interest in anything beside Latin exercises and Greek roots.
CHAPTER III
VISITORS' DAY
The afternoon preceding the closing exercises of Central High was
Visitors' Day at the girls' gymnasium. This was an entirely different
affair from the recent Field Day when Laura Belding and her particular
friends had so well distinguished themselves.
On _that_ occasion the general public had been invited. Visitors' Day
might better have been called "Mothers' Day." Mrs. Case personally
invited all those mothers who had shown little interest, or positive
objection, to their daughters' athletic activities.
For to the Centerport ladies the fact that their daughters were being
trained "like prize-ring fighters," as one good but misled mother had
said in a letter to the newspaper, was not only a novel course but was
considered of doubtful value.
"And you must come, Mother," begged Laura, when Mrs. Belding seemed
inclined to make excuses. Mrs. Belding was one of the mothers who
could not approve of her daughter's interest in athletics.
"Really, Laura, I am not sure that I should enjoy myself seeing you
crawl about those ladders like a spider--or climbing ropes like a
sailor--or turning on a trapeze like a monkey--or otherwise making
yourself ridiculous."
"Oh, Mother!" half-laughed Laura. Yet she was a little hurt, too.
"Aw, Mother, don't sidestep your plain duty," said Chet, his eyes
twinkling.
"Chetwood! You know very well that I do not approve of many of these
modern dances. I certainly do not 'sidestep'"----
"That isn't a dance, Mother," giggled Laura.
Her husband chuckled at the other end of the table. "My dear," he
said, suavely, "you should keep up with the times----"
"No, thank you. I have no desire to. Keeping up with the times, as you
call it, has made my son speak a language entirely unintelligible to
_my_ ear, and has made my daughter an exponent of muscular exercises
of which I cannot approve."
"Pshaw!" said her husband, easily. "Basketball, and running, and
rowing, and the exercise she gets at that gymnasium, aren't going to
hurt Mother Wit."
"There you go!" exclaimed his wife. "You have begun to apply to Laura
an appellation which she has gained since all this disturbance over
athletics among the girls, has arisen.
"I can no more than expect," went on Mrs. Belding, seriously, "that,
dissatisfied with basketball and the like, the girls will become
baseball and football--what do you call them, Chetwood? Fans?"
"Quite right, mother," Laura hastened to answer instead of her
brother. "And all we girls of Central High are fans already when it
comes to baseball and football. I'd like to belong to a baseball team,
myself, for one----"
"Laura!" gasped her mother, while her father and Chet burst out
laughing.
"It's the finest game in the world," declared Laura, stoutly.
"Hear! hear!" from Chet.
"I've been to see the games a lot with father Saturday afternoons,"
began Laura, when her mother interposed:
"Indeed? _That_ is why you are so eager always to spend your forenoons
with your father on Saturday?"
"Oh, Mother! I really _do_ help father in the jewelry-store--don't I,
Dad?"
"Couldn't get along without you, daughter," said Mr. Belding,
stoutly.
"And he always takes me for a nice bite in a restaurant," pursued the
girl, "and then if there's a game, we go to see it."
"Runaways!" said Mrs. Belding, shaking an admonishing finger at them.
"So you encourage her in these escapades, do you, Mr. Belding?"
"Quite so, Mother," he returned. "You're behind the times. Girls are
different nowadays--in open practise, at least--from what they were in
our day. Of course, I remember when I first saw you----"
"That will do!" exclaimed Mrs. Belding, flushing very prettily, while
the children laughed. "We will not rake up old stories, if you
please."
Any reference to the occasion at which her husband hinted, usually
brought his wife "to time," as Chet slangily expressed it. She agreed
to be present at the girls' gymnasium on that last day when the girls
used the paraphernalia as they pleased, with Mrs. Case standing by to
direct, or admonish, or advise.
Mrs. Belding found in the gallery overlooking the big gymnasium floor
many of her neighbors, church friends, or fellow club-members.
"I've been trying to get here for months," one stout lady confided to
the Market Street jeweler's wife; "but it does seem to me I never have
a minute to spare. But Lluella says that I _must_ come now, for the
term is ending. That's Lluella over yonder jumping on that mat. Isn't
she quick on her feet?"
"Grace is such a reckless child," complained the lady on Mrs.
Belding's other side. "She's her father all over again--and he's got
the quickest temper of any man I ever saw. Gets over it right away,
you know; but it's a trial to have a man get mad because the coffee's
muddy of a morning."
"Oh, I know all about _that_," sighed the fleshy lady, windily.
"I don't suppose there's really any danger of the children getting
hurt here, Mrs. Belding?" proceeded the thin mother.
"I believe not. Laura says there is no danger----"
"Oh, your Laura is a regular athlete!" interrupted the fat woman. "My
Lluella says she is just _wonderful_."
"So does my Grace," declared the thin lady on the other side. "She
says there's nobody like 'Mother Wit,' as she calls Laura."
"I think there is no danger," murmured Mrs. Belding, not sure whether
she was glad or sorry that her daughter was so popular.
"Oh, Mrs. Belding! are _you_ here?" broke in rather a shrill voice
from the rear. "I told Lily I would come to-day; but really, I hardly
knew whether it was the thing to approve of this gymnasium
business----"
Mrs. Pendleton's voice trailed off as it usually did before she
completed a sentence. She was a small, extremely vivacious, black-eyed
woman, much overdressed, and carrying a lorgnette with which she eyed
the crowd of girlish figures on the floor below.
"Of course," she murmured to Mrs. Belding, "if _you_ approve----"
"Where is Grace now?" cried the thin lady, suddenly. "Mercy! See where
she has climbed to. Do you suppose they can get her without a
ladder?"
Grace, a thin, wiry child of the wriggling type, had successfully
clambered up the rope almost to the beam overhead and was now
surveying the gallery with lofty compassion, which included a lively
appreciation of her mother's uneasiness.
"Oh, Grace!" shrilled the thin woman. "Get down this instant! Or do
you want me to bring you a ladder?"
An appreciative giggle arose from some of the girls below. Grace
turned rather red around her ears, and began to descend. It was one
thing to make her mother marvel; she did not want her "act" to be
turned to ridicule.
"They look real pretty--now don't they?" admitted Mrs. Pendleton,
loftily, after surveying the gymnasium for some time through her
lorgnette. "Lily's dress cost us a deal of trouble. But she looks well
in it. She's well developed for her age and--thank goodness!--she has
a _chic_ way with her.
"I thought we never would get the suit to fit her. And she changed her
shoes three times," added the society matron. "Finally I told her if
she was going to have nervous prostration getting ready to take
physical culture, she'd better wait and take it when she was
convalescent."
"I hope Lluella will be careful of her hands," said the fleshy lady on
Mrs. Belding's right. "She's always bruising or cutting her fingers.
Just like her aunt. Her aunt always had to wear gloves doing her
housework."
"There! they are going to march," cried the thin lady, as Mrs. Case
blew her whistle and the girl on the rope slid the last few feet to
the floor. "Grace is down, thank goodness!"
"Her music teacher says Grace's ear is a regular gift--she keeps such
good time."
"I'm sure no sensible parent would ever have _bought_ those ears,"
whispered Mrs. Pendleton to Mrs. Belding. "They must have been a
gift," for those organs on the agile Grace were painfully prominent.
"But she had _such_ a pretty smile when she looked up at her mother
just now," whispered the kind-hearted Mrs. Belding.
"That reminds me," said the society matron--though why it should have
reminded her nobody knows! "That reminds me, my Lily is crazy to go
camping--positively crazy!"
"I know," sighed Mrs. Belding. "Laura is determined, too. And her
father approves and has overruled all _my_ objections."
"Oh, it's not that with me at all," said Mrs. Pendleton, briskly. "I'm
glad enough to have the child go. She's too much advanced for her age,
anyway. If she spends this summer at Newport, and Bar Harbor, and one
or two other places where I positively _must_ appear, I'll never be
able to get her back into school this fall.
"It ages a mother so to have a growing daughter--and one that is so
forward as Lily," said this selfish lady, fretfully. "Lily thinks she
is grown up now. No. I approve of her going with a lot of little girls
into camp. And she wants to go with your Laura's crowd, Mrs.
Belding."
"I'm sure--Laura would be pleased," said Mrs Belding, sweetly, without
an idea that she was laying up trouble in store for Mother Wit.
"Oh, then, I can leave it with you, dear Mrs. Belding?" cried Mrs.
Pendleton, with uncanny eagerness. "You will arrange it?"
"Why--er--I presume Laura and her friends would have no objection to
another of their schoolmates joining them. I understand Mrs. Morse
will chaperon them----"
"And quite a proper person for that office, too," agreed Mrs.
Pendleton. "I presume they will take along a maid."
"Oh! I do not know," said Mrs. Belding, beginning to feel somewhat
worried now. "I imagine the girls expect to do for themselves----"
"Oh! I will send a maid with Lily. At least, I will pay the wages of
one who will do for all the girls--in a way."
She bustled away to find Lily after the march. Mrs. Belding waited for
her daughter in more or less trepidation. It had suddenly crossed her
mind that Lily Pendleton was seldom at her house with the friends that
Mother Wit gathered about her.
CHAPTER IV
"LONESOME LIZ"
"Oh, galloping grasshoppers!" gasped Bobby Hargrew, clinging tight to
Laura and Nellie Agnew in the dressing-room. "Do you hear what she
says?"
"What language, Bob!" said Nellie, in horror. "How _can_ you?"
"Of whom are you speaking?" asked Laura, with an admonishing look.
"That Lil Pendleton. The gall of her!"
"Stop, Bob!" commanded Laura. "You talk like a street urchin."
"I don't care if I talk like a sea urchin," complained the smaller
girl. "She says she's going with us."
"Where?" asked Nell.
"Camping."
"Who?" exclaimed Laura, promptly.
"That Pendleton girl. Says her mother just told her. _Your_ mother
said so, Laura Belding. So there!"
"Why--why----"
"I don't want to complain of your mother, Laura," said the grocer's
daughter, "but it seems too bad we can't pick and choose whom we'll
have go camping in our crowd."
"Mother doesn't understand! I am sure she never meant to _make_ us
take Lil if we didn't want her."
"And surely we _don't_," declared the doctor's daughter, with more
emphasis than she usually used in commenting upon any subject.
"Let's put the rollers under her and let her zip," exclaimed the
slangy Bobby.
"If Gee Gee should hear you," laughed Laura, referring to one of the
very strict lady teachers of Central High, Miss Grace Gee Carrington.
"She's too busy with Margit Salgo--Beg pardon!" exclaimed Bobby.
"Margaret Carrington, as she will in future be known. Gee Gee has
scarcely called me down this week."
"Now, if it was Margit who wanted to go," sighed Nell Agnew, speaking
of the half-Gypsy girl who had just come under the care of Miss
Carrington.
"Or Eve Sitz," added Bobby. "But Eve says she gets out-of-door work
enough on the farm in the summer. Camping out is no fun for her."
"I don't know what to say about Lily," began Laura. "I cannot
understand mother promising such a thing. If anybody should decide, it
should be Jess' mother. _She_ is going with us."
"Oh! there's another thing," interrupted the fly-away Bobby. "If Lil
goes, she's going to take along a lady's maid."
"_What_?" gasped the other girls.
"Mrs. Pendleton is going to pay the wages of a girl to go with us and
do the camp work," announced Bobby, and now she spoke with some
enthusiasm.
"Goodness!" exclaimed Laura.
"Not so bad," sighed Nellie, who really did _not_ like hard work and
had dreaded that division of labor which she knew must fall to her if
they went camping without "help."
"Having a girl along to cook and do up the beds and wash dishes and
the like wouldn't be so bad," announced Bobby, growing braver as Nell
seemed to encourage the idea.
"Well! Miss Hargrew!" accused Laura. "I believe you have gone over to
the enemy. _You_ really want Lil to go with us to Acorn Island."
"No. But I'd be glad to have her mother pay the wages of somebody to
do most of the hard work," grinned Bobby.
There was a regular "buzz society," as Bobby called it, after the
girls were dressed. The original six who had planned to go camping on
Acorn Island _did_ hum like a colony of bees when they all learned
that Lily Pendleton was likely to be foisted upon them.
"It's a shame!" exclaimed Jess, angrily. "She knows well enough we
don't want her."
"Well," murmured one of the Lockwood twins. "She asked us and we said
the invitation would have to come through Laura."
"Cowards!" exclaimed Mother Wit, dramatically. "That's why she got her
mother to go to _mine_. And I am real angry with mother----"
"Oh, Laura! we wouldn't offend your mother for anything," said Nell,
hastily.
"Or put her in an uncomfortable position," Bobby added. "She's been
too nice to us all."
"And, of course, we have to stand Lil in the school and gymnasium. She
won't kill us; she's only silly," went on Nell.
"I believe you're all more or less willing to have Lil go," declared
Laura, in wonder.
"We-ell," drawled Bobby. "There's the chance of having somebody to do
the camp work for us----"
"Not Lil!" shrieked Jess. "She never lifts her hand at home."
"No," said Nell. "But Mrs. Pendleton will pay a maid's wages."
"Ah--ha!" ejaculated Jess Morse. "I smell a mice, as the Dutchman
says. We are to be bribed."
And bribed they were. At least, none of them wished to put Laura's
mother to any trouble. So they agreed to let Lily Pendleton go camping
with them. Mrs. Pendleton left it to the girls to find anyone they
wanted to help about the camp, and promised to pay good wages.
"I know just whom we can get," Bobby said, eagerly, that evening when
the girls--and some of the boys--were assembled as usual on the
Belding front porch.
"Who's that?"
"That Bean girl," said the groceryman's daughter.
"Who's she? Miss Boston Bean?" chuckled Chet.
"Lizzie Bean! I know who she is," exclaimed Laura.
"She's the girl who's been helping the Longs since Alice came back to
school. Now Alice will keep house for her father and the other
children again, and Lizzie will be out of a job," explained Bobby.
"Whew! 'Lonesome Liz?'" ejaculated Lance Darby. "Short and Long calls
her that. Says she's about half cracked----"
"I guess she isn't cracked enough to hurt," said Dora Lockwood,
quickly. "Is she, Dorothy?"
"Of course not," agreed her twin. "And she keeps the house beautifully
clean, and looks after Tommy fine."
"Let me tell you Master Tommy Long is some kid to look after,"
chuckled Chet.
"And that's no dream," agreed his chum, Lance.
Bobby began to laugh, too. "Did you hear his latest?" she demanded of
the crowd.
"Who's latest," asked Jess.
"Tommy Long--the infant terrible?"
"Let's hear it, Bobs," said Jess. "If he can say anything worse than
_you_ can----"
"But this break on Master Tommy's part was entirely unintentional.
Alice was telling me about it. She sends him to Sunday School and he
has to memorize the Golden Text and repeat it to her when he comes
home.
"The other Sunday he had been skylarking in Sunday School, it was
evident, for when she asked him to tell her the text, he shot this one
at her: 'Don't worry. You'll get the blanket.'"
"_What_?" gasped Laura.
"That's a teaser," said Lance. "What did the kid mean?"
"That's what troubled Alice," chuckled Bobby. "She couldn't get it at
all; but Tommy stuck to it that he had given her the text straight. So
she looked it up herself and what do you suppose Tommy had twisted
into 'Don't worry. You'll get the blanket?'"
"Give it up," said Jess. "Let's have it."
"Why, the text was," said Bobby, more seriously, "'Fear not; the
Comforter shall come unto you.'"
"That kid is a terror," said Chet, when the laugh had subsided. "And
so's Short and Long. I believe he agreed to let Pretty Sweet go along
with us to Lake Dunkirk just because he likes to play jokes on Purt."
"Dear me!" sighed Bobby, with unction. "With Pretty in your camp and
Lil in ours, the sun of no day should go down upon us without, seeing
_some_ fun."
"And if you have 'Lonesome Liz' along," chuckled Lance, "you girls
certainly won't forget how to laugh."
It was agreed that Laura and Jess should see Lizzie Bean the next
morning and engage her for the position--if she would accept. They
started early, for although they were only juniors and would have
another year to attend Central High before graduation, this last day
of school would be a busy one for them as well as for the graduating
class.
Billy and Alice Long, who were their schoolmates, lived in a much
poorer quarter of the town; it was down toward the wharves, and not
far from the Central High's boathouses.
The street was a typical water-side street, with small, gaily painted
cottages, or cottages without any paint at all save that put on
lavishly by the ancient decorating firm of Wind & Weather. Each
dwelling had its own tiny fenced yard, with a garden behind. The
Longs' was neatly kept both front and rear, and the house itself
showed no neglect by the tenants.
Mr. Long was a hard working man, and although the children were
motherless, Alice, the oldest, kept the home neat and cheerful for her
brothers and sisters. All the children were old enough to go to school
save Tommy; and he had been to kindergarten occasionally this last
term and would go to school regularly in the fall.
Laura and Jess, hurrying on their errand, came in sight of the Long
cottage abruptly, and of a wobegone little figure on the front step.
"Why, it's Tommy!" exclaimed Laura Belding. "Whatever is the the
matter, Tommy?" for the little fellow was crying softly.
He was a most cherubic looking child, with a pink and white face,
yellow curls that swept the clean collar of his shirt-waist, and a
plump, "hug-able" little body.
"Yes, what _is_ the matter, dear?" begged Jess Morse.
"H-he's gone an' cut off th-the tails of the pu-puppies," sobbed
Master Tommy, his breast heaving.
"Who has?" demanded Laura.
"He. That man what co-comed here," choked the little fellow.
"What a pity! I'm awfully sorry," Laura pursued, soothingly. "The poor
little puppies."
"Ye-yes. Pa s-said _I_ should chop 'em off myself!" concluded Master
Tommy in a burst of anger.
"My goodness me!" gasped Jess, horror-stricken. "Will you hear that
boy talk? He's a perfect little savage."
"No, he isn't," said Mother Wit, shaking her head. "He's only a
boy--that's all. You never had a brother, Jess."
"I know well enough Chet was never like _that_," declared Josephine,
confidently.
They went in by the front gate and walked around the house, leaving
the disappointed youngster wiping his eyes. They expected to find
Lizzie Bean at the back.
In that they were not mistaken. At the well-curb was a lank, bony
girl, who might have been Laura's age, or perhaps a couple of years
older. She was dreadfully thin. As she hauled on the chain which
brought the brimming bucket to the top of the well, she betrayed more
red elbow and more white stockinged ankle-bone than any _one_ person
should display.
"My goodness, she's thin!" whispered Jess.
"We are not looking for a Hebe to help us at the camp," Laura returned
in the same low tone.
Lizzie Bean turned to see who was approaching. Her face was as thin as
the rest of her figure. Prominent cheek bones, a sharp, long nose, and
a pointed chin do not make a beautiful countenance, to say the least.
Besides, the expression of her face was lachrymose in the extreme. It
did seem, as Jess afterward said, that Lizzie must have lost all her
relatives and friends very recently, and was mourning for them all!
"Goodness me!" she whispered to Laura. "No wonder they call her
'Lonesome Liz.' She's so sad looking she's positively funny."
CHAPTER V
THE START
"What do you girls want?" drawled the lean girl, resting her red
elbows on the well-shelf and looking down at Laura and Jess Morse.
She did not speak unpleasantly; but she was very abrupt. Laura saw
that Lizzie Bean's flat, shallow appearing eyes were of a greenish
gray color--eyes in which a twinkle could not possibly lurk.
"We understand that you are not going to help Alice much longer,"
Laura said, pleasantly. "So we have come to see if you would like
another position for a few weeks?"
"What d'ye mean--a _job_?" proposed Liz-Bean, bluntly.
"Ye-yes," said Laura, rather taken aback.
"What doin'?"
"Why, we girls are going camping. There are seven of us--and Mrs.
Morse. Mrs. Morse is the mother of my friend, here, Josephine
Morse----"
"Please ter meet yer," interposed Liz, bobbing a little courtesy at
the much amused Jess.
Laura went on steadily, and without smiling too broadly at Liz:
"There are seven of us girls and Mrs. Morse. We shall live very
simply--in tents and in a cabin, on Acorn Island."
"Eight in fam'bly, eh?" put in the thin girl. "Eight is a bigger
contract than I got here."
"Oh! in camping out we don't expect anything fancy," Laura hastened to
say. "We want somebody to make beds, and wash dishes, and clean up
generally. Of course, the cooking will not _all_ fall on your
shoulders----"
"I sh'd hope not," said Liz, briskly. "Not if it was as solid as some
folkses' biscuits. One woman I worked for once made her soda-riz
biscuits so solid that if a panful had fell on yer shoulders 'twould
ha' broke yer back."
Jess _had_ to explode at that, but the odd girl did not even smile.
She only stared at the giggling Jess and asked:
"Ain't ye well?"
"Oh, yes!" gasped Jess.
"Well, I didn't know," drawled Liz. "My a'nt what brought me up useter
keep a bottle of giggle medicine for us gals. An' it was nasty tastin'
stuff, too. She made us take a gre't spoonful if we laffed at table,
or after we gotter bed nights. There was jala inter it, I b'lieve. I
guess I could make ye some."
Jess stopped laughing in a hurry. Laura tried to ignore her chum's
indignant look; but it was quite plain that Lizzie Bean "had all her
wits about her," as the saying is.
"Then you can cook?" Laura observed.
"Well, I can boil water without burnin' it," declared the odd girl.
"But I ain't no Woodruff-Wisteria chef." Afterward the chums figured
it out that Liz meant "Waldorf-Astoria."
"Do you think you would like to go with us?" Laura asked.
"I dunno yet. Where is it?"
Laura explained more fully about the camping site, how they were to
get there, and other particulars of the project.
"It listens good," Liz said, reflectively. "Though I ain't never
cooked nothin' but soft-soap over a campfire."
"Oh! there will be a portable stove," Laura said.
"When ye goin'?" asked the girl.
"Day after to-morrow."
"What'll ye pay?" was the next bluntly put question.
Laura told her the weekly wage Mrs. Pendleton had guaranteed. Although
Lizzie Bean's face was well nigh expressionless at all times, the
girls saw at once that something was wrong.
"I dunno," said Liz, slowly. "I have worked mighty cheap in my
life--and I ain't got no job when I leave here--an' I gotter eat. But
that _does_ seem a _naw_-ful little wages."
"Why! I think that is real liberal," declared Jess, with some warmth.
Liz eyed her again coldly. "You must ha' worked awful cheap in your
life," she said.
"I know," Laura explained, quietly, laying an admonitory hand upon her
chum's arm, "You know, that is what you will receive each week."
"What's _that_?" demanded Liz, with a jump, "Say that again, will
ye?"
"We will pay you that sum weekly," repeated Laura.
"Say--say it by the month!" gasped the lean girl, her eyes showing
more surprise than Laura had thought them capable of betraying.
Laura did as she was requested. A slow, faint grin dawned on Liz
Bean's narrow countenance.
"I been useter gittin' paid by the month--and sometimes not _then_.
Some ladies has paid me so little for helpin' them that I wisht
they'd paid me only every _three_ months, so's 'twould sound bigger!
"I gotter take ye up before somebody pinches me."
"Pinches you? What do you mean?" asked Jess, doubtfully.
"I don't want to wake up," declared Liz. "I never got so much money
since I was turned adrift when my a'nt died. Don't _you_ wake up,
neither, and forgit to pay me!"
"I promise not to do that," laughed Laura. "Then you'll come with
us?"
"If I don't break an arm," declared Lizzie Bean, with emphasis.
They told her how to meet them at the dock, and the hour they expected
to start. "And bring your oldest clothes," warned Jess.
"What's that?" demanded Liz.
"We just about live in old clothes--or in a bathing suit--in camp,"
explained Laura.
"Bless your heart!" exclaimed Liz. "I ain't never had nothin' but old
clo'es. Been wearin' hand-me-downs ever since I can remember."
"My goodness gracious!" said Jess, and she and Laura hurried off for
school. "Did you ever see such an uncouth creature? I don't wonder
Billy Long says she's cracked."
"I don't know about her being cracked, as you call it," laughed Laura.
"Just because she's queer is no proof that she is an imbecile. You
know the old parody on 'Lives of Great Men All Remind Us,' don't you?"
and she went on to quote:
"'Lives of imbeciles remind us
It may some day come to pass,
We shall see one staring at us
From our trusty looking-glass!'"
"Shucks!" responded Jess. "You'll get to be as bad as Bobby Hargrew
with those old wheezes. But, did you _ever_ see such a girl before?"
"No," admitted Laura. "I honestly never did. But I am quite sure she
is in the possession of all her senses----"
"She may be; but I bet her senses are not like other folks'," chuckled
Jess.
"She surely won't _bite_, Jess," responded Laura, smiling.
"Hope not! 'Boil water without burning it!' What do you know about
_that_?"
"I think it's funny," said Laura.
"Well! I only hope we get something to eat in camp," murmured Jess.
"We can't expect her to do all the cooking," Laura said. "And I shall
tell the girls so."
"Goodness! I don't know whether I want to go camping with this bunch,
after all," said Jess. "What some of them will do to the victuals they
have to cook will be a shame!"
However, the prospect of indifferent cookery made none of the girls of
Central High less enthusiastic in the matter of the preparations for
camping out on Acorn Island, in the middle of Lake Dunkirk.
They were all as busy as bees the next day, packing their bags and
flying about from house to house, asking each other: "What you going
to take?"
"Goodness me!" cried Laura, at last; "it isn't what do we _want_, but
how little can we get along with! Discard everything possible,
girls--do!"
Bobby Hargrew declared Lil Pendleton had started to pack a Saratoga
trunk, and that she had been obliged to point out to Lil that neither
of the motorboats was large enough to ship such a piece of baggage.
Their gymnasium suits would be just the thing in camp. And of course
they all had bathing suits. Otherwise most of the girls got their
apparel down to what Jess Morse called "an insignificant minority."
"If the King of India, or the Duke and Duchess of Doosenberry, comes
calling at our camp, we shall have to put up a scarlet fever sign and
all go to bed," said Bobby. "We'll have nothing to receive them in."
"But not Purt Sweet," chuckled Billy Long. "Purt's packed a dinner
jacket and a pair of spats. How much other fancy raiment he proposes
to spring on us the deponent knoweth not. He'll be just a scream in
the woods."
"He asked me if there were many dangerous characters lurking in the
woods around Lake Dunkirk," chuckled Lance. "Somebody has been
stringing him about outlaws."
"Short and Long looks guilty," said Chet, suspiciously. "What you been
stuffin' Purt with, Billy?"
Billy Long, who straddled the piazza rail, swinging his feet, showed
his teeth in a broad smile. "You read about that Halliday fellow,
didn't you?" he asked.
"Oh! the chap they say stole the money from that Albany bank?"
responded Lance.
"It was securities he stole--and forged people's names to them so as
to get money," said Laura. "The Lockwood girls' Aunt Dora lost some
money by him."
"That is--if he did it," said Chet, doubtfully.
"Well, the newspapers say so," Jess observed.
"What if they do?" demanded Billy, belligerently. "They all said _I_
helped burglarize that department store last summer--didn't they? And
I never did it at all."
"No. It was another monkey," chuckled Lance.
The others laughed, for Billy Long had gotten them into serious
trouble on the occasion mentioned, and it was long enough in the past
now to seem amusing. But Chet added:
"It's a wonder to me that Norman Halliday had a chance to get hold of
all those securities and forge people's names to them. And he knew
just which papers to take. Looks fishy."
"Well, he ran away, anyhow," Lance said.
"So did Billy," Bobby said. "And for the same reason, perhaps. He was
scared."
"My father says," Chet pursued, "he has his doubts about Halliday's
guilt. He believes he is a catspaw for somebody else."
"Anyhow," said Billy, "the papers say he's gone into the Big Woods
south of Lake Dunkirk. And Purt wants to carry a gun to defend himself
from outlaws."
"If he does," Chet said, seriously, "I'll see that there are no
cartridges in the gun. Huh! I wouldn't trust Purt Sweet with a
pop-gun."
Bobby, meanwhile, was saying to Laura: "I wonder why Old Dimple was
interested enough in that Albany bank robbery to carry around that
clipping out of the paper?"
"Maybe he lost money, too," Laura suggested.
"What's that about the old Prof?" put in Chet. "Do you know he's gone
out of town already?"
"No!" was the chorus in reply.
"Fact. I saw him with his suitcase this forenoon. He took the boat to
Lumberport."
"Well, as we shall all start in that same direction to-morrow morning,
bright and early----"
"Not all of us bright, but presumably early," put in Bobby, sotto
voce.
"Anyway, it's time we were in bed," finished Mother Wit. "Off with you
all!"
Whether Laura's advice had a good effect, or not, nobody was really
late at the rendezvous the next morning. Prettyman Sweet's motorboat
_Duchess_, a very nice craft, and the larger powerboat belonging to
Chet Belding and Lance Darby, named _Bonnie Lass_, were manned by the
boys before the girls appeared.
These two boats were large enough to transport both parties of
campers, and would likewise tow the flotilla of canoes. The _Duchess_
tailed behind it three double canoes belonging to the girls and the
_Bonnie Lass_ towed five belonging to their boy friends.
It was a fine day and the lake was as blue as the sky--and almost as
smooth to look upon. A party of parents and friends came to see the
campers start. The girls and Mrs. Morse went aboard the _Bonnie Lass_.
Lizzie Bean, with a bulging old-fashioned carpet-bag, appeared in
season and joined the girls.
In the bustle of departure not many noticed the odd looking maid. The
girls and boys were too busy shouting goodbyes to those ashore, and
the crowd ashore was too busy shouting good wishes, or last
instructions, to the campers.
Mrs. Pendleton had been driven down to the wharf, early as the hour
was, to see her daughter off.
"And be sure to wear your rubbers if it rains, Lily!" the lady
shrieked after the departing _Bonnie Lass_.
"Gee!" whispered Bobby, to Jess. "I s'pose somebody'll have to hold an
umbrella over her, too, if it starts to shower."
CHAPTER VI
PRETTYMAN SWEET MAKES A FRIEND
Lake Luna was a beautiful body of water, all of twenty miles long and
half as broad, with Centerport on its southern shore and Lumberport
and Keyport situated at either end.
The first named stood at the mouth of Rocky River which fed the great
lake, while Keyport was at the head of Rolling River through which
Lake Luna discharged its waters.
Centerport was a thriving and rich city of some 150,000 inhabitants,
while the other two towns--although much smaller--were likewise
thriving business communities. There was considerable traffic on Lake
Luna, between the cities named, and up and down the rivers.
Cavern Island was a beautiful resort in the middle of Lake Luna; but
man's hand was shown in its landscape gardening and in the pretty
buildings and the park at one end.
Acorn Island, in Lake Dunkirk (thirty miles above Lumberport, and
connected with Lake Luna by Rocky River) was a very different place.
It was heavily timbered and had been held by a private estate for
years. Therefore the trees and rubbish had been allowed to grow, and
one end of the island, as the girls of Central High knew, was almost a
jungle.
But at the eastern end--that nearest the head of Rocky River--was a
pleasant grove on a high knoll, where the old cabin stood. There they
proposed to camp.
Indeed, Mr. Tom Hargrew, Bobby's father, had been kind enough to send
the girls' tents up to the island with the men he had directed to
repair the cabin, and the party expected to find the camp pitched, and
everything ready for them when they arrived at Acorn Island.
This would scarcely be before dark, for there was some current to
Rocky River, although its channel was deep and there were no bridges
or other barriers which the powerboats and their tows could not easily
pass.
The boys expected to have to rough it at the site of _their_ camp for
the first night, and they had come prepared for all emergencies of
wind and weather.
All, did we say? All but one!
In the confusion of getting under way the details of Prettyman
Sweet's outing suit, and his general get-up for camping in the wilds,
was scarcely noticed. Once the boats were steering up the lake toward
Lumberport, a sudden shriek from Billy Long drew the attention of the
girls and Mrs. Morse to the object to which he pointed.
"It's not! it's not! my eyes deceive me!" panted Short and Long, who
was the third member of the crew of boys aboard the _Bonnie Lass_,
Chet and Lance being the other two.
Short and Long was pointing to the other powerboat that was drawing in
beside the _Bonnie Lass_, Pretty himself was at the wheel of the
_Duchess_ for he had learned to manage her.
"What _is_ the matter with you, Billy?" Chet demanded.
"What _is_ it I see?" begged the younger boy, wringing his hands and
glaring across the short strip of water between the powerboats. "I
know there ain't no sech animile, as the farmer said when he first saw
the giraffe at the circus."
"What's eating you, Billy?" asked Lance, who was giving his attention
to the steering of the _Bonnie Lass_. "Don't frighten the girls and
Mrs. Morse to death."
"It's just some joke of Billy's," began Jess, when the very short boy
broke in with:
"If _that's_ a joke, may I never see another! It is a phantom! It's a
nightmare! It's something that comes to you in a bad dream."
"_What?_" demanded Chet, suddenly shaking Short and Long by the
collar.
"Don't, Chetwood," begged Billy. "I'm not strong. I'm sea-sick. That
thing yonder has queered me----"
"What thing?" asked Laura. "We don't see the joke, Billy."
"There you go again--calling a serious thing like that a joke," cried
the small boy. "Look at it--at the wheel of the _Duchess_! How ever
did it crawl aboard? I bet a cent it's been living in the bottom of
the lake for years and years, and has come up to the light of day for
the first time now."
"You ridiculous thing!" snapped Lily Pendleton. "Do you mean Prettyman
Sweet?"
"My goodness gracious Agnes!" gasped Billy. "That's never Purt Sweet?
_Don't_ tell me he's disguised himself for a nigger minstrel show in
that fashion?"
They were all laughing at the unconscious Purt by now--all save Lily;
and Chet said, gravely:
"There is something the matter with your eyesight, Short and Long.
That's Purt in a brand new outing suit."
"He didn't dress like that to go camping?" murmured Billy. "Say not
so! Somebody dared him to do it!"
It was a fact that the exquisite of Central High had decked himself
out in most astonishing array--considering that he was expected to
"rough it" in the woods instead of appear at a lawn party on the
"Hill."
"His tailor put him up to that suit," chuckled Lance. "He told me so.
As he expects to live in the sylvan forest, as did the 'merrie, merrie
men' of Robin Hood, Purt is dolled up accordingly."
"Gee!" breathed Bobby. "Do you suppose Robin Hood ever looked like
that?"
"That's Lincoln green," announced Lance, trying to keep his face
straight. "You notice that the pants are short--knickerbockers, in
fact. They are tied just below the knee with 'ribbands' in approved
outlaw style."
"Oh, my!" giggled Dora Lockwood. "Do you suppose they hurt him?"
"What hurts him most is the leather belt at which is slung a
long-bladed hunting knife so dull that it wouldn't cut cheese! But the
knife handle gets in his way every time he stoops."
"Oh! he's so funny!" gasped Dorothy Lockwood. "You boys are certainly
going to have a great time with Pretty Sweet on this trip."
"I don't think it is funny at all," muttered Lily Pendleton. "That
rude little thing, Billy Long, tries to be too smart."
"But look at the cap!" gasped Laura, who was herself too much amused
to ignore the queer get-up of their classmate. "Where did he get the
idea of _that_?"
"It's a tam-o'-shanter," said Lance. "Another idea of the tailor's.
That tailor, I think, tries things out on Pretty. If Pretty doesn't
get shot wearing them, then he puts similar garments on his dummies
and risks them outside his shop door."
"But what has he got stuck into the cap?" pursued Laura.
"A feather. Rather, the remains of one," chuckled Lance. "It was quite
a long one when he started for the dock this morning; but he crossed
the street right under the noses of Si Cumming's team of mules that
draws the ice-wagon, and that off mule grabbed the best part of the
feather. You know, that mule will eat anything."
"Well, one thing is sure," drawled Bobby. "If Purt is supposed to
represent a Sherwood Forest outlaw, and he ever meets one of the
outlaws of the Big Woods that he's been worried about, the latter
'squashbuckler' will be scared to death."
"'Squashbuckler' is good!" chuckled Jess. "Some of those old villains
I expect _were_ squashes."
"My dear!" ejaculated her mother. "I fear the language you young folk
use does not speak well for your instructors of Central High."
"I guess we do not cast much glory upon our teachers, Mrs. Morse,"
rejoined Laura, laughing.
"It's only Short and Long, here, who 'does the teachers proud,'" said
her brother, with a grin. "Hear about what he got off in Ancient
History class the other day? Professor Dimp pretty nearly set him back
for _that_."
"Aw--now," growled Billy. "He asked for a date, didn't he?"
"What's the burn?" demanded Bobby, briskly.
"Why, Old Dimple asked Billy to mention a memorable date in Roman
history, and Billy says: 'Antony's with Cleopatra.'"
"Oh, oh, oh!" gasped Jess. "That's the worst kind of slang."
Mrs. Morse paid the young folk very little attention. She had
withdrawn from the group and was busy with pencil and notebook.
"When mother gets to work that way, she heeds neither time, place, nor
any passing event," laughed Jess. "She expects to sketch out her
whole book while she is at camp with us."
"She's going to be a dandy chaperone," declared Chet. "Suppose we'd
had Miss Carrington along?"
"Goodness!" groaned Bobby. "Don't let's mention that lady again this
summer."
"And we can cut out Old Dimple, too," grumbled Billy Long.
"He's off somewhere on a trip, so we won't have to bother about him,"
said Chet, with confidence.
The girls had begun to compare notes regarding what they had packed in
their suitcases, long before the boats reached Lumberport; and some of
them discovered that they had neglected to bring some very essential
things.
"You'll just have to tie up beyond the Main Street bridge, and give us
a chance to shop, Chet," announced Laura. "We're making good time as
it is."
"Isn't that just like a parcel of girls?" grumbled Billy. "Now, we
fellows didn't forget a thing--you bet!"
"Wait till we unpack at camp," chuckled Chet. "We'll see about that,
then."
He and Lance agreed to make the halt as the girls requested; and they
shouted to the crowd on the smaller boat to do the same. As Lily
Pendleton was one of the girls who must shop in Lumberton, Purt Sweet
was most willing to tarry and accompany the girls ashore.
He was, in fact, the only escort the girls had when they went up into
the town in search of the several articles they needed. The dude was
evidently proud of his outing suit and, as Billy suggested, "wanted to
give the people of Lumberport a treat."
So he swaggered along up Main Street with the girls. Not a block from
the wharf at which the boats were tied he met with an adventure.
"Whatever impression Purt is making on the good people of this town,"
whispered Nellie Agnew to Laura, "he has certainly smitten a
four-footed inhabitant with a deep, deep interest."
"What's that?" asked Laura, turning swiftly to see. Bobby Hargrew
looked, likewise. Purt and Lily were behind, and Bobby immediately
shouted:
"Say, Purt who's your friend?"
"What's that, Miss Hargrew?" asked Purt staring. "I weally don't get
you--don't you know?"
"But he'll get _you_ in a minute," chuckled Bobby.
"Don't pay any attention to her, Mr. Sweet," said Lily. "She's a
vulgar little thing."
But just then Purt felt something at his heels and turned swiftly. One
of the homeliest mongrel curs ever seen was sniffing at Purt's green
stockings.
"Get out, you brute!" gasped the dude, rather frightened.
But the dog didn't seem to have any designs upon Purt's thin shanks.
Instead, he jumped about, foolishly stiff-legged as a dog will when he
thinks he has found a friend, and barked.
"Gee! he's glad to see you," said Bobby. "Where'd you find him,
Purt?"
"Weally!" declared the dude, trying to shoo the dog off. "I--I never
did see the horrid brute before--I never did."
"Don't call him names. You'll hurt his feelings," suggested one of the
Lockwood twins, while Laura said, seriously: "That dog certainly does
know you, Mr. Sweet."
"I declare, I never saw him before," said Purt, making frantic efforts
to frighten the dog away.
He was a snarly haired dog, with one ear cocked up and the other half
chewed off, his coat muddied, only half a tail, which he wiggled
ecstatically, and the most foolish looking face that was ever given to
a dog.
"Did you ever see such a looking thing?" gasped Bobby, half choked
with laughter.
"And how well he matches Purt's suit," said Nellie, demurely.
"I'm not going to walk with you if you don't get rid of that dog!"
declared Lily, seeing that many bystanders were laughing at the boy
and the mongrel.
She went ahead with the other girls while poor Purt remained in the
rear, trying his best to chase away the friendly animal. But the more
Purt shooed him, or attempted to hit him, or strove otherwise to send
the brute about his business, the more the latter considered that the
boy was playing with him, and he welcomed the game with loud and
cheerful barks.
Soon a small crowd was collected, watching the performance with broad
grins. The girls, giggling, but rather worried by the attention that
was being attracted to their escort, darted into a store and left Purt
to settle the matter by himself.
CHAPTER VII
THE BARNACLE
The crowd was laughing loudly and Purt Sweet (although he was
frequently the source of mirth for his companions) did not enjoy it.
He began to hate that mongrel cur with an intense hatred.
"Get away from me, you brute!" he exclaimed, trying to kick the dog.
"Look out there, son," drawled one on-looker. "If you abuse your dog
the S. P. C. A. will do something to you that you won't like."
"It isn't my dog! I weally never saw it before," gasped the dude,
growing very warm and red as the dog leaped about him in delight.
"You'll have to tell that to the judge," the man assured him.
This really scared Purt. He did not want to be arrested for abusing
the strange dog. But he could not allow it to follow him, that was
sure. The girls were already disgusted with him for having attracted
the brute.
"And I never meant to!" thought the boy, in despair. "Oh! if I only
had him out in the woods, and had a good rock!"
But he dared not pelt the mongrel after what the bystander had said.
The crowd became so numerous that a policeman came strolling that way.
He saw Purt with the dog dancing about him.
"Here! this is no place for a circus. You and your dog get out!"
commanded the officer of the law. "Move on!"
He flourished his baton; the horrified Purt made off around the
nearest corner; the dog stuck like a porous plaster.
"If I only had a club!" groaned Purt.
He escaped the crowd and sat down upon a dwelling house stoop. At once
that imbecile dog rushed upon him, leaped into his lap, and lapped
Purt's face!
"Get out! You nawsty, nawsty brute you!" wailed the dude, beating the
dog off weakly.
The latter considered it all in the game. He had taken a decided
liking to the boy from Central High, and nothing would drive him
away.
Purt had never really cared for dogs. Most boys are tickled enough to
get a dog--even a mongrel like this one. But the dude found himself
with a possession for which he had never longed.
The dog lay down on the walk in front of him, his tongue hanging on
his breast like an inflammatory necktie, and laughing as broadly as a
dog _could_ laugh. He evidently admired Purt greatly. Whether it was
the Lincoln green suit, or the tam-o'-shanter cap, or the dude's
personal pulchritude, which most attracted his doggish soul, it was
hard to say.
Suddenly a window went up behind Purt and a lady put out her head.
"Little boy! Little boy!" she called, shrilly. "I wish you'd take your
dog away from here. I want to let my cat out, and dogs make her so
nervous."
"It isn't my dog--weally it isn't!" exclaimed Purt, jumping up.
Immediately the dog leaped about, barking fit to split his throat.
"You naughty boy!" gasped the lady in the window. "I have seen you
with that dog go past here hundreds of times!" and she immediately
slammed down the sash before Purt could further defend himself.
However the lady could have made the mistake of thinking she had seen
Purt before, is not easily explained. Perhaps she was very near
sighted.
The Central High dude "moved on," with the mongrel frisking about him.
Purt heartily wished the animal would have a sunstroke (for it was
high noon now, and very warm) or would be taken with an apoplectic
stroke, or some other sudden complaint!
Purt wanted to get back to Main Street and rejoin the girls; but he
knew it would be no use in trying that unless he could "shake" the
dog. The girls (especially Lily Pendleton, whom he so much admired)
would not stand for that mongrel brute following in their train.
So, finding that the dog was fastened to him like a new Old Man of the
Sea, Prettyman Sweet decided to sneak back to the dock, by the way of
back streets, and escape the beast by going aboard the _Duchess_.
He set off, therefore, through several byways, coming out at last on a
water-front street of more prominence. Here were stores and tenements.
The gutters were crowded with noisy children, and the street with
traffic.
A fat butcher stood before his shop, with his thumbs in the string of
his apron. When he spied Purt and his close companion, he gave vent to
an exclamation of satisfaction and reached for the Central High boy
with a mighty hand.
"Here!" he said, hoarsely, his fat face growing scarlet on the
instant. "I been waiting for you."
"Waiting for me, Mister?" gasped Purt. "Weally--that cawn't be,
doncher know! I never came this way before."
"No, ye smart Ike! But yer dog has," growled the man, giving Prettyman
a shake that seemed to start every tooth in his head.
"Oh, dear me!" cried Purt. "I never saw you before, sir."
"But I've seen yer dog--drat the beast! And if I could ketch him I'd
chop him up into sassingers--that's what I'd do to _him_."
"He--he's not my dog," murmured Purt, faintly.
Fido had scurried across the street when he spied the butcher; but he
waited there, mouth agape, stump of tail wagging, and a knowing cock
to his good ear, to see how his adopted master was coming out with his
sworn enemy, the butcher.
"I tell yer what," hoarsely said the butcher, still gripping Purt's
shoulder, "a boy can deny his own father, but 'e can't deny his
dawg--no, sir! That there brute knows ye, bub. Only yisterday he
grabbed several links of frankfurter sassingers off'n this hook right
overhead 'ere.
"I ain't goin' to have no dumbed dawg like him come an' grab my
sassingers an' make off with 'em, free gratis for nothin'."
A little crowd--little, but deeply interested--had gathered again.
Had Purt been seeking notoriety in Lumberport, he was getting it
without doubt!
The grocer next door, with a great guffaw of laughter, cried:
"Hey, Bill! don't blame the dawg. He smelled some o' his relatives,
it's likely, in the frankfurters, an' set out to rescue 'em!"
"I do-ent care," breathed the fat butcher, growing more and more
excited. "No man's dawg ain't goin' ter do what he done ter me an' git
away with it. This boy has got ter pay for what the dawg stole."
Purt did not like to let go of money--among his school chums he was
considered a notorious "tight-wad"--but he was willing to do almost
anything to get away from the greasy-handed butcher.
"What--what did the dog take? How much were the frankfurters worth?"
he stammered. "The dog isn't mine--weally!--but I'll pay----"
"A dollar, then. And I'll lose by it, too," said the butcher, but with
an avaricious sparkle in his eye.
"A dollar's worth of frankfurters!" gasped Purt.
"Yes. An' I wish they'd ha' chocked the brute," complained the
butcher.
"I wish they had--before he ever saw me," murmured Purt.
He paid over the money and hurried away from the laughing crowd. And
there, within a block, the dog was right at his heels again--rather
slinkingly, but with the joy of companionship in his eye.
Now Purt was nearing the dock above the Main Street bridge where the
motorboats were tied up. Whether the girls had returned or no, he
hated to face the other fellows with this mongrel trailing at his
heels.
The situation sharpened Purt's wits. Here was a store where was sold
rope and other ship-chandlery. He marched in and bought a fathom of
strong manilla line, called the foolish dog to him, found that he wore
a nondescript collar, and hastily fastened the line to the aforesaid
collar.
It was in the boy's mind to tie the dog somewhere and leave it behind.
If he had dared, he would have tied a weight to the other end of the
rope and dropped both weight and dog overboard.
Just then, however, he met a group of ragged, barefooted
urchins--evidently denizens of the water-front. They hailed the gaily
dressed Purt and the ragged mongrel, with delight.
"What yer doin' wid the dawg?" inquired one.
"Takin' him to the bench-show, Clarence? He'll win a blue ribbon, _he_
will."
"Naw," said another youthful humorist. "They don't let Clarence out
without the dawg. That's to keep Clarence from gettin' kidnapped.
Nobody would wanter kidnap him if they had ter take that mutt along,
too."
Purt was too anxious to be offended by these remarks. He walked
directly up to the leader of the gang.
"Say!" he exclaimed, breathlessly. "Do you want a dog?"
"Not if _that's_ what yer call a dawg, Mister," said the other boy.
"I'd be ashamed to call on me tony friends wit' that mutt. What I
needs is a coach-dawg to run under the hind axle of me landau."
"Say!" breathed Purt, heavily, and paying no attention to the gibes.
"You take this dog and keep it--or tie it up somewhere so he can't
follow me--and I'll give you a quarter."
"When do I git the quarter?" demanded the boy.
"Right now," declared Purt reaching into his pocket with his free
hand.
"Hand it over," said the other, snatching away the rope.
The dude sighed to think how this strange and unknown cur had already
cost him a dollar and a quarter. A dollar and a quarter would have
been far too much to pay for a dozen similar mongrels, and well Purt
knew it.
But the instant the quarter was transferred to the other boy, the
Central High exquisite traveled away from there just as fast as he
could walk.
At once a mournful and heart-rending howl broke out. He looked back
once; the dog was leaping at the length of his rope, nearly capsizing
the holder of the same with every jump, and wailing hungrily for his
fast disappearing friend.
Purt set off on a run. He did not know how soon that rope might
break!
He reached the dock just after the girls, who had arrived breathless
with laughter, and full of the tale of Purt Sweet's new friend.
"Where is he?" was the chorus that welcomed Purt.
"I--I got rid of him," panted Purt.
"Sure?" laughed Chet, as they began to cast off.
"I--I hope so," returned the worried Purt. "I never _did_ see such a
cweature--weally."
"He must have been an old friend of yours, Purt," said Reddy Butts.
"Dogs don't follow folks for nothing."
"But weally, I never saw him before," Purt tried to explain.
"Aw, that's all very well," Billy Long sang out. "But it's plain
enough why he followed you."
"Why?" asked Reddy, willing to help the joke along.
"It was Purt's shanks in those green socks that attracted the dog. I
suppose the poor dog was hungry, and a hungry dog will go far for a
bone, you know."
Purt was hurrying to get his _Duchess_ under way, and he was so glad
of getting rid of the dog that he did not mind the boys' chaffing.
Suddenly a wild yell arose from some of the boys on the dock.
"What's this? See who's come!" yelled Billy Long.
"The Barnacle!" quoth Chet, bursting into a roar of laughter.
Even Lily Pendleton could not forbear giving vent to her amusement,
and she laughed with the others. Down the dock tore the ragged coated
dog, with a fathom of rope tied to his collar.
He leaped aboard the _Bonnie Lass_ and then, with a glad yelp, sprang
to the decked-over part of the _Duchess_.
Purt Sweet looked up with a cry of amazement and received the
delighted dog full in his chest. They rolled together in the cockpit
of the boat, the dog eagerly lapping Purt's face, while the boy tried
to beat him off with his fists.
"The Barnacle!" yelled Chet again, and that name stuck.
So did the dog. He refused to leave. The party left Lumberton with the
foolish beast sitting up in the prow of the _Duchess_, wagging his
ridiculous tail and barking a last farewell to the amused spectators
gathered along the edge of the dock.
CHAPTER VIII
UP ROCKY RIVER
The second start of the flotilla--that from Lumberton--was a hilarious
start indeed. Poor Prettyman Sweet was the butt of everybody's
laughter. The glare of rage he threw now and then at the ridiculous
dog in the bow of the _Duchess_ sent the boys into spasms of
laughter.
The girls in the other motorboat--even Bobby--seeing that their
laughter quite offended Lily Pendleton, began talking about something
else and ignored the Barnacle, as the dog had been so aptly named.
Reddy Butts and Art Hobbs, however, loved to annoy the Central High
dude. They told Purt that the Barnacle possessed a family resemblance
to the Sweets that could not be denied.
"He smiles just like you do, Pretty," said Arthur. "I declare I
wouldn't deny the relationship."
"You fellows think you are funny," snarled the dude, losing his
temper at last. "I'll fix that beast!"
"How you going to do it?" demanded Reddy, grinning.
"You come here and take the wheel," commanded the dude. "See that you
steer right and keep in the channel, right behind Chet's boat and his
tow."
"All right," said Butts, and took the spokes in hand.
Purt, shooting an inquiring glance forward to see if the girls were
watching, began to creep up on the dog. The beast was looking over the
bow, his tongue hanging out, and evidently enjoying the rapid sail up
Rocky River.
Somebody had removed the rope from his collar since he had come aboard
the _Duchess_. There was nothing for Purt to grab had the dog observed
his approach and sought to get away.
However, the dog remained unconscious of the attempt on his peace of
mind. Purt crept nearer and nearer, while the giggling boys in the
cockpit watched him narrowly.
Reddy looked knowingly at Arthur, and the latter pulled off his jacket
and kicked off his sneakers. The water was warm and Arthur was a good
swimmer.
The dude, earnestly striving to move softly, got within hand's reach
of the dog. Suddenly he threw himself forward. At the same moment
Reddy twisted the wheel ever so little to starboard.
The _Duchess_ was traveling at a good clip. The wave at her nose was
foam-streaked and spreading broadly. The water in her wake boiled.
The sudden thrust Purt gave the dog cast the surprised brute
overboard; with a yelp of amazement he sank beneath the foam-streaked
surface as the motorboat rushed on.
But another yelp echoed the dog's; when Reddy Butts swerved the boat's
nose, the move was quite unexpected by Purt.
He dove forward, yelled loudly, and was cast over the edge of the deck
just as sprawlingly as the Barnacle himself!
"Man overboard!" yelled Reddy, scarcely able to say it for laughter.
The crowd on the other powerboat heard the shout, if they had not all
seen Purt's exhibition of diving. The dude went under just as deep as
the dog, and did not come to the surface anywhere near as quickly.
The Barnacle, whether he was a water-dog, or not, was a good swimmer.
When his head shot above the stream he yelped, started to paddle after
the _Duchess_ and her tow, saw that that was useless, and turned
toward the southerly bank of the stream.
The river was half a mile wide at this place, and the Barnacle left a
wake like a motorboat behind him. He was going to reach the shore all
right.
How about the master he had adopted? Purt came to the surface more
slowly, but when he got there he emitted a shriek like a steam
whistle.
The _Duchess_ had gone ahead of him. Arthur Hobbs was poised to leap
overboard; but there swept close to the dude one of the trailing
canoes, and just by raising an arm Purt reached it.
He clung to the gunwale and was dragged on behind the _Duchess_. At
first the canoe tipped and threatened to turn over; Purt slipped along
to the stern, and there got a grip on both sides, and so trailed on
behind, getting his breath.
"He's all right," said Reddy, chuckling. "Let him cool off a little,
Art."
The girls aboard the _Bonnie Lass_ were somewhat worried over Purt
Sweet's predicament. "He'll be drowned!" Lily Pendeton declared, first
of all.
"I'm not afraid of that," Bobby said. "But if that suit of his
shrinks, what a sight he'll be!"
"This is no time for light talk," declared Jess Morse. "Purt isn't a
very good swimmer."
"Well!" exclaimed Nellie, rather tartly for her, "how did he know
whether that poor dog could swim, or not?"
"Looks as though he had finally gotten rid of the Barnacle, just the
same," laughed Laura.
"We'll see about that," responded her brother, darkly. "That dog has
the stick-to-it-iveness of fish-glue. Wait and see."
Meanwhile Arthur Hobbs drew in the canoe Purt was clinging to, and
soon helped the gasping dude into the large boat.
"Oh! oh!" cried Purt. "I might have known that horrid dog was bad
luck."
Having seen the exquisite dragged aboard the _Duchess_, most of the
girls on the other powerboat gave their attention to the dog. Indeed,
his fate all the time had attracted more attention from Lizzie Bean,
than had the trouble Purt Sweet was in.
"Why! he might have been drowned!" Lily exclaimed in answer to
something Bobby said.
"That's right. And it would be too mean," spoke up Lonesome Liz, as
Billy Long secretly called the sad-faced girl. "He's a smart dog."
"Mercy! who cares about that horrid dog?" snapped Lily.
"I do, for one," said Nellie Agnew.
"Me, too. He was pushed overboard by Purt, and it just served Purt
right that he went into the water," Bobby declared.
The mongrel cur had swum nobly for the shore. Before Purt was dragged
aboard by Art the dog was nearing his goal.
They were well above the town of Lumberport now, and the shore along
here was a shelving beach. After fighting the current the dog would
have been unable to drag himself out had the bank been steep.
"He's done it!" exclaimed Liz, eagerly. "Well! I declare I'm glad."
"Gladder than you were over Purt?" chuckled Bobby.
"Well, if you ask me," drawled the maid-of-all-work, "I think the
dog's wuth a whole lot more than that silly feller in the green
pants."
"How horrid!" ejaculated Lily.
"Gee!" said Bobby. "Don't you know, Lizzie, that there is only _one_
Pretty Sweet? I don't suppose you could find another fellow like him
if you combed the zones of both hemispheres."
"Hear! hear!" drawled Jess. "How many zones do you suppose there are,
Bobs?"
"Oh, a whole bunch of them," declared the reckless Bobby. "There's one
torrid, two temperate, two frigid, and a lot of postal zones."
"How smart!" sneered Lily, in no very good temper.
Meanwhile the dog had crawled out of the water. They saw him shake
himself and then sink upon the shore, evidently exhausted.
"Well," said Laura, "I guess Purt has finally gotten rid of the poor
creature. But it was too funny for anything."
The shores of Rocky River, as they advanced, were very pretty indeed.
There were several suburban villages near Lumberport; but the farther
they sailed up the stream the less inhabited the shores were and the
wilder the scenery became.
"My!" ejaculated Dorothy. "I had no idea this country was really so
_woodsy_."
"You know there is scarcely anything but forest south of us, until you
reach the B. & P. W. Railroad."
"Maybe there are bad people up in these woods, after all," suggested
the timid Nell.
"Never you mind. Purt's got his revolver," chuckled Jess. "Lance says
that it is one that hasn't been fired for twenty years and belonged to
Purt's father."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Laura. "I _shall_ be afraid of that. It's those
old guns that nobody supposes are loaded, that are always going off
and killing the innocent bystander. You ought to confiscate that gun,
Chet."
"Don't worry," returned her brother, laughing. "I've taken the
trigger screw out of Purt's gun and he couldn't shoot it if he had
forty cartridges in it. But I haven't told Purt, for the dear boy
seems to place implicit confidence in the old gat as a defense against
anything on two or four legs in the Big Woods."
CHAPTER IX
THE CAMP ON ACORN ISLAND
Although it was high noon when they were at Lumberport the Girls of
Central High and their boy friends had not lunched there. Indeed, they
waited to reach a certain pleasant grove which some of them knew
about, on the south shore of the river, and several miles above the
spot where Purt Sweet had taken his involuntary ducking.
As the motorboats put ashore and the boys tied them to stubs in the
high bank, they all began joking Purt about his plunge into the river.
The dude had been obliged to exchange his natty outing suit of Lincoln
green for a suit of oil-stained overalls that he found in the cabin of
the _Duchess_. He could not find his own baggage, as the boys with him
had hidden it.
As for the tam-o'-shanter, it had fallen off and floated down the
stream. Purt would never see that remarkable headgear again.
"But that isn't what the boy is worrying about," chuckled Lancelot
Darby, as the party came ashore with the luncheon hampers. "It's the
fate of the Barnacle that is corroding Purt's sensitive soul!"
"How do you make that out?" demanded Reddy Butts, broadly grinning.
"Why, isn't it a fact that he went in after the dog? I saw him dive
right after the poor thing when it fell overboard. It was a mighty
brave attempt at rescue, I should say--especially when we all know
that Purt swims about as good as a stone fence."
"Some hero, Purt is," agreed Billy Long, chuckling.
"And didn't he make that dive gracefully?" demanded Reddy, bursting
with laughter to think how he had shot the dude overboard by a sly
twist of the wheel on the _Duchess_.
Purt was really ashamed of his present appearance. He felt it
necessary to excuse it to the girls.
"Weally," he said, when he came ashore, "I am not pwesentible; but I
hope you ladies understand that it was an unavoidable accident."
"I don't know about that," said Laura, gravely.
"Oh! I assure you, Miss Belding," Purt hastened to say, "I had no
intention of going overboard--weally!"
"So you were not actually trying to rescue the dog?" demanded Jess.
"That howwible cweature!" gasped Purt, in disgust. "I would fling him
from the tallest cliff there is--could I safely do so."
"And not try to dive after him--eh?" chuckled Bobby.
"You are cruelty incarnate!" exclaimed Jess, gravely. "I am horrified
to find that we have a boy at Central High who would willingly destroy
such a beautiful--Oh! oh!" shrieked Jess, who had been facing a thick
path of woods below this open camping place. "What is _that_? It's a
bear!" she concluded, asking and answering the question herself.
She started in a very lively fashion for the boats. Some of the other
girls were quite as agile. Like the word "mouse" in domestic scenes,
the cry of "Bear!" in ruder surroundings "always gets a rise out of
the girls," as Chet Belding slangily expressed it.
But it was not a bear. Purt Sweet was stooping to aid in blowing up
the flame of the campfire over which they proposed making Mrs. Morse a
cup of tea. He did not see the "bear" coming.
But the other boys recognized the object that had so frightened Jess,
and they burst into a roar of laughter. Out of the bushes and across
the opening in the wood came a half wet, bedraggled dog, which, with
a joyful whine, leaped upon the individual who had so fatally
attracted his doggish love and loyalty!
"The Barnacle!" yelled Chet. "What did I tell you? Talk about 'the cat
coming back?' Crickey! the cat wasn't in it with this mongrel of
Purt's."
In the exuberance of his joy Barnacle fairly pitched Purt across the
fire, and tipped over the pail of water that had been hung over it to
boil. The dude seemed fated to fall into trouble on this first day of
the outing.
But now Purt was mad! He scrambled up, found a club, and chased the
barking Barnacle all about the camp. The dog would not be chased away.
Perhaps he had observed Lizzie opening the lunch baskets. Besides, he
seemed to take everything Purt tried to do to him as a game of play.
"Do leave the dog alone, Purt!" exclaimed Lil, at last. "You're making
yourself perfectly ridiculous."
Lily Pendleton's opinion had weight with Pretty Sweet. He sat down,
gloomy and breathless, and tried to ignore the Barnacle.
The latter sat on his tail all through the _alfresco_ meal, directly
behind Purt. The dude gave him no attention; but the other boys threw
pieces of meat and sweet crackers into the air for the Barnacle to
catch.
Could he catch them? Why! it seemed as though the dog must have been
trained for just that trick. He never missed a bite!
When his appetite was satisfied the mongrel began to try to attract
Purt's attention. Every time Purt reached for anything, the Barnacle's
cold, wet nose was right there! It was a plain case of "love at first
sight," as Bobby remarked. Nothing could convince that dog that Purt
was not his loving friend.
But finally the dude's serious air and his efforts to reach the dog
with a particularly well-shod foot, made an impression on the
Barnacle. He squatted down before Purt and lifting up his head,
uttered a howl that would have brought tears to the eyes of a graven
image.
"You'll break the poor dog's heart, Purt," said Jess, gravely. "Give
him a kind word."
"He has the most sorrowful face on him of any dog I ever saw,"
declared Dora Lockwood. "Look at him kindly, even if you can't
speak."
"Yes," whispered Dorothy, her twin. "He has almost as sorrowful a face
as Lizzie's."
"Gee! there's a pair of them," sighed Bobby, ecstatically. "Let's take
the dog with us to be a comrade for Liz."
Indeed, Lizzie Bean petted the mongrel, which hung around the camp
until the picnickers started up the river again.
There was another disturbance when Purt tried to slip aboard the
_Duchess_ without the dog. The Barnacle whined, and howled, and jumped
aboard, and was finally driven ashore with an oar.
The motorboats and their tows got off into the stream. There sat the
deserted dog on his tail, howling most dismally as the boats drew up
stream and left him behind.
Laura called to Purt in the other boat: "Never mind, Mr. Sweet, I
don't think you'll be troubled with that dog any more. It's twenty
miles to Lake Dunkirk. He will never follow you that far."
"I bet the Barnacle haunts Purt in his dreams," exclaimed Bobby.
"Oh! say not so!" begged Billy Long. "If Purt has the nightmare and
draws that 'family friend,' the faithful revolver, on the ghost of the
dog--Good-_night_! Like enough he'll blow us all out of the tent."
"I bet that Barnacle dogs his 'feetsteps' for the rest of Purt's
mortal existence," declared Chet, prophetically.
"One thing," said Lil Pendleton, "the nasty beast can't follow us to
Acorn Island."
"And we won't get there ourselves to-day, if we don't hurry," Chet
said. "Come on, Pretty! let's see what your little _Duchess_ can do,"
and he speeded up the engine of the _Bonnie Lass_.
"We have some distance to go, that's a fact," said Nellie. "The island
is two miles beyond the end of Rocky River."
The bigger powerboat pulled away from the _Duchess_ and the two
parties ceased shouting back and forth. Mrs. Morse was trying to get a
nap, so the girls did not sing. But they told jokes and stories, and
of course Bobby gave one of her jingles:
"'There was an old man of Nantasket
Who went to sea in a basket:
When up came a shark,
Swallowed him and his bark----
Now, wasn't that a fine funeral casket?'"
"Oh! I can beat that one," cried Jess.
"Let's hear you," responded the black-eyed miss.
"Listen, then," returned her schoolmate:
"'A canny young canner of Cannee,
One morning observed to his Granny,
"A canner can can
A lot of things, Gran,
But a canner can't can a can, can 'e?"'"
Now, how is that for a match for _your_ limerick?"
This started the ball a-rolling. Dora Lockwood raised her hand,
crying,
"Please, teacher! I have one," and immediately produced this:
"'There was a small boy who lived in Jamaica,
Who bought a lobster wrapped in a brown paper;
The paper was thin
And the lobster grabbed him----
What an awful condition that small boy was in!'"
This woke up Dorothy Lockwood, who would not be outdone by her twin.
She recited:
"'In Huron, a hewer, Hugh Hughes,
Hued yew-trees of unusual hues.
Hugh Hughes used blue yews
To build sheds for his ewes;
So his ewes a blue-hued yew shed use.'"
"Great Scott, girl!" gasped Chet. "That almost twisted your tongue out
of kilter."
"Any more?" queried Lance, who likewise had wonderingly listened to
this display of talent. "Ah-ha! I see Nellie just bursting with
one."
"Yes. I have a good one," admitted the doctor's daughter. "Hear it:
"'A right-handed writer named Wright
In writing "write" always wrote "rite."
Where he meant to write "write,"
If he'd written "write" right,
Wright would not have wrought rot writing "rite.'"
Now! let's hear you say _that_ fast?"
This certainly was a teaser and the boys admitted it. Finally somebody
shouted for Mother Wit. "Come on, Laura! where are you?" demanded
Bobby. "Are you going to let us mere 'amachoors' beat you? Give us a
limerick."
Mother Wit was expected to keep up with the other wits, that was sure.
So she obliged with:
"'A smart young fisher named Fischer,
Fished for fish from the edge of a fissure.
A fish, with a grin,
Pulled the fisherman in.
Now they're fishing the fissure for Fischer.'
"And now, boys, while we have been entertaining you," concluded Laura,
"you have gotten behind the _Duchess_ again."
"That's right, Lance," said Chet. "Give her some more power."
"Electricity is a wonderful thing," said Jess, seriously. "Just think
how fast it travels."
"How fast?" demanded Bobby.
"Something like 250,000 miles a second, I read somewhere."
"And so," remarked Bobby, grinning, "if it hits anybody, it tells the
judge it was going about ten miles an hour."
They were out for a good time and could laugh at almost anything that
was said, or was done. Freed from what Bobby called "the scholastic
yoke," the whole world seemed a big joke to them.
"I know we're going to have the finest kind of a time at Acorn
Island!" the cut-up exclaimed.
"Well! I hope there's nothing much to do there to-night, save to eat
supper," Jess said, yawning. "So much ozone is already making me
sleepy."
"Father Tom promised to have a man there to meet us, who would even
have the fire going and the teakettle boiling," said Bobby. "You see,
he's been up here hunting and fishing, and these guides all know him.
He can get what he wants from them."
The boats chugged on up the river and finally, as the evening began to
draw in, they sighted the broadening sheet of water which they knew to
be Lake Dunkirk. The lake was longer, but much narrower, than Lake
Luna, and it was surrounded by an unbroken line of forest.
The sun was setting. Its last beams shone upon the island which lay
about two miles above the entrance to Rocky River, and that island
looked like an emerald floating on the blue water.
The light was fast fading out of the sky, save where the west was
still riotous with colors. The big oaks on Acorn Island grew black as
the shadows gathered beneath them.
At the nearer end was the hillock where they were to camp. Here the
grove was open and they could see the cabin standing, with two tents
beside it. One of the tents had a raised flap, and there was the
stovepipe with a curl of smoke coming out of it.
Down at the edge of the shore--a smooth and sheltered bit of beach
where the landing was easy--a man was sitting, smoking his pipe. A
beautiful canoe, of Indian manufacture, had its bow drawn up beside
him.
The boys and girls shouted a welcome as they drove in toward the
shore. He rose, knocking the ashes from his pipe, and waved a hand
toward the camp above. He was a tall man, almost as black as a negro,
with long, black hair, and was barefooted.
"All right!" he grunted, gutturally. Then he pushed off, stepped into
his canoe, and paddled away without another word.
The boats were beached and the young people began to disembark. Before
the guide in the canoe got half way to the northern shore of the lake,
he was lost to their sight, the darkness came down so suddenly.
CHAPTER X
GETTING USED TO IT
The boys were in haste to get to their own camping site, which was
across from the island on the southern shore of Lake Dunkirk. So they
hurried the baggage belonging to Mrs. Morse and the girls to the
cabin, and then prepared to embark again with their own boats.
Chet saw to it that everything appeared to be in good shape about the
camp on the island knoll, and he drew up the three canoes belonging to
the girls, himself.
"Now, if you girls get into trouble to-night, toot this thing," and
Chet produced an automobile horn which he had brought along for the
purpose. "If you need us by day, Laura knows how to wig-wag with those
flags. I taught her."
"For pity's sake, Chet!" exclaimed Jess, with some asperity. "Do you
suppose we are going to need you boys every hour, or so?"
"I hope not!" added Lil Pendleton. "Surely we ought to be able to get
along in camp just as well as you boys."
"Hear! hear!" cried Bobby. "How are you going to summon us if you need
help, my dear little boys? Sha'n't we give you each a penny whistle so
you can call us?"
Chet only laughed. Lance said: "We've been camping before; most of you
girls haven't. Of course you will get into trouble forty times to our
once."
"Well! I like that," sniffed Jess, who did not like it at all. "If
girls aren't just as well able to take care of themselves, as boys,
I'd like to know why."
"Jess is getting to be a regular suffragette," chuckled Dora
Lockwood.
"Reminds me of the little girl whose mother was chasing the hens out
of the garden," said Laura, with her low laugh. "The hen-chaser
declared that 'You can't teach a hen anything, to save your life,'
when the little girl spoke up for her sex, and said: 'Well! I think
they know quite as much as the roosters!'"
"And that's all right," teased Lance, as the boys got under way. "I
bet this bunch of hens on Acorn Island will holler for us roosters
before we set the distress signal for _them_."
"Get out, you horrid thing!" cried Bobby. "Calling us hens. We're only
pullets, at best."
A lantern had been lit in each tent, for the shadows were thickening
under the oak trees on the knoll. Lizzie Bean at once began to
overhaul the cooking utensils and supplies in the cook-tent.
This tent was divided into two parts. Lizzie's own cot was in the rear
apartment. There was a long table, roughly built but serviceable, in
the front with the stove and chest of drawers. There were folding
campstools in plenty.
In the cabin was a comfortable straw mattress for Mrs. Morse in the
wide bunk, a small table on which her typewriter case already stood, a
rocker made in rustic fashion, a painted dressing case with mirror of
good size, and shelves for books.
A small fire was burning on the hearth, for the cabin was apt to be
damp after its many months of abandonment. It had been swept and
garnished with boughs of sweet-smelling spruce and pine.
The girls' sleeping tent housed seven cots, all supplied with
unbleached cotton sheets and heavy double blankets. Lil Pendleton
looked about it when she brought in her bag, and shivered.
"Goodness!" she said. "I'm glad we're 'way out here in the wilderness
if we're going to dress and undress in this thing. Why! I shall feel
just as much exposed as though the sides were made of window-glass."
"What nonsense!" sniffed Bobby, who had been camping with her father
and had spent many a night in a tent. "You're too particular, Lil."
"Who asked _you_ to put in your oar?" demanded Miss Pendleton,
crossly. "I have a right to my opinion, I hope."
"I should hope it was nobody else's opinion," returned Miss Bobby,
quick to pick up the gauntlet.
"Hush, girls!" advised Mother Wit. "Let us not be quarrelsome. We
don't want Mrs. Morse to think we are female savages right at the
start."
Lil sniffed; but good-tempered Bobby said, quickly: "You're right,
Laura. I beg the company's pardon--and Lil's particularly. We must be
'little birds who in their nest agree.'"
"You're a fine bird, Bobby," laughed Dora. "Come on! I hear the dishes
rattling. Let's see what Lizzie has tossed up for supper."
"I wonder if she managed to boil the water without burning it?"
giggled Jess. "She's the funniest girl!"
"I should think you and Laura could have found a maid who wasn't quite
such a gawk," muttered Lil, unpleasantly.
"Hush!" admonished Mother Wit. "Don't let her hear you."
"Why not?" snapped Lil.
"You will hurt her feelings."
"Pooh! she's paid for it----"
"Not for having her feelings hurt," declared Laura, sternly. "And I
won't have it. She's odd; but she is quite as quick of hearing as the
next person."
"Aw, you're too particular, Laura," drawled Lil. But she stood a
little in awe of Mother Wit.
They joined Mrs. Morse and filed into the cook-tent. Lizzie's flushed
face appeared behind the steaming biscuits and a big platter of ham
and eggs. They did not really know how hungry they were until they sat
down to these viands.
Lizzie stood with arms akimbo and waited for the verdict upon the
cooking.
"Most excellent, Lizzie," Mrs. Morse said, kindly.
"Suits ye, does it?" asked the strange girl. "I flatter myself them
biscuits air light enough to sleep on."
"They are a good deal more feathery than our 'downy couches' here in
camp, I warrant, Lizzie," laughed Laura.
"Glad ye like 'em. There's plenty of biscuits--don't be bashful."
Jess giggled when she saw Lil's face. "How rude!" muttered Miss
Pendleton. "I don't see what you and Mother Wit were thinking about
when you hired that girl."
"Thinking of you, Lily--thinking of you," declared Jess. "She will
willingly do your share of the dish-washing."
"Dish-washing? Fancy!" exclaimed Lil. "I'd like to see myself!"
"Well I wouldn't," put in the omnipresent Bobby. "Not if I had to eat
after your manipulation of the dish-mop."
"But we didn't come to do anything like _that_," wailed Lil.
"Just the same we have got to do a part of the camp work," declared
Mother Wit. "It all can't be shoved off onto Lizzie."
"Let us arrange about that right here and now," suggested Mrs. Morse.
"Oh, Mrs. Morse!" cried Nell, eagerly. "First of all I vote that Mrs.
Morse is not called upon to do a thing! She's company as well as
chaperon."
"I will make my own bed," said the lady, smiling. "You girls can take
turns sweeping and dusting the cabin, if you like."
"And making the beds and cleaning up our tent," added Laura. "Two at a
time--it won't seem so hard if two work together."
"A good idea," agreed Mrs. Morse.
"But that leaves an odd girl," suggested Jess.
"We'll change about. The odd girl shall help the cook. And one meal a
day--either breakfast, dinner, or supper--we girls must cook, and
Lizzie is going to have nothing to do with that meal."
"Why! _I_ can't cook," wailed Lil again.
"Good time for you to begin to learn, then," Laura said, laughingly.
Some of the other girls looked disturbed at the prospect. "I can make
fudge," observed Nell, honestly, "but I never really tried anything
else, except to make toast and tea for mother when she was ill and the
maid was out."
"Listen to that!" exclaimed the voice of Lizzie Bean, who had been
listening frankly to the dialogue. "An' I been doin' plain cookin' an'
heavy sweepin' and hard scrubbin' ever since I was knee-high to a
toadstool!"
Bobby burst out laughing. "So have I, Lizzie!" she cried. "Only I have
done it for Father Tom and my kid brothers and sisters when Mrs.
Betsey was sick."
Lily Pendleton turned up her nose--literally. "We're going to have
trouble with that girl," she announced to Nellie. "She doesn't know
her place."
But whatever Lizzie knew, or did not know, she did not shirk her share
of the work. She stayed up after everybody else had retired and
washed every pot and pan and plate, and set her bread to rise for
morning, and stirred up a big pitcher of flapjack flour to rise over
night, peeled potatoes to fry, leaving them in cold water so they
would not turn black, and set the long table fresh for breakfast.
When the earliest riser among the girls (who was Laura herself) peeped
into the cooking tent at daybreak, the fire in the stove was already
roaring, and Lizzie had gone down to the shore to wash her face and
hands in the cold water. Laura ran down in her bathing suit.
"What do you think of this place, Lizzie?" she asked the solemn-faced
girl.
"For the land's sake, Miss!" drawled Lizzie Bean, "I never had no idea
the woods was so lonesome--for a fac'."
"No?"
"I sh'd say not! I went to bed and lay there an' listened. The trees
creaked, and the crickets twittered, and some bird had the nightmare
an' kep' cryin' like a baby----"
"I expect that was a screech-owl, Lizzie," interrupted Laura. "They
come out only at night."
"Goodness to gracious! Do they come out _every_ night?" demanded the
girl.
"I expect so."
"And them frogs?"
"They are tree-toads. Yes, they are here all summer, I guess."
"Goodness to gracious! And folks like to live in the woods? Well!"
"Do you think you can stand it?" queried Laura, much amused, yet
somewhat anxious, too.
"As long as I'm goin' to get all that money every week it'll take more
than birds with the nightmare an' a passel of frogs to drive me away.
Now! when do you want breakfast, Miss?"
"Not until Mrs. Morse gets up. And none of the other girls are out
yet," said Laura.
But very soon the other girls began to appear. They had agreed to have
a dip the first thing, and the girls who first got into the water
squealed so because of the cold, that it routed out the lie-abeds.
Lily would not venture in. She sat on a stump, with a blanket wrapped
around her, and shivered, and yawned, and refused to plunge in with
the others.
"And it's so early," she complained. "I had no idea you'd all get up
so early and make such a racket. Why, when there isn't school, I
_never_ get up before nine o'clock."
"Ah! how different your life is going to be on Acorn Island," said
Bobby, frankly. "You'll be a new girl by the time we go back home."
"I don't want to be a new girl," grumbled Lily.
"Now, isn't that just like her?" said Bobby, _sotto voce_. "She is
perfectly satisfied with herself as she is. Humph! Lucky she _is_
satisfied, I s'pose, for nobody else could be!"
CHAPTER XI
LIZ SEES A "HA'NT"
After their bath the girls got into their gymnasium costumes. Then
they clamored for breakfast, and had Mrs. Morse not appeared just then
there certainly would have been a riot at the cook-tent. Lizzie was a
stickler for orders, and she would not begin to fry cakes until Jess'
mother gave the signal.
Flapjacks! My! weren't they good, with butter and syrup, followed by
bacon and eggs and French fried potatoes? The girls ate for a solid
hour. Lizzie's face was the color of a well-burned brick when the
girls admitted they were satisfied. The out-of-door air had given even
Lil an enormous appetite.
"If my mother had any idea that I'd eat so much at this time in the
morning she'd never have let me come camping," she said. "Why! do you
know--I only drink a cup of coffee and pick the inside out of a roll,
at breakfast, at home."
There was a general inclination to "laze" about the camp and read, or
take naps after that heavy breakfast. But Laura would not allow the
other six girls of Central High any peace.
"Of course, we have a big ham and a case of eggs with us," said Mother
Wit. "But we don't want to eat ham and eggs, or bacon and eggs, three
times a day while we stay here.
"Beside, the eggs, at least, won't hold out. We must add to the
larder----"
"What shall we do?" asked Dora Lockwood. "Paddle to the mainland and
kill some farmer's cow to get beef?"
"No, indeed," Laura said, laughing. "We must, however, make an attempt
to coax some of the finny denizens of the lake out of it and into
Lizzie's fry-pan."
"Fishing!" cried Dorothy.
"I never went fishing in my life," complained Lil.
But the other girls of Central High were not like Lil--no, indeed!
They had been out with the boys on Lake Luna--both in summer and
winter--and every one of them knew how to put a worm on a hook.
Lil squealed at the thought of "using one of the squirmy things."
"Aw, you give me a pain!" said Bobby. "Don't act as though you were
made of something different from the rest of us. A worm never bit me
yet, and I've been fishing thousands of times, I guess."
Lil did not hear her, however. She was the only girl who had not
brought fishing tackle. When she saw her six schoolmates going about
the work of tolling the finny denizens of Lake Dunkirk onto the bank,
she began to be jealous of the fun they were having. White perch, and
roach, and now and then a lake trout, were being landed.
Lil got excited. She wanted to try her hand at the sport, too. Yes!
Bobby had an extra outfit, and she even cut Lil a pole.
"But I tell you what it is, Miss," said the black-eyed girl, "I'm
going to hold you responsible for this outfit. If you break anything,
or lose anything, or snarl the line up, you'll have to pay me for it.
I paid good money for that silk line and those hooks."
Lil promised to make good if anything happened to the fishing tackle.
She took her place on a rock near Bobby and made a cast. The other
girls were very busy themselves and paid Lil very little attention.
The fish were biting freely, for the morning was cloudy and these
waters about Acorn Island were far from being "fished out." Bobby
hauled in a couple of perch and had almost forgotten about Lil, when
the latter said, mournfully:
"Say, Clara."
"Well! what is it?" demanded the other.
"What do you call that little thing that bobbed up and down on the
water?"
"The float," replied the busy Bobby.
"Well, Clara!" whined Lil, mournfully.
"Well! what is it?" snapped the busy fisherman.
"I'll have to buy you a new one."
"Buy me _what_?" demanded the surprised Bobby.
"A new float."
"What for?" was the amazed demand.
"Because that one you lent me _has sunk_," mourned Lily.
"For goodness' sake!" shrieked Bobby. "You've got a bite!"
She dropped her own pole, ran to the amazed Lily, and dragged in a big
bullpout--sometimes called "catfish"--that was sulking in the mud at
the bottom, with Lil's hook firmly fastened in its jaws.
Lil shrieked. She would not touch the wriggling, black fish. She was
afraid of being "horned," she said!
Bobby put her foot on the fish and managed to extract the hook. Then
she baited the hook again and bade Lil try her luck once more.
But the amateur fisherman was doomed to ill-luck on this occasion. She
had scarcely dropped the bait into the water, when a fierce little
head appeared right at the surface. It swallowed the bait--hook and
all--at a gulp, and swam right toward the shore where Lil stood.
She began to squeal again: "A snake! a snake! Oh, Bobby, I'm deathly
afraid of snakes."
"So am I," rejoined Bobby. "But you won't catch a snake in the water
with a hook and line."
"_I've caught one!_" gasped the frightened Lil.
"Gee!" growled Bobby. "You're more trouble than a box of bald-headed
monkeys. What is the matter--Oo! it's a snapper!"
"A what?" cried Lil, dropping the fishpole.
"A snapping turtle," explained Bobby. "Now you _have_ caught it! I'll
lose hook and all, like enough."
She jerked the turtle ashore. Lil had seen only its reptilian head.
The beast proved to be more than a foot across.
"Makes bully soup," said the practical Bobby. "But he won't willingly
let go of that bait and the hook in a month of Sundays."
She ran up to the camp and came flying back in a minute with the
camp-hatchet. Lil grew bold enough to hold the line taut. The turtle
pulled back, and Bobby caught it just right and cut its head off!
Although Lonesome Liz had never seen a turtle before, she managed to
clean it and with Mrs. Morse's advice made a pot of soup. Lizzie was
getting bolder as the hours passed; but she announced to Laura that
she believed there must be "ha'nts" in the woods.
"What is a haunt?" asked Laura, curiously.
"Dead folks that ain't contented in their minds," declared the queer
girl.
"And why should the spirits of the dead haunt _these_ woods?" asked
Laura. "Seems to me it's an awfully out of the way place for dead
people to come to."
But Lizzie would not give up her belief in the "spooks."
That first day in camp the girls had no visitors. Through their
binoculars and opera glasses, they could see the boys very active
about their camp across the lake. It was plain they were too busy to
visit Acorn Island.
The girls of Central High, however, had plenty of fun without the
boys. Only Bobby declared that Lil principally spent the time staring
through her opera glasses across the lake, wishing Purt would come
over in the _Duchess;_ but Lil angrily denied _that._
"And you stop trying to stir up a rumpus, Miss," commanded Laura, to
the cut-up. "Let us live, if we can, like a Happy Family."
"My!" drawled Jess, "Mother Wit is nothing if not optimistic."
"Ha! what is your idea of an optimist?" demanded Nellie Agnew.
"Why," Jess said, smiling quietly, "I read of a real optimist once. He
was strolling along a country road and an automobile came along and
hit him in the back. It knocked him twenty feet.
"'Oh, well!' said he, as he got up, 'I was going in this direction,
anyway.'"
"Aw, say!" put in Bobby, "that's all right for a _story;_ but _my_
idea of a real optimist is a man who's dead broke, going into a
restaurant and ordering oysters on the half shell with the hope that
he can pay for the dinner by finding a pearl in one of the bivalves."
They all laughed at that, and then Laura said:
"To get back to our original conversation, let us see if we can't get
on in _this_ camp without friction. And that means that _you_, Bobby,
must set a watch on your tongue."
"What do you suppose my tongue is--a timekeeper?" cried the irreverent
Bobby.
Laura herself helped get dinner, the main dish of which was fried
fish. And how good they tasted, fresh out of the lake!
Mrs. Morse had kept her typewriter tapping at a swift pace in the
cabin, and she could scarcely be coaxed to leave her story long enough
to eat dinner.
"This quietude is an incentive to good work," she said, reflectively,
at table. "I shall be sorry to go back to town."
But it was very early in their experience to say _that._ Lizzie Bean
was not yet an enthusiast for the simple life, that was sure. She and
Mother Wit had gotten better acquainted during the preparations for
the noonday meal.
"I ain't never been crazy about the country myself," admitted Liz.
"Cows, and bugs, and muskeeters, and frogs, don't seem so int'restin'
to me as steam cars, and pitcher shows, and sody-water fountains, and
street pianners.
"I like the crowds, I do. A place where all ye hear all day is a
mowin' merchine clackin', or see a hoss switchin' his tail to keep off
the bluebottles, didn't never coax me, _much._"
"The bucolic life does not tempt you, then?" said Laura, her eyes
twinkling.
"Never heard it called that afore. Colic's it serious thing--'specially
with babies. But the city suits me, I can tell ye," said Liz.
"I never seen no-one that liked the woods like you gals seem to
before, 'ceptin' a feller that lived in the boardin' house I worked
at in Albany. He was a bug on campin' and fishin' and gunnin', and all
that."
"Did you work in Albany?" queried Laura, surprised.
"Yep. Last year. I had a right good place, too. Plenty of work. I got
up at four o'clock in the mornin' and I never _did_ get through at
night!"
"Oh, my!"
"Yep. I love work. It keeps yer mind off yer troubles, if you have
enough and plenty to do. But if yer have too much of it, yer get fed
up, as ye might say. I didn't get time to sleep."
Laura had to laugh at that.
"Yep. That chap I tell you about was the nicest chap I ever see. He
was kind to me, too. When I cut my thumb most off--see the
scar?--a-slicin' bread in that boardin' house, the missis put me out
'cause I couldn't do my work."
"How mean!" exclaimed Laura.
"Ah! ye don't know about boardin' house missises. They ain't human,"
said Liz, confidently. "But Mr. Norman, he seen me goin' out with my
verlise, and he knowed about my sore thumb. He slipped me five dollars
out o' his pocket. But he was rich," sighed Liz, ecstatically. "He
owned a bank."
"Owned a bank?" gasped Laura.
"Yep."
"And lived in a cheap boarding house?" for Laura knew that Liz could
not have worked in a very aristocratic place.
"Well! he went to a bank every day," said the simple girl. "And if he
warn't rich why should he have slipped me the five dollars?"
"True--very true," admitted Laura, much amused.
But she did not think it so funny that evening when, as the girls sat
about a fire they had made in the open, singing and telling jokes, and
Lizzie was washing up the supper dishes, a sudden shrill whoop arose
from the cook-tent.
"Gee! what's that?" demanded the slangy Bobby.
"A mouse!" declared Nellie. "That funny girl must be just as much
afraid of them as _I_ am."
"I hope it's nothing worse than a mouse," Lil said, tremblingly.
Laura had sprung up on the instant and run to the cook tent. Liz had
dropped a pile of plates, and some of them were broken. She had
deposited herself stiffly in a campstool. Her body was quite stiffened
and her eyes fairly bulged--and it was not easy for Liz Bean's eyes
_to_ bulge!
"What is the matter, Liz?" demanded Laura, seizing her by the
shoulder.
"I seen him," gasped Liz.
"You have seen whom?"
"_Him_."
"But that doesn't mean anything to me," declared Laura, shaking her.
"Who _is_ he?"
"The feller I was tellin' you about. That feller that give me the five
dollars."
"_What_?"
"Yes, Ma'am!" uttered Liz, solemnly. "He was standin' right
yonder--just at the edge of them woods. I took the cover off the stove
and the fire flashed out and showed me his face--just as plain!"
"You've been dreaming," said Laura, slowly.
"Git out!" ejaculated Liz, with emphasis. "I never fell asleep yet
washin' greasy dishes--no, Ma'am!"
"Well!"
"I know what it means," Liz said, solemnly. "Yes, I do."
"What _does_ it mean?" demanded Laura, doubtful whether to laugh or be
serious.
"He's dead," said the odd girl.
"Dead?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"But why should he appear to you, even if he _were_ dead?" demanded
Laura, seeing that she must never let this superstition take root in
the camp. "Do you suppose he's come to try to get his five dollars
back?"
"My goodness to gracious!" said Liz. "No. The ha'nt of a man that
owned a bank wouldn't come to bother a poor gal like me for money,
would he?"
CHAPTER XII
THE "KLEPTOMANIANTIC" GHOST
The other girls crowded around then and wanted to know what had
happened. Laura pinched Liz and said:
"She dropped those plates. Guess we won't make her pay for the broken
ones, girls. Go on, now. I'll finish helping Liz wipe them."
So the matter of the "ha'nt" did not become public property just then.
In fact, Mother Wit talked so seriously to the maid-of-all-work that
she hoped the "ha'nt" had been laid, before they sought their cots
that night.
But in the morning there was a most surprising sequel to the incident.
The larder had been robbed!
"It can't be," said Laura, who heard of the trouble first of all when
she popped out of the sleeping tent. Lizzie Bean had awakened Mrs.
Morse and that lady--bundled in a blanket-robe--had come to the
cook-tent to see.
"I ain't never walked in my sleep yet--and knowed it," stated Lizzie,
with conviction. "And there's the things missin'----"
The remainder of the big ham, a strip of bacon, coffee, sugar, syrup,
canned milk, and half a sack of flour were among the things which had
disappeared.
While the three stood there, amazed, Bobby came. "Bet it was those
boys," said she. "Playing a joke on us. They're over here somewhere."
The sun was just rising, and its early beams shone on the camp across
the lake. Laura ran for the binoculars and examined the boys' camp.
Both powerboats were there, and the five canoes. The boys were all
disporting themselves in the water--Laura could count the six.
"If they did it," she said, "they got back to their camp very early."
"See this!" shrieked Bobby, suddenly.
She was pointing to the table, set as usual for breakfast. Pinned to
the red and white checked table-cloth was a crisp ten dollar bill.
"Whoever robbed us paid for the goods," Mrs. Morse said, feebly.
"It was that ha'nt!" declared Liz.
At that the story of the man's face she had seen at the edge of the
wood the evening before, came out. All the girls heard the story, and
at once there was a great hullabaloo!
"A man on the island!" gasped Nellie. "I'm going home."
"Pooh!" said Bobby. "Liz says it's a ghost. A kleptomaniac ghost at
that."
"He can't be a kleptomaniac, Bobby," said Laura, laughing, "or he
wouldn't have left money for the goods."
"He's a kleptomani-_antic_ ghost, then!" giggled Bobby.
"How ridiculous!" said Jess. "Whoever heard the like?"
"The fact remains," said her mother, "that some stranger has been here
while we slept, and taken the provisions--and we shall have to get
more."
"The ten dollars will more than pay for what's missing," said Laura,
slowly.
"What of that?" demanded Nellie. "I don't like the idea."
Lizzie was somewhat flurried. "And me--I was sleepin' right behind
that canvas curtain. Not again! never! I'm goin' back to town."
At this the girls all set up a wail. "Oh, Liz! you mustn't! You
promised to stay! We're paying you good wages, Liz! Don't leave us to
do all the work!" was the chorus of objections.
"Well! I ain't goin' to stay right here where that ha'nt can get me,"
declared Liz.
"But," put forth Laura, seriously, though her eyes twinkled, "you
shouldn't be afraid of _that_ haunt if he was such a nice young man as
you say he was."
"Huh!" grumbled Lizzie Bean, practically. "No young man is nice after
he's dead."
There seemed to be no answer to this statement. But Mrs. Morse came to
the rescue.
"You can bring your cot into the cabin, Lizzie," she said. "You will
not be afraid if you sleep there with me, will you?"
"No, Ma'am. I reckon not," admitted the girl.
"But how about _us_?" cried Lil Pendleton. "Surely, we won't stay here
if there are men on the island?"
"It's big enough for them and us, too, I guess," said Bobby,
doubtfully.
"Maybe the man--or men--who stole our food, is no longer on the
island," Laura said, slowly.
"And they paid for it!" exclaimed Dora.
"Money isn't everything," said Nellie.
"What _is_?" demanded Bobby.
"Our peace of mind," declared the doctor's daughter, "is more
important. I shall be afraid to stay here if there are strange men on
the island."
"We'll settle that," Laura declared, with vigor, "and at once."
"How?" demanded Dorothy, wonderingly.
"Search the island," said practical Mother Wit. "Certainly not by
sitting down and sucking our thumbs."
"Oh, Laura!" wailed Lil. "I wouldn't dare!"
"Wouldn't dare what?" was Laura's rejoinder.
"Hunt for those men on this island. Why! we don't _want_ to find
them."
"And I'd like to know why not? I don't care if they _did_ leave money
for the food they took----"
"But there must be something bad about them----"
"How do we know that, Lil?" asked Laura. "There is, rather, something
_good_ about them, or they would not have left the money for the
stolen food."
"Dear Laura is right--as she almost always is," said Mrs. Morse,
fondly. "A real thief at heart would not have left that ten dollar
bill."
"An' I'm tellin' you that chap was the nicest one that lived at Missis
Brayton's boardin' house," put in Liz, reflectively.
"What chap?" cried Jess.
"The ha'nt," said Liz, simply.
"Oh, dear me, Lizzie!" said Laura, in some disgust. "Don't keep that
up."
"Well, then! If it wasn't his ha'nt, it was _himself_. Guess I know
him," declared the girl-of-all-work.
"Tell _me_ about it, please?" said Jess' mother, "You girls run and
get your baths and we'll get breakfast."
"I--I don't want to leave the tent if there are thieves about,"
complained Lil, to whom the water looked just as cold on this morning
as it had the day before. "I--I've got some jewelry in my bag."
"Very foolish," said Bobby, bluntly. "We told you not to bring
anything to camp that you cared about."
"Gently! gently!" said Laura, the peacemaker, "Come on, Lil. Don't be
afraid of either the kleptomaniantic thief, as Bobby calls him, or the
cold water--neither will hurt you, I guess."
They had their plunge and that--or something else--stirred Mother
Wit's "thinking machine." She said, as they trooped up to dress:
"We'll wig-wag the boys and bring them over. They will help us search
the island. Besides, we shall need one of the powerboats to go for
more food. It seems funny that a man who was willing to pay for what
he took--and pay so well--did not go down to Elberon Crossing and buy
at the store just what he took from us."
"He's an outlaw--a murderer, maybe, fleeing for his life," suggested
Lil, tremblingly.
"Pooh! so are you!" scoffed Jess. "More than likely he is some lazy
fisherman who did not want to go to the store--some rich fellow from
the city."
"If Liz knows what she is talking about," said Laura, "it _is_ a rich
fellow from Albany. A Mr. Norman. And she told me last night that he
was a great fisherman and hunter.
"But what under the sun," demanded Bobby, "should he take our food
for?"
"You can't tell me it is anything as simple as that," Lil Pendleton
declared. "He is a thief, just the same. And it as dangerous for us to
be on this island with him. Why! I wouldn't stay another night--unless
the boys were here to defend us."
"Ah! the cat is out of the bag," chuckled Bobby. "Lil wants Purt over
here with his revolver," and then the other girls laughed and Lil got
mad again.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SEARCH OF THE ISLAND
Laura dressed in a hurry and ran out with the flags. She took a slip
of paper with her on which Chet had marked down the code, to refresh
her memory, and at once stood out upon a high boulder and began to
wave the "call flag."
Without the glasses she could not see what the boys were doing about
their camp; but Jess came with the best pair of binoculars, and soon
told her that the boys were evidently in much excitement. Chet
appeared with _his_ flags, and brother and sister carried on a silent
conversation for some ten minutes.
"No, girls," Laura said, seriously, when she came down from the rock
and led the way to the breakfast table. "Chet assures me none of the
boys have been over here. They were coming right after breakfast,
anyway, and will come in the powerboats."
"They know nothing about our loss, and Chet is impressed with the
seriousness of the affair. I wouldn't let him think we were scared at
all, but asked to borrow a boat so as to get more provisions."
"No! I should say not!" exclaimed Jess. "After what they said about
our calling them, when they left us the other night, we don't want to
give then a chance to laugh at us."
"Who'll go for the provisions to this Crossing you speak of?" asked
Nellie.
"Oh, a couple of the boys. The others will help us search the island,"
Laura said, cheerfully.
"Make out a list of what is needed, Laura," advised Mrs. Morse, as she
retired to her typewriter. "And be sure to get a bottle of peroxide.
It's good for cuts, or mosquito bites, or any poison."
Not long after breakfast the two powerboats, the _Duchess_ and the
_Bonnie Lass_, were seen approaching. All the boys had come, and they
were all very curious as to the raid that had been made upon the
girls' pantry.
Purt Sweet had seemingly been transformed in the two days he had been
"roughing it" in camp. He still wore the green knickerbockers, and the
long stockings. The belt with its hunting-knife scabbard, was about
his waist. And there was a suspicious bunch under his waistband that
announced the presence of the ancient revolver.
However, Purt's mother would not have known his clothing, so stained,
torn and bedraggled did his garments appear. The boys had made him do
his share of the camp work. Chopping wood had made his palms blister,
sparks had snapped out of the fires he had made and burned holes in
his clothes, and hot fat snapping from the skillet had left red marks
on his hands and face.
Having fun in camp was the hardest work Purt Sweet had ever done; but
he was ashamed to "kick" about it before the girls. He came ashore to
assure Lil Pendleton that he would do his best to find and punish the
marauders who had raided the camp on the island.
"Whether the fellow paid for what he got, or not," Chet said,
seriously, when he had heard the particulars, "we want to know if he
is still here, and what he means by such actions."
"We must know that he _isn't_ here, or I sha'n't want to stay,"
declared Nellie Agnew, who was really very timid.
"Leave it to us," said Billy Long, grandly. "We'll comb this island
with a fine tooth comb----"
"You don't suppose we girls are going to let you fellows do it all, do
you?" demanded Laura. "Of course we shall help, Short and Long."
"Aw! you'll tear your frocks and scratch yourself on the vines, and
stub your toes and fall down, and make a mess generally," declared
Short and Long, loftily. "Better stay here in camp and do your
squealing."
"Well! I like that!" quoth Jess, making a dive for the short boy. She
was considerably bigger than he, and catching him from the rear she
wound her long arms about him and so held him tight.
"Take that back, Short and Long," she commanded, "or I shall hold you
prisoner."
Short and Long found he could not get away from Jess, and finally
stopped struggling. "I didn't know you thought so much of me, Jess,"
he said, grinning. "But it embarrasses me dreadfully, to have you hug
me in public."
"Why!" laughed the big girl, "I'd think no more of hugging you, than I
would your brother, Tommy--and _he's_ a dear!"
"You'd think so if you had that kid around all the time," grunted
Short and Long, as Jess finally allowed him to wriggle loose. "I think
he's more of a terror than he is a dear."
"He takes it from you, then," laughed Bobby.
"Yep," said Lance, grinning, "it runs in Billy's family to be a
cut-up--like wooden legs!"
"What's Tommy been doing now?" asked Dorothy Lockwood.
"Why, he is great chums with the kid next door, and they got into
mischief of some kind the other day. The other kid's mother told them
that if they did such things 'the bad man would get them.' 'Who's the
bad man, Tommy?' our Sue asked him, and Tommy says:
"'Don't know. You'll hafter ask Charlie's mother. She's well
acquainted with him.'"
"Come on, now!" exclaimed Lance. "Who's going to take the _Duchess_
and go to Elberon Crossing for this bill of goods? We can't all go
hunting for robbers."
"I shall stay here to help defend the girls, doncher know," stated
Purt, swaggering about the camp. "But any of you fellows can take my
boat."
"Spoken like a nobleman, Purt!" declared Chet, laughing. "Come on,
now! Let's arrange how we shall sweep the island, from shore to
shore."
But first it was agreed that Lance and Reddy should go with the
_Duchess_ for the new supply of food for the girls. They set off at
once.
The island was a quarter of a mile across at its widest point. Even if
the whole party entered on the search they would have difficulty in
making so strong a human barrier across the isle that a fugitive in
the covert could not escape through the line.
But Chet occasionally had a bright idea as well as his sister. He sent
Short and Long--who could climb like a squirrel--to the top of a tall
tree on the knoll. From that height he could see every opening in the
wood, to the upper point of the island--which was nearly two miles
long.
"Now we'll all go and beat up the brush and see if we can start
anything bigger than a rabbit," Chet declared. "Spread out and try to
push through the woods as straight as possible."
"We girls, too?" cried Nellie.
"Be a sport, Nell, and come along," urged Jess Morse. "We'll be in
sight and call of each other all the time."
Which was true enough, as they soon discovered. Lil said it was her
turn to help do the camp work. And of course neither Mrs. Morse nor
Liz could go.
"Don't you think," Purt asked, seriously, "that one of us ought to
remain here and defend--er--the camp?"
"Sure," said Chet, quickly. "We'll leave Art, if you say so. He rather
admires Lil, too, Purt."
This made the dude keep still; but he _did_ dislike this "manhunt" in
the thick brush of Acorn Island.
After they had gone half a mile or so, and found nothing--not even a
trace of anybody else having camped on the island--they all took the
situation more cheerfully. They believed whoever had stolen the girls'
food had already departed.
"Some of these fancy city fishermen, like enough," Chet declared, when
they all came together at the western point of the island. "See
yonder! there are two men in a boat, fishing, now."
"If they were the robbers they would not boldly anchor off there," his
sister said.
"True enough, Laura," said Bobby. "I believe that whoever stole from
us, is far away now. And everybody who comes to the lake knows that it
is forbidden to camp on Acorn Island. The guides all know it."
"How about what Liz says about the man she saw last evening?" demanded
Jess. "She says he was a man she knew in Albany."
"She had been talking to me about him," laughed Laura, "and I guess he
was in her mind. Why should such a man come and rob our camp?"
"Well! it's a mystery," Chet said. "But I reckon you'll not be
bothered again; the island seems empty save for ourselves."
But later they thought that they might have been a little more careful
in searching the upper end of Acorn Island.
CHAPTER XIV
"MORE FUN THAN A LITTLE"
The girls were tired enough when they got back from the search; and it
being an hour before dinner, Mrs. Morse advised them all to retire to
the sleeping tent and lie down.
However, it was too sultry for that, and they chose to put on bathing
suits and take a second dip to cool off. The boys had their bathing
suits, too, and the party had twenty minutes of fun in the lake, with
Mrs. Morse sitting on a rock in the shade and enjoying the pranks.
Lil's bathing suit was very resplendent, and so was Purt's. They were
so much better dressed than anybody else that Bobby declared she was
ashamed to be seen in their company--so she dove under the water.
The cut-up had the power of remaining beneath the surface a long time,
and she crawled on the bottom to where Lil and Purt stood, waist deep
in the water, without being observed.
Suddenly Purt yelled, dropped Lil's hand, and grabbed at the calf of
his right leg. "A crab's got me!" he bawled.
"A crab in fresh water?" jeered Billy Long. "That's a new one!"
"It's one of those horrid snapping turtles!" shrieked Lil, and started
for the shore. Not quickly enough, however, to escape Bobby's thumb
and finger.
"It's that horrid Bobby Hargrew!" gasped Lil, seeing the black-eyed
one shoot up from beneath, and take a long breath.
"Aw, Miss Hargrew!" begged Purt. "Don't bother us so. It's weally too
bad of you."
"Then act human!" ejaculated Bobby. "Don't you two stand around as
though you were fashion pictures in the magazines. Duck under and get
your hair wet! You'll both get a sunstroke," and in passing them she
managed to tip Lil right over backward--and that beautiful bathing
suit never _did_ look as well after it was all wet!
They had dinner before Lance and Reddy returned from their errand. It
had already been agreed that the boys should stay all day at Acorn
Island and not return to their own camp until after supper.
Occasionally one of them took a squint at the camp across the lake
through a pair of glasses. But nothing disturbed _that_ spot. Their
tents were erected in a clearing at the edge of the water, and they
knew there was not a human habitation on that side of the lake within
five miles.
Elberon Crossing was at the head of Rocky River, but a good half mile
from the water and landing, where a "tote-road" went through the Big
Woods to the lumber camps farther west.
The _Duchess_ was in sight of the girls' camp all the way from the
landing on the south side of the river. On her return the party
watched her approach, which was soon after the noonday meal.
"Hello!" ejaculated Chet, suddenly grabbing up the glasses. "They have
a passenger."
"Who have?" queried Billy Long.
"Lance and Reddy. Crickey! who have we here?" and then Chet began to
laugh uproariously.
He tossed the glasses to Short and Long. The latter looked at the
motorboat for a moment, and then began to laugh, too. Some of the
girls became interested, and they ran for their glasses.
There was a third moving figure in the boat. It sat up forward and
seemed to be gazing on the island eagerly. The girls began to giggle
as well as Short and Long.
"Hush!" begged Laura. "Don't say a word."
Purt and Lil were sitting together in the shade, and paid no
attention to what was going on. Almost everybody on the island but
themselves realized the identity of the third figure in the _Duchess_
before the boat neared the beach.
Suddenly Purt gasped, and sat up straighter. He glanced all about and
a sort of hunted expression came into his face.
"What's the matter, Mr. Sweet?" demanded Lil, in surprise.
"I--I thought I heard--Yes! I knew I could not be mistaken," said
Purt, in horror.
"What _is_ the matter?" demanded his companion, with some tartness.
She did not like mysteries.
"I--I heard a dog bark," stammered Purt.
"Well! what if you did?"
"But on this--this island. Who--who could have brought the howwid
cweature here?"
"Not _that_ dog, Purt!" gasped Lil, suddenly remembering.
There was a hail from the crew of the _Duchess_. Again the sharp bark
of a dog sounded.
Purt leaped to his feet. He glared down upon the approaching
motorboat. Then he glanced around helplessly, as though tempted to
run.
The Barnacle was fixed on his tail in the bow of the approaching boat,
barking for all he was worth!
"Hi, Purt!" yelled Lance, standing up in the cockpit of the _Duchess_
and bawling the news. "Here's your canine friend!"
Purt fairly groaned. Then he got mad and forgetting the girls were
present, he blackguarded the jokers in the launch wrathfully.
"Oh, hush-aby! hush-aby, sonny!" begged Bobby. "You wouldn't do all
that to Lance and poor little Reddy--would you really?"
"I'll get square with them!" stammered the dude, "and I'll kill that
dog."
"Don't you bite him," warned Short and Long, "for if you do right now
he will sure have the hydrophobia. Take it easy, Purt--cool and
easy."
But the dude could not. The very sight of that laughing, ragged-coated
dog made his blood boil. He hunted a club with which to meet the brute
when he landed.
But Lance explained about the Barnacle before the _Duchess_ came close
enough for them to land.
"Why, there he was ready to meet us at the Elberon store," laughed
Lance. "I found out that everybody along the Big Woods trails knows
the mongrel. He had come up yesterday with a tote-team which was going
into the woods.
"He welcomed Reddy and me as if we were his long-lost brothers. But
it's Purt he wants to see--believe me!"
"I'll fix him!" threatened the dude, from the shore, and waving a
club.
"Hold on!" begged Lance. "I have a better idea than that. I didn't
bring the Barnacle along to be slaughtered to make a Sweet
holiday--no, sir! What do you think about leaving him at the island
here with the girls, Chet?"
"Great! he'll guard the camp," declared Laura's brother. "Nobody else
will come around to steal grub."
"That's a good idee, Mister," said Liz, from the cook-tent. "The dog
is wuth more than any boy to watch for us."
"Hear that, will you?" demanded Chet. "You girls have one fine
suffragette in this Lonesome Liz, as Billy calls her."
"She's ripe for battle, when it comes to pitting the ladies against
the mere male," laughed Laura. "We have found _that_ out."
Against Purt's objections the Barnacle was allowed to come ashore. And
the poor beast _did_ seem so delighted to be among them again that
they had not the heart to treat him badly. At least, nobody hated him
save Lily and Purt.
Barnacle was fed hugely by Liz Bean, and had to lie down after it and
sleep. So he did not disturb Purt during the afternoon.
The girls had agreed to get supper all by themselves. Liz and Mrs.
Morse were to have nothing to do with it.
Bobby and Laura made cake. There were chickens to roast--two pairs of
them--that Lance had thoughtfully bought of a woman at the Crossing.
These were handed over to the tender mercies of Jess and Nell.
Now, Jess was a good cook; she did most of the housework at the Morse
cottage. But when they had had chicken, the butcher always cleaned the
creature before sending it home.
"My goodness!" sniffed Nell. "What do you know about taking a chicken
apart?"
"Not--not much, I am afraid," admitted Jess, "And here are four of
them! Well, we ought to learn a good deal about it by the time we have
butchered all four."
"Ugh! I don't want to cut into them. And some of their insides are the
delicacies of the chicken, while other parts are no good. Do you know
one from the other, Jess?"
"I reckon I know the giblets--if I can once get at them," said Jess.
"Mother and I took our sewing machine to pieces once, and fixed it,"
Nellie said, "and that was pretty complicated. But we had a book of
instructions----"
"They don't issue a book of instructions with a roasting chicken,"
Jess chuckled. "It's up to us, I expect----"
Then she called Lance. They had to admit a boy _was_ good for
something once in a while. Lance knew all about cleaning and drawing
chickens, and he did _that_ part of the work very neatly and with
dispatch.
It being such warm weather the girls made dressing enough to stuff
only two of the chickens. They got on bravely with their share of the
work and were ready to put the chickens in the oven in the big
dripping-pan when Laura's and Bobby's cakes were done.
Meanwhile Reddy and Short and Long had been very busy with the
ice-cream freezer. The boys had brought over a can of milk and a big
block of ice from the landing and Mrs. Morse had made the ice-cream.
The boys froze it and packed it down in the shade.
Everybody began to get hungry early, for the odors from the cook-tent
had been most delicious. As soon as the chickens and the baked
potatoes were done, supper was served. Liz, in a clean dress and a
clean apron served it.
Everything was fine except the chicken stuffing. There was something
just a little queer about _that_; but what it was nobody seemed able
to tell.
"I know I seasoned it with that same prepared seasoning of herbs that
we use at home," wailed Jess.
"You must have left something out," said Nellie, despairingly.
Chet was tasting the dressing critically. "No," he said, without a
smile. "I don't think you could have done _that_."
Jess brightened visibly. "Then it doesn't taste so bad?" she said,
hopefully.
"There's nothing you could have left _out_, Jess, that would make it
taste like this. It's something you've put in----"
Liz suddenly presented herself at the table shaking a box in her hand.
"Was _this_ what you took for seasonin' for that stuffin'?" she
demanded, solemnly.
"Why--yes," admitted Jess. "That's the very box I always buy it in at
our grocer's."
"Yep," said Liz. "It comes in that. But that's an old box I've had a
long time, and there was lic'rish powder in it. I guess 'twon't hurt
none o' yer; but I wouldn't eat much o' that stuffin'."
"Goodness!" murmured Jess, as the laughter broke out. "I _thought_
that stuff smelt kind of funny when I shook it out of the can."
CHAPTER XV
THE BARNACLE HAS A NOSE
Aside from that single mistake the meal was declared to be a great
success. The cake turned out a joy, and when it and the heaping dishes
of ice-cream were brought on, the boys stood up and gave three cheers
for the girls of Acorn Island Camp.
"But hold on!" exclaimed Chet, suddenly investigating his share of the
ice-cream with a spoon. "I have been given a premium with my supply.
Here! who has lost a perfectly good fly?"
"Alive?" demanded his chum, Lance.
"He can still crawl," admitted Chet.
"That fly's a perfect idiot," declared Lance, warmly. "It's the same
one that was in the hot gravy a little while ago. I hope he takes a
chill. What does he think this is--a turkish bath?"
They lingered long at the table, until finally Liz (who had agreed to
"clean up") drove them all out of the tent. They finished the
ice-cream (which Reddy and Short and Long declared _had_ to be eaten
up because there was not ice enough to keep it out in the open), with
the light fading out of the western sky and the early fireflies
flitting about the edge of the wood.
The Barnacle began to bark vociferously, all of a sudden. Lizzie, up
at the lighted cook-tent, squealed.
Up rose the boys with a great whoop. "Go for it!" yelled Lance. "Sick
'im!" which seems to be the approved way to set a dog on anything
living.
Barnacle was barking his foolish head off. He dashed across from the
cook-tent to the woods, and then back again. The boys all urged him
on. The girls ran together in a frightened group, Lil moaning:
"Oh, he's here again! that dreadful man is here again!"
"Hush you!" commanded Liz, in disgust. "'Tain't no man. 'Tain't even a
ha'nt. I seen it. It's a black and white kitten----"
"Oh, Chet! call him off! call him off!" begged Laura.
"Quick, Chet!" added Jess. "Don't let that horrid dog hurt that
kitty."
"Chetwood!" shrieked Laura again, knowing more about the inhabitants
of the woods than her chum. "Chetwood! Stop it! Come back! That's _a
polecat_!"
"_What_?" gasped all the girls, and then Bobby began to shriek with
laughter. It was too, too funny--with Jess begging the boys not to let
the Barnacle hurt "kitty."
It was impossible, however, to call the dog off the trail. That camp
scavenger, the American skunk, is the mildest mannered little creature
in the world--providing he is left strictly alone. Being timid and
otherwise defenseless, God has given him a scent-sack which----
"Nobody can tell me that the skunk only brought a _cent_ into the
Ark," declared the exhausted Bobby. "That fellow has a dollar's worth
himself!"
"Why--why did the Creator ever _make_ such a horrid beast?" demanded
Lil.
"You ask that and wear those furs of yours in the winter?" said
Nellie, laughing. "The pretty little fellow that the Barnacle has so
unwisely chased away from our vicinity is becoming very valuable to
the furriers. There are people who raise the creatures for the
market----"
"Excuse _me_!" gasped Bobby. "I'd want a chronic cold in the head, if
I had to work on a skunk farm."
As Barnacle and his quarry went farther from the camp the odor that
had risen drifted away, too; but for two days thereafter the girls
could easily tell in which part of the island Barnacle was running
game, by the way in which the odor came "down wind" to them.
Liz fed him at the edge of the wood; the girls chased him from the
vicinity of the tents whenever he appeared.
The Barnacle did not mind much; for he had struck a dog-hunter's
paradise. He was a fiend after small game and there had not been a dog
on Acorn Island for some years, in all probability.
He was running and yapping all day and pretty nearly all night. How
many groundhogs, chipmunks, muskrats, coons, and other small animals,
besides the rabbits, he chased and caught there was no telling.
Perhaps he did not kill one.
But he barked to his heart's desire and when he finally had driven
everything to cover, he came back to the tents, purified in soul as
well as in odor, and was willing to sleep during the day and sit up on
his haunches at night (when they tied him to the corner of the cabin)
and try to howl his head off at the moon.
The girls--even Lil and Nellie--lost their fear of a second visit from
the mysterious "kleptomaniantic." Nobody would land upon the island to
disturb them while that crazy dog was about.
So they fished, and swam, and picked berries, and hunted flowers and
herbs, and went out sailing with the boys in the powerboats, and drove
their canoes up and down the lake, having a fine time every hour of
the day.
Mrs. Morse got on famously with her book, and allowed the girls to do
about as they liked. They got into no mischief, however; but they all
grew brown, and strong, and even Lily began to put on flesh.
At this season there were few fishermen at Lake Dunkirk. Some days
there were long processions of barges sailing past the island, making
for Rocky River and the ports down stream. And sometimes puffy tugs
drew other barges westward, against the current.
None of the crews of these boats disturbed the campers. Acorn Island
had been placarded for years, and it had always been necessary to get
a permit to have even a picnic there.
Just one couple of fishermen came within range of the girls' vision
that first week or ten days. And that couple, in their clumsy canoe,
were never near enough for the girls of Central High to see their
faces.
"I wonder where _they_ camp at night?" said Laura thoughtfully one
evening as she and Jess were paddling in for supper, being the last of
the scattered girls to make camp. She had sighted the strange
fishermen off the western end of Acorn Island again.
"Bet they are the fellows who took our food!" exclaimed Jess,
suddenly.
"And have hung about here all this time? Nonsense!" returned Laura.
"But don't let Lil and Nellie hear you say that."
"All right. But I bet they are."
"I'm more worried by that cloud yonder," said Laura. "We're going to
have a tempest."
"Hope not till supper's over," said the hungry Jess.
"We'll peg down the tents to make sure as soon as we get in," said the
careful Laura.
They did so. Half through supper the first drops of the storm fell.
Then the thunder rolled nearer and a tall tree was riven on the
mainland, within sight of Camp Acorn.
_That_ pretty well settled the supper for most of the girls. Even the
bravest had never experienced a thunder storm under canvas before.
So they all ran into Mrs. Morse's cabin. It did not seem so bad
there.
In the midst of the downpour, however, and in a lull between thunder
claps, Barnacle, who had been tied to the corner of the hut and had
crawled under the floor for protection, suddenly broke out with a
terrific salvo of barks. He rushed out into the rain and leaped at the
end of his rope, barking and yelping.
"Somebody's about the camp," murmured Mrs. Morse. "The dog's nose--if
not his eyes--tells him so."
"It's Liz," ventured Jess, for the maid-of-all-work had not come with
them to the cabin.
Laura threw the door open, in spite of the flashing lightning. Lil
shrieked and even some of the other girls cowered as the lightning
played across the sky. But before the thunder burst forth again, Laura
heard another sound--and it was not the Barnacle baying.
Lizzie Bean, in the cook-tent, was screaming in a queer and stifled
way.
CHAPTER XVI
WHERE THE BARNACLE'S NOSE LED HIM
The rain descended in torrents before the cabin door. E'er Laura could
plunge into it, Jess dragged her back and slammed the door.
"Don't be a goose, Laura!" she cried.
"She--she----Something is the matter with Liz," declared Laura.
"Of course not!"
"I tell you, I heard her. And there's the dog barking again."
"You can't go through that rain----"
"I will!" declared Laura, and she wrenched open the door once more.
Jess could not hold her. Mother Wit plunged out into the storm.
Never having deserted her chum but once--and then involuntarily at a
certain occasion long ago--Jess was not going to be behind now. She
dove likewise into the storm.
The rain beat upon the two girls in a fashion to almost take their
breath away. Never had they been so beaten by the elements.
They staggered, almost fell, clung together, and then bent their
heads to the downpour and pressed on. The flickering lantern still
illuminated the cook-tent. The awning was dropped and the canvas
heaved and slatted against the poles.
The rain made so much noise that they did not hear Liz now. Or else,
she had ceased crying out. Laura and Jess pressed forward and--it
being but a few yards, after all, to the tent--they burst into the
kitchen in a moment more.
"Liz! Liz!" gasped Laura, almost breathless.
There was a noise behind the fluttering canvas partition. Was it the
girl in the sleeping part of the tent?
"Oh! somebody's there!" muttered Jess, clinging to her chum's hand.
Laura sprang forward and jerked apart the flap. She only feared that
something was the matter with Liz.
And there was, apparently. She was crouching down, against the far
wall of the tent, her hands over her face, and trembling like a leaf.
Afterward Laura thought over this scene with wonder. Lonesome Liz did
not seem like a girl who would be so terribly disturbed about a
thunder storm. She had shown no fear when the tempest began and the
other girls had scampered for the cabin.
But now she was moaning, and rocking herself to and fro, and it was
some moments before they could get a sensible word out of her.
"Oh! oh! oh!" wailed Liz. "I want to go back to town. I don't like
this place a little bit--no, I don't! Oh, oh!"
"Stop your noise, Liz!" exclaimed Jess, suddenly exasperated. "You
can't go back while it is storming so. And when it stops you won't
want to."
But Laura was worried. She looked all about the tent. What had the
Barnacle barked so about?
Nor was he satisfied now. The storm held up after a time; but the dog
kept rushing out and barking as though he had just remembered that
there had been a prowler about, and he had not had a chance to chase
him.
Laura understood that rain, or wet, killed the scent for dogs and like
trailing animals. This that had disturbed the Barnacle must have been
a person who had come very close.
They took Liz to the cabin, and left her there after the storm was
over and the six Central High girls went to their own tent. But
although Laura did not say much about it, she was as dissatisfied as
the dog seemed to be.
In the morning she was up earlier than anybody else in the camp. The
grass and brush was drenched with the rain. There were puddles here
and there. The sun was not yet up and it would take several hours of
his best work to dry up the wet places.
Laura had not won her nickname of "Mother Wit" for nothing. She had
inventiveness; likewise she had a sane and sensible way of looking at
almost any mysterious happening. She did not get scared as Nellie did,
or ignore a surprising thing, as Jess did.
Now she was dissatisfied with the outcome of Liz Bean's "conniption,"
as Bobby had termed it the evening before. The maid-of-all-work had
shown no fear of thunder and lightning when the tempest began and the
other girls were frightened.
Then, why should she wait until the storm was nearly over before
showing all the marks of extreme terror? And, in addition, Liz seemed
to be fairly speechless about the matter, whereas she was naturally an
extremely garrulous person.
"Why did the Barnacle bark so?" demanded Laura, when she stood,
shivering, in the gray light of dawn before the cook-tent. "Not just
for the fun of hearing his own voice, I am sure."
The ground before the cook-tent was soft, and trampled by the girls'
own feet. Laura went carefully around to the rear, stepping on firm
ground so as to leave no marks.
There was a rear opening to the cook-tent--out of the part Liz had
been sleeping in. But these flaps were laced down.
However, there were marks in the soft ground right here--footmarks
that could not be mistaken. They were prints of a man's boot--no girl
in the crowd wore such footgear as those that made these marks!
The boot-prints led right from the laced flaps of the tent toward the
woods. Laura could see fully a dozen of the marks, all headed that
way. The man had come from the inside of the tent, for there were no
footprints showing an approach to the tent from this end.
"I knew that girl did not cry because of the thunder and lightning,"
was Laura's decision. "This man burst into the tent while she was
alone. And for some reason she is afraid to tell us the truth about
him.
"Of course, she hasn't really told a falsehood. She just let us
believe that it was the storm that had scared her.
"Now, who is the man? Is she sheltering him because of fear, or for
another reason?
"And what did he want? Why did he come to the tent in the storm? For
shelter from the rain? Not probable. I declare!" thought Mother Wit,
"this is as puzzling a thing as ever I heard."
She said nothing to anybody before breakfast about her discoveries.
She did not wish to disturb Mrs. Morse, for that lady had come into
the woods for a rest from her social duties, and for the writing of a
book. Why should she be troubled by a mere mystery?
The detective fever burned hotly in Laura Belding's veins on this
morning. From Jess she could not keep her discovery for long; but she
swore her chum to silence.
Then she took Bobby Hargrew into her confidence. Despite the younger
girl's recklessness, she was brave and physically strong.
"We're going to run down Lizzie's 'ha'nt,' if the Barnacle has a
nose," declared Laura, after the trio had discussed the pros and cons
of the affair.
So they loosened the dog, Laura holding him in leash, and slipped away
to the woods when none of the other members of the party were
watching. Laura knew that the scent would not lie very strong after
the pelting rain; but they could follow the trail by sight for a long
distance.
It led straight toward the far end of Acorn Island--the end which they
and the boys had so carelessly searched the day after the larder had
been robbed. Here and there they came upon the print of the unknown
man's boots in the softened soil.
"Gee, Laura!" gasped Bobby. "Suppose he turns on us? We don't know
whether he is a robber or a minister. What will we do when we find
him?"
"That depends altogether upon what he looks like," said Laura. "Now
hush, Bobby. The Barnacle is pulling hard; he really smells
something."
"I hope it isn't another black and white kitten," chuckled Bobby.
They went down a slope to a small hollow, well sheltered by trees and
rocks. There was a faint odor of wood smoke in the air.
"A camp," whispered Jess, having hard work to keep her teeth from
nervously chattering, despite the heat of the day, "Who do you suppose
is here?"
"We'll see," whispered Laura in return, and slipped the dog's leash.
The Barnacle ran down into the dale at once. The three girls followed,
cautiously parting the branches. They came in sight of the fire.
It was the remains of a late breakfast-fire, without doubt. There was
a single figure sitting at one side of the smoldering wood. Barnacle
was running about the encampment, snuffing eagerly for broken bits. He
paid the figure by the fire no attention, nor did the man look at the
dog.
The man stooped, and his face was buried in his hands. He wore a
shabby frock coat, and a disreputable hat.
"That's one of those two fishermen we saw in the canoe," whispered
Jess.
"Wonder if you're right?" breathed Bobby.
Just then the man raised his head and turned so that the three girls
from Central High could see his face. It was unshaven and the man
looked altogether like a tramp. But there was no mistaking him for
anybody but Professor Dimp, the Latin and history instructor of
Central High!
CHAPTER XVII
A PERFECTLY UNSATISFACTORY INTERVIEW
"Goodness gracious!" gasped Bobby, the first to find her breath. She
fell limply against Laura and Jess. "What do you know about _that_?
Say, girls! Do you see the same thing I do, or am I going crazy?"
"Hush!" commanded Jess, hoarsely.
"Don't be ridiculous, child," advised Laura, rather sharply. "He will
hear you----"
"Will that be a crime?" demanded Bobby, still in a whisper.
"It may be," said Laura, slowly. "We don't know why the professor is
here."
"To commune with nature, I judge," said Jess, drily.
"I can't imagine Old Dimple communing with nature--not as a pastime,"
giggled Bobby.
"He surely has some good reason for being here," Laura murmured.
"We won't accuse him of robbing the camp that time, I suppose?" asked
Jess. "Or being up there last evening in the storm?"
"That trail came this way," declared Bobby, suddenly forgetting to
laugh.
"Barnacle's nose might have deceived him," said Laura.
"I haven't faith in much of that dog _but_ his nose," declared Jess.
"He showed particular intelligence in following the trail down here.
Why should we suddenly suspect him of being foolish, just because we
found what we didn't expect."
"Clear as mud!" exclaimed Bobby. "'Didn't expect' is good, however. If
you had asked me a minute before we saw him, who was the most
unexpected person to find at the end of our walk, I should have said
Old Dimple."
"Why!" gasped Jess, "it _couldn't_ be Professor Dimp."
"You mean he couldn't have been the kleptomaniantic thief?" chuckled
Bobby.
Laura began to laugh softly herself. "Nor could he have been the
person we--and the Barnacle--have been trailing," she said, suddenly.
"Why not?" demanded Jess and Bobby together.
"Did you ever notice Professor Dimp's feet?" asked Mother Wit.
"Horrors! No. Never saw him barefooted," said Bobby.
"Miss Smartie! His shoes, then?" proceeded the unruffled Laura.
"I--I----Why, no," admitted Bobby.
"Look at them now. He's not a big man, but he has plentiful
understandings," chuckled Laura. "See?"
"Plain!" exclaimed Jess, peering through the branches.
"And those footprints we followed were of a person who wears a narrow,
small boot. Small for a man, I mean. I don't believe the old Prof.
ever _could_ get into such shoes."
"Hurrah for Mother Wit--the lady detective!" cheered Bobby, under her
breath.
"I am going to ask him----"
"What?" demanded Jess, half frightened as Laura started to press
through the fringe of bushes.
"If he knows anything about that young man."
"What young man?" demanded the startled Jess.
"The young man who scared Liz last evening in the storm. The same
young man who took the things from our camp--and left the ten dollar
bill."
"The kleptomaniantic!" breathed Bobby, tagging close behind.
"Then it's the man who has been fishing with the professor?" gasped
Jess.
"You've guessed it," said Laura. "They are together. This is a camp
for two. You can see the fish-heads lying about. There are two
tin-plates and two empty cups."
"Are you sure the--the old Prof was one of those fishermen we saw in
the boat?" asked Bobby.
"I recognize that old coat and hat," said Laura, firmly. "I do not see
why I did not recognize Professor Dimp, in spite of his disguise,
before."
"Well!" sighed Jess. "I am thankful one of our fellow-inhabitants of
the island is nobody worse than Professor Dimp."
"But _why_?" demanded Bobby, wonderingly.
"We'll find out what it means," said Laura, with more confidence than
she really felt. Of course, she was not afraid of any physical
violence. But the old professor was so terribly stern and strict that
it took some courage to walk across the glade, where Barnacle was
chewing fish-heads, and face the shabby old gentleman.
"What, what, what?" snapped Professor Dimp, rising up from the log on
which he had been sitting. "Girls from Central High, eh? Ha! Miss
Belding--yes; Miss Morse--yes; Miss Hargrew--yes. Well! what do you
want?"
He seemed grayer than ever. His outing in the woods (if he had been
here ever since school broke up) had done him little good, for he was
wrinkled and troubled looking. His thin lips actually trembled as he
greeted the three girls in characteristic manner. His eyes, however,
were as bright as ever--like steel points. He looked this way when the
boys had been a trial to him in Latin class and he was about to say
something very sharp.
"We are sorry to disturb you, Professor Dimp," said Laura, bravely.
"But we are in a quandary."
"A quandary, Miss Belding?"
"Yes, sir. Our dog has been following a man who came to our camp last
night and frightened us. The dog led us right here to this spot. Have
you seen him?"
"Seen the dog?" demanded the old professor. "Do you think I am
blind?"
"I mean the man," said Laura, humbly.
"What does he look like? Describe him," commanded the professor,
without a change of expression.
Laura was balked right at the start. She had no idea what the young
man looked like, whom she believed Liz Bean knew, and whom she
believed had come to the camp at the other end of Acorn Island twice.
"I only know what his boots are like," she said, finally, and looking
straight into the old professor's face.
"Well, Miss?"
"I think _you_ can supply the rest of his description," said Mother
Wit, firmly.
"What do you mean, Miss?" snapped the old professor.
"He wore narrow boots, and his footprints lead directly to this
place," said Laura. "Surely you must have seen him."
"Why should I?" demanded the professor.
"Because you have had a companion here. Two men made this camp--have
eaten more than one meal here. Where is your companion, sir?"
"Miss--Miss Belding!" exclaimed the professor in a tone of anger. "How
dare you? What do you mean?"
"I don't mean to offend you, sir," said Mother Wit, while Jess tugged
at her sleeve and even Bobby stepped back toward the fringe of brush.
The old gentleman looked very terrible indeed.
"I don't mean to offend you, sir," repeated Laura. "But that man has
been twice to our camp. He has disturbed us. He was there again last
night and frightened our little maid-of-all-work almost out of her
wits. We have got to know what it means."
"You are beside yourself, girl!" gasped the old gentleman, and
instantly turned his head aside so that they could not see his face.
"Liz calls him 'Mr. Norman,'" Laura pursued. "If you do not tell me
who he is, and what his visits to our camp mean, I shall find out more
about him--_in Albany_!"
Professor Dimp did not favor them with another word. He walked away
and left the trio of girls standing, amazed, in the empty camping
place.
CHAPTER XVIII
AN EVENTFUL FISHING TRIP
Jess and Bobby were both disappointed and disturbed over the interview
with Professor Dimp. Laura said so little about it that Jess was
really suspicious.
"Can you see through it?" she demanded. "What do you think the Dimple
means?"
"I haven't the least idea," said her chum, frankly.
But there was another thought which Laura Belding was not so frank
about. She spoke of this to neither Jess nor Bobby.
They agreed, as they went back toward their camp, with Barnacle, that
they would take nobody into their confidence about the professor being
up here at Lake Dunkirk, fishing. Suspicious circumstances had
attached themselves to the old gentleman's presence here; yet the
girls could not believe that Professor Dimp had anything to do with
the raid on their larder, or the frightening of Liz Bean the evening
previous.
However, Laura took Liz aside when they arrived at the camp and
endeavored to get the truth out of her.
"Liz," she said to the sad-faced girl, who seemed gloomier than ever
on this morning, "who was the man who scared you in the rain last
evening?"
The maid-of-all-work did not look startled. Perhaps she had nerved
herself already for just this question.
She merely stared at Laura unblinkingly and asked. "What, Ma'am?"
"Don't pretend that you don't know what I mean, Liz," said Laura,
impatiently. "I found the man's tracks and the Barnacle found his camp
for us. The man came right into this tent last evening in all that
storm, and you let him out at the back and laced down the flaps.
"Of course, there was no harm in it. And there may be no harm in the
man himself, or his reason for being here on Acorn Island.
"But if the girls hear of it--all of them, I mean--they are going to
be scared again, and it will break up our outing and spoil all our
fun. Now! I want to know what it means, Liz."
"Don't mean nothin'," declared the girl, sullenly.
"Why, _that_ is no answer," cried Laura.
"Then there ain't none," said Liz, shrugging her narrow shoulders, and
she turned to her work again.
"You absolutely refuse to talk to me about him?" demanded Laura,
rather vexed.
"I ain't got nothin' to say," muttered Lizzie Bean.
"Then I'll find out about him in some other way. It is that Mr. Norman
you spoke about before--I am sure of _that_. And I shall write to
Albany and learn why he is up here and what he is doing. Of one thing
I am sure: he has no business on this island frightening the girls.
The island is private property and is posted."
If Liz was at all frightened by this threat, she did not show it. And,
to tell the truth, it was an empty threat. Laura Belding did not know
whom to write to in the city. She did not know the address at which
Liz had worked there, and at which the mysterious Mr. Norman had been
a boarder.
Some of the boys came over that afternoon and arranged with the girls
of Acorn Island Camp to go fishing up the lake the next day. There was
a certain creek, which came in from the north side, that was supposed
to be well stocked with perch and trout.
"Part of it is posted, I believe," said Chet. "Some old grouch owns a
fishing right on the stream. But we can keep off his territory. And
we'll show you girls how to fish with a fly, and to use your reels."
"Teach us how to fish with mosquitoes--they're more plentiful than
flies since the rain," Jess said, slapping at one which was just
presenting his bill.
"Crackey!" exclaimed Billy Long. "You've got it good here. There are
not many of the beasts on this island. But there's a swamp not far
behind our camp, and it's a shame to call the things that come from
that swamp, mosquitoes--they are more like flying tigers!"
"I suppose the old sabre-toothed tiger, of our prehistoric days, was
no more savage than these swamp fly-by-nights," Chet laughed.
"Don't you have any other visitors over yonder?" Laura asked.
"Oh, say! we had some this morning. Did you hear the hounds baying?"
"Hounds?"
"Real bloodhounds," said her brother. "Sheriff's posse----"
"Hush!" gasped Laura, clapping a hand over his mouth. "Haven't you any
sense at all? Want to scare Lil and Nellie out of their next five
years' growth?"
"Wow!" muttered Chet.
"Shut Billy off, too. And then come and tell me all about it,"
commanded Laura.
Chet grabbed Billy by the collar and dragged him away from the girls.
Then, after whispering to the smaller boy, emphatically, for a minute,
he let him go and rejoined his sister.
"Now, what do you want to know, Sis?" he demanded.
"All about it," said Laura, eagerly. "Is there really a sheriff's
posse hunting him?"
"Who's who?" asked Chet, in much amazement.
"Why--whoever they are chasing," replied Laura, rather blankly.
"Just curiosity?" Chet wanted to know.
"You can call it that," responded the girl, smiling whimsically at
him.
"You never were just idly curious in all your life," declared Chet,
grinning at her. "Well! the men were after that fellow who stole from
the Merchants and Miners Bank of Albany."
"Oh!"
"They got wind of his being up this way. Somebody saw him, or thought
he did. Crackey! Do you suppose _he_ was the fellow who took the food
from your tent, Laura?"
"Yes, I do," admitted his sister.
"Then he's far enough away from the lake now," said Chet, nodding.
"That amount would have lasted him till he got over the Canadian
border."
"Perhaps," said Laura. "At any rate, those dogs won't be able to
follow his trail much after the hard rain of last night."
"Sure not," Chet rejoined. "That's what the sheriff said. He got us to
promise to let him know at Creeper Station if we saw anybody who
looked like Norman Halliday----"
"That's it!" gasped Laura, clapping her hands together.
"What's 'it?'" demanded her brother, wonderingly.
"His name."
"Of course it is. The fellow who stole the securities from the bank.
They will get him of course."
"With bloodhounds? How terrible!"
"Not at all. They are muzzled. And friendly brutes, at that. They only
follow the scent they are put on, and probably would do their quarry
no harm, even if they were unmuzzled."
"Well, it seems terrible, just the same," murmured Laura. Then she
added: "Suppose he was somebody _we_ had an interest in, Chet?"
"Humph! that _would_ be tough. But he isn't."
"Just the same, promise me something," urged Laura, clinging to his
shoulder with both hands.
"What is it, Sis?" asked Chet, in surprise.
"_Don't_ tell the sheriff if you should run across the poor young man.
Don't tell anybody!"
"Why, Sis!"
"I have a reason. I can't tell you what it is," Laura said, half
sobbing. "Will you mind me, Chet?"
"Surest thing you know!" declared her brother, heartily.
"And without asking questions?"
"That's putting a bit of a strain on me," laughed Chet. "But I know
you must have a good reason, Sis. Only remember, when you want help,
you haven't any friend like your own 'buddy.'"
"I know it, dear," said Laura, kissing him. "You are the best brother
who ever lived!"
This was all "on the side." When they rejoined the others, neither
Chet nor Laura revealed any particular emotion. The girls all promised
to be ready for the fishing trip an hour after daybreak on the
following morning.
Meanwhile, everything at Acorn Island went on as usual. Liz Bean
seemed no more morose than before. Mrs. Morse was much too busy to
notice small things. She had half-heartedly offered to accompany the
girls and boys to Bang-up Creek for the fishing; but they had all
assured her that it would be unnecessary.
Instead, they were to come home by mid-afternoon and all have supper
at the island. The boys brought over a part of their own provisions,
when they arrived in the bigger motorboat soon after sun-up.
Purt Sweet was the only boy who did not have a smile on; he looked
gloomy indeed.
"What's the matter?" asked Jess.
"Surely he isn't afraid of the Barnacle, is he?" queried Dora.
"Don't bother about _him_," said Dorothy. "He's tied up, anyway, so as
not to follow us."
"How do you think that dog can follow us, when we're going ten miles
by boat?" demanded Reddy Butts.
"I don't know but the Barnacle would sprout wings and fly through the
air after Purt," giggled Bobby.
"It isn't the dog this time that troubles Purt--deah boy!" drawled
Lance Darby.
"What is it?" asked Laura.
"Purt's day is spoiled," declared Lance. "He has come off without his
cigarettes."
"Cigarettes!" exclaimed Jess. "I thought we had shown him the folly of
smoking coffin nails long ago."
"Oh, he doesn't smoke any," Lance returned. "But he always carries a
case of them around with him. You know, he bought a thousand once with
his monogram printed in gold on them, and he never _will_ get rid of
them all. He thought it would be a good thing to bring them to camp
with him so as to use them for a smudge to chase off the mosquitoes."
"And they work all right," grunted Chet. "The smoke chases the
mosquitoes, you can believe. But then, the smoke chases _us_, too.
Purt's brand of cigarettes is made out of long-filler Connecticut
cabbage."
"That's all right; don't make fun of the poor fellow," Lance said,
with exaggerated sympathy. "Even if anybody had cigarettes to lend
him, he couldn't smoke any with anothah fellah's monogram on 'em,
don'tcher know, old top?"
But it came out that there was something else on Purt Sweet's mind. He
had a very expensive rod, reel, and book of flies. And to tell the
truth, he had never strung a line on such a rod, and did not know any
more about using the flies than a baby in arms!
He hated to admit his ignorance, for the boys were not at all tender
with the Central High dude. However, Chet and Lance were not
ill-natured, and Purt plucked up courage finally to beg Lance to take
him privately up stream (when they reached the creek) and give him a
lesson in fly-casting.
Lance had already taken Laura under his wing--as was to be expected;
but Mother Wit made him give Purt the assistance he needed. The three
wandered up stream, far above the series of quiet pools where the
other members of the party were casting for trout, or fishing for
perch.
The trio passed a series of rapids, several rods long, and then struck
a very beautiful stretch of calm water, with tree-shaded banks, and
shallows where the cat-tails and rushes grew in thick clusters.
"I see a sign up yonder," Laura said to Lance. "Didn't you say a part
of this stream was a private fishing preserve?"
"So I've been told. We won't go beyond the sign," said Lance.
He got Laura and Purt properly stationed and then cast, himself. They
were having good sport and had landed several beauties, when Billy
Long came idly up the stream on the other side.
"Hello!" he grunted. "Everywhere I go, there are girls. Isn't there a
place where a fellow can get away from them and fish? They chatter so
much that they drive all the fish into the mud, with their fins over
their ears--that's right!"
"Horrid thing!" said Laura. "We can keep just as silent when we're
fishing as any of you boys."
"Try it, then," advised Short and Long, gruffly.
He kept on up stream. "Look out there, Billy," Lance advised. "It's
posted above there."
"Posted?"
"Yes. Don't you see that sign?"
"Huh!" said the smaller boy. "I never _did_ believe in signs. And
besides, it says there's no fishing here--and I believe it! I haven't
had a bite all the way up this brook."
He went on a bit farther and cast his fly again. Quiet fell upon the
long pool, where the shadow and sunshine lay in alternate blocks.
Suddenly there was a scrambling through the brush on the side of the
stream where Short and Long was standing, and then appeared a big dog
and a big man, the latter holding the former in leash. The man was
just as ugly looking as the dog--and the Barnacle was a howling beauty
beside this dog!
"Hey, you!" exclaimed the man to Short and Long--and he certainly
_did_ speak savagely.
CHAPTER XIX
THE YOUNG MAN WITH THE GUN
"Oh, dear, Lance!" gasped Laura Belding, in a whisper. "I am afraid
Short and Long will get into trouble. That man looks perfectly
savage!"
But the small boy did not seem to be in the least disturbed. He had
just made a very pretty cast into the stream as the dog and its master
appeared.
"Say! can't you read that there sign?" demanded the man, very red in
the face. The sign really was plainly to be seen, and easily read. In
large black letters it said:
PRIVATE
NO FISHING ALLOWED
The angler looked at the sign on the tree unabashed and observed:
"I didn't notice it. You see, Mister, they taught me never to read
anything marked 'Private.'"
"Well, it says 'No fishin' allowed,' anyway," snarled the farmer.
"But I'm not fishing aloud," came from Short and Long, who was
perfectly serious. "That's what I've been kickin' about. The other
folks down stream are making so much noise that they'd give every
trout in the brook nervous prostration. I tell you I came up here
especially to be quiet about my fishing----"
"You may think you're funny, youngster," interrupted the man; "but
you're fishin' just the same, aren't you?"
"Not so's you'd notice it," declared Short and Long. "All I've managed
to do so far is to give my fly a chance to swim. Haven't even had a
rise."
"I'll give yer a rise, confound ye!" roared the man, coming with a
rush through the bushes. "Git out o' there, an' git out quick, or I'll
set this dawg on ye!"
Here Lance took a hand in the affair. He shouted across the stream:
"Have a care, there, Mister! If that dog is savage, don't you turn him
loose."
"Who the dickens are _you_?" snarled the farmer. "This is my land, and
it's posted, and this here is my dawg----"
"Let me have that pistol of yours, Purt," commanded Lance, firmly,
reeling in his line.
The dude, who had stood open-mouthed and shaking, could not follow
Lance's lead worth a cent. "You--you know, Lance," he stammered, "the
pistol won't shoot----"
"Ho, ho!" cried the farmer, who had stopped abruptly when Lance had
spoken. "Tryin' to scare me, was you? Now you step lively, or I'll let
the dawg go."
"You poor sport!" gasped Lance, scowling at the shaking dude.
Short and Long, having tempted the fates far enough, was winding up
his own line. And just before the fly left the surface of the water a
trout jumped for it and caught the hook.
"Whee!" yelled Short and Long, as the line reeled out, singing
shrilly.
"Stop that!" yelled the man. "That's my fish----"
"I can't help it," responded the boy from Central High. "I was reeling
in, wasn't I? He came right up and jumped for my fly. Call off your
old fish, if you don't want him caught on my hook and line."
But Billy Long was too saucy that time. He was playing the fish while
he talked, just as well as he knew how. The farmer gave a yell, let
the dog's strap run through his hand, and the beast, with an angry
bay, dashed straight at the youthful fisherman.
Perhaps the farmer did not really intend doing such a cruel thing. For
the dog would have torn Billy Long to pieces had he reached him.
There was a shout from across the stream--on the side where Laura
stood--and a man leaped into the open. He carried a gun. As he reached
the bank of the brook he threw up the shot-gun and erupted the
contents of one barrel into the fore-shoulder of the angry dog.
The distance was scarcely two rods. The small shot peppered the dog
well, and gave him a whole lot to think of beside grabbing a
defenseless boy.
The farmer began to yell vociferously; the dog raised his voice even
more loudly and, after falling and rolling over and over on the ground
for a moment, he got to his feet and cut into the bushes like a flash.
He was more scared than hurt.
"I'll have you arrested for that!" yelled the dog's owner, shaking
both clenched fists at the young man with the gun.
"You'd better thank me that the beast did not grab that boy," was the
reply.
The young man with the gun seemed perfectly calm. He was a pale-faced
young man, well dressed in a hunting suit, and with narrow boots on
his rather small feet. He was doubtless a city sportsman.
"I bet I know who you be, ye scoundrel!" bawled the farmer.
The young man turned away instantly. Laura saw that he flushed and
then paled again. He did not stop to say a word to the party of young
folk from Centerport. Instead, he stepped into the thick underbrush
and was almost instantly lost to their sight.
Short and Long had hastened to get over the border of the farmer's
posted preserve. But he had brought the trout with him--and it weighed
a good pound and a half!
CHAPTER XX
LAURA KEEPS HER SECRET
They left the farmer threatening vengeance upon the strange young man
who had used his shot-gun to such good purpose.
"That fellow's all right, whoever he is," Lance declared. "And how
quick he was with his gun!"
"He knows how to use one," Short and Long agreed, with admiration. "I
wish I could have thanked him."
"And this dummy here!" added Lance, with a look of disgust at Purt.
"You had that old pistol in your pocket, didn't you?" he demanded of
the dude.
"Ye-es," agreed Purt.
"Then if you had kept still about it, I could have scared that farmer
into holding his dog in leash. Just as glad the brute was shot,
though. He'll be tamed for a while, I bet!"
"It is too bad the dog was trained so badly," Laura said. "It is not
his fault that he was taught to attack people."
"Well!" grunted Short and Long. "If he'd grabbed me, I reckon he'd
have eaten me up before anybody could have helped."
"You had no business on that man's land," said Laura, admonishingly.
"And you _did_ sauce him."
"Ugh! who'd have thought he was so mean?" growled Short and Long.
"Bet you have a care next time," said Lance, grinning. "But who do you
suppose that fellow with the gun was? I'd really like to meet him
again."
"Good sort, whoever he is," Short and Long agreed.
"No farmer."
"Not much! He was city-dressed all right."
Laura listened to their comments, but said nothing. She believed she
could make a good guess as to who the young man was; but she was
keeping that secret to herself.
When she and the three boys rejoined their companions down stream,
they had enough to tell about the adventure without declaring the
identity of the young man with the gun. It was exciting enough to have
had Short and Long almost "chawed up" by a savage dog, as Lance
expressed it.
"And this useless piece of goods," he added taking Purt by the
collar, "made a foozle--right off the reel! I could have scared that
big bully easily enough if Purt had kept still about his old revolver
being no good."
"I don't care," complained Purt. "The revolver would have been all
right if you hadn't taken that screw out and thrown it away."
"And you'd likely shot yourself--or somebody else--by this time."
"No I wouldn't," said Purt, gloomily.
"How do you know?" asked Chet.
"Why--I find that when I bought cartridges for that pistol I got
thirty-eights--and the pistol is a forty-five!"
The whole crowd laughed at that. Purt Sweet really _was_ too funny for
anything.
They got another good laugh on him before they went back to the
island. There was a squatter's cabin near the bank of the brook and
they trooped up there for a drink of cool milk, for the woman had two
cows and was willing to sell the milk to them, right from her log
buttery.
The woman's daughter--a girl about Lil Pendleton's age--waited on
them. She was a brown-skinned, big-eyed, healthy-looking girl--a
regular country beauty. Laura whispered:
"Isn't she a splendid creature?"
Purt had cocked an appreciative eye at her, and he murmured:
"Quite true--quite true, Miss Laura. She's as beautiful as Hebe," and
gave the name of the goddess the very best pronunciation, according to
Professor Dimp.
"Beautiful as _he_ be?" drawled Chet, in exaggeration of bucolic
twang, looking amusedly at the lank and lazy squatter himself who lay
snoring on the platform before the hut. "Huh! she's a sight purtier
than _he_ be. Why, _he's_ as humbly as a hedge-fence--an' ye can see,
Purt, that the girl takes after her mother."
"It sure is too bad how they rig you, Pretty," laughed Jess.
"Pretty's all right!" joined in Billy Long. "Only one thing wrong with
him. He starts easy, and he speeds up well, but just at the critical
moment he always skids."
"Hear the motor talk from Short and Long! Yow!" exclaimed Reddy Butts.
"And old Purt's not so slow at that!"
"Who said he was slow?" demanded Short and Long, with apparent
indignation. "Bet you can't do him, Reddy."
"Bet I can--and for half a dollar, too," declared the youth with the
radiant head of hair.
This was after the party had returned to the creek and luncheon was in
order. The other boys saw that the red-headed youth and Short and
Long had a scheme between them, and they sat back and prepared to
enjoy Purt's discomfiture.
"You can't fool Purt in a hundred years," Short and Long reiterated,
quite hotly.
"Can," returned Reddy, briefly, with his mouth full. "Got a half
dollar, Purt?"
"What if I have?" demanded the dude, suspiciously.
"You put it under that mug on the table, and I bet I can take the
money without touching the mug."
"You cawn't trick me," drawled Port. "You couldn't do that, you know,
Reddy."
"Put your half dollar under the mug and see if I can't," chuckled the
auburn-haired youth.
Thus urged, Purt did as agreed. He placed a half dollar on the table,
and carefully covered it with an inverted mug that he had been
drinking milk from.
Everybody was interested now and was watching the proceedings.
"Better put a napkin over it, Purt," advised Reddy. "For I'm going to
fool you a whole lot!"
"You cawn't fool me, deah boy!" declared the dude, with growing
conviction.
But he carefully covered the mug. Then Reddy, with a grin, reached
under the rough table they were using and soon pulled his hand back
with a half dollar in the palm.
The boys laughed, and wondered, and the girls were likewise puzzled.
Purt looked both amazed and vexed. Then they began to laugh at him.
"Mighty easy way to make half a dollar," commented Reddy, slipping it
into his pocket. "I told you I'd get it, Purt, without touching the
mug."
"But you didn't do it, doncher know!" cried Purt, growing exasperated.
"My half dollar is there."
He whipped off the napkin, lifted the mug--and Reddy, with a laugh,
grabbed the coin that lay under it.
"I told you I'd get it without lifting the mug, Purt," he said, and
the crowd burst into a chorus of laughter. Purt had been made the
victim of the joke, after all.
It was all good fun, however. Purt could well afford the half dollar,
and after a minute he, too, laughed.
They started back for Acorn Island in good season, with a nice string
of speckled trout and some two dozen white perch--the promise of a
splendid "fish-fry" that evening. On the way they passed the heavy
canoe seen several times before on the lake.
There was but one man in it now, fishing; and he sat with his
shoulders hunched up and his hat drawn down about his face.
"I wonder who that old man is?" Chet said, reflectively, as the
_Bonnie Lass_ sped by.
"Wonder where his camp is?" responded Lance, idly.
"He looks like a native," Reddy said. "If he's no handsomer than that
squatter back yonder, I wouldn't want to see him any closer to."
Laura, and Jess, and Bobby looked at each other surreptitiously. They
knew that the man in the canoe was Professor Asa Dimp, Latin teacher
at Central High!
CHAPTER XXI
THE SHERIFF WITH HIS DOGS
Another evening melted into night, leaving in the minds of most of the
girls of Central High now encamped on Acorn Island, a feeling of
contentment and pleasure because of a well-spent day.
Their activities had been joyous ones; their fun and sport healthful;
and nothing had really occurred to trouble their minds.
Of course, Laura was an exception to the others. Jess and Bobby were
to a degree disturbed over the mystery of the young man who had
visited the camp on two occasions, and about their unexpected
discovery of Professor Dimp's presence on Acorn Island.
But it was Mother Wit who had thought out the true significance of
these mysterious happenings. She had reason to believe that the "Mr.
Norman" whom Lizzie Bean had talked about--and the man who had
frightened the same Lizzie and robbed the camp of food--and the Norman
Halliday who was wanted by the sheriff for the robbery of the
Merchants and Miners Bank of Albany, was one and the same person.
Not alone that, but he was camping on this island, without a permit
from the Rocky River Lumber Company; and his companion was their own
respected, if not well-liked, Professor Dimp.
Certainly the old professor could have had nothing to do with the
robbery of the bank; nor could he have reaped any benefit by such
crime. Laura was sure that the old professor was perfectly honest and
respectable.
He was surely not camping against his will, with the strange young man
who had saved Short and Long from the farmer's savage dog. Professor
Dimp must have some deep interest in him.
Laura, too, could not believe the young man with the gun to be a
criminal of the character the newspapers had given the thief and
forger who had betrayed his employers in the bank.
"That young man has a good face. If Lizzie's story is true, too, he
has a good heart. And he was quick to act to-day when he saved Billy
Long; he took a chance for a stranger, when it was unwise for him to
show himself.
"There is a mystery about him. The professor would not be with the
young man if he were bad--oh! I am sure of that," concluded Laura.
This discussion Laura carried on in her mind. She did not take even
Jess into her inmost confidence, and Chet--of course--went back to the
mainland with the rest of the boys, when bedtime came.
Poor old Professor Dimp! He had ever been the butt for his careless
pupils' pranks. His eccentricities, his absent-mindedness, and his
devotion to what Bobby called "the dead parts of speech" had made him
an object of the pupils' dislike and a subject for their wit.
Of course, they knew he was wonderfully well educated--that the depths
of Latin and Greek were easily plumbed by his thought. But respect for
a teacher's attainments does not always breed love for the
teacher--nor an appreciation of the said teacher's softer qualities,
either.
Laura had come to the conclusion that there must be a side to "Old
Dimple's" character that few of his pupils had surmised.
There was a bond between Professor Dimp and that mysterious young man
from Albany that Laura Belding did not understand. Yet she sought her
cot that night with a belief that the old gentleman was good and kind,
and that the accusation against his young companion must be very, very
wrong!
Could she have climbed a tree like Short and Long, Laura would have
gone to the top of one of the big oaks near the camp, the next
morning at daybreak. From that height she knew she could see most of
the open patches on the island, clear to the western end.
She was very curious as to whether Professor Dimp was still camping in
the little glade where she and her comrades had met him. And had the
young man returned from the north side of the lake where she had seen
him the day before?
Laura was an early riser, as ever, that morning. She was tempted,
before the camp was generally astir, to run out to the end of the
island and see if the Professor's camp were still established there.
But Professor Dimp had been so sharp with her and the other girls,
that Laura half feared to meet him. He was certainly a stern old
gentleman, and she remembered now that, from the time the girls of
Central High had decided to come here to Acorn Island to camp,
Professor Dimp had been quite put out about it.
"Why!" thought Laura, "he was planning to come here himself at that
time. He must have already arranged to meet the young man here. And he
considers us interlopers. It's very, very strange!"
Nor did Laura wish to discuss the affair with Jess or Bobby Hargrew.
She was afraid to tell anybody what she surmised about Professor
Dimp's companion.
It was after breakfast--which Liz served with all the spirit and
cheerfulness, so Bobby said, of an Egyptian mummy with the
mumps!--that they first spied the big barge coming from the north
shore of the lake.
The slow-moving craft was under sail and there were several men aboard
of her, as well as a pack of dogs which now and then gave tongue.
Immediately the Barnacle went raving mad. The sigh and sound of so
many canines heading toward the island that had been his own domain
for a week, quite drove the Barnacle out of such few senses as he
possessed.
He barked at the barge from the heights where the camp stood; then he
raced down to the shore and emitted a salvo of barks from the landing
on that side of the island. Then he raced back again, and so returned
to the shore--alternating in his rushes in the craziest possible way.
Meanwhile the barge drew nearer and nearer. The general question at
the girls' camp was: "Why were the men and dogs coming to Acorn
Island?"
"They can't land here without a permit," Bobby declared. "The Rocky
River Lumber Company has posted the island."
"And what sort of game can they hunt with hounds this time of year?"
demanded Jess.
"Those are bloodhounds," said her mother, calmly. "English
bloodhounds."
"Goodness!" squealed Bobby, suddenly. "Bloodhounds? Don't you all feel
just like Eliza crossing the ice, girls?"
"Not much!" cried Dora, laughing. "On a hot day like this?"
The cicadas were filing their saws in the tops of the trees and the
promise of one of the hottest days of the season danced in the shimmer
of haze over the water.
"Do you really suppose they are coming here with those dogs?" repeated
Nell.
"They have no business to land," said Bobby, again serious.
"I know who they are!" Jess cried, suddenly.
"Who?" asked her mother.
"Chet said something about a sheriff coming to the boys' camp over
yonder. And he had a pack of bloodhounds with him."
"But why should an officer of the law come _here_?" queried Mrs.
Morse.
Laura, and Jess, and Bobby looked at each other. Of course, Mother Wit
had understood the approach of the barge from the first; but she had
said nothing. Now Jess and Bobby burst out with:
"Oh! he must be after that young man."
"What young man?" was the chorus of the other campers.
"The young man who is with Professor Dimp," said the thoughtless
Bobby. "Isn't that it, Laura?"
Laura groaned. The cat was out of the bag now, and she foresaw much
trouble in the camp on Acorn Island.
CHAPTER XXII
WHERE PROFESSOR DIMP COMES IN BIG
"What under the sun are you talking about, Bobby?" demanded Lil
Pendleton; and Nell cried:
"Professor Dimp! What do you know about the professor?"
"Is _he_ here?" demanded Dora.
"Not Old Dimple?" chimed in her twin.
"You surprise me, Clara," said Mrs. Morse. "Are you referring to your
Latin teacher? and is he anywhere near here?"
"Oh, gracious! I'm always putting my foot into it whenever I open my
mouth," groaned Bobby.
"A highly impossible athletic feat, I am sure, Bobby," said Jess,
unable to keep from laughing, although she knew Bobby deserved
chiding.
"I want to know what this means," exclaimed Lil again. "Who is this
sheriff after? And why is Old Dimple mixed up in it?"
"It's the fellow who came and robbed our larder!" shrieked Nell,
guessing the enigma at last.
"I am afraid that is who the sheriff is looking for," admitted Laura,
gravely.
"And why _here_?" cried Lil. "Didn't that fellow take the food and get
away from the island?"
"We did not find him--that's sure!" said Dora Lockwood.
"Barnacle found his camp, and we saw Professor Dimp there," explained
Laura seeing that a clean breast of it was the better way.
"Who's 'we?'" demanded Lil.
"Jess and Bobby and I. We spoke to the old professor, and he was real
cross to us. He would not tell us anything about the young man."
"Then Liz _did_ see that Mr. Norman the night we were robbed?" said
Nell.
"Yes. I expect so."
"'Mr. Norman?'" Nell repeated, reflectively. "And the fellow who
robbed that bank in Albany is Norman Halliday? The very same!"
"And you knew this all along, Laura Belding?" cried Lil. "You mean
thing!"
"Oh, quit, Lil," advised Bobby, gruffly. "Why should Laura stir up a
row and scare you all? I never till this very moment guessed who the
fellow might be, myself. Of course the sheriff is looking for him!"
"And on this island!" murmured Lil. "A criminal!"
"We don't know how much of a criminal he is," said Laura, stoutly. "He
was the fellow that saved Short and Long from that dog yesterday, I
verily believe," and she wagged her head. "_He_ didn't look very
desperate, I can tell you!"
"My goodness! that's so," said Bobby, eagerly. "Let's keep the sheriff
off."
"How are you going to do it?" asked Jess. "Go down there and stone him
when the barge comes near?" and she chuckled.
"He hasn't any permit. This is private land----"
"But can't he search the island for a lawbreaker?" asked Dorothy.
"I don't know that he has a right to, without a warrant."
"But if we try to stop him," said Laura, slowly, "won't he suspect
that we don't want him to search the island?"
"Say!" exclaimed Lil, angrily. "What do _we_ care?"
"We don't want him to find that poor fellow," said Bobby.
"Why not?" repeated Lil, sharply.
"After he saved Short and Long's life?"
"Humph! should we pass a vote of thanks to him for _that_?" demanded
Lil, with, sarcasm.
"Not for that, perhaps," Laura said, gently. "But think of the old
professor."
"Old Dimple!"
"The old Prof?"
"What about him?"
The chorus rose loud and general. Laura flushed, but held her ground.
"Our loyalty to Central High ought to be enough to prompt us to help
one of our teachers. In some way the old professor is connected with
this young man who is in danger of arrest. I don't mean that we should
actually thwart the officer of the law. But I, for one, certainly will
not help the officer."
"You are right, Mother Wit!" cried Bobby. "I'll go a step farther.
I'll try to keep that man from landing here with his dogs."
"I know nothing about the right or wrong of the case," said Mrs.
Morse; "but I am afraid of those awful beasts. There are five of
them!"
"And Barnacle will only get into a fight with them if they land,"
declared Jess, rather amused. "Let's go down to the lake in a body and
refuse to allow the dogs to come ashore."
Liz Bean had listened from the cook-tent, but said nothing. Her plain
face was as expressionless as ever.
Now, when Mrs. Morse and the girls of Central High started down the
slope on the northern side of the knoll, Liz slipped into the woods to
the west, and quickly disappeared in the thick underbrush.
The big mainsail of the barge had been dropped and the men with the
sheriff were paddling the craft in to the shore. Now and then a hound
would lift its head and utter a mournful bay. Then Barnacle would
strive to bark his own head off!
Laura recognized one of the paddlers with a start of surprise. It was
the vicious farmer who had set his dog on Short and Long, on Bang-up
Creek!
If she had had any doubts about the right and wrong of an attempt to
thwart the sheriff before, Laura had none _now_. Perhaps her course
was indefensible; but intuitively she believed that farmer to be a bad
man. And she was sure that he was the one who had set the sheriff on
this trail.
He had doubtless followed the young man with the gun and seen him join
Professor Dimp. The two had paddled for Acorn Island. The farmer had
communicated with the sheriff.
Right then, so hotly burned Laura's righteous indignation, that she
would have done her very best to keep the officer of the law from
landing those bloodhounds, and chasing the mysterious "Mr. Norman" out
of his hiding place.
But it was Bobby who put the ball into play first.
"Say, Mister! don't you bring those dogs ashore here!" she called to
the sheriff.
He was a big, red-faced, beefy-looking man, with a bristling mustache
and little, piglike eyes.
"I wanter know!" he said, huskily. "Who do you think you are giving
orders to, young lady?"
"You are a sheriff, aren't you?"
"Yes I be," said the man.
"And you are searching all the woods around about for a convict?"
"Not perzactly. But he's likely ter be a convic' arter I git him," and
he chuckled, hoarsely.
"Well, this island is posted. We have a permit to camp here, but I
don't believe _you_ have any warrant for landing at all," said Bobby,
sharply. "And my father, who is one of the directors of the Rocky
River Lumber Company, certainly does not want a pack of hounds like
those, running the game on this island--out of season, too."
"This ain't that kind o' game, young lady," said the sheriff, slowly.
Then he stopped. A figure had suddenly appeared from the wood. It was
a shabby but commanding figure, and the girls themselves shrank
together and waited for the old Latin professor to speak.
"Miss Hargrew is quite right," said Professor Dimp, in his iciest
tone. "Those hounds must not land here."
"I say, now!" growled the sheriff.
"This is private property," continued Professor Dimp, coldly, "as Miss
Hargrew tells you. You can see the signs. You will trespass here if
you are determined. But I warn you that if you bring those dogs ashore
you will be prosecuted."
"I'm a-goin' to search this islan'," growled Sheriff Larkin, uglily.
"You may. You have no warrant to do so, but you may. But you must not
bring ashore those dogs. And," added the professor, turning and bowing
with old-fashioned courtesy to Mrs. Morse, "you must keep away from
the camp where this lady and her young charges are ensconced."
He turned on his heel in conclusion, and walked into the woods again.
"Three rousing cheers!" whispered Bobby under her breath. "What's the
matter with Old Dimple? _He's_ all right!"
CHAPTER XXIII
LIZ ON THE DEFENSIVE
The professor had spoken with such authority that Sheriff Larkin
hesitated in his intention of landing the bloodhounds. Besides, having
learned that one of these girls was a daughter of a member of the
powerful lumber company, he feared to make a misstep.
The Rocky River Lumber Company could make or break a sheriff easily
enough. The political power of the men owning the corporation in
Monadnock County was supreme.
"Well, I tell ye what it is, ladies," he said, pulling off his broad
brimmed hat to wipe a perspiring, red brow. "I gotter do my duty----"
"With the prospect of five hundred dollars ahead of you!" interposed
Bobby, pertly.
"That ain't neither here nor there," declared the man. "I got to
search the island."
"You know best what you must do, sir," said Mrs. Morse, coldly. "But I
beg of you to leave your dogs on the boat. I am afraid of the
brutes."
"And don't come to _our_ camp, I pray, looking for any criminal," said
Laura, speaking for the first time.
"Why! I guess not, Ma'am!" cried the sheriff. "Come on, boys. Leave
them dawgs tied yere. And we'll go over the island. It's purty open
timber this end, so he ain't likely to be near here."
They had moored the barge. Barnacle had barked himself hoarse. When
the sheriff and four of his companions leaped ashore, he put his tail
between his legs and scuttled up the hillside again.
At the top he suddenly began to bark once more. He did not face down
hill, but seemed distraught about something, or somebody, in the
camp.
"Hey!" exclaimed the ugly farmer whom Laura had taken a dislike to the
previous day. "That dawg sees something."
"He is crazy," spoke up Laura, quickly. "He is like enough barking at
our maid."
"Sure!" rejoined Bobby. "Liz is up there."
"Come on!" exclaimed the sheriff to his men, and started westward, in
the direction Professor Dimp had taken.
"Whom do you suppose the Barnacle is really barking at?" whispered
Jess to Laura Belding. "He'd never make all that 'catouse' over Liz.
In fact, he wouldn't bark at her at all."
"Hush!" warned Laura, as the party started up the slope toward the
camp.
Jess looked at her curiously. Barnacle was still barking with
desperate determination. Liz appeared before the Central High girls
climbed to the top of the hillock, and catching the dog by the collar,
dragged him over to the corner of the log cabin and snapped on his
chain.
"There!" Laura heard her say. "Ye kin bark your head off--but ye can't
run."
The girl went back to her cook-tent and began clearing up the
breakfast things again. Laura noted that she seemed to have done
nothing while they were down on the shore.
But that was not surprising; perhaps she had crept near to overhear
the talk with the sheriff. Now Liz said nothing to any of them, and
went grimly on with her work.
"It's my turn to help you get dinner, Lizzie," Laura said, quietly.
"What are we going to have? Shall I begin by peeling the potatoes?"
"No. Don't want yer," said Liz, shortly.
"Why! of course you want some help----"
"Don't neither!" snapped the maid-of-all-work.
"Why, Lizzie!" said Laura, in surprise--at least, in apparent
surprise! "You surely don't want to do all the work yourself?"
"I'd ruther," responded the girl, ungraciously. "You gals are in my
way in the tent."
Now this, of course, was ridiculous. It could mean but one thing: Liz
was anxious to be alone in the cook-tent. And _why_?
Laura, however, merely said:
"Oh! very well. If you prefer not to be helped, Lizzie, that is all
right."
And she walked away; but she did not lose sight of the cook-tent.
There was somebody there beside the maid-of-all-work, and Laura was
sure she knew _who_.
Lil was inclined to feel abused. She thought that she should have been
taken into the secret at the first.
"But see how you would have kicked," said the slangy Bobby. "Why!
you'd have wanted to go back home by the first boat."
"I don't think we ought to have stayed here with that man on the
island," grumbled Lil.
"With the old professor tagging after him?" chuckled Jess. "My
goodness! can there be anything more respectable than Old Dimple?"
"If he is, why is he mixed up with this bank thief?" asked Lil,
bluntly.
"I don't believe the young man is any such thing," announced Laura,
hearing this. "He doesn't look bad. And surely we can trust to the
professor's judgment."
"And we ought to help Professor Dimp," said Nell. "Poor old man! I am
sorry for him."
"Say! Old Dimple's a good sort," declared Bobby, enthusiastically.
"And he certainly stood up to that red-faced sheriff this morning--Oh,
gee!" finished the tomboy, with a gasp. "Here he is now."
"Here's who?" squealed Lil, whirling around.
"Professor Dimp?" demanded Nell.
But it was the sheriff.
"'Scuse me, young ladies," he wheezed. "But I feel it my duty to
s'arch this yere camp. If you ain't a-hidin' of that thar feller, ye
won't mind my pokin' around a bit, will yer?"
Laura did not say a word. She stood up and looked over at Liz Bean.
For a moment the maid-of-all-work seemed petrified.
Then she dove for the growling Barnacle. She untied the rope with
which he was fastened.
"Hello!" exclaimed the puffing sheriff. "What's _that_ for?"
Liz held the Barnacle with difficulty; the dog bared his teeth at the
sheriff and uttered a series of most blood-curdling growls.
"You come botherin' around _here_," said Liz, desperately, "an' I'll
let him fly at ye!"
CHAPTER XXIV
THE BARNACLE TREES SOMETHING AT LAST
Both the girls of Central High, and their brothers and boy friends, in
the camp across the lake, had believed the Barnacle to be "all bluff."
He was a fine dog for barking, as Short and Long had said, but he
acted as though he thought his teeth had been given him for chewing
his food, and for nothing else.
The savage way in which he bayed the sheriff, however, and tried to
get at him as Liz held him in leash, was really surprising. It was no
wonder that Sheriff Larkin started back and cried out in alarm.
"Don't you dare set that dawg on me, young woman!" he cried. "I'll
have the law on yer, if yer do."
"He'll chaw yer up if I let him go," threatened Liz. "Git out o'
here!"
"Why, Lizzie!" gasped Mrs. Morse, coming to the door of the cabin, and
speaking to the girl in a most amazed tone. "What does this mean?"
"He's a body snatcher! he's a man hunter! he's ev'rything mean an'
filthy!" exclaimed the girl, her face red and her eyes blazing. Her
appearance was really most astonishing. Laura would never have
believed that "Lonesome Liz" could display so much emotion.
"Let him bother this camp if he dares!" went on Liz. "He was told by
that old gentleman to keep away from here, wasn't he? Then let him
run, for I ain't a-goin' to hold this dawg in much longer!"
It seemed that her threat would hold true. At every leap Barnacle
made, he seemed about to tear the rope from her grasp.
"Missis!" yelled the sheriff to Mrs. Morse. "You'd better call that
gal off----"
"She ain't got nothin' to do with it," declared Liz. "I ain't workin'
for her no more. I ain't workin' for nobody. I've struck, I have! You
can't hold nobody responserble but me an' Barnacle."
"The gal's crazy!" squalled the sheriff, going rapidly backward, for
the dog and Liz were advancing.
"Well, you won't shet me up in no 'sylum," declared Liz, grimly. "But
ye _may_ send me ter the penitentiary."
"Did you ever hear the like?" gasped Lil, clinging to Nellie and
Jess. "That girl's mad."
"She is brave," muttered Jess. "But--but I wonder what she's up to?"
Laura did not question the maid-of-all-work. She thought she already
knew. There was method in Lizzie's madness, that was sure!
She was driving the bullying sheriff away from the cook-tent--away
from the camp, indeed. He was going sideways like a crab, and Barnacle
was growling and almost choking himself as he tugged at his collar.
"Git out! Scat!" exclaimed Liz. "I'm a-goin' to let this dawg _go_!"
"Don'cher dare!" shouted Sheriff Larkin.
But the girl deliberately stooped over Barnacle, and began to unfasten
the rope. At that the officer of the law turned and lumbered down the
hill.
Where his companions were the girls did not know. And the barge with
the bloodhounds had been poled off shore a few rods. The keeper was
sitting on it and calmly smoking his pipe.
Sheriff Larkin was some rods from the shore. With a sudden roar
Barnacle slipped his leash and tore down the slope. The dog had run a
lot of game on Acorn Island since being landed here; but never a
quarry like this.
The big man gave one glance behind and then lost all hope of reaching
the boat. There was a low-branching tree before him: He leaped for
the nearest branch and swung his booted legs for a moment while he
tried to hitch up on the limb.
The Barnacle jumped for him. The dog fastened to his heel, and for the
first time the girls saw that the mongrel-cur really had a terrific
grip.
Sheriff Larkin scrambled up into the tree; but for half a minute
Barnacle swung from him, clear of the ground. When he dropped to the
ground the heel of the sheriff's boot came with the dog's jaws!
Barnacle crouched down and began to masticate the heel. But the glare
that he turned upward at the man, from his red-rimmed eyes, proclaimed
the fact that he would "just as lives" chew on the sheriff's anatomy.
The camp on the top of the knoll had been left in confusion. The girls
were talking rather wildly--some praising Liz and others deploring the
happening.
Mrs. Morse commanded silence. She walked over to where the
maid-of-all-work stood before the cook-tent.
"What does this mean, Lizzie Bean?" she demanded.
"I tell you I ain't workin' for you no more," cried Liz, wildly. "I've
give up me job."
"But you had no right to do what you have done."
"I don't care, I'd done more. I'd gone at that sheriff with my
finger-nails if he'd come nearer. Don't I hate him--_just_?"
"Why--why, Lizzie!" gasped the gentle Mrs. Morse.
Here Laura interfered. "I believe I know what is the matter with
Lizzie, Mrs. Morse," she said.
"Well!" snapped Lil, in the background. "Let's hear it. The girl's
crazy. My mother would never have paid for such a creature to come
here with us if she'd known."
"Your ma needn't give me a cent, Miss," returned Liz, sullenly.
"What _is_ the matter with her, Laura?" asked Mrs. Morse again.
"She has somebody hidden in that tent," said Mother Wit, calmly.
"Isn't that the truth, Lizzie? Isn't Mr. Halliday in there--Mr. Norman
Halliday?"
"The bank robber!" shrieked Lil.
"Oh, oh!" gasped Nellie.
"Hurray for Liz!" exclaimed Bobby, but in a low tone.
"It cannot be?" queried Mrs. Morse.
"Yes he is. I got him here while youse folks was down talkin' to that
red-faced sheriff. He was good to me when I lived at that boardin'
house, in Albany, he was! I wouldn't give him up to that sheriff."
Mrs. Morse looked at Laura very gravely. "_You_ have known about this
for some time, Laura? You knew that the young man was on the island?"
"With Professor Dimp--yes," said Mother Wit, bravely.
"Professor Dimp has his own actions to answer for," said Jess' mother,
gravely. "But I am quite sure your mother would not approve of your
trying to help such a character as this young man seems to be."
"Wait a minute, Mrs. Morse," cried Laura. "Here come Chet and the
boys."
"The boys!" chorused the other girls.
"What has your brother to do with this affair?" asked Mrs. Morse,
wonderingly.
"I saw Chet wig-wagging a little while ago, and I answered and read
his message. He is bringing over a gentleman from Albany--a lawyer--to
see Professor Dimp and the young man who has been in hiding so long. I
think something important is going to happen," said Laura,
complacently. "Do let the Barnacle keep the sheriff up in that tree
for a little while longer."
CHAPTER XXV
"QUITE ALL RIGHT"
One amazing thing was happening after another. The girls of Central
High could scarcely keep up with the several happenings. On top of
Laura's statement the platform before the cook-tent heaved mightily,
and a man's head and shoulders appeared.
Lil shrieked again. Even Mrs. Morse stepped back in surprise. The
young man continued to push his way out, and finally climbed to his
feet.
It was the same young man who had appeared on the bank of Bang-up
Creek and saved Short and Long from the farmer's dog. His very good
looking hunting suit was now sadly torn and wrinkled. He was without a
hat. There was a scratch upon his face that had drawn blood, and he
was altogether rather messy looking.
He bowed gravely to Mrs. Morse. "I see," he said, "that this young
lady," and he looked at Laura, "knows who I am. And further
introduction would be unnecessary."
"Ye--yes?" said Mrs. Morse, rather doubtfully.
"I pray that you will not blame Lizzie Bean. She would sacrifice
herself for my safety; but I could hardly allow her to do that, don't
you know? I had an idea that that sheriff would really not come to
this camp, and I could get away again after dark."
Lil had given over any intention of screaming again. She was examining
the scratched face of the strange young man with growing approval.
"Isn't he romantic looking?" she whispered to Nellie.
"Poor fellow," sighed the doctor's daughter. "He _doesn't_ look
wicked, does he?"
"He's a regular heart-breaker when he's dolled up, I bet," giggled
Bobby.
"It's too bad!" murmured the Lockwood twins, in unison.
Thus did the appearance of the young man, Mr. Norman Halliday, tell
upon the covey of frightened girls. Mrs. Morse herself began to
recover from her disturbance of mind. _This_ was no criminal
character, for sure!
Suddenly the sheriff in the tree set up a bellow: "That's the feller I
want! That's him! Don't you let him escape----"
"Why don't you come down and take him?" demanded Bobby, wickedly.
But immediately the Barnacle began leaping under the tree and barking
and Sheriff Larkin climbed higher.
"You see, the police want me," explained the young man, simply.
"We--we should judge so," gasped Mrs. Morse.
"But I really don't want to be arrested. Especially by this sheriff. I
do not want the bank I work for to be put to the expense of paying him
a reward for my apprehension."
This sounded rather odd--from a criminal!
"You see," went on the young man, with a more cheerful smile, "I am
going to return to Albany when my attorney lets me know that I may
safely do so. Had I remained when I was first charged with the crime
of forging names to coupons and bonds, and selling the same for my own
benefit, I could not have disproved the accusation."
"It had been arranged to make me a 'scapegoat'--to railroad me to
jail, in fact. But I have one good friend, at least--my uncle,
Professor Dimp. You all doubtless know him, and know what a really
fine old fellow he is," said the young man, heartily.
"He is paying my lawyer's expenses, and he insisted, too, upon coming
up here into the Big Woods and staying with me. That's why I was
really obliged to rob your larder one night. I dared not appear at any
store to buy food, and I could not let the dear old man go hungry. I
hope the money I left was sufficient to pay for the food?"
"Certainly--certainly," murmured Mrs. Morse, while the girls listened
in wide-eyed amazement.
"The Professor is just a brick," continued Mr. Norman Halliday, "as of
course you all know----"
"You bet we do!" burst out Bobby, her face aflame. "Three cheers for
Old D----That is, for Professor Asa Dimp!"
"Thank you, Miss Hargrew," said the dry voice of the absent-minded old
professor. "I did not know I was so well appreciated by the girls of
Central High."
But Laura showed _her_ appreciation in an entirely unlooked for way.
As the professor walked into the open from the woods, she darted for
him, seized him tightly in her arms, and planted a kiss first on one,
and then on his other unshaven cheek.
"Bless my soul! bless my soul!" gasped Professor Dimp, who had
probably not been kissed before in years.
"You're a perfect old _dear_!" declared Laura, in a low voice. "And I
am never going to be afraid of you again. Your nephew showed that he
had a tender heart when he was kind to Lizzie Bean; and I believe he
gets it honestly--_from you_! _Dear_ Professor Dimp!"
"Ha!" said the old gentleman, drily, yet flushing a little, too, "I
can see very clearly that I shall hereafter have very mediocre
recitations from the girls of Central High. They will no longer fear
me."
At that moment the motorboat that had been skimming across from the
main land, pushed her nose against the shore of the island. One of the
first persons to land was a gentleman with a green bag in his hand who
hurried up the hill to greet the professor and his nephew, the much
disheveled Mr. Halliday.
"The best of news Mr. Halliday--and you, my dear Professor Dimp," this
gentleman said. "The evidence is concluded. The guilty director has
been arrested and the reward for _your_ capture, Mr. Halliday, has
been withdrawn. I have come to take you back to Albany where your name
will be completely cleared of the false accusation."
"Hurrah!" shouted Bobby again, and waving her hand at the dog and the
sheriff on the other side of the hill. "Come away, Barnacle; you may
let the sheriff down out of the tree."
Dear me! It took nearly all day to explain affairs, after all. The
sheriff, and his bloodhounds, and his posse departed unnoticed by the
rejoicing party in the camp of the Central High girls.
The girls and boys made a hero out of Professor Dimp. And he was not a
bad sort after all--as they found out upon closer acquaintance.
"We shall not let Professor Dimp hide his light under a bushel," cried
Laura Belding, otherwise Mother Wit. "Whenever there is anything else
exciting going on for the girls of Central High, he shall be in it."
All the males of the party later piled into the _Bonnie Lass_ to
return to the boys' camp. There the lawyer had left a team with which
he was going to take Norman Halliday out of the Big Woods to the
railway station.
But the professor promised to remain at least another week, as the
guest of the boys. That week was the very jolliest week of all the
vacation at Lake Dunkirk, both for the boys, and for the Girls of
Central High.
THE END
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