152CHAPTER XVIIA PERFECTLY UNSATISFACTORY INTERVIEW
“Goodness gracious!” gasped Bobby, the first to find her breath. She fell limply against Laura and Jess. “What do you know aboutthat? 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?”153
“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 dogbuthis 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, “itcouldn’tbe 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.154
“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. evercouldget 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 are155together. 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.”
“Butwhy?” 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 was156wrinkled 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.157
“Well, Miss?”
“I thinkyoucan 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.158
“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.
159CHAPTER XVIIIAN 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.160
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,thatis no answer,” cried Laura.161
“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 ofthat. 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 the162stream. 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.163
“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 supposehewas the fellow who took the food from your tent, Laura?”
“Yes, I do,” admitted his sister.
“Then he’s far enough away from the lake164now,” 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 somebodywehad an interest in, Chet?”
“Humph! thatwouldbe tough. But he isn’t.”165
“Just the same, promise me something,” urged Laura, clinging to his shoulder with both hands.
“What is it, Sis?” asked Chet, in surprise.
“Don’ttell 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 offered166to 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 abouthim,” 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.”167
“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 neverwillget 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 chasesus, 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 Lance168to 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!”169
“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 neverdidbelieve 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 certainlydidspeak savagely.
170CHAPTER XIXTHE 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:
PRIVATENO 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.171
“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 areyou?” 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 and172shaking, 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.173
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.174
“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!
175CHAPTER XXLAURA 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.”176
“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 youdidsauce 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 added177taking 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 reallywastoo 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:178
“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 ashebe?” 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 thanhebe. Why,he’sas 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 and179Long 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 table180they 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.181
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 theBonnie Lasssped 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!
182CHAPTER XXITHE 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 the183robbery 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.184She 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 one185of 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 tell186anybody 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.”187
“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 comehere?” 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:188
“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.