A TERRIBLE PREDICAMENT.

During the days that followed the behavior of Piper was even more inexplicable and annoying; for each day, refusing to let anyone accompany him, he set forth alone in his boat, sometimes leaving the camp before noon, and usually remaining away until near nightfall. Nor would he offer any explanation, compelling his perplexed and offended friends to remain as content as possible with his promise that he would “reveal all in due time.”

“I’d give tut-ten dollars to know what he’s up to,” said Springer.

“So’d I—if I had ten dollars,” declared Crane.

Once Phil and Sile attempted to follow Piper with the canoe, but when he detected them he promptly turned about and rowed straight back to Pleasant Point.

“Think yeou’re smart, don’t ye?” sneered Crane, when he and Phil had also returned. “Yeou make me sick at the stomach.”

“It’s plain,” retorted Piper grimly, “that you need another lesson to cure you of your overweening curiosity.”

After that they ceased their efforts, Sile and Phil treating Piper with the utmost disdain, although Grant appeared to be more or less amused; and, in his quiet way, Stone accepted it all as an entertaining joke.

One day the boys saw Piper come swiftly forth from the tent and make for his boat, bearing the shotgun. Immediately Sile shouted:

“Hey, there! Yeou leave that gun! Yeou’ve got a crust, takin’ it without askin’ leave. Drop it!”

But Sleuth hurried on, placed the gun in the boat and pushed off, paying not the slightest heed to Crane’s commands. They watched him rowing steadily away across the lake, heading somewhat to the south of Spirit Island, and finally he passed from view beyond a wooded point of the farther shore.

Keeping close to the shore after rounding the point, Sleuth plied his oars in a gentle way, as if trying to make as little noise as possible. Presently he ran into the narrow mouth of a sluggish, boggy brook and made a landing amid some overhanging bushes, where were to be seen marks which seemed to indicate that this was not the first time a boat had touched there. Stepping ashore, he pulled the little boat up until it was well hidden by the bushes, after which he took the gun and turned away. His manner, as he stole cautiously through the woods with the gun in his hands, was that of one bent upon a stealthy and dangerous manoeuvre. No scout or trapper of colonial days had ever attempted to preserve more caution in a region possibly infested by redskins.

For something like a quarter of a mile the boy made his way through the thickets, maintaining that air of extreme caution. Indeed, if possible, he became even more careful, and finally he took to creeping forward on all fours, ending with a snake-like squirm flat upon his stomach, which brought him to a thick cluster of bushes on the edge of a small clearing near the lake shore. Parting the bushes gently, he thrust his head into them and looked forth through a filmy veil of ferns into the clearing.

Near the shore, where there was a landing place, lay an overturned canoe, and from the landing a path ran up to the open door of a small log cabin. That there was someone within the cabin this open door seemed to denote, but from his place of concealment Piper could perceive no person. Nevertheless, with amazing patience, Sleuth remained hidden there, watching and waiting, his chin upon his hands and the shotgun beside him. Nearly an hour had passed in this manner when from the cabin there came a spasmodic clicking sound, which caused the concealed youth to breathe a sigh of satisfaction.

“He’s there,” whispered Sleuth to himself. “I knew he must be, for the door is open and the canoe is in sight. He’s hammering at his old typewriter. It’s about time he did something else.”

But it seemed that Sleuth waited in vain for Charles Granger to do anything else. The dozy afternoon hours crept on. At times the sound of the typewriter would cease, only to be heard after an interval. A kingfisher, swooping along the shore, uttered a shriek and went careening away with a burst of mocking laughter. A chipmunk, scurrying through the underbrush, stopped suddenly within three feet of Piper and challenged him with a sharp chatter. The lad remaining motionless, the little ground squirrel seemed both perplexed and offended, for he continued to squeak and chitter and flit his tail in a desperate effort to make the silent figure stir. Wearying of this at last, Sleuth turned his head a bit and gave a sharp hiss, whereupon, with a scream of delighted dismay, the squirrel fled.

The afternoon was passing. In spite of himself, Piper’s eyelids drooped. Suddenly they snapped wide open, and there before him in the doorway, leaning indolently against the casing and smoking a corncob pipe, was Mr. Granger, minus coat, vest and hat, and wearing an old pair of slippers upon his feet. For nearly ten minutes he lounged there, gazing dreamily toward the landing, and then he turned back into the cabin and disappeared.

“Piffle!” whispered Sleuth. “He’s not going out. Another day wasted, but I’ll foil him yet.”

He was about to retreat when a faint, far-away sound caused him to prick up his ears and remain concealed in the bushes. Someone was whistling in the distant woods, and gradually the sound drew nearer. It was a rollicking jumble of popular tunes, and after a time the whistler, a boy about Sleuth’s age—possibly a little younger—came out by a path that led away from the cabin. Straight to the door the boy advanced, and there he was met by Granger, who, like Piper, had heard the whistling.

“Here’s something for you, Mr. Granger,” said the strange boy as he drew a sealed envelope from his pocket and handed it over to the man.

“Thanks, Jack,” said Granger. “How is everything?”

“First-rate,” was the cheerful reply. “I’ve got to hustle back. So long.”

He was off as quickly as he had come, again making the woods ring with his whistling.

With the sealed envelope in his hand, Granger retired into the cabin.

“Piffle!” said Sleuth once more. “A returned manuscript, I suppose. I guess this story writing is poor business, all right. No use for me to watch any more today; I’m baffled again.”

Withdrawing from the bushes, he crept away until he could rise to his feet and retreat fully hidden in the thickets. He seemed to be not a little disappointed and downcast, and while returning to the boat he failed to maintain the caution that had marked his movements at an earlier hour.

Putting the gun back into the boat, he pushed off and was soon out upon the lake. The sun was just touching the crest of the mountains, but its full light still fell upon the dark, pine-covered body of Spirit Island. Involuntarily Piper rowed toward the island.

“I’d just like to land there alone and look it over again,” he muttered. “Springer thinks I wouldn’t dare. Huh! I’ve got a loaded gun, and I’d like to see a ghost that could make me run now. By smoke! I’ve half a mind to do it!”

This temptation persisted even when he had rowed close to the island, for all of the fact that he could again feel more than a touch of the awesome, scarey sensation that he had experienced during his previous visit to that haunted spot.

“I’ll do it!” he suddenly decided, choking down the unmanning fears with a strong hand. “I’ll just land and look around a few minutes before it gets dark.”

Selecting a landing place on the eastern shore of the island, he beached the boat and drew it up safely. Then, with the gun in his hands and a quiver in his veins, he sought for the path that led to the hermit’s hut.

Despite the fact that the sun had not yet set, that path was amazingly gloomy and dark. Piper’s hands gripped the gun almost fiercely as, with parted lips, he followed the path.

Again he took note of the seeming utter absence of life and movement upon the island, and several times he paused to listen and to peer into the shadows on either side.

At last, however, he reached the clearing and saw the old hut standing lurch-wise beneath the taller pines. And now the sunlight just touched the tops of those pines, telling that the sun was dropping behind the mountains. Twilight would follow in a few moments, and then darkness would gather over Spirit Island.

Piper sprang the catch of the hammerless, set his teeth and advanced, his finger on the trigger. Up to the very door of the hut he went, halting there with one ear half turned and listening, although he kept his slantwise gaze fixed on the dim interior. He could hear it again, faint, muffled, yet regular and distinct enough—the ticking of the unseen clock!

He had even thought of stepping, alone, inside that hut, but his resolution had been drawn upon to the limit, and he found it impossible to carry out the design. The shadows seemed to be thickening with amazing swiftness, and, shaken by the sudden dreadful thought of night upon that awesome island, Sleuth beat a precipitate retreat.

“What’s the use?” he whispered huskily, as he retrod the path. “I can’t find out anything this way, and I’ve done more than any other fellow of our bunch has dared to do. If I tell them, they’ll think I’m lying.”

The sun was gone when he reached the shore, and, arriving at the spot where he had left his boat, he made the disconcerting discovery that that likewise was gone. In the sand he could see the marks he had made when he drew the boat up, but, to his horror, it was not there, nor could it be seen afloat anywhere upon the lake.