ions had rolled up in their blankets;
then she opened the door wide so that the ocean breeze blew in and
swirled about the interior of the cabin in a miniature gale. The girls
did not mind it at all. They thought it delicious. This was getting
the real benefit of being at the sea shore. Harriet rolled in her
blanket directly in front of the door with her head pillowed on the
sill. To enter the cabin one would have to step over her. She went to
sleep after lying gazing out over the sea for some time.

"What's that?" Harriet started up with a half-smothered exclamation. A
report that sounded like the discharge of a gun had aroused her, or
else she had been dreaming. She was not certain which it had been. The
other girls were asleep, as was indicated by their regular breathing.
Harriet listened intently. She had not changed her position, but her
eyes were wide open, looking straight out to sea. Nothing unusual was
found there. She was about to close her eyes again when a peculiar
creaking sound greeted her ears. Harriet knew instantly the meaning of
the sound. It came from the straining of ropes on a sailboat.

Unrolling from the blanket and hastily dressing, the Meadow-Brook Girl
crawled out to the bar, wishing to make her observations unseen by any
one else. Now she saw it again, that same filmy cloud in the darkness,
towering up in the air, moving almost phantom-like into the bay to the
south of the cabin on Lonesome Bar.

"It's a boat. I believe it is the same one I saw in there before. But
I can't be sure of that. I don't know boats well enough; then, again,
the night is too dark to make certain. I don't know that it would be
anything of importance if a boat were to run in here to anchor for the
night. That evidently is what they propose doing," she thought.

That Harriet's surmise was correct was evidenced a few moments later
when the boat's anchor splashed into the waters of the bay and the
anchor chain rattled through the hawse hole. Harriet tried to get a
clear idea of what the boat itself looked like, but was unable to do
so on account of the darkness. Now the creak of oars was borne faintly
to her ears; the sound ceased abruptly, then was taken up again.

"They are putting a boat ashore!" muttered Harriet, who was now
sitting on the sand, her hair streaming over her shoulder in the
fresh, salty breeze. "I hope to goodness none of them comes out here.
The girls would be terribly frightened if they knew about