Lasses
Copley, Ruth."

"Your own fault that you don't," returned her chum promptly. "You could
have been along. But you don't like Mr. Copley."

"What has that to do with it?" rejoined Helen smartly. "I would go
adventuring with any boy--even 'Lasses."

"Don't call him that," commanded Ruth.

"Pooh! He likes it. Or he used to."

"He is a nice fellow," Ruth declared, with more earnestness than there
really seemed to be necessity for.

"I--de-clare!" murmured Helen. "Really! Does the wind sit in that
quarter?"

CHAPTER XVII

A DETERMINATION

However the wind might sit and whatever may have been her secret opinion
of Ruth Fielding's interest in Chessleigh Copley, Helen suddenly became
mute regarding that young man.

But, after a moment, she was not at all mute upon the subject of the King
of the Pipes and what might be going on on the island where they believed
the queer old man had his headquarters.

"If it should be smugglers over there--only fancy!" sighed Helen
ecstatically. "Diamonds and silks and lots of precious things! My, oh,
my!"

"Better than pirates?" laughed Ruth.

"Consider!" cried her chum boldly. "I said that island looked like a
pirate's den from the start."

"Your fore-sight-hind-sight is wonderful," declared Ruth, shaking her
head and making big eyes at her friend.

"Don't laugh--Oh! What's that?"

From over the water, and unmistakably from the rocky island on the summit
of which the blasted beech stood--a prominent landmark--came the strange
cry, "co-ee! co-ee!" which they had heard before.

"Do you suppose that poor old man is calling for help?" hesitated Ruth.

"Your grandmother's aunt!" ejaculated Helen, in disgust.

"We-ell that is even a more roundabout relationship than that between
Aunt Alvirah Boggs and me. Poor old soul, she is nobody's relation, as
she often says, but everybody's aunt."

"There goes the signal again, and here comes that boat!" exclaimed Helen
suddenly.

"What boat?" demanded Ruth, looking in the direction of the distant
Canadian island, toward which the canoe, with Totantora and Wonota in it,
had now disappeared.

"Turn around--do!" exclaimed Helen. "This way. That is the same boat we
saw going by some time ago. The boat with the yellow lady in it, as
Wonota called her."

"This is very strange," murmured Ruth.

"But the yellow lady is not with those men now," said Helen.

"I do not see any woman aboard," admitted her friend.

The bo