ighborhood we ought to find him
without much trouble. What do you fellows say to my plan?"

"It's about as systematic as anything could be," Dave agreed.
"But what if one pair of us find something?"

"We'll try our best to communicate with the other pair," Dick
rejoined. "Suppose, Dave, that you and I run into something interesting
and don't want to leave it? Tom and Dan, not meeting us at the
appointed place, will know enough to keep right on over our course
until they find us."

"That looks plain enough," nodded Reade thoughtfully.

"All right, then," Dick declared. "Now we'll start."

He and Dave started off at a swinging gait. The first time Prescott
turned to look behind him Reade and Danny Grin had already vanished.

Dick kept close to the shore, Dave moving in a parallel line a
few steps up the slope.

"There isn't any hut, lodge or camp down there," Dave called softly,
"or else we'd have seen it from our camp on the other side of
the lake."

"I know it," Dick nodded. "What I'm trying to do is to see if
I can find any hint, on the shore, of how that fellow landed yesterday,
without Tom or Danny catching sight of him. Of course, a very
clever swimmer could have gone quite a distance under water.
and I want to see if I can find any sign of anything that would
have hidden his landing from the fellows in the canoe."

"Oh!" nodded Dave understandingly.

The full ten minutes of searching passed without the slightest
trace of a discovery.

"Halt," Dick called up smilingly. "Now, join me, Darry, while
I count off the hundred steps up the slope."

This done, the chums started backward, keeping a course as nearly
parallel with the shore as was possible.

"Now, try to be keener than ever," Dick urged, as Dave paced off
another twenty steps higher up. "We're in a growth of deeper
forest, with a bigger tangle of underbrush and it will be easy
enough to overlook something."

The two boys trudged on. They were five minutes on their way
back, perhaps, when Dick heard a sudden scrambling in the underbrush
not far away. Then Prescott caught sight of a human figure, yet
so fleetingly that he could have given no description of it.

"Is that you, Darry?" he called sharply.

But it wasn't, for no answer came back, save for the slight sound
of someone going through the brush farther on.

"Dave! Darry!" shouted Prescott. "Here! Quickly!"

Then Dick dashed on in pursuit, calling again and again until