shed. She looked exceedingly pretty.
"The thing to do," she said, "is to teach him a lesson. He's young. He
mayn't always have had to stoop to such--such criminality. If we can
scare him thoroughly, it might do him a lot of good."
I said I was afraid Tish took a more serious view of things and would
notify the authorities. And at that moment there came two or three
shots--then silence.
I shall never forget the ride after Tish and how we felt when we failed
to find her; for there was no sign of her. The wind had come up, and,
what with seeing Tish tied to that wretched canoe and sinking with it or
shot through the head and lying dead in the bottom of it, we were about
crazy. As we passed Island Eleven we could see the spy's camp-fire and
his tent, but no living person.
At four in the morning we gave up and started back, heavy-hearted.
What, therefore, was our surprise to find Tish sitting by the fire in
her bathrobe, with a cup of tea in her lap and her feet in a foot-tub of
hot water! Considering all we had gone through and that we had obeyed
orders exactly, she was distinctly unjust. Indeed, at first she quite
refused to speak to any of us.
"I do think, Tish," Aggie said as she stood shivering by the fire, "that
you might at least explain where you have been. We have been going up
and down the river for hours, burying you over and over."
Tish took a sip of tea, but said nothing.
"You said," I reminded her, "that if there was shooting, we were to
start after you at once. When we heard the shots, we went, of course."
Tish leaned over and, taking the teakettle from the fire, poured more
water into the foot-tub. Then at last she turned to speak.
"Bring some absorbent cotton and some bandages, Hutchins," she said. "I
am bleeding from a hundred wounds. As for you"--she turned fiercely on
Aggie and me--"the least you could have done was to be here when I
returned, exhausted, injured, and weary; but, of course, you were
gallivanting round the lake in an upholstered motor boat."
Here she poured more water into the foot-tub and made it much too hot.
This thawed her rather, and she explained what was wrong. She was
bruised, scratched to the knees, and with a bump the size of an egg on
her forehead, where she had run into a tree.
The whole story was very exciting. It seems she got the green canoe
without any difficulty, the spy being sound asleep in his tent; but
about that time the wind came up and Tish sai
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