nd are marvelous. In the midst of
chopping, Tish suddenly looked up.

"Have you noticed," she said, "that the detective is always watching our
camp?"

"That's all he has to do," Aggie suggested.

"Stuff and nonsense! Didn't he follow you into the swamp? Does Hutchins
ever go out in the canoe that he doesn't go out also? I'll tell you what
has happened: She's young and pretty, and he's fallen in love with her."

I must say it sounded reasonable. He never bothered about the motor
boat, but the instant she took the canoe and started out he was hovering
somewhere near.

"She's noticed it," Tish went on. "That's what she was quarreling about
with him yesterday."

"How are we to know," said Aggie, who was gathering up the scraps of the
green canoe and building a fire under them--"how are we to know they are
not old friends, meeting thus in the wilderness? Fate plays strange
tricks, Tish. I lived in the same street with Mr. Wiggins for years, and
never knew him until one day when my umbrella turned wrong side out in a
gust of wind."

"Fate fiddlesticks!" said Tish. "There's no such thing as fate in
affairs of this sort. It's all instinct--the instinct of the race to
continue itself."

This Aggie regarded as indelicate and she was rather cool to Tish the
balance of the day.

Our prisoner spent most of the day at the end of the island toward us,
sitting quietly, as we could sec through the glasses. We watched
carefully, fearing at any time to see the Indian paddling toward him.

[Tish was undecided what to do in such an emergency, except to intercept
him and explain, threatening him also with having attempted to carry the
incriminating papers. As it happened, however, the entire camp had gone
for a two-days' deer hunt, and before they returned the whole thing had
come to its surprising end.]

Late in the afternoon Tish put her theory of the red-haired man to the
test.

"Hutchins," she said, "Miss Lizzie and I will cook the dinner if you
want to go in the canoe to Harvey's Bay for water-lilies."

Hutchins at once said she did not care a rap for water-lilies; but,
seeing a determined glint in Tish's eye, she added that she would go for
frogs if Tish wanted her out of the way.

"Don't talk like a child!" Tish retorted. "Who said I wanted you out of
the way?"

It is absolutely true that the moment Hutchins put her foot into the
canoe the red-haired man put down his fishing-rod and rose. And she had
not taken thr