owner, is so very strict about trespassing."

"Yes, the keepers are down on you if you even go a few yards into the
preserves," agreed Ralph. "Look here! What do you say to camping out on
that little island? There can't be any pheasants there to scare, and we
ought to get plenty of sticks."

The island in question was a small, green-looking collection of hazel
bushes and birch trees, well out in the middle of the lake. It had an
attractive appearance, so they rowed through the quiet stretch of water
that separated them from it, and ran the boat in among the reeds that
grew at the edge.

"It seems rather jolly," said Rhoda. "Suppose we leave the baskets here,
and go and explore first to find a good place?"

"It's quite romantic," declared Irene, "like Ellen's Isle in the _Lady
of the Lake_. We ought to find a hunting-lodge among the trees, and an
interesting outlaw living there."

"More likely to find a poacher!" laughed Ralph; "though there'd be
nothing for him to trap here, unless he kept a boat stowed away in the
reeds, and took midnight excursions into the woods."

"I think it's the kind of place for a hermit," said Monica. "He could
have had a little cell and told his beads without being disturbed by
anybody, except an occasional knight-errant who would blow a horn from
the opposite bank. I wonder if one ever lived here?"

"The landlords couldn't have been so particular about trespassing in
those days, then, if he did," replied Leonard. "I don't believe Sir
Percy Harwood would let anybody settle so near his pheasants; he'd
suspect steel traps or wire snares under the cassock, and expect to hear
a shot in the woods instead of a vesper bell."

"We'll tie the boat to this old stump," said Ralph. "Be careful where
you step in getting off--the ground seems fearfully soppy. Perhaps it
may be better higher up. Let us come on a little. I say, there's
something rather queer about it, isn't there?"

There certainly was something decidedly queer. The green mossy earth
under their feet gave way as if they were treading upon a feather bed.
At each step it sank with a curious squelching sound, and rose behind
with the elasticity of a cork, so that as they sprang here and there the
whole of the little island appeared to be bounding up and down beneath
them, as Leonard expressed it, "just like a spring mattress when you
jump on it".

"The ground is so funny, too," said Meta, poking about with a stick; "it
doesn't seem