" sighed Dorothy.

"But it must be found before the Big Day!" cried Dora.

"I guess that's what all the girls of Central High will say. But Lake
Luna is a large body of water, and there are plenty of wild pieces of
shore where the shell could be hidden, in the mouth of a creek, or some
such place. Or, perhaps it has been removed from the lake altogether.
Oh, it may have been already destroyed."

"Dreadful!" groaned Dorothy.

"And we haven't paid for it, yet," added Dora.

The news of the shell's disappearance was well circulated over the Hill
before schooltime. The girls of Central High could scarcely give proper
attention to their textbooks that morning. Some of the members of the
crew actually wept. It was the afternoon for practice, and there were
only a few more such opportunities.

There was no news of the lost boat when school was out. The police had
been notified, and the police launch had taken up the search. The
watchman at the boat houses was made to admit that it had been his
custom to sleep most of the night. There had never been any robbery of
the school boathouses before. But, as Principal Sharp of Central High
said, another watchman would doubtless be able to keep awake better than
Mike, and the old man received his notice.

This stringent measure did not bring the lost shell back, however.
Professor Dimp had the girls out in the old shell that afternoon, and
although they did their very best, they fell back more than forty
seconds in half a mile. And from what they knew about Keyport, the girls
of Central High knew very well that they could not afford to drop those
forty seconds if they were to win the Luna Boat Club's cup.

There wasn't a girl in Central High--unless it was Hester Grimes--who
did not consider the loss of the new shell a calamity. Theories of the
wildest nature were put forward to explain the robbery. That the shell
had been stolen for the sake of profit was hardly likely. Eight-oared
shells cannot be pledged at a pawn shop; nor would any other rowing club
purchase such a boat without knowing just where the craft came from.

Really, Bobby Hargrew's belief that one of the competing crews had
caused the shell to be spirited away gained ground among the school
pupils as a body. Yet there was no trace of the course of the robbers,
and the search of the borders of the lake was fruitless.

The newspapers took it up and the theory that one of the competing crews
had caused the shell'