t you may
call hunky-dory. Bill Drake's father had a flat-bottomed boat that we
got into and rowed along shore. We rigged up a sail; but there was
something the matter with it, and it kept flopping about, and wasn't
much good, but anyhow it looked nice. We never went far from shore. We
weren't afraid, but we didn't care to. Smugglers always kept along
shore.

We all had blue shirts, and pulled our caps down over our eyes to look
fierce. And Bill Drake kept an old pipe of his father's in his mouth; it
hadn't any tobacco in it, but it was a real pipe, so we made Bill
captain. The thing was to get lots of traps into the cave to look like
smuggled goods. We fished up old bathing pieces and bits of broken
bottles, and Bill brought down a red petticoat; but the best of all was
Aunt Pam's shawl.

Now I'd scorn to do a mean or sneaking thing, especially to Aunt Pam,
but she didn't seem to care a button for that shawl. I didn't think it
was worth twopence. She used to wear it in all sorts of weather, and it
looked to me as if it was patched up out of bits that she hadn't any
other use for. I'm sure she'd worn it since she was a baby. I could
remember seeing that shawl around as long as I could remember anything,
and it was just the thing for our cave. It was kind of like a Turk's
best turban as to color; and when it was fixed over Bill Bates's bathing
suit, and one corner hung down over the rock, it made the cave look
bully. I went into Aunt Pam's room one morning, and found it thrown over
the foot of the bedstead, like an old blanket, and I carried it off to
the cave.

When I came home from school, I saw Aunt Pam out walking with a worsted
thing that one of my sisters made for her, and I thought it was enough
sight handsomer in the way of a shawl. I went on down to the cave, and
when I got home again there was a regular hullabulloo in the house.

The girls were ransacking the closets, Aunt Pam was flying around like a
hen with its head cut off, and everybody was turning everything inside
out. "Maybe Tom's seen it," said mamma. "Tom, have you seen your aunt
Pam's shawl?"

"That old thing she used to wear around?" I said.

"Old thing!" they all shrieked together. "Why, it's a camel's-hair
shawl; it's worth five hundred dollars."

"Oh no!" I said. "I beg your pardon; there wasn't the hair of a camel,
or even a cat, in the shawl that I mean; it was just sewed together on
the wrong side like a bed-quilt."

"That was it, y