haps Captain Plum heard the gloating chuckle that followed the
movement. If so he thought it only some night bird in the brush.

"Heigh-ho!" he exclaimed with some return of his old cheer, "it's about
time we were starting!" He jumped to his feet and began brushing the
sand from his clothes. When he had done, he walked out upon the rim of
beach and stretched himself until his arm-bones cracked.

Again the hidden head shot forth from its concealment. A sudden turn and
Captain Plum would certainly have been startled. For it was a weird
object, this spying head; its face dead-white against the dense green of
the verdure, with shocks of long white hair hanging down on each side,
framing between them a pair of eyes that gleamed from cavernous sockets,
like black glowing beads. There was unmistakable fear, a tense anxiety
in those glittering eyes as Captain Plum walked toward the paper, but
when he paused and stretched himself, the sole of his boot carelessly
trampling the discarded letter, the head disappeared again and there
came another satisfied bird-like chuckle from the gloom of the thicket.

Captain Plum now put on his coat, buttoned it close to conceal the
weapons in his belt, and walked along the narrow water-run that crept
like a white ribbon between the lake and the island wilderness. No
sooner had he disappeared than the bushes and vines behind the rock were
torn asunder and a man wormed his way through them. For an instant he
paused, listening for returning footsteps, and then with startling
agility darted to the beach and seized the crumpled letter.

The person who for the greater part of the afternoon had been spying
upon Captain Plum from the security of the thicket was to all
appearances a very small and a very old man, though there was something
about him that seemed to belie a first guess at his age. His face was
emaciated; his hair was white and hung in straggling masses on his
shoulders; his hooked nose bore apparently the infallible stamp of
extreme age. Yet there was a strange and uncanny strength and quickness
in his movements. There was no stoop to his shoulders. His head was set
squarely. His eyes were as keen as steel. It would have been impossible
to have told whether he was fifty or seventy. Eagerly he smoothed out
the abused missive and evidently succeeded even in the failing light, in
deciphering much of it, for the glimmer of a smile flashed over his thin
features as he thrust the paper into