eps you busy, I grant. And there go Tom and Ruth mooning off
together with fish lines. Lots of fishing _they_ will do! They are almost
as bad as you and Henri. Why!" ejaculated Helen in some heat, "I am just
driven to writing scenarios to keep from dying of loneliness."

"I notice that 'juvenile lead,' Mr. Simmons, is keeping you quite busy,"
remarked Jennie slyly, as she turned away.

It was a fact that Ruth and Tom enjoyed each others' company. But Helen
need not have been even a wee bit jealous. To tell the truth, she did not
like to "get all mussed up," as she expressed it, by going fishing. To
Ruth the adventure was a glad relief from worriment. Much as she tried,
she could not throw off all thought of her lost scenario.

She welcomed every incident that promised amusement and mental relaxation.
Some of the troupe of actors--the men, mostly--were bathing off the
Point.

"And see that man in the old skiff!" cried Ruth. "'The Lone Fisherman'."

The individual in question sat upon a common kitchen chair in the skiff
with a big, patched umbrella to keep the sun off, and was fishing with a
pole that he had evidently cut in the woods along the shore.

"That is that hermit fellow," said Tom. "He's a queer duck. And the boys
bother him a good deal."

He was angrily driving some of the swimmers away from his fishing location
at that moment. It was plain the members of the moving picture company
used the hermit as a butt for their jokes.

While one fellow was taking up the hermit's attention in front, another
bather rose silently behind him and reached into the bottom of the skiff.
What this second fellow did Tom and Ruth could not see.

"The old chap can't swim a stroke," explained one of the laughing bathers
to the visitors. "He's as afraid of water as a cat. Now you watch."

But Tom and Ruth saw nothing to watch. They went on to the tip of the
Point and Tom prepared the fishing tackle and baited the hooks. Just as
Ruth made her first cast there sounded a scream from the direction of the
lone fisherman.

"What is it?" she gasped, dropping her pole.

The bathers had deserted the old man in the skiff, and were now at some
distance. He was anchored in probably twenty feet of water.

To the amazement of Ruth and her companion, the skiff had sunk until its
gunwales were scarcely visible. The hermit had wrenched away his umbrella
and was now balanced upon the chair on his feet, in danger of sinking. His
fear of thi