Don't you think so?"

"Is it the custom to do so when the enemy, he arrive?" asked Colonel
Marchand, to whom the idiomatic speech of the Yankee was still a puzzle.

"Sure!" replied Tom, grinning. "Sure, Henri! These New England women would
clean house, no matter what catastrophe arrived."

"Oh, don't suggest such horrid possibilities," cried Jennie. "And they are
only fooling you, Henri."

"Look yonder!" exclaimed Captain Tom, waving an instructive hand. "Behold!
Let the Kaiser's underseas boat come. That little tin lizzie of the sea is
ready for it. Depth bombs and all!"

The grim looking drab submarine chaser lay at the nearest dock, the faint
spiral of smoke rising from her stack proclaiming that she was ready for
immediate work. There was a tower, too, on the highest point on the
headland from which a continual watch was kept above the town.

"O-o-oh!" gurgled Jennie, snuggling up to Henri. "Suppose one of those
German subs shelled the movie camp back there on Beach Plum Point!"

"They would likely spoil a perfectly good picture, then," said Helen
practically. "Think of Ruthie's 'Seaside Idyl!'.

"Oh, say!" Helen went on. "They tell me that old hermit has submitted a
story in the contest. What do you suppose it is like, Ruth?"

The girl of the Red Mill was sitting beside Aunt Kate. She flushed when
she said:

"Why shouldn't he submit one?"

"But that hermit isn't quite right in his head, is he?" demanded Ruth's
chum.

"I don't know that it is his head that is wrong," murmured Ruth, shaking
her own head doubtfully.

Here Jennie broke in. "Is auntie letting you read her story, Ruth?" she
asked slyly.

"Now, Jennie Stone!" exclaimed their chaperon, blushing.

"Well, you are writing one. You know you are," laughed her niece.

"I--I am just trying to see if I can write such a story," stammered Aunt
Kate.

"Well, I am sure you could make up a better scenario than that old grouch
of a hermit," Helen declared, warmly.

Ruth did not add anything to this discussion. What she had discovered
regarding the hermit's scenario was of too serious a nature to be publicly
discussed.

Her interview the evening before with Mr. Hammond regarding the matter had
left Ruth in a most uncertain frame of mind. She did not know what to do
about the stolen scenario. She shrank from telling even Helen or Tom of
her discovery.

To tell the truth, Mr. Hammond's seeming doubt--not of her truthfulness
but of her wisdom--had