and the silver images been
found, Dr. Shelton might have been obliged to pay a large reward to
obtain them, for not all of the bateau men of the lake were honest.

"Some of them bothered father a good deal while he was first laid up
from his accident, coming by night and trying to get him to give them
details which he hadn't given to the other searchers. They thought he
must know just where the _Bright Eyes_ was sunk," Polly had told
the captain of the Go-Ahead Club. "But they got tired of that after a
while. They saw he really did not know what had become of the boat."

Polly! She was the one to confide in, Wyn decided. And the captain of
the Go-Ahead Club did not decide upon this until after the other girls
in the big tent, and Mrs. Havel, were all asleep. Wyn had been awake an
hour wondering what she would better do.

Now, convinced that the boatman's daughter would be a wiser as well as
safer confidante at this stage than Frank or the others, Wyn wriggled
out of her blanket and seized her bathing suit. It was a beautiful warm
night. She was no more afraid of the woods and lake at this hour than
she was by daylight.

So she slipped into the suit, got out of the tent without rousing any of
the others, selected her own paddle from the heap by the fireplace, and
ran barefooted down to the shore. It took but a minute to push her canoe
into the water.

She paddled away around the rushes at the end of the strip of sand below
the knoll, driving the canoe toward the Jarley Landing. Out of the
rushes came a sudden splashing, and some water-fowl, disturbed by her
passing, spattered deeper into hiding.

Wyn only laughed. The warm, misty night wrapped her around like a cloak;
yet there was sufficient light on the surface of the lake for her to see
her course a few yards ahead.

_This_ was a real adventure--out in her canoe alone in the dark.
And how fast she made the light craft travel through the still water!

She reached the landing in a very short time. Hopping out, she hauled up
the canoe. Was that the water splashing--or was there a sound behind her
on the float? Was it a footstep--somebody hastening away?

Now, for the first time, Wyn felt a little tremor. But she was naturally
too brave to be particularly disturbed by such a fancy. Who would be
lurking about the Jarleys' place at this hour?

So, after a moment, she shook off her doubt, and ran lightly up the
float and along the path to the little cottage. She