r saw if that thing I hit proves to be the _Bright
Eyes_."

Polly had glanced behind them frequently. "Don't you hear anything?" she
asked finally.

"Hear what?"

"Hush! that's somebody getting up a sail. Can't you hear it?"

Wyn listened, and then murmured: "Your ears must be sharper than mine,
Polly. I hear nothing but the slap of the water."

"No. There is another sailboat under weigh. Where can it be from?"

"You don't suppose your father was aroused, and is coming after us?"
asked Wyn.

"Of course not. Beside, the _Coquette_ is the only sailing
boat--except a canoe--that we have at present. The other cat is loaned
for a week. And I heard the hoops creaking on the mast as a heavy sail
went up."

"Some crowd of fishermen?" suggested Wyn.

"But where's their light?"

Wyn stared all around. "You're right," she gasped. "There isn't a single
twinkling lantern--except ashore."

Polly, sitting in the stern seat, reached for their own lantern and
smothered its rays. "We won't show a gleam, either," she muttered.

"Why! who could it possibly be?" cried Wyn. "Do you think somebody may
be following us?"

"I don't know," returned Polly, grimly. "But I thought I heard something
back there at our house. We were talking loud. If those silver images
were worth all Dr. Shelton says they were, there are more than us girls
who would like to find them."

"My goodness me! I didn't think of _that_," observed Wyn Mallory,
with a little shiver. "Do you suppose we really are being followed?"

CHAPTER XXV

THE STRANGE BATEAU

Polly laughed a little. Yet she spoke seriously.

"You needn't be so worried, Wyn. I know most of the men who do business
on the lake. Some of them are mighty fine fellows, and others are just
the opposite; but I'm not afraid of the worst of them."

"If they followed us, and we _did_ find the sunken motor boat,
couldn't they grapple for the box of silver images, and steal them?"
demanded Wyn.

"Not easily. You see, they don't know where the box was stowed. Father
told nobody but me. The _Bright Eyes_ was a good-sized boat, and
they'd have some trouble getting up the box without raising the boat
herself."

"I suppose that's so," admitted Wyn, less anxiously, as the
_Coquette_ carried them swiftly toward Gannet Island. "But these
men you speak of might interfere with us."

"Yes. That's so. But they'd get as good as they sent, I reckon," said
Polly, who didn't seem to have a bit of fe