The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat | Page 7

on here. Something occurred the first day we were here, to
excite my suspicion. And now this strange thing has happened. There's
the rowboat. Let's go out and look around. Oh, this is too bad, too bad!"
CHAPTER II
CRAZY JANE MAKES A DISCOVERY
"Wait!"
Jane sprang forward, and grasping the rope, lifted it from the water and
began hauling in on it. She uttered a shout of joy.
"There's no 'Red Rover' on the other end of this rope, Harriet," she
cried.
"Then it has broken away and sunk," answered Harriet gloomily. "Let's
get into the rowboat and go out yonder."
"In a minute. I want to see what is at the other end of this rope, Harriet,
dear. There's nothing like beginning at the right end. This is the right
end; after we get the rope in we will move on to the other end. We may
have to dive, but you and I know how to do that, don't we darlin'?"
Harriet nodded. The long rope came in dripping, so cold to the touch as
to make Jane's fingers numb.
"There!" exclaimed Jane, slamming the rope down on the wharf.
"There's the old thing. Didn't I tell you there was no 'Red Rover' on the
end of it."
"Then we had better take to the rowboat. I don't understand this at all,"
said Harriet, in a troubled voice.
"Just a minute, Harriet. Will you look at this and tell Jane McCarthy the
meaning of it?" She extended the end of the rope toward Harriet. The

latter took it, permitting the dripping rope to lie across the palm of one
hand for a minute. Harriet glanced up at her companion with troubled
eyes.
"Do you know what has been done to it?" asked Harriet.
"I think so," nodded Jane.
"The rope has been cut," reflected Harriet.
"It has," agreed Jane.
"But, who could have done such a thing?" Harriet wondered.
"If I knew, I'd make him suffer for this piece of work," retorted Jane.
"I don't know; I can't even think," answered Harriet solemnly. "What
do you suppose has become of the boat, Jane?"
"Goodness knows," replied Jane.
"I'm going to search the lake." Harriet ran around the end of the pier,
where, shoving off the rowboat, she leaped in. Jane followed her. "I'm
going to the west. The wind is blowing that way."
Jane McCarthy nodded understandingly. Harriet was rowing, Jane
sitting in the stern of the boat.
"Watch the shore, Jane. I will do the rowing. I am going to tell you
what I discovered that day we first went aboard the houseboat. I put my
hand on the stove quite by accident that morning. The stove was so hot
that it burned my hand."
"You don't say?"
"Yes. Now explain how that stove happened to be hot," continued
Harriet.
"That's easy. Somebody had had a fire in it," nodded Jane.

"Exactly. And not long before we went aboard. Then there were bread
crumbs on the floor. Jane, some person had been living on that boat.
You remember how anxious Dee Dickinson was that we should not go
to the boat until he had first been there?"
"Yes, but what has that to do with the cutting of the rope, last night, and
losing the boat?"
"I don't know. That the two puzzles have some connection I am
positive. What we wish most, just now, is to find the 'Red Rover.'"
"There's something red on the shore; it looks like a fire!" cried Jane,
pointing excitedly. "Oh, if it should be the boat."
Harriet ceased rowing and quickly turned her head over her right
shoulder. She gazed, at first half startled, then uttered a cry of delight.
"It's the 'Red Rover.' Don't you see? Hurrah! We've found the boat. It's
the sun shining on those red sides that made it look like a fire."
Harriet swung the prow of the boat and began rowing shoreward with
all her might. After a few minutes of rowing she drove the boat in
alongside of the "Red Rover," then leaped out on the shore. The
unknown miscreant having cut her from her moorings the houseboat
had drifted down the lake. She had stranded among a forest of rushes,
the bottom of the boat being hard and fast on the gravel.
The girls breathless with excitement, climbed aboard. The after-half of
the house floor was under water. There were fully two feet of water in
the stern. In the after cockpit were several bushels of sand and gravel
that had been thrown up by the wind and waves during the night.
"Oh, the villains, to do a thing like this!" raged Jane. She started to run
aft for a pail but losing her footing on the slippery floor she went
sprawling and