“What does it mean, Harriet?” demanded the guardian.

“I think a fairy must have touched the world with her wand and changed it into something else during the night,” replied Harriet.  “But don’t you know where you are, Miss Elting?”

“I do not.  Do you?”

“I think I do.”

“I know,” piped Tommy.  “We are on the water.  I wath in it earlier thith morning.”

No one gave any heed to Tommy’s pleasantry.  They were too amazed and perplexed to give thought to anything but the strangeness of their surroundings.

“Then I will tell you,” said Harriet, “We are on the other side of the lake.  Do you see that white house on the bluff across the lake?  Well, that is the farmhouse where we got our milk yesterday.”

“But—­but——­” gasped Miss Elting.

“We are now where we wanted to be, across the lake near the beautiful islands and the pretty wooded shores.”

“But how did we get here?” finished Miss Elting.

“I don’t know.  I know only that we’re here.  Somehow we must have made a mysterious journey across the lake during the night, or else the fairy that I spoke of has turned the lake around in the night and left us standing exactly as we were.  But I can’t think on an empty stomach.  Let’s dress and get breakfast; then we will consider what has happened to us.  We are anchored all right, so there is no occasion for worry.  The weather is fine too.  Our unknown enemy did us a good turn, this time, if he only knew it.  Come along, girls.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE ISLAND OF DELIGHT

“It is the most mysterious thing I ever encountered,” declared Miss Elting at breakfast, after she had stepped to the window again to gaze off over the lake to the cove—­in the distance—­where the “Red Rover” had lain when they retired the night before.

None of the girls except Harriet and Jane had much appetite for breakfast.  They were too excited over the mysterious changing of their position.

“What I cannot understand,” continued the guardian, “is how we, who pride ourselves on being woodsmen, trailers and scouts and all the other things, could possibly be carried across a lake, dragged over several miles of water and not know anything about it.  Can you explain why we didn’t wake up, Harriet Burrell?”

Harriet shook her head.

“And we are anchored just the same as we were last night,” remarked Jane.  “It’s spirits, girls.  No mistake about that.”

“Now, Jane,” laughed Harriet.  “You know very well that the mere fact that our anchor was pulled up before we left the other side of the lake, then let down on this side, makes your spirit theory impossible.”

“It wath thpookth,” declared Tommy.  “I thaw one thtanding on the handle of the mop pail latht night after I went to bed.  I heard the water thplathh when he jumped in the pail.”