The rowboat shot past Harriet Burrell’s hiding place so close that she might have reached out an oar and touched it.  She was tempted to give the person in the stern of the boat a poke with her oar, but wisely refrained from doing anything of the sort.  After the boat had passed, Harriet sat perfectly still, arms folded, a quiet smile on her face.

“Harriet Burrell, you are a pretty good scout, after all.  You wouldn’t have made such a bad Indian.  I’ll rap on wood.”

She drummed on the gunwale of the boat.  “I hope they won’t go far.  The girls will worry if I do not return soon.  Still, Miss Elting will know that there is a good reason for my remaining away so long.  There they come.”

The rowboat was returning.  The rowers were moving more slowly now, talking and wondering as to the man who had been spying on them.  They passed her talking loudly.  One of them was threatening vengeance.  The girl waited until they had rowed a safe distance from her, after which she cautiously pushed her boat out and began rowing toward home.  Harriet was chuckling under her breath, but her eyes and ears were on the alert.  She had not forgotten that canoe.  Any person who could paddle like that was well worth looking out for.

Harriet rowed past the entrance to their retreat without having observed it.  But it was only a few moments later when she discovered her error.  She turned her boat more carefully this time, then rowed it into the secret waterway.  So quietly did she enter that her companions did not discover her until the nose of her rowboat bumped the scow.

There was a little scream, quickly suppressed by Miss Elting.

“Is that you, Harriet?” she questioned, with no trace of alarm in her voice.

“Yes.”

“You were so quiet about it that you gave me the creeps,” declared Margery.

“Did you find them, Harriet?” asked Jane.

“Yes.  And they came near to finding me too.  They chased me nearly all the way home.  I hid in the bushes and waited.  They passed me and came on this way, I should judge nearly up to the entrance, after which they turned about and went back.  That isn’t the only strange experience I have had since I left you.”  Harriet related the incident of the mysterious canoe.

“What were the men doing?”

“They were pitching camp.  We are going to have near neighbors,” answered Harriet, unshipping the oar and tying the rowboat to the scow.

“Of course, you do not know who they are?”

“Yes, I do.  It is George Baker and his friends.”

A chorus of exclamations greeted this announcement.

“They have come over here to find us.  I think we will play our second trick on them to-night.  It won’t do to wait until to-morrow.  We will get caught if we do.”

“Those boys certainly are persistent.  They must suspect that we are in hiding somewhere hereabouts.”

“Yes.  I wanted them to think so.  I did not wish them to believe we had been drowned and have the entire lakeside out looking for us.  That wouldn’t be fun.  It is more fun to tease and tantalize them.”