“Which way shall you come back?” asked Jane.

“The way we came in.  Don’t have the boat wait for me down there.  If I have to come back in a hurry I will wade.  Meadow-Brook Girls aren’t afraid of the water, you know.”

“We know,” answered Miss Elting, smiling, “but be careful that you don’t fall and hurt yourself.  Good-bye.  I will have the sheets and other things ready by the time you return.  We have the poles here.  I do hope we get an opportunity to use the stuff now that we have been at so much pains to get it ready.  You see, I am just as anxious to play this trick as the rest of you girls.”

Harriet laughed merrily at the prospect of the coming fun, then stepped out into the rowboat that Hazel had pulled close to the stern of the houseboat.  A few moments later Hazel left her companion on the west bank at the lower end of the little stream.  Harriet slipped away through the bushes almost noiselessly.  If everything worked smoothly the Tramp Club were to receive an overwhelming surprise.

CHAPTER XX

JANE PLAYS EAVESDROPPER

Two hours later the Meadow-Brook Girls were startled to hear a voice directly over their heads call: 

“Girls, girls.”

“Who is it?” asked Miss Elting cautiously.

“It’s I. I’m up here, right where we heard George Baker talking this morning.”

“You nearly thcared me to death!” gasped Tommy.

“Speak more quietly, please,” warned Harriet.  “Jane, I wish you would come up here.  No; I’m not going to take you far.  I want you within reach of the boat.”

“Do you see anything of the boys, Harriet?” asked Miss Elting.

“No, but I hear them occasionally.  They are quite a distance ahead, traveling fast, and ought to be back long before dark.”

Jane lost no time in hurrying to the lower end of the creek in order to join her friend.  Harriet lay on the rocks, at a point where she could not see the water, and there Jane joined her.

“What I want you to do,” Harriet explained in whispers, at the same time on the alert for sound or sign of the boys, “is to stay here, or not far from here, so that you can warn the girls in case I signal by making a cawing noise like a crow.  I don’t want the girls to make too much noise, for it would spoil our fun if the boys should discover our hiding place.”

“But how am I going to get back if I have to do so in a hurry?”

“Can you go down a rope?”

“Show me the rope that I can’t go down,” boasted Jane.

“How about this one?” smiled Harriet, producing a coil of quarter inch manila rope.

“Well, it’s small, but I’ll try it.  Where do you wish me to climb?”

“I’ll show you.  Take hold of my feet and don’t you dare let go.  I surely shall break my neck if you do.”  Harriet crawled over the edge, Jane grasping her by the ankles to prevent her from falling.  Then Harriet tied one end of the rope to a root of a tree that stood on the brink.  “Look out below!” she warned, at the same time dropping the coil through the foliage and shaking the rope until the coil finally dropped into the stream.  “Please draw the rope up to the boat,” she called.  “That’s it.  Now pull me back, Jane.”