“Our houseboat is gone!” gasped Madge.  “It was right there, tied to that very post along the shore early this morning!  The man who brought it down from Baltimore left a note for me describing the landing place.  He said he had to go back to Baltimore, but that he would come here this afternoon to tow us.  Now the boat has gone!  O, girls, what shall we do?”

The girls stared at the water in silence.  Disappointment rendered them speechless for the moment.  “Let us look up and down the shore,” suggested Phil comfortingly.  “I suppose it is just barely possible that the rope broke away from the stake, and the boat has floated off somewhere.”

The four girls ran up and down the bank, straining their eyes in anxious glances out over the wide stretch of water.  There was no houseboat in sight.  It had vanished as completely as though it had really been a “Ship of Dreams.”

“Perhaps you have made a mistake in the place, Madge,” was the chaperon’s first remark as she joined the excited party.

Madge compressed her red lips.  Miss Jones was so provoking.  She was utterly without tact.  But now that she was to be one of the party it would be wrong to say a single impolite thing to their chaperon the whole six weeks of their holiday, no matter how provoking or tactless she might he.  Madge sighed impatiently, then turned to the teacher.

“No, I am not mistaken, Miss Jones.  I can’t be.  You see, I came to this very spot this morning and went aboard our boat.  Then I have the man’s description of the landing place.  I think we had better go back to the village and see if we can get some men who know the shore along here to come to help us look out for our boat.  There is no use in having our furniture brought here if we haven’t any houseboat,” finished Madge, her voice trembling.

“Come along, then; I will go back with you,” volunteered Phil.  “Miss Jones, you sit under the tree.  Lillian, you and Nellie keep a sharp look-out.  If any one comes along in a boat, ask him about ours.”

“Do you think our boat has gone forever, Phil?” asked Madge dejectedly as the two companions walked wearily back over the road they had traveled so gayly a short time before.

“I don’t know,” replied Phil.  “I should say it depended entirely upon who had taken the trouble to spirit it away.”

While the two girls stood gazing moodily out over the bay a hard, green apple landed with a thump on top of Madge’s uncovered head.  Madge and Phil looked up simultaneously.  There in a gnarled old apple tree directly above them appeared the grinning face of the small boy whose acquaintance Madge had made earlier in the morning.

“Lost your boat, ain’t you?” he asked cheerfully.

Madge nodded and walked on.  She was not anxious to renew conversation with the mischievous youngster.

Phil, however, was seized with an inspiration.  “Have you been about this place very long?” she inquired casually.