“The eggs and bacon were in the refrigerator all right when I washed up the supper dishes last night,” she said.  “I counted on having them for breakfast.  Now they’re gone!”

“Then there must have been someone in our camp, snooping around last night,” said Daddy Brown.  “It was a tramp, after all.  And when he helped himself to something to eat he knocked down the pans.  That’s how it happened.”

“I suppose so,” said Mother Brown.  “Well, I’m sure if the poor tramp was hungry I’m glad he got something to eat.  But I wish he had not taken my bacon and eggs.”

However, there was plenty else to eat in Camp Rest-a-While, so no one went hungry.

“I wonder if it was the same tramp that took the pie,” said Bunny as he finished the last of his glass of milk.

“He must be a hungry tramp to eat a whole pie, and all those eggs, and the big piece of bacon,” said Bunker Blue.

“Oh, I guess the things he took lasted him for several meals,” Mr. Brown said.  “The funny part of it is, though, that Splash did not bark.  When he ran out of the tent last night the tramp could not have been far away.  And yet Splash did not bark, as he always does when strangers are around at night.  I think that’s queer.”

“So do I,” put in Uncle Tad.  “Maybe Splash knew the tramp.”

“Splash doesn’t like tramps,” said Bunny.

“Well, he must have liked this one, for he didn’t bark at him,” added Bunker Blue with a laugh.  “Maybe Splash knew this tramp before you children found your dog, on the island where you were shipwrecked.”

For Bunny and Sue had found Splash on an island, as I told you in the first book of this series.  That was when Bunny and Sue were “shipwrecked,” as they called it.

Nothing else had been taken from Camp Rest-a-While except the bacon and eggs, and as Bunker Blue was going to the village that day he could buy more meat for Mother Brown.  The eggs they could get at the farmhouse where they bought their milk.  So, after all, no harm was done.

“The only thing is,” said Daddy Brown, “that I don’t like the idea of tramps prowling about our tents at night.  I’d rather they would keep away.”

[Illustration:  BUNNY AND SUE OFTEN WENT BATHING IN THE COOL LAKE. Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-a-While. Page 181.]

It was so lovely, living out in the woods, near the beautiful lake, as the Browns were doing, that they soon forgot about the noise in the night, and the tramps.  Bunny and Sue were getting as brown as little Indian children.  For they wore no hats and they went about with only leather sandals on, and no stockings, their sleeves rolled up to their elbows, so their arms and legs were brown, too.  They often went bathing in the cool lake, for, not far from the camp, was a little sandy beach.

Of course, it was not like an ocean beach, or the one at Sandport Bay, for there were only little waves, and then only when the wind blew.  In the ocean there are big waves all the while, pounding the sandy shore.