“Certainly, old man,” replied my client, anything but abashed.  “You’ll pardon me, but they seemed too good to be true.  I congratulate you on them.”

I was amused as well as alarmed at this piece of boldness, but the incident passed off without any disagreeable results, except, perhaps, a slight nervousness noticeable in the detective; and this soon disappeared.  As the sun grew low, the Celebrity’s conductors straggled in with fishing-rods and told of an afternoon’s sport, and we left the captain peacefully but sonorously slumbering on the bank.

“Crocker,” said my client to me, afterwards, “they didn’t feel like the real, home-grown article.  But aren’t they damned handsome?”

CHAPTER XIII

After supper, Captain Jay was rowed out and put to bed in his own bunk on the Scimitar.  Then we heaped together a huge pile of the driftwood on the beach and raised a blazing beacon, the red light of which I doubt not could be seen from the mainland.  The men made prongs from the soft wood, while Miss Thorn produced from the stores some large tins of marshmallows.

The memory of that evening lingers with me yet.  The fire colored everything.  The waves dashed in ruby foam at our feet, and even the tall, frowning pines at our backs were softened; the sting was gone out of the keen night wind from the north.  I found a place beside the gray cape I had seen for the first time the night of the cotillon.  I no longer felt any great dislike for Miss Thorn, let it be known.  Resentment was easier when the distance between Mohair and Asquith separated us,—­impossible on a yachting excursion.  But why should I be justifying myself?

Mr. Cooke and the Four, in addition to other accomplishments, possessed excellent voices, and Mr. Drew sang a bass which added much to the melody.  One of the Four played a banjo.  It is only justice to Mr. Drew to say that he seemed less like a detective than any man I have ever met.  He told a good story and was quick at repartee, and after a while the music, by tacit consent, was abandoned for the sake of hearing him talk.  He related how he had worked up the lake, point by point, from Beaverton to Asquith, and lightened his narrative with snappy accounts of the different boatmen he had run across and of the different predicaments into which he had fallen.  His sketches were so vivid that Mr. Cooke forgot to wink at me after a while and sat spellbound, while I marvelled at the imaginative faculty he displayed.  He had us in roars of laughter.  His stories were far from incredible, and he looked less like a liar than a detective.  He showed, too, an accurate and astonishing knowledge of the lake which could hardly have been acquired in any other way than the long-shore trip he had described.  Not once did he hint of a special purpose which had brought him to the island, and it was growing late.  The fire died down upon the