THE next morning Prime waited until after breakfast before telling
Lucetta about the visit of the intruder, the postponement basing itself
upon a very natural disinclination to re-align himself, even
constructively, with such a brutal humorist as Watson Grider. Indeed,
when he told the story, he omitted to mention the barbarian's name;
would never have mentioned it if Lucetta had not pushed him into a
corner.

"You say you saw the man; was it a stranger, or some one you knew?" she
questioned.

"I couldn't be sure," Prime evaded. "The fire wasn't burning very
brightly, and he had just blinded me with his flashlight."

The gray eyes were regarding him calmly.

"It is to be hoped, Cousin Donald, that you will never have to fib
yourself out of a real difficulty. You prevaricate so clumsily, you
know."

"I wasn't lying," he protested; "really, you know, I couldn't be sure."

"But you thought you recognized him."

"Yes, I did," he admitted doggedly. "I didn't mean to tell you, but I
fancy it doesn't make any great difference now. It was Grider, of
course."

"You are sure?"

"I have just said that I wasn't sure. I didn't see his face. But I saw a
golf cap and a sweater, and Grider wears both upon any and all
occasions; he has even been accused of sleeping in them."

"But why should he come here like that and then run away again?"

"He wanted to find out how his execrable joke was getting along, of
course! I had a mind to fire at him after he got into the boat, and I
wish now that I had. You didn't hear any of the noise?"

"Not a sound." They had taken the cooking utensils down to the river
edge to wash them, and Lucetta scoured for a silent half minute on the
skillet before she picked the one comforting grain of assurance out of
the midnight adventure. "We ought to be obliged to this outrageous
friend of yours for one thing, anyway," she commented. "He has told us
that there are no more rapids to be shot. If he could come up the river
in a motor-boat, we can go down it safely in a canoe."

"That is so," said Prime; "I hadn't thought of that. I wonder if our
patch is sticking all right. Suppose we go and see."

They went to look, and what they saw struck them both dumb. The clamped
patch was still in place, but a glance at the upturned canoe bottom
showed them what the midnight marauder had done and explained for Prime
the cause of the ripping noise he had heard. For a distance fully
one-third of its leng