anger. "How
dare you? What do you mean?"

"I don't mean to offend you, sir," said Mother Wit, while Jess tugged
at her sleeve and even Bobby stepped back toward the fringe of brush.
The old gentleman looked very terrible indeed.

"I don't mean to offend you, sir," repeated Laura. "But that man has
been twice to our camp. He has disturbed us. He was there again last
night and frightened our little maid-of-all-work almost out of her
wits. We have got to know what it means."

"You are beside yourself, girl!" gasped the old gentleman, and
instantly turned his head aside so that they could not see his face.

"Liz calls him 'Mr. Norman,'" Laura pursued. "If you do not tell me
who he is, and what his visits to our camp mean, I shall find out more
about him--_in Albany_!"

Professor Dimp did not favor them with another word. He walked away
and left the trio of girls standing, amazed, in the empty camping
place.

CHAPTER XVIII

AN EVENTFUL FISHING TRIP

Jess and Bobby were both disappointed and disturbed over the interview
with Professor Dimp. Laura said so little about it that Jess was
really suspicious.

"Can you see through it?" she demanded. "What do you think the Dimple
means?"

"I haven't the least idea," said her chum, frankly.

But there was another thought which Laura Belding was not so frank
about. She spoke of this to neither Jess nor Bobby.

They agreed, as they went back toward their camp, with Barnacle, that
they would take nobody into their confidence about the professor being
up here at Lake Dunkirk, fishing. Suspicious circumstances had
attached themselves to the old gentleman's presence here; yet the
girls could not believe that Professor Dimp had anything to do with
the raid on their larder, or the frightening of Liz Bean the evening
previous.

However, Laura took Liz aside when they arrived at the camp and
endeavored to get the truth out of her.

"Liz," she said to the sad-faced girl, who seemed gloomier than ever
on this morning, "who was the man who scared you in the rain last
evening?"

The maid-of-all-work did not look startled. Perhaps she had nerved
herself already for just this question.

She merely stared at Laura unblinkingly and asked. "What, Ma'am?"

"Don't pretend that you don't know what I mean, Liz," said Laura,
impatiently. "I found the man's tracks and the Barnacle found his camp
for us. The man came right into this tent last evening in all that
storm, and you