thing for me to do," she said as she quickly
faced ahead again. "I suppose that look has done more damage than
anything else since we started from Fairberry. And to think that I above
all others should have been the one to do it. I'm ashamed of myself."

"Did he see you?" Katherine inquired.

"He was looking right at me," Hazel replied; "and that look was full of
suspicion and meaning. There's no doubt he's on our trail and suspects
something of the nature of our mission."

"Oh don't let that bother you," Katherine advised. "There's no reason
why he should jump to a conclusion just because you looked back at him.
That needn't necessarily mean anything. But if you let it make you
uneasy, you may give us dead away the next time you meet him."

"I believe he knows what our mission here is already," was Katharine's
fatalistic answer.

"If that's the case, you needn't worry any more about what you do or say
in his presence," said Hazel. "We might as well go to him and tell him
our story and have it all over with."

"I don't agree with you," Katherine replied. "I believe that the worst
chance we have to work against is the probability of suspicion on his
part. I don't see how he can know anything positively. He probably
merely learned of our intended departure for Twin Lakes and, knowing
that the Grahams were spending the summer here, began to put two and two
together. I figure that he followed us on his own responsibility."

"And that his visit at the Graham cottage today is to give them warning
of our coming," Hazel added.

"Yes, very likely," Katherine agreed. "I'd like to hear the conversation
that is about to take place in that house. I bet it would be very
interesting to us."

"No doubt of it," said the other; "and it might prove helpful to us in
our search for the information we were sent to get."

"Don't you think it strange, Hazel, that your aunt should select a bunch
of girls like us to do so important a piece of work as this?" Katherine
inquired. This question had puzzled her a good deal from the moment the
proposition had been put to her. Although she had received it originally
from Mrs. Hutchins even before the matter had been broached to Hazel,
she had not questioned the wisdom of the move, but had accepted the role
of advocate assigned to her as if the proceeding were very ordinary and
commonsensible.

"If you hadn't restricted your remark to 'a bunch of girls like us', I
would answer 'yes'," Hazel