as only a dot on the horizon through the binocular, having
missed Island Eleven, as she explained later, by the rope being caught
on a submerged log, which deflected her course.

We got into the motor boat and followed her, and, except for a most
unjust sense of irritation that I had not drowned myself by following
her in the canoe, she was unharmed. We got her into the motor boat and
into a blanket, and Aggie gave her some blackberry cordial at once. It
was some time before her teeth ceased chattering so she could speak.
When she did it was to announce that she had made a discovery.

"He's a spy, all right!" she said. "And that Indian is another. Neither
of them saw me as I floated past. They were on Island Eleven. Mr.
McDonald wrote something and gave it to the Indian. It wasn't a letter
or he'd have sent it by the boat. He didn't even put it in an envelope,
so far as I could see. It's probably in cipher."

Well, we took her home, and she had a boiled egg at dinner.

The rest of us had fish. It is one of Tish's theories that fish should
only be captured for food, and that all fish caught must be eaten. I do
not know when I have seen fish come as easy. Perhaps it was the worms,
which had grown both long and fat, so that one was too much for a hook;
and we cut them with scissors, like tape or ribbon. Aggie and I finally
got so sick of fish that while Tish's head was turned we dropped in our
lines without bait. But, even at that, Aggie, reeling in her line to go
home, caught a three-pound bass through the gills and could not shake
it off.

We tried to persuade Tish to lie down that afternoon, but she refused.

"I'm not sick," she said, "even if you two idiots did try to drown me.
And I'm on the track of something. If that was a letter, why didn't he
send it by the boat?"

Just then her eye fell on the flagpole, and we followed her horrified
gaze. The flag had been neatly cut away!

Tish's eyes narrowed. She looked positively dangerous; and within five
minutes she had cut another flag out of the back breadth of the
petticoat and flung it defiantly in the air. Who had cut away the
signal--McDonald or the detective? We had planned to investigate the
nameless lake that afternoon, Tish being like Colonel Roosevelt in her
thirst for information, as well as in the grim pugnacity that is her
dominant characteristic; but at the last minute she decided not to go.

"You and Aggie go, Lizzie," she said. "I've got something