o
the boat, the old thing had filled and sunk. You never could row that
boat to the island without bailing her out a couple of times; and I
ought to have dragged her ashore.

"So I couldn't get the boat up, and I thought I'd stop there. I had some
fishing tackle, and matches, and some crackers. I camped in the cave for
a couple of days, and had fires, and cooked fish. But, my goodness! fish
gets awful tasteless when you don't have any salt and pepper.

"There were berries," continued Billy, "and I managed to get along.
Then, I washed out my old bait bucket and at night I went down to the
pasture of that park superintendent and milked his old mooley cow. I got
along.

"One of those men was always hanging about in the woods, though, and
that kept me scared. But I tried to watch him. Didn't know but he'd go
to the place where he'd buried the money in the lard can. But he went
off after a while and I didn't see him again.

"Then I tried to climb that cliff to get some berries, and I slipped
down and twisted my ankle. I guess I'd have starved to death there if
Mother Wit han't found me and got me down."

This was all Billy's story; but when the twins got out of the house,
Dorothy demanded of her sister:

"What did you pinch me for? What did you mean?"

"You're so slow!" cried Dora, with some disgust. "Those two foreign men
Billy heard talking about the money were Tony Allegretto and his friend
that the police drove off the island. They weren't the burglars at all!"

CHAPTER XXI

IN PRACTICE AGAIN

All the time the twins had been forbidden to row in the new shell the
crew had been getting on very badly. Professor Dimp was hopeless, and
Mrs. Case could not find two girls to take the twins' places who worked
well with the other members of the crew.

Dora and Dorothy could only walk on the bank of the lake and watch the
crew struggle to make the time that was its former record. Hester Grimes
and her particular friends scoffed at the practice. Hester and Lily
paddled almost daily in their canoe, and they seemed pretty sure of
being chosen to represent the girls of Central High in the canoe race
instead of the Lockwood twins.

Aunt Dora wished to know why Dora and Dorothy were not giving so much
"precious time," as she expressed it, to athletics as formerly, and the
twins had to tell her.

"Humph!" was the old lady's comment; but perhaps she did not feel all
the satisfaction that exclamation implied when s