e marks like
footprints on the floor too.'

'What impudence,' said Reggie, with a darkening face. 'We must put up
a notice board. No one has any business to come here except ourselves.'

Allan had been looking about him, and he suddenly darted forward and
took possession of some object lying upon the floor. After a glance at
it he turned white, gave an odd little gasp and slipped it into his
pocket.

'What is it, Allan?' asked the others, crowding around.

'Nothing,' he said; 'nothing at all. I don't think any one has been
here; it's all fancy.'

Reggie's eyes looked very much astonished at this change of front.

'Come along,' said Allan impatiently; 'it's time we went home,' and he
swept them out of the cottage with so much decision that they obeyed,
looking at him with puzzled faces.

'Hulloa!' cried Hamish; 'we had better be going.'

'Going?' echoed Allan; 'why, yes, we have no time to lose. Come along,
all of you.'

'What's the matter?' asked Harry of Marjorie as they hurried towards
the boat.

'It's a very high tide,' she said. 'Soon there will be a dangerous
current flowing between the two islands, and if we get into it we might
be swept out to sea. We are allowed to have the boat on condition that
we watch the tide-ways; so we have to be careful.'

It took some hard rowing to gain the opposite shore; and when they had
landed, Reggie turned to Hamish. 'A near thing that, eh, Hamish?' he
said; and they all looked at the dark swift current which filled the
channel.

'Ten minutes later, and we couldn't have crossed,' said Marjorie.
'What do you think, Allan?'

Despite the danger so recently escaped, Allan's thoughts were
wandering. He looked round abstractedly, and slid into his pocket some
object which he had been turning over unobserved; and Reggie fancied he
caught a glimpse of a sailor's knife with some elaborate carving on the
handle.

Reggie looked at his brother with a gleam of curiosity in his eyes.

'Come along,' said Allan authoritatively; 'don't let's stand dawdling
about.'

CHAPTER VIII

A CRUISE IN THE 'HEROIC'

'I can't understand Allan at all,' declared Marjorie. She and Reggie,
armed with large pocket-knives, were engaged in cutting heather on the
moor, which stretched, a mass of purple, to the verge of the cliffs. A
pile of heather lay beside them, the result of an hour's hard sawing of
the wiry stems.

Marjorie's remark had interrupted a busy silence.

R