e a backwoods boy, with two guns?" snorted Ann. "Why, he
wouldn't even let them arrest him, I don't suppose. _I_ wouldn't if I were
Jerry."

"But that would be dreadful," sighed Ruth. "Let's go a little farther,
Ann."

Dusk was falling, however, and when they got down the far side of the
ridge they came to a swift, open water-course. Blent and the constable
were evidently "stumped." Blent was snarling at their ill-luck.

"He's took to the water--that's all _I_ know," drawled Lem Daggett, the
constable. "Ye see, there ain't a mark in the snow on 'tother side."

"Him wadin' in that ice-cold stream in mid-winter," grunted Blent. "Ain't
he a scoundrel?"

"Can't do nothin' more to-night," announced the constable, who didn't like
the job any too well, it was evident. "And dorgs wouldn't do us no good."

"Ha! ye know what ye gotter do," threatened Blent. "I'm goin' back to town
when the punt goes this evenin'. But you stay here, an' you git the hue
an' cry out after him to-morrer bright and early.

"I don't want him rummagin' around this island at all. You understand? Not
at all! It's up to you to git him, Lem Daggett."

Daggett grunted and followed his master back to the lodge. The girls went
on before and Ruth was delighted that, for a time, at least, Jerry was to
have his freedom.

"If it froze over solid in the night he could get to the mainland from the
other end of the island, and then they'd never find him," she confided to
Tom.

But when morning came the surface of the lake was still a mass of loose
and shifting ice. Lem demanded of Mrs. Tingley the help of all the men at
the camp, and they started right away after breakfast to "comb" the island
in a thorough manner.

There wasn't a trace near the running stream to show in which direction
the fugitive had gone. Had Jerry gone up stream he could have reached the
very heart of the rough end of the island without leaving the water-trail.

A party of the boys, with Ruth, Helen, and Ann Hicks, stole out of the
lodge after the main searching party, and struck off for the high point
where the lone pine tree grew.

"I'd hate to think we'd draw that constable over there and help him to
catch Jerry," said Bobbins.

"We won't," Tom replied. "We are just going to leave the tin box of grub
for him. He probably won't come out of hiding and try to get the food
until this foolish constable has given up the chase. And I put the food in
the tin box so that no prowling a