at once. "It's
full glad I am to see ye, even if I can't see ye half in the darkness of
it," came with a pronounced Irish accent.

"Guess that won't make much difference if you can see your way into the
boat," Dave answered. "Did you get lost?"

"No, no! not lost at all, at all, but I couldn't find me way, quite," came
the response. The speaker had now come down on the sloping bank close to
the boat, as if about to step aboard.

"I only wondered," Dave answered. "Seems as if the woods were full of
mysterious people--one lone man hiding in an old clubhouse, another--"
The lad checked himself. A sudden thought came to him that perhaps he
better not speak too freely without knowing with whom he was talking.

"What's he doin' there? A man all alone, and in an old clubhouse? What
might be his name thin?"

"How should I know?" Dave answered to this question. He was becoming the
least bit suspicious and again he checked himself when it was just at his
tongue's tip to add, "We think the name may be Grandall." There would be
no harm in awaiting developments before he told a stranger quite all he
knew, he grimly reflected--a wise thought, it should be needless to say.

"No harm,--no harm intinded," spoke the Irishman good-naturedly. He
had come close to the water's edge now and Dave's eyes being fairly
accustomed to the darkness, made him out to be a little, elderly man
with a short beard, but very little hair on his head. The old fellow's
baldness was, indeed, the most noticeable thing about him as, with hat
in hand, lest it fall off into the lake, perhaps, he stooped down the
more closely to inspect MacLester and the boat.

"Why," said the boy, fearing his short "How should I know?" might have
been unpleasantly curt, "You see there are four of us fellows in camp on
t'other side and we've happened to see a man at the old house on the Point
below us. We've wondered who he might be, staying alone as he does, and
keeping so out of sight of everybody. It's miles to the nearest house and
nobody but our crowd of four fellows and our one visitor is anywhere near.
But climb down into the scow and I'll take you over. Steady now, while I
hold the old shell up to the bank."

For a few seconds the stranger made no reply. Then--"It must be a lake
here thin. Has it a name, at all, d'ye know?"

"Why, sure it's a lake!" replied Dave a little tartly, wondering if the
old fellow supposed the sheet of water lying so quiet in the darkness