flash of lightning strike him in the face?"

"I never happened to go through the experience," confessed Frank; "but
I'm pretty sure it would give me a fierce jolt."

"But who can the sneaker be, Frank; some darky chicken thief prowling
around in hopes of picking up some of our camp duffle?" asked Jerry.

Will turned on him with the scorn an expert photographer always
displays when he meets crass ignorance.

"Why, can't you see from the dark shade of his face in the negative,
Jerry, that he's a white man?" he demanded. "If it were a negro you'd
see his face almost white here. That point is settled without any
question."

"All right, Will, I acknowledge the corn," Jerry hastened to say; "but
that doesn't bring us any nearer a solution of the mystery. Why should
a white man, and one with a white beard at that, be wandering around
our camp in the night?"

They looked at Frank. It was an old habit with the three chums.
Whenever an unusually knotty point arose that needed attention, and
their powers seemed baffled, Frank was always depended on to supply
the needed answer.

"So far as I'm concerned, fellows," he told them, "I can think of only
one old man around this vicinity, and that happens to be Aaron
Dennison."

"Ginger! why didn't I guess him right away?" grumbled Bluff. "Seems as
if my wits go wool gathering nearly every time there's some sudden
necessity for thinking up an answer. Course it's Aaron, and nobody
else!"

"Yes," Jerry went on to say, as though not wholly convinced; "but what
under the sun would Aaron be doing here, tell me, and acting
suspiciously like a thief in the night?"

"Of course we can't say what tempted him to come out," Frank observed;
"we've never met the gentleman face to face, but we have heard that
he's a queer one. Besides, if you stop to think, you'll remember a
little circumstance that seemed to connect old Aaron with this cabin
on the Point many years ago."

"It takes you to piece out these things, Frank," admitted Bluff
candidly. "Sure! We figured that out by finding a part of an old
envelope in the deserted rat's nest under the floor board."

"Just as like as not," added Jerry, "the old chap owns all the ground
along the lake shore, including this cabin; and if that's so he'd
have a perfect right to walk out this way whenever he chose, at
midnight or noon, as the notion struck him."

"Oh, well," remarked Will with a sigh, "he spoiled my little game with
Br'er 'Coon, t