y recently
learned how to swim, and the shore seemed a tremendous distance away,
with the flag of the camp floating in the morning breeze, and the tents
showing plainly against the green background.

"Now, this time I'm going to comb the whole island over, and see what's
here," announced Thad, resolutely. "You see, we can make a start, and
keep close to this shore until we strike the other end. Then changing
our base, we'll come back this way, keeping just so far away from our
first trail. After that, it's back again; and in that way we ought to
see all there is."

"Going to be pretty tough climbing, I reckon?" remarked Davy, surveying
the piled-up rocks, of which the island seemed to consist mainly, with
the trees growing from crevices, and in every odd place, so that they
formed a dense canopy indeed.

"That'll make it more interesting, perhaps," said Smithy; and Thad
nodded his head encouragingly; for he liked to see evidences in the
spoiled boy tending to show what his real nature must be, back of the
polish his fond mother and maiden aunts had succeeded in putting upon
his actions in the past.

They reached the other end of the island and began to make the return
trip. As Davy Jones had said, it was strenuous work at times, since the
rocks were piled up in a way to suggest that some convulsion of nature
had heaved this island up from the bottom of the lake.

"Just see the black holes, would you?" Davy declared, again and again.
"Why, lots of 'em'd make the finest kind of fox dens; and I reckon a
wolf wouldn't want a better hiding-place than that big one over there.
Say, Thad, I c'd crawl in easy, myself, and I'd like to do it for a
cooky now, if you said the word."

"Not just yet, Davy," remarked the scout leader; who began to wonder
himself if the men of the island might not be hiding right then in one
of the cavities Davy pointed out. "We want to see what the place is
like, you know. Come along, and in a jiffy we'll be at the end where our
boat lies."

"But what are you keeping on looking so close at the ground, whenever we
strike any soil at all, Thad?" the Jones boy continued. "S'pose now, you
think you might run on that footprint Bob was speakin' about, say?"

"Just what was in my mind, Davy," replied the other, always willing to
give information to those with him. "I wanted you to see what it looked
like, so you and Smithy here could be keeping on the watch. If we found
that it made a regular trail,