pulled close to the stern of the
houseboat. A few moments later Hazel left her companion on the west bank
at the lower end of the little stream. Harriet slipped away through the
bushes almost noiselessly. If everything worked smoothly the Tramp Club
were to receive an overwhelming surprise.

CHAPTER XX

JANE PLAYS EAVESDROPPER

Two hours later the Meadow-Brook Girls were startled to hear a voice
directly over their heads call:

"Girls, girls."

"Who is it?" asked Miss Elting cautiously.

"It's I. I'm up here, right where we heard George Baker talking this
morning."

"You nearly thcared me to death!" gasped Tommy.

"Speak more quietly, please," warned Harriet. "Jane, I wish you would
come up here. No; I'm not going to take you far. I want you within reach
of the boat."

"Do you see anything of the boys, Harriet?" asked Miss Elting.

"No, but I hear them occasionally. They are quite a distance ahead,
traveling fast, and ought to be back long before dark."

Jane lost no time in hurrying to the lower end of the creek in order to
join her friend. Harriet lay on the rocks, at a point where she could
not see the water, and there Jane joined her.

"What I want you to do," Harriet explained in whispers, at the same time
on the alert for sound or sign of the boys, "is to stay here, or not far
from here, so that you can warn the girls in case I signal by making a
cawing noise like a crow. I don't want the girls to make too much noise,
for it would spoil our fun if the boys should discover our hiding
place."

"But how am I going to get back if I have to do so in a hurry?"

"Can you go down a rope?"

"Show me the rope that I can't go down," boasted Jane.

"How about this one?" smiled Harriet, producing a coil of quarter inch
manila rope.

"Well, it's small, but I'll try it. Where do you wish me to climb?"

"I'll show you. Take hold of my feet and don't you dare let go. I surely
shall break my neck if you do." Harriet crawled over the edge, Jane
grasping her by the ankles to prevent her from falling. Then Harriet
tied one end of the rope to a root of a tree that stood on the brink.
"Look out below!" she warned, at the same time dropping the coil through
the foliage and shaking the rope until the coil finally dropped into the
stream. "Please draw the rope up to the boat," she called. "That's it.
Now pull me back, Jane."

Jane McCarthy did so with some assistance from Harriet, who clawed at
the roots o