m going to tell you
what I discovered that day we first went aboard the houseboat. I put my
hand on the stove quite by accident that morning. The stove was so hot
that it burned my hand."

"You don't say?"

"Yes. Now explain how that stove happened to be hot," continued Harriet.

"That's easy. Somebody had had a fire in it," nodded Jane.

"Exactly. And not long before we went aboard. Then there were bread
crumbs on the floor. Jane, some person had been living on that boat. You
remember how anxious Dee Dickinson was that we should not go to the boat
until he had first been there?"

"Yes, but what has that to do with the cutting of the rope, last night,
and losing the boat?"

"I don't know. That the two puzzles have some connection I am positive.
What we wish most, just now, is to find the 'Red Rover.'"

"There's something red on the shore; it looks like a fire!" cried Jane,
pointing excitedly. "Oh, if it should be the boat."

Harriet ceased rowing and quickly turned her head over her right
shoulder. She gazed, at first half startled, then uttered a cry of
delight.

"It's the 'Red Rover.' Don't you see? Hurrah! We've found the boat. It's
the sun shining on those red sides that made it look like a fire."

Harriet swung the prow of the boat and began rowing shoreward with all
her might. After a few minutes of rowing she drove the boat in alongside
of the "Red Rover," then leaped out on the shore. The unknown miscreant
having cut her from her moorings the houseboat had drifted down the
lake. She had stranded among a forest of rushes, the bottom of the boat
being hard and fast on the gravel.

The girls breathless with excitement, climbed aboard. The after-half of
the house floor was under water. There were fully two feet of water in
the stern. In the after cockpit were several bushels of sand and gravel
that had been thrown up by the wind and waves during the night.

"Oh, the villains, to do a thing like this!" raged Jane. She started to
run aft for a pail but losing her footing on the slippery floor she went
sprawling and splashing into the water. Jane scrambled up, wet from head
to feet.

"Oh, me! Oh my! What a mess!"

Harriet leaned against the side of the cabin screaming with laughter.
Jane looked at her an instant, then, joined in the merriment.

"You are a sight!" gasped Harriet.

"Why shouldn't I be? I've been in the water? Are we going to stand here
and laugh all the morning, or are we going to get