"Oh, perhaps then that would make a difference."

"I hope she gets the album back," said Billie seriously.

Then Laura promptly forgot all about both Miss Arbuckle and the album.

A little while later the girls swung joyfully out upon the road, bound
for town and shopping and perhaps some ice cream and--oh, just a jolly
good time of the kind girls know so well how to have, especially in the
spring of the year.

CHAPTER VI

FOUND--ONE ALBUM

"I'm sorry Connie couldn't come along," said Laura, drinking in deep
breaths of the fragrant air.

"Yes," said Billie, her eyes twinkling. "She said she wished she hadn't
been born with a conscience."

"A conscience," said Vi innocently. "Why?"

"Because," said Billie, her cheeks aglow with the heat and exercise, her
brown hair clinging in little damp ringlets to her forehead, and her eyes
bright with health and the love of life, "then she could have had a good
time to-day instead of staying at home in a stuffy room and writing a
cartload of letters. She says if she doesn't write them, she'll never
dare face her friends when she gets home."

"She's a darling," said Laura, executing a little skip in the road that
sent the dust flying all about them. "Just think--if we hadn't met her we
wouldn't be looking forward to Lighthouse Island and a dear old uncle who
owns the light----"

"Anybody would think he was your uncle," said Vi.

"Well, he might just as well be," Laura retorted. "Connie says that he
adopts all the boys and girls about the place."

"And that they adopt him," Billie added, with a nod. "He must be a
darling. I'm just crazy to see him."

Connie Danver's Uncle Tom attended the lighthouse, and, living there all
the year around, had become as much of a fixture as the island itself.
Connie loved this uncle of hers, and had told the girls enough about him
to rouse their curiosity and make them very eager to meet him.

The girls walked on in silence for a little way and then, as they came to
a path that led into the woods, Laura stopped suddenly and said in a
dramatic voice:

"Do you realize where we are, my friends? Do you, by any chance, remember
a tall, thin, wild-eyed man?"

Did they remember? In a flash they were back again in a queer little hut
in the woods, where a tall man stood and stared at them with strange
eyes.

Laura and Vi started to go on, but Billie stood staring at the p