VI

"I am," Mr. McDonald said, as the cigarette steamed, "the son of poor

but honest parents. All my life I have been obliged to labor. You may

say that my English is surprisingly pure, under such conditions. As a

matter of fact, I educated myself at night, using a lantern in the top

of my father's stable."

"I thought you said he was poor," Hutchins put in nastily. "How did he

have a stable?"

"He kept a livery stable. Any points that are not clear I will explain

afterward. Once the thread of a narrative is broken, it is difficult to

resume, Miss Hutchins. Near us, in a large house, lived the lady of my

heart."

"The pink tam-o'-shanter girl!" said Aggie. "I begin to understand."

"But," he added, "near us also lived a red-headed boy. She liked him

very much, and even in the long-ago days I was fiercely jealous of him.

It may surprise you to know that in those days I longed--fairly

longed--for red hair and a red mustache."

"I hate to interrupt," said Hutchins; "but did he have a mustache as a

boy?"

He ignored her. "We three grew up together. The girl is

beautiful--you've probably noticed that--and amiable. The one thing I

admire in a young woman is amiability. It would not, for instance, have

occurred to her to isolate an entire party on the bosom of a northern

and treacherous river out of pure temper."

"To think," said Aggie softly, "that she is just over there by the

camp-fire! Don't you suppose, if she loves you, she senses your

nearness?"

"That's it exactly," he replied in a gloomy voice, "if she loves me! But

does she? In other words, has she come up the river to meet me or to

meet my rival? She knows we are here. Both of us have written her. The

presence of one or the other of us is the real reason for this excursion

of hers. But again the question is--which?"

Here the match he was holding under the cigarette burned his fingers and

he flung it overboard with a violent gesture.

"The detective, of course," said Tish. "I knew it from the beginning of

your story."

"The detective," he assented. "You see his very profession attracts.

There's an element of romance in it. I myself have kept on with my

father and now run the--er--livery stable. My business is a handicap

from a romantic point of view.

"I am aware," Mr. McDonald went on, "that it is not customary to speak

so frankly of affairs of this sort; but I have two reasons. It hurts me

to rest under unjust suspicion. I am no spy, ladies. And the second

reason is even stronger. Consider my desperate position: In the morning

my rival will see her; he will paddle his canoe to the great rock below

your camp and sing his love song from the water. In the morning I shall

sit here helpless--ill, possibly--and see all that I value in life slip

out of my grasp. And all through no fault of my own! Things are so

evenly balanced, so little will shift the weight of her favor, that

frankly the first one to reach her will get her."

I confess I was thrilled. And even Tish was touched; but she covered her

emotion with hard common sense.

"What's her name?" she demanded.

"Considering my frankness I must withhold that. Why not simply refer to

her as the pink tam-o'-shanter--or, better still and more briefly, the

P.T.S.? That may stand for pink tam-o'-shanter, or the Person That

Smiles,--she smiles a great deal,--or--or almost anything."

"It also stands," said Hutchins, with a sniff, "for Pretty Tall Story."

Tish considered her skepticism unworthy in one so young, and told her

so; on which she relapsed into a sulky silence.

In view of what we knew, the bonfire at our camp and the small figure

across the river took on a new significance.

As Aggie said, to think of the red-haired man sleeping calmly while his

lady love was so near and his rival, so to speak, _hors de combat!_

Shortly after finishing his story, Mr. McDonald went to the stern of the

boat and lifted the anchor rope.

"It is possible," he said, "that the current will carry us to my island

with a little judicious management. Even though we miss it, we'll hardly

be worse off than we are."

It was surprising we had not thought of it before, for the plan

succeeded admirably. By moving a few feet at a time and then anchoring,

we made slow but safe progress, and at last touched shore. We got out,

and Mr. McDonald built a large fire, near which we put Aggie to steam.

His supper, which he had not had time to eat, he generously divided, and

we heated the tea. Hutchins, however, refused to eat.

Warmth and food restored Tish's mind to its usual keenness. I recall now

the admiration in Mr. McDonald's eyes when she suddenly put down the

sandwich she was eating and exclaimed:--

"The flags, of course! He told her to watch for a red flag as she came

up the river; so when the party saw ours they landed. Perhaps they still

think it is his camp and that he is away overnight."

"That's it, exactly," he said. "Think of the poor wretch's excitement

when he saw your flag!"

Still, on looking back, it seems curious that we overlooked the way the

red-headed man had followed Hutchins about. True, men are polygamous

animals, Tish says, and are quite capable of following one woman about

while they are sincerely in love with somebody else. But, when you think

of it, the detective had apparently followed Hutchins from the start,

and had gone into the wilderness to be near her, with only a suitcase

and a mackintosh coat; which looked like a mad infatuation.

[Tish says she thought of this at the time, and that, from what she had

seen of the P.T.S., Hutchins was much prettier. But she says she decided

that men often love one quality in one girl and another in another; that

he probably loved Hutchins's beauty and the amiability of the P.T.S.

Also, she says, she reflected that the polygamy of the Far East is

probably due to this tendency in the male more than to a preponderance

of women.]

Tish called me aside while Mr. McDonald was gathering firewood. "I'm a

fool and a guilty woman, Lizzie," she said. "Because of an unjust

suspicion I have possibly wrecked this poor boy's life."

I tried to soothe her. "They might have been wretchedly unhappy

together, Tish," I said; "and, anyhow, I doubt whether he is able to

support a wife. There's nothing much in keeping a livery stable

nowadays."

"There's only one thing that still puzzles me," Tish observed: "granting

that the grocery order was a grocery order, what about the note?"

We might have followed this line of thought, and saved what occurred

later, but that a new idea suddenly struck Tish. She is curious in that

way; her mind works very rapidly at times, and because I cannot take her

mental hurdles, so to speak, she is often impatient.

"Lizzie," she said suddenly, "did you notice that when the anchor was

lifted, we drifted directly to this island? Don't stare at me like that.

Use your wits."

When I failed instantly to understand, however, she turned abruptly and

left me, disappearing in the shadows.

For the next hour nothing happened. Tish was not in sight and Aggie

slept by the fire. Hutchins sat with her chin cupped in her hands, and

Mr. McDonald gathered driftwood.

Hutchins only spoke once. "I'm awfully sorry about the canoe, Miss

Lizzie," she said; "it was silly and--and selfish. I don't always act

like a bad child. The truth is, I'm rather upset and nervous. I hate to

be thwarted--I'm sorry I can't explain any further."

I was magnanimous. "I'm sure, until to-night, you've been perfectly

satisfactory," I said; "but it seems extraordinary that you should

dislike men the way you do."

She only eyed me searchingly.

It is my evening custom to prepare for the night by taking my switch off

and combing and braiding my hair; so, as we seemed to be settled for the

night, I asked Mr. McDonald whether the camp afforded an extra comb. He

brought out a traveling-case at once from the tent and opened it.

"Here's a comb," he said. "I never use one. I'm sorry this is all I can

supply."

My eyes were glued to the case. It was an English traveling-case, with

gold-mounted fittings. He saw me staring at it and changed color.

"Nice bag, isn't it?" he said. "It was a gift, of course. The--the

livery stable doesn't run much to this sort of thing."

But the fine edge of suspicion had crept into my mind again.

* * * * *

Tish did not return to the fire for some time. Before she came back we

were all thoroughly alarmed. The island was small, and a short search

convinced us that she was not on it!

We wakened Aggie and told her, and the situation was very painful. The

launch was where we had left it. Mr. McDonald looked more and more

uneasy.

"My sane mind tells me she's perfectly safe," he said. "I don't know

that I've ever met a person more able to take care of herself; but it's

darned odd--that's all I can say."

Just as he spoke a volley of shots sounded from up the river near our

camp, two close together and then one; and somebody screamed.

It was very dark. We could see lanterns flashing at our camp and

somebody was yelling hoarsely. One lantern seemed to run up and down the

beach in mad excitement, and then, out of the far-off din, Aggie, whose

ears are sharp, suddenly heard the splash of a canoe paddle.

I shall tell Tish's story of what happened as she told it to Charlie

Sands two weeks or so later.

"It is perfectly simple," she said, "and it's stupid to make such a fuss

over it. Don't talk to me about breaking the law! The girl came; I

didn't steal her."

Charlie Sands, I remember, interrupted at that moment to remind her that

she had shot a hole in the detective's canoe; but this only irritated

her.

"Certainly I did," she snapped; "but it's perfectly idiotic of him to

say that it took off the heel of his shoe. In that stony country it's

always easy to lose a heel."