Dick chuckled. “Clever dog, me! Little old Sherlock Holmes! Well, I think I have found your cave, not two miles from here the other way.”
“So near? But why haven’t you found it before?” Anne stared in wonder.
“I never went that way. There’s no path, and it is boggy by land. Then by sea it is full of rips and bars, the worst place along the coast, I guess. I took the canoe.”
“Did you see my man?” Anne asked eagerly, but Dick shook his head. “I didn’t explore much. I thought we’d go together, since the cave was really your find.” Anne guessed how much Dick would have liked this adventure for his very own, and she was touched. “That was nice of you, Reddy!” she said. “When shall we go?”
“Right now, if you say so,” he suggested eagerly. Anne hesitated. “Do you suppose it is safe for us to go alone?” she asked. “I haven’t told anybody the whole story.” Then of course Dick made her tell him everything; about the hut in the woods and the story that it was “haunted,” and the threat of the tall stranger. Only she did not tell him the name he had called her father.
Dick whistled when the tale was finished, and his eyes shone. “Great!” he exclaimed. “It sounds like something exciting. Of course we will go by ourselves and ferret out the mystery. Of course I can take care of you! But we will be careful, yes. What will Hugh and Victor say, eh?”
Dick was anxious to recover the prestige he had lost by that laughable fiasco of the clambake. He wanted to get even with Hugh and Victor, who had never ceased to tease him about it.
Anne had some misgivings. But she was not willing that Dick should go without her. And she too thought it would be nice to be the heroine of a real adventure,—if adventure it was to be.
They pushed off from the landing in the shadow of the fir-trees. The water of the bay was as still as quicksilver, just right for paddling, and Dick was an expert canoeist. He knew when it was safe to keep off-shore; when one might dare the neighborhood of those sharp and cruel rocks that guarded the cliffs.
“Now you must keep calm,” said Dick in his mock-hero manner. “And whatever you do, don’t scream.”