The other members of the freshman crew were so inordinately busy chattering and laughing and telling jokes and stories that nobody for the moment noticed Ruth Fielding, who stole out from the covert through the fast slackening rainfall without saying a word. Lightly running over the crest of the hill, she came in sight of the huge boulder at which she and Helen had experienced their never-to-be-forgotten adventure the winter before.
She saw nobody at the foot of the boulder, but she pressed on to the edge of the grove to make sure. And then she saw that somebody had certainly and very recently been at work near the boulder.
There was a pickaxe—perhaps the very one she had seen there in the winter—and a shovel. Some attempt had been made to dig over the gravelly soil for some yards from the foot of the boulder.
"Goodness me! what can this mean?" thought the girl of the Red Mill. "Something must be buried here! Treasure hunters! Fancy!" and she laughed a little uncertainly. "Can somebody believe that this is one of the hiding places of Captain Kidd's gold? Who ever heard the like?"
The rain ceased falling. There was a tooting of a horn down behind the island. The launch had come in sight of the shell and Miss Mallory was trying to signal the girls to return to the shore.
But Ruth did not go back. She heard the girls shout for her, but instead of complying she went straight across to the Stone Face and picked up the heavy pickaxe.
"I don't believe whoever has been digging has found anything yet," she told herself. "No. She's been here before—for, of course, it is that girl. She couldn't have dug all this over in a few minutes. No. She has been here and dug unsuccessfully. Then she has come back to-day for another attempt at—at the treasure, shall we call it? Well!"
There was already an excavation more than a foot in depth and several yards in circumference. Whatever it was the strange girl had been after she was not quite sure of its burial place.
In the winter when she had essayed to dig for the hidden thing there had been too much frost in the ground. Besides, doubtless Ruth and Helen's inquisitiveness had frightened the strange girl away. Now she was back again—somewhere now on Bliss Island. She had not accomplished her purpose as yet. Ruth smote the hard ground at her feet with all her strength. The pick sunk to its helve in the earth, now softened by the spring rain.
"Oh! I hit something!" she gasped.