It was after luncheon before the three friends got away from the Stone bungalow in the catboat. Tom owned a catrigged boat himself on the Lumano river, and Helen and Ruth, of course, were not afraid to trust themselves to his management of the Jennie S.
The party was pretty well broken up that day, anyway. Mercy and Miss Kate remained at home and the others found amusement in different directions. Nobody asked to go in the Jennie S., for which Ruth was rather glad.
Mr. Hicks had gone over to Sokennet with the avowed intention of interviewing every soul in the town for news of Jack Crab. Somebody, surely, must know where the assistant lighthouse keeper was, and the Westerner was not a man to be put off by any ordinary evasion.
“My Jane Ann may be hiding over thar amongst them fishermen,” he declared to Ruth before he went away. “He couldn’t have sailed far with her that night, if he was back in ’twixt two and three hours. No, sir-ree!”
And that was the thought in Ruth’s mind. Unless Crab had sailed out and put Nita aboard a New York, or Boston, bound steamer, it seemed impossible that the girl could have gotten very far from Lighthouse Point.
“Shall we take one of the rowboats in tow, Ruth?” queried Tom, before they left the Stone dock.
“No, no!” returned the girl of the Red Mill, hastily. “We couldn’t land on that island, anyway.”
“Only at low tide,” rejoined Tom. “But it will be about low when we get outside the point.”
“You don’t really suspect that Crab and Nita are out there, Ruth?” whispered Helen, in her chum’s ear.
“It’s a crazy idea; isn’t it?” laughed Ruth. Yet she was serious again in a moment. “I thought, when Mother Purling spoke of his going there so much, that maybe he had a reason–a particular reason.”