“I Cagliostro—Merlin—wizard that I am,” chuckled Tom. “I am still little Brighteyes, and I can see just as far into a spruce plank as the next one.”
“Well, I am mad, if you want to know,” sniffed Helen.
“Where’s Ruth?”
“She’s whom I am mad at,” declared the girl, nodding.
“I don’t believe it,” said Tom soothingly. “We could not really be mad at Ruth Fielding.”
“Don’t you feel that way yourself—the way she acts with Chess Copley?”
“I wouldn’t mind punching ’Lasses’ head,” returned Tom. “But that’s different.”
“Is that so? What do you know about their being out on the river together right now? Humph!”
“Where have they gone?” asked her brother. “Why aren’t you with them? Are they alone?”
This brought out the full particulars of the affair, and Tom listened to the end of a rather excited account of what had happened that afternoon—both on the island where Helen and Ruth had been “marooned” and here at the camp—together with the suspicions and curiosity about the island which had been dubbed the Kingdom of Pipes. Nor did it lack interest in Tom’s ears in spite of his sister’s rather excited way of telling it.