"Yes," returned Mr. Black. "In, as nearly as I could make out from Mrs. Lombard's description, a very quiet little place across the lake from Pete's Patch, if not exactly opposite. But so far away that one wouldn't expect small boats to make the journey. In that village, however, Laddie was seriously ill; because, by this time, he had pneumonia in addition to typhoid. For weeks he was a very sick boy. Then, when he began to mend, his mother found it difficult to hold him down, headstrong little rascal that he was, with no father to control him—his father died when Laddie was two years old, and I guess the boy has had his own way most of the time."
"He isn't a bit spoiled," defended Mrs. Crane. "But go on with your story."
"Long before he was well enough to walk he was begging to be taken on the water—he was always crazy about the water, his mother says; perhaps because most of his ancestors were sailors. On pleasant days—our spring was unusually mild, you remember—they allowed him to sit on the sunny veranda of Mrs. Brown's cottage, from which the lake, only two hundred feet distant, was plainly visible. At first they merely rolled him up in a blanket; but for the last three days of his sojourn in that place he had worn his clothes, shoes and all, since it galled his proud young spirit to be considered an invalid in the sight of the villagers.
"One day, during the half-hour or so that Mrs. Lombard was busy changing her dress, straightening her son's room, and so forth, Laddie disappeared."
"Before he could walk?" demanded Mrs. Crane.
"No, he was able to go from room to room by that time. You've noticed, haven't you, how quickly he recovers, once he is started? Well, as soon as he was better he disappeared."
"Where did he go?" asked Bettie. The girls, of course, were all nearly breathless with interest—no tale told by Saunders had held them so closely.
"Nobody knows," returned Mr. Black. "Probably nobody ever will know precisely what happened. However, there was a sociable half-breed fisherman, sort of a half-witted chap, who had leaned over the fence almost daily to talk to the boy. The theory is that he asked Laddie to go out in his boat. The landing was only a short distance away and almost directly in front of Mrs. Brown's house; but, owing to jutting rocks at the east side of the little bay, one could easily embark and very speedily get entirely out of sight of any of the houses. Now, the chances are that Laddie, or any other boy, invited by Indian Charlie to go out for a brief sail, would have considered it rather smart to accept the invitation. Would have thought it a good joke on his mother, perhaps—the best of boys make such mistakes, sometimes.
"Anyway, Laddie disappeared, and several days later Indian Charlie was found drowned near a rocky point several miles from the village; pieces of timber that might have been part of his boat were picked up after the storm—that same storm that brought Laddie to us. Moreover, another fisherman remembered noticing a boy with very bright hair in Charlie's boat, which he happened to pass that afternoon a mile or two down the shore. The wind was pretty fresh that day, and by night it was blowing a gale.
"Mrs. Lombard was forced to conclude, when no further word was heard of Laddie, that her boy had shared poor Charlie's fate—several far more seaworthy boats were wrecked that night and more than one unfortunate sailor lost his life. But Mrs. Lombard is now blaming herself for giving up hope so easily, though she did offer a reward, through the Canadian papers, for the finding of Laddie's body; and afterwards the Canadian shore was searched quite thoroughly. It didn't occur to anybody that Laddie, probably lashed to the mast by Indian Charlie, probably ill again and possibly delirious, as a result of exposure to wind and waves, could have been carried across Lake Superior in so frail a craft as that poor half-breed's boat. But the wind was in the right direction. How long the boat held together we shall never know.