From the group in the shadow came a little rippling laugh.
Cunningham started. It was nearly seven long years, but he had not forgotten Marian Hadley’s laugh. He snatched at a lantern, but before he could detach it from its hook, a young fellow beside him, a great stalwart fellow, yelled and began to swing his hat.
“The Hadleys!” he shouted, “the Hadleys!” and threw the hat into the air, but before it could fall he was rushing over, calling Delbert.
Marian, laughing, grasped his arm.
“For Heaven’s sake, Bobbie,” she said, “take us girls up to your mother before they get here with those lanterns.”
Late, very late, that night Delbert sat on the edge of Bobbie’s bed and said to him:—
“Now, look here! what I want to know is, how in creation it could happen that, with that bay fairly teeming with fish and turtles, there could be over six years with never a canoe really inside of it, never one within hailing, or even signaling, distance of the Island, though it must be known among the Indians that there is fresh water and an old banana-patch there.”
THE HADLEYS! THE HADLEYS!