“You cawn’t fool me, deah boy!” declared the dude, with growing conviction.
But he carefully covered the mug. Then Reddy, with a grin, reached under the rough table 180 they were using and soon pulled his hand back with a half dollar in the palm.
The boys laughed, and wondered, and the girls were likewise puzzled. Purt looked both amazed and vexed. Then they began to laugh at him.
“Mighty easy way to make half a dollar,” commented Reddy, slipping it into his pocket. “I told you I’d get it, Purt, without touching the mug.”
“But you didn’t do it, doncher know!” cried Purt, growing exasperated. “My half dollar is there.”
He whipped off the napkin, lifted the mug—and Reddy, with a laugh, grabbed the coin that lay under it.
“I told you I’d get it without lifting the mug, Purt,” he said, and the crowd burst into a chorus of laughter. Purt had been made the victim of the joke, after all.
It was all good fun, however. Purt could well afford the half dollar, and after a minute he, too, laughed.
They started back for Acorn Island in good season, with a nice string of speckled trout and some two dozen white perch—the promise of a splendid “fish-fry” that evening. On the way they passed the heavy canoe seen several times before on the lake. 181
There was but one man in it now, fishing; and he sat with his shoulders hunched up and his hat drawn down about his face.