“They’re pretty,” Brook said, musingly, “and rocky, but not very high after all.”
A deep pool lay below, and there was the canoe, bobbing around aimlessly near the edge of the pool. It had a big gash in its side, but was not beyond repair, Jimmy reported. He towed it up on the shore with the aid of the trusty rope and a hook they made with some wire.
“Maybe I could have swum out,” Brook ventured, “but I’m certainly glad I didn’t have to try it. And most of all, Pat, I’m glad you didn’t make much of my disobedience of your order. Believe me, it won’t happen again.”
“I know,” said Pat. “Forget it—it merely was a bit more excitement on a very pleasant trip.”
After their return from the falls, Brook remembered the dilapidated letter and got it out. Everyone gathered round him and they all tried to read it. It was badly torn, obviously a good part of it was missing and what little was left was hardly discernible. They managed to make out the words buried and shed.
Suddenly Jimmy’s face lighted up. “Say, do you remember last week, the day we finished the shower, Marjorie showed me a scrap of paper she said she and Judy had found in a bottle on the beach?”
Alf nodded. “So what? They didn’t find it in any old bottle. They manufactured the whole story just to kid us.”
“That’s what I thought,” Jimmy said, rather shamefacedly. “But now I think differently. This piece looks as though it had been torn from the scrap they found.”
“Holy cow!” Brook stared at him. “And the girls couldn’t have followed us and planted this part of it in the pocket of that old coat.”
“Of course not,” Jimmy said, grinning, “although if either of them could drive a car I wouldn’t have put it past them. Besides, you said the footprints you saw leading to and from the coat were made by a man’s shoes.”