A shout of laughter went up from the group of fellows gathered in the cook shack. There was a regular cook attached to the camp, but every other evening supper was prepared by the boys themselves as a means of perfecting themselves in the culinary art. Usually these occasions were marked by an earnest seriousness, for there was great rivalry between the various tents; but to-night a spirit of levity undoubtedly prevailed.
“But why shouldn’t he have been in the dory, you old lobster?” asked Billy McBride, from where he bent over the frying pan.
Steve Haddon shrugged his bulky shoulders and ran his fingers through an already much towsled mop of brown hair. “Well,” he said hesitatingly, “because he wasn’t—he wasn’t—”
“Wasn’t what?” demanded three or four voices, as the big fellow paused.
“Well, he wasn’t the sort of person who’d be in—in that sort of a boat.”
Another shout of laughter rang out. Jim Cavanaugh, still chuckling, thumped Haddon on the back.
“You’re certainly lucid, Steve,” he exclaimed. “Just what do you mean by that? What sort of a person was he, anyhow? One of those swell city guys who came down to fish, all dolled up in dinky knickerbockers and that sort of thing?”
Steve was grinning good naturedly, but the color had deepened faintly under his tan; he shook his head slowly. “He wasn’t dolled up at all,” he told them. “He had on—well, just ordinary old things; I didn’t notice his clothes much. He might have had a rod, though he wasn’t fishing when I saw him.”
“What was he doing, then?” asked Ted Hinckley rather sharply. “He must have been doing something out of the way to set you against him like this.”
Again Haddon shook his head. The smile had faded and his lips straightened into a firm line. “He wasn’t doing anything except just running the dory past that big island—Loon Island, I think they call it,” he returned. “You wouldn’t understand, Ted. It—it was his face—”