“Who do you suppose did that?” he exclaimed indignantly. “None of the folks around here would ever leave a fire burning in the woods. Why, it might spread and burn off the whole territory. Once a fire got started up through the pines nothing could stop it.”
Ann looked down at the wicked gleam. She never would have dreamed that it was wicked if Jo hadn’t told her it was, but what he had said made her regard the fire from a very different standpoint. To her imagination the live embers glowed and flickered like the lantern she had seen on the wrecked ship.
She grew vaguely excited, for if no native of Pine Ledge could have left that fire, then some stranger must be prowling around the neighborhood, some one who didn’t want to be seen. Perhaps the very person who lighted this fire to cook his breakfast was the same invisible person who carried the swinging lantern across the deck, that first night.
The keen-minded Jo saw her excitement. “What’s up?” he asked. “Is something the matter?”
Ann hesitated. “Perhaps I am imagining, but I think I know of some one who might have built this fire.”
So she told them about that tiny pin point of lantern light.
Jo listened silently until she had finished, although Ann could see that he, too, was growing excited.
“I shouldn’t wonder if you were right,” he said at last. “It looks to me as if some one who has no business here is hanging about. But if we tell the other folks about it they will say that it is nonsense; they think that we are too young to know much of what we are talking about. I think we had better keep a good lookout, and if we actually discover anything we can tell them then. This is a job for Robin Hood’s men all right.”
Jo threw up his head and squared his shoulders.
“What ho, merry men!” he shouted. “How many will follow me in fathoming the mystery of the wrecked ship?”