“Well, so long, boys,” said Granger, pushing off and dipping his paddle into the water.
They watched until he was some distance away, heading for the further shore to the south of the hotel.
“A right agreeable chap,” commented Grant, “though he didn’t seem inclined to tell a heap about himself.”
“He was too busy telling us about Lovers’ Leap and the old hermit,” said Stone, as they made their way toward the shade in the vicinity of the tent. “Those yarns were very interesting and very well told.”
“That’s a fact,” agreed Piper, “and that’s the reason why the brand of fiction was so plain upon them.”
“Naow yeou look here, Sleuthy,” cried Crane. “Mebbe there ain’t no proofs to back up the Injun story, but everybody knows the principal features of the other yarn are true. The old hermit did live on Spirit Island, and after he was faound dead folks said there was evidence to show that he was an escaped convict.”
“That much may possibly be true,” admitted Piper, with evident reluctance; “but think of claiming that the spirits of the Indian lovers appear on the cliff once a year and leap off clasped in each other’s arms! Piffle! And all that stuff about the ticking of an unseen clock in the hermit’s hut, and mysterious rappings, and ghostly lights, and the howling of a dog, and white figures seen vaguely on the island! Bah! Rot!” With those final explosive ejaculations he burned the brand of condemnation upon such preposterous moonshine.
“Oh, of course we didn’t really believe them things,” protested Crane, although his manner seemed to indicate that he would have found a certain amount of satisfaction in believing them.
“You must recall,” said Grant, “that Granger did not make the assertion that such things really happened; he simply claimed that some people believed or told that they happened.”
“No, sir,” denied Piper promptly; “he declared that he himself had seen mysterious lights on the island, and had likewise heard the doleful howling of a dog. I’ll admit that he was clever in avoiding assertions that might be disproved by investigation or the light of reason’s torch, which must illuminate the minds of all intelligent men; but, nevertheless, in a subtle, crafty manner, he sought by every possible device to inveigle us into accepting as truth the fanciful chimeras of his, or some other person’s, imaginative mind.”