“What do you say, Kid?”
“I have only one thing to say, Harry. We have been handed a large and juicy lemon.”
“Let’s go down and look around the shore.”
The shore was sloping in one place—an ideal spot for hauling up canoes; but no sign was there, not the slightest ruffle in the sand, to indicate that any boats had been there.
“Maybe they went back the way they came, Harry.”
Harry paid no heed to this remark, but walked about the shore, stooping now and then, examining it closely. He walked along the stream to its nearest point to the deserted camp, but found nothing. Gordon sat on a large rock by the shore, watching him.
“Harry, you look like an Uncle Tom’s Cabin bloodhound.”
Harry, meanwhile, had taken a stick and prodded it into the water under the rock. “Pretty deep, eh?” he said. Then he felt of the rock by Gordon’s side. His finger rested on what appeared to be a wet spot, but it was perfectly dry. He leaned down and smelled of it. “Take a whiff of that, Kid.”
Gordon smelled it. “You can’t prove anything by me, Harry.”
Harry vaulted on to the rock and sat by Gordon’s side. “You’d better read up what your old college chum, General Baden-Powell, has to say about smelling clues, my son,—that’s a grease spot.”