She drew a pair of men’s hip boots up over her shoes and knickers, donned a black waterproof hat, and, so attired, sallied forth to fish.
“The sprinkle box is a good place,” she told herself.
John Kingfisher, an Indian, had told her of the sprinkle box. The sprinkle box belonged to a past age for that country; the age of logging. To keep trails smooth, that huge loads of logs might glide easily to the water’s edge, trails in those days had been sprinkled from a large tank, or box, on a sled. The water from the box froze on the trail. This made the sleds move easily.
When an anchorage for a very large raft had been needed one spring, a sprinkle box had been filled with rocks and had been sunk in the bay.
Since water preserves wood, the box remains to-day, at the bottom of the bay, as it was twenty years ago.
“You find it by lining a big poplar tree on shore with a boathouse on the next point,” the Indian had told her. On a quiet day she had found it. She had seen, too, that some big black bass were lurking there.
They would not bite; seemed, indeed, to turn up their noses at her offering. “You wait. I’ll get you yet!” She had shaken a fist at them.
So now, with the rain beating a tattoo on her raincoat, she rowed away and at last dropped her line close to the submerged sprinkle box.
Fish are strange creatures. You may make a date with them, but you never can be sure of finding them at home at the appointed hour. A rainy day is a good day for fishing. Sometimes. The fish of the ancient sprinkle box very evidently were not at home on this rainy day. Florence fished for two solid hours. Never a bite. She tried all the tricks she knew. Never a nibble.
She was rolling in her line preparatory to returning home, when, on the little dock on Mystery Island that led to the lady cop’s abode, she spied a solitary figure. This figure was garbed from head to toe in rubber hat and slicker. Like some dark scarecrow, it put out a hand and beckoned.