“No wonder they were in a hurry to get away!” There was genuine alarm in her tone.
“Why? What is it?” Pearl gripped her arm.
“Dynamite,” Ruth answered soberly. “Enough to blow us all to Glory sixteen times. And if I had struck a stick of it squarely with my oar—” Again she let out a long low sigh.
“Well, we’ve got it,” she concluded. “Next thing is something else.”
There really was only one thing to be done; that was to take the dynamite to the office of the Coast Guard in Portland and to tell the officer all there was to tell about it. This they did on the next morning. When this was done they considered the matter closed. It was not, however, not by a long mile.
CHAPTER XII
THE LITTLE MAN OF WITCHES COVE
That day, after Ruth had delivered her fear-inspiring cargo, which had doubtless been stolen from Fort Georges, to the proper authorities, she went uptown to shop. There she selected with care a figured taffeta dress, a bright new hat and new shoes.
“I won’t show them to anyone until Sunday,” she told herself. When an uneasy feeling took possession of her she stilled it by whispering, “Life is a joke.” Had she been asked quite suddenly what that had to do with a figured taffeta dress, she might not, perhaps, have been able to tell.
That same day, Pearl took her new dory and rowed away to her favorite fishing ground, Witches Cove.
She had not been fishing long when she caught sight of the mysterious little man who, with his two great black cats, had come to live in the abandoned cottage above the cove.