“I wonder what they’ve been up to?” said Ben. “Playing some joke perhaps.”
They returned to the camp, and there were Tom and David, toasting marshmallows on long sticks over a bed of hot coals.
“We were betting ten to one,” said David, “that you’d come back nice and wet. Want to dry your clothes at the fire?”
“No, thanks,” answered Tuckerman. “We’ve been all round the island, and we didn’t ship a thimbleful of water.”
Tom glanced at Ben. “The Professor hasn’t been fooling us, has he? He didn’t know all about handling a canoe, did he?”
“No,” said Ben with a smile. “He didn’t know all about handling a canoe when we started. But he knows almost everything about it now.” Then, as he sat down cross-legged on the grass, Ben said carelessly, “We saw your light in the house. I suppose you climbed in through a window.”
“Saw our light in the house?” Tom echoed. “What are you giving us?”
His tone was perfectly sincere. Ben saw that he wasn’t joking.
“Well, we certainly saw some light,” Tuckerman stated. “It looked like a pocket flashlight, at the front door and at one of the windows.”
“Not guilty,” said David. “Are you sure it wasn’t a firefly?”