Marian was the first one up in the morning. It was her turn for making toast and coffee. As she pa.s.sed Lucile's desk she glanced at the stock of paper and unconsciously read the t.i.tle, "The Cruise of the O Moo."

Gladly would she have read the pages which followed but loyalty to her cousin forbade.

"To-day," said Lucile at breakfast, "I am going to have my story typed, and next day I shall take it to the office of the Literary Monthly."

"I hope the editor treats you kindly," smiled Marian. "You must remember, though, that we are only freshmen."

But Lucile's faith in her product, her first real "creation," was not to be daunted. "I did it just as Professor Storris said it should be done, so I know it must be good," she affirmed stoutly.

That night Lucile spent an hour working over the typewritten copy of her story. Tracing in a word here, marking one out there, punctuating, comparing, rearranging, she made it as perfect as her limited knowledge of the story writing art would permit her.

"There now," she sighed, tossing back the loose-flung hair which tumbled down over her shapely shoulders, "I will take you to ye editor in ye morning. And here's hoping he treats you well." She patted the ma.n.u.script affectionately, then stowed it away in a pigeon-hole.

If the truth were to be told, she was due for something of a surprise regarding that ma.n.u.script. But all that lay in the future.

Florence and Marian were away. They had gone for a spin on the lagoon before retiring. She was alone on the O Moo. Tossing her dressing-gown lightly from her she proceeded to put herself through a series of exercises such as are calculated to bring color to the cheek and sparkle to the eye of a modern American girl.

Coming out of this with glowing face and heaving chest, she threw on her dressing-gown and leaped out of the cabin and into the moonlight which flooded a narrow open spot on deck.

Away at the left she saw the ice on the lake sh.o.r.e stand out in irregular piles. Here was a huge pile twenty feet high and there a single cake on end. There was a whole forest of jagged, bayonet-like edges and here again pile after pile lay scattered like shocks of grain in the field.

"For all the world like the Arctic!" she breathed. "What sport it would be to play hide-and-go-seek with oneself out there in the moonlight."

She paused a moment in thought. Then, clapping her hands she exclaimed, "I'll do it. It will be like going back to good old Cape Prince of Wales, in Alaska." Hastening inside, she twisted her hair in a knot on the top of her head, drew on some warm garments, crowned herself with a stocking-cap, and was away toward the beach.

Since the O Moo was on the track nearest to the sh.o.r.e, she was but a moment reaching the edge of the ice which, packed thick between two breakwaters, lay glistening away in the moonlight. Here she hesitated.

She was not sure it was quite safe. The wind had been blowing on sh.o.r.e for days. It had brought the ice-packs in. Under similar conditions in the Arctic, the ice would have been solidly frozen together by this time, but she was not acquainted with lake ice; it might be treacherous.

"Pooh!" she exclaimed at last. "Wind's still onsh.o.r.e; I'll try it."

Stepping out upon the first flat cake, she hurried across it to dodge into the shadow of a towering pile of broken fragments.

"Catch me!" she exclaimed joyously aloud. "Catch me if you can!"

She had reverted to the days of her childhood and was playing hide-and-go-seek with herself. First behind this pile, then that, she flitted in the moonlight like a ghost. On and on, in a zigzag course, she went until a glance back brought from her lips an exclamation of surprise: "How far I am from the sh.o.r.e!" For a moment she stood quite still. Then the startled exclamation came again.

"That cake of ice tips. It moves! I must go back."

Springing from the cake, she leaped upon another and another. She had just succeeded in reaching a spot where the rise and fall of the ice in response to the swells which swept in from the lake, was lessening, when something caused her heart to flutter wildly.

Had she seen a dark form disappear behind that ice-pile off to her right?

In an instant she was hugging the shadow of a great, up-ended cake. No, she had not been mistaken. Out of the silence there came the pat-pat of footsteps.

"What can it mean?" she whispered.

Locating as best she could the position of the intruder, she sprang away in the opposite direction. She was engaged in a game of hide-and-go-seek, not with herself, but with some other person, a stranger probably. What the outcome of that game would be she could not tell.

CHAPTER IX SOMEONE DROPS IN FROM NOWHERE

Pausing to listen whenever she gained the protecting shadow of an ice-pile, Lucile caught each time the pit-pat of footsteps. This so terrified her that she lost all knowledge of direction, her only thought to put a greater distance between herself and that haunting black shadow.

Suddenly she awoke to her old peril. The ice beneath her was heaving.

Before her lay a dark patch of water. In her excitement she had been making her way toward open water. With a shudder she wheeled about, and forcing her mind to calmer counsel, chose a circling route which would eventually bring her to the sh.o.r.e.

Again she dodged from ice-pile to ice-pile, again paused to hear the wild beating of her own heart and the pit-pat of the shadow's footfalls.

But what was this? As she listened she seemed to catch the fall of two pairs of feet.

In desperation she shot forward a great distance without pausing. When at last she did pause it was with the utmost consternation that she realized that not one or two, but many pairs of feet were dropping pit-pat on the ice floor of the lake.

As she dodged out for another flight, she saw them--three of them--as they suddenly disappeared from sight. One to the right, one to the left, one behind her, they were closing in upon her.

There was still a s.p.a.ce between the two to right and left. Through this she sprang, only to see a fourth directly before her. As she again dodged into a sheltering shadow she nerved herself for a scream. The girls were away, but someone, Mark Pence, the fishermen, old Timmie, might hear and come to her aid.

But what was this? She no longer caught the shuffle of moving feet. All was silent as the tomb.

For a moment she hovered there undecided. Then she caught the distant, even tramp-tramp of two pairs of heavy, marching feet. Glancing sh.o.r.eward, she saw two burly policemen, their bra.s.s b.u.t.tons gleaming in the moonlight, marching down the beach. It had been the presence of these officers which had held her pursuers to their shadowy hiding-places.

If she but screamed once these officers would come to her rescue! But she had, from early childhood, experienced a great fear of policemen. When she endeavored to scream, her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth. And so there she stood, motionless, voiceless, until the officers had pa.s.sed from her sight.

While Lucile was experiencing the strange thrills of this terrible game out on the lake ice, Florence and Marian were witnessing mysterious actions of strange persons out on the lagoon.

In spite of the lateness of the hour, there were a number of persons skating on the north end of the lagoon, so the two girls experienced no fear as they went for a quarter-mile dash down the southern channel which lay between an island and the sh.o.r.e. At the south end of the lagoon the channel, which became very narrow, was spanned by a wooden bridge.

This bridge, even in the daytime, always gave Marian a shock of something very like fear, for it was here that a great tragedy ending in the death of a prominent society woman had occurred.

Now, as she found herself nearing it, preparing for a long skimming glide beneath it, she felt a chill shoot up her spine. Involuntarily she glanced up at the bridge railing. Then she gripped Florence's arm tightly.

"Who can that be on the bridge at this hour of the night?" she whispered.

"Probably someone who has climbed up there to take off his skates," said Florence with her characteristic coolness.

"But look! He's waving his arms. He's signaling. Do you suppose he means it for us?"

"No," said Florence. "He's looking north, toward the edge of the island.

Come on; pay no attention to him. Under we go."

With a great, broad swinging stroke she fairly threw her lighter partner across the shadow that the bridge made and out into the moonlight on the other side.

Marian was breathing quite easily again. They had made half the length of the island on the return lap, when she again gripped Florence's arm.