"Bet you have a care next time," said Lance, grinning. "But who do you suppose that fellow with the gun was? I'd really like to meet him again."

"Good sort, whoever he is," Short and Long agreed.

"No farmer."

"Not much! He was city-dressed all right."

Laura listened to their comments, but said nothing. She believed she could make a good guess as to who the young man was; but she was keeping that secret to herself.

When she and the three boys rejoined their companions down stream, they had enough to tell about the adventure without declaring the ident.i.ty of the young man with the gun. It was exciting enough to have had Short and Long almost "chawed up" by a savage dog, as Lance expressed it.

"And this useless piece of goods," he added taking Purt by the collar, "made a foozle--right off the reel! I could have scared that big bully easily enough if Purt had kept still about his old revolver being no good."

"I don't care," complained Purt. "The revolver would have been all right if you hadn't taken that screw out and thrown it away."

"And you'd likely shot yourself--or somebody else--by this time."

"No I wouldn't," said Purt, gloomily.

"How do you know?" asked Chet.

"Why--I find that when I bought cartridges for that pistol I got thirty-eights--and the pistol is a forty-five!"

The whole crowd laughed at that. Purt Sweet really _was_ too funny for anything.

They got another good laugh on him before they went back to the island. There was a squatter's cabin near the bank of the brook and they trooped up there for a drink of cool milk, for the woman had two cows and was willing to sell the milk to them, right from her log b.u.t.tery.

The woman's daughter--a girl about Lil Pendleton's age--waited on them. She was a brown-skinned, big-eyed, healthy-looking girl--a regular country beauty. Laura whispered:

"Isn't she a splendid creature?"

Purt had c.o.c.ked an appreciative eye at her, and he murmured:

"Quite true--quite true, Miss Laura. She's as beautiful as Hebe," and gave the name of the G.o.ddess the very best p.r.o.nunciation, according to Professor Dimp.

"Beautiful as _he_ be?" drawled Chet, in exaggeration of bucolic tw.a.n.g, looking amusedly at the lank and lazy squatter himself who lay snoring on the platform before the hut. "Huh! she's a sight purtier than _he_ be. Why, _he's_ as humbly as a hedge-fence--an' ye can see, Purt, that the girl takes after her mother."

"It sure is too bad how they rig you, Pretty," laughed Jess.

"Pretty's all right!" joined in Billy Long. "Only one thing wrong with him. He starts easy, and he speeds up well, but just at the critical moment he always skids."

"Hear the motor talk from Short and Long! Yow!" exclaimed Reddy b.u.t.ts.

"And old Purt's not so slow at that!"

"Who said he was slow?" demanded Short and Long, with apparent indignation. "Bet you can't do him, Reddy."

"Bet I can--and for half a dollar, too," declared the youth with the radiant head of hair.

This was after the party had returned to the creek and luncheon was in order. The other boys saw that the red-headed youth and Short and Long had a scheme between them, and they sat back and prepared to enjoy Purt's discomfiture.

"You can't fool Purt in a hundred years," Short and Long reiterated, quite hotly.

"Can," returned Reddy, briefly, with his mouth full. "Got a half dollar, Purt?"

"What if I have?" demanded the dude, suspiciously.

"You put it under that mug on the table, and I bet I can take the money without touching the mug."

"You cawn't trick me," drawled Port. "You couldn't do that, you know, Reddy."

"Put your half dollar under the mug and see if I can't," chuckled the auburn-haired youth.

Thus urged, Purt did as agreed. He placed a half dollar on the table, and carefully covered it with an inverted mug that he had been drinking milk from.

Everybody was interested now and was watching the proceedings.

"Better put a napkin over it, Purt," advised Reddy. "For I'm going to fool you a whole lot!"

"You cawn't fool me, deah boy!" declared the dude, with growing conviction.

But he carefully covered the mug. Then Reddy, with a grin, reached under the rough table they were using and soon pulled his hand back with a half dollar in the palm.

The boys laughed, and wondered, and the girls were likewise puzzled.

Purt looked both amazed and vexed. Then they began to laugh at him.

"Mighty easy way to make half a dollar," commented Reddy, slipping it into his pocket. "I told you I'd get it, Purt, without touching the mug."

"But you didn't do it, doncher know!" cried Purt, growing exasperated.

"My half dollar is there."

He whipped off the napkin, lifted the mug--and Reddy, with a laugh, grabbed the coin that lay under it.

"I told you I'd get it without lifting the mug, Purt," he said, and the crowd burst into a chorus of laughter. Purt had been made the victim of the joke, after all.

It was all good fun, however. Purt could well afford the half dollar, and after a minute he, too, laughed.

They started back for Acorn Island in good season, with a nice string of speckled trout and some two dozen white perch--the promise of a splendid "fish-fry" that evening. On the way they pa.s.sed the heavy canoe seen several times before on the lake.

There was but one man in it now, fishing; and he sat with his shoulders hunched up and his hat drawn down about his face.

"I wonder who that old man is?" Chet said, reflectively, as the _Bonnie La.s.s_ sped by.

"Wonder where his camp is?" responded Lance, idly.

"He looks like a native," Reddy said. "If he's no handsomer than that squatter back yonder, I wouldn't want to see him any closer to."

Laura, and Jess, and Bobby looked at each other surrept.i.tiously. They knew that the man in the canoe was Professor Asa Dimp, Latin teacher at Central High!