her regard the fire from a very different standpoint. To her imagination the live embers glowed and flickered like the lantern she had seen on the wrecked ship.

She grew vaguely excited, for if no native of Pine Ledge could have left that fire, then some stranger must be prowling around the neighborhood, some one who didn’t want to be seen. Perhaps the very person who lighted this fire to cook his breakfast was the same invisible person who carried the swinging lantern across the deck, that first night.

The keen-minded Jo saw her excitement. “What’s up?” he asked. “Is something the matter?”

Ann hesitated. “Perhaps I am imagining, but I think I know of some one who might have built this fire.”

So she told them about that tiny pin point of lantern light.

65 Jo listened silently until she had finished, although Ann could see that he, too, was growing excited.

65

“I shouldn’t wonder if you were right,” he said at last. “It looks to me as if some one who has no business here is hanging about. But if we tell the other folks about it they will say that it is nonsense; they think that we are too young to know much of what we are talking about. I think we had better keep a good lookout, and if we actually discover anything we can tell them then. This is a job for Robin Hood’s men all right.”

Jo threw up his head and squared his shoulders.

“What ho, merry men!” he shouted. “How many will follow me in fathoming the mystery of the wrecked ship?”

“I will follow,” Ann said quickly.

“I want to be in on it, too,” Ben cried breathlessly.

“Me, too,” Helen chimed in a voice that was a bit frightened but nevertheless determined. “I want to help hunt for ghosts.”

“Then we are united?” Jo asked.

“Aye, aye,” shouted Ben. “Lead on.”

Before they started on their way again they dipped water from the river in their cupped hands and threw it hissing upon the live coals until the fire was out. As an extra precaution, for the fire might have gone deep into the pine needles beneath, Jo raked away the leaves and twigs and needles until he had made a wide circle of bareness.

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