Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island The Mystery of the Wreck
Laura just kept on gaping. “Oh,

   Vi, you’re a darling, and I forgive you for scaring us almost to death. Come on, light another one so we can see where we are.”

   Vi obediently lighted another match, a box of which she had found quite by accident, and the girls looked about them curiously. And as they looked their curiosity and wonder grew. Billie was wild with impatience when the match in Vi’s hand flickered and went out again.

   “Here, give them to me,” she cried. “I thought I saw something. Look out, don’t spill them, Vi!”

   “I should say not—they’re all we have,” chimed in Laura.

   The match flared up in Billie’s hand, and this time it was her turn to make a discovery. The discovery was a pair of thick white candles, each set in a white china dish and pushed to one end of a rudely-made table.

   Quick as a flash, Billie put the match to the wick of one candle, and then, with a sigh of excitement, blew out the match that was almost burning her fingers.

   “Girls,” she cried, looking about her eagerly, “isn’t this the queerest, funniest little place you ever saw? And it’s so complete.”

   Excitedly she crossed the little hut, whose floor was nothing but solid, trampled-down earth, and began to examine a rude-looking cot that ran along all one side of the queer little place.

   “And here’s a pantry!” exclaimed Vi excitedly. “Look, girls, shelves and cans of things and—and—everything!”

   The interior of the place was made of rough boards, rudely thrown together as if by an amateur. Why the person who had made the little cabin had not laid boards for his floor, nobody could tell. Perhaps he had run short of lumber or perhaps he preferred the hard earth floor.

   As Vi had said, in one corner some boards had been nailed up to form shelves, and there were several tins of canned goods upon the shelves. Quite evidently this must be the queer owner’s pantry.

   Besides this, the cot, the table, and an oddly-shaped chair, which had evidently been made from an old soap box, made the only furnishings of the place.

   “I wonder,” said Billie, looking about her while a sort of awe crept into her voice, “what the person is like that lives here. He must be very queer, to 
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