The afternoon had been cloudy, and late in the evening it began to rain.

Then the wind came up, moaning through the forest in melancholy fashion and sending thousands of whitecaps across the surface of the lake.

"It isn't Mirror Lake to-night," said Belle, with a little shiver. "It's more like Foamy Lake."

"I don't think I'd want to go out in a canoe to-night," returned Phil, who was beside her.

"I think we are going to have quite a storm," said Laura. "Just listen to that wind!"

With fitful gusts tearing around the bungalows, no one felt much like going to bed. About ten o'clock came a hard downpour, lasting for half an hour. Then the wind died away, and gradually the rain ceased.

"I guess the worst of it is over," announced Mrs. Wadsworth, presently.

"I think we may as well retire." And shortly after that all of the inmates of both bungalows were in bed.

For a long while Dave could not sleep. As had been the case the night previous, he tumbled and tossed on his couch, thinking of the trouble that had come to him. But at last tired nature claimed its own, and he sank into a profound slumber, from which he did not awaken until some time after sunrise.

"h.e.l.lo! I must have overslept," he declared, as he leaped up, to see that his chums were almost dressed.

Dave was just finishing his toilet, and the other boys and some of the girls had started to walk down to the dock to look at the lake, when a cry came from the kitchen of the bungalow.

"Mrs. Wadsworth! Mr. Porter!" came a call from the hired girl. "Please come here!"

"What is it, Mary?" asked Mrs. Wadsworth, as she appeared from her own room.

"Sure, ma'am, a whole lot of things are missing!" declared the girl.

"Missing! What is missing?"

"Sure, ma'am, almost everything in the kitchen is missing, ma'am!" and the girl pointed around in a helpless sort of fashion. "All the knives and forks and spoons are gone! And so are some of the pots and pans and kettles!"

"Is that possible?"

"Yes, ma'am. And that ain't all, ma'am. Sure, and most of the things in the pantry and in the ice-box are gone, too!" announced Mary, running from one place to another. "Sure, ma'am, we've been burglarized, ma'am!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

DELLA FORD'S STATEMENT

"Burglars!"

"Did they take any of our valuables?"

"Oh, I wonder if they were in our rooms!"

"Mary, were all the things here when you went to bed?" questioned Mrs.

Wadsworth, of the servant girl, who was now in the wildest possible state of excitement, wringing her hands and running from one room to another.

"Yes, ma'am, when I went to bed everything was in its place. I'm sure of it, ma'am."

The boys as well as the girls crowded into the kitchen, and then looked into the pantry, in a corner of which was located the ice-box.

"How about this pantry window, Mary? Did you leave it open last night?"

asked Dave, pointing to the window in question.

"Sure, sir, I did not! I always lock up well before I go to bed,"

answered the girl.

"You didn't open the window this morning?"

"No, sir."

"Then that is where the thief must have come in," remarked Roger.

"I think we had better take a look around and see just how much is missing," advised Phil. "The thief may have cleaned us out more than we imagine."

Upon this, a systematic search was made through all the rooms of the bungalow. In the midst of the work Ben came running over from the other place.

"Say, what do you know about this!" he called out. "Somebody visited our bungalow last night and took nearly all our victuals and our tableware and our kitchen utensils!"

"The same thing happened here, Ben," answered Dave. "We are just sizing up the situation, to find out how much is gone."

"The others are at that now over at our bungalow. I thought I'd run over to tell you. I'll go back and tell them you are in the same fix. This is fierce; isn't it?" And then Ben hurried away.

An examination of the premises showed that all the tableware of value had disappeared, along with two rings which Laura had left on the mantelpiece in the living-room. From the kitchen nearly everything used in cooking was gone, and likewise almost everything from the pantry and the ice-box.

"Oh, my two rings!" burst out Laura. "The diamond that dad gave me and the beautiful ruby from Uncle Dunston!"

"It's too bad, Laura!" declared Jessie.

"That's what it is!" said Dave. "We'll have to get after that burglar, whoever he is."

"This looks to me like the work of some of these people who are camping out in the Adirondacks," announced Roger. "What would an ordinary burglar do with a lot of kitchen utensils, not to mention canned goods and stuff from an ice-box?"

"Maybe they took the stuff from the ice-box to eat," suggested Dave. "It might be that they would rather camp out than run the risk of going to Carpen Falls, or to some of the hotels, for their meals."

Having completed the search in the bungalows, the boys, followed by the others, went outside. Here they discovered a great number of footprints leading back and forth from the pantry window to the edge of the forest.

Among some jagged rocks, the trail was lost.

"Looks to me as if there must have been half a dozen fellows in this raid," announced Roger. "What do you think of it, Dave?"

"Either that, or else the fellow who did the job made a dozen trips or more. To me, the footprints look very much alike."

Presently the crowd went over to the Ba.s.swood bungalow, and there learned that, among other things, some solid silver tableware which Mrs. Ba.s.swood had brought along had vanished.

"I was foolish to bring such expensive silver," declared the lady of the house. "But I thought we could use it if we happened to have visitors. I never dreamed of being robbed up here."