"He isn't! He is unfortunate. He has been accused wrongfully, and everybody is against him," exclaimed Polly, with some heat.

"All right. Then let's hear about it," urged Wyn, capturing both of the other girl's hands in her own, and smiling into her tear-drenched gray eyes.

CHAPTER IV

THE SILVER IMAGES

"Didn't you ever hear of us Jarleys?" Polly first of all demanded.

"Only as being interested in the wax-work business," replied Wyn, with twinkling eyes.

"I--I guess father never made wax-work," said Polly, hesitatingly.

She was an innocent sort of girl, who evidently lacked many advantages of education and reading that Wyn and her friends had enjoyed as a matter of course.

"Well, I never heard the name before to-day--not _your_ name, nor your father's," Wyn said.

"Well, we used to live here."

"In Denton?"

"Yes, ma'am----"

"Will you stop that?" cried Wyn. "I am Wyn Mallory, I tell you."

"All right, Wyn. It's a pretty name. I'll be glad to use it," returned Polly.

"Prove it by using it altogether," commanded Wyn. "Now, what about your father?"

"I--I can't tell you much about it--much of the particulars, I mean,"

said the girl from Lake Honotonka, diffidently. "I don't really know them. Father never speaks of it much. But even as a tiny girl mother explained to me that when folks said father had done wrong I must deny it. That it was not so. It was only circ.u.mstances that made him appear in the wrong. And--you know, Wyn--your mother wouldn't lie to you!"

"Of course not!" cried Wyn, warmly. "Of course not!"

"Well, then, you'll have to believe just what I tell you. Father was in some business deal with a man here in Denton, and something went wrong.

The other man accused father of being dishonest. Father could not defend himself. Circ.u.mstances were dead against him. And it worried mother so that it made her sick.

"So we all left town. Father had very little money, and he built a shack up there in the woods near Honotonka. We're just 'squatters' up there.

But gradually father got a few boats, and built a float, and made enough in the summer from fishermen and campers to support us. Of course, mother being sick so many years before she died, kept us very poor. I only go to the district school winters. Then I have to walk four miles each way, for we own no horse. Summers I help father with the boats."

"That's where you got such palms! cried Wyn, touching her new friend's calloused hands again.

"It's rowing does it. But I don't mind. I love the water, you see."

"So do I. I've got a canoe. I'm captain of a girls' canoe club."

"That's nice," said Polly. "I suppose when you take up boating for just a sport it's lots better than trying to make one's living out of it."

"Well, tell me more," urged Wyn. "What are you in town for now? Why did I find you crying here on the bench?"

"A man hurt me by talking harshly about poor father," said the girl from Lake Honotonka.

"Come on! tell me," urged Wyn, giving her a little shake. Polly suddenly threw an arm about the town girl and hugged her tightly.

"I _do_ love you, Wyn Mallory," she sobbed. "I--I wish you were my sister. I get so lonely sometimes up there in the woods, for there's only father and me now. And this past winter he was very sick with rheumatic fever. You see, there was an accident."

"He met with an accident, you mean?"

"Yes. It was awful--or it might have been awful for him if he and I had not had signals that we use when there's a fog on the lake. I'll tell you.

"You see, there is a man named Shelton--Dr. Shelton--who lives in one of the grand houses at Braisely Park--you know, that is the rich people's summer colony at the upper end of the lake?"

"I know about it," said Wyn. "Although I never was there."

"Well, Dr. Shelton had his motor boat down at our float. He left it there himself, and he told father to go to the express office at Meade's Forge on a certain day and get a box that would be there addressed to Dr. Shelton. It was a valuable box.

"When father went for it the expressman would not give it up until he had telephoned to Dr. Shelton and recognized the doctor's voice over the wire. It seems that that box was packed with ancient silver images that had been found in a ruined temple in Yucatan, and had been sent to Dr.

Shelton by the man who found them. They claim they were worth at the least five thousand dollars.

"The doctor had a party at his house right then, he said over the telephone, and he wanted father to come up the lake with the box. He wanted to display his antique treasures to his friends.

"Now, it was a dreadfully bad day. After father had started down to the Forge in the motor boat he knew that a storm was coming. And ahead of it was a thick fog. He told Dr. Shelton over the 'phone that it was a bad time to make the trip the whole length of Lake Honotonka.

"The doctor would not listen to any excuses, however; and it was his boat that was being risked. And his silver images, too! Those rich people don't care much about a poor man's life, and if father had refused to risk his on the lake in the storm Dr. Shelton would have given his trade to some other boatkeeper after that.

"So father started in the _Bright Eyes_. He did not shoot right up the middle of the lake, as he would have done had the day been fair. The lake is twenty miles broad, you know, in the middle. So he kept near our side--the south side it is--and did not lose sight of the sh.o.r.e at first.

"But at Gannet Island he knew he had better run outside. You see, the strait between the island and the sh.o.r.e is narrow and, when the wind is high, it sometimes is dangerous in there. Why, ten years ago, one of the little excursion steamers that used to ply the lake then, got caught in that strait and was wrecked!

"So father _had_ to go outside of Gannet Island. The fog shut down as thick as a blanket before he more than sighted the end of the island.

He kept on, remembering what Dr. Shelton had said, and that is where he made a mistake," said Polly, shaking her head. "He ought to have turned right around and come back to our landing."

"Oh, dear me! what happened to him?" cried Wyn, eagerly.

"The fog came down, thicker and thicker," proceeded the boatman's daughter. "And the wind rode down upon father, too. Wind and fog together are not usual; but when the two combine it is much worse than either alone. You see, the thick mist swirling into father's eyes, driven head-on by the wind, blinded him. He steered a shade too near the sh.o.r.e.

"Suddenly the _Bright Eyes_ struck. A motor boat, going head-on upon a snag, can be easily wrecked. The boat struck and stuck, and father leaped up to shut off the engine.

"As he did so, something swished through the blinding fog and struck him, carrying him backward over the stern of the boat. Perhaps it was the loss of his weight that allowed the _Bright Eyes_ to sc.r.a.pe over the snag. At least, she did so as father plunged into the lake, and as he sank he knew that the boat, with her engine at half speed, was tearing away across the lake.

"It was the drooping limb of a tree that had torn father from the stern of the motor boat," continued Polly Jarley. "It may have been a big root of the same tree, under water, that had proved the finish of the boat.

For n.o.body ever saw the _Bright Eyes_ again. She just ran off at a tangent, into the middle of the lake, somewhere, we suppose, and filled and sank."

"Oh, dear me! And your father?" asked Wyn, anxiously.