“Yes!” The girl flashed up indignantly. “And you know what they say about us over on the mainland--that everybody on the Beavers runs whisky from Canada! It’s not so. None of us do that. Jimmy Basset, who’s here with Father, makes whisky--that’s true; but most of the time he’s so crippled up with rheumatism that he can’t fish and do any work, and it’s the only way he has of supporting his family. So nobody else on Beaver makes whisky, and nobody runs it from Canada--it’s those Cheboygan men who run it! And they hide up on one of the islands here until they can sneak it in to Ed Julot over at Harbor Springs for the summer resorters to buy--and then everybody blames the Beaver men! Look after that fish, or it’ll burn--quick, it’s in the fire! I’ll get the coffee and bread.” The girl was up and gone for her supplies. * * * * * Hardrock rescued the planked whitefish from the encroaching blaze, smiling to himself as he did so, over the utterance of the indignant Nelly. He could appreciate her point of view and could even sympathize with it. There was something whimsically just about one half-crippled man being allowed a monopoly on moonshine liquor, by common consent, for his support. “Thank heaven I’m no prohibition-enforcer!” reflected Hardrock. “I expect she’s hit it right, however, as regards the runners who supply the resort towns from Mackinac to Traverse with booze. These islands are ideally located for their purpose, and the pretense of being honest fishermen--hm! By hemlock, I’ve got the answer to the whole thing! But not a word of it to her. No wonder those fellows opened fire, and shot to kill, when they saw their fish-trap being robbed! But I’d better go mighty slow until I’m sure. There’s nothing on which to hang any legal peg, so far.” Even though the girl’s theory was right, even though he found the men who used this black-and-white flag, any accumulation of legal evidence as to the shooting was distinctly improbable. Hardrock recognized this clearly. At the same time, he felt confident that he had hit upon one solution of the whole enigma--a solution which promised to be highly interesting, even more so than writing a textbook for mining engineers. Planked whitefish, fresh from the lake, and coffee, and thick bread; and over the bread, the rich juice of the eternal mulligan, made this time from the white small-mouth bass that swam around the wreck down the shore. Thus the two dined together, not gracefully but well, and by tacit consent avoided the matter of their early talk. Instead, Hardrock spoke of Danny Gallagher and Arizona, and the mines, and gradually fell silent and brought the girl to speak of herself and her life down State, where she had these two years taught school, and the world outside this narrow horizon of the Beavers. Two on an island together--and time was not.