That morning when Jeannette, eldest daughter of Léon Duval, tumbled out of the rumpled bed that she shared with her stepsister, the day had seemed just like any other day. It was to prove, as you may have guessed, quite different from the ordinary run of days. In the first place, it was pleasant; the first really mild day, after months of cold weather. In the second place, things were to happen. Of course, things happened _every_ day; but then, most things, like breakfast, dinner, and supper, have a way of happening over and over again. But it isn't every day that a really, truly adventure plunges, as it were, right into one's own front yard. To be sure, Jeanne's front yard invited adventures. It was quite different from any other front yard in Bancroft. It was large and wet and blue; and big enough to show on any map of the Western Hemisphere. Nothing less, indeed, than Lake Superior. Her side yard, too, was another big piece of the same lake. The rest of her yard, except what was Cinder Pond, was dock. In order to understand the adventure; and, indeed, all the rest of this story, you must have a clear picture of Jeanne's queer home; for it _was_ a queer home for even the daughter of a fisherman. You see, the Duvals had lived on dry land as long as they were able (which was not very long) to pay rent. When there were no more landlords willing to wait forever for their rent-money, the impecunious family moved to an old scow anchored in shallow water near an abandoned wharf. After a time, the scow-owner needed his property but not the family that was on it. The Duvals were forced to seek other shelter. Happily, they found it near at hand. Once on a time, ever so far back in the history of Bancroft, the biggest, busiest, and reddest of brick furnaces, in that region of iron and iron mines, had poured forth volumes of thick black smoke. It was located right at the water's edge, on a solid stone foundation. From it, a clean new wooden wharf extended southward for three hundred feet, east for nine hundred feet, north for enough more feet to touch the land again. This wharf formed three sides of a huge oblong pond. The shore made the fourth side. The shallow water inside this inclosure became known, in time, as "The Cinder Pond." After twenty years of activity, the furnace, with the exception of the huge smoke-stack, was destroyed by fire. After that, there was no further use for the wharf. Originally built of huge cribs filled with stone, planked over with heavy timbers, it became covered, in time, first with fine black cinders, then with soil. As it grew less useful, it became more picturesque, as things sometimes do.