"Now listen and we'll tell you. We've about decided that the man who stays on Cockburn Island is a regular smuggler. You know those letters we found, or rather the letter that came to me and the one we picked up on the shore of Western Duck Island, don't you?" "Yes," replied George and Grant together. "Well, I suspect," resumed Fred, "that this man Rufus wrote them both." "He's almost as good a letter writer as he is a dresser, isn't he?" laughed Grant. "You just wait until I'm done," retorted Fred. "That's always the trouble in this party. Whenever I start in to give you information and try to teach you some things you need to know and don't know, there's always somebody that has to spoil it all." "We're not spoiling it," laughed George. "Go ahead with your story. What makes you think he wrote those letters?" "Be quiet, me child," said Fred, "and I will enlighten thee. We suspect Rufus wrote them because he talked almost all the way from Sault St. Marie to Cockburn Island. Even when we stopped on the shore of Mud Lake and he cooked our dinner for us he kept on talking just the same whether we were there or not." "That's just the trouble with you, Fred," retorted George. "You say he kept on talking whether you were there or not. Now how do you know he kept on talking when you weren't there? You see that's the reason we have to put in intelligent questions sometimes. You are just as likely to talk about things you don't know as you are about things that you do." "Never mind," retorted Fred. "This man in the course of his extended remarks dropped a few words that made us think he knew more than at first we thought he did. We suspect that he runs a motor-boat for this man over on Cockburn Island." "Is that the reason why he took you there?" inquired George. "Probably," answered Fred. "At any rate he told us that he had to go that way and that he had to be there this afternoon. I tell you, fellows, that man is doing something he doesn't want Uncle Sam to find out and my own impression is that he's a smuggler and carrying on a regular trade at it." "What do you think he smuggles?" inquired George. "I'm not just sure yet about that, but I'm pretty sure that I know where he hides the stuff before he takes it over to Mackinac or up to Sault St. Marie. In fact I think he has two places, one on Cockburn Island and the other down on Western Duck Island and I think, too, that he has a man or two on each island. Rufus runs a boat between Cockburn Island and Sault St. Marie and we suspect that he has another man down on Western Duck who gets rid of things there for him. And the strangest part of all is where he hides the stuff on Cockburn Island." "Where is that?" demanded George and Grant, who now were greatly interested in the story of their friends. "I think he hides it in the barn." "Do you mean that old barn right behind his shanty?" inquired Grant. "That's the very place." "What makes you think he hides the stuff there?"