"I think I know as good a plan as any," he announced, after a pause. "Dave, you and I will walk down the lake, using our eyes and ears. Tom and Dan will go in the opposite direction. Each pair will keep along until our watches show that we've been going ten minutes. Then we will walk up the slope a hundred steps and turn toward the centre, meeting probably about the end of the second ten minutes. After that, if we decide to do so, we can go further inland from the lake. If there's a house or hut, or any fellow camping out in this neighborhood we ought to find him without much trouble. What do you fellows say to my plan?" "It's about as systematic as anything could be," Dave agreed. "But what if one pair of us find something?" "We'll try our best to communicate with the other pair," Dick rejoined. "Suppose, Dave, that you and I run into something interesting and don't want to leave it? Tom and Dan, not meeting us at the appointed place, will know enough to keep right on over our course until they find us." "That looks plain enough," nodded Reade thoughtfully. "All right, then," Dick declared. "Now we'll start." He and Dave started off at a swinging gait. The first time Prescott turned to look behind him Reade and Danny Grin had already vanished. Dick kept close to the shore, Dave moving in a parallel line a few steps up the slope. "There isn't any hut, lodge or camp down there," Dave called softly, "or else we'd have seen it from our camp on the other side of the lake." "I know it," Dick nodded. "What I'm trying to do is to see if I can find any hint, on the shore, of how that fellow landed yesterday, without Tom or Danny catching sight of him. Of course, a very clever swimmer could have gone quite a distance under water. and I want to see if I can find any sign of anything that would have hidden his landing from the fellows in the canoe." "Oh!" nodded Dave understandingly. The full ten minutes of searching passed without the slightest trace of a discovery. "Halt," Dick called up smilingly. "Now, join me, Darry, while I count off the hundred steps up the slope." This done, the chums started backward, keeping a course as nearly parallel with the shore as was possible. "Now, try to be keener than ever," Dick urged, as Dave paced off another twenty steps higher up. "We're in a growth of deeper forest, with a bigger tangle of underbrush and it will be easy enough to overlook something." The two boys trudged on. They were five minutes on their way back, perhaps, when Dick heard a sudden scrambling in the underbrush not far away. Then Prescott caught sight of a human figure, yet so fleetingly that he could have given no description of it. "Is that you, Darry?" he called sharply. But it wasn't, for no answer came back, save for the slight sound of someone going through the brush farther on. "Dave! Darry!" shouted Prescott. "Here! Quickly!"