"It sounds like whisky--more likely, morphia. I reckon it's my duty to go." As a matter of fact, the physician's curiosity had been aroused. He was professionally anxious to get at a solution of the mystery. He hurriedly changed his clothes in preparation for the rough voyage to Ichabod's Island, and equipped himself with the old, worn leather bag stocked with medicines, which, for years, had been a familiar sight throughout the whole region in every household where disease came to terrify and destroy. "Hurry, Ichabod," the Doctor cried. "We'll shake a leg, or the tide'll be running against us." Ichabod's skiff was tailed to the physician's little launch. The motor power made the voyage to the Island swift, although it was rough, even to the point of danger on account of the storm-driven waters. When they had made fast at the landing, the two hurried to the shack. The door was swinging wide. But to their amazement and dismay not even Shrimp was there to give them welcome. The place was utterly deserted. The visitors so strangely cast up from the sea had vanished as mysteriously as they had come. There was the bed on which the girl had been lying--now it was empty. Not even a vestige of her clothing remained to prove that she was more than the figment of a crazed brain. Ichabod stared about him with distended eyes. He could make no guess as to the meaning of the strange thing that had befallen. Then, abruptly, his dazed mind was aroused to a new calamity.... Shrimp, too, was gone! Presently, Ichabod looked for the yacht's tender, and found it likewise gone. He was able to understand in some measure what had occurred. The batteries had been dried by the hot stove in the shack, and--the little craft thus restored to running condition--the man had undoubtedly fled with the girl. And with them Shrimp had voyaged. A sudden overwhelming desolation fell on the old man. He had been through much that day. He had been strained to the utmost resources of his energies. And he was an old man. He had small reserves of force with which to meet the unexpected. Now, he felt himself bewildered over all the strange happenings. And there was something more. The one constant companion of his lonely life was Shrimp--and Shrimp, too, had fled from him. The Doctor, very much puzzled over this absence of an expected patient, started to leave the shack. He halted at the head of the steps, and looked down in a bewilderment touched with pity. For Ichabod was on his knees before the steps of his own house, and his form was shaken with the sobbings of despair. CHAPTER IV UNDER THE AFTER AWNING