The girls had been lazily on the lookout for Mr. Lavine's appearance and earlier in the day had kept the camp spyglass busy. Now Frank suddenly caught it up again and focused it almost at once on the stalled motor boat. "Oh! what's that?" was her excited demand. "Girls! there's a boat we missed before." "Where?" drawled Grace, lazily. "It isn't father; is it?" demanded Bess. "How do I know? It's a power boat----Goodness, what's that?" She jumped so that Wyn came to her side quickly. "Let me see, Frank," she begged. "There's--there's a fire!" gasped Frankie. The girls came running at her cry. Even Mrs. Havel left her seat and stepped out of the shade of the beech tree to scan the water under her hand. "I see smoke!" cried Percy. "Dear me! is the boat really afire?" demanded Mina Everett. "Of course, it can't be father," declared Bess. "He knows how to take care of a motor boat." Through the glass Wyn, who now had it, saw the flames leaping from under the hood of the boat, while a dense plume of smoke began to reel away on the breeze that was blowing. "It is afire!" she gasped "Oh! it _is_! What can we do?" "We could never reach it in our canoes before the boat burns to the water's edge," cried Frankie. They could see two figures on the doomed boat. Through the glass Wyn could see them so plainly that she knew one to be a waterman, while the other was much better dressed. Indeed, she feared that she recognized the figure of this second man. "Let me have the glass, Wyn," said Bessie, eagerly. But Wyn, for once, was disobliging. "You can't see anything--much," she said. "Come on, Bess! let's try and paddle out to them." "And have them swamp our canoes if they tried to climb in," said Miss Lavine. "No, thanks!" "Come on!" cried Frank, joining in. "We ought to try and help." "What's the use?" drawled Bessie, walking away. "And you're mean not to let me have the glass, Wyn." "Oh, come on and take it!" gasped Wyn. "Don't want it now," snapped Bess, who took offense rather easily at times. "You can keep the old thing." Wyn sighed with relief. Then she whirled quickly and ran down to the beach, with Frank right at her heels. They were the only two girls who launched their canoes. Wyn had brought the glass with her. "Now I _know_ Bess won't see him," she exclaimed, almost in a whisper. "What's that?" demanded Frankie, who overheard. "What do you mean, Wyn?" "I believe that is Mr. Lavine out there," said the captain of the Go-Aheads. "Oh, Frank! paddle hard!" And it _was_ Mr. Lavine. He had hired this little gasoline boat, with its owner to run it, at Denton, and had paid the owner an extra five-dollar bill to force the boat to its very highest speed (and that wasn't much) all the way up the Wintinooski. Mr. Lavine was in a hurry; he was in too much of a hurry, as it proved. Somewhere off Meade's Forge he began to smell the gasoline all too strongly. There was a leak somewhere; but the boat kept on.