“But I don’t hear you shouting out that you’ve made any sort of discovery, up to now, Andy?”

“Well, no, for a fact I haven’t.  But Frank, I wish you could take the glass and let me hold the wheel for a minute.”

“You can tell me just as well, I think,” replied the other.

“It’s about the sandy beach in front of the point,” remarked Andy.

“What ails it then?” Frank inquired, seeing his cousin hesitate.

“Why,” Andy went on to say, “you know how powerful this glass is, and how it shows up the smallest of things when the sun is just right?  It’s doing that now.  I can look down on the sand spit at the point; and for a lonely spot where hardly a man ever comes from November to June, it looks pretty well trampled up to me.”

“Trampled by men or animals?” the pilot inquired.

“I think by two-legged animals,” answered the one who held the powerful lenses to his young eyes.  “And it struck me that perhaps the biplane came down right there early this morning.  It was headed this way when I saw it, and not so very high up; though that flock of crazy crows knocked me out of watching it for some times.”

“Do you mean it fell there; that they had an accident of some kind, Andy?”

“Might be that; and then, again, perhaps they dropped down on purpose; p’raps they mean to have another warm session around Bloomsbury before skipping out of this section for good.  With the aeroplane to make a quick get-away, they might think of some rich haul they want to gather in.  Am I away off in my guess, Frank, or do you kind of lean the same way?”

“I think you are getting pretty close to the truth, Andy, and that’s a fact,” replied the other.  “But it would clinch it if you could only glimpse the biplane hidden away somewhere down there under the brush or the trees.”

“That’s what I’ve been hoping for,” returned Andy, a little fretfully, “but so far without meeting any success that you could notice.  But what ought we to do about it, Frank?”

“Go on, and take a wide sweep around,” came the steady reply.  “Perhaps we might run across another leading clue, and then this one would look foolish.  We’d be sorry then, that we thought so bad of Todd.  Perhaps, after all, he was only making signals to one of the men connected with the logging camp, up on the Point for something or other.”

He allowed the motor to work at the reduced speed that it had been carrying on ever since quitting the home field, where the workshop and the hangar stood.  Andy still continued to use the glasses, as though he had not quite given up all hope of making some sort of discovery.

Once, however, they had left the northern end of the lovely lake behind them for good, and only the forest lay below, Frank quickened matters somewhat.  Truth to tell, he hardly knew what to think, and whether what they had witnessed could really have any bearing on the solution of the puzzle or not.