“Let’s!” proposed Grace.  The boys had gone off fishing.

Soon the girls were splashing around in the lake, making a pretty picture in their becoming bathing suits, of which they had more use than they had anticipated.

“Let’s try some diving!” proposed Mollie, always a daring water sprite.  “It’s lovely and deep here,” and she looked down from the end of the dock.

“I wish I dared dive,” said Amy.  She was a rather timid swimmer, slow and deliberate, probably able to keep afloat for a long time, but always timid in deep water.

“Here goes!” cried impulsive Mollie, as she poised for a flash into the water.

She went down cleanly, but was rather long coming up.  Grace and Betty looked anxiously at one another.

“She is——­” began Betty.

Mollie flashed into sight like a seal.

“I—­ I found something!” she panted.

“Did you strike bottom?” asked Betty.

“Almost.  But that’s all right.  I’m going down again.  There is something down there.  Maybe it’s the ghost!”

“Oh, do be careful!” cautioned Betty, but Mollie was already in the water.  She was longer this time coming up, and Betty was getting nervous.  Then Mollie shot into view.

“I—­ I found it!” she gasped.

“What?” chorused the others.

“The missing canoe those boys have been looking for!  It is down there on the bottom, freighted with stones.  We will get it up for them!”

CHAPTER XXIII

 Setting A trap

“Are you sure it is the canoe?” asked Betty, who did not want Mollie to take any unnecessary risks.

“Of course I am,” came the confident answer, as Mollie poised, in her dripping bathing suit, on the little dock.  She made a pretty picture, too, with her red cap, and blue suit trimmed with white.  “I could feel the edge of the gunwhale,” she went on, “and the stones in it that keep it down.”

“But how can we get it up?” asked Grace, who was sitting on the dock, splashing her feet in the water.  Grace never did care much about getting wet.  Amy said she thought she looked better dry.  Certainly she was a pretty girl and knew how to “pose” to make the most of her charms—­ small blame to her, though, for she was unconscious of it.

“We can get it up easily enough,” declared Mollie, wringing the water from her skirt, “All we’ll have to do will be to toss out the stones, one by one, and the canoe will almost float itself.  I can tie a rope to the bow, and we can stand on shore and pull.  Those boys will be so glad to get it back.”

“But can we lift out the heavy stones?” asked Amy, in considerable doubt.

“Of course we can.  You know any object is much lighter in water than out of it, we learned that in physics class, you remember.  The water buoys it up.  You can move a much heavier stone under water than you could if the same stone was on land.  We can all try.”