There were a number of small annoyances the first day or two.  Hutchins was having trouble with the motor launch, which the steamer had towed up the day we came, and which she called the “Mebbe.”  And another civilized Indian, with a gold watch and a cigarette case, had rented us a leaky canoe for a dollar a day.

[We patched the leak with chewing gum, which Aggie always carried for indigestion; and it did fairly well, so long as the gum lasted.]

Then, on the second night, there was a little wind, and the tent collapsed on us, the ridgepole taking Aggie across the chest.  It was that same night, I think, when Aggie’s cat found a porcupine in the woods, and came in looking like a pincushion.

What with chopping firewood for the stove, and carrying water, and bailing out the canoe, and with the motor boat giving one gasp and then dying for every hundred times somebody turned over the engine, we had no time to fish for two days.

The police agent fished all day from a rock, for, of course, he had no boat; but he seemed to catch nothing.  At times we saw him digging frantically, as though for worms.  What he dug with I do not know; but, of course, he got no worms.  Tish said if he had been more civil she would have taken something to him and a can of worms; but he had been rude, especially to Aggie’s cat, and probably the boat would bring him things.

What with getting settled and everything, we had not much time to think about the spy.  It was on the third day, I believe, that he brought his green canoe to the open water in front of us and anchored there, just beyond earshot.

He put out a line and opened a book; and from that time on he was a part of the landscape every day from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M.  At noon he would eat some sort of a lunch, reading as he ate.

He apparently never looked toward us, but he was always there.  It was the most extraordinary thing.  At first we thought he had found a remarkable fishing-place; but he seemed to catch very few fish.  It was Tish, I think, who found the best explanation.

“He’s providing himself with an alibi,” she stated.  “How can he be a spy when we see him all day long?  Don’t you see how clever it is?”

It was the more annoying because we had arranged a small cove for soap-and-water bathing, hanging up a rod for bath-towels and suspending a soap-dish and a sponge-holder from an overhanging branch.  The cove was well shielded by brush and rocks from the island, but naturally was open to the river.

It was directly opposite this cove that Mr. McDonald took up his position.

This compelled us to bathe in the early morning, while the water was still cold, and resulted in causing Aggie a most uncomfortable half-hour on the fourth morning of our stay.

She was the last one in the pool, and Tish absent-mindedly took her bathrobe and slippers back to the camp when she went.  Tish went out in the canoe shortly after.  She was learning to use one, with a life preserver on—­Tish, of course, not the canoe.  And Mr. McDonald arriving soon after, Aggie was compelled to sit in the water for two hours and twenty minutes.  When Hutchins found her she was quite blue.