longer a run--it was a real river, and Dave's voice sounded far off
when he came out on some bare point to shout his constant:

"Nothing doing--yet."

They were now on a part of the river that was comparatively strange
to them. Jerry had more than once followed the Plum this far south,
but it had always been by boat, or at best on the west bank, Dave's
territory, where a chain of lakes followed the course of the river.
Each new twist and turn sent a shiver of nervous dread through him.
Many the story of rattlers and copperheads he had heard from
fishermen and campers--and the night was filled with unexpected and
disturbing noises, overhead and underfoot. Of course he knew that
snakes are not abroad at night, but the knowledge did not help his
nerves.

Moreover, they were drawing near Lost Island, and no boy of
Watertown had ever been known to cast a line within half a mile of
that dreaded spot. For Lost Island was the "haunted castle" of the
neighborhood. It was nothing more than a large, weed-and-willow-
covered five acres, a wrecked dam jutting out from the east bank,
and a great gaunt pile of foundation masonry standing high and dry
on a bare knoll at the north end.

It had a history--never twice told the same. The dam had been
dynamited, that much was sure. By whom, no one knew. The house, if
ever a house had been built over those rain-bleached rocks, had been
struck by lightning, hurricane, blown up by giant powder, rotted
away--a dozen other tragic ends, as the whim of the story-teller
dictated. The owner had been murdered, lynched, had committed