"Yes. Someone hacked it partly through with a knife, and the wind did the rest."
There was no doubt of it. The main rope had been partly severed, and the strain of the hard blow had done the rest.
"That fellow we saw near the ice-boat!" began Harry. "It must have been him! Who was he?"
"Danny Rugg—if anybody," answered Bert. "I thought it looked like him. Probably he heard that we were going to use the boat to go to Snow Lodge, and he wanted to make trouble for us. He's going to camp up there near us, I hear."
"Gracious!" cried Dorothy. "I hope he doesn't play any tricks like that up there."
"If he does I guess Harry and I can attend to him," cried Bert. "But, in a way, it's a good thing the rope did break or we might have upset. Only Danny, if he did it, had no idea of doing us a good turn. He just wanted to make trouble."
"Can you fix it?" asked Nan of her brother.
"Oh, yes, it can be spliced and will be
