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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Ruth Fielding Down East, by Alice B. Emerson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Ruth Fielding Down East
+       Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point
+
+
+Author: Alice B. Emerson
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2007  [eBook #23116]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Edwards, Anne Storer, D. Alexander, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustration.
+      See 23116-h.htm or 23116-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/3/1/1/23116/23116-h/23116-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/3/1/1/23116/23116-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
+
+Or
+
+The Hermit of Beach Plum Point
+
+by
+
+ALICE B. EMERSON
+
+Author of "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill," "Ruth
+Fielding at Sunrise Farm," "Ruth Fielding
+Homeward Bound," Etc.
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: TOM CAST ASIDE HIS SWEATER AND PLUNGED INTO THE TIDE.
+_Ruth Fielding Down East Page 113_]
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Cupples & Leon Company
+Publishers
+
+
+
+
+              Books for Girls
+            BY ALICE B. EMERSON
+            RUTH FIELDING SERIES
+       12mo.   Cloth.    Illustrated.
+
+      RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
+      RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
+      RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
+      RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
+      RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
+      RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
+      RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
+      RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
+      RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
+      RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
+      RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
+      RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
+      RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
+      RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
+      RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND
+      RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
+
+  CUPPLES & LEON CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.
+
+
+Copyright, 1920, by
+Cupples & Leon Company
+
+Ruth Fielding Down East
+
+Printed in U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ CHAPTER                                     PAGE
+      I.  THE WIND STORM                        1
+     II.  THE MYSTERY OF IT                     7
+    III.  THE DERELICT                         14
+     IV.  THE CRYING NEED                      22
+      V.  OFF AT LAST                          29
+     VI.  "THE NEVERGETOVERS"                  35
+    VII.  MOVIE STUNTS                         43
+   VIII.  THE AUCTION BLOCK                    52
+     IX.  A DISMAYING DISCOVERY                67
+      X.  A WILD AFTERNOON                     77
+     XI.  MR. PETERBY PAUL--AND "WHOSIS"       86
+    XII.  ALONGSHORE                           95
+   XIII.  THE HERMIT                          104
+    XIV.  A QUOTATION                         113
+     XV.  AN AMAZING SITUATION                122
+    XVI.  RUTH SOLVES ONE PROBLEM             129
+   XVII.  JOHN, THE HERMIT'S, CONTRIBUTION    136
+  XVIII.  UNCERTAINTIES                       144
+    XIX.  COUNTERCLAIMS                       152
+     XX.  THE GRILL                           159
+    XXI.  A HERMIT FOR REVENUE ONLY           171
+   XXII.  AN ARRIVAL                          180
+  XXIII.  TROUBLE--PLENTY                     186
+   XXIV.  ABOUT "PLAIN MARY"                  193
+    XXV.  LIFTING THE CURTAIN                 199
+
+
+
+
+RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE WIND STORM
+
+
+Across the now placidly flowing Lumano where it widened into almost the
+proportions of a lake just below the picturesque Red Mill, a bank of
+tempestuous clouds was shouldering into view above the sky line of the
+rugged and wooded hills. These slate-colored clouds, edged with pallid
+light, foredoomed the continuance of the peaceful summer afternoon.
+
+Not a breath of air stirred on the near side of the river. The huge old
+elms shading the Red Mill and the farmhouse connected with it belonging to
+Mr. Jabez Potter, the miller, were like painted trees, so still were they.
+The brooding heat of midday, however, had presaged the coming storm, and
+it had been prepared for at mill and farmhouse. The tempest was due soon.
+
+The backyard of the farmhouse--a beautiful lawn of short grass--sloped
+down to the river. On the bank and over the stream itself was set a
+summer-house of fair proportions, covered with vines--a cool and shady
+retreat on the very hottest day of midsummer.
+
+A big robin redbreast had been calling his raucous weather warning from
+the top of one of the trees near the house; but, with her back to the
+river and the coming storm, the girl in the pavilion gave little heed to
+this good-intentioned weather prophet.
+
+She did raise her eyes, however, at the querulous whistle of a striped
+creeper that was wriggling through the intertwined branches of the
+trumpet-vine in search of insects. Ruth Fielding was always interested in
+those busy, helpful little songsters.
+
+"You cute little thing!" she murmured, at last catching sight of the
+flashing bird between the stems of the old vine. "I wish I could put _you_
+into my scenario."
+
+On the table at which she was sitting was a packet of typewritten sheets
+which she had been annotating, and two fat note books. She laid down her
+gold-mounted fountain pen as she uttered these words, and then sighed and
+pushed her chair back from the table.
+
+Then she stood up suddenly. A sound had startled her. She looked all about
+the summer-house--a sharp, suspicious glance. Then she tiptoed to the door
+and peered out.
+
+The creeper fluttered away. The robin continued to shout his warning. Had
+it really been a rustling in the vines she had heard? Was there somebody
+lurking about the summer-house?
+
+She stepped out and looked on both sides. It was then she saw how
+threatening the aspect of the clouds on the other side of the river were.
+The sight drove from her thoughts for the moment the strange sound she had
+heard. She did not take pains to look beneath the summer-house on the
+water side.
+
+Instead, another sound assailed her ears. This time one that she could not
+mistake for anything but just what it was--the musical horn of Tom
+Cameron's automobile. Ruth turned swiftly to look up the road. A dark
+maroon car, long and low-hung like a racer, was coming along the road,
+leaving a funnel of dust behind it. There were two people in the car.
+
+The girl beside the driver--black-haired and petite--fluttered her
+handkerchief in greeting when she saw Ruth standing by the summer-house.
+At once the latter ran across the yard, over the gentle rise, and down to
+the front gate of the Potter farmhouse. She ran splendidly with a free
+stride of untrammeled limbs, but she held one shoulder rather stiffly.
+
+"Oh, Ruth!"
+
+"Oh, Helen!"
+
+The car was at the gate, and Tom brought it to a prompt stop. Helen, his
+twin sister, was out of it instantly and almost leaped into the bigger
+girl's arms.
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh!" sobbed Helen. "You _are_ alive after all that horrible
+experience coming home from Europe."
+
+"And you are alive and safe, dear Helen," responded Ruth Fielding, quite
+as deeply moved.
+
+It was the first time they had met since separating in Paris a month
+before. And in these times of war, with peace still an uncertainty, there
+were many perils to fear between the port of Brest and that of New York.
+
+Tom, in uniform and with a ribbon and medal on his breast, grinned
+teasingly at the two girls.
+
+"Come, come! Break away! Only twenty seconds allowed in a clinch. Don't
+Helen look fine, Ruth? How's the shoulder?"
+
+"Just a bit stiff yet," replied the girl of the Red Mill, kissing her chum
+again.
+
+At this moment the first sudden swoop of the tempest arrived. The tall
+elms writhed as though taken with St. Vitus's dance. The hens began to
+screech and run to cover. Thunder muttered in the distance.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" gasped Ruth, paling unwontedly, for she was not by nature
+a nervous girl. "Come right into the house, Helen. You could not get to
+Cheslow or back home before this storm breaks. Put your car under the
+shed, Tom."
+
+She dragged her friend into the yard and up the warped flag stones to the
+side door of the cottage. A little old woman who had been sitting on the
+porch in a low rocking chair arose with difficulty, leaning on a cane.
+
+"Oh, my back, and oh, my bones!" murmured Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who was not
+long out of a sick bed herself and would never again be as "spry" as she
+once had been. "Do come in, dearies. It is a wind storm."
+
+Ruth stopped to help the little old woman. She continued pale, but her
+thought for Aunt Alvirah's comfort caused her to put aside her own fear.
+The trio entered the house and closed the door.
+
+In a moment there was a sharp patter against the house. The rain had begun
+in big drops. The rear door was opened, and Tom, laughing and shaking the
+water from his cap, dashed into the living room. He wore the insignia of a
+captain under his dust-coat and the distinguishing marks of a very famous
+division of the A. E. F.
+
+"It's a buster!" he declared. "There's a paper sailing like a kite over
+the roof of the old mill----"
+
+Ruth sprang up with a shriek. She ran to the back door by which Tom had
+just entered and tore it open.
+
+"Oh, do shut the door, deary!" begged Aunt Alvirah. "That wind is 'nough
+to lift the roof."
+
+"What _is_ the matter, Ruth?" demanded Helen.
+
+But Tom ran out after her. He saw the girl leap from the porch and run
+madly down the path toward the summer-house. Back on the wind came a
+broken word or two of explanation:
+
+"My papers! My scenario! The best thing I ever did, Tom!"
+
+He had almost caught up to her when she reached the little pavilion. The
+wind from across the river was tearing through the summer-house at a
+sixty-mile-an-hour speed.
+
+"Oh! It's gone!" Ruth cried, and had Tom not caught her she would have
+dropped to the ground.
+
+There was not a scrap of paper left upon the table, nor anywhere in
+the place. Even the two fat notebooks had disappeared, and, too, the
+gold-mounted pen the girl of the Red Mill had been using. All, all seemed
+to have been swept out of the summer-house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MYSTERY OF IT
+
+
+For half a minute Tom Cameron did not know just what to do for Ruth. Then
+the water spilled out of the angry clouds overhead and bade fair to drench
+them.
+
+He half carried Ruth into the summer-house and let her rest upon a bench,
+sitting beside her with his arm tenderly supporting her shoulders. Ruth
+had begun to sob tempestuously.
+
+Ruth Fielding weeping! She might have cried many times in the past, but
+almost always in secret. Tom, who knew her so well, had seen her in
+dangerous and fear-compelling situations, and she had not wept.
+
+"What is it?" he demanded. "What have you lost?"
+
+"My scenario! All my work gone!"
+
+"The new story? My goodness, Ruth, it couldn't have blown away!"
+
+"But it has!" she wailed. "Not a scrap of it left. My notebooks--my pen!
+Why!" and she suddenly controlled her sobs, for she was, after all, an
+eminently practical girl. "Could that fountain pen have been carried away
+by the windstorm, too?"
+
+"There goes a barrel through the air," shouted Tom. "That's heavier than a
+fountain pen. Say, this is some wind!"
+
+The sound of the dashing rain now almost drowned their voices. It sprayed
+them through the porous shelter of the vines and latticework so that they
+could not sit on the bench.
+
+Ruth huddled upon the table with Tom Cameron standing between her and the
+drifting mist of the storm. She looked across the rain-drenched yard to
+the low-roofed house. She had first seen it with a home-hungry heart when
+a little girl and an orphan.
+
+How many, many strange experiences she had had since that time, which
+seemed so long ago! Nor had she then dreamed, as "Ruth Fielding of the Red
+Mill," as the first volume of this series is called, that she would lead
+the eventful life she had since that hour.
+
+Under the niggard care of miserly old Jabez Potter, the miller, her great
+uncle, tempered by the loving kindness of Aunt Alvirah Boggs, the miller's
+housekeeper, Ruth's prospects had been poor indeed. But Providence moves
+in mysterious ways. Seemingly unexpected chances had broadened Ruth's
+outlook on life and given her advantages that few girls in her sphere
+secure.
+
+First she was enabled to go to a famous boarding school, Briarwood Hall,
+with her dearest chum, Helen Cameron. There she began to make friends and
+widen her experience by travel. With Helen, Tom, and other young friends,
+Ruth had adventures, as the titles of the series of books run, at Snow
+Camp, at Lighthouse Point, at Silver Ranch, on Cliff Island, at Sunrise
+Farm, with the Gypsies, in Moving Pictures, and Down in Dixie.
+
+With the eleventh volume of the series Ruth and her chums, Helen Cameron
+and Jennie Stone, begin their life at Ardmore College. As freshmen their
+experiences are related in "Ruth Fielding at College; Or, The Missing
+Examination Papers." This volume is followed by "Ruth Fielding in the
+Saddle; Or, College Girls in the Land of Gold," wherein Ruth's first big
+scenario is produced by the Alectrion Film Corporation.
+
+As was the fact with so many of our college boys and girls, the World War
+interfered most abruptly and terribly with Ruth's peaceful current of
+life. America went into the war and Ruth into Red Cross work almost
+simultaneously.
+
+In "Ruth Fielding in the Red Cross; Or, Doing Her Bit for Uncle Sam," the
+Girl of the Red Mill gained a very practical experience in the work of the
+great peace organization which does so much to smooth the ravages of war.
+Then, in "Ruth Fielding at the War Front; Or, The Hunt for the Lost
+Soldier," the Red Cross worker was thrown into the very heart of the
+tremendous struggle, and in northern France achieved a name for courage
+that her college mates greatly envied.
+
+Wounded and nerve-racked because of her experiences, Ruth was sent home,
+only to meet, as related in the fifteenth volume of the series, "Ruth
+Fielding Homeward Bound; Or, A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils," an
+experience which seemed at first to be disastrous. In the end, however,
+the girl reached the Red Mill in a physical and mental state which made
+any undue excitement almost a tragedy for her.
+
+The mysterious disappearance of the moving picture scenario, which had
+been on her heart and mind for months and which she had finally brought,
+she believed, to a successful termination, actually shocked Ruth Fielding.
+She could not control herself for the moment.
+
+Against Tom Cameron's uniformed shoulder she sobbed frankly. His arm stole
+around her.
+
+"Don't take on so, Ruthie," he urged. "Of course we'll find it all. Wait
+till this rain stops----"
+
+"It never blew away, Tom," she said.
+
+"Why, of course it did!"
+
+"No. The sheets of typewritten manuscript were fastened together with a
+big brass clip. Had they been lose and the wind taken them, we should have
+seen at least some of them flying about. And the notebooks!"
+
+"And the pen?" murmured Tom, seeing the catastrophe now as she did. "Why,
+Ruthie! Could somebody have taken them all?"
+
+"Somebody must!"
+
+"But who?" demanded the young fellow. "You have no enemies."
+
+"Not here, I hope," she sighed. "I left them all behind."
+
+He chuckled, although he was by no means unappreciative of the seriousness
+of her loss. "Surely that German aviator who dropped the bomb on you
+hasn't followed you here."
+
+"Don't talk foolishly, Tom!" exclaimed the girl, getting back some of her
+usual good sense. "Of course, I have no enemy. But a thief is every honest
+person's enemy."
+
+"Granted. But where is the thief around the Red Mill?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"Can it be possible that your uncle or Ben saw the things here and rescued
+them just before the storm burst?"
+
+"We will ask," she said, with a sigh. "But I can imagine no reason for
+either Uncle Jabez or Ben to come down here to the shore of the river.
+Oh, Tom! it is letting up."
+
+"Good! I'll look around first of all. If there has been a skulker
+near----"
+
+"Now, don't be rash," she cried.
+
+"We're not behind the German lines now, Fraulein Mina von Brenner," and he
+laughed as he went out of the summer-house.
+
+He did not smile when he was searching under the house and beating the
+brush clumps near by. He realized that this loss was a very serious matter
+for Ruth.
+
+She was now independent of Uncle Jabez, but her income was partly derived
+from her moving picture royalties. During her war activities she had been
+unable to do much work, and Tom knew that Ruth had spent of her own means
+a great deal in the Red Cross work.
+
+Ruth had refused to tell her friends the first thing about this new story
+for the screen. She believed it to be the very best thing she had ever
+originated, and she said she wished to surprise them all.
+
+He even knew that all her notes and "before-the-finish" writing was in the
+notebooks that had now gone with the completed manuscript. It looked more
+than mysterious. It was suspicious.
+
+Tom looked all around the summer-house. Of course, after this hard
+downpour it was impossible to mark any footsteps. Nor, indeed, did the
+raider need to leave such a trail in getting to and departing from the
+little vine-covered pavilion. The sward was heavy all about it save on the
+river side.
+
+The young man found not a trace. Nor did he see a piece of paper anywhere.
+He was confident that Ruth's papers and notebooks and pen had been removed
+by some human agency. And it could not have been a friend who had done
+this thing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DERELICT
+
+
+"Didn't you find anything, Tom?" Ruth Fielding asked, as Helen's twin
+re-entered the summer-house.
+
+His long automobile coat glistened with wet and his face was wind-blown.
+Tom Cameron's face, too, looked much older than it had--well, say a year
+before. He, like Ruth herself, had been through much in the war zone
+calculated to make him more sedate and serious than a college
+undergraduate is supposed to be.
+
+"I did not see even a piece of paper blowing about," he told her.
+
+"But before we came down from the house you said you saw a paper blow over
+the roof like a kite."
+
+"That was an outspread newspaper. It was not a sheet of your manuscript."
+
+"Then it all must have been stolen!" she cried.
+
+"At least, human agency must have removed the things you left on this
+table," he said.
+
+"Oh, Tom!"
+
+"Now, now, Ruth! It's tough, I know----"
+
+But she recovered a measure of her composure almost immediately. Unnerved
+as she had first been by the disaster, she realized that to give way to
+her trouble would not do the least bit of good.
+
+"An ordinary thief," Tom suggested after a moment, "would not consider
+your notes and the play of much value."
+
+"I suppose not," she replied.
+
+"If they are stolen it must be by somebody who understands--or thinks he
+does--the value of the work. Somebody who thinks he can sell a moving
+picture scenario."
+
+"Oh, Tom!"
+
+"A gold mounted fountain pen would attract any petty thief," he went on to
+say. "But surely the itching fingers of such a person would not be tempted
+by that scenario."
+
+"Then, which breed of thief stole my scenario, Tom?" she demanded. "You
+are no detective. Your deductions suggest two thieves."
+
+"Humph! So they do. Maybe they run in pairs. But I can't really imagine
+two light-fingered people around the Red Mill at once. Seen any tramps
+lately?"
+
+"We seldom see the usual tramp around here," said Ruth, shaking her head.
+"We are too far off the railroad line. And the Cheslow constables keep
+them moving if they land _there_."
+
+"Could anybody have done it for a joke?" asked Tom suddenly.
+
+"If they have," Ruth said, wiping her eyes, "it is the least like a joke
+of anything that ever happened to me. Why, Tom! I couldn't lay out that
+scenario again, and think of all the details, and get it just so, in a
+year!"
+
+"Oh, Ruth!"
+
+"I mean it! And even my notes are gone. Oh, dear! I'd never have the heart
+to write that scenario again. I don't know that I shall ever write
+another, anyway. I'm discouraged," sobbed the girl suddenly.
+
+"Oh, Ruth! don't give way like this," he urged, with rather a boyish fear
+of a girl's tears.
+
+"I've given way already," she choked. "I just feel that I'll never be able
+to put that scenario into shape again. And I'd written Mr. Hammond so
+enthusiastically about it."
+
+"Oh! Then he knows all about it!" said Tom. "That is more than any of us
+do. You wouldn't tell us a thing."
+
+"And I didn't tell him. He doesn't know the subject, or the title, or
+anything about it. I tell you, Tom, I had _such_ a good idea----"
+
+"And you've got the idea yet, haven't you? Cheer up! Of course you can do
+it over."
+
+"Suppose," demanded Ruth quickly, "this thief that has got my manuscript
+should offer it to some producer? Why! if I tried to rewrite it and bring
+it out, I might be accused of plagiarizing my own work."
+
+"Jimminy!"
+
+"I wouldn't dare," said Ruth, shaking her head. "As long as I do not know
+what has become of the scenario and my notes, I will not dare use the idea
+at all. It is dreadful!"
+
+The rain was now falling less torrentially. The tempest was passing. Soon
+there was even a rift in the clouds in the northwest where a patch of blue
+sky shone through "big enough to make a Scotchman a pair of breeches," as
+Aunt Alvirah would say.
+
+"We'd better go up to the house," sighed Ruth.
+
+"I'll go right around to the neighbors and see if anybody has noticed a
+stranger in the vicinity," Tom suggested.
+
+"There's Ben! Do you suppose he has seen anybody?"
+
+A lanky young man, his clothing gray with flour dust, came from the back
+door of the mill and hastened under the dripping trees to reach the porch
+of the farmhouse. He stood there, smiling broadly at them, as Ruth and Tom
+hurriedly crossed the yard.
+
+"Good day, Mr. Tom," said Ben, the miller's helper. Then he saw Ruth's
+troubled countenance. "Wha--what's the matter, Ruthie?"
+
+"Ben, I've lost something."
+
+"Bless us an' save us, no!"
+
+"Yes, I have. Something very valuable. It's been stolen."
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"But I do! Some manuscript out of the summer-house yonder."
+
+"And her gold-mounted fountain pen," added Tom. "That would tempt
+somebody."
+
+"My goodness!"
+
+Ben could express his simple wonderment in a variety of phrases. But he
+seemed unable to go beyond these explosive expressions.
+
+"Ben, wake up!" exclaimed Ruth. "Have you any idea who would have taken
+it?"
+
+"That gold pen, Ruthie? Why--why---- A thief!"
+
+"Old man," said Tom with suppressed disgust, "you're a wonder. How did you
+guess it?"
+
+"Hush, Tom," Ruth said. Then: "Now, Ben, just think. Who has been around
+here to-day? Any stranger, I mean."
+
+"Why--I dunno," said the mill hand, puckering his brows.
+
+"Think!" she commanded again.
+
+"Why--why----old Jep Parloe drove up for a grinding."
+
+"He's not a stranger."
+
+"Oh, yes he is, Ruthie. Me nor Mr. Potter ain't seen him before for nigh
+three months. Your uncle up and said to him, 'Why, you're a stranger, Mr.
+Parloe.'"
+
+"I mean," said Ruth, with patience, "anybody whom you have never seen
+before--or anybody whom you might suspect would steal."
+
+"Well," drawled Ben stubbornly, "your uncle, Ruthie, says old Jep ain't
+any too honest."
+
+"I know all about that," Ruth said. "But Parloe did not leave his team and
+go down to the summer-house, did he?"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Did you see anybody go down that way?"
+
+"Don't believe I did--savin' you yourself, Ruthie."
+
+"I left a manuscript and my pen on the table there. I ran out to meet Tom
+and Helen when they came."
+
+"I seen you," said Ben.
+
+"Then it was just about that time that somebody sneaked into that
+summer-house and stole those things."
+
+"I didn't see anybody snuck in there," declared Ben, with more confidence
+than good English.
+
+"Say!" ejaculated Tom, impatiently, "haven't you seen any tramp, or
+straggler, or Gypsy--or anybody like that?"
+
+"Hi gorry!" suddenly said Ben, "I do remember. There was a man along here
+this morning--a preacher, or something like that. Had a black frock coat
+on and wore his hair long and sort o' wavy. He was shabby enough to be a
+tramp, that's a fact. But he was a real knowledgeable feller--he was that.
+Stood at the mill door and recited po'try for us."
+
+"Poetry!" exclaimed Tom.
+
+"To you and Uncle Jabez?" asked Ruth.
+
+"Uh-huh. All about 'to be or not to be a bean--that is the question.' And
+something about his having suffered from the slung shots and bow arrers of
+outrageous fortune--whatever that might be. I guess he got it all out of
+the Scriptures. Your uncle said he was bugs; but I reckoned he was a
+preacher."
+
+"Jimminy!" muttered Tom. "A derelict actor, I bet. Sounds like a
+Shakespearean ham."
+
+"Goodness!" said Ruth. "Between the two of you boys I get a very strange
+idea of this person."
+
+"Where did he go, Ben?" Tom asked.
+
+"I didn't watch him. He only hung around a little while. I think he axed
+your uncle for some money, or mebbe something to eat. You see, he didn't
+know Mr. Potter."
+
+"Not if he struck him for a hand-out," muttered the slangy Tom.
+
+"Oh, Ben! don't you know whether he went toward Cheslow--or where?" cried
+Ruth.
+
+"Does it look probable to you," Tom asked, "that a derelict
+actor---- Oh, Jimminy! Of course! _He_ would be just the person to
+see the value of that play script at a glance!"
+
+"Oh, Tom!"
+
+"Have you no idea where he went, Ben?" Tom again demanded of the puzzled
+mill hand.
+
+"No, Mister Tom. I didn't watch him."
+
+"I'll get out the car at once and hunt all about for him," Tom said
+quickly. "You go in to Helen and Aunt Alvirah, Ruth. You'll be sick if
+you let this get the best of you. I'll find that miserable thief of a ham
+actor--if he's to be found." He added this last under his breath as he ran
+for the shed where he had sheltered his automobile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE CRYING NEED
+
+
+Tom Cameron chased about the neighborhood for more than two hours in
+his fast car hunting the trail of the man who he had decided must be a
+wandering theatrical performer. Of course, this was a "long shot," Tom
+said; but the trampish individual of whom Ben had told was much more
+likely to be an actor than a preacher.
+
+Tom, however, was able to find no trace of the fellow until he got to the
+outskirts of Cheslow, the nearest town. Here he found a man who had seen a
+long-haired fellow in a shabby frock coat and black hat riding toward the
+railroad station beside one of the farmers who lived beyond the Red Mill.
+This was following the tempest which had burst over the neighborhood at
+mid-afternoon.
+
+Trailing this information farther, Tom learned that the shabby man had
+been seen about the railroad yards. Mr. Curtis, the railroad station
+master, had observed him. But suddenly the tramp had disappeared. Whether
+he had hopped Number 10, bound north, or Number 43, bound south, both of
+which trains had pulled out of Cheslow within the hour, nobody could be
+sure.
+
+Tom returned to the Red Mill at dusk, forced to report utter failure.
+
+"If that bum actor stole your play, Ruth, he's got clear way with it," Tom
+said bluntly. "I'm awfully sorry----"
+
+"Does that help?" demanded his sister snappishly, as though it were
+somewhat Tom's fault. "You go home, Tom. I'm going to stay with Ruthie
+to-night," and she followed her chum into the bedroom to which she had
+fled at Tom's announcement of failure.
+
+"Jimminy!" murmured Tom to the old miller who was still at the supper
+table. "And we aren't even sure that that fellow did steal the scenario."
+
+"Humph!" rejoined Uncle Jabez. "You'll find, if you live to be old enough,
+young feller, that women folks is kittle cattle. No knowing how they'll
+take anything. That pen cost five dollars, I allow; but them papers only
+had writing on 'em, and it does seem to me that what you have writ once
+you ought to be able to write again. That's the woman of it. She don't say
+a thing about that pen, Ruthie don't."
+
+However, Tom Cameron saw farther into the mystery than Uncle Jabez
+appeared to. And after a day or two, with Ruth still "moping about like a
+moulting hen," as the miller expressed it, the young officer felt that he
+must do something to change the atmosphere of the Red Mill farmhouse.
+
+"Our morale has gone stale, girls," he declared to his sister and Ruth.
+"Worrying never did any good yet."
+
+"That's a true word, Sonny," said Aunt Alvirah, from her chair. "'Care
+killed the cat.' my old mother always said, and she had ten children to
+bring up and a drunken husband who was a trial. He warn't my father. He
+was her second, an' she took him, I guess, 'cause he was ornamental. He
+was a sign painter when he worked. But he mostly advertised King Alcohol
+by painting his nose red.
+
+"We children sartain sure despised that man. But mother was faithful to
+her vows, and she made quite a decent member of the community of that man
+before she left off. And, le's see! We was talkin' about cats, warn't we?"
+
+"You were, Aunty dear," said Ruth, laughing for the first time in several
+days.
+
+"Hurrah!" said Tom, plunging head-first into his idea. "That's just what I
+wanted to hear."
+
+"What?" demanded Helen.
+
+"I have wanted to hear Ruth laugh. And we all need to laugh. Why, we are
+becoming a trio of old fogies!"
+
+"Speak for yourself, Master Tom," pouted his sister.
+
+"I do. And for you. And certainly Ruth is about as cheerful as a funeral
+mute. What we all need is some fun."
+
+"Oh, Tom, I don't feel at all like 'funning,'" sighed Ruth.
+
+"You be right, Sonny," interjected Aunt Alvirah, who sometimes forgot that
+Tom, as well as the girls, was grown up. She rose from her chair with her
+usual, "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! You young folks should be dancing
+and frolicking----"
+
+"But the war, Auntie!" murmured Ruth.
+
+"You'll neither make peace nor mar it by worriting. No, no, my pretty! And
+'tis a bad thing when young folks grow old before their time."
+
+"You're always saying that, Aunt Alvirah," Ruth complained. "But how can
+one be jolly if one does not feel jolly?"
+
+"My goodness!" cried Tom, "you were notoriously the jolliest girl in that
+French hospital. Didn't the _poilus_ call you the jolly American? And
+listen to Grandmother Grunt now!"
+
+"I suppose it is so," sighed Ruth. "But I must have used up all my fund of
+cheerfulness for those poor _blessés_. It does seem as though the font of
+my jollity had quite dried up."
+
+"I wish Heavy Stone were here," said Helen suddenly. "_She'd_ make us
+laugh."
+
+"She and her French colonel are spooning down there at Lighthouse Point,"
+scoffed Ruth--and not at all as Ruth Fielding was wont to speak.
+
+"Say!" Tom interjected, "I bet Heavy is funny even when she is in love."
+
+"_That's_ a reputation!" murmured Ruth.
+
+"They are not at Lighthouse Point. The Stones did not go there this
+summer, I understand," Helen observed.
+
+"I am sorry for Jennie and Colonel Marchand if they are at the Stones'
+city house at this time of the year," the girl of the Red Mill said.
+
+"Bully!" cried Tom, with sudden animation. "That's just what we will do!"
+
+"What will we do, crazy?" demanded his twin.
+
+"We'll get Jennie Stone and Henri Marchand--he's a good sport, too, as I
+very well know--and we'll all go for a motor trip. Jimminy Christmas! that
+will be just the thing, Sis. We'll go all over New England, if you like.
+We'll go Down East and introduce Colonel Marchand to some of our
+hard-headed and tight-fisted Yankees that have done their share towards
+injecting America into the war. We will----"
+
+"Oh!" cried Ruth, breaking in with some small enthusiasm, "let's go to
+Beach Plum Point."
+
+"Where is that?" asked Helen.
+
+"It is down in Maine. Beyond Portland. And Mr. Hammond and his company are
+there making my 'Seaside Idyl.'"
+
+"Oh, bully!" cried Helen, repeating one of her brother's favorite phrases,
+and now quite as excited over the idea as he. "I do so love to act in
+movies. Is there a part in that 'Idyl' story for me?"
+
+"I cannot promise that," Ruth said. "It would be up to the director. I
+wasn't taking much interest in this particular picture. I wrote the
+scenario, you know, before I went to France. I have been giving all my
+thought to----
+
+"Oh, dear! If we could only find my lost story!"
+
+"Come on!" interrupted Tom. "Let's not talk about that. Will you write to
+Jennie Stone?"
+
+"I will. At once," his sister declared.
+
+"Do. I'll take it to the post office and send it special delivery. Tell
+her to wire her answer, and let it be 'yes.' We'll take both cars. Father
+won't mind."
+
+"Oh, _but_!" cried Helen. "How about a chaperon?"
+
+"Oh, shucks! I wish you'd marry some nice fellow, Sis, so that we'd always
+have a chaperon on tap and handy."
+
+She made a little face at him. "I am going to be old-maid aunt to your
+many children, Tommy-boy. I am sure you will have a full quiver. We will
+have to look for a chaperon."
+
+"Aunt Kate!" exclaimed Ruth. "Heavy's Aunt Kate. She is just what Helen
+declares she wants to be--an old-maid aunt."
+
+"And a lovely lady," cried Helen.
+
+"Sure. Ask her. Beg her," agreed Tom. "Tell her it is the crying need. We
+have positively got to have some fun."
+
+"Well, I suppose we may as well," Ruth sighed, in agreement.
+
+"Yes. We have always pampered the boy," declared Helen, her eyes
+twinkling. "I know just what I'll wear, Ruthie."
+
+"Oh, we've clothes enough," admitted the girl of the Red Mill rather
+listlessly.
+
+"Shucks!" said Tom again. "Never mind the fashions. Get that letter
+written, Sis."
+
+So it was agreed. Helen wrote, the letter was sent. With Jennie Stone's
+usual impulsiveness she accepted for herself and "_mon Henri_" and Aunt
+Kate, promising to be at Cheslow within three days, and all within the
+limits of a ten-word telegram!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+OFF AT LAST
+
+
+"The ancients," stated Jennie Stone solemnly, "burned incense upon any and
+all occasions--red letter days, labor days, celebrating Columbus Day and
+the morning after, I presume. But we moderns burn gasoline. And, phew! I
+believe I should prefer the stale smoke of incense in the unventilated
+pyramids of Egypt to this odor of gas. O-o-o-o, Tommy, do let us get
+started!"
+
+"You've started already--in your usual way," he laughed.
+
+This was at Cheslow Station on the arrival of the afternoon up train that
+had brought Miss Stone, her Aunt Kate, and the smiling Colonel Henri
+Marchand to join the automobile touring party which Jennie soon dubbed
+"the later Pilgrims."
+
+"And that big machine looks much as the _Mayflower_ must have looked
+steering across Cape Cod Bay on that special occasion we read of in sacred
+and profane history, hung about with four-poster beds and whatnots. In our
+neighborhood," the plump girl added, "there is enough decrepit furniture
+declared to have been brought over on the _Mayflower_ to have made a cargo
+for the _Leviathan_."
+
+"Oh, _ma chere_! you do but stretch the point, eh?" demanded the handsome
+Henri Marchand, amazed.
+
+"I assure you----"
+
+"Don't, Heavy," advised Helen. "You will only go farther and do worse. In
+my mind there has always been a suspicion that the _Mayflower_ was sent
+over here by some shipped knocked-down furniture factory. Miles Standish
+and Priscilla Mullins and John Alden must have hung on by their eyebrows."
+
+"Their eyebrows--_ma foi_!" gasped Marchand.
+
+"Say, old man," said Tom, laughing, "if you listen to these crazy college
+girls you will have a fine idea of our historical monuments, and so forth.
+Take everything with a grain of salt--do."
+
+"_Oui, Monsieur!_ But I must have a little pepper, too. I am 'strong,' as
+you Americans say, for plentiful seasoning."
+
+"Isn't he cute?" demanded Jenny Stone. "He takes to American slang like a
+bird to the air."
+
+"Poetry barred!" declared Helen.
+
+"Say," Tom remarked aside to the colonel, "you've got all the pep
+necessary, sure enough, in Jennie."
+
+"She is one dear!" sighed the Frenchman.
+
+"And she just said you were a bird. You'll have a regular zoo about you
+yet. Come on. Let's see if we can get this baggage aboard the good ship.
+It does look a good deal of an ark, doesn't it?"
+
+Although Ruth and Aunt Kate had not joined in this repartee, the girl of
+the Red Mill, as well as their lovely chaperon, enjoyed the fun immensely.
+Ruth had revived in spirits on meeting her friends. Jennie had flown to
+her arms at the first greeting, and hugged the girl of the Red Mill with
+due regard to the mending shoulder.
+
+"My dear! My dear!" she had cried. "I _dream_ of you lying all so pale and
+bloody under that window-sill stone. And what I hear of your and Tom's
+experiences coming over----"
+
+"But worse has happened to me since I arrived home," Ruth said woefully.
+
+"No? Impossible!"
+
+"Yes. I have had an irreparable loss," sighed Ruth. "I'll tell you about
+it later."
+
+But for the most part the greetings of the two parties was made up as Tom
+said of "Ohs and Ahs."
+
+"Take it from me," the naughty Tom declared to Marchand, "two girls
+separated for over-night can find more to tell each other about the next
+morning than we could think of if we should meet at the Resurrection!"
+
+The two Cameron cars stood in the station yard, and as the other waiting
+cars, taxicabs and "flivvers" departed, "the sacred odor of gasoline,"
+which Jennie had remarked upon, was soon dissipated.
+
+The big touring car was expertly packed with baggage, and had a big hamper
+on either running-board as well. There was room remaining, however, for
+the ladies if they would sit there. But as Tom was to drive the big car he
+insisted that Ruth sit with him in the front seat for company. As for his
+racing car, he had turned that over to Marchand. It, too, was well laden;
+but at the start Jennie squeezed in beside her colonel, and the maroon
+speeder was at once whisperingly dubbed by the others "the honeymoon car."
+
+"Poor children!" said Aunt Kate in private to the two other girls. "They
+cannot marry until the war is over. _That_ my brother is firm upon,
+although he thinks well of Colonel Henri. And who could help liking him?
+He is a most lovable boy."
+
+"'Boy!'" repeated Ruth. "And he is one of the most famous spies France has
+produced in this war! And a great actor!"
+
+"But we believe he is not acting when he tells us he loves Jennie," Aunt
+Kate said.
+
+"Surely not!" cried Helen.
+
+"He is the soul of honor," Ruth declared. "I trust him as I do--well, Tom.
+I never had a brother."
+
+"I've always shared Tom with you," pouted Helen.
+
+"So you have, dear," admitted Ruth. "But a girl who has had no
+really-truly brother really has missed something. Perhaps good, perhaps
+bad. But, at least, if you have brothers you understand men better."
+
+"Listen to the wisdom of the owl!" scoffed Helen. "Why, Tommy is only a
+girl turned inside out. A girl keeps all her best and softest attributes
+to the fore, while a boy thinks it is more manly to show a prickly
+surface--like the burr of a chestnut."
+
+"Listen to them!" exclaimed Aunt Kate, with laughter. "All the wise
+sayings of the ancient world must be crammed under those pretty caps you
+wear, along with your hair."
+
+"That is what we get at college," said Helen seriously. "Dear old Ardmore!
+Ruth! won't you be glad to get back to the grind again?"
+
+"I--don't--know," said her chum slowly. "We have seen so much greater
+things than college. It's going to be rather tame, isn't it?"
+
+But this conversation was all before they were distributed into their
+seats and had started. Colonel Marchand was an excellent driver, and he
+soon understood clearly the mechanism of the smaller car. Tom gave him the
+directions for the first few miles and they pulled out of the yard with
+Mr. Curtis, the station master, and his lame daughter, who now acted as
+telegraph operator, waving the party good-bye.
+
+They would not go by the way of the Red Mill, for that would take them out
+of the way they had chosen. The inn they had in mind to stop at on this
+first night was a long four hours' ride.
+
+"Eastward, Ho!" shouted Tom. "This is to be a voyage of discovery, but
+don't discover any punctures or blow-outs this evening."
+
+Then he glanced at Ruth's rather serious face beside him and muttered to
+himself:
+
+"And we want to discover principally the smile that Ruth Fielding seems to
+have permanently lost!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"THE NEVERGETOVERS"
+
+
+After crossing the Cheslow Hills and the Lumano by the Long Bridge about
+twenty miles below the Red Mill, the touring party debouched upon one of
+the very best State roads. They left much of the dust from which they had
+first suffered behind them, and Tom could now lead the way with the big
+car without smothering the occupants of the honeymoon car in the rear.
+
+The highway wound along a pretty ridge for some miles, with farms dotting
+the landscape and lush meadows or fruit-growing farms dipping to the edge
+of the distant river.
+
+"Ah," sighed Henri Marchand. "Like _la belle_ France before the war. Such
+peace and quietude we knew, too. Fortunate you are, my friends, that _le
+Boche_ has not trampled these fields into bloody mire."
+
+This comment he made when they halted the cars at a certain overlook to
+view the landscape. But they could not stop often. Their first objective
+inn was still a long way ahead.
+
+They did not, however, reach the inn, which was a resort well known to
+motorists. Five miles away Tom noticed that the car was acting strangely.
+
+"What is it, Tom?" demanded Ruth quickly.
+
+"Steering gear, I am afraid. Something is loose."
+
+It did not take him long to make an examination, and in the meantime the
+second car came alongside.
+
+"It might hold out until we get to the hotel ahead; but I think we had
+better stop before that time if we can," was Tom's comment. "I do not want
+the thing to break and send us flying over a stone wall or up a tree."
+
+"But you can fix it, Tom?" questioned Ruth.
+
+"Sure! But it will take half an hour or more."
+
+After that they ran along slowly and presently came in sight of a place
+called the Drovers' Tavern.
+
+"Not a very inviting place, but I guess it will do," was Ruth's
+announcement after they had looked the inn over.
+
+The girls and Aunt Kate alighted at the steps while the young men wheeled
+the cars around to the sheds.
+
+The housekeeper, who immediately announced herself as Susan Timmins, was
+fussily determined to see that all was as it should be in the ladies'
+chambers.
+
+"I can't trust this gal I got to do the upstairs work," she declared,
+saying it through her nose and with emphasis. "Just as sure as kin be,
+if ye go for to help a poor relation you air always sorry for it."
+
+She led the way up the main flight of stairs as she talked.
+
+"This here gal will give me the nevergitovers, I know! She's my own
+sister's child that married a good-for-nothing and is jest like her
+father."
+
+"Bella! You Bella! Turn on the light in these rooms. Is the pitchers
+filled? And the beds turned down? If I find a speck of dust on this
+furniture I'll nigh 'bout have the nevergitovers! That gal will drive me
+to my grave, she will. Bella!"
+
+Bella appeared--a rather good looking child of fourteen or so, slim as a
+lath and with hungry eyes. She was dark--almost Gypsy-like. She stared at
+Ruth, Helen and Jennie with all the amazement of the usual yokel. But it
+was their dress, not themselves, Ruth saw, engaged Bella's interest.
+
+"When you ladies want any help, you call for Bella," announced Miss Susan
+Timmins. "And if she don't come running, you let me know, and I'll give
+her her nevergitovers, now I tell ye!"
+
+"No wonder this hotel is called 'Drovers' Tavern,'" said Jennie Stone.
+"That woman certainly is a driver--a slave driver."
+
+Ruth, meanwhile, was trying to make a friend of Bella.
+
+"What is your name, my dear?" she asked the lathlike girl.
+
+"You heard it," was the ungracious reply.
+
+"Oh! Yes. 'Bella.' But your other name?"
+
+"Arabella Montague Fitzmaurice Pike. My father is Montague Fitzmaurice."
+
+She said it proudly, with a lift of her tousled head and a straightening
+of her thin shoulders.
+
+"Oh!" fairly gasped Ruth Fielding. "It--it sounds quite impressive, I must
+say. I guess you think a good deal of your father?"
+
+"Aunt Suse don't," said the girl ungraciously. "My mother's dead. And pa
+is resting this season. So I hafter stay here with Aunt Suse. I hate it!"
+
+"Your father is--er--what is his business?" Ruth asked.
+
+"He's one of the profession."
+
+"A doctor?"
+
+"Lands, no! He's a heavy."
+
+"A _what_?"
+
+"A heavy lead--and a good one. But these moving pictures knock out all
+the really good people. There are no chances now for him to play
+Shakespearean roles----"
+
+"Your father is an actor!" cried Ruth.
+
+"Of course. Montague Fitzmaurice. Surely you have heard the name?" said
+the lathlike girl, tossing her head.
+
+"Why--why----of course!" declared Ruth warmly. It was true. She had heard
+the name. Bella had just pronounced it!
+
+"Then you know what kind of an actor my pa is," said the proud child. "He
+did not have a very good season last winter. He rehearsed with four
+companies and was only out three weeks altogether. And one of the managers
+did not pay at all."
+
+"That is too bad."
+
+"Yes. It's tough," admitted Bella. "But I liked it."
+
+"You liked it when he was so unsuccessful?" repeated Ruth.
+
+"Pa wasn't unsuccessful. He never is. He can play any part," declared the
+girl proudly. "But the plays were punk. He says there are no good plays
+written nowadays. That is why so many companies fail."
+
+"But you said you liked it?"
+
+"In New York," explained Bella. "While he was rehearsing pa could get
+credit at Mother Grubson's boarding house on West Forty-fourth Street. I
+helped her around the house. She said I was worth my keep. But Aunt Suse
+says I don't earn my salt here."
+
+"I am sure you do your best, Bella," Ruth observed.
+
+"No, I don't. Nor you wouldn't if you worked for Aunt Suse. She says I'll
+give her her nevergitovers--an' I hope I do!" with which final observation
+she ran to unlace Aunt Kate's shoes.
+
+"Poor little thing," said Ruth to Helen. "She is worse off than an orphan.
+Her Aunt Susan is worse than Uncle Jabez ever was to me. And she has no
+Aunt Alvirah to help her to bear it. We ought to do something for her."
+
+"There! You've begun. Every waif and stray on our journey must be aided, I
+suppose," pouted Helen, half exasperated.
+
+But Tom was glad to see that Ruth had found a new interest. Bella waited
+on the supper table, was snapped at by Miss Timmins, and driven from
+pillar to post by that crotchety individual.
+
+"Jimminy Christmas!" remarked Tom, "that Timmins woman must be a
+reincarnation of one of the ancient Egyptians who was overseer in the
+brickyard where Moses learned his trade. If they were all like her, no
+wonder the Israelites went on a strike and marched out of Egypt."
+
+They were all very careful, however, not to let Miss Susan Timmins hear
+their comments. She had the true dictatorial spirit of the old-fashioned
+New England school teacher. The guests of Drovers' Tavern were treated by
+her much as she might have treated a class in the little red schoolhouse
+up the road had she presided there.
+
+She drove the guests to their chambers by the method of turning off the
+electric light in the general sitting room at a quarter past ten. Each
+room was furnished with a bayberry candle, and she announced that the
+electricity all over the house would be switched off at eleven o'clock.
+
+"That is late enough for any decent body to be up," she announced in her
+decisive manner. "That's when I go to bed myself. I couldn't do so in
+peace if I knew folks was burning them electric lights to all hours.
+'Tain't safe in a thunder storm.
+
+"Why, when we first got 'em, Jed Parraday from Wachuset come to town to do
+his buyin' and stayed all night with us. He'd never seed a 'lectric bulb
+before, and he didn't know how to blow it out. And he couldn't sleep in a
+room with a light.
+
+"So, what does the tarnal old fool do but unhook the cord so't the bulb
+could be carried as far as the winder. And he hung it outside, shut the
+winder down on it, drawed the shade and went to bed in the dark.
+
+"Elnathan Spear, the constable, seen the light a-shining outside the
+winder in the middle of the night and he thought 'twas burglars. He
+_dreams_ of burglars, Elnathan does. But he ain't never caught none yet.
+
+"On that occasion, howsomever, he was sure he'd got a whole gang of 'em,
+and he waked up the whole hotel trying to find out what was going on. I
+charged Parraday ha'f a dollar for burning extry 'lectricity, and he got
+so mad he ain't stopped at the hotel since.
+
+"He'd give one the nevergitovers, that man would!" she concluded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MOVIE STUNTS
+
+
+Jennie Stone slept in Ruth's bed that night because, having been parted
+since they were both in France, they had a great deal to say to each
+other--thus proving true one of Tom Cameron's statements regarding women.
+
+Jennie was just as sympathetic--and as sleepy--as she could be and she
+"oh, dear, me'd" and yawned alternately all through the tale of the lost
+scenario and notebooks, appreciating fully how Ruth felt about it, but
+unable to smother the expression of her desire for sleep.
+
+"Maybe we ought not to have come on this automobile trip," said Jennie.
+"If the thief just did it to be mean and is somebody who lives around the
+Red Mill, perhaps you might have discovered something by mingling with the
+neighbors."
+
+"Oh! Tom did all that," sighed Ruth. "And without avail. He searched the
+neighborhood thoroughly, although he is confident that a tramp carried it
+off. And that seems reasonable. I am almost sure, Heavy, that my scenario
+will appear under the trademark of some other producing manager than Mr.
+Hammond."
+
+"Oh! How mean!"
+
+"Well, a thief is almost the meanest person there is in the world, don't
+you think so? Except a backbiter. And anybody mean enough to steal my
+scenario must be mean enough to try to make use of it."
+
+"Oh, dear! Ow-oo-ooo! Scuse me, Ruth. Yes, I guess you are right. But
+can't you stop the production of the picture?"
+
+"How can I do that?"
+
+"I don't----ow-oo!----know. Scuse me, dear."
+
+"Most pictures are made in secret, anyway. The public knows nothing about
+them until the producer is ready to make their release."
+
+"I--ow-oo!--I see," yawned Jennie.
+
+"Even the picture play magazines do not announce them until the first
+runs. Then, sometimes, there is a synopsis of the story published. But it
+will be too late, then. Especially when I have no notes of my work, nor
+any witnesses. I told no living soul about the scenario--what it was
+about, or----"
+
+"Sh-sh-sh----"
+
+"Why, Heavy!" murmured the scandalized Ruth.
+
+"Sh-sh-sh--whoo!" breathed the plump girl, with complete abandon.
+
+"My goodness!" exclaimed Ruth, tempted to shake her, "if you snore like
+that when you are married, Henri will have to sleep at the other end of
+the house."
+
+But this was completely lost on the tired Jennie Stone, who continued to
+breathe heavily until Ruth herself fell asleep. It seemed as though the
+latter had only closed her eyes when the sun shining into her face awoke
+the girl of the Red Mill. The shades of the east window had been left up,
+and it was sunrise.
+
+Plenty of farm noises outside the Drovers' Tavern, as well as a stir in
+the kitchen, assured Ruth that there were early risers here. Jennie,
+rolled in more than her share of the bedclothes, continued to breathe as
+heavily as she had the night before.
+
+But suddenly Ruth was aware that there was somebody besides herself awake
+in the room. She sat up abruptly in bed and reached to seize Jennie's
+plump shoulder. Ruth had to confess she was much excited, if not
+frightened.
+
+Then, before she touched the still sleeping Jennie Stone, Ruth saw the
+intruder. The door from the anteroom was ajar. A steaming agateware can
+of water stood on the floor just inside this door. Before the bureau which
+boasted a rather large mirror for a country hotel bedroom, pivoted the
+thin figure of Arabella Montague Fitzmaurice Pike!
+
+From the neatly arranged outer clothing of the two girls supposedly asleep
+in the big four-poster, Bella had selected a skirt of Ruth's and a
+shirt-waist of Jennie's, arraying herself in both of these borrowed
+garments. She was now putting the finishing touch to her costume by
+setting Ruth's cap on top of her black, fly-away mop of hair.
+
+Turning about and about before the glass, Bella was so much engaged in
+admiring herself that she forgot the hot water she was supposed to carry
+to the various rooms. Nor did she see Ruth sitting up in bed looking at
+her in dawning amusement. Nor did she, as she pirouetted there, hear her
+Nemesis outside in the hall.
+
+The door suddenly creaked farther open. The grim face of Miss Susan
+Timmins appeared at the aperture.
+
+"Oh!" gasped Ruth Fielding aloud.
+
+Bella turned to glance in startled surprise at the girl in bed. And at
+that moment Miss Timmins bore down upon the child like a shrike on a
+chippy-bird.
+
+"Ow-ouch!" shrieked Bella.
+
+"Oh, don't!" begged Ruth.
+
+"What is it? Goodness! _Fire!_" cried Jennie Stone, who, when awakened
+suddenly, always remembered the dormitory fire at Briarwood Hall.
+
+"You little pest! I'll larrup ye good! I'll give ye your nevergitovers!"
+sputtered the hotel housekeeper.
+
+But the affrighted Bella wriggled away from her aunt's bony grasp. She
+dodged Miss Timmins about the marble-topped table, retreated behind the
+hair-cloth sofa, and finally made a headlong dash for the door, while
+Jennie continued to shriek for the fire department.
+
+Ruth leaped out of bed. In her silk pajamas and slippers, and without any
+wrap, she hurried to reach, and try to separate, the struggling couple
+near the door.
+
+Miss Timmins delivered several hearty slaps upon Bella's face and ears.
+The child shrieked. She got away again and plunged into the can of hot
+water.
+
+Over this went, flooding the rag-carpet for yards around.
+
+"Fire! Fire!" Jennie continued to shriek.
+
+Helen dashed in from the next room, dressed quite as lightly as Ruth, and
+just in time to see the can spilled.
+
+"Oh! Water! Water!"
+
+"Drat that young one!" barked Miss Timmins, ignoring the flood and
+everything else save her niece--even the conventions.
+
+She dashed after Bella. The latter had disappeared into the hall through
+the anteroom.
+
+"Oh, the poor child!" cried sympathetic Ruth, and followed in the wake of
+the angry housekeeper.
+
+"Fire! Fire!" moaned Jennie Stone.
+
+"Cat's foot!" snapped Helen Cameron. "It's water--and it is flooding the
+whole room."
+
+She ran to set the can upright--after the water was all out of it. Without
+thinking of her costume, Ruth Fielding ran to avert Bella's punishment if
+she could. She knew the aunt was beside herself with rage, and Ruth feared
+that the woman would, indeed, give Bella her "nevergetovers."
+
+The corridor of the hotel was long, running from front to rear of the main
+building. The window at the rear end of it overlooked the roof of the back
+kitchen. This window was open, and when Ruth reached the corridor Bella
+was going head-first through the open window, like a circus clown diving
+through a hoop.
+
+She had discarded Jennie's shirt-waist between the bedroom and the window.
+But Ruth's skirt still flapped about the child's thin shanks.
+
+Miss Timmins, breathing threatenings and slaughter, raced down the hall in
+pursuit. Ruth followed, begging for quarter for the terrified child.
+
+But the housekeeper went through the open window after Bella, although in
+a more conventional manner, paying no heed to Ruth's plea. The frightened
+girl, however, escaped her aunt's clutch by slipping off the borrowed
+skirt and descending the trumpet-vine trellis by the kitchen door.
+
+"Do let her go, Miss Timmins!" begged Ruth, as the panting woman, carrying
+Ruth's skirt, returned to the window where the girl of the Red Mill stood.
+"She is scared to death. She was doing no harm."
+
+"I'll thank you to mind your own business, Miss," snapped Miss Timmins
+hotly. "I declare! A girl growed like you running 'round in men's
+overalls--or, what be them things you got on?"
+
+At this criticism Ruth Fielding fled, taking the skirt and Jennie's
+shirt-waist with her. But Aunt Kate was aroused now and the four women of
+the automobile party swiftly slipped into their negligees and appeared in
+the hall again, to meet Tom and Colonel Marchand who came from their room
+only partly dressed.
+
+The critical Miss Timmins had darted downstairs, evidently in pursuit of
+her unfortunate niece. The guests crowded to the back window.
+
+"Where did she go?" demanded Tom, who had heard some explanation of the
+early morning excitement. "Is she running away?"
+
+"What a child!" gasped Aunt Kate.
+
+"My waist!" moaned Jennie.
+
+"Look at Ruth's skirt!" exclaimed Helen.
+
+"I do not care for the skirt," the girl of the Red Mill declared. "It is
+Bella."
+
+"Her aunt will about give her those 'nevergetovers' she spoke of,"
+chuckled Tom.
+
+"_Ma foi!_ look you there," exclaimed Colonel Marchand, pointing through
+the window that overlooked the rear premises of the hotel.
+
+At top speed Miss Timmins was crossing the yard toward the big hay barn.
+Bella had taken refuge in that structure, and the housekeeper's evident
+intention was to harry her out. The woman grasped a clothes-stick with
+which she proposed to castigate her niece.
+
+"The cruel thing!" exclaimed Helen, the waters of her sympathy rising for
+Bella Pike now.
+
+"There's the poor kid!" said Tom.
+
+Bella appeared at an open door far up in the peak of the haymow. The hay
+was packed solidly under the roof; but there was an air space left at
+either end.
+
+"She has put herself into the so-tight corner--no?" suggested the young
+Frenchman.
+
+"You've said it!" agreed Tom. "Why! it's regular movie stunts. She's come
+up the ladders to the top of the mow. If auntie follows her, I don't see
+that the kid can do anything but jump!"
+
+"Tom! Never!" cried Ruth.
+
+"He is fooling," said Jennie.
+
+"Tell me how she can dodge that woman, then," demanded Tom.
+
+"Ah!" murmured Henri Marchand. "She have arrive'."
+
+Miss Timmins appeared at the door behind Bella. The spectators heard the
+girl's shriek. The housekeeper struck at her with the clothes stick. And
+then----
+
+"Talk about movie stunts!" shouted Tom Cameron, for the frightened Bella
+leaped like a cat upon the haymow door and swung outward with nothing more
+stable than air between her and the ground, more than thirty feet below!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE AUCTION BLOCK
+
+
+Helen Cameron and Jennie Stone shrieked in unison when Miss Susan Timmins'
+niece cast herself out of the haymow upon the plank door and swung as far
+as the door would go upon its creaking hinges. Ruth seized Tom's wrist in
+a nervous grip, but did not utter a word. Aunt Kate turned away and
+covered her eyes with her hands that she might not see the reckless child
+fall--if she did fall.
+
+"Name of a name!" murmured Henri Marchand. "_Au secours!_ Come, Tom, _mon
+ami_--to the rescue!"
+
+He turned and ran lightly along the hall and down the stairs. But Tom went
+through the window, almost as precipitately as had Bella Pike herself, and
+so over the roof of the kitchen ell and down the trumpet-vine trellis.
+
+Tom was in the yard and running to the barn before Marchand got out of the
+kitchen. Several other people, early as the hour was, appeared running
+toward the rear premises of Drovers' Tavern.
+
+"See that crazy young one!" some woman shrieked. "I know she'll kill
+herself yet."
+
+"Stop that!" commanded Tom, looking up and shaking a threatening hand at
+Miss Timmins.
+
+For in her rage the woman was trying to strike her niece with the stick,
+as Bella clung to the door.
+
+"Mind your own business, young man!" snapped the virago. "And go back and
+put the rest of your clothes on. You ain't decent."
+
+Tom was scarcely embarrassed by this verbal attack. The case was too
+serious for that. Miss Timmins struck at the girl again, and only missed
+the screaming Bella by an inch or so.
+
+Helen and Jennie screamed in unison, and Ruth herself had difficulty in
+keeping her lips closed. The cruel rage of the hotel housekeeper made her
+quite unfit to manage such a child as Bella, and Ruth determined to
+interfere in Bella's behalf at the proper time.
+
+"I wish she would pitch out of that door herself!" cried Helen recklessly.
+
+Tom had run into the barn and was climbing the ladders as rapidly as
+possible to the highest loft. Scolding and striking at her victim, Miss
+Susan Timmins continued to act like the mad woman she was. And Bella, made
+desperate at last by fear, reached for the curling edges of the shingles
+on the eaves above her head.
+
+"Don't do that, child!" shrieked Jennie Stone.
+
+But Bella scrambled up off the swinging door and pulled herself by her
+thin arms on to the roof of the barn. There she was completely out of her
+aunt's reach.
+
+"Oh, the plucky little sprite!" cried Helen, in delight.
+
+"But--but she can't get down again," murmured Aunt Kate. "There is no
+scuttle in that roof."
+
+"Tom will find a way," declared Ruth Fielding with confidence.
+
+"And my Henri," put in Jennie. "That horrid old creature!"
+
+"She should be punished for this," agreed Ruth. "I wonder where the
+child's father is."
+
+"Didn't you find out last night?" Helen asked.
+
+"Only that he is 'resting'."
+
+"Some poor, miserable loafer, is he?" demanded Aunt Kate, with acrimony.
+
+"No. It seems that he is an actor," Ruth explained. "He is out of work."
+
+"But he can't think anything of his daughter to see her treated like
+this," concluded Aunt Kate.
+
+"She is very proud of him. His professional name is Montague Fitzmaurice."
+
+"Some name!" murmured Jennie.
+
+"Their family name is Pike," said Ruth, still seriously. "I do not think
+the man can know how this aunt treats little Bella. There's Tom!"
+
+The young captain appeared behind the enraged housekeeper at the open door
+of the loft. One glance told him what Bella had done. He placed a firm
+hand on Miss Timmins' shoulder.
+
+"If you had made that girl fall you would go to jail," Tom said sternly.
+"You may go, yet. I will try to put you there. And in any case you shall
+not have the management of the child any longer. Go back to the house!"
+
+For once the housekeeper was awed. Especially when Henri Marchand, too,
+appeared in the loft.
+
+"Madame will return to the house. We shall see what can be done for the
+child. _Gare!_"
+
+Perhaps the woman was a little frightened at last by what she had done--or
+what she might have done. At least, she descended the ladders to the
+ground floor without argument.
+
+The two young men planned swiftly how to rescue the sobbing child. But
+when Tom first spoke to Bella, proposing to help her down, she looked over
+the edge of the roof at him and shook her head.
+
+"No! I ain't coming down," she announced emphatically. "Aunt Suse will
+near about skin me alive."
+
+"She shall not touch you," Tom promised.
+
+"She'll give me my nevergitovers, just as she says. You can't stay here
+and watch her."
+
+"But we'll find a way to keep her from beating you when we are gone," Tom
+promised. "Don't you fear her at all."
+
+"I don't care where you put me, Aunt Suse will find me out. She'll send
+Elnathan Spear after me."
+
+"I don't know who Spear is----"
+
+"He's the constable," sobbed Bella.
+
+"Well, he sha'n't spear you," declared Tom. "Come on, kid. Don't be
+scared, and we'll get you down all right."
+
+He found the clothes-stick Miss Timmins had abandoned and used it for a
+brace. With a rope tied to the handle of the plank door and drawn taut, it
+was held half open. Tom then climbed out upon and straddled the door and
+raised his arms to receive the girl when she lowered herself over the
+eaves.
+
+She was light enough--little more than skin and bone, Tom declared--and
+the latter lowered her without much effort into Henri's arms.
+
+When the three girls and Aunt Kate at the tavern window saw this safely
+accomplished they hurried back to their rooms to dress.
+
+"Something must be done for that poor child," Ruth Fielding said with
+decision.
+
+"Are you going to adopt her?" Helen asked.
+
+"And send her to Briarwood?" put in Jennie.
+
+"That might be the very best thing that could happen to her," Ruth
+rejoined soberly. "She has lived at times in a theatrical boarding house
+and has likewise traveled with her father when he was with a more or less
+prosperous company.
+
+"These experiences have made her, after a fashion, grown-up in her ways
+and words. But in most things she is just as ignorant as she can be. Her
+future is not the most important thing just now. It is her present."
+
+Helen heard the last word from the other room where she was dressing, and
+she cried:
+
+"That's it, Ruthie. Give her a present and tell her to run away from her
+aunt. She's a spiteful old thing!"
+
+"You do not mean that!" exclaimed her chum. "You are only lazy and hate
+responsibility of any kind. We must do something practical for Bella
+Pike."
+
+"How easily she says 'we'," Helen scoffed.
+
+"I mean it. I could not sleep to-night if I knew this child was in her
+aunt's control."
+
+A knock on the door interrupted the discussion. Ruth, who was quite
+dressed now, responded. A lout of a boy, who evidently worked about the
+stables, stood grinning at the door.
+
+"Miz Timmins says you folks kin all get out. She won't have you served no
+breakfast. She don't want none of you here."
+
+"My goodness!" wailed Jennie. "Dispossessed--and without breakfast!"
+
+"Where is the proprietor of this hotel, boy?" Ruth asked.
+
+"You mean Mr. Drovers? He ain't here. Gone to Boston. But that wouldn't
+make no dif'rence. Suse Timmins is boss."
+
+"Oh, me! Oh, my!" groaned Jennie, to whom the prospect was tragic.
+Jennie's appetite was never-failing.
+
+The boy slouched away just as Tom and Henri Marchand appeared with Bella
+between them.
+
+"You poor, dear child!" cried Ruth, running along the hall to meet them.
+
+Bella struggled to escape from the boys. But Tom and Colonel Marchand held
+her by either hand.
+
+"Easy, young one!" advised Captain Cameron.
+
+"I never meant to do no harm, Miss!" cried Bella. "I--I just wanted to see
+how I'd look in them clothes. I never do have anything decent to wear."
+
+"Why, my dear, don't mind about that," said Ruth, taking the lathlike girl
+in her arms. "If you had asked us we would have let you try on the things,
+I am sure."
+
+"Aunt Suse would near 'bout give me my nevergitovers--and she will yet!"
+
+"No she won't," Ruth reassured her. "Don't be afraid of your aunt any
+longer."
+
+"That is what I tell her," Tom said warmly.
+
+"Say! You won't put me in no home, will you?" asked Bella, with sudden
+anxiety.
+
+"A 'home'?" repeated Ruth, puzzled.
+
+"She means a charitable institution, poor dear," said Aunt Kate.
+
+"That's it, Missus," Bella said. "I knew a girl that was out of one of
+them homes. She worked for Mrs. Grubson. She said all the girls wore brown
+denim uniforms and had their hair slicked back and wasn't allowed even to
+whisper at table or after they got to bed at night."
+
+"Nothing like that shall happen to you," Ruth declared.
+
+"Where is your father, Bella?" Tom asked.
+
+"I don't know. Last I saw of him he came through here with a medicine
+show. I didn't tell Aunt Suse, but I ran away at night and went to Broxton
+to see him. But he said business was poor. He got paid so much a bottle
+commission on the sales of Chief Henry Red-dog's Bitters. He didn't think
+the show would keep going much longer."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"You know, they didn't know he was Montague Fitzmaurice, the great
+Shakespearean actor. Pa often takes such jobs. He ain't lazy like Aunt
+Suse says. Why, once he took a job as a ballyhoo at a show on the Bowery
+in Coney Island. But his voice ain't never been what it was since."
+
+"Do you expect him to return here for you?" Ruth asked, while the other
+listeners exchanged glances and with difficulty kept their faces straight.
+
+"Oh, yes, Miss. Just as soon as he is in funds. Or he'll send for me. He
+always does. He knows I hate it here."
+
+"Does he know how your aunt treats you?" Aunt Kate interrupted.
+
+"N--not exactly," stammered Bella. "I haven't told him all. I don't want
+to bother him. It--it ain't always so bad."
+
+"I tell you it's got to stop!" Tom said, with warmth.
+
+"Of course she shall not remain in this woman's care any longer," Aunt
+Kate agreed.
+
+"But we must not take Bella away from this locality," Ruth observed. "When
+her father comes back for her she must be here--somewhere."
+
+"Oh, lady!" exclaimed Bella. "Send me to New York to Mrs. Grubson's. I bet
+she'd keep me till pa opens somewhere in a good show."
+
+But Ruth shook her head. She had her doubts about the wisdom of the
+child's being in such a place as Mrs. Grubson's boarding house, no matter
+how kindly disposed that woman might be.
+
+"Bella should stay near here," Ruth said firmly, "as long as we cannot
+communicate with Mr. Pike at once."
+
+"Let's write a notice for one of the theatrical papers," suggested Helen
+eagerly. "You know--'Montague Fitzmaurice please answer.' All the actors
+do it."
+
+"But pa don't always have the money to buy the papers," said Bella, taking
+the suggestion quite seriously.
+
+"At least, if Bella is in this neighborhood he will know where to find
+her," went on Ruth. "Is there nobody you know here, child, whom you would
+like to stay with till your father returns?"
+
+Bella's face instantly brightened. Her black eyes flashed.
+
+"Oh, I'd like to stay at the minister's," she said.
+
+"At the minister's?" repeated Ruth. "Why, if he would take you that would
+be fine. Who is he?"
+
+"The Reverend Driggs," said Bella.
+
+"Do you suppose the clergyman would take the child?" murmured Aunt Kate.
+
+"Why do you want to go to live with the minister?" asked Tom with
+curiosity.
+
+"'Cause he reads the Bible so beautifully," declared Bella. "Why! it
+sounds just like pa reading a play. The Reverend Driggs is an educated man
+like pa. But he's got an awful raft of young ones."
+
+"A poor minister," said Aunt Kate briskly. "I am afraid that would not
+suit."
+
+"If the Driggs family is already a large one," began Ruth doubtfully, when
+Bella declared:
+
+"Miz Driggs had two pairs of twins, and one ever so many times. There's a
+raft of 'em."
+
+Helen and Jennie burst out laughing at this statement and the others were
+amused. But to Ruth Fielding this was a serious matter. The placing of
+Bella Pike in a pleasant home until her father could be communicated with,
+or until he appeared on the scene ready and able to care for the child,
+was even more serious than the matter of going without breakfast, although
+Jennie Stone said "No!" to this.
+
+"We'd better set up an auction block before the door of the hotel and
+auction her off to the highest bidder, hadn't we?" suggested Helen, who
+had been rummaging in her bag. "Here, Bella! If you want a shirt-waist to
+take the place of that calico blouse you have on, here is one. One of
+mine. And I guarantee it will fit you better than Heavy's did. She wears
+an extra size."
+
+"I don't either," flashed the plump girl, as the boys retreated from the
+room. "I may not be a perfect thirty-six----"
+
+"Is there any doubt of it?" cried Helen, the tease.
+
+"Well!"
+
+"Never mind," Ruth said. "Jennie is going to be thinner."
+
+"And it seems she will begin to diet this very morning," Aunt Kate put
+in.
+
+"Ow-wow!" moaned Jennie at this reminder that they had been refused
+breakfast.
+
+Captain Tom, however, had handled too many serious situations in France to
+be browbeaten by a termagant like Miss Susan Timmins. He went down to the
+kitchen, ordered a good breakfast for all of his party, and threatened to
+have recourse to the law if the meal was not well and properly served.
+
+"For you keep a public tavern," he told the sputtering Miss Timmins, "and
+you cannot refuse to serve travelers who are willing and able to pay. We
+are on a pleasure trip, and I assure you, Madam, it will be a pleasure to
+get you into court for any cause."
+
+On coming back to the front of the house he found two of the neighbors
+just entering. One proved to be the local doctor's wife and the other was
+a kindly looking farmer.
+
+"I knowed that girl warn't being treated right, right along," said the
+man. "And I told Mirandy that I was going to put a stop to it."
+
+"It is a disgrace," said the doctor's wife, "that we should have allowed
+it to go on so long. I will take the child myself----"
+
+"And so'll Mirandy," declared the farmer.
+
+"It is an auction," whispered Helen, overhearing this from the top of the
+stairs.
+
+The party of guests came down with their bags now, bringing Bella in
+their midst--and in the new shirt-waist.
+
+"Let her choose which of these kind people she will stay with," Tom
+advised. "And," he added, in a low voice to Ruth, "we will pay for her
+support until we can find her father."
+
+"Like fun you will, young feller!" snorted the farmer, overhearing Tom.
+
+"I could not hear of such a thing," said the doctor's wife.
+
+"I'd like to know what you people think you're doing?" demanded Miss
+Timmins, popping out at them suddenly.
+
+"Now, Suse Timmins, we're a-goin' to do what we neighbors ought to have
+done long ago. We're goin' to take this gal----"
+
+"You start anything like that--taking that young one away from her lawful
+guardeen--an' I'll get Elnathan Spear after you in a hurry, now I tell ye.
+I'll give you your nevergitovers!"
+
+"If Nate Spear comes to my house, I'll ask him to pay me for that corn he
+bought off'n me as long ago as last fall," chuckled the farmer. "Just
+because you're own cousin to Nate don't put _all_ the law an' the gospel
+on your side, Suse Timmins. I'll take good care of this girl."
+
+"And so will I, if Bella wants to live with me," said the doctor's wife.
+
+"Mirandy will be glad to have her."
+
+"And she'd be company for me," rejoined the other neighbor. "I haven't any
+children."
+
+"Bella must choose for herself," said Ruth kindly.
+
+"I guess I'll go with Mr. Perkins," said the actor's daughter. "Miz Holmes
+is real nice; but Doctor Holmes gives awful tastin' medicine. I might be
+sick there and have to take some of it. So I'll go to Miz Perkins. She has
+a doctor from Maybridge and he gives candy-covered pellets. I ate some
+once. Besides, Miz Perkins is lame and can't get around so spry, and I can
+do more for her."
+
+"Now listen to that!" exclaimed the farmer. "Ain't she a noticing child?"
+
+"Well, Mrs. Perkins will be good to her, no doubt," agreed the doctor's
+wife.
+
+"I'd like to know what you fresh city folks butted into this thing for!"
+demanded Miss Timmins. "If there's any law in the land----"
+
+"_You'll_ get it!" promised Tom Cameron.
+
+"Go get anything you own that you want to take with you, Bella," Ruth
+advised the shrinking child.
+
+With another fearful glance at her aunt, Bella ran upstairs.
+
+Miss Timmins might have started after her, but Tom planted himself before
+that door. The lout of a boy began bringing in the breakfast for the
+automobile party. Ruth talked privately with the doctor's wife and Mr.
+Perkins, and forced some money on the woman to be expended for a very
+necessary outfit of clothing for Bella.
+
+Miss Timmins finally flounced back into the kitchen where they heard her
+venting her anger and chagrin on the kitchen help. Bella returned bearing
+an ancient extension bag crammed full of odds and ends. She kissed Ruth
+and shook hands with the rest of the company before departing with Mr.
+Perkins.
+
+The doctor's wife promised to write to Ruth as soon as anything was heard
+of Mr. Pike, and the automobile party turned their attention to ham and
+eggs, stewed potatoes, and griddle cakes.
+
+"Only," said Jennie, sepulchrally, "I hope the viands are not poisoned.
+That Miss Timmins would certainly like to give us all our
+'nevergetovers'."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A DISMAYING DISCOVERY
+
+
+"'The Later Pilgrims' are well out of that trouble," announced Helen, when
+the cars were underway, the honeymoon car ahead and the other members of
+the party packed into the bigger automobile.
+
+"And I hope," she added, "that Ruth will find no more waifs and strays."
+
+"Don't be knocking Ruthie all the time," said Tom, glancing back over his
+shoulder. "She's all right."
+
+"And you keep your eyes straight ahead, young man," advised Aunt Kate, "or
+you will have this heavy car in the ditch."
+
+"Watch out for Henri and Heavy, too," advised Helen. "They do not quite
+know what they are about and you may run them down. There! See his
+horizon-blue sleeve steal about her? He's got only one hand left to steer
+with. Talk about a perfect thirty-six! It's lucky Henri's arm is
+phenomenally long, or he could never surround _that_ baby!"
+
+"I declare, Helen," laughed Ruth. "I believe you are covetous."
+
+"Well, Henri is an awfully nice fellow--for a Frenchman."
+
+"And you are the damsel who declared you proposed to remain an old maid
+forever and ever and the year after."
+
+"I can be an old maid and still like the boys, can't I? All the more, in
+fact. I sha'n't have to be true to just one man, which, I believe, would
+be tedious."
+
+"You should live in that part of New York called Greenwich Village and
+wear a Russian blouse and your hair bobbed. Those are the kind of bon mots
+those people throw off in conversation. Light and airy persiflage, it is
+called," said Tom from the front seat.
+
+"What do you know about such people, Tommy?" demanded his sister.
+
+"There were some co-eds of that breed I met at Cambridge. They were
+exponents of the 'new freedom,' whatever that is. Bolshevism, I guess.
+Freedom from both law and morals."
+
+"Those are not the kind of girls who are helping in France," said Ruth
+soberly.
+
+"You said it!" agreed Tom. "That sort are so busy riding hobbies over here
+that they have no interest in what is going on in Europe unless it may be
+in Russia. Well, thank heaven, there are comparatively few nuts compared
+with us sane folks."
+
+Such thoughts as these, however, did not occupy their minds for long. Just
+as Tom had declared, they were out for fun, and the fun could be found
+almost anywhere by these blithe young folk.
+
+Ruth's face actually changed as they journeyed on. She was both "pink and
+pretty," Helen declared, before they camped at the wayside for luncheon.
+
+The hampers on the big car were crammed with all the necessities of food
+and service for several meals. There were, too, twin alcohol lamps, a
+coffee boiler and a teapot.
+
+Altogether they were making a very satisfactory meal and were having a
+jolly time at the edge of a piece of wood when a big, black wood-ant
+dropped down Jennie Stone's back.
+
+At first they did not know what the matter was with her. Her mouth was
+full, the food in that state of mastication that she could not immediately
+swallow it.
+
+"Ow! Ow! Ow!" choked the plump girl, trying to get both hands at once down
+the neck of her shirt-waist.
+
+"What _is_ the matter, Heavy?" gasped Helen.
+
+"Jennie, dear!" murmured Ruth. "Don't!"
+
+"_Ma chere!_" gasped Henri Marchand. "Is she ill?"
+
+"Jennie, behave yourself!" cried her aunt.
+
+"I saw a toad swallow a hornet once," Tom declared. "She acts just the
+same way."
+
+"As the hornet?" demanded his sister, beginning to giggle.
+
+"As the toad," answered Tom, gravely.
+
+But Henri had got to his feet and now reached the wriggling girl. "Let me
+try to help!" he cried.
+
+"If you even begin wiggling that way, Colonel Marchand," declared Helen,
+"you will be in danger of arrest. There is a law against _that_ dance."
+
+"Ow! Ow! Ow!" burst out Jennie once more, actually in danger of choking.
+
+"What _is_ it?" Ruth demanded, likewise reaching the writhing girl.
+
+"Oh, he bit me!" finally exploded Jennie.
+
+Ruth guessed what must be the trouble then, and she forced Jennie's hands
+out of the neck of her waist and ran her hand down the plump girl's back.
+Between them they killed the ant, for Ruth finally recovered a part of the
+unfortunate creature.
+
+"But just think," consoled Helen, "how much more awful it would have been
+if you had swallowed him, Heavy, instead of his wriggling down your spinal
+column."
+
+"Oh, don't! I can feel him wriggling now," sighed Jennie.
+
+"That can be nothing more than his ghost," said Tom soberly, "for Ruth
+retrieved at least half of the ant's bodily presence."
+
+"You'll give us all the fidgets if you keep on wriggling, Jennie,"
+declared Aunt Kate.
+
+"Well, I don't want to sit on the grass in a woodsy place again while we
+are on this journey," sighed Jennie. "Ugh! I always did hate creepy
+things."
+
+"Including spiders, snakes, beetles and babies, I suppose?" laughed Helen.
+"Come on now. Let us clear up the wreck. Where do we camp to-night,
+Tommy?"
+
+"No more camping, I pray!" squealed Jennie. "I am no Gypsy."
+
+"The hotel at Hampton is recommended as the real thing. They have a horse
+show every year at Hampton, you know. It is in the midst of a summer
+colony of wealthy people. It is the real thing," Tom repeated.
+
+They made a pleasant and long run that afternoon and arrived at the
+Hampton hotel in good season to dress for dinner. Jennie and her aunt met
+some people they knew, and naturally Jennie's fiancé and her friends were
+warmly welcomed by the gay little colony.
+
+Men at the pleasure resorts were very scarce that year, and here were two
+perfectly good dancers. So it was very late when the automobile party got
+away from the dance at the Casino.
+
+They were late the next morning in starting on the road to Boston.
+Besides, there was thunder early, and Helen, having heard it rumbling,
+quoted:
+
+    "'Thunder in the morning,
+     Sailors take warning!'"
+
+and rolled over for another nap.
+
+Ruth, however, at last had to get up. She was no "lie-abed" in any case,
+and in her present nervous state she had to be up and doing.
+
+"But it's going to ra-a-ain!" whined Jennie Stone when Ruth went into her
+room.
+
+"You're neither sugar nor salt," said Ruth.
+
+"Henri says I'm as sweet as sugar," yawned Jennie.
+
+"He is not responsible for what he says about you," said her aunt briskly.
+"When I think of what that really nice young man is taking on his
+shoulders when he marries you----"
+
+"But, Auntie!" cried Jennie, "he's not going to try to carry me pickaback,
+you know."
+
+"Just the same, it is wrong for us to encourage him to become responsible
+for you, Jennie," said her aunt. "He really should be warned."
+
+"Oh!" gasped the plump girl. "Let anybody dare try to get between me and
+my Henri----"
+
+"Nobody can--no fear--when you are sitting with him in the front seat of
+that roadster of Tom's," said Ruth. "You fill every atom of space, Heavy."
+
+She went to the window and looked out again. Heavy rolled out of bed--a
+good deal like a barrel, her aunt said tartly.
+
+"What is it doing outside?" yawned the plump girl.
+
+"Well, it's not raining. And it is a long run to Boston. We should be on
+our way now. The road through the hills is winding. There will be no time
+to stop for a Gypsy picnic."
+
+"Thank goodness for that!" grumbled Jennie, sitting on the floor,
+schoolgirl fashion, to draw on her stockings. "I'll eat enough at
+breakfast hereafter to keep me alive until we reach a hotel, if you folks
+insist on inviting wood ants and other savage creatures of the forest to
+our luncheon table."
+
+When the party finally gathered for breakfast in the hotel dining room on
+this morning, it was disgracefully late. Tom had been over both cars and
+pronounced them fit. He had ordered the tanks filled with gasoline and had
+tipped one of the garage men liberally to see that this was properly done.
+
+Afterward Captain Tom declared he would never trust a garage workman
+again.
+
+"The only way to get a thing done well is to do it yourself--and a tip
+never bought any special service yet," declared the angry Tom. "It is
+merely a form of highway robbery."
+
+But this was afterward. The party started off from Hampton in high fettle
+and with a childlike trust in the honesty of a garage attendant.
+
+There were banks of clouds shrouding the horizon both to the west and
+north--the two directions from which thunder showers usually rise in this
+part of New England in which they were traveling. And yet the shower held
+off.
+
+It was some time past noon before the thunder began to mutter again. The
+automobile party was then in the hilly country. Heretofore farms had been
+plentiful, although hamlets were few and far between.
+
+"If it rains," said Ruth cheerfully, "of course we can take refuge in some
+farmhouse."
+
+"Ho, for adventure among the savage natives!" cried Helen.
+
+"I hope we shall meet nobody quite as savage as Miss Susan Timmins," was
+Aunt Kate's comment.
+
+They ran into a deep cut between two wooded hills and there was not a
+house in sight. Indeed, they had not passed a farmstead on the road for
+the last five miles. Over the top of the wooded crest to the north curled
+a slate colored storm cloud, its upper edge trembling with livid
+lightnings. The veriest tyro of a weather prophet could see that a storm
+was about to break. But nobody had foretold the sudden stopping of the
+honeymoon car in the lead!
+
+"What is the matter with you?" cried Helen, standing up in the tonneau of
+the big car, when Tom pulled up suddenly to keep from running the maroon
+roadster down. "Don't you see it is going to rain? We want to get
+somewhere."
+
+"I guess we have got somewhere," responded Jennie Stone. "As far as we are
+concerned, this seems to be our stopping place. The old car won't go."
+
+Tom jumped out and hurried forward to join Henri in an examination of the
+car's mechanism.
+
+"What happened, Colonel?" he asked the Frenchman, worriedly.
+
+"I have no idea, _mon ami_," responded Marchand. "This is a puzzle, eh?"
+
+"First of all, let's put up the tops. That rain is already beating the
+woods on the summit of the hill."
+
+The two young men hurried to do this, first sheltering Jennie and then
+together dragging the heavy top over the big car, covering the baggage and
+passengers. Helen and Ruth could fasten the curtains, and soon the women
+of the party were snug enough. The drivers, however, had to get into rain
+garments and begin the work of hunting the trouble with the roadster.
+
+The thunder grew louder and louder. Flashes of lightning streaked across
+the sky overhead. The electric explosions were soon so frequent and
+furious that the girls cowered together in real terror. Jennie had slipped
+out of the small car and crowded in with her chums and Aunt Kate.
+
+"I don't care!" she wailed, "Henri and Tom are bound to take that car all
+to pieces to find what has happened."
+
+But they did not have to go as far as that. In fact, before the rain
+really began to fall in earnest, Tom made the tragic discovery. There was
+scarcely a drop of gasoline in the tank of the small machine. Tom hurried
+back to the big car. He glanced at the dial of the gasoline tank. There
+was not enough of the fluid to take them a mile! And the emergency tank
+was turned on!
+
+It was at this point that he stated his opinion of the trustworthiness of
+garage workmen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A WILD AFTERNOON
+
+
+This was a serious situation. Five miles behind the automobile party was
+the nearest dwelling on this road, and Tom was sure that the nearest
+gasoline sign was all of five miles further back!
+
+Ahead lay more or less mystery. As the rain began to drum upon the roofs
+of the two cars, harder and harder and faster and faster, Tom got out the
+road map and tried to figure out their location. Ridgeton was ahead
+somewhere--not nearer than six miles, he was sure. And the map showed no
+gas sign this side of Ridgeton.
+
+Of course there might be some wayside dwelling only a short distance ahead
+at which enough gasoline could be secured to drive the smaller car to
+Ridgeton for a proper supply for both machines. But if all the gasoline
+was drained from the tank of the big car into that of the roadster, the
+latter would be scarcely able to travel another mile. And without being
+sure that such a supply of gas could be found within that distance, why
+separate the two cars?
+
+This was the sensible way Tom put it to Henri; and it was finally decided
+that Tom should start out on foot with an empty can and hunt for gasoline,
+while Colonel Marchand remained with the girls and Aunt Kate.
+
+When the two young men ran back through the pouring rain to the big car
+and announced this decision, they had to shout to make the girls hear. The
+turmoil of the rain and thunder was terrific.
+
+"I really wish you'd wait, Tom, till the tempest is over," Ruth anxiously
+said. "Suppose something happened to you on the road?"
+
+"Suppose something happened to _us_ here in the auto?" shrieked Helen.
+
+"But Henri Marchand will be with you," said her brother, preparing to
+depart. "And if I delay we may not reach Boston to-night."
+
+"Oh!" gasped Jennie. "Do please find some gas, Tom. I'd be scared to death
+to stay out here in these woods."
+
+"One of the autos may bite her," scoffed Helen, ready to scorn her own
+fears when her friend was even more fearful. "These cars are the wildest
+thing in these woods, I warrant."
+
+"Of course you must do what you think is best, Tom," said Ruth, gravely.
+"I hope you will not have to go far."
+
+"No matter how long I am gone, Ruth, don't be alarmed," he told her. "You
+know, nothing serious ever happens to me."
+
+"Oh, no!" cried his sister. "Of course not! Only you get carried away on a
+Zeppelin, or are captured by the Germans and Ruth has to go to your
+rescue. We know all about how immune you are from trouble, young man."
+
+"Thanks be! there are no Boches here in peaceful New England," exclaimed
+Jennie, after Tom had started off with the gasoline can. "Oh!"
+
+A sharp clap of thunder seemingly just overhead followed the flash that
+had made the plump girl shriek. The explosion reverberated between the
+hills in slowly passing cadence.
+
+Jennie finally removed her fingers from her ears with a groan. Aunt Kate
+had covered her eyes. With Helen they cowered together in the tonneau.
+Ruth had been sitting beside Tom in the front seat when the cars were
+stalled, and now Henri Marchand was her companion.
+
+"I heard something then, Colonel," Ruth said in a low tone, when the salvo
+of thunder was passed.
+
+"You are fortunate, Mademoiselle," he returned. "Me, I am deafened
+complete'."
+
+"I heard a cry."
+
+"Not from Captain Cameron?"
+
+"It was not his voice. Listen!" said the girl of the Red Mill, in some
+excitement.
+
+Despite the driving rain she put her head out beyond the curtain and
+listened. Her face was sheltered from the beating rain. It would have
+taken her breath had she faced it. Again the lightning flashed and the
+thunder crashed on its trail.
+
+Ruth did not draw in her head. She wore her raincoat and a rubber cap, and
+on her feet heavy shoes. The storm did not frighten her. She might be
+anxious for Tom's safety, but the ordinary chances of such a disturbance
+of the elements as this never bothered Ruth Fielding at all.
+
+As the rolling of thunder died away in the distance again, the splashing
+sound of the rain seemed to grow lighter, too; or Ruth's hearing became
+attuned to the sounds about her.
+
+There it was again! A human cry! Or was it? It came from up the hillside
+to the north of the road on which the automobiles were stalled.
+
+Was there somebody up there in the wet woods--some human creature lost in
+the storm?
+
+For a third time Ruth heard the wailing, long-drawn cry. Henri had his
+hands full soothing Jennie. Helen and Aunt Kate were clinging together in
+the depths of the tonneau. Possibly their eyes were covered against the
+glare of the lightning.
+
+Ruth slipped out under the curtain on the leeward side. The rain swept
+down the hillside in solid platoons that marched one after another from
+northwest to southeast. Dashing against the southern hillside, these
+marching columns dissolved in torrents that Ruth could hear roaring down
+from the tree-tops and rushing in miniature floods through the forest.
+
+The road was all awash. The cars stood almost hub-deep in a yellow,
+foaming flood. The roadside ditches were not deep here, and the sudden
+freshet was badly guttering the highway.
+
+Sheltered at first by the top of the big car, Ruth strained her ears again
+to catch that cry which had come down the wind from the thickly wooded
+hillside.
+
+There it was! A high, piercing scream, as though the one who uttered it
+was in great fear or agony. Nor did the cry seem to be far away.
+
+Ruth went around to the other side of the automobile. The rain was letting
+up--or seemed to be. She crossed to the higher ground and pushed through
+the fringe of bushes that bordered the road.
+
+Already her feet and ankles were saturated, for she had waded through
+water more than a foot in depth. Here on the steep hillside the flowing
+water followed the beds of small rivulets which carried it away on either
+side of her.
+
+The thick branches of the trees made an almost impervious umbrella above
+her head. She could see up the hill through the drifting mist for a long
+distance. The aisles between the rows of trees seemed filled with a sort
+of pallid light.
+
+Across the line of her vision and through one of these aisles passed a
+figure--whether that of an animal or the stooping body of a human being
+Ruth Fielding could not at first be sure.
+
+She had no fear of there being any savage creature in this wood. At least
+there could be nothing here that would attack her in broad daylight. In a
+lull in the echoing thunder she cried aloud:
+
+"Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Where are you?"
+
+She was sure her voice drove some distance up the hillside against the
+wind. She saw the flitting figure again, and with a desire to make sure of
+its identity, Ruth started in pursuit.
+
+Had Tom been present the girl of the Red Mill would have called his
+attention to the mystery and left it to him to decide whether to
+investigate or not. But Ruth was quite an independent person when she was
+alone; and under the circumstances, with Henri Marchand so busy comforting
+Jennie, Ruth did not consider for a moment calling the Frenchman to advise
+with her.
+
+As for Helen and Aunt Kate, they were quite overcome by their fears. Ruth
+was not really afraid of thunder and lightning, as many people are. She
+had long since learned that "thunder does not bite, and the bolt of
+lightning that hits you, you will never see!"
+
+Heavy as the going was, and interfering with her progress through her wet
+garments did, Ruth ran up the hill underneath the dripping trees. She saw
+the flitting, shadowy figure once more. Again she called as loudly as she
+could shout:
+
+"Wait! Wait! I won't hurt you."
+
+Whoever or whatever it was, the figure did not stay. It flitted on about
+two hundred yards ahead of the pursuing girl.
+
+At times it disappeared altogether; but Ruth kept on up the hill and her
+quarry always reappeared. She was quite positive this was the creature
+that had shrieked, for the mournful cry was not repeated after she caught
+sight of the figure.
+
+"It is somebody who has been frightened by the storm," she thought. "Or it
+is a lost child. This is a wild hillside, and one might easily be lost up
+here."
+
+Then she called again. She thought the strange figure turned and
+hesitated. Then, of a sudden, it darted into a clump of brush. When Ruth
+came panting to the spot she could see no trace of the creature, or the
+path which it had followed.
+
+But directly before Ruth was an opening in the hillside--the mouth of a
+deep ravine which had not been visible from the road below.
+
+Down this ravine ran a noisy torrent which had cut itself a wider and
+deeper bed since the cloudburst on the heights. Small trees, brush, and
+rocks had been uprooted by the force of the stream, but its current was
+now receding. One might walk along the edge of the brook into this
+hillside fastness.
+
+Determined to solve the mystery of the strange creature's disappearance,
+and quite convinced that it was a lost child or woman, Ruth Fielding
+ventured through the brush clump and passed along the ragged bank of the
+tumbling brook.
+
+Suddenly, in the muddy ground at her feet, the girl spied a shoe. It was a
+black oxford of good quality, and it had been, of course, wrenched from
+the foot of the person she pursued. This girl, or woman, must be running
+from Ruth in fear.
+
+Ruth picked up the shoe. It was for a small foot, but might belong to
+either a girl of fourteen or so or to a small woman. She could see the
+print of the other shoe--yes! and there was the impress of the stockinged
+foot in the mud.
+
+"Whoever she may be," thought Ruth Fielding, "she is so frightened that
+she abandoned this shoe. Poor thing! What can be the matter with her?"
+
+Ruth shouted again, and yet again. She went on up the side of the
+turbulent brook, staring all about for the hiding place of her quarry.
+
+The rain ceased entirely and abruptly. But the whole forest was a-drip.
+Far up through the trees she saw a sudden lightening of the sky. The
+clouds were breaking.
+
+But the smoke of the torrential downpour still rose from the saturated
+earth. When Ruth jarred a bush in passing a perfect deluge fell from the
+trembling leaves. The girl began to feel that she had come far enough in
+what appeared to be a wild-goose chase.
+
+Then suddenly, quite amazingly, she was halted. She plunged around a sharp
+turn in the ravine, trying to step on the dryer places, and found herself
+confronted by a man standing under the shelter of a wide-armed spruce.
+
+"Oh!" gasped Ruth, starting back.
+
+He was a heavy-set, bewhiskered man with gleaming eyes and rather a grim
+look. Worst of all, he carried a gun with the lock sheltered under his
+arm-pit from the rain.
+
+At Ruth's appearance he seemed startled, too, and he advanced the muzzle
+of the gun and took a stride forward at the same moment.
+
+"Hello!" he growled. "Be you crazy, too? What in all git out be you
+traipsing through these woods for in the rain?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+MR. PETERBY PAUL AND "WHOSIS"
+
+
+Ruth Fielding was more than a little startled, for the appearance of this
+bearded and gruff-spoken man was much against him.
+
+She had become familiar, however, during the past months with all sorts
+and conditions of men--many of them much more dangerous looking than this
+stranger.
+
+Her experiences at the battlefront in France had taught her many things.
+Among them, that very often the roughest men are the most tender with and
+considerate of women. Ruth knew that the girls and women working in the
+Red Cross and the "Y" and the Salvation Army might venture among the
+roughest _poilus_, Tommies and our own Yanks without fearing insult or
+injury.
+
+After that first startled "Oh!" Ruth Fielding gave no sign of fearing the
+bearded man with the gun under his arm. She stood her ground as he
+approached her.
+
+"How many air there of ye, Sissy?" he wanted to know. "And air ye all
+loose from some bat factory? That other one's crazy as all git out."
+
+"Oh, did you see her?"
+
+"If ye mean that Whosis that's wanderin' around yellin' like a
+cat-o'-mountain----"
+
+"Oh, dear! It was she that was screaming so!"
+
+"I should say it was. I tried to cotch her----"
+
+"And that scared her more, I suppose."
+
+"Huh! Be I so scareful to look at?" the stranger demanded. "Or, mebbe
+_you_ ain't loony, lady?"
+
+"I should hope not," rejoined Ruth, beginning to laugh.
+
+"Then how in tarnation," demanded the bearded man, "do you explain your
+wanderin' about these woods in this storm?"
+
+"Why," said Ruth, "I was trying to catch that poor creature, too."
+
+"That Whosis?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Whatever and whoever she is. See! Here's one of her shoes."
+
+"Do tell! She's lost it, ain't she? Don't you reckon she's loony?"
+
+"It may be that she is out of her mind. But she couldn't hurt you--a big,
+strong man like you."
+
+"That's as may be. I misdoubted me she was some kind of a Whosis," said
+the woodsman. "I seen her a couple of times and heard her holler ev'ry
+time the lightning was real sharp."
+
+"The poor creature has been frightened half to death by the tempest," said
+Ruth.
+
+"Mebbe. But where did she come from? And where did you come from, if I may
+ask? This yere ain't a neighborhood that many city folks finds their way
+into, let me tell ye."
+
+Ruth told him her name and related the mishap that had happened to the two
+cars at the bottom of the hill.
+
+"Wal, I want to know!" he responded. "Out o' gasoline, heh? Wal, that can
+be mended."
+
+"Tom Cameron has gone on foot for some."
+
+"Which way did he go, Ma'am?"
+
+"East," she said, pointing.
+
+"Towards Ridgeton? Wal, he'll have a fine walk."
+
+"But we have not seen any gasoline sign for ever so far back on the road."
+
+"That's right. Ain't no reg'lar place. But I guess I might be able to
+scare up enough gas to help you folks out. Ye see, we got a saw mill right
+up this gully and we got a gasoline engine to run her. I'm a-watchin' the
+place till the gang come in to work next month. That there Whosis got me
+out in the rain----"
+
+"Oh! Where do you suppose the poor thing has gone?" interrupted Ruth. "We
+should do something for her."
+
+"Wal, if she don't belong to you folks----"
+
+"She doesn't. But she should not be allowed to wander about in this awful
+way. Is she a woman grown, or a child?"
+
+"I couldn't tell ye. I ain't been close enough to her. By the way, my name
+is Peterby Paul, and I'm well and fav'rably knowed about this mounting. I
+did have my thoughts about you, same as that Whosis, I must say. But you
+'pear to be all right. Wait, and I'll bring ye down a couple of cans of
+gasoline, and you can go on and pick up the feller that's started to walk
+to Ridgeton."
+
+"But that poor creature I followed up here, Mr. Paul? We _must_ find her."
+
+"You say she ain't nothin' to you folks?"
+
+"But she is alone, and frightened."
+
+"Wal, I expect so. She did give me a start for fair. I don't know where
+she could have come from 'nless she belongs over toward Ridgeton at old
+Miz Abby Drake's. She's got some city folks stopping with her--"
+
+"There she is!" cried Ruth, under her breath.
+
+A hobbling figure appeared for a moment on the side of the ravine. The
+rain had ceased now, but it still dripped plentifully from the trees.
+
+"I'm going after her!" exclaimed Ruth.
+
+"All right, Ma'am," said Mr. Peterby Paul. "I guess she ain't no Whosis,
+after all."
+
+Ruth could run much faster than the strange person who had so startled
+both the woodsman and herself. And running lightly, the girl of the Red
+Mill was almost at her quarry's elbow before her presence was suspected by
+the latter.
+
+The woman turned her face toward Ruth and screeched in evident alarm. She
+looked wild enough to be called a "Whosis," whatever kind of supernatural
+apparition that might be. Her silk dress was in rags; her hair floated
+down her back in a tangled mane; altogether she was a sorry sight, indeed.
+
+She was a woman of middle age, dark, slight of build, and of a most
+pitiful appearance.
+
+"Don't be frightened! Don't be afraid of me," begged Ruth. "Where are your
+friends? I will take you to them."
+
+"It is the voice of God," said the woman solemnly. "I am wicked. He will
+punish me. Do you know how wicked I am?" she added in a tense whisper.
+
+"I have no idea," Ruth replied calmly. "But I think that when we are
+nervous and distraught as you are, we magnify our sins as well as our
+troubles."
+
+Really, Ruth Fielding felt that she might take this philosophy to
+herself. She had been of late magnifying her troubles, without doubt.
+
+"I have been a great sinner," said the woman. "Do you know, I used to
+steal my little sister's bread and jam. And now she is dead. I can never
+make it up to her."
+
+Plainly this was a serious matter to the excited mind of the poor woman.
+
+"Come on down the hill with me. I have got an automobile there and we can
+ride to Mrs. Drake's in it. Isn't that where you are stopping?"
+
+"Yes, yes. Abby Drake," said the lost woman weakly. "We--we all started
+out for huckleberries. And I never thought before how wicked I was to my
+little sister. But the storm burst--such a terrible storm!" and the poor
+creature cowered close to Ruth as the thunder muttered again in the
+distance.
+
+"It is the voice of God----"
+
+"Come along!" urged Ruth. "Lots of people have made the same mistake. So
+Aunt Alvirah says. They mistake some other noise for the voice of God!"
+
+The woman was now so weak that the strong girl could easily lead her. Mr.
+Peterby Paul looked at the forlorn figure askance, however.
+
+"You can't blame me for thinkin' she was a Whosis," he said to Ruth. "Poor
+critter! It's lucky you came after her. She give me such a start I might
+o' run sort o' wild myself."
+
+"Perhaps if you had tried to catch her it would only have made her worse,"
+Ruth replied, gently patting the excited woman's hand.
+
+"The voice of God!" muttered the victim of her own nervousness.
+
+"And she traipsing through these woods in a silk dress!" exclaimed Mr.
+Paul. "I tell 'em all, city folks ain't got right good sense."
+
+"Maybe you are right, Mr. Paul," sighed Ruth. "We are all a little queer,
+I guess. I will take her down to the car."
+
+"And I'll be right along with a couple of cans of gasoline, Ma'am,"
+rejoined Peterby Paul. "Ain't no use you and your friends bein' stranded
+no longer."
+
+"If you will be so kind," Ruth said.
+
+He turned back up the ravine and Ruth urged the lost woman down the hill.
+The poor creature was scarcely able to walk, even after she had put on her
+lost shoe. Her fears which had driven her into this quite irresponsible
+state, were the result of ungoverned nervousness. Ruth thought seriously
+of this fact as she aided her charge down the hillside.
+
+She must steady her own nerves, or the result might be quite as serious.
+She had allowed the loss of her scenario to shake her usual calm. She
+knew she had not been acting like herself during this automobile journey
+and that she had given her friends cause for alarm.
+
+Then and there Ruth determined to talk no more about her loss or her fears
+regarding the missing scenario. If it was gone, it was gone. That was all
+there was to it. She would no longer worry her friends and disturb her own
+mental poise by ruminating upon her misfortune.
+
+When she and the lost woman got out of the ravine, Ruth could hear the
+girls calling her. And there was Colonel Marchand's horizon-blue uniform
+in sight as he toiled up the ascent, looking for her.
+
+"Don't be frightened, dear," Ruth said to the startled woman. "These are
+my friends."
+
+Then she called to Helen that she was coming. Colonel Marchand hurried
+forward with an amazed question.
+
+"Never mind! Don't bother her," Ruth said. "The poor creature has been
+through enough--out in all this storm, alone. We must get her to where she
+is stopping as soon as possible. See the condition her clothes are in!"
+
+"But, Mademoiselle Ruth!" gasped the Frenchman. "We are stalled until
+Captain Tom comes back with the gasoline--is it not?"
+
+"We are going to have gas in a very few minutes," returned Ruth gaily. "I
+did more than find this poor woman up on the hill. Wait!"
+
+Helen and Jennie sprang at Ruth like a pair of terriers after a cat,
+demanding information and explanation all in a breath. But when they
+realized the state of mind of the strange woman, they calmed down.
+
+They wrapped her in a dry raincoat and put her in the back of the big car.
+She remained quietly there with Jennie's Aunt Kate while Ruth related her
+adventure with Mr. Peterby Paul and the "Whosis."
+
+"Goodness!" gasped Helen, "I guess he named her rightly. There must be
+something altogether wrong with the poor creature to make her wander about
+these wet woods, screeching like a loon."
+
+"I'd screech, too," said Jennie Stone, "if I'd torn a perfectly good silk
+dress to tatters as she has."
+
+"Think of going huckleberrying in a frock like that," murmured Ruth. "I
+guess you are both right. And Mr. Peterby Paul did have good reason for
+calling her a 'Whosis'."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ALONGSHORE
+
+
+Mr. Peterby Paul appeared after a short time striding down the wooded
+hillside balancing a five-gallon gasoline can in either hand.
+
+"I reckon you can get to Ridgeton on this here," he said jovially. "Guess
+I'd better set up a sign down here so's other of you autermobile folks kin
+take heart if ye git stuck."
+
+"You are just as welcome as the flowers in spring, tra-la!" cried Helen,
+fairly dancing with delight.
+
+"You are an angel visitor, Mr. Paul," said the plump girl.
+
+"I been called a lot o' things besides an angel," the bearded woodsman
+said, his eyes twinkling. "My wife, 'fore she died, had an almighty tart
+tongue."
+
+"And _now_?" queried Helen wickedly.
+
+"Wal, wherever the poor critter's gone, I reckon she's l'arned to bridle
+her tongue," said Mr. Peterby Paul cheerfully. "Howsomever, as the feller
+said, that's another day's job. Mr. Frenchy, let's pour this gasoline
+into them tanks."
+
+Ruth insisted upon paying for the gasoline, and paying well. Then Peterby
+Paul gave them careful directions as to the situation of Abby Drake's
+house, at which it seemed the lost woman must belong.
+
+"Abby always has her house full of city folks in the summer," the woodsman
+said. "She is pretty near a Whosis herself, Abby Drake is."
+
+With which rather unfavorable intimation regarding the despised "city
+folks," Mr. Peterby Paul saw them start on over the now badly rutted road.
+
+Helen drove the smaller car with Ruth sitting beside her. Henri Marchand
+took the wheel of the touring car, and the run to Boston was resumed.
+
+"But we must not over-run Tom," said Ruth to her chum. "No knowing what
+by-path he might have tried in search of the elusive gasoline."
+
+"I'll keep the horn blowing," Helen said, suiting action to her speech and
+sounding a musical blast through the wooded country that lay all about.
+"He ought to know his own auto-horn."
+
+The tone of the horn was peculiar. Ruth could always distinguish it from
+any other as Tom speeded along the Cheslow road toward the Red Mill. But
+then, she was perhaps subconsciously listening for its mellow note.
+
+She tacitly agreed with Helen, however, that it might be a good thing to
+toot the horn frequently. And the signal brought to the roadside an
+anxious group of women at a sprawling farmhouse not a mile beyond the spot
+where the two cars had been stalled.
+
+"That is the Drake place. It must be!" Ruth exclaimed, putting out a hand
+to warn Colonel Marchand that they were about to halt.
+
+A fleshy woman with a very ruddy face under her sunbonnet came eagerly out
+into the road, leading the group of evidently much worried women.
+
+"Have you folks seen anything of----"
+
+"_Abby!_" shrieked the woman Ruth had found, and she struggled to get out
+of the car.
+
+"Well, I declare, Mary Marsden!" gasped the sunbonneted woman, who was
+plainly Abby Drake. "If you ain't a sight!"
+
+"I--I'm so scared!" quavered the unforunate victim of her own nerves, as
+Ruth ran back to help her out of the touring car. "God is going to punish
+me, Abby."
+
+"I certainly hope He will," declared her friend, in rather a hard-hearted
+way. "I told you, you ought to be punished for wearing that dress up there
+into the berry pasture, and---- Land's sakes alive! Look at her
+dress!"
+
+Afterward, when Ruth had been thanked by Mrs. Drake and the other women,
+and the cars were rolling along the highway again, the girl of the Red
+Mill said to Helen Cameron:
+
+"I guess Tom is more than half right. Altogether, the most serious topic
+of conversation for all kinds and conditions of female humans is the
+matter of dress--in one way or another."
+
+"How dare you slur your own sex so?" demanded Helen.
+
+"Well, look at this case," her chum observed. "This Mary Marsden had been
+lost in the storm and killed for all they knew, yet Abby Drake's first
+thought was for the woman's dress."
+
+"Well, it was a pity about the dress," Helen remarked, proving that she
+agreed with Abby Drake and the bulk of womankind--as her twin brother oft
+and again acclaimed.
+
+Ruth laughed. "And now if we could see poor dear Tommy----"
+
+The car rounded a sharp turn in the highway. The Drake house was perhaps a
+mile behind. Ahead was a long stretch of rain-drenched road, and Helen
+instantly cried:
+
+"There he is!"
+
+The figure of Tom Cameron with the empty gasoline can in his hand could
+scarcely be mistaken, although he was at least a mile in advance. Helen
+began to punch the horn madly.
+
+"He'll know that," Ruth cried. "Yes, he looks back! Won't he be
+astonished?"
+
+Tom certainly was amazed. He proceeded to sit down on the can and wait for
+the cars to overtake him.
+
+"What are you traveling on?" he shouted, when Helen stopped with the
+engine running just in front of him. "Fairy gasoline?"
+
+"Why, Tommy, you're not so smart!" laughed his sister. "It takes Ruth to
+find gas stations. We were stalled right in front of one, and you did not
+know it. Hop in here and take my place and I'll run back to the other car.
+Ruth will tell you all about it."
+
+"Perhaps we had better let Colonel Marchand and Jennie have this honeymoon
+car," Ruth said doubtfully.
+
+"Humph!" her chum observed, "I begin to believe it will be just as much a
+honeymoon car with you and Tom in it as with that other couple. 'Bless
+you, my children!'"
+
+She ran back to the big car with this saucy statement. Tom grinned,
+slipped behind the wheel, and started the roadster slowly.
+
+"It must be," he observed in his inimitable drawl, "that Sis has noticed
+that I'm fond of you, Ruthie."
+
+"Quite remarkable," she rejoined cheerfully. "But the war isn't over yet,
+Tommy-boy. And if our lives are spared we've got to finish our educations
+and all that. Why, Tommy, you are scarcely out of short pants, and I've
+only begun to put my hair up."
+
+"Jimminy!" he grumbled, "you do take all the starch out of a fellow. Now
+tell me how you got gas. What happened?"
+
+Everybody has been to Boston, or expects to go there some time, so it is
+quite immaterial what happened to the party while at the Hub. They only
+remained two days, anyway, then they started off alongshore through the
+pleasant old towns that dot the coast as far as Cape Ann.
+
+They saw the ancient fishing ports of Marblehead, Salem, Gloucester and
+Rockport, and then came back into the interior and did not see salt water
+again until they reached Newburyport at the mouth of the Merrimac.
+
+The weather remained delightfully cool and sunshiny after that heavy
+tempest they had suffered in the hills, and they reached Portsmouth and
+remained at a hotel for three days when it rained again. The young folks
+chafed at this delay, but Aunt Kate declared that a hotel room was restful
+after jouncing over all sorts of roads for so long.
+
+"They never will build a car easy enough for auntie," Jennie Stone
+declared. "I tell pa he must buy some sort of airship for us----"
+
+"Never!" cried Aunt Kate in quick denial. "Whenever I go up in the air it
+will be because wings have sprouted on my shoulder blades. And I should
+not call an aeroplane easy riding, in any case."
+
+"At least," grumbled Tom, "you can spin along without any trouble with
+country constables, and _that's_ a blessing."
+
+For on several occasions they had had arguments with members of the police
+force, in one case helping to support a justice and a constable by paying
+a fine.
+
+They did not travel on Sunday, however, when the constables reap most of
+their harvest, so they really had little to complain of in that direction.
+Nor did they travel fast in any case.
+
+After the rainy days at Portsmouth, the automobile party ran on with only
+minor incidents and no adventures until they reached Portland. There Ruth
+telegraphed to Mr. Hammond that they were coming, as in her letter,
+written before they left Cheslow, she had promised him she would.
+
+Herringport, the nearest town to the moving picture camp at Beach Plum
+Point, was at the head of a beautiful harbor, dotted with islands, and
+with water as blue as that of the Bay of Naples. When the two cars rolled
+into this old seaport the party was welcomed in person by Mr. Hammond,
+the president and producing manager of the Alectrion Film Corporation.
+
+"I have engaged rooms for you at the hotel here, if you want them," he
+told Ruth, after being introduced to Aunt Kate and Colonel Marchand, the
+only members of the party whom he had not previously met.
+
+"But I can give you all comfortable bunks with some degree of luxury at
+the camp. At least, we think it luxurious after our gold mining experience
+in the West. You will get better cooking at the Point, too."
+
+"But a camp!" sighed Aunt Kate. "We have roughed it so much coming down
+here, Mr. Hammond."
+
+"There won't be any black ants at this camp," said her niece cheerfully.
+
+"Only sand fleas," suggested the wicked Tom.
+
+"You can't scare me with fleas," said Jennie. "They only hop; they don't
+wriggle and creep."
+
+"My star in the 'Seaside Idyl,' Miss Loder, demanded hotel accommodations
+at first. But she soon changed her mind," Mr. Hammond said. "She is now
+glad to be on the lot with the rest of the company."
+
+"It sounds like a circus," Aunt Kate murmured doubtfully.
+
+"It is more than that, my dear Madam," replied the manager, laughing.
+"But these young people----"
+
+"If Aunt Kate won't mind," said Ruth, "let us try it, while she remains at
+the Herringport Inn."
+
+"I'll run her back and forth every day for the 'eats'," Tom promptly
+proposed.
+
+"My duty as a chaperon----" began the good woman, when her niece broke in
+with:
+
+"In numbers there is perfect safety, Auntie. There are a whole lot of
+girls down there at the Point."
+
+"And we have chaperons of our own, I assure you," interposed Mr. Hammond,
+treating Aunt Kate's objection seriously. "Miss Loder has a cousin who
+always travels with her. Our own Mother Paisley, who plays character
+parts, has daughters of her own and is a lovely lady. You need not fear,
+Madam, that the conventions will be broken."
+
+"We won't even crack 'em, Aunt Kate," declared Helen rouguishly. "I will
+watch Jen like a cat would a mouse."
+
+"Humph!" observed the plump girl, scornfully. "_This_ mouse, in that case,
+is likely to swallow the cat!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE HERMIT
+
+
+"Now, tell me, Miss Ruth," said Mr. Hammond, having taken the girl of the
+Red Mill into his own car for the short run to Beach Plum Point, "what is
+this trouble about your new scenario? You have excited my curiosity during
+all these months about the wonderful script, and now you say it is not
+ready for me."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hammond!" exclaimed Ruth, "I fear it will never be ready for
+you."
+
+"Nonsense! Don't lose heart. You have merely come to one of those
+thank-you-ma'ams in story writing that all authors suffer. Wait. It will
+come to you."
+
+"No, no!" sighed Ruth. "It is nothing like that. I had finished the
+scenario. I had it all just about as I wanted it, and then----"
+
+"Then what?" he asked in wonder at her emotion.
+
+"It--it was stolen!"
+
+"Stolen?"
+
+"Yes. And all my notes--everything! I--I can't talk about it. And I never
+could write it again," sobbed Ruth. "It is the best thing I ever did, Mr.
+Hammond."
+
+"If it is better than 'The Heart of a Schoolgirl', or 'The Forty-Niners',
+or 'The Boys of the Draft', then it must be some scenario, Miss Ruth. The
+last two are still going strong, you know. And I have hopes of the
+'Seaside Idyl' catching the public fancy just when we are all getting
+rather weary of war dramas.
+
+"If you can only rewrite this new story----"
+
+"But Mr. Hammond! I am sure it has been stolen by somebody who will make
+use of it. Some other producer may put it on the screen, and then my
+version would fall flat--if no worse."
+
+"Humph! And you have been so secret about it!"
+
+"I took your advice, Mr. Hammond. I have told nobody about it--not a
+thing!"
+
+"And somebody unknown stole it?"
+
+"We think it was a vagrant actor. A tramp. Just the sort of person,
+though, who would know how to make use of the script."
+
+"Humph! All actors were considered 'vagrants' under the old English
+law--in Shakespeare's younger days, for instance," remarked Mr. Hammond.
+
+"You see how unwise it would be for me to try to rewrite the story--even
+if I could--and try to screen it."
+
+"I presume you are right. Yes. But I hoped you would bring a story with
+you that we could be working on at odd times. I have a good all-around
+company here on the lot."
+
+"I had most of your principals in mind when I wrote my scenario," sighed
+Ruth. "But I could not put my mind to that same subject now. I am
+discouraged, Mr. Hammond."
+
+"I would not feel that way if I were you, Miss Ruth," he advised, trying,
+as everybody else did, to cheer her. "You will get another good idea, and
+like all other born writers, you will just _have_ to give expression to
+it. Meantime, of course, if I get hold of a promising scenario, I shall
+try to produce it."
+
+"I hope you will find a good one, Mr. Hammond."
+
+He smiled rather ruefully. "Of course, there is scarcely anybody on the
+lot who hasn't a picture play in his or her pocket. I was possibly unwise
+last week to offer five hundred dollars spot cash for a play I could make
+use of, for now I suppose there will be fifty to read. Everybody, from
+Jacks, the property man, to the old hermit, believes he can write a
+scenario."
+
+"Who is the hermit?" asked Ruth, with some curiosity.
+
+"I don't know. Nobody seems to know who he is about Herringport. He was
+living in an old fish-house down on the Point when we came here last week
+with the full strength of the company. And I have made use of the old
+fellow in your 'Seaside Idyl'.
+
+"He seems to be a queer duck. But he has some idea of the art of acting,
+it seems. Director Jim Hooley is delighted with him. But they tell me the
+old fellow is scribbling all night in his hut. The scenario bug has
+certainly bit that old codger. He's out for my five hundred dollars," and
+the producing manager laughed again.
+
+"I hope you get a good script," said Ruth earnestly. "But don't ask me to
+read any of them, Mr. Hammond. It does seem as though I never wanted to
+look at a scenario again!"
+
+"Then you are going to miss some amusement in this case," he chuckled.
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"I tell you frankly I do not expect much from even those professional
+actors. It was my experience even before I went into the motion picture
+business that plays submitted by actors were always full of all the old
+stuff--all the old theatrical tricks and the like. Actors are the most
+insular people in existence, I believe. They know how plays should be
+written to fulfill the tenets of the profession; but invention is
+'something else again'."
+
+The young people who had motored so far were welcomed by many of Mr.
+Hammond's company who had acted in "The Forty-Niners" and had met Ruth and
+her friends in the West, as related in "Ruth Fielding in the Saddle."
+
+The shacks that had been built especially for the company's use were
+comfortable, even if they did smell of new pine boards. The men of the
+company lived in khaki tents. There were several old fish-houses that were
+likewise being utilized by the members of the company.
+
+Beach Plum Point was the easterly barrier of sand and rock that defended
+the beautiful harbor from the Atlantic breakers. It was a wind-blown
+place, and the moan of the surf on the outer reef was continually in the
+ears of the campers on the Point.
+
+The tang of salt in the air could always be tasted on the lips when one
+was out of doors. And the younger folks were out on the sands most of the
+time when they were not working, sleeping, or eating.
+
+"We are going to have some fun here," promised Tom Cameron to Ruth, after
+their party had got established with its baggage. "See that hard strip of
+beach? That's no clamflat. I am going to race my car on that sand. Palm
+Beach has nothing on this. Jackman, the property man (you remember Jacks,
+don't you, Ruth?), says the blackfish and bass are biting off the Point.
+You girls can act in movies if you like, but _I_ am going fishing."
+
+"Don't talk movies to me," sighed the girl. "I almost wish we had not
+come, Tom."
+
+"Nonsense! You shall go fishing with me. Put on your oldest duds
+and--well, maybe you will have to strip off your shoes and stockings. It
+is both wet and slippery on the rocks."
+
+"Pooh! I'll put on my bathing suit and a sweater. I never was afraid of
+water yet," Ruth declared.
+
+This was the morning after their arrival. Tom had been up to the port and
+brought down Aunt Kate for the day. Aunt Kate sat under an umbrella near
+where the company was working on location, and she scribbled all day in a
+notebook. Jennie whispered that she, too, was bitten by the scenario bug!
+
+"I feel it coming over me," announced Helen. "I've got what I think is a
+dandy idea."
+
+"Oh, there's too much to do," Jennie Stone said. "I couldn't find time to
+dabble in literature."
+
+"My, oh, my!" gasped Helen, with scorn. "How busy we are! You and Henri
+spend all your time making eyes at each other."
+
+"But just think, Nell!" cried the plump girl. "He's got to go back to
+France and fight----"
+
+"And so has my Tom."
+
+"But Tom is only your brother."
+
+"And Henri is nothing at all to you," rejoined Helen cruelly. "A fiancé is
+only an expectation. You may change your mind about Henri."
+
+"Never!" cried Jennie, with horror.
+
+"Well, he keeps you busy, I grant. And there go Tom and Ruth mooning off
+together with fish lines. Lots of fishing _they_ will do! They are almost
+as bad as you and Henri. Why!" ejaculated Helen in some heat, "I am just
+driven to writing scenarios to keep from dying of loneliness."
+
+"I notice that 'juvenile lead,' Mr. Simmons, is keeping you quite busy,"
+remarked Jennie slyly, as she turned away.
+
+It was a fact that Ruth and Tom enjoyed each others' company. But Helen
+need not have been even a wee bit jealous. To tell the truth, she did not
+like to "get all mussed up," as she expressed it, by going fishing. To
+Ruth the adventure was a glad relief from worriment. Much as she tried,
+she could not throw off all thought of her lost scenario.
+
+She welcomed every incident that promised amusement and mental relaxation.
+Some of the troupe of actors--the men, mostly--were bathing off the
+Point.
+
+"And see that man in the old skiff!" cried Ruth. "'The Lone Fisherman'."
+
+The individual in question sat upon a common kitchen chair in the skiff
+with a big, patched umbrella to keep the sun off, and was fishing with a
+pole that he had evidently cut in the woods along the shore.
+
+"That is that hermit fellow," said Tom. "He's a queer duck. And the boys
+bother him a good deal."
+
+He was angrily driving some of the swimmers away from his fishing location
+at that moment. It was plain the members of the moving picture company
+used the hermit as a butt for their jokes.
+
+While one fellow was taking up the hermit's attention in front, another
+bather rose silently behind him and reached into the bottom of the skiff.
+What this second fellow did Tom and Ruth could not see.
+
+"The old chap can't swim a stroke," explained one of the laughing bathers
+to the visitors. "He's as afraid of water as a cat. Now you watch."
+
+But Tom and Ruth saw nothing to watch. They went on to the tip of the
+Point and Tom prepared the fishing tackle and baited the hooks. Just as
+Ruth made her first cast there sounded a scream from the direction of the
+lone fisherman.
+
+"What is it?" she gasped, dropping her pole.
+
+The bathers had deserted the old man in the skiff, and were now at some
+distance. He was anchored in probably twenty feet of water.
+
+To the amazement of Ruth and her companion, the skiff had sunk until its
+gunwales were scarcely visible. The hermit had wrenched away his umbrella
+and was now balanced upon the chair on his feet, in danger of sinking. His
+fear of this catastrophe was being expressed in unstinted terms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A QUOTATION
+
+
+"Do help him, Tom!" cried Ruth Fielding, and she started for the spot
+where the man and the skiff were sinking.
+
+Tom cast aside his sweater, kicked his sneakers off, and plunged into the
+tide. Ruth was quite as lightly dressed as Tom; but she saw that he could
+do all that was necessary.
+
+That was, to bring the frightened man ashore. This "hermit" as they called
+him, was certainly very much afraid of the water.
+
+He splashed a good deal, and Tom had to speak sharply to keep him from
+getting a strangle-hold about his own neck.
+
+"Jimminy! but that was a mean trick," panted Tom, when he got ashore with
+the fisherman. "Somebody pulled the plug out of the bottom of the skiff
+and first he knew, he was going down."
+
+"It is a shame," agreed Ruth, looking at the victim of the joke curiously.
+
+He was a thin-featured, austere looking man, scrupulously shaven, but with
+rather long hair that had quite evidently been dyed. Now that it was
+plastered to his crown by the salt water (for he had been completely
+immersed more than once in his struggle with Tom Cameron) his hair was
+shown to be quite thin and of a greenish tinge at the roots.
+
+The shock of being dipped in the sea so unexpectedly was plainly no small
+one for the hermit. He stood quite unsteadily on the strand, panting and
+sputtering.
+
+"Young dogs! No respect for age and ability in this generation. I might
+have been drowned."
+
+"Well, it's all over now," said Tom comfortingly. "Where do you live?"
+
+"Over yonder, young man," replied the hermit, pointing to the ocean side
+of the point.
+
+"We will take you home. You lie down for a while and you will feel
+better," Ruth said soothingly. "We will come back here afterward and get
+your skiff ashore."
+
+"Thank you, Miss," said the man courteously.
+
+"I'll make those fellows who played the trick on you get the boat ashore,"
+promised Tom, running for his shoes and sweater.
+
+The hermit proved to be a very uncommunicative person. Ruth tried to get
+him to talk about himself as they crossed the rocky spit, but all that he
+said of a personal nature was that his name was "John."
+
+His shack was certainly a lonely looking hovel. It faced the tumbling
+Atlantic and it seemed rather an odd thing to Ruth that a man who was so
+afraid of the sea should have selected such a spot for his home.
+
+The hermit did not invite them to enter his abode. He promised Ruth that
+he would make a hot drink for himself and remove his wet garments and lie
+down. But he only seemed moderately grateful for their assistance, and
+shut the door of the shack promptly in their faces when he got inside.
+
+"Just as friendly as a sore-headed dog," remarked Tom, as they went back
+to the bay side of the Point.
+
+"Perhaps the others have played so many tricks on him that he is
+suspicious of even our assistance," Ruth said.
+
+Thus speaking, she stooped to pick up a bit of paper in the path. It had
+been half covered by the sand and might have lain there a long time, or
+only a day.
+
+Just why this bit of brown wrapping paper had caught her attention, it
+would be hard to say. Ruth might have passed it a dozen times without
+noticing it.
+
+But now she must needs turn the paper over and over in her hands as she
+watched Tom, with the help of the rather abashed practical jokers, haul
+the water-logged skiff ashore.
+
+She had forgotten the fishing poles they had abandoned on the rocks, and
+sat down upon a boulder. Suddenly she discovered that there was writing on
+the bit of paper she had picked up. It was then that her attention really
+became fixed upon her find.
+
+The characters had been written with an indelible pencil. The dampness had
+only blurred the writing instead of erasing it. Her attention thus
+engaged, she idly scrutinized more than the blurred lines. Her attitude as
+she sat there on the boulder slowly stiffened; her gaze focused upon the
+paper.
+
+"Why! what is it?" she murmured at last.
+
+The blurred lines became clearer to her vision. It was the wording of the
+phrase rather than the handwriting that enthralled her. This that follows
+was all that was written on the paper:
+
+     "Flash:--
+
+     "As in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be----"
+
+To the ordinary observer, with no knowledge of what went before or
+followed this quotation, the phrase must seem idle. But the word "flash"
+is used by scenario writers and motion picture makers, indicating an
+explanatory phrase thrown on the screen.
+
+And this quoted phrase struck poignantly to Ruth Fielding's mind. For it
+was one she had used in that last scenario--the one that had so strangely
+disappeared from the summer-house back at the Red Mill!
+
+Amazed--almost stunned--by this discovery, she sat on the boulder scarcely
+seeing what Tom and the others were doing toward salvaging the old
+hermit's skiff and other property.
+
+Thoughts regarding the quotation shuttled back and forth in the girl's
+mind in a most bewildering way. The practical side of her character
+pointed out that there really could be no significance in this discovery.
+It could not possibly have anything to do with her stolen script.
+
+Yet the odd phrase, used in just this way, had been one of the few
+"flashes" indicated in her scenario. Was it likely that anybody else,
+writing a picture, would use just that phrase?
+
+She balanced the improbability of this find meaning anything at all to her
+against the coincidence of another author using the quotation in writing a
+scenario. She did not know what to think. Which supposition was the more
+improbable?
+
+The thought was preposterous that the paper should mean anything to her.
+Ruth was about to throw it away; and then, failing to convince herself
+that the quotation was but idly written, she tucked the piece of paper
+into the belt of her bathing suit.
+
+When Tom was ready to go back to their fishing station, Ruth went with him
+and said nothing about the find she had made.
+
+They had fair luck, all told, and the chef at the camp produced their
+catch in a dish of boiled tautog with egg sauce at dinner that evening.
+The company ate together at a long table, like a logging camp crew, only
+with many more of the refinements of life than the usual logging crew
+enjoys. It was, however, on a picnic plane of existence, and there was
+much hilarity.
+
+These actor folk were very pleasant people. Even the star, Miss Loder, was
+quite unspoiled by her success.
+
+"You know," she confessed to Ruth (everybody confided in Ruth), "I never
+would have been anything more than a stock actress in some jerkwater town,
+as we say in the West, if the movies hadn't become so popular. I have what
+they call the 'appealing face' and I can squeeze out real tears at the
+proper juncture. Those are two very necessary attributes for a girl who
+wishes to gain film success."
+
+"But you can really act," Ruth said honestly. "I watched you to-day."
+
+"I should be able to act. I come of a family who have been actors for
+generations. Acting is like breathing to me. But, of course, it is another
+art to 'register' emotion in the face, and very different from displaying
+one's feelings by action and audible expression. You know, one of our most
+popular present-day stage actresses got her start by an ability to scream
+off-stage. Nothing like that in the movies."
+
+"You should hear Jennie Stone with a black ant down her back," put in
+Helen, with serious face. "I am sure Heavy could go the actress you speak
+of one better, and become even more popular."
+
+"I am not to be blamed if I squeal at crawly things," sniffed the plump
+girl, hearing this. "See how brave I am in most other respects."
+
+But that night Jennie exhibited what Tom called her "scarefulness" in most
+unmistakable fashion, and never again could she claim to be brave. She
+gave her chums in addition such a fright that they were not soon over
+talking about it.
+
+The three college girls had cots in a small shack that Mr. Hammond had
+given up to their use. It was one of the shacks nearest the shore of the
+harbor. Several boat-docks near by ran out into the deep water.
+
+It was past midnight when Jennie was for some reason aroused. Usually she
+slept straight through the night, and had to be awakened by violent means
+in time for breakfast.
+
+She was not startled, but awoke naturally, and found herself broad awake.
+She sat up in her cot, almost convinced that it must be daylight. But it
+was the moon shining through a haze of clouds that lighted the interior of
+the shack. The other two girls were breathing deeply. The noises she heard
+did not at first alarm Jennie.
+
+There was the whisper of the tide as it rolled the tiny pebbles and shells
+up the strand and, receding, swept them down again. It chuckled, too,
+among the small piers of the near-by docks.
+
+Then the listening girl heard footsteps--or what she took to be that
+sound. They approached the shack, then receded. She began to be curious,
+then felt a tremor of alarm. Who could be wandering about the camp at this
+grim hour of the night?
+
+She was unwise enough to allow her imagination to wake up, too. She stole
+from her bed and peered out of the screened window that faced the water.
+Almost at once a moving object met her frightened gaze.
+
+It was a figure all in white which seemed to float down the lane between
+the tents and out upon the nearest boat-dock.
+
+Afterward Jennie declared she could have suffered one of these
+spirit-looking manifestations in silence. She crammed the strings of her
+frilled nightcap between her teeth as a stopper!
+
+This spectral figure was going away from the shack, anyway. It appeared to
+be bearing something in its arms. But then came a second ghost, likewise
+burdened. Gasping, Jennie waited, clinging to the window-sill for support.
+
+A third spectre appeared, rising like Banquo's spirit at Macbeth's feast.
+This was too much for the plump girl's self-control. She opened her mouth,
+and her half-strangled shriek, the partially masticated cap-strings all
+but choking her, aroused Ruth and Helen to palpitating fright.
+
+"Oh! What is it?" demanded Helen, bounding out of bed.
+
+"Ghosts! Oh! Waw!" gurgled Jennie, and sank back into her friend's arms.
+
+Helen was literally as well as mentally overcome. Jennie's weight carried
+her to the straw matting with a bump that shook the shack and brought
+Ruth, too, out of bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+AN AMAZING SITUATION
+
+
+"'Ghost'?" cried Ruth Fielding. "Let me see it! Remember the campus ghost
+back at old Briarwood, Helen? I haven't seen a ghost since that time."
+
+"Ugh! Get this big elephant off of me!" grunted her chum, impolitely as
+well as angrily. "_She's_ no ghost, I do assure you. She's of the earth,
+earthy, and no mistake! Ouch! Get off, Heavy!"
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned the plump girl. "I--I saw them. Three of them!"
+
+"Sounds like a three-ring circus," snapped Helen.
+
+But Ruth was peering through the window. She saw nothing, and complained
+thereof:
+
+"Jen has had a nightmare. I don't see a thing."
+
+"Nightmare, your granny!" sputtered the plump girl, finally rolling off
+her half crushed friend. "I saw it--them--_those_!"
+
+"Your grammar is so mixed I wouldn't believe you on oath," declared Helen,
+getting to her own bare feet and paddling back to her cot for slippers
+and a negligee.
+
+"O-o-oh, it is chilly," agreed Ruth, grabbing a wrap, too.
+
+"Do tell us about it, Jennie," she begged. "Did you see your ghost through
+the window here?"
+
+"It isn't my ghost!" denied the plump girl. "I'm alive, ain't I?"
+
+"But you're not conscious," grumbled Helen.
+
+"I can see!" wailed Jennie. "I haven't lost my eyesight."
+
+"Stop!" Ruth urged. "Let us get at the foundation of this trouble. You say
+you saw----"
+
+"I saw what I saw!"
+
+"Oh, see-saw!" cried Helen. "We're all loony, now."
+
+Ruth was about to ask another question, but she was again looking through
+the window. She suddenly bit off a cry of her own. She had to confess that
+the sight she saw was startling.
+
+"Is--is that the ghost, Jennie?" she breathed, seizing the plump girl by
+her arm and dragging her forward.
+
+Jennie gave one frightened look through the window and immediately clapped
+her palms over her eyes.
+
+"Ow!" she wailed in muffled tones. "They're coming back."
+
+They were, indeed! Three white figures in Indian file came stalking up
+the long dock. They approached the camp in a spectral procession and had
+she been awakened to see them first of all, Ruth might have been startled
+herself.
+
+Helen peered over her chum's shoulder and in teeth-chattering monotone
+breathed in Ruth's ear the query:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It--it's Heavy's ghost."
+
+"Not mine! Not mine!" denied the plump girl.
+
+"Oh!" gasped Helen, spying the stalking white figures.
+
+It was the moonlight made them appear so ghostly. Ruth knew that, of
+course, at once. And then----
+
+"Who ever saw ghosts carrying garbage cans before?" ejaculated the girl of
+the Red Mill. "Mercy me, Heavy! do stop your wailing. It is the chef and
+his two assistants who have got up to dump the garbage on the out-going
+tide. What a perfect scare-cat you are!"
+
+"You don't mean it, Ruth?" whimpered the plump girl. "Is that _all_ they
+were?"
+
+Helen began to giggle. And it covered her own fright. Ruth was rather
+annoyed.
+
+"If you had remained in bed and minded your own business," she said to
+Jennie, "you would not have seen ghosts, or got us up to see them. Now go
+back to sleep and behave yourself."
+
+"Yes, ma'am," murmured the abashed Jennie Stone. "How silly of me! I was
+never afraid of a cook before--no, indeed."
+
+Helen continued to giggle spasmodically; but she fell asleep soon. As for
+Jennie, she began to breathe heavily almost as soon as her head touched
+the pillow. But Ruth must needs lie awake for hours, and naturally the
+teeth of her mind began to knaw at the problem of that bit of paper she
+had found in the sand.
+
+The more she thought of it the less easy it was to discard the idea that
+the writing on the paper was a quotation from her own scenario script. It
+seemed utterly improbable that two people should use that same expression
+as a "flash" in a scenario.
+
+Yet, if this paper was a connecting link between her stolen manuscript and
+the thief, _who was the thief_?
+
+It would seem, of course, if this supposition were granted, that some
+member of the company of film actors Mr. Hammond had there at Beach Plum
+Point had stolen the scenario. At least, the stolen scenario must be in
+the possession of some member of the company.
+
+Who could it be? Naturally Ruth considered this unknown must be one of the
+company who wished Mr. Hammond to accept and produce a scenario.
+
+Ruth finally fell into a troubled sleep with the determination in her mind
+to take more interest in the proposed scenario-writing contest than she
+had at first intended.
+
+She could not imagine how anybody could take her work and change it so
+that she would not recognize it! The plot of the story was too well
+wrought and the working out of it too direct.
+
+She did not think that she had it perfect. Only that she had perfected the
+idea as well as she was able. But changing it would not hide from her the
+recognition of her own brain-child.
+
+So after breakfast she went to Mr. Hammond to make inquiry about the
+scenario contest.
+
+"Ha, ha! So you are coming to yourself, Miss Ruth!" he chuckled. "I told
+you you would feel different. I only wish _you_ would get a real smart
+idea for a picture."
+
+"Nothing like that!" she told him, shaking her head. "I could not think of
+writing a new scenario. You don't know what it means to me--the loss of
+that picture I had struggled so long with and thought so much about. I----
+
+"But let us not talk of it," she hastened to add. "I am curious regarding
+the stories that have been offered to you."
+
+"You need not fear competition," he replied. "Just as I told you, all
+these perfectly good acting people base their scenarios on dramas they
+have played or seen played. They haven't got the idea of writing for the
+screen at all, although they work before the camera."
+
+"And that is no wonder!" exclaimed Ruth. "The way the directors take
+scenes, the actors never get much of an idea of the continuity of the
+story they are making. But these stories?"
+
+"So far, I haven't found a possible scenario. And I have looked at more
+than a score."
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"I most certainly do," he assured her. "Want to look at them?"
+
+"Why--yes," confessed Ruth. "I am curious, as I tell you."
+
+"Go to it!" exclaimed Mr. Hammond, opening a drawer of his desk and
+pointing to the pile of manuscripts within. "Consider yourself at home
+here. I am going over to the port with Director Hooley and most of the
+members of the company. We have found just the location for the shooting
+of that scene in your 'Seaside Idyl' where the ladies' aid society holds
+its 'gossip session' in the grove--remember?"
+
+"Oh, yes," Ruth replied, not much interested, as she took the first
+scenario out of the drawer.
+
+"And Hooley's found some splendid types, too, around the village. They
+really have a sewing circle connected with the Herringport Union Church,
+and I have agreed to help the ladies pay for having the church edifice
+painted if they will let us film a session of the society with our
+principal character actors mixed in with the local group. The sun is good
+to-day."
+
+He went away, and a little later Ruth heard the automobiles start for
+Herringport. She had the forenoon to herself, for the rest of her party
+had gone out in a motor boat fishing--a party from which she had excused
+herself.
+
+Eagerly she began to examine the scenarios submitted to Mr. Hammond. The
+possibility that she might find one of them near enough like her own lost
+story to suggest that it had been plagiarized, made Ruth's heart beat
+faster.
+
+She could not forget the quotation on the scrap of brown paper. Somebody
+on this Point--and it seemed that the "somebody" must be one of the moving
+picture company--had written that quotation from her scenario. She felt
+that this could not be denied.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+RUTH SOLVES ONE PROBLEM
+
+
+Had Ruth Fielding been confronted with the question: "Did she expect to
+find a clue to the identity of the person who had stolen her scenario
+before she left the Red Mill?" she could have made no confident answer.
+She did not know what she would find when she sat down at Mr. Hammond's
+desk for the purpose of looking over the submitted stories.
+
+Doubt and suspicion, however, enthralled her mind. She was both curious
+and anxious.
+
+Ruth had no particular desire to read the manuscripts. In any case she did
+not presume Mr. Hammond desired her advice about selecting a script for
+filming.
+
+She skimmed through the first story. It had not a thing in it that would
+suggest in the faintest way any familiarity of the author with her own
+lost scenario.
+
+For two hours she fastened her attention upon one after another of the
+scenarios, often by main will-power, because of the utter lack of
+interest in the stories the writers had tried to put over.
+
+Without being at all egotistical, Ruth Fielding felt confident that had
+any one of these scenario writers come into possession of her lost script,
+and been dishonest enough to use it, he would have turned out a much
+better story.
+
+But not a trace of her original idea and its development was to be found
+in these manuscripts. Her suspicion had been needlessly roused.
+
+Ruth could not deny that the scrap of paper found in the sand was quite as
+mysterious as ever. The quotation on it seemed to be taken directly from
+her own scenario. But there was absolutely nothing in this pile of
+manuscripts to justify her suspicions.
+
+She was just as dissatisfied after scanning all the submitted scenarios as
+Mr. Hammond seemed to be with the day's work when the company came back
+from Herringport in the late afternoon.
+
+"I suppose it is a sanguine disposition that keeps me at this game, Miss
+Ruth," he sighed. "I always expect much more than I can possibly get out
+of a situation; and when I fail I go on hoping just the same."
+
+"I am sure that is a commendable disposition to possess," she laughed.
+"What has gone so wrong?"
+
+"It is the old story of leading the horse to water, and the inability of
+making him drink. This is a balky horse, and no mistake!"
+
+"Do tell me what you mean, Mr. Hammond?"
+
+"Why, I told you we had got what the ladies call 'perfectly lovely' types
+for that scene to-day. You ought to see them, Miss Ruth! You would be
+charmed. Just what the dear public expects a back-country sewing circle
+should look like."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"And they all promised to be on hand at the location--and they were. I
+have had my experiences with amateurs before. I had begged the ladies to
+dress just as they would were they going to an actual meeting of their
+sewing society----"
+
+"And they all dressed up?" laughed Ruth, clasping her hands.
+
+"Well, that I expected to contend with. And most of them even in their
+best bib and tucker were not out of the picture. Not at all! That was not
+the main difficulty and the one that has spoiled our day's work."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"I am afraid Jim Hooley will have to fake the whole scene after all,"
+continued the manager. "Those women came all dressed up 'to have their
+pictures took,' it is true. But the worst of it is, they could not be
+natural. It was impossible. They showed in every move and every glance
+that they were sitting with a bunch of actors and were not at all sure
+that what they were doing was altogether the right thing.
+
+"We worked over them as though it were a 'mob scene' and there were five
+hundred in it instead of twenty. But twenty wooden dummies would have
+filmed no more unnaturally. You know, in your story, they are supposed to
+be discussing the bit of gossip about your heroine's elopement with the
+schoolteacher. I could not work up a mite of enthusiasm in their minds
+about such a topic."
+
+Ruth laughed. But she saw that the matter was really serious for Mr.
+Hammond and the director. She became sympathetic.
+
+"I fancy that if they had had a real scandal to discuss," she observed,
+"their faces would have registered more poignant interest."
+
+"'Poignant interest'!" scoffed the manager in disgust. "If these
+Herringport tabbies had the toothache they would register only polite
+anguish--in public. They are the most insular and self-contained and
+self-suppressed women I ever saw. These Down-Easters! They could walk over
+fiery ploughshares and only wanly smile----"
+
+Ruth went off into a gale of laughter at this. Mr. Hammond was a Westerner
+by birth, and he found the Yankee character as hard to understand as did
+Henri Marchand.
+
+"Have you quite given up hope, Mr. Hammond?" Ruth asked.
+
+"Well, we'll try again to-morrow. Oh, they promised to come again! They
+are cutting out rompers, or flannel undervests, I suppose, for the South
+Sea Island children; or something like that. They are interested in that
+job, no doubt.
+
+"I wanted them to 'let go all holts,' as these fishermen say, and be eager
+and excited. They are about as eager as they would be doing their washing,
+or cleaning house--if as much!" and Mr. Hammond's disappointment became
+too deep for further audible expression.
+
+Ruth suddenly awoke to the fact that one of her best scenes in the
+"Seaside Idyl" was likely to be spoiled. She talked with Mr. Hooley about
+it, and when the day's run was developed and run off in one of the shacks
+which was used for a try-out room, Ruth saw that the manager had not put
+the matter too strongly. The sewing circle scene lacked all that snap and
+go needed to make it a realistic piece of action.
+
+Of course, there were enough character actors in the company to use in the
+scene; but naturally an actor caricatures such parts as were called for in
+this scene. The professional would be likely to make the characters seem
+grotesque. That was not the aim of the story.
+
+"I thought you were not going to take any interest in this 'Seaside Idyl,'
+at all," suggested Helen, when Ruth was talking about the failure of the
+scene after supper that night.
+
+"I can't help it. My reputation as a scenario writer is at stake, just as
+much as is Mr. Hooley's reputation as director," Ruth said, smiling. "I
+really didn't mean to have a thing to do with the old picture. But I can
+see that somebody has got to put a breath of naturalness into those
+ladies' aid society women, or this part of the picture will be a fizzle."
+
+"And our Ruth," drawled Jennie, "is going to prescribe one of her famous
+cure-alls, is she?"
+
+"I believe I can make them look less like a lot of dummies while they are
+cutting out rompers for cannibal island pickaninnies," laughed Ruth. "Tom,
+I am going to the port with you the first thing in the morning."
+
+"By all means," said Captain Cameron. "I am yours to command."
+
+Her newly aroused interest in the scenario at present being filmed, was a
+good thing for Ruth Fielding. Having found nothing at all in the submitted
+stories that suggested her own lost story, the girl of the Red Mill tried
+to put aside again the thing that so troubled her mind. And this new
+interest helped.
+
+In the morning before breakfast she and Tom ran over to the port in the
+maroon roadster. While they were having breakfast at the inn, Ruth asked
+the waitress, who was a native of this part of the country, about the
+Union Church and some of the more intimate life-details of the members of
+its congregation.
+
+It is not hard to uncover neighborhood gossip of a kind not altogether
+unkindly in any similar community. The Union Church had a new minister,
+and he was young. He was now away on his vacation, and more than one local
+beauty and her match-making mamma would have palpitation of the heart
+before he returned for fear that the young clergyman would have his heart
+interests entangled by some designing "foreigner."
+
+Tom had no idea as to what Ruth Fielding was getting at through this
+questioning of the beaming Hebe who waited on them at breakfast. And he
+was quite as much in the dark as to his friend's motive when Ruth
+announced their first visit to be to the office of the Herringport
+_Harpoon_, the local news sheet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+JOHN, THE HERMIT'S, CONTRIBUTION
+
+
+A man with bushy hair, a pencil stuck over his ear, and wearing an
+ink-stained apron, met them in the office of the _Harpoon_. This was Ezra
+Payne, editor and publisher of the weekly news-sheet, and this was his
+busiest day. The _Harpoon_, Ruth had learned, usually went into the mails
+on this day.
+
+"Tut, tut! I see. Is this a joke?" Mr. Payne pursed his lips and wrinkled
+his brow in uncertainty.
+
+"A whole edition, Miss? Wall, I dunno. I do have hard work selling all the
+edition some weeks. But I have reg'lar subscribers----"
+
+"This will not interfere with your usual edition of the _Harpoon_," she
+hastened to assure him.
+
+"How's that, Miss?"
+
+"I want to buy an edition of one copy."
+
+"One copy!"
+
+"Yes, sir. I want something special printed in one paper. Then you can
+take it out and print your regular edition."
+
+"Tut, tut! I see. Is this a joke?" Mr. Payne asked, his eyes beginning to
+twinkle.
+
+"It is the biggest joke you ever heard of," declared Ruth.
+
+"And who's the joke on?"
+
+"Wait and see what I write," Ruth said, sitting down at the battered old
+desk where he labored over his editorials and proofsheets.
+
+Opening a copy of the last week's _Harpoon_ that lay there, she was able
+to see the whole face of the paper.
+
+"I've got the inside run off," said Mr. Payne, still doubtfully. "So you
+can't run anything on the second and third pages."
+
+"Oh, I want the most prominent place for my item," laughed Ruth. "Front
+page, top column---- Here it is!"
+
+He bent over her. Tom stared in wonder, too, as Ruth pointed to an item
+under a certain heading at the top of the middle column of the front page
+of the sheet.
+
+"That is just where I want my item to appear," she said briskly to the
+editor. "You run that--that department there every week?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Miss. The people expect it. You know how folks are. They look
+for those items first of all in a country paper."
+
+"Yes. It is so. One of the New York dailies is still printed with that
+human foible in mind. It caters to this very curiosity that your
+_Harpoon_ caters to."
+
+"Yes, Miss. You're right. Most folks have the same curiosity, city or
+country. Shakespeare spoke of the 'seven ages of man'; but there are only
+three of particular interest--to womankind, anyway; and they are all
+_here_."
+
+"There you go! Slurring the women," she laughed. "Or do you speak
+compliments?"
+
+"I guess the women have it right," chuckled Mr. Payne. "Now, what is it
+you want me to print in one paper for you?"
+
+Ruth drew a scratch pad to her and scribbled rapidly for a couple of
+minutes. Then she passed the page to the newspaper proprietor.
+
+Mr. Payne read it, stared at her, pursed his lips, and then read it again.
+Suddenly he burst into a cackle of laughter, slapping his thigh in high
+delight.
+
+"By gravy!" he chortled, "that's a good one on the dominie. By gravy! wait
+till I tell----"
+
+"Don't you tell anybody, Mr. Payne," interrupted Ruth, smiling, but
+firmly. "I am buying your secrecy as well as your edition of _one copy_."
+
+"I get you! I get you!" declared the old fellow. "This is to be on the
+q.t.?"
+
+"Positively."
+
+"You sit right here. The front page is all made up on the stone,
+Marriages, Births, Death Notices, and all. I'll set the paragraph and
+slip it in at the top o' the column. My boy is out, but this young man can
+help me lift the page into the press. She's all warmed up, and I was going
+to start printing when Edgar comes back from breakfast."
+
+He grabbed the piece of copy and went off into the printing room,
+chuckling. Half an hour later the first paper came from the press, and
+Ruth and Tom bent over it. The item the girl had written was plainly
+printed in the position she had chosen on the front page of the _Harpoon_.
+
+"Now, you are to keep still about this," Ruth said, threatening Mr. Payne
+with a raised finger.
+
+"I don't know a thing about it," he promised, pocketing the bill she took
+from her purse, and in high good humor over the joke.
+
+Tom helped him take the front page from the press again. The printer
+unlocked the chase, and removed and distributed the three lines he had set
+up at Ruth's direction.
+
+The crowd from Beach Plum Point came over in the cars about noontime. Aunt
+Kate had remained at the inn on this morning, and she and Ruth walked to
+the "location," which was a beautiful old shaded front yard at the far end
+of the village.
+
+Helen and Jennie had come with the real actors, and were to appear in the
+picture. The story related incidents at a Sunday-school picnic, and most
+of the comedy had already been filmed on the lot.
+
+The scene around the long sewing table under the trees, when the ladies'
+aid was at work with needle and tongue, should be the principal incident
+of this reel devoted to the picnic.
+
+The heroine, to the amazement of the village gossips, has run away with
+the schoolmaster and married him in the next county. A certain character
+in the picture runs in with this bombshell of news and explodes it in the
+midst of the group about the sewing table.
+
+The day before this point had failed to make much impression upon the
+amateur members of the company engaged in this typical scene. The
+Herringport ladies were not at all interested in such a thing happening to
+the town's schoolmaster, for to tell the truth the local schoolmaster was
+an old married man with a house full of children and nothing at all
+romantic about him.
+
+Ruth took Mr. Hooley aside and showed him the copy of the _Harpoon_ she
+had had printed, and whispered to him her idea of the change in the action
+of the scenario. He seized upon the scheme--and the paper--with gusto.
+
+"You are a jewel, Miss Fielding!" he declared. "If this doesn't make those
+old tabbies come to life and act naturally, nothing ever will!"
+
+Ruth left the matter in the director's hands and retired from the
+location. She had no intention herself of appearing in the picture. She
+found Mr. Hammond sitting in his automobile in a state of good-humor.
+
+"You seem quite sure that the work will go better to-day, Mr. Hammond,"
+Ruth observed, with curiosity as to the reason for his apparent enjoyment.
+
+"Whether it does or not, Miss Ruth," he responded. "There is something
+that I fancy is going to be more than a little amusing."
+
+He tapped a package wrapped in a soiled newspaper which lay on the seat
+beside him. "Thank goodness, I can still enjoy a joke."
+
+"What is the joke? Let me enjoy it, too," she said.
+
+"With the greatest of pleasure. I'll let you read it, if you like--as you
+did those other scenarios."
+
+"What! Is it a movie story?" she asked.
+
+"So I am assured. It is the contribution of John, the hermit. He brought
+it to me just before we started over here this morning. Poor old codger!
+Just look here, Miss Ruth."
+
+Mr. Hammond turned back the loose covering of the package on the
+automobile seat. Ruth saw a packet of papers, seemingly of roughly trimmed
+sheets of wrapping paper and of several sizes. At the top of the upper
+sheet was the title of the hermit's scenario. It was called "Plain Mary."
+She glanced down the page, noting that it was written in a large, upright,
+hand and with an indelible pencil.
+
+Ruth Fielding had not the least idea that she was to take any particular
+interest in this picture-story. She smiled more because Mr. Hammond seemed
+so amused than for any other reason. Secretly she thought that most of
+these moving picture people were rather unkind to the strange old man who
+lived alone on the seaward side of the Beach Plum Point.
+
+"Want to read it over?" Mr. Hammond asked her. "I would consider it a
+favor, for I've got to go back and try to catch up with my correspondence.
+I expect this is worse than those you skimmed through yesterday."
+
+Ruth did not hear him. Suddenly she had seen something that had not at
+first interested her. She read the first few lines of the opening, and saw
+nothing in them of importance. It was the writing itself that struck her.
+
+"Why!" she suddenly gasped.
+
+She was reminded of something that she had seen before. This writing----
+
+"Let me go back to the camp with you, Mr. Hammond," she said, slipping
+into the seat and taking the packet of written sheets into her lap. "I--I
+will look through this scenario, if you like. There is something down
+there on the Point that I want."
+
+"Sure. Be glad to have your company," he said, letting in his clutch after
+pushing the starter. "We're off."
+
+Ruth did not speak again just then. With widening eyes she began to devour
+the first pages of the hermit's manuscript.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+UNCERTAINTIES
+
+
+The automobile purred along the shell road, past the white-sided,
+green-blinded houses of the retired ship captains and the other well-to-do
+people of Herringport. The car ran so smoothly that Ruth might have read
+all the way.
+
+But after the first page or two--those containing the opening scenes of
+"Plain Mary"--she dared not read farther.
+
+Not yet. It was not that there was a familiar phrase in the upright
+chirography of the old hermit. The story merely suggested a familiar
+situation to Ruth's mind. Thus far it was only a suggestion.
+
+There was something else she felt she must prove or disprove first of all.
+She sat beside Mr. Hammond quite speechless until they came to the camp on
+the harbor shore of Beach Plum Point.
+
+He went off cheerfully to his letter writing, and Ruth entered the shack
+she occupied with Helen and Jennie. She opened her locked writing-case.
+Under the first flap she inserted her fingers and drew forth the wrinkled
+scrap of paper she had picked up on the sands.
+
+A glance at the blurred writing assured her that it was the same as that
+of the hermit's scenario.
+
+     "Flash:
+
+     "As in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be----"
+
+Shakingly Ruth sat down before the cheap little maple table. She spread
+open the newspaper wrapper and stared again at the title page of "Plain
+Mary."
+
+That title was nothing at all like the one she had given her lost
+scenario. But a title, after all, meant very little.
+
+The several scenes suggested in the beginning of the hermit's story did
+not conflict with the plot she had evolved, although they were not her
+own. She had read nothing so far that would make this story different from
+her own. The names of the characters were changed and the locations for
+the first scene were different from those in her script. Nevertheless the
+action and development of the story might prove to be exactly like hers.
+
+She shrank from going deeper into the hermit's script. She feared to find
+her suspicions true; yet she _must_ know.
+
+Finally she began to read. Page after page of the large and sprawling
+writing she turned over, face down upon the table. Ruth grew so absorbed
+in the story that she did not note the passing of time. She was truly
+aware of but one thing. And that seized upon her mind to wring from it
+both bitterness and anger.
+
+"Want to go back to the port, Miss Ruth?" asked Mr. Hammond. "I want to
+mail my letters."
+
+His question startled her. She sprang up, a spot of crimson in either
+cheek. Had he looked at her, the manager would certainly have noted her
+strange look.
+
+"I'll come in a minute," she called to him in a half-stifled voice.
+
+She laved her eyes and cheeks in cool water, removing such marks of her
+emotion as she could. Then she bundled up the hermit's scenario and joined
+Mr. Hammond in the car.
+
+"Did you look at this?" she asked the producer as he started the motor.
+
+"Bless you, no! What is it? As crazy as the old codger himself?"
+
+"Do you really think that man is crazy?" she asked sharply.
+
+"Why, I don't really know. Just queer perhaps. It doesn't seem as though
+a sane man would live all stark alone over on that sea-beaten point."
+
+"He is an actor," declared Ruth. "Your director says so."
+
+"At least, he does not claim to be, and they usually do, you know,"
+chuckled Mr. Hammond. "But about this thing----"
+
+"You read it! Then I will tell you something," said the girl soberly, and
+she refused to explain further.
+
+"You amaze me," said the puzzled manager. "If that old codger has
+succeeded in turning out anything worth while, I certainly shall believe
+that 'wonders never cease.'"
+
+"He has got you all fooled. He _is_ a good actor," declared Ruth bitterly.
+Then, as Mr. Hammond turned a puzzled frown upon her, she added, "Tell me
+what you think of the script, Mr. Hammond, before you speak to--er--John,
+or whatever his name may be."
+
+"I certainly am curious now," he declared.
+
+They got back to the place where the director had arranged to "shoot" the
+sewing circle scene just as everything was all set for it. Mother Paisley
+dominated the half circle of women about the long table under the trees.
+Ruth marveled at the types Mr. Hooley had found in the village. And she
+marveled further that any group of human beings could appear so wooden.
+
+"Oh, Ruth!" murmured Helen, who was not in this scene, but was an
+interested spectator, "they will surely spoil the picture again. Poor Mr.
+Hooley! He takes _such_ pains."
+
+It was like playing a child's game for most of the members of the
+Herringport Union congregation. They were selfconscious, and felt that
+they were in a silly situation. Those who were not too serious of demeanor
+were giggling like schoolgirls.
+
+Yet everything was ready for the cameras. Mr. Hooley's keen eye ran over
+all the group. He waved a hand to the camera men.
+
+"Ready camera--action--go!"
+
+The women remained speechless. They merely looked at each other in a
+helpless way. It was evident they had forgotten all the instructions the
+director had given them.
+
+But suddenly into the focus of the cameras ran a barefooted urchin waving
+a newspaper. This was the Alectrion Company's smartest "kid" actor and a
+favorite wherever his tousled head, freckled face, and wide grin appeared
+on the screen. He plunged right at Mother Paisley and thrust the paper
+into her hand, while he pointed at a certain place on the front page.
+
+"Read _that_, Ma Bassett!" cried the news vender.
+
+Mrs. Paisley gave expression first to wonder, then utter amazement, as she
+read the item Ruth had had inserted in this particular "edition" of the
+_Harpoon_. She was a fine old actress and her facial registering of
+emotion was a marvel. Mr. Hooley had seldom to advise her.
+
+Now his voice was heard above the clack of the cameras:
+
+"Pass it to the lady at your left. That's it! Cling to the paper. Get your
+heads together--three of you now!"
+
+The amateur players looked at each other and began to grin. The scene
+promised to be as big a "fizzle" as the one shot the previous day.
+
+But the woman next to Mrs. Paisley, after looking carelessly at the paper,
+of a sudden came to life. She seized the _Harpoon_ with both hands, fairly
+snatching it out of the actress' hands. She was too startled to be polite.
+
+"What under the canopy is this here?" she sputtered.
+
+She was a small, wiry, vigorous woman, and she had an expressive, if a
+vinegary, face. She rose from her seat and forgot all about her
+"play-acting."
+
+"What d'you think it says here?" she demanded of her sister-members of the
+ladies' aid.
+
+"Sh!"
+
+"Ella Painter, you're a-bustin' up the show!" admonished a motherly old
+person at the end of the table.
+
+But Mrs. Painter did not notice these hushed remarks. She read the item in
+the paper aloud--and so extravagantly did she mouth the astonishing words
+that Ruth feared they might be read on her lips when shown on the screen.
+
+"Listen!" Mrs. Painter cried. "Right at the top of the marriage notices!
+'Garside--Smythe. At Perleyvale, Maine, on August twenty-second, the
+Reverend Elton Garside, of Herringport, and Miss Amy Smythe, of
+Perleyvale.' What do you know about that?"
+
+The gasp of amazement that went up from the women of the Herringport Union
+Church was almost a chorus of anguish. The paper was snatched from hand to
+hand. Nobody could accuse the amateurs now of being "wooden."
+
+Not until Mrs. Paisley in the character of _Ma Bassett_, at the signal
+from Mr. Hooley, fell back in her chair, exclaiming: "My mercy me! Luella
+Sprague and the teacher! Who'd have thought it?" did the company in
+general suspect that something had been "put over on them."
+
+"All right! All right!" shouted Jim Hooley in high delight, stopping his
+camera men. "That's fine! It's great! Miss Fielding, your scheme worked
+like a charm."
+
+The members of the sewing circle began to ask questions.
+
+"Do you mean to say this is in the play?" demanded Mrs. Ella Painter,
+waving the newspaper and inclined to be indignant.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Painter. That marriage notice is just a joke," the director
+told her. "It certainly gave you ladies a start and---- Well, wait
+till you see this scene on the screen!"
+
+"But ain't it _so_?" cried another. "Why, Mr. Garside---- Why! it's
+in the _Harpoon_."
+
+"But you won't find it in another _Harpoon_," laughed the director,
+recovering possession of the newspaper. "It's only a joke. But I
+positively had to give you ladies a real shock or we'd never have got this
+scene right."
+
+"Well, of all the impudence!" began Mrs. Painter.
+
+However, she joined in the laughter a minute later. At best, the women had
+won from Mr. Hammond enough money to pay for the painting of their church
+edifice, and they were willing to sacrifice their dignity for that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+COUNTERCLAIMS
+
+
+"I declare, Ruth! that was a ridiculous thing to do," exclaimed Helen,
+when they were on their way back to the Point. "But it certainly brought
+the sewing circle women all up standing."
+
+"I've been wondering all day what Ruth was up to," said Tom, who was
+steering the big car. "I was in on it without understanding her game."
+
+"Well, it was just what the directer needed," chuckled Jennie. "Oh, it
+takes our Ruth to do things."
+
+"I wonder?" sighed the girl of the Red Mill, in no responsive mood.
+
+She had something very unpleasant before her that she felt she must do,
+and nothing could raise her spirits. She did not speak to anybody about
+the hermit's scenario. She waited for Mr. Hammond to express his opinion
+of it.
+
+At the camp she found a letter for her from the doctor's wife who had
+promised to keep her informed regarding Arabella Montague Fitzmaurice
+Pike. That young person was doing well and getting fat at the Perkins'
+farm. But Mrs. Holmes was quite sure that she had not heard from her
+father.
+
+"You've got another half-orphan on your hands, Ruth," said Helen. She made
+it a point always to object to Ruth's charities. "I don't believe that man
+will ever show up again. If he went away with a medicine show----"
+
+"No, no," said Ruth firmly. "No child would ever respect and love her
+father as Bella does if he was not good to her. He will turn up."
+
+Just then Tom called from outside the door of the girls' shack.
+
+"What say to a moonlight dip off the Point?" he asked. "The tide is not
+very low. And I missed my splash this morning."
+
+"We're with you, Tommy," responded his sister. "Wait till we get into
+bathing suits."
+
+Even Ruth was enthusiastic--to a degree--over this. In twenty minutes they
+were running up the beach with Tom and Henri toward the end of the Point.
+
+"Let's go over and get the surf," suggested Jennie. "I do love surf
+bathing. All you have to do is to bob up and down in one place."
+
+"Heavy is lazy even in her sport," scoffed Helen. "But I'm game for the
+rough stuff."
+
+They crossed the neck of land near the hermit's hut. There was a hard
+beach almost in front of the hut, and up this the breakers rolled and
+foamed delightfully. The so-called hermit, hearing their voices, came out
+and sat on a rock to watch them. But he did not offer to speak until Ruth
+went over to him.
+
+"Mr. Hammond let me read your script, John," she said coldly.
+
+"Indeed?" he rejoined without emotion.
+
+"Where did you get the idea for that scenario?"
+
+He tapped his head with a long forefinger. "Right inside of that skull. I
+do my own thinking," he said.
+
+"You did not have any help about it? You originated the idea of 'Plain
+Mary?'"
+
+He nodded. "You ain't the only person who can write a picture," he
+observed. "And I think that this one they are filming for you is silly."
+
+Ruth stared down at him, but said nothing more. She was ready to go back
+to camp as soon as the others would, and she remained very silent. Mr.
+Hammond had been asking for her, Miss Loder said. When Ruth had got into
+something more presentable than a wet bathing suit, she went to his
+office.
+
+"What do you know about this?" he demanded in plain amazement. "This story
+the old man gave me to read is a wonder! It is one of the best ideas I
+ever saw for the screen. Of course, it needs fixing up a bit, but it's
+great! What did you think of it, Miss Ruth?"
+
+"I am glad you like it, Mr. Hammond," she said, steadying her voice with
+difficulty.
+
+"I do like it, I assure you."
+
+"It is _my_ story, Mr. Hammond!" she exclaimed. "It is the very scenario
+that was stolen from me at home. He's just changed the names of the
+characters and given it a different title, and spoiled some of the scenes.
+But a large part of it is copied word for word from my manuscript!"
+
+"Miss Fielding!" gasped the president of the Alectrion Film Corporation.
+
+"I am telling you the truth," Ruth cried, rather wildly, it must be
+confessed, and then she broke down and wept.
+
+"My goodness! It can't be possible! You--you've let your mind dwell upon
+your loss so much----"
+
+"Do you think I am crazy?" she demanded, flaring up at him, her anger
+drying her tears.
+
+"Certainly not," he returned gently; yet he looked at her oddly. "But
+mistakes have been made----"
+
+"Mistakes, indeed! It is no mistake when I recognize my own work."
+
+"But--but how could this old man have stolen your work--and away back
+there at the Red Mill? I believe he has lived here on the Point for
+years. At least, every summer."
+
+"Then somebody else stole it and he got the script from them. I tell you
+it is mine!" cried Ruth.
+
+"Miss Fielding! Let us be calm----"
+
+"You would not be calm if you discovered somebody trying to make use of
+something you had originated, and calling it theirs--no you wouldn't, Mr.
+Hammond!"
+
+"But it seems impossible," he said weakly.
+
+"That old man is an actor--an old-school actor. You can see that easily
+enough," she declared. "There was such a person about the Red Mill the day
+my script was lost. Oh, it's plain enough."
+
+"Not so plain, Miss Ruth," said Mr. Hammond firmly. "And you must not make
+wild accusations. That will do no good--and may do harm in the end. It
+does not seem probable to me that this old hermit could have actually
+stolen your story. A longshore character like him----"
+
+"He's not!" cried Ruth. "Don't you see that he is playing a part? He is no
+fisherman. No longshore character, as you call him, would be as afraid of
+the sea as he is. He is playing a part--and he plays it just as well as
+the parts Mr. Hooley gives him to play."
+
+"Jove! There may be something in that," murmured the manager.
+
+"He got my script some way, I tell you!" declared Ruth. "I am not going to
+let anybody maul my story and put it over as his own. No, sir!"
+
+"But--but, Miss Ruth!" exclaimed Mr. Hammond. "How are you going to prove
+what you say is true?"
+
+"Prove it?"
+
+"Yes. You see, the burden of proof must be on you."
+
+"But--but don't you believe me?" she murmured.
+
+"Does it matter what I believe?" he asked her gently. "Remember, this man
+has entrusted me with a manuscript that he says is original. At least it
+is written in his own hand. I cannot go back of that unless you have some
+means of proof that his story is your story. Who did you tell about your
+plot, and how you worked it out? Did you read the finished manuscript--or
+any part of it--to any person who can corroborate your statements?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hammond!" she cried, with sudden anguish in her voice. "Not a
+soul! Never to a single, solitary person. The girls, nor Aunt Alvirah, nor
+Tom----"
+
+She broke down again and he could not soothe her. She wept with abandon,
+and Mr. Hammond was really anxious for her. He went to the door, whistled
+for one of the boys, and sent for Mrs. Paisley.
+
+But Ruth recovered her composure--to a degree, at least--before the
+motherly old actress came.
+
+"Don't tell anybody! Don't tell anybody!" she sobbed to Mr. Hammond. "They
+will think I am crazy! I haven't a word of proof. Only my word----"
+
+"Against his," said the manager gravely. "I would accept your word, Miss
+Ruth, against the world! But we must have some proof before we
+deliberately accuse this old man of robbing you."
+
+"Yes, yes. I see. I will be patient--if I can."
+
+"The thing to do is to find out who this hermit really is," said Mr.
+Hammond. "Through discovering his private history we may put our finger on
+the thing that will aid you with proof. Good-night, my dear. Try to get
+calm again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE GRILL
+
+
+Ruth did not go back to her chums until, under Mother Paisley's comforting
+influence, she had recovered a measure of her self-possession. The old
+actress asked no questions as to the cause of Ruth's state of mind. She
+had seen too many hysterical girls to feel that the cause of her patient's
+breakdown was at all important.
+
+"You just cry all you want to, deary. Right here on Mother Paisley's
+shoulder. Crying will do you good. It is the Good Lord's way of giving us
+women an outlet for all our troubles. When the last tear is squeezed out
+much of the pain goes with it."
+
+Ruth was not ordinarily a crying girl. She had wept more of late,
+beginning with that day at the Red Mill when her scenario manuscript had
+been stolen, than in all her life before.
+
+Her tears were now in part an expression of anger and indignation. She was
+as mad as she could be at this man who called himself "John, the hermit."
+For, whether he was the person who had actually stolen her manuscript, he
+very well knew that his scenario offered to Mr. Hammond was not original
+with him.
+
+The worst of it was, he had mangled her scenario. Ruth could look upon it
+in no other way. His changes had merely muddied the plot and cheapened her
+main idea. She could not forgive that!
+
+The other girls were drowsy when Ruth kissed Mother Paisley good-night and
+entered the small shack. She was glad to escape any interrogation. By
+morning she had gained control of herself, but her eyes betrayed the fact
+that she had not slept.
+
+"You certainly do not look as though you were enjoying yourself down
+here," Tom Cameron said to her at breakfast time, and with suspicion.
+"Maybe we did come to the wrong place for our vacation after all. How
+about it, Ruth? Shall we start off in the cars again and seek pastures
+new?"
+
+"Not now, Tom," she told him, hastily. "I must stay right here."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because----"
+
+"That is no sensible reason."
+
+"Let me finish," she said rather crossly. "Because I must see what sort of
+scenario Mr. Hammond finds--if he finds any--in this contest."
+
+"Humph! And you said you and scenarios were done forever! I fancy Mr.
+Hammond is taking advantage of your good nature."
+
+"He is not."
+
+"You are positively snappish, Ruth," complained Tom. "You've changed your
+mind----"
+
+"Isn't that a girl's privilege?"
+
+"Very well, Miladi!" he said, with a deep bow as they rose from the table.
+"However, you need not give all your attention to these prize stories,
+need you? Let's do something besides follow these sun-worshippers around
+to-day."
+
+"All right, Tommy-boy," acclaimed his sister. "What do you suggest?"
+
+"A run along the coast to Reef Harbor where there are a lot of folks we
+know," Tom promptly replied.
+
+"Not in that old _Tocsin_," cried Jennie. "She's so small I can't take off
+my sweater without tipping her over."
+
+"Oh, what a whopper!" gasped Helen.
+
+"Never mind," grinned her twin. "Let Jennie run to the superlatives if she
+likes. Anyway, I would not dream of going so far as the Harbor in that
+dinky little _Tocsin_. I've got my eye on just the craft, and I can get
+her over here in an hour by telephoning to the port. It's the _Stazy_."
+
+"Goody!" exclaimed Jennie Stone. "That big blue yacht! And she's got a
+regular crew--and everything. Aunty won't be afraid to go with us in
+her."
+
+"That's fine, Tom," said his sister with appreciation.
+
+Even Ruth seemed to take some interest. But she suggested:
+
+"Be sure there is gasoline enough, Tom. That _Stazy_ doesn't spread a foot
+of canvas, and we are not likely to find a gas station out there in the
+ocean, the way we did in the hills of Massachusetts."
+
+"Don't fear, Miss Fidget," he rejoined. "Are you all game?"
+
+They were. The girls went to "doll up," to quote the slangy Tom, for Reef
+Harbor was one of the most fashionable of Maine coast resorts and the
+knockabout clothing they had been wearing at Beach Plum Point would never
+do at the Harbor hotels.
+
+The _Stazy_ was a comfortable and fast motor-yacht. As to her
+sea-worthiness even Tom could not say, but she looked all right. And to
+the eyes of the members of Ruth Fielding's party there was no threat of
+bad weather. So why worry about the pleasure-craft's balance and her
+ability to sail the high seas?
+
+"It is only a short run, anyway," Tom said.
+
+As for Colonel Marchand, he had not the first idea about ships or sailing.
+He admitted that only continued fair weather and a smooth sea had kept
+him on deck coming over from France with Jennie and Helen.
+
+At the present time he and Jennie Stone were much too deeply engrossed in
+each other to think of anything but their own two selves. In a fortnight
+now, both the Frenchman and Tom would have to return to the battle lines.
+And they were, deep in their hearts, eager to go back; for they did not
+dream at this time that the German navy would revolt, that the High
+Command and the army had lost their morale, and that the end of the Great
+War was near.
+
+Within Tom's specified hour the party got under way, boarding the _Stazy_
+from a small boat that came to the camp dock for them. It was not until
+the yacht was gone with Ruth Fielding and her party that Mr. Hammond set
+on foot the investigation he had determined upon the night before.
+
+The president of the Alectrion Film Corporation thought a great deal of
+the girl of the Red Mill. Their friendship was based on something more
+than a business association. But he knew, too, that after her recent
+experiences in France and elsewhere, her health was in rather a precarious
+state.
+
+At least, he was quite sure that Ruth's nerves were "all out of tune," as
+he expressed it, and he believed she was not entirely responsible for
+what she had said.
+
+The girl had allowed her mind to dwell so much upon that scenario she had
+lost that it might be she was not altogether clear upon the subject. Mr.
+Hammond had talked with Tom about the robbery at the Red Mill, and it
+looked to the moving picture producer as though there might be some
+considerable doubt of Ruth's having been robbed at all.
+
+In that terrific wind and rain storm almost anything might have blown
+away. Tom admitted he had seen a barrel sailing through the air at the
+height of the storm.
+
+"Why couldn't the papers and note books have been caught up by a gust of
+wind and carried into the river?" Mr. Hammond asked himself. "The river
+was right there, and it possesses a strong current."
+
+The president of the Alectrion Film Corporation knew the Lumano, and the
+vicinity of the Red Mill as well. It seemed to him very probable that the
+scenario had been lost. And the gold-mounted fountain pen? Why, that might
+have easily rolled down a crack in the summer-house floor.
+
+The whole thing was a matter so fortuitous that Mr. Hammond could not
+accept Ruth's version of the loss without some doubt, in any case. And
+then, her suddenly finding in the only good scenario submitted to him by
+any of his company, one that she believed was plagiarized from her lost
+story, seemed to put a cap on the whole matter. Ruth might be just a
+little "off soundings," as the fishermen about Herringport would say. Mr.
+Hammond was afraid that she had been carried into a situation of mind
+where suspicion took the place of certainty.
+
+She had absolutely nothing with which to corroborate her statement. Nobody
+had seen Ruth's scenario nor had she discussed the plot with any person.
+Secrecy necessary to the successful production of anything new in the line
+of picture plays was all right. Mr. Hammond advised it. But in this case
+it seemed that the scenario writer had been altogether too secret.
+
+Had Ruth not chanced to read the hermit's script before making her
+accusation, Mr. Hammond would have felt differently. Better, had she been
+willing to relate to him in the first place the story of the plot of her
+scenario and how she had treated it, her present accusation might have
+seemed more reasonable.
+
+But, having read the really good story scrawled on the scraps of brown
+paper that John, the hermit, had put in the manager's hands, the girl had
+suddenly claimed the authorship of the story. There was nothing to prove
+her claim. It looked dubious at the best.
+
+John, the hermit, was a grim old man. No matter whether he was some old
+actor hiding away here on Beach Plum Point or not, he was not a man to
+give up easily anything that he had once said was his.
+
+The manager was far too wise to accuse the hermit openly, as Ruth had
+accused him. They would not get far with the old fellow that way, he was
+sure.
+
+First of all he called the company together and asked if there were any
+more scenarios to be submitted. "No," being the answer, he told them
+briefly that out of the twenty-odd stories he had accepted one that might
+be whipped into shape for filming--and one only.
+
+Each story submitted had been numbered and the number given to its author.
+The scripts could now be obtained by the presentation of the numbers. He
+did not tell them which number had proved successful. Nor did he let it be
+known that he proposed to try to film the hermit's production.
+
+Mr. Hooley was using old John on this day in a character part. For these
+"types" the director usually paid ten or fifteen dollars a day; but John
+was so successful in every part he was given that Mr. Hooley always paid
+him an extra five dollars for his work. Money seemed to make no difference
+in the hermit's appearance, however. He wore just as shabby clothing and
+lived just as plainly as he had when the picture company had come on to
+the lot.
+
+When work was over for the day, Hooley sent the old man to Mr. Hammond's
+office. The president of the company invited the hermit into his shack and
+gave him a seat. He scrutinized the man sharply as he thus greeted him. It
+was quite true that the hermit did not wholly fit the character he assumed
+as a longshore waif.
+
+In the first place, his skin was not tanned to the proper leathery look.
+His eyes were not those of a man used to looking off over the sea. His
+hands were too soft and unscarred for a sailor's. He had never pulled on
+ropes and handled an oar!
+
+Now that Ruth Fielding had suggested that his character was a disguise,
+Mr. Hammond saw plainly that she must be right. As he was a good actor of
+other parts before the camera, so he was a good actor in his part of
+"hermit."
+
+"How long have you lived over there on the point, John?" asked Mr. Hammond
+carelessly.
+
+"A good many years, sir, in summer."
+
+"How did you come to live there first?"
+
+"I wandered down this way, found the hut empty, turned to and fixed it up,
+and stayed on."
+
+He said it quite simply and without the first show of confusion. But this
+tale of his occupancy of the seaside hut he had repeated frequently, as
+Mr. Hammond very well knew.
+
+"Where do you go in the winter, John?" the latter asked.
+
+"To where it's a sight warmer. I don't have to ask anybody where I shall
+go," and now the man's tone was a trifle defiant.
+
+"I would like to know something more about you," Mr. Hammond said, quite
+frankly. "I may be able to do something with your story. We like to know
+about the person who submits a scenario----"
+
+"That don't go!" snapped the hermit grimly. "You offered five hundred for
+a story you could use. If you can use mine, I want the five hundred. And I
+don't aim to give you the history of my past along with the story. It's
+nobody's business what or who I am, or where I came from, or where I am
+going."
+
+"Hoity-toity!" exclaimed Mr. Hammond. "You are quite sudden, aren't you?
+Now, just calm yourself. I haven't got to take your scenario and pay you
+five hundred dollars for it----"
+
+"Then somebody else will," said the hermit, getting up.
+
+"Ah! You are quite sure you have a good story here, are you?"
+
+"I know I have."
+
+"And how do you know so much?" sharply demanded the moving picture
+magnate.
+
+"I've seen enough of this thing you are doing, now--this 'Seaside Idyl'
+stuff--to know that mine is a hundred per cent. better," sneered the
+hermit.
+
+"Whew! You've a good opinion of your story, haven't you?" asked Mr.
+Hammond. "Did you ever write a scenario before?"
+
+"What is that to you?" returned the other. "I don't get you at all, Mr.
+Hammond. All this cross-examination----"
+
+"That will do now!" snapped the manager. "I am not obliged to take your
+story. You can try it elsewhere if you like," and he shoved the
+newspaper-wrapped package toward the end of his desk and nearer the
+hermit's hand. "I tell you frankly that I won't take any story without
+knowing all about the author. There are too many comebacks in this game."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded the other stiffly.
+
+"I don't _know_ that your story is original. Frankly, I have some doubt
+about that very point."
+
+The old man did not change color at all. His gray eyes blazed and he was
+not at all pleasant looking. But the accusation did not seem to surprise
+him.
+
+"Are you trying to get it away from me for less than you offered?" he
+demanded.
+
+"You are an old man," said Mr. Hammond hotly, "and that lets you get away
+with such a suggestion as that without punishment. I begin to believe that
+there is something dead wrong with you, John--or whatever your name is."
+
+He drew back the packet of manuscript, opened a drawer, put it within, and
+locked the drawer.
+
+"I'll think this over a little longer," he said grimly. "At least, until
+you are willing to be a little more communicative about yourself. I would
+be glad to use your story with some fixing up, if I was convinced you
+really wrote it all. But you have got to show me--or give me proper
+references."
+
+"Give me back the scenario, then!" exclaimed the old man, his eyes blazing
+hotly.
+
+"No. Not yet. I can take my time in deciding upon the manuscripts
+submitted in this contest. You will have to wait until I decide," said Mr.
+Hammond, waving the man out of his office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A HERMIT FOR REVENUE ONLY
+
+
+The bays and inlets of the coast of Maine have the bluest water dotted by
+the greenest islands that one can imagine. And such wild and romantic
+looking spots as some of these islands are!
+
+Just at this time, too, a particular tang of romance was in the air. The
+Germans had threatened to devastate our Atlantic coast from Eastport to
+Key West with a flock of submersibles. There actually were a few
+submarines lurking about the pathways of our coastwise shipping; but, as
+usual, the Hun's boast came to naught.
+
+The young people on the _Stazy_ scarcely expected to see a German
+periscope during the run to Reef Harbor. Yet they did not neglect watching
+out for something of the kind. Skipper Phil Gordon, a young man with one
+arm but a full and complete knowledge of this coast and how to coax speed
+out of a gasoline engine, ordered his "crew" of one boy to remain sharply
+on the lookout, as well.
+
+The _Stazy_ did not, however, run far outside. The high and rocky headland
+that marked the entrance to Reef Harbor came into view before they had
+more than dropped the hazy outline of Beach Plum Point astern.
+
+But until they rounded the promontory and entered the narrow inlet to Reef
+Harbor the town and the summer colony was entirely invisible.
+
+"If a German sub should stick its nose in here," sighed Helen, "it would
+make everybody ashore get up and dust. Don't you think so?"
+
+"Is it the custom to do so when the enemy, he arrive?" asked Colonel
+Marchand, to whom the idiomatic speech of the Yankee was still a puzzle.
+
+"Sure!" replied Tom, grinning. "Sure, Henri! These New England women would
+clean house, no matter what catastrophe arrived."
+
+"Oh, don't suggest such horrid possibilities," cried Jennie. "And they are
+only fooling you, Henri."
+
+"Look yonder!" exclaimed Captain Tom, waving an instructive hand. "Behold!
+Let the Kaiser's underseas boat come. That little tin lizzie of the sea is
+ready for it. Depth bombs and all!"
+
+The grim looking drab submarine chaser lay at the nearest dock, the faint
+spiral of smoke rising from her stack proclaiming that she was ready for
+immediate work. There was a tower, too, on the highest point on the
+headland from which a continual watch was kept above the town.
+
+"O-o-oh!" gurgled Jennie, snuggling up to Henri. "Suppose one of those
+German subs shelled the movie camp back there on Beach Plum Point!"
+
+"They would likely spoil a perfectly good picture, then," said Helen
+practically. "Think of Ruthie's 'Seaside Idyl!'.
+
+"Oh, say!" Helen went on. "They tell me that old hermit has submitted a
+story in the contest. What do you suppose it is like, Ruth?"
+
+The girl of the Red Mill was sitting beside Aunt Kate. She flushed when
+she said:
+
+"Why shouldn't he submit one?"
+
+"But that hermit isn't quite right in his head, is he?" demanded Ruth's
+chum.
+
+"I don't know that it is his head that is wrong," murmured Ruth, shaking
+her own head doubtfully.
+
+Here Jennie broke in. "Is auntie letting you read her story, Ruth?" she
+asked slyly.
+
+"Now, Jennie Stone!" exclaimed their chaperon, blushing.
+
+"Well, you are writing one. You know you are," laughed her niece.
+
+"I--I am just trying to see if I can write such a story," stammered Aunt
+Kate.
+
+"Well, I am sure you could make up a better scenario than that old grouch
+of a hermit," Helen declared, warmly.
+
+Ruth did not add anything to this discussion. What she had discovered
+regarding the hermit's scenario was of too serious a nature to be publicly
+discussed.
+
+Her interview the evening before with Mr. Hammond regarding the matter had
+left Ruth in a most uncertain frame of mind. She did not know what to do
+about the stolen scenario. She shrank from telling even Helen or Tom of
+her discovery.
+
+To tell the truth, Mr. Hammond's seeming doubt--not of her truthfulness
+but of her wisdom--had shaken the girl's belief in herself. It was a
+strange situation, indeed. She thought of the woman she had found
+wandering about the mountain in the storm who had lost control of both her
+nerves and her mind, and Ruth wondered if it could be possible that she,
+too, was on the verge of becoming a nervous wreck.
+
+Had she deceived herself about this hermit's story? Had she allowed her
+mind to dwell on her loss until she was quite unaccountable for her mental
+decisions? To tell the truth, this thought frightened the girl of the Red
+Mill a little.
+
+Practical as Ruth Fielding ordinarily was, she must confess that the shock
+she had received when the hospital in France was partly wrecked, an
+account of which is given in "Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound," had shaken
+the very foundations of her being. She shuddered even now when she thought
+of what she had been through in France and on the voyage coming back to
+America.
+
+She realized that even Tom and Helen looked at her sometimes when she
+spoke of her lost scenario in a most peculiar way. Was it a fact that she
+had allowed her loss to unbalance--well, her judgment? Suppose she was
+quite wrong about that scenario the hermit had submitted to Mr. Hammond?
+The thought frightened her!
+
+At least, she had nothing to say upon the puzzling subject, not even to
+her best and closest friends. She was sorry indeed two hours later when
+they were at lunch on the porch of the Reef Harbor House with some of the
+Camerons' friends that Helen brought the conversation around again to the
+Beach Plum Point "hermit."
+
+"A _real_ hermit?" cried Cora Grimsby, a gay, blonde, irresponsible little
+thing, but with a heart of gold. "And is he a hermit for revenue only,
+too?"
+
+"What do you mean by that?" Helen demanded.
+
+"Why, we have a hermit here, you see. Over on Reef Island itself. If you
+give us a sail in your motor yacht after lunch I'll introduce our hermit
+to you. But you must buy something of him, or otherwise 'cross his palm
+with silver.' He told me one day that he was not playing a nut for summer
+folks to laugh at just for the good of his health."
+
+"Frank, I must say," laughed Tom Cameron.
+
+"I guess he's been in the hermit business before," said Cora, sparkling at
+Tom in his uniform. "But this is his first season at the Harbor."
+
+"I wonder if he belongs to the hermit's union and carries a union card,"
+suggested Jennie Stone soberly. "I don't think we should patronize
+non-union hermits."
+
+"Goody!" cried Cora, clapping her hands. "Let's ask him."
+
+Ruth said nothing. She rather wished she might get out of the trip to Reef
+Island without offending anybody. But that seemed impossible. She really
+had seen all the hermits she cared to see!
+
+She could not, however, be morose and absent-minded in a party of which
+Cora Grimsby and Jennie Stone were the moving spirits. It was a gay crowd
+that crossed the harbor in the _Stazy_ to land at a roughly built dock
+under the high bluff of the wooded island.
+
+"There's the hermit!" Cora cried, as they landed. "See him sitting on the
+rock before the door of his cabin?"
+
+"Right on the job," suggested Tom.
+
+"No unlucky city fly shall escape that spider's web," cried Jennie.
+
+He was a patriarchal looking man. His beard swept his breast. He wore
+shabby garments, was barefooted, and carried a staff as though he were
+lame or rheumatic.
+
+"Dresses the part much better than our hermit does," Helen said, in
+comment.
+
+The man met the party from the _Stazy_ with a broad smile that displayed a
+toothless cavity of a mouth. His red-rimmed eyes were moist looking, not
+to say bleary. Ruth smelled a distinct alcoholic odor on his breath. A
+complete drouth had evidently not struck this part of the State of Maine.
+
+"Good day to ye!" said the hermit. "Some o' you young folks I ain't never
+seed before."
+
+"They are my friends," Cora hastened to explain, "and they come from Beach
+Plum Point."
+
+"Do tell! If you air goin' back to-night, better make a good v'y'ge of it.
+We're due for a blow, I allow. You folks ain't stoppin' right on the
+p'int, be ye?"
+
+Ruth, to whom he addressed this last question, answered that they were,
+and explained that there was a large camp there this season, and why.
+
+"Wal, wal! I want to know! Somebody did say something to me about a gang
+of movin' picture folks comin' there; but I reckoned they was a-foolin'
+me."
+
+"There is a good sized party of us," acknowledged Ruth.
+
+"Wal, wal! Mebbe that fella I let my shack to will make out well, then,
+after all. Warn't no sign of ye on the beach when I left three weeks ago".
+
+"Did you live there on the point?" asked Ruth.
+
+"Allus do winters. But the pickin's is better over here at the Harbor at
+this time of year."
+
+"And the man you left in your place? Where is your house on the point?"
+
+The hermit "for revenue only" described the hut on the eastern shore in
+which the other "hermit" lived. Ruth became much interested.
+
+"Tell me," she said, while the others examined the curios the hermit had
+for sale, "what kind of man is this you left in your house? And who is
+he?"
+
+"Law bless ye!" said the old man. "I don't know him from Adam's off ox.
+Never seed him afore. But he was trampin' of it; and he didn't have much
+money. An' to tell you the truth, Miss, that hutch of mine ain't wuth much
+money."
+
+She described the man who had been playing the hermit since the Alectrion
+Film Corporation crowd had come to Beach Plum Point.
+
+"That's the fella," said the old man, nodding.
+
+Ruth stood aside while he waited on his customers and digested these
+statements regarding the man who claimed the authorship of the scenario of
+"Plain Mary."
+
+Not that Ruth would have desired to acknowledge the scenario in its
+present form. She felt angry every time she thought of how her plot had
+been mangled.
+
+But she was glad to learn all that was known about the Beach Plum Point
+hermit. And she had learned one most important fact.
+
+He was not a regular hermit. As Jennie Stone suggested, he was not a
+"union hermit" at all. And he was a stranger to the neighborhood of
+Herringport. If he had been at the Point only three weeks, as this old man
+said, "John, the hermit," might easily have come since Ruth's scenario was
+stolen back there at the Red Mill!
+
+Her thoughts began to mill again about this possibility. She wished she
+was back at the camp so as to put the strange old man through a
+cross-examination regarding himself and where he had come from. She had no
+suspicion as to how Mr. Hammond had so signally failed in this very
+matter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+AN ARRIVAL
+
+
+Mr. Hammond was in no placid state of mind himself after the peculiarly
+acting individual who called himself "John, the hermit," left his office.
+The very fact that the man refused to tell anything about his personal
+affairs--who he really was, or where he came from--induced the moving
+picture producer to believe there must be something wrong about him.
+
+Mr. Hammond went to the door of the shack and watched the man tramping up
+the beach toward the end of the point. What a dignified stride he had!
+Rather, it was the stride of a poseur--like nothing so much as that of the
+old-time tragedian, made famous by the Henry Irving school of actors.
+
+"An ancient 'ham' sure enough, just as the boys say," muttered the
+manager.
+
+The so-called hermit disappeared. The moving picture people were gathering
+for dinner. The sun, although still above the horizon, was dimmed by
+cloud-banks which were rising steadily to meet clouds over the sea.
+
+A wan light played upon the heaving "graybacks" outside the mouth of the
+harbor. The wind whined among the pines which grew along the ridge of
+Beach Plum Point.
+
+A storm was imminent. Just as Mr. Hammond took note of this and wished
+that Ruth Fielding and her party had returned, a snorting automobile
+rattled along the shell road and halted near the camp.
+
+"Is this the Alectrion Film Company?" asked a shrill voice.
+
+"This is the place, Miss," said the driver of the small car.
+
+The chauffeur ran his jitney from the railroad station and was known to
+Mr. Hammond. The latter went nearer.
+
+Out of the car stepped a girl--a very young girl to be traveling alone.
+She was dressed in extreme fashion, but very cheaply. Her hair was bobbed
+and she wore a Russian blouse of cheap silk. Her skirt was very narrow,
+her cloth boots very high, and the heels of them were like those of
+Jananese clogs.
+
+What with the skimpy skirt and the high heels she could scarcely walk. She
+was laden with two bags--one an ancient carpet-bag that must have been
+seventy-five years old, and the other a bright tan one of imitation
+leather with brass clasps. She wore a coal-scuttle hat pulled down over
+her eyes so that her face was quite extinguished.
+
+Altogether her get-up was rather startling. Mr. Hammond saw Jim Hooley
+come out of his tent to stare at the new arrival. She certainly was a
+"type."
+
+There was a certain kind of prettiness about the girl, and aside from her
+incongruous garments she was not unattractive--when her face was revealed.
+Mr. Hammond's interest increased. He approached the spot where the girl
+had been left by the jitney driver.
+
+"You came to see somebody?" he asked kindly. "Who is it you wish to see?"
+
+"Is this the moving picture camp, Mister?" she returned.
+
+"Yes," said the manager, smiling. "Are you acquainted with somebody who
+works here?"
+
+"Yes. I am Arabella Montague Fitzmaurice," said the girl, with an air that
+seemed to show that she expected to be recognized when she had recited her
+name.
+
+Mr. Hammond refrained from open laughter. He only said:
+
+"Why--that is nice. I am glad to meet you, my dear. Who are you looking
+for?"
+
+"I want to see my pa, of course. I guess you know who _he_ is?"
+
+"I am not sure that I do, my dear."
+
+"You don't--Say! who are you?" demanded Bella, with some sharpness.
+
+"I am only the manager of the company. Who is your father, child?"
+
+"Well, of all the---- Wouldn't that give you your nevergitovers!"
+exclaimed Bella, in broad amazement. "Say! I guess my pa is your leading
+man."
+
+"Mr. Hasbrouck? Impossible!"
+
+"Never heard of him," said Bella, promptly. "Montague Fitzmaurice, I
+mean."
+
+"And I never heard of him," declared Mr. Hammond, both puzzled and amused.
+
+"What?" gasped the girl, almost stunned by this statement. "Maybe you know
+him as Mr. Pike. That is our honest-to-goodness name--Pike."
+
+"I am sorry that you are disappointed, my dear," said the manager kindly.
+"But don't be worried. If you expected to meet your father here, perhaps
+he will come later. But really, I have no such person as that on my staff
+at the present time."
+
+"I don't know---- Why!" cried Bella, "he sent me money and said he
+was working here. I--I didn't tell him I was coming. I just got sick of
+those Perkinses, and I took the money and went to Boston and got dressed
+up, and then came on here. I--I just about spent all the money he sent me
+to get here."
+
+"Well, that was perhaps unwise," said Mr. Hammond. "But don't worry. Come
+along now to Mother Paisley. She will look out for you--and you can stay
+with us until your father appears. There is some mistake somewhere."
+
+By this speech he warded off tears. Bella hastily winked them back and
+squared her thin shoulders.
+
+"All right, sir," she said, picking up the bags again. "Pa will make it
+all right with you. He wrote in his letter as if he had a good
+engagement."
+
+Mr. Hammond might have learned something further about this surprising
+girl at the time, but just as he introduced her to Mother Paisley one of
+the men came running from the point and hailed him:
+
+"Mr. Hammond! There's a boat in trouble off the point. I think she was
+making for this harbor. Have you got a pair of glasses?"
+
+Mr. Hammond had a fine pair of opera glasses, and he produced them from
+his desk while he asked:
+
+"What kind of boat is it, Maxwell?"
+
+"Looks like that blue motor that Miss Fielding and her friends went off in
+this morning. We saw it coming along at top speed. And suddenly it
+stopped. They can't seem to manage it----"
+
+The manager hurried with Maxwell along the sands. The sky was completely
+overcast now, and the wind whipped the spray from the wave tops into their
+faces. The weather looked dubious indeed, and the manager of the film
+corporation was worried before even he focused his glasses upon the
+distant motor-boat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+TROUBLE--PLENTY
+
+
+Even Ruth Fielding had paid no attention to the warning of the Reef Island
+hermit regarding a change in the weather, in spite of the fact that she
+was anxious to return to the camp near Herringport. It was not until the
+_Stazy_ was outside the inlet late in the afternoon that Skipper Phil
+Gordon noted the threatening signs in sea and sky.
+
+"That's how it goes," the one-armed mariner said. "When we aren't
+dependent on the wind to fill our canvas, we neglect watching every little
+weather change. She's going to blow by and by."
+
+"Do you think it will be a real storm?" asked Ruth, who sat beside him at
+the steering wheel and engine, watching how he managed the mechanism.
+
+"Maybe. But with good luck we will make Beach Plum Point long before it
+amounts to anything."
+
+The long graybacks were rather pleasant to ride over at first. Even Aunt
+Kate was not troubled by the prospect. It was so short a run to the
+anchorage behind the Point that nobody expressed fear.
+
+When the spray began to fly over the bows the girls merely squealed a bit,
+although they hastily found extra wraps. If the _Stazy_ plunged and
+shipped half a sea now and then, nobody was made anxious. And soon the
+Point was in plain view.
+
+To make the run easier, however, Skipper Gordon had sailed the motor-yacht
+well out to sea. When he shifted the helm to run for the entrance to the
+bay, the waves began to slap against the _Stazy's_ side. She rolled
+terrifically and the aspect of affairs was instantly changed.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" moaned Jennie Stone. "How do you feel, Henri? I did not
+bargain for this rough stuff, did you? Oh!"
+
+"'Mister Captain, stop the ship, I want to get off and walk!'" sang Helen
+gaily. "Don't lose all hope, Heavy. You'll never sink if you do go
+overboard."
+
+"Isn't she mean?" sniffed the plump girl. "And I am only afraid for
+Henri's sake."
+
+"I don't like this for my own sake," murmured Aunt Kate.
+
+"Are you cold, dear?" her niece asked, with quick sympathy. "Here! I don't
+really need this cape with my heavy sweater."
+
+She removed the heavy cloth garment from her own shoulders and with a
+flirt sought to place it around Aunt Kate. The wind swooped down just then
+with sudden force. The _Stazy_ rolled to leeward.
+
+"Oh! Stop it!"
+
+Bulging under pressure of the wind, the cape flew over the rail. Jennie
+tried to clutch it again; Henri plunged after it, too. Colliding, the two
+managed between them to miss the garment altogether. It dropped into the
+water just under the rail.
+
+"Of all the clumsy fingers!" ejaculated Helen. But she could not seize the
+wrap, although she darted for it. Nor could Ruth help, she being still
+farther forward.
+
+"Now, you've done it!" complained Aunt Kate.
+
+The boat began to rise on another roller. The cape was sucked out of sight
+under the rail. The next moment the whirling propeller was stopped--so
+abruptly that the _Stazy_ shook all over.
+
+"Oh! what has happened?" shrieked Helen.
+
+Ruth started up, and Tom seized her arm to steady her. But the girl of the
+Red Mill did not express any fear. The shock did not seem to affect her so
+much as it did the other girls. Here was a real danger, and Ruth did not
+lose her self-possession.
+
+Phil Gordon had shut off the power, and the motor-boat began to swing
+broadside to the rising seas.
+
+"The propeller is broken!" cried Tom.
+
+"She's jammed. That cape!" gasped the one-armed skipper. "Here! Tend to
+this till I see what can be done. Jack!" he shouted to his crew. "This
+way--lively, now!"
+
+But Ruth slipped into his place before Tom could do so.
+
+"I know how to steer, Tommy," she declared. "And I understand the engine.
+Give him a hand if he needs you."
+
+"Oh, we'll turn turtle!" shrieked Jennie, as the boat rolled again.
+
+"You'll never become a turtle, Jen," declared Tom, plunging aft. "Turtles
+are dumb!"
+
+The _Stazy_ was slapped by a big wave, "just abaft the starboard bow," to
+be real nautical, and half a ton of sea-water washed over the forward deck
+and spilled into the standing-room of the craft.
+
+Henri had wisely closed the door of the cabin. The water foamed about
+their feet. Ruth found herself knee deep for a moment in this flood. She
+whirled the wheel over, trying to bring up the head of the craft to meet
+the next wave.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" groaned Jennie Stone. "We are going to be drowned."
+
+"Drowned, your granny!" snapped Helen angrily. "Don't be such a silly,
+Jennie."
+
+Ruth stood at the wheel with more apparent calmness than any of them. Her
+hair had whipped out of its fastenings and streamed over her shoulders.
+Her eyes were bright and her cheeks aglow.
+
+Helen, staring at her, suddenly realized that this was the old Ruth
+Fielding. Her chum had not looked so much alive, so thoroughly competent
+and ready for anything, before for weeks.
+
+"Why--why, Ruthie!" Helen murmured, "I believe you like this."
+
+Her chum did not hear the words, but she suddenly flashed Helen a
+brilliant smile. "Keep up your pluck, child!" she shouted. "We'll come out
+all right."
+
+Again the _Stazy_ staggered under the side swipe of a big wave.
+
+"Ye-ow!" yelped Tom in the stern, almost diving overboard.
+
+"Steady!" shouted Skipper Gordon, excitedly.
+
+"Steady she is, Captain!" rejoined Ruth Fielding, and actually laughed.
+
+"How can you, Ruth?" complained Jennie, clinging to Henri Marchand. "And
+when we are about to drown."
+
+"Weeping will not save us," flung back Ruth.
+
+Her strong hands held the wheel-spokes with a grip unbreakable. She could
+force the _Stazy's_ head to the seas.
+
+"Can you start the engine on the reverse, Miss?" bawled Gordon.
+
+"I can try!" flashed Ruth. "Say when."
+
+In a moment the cry came: "Ready!"
+
+"Aye, aye!" responded Ruth, spinning the flywheel.
+
+The spark caught almost instantly. The exhaust sputtered.
+
+"Now!" yelled the skipper.
+
+Ruth threw the lever. The boat trembled like an automobile under the
+propulsion of the engine. The propeller shaft groaned.
+
+"Ye-ow!" shouted the excited Tom again.
+
+This time he sprawled back into the bottom of the boat, tearing away a
+good half of Jennie's cape in his grip. The rest of the garment floated to
+the surface. It was loose from the propeller.
+
+"Full speed ahead!" shouted the one-armed captain of the motor-boat.
+
+Ruth obeyed the command. The _Stazy_ staggered into the next wave. The
+water that came in over her bow almost drowned them, but Ruth, hanging to
+the steering wheel, brought the craft through the roller without swamping
+her.
+
+"Good for our Ruth!" shouted Helen, as soon as she could get her breath.
+
+"Oh, Ruth! you always come to our rescue," declared Jennie gratefully.
+
+"Hi! I thought you were a nervous wreck, young lady," Tom sputtered,
+scrambling forward to relieve her. "Get you into a tight corner, and you
+show what you are made of, all right."
+
+The girl of the Red Mill smiled at them. She had done something! Nor did
+she feel at all overcome by the effort. The danger through which they had
+passed had inspired rather than frightened her.
+
+"Why, I'm all right," she told Tom when he reached her. "This is great!
+We'll be behind the shelter of the Point in a few minutes. There's nothing
+to worry about."
+
+"You're all right, Ruth," Tom repeated, admiringly. "I thought you'd lost
+your grip, but I see you haven't. You are the same old Ruthie Fielding,
+after all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+ABOUT "PLAIN MARY"
+
+
+Mr. Hammond and the actors with him had no idea of the nature of the
+accident that had happened to the _Stazy_. From the extreme end of Beach
+Plum Point they could merely watch proceedings aboard the craft, and
+wonder what it was all about.
+
+The manager could, however, see through his glasses that Ruth Fielding was
+at the wheel. Her face came out clear as a cameo when he focused the opera
+glasses upon her. And at the change in the girl's expression he marveled.
+
+Those ashore could do nothing to aid the party on the motor-yacht; and
+until it got under way again Mr. Hammond was acutely anxious. It rolled so
+that he expected it to turn keel up at almost any moment.
+
+Before the blasts of rain began to sweep across the sea, however, the
+_Stazy_ was once more under control. At that most of the spectators made
+for the camp and shelter. But the manager of the film corporation waited
+to see the motor-yacht inside the shelter of Beach Plum Point.
+
+The rain was falling heavily, and not merely in gusts, when Ruth and her
+friends came ashore in the small boat. The lamps were lit and dinner was
+over at the main camp. Therefore the automobile touring party failed to
+see Bella Pike or hear about her arrival. By this time the girl had gone
+off to the main dormitory with Mother Paisley, and even Mr. Hammond did
+not think of her.
+
+Nor did the manager speak that evening to Ruth about the hermit's scenario
+or his interview with the old man regarding it.
+
+The three girls and Aunt Kate changed their clothing in the little shack
+and then joined the young men in the dining room for a late supper. Aunt
+Kate was to stay this night at the camp. There was a feeling of much
+thankfulness in all their hearts over their escape from what might have
+been a serious accident.
+
+"Providence was good to us," said Aunt Kate. "I hope we are all properly
+grateful."
+
+"And properly proud of Ruthie!" exclaimed Helen, squeezing her chum's
+hand.
+
+"Don't throw too many bouquets," laughed Ruth. "It was not I that tore
+Jennie's cape out of the propeller. I merely obeyed the skipper's
+orders."
+
+"She is a regular Cheerful Grig again, isn't she?" demanded Jennie,
+beaming on Ruth.
+
+"I have been a wet blanket on this party long enough. I just begin to
+realize how very unpleasant I have been----"
+
+"Not that, Mademoiselle!" objected Henri.
+
+"But yes! Hereafter I will be cheerful. Life is worth living after all!"
+
+Tom, who sat next to her at table (he usually managed to do that) smiled
+at Ruth approvingly.
+
+"Bravo!" he whispered. "There are other scenarios to write."
+
+"Tom!" she whispered sharply, "I want to tell you something about that."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"My scenario."
+
+"You don't mean----"
+
+"I mean I know what has become of it."
+
+"Never!" gasped Tom. "Are you--are--you----"
+
+"I am not '_non compos_,' and-so-forth," laughed Ruth. "Oh, there is
+nothing foolish about this, Tom. Let me tell you."
+
+She spoke in so low a tone that the others could not have heard had they
+desired to. She and Tom put their heads together and within the next few
+minutes Ruth had told him all about the hermit's scenario and her
+conviction that he had stolen his idea and a large part of his story from
+Ruth's lost manuscript.
+
+"It seems almost impossible, Ruth," gasped her friend.
+
+"No. Not impossible or improbable. Listen to what that man on Reef Island
+told me about this hermit, so-called." And she repeated it all to the
+excited Tom. "I am convinced," pursued Ruth, "that this hermit could
+easily have been in the vicinity of the Red Mill on the day my manuscript
+disappeared."
+
+"But to prove it!" cried Tom.
+
+"We'll see about that," said Ruth confidently. "You know, Ben told us he
+had seen and spoken to a tramp-actor that day. Uncle Jabez saw him, too.
+And you, Tom, followed his trail to the Cheslow railroad yards."
+
+"So I did," admitted her friend.
+
+"I believe," went on Ruth earnestly, "that this man who came here to live
+on Beach Plum Point only three weeks ago, is that very vagrant. It is
+plain that this fellow is playing the part of a hermit, just as he plays
+the parts Mr. Hooley casts him for."
+
+"Whew!" whistled Tom. "Almost do you convince me, Ruth Fielding. But to
+prove it is another thing."
+
+"We _will_ prove it. If this man was at the Red Mill on that particular
+day, we can make sure of the fact."
+
+"How will you do it, Ruth?"
+
+"By getting one of the camera men to take a 'still' of the hermit, develop
+it for us, and send the negative to Ben. He and Uncle Jabez must remember
+how that traveling actor looked----"
+
+"Hurrah!" exclaimed Tom, jumping up to the amazement of the rest of the
+party. "That's a bully idea."
+
+"What is it?" demanded Helen. "Let us in on it, too."
+
+But Ruth shook her head and Tom calmed down.
+
+"Can't tell the secret yet," Helen's twin declared. "That would spoil it."
+
+"Oh! A surprise! I love surprises," said Jennie Stone.
+
+"I don't. Not when my chum and my brother have a secret from me and won't
+let me in on it," and Helen turned her back upon them in apparent
+indignation.
+
+After that Ruth and Tom discussed the matter with more secrecy. Ruth said
+in conclusion:
+
+"If he was there at the mill the day my story was stolen, and now submits
+this scenario to Mr. Hammond--and it is merely a re-hash of mine, Tom, I
+assure you----"
+
+"Of course I believe you, Ruth," rejoined the young fellow.
+
+"Mr. Hammond should be convinced, too," said the girl.
+
+But there was a point that Tom saw very clearly and which Ruth Fielding
+did not seem to appreciate. She still had no evidence to corroborate her
+claim that the hermit's story of "Plain Mary" was plagiarized from her
+manuscript.
+
+For, after all, nobody but Ruth herself knew what her scenario had been
+like!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+LIFTING THE CURTAIN
+
+
+Ruth slept peacefully and awoke the next morning in a perfectly serene
+frame of mind. She was quite as convinced as ever that she had been robbed
+of her scenario; and she was, as well, sure that "John, the hermit," had
+produced his picture play from her manuscript. But Ruth no longer felt
+anxious and excited about it.
+
+She clearly saw her way to a conclusion of the matter. If the old actor
+was identified by Ben and Uncle Jabez as the tramp they had seen and
+conversed with, the girl of the Red Mill was pretty sure she would get the
+best of the thief.
+
+In the first place she considered her idea and her scenario worth much
+more than five hundred dollars. If by no other means, she would buy the
+hermit's story at the price Mr. Hammond was willing to pay for it--and a
+little more if necessary. And if possible she would force the old actor to
+hand over to her the script that she had lost.
+
+Thus was her mind made up, and she approached the matter in all
+cheerfulness. She had said nothing to anybody but Tom, and she did not see
+him early in the morning. One of the stewards brought the girls' breakfast
+to the shack; so they knew little of what went on about the camp at that
+time.
+
+The rain had ceased. The storm had passed on completely. Soon after
+breakfast Ruth saw the man who called himself "John, the hermit," making
+straight for Mr. Hammond's office.
+
+That was where Ruth wished to be. She wanted to confront the man before
+the president of the film corporation. She started over that way and ran
+into the most surprising incident!
+
+Coming out of the cook tent with a huge apron enveloping her queer, tight
+dress and tilting forward upon her high heels, appeared Bella Pike! Ruth
+Fielding might have met somebody whose presence here would have surprised
+her more, but at the moment she could not imagine who it could be.
+
+"Ara-bella!" gasped Ruth.
+
+The child turned to stare her own amazement. She changed color, too, for
+she knew she had done wrong to run away; but she smiled with both eyes and
+lips, for she was glad to see Ruth.
+
+"My mercy!" she ejaculated. "If it ain't Miss Fielding! How-do, Miss
+Fielding? Ain't it enough to give one their nevergitovers to see you
+here?"
+
+"And how do you suppose I feel to find you here at Beach Plum Point,"
+demanded Ruth, "when we all thought you were so nicely fixed with Mr. and
+Mrs. Perkins? And Mrs. Holmes wrote to me only the other day that you
+seemed contented."
+
+"That's right, Miss Fielding," sighed the actor's child. "I was. And Miz
+Perkins was always nice to me. Nothing at all like Aunt Suse Timmins. But,
+you see, they ain't like pa."
+
+"Did your father bring you here?"
+
+"No'm."
+
+"Nor send for you?"
+
+"Not exactly," confessed Bella.
+
+"Well!"
+
+"You see, he sent me money. Only on Tuesday. Forty dollars."
+
+"Forty dollars! And to a child like you?"
+
+"Well, Miss Fielding, if he had sent it to Aunt Suse I'd never have seen a
+penny of it. And pa didn't know what you'd done for me and how you'd put
+me with Miz Perkins."
+
+"I suppose that is so," admitted the surprised Ruth. "But why did you come
+here?"
+
+"'Cause pa wrote he had an engagement here. I came through Boston, an' got
+me a dress, and some shoes, and a hat--all up to date--and I thought I'd
+surprise pa----"
+
+"But, Bella! I haven't seen your father here, have I?"
+
+"No. There's a mistake somehow. But this nice Miz Paisley says for me not
+to worry. That like enough pa will come here yet."
+
+"I never!" ejaculated Ruth. "Come right along with me, Bella, and see Mr.
+Hammond. Something must be done. Of course, Mrs. Perkins and the doctor's
+wife have no idea where you have gone?"
+
+"Oh, yes'm. I left a note telling 'em I'd gone to meet pa."
+
+"But we must send them a message that you are all right. Come on, Bella!"
+and with her arm about the child's thin shoulders, Ruth urged her to Mr.
+Hammond's office--and directly into her father's arms!
+
+This was how Arabella Montague Fitzmaurice Pike came to meet her
+father--in a most amazing fashion!
+
+"Pa! I never did!" half shrieked the queer child.
+
+"Arabella! Here? How strange!" observed the man who had been acting the
+part of the Beach Plum Point hermit. "My child!"
+
+Mr. Pike could do nothing save in a dramatic way. He seized Bella and
+hugged her to his bosom in a most stagy manner. But Ruth saw that the
+man's gray eyes were moist, that his hands when he seized the girl really
+trembled, and he kissed Bella with warmth.
+
+"I declare!" exclaimed Mr. Hammond. "So your name is
+something-or-other-Fitzmaurice Pike?"
+
+"John Pike, if it please you. The other is for professional purposes
+only," said Bella's father. "If you do not mind, sir," he added, "we will
+postpone our discussion until a later time. I--I would take my daughter to
+my poor abode and learn of her experience in getting here to Beach Plum
+Point."
+
+"Go as far as you like, Mr. Pike. But remember there has got to be a
+settlement later of this matter we were discussing," said the manager
+sternly.
+
+The actor and his daughter departed, the former giving Ruth a very curious
+look indeed. Mr. Hammond turned a broad smile upon the girl of the Red
+Mill.
+
+"What do you know about _that_?" Mr. Hammond demanded. "Why, Miss Ruth,
+yours seems to have been a very good guess. That fellow is an old-timer
+and no mistake."
+
+"My guess was good in more ways than one," said Ruth. "I believe I can
+prove that this Pike was at the Red Mill on the day my scenario was
+stolen."
+
+She told the manager briefly of the discovery she had made through the
+patriarchal old fellow on Reef Island the day before, and of her intention
+of sending a photograph of Pike back home for identification.
+
+"Good idea!" declared Mr. Hammond. "I will speak to Mr. Hooley. There are
+'stills' on file of all the people he is using here on the lot at the
+present time. If you are really sure this man's story is a plagiarism on
+your own----"
+
+She smiled at him. "I can prove that, too, I think, to your satisfaction.
+I feel now that I can sit down and roughly sketch my whole scenario again.
+I must confess that in two places in this 'Plain Mary' this man Pike has
+really improved on my idea. But as a whole his manuscript does not flatter
+my story. You'll see!"
+
+"Truly, you are a different young woman this morning, Miss Ruth!"
+exclaimed her friend. "I hope this matter will be settled in a way
+satisfactory to you. I really think there is the germ of a splendid
+picture in this 'Plain Mary.'"
+
+"And believe me!" laughed Ruth, "the germ is mine. You'll see," she
+repeated.
+
+She proved her point, and Mr. Hammond did see; but the outcome was through
+quite unexpected channels. Ruth did not have to threaten the man who had
+made her all the trouble. John M. F. Pike made his confession of his own
+volition when they discussed the matter that very day.
+
+"I feel, Miss Fielding, after all that you did for my child, that I cannot
+go on with this subterfuge that, for Bella's sake, I was tempted to engage
+in. I did seize upon your manuscript in that summer-house near the mill
+where they say you live, and I was prepared to make the best use of it
+possible for Bella's sake.
+
+"We have had such bad luck! Poverty for one's self is bad enough. I have
+withstood the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for years. But my
+child is growing up----"
+
+"Would you want her to grow up to know that her father is a thief?" Ruth
+demanded hotly.
+
+"Hunger under the belt gnaws more potently than conscience," said Pike,
+with a grandiloquent gesture. "I had sought alms and been refused at that
+mill. Lurking about I saw you leave the summer-house and spied the gold
+pen. I can give you a pawn ticket for that," said Mr. Pike sadly. "But I
+saw, too, the value of your scenario and notes. Desperately I had
+determined to try to enter this field of moving pictures. It is a terrible
+come down, Miss Fielding, for an artist--this mugging before the camera."
+
+He went on in his roundabout way to tell her that he had no idea of the
+ownership of the scenario. Her name was not on it, and he had not
+observed her face that day at the Red Mill. And in his mind all the time
+had been his own and his child's misery.
+
+"It was a bold attempt to forge success through dishonesty," he concluded
+with humility.
+
+Whether Ruth was altogether sure that Pike was quite honest in his
+confession or not, for Bella's sake she could not be harsh with the old
+actor. Nor could he, Ruth believed, be wholly bad when he loved his child
+so much.
+
+As he turned over to Ruth every scrap of manuscript, as well as the
+notebooks she had lost, she need not worry about establishing her
+ownership of the script.
+
+When Mr. Hammond had examined her material he agreed with Ruth that in two
+quite important places Bella's father had considerably improved the
+original idea of the story.
+
+This gave Ruth the lead she had been looking for. Mr. Hammond admitted
+that the story was much too fine and too important to be filmed here at
+this summer camp. He decided to make a great spectacular production of it
+at the company's main studio later in the fall.
+
+So Ruth proceeded to force Bella's father to accept two hundred dollars in
+payment for what he had done on the story. As her contract with Mr.
+Hammond called for a generous royalty, she would make much more out of
+the scenario than the sum John Pike had hoped to get by selling the stolen
+idea to Mr. Hammond.
+
+The prospects of Bella and her father were vastly improved, too. His work
+as a "type" for picture makers would gain him a much better livelihood
+than he had been able to earn in the legitimate field. And when Ruth and
+her party left Beach Plum Point camp for home in their automobiles, Bella
+herself was working in a two-reel comedy that Mr. Hooley was directing.
+
+"Well, thank goodness!" sighed Helen, "Ruth has settled affairs for two
+more of her 'waifs and strays.' Now don't, I beg, find anybody else to
+become interested in during our trip back to the Red Mill, Ruthie."
+
+Ruth was sitting beside Tom on the front seat of the big touring car. He
+looked at her sideways with a whimsical little smile.
+
+"I wish you would turn over a new leaf, Ruthie," he whispered.
+
+"And what is to be on that new leaf?" she asked brightly.
+
+"Just me. Pay a little attention to yours truly. Remember that in a week I
+shall go aboard the transport again, and then----"
+
+"Oh, Tom!" she murmured, clasping her hands, "I don't want to think of it.
+If this awful war would only end!"
+
+"It's the only war so far that hasn't ended," he said. "And I have a
+feeling, anyway, that it may not last long. Henri and I have got to hurry
+back to finish it up. Leave it to us, Ruth," and he smiled.
+
+But Ruth sighed. "I suppose I shall have to, Tommy-boy," she said. "And do
+finish it quickly! I do not feel as though I could return to college, or
+write another scenario, or do a single, solitary thing until peace is
+declared."
+
+"And _then_?" asked Tom, significantly.
+
+Ruth gave him an understanding smile.
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+                      THE RUTH FIELDING SERIES
+                         By ALICE B. EMERSON
+    _12mo. Illustrated.  Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_
+
+            _Ruth Fielding will live in juvenile Fiction_.
+
+    RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
+        _or Jasper Parloe's Secret_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
+        _or Solving the Campus Mystery_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
+        _or Lost in the Backwoods_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
+        _or Nita, the Girl Castaway_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
+        _or Schoolgirls Among the Cowboys_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
+        _or The Old Hunter's Treasure Box_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
+        _or What Became of the Raby Orphans_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
+        _or The Missing Pearl Necklace_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
+        _or Helping the Dormitory Fund_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
+        _or Great Days in the Land of Cotton_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
+        _or The Missing Examination Papers_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
+        _or College Girls in the Land of Gold_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
+        _or Doing Her Bit for Uncle Sam_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
+        _or The Hunt for a Lost Soldier_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND
+        _or A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
+        _or The Hermit of Beach Plum Point_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST
+        _or The Indian Girl Star of the Movies_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE
+        _or The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands_
+
+    RUTH FIELDING TREASURE HUNTING
+        _or A Moving Picture that Became Real_
+
+
+          CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers     New York
+
+
+
+
+                     THE BETTY GORDON SERIES
+                        BY ALICE B. EMERSON
+          _Author of the Famous "Ruth Fielding" Series_
+         _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors_
+              _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_
+
+          _A series of stories by Alice B. Emerson which
+          are bound to make this writer more popular than
+          ever with her host of girl readers._
+
+    1.  BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
+        _or The Mystery of a Nobody_
+  At the age of twelve Betty is left an orphan.
+  Her uncle sends her to live on a farm.
+
+    2.  BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON
+        _or Strange Adventures in a Great City_
+  In this volume Betty goes to the National Capitol to find her
+  uncle and has several unusual adventures.
+
+    3.  BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL
+        _or The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune_
+  From Washington the scene is shifted to the great oil fields of
+  our country. A splendid picture of the oil field operations of to-day.
+
+    4.  BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL
+        _or The Treasure of Indian Chasm_
+  Seeking the treasure of Indian Chasm makes an exceedingly interesting
+  incident.
+
+    5.  BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP
+        _or The Mystery of Ida Bellethorne_
+  At Mountain Camp Betty found herself in the midst of a mystery
+  involving a girl whom she had previously met in Washington.
+
+    6.  BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK
+        _or Gay Days on the Boardwalk_
+  Adventure in high society let loose on the seashore.
+
+              _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue_
+
+
+          CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers     New York
+
+
+
+
+                     THE GIRL SCOUT SERIES
+                         BY LILIAN GARIS
+         _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors_
+              _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_
+
+          _The highest ideals of girlhood as advocated
+          by the foremost organizations of America
+          form the background for these stories and while
+          unobtrusive there is a message in every volume._
+
+    1. THE GIRL SCOUT PIONEERS
+        _or Winning the First B. C._
+  A story of the True Tred Troop in a Pennsylvania
+  town. Two runaway girls, who
+  want to see the city, are reclaimed through
+  troop influence. The story is correct in scout
+  detail.
+
+    2.  THE GIRL SCOUTS AT BELLAIRE
+        _or Maid Mary's Awakening_
+  The story of a timid little maid who is afraid to take part in
+  other girls' activities, while working nobly alone for high ideals.
+  How she was discovered by the Bellaire Troop and came into her
+  own as "Maid Mary" makes a fascinating story.
+
+    3.  THE GIRL SCOUTS AT SEA CREST
+        _or The Wig Wag Rescue_
+  Luna Land, a little island by the sea, is wrapt in a mysterious
+  seclusion, and Kitty Scuttle, a grotesque figure, succeeds in keeping
+  all others at bay until the Girl Scouts come.
+
+    4.  THE GIRL SCOUTS AT CAMP COMALONG
+        _or Peg of Tamarack Hills_
+  The girls of Bobolink Troop spend their summer on the shores of
+  Lake Hocomo. Their discovery of Peg, the mysterious rider, and
+  the clearing up of her remarkable adventures afford a vigorous plot.
+
+    5.  THE GIRL SCOUTS AT ROCKY LEDGE
+        _or Nora's Real Vacation_
+  Nora Blair is the pampered daughter of a frivolous mother. Her
+  dislike for the rugged life of Girl Scouts is eventually changed to
+  appreciation, when the rescue of little Lucia, a woodland waif,
+  becomes a problem for the girls to solve.
+
+              _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue_
+
+
+          CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers     New York
+
+
+
+
+                      THE RADIO GIRLS SERIES
+                        BY MARGARET PENROSE
+          _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors_
+              _Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid_
+
+          _A new and up-to-date series, taking in the
+          activities of several bright girls who become
+          interested in radio. The stories tell of thrilling
+          exploits, out-door life and the great part the
+          Radio plays in the adventures of the girls and
+          in solving their mysteries. Fascinating books
+          that girls of all ages will want to read._
+
+    1.  THE RADIO GIRLS OF ROSELAWN
+        _or A Strange Message from the Air_
+  Showing how Jessie Norwood and her chums became interested
+  in radiophoning, how they gave a concert for a worthy local charity,
+  and how they received a sudden and unexpected call for help out
+  of the air. A girl who was wanted as a witness in a celebrated law
+  case had disappeared, and how the radio girls went to the rescue is
+  told in an absorbing manner.
+
+    2.  THE RADIO GIRLS ON THE PROGRAM
+        _or Singing and Reciting at the Sending Station_
+  When listening in on a thrilling recitation or a superb concert
+  number who of us has not longed to "look behind the scenes" to see
+  how it was done? The girls had made the acquaintance of a sending
+  station manager and in this volume are permitted to get on the program,
+  much to their delight. A tale full of action and not a little
+  fun.
+
+    3.  THE RADIO GIRLS ON STATION ISLAND
+        _or The Wireless from the Steam Yacht_
+  In this volume the girls travel to the seashore and put in a vacation
+  on an island where is located a big radio sending station. The big
+  brother of one of the girls owns a steam yacht and while out with a
+  pleasure party those on the island receive word by radio that the
+  yacht is on fire. A tale thrilling to the last page.
+
+              _Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue_
+
+
+  CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers     New York
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST***
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