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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp, by Katherine
+Stokes, Illustrated by Charles L. Wrenn
+
+
+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: The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp
+
+
+Author: Katherine Stokes
+
+
+
+Release Date: November 28, 2007  [eBook #23645]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOTOR MAIDS AT SUNRISE CAMP***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
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+
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+
+
+
+
+
+THE MOTOR MAIDS AT SUNRISE CAMP
+
+by
+
+KATHERINE STOKES
+
+Author of "The Motor Maids' School Days," "The Motor Maids
+by Palm and Pine," "The Motor Maids Across the Continent,"
+"The Motor Maids by Rose, Shamrock and Thistle,"
+"The Motor Maids in Fair Japan," Etc.
+
+With Four Illustrations by Charles L. Wrenn
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Presently Mr. Lupo came in with a tray of cups and
+saucers and a pot of steaming hot coffee.--Page 29.]
+
+
+
+M. A. Donohue & Company
+Chicago New York
+
+Copyright, 1914,
+by
+Hurst & Company
+
+Made in U. S. A.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   CHAPTER                                                          PAGE
+
+         I. OFF FOR THE MOUNTAINS                                      5
+        II. THE CAMP                                                  19
+       III. RULES AND REGULATIONS                                     34
+        IV. TABLE TOP                                                 50
+         V. IN THE BOG                                                67
+        VI. THE DOCTOR                                                83
+       VII. PHOEBE                                                   101
+      VIII. THE GYPSY COOKS                                          114
+        IX. A LESSON BY THE WAYSIDE                                  132
+         X. ALBERDINA SCHOENBACHLER                                  146
+        XI. A COMEDY OF ERRORS                                       162
+       XII. THE RETURN                                               177
+      XIII. BILLIE AND THE DOCTOR                                    190
+       XIV. CHANCE NEWS                                              204
+        XV. A WARNING                                                221
+       XVI. THE ATTACK                                               234
+      XVII. THE FORCE OF ELOQUENCE                                   249
+     XVIII. THE MORNING AFTER                                        262
+       XIX. THE MILLS OF GOD                                         273
+        XX. A LONG SLEEP                                             286
+       XXI. COMRADES OF THE ROAD                                     304
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MOTOR MAIDS IN SUNRISE CAMP.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+OFF FOR THE MOUNTAINS.
+
+
+"Sunrise Camp! What next, pray tell me?" sighed Miss Helen Campbell.
+
+"But it doesn't mean getting up at sunrise, Cousin Helen," Billie
+Campbell assured her. "Although Papa says we would like it, once we got
+started. Campers always do rise with the sun. It's the proper thing to
+do."
+
+"But why do they give it that uncivilized name?" continued Miss Campbell
+in an injured tone of voice. "Why not Sunset Camp or Meridian Camp or
+even Moonrise Camp? There is nothing restful to me in the name of
+'Sunrise.'"
+
+"It will be restful, indeed it will, dear cousin, once you are used to
+the life, and it couldn't be called any of those other names because
+they would not be appropriate. You see there is a wonderful view of the
+sunrise from the camp, and every morning if you wake early enough you
+see a beautiful pink light all over the sky and you wonder where the sun
+is; and suddenly he comes shooting up from behind the tallest mountain
+in the range across the valley, and it's really quite late by then. He
+has been up ever so long, but he's been hiding behind the mountains."
+
+"And we are to sleep on the ground under those flimsy tents, I suppose?"
+asked Miss Campbell, who was not taking very kindly to the camping
+proposition.
+
+"No, no," protested her young cousin, laughing, "you're thinking of
+soldiers, and they do have cots. This camp is a log house, a really
+beautiful log house. There is one immense room without any ceiling, and
+you look straight up through the beams into the roof. Papa says it's
+splendid."
+
+Miss Campbell bestowed upon Billie a tolerant, suffering smile.
+
+"And back of that room," continued Billie, speaking quickly, "is a long
+sleeping porch that can be partitioned off into bedrooms----"
+
+"No protection from rain and wild animals, I suppose?" put in Miss
+Campbell sadly.
+
+"Oh, yes. There is a roof overhead and a floor underneath, and it's all
+enclosed with wire netting to keep out mosquitoes. It can't rain in far
+enough to wet the beds and, of course, nothing else matters----"
+
+"Clothes?" groaned the little lady.
+
+"But khaki skirts, cousin, and rubber-soled shoes and pongee
+blouses,--water couldn't injure things like that."
+
+"I went camping once forty years ago," went on Miss Campbell, without
+seeming to notice Billie's reply. "It was terrible, I assure you, it was
+quite too dreadful. One night there was a storm, and the tents that were
+not blown away by the high winds were swamped by rain. Our clothes all
+mildewed, and the flies! I shall never forget the disgusting
+flies,--they were everywhere."
+
+"This camp couldn't possibly be blown away even by the strongest wind,"
+broke in Billie, ready to refute every argument, "and the screens make
+it just as comfortable as your own home would be."
+
+"How far is it from anywhere?" demanded Miss Campbell suddenly.
+
+Billie hesitated.
+
+"It's twenty-five miles, but there is a good road from the railroad
+station and the 'Comet' can take us across in no time. You see, there is
+a little village in the valley at the foot of our mountain, and in
+summer a 'bus runs twice a day with passengers and the mail, so the road
+must be fairly good. Papa says lots of automobiles go over it."
+
+"Twenty-five miles," groaned Miss Campbell.
+
+"Twenty-five miles from a telegraph station----"
+
+"But there is no one for you to telegraph to if Papa and I are with you,
+dear Cousin, is there?" asked Billie ingenuously.
+
+Miss Campbell's expression softened. Nothing pleased her so much as for
+Billie to make one family of the three. The young cousin had become such
+a fixture in her home that she had grown quite jealous of Duncan
+Campbell's possessive airs with his daughter.
+
+"One would think she really belonged to him more than to me," she would
+exclaim at such times, with some unreasonableness it must be admitted.
+
+But it was plain that the little spinster's resolutions against camping
+were beginning to crumble.
+
+"We are not to eat on the ground, then, or drink coffee from tin cups,
+or sleep in our clothes, or be bitten to death by mosquitoes, and
+finally exterminated by wild animals?"
+
+Billie laughed joyously. She knew by these extravagant remarks that her
+cousin had been won over.
+
+"None of those things," she cried. "We are to lead a comfortable,
+beautiful rustic life, and I know you'll just love it. There are lakes,
+cousin, exquisite, beautiful little gems of lakes; and trails all
+through the pine forests, and the walking isn't a bit difficult----"
+
+"Khaki skirts, did you say?"
+
+"Yes, and sneakers."
+
+"What are they, child?"
+
+"Rubber-soled shoes to keep you from slipping."
+
+Miss Campbell sighed.
+
+"And at my age!" she said aloud, answering some unspoken thought. "Tell
+your father I accept, but it's the last straw, and I may never see my
+comfortable old home again."
+
+Billie did not pause to disprove this dejected statement. She kissed her
+relative with the wild abandon of eighteen, rushed from the room and
+was down the stairs in a breathlessly short space of time.
+
+"She's going! She's going!" she cried, rushing into the drawing-room,
+where her three friends were anxiously awaiting news, and Mr. Campbell,
+almost as anxious himself, was pacing the floor, his hands thrust deep
+into his pockets.
+
+"Good work, little daughter!" he said, pausing in his walk. "I knew you
+could win her over if anybody could, although last night I was afraid we
+hadn't the ghost of a show. She was dead set against it. The word 'camp'
+alone seemed to make her wild."
+
+"But, you see, she thought it was tents and flies and mosquitoes and tin
+cups."
+
+Mr. Campbell smiled.
+
+"I think we won't tell her any more, now that she has made up her mind.
+We'll give her a little surprise. Call the camp a log hut and let it go
+at that."
+
+"Now, about clothes----" began Nancy Brown, and her friends all smiled.
+"Well, one must have clothes, even on a camping trip. Don't you think a
+blue corduroy would be attractive, with a touch of coral pink in the
+silk tie, say; and high russet walking boots--the kind that lace, you
+know----"
+
+"They must have rubber soles," put in Billie, "no matter what the tops
+are."
+
+"And a straw hat in the natural color, with a brim that droops slightly,
+and a pheasant's tail feather, slightly at one side----"
+
+There was another burst of laughter at this juncture, and Mr. Campbell
+joined in.
+
+"Miss Nancy," he said, "I'm afraid you'll have everything from hedge
+hogs to wood choppers at your feet if you make yourself so attractive in
+silks and velvets and russets----"
+
+"Nothing perishable," protested Nancy. "It will be quite suitable, of
+course. It's a mountain costume I saw in a French fashion magazine, and
+it was really intended for an Alpine climber; only it was much fancier.
+The French lady in the picture wore a lace jabot and high-heeled shoes,
+and she carried an Alpine stock with a pink bow tied just below the
+crook."
+
+"Was the skirt hobble?" demanded Billie.
+
+"It sounds to me like a Little Bo-Peep costume," put in Mary Price.
+
+"I think one should dress quite quietly on a camping party," observed
+Elinor Butler.
+
+Mr. Campbell seized his hat.
+
+"My only advice to you, ladies," he announced as he reached the door,
+"is to wear shoes that won't turn your ankles; skirts that give you
+plenty of leeway for climbing, and shirts that may be easily washed,
+because laundries are not abundant in those regions. As for hats," he
+finished, "you'll probably not wear any after the first day, even the
+latest thing from the Alps trimmed with the tail feather of a pheasant.
+As for colors, the first time you go camping you'll probably let your
+fancy run riot and wear Assyrian purple or crushed strawberry. But the
+next time, you'll pass right down the line until you get to brown,
+because you will know by that time that brown fades brown. If campers
+had been born wild animals instead of human beings, Nature would surely
+have provided them with brown coats for utilitarian as well as
+protective purposes."
+
+"I thought we could just wear old clothes," put in Mary Price,
+doubtfully. "I didn't know people had costumes made for camping."
+
+Mr. Campbell thrust his genial, handsome face back into the room.
+
+"Camping clothes are like bathing suits," he remarked. "After the first
+wetting or so, they all look alike."
+
+"I'm sure blue corduroy will last," cried Nancy. "The man at the store
+said it was unfadeable."
+
+"You mean that curly-haired clerk who wears the ruby scarf pin?"
+laughed Billie. "What's his name?"
+
+"Delosia Moxley," answered Elinor. "He is always giving Nancy pointers
+about the latest modes. He was responsible for that Spanish veil she
+would wear last winter----"
+
+"He was not," interrupted Nancy. "He merely told me they were the
+fashion in New York. I needn't have bought it if I hadn't wanted to."
+
+"I suppose he furnished that French lady's Alpine costume, too, didn't
+he, Nancy Bell?"
+
+Nancy smiled good-naturedly. She never really minded being teased about
+her elaborate taste in dress.
+
+"His taste is extremely good," she said. "He expects to run a millinery
+shop in a year or so. He says he can trim hats charmingly."
+
+"My word!" exclaimed Billie. "I suppose his mother will make your suit
+and he'll pin the feather on the hat, and between them they will equip
+you to climb the Adirondacks. But, oh, Nancy, I implore you to explain
+to Mrs. Moxley that hobbles don't go in the mountains."
+
+"She understands," replied Nancy with much dignity. "She is going to
+make me the very latest thing in mountain-climbing suits, and she gets
+all her fashions straight from New York."
+
+Her friends exchanged covert glances and said nothing. Nancy's
+conferences with Mrs. Moxley, the dressmaker, were a source of endless
+amusement to them. It was Mrs. Moxley who had made Nancy's graduating
+costume that June, and never had been seen on the platform of West Haven
+High School such a fashionable _toilette_. It had a hobble skirt and a
+fancy little train that flopped about Nancy's feet like a beaver's tail,
+and at the reception afterwards the boys had teased her until she left
+in tears.
+
+Two weeks had passed since graduation and our Motor Maids were just
+beginning to feel the results of their hard winter's work. It had been
+a tough pull to catch up with their classes after the return from
+Japan. There had been no gayeties for them during the Christmas
+holidays, only continuous hard study, and for weeks afterwards Billie
+and Nancy and Elinor were tutored every afternoon. Mary Price, the best
+student of the three, had outstripped them, and in the end had carried
+off first honors and a scholarship besides. But after the excitement of
+finals, the four friends had collapsed like pricked balloons. Billie,
+mortified at what she considered a weakness in her character, had not
+been able to throw off a deep cold contracted in the spring. Mary Price
+was limp and white; Elinor had grown mortally thin, and even Nancy had
+lost her roundness, and her usually plump face was peaked and pale.
+
+"My child needs mountain air!" said Mr. Campbell on one of his flying
+trips to West Haven. "She must not be in a hotel, and she must have her
+friends with her."
+
+With characteristic energy he had set to work to find a place somewhere
+in the mountains, and he had made three trips before he satisfied
+himself that "Sunrise Camp" in the Adirondacks, to let furnished, was
+exactly what he had been searching for. The owners had gone abroad and
+were glad to rent it at a low price.
+
+To "Sunrise Camp" therefore, after due preparation, Miss Helen Campbell,
+the Motor Maids and Mr. Campbell, who went up to install them, departed.
+At the station next day they found the "Comet," still attired in his
+blue suit acquired in Japan, in charge of a chauffeur from a nearby
+hotel. Along twenty-five miles of mountainous road the faithful car
+carried them, patiently climbing the last steep grade which led to a
+kind of shelf in the mountain whereon stood "Sunrise Camp."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE CAMP.
+
+
+"Hurrah!" cried Billie, trying to pretend that she was not at all tired
+after the interminable hot journey on the train and across the
+mountains.
+
+But her enthusiasm was not echoed by the others. Even Mr. Campbell, who
+always felt the heat, sat silent and dejected. Billie, however, usually
+endeavored to live up to her theories, and she had believed that pure
+mountain air would act as an instantaneous tonic on their jaded spirits.
+She was trying now to persuade herself that she was not hot and dusty
+and excessively weary.
+
+They had drawn up in front of a rustic hut built of logs with the bark
+left on. The roof had a graceful slant from the central peak, and over
+the gallery in front was another low-hanging roof like the visor of a
+cap. On one side of the camp, at no great distance from the house, a
+majestic army of pine trees had ranged itself in the manner of a silent
+and faithful guard. At the other side, the ledge sloped down in natural,
+uneven terraces to the valley far below. From the sleeping porches in
+the back could be seen a broad vista of low country encircled by a wall
+of mountains, now clothed in a mantle of purple shadows as the sun sank
+behind the crests of the opposite range. The air was hot and sweet and
+very dry, and the atmosphere vibrated with the hum of insects like the
+low, steady accompaniment of stringed instruments in a great orchestra.
+But at close view, it must be confessed, Nature was very dingy. The pine
+trees had a rusty look and the parched earth cried out for rain.
+
+"Well, ladies, we are here," remarked Mr. Campbell, "and I hope you'll
+find it to your several tastes."
+
+"I am sure we will," answered Mary politely, while the others moved in
+a silent procession toward the house.
+
+Miss Campbell was already wondering how long they could endure this
+crude and lonely existence a hundred miles from anywhere. The contagion
+of doubt had indeed spread like a plague over the entire company, and
+all for the want of a bath, a supper and a good night's rest.
+
+"Ah, here are Mr. and Mrs. Lupo," exclaimed Mr. Campbell in a tone of
+relief, as a man and woman approached down the gallery. "They are half
+Indians," he added in a low voice. "Mrs. Lupo will be cook and her
+husband, guide, protector and man of all work."
+
+Miss Campbell turned reproachful eyes upon her relative.
+
+So then they were to be left in charge of two half-breed Indians in this
+wild mountainous place, while he was away. Really, men were too
+incorrigible. But Mr. and Mrs. Lupo, at first glimpse, were far removed
+from savages. They were, apparently, like two shy, gentle animals with
+dark, shining eyes, and when they spoke, which was seldom, it was almost
+as if they had broken a vow of silence. Winter and summer they lived in
+these high places, and only occasionally did Mrs. Lupo descend to the
+valley to visit the little shops in the village and look upon the
+vanities of life.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Lupo," said Mr. Campbell, after shaking hands with the
+husband and wife and properly introducing them to the others, "I trust
+you have some food ready for a crowd of very hungry people. It was too
+hot this afternoon to be enthusiastic about lunch at the Valley Inn and
+hunger has overtaken us."
+
+Mrs. Lupo looked gravely from one face to another but said nothing.
+
+"Supper will be ready in fifteen minutes," answered her husband, and the
+strange pair promptly and quietly disappeared.
+
+"She reminds me," said Mary to Billie, "of one of those genii in fairy
+tales that appear when you want them and melt away when you have
+finished with them."
+
+"I wonder if she can cook," was Billie's unpoetic reply.
+
+During these brief moments they had lingered on the dusty gallery, and
+now Mr. Campbell, eager as a boy for their approval, led them through
+the broad opening into the only room of the camp, of which they had
+caught glimpses as they waited outside. But they were quite unprepared
+for its vast size, capped by the unceiled roof now fast filling with
+shadows.
+
+"Why, it's really grand," cried Miss Campbell, with a sudden spurt of
+enthusiasm. "It's like a cathedral."
+
+"Isn't it fine?" answered Mr. Campbell. "I think the primeval huts must
+have looked like this, and when it came time to build churches it wasn't
+a very far cry."
+
+"I expect Mr. Primeval Man would have been mighty glad to have had one
+of those nice Morris chairs," observed Billie.
+
+"It would have been good-by to cathedrals then," answered her father.
+"Mr. Primeval Man would have passed so much of his time in the easy
+chair that he would never have got beyond the age of dull-edged tools."
+
+And in this thoroughly modern primeval hut there were plenty of
+inducements to be lazy. Grouped about the stone chimney of an immense
+open fire-place were numerous easy chairs, and ranged against the dim
+confines of the walls were quite half a dozen cots to be used by people
+who might prefer to sleep indoors, Mr. Campbell explained.
+
+The heads of several deer with branching antlers looked down at them
+from the walls, and on the floor in front of the fire-place was
+stretched the skin of a great black bear.
+
+"Papa, I think it's really beautiful," exclaimed Billie, rubbing her
+cheek against her father's shoulder.
+
+"So do we all, Mr. Campbell," cried the other Motor Maids.
+
+"I am delighted and relieved," he answered, rubbing his hands together
+with pleasure over their pleasure. "Better introduce Cousin Helen to
+her--er bedroom now, and wash up before supper," he added, winking and
+grinning behind that little lady's back.
+
+Anybody would approve of the big room of the camp. It was indeed a
+splendid place, but how was Miss Campbell going to take to the
+dormitory? A flight of rustic steps at one end led to a gallery opening
+on this doubtful territory.
+
+"Oh, how delightful," cried Billie, rushing through the door with a
+great show of enthusiasm. "I have always wanted to sleep in the open and
+never had a chance except that one night on the plains. Remember, Cousin
+Helen? And how you did enjoy it, too!"
+
+"One night, yes, my dear, but this is for some sixty nights or more,"
+answered Miss Campbell, surveying a row of cots placed at intervals
+along the porch. "I never slept in the room with anybody in my life
+before."
+
+"But this is not sleeping in a room. This is sleeping in the world,
+under the great dome of heaven," exclaimed Billie, laughing uneasily.
+
+"If you want privacy, you can draw a veil," remarked Elinor, pointing to
+denim curtains on poles between some of the beds.
+
+"And be alone in the world, under the great dome of heaven? Never!"
+cried Miss Campbell. "But do we dress out here in sight of the entire
+range of mountains? I should feel that each mountain had an eye turned
+on me."
+
+"Really, cousin, you remind me of the old lady from Skye," ejaculated
+Billie:
+
+    "'There was an old lady from Skye
+    Who was so exceedingly shy,
+    When she undressed at night,
+    She put out the light,
+    For fear of the all-seeing eye.'"
+
+Miss Campbell so far forgot her objections as to burst out laughing,
+and she was still further placated by finding at one end of the porch a
+good-sized locker room, and adjoining that a bathroom.
+
+"The water comes from the top of the mountain," announced Billie. "It's
+just piped in and doesn't have to be pumped. Think of bathing in such
+clear pure water as that. Oh, I know camping like this will be perfect!"
+
+"It may and it may not be," observed Miss Campbell, bathing her hands
+and face in some of the crystal water. "Good heavens, what's that?" she
+demanded, startled by the sound of a bugle in the twilight stillness.
+The call was loud and clear, reverberating among the mountains and
+coming back to them in a softened, muffled echo.
+
+"That's Mr. Lupo blowing the supper horn," called Mr. Campbell from the
+sleeping porch below. Down they all filed and seated themselves anywhere
+around a long rustic table apparently loaded with food, for all the
+meal had been placed upon it regardless of ceremony, and people were
+expected to help themselves.
+
+"Fall to, fall to, ladies," said Mr. Campbell, serving slices of broiled
+ham until the pile of plates in front of him was reduced to one.
+
+"Let's introduce scientific management into this business," suggested
+Billie. "With one deft movement of the arm, I'll help each plate to
+creamed potatoes, passing them along in order to Nancy, who can dish out
+the baked omelette. While we are doing that Mary can serve the butter
+and Elinor can pass around the biscuits. There is no labor wasted and
+the food is distributed in the quickest possible time."
+
+"What shall I be doing?" asked Miss Campbell. "I don't see that I am
+being scientifically managed."
+
+"Yes you are," answered Mr. Campbell with a mischievous glance at the
+pretty little lady. "You are being scientifically managed by not being
+allowed to do anything."
+
+There was a chorus of drowsy, good-natured laughter. The leavening
+influence of food at a journey's end was already beginning to take
+effect. Presently Mr. Lupo came in with a tray of cups and saucers and a
+pot of steaming hot coffee, and Mrs. Lupo, silent and soft of foot,
+placed four tall wooden candlesticks on the table, the light from the
+tallow candles shedding a yellow glow on their faces.
+
+"Excuse me," said Mary, rising, after the hungry company had cleared up
+everything before them, "I want to go to the end of the room and see
+what we look like. I feel as if we were making a picture somebody ought
+to see. We are," she called presently from the far end of the vast
+apartment. "You've no idea how picturesque you look around that dark
+wooden table with those candles and the blue water pitcher and the
+pewter coffee pot."
+
+"And the empty omelette dish," called Billie.
+
+"And only one biscuit left," added Elinor.
+
+"I've no doubt Mr. Rembrandt would have painted us just so," said Mr.
+Campbell.
+
+"And called it 'The Guild of The Globe Trotters'," Miss Campbell was
+saying, when Mary gave a low exclamation of surprise. In order not to
+obstruct the beautiful view across the valley, the rustic porch had not
+been enclosed with screens, but the openings into the living room were
+screened, and, standing just outside the broad door, Mary saw a man
+peering into the room.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, "I am afraid I frightened you. I was lost
+on the side of the mountain, and when I saw the light in the camp I
+thought I would stop and ask the way."
+
+"Come in, won't you?" said Mr. Campbell hospitably. "Have you had your
+supper?"
+
+"I am afraid not," answered the stranger with a short laugh.
+
+"Mrs. Lupo, will you get this gentleman some supper?" called Mr.
+Campbell, while Miss Campbell, almost lost in one of the big chairs,
+was wondering if this were the etiquette of campers, and if they would
+be expected to take in strangers after Duncan had departed.
+
+"Sit down," went on the incorrigible Duncan. "We only arrived ourselves
+an hour ago, and we are hardly familiar with the house yet, but there is
+plenty of room. Won't you stop over night? My name is Campbell."
+
+"My name is St. Clair," answered the stranger. "I live in a place called
+West Haven. Ever hear of it?"
+
+"Percy St. Clair!" cried the girls and Miss Helen. "Where did you come
+from?"
+
+"The scheme worked pretty well, eh, Percy?" laughed Mr. Campbell, after
+the young man, their old friend and playmate, had shaken hands all
+around and insisted on hugging Miss Campbell. "I thought I would keep
+you as a surprise. Where's the motor cycle?"
+
+"It's outside. I walked it up the last climb."
+
+"Did you have any trouble finding the way?"
+
+"Considerable. That's why I'm so late. A fellow told me the wrong road,
+and I was lost for a while and had a foolish adventure besides."
+
+"What was it? What was it?" they demanded.
+
+Percy seated himself at the supper table, while Nancy poured out his
+coffee and Billie served him with ham and eggs.
+
+"Well, I asked a man the way and he said, 'Are you a doctor?' I said,
+'Not yet, but soon.' Then he showed me a road and told me there was a
+very sick woman in a house at the top, and would I call and see what
+could be done. You may imagine my feelings when I found that the road
+led straight to an old ruined hotel, and there wasn't a human being in
+it as far as I could see nor any sign of one. So I got on my cycle and
+went back down the mountain until I found a sign board that put me on
+the right track again. But it was queer, wasn't it, and rather uncanny,
+too."
+
+It was a strange experience, and after supper they sat under the stars
+discussing it until bedtime, and came to the conclusion that Percy had
+met a crazy man.
+
+Never had Miss Helen Campbell slept so well as she did that night on the
+sleeping porch. Toward morning there came a quiet life-giving rain that
+freshened the parched earth and brought out the pungency of the pine
+trees. Only Mary knew of the shower and of the soft wind that followed
+just before dawn, bearing with it the fragrance of the wet woods. Only
+Mary saw the miracle of the dawn; first the faint flush of pink; then a
+deep rosy blush; next, rays of orange and gold, and at last the sun
+bursting into view. It was Mary who softly let down the bamboo blinds to
+keep out the sunlight and who finally slipped back to bed and went to
+sleep with the songs of innumerable forest birds in her ears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+RULES AND REGULATIONS.
+
+
+At six o'clock they were awakened by a long, melodious trumpet call. The
+vigorous tripping melody drove the sleep from their brains like a dash
+of cold water. Billie found herself sitting up in bed humming:
+
+    "'Oh, come to the stable,
+    As soon as you're able
+    And feed the horses grain.
+    If you don't do it
+    The Captain will know it
+    And raise particular Cain.'"
+
+It was an energetic summons to rise and view a fresh and beautiful
+world, and Billie, glancing at her watch, was aware that, as a
+concession to new arrivals, the summons had come half an hour later
+than scheduled. Half-past five was to be the hour for rising in camp,
+provided the ladies were willing. And certainly they showed no signs of
+unwillingness at the six o'clock call. Miss Campbell glanced placidly
+down the line of white cots. Then she inhaled a breath of the delicious
+air.
+
+"In all my life I never slept as I did last night," she announced. "Did
+somebody put sleeping drops in my coffee, I wonder?"
+
+"I fancy the sleeping drops fell in the night in the form of showers,"
+observed Mary from her cot at the end of the line. "There was no storm,
+just one of those quiet steady rains, and I never saw people sleep so
+hard. I thought you were all dead until I heard Miss Campbell----" Mary
+paused and blushed. "That is, until I heard some one breathing very
+heavily."
+
+"Now, Mary Price, don't tell me you heard me snore. I never did such a
+thing in my life," cried Miss Campbell.
+
+With a laugh, Billie leapt from her bed and ran to take a cold plunge
+in the mountain water which gurgled from the faucet with the pleasant
+song it had not left off singing when it leaped out of the side of the
+rock into the pipe.
+
+At seven o'clock came the clarion call for breakfast: inviting and
+persuasive it was, with a lingering last note that fell softly on the
+ear and gradually died into discreet silence.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Mr. Lupo blows the horn with so much expression," said Elinor. "I
+really think he must have had long experience in summoning people to
+breakfast who were never ready. He'll be giving 'Weber's Invitation to
+the Dance' for dinner, I suppose."
+
+They had finished their morning toilets in the locker room, and were
+about to go downstairs when something tapped against one of the bamboo
+blinds. Billie promptly drew it up and looked into the clearing below.
+
+"Who's tapping at our chamber door?" she demanded.
+
+A long fishing pole on which dangled five little nosegays made of ferns
+and grasses and wild asters was thrust at her. "Why, Algernon Percival,"
+she called. "I never dreamed you were so energetic."
+
+"Not guilty," answered that young man's voice from the lower porch.
+"When the bugle sounded just now, I was taking a shower bath. I'm still
+busy, but it doesn't take long to get into camping clothes. Who is the
+only person we know who would get up at dawn and go tramping off for
+wild flowers?"
+
+A tall, lanky figure stepped out from the shadow of the gallery and
+lifted his handsome, thoughtful face up to the girls leaning over the
+railing.
+
+"Why, it's Ben Austen," they cried. "Dear old Ben, when did you come?"
+
+"Last night at ten o'clock," he answered. "The 'bus wouldn't come up
+from the village at that hour, so I walked. It was great. How are all of
+you?" he added, wiggling the nosegays in front of their noses.
+
+"We're as fine as silk," answered Billie, with a happy laugh. "And it's
+such fun that you and Percy are here. Papa kept it a secret so as to
+surprise us, I suppose."
+
+"I hope it's a pleasant surprise."
+
+"The jolliest kind," they cried, running downstairs at the second call
+to breakfast.
+
+Those of you who have read the first volume of this series, "The Motor
+Maids' School Days," will recall Percy St. Clair and Ben Austen, two
+West Haven boys who were great friends of the girls during that winter
+when Billie Campbell and her red car first made their appearance in the
+town. Percy, in the transition from boyhood to manhood, has changed
+very little. He is of medium height, and his handsome fair face still
+flushes like a schoolgirl's, to his great annoyance. Ben, at nineteen,
+is six feet tall. His face has developed since we knew him some years
+ago. His features are large and regular, his dark eyes filled with
+serious intent, and a mop of curly black hair covers his head like a
+thick cap.
+
+Downstairs they found Mr. Campbell pouring for himself a cup of coffee.
+The camp table was never to be set for breakfast, but the dishes were to
+be piled at one end and the food at the other, and each camper was to
+help himself to what he chose. There was a good deal of laughing and
+scrambling at this morning meal. It started everybody off in a good
+humor, and in time it became the hour for jokes and absurdities that
+will never die out as long as there are boys and girls enough to keep
+them alive.
+
+After they had disposed of quantities of very good food, at least it
+seemed good to mountain appetites, Mr. Campbell took a sheet of letter
+paper from his pocket and rapped for quiet.
+
+"Young people, I want to read you a few rules which must be obeyed if
+camp is to be run on a military basis, the only way a camp can be
+successfully conducted. Here they are:
+
+"'RULES FOR SUNRISE CAMP.
+
+"'Unless physically unable, all persons must appear at breakfast
+promptly at six-thirty. Penalty for not appearing--general housework
+for a day.
+
+"'Every camper, except Captain Helen E. Campbell, must make his own
+bed and keep his part of the dormitory in first rate order.
+
+"'There will be inspection twice a week by Captain H. E. Campbell.'"
+
+Miss Campbell bowed her head in acknowledgment of the honor.
+
+"'Dinner at twelve-thirty, unless picnics interfere.
+
+"'Supper at six.
+
+"'SUB-RULES FOR WOMEN MEMBERS.
+
+"'Females unattended or with each other are expressly forbidden to
+wander off bounds; that is, off the three trails which pass near
+this camp.
+
+"'Picnics are forbidden without male attendants.'"
+
+"Dear me," interrupted Billie, "aren't there any laws for the men to
+follow? These are all against women."
+
+"They are merely for your protection, my dear."
+
+"That's what the men always say when they begin to trample on women's
+rights," declared Billie.
+
+"All right, Miss Suffragette, just wait a minute. There'll be a few for
+the men.
+
+"'SUB-RULES FOR WOMEN MEMBERS--Continued.
+
+"'Hobble skirts are forbidden.'" Mr. Campbell gave a jovial wink and
+glanced at Nancy.
+
+"'Any individual who introduces a Parisian Alpine climbing suit into
+camp must pay the penalty by being made to climb a mountain in it.'"
+
+"Now, you know that's not on the list. You're making it up," exclaimed
+Nancy, blushing.
+
+"'The tail feather of a pheasant is not recommended as trimming for a
+camp hat,'" he went on blandly.
+
+"'No woman member is permitted to wear a lavender silk polonaise with
+lace ruffles.'"
+
+"Polonaise?" cried Miss Campbell. "What on earth are you talking
+about, Duncan? Do you mean negligee?"
+
+"Oh, excuse my ignorance. I thought it was called polonaise," he
+answered humbly.
+
+"Polonaise," exclaimed the little lady, amid a wild whoop of laughter.
+"It's a good thing you brought your daughter to a woman member to have
+her education finished. Goodness me!"
+
+"Dearest Papa," said Billie, kissing him, "don't you wear negligee
+shirts most all the time? It's the same thing."
+
+"I thought all ladies wore polonaises," insisted Mr. Campbell. "It
+certainly was the fashion in my youth, at any rate."
+
+"Fashions change with the times and manners, my boy," said Miss
+Campbell. "But do give us the rules for the men of this household before
+you forget it."
+
+"'SUB-RULES FOR MEN MEMBERS.
+
+"'Men are required to look after the wants of the ladies and see that
+they obey their set of rules to the letter.'"
+
+"And is that all?" demanded the women members with a great show of
+indignation. "Why, we have no rights at all and they have everything!"
+
+"No indeed, children," answered Mr. Campbell. "When a man is required to
+look after the wants of five ladies, he at once gives up all rights of
+his own and becomes a slave. There is no need of making any more rules
+for the men, but there is one more rule for general obedience.
+
+"'All questions and disputes arising shall be settled by Helen Eustace
+Campbell, Captain of Sunrise Camp.'"
+
+"Three cheers for Captain Campbell," cried Percy.
+
+Miss Campbell rose and lifted her little crinkled hand for silence.
+
+"I accept the responsibility of Sunrise Camp," she said, "under the
+conditions I am about to state: that I am not asked to go canoeing in
+one of those tippy little boats without seats; that I am not persuaded
+against my better judgment to climb to the top of a mountain, for I
+simply won't, I tell you beforehand; and that nothing shall interfere
+with my afternoon nap."
+
+"I am sure that these mild requests will be agreeable to all concerned,"
+said Mr. Campbell. "Will the company state objections, if any?"
+
+There was a dead silence.
+
+"Captain Campbell, consider yourself installed as absolute ruler in this
+camp."
+
+"Papa, why be so businesslike?" asked Billie.
+
+"Because there must always be a certain amount of system in a camp or it
+won't run. I've lived in camp so much more than in houses that I know,
+and since I can't be with you until later, I think it wise to get things
+started in this way before I go----"
+
+"The car is ready, sir," said the village chauffeur at the door.
+
+The Motor Maids had begun to learn by this time that it was invariably
+Mr. Campbell's way to leave his guests in a cheerful frame of mind, and
+they all knew perfectly well that "Rules for Sunrise Camp" had been
+prepared chiefly for Billie's sake, that she would be still laughing
+when her father kissed her good-by and still smiling when he turned to
+wave his hat for the last time. She had been very homesick for him
+lately during his absences from West Haven, perhaps because she had been
+run down in health and tired out. And to-day, in spite of all the
+laughing and joking, her eyes filled with tears as she watched the car
+creep down the mountain road to the valley.
+
+For a little while the camp seemed lonely and remote.
+
+"The truth is," thought Mary, wandering down the path to look at the
+view, "Mr. Campbell is so splendid that when he goes away he always
+leaves a big empty space that doesn't seem to fill up. And Billie is
+just like him. Nobody ever could fill the emptiness she would leave."
+
+As if drawn by these loyal and devoted thoughts, Billie had followed
+Mary, and the two girls stood with clasped hands watching the distant
+motor, now a black speck in the valley.
+
+"Dearest, dearest Papa," exclaimed Billie under her breath, as the tears
+welled into her eyes and slipped down her cheeks.
+
+Mary pressed close to her side with silent sympathy.
+
+Presently Billie wiped her eyes and began to smile.
+
+"Don't tell on me, Mary dear. I'm just like a foolish little girl. But I
+do love Papa so, and sometimes I can't bear to have him leave me. Then I
+wish I had been born his twin brother and we never could be separated."
+
+Mary was about to dispute this argument on the grounds that marriage
+would have separated them, when they noticed coming up the steep road a
+small bony horse drawing a little cart. A girl was walking at one side,
+holding the reins. She wore a broad-brimmed jimmy hat and an old gingham
+dress faded to a soft mellowed pink. The two girls watched her with
+admiration as she swung along the road, swaying slightly at the waist
+like one who had adopted the easiest way of walking up hill. They were
+so intent upon her that they hardly noticed the blackberries and
+vegetables in the back of the cart.
+
+Presently the girl paused and turned her beautiful dark blue eyes on
+them without any embarrassment.
+
+"Want to buy any vegetables?" she asked.
+
+"Perhaps they will up at the camp," said Billie. "Ask Mrs. Lupo."
+
+The mountain girl looked at her strangely and shook her head.
+
+"Do you know Mrs. Lupo?" asked Billie.
+
+"Yes, but I will not ask her."
+
+"Very well, I'll buy something myself. What have you got?"
+
+"Blackberries, onions and beets."
+
+Billie bought a pail of berries.
+
+"You had better come up to the camp and let me empty them," she said.
+
+"Keep the pail," answered the mountain girl, and swung on up the road,
+flicking the little old horse with a long switch.
+
+Billie and Mary followed with the berries, which they presently left in
+the kitchen where Mrs. Lupo was working.
+
+"I bought these from a mountain girl, Mrs. Lupo," said Billie.
+
+The woman went on working without looking up. Billie repeated what she
+had said. There was still no answer, and the girls went out of the
+kitchen somewhat disconcerted.
+
+"She's a queer, shy creature," said Billie, and thought no more about
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+TABLE TOP.
+
+
+Miss Campbell was quite willing to trust her brood with Ben Austen.
+
+"He was always reliable," she remarked. "When he was a baby, his mother
+could depend on him not to cry at the wrong time, although, of course,
+he was only human."
+
+On the whole, she was relieved that her cousin had asked Ben to make
+them a visit. Mr. Lupo was all very well and had guided their walking
+parties up the trails, or, seated beside Billie in the "Comet," had
+pointed out good roads for motoring; but Miss Campbell did not consider
+him as entirely to be trusted, because, as you probably recall, she
+never liked mixed bloods nor mixed colors, either.
+
+Some days after their arrival, when they had quite recovered from that
+unconquerable disposition to sleep, which always attacks lowlanders
+visiting the mountains, Billie proposed that they take a walking trip
+across a tableland which separated their mountain from the one behind,
+and finally scale the peak beyond, where the view, it was said, was
+magnificent.
+
+"Let's go to-day while the spirit moves us and it's so delightfully
+cool," she suggested at breakfast.
+
+"But Mr. Lupo isn't here," objected Miss Campbell. "He's gone to the
+village."
+
+"We know the way, don't we, Ben? Mr. Lupo showed us the trail yesterday.
+Most of it goes through the woods. It's only two miles across 'Table
+Top' and then we get to the other mountain. I'm wild to go. I'm
+beginning to feel shut in, and I want to see what's on the other side of
+this Chinese wall."
+
+"More Chinese walls," observed Ben gravely.
+
+"Mr. Lupo is such a restraining influence," put in Nancy. "When he's
+along, we have no real conversation."
+
+"He is a kind of a wet blanket," observed Percy. "You never know whether
+he has heard you or not. You generally have a feeling he has, but that
+your remarks are too trivial for comment."
+
+"All of which means," said Miss Campbell, "that you want to go off for
+the day without a guide."
+
+"Please, Cousin Helen," pleaded Billie.
+
+"Dear Miss Campbell, won't you let us?" cried the other Motor Maids.
+
+"Not because that feather-top Percy is with you, but because Ben is
+here, I suppose I might as well consent," said Miss Campbell.
+
+"Old Ben is just as much of a feather-top as I am, Miss Campbell,"
+protested Percy. "He deceives people because he looks like an Indian.
+I've got a serious mind underneath all this curl and color."
+
+"I don't believe it," answered Miss Campbell. "But I wouldn't have you
+changed, my boy. I like you as you are."
+
+After this two-sided compliment, they took it for granted that consent
+had been given and Billie rushed off to see Mrs. Lupo about the lunch.
+
+They had come to learn during that first week in camp that Mrs. Lupo was
+a law unto herself. For one thing, the blackberries that Billie had
+purchased of the mountain girl had never come to the table, although the
+girls kept looking for them to appear in the form of a cobbler or a
+roly-poly pudding. What had become of them they never learned, but
+Billie had an uncomfortable suspicion that they had been tossed into the
+garbage pail.
+
+"We can't do anything about it, my dear," Miss Campbell had informed
+Billie. "The woman certainly holds us in the hollow of her hand unless
+we want to do our own cooking."
+
+Billie smiled. Miss Campbell was never known to boil a kettleful of
+water, let alone cook a meal. If there was any culinary work to be done
+the Motor Maids would do it, and Miss Campbell might possibly arrange
+the salt cellars or offer to go over the silver with a polishing cloth.
+
+Mrs. Lupo dumbly acquiesced to the lunch.
+
+"We will be glad to make the sandwiches, Mrs. Lupo," said Billie
+timidly. "Please let us have some cold meat. I suppose there is plenty
+of bread? Will you hard-boil a dozen eggs?"
+
+Mrs. Lupo rarely replied to any question addressed to her, but she went
+about getting the things for the lunch and Billie breathed a sigh of
+silent thanks.
+
+"It's really terrible to be a slave to one's cook," she thought. "But I
+know perfectly well that if I ever tried to subjugate Mrs. Lupo I'd get
+mad, and she would just fold her tent like the Arab and silently steal
+away, and one morning there would be no breakfast."
+
+Billie had tried several methods with Mrs. Lupo. She had said good
+morning with a polite smile, but received no response. Once she had
+added:
+
+"How do you feel this morning, Mrs. Lupo?"
+
+A dead silence had followed this courteous inquiry.
+
+"Wires crossed," Percy had cried. "Try again, Central."
+
+They had all laughed at this witticism and Billie had hoped Mrs. Lupo
+had not understood.
+
+"If you had lived in the mountains all your life I guess you wouldn't be
+very communicative, either," she had admonished Percy, after Mrs. Lupo
+had glided noiselessly out of the room.
+
+"I guess I wouldn't miss a call," answered Percy. "If there was any one
+to call, I wouldn't hang up the receiver."
+
+There were times, however, when Billie could scarcely conceal her
+irritation, and this morning nothing went quite as she had planned.
+
+There was only enough bread for a dozen sandwiches and there were only
+six eggs.
+
+"But I said a dozen eggs, Mrs. Lupo," she said, after she had sliced and
+buttered the bread and glancing up saw six eggs cooling in a pan. "You
+know we are going to take a long walk across Table Top to Indian Head."
+
+The silence was profound.
+
+"And we need more bread. Will you get me another loaf, please?"
+
+No reply. Mrs. Lupo was quietly stringing beans on a bench by the door
+of the lean-to which served the camp as a kitchen.
+
+"Did you hear what I asked?" demanded Billie.
+
+Nancy and Mary, placing ham between the slices of bread, looked up
+quickly, half amused and half frightened.
+
+"Did you hear me ask you a question, Mrs. Lupo?" repeated Billie,
+exasperated beyond endurance.
+
+Mrs. Lupo went on stringing beans.
+
+Brandishing the long carving knife, Billie went over and stood in front
+of the strange woman. Percy, peeping through the half open door, was
+grinning, and Nancy stifled a giggle.
+
+"When I speak to you I expect an answer, Mrs. Lupo," said Billie, trying
+to keep her voice smooth and even. "Now, answer me at once."
+
+Mrs. Lupo looked up mildly surprised.
+
+"There ain't no more bread and there ain't no more eggs," she said, in a
+voice that sounded like an echo.
+
+Billie went back to her work without a word, and later, when they had
+started on the walk with the small allowance of lunch packed in a candy
+box, Percy teased her and called her the javelin thrower.
+
+"I _was_ almost tempted to pitch it at her," said Billie. "She is the
+most aggravating human being I ever saw. I'll certainly never address
+another word to her, but it's so hard to remember not to be agreeable."
+
+The placid depths of Billie's amiable nature had been so stirred by the
+incident that it took her some time to calm down, and she went blindly
+along the trail following Ben without seeing anything or anybody.
+
+"Don't let her jar you, Billie," said Ben, soothingly. "If you want to
+forget your troubles, just have a look at Nancy-Bell. She looks like a
+fashion plate lady standing on the top of Mont Blanc."
+
+Nancy had disappeared just when they were ready to start and kept them
+waiting fifteen minutes, which had also served to aggravate Billie's
+ruffled temper.
+
+"Goodness me," exclaimed Billie, laughing, "the child has put on her new
+walking costume made by Delosia Moxley's mother! When the climbing part
+comes, what will she do, Ben?"
+
+Ben shook his head doubtfully.
+
+"How do you like it, Billie dear?" asked Nancy in a honeyed tone,
+noticing her friend's backward glances.
+
+"It's awfully pretty, Nancy. Lovely color, but----"
+
+"You see, the skirt's quite broad," interrupted Nancy, anticipating
+objections and endeavoring to spread the skirt to the full limit of its
+yard and a quarter.
+
+"Just about as broad as one trouser leg," teased Ben.
+
+Nancy ignored the remark, and the pheasant's feather in her hat seemed
+to quiver with indignation.
+
+"Where's the crook?" asked Mary politely.
+
+"I'm her crook," put in Percy. "You'll find she'll be using me as a
+staff presently when she has to take a step six inches instead of five."
+
+"We'll be carrying her yet," Ben predicted.
+
+"I think you are all perfectly horrid," ejaculated Nancy, who indeed
+looked as pretty as a picture in the blue velveteen. There was the coral
+tie at her throat, as she had planned, and perched on her curls was the
+jauntiest little hat imaginable that served only to keep the sun off
+the top of her head and was no protection whatever to her tip-tilted
+freckled nose. Mary and Elinor wore jimmies bought in the village, and
+Billie wore no hat at all.
+
+"No, we aren't, Nancy dear. We're just teasing," said Billie. "You look
+sweet, but why have you never worn it before?"
+
+"To tell the truth, I was afraid of the scorn of Mr. Lupo," said Nancy.
+"All of you are just like a family, so it didn't matter, but Mr. Lupo
+might have thought me, well--an amateur. I've been dying to wear it,"
+she added, giving a dance step and looking down with pride at the
+snug-fitting skirt. "Of course, I know the skirt is a bit narrow. You
+know how Mrs. Moxley is,--just determined to have her own way. It was
+all I could do to get her to put the extra quarter of a yard in the
+skirt. But I think I can manage it if we don't walk too fast. There is
+so much level ground on this walk, too,--all that table land, you know."
+
+Ben gave a covert smile and the others laughed openly.
+
+"You funny child," said Billie. "It's really beautiful to see a person
+enjoy clothes like that. You look sweet enough to charm a snake, and if
+the walking is too stiff, we'll just carry you."
+
+"So far so good," said Ben, "but on the other side of Table Top there'll
+be some climb."
+
+Nancy did not hear this prediction.
+
+So far, indeed, the trail was a broad and honest path leading through
+the pine forest; but after a while, as it descended toward the
+tableland, it grew so narrow as to be imperceptible to everybody but
+Ben, whose eyes, trained by long months of camping and vacation walking
+trips, could pick out the faintest indication of a path where the others
+saw nothing at all.
+
+It was well past noon when at last they arrived at a scooped out area of
+land between the two mountains, connecting them half way to their
+summit, like the web foot of a duck.
+
+Here, hungry and tired, they paused for lunch, and somehow, two
+sandwiches and a boiled egg apiece didn't seem to go very far.
+
+"I have to apologize," said Billie. "There was nothing in the camp to
+eat. I suppose that's why Mr. Lupo made his mysterious visit to the
+village: to get supplies."
+
+"I'm thankful it's all gone and there is no more," announced Percy.
+"It's something less to carry," he added, tying a cord around Nancy's
+coat and his own and hanging them over his back like a peddler's pack.
+
+"Be still," whispered Elinor, raising a warning hand, "I was certain I
+heard music off in that direction."
+
+The six friends sat silently listening for strains of music. In the
+stillness of the forest they heard nothing but the songs of the birds,
+broken occasionally by the caw of a crow or the tapping of a woodpecker.
+But it was good to stop chattering for a while in this peaceful place,
+and Billie, lying on her back looking up into the interlacing branches
+of the trees, smiled happily.
+
+How could she have been out of humor when just at their very doorstep
+lay the most wonderful enchanted forest? It would not be easy to recall
+silly domestic troubles in the midst of all this beauty.
+
+"Curious. I was certain I heard the sound of some instrument like a
+mandolin or a zither," said Elinor. "It was just one strain, almost as
+if the wind had blown over an aeolian harp."
+
+"It was fairy music," put in Mary.
+
+"Like enough," said Ben; "and we had better be moving on," he added,
+rising and leading the way. "The fairies don't like human ears to hear
+their music and they might be playing tricks on us. Then we'd be in the
+deuce of a fix out in the wilderness."
+
+"They don't mind at all," said Mary. "You're entirely mistaken, Ben. You
+are thinking of elves. The fairies are kind little people who never harm
+anyone."
+
+They had been walking for some time when they heard cries behind them.
+
+"Help! Help!" screamed the voice of Nancy from around a curve in the
+trail.
+
+"What did I tell you," said Ben, running back with the others to see
+what had happened, and then bursting into a perfect roar of laughter.
+
+There was Percy in the act of killing a long black snake, which was
+curled up with head thrust out in an attitude of defence, and there was
+Nancy, who had evidently started to run and, missing the trail, had
+rushed into a tall clump of bramble bushes. The brambles had wrapped
+themselves about her like the tentacles of an octopus, and the jaunty
+feather was caught in an overhanging branch.
+
+"Don't kill the snake, Percy," objected Ben. "There are lots more just
+like him, and it won't help any to kill one. Besides, they never start a
+quarrel."
+
+"All right, old S. P. C. A.," said Percy, as relieved as the snake,
+which immediately glided off into the bushes as if it had actually
+understood that Ben was making a plea for its life.
+
+With subdued giggles they released Nancy from the clutches of the
+brambles. The feather was broken in half and dragged dejectedly over the
+crown of her hat, and there was a long scratch across her left cheek.
+
+"Do you remember Jim Phipps in the Fourth Grade, Ben," began Percy,
+pointing to Nancy's hat. "Do you remember the poem called 'Absalom' he
+recited? That is, he began it but he never got any farther than the
+first line, because he started out by saying, 'Abalsom, my son
+Abalsom.'"
+
+The laugh was against Nancy, but she took it good-naturedly and joined
+in, while she broke the feather in half and left the lower end standing
+up in the band in a straight cockade.
+
+And now the path, although it was on level ground, seemed to grow more
+and more difficult. Ben, glancing behind him, doubtfully remarked:
+
+"As long as there are only two miles of this, I suppose we can stand it,
+but if any person feels tired, sing out and we'll start back without
+trying to make Indian Head."
+
+"We are all right," they assured him.
+
+For a long time they walked on in silence. The ground was soft and
+squashy under foot, and Billie privately believed that the trail lay
+only in Ben's imagination.
+
+"Ben," she said at last. "I think maybe we had better start back. We
+don't seem to be getting anywhere, and this ground is like a sponge."
+
+Silently they turned their faces in the other direction, feeling all at
+once chilled and tired and hungry. Ben, leading the way with Billie,
+began to look serious.
+
+"Billie," he said in a low voice after a while, "I am afraid I am not
+worthy the confidence Miss Campbell has placed in me. I am afraid I'll
+have to confess that we are lost."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+IN THE BOG.
+
+
+It was not an unique experience to Billie to be lost. She had once known
+what it was to be out of sight of every human habitation on a Western
+plain, and furthermore half dead with hunger and thirst. You will recall
+how the "Comet" once carried the Motor Maids safely over an old wagon
+trail through a tropical forest in Florida, and perhaps also you have
+not forgotten how Billie and Mary Price were lost in the sacred groves
+of Nikko in Japan. Therefore, Billie was not in the least frightened
+when Ben confided to her private ear that he had missed the trail.
+
+"We can't be very much lost," she answered. "'Table Top' is only two
+miles broad, and we'll have to reach one side or the other pretty soon."
+
+"I hope so," said Ben, "but don't tell the others yet. If they lose
+confidence in me, it will only make matters worse. I wasn't prepared for
+this bog. I should think Mr. Lupo might have mentioned it."
+
+"There couldn't be a trail through a bog anyhow, could there?"
+
+"Sometimes there is. I've seen a swamp with just a narrow path running
+through it. But a swamp path is the sneakiest kind of a trail. It hides
+itself wherever it can under tall grasses and bushes. Of course, Mr.
+Lupo didn't know we were going, or he would certainly have stopped us,
+but do you suppose Mrs. Lupo understood we were taking this particular
+trail?"
+
+"She certainly did. I told her myself just before I drew the knife on
+her."
+
+Ben smiled at the mental picture of Billie brandishing a carving knife.
+
+"Hey, Ben," called Percy. "Is this a trail? I think it's a channel. I'm
+up to my knees."
+
+Ben made no reply. He was deeply mortified, and hung his head with a
+kind of animal-like humiliation.
+
+"What's the matter, old man?" demanded Percy, putting his arm
+affectionately on his friend's shoulder. "You look like my collie did
+when I caught him sucking eggs."
+
+"I've missed the trail," Ben burst out with a choke in his voice.
+
+The others had gathered around now. Their shoes were wet, their
+stockings torn with brambles, and their skirts splattered and stained
+with grasses and the juices of wild berries. But they were a valiant
+little company, even Mary Price, the weakest and frailest among them,
+and the sight of Ben's unhappiness and remorse only added to their
+courage.
+
+"It's all right, Ben," said Elinor. "We'll find the trail again. We're
+obliged to. There is the mountain right over there. Why not walk until
+we get to it?"
+
+"I'm afraid it looks nearer than it is," said Ben, "and besides, it's
+not Sunrise Mountain. It's Indian Head. I thought some time ago we were
+getting well away from it, but these infernal bogs are so deceiving."
+
+"I move we start on," put in Billie, briskly. "We're obliged to get
+somewhere some time."
+
+"I'll put it to the vote, then," announced Ben. "Shall we go toward
+Indian Head or Sunrise? We are nearer to Indian Head, and we may strike
+a farm and hire a horse and wagon to take us home."
+
+This seemed a good suggestion, and they accordingly turned their faces
+toward the mountain, the rugged outline of which resembled the profile
+of an Indian.
+
+Anything to get on solid dry land again was the unspoken thought of the
+six friends. Once on dry surfaces and out of the level treacherous
+monotony of the bog, they felt they might be equal to anything. For
+nearly two hours they worked their way through the morass without
+making any apparent progress toward the mountain. And now the sun was
+sinking behind the Western range. Ben watched the lessening rays with
+feelings very much like despair.
+
+"If I had been alone or with some of the fellows it wouldn't have
+mattered," he thought, "but with the girls----"
+
+In a little while Table Top took on the appearance of a vast plain shut
+in by high walls. It was a weird, lonely place.
+
+"It reminds me of the Valley of the Shadow of Death in 'Pilgrim's
+Progress'," Mary whispered to Ben, who was helping her over the rough,
+uneven ground. "Don't you remember the Wilderness that Christian had to
+pass through before he reached the Celestial City?"
+
+"I'm afraid I never read 'Pilgrim's Progress'," Ben confessed in
+grief-stricken tones, "but I can see what you mean, and the white mist
+that's rolling in looks like a troop of spirits."
+
+"Would any person or persons care to hear me sing some cheerful ditty?"
+asked Percy, and he forthwith began to sing in a rollicking tenor voice:
+
+    "'It was a robber's daughter and her name was Alice Brown;
+    Her father was the terror of a small Italian town,
+    Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing,
+    But it isn't of her parents that I'm going for to sing.
+
+    "'As Alice was a-sitting at her window sill one day,
+    A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way,
+    She cast her eyes upon him and he looked so good and true
+    That she thought, "I could be happy with a gentleman like you."'"
+
+"Help! Help!" screamed Nancy. "Oh, Ben, Oh, Percy, Oh, Billie, save me!"
+
+"What is the matter?" they cried.
+
+"Don't come near me," she interrupted. "Don't, don't! Keep away. They'll
+kill you, too."
+
+Nancy was jumping up and down in a perfect agony of fear, wringing her
+hands one moment and tearing at her skirts the next.
+
+"It's a hornet's nest," exclaimed Ben. "Keep still, Nancy. Don't run.
+They won't sting you if you are perfectly still."
+
+But it was needless to tell Nancy not to run. What with her narrow skirt
+and the spongy ground she could scarcely walk.
+
+"There are dozens of them crawling inside my skirt," she sobbed, "and
+you tell me to keep still."
+
+"Don't be frightened, Nancy-Bell. I'll stand with you," announced Percy,
+boldly offering himself as a sacrifice to hornets, as he drew Nancy's
+arm through his.
+
+"Come on, hornets," he cried. "Sting a man. Don't attack a helpless
+girl."
+
+The others could not keep from laughing at the picture of Nancy and
+Percy standing arm in arm in the wilderness.
+
+"You remind me of a bridal couple walking up the aisle," exclaimed
+Billie. But Nancy was too frightened to withdraw her arm from Percy's
+even at this witticism. She leaned on him in an attitude of relief and
+extreme confidence.
+
+"Didn't I tell you I would be her staff before the day was over?" he
+remarked with a grin.
+
+"I've been stung in a dozen different places," sobbed Nancy.
+
+"Stand still," ordered Ben. "They will leave you and go back to their
+nest if you are quiet."
+
+And as he had predicted, the hornets did leave off their attack and
+return to their home, but not until Percy had been stung several times
+without a murmur. For the sake of Nancy Brown, he would voluntarily have
+stepped into any number of hornets' nests.
+
+At last the procession started on. In the misty twilight, they were a
+company of gray shadows moving silently along. When people are lost,
+really and unquestionably lost, their true natures rise to the surface:
+if there is any selfishness hidden away, it develops into complainings
+and reproaches; the faint-hearted make unhappy predictions; the lazy
+ones get tired before they have any right to. Ben had always admired the
+Motor Maids, but never more than now when he saw them quiet and
+courageous in the face of a night in the swamp. Nancy might shriek over
+hornets and snakes, but she would never confess to being tired or
+frightened. Not once had they complained or reproached him, and now when
+the will-o'-the-wisps began their ghostly dance through the mists, and
+the great wall of mountain loomed up in front of them black and
+threatening, it seemed to poor Ben that it would make it easier for him
+to bear his sorrows if some one would only make one little complaint.
+
+It was Mary who gave out first. She was just sinking to her knees when
+Billie called out cheerfully:
+
+"I see a light and it's not a will-o'-the-wisp."
+
+There indeed was a light sending out a kindly beam in the darkness, and
+while they watched it, it went out.
+
+"Listen," exclaimed Elinor, "I hear the music again." There came to them
+the sweet fairy notes of the zither.
+
+"Halloo!" called Ben again and again, and presently the others joined in
+the chorus.
+
+"What is it?" answered a voice quite near, and a figure bounded toward
+them through the mists.
+
+"We have been lost," answered Ben. "Do you think you could let these
+young ladies rest in your cabin while we get a vehicle and drive them
+home?"
+
+"Yes," answered the voice, and Billie then recognized the mountain girl
+who had sold them the blackberries that Mrs. Lupo had pitched out.
+
+[Illustration: After a stiff climb up a rocky path, they reached a
+little cabin.--Page 77.]
+
+"Come this way," she added, and they presently realized they were on
+rising ground and that the morass with its glimmering will-o'-the-wisps
+and its floating veils of thin mist was now well below them. After a
+stiff climb up a rocky path they reached a little cabin built in a
+clearing, commanding a wide vista of the treacherous Table Top and the
+mountains beyond. At the door of the cabin sat the zither player, his
+hands traveling aimlessly over the strings while he listened to the
+approaching footsteps.
+
+"Father," called the girl, "visitors!"
+
+"Eh? Eh?" answered the man. "Physicians, with medicines? Will they save
+her? Come in! Come in!"
+
+They filed slowly into the cabin wondering what sort of a person it was
+sitting in the darkness and calling for physicians. The girl struck a
+match and lighted two candles, and at least three of the visitors
+noticed that the candlesticks were of silver, tall and graceful in
+design, and as bright as rubbing could make them.
+
+The father like the daughter was tall and slender, with the same dark
+blue eyes, although his had a strange unseeing look in them. His hair
+was very thick and almost white, his frame spare to emaciation, but he
+carried himself erect and his shoulders were broad and well developed.
+
+"Make a fire, father," the girl ordered, and he obediently left the
+room, presently returning with an armful of wood.
+
+Oh, the joy of sinking to the floor in front of that warm blaze! Ben
+consulted with the girl at the door of the cabin, and the strange
+father, rubbing his hands and smiling absently, remarked with an accent
+that was very different from Mr. Lupo's or any of the natives
+thereabouts:
+
+"Not half bad, this fire, eh? Rather cheerful on a dull night."
+
+Presently his daughter began preparing supper on a little wood stove in
+the lean-to back of the house. Swiftly and silently, with Ben's
+assistance, she made coffee, scrambled eggs and fried bacon.
+
+"You may set the table," she said to Percy, pointing to some shelves at
+one end of the cabin.
+
+Percy obediently placed on the plain deal table six blue plates, nicked
+and cracked in a dozen places, but undoubtedly of Canton; also in a tin
+box he found knives and forks and spoons, all shining as brightly as the
+candlesticks, and, he felt perfectly certain, all of silver. It was
+necessary to revive Mary with some hot coffee before she could eat a
+mouthful, and after she had taken a little food, Ben hoisted her in his
+arms and carried her into a small adjoining room where he laid her on a
+cot; all this under the supervision of the young mistress of the cabin.
+
+There was no attempt at conversation while they satisfied their ravenous
+appetites, but later, when the wanderers had risen and Billie was
+consulting with Ben and Percy what was best to do, the father pointed to
+Nancy sitting in the darkest corner of the room in a small huddled heap.
+
+"Rosalind has come out of the Forest of Arden," he said.
+
+All eyes were turned on Nancy who shrank into the shadow. Suddenly
+Percy seized one of the tall candlesticks and held it over her head.
+
+"Why, Nancy-Bell," he cried, "what has happened to your----"
+
+Nancy spread her hands over her lap and turned her large blue eyes to
+them with a piteous expression.
+
+"I took it off and threw it away in the swamp," she said tremulously. "I
+did hate the thing so, and it was full of hornets and not big enough to
+take a decent step in anyhow. I hoped no one would notice."
+
+They were tired, but not too tired to laugh.
+
+"If I had been dying, I should have died laughing," Billie often
+afterwards remarked in telling of this incident.
+
+Nancy, minus her narrow velveteen skirt, was really a beguiling figure
+in blue pongee knickerbockers. The straight velveteen jacket reached
+just below her waist, and with her rumpled curls and weary expression
+she might easily have been taken for Rosalind, just arrived at the
+Forest of Arden with Celia and Touchstone.
+
+But the wonder of it was how a half-crazed mountaineer could know
+anything about the greatest comedy in the world. This did not trouble
+them until afterwards, however.
+
+"Billie," observed Ben presently, "I've been consulting with--with this
+young lady here. She knows the trail through the swamp and has consented
+to guide me back to the camp to-night. We may be able to make it in less
+than two hours by a short cut, she says, and we ought to start at once.
+Miss Campbell will be half wild with uneasiness. As soon as it's
+daylight, I'll come back by the road in the 'Comet.' There are some
+bearskins and blankets. You can all put up here for the night. Percy
+will stay of course."
+
+"But isn't that a great deal to ask of you, to take that long trip
+to-night?" asked Billie gratefully, turning to the girl.
+
+"It is nothing," she answered shortly and set about lighting a lantern.
+Then she beckoned to Ben and they silently left the cabin.
+
+In a few moments, the father, who had been smoking a pipe at the cabin
+door, took one of the silver candlesticks from the mantel.
+
+"Good night," he said courteously. "I trust you will have a pleasant
+rest after your journey. I presume you have been shown your rooms?"
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Percy.
+
+The man paused at the door of his bedroom at the other side of the
+cabin.
+
+"I trust the physician will come soon," he said. "With luck he may reach
+there before I do."
+
+"That's the man who sent me to the old ruined hotel," whispered Percy.
+"He's certainly touched, but he's harmless."
+
+They found two steamer rugs and several blankets in a heap on a bench,
+left there by the mountain girl for their comfort; and it was not long
+before they lay in a circle around the fire, sound asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE DOCTOR.
+
+
+After the young people had departed on the morning of that eventful day,
+Miss Helen Campbell settled herself in a hammock on the upper porch with
+a novel and two new magazines. She loved the "children," as she called
+them, and the sound of their voices and laughter was as music to her
+ears, but occasionally she enjoyed a peaceful morning to herself without
+any chatter to disturb her quietude.
+
+Who would have imagined as she sat there idly swinging in the hammock,
+that the dainty little lady was all the way to sixty years old? Her eyes
+were as blandly blue and clear as a child's; her complexion had never
+lost its peach blossom glow, and the fine network of wrinkles around her
+eyes and at the corners of her mouth was only faintly visible.
+
+"But I'm getting old," she thought. "Those long trips have rejuvenated
+my spirits but my body is tired. I haven't the physique for adventuring
+any longer. I don't think I could stand a shock of any kind, great or
+small."
+
+Her thoughts broke off at this point and she idly touched the railing of
+the porch with one of her little feet and set the hammock to a gentle
+motion like a rocking cradle.
+
+"No, I shall not put myself in the way of shocks. I am glad we are not
+touring this summer; just taking life peacefully----"
+
+Again her thoughts broke off. Her eyes wandered across the wide vista of
+valley flanked by a range of mountains. The landscape was flecked by
+great shadows cast by lazily moving ribbons of cloud. The foliage of the
+trees and the undergrowth on the opposite mountains were like rugs of
+velvet. One might imagine a gigantic figure stretched out on the soft
+green patches of forest. There were no harsh outlines to the mountains.
+Their rugged edges were veiled and softened by the shadows of the
+passing clouds. Miss Campbell closed her eyes.
+
+"Life is very pleasant," she thought, "even at sixty."
+
+After a long dreamy period as untroubled as a summer sea, some instinct
+compelled her to open her eyes, and she found herself looking straight
+into the eyes of Mrs. Lupo who was standing at the foot of the hammock.
+Mrs. Lupo held her hands behind her back. Miss Campbell noticed at once
+that the woman's expression had changed. She had lost that look of a shy
+gentle animal. Her eyes had narrowed into little slits and her upper lip
+was drawn back showing an even row of glistening teeth. Without taking
+her eyes off Mrs. Lupo's, Miss Campbell sat up very straight and stiff.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" she demanded, always holding the woman's gaze
+with hers.
+
+Mrs. Lupo moved a step nearer, still with her hands behind her back.
+
+"Stand where you are," ordered Miss Campbell, fired with superhuman
+courage and never once shifting her gaze. "Stand where you are," she
+repeated. There was not a tremor in her voice. "Now, give me what you
+are hiding behind you."
+
+For at least a moment the two women stood looking at each other. If Miss
+Campbell had flinched, there is no telling what the half-savage
+creature, insane with rage, might have done.
+
+And even now, with a swift movement, Mrs. Lupo brandished a long carving
+knife in Miss Campbell's face.
+
+"Drop that instantly," thundered Miss Campbell in a voice that did not
+seem to be her own.
+
+But the force of her splendid will and courage struck home. The carving
+knife slipped from Mrs. Lupo's hand and stood upright between them in
+the board floor of the porch.
+
+"Get down on your knees," ordered Miss Campbell, and all this time she
+had never taken her eyes off Mrs. Lupo's.
+
+The knife was still swaying on the point of its blade, as the woman sank
+to the floor in a quivering, sobbing heap.
+
+"What do you mean by coming to me like this?" demanded Miss Campbell.
+
+"Your daughter, she try cut my throat this morning with same. I take
+revenge," answered Mrs. Lupo between her sobs.
+
+"Nonsense! Absurd!"
+
+"She have dislike me from first," went on Mrs. Lupo, who seemed to
+eliminate all articles from her conversation. "She joke at me. She buy
+berries of girl I hate."
+
+Miss Campbell leaned against the rail and watched the woman crouched at
+her feet like a whipped dog. Only an instant did she allow the thought
+to come to her that she was alone in camp with a half-crazed savage.
+
+"She is a very weak, pitiable object," she said to herself. "I must
+manage her and I shall. I am not afraid."
+
+Suddenly she leaned over and put her hand very softly on the woman's
+shoulder.
+
+"I am so sorry for you," she said. "Won't you let me help you? I think
+you are much too fine and capable to fly into rages like this. What is
+the reason of it?"
+
+"Not know," answered Mrs. Lupo. "When they come, I see red. I wish to
+break up--kill."
+
+"Do you love your husband?"
+
+"Yes," answered the other with so much eloquence of expression that Miss
+Campbell knew she spoke the truth.
+
+"And he loves you?"
+
+"He loves me, but not so much. He leaves me for long time,--alone."
+
+"Has he ever seen you in a rage?"
+
+"Yes," answered Mrs. Lupo in a low voice, her head sinking on her
+breast.
+
+"Of course, then, that is why he leaves you. Men like gentleness in a
+woman. A violent-tempered wife never keeps her husband's love. If you
+were gentle and quiet, your husband would take you with him to the
+village. But you are jealous and uncontrolled. You make a spectacle of
+yourself and of him. You look very ugly as you looked a while ago, like
+an angry animal instead of a handsome young woman. Try being gentle and
+always looking pretty and see how it works."
+
+Mrs. Lupo looked up. Miss Campbell had captured her interest and she was
+listening to that sage spinster's advice with entire attention.
+
+"You think me handsome woman?"
+
+"Very, when you are in a good temper."
+
+"Suppose I can't keep back anger?"
+
+"The next time your eyes see red, make a little prayer. It will always
+be answered."
+
+"To Christ?" asked Mrs. Lupo, who had been to a mission school as a
+girl.
+
+"Yes, to Christ, who never spoke a harsh word even when He was struck
+in the face and spit upon and finally nailed to a cross."
+
+"What shall I say?" asked the other, as interested as a child.
+
+"When you feel the rage coming on, say over and over: 'Oh, Christ, take
+my anger from me and make me gentle and kind.'"
+
+Mrs. Lupo repeated the prayer several times.
+
+"And it will come true?" she asked.
+
+"Always, always. Try it and see."
+
+At last the half-breed rose to her feet. The knife stood upright between
+them swaying on its blade.
+
+"You forgive?" she asked.
+
+"I forgive."
+
+"I will go away. I am afraid yet when the daughter comes. There is still
+hate here," she pointed to her temples. "But it will be gone if I stay
+away. When Lupo goes to village he stays long time. It is better for me
+not to see him when he comes back. Until I learn, I will not see him no
+more. Good-by. I'm thankful to you."
+
+Mrs. Lupo departed, leaving the knife where it had fallen. It was on the
+tip of Miss Campbell's tongue to say:
+
+"You must not leave me alone." But she checked herself. She doubted if
+she could exert her will another time like that. Already beads of
+perspiration stood out on her brows. A feeling of extreme lassitude
+crept over her and she slipped back into the hammock with a sensation of
+nausea. Then unconsciousness bound her with invisible cords and the
+brave little woman fainted dead away.
+
+As Mrs. Lupo turned into the gallery, she glanced back but she only saw
+the train of Miss Campbell's white wrapper fluttering from the hammock
+in the breeze.
+
+There had been several loud raps downstairs, but to Miss Campbell,
+fighting her way slowly back to consciousness, it sounded hundreds of
+miles away, like spirit rapping; or perhaps it was the pounding of her
+own pulses. A man entered the living room. He was of medium height and
+spare with a lean brown face, and he was dressed as men usually dress
+for walking trips, in knickerbockers, heavy shoes laced well up the leg,
+a gray flannel shirt open at the neck with a brown silk tie. He wore a
+pith helmet; on his back was strapped a flat knapsack, and he carried a
+cane and a telescope. As he hurried through the living room, he tossed
+his helmet into a chair. There was a bald spot on his head fringed with
+reddish hair turning gray. His features were distinguished and because
+of a certain dignity with which he carried himself, a certain air of
+command and confidence, people were apt to wonder who he was.
+
+"It was upstairs, I am certain," the visitor remarked to himself,
+glancing into the empty kitchen and then mounting the rustic steps to
+the upper sleeping porch. With quick, comprehensive eyes he took in the
+five white cots standing in a row, on the porch the group of wicker
+chairs, the murderous looking knife, swaying on the tip of its shining
+blade, and lastly the high-backed canvas sleeping hammock from which
+trailed the train of a white muslin dress.
+
+"Whew!" he exclaimed, under his breath.
+
+For a moment it looked as if something unspeakably dreadful had happened
+that beautiful morning, and his fears were not set at rest even when he
+bounded past the knife and stood leaning over Miss Campbell's half
+conscious form.
+
+"Water," she gasped faintly.
+
+"I wonder if there's a bathroom," he thought, running along the porch to
+the nearest door after the one leading to the passage. "Of course they
+always have them in these so-called camps," he added, catching the flash
+of a porcelain tub beyond. In another moment he had wet Miss Campbell's
+lips from a glass of water and was dabbing her temples with the end of
+a wet towel. "Better now?" he asked, as she opened her heavenly blue
+eyes.
+
+She nodded with a faint smile and closed them again.
+
+"Curious how a doctor is always finding work to do even in the
+wilderness," he thought, feeling Miss Helen's pulse. With an
+exclamation, he hurried back to the bathroom, and among a perfect army
+of tooth powder and talcum powder boxes,--"enough for half a dozen
+people," he thought,--he spied a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia.
+He mixed a dose in the glass with professional dexterity and hurried
+back.
+
+"Just as well I happened along," he thought, moistening her lips with
+the mixture. "That does the trick," he added, as she presently opened
+her eyes again and swallowed a little of the ammonia and water.
+
+The white, pinched look left her face, the color crept back to her
+cheeks, and she gave a sigh of relief as she shifted her position in
+the hammock.
+
+"My pillows?" she asked, feeling for the pillows which he had slipped
+from under her head to the floor.
+
+"Better lie flat for a while," he ordered in a tone of authority. "I
+wonder where her people are?" the doctor added to himself, glancing
+again at the five cot beds. Then he drew up a chair and watched Miss
+Helen Campbell as she dropped into a doze.
+
+In a little while she exclaimed in a much stronger tone of voice:
+
+"Please take me out of this wobbly thing; I want to lie on my own bed."
+The walking-doctor promptly lifted her in his arms like a little child
+and deposited her on one of the cots. Her hands were cold, and he
+covered her with a Roman blanket that lay on the foot of the bed. Then
+he found two hot water bottles, marched down stairs, heated a kettle of
+water on the kerosene stove, searched for beef tea in the ice chest and
+by good luck found half a jar. With the water bottles at her feet and a
+little beef tea to nourish her, Miss Campbell at last fell into a deep
+sleep, while the doctor, sitting near at hand, read one of the magazines
+and, occasionally tip-toeing to her bedside, listened to her breathing
+and felt her pulse.
+
+Toward late afternoon, he descended into the lower regions of the log
+house and foraged for food. He found crackers and cheese, a tin of beans
+and a bottle of ginger ale. Having refreshed himself, he was about to
+return to his patient when Mr. Lupo staggered into the kitchen with a
+market basket on his arm.
+
+"Where is my wife?" he asked in a thick voice.
+
+"She is not here and you'd better go, too, quick," answered the doctor.
+
+Mr. Lupo looked at him with an ugly expression, his eyes narrowing, as
+his wife's had done when she had approached Miss Campbell with the
+carving knife.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked.
+
+"I am a doctor."
+
+"Has anything happened? My wife, she is crazy when she is mad. Is that
+the reason why she ran away?"
+
+"Does your wife flourish carving knives?"
+
+Mr. Lupo retreated with a terrified expression.
+
+"She has--?" he was too frightened to finish.
+
+"No," replied the doctor. "The lady was too strong for her here." He
+touched his forehead with his finger.
+
+"She was not touched--the lady?"
+
+"No, but she has collapsed from fright,--she is very ill,--I could not
+answer for her recovery if you gave her another shock."
+
+Without a word, Mr. Lupo rushed out of doors, jumped into a rickety
+wagon drawn by an old mountain-climbing horse and in another instant was
+clattering down the road.
+
+Toward evening Miss Campbell grew stronger. The doctor raised her head
+and fed her by the spoonful a cup of malted milk, also found in the ice
+chest.
+
+"Billie?" she said.
+
+"That's my name," answered the doctor. "William for long."
+
+"Nice boy," she added, patting him on the shoulder, with a very small
+limp hand. "Have the children got back?"
+
+"They will be here pretty soon, now," he answered, frowning and glancing
+at his watch.
+
+"Ben is a safe guide. They are safe with him. Wake me when they arrive,"
+and turning over on her side, Miss Campbell went back to sleep.
+
+Occasionally the doctor scanned the side of the mountain with his
+telescope.
+
+"The children are taking a long time," he said to himself. "They had
+better look alive, if they want to make it before nightfall."
+
+But night fell and there was no sign of the wanderers. The doctor lit a
+cigar and watched the shadows creep up the side of the mountains. He
+listened to the last twittering of the birds and then a silence,
+profound and deep, settled on the camp.
+
+Again he descended to the living room of the camp now in darkness.
+Presently he lighted the green shaded lamp and two lanterns, hanging one
+at the front of the house and the other at the back. He unpacked the
+market basket and cooked himself some supper, and finally with a glass
+of milk and a slice of bread for Miss Campbell when she waked, returned
+to the upper sleeping porch.
+
+"A telescope is an excellent thing," he observed, settling himself in a
+steamer chair, a lamp on the floor beside him with a tin protector to
+keep draughts from the flame. "I saw the woman plainly enough
+flourishing the carving knife. It must have been sheer force of will on
+the part of this little lady that made her drop it."
+
+And now the darkness had indeed fallen, a black, impenetrable curtain.
+Only the outline of the opposite range could be seen. It seemed to have
+closed in on the camp, and like a gigantic wall, to shut it off from the
+outer world. An owl hooted in a tree not far away and from a cleft in
+the mountains came the weird song of the whippoorwill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PHOEBE.
+
+
+Fate had chosen a very simple way of bringing about events of great
+importance to persons in this history. A doctor off on a walking trip
+had idly lifted his telescope to scan the village in the valley. As he
+swept his glass over the country, it had brought near to him glimpses of
+white farmhouses, men working in the fields and then looming quite close
+and unexpectedly large to his eye, a woman brandishing a long knife over
+the head of a person in white.
+
+The doctor lost no time in idle speculation.
+
+"It's in that camp on the lower ledge," he said to himself as he dashed
+down the path, and in some twenty minutes or more entered the living
+room of Sunrise Camp.
+
+It is not pleasant to think of what might have happened to Miss Helen
+Campbell if the doctor's alert, intelligent eyes had not caught and
+instantly comprehended the significance of the picture brought to him by
+the telescope. How long might she have lain there unconscious, or how
+dealt with the half-intoxicated Lupo if he had mounted the steps in
+search of his wife? Then, as the hours slipped on and no human soul came
+near to minister to her and comfort her, and she had finally realized
+that her young people had never returned, how would she have endured
+that second shock?
+
+Fate had brought the doctor in the nick of time to perform an
+inestimable service to the Motor Maids and to all those who knew and
+loved Miss Helen Campbell.
+
+And through this service to the friends of Miss Campbell, another was to
+follow,--one filled with danger and interest, which would require all
+the skill of his profession.
+
+About ten o'clock Miss Campbell awoke, refreshed and rested. She took
+the milk and bread with an appetite. Then she examined the stranger at
+her bedside with some curiosity.
+
+"I suppose they sent for you from the village?" she asked.
+
+"I happened to be nearer than that," he answered.
+
+Memory was returning by slow degrees.
+
+"I had a shock of some sort; or was it a fall? I remember fainting and
+the next thing I recall was aromatic ammonia and you." The doctor
+smiled. "I suppose they are all in bed now. They were too tired to sit
+up."
+
+"It was so late, you see," he said apologetically.
+
+"They needn't have left me this enormous porch to myself. I know they
+will hate sleeping down there. Can't Billie come and speak to me?"
+
+"I am afraid he's sound asleep by now."
+
+"He?" ejaculated the patient. "But, of course, how could you be expected
+to know my young cousin by name. She is the tall girl with the gray
+eyes. I think she is beautiful. Perhaps you might not--but you would--"
+
+The doctor started. He had heard a stealthy step on the porch below.
+
+"You will not think me impertinent if I ask you not to talk?" he said.
+"Just a few more hours' quiet and you'll be quite fit. I'm going to
+leave you a moment."
+
+Miss Campbell gave him a good natured smile. She liked his fine face and
+his clear brown eyes.
+
+"Very well, doctor," she said. "I see you know your business. I'll be
+obedient."
+
+Taking the lamp he went downstairs.
+
+It could hardly be the gray-eyed Billie and her friends returning, he
+argued. They would never come creeping back in that stealthy manner.
+
+"Well, who is it?" he called in a low voice.
+
+Mrs. Lupo came out of the shadows and stood before him.
+
+"Lady going die?" she asked in a terrified whisper.
+
+"Pretty ill, but she's coming around."
+
+The woman looked vastly relieved.
+
+"Young lady know?"
+
+"She has never come back."
+
+Mrs. Lupo raised both hands in a gesture of despair.
+
+"The marsh--I never told--I'm wicked woman!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Good heavens!" said the doctor, "you mean to say you sent them through
+that bog? It's full of suck holes. You have done enough wickedness for
+one day. Where is your husband? Hurry up, quick. Wake up the villagers.
+Get lanterns. Go find them!"
+
+Mrs. Lupo seized a lantern from the gallery.
+
+"I go myself," she said, and disappeared. All that night Mrs. Lupo
+searched Table Top. She knew the trail as intimately as the mountain
+girl, but at dawn she had found nothing. But as the light spread over
+the marsh, she saw something lying on the very edge of the most
+dangerous quicksand in the place. It was Nancy's hobble skirt.
+
+"Oh, oh!" groaned the poor woman over and over with a kind of savage
+chant. "Oh, oh! I'm punished now."
+
+Rolling the skirt into a bundle she turned her face from Sunrise Camp
+and disappeared in the pine forests.
+
+About an hour after Mrs. Lupo had left the camp, the doctor heard the
+noise of hurrying footsteps on the gallery at the front and hastening
+downstairs he found Ben Austen and his guide.
+
+"Miss Campbell--how has she stood it? Is she all right?" demanded Ben
+breathlessly.
+
+"Not so loud," answered the doctor. Then he told Ben in a few words what
+had happened. "She doesn't even know you have been lost," he said.
+
+While the two men were talking together in whispers, the girl looked
+about her with much curiosity. Was she in a palace? The high roof, the
+rugs and chairs were things new to her. And this was called a "camp"!
+What was the inside of a real house like, she wondered.
+
+"That virago!" she heard Ben say. "No wonder she drives Lupo to drink.
+This young lady here has saved us all and guided me back through the
+swamp." He indicated the barefooted girl. "I suppose we would have been
+there yet if she hadn't heard us call."
+
+"You must sit down," said the doctor kindly. "I'll just have a look at
+my patient and then help this young man get some supper. Your name
+is--?"
+
+"Phoebe," she answered, shrinking with shyness.
+
+"Phoebe what?"
+
+"I have no other name."
+
+Phoebe had been accustomed all her life to the courtesy and gentleness
+of one man, her father. The few others she had known were rough
+mountaineers, and here was she, barefooted and ragged, treated like a
+princess by two men.
+
+While the doctor fried ham and eggs, the staple of every camp, Ben made
+a pot of tea, and presently drew up a table in front of her and placed
+on it a tray set as neatly as he knew how. Phoebe watched the
+proceedings with wide frightened eyes. She tried to hide her bare feet
+under her ragged dress and to draw down the sleeves over her hands,
+brown and stained with blackberry juice. Later, when they had made her a
+bed on one of the divans and left her to sleep until daylight, she was
+too bewildered to say good-night.
+
+All her life Phoebe had lived in the little mountain cabin. She had
+never known a mother and she had never had a friend. Her father had
+taught her many things, however, and one was to read from the books on
+the shelf. There were several books on astronomy; Pilgrim's Progress;
+the Bible; a volume of Shakespeare; a history of England; a translation
+of the "Iliad", and some volumes of poetry:--Keats, Tennyson and
+Browning. Where her father had got these books and the silver and the
+blue china, she knew no more than he. He had tried and tried to
+remember, but he had forgotten. He had no identity, no past. His name,
+his family, everything connected with his early life had gone. His past
+life had stopped when he had gone for a physician. He had taught his
+little girl to read, as we have said, and when old enough she had often
+read aloud in the long winter evenings. He had seemed to listen with
+absorbed interest, but it is difficult to say how much he grasped of the
+words he heard, or whether they were mere words to him with no
+collective significance.
+
+With a certain instinct left to him from that mysterious dead past, he
+had imparted to his daughter an unmistakable refinement of speech and
+manner. About some things he was even fastidious,--her way of eating,
+the appearance of the table and the silver. He himself was excessively
+neat and orderly and had periods of great industry, weaving baskets of
+sweet grass and carving wood, not crudely, but with unusual taste, boxes
+and chalets, napkin rings and figures of animals. Where he had learned
+these arts his daughter never knew, but she imagined from an old Indian
+who had lived in the little cabin in the early days and had died when
+Phoebe was still quite small. As far as a man may be sane whose memory
+extends back only some eighteen years and who has only one illusion,
+Phoebe's father was sane. The baskets and woodcarving he and his
+daughter peddled through the country with success, because they were
+exceedingly well done, and the money earned was sufficient for their
+small needs.
+
+Too excited from the unusual events of the night to sleep, Phoebe lay on
+the divan in the living room and reviewed the mysteries that filled her
+life. She had a strange smattering of knowledge for a girl of eighteen.
+It would seem that she had been gifted with a memory for two since her
+father had none, and whatever she learned from the row of books on the
+shelves she remembered. That is, whatever interested her.
+
+She knew the constellations and the planets, and on summer nights had
+located them in the heavens by means of the book chart. She would point
+them out to her father, who glanced at them vaguely, smiled and went on
+playing the zither, his consolation in idle moments.
+
+She had read and re-read the history of England so many times that some
+of the chapters she could repeat word for word. She understood little of
+the poetry, but the rhythm of the lines sang in her head, and without
+knowing the meaning she could repeat in a sing-song voice long poems and
+sonnets. "Pilgrim's Progress" and the "Iliad" and the New Testament with
+the Psalms were her solace on the long winter evenings. One after the
+other she read them with unending pleasure. She would read slowly so as
+not to finish too soon, as a child nibbles at her sweet cake to make it
+last the longer, and having finished one volume she would take up
+another with all the eagerness of one about to plunge into a new book.
+Just how much she had gained from the teachings of Christ was hidden
+deep in her own soul, but we will find later that Phoebe had learned a
+secret which those who have had the advantage of broad education have
+often passed by.
+
+When at last the first pipings of the birds came to herald the dawn, she
+rose and went out to the gallery. The last star was fading into the
+grayness of the sky and already morning was at hand. In the growing
+light it might be seen that Phoebe had an unusually beautiful face. Her
+eyes, of very dark blue, were almost black at times; her reddish brown
+hair, coiled into a thick knot on her neck, grew low on her forehead.
+Her features were well molded, her mouth fine and strong, and a full,
+rounded chin added sweetness to her expression.
+
+Standing in the very spot where she had first seen Billie and Mary, she
+turned her face toward the east and watched for the sun.
+
+"I believe my prayers are answered," she said.
+
+Some twenty minutes later, seated by Ben in the motor car, she guided
+him along a mountain road, which led at last to a point near her
+father's cabin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE GYPSY COOKS.
+
+
+"Dearest Papa:" (wrote Billie) "Cousin Helen has entirely recovered from
+her fright,--anger she calls it. She is not afraid of either of the
+Lupos, although the dent in the plank where the knife was still standing
+when we finally did get home will always make me feel trembly. Dr. Hume
+is making us a visit. Cousin Helen will not hear of his leaving us. She
+says she will certainly have another attack of heart failure if he goes
+away, but that it's of a different variety from the last. I think we all
+have a touch of that kind of heart disease as a matter of fact, boys and
+girls. He is a wonderful man and has taken us on some beautiful walks
+over the mountain. Nancy and Percy always stay behind with Cousin Helen,
+and we are finally beginning to understand that it's as much preference
+as self-denial. Nancy and I are doing the cooking with some help from
+Ben and Dr. Hume. It's great fun. We cook on a camp fire outside and not
+on that wretched little stove, which is like a bad child and never
+behaves when it is expected to. Ben and Percy wash the dishes. Thank
+heavens for that. I could never make a living as a scullery maid. It's a
+dog's life. Elinor and Mary make up our cots and keep things tidy. It is
+really and truly camping now, and such a relief not to have those Lupos.
+But there is trouble about the laundry. Nobody in these high places will
+stoop to wash clothes. If you could send us up a strong, fearless girl,
+it doesn't matter how little she knows, it would be fine. We want her
+strong to scour pans and wash clothes, and fearless enough to be left at
+the camp alone when we all go off in the 'Comet' on a picnic.
+
+"The mountain girl who saved us is named Phoebe. Her father is not
+insane, but he has no memory. His accent might be English. At any rate
+it's better than ours. Nobody on the mountain knows anything about them.
+An old Indian brought them to the cabin when Phoebe was a baby and took
+care of them both for several years. The people call the man 'Frenchy,'
+why I'm sure I can't imagine, perhaps because he seems foreign. He does
+really beautiful wood carving and basket weaving and he seemed quite
+pleased over getting orders from us. We all of us want to do something
+for Phoebe but she is not the kind you can approach easily. I would not
+dare even offer her a pair of shoes, and she's generally barefooted.
+Cousin Helen thought perhaps she might like to work for us, but I would
+as soon think of asking our dear cousin herself. I'm the best coffee
+maker in the compound and I've learned by the cookbook how to poach
+eggs, after breaking six to get the hang of it. Dr. Hume knows a Scotch
+dish that's a dream and so easy to make. Nancy and I are going to give
+them a surprise. It's 'Mock Duck,' made of beefsteak stuffed with many
+things, and then rolled up like a mummy and tied with strings. We shall
+roast it over hot embers on a spit Ben has rigged up, with a thing he
+calls a 'gutter' to catch the juices. Good-by, dearest Papa. Don't
+forget the strong, fearless girl.
+
+                                Your devoted daughter,
+                                                          Billie."
+
+In due time a telegram was telephoned from the railroad station to the
+nearest hotel and from thence to the postoffice in the village at the
+foot of Sunrise Mountain. Here it was written down on a scrap of paper
+and in the course of events reached Billie Campbell. It said:
+
+"Meet Alberdina, fearless Swiss-German. 4.30 train Saturday. Father."
+
+Ben brought the message with the evening mail Friday afternoon while
+Nancy and Billie, much heated and excited, were in the act of cooking
+the mock duck.
+
+"What are you roasting? An Indian papoose?" he demanded, after they had
+laughed over the name of the new, fearless maid.
+
+The spurious fowl made of a large flat piece of meat stuffed out to
+plump proportions and tied at each end did resemble a fat little Indian
+baby.
+
+"Don't worry us," exclaimed Nancy. "We have enough to bother us now. The
+potatoes are taking forever to cook and the beans are almost done."
+
+"The onions are just as bad," put in Billie.
+
+"Why don't you put the onions and potatoes in the same pot with the
+beans? Maybe it will bring them luck," suggested Ben.
+
+"Do you think it would affect the flavor?" Billie asked eagerly.
+
+But Nancy, of a more adventurous spirit in cooking, recklessly dumped
+all the vegetables together into one pot and set it on the kerosene
+stove, which had been carried out by the ever-useful Ben and placed at
+no great distance from the open fire.
+
+Percy came up just then.
+
+"How are the Gypsy cooks? Is the pot boiling? What's that thing that
+looks like a pig in a blanket? Or is this a cannibal feast?"
+
+"Run away, Algernon Percival, and don't ask so many questions," replied
+Billie, stirring the pot.
+
+"I've brought the dinner horn along," said Percy in an insinuating tone
+of voice.
+
+Even the Gypsy cooks laughed at this. Percy was the last person to rise
+in the morning. He usually appeared with the coffee and eggs, but the
+moment he waked up, he seized the trumpet from a nail in the wall at the
+side of his bed and blew a long triumphant aria with variations. Then
+from the camp fire at a safe distance from the log hut would come shouts
+of derision from the others who had been up quite an hour. The table had
+been carried out under the trees, and here in the early morning they had
+their breakfast. Here also, they had their supper if it was ready
+before dark and there were no lights to attract the myriads of
+night-flying insects. But it did look this evening as if they would be
+obliged to transfer all dishes and stools, table and eatables into the
+house, unless the potatoes and onions could be impressed with the
+importance of submitting to the inevitable.
+
+Dr. Hume, just in from a long walk, tired and mortally hungry, now made
+his appearance, and Miss Helen Campbell in dainty white, and without any
+traces whatever of her recent experience with Mrs. Lupo, came trailing
+across the clearing. There was an expectant expression on her face, as
+of one who is thinking with inward pleasure of dinner. Elinor came with
+a bowl of Michaelmas daisies and Mary brought up the procession,
+carrying a platter of bread sliced so as not to destroy the shape of the
+loaf, an accomplishment she was proud of.
+
+Percy, seeing the gathering of the company, promptly lifted the trumpet
+to his lips and blew a blast so startling and unexpected that Mary gave
+a nervous shriek and dropped the bread to the ground.
+
+"Oh, you wretch," she cried, "see what you have done! And what was the
+use anyway, since dinner isn't ready and we are all here?"
+
+"Don't be so hasty in your judgments, Lady Mary," answered Percy,
+composedly gathering up the slices of bread. "That was a song of joy
+because a beautiful damozel approached with bread for the hungry."
+
+"Hungry?" repeated Miss Campbell, watching, unmoved, the process of
+shaking the pine needles from the bread. "Starving, rather. If I don't
+have my dinner in a minute, I shall be light enough to float away like a
+thistledown."
+
+"Who said starving?" cried Dr. Hume, joining the circle. "If there were
+a stronger word, I'd use it."
+
+"Famished?" suggested Ben.
+
+"Perishing for want of food," added Elinor.
+
+Nancy and Billie exchanged glances of dismay and Billie impotently
+poked the pot of vegetables with a long peeled wand.
+
+"What's that thing that looks like an emigrant's roll?" demanded the
+doctor.
+
+"It won't explode, I hope," remarked Miss Campbell, noticing that the
+roll of meat seemed to be bursting its bonds in the process of roasting.
+
+"Poor thing, it does seem to be suffering," said Dr. Hume gravely.
+"There is some enlargement taking place in its internal organs, due to
+heat expansion, I judge."
+
+"I guess that animal, whatever it is, feels something like an early
+Christian martyr," put in Percy.
+
+"What is the creature?" inquired Miss Campbell, raising her tortoise
+shell lorgnette in order the better to see the writhing form over the
+flames.
+
+"It's a duck," answered Billie, desperately stirring the kettle of
+vegetables.
+
+"Duck?" they shouted in a loud chorus.
+
+"There never was a duck on land or sea that looked like that."
+
+"Where are its legs?"
+
+"Was it a winged duck?"
+
+"Perhaps it's a species of wingless, legless mountain duck, unknown to
+low countries?"
+
+"Well, if you must know," cried Billie, now very hot and red over the
+fire, and wishing devoutly that that brutally truthful speech about
+watched pots had never been made, "if you demand the truth, it's mock
+duck----"
+
+"It sounds like the name of a Chinese laundry-man," put in Percy.
+
+"Made by a famous Southern recipe. We didn't know it would take so long
+to cook." She was ashamed to mention the potatoes and onions. "If you
+are all so famished, you might start on the bread and butter."
+
+Instantly they gathered around the table and Percy passed around the
+bread tray. From bread they turned to the salad of tomatoes and
+cucumbers. Lettuce did not seem to flourish in that country. They drank
+the ginger ale and ate all the olives, and still the spurious fowl
+remained a mockery to cooks. It sent forth rivulets of juices and made a
+great to do over the fire, like people who are all promises and talk and
+no action, but it would not get done. Then the doctor slipped away and
+presently returned with his contribution to the supper. He had made it
+in the morning and it had been standing in the ice chest all day.
+
+"I thought we might help this so as there would be no delays after we
+had dispatched that talkative fat person in the blanket," he said. "I
+hope you will like it. My mother used to call it 'piddling.' It was a
+wash-day dessert and we always had it Mondays, made from Sunday's cake."
+
+Elinor busied herself serving the wash-day dessert into china saucers.
+It was made of slices of cake soaked in fruit juice and spread with jam.
+
+"When there is cream in the house, it adds of course," observed the
+doctor with some pride over his success as a cook.
+
+"The flavor's delicious," observed Miss Campbell, testing a small piece
+daintily on the edge of her spoon.
+
+"It's bully," exclaimed Ben.
+
+The doctor was really vain over his efforts.
+
+"And I made it from memory," he informed them, "without any recipe. I
+call that pretty good for a first attempt."
+
+They wondered if he had ever done anything in his profession that gave
+him as much childish delight as making this simple dessert of his
+boyhood.
+
+After a brief silence, broken only by the tinkle of spoons against
+saucers, the campers around the table glanced at each other guiltily.
+Except for the portions reserved for the two cooks, there was not a
+crumb of piddling left.
+
+"Better hide the plates and cover the dish," said the doctor in a
+conspirator's whisper. "It's enough to provoke them into a mutiny. Time
+enough to break the news after they have eaten their mock turtle."
+
+"Duck," choked Percy.
+
+But the Gypsy cooks had noticed nothing. They were too absorbed with
+straining the beans and the onions now cooked to shreds, from the
+adamantine potatoes. The cooked vegetables they arranged in the bottom
+of a large meat platter as a becoming bed for the mock duck which
+Billie, with mingled feelings of fear and triumph, now prepared to loose
+from his fastenings with a long fork and the historic carving knife. But
+Mock Duck to the end was a rogue and a trickster. The poor little cook
+had just loosened him from the spit and was holding him precariously on
+the prong of a fork, when he gave a malicious leap into the air and
+plunged into the very centre of the hot embers. Instantly a circle of
+flames rose high about him and the air was charged with the fumes of
+burning flesh.
+
+"Oh, oh!" shrieked Billie. "Help! Help!"
+
+They did what they could to save the remnants of Mock Duck. Ben singed
+his eyebrows in an effort to spear him on a fork and raise him from his
+fiery bed. They were all very quick but the flames were quicker, and
+when at last Mock Duck was lifted from the embers his form was no longer
+recognizable and the surface of his outer covering was burned to a
+cinder.
+
+The two little Gypsy cooks wept with disappointment. They had worked so
+hard and were so hot and tired and hungry.
+
+Their friends were consumed with pity.
+
+"There, there," cried Dr. Hume, too tender hearted to look upon tears
+without being moved. "Don't cry, little cooks. Look at all this nice
+gravy and these delicious vegetables."
+
+"Why, my dearest children, you mustn't mind," exclaimed Miss Campbell.
+"See what a beautiful mixture we can have. Pour the gravy right into the
+platter with the beans and onions. We'll eat it on bread."
+
+How callous do the most fastidious become after a few weeks in camp!
+
+"Come, come, there's no time to be lost," exclaimed the starving Percy.
+
+But the two disappointed cooks had nothing to say. They choked back
+their tears and fell to with an appetite on beans and onions
+ingloriously mixed with bread and gravy. And as a final delicacy, the
+campers, who had commenced with dessert and salad, finished off with two
+very delicious mealy potatoes apiece.
+
+"If we stayed in this wilderness long, we'd revert to savages," Miss
+Campbell remarked, stirring a large cup of black coffee. "But on the
+whole, I think I am enjoying the reversion and my appetite is getting
+better every day."
+
+"If I were starving in the wilderness and somebody offered me Mock Duck,
+I'd refuse it," ejaculated Billie irrelevantly, for nobody had mentioned
+mock duck for a long time.
+
+THE BALLAD OF MOCK DUCK.
+
+(Poem by Percy.)
+
+There was a haughty animal,
+  Lived in a meadow fine;
+A domesticated lady
+  Of the genus called bovine.
+
+Like many other females,
+  Beast or human or divine,
+This domesticated lady
+  Of the family of kine
+
+Gazed with rapture at her features,
+  As reflected in a brook,
+When with unblushing ecstasy
+  Each morn she took a look.
+
+As she smiled at her reflection
+  In the mirror of the stream,
+She indulged in gentle rev'ries
+  Of complacency supreme.
+
+"Besides my gift of beauty
+  And my cultivated mind,
+I have other choice attractions
+  Of a very varied kind.
+
+"My roasts and steaks are luscious,
+  On my hash all have relied,
+My youthful veal's delicious,
+  And my milk is certified."
+
+On these pleasing meditations
+  Broke a mother with her brood,
+Sailing o'er that calm reflection
+  In a most ungracious mood.
+
+"You may be steaks and roast beef
+  And hash of quality,
+But you stoop to imitations
+  Of poor humble little me.
+
+"You may be a benefactor,
+  But I'll just remind you, ma'am,
+That in one small particular
+  You are a blooming sham.
+
+"Don't let your sweet milk curdle
+  And don't let it sour your luck,
+If I make so bold to mention
+  That imposture called 'Mock Duck'!"
+
+So this web-footed lady,
+  With a malice quite feline,
+Disturbed the calm reflections
+  Of that innocent bovine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A LESSON BY THE WAYSIDE.
+
+
+Promptly at nine o'clock Saturday morning the "Comet" might have been
+seen crawling down the side of the mountain with Billie at the wheel.
+Dr. Hume sat beside her and Elinor and Ben were in the back seat. It was
+with something of a holiday feeling that they went forth to meet
+Alberdina, the new maid, whose presence was becoming a pressing
+necessity.
+
+"I don't mind the cooking a bit, Doctor," Billie was saying. "Especially
+with Nancy, although I suppose I am really her assistant. She makes
+things exciting enough. I think she's a kind of culinary speculator and
+takes a lot of chances, but she's awfully lucky. She takes all sorts of
+rag-tag ends of things, chops them into bits and turns out what she
+calls _ragouts_."
+
+"They're mighty good," said the doctor. "Experimenting cooks generally
+have a sub-conscious instinct that carries them along when they seem to
+be going blindly. But it's difficult to work with them. They are always
+dictatorial and inclined to treat the assistant as a scullery maid."
+
+Billie groaned.
+
+"I hope Alberdina, strong and fearless, will relieve us of that awful
+scullery work. I have a feeling it would be a reflection on my character
+and on the Campbell family if I didn't leave every pan bright and
+shining, but oh, dear, it's work! I think if I had to keep it up I
+should cook everything together, vegetables and meat, in one big kettle
+full of boiling water."
+
+"That wouldn't be such a bad mess," laughed the doctor. "The vegetable
+and meat juices would make a rich broth and you could serve soup, meat
+and vegetables all in one plate. Think of the saving of that."
+
+"As Cousin Helen said, it wouldn't take campers long to revert to
+savagery," ejaculated Billie. "We are already as brown as Indians. We
+keep our sleeves rolled up and our collars turned in and wear creepers
+instead of shoes, and always khaki skirts, and never dress for supper.
+Even Cousin Helen has slipped back a peg--"
+
+"It's the only possible way to enjoy camping," broke in the doctor. "But
+you would never get to be an all the way savage. Look at that remarkable
+young woman, Miss Phoebe, who has never had anything else in all her
+life,--she is far from being a savage."
+
+"Indeed she is," said Billie. "She has never been to school in her life,
+but she knows a great deal more about some things than I do--astronomy,
+for instance, and English history."
+
+"There is more than that," put in Elinor, leaning over to join in the
+conversation. "Phoebe has learned something else that keeps her from
+ever being ill or tired or unhappy. I asked her what it was and she said
+it was a secret."
+
+"Speaking of angels," remarked Ben, "there is Phoebe in front of us
+now, carrying a basket. I suppose she is going to the Antler's Inn to
+sell some of her father's work."
+
+Far ahead of them, swinging along the dusty road, was Phoebe. Her tall,
+slender figure swayed gracefully with the movement of the walk, but her
+shoulders did not bend under the burden of the large basket. A hot, dry
+wind blew her skirts about her and flapped the brim of her jimmie hat.
+Since the night at Sunrise Camp, Phoebe had never gone barefooted
+again, and she now wore a pair of canvas creepers that gave a spring to
+her step as she hurried along.
+
+Keeping time to the rhythm of her steps, Phoebe chanted softly in a
+rich, clear voice:
+
+"'The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want.
+
+"'He maketh me to lie down in the green pastures: he leadeth me beside
+the still waters.'"
+
+The whir of the motor car interrupted the chanting, and, with an
+absent-minded glance over her shoulder, she stepped to the side of the
+road to wait for it to pass.
+
+But the "Comet" stopped short and all the occupants called out, "Good
+morning," with an especial cordiality.
+
+Phoebe bowed her head gravely. Her eyes had a remote expression as if
+she had been awakened from a dream. Ben opened the door of the car and
+jumped out, while Billie exclaimed:
+
+"I am so glad we met you, Phoebe, because now you will let us give you a
+lift."
+
+Phoebe looked into Billie's kind gray eyes for a moment and then smiled
+as if she had found something there that pleased her.
+
+"I will come," she said, as Ben took the basket from her arm and helped
+her into the car.
+
+"Have you walked across the mountain this morning?" he asked, when they
+had started on their way again.
+
+"I started early," she said, "when it was cool."
+
+"And you are not tired?" asked the doctor.
+
+[Illustration: Her eyes had a remote expression as if she had been
+awakened from a dream.--Page 136.]
+
+"No, no, I am not tired. Why should I be? This was my work for to-day.
+If I had been tired, I could not have done it."
+
+The doctor looked at her curiously.
+
+"You believe, then, you are given strength for each day's task?"
+
+Phoebe did not reply. She was not accustomed to conversation and it was
+impossible to find words in which to express herself.
+
+She turned her dark beautiful eyes on him with a gaze that was almost
+disconcerting while searching her mind for an answer.
+
+The doctor put his question in a different way.
+
+"When it's your day's work to take a long walk across the mountain in
+the hot sun, what keeps you from getting tired?"
+
+"I sing," answered Phoebe, and settled back in the seat between Elinor
+and Ben, her brown hands folded loosely in her lap.
+
+The ride over to meet the new maid was intended to be something in the
+nature of a picnic, and they had made an early start in order to eat
+lunch in the woods after the first stage of the journey. And now, as the
+sun crept up toward the meridian, their appetites began to clamor for
+food. About that time, too, they came near to the road which led to the
+Antlers, where Phoebe hoped to sell some of her baskets. She lifted the
+big basket into her lap and touched Billie on the shoulder as a dumb
+signal to stop.
+
+"But we are not going to let you go, Phoebe," exclaimed Billie. "You
+must lunch with us in the woods. Then we'll have time I think to drop
+you at the Antlers and stop for you again on the way back."
+
+"I do not see why Miss Phoebe needs to visit the inn at all," put in Dr.
+Hume. "I wanted to get presents for my nieces and nephews. I will buy
+the basketful and that will save me no end of trouble searching for
+things in the village."
+
+Phoebe thoughtfully considered these generous and hospitable
+propositions before she replied with great seriousness of tone and
+manner:
+
+"Thank you, but it is too much; I cannot accept. It is too much."
+
+"But it is not, Phoebe," protested Billie. "We want you. We like to have
+you with us."
+
+"And I want the baskets, too," went on the doctor. "It will save me a
+hot, stupid journey to the village."
+
+Phoebe looked from one to the other. Her pride was struggling with her
+yearning to be with these new and wonderful friends.
+
+"We won't take 'No'," cried Billie. "We are depending on you to show us
+a good place for our picnic and you can guide us over the last of the
+road to the station. You see, we have a reason for asking you. We want
+your help."
+
+The mountain-girl was therefore persuaded to remain with them for the
+rest of the trip, and presently they drew up near a pine forest where
+there was a little stream. Ben lifted out the luncheon hamper and the
+tea basket, and while the girls unpacked the food, Phoebe stood shyly by
+and watched the proceedings. With a heightened color she glanced from
+Billie's and Elinor's neat skirts and pongee blouses to her own faded
+calico dress. She spread out her brown fingers stained with berry juice,
+and looked at them sadly. Then her face brightened.
+
+"I was almost forgetting," she said out loud, but to no one. "I am
+always in too great a hurry. I have waited a long time and now it is
+beginning to come. It was too soon last summer, but now at last it is
+time."
+
+Dr. Hume noticed Phoebe talking to herself and shook his head.
+
+"Too much alone," he thought.
+
+Meanwhile, Billie, piling sandwiches on the lunch cloth, was busy
+thinking of something far different. Her glance shifted from Dr. Hume to
+Phoebe and back again. She closed her eyes and the thought which at
+first she saw dimly in the dark recesses of her mind advanced to the
+open, took form and shape and presently boldly showed itself as a
+full-grown plan. Billie, sitting abstractedly on the ground, piling and
+re-piling the sandwiches, was startled by Ben's rather impatient voice.
+
+"I'll have to fall-to unless you give the word, Billie; I'm famished."
+
+"Excuse my absent-mindedness, Ben," laughed Billie. "I had just thought
+up a wild, though perfectly feasible scheme, and I couldn't turn my mind
+to mere food for a moment."
+
+"And the scheme is?" demanded Elinor, seating herself at the lunch table
+while she waited for the water to boil.
+
+"I shall have to wait to tell you until it's ready to serve up,"
+answered Billie, "nice and brown and done through."
+
+"Why, Billie, what kind of kitchen talk is that?" exclaimed Elinor,
+laughing. "You'll be seeing with the eyes of a cook next. Sunsets will
+remind you of tomato soup and clouds will make you think of meringues
+and--"
+
+Elinor broke off, her eyes wide with astonishment, and the others
+following the direction of her gaze saw that she was looking at a man
+who had crept into their midst so silently that no one had noticed him.
+In that haggard and unshaved face they recognized Mr. Lupo.
+
+"Something to eat," he demanded fiercely. "I'm almost starved."
+
+Without a word Billie handed him several sandwiches and some fruit.
+
+"Eat it over there," she ordered, pointing to a distant tree, "and
+afterwards you can tell us what is the matter."
+
+The others admired her calm assurance with the half-breed, but Billie
+was tired of the Lupos. The wife had come near being the death of her
+beloved cousin, and the husband was a lazy, loafing fellow. Such was her
+judgment of them.
+
+"Come, Phoebe. Come, Dr. Hume," she said, and the others gathered around
+the lunch cloth. Mr. Lupo lifted his sodden, bloodshot eyes at the word
+"Phoebe," and saw with astonishment the young girl, whom Billie knew the
+couple hated, now drinking tea and mingling on equal terms with the
+people of Sunrise Camp.
+
+His eyes narrowed into little slits. After choking down the sandwiches
+greedily, he stalked over into their midst.
+
+"What have you done with my wife?" he demanded.
+
+"We know nothing of your wife, Lupo," answered Dr. Hume, who knew all
+about the couple by this time. "You had better go on now, if you have
+had enough food."
+
+"I don't want any more of your cursed food," answered Lupo, looking very
+much like his namesake, the wolf, at that moment. "But I tell you if
+you've given my wife money to leave me, you will have to pay for it in
+another coin."
+
+"Nobody has ever given your wife any money. She has never been back
+since the day she threatened Miss Campbell with a carving knife. If
+anybody has driven her away, it's you, with your drunken, low habits."
+
+Lupo moved a step nearer and pointed his thumb at Phoebe.
+
+"So you're trying to make a lady of her, are you?"
+
+Phoebe took not the slightest notice. She was watching the antics of a
+squirrel leaping in the branches of a giant oak tree, but she turned her
+eyes gratefully toward Billie, when that young woman burst out with:
+
+"She is a lady and my friend. I think you'd better go now, Mr. Lupo."
+
+"Whoever meddles with those two shall pay for it," cried the man
+fiercely, just as Ben seized him by the collar and flung him into a
+thicket of bushes, from where he presently crawled away out of sight,
+occasionally pausing to shake his fist in their direction.
+
+"A nice return for hospitality," exclaimed Billie.
+
+"He's a dangerous fellow," said the doctor. "But I imagine he's mostly
+talk. What do you know of him, Miss Phoebe?"
+
+"I only know that years ago they tried to drive us away from our house.
+But an old man who lived with us, protected us. He owned the cabin and
+he left it to father and me. There was a will that made it ours. It
+became a home." They smiled at her quaint expression. "And the Lupos
+have been turned against us always, but God has protected us from our
+enemies."
+
+They looked at her silently. It was impossible not to feel deeply
+impressed with the earnestness of her tone. Billie felt ashamed. With
+all her advantages and the opportunities money and travel had brought
+her, Phoebe, raised in a cabin on the mountain side, had learned
+something she had not.
+
+Presently she went over and sat beside the mysterious girl.
+
+"I wish you would teach me a few things, Phoebe. I feel that I am very
+ignorant."
+
+"But I have never been to school," replied Phoebe in astonishment.
+
+"There are some things one doesn't learn at school," answered Billie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+ALBERDINA SCHOENBACHLER
+
+
+"You no lig I shall dos clothes coog?" asked Alberdina, the Monday after
+her arrival.
+
+"Boil, you mean?" corrected Miss Campbell. "Certainly. There is a
+clothes boiler, and goodness knows the things need it, and a good
+bleaching afterwards in the sun. They are as yellow as gold."
+
+When Alberdina, the new German-Swiss maid, had alighted from the train
+with her absurd little iron-bound trunk, about as big as a bread basket,
+Billie had felt no misgivings. Here, indeed, was a creature too healthy
+to know the name of fear, and too good-natured to object to hard work.
+The brilliant red cheeks and broad engaging smile immediately decided
+Billie to put all her accumulated linen in wash at once.
+
+On top of Alberdina's large peasant head was perched a small round hat,
+positively the most ludicrous thing ever seen in the shape of millinery.
+With its band of red satin ribbon and tiny bunch of field flowers, it
+seemed to defy the world to find anything funnier.
+
+"It's a real comedy hat," Dr. Hume observed. "The kind they wear when
+they sing:
+
+    "'Hi-lee-hi-lo-hi-lee-hi-lo,
+      I joost come over; I joost come over.'"
+
+"But she's really a ministering angel, you know," said Billie, "sent to
+do the washing and ironing and scullery work. Except for cooking meals,
+we expect to take life easy from now on."
+
+And so, right gladly, they had carried Alberdina Schoenbachler over the
+twenty-five miles of mountain road and established her in Sunrise Camp.
+
+"I think she is the very person we needed, Cousin Helen," Billie said.
+"Not accomplished, you know, or trained in any way, but good enough for
+camping. And there is no reason now why we shouldn't take the trip to
+the lower lake if you feel well enough. The weather is perfect."
+
+"Do you think we ought to leave her on the first day?" Miss Campbell
+replied somewhat doubtfully.
+
+"Why not? She has enough to occupy her, goodness knows, with all that
+washing."
+
+"But suppose she should get lonely or frightened--?"
+
+Just then a melodious Swiss yodel broke the stillness of the early
+morning and Billie laughed.
+
+"She isn't going to be lonesome. She is accustomed to the mountains. Do
+let's take a holiday, Cousin Helen, please," and with Miss Helen's
+assent, Billie rushed off to find the others and tell the good news.
+
+Perhaps some people would regard it as a fault in Billie's character
+that, having formed a plan, she was always filled with wild impatience
+to carry it out. But when we consider that Billie's plans concerned the
+pleasure and entertainment of other people and that her impatience was
+only another form of earnest enthusiasm, it would be difficult to
+criticise her.
+
+While three of the Motor Maids busied themselves preparing the luncheon,
+Billie and Ben worked over the motor car, putting it in condition for a
+long trip, and Percy, in blue overalls, washed the body of the car.
+
+"I am so glad to save you this drudgery," he observed, with an
+ingratiating smile.
+
+"You're not half as glad as we are, Percival Algernon," answered Ben.
+"It's a double blessing, because it's good discipline for you and it
+gives us a chance to show how much we know about machinery."
+
+"Don't boast, my son. You may have a sure enough chance before the sun
+sets," remarked Percy in the tone of a prophet.
+
+"After you have washed him off well, rub him down with those cloths,"
+ordered Billie from under the car. "Then stow the rubber curtains inside
+and see to the lights. It may be late before we get back."
+
+"All right, Captain," answered Percy respectfully.
+
+It was still not nine o'clock when the "Comet," polished and oiled and
+looking as neat in his dark blue and buff uniform as a soldier on
+parade, stood ready for departure. The hamper of luncheon was strapped
+on behind, and underneath the middle seats in a pan of ice were bottles
+of root beer and ginger ale. Presently he started down the steep road
+with his load. The rustic camp, perched on the ledge in the side of the
+mountain, with its guard of pine trees crowding almost to its doors,
+never looked more alluring.
+
+"I declare I hate to leave the place," said Miss Campbell, peeping
+through the glass window in the back curtain of the car.
+
+"It's in good hands," laughed the doctor, as the voice of Alberdina
+floated to them, singing in fulsome tones:
+
+"Ach, mein lieber Augustine, Augustine, Augustine!"
+
+But the motor car with its load of campers had not been long gone when
+Alberdina withdrew her arms, elbow deep in soapsuds, from the wash tub,
+and looked around her.
+
+"Ach, mein lieber Gott," she said turning her large cow-like eyes on the
+pile of linen, "I dis worg nod much lige. It is too many. I mag to coog
+dos clothes and rest. Dis life it all hard worg ees."
+
+She lifted an armful of linen garments from the tub and stuffed them
+into the clothes boiler which she filled with water and set on the coal
+oil stove. Then drawing up a steamer chair, she settled herself
+comfortably and closed her eyes, not noticing that in the boilerful of
+white things she had plunged a red silk handkerchief of Percy's. Nearly
+an hour had passed when Alberdina awoke from her healthy,
+conscienceless slumber with a start. Turning her head lazily, she
+noticed that the clothes were boiling and the water was running over the
+sides of the boiler.
+
+"Mein Gott!" she said in German. "That little mistress will make of me
+the Hamburger. I must do some work."
+
+But to her horror and astonishment, when Alberdina made an effort to
+rise from the low, easy chair, she could not move. She had been bound to
+the chair with a stout rope, the clothes line in fact. Each fat red hand
+was secured to an arm of the chair, her feet tied together and her body
+strapped to the seat and back.
+
+Alberdina groaned and her stupid eyes became humid with terror.
+
+"Helb! Helb!" she called. "Helb bring. Mein Gott in himmel, helb!"
+
+No answer came from the silent camp.
+
+"Ees it for dis, den, I haf to you come?" she cried, addressing the
+circle of mountains shimmering in opalescent light. Far down from the
+valley below came the long clear note of a bugle, probably of some
+coaching party. An impudent woodpecker seated on a limb above her
+commenced an insistent, aggravating tapping.
+
+Alberdina made another struggle to loose her bonds and then settled back
+weeping. At last merciful sleep brought her oblivion. The mountains
+shimmered in the heat waves. The sunlight slanting through the trees
+cast flickering golden shadows on the carpet of pine needles. The tinkle
+of a cowbell broke the stillness. In her dreams the Swiss girl was
+reminded of her own cherished uplands, where in the festive
+cheese-making time she had gathered with other maids and youths and
+danced to the music of the zither. Zither, did she say? But, had she
+been dreaming then, all the while? Was not that a zither now mingling
+its fairy music with the notes of the cow bell? Alberdina opened her
+eyes.
+
+"Helb! Helb! I asg you helb!" she called.
+
+The music stopped instantly and a man, tall, slender, with an
+indescribably distinguished air, approached, carrying the zither under
+his arm.
+
+"You called?" he asked courteously.
+
+Alberdina burst into a torrent of excited German. She rolled her
+prominent eyes to indicate her bonds. Streams of tears flowed down her
+cheeks, or taking a short cut, ran over the bridge of her nose and
+dropped down a precipice to her heaving bosom. Phoebe's father watched
+her with an expression of gentle bewilderment. He seemed to be trying to
+recall something an infinite distance away, like one of those
+inexplicable reminiscences that flash through our minds and are gone
+before we can grasp their significance.
+
+"It's useless," he said, shaking his head. "But something has happened
+to you? Oh, yes, you have been tied up."
+
+Taking a bone-handled clasp knife from his pocket, he carefully cut the
+ropes wound about her. Alberdina bounded out of the chair like a big,
+fleshy catapult.
+
+"Ach, himmel, I thangs mag to you, sir," she cried respectfully, for
+there was something in this wanderer which commanded deference, although
+he did wear a threadbare suit and mountain brogans.
+
+"You know who did this, my girl?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head and ran into the camp beyond. The locker rooms on the
+two sleeping porches were in confusion. The contents of drawers and
+trunks had been dumped to the floor and writing portfolios overhauled.
+But, apparently, nothing had been taken, because there was nothing
+valuable enough to tempt the most eager burglar. What little ready money
+they had the campers had carried with them, and there was no jewelry to
+steal. Only Alberdina had been robbed. With many deep guttural
+exclamations she found that her own little emigrant trunk had not been
+overlooked in the pillage and her purse, containing ten dollars, was
+gone.
+
+The gentleman with the zither turned to go.
+
+"I came to find a physician," he said. "Is there none here?"
+
+"I know nod," answered the girl, shaken with sobs.
+
+He lifted his old slouch hat.
+
+"I bid you good day," he said, and started away, then turning back, he
+exclaimed: "Perhaps I ought not to leave you here alone. But I must not
+stay away so long. Phoebe will be frightened. Will you come with me to
+my home?"
+
+Alberdina shook her head. She was half afraid of the strange man. Who
+knows but it might have been this stranger, himself, who had robbed her
+of her savings?
+
+"No, no; I vill stay here. The vorst is over yet already. Dey haf me
+robbed of my moneys. I no more haf. Dey vill not come bag."
+
+Having so spoken, she returned to her labors and was presently hanging
+on the line a long row of deep pink clothing, headed by the red silk
+handkerchief, the iniquitous author of the wicked deed.
+
+In the meantime the motorists had proceeded joyfully on their way. They
+sang and joked and made so merry that Dr. Hume felt that he had gone
+back fifteen years in his busy life and was a boy himself. The road as
+indicated on the map in the road book was cut through forests of
+primeval growth. Sometimes it descended into the valley past villages
+and farm houses. Once it took them through a splendid tract of land
+dedicated with its club house to St. Hubert, patron saint of the hunt.
+At last it began by degrees to climb upward, and with a sudden turn
+around the mountain side, they came into view of an exquisite little
+lake, reflecting in its mirrored depths the peaks of the high mountains
+encircling it. Hundreds of silver birches, slender and elegant, fringed
+its edges, gleaming white against a background of impenetrable green.
+
+At one corner of the lake were a small boathouse and restaurant, where
+customers are perpetually served with tea and maple cake. Long ago they
+had eaten lunch and were quite ready for more refreshments. Then
+everybody but Miss Campbell took a dip in the lake. The hours sped past
+and the sun was well on its downward grade before they realized it was
+time to return.
+
+In the meantime, Billie, always eager to find out about new roads and
+new trails, had been questioning one of the guides at the boathouse.
+
+"He says there's a walk called the 'river trail' only two miles long
+that we could take, and meet the 'Comet' at a bridge at the end. Don't
+you think some of us could take it, Dr. Hume? It's right through the
+most wonderful pine forests,--one of the most beautiful walks in the
+Adirondacks, he says."
+
+"But who will run the motor car?" asked the doctor, beetling his shaggy
+eyebrows.
+
+"I will," Ben volunteered, and it was accordingly arranged that Dr. Hume
+and Percy should conduct the girls along the river trail while Miss
+Campbell and Ben proceeded by the road in the car.
+
+It was all very simple. Miss Campbell was to take a nap while Ben looked
+after the "Comet's" needs and in the course of half an hour, or at their
+leisure, they were to take the road. In the meantime, the others, with
+good walking, would have ample time to make the two miles through the
+forest. They bade each other a casual farewell since they were to meet
+again so soon, and led by the doctor, plunged into the forest.
+
+The ground had been cleared of undergrowth, so that looking up the side
+of the mountain, at the foot of which gurgled a little river, one could
+see a vast multitude of tall straight pine trees and occasionally the
+flash of a silver birch. Rank on rank they stood in infinite
+perspective; and sometimes an aged beech tree generalled their march and
+sometimes a magnificent oak spread out his venerable arms with a gesture
+of command. But the rank and file were pines; gray grenadiers, still
+upright with the years; young stripling pines, eager to be on the march.
+And always they seemed to be going the same way over the mountains to
+the frontiers of the world, and always through their branches came the
+murmur of their martial song.
+
+Nowhere had Billie seen so impressive, so magnificent a forest. She
+thought of the cryptomerias in Japan, but they were more like the
+gigantic pillars of a cathedral, while these hurrying hordes of pines
+and birches were like human beings. They suggested romances: lovers in
+the forests; knights in armor; wicked enchantresses.
+
+Once Dr. Hume paused and pointed to a cleared space beyond. There,
+standing under a great pine tree looking at them with startled eyes were
+a doe and her young. In another instant they were gone, leaving the
+campers holding their breath.
+
+In a little more than an hour they reached the end of the trail, where a
+foot bridge made of two logs took them over the turbulent little river.
+But no "Comet" stood waiting for them at the rendezvous with Ben at the
+wheel and Miss Campbell on the back seat. To be sure the road was twice
+as long, as the trail had wound around the side of the mountain for some
+five miles, but that was nothing to a motor car.
+
+"Might as well sit down and wait," suggested the doctor.
+
+They seated themselves in a row on a log expecting every minute to see
+the familiar blue car loom into sight.
+
+But the lagging moments dragged themselves into half an hour and still
+the "Comet" lingered.
+
+"I think we'd better walk back," said Billie, beginning to feel just a
+tinge of uneasiness.
+
+"Perhaps it would be as well," echoed the doctor. "They have had a
+breakdown, no doubt."
+
+The band of wayfarers feeling very weary after the rough walk along the
+river trail began their march back toward the lake.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A COMEDY OF ERRORS.
+
+
+The original lake party might have served as an excellent illustration
+of the history of many principalities and nations. Having suffered a
+division and then a subdivision and finally a breaking up into
+fractional groups, it became as a weakened and shattered government,
+powerless to help itself.
+
+It soon became evident that Mary Price was too weary to take the long
+walk back to the lake.
+
+She was left therefore by the roadside with Percy and Elinor, while Dr.
+Hume, Nancy and Billie went on.
+
+"It will probably be no time at all before we pick them up," said the
+doctor cheerfully, but they made the entire walk to the lake house and
+there was no "Comet" to be seen.
+
+"It left here two hours ago," the boatman informed them. "Maybe they
+went on to the second bridge. That's half a mile beyond the first one.
+They'll tell a person anything, these people here will."
+
+"I suppose that's exactly what happened," Billie exclaimed, much
+relieved. "They have been waiting at the second bridge and will be on
+their way back by this time. But I think they will have to come all the
+way. Nancy has a blister on her heel."
+
+"Now, don't blame it all on me, Billie," said Nancy. "You know you are
+dead tired yourself."
+
+Billie smiled guiltily.
+
+"I am played out," she said.
+
+"I wouldn't think of allowing either of you young ladies to start on
+another tramp," put in Dr. Hume. "I am too good a doctor for that. You
+must stay right here and rest and I'll start back. I may meet the whole
+party any time, now."
+
+Billie and Nancy, therefore, settled themselves to rest on two benches
+near the lake while the good doctor trudged off along the dusty road.
+
+In the meantime, Mary, who had more than overtaxed her strength that
+day, gave Percy and Elinor a bad fright by toppling over in a faint.
+They brought her to with water which Percy carried from a brook in his
+hat, and then carried her into the wood a bit where she could lie on the
+pine needles and rest her head in Elinor's lap. But Percy hurried back
+to the road to keep watch, and seeing a motor car broken down in the
+distance hastened to catch up with it. It was a strange car, however,
+and the chauffeur had not seen the "Comet."
+
+And all this while, Ben and Miss Campbell, having waited an incalculable
+time at the second bridge, had gone on for half a mile. Few people can
+stand the test of being kept waiting. Their patience may be
+inexhaustible but their judgments are apt to take a bad twist and bring
+them right about face in the wrong direction.
+
+It is true that Ben had yielded to Miss Campbell in going beyond the
+supposed meeting place, and now to make matters worse, the "Comet" came
+to an inexplicable standstill. Poor Ben, with small knowledge of what to
+do, began a long and wearisome investigation of unfamiliar machinery.
+
+There was something of the dumb driven animal in Ben when he entered
+unfamiliar territory, and his slow plodding methods had been known to
+irritate Miss Campbell profoundly.
+
+And now, one more separation remained to complete the disbandment of
+this innocent party of pleasure. Ben, shamefaced and very humble, was
+obliged to confess to Miss Campbell that he could not locate the trouble
+with the "Comet." Deeply he regretted his inefficiency, but there was
+nothing to do but give up.
+
+"I'm thinking," he said, "that maybe I had better walk back a little
+ways and see if the others aren't coming up behind us."
+
+"Very well," answered Miss Campbell with dignity. "You may go. I
+suppose nobody would wish to harm an old woman."
+
+Presently, therefore, she found herself alone in the wilderness. There
+was something almost human and comforting about the "Comet," however,
+that faithful mechanism that had borne them on so many pilgrimages, and
+Miss Campbell addressed herself to him as to a human companion.
+
+"I just believe you had more sense than that stupid Ben Austen," she
+said. "You wouldn't go on because you knew perfectly well that your
+mistress was behind you. You're a nice, good old thing."
+
+She paused and peered out of the car. Darkness was falling and the road
+was filled with somber shadows cast by the far-reaching branches of the
+trees on either side. As far as she could see along the white strip of
+road there was no human soul behind her. Her eyes swept the road in
+front. It was criss-crossed with light and shadow and it was difficult
+to make out anything moving, but Miss Campbell thought she saw an object
+approaching. Yes, it was unquestionably an object. Something large and
+white--a van. Great heavens, it was a Gypsy van!
+
+"Ben!" she called, but Ben was quite a quarter of a mile away by now.
+
+The only thing to do was to get out and hide behind a tree in the woods.
+She could not bring herself to face a band of Gypsies. Hurriedly
+climbing down from the car, Miss Campbell concealed herself in a thicket
+of trees near the road.
+
+Presently the van drew up alongside the empty car.
+
+"By Jove, here's an abandoned motor. Where do you suppose the people
+are?" said a man walking at one side of the van and driving the horse.
+
+Two women were comfortably seated in rocking chairs in the little front
+compartment of the vehicle.
+
+"How strange!" said one of them. "It's like finding a derelict at sea.
+Where are the Captain and the crew? Where are the passengers?"
+
+"Where indeed?" thought the lady behind the tree.
+
+"It's like the mystery of the 'Maria Theresa,'" pursued the man. "A
+perfectly good ship abandoned in mid-ocean without the slightest
+explanation and all on board lost forever."
+
+This gruesome comparison made Miss Campbell decidedly uncomfortable.
+
+"Shall we leave her to drift, ladies?" he asked affably.
+
+"I will protect the 'Comet' with my life," she thought. "I don't believe
+they are Gypsies anyhow. Their accent is too good, and a Gypsy would
+never address the women of his family as 'ladies.'"
+
+"I am afraid I am at present the sole survivor of the crew," she said
+politely to the young man. "If you would be kind enough to advise me,
+sir, I should be greatly indebted."
+
+Immediately the man lifted his broad-brimmed hat and the women in the
+rocking chairs leaned forward in order the better to see this dainty,
+mysterious little lady in gray who had emerged apparently from a
+primeval forest.
+
+"With the greatest pleasure, ma'am," answered the young man, filled with
+curiosity, and they all listened with courteous attention while she
+related the history of the afternoon's mishaps.
+
+"And now that stupid Ben, who is really a very nice boy under ordinary
+circumstances, has gone off and left me and almost anything could have
+happened,--wolves, Indians, half-breeds--" she added, thinking of the
+treacherous Lupos.
+
+After she had finished, the young man stood for a moment thinking.
+
+"My name is Richard Hook, ma'am, at your service," he said. "The only
+thing I could suggest is for me to unhitch Dobbin here and ride him down
+the road to look for your party and leave you with my sister, Maggie,
+and her friend. This is as good a place as any other for us to put up
+for the night. You might as well start supper, girls. Perhaps this lady
+is hungry."
+
+"I am," interjected Miss Campbell fervently.
+
+So it happened that Richard Hook went ambling off into the twilight on
+old Dobbin while Maggie Hook and her friend, Amy Swinnerton, made Miss
+Campbell comfortable in the van and prepared to cook supper.
+
+"And you are not Gypsies after all?" asked the little lady, watching one
+of the girls light a bracket lamp on the wall of the van.
+
+"No, indeed," laughed Maggie Hook. "Not by birth at least, but I think
+we have something of the Gypsy spirit because we love to spend our
+summers in this way. Have you never seen a van?"
+
+Miss Campbell could not say that she had and looked about her with much
+interest.
+
+"These are our beds, you see," Amy explained. "The top one folds up and
+we use the lower one for a divan. Richard sleeps in a tent. This is the
+dressing room," she continued with as much pride as a custodian showing
+a sightseer over an ancient castle.
+
+A little space had been curtained off in the back and behind this hung a
+mirror over a small dressing table, and a row of hooks for clothes.
+
+"And this is your kitchen?" asked Miss Campbell, indicating a row of
+plates and cups on a plate rack and a small kerosene stove, at one side
+opposite the beds.
+
+"That and a chafing dish and a camp fire," answered Maggie Hook. "But we
+mostly prefer the fire. I'll get things started here to-night and when
+Richard comes he can make us a fire if he dares. I believe the laws
+around here are pretty strict about fires."
+
+"Well, my dears, it is assuredly the most complete and delightful little
+traveling home I ever saw," exclaimed Miss Campbell, after she had
+looked over the entire van and then seated herself in a rocking chair
+to watch preparations for supper. It did not take long for her to make
+friends with these nice young girls who were indeed about the age of her
+own charges.
+
+"How many are in your party, Miss Campbell?" asked Maggie, in the act of
+breaking eggs into a bowl.
+
+"There are eight of us, but I hope you aren't thinking----"
+
+"Oh, but I am," insisted Maggie. "I am sure they will be very tired and
+hungry, and, besides, we have plenty in the larder for everyone,--a
+whole ham!" she added archly.
+
+"Dear me, I wish Billie were here," said Miss Campbell. "I believe she
+always keeps things stored away in the 'Comet' for an emergency."
+
+"I'll beat up some Johnnie cakes," announced Amy. "We can cook those on
+the wood fire later."
+
+In the meantime, the waiters who had waited in vain and the wanderers
+who had wandered fruitlessly, began to realize that the situation was
+serious. Billie grew desperately impatient. At last she succeeded in
+engaging a carry-all and two horses from a man at the moat house and
+soon she and Nancy, seated face to face, were hurrying along the road.
+Dr. Hume had met Percy. Ben had discovered Elinor and Mary standing
+fearfully on the edge of the forest. By the time that Richard Hook had
+got anywhere at all with his old nag, the lake-party, with the exception
+of Miss Campbell, was re-united in Billie's carry-all and driving
+comfortably in the direction of the "Comet."
+
+They were very tired and hungry but a graven image would have melted to
+laughter over this comedy of errors, and Richard Hook, hearing the gay
+chorus of voices approaching, was quite sure it was another picnic
+party. But he was not a young man to take chances, and having taken his
+position across the middle of the road, he waved his arms and yelled,
+"Stop!"
+
+"Do you know anything about a little lady in gray and an abandoned
+automobile?" he asked.
+
+"Cousin Helen and the 'Comet,'" cried Billie, consumed with anxiety.
+"Oh, Ben, how could you have left them?"
+
+"But----" began Ben.
+
+"I assure you the lady is in good hands," interrupted Richard. "My
+sister is looking after her."
+
+There were more explanations and presently they started on their way
+again, and in a little while drew up beside the Gypsy van and the
+abandoned motor car. And the upshot of the whole adventure was that the
+two parties joined forces and provisions.
+
+The boys built a fire against a great boulder on the river bank and
+there was a wonderful supper. All the very best of everything was
+brought out for the occasion. They ate Johnnie cakes from wooden
+platters and drank black coffee from glasses, Russian fashion. Later
+they sang songs and told stories around the camp fire. Never did people
+commingle so agreeably as the caravanners and the motorists. Somehow
+Sunrise Camp and Alberdina Schoenbachler faded into the dim recesses of
+their memories.
+
+"Of course you can't go home," Richard Hook remarked to Billie. "We'll
+camp out to-night. You'll never be able to mend that car in all this
+blackness, and it would be a pretty hard road to follow at night anyhow.
+We've just come over it. Dobbin can pull the car over to one side of the
+road, and Miss Campbell and Miss Price can sleep in the van."
+
+"And we'll show you what a bed really is," Ben went on eagerly. "Not a
+motor car cushion affair either."
+
+To their surprise, Miss Campbell was agreeable to the plan.
+
+"There's nobody at home to worry but Alberdina," she said, "and it won't
+hurt her to lose a little flesh, anyhow."
+
+The boys worked hard over the beds. Springy couches they made of spruce
+branches, covered with blankets, and, at last as care-free as a lot of
+Gypsies, they all slept as soundly as they had ever slept in their own
+beds at home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE RETURN.
+
+
+With the exception of her three best friends, Billie Campbell had never
+met people who pleased her so much on short acquaintance as the Hooks
+and their guest. It had not taken them half an hour to bridge over the
+gap of unfamiliarity.
+
+"What is it?" she asked of Maggie Hook, Richard's small, whimsical
+sister, black haired, black eyed, with quick alert movements like a
+bird's.
+
+"I can tell you exactly the reason," replied Maggie. "It's because we
+all belong to the road. There is a bond between us. We go Gypsying in
+our van and you go Gypsying in your car. We be all of one blood like
+Kipling's Mowgli and the animals in the jungle."
+
+"Only we aren't the real thing as much as you," said Billie modestly.
+"The 'Comet' is a dear old thing, but he's not a house."
+
+"You wouldn't enjoy it if he were," said Maggie. "A motor traveling van
+would never do. You see the point of this kind of life is that it's lazy
+and contemplative. We just amble along and it doesn't matter whether we
+make ten miles or five. We are not attempting long distance records. We
+are just getting intimate with the ups and downs of the country; the
+streams and rivers; the little valleys and bits of green by the
+roadside. Sometimes, if we find a place that's secluded enough, a little
+glen or a grove that screens off the road, we stay there for several
+days."
+
+"But what do you do?"
+
+"We all do the things we like best. Richard reads and takes long walks
+or fishes, if there is a stream. I clean the van from top to bottom and
+polish everything up and bake a cake in the little oven. Then I darn all
+the stockings and mend the clothes."
+
+Billie laughed.
+
+"You're not a Gypsy," she said, "if you are a black-eyed wanderer. They
+never mend or clean anything. But what does Miss Swinnerton like to do?
+Is she fond of housework, too?"
+
+"Amy? No, not specially. She sketches and paints in water colors, and
+botanizes, and looks for bits of stones and rocks which she examines
+through a glass, and translates French and generally potters around.
+She's always busy. She can do anything from making an omelette to
+painting a picture."
+
+Billie turned her eyes half wistfully toward the plump brown-haired Amy
+Swinnerton. She felt suddenly very inefficient and worthless.
+
+"I can't do anything," she said, frowning. "I'm ashamed of myself."
+
+"You can run a motor car and keep it in order," answered the new friend.
+"I never knew another girl who could."
+
+"That's ground into me by experience. But I hate sewing. I'm not a good
+cook and I can't draw or paint or play the piano. We met a girl this
+summer who has been brought up in a cabin on the mountain and has never
+been to school in her life, who knows a lot more than I do."
+
+Billie told what little she knew of the strange history of Phoebe.
+
+"It would make a wonderful story," observed Maggie. "I should like to
+put it into a book."
+
+"Do you write, too?" asked Billie eagerly.
+
+Maggie blinked her dark, bright eyes.
+
+"When you see my name appear in book reviews and magazines and things,
+then you'll know I write," she replied.
+
+This conversation occurred the next morning at breakfast. Billie had
+risen at dawn and repaired the "Comet" and the motor party was soon now
+to start on its homeward journey.
+
+Richard Hook presently joined his sister and Billie. Sitting
+cross-legged on the ground at their feet, he munched a bacon sandwich
+and sipped black coffee from a tin cup. He reminded Billie of one of
+Shakespeare's wise fools. All he lacked were the cap and bells. His
+whimsical, humorous eyes were rather far apart; his dark hair, cropped
+close, stood up straight over his forehead. His nose was distinguished
+in shape and his flexible mouth turned up at the corners. He talked
+slowly with a sort of twang like a farmer from the east coast and there
+was a kind of hidden humor under whatever he said. He had charming
+old-world manners, and an old-fashioned way of saying "I thank you," or
+"Permit me, ma'am," or "At your service, ma'am." He was really quite a
+delightful person, they unanimously decided; and so was his sister and
+so was her friend.
+
+Billie wondered what Richard Hook's work was; or whether perhaps he was
+still in college. She wondered a great many things about him, and she
+felt quite sure that he was not well off. Presently she said:
+
+"It's too bad when we are all just beginning to be friends that we must
+part so soon. Why can't you turn old Dobbin right about face and come
+back and see us at Camp Sunrise?"
+
+"Why not, indeed?" answered Richard.
+
+"Do come," urged Billie, never dreaming that in giving this invitation
+she had been moved by something stronger than her own friendly wish to
+know more of these nice people, and that destiny itself had a hand in
+the business.
+
+Richard Hook took a little calendar from his pocket and contemplated it
+gravely.
+
+"Another month has perished with her moon," he remarked. "We're in
+August, little sister. Did you realize that? I see no reason why we
+shouldn't travel toward Sunrise Camp before----"
+
+"Before----" repeated Maggie, and the brother and sister exchanged a
+swift glance.
+
+"Then you do accept," exclaimed Billie joyfully.
+
+"With the greatest pleasure," answered Richard, "if you think old
+Dobbin can climb the hill."
+
+"Of course he can," replied Billie.
+
+"But, Richard, do you think we dare?" asked Maggie in a low voice.
+
+Richard's mouth turned up at the corners and his eyes gave a humorous
+blink.
+
+"We dare anything," he said. "Pray excuse this little aside, Miss
+Billie. It's only that we are obliged to consider certain complications
+that arise to vex us at times. I think we can easily arrange to go to
+Camp Sunrise."
+
+Billie was more certain than ever that money was the complication. But
+surely that was an inexpensive way of spending one's vacation, provided
+one owned the van and the horse.
+
+"How much longer does your vacation last, Mr. Hook?" she asked.
+
+"It depends. My boss is a very notionate old party. He might let me go
+wandering on like this for several weeks longer or he might suddenly
+decide to send for me, and I should have to go hiking back in the midst
+of my holiday."
+
+Maggie laughed, and Billie wondered what kind of work this unusual young
+man did that sent out sudden calls in the very middle of hard-earned
+vacations.
+
+However, it was arranged that the caravanners should meander back toward
+Sunrise Camp and in the course of time stop there for a visit.
+
+"They are delightful young people," Miss Campbell said. "I don't know
+who they are, I'm sure, nor what the young man does, but I find them
+quite the most charming young people with the exception of my own that I
+ever met."
+
+"It's rather strange about his work," remarked Dr. Hume. "I don't know
+what he does now, but he wishes above all things to be a farmer, he
+informed me. He's always looking for farms as he journeys along the
+road. That's one of the reasons why he got the van, in order to see the
+country and decide where he'd like best to locate."
+
+They were not so merry on the journey back as they had been on the trip
+of the morning before. For one reason those who had slept in open camp
+had not had off their clothes for twenty-four hours, and all of them
+felt the crying need of baths after the two dusty journeys. But there
+was another reason besides these physical ones. They were beginning to
+feel conscience-stricken about Alberdina. How had she taken their long,
+unexplained absence? Would she still be singing "Ach, mein lieber
+Augustine!" when they returned, and would there be a long clothes line
+bowed under the weight of clean white linen bleaching in the sun ready
+to be ironed? So restless did they grow under these speculations, that
+they did not pause for lunch and, urging the "Comet" to the limit of his
+speed, they reached home a little before noon. Alberdina was there.
+Thank heavens for that. They could see her plainly as they turned the
+curve in the road. But her appearance was not promising. Perched on her
+head was that absurd comedy hat. She was sitting down, quite low, on the
+iron-bound trunk, in fact, leaning on her large cotton umbrella, as one
+prepared to depart on a journey.
+
+If you have ever lived in a remote spot with an uncertain maid, you will
+recall how apologetic you were to her for your own shortcomings.
+
+"Oh, dear, what shall I say to her?" exclaimed Miss Campbell. "She looks
+as if she were ready to go this minute."
+
+"Why can't we tell her the truth? We simply couldn't help it," said
+Billie. "She ought not to be angry over something we couldn't control."
+
+"You don't know them, but I'll just brazen it out. I know we're entirely
+dependent on the creature for the comforts of life, but I won't let her
+bully me. Well, Alberdina," she called, as the car drew up at the camp
+door, "have you been lonesome?"
+
+"Lonesome?" repeated Alberdina, not moving from her ridiculous trunk.
+"I no time haf had for lonesomes. Many peoples to dis house come--crazy
+peoples--men and vimmen, hein? They haf my moneys took already
+yesterday! Ach, Gott! They haf me tied wid ropes. They have nogged and
+nogged in the night times. Dos vimmens, I hear the boice already yet. I
+no lig dees place. I to my home go bag to-day. Dey have robbed dis
+house. Dey haf made to turn red dos vite clothes."
+
+In dead silence they descended from the motor car and filed into the
+house to investigate Alberdina's wild, incoherent story.
+
+There were certainly signs of an invasion in the locker rooms,
+everything tipsy turvy on the floor. Alberdina showed them the ropes
+that had bound her. With rivers of tears she mentioned her loss of ten
+dollars.
+
+"And the red clothes?" asked Billie doubtfully.
+
+This had been reserved to the last by the wily-innocent Swiss girl.
+With cries of sorrow they beheld their underclothing and blouses all
+tinged a deep pink.
+
+Suddenly Miss Campbell marched up and stood in front of the girl with a
+very cold steely look in her cerulean eyes.
+
+"Answer me this instant," she said, "and speak the truth. You boiled
+those clothes with a red silk handkerchief?"
+
+Alberdina broke down and wept copiously.
+
+"I knew not about dos red," she exclaimed.
+
+"But when you saw the clothes were turning red, why didn't you take them
+off the fire?" asked Billie.
+
+"I did nod see."
+
+"Not see? And why not, pray?" demanded Miss Campbell.
+
+"I was asleeb and when I wog, I was wit rope tied."
+
+"Who cut the rope?" asked Dr. Hume, beginning to doubt the whole story.
+
+"A gentlemans who mag to play music on the zither."
+
+"Phoebe's father!" exclaimed the girls.
+
+They glanced at each other with a wild surmise.
+
+"It couldn't have been----"
+
+"No, no, I'm sure he never would----"
+
+"Hush," said Ben, "here comes Phoebe."
+
+The mountain girl, looking pale and distraught, her hair flying, her
+face and hands scratched from contact with brambles, rushed into their
+midst.
+
+"My father," she cried. "He has been lost all night. I have looked and
+looked and I cannot find him. Oh, if he should be in the marshes----"
+
+She fell on her knees at Billie's feet and broke into sobbing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+BILLIE AND THE DOCTOR.
+
+
+Several things had to be done before any steps could be taken to find
+Phoebe's father. First Alberdina must be roundly scolded for her
+carelessness about the clothes and then placated with a ten dollar bill
+to compensate her for her loss. There must be lunch prepared for hungry
+travelers, and Phoebe, herself, must be given food and made to rest. In
+the meantime they questioned her concerning her father's movements. He
+had left the cabin with his zither the morning of the day before and had
+not been seen since, except when he had appeared at the camp and cut
+Alberdina's bonds.
+
+"Has he ever stayed away before at night?" asked Dr. Hume.
+
+"No, never. When he is not weaving baskets or carving, he is very
+restless and often is away for hours, but he always comes back before
+bed time. He never forgets me. That is why I am so uneasy now," she went
+on, clasping and unclasping her hands in the agony of her uncertainty.
+
+"Phoebe," said the doctor, "what is it that gives you strength to do
+your day's work, even if it means walking across a mountain in the hot
+sun carrying a heavy basket?"
+
+Phoebe lowered her eyes and a flush spread over her sunburned face.
+
+"I forgot," she said. "I was so unhappy that I forgot. It has helped me,
+oh, so many times when we have had no money. Many times we have been
+snowed in on the mountain without food and it has always come. It saved
+us from the Lupos. I was lonesome and it brought me friends." She
+glanced at the girls busily preparing lunch and at Ben and Percy talking
+in low voices on the porch.
+
+"Don't you think it will help you now?"
+
+"It has left me. I can't find it," replied poor Phoebe. "It is because I
+am so frightened. It never comes if you are frightened."
+
+"My child," said the good doctor, "you are worn out. You must have lunch
+and take a good rest. In the meantime we will do everything we can to
+find your father. Perhaps he has lost his way and is wandering in the
+woods somewhere."
+
+"No," said Phoebe, shaking her head miserably, "he never loses his way.
+He knows the trails better than I do myself."
+
+The doctor himself brought Phoebe a tray of lunch. She was ravenously
+hungry.
+
+"The poor little thing hasn't eaten for hours," he thought, glancing at
+her covertly, as he returned with a basin of water, a soft towel and
+Miss Campbell's private bottle of eau de cologne. When she had finished
+eating, he made her stretch out on the divan while he gave her face and
+hands and wrists an aromatic bath. Never before had Phoebe been
+ministered to and waited on. She smiled at the doctor with dumb
+gratitude.
+
+"When people are hungry and tired and discouraged, they have a pretty
+hard time holding on to their faith, Phoebe," he said. "Even when they
+haven't anything to worry about, it's hard enough. You go to sleep now
+and I promise you we will start on the search for your father at once."
+
+Phoebe raised her eyes gratefully to his. In those clear brown depths
+she read strength, gentleness and sympathy. She felt she was looking
+into the face of an angel with a shiny bald head and shaggy red-gray
+eyebrows.
+
+"I believe God sent you," she said, and in a few moments dropped off
+into a deep exhausted sleep.
+
+After luncheon or dinner, whatever that meal might be called in camp,
+Percy got out his motor cycle and proceeded to the Antler's Inn to ask
+for news of Phoebe's father. Ben took the trail to Indian Head and
+Billie and Dr. Hume went down to the village in the motor car to drum up
+a search party or find guides to help them scour the mountains. In
+neither attempt were they in the least successful.
+
+On the way down the mountain, Billie decided to unburden herself of
+something that had been on her mind for a long time.
+
+"You have never seen Phoebe's father, have you, Dr. Hume?"
+
+The doctor shook his head.
+
+"Have you ever heard of a case like his? I mean forgetting one's past."
+
+"Oh, yes. I have seen a number of cases. The patient usually loses his
+memory altogether in time and goes insane."
+
+"But he's not insane, doctor. He's not even going insane. Really and
+truly, except about always trying to find a physician, his brain is as
+clear as anybody's."
+
+The doctor smiled. He liked this earnest, enthusiastic girl who was
+always doing things for other people and modestly disclaiming credit.
+There was something masculine in her disregard for small things and the
+largeness of her views.
+
+"A very nice man has instilled her with extremely big ideas about life,"
+he reflected. "She is furthermore a wholesome, healthy young creature
+with a high order of intelligence and a very warm, tender heart."
+
+So much engaged was he in his diagnosis of Billie's character that he
+had almost forgotten the subject of the conversation when she spoke up
+again rather timidly.
+
+"What I'm driving at is this, doctor, and I've been thinking about it
+for days. Don't you think you could operate on Phoebe's father, put a
+silver plate on his skull or lift whatever's pressing on his memory
+bump? Don't you think you could undertake it, doctor? I know you are a
+famous surgeon. Papa wrote that to me long ago, but I knew it before he
+told me. I could tell just from seeing and being with you that you were
+a great man."
+
+The doctor laughed over these artless compliments.
+
+"Are you a mind reader, Miss Billie?"
+
+"But you will undertake it, doctor?" she urged.
+
+"We must first catch our man, my child, and then have a look at him. A
+good many things would have to be considered: whether he would consent
+himself; whether he would be able to stand the shock of a serious
+operation, and whether he may not have some disease an operation
+wouldn't help; paralysis or softening of the brain."
+
+"At any rate, you will undertake it?" cried Billie joyfully.
+
+"Do you wish it so much?" he asked, watching her face as she guided the
+car down the steep road.
+
+"I do, I do! Think what it would mean to Phoebe to have this mystery
+cleared; think what it would mean to him, too!"
+
+"I was thinking of it," answered the doctor gravely. "That's just the
+point. Suppose Phoebe's father would not thank me for bringing his past
+back? Suppose, after all, he would be happier in this state than with
+his memory restored. Do you realize that a man like that, a man of
+education and refinement, I mean, must have had some very good reason
+for hiding himself away in these mountains? That he may have been flying
+from something?"
+
+The enthusiasm died out of Billie's face.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Hume," she began, "I hadn't thought of that. Indeed, I couldn't
+connect anything of the sort with Phoebe and her father. They are not a
+bit like that."
+
+"You never can tell. The people who have given way to some wild impulse
+that will cause them everlasting regret are not always bad people by any
+means. His reasons for hiding himself and his wife in a cabin in these
+mountains of course may have been entirely innocent; or he may have
+hoped to find oblivion and forgetfulness up here out of the world. If I
+give him back his memory, providing of course I can do it, I may give
+him the very thing he is running away from."
+
+"Don't you think he has been punished enough and that Phoebe ought to
+have a chance?" argued Billie.
+
+"Is there anything to prevent Phoebe's having a chance without knowing
+her father's past?" asked the doctor.
+
+"Nothing, except there would always be that mystery hanging over her.
+Don't you think it would be very unpleasant not to know who you were or
+even your father's name?"
+
+"I am a living example to the contrary," said the doctor with a laugh.
+"My father and mother were really my adopted parents. They took me out
+of an orphan asylum when I was a little lad about five years old. I
+remember it vividly. Afterwards they had other children, but they
+always treated me like a beloved eldest son. I never knew any difference
+and I never bothered my head about my real parents. Whoever they were,
+they had died or shuffled me off on an institution. My adopted mother
+was the finest woman I have ever known and if Hume isn't my real name,
+it doesn't matter. I shall do everything I can to make it an honored
+one."
+
+"You are a wonderful man, doctor," exclaimed Billie, quite overcome by
+this bit of confidence about his past. "It was because you were so fine
+that they were good to you. Perhaps God picked you out from all the
+other orphans to have a good home because he saw what fine material
+there was in you."
+
+"No indeed, my dear young lady," laughed the doctor. "It was just a
+matter of chance. The little orphans were like the two women sitting in
+the market place. The one was taken and the other left. If they chose me
+for anything, it was solely and entirely because I had brown eyes."
+
+"You may say what you please," protested Billie. "They looked deeper
+than that, I am certain."
+
+"Simply luck, Miss Billie. I have always been lucky. The fellows at
+college called me 'Lucky Bill.' But to return to the original subject of
+the discussion: I don't want to disappoint an unselfish, fine young
+woman like you,--you see I can pay compliments, too,----" he added,
+watching the flush of pleasure mount to Billie's face; "I don't want to
+make any promises about this man I can't carry out, but I promise this
+much: I will do what I can."
+
+"Thank you a thousand times, Dr. Hume," said Billie gratefully. "I would
+just like to shake hands with you if I could, but you see I have to
+guide the 'Comet.' It will be a wonderful thing to give a man back his
+senses after eighteen years."
+
+"Maybe so; maybe not," answered the doctor as the car turned into the
+village street.
+
+They stopped in front of the only hostelry in the place, a cheap
+two-story wooden house with a horse trough in front of it. Here usually
+could be found several guides for camping trips and driving parties, and
+here Dr. Hume looked for help in rescuing Phoebe's father.
+
+The owner of the house, a thin sallow-faced man with pale shifting eyes
+came out to speak to them.
+
+"You ain't meanin' it's old crazy Frenchy you're after?" he asked. "I
+don't wonder he's lost if it's him."
+
+"That's the man," answered Dr. Hume, "but I don't understand what you
+mean."
+
+"I guess he's got wind he's suspected of settin' Razor Back Mountain on
+fire and he's vamoosed. He ought to be shut up anyhow. He's a dangerous
+character runnin' around the country."
+
+Billie was shocked and angry.
+
+"He is not," she burst out. "I know Mr.--Mr. French quite well----"
+
+The man broke into a loud rasping laugh.
+
+"Mr. French!" he repeated.
+
+"He's incapable of setting a mountain on fire and he is as gentle and
+courteous as possible."
+
+There was another laugh. This time it came from within the house and
+Billie and the doctor recognized the voice of Mr. Lupo.
+
+"You're a friend of Lupo, I see," remarked the doctor looking very hard
+at the man.
+
+"I guess that's none of your affair," answered the other angrily. "And
+nothin' agin' him nor me either, for the matter o' that."
+
+The doctor lifted his eyebrows.
+
+"I'd like to hire two or three guides. Are there any about?"
+
+"There ain't no guides connected with this here establishment goin' to
+go huntin' for crazy Frenchy," announced the man roughly, "if that's
+what you're wantin' with them. Most of 'em is fightin' the flames
+anyhow."
+
+The doctor sat silently for a moment looking at the mountaineer, whose
+eyes shifted uneasily under his steady gaze.
+
+"I would advise you and your friend, Lupo, not to meddle too much in
+this affair," he said, as the inn keeper with a snarling laugh shuffled
+back into the house.
+
+Billy turned the automobile and they went slowly down the street.
+
+"If we were in the Kentucky or the Virginia mountains, I should call
+this a feud," remarked the doctor, "but up here there is something more
+than a revenge for a quarrel two generations old that creates a
+situation of this kind. That man has got some ugly reason for
+withholding his guides. He's a sinister looking wretch, and no man with
+a shifting pair of eyes can be trusted around the corner."
+
+"But what are we to do?" asked Billie.
+
+"If we can't get guides,--we'll just go alone," answered Dr. Hume. "I
+think we'll have to find your Mr. French, Miss Billie, seeing that a lot
+of cut-throats are trying to keep us from doing it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CHANCE NEWS.
+
+
+Billie and the doctor were indeed in something of a quandary as to what
+to do about Phoebe's father. It was evident from further inquiry that
+the tide of general opinion had been turned against Crazy Frenchy; not
+one soul could be interested in the search for him, not even after an
+offer of liberal pay.
+
+"He ain't no good anyhow," one man said. "He and his daughter holds
+themselves above common people even when they don't have enough to keep
+body and soul together. They lives on property that ain't theirs by
+rights, and they don't belong in this section of the country. The
+father's crazy and the neighborhood will be glad to git rid of him."
+
+"An' I'd jes' like to mention," added another man, "the people as takes
+up for 'em ain't goin' to find it no ways a easy proposition."
+
+Certainly Lupo had enlisted the sympathies of the entire village in his
+own behalf.
+
+"I told your friend at the hotel a moment ago," said the doctor, "that
+he and Lupo had better be careful how they meddled in this business. If
+you don't want to engage yourself to me to find this unfortunate man,
+you have a perfect right to refuse. It's only a common act of kindness
+at any rate. But I would warn you that if you and your friends intend to
+make trouble, you will get into trouble. That's all."
+
+The mountaineer scowled.
+
+"We can prove he set Razor Back on fire," he said. "He was seen in the
+neighborhood prowling about with a can of oil yesterday morning."
+
+"At what time?" demanded Billie quickly.
+
+"I don't know the exact hour, lady, but it was some time in the
+forenoon."
+
+"Well," ejaculated Billie angrily, "that shows how much evidence you
+have to go upon. There's not a word of truth in it and you have no right
+to spread that wicked report founded on a falsehood. Mr. French was at
+Sunrise Camp just about that time and he couldn't have got anywhere near
+Razor Back Mountain in hours. We have a witness to prove what we say."
+
+"It may not have been forenoon, come to think of it," said the man
+doggedly.
+
+"Nonsense," exclaimed the exasperated Billie, as the "Comet" dashed away
+with a contemptuous honk-honk, leaving the defeated mountaineer standing
+in the middle of the road.
+
+Only one person was awake in all the camp when the doctor and Billie
+returned: Alberdina, busy ironing pink-tinted clothes in the lean-to.
+Miss Campbell and the girls were napping on the upper porch and Phoebe
+still slept on a couch in the living room, while Ben and Percy had not
+returned from their search for news of her father.
+
+"Miss Billie," remarked the doctor, "if you will be kind enough to fix
+me up a lunch, I think I'll pack my knapsack and start on the road
+again. I can't say how long I shall be gone, but you mustn't be uneasy
+if I don't get back for a day or two. The boys will look after you and
+if you have any real trouble, you had better telegraph your father. If
+possible, try and keep Phoebe right here. Those men will go no further
+than threats in regard to us. They know we are too powerful for them,
+but I couldn't say the same for that poor girl and her father. I suppose
+jealousy and Lupo's treachery are the motives behind it. The father does
+better work than any of them can do and the mountaineers resent the
+difference between them, whatever it is, birth, breeding, education. But
+we can't judge them by the usual standards, of course. They have never
+had any chances, these people, shut in by this wall of mountains. There
+is not much inspiration to be charitable and kind, living in one of
+these little shanties during the long cold winters. It's a pretty fine
+nature that doesn't get warped and narrowed by the life."
+
+"Phoebe's didn't," thought Billie, while she sliced bread for the
+doctor's lunch.
+
+After he had departed with his staff and his telescope and his knapsack,
+Billie sat down in a steamer chair under the trees and began to think.
+She lifted her eyes to the wall of mountains now mystical and unreal
+under their mantle of blue shadow. How could treachery and hatred and
+jealousy exist where there was so much beauty? It seemed to her that she
+had only to look about her to be inspired and uplifted; but Billie was
+too young to realize that it takes more than scenery to furnish that
+kind of inspiration.
+
+"I am not tired and I am not sleepy," she thought. "Must I sit here all
+the afternoon waiting for the others to wake?" She glanced at her
+watch. "Only a quarter to three. Why can't I take a walk? It's against
+the rules as laid down by papa for women members, but that was only a
+joke anyhow and I shan't go far."
+
+Billie chose a trail they often took after supper for the reason that it
+was brought to an early finish by the bed of a creek dry in summer,
+though probably a brave stream in the spring after the thaws. But it was
+a pretty walk, tunneled through the forest, carpeted with dried pine
+needles and bordered on either side by ferns.
+
+Strolling along, Billie thought of many things; of the mountain on the
+other side of Indian Head on which fires had started and where bands of
+men were now fighting the flames. That was a dreadful thing to do, to
+set a forest on fire; a crime against nature as well as against man. She
+thought of Phoebe's father, perhaps injured, or worse, who could tell?
+Then with a mental leap she thought of Richard Hook and his sister
+Maggie; the charm of their personalities; their simplicity; their joy
+in living. Billie wondered if she could be happy if she were poor,
+really quite poor. It was rather fun cooking, with Alberdina to clean up
+after them. It was only for a little while and it was just a sort of
+game.
+
+"It would be a dog's life to keep up forever," thought Billie, "but
+Richard and Maggie Hook would never admit it. They make the best of
+being poor and pretend that living like Gypsies is the most delightful
+way of spending one's vacation. I think they are just fine. There is
+Phoebe, too. How well she has got on without anything, education, money,
+friends. She is wonderful."
+
+Who was Phoebe? Who was her father? Were they not mysterious people?
+When the veil was lifted at last, Billie felt convinced that it would
+disclose no ordinary identity. They had the marks of distinguished
+people in exile. There was a look of family about them both that no
+ragged attire could disguise.
+
+Toward the end of the trail, Billie saw an old woman hobbling toward
+her, leaning on a stout stick. She looked remarkably like one of the
+aged forest trees unexpectedly come to life. A gnarled, brown,
+weather-beaten old creature she was, who reminded Billie of a dwarfed
+apple tree she had seen in Japan, a little old bent thing said to have
+been over two hundred years old. Attached to the woman's waist was a
+pocket apron bulging with herbs, camomile and catnip, wood sorrel and
+sassafras root.
+
+"Now, if Mary were here," thought Billie, "she would at once make a
+story of this: 'The Princess and the Old Witch.' I am sure Mary would
+call me a princess," she added modestly.
+
+When the young girl and the old witch met, they paused without exactly
+knowing why. The herb gatherer had a strange, small, yellow face,
+crossed and re-crossed with wrinkles.
+
+"Good afternoon," said Billie politely, not knowing what else to say.
+
+The old woman waved aside this greeting with her stick.
+
+"You come from Sunrise Camp?" she asked in a voice as cracked as her
+face was wrinkled.
+
+Billie nodded.
+
+"I bring message. You look for somebody?"
+
+"Yes," replied Billie eagerly.
+
+"You not find him now. Too much enemies."
+
+"Where is he?" she demanded.
+
+No answer came to this question.
+
+"You will not tell me?"
+
+"No tell," answered the old creature.
+
+"Is he ill or hurt?"
+
+The herb gatherer touched her forehead.
+
+"He safe," she answered. "But people not safe who look for him. Too much
+enemies."
+
+After that not another word could Billie get out of the obstinate old
+creature.
+
+Who had sent her? Who was looking after Phoebe's father, if he were hurt
+or a prisoner? Could not Phoebe see him? Nothing would she reply to all
+these questions.
+
+[Illustration: The old woman waved aside this greeting with her
+stick.--Page 212.]
+
+"I'm much obliged for that much anyhow," said Billie at last. "You
+must be tired and hungry. Won't you come back to the camp and let me
+give you----" she paused to consider. What could an old stunted apple
+tree like? Somehow it didn't seem as if she could live on real food.
+"Will you drink a cup of tea?" she added hastily.
+
+The wrinkled face remained inscrutable.
+
+"Or coffee?"
+
+"Coffee?" repeated the old soul, and suddenly without the faintest
+warning, smiled and Billie smiled back.
+
+"I can make delicious strong coffee," announced the girl proudly. "You
+will come, won't you?"
+
+"I come," answered the herb-gatherer. "Coffee? I come!"
+
+They walked briskly back to camp, this ill-assorted couple, and it was
+not long before Billie had established her companion in a chair under
+the trees and the coffee pot on the kerosene stove, where it was soon
+sending out a fragrant aroma.
+
+"Don't you get very tired gathering herbs on the mountains?" asked
+Billie, by way of making conversation.
+
+"When I tired, I rest," answered the other briefly.
+
+Presently Billie brought out a tray with a cup and saucer, sugar and
+cream and some thin slices of buttered bread. From the upper gallery
+there came to her the low hum of conversation. The sleepers had awakened
+and were getting bathed and dressed.
+
+"Do you know Phoebe?" she asked, while she poured the coffee.
+
+The herb-gatherer smacked her lips and sniffed the air expectantly.
+"I've seen her."
+
+"Don't you feel sorry for her to lose her father? She is very unhappy."
+
+"No sugar," exclaimed the old woman, ignoring the question. "Good!" she
+exclaimed. "Fine coffee!"
+
+Presently Billie poured out another cup and finally another.
+
+"You like coffee, don't you?" she said.
+
+"This fine coffee."
+
+"We send away for it. The village coffee is not good."
+
+"I never tasted the like before."
+
+"If you will answer me a question," said Billie suddenly, "I will get my
+father to send you enough of this coffee to last all winter."
+
+The old woman picked up the coffee pot and drained it to the last drop.
+
+"If I tell," she said, warmed and stimulated by the hot drink, "it make
+lot trouble."
+
+"Trouble for whom?"
+
+"Much trouble for all."
+
+"All I am to say to Phoebe then is that her father is in good hands and
+she is not to look for him?"
+
+The herb-gatherer nodded.
+
+"How soon will he be coming back?"
+
+She shook her head and seizing her staff, rose to go.
+
+"Are you a friend of the Lupos?"
+
+There was no answer. Billie tried again.
+
+"Did Mrs. Lupo ever go back to her husband?"
+
+"Lupo very angry. She not go back."
+
+"She needn't stay away on our account. My cousin forgave her long ago."
+
+"I go now," announced the old woman, not taking the slightest notice of
+Billie's remarks.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you for the news of Phoebe's father. Every
+time you bring us any news, you may have coffee, and if you show us
+where he is,--quite secretly, you know,--you shall have a great deal of
+coffee and money, too."
+
+"I go now," repeated the strange old creature, pretending not to
+understand Billie's offer, and she promptly took her leave without
+another word.
+
+Billie gathered up the tray and the coffee things and carried them into
+the kitchen.
+
+"It looks like rain, Alberdina. I think we had better eat indoors
+to-night," she said.
+
+Something, perhaps the east wind charged with wet, had made her feel
+dispirited and uneasy. She was homesick for her father and she wished
+that Dr. Hume had not gone away. She almost wished they had never set
+eyes on Phoebe and her father at all. How complicated life had suddenly
+become! They were just a party of well-meaning campers taking a summer
+holiday on the mountainside, meaning no harm to anybody on earth; and
+having done a little kindness to a poor girl and her half-crazed father,
+they had obtained the enmity of an entire village. How cruel and
+ignorant these people were! How warped and uncharitable!
+
+"Have Percy and Ben got back yet?" asked Nancy, appearing at the door of
+the lean-to in a fresh blue linen dress, her hair all dewy from her
+bath, her eyes bright and clear from the long rest.
+
+"Heavens, Nancy, you make me feel like a dusty old shoe," exclaimed
+Billie, realizing for the first time that she was tired and hot and
+crushed. "No, no one has come and Dr. Hume has gone to look for Phoebe's
+father." Then she told Nancy of the experiences of the afternoon.
+
+"If the old woman spoke the truth all we have to do is to lie low and
+say nothing, like Br'er Rabbit," said Nancy.
+
+"Do you know what I intend to do, Nancy," announced Billie, glancing
+through the open door at Phoebe in the distance on the divan. "Phoebe's
+awake. You see she's sitting up. I am going to set her fears at rest
+about her father first. Then I'm going to take her upstairs and after
+she's bathed, I'll dress her in some of my things. She shall swallow her
+pride. Cousin Helen shall ask her to visit us until her father is able
+to come back, and to-morrow I mean to take her down to the village in
+the 'Comet.' She shall wear my best and only pink linen. Won't she be
+stunning? I'm glad I took your advice and brought it along now, and
+we'll just show these people that Phoebe is not a poor ragged mountain
+girl."
+
+"Take anything of mine you want," said Nancy generously. "Phoebe's
+taller than I am, but she can wear my 'undies,' I suppose."
+
+"I think I have plenty," replied Billie, "that is, if Alberdina
+Schoenbachler ever gets through ironing the pink wash."
+
+Phoebe was a good deal cheered by the message of the old herb gatherer.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know her quite well. She likes me. Once when I had a fever
+she came and nursed me for several days and gave me herb tea."
+
+Phoebe also submitted to being dressed up, after a good deal of
+persuasion.
+
+"You know we are under a great obligation to you and you must give us a
+chance to get rid of a little of it," Billie said. "Besides, Dr. Hume
+said that on no account were you to leave the camp. You wouldn't like
+to disobey him, would you?"
+
+"No, no," Phoebe answered, and finally permitted herself to be led to
+the women's quarter of the camp, where for the first time in her life
+she bathed in a porcelain bath tub, with scented soap and toilet water
+and sweet smelling talcum powder and violet ammonia and all kinds of
+women's luxuries at her service on a hand shelf by the tub.
+
+When Billie proudly led Phoebe downstairs that evening, the others,
+already gathered around the supper table, were filled with amazement.
+Instead of the ragged, disheveled mountain girl, they saw a beautiful
+young woman in a white duck skirt and a muslin blouse. Her throat rose
+like a slender column from the lace yoke of the blouse and her soft hair
+was rolled into a loose knot on her neck.
+
+"I know now she is a princess," said Mary.
+
+Ben and Percy, returned from their search, had brought no news.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A WARNING.
+
+
+The next day Billie had much difficulty in persuading Phoebe to put on
+the beautiful pink linen.
+
+"It is not right," Phoebe kept saying, although her eyes shone with a
+new luster when she gazed at the pretty frock. "I am very grateful for
+what you have done but you must not do too much. I am sure my father
+would not approve of my accepting so many favors."
+
+"Nonsense," exclaimed Billie. "Can't one girl lend another a few clothes
+without its being called 'favors'? I shouldn't hesitate to borrow from
+you, Phoebe, if I were--well--in your situation. And it seems to me that
+this dress would be very becoming to you. It suits your complexion
+better than mine because it matches your cheeks. I usually wear blue
+but I was over-persuaded by Nancy-Bell to get pink."
+
+In the end, Phoebe was induced to put on the pink dress. It had been
+wonderful enough to wear a neatly fitted duck skirt and a lace-trimmed
+blouse, but in this embroidered linen frock the color of wild roses
+Phoebe was in a dream.
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, glancing at her flushed image in the mirror, "I
+never understood that clothes would make so much difference. I feel like
+someone else." She looked down at her white canvas pumps, which were, as
+a matter of fact, a shade too long for her, although she had run
+barefoot over the mountains. "And my feet look really small."
+
+When Billy placed on her head a white Panama hat trimmed with a broad
+band of black velvet, Phoebe's eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Am I Phoebe?" she ejaculated. "Phoebe without a name, who lives in a
+log house? Oh, Miss Campbell----"
+
+"Not Miss Campbell," interrupted Billie. "You must call me Billie.
+Aren't you my guest and almost the same age? Besides, I never recognize
+myself with 'Miss' tucked on before my name."
+
+"Billie, then," went on Phoebe, blushing because she had never known a
+girl before to call by the first name. "Do you think it is right that I
+should dress up so beautifully when--when my father is hidden away
+somewhere?"
+
+"But I feel perfectly sure he is safe," said Billie. "Perhaps someone
+has told him it would be safer to keep away for a while."
+
+"But why? He has never injured anyone in his life."
+
+"It is all Lupo's doings and that is one reason why we want you to go
+with us down to the village and show yourself, so that they can see you
+have a number of very good friends to look after your interests."
+
+The girls all left off their khaki camping clothes and attired
+themselves in light summer frocks that morning. There was a reason for
+this unusual "hike" as Percy called it, and it pleased Nancy extremely,
+who took that opportunity to wear her best blue batiste and her
+prettiest hat. Billie wore no hat. It annoyed her when she drove the
+car, she said; but as a matter of fact she had lent her only hat to
+Phoebe.
+
+From time to time, as the car went down the mountain road, Miss Campbell
+glanced admiringly at the mountain girl beside Billie in front.
+
+"Dear, dear," she exclaimed in a low voice, "what clothes will do for
+one. And how well the child wears them. She might have been accustomed
+to pretty things all her life."
+
+"She puts us all in the shade," whispered Nancy.
+
+If Billie had intended to create a sensation in the village, she
+succeeded beyond her wildest hopes. At first Phoebe was not recognized,
+but at the village store where everything was sold from groceries to
+Indian moccasins, a man loafing at the door exclaimed:
+
+"By golly, that there's Phoebe from up on the mountains!"
+
+Phoebe blushed scarlet and then smiled.
+
+"I suppose it will be a surprise to them," she said.
+
+They waited some time at the general store for purchases and letters,
+and by the time the "Comet" had borne them slowly onward to the small
+hotel, the news had spread down the street. At the water trough, they
+came to a full stop. They had no errands at the hotel, but Billie
+pretended to examine the "Comet's" interior mechanism with careful
+interest. Pretty soon, nearly two dozen people had gathered at the
+trough. The innkeeper himself appeared, pale-eyed and sly; and Lupo made
+bold to show his face.
+
+"Look at Crazy Frenchy's gal diked out in all them duds," one of the
+company exclaimed.
+
+"She do look good, crazy or no crazy," remarked a swarthy-faced guide
+eying Phoebe with admiration.
+
+The young girl seemed entirely unconscious of all the attention she was
+attracting. She looked straight ahead down the village street and never
+even glanced at the group of rough men gathered near the car.
+
+"How do we know but she didn't aid and abet Frenchy?" burst out the
+innkeeper. "How do we know but she didn't help him start them fires on
+Razor Back? The two is always together, 'ceptin' now when he's a-hidin'
+and she's put on fine clothes to drive around with her rich friends."
+
+Phoebe turned her startled gaze on the man. Her lips parted.
+
+"Don't answer them," whispered Billie, and with a grand flourish she
+swept the "Comet" around in a circle and turned his nose up the street.
+
+"Do they accuse my father of setting Razor Back on fire?" asked Phoebe,
+tremulously.
+
+"They tried to, but they couldn't prove it," answered Billie.
+
+"My father loves the mountains," protested poor Phoebe. "He loves the
+forests. He wouldn't harm even one tree. How cruel these people are!
+Always they have hated us and we have never injured any of them. Oh,
+Billie, I feel that I must go to my father. I know he needs me."
+
+"You remember the doctor's message," answered Billie; "that it would be
+dangerous for you to leave camp. I am certain he knew what he was
+saying. Besides, didn't you say the old herb woman was a friend? She
+would not have deceived you, would she?"
+
+"No," answered Phoebe, half smiling. "Once I pulled a thorn out of old
+Granny's foot and washed and bound it, and she has been good to me ever
+since. The time she nursed me, she never left me day or night until I
+was well."
+
+"So you see," said Billie, "it would be foolish for you to start out to
+hunt your father when you know old Granny can be depended upon and Dr.
+Hume, too."
+
+Phoebe was not the only one who felt restless in camp that afternoon.
+All of them had the sensation of waiting for something. Only Alberdina
+seemed placidly content. Having been forgiven the pink clothes and
+having had her stolen money refunded, she went about her work, singing
+and yodelling in a melodious voice, and for lunch surprised them with a
+German cinnamon cake she had made during their absence in the village.
+
+"Why, you can cook, Alberdina?" exclaimed Billie, on whom cooking was
+beginning to pall.
+
+"I can a leedle coog."
+
+"Then you shall cook the dinner," announced Billie firmly, and
+Alberdina, who had not mentioned cooking in the bond, quailed before her
+stern gray eye and consented.
+
+The afternoon dragged slowly along. It was very hot and the women
+members of the camp lay on their cots in kimonos reading and napping.
+Percy, underneath, snored lustily, and Ben chopped wood and piled up the
+logs scientifically for a fire that evening.
+
+Alberdina's supper was distinctly German in flavor, but it was good and
+Billie and Nancy enjoyed freedom from the bondage of cooking the evening
+meal. After supper the wind freshened and it grew much cooler.
+
+"It's going to be a dark night. There's no moon," remarked Ben,
+wistfully. "Shall I light the camp fire? And then we can sit around and
+tell stories and sing songs," and because no one either assented or
+objected, owing to the peculiar restlessness that possessed them, he put
+a match to the pile of logs and presently the clearing was illuminated.
+The camp house stood out in bold relief against the background of the
+mountains. Little clouds were scurrying across the sky like schools of
+fish, and an occasional flash of heat lightning lit up the mountains and
+valley with strange distinctness. Elinor had brought out her guitar and
+they had just begun one of the old familiar songs, when a ragged boy
+appeared in their midst so suddenly that he might have sprung up full
+grown from the earth.
+
+He faced Ben without looking at the others.
+
+"The doctor wants both gem'man to come. I show the way. Quick."
+
+Phoebe sat up very straight and looked at the boy.
+
+"I don't know you," she said. "Who are you?"
+
+"I come from that away," answered the boy, pointing with his thumb
+toward Indian Head. "The doctor said you would know it was all right by
+this here," he added, unbuttoning his coat and taking out the doctor's
+well remembered cane. "An' he don't want none of the ladies to come.
+Jes' the men."
+
+"But I will go," exclaimed Phoebe. "My father----"
+
+"Is your father Frenchy?"
+
+"Yes," answered the girl, lowering her eyes.
+
+"The doctor says Frenchy's gal was not to be skeered. Frenchy is safe
+and well."
+
+"Are you sure?" demanded Phoebe.
+
+"So help me," answered the boy, raising his hand to heaven.
+
+"But what does it mean?" broke in Miss Campbell. "I don't like the sound
+of it at all. Why has the doctor sent for both of you boys? Why should
+we be left alone? It's not like the doctor at all."
+
+"They ain't got to go no distance much, lady," the boy assured her.
+"They'll be back inside of fifteen minutes," and being the prince of
+liars and an actor of precocious ability, he succeeded in persuading
+them that Ben and Percy must follow him without delay.
+
+The girls were still gathering up the rugs and cushions preparatory to
+going into the house, when there came another interruption that
+frightened Miss Campbell so much that she gave a little cry and seized
+Billie's arm.
+
+"It's only old Granny, the herb-woman," Billie assured her. "What is it,
+Granny?"
+
+"Phoebe! They gona' tar and feather Phoebe an' her father if they can
+find him. Go, quick. Lupo an' his men comin' up mountain. Hurry and shut
+house."
+
+"But I don't want to bring this danger on my friends," exclaimed Phoebe.
+"I will go with you, Granny."
+
+"No, no, too dangerous," answered the old woman. "Lupo, he see in dark."
+
+"Indeed, you shall not go," broke in Miss Campbell indignantly. "You'll
+stay right here and they shall not tar and feather you or anybody else.
+The low wretches!"
+
+"Shut up house, quick," was Granny's last piece of advice as she melted
+away in the darkness.
+
+Nobody paused to beat down the camp fire or gather up the rugs and
+cushions. Into the house they scurried and lost no time in drawing the
+great iron-bound winter doors across the openings into the living room,
+and bolting them. The doors to the sleeping porches were all carefully
+closed and locked from the inside. Then they sat down in the immense
+vaulted room and waited.
+
+Phoebe, sitting apart from the others, seemed very quiet and calm in the
+face of the danger which threatened her, and Billie knew she was calling
+on the faith which had never failed her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE ATTACK.
+
+
+They were filled with hot indignation over the situation. They felt sure
+now that Ben and Percy had been lured away, but they were not uneasy for
+their safety. Billie had told them what Dr. Hume had said: that the
+mountaineers would not dare injure any of the campers. But all of them
+realized that Phoebe might be treated with cruel indignities. Only a few
+weeks before, Billie had read an account in a newspaper of how a pretty
+young school teacher had been tarred and feathered by a mob of people
+who were jealous of her beauty and refinement. If Lupo could persuade
+the villagers that Phoebe and her father were responsible for the forest
+fires, Billie felt certain they would have a very unreasonable lot of
+visitors to deal with that night. She wished with all her heart that
+someone with an eloquent tongue would appear and address these narrow,
+stupid men, someone who understood their natures and knew how to deal
+with them. She believed that violence would only aggravate their rage.
+Someone would have to talk to them.
+
+The other Motor Maids sat on a divan whispering together, and Miss
+Campbell, calm as was her wont in the presence of danger, paced up and
+down the room, examining the bolts of the heavy shutters. Alberdina,
+with her little iron bound trunk beside her, sat grumbling in a corner.
+
+"Is it for thees I haf gome?" she murmured. "I to New Yorg return
+to-morrow. They will keel me already yet."
+
+"You are perfectly safe, Alberdina," said Miss Campbell, "and you are
+not to go back to New York to-morrow. You are to stay with us and see
+this thing through. I shall telegraph Mr. Campbell in the morning and
+have the law on these people. I am sick and tired of their savagery and
+injustice. The cruel wretches! I----"
+
+A long shrill whistle interrupted her outburst. It penetrated the stout
+walls of their fortress so unexpectedly that it brought them all to
+their feet with low exclamations.
+
+"There they are," whispered Mary.
+
+Alberdina groaned, "Mein lieber Gott," and sank upon a couch with the
+expression of a condemned man about to be executed.
+
+It was some moments after the whistle before the enemy made its next
+advance. That also was unexpected and terrifying,--loud knocks on the
+wooden shutters of the large entrance.
+
+Nobody moved or spoke. Again the knocks came and a voice called:
+
+"We want that gal and her father. You ain't got no right to shelter
+criminals. Open in the name of the law. I reckon a sheriff will make you
+listen to reason."
+
+"Break the door down, Lupo," said another voice. "The law's in its
+right to git what it wants. They ain't nobody that kin refuse the law
+without payin' for it."
+
+Although they were so confident of the law, the girls felt sure the
+mention of a sheriff was a blind, and that the mountaineers were not
+going to do anything so incriminating as to break in the doors. Then
+there followed a period of consultation outside. Footsteps could be
+heard along the galleries; the stout shutters on all the openings were
+shaken and pounded upon; but Sunrise Camp was indeed as strong as a
+fortress when it was closed. Storms had beaten against it in vain, and
+unless the mob outside resorted to hatchets and saws, it would not be
+easy to break in.
+
+At last the voice of Lupo spoke from the front gallery.
+
+"Ladies, I'm only askin' justice. You got two dangerous people in this
+here house. The law wants 'em. We don't mean no harm to you an' we'll
+leave peaceable if you'll hand over the prisoners. I'm goin' to give you
+five minutes to decide in an' if you don't open the door, we're goin' to
+break it open with this here axe."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort, Lupo," cried Miss Campbell, her voice
+ringing with indignation. "And I warn you that unless you wish to serve
+a long term in the penitentiary, you'd better leave this place at once
+with your friends. Mr. Campbell would never stop until he saw all of you
+well punished for this night's work. You've already broken into the
+house and robbed our maid----"
+
+"Who said I did?" shouted Lupo. "It was Frenchy done that, too. He's a
+dangerous man to live in a peaceable place. We've been puttin' up with
+him and his daughter for too long, and we citizens ain't goin' to put up
+with 'em no longer. They gona' be punished first, and then they gona'
+give up that there home that ain't theirs by rights and leave this here
+part of the country forever."
+
+Miss Campbell decided not to reply to Lupo's outburst. It only excited
+him and it was evident her arguments had no effect.
+
+And now, after what seemed an interminable time, the door resounded with
+the blows of a woodman's axe.
+
+"Go up into the gallery, Phoebe," ordered Miss Campbell, trembling in
+spite of her determination not to be frightened.
+
+Phoebe rose and walked to the middle of the room. Her face was
+transfigured and she looked almost unearthly.
+
+"I am not afraid," she said. "I believe that I will be saved from my
+enemies. God is sending someone to save me."
+
+But the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell had no such faith to bolster up
+their faltering courage. During the long, lonely evenings on the
+mountainside when Phoebe had read aloud to her father from the New
+Testament, which he seemed to like best, there had grown in her mind a
+belief as strong as it was simple. There had never been any people to
+shake her convictions with arguments, nor books to suggest doubts. And
+now in her soul she had called for help and she believed it would come
+even at the eleventh hour.
+
+Billie, whose faith in prayer was not unmixed with a desire for action
+of a very vigorous and immediate variety, seized an old rifle hung from
+a nail on the wall. She had no idea whether there were any loads in it,
+but she had made up her mind to use the butt-end on the first man who
+entered the room. In the meantime, the axe had crashed through one of
+the thick, hardwood panels, making a slit broad enough to see through.
+
+"I'll shoot any man who comes into this room," called Billie. "Keep
+out."
+
+An eye was placed at the hole in the door. Billie felt instinctively it
+was Lupo's.
+
+"That there old rusty gun ain't got no loads in it, Miss. You kin shoot
+all you like."
+
+There was another pause, and the blows began again. Alberdina gave
+evidence of wishing to speak, but Miss Campbell interrupted her.
+
+"Never mind, Alberdina," she said impatiently. "You may go up into the
+gallery if you like. You are quite safe. They only want Miss Phoebe."
+
+But Alberdina would not be silenced. Perhaps somewhere in the remote
+history of her ancestors there had been a warrior who had ranged the
+German forests dressed in the skins of wild beasts, his helmet decorated
+with a pair of fierce upstanding horns. Who knows but a drop of his
+fighting blood had come down through the generations to stir this
+sluggish descendant into action just at this particular moment when
+something had to be done?
+
+"Come," she called, with unexpected energy. "I asg you, come. We will a
+high wall mag already. You will see. Hein?"
+
+Again the axe crashed through the door and without a word they followed
+her into the gallery, Billie carrying the rifle and Elinor the breakfast
+horn. Alberdina hurried into the locker room and presently returned with
+a trunk hoisted on her shoulders. This she placed at the top of the
+stairs.
+
+"Good," exclaimed Billie. "Why didn't we think of that before? It will
+keep them off for a little longer, at any rate."
+
+Alberdina did not listen to these honeyed words of praise, however. She
+never paused until she had piled three trunks, one on top of the other
+in a very effective barricade. At the far end of the gallery, Elinor and
+Mary appeared to be very much occupied at a little window placed in the
+roof for ventilation, but now closed. Finding the bolt rusty, Elinor
+took off her slipper and broke a pane of glass. Mary, her lieutenant,
+then handed her the breakfast horn. It was like Elinor to wipe off the
+mouth piece carefully with her handkerchief before she placed it to her
+lips. But the blast she blew must have startled the mountaineers
+outside, for the blows on the door ceased for a moment. Again and again
+she signaled, always the same long agitated note.
+
+"I think anybody would recognize that as a call for help," she said,
+pausing for breath; and while the axe crashed through the door, she
+continued to blow the bugle with all her strength.
+
+Billie, however, felt fairly certain that a trunk barricade and a bugle
+blast for help would not keep off the savages long.
+
+"We need some kind of ammunition, Nancy," she said. "If only this rifle
+was loaded."
+
+"Did you look through the barrel?" asked Nancy, slightly more
+experienced with firearms than Billie. She seized the rifle and held it
+up before a lamp that Alberdina had set in a corner of the gallery,
+cocked it and looked through with one eye professionally squinted.
+
+"Why, it is loaded," she announced. "It only has two empty what do you
+call them--chambers?"
+
+"Must I shoot at somebody?" asked Billie.
+
+"You could try and I could try," answered Nancy, "but I don't think
+either one of us would hit an elephant."
+
+Just then Miss Campbell put out the light. At the same moment the axe
+made a breach in the door and a man crawled through. Billie lifted the
+rifle and, taking a long breath, aimed at his foot. The man was looking
+about him in a bewildered way. It was the innkeeper, second leader of
+the gang. Billie pulled and pulled, but nothing happened, and in another
+moment a dozen mountaineers had crawled through the opening. The one
+lamp cast a small circle of light near the fire-place. The rest of the
+room was in darkness. In the gallery the anxious watchers were invisible
+to the band of men, but the watchers themselves could see the outlaws
+plainly now gathered in a group in the center of the room, rather uneasy
+after breaking down the door of Sunrise Camp.
+
+"Ladies, I'd advise you to give up the prisoners," called Lupo,
+addressing the darkness. "We ain't goner touch none of you, but we wants
+them two furriners right away."
+
+"Git some torches," ordered the innkeeper, who seemed really to be the
+boldest man in the lot.
+
+Several men disappeared and in a moment returned with pitch torches
+which cast a lurid, flickering light through the room. It was a weird
+scene, looking down from the gallery. All of the men wore masks except
+Lupo and the innkeeper, who were boldly undisguised. They peered about
+the room. Suddenly Lupo's eye caught a corner of the staircase at the
+far end.
+
+"They're upstairs. Come on, men," he called.
+
+Billie raised the shotgun to her shoulder.
+
+"I'll shoot the old thing off this time if it flies to pieces," she
+said, and pulled the trigger with all her might.
+
+"Bang!" went the gun, and down she sat very hard, not knowing where she
+had aimed. There was a great confusion of voices below and she thought
+she heard someone cry out with pain.
+
+"Could I have shot anyone?" she asked herself tremulously as she picked
+herself up from the floor. Her shoulder ached and her finger was
+bruised, but she put the gun into position again.
+
+"I'll shoot any man who comes up those steps," she called.
+
+The outlaws had gathered under the gallery now, holding their torches
+high and gazing with some curiosity at the women grouped above them.
+Miss Campbell stood with her arm around Phoebe's waist. Elinor and Mary
+were still at the window. Nancy was with Billie, and Alberdina crouched
+behind the barricade.
+
+Lupo fell back angrily.
+
+"I guess you ain't got but one load in your old shotgun," he called.
+"Come on, men. We'll make a run for it."
+
+Billie turned the gun straight on him. She felt almost more afraid of
+the unwieldy thing than she did of the man himself.
+
+"If it jumps again," she thought, "it'll break my shoulder. And it's so
+undignified to have to sit down every time I shoot it off."
+
+The innkeeper made a leap for the steps and Lupo followed him. Billie
+ran to the other end of the gallery so as to get a better aim, and
+pulled at the trigger. The trunks were swaying and Alberdina had rushed
+from behind them.
+
+"Oh, Nancy, I can't make it go off," Billie sobbed under her breath.
+
+"Give it to me," whispered Nancy, seizing the gun and leveling it with
+trembling hands at Lupo.
+
+"Look out, Lupo," called a man below, as the barricade went down with a
+crash.
+
+But Lupo was in no mood to listen to warnings. Bounding over a fallen
+trunk, he wrenched the gun from Nancy's hand.
+
+At this moment, a man walked into the room and marched straight up to
+the group of mountaineers.
+
+"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," he said in a voice loud enough to be
+heard by everybody, "is this Sunrise Camp?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE FORCE OF ELOQUENCE.
+
+
+Phoebe gazed at the newcomer as if she were seeing a visitor from
+heaven. All the women in the gallery experienced enormous sensations of
+relief and Alberdina smiled down at him broadly.
+
+"Mein lieber Gott, helb has gome already yet," she exclaimed.
+
+They hardly seemed to comprehend in their relief that one man had to
+deal with a dozen or more.
+
+"Who are you?" demanded Lupo, roughly, coming to the top of the stairs.
+
+"My name is Hook, at your service. May I ask if you are giving a
+performance of private theatricals? The scene is a good deal like a band
+of highwaymen attacking a number of helpless women."
+
+"We're in the rights of the law," put in the innkeeper.
+
+"Why wear masks then?" asked Richard Hook.
+
+There was no answer to this pointed question and three of the maskers
+slunk toward the door.
+
+"We've come here to git two criminals hiding illegally in this here
+camp," burst out Lupo.
+
+"Have you a warrant for their arrest?"
+
+"We don't need no warrants in these here mountains."
+
+"Oh, yes you do," insisted Richard politely. "Law and order must be
+respected just as much on the mountains as in the valleys. People who
+don't respect them soon find out what happens."
+
+Two more men slunk toward the door.
+
+"I think," went on Richard, "that you had better follow your friends out
+quietly and go to your homes. I am certain most of you have wives who
+would be glad to see you again after this dangerous little adventure.
+Jail isn't a pleasant place, you know, especially to people who are in
+the habit of breathing mountain air."
+
+Only six men remained now of the original number. Even Lupo had been
+silenced, but at the mention of wives he flared up again.
+
+"They have taken my wife away from me," he cried, shaking his fist at
+the women in the gallery. "They have given her money to leave me. I
+ain't so forgivin'."
+
+"Do you want to know the real reason why your wife left you?" said
+Richard in a tone of such conviction that Lupo was deceived into
+thinking this perfect stranger knew all about him. "She was afraid of
+you and your lawless ways. When you have been drinking, as you have
+to-night, you're a dangerous man. You begin by breaking into private
+houses. You're disorderly and violent. Men like you end in the
+penitentiary. You hide yourselves perhaps for a while, but these
+mountains are difficult to hide in nowadays. You would be caught sooner
+or later, and do you think you'll get much sympathy with the court
+after one of these ladies, perhaps, has told the history of to-night's
+work? Fifteen years would be a short sentence. Your wife is right, I
+think. You're not a very safe companion."
+
+Lupo looked about him bewildered. Only one of the band remained: the
+watery-eyed innkeeper.
+
+"I was in the rights of the law," exclaimed Lupo, half-crying as he
+crept down the gallery steps.
+
+"I am afraid not," said Richard gently. "But you take a little trip to
+another county and get some good honest work, and you will soon find out
+how much happier and safer it is to be within the limits of the law.
+Decidedly more agreeable than being hunted through the mountains by a
+sheriff with his bloodhounds, sleeping out in the cold, going hungry,
+slinking around the edges of villages when everybody is asleep for a
+chance piece of bread. Earning honest money with your wife happy beside
+you is heaven in comparison, I assure you."
+
+Lupo hung his head until his eyes were hidden by the brim of his felt
+hat.
+
+"I'm goin'," he said sullenly. "I guess your argyments is too good for
+the likes of me to try an' answer. I wants my wife back more'n I wants
+to git even with Frenchy and his gal. They done me a injury once, but
+I'm willin' to call it square if you are."
+
+"Call it square," said Richard, and the two mountaineers slunk out of
+the room and disappeared in the night.
+
+And now the ladies of Sunrise Camp and Richard Hook found themselves
+quite alone in the vast living room. The danger was over and the last
+and most impious of the outlaws departed. Miss Campbell and her girls
+standing in a row in the gallery looked down into the whimsical face of
+their deliverer. Billie recalled that only a little while before she had
+wished for someone with a persuasive tongue to appear and address the
+outlaws. Phoebe, too, had believed that God would send a deliverer.
+Whose prayer had brought the young man to Sunrise Camp in the nick of
+time? Hers or Phoebe's, Billie wondered. Perhaps it was their combined
+wishes. She understood little about the psychology of wishes. At any
+rate, here they all stood, safe and sound, and presently they found
+themselves laughing at the ludicrous thing that might have turned into a
+tragedy but for Richard Hook's persuasive tongue.
+
+Already Alberdina was removing the barriers.
+
+"Whose idea was that? Yours, Miss Billie?" asked Richard.
+
+"No, no. We really owe our temporary safety to Alberdina, there. She
+thought of it herself."
+
+The German girl was well pleased over the fame the one intelligent act
+of her life had brought her. She smiled broadly at Richard as she
+cleared the way for the ladies to descend.
+
+"Before we settle down to talk," remarked the young man, "suppose we
+open the doors and windows and light the lights. This room is fairly
+close and it would be a good idea to illuminate for the sake of your
+friends who might happen to be returning. By the way, where are the
+criminals?"
+
+"Here is one of them," answered Miss Campbell, smiling. "This is our
+friend, Miss Phoebe--" she hesitated, "Miss Phoebe French. Does she look
+like a criminal?"
+
+Phoebe, who all this time had been watching Richard with a sort of rapt
+expression, was startled out of her dream. She blushed and looked down
+at the floor. The girls had never seen her so shy.
+
+"This is Mr. Hook, Phoebe," continued Miss Campbell. "I think we ought
+all to offer him our united thanks for his courage."
+
+"I do thank you, sir, with all my heart," said Phoebe fervently, timidly
+offering her hand.
+
+Richard stretched out his left hand.
+
+"I--I ask your pardon for giving you my left hand," he said, and for the
+first time they noticed that his right arm was hanging limply at his
+side.
+
+"Oh, Rich--Oh, Mr. Hook," cried Billie, as red as a beet. "What have I
+done--I shot you--Oh, dear, I am so sorry!"
+
+"Don't you worry, Miss Billie. It's just a coat sleeve wound. The bullet
+cut through the cloth and scratched my arm. It's lodged there in the
+wall now, I suppose, as a memento of your nerve."
+
+"Why, boy, your sleeve is soaked in blood," exclaimed Miss Campbell.
+"And you're as white as a ghost. Sit down here quick. Alberdina, a basin
+of water. Billie, some bandages. Hurry, all of you. Why are you standing
+around like a lot of wooden images?"
+
+Phoebe was too inexperienced to join in the general rush for bandages,
+peroxide of hydrogen, absorbent cotton and witch hazel: all the
+first-aid-to-the-injured the camp afforded. She stood at the foot of the
+couch and watched Richard Hook with large innocent eyes. His own eyes,
+very dark gray, wide apart and extremely intelligent, returned her gaze
+with a kind of amused admiration.
+
+In the meanwhile, Miss Helen Campbell snipped up his shirt sleeve with a
+pair of small scissors and Billie, overwhelmed with contrition, stood
+ready to bathe the wound, which was more bloody than serious.
+
+"I call this pretty nice," remarked Richard, glancing at the circle of
+anxious faces leaning over him. "It's worth being shot to have so many
+ministering angels about one; and a Seraph with a flaming sword at the
+foot of my couch to guard me," he added, glancing again at Phoebe, now
+holding a lamp high with a perfectly steady arm, so that the others
+could see to work.
+
+Having washed and bound the wound, they propped his head on two pillows
+and drew their chairs about the couch. Never was a young man so coddled
+before.
+
+"You haven't explained to us yet, Mr. Hook, how you happened to drop
+down from the skies," said Miss Campbell.
+
+"I dropped up and not down, on the contrary, Miss Campbell. The van
+isn't so very far away. The girls wanted to put up for the night at the
+foot of the mountain, but I was stubborn for once and we worked old
+Dobbin until his limbs refused to go any farther. After they had got
+settled for the night, I thought I'd take a stroll. I supposed you would
+all have gone to bed but I had a feeling I'd like to see Sunrise Camp by
+starlight. I wouldn't have found it, however, if I had not heard the
+calls for help on the bugle. There wasn't a light to be seen from the
+road."
+
+Elinor felt a secret pride at this statement. It was she, then, who had
+brought the rescuer! Billie felt sure it was her own strong wish that
+had drawn Richard to them in their great need, while Phoebe, filled with
+the conviction of her faith, believed he had been sent in answer to her
+fervent prayers.
+
+If Richard had been consulted about this and had spoken the truth from
+his heart, could he have explained the irresistible impulse that had
+urged him to climb the steep road up the mountain on that dark night?
+
+At this juncture, Ben and Percy, more dead than alive from running,
+almost fell into the room.
+
+"Great Caesar's ghost," Percy ejaculated in a weak voice, "but we have
+had a fright about you, and here you are giving an evening reception!"
+
+"Nothing has happened, then?" Ben managed to gasp.
+
+"That little arch fiend led us into a jungle and lost us," went on
+Percy. "We heard the bugle calls for help. Gee! But we have had a run."
+
+"And you're all right? You're safe?" cried Ben, counting them over. "And
+Mr. Hook has been protecting you? Thank heavens for that."
+
+"My dear young man," observed Miss Campbell with some irritation, "will
+you please to turn around and look at that front door or slide or
+whatever you call the thing? I wish you to know that we have had one of
+the most exciting evenings of our lives. This house was attacked and
+broken into by a dozen ruffians and if it hadn't been for Alberdina,
+there, who has the mind of a general and knew exactly how to build a
+barricade with trunks, Phoebe would certainly have been tarred and
+feathered, even before Mr. Hook came to our rescue----"
+
+"He heard my bugle," announced Elinor.
+
+"I wished for him," thought Billie.
+
+"I prayed for him," said Phoebe in a low voice.
+
+"If Richard Hook had not appeared and permitted himself to be shot by
+Billie without uttering a sound----"
+
+"Oh, I let out a yell," broke in Richard.
+
+"We would have all been murdered, like enough."
+
+"But where are your sister and Miss Swinnerton?" asked Ben.
+
+"I suppose I had better be getting back to them," said Richard, who had
+quite forgotten that he had left two unprotected maidens asleep in a
+traveling van on a ledge half a mile below.
+
+Percy and Ben offered to go back for him, but he would not consent, and
+Billie, solicitous and full of contrition for her reckless shooting, had
+the "Comet" out in a jiffy although Richard had asked to be allowed to
+walk. They found the van dark and quiet. Evidently the girls had heard
+nothing of the rumpus on the mountain and had felt no uneasiness about
+Richard, who was accustomed to taking strolls at untimely hours.
+
+It did not take long to bring the motor car back to camp and before
+midnight a peaceful calm had settled over the log hut.
+
+Phoebe, stretched on her cot in the living room, lay staring up into the
+darkness of the unceiled roof. She tried to think of her father
+somewhere out on the mountain, but always her thoughts reverted to the
+new young man with the kind, smiling eyes. Once she chanted in a low
+voice:
+
+"'How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth
+good tidings!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+THE MORNING AFTER.
+
+
+Miss Campbell felt no ill effects from the visit of the mountaineers.
+She had not even thought of ill effects, in fact. Somehow, the presence
+of Phoebe, unruffled and calm through all the danger, had had its
+influence on all of them. Even Alberdina's emotions had been hushed by
+contact with that peaceful nature.
+
+It was well past six o'clock before the exhausted household awakened
+next morning at Percy's trumpet call. Hurrying down before the others,
+Billie was amazed to see the traveling van drawn up in a clearing at the
+edge of the grove. Old Dobbin, tethered to a rope, stood nearby
+peaceably munching his breakfast from a wooden pail. Amy Swinnerton was
+seated in front of an easel sketching the log cabin and from inside of
+the van came the crisp voice of Maggie Hook, singing:
+
+    "'I loved a lass, a fair one,
+    As fair as e'er was seen;
+    She was indeed a rare one,
+    Another Sheba Queen:
+    But, fool as then I was,
+    I thought she loved me, too:
+    But, now alas! she's left me,
+    Falero, lero, loo!'"
+
+"Good morning!" cried Billie, running over to the van. "You must have
+muffled old Dobbin's feet to have crept in so quietly. How is Ri--Mr.
+Hook?" she added, all in one breath.
+
+Maggie popped her head out of the front of the van. She reminded Billie
+of a little bird peeping from a bird house.
+
+"Not 'Mister,'" she called, smiling brightly. "Remember, Billie, that we
+brothers and sisters of the road never use titles."
+
+"Oh, yes, I mustn't forget that I'm one of the fraternity," answered
+Billie, smiling.
+
+    "'--Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood
+    Ever the wide world over,'"
+
+called Maggie, with much animation, from the top step of the van.
+
+"You'll have to know her better to understand her dual nature, Billie,"
+observed Amy Swinnerton, glancing up from her easel. "After she's been a
+good housewife and got things shipshape and free from the dust of the
+road she loves so much, she's ready to turn Gypsy and muss them all up
+again."
+
+"I never mussed anything up in my life," broke in Maggie. "I only clean
+up other people's musses."
+
+"But how is your brother Richard?" persisted Billie. "You see I feel
+some natural anxiety because I was the one who shot him last night. Has
+the wound been dressed?"
+
+"Shot him?" repeated the other girls.
+
+"That was why he made me drive old Dobbin this morning," said Amy.
+
+"And to think he never told," broke in Maggie, "and he's gone off now,
+goodness only knows where."
+
+"And he didn't tell you about the attack and how he saved us?" demanded
+Billie.
+
+"Not a word."
+
+Billie gave them an account of what had happened the evening before. It
+was exciting enough to tell about and the girls listened breathlessly.
+Richard's courage and tact with the outlaws when all the time his sleeve
+was soaked with blood from the wound in his arm, fired her with unusual
+eloquence.
+
+"I don't think they intended to harm any of us," she finished. "It was
+Phoebe they wanted, and her father, who is hiding somewhere on the
+mountain. But we shall be thankful to him all our lives for what he did.
+Why didn't he tell you?"
+
+"It's too like him," said Maggie. "I don't know whether it's modesty or
+indifference, but he never, never tells stories where he figures as a
+hero."
+
+"Do you wish us to stop here now after so much excitement?" Amy asked.
+"I don't think it's any time for outsiders to intrude in spite of
+Maggie's rhymes about Gypsy blood and brothers of the road."
+
+"Indeed, we wouldn't think of letting you go," cried Billie hospitably.
+"You are not strangers to us, I assure you, after all your kindness. But
+I do wish I could find your brother. The place on his arm bled a lot
+last night. I am certain a wound like that should be washed and dressed
+every few hours. Do you think he could have gone very far away?"
+
+"Oh, dear," exclaimed Maggie. "Richard is incorrigible. He does make me
+so uneasy sometimes."
+
+"There is nothing to do but wait patiently until the spirit moves him
+to come back," put in Amy calmly. "He is so strong and well that perhaps
+his wounds don't have to be dressed as often as other people's. There
+seems to be a special Providence that looks after him anyhow. It would
+be foolish to worry."
+
+Nevertheless, Billie did worry considerably in her heart, and even
+Phoebe, who presently joined them and was introduced to the girls,
+looked startled and uneasy when she heard that Richard Hook, her
+deliverer, had gone away without having his wound dressed.
+
+The caravanners were greatly interested in seeing Phoebe, whose history
+they had heard.
+
+"She is very beautiful," Amy observed, "but she doesn't look human,
+somehow. She has the expression of a person who sees visions, air
+pictures invisible to other people."
+
+"She is very religious," Billie replied. "Not like the religious people
+we know, but--well like people in the time of Christ might have been.
+You see she got it all herself without any outside teaching. She just
+learned it out of the New Testament mostly, and she practices it all the
+time. It's part of her life. Sometimes, I think it would be a pity to
+interfere with it."
+
+"How can you interfere with it, Billie?" asked Nancy.
+
+"By taking her back to wicked West Haven with all its temptations,"
+laughed Billie.
+
+"But shall you?" they asked in a chorus.
+
+"We can't leave her in this wild place."
+
+"And her father?" put in Mary.
+
+"You'll have to ask Dr. Hume about that," answered Billie, and not
+another word would she say on the subject.
+
+That morning the "Comet" conveyed a load of young people down to the
+village. Miss Campbell ordered a telegram to be sent to her cousin,
+demanding his immediate presence at the camp. Also a carpenter was
+secured to build a new door for the living room. This time the village
+street was singularly empty. No faces peeped from the half opened doors
+and no crowd gathered at the town pump. The rickety old wooden hotel was
+closed and the blinds drawn at every window. Evidently Richard Hook had
+frightened Lupo and the innkeeper very effectually.
+
+"I don't think they will ever trouble us again, Phoebe," Billie remarked
+as they circled the pump and started home.
+
+"They are sorry," said Phoebe compassionately. "They are like children,
+and Mr. Hook understood that when he spoke to them as children. He is
+very wonderful and very good."
+
+"He is indeed," agreed Billie. "He is a very remarkable young man."
+
+Phoebe seemed about to speak again, but kept silent. It was difficult
+for her to carry on a conversation.
+
+"I love him," she said at last, so simply and innocently that Billie
+smiled in spite of the earnestness of Phoebe's expression.
+
+"You love everyone, do you not, Phoebe? It is what you have learned by
+yourself up here in the mountain."
+
+"I cannot do that," answered Phoebe. "I have tried but I cannot. But I
+love Mr. Hook. May God protect him always and reward him for his
+kindness."
+
+Billie looked away abashed. She had never heard anyone speak like that
+before outside of a church. She, too, hoped that God would protect
+Richard, but she would not have said it for worlds. She hoped also that
+Richard would be waiting for them at Sunrise Camp when they returned. He
+was not there, however. Miss Campbell, with Nancy and Percy, had looked
+for him in vain.
+
+"No, he has not come back," said the little lady. "And neither has Dr.
+Hume. Where is that foolish man? He shouldn't have left us without news
+all this time."
+
+"Richard should remember that he is a guest and not an independent
+traveler," exclaimed Maggie Hook. "I don't think he has any right to go
+off and stay like this."
+
+"Now, Maggie, you are worrying and it's very foolish," put in practical
+Amy Swinnerton. "You know perfectly well he'll be back by nightfall."
+
+Nobody felt quite in the humor to do anything. The day was exceedingly
+hot and the sun on its downward course in the heavens was like a red
+ball. Most of the party scattered for naps and letter writing and did
+not meet again until sunset.
+
+That afternoon as they gathered around the supper table, Alberdina
+brought a note to Miss Campbell, written in a strange, old-fashioned
+handwriting on a scrap of paper. It read:
+
+"Do not be uneasy. I have gone in search of Mr. Hook. Phoebe."
+
+Miss Campbell groaned as she read the message aloud.
+
+"Really, Billie," she exclaimed reproachfully, "you and your father
+between you induced me to come to this place for peace and rest----"
+
+Billie's eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Never mind, child," added the distracted lady. "It's not your fault."
+
+"It all came about," remarked Mary, who was fond of tracing things to
+their beginnings, "because Billie bought a pail of blackberries from
+Phoebe one morning and Mrs. Lupo was angry."
+
+This might be considered an interesting and perfectly true statement,
+but nobody heard it, because they were busy organizing a search party. A
+few moments later Billie and Ben went down to the village in the motor
+car for guides, and this time guides were forthcoming.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE MILLS OF GOD.
+
+
+It was not often that Billie lost a night's rest from anxiety, but that
+night her eyes refused to close and she lay staring into the darkness,
+straining her ears for sounds in the forest. Even Richard's sister,
+Maggie, was not so abjectly miserable as Billie. She tried to explain to
+herself that it was all because she had been the one to shoot the young
+man in the arm.
+
+"I'd much rather have shot that horrid Lupo," she sobbed under her
+breath. "Suppose I've killed Richard? The wound may be much worse than
+we thought it was." She wiped her eyes on the sheet and lay very still
+listening. Away off on the mountain somewhere a dog began to howl. The
+weird sound made her shiver and hide her face in the pillow.
+
+"Oh, God protect him," she whispered, and then blushed furiously. "I
+suppose I have a perfect right to pray for a friend?" she thought in
+reply to some unspoken thought.
+
+Besides the anxiety she felt, all sorts of new and unusual sensations
+were disturbing her peace of mind that wakeful night. She experienced a
+kind of irritation against Phoebe, which she could not explain to
+herself.
+
+"He'll think she's lots braver than I am," she thought, naming no names,
+"because I wouldn't dare go out in the woods alone at night to hunt for
+him. She is braver and better than I am. She is wonderful and--and so
+beautiful. I--I wish my hair wasn't so straight," she added to the
+pillow into which she had poured these girlish secrets.
+
+At last when the first gray streaks of dawn appeared, Billie rose and,
+quietly dressing, crept downstairs.
+
+"How silly I have been," she was admonishing herself, irritably, when
+she saw Phoebe run around the side of the house and stand looking up at
+the sleeping porch.
+
+Billie dashed across the clearing.
+
+"Phoebe, have you found him? Is he all right?" she demanded, grasping
+the girl's shoulders and shaking her in her impatience.
+
+"Yes. I found him and took him to my home," answered Phoebe proudly. "He
+was lost in the marsh just as you were. His arm was bleeding and he was
+very weak."
+
+"He is very ill?"
+
+"No, no. It was from losing so much blood, they said."
+
+"They?"
+
+"Old Granny and Dr. Hume. My father is there, too." Phoebe clasped her
+hands. "Oh, God is good to me," she cried. "That I should find my father
+and Mr. Hook on the same day."
+
+Billie felt strangely irritated, and then reproachful of herself.
+
+"And your father, Phoebe," she asked kindly. "What happened to him?"
+
+"On the day he came to the camp, he said, the language of the German
+girl stirred up something in his mind. After he went away he must have
+been very confused and he only remembers walking for a long time and
+then falling. You would not guess who found and has cared for him all
+this time? Old Granny and Mrs. Lupo. They brought him to Granny's cabin,
+where Mrs. Lupo has been hiding. Then the doctor came, and they got a
+wagon and moved him down the mountain to our home. That was yesterday."
+
+"I am so glad," said Billie, endeavoring to be sympathetic, but feeling
+really much more relieved over the safety of Richard Hook.
+
+"The doctor has sent you some written messages," went on Phoebe, giving
+Billie a little note book. "They are inside."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My dear Miss Billie," the note read, "not long ago you asked me to
+restore the sleeping memory of our friend and I told you it was
+sometimes best to let sleeping memories lie. Since that time I have
+become deeply interested in the personality of Phoebe's father. He is a
+gentleman, undoubtedly, in birth and breeding. He is perfectly aware
+that he has lost his memory and has discussed the mystery of his
+identity with me so intelligently that I may say I feel it my duty to do
+what I can. Even his illusion regarding the physician is more in the
+nature of a deep and lasting impression evidently made just before he
+took the plunge into forgetfulness. I have mentioned that to him, too.
+He has never talked to people before on these subjects because there has
+never been anyone to talk to, but I have suggested the operation and he
+is keen to have it done. I must confess I am filled with curiosity about
+him. Who knows what distinguished niche he may have occupied once
+somewhere? I may be restoring--well, never mind. There is no use making
+guesses now. In spite of his broken leg, he is in good physical
+condition and I am going to have the thing over with. I am therefore
+asking you to send the telegrams you will find further over, to two
+young surgeons I know who will be interested enough in the case to put
+up with the inconvenience of the place. I would not risk exciting this
+mysterious person by moving him to a hospital. Mrs. Lupo appears anxious
+to make amends and will remain to cook and help generally. I think you
+had better bring over the 'Comet' to take back your friend, Mr. R. Hook,
+who seems strangely eager to return, although I have done my best to
+entertain him. I wonder if it could be a princess disguised as a beggar
+girl or a princess undisguised, who has so stirred young Richard's soul.
+I need not say which princess has stirred mine.
+
+"Faithfully, William Hume."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, what did the doctor mean by all this nonsense, Billie asked
+herself. It was true that Phoebe, when she had gone in search of
+Richard had put on her old faded gingham, and certainly Richard owed a
+great deal to the beggar maid in disguise, but she--Billie--did wish the
+doctor wouldn't tease.
+
+Billie blessed the "Comet" that morning from the bottom of her heart. It
+was a busy time and the swift, faithful machine enabled them to
+accomplish in a few hours what with a horse and wagon might have taken
+them at least a day to do. After breakfast he carried them down to the
+village, where Dr. Hume's telegrams were sent, and where something
+happened that set Billie wondering about the identity of Phoebe and her
+father.
+
+While Ben sent the telegrams and Maggie Hook and Mary looked over the
+souvenir post cards in the general store, Billie sat on the steps
+outside reading a letter from her father. Only Phoebe, once more attired
+in the white blouse and duck skirt, remained in the car. A big touring
+car containing two men and a chauffeur drew up alongside the "Comet,"
+and while one of the men went into the store, the other paced up and
+down outside. He was a man about Mr. Campbell's age, tall and foreign
+looking with a soldierly bearing. Billie glanced at him only once and
+went on reading her letter. Presently she noticed that he was standing
+in front of her, his hat in his hand.
+
+"Will you pardon me if I interrupt you?" he asked in good English with
+an accent. "May I take the liberty of asking you a question?"
+
+"Oh, certainly," answered Billie politely.
+
+"May I inquire the name of the young lady in the motor car, if it is not
+too great an impertinence? I ask not from curiosity, but because I
+perceive a strong likeness."
+
+"Her name is 'Phoebe,'" Billie answered.
+
+"And her surname?"
+
+Billie hesitated. After all it was absurd to assert that Phoebe's last
+name was "French."
+
+"You do not know her last name?"
+
+"Well,--you see--she hasn't any," Billie stammered. "She--her father has
+forgotten who he was."
+
+"So?" ejaculated the stranger. "And they live?"
+
+"They live on Indian Head Mountain in a little cabin."
+
+"Will you pardon me if again I seem inquisitive? The young lady--you say
+she lives in what you call a _cabeen_ and yet she seems not to be
+poor--that is, in appearance, I mean."
+
+Billie flushed again. It did seem very much like gossiping to answer all
+these questions, but this stranger was commanding,--rather elegant in
+his manner.
+
+"The young lady has friends, perhaps? People who have helped her?"
+
+"Yes, that is it," said Billie.
+
+"Another question and I shall not trouble you further. Where is
+this--er--_cabeen_?"
+
+"It is on a ledge over 'Table Top' on 'Indian Head Mountain,'" answered
+Billie promptly, having good reason to remember that location. "Take the
+road to the right at the end of this street and it takes you straight
+there. It's called 'Indian Head Road.'"
+
+The stranger took a notebook and pencil from his pocket and wrote down
+the names. When he closed the book, Billie saw that it was of Russian
+leather with a coat of arms in dull gilt embossed on the back. The
+pencil fitted into a flat gold case on which also was the coat of arms.
+She glanced quickly at Phoebe and her heart gave a leap. It was not
+difficult to connect coats of arms and grand things with Phoebe. Billie
+could easily picture her in the midst of fine surroundings.
+
+"She is a princess," she thought wistfully. "And beautiful and good."
+
+The stranger also was watching Phoebe. His face worked with emotion and
+he said something in German in a low voice.
+
+"And her father?" he asked suddenly. "Where is he?"
+
+"At the cabin," answered Billie.
+
+"You are indeed very kind," and the stranger, making a low foreign bow,
+joined his companion in the touring car and in two minutes the great
+machine was lost in the distance.
+
+Billie's mind was filled with conjectures on the journey to Phoebe's
+home a little later. When they left the car to climb the path to the
+cabin, she lingered behind the others, thinking deeply, although she had
+seen Richard from below standing on the very edge of a rocky shelf
+scanning the road with the doctor's telescope.
+
+With a shy obstinacy new to her candid nature she pretended not to
+notice him or to mind that Phoebe with ingenuous joy had run ahead to
+speak to him first.
+
+"I've been waiting for you a long time, Miss Billie," he exclaimed,
+having left the others and run down the path to meet her.
+
+"We had to go to the village first," answered Billie.
+
+"No, no. I mean it has seemed an infernal long time since the 'Comet'
+pulled up down there in the road and you lagged behind."
+
+"Not ten minutes."
+
+"I guess it would have seemed long to you if you had been sitting here
+since eight A. M. watching every vehicle that passed. Not long ago a big
+black car stopped down there and I was pretty sure it had come to fetch
+me."
+
+He gave her one of his ingratiating smiles.
+
+"Who was it?" asked Billie.
+
+"I don't know. They saw the doctor for a minute and then went on. But I
+don't want to talk about them. Why didn't you hurry?"
+
+"I always heard that sick men were children," laughed Billie, "and I can
+see that you are quite ill because you are such a child. We shall take
+you home now and feed you up on cream and eggs, providing we can get
+any."
+
+Billie was glad to see Dr. Hume again. They clasped hands like old
+comrades. There was a peculiar radiance in his brown eyes as he looked
+at her.
+
+"You've had a great honor paid you, Miss Billie," he said.
+
+"What in the world?"
+
+"The gods have chosen you to turn their mills a while and you are
+turning them pretty fast, I can tell you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+A LONG SLEEP.
+
+
+The song of the "Comet's" motor broke the stillness of the afternoon
+some ten days later as he cheerfully pushed upward on the Indian Head
+road. Mr. Campbell was at the wheel and beside him sat Billie, glancing
+up at him from time to time with eyes full of loving devotion. On the
+back seat was Phoebe, silently contented beside Richard Hook, and the
+other occupant was Alberdina Schoenbachler, that absurd little hat
+perched atop her big smiling face.
+
+There had been many days of anxiety and suspense for the people at
+Sunrise Camp. It was impossible not to feel deeply interested in the
+strange things that were transpiring in the little cabin on Indian Head.
+The two young surgeons had arrived; a tent had been pitched alongside
+the cabin, and one morning early the operation was performed. Since
+that time the patient had lain in a stupor. And now Dr. Hume had sent
+Mrs. Lupo, tamed and domestic, to take Alberdina's place at the camp,
+and Alberdina was to come at once to the cabin. Mrs. Lupo could give no
+reason; that was all the message stated, except that the patient was
+doing well.
+
+The doctor went down the path to meet them, when the car stopped under
+the brow of the hill. He shook hands with Richard Hook, patted Phoebe on
+the cheek, and said:
+
+"Hang on to your faith, little girl. It's a wonderful reservoir to draw
+on."
+
+Then he grasped hands with Mr. Campbell, whom he had met several times
+now and liked immensely, nodded to Alberdina, and drawing Billie's arm
+through his, marched on ahead.
+
+"Anybody might think my little girl was a consulting physician,"
+remarked Mr. Campbell, amused at the earnest conversation the young girl
+and the great surgeon had plunged into,--and proud, too, that it should
+be so.
+
+"Oh, they have lots of secrets from us, Mr. Campbell," replied Richard
+Hook. "Miss Billie is confidential adviser to the doctor. I don't
+believe he takes a step without consulting her first."
+
+"Wise man," answered Billie's father. "He'll get some good sound advice,
+if not entirely professional."
+
+In the meantime, Billie was saying:
+
+"Oh, doctor, what has happened? Is he conscious? Has he spoken? Does he
+recognize anyone?"
+
+"How could he, child, when there is no one for him to recognize?
+Recollect that in coming to, the man has taken up the thread of his life
+of eighteen or twenty years ago. I would not trust him to see Phoebe at
+this point. Only the faces of strangers are safe for him for the time
+being."
+
+"And the stranger never came back who inquired about him that day?"
+
+"No. I told him two weeks would be safer. There is no doubt the man was
+a personage of some sort. His companion said, 'Yes, Excellency,' as they
+went down the path. I suppose he's got some kind of a title."
+
+"Did he seem excited?" asked Billie.
+
+"I could hardly say excited. He appeared a good deal moved by the story
+of Phoebe and her father. He asked me if any money was needed."
+
+"Of course you said 'no'?" observed Billie.
+
+"I did. It's my turn now. His turn may come later. I explained to him
+that any excitement or sudden recognition immediately after the
+operation might prove fatal or disastrous, and he took himself off. But
+I consider that Phoebe's father is practically identified."
+
+"Is he conscious?" asked Billie with subdued excitement.
+
+"Not only conscious, but, my dear child, what do you think? Speaking
+German; not English."
+
+Billie gasped.
+
+"That's why you wanted Alberdina."
+
+"Yes, I needed someone who could speak with him, and a servant would be
+excellent; better, really, than an educated German. Just now the man's
+mind is in terrible confusion. He is back in another country somewhere,
+but he is holding his own, and if he can get over the shock which must
+come when he links his past with his present, I believe we need have no
+fear for his reason; but it will be a pretty ticklish moment."
+
+The doctor looked down into Billie's eager, earnest face, and his eyes
+were filled with admiration.
+
+"Oh, doctor," she exclaimed, "you are so wonderful. Next to Papa, the
+most wonderful man I have ever met. Richard and I----"
+
+"What!" interrupted the doctor, smiling, "do you mean to say that that
+young whipper snapper, with his Gypsy notions and his clever tongue, has
+already photographed himself on your mind? I should never have bathed
+and bound his wounds if I had guessed it."
+
+"You know you would," laughed Billie, blushing a little. "But he's only
+a comrade."
+
+The doctor looked into her eyes again.
+
+"That's what they all should be, Miss Billie," he said. "Comrades. And
+if I were only fifteen years younger, I should be looking for just such
+a comrade as you."
+
+"But I am your comrade," protested the young girl. "Just as much as
+Richard's. I'm proud to be. It's the greatest honor that's ever been
+paid to me."
+
+"Oh, to be young again," sighed the doctor with a humorous lift to his
+eyebrows. "Oh, to be young, like young Richard, there. But I must
+remember that I am a very busy middle-aged person with an extremely
+interesting patient to pull through. I trust he'll thank me for the
+job."
+
+"Don't you honestly believe he is some distinguished person?"
+
+"I couldn't say, little comrade, but I could guess that he's no ordinary
+one."
+
+They had reached the cabin now. The others had come up, and they all
+stood outside talking in low voices. After a brief word with Alberdina,
+Dr. Hume conducted her into the little room where the Motor Maids and
+their friends had once found refuge. From the doorway, Billie could see
+the silver candlesticks on the mantel shelf. Mrs. Lupo had kept them
+brightly polished and they lent a strange charm and refinement to the
+bare apartment. Phoebe crept in and knelt outside her father's door.
+
+"Now, Alberdina," said the doctor as a last caution, "you understand
+that you are not to speak unless the gentleman inside asks you a
+question in German. Answer him in three words if you can. Then come out
+quietly. If he calls, you may go back."
+
+Alberdina laid aside her comedy hat and followed the doctor into the
+sick room. The others gathered noiselessly outside the window and
+listened. There was a long silence. Then the man on the bed spoke in a
+low, weak voice. It was only a mumble of sounds to Billie and Richard,
+but Mr. Campbell understood German and listened intently.
+
+Alberdina replied not in three words but in a long voluble speech.
+
+They held their breath.
+
+"Come out," called the doctor softly.
+
+The sick man had begun to speak again. He seemed to be giving orders.
+
+At the door Phoebe was weeping softly. Her father, restored to himself,
+was a stranger who spoke in a foreign tongue. Billie was fairly shaking
+with excitement.
+
+"Do you suppose he's forgotten English?" she whispered to Richard, who
+made the most absurd reply that had nothing whatever to do with Phoebe's
+father and lost memories.
+
+"I think the doctor had better take you in hand," said Billie.
+
+"I have an incurable disease," answered the young man, not in the least
+ashamed.
+
+Mr. Campbell had joined the doctor and Alberdina at the other end of
+the house where their voices could not be heard in the sick room. The
+young surgeons were also in the group. When Billie and Richard came up,
+the German girl was saying:
+
+"I cannot from the German English mag. He is a German already yet?"
+
+"Of course," answered the doctor impatiently, "but what did he ask you?"
+
+Alberdina broke into German.
+
+"No, no. In English."
+
+"He very sig yet ees----"
+
+The doctor gave poor Alberdina a withering glance.
+
+"I think I can tell you most of the conversation, Doctor," put in Mr.
+Campbell. "The patient asked Alberdina if she were one of the maids at
+the palace. She answered at great length that she was laundress at
+Sunrise Camp. 'This was not a palace,' she explained, 'but a hut.'
+
+"'I have been in an accident?'" the sick man asked, as Mr. Campbell
+translated it.
+
+"When Alberdina acquiesced, he told her to call Franz or Karl.
+
+"Seeing her shake her head, he said:
+
+"'The Baron von Metz is here?'
+
+"'No,' answered Alberdina.
+
+"'None of the household?'"
+
+Then he gave her orders to telegraph the Baron von Metz at an address in
+Dresden and sign it A. J. Mr. Campbell had failed to catch the telegram,
+although he distinctly heard the second telegram to a "Miss Phoebe
+Jones," at an address in England. It said she was not to worry. He had
+been detained by illness. Twice he made the blundering maid repeat the
+telegram, and finally exhausted with the mental effort, dropped into
+unconsciousness.
+
+Was it not strange and terrible to take up the thread of one's life
+where it had been so ruthlessly snapped off some two decades ago?
+
+Richard and Billie, seated on a rock out of hearing distance of the
+cabin, discussed the anomaly together.
+
+"It's like Rip Van Winkle," Billie observed, "only worse because there
+have been so many inventions."
+
+"Yes, there are motor cars, for instance. They were only on trial then;
+and flying machines."
+
+"And hobble skirts," added Billie with an inward laugh, remembering
+Nancy's.
+
+"It's very interesting," said Richard, "a good deal like missing the
+middle act of a drama."
+
+"Don't you imagine that Phoebe's father belonged to a noble family?
+Perhaps he was a younger son, and fell in love with a pretty English
+girl named Phoebe Jones. They eloped to America and hid themselves in
+the mountains, and the old Archduke or Prince or Baron who was the
+father perhaps gave it out that his son was insane. They always do that,
+you know."
+
+"Very romantic," said Richard, "but why has he been speaking only
+English all these years?"
+
+"Don't ask me anything so scientific, please."
+
+"It would go hard with me," pursued Richard, "if I got a blow on the
+head over my English-language bump, because I wouldn't have any other to
+take its place."
+
+Having arranged the history of the sick man to their own satisfaction,
+and as a matter of fact, to the doctor's and Mr. Campbell's also, they
+returned to Sunrise Camp, leaving Alberdina and Phoebe behind them.
+
+Poor Phoebe had watched Billie and Richard together from the doorstep of
+the cabin. Then she had folded her hands with a gesture of resignation
+and closed her eyes. Something had hurt her. She still felt the pain and
+not all her faith nor prayers could ease it.
+
+That night the campers gathered around the fire and discussed the
+mystery of the "Prince in Exile," as they had named Phoebe's father.
+They told stories of similar cases, of men with double identities who
+had been lost for years, of men who had made new lives for themselves
+and even earned fortunes.
+
+"I knew he was a prince the first time I saw him," Mary exclaimed.
+
+"And now Phoebe will be a princess and perhaps very rich," observed
+Elinor.
+
+"Think of stepping from a cabin to a palace," went on Amy Swinnerton.
+"From being a barefooted girl selling blackberries on the mountain to
+being a noble lady with a retinue of servants."
+
+And so they all talked and discussed and enjoyed themselves immensely
+until a motor horn interrupted them. A car had evidently stopped in
+front and someone now hurried over to the group around the fire.
+
+"Well, children," called Dr. Hume, "I daresay you'll be interested in
+the news I am bringing you."
+
+"Wasn't I right?" cried Billie.
+
+"He was a prince?"
+
+"Or a duke, perhaps?"
+
+"Even a baron is pretty good."
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+"You are wonderful guessers," said the doctor. "He lived in a palace."
+
+"I knew it," cried Mary.
+
+"Would it disappoint you very much if I were to tell you that the
+gentleman without a memory who lived in a palace was not a prince, nor a
+duke, nor a baron, but at one time a clergyman?"
+
+"Oh!" they exclaimed in varying tones of surprise and disappointment.
+
+"Then how the palace?" asked Maggie Hook.
+
+"The Rev. Archibald Jones, a highly educated English gentleman of no
+means to speak of, was tutor in a noble family in Germany."
+
+"But his wife? She was a princess?" cried Mary, almost weeping.
+
+"Every woman is a princess, my dear young lady," replied the gallant
+doctor.
+
+"But a real one, Doctor? One who lived in a palace?"
+
+"She lived in the palace, yes. She was attached to the household as
+English governess. The tutor and the governess met, as well they might
+even in a grand castle, and being in the same boat as regards teaching
+and birth, they fell in love. The lady was very beautiful, I
+understand."
+
+"And then?" demanded the chorus.
+
+"Then they came to America where the field was larger even than in a
+palace with the _noblesse_. The young wife fell sick and the young
+husband, having saved a bit of money, brought her up into the mountains.
+The night Phoebe was born he tried to take a short cut down the
+mountainside to get a doctor who was stopping at a hotel now in
+ruins----"
+
+Percy bowed his head.
+
+"I recognize the spot," he said.
+
+"And the young tutor husband not of the nobility fell and hit his head
+against a rock. He was brought back insensible by an old Indian
+grandfather of Mrs. Lupo. The beautiful young wife only lived a few
+days, and when the father was better and the baby stronger the Indian
+took them and their belongings across the valley to Indian Head, where
+they have lived ever since."
+
+"Poor things," exclaimed Miss Campbell. "What a pitiful, sad story!"
+
+"And the wife's name was Phoebe Jones?" asked Billie.
+
+"Wrong again," replied the doctor. "Would you have a Jones marry a
+Jones?"
+
+"Then who, pray, was Miss Phoebe Jones?"
+
+"Aunt of the Rev. Archibald. For some reason he remembered the name and
+I suppose gave it to the child."
+
+"Then who was the German gentleman who recognized Phoebe?"
+
+"Now you are getting down to real romance," replied the doctor.
+
+"He was the young noble for whom the Rev. Archibald acted as tutor."
+Here the doctor spoke slowly and impressively. "He loved the English
+governess and when she married the poor tutor, his noble heart was
+broken and never has been mended."
+
+"And he never married another?" piped up Mary's small voice.
+
+"Oh yes, my dear. The nobility always marries. Singleness is against the
+rules. He married and has a family of six."
+
+"And is that the end of the story?" asked Billie.
+
+"No, there is a sequel. It seems that when the Rev. and Mrs. Archibald
+Jones disappeared from the stage of life without explanation only one
+person, after a decade or more, still clung to the belief that they were
+not dead. None other than Miss Phoebe Jones herself, spinster, living in
+Surrey, England. She recently died leaving her property to her nephew,
+his wife or possible heirs. It seems that the gentlemen who just now
+dropped me at your door----"
+
+"The disappointed lover?"
+
+"Yes. The broken-hearted noble with a wife and six children, knew about
+this will because the lawyers in trying to trace Mr. Jones and his wife
+had got into communication with him."
+
+"And so they won't be poor," said Nancy. "I'm glad of that. Phoebe
+looked beautiful in good clothes."
+
+Everybody laughed, and then the doctor remarked:
+
+"And so the story has a plain ending, after all. Phoebe is not a
+princess and you are all disappointed."
+
+"No, no, no," they protested, but the doctor knew better.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+COMRADES OF THE ROAD.
+
+
+Already the scarlet sumac lit the road with its flaming torch, and here
+and there on the mountainside a flash of scarlet like a redbird's wing
+appeared among the masses of foliage. Autumn was at hand, the autumn of
+the Adirondacks, when the evening air is nipped with the hint of frosts
+to come and the sky is a deeper blue than ever it is at mid-summer.
+
+Summer comrades of the road may not linger in the hills at this
+enchanting season. There is work to be done in the valleys where the
+busy people live. In a few days now the shutters of log cabin camps will
+be closed and traveling vans will be sent to winter quarters.
+
+The boys and girls who have lingered around the campfire, singing songs
+and telling stories under the great harvest moon, all comrades of the
+road, must turn their thoughts to soberer things than roasting apples
+and school day reminiscences. The grown people, too, stretched out in
+their steamer chairs, have been idling away the hours. Vaguely, as in a
+mist, a great surgeon recalls that there is a hospital somewhere he has
+been neglecting for weeks. An engineer is thinking of his tunnel only
+just started through the heart of a mountain. A little old spinster,
+fair and fresh as a rose, recalls with a start that for many weeks she
+has been sleeping under the stars and eating strange food on a bare deal
+table; and down in the valley her beautiful old home, filled with
+memories of her girlhood, is waiting to shelter her.
+
+Near the spinster sits a tall man with a delicate, nervous face. He sits
+with folded arms, his eyes fixed on the back wall of mountains across
+the valley. He is thinking not of the future of the little home in
+Surrey that awaits him, but of the twenty black years behind him, as
+blank and empty as the years of a prisoner spent in solitary
+confinement. Sometimes, with a curious, startled gaze, he turns his eyes
+toward his daughter, seated in the circle with the young people.
+
+While we have been taking this leisurely view of our friends, Alberdina
+has approached, smiling broadly over a great tray of cakes and ginger
+ale. Mrs. Lupo is hovering in the background.
+
+"It was that skirt of the young lady's that brought me really back to my
+senses," Mrs. Lupo had confessed to Miss Campbell. "I thought the young
+lady had sunk in the mire. The misery that come to me then made me see
+things different; that and the prayer you taught me. Lupo, he's workin'
+now in the valley and when the camp is broke up, I guess we'll forgive
+and forgit."
+
+Miss Campbell, glancing at Mrs. Lupo now in the background, wondered if
+that awful memory of the carving knife was not a dream.
+
+"Papa," Billie called from her place near the campfire, "you mustn't
+forget to send pounds and pounds of really good coffee to old Granny,
+the herb gatherer, enough to last her all winter."
+
+"I'll make a note of it, daughter. Are there any other old parties you
+wish to pension off with coffee or tea this winter?"
+
+"No, papa. But I'd like to keep old Granny in coffee for the rest of her
+life because she loves it so."
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," called Percy, rising and flourishing an apple on
+the end of a long stick, "I made a discovery this morning through a
+letter from a friend, and I've been saving it until this moment to
+spring it on the Motor Maids and company."
+
+"About whom is this discovery?" asked Richard uneasily, raising his
+eyebrows and blinking his humorous eyes.
+
+"It's about two impostors who travel around in a little wooden house on
+wheels and live like Gypsies----"
+
+"Oh, dear," cried Maggie, "now what have you been finding out about us,
+pray?"
+
+"I know," said Richard. "You've found that we are really Gypsies and
+only pretending to be amateurs."
+
+"Nothing of the sort. I've discovered that you have been traveling under
+a disguise----"
+
+"My name is certainly 'Hook,'" put in Richard.
+
+"And mine is Maggie," piped his sister.
+
+"Maybe so," went on Percy. "That's not the disguise. You've been wearing
+the cloak of poverty, when you are really as rich as cream, the pair of
+you, with an old grandfather in England who has a title and castles and
+much pleasing property; and every now and then the old grandpapa sends
+for you and you have to give up Gypsying and fly."
+
+"And _he's_ your boss who's always interfering with your vacations?"
+interrupted Billie.
+
+"And you just _pretend_ to be poor for the novelty of the experience?"
+asked Nancy. "I wish I could pretend to be rich in the same way."
+
+"But we are Gypsies at heart," put in Maggie, "and I do love to scrub
+and cook. Grandpapa's is so dull."
+
+"And where does Grandpapa think you are now? Not in a traveling van,
+I'll wager," said Miss Campbell.
+
+Maggie laughed.
+
+"We are supposed to be visiting Aunt Lucretia. She's our American aunt,
+Papa's sister, who brought us up, before Grandpapa decided to recognize
+us. You see Mamma would marry Papa, who was poor then, and came from
+Maine. He looked just like Richard and I don't blame her. Grandpapa lets
+us come every summer to visit Aunt Lucretia now."
+
+"And where does Aunt Lucretia think you are?"
+
+"Why, visiting Amy Swinnerton."
+
+Who could keep from laughing over this brother and sister who loved the
+life on the road and the campfire?
+
+"Thank fortune, I'm not in line for the title," Richard whispered to
+Billie under cover of the conversation of the others, "and Grandpapa or
+no Grandpapa, I shall buy that farm,--do you guess where?"
+
+"I can't imagine," answered Billie.
+
+"In West Haven. I've never seen it, but that is the place you like best,
+isn't it?"
+
+"I think I like the traveling van best," answered Billie
+irrelevantly,--"that is, next to the 'Comet,'" she added with a sudden
+feeling of loyalty toward the faithful motor car.
+
+"The traveling van would be a part of it and the 'Comet,' too, for that
+matter."
+
+Then he calmly slipped his hand over hers under the folds of her scarlet
+cape.
+
+"Shall we be comrades of the road?" he whispered.
+
+"Some day, perhaps," Billie answered, not taking her hand away, but
+glancing shyly at her father, who was watching her face in the fire
+light.
+
+Then she smiled at Richard. After all, she was past eighteen and
+Richard,--well, Richard was the most delightful person she had ever met
+in all her life.
+
+Let us take leave of our young people before they go back to the valleys
+where work is waiting for them. Brown and strong and happy, they sit in
+a circle talking and laughing, as boys and girls will, under the light
+of the harvest moon.
+
+While they are still comrades of the road, we will bid them good-night.
+
+Good-night, little Mary, calm and sweet, watching the stars twinkling
+through the tree tops. Good-night to you, Nancy, dimpling and smiling,
+while Percy whispers in your ear; and Elinor, too, talking quietly and
+happily to Ben. And now a last good-night to Billie, best of comrades,
+kindest and truest of friends.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
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