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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp, by Annie Roe Carr
+
+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: Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp
+       or, The Old Lumberman's Secret
+
+Author: Annie Roe Carr
+
+Posting Date: December 27, 2008 [EBook #2691]
+Release Date: July, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NAN SHERWOOD AT PINE CAMP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Justin Philips
+
+
+
+
+
+NAN SHERWOOD AT PINE CAMP
+
+or, The Old Lumberman's Secret
+
+
+By Annie Roe Carr
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I. THE YELLOW POSTER
+
+"Oh, look there, Nan!" cried Bess Harley suddenly, as they turned
+into High Street from the avenue on which Tillbury's high school was
+situated.
+
+"Look where?" queried Nan Sherwood promptly. "Up in the air, down on the
+ground or all around?" and she carried out her speech in action,
+finally spinning about on one foot in a manner to shock the more staid
+Elizabeth.
+
+"Oh, Nan!"
+
+"Oh, Bess!" mocked her friend.
+
+She was a rosy-cheeked, brown-eyed girl, with fly-away hair, a blue
+tam-o'-shanter set jauntily upon it, and a strong, plump body that she
+had great difficulty in keeping still enough in school to satisfy her
+teachers.
+
+"Do behave, Nan," begged Bess. "We're on the public street."
+
+"How awful!" proclaimed Nan Sherwood, making big eyes at her chum. "Why
+folks know we're only high-school girls, so, of course, we're crazy!
+Otherwise we wouldn't BE high-school girls."
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Bess, interrupting. "Do be reasonable, Nan. And look
+yonder! What do you suppose that crowd is at the big gate of the Atwater
+Mills?"
+
+Nan Sherwood's merry face instantly clouded. She was not at all a
+thoughtless girl, although she was of a sanguine, cheerful temperament.
+
+The startled change in her face amazed Bess.
+
+"Oh dear!" the latter cried. "What is it? Surely, there's nobody hurt in
+the mills? Your father-----"
+
+"I'm afraid, Bess dear, that it means there are a great many hurt in the
+mills."
+
+"Oh, Nan! How horridly you talk," cried Bess. "That is impossible."
+
+"Not hurt in the machinery, not mangled by the looms," Nan went on to
+say, gravely. "But dreadfully hurt nevertheless, Bess. Father has been
+expecting it, I believe. Let's go and read the poster."
+
+"Why it is a poster, isn't it?" cried Bess. "What does it say?"
+
+The two school girls, both neatly dressed and carrying their bags of
+text books, pushed into the group before the yellow quarter-sheet poster
+pasted on the fence.
+
+The appearance of Nan and Bess was distinctly to their advantage when
+compared with that of the women and girls who made up the most of the
+crowd interested in the black print upon the poster.
+
+The majority of these whispering, staring people were foreigners. All
+bore marks of hard work and poverty. The hands of even the girls in the
+group were red and cracked. It was sharp winter weather, but none wore
+gloves.
+
+If they wore a head-covering at all, it was a shawl gathered at the
+throat by the clutch of frost-bitten fingers. There was snow on the
+ground; but few wore overshoes.
+
+They crowded away from the two well-dressed high-school girls, looking
+at them askance. Bess Harley scarcely noticed the mill-hands' wives and
+daughters. She came of a family who considered these poor people little
+better than cattle. Nan Sherwood was so much interested in the poster
+that she saw nothing else. It read:
+
+NOTICE: Two weeks from date all departments of these mills will be
+closed until further notice. Final payment of wages due will be made
+on January 15th. Over-supply of our market and the prohibitive price
+of cotton make this action a necessity. ATWATER MILLS COMPANY. December
+28th.
+
+"Why, dear me!" murmured Bess. "I thought it might really be something
+terrible. Come on, Nan. It's only a notice of a vacation. I guess most
+of them will be glad to rest awhile."
+
+"And who is going to pay for their bread and butter while the poor
+creatures are resting?" asked Nan seriously, as the two girls moved away
+from the group before the yellow poster.
+
+"Dear me, Nan!" her chum cried. "You do always think of the most
+dreadful things. It troubles me to know anything about poverty and
+poor people. I can't help them, and I don't want to know anything about
+them."
+
+"If I didn't know that you are better than your talk, Bess," said Nan,
+still gravely, "I'd think you a most callous person. You just don't
+understand. These poor people have been fearing this shut-down for
+months. And all the time they have been expecting it they have been
+helpless to avert it and unable to prepare for it."
+
+"They might have saved some of their wages, I suppose," said Bess. "I
+heard father say the other night how much money the mills paid out in a
+year to the hands, some perfectly en_or_mous sum."
+
+"But just think how many people that has to be divided among," urged
+Nan. "Lots of the men earn only eight or nine dollars a week, and have
+families to support."
+
+"Well, of course, they don't have to be supported as we are," objected
+the easy-minded Bess. "Anyway my father says frugality should be taught
+to the poor just the same as reading and writing. They ought to learn
+how to save."
+
+"When you earn only just enough to supply your needs, and no more, how
+can you divide your income so as to hoard up any part of it?"
+
+"Dear me! Don't ask questions in political economy out of school, Nan!"
+cried Bess, forgetting that she had started the discussion herself. "I
+just HATE that study, and wish we didn't have to take it! I can't answer
+that question, anyway."
+
+"I'll answer it then," declared Nan. "If you are a mill-hand your
+stomach won't let you save money. There probably won't be a dozen
+families affected by this shut-down who have more than ten dollars
+saved."
+
+"Goodness! You don't mean that that's true? Why, dad gives me that much
+to spend on myself each month," Bess cried. "The poor things! Even
+if they are frowsy and low, I am sorry for them. But, of course, the
+shut-down doesn't trouble you, Nan. Not personally, I mean. Your father
+has had a good position for so many years-----"
+
+"I'm not at all sure that it won't trouble us," Nan interposed gravely.
+"But of course we are not in danger of starvation."
+
+She felt some delicacy about entirely confiding in Bess on the subject.
+Nan had heard the pros and cons of the expected closing of the mills
+discussed at home almost every day for weeks past; but family secrets
+should never be mentioned outside the family circle, as Nan very well
+knew.
+
+"Well," signed Bess, whose whole universe revolved around a central
+sun called Self, as is the case with many girls brought up by indulgent
+parents. "I hope, dear, that this trouble won't keep you from entering
+Lakeview with me next fall."
+
+Nan laughed. "There never was a chance of my going with you, Bess, and
+I've told you so often enough-----"
+
+"Now, don't you say that, Nan Sherwood!" cried her chum. "I've just made
+up my mind that you shall go, and that's all there is to it! You've just
+got to go!"
+
+"You mean to kidnap me and bear me off to that ogre's castle, whether or
+not?"
+
+"It's the very nicest school that ever was," cried Bess. "And such a
+romantic place."
+
+"Romantic?" repeated Nan curiously.
+
+"Yes, indeed! A great big stone castle overlooking Lake Michigan, a
+regular fortress, they say. It was built years ago by Colonel Gilpatrick
+French, when he came over from Europe with some adventurous Irishmen
+who thought all they had to do was to sail over to Canada and the whole
+country would be theirs for the taking."
+
+"Goodness me! I've read something about that," said Nan, interested.
+
+"Well, Lakeview Hall, as the school is called, was built by that rich
+Colonel French. And they say there are dungeons under it."
+
+"Where they keep their jams and preserves, now, I suppose?" laughed Nan.
+
+"And secret passages down to the shore of the lake. And the great hall
+where the brave Irishmen used to drill is now the assembly hall of the
+school."
+
+"Sounds awfully interesting," admitted Nan.
+
+"And Dr. Beulah Prescott, who governs the hall, the preceptress,
+you know, is really a very lovely lady, my mother says," went on the
+enthusiastic Bess. "MY mother went to school to her at Ferncliffe."
+
+"Oh, Bess," Nan said warmly, "It must be a perfectly lovely place! But I
+know I can never go there."
+
+"Don't you say that! Don't you say that!" cried the other girl. "I won't
+listen to you! You've just got to go!"
+
+"I'm afraid you'll have to kidnap me, then," repeated Nan, with a
+rueful smile. "I'm very sure that my father won't be able to afford it,
+especially now that the mills will close."
+
+"Oh, Nan! I think you're too mean," wailed her friend. "It's my pet
+project. You know, I've always said we should go to preparatory school
+together, and then to college."
+
+Nan's eyes sparkled; but she shook her head.
+
+"We sat together in primary school, and we've always been in the same
+grade through grammar and into high," went on Bess, who was really very
+faithful in her friendships. "It would just break my heart, Nan, if we
+were to be separated now."
+
+Nan put her arm about her. They had reached the corner by Bess's big
+house where they usually separated after school.
+
+"Don't you cry, honey!" Nan begged her chum. "You'll find lots of nice
+girls at that Lakeview school, I am sure. I'd dearly love to go with
+you, but you might as well understand right now, dear, that my folks are
+poor."
+
+"Poor!" gasped Bess.
+
+"Too poor to send me to Lakeview," Nan went on steadily. "And with the
+mills closing as they are, we shall be poorer still. I may have to get a
+certificate as Bertha Pike did, and go to work. So you mustn't think any
+more about my going to that beautiful school with you."
+
+"Stop! I won't listen to you another moment, Nan Sherwood!" cried Bess,
+and sticking her fingers in her ears, she ran angrily away and up the
+walk to the front door.
+
+Nan walked briskly away toward Amity Street. She did not turn back to
+wave her hand as usual at the top of the hill.
+
+
+
+Chapter II. THE COTTAGE ON AMITY STREET
+
+The little shingled cottage stood back from the street, in a deeper yard
+than most of its neighbors. It was built the year Nan was born, so the
+roses, the honeysuckle, and the clematis had become of stalwart growth
+and quite shaded the front and side porches.
+
+The front steps had begun to sag a little; but Mr. Sherwood had blocked
+them up. The front fence had got out of alignment, and the same able
+mechanic had righted it and set the necessary new posts.
+
+The trim of the little cottage on Amity Street had been painted twice
+within Nan's remembrance; each time her father had done the work in his
+spare time.
+
+Now, with snow on the ground and frozen turf peeping out from under
+the half-melted and yellowed drifts, the Sherwood cottage was not so
+attractive as in summer. Yet it was a cozy looking house with the early
+lamplight shining through the kitchen window and across the porch as Nan
+approached, swinging her schoolbooks.
+
+Papa Sherwood called it, with that funny little quirk in the corner
+of his mouth, "a dwelling in amity, more precious than jewels or fine
+gold."
+
+And it was just that. Nan had had experience enough in the houses of her
+school friends to know that none of them were homes like her own.
+
+All was amity, all was harmony, in the little shingled cottage on this
+short by-street of Tillbury.
+
+It was no grave and solemn place where the natural outburst of childish
+spirits was frowned upon, or one had to sit "stiff and starched" upon
+stools of penitence.
+
+No, indeed! Nan had romped and played in and about the cottage all her
+life. She had been, in fact, of rather a boisterous temperament until
+lately.
+
+Her mother's influence was always quieting, and not only with her little
+daughter. Mrs. Sherwood's voice was low, and with a dear drawl in it, so
+Nan declared.
+
+She had come from the South to Northern Illinois, from Tennessee, to
+be exact, where Mr. Sherwood had met and married her. She had grace and
+gentleness without the languor that often accompanies those qualities.
+
+Her influence upon both her daughter and her husband was marked. They
+deferred to her, made much of her, shielded her in every way possible
+from all that was rude or unpleasant.
+
+Yet Mrs. Sherwood was a perfectly capable and practical housekeeper, and
+when her health would allow it she did all the work of the little family
+herself. Just now she was having what she smilingly called "one of her
+lazy spells," and old Mrs. Joyce came in to do the washing and cleaning
+each week.
+
+It was one of Mrs. Sherwood's many virtues that she bore with a smile
+recurrent bodily ills that had made her a semi-invalid since Nan was a
+very little girl. But in seeking medical aid for these ills, much of the
+earnings of the head of the household had been spent.
+
+The teakettle was singing when Nan entered the "dwelling in amity", and
+her mother's low rocker was drawn close to the side-table on which the
+lamp stood beside the basket of mending.
+
+Although Mrs. Sherwood could not at present do her own laundry-work, she
+insisted upon darning and patching and mending as only she could darn
+and patch and mend.
+
+Mr. Sherwood insisted that a sock always felt more comfortable on his
+foot after "Momsey" had darned it than when it was new. And surely she
+was a very excellent needlewoman.
+
+This evening, however, her work had fallen into her lap with an idle
+needle sticking in it. She had been resting her head upon her hand and
+her elbow on the table when Nan came in. But she spoke in her usual
+bright way to the girl as the latter first of all kissed her and then
+put away her books and outer clothing.
+
+"What is the good word from out of doors, honey?" she asked.
+
+Nan's face was rather serious and she could not coax her usual
+smile into being. Her last words with Bess Harley had savored of a
+misunderstanding, and Nan was not of a quarrelsome disposition.
+
+"I'm afraid there isn't any real good word to be brought from outside
+tonight, Momsey," she confessed, coming back to stand by her mother's
+chair.
+
+"Can that be possible, Daughter!" said Mrs. Sherwood, with her low,
+caressing laugh. "Has the whole world gone wrong?"
+
+"Well, I missed in two recitations and have extras to make up, in the
+first place," rejoined Nan ruefully.
+
+"And what else?"
+
+"Well, Bess and I didn't have exactly a falling out; but I couldn't help
+offending her in one thing. That's the second trouble."
+
+"And is there a 'thirdly,' my dear?" queried little Mrs. Sherwood
+tranquilly.
+
+"Oh, dear, yes! The worst of all!" cried Nan. "The yellow poster is up
+at the mills."
+
+"The yellow poster?" repeated her mother doubtfully, not at first
+understanding the significance of her daughter's statement.
+
+"Yes. You know. When there's anything bad to announce to the hands
+the Atwater Company uses yellow posters, like a small-pox, or typhoid
+warning. The horrid thing! The mills shut down in two weeks, Momsey, and
+no knowing when they will open again."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" was the little woman's involuntary tribute to the
+seriousness of the announcement.
+
+In a moment she was again her usual bright self. She drew Nan closer
+to her and her own brown eyes, the full counterpart of her daughter's,
+winkled merrily.
+
+"I tell you what let's do, Nan," she said.
+
+"What shall we do, Momsey?" repeated the girl, rather lugubriously.
+
+"Why, let's not let Papa Sherwood know about it, it will make him feel
+so bad."
+
+Nan began to giggle at that. She knew what her mother meant. Of course,
+Mr. Sherwood, being at the head of one of the mill departments, would
+know all about the announcement of the shut-down; but they would keep
+up the fiction that they did not know it by being particularly cheerful
+when he came home from work.
+
+So Nan giggled and swallowed back her sobs. Surely, if Momsey could
+present a cheerful face to this family calamity, she could!
+
+The girl ran her slim fingers into the thick mane of her mother's coiled
+hair, glossy brown hair through which only a few threads of white were
+speckled.
+
+"Your head feels hot, Momsey," she said anxiously. "Does it ache?"
+
+"A wee bit, honey," confessed Mrs. Sherwood.
+
+"Let me take the pins out and rub your poor head, dear," said Nan. "You
+know, I'm a famous 'massagist.' Come do, dear."
+
+"If you like, honey."
+
+Thus it was that, a little later, when Mr. Sherwood came home with feet
+that dragged more than usual on this evening, he opened the door upon a
+very beautiful picture indeed.
+
+His wife's hair was "a glory of womanhood," for it made a tent all about
+her, falling quite to the floor as she sat in her low chair. Out of this
+canopy she looked up at the brawny, serious man, roguishly.
+
+"Am I not a lazy, luxurious person, Papa Sherwood?" she demanded.
+"Nan is becoming a practical maid, and I presume I put upon the child
+dreadfully, she is good-natured, like you, Robert."
+
+"Aye, I know our Nan gets all her good qualities from me, Jessie," said
+her husband. "If she favored you she would, of course, be a very hateful
+child."
+
+He kissed his wife tenderly. As Nan said, he always "cleaned up" at the
+mills and "came home kissable."
+
+"I ought to be just next door to an angel, if I absorbed the virtues of
+both my parents," declared Nan briskly, beginning to braid the wonderful
+hair which she had already brushed. "I often think of that."
+
+Her father poked her tentatively under the shoulder blades with a blunt
+forefinger, making her squirm.
+
+"I don't feel the wings sprouting yet, Nancy," he said, in his dry way.
+
+"I hope not, yet!" exclaimed the girl. "I'd have to have a new winter
+coat if you did, and I know we can't afford that just now."
+
+"You never said a truer word, Nan," replied Mr. Sherwood, his voice
+dropping to a less cheerful level, as he went away to change his coat
+and light the hanging lamp in the dining room where the supper table was
+already set.
+
+Mother and daughter looked at each other rather ruefully.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" whispered Nan. "I never do open my mouth but I put my
+foot in it!"
+
+"Goodness!" returned her mother, much amused. "That is an acrobatic feat
+that I never believed you capable of, honey."
+
+"We-ell! I reminded Papa Sherwood of our hard luck instead of being
+bright and cheerful like you."
+
+"We will give him a nice supper, honey, and make him forget his
+troubles. Time enough to call to order the ways and means committee
+afterward." Her husband came back into the kitchen as Nan finished
+arranging the hair. "Come, Papa Sherwood!" cried the little lady. "Hot
+biscuit; the last of the honey; sweet pickles; sliced cold ham; and a
+beautiful big plum cake that our Nan made this morning before school
+time, her own self. You MUST smile at all those dainties."
+
+And the husband and father smiled. They all made an effort to help each
+other. But they knew that with the loss of his work would doubtless come
+the loss of the home. During the years that had elapsed, Mr. Sherwood
+had paid in part for the cottage; but now the property was deteriorating
+instead of advancing in value. He could not increase the mortgage upon
+it. Prompt payment of interest half-yearly was demanded. And how could
+he meet these payments, not counting living expenses, when his income
+was entirely cut off?
+
+Mr. Sherwood was forty-five years old, an age at which it is difficult
+for a man to take up a new trade, or to obtain new employment at his old
+one.
+
+
+
+Chapter III. "FISHING"
+
+Nan told of Bess Harley's desire to have her chum accompany her to
+Lakeview Hall the following autumn, as a good joke.
+
+"I hope I'll be in some good situation by that time," she said to her
+mother, confidentially, "helping, at least, to support myself instead of
+being a burden upon father and you."
+
+"It's very unselfish of you to propose that, honey," replied her mother.
+"But, perhaps, such a sacrifice as the curtailment of your education
+will not be required of you."
+
+"But, my DEAR!" gasped Nan. "I couldn't go to Lakeview Hall. It would
+cost, why! a pile!"
+
+"I don't know how much a pile is, translated into coin of the realm,
+honey," responded Mrs. Sherwood with her low, sweet laugh. "But the only
+thing we can give our dear daughter, your father and I, is an education.
+That you MUST have to enable you to support yourself properly when your
+father can do no more for you."
+
+"But I s'pose I've already had as much education as most girls in
+Tillbury get. So many of them go into the mills and factories at my age.
+If they can get along, I suppose I can."
+
+"Hush!" begged her mother quickly. "Don't speak of such a thing. I
+couldn't bear to have you obliged to undertake your own support in any
+such way.
+
+"Both your father and I, honey, had the benefit of more than the
+ordinary common-school education. I went three years to the Tennessee
+Training College; I was prepared to teach when your father and I met
+and married. He obtained an excellent training for his business in a
+technical college. We hoped to give our children, if we were blessed
+with them, an even better start in life than we had.
+
+"Had your little brother lived, honey," added Mrs. Sherwood tenderly,
+"we should have tried to put him through college, and you, as well. It
+would have been something worthwhile for your father to work for. But I
+am afraid all these years that his money has been wasted in attempts to
+benefit my health."
+
+"Oh, Momsey! Don't say it, that way," urged Nan. "What would we ever
+do without you? But I sometimes think how nice it would be had I been a
+boy, my own brother, for instance. A boy can be so much more help than a
+girl."
+
+"For shame!" cried her mother, laughing. "Do you dare admit a boy is
+smarter than a girl, Nan?"
+
+"Not smarter. Only better able to do any kind of work, I guess. They
+wouldn't let me work in the file shop, or drive a grocery wagon."
+
+"Goodness! Listen to the child!" gasped Mrs. Sherwood. "I should hope
+not! Why, honey, is your mind running continually on such dreadful
+things? I am afraid your father and I allow you to hear us talk too
+frequently about family matters. You must not assume the family's
+burdens at your age."
+
+There was that trend to Nan Sherwood's character, however. With all
+her blithesomeness and high spirits she was inclined to be serious in
+thought.
+
+This conversation occurred several days after the evening when, on their
+way home from school, Nan and her school chum, Bess Harley, had read the
+yellow poster at the gate of the Atwater Mills.
+
+The district surrounding the mills, in which most of the hands lived,
+had put on an aspect of mourning. Some of the workmen and their families
+had already packed up and gone. Most of the houses occupied by the hands
+were owned by the Atwater Company, and if the poor people remained till
+January 15th, the wages due them then would be eaten up by the rent of
+the tenements.
+
+So they were wise to leave when they could. Many who remained would be a
+burden upon the taxpayers of Tillbury before the winter was over.
+
+Nan and her folks were not in such a sad situation as the laborers, of
+course. Mr. Sherwood had a small sum in bank. He had, too, a certain
+standing in the community and a line of credit at the stores that he
+might have used.
+
+Debt, however, save that upon their house, he had fought to keep out of
+all his married life. That his equity in the Amity Street cottage was so
+small was not his fault; but he owed not any man.
+
+"Now we must go fishing," Mrs. Sherwood said, in her sprightly way, when
+the little family really discussed the unfortunate situation after the
+announcement of the shut-down of the mills was made public.
+
+"Goodness, Momsey! What a reckless creature you are," laughed Mr.
+Sherwood. "Waste our precious time in such employment, and in the dead
+of winter, too?"
+
+"Now, Papa Sherwood, I don't mean that kind of fishing at all!" cried
+the little woman gaily. "We are going to fish for employment for you,
+perhaps for a new home."
+
+"Oh!" gasped Nan. The thought of deserting the little cottage on Amity
+Street was a dreadful shock.
+
+"We must face that possibility," said her mother firmly. "It may be.
+Tillbury will see very hard times now that the mills are closed. Other
+mills and shops will follow suit."
+
+"Quite true, Momsey," agreed the husband and father.
+
+"I am a very logical person, am I not?" said the smiling little lady.
+
+"But the fishing?" cried Nan curiously.
+
+"Ah, yes. I am coming to that," said her mother. "The fishing, to be
+sure! Why, we are going to write letters to just everybody we know, and
+some we only know by hearsay, and find out if there isn't a niche for
+Papa Sherwood somewhere outside Tillbury."
+
+"So we can!" cried Nan, clapping her hands.
+
+"I am afraid there is general depression in my line of business
+everywhere," suggested Mr. Sherwood. "For some years the manufacturers
+have been forcing cotton goods upon a false market. And the recent
+attempt to help the cotton growers by boosting the price of raw cotton
+will come near to ruining the mills and mill workers. It is always
+so. In an attempt to benefit one class of the people another class is
+injured."
+
+"Now, never mind politics, sir!" cried his little wife. "We poor, weak
+women aren't supposed to understand such things. Only when Nan and I get
+the vote, and all the other millions of women and girls, we will have no
+class legislation. 'The greatest good for the greatest number' will be
+our motto."
+
+Mr. Sherwood only smiled. He might have pointed out that in that very
+statement was the root of all class legislation. He knew his wife's
+particular ideas were good, however, her general political panacea was
+rather doubtful. He listened thoughtfully as she went on:
+
+"Yes, we must fish for a new position for papa. We may have to go away
+from here. Perhaps rent the house. You know, we have had good offers for
+it."
+
+"True," admitted Mr. Sherwood.
+
+"Oh, dear!" sighed Nan, but below her breath so that Momsey and Papa
+Sherwood did not hear the sigh.
+
+"I am going to write to Cousin Adair MacKenzie, in Memphis. He is quite
+prominent in business there," pursued Mrs. Sherwood. "We might find a
+footing in Memphis."
+
+Mr. Sherwood looked grave, but said nothing. He knew that the enervating
+climate of the Southern river city would never do for his wife. Change
+of climate might benefit her greatly; the doctors had all said so of
+late; but not that change.
+
+"Then," continued Nan's mother, "there is your brother, Henry, up in
+Michigan."
+
+"Oh! I remember Uncle Henry," cried Nan. "Such a big, big man!"
+
+"With a heart quite in keeping with the size of his body, honey," her
+mother quickly added. "And your Aunt Kate is a very nice woman. Your
+uncle has lumber interests. He might find something for your father
+there."
+
+"I'll write to Hen, Jessie," Mr. Sherwood said decisively. "But a lumber
+camp is no place for you. Let's see, his mail address is Hobart Forks,
+isn't it? Right in the heart of the woods. If you weren't eaten up by
+black gnats, you would be by ennui," and he chuckled.
+
+"Goodness!" cried Mrs. Sherwood, making big eyes at him. "Are those a
+new kind of mosquito? Ennui, indeed! Am I a baby? Is Nan another?"
+
+"But think of Nan's education, my dear," suggested Mr. Sherwood.
+
+"I ought to work and help the family instead of going to school any
+longer," Nan declared.
+
+"Not yet, Daughter, not yet," her father said quickly. "However, I will
+write to Hen. He may be able to suggest something."
+
+"It might be fun living in the woods," Nan said. "I'm not afraid of
+gnats, or mosquitoes, or, or on-wees!"
+
+She chanced to overhear her father and Dr. Christian talking the next
+day on the porch, and heard the wise old physician say:
+
+"I'm not sure I could countenance that, Robert. What Jessie needs is an
+invigorating, bracing atmosphere. A sea voyage would do her the greatest
+possible good."
+
+"Perhaps a trip to Buffalo, down the lakes?"
+
+"No, no! That's merely an old woman's home-made plaster on the wound.
+Something more drastic. Salt air. A long, slow voyage, overseas. It
+often wracks the system, but it brings the patient to better and more
+stable health. Jessie may yet be a strong, well woman if we take the
+right course with her."
+
+Nevertheless, Mr. Sherwood wrote to his brother. He had to do so, it
+seemed. There was no other course open to him.
+
+And while he fished in that direction, Momsey threw out her line toward
+Memphis and Adair MacKenzie. Mr. Sherwood pulled in his line first,
+without much of a nibble, it must be confessed.
+
+"Dear Bob," the elder Sherwood wrote: "Things are flatter than a
+stepped-on pancake with me. I've got a bunch of trouble with old Ged
+Raffer and may have to go into court with him. Am not cutting a stick
+of timber. But you and Jessie and the little nipper,"("Consider!"
+interjected Nan, "calling me 'a little nipper'! What does he consider a
+big 'nipper'?") "come up to Pine Camp. Kate and I will be mighty glad to
+have you here. Tom and Rafe are working for a luckier lumberman than I,
+and there's plenty of room here for all hands, and a hearty welcome for
+you and yours as long as there's a shot in the locker."
+
+"That's just like Hen," Nan's father said. "He'd divide his last crust
+with me. But I don't want to go where work is scarce. I must go where it
+is plentiful, where a man of even my age will be welcome."
+
+"Your age, Papa Sherwood! How you talk," drawled Nan's mother in her
+pretty way. "You are as young as the best of 'em yet."
+
+"Employers don't look at me through your pretty eyes, Momsey," he
+returned, laughing.
+
+"Well," said his wife, still cheerfully, "my fishing seems to be
+resultless yet. Perhaps the bait's gone off the hook. Had I better haul
+in the line and bait again? I was always doing that when I went fishing
+with Adair and his brothers, years ago, when I was a little girl."
+
+Her husband shook his head. "Have patience, Jessie," he said.
+
+He had few expectations from the Memphis letter; yet there was a most
+surprising result from it on the way, something which by no possibility
+could the little family in the Amity Street cottage have suspected.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV. SWEEPING CLEAN
+
+"My goodness me!" ejaculated Bess Harley. "Talk about the 'leaden wings
+of Time.' Why! Time sweeps by us on electrically-driven, ball-bearing
+pinions. Here's another week gone, Nan, and tomorrow's Saturday."
+
+"Yes," Nan agreed. "Time flies all too quickly, for me, anyway. The
+mills have been closed a week now."
+
+"Oh, dear! That's all I hear," complained Bess. "Those tiresome old
+mills. Our Maggie's sister was crying in the kitchen last night because
+her Mike couldn't get a job now the mills were closed, and was drinking
+up all the money they had saved. That's what the mill-hands do; their
+money goes to the saloon-keepers!"
+
+"The proportion of their income spent by the laboring class for
+alcoholic beverages is smaller by considerable than that spent by
+the well-to-do for similar poison!" quoted Nan decisively. "Mike is
+desperate, I suppose, poor fellow!"
+
+"My goodness me!" cried Bess again. "You are most exasperating, Nan
+Sherwood. Mike's case has nothing to do with political Economy, and I do
+wish you'd drop that study out of school----"
+
+"I have!" gasped Nan, for just then her books slipped from her strap;
+"and history, rhetoric, and philosophical readings along with it," and
+she proceeded cheerfully to pick up the several books mentioned.
+
+"You can't mean," Bess said, still severely, "that you won't go to
+Lakeview with me, Nan?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that, Bess," Nan Sherwood cried. "Is it
+my fault? Don't you suppose I'd love to, if I could? We have no money.
+Father is out of work. There is no prospect of other work for him in
+Tillbury, he says, and," Nan continued desperately, "how do you suppose
+I can go to a fancy boarding school under these circumstances?"
+
+"Why-----"
+
+For once Elizabeth was momentarily silenced. Suddenly her face
+brightened. "I tell you!" she exclaimed. "I'll speak to my father about
+it. He can fix it so that you will be able to go to the Hall with me, I
+know."
+
+"I'd like to see myself an object of charity!" Nan cried, with heat.
+"I, guess, not! What I can't earn, or my father can't give me, I'll go
+without, Bess. That's all there is to that!"
+
+Bess stared at her with quivering lips. "You can't be so mean, Nan," she
+faltered.
+
+"I'm not mean!" denied the other.
+
+"I'd like to know what you call it? Why, father'd never miss your
+tuition money in the world. And I know he'd pay your way if I asked him
+and told him how bad I felt about your not going."
+
+"You're a dear, Bess!" declared Nan, impulsively hugging her friend
+again. "But you mustn't ask him, honey. It wouldn't be right, and I
+couldn't accept.
+
+"Don't you understand, honey, that I have some pride in the matter?
+So have Papa Sherwood and Momsey. What they can't do for me their own
+selves I wouldn't want anybody to do."
+
+"Why, that sounds awfully silly to me, Nan!" said Bess. "Why not take
+all you can get in this world? I'm sure I should."
+
+"You don't know what you are saying," Nan returned seriously. "And,
+then, you are not poor, so you can afford to say it, and even do it."
+
+"Poor! I'm getting to hate that word," cried Bess stormily. "It never
+bothered me before, much. We're not poor and none of our friends were
+poor. Not until those old mills closed. And now it seems all I hear is
+about folks being POOR. I hate it!"
+
+"I guess," said Nan ruefully, "you don't hate it half as much as those
+of us who have to suffer it."
+
+"I'm just going to find some way of getting you to Lakeview Hall, my
+dear," Bess rejoined gloomily. "Why! I won't want to go myself if you
+don't go, Nan."
+
+Her friend thought she would better not tell Bess just then that the
+prospect was that she, with her father and mother, would have to leave
+Tillbury long before the autumn. Mr. Sherwood was trying to obtain
+a situation in Chicago, in a machine shop. He had no hope of getting
+another foreman's position.
+
+Nothing had been heard from Mr. Adair MacKenzie, of Memphis. Mrs.
+Sherwood wanted to write again; but her husband begged her not to. He
+had a proper pride. It looked to him as though his wife's cousin did not
+care to be troubled by the necessities of his relations.
+
+"We'll get along!" was Mr. Sherwood's repeated and cheerful statement.
+"Never say die! Hope is our anchor! Fate shall not balk us! And all the
+other copy-book maxims."
+
+But it was Mrs. Sherwood and Nan who managed to save and scrimp and
+be frugal in many infinitesimal ways, thus making their savings last
+marvelously.
+
+Nan gave up her entire Saturdays to household tasks. She insisted on
+that, and urged the curtailment of the weekly expense by having Mrs.
+Joyce come in to help but one day.
+
+"I can iron, Momsey, and if I can't do it very well at first, I can
+learn," declared the plucky girl. "And, of course, I can sweep. That's
+good for me. Our physical instructor says so. Instead of going to the
+gym on Saturday, I'll put in calisthenics and acrobatic stunts with a
+broom and duster."
+
+She was thorough, too. She could not have been her father's daughter
+without having that virtue. There was no "lick and a promise" in Nan
+Sherwood's housekeeping. She did not sweep the dust under the bureau,
+or behind the door, or forget to wipe the rounds of the chairs and the
+baseboard all around the rooms.
+
+Papa Sherwood, coughing in the lower hall as the dust descended from
+above, declared she went through the cottage like a whirlwind. It was
+not as bad as that, but her vigorous young arms wielded the broom with
+considerable skill.
+
+One Saturday, with every other room swept but the front hall, she closed
+the doors into that, and set wide open the outer door. There was more
+snow on the ground now; but the porch was cleaned and the path to the
+front gate neatly dug and swept. The tinkle of sleigh bells and the
+laughter of a crowd of her school friends swept by the corner of Amity
+Street. Nan ran out upon the porch and waved her duster at them.
+
+There she stood, smiling out upon her little world for a minute. She
+might not see Amity Street, and the old neighbors, many weeks longer. A
+half-promise of work from the Chicago machine shop boss had reached Mr.
+Sherwood that morning by post. It seemed the only opening, and it
+meant that they would have to give up the "dwelling in amity" and go to
+crowded Chicago to live. For Momsey was determined that Papa Sherwood
+should not go without her.
+
+Nan came back into the hall and began to wield the broom again. She
+could not leave the door open too long, for it was cold outside and the
+winter chill would get into the house. They had to keep all the rooms at
+an even temperature on account of Momsey's health.
+
+But she swept vigorously, moving each piece of furniture, and throwing
+the rugs out upon the porch for a special sweeping there. The rough mat
+at the door was a heavy one. As Nan stooped to pick it up and toss it
+after the other small rugs, she saw the corner of a yellow envelope
+sticking from under the edge of the hall carpet.
+
+"Wonder what that is?" murmured Nan. "Somebody has thrust a circular,
+or advertisement, under our door, and it's gone under the carpet. Yes!
+There's a tack out there."
+
+She seized the corner of the envelope with thumb and finger. She drew it
+out. Its length surprised her. It was a long, official looking envelope,
+not bulky but most important looking. In the upper left-hand corner was
+printed:
+
+ADAIR MACKENZIE & CO. STOCKS AND BONDS MEMPHIS
+
+It was properly stamped and addressed to her mother. By the postmark on
+it Nan knew it must have been tucked under the door by the postman more
+than a week before. Somehow he had failed to ring their bell when he
+left the letter. The missing tack in the edge of the hall carpet had
+allowed the document to slide out of sight, and it might have been
+hidden for weeks longer had chance not shown the small corner of
+straw-colored paper to Nan.
+
+She felt breathless. Her knees trembled. Somehow, Nan just KNEW that the
+letter from her mother's cousin must be of enormous importance. She
+set her broom in the corner and closed the door. It was fated that she
+should do no more sweeping that day.
+
+
+
+Chapter V. GREAT EXPECTATIONS
+
+Mr. Sherwood, in overalls and an old cap, had been sifting cinders out
+behind the shed. They had to be careful of fuel as well as of most other
+things. Momsey would not open the long envelope until he had been called
+and had come in. Nan still wore the bright colored bandana wound about
+her head, turban-wise, for a dust cap. Papa Sherwood beat the ashes from
+his hands as he stood before the glowing kitchen range.
+
+"What is it?" he asked calmly. "A notice of a new tax assessment? Or a
+cure-all advertisement of Somebody's Pills?"
+
+"It's from Cousin Adair," said Momsey, a little breathlessly. "And it's
+been lying at our door all the time."
+
+"All what time?" asked Mr. Sherwood curiously.
+
+"All the time we have been so disappointed in our inquiries elsewhere,"
+said Momsey soberly.
+
+"Oh!" responded her husband doubtfully, and said no more.
+
+"It makes my knees shake," confessed Nan. "Do open it, Momsey!"
+
+"I, I feel that it is important, too," the little lady said.
+
+"Well, my dear," her husband finally advised, having waited in patience,
+"unless it is opened we shall never know whether your feeling is
+prophetic or not. 'By the itching of my thumb,' and so forth!"
+
+Without making any rejoinder to this, and perhaps without hearing his
+gentle raillery, Mrs. Sherwood reached up to the coils of her thick hair
+to secure woman's never-failing implement, a hairpin.
+
+There were two enclosures. Both she shook into her lap. The sealed,
+foreign-looking letter she picked up first. It was addressed in a
+clerkly hand to,
+
+"MISTRESS JESSIE ADAIR BLAKE,
+
+"KINDNESS OF MESSRS. ADAIR MACKENZIE & CO.
+
+"MEMPHIS, TENN., U.S.A."
+
+"From England. No! From Scotland," murmured Nan, looking over her
+mother's shoulder in her eagerness. She read the neatly printed card in
+the corner of the foreign envelope:
+
+KELLAM & BLAKE HADBORNE CHAMBERS EDINBURGH
+
+Mrs. Sherwood was whispering her maiden name over to herself. She looked
+up suddenly at her husband with roguish eyes.
+
+"I'd almost forgotten there ever was such a girl as Jessie Adair Blake,"
+she said.
+
+"Oh, Momsey!" squealed Nan, with clasped hands and immense impatience.
+"Don't, DON'T be so slow! Open it!"
+
+"No-o," her mother said, with pursed lips. "No, honey. The other comes
+first, I reckon."
+
+It was a letter typewritten upon her cousin's letter-head; but it
+was not dictated by Mr. Adair MacKenzie. Instead, it was from Mr.
+MacKenzie's secretary, who stated that her employer had gone to Mexico
+on business that might detain him for several weeks.
+
+"A letter addressed by you to Mr. MacKenzie arrived after his departure
+and is being held for him with other personal communications until
+his return; but being assured that you are the Jessie Adair Blake, now
+Sherwood--to whom the enclosed letter from Scotland is addressed, I take
+the liberty of forwarding the same. The Scotch letter reached us after
+Mr. MacKenzie's departure, likewise. Will you please acknowledge the
+receipt of the enclosure and oblige?"
+
+This much of the contents of the secretary's letter was of particular
+interest to the Sherwoods. Momsey's voice shook a little as she finished
+reading it. Plainly she was disappointed.
+
+"Cousin Adair, I am sure, would have suggested something helpful had
+he been at home," she said sadly. "It, it is a great disappointment,
+Robert."
+
+"Well, well!" replied Mr. Sherwood, perhaps not without some secret
+relief. "It will all come out right. At least, your cousin hasn't
+refused his assistance. We shall be established somewhere before he
+returns from his Mexican trip."
+
+"I, I did depend so much upon Adair's good will and advice," signed
+Momsey.
+
+"But, dear me suz!" gasped Nan impatiently. "What are you folks
+bothering over that for? It isn't Cousin Adair that I want to know
+about. It's this letter, Momsey," and she seized the thin yet important
+envelope from Scotland and shook it before her mother's eyes.
+
+"Better look into it, Momsey," advised Mr. Sherwood easily, preparing to
+return to the cinder sifting. "Maybe it's from some of your relatives in
+the Old Country. I see 'Blake' printed in the corner. Didn't your father
+have an uncle or somebody, who was steward on the estate of a Scotch
+Laird of some renown?"
+
+"Heck, mon!" cried Momsey, with her usual gaiety, and throwing off the
+cloud of gloom that had momentarily subdued her spirit. "Ye air a wise
+cheil. Ma faither talked muckle o' Uncle Hughie Blake, remimberin' him
+fra' a wee laddie when his ain faither took him tae Scotland, and tae
+Castle Emberon, on a veesit."
+
+Nan and Papa Sherwood laughed at her when she assumed the Scotch burr of
+her forebears. With precision she cut the flap of this smaller envelope.
+She felt no excitement now. She had regained control of herself after
+the keen disappointment arising from the first letter.
+
+She calmly opened the crackly sheet of legal looking paper in her lap.
+It was not a long letter, and it was written in a stiff, legal hand,
+instead of being typewritten, each character as precise as the legal
+mind that dictated it:
+
+"Mistress Jessie Adair Blake, (Known to be a married woman, but wedded
+name unknown to writer.)
+
+"Dear Madam: It is my duty to inform you that your father (the late
+Randolph Hugh Blake) was made sole beneficiary of his late uncle, Mr.
+Hugh Blake, the Laird of Emberon's steward, by a certain testament, or
+will, made many years ago. Mr. Hugh Blake has recently died a bachelor,
+and before his demise he added a codicil to the above testament, or
+will, naming you, his great niece, his sole heir and beneficiary.
+
+"There are other relatives who may make some attempt to oppose your
+claim; but none of near blood. Your title to the said estate is clear;
+but it is quite necessary that you should appear before our Courts with
+proofs of identity, and so forth. On receipt from you of acknowledgment
+of this letter, with copies of identification papers (your grandfather's
+naturalization papers, your father's discharge from army, your own birth
+certificate and marriage lines, and so forth) I will give myself
+the pleasure of forwarding any further particulars you may wish, and
+likewise place at your command my own services in obtaining possession
+for you of your great uncle's estate.
+
+"The said estate of Mr. Hugh Blake, deceased, amounts, in real and
+personal property, including moneys in the bank, to about the sum,
+roughly estimated, of 10,000 pounds.
+
+"Respectfully, your servant,
+
+"Andrew Blake, Solicitor and Att'y."
+
+
+Nan had leaned over her mother's shoulder, big-eyed, scarce believing
+the plainly written words she read. It was preposterous, ridiculous,
+fanciful, a dream from which she must awake in a moment to the full
+realization of their dreadful need of just such a godsend as this.
+
+It was her father's voice that roused the girl. He had not seen the
+letter and Momsey had read it silently to herself.
+
+"Look out, Nancy! What is the matter with your mother?"
+
+With a cry the girl caught the frail little lady in her arms as the
+letter slipped unheeded from her lap to the floor. Mrs. Sherwood's eyes
+were closed. She had fainted.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI. A SPRAT FOR A HERRING
+
+"I don't need the doctor this time, honey; joy never killed yet."
+
+So said Mrs. Sherwood, opening her eyes to see the scared face of Nan
+close above her. Then she saw her husband at her feet, quietly chafing
+her hands in his own hard, warm palms. She pulled hers gently from his
+clasp and rested them upon his head. Mr. Sherwood's hair was iron-gray,
+thick, and inclined to curl. She ran her little fingers into it and
+clung tightly.
+
+"Let, let me get my breath!" she gasped. Then, after a moment she smiled
+brilliantly into the wind-bitten face of the kneeling man. "It's all
+over, Robert," she said.
+
+"My dear!" he cried thickly; while Nan could not wholly stifle the cry
+of fear that rose to her lips.
+
+"It's all over," repeated the little woman. "All the worry, all the
+poverty, all the uncertainty, all the hard times."
+
+Mr. Sherwood looked startled indeed. He had no idea what the letter
+from Scotland contained, and he feared that his wife, who had already
+suffered so much, was for the moment quite out of her head.
+
+"My poor Jessie," he began, but her low, sweet laugh stopped him.
+
+"Not poor! Never poor again, Robert!" she cried. "God is very good to
+us. At the very darkest hour He has shown us the dawn. Robert, we are
+rich!"
+
+"Great goodness, Jessie! What do you mean? Exclaimed Mr. Sherwood,
+stumbling to his feet at last.
+
+"It's true! It's true, Papa Sherwood!" Nan cried, clapping her hands.
+"Don't you call ten thousand dollars riches?"
+
+"Ten, thousand, dollars?" murmured her father. He put his hand to
+his head and looked confusedly about for a seat, into which he weakly
+dropped. Nan had picked up the letter and now she dramatically thrust it
+into his hand.
+
+"Read that, Papa Sherwood!" she said commandingly.
+
+He read the communication from the Scotch attorney, first with immense
+surprise, then with profound doubt. Who but a young imaginative girl,
+like Nan, or a woman with unbounded faith in the miracles of God, like
+her mother, could accept such a perfectly wonderful thing as being real?
+
+"A hoax," thought the man who had worked so hard all his life without
+the least expectation of ever seeing a penny that he did not earn
+himself. "Can it be that any of those heedless relatives of my wife's in
+Memphis have attempted a practical joke at this time?"
+
+He motioned for Nan to bring him the envelope, too. This he examined
+closely, and then read the communication again. It looked all regular.
+The stationery, the postmark, the date upon it, all seemed perfectly in
+accord.
+
+Mrs. Sherwood's gay little laugh shattered the train of her husband's
+thought. "I know what the matter is with you, Papa Sherwood," she said.
+"You think it must be a practical joke."
+
+"Oh!" gasped Nan, feeling a positive pain at her heart. This awful
+possibility had never entered her mind before.
+
+"But it isn't," went on her mother blithely. "It is real. Mr. Hugh
+Blake, of Emberon, must have been very old; and he was probably as
+saving and canny as any Scotchman who ever wore kilts. It is not
+surprising that he should have left an estate of considerable size-----"
+
+"Ten thousand dollars!" breathed Nan again. She loved to repeat it.
+There was white magic in the very sound of such a sum of money. But her
+father threw a conversational bomb into their midst the next instant.
+
+"Ten thousand dollars, you goosey!" he said vigorously. "That's the main
+doubt in the whole business. It isn't ten thousand dollars. It's fifty
+thousand dollars! A pound, either English or Scotch, is almost five of
+our dollars. Ten thousand dollars would certainly be a fortune for us;
+fifty thousand is beyond the dreams of avarice."
+
+"Oh, dear me!" said Nan weakly.
+
+But Mrs. Sherwood merely laughed again. "The more the better," she said.
+"Why shouldn't we be able to put fifty thousand dollars to good use?"
+
+"Oh, we can, Momsey," said Nan eagerly. "But, will we be let?"
+
+Mr. Sherwood laughed grimly at that; but his wife continued confidently:
+
+"I am sure nobody needs it more than we do."
+
+"Why!" her daughter said, just as excitedly, "we'll be as rich as Bess
+Harley's folks. Oh, Momsey! Oh, Papa Sherwood! Can I go to Lakewood
+Hall?"
+
+The earnestness of her cry showed the depths to which that desire had
+plumbed during these last weeks of privation and uncertainty. It was
+Nan's first practical thought in relation to the possibility of their
+changed circumstances.
+
+The father and mother looked at each other with shocked understanding.
+The surprise attending the letter had caused both parents to forget,
+for the moment, the effect of this wonderful promise of fortune, whether
+true or false, on imaginative, high-spirited Nan.
+
+"Let us be happy at first, Nan, just in the knowledge that some money is
+coming to us," Mrs. Sherwood said more quietly. "Never mind how much, or
+how little. Time will tell all that."
+
+"Now you talk like father," cried Nan, pouting.
+
+"And let father talk a little, too," Mr. Sherwood said, smiling, "and
+to you both." His right forefinger struck the letter emphatically in his
+other hand. "This is a very wonderful, a blessed, thing, if true. But it
+has to be proven. We must build our hopes on no false foundation."
+
+"Oh, Papa Sherwood! How can we, when the man says there-----"
+
+"Hush!" whispered Momsey, squeezing her excited little daughter's hand.
+
+"In the first place," continued Mr. Sherwood quietly and gravely, "there
+may be some mistake in the identification of your mother, child, as the
+niece mentioned in this old man's will."
+
+"Oh!" Nan could not help that gasp.
+
+"Again, there may be stronger opposition to her claim than this lawyer
+at present sees. Fifty thousand dollars is a whole lot of money, and
+other people by the name of Blake will be tempted by it."
+
+"How mean of them!" whispered Nan.
+
+"And, above all," pursued Mr. Sherwood, "this may be merely a scheme by
+unprincipled people to filch small sums of money from gullible people.
+The 'foreign legacy swindle' is worked in many different ways. There
+may be calls for money, by this man who names himself Andrew Blake, for
+preliminary work on the case. We haven't much; but if he is baiting for
+hundreds of Blakes in America he may secure, in the aggregate, a very
+tidy sum indeed."
+
+"Oh, Father!" cried Nan. "That's perfectly horrid!"
+
+"But perfectly possible. Let us not swallow this bait, hook, line and
+sinker. You see, he sends no copy of the will in question, or
+that codicil relating to your mother's legacy; nor does he offer
+identification or surety as to his own standing. Don't let the
+possibilities of this wonderful thing carry you off your feet, my dear."
+
+Nan's lip was quivering and she could scarcely crowd back the tears. To
+have one's hopes rise so high only to be dashed-----.
+
+"Don't completely crush us, Papa Sherwood, with your perfectly
+unanswerable logic," said his wife lightly. "We'll remember all these
+strictures, and more. We can at least put the matter to the test."
+
+"Quite so," agreed her husband. "We will prepare the papers requested
+by this Scotch attorney. I will even inquire of a good lawyer here
+something regarding the Scotch laws in such a matter as this, if it will
+be necessary to make a personal appearance before the local courts
+over there. And perhaps we can find out the true standing of Mr. Andrew
+Blake, of Kellam & Blake, Edinburgh. It will cost us a little money, and
+we can ill spare it now; but to satisfy ourselves-----"
+
+"We will throw a sprat to catch a herring," quoted Momsey cheerfully.
+
+"Quite so," repeated Mr. Sherwood.
+
+"But, dear, DEAR!" moaned Nan. "Is that all it is going to amount to?
+Don't you really believe it's all true, Papa Sherwood?"
+
+"I can't say that I do, my dear," returned her father gravely. "Such
+romantic things as this do not often happen outside of story books."
+
+"Then, I declare!" cried Nan desperately, "I wish we lived in a story
+book!"
+
+"Your father will make inquiries at once, honey," said Momsey easily,
+seemingly very little disturbed herself by her husband's doubts and
+fears. To her mind this wonderful turn of fortune's wheel was in direct
+answer to prayer. Nothing could shake her faith in the final result
+of her husband's inquiries. Yet, she was proud of his caution and good
+sense.
+
+"I do think it is dreadful," murmured Nan, "to believe one's self rich
+for only a minute!"
+
+"Have patience, honey," said her mother.
+
+"Meanwhile," added Mr. Sherwood, rising, "I will go back to sifting
+cinders."
+
+But Nan did no more sweeping that day.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII. A VISTA OF NEW FORTUNES
+
+Nan said nothing to Bess Harley, her particular chum and confidant,
+about the wonderful letter that had come from Scotland. Although Momsey
+and Nan talked the legacy over intimately that Saturday afternoon, and
+planned what they would really do with some of the money "when their
+ship came in," the young girl knew that the matter was not to be
+discussed outside of the family circle.
+
+Not even the hope Nan now cherished of accompanying her chum to Lakeview
+Hall when the next school year opened was divulged when the two girls
+were together on Sunday, or on the days that immediately followed.
+
+Nan Sherwood went about her household and school tasks in a sort of
+waking dream. Imagination was continually weaving pictures in her mind
+of what might happen if the vista of new fortunes that had opened before
+the little family in the Amity Street cottage really came true.
+
+Papa Sherwood's first reports on the matter of the Scotch legacy were
+not inspiring.
+
+"Mr. Bludsoe says we'd better go slow," he said seriously. Mr. Bludsoe
+was a lawyer of high repute in Tillbury. "This letter may be written by
+an attorney in Edinburgh; but there are rascally lawyers there as well
+as elsewhere. Bludsoe had correspondents in London. They may be able to
+inform him regarding the firm of solicitors, Kellam & Blake, if the firm
+really is entered at the Scotch bar."
+
+"Oh! But won't that mean delay?" murmured Nan.
+
+"Meanwhile," said her father, smiling at her impatience, "we will
+prepare the papers identifying your dear mother so that, if this
+wonderful new fortune should be a reality, we can put in a proper claim
+for it. Just the same," he added to his wife, when Nan had left the
+room, "I have written to that machine shop boss in Chicago that I am
+ready to come to work any day he may send for me."
+
+"Oh, Robert!" gasped the little lady. "Won't you believe?"
+
+"Like the darkey who was asked if he believed the world was round, and
+said, 'Ah believes it, but Ah ain't dead sho' of it.' I presume this
+great fortune is possible, Jessie, but I haven't perfect and abiding
+faith in its existence, FOR us," said her husband.
+
+But Momsey had just that quality of faith. She went singing about her
+household tasks and her usual smile beamed quite beatific. So said Dr.
+Christian, who stepped in to see her, as was his custom every few days.
+
+"What's this? What's this?" the old medical practitioner demanded of Mr.
+Sherwood, on the porch, where he usually made his report, and to which
+Nan often stole to listen openly to them discuss her mother's case.
+"I find her in a state of happy excitement, and that is quite right,
+Robert, quite right, if the hopes that are the wellspring of it are
+not quenched. What does it mean? Have you arranged the sea voyage I
+advised?"
+
+Papa Sherwood's face changed suddenly. He looked oddly, Nan thought,
+at the doctor. "I don't know but that is it, Doc," he said. "That sea
+voyage may be in the offing."
+
+"Best thing that could happen to her, best thing that could happen to
+her!" declared the old physician with emphasis, as he stumped away.
+
+Nan wondered what that could mean. A sea voyage for Momsey? Of course,
+for all of them. She could not imagine Momsey going anywhere without her
+and Papa Sherwood.
+
+She knew she was not to say anything about what she heard pass between
+her father and the doctor on the porch. Indeed, Nan was no bearer
+of tales in any event. But she was very curious. The steam from the
+cauldron of Mystery seldom arose in the little "dwelling in amity"
+save about Christmas time or just previous to Nan's birthday. But Papa
+Sherwood certainly was enigmatical and Momsey was mysteriously happy, as
+Dr. Christian had said.
+
+"And we'll put steam heat in the little house. You know, Robert, we've
+always wanted to," Nan's mother suddenly said one evening as they all
+sat around the reading lamp, and quite apropos of nothing at all. Then
+she laughed, flushing prettily. "There! You see what my mind runs on. I
+really can't help it."
+
+It was only a day or two later that the second letter came from Memphis.
+Mr. Adair MacKenzie had returned from Mexico and evidently one of
+the first duties he performed was to write his Cousin Jessie his
+congratulations.
+
+"A letter on quite another matter," this epistle read, "from our distant
+kinsman, Andrew Blake, of Kellam & Blake, apprised me that the ancient
+Hugh Blake, steward to the Lairds of Emberon for so many years, was dead
+and that his property was willed to your father, whose appearance as a
+lad at Emberon pleased the old man greatly.
+
+"You are to be congratulated. The estate is considerable, I understand.
+Your husband's troubles which are mentioned in your letter that I
+found awaiting my return will now be over. For, although Andrew Blake
+intimates that there may be considerable opposition in the courts there,
+over the money going to an American heir, you will be able in the end to
+establish your rights.
+
+"Believe me, my dear Jessie, I know of nobody in our family to whom I
+would rather see fortune come than to yourself and your dear ones. If
+I can be of any assistance, financially, or otherwise, in helping you
+obtain your rights in this event, believe me, I stand ready to give such
+aid. Do not hesitate to call upon me. My regards to your husband and
+little girl whom I have never seen; Alice and John join me in expressing
+our good wishes for your happy future. I remain, with the old love I
+always had for you, Your cousin, Adair MacKenzie."
+
+"Now, Robert, what have you to say?" cried Momsey triumphantly, while
+Nan danced a fandango about the room.
+
+"This much," replied her husband, smiling. "Our minds are relieved on
+one point, at least. Kellam & Blake are respectable attorneys. We will
+send our communication to Mr. Blake at once, without waiting for Mr.
+Bludsoe's enquiries to bear fruit. Your Cousin Adair knows the Scotch
+firm, and of course vouches for their trustworthiness."
+
+"Dear me, Papa Sherwood, you are so practical!" sighed Nan. She meant
+"vexing;" they were interchangeable terms to her mind at this exciting
+point. "Can't you work up any enthusiasm over Momsey's wonderful
+fortune?"
+
+"Its existence is established, it would seem, beyond peradventure," said
+Mr. Sherwood drily. "But our attempt to obtain the fortune is not yet
+begun."
+
+"Why, ee!" squealed Nan. "You don't really suppose anybody will try to
+keep Momsey from getting it?"
+
+"Exactly that," said her father. "The Blakes are a widely scattered
+clan. There are probably a number of people as close in blood-tie to the
+old man who has just died as your mother, my dear. These people may all
+bob up, one after another, to dispute Momsey's claim."
+
+"But, dear me!" gasped Nan. "The money was willed to Momsey."
+
+"Nevertheless, these other relatives, if there be such--can keep Momsey
+out of the enjoyment of her rights for a long time. Court processes are
+slow, and especially so, I should judge, among the canny and careful
+Scotch. I think we would better leave it to the lawyers to settle. We
+cannot hasten the courts by worrying over the fortune.
+
+"I think," pursued Papa Sherwood judiciously, "that instead of spending
+our time discussing and dreaming of the fortune in Scotland, we would
+better go right on with our tasks here as though there were really no
+fortune at all."
+
+"Oh, my!" whispered Nan, her eyes clouding. "That's because of my last
+fortnightly report. I know I fell behind in history and rhetoric."
+
+"Don't be too hard on us, Papa Sherwood," said Momsey brightly.
+"Anticipation is more than half of every pleasure. I lie awake every
+night and spend this great fortune of ours to the very last penny."
+
+"Of course," the little lady added, with more gravity, "I wouldn't
+really spend fifty thousand dollars so recklessly as I do in my mind.
+But I can found schools, and hospitals, and educate Nan, and give you,
+Papa Sherwood, a great big business, and buy two automobiles, and-----"
+
+"Enough! Enough!" cried Mr. Sherwood, in mock seriousness. "You are a
+born spendthrift, Momsey. That you have had no chance to really be one
+thus far will only make your case more serious when you have this legacy
+in your possession. Two automobiles, no less!"
+
+"But I want you both, my dears, to bear one very important fact in mind.
+Roughly estimated the fortune is ten thousand pounds. To be exact, it
+may be a good deal less at the start. Then, after the lawyers and the
+courts get through with the will and all, the remainder that dribbles
+into your pocket, Momsey, may be a very small part of ten thousand
+pounds."
+
+"Oh, how horrid, Papa Sherwood!" cried Nan. "We won't listen to him,
+will we, Momsey?"
+
+"Oh, yes we will," her mother said quietly, but smiling. "But we will
+still believe that the world is good and that God has given us great
+good fortune. Papa talks very sensibly; but I know that there is nothing
+to fear. We are going to be very well off for the rest of our lives, and
+I cannot be thankful enough for it."
+
+At that Mr. Sherwood literally threw up his hands. "Nevertheless,"
+he said, "I expect to go to Chicago next Monday, to begin work in the
+machine shop. The boss writes me that I can come at that time."
+
+"I will get your clothes ready for you, Robert," said Momsey calmly.
+"Perhaps you will feel better in your mind if you keep busy during this
+time of waiting."
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII. TWO IMPORTANT HAPPENINGS
+
+It happened, however, that Mr. Sherwood did not go to Chicago to work in
+the machine shop. Something happened before the week was out, that quite
+put his intention aside.
+
+Indeed, Nan declared that two important happenings just then changed the
+current of affairs at the little cottage on Amity Street and that she
+had a principal part in the action of the first of these unexpected
+happenings.
+
+It was lovely skating on Norway Pond, and both Nan and her chum, Bess
+Harley, were devoted to the sport. Nan had been unable to be on the ice
+Saturdays, because of her home tasks; but when her lessons were learned,
+she was allowed to go after supper.
+
+It happened to be just at the dark of the moon this week; that kept many
+off the ice, although the weather was settled and the ice was perfectly
+safe. Sometimes the boys built a bonfire on Woody Point, with refuse
+from the planing mill, and that lit up a good bit of the ice.
+
+But once out on the pond, away from the shadows cast by the high banks,
+the girls could see well enough. They were both good skaters, and with
+arms crossed and hands clasped, they swung up the middle of the pond in
+fine style.
+
+"I just love to skate with you, Nan," sighed Bess ecstatically. "You
+move just like my other self. We're Siamese twins. We strike out
+together perfectly. Oh, my dear! I don't see whatever I am to do if you
+refuse to go to Lakeview with me."
+
+Nan could scarcely keep from telling Bess of the wonderful new fortune
+that seemed about to come to her; but she was faithful to her home
+training, and only said:
+
+"Don't fret about it, honey. Maybe something will turn up to let me go."
+
+"If you'd let my father pay your way-----?" insinuated Bess.
+
+"Don't talk of that. It's impossible," said Nan decisively. "It's a long
+time yet to fall. Maybe conditions will be different at home. A dozen
+things may happen before school opens in September."
+
+"Yes! But they may not be the right things," sighed Bess.
+
+She could not be too melancholy on such a night as this, however. It was
+perfectly quiet, and the arch of the sky was like black velvet pricked
+out with gold and silver stars. Their soft radiance shed some light upon
+the pond, enough, at least, to show the girl chums the way before them
+as they skimmed on toward Powerton Landing.
+
+They had left a noisy crowd of boys behind them, near the stamp Factory,
+mostly mill boys, and the like. Bess had been taught at home to shrink
+from association with the mill people and that is why she had urged Nan
+to take this long skate up the pond. Around the Tillbury end of it they
+were always falling in with little groups of mill boys and girls whom
+Bess did not care to meet.
+
+There was another reason this evening for keeping away from the stamp
+factory, too. The manager of that big shop had hired a gang of ice
+cutters a few days before, and had filled his own private icehouse. The
+men had cut out a roughly outlined square of the thick ice, sawed it
+into cakes, and poled it to shore and so to the sleds and the manager's
+icehouse.
+
+It was not a large opening in the ice; but even if the frost continued,
+it would be several days before the new ice would form thickly enough to
+bear again over that spot.
+
+Elsewhere, however, the ice was strong, for all the cutting for the
+big icehouses had been done long before near the Landing. The lights of
+Powerton Landing were twinkling ahead of them as the two friends swept
+on up the long lake. The wind was in their faces, such wind as there
+was, and the air was keen and nippy.
+
+The action of skating, however, kept Nan and Bess warm. Bess in her furs
+and Nan in her warm tam-o'-shanter and the muffler Momsey had knitted
+with her own hands, did not mind the cold.
+
+The evening train shrieked out of the gap and across the long trestle
+just beyond the landing, where it halted for a few seconds for
+passengers to embark or to leave the cars. This train was from Chicago,
+and on Monday Papa Sherwood expected to go to that big city to work.
+
+The thought gave Nan a feeling of depression. The little family in the
+Amity street cottage had never been separated for more than a day
+since she could remember. It was going to be hard on Momsey, with Papa
+Sherwood away and Nan in school all day. How were they going to get
+along without Papa Sherwood coming home to supper, and doing the hard
+chores?
+
+Bess awoke her chum from these dreams. "Dear me, Nan! Have you lost your
+tongue all of a sudden? Do say something, or do something."
+
+"Let's race the train down the pond to Tillbury," proposed Nan
+instantly.
+
+The lights of the long coaches were just moving out of the station at
+the Landing. The two girls came about in a graceful curve and struck
+out for home at a pace that even the train could not equal. The rails
+followed the shore of the pond on the narrow strip of lowland at the
+foot of the bluffs. They could see the lights shining through the car
+windows all the way.
+
+The fireman threw open the door of his firebox to feed the furnace and
+a great glare of light, and a shower of sparks, spouted from the
+smokestack. The rumble of the wheels from across the ice seemed louder
+than usual.
+
+"Come on, Bess!" gasped Nan, quite excited. "We can do better than this!
+Why, that old train will beat us!"
+
+For they were falling behind. The train hooted its defiance as it swept
+down toward Woody Point. The girls shot in toward the shore, where the
+shadow of the high bluff lay heavily upon the ice.
+
+They heard the boys' voices somewhere below them, but Bess and Nan could
+not see them yet. They knew that the boys had divided into sides and
+were playing old-fashioned hockey, "shinny-on-your-own-side" as it was
+locally called. Above the rumbling of the train they heard the crack of
+the shinny-stick against the wooden block, and the "z-z-z-zip!" of the
+missile as it scaled over the ice.
+
+"Those boys will get into the ice-hole if they don't look out," Nan had
+just said to her chum, when suddenly a wild yell arose from the hockey
+players.
+
+The train was slowing down at the signal tower, and finally stopped
+there. A freight had got in on the main track which had to be cleared
+before the passenger train could go into Tillbury station. The coaches
+stood right along the edge of the frozen pond.
+
+But it was nothing in connection with the evening train that caused such
+a commotion among the skaters near the stamp factory. There was a crash
+of breaking ice and a scrambling of skaters away from the spot. The
+boys' yells communicated panic to other people ashore.
+
+"He's in! He's in!" Nan and Bess heard the boys yelling. Then a man's
+voice took up the cry: "He'll be drowned! Help! Help!"
+
+"That's old Peter Newkirk," gasped Nan, squeezing Bess' gloved hands
+tightly. "He's night watchman at the stamp works, and he has only one
+arm. He can't help that boy."
+
+The youngsters who had been playing hockey so recklessly near the thin
+ice, were not as old as Nan and Bess, and the accident had thrown them
+into utter confusion. Some skated for the shore, screaming for ropes
+and fence-rails; others only tried to get away from the danger spot
+themselves. None did the first thing to help their comrade who had
+broken through the ice.
+
+"Where are you going, Nan?" gasped Bess, pulling back. "You'll have us
+both in the water, too."
+
+"We can save him! Quick!" returned her chum eagerly.
+
+She let go of Bess and unwound the long muffler from about her own neck.
+"If we could only see him!" the girl said, over and over.
+
+And then a brilliant idea struck Nan Sherwood, and she turned to shout
+to old Peter Newkirk on the shore. "Peter! Peter! Turn on the electric
+light sign! Turn it on so we can see where he's gone in!"
+
+The watchman had all his wits about him. There was a huge electric sign
+on the stamp works roof, advertising the company's output. The glare of
+it could be seen for miles, and it lit up brilliantly the surroundings
+of the mill.
+
+Peter Newkirk bounded away to the main door of the works. The switch
+that controlled the huge sign was just inside that door. Before Nan
+and Bess had reached the edge of the broken ice, the electricity was
+suddenly shot into the sign and the whole neighborhood was alight.
+
+"I see him! There he is!" gasped Nan to her chum. "Hold me tight by the
+skirt, Bess! We'll get him!"
+
+She flung herself to her knees and stopped sliding just at the edge of
+the old, thick ice. With a sweep of her strong young arm she shot the
+end of the long muffler right into the clutching hands of the drowning
+boy.
+
+Involuntarily he seized it. He had been down once, and submersion in
+the ice water had nearly deprived him of both consciousness and power
+to help save himself. But Nan drew him quickly through the shattered
+ice-cakes to the edge of the firm crystal where she knelt.
+
+"We have him! We have him!" she cried, in triumph. "Give me your hand,
+boy! I won't let you go down again."
+
+But to lift him entirely out of the water would have been too much for
+her strength. However, several men came running now from the stalled
+passenger train. The lighting of the electric sign had revealed to them
+what was going on upon the pond.
+
+The man who lifted the half-drowned boy out of the water was not one of
+the train crew, but a passenger. He was a huge man in a bearskin coat
+and felt boots. He was wrapped up so heavily, and his fur cap was pulled
+down so far over his ears and face, that Nan could not see what he
+really looked like. In a great, gruff voice he said:
+
+"Well, now! Give me a girl like you ev'ry time! I never saw the beat of
+it. Here, mister!" as he put the rescued boy into the arms of a man who
+had just run from a nearby house. "Get him between blankets and he'll be
+all right. But he's got this smart little girl to thank that he's alive
+at all."
+
+He swung around to look at Nan again. Bess was crying frankly, with her
+gloved hands before her face. "Oh, Nan! Nan!" she sobbed. "I didn't do a
+thing, not a thing. I didn't even hang to the tail of your skirt as you
+told me. I, I'm an awful coward."
+
+The big man patted Nan's shoulder lightly. "There's a little girl that
+I'm going to see here in Tillbury," he said gruffly. "I hope she turns
+out to be half as smart as you are, sissy." Then he tramped back to the
+train that was just then starting.
+
+Nan began to laugh. "Did you hear that funny man?" she asked Bess. "Do
+stop your crying, Bess! You have no reason to cry. You are not hurt."
+
+"But, but you might have been, been drowned, too," sobbed her chum. "I
+didn't help you a mite."
+
+"Bother!" exclaimed Nan Sherwood. "Don't let's talk about it. We'll go
+home. I guess we've both had enough skating for tonight."
+
+Bess wiped away her tears and clung to Nan's hand all the way to their
+usual corner for separating. Nan ran home from there quickly and burst
+into the kitchen to find Momsey and Papa Sherwood in the midst of a very
+serious conference.
+
+"What is the matter?" cried Nan, startled by the gravity of her father
+and the exaltation upon her mother's face. "What's happened?"
+
+"A very great thing, Nan, honey," said Momsey, drawing her daughter to
+her side. "Tell her, Papa Sherwood."
+
+He sighed deeply and put away the letter they had been reading. "It's
+from Mr. Blake, of Edinburgh," he said. "I can no longer doubt the
+existence of the fortune, my dears. But I fear we shall have to strive
+for it in the Scotch courts."
+
+"Oh!" cried Nan, under her breath.
+
+"Mr. Blake tells us here that it is absolutely necessary for us to come
+to Scotland, and for your mother to appear in person before the court
+there. The sum of money and other property willed to Momsey by her great
+uncle is so large that the greatest care will be exercised by the Scotch
+judges to see that it goes to the right person."
+
+"As your mother once said, we must throw a sprat to catch a herring. In
+this case we shall be throwing a sprat to catch a whale! For the amount
+of money we may have to spend to secure the fifty thousand dollars left
+by Mr. Hugh Blake, of Emberon, is small, in comparison to the fortune
+itself.
+
+"We must go to Scotland," finished Mr. Sherwood firmly. "And we must
+start as soon as possible."
+
+
+
+Chapter IX. ON THE WAY TO THE WILDERNESS
+
+It seemed to Nan Sherwood that night as though she never could get to
+sleep. Her mind and imagination worked furiously.
+
+Momsey and Papa Sherwood had sent her to bed early. There had been no
+time to tell them about the accident on the ice and her part in it.
+Her parents had much to discuss, much to decide upon. The Scotch lawyer
+urged their presence before the court having jurisdiction in the matter
+of the late Mr. Hugh Blake's will, and that as soon as they could cross
+the ocean.
+
+Transportation from the little Illinois town, across the intervening
+states to the seaport, and thence, over the winter ocean to Glasgow, and
+so on by rail to Edinburgh, was a journey the contemplation of which, to
+such a quiet family as the Sherwoods, was nothing less than appalling.
+
+And there were many things to take into consideration that Nan did not
+wholly understand. Mrs. Sherwood would require her husband's undivided
+attention while she made the long and arduous journey. The sea voyage
+was right in line with the physician's opinion of what was needed to
+restore her health; but it was a venture at best.
+
+Had the family possessed plenty of money it is doubtful if Mr. Sherwood
+would have risked more than a coasting voyage. Conditions rising out of
+the legacy from the great uncle in Scotland spelled necessity in this
+case. Of the little sum left in bank, most of it would be required to
+pay the fares of Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood to Edinburgh, and their modest
+living there for a few weeks. There was not enough money in hand to pay
+a third passage and the expenses of a third person in Scotland, until
+the court business should be settled.
+
+Mr. Sherwood had already taken Mr. Bludsoe, the lawyer, into his
+confidence. He could make arrangements through him to mortgage the
+cottage if it became absolutely necessary. He shrank from accepting
+financial help from Mrs. Sherwood's relatives in Memphis.
+
+Besides, decision must be made immediately. Plans must be made almost
+overnight. They must start within forty-eight hours to catch a certain
+steamer bound for the Scotch port of Glasgow, as Mr. Sherwood had
+already found out. And all their questions resolved finally into this
+very important one:
+
+"WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT NAN?"
+
+Nan, in her little white bed, had no idea that she was the greatest
+difficulty her parents found in this present event. It never entered her
+busy mind that Papa Sherwood and Momsey would dream of going to Scotland
+without her.
+
+"What shall we do with Nan?" Momsey said over and over again. She
+realized as well as did Mr. Sherwood that to take the child was an
+utter impossibility. Their financial circumstances, as well as other
+considerations would not allow it.
+
+Yet, what should they do with her, with whom to trust her during their
+uncertain absence on the other side? No answer that came to their minds
+seemed the right one. They rose that wintry morning without having this
+most important of all questions decided.
+
+This was Sunday and Mrs. Joyce always came over for breakfast; for she
+lived alone and never had any too much to eat, Nan was sure. As for the
+old woman's eating with the family, that was a fiction she kept up
+for appearance's sake, perhaps, or to salve her own claims to former
+gentility. She always set a place for herself at the family table in the
+dining room and then was too busy to eat with them, taking her own meal
+in the kitchen.
+
+Therefore it was she only who heard the commanding rap at the kitchen
+door in the midst of the leisurely meal, and answered it.
+
+Just then Nan had dropped her knife and fork and was staring from
+Momsey's pitying face to Papa Sherwood's grave one, as she cried, in a
+whisper:
+
+"Not me? Oh, my dears! You're never going without me, all that long
+journey? What, whatever shall I do without you both?"
+
+"Don't, honey! Don't say it that way!" begged Momsey, putting her
+handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+"If it was not quite impossible, do you think for a moment, daughter,
+that we would contemplate leaving you at home?" queried Mr. Sherwood,
+his own voice trembling.
+
+"It, it seems impossible!" gasped Nan, "just as though it couldn't be.
+I won't know what to do without you, my dears. And what will you do
+without me?"
+
+That seemed to be unanswerable, and it quite broke Momsey down. She
+sobbed openly into her handkerchief.
+
+"Who's going to be her little maid?" demanded Nan, of her father. "Who's
+going to 'do' her beautiful hair? Who's going to wait on her when she
+has her dreadful headaches? And who's going to play 'massagist' like me?
+I want to know who can do all those things for Momsey if you take her
+away from me, Papa Sherwood?" and she ended quite stormily.
+
+"My dear child!" Mr. Sherwood said urgently. "I want you to listen to
+me. Our situation is such that we cannot possibly take you with us.
+That is final. It is useless for us to discuss the point, for there is
+nothing to be gained by discussing it from now till Doomsday."
+
+Nan gulped down a sob and looked at him with dry eyes. Papa Sherwood had
+never seemed so stern before, and yet his own eyes were moist. She began
+to see that this decision was very hard upon her parents, too.
+
+"Now do you understand," he asked gently, "that we cannot take our
+little daughter with us, but that we are much worried by the fact, and
+we do not know what to do with her while we are gone?"
+
+"You, you might as well put me in an orphan asylum," choked Nan. "I'll
+be an orphan till you get back."
+
+"Oh, honey!" cried her mother.
+
+"There now!" said Nan, jumping up quickly and going around the table to
+her mother's side. "You poor dear! I won't say anything more to hurt and
+trouble you. I'm a selfish thing, that's what I am."
+
+Momsey wound her arms about her. Papa Sherwood still looked grave. "We
+get no nearer to the proper solution of the difficulty," he said. "Of
+course, Nancy, the orphan asylum is out of the question."
+
+"I'll stay here, of course," Nan said, with some difficulty keeping her
+voice from quavering.
+
+"Not alone in the house, honey," Momsey said quickly.
+
+"With Mrs. Joyce?" suggested Nan tentatively.
+
+"No," Mr. Sherwood said. "She is not the person to be trusted with you."
+
+"There's Mrs. Grimes' boarding house around the corner?" suggested Nan.
+
+Momsey shuddered. "Never! Never! My little girl in a boarding house. Oh,
+Papa Sherwood! We must find somebody to care for her while we are away,
+who loves Nan."
+
+And it was just here that a surprisingly gruff voice took up the matter
+and decided it in a moment.
+
+"That's me," said the voice, with conviction. "She's just the sort of
+little girl I cotton to, sister Jessie. And Kate'll be fairly crazy
+about her. If you're going anywhere for a long spell, just let me take
+her up to Pine Camp. We have no little girls up there, never had any.
+But I bet we know how to treat 'em."
+
+"Hen!" shouted Mr. Sherwood, stumbling up from the table, and putting
+out both hands to the big man whom Mrs. Joyce had ushered in from the
+kitchen so unexpectedly.
+
+"Henry Sherwood!" gasped Momsey, half rising herself in her surprise and
+delight.
+
+"Why!" cried Nan, "it's the bear-man!" for Mr. Henry Sherwood wore the
+great fur coat and cap that he had worn the evening before when he had
+come to Nan's aid in rescuing the boy from Norway Pond.
+
+Afterward Nan confessed, naively, that she ought to have known he was
+her Uncle Henry. Nobody, she was quite sure, could be so big and brawny
+as the lumberman from Michigan.
+
+"She's the girl for me," proclaimed Uncle Henry admiringly. "Smart as a
+whip and as bold as a catamount. Hasn't she told you what she did last
+night? Sho! Of course not. She don't go 'round blowing about her deeds
+of valor, I bet!" and the big man went off into a gale of laughter that
+seemed to shake the little cottage.
+
+Papa Sherwood and Momsey had to learn all the particulars then, and both
+glowed with pride over their little daughter's action. Gradually, after
+numerous personal questions were asked and answered on both sides, the
+conversation came around to the difficulty the little family was in, and
+the cause of it.
+
+Henry Sherwood listened to the story of the Scotch legacy with wide-open
+eyes, marveling greatly. The possibility of his brother's wife becoming
+wealthy amazed and delighted his simple mind. The fact that they had to
+take the long journey to Scotland to obtain the money troubled him but
+little. Although he had never traveled far himself, save to Chicago from
+the Michigan woods, Mr. Henry Sherwood had lived in the open so much
+that distances did not appall him.
+
+"Sure you'll go," he proclaimed, reaching down into a very deep pocket
+and dragging to light a long leather pouch, with a draw-string of
+home-cured deer skin. "And if you are short, Bob, we'll go down into
+this poke and see what there is left.
+
+"I came down to Chicago to see about a piece of timber that's owned by
+some sharps on Jackson Street. I didn't know but I might get to cut that
+timber. I've run it careless-like, and I know pretty near what there is
+in it. So I said to Kate:
+
+"'I'll see Bob and his wife, and the little nipper-----"
+
+"Goodness!" ejaculated Nan, under her breath.
+
+Uncle Henry's eyes twinkled and the many wrinkles about them screwed
+up into hard knots. "Beg pardon!" he exclaimed, for his ears were very
+sharp. "This young lady, I should have said. Anyhow, I told Kate I'd see
+you all and find out what you were doing.
+
+"Depending on mills and such for employment isn't any very safe way to
+live, I think. Out in the woods you are as free as air, and there aren't
+so many bosses, and you don't have to think much about 'the market' and
+'supply and demand,' and all that."
+
+"Just the same," said Mr. Robert Sherwood, his own eyes twinkling, "you
+are in some trouble right now, I believe, Hen?"
+
+"Sho! You've got me there," boomed his brother with a great laugh.
+"But there aren't many reptiles like old Ged Raffer. And we can thank
+a merciful Creator for that. I expect there are just a few miserly old
+hunks like Ged as horrible examples to the rest of us."
+
+"What is the nature of your trouble with this old fellow?" asked Mr.
+Robert Sherwood.
+
+"We've got hold on adjoining options. I had my lines run by one of the
+best surveyors in the Peninsula of Michigan. But he up and died. Ged
+claims I ran over on his tract about a mile. He got to court first, got
+an injunction, and tied me all up in a hard legal knot until the state
+surveyors can go over both pieces of timber. The land knows when that'll
+be! Those state surveyors take a week of frog Sundays to do a job.
+
+"I can't cut a stick on my whole piece 'cause Ged claims he'll have a
+right to replevin an equal number of sticks cut, if the surveyors back
+up his contention. Nasty mess. The original line was run years and years
+ago, and they're not many alive today in the Big woods that know the
+rights of it.
+
+"I expect," added Uncle Henry, shaking his bushy head, "that old Toby
+Vanderwiller knows the rights of that line business; but he won't tell.
+Gedney Raffer's got a strangle hold on Toby and his little swamp farm,
+and Toby doesn't dare say his soul's his own.
+
+"Well!" continued the lumberman, with another of his big laughs. "This
+has nothing to do with your stew, Bob. I didn't want to come to the
+house last night and surprise you; so I stayed at the hotel. And all the
+time I was thinking of this little nip, Beg pardon! This young lady, and
+how smart and plucky she was.
+
+"And lo and behold," pursued Uncle Henry, "she turns out to be my own
+niece. I'm going to take her back with me to Pine Camp. Kate's got to
+see and know her. The boys will be tickled out of their boots to have a
+girl like her around. That's our one lack at Pine Camp. There never was
+a girl in the family.
+
+"Seems that this was just foreordained. You and Jessie have got to go
+'way off, over the water; can't leave this plucky girl alone. Her old
+uncle and aunt are the proper folks to take care of her. What do you say
+yourself, young lady?"
+
+Nan had liked the big man from the very beginning. She was a sensible
+child, too. She saw that she must settle this matter herself, for it was
+too hard a question for either Momsey or Papa Sherwood to decide.
+She gained control of herself now; but nobody will ever know how much
+courage it took for her to say, promptly:
+
+"Of course I will go home with you, Uncle Henry. It will be fun, I
+think, to go into the woods in the winter. And, and I can come right
+back as soon as Momsey and Papa Sherwood return from Scotland."
+
+So it was settled, just like that. The rush in which both parties got
+under way on Monday made Nan's head whirl. Momsey was to buy a few
+necessary things in New York before she boarded the steamer. Nan had a
+plentiful supply of warm winter clothing, and she took a trunkful.
+
+Mrs. Joyce was left to take a peep at the little, locked cottage on
+Amity Street, now and then. Nan could say "Goodbye" only very hastily
+to Bess Harley and her other school friends. Her school had to be broken
+off at a bad time in the year, but there was the prospect of a change in
+Nan's method of education the next fall.
+
+Momsey and Papa Sherwood took the train east an hour before Nan and
+Uncle Henry boarded that for Chicago. All went with a rush and clatter,
+and Nan found herself at last rumbling out of Tillbury, on her way to
+the northern wilderness, while a thin drive of fine snowflakes tapped on
+the car windows.
+
+
+
+Chapter X. GEDNEY RAFFER
+
+It was fortunate for Nan Sherwood that on the day of parting with her
+parents she had so much to do, and that there was so much to see, and so
+many new things of which to think.
+
+She had never traveled to Chicago before, nor far from Tillbury at all.
+Even the chair car was new to the girl's experience and she found it
+vastly entertaining to sit at a broad window with her uncle in the
+opposite chair, gazing out upon the snowy landscape as the train hurried
+over the prairie.
+
+She had a certain feeling that her Uncle Henry was an anomaly in the
+chair car. His huge bearskin coat and the rough clothing under it; his
+felt boots, with rubber soles and feet; the fact that he wore no linen
+and only a string tie under the collar of his flannel shirt; his great
+bronzed hands and blunted fingers with their broken nails, all these
+things set him apart from the other men who rode in the car.
+
+Papa Sherwood paid much attention to the niceties of dress, despite the
+fact that his work at the Atwater Mills had called for overalls and,
+frequently, oily hands. Uncle Henry evidently knew little about stiff
+collars and laundered cuffs, or cravats, smart boots, bosomed shirts, or
+other dainty wear for men. He was quite innocent of giving any offence
+to the eye, however. Lying back in the comfortable chair with his coat
+off and his great lumberman's boots crossed, he laughed at anything Nan
+said that chanced to be the least bit amusing, until the gas-globes rang
+again.
+
+It seemed to Nan as though there never was such a huge man before. She
+doubted if Goliath could have looked so big to young David, when the
+shepherd boy went out with his sling to meet the giant. Uncle Henry
+was six feet, four inches in height and broad in proportion. The chair
+creaked under his weight when he moved. Other people in the car gazed on
+the quite unconscious giant as wonderingly as did Nan herself.
+
+"Uncle Henry," she asked him once, "are all the men in the Big Woods as
+tall as you are?"
+
+"Goodness me! No, child," he chuckled. "But the woods don't breed many
+runts, that's a fact. There's some bigger than I. Long Sam Dorgan is
+near seven feet he isn't quite sure, for he's so ticklish that you can't
+ever measure him," and Uncle Henry's chuckle burst into a full-fledged
+laugh. "He's just as graceful as a length of shingle lathing, too. And
+freckles and liver spots on his hands and face, well, he certain sure is
+a handsome creature.
+
+"He went to town once and stayed over night. Wasn't any bed long enough
+at the hotel, and Sam had got considerably under the weather, anyhow,
+from fooling with hard cider. So he wasn't particular about where he
+bedded down, and they put him to sleep in the horse trough."
+
+"The horse trough!" gasped Nan.
+
+"Yes. It was pretty dry when Sam went to bed; but right early in the
+morning a sleepy hostler stumbled out to the trough and began to pump
+water into it for the cattle. Maybe Long Sam needed a bath, but not just
+that way. He rose up with a yell like a Choctaw Indian. Said he was
+just dreaming of going through the Sault Ste. Marie in a barrel, and he
+reckoned the barrel burst open."
+
+Nan was much amused by this story, as she was by others that the old
+lumberman related. He was full of dry sayings and his speech had many
+queer twists to it. His bluff, honest way delighted the girl, although
+he was so different from Papa Sherwood. As Momsey had said, Uncle
+Henry's body had to be big to contain his heart. One can excuse much
+that is rough in a character so lovable as that of Uncle Henry's.
+
+The snow increased as the train sped on and the darkness gradually
+thickened. Uncle Henry took his niece into the dining car where they
+had supper, with a black man with shiny eyes and very white teeth, who
+seemed always on the broad grin, to wait upon them. Nan made a mental
+note to write Bess Harley all about the meal and the service, for Bess
+was always interested in anything that seemed "aristocratic," and to the
+unsophisticated girl from Tillbury the style of the dining car seemed
+really luxurious.
+
+When the train rolled into the Chicago station it was not yet late;
+but it seemed to Nan as though they had ridden miles and miles, through
+lighted streets hedged on either side with brick houses. The snow was
+still falling, but it looked sooty and gray here in the city. Nan began
+to feel some depression, and to remember more keenly that Momsey and
+Papa Sherwood were flying easterly just as fast as an express train
+could take them.
+
+It was cold, too. A keen, penetrating wind seemed to search through
+the streets. Uncle Henry said it came from the lake. He beckoned to a
+taxicab driver, and Nan's trunk was found and strapped upon the roof.
+Then off they went to the hotel where Uncle Henry always stopped when he
+came to Chicago, and where his own bag was checked.
+
+Looking through the cab windows, the girl began to take an immediate
+interest in life again. So many people, despite the storm! So many
+vehicles tangled up at the corners and waiting for the big policemen
+to let them by in front of the clanging cars! Bustle, hurry, noise,
+confusion!
+
+"Some different from your Tillbury," drawled Uncle Henry. "And just as
+different from Pine Camp as chalk is from cheese."
+
+"But so interesting!" breathed Nan, with a sigh. "Doesn't it ever get to
+be bedtime for children in the city?"
+
+"Not for those kids," grumbled Uncle Henry. "Poor creatures. They sell
+papers, or flowers, or matches, or what-not, all evening long. And
+stores keep open, and hotel bars, and drug shops, besides theatres and
+the like. There's a big motion picture place! I went there once. It
+beats any show that ever came to Hobart Forks, now I tell you."
+
+"Oh, we have motion picture shows at Tillbury. We have had them in the
+school hall, too," said Nan complacently. "But, of course, I'd like
+to see all the people and the lights, and so forth. It looks very
+interesting in the city. But the snow is dirty, Uncle Henry."
+
+"Yes. And most everything else is dirty when you get into these brick
+and mortar tunnels. That's what I call the streets. The air even isn't
+clean," went on the lumberman. "Give me the woods, with a fresh wind
+blowing, and the world looks good to me," then his voice and face fell,
+as he added, "excepting that snake-in-the-grass, Ged Raffer."
+
+"That man must make you a lot of trouble, Uncle Henry," said Nan
+sympathetically.
+
+"He does," growled the lumberman. "He's a miserable, fox-faced
+scoundrel, and I've no more use for him than I have for an egg-sucking
+dog. That's the way I feel about it."
+
+They reached the hotel just then, and Uncle Henry's flare of passion was
+quenched. The hostelry he patronized was not a new hotel; but it was
+a very good one, and Nan's heart beat high as she followed the porter
+inside, with Uncle Henry directing the taxicab driver and a second
+porter how to dispose of the trunk for the night.
+
+Nan had her bag in which were her night clothes, toilet articles, and
+other necessities. The porter carried this for her and seated her on
+a comfortable lounge at one side while Uncle Henry arranged about the
+rooms.
+
+To do honor to his pretty niece the lumberman engaged much better
+quarters than he would have chosen for himself. When they went up to the
+rooms Nan found a pretty little bath opening out of hers, and the maid
+came and asked her if she could be of any help. The girl began to feel
+quite "grown up." It was all very wonderful, and she loved Uncle Henry
+for making things so pleasant for her.
+
+She had to run to his door and tell him this before she undressed. He
+had pulled off his boots and was tramping up and down the carpeted floor
+in his thick woolen socks, humming to himself.
+
+"Taking a constitutional, Nan," he declared. "Haven't had any exercise
+for this big body of mine all day. Sitting in that car has made me as
+cramped as a bear just crawling out of his den in the spring."
+
+He did not tell her that had he been alone he would have gone out and
+tramped the snowy streets for half the night. But he would not leave
+her alone in the hotel. "No, sir," said Uncle Henry. "Robert would
+never forgive me if anything happened to his honey-bird. And fire, or
+something, might break out here while I was gone."
+
+He said nothing like this to Nan, however, but kissed her good night and
+told her she should always bid him good night in just that way as long
+as she was at Pine Camp.
+
+"For Kate and I have never had a little girl," said the big lumberman,
+"and boys get over the kissing stage mighty early, I find. Kate and I
+always did hanker for a girl."
+
+"If you owned a really, truly daughter of your own, Uncle Henry, I
+believe you'd spoil her to death!" cried Nan, the next morning, when she
+came out of the fur shop to which he had taken her.
+
+He had insisted that she was not dressed warmly enough for the woods. "We
+see forty and forty-five below up there, sometimes," he said. "You think
+this raw wind is cold; it is nothing to a black frost in the Big Woods.
+Trees burst as if there were dynamite in 'em. You've never seen the
+like.
+
+"Of course the back of winter's about broken now. But we may have some
+cold snaps yet. Anyhow, you look warmer than you did."
+
+And that was true, for Nan was dressed like a little Esquimau. Her coat
+had a pointed hood to it; she wore high fur boots, the fur outside. Her
+mittens of seal were buttoned to the sleeves of her coat, and she could
+thrust her hands, with ordinary gloves on them, right into these warm
+receptacles.
+
+Nan thought they were wonderfully served at the hotel where they
+stopped, and she liked the maid on her corridor very much, and the boy
+who brought the icewater, too. There really was so much to tell Bess
+that she began to keep a diary in a little blank-book she bought for
+that purpose.
+
+Then the most wonderful thing of all was the message from Papa Sherwood
+which arrived just before she and Uncle Henry left the hotel for the
+train. It was a "night letter" sent from Buffalo and told her that
+Momsey was all right and that they both sent love and would telegraph
+once more before their steamship left the dock at New York.
+
+Nan and Uncle Henry drove through the snowy streets to another station
+and took the evening train north. They traveled at first by the
+Milwaukee Division of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad; and now
+another new experience came Nan's way. Uncle Henry had secured a section
+in the sleeping car and each had a berth.
+
+It was just like being put to sleep on a shelf, Nan declared, when the
+porter made up the beds at nine o'clock. She climbed into the upper
+berth a little later, sure that she would not sleep, and intending to
+look out of the narrow window to watch the snowy landscape fly by all
+night.
+
+And much to her surprise (only the surprise came in the morning) she
+fell fast asleep almost immediately, lulled by the rocking of the huge
+car on its springs, and did not arouse until seven o'clock and the car
+stood on the siding in the big Wisconsin city.
+
+They hurried to get a northern bound train and were soon off on what
+Uncle Henry called the "longest lap" of their journey. The train swept
+them up the line of Lake Michigan, sometimes within sight of the shore,
+often along the edge of estuaries, particularly following the contour
+of Green By, and then into the Wilderness of upper Wisconsin and the
+Michigan Peninsula.
+
+On the Peninsula Division of the C. & N. W. they did not travel as fast
+as they had been running, and before Hobart Forks was announced on the
+last local train they traveled in, Nan Sherwood certainly was tired
+of riding by rail. The station was in Marquette County, near the
+Schoolcraft line. Pine Camp was twenty miles deeper in the Wilderness.
+It seemed to Nan that she had been traveling through forests, or the
+barren stumpage where forests had been, for weeks.
+
+"Here's where we get off, little girl," Uncle Henry said, as he seized
+his big bag and her little one and made for the door of the car. Nan
+ran after him in her fur clothing. She had found before this that he was
+right about the cold. It was an entirely different atmosphere up here in
+the Big Woods from Tillbury, or even Chicago.
+
+The train creaked to a stop. They leaped down upon the snowy platform.
+Only a plain station, big freight house, and a company of roughly
+dressed men to meet them. Behind the station a number of sleighs and
+sledges stood, their impatient horses shaking the innumerable bells they
+wore.
+
+Nan, stumbling off the car step behind her uncle, came near to colliding
+with a small man in patched coat and cowhide boots, and with a rope tied
+about his waist as some teamsters affect. He mumbled something in anger
+and Nan turned to look at him.
+
+He wore sparse, sandy whiskers, now fast turning gray. The outthrust of
+the lower part of his face was as sharp as that of a fox, and he really
+looked like a fox. She was sure of his identity before uncle Henry
+wheeled and, seeing the man, said:
+
+"What's that you are saying, Ged Raffer? This is my niece, and if you
+lay your tongue to her name, I'll give you something to go to law about
+in a hurry. Come, Nan. Don't let that man touch so much as your coat
+sleeve. He's like pitch. You can't be near him without some of his
+meanness sticking to you."
+
+
+
+Chapter XI. PINE CAMP AT LAST
+
+It was the first shade upon Uncle Henry's character that displeased
+Nan. He was evidently a passionate man, prone to give way to elemental
+feelings, literally, "a man of wrath."
+
+Gedney Raffer, weazened, snakelike, sly, and treacherous, had doubtless
+wronged Uncle Henry deeply. But this fact could not excuse the huge
+lumberman's language on the platform of the Hobart Forks station.
+
+Nan wanted to stop her ears with her fingers and run from the spot.
+The tough fellows standing around enjoyed the war of words hugely. Mr.
+Sherwood was too big to strike Gedney Raffer, and of course the latter
+dared not use his puny fists on the giant.
+
+The blunt club of the lumberman's speech was scarcely a match for the
+sharp rapier of Raffer's tongue. As the crowd laughed it was evident
+that the fox-faced man was getting the verbal best of the controversy.
+
+Nan's ears burned and tears stood in her eyes. Uncle Henry descended to
+personal threats and the smaller man called out:
+
+"You jest put your hand on me, you big, overgrown sawney! That's all I'm
+a-waitin' for. You 'tack me and I'll have you in the caboose, sure's my
+name's Gedney Raffer. Try it!"
+
+The quarrel was most distressing. Nan pulled at her uncle's coat sleeve.
+The rough men eyed her curiously. She had never felt so ashamed in her
+life.
+
+"Do come, Uncle Henry," she whispered. "I'm cold."
+
+That statement started the fuming giant at once. Nan's sensitiveness
+to a rude quarrel did not impress the man; but her sensitiveness to the
+weather shocked him immediately.
+
+"My goodness, girl! We'll go right up to the hotel," he said, kindly.
+"Any of you fellows seen Rafe or Tom in town this morning with the sled
+and roans?"
+
+"Hey, Hen!" cried the station master, waving a yellow paper. "Here's a
+telegraph despatch for you."
+
+It was really for Nan, and from Papa Sherwood filed just before the
+Afton Castle sailed from New York:
+
+"Momsey and papa send love and kisses. Be cheerful and good. Write
+often. We think of you always. Kind wishes for Henry, Kate and boys.
+We look forward to fair voyage and safe landing. Will cable from other
+side. Expect happy meeting in spring. R. and J. Sherwood."
+
+"They got a good start," commented Uncle Henry, putting all thought of
+his quarrel with Ged Raffer behind him at once. "We'll hope they have a
+safe voyage. Now! Where are those boys of mine?"
+
+The town of Hobart Forks was by no means a lumber town. Millions of feet
+of timber was boomed on the river within the limits of the town every
+season, and there were great mills along the banks of the stream, too.
+But there were other industries, as well as churches, amusement places
+and many pleasant dwellings. It was no settlement of "slab shanties"
+with a few saloons and a general store. Nan had yet to see this latter
+kind of settlement.
+
+But what she saw about the central market place of Hobart Forks opened
+her eyes considerably to an appreciation of the rough country she had
+come to, and the rough people to be met therein.
+
+The storekeepers she saw through the frosted windows were dressed like
+storekeepers in Tillbury; and there were well dressed women on the
+streets, a few, at least.
+
+But most of the men striding through the snow were as roughly dressed as
+her uncle, and not many were as good looking as Mr. Sherwood. Some who
+came out of the swinging doors of saloons staggered, and were very noisy
+in their speech and rude in their actions. Of course nobody spoke to
+Nan, or troubled her; Henry Sherwood was undoubtedly a man of standing
+in the settlement and highly respected.
+
+Not far from the market place they came upon a sprawling old tavern,
+with a fenced yard at one side. As they approached, a sled drawn by a
+wild looking pair of rough, red-roan ponies, dashed out of the yard and
+stopped at the broad front portico of the hotel.
+
+"Hey, Tom! What's the matter with you?" called Uncle Henry. "Here we
+are!"
+
+The driver turned a broad, good-humored face to look over his burly
+shoulder. Nan saw that Tom Sherwood strongly resembled his father.
+
+"That you, Dad?" he drawled. "I'd about given you up. I didn't want to
+drive down to the depot with these crazy creatures. And if I'd left 'em
+standing they'd have kicked Phil's shed to pieces, I do believe. The
+train's been in half an hour and more."
+
+"I know," said his father. "I had a mess of words with Ged Raffer. That
+delayed me."
+
+"You ought to give him the back of your hand, and say no more about it,"
+declared Tom, in a tone that showed he warmed in his bosom the family
+grudge against the fox-faced man.
+
+"Here's your Cousin Nan, Tom," said his father, without making rejoinder
+to the young man's observation. "She must go into Phil's and get warm
+and have a cup of hot coffee. I'll take some in a new-fangled bottle I
+bought down in Chicago, so we can all have a hot drink on the way home."
+
+"'Twon't keep warm twenty miles," said Tom.
+
+"Yes 'twill. It'll keep HOT for twenty miles and more. They call it a
+thermos bottle. It'll keep coffee hot, or cold, for a day, just as you
+please."
+
+"Jehosaphat, Dad! What kind of a swindle's that? How does the bottle
+know whether you want your drink hot or cold? Huh! Those city folks
+couldn't make me believe any such thing," objected the son.
+
+Nan had to giggle at that, and Uncle Henry demanded: "Did you ever see
+such a gump? Go on down to the station and tell Abe to fling that trunk
+and the bags into the back of the sled. We'll have our coffee, and get
+the thermos bottle filled, too, by the time you come back."
+
+Nan liked tom Sherwood. He was about nineteen and almost as big as
+his father. He was gentle with her, and showed himself to be an expert
+driver of the roan colts. Otherwise Nan might have been much afraid
+during the first mile of the journey to Pine Camp, for certainly she had
+never seen horses behave so before.
+
+"Haven't been out of the stable for a week," explained Tom cooly as the
+roans plunged and danced, and "cut up didos" generally, as Uncle Henry
+remarked.
+
+"We had a big fall of snow," Tom went on to say. "Bunged us all up in
+the woods; so Rafe and I came in. Marm's all right. So's everybody else
+around the Camp, except Old Man Llewellen. He's down with rheumatism, or
+tic-douloureux, or something. He's always complaining."
+
+"I know," said Uncle Henry, and then went on to relate for his son's
+benefit the wonderful thing that had happened to his brother and his
+brother's wife, and why Nan had come up into Michigan without her
+parents.
+
+"We'll be mighty proud to have her," said Tom simply. He was only a
+great boy, after all, and he blushed every time he caught Nan looking at
+him. The girl began to feel very much grown up.
+
+They were glad of the hot coffee, and Tom was shown how and why the
+mysterious bottle kept the drink hot. They only made that single halt
+(and only for a few minutes for the horses to drink) before reaching
+Pine Camp. They traveled through the snow-covered woods most of the way.
+There were few farms and no settlements at all until they reached Pine
+Camp.
+
+The road was not well beaten and they could not have got through some of
+the drifts with less spirited ponies than the roans. When they crossed
+the long bridge over the river and swept into the village street, Nan
+was amazed.
+
+Likewise, her heart sank a little. There was not a building in the place
+more than a story and a half in height. Most of them were slab cottages.
+Few yards were fenced. There were two stores, facing each other on the
+single street of the town, with false-fronts running up as tall as the
+second story would have been had there been a second story.
+
+The roans dashed through the better beaten path of the street, with
+everybody along the way hailing Henry Sherwood vociferously. The giant
+waved his hand and shouted in reply. Nan cowered between him and Tom,
+on the seat, shielding her face from the flying snow from the ponies'
+hoofs, though the tears in her eyes were not brought there only by the
+sting of the pelting she received.
+
+
+
+Chapter XII. "HOME WAS NEVER LIKE THIS"
+
+The roan ponies dashed through the slab settlement, past the blacksmith
+and wheelwright shop and the ugly red building Tom told Nan was the
+school, and reached a large, sprawling, unpainted dwelling on the
+outskirts of the village.
+
+There were barns back of the Sherwood house; there was no fence between
+the yard and the road, the windows of the house stared out upon the
+passerby, blindless, and many of them without shades. There was such a
+painful newness about the building that it seemed to Nan the carpenters
+must have just packed their tools and gone, while the painters had not
+yet arrived.
+
+"Well! Here we are," announced Mr. Henry Sherwood, as Tom held in the
+still eager ponies. He stepped out and offered Nan his hand. "Home
+again, little girl. I reckon Kate will be mighty glad to see you, that
+she will."
+
+Nan leaped out and began to stamp her feet on the hard snow, while Uncle
+Henry lifted out the trunk and bags. Just as the ponies sprang away
+again, a door in the ugly house opened and a tall, angular woman looked
+forth.
+
+"Bring her in, Hen!" she cried, in a high-pitched voice. "I want to see
+her."
+
+Nan went rather timidly up the path. Her aunt was almost as tall as her
+husband. She was very bony and was flat-chested and unlovely in every
+way. That is, so it seemed, when the homesick girl raised her eyes to
+Aunt Kate's face.
+
+That face was as brown as sole-leather, and the texture of the skin
+seemed leathery as well. There was a hawklike nose dominating the
+unfeminine face. The shallows below the cheekbones were deep, as
+though she had suffered the loss of her back molars. The eyebrows were
+straggly; the eyes themselves of a pale, watery blue; the mouth a thin
+line when her colorless lips were closed; and her chin was as square and
+determined as Uncle Henry's own.
+
+As Nan approached she saw something else about this unlovely woman. On
+her neck was a great, livid scar, of a hand's breadth, and which looked
+like a scald, or burn. No attempt was made to conceal this unsightly
+blemish.
+
+Indeed, there was nothing about Aunt Kate Sherwood suggesting a
+softening of her hard lines. Her plain, ugly print dress was cut low at
+the throat, and had no collar or ruff to hide the scar. Nan's gaze was
+fastened on that blemish before she was half way to the door, and she
+could see nothing else at first.
+
+The girl fought down a physical shudder when Aunt Kate's clawlike hands
+seized her by both shoulders, and she stooped to kiss the visitor.
+
+"Welcome, dear Nannie," her sharp voice said, and Nan thought that, with
+ease, one might have heard her in the middle of the village.
+
+But when Aunt Kate's lips touched the girl's forehead they were
+Warm, and soft as velvet. Her breath was sweet. There was a wholesome
+cleanliness about her person that pleased Nan. The ugly dress was
+spotless and beautifully laundered. She had a glimpse of the unplastered
+kitchen and saw a row of copper pots on the shelf over the dresser that
+were scoured to dazzling brightness. The boards of the floor were
+white as milk. The big, patent range glistened with polish, and its
+nickel-work was rubbed till it reflected like a mirror.
+
+"Welcome, my dear!" said Aunt Kate again. "I hope you will be happy
+while you stay with us."
+
+Happy! With Momsey and Papa Sherwood on the ocean, and the "little
+dwelling in amity" closed and deserted? Nan feared she would break down
+and cry.
+
+Her Aunt Kate left her to herself a minute just then that she might
+overcome this weakness. Uncle Henry came up the path with the bags,
+smiling broadly.
+
+"Well, old woman!" he said heartily.
+
+"Well, old man!" she returned.
+
+And then suddenly, Nan Sherwood had a new vision. She was used to
+seeing her pretty mother and her handsome father display their mutual
+affection; it had not seemed possible that rough, burly Uncle Henry and
+ugly Aunt Kate could feel the same degree of affection for each other.
+
+Uncle Henry dropped the bags. Aunt Kate seemed to be drawn toward him
+when he put out his hands. Nan saw their lips meet, and then the giant
+gently, almost reverently, kissed the horrid scar on Aunt Kate's neck.
+
+"Here's Nan!" cried the big lumberman jovially. "The pluckiest and
+smartest little girl in seven states! Take her in out of the cold, Kate.
+She's not used to our kind of weather, and I have been watching for the
+frost flowers to bloom on her pretty face all the way from the forks."
+
+The woman drew Nan into the warm kitchen. Uncle Henry followed in a
+minute with the trunk.
+
+"Where'll I put this box, Kate?" he asked. "I reckon you've fixed up
+some cozy place for her?"
+
+"The east room, Hen," Aunt Kate replied. "The sun lies in there
+mornings. I took the new spring rocker out of the parlor, and with the
+white enameled bedstead you bought in Chicago, and the maple bureau
+we got of that furniture pedlar, and the best drugget to lay over the
+carpet I reckon Nannie has a pretty bedroom."
+
+Meanwhile Nan stared openly around the strange kitchen. The joists and
+rafters were uncovered by laths or plaster. Muslin, that had once been
+white, was tacked to the beams overhead for a ceiling. The smoke from
+the cookstove had stained it to a deep brown color above the stove and
+to a lighter, meerschaum shade in the corners.
+
+The furniture was of the rudest plainest kind much of it evidently
+home-made. Uncle Henry was not unhandy with tools. She learned, later,
+that he and the boys had practically built the house by themselves. They
+were finishing it inside, as they had time. In some of the rooms the
+inside window and door frames were not yet in place.
+
+There was an appetizing smell from the pots upon the stove, and the
+long table was set for dinner. They would not let Nan change from her
+traveling dress before sitting down to the table. Tom and Rafe came in
+and all three men washed at the long, wooden sink.
+
+Rafe was of slighter build than his brother, and a year or more younger.
+He was not so shy as Tom, either; and his eyes sparkled with mischief.
+Nan found that she could not act "grown up" with her Cousin Rafe.
+
+The principal dish for dinner was venison stew, served with vegetables
+and salt-rising bread. There was cake, too, very heavy and indigestible,
+and speckled with huckleberries that had been dried the fall previous.
+Aunt Kate was no fancy cook; but appetite is the best sauce, after all,
+and Nan had her share of that condiment.
+
+During the meal there was not much conversation save about the wonderful
+fortune that had fallen to Nan's mother and the voyage she and her
+husband were taking to Scotland to secure it. Nan learned, too, that
+Uncle Henry had telegraphed from Tillbury of Nan's coming to Pine Camp,
+and consequently Aunt Kate was able to prepare for her.
+
+And that the good woman had done her best to make a nest for her little
+niece in the ugly house, Nan was assured. After dinner she insisted upon
+the girl's going to the east room to change her dress and lie down. The
+comparison between this great chamber and Nan's pretty room at home was
+appalling.
+
+The room had been plastered, but the plaster was of a gray color and
+unfinished. The woodwork was painted a dusty, brick red with mineral
+paint. The odd and ugly pieces of furniture horrified Nan. The drugget
+on the floor only served to hide a part of the still more atrociously
+patterned carpet. The rocking chair complained if one touched it. The
+top of the huge maple dresser was as bald as one's palm.
+
+Nan sat down on the unopened trunk when her aunt had left her. She
+dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. Home certainly was never like
+this! She did not see how she was ever going to be able to stand it.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII. MARGARET LLEWELLEN
+
+"If Momsey or Papa Sherwood knew about this they'd be awfully sorry for
+me," thought Nan, still sitting on the trunk. "Such a looking place!
+Nothing to see but snow and trees," for the village of Pine Camp was
+quite surrounded by the forest and all the visitor could see from the
+windows of her first-floor bedroom were stumps and trees, with deep snow
+everywhere.
+
+There was a glowing wood stove in the room and a big, chintz-covered
+box beside it, full of "chunks." It was warm in the room, the atmosphere
+being permeated with the sweet tang of wood smoke.
+
+Nan dried her eyes. There really was not any use in crying. Momsey and
+Papa Sherwood could not know how bad she felt, and she really was not
+selfish enough to wish them to know.
+
+"Now, Nanny Sherwood!" she scolded herself, "there's not a particle of
+use of your sniveling. It won't 'get you anywhere,' as Mrs. Joyce says.
+You'll only make your eyes red, and the folks will see that you're not
+happy here, and they will be hurt.
+
+"Mustn't make other folks feel bad just because I feel bad myself," Nan
+decided. "Come on! Pluck up your courage!
+
+"I know what I'll do," she added, literally shaking herself as she
+jumped off the trunk. "I'll unpack. I'll cover up everything ugly that I
+can with something pretty from Tillbury."
+
+Hurried as she had been her departure from the cottage on Amity Street,
+Nan had packed in her trunk many of those little possessions, dear to
+her childish heart, that had graced her bedroom. These appeared from the
+trunk even before she hung away her clothes in the unplastered closet
+where the cold wind searched through the cracks from out-of-doors. Into
+that closet, away back in the corner, went a long pasteboard box, tied
+carefully with strong cord. Nan patted it gently with her hand before
+she left the box, whispering:
+
+"You dear! I wouldn't have left you behind for anything! I won't
+let them know you are here; but sometimes, when I'm sure nobody will
+interrupt, you shall come out."
+
+She spread a fringed towel over the barren top of the dresser. It
+would not cover it all, of course; but it made an island in a sea of
+emptiness.
+
+And on the island she quickly set forth the plain little toilet-set her
+mother had given her on her last birthday, the manicure set that was a
+present from Papa Sherwood, and the several other knickknacks that
+would help to make the big dresser look as though "there was somebody at
+home," as she whispered to herself.
+
+She draped a scarf here, hung up a pretty silk bag there, placed
+Momsey's and Papa Sherwood's portraits in their little silver filigree
+easels on the mantelpiece, flanking the clock that would not run and
+which was held by the ugly china shepherdess with only one foot and
+a broken crook, the latter ornament evidently having been at one time
+prized by the babies of her aunt's family, for the ring at the top was
+dented by little teeth.
+
+Nothing, however, could take the curse of ugliness off the staring
+gray walls of the room, or from the horrible turkey-red and white
+canton-flannel quilt that bedecked the bed. Nan longed to spill the
+contents of her ink bottle over that hideous coverlet, but did not dare.
+
+The effort to make the big east room look less like a barn made Nan feel
+better in her mind. It was still dreary, it must be confessed. There
+were a dozen things she wished she could do to improve it. There
+were nothing but paper shades at the windows. Even a simple scrim
+curtain-----
+
+And, in thinking of this, Nan raised her eyes to one window to see a
+face pressed close against the glass, and two rolling, crablike eyes
+glaring in at her.
+
+"Mercy!" ejaculated Nan Sherwood. "What is the matter with that child's
+eyes? They'll drop out of her head!"
+
+She ran to the window, evidently startling the peeper quite as much as
+she had been startled herself. The girl, who was about Nan's own age,
+fell back from the pane, stumbled in the big, men's boots she wore, and
+ungracefully sprawled in the snow upon her back. She could not get away
+before Nan had the window open.
+
+The sash was held up by a notched stick. Nan put her head and shoulders
+out into the frosty air and stared down at the prostrate girl, who
+stared up at her in return.
+
+"What do you want?" Nan asked.
+
+"Nothin'," replied the stranger.
+
+"What were you peeping in for?"
+
+"To see you," was the more frank reply.
+
+"What for?" asked Nan.
+
+"Ain't you the new gal?"
+
+"I've newly come here, yes," admitted Nan.
+
+"Well!"
+
+"But I'm not such a sight, am I?" laughed the girl from Tillbury. "But
+you are, lying there in the snow. You'll get your death of cold. Get up."
+
+The other did so. Beside the men's boots, which were patched and old,
+she wore a woollen skirt, a blouse, and a shawl over her head and
+shoulders. She shook the snow from her garments much as a dog frees
+himself from water after coming out of a pond.
+
+"It's too cold to talk with this window open. You're a neighbor, aren't
+you?"
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"Then come in," urged Nan. "I'm sure my aunt will let you."
+
+The girl shook her head in a decided negative to this proposal. "Don't
+want Marm Sherwood to see me," she said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"She told me not to come over after you come 'ithout I put on my new
+dress and washed my hands and face."
+
+"Well!" exclaimed Nan, looking at her more closely. "You seem to have a
+clean face, at least."
+
+"Yes. But that dress she 'gin me, my brother Bob took and put on Old
+Beagle for to dress him up funny. And Beagle heard a noise he thought
+was a fox barking and he started for the tamarack swamp, lickety-split.
+I expect there ain't enough of that gingham left to tie around a sore
+thumb."
+
+Nan listened to this in both amusement and surprise. The girl was a new
+specimen to her.
+
+"Come in, anyway," she urged. "I can't keep the window open."
+
+"I'll climb in, then," declared the other suddenly, and, suiting the
+action to the word, she swarmed over the sill; but she left one huge
+boot in the snow, and Nan, laughing delightedly, ran for the poker to
+fish for it, and drew it in and shut down the window.
+
+The strange girl was warming her hands at the fire. Nan pushed a chair
+toward her and took one herself, but not the complaining spring rocking
+chair.
+
+"Now tell me all about yourself," the girl demanded.
+
+"I'm Nan Sherwood, and I've come here to Pine Camp to stay while my
+father and mother have gone to Scotland."
+
+"I've heard about Scotland," declared the girl with the very prominent
+eyes.
+
+"Have you?"
+
+"Yes. Gran'ther Llewellen sings that song. You know:
+
+"'Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning! Where, where? Where, where?
+Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Pour on water! Pour on water! Fire's out! Fire's
+out!'"
+
+Nan laughed. "I've heard that, too," she said. "But it was another
+Scotland." Then: "So your name is Llewellen?"
+
+"Marg'ret Llewellen."
+
+"I've heard your grandfather is sick," said Nan, remembering Tom's
+report of the health of the community when he had met her and her uncle
+at Hobart Forks.
+
+"Yes. He's got the tic-del-rew," declared Margaret, rather unfeelingly.
+"Aunt Matildy says he's allus creakin' round like a rusty gate-hinge."
+
+"Why! That doesn't sound very nice," objected Nan. "Don't you love your
+grandfather?"
+
+"Not much," said this perfectly frank young savage. "He's so awfully
+wizzled."
+
+"'Wizzled'?" repeated Nan, puzzled.
+
+"Yes. His face is all wizzled up like a dried apple."
+
+"But you love your aunt Matilda?" gasped Nan.
+
+"Well, she's wizzled some," confessed Margaret. Then she said: "I
+don't like faces like hern and Marm Sherwood's. I like your face. It's
+smooth."
+
+Nan had noticed that this half-wild girl was of beautifully fair
+complexion herself, and aside from her pop eyes was quite petty. But she
+was a queer little thing.
+
+"You've been to Chicago, ain't you?" asked Margaret suddenly.
+
+"We came through Chicago on our way up here from my home. We stayed one
+night there," Nan replied.
+
+"It's bigger'n Pine Camp, ain't it?"
+
+"My goodness, yes!"
+
+"Bigger'n the Forks?" queried Margaret doubtfully.
+
+"Why, it is much, much bigger," said Nan, hopeless of making one
+so densely ignorant understand anything of the proportions of the
+metropolis of the lakes.
+
+"That's what I told Bob," Margaret said. "He don't believe it. Bob's my
+brother, but there never was such a dunce since Adam."
+
+Nan had to laugh. The strange girl amused her. But Margaret said
+something, too, that deeply interested the visitor at Pine Camp before
+she ended her call, making her exit as she had her entrance, by the
+window.
+
+"I reckon you never seen this house of your uncle's before, did you?"
+queried Margaret at one point in the conversation.
+
+"Oh, no. I never visited them before."
+
+"Didn't you uster visit 'em when they lived at Pale Lick?"
+
+"No. I don't remember that they ever lived anywhere else beside here."
+
+"Yes, they did. I heard Gran'ther tell about it. But mebbe 'twas before
+you an' me was born. It was Pale Lick, I'm sure. That's where they lost
+their two other boys."
+
+"What two other boys?" asked Nan, amazed.
+
+"Didn't you ever hear tell you had two other cousins?"
+
+"No," said Nan.
+
+"Well, you did," said Margaret importantly. "And when Pale Lick burned
+up, them boys was burned up, too."
+
+"Oh!" gasped Nan, horrified.
+
+"Lots of folks was burned. Injun Pete come near being burned up. He
+ain't been right, I reckon, since. And I reckon that's where Marm
+Sherwood got that scar on the side of her neck."
+
+Nan wondered.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV. AT THE LUMBER CAMP
+
+Nan said nothing just then about her queer little visitor. Aunt Kate
+asked her when she came out of the east room and crossed the chill
+desert of the parlor to the general sitting room:
+
+"Did you have a nice sleep, Nannie?"
+
+"Goodness, Auntie!" laughed Nan. "I got over taking a nap in the daytime
+a good while ago, I guess. But you come and see what I have done. I
+haven't been idle."
+
+Aunt Kate went and peeped into the east chamber. "Good mercy, child! It
+doesn't look like the same room, with all the pretty didos," she said.
+"And that's your pretty mamma in the picture on the mantel? My! Your
+papa looks peaked, doesn't he? Maybe that sea voyage they are taking
+will do 'em both good."
+
+Nan had to admit that beside her uncle and cousins her father did look
+"peaked." Robust health and brawn seemed to be the two essentials in the
+opinion of the people of Pine Camp. Nan was plump and rosy herself and
+so escaped criticism.
+
+Her uncle and aunt, and the two big boys as well, were as kind to her
+as they knew how to be. Nan could not escape some of the depression
+of homesickness during the first day or two of her visit to the woods
+settlement; but the family did everything possible to help her occupy
+her mind.
+
+The long evenings were rather amusing, although the family knew little
+about any game save checkers, "fox and geese," and "hickory, dickory,
+dock." Nan played draughts with her uncle and fox and geese and the
+other kindergarten game with her big cousins. To see Tom, with his
+eyes screwed up tight and the pencil poised in his blunt, frost-cracked
+fingers over the slate, while he recited in a base sing-song:
+
+     "Hick'ry, dick'ry, dock
+     The mouse ran up the clock,
+     The clock struck one,
+     An' down he come
+     Hick'ry, dick'ry, dock,"
+
+was side-splitting. Nan laughed till she cried. Poor, simple Tom did
+know just what amused his little cousin so.
+
+Rafe was by no means so slow, or so simple. Nan caught him cheating
+more than once at fox and geese. Rafe was a little sly, and he was
+continually making fun of his slow brother, and baiting him. Uncle Henry
+warned him:
+
+"Now, Rafe, you're too big for your Marm or me to shingle your pants;
+but Tom's likely to lick you some day for your cutting up and I sha'n't
+blame him. Just because he's slow to wrath, don't you get it in your
+head that he's afraid, or that he can't settle your hash in five
+minutes."
+
+Nan was greatly disturbed to hear so many references to fistic
+encounters and fighting of all sorts. These men of the woods seemed to
+be possessed of wild and unruly passions. What she heard the boys say
+caused her to believe that most of the spare time of the men in the
+lumber camps was spent in personal encounters.
+
+"No, no, deary. They aren't so bad as they sound," Aunt Kate told her,
+comfortably. "Lots of nice men work in the camps all their lives and
+never fight. Look at your Uncle Henry."
+
+But Nan remembered the "mess of words" (as he called it) that Uncle
+Henry had had with Gedney Raffer on the railroad station platform at the
+Forks, and she was afraid that even her aunt did not look with the same
+horror on a quarrel that Nan herself did.
+
+The girl from Tillbury had a chance to see just what a lumber camp was
+like, and what the crew were like, on the fourth day after her arrival
+at her Uncle Henry's house. The weather was then pronounced settled, and
+word came for the two young men, Tom and Rafe, to report at Blackton's
+camp the next morning, prepared to go to work. Tom drove a team which
+was then at the lumber camp, being cared for by the cook and foreman;
+Rafe was a chopper, for he had that sleight with an ax which, more than
+mere muscle, makes the mighty woodsman.
+
+"Their dad'll drive 'em over to Blackton's early, and you can go, too,"
+said Aunt Kate. "That is, if you don't mind getting up right promptly in
+the morning?"
+
+"Oh, I don't mind that," Nan declared. "I'm used to getting up early."
+
+But she thought differently when Uncle Henry's heavy hand rapped on the
+door of the east chamber so early the next morning that it seemed to Nan
+Sherwood that she had only been in bed long enough to close her eyes.
+
+"Goodness, Uncle!" she muttered, when she found out what it meant. "What
+time is it?"
+
+"Three o'clock. Time enough for you to dress and eat a snack before we
+start," replied her uncle.
+
+"Well!" said Nan to herself. "I thought the house was afire."
+
+Uncle Henry heard her through the door and whispered, shrilly: "Sh!
+Don't let your aunt hear you say anything like that, child."
+
+"Like what?" queried Nan, in wonder.
+
+"About fire. Remember!" added Uncle Henry, rather sternly, Nan thought,
+as he went back to the kitchen.
+
+Then Nan remembered what the strange little girl, Margaret Llewellen,
+had said about the fire at Pale Lick that had burned her uncle's former
+home. Nan had not felt like asking her uncle or aunt, or the boys,
+either, about it. The latter had probably been too young to remember
+much about the tragedy.
+
+Although Nan had seen Margaret on several fleeting occasions since her
+first interview with the woods girl, there had been no opportunity of
+talking privately with her. And Margaret would only come to the window.
+She was afraid to tell "Marm Sherwood" how she had lost the new dress
+that had been given to her.
+
+It was now as black outside Nan's window as it could be. She lit her oil
+lamp and dressed swiftly, running at last through the cold parlor and
+sitting room into the kitchen, where the fire in the range was burning
+briskly and the coffee pot was on. Tom and Rafe were there comfortably
+getting into thick woolen socks and big lumbermen's boots.
+
+There was a heaping pan of Aunt Kate's doughnuts on the table, flanked
+with the thick china coffee cups and deep saucers. Her uncle and the
+boys always poured their coffee into the saucers and blew on it to take
+the first heat off, then gulped it in great draughts.
+
+Nan followed suit this morning, as far as cooling the coffee in the
+saucer went. There was haste. Uncle Henry had been up some time, and now
+he came stamping into the house, saying that the ponies were hitched
+in and were standing in readiness upon the barn floor, attached to the
+pung.
+
+"We've twenty-five miles to ride, you see, Nannie," he said. "The boys
+have to be at Blackton's so's to get to work at seven."
+
+They filled the thermos bottle that had so puzzled Tom, and then sallied
+forth. The ponies were just as eager as they had been the day Nan had
+come over from the Forks. She was really half afraid of them.
+
+It was so dark that she could scarcely see the half-cleared road before
+them as the ponies dashed away from Pine Camp. The sky was completely
+overcast, but Uncle Henry declared it would break at sunrise.
+
+Where the track had been well packed by former sleighs, the ponies'
+hoofs rang as though on iron. The bits of snow that were flung off by
+their hoofs were like pieces of ice. The bells on the harness jingled a
+very pretty tune, Nan thought. She did not mind the biting cold, indeed,
+only her face was exposed. Uncle Henry had suggested a veil; but she
+wanted to see what she could.
+
+For the first few miles it remained very dark, however. Had it not been
+for the snow they could not have seen objects beside the road at all.
+There was a lantern in the back of the pung and that flung a stream of
+yellow light behind them; but Uncle Henry would not have the radiance of
+it shot forward.
+
+"A light just blinds you," he said. "I'd rather trust to the roans'
+sense."
+
+The ponies galloped for a long way, it seemed to Nan; then they came
+to a hill so steep that they were glad to drop to a walk. Their bodies
+steamed in a great cloud as they tugged the sleigh up the slope. Dark
+woods shut the road in on either hand. Nan's eyes had got used to the
+faint light so that she could see this at least.
+
+Suddenly she heard a mournful, long-drawn howl, seemingly at a great
+distance.
+
+"Must be a farm somewhere near," she said to Rafe, who sat beside her on
+the back seat.
+
+"Nope. No farms around here, Nan," he returned.
+
+"But I hear a dog howl," she told him.
+
+Rafe listened, too. Then he turned to her with a grin on his sharp face
+that she did not see. "Oh, no, you don't," he chuckled. "That's no dog."
+
+Again the howl was repeated, and it sounded much nearer. Nan realized,
+too, that it was a more savage sound than she had ever heard emitted by
+a dog.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, speaking in a low voice to Rafe.
+
+"Wolves!" responded her cousin maliciously. "But you mustn't mind a
+little thing like that. You don't have wolves down round where you live,
+I s'pose?"
+
+Nan knew that he was attempting to plague her, so she said: "Not for
+pets, at least, Rafe. These sound awfully savage."
+
+"They are," returned her cousin calmly.
+
+The wolf cry came nearer and nearer. The ponies had started on a trot
+again at the top of the hill, and her uncle and Tom did not seem to
+notice the ugly cry. Nan looked back, and was sure that some great
+animal scrambled out of the woods and gave chase to them.
+
+"Isn't there some danger?" she asked Rafe again.
+
+"Not for us," he said. "Of course, if the whole pack gathers and catches
+us, then we have to do something."
+
+"What do you do?" demanded Nan quickly.
+
+"Why, the last time we were chased by wolves, we happened to have a ham
+and a side of bacon along. So we chucked out first the one, and then the
+other, and so pacified the brutes till we got near town."
+
+"Oh!" cried Nan, half believing, half in doubt.
+
+She looked back again. There, into the flickering light of the lantern,
+a gaunt, huge creature leaped. Nan could see his head and shoulders
+now and then as he plunged on after the sleigh, and a wickeder looking
+beast, she hoped never to see.
+
+"Oh!" she gasped again, and grabbed at Rafe's arm.
+
+"Don't you be afraid," drawled that young rascal. "I reckon he hasn't
+many of his jolly companions with him. If he had, of course, we'd have
+to throw you out to pacify him. That's the rule--youngest and prettiest
+goes first-----"
+
+"Like the ham, I s'pose?" sniffed Nan, in some anger, and just then Tom
+reached over the back of the front seat and seized his brother by the
+shoulder with a grip that made Rafe shriek with pain.
+
+Nan was almost as startled as was Rafe. In the half-darkness Tom's dull
+face blazed with anger, and he held his writhing brother as though he
+were a child.
+
+"You ornery scamp!" he said, almost under his breath. "You try to scare
+that little girl, and I'll break you in two!"
+
+Nan was horrified. She begged Tom to let his brother alone. "I was only
+fooling her," snarled Rafe, rubbing his injured shoulder, for Tom had
+the grip of a pipe wrench.
+
+Uncle Henry never turned around at all; but he said: "If I had a gun
+I'd be tempted to shoot that old wolf hound of Toby Vanderwiller's. He's
+always running after sleds and yelling his head off."
+
+Nan was glad the creature following them was not really a wolf; but she
+knew she should be just as much afraid of him if she met him alone, as
+though he really were a wolf. However, mostly, she was troubled by the
+passionate nature of her two cousins. She had never seen Tom show any
+anger before; but it was evident that he had plenty of spirit if it were
+called up. And she was, secretly, proud that the slow-witted young giant
+should have displayed his interest in her welfare so plainly. Rafe sat
+and nursed his shoulder in silence for several miles.
+
+The cold was intense. As the sky lightened along the eastern horizon it
+seemed to Nan as though the frost increased each moment. The bricks at
+their feet were getting cool; and they had already had recourse to the
+thermos bottle, which was now empty of the gratefully hot drink it had
+contained.
+
+As the light gradually increased Nan saw Rafe watching her with sudden
+attention. After his recent trick she was a little afraid of Rafe. Still
+it did not seem possible that the reckless fellow would attempt any
+second piece of fooling so soon after his brother's threat.
+
+But suddenly Rafe yelled to his father to pull down the roans, and as
+the ponies stopped, he reached from the sled into a drift and secured a
+big handful of snow. Seizing Nan quickly around the shoulders he began
+to rub her cheek vigorously with the snow. Nan gasped and almost lost
+her breath; but she realized immediately what Rafe was about.
+
+The frost had nipped her cheek, and her cousin had seen the white spot
+appear. "The rubbing stung awfully, and the girl could not keep back the
+tears; but she managed to repress the sobs.
+
+"There!" exclaimed Rafe. "You are a plucky girl. I'm sorry I got some of
+that snow down your neck, Nan. Couldn't help it. But it's the only thing
+to do when the thermometer is thirty-two degrees below zero. Why! A
+fellow went outside with his ears uncovered at Droomacher's camp one
+day last winter and after awhile he began to rub his ears and one of 'em
+dropped off just like a cake of ice."
+
+"Stop your lying, boy!" commanded his father. "It isn't as bad as that,
+Nan. But you want to watch out for frost bite here in the woods, just
+the same as we had to watch out for the automobiles in crossing those
+main streets in Chicago."
+
+With a red sun rising over the low ridge of wooded ground to the east,
+the camp in the hollow was revealed, the smoke rising in a pillar of
+blue from the sheet-iron chimney of the cookhouse; smoke rising, too,
+from a dozen big horses being curried before the stables.
+
+Most of the men had arrived the night before. They were tumbling out
+of the long, low bunkhouse now and making good use of the bright tin
+washbasins on the long bench on the covered porch. Ice had been broken
+to get the water that was poured into the basins, but the men laved
+their faces and their hairy arms and chests in it as though it were
+summer weather.
+
+They quickly ran in for their outer shirts and coats, however, and then
+trooped in to the end of the cook shed where the meals were served. Tom
+turned away to look over his horses and see that they were all ready for
+the day's work. Rafe put up the roan ponies in a couple of empty stalls
+and gave them a feed of oats.
+
+Uncle Henry took Nan by the hand, and, really she felt as though she
+needed some support, she was so stiff from the cold, and led her into
+the warm room where the men were gathering for the hearty meal the cook
+and his helper had prepared.
+
+The men were boisterous in their greeting of Uncle Henry, until they saw
+Nan. Than, some bashfully, some because of natural refinement, lowered
+their voices and were more careful how they spoke before the girl.
+
+But she heard something that troubled her greatly. An old, grizzled man
+in a corner of the fireplace where the brisk flames leaped high among
+the logs, and who seemed to have already eaten his breakfast and was
+busily stoning an axe blade, looked up as Nan and her uncle approached,
+saying:
+
+"Seen Ged Raffer lately, Hen?"
+
+"I saw him at the Forks the other day, Toby," Mr. Sherwood replied.
+
+"Yaas. I heard about that," said the old man drawlingly. "But since
+then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Wal, he was tellin' me that he'd got you on the hip this time, Hen. If
+you as much as put your hoof over on that track he's fighting you about,
+he'll plop you in jail, that's what he'll do! He's got a warrant all
+made out by Jedge Perkins. I seen it."
+
+Uncle Henry walked closer to the old man and looked down at him from
+his great height. "Tobe," he said, "you know the rights of that business
+well enough. You know whether I'm right in the contention, or whether
+Ged's right. You know where the old line runs. Why don't you tell?"
+
+"Oh, mercy me!" croaked the old man, and in much haste. "I ain't goin'
+to git into no land squabble, no, sir! You kin count me out right now!"
+And he picked up his axe, restored the whetstone to its sheath on the
+wall, and at once went out of the shack.
+
+
+
+Chapter XV. A CAT AND HER KITTENS
+
+That was a breakfast long to be remembered by Nan Sherwood, not
+particularly because of its quality, but for the quantity served. She
+had never seen men like these lumbermen eat before, save for the few
+days she had been at Uncle Henry's house.
+
+Great platters of baked beans were placed on the table, flanked by the
+lumps of pork that had seasoned them. Fried pork, too, was a "main-stay"
+on the bill-of-fare. The deal table was graced by no cloth or napery of
+any kind. There were heaps of potatoes and onions fried together, and
+golden cornbread with bowls of white gravy to ladle over it.
+
+After riding twenty-five miles through such a frosty air, Nan would have
+had to possess a delicate appetite indeed not to enjoy these viands. She
+felt bashful because of the presence of so many rough men; but they left
+her alone for the most part, and she could listen and watch.
+
+"Old Toby Vanderwiller tell you what Ged's been blowin' about, Henry?"
+asked one of the men at the table, busy ladling beans into his mouth
+with a knife, a feat that Nan thought must be rather precarious, to say
+the least.
+
+"Says he's going to jail me if I go on to the Perkins Tract," growled
+Uncle Henry, with whom the matter was doubtless a sore subject.
+
+"Yaas. But he says more'n that," said this tale bearer.
+
+"Oh, Ged says a whole lot besides his prayers," responded Uncle Henry,
+good-naturedly. Perhaps he saw they were trying to bait him.
+
+"Wal, 'tain't nothin' prayerful he's sayin'," drawled the first speaker,
+after a gulp of coffee from his thick china cup. "Some of the boys at
+Beckett's, you know, they're a tough crowd, was riggin' him about what
+you said to him down to the Forks, and Ged spit out that he'd give a
+lump of money to see you on your back."
+
+"Huh!" grunted Uncle Henry.
+
+"And some of 'em took him up, got the old man right down to cases."
+
+"That so?" asked Mr. Sherwood curiously. "What's Ged going to do?
+Challenge me to a game of cat's cradle? Or does he want to settle the
+business at draughts, three best out o' five?"
+
+"Now you know dern well, Hen," said the other, as some of the listeners
+laughed loudly at Mr. Sherwood's sally, "that old Ged Raffer will never
+lock horns with you 'ceptin' it's in court, where he'll have the full
+pertection of the law, and a grain the best of it into the bargain."
+
+"Well, I s'pose that's so," admitted Nan's uncle, rather gloomily, she
+thought.
+
+"So, if Beckett's crowd are int'rested in bumping you a whole lot, you
+may be sure Ged's promised 'em real money for it."
+
+"Pshaw!" exclaimed Uncle Henry. "You're fooling now. He hasn't hired any
+half-baked chip-eaters and Canucks to try and beat me up?"
+
+"I ain't foolin'."
+
+"Pshaw!"
+
+"You kin 'pshaw' till the cows come home," cried the other heatedly. "I
+got it straight."
+
+"Who from?"
+
+"Sim Barkis, him what's cookin' for Beckett's crew."
+
+"Good man, Sim. Never caught him in a lie yet. You are beginning to
+sound reasonable, Josh," and Mr. Sherwood put down his knife and fork
+and looked shrewdly at his informant. "Now tell me," he said, "how much
+is Sim going to get for helping to pay Ged Raffer's debts?"
+
+"Har!" ejaculated the other man. "You know Sim ain't that kind."
+
+"All right, then. How much does he say the gang's going to split between
+'em after they've done me up brown according to contract?" scoffed Uncle
+Henry, and Nan realized that her giant relative had not the least fear
+of not being able to meet any number of enemies in the open.
+
+"Sim come away before they got that far. Of course Ged didn't say right
+out in open meetin' that he'd give so many dollars for your scalp. But
+he got 'em all int'rested, and it wouldn't surprise him, so Sim said, if
+on the quiet some of those plug-uglies had agreed to do the job."
+
+Nan shuddered, and had long since stopped eating. But nobody paid any
+attention to her at the moment.
+
+Uncle Henry drawled: "They're going to do the hardest day's job for the
+smallest pay that they ever did on this Michigan Peninsula. I'm much
+obliged to you, Josh, for telling me. I never go after trouble, as you
+fellows all know; but I sha'n't try to dodge it, either."
+
+He picked up his knife and fork and went quietly on with his breakfast.
+But Nan could not eat any more at all.
+
+It seemed to the gently nurtured girl from Tillbury as though she had
+fallen in with people from another globe. Even the mill-hands, whom Bess
+Harley so scorned, were not like these great, rough fellows whose minds
+seemed continually to be fixed upon battle. At least, she had never seen
+or heard such talk as had just now come to her ears.
+
+The men began, one by one, to push back the benches and go out. There
+was a great bustle of getting under way as the teams started for the
+woods, and the choppers, too, went away. Tom hurried to start his big
+pair of dapple grays, and Nan was glad to bundle up again and run out to
+watch the exodus.
+
+They were a mighty crew. As Uncle Henry had said, the Big Woods did not
+breed runts.
+
+Remembering the stunted, quick-moving, chattering French Canadians, and
+the scattering of American-born employees among them, who worked in the
+Tillbury mills, Nan was the more amazed by the average size of
+these workmen. The woodsmen were a race of giants beside the
+narrow-shouldered, flat-chested pygmies who toiled in the mills.
+
+Tom strode by with his timber sled. Rafe leaped on to ride and Tom
+playfully snapped his whiplash at him. Nan was glad to see that the
+two brothers smiled again at each other. Their recent tiff seemed to be
+forgotten.
+
+Some of the choppers had already gone on ahead to the part of the tract
+where the marked trees were being felled. Now the pluck, pluck, pluck of
+the axe blows laid against the forest monarchs, reached the girl's ears.
+She thought the flat stuttering sound of the axes said "pluck" very
+plainly, and that that was just the word they should say.
+
+"For it does take lots of pluck to do work of this kind," Nan
+confided to her uncle, who walked up and down on the porch smoking an
+after-breakfast pipe.
+
+"Yes. No softies allowed on the job," said he, cheerfully. "Some of the
+boys may be rough and hard nuts to crack; but it is necessary to have
+just such boys or we couldn't get out the timber."
+
+"But they want to fight so much!" gasped Nan.
+
+"Sho!" said her uncle, slowly. "It's mostly talk. They feel the itch
+for hard work and hard play, that's all. You take lively, full-muscled
+animals, and they are always bucking and quarreling--trying to see which
+one is the best. Take two young, fat steers they'll lock horns at the
+drop of a hat. It's animal spirits, Nan. They feel that they've got
+to let off steam. Where muscle and pluck count for what they do in the
+lumber camps, there's bound to be more or less ructions."
+
+Perhaps this might be; but Nan was dreadfully sorry, nevertheless, that
+Uncle Henry had this trouble with Mr. Gedney Raffer. The girl feared
+that there had been something besides "letting off steam" in the
+challenge her uncle had thrown down to his enemy, or to the men that
+enemy could hire to attack him.
+
+The timber sledges soon began to drift back, for some of the logs had
+been cut before the big storm, and had only to be broken out of the
+drifts and rolled upon the sleds with the aid of the men's canthooks. It
+was a mystery at first to Nan how they could get three huge logs, some
+of them three feet in diameter at the butt, on to the sled; two at the
+bottom and one rolled upon them, all being fastened securely with the
+timber-chain and hook.
+
+How the horses strained in their collars to start the mighty load! But
+once started, the runners slipped along easily enough, even through the
+deep snow, packing the compressible stuff in one passage as hard as ice.
+Nan followed in this narrow track to the very bank of the river where
+the logs were heaped in long windrows, ready to be launched into the
+stream when the waters should rise at the time of the spring freshet.
+
+Tom managed his team alone, and unloaded alone, too. It was marvelous
+(so Nan thought) that her cousin could start the top log with the great
+canthook, and guide it as it rolled off the sled so that it should lie
+true with timbers that had been piled before. The strain of his work
+made him perspire as though it were midsummer. He thrust the calks on
+his bootsoles into the log and the shreds of bark and small chips flew
+as he stamped to get a secure footing for his work. Then he heaved
+like a giant, his shoulders humping under the blue jersey he wore, and
+finally the log turned. Once started, it was soon rolled into place.
+
+Nan ran into the cook shed often to get warm. Her uncle was busy with
+the boss of the camp, so she had nobody but the cook and his helper to
+speak to for a time. Therefore it was loneliness that made her start
+over the half-beaten trail for the spot where the men were at work,
+without saying a word to anybody.
+
+None of the teams had come by for some time; but she could hear faintly
+the sound of the axes and the calling of the workmen to each other and
+their sharp commands to the horses.
+
+She went away from the camp a few hundred yards and then found that the
+trail forked. One path went down a little hill, and as that seemed easy
+to descend, Nan followed it into a little hollow. It seemed only one
+sled had come this way and none of the men were here. The voices and
+axes sounded from higher up the ridge.
+
+Suddenly she heard something entirely different from the noise of the
+woodsmen. It was the snarling voice of a huge cat and almost instantly
+Nan sighted the creature which stood upon a snow-covered rock beside the
+path. It had tasseled ears, a wide, wicked "smile," bristling whiskers,
+and fangs that really made Nan tremble, although she was some yards from
+the bobcat.
+
+As she believed, from what her cousins had told her, bobcats are not
+usually dangerous. They never seek trouble with man, save under certain
+conditions; and that is when a mother cat has kittens to defend.
+
+This was a big female cat, and, although the season was early, she had
+littered and her kittens, three of them, were bedded in a heap of leaves
+blown by the wind into a hollow tree trunk.
+
+The timberman driving through the hollow had not seen the bobcat and her
+three blind babies; but he had roused the mother cat and she was now all
+ready to spring at intruders.
+
+That Nan was not the person guilty of disturbing her repose made no
+difference to the big cat. She saw the girl standing, affrighted and
+trembling, in the path and with a ferocious yowl and leap she crossed
+the intervening space and landed in the snow within almost arm's reach
+of the fear-paralyzed girl.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI. "INJUN PETE"
+
+Nan Sherwood could not cry out, though she tried. She opened her lips
+only to find her throat so constricted by fear that she could not utter
+a sound. Perhaps her sudden and utter paralysis was of benefit at
+the moment, after all; for she could not possibly have escaped the
+infuriated lynx by running.
+
+The creature's own movements were hampered by the deep drift in which
+she had landed. The soft snow impeded the cat and, snarling still, she
+whirled around and around like a pinwheel to beat a firmer foundation
+from which to make her final spring at her victim.
+
+Nan, crouching, put her mittened hands before her face. She saw no
+chance for escape and could not bear to see the vicious beast leap at
+her again. "Momsey! Papa Sherwood!" she thought, rather than breathed
+aloud.
+
+Then, down the hill toward her, plunged a swift body. She rather felt
+the new presence than saw it. The cat yowled again, and spit. There was
+the impact of a clubbed gun upon the creature's head.
+
+"Sacre bleu! Take zat! And zat!" cried a sharp voice, between the blows
+that fell so swiftly. The animal's cries changed instantly from rage to
+pain. Nan opened her eyes in time to see the maddened cat flee swiftly.
+She bounded to the big tree and scrambled up the trunk and out upon the
+first limb. There she crouched, over the place where her kittens were
+hidden, yowling and licking her wounds. There was blood upon her head
+and she licked again and again a broken forefoot between her yowls of
+rage and pain.
+
+But Nan was more interested just then in the person who had flown to
+her rescue so opportunely. He was not one of the men from the camp, or
+anybody whom she had ever seen before.
+
+He was not a big man, but was evidently very strong and active. His
+dress was of the most nondescript character, consisting mainly of a
+tattered fur cap, with a woolen muffler tied over his ears; a patched
+and parti-colored coat belted at the waist with a frayed rope. His legs
+disappeared into the wide tops of a pair of boots evidently too big for
+him, with the feet bundled in bagging so that he could walk on top of
+the snow, this in lieu of regular snowshoes.
+
+His back was toward Nan and he did not turn to face her as he said:
+
+"Be not afeared, leetle Man'zelle. Le bad chat is gone. We shall now do
+famous-lee, eh? No be afeared more."
+
+"No, no, sir," gasped Nan, trying to be brave. "Won't, won't it come
+back?"
+
+"Nev-air!" cried the man, with a flourish of the gun which was a
+rusty-barreled old weapon, perhaps more dangerous at the butt end than
+at its muzzle. "Ze chat only fear for her babies. She have zem in dat
+tree. We will go past leeving zem streectly alone, eh?"
+
+"No!" cried Nan hastily. "I'm going back to the camp. I didn't know
+there were such dangerous things as that in these woods."
+
+"Ah! You are de strange leetle Mam'zelle den?" responded the man. "You
+do not know ze Beeg Woods?"
+
+"I guess I don't know anything about this wilderness," confessed Nan.
+"My uncle brought me to the camp up yonder this morning, and I hope
+he'll go right home again. It's awful!"
+
+"Eet seem terrifying to ze leetle Mam'zelle because she is unused--eh?
+Me! I be terrified at ze beeg city where she come from, p'r'aps. Zey
+tell Pete 'bout waggings run wizout horses, like stea'mill. Ugh! No
+wanter see dem. Debbil in 'em," and he laughed, not unpleasantly, making
+a small joke of the suggestion.
+
+Indeed his voice, now that the sharpness of excitement had gone out of
+it, was a very pleasant voice. The broken words he used assured Nan that
+his mother tongue must be French. He was probably one of the "Canucks"
+she had heard her cousins speak of. French Canadians were not at all
+strange to Nan Sherwood, for in Tillbury many of the mill hands were of
+that race.
+
+But she thought it odd that this man kept his face studiously turned
+from her. Was he watching the bobcat all the time? Was the danger much
+more serious than he would own?
+
+"Why don't you look at me?" cried the girl, at length. "I'm awfully much
+obliged to you for coming to help me as you did. And my uncle will want
+to thank you I am sure. Won't you tell me your name?"
+
+The man was silent for a moment. Then, when he spoke, his voice was
+lower and there was an indescribably sad note in it.
+
+"Call me 'Injun Pete', zat me. Everybody in de beeg Woods know Injun
+Pete. No odder name now. Once ze good Brodders at Aramac goin' make
+scholar of Pete, make heem priest, too, p'r'aps. He go teach among
+he's mudder's people. Mudder Micmac, fadder wild Frinchman come to dees
+lakeshore. But nev-air can Pete be Teacher, be priest. Non, non! Jes'
+Injun Pete."
+
+Nan suddenly remembered what little Margaret Llewellen had said about
+the fire at Pale Lick, and "Injun Pete." The fact that this man kept
+his face turned from her all this time aroused her suspicion. She was
+deeply, deeply grateful to him for what he had just done for her, and,
+naturally, she enlarged in her mind the peril in which she had been
+placed.
+
+Margaret had suggested this unfortunate half-breed was "not right in his
+head" because of the fire which had disfigured him. But he spoke very
+sensibly now, it seemed to Nan; very pitifully, too, about his blasted
+hopes of a clerical career. She said, quietly:
+
+"I expect you know my uncle and his family, Pete. He is Mr. Sherwood of
+Pine Camp."
+
+"Ah! Mis-tair Hen Sherwood! I know heem well," admitted the man. "He
+nice-a man ver' kind to Injun Pete."
+
+"I'd like to have you look at me, please," said Nan, still softly. "You
+see, I want to know you again if we meet. I am very grateful."
+
+Pete waved her thanks aside with a royal gesture. "Me! I be glad to be
+of use, oh, oui! Leetle Man'zelle mus' not make mooch of nottin', eh?"
+
+He laughed again, but he did not turn to look at her. Nan reached out a
+tentative hand and touched his sleeve. "Please, Mr. Pete," she said. "I,
+I want to see you. I, I have heard something about your having been hurt
+in a fire. I am sure you must think yourself a more hateful sight than
+you really are."
+
+A sob seemed to rise in the man's throat, and his shoulders shook. He
+turned slowly and looked at her for a moment over his shoulder. Then he
+went swiftly away across the snow (for the bobcat had disappeared into
+her lair) and Nan stumbled back up the trail toward the camp, the tears
+blinding her own eyes.
+
+The disfigured face of the half-breed HAD been a shock to her. She could
+never speak of it afterward. Indeed, she could not tell Uncle Henry
+about her meeting with the lynx, and her rescue--she shrank so from
+recalling Injun Pete's disfigured face.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII. SPRING IN THE BIG WOODS
+
+That visit to the lumber camp was memorable for Nan Sherwood in more
+ways than one. Her adventure with the lynx she kept secret from her
+relatives, because of the reason given in the previous chapter. But
+there was another incident that marked the occasion to the girl's mind,
+and that was the threat of Gedney Raffer, reported to her Uncle Henry.
+
+Nan thought that such a bad man as Raffer appeared to be would
+undoubtedly carry out his threat. He had offered money to have Mr.
+Sherwood beaten up, and the ruffians he had bribed would doubtless be
+only too eager to earn the reward.
+
+To tell the truth, for weeks thereafter, Nan never saw a rough-looking
+man approach the house on the outskirts of Pine Camp, without fearing
+that here was coming a ruffian bent on her uncle's injury.
+
+That Uncle Henry seemed quite to have forgotten the threat only made Nan
+more keenly alive to his danger. She dared not discuss the matter
+with Aunt Kate, for Nan feared to worry that good woman unnecessarily.
+Besides, having been used to hiding from her own mother all unpleasant
+things, the girl naturally displayed the same thoughtfulness for Aunt
+Kate.
+
+For, despite Mrs. Henry Sherwood's bruskness and masculine appearance,
+Nan learned that there were certain matters over which her aunt showed
+extreme nervousness.
+
+For instance, she was very careful of the lamps used in the house--she
+insisted upon cleaning and caring for them herself; she would not allow
+a candle to be used, because it might be overturned; and she saw to it
+herself that every fire, even the one in Nan's bedroom, was properly
+banked before the family retired at night.
+
+Nan had always in mind what Uncle Henry said about mentioning fire
+to Aunt Kate; so the curious young girl kept her lips closed upon the
+subject. But she certainly was desirous of knowing about that fire, so
+long ago, at Pale Lick, how it came about; if Aunt Kate had really got
+her great scar there; and if it was really true that two members of her
+uncle's family had met their death in the conflagration.
+
+She tried not to think at all of Injun Pete. That was too terrible!
+
+With all her heart, Nan wished she might do something that would really
+help Uncle Henry solve his problem regarding the timber rights on the
+Perkins Tract. The very judge who had granted the injunction forbidding
+Mr. Sherwood to cut timber on the tract was related to the present
+owners of the piece of timberland; and the tract had been the basis of a
+feud in the Perkins family for two generations.
+
+Many people were more or less interested in the case and they came to
+the Sherwood home and talked excitedly about it in the big kitchen. Some
+advised an utter disregard of the law. Others were evidently minded
+to increase the trouble between Raffer and Uncle Henry by malicious
+tale-bearing.
+
+Often Nan thought of what Uncle Henry had said to old Toby Vanderwiller.
+She learned that Toby was one of the oldest settlers in this part of the
+Michigan Peninsula, and in his youth had been a timber runner, that is,
+a man who by following the surveyors' lines on a piece of timber, and
+weaving back and forth across it, can judge its market value so nearly
+right that his employer, the prospective timber merchant, is able to bid
+intelligently for the so-called "stumpage" on the tract.
+
+Toby was still a vigorous man save when that bane of the woodsman,
+rheumatism, laid him by the heels. He had a bit of a farm in the
+tamarack swamp. Once, being laid up by his arch enemy, with his joints
+stiffened and muscles throbbing with pain, Toby had seen the gaunt
+wolf of starvation, more terrible than any timber wolf, waiting at his
+doorstone. His old wife and a crippled grandson were dependent on Toby,
+too.
+
+Thus in desperate straits Toby Vanderwiller had accepted help from
+Gedney Raffer. It was a pitifully small sum Raffer would advance upon
+the little farm; but it was sufficient to put Toby in the usurer's
+power. This was the story Nan learned regarding Toby. And Uncle Henry
+believed that Toby, with his old-time knowledge of land-boundaries,
+could tell, if he would, which was right in the present contention
+between Mr. Sherwood and Gedney Raffer.
+
+These, and many other subjects of thought, kept the mind of Nan Sherwood
+occupied during the first few weeks of her sojourn at Pine Camp. She
+had, too, to keep up her diary that she had begun for Bess Harley's
+particular benefit. Every week she sent off to Tillbury a bulky section
+of this report of her life in the Big woods. It was quite wonderful how
+much there proved to be to write about. Bess wrote back, enviously, that
+never did anything interesting, by any possibility, happen, now that
+Nan was away from Tillbury. The town was "as dull as ditch water." She,
+Bess, lived only in hopes of meeting her chum at Lakeview Hall the next
+September.
+
+This hope Nan shared. But it all lay with the result of Momsey's and
+Papa Sherwood's visit to Scotland and Emberon Castle. And, Nan thought,
+it seemed as though her parents never would even reach that far distant
+goal.
+
+They had taken a slow ship for Momsey's benefit and the expected
+re-telegraphed cablegram was looked for at the Forks for a week before
+it possibly could come.
+
+It was a gala day marked on Nan's calendar when Uncle Henry, coming home
+from the railroad station behind the roan ponies, called to her to
+come out and get the message. Momsey and Papa Sherwood had sent it from
+Glasgow, and were on their way to Edinburgh before Nan received the
+word. Momsey had been very ill a part of the way across the ocean, but
+went ashore in improved health.
+
+Nan was indeed happy at this juncture. Her parents were safely over
+their voyage on the wintry ocean, so a part of her worry of mind was
+lifted.
+
+Meanwhile spring was stealing upon Pine Camp without Nan's being really
+aware of the fact. Uncle Henry had said, back in Chicago, that "the back
+of winter was broken"; but the extreme cold weather and the deep snow
+she had found in the Big Woods made Nan forget that March was passing
+and timid April was treading on his heels.
+
+A rain lasting two days and a night washed the roads of snow and turned
+the fast disappearing drifts to a dirty yellow hue. In sheltered fence
+corners and nooks in the wood, the grass lifted new, green blades, and
+queer little Margaret Llewellen showed Nan where the first anemones and
+violets hid under last year's drifted leaves.
+
+The river ice went out with a rush after it had rained a few hours;
+after that the "drives" of logs were soon started. Nan went down to the
+long, high bridge which spanned the river and watched the flood carry
+the logs through.
+
+At first they came scatteringly, riding the foaming waves end-on, and
+sometimes colliding with the stone piers of the bridge with sufficient
+force to split the unhewn timbers from end to end, some being laid open
+as neatly as though done with axe and wedge.
+
+When the main body of the drive arrived, however, the logs were like
+herded cattle, milling in the eddies, stampeded by a cross-current,
+bunching under the bridge arches like frightened steers in a chute. And
+the drivers herded the logs with all the skill of cowboys on the range.
+
+Each drive was attended by its own crew, who guarded the logs on either
+bank, launching those that shoaled on the numerous sandbars or in the
+shallows, keeping them from piling up in coves and in the mouths of
+estuaries, or creeks, some going ahead at the bends to fend off and
+break up any formation of the drifting timbers that promised to become a
+jam.
+
+Behind the drive floated the square bowed and square sterned chuck-boat,
+which carried cook and provisions for the men. A "boom", logs chained
+together, end to end, was thrown out from one shore of the wide stream
+at night, and anchored at its outer end. Behind this the logs were
+gathered in an orderly, compact mass and the men could generally get
+their sleep, save for the watchman; unless there came a sudden rise of
+water in the night.
+
+It was a sight long to be remembered, Nan thought, when the boom was
+broken in the morning. Sometimes an increasing current piled the logs up
+a good bit. It was a fear-compelling view the girl had of the river
+on one day when she went with Uncle Henry to see the first drive from
+Blackton's camp. Tom was coming home with his team and was not engaged
+in the drive. But reckless Rafe was considered, for his age, a very
+smart hand on a log drive.
+
+The river had risen two feet at the Pine Camp bridge overnight. It was a
+boiling brown flood, covered with drifting foam and debris. The roar
+of the freshet awoke Nan in her bed before daybreak. So she was
+not surprised to see the river in such a turmoil when, after a hasty
+breakfast, she and Uncle Henry walked beside the flood.
+
+"They started their drive last night," Uncle Henry said, "and boomed her
+just below the campsite. We'll go up to Dead Man's Bend and watch her
+come down. There is no other drive betwixt us and Blackton's."
+
+"Why is it called by such a horrid name, Uncle?" asked Nan.
+
+"What, honey?" he responded.
+
+"That bend in the river."
+
+"Why, I don't know rightly, honey-bird. She's just called that. Many a
+man's lost his life there since I came into this part of the country,
+that's a fact. It's a dangerous place," and Nan knew by the look on her
+uncle's face that he was worried.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII. AT DEAD MAN'S BEND
+
+Nan and her uncle came out on the bluff that overlooked the sharp bend
+which hid the upper reaches of the river from Pine Camp. Across the
+stream, almost from bank to bank, a string of gravel flats made a
+barrier that all the rivermen feared.
+
+Blackton was no careless manager, and he had a good foreman in Tim
+Turner. The big boss had ridden down to the bend in a mud-splashed
+buggy, and was even prepared to take a personal hand in the work, if
+need be. The foreman was coming down the river bank on the Pine
+Camp side of the stream, watching the leading logs of the drive, and
+directing the foreguard. Among the latter Nan spied Rafe.
+
+"There he is, Uncle!" she cried. "Oh! He's jumped out on that log, see?"
+
+"He's all right, girl, he's all right," said Uncle Henry comfortingly.
+"Rafe's got good calks on his boots."
+
+The boy sprang from log to log, the calks making the chips fly, and with
+a canthook pushed off a log that had caught and swung upon a small bank.
+He did it very cleverly, and was back again, across the bucking logs, in
+half a minute.
+
+Below, the foreman himself was making for a grounded log, one of the
+first of the drive. It had caught upon some snag, and was swinging
+broadside out, into the stream. Let two or three more timbers catch with
+it and there would be the nucleus of a jam that might result in much
+trouble for everybody.
+
+Tim Turner leaped spaces of eight and ten feet between the logs, landing
+secure and safe upon the stranded log at last. With the heavy canthook
+he tried to start it.
+
+"That's a good man, Tim Turner," said Mr. Sherwood, heartily. "He's
+worked for me, isn't afraid of anything, Ha! But that's wrong!" he
+suddenly exclaimed.
+
+Turner had failed to start the stranded log. Other logs were hurtling
+down the foam-streaked river, aimed directly for the stranded one. They
+would begin to pile up in a heap in a minute. The foreman leaped to
+another log, turning as he did so to face the shore. That was when Uncle
+Henry declared him wrong.
+
+Turner was swinging his free arm, and above the roar of the river
+and the thunder of the grinding and smashing logs they could hear him
+shouting for somebody to bring him an axe. One of his men leaped to
+obey. Nan and Mr. Sherwood did not notice just then who this second man
+was who put himself in jeopardy, for both had their gaze on the foreman
+and that which menaced him.
+
+Shooting across on a slant was a huge log, all of three feet through at
+the butt, and it was aimed for the timber on which Turner stood. He did
+not see it. Smaller logs were already piling against the timber he had
+left, and had he leaped back to the stranded one he would have been
+comparatively safe.
+
+Mr. Sherwood was quick to act in such an emergency as this; but he was
+too far from the spot to give practical aid in saving Turner from the
+result of his own heedlessness. He made a horn of his two hands and
+shouted to the foreguard at the foot of the bluff:
+
+"He's going into the water! Launch Fred Durgin's boat below the bend!
+Get her! Quick, there!"
+
+Old riverman that he was, Uncle Henry was pretty sure of what was about
+to happen. The huge log came tearing on, butt first, a wave of troubled
+water split by its on-rush. Turner was watching the person bringing him
+the axe, and never once threw a glance over his shoulder.
+
+Suddenly Nan cried out and seized Uncle Henry's arm. "Look! Oh, Uncle!
+It's Rafe!" she gasped, pointing.
+
+"Aye, I know it," said her uncle, wonderfully cool, Nan thought, and
+casting a single glance at the figure flying over the bucking logs
+toward the endangered foreman. "He'll do what he can."
+
+Nan could not take her eyes from her cousin after that. It seemed to
+be a race between Rafe and the charging log, to see which should first
+reach the foreman. Rafe, reckless and harebrained as he was, flew over
+the logs as sure-footed as a goat. Nan felt faint. Her cousin's peril
+seemed far greater to her than that of the foreman.
+
+A step might plunge Rafe into the foaming stream! When a log rolled
+under him she cried out under her breath and clamped her teeth down on
+to her lower lip until the blood almost came.
+
+"He'll be killed! He'll be killed!" she kept repeating in her own mind.
+But Uncle Henry stood like a rock and seemingly gave no more attention
+to his son than he did to Turner, or to the men running down the bank to
+seize upon and launch the heavy boat.
+
+Rafe was suddenly balked and had to stop. Too great a stretch of water
+separated him from the next floating log. Turner beckoned him on. It was
+difficult to make the foreman hear above the noise of the water and the
+continual grinding of the logs, but Rafe yelled some warning and pointed
+toward the timber now almost upon Turner's foothold.
+
+The man shot a glance behind him. The butt of the driving log rose
+suddenly into the air as though it would crush him.
+
+Turner leaped to the far end of the log on which he stood. But too
+great a distance separated him from the log on which Rafe had secured a
+foothold.
+
+Crash!
+
+Nan heard, on top of the bluff, the impact of the great timber as it was
+flung by the current across the smaller log. Turner shot into the air
+as though he were flung from a catapult. But he was not flung in Rafe's
+direction, and the boy could not help him.
+
+He plunged into the racing stream and disappeared. The huge timber rode
+over the smaller log and buried it from sight. But its tail swung around
+and the great log was headed straight down the river again.
+
+As its smaller end swung near, Rafe leaped for it and secured a footing
+on the rolling, plunging log. How he kept his feet under him Nan could
+not imagine. A bareback rider in a circus never had such work as this.
+Rafe rode his wooden horse in masterly style.
+
+There, ahead of him in the boiling flood, an arm and head appeared.
+Turner came to the surface with his senses unimpaired and he strove to
+clutch the nearest log. But the stick slipped away from him.
+
+Rafe ran forward on the plunging timber he now rode the huge stick that
+had made all the trouble, and tried to reach the man in the water. No
+use!
+
+Of course, there was no way for Rafe to guide his log toward the
+drowning man. Nor did he have anything to reach out for Turner to grasp.
+The axe handle was not long enough, and the foreman's canthook had
+disappeared.
+
+Below, the men were struggling to get the big boat out from under the
+bank into the stream. Two of them stood up with their canthooks to fend
+off the drifting logs; the others plied the heavy oars.
+
+But the boat was too far from the man in the river. He was menaced on
+all sides by plunging logs. He barely escaped one to be grazed on the
+shoulder by another. A third pressed him under the surface again; but
+as he went down this second time, Rafe Sherwood threw away his axe and
+leaped into the flood!
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX. OLD TOBY VANDERWILLER
+
+Nan was sure her Cousin Rafe would be drowned, as well as his foreman.
+She covered her eyes for a moment, and could not look.
+
+Then a great cheer arose from the men in the boat and those still
+remaining on the bank of the river. Her uncle, beside her, muttered:
+
+"Plucky boy! Plucky boy!"
+
+Her eyes flew open and she looked again. In the midst of the scattering
+foam she saw a small log over which her cousin had flung his left arm;
+his other arm was around the foreman, and Rafe was bearing his head
+above water. Turner had been struck and rendered senseless by the blow.
+
+The small log slipped through a race between two shallows, ahead of the
+greater timber. The latter indeed grounded for a moment and that gave
+the victim of the accident and his rescuer a chance for life.
+
+They shot ahead with the log to which Rafe clung. The men in the boat
+shouted encouragement, and rowed harder. In a minute the boat came
+alongside the log and two of the rivermen grabbed the boy and the
+unconscious foreman. They had them safely in the boat, and the boat was
+at the shore again in three minutes.
+
+By that time the big boss himself, Mr. Blackton, was tearing out over
+the logs from the other shore, axe in hand, to cut the key log of the
+jam, the formation of which Turner had tried to prevent. A hundred logs
+had piled up against the stoppage by this time and there promised to be
+a bad time at the bend if every one did not work quickly.
+
+Before Nan and her uncle could reach the foot of the bluff, Turner had
+regained consciousness and was sitting on a stranded log, holding his
+head. Rafe, just as he had come out of the river, was out on the logs
+again lending a hand at the work so necessary to the success of the
+drive.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" cried Nan, referring to her cousin, "he ought to go home
+and change his clothes. He'll get his death of cold."
+
+"He'll work hard enough for the next hour to overcome the shock of the
+cold water. It's lucky if he isn't in again before they get that trouble
+over," responded Uncle Henry. Then he added, proudly: "That's the kind
+of boys we raise in the Big Woods, Nannie. Maybe they are rough-spoken
+and aren't really parlor-broke, but you can depend on 'em to do
+something when there's anything to do!"
+
+"Oh, Uncle!" cried the girl. "I think Rafe is just the bravest boy I
+ever saw. But I should think Aunt Kate would be scared every hour he is
+away from home, he is so reckless."
+
+She was very proud herself of Rafe and wrote Bess a lot about him. Slow
+Tom did not figure much in Nan Sherwood's letters, or in her thoughts,
+about this time. Thoughts and letters were filled with handsome Rafe.
+
+It was while the Blackton drive was near Pine Camp that Nan became
+personally acquainted with old Toby Vanderwiller. It was after dinner
+that day that she met Margaret and Bob Llewellen and the three went down
+to the river bank, below the bridge, to watch the last of the Blackton
+drive.
+
+The chuck-boat had pushed off into the rough current and was bobbing
+about in the wake of the logs; but all the men had not departed.
+
+"That's old Toby," said Bob, a black-haired boy, full of mischief. "He
+don't see us. Le's creep up and scare him."
+
+"No," said Nan, decidedly; "don't you dare!"
+
+"Aw, shucks! Girls ain't no fun," the boy growled. "Mag's bad enough,
+but you air wuss'n she, Nan Sherwood. What's old Toby to you? He's allus
+as cross as two sticks, anyway."
+
+"We won't make him any crosser," said Nan, laughing. "What's the good?"
+
+Nan saw that the old man had his coat off, and had slipped down the
+right sleeve of his woolen shirt to bare his shoulder and upper right
+arm. He was clumsily trying to bandage the arm.
+
+"He's got hurt," Nan cried to Margaret. "I wonder how?"
+
+"Dunno," returned the smaller girl, carelessly. Although she was
+not mischievous like her brother, Margaret seldom showed traits of
+tenderness or affection. Nan was in some doubt as to whether the strange
+girl liked her. Margaret often patted Nan's cheeks and admired her
+smooth skin; but she never expressed any real affection. She was
+positively the oddest little piece of humanity Nan had ever met.
+
+Once Nan asked her if she had a doll. "Doll?" snarled Margaret with
+surprising energy. "A'nt Matildy give me one once't an' I throwed it as
+far as I could inter the river, so I did! Nasty thing! Its face was all
+painted and rough."
+
+Nan could only gasp. Drown a doll-baby! Big girl as she considered
+herself, she had a very tender spot in her heart for doll-babies.
+
+Margaret Llewellen only liked people with fair faces and smooth
+complexions; she could not possibly be interested in old Toby
+Vanderwiller, who seemed always to need a shave, and whose face, like
+that of Margaret's grandfather, was "wizzled."
+
+Nan ran down to him and asked: "Can't I help you, Mr. Vanderwiller? Did
+you get badly hurt?"
+
+"Hullo!" grunted Toby. "Ain't you Hen Sherwood's gal?"
+
+"I'm his niece," she told him. "Can I help?"
+
+"Well, I dunno. I got a wallop from one o' them logs when we was
+breakin' that jam, and it's scraped the skin off me arm----"
+
+"Let me see," cried Nan, earnestly. "Oh! Mr. Vanderwiller! That must be
+painful. Haven't you anything to put on it?"
+
+"Nothin' but this rag," grunted Toby, drily. "An' ye needn't call me
+'Mister,' Sissy. I ain't useter bein' addressed that way."
+
+Nan laughed; but she quickly washed the scraped patch on the old man's
+arm with clean water and then bound her own handkerchief over the
+abrasion under the rather doubtful rag that Toby himself supplied.
+
+"You're sure handy, Sissy," he said, rising and allowing her to help him
+into the shirt again and on with his coat. "Now I'll hafter toddle along
+or Tim will give me a call-down. Much obleeged. If ye get inter the
+tam'rack swamp, come dry-foot weather, stop and see me an' my old
+woman."
+
+"Oh! I'd love to, Mr. Vanderwiller," Nan cried. "The swamp must be full
+of just lovely flowers now."
+
+The old man's face wrinkled into a smile, the first she had seen upon
+it. Really! He was not a bad looking man, after all.
+
+"You fond of posies, sissy?" he asked.
+
+"Indeed I am!" she cried.
+
+"There's a-plenty in the swamp," he told her. "And no end of ferns and
+sich. You come see us and my old woman'll show ye. She's a master hand
+at huntin' up all kind o' weeds I tell her."
+
+"I'll surely come, when the weather gets warmer," Nan called after Toby
+as the old man dogtrotted down the bank of the river. But he did not
+answer and was quickly out of sight.
+
+
+
+Chapter XX. NAN'S SECRET
+
+But Margaret Llewellen declared she would not go with her!
+
+"It's nasty in the Tam'rack swamp; and there's frogs and, and snakes.
+Ketch me! And as fur goin' ter see Tobe and his old woman, huh! They're
+both as ugly as sin."
+
+"Why, Margaret!" exclaimed Nan, in horror. "How you talk!"
+
+"Wal, it's so. I don't like old, wizzled-up folks, I don't, now I tell
+ye!"
+
+"That sounds awfully cruel," said Nan, soberly.
+
+"Huh!" snorted Margaret, no other word would just express her manner of
+showing disgust. "There ain't no reason why I should go 'round makin'
+believe likin' them as I don't like. Dad useter take the hide off'n me
+and Bob for lyin'; an' then he'd stand an' palaver folks that he jest
+couldn't scurce abide, fur I heard him say so. That's lyin', too ain't
+it?"
+
+"I, I don't believe it is right to criticize our parents," returned Nan,
+dodging the sharp girl's question.
+
+"Mebbe yourn don't need criticizin'," responded Margaret, bluntly. "My
+dad ain't no angel, you kin bet."
+
+And it was a fact that the Llewellen family was a peculiar one, from
+"Gran'ther" down to Baby Bill, whom Margaret did not mind taking care
+of when he was not "all broke out with the rash on his face." The girl's
+dislike for any countenance that was not of the smoothest, or skin of
+the softest texture, seemed strange indeed.
+
+Margaret's mother was dead. She had five brothers and sisters of
+assorted ages, up to 'Lonzo, who was sixteen and worked in the woods
+like Nan's cousins.
+
+Aunt Matilda kept house for the motherless brood, and for Gran'ther and
+Mr. Fen Llewellen. They lived in a most haphazard fashion, for, although
+they were not really poor, the children never seemed to have any decent
+clothing to wear; and if, by chance, they got a new garment, something
+always happened to it as, for instance, the taking of Margaret's new
+gingham by Bob as a dress for old Beagle.
+
+As the Llewellens were close neighbors of the Sherwoods, Nan saw much
+of Margaret. The local school closed soon after the visitor had come
+to Pine Camp, and Nan had little opportunity of getting acquainted
+with other girls, save at the church service, which was held in the
+schoolhouse only every other Sunday. There was no Sunday School at Pine
+Camp, even for the very youngest of the children.
+
+Nan talked to Aunt Kate about that. Aunt Kate was the very
+kindest-hearted woman that ever lived; but she had little initiative
+herself about anything outside her own house. "Goodness knows, I'd like
+to see the kiddies gathered together on Sunday afternoon and taught good
+things," she signed; "but lawsy, Nan! I'm not the one to do it. I'm not
+good enough myself."
+
+"Didn't you teach Tom and Rafe, and--and--" Nan stopped. She had almost
+mentioned the two older boys of her aunt's, whom she had heard were
+destroyed in the Pale Lick fire. Aunt Kate did not notice, for she went
+on to say:
+
+"Why--yes; I taught Tom and Rafe to say their prayers, and I hope they
+say 'em now, big as they are. And we often read the Bible. It's a great
+comfort, the main part of it. I never did take to the 'begats,' though."
+
+"But couldn't we," suggested Nan, "interest other people and gather the
+children together on Sundays? Perhaps the old gentleman who comes here
+to preach every fortnight might help."
+
+"Elder Posey's not here but three hours or so, any time. Just long
+enough to give us the word and grab a bite at somebody's house. Poor old
+man! He attends three meetings each Sunday, all different, and lives on
+a farm at Wingate weekdays where he has to work and support his family.
+
+"He doesn't get but fifty dollars a year from each church, it's not
+making him a millionaire very fast," pursued Aunt Kate, with a soft
+little laugh. "Poor old man! I wish we could pay him more; but Pine
+Camp's not rich."
+
+"You all seem to have enough and to spare, Auntie," said Nan, who was an
+observant girl for her age. "Nobody here is really poor."
+
+"Not unless he's right down lazy," said her aunt, vigorously.
+
+"Then I should think they'd build a proper church and give a minister
+some more money, so that he could afford to have a Sunday School as
+well."
+
+"Lawsy me, Nan!" exclaimed her aunt. "The men here in Pine Camp haven't
+been woke up to such things. They hate to spend that fifty dollars for
+Elder Posey, they'd get a cheaper man if there were such. There's never
+been much out of the common happen here at Pine Camp. It takes trouble
+and destruction to wake folks up to their Christian duty in these woods.
+Now, at Pale Lick they've got a church-----"
+
+She stopped suddenly, and her face paled, while the ugly scar on her
+neck seemed to glow; but that may have been only in contrast. Aunt Kate
+turned away her head, and finally arose and went into her own room and
+closed the door. Nan dared not continue the subject when the good woman
+came out again, and the talk of a Sunday School for Pine Camp, for the
+time being, was ended.
+
+There were hours when the girl from Tillbury was very lonely indeed.
+Writing to Bess and other girl friends in her old home town and penning
+long letters on thin paper to Momsey and Papa Sherwood in Scotland, did
+not fill all of these hours when Nan shut herself into that east room.
+
+Sometimes she pulled down the paper shades and opened the clothes closet
+door, bringing out the long box she had hidden away there on the first
+day she had come to Pine Camp. In that box, wrapped in soft tissue
+paper, and dressed in the loveliest gown made by Momsey's own skillful
+fingers, was the great doll that had been given to Nan on her tenth
+birthday.
+
+When girls went to high school, of course they were supposed to put away
+dolls, together with other childish things. But Nan Sherwood never could
+neglect her doll-babies and had often spent whole rainy days playing
+with them in secret in the attic of the little house on Amity Street.
+
+Her other dolls had been left, carefully wrapped and shielded from the
+mice, at Tillbury; but Nan had been unable to leave Beautiful Beulah
+behind. She packed her in the bottom of her trunk, unknown even to
+Momsey in the hurry of departure. She had not told a soul here at Pine
+Camp that she possessed a doll; she knew the boys would make fun of her
+for sure.
+
+But she often sat behind the drawn shades nursing the big doll and
+crooning softly to it as she swung back and forth in the spring
+rocking-chair. Tom had oiled the springs for her so that it no longer
+creaked.
+
+She did not confide even in Aunt Kate about the big doll. They were all
+very kind to her; but Nan had a feeling that she ought to be grown up
+here among her backwoods relatives. How could she ever face roguish Rafe
+if he knew she liked to "play dolls?"
+
+Fearing that even Margaret would tell, Nan had never shown the woods
+girl Beautiful Beulah. Once she was afraid Margaret had come to the
+window to peep in when Nan had the doll out of her hiding place; but she
+was not sure, and Nan hoped her secret was still inviolate. At least,
+Margaret never said a word about it.
+
+Margaret's sisters had dolls made of corncobs, and rag babies with
+painted faces like the one Margaret had thrown into the river and
+drowned; but Margaret turned up her nose at them all. She never seemed
+to want to "play house" as do most girls of her age. She preferred to
+run wild, like a colt, with Bob in the woods and swamp.
+
+Margaret did not wish to go into the swamp with Nan, however, on her
+first visit to Toby Vanderwiller's little farm. This was some weeks
+after the log drives, and lumbering was over for the season. Uncle Henry
+and the boys, rather than be idle, were working every acre they owned,
+and Nan was more alone than she had ever been since coming to Pine Camp.
+
+She had learned the way to Toby's place, the main trail through the
+swamp going right by the hummock on which the old man's farm was
+situated. She knew there was a corduroy road most of the way--that is, a
+road built of logs laid side by side directly over the miry ground. Save
+in very wet weather this road was passable for most vehicles.
+
+The distance was but three miles, however, and Nan liked walking.
+Besides, nobody who has not seen a tamarack swamp in late spring or
+early summer, can ever imagine how beautiful it is. Nan never missed
+human companionship when she was on the long walks she so often took in
+the woods.
+
+She had learned now that, despite her adventure with the lynx in the
+snow-drifted hollow, there was scarcely any animal to fear about Pine
+Camp. Bears had not been seen for years; bobcats were very infrequently
+met with and usually ran like scared rabbits; foxes were of course
+shy, and the nearest approach to a wolf in all that section was Toby
+Vanderwiller's wolfhound that had once frightened Nan so greatly.
+
+Hares, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and many, many birds, peopled
+the forest and swamp. In sunken places where the green water stood and
+steamed in the sun, turtles and frogs were plentiful; and occasionally a
+snake, as harmless as it was wicked looking, slid off a water-soaked log
+at Nan's approach and slipped under the oily surface of the pool.
+
+On the day Nan walked to Toby's place the first time, she saw many
+wonders of plant life along the way, exotics clinging to rotten logs
+and stumps; fronds of delicate vines that she had never before heard
+of; ferns of exquisite beauty. And flashing over them, and sucking honey
+from every cuplike flower, were shimmering humming-birds and marvelously
+marked butterflies.
+
+The birds screamed or sang or chattered over the girl's head as she
+tripped along. Squirrels peeped at her, barked, and then whisked their
+tails in rapid flight. Through the cool, dark depths where the forest
+monarchs had been untouched by the woodsmen, great moths winged their
+lazy flight. Nan knew not half of the creatures or the wonderful plants
+she saw.
+
+There were sounds in the deeps of the swamplands that she did not
+recognize, either. Some she supposed must be the voices of huge frogs;
+other notes were bird-calls that she had never heard before. But
+suddenly, as she approached a turn in the corduroy road, her ear was
+smitten by a sound that she knew very well indeed.
+
+It was a man's voice, and it was not a pleasant one. It caused Nan to
+halt and look about for some place to hide until the owner of the voice
+went by. She feared him because of his harsh tones, though she did not,
+at the moment, suspect who it was.
+
+Then suddenly she heard plainly a single phrase: "I'd give money, I tell
+ye, to see Hen Sherwood git his!"
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI. IN THE TAMARACK SWAMP
+
+The harsh tone of the unseen man terrified Nan Sherwood; but the words
+he spoke about her Uncle Henry inspired her to creep nearer that she
+might see who it was, and hear more. The fact that she was eavesdropping
+did not deter the girl.
+
+She believed her uncle's life to be in peril!
+
+The dampness between the logs of the roadway oozed up in little pools
+and steamed in the hot blaze of the afternoon sun. Insects buzzed and
+hummed, so innumerable that the chorus of their voices was like the
+rumble of a great church-organ.
+
+Nan stepped from the road and pushed aside the thick underbrush to find
+a dry spot to place her foot. The gnats danced before her and buzzed in
+her ears. She brushed them aside and so pushed on until she could see
+the road again. A lean, yellow horse, tackled to the shafts of a
+broken top-buggy with bits of rope as well as worn straps, stood in the
+roadway. The man on the seat, talking to another on the ground, was Mr.
+Gedney Raffer, the timberman who was contending at law with Uncle Henry.
+
+It was he who had said: "I'd give money, I tell ye, to see Hen Sherwood
+git his."
+
+There had fallen a silence, but just as Nan recognized the mean looking
+old man on the carriage seat, she heard the second man speak from the
+other side of the buggy.
+
+"I tell you like I done Hen himself, Ged; I don't wanter be mixed up in
+no land squabble. I ain't for neither side."
+
+It was Toby. Nan knew his voice, and she remembered how he had answered
+Uncle Henry at the lumber camp, the first day she had seen the old
+lumberman. Nan could not doubt that the two men were discussing the
+argument over the boundary of the Perkins Tract.
+
+Gedney Raffer snarled out an imprecation when old Toby had replied as
+above. "Ef you know which side of your bread the butter's on, you'll
+side with me," he said.
+
+"We don't often have butter on our bread, an' I ain't goin' ter side
+with nobody," grumbled Toby Vanderwiller.
+
+"S-s!" hissed Raffer. "Come here!"
+
+Toby stepped closer to the rattletrap carriage. "You see your way to
+goin' inter court an' talkin' right, and you won't lose nothin' by it,
+Tobe."
+
+"Huh? Only my self-respect, I s'pose," grunted the old lumberman, and
+Nan approved very much of him just then.
+
+"Bah!" exclaimed Raffer.
+
+"Bah, yourself!" Toby Vanderwiller returned with some heat. "I got some
+decency left, I hope. I ain't goin' to lie for you, nor no other man,
+Ged Raffer!"
+
+"Say! Would it be lyin' ef you witnessed on my side?" demanded the eager
+Raffer.
+
+"That's my secret," snapped the old lumberman. "If I don't witness for
+you, be glad I don't harm you."
+
+"You dare!" cried Raffer, shaking his fist at the other as he leaned
+from the buggy seat.
+
+"You hearn me say I wouldn't go inter court one way or 'tother,"
+repeated Toby, gloomily.
+
+"Wal," snarled Raffer, "see't ye don't see't ye don't. 'Specially for
+any man but me. Ye 'member what I told ye, Tobe. Money's tight and I
+oughter call in that loan."
+
+Toby was silent for half a minute. Then Nan heard him sigh.
+
+"Well, Ged," he observed, "it's up to you. If you take the place it'll
+be the poorhouse for that unforchunit boy of mine and mebbe for the ol'
+woman, 'specially if I can't strike a job for next winter. These here
+lumber bosses begin to think I'm too stiff in the j'ints."
+
+"Wal, wal!" snarled Raffer. "I can't help it. How d'ye expec' I kin help
+you ef you won't help me?"
+
+He clucked to the old horse, which awoke out of its drowse with a start,
+and moved on sluggishly. Toby stood in the road and watched him depart.
+Nan thought the old lumberman's to be the most sorrowful figure she had
+ever seen.
+
+Her young heart beat hotly against the meanness and injustice of Gedney
+Raffer. He had practically threatened Toby with foreclosure on his
+little farm if the old lumberman would not help him in his contention
+with Mr. Sherwood. On the other hand, Uncle Henry desired his help; but
+Uncle Henry, Nan knew, would not try to bribe the old lumberman. Under
+these distressing circumstances, which antagonist's interests was Toby
+Vanderwiller likely to serve?
+
+This query vastly disturbed Nan Sherwood. All along she had desired much
+to help Uncle Henry solve his big problem. The courts would not allow
+him to cut a stick of timber on the Perkins Tract until a resurvey of
+the line was made by government-appointed surveyors, and that would be,
+when?
+
+Uncle Henry's money was tied up in the stumpage lease, or first payment
+to the owners of the land. It was a big contract and he had expected to
+pay his help and further royalties on the lease, from the sale of the
+timber he cut on the tract. Besides, many valuable trees had been felled
+before the injunction was served, and lay rotting on the ground. Every
+month they lay there decreased their value.
+
+And now, it appeared, Gedney Raffer was doing all in his power to
+influence old Toby to serve as a witness in his, Raffer's, interests.
+
+Had toby been willing to go into court and swear that the line of the
+Perkins Tract was as Mr. Sherwood claimed, the court would have to
+vacate the injunction and Uncle Henry could risk going ahead and cutting
+and hauling timber from the tract. Uncle Henry believed Toby
+knew exactly where the line lay, for he had been a landloper, or
+timber-runner in this vicinity when the original survey was made,
+forty-odd years before.
+
+It was plain to Nan, hiding in the bushes and watching the old man's
+face, that he was dreadfully tempted. Working as hard as he might,
+summer and winter alike, Toby Vanderwiller had scarcely been able to
+support his wife and grandson. His occasional attacks of rheumatism so
+frequently put him back. If Raffer took away the farm and the shelter
+they had, what would become of them?
+
+Uncle Henry was so short of ready money himself that he could not assume
+the mortgage if Raffer undertook to foreclose.
+
+"Oh, dear me! If Momsey would only write to me that she is really rich,"
+thought Nan, "I'd beg her for the money. I'll tell her all about poor
+Toby in my very next letter and maybe, if she gets all that money from
+the courts in Scotland, she will let me give Toby enough to pay off the
+mortgage."
+
+She never for a moment doubted that Uncle Henry's contention about the
+timber tract line was right. He must be correct, and old Toby must know
+it! That is the way Nan Sherwood looked at the matter.
+
+But now, seeing Toby turning back along the corduroy road, and slowly
+shuffling toward home, she stepped out of the hovering bushes and walked
+hastily after him. She overtook him not many yards beyond the spot where
+he had stood talking with Raffer. He looked startled when she spoke his
+name.
+
+"Well! You air a sight for sore eyes, Sissy," he said; but added,
+nervously, "How in Joe Tunket did you git in the swamp? Along the road?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Nan.
+
+"Come right erlong this way?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Did ye meet anybody?" demanded old Toby, eyeing her sharply.
+
+"Mr. Raffer, driving his old buckskin horse. That's all."
+
+"Didn't say nothin' to ye, did he?" asked Toby, curiously.
+
+"Not a word," replied Nan, honestly. "I'm afraid of him and I hid in the
+bushes till he had gone by."
+
+"Huh!" sighed Toby, as though relieved. "Jest as well. Though Ged
+wouldn't ha' dared touch ye, Sissy."
+
+"Never mind. I'm here now," said Nan, brightly. "And I want you to show
+me your house and introduce me to Mrs. Vanderwiller."
+
+"Sure. My ol' woman will be glad to see ye," said the man, briskly.
+"'Tain't more'n a mile furder on."
+
+But first they came to a deserted place, a strip more than half a mile
+wide, where the trees had been cut in a broad belt through the swamp.
+All Nan could see was sawdust and the stumps of felled trees sticking
+out of it. The sawdust, Toby said, was anywhere from two to twenty feet
+deep, and there were acres of it.
+
+"They had their mill here, ye kin see the brick work yonder. They hauled
+out the lumber by teams past my place. The stea'mill was here more'n
+two years. They hauled the sawdust out of the way and dumped it in ev'ry
+holler, jest as it come handy."
+
+"What a lot there is of it!" murmured Nan, sniffing doubtfully at the
+rather unpleasant odor of the sawdust.
+
+"I wish't 'twas somewhere else," grunted Toby.
+
+"Why-so?"
+
+"Fire git in it and it'd burn till doomsday. Fire in sawdust is a mighty
+bad thing. Ye see, even the road here is made of sawdust, four foot or
+more deep and packed as solid as a brick walk. That's the way Pale Lick
+went, sawdust afire. Ha'f the town was built on sawdust foundation an'
+she smouldered for weeks before they knowed of it. Then come erlong a
+big wind and started the blaze to the surface."
+
+"Oh!" murmured Nan, much interested. "Didn't my Uncle Henry live there
+then?"
+
+"I sh'd say he did," returned Toby, emphatically. "Didn't he never tell
+ye about it?"
+
+"No, sir. They never speak of Pale Lick."
+
+"Well, I won't, nuther," grunted old Toby. "'Taint pretty for a young
+gal like you to hear about. Whush! Thar goes a loon!"
+
+A big bird had suddenly come into sight, evidently from some nearby
+water-hole. It did not fly high and seemed very clumsy, like a duck or
+goose.
+
+"Oh! Are they good to eat, Mr. Vanderwiller?" cried Nan. "Rafe brought
+in a brace of summer ducks the other day, and they were awfully good,
+the way Aunt Kate cooked them."
+
+"Well!" drawled Toby, slyly, "I've hearn tell ye c'd eat a loon, ef
+'twas cooked right. But I never tried it."
+
+"How do you cook a loon, Mr. Vanderwiller?" asked Nan, interested in all
+culinary pursuits.
+
+"Well, they tell me thet it's some slow process," said the old man,
+his eyes twinkling. "Ye git yer loon, pluck an' draw it, let it soak
+overnight in vinegar an' water, vitriol vinegar they say is the best.
+Then ye put it in the pot an' let it simmer all day."
+
+"Yes?" queried the perfectly innocent Nan.
+
+"Then ye throw off that water," Toby said, soberly, "and ye put on fresh
+water an' let it cook all the next day."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"An' then ye throw in a piece of grin'stone with the loon, and set it
+to bilin' again. When ye kin stick a fork in the grin'stone, the loon's
+done!"
+
+Nan joined in Toby's loud laugh at this old joke, and pretty soon
+thereafter they came to the hummock on which the Vanderwillers lived.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII. ON THE ISLAND
+
+In the winter it was probably dreary enough; but now the beauty of the
+swelling knoll where the little whitewashed house stood, with the tiny
+fields that surrounded it, actually made Nan's heart swell and the tears
+come into her eyes.
+
+It seemed to her as though she had never seen the grass so green as
+here, and the thick wood that encircled the little farm was just a hedge
+of blossoming shrubs with the tall trees shooting skyward in unbroken
+ranks. A silver spring broke ground at the corner of the paddock fence.
+A pool had been scooped out for the cattle to drink at; but it was not
+muddied, and the stream tinkled down over the polished pebbles to the
+wider, more sluggish stream that meandered away from the farm into the
+depths of the swamp.
+
+Toby told her, before they reached the hummock, that this stream rose in
+the winter and flooded all about the farm, so that the latter really was
+an island. Unless the ice remained firm they sometimes could not drive
+out with either wagon or sled for days at a time.
+
+"Then you live on an island," cried Nan.
+
+"Huh! Ye might say so," complained Toby. "And sometimes we feel like as
+though we was cast away on one, too."
+
+But the girl thought it must really be great fun to live on an island.
+
+They went up to the house along the bank of the clear stream. On the
+side porch, vine-covered to the eaves, sat an old woman rocking in a low
+chair and another figure in what seemed at a distance, to be a child's
+wagon of wickerwork, but with no tongue and a high back to it.
+
+"Here's Gran'pop!" cried a shrill voice and the little wagon moved
+swiftly to the edge of the steps. Nan almost screamed in fear as it
+pitched downward. But the wheels did not bump over the four steps
+leading to the ground, for a wide plank had been laid slantingly at that
+side, and over this the wheels ran smoothly, if rapidly.
+
+"You have a care there, Corson!" shrilled the old lady after the
+cripple. "Some day you'll break your blessed neck."
+
+Nan thought he was a little boy, until they met. Then she was surprised
+to see a young man's head set upon a shriveled child's body! Corson
+Vanderwiller had a broad brow, a head of beautiful, brown, wavy hair,
+and a fine mustache. He was probably all of twenty-five years old.
+
+But Nan soon learned that the poor cripple was not grown in mind, more
+than in body, to that age. His voice was childish, and his speech and
+manner, too. He was bashful with Nan at first; then chattered like a
+six-year-old child to her when she had once gained his confidence.
+
+He wheeled himself about in the little express wagon very well indeed,
+old Toby having rigged brakes with which he moved the wagon and steered
+it. His arms and hands were quite strong, and when he wished to get back
+on to the piazza, he seized a rope his grandfather had hung there, and
+dragged himself, wagon and all, up the inclined plane, or gangplank, as
+it might be called.
+
+He showed Nan all his treasures, and they included some very childish
+toys, a number of them showing the mechanical skill of his grandfather's
+blunt fingers. But among them, too, were treasures from the swamp and
+woods that were both very wonderful and very beautiful.
+
+Old Toby had made Corson a neatly fitted cabinet in which were specimens
+of preserved butterflies and moths, most of them of the gay and common
+varieties; but some, Nan was almost sure, were rare and valuable. There
+was one moth in particular, with spread wings, on the upper side of the
+thorax of which was traced in white the semblance of a human skull. Nan
+was almost sure that this must be the famous death's-head moth she had
+read about in school; but she was not confident enough to say anything
+to old Toby Vanderwiller. A few specimens of this rare insect have been
+found in the swamps of America, although it was originally supposed to
+be an Old World moth.
+
+Nan did say, however, to Toby that perhaps some of these specimens
+might be bought by collectors. The pressed flowers were pretty but not
+particularly valuable. In the museum at the Tillbury High School there
+was a much finer collection from the Indiana swamps.
+
+"Sho!" said Toby, slowly; "I wouldn't wanter sell the boy's pretties. I
+brung most on 'em home to him; but he mounted 'em himself."
+
+Nan suspected that old Mrs. Vanderwiller had much to do with the neat
+appearance of the cabinet. She was a quiet, almost a speechless, old
+lady. But she was very kind and she set out her best for Nan's luncheon
+before the girl from Tillbury returned home.
+
+"We ain't got much here on the island," the old lady said; "but we do
+love to have visitors. Don't we, Corson?"
+
+"Nice ones," admitted the cripple, munching cake.
+
+He had heard something of what Nan suggested to Toby about the moths
+and other specimens. So when the old lady was absent from the porch he
+whispered:
+
+"Say, girl!"
+
+"Well?" she asked, smiling at him.
+
+"Is what's in that cabinet wuth as much as a dollar?"
+
+"Oh! I expect so," said Nan. "More."
+
+"Will you give me a dollar for 'em?" he asked, eagerly.
+
+"Oh, I couldn't! But perhaps I can write to somebody who would be
+interested in buying some of your things, and for much more than a
+dollar."
+
+Corson looked disappointed. Nan asked, curiously: "Why do you want the
+dollar?"
+
+"To git Gran'mom a silk dress," he said promptly. "She's admired to have
+one all her life, and ain't never got to git it yet."
+
+"I'm sure that's nice of you," declared Nan, warmly. "I'll try to sell
+some of your collection."
+
+"Well!" he jerked out. "It's got to be pretty soon, or she won't git to
+wear it much. I heard her tell Gran'pop so."
+
+This impressed Nan Sherwood as being very pitiful, for she was of a
+sympathetic nature. And it showed that Corson Vanderwiller, even if he
+was simple-minded, possessed one of the great human virtues, gratitude.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII. A MYSTERY
+
+On this, her first visit to the island in the swamp, Nan said nothing
+to old Toby Vanderwiller about the line dispute between her uncle and
+Gedney Raffer, which the old lumberman was supposed to be able to settle
+if he would.
+
+Mrs. Vanderwiller insisted upon Toby's hitching up an old, broken-kneed
+pony he owned, and taking her over the corduroy road to Pine Camp, where
+she arrived before dark. To tell the truth, little Margaret Llewellen
+was not the only person who thought it odd that Nan should want to go
+to see the Vanderwillers in the heart of the tamarack swamp. Nan's uncle
+and aunt and cousins considered their guest a little odd; but they made
+no open comment when the girl arrived at home after her visit.
+
+Nan was full of the wonders she had seen, commonplace enough to her
+relatives who had lived all their lives in touch with the beautiful and
+queer things of Nature as displayed in the Michigan Peninsula. Perhaps
+none but Tom appreciated her ecstasy over crippled Corson Vanderwiller's
+collection.
+
+Rafe was inclined to poke good-natured fun at his young cousin for her
+enthusiasm; but Tom showed an understanding that quite surprised Nan.
+Despite his simplicity regarding some of the commonest things of the
+great outside world, he showed that he was very observant of the things
+about him.
+
+"Oh, Tom was always like that," scoffed Rafe, with ready laughter at his
+slow brother. "He'd rather pick up a bug any day and put it through a
+cross-examination, than smash it under the sole of his boot."
+
+"I don't think bugs were made to smash," Tom said stoutly.
+
+"Whew! What in thunder were they made for?" demanded the mocking Rafe.
+
+"I don't think God Almighty made things alive just for us to make 'em
+dead," said Tom, clumsily, and blushing a deep red.
+
+Rafe laughed again. Rafe had read much more in a desultory fashion than
+Tom.
+
+"Tom ought to be one of those Brahmas," he said, chuckling. "They carry
+a whisk broom to brush off any seat they may sit on before they sit
+down, so's they sha'n't crush an ant, or any other crawling thing.
+They're vegetarians, too, and won't take life in any form."
+
+"Now, Rafe!" exclaimed his mother, who was never quite sure when her
+younger son was playing the fool. "You know that Brahmas are hens.
+I've got some in my flock those big white and black, lazy fowls, with
+feathers on their legs."
+
+Nan had to laugh at that as well as Rafe. "Brahma fowl, I guess, came
+from Brahma, or maybe Brahmaputra, all right. But Rafe means Brahmans.
+They're a religious people of India," the girl from Tillbury said.
+
+"And maybe they've got it right," Tom said stubbornly. "Why should we
+kill unnecessarily?"
+
+Nan could have hugged him. At any rate, a new feeling for him was born
+at that moment, and she applauded. Aunt Kate said:
+
+"Tom always was soft-hearted," and her big son became silent. She
+might as well have called him "soft-headed"; but Nan began better to
+appreciate Tom's worth from that time on.
+
+Rafe remained in her eyes still the reckless, heroic figure he had
+seemed when running over the logs the day of the timber drive. But
+she began to confide in Tom after this evening of her return from the
+tamarack swamp.
+
+However, this is somewhat in advance of the story. The pleasant evening
+passed as usual until bedtime came for Nan. She retired to her east
+chamber, for the windows of which Tom had made screens to keep out the
+night-flying insects. No matter how tired she was at night there was one
+thing Nan Sherwood seldom forgot.
+
+Possibly it was silly in a girl who was almost through her freshman year
+at high school, but Nan brought out Beautiful Beulah and rocked her, and
+hugged her, and crooned over her before she went to bed. She was such a
+comfort!
+
+So Nan, on this evening, went first of all to the closet and reached
+down to draw out the box in which she had kept the doll hidden ever
+since coming to Pine Camp.
+
+It was not there!
+
+At first Nan Sherwood could not believe this possible. She dropped on
+her knees and scrambled over the floor of her closet, reaching under the
+hanging skirts and frocks, her fear rising, second by second.
+
+The box was not in its place. She arose and looked about her room
+wildly. Of course, she had not left it anywhere else, that was out of
+the question.
+
+She could scarcely believe that any member of the family had been in her
+room, much less would disturb anything that was hers. Not even Aunt Kate
+came to the east chamber often. Nan had insisted upon taking care of
+the room, and she swept and dusted and cleaned like the smart little
+housewife she was. Aunt Kate had been content to let her have her way in
+this.
+
+Of course Nan never locked her door. But who would touch a thing
+belonging to her? And her doll! Why, she was sure the family did not
+even know she had such a possession.
+
+Almost wildly the girl ran out of her chamber and into the sitting
+room, where the family was still gathered around the evening lamp, Rafe
+cleaning his shot-gun, Tom reading slowly the local paper, published at
+the Forks, Aunt Kate mending, and Uncle Henry sitting at the open window
+with his pipe.
+
+"Oh, it's gone!" gasped Nan, as she burst into the room.
+
+"What's gone?" asked Aunt Kate, and Uncle Henry added: "What's happened
+to you, honey-bird?"
+
+"My Beulah!" cried Nan, almost sobbing. "My Beulah, she's been taken!"
+
+"My mercy, child!" cried Aunt Kate, jumping up. "Are you crazy?"
+
+"Who's Beulah?" demanded Rafe, looking up from his gun and, Nan thought,
+showing less surprise than the others.
+
+"My Beulah doll," said Nan, too troubled now to care whether the family
+laughed at her or not. "My Beautiful Beulah. Somebody's played a trick."
+
+"A doll!" shouted Rafe, and burst into a chatter of laughter.
+
+"Mercy me, child!" repeated Aunt Kate. "I didn't know you had a doll."
+
+"Got a baby rattle, too, Sissy?" chuckled Rafe. "And a ring to cut your
+teeth on? My, my!"
+
+"Stop that, Rafe!" commanded his father, sternly, while Tom flushed and
+glared angrily at his brother.
+
+"I didn't know you had a doll, Nannie," said Mrs. Sherwood, rather
+weakly. "Where'd you have it?"
+
+"In my closet," choked Nan. "She's a great, big, beautiful thing! I know
+somebody must be playing a joke on me."
+
+"Nobody here, Nannie," said Uncle Henry, with decision. "You may be sure
+of that." But he looked at Rafe sternly. That young man thought it the
+better part of wisdom to say no more.
+
+In broken sentences the girl told her innocent secret, and why she had
+kept the doll hidden. Aunt Kate, after, all, seemed to understand.
+
+"My poor dear!" she crooned, patting Nan's hand between her hard palms.
+"We'll all look for the dolly. Surely it can't have been taken out of
+the house."
+
+"And who'd even take it out of her closet?" demanded Tom, almost as
+stern as his father.
+
+"It surely didn't walk away of itself," said Aunt Kate.
+
+She took a small hand lamp and went with Nan to the east chamber. They
+searched diligently, but to no good end, save to assure Nan that Beulah
+had utterly disappeared.
+
+As far as could be seen the screens at the windows of the bedroom had
+not been disturbed. But who would come in from outside to steal Nan's
+doll? Indeed, who would take it out of the closet, anyway? The girl
+was almost sure that nobody had known she had it. It was strange, very
+strange indeed.
+
+Big girl that she was, Nan cried herself to sleep that night over the
+mystery. The loss of Beulah seemed to snap the last bond that held her
+to the little cottage in Amity street, where she had spent all her happy
+childhood.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV. THE SMOKING TREE
+
+Nan awoke to a new day with the feeling that the loss of her treasured
+doll must have been a bad dream. But it was not. Another search of her
+room and the closet assured her that it was a horrid reality.
+
+She might have lost many of her personal possessions without a pang;
+but not Beautiful Beulah. Nan could not tell her aunt or the rest of
+the family just how she felt about it. She was sure they would not
+understand.
+
+The doll had reminded her continually of her home life. Although the
+stay of her parents in Scotland was much more extended than they or Nan
+had expected, the doll was a link binding the girl to her old home life
+which she missed so much.
+
+Her uncle and aunt had tried to make her happy here at Pine Camp. As far
+as they could do so they had supplied the love and care of Momsey and
+Papa Sherwood. But Nan was actually ill for her old home and her old
+home associations.
+
+On this morning, by herself in her bedroom, she cried bitterly before
+she appeared before the family.
+
+"I have no right to make them feel miserable just because my heart, is,
+breaking," she sobbed aloud. "I won't let them see how bad I feel. But
+if I don't find Beulah, I just know I shall die!"
+
+Could she have run to Momsey for comfort it would have helped, Oh, how
+much!
+
+"I am a silly," Nan told herself at last, warmly. "But I cannot help it.
+Oh, dear! Where can Beulah have gone?"
+
+She bathed her eyes well in the cold spring water brought by Tom that
+she always found in the jug outside her door in the morning, and removed
+such traces of tears as she could; and nobody noticed when she went out
+to breakfast that her eyelids were puffy and her nose a bit red.
+
+The moment Rafe caught sight of her he began to squall, supposedly like
+an infant, crying:
+
+"Ma-ma! Ma-ma! Tum an' take Too-tums. Waw! Waw! Waw!"
+
+After all her hurt pride and sorrow, Nan would have called up a laugh
+at this. But Tom, who was drinking at the water bucket, wheeled with the
+full dipper and threw the contents into Rafe's face. That broke off the
+teasing cousin's voice for a moment; but Rafe came up, sputtering and
+mad.
+
+"Say! You big oaf!" he shouted. "What you trying to do?"
+
+"Trying to be funny," said Tom, sharply. "And you set me the example."
+
+"Now, boys!" begged Aunt Kate. "Don't quarrel."
+
+"And, dear me, boys," gasped Nan, "please don't squabble about me."
+
+"That big lummox!" continued Rafe, still angry. "Because dad backs
+him up and says he ought to lick me, he does this. I'm going to defend
+myself. If he does a thing like that again, I'll fix him."
+
+Tom laughed in his slow way and lumbered out. Uncle Henry did not hear
+this, and Nan was worried. She thought Aunt Kate was inclined to side
+with her youngest boy. Rafe would always be "the baby" to Aunt Kate.
+
+At any rate Nan was very sorry the quarrel had arisen over her. And she
+was careful to say nothing to fan further the flame of anger between
+her cousins. Nor did she say anything more about the lost doll. So the
+family had no idea how heartsore and troubled the girl really was over
+the mystery.
+
+It hurt her the more because she could talk to nobody about Beulah.
+There was not a soul in whom she could confide. Had Bess Harley been
+here at Pine Camp Nan felt that she could not really expect sympathy
+from her chum at this time; for Bess considered herself quite grown up
+and her own dolls were relegated to the younger members of her family.
+
+Nan could write to her chum, however, and did. She could write to
+Momsey, and did that, too; not forgetting to tell her absent parents
+about old Toby Vanderwiller, and his wife and his grandson, and of their
+dilemma. If only Momsey's great fortune came true, Nan was sure that
+Gedney Raffer would be paid off and Toby would no longer have the threat
+of dispossession held over him.
+
+Nan Sherwood wrote, too, to Mr. Mangel, the principal of the Tillbury
+High School, and told him about the collection the crippled grandson
+of the old lumberman had made, mentioning those specimens which had
+impressed her most. She had some hope that the strange moth might be
+very valuable.
+
+Nan was so busy writing letters, and helping Aunt Kate preserve some
+early summer fruit, that she did not go far from the house during the
+next few days, and so did not see even Margaret Llewellen. The other
+girl friends she had made at Pine Camp lived too far away for her to
+visit them often or have them come to call on her.
+
+A long letter from Papa Sherwood about this time served to take Nan's
+mind off the mystery, in part, at least. It was a nice letter and most
+joyfully received by the girl; but to her despair it gave promise of no
+very quick return of her parents from Scotland:
+
+"Those relatives of your mother's whom we have met here, Mr. Andrew
+Blake's family, for instance, have treated us most kindly. They are,
+themselves, all well-to-do, and gentlefolk as well. The disposal by
+Old Hughie Blake, as he was known hereabout, of his estate makes no
+difference to the other Blakes living near Emberon," wrote Mr. Sherwood.
+
+"It is some kin at a distance, children of a half sister of Old Hughie,
+who have made a claim against the estate. Mr. Andrew Blake, who is well
+versed in the Scotch law, assures us these distant relatives have not
+the shadow of a chance of winning their suit. He is so sure of this that
+he has kindly offered to advance certain sums to your mother to tide us
+over until the case is settled.
+
+"I am sending some money to your Uncle Henry for your use, if any
+emergency should arise. You must not look for our return, my dear Nancy,
+too soon. Momsey's health is so much improved by the sea voyage and the
+wonderfully invigorating air here, that I should be loath to bring her
+home at once, even if the matter of the legacy were settled. By the way,
+the sum she will finally receive from Mr. Hugh Blake's estate will be
+quite as much as the first letter from the lawyer led us to expect. Some
+of your dearest wishes, my dear, may be realized in time."
+
+"Oh! I can go to Lakeview Hall with Bess, after all!" cried Nan, aloud,
+at this point.
+
+Indeed, that possibility quite filled the girl's mind for a while.
+Nothing else in Papa Sherwood's letter, aside from the good news of
+Momsey's improved health, so pleased her as this thought. She hastened
+to write a long letter to Bess Harley, with Lakeview Hall as the text.
+
+Summer seemed to stride out of the forest now, full panoplied. After the
+frost and snow of her early days at Pine Camp, Nan had not expected
+such heat. The pools beside the road steamed. The forest was atune from
+daybreak to midnight with winged denizens, for insect and bird life
+seemed unquenchable in the Big Woods.
+
+Especially was this true of the tamarack swamp. It was dreadfully hot
+at noontide on the corduroy road which passed Toby Vanderwiller's little
+farm; but often Nan Sherwood went that way in the afternoon. Mr. Mangel,
+the school principal, had written Nan and encouraged her to send a full
+description of some of Corson Vanderwiller's collection, especially of
+the wonderful death's-head moth, to a wealthy collector in Chicago. Nan
+did this at once.
+
+So, one day, a letter came from the man and in it was a check for
+twenty-five dollars.
+
+"This is a retainer," the gentleman wrote. "I am much interested in your
+account of the lame boy's specimens. I want the strangely marked moth
+in any case, and the check pays for an option on it until I can come and
+see his specimens personally."
+
+Nan went that very afternoon to the tamarack swamp to tell the
+Vanderwillers this news and give Toby the check. She knew poor Corson
+would be delighted, for now he could purchase the longed-for silk dress
+for his grandmother.
+
+The day was so hot and the way so long that Nan was glad to sit down
+when she reached the edge of the sawdust strip, to rest and cool off
+before attempting this unshaded desert. A cardinal bird--one of the
+sauciest and most brilliant of his saucy and brilliant race, flitted
+about her as she sat upon a log.
+
+"You pretty thing!" crooned Nan. "If it were not wicked I'd wish to have
+you at home in a cage. I wish--"
+
+She stopped, for in following the flight of the cardinal her gaze
+fastened upon a most surprising thing off at some distance from the
+sawdust road. A single dead tree, some forty feet in height and almost
+limbless, stood in solemn grandeur in the midst of the sawdust waste. It
+had been of no use to the woodcutters and they had allowed the shell of
+the old forest monarch to stand. Now, from its broken top, Nan espied a
+thin, faint column of blue haze rising.
+
+It was the queerest thing! It was not mist, of course and she did not
+see how it could be smoke. There was no fire at the foot of the tree,
+for she could see the base of the bole plainly. She even got up and ran
+a little way out into the open in order to see the other side of the
+dead tree.
+
+The sky was very blue, and the air was perfectly still. Almost Nan was
+tempted to believe that her eyes played her false. The column was almost
+the color of the sky itself, and it was thin as a veil.
+
+How could there be a fire in the top of that tall tree?
+
+"There just isn't! I don't believe I see straight!" declared Nan to
+herself, moving on along the roadway. "But I'll speak to Toby about it."
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV. THE TEMPEST
+
+Nan, however, did not mention to Toby the haze rising from the dead
+tree. In the first place, when she reached the little farm on the island
+in the tamarack swamp, old Toby Vanderwiller was not at home. His wife
+greeted the girl warmly, and Corson was glad to see her. When Nan spread
+the check before him and told him what it was for, and what he could do
+with so much money, the crippled boy was delighted.
+
+It was a secret between them that the grandmother was to have the black
+silk dress that she had longed for all her married life; only Nan and
+Corson knew that Nan was commissioned to get the check cashed and buy
+the dress pattern at the Forks; or send to a catalogue house for it if
+she could not find a suitable piece of goods at any of the local stores.
+
+Nan lingered, hoping that Toby would come home. It finally grew so late
+that she dared not wait longer. She had been warned by Aunt Kate not to
+remain after dusk in the swamp, nor had she any desire to do so.
+
+Moreover there was a black cloud rolling up from the west. That
+was enough to make the girl hurry, for when it rained in the swamp,
+sometimes the corduroy road was knee deep in water.
+
+The cloud had increased to such proportions when Nan was half way across
+the sawdust desert that she began to run. She had forgotten all about
+the smoking tree.
+
+Not a breath of air was stirring as yet; but there was the promise of
+wind in that cloud. The still leaves on the bushes, the absence of bird
+life overhead, the lazy drone of insects, portended a swift change soon.
+Nan was weather-wise enough to know that.
+
+She panted on, stumbling through the loose sawdust, but stumbling
+equally in the ruts; for the way was very rough. This road was lonely
+enough at best; but it seemed more deserted than ever now.
+
+A red fox, his tail depressed, shot past her, and not many yards away.
+It startled Nan, for it seemed as though something dreadful was about to
+happen and the fox knew it and was running away from it.
+
+She could not run as fast as the fox; but Nan wished that she could. And
+she likewise wished with all her heart that she would meet somebody.
+
+That somebody she hoped would be Tom. Tom was drawing logs from some
+point near, she knew. A man down the river had bought some timber and
+they had been cut a few weeks before. Tom was drawing them out of the
+swamp for the man; and he had mentioned only that morning at breakfast
+that he was working within sight of the sawdust tract and the corduroy
+road.
+
+Nan felt that she would be safe with big, slow Tom. Even the thought of
+thunder and lightning would lose some of its terrors if she could only
+get to Tom.
+
+Suddenly she heard a voice shouting, then the rattle of chain harness.
+The voice boomed out a stave of an old hymn:
+
+"On Jordan's stormy bank I stand, And cast a wishful eye."
+
+"It's Tom!" gasped Nan, and ran harder.
+
+She was almost across the open space now. The cooler depths of the
+forest were just ahead. Beyond, a road crossed the mainly-traveled swamp
+track at right angles to it, and this was the path Tom followed.
+
+He was now coming from the river, going deeper into the swamp for
+another log. Nan continued to run, calling to him at the top of her
+voice.
+
+She came in sight of the young timberman and his outfit. His wagon
+rattled so that he could not easily hear his cousin calling to him. He
+sat on the tongue of the wagon, and his big, slow-moving horses jogged
+along, rattling their chains in a jingle more noisy than harmonious.
+
+The timber cart was a huge, lumbering affair with ordinary cartwheels in
+front but a huge pair behind with an extended reach between them; and
+to the axle of the rear pair of wheels the timber to be transported
+was swung off the ground and fastened with chains. Nan ran after the
+rumbling cart and finally Tom saw her.
+
+"My mercy me!" gasped the boy, using one of his mother's favorite
+expressions. "What you doing here, Nan?"
+
+"Chasing you, Tom," laughed the girl. "Is it going to rain?"
+
+"I reckon. You'll get wet if it does."
+
+"I don't care so much for that," confessed Nan. "But I am so afraid of
+thunder! Oh, there it comes."
+
+The tempest muttered in the distance. Tom, who had pulled in his horses
+and stopped, looked worried. "I wish you weren't here, Nan," he said.
+
+"How gallant you are, I declare, Tommy Sherwood," cried Nan, laughing
+again, and then shuddering as the growl of the thunder was repeated.
+
+"Swamp's no place for a girl in a storm," muttered the boy.
+
+"Well, I am here, Tommy; what are you going to do with me?" she asked
+him, saucily.
+
+"If you're so scared by thunder you'd better begin by stopping your
+ears," he drawled.
+
+Nan laughed. Slow Tom was not often good at repartee. "I'm going to
+stick by you till it's over, Tom," she said, hopping up behind him on
+the wagon-tongue.
+
+"Cracky, Nan! You'll get soaked. It's going to just smoke in a few
+minutes," declared the anxious young fellow.
+
+And that reminded Nan again of the smoking tree.
+
+"Oh, Tom! Do you know I believe there is a tree afire over yonder," she
+cried, pointing.
+
+"A tree afire?"
+
+"Yes. I saw it smoking."
+
+"My mercy me!" exclaimed Tom again. "What do you mean?"
+
+Nan told him about the mystery. The fact that a column of smoke arose
+out of the top of the dead tree seemed to worry Tom. Nan became alarmed.
+
+"Oh, dear, Tom! Do you really think it was afire?"
+
+"I, don't know. If it was afire, it is afire now," he said. "Show me,
+Nan."
+
+He turned the horses out of the beaten track through the brush and
+brambles, to the edge of the open place which had been heaped with
+sawdust from the steam-mill.
+
+Just as they broke cover a vivid flash of lightning cleaved the black
+cloud that had almost reached the zenith by now, and the deep rumble of
+thunder changed to a sharp chatter; then followed a second flash and a
+deafening crash.
+
+"Oh, Tom!" gasped Nan, as she clung to him.
+
+"The flash you see'll never hit you, Nan," drawled Tom, trying to be
+comforting. "Remember that."
+
+"It isn't so much the lightning I fear as it is the thunder," murmured
+Nan, in the intermission. "It just so-o-ounds as though the whole house
+was coming down."
+
+"Ho!" cried Tom. "No house here, Nan."
+
+"But-----"
+
+The thunder roared again. A light patter on the leaves and ground
+announced the first drops of the storm.
+
+"Which tree was it you saw smoking?" asked the young fellow.
+
+Nan looked around to find the tall, broken-topped tree. A murmur that
+had been rising in the distance suddenly grew to a sweeping roar. The
+trees bent before the blast. Particles of sawdust stung their faces. The
+horses snorted and sprang ahead. Tom had difficulty in quieting them.
+
+Then the tempest swooped upon them in earnest.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI. BUFFETED BY THE ELEMENTS
+
+Nan knew she had never seen it rain so hard before. The falling water
+was like a drop-curtain, swept across the stage of the open tract of
+sawdust. In a few minutes they were saturated to the skin. Nan could not
+have been any wetter if she had gone in swimming.
+
+"Oh!" she gasped into Tom's ear. "It is the deluge!"
+
+"Never was, but one rain 't didn't clear up yet," he returned, with
+difficulty, for his big body was sheltering Nan in part, and he was
+facing the blast.
+
+"I know. That's this one," she agreed. "But, it's awful."
+
+"Say! Can you point out that tree that smoked?" asked Tom.
+
+"Goodness! It can't be smoking now," gasped Nan, stifled with rain and
+laughter. "This storm would put out Vesuvius."
+
+"Don't know him," retorted her cousin. "But it'd put most anybody out, I
+allow. Still, fire isn't so easy to quench. Where's the tree?"
+
+"I can't see it, Tom," declared Nan, with her eyes tightly closed. She
+really thought he was too stubborn. Of course, if there had been any
+fire in that tree-top, this rain would put it out in about ten seconds.
+So Nan believed.
+
+"Look again, Nan," urged her cousin. "This is no funning. If there's
+fire in this swamp."
+
+"Goodness, gracious!" snapped Nan. "What a fuss-budget you are to be
+sure, Tom. If there was a fire, this rain would smother it. Oh! Did it
+ever pelt one so before?"
+
+Fortunately the rain was warm, and she was not much discomforted by
+being wet. Tom still clung to the idea that she had started in his slow
+mind.
+
+"Fire's no funning, I tell you," he growled. "Sometimes it smoulders
+for days and days, and weeks and weeks; then it bursts out like a
+hurricane."
+
+"But the rain"
+
+"This sawdust is mighty hard-packed, and feet deep," interrupted Tom.
+"The fire might be deep down."
+
+"Why, Tom! How ridiculously you talk!" cried the girl. "Didn't I tell
+you I saw the smoke coming out of the top of a tree? Fire couldn't be
+deep down in the sawdust and the smoke come out of the tree top."
+
+"Couldn't, heh?" returned Tom. "Dead tree, wasn't it?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Hollow, too, of course?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Might be hollow clear through its length," Tom explained seriously.
+"The butt might be all rotted out. Just a tough shell of a tree standing
+there, and 'twould be a fine chimney if the fire was smouldering down at
+its old roots."
+
+"Oh, Tom! I never thought of such a thing," gasped Nan.
+
+"And you don't see the tree now?"
+
+"Let me look! Let me look!" cried Nan, conscience-stricken.
+
+In spite of the beating rain and wind she got to her knees, still
+clinging to her big cousin, and then stood upon the broad tongue of
+the wagon. The horses stood still with their heads down, bearing the
+buffeting of the storm with the usual patience of dumb beasts.
+
+A sheer wall of water seemed to separate them from every object out
+upon the open land. Behind them the bulk of the forest loomed as another
+barrier. Nan had really never believed that rain could fall so hard. It
+almost took her breath.
+
+Moreover, what Tom said about the smoking tree began to trouble the
+girl. She thought of the fire at Pale Lick, of which she had received
+hints from several people. That awful conflagration, in which she
+believed two children belonging to her uncle and aunt had lost their
+lives, had started in the sawdust.
+
+Suddenly she cried aloud and seized Tom more tightly.
+
+"Cracky! Don't choke a fellow!" he coughed.
+
+"Oh, Tom!"
+
+"Well"
+
+"I think I see it."
+
+"The tree that smoked?" asked her cousin.
+
+"Yes. There!"
+
+For the moment it seemed as though the downpour lightened. Veiled by the
+still falling water a straight stick rose high in the air ahead of them.
+Tom chirruped to the horses and made them, though unwilling, go forward.
+
+They dragged the heavy cart unevenly. Through the heavy downpour the
+trail was hard to follow, and once in a while a rear wheel bumped over
+a stump, and Nan was glad to drop down upon the tongue again, and cling
+more tightly than ever to her cousin's collar.
+
+"Sure that's it?" queried Tom, craning his neck to look up into the
+tall, straight tree.
+
+"I, I'm almost sure," stammered Nan.
+
+"I, don't, see, any, smoke," drawled Tom, with his head still raised.
+
+The rain had almost ceased, an intermission which would not be of long
+duration. Nan saw that her cousin's prophecy had been true; the ground
+actually smoked after the downpour. The sun-heated sawdust steamed
+furiously. They seemed to be crossing a heated cauldron. Clouds of steam
+rose all about the timber cart.
+
+"Why, Tommy!" Nan choked. "It does seem as though there must be fire
+under this sawdust now."
+
+Tom brought his own gaze down from the empty tree-top with a jerk.
+"Hoo!" he shouted, and leaned forward suddenly to flick his off horse
+with the whiplash. Just then the rear wheel on that side slumped down
+into what seemed a veritable volcano.
+
+Flame and smoke spurted out around the broad wheel. Nan screamed.
+The wind suddenly swooped down upon them, and a ball of fire, flaming
+sawdust was shot into the air and was tossed twenty feet by a puff of
+wind.
+
+"We're over an oven!" gasped Tom, and laid the whip solidly across the
+backs of the frightened horses.
+
+They plunged. Another geyser of fire and smoke spurted from the hole
+into which the rear wheel had slumped. Again and again the big horses
+flung themselves into the collars in an endeavor to get the wheel out.
+
+"Oh, Tommy!" cried Nan. "We'll be burned up!"
+
+"No you won't," declared her cousin, leaping down. "Get off and run,
+Nan."
+
+"But you--"
+
+"Do as I say!" commanded Tom. "Run!"
+
+"Where, where'll I run to?" gasped the girl, leaping off the tongue,
+too, and away from the horses' heels.
+
+"To the road. Get toward home!" cried Tom, running around to the rear of
+the timber cart.
+
+"And leave you here?" cried Nan. "I guess not, Mr. Tom!" she murmured.
+
+But he did not hear that. He had seized his axe and was striding toward
+the edge of the forest. For a moment Nan feared that Tom was running
+away as he advised her to do. But that would not be like Tom Sherwood!
+
+At the edge of the forest he laid the axe to the root of a sapling about
+four inches through at the butt. Three strokes, and the tree was down.
+In a minute he had lopped off the branches for twenty feet, then removed
+the top with a single blow.
+
+As he turned, dragging the pole with him, up sprang the fire again from
+the hollow into which the wheel of the wagon had sunk. It was a smoking
+furnace down there, and soon the felloe and spokes would be injured by
+the flames and heat. Sparks flew on the wings of the wind from out of
+the mouth of the hole. Some of them scattered about the horses and they
+plunged again, squealing.
+
+It seemed to Nan impossible after the recent cloudburst that the fire
+could find anything to feed upon. But underneath the packed surface of
+the sawdust, the heat of summer had been drying out the moisture for
+weeks. And the fire had been smouldering for a long time. Perhaps for
+yards and yards around, the interior of the sawdust heap was a glowing
+furnace.
+
+Nan would not run away and Tom did not see her. As he came plunging
+back to the stalled wagon, suddenly his foot slumped into the yielding
+sawdust and he fell upon his face. He cried out with surprise or pain.
+Nan, horrified, saw the flames and smoke shooting out of the hole into
+which her cousin had stepped. For the moment the girl felt as if her
+heart had stopped beating.
+
+"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" she shrieked, and sprang toward him.
+
+Tom was struggling to get up. His right leg had gone into the yielding
+mass up to his hip, and despite his struggles he could not get it out.
+A long yellow flame shot out of the hole and almost licked his face. It,
+indeed, scorched his hair on one side of his head.
+
+But Nan did not scream again. She needed her breath, all that she could
+get, for a more practical purpose. Her cousin waved her back feebly, and
+tried to tell her to avoid the fire.
+
+Nan rushed in, got behind him, and seized her cousin under the arms. To
+lift him seemed a giant's task; but nevertheless she tried.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII. OLD TOBY IN TROUBLE
+
+The squealing and plunging of the horses, the rattling of their chains,
+the shrieking of the wind, the reverberating cracks of thunder made
+a deafening chorus in Nan's ears. She could scarcely hear what the
+imperiled Tom shouted to her. Finally she got it:
+
+"Not that way! Pull sideways!"
+
+He beat his hands impotently upon the crust of sawdust to the left. Nan
+tugged that way. Tom pulled, too, heaving his great body upward, and
+scratching and scrambling along the sawdust with fingers spread like
+claws. His right leg came out of the hole, and just then the rain
+descended torrentially again.
+
+The flames from this opening in the roof of the furnace were beaten
+down. Tom got to his feet, shaking and panting. He hobbled painfully
+when he walked.
+
+But in a moment he seized upon the pole he had dropped and made for the
+smoking timber cart. The terrified horses tried again and again to break
+away; but the chain harnesses were too strong; nor did the mired wheel
+budge.
+
+"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" begged Nan. "Let us make the poor horses free, and
+run ourselves."
+
+"And lose my wagon?" returned her cousin, grimly. "Not much!"
+
+The rain, which continued to descend with tropical violence, almost beat
+Nan to the ground; but Tom Sherwood worked furiously.
+
+He placed the butt of the lever he had cut under the hub of the great
+wheel. There was a sound stump at hand to use as a fulcrum. Tom threw
+himself upon the end of the lever. Nan ran to add her small weight to
+the endeavor. The wheel creaked and began to rise slowly.
+
+The sawdust was not clinging, it was not like real mire. There was no
+suction to hold the wheel down. Merely the crust had broken in and the
+wheel had encountered an impediment of a sound tree root in front of it
+so that, when the horses tugged, the tire had come against the root and
+dragged back the team.
+
+Out poured the flames and smoke again, the flames hissing as they were
+quenched by the falling water. Higher, higher rose the cart wheel. Nan,
+who was behind her cousin, saw his neck and ears turn almost purple from
+the strain he put in the effort to dislodge the wheel. Up, up it came,
+and then-----
+
+"Gid-ap! 'Ap, boys! Yah! Gid-ap!"
+
+The horses strained. The yoke chains rattled. Tom gasped to Nan:
+
+"Take my whip! Quick! Let 'em have it!"
+
+The girl had always thought the drover's whip Tom used a very cruel
+implement, and she wished he did not use it. But she knew now that it
+was necessary. She leaped for the whip which Tom had thrown down and
+showed that she knew its use.
+
+The lash hissed and cracked over the horses' backs. Tom voiced one last,
+ringing shout. The cart wheel rose up, the horses leaped forward, and
+the big timber cart was out of its plight.
+
+Flames and smoke poured out of the hole again. The rain dashing upon and
+into the aperture could not entirely quell the stronger element. But the
+wagon was safe, and so, too, were the two cousins.
+
+Tom was rather painfully burned and Nan began to cry about it. "Oh! Oh!
+You poor, poor dear!" she sobbed. "It must smart you dreadfully, Tommy."
+
+"Don't worry about me," he answered. "Get aboard. Let's get out of
+this."
+
+"Are you going home?"
+
+"Bet you!" declared Tom. "Why, after this rain stops, this whole blamed
+place may be in flames. Must warn folks and get out the fire guard."
+
+"But the rain will put out the fire, Tom," said Nan, who could not
+understand even now the fierce power of a conflagration of this kind.
+
+"Look there!" yelled Tom, suddenly glancing back over her head as she
+sat behind him on the wagon tongue.
+
+With a roar like an exploding boiler, the flames leaped up the heart of
+the hollow tree. The bursted crust of the sawdust heap had given free
+ingress to the wind, and a draught being started, it sucked the flames
+directly up the tall chimney the tree made.
+
+The fire burst from the broken top. The flames met the falling rain as
+though they were unquenchable. Indeed the clouds were scattering, and
+second by second the downfall was decreasing. The tempest of rain was
+almost over; but the wind remained to fan the flames that had now broken
+cover in several spots, as well as through the tall and hollow tree.
+
+Tom hastened his team toward the main road that passed through the
+tamarack swamp. At one end of it was Pine Camp; in the other direction,
+after passing the knoll on which the Vanderwillers lived, the roadway
+came out upon a more traveled road to the forks and the railroad.
+
+Pine Camp was the nearest place where help could be secured to beat down
+the fire, if, indeed, this were at all possible. There was a telephone
+line there which, in a roundabout way, could be made to carry the news
+of the forest fire to all the settlements in the Big Woods and along the
+railroad line.
+
+But Nan seized Tom's arm and shook it to call his attention as the
+horses neared the road.
+
+"Tom! For goodness' sake!" she gasped.
+
+"What's the matter now?" her cousin demanded, rather sharply, for his
+burns were painful.
+
+"Toby, the Vanderwillers! What will become of them?"
+
+"What d'you mean?" asked Tom, aghast.
+
+"That poor cripple! They can't get away, he and his grandmother. Perhaps
+Toby hasn't come home yet."
+
+"And the wind's that way," Tom interrupted.
+
+It was indeed. The storm had come up from the west and the wind was
+still blowing almost directly into the east. A sheet of flame flew from
+the top of the old dead tree even as the boy spoke, and was carried
+toward the thick forest. It did not reach it, and as the blazing brand
+fell it was quenched on the wet surface of the sawdust.
+
+Nevertheless, the fire was spreading under the crust and soon the few
+other dead trees left standing on the tract would burst into flame. As
+they looked, the fire burst out at the foot of the tree and began to
+send long tongues of flame licking up the shredded bark.
+
+The effect of the drenching rain would soon be gone and the fire would
+secure great headway.
+
+"Those poor folks are right in the track of the fire, I allow," admitted
+Tom. "I wonder if he's got a good wide fire strip ploughed?"
+
+"Oh! I know what you mean," Nan cried. "You mean all around the edge of
+his farm where it meets the woods?"
+
+"Yes. A ploughed strip may save his buildings. Fire can't easily cross
+ploughed ground. Only, if these woods get really ablaze, the fire will
+jump half a mile!"
+
+"Oh no, Tom! You don't mean that?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said her cousin, gloomily. "Tobe's in a bad place. You
+don't know what a forest fire means, nor the damage it does, Nannie. I'm
+right troubled by old Tobe's case."
+
+"But there's no danger for Pine Camp, is there?" asked the girl,
+eagerly.
+
+"Plenty of folks there to make a fire-guard. Besides, the wind's not
+that way, exactly opposite. And she's not likely to switch around so
+soon, neither. I, don't, know"
+
+"The folks at home ought to know about it," Nan interrupted.
+
+"They'll know it, come dark," Tom said briefly. "They'll be looking for
+you and they'll see the blaze. Why! After dark that old dead tree will
+look like a lighthouse for miles 'n' miles!"
+
+"I suppose it will," agreed Nan. "But I do want to get home, Tom."
+
+"Maybe the storm's not over," said her cousin, cocking an eye towards
+the clouded heavens. "If it sets in for a long rain (and one's due about
+this time according to the Farmer's Almanac) it would keep the fire
+down, put it out entirely, maybe. But we can't tell."
+
+Nan sighed and patted his shoulder. "I know it's our duty to go to the
+island, Tommy. You're a conscientious old thing. Drive on."
+
+Tom clucked to the horses. He steered them into the roadway, but headed
+away from home. Another boy with the pain he was bearing would not have
+thought of the old lumberman and his family. They were the only people
+likely to be in immediate danger from the fire if it spread. The cousins
+might easily reach the Vanderwiller's island, warn them of the fire, and
+return to town before it got very late, or before the fire crossed the
+wood-road.
+
+They rumbled along, soon striking the corduroy road, having the thick
+forest on either hand again. The ditches were running bank full. Over
+a quagmire the logs, held down by cross timbers spiked to the sleepers,
+shook under the wheels, and the water spurted up through the interstices
+as the horses put down their heavy feet.
+
+"An awful lot of water fell," Tom said soberly.
+
+"Goodness! The swamp is full," agreed Nan.
+
+"We may have some trouble in reaching Toby's place," the boy added. "But
+maybe--"
+
+He halted in his speech, and the next instant pulled the horses down to
+a willing stop. "Hark-a-that!" whispered Tom.
+
+"Can it be anybody crying? Maybe it's a wildcat," said Nan, with a vivid
+remembrance of her adventure in the snow that she had never yet told to
+any member of the family.
+
+"It's somebody shouting, all right," observed Tom. "Up ahead a way.
+Gid-ap!"
+
+He hurried the horses on, and they slopped through the water which, in
+places, flowed over the road, while in others it actually lifted the
+logs from their foundation and threatened to spoil the roadway entirely.
+
+Again and again they heard the faint cry, a man's voice. Tom stood up
+and sent a loud cry across the swamp in answer:
+
+"We're coming! Hold on!
+
+"Don't know what's the matter with him," he remarked, dropping down
+beside Nan again, and stirring the horses to a faster pace. "S'pose he's
+got into a mud-hold, team and all, maybe."
+
+"Oh, Tom! Maybe he'll be sucked right down into this awful mud."
+
+"Not likely. There aren't many quicksands, or the like, hereabout. Never
+heard tell of 'em, if there are. Old Tobe lost a cow once in some
+slough."
+
+They came to a small opening in the forest just then. Here a great tree
+had been uprooted by the wind and leaned precariously over a quagmire
+beside the roadway. Fortunately only some of the lower branches touched
+the road line and Tom could get his team around them.
+
+Then the person in trouble came into sight. Nan and her cousin saw him
+immediately. He was in the middle of the shaking morass waist deep in
+the mire, and clinging to one of the small hanging limbs of the uprooted
+tree.
+
+"Hickory splits!" ejaculated Tom, stopping the team. "It's old Tobe
+himself! Did you ever see the like!"
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII. THE GIRL IN THE HOLLOW TREE
+
+Just why old Toby Vanderwiller was clinging to that branch and did not
+try to wade ashore, neither Nan nor Tom could understand. But one thing
+was plain: the old lumberman thought himself in danger, and every once
+in a while he gave out a shout for help. But his voice was growing weak.
+
+"Hey, Tobe!" yelled Tom. "Why don't you wade ashore?"
+
+"There ye be, at last, hey?" snarled the old man, who was evidently just
+as angry as he could be. "Thought ye'd never come. Hearn them horses
+rattling their chains, must ha' been for an hour."
+
+"That's stretching it some," laughed Tom. "That tree hasn't been toppled
+over an hour."
+
+"Huh! Ye can't tell me nothin' 'beout that!" declared Toby. "I was right
+here when it happened."
+
+"Goodness!" gasped Nan.
+
+"Yep. And lemme tell ye, I only jest 'scaped being knocked down when she
+fell."
+
+"My!" murmured Nan again.
+
+"That's how I got inter this muck hole," growled the old lumberman. "I
+jumped ter dodge the tree, and landed here."
+
+"Why don't you wade ashore?" demanded Tom again, preparing in a
+leisurely manner to cast the old man the end of a line he had coiled on
+the timber cart.
+
+"Yah!" snarled Toby. "Why don't Miz' Smith keep pigs? Don't ax fool
+questions, Tommy, but gimme holt on that rope. I'm afraid ter let go the
+branch, for I'll sink, and if I try ter pull myself up by it, the whole
+blamed tree'll come down onter me. Ye see how it's toppling?"
+
+It was true that the fallen tree was in a very precarious position. When
+Toby stirred at all, the small weight he rested on the branch made the
+head of the tree dip perilously. And if it did fall the old man would
+be thrust into the quagmire by the weight of the branches which overhung
+his body.
+
+"Let go of it, Toby!" called Tom, accelerating his motions. "Catch
+this!"
+
+He flung the coil with skill and Toby seized it. The rocking tree
+groaned and slipped forward a little. Toby gave a yell that could have
+been heard much farther than his previous cries.
+
+But Tom sank back on the taut rope and fairly jerked the old man out
+of the miry hole. Scrambling on hands and knees, Toby reached firmer
+ground, and then the road itself.
+
+Nan uttered a startled exclamation and cowered behind the cart. The
+huge tree, groaning and its roots splintering, sagged down and, in
+an instant, the spot there the old lumberman had been, was completely
+covered by the interlacing branches of the uprooted tree.
+
+"Close squeal, that," remarked Tom, helping the old man to his feet.
+
+Toby stared at them both, wiping the mire from his face as he did so.
+He was certainly a scarecrow figure after his submersion in the mud; gut
+Nan did not feel like laughing at him. The escape had been too narrow.
+
+"Guess the Almighty sent you just in time, Tom, my boy," said Toby
+Vanderwiller. "He must have suthin' more for the old man to do yet,
+before he cashes in. And little Sissy, too. Har! Henry Sherwood's son
+and Henry Sherwood's niece. Reckon I owe him a good turn," he muttered.
+
+Nan heard this, though Tom did not, and her heart leaped. She hoped that
+Toby would feel sufficient gratitude to help Uncle Henry win his case
+against Gedney Raffer. But, of course, this was not the time to speak of
+it.
+
+When the old lumberman heard about the fire in the sawdust he was quite
+as excited as the young folk had been. It was fast growing dark now, but
+it was impossible from the narrow road to see even the glow of the fire
+against the clouded sky.
+
+"I believe it's goin' to open up and rain ag'in," Toby said. "But if you
+want to go on and plow me a fire-strip, Tommy, I'll be a thousand times
+obleeged to you."
+
+"That's what I came this way for," said the young fellow briefly. "Hop
+on and we'll go to the island as quickly as possible."
+
+They found Mrs. Vanderwiller and the crippled boy anxiously watching the
+flames in the tree top from the porch of the little house on the island.
+Nan ran to them to relate their adventures, while Toby got out the plow
+and Tom hitched his big horses to it.
+
+The farm was not fenced, for the road and forest bounded it completely.
+Tom put the plow in at the edge of the wood and turned his furrows
+toward it, urging the horses into a trot. It was not that the fire was
+near; but the hour was growing late and Tom knew that his mother and
+father would be vastly anxious about Nan.
+
+The young fellow made twelve laps, turning twelve broad furrows that
+surely would guard the farm against any ordinary fire. But by the time
+he was done it did not look as though the fire in the sawdust would
+spread far. The clouds were closing up once more and it was again
+raining, gently but with an insistence that promised a night of
+downpour, at least.
+
+Old Mrs. Vanderwiller had made supper, and insisted upon their eating
+before starting for Pine Camp. And Tom, at least, did his share with
+knife and fork, while his horses ate their measure of corn in the
+paddock. It was dark as pitch when they started for home, but Tom was
+cheerful and sure of his way, so Nan was ashamed to admit that she was
+frightened.
+
+"Tell yer dad I'll be over ter Pine Camp ter see him 'fore many days,"
+Old Toby jerked out, as they were starting. "I got suthin' to say to
+him, I have!"
+
+Tom did not pay much attention to this; but Nan did. Her heart leaped
+for joy. She believed that Toby Vanderwiller's words promised help for
+Uncle Henry.
+
+But she said nothing to Tom about it. She only clung to his shoulder as
+the heavy timber cart rattled away from the island.
+
+A misty glow hung over the sawdust strip as they advanced; but now that
+the wind had died down the fire could not spread. Beside the road the
+glow worms did their feeble best to light the way; and now and then an
+old stump in the swamp displayed a ghostly gleam of phosphorus.
+
+Nan had never been in the swamp before at night. The rain had driven
+most of the frogs and other croaking creatures to cover. But now and
+then a sudden rumble "Better-go-roun'!" or "Knee-deep! Knee-deep!"
+proclaimed the presence of the green-jacketed gentlemen with the yellow
+vests.
+
+"Goodness me! I'd be scared to death to travel this road by myself," Nan
+said, as they rode on. "The frogs make such awful noises."
+
+"But frogs won't hurt you," drawled Tom.
+
+"I know all that," sighed Nan. "But they sound as if they would. There!
+That one says, just as plain as plain can be, 'Throw 'im in! Throw 'im
+in!"
+
+"Good!" chuckled Tom. "And there's a drunken old rascal calling:
+'Jug-er-rum! Jug-er-rum!'!"
+
+A nighthawk, wheeling overhead through the rain, sent down her
+discordant cry. Deep in a thicket a whip-poor-will complained. It was
+indeed a ghostly chorus that attended their slow progress through the
+swamp at Pine Camp.
+
+When they crossed the sawdust tract there was little sign of the fire.
+The dead tree had fallen and was just a glowing pile of coals, fast
+being quenched by the gently falling rain. For the time, at least, the
+danger of a great conflagration was past.
+
+"Oh! I am so glad," announced Nan, impetuously. "I was afraid it was
+going to be like that Pale Lick fire."
+
+"What Pale Lick fire?" demanded Tom, quickly. "What do you know about
+that?"
+
+"Not much, I guess," admitted his cousin, slowly. "But you used to live
+there, didn't you?"
+
+"Rafe and I don't remember anything about it," said Tom, in his quiet
+way. "Rafe was a baby and I wasn't much better. Marm saved us both, so
+we've been told. She and dad never speak about it."
+
+"Oh! And Indian Pete?" whispered Nan.
+
+"He saved the whole of us--dad and all. He knew a way out through a
+slough and across a lake. He had a dug-out. He got badly burned dragging
+dad to the boat when he was almost suffocated with smoke," Tom said
+soberly.
+
+"'Tisn't anything we talk about much, Nan. Who told you?"
+
+"Oh, it's been hinted to me by various people," said Nan, slowly. "But I
+saw Injun Pete, Tom."
+
+"When? He hasn't been to Pine Camp since you came."
+
+Nan told her cousin of her adventure in the hollow near Blackton's
+lumber camp. Tom was much excited by that.
+
+"Gracious me, Nan! But you are a plucky girl. Wait till Rafe hears about
+it. And marm and dad will praise you for being so level-headed today.
+Aren't many girls like you, Nan, I bet!"
+
+"Nor boys like you, Tom," returned the girl, shyly. "How brave you were,
+staying to pull that old wagon-wheel out of the fire."
+
+"Ugh!" growled Tom. "A fat time I'd have had there if it hadn't been for
+you helping me out of the oven. Cracky! I thought I was going to have my
+leg burned to a cinder.
+
+"That would have been terrible!" shuddered Nan. "What would poor Aunt
+Kate have said?"
+
+"We can't tell her anything about it," Tom hastened to say. "You see, my
+two older brothers, Jimmy and Alfred, were asleep in the garret of our
+house at Pale Lick, and marm thought they'd got out. It wasn't until
+afterward that she learned they'd been burned up with the house. She's
+never got over it."
+
+"I shouldn't think she would," sighed Nan.
+
+"And you see she's awfully afraid of fire, even now," said Tom.
+
+They rattled on over the logs of the road; here and there they came to
+bad places, where the water had not gone down; and the horses were very
+careful in putting their hoofs down upon the shaking logs. However, it
+was not much over an hour after leaving the island that they spied the
+lights of Pine Camp from the top of the easy rise leading out of the
+tamarack swamp.
+
+They met Rafe with a lantern half way down the hill. Uncle Henry was
+away and Aunt Kate had sent Rafe out to look for Nan, although she
+supposed that the girl had remained at the Vanderwillers' until the rain
+was over, and that Toby would bring her home.
+
+There was but one other incident of note before the three of them
+reached the rambling house Uncle Henry had built on the outskirts of
+Pine Camp. As they turned off the swamp road through the lane that ran
+past the Llewellen cottage, Rafe suddenly threw the ray of his lantern
+into a hollow tree beside the roadway. A small figure was there, and it
+darted back out of sight.
+
+"There!" shouted Rafe. "I knew you were there, you little nuisance. What
+did you run out of the house and follow me for, Mar'gret Llewellen?"
+
+He jumped in and seized the child, dragging her forth from the hollow of
+the big tree. He held her, while she squirmed and screamed.
+
+"You lemme alone, Rafe Sherwood! Lemme alone!" she commanded. "I ain't
+doin' nothin' to you."
+
+"Well, I bet you are up to some monkey-shines, out this time of night,"
+said Rafe, giving her a little shake. "You come on back home, Mag."
+
+"I won't!" declared the girl.
+
+"Yes, do, Margaret," begged Nan. "It's going to rain harder. Don't hurt
+her, Rafe."
+
+"Yah! You couldn't hurt her," said Rafe. "She's as tough as a little
+pine-knot, and don't you forget it! Aren't you, Mag?"
+
+"Lemme go!" repeated Margaret, angrily.
+
+"What did you chase down here after me for?" asked Rafe, the curious.
+
+"I, I thought mebbe you was comin' to hunt for something," stammered the
+girl.
+
+"So I was. For Nancy here," laughed Rafe.
+
+"Thought 'twas somethin' of mine," said the girl. "Lemme go now!"
+
+She jerked away her hand and scuttled into the house that they were then
+just passing.
+
+"Wonder what the little imp came out to watch me for?" queried Rafe.
+
+After they had arrived at home and the excitement o the return was over;
+after she and Tom had told as much of their adventures as they thought
+wise, and Nan had retired to the east chamber, she thought again about
+Margaret and her queer actions by the roadside.
+
+"Why, that tree is where Margaret hides her most precious possessions,"
+said Nan, suddenly, sitting up in bed. "Why, what could it be she was
+afraid Rafe would find there? Why can that child have hidden something
+there that she doesn't want any of us to see?"
+
+Late as it was, and dark as it was, and stormy as the night was, she
+felt that she must know immediately what Margaret Llewellen had hidden
+in the hollow tree.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX. GREAT NEWS FROM SCOTLAND
+
+Nan put two and two together, and the answer came right.
+
+She got out of bed, lit her lamp again and began to dress. She turned
+her light down to a dim glimmer, however, for she did not want her aunt
+to look out of the window of her bedroom on the other side of the parlor
+and catch a glimpse of her light.
+
+In the half darkness Nan made a quick toilet; and then, with her
+raincoat on and hood over her head, she hesitated with her hand upon the
+knob of the door.
+
+"If I go through the parlor and out the side door, Aunt Kate will hear
+me," thought Nan. "That won't do at all."
+
+She looked at the further window. Outside the rain was pattering and
+there was absolutely no light. In the pocket of her raincoat Nan had
+slipped the electric torch she had brought from home, something of which
+Aunt Kate cordially approved, and was always begging Uncle Henry to buy
+one like it.
+
+The pocket lamp showed her the fastenings of the screen. Tom had made
+it to slide up out of the way when she wanted to open or close the sash.
+And, as far as she could see, any one could open it from the outside as
+easily as from the room itself.
+
+"And that's just what she did," decided Nan. "How foolish of me not to
+think of it before."
+
+With this enigmatical observation Nan prepared to leave the room by this
+very means. She was agile, and the sill of the window was only three
+feet from the ground. It was through this opening that she had helped
+Margaret Llewellen into her room on the first occasion that odd child
+had visited her.
+
+Nan jumped out, let the screen down softly, and hurried across the
+unfenced yard to the road. She knew well enough when she reached the
+public track, despite the darkness for the mirey clay stuck to her shoes
+and made the walking difficult.
+
+She flashed her lamp once, to get her bearings, and then set off down
+the lane toward the swamp road. There was not a light in any house she
+passed, not even in Mr. Fen Llewellen's cottage. "I guess Margaret's
+fast asleep," murmured Nan, as she passed swiftly on.
+
+The rain beat down upon the girl steadily, and Nan found it shivery
+out here in the dark and storm. However, her reason for coming, Nan
+conceived, was a very serious one. This was no foolish escapade.
+
+By showing her light now and then she managed to follow the dark lane
+without stepping off into any of the deep puddles which lay beside the
+path. She came, finally, to the spot where Rafe had met her and Tom with
+his lantern that evening. Here stood the great tree with a big hollow in
+it, Margaret Llewellen's favorite playhouse.
+
+For a moment Nan hesitated. The place looked so dark and there might be
+something alive in the hollow.
+
+But she plucked up courage and flashed her lamp into it. The white ray
+played about the floor of the hollow. The other Llewellen children dared
+not come here, for Margaret punished them if they disturbed anything
+belonging to her.
+
+What Nan was looking for was not in sight. She stepped inside, and
+raised the torch. The rotting wood had been neatly scooped out, and
+where the aperture grew smaller at the top a wide shelf had been made by
+the ingenious Margaret. Nan had never been in this hide-out before.
+
+"It must be here! It must be here!" she kept telling herself, and stood
+on her tiptoes to feel along the shelf, which was above her head.
+
+Nan discovered nothing at first. She felt along the entire length of the
+shelf again. Nothing!
+
+"I know better!" she almost sobbed. "My dear, beautiful."
+
+She jumped up, feeling back on the shelf with her right hand. Her
+fingers touched something, and it was not the rotting wood of the tree!
+
+"It's there!" breathed the excited girl. She flashed her lamp around,
+searching for something to stand upon. There in the corner was a roughly
+made footstool.
+
+In a moment Nan had the footstool set in position, and had stepped upon
+it. Her hand darted to the back of the shelf. There was a long box, a
+pasteboard box.
+
+Nan dropped her lamp with a little scream of ecstasy, and of course the
+light went out. But she had the long box clasped in her arms. She could
+not wait to get home with it, but tumbled off the stool and sat down
+upon it, picked up the torch, held it so the round spot-light gave her
+illumination, and untied the string.
+
+Off came the cover. She peeped within. The pink and white loveliness of
+Beulah's wax features peered up at her.
+
+In fifteen minutes Nan was back in her room, without being discovered by
+anybody, and with the doll safely clasped in her arms. Indeed, she went
+to bed a second time that night with her beloved playmate lying on the
+pillow beside her, just as she had done when a little girl.
+
+"I suppose I'm foolish," she confessed to Aunt Kate the next morning
+when she told her about it. "But I loved Beulah so much when I was
+little that I can't forget her now. If I go to Lakeview Hall I'm going
+to take her with me. I don't care what the other girls say!"
+
+"You are faithful in your likes, child," said Aunt Kate nodding. "'Tis a
+good trait. But I'd like to lay that Marg'ret Llewellen across my knee,
+for her capers."
+
+"And I didn't think she cared for dolls," murmured Nan.
+
+But it was young Bob who betrayed the mysterious reason for his sister's
+act.
+
+"Huh!" he said, with a boy's disgust for such things. "Mag's crazy about
+pretty faces, if they're smooth, an' pink. She peeked into that Sherwood
+gal's room and seed her playin' doll; then she had ter have it for
+herself 'cause it was so pretty and had a smooth face, not like the
+kids' dolls that Aunt Matildy buyed."
+
+Poor little Margaret was greatly chagrined at the discovery of her
+secret. She ran away into the woods whenever she saw Nan coming, for a
+long time thereafter. It took weeks for the girl from Tillbury to regain
+the half-wild girl's confidence again.
+
+Nan was just as busy and happy as she could be, considering the
+uncertain news from Scotland and Uncle Henry's unfortunate affair with
+Gedney Raffer. She helped Aunt Kate with the housework early every
+morning so that they might both hurry into the woods to pick berries.
+
+Pine Camp was in the midst of a vast huckleberry country, and at the
+Forks a cannery had been established. Beside, the Forks was a big
+shipping centre for the fresh berries.
+
+Uncle Henry bought crates and berry "cups," and sometimes the whole
+family picked all day long in the berry pasture, taking with them a cold
+luncheon, and eating it picnic fashion.
+
+It was great fun, Nan thought, despite the fact that she often came home
+so wearied that her only desire was to drop into bed. But the best part
+of it, the saving grace of all this toil, was the fact that she was
+earning money for herself! Account was faithfully kept of every cup of
+berries she picked, and, when Uncle Henry received his check from the
+produce merchant to whom he shipped the berries, Nan was paid her share.
+
+These welcome earnings she saved for a particular purpose, and for no
+selfish one, you may be sure. Little Margaret Llewellen still ran from
+her and Nan wished to win the child back; so she schemed to do this.
+
+After all, there was something rather pitiful in the nature of the child
+who so disliked any face that was "wizzled," but loved those faces that
+were fair and smooth.
+
+Margaret only possessed a feeling that is quite common to humanity; she
+being such a little savage, she openly expressed an emotion that many of
+us have, but try to hide.
+
+The Llewellen children picked berries, of course, as did most of the
+other neighbors. Pine Camp was almost a "deserted village" during the
+season when the sweet, blue fruit hung heavy on the bushes.
+
+Sometimes the Sherwood party, and the Llewellens, would cross each
+others' paths in the woods, or pastures; but little Margaret always
+shrank into the background. If Nan tried to surprise her, the half wild
+little thing would slip away into the deeper woods like one of its own
+denizens.
+
+Near the river one day Margaret had an experience that should have
+taught her a lesson, however, regarding wandering alone in the forest.
+And the adventure should, too, have taught the child not to shrink so
+from an ugly face.
+
+Nan had something very important to tell Margaret. Her savings had
+amounted to quite a goodly sum and in the catalog of a mail-order
+house she had found something of which she wished to secure Margaret's
+opinion. The child, as usual, ran away when they met, and even Bob could
+not bring her back.
+
+"She's as obstinate as dad's old mu-el," grunted the disgusted boy.
+"Can't do a thing with her, Nan Sherwood."
+
+"I'll just get her myself!" declared Nan, laughing, and she started into
+the thicker woods to circumvent Margaret. She did not follow the river
+as the smaller girl had, but struck into the bush, intending to circle
+around and head Margaret off.
+
+She had not pushed her way through the clinging vines and brush for ten
+minutes before she heard somebody else in the jungle. She thought it was
+the little girl, at first; then she caught sight of a man's hat and knew
+that Margaret did not wear a hat at all.
+
+"Goodness! Who can that be?" thought Nan. She was a little nervous about
+approaching strange people in the wood; although at this season there
+was nothing to apprehend from stragglers, there were so many berry
+pickers within call.
+
+Nan did not seek to overtake the man, however, and would have kept on
+in her original direction, had she not heard a cry and a splitting crash
+toward the river bank. Some accident had happened, and when Nan heard
+the scream repeated, she was sure that the voice was that of Margaret.
+
+So she set off directly, on a run, tearing her dress and scratching her
+hands and face, but paying no attention to either misfortune. She only
+wanted to get to the scene of the accident and lend her aid, if it was
+needed.
+
+And it would have been needed if it had not been for the man whose hat
+she had seen a few moments before. He made his passage through the bush
+much quicker than could Nan, and when the latter reached an opening
+where she could see the river, the stranger was just leaping into the
+deep pool under the high bank.
+
+It was plain to be seen what had happened. A sycamore overhung the
+river and somebody had climbed out upon a small branch to reach a few
+half-ripened grapes growing on a vine that ran up the tree.
+
+The branch had split, drooping downward, and the adventurous
+grape-gatherer had been cast into the water.
+
+"Oh, Margaret!" screamed Nan, confident that it was the reckless child
+that was in peril.
+
+She hurried to the brink of the low bluff, from which the rescuer had
+plunged. He had already seized the child (there was an eddy here under
+the bank) and was striking out for the shore. Nan saw his wet face, with
+the bedraggled hair clinging about it.
+
+It was the awfully scarred face of Injun Pete; but to the excited Nan,
+at that moment, it seemed one of the most beautiful faces she had ever
+seen!
+
+The Indian reached the bank, clung to a tough root, and lifted up the
+gasping Margaret for Nan to reach. The girl took the child and scrambled
+up the bank again; by the time she was at the top, Injun Pete was beside
+her.
+
+"She not hurt, Little missy," said the man, in his soft voice, and
+turning his face so that Nan should not see it. "She just scared."
+
+Margaret would not even cry. She was too plucky for that. When she got
+her breath she croaked:
+
+"Put me down, Nan Sherwood. I ain't no baby."
+
+"But you're a very wet child," said Nan, laughing, yet on the verge of
+tears herself. "You might have been drowned, you WOULD have been had it
+not been for Mr. Indian Pete."
+
+"Ugh!" whispered Margaret. "I seen him when I come up out o' that nasty
+water. I wanted to go down again."
+
+"Hush, Margaret!" cried Nan, sternly. "You must thank him."
+
+The man was just then moving away. He shook himself like a dog coming
+out of the stream, and paid no further attention to his own wet
+condition.
+
+"Wait, please!" Nan called after him.
+
+"She all right now," said the Indian.
+
+"But Margaret wants to thank you, don't you, Margaret?"
+
+"Much obleeged," said the little girl, bashfully. "You air all right,
+you air."
+
+"That all right, that all right," said the man, hurriedly. "No need to
+thank me."
+
+"Yes, there is," said Nan, insistently. "Come here, please. Margaret
+wants to kiss you for saving her life."
+
+"Oh!" The word came out of Margaret's lips like an explosion. Nan stared
+very sternly at her. "If you don't," she said in a low tone, "I'll tell
+your father all about how you came to fall into the river."
+
+Under this threat Margaret became amenable. She puckered up her lips
+and stretched her arms out toward Indian Pete. The man stumbled back and
+fell on his knees beside the two girls. Nan heard the hoarse sob in his
+throat as he took little Margaret in his arms.
+
+"Bless you! Bless you!" he murmured, receiving the kiss right upon his
+scarred cheek. But Nan saw that Margaret's eyes were tightly closed as
+she delivered the caress, per order!
+
+The next moment the man with the scarred face had slipped away and
+disappeared in the forest. They saw him no more.
+
+However, just as soon as the catalog house could send it, Margaret
+received a beautiful, pink-cheeked, and flaxen-haired Doll, not as fine
+as Beulah, but beautiful enough to delight any reasonable child.
+
+Nan had won back Margaret's confidence and affection.
+
+Meanwhile the hot summer was fast passing. Nan heard from her chum, Bess
+Harley, with commendable regularity; and no time did Bess write without
+many references to Lakeview Hall.
+
+Nan, advised by her former teacher in Tillbury, had brought her books to
+Pine Camp, and had studied faithfully along the lines of the high school
+work. She was sure she could pass quite as good an entrance examination
+for Lakeview Hall as Bess could.
+
+And at last good news came from Scotland:
+
+"I am not quite ready to bring Momsey home," Papa Sherwood wrote. "But
+the matter of her fortune is at least partially settled. The claims of
+the other relatives have been disallowed. Mr. Andrew Blake is prepared
+to turn over to your Momsey a part of her wonderful fortune. The rest
+will come later. She will tell you all about it herself.
+
+"What I wish to say to you particularly in this letter," pursued Mr.
+Sherwood, "is, that arrangements have been made for you to attend
+Lakeview Hall this coming semester. You will meet your friend, Elizabeth
+Harley, in Chicago, and will go with her to the school. I am writing by
+this mail to the principal of the Hall. Mr. Harley has made all other
+necessary arrangements for you."
+
+"Oh!" cried Nan, clasping her hands. "It's too good to be true! It can't
+be possible! I just know I'll wake up in a minute and find all this an
+exciting dream, and that's all!"
+
+But Nan was wrong on that point, as the reader will see if her further
+adventures are followed in the next volume of the series, entitled, "Nan
+Sherwood at Lakeview Hall, or, The Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse."
+
+While Nan was still intensely excited over this letter from Scotland,
+Toby Vanderwiller drove up to the Sherwood house behind his broken-kneed
+pony. This was the first time any of the Sherwoods had seen him since
+the day of the big storm and the fire in the sawdust.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX. OFF FOR LAKEVIEW HALL
+
+Nan ran out immediately to speak to the old lumberman; but Toby was
+calling for Uncle Henry:
+
+"Hey, Hen! Hen Sherwood! Come out yere," he cried.
+
+Uncle Henry halloaed from the stables, and came striding at the call.
+Nan reached the old rattletrap wagon first.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Vanderwiller!" she said. "I am glad to see you! And how is your
+wife and Corson?"
+
+He looked down at her reflectively, and for a moment did not say a word.
+Then he swallowed something and said, jerkily:
+
+"An' you're the one that done it all, Sissy! The ol' woman an' the boy
+air as chipper as bluejays. An' they air a honin' for a sight on you."
+
+"Yes. I haven't been over lately. But that man from Chicago came, didn't
+he?"
+
+"I sh'd say 'yes'! He come," said Toby, in awe. "An' what d'ye s'pose?
+He done buyed a heap of Corson's spec'mens an' paid him more'n a hundred
+dollars for 'em. And that ain't countin' that there dead-head butterfly
+ye made sech a time about.
+
+"I reckoned," pursued Toby, "that you was right crazy about that there
+bug. One bug's as bad as another to my way of thinkin'. But it seems
+that Chicago feller thinked dif'rent."
+
+"It really was one of the very rare death's-head moths?" cried Nan,
+delighted.
+
+"So he said. And he was willin' ter back up his belief with cold cash,"
+declared Toby, smiting his leg for emphasis. "He paid us harnsome for
+it; and he said he'd take a lot more spec'mens if--
+
+"Har! Here ye be, Hen," he added, breaking off to greet Nan's uncle. "I
+got suthin' to say to you. I kin say it now, for I ain't beholden ter
+nobody. With what me and the ol' woman had scrimped and saved, an' what
+this feller from Chicago give Corson, I done paid off my debt to ol' Ged
+Raffer, an' the little farm's free and clear."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it, Tobe," Uncle Henry declared, shaking hands with
+the old lumberman again. "I certain sure am glad to hear it! I'm pleased
+that you shouldn't have that worry on your mind any longer."
+
+"And it has been a worry," said Old Toby, shaking his head. "More'n you
+think for. Ye see, it snarled me all up so's I warn't my own master."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Ye see, Ged was allus after me to go inter court an' back up his claim
+ag'in you on that Perkins Tract."
+
+"I see," said Henry Sherwood again, nodding.
+
+"On the other hand, you wanted me, if I knowed which was right, to
+witness, too. If I'd witnessed for Ged, ev'rybody wuld ha' thought I
+done it because he had a mortgage on the farm."
+
+"I s'pose so," admitted Uncle Henry.
+
+"Or, if I helped you, they'd ha' thought you'd bribed me--mebbe helped
+me git square with Ged."
+
+"I couldn't. Too poor just now," said Uncle Henry, grimly. "But I'd the
+mind for it, Toby."
+
+"Well, there ye be. Whichever way the cat jumped, I'd lost the respect
+of the community," said the old lumberman. "But now I am independent, I
+don't give a dern!"
+
+Mr. Sherwood looked at him expectantly. Toby's "wizzled" face shone.
+
+"I got a debt owin' to that leetle gal you got here, and somethin' to
+pay off to Tommy, too. But money won't do it, ef I had money. I am goin'
+to tell what I know about that boundary, though, Hen, and it will do YOU
+good! I can find another old feller, livin' down Pale Lick way, that can
+corroborate my evidence.
+
+"You can git that injunction vacated at once, Hen, if you want, and put
+your axe-men right back into the Perkins Tract to work. That's what I
+come 'round to tell ye."
+
+Aunt Kate was moved to tears, an unusual expression of emotion on her
+part. Being of pioneer stock, and having suffered much in the past,
+Nan's aunt was not easily moved. Uncle Henry was delighted. It was a
+great day for the Sherwoods.
+
+It was another great day when, a week later, the roan ponies were
+brought to the door and Nan's trunk was strapped upon the back of the
+buckboard. Uncle Henry was to drive her to the train; but she would
+travel alone to Chicago to meet her chum, Bess Harley.
+
+"And go to Lakeview Hall! I never did really expect I'd get there," Nan
+sighed, as she clung to Aunt Kate's neck. "It almost makes me forget
+that Momsey and Papa Sherwood are not at home yet.
+
+"But, my dear!" she added, "if such a thing could be, you and Uncle
+Henry have taken the place of my own dear parents all these months I
+have been at Pine Camp. I've had a dee-lightful time. I'll never forget
+you all. I love you, love you, love you."
+
+The roan ponies started on the jump. The boys cheered her from the
+corner of the house, having bashfully remained in the background. Even
+Margaret Llewellen and her impish brother, Bob, appeared and shrilly
+bade her goodbye.
+
+Nan was off for school, and wonderful adventures lay before her!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp, by Annie Roe Carr
+
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