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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge, by Laura Lee Hope
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge
+
+Author: Laura Lee Hope
+
+Release Date: April 7, 2002 [eBook #4988]
+[Most recently updated: March 27, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Jim Weiler, xooqi.com
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT WILD ROSE LODGE ***
+
+
+
+
+The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge 
+
+or
+
+The Hermit of Moonlight Falls
+
+by Laura Lee Hope
+
+1921
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I. JUST FUN
+ CHAPTER II. THE FALLING TREE
+ CHAPTER III. THE QUEER LITTLE MAN
+ CHAPTER IV. GOOD NEWS
+ CHAPTER V. BETTY TAKES A DARE
+ CHAPTER VI. NEARLY WRECKED
+ CHAPTER VII. BAD TIDINGS CONFIRMED
+ CHAPTER VIII. PREMONITIONS
+ CHAPTER IX. A VISITOR
+ CHAPTER X. HURRAH FOR ALLEN
+ CHAPTER XI. THE HOLD-UP
+ CHAPTER XII. SHEEP!
+ CHAPTER XIII. THE ENEMY ROUTED
+ CHAPTER XIV. NOTHING HUMAN
+ CHAPTER XV. WILD ROSES
+ CHAPTER XVI. THE WHIRLPOOL
+ CHAPTER XVII. THE THING
+ CHAPTER XVIII. SURPRISED
+ CHAPTER XIX. LIKE OLD TIMES
+ CHAPTER XX. VERY MUCH ALIVE
+ CHAPTER XXI. OUT OF THE DARK
+ CHAPTER XXII. TRAGEDY
+ CHAPTER XXIII. A MOONLIGHT APPARITION
+ CHAPTER XXIV. RECOVERED
+ CHAPTER XXV. THE OLD CROWD AGAIN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+JUST FUN
+
+
+“Did you ever see a more wonderful day?”
+
+The four Outdoor Girls, in Mollie Billette’s touring car and with
+Mollie herself at the wheel, were at the present moment rushing wildly
+over a dusty country road at the rate of thirty miles an hour.
+
+Grace Ford was sitting in front with Mollie, while Betty Nelson and Amy
+Blackford “sprawled,” to use Mollie’s sarcastic and slightly
+exaggerated description, “all over the tonneau.”
+
+“You look as if you had never done a real day’s work in your life,”
+said Mollie, with a disapproving glance over her shoulder at the girls
+in the tonneau.
+
+“We never have,” returned quiet Amy, with a grin.
+
+“And we are proud of it,” added Betty, as she defiantly settled her
+feet still more comfortably on the foot rail. “Why should we be
+energetic when it is so much easier to be lazy?”
+
+“There the proper spirit speaks,” applauded Grace Ford from the front.
+“I think I shall have to change places with you, Betty. It’s far too
+exciting up here with Mollie. She insists upon staging near collisions
+every few feet! thus keeping me awake!”
+
+“Great heavens!” cried Mollie, pressing an impatient foot upon the
+accelerator to which the great car responded with an eager purring,
+“did any one ever give us the mistaken title of Outdoor Girls, I
+wonder? They should have called us the Rip Van Winkle club, instead.”
+
+“Now she’s getting sour-castic,” commented Grace lazily. “Have some
+candy, honey, and sweeten up.”
+
+She passed the ever-present box of delicacies over to Mollie, to which
+overture the young driver responded with so indignant a stare that
+Grace quickly withdrew the box, tucked it behind her, and strove to
+look unconscious.
+
+“Please, ma’am, I didn’t mean to do it,” she said meekly.
+
+“Well, don’t do it again, that’s all,” returned Mollie,
+uncompromisingly, her eyes once more on the road ahead. “I’ve eaten so
+many chocolates this week that I’ve had indigestion and mother
+threatened to cut down my allowance.”
+
+“Goodness, it’s my allowance that suffers,” retorted Grace, ruefully,
+“since it is my candy that you eat.”
+
+“Stop quarreling, girls, and answer my question,” said Betty, sitting
+up straight and regarding delightedly a vista of flying hills and
+woodland greenery. “I asked you a few minutes ago if you had ever seen
+so wonderful a day?”
+
+“Yes, plenty of ’em,” returned Mollie, as she took a sharp curve on two
+wheels. “If you weren’t too lazy to notice anything, Betty Nelson, you
+would see that there is a storm coming up. Look at those clouds over
+there in the east.”
+
+“Oh, you’re a kill-joy!” cried Betty, cocking an optimistic eye up at
+the sky. “It’s only one teeny little cloud anyway, and who cares for
+clouds when the boys are coming home?”
+
+Both Amy and Grace felt a breathless little tug at their hearts at the
+joyful challenge in Betty’s words, but Mollie, with a perverseness that
+was sometimes characteristic of her, refused to be too happy.
+
+“Who says they’re coming home?” she asked. “Now you’re only guessing.”
+
+“Guessing!” cried Betty indignantly. “What do you mean! guessing? The
+war is over, isn’t it?”
+
+“Yes; and has been for quite a while,” Mollie responded dryly. “But
+that doesn’t say that the boys are coming home right away!!”
+
+“We don’t care about the right away,” interrupted Amy, with a quiet
+happiness in her face that made Betty hug her impulsively. “We can wait
+patiently, now that we know they are safe.”
+
+“It’s all right for you to talk about patience, Amy,” retorted Mollie,
+throttling her engine and sliding at breakneck speed down a long hill
+without the thought of using a brake. A brake to Mollie meant something
+to be used at the last minute when she couldn’t think of anything else
+to do. “You’re an angel, but I’m not!”
+
+“No, indeed!” said Grace, so emphatically that the girls in the tonneau
+chuckled and Mollie looked at her threateningly.
+
+“For goodness’ sake, don’t waste time looking at me,” Grace pleaded, as
+they bounced into a hole in the road and out again, fairly jouncing the
+breath from the girls’ bodies. “Keep your eyes on the road, Mollie
+dear, We’re not ready to die yet.”
+
+“Well, look out, or you may! ready or not,” threatened Mollie darkly,
+as the car skidded around another precipitous turn and the girls saw
+with relief a long stretch of flat road before them.
+
+“Just the same the boys must be coming home before very long,” said
+Amy, quietly returning to the subject. “And when they do come we’ll
+have to give them some sort of big party or something, girls.”
+
+“Of course we will,” said Grace, munching contentedly on a chocolate.
+“Something that will make the people in Deepdale sit up and take
+notice.”
+
+“We-el! I don’t know,” objected Betty thoughtfully. “They say that the
+few soldier boys who have come home object to any sort of fuss being
+made over them. They seem to want to forget everything that has
+happened ‘over there,’ and any sort of celebration brings the whole
+thing vividly before them again.”
+
+“Yes, that’s true, too,” Mollie agreed. “I remember our doctor telling
+mother that if people only wouldn’t try to force confidences from the
+boys and would try to keep all thought of the awful things they had
+been through out of their minds, there would be fewer cases of nervous
+breakdowns.”
+
+“Pop!” said Grace, snapping her finger resignedly. “There go all our
+hopes of a good time, Amy. When the boys come home all we shall be
+allowed to do will be to smooth their fevered brows and hold their
+hands
+
+“Well, we might do worse things even than that,” said Betty, with a
+light laugh, and Mollie shot her a malicious glance.
+
+“Just watch Betty objecting to that,” she said wickedly. “Before we
+know it she will be sighing that Allen has only one fevered brow to
+smooth!”
+
+Amy and Grace looked at Betty mischievously! at Betty who could not for
+the life of her look as unconcerned as she would have liked.
+
+“Don’t be so foolish,” she said hastily, at which the girls only
+laughed the more.
+
+“Never mind, honey,” said Amy, putting an arm fondly about her chum. “I
+guess we will all be crazy with joy to get the boys home again,”
+
+“Well, you needn’t think you can hold hands with Will and smooth his
+fevered brow all the time,” said Grace unexpectedly. “Because I really
+have some share in him myself, you know. Remember, mine was one of the
+three pictures he kept under his pillow.”
+
+Readers of previous volumes in this series may recall that joyful
+letter written to Betty not so long ago in which Sergeant Allen
+Washburn! now Lieutenant Allen Washburn! had spoken of the three
+pictures which Will Ford had kept under his pillow during his long
+convalescence in one of the army hospitals over there. These readers
+may also remember that one of the pictures was of the boy’s mother,
+another of his sister, Grace, and the third of shy little Amy
+Blackford, who now was blushing so furiously at the mere mention of it.
+
+“How about poor Frank and Roy?” asked Mollie, mentioning the other two
+boys who made up the quartette of the girls’ boy chums. “Who will
+attend to their fevered brows?”
+
+“Oh, you and Grace can take turns at that,” said Betty, lightly adding,
+with a little sigh: “Try as we can, Amy and I never know quite how to
+pair you four off. We can’t for the life of us find out which of you
+likes Frank best and which inclines to Roy.”
+
+“That’s right, kid! keep ’em guessing,” said Mollie slangily, as she
+turned on power and challenged a steep grade. “Grace and I believe in
+scattering our favors! as ’twere. See that hill just ahead of us? What
+do you bet I make it without changing gears?”
+
+“If you make it without changing our looks, I’ll be happy,” said Grace
+ruefully, as they bumped and rumbled to the top of the steep grade.
+“Look out, Mollie!” she added suddenly, indicating a big pile of
+brushwood that jutted out almost into the center of the road. “For
+goodness’ sake, slow down!”
+
+But Mollie did more than slow down. She stopped! and with such
+suddenness that the girls were all but thrown out of the car and Betty
+bumped her nose on the seat in front.
+
+They had scarcely regained their poise when they were startled by a
+shrill cry from Amy.
+
+“Girls!” she almost screamed, clutching Betty’s arm in a grip that
+hurt, “look at that tree. It’s going to fall! Oh, we’ll be killed!”
+
+The girls followed the direction of her pointing finger and looks of
+horror sprang to their eyes. Slowly, its descent retarded somewhat by
+the branches of other trees, a towering giant of the forest tottered
+and crashed its destructive way downward. And they were directly in its
+path!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+THE FALLING TREE
+
+
+For a moment the Outdoor Girls sat fascinated, paralyzed, without the
+power to move a muscle. Then suddenly Grace seemed galvanized to
+action, She leaned toward Mollie, grasping the steering wheel of the
+motionless car frantically.
+
+“For heaven’s sake, Mollie, get out of the way! Start the car!” she
+screamed.
+
+“I can’t!” Mollie answered, tight-lipped. “Something’s wrong. The
+motor’s dead.”
+
+But with Grace’s scream, Betty had come to her senses and had scrambled
+out of the car, dragging the still paralyzed Amy after her.
+
+“Grace, get out! Mollie, are you crazy?” she shouted wildly. “You’ll be
+killed!!”
+
+Automatically Grace started to clamber to the road, but Mollie still
+fussed with brakes and levers, her lips in a tight line, her eyes
+blazing.
+
+“Something’s wrong! but I’ll get her started,” she muttered over and
+over to herself while Betty raged at her from the road.
+
+“Get out! get out!” fumed the Little Captain, “Jump, or I’ll come after
+you and we’ll both be killed. Mollie!”
+
+Luckily for Mollie’s suicidal stubbornness, the great tree had been
+halted far a moment in its downward plunge by some particularly heavy
+foliage and branches, but the girls could see that it was only a matter
+of seconds until the giant should tear itself loose and come plunging
+down upon them.
+
+And still Mollie fumbled with levers in a vain and foolish attempt to
+save her beloved car at the risk of her own life.
+
+Betty had just jumped upon the running board in a wild attempt to drag
+her chum from the car when suddenly help came to them from an
+unexpected quarter.
+
+An elderly man came running from the woods, evidently attracted by
+their excited cries. He gave one look at the toppling tree, even now
+tearing itself loose from the impeding branches, another at the machine
+with the two girls still in it, and then, with a speed and decision
+which seemed to belie his age, went to the rescue.
+
+“Come! help me push!” he cried to Amy and Grace, who were still
+standing dumbly in the middle of the road. A moment later he had thrown
+himself with all his might against the machine, striving to push it out
+of the path of the falling tree.
+
+In an instant of time the girls had added their strength to his and the
+automobile was moving slowly down the road. Luckily the car was on a
+down grade or they never could have managed it. As it was, there was
+just time to got out of the way when the great tree came crashing down,
+its outermost branches just brushing Amy’s skirt. The giant had fallen
+on the very spot where the car had been only a moment before!
+
+“Girls,” breathed Betty, with a shaky little attempt at a laugh, “I
+guess we’ve never in our lives been nearer death than we were just
+then.”
+
+And while the girls are marveling at their almost miraculous escape
+from a terrible death, time will be taken to introduce the Outdoor
+Girls to those readers who have not yet met them and also to review
+briefly a few of the exciting and interesting adventures they have had
+up to the time of this present narrative.
+
+There were four of them, Betty Nelson, or the “Little Captain” as the
+girls often called her because she had such a decided talent for
+knowing just the right thing to do at just the right moment, was
+eighteen, dark-haired and dark-eyed. She had a fund of vitality and
+more than her share of sense and good judgment! all of which went
+toward making her what she was, the most popular girl in Deepdale.
+
+Grace Ford, tall, slender and willowy, was almost the same age as
+Betty, but that fact and her love of the outdoors were the only things
+she had in common with the “Little Captain.” Her father, James Ford,
+was a lawyer, and her mother, Mrs. Margaret Ford, a rather dressy lady
+who spent a good deal of her time at clubs, was quite a figure in the
+society of Deepdale. However, all through the war Mrs. Ford had worked
+with an untiring enthusiasm for the “cause,” a fact which had made her
+many more friends than her social popularity could ever have done.
+
+Next in the little quartette came Mollie Billette. Mollie was
+seventeen, French-American, and impulsive, with a quick temper that
+made more trouble for herself than for any one else. She and Betty were
+alike in their splendid vigor and vitality. Mollie, or “Billy” as she
+was sometimes called by her chums, had a very lovely widowed mother and
+an extremely mischievous young brother and sister, Paul and Dora
+(nicknamed “Dodo”), who were twins and six. Although the twins were
+pretty nearly always in trouble, they were really adorable children,
+whom everybody loved.
+
+Amy Blackford, shy, sweet, pretty, completed the quartette. There had
+been a mystery about her past which had recently been cleared up, and
+it may have been this mystery that caused the girls to treat her with a
+little more consideration and gentleness than they did each other. Her
+guardian was a broker in the city who knew very little of the past
+except through letters.
+
+The four boys who were close chums of the girls and had added to the
+interest and excitement of more than one of their adventures were Allen
+Washburn, who was very much interested in Betty, and in whom Betty was
+very much interested; Will Ford, Grace’s brother, who had carried Amy
+Blackford’s picture all through the war; Frank Haley, Will Ford’s
+closest chum, and Roy Anderson who had not much distinction of any kind
+except that he was “lots of fun” and a chum of the other three boys.
+
+In the first volume of this series the girls went on a camping and
+tramping tour, tramping for miles over the country and meeting with
+many adventures on the way.
+
+Later they had more fun at Rainbow Lake, in a motor car, in a winter
+camp, in Florida, at Ocean View, then at Pine Island where the girls
+and boys together had cleared up a mystery surrounding a gypsy cave.
+
+Later the girls and boys found themselves caught in the meshes of the
+great war, as many hundreds of thousands of others had been. The boys
+responded eagerly to the bugle call, and the girls, too, were eager for
+Army service and finally went to a hostess house at Camp Liberty.
+Though the girls had never worked harder in their lives, they found
+that the task had a stirringly romantic side as well.
+
+Then in the volume directly preceding this, entitled “The Outdoor Girls
+at Bluff Point” the girls had had perhaps the most exciting adventure
+of all.
+
+The Hostess House at Camp Liberty having burnt down, the chums found
+themselves forced to take a much-needed, although not entirely welcome,
+vacation and had decided to spend it at a romantic spot near the ocean
+called Bluff Point. The cottage on the bluff had been loaned to the
+girls by Grace’s patriotic Aunt Mary, who declared that she owed
+something to the chums for having worked so hard for the good old Stars
+and Stripes. Mrs. Ford, worn out with war work, had gone with the girls
+to chaperon them.
+
+Bad tidings at first threatened to overwhelm the chums. The Fords
+received word that Will was seriously wounded “somewhere in France,”
+and later Mollie received a telegram from her mother saying that the
+twins, Dodo and Paul, had disappeared. Still later, while everything
+was at its blackest, Betty read Allen Washburn’s name among the
+missing. However, everything cleared up later when the twins, who had
+been kidnapped, were recovered and their kidnapper sent to justice.
+Still later Allen proved that the report that he had been missing was
+an error by writing to Betty himself and in the letter he also spoke of
+Will Ford and the fact that he was getting over his wound splendidly.
+Of course there had been great rejoicing and the vacation had proved a
+happy one after all.
+
+And now, at the time of this story, the war was over and the first
+regiments of soldiers had arrived from the other side and the girls
+were expecting a joyful reunion with the boys at any time.
+
+They had not yet made definite plans for the summer and were just in
+the position of waiting for something to happen when something had
+happened with a vengeance! but not at all the kind of something which
+the four girls had expected.
+
+“I think you are right, my dear,” said the man who had saved the lives
+of at least two of the girls, rubbing his hands fussily together and
+peering out of small, near-sighted eyes, first at the tree and then at
+the girls. “It was a close call! a very close call. I declare, it was
+very nearly the closest call I ever saw!”
+
+For the first time the girls really looked at him. He was a rather
+small man, slenderly built, with long sensitive hands and a very bald
+head, in the center of which a tuft of hair stood comically upright.
+These characteristics, coupled to the squinting eyes, gave the man a
+very odd appearance.
+
+He was so queer a figure standing there in the center of the road that
+the girls found themselves staring unduly. Realizing something of this,
+Betty jumped down from the running board where she was still standing
+and held out her hand to the little man, thanking him in a voice that
+still trembled a little for the great service he had done them. The
+other girls followed suit and so overwhelmed their rescuer that he
+seemed quite embarrassed and looked around nervously as if for some
+means of escape.
+
+Betty, seeing his embarrassment, was about to take pity upon him when
+something happened that they had not bargained for. It began to rain,
+not gently, but in a deluge, taking the girls completely by surprise.
+
+Instinctively they turned toward the car, but Mollie suddenly began to
+laugh in a half-hysterical manner.
+
+“This is what I call fun,” she said. “Engine dead, caught in the rain,
+and I’ve even left the side curtains at home! I guess we’re in for it,
+girls.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+THE QUEER LITTLE MAN
+
+
+While the girls stood looking wildly at each other their unknown
+rescuer seemed suddenly galvanized to action.
+
+“This won’t do at all!” he cried, raising both hands to his bald head
+which was by this time very wet and more shiny than ever. “You will get
+your death of cold, young ladies, you surely will. You must come with
+me. Here, right along this path I have a cottage!” All the time he was
+talking he was hustling them fussily ahead of him, for all the world
+like some old hen with a brood of chickens.
+
+The girls, not knowing what else to do and being in rather a bewildered
+frame of mind, allowed themselves to be hustled. The rain was sheeting
+down in a terrific cloud burst, so that their clothes clung to them
+damply and they began to shiver.
+
+They circled the fallen tree which had so nearly been their undoing,
+and a moment later found themselves upon a narrow footpath which seemed
+to lead into the very heart of the woods.
+
+“I wonder where he is taking us,” whispered Grace in Betty’s ear.
+“Maybe he’s a murderer or something.”
+
+In spite of her discomfort, Betty giggled.
+
+“Did you ever see a murderer with a bald head like that?” she asked.
+
+It seemed to the girls as if the path must be at least a mile long, but
+just as they were despairing of ever reaching the end of it, they came
+out into a partially cleared space and through the trees caught a
+glimpse of something that looked like a house.
+
+Their new acquaintance, who up to this time had been bringing up the
+rear, now took the lead and led them over tangled underbrush, stones
+and foot-bruising rocks, to his strange little dwelling.
+
+“It’s a house, it’s a house!” cried Grace thankfully, as they hurried
+after the little man. “I guess somebody will have to wring me out when
+we get inside. I’m soaked through!”
+
+“Goodness, why don’t you tell us something we don’t know?” grumbled
+Mollie, but nobody was listening to her. They had reached the house and
+the man had swung the door open hospitably.
+
+“Step inside, step inside, do,” he urged with a nervous gesture that
+reminded the girls once more of the proverbial hen. “You will find it
+dry at least, and I will have a fire for you in a hurry. Just a moment
+till I get some wood! just a moment!!”
+
+And while he rambled on, suiting his words with quick nervous action,
+the girls crowded inside the cottage and looked about them curiously.
+
+The room they had entered was large and scrupulously neat. At first
+glance it seemed a queer combination of hunting lodge and museum of
+natural history. The rough clapboards and beams of the ceiling and
+walls had never been plastered, and this very crudity seemed somehow to
+give the room an air of warmth and homelikeness that was very inviting.
+
+Hung on the walls were several fairly large skins of animals, a gun or
+two, and over the huge open fireplace, which very nearly covered one
+end of the room, hung the magnificent head of a buck.
+
+On the wall opposite the fireplace was a set of rudely-erected shelves,
+one beneath the other, and these shelves were covered with specimens of
+butterflies, beetles and other bugs of every size and description. That
+the specimens had been mounted by an expert even an inexperienced eye
+could see.
+
+The girls, who had been regarding the oddities of the room with growing
+interest, were brought back to a realization of the discomfort of wet
+clothes by the owner of the place himself.
+
+The latter had brought firewood from somewhere, and, with the aid of
+half a dozen matches, had succeeded in getting a fairly good blaze.
+
+Then with a smile of satisfaction he turned to the girls, rubbing his
+hands together genially.
+
+“Come nearer to the fire! come closer! do,” he urged in his quick
+nervous way. “I am sure you are chilled through! quite chilled through.
+I will bring chairs.” He stopped abruptly and looked about him with an
+embarrassed air, his gaze coming to rest on the only chair which
+adorned the room.
+
+Betty, seeing his confusion, was trying to think of something helpful
+to say, when the little man suddenly found a way out of his quandary.
+
+“Ah, I have it!” he cried, seizing enthusiastically upon a long bench
+that stood on one side of the room. “Four can sit upon this quite
+easily, I am sure. A happy thought! a very happy thought!” and he
+pulled and tugged at the bench until he succeeded in moving it close to
+the fire,
+
+Afterward it occurred to the girls that they might have helped him, for
+it was a very heavy bench and he was rather a frail old man. But at the
+time they were too interested in this unusual place and their rather
+extraordinary host, to think of anything very rational.
+
+However, they seated themselves dutifully in a row upon the bench, “for
+all the world like an orphan asylum out for an airing,” as Mollie said
+later, and gratefully stretched out their sodden shoes to the blaze.
+
+They were cold and they were wet and they were fast becoming very
+hungry, all of which might have been expected to form a very good
+reason why they should have been miserable, But they weren’t miserable!
+not at all. To the Outdoor Girls the thrill of an adventure always more
+than counterbalanced the possible discomforts attending it.
+
+Their host started to draw up the one chair in the room, hesitated a
+moment then, as though he had just thought of something, turned and
+darted through the door, closing it with a little click behind him.
+
+For the space of half a second, the girls looked after him. Then they
+looked at each other. Then they drew a long breath and let loose the
+flood of curious questions which had been struggling for expression for
+the past twenty minute
+
+“Well, isn’t this a lark?” cried Mollie, her eyes dancing. “Half an
+hour ago we were awfully bored, and now look at us.”
+
+“Yes, look at us,” said Grace with a little sniff. “I’m sure we’re not
+very much to look at right now with our hair wet, and our clothes!”
+
+“Oh, for goodness’ sake, who cares about such things?” cried Betty
+gaily. “I think this is a darling place and I’m having the time of my
+life. I wonder who he is?”
+
+“He seemed kind of scared just now, didn’t he!” chuckled Mollie,
+feeling her shoe to see if it was drying out any. “It was funny the way
+he bolted out of the room.”
+
+“Poor old dear! no wonder he was scared,” commented Grace, as she took
+off her hat and tried to do something with her hopelessly bedraggled
+locks. “The way we look we’re enough to scare anybody. Oh, dear, hasn’t
+any one a comb?”
+
+“Why, of course, we carry a complete beauty parlor outfit just for your
+benefit, dear,” giggled Mollie. “The rest of us don’t need it though.
+We are too beautiful naturally.”
+
+“You know I like him a lot, the queer little man, I mean,” said Amy,
+evidently following out her own train of thought. “He seems kind of
+fussy and peculiar but he has an awfully nice smile.”
+
+“Trust Amy to find the smile,” said Betty, putting an arm fondly about
+the younger girl. “And of course we all like him,” she added seriously.
+“If it hadn’t been for him we probably wouldn’t be feeling so happy
+right now.”
+
+“Yes, we would probably be in some hospital with our unhappy relatives
+weeping over our mangled remains,” said the irrepressible Mollie, and
+laughed at the shriek that went up at her gruesome remark. “There
+probably wouldn’t have been enough of us left to recognize,” she added
+by way of good measure, and they shrieked again.
+
+“For goodness’ sake, let’s talk of something pleasant,” said Grace,
+rising suddenly and going over to the window. “If you want to sit on
+that old bench all day, you can.”
+
+It appeared that the girls had no intention of sitting on the bench all
+day. They got up and sauntered about the room, examining the skins on
+the walls and looking, but without much curiosity, at the rifles. They
+lingered longest before the shelves of butterflies and beetles, for
+some of the specimens were really beautiful and very rare.
+
+After they had examined everything in sight they began to grow restive.
+They must have been in the place nearly an hour and it suddenly
+occurred to them to wonder where their host had been keeping himself
+all this time.
+
+“I wish we could get started,” worried Mollie, looking out upon the
+sodden landscape. The rain was apparently coming down just as hard as
+ever. “I hate to leave the car all by itself out there. Somebody might
+steal it.”
+
+“I wish I knew where that man was,” said Grace nervously. “I never
+trust strange men. He may set the house on fire for all we know.”
+
+The words were hardly out of her mouth when the door opened and the
+topic of conversation himself entered, carrying a tray so big and
+heaped so high with sandwiches that one could scarcely discover the man
+behind it.
+
+Betty and Amy ran to his assistance, and between them they got the tray
+safely to the bench. In one delighted glance the girls saw that not
+only sandwiches, but a steaming pot of coffee and the remains of what
+had been a great, three-layer chocolate cake were on the tray.
+
+At thought of the fussy little man taking all this time and trouble,
+for it must have taken a good deal of work to make all that formidable
+array of sandwiches! the girls were sincerely touched and regarded
+their host with a new interest.
+
+“There, there,” he was saying, regarding the heaped-up tray with
+evident pleasure, “you must sit down and eat at once. You must be
+nearly starved! famished. I hope this will be enough.”
+
+He looked at them so anxiously that Betty felt like hugging him! and
+nearly did it.
+
+“Enough! Well, I guess it is enough,” she said heartily, as the other
+girls seated themselves on the bench either side of the tempting tray
+and began enthusiastically to help themselves. “It would be plenty for
+an army. We can’t thank you enough.”
+
+“Indeed we can’t,” added Mollie.
+
+“It’s awfully good of you,” said Grace, as she took a bite of her ham
+sandwich.
+
+“Awfully good,” added Amy, like an echo.
+
+The little man waved aside their thanks and drew up the one chair in
+the room, talking all the time in his quick, jerky fashion.
+
+“It was no trouble, I am sure,! no trouble whatever,” he said, adding
+as though he wished to change the subject: “You didn’t tell me your
+name!!” he hesitated, looking at Betty, who of course did tell him her
+name on the spot. This proved a signal for mutual introductions, and
+the girls learned that their new friend was a college professor, Arnold
+Dempsey by name. They also learned that he had taken up woodcraft in
+the hope of recovering his health.
+
+And while they contentedly munched sandwiches and sipped steaming
+coffee the girls learned a good deal more about Arnold Dempsey, and the
+more they learned of him the more they felt drawn to him.
+
+And when he started to tell them of his two sons who had fought so
+nobly in the army of democracy, their eyes began to shine and they
+leaned toward him with an interest that was intensely real.
+
+“Oh, it must be wonderful to have two big soldier sons,” cried Amy,
+forgetting her shyness in her enthusiasm. “Aren’t you dreadfully
+proud?”
+
+A gleam came into Professor Dempsey’s eyes and his thin shoulders
+straightened.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he said. “Of course I’m proud of my boys! very proud. And I
+hope,” a look of absolute happiness came into his eyes and he smiled
+contentedly, “that before very long I shall see them.”
+
+“Oh, I’m sure you will!” cried Betty eagerly.
+
+“That’s what we are all hoping for, anyway,” said Grace, adding with a
+sigh: “The boys have been gone so _dreadfully_ long.”
+
+“Look,” cried Mollie presently, rising suddenly to her feet and
+pointing toward the window. “We have been so busy talking that we never
+noticed the sun had come out.”
+
+“And doesn’t it look good!” exulted Betty.
+
+In spite of their reluctance to leave their newfound friend, the girls
+were anxious to be off, for they knew their parents would be worrying
+about them.
+
+Professor Dempsey insisted on seeing them safely back to the road
+although they protested that there was absolutely no need of it.
+
+“There are two or three paths that lead to the road,” he explained, as
+he flung wide the door, letting in a flood of sunshine, “and I wouldn’t
+have you lose your way for the world! not for the world!”
+
+The woodland was beautiful after the rain, and the girls sniffed the
+fragrant air eagerly as they followed Professor Dempsey along the path.
+It was not till they had almost reached the road that Mollie had a
+disquieting thought.
+
+“How do we know but what we’re stuck here for good?” she asked the
+girls. “The car stopped dead, you remember, just under that horrible
+tree, and I’m sure I don’t know what in the world made it. If I can’t
+find out the trouble!!”
+
+“Oh, but you’ve got to find it,” protested Grace, while Betty and Amy
+looked worried. “We can’t stay here all night, and it may be a dozen
+miles to the nearest garage.”
+
+“I know that just as well as you do,” grumbled Mollie. “But if I can’t,
+I can’t, that’s all.”
+
+By this time they had reached the road and Mollie went straight to the
+car. While she and Betty were trying to find out what was wrong the
+other two girls and Professor Dempsey looked on anxiously.
+
+“Well, as far as I can see there is absolutely nothing wrong with it,”
+snapped Mollie at last, lifting a face flushed with exertion. “Get in,
+girls, and I’ll start the engine! or try to. Then if she won’t go we’ll
+have to make up our minds to stay here all night or walk to the next
+garage.”
+
+Accordingly the girls got in and Mollie pressed the self-starter. To
+her great surprise, the engine purred a response, and as she shifted
+her gears the car moved slowly forward.
+
+“Oh, goodie, we’re going,” cried Amy, and the faces of the other girls
+showed relief.
+
+“Must have been a drop of water in the gasoline,” hazarded Mollie, and
+then she throttled the engine once more while she and her chums turned
+to say good-bye to Professor Dempsey. The latter was still standing in
+the road, looking up at them rather wistfully.
+
+“I’m glad that I had an opportunity of helping you, young ladies! very
+glad,” he answered, in response to their repeated thanks. “You
+conferred a great favor on me also, for I have little company.
+Good-bye! and good luck to you.”
+
+The girls responded gayly, and as they started forward Betty leaned far
+out of the machine to call back an encouraging: “Keep hoping hard for
+your boys to come home. I am sure they will be back soon.”
+
+“Thank you, young lady, thank you,” said Professor Dempsey, but the
+words were too low for Betty to catch and she was too far away to see
+the mist that sprang suddenly to his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+GOOD NEWS
+
+
+Deepdale, the home of the four Outdoor Girls, is a thriving little city
+with a population of about fifteen thousand people. It is situated on
+the Argono River, a pleasant stream where a great many of the young
+folk of Deepdale, and some of the older ones too, keep motor boats and
+canoes and various other types of pleasure craft.
+
+Farther on, the Argono empties into Rainbow Lake, which is picturesque
+in the extreme. It has several pretty and romantic looking islands,
+chief of which is Triangle Island! so called because of its shape.
+
+There is a boat running from Deepdale to Clammerport at the foot of
+Rainbow Lake, and this boat is almost always crowded with pleasure
+seekers. In addition to this Deepdale is situated in the heart of New
+York state and is only a hundred-and-fifty-mile run from the city of
+that name. Thus one can easily see that Deepdale is a very desirable
+place in which to live.
+
+At least that is what the four Outdoor Girls thought. And since they
+had spent most of their lives there, they certainly ought to know!
+
+On the morning of this day, some ten days or so after their strange
+encounter with Professor Dempsey, the girls were gathered on Betty’s
+porch, talking over their plans for the summer.
+
+“I am only waiting to hear from Uncle John,” Mollie was saying, as she
+swung lazily back and forth in the couch swing. “The last time I saw
+him he said that he was almost sure to go north this summer and he told
+me that as soon as he made definite plans he would let me know.”
+
+“You told us that two weeks ago,” Grace reminded her. “And we haven’t
+heard from him yet.”
+
+“It does seem to take him a long time to make up his mind,” sighed Amy.
+
+Betty, who had been trying to read a novel, closed the book and turned
+to them with a laugh.
+
+“Goodness, you all sound doleful,” she told them. “It seems to me that
+we ought to be able to live through it, even if we don’t get Wild Rose
+Lodge for the summer. There are plenty of other things we can do,”
+
+Mollie turned upon her indignantly.
+
+“How you talk, Betty Nelson,” she scolded her. “As if we could possibly
+have as good a time anywhere else as we could at Wild Rose Lodge. Think
+of being in a real hunting lodge out in the woods away from everybody!
+Why, it will be a real adventure!”
+
+“All right. I surrender! don’t shoot,” laughed Betty, coming over and
+perching on the railing beside Mollie. “I admit we should probably have
+more fun at the lodge than we could anywhere else. I was only trying to
+look on the bright side of things in case our plans should fall
+through. Hello! who’s this?”
+
+“This” proved to be Mollie’s little sister Dora, or “Dodo,” as she was
+called by almost everybody. With a sigh of relief, the girls saw that
+Dodo’s twin brother, Paul, was not with her, for together the children
+were a simply unconquerable pair.
+
+The twins had been spoiled by their widowed mother, Mrs. Billette, even
+before the time when they had been kidnapped and spirited off by a
+hideous Spaniard. But since their recovery, their joyful mother had
+indulged them in every way until they had become well nigh
+unmanageable.
+
+Yet in spite of everything, the twins were very lovable, and every one
+loved them, even those whom they annoyed most.
+
+And now as Dodo tore up the street toward them, waving something white
+in her hand, the girls instinctively glanced about to see what they
+ought to put out of sight before the cyclone struck them.
+
+“Thank goodness, Paul isn’t with her,” murmured Grace. “Then we would
+be in for it.”
+
+“Dodo,” cried Mollie as the child started up the walk, “scrape some of
+that mud off your feet before you come up, You will get Betty’s porch
+all dirty.”
+
+“Name’s Dora! not Dodo,” the little girl answered, paying not the
+slightest heed to Mollie’s caution about the mud. “Dodo’s a baby’s
+name! don’t like it. Got something for you.”
+
+She stumbled heedlessly up the steps, leaving a trail of mud behind
+her, and almost breaking her neck in the bargain.
+
+“Now just look at Betty’s porch,” Mollie was beginning in exasperation
+when Betty laughingly interfered.
+
+“Oh, let her alone, Mollie,” she coaxed. “The porch was dirty anyway
+and! what’s that you have in your hand, Dodo?”
+
+“Sumfin’ for Mollie,” answered Dodo, leaning sulkily against the rail
+while the girls regarded her anxiously. “An’ if Mollie aren’t nice to
+me she can’t have it.”
+
+“Oh, for goodness’ sake be nice to her and get it over with, Mollie,”
+urged Grace, uneasily conscious of the candy box she had shoved hastily
+behind her. She was afraid one corner of it might show.
+
+So Mollie got down from her perch on the railing and went over
+coaxingly to the little girl.
+
+“Give it to Mollie, honey,” she begged. “I’ll even call you Dora, if
+you will.”
+
+“_Always_ Dora! _never_ Dodo?” asked Dodo eagerly, for she was growing
+out of babyhood just enough to resent being called by her baby name.
+
+“Always Dora,” Mollie promised.
+
+For answer Dodo held out the white thing she had waved at them from the
+street, and with a little cry of excitement Mollie saw that it was a
+letter addressed to her in her Uncle John’s firm hand.
+
+At her exclamation the girls crowded round her eagerly. She hastily
+tore open the envelope and devoured the contents. Then she turned to
+the girls with a glowing face.
+
+“It’s all right, it’s all right!” she cried, waving the letter round
+her head like a flag and nearly upsetting her chums. “Uncle John says
+it is settled. He is going to Canada for a couple of months and we can
+have the lodge for the whole time he is away or a part of it, just as
+we wish. Hooray! How’s that for luck?”
+
+The girls were so excited over their good fortune that they forgot all
+about Dodo. She, finding herself unobserved, had slipped around the
+girls to the swing, snatched the box of candy which Grace had exposed
+when she got up, had taken the steps two at a time and was flying off
+down the street before the girls saw what she was up to.
+
+Then it was Grace who, with a dreadful premonition, thought of her
+candy. She turned quickly, saw that the box was gone, and uttered a
+wail of woe.
+
+“That little Turk of a sister of yours has done it again,” she cried,
+turning to Mollie, while Betty and Amy began to laugh. “You just wait
+till I catch her. I’ll get my candy back if I have to! spank her,” this
+last with a fierce scowl.
+
+Betty put an arm about her excited chum, led her over to the swing and
+put her down in it.
+
+“By the time you caught Dodo there wouldn’t be any of your candy left,”
+she said, adding soothingly: “Never mind, honey. We will get you some
+more if we have to take up a collection.”
+
+“Makes me feel like an orphan’s home,” grumbled Grace, but she laughed
+nevertheless with the rest and immediately forgot both her candy and
+Dodo in renewed excitement over Wild Rose Lodge.
+
+“Just where is this place, Mollie?” asked Amy. “What is it called?”
+
+“Oh, that’s the very best part of it,” said Mollie, with a mysterious
+smile. “It has the most wonderful, most romantic name. Come closer
+while I whisper it! Moonlight Falls. There, isn’t that a real name for
+a place?”
+
+“Wild Rose Lodge at Moonlight Falls,” sighed Grace ecstatically. “If we
+don’t have a wildly romantic time in a place with a name like that, it
+will be our own fault.”
+
+“But we will have to have a chaperon!” Amy was beginning when Betty
+interrupted her eagerly.
+
+“I have fixed that,” she said, and while they all looked in
+astonishment she went on quickly to explain. “I met Mrs. Irving in the
+street the other day! you know she has been away ever since that last
+time she was with us on Pine Island! and I asked her then if she would
+chaperon us this summer.”
+
+“But you didn’t even know then that we were going to Wild Rose Lodge,
+Betty,” Mollie interrupted.
+
+“I knew we were sure to go somewhere. We always!” Betty was arguing
+when Grace cut in impatiently.
+
+“Never mind about that,” she said. “Did Mrs. Irving say she would go?”
+
+“She said she was very sure she could manage it,” Betty answered. “She
+seemed awfully surprised and said it would be great fun to be with us
+girls again.”
+
+“It will be great fun for all of us,” said Amy happily. “I’ll never
+forget the wonderful time we had on Pine Island with Mrs. Irving and
+the boys.”
+
+“Yes! and the boys,” Betty repeated a little wistfully. She was
+thinking of Allen Washburn and the wonderful time they had had that
+never-to-be-forgotten summer! before the war had come to separate them
+and make their hearts ache. Oh, it would be unbelievably happy to have
+the boys back again! Will, Roy, Frank and! her Allen. The old crowd
+together once more. She looked around at the girls, who had also fallen
+into a thoughtful mood, and suddenly she smiled, the old bright, happy
+smile that was peculiarly Betty’s own.
+
+“Oh, cheer up, everybody,” she cried gayly. “How do we know but what
+the boys will be home in time to join us at Wild Rose Lodge? Then think
+of the fun!”
+
+“Oh, Betty, if we could only believe that!” they cried.
+
+“Well,” said the Little Captain stoutly, “you never can tell. Stranger
+things have happened, you know.”
+
+“But nothing so joyful,” added Mollie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+BETTY TAKES A DARE
+
+
+It would be a week or two before Wild Rose Lodge would be ready for the
+girls’ occupancy, and as a relief for their impatience they filled in
+the time in hiking, motoring and put-putting up and down the Argono in
+their natty little motor boat.
+
+But whatever it was they were doing, their conversation almost
+invariably returned to one of two subjects! the return of the boys and
+the good time they would have at Moonlight Falls.
+
+They spoke often of Professor Arnold Dempsey. They took a real interest
+in the queer little old man, both because of the service he had done
+them and the fact that he was watching and waiting for his two big
+sons, even as they were anxiously awaiting the return of their boys.
+
+“It must be dreadfully lonely for him in that little cabin or house or
+whatever you call it in the woods,” Amy said one day as she and the
+girls sauntered down to the dock where their motor boat was anchored.
+“And he said he hardly ever had company.”
+
+“Goodness, I should think he would go crazy,” Mollie commented. “Why, I
+go almost mad when I don’t have any one to talk to for an _hour_.”
+
+“I wonder if he lived in that little house all during the war,” said
+Betty thoughtfully. They had reached the dock and were walking slowly
+out upon it. “If he did, it must have been dreadfully hard for him. It
+makes me shiver to think of him sitting there all alone, reading the
+casualty list, terrified for fear the next name would be that of his
+son!!”
+
+“Oh, Betty,” cried gentle Amy, all her sympathy quickly roused by the
+picture Betty had drawn, “what a dreadful thing to think of!”
+
+“But he never did find their names among the missing or killed,” Mollie
+reminded them soberly. “We know that because he said he expected to see
+them soon.”
+
+“Of course, And all we can do is hope with all our hearts that he gets
+his wish,” said Betty brightly, adding with a sudden change of subject:
+“But away with dull care. The sun is shining and here’s our fairy ship
+waiting to carry us off to fresh adventure. What more could any one
+want, I’d like to know.”
+
+“Humph,” grunted Mollie, eyeing critically the trim little boat in
+which they had had so much fun and adventure, as the other girls
+tumbled aboard. “I’d say she didn’t look very much like a fairy boat
+just now. She needs considerable polishing and scrubbing. Why don’t you
+girls get busy, anyhow?”
+
+“Just hear who’s talking,” yawned Grace, disposing herself lazily in a
+comfortable chair on deck. “I haven’t noticed you waving a broom and
+mop frantically around these parts lately, Mollie dear.”
+
+“In fact,” Betty added with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, “I think
+I remember suggesting that the _Gem_ needed grooming the other day.
+Whereupon some one who shall be nameless suggested a motor ride
+instead.”
+
+“She’s got you there, old dear,” drawled Grace, taking the inevitable
+box of chocolates from her pocket and opening it lovingly. “I remember
+the incident pre-zactly as it has been described.”
+
+Mollie, who was still standing on the dock, regarding them frowningly,
+started to reply but Betty interrupted her with a shout. She had
+started the engine and the boat began to move slowly away from the
+dock.
+
+“Better hurry up,” suggested the Little Captain wickedly. “We’d rather
+not leave you behind, but if you insist.
+
+However, Mollie had not the slightest intention in the world of being
+left behind. With a gasp of mingled surprise and dismay she made a jump
+for it, cleared the foot of space between the dock and the boat and
+landed square in the middle of Grace’s astonished and outraged lap. She
+would have sat on the candy box, too, and would, in all probability,
+have ruined it and her dress as well, had not Grace, with rare presence
+of mind, whipped the box out of danger just in the nick of time.
+
+“Well,” said Mollie, too surprised and indignant to move for a moment,
+while, at the comical picture she made, both Betty and Amy laughed
+merrily, “I surely like this!”
+
+“You do, do you? Well, I don’t!” cried Grace, recovering both her
+breath and her dignity at the same moment. “If you don’t stop sitting
+on my lungs this minute, Mollie Billette, I’ll! I’ll! stick this pin
+into you.”
+
+With a yell Mollie stumbled to her feet and shook out her dress
+belligerently.
+
+“You had better not. I’m stronger than you, Grace Ford, and I’ve a good
+mind to let you see what the bottom of the river looks like.”
+
+She advanced toward her prospective victim, and Betty stopped laughing
+long enough to call to her.
+
+“You’d better change your mind, Mollie,” she cautioned merrily. “You
+can’t give Gracie a ducking without ruining her dress and she might
+charge you damages. Reconsider! I beg of you, reconsider!”
+
+Mollie condescended to reconsider and plumped herself down cross-legged
+on the deck, disdaining a chair.
+
+“Oh, very well,” she said, adding as she glared darkly at Grace: “You
+will probably never know, woman, how near to death you were.”
+
+To which Grace replied with unexpected ferocity.
+
+“And you may never know, woman, just how near to death you are this
+minute. Look at what you have done to my best sport skirt. I don’t
+believe I will ever be able to get those wrinkles out.”
+
+“If you two will stop quarreling just long enough to tell me where you
+want to go,” Betty requested, “I should be very much obliged. Up or
+down the river?”
+
+“Anywhere,” answered Grace, still regarding her crumpled sport skirt
+gloomily. “We are just trying to kill time this afternoon anyway, so I
+don’t see that it makes much difference where we go.”
+
+“Suppose we take her up to the Point,” suggested Mollie, getting up
+from the deck and going over to Betty who still had the wheel. “Maybe
+we can get some ice-cream and a drink of ice water. I am getting
+dreadfully thirsty already.”
+
+Betty looked tempted but a little doubtful.
+
+“You know it is pretty dangerous to run in there, Mollie,” she
+protested. “There are so many other boats driven by Percy Falconer’s
+crazy lot who don’t care whether they capsize you or not!”
+
+“Goodness, Betty, it isn’t like you to be afraid,” Mollie started, but
+stopped at the look in the “Little Captain’s” eye.
+
+“I’d rather you didn’t ever say that again, Mollie,” she said. “I’ll
+take you in there since you want it, but if anything should happen
+remember that I warned you.”
+
+“Goodness, Mollie, I don’t see why you ever wanted to go and suggest
+that for,” said Grace nervously. “We all know there is danger of a
+collision over at the Point, and I’m sure I don’t want to spoil my
+clothes, even if you do.”
+
+“Your father said that he would rather we kept to this side of the
+river, Betty,” urged Amy. “Please don’t go over to the Point now.”
+
+“There’s no use talking to her,” snapped Grace. “You ought to know
+Betty well enough by this time to know that she would take us over to
+the Point now, after what Mollie said, if she knew we would all die of
+it. Might as well save your breath.”
+
+Mollie said nothing, but down in her heart she was more than a little
+bit anxious and was beginning to regret that she had deliberately egged
+Betty on.
+
+Percy Falconer, of whom Betty had spoken, had once been a rather
+dudish, affected boy and had later developed into an exceedingly fast
+young man. He had an immensely rich father and a mother who denied him
+nothing so that he had been able to gather together a few kindred
+spirits among whom he was the leader. All the regular boys and girls in
+town thoroughly disliked “the set,” but there were a few girls who were
+willing to put up with Percy Falconer and his crowd for sake of the
+long motor rides, dances, dinners and motorboat picnics that the boys
+were able to give them.
+
+There were always some of this wild crowd over at the “Point,” and it
+was for this reason as well as the very real danger of a collision with
+a recklessly driven boat that Betty’s father had rather discouraged the
+chums going over to that side of the river.
+
+However the day was fine, the water of the river was as calm as a lake
+and the _Gem_ flew across the sparkling water like a gull, bringing a
+flush of pure excitement and pleasure to the faces of the girls.
+Danger! what danger could there be in this staunch little craft, with
+Betty at the wheel?
+
+They were half way across the river, now! three quarters. The gay
+pleasure craft flaunting up and down the river were becoming more
+numerous and Betty slackened speed. Her breath came more quickly and
+her hands tightened on the wheel. She could drive a boat as well as any
+boy, but here, she knew, was a situation to test her greatest skill.
+
+Craft of all sizes and descriptions seemed to the excited girls to be
+piling up about them. Most of the boats were being navigated carefully,
+but now and then a small, fast speed-craft would shoot out from behind
+another so suddenly that Betty would be forced to swerve sharply to one
+side, fairly grazing the stern of the racing boat.
+
+On one of these occasions, when it had seemed impossible to avoid a
+collision, Amy called out sharply:
+
+“Oh, Betty, don’t you think we had better go back?”
+
+And Betty replied with a queer little laugh:
+
+“Might just as well go ahead as back now. We’ll be there in a minute.
+Don’t worry.”
+
+The words were scarcely out of her mouth when two craft running neck
+and neck and driven recklessly slipped out from behind a sailboat and
+drove directly down upon the _Gem_. It seemed impossible that the
+Outdoor Girls could escape disaster.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+NEARLY WRECKED
+
+
+The girls did not scream. Perhaps they were too frightened or perhaps
+it was just natural pluck.
+
+They did jump to their feet though as if with some wild thought of
+leaping overboard. But there they remained, staring with fascinated
+eyes at the fate that was bearing down upon them.
+
+As for Betty, after one breath-taking minute when all the blood in her
+body seemed to rush to her head, she simply sat there and tried in the
+second that was given her to think what to do.
+
+Almost automatically, she wrenched the wheel around, nearly capsizing
+the boat with the sudden turn. At almost the same second, as though the
+thing had been prearranged, the boys in the racing craft swung around
+in the opposite direction.
+
+A slight scraping as the side of the _Gem_ slid along the side of the
+nearer of the racing craft, and they were safe, with no harm done with
+the exception of a little paint scraped from the side of the boat.
+
+It was a moment before the girls could realize what had happened to
+them. Then a voice hailed them from the boat alongside. In a glance the
+girls perceived that the voice belonged to no other than Percy Falconer
+himself.
+
+“Hello,” called Percy, adding boisterously as he recognized the girls:
+“Well, by all that’s holy, if it isn’t the Outdoor Girls! Thought you
+never came over to this side of the river.”
+
+“We don’t,” Betty answered, the hand that still gripped the wheel
+shaking nervously now that the danger was over. “And I don’t believe we
+ever will again, either!”
+
+“I say, your teeth are chattering,” cried Percy, looking at Betty in
+open admiration. In the old days, Percy had tried hard to win favor in
+Betty’s eyes, but the latter had always treated him with a good-natured
+indifference not unmixed with contempt that had been very hard for the
+young dude to bear. During the years he had still admired Betty from
+afar and hated Allen Washburn for being the “lucky one.” So now he
+hastened to make the most of what he thought was an opportunity.
+
+“Come on over to the Point with me and Derby here,” indicating the
+young fellow in the other racing craft who had drawn his boat up close
+to them and was looking on with interest. “We will get you something to
+steady your nerves a bit. We had a pretty narrow squeak that time, and
+it’s no wonder it upset you a little.”
+
+He was supposedly addressing all the girls, but his eyes were only for
+Betty. As for her, she suddenly had a startlingly clear mental picture
+of what her father would think were some one to tell him that his
+daughter and her chums had been seen at the “Point” with Percy Falconer
+and a friend of his.
+
+In days gone by Percy had been very insipid, his mind entirely on his
+clothes; now he had become a sport, and the report was that he caroused
+around not a little.
+
+Betty turned to the youth with a decided little shake of her head,
+though her eyes were smiling.
+
+“I think we shall have to go right back,” she said. “It looks as though
+it were going to rain. Thank you just as much,” and she began to ease
+her motor boat gently away from the other craft,
+
+“Oh, I say,” Percy cried, disappointedly and a little angrily, for out
+of the corner of his eye he could see that his friend was laughing at
+him, “we would only keep you for a moment or two. You needn’t be afraid
+of us. We won’t bite, you know.”
+
+“We don’t know you well enough to be sure even of that,” said Mollie,
+coming suddenly and flippantly into the conversation.
+
+But Percy took not the slightest notice of her and, as Betty was slowly
+but surely widening the distance between the _Gem_ and his boat, he
+leaned forward eagerly.
+
+“Betty, let me see you some time. How about to-morrow night?”
+
+And because Betty was always kind to every one and was sorry for
+Mollie’s flippant speech, she said, quite unexpectedly, even to
+herself, “All right.”
+
+Then she turned the _Gem_ around and started for home, conscious that
+her chums were gazing at her in speechless amazement.
+
+“Betty!” cried Grace, horrified. “You are never going to let Percy
+Falconer come to see you, are you?”
+
+But Betty turned on her irritably. She was tired and nervous and angry
+at herself for having anything to do with that conceited dude, Percy
+Falconer.
+
+“You heard me say he could come, didn’t you?” she said in response to
+Grace’s incredulous question, Amy’s wide-eyed stare, and Mollie’s grin.
+“And if you are going to ask me why I said so,” she added desperately,
+“I’m not going to tell you. And if anybody speaks to me before I get
+back to the dock, I’ll! wreck ’em, that’s all.”
+
+The girls exchanged glances and wisely decided to change the subject,
+for the present at least. For the time they had plenty to do anyway,
+just watching out that somebody else did not run into them!
+
+By the time they reached comparatively clear water they were all tired
+and they were glad for once when the _Gem_ scraped against the home
+dock and the “cruise” was over.
+
+“Well,” said Mollie as they climbed on to the dock, “we surely did have
+some excitement, but we didn’t get what we started out for after all.”
+
+“What’s that?” asked Grace, as she tied the ribbon round her candy box
+and adjusted her hat at a more becoming angle.
+
+“Ice-cream and a drink of ice water,” said Mollie ruefully. “I’ve just
+remembered that I am dying of thirst.”
+
+“Come on around to my house,” Betty invited. Her wrist was lame from
+gripping the wheel so hard and she felt it gingerly. “Mother said she
+would make a big pitcher of lemonade for us and leave it in the
+refrigerator.”
+
+“Whew,” whistled Mollie, taking Betty’s arm and hurrying her forward.
+“By any chance did you girls hear what I heard? _Me_ for _it_, Betty
+Nelson.”
+
+The girls talked little an their way to Betty’s house, but they thought
+a good deal. They were tired and disgruntled, and it seemed to them in
+their pessimistic mood that everything they had tried to do that day
+had gone wrong. And the climax of it all was their meeting! if it could
+be called a meeting! with Percy Falconer. Worst of all, Betty was going
+to allow him to call!
+
+With something of this in her mind, Mollie glanced sideways at her chum
+and, curiosity getting the better of her discretion, ventured to remark
+upon it.
+
+“I wonder what Allen will say,” she said, “when he learns about Percy.”
+
+It was an unfortunate remark, as Betty very soon showed by turning upon
+her chum angrily.
+
+“I don’t know that Allen has a right to say anything at all about what
+I do,” she said. “And as I don’t intend ever to see Percy Falconer
+after to-morrow, I think we had better forget about him. But there,”
+she added, bringing herself up short and giving Mollie’s hand a little
+conciliatory squeeze, “I didn’t mean to be cross. I’m just kind of mad
+about the whole thing! and tired, and hot!!”
+
+“I know,” said Mollie generously. “I guess we all are! tired and hot, I
+mean. We will feel better after we have had something cold to drink.”
+
+Betty’s mother had left not only the lemonade but some sandwiches of
+chopped nuts and cream cheese. Jubilantly the girls carried these
+delicacies out on the front porch and proceeded to devour them without
+further delay.
+
+As they ate and drank, their ill-humor vanished and they began to feel
+once more like their cheerful, optimistic selves. They even began to
+laugh a little about the close shave they had had with Percy and his
+friend.
+
+“It was mighty clever work of yours, Betty, swerving around like that,”
+Mollie said reminiscently, as she patted the Little Captain’s hand
+approvingly. “I’m sure I would have been so scared I’d have gone right
+ahead and then there would have been a nasty smash.”
+
+“I do hope the folks don’t hear about it,” worried Grace. “It would
+only make them nervous and they might even refuse to let us go out in
+the _Gem_ any more.”
+
+“I don’t see how the folks are going to know anything about it,” said
+Amy calmly.
+
+“Unless our dear friend Percy blabs it all over town,” added Grace.
+
+“I think we ought to tell the folks,” Betty spoke up suddenly. “I know
+they would rather hear about it from us than from any one else. Hello,”
+she broke off, as her eye lighted on a newspaper lying on the table,
+“this looks like the evening edition. Maybe it has some news of Allen’s
+division.”
+
+“My, just listen to her,” yawned Grace. “Allen’s division, indeed. As
+though he were the only one we were interested in!!”
+
+But her words were cut short by a startled exclamation from Betty.
+
+“Oh, girls, look here!” she cried. “Look at these names. Oh, I hope it
+isn’t true! I hope it isn’t!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+BAD TIDINGS CONFIRMED
+
+
+“I wish I knew what you were talking about,” said Mollie, pausing with
+a sandwich half-way to her mouth, while Amy and Grace regarded the
+Little Captain with astonishment. “What names? Where?”
+
+But Betty was paying no attention to them. She was reading hastily the
+column that had caught her startled attention.
+
+“Listen to this,” she said, reading out loud. “Among those who were
+killed in the last great Allied offensive are the names of these brave
+soldiers. James Browning of Columbus, Ohio! No, that isn’t what I mean!
+Look, here they are! James Dempsey and Arnold Dempsey, Junior. Girls,
+do you suppose!” and she looked at them with widening eyes.
+
+“Arnold Dempsey, Arnold Dempsey,” repeated Mollie, searching in her
+memory, but Amy interrupted excitedly.
+
+“That was Professor Dempsey’s name, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Oh, Betty,
+do you suppose it could be his son?”
+
+“Why, of course it is his son! how could it be any one else?” cried
+Grace, the excitement beginning to communicate itself to her. “Arnold
+Dempsey, Junior! and the professor said his sons were over there.”
+
+“Didn’t it say something about James Dempsey, too, Betty?” asked
+Mollie, fairly snatching the paper from her chum. “Yes, here it is. Do
+you suppose that can be his other son?”
+
+Betty shook her head soberly.
+
+“I don’t know,” she said. “Of course he didn’t tell us the name of his
+other son, but it might easily be James. Oh, I hope it isn’t so!” she
+added, her heart aching for the lonely old man whose one big interest
+in life was his boys. “I do hope there has been some mistake.”
+
+“I guess we all do,” said Amy gently, adding with a sigh: “But I’m
+afraid there isn’t very much hope of it. The Government is usually
+right when it comes to things like that.”
+
+“Not always,” Mollie retorted quickly. “Look at the time they reported
+that Allen was among the missing and he wasn’t at all. That is the only
+mistake we happen to know about, but I fancy there are plenty of
+others.”
+
+At mention of that dreadful time when she had read Allen’s name in the
+long list of the missing, Betty experienced again something of the
+emotion she had felt at that time.
+
+She saw again in imagination the dark room where she had gone to be by
+herself, she heard the thunder of the surf on the rocks outside and the
+rumble of the thunder overhead. She saw once more the vision of Allen
+as she had seen it then. Allen stretched out cold and dead perhaps on
+some shell-ridden battlefield or perhaps, more terrible still, a
+prisoner in the hands of the Hun, suffering unspeakable torture!!
+
+“But this is not as bad as though the boys were missing,” she said
+suddenly, speaking her thought aloud. “At least the professor will know
+that his sons are dead.”
+
+The girls started and looked at Betty queerly.
+
+“I was thinking of Allen,” she explained in response to their rather
+startled glances, “and the time when we thought he was missing. If this
+thing is true about Professor Dempsey’s sons I think I shall be able to
+sympathize with him, almost better than any of you.”
+
+“I guess you will, honey,” said Mollie soberly, putting an arm about
+her chum. “It was a terrible time for us all! there at Bluff Point. But
+it was almost worth the suffering when we found out that Allen was
+alive and well and never had been missing at all. Do you remember how
+happy we all were then?”
+
+“Happy,” Betty repeated, shaking off her depression and smiling at the
+memory. “I’ll say we were the happiest girls on earth! especially after
+we recovered the twins. But what,” she said, coming back to the present
+subject, “are we going to do about Professor Dempsey? We ought to do
+something, you know.”
+
+“I suppose we ought,” said Grace, a little vaguely, “but I’m sure I
+don’t know just what.”
+
+“I think,” suggested Amy practically, “that the best thing would be to
+try to find out first of all whether these poor boys who were killed
+are really Professor Dempsey’s sons or not.”
+
+“Humph, that sounds all right,” observed Mollie. “But has any one here
+any suggestion as to just how we will go about it? I’m sure I don’t
+know any one who is acquainted with Professor Dempsey! or his family
+either.”
+
+“I’ve got it,” said Betty, leaning forward eagerly. “It may not be much
+of an idea, but then again it may.”
+
+“Speak up, speak up, what’s on your mind?” urged Mollie slangily.
+
+“Well,” said Betty, “there is Mr. Haig, principal of Deepdale High. He
+knows pretty nearly every one at the university where Professor Dempsey
+used to teach and he is more than likely to know whether the professor
+has any sons and what their names are.”
+
+“Yes, that is all right as far as it goes,” broke in Mollie
+impatiently.
+
+“We all know Mr. Haig!” Amy began, but this time it was Grace who
+interrupted.
+
+“Yes, we all know him,” she said. “But I’d like to know if there is any
+one of us! except Betty perhaps! who would have the nerve to go to him
+and ask him a question like that!!”
+
+“Say, who’s telling this story I’d like to know,” broke in Betty
+impatiently. “I’m not asking any one to go to Mr. Haig with that
+question or any other! although I would be perfectly willing to brave
+the lion in his den if there were no other way. My plan is this. Dad
+knows Mr. Haig, you know! went to school with him! old college chums
+and all that. I’m sure that if we asked him real pretty he would go to
+Mr. Haig and find out about Professor Dempsey for us.”
+
+“Then suppose we find out that Professor Dempsey hasn’t any sons by the
+name of James and Arnold?” suggested Grace.
+
+“Then we shall be mighty glad we took the trouble to find out and set
+our minds at rest,” answered Betty soberly.
+
+“And if we find out that they are really his sons, what then?” queried
+Grace, and this time Betty looked puzzled and Mollie and Amy completely
+beyond their depth.
+
+“Why then,” said Betty hesitatingly, “I’m sure I don’t just know what
+we ought to do. But don’t you think,” she added, brightening, “that it
+might be a good idea to wait until we have found out definite facts
+before we try to solve any more problems?”
+
+Rather reluctantly the girls agreed and, after making Betty promise
+that she would let them know the very first minute she found out the
+names of Arnold Dempsey’s sons, they said good-bye and started for
+home.
+
+Of course Betty had already told her father and mother about Professor
+Dempsey and the part he had played in actually saving their lives; so
+when she told them that night of what she had read in the paper and
+begged her father to help her find out whether the dead soldiers were
+really Arnold Dempsey’s sons or not, he readily consented to do what he
+could.
+
+“I’ll drop in and see Haig to-morrow,” he promised. “I have often heard
+him speak of Professor Dempsey as being one of the best professors of
+zoology up at the university and I am sure I will be able to find out
+what you want to know. I hope you have been mistaken in your
+conclusions, for it would be a horrible blow to a man to lose both his
+grown sons at once and like that. Now run off to bed and tomorrow I may
+have some news for you.”
+
+With this Betty was forced to be content. She went to bed of course,
+there was nothing else to do, but she tossed restlessly all night and
+what sleep she got was checkered with horrid dreams and she woke up in
+the morning feeling as though she had not been to sleep at all.
+
+The next day was a long one to live through, even though the girls did
+keep calling her up at frequent intervals to see if she had any news
+for them yet. She became so tired of hearing the telephone bell ring at
+last that she stuffed a handkerchief between the bell and the clapper
+and sat down to read a novel and while away the time as best she could
+till her father came home.
+
+Luckily for her! and him too, perhaps! Mr. Nelson did get home early,
+and he was no sooner inside the door than Betty grabbed him by the arm,
+led him over to a divan in the corner of the living room, and let loose
+upon him a flood of questions.
+
+“Did you see him? What did he say? Why didn’t you let me know sooner?”
+
+These and various other queries were hurled at Mr. Nelson so fast that
+it is no wonder the poor gentleman appeared slightly bewildered. But
+knowing his impetuous young daughter of old, he merely pinched her
+cheek fondly and waited for her to give him a chance to speak.
+
+“If you will wait just a moment I will try to tell you about it,” he
+said at last, mildly.
+
+“There’s only one thing I really want to know, Dad,” said Betty
+soberly. “And that is the name of Professor Dempsey’s sons.”
+
+Her father shook his head slowly, regretfully.
+
+“I am afraid it is as you have feared, dear,” he said, “Professor
+Dempsey has two sons! or rather, had! and their names were James and
+Arnold.”
+
+“Oh, Daddy!” Betty was quiet for a minute, letting the full
+consciousness of what her father had said sink into her heart. Then her
+lips trembled and her eyes filled with tears. “I! I was pretty sure it
+was true. But, oh, I was hoping so hard that it wouldn’t be!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+PREMONITIONS
+
+
+Betty kept her promise and called up the girls to tell them the news.
+Like the Little Captain, they had felt almost sure of the identity of
+the two Dempsey boys who had been killed in France, yet the
+confirmation of their fears came as a distinct shock.
+
+They waited for a couple of days, undecided what to do, if indeed it
+was their place to do anything at all. Vaguely they felt the need of
+comforting the queer little professor in his hour of greatest trouble,
+and yet they were at a loss to know just how to go about it.
+
+Meanwhile, the occupations that had ordinarily filled their days to
+overflowing with fun, seemed dull and uninteresting and they found
+their thoughts reverting again and again to the bereaved father in his
+lonely little cabin in the woods.
+
+Percy Falconer had called at Betty’s house the day after the incident
+on the river as had been arranged, and Betty had conceived the plan of
+having all her chums there to meet him.
+
+Her hope was that the gay Percy, seeing four, where he had expected
+only one, would be overwhelmed with numbers and would flee the premises
+early! to return no more.
+
+Her faith in her plan was more than justified. Percy had always been a
+little afraid of the Outdoor Girls! Betty in particular! but it is
+probable that if he had been able to meet them one at a time, he might
+have come off victorious. As it was, he was routed, completely and
+ignominiously, leaving the girls to laugh at his discomfiture.
+
+“There, I guess that is the end of _that_ pest,” Mollie had said when
+she had recovered a little from her mirth. “I imagine we won’t see him
+around these parts again.”
+
+“I hope not,” Betty had answered with a satisfied little yawn. “Wasn’t
+he too funny in that checked suit and awful green necktie? Poor old
+Percy! I suppose he can’t help it. He probably just grew that way,”
+
+She had been comparing him all evening with her splendid, upstanding
+Allen, and poor Percy had certainly not gained by the comparison.
+
+The amusing incident served to divert their minds somewhat from the
+thought of Professor Dempsey, but the picture of him haunted their
+minds so continually day and night that the Outdoor Girls finally
+decided that something must he done about it.
+
+“I can’t stand it any longer,” Betty confided to them one morning when
+they stood on Mollie’s porch discussing what course of action it would
+be best to take. “I have a queer feeling that the poor professor is in
+desperate need of friends, and I don’t believe I’ll be able to sleep
+another night until I find out something definite about him.”
+
+“Won’t he think we are sort of ‘butting in’?” asked Grace, hesitating a
+little. “He might think we came just out of curiosity.”
+
+“I don’t think he would,” said Mollie. “You know he invited us to come
+back some time when we could stay long enough for him to tell us
+something about those bugs and butterflies and things he sticks pins
+into
+
+“That’s the idea!” exclaimed Betty quickly. “We won’t have to tell him
+we know anything about his trouble. If he tells us! why, all right, but
+if he doesn’t, of course we won’t try to force a confidence. Anyway,”
+she finished soberly, “we’ll have the satisfaction of knowing we have
+done our best for him whether it really helps him any or not.”
+
+“And we owe him a very great deal,” spoke up Amy softly. “He really
+saved our lives, you know.”
+
+So it was settled, and while the other three girls ran home to put on
+coats and hats and get ready for the drive, Mollie ran around to the
+garage and brought her big car to the front of the house.
+
+She waved good-bye to her mother, who was trying rather wildly to keep
+Dodo and Paul from running under the wheels of the car and getting
+killed, and purred off down the street in the direction of Betty’s
+house.
+
+When she arrived there she was a little surprised to see that Betty was
+backing her fast little roadster down the drive.
+
+To Betty the little car was almost alive, and she talked to it as she
+would have to some loved horse or dog. She scrubbed it and scoured it
+and shined it so that it always looked like a brand new car.
+
+“Hey, look out!” cried Mollie, for Betty, not noticing her and being a
+little worried about the sound of the engine, had backed the small car
+down the drive and almost into Mollie’s big one. “What kind of driving
+do you call that? Do you want to buy me a new mudguard?”
+
+“Oh, pardon me,” said Betty, laughing back at her. “You were so small
+and insignificant, I came near not seeing you.”
+
+“Well, you would have _felt_ me in another minute,” grumbled Mollie, as
+she shut off the engine and got out of the car. “What’s the idea of
+your little peanut, anyway? Thought you were going to ride in a regular
+car.”
+
+“That’s why I chose mine,” Betty laughed back impishly, still intent on
+the sound of the engine.
+
+It was part of their fun to be always throwing insults at each other’s
+car but the thrusts were invariably good-natured.
+
+Only once had there threatened to be any trouble between the chums on
+account of rivalry over the cars. That had been when Mollie had taken
+Betty’s “dare” to a race and Betty’s little roadster had won the day,
+racing like a streak of light along the country road and leaving
+Mollie’s high-powered but more clumsy car far behind.
+
+But Mollie had taken her defeat like the little sport she was! even
+though it must be admitted she had been considerably disappointed and
+taken aback by her failure! and in her ever since there had been a
+great respect for Betty’s car.
+
+But now she eyed with impatience the bent figure of the Little Captain
+as she still leaned over the wheel, her ear tuned to the purr of the
+engine.
+
+“For goodness’ sake, what’s the matter with you?” she cried. “I thought
+you were the one who was in a hurry to be off and now look at you!
+sitting there like!!”
+
+“Engine is missing,” Betty informed her briskly. “Guess I had better
+have a look!”
+
+“If you start fussing with bolts and screws now, you can count me out,”
+said Mollie, resolutely climbing back into her car. “It is ten o’clock
+already, and we won’t be home before night if we don’t hurry.”
+
+“Oh, all right,” laughed Betty. “But if the car gives out before we get
+back don’t blame me, that’s all.”
+
+“It would give me the greatest of pleasure,” said Mollie with a
+diabolical chuckle as her machine moved off down the street, “to have
+every one in Deepdale see me towing your poor little flivver through
+the town.”
+
+“Huh,” sang back Betty scornfully as the roadster responded eagerly to
+her touch, “they will have a great deal better chance of seeing me in
+the lead with your great big jumbo tottering feebly at the end of a
+rope.”
+
+They picked up Amy and Grace on the way and were soon flying swiftly
+down the road in the direction of Professor Dempsey’s tree-surrounded
+home.
+
+They were in rather good spirits at first, for now that they were
+really on the way to doing something, though they were not quite sure
+what, they felt relieved and almost gay.
+
+But as the distance shortened between them and their destination, a
+strange depression that they could neither explain nor brush away
+settled down over them.
+
+Once, Grace, who sat beside the Little Captain in the roadster, sighed
+rather dolefully and Betty looked at her out of the corner of her eye.
+
+“Do you feel that way too, Gracie?” the latter asked.
+
+“What way?” asked Grace uncertainly. “That sigh, do you mean?”
+
+“Yes,” nodded Betty. “You sounded rather mournful and that is exactly
+the way I feel. What’s the matter with us, anyway? Where are our
+spirits?”
+
+“I suppose we couldn’t expect to feel joyful,” said Grace after a
+little pause. “We aren’t going, so far as I can see, on a very happy
+errand, you know.”
+
+“But I don’t think it is that alone,” said Betty, with a shake of her
+head. “I feel as if we were going to see something perfectly dreadful!”
+
+“Betty,” Grace looked at her in sudden alarm, her eyes wide, “you don’t
+suppose that the professor could have done anything! anything rash, do
+you?”
+
+“You mean!!” said Betty, hesitating before the ugly word. “Oh, Grace,
+you don’t mean! suicide, do you?”
+
+Grace nodded and tried hard not to look as frightened as she felt.
+
+“No, I! I don’t think so,” said Betty, grasping the wheel with hands
+that somehow seemed suddenly weak. “If I thought anything like that had
+happened I wouldn’t have the courage to go on.”
+
+“Well, I don’t believe I have! the courage, I mean,” said Grace,
+irresolutely. “Don’t you think we had better go back, Betty? It’s so
+lonesome here and! and! everything!!”
+
+Her voice was rising to something like a wail, and Betty, striving to
+throttle her own misgivings, spoke in a voice that was intended to be
+reassuring.
+
+“We wouldn’t think very much of ourselves if we turned back now,” she
+said. “And probably we are worrying a great deal about nothing. He
+didn’t seem like the kind of man who would do a thing like that.”
+
+Grace said no more about turning back, and they were silent for the
+rest of the way. But instead of lightening, the cloud of depression
+became deeper and more foreboding until even the stout Little Captain
+began almost to wish that they had not come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+A VISITOR
+
+When they came to the scene of what was so nearly a terrible accident a
+week or so before they found that the big tree which had extended clear
+across the road was gone and that the underbrush also had been cleared
+away.
+
+They stopped the cars a little the other side of the path that led into
+the woods and slowly stepped down into the road.
+
+When they caught sight of each other’s faces they began to laugh
+shakily.
+
+“We certainly look as if we were going on a ghost hunt,” Mollie said.
+At this Grace uttered a little cry of protest. The thought had struck
+too near her own disquieting thoughts to be comfortable.
+
+“For goodness’ sake, somebody say something cheerful,” she begged.
+“I’ve got to get up my courage some way.”
+
+“Well, I haven’t any to lend you,” grumbled Mollie, as she linked her
+arm in Betty’s and the two went along toward the path. “I don’t like
+this job a little bit.”
+
+“Don’t you think,” suggested Amy, holding back a little, “that somebody
+ought to stay here and take care of the cars?”
+
+“No, you don’t!” said Mollie, catching her by the hand and pulling her
+along after them. “If one of us goes we are all going.”
+
+“Oh, come along,” urged Betty, eager to get the thing over with. “I
+think we are all acting like a lot of geese. It might help some if we
+tried to remember that we are Outdoor Girls.”
+
+This challenge did a great deal toward bolstering up the girls’ courage
+and they hurried along the path more confidently,
+
+Their pace slowed a bit, however, when they reached the cleared space
+where the little cottage stood and they paused for a moment in the
+shelter of the trees to discuss what to do next.
+
+“Do you think we had all better go?” asked Grace nervously. “Perhaps
+the four of us would frighten him!!”
+
+“No, we will all go together,” said Betty decidedly. “There is nothing
+to be gained by standing here talking about it. Come on, girls.”
+
+She started across the cleared space and the girls followed slowly. The
+little cottage looked deserted and forlorn and the dreary aspect of it
+served to increase the girls’ uneasy sense of disaster.
+
+Betty knocked gently on the door which had, upon that other occasion
+not so very long ago, been hospitably opened to them. But, though they
+waited breathlessly for a response, none came! the house was as silent
+as a tomb.
+
+“Do it again, Betty. He might be asleep or something,” suggested
+Mollie, with a glance over her shoulder at the quiet woodland. “Knock
+harder this time.”
+
+Betty obeyed, but with no better success than the first time.
+Everything was as silent as before.
+
+“Isn’t there a bell, I wonder?” suggested Amy, wishing ardently that
+they were back on the road once more. “Perhaps your knock isn’t loud
+enough for him to hear.”
+
+“We might tap on the window,” suggested Grace. “If I use my ring on the
+window pane he surely ought to hear that.”
+
+She started to suit her action to the words when an exclamation from
+Betty made her pause. The latter had tried the door and found to her
+surprise that it gave to her touch.
+
+“The door is unlocked,” she said. “I don’t believe the professor is in
+here at all and if he has gone into the woods to hunt his butterflies
+and beetles I am sure he wouldn’t mind our going inside. What do you
+think?”
+
+She was about to push the door open, but Grace detained her with a
+nervous hand on her arm.
+
+“Oh, I don’t think we had better go in, Betty!” she cried. “You know
+what we were speaking of in the car. Suppose we should find that he
+has! that he has!!”
+
+“That he has what?” asked Amy, her eyes wide. “For goodness’ sake, what
+do you mean, Grace?”
+
+Betty tried to stop her, but Grace hurried on heedlessly.
+
+“He may have committed suicide,” she cried, adding, in response to
+Mollie’s and Amy’s cry of horror: “You know he must have been desperate
+enough to do anything, poor old man, out here all alone.”
+
+At the conviction in Grace’s tone, Betty felt her own nerve slipping.
+She did not want to go into that silent house any more than the other
+girls did. Every instinct in her commanded that she run from the place
+to the commonplace safety of the road. She was afraid of what she might
+find on the other side of that unlocked door. And yet!!
+
+“I’m going in,” she cried, and, suiting the action to the word, pushed
+the door quickly open and stepped over the threshold.
+
+Emboldened by her example, the other girls followed and stopped short
+with a cry of dismay. They had not found what they feared! but
+something almost as bad.
+
+The room, which had been so neat and orderly when they had last seen
+it, was now the scene of such utter confusion as one might only hope to
+see depicted in a cubist’s nightmare.
+
+The animal skins which had adorned the walls had been torn down and lay
+in a tattered heap upon the floor. The shelves upon which had rested
+the professor’s botanical specimens had been swept clean and their
+contents also were scattered about the floor.
+
+The bench upon which the girls had sat and partaken of the queer little
+man’s hospitality was overturned and the one chair in the room was
+upside down on top of it. The whole room looked as though a cyclone! or
+a maniac! had been at work.
+
+The girls stared for a minute and then drew closer together as if
+seeking protection from some unseen menace. They had some vague
+conception of what had taken place here in this lonely little cottage.
+The elderly and already nervous professor, reading the tragedy of his
+sons’ death, all alone perhaps, with no one to comfort or restrain him,
+had lost his mind, temporarily at least, and had found an outlet in
+ruthlessly destroying everything which came within reach of his hand.
+
+And if this were so, might he not even now be hiding about somewhere,
+watching them, perhaps?
+
+This thought seemed to strike the girls at the same time, for after
+peering for a second about the room, they turned and made a concerted
+dash for the door.
+
+Once outside the room, in the reassuring sunshine, they turned and
+looked at each other sheepishly. Then Betty wheeled about and started
+for the door again.
+
+“Betty, you are never going back into that place again?” cried Amy
+wildly, holding to her skirt. “I won’t let you! Do you hear me? Come
+back here!”
+
+But Betty had no intention of coming back. She turned and faced the
+girls calmly, though inwardly she was trembling.
+
+“Of course I am going back,” she said. “Professor Dempsey may be in one
+of the other rooms and he may be sick. If nobody will go with me, I’m
+going in alone.”
+
+Of course the three girls could not let her go in alone, so they
+trailed back at her heels into the house, being very careful, however,
+to leave the door wide open behind them, in case a hasty retreat became
+necessary.
+
+Cautiously Betty opened the door at the other end of the room and
+stepped into what had evidently been a sort of rough kitchen. Now it
+was nothing but a nightmare like the other room, and she shuddered as
+she looked about at the desolate confusion.
+
+There was a door at the farther end of this room, and after some
+hesitation and an inward struggle Betty crossed hastily to it and flung
+it wide open.
+
+What she half expected and feared to find there nobody but Betty
+herself ever knew, but whatever it was, she gave a great sigh of relief
+at not finding it there. The room was upset, though not quite as badly
+as the other two, but there was no sign of human occupancy anywhere.
+
+She turned to the girls who had come up behind her and were eagerly and
+half shudderingly peering over her shoulder.
+
+“There’s nothing here,” she announced, the relief she felt showing in
+her voice, “and as there doesn’t seem to be any other room in the
+place, I suppose we might as well go back.”
+
+Echoing her suggestion heartily, the girls started to retrace their
+steps when a slight sound in the other room made them stop short in a
+panic.
+
+“What was that?” Amy questioned, but Mollie held up her hand
+impatiently.
+
+There came the sound of some one stumbling over something. This was
+followed by a muttered exclamation.
+
+While the girls looked about them wildly for a means of escape Mollie
+began to laugh hysterically.
+
+“We have a visitor,” she announced in a strangled voice. “And he is
+between us and the only door in the place. Come on, girls, let’s see
+who it is.”
+
+They stepped out into the cluttered living room and came face to face
+with a young man who seemed more startled at seeing them than they had
+been at sight of him.
+
+“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” he exclaimed, and at sound of the commonplace
+phrase the girls could have hugged the speaker in relief. Also they
+felt a rather hysterical desire to laugh long and foolishly.
+
+As it was, the stranger stood staring at the girls and the girls at him
+so long that the funny side of the situation struck Betty and she
+really did begin to laugh.
+
+“We haven’t the slightest idea who you are,” she told the astonished
+young man. “But I am sure of one thing, and that is that we were never
+so glad to see any one in all our lives as we are to see you.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+HURRAH FOR ALLEN
+
+
+The young man stared for a moment longer. Then the humor of the
+situation seemed to strike him too, and he smiled pleasantly.
+
+“It surely is a pleasure to be as welcome as all that,” he said
+pleasantly, and the girls noticed that he was a well set up young
+fellow and that he wore his uniform easily, as if he had been used to
+wearing it for a long, long time. “I am Wesley Travers,” he went on. “I
+live in a cottage down the road and I came over this way to see if the
+old professor had come back yet. I saw the door open! came in! and
+found you.”
+
+He smiled again pleasantly and looked as though he considered that he
+had fallen into rather good luck. But at his mention of the professor
+Betty had sobered instantly.
+
+“Oh, then you know something about Professor Dempsey?” she questioned
+eagerly.
+
+“Please tell us what happened to him,” added Amy breathlessly.
+
+“Did he do this?” asked Mollie, with a comprehensive sweep of her hand
+about the cluttered room.
+
+“I’m afraid he did,” answered the young fellow, sobering instantly.
+“You see, I just returned from overseas about a week ago and a couple
+of days later my dad read in the paper about the death of this queer
+old man’s two sons. The pater had always been interested in the lonely
+old boy, so he sent me over to see if I could do anything for him. I
+found the place like this and! the bird had flown. Went dopy I suppose
+about the bad news and tore things up a bit.”
+
+Though the boy’s words were slangy, there was real sympathy in his tone
+and the girls liked him the better for it.
+
+“And you haven’t heard anything from him since?” asked Betty softly.
+
+“Not a word or a sign,” answered the boy, with a shake of his head.
+“Just clean cleared out, that’s all. Pretty hard luck, I call it. Just
+at the end of things too! when he had a right to expect the fellows
+home. Pretty tough luck. I wish I could find the poor old duffer and do
+something for him.”
+
+The girls heartily echoed the wish. Before leaving the place for good,
+they looked about the rooms once more for some sign or message that
+might give them a clue to the whereabouts of the professor. They found
+nothing, however, and finally were forced to give up the search.
+
+As the young people stepped outside once more and closed the door after
+them upon the desolate house a great wave of pity swept over Betty.
+Somehow it did not seem right to go off like this as though they were
+abandoning the old man to his fate. Yet what could they do more than
+they had done?
+
+“Girls,” she said, a little quiver in her voice, “I would give almost
+everything I own to find the poor old professor and help him back to
+happiness. If I only could,” she added after a pause.
+
+“Well,” said Wesley Travers, as he looked admiringly at Betty’s
+flushed, sympathetic little face, “I imagine if any one could find him
+and bring him happiness, you would be that one.”
+
+The young soldier accompanied them back to the road. After thanking him
+for the information he had given them, the girls climbed into their
+cars and headed toward home, leaving Wesley Travers still standing in
+the road and looking after them thoughtfully.
+
+“A mighty nice bunch of girls,” thought the latter. “Especially the
+little brown-haired one. They seemed rather interested in that dotty
+old professor too. Lucky fellow to have four girls like that interested
+in him!” After this remark he started off toward home.
+
+Luckily for the girls, the next few days were so crowded with
+preparations for the trip to Wild Rose Lodge that they had not much
+time to dwell on the poor old professor and his misfortunes.
+
+Only at night would they sometimes dream queer dreams in which
+wild-eyed men went around smashing everything in sight and a little
+cottage stood lonely and desolate and ghostlike amid a silent forest of
+trees.
+
+After a night like this the girls were always glad to awake and find
+the sunshine streaming cheerfully in their windows. And they would
+throw themselves with more than usual energy into the activities of the
+day. Yet try as they would, they could never quite blot the tragedy
+from their minds.
+
+On the afternoon of the day before they were to start for Moonlight
+Falls, the girls were gathered in Betty’s garage at the back of the
+house, where the Little Captain was giving her car one last overhauling
+to make sure that it was in perfect condition for the trip. Mollie
+suddenly espied the postman coming down the street.
+
+Now the postman was a very popular man with the girls, for the reason
+that he brought almost daily some message from the boys on the other
+side. He sympathized with the chums so fully in their desire for
+letters with the red triangle in one corner that he actually confessed
+to a guilty feeling when he had no missive of the sort for them.
+
+So now, as Mollie ran toward him with outstretched hand, he held up to
+her delighted gaze not only one letter, but four.
+
+“One for each of you,” he said beamingly, as Mollie reached him. “I
+thought that probably I would find all four of you at one place, so I
+kept the letters together.”
+
+“Oh, thanks, it is awfully good of you,” said Mollie absent-mindedly,
+as she took the welcome letters and hurried with them back to the
+garage. “One for each of us, just think of that!” she cried to the
+questioning girls. “It looks as if the boys had all written at the same
+time. Put down your duster, Betty, for goodness’ sake, and read what
+Allen has to say. Maybe,” she added hopefully, as she ripped her
+envelope open, “they will tell us something definite about coming
+home.”
+
+So down the girls sat in the midst of dust cloths and more or less dirt
+to find what the boys had written. For a moment only the crackling of
+paper broke the silence. Then Grace gave a little joyful cry.
+
+“Will says he is almost sure to be home soon!!”
+
+“And he has been made a sergeant,” Amy interrupted, or rather added,
+her eyes shining with pride. “Just think of that! Will, a sergeant!”
+
+“I was just going to tell them that if you had waited a minute,” said
+Grace, rather crossly. There was quite a little jealousy between Grace
+and Amy over Will. Grace had declared more than once that whereas she
+had known her brother all her life, Amy had only known him for a couple
+of years! or! or more. Grace loved her brother devotedly and once in a
+while she resented Amy’s place in his affections.
+
+So now to change the subject and avert a possible quarrel, Mollie
+jumped into the breach.
+
+“Listen to this,” she said. “Roy and Frank have been made corporals and
+Allen! oh, look at Betty blush!” She looked gleefully across at the
+Little Captain and Amy and Grace followed her glance.
+
+Betty was not blushing, but she felt as uncomfortable as though she had
+been.
+
+“Tell us what Allen says,” Mollie dared her wickedly. “Come on, honey!
+dare you to.”
+
+“You can go on daring all you like,” said Betty defiantly. This time
+she was blushing! from the fact that she knew she could not, or would
+not, tell the girls what Allen had said in his letter. Not for anything
+in this world!
+
+“I don’t mean what you mean,” said Mollie, enjoying her confusion
+immensely, while Grace and Amy looked on laughingly. “I just thought
+that maybe you would like to be the one to tell us about his
+promotion.”
+
+“His promotion!” cried Amy and Grace together, and Betty looked quite
+as bewildered as any of them.
+
+“Mollie, for goodness’ sake tell us what you mean,” she demanded.
+
+“But didn’t he tell you about it, Betty?” Mollie insisted.
+
+“Wait a minute,” said the Little Captain as she hastily scanned the
+pages of her long letter. Then, down near the end of the last page she
+found it, just a little paragraph, put in as though it had been an
+afterthought. “Why,” cried Betty, her eyes beginning to shine with
+excitement, “girls, listen to this. Allen _has_ been promoted. He’s an
+officer now! a lieutenant! Think of it! leather leggings and all!”
+
+It was too much for the girls. They laughed and cried and hugged each
+other and tried to imagine Allen in his new uniform to their hearts’
+content, for the young new-made officer was a favorite with them all.
+
+“Goodness,” said Amy happily, “I suppose when he gets home he will be
+altogether too high-toned to notice common folk like us.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know,” said Grace happily, adding with a sly little glance
+at Betty, “I imagine he will make an exception of one of us at least.”
+
+“I wonder,” drawled Mollie as she picked up her unfinished letter,
+“which one of us you can mean.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+THE HOLD-UP
+
+
+The girls were glad that the letters had come from the boys just as
+they had, for it helped them to bridge over the tediously long wait
+till the next morning.
+
+They read the missives with the little red triangles in the left hand
+corner over and over again and! whisper it!! at least two of them slept
+with the precious letters under their pillows.
+
+And then! the morning was upon them. It was a beautiful morning too,
+and as the girls dressed hurriedly they were glad that they had
+arranged to start early. In that way they could take their time and
+enjoy to the full the glorious ride to Moonlight Falls. It was only
+fifty-five miles, but by driving slowly they could make it seem like
+twice that.
+
+It was barely half past nine when Betty, having finished breakfast and
+put the last finishing touches to her new white hat, ran around to the
+garage to get the car out.
+
+Ten minutes later she had drawn up in front of Mollie’s house, her ears
+still ringing with the hundred and one instructions of her anxious
+mother, and was tooting the horn of her little car furiously.
+
+The summons had the desired effect. Mollie came running from the house,
+straightening her hat with one hand and lugging a valise in the other
+while the twins trailed at her skirts.
+
+“For goodness’ sake, let go of me, Paul. Dodo, if you touch that bag
+again, I’ll spank you. Mother,” she wailed, looking back pleadingly
+over her shoulder, “won’t you please make these little pests go into
+the house?”
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Billette suddenly appeared at the door, smiled at Betty,
+grabbed Paul with one hand, Dodo with the other, while the twins roared
+a protest.
+
+Released, Mollie dropped her bag, sped round to the garage, and in a
+moment more was backing the big car round to the road.
+
+The girls had decided to about live in their khaki tramping suits on
+this trip, merely packing in a good dress or two to wear on dress-up
+occasions. In this way they had to take less luggage and could have
+more space to “spread out” as Mollie said.
+
+“Put your grip in here, Betty,” Mollie suggested, as she slung her own
+grip into the tonneau of the big machine. “There is more room, and Mrs.
+Irving said she wouldn’t mind in the least being entirely surrounded by
+suitcases.”
+
+Betty laughed, did as she was bid, and a moment later they were off,
+speeding down the road to Grace’s house where they were to pick up the
+other two girls and Mrs. Irving.
+
+They found the three waiting for them, and it took scarcely any time at
+all to add the extra grips to the growing pile in the tonneau of
+Mollie’s car. Amid great fun, Mrs. Irving, who was rosy-cheeked and
+matronly and as jolly as the girls, was wedged into the remaining
+space, Amy climbed to the front seat beside Mollie and Grace took her
+seat with Betty.
+
+They were off! The sting of the wind was in their faces, and the sun
+beat warmly down upon them as they rolled along, passing familiar
+houses, and sometimes familiar people, to whom they waved, and so on
+and on till they left the town behind them and started out on the open
+road.
+
+“My, this is something like,” commented Grace, stretching her feet out
+before her for all the world like a lazy, comfortable cat. “I feel
+awfully sorry for all the poor people who haven’t cars to ride in
+to-day and Wild Rose Lodges to visit. By the way, why is it called Wild
+Rose Lodge, Betty?”
+
+“Because they say there are lots of wild roses around it, of course,”
+Betty responded, her hands resting easily on the wheel, her eyes bright
+with the joy of the moment. Grace, stealing a sideways glance at her,
+could not help thinking that Betty looked not unlike a wild rose
+herself.
+
+“You look awfully pretty, honey,” she said then, for Grace was always
+generous with praise where her friends were concerned. “I would give
+the world to have a color like yours.”
+
+“Goodness,” remarked Betty, turning to look at her chum, her face a
+little brighter pink because of the honest compliment, “you have a
+lovely color! as you very well know. Mine is too red sometimes.”
+
+“Nobody thinks that but you,” said Grace, squeezing Betty’s hand
+affectionately while she dived down in her pocket for some candy. “The
+only time I have noticed you get very red,” she added, “is when some
+one happens to mention a certain young gentleman by the name of
+Lieutenant Allen Washburn.”
+
+Betty could feel that her face was burning, but she did not care. She
+was awfully proud of Allen and desperately fond of him and for the
+moment she did not care if the whole world knew about it.
+
+“Isn’t it wonderful, Gracie?” she cried, her heart pounding joyously.
+“About Allen being an officer, I mean. I have to pinch myself several
+times a minute to make myself realize that it is really true.”
+
+“It surely is great,” Grace answered slowly, adding after a moment,
+while a faraway expression crept into her eyes, “I don’t blame you for
+being crazy about him, honey. I could almost be foolish myself. Oh,
+don’t worry,” she went on quickly as Betty turned amazed and rather
+startled eyes upon her. “I’m no fonder of Allen than I am of any of the
+other boys. I just said that I didn’t blame _you_, that’s all.”
+
+Betty turned her eyes to the road once more, but in her heart she was
+troubled. There had been a note in Grace’s voice that she had never
+heard before. Could it be possible that she really cared for Allen? But
+she pushed the thought from her mind resolutely. If such a thing could
+have been possible, she certainly would have discovered it before this.
+The mere thought was nonsense of course. And yet she was troubled.
+
+“Have some candy,” Grace invited, breaking in upon her thoughts. “You
+needn’t stick up your nose at it to-day for I bought this fresh from
+the store this morning.”
+
+“Who said I was going to stick up my nose?” said Betty, helping herself
+to a chocolate that looked as if it might contain a nut and thankful
+for the break in her not-too-pleasant reflections. “If you will think
+back just a little, I think you will admit that I have been guilty very
+seldom of sticking up my nose at anything
+
+“Except Percy Falconer,” finished Grace drolly, and they both laughed
+merrily.
+
+“Poor Percy!” said Betty, chewing her candy contentedly. “I suppose he
+will hate us more heartily than ever now.”
+
+They were running some eight or ten miles from the town along a quiet
+stretch of road, never dreaming of danger, when Betty’s little racer
+nosed around a bend in the road and came smack into it! Not twenty feet
+ahead of them a man sprang into the middle of the road and leveled a
+revolver at them! In one electrified instant they saw that the fellow
+wore a mask and a slouch hat and looked for all the world like a
+brigand straight out of some sensational moving picture.
+
+Betty, more surprised at first than alarmed, put on her brakes and came
+to a standstill, at the same time putting out a hand to warn the car
+behind them.
+
+“Oh, Betty, we are being held up!” moaned Grace, who evidently was
+frightened enough for both of them. “For goodness’ sake, hold up your
+hands. He may shoot.”
+
+Still feeling rather dazed with the suddenness of the thing, Betty
+raised both hands above her head, at the same time feeling a rather
+hysterical desire to laugh. It was so absurd, being held up by a masked
+stranger in broad daylight,
+
+Nevertheless, she gave a little gasp of fright as the man waved his big
+revolver menacingly and came close to the car. She wished frantically
+that he would not point that firearm at her. Suppose it should go off!
+
+“Come on, hand over what you got,” the robber demanded in a gruff
+threatening voice. “The quicker you move, the better it will be for
+you.”
+
+“Wh-what do you want?” asked Betty, in a weak little voice that did not
+sound like her own at all. She had thought of her pocketbook beside her
+in the pocket of the car. The purse contained a whole month’s
+allowance. She was sparring desperately for time! help in some form or
+other might come at any moment. But the ruffian in the road was
+evidently in no frame of mind to be fooled with.
+
+He waved his revolver once more, eliciting a terrified gurgle from
+Grace and commanded roughly that they get out of the car.
+
+“No funny business,” he snarled. “Get out!”
+
+Betty was about to obey when she had a brilliant thought. Her pepper
+gun! She had bought it the day before from the son of her father’s
+chauffeur, thinking it was an undesirable plaything for a nine-year-old
+boy and had put it, as the most convenient place, in her car. And the
+pepper gun was filled! as it should have been! with good red cayenne
+pepper!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+SHEEP!
+
+
+For a moment Betty hesitated, almost afraid of what she was going to
+do. The pepper gun might work, but if she were not quick enough or
+clever enough, her little trick might also result in a tragedy.
+
+Her hesitation was only momentary, however, for Betty was a born
+fighter. Suddenly she cried out as if in joyful greeting to an
+unexpected arrival.
+
+“Here they come! here they come!” she called, and in the moment that
+their captor turned his startled eyes from her to the road ahead, Betty
+acted.
+
+She snatched the pepper gun from its hiding place in the car and as the
+man once more turned furiously upon her let him have the full contents
+directly in the face.
+
+It was a dreadful thing to do. Choking and sputtering, the ruffian
+dropped his revolver and raised both fists to his tortured eyes.
+
+“I’ll get you for this!” he cried between great sneezes that threatened
+to tear him apart. “You just wait!!”
+
+But Betty refused to wait. As soon as the fellow had dropped his weapon
+she had started the engine, and now she guided the car past the
+stuttering robber and raced off down the road.
+
+Mollie, who had only half understood what was going on but who had
+caught enough of it to be considerably alarmed did not stop to ask
+questions, but sped off down the road after Betty.
+
+It was half a dozen miles farther on that Betty finally slowed the car
+and waited for Mollie and the others to catch up with her. Grace, who
+had been gradually recovering from her fright, had not yet recovered
+enough to ask any questions. She had been too much concerned in putting
+miles between them and the scene of their adventure.
+
+As Mollie came up alongside, Betty drew her first free breath.
+
+Of course Mollie and Amy and Mrs. Irving wanted to hear all about it,
+and Betty told them what had happened, her account interrupted by
+hysterical laughter.
+
+But when she came to the pepper gun, the girls’ expression of utter
+bewilderment changed to admiration of Betty’s quick thought and quicker
+action.
+
+“Why, Betty,” cried Amy, incredulously, “I don’t see how you ever had
+the courage to do it. Why, that man might have shot you!”
+
+“He probably would have if I hadn’t got him first,” said Betty,
+half-way between laughter and tears. “It was taking an awfully big
+chance, but,” with a flash of spirit, “I wasn’t going to sit there
+calmly and have him take away all our money. Not if I could help it.”
+
+“Betty, I think you were simply wonderful,” said Mollie in heart-felt
+admiration. “Why, if he had taken our money it would have completely
+spoiled our trip.”
+
+“How they talk,” said Grace hysterically. “Any one would think it was
+only the trip that mattered when we might very easily have been
+_killed_.”
+
+This remark served to bring Mrs. Irving to a realization of the
+present, and she suggested that they start on again.
+
+“Not that I am particularly nervous,” she hastily added, as the girls
+looked at her suspiciously. “Only I will feel just as well when we have
+put a dozen miles between us and that highway robber, instead of only
+half that. I wish there was a town handy where we could notify the
+authorities.”
+
+They started on again, and as the miles slid past them they became less
+nervous and even began to laugh a little at thought of the robber’s
+consternation when he received the contents of Betty’s pepper gun full
+in his face.
+
+“He was probably the most surprised crook ever,” commented Grace with a
+chuckle. “He never will get over cursing you, Betty. How did you ever
+happen to have it? The pepper gun, I mean,” she added curiously.
+
+Betty explained how the gun had come into her possession. “I didn’t
+know,” she added ruefully, her foot on the accelerator as they sped up
+a steep hill, “when I bought it, that it would come in so handy. How
+much further do you suppose we have to go?” she asked, changing the
+subject abruptly.
+
+“Why,” said Grace, looking at her wrist watch and realizing suddenly
+that she was getting rather hungry, “we have been riding since ten
+o’clock and it is now after noon. We must be very nearly there by this
+time. Goodness, I hope there will be something to eat around Wild Rose
+Lodge. I’m getting famished.”
+
+“Mollie’s Uncle John said he would attend to that! stocking the cabin
+with good things, I mean,” said Betty, herself suddenly conscious of a
+disturbingly hungry feeling. “He said we would find enough canned
+things to last us at least a week.”
+
+“Canned things, yes,” pouted Grace. “But who in the world wants to live
+on canned things? I don’t see why we didn’t bring a chicken along, at
+least.”
+
+“Well, maybe we can manage to run over one,” chuckled Betty, as they
+passed a farmhouse and several chickens scuttled squawking across the
+road. “Then we can have one good and fresh. For goodness’ sake, what is
+Mollie tooting that horn for?” she added, as the raucous signal came
+from the car behind them. “Has she stopped the car, Grace? Look and
+see.”
+
+“It’s stopped deader than a door nail,” said Grace, obligingly screwing
+about in her seat and fixing on the road behind them a disapproving
+eye. “Now what do you suppose can be the trouble this time? If she has
+had a blowout or something, I’m not going to help fix the old thing!!”
+
+“You couldn’t fix the blowout, dear, but you might help with the tire,”
+Betty said, with a laugh, as she stopped the roadster and jumped to the
+road. “Come on, she seems to be excited about something!!”
+
+“Goodness, I hope it isn’t another highway robber,” said Grace
+anxiously, stopping in the middle of the road at the dreadful thought.
+“I don’t see any, but!!”
+
+“You don’t see any because there _isn’t_ any,” Betty assured her,
+taking her by the arm and leading her decidedly forward. “You don’t
+suppose there is a whole Robin Hood’s band in this woods, do you?”
+
+Mollie and Amy and Mrs. Irving came running to meet them excitedly! or
+at least, Mollie and Amy did the running, while their chaperon followed
+more slowly.
+
+“There are blackberries in there, whole bushels and bushels of them!”
+Mollie called. “You could see them from the road, and there you girls
+passed right by them without even looking.”
+
+“Blackberries!” repeated Grace resignedly, as she felt in her pocket to
+see if she had any candy left. “Just listen to her speaking of
+blackberries when what I’m dying for is a good big steak with onions on
+top of it!”
+
+“Stop it,” cried Mollie indignantly, while the others felt their mouths
+begin to water. “The idea of mentioning steak! But here,” she broke
+off, seizing Grace’s hand and dragging her toward the woods, “come with
+me and pick berries if you value your life. Lucky we brought those tin
+pails along.”
+
+“But why,” protested Grace patiently, as she was dragged along, “should
+we want to pick berries?”
+
+“To eat,” replied Mollie, attacking a bush that was fairly black with
+the luscious ripe fruit. “And besides,” she added, lowering her voice
+to a confidential pitch, “Mrs. Irving said that if she could find some
+flour and baking powder in the lodge she would make us a steamed
+blackberry pudding for supper.”
+
+Grace stared for a moment then, without another word, set to work on
+the loaded bush.
+
+“You might have told me that before,” she grumbled, her mouth full of
+berries. “You always did have a mean disposition, Mollie.”
+
+To which Mollie’s only reply was a chuckle and a sly wink at Betty, who
+was working close at her side.
+
+They worked on happily for a few minutes, then suddenly Amy
+straightened up and stood quiet as though she were listening to
+something.
+
+The girls, whose nerves were still a little on edge from their recent
+adventure, demanded to know in no uncertain tones what was the matter
+with her.
+
+“N-nothing,” Amy answered a little sheepishly. “I thought I heard a
+little rustling among the leaves, that’s all.”
+
+“Probably a breeze coming up,” said Betty matter-of-factly, and they
+went on with their berry picking.
+
+But it was not long before a second disturbance came, and this time
+they all heard it. It was, as Amy had said, a rustling sound. However,
+it was louder this time, as though several heavy bodies were pushing
+through the underbrush on the other side of the road.
+
+“Perhaps we had better go and see what is making all the noise,” said
+Mrs. Irving, her light tone successfully hiding an undercurrent of
+nervousness. “I guess we have picked enough berries for our pudding,
+anyway.”
+
+The girls picked up their pails and started for the road, Betty in the
+lead. But when the latter reached the outer fringe of bushes she
+started back, almost treading on Mollie’s toes and causing her to drop
+her pail in alarm.
+
+“It’s sheep!” cried the Little Captain. “Dozens and dozens of them!
+Come and look!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+THE ENEMY ROUTED
+
+
+Mrs. Irving pushed forward beside Betty, and the girls stared
+unbelievingly over her shoulder. Then they saw that she was right.
+
+While they had been picking berries in the woods a flock of sheep had
+wandered down to the road from the other direction and had completely
+surrounded their two cars.
+
+The big-eyed, innocent looking animals were circling around and around
+the machines as if examining them with a sort of ovine interest and
+curiosity.
+
+But to the girls the sheep had a rather terrifying aspect. There were
+so many of them and they had so completely taken possession of their
+automobiles! How in the world were they ever to get back their
+property?
+
+“Goodness!” Grace whispered plaintively in Betty’s ear, “I expect they
+will try to climb into the cars next. What ever are we going to do?”
+
+“Sh,” cautioned Amy fearfully, as some of the flock, attracted by the
+noise in the bushes, turned their heads in the direction of it.
+“Suppose they should come in here?”
+
+“Well, they are not lions, you goose,” said Mollie, coming out of the
+trance into which surprise had thrown her. “They are only sheep, and
+they couldn’t hurt you if they tried.”
+
+“Not unless they stampeded,” said Betty quietly. “In that case I
+wouldn’t care to be in the way.”
+
+“But we can’t stay here all night,” Mollie protested impatiently.
+
+“Held up by a lot of silly old sheep,” added Grace, still more
+uncomfortably conscious of a growing appetite.
+
+“It must be almost two o’clock,” added Amy with a sigh.
+
+“Yes, if things keep on this way it will be night before we reach the
+lodge,” said Mollie, adding with decision, “I vote that we get some
+sticks and stones and scat ’em out of the way.”
+
+“I think I have a better suggestion than that,” put in Mrs. Irving,
+speaking for the first time. “I think we had better wait for a short
+time before we do anything. The sheep will probably get tired in a
+little while and wander off of their own accord.”
+
+“Oh, all right,” said Mollie, with rather bad grace as she seated
+herself on a convenient rock. “But all the time we are waiting for them
+to be tired, we will be getting tired ourselves and, goodness, Mrs.
+Irving, I’m being starved to death.”
+
+At the desperation in her tones the girls had to laugh, though they
+were as reluctant to sit with folded hands and wait as she was. Still,
+Mrs. Irving was their chaperon and probably knew best.
+
+So with admirable resignation they disposed themselves beside Mollie on
+the big rock and settled down to watch for developments.
+
+But after waiting for an everlasting five minutes they decided that
+there were to be no developments. The foolish sheep continued to circle
+lazily about the cars, nibbling now and then upon the grass by the
+roadside but showing not the slightest intention in the world of moving
+from there for some time to come.
+
+“Oh, what shall we do?” moaned Grace, moving restlessly on her
+uncomfortable seat. “My foot is going to sleep and I’m trying to sit on
+a pointed stone or something.”
+
+“And it looks as though those crazy sheep were going to stay there all
+night,” added Betty, herself growing restive at the apparent futility
+of waiting for something to happen. “Can’t we do something, Mrs.
+Irving?”
+
+“Wait just a few minutes more,” begged the lady, who was afraid of the
+sheep, but was reluctant to confess her fear to her young charges.
+“Look, there seems to be a movement among them now,” she added
+hopefully, as one sheep pressed against another and sent it scampering
+a few feet along the road. “We won’t have to wait much longer, I am
+sure.”
+
+And so, loth to break their chaperon’s authority, the girls fidgeted
+and fumed, getting more impatient and hungrier with every leaden minute
+that dragged itself by until almost three-quarters of an hour had
+passed.
+
+Then, when they began to think that they must scream if they were
+forced to wait another minute, their chaperon rose of her own accord
+and with a decided movement flicked the dust from her skirt.
+
+“I think we have waited long enough,” she hazarded, to which each girl
+said a fervent though silent “amen.” “I suppose we shall have to follow
+Mollie’s suggestion and gather sticks and stones. Perhaps we can scare
+them away.”
+
+“Hooray!” shouted Mollie, jumping to her feet with relief. At the
+unexpected sound the sheep in the road started and looked about them
+uneasily. “Come on, girls, I’m mad enough to attack ’em single-handed.
+All who are with me, say Aye.”
+
+“Aye!” they yelled, scurrying about to find sticks and stones.
+
+Betty, flourishing a branch at the frightened flock, yelled: “We are
+wild, wild women, old sheep. You had better get out while the going’s
+good. We eat little fellers like you alive!” and with a whoop of wild
+spirits she danced down to the edge of the wood waving her stick wildly
+about her head.
+
+Her fun was contagious and, smothering their laughter, the girls
+waltzed after her, throwing sticks and stones and all sorts of
+improvised weapons into the midst of the now thoroughly frightened
+flock.
+
+Mrs. Irving strove to caution them, but her voice was lost in the
+babble, and for once in her life at least she found herself utterly
+ignored. With a little sigh she picked up a stick of her own and
+followed after the girls.
+
+For a moment it looked as though the panic stricken sheep would rush
+straight for the shouting girls, and in that moment what was little
+more than an exciting game to the girls might have turned into a rather
+dreadful tragedy.
+
+But, luckily, half a dozen sheep broke through and, led by an old ram,
+started down the road and the rest of the flock, as is the habit of
+sheep, followed after.
+
+In a moment the entire flock was galloping off down the road with the
+excited girls in pursuit. There is no telling how far they might have
+followed the sheep had not Betty become suddenly possessed of a grain
+of common-sense.
+
+Panting and laughing, she came to a standstill while the girls rushed
+past her.
+
+“Come back here!” she cried, her voice choked with laughter. “There’s
+no use of our being as silly as the sheep. Mrs. Irving will think we
+have deserted her.”
+
+So reluctantly the girls abandoned the chase and started back to rejoin
+their much relieved but slightly dazed chaperon.
+
+“Now if we had only done that an hour ago,” said Mollie, as they
+climbed back into the machines determined to make up for lost time, “we
+would have been that much nearer the lodge and! something to eat.”
+
+“Goodness, it will he almost dark when we get there now,” wailed Grace,
+as she slipped into the seat beside Betty. “And we haven’t had anything
+to eat since breakfast.”
+
+“What with highway robbers and sheep,” laughed Betty, as she started
+the engine, “we shall be lucky if we get there at all.”
+
+“Oh, Betty, if you love me don’t mention that awful highwayman again,”
+begged Grace, looking uneasily into the shadows of the wood. “I don’t
+want to have any more thrills like that as long as I live.”
+
+“Let’s hope we won’t,” said Betty fervently.
+
+“It’s a pity there is no telephone along this road! we could notify the
+folks at Deepdale,” remarked Mollie.
+
+“Humph, if we did that they might get so scared that they’d send for us
+to come home,” came from Amy.
+
+“That’s so!” came from the other Outdoor Girls quickly.
+
+“Well, as I said before, no more thrills like that for yours truly,”
+repeated Grace.
+
+But little did the girls know that in the weeks to follow they would
+have more and more startling thrills than they had ever experienced
+before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+NOTHING HUMAN
+
+
+They might have reached Wild Rose Lodge before dusk, in spite of
+Grace’s gloomy prediction, if everything had gone well then. But it
+seemed that the evil genius of bad luck was not yet through with them.
+
+They were scarcely five miles from their destination when, bang! went a
+report that made the girls clutch at each other wildly. At first they
+jumped to the conclusion that they were being held up again, but close
+on the heels of the first thought came the conviction of the truth.
+Mollie had had a blowout!
+
+Betty, looking behind, saw the big car stop and brought her own little
+roadster to a standstill once more.
+
+“There is nothing wrong with our tires, is there?” she asked of Grace.
+“Look over your side, Gracie, and see.”
+
+Finding nothing amiss, they jumped out and ran back to Mollie to offer
+assistance. Mollie was eyeing the flat tire gloomily and saying things
+under her breath that none of the girls could catch. Then as Betty
+spoke to her she seemed to come to life and ran around to the back of
+the machine.
+
+“Of course you can help,” she answered, working to release the extra
+tire. “I would like to see you get out of it. Lucky I bought an extra
+tire before we started, though I did hope,” here she glared at the
+girls as if it were all their fault, “that I wouldn’t have to use it so
+soon. We’ve had more trouble on this ride than any I can remember. A
+hold-up, sheep and! this!”
+
+“Well, there is no use talking about it,” Betty reminded her
+cheerfully. “The less we talk, the harder we can work and the sooner we
+shall get started again.”
+
+“Yes, that’s all very well,” grumbled Mollie, as she fumbled for her
+tools; “but you don’t know this place as well as I do.”
+
+“You talk,” said Amy, her eyes widening, “as though there were wild
+animals or something in the woods. I didn’t know they came as far east
+as this.”
+
+“They don’t, goose,” said Mollie grumpily, as she pulled at the tire.
+“I didn’t say anything about wild animals, did I? Only we have to ride
+about two miles through the woods before we get to the lodge and I must
+say I didn’t want to do that in the dark.”
+
+“But there is some sort of road, isn’t there?” asked Grace.
+
+Mollie, bending over the lifting jack, shot her a withering glance.
+
+“Of course there’s a road,” she said shortly. “How else could we expect
+to use the cars?”
+
+“It must be a sort of wagon road,” suggested Betty as she deftly helped
+her chum. “And I don’t blame you for not wanting to try it at night,
+Mollie. I don’t much like the idea myself.”
+
+“I believe if we hurry that we can get there before dusk,” said Mrs.
+Irving confidently, though it might have been noticed that she kept her
+eyes rather anxiously on the fast sinking sun.
+
+At last, after what seemed an eternity to the impatient girls, the new
+tire had replaced the old one, the old one was safely strapped on the
+back of the car, the tools were put away, and they were ready to start
+once more.
+
+“Give her plenty of gas this time, Betty,” Mollie sung after her as the
+Little Captain climbed into her car. If we can manage to get to the
+woods before dark we will be doing good work. Let her go.”
+
+With which advice she settled herself behind the wheel of her own car
+and they were off once more.
+
+Betty did “give her plenty of gas,” the result being that they
+succeeded in reaching the wagon road that led into the woods to the
+lodge just on the edge of dusk.
+
+However, when they started along the road they were dismayed to find
+that what was only dusk outside on the road became almost dark in here,
+and Betty had all she could do to keep to the road at all.
+
+“Hadn’t you better put on your lights?” Grace suggested uneasily. “We
+might run into a ditch or something. Betty, I’m half scared.”
+
+For answer Betty switched on the lights and the woods and the road
+ahead of them were suddenly flooded with a weird radiance. It brought
+out branches and leaves and stones in such sharp contrast to the dark
+background that the effect was startling.
+
+“Oh,” gasped Grace, “turn them off again, do, Betty. It is positively
+ghastly.”
+
+“Don’t be foolish,” said Betty, striving to make her voice sound
+matter-of-fact, her eyes glued to the road ahead of them as it twisted
+and turned through the woods. “I don’t see why lights should make a
+perfectly harmless wood look ghastly. And, anyway, I couldn’t turn them
+out now. I don’t believe I could find my way. You don’t want me to run
+into something, do you?”
+
+“No, of course not,” Grace said more firmly, rather ashamed of her
+fears. “I didn’t mean to act in a silly fashion. But,” she turned to
+Betty quickly, “that hold-up and all! don’t you feel a little queer
+yourself, Betty? Tell the truth.”
+
+“Yes,” said the Little Captain truthfully. “I feel,” she added slowly,
+as though searching for words, “I feel as though the woods belonged to
+somebody and that we were sort of! sort of! intruding.”
+
+“Why, Betty!” said Grace, staring at her, “what a funny thing to say.”
+
+“I suppose it is,” said Betty, shaking off the illusion with a shrug of
+her shoulders. “I am getting foolish in my old age I guess. We shall
+all feel better when we get something to eat.”
+
+“If we ever do,” said Grace gloomily, adding as a sudden turn in the
+woods shot them deeper into the gloom of it: “Do be careful, Betty. I
+feel as though we were going over a precipice.”
+
+But Betty was too busy keeping the road to listen to her.
+
+“Look behind,” she directed Grace, “and see if Mollie is following
+close to us.”
+
+“She is right behind,” reported Grace, as two eyes of light shot their
+glare in her eyes. “She is following us closer than a poor relation.”
+
+Betty giggled at this, and then for a long time! or at least it seemed
+a long time to their strained nerves! they went on in silence,
+following the winding road wherever it led and getting deeper into the
+forest with every moment.
+
+Then suddenly something loomed up dark against the shadows only a few
+hundred feet ahead of them, and with a great feeling of thankfulness
+they realized that they had reached their destination. Directly ahead
+of them stood Wild Rose Lodge. They had arrived!
+
+But just as they were about to break into wild jubilation something
+happened that tightened Betty’s hand on the wheel and made Grace cry
+out with dismay.
+
+Out from the shadow of the lodge a second shadow detached itself, a
+hunched up, bulky, fearful shadow that seemed neither beast nor man,
+but a combination of both of them.
+
+For a moment, while the girls watched, paralyzed with fright, the thing
+seemed about to spring into the path of the moving car. But in another
+instant it turned, wheeled, and disappeared into the thick bushes about
+the house.
+
+Then and only then did Betty recover presence of mind enough to stop
+the car.
+
+“Betty! Betty!” cried Grace in a horrified whisper, grasping Betty’s
+hand as it clung to the wheel. “What was it? Oh, what was it?”
+
+“I don’t know,” Betty answered mechanically. “I only know it was
+horrible.”
+
+Then quite suddenly and without warning Grace broke down and cried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+WILD ROSES
+
+
+“We will go into the house,” Mrs. Irving answered to their concerted
+cry of “What shall we do?” “Whatever it was that has frightened us has
+disappeared now, and we shall certainly be safer inside the house than
+out here. Come on, girls, I have the key.”
+
+And so, leaving the cars where they were, the girls approached the
+house with shaking knees and hearts that hammered their fear aloud. The
+Outdoor Girls were ordinarily afraid of nothing real and human, but to
+be held up at the point of a pistol would unnerve almost any one, and
+the struggle the girls had made not to give way to their fears at the
+time had made them more nervous still. And this thing that had startled
+them now, added to what had gone before, seemed a little more than
+could be borne. It seemed, in fact, like nothing human.
+
+Mrs. Irving turned the key in the lock, opened the door and stepped
+inside the dark place, motioning to the girls to follow her.
+
+Fearfully the chums obeyed and Betty and Mollie pulled out their
+electric pocket torches, filling the place with a weird light. Mollie,
+being acquainted with the place, naturally took charge of the
+situation.
+
+“There are matches over there,” she said, “and candles over the
+fireplace. For goodness’ sake, let’s get a regular light, folks.
+Perhaps that will make us feel more natural.”
+
+“So say all of us,” echoed Amy. “The dark makes everything worse, when
+you are not well acquainted with a place.”
+
+Mollie touched a match to the candles, and in the answering flare
+turned to face her chums.
+
+“Girls,” she said, determinedly, “I don’t know how you feel about it,
+but I vote that before we do anything else we get something to eat. We
+all look like ghosts just now and I’m sure we feel much worse than
+that. But a little food makes a monstrous lot of difference.”
+
+“You know it does,” cried Grace, relaxing into one of the big chairs
+that were scattered about the room and covering her face with her
+hands. “I think if I don’t get something to eat soon, I’ll die, that’s
+all.”
+
+“Well, we are none of us going to die,” said Mrs. Irving vigorously, as
+she threw aside her coat and hat. “Show us the way to the kitchen,
+Mollie, and if there is anything there to eat, we will get it.”
+
+Accordingly Mollie took one of the candles and led the way into a
+little room beyond while all the girls but Betty crowded in after her.
+
+For the Little Captain slipped back for a moment and very quietly
+closed the door, shutting out definitely the shadow beyond it.
+
+“I suppose it is foolish,” she said to herself, “because if there is
+anything out there that really wants to get in there are plenty of ways
+that it can do it, without coming in through the door. But,” and she
+turned the key in the lock, “it certainly makes one feel more
+comfortable to have the door closed.” Then she followed the girls into
+the other room, and the sight that met her eyes was certainly more
+cheering than anything she could have imagined.
+
+Mollie’s Uncle John had surprised them. In the exact center of a table
+set for five lay a young pig, roasted whole and browned to a turn! Nor
+was this all. The table was littered with covered dishes of all sizes
+and descriptions, and as the contents of each one of these dishes was
+disclosed, the girls became more and more excited and hilarious.
+
+There was apple sauce in one, salad in another, mashed potatoes that
+had become quite cold in another, and a boat of gravy which had also
+become quite cold.
+
+“But we don’t mind,” cried Mollie joyfully, as she took the gravy-boat
+in one hand, the dish of potatoes in the other, and ran with them over
+to a great stove in one corner of the room. “We need only some matches
+to have this blazing hot in a minute. No, not that way, Grace,” as the
+latter tried to help by lighting the burner. “This isn’t a gas stove,
+you know; it’s an oil stove and you had better look out or you will
+blow us all up.
+
+It is small wonder if Betty was so dazzled by this joyful scene that
+she could neither move nor speak for the space of two seconds or so.
+Then, recovering her powers of locomotion, she went over to the table
+and picked up a note that, in their excitement, the girls had
+overlooked.
+
+“See what this says,” she called to them, and they looked at her rather
+impatiently. Just at that moment the only thing they cared to consider
+was food! and more food! and then some more!
+
+But as Betty read they became more interested, and even stopped long
+enough to hear her through. It was a brief note. This is what it said.
+
+“My dear young ladies:
+    “I am a neighbor of Mr. Prendergast,” (this was the dressed-up name
+    of Mollie’s Uncle John) “and he axed me to get your dinner ready
+    fer you. I tried to keep it hot but you wus so long comin’ I had to
+    go home to get dinner fer my old man. Hope things is all right.
+
+
+“LIZZIE DAVIS.”
+
+
+“So she is the one who has done all this,” said Betty, looking around
+at the good things with dancing eyes. “I bet she is nice and plump and
+has rosy cheeks.”
+
+“Lizzie Davis? Lizzie Davis?” repeated Mollie, bringing the steaming
+gravy back and plumping the dish triumphantly down on the table.
+“Rather a funny name for a fairy godmother, but she sure does know how
+to cook. Don’t forget the potatoes, Grace. Come on, girls! let’s sit
+down.”
+
+So down the girls sat and acted like ravenous pigs! or so Grace
+described their conduct afterward, Mrs. Irving set to work carving the
+delicious pork, but they could not wait for her.
+
+They seized slices of bread, spread apple sauce and butter on them, and
+ate like what they were, four famished girls and one equally famished
+chaperon who had been out in the open all day and had had nothing to
+eat since morning.
+
+It was some time before they showed any considerable signs of slowing
+up. Then Grace put down her fork, leaned back lazily, and called for
+dessert. The latter was a huge cherry pie, and before the girls were
+through with it there was not enough left to color a robin’s egg.
+
+After the pangs of hunger had been satisfied they found to their great
+surprise that they were dead tired and sleepy.
+
+“We will get the dishes out of the way and then Mollie can show us
+where we sleep,” said Betty. “Oh, girls, did you ever in your life
+taste such a dinner?”
+
+It was not till the dishes had all been cleared away and Mollie took up
+her candle to show them their quarters that the unwelcome thought of
+the thing that had so frightened them again crept terrifyingly into
+their minds. Try as they would to forget it, they could not.
+
+There were three small sleeping rooms in the lodge, but, small as they
+were, they were comfortable and contained beds that seemed the height
+of luxury to the tired girls.
+
+Because of the indistinct and flickering candle light the girls could
+make out very little of what the rooms really looked like, and they
+postponed any close examination until the morning. Back of the lodge
+was a shed for the cars.
+
+The bedrooms were all joined by doors, which gave the girls a safe and
+sociable feeling. Mrs. Irving, of course, had one room to herself,
+Betty and Mollie slept together and Grace and Amy paired off.
+
+They wasted little time in getting ready! Betty and Mollie had
+appointed themselves a committee of two to bring in the grips from
+Mollie’s car! and before long they tasted the exquisite restfulness of
+comfortable beds after a long nerve-trying day in the out-of-doors.
+
+“I don’t believe I shall close my eyes all night,” said Amy with
+conviction. “I’m too horribly nervous.”
+
+But three minutes later she was sound asleep!
+
+The sun had been up a good two hours before any one stirred in Wild
+Rose Lodge. Betty was the first to awake, and in fifteen minutes she
+had the rest of the sleepy-eyed and protesting girls up and nearly
+dressed.
+
+“What’s the idea, anyway?” yawned Grace lazily. “I could have slept at
+least a good two hours more.”
+
+“On a day like this?” sang Betty, breathing in deep breaths of the
+wood-scented air. “And isn’t this just the dearest room you ever saw?”
+she added, wheeling about and regarding the apartment delightedly. They
+were in Grace and Amy’s room, for, as usual, Mollie and Betty had been
+the first dressed and had gone into their chums’ room to hurry them up!
+if such a thing were possible.
+
+Betty’s summing up of the room they were in was indeed well deserved,
+for the place was charming. There was a dresser, a bed, and three
+chairs, and all of these articles of furniture had been rough-hewed out
+of logs, giving the place a delightfully rustic appearance. There was a
+grass rug on the floor and in one corner a little table covered with
+books.
+
+“Isn’t it darling?” cried Mollie, following Betty’s glance about the
+place. “Uncle John built the lodge and made all of the furniture
+himself, you know. And he bought the grass rugs from the Indians.”
+
+They were still exclaiming about the place when Mrs. Irving called to
+them that breakfast was ready. With a whoop of delight they answered
+the summons, and a moment later sat themselves down to a most
+satisfying meal of omelet and toast and coffee with real cream in it.
+Also Mrs. Irving set on the table a yellow-topped pitcher of milk fresh
+from the cow.
+
+“Our friend, Lizzie Davis, brought it,” their chaperon answered with a
+smile, in response to the girls’ curious questions. “Also some fresh
+butter and eggs, I have an idea,” she added, as she got up to refill
+the butter plate, “that we shall live on the fat of the land while we
+are here.”
+
+“Lizzie Davis,” repeated Betty, pausing in the act of filling her glass
+with fresh milk and regarding Mrs. Irving with dancing eyes. “Tell me,
+chaperon dear, Didn’t she have nice red cheeks, and wasn’t she
+delightfully plump?”
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Irving, smiling at Betty’s flushed prettiness. “She
+was all of that, my dear. I don’t believe I ever saw a more cozy
+looking person in my life.”
+
+“I knew it!” cried Betty triumphantly, adding with a suspicious eye on
+Grace: “Hand over that plate of toast, Gracie. You needn’t think you
+can eat it all up!”
+
+After breakfast they sallied forth to “view the country o’er.” They
+would have stayed and helped Mrs. Irving clear up, but that good woman
+declared that she could do better by herself on this first morning.
+After she had become better acquainted with the place they could help
+her all they liked. Finally, after some protest, they had to let her
+have her way.
+
+As they stepped out on the porch, Betty paused and held up her hand for
+silence.
+
+“Listen,” she said. “That murmuring sound and the splash of water!!”
+
+“It’s the river and the falls,” explained Mollie. “Let’s go down and
+have a look at them.”
+
+But Amy, giving a little gasp of delight, fairly tumbled down the steps
+and into a riot of gorgeous pink wild roses. The lodge was fairly
+surrounded by them.
+
+“Oh, you darlings!” cried Amy, putting both arms around a bush of the
+fragrant flowers as though she would gather in all their beauty at
+once. “I never saw anything so wonderful in all my life! Oh, girls, I’m
+glad I came!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+THE WHIRLPOOL
+
+
+All the spirit and joy of the woods seemed to have entered into the
+Outdoor Girls. For the next half hour they romped in the woods and the
+beautiful flowers for all the world like little children whose first
+glimpse it was of the country.
+
+They took down their hair and made wreaths of wild roses for crowns,
+and when, faces flushed with exercise and fun, they had finished, one
+might easily have mistaken them for real fairies come to life.
+
+“But I want to see the river,” Betty called to them, stopping once more
+to listen to the rhythmic sound of splashing water. “Come on, girls. It
+can’t be more than a few hundred feet away, even though we can’t see it
+for the bushes. Lead on, Mollie Billette, I wouldst hie me hence.”
+
+But when Mollie laughingly obeyed and started into the woods, Amy held
+back.
+
+“What’s the matter?” Grace asked, turning to her curiously.
+
+“I! I was just thinking,” stammered Amy, ashamed of her own weakness,
+“about last night.”
+
+“About last night,” Betty prompted, still at a loss.
+
+“You haven’t forgotten, have you?” she asked, incredulously. “That!
+thing! on the porch.”
+
+“Oh!” they said, and a shadow fell over their bright faces.
+
+“Why, yes,” said Betty, slowly, adding as though she could not quite
+explain the phenomenon herself: “I suppose we did forget all about it.”
+
+“Or if we didn’t, we should have,” said Mollie, ungrammatically but
+decidedly. “Come on, girls, we aren’t going to let any silly old thing
+like that frighten us out of a good time.”
+
+“It seems,” said Grace thoughtfully, while Amy still held back, “almost
+as if we had dreamed the whole thing. The memory of it is so vague! and
+indistinct.”
+
+“Well, it isn’t vague to me! or indistinct either,” said Amy, feeling
+rather abused because the girls did not seem to share her feelings. “I
+hardly slept all night long just thinking about it.”
+
+“Oh, Amy Blackford!” said Grace accusingly, while Mollie and Betty
+turned twinkling eyes upon her. “If that isn’t the biggest one I ever
+heard. Why, I woke up once or twice in the night and each time I found
+you almost snoring.”
+
+“Oh, I did not,” protested Amy, flushing indignantly, but here Mollie
+and Betty stepped laughingly into the fray and peremptorily put an end
+to it.
+
+“Let’s not fight about it,” said Betty, when she could make herself
+heard. “We don’t care whether Amy snored or not. What we want to know
+is this: Who is coming with us for a look at the falls?”
+
+“Now you’re talking, Little Captain,” said Mollie approvingly. “All in
+favor please say Aye.”
+
+Amy still showed some inclination to hold back, but Mollie and Betty
+each took an arm and hurried her willy-nilly with them into the woods.
+
+“You had better take the lead, Mollie,” Betty suggested after they had
+gone some little distance along the path. “I can manage Amy alone now,
+I guess. She seems pretty well tamed.”
+
+“Tamed, but scared to death,” Amy came back, with a wry smile. “Really,
+Betty,” she turned to look at the Little Captain closely, “aren’t you
+the least little bit nervous about what happened last night?”
+
+“No, I don’t think I am now,” said Betty, adding candidly, “I must say
+I was last night though! just frightened to death. It seemed so awfully
+uncanny! coming upon that thing in the dark after what we had gone
+through with that bandit. But then,” she added more lightly,
+“everything seems so much worse in the dark, you know.”.
+
+“Yes,” said Amy slowly and looking very serious. “That all may be very
+true. But I think that as long as we are sure we didn’t dream it last
+night and that the skulking thing really dodged out from the corner of
+our porch that we ought to be on our guard against it. And how,” she
+finished most reasonably, “can we be on our guard in the woods?”
+
+Betty was at a loss to know just how to answer such a question. By this
+time Mollie and Grace were some little distance ahead of them and Amy’s
+nervousness was beginning to communicate itself to her against her
+will.
+
+She felt again the creeping sensation that had traveled up and down her
+spine at sight of that crouching, sinister figure that had sprung out
+from the shadow of the porch.
+
+It had disappeared into the bushes last night, and, for all she knew!
+and the thought made her tingle weirdly! it might still be hiding in
+them, crouching, ready to spring
+
+With an effort she shook off the mood and turned to Amy brightly.
+
+“There is no use in our making a mountain out of a mole hill,” she
+said, plucking a wild rose as they swung by and smelling of its
+delicious fragrance. “Last night, I admit, it seemed very terrifying to
+us, but that was probably because we couldn’t see what it was that
+frightened us. It may just have been a large dog or something.”
+
+“Humph,” sniffed Amy, sceptically, “it must have been a monster dog.
+Sort of a ghost hound.”
+
+“Goodness, that’s going from bad to worse,” laughed Betty, as they
+rejoined the other girls. “Let’s hope it isn’t anything like that, Amy
+dear. Hello, what are you waiting for?” she hailed the girls
+cheerfully. “We almost fell over you.”
+
+“Watch your step,” cautioned Mollie, adding as she cleared aside some
+bushes and motioned Betty to a place beside her: “We’ve reached the
+river, Betty, and a little farther up is the falls. Isn’t it
+beautiful?”
+
+“Oh, it is beautiful,” rejoined Betty, a sentiment which Amy heartily
+echoed, and for a few minutes they stood there, drinking in the beauty
+of the scene, entirely unmindful of the lovely picture they themselves
+made with their loosened hair and wreaths of wild flowers.
+
+The river was not very wide, but the water was deep and clear and swift
+and the continual swish-swish of its passage over rocks and between
+foliage-laden banks made a pleasant, even sound that was deliciously
+restful and refreshing.
+
+“Oh, if we could only get down right into the very middle of it and let
+those little ripples wash over us forever and forever!” sighed Grace
+ecstatically.
+
+“She would a little mermaid be!” sang Betty, as she slipped down to the
+very edge of the water and leaned over to catch her reflection in the
+bright depths of it. “But honestly, Mollie, isn’t there any place in
+the river where we can swim?”
+
+“It looks too swift for good swimming to me!” began Grace, but Mollie
+stopped her with a mysterious finger to her lips.
+
+“Hush, my pretty one, not a word,” said the latter, beginning to pick
+her way daintily along the river bank. “Follow me and you will wear
+diamonds, or seaweed, or whatever it is that mermaids wear. And don’t
+fall over, whatever you do,” she turned around to caution them, “The
+river is so swift here that I don’t believe even the strongest swimmer
+would have a chance.”
+
+Accordingly the girls “watched their step,” and for some distance
+followed Mollie uncomplainingly. Then, as there seemed no sign of their
+getting anywhere, Grace started to protest.
+
+“Say, do you suppose she has any idea where she is going?” the latter
+asked of Betty in a tone that was designed to reach Mollie’s ear. But
+before she could say anything more, Mollie herself swung jubilantly
+round upon them.
+
+“Here we are, girls!” she cried. “Now see if you ever saw anything so
+pretty in all your lives.”
+
+Once more the girls stood spellbound by the natural beauty of the
+scene. As they walked they had become more and more conscious of the
+roaring noise made by rushing water, and now, ascending a small rise of
+ground, they came full upon the majestic beauty of Moonlight Falls.
+
+The falls fell full thirty feet, and at the foot of it the river was
+churned into swirling, liquid foam that whirled around and around again
+in a sort of mad race and then went rushing off down the river in a
+shower of lacy spray.
+
+It was wildly inspiring, exhilarating, and the girls thrilled with a
+strange new emotion as they watched. It was so free, so gloriously
+unchained!
+
+“There is our swimming pool over there,” Mollie said, raising her voice
+to make it heard above the roar of the water. “You see there is a sort
+of little back eddy below the falls and to one side of it, and right
+there we’ll find the best swimming of our lives. But,” she added, and
+her voice was impressively solemn, “heaven help any one of us who gets
+in the path of the falls.”
+
+“Look!” cried Amy suddenly, her voice ringing out full and clear and
+startled above the uproar. “That! thing! over there. It is going into
+the falls! no, under them!”
+
+“Where?” cried Mollie eagerly, leaning far forward. “Oh, yes, I see
+what you mean. Oh, girls, I’m slipping!” Her voice rose to a terrified
+wail. “Betty! Catch me!”
+
+But Betty was too late. She sprang forward just in time to see Mollie
+slide down the slippery bank and plunge into the maddened water of the
+river!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+THE THING
+
+
+It took the girls a moment to realize the extent of the awful thing
+that had happened. Then Betty, obeying her first impulse, raised her
+hands above her head as though to dive, but Amy screamed to her to
+stop.
+
+“You will only be lost too!” she cried frantically. “Look! that flat
+stick! the long one!!”
+
+Instantly Betty saw what she meant and stooped to pick up a long broken
+branch that was lying at her feet. At the same instant Mollie came to
+the surface several feet away from the spot where she had fallen and
+threw her strength desperately against the rushing might of the river.
+
+Betty ran along the river bank, Amy and Grace at her heels, shouting
+encouragement to Mollie as she ran.
+
+“Hold tight!” she cried, adding with fresh dismay as she saw that the
+girl was being swept further from the shore: “Over this way, honey,
+Swim to your right! to your right!!”
+
+Blinded, chilled to the bone with the cold water, her hair in her eyes
+and her skirts clinging tight about her legs, Mollie struggled wildly,
+unable to hear the shouts of her chums above the ringing in her ears.
+
+It was taking all her strength to hold her own against the rush of the
+river! and now she was not even doing that! Slowly, very slowly, she
+was being pushed backward; in a little while more she would be sucked
+downward, and then!!
+
+She closed her eyes, and then, as though the obliteration of one sense
+made more clear the other, she heard Betty calling to her above the
+roar of the falls.
+
+“Mollie! Mollie!” it came, faint but distinct, “take hold of the stick
+and we’ll pull you in. Mollie, do you hear me?”
+
+The girl in the water was still struggling hard against the current
+that was dragging at her cruelly, and at the sound of Betty’s words she
+shook the water from her eyes and looked about her dazedly. She had
+forgotten the girls.
+
+Then she saw something that sent a tingle of renewed hope through her
+tired body. What she saw was a long branch bobbing on the water not two
+feet from her outstretched hand, and at the other end of the stick was!
+Betty.
+
+With a sigh that was half a sob she struck out for it, reached it, and
+clung to it as only the drowning know how to cling.
+
+Then she felt herself being drawn through the water, and once more she
+closed her eyes. When she opened them again she was on a warm grassy
+bank with Amy chafing one hand, Grace the other, while Betty was busy
+unfastening the clothes about her waist.
+
+As Mollie was never under any circumstances expected to act as people
+thought she should act, so this occasion was no exception to the rule.
+She pushed Amy and Grace aside, glared at Betty, and sat up with a
+little jerk.
+
+“For goodness’ sake, stop undressing me, Betty Nelson!” she said. “I’m
+not dead yet.”
+
+“So we see,” said Betty, while her eyes lost their anxious expression
+and began to twinkle instead. “But you might have been, you know, if we
+had left you to yourself.”
+
+Mollie looked down at her dripping clothes ruefully and then out at the
+rushing water.
+
+“I guess you are right,” she said with a little grimace, “It wasn’t
+very pleasant while it lasted, either. Whew, but that water was cold!”
+She shivered involuntarily and Betty sprang to her feet.
+
+“We had better be getting back to the lodge,” she said. “You can put on
+some dry things, Mollie, and we girls will get you some hot soup. You
+are chilled to the bone.”
+
+“Nonsense,” denied Mollie grumpily. “I’m beginning to feel fine and
+warm. Besides,” she added, trying to cover a chill that fairly made her
+teeth ache, “I want to stay and find out about that thing that got us
+into all this fuss.”
+
+“Nonsense,” Grace put in. Up to this time Grace had been made
+speechless by Mollie’s sudden recovery. “You are shivering so you can’t
+sit still.”
+
+“It makes me cold just to look at you,” added Amy,
+
+“Don’t be foolish, honey,” said Betty impatiently. “You can’t sit there
+all day in dripping clothes, and besides you will really get cold.”
+
+“Humph,” grunted Mollie, getting to her feet rather unsteadily and
+shaking out her sodden skirts. “I guess this isn’t the first time I
+have taken a dip in cold water. And besides,” she added impatiently; “I
+don’t know about you girls, but I would like to know just what that
+thing was that we saw dart beneath the falls.”
+
+“That was what made you fall into the water, wasn’t it?” asked Betty,
+her forehead wrinkling thoughtfully. “You leaned so far out to see!!”
+
+“Yes, yes,” Mollie interrupted impatiently, all her curiosity revived.
+“That was what made me fall into the water all right. But what I want
+to know is! what was it?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Betty, shaking her head. “I didn’t see it.”
+
+“Neither did I,” Grace added.
+
+Mollie looked from one to the other of them open-mouthed. Then she
+turned to Amy,
+
+“You saw it, didn’t you?” she asked. “You screamed, you know.”
+
+“Yes,” said Amy, nodding her head very solemnly, “And it looked to me a
+lot like what we saw last night.”
+
+“Thank goodness, you saw it too or the girls would surely think I had
+been dreaming or was crazy,” said Mollie, with relief. Then she
+suddenly turned and started off into the woods. “I’m going all alone to
+find out what that was,” she told her stupefied chums. “I’ve got to
+clear up the mystery before I’m an hour older.”
+
+But this time Mollie found that there was some one stronger than she,
+and that was Betty. The Little Captain ran after her and brought her
+back, protesting but captive.
+
+“We are going back to the house now and get you something hot to eat,”
+said Betty, as they rejoined Amy and Grace and started off toward home.
+“Afterwards if everybody’s willing we will hunt this strange beast that
+jumps out from porches and leaps into rivers just for the fun of the
+thing. But just now, Billy Billette, you are going home.”
+
+But Mollie had been more severely shocked than she was willing to admit
+by her experience, and it was some time before the girls visited the
+falls or the river again. Meanwhile they contented themselves with
+exploring the country about the lodge, taking short trips in the cars
+and wondering whether the boys would really be home before the summer
+was over.
+
+Their days were not altogether happy, however, for the thought of that
+weird thing prowling around in the woods and ready, for all they knew,
+to spring out at them at every turn, refused to be banished from their
+minds.
+
+Then, too, they thought a great deal about poor Professor Dempsey and
+the little ruined cottage in the woods. Somehow, they had an uneasy
+feeling that if they had gone to him at the very first minute they had
+heard of his trouble they might have helped him. Whereas, they had
+waited and! he had fled.
+
+For a while the idea of a dip in the swimming pool was naturally not
+very attractive to Mollie, but at last there came a day when she
+herself suggested it and the girls enthusiastically seconded the
+motion.
+
+More than the prospect of a good time, was the hope, unexpressed, that
+they might see again that strange thing which Amy and Mollie had only
+glimpsed the time before. Perhaps, they thought, if the mysterious
+thing were faced in the open and in broad daylight, it might prove to
+be no mystery at all but something ordinary and commonplace enough to
+do away with all their vague and weird imaginings.
+
+But in this expectation they were most completely disappointed. Nothing
+at all unusual occurred and although they enjoyed their swim in the
+warm back eddy of the pool, they came away disgruntled and with a
+curious feeling that they had been cheated out of something.
+
+“I only wish the boys would come,” sighed Amy, as they turned in once
+more at the lodge.
+
+After that the “Thing” became almost like an obsession with them. They
+must find out definitely what it was that was spoiling all their fun.
+They began to haunt the river, especially at the foot of the falls, in
+the hope of seeing something, anything that would put an end to their
+curiosity and uneasiness.
+
+For a long time they had not got up courage enough to visit the place
+at night, but at last they became curious enough to brave even that.
+
+“We have simply got to find out something,” Mollie whispered to Betty
+as on this particular night they stood on the porch and waited for Mrs.
+Irving to join them. “We can’t go on this way any longer, Betty. Why, I
+am getting so nervous I jump if you look at me.”
+
+“I know,” said Betty soberly. “It really is getting on our nerves too
+much. Amy and Grace are feeling it even worse than we are.”
+
+“Yes,” agreed Mollie grumpily. “Last night was the third night in
+succession that Amy got us all out of bed to listen to some fool noise
+outside. I’m just about sick of it.”
+
+The other three came then and they had no further chance for
+conversation. As a matter of fact, they talked surprisingly little on
+the walk to the river.
+
+High above them a wonderful full moon sent its silvery light filtering
+down through leaves and branches, making of the woods a fairyland.
+Somehow, the very beauty of it filled the girls with a strange dread.
+To them the patches of moonlight were weird, unreal, the shadowy woods
+held a sinister menace.
+
+By the time they had reached the river’s edge they were almost ready to
+turn and run, But they conquered the impulse and pressed on. Then
+suddenly they saw what they had hoped, yet dreaded, to see.
+
+On the opposite bank, staring down into the rapids with a terrible
+intentness, stood a man, or something that resembled a man. In one
+awful, breath-taking minute they realized that here at last was the
+“Thing.”
+
+As they watched, the hunched-up crouching figure on the opposite bank
+made a lumbering movement forward as though about to throw itself into
+the water at the foot of the falls.
+
+“Oh!” screamed Betty, the words wrenched from her dry throat. “Don’t do
+that! You mustn’t do that! Go back! For goodness’ sake, go back!”
+
+With a hoarse cry that answered her own, the “Thing” flung back from
+the water’s edge and disappeared into the darkness!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+SURPRISED
+
+
+The Outdoor Girls could hardly have told how they got back to the lodge
+after that, Blindly they stumbled through the underbrush, expecting
+they knew not what horrible thing, thankful for the moonlight that made
+it possible for them to hurry.
+
+They did reach home somehow and there they sat until late into the
+night, trying to find some explanation for the thing they had seen,
+striving to think up some plan for hunting it down until finally Mrs.
+Irving sent them to bed.
+
+That did not do very much good, for they lay awake and talked until the
+first rays of sunlight crept into the windows. Then they said goodnight
+and sank into a sleep of exhaustion.
+
+For three days after the episode the girls never went far from the
+house on foot. They would take the cars and spin down the open road,
+but a sort of horror of the supernatural kept them from venturing into
+the woods again.
+
+But when the fourth day dawned the fright of their moonlight experience
+had begun to wear off and they were beginning to feel ashamed of their
+fear.
+
+Having a little of this in her mind, Mollie gave voice to it at the
+breakfast table.
+
+“I must say,” she began, buttering a piece of bread energetically,
+“that it isn’t like us Outdoor Girls to let anything scare us into
+staying near the house. Why, I declare, I don’t believe there is one of
+us who would dare poke her nose past that rose bush in front of the
+porch after sundown. That’s a pretty state of affairs, isn’t it?”
+
+“Well, you needn’t glare at me as if it were all my fault,” retorted
+Amy with spirit. “I’m sure I didn’t wish the horrible old thing on us.”
+
+“I only wish I knew who did,” sighed Grace, adding, with a sudden burst
+of ferocity: “I would wring his neck.”
+
+“Suppose somebody suggests something we can do about it,” said Betty
+reasonably. “I’m sure that after the other night nobody could blame us
+for being frightened.”
+
+“No. But there is one thing I can blame you for,” said Mollie, glaring
+morosely at her chum. “And that is for not letting the horrible old
+thing drown itself when it so very evidently wanted to. If that had
+happened all our worries would have been over.”
+
+“Goodness, Mollie, what a horrible idea!” Betty protested.
+
+“I don’t think it was a horrible idea,” Grace put in. “I think it was
+just about the finest idea I ever heard of.”
+
+“Yes,” added Amy with a deceptive mildness, “if you hadn’t called out
+just then, Betty, the whole thing would have been over and the Thing
+would have been drowned. And then,” she added plaintively, “we would
+have been able to enjoy our summer.”
+
+“It really wasn’t any of our business, you know,” Grace finished,
+moodily.
+
+For a moment Betty sat and stared at them, undecided whether to be
+amused or indignant. However, the latter emotion won and she turned
+upon the girls with flashing eyes.
+
+“I think you are all perfectly horrid,” she said. “And I would think
+you were worse if I weren’t perfectly sure that you don’t really mean
+what you say. Why, just suppose,” she went on earnestly, “that we had
+willingly permitted that man to commit suicide? Why, we would have been
+just as guilty as if we had murdered him!”
+
+“But he may have done it since anyway,” muttered Mollie stubbornly. “He
+didn’t have to wait to ask our permission, and there are plenty of
+times that he can commit suicide when we are not around! if he really
+wants to do it.”
+
+“What he or anybody else does when we are not around, is not our
+business,” answered Betty. “We can’t help what happens in our absence.”
+
+“You seem to take it for granted that it is a man,” Mollie continued,
+still stubbornly argumentative. “But I am not so sure about that. The
+several times that we have seen the! the! Thing! it has looked as much
+animal as human to me.”
+
+“Well, we won’t argue that point,” said Betty, rising and beginning to
+clear away the dishes, “because we don’t know anything about it.”
+
+“That is just exactly what I am getting at,” said Mollie earnestly,
+leaning forward and resting her elbows on the table while the girls
+watched her interestedly. “We don’t know anything about it, but that is
+no reason why we should sit back and twiddle our thumbs and start at
+shadows.”
+
+“Well, for goodness’ sake, tell us what’s on your mind,” prompted Grace
+impatiently. “We haven’t sat back and twiddled our thumbs and started
+at shadows because we enjoyed it, you know.”
+
+“Now my plan is this,” said Mollie, ignoring Grace, who shrugged her
+shoulders and reached for her candy box. “Suppose we take a tramp
+through the woods to the head of the falls? It is a beautiful hike and
+the scenery at the falls is magnificent. But aside from that we will
+have a chance to find out something about this thing that will do away
+with the mystery.”
+
+“If it doesn’t do away with us at the same time,” said Amy so ruefully
+that they had to laugh at her.
+
+“Well, what do you say?” asked Mollie, looking around the circle of
+thoughtful faces! her glance a dare.
+
+For a moment it looked as if they all might refuse to go, but then
+their sporting blood came to the fore and they decided for the
+adventure.
+
+But when they told Mrs. Irving about their project and begged her to
+say yes to it, she looked very doubtful and only consented at last on
+the proviso that she was to go with them. This they were only too glad
+to have, and a few minutes later the lodge hummed with excitement and
+preparation once more. To the Outdoor Girls, active and fun-loving by
+nature, to be quiet for a few days was nothing short of torture. So
+now, even though there was still more than a little fear of the “Thing”
+in their hearts, they found relief in the promise of adventure.
+
+They put up some sandwiches and fruit in a basket in case they were not
+able to get home by noon. Then they locked the door of the little lodge
+and started down the steps. They hesitated before starting into the
+woods, and Mollie had a happy thought.
+
+“We can go part of the way along the road,” she said. “And then there
+is a path that leads directly through to the head of the falls.”
+
+The celerity with which they accepted this suggestion seemed funny to
+them afterward, but at the time they had other things to think about.
+Mostly they were wondering if they would realty be able to hold on to
+their nerve long enough to see the adventure through.
+
+“I wish,” said Betty wistfully, as she had wished so many times of
+late, “that the boys were here. They could help us out so beautifully.”
+And she sighed, for when she spoke of “the boys,” she always thought of
+one boy most! and that one was Allen.
+
+“Well, there’s no use wishing for what can’t possibly happen,” Grace
+was saying, when there came a whistle so clear and penetrating that it
+made them jump! then another, and another. Was it just that they were
+nervous or was there really something peculiarly familiar in the sound?
+At any rate they stopped and turned around to see who the whistlers
+could be.
+
+There were three soldiers coming down the road, broad-shouldered, vital
+looking fellows who swung along toward the astonished girls as though
+they owned the world.
+
+“Betty, oh, Betty!” whispered Grace in a tense voice, grasping Betty’s
+arm so hard it hurt. “It can’t be, oh, it can’t be the boys!”
+
+But Mollie had broken away from the group and was rushing toward the
+soldier lads like the wild little tomboy she was.
+
+“Girls, it’s the boys! it’s the boys! it’s the boys!” she yelled.
+“They’re all tanned and they’re at least ten inches taller, but it’s
+the boys just the same.”
+
+And before any of the other girls knew what she was about she had
+kissed each one of them twice and was hanging on the tallest one’s arm,
+who happened to be Frank, laughing and crying at the same time.
+
+Then the girls seemed to decide that she had had the lads to herself
+long enough, and they immediately entered the contest, all laughing at
+once, all crying at once, and all talking at once, until it was a
+wonder the boys did not lose their heads entirely.
+
+The only one who was not absolutely and completely and deliriously
+happy was Betty. For the other three boys were there, but Allen had not
+come!
+
+As though reading her thought, Will, who was much handsomer and more
+manly than when he went away, put an arm about the Little Captain’s
+shoulder big brother fashion and drew her aside from the rest.
+
+“You are wondering about Allen,” he said, and Betty nodded eagerly.
+“You see,” continued Will, his face lighting up in a smile that would
+always be boyish, “since Allen became one of the big bugs! which is
+another name for officer, you understand! he had to pay the penalty and
+stay over there with them for a little while longer. He will probably
+be over on the next transport, although of course you can never be sure
+about that. Oh, and I forgot,” he put his hand in his pocket and drew
+forth a pocketknife, a wad of string and! a little three-cornered note.
+“He asked me to give this to you as soon as I saw you. So now you can
+tell him that ‘I seen my duty and I done it noble.’“
+
+With a twinkle in his eye Will turned back to the others and Betty was
+left to open her note. This is what she read:
+
+“Gosh, some fellows do have all the luck, don’t they? But never mind,
+little girl. I’m coming to you by the very first boat, and when I get
+there do you know what I’m going to do? Do you?”
+
+
+Betty wanted to run away by herself and read the note over and over
+again. But she could not do that. With a sigh she hid the little
+message in a pocket of her skirt and turned back to the others.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+LIKE OLD TIMES
+
+
+It was a long time before the boys and girls woke up to the fact that
+they were still standing in the center of the road and that they might
+be ever so much more comfortable on the porch of the lodge, if any one
+had had sense enough to think that far.
+
+Mrs. Irving, who had been keeping herself rather in the background
+during the first rapturous greetings, now came in for her share of
+salutations and boyish greetings. The young soldiers crowded about her,
+patting her hands and her shoulders and telling her how awfully fine
+she looked and how glad they were to find her here until the lady
+actually blushed with pleasure and begged them to stop their nonsense.
+In fact, it was she who finally suggested that they go up to the lodge
+again.
+
+“I don’t see why we didn’t think of that before,” said Mollie, joyfully
+slipping an arm into Frank’s and turning him right-about-face. “We are
+due to talk all day anyway, so we might as well do it in comfort. Don’t
+forget the lunch basket, Betty,” she called back to her chum.
+
+Betty would have forgotten the basket and left it where it stood just
+as she had dropped it at the side of the road! and small wonder if she
+had! but as she stooped to pick it up, Will’s strong brown hand whipped
+out in front of her nose and seized the handle firmly.
+
+“That’s the idea,” said Grace approvingly, adding with a sisterly pat
+on his shoulder: “You run along with Amy and Mrs. Irving. I want to
+talk to Betty.”
+
+So Will, being a well-trained brother, did as he was told, and Grace
+drew Betty behind the others.
+
+“What about Allen, honey?” she asked, her blue eyes honestly worried.
+“We all missed him so, but we didn’t like to say too much for fear! for
+fear!!”
+
+“He’s all right,” said Betty, her heart glowing again at thought of the
+little note hidden away in her pocket. “He has only been delayed a
+little, that’s all. Will says he will probably be over on the next
+transport.”
+
+“Oh, I am relieved,” said Grace with such fervor that Betty looked at
+her quickly. Could it be, she wondered, that what she had half sensed
+before could be really true? Was Grace fond of Allen? But because the
+idea made her unhappy, she decided that she was just trying to think up
+trouble and dismissed it from her mind. All the girls loved Allen of
+course! who could help it?! but they couldn’t any of them, she told
+herself fiercely, care for him the way she did.
+
+“Well, what are you thinking about? You needn’t look so fierce,” she
+heard Grace saying, and she forced a smile to her face.
+
+“I’m not looking fierce,” Betty answered gayly. “Don’t you know that
+that is just my natural expression, Gracie dear? That’s the way I make
+little girls like you afraid of me.”
+
+“Well, I’m not afraid of you, not one little bit,” asserted Grace,
+squeezing Betty’s arm fondly. “Oh, Betty dear, isn’t it wonderful
+having the boys back and don’t they look fine! especially Will?”
+
+“Don’t they? Especially Will,” agreed Betty with a sly little glance.
+“If you don’t look out you will give the impression that you’re rather
+fond of that worthless old brother of yours, honey.”
+
+“I love him awfully,” replied Grace, adding with a little puckering of
+her forehead: “But I am going to tell you something, Betty, that I
+wouldn’t tell to any one else for the world. I’m jealous, actually
+jealous! of Amy.”
+
+Betty gave a merry little laugh and slipped an arm about her chum.
+
+“Gracie dear, we never would have known that if you hadn’t told us,”
+she said dryly, “Don’t, you know,” as Grace looked at her
+reproachfully, “that we have all been perfectly well aware of that ever
+since Will first began to make eyes at Amy?”
+
+“I can’t help it,” Grace retorted, while sudden tears sprang to her
+eyes. “I’ve known him longer than she has, and we’ve loved each other
+ever since he was two and I was two weeks! Did you see the way he
+looked at her?” she finished dolefully.
+
+“Yes. But of course you couldn’t see the way he looked at you,” said
+Betty quickly. “And I did.”
+
+“Oh, did he look glad to see me? Did he?” demanded Grace with pathetic
+eagerness.
+
+“Of course he did, you little goose,” said Betty, adding with a
+chuckle: “You’ve been spoiled, that’s all. You’ve been so used to being
+the _only_ pebble on the beach, dear, that you can’t be content with
+being just one of two.”
+
+By this time they had reached the lodge and were greeted noisily by the
+others, who had already seated themselves on the porch as though they
+intended to stay all day.
+
+“Hello,” called Frank. His handsome face, though somewhat thinner than
+the girls remembered, was better looking than ever and he had developed
+a trick of flinging the hair back from his forehead that the girls
+thought immensely attractive,
+
+Roy, who had seated himself on the railing of the porch and was
+swinging his feet, looked more unchanged than either of the boys,
+though the girls were soon to find out that he had changed the most.
+
+Will, who had settled Amy in a chair and was sitting cross-legged on
+the floor at her feet, was gazing up at the girl with his heart in his
+eyes. As for Amy! well, the girls had never known she could look so
+radiant.
+
+“Have a seat,” invited Roy, rising lazily to the dignity of his six
+feet as Betty and Grace came up on the porch. “It would seem like old
+times to see you girls perched on the railing.”
+
+“I’ll have you know, sir,” said Betty very demurely, as she pulled
+Grace down beside her on the top step of the porch, “that we have quite
+grown up since you have been away. We will sit here where we can get a
+good view of you all.”
+
+“And we want to hear about everything you have done over there,” broke
+in Amy eagerly. “Please, everything! right from the beginning.”
+
+The boys fidgeted, looked dismayed, and Roy burst forth in protest.
+
+“Oh, I say!” he cried. “We’ll do anything else for you, but please
+don’t ask us to do that.”
+
+“We don’t want to talk about ourselves or the war,” muttered Frank,
+almost as if to himself. “We want to forget about it! if we can.”
+
+“You see,” Will explained, and there was a stern note in his young
+voice, “we worked and we sweated and we fought. We lived under
+conditions week after week and month after month that it makes us
+shudder even to think of now. For months we lived in a perfect inferno!
+and do you know what our idea of heaven was then?”
+
+They said nothing and he went on in a lighter tone.
+
+“It was just to get back alive and, well, to God’s country and you
+girls! to sit for hours, days if we could, where we could look at you
+and listen to you and not do a thing but just be happy. I wonder if you
+can understand that?”
+
+“Of course, we can, Will!” cried Betty, impulsively reaching over and
+laying a hand on the boy’s arm. “You have earned the right to sit and
+be amused, and we’ll do it till you cry aloud for mercy. And you
+needn’t tell us a single word about yourselves until you get good and
+ready.”
+
+“You’re a brick, Betty,” said Will warmly, laying his hand over her
+little one. “I might have known we could count on you.”
+
+“By the way,” Roy broke in suddenly, his eye on the basket of eatables
+that the girls had prepared for their adventure, “what’s in that
+hamper, anyway? If it’s anything to eat, let’s have it.”
+
+Betty pulled the basket over to her, lifted the cover and passed it
+over to the ravenous one.
+
+“Eat while there is anything left,” she commanded, adding with a
+chuckle: “Our adventure seems to be over for to-day, at least.”
+
+“Adventure?” repeated Frank inquiringly, as he reached for a sandwich.
+
+“Yes,” said Mollie, adding with a sigh: “And you boys had to come along
+just in time to spoil it all.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+VERY MUCH ALIVE
+
+
+That is complimentary, I must say,” grinned Will, getting up from his
+seat on the porch and going over to join Roy on the railing. “After
+being away for months we are told the minute we get back that we’ve
+‘spoiled everything.’ “
+
+“’Tis rather hard lines,” said Mollie with an answering grin. “But one
+must tell the truth, you know.”
+
+“By the way,” put in Grace curiously, “I know Betty promised that we
+wouldn’t ask questions, but there is just one thing I want to know.”
+
+“Speak, fair damsel,” Roy replied, thinking meanwhile how much prettier
+Grace had grown. “We will promise to answer faithfully anything that is
+not connected with war.”
+
+“When did you get in?” asked Grace, “and how did you get here?”
+
+“We came in yesterday,” answered Roy, helping himself to another
+sandwich. “And of course we beat it for headquarters right away.”
+
+“Yes’m, and I’ll tell you we were a disappointed lot when we found that
+you girls had flown,” added Frank ruefully. “We were all set for a
+jolly reunion!!”
+
+“But we wrote you about spending the summer here,” Betty interrupted.
+“And we were mourning because you couldn’t be at the lodge with us.”
+
+“We missed your letters, I guess,” said Will. “We sailed very suddenly,
+and there is probably a stack of them piled up there at the old service
+station.”
+
+“We found out where you were all rightie, though,” Roy continued. “So
+we took the first train out this morning, debarked at the nearest
+station south of here, and proceeded to walk the rest of the way. It
+was thus that you came upon us.”
+
+“You came upon us, you mean,” Amy corrected. “We ought to know well
+enough, because you nearly gave us heart failure.”
+
+Will looked at her as if he wanted to say something but did not quite
+dare in public. However, she intercepted the look and with a little
+panicky feeling turned her eyes away.
+
+“I imagine,” said Grace softly, looking up at Will, “that mother wasn’t
+glad to see you or anything.”
+
+“Not at all,” returned Will, a soft light in his eyes as he remembered
+the greeting between him and his parents. “I was a little afraid,” he
+added soberly, “that mother and dad wouldn’t like my skipping off like
+this the day after I’d got home. But they seemed to understand all
+right.”
+
+“Gee, but this is great,” said Frank, stretching contentedly and
+looking about the group with happy eyes. “I wonder how many times we’ve
+seen this all in our dreams, fellows. Only we couldn’t have imagined it
+half as perfect as this.”
+
+“It sure is like old times,” agreed Roy, adding with a smile as he
+turned to their chaperon, who had been quietly enjoying herself: “We
+even have Mrs. Irving with us. Gee, it’s just like that summer at Pine
+Island! All the old crowd together!!”
+
+“Except Allen,” put in Will, frowning a little. “Gosh, it didn’t seem
+right at all to leave the old fellow behind. You wouldn’t know him,” he
+added, his face flushing enthusiastically, “I’ve never seen a fellow
+change the way Allen has! for the better.”
+
+“Was there so much room for improvement?” asked Betty demurely, and
+they looked at her laughingly.
+
+“Nobody would expect you to think so,” Will replied, his eyes
+twinkling, then added seriously:
+
+“Of course we all know that Allen was the finest kind even before the
+war, but, gosh! I wish you could just see how all the fellows love him
+and how even his superior officers consult him and seem to value his
+judgment. I tell you, I’m glad to have him call me his friend.”
+
+“You bet!” exclaimed Frank, nodding soberly.
+
+“Allen sure has come out strong,” Roy agreed; and at this glowing
+praise of the only absent one Betty felt her heart swell with pride and
+she wanted to hug the boys for being so loyal to her Allen. Also, deep
+down in her heart, she began to feel a little trepidation about the
+homecoming of this hero. Who was she, Betty Nelson, to call this
+glorious Lieutenant Allen Washburn, _her_ Allen?
+
+So engrossed was she in these and other absorbing thoughts that it was
+some time before she noticed that the conversation had taken another
+turn. Also that the boys and girls were becoming rather excited.
+
+“I didn’t say it was a ghost,” Mollie was declaring hotly. “In fact I
+have always thought of a ghost as wearing a sheet and pillow case sort
+of garb. And this thing certainly wore nothing of the sort.”
+
+“Tell us all about it,” said Frank, leaning forward.
+
+“Yes, it sounds as if it might prove interesting,” added Roy.
+
+So the girls told them all about it from that first night when they had
+been so badly frightened by the “Thing” that had hidden in the shadows
+of the porch. The boys listened with scarcely an interruption till they
+were through.
+
+“Gosh, I don’t like the sound of that at all,” said Will, when they had
+finished. “It isn’t a pleasant thing to have a lunatic roaming the
+woods while you girls are all alone here in this place. Could you
+possibly put us up for the night?” he asked, turning abruptly to Mrs.
+Irving.
+
+“Why, there isn’t any room,” said the latter slowly, frowning a little
+as she tried to think up ways and means. “There aren’t any extra beds,
+but there is a large settee in the living room and a couple of you can
+sleep on that. I found plenty of blankets stowed away.”
+
+“Fine!” cried Will enthusiastically. “Just the very thing! One of us
+can take turns sleeping on the floor. It won’t be the first time we’ve
+slept on harder things.”
+
+“Goodness, any one would think they were going to stay a month,” said
+Mollie in dismay.
+
+“No, we won’t stay a month,” Will went on. “But we are going to stay
+until we find out what it is that has been bothering you girls. Do you
+suppose we would leave you unprotected here? I should say not!” Grace
+noticed that when he said this his glance was first for Amy, and,
+afterward, for her.
+
+So it was settled. Mrs. Irving went inside to see about getting lunch.
+“Though how the boys can find any room for lunch after eating all those
+sandwiches, I don’t know,” Amy had commented wonderingly.
+
+Mrs. Irving had refused absolutely to let any of the girls even so much
+as help with this lunch, saying they must stay outside and visit with
+the boys on this momentous occasion.
+
+“Since you are convinced that this thing is not a ghost,” Will went on,
+while appetizing odors began to waft toward them from the open kitchen
+windows, “we will take it for granted that it is a man, and a man who
+has, presumably, lost his mind.”
+
+“A crazy man,” murmured Betty. “Worse and worse! and more of it.”
+
+“Girls,” cried Amy, jumping suddenly to her feet, “I have an idea.”
+
+“Impossible!” drawled Grace.
+
+“Why,” went on Amy, unheeding Grace’s remark and growing visibly more
+excited as she talked, “you know, Professor Dempsey went crazy! or at
+least we supposed he did! and ran away into the woods. Now since Will
+thinks this man is crazy too, why, they may be one and the same
+
+“Amy!” cried Mollie, her eyes beginning to shine as she realized the
+possibility of what the girl had said. “You are a wonder, child! Why
+didn’t any of us think of that before?”
+
+“Because it is rather far-fetched and absurd, I suppose,” said Grace,
+the suggestion of a sneer in her voice bringing a quick flush to Amy’s
+face.
+
+“I don’t see that it is so far-fetched! or absurd either,” Betty broke
+in quietly. “Remember, we are only a little over fifty miles from the
+place where Professor Dempsey had his cottage, and it would be easy for
+him to wander this far.”
+
+Here Frank broke in on behalf of the very much mystified boys.
+
+“Before you stage the hair-pulling contest,” he said, “would you mind
+telling us poor benighted males what it is all about?”
+
+So the girls told them all about Professor Dempsey, and while they
+talked the boys became more and more excited. Finally Will could keep
+quiet no longer.
+
+“Say,” he asked, leaning forward, “did the two sons of the cracked old
+professor happen to bear the names of James and Arnold?”
+
+The girls gaped at him, “Yes,” they breathed. “How did you know?”
+
+“Because,” said Will, “those very same fellows were in our regiment. In
+fact, I was beside Arnold when he was wounded in that last engagement.
+Strange thing that James was wounded at the same time.”
+
+“Wounded?” repeated Betty, who like all the girls was feeling rather
+dazed at this new development. “Then they weren’t killed?”
+
+“Not a bit of it,” Will replied vehemently. “Why, even their wounds
+weren’t serious enough to lay them up for long. The last I heard of
+them they were coming over on a hospital ship and expected to be here
+almost as soon as we were. For all I know, they may have landed by this
+time.”
+
+“Oh,” said Amy, still too dazed to take it all in. “Then all this time
+we have thought of them as dead, they were alive!”
+
+“Very much so,” said Will, with a grin, “and probably kicking too! just
+like us!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+OUT OF THE DARK
+
+
+It took the Outdoor Girls a moment or two to digest this rather
+startling information. And when it did finally seep into their
+consciousness, their first feeling was one of joy for the poor
+professor whose sons would be restored to him after all.
+
+But quick on the heels of this thought came another. How could the sons
+be restored to their father, if the father were nowhere to be found?
+
+“You say the old chap skipped out, decamped?” Will broke in on their
+meditations. “That sort of complicates matters, doesn’t it?”
+
+“Rather,” agreed Roy, frowning. “It is going to be rather tough on
+those fellows, James and Arnold, to come home, expecting to be welcomed
+by a rejoicing parent, only to find said parent missing.”
+
+“Humph, that’s the first time I’ve thought of the boys’ side of it,”
+said Betty. “We have been too much occupied right along in being sorry
+for the poor old professor.”
+
+“Well, if you had known the boys, you would have thought of their side
+of it all right,” said Frank seriously, “They are mighty good scouts,
+both of them, and they think a lot of their old dad, too, I can tell
+you. Why, many a night”! his voice took on a reminiscent note and the
+girls felt once again that they were privileged in having a brief
+glimpse of the life “over there”! “when a surprise attack was scheduled
+for the next morning or we were waiting for some such manoeuvre from
+the enemy, Arnold would talk to me about his dad! that was the time
+when fellows got chummy, you know, and got to know each other’s souls!
+and once he gave me a note for the old chap and asked me to deliver it
+if I came through and he didn’t. I think I have it about me somewhere.”
+He fumbled about in his pockets while the girls waited silently.
+
+Presently he drew forth a little slip of paper, muddy and worn and
+dust-stained from being carried about for a long, long time in a khaki
+pocket.
+
+“He told me,” Frank went on, still holding the slip of paper in his
+hand but making no attempt to open it, “that his mother had died when
+he and Jimmy were young and that since then his dad had been father and
+mother both to them and that he had worked himself nearly to death to
+give them a chance for the college education that he had had. He said
+that the one thing that had always threatened to floor the old boy was
+when either he or Jim got mad and threatened to give up school and go
+to work so as to take some of the load from the old pater’s shoulders.
+So they were glad, actually glad, when the war came along and gave them
+a chance not only to serve their country and earn some money! even if
+it was only a miserable pittance! so that they could send some home to
+their dad and feel that they had stopped being a drag upon him. He used
+to tell me,” Frank went on, for the spell of those old thrilling times
+was strong upon him again, “with tears in his eyes! and I’ll tell you
+there was no braver man in all the American army than Arnold Dempsey;
+he was good for two Boches any day! that it would be the happiest
+moment of his life when he got back to the old country and announced to
+his proud and admiring pater that he had come home to turn the tables;
+that Jimmy and he were going to make the old fellow take a rest and do
+the work themselves for a change. And he asked me, in case anything did
+happen to him and Jimmy, to be kind to his dad and try to make up to
+him as much as I could. I gave him my promise that night.” Frank looked
+about the intent group of faces soberly, “In case the boys had been
+killed, I would have regarded it as a sacred trust.”
+
+Something swelled in the girls’ hearts and for a moment they could not
+speak. Then,
+
+“I guess we all love you for that, Frank,” said Betty simply. With a
+little nod of her head toward the slip of paper he still held, she
+added: “What about that! now?”
+
+Frank looked down at the slip of paper for a moment uncomprehendingly,
+for his thoughts had been far away.
+
+“Oh, the note,” he said. “Why, that was only to be given to his father
+in case anything happened, you know. But now that the boys are coming
+back to him themselves, I suppose the thing is worthless.” He made a
+motion as though to tear the note up, but Grace stopped him with a
+quick exclamation.
+
+“Don’t!” she cried, adding as they all looked at her in surprise:
+“Don’t you suppose there might be something in it that would give us a
+clue to the professor’s whereabouts now, perhaps? Don’t you think it
+would be wise to look, at least?”
+
+But Frank slowly shook his head.
+
+“Arnold Dempsey’s message, written to his dad when he thought he might
+never see him again, doesn’t belong to us,” he said decidedly. “The
+note was given in trust to me, and since I can’t deliver it! or at
+least, since there is now no reason for delivering it! the only thing I
+can honorably do is this.” And very slowly and very decidedly he tore
+the note into little bits and threw the pieces among the wild roses at
+the side of the porch.
+
+It was the first real glimpse the girls had had of the man who had come
+back in the old Frank’s place, and with all their hearts they admired
+him.
+
+Even Grace, who had seemed inclined to pout a little, could not but
+admit that the action was splendid in him.
+
+“And now,” said Will, “after all that, the boys will come back to find
+their dad gone, heaven knows where, dead perhaps!!”
+
+“Oh, I wonder if there isn’t some way we can follow him and find out at
+least what has happened to him?” broke in Amy earnestly. “It seems
+dreadful just to sit back and not even try to help,”
+
+“I don’t see what we can do,” said Will judicially, just as Mrs. Irving
+appeared in the doorway. “We will postpone the discussion for the
+present anyway,” he added, in a different tone, rising with alacrity
+and dusting off his uniform. “Something tells me that lunch is waiting.
+Come, let us eat!”
+
+So ended all serious discussion for that day, and the girls and boys
+gave themselves up to the delight of being together again. Only Betty’s
+thoughts seemed to wander at times and she had to be brought back by
+sundry mischievous and significant remarks from the young folks.
+
+Worn out with fun, the young soldiers slept like tops that night in
+their improvised beds and rose the next morning professing to feel like
+“two year olds” and ready for whatever new fun and adventure the day
+might bring them.
+
+And for the first night since their arrival at Wild Rose Lodge the
+girls slept soundly without being bothered by the haunting fear of the
+“Thing”! at least, so they said.
+
+That day they wandered through the woods together, searching for some
+sign of their strange visitor, but found not a trace of anything
+unusual and alarming.
+
+“I’m really beginning to believe that you girls have let your
+imaginations run away from you,” Will remarked, when they sat about the
+living-room after a satisfying supper, just luxuriating in idleness.
+
+“Or perhaps the gentleman has been frightened away by our coming,” Roy
+suggested in a superior tone that made the girls want to throw
+something at him. “Perhaps he is afraid of the uniform of the U. S. A.”
+
+“He may be afraid of the uniform,” sniffed Mollie scathingly. “But he
+certainly couldn’t be afraid of _you_.”
+
+“Now you don’t mean that, you know you don’t,” laughed Roy, drawing her
+down beside him on the couch and holding her there with an iron grip of
+his brown fingers. “Say you didn’t, like a pretty little girl, and I’ll
+let you go.”
+
+“I won’t say any such!!” Mollie began, then suddenly her gaze stiffened
+into such a stare of wonder, and even alarm, that it made the girls
+fairly hold their breath.
+
+“Mollie, what is it?” demanded Roy commandingly.
+
+“Over there!” she shrieked. “At the window, Roy! Do you see it?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+TRAGEDY
+
+
+There, pressed so close to the pane of the window that the nose was
+flattened grotesquely, eyes wildly staring, hair disheveled, was a face
+that even in that tense moment the girls recognized! the face of
+Professor Dempsey!
+
+It took the boys perhaps a second to fling out of the room, jump down
+the steps of the porch and circle the house to the window.
+
+And yet, in that second, the man was gone, leaving no more trace than
+if the earth had opened and swallowed him up. For almost an hour the
+boys searched the woods about the lodge, refusing to allow the girls to
+accompany them, saying truly that they would hamper them more than they
+could help.
+
+“You see, I was right after all,” Amy stated for at least the tenth
+time. “From the moment the idea came to me, I felt almost sure that
+poor crazy Professor Dempsey was this thing that was frightening us.”
+
+“But did you ever see such an awful face in all your life?” said
+Mollie, shuddering at the recollection.
+
+“And the look in his eyes as he stared at Roy,” Grace added in a hushed
+voice. “I shouldn’t wonder if! if we hadn’t been there, he might have
+murdered him.”
+
+“Oh, Gracie, don’t!” Amy clapped her hands to her ears. “We are
+frightened enough without having you say things like that.”
+
+“Suppose,” said Mollie, in a sepulchral voice, “he should come back
+before the boys do?”
+
+“That’s just what I was thinking,” said a quiet voice behind them, and
+they jumped and cried out in alarm. The next moment they saw it was
+Mrs. Irving and felt ashamed of themselves.
+
+“I think you had all better come into the house till the boys come
+back,” their chaperon continued. “I shall feel safer when we are behind
+locked doors.”
+
+The girls shivered, but Mollie protested.
+
+“Suppose anything should happen to the boys?” she asked, but here Mrs.
+Irving chose to exercise her authority.
+
+“We will talk about that when we are inside the house,” she said very
+firmly, and Mollie had nothing else to do but obey.
+
+The girls did breathe a little more freely when the door was locked,
+but they found themselves wishing even more ardently that the boys
+would come back.
+
+The window against which the horribly distorted face had been pressed
+seemed to hold a peculiar fascination for the Outdoor Girls and they
+found themselves unable to turn their eyes away from it.
+
+“Oh, I wish the boys would come back,” moaned Amy, after a few moments
+more had passed in strained silence. “If anything should happen to them
+I’m sure I would die.”
+
+“Nonsense, Amy,” snapped Mollie. “What could one little mad old man do
+to three big husky soldier boys?”
+
+The words had hardly been spoken when the sound of voices could be
+heard coming toward the house, and a moment later the boys themselves
+stamped up on the porch.
+
+“Not a sign of him,” said Will in response to the girls’ eager
+questions. “I don’t see how he could have disappeared so completely in
+such a short time.”
+
+“We all took different directions, too,” said Roy, taking a seat on the
+couch again and staring fascinatedly at the window. “If all the rest of
+you hadn’t seen it too, I should certainly think I had been mistaken.”
+
+“You weren’t mistaken,” Mollie assured him grimly. “I can vouch for
+that.”
+
+“Didn’t one of you girls call out something about Professor Dempsey?”
+asked Frank, abruptly.
+
+“Yes,” said Betty, going over to him, and putting an excited hand on
+his shoulder. “That’s the thing that startled us so, Frank. We are sure
+it was Professor Dempsey’s face. But, still, it was so wild and
+distorted that we really wouldn’t feel like contradicting any one who
+told us it wasn’t he,” she added slowly. “Do you understand what I
+mean?”
+
+Frank nodded, and Will broke in excitedly:
+
+“But the poor old codger’s looks would naturally be changed,” he
+argued, “after he had spent all this time wandering around the woods!
+out of his mind at that. I am inclined to think that the girls are
+right and that it is really Professor Dempsey.”
+
+“If only I could have gotten my hands on him!” mourned Roy. “We
+wouldn’t have been in any further doubt.”
+
+“There is really no doubt, boys. We just want! oh, I don’t know what we
+want!” exclaimed Mollie, who was excited and unstrung and nervous.
+
+Soon after that they all went to bed, having first decided to make a
+more thorough search of the woods in the morning and take the postponed
+trip to the head of the falls.
+
+They slept fitfully and were glad when at last they woke to find the
+sun shining in their windows. For once Amy and Grace did not have to be
+coaxed or wheedled or forced to get out of bed, but dressed quickly and
+were ready almost as soon as Mollie and Betty.
+
+“You know I rather hated to leave the boys in that room last night,”
+Betty confided to Grace, stopping before the mirror for one final
+little pat of her hair. “I was afraid that! he! might come back!!”
+
+“Oh, Betty, what a horrid idea,” said Grace. “Come on, let’s see if
+everything is all right.”
+
+But they found that their fears had been wasted. The boys were in the
+kitchen hilariously helping Mrs. Irving get the breakfast to the
+accompaniment of continual good-natured scolding from that flushed and
+perspiring lady. It was Amy’s day to get the breakfast, but, as usual,
+she was late in getting down.
+
+“You make a good deal more trouble than you mend,” Mrs. Irving was
+saying as the girls came to the door, then added relievedly as she
+caught sight of them: “For goodness’ sake, get these young ruffians out
+of the kitchen, my dears, or we’ll not have any breakfast until noon.”
+
+So amid much fun and nonsense the boys were shooed forth into the
+bright sunshine of the out-of-doors, and all the girls fell to to help
+their chaperon, not wanting to put the extra work the boys made
+entirely on Amy’s shoulders.
+
+Breakfast was good, but they ate hurriedly, anxious to get at the
+business of the day. They wanted more than they had wanted anything in
+a very long time to find Professor Dempsey and tell him the joyful news
+that his sons were alive.
+
+“I’m horribly afraid of him at night,” Mollie confided, as they started
+out at last, “but in the daytime I am only sorry for him.”
+
+“Do you think we shall find him, Will?” asked Amy, with a helpless
+little look into Will’s self-reliant young face. “I do want to so
+much.”
+
+Will looked down at her with an expression that said to any one who
+would read it: “I would give you anything in the world you asked for,
+if I only could.”
+
+But all he really said was: “That remains to be seen. He proved himself
+a rather slippery customer last night, and the chase we put up may only
+serve to put him on his guard. Crazy people are tricky, you know.”
+
+“Goodness,” said Grace, looking fearfully over her shoulder. “There is
+nothing in the world I am so afraid of as a crazy person.”
+
+“That’s why she has always been so afraid of me, I suppose,” grinned
+Mollie.
+
+“Afraid of you,” said Grace, her eyebrows raised in mock surprise.
+“Little shrimp! who are you?”
+
+There followed a characteristic scene that somewhat lifted the
+oppression they had all been feeling, and it was not till they had
+nearly reached the river at the head of the falls that they became
+serious again.
+
+“It was right about here,” said Betty soberly, “that we saw him the
+night that he started to jump into the river! or I suppose it was the
+same one,” she added.
+
+“Let us hope so,” said Mollie fervently. “I wouldn’t like to think that
+there were two lunatics wandering round these woods. One is quite
+enough.”
+
+As they came closer to the river they became more and more conscious
+that they were not alone, that some one, hidden in the bushes, was
+craftily watching them.
+
+So strong did this feeling finally become that once the boys separated,
+thrashing the bushes in all directions. They did not find anything, and
+finally continued along the path, a little ashamed of what they thought
+was an attack of nerves.
+
+“Phew, this is getting a little hot for me,” said Frank, running his
+hand through his shock of fair hair. “I don’t mind fighting anything in
+the open!” He left the sentence unfinished, for at that moment they
+broke through the bushes at the river’s edge upon a sight that struck
+them speechless.
+
+Not twenty yards down the bank stood a ragged scarecrow of a man, so
+unkempt, so wild, so abandoned in its crouching attitude as to appear
+hardly human.
+
+Before they had time to utter a word or move a muscle, the man threw up
+his arms in a gesture indescribably terrible, and with a hoarse shout
+disappeared in the swirling waters.
+
+It all happened so quickly that for the space of a dazed second they
+wondered if they had really seen it at all. Then they recovered their
+powers of motion and rushed to the spot where the man had disappeared.
+
+Though they leaned far out over the water they could see no sign of
+anything human, and with a creeping feeling of horror they began to
+speak of what had probably already happened.
+
+“It’s certain death down there,” Roy muttered, as though to himself,
+gazing into the rushing river. “The poor old fellow! He has got his, I
+guess.”
+
+“Look here, fellows, here are some clothes,” Will called out suddenly,
+and the boys rushed over to where he stood, a tattered old hat and an
+equally ragged coat in his hands. “Maybe there will be something in the
+jacket to tell us where the poor fellow has been staying and what he
+has been up to.”
+
+They searched through the coat and finally pulled out a wallet.
+
+“Now if it only has some writing in it,” said Mollie breathlessly.
+
+There was a card, and the card bore the words which they expected, yet
+dreaded, Arnold Dempsey, Ph. D. But there was nothing else, and
+suddenly tears dimmed their eyes and they had to turn away.
+
+“It will be mighty hard on Jimmy and Arnold,” muttered Roy, gazing
+somberly at the fast-flowing river. “To have their dad go that way!
+They’ll take it mighty hard! those boys.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+A MOONLIGHT APPARITION
+
+
+“Let’s look around a little anyway,” Betty suggested. “He may possibly
+have been swept up on the shore farther down the river.”
+
+“If such a thing were possible he would probably be dead anyway,” Frank
+protested, but the girls paid no attention to him. The mere suggestion
+that the professor might still be alive and in need of assistance was
+enough for them, and they set about feverishly to scour the woods on
+both sides of the river and for a considerable distance down its
+shores.
+
+After an hour of vain search, however, they were forced to conclude
+that the old man was indeed dead, and so reluctantly and with heavy
+hearts they turned their steps back toward Wild Rose Lodge.
+
+They talked very little on the way back, for they were too occupied
+with their own gloomy thoughts. Only once Betty spoke what was in the
+minds of all of them.
+
+“It seems such a terrible waste! such a pity,” she said. “Just a
+mistake on the part of the Government to have resulted in this tragedy.
+Arnold and James Dempsey coming home, safe and well and hopeful to find
+their father! dead!”
+
+The boys stayed on for several days at the lodge, and for all the
+Outdoor Girls but Betty their stay was unmitigated joy. But in the
+heart of the Little Captain, hard as she tried to fight against it, was
+a little sense of injury to think that her chums had got their boys
+back and she had been denied hers.
+
+To be sure, all the boys made much of her and petted her! for there was
+not one of them who had not competed for her favor in the old days
+before Allen had shouldered them all out! but no amount of attention
+from any one else could make up for one little word from Allen.
+
+At each sunrise she awoke thrilling with the thought that perhaps Allen
+would be with her before the sun went down. And as each evening came
+without him she sighed and thought, “Perhaps to-morrow.”
+
+Since the tragic death of Professor Dempsey they felt that they need no
+longer fear the woods, although they never ventured near the river or
+the falls without a heartache and the fervent wish that they might have
+reached the poor demented man with the glad news of his sons’ safety in
+time to avert the tragedy.
+
+However, they did enjoy their liberty, and took long tramps with the
+boys through the woods and picnicked with them beside little unexpected
+brooks and streams, quite in the nature of old days.
+
+Then at last came the day when the boys announced that they would have
+to return to town and to the military camp to obtain their formal
+discharge from the army.
+
+“We may surprise you by coming back in ‘civies’ a week or two from
+now,” Will laughed, as the girls prepared to spin them to the railroad
+station in the cars. “So you had better be prepared for the shock.”
+
+“Maybe they won’t care for us any more when they see us out of
+uniform,” grinned Roy, as he shook hands with Mrs. Irving. “You know
+the old saying that a uniform has made many a hero of a bootblack.”
+
+“Goodness, I hope you aren’t a bootblack,” said Mollie from her car,
+where she was “doing things” with the engine.
+
+“I’m not,” answered Roy, adding with a grin: “Nothing half so honest.”
+
+Although the girls knew that they were only saying good-bye to the boys
+for a few days, the parting was hard just the same, and half an hour
+later they watched the train wind serpent-like down the shining track
+with a sinking feeling at their hearts.
+
+“Aren’t we a lot of geese?” said Grace impatiently, as they climbed
+back into the cars. “We have done without the boys for a couple of
+years, and now when they have just gone as far as Deepdale for a couple
+of weeks, we are almost crying about it.”
+
+“I suppose it is just because we have had so much separation that we
+can’t bear any more of it! even a little,” suggested gentle Amy,
+feeling as if she had just awakened from a blissful dream.
+
+“Never mind,” said Mollie, putting an arm about Betty’s waist and
+giving it a little squeeze. “Just think how lovely it will be to see
+the boys in regular clothes again, and maybe,” with a sly glance at
+Betty, “by the time they come back they will have added one to their
+number.”
+
+“Goodness, I hope so!” said Betty, unashamed.
+
+In spite of some regret at not having the boys, the girls managed to
+enjoy themselves in the days that followed. They motored and swam and
+fished and hiked, and got as becomingly sunburned and tanned as young
+Indians. It was not until two or three days before the boys returned
+that anything untoward happened to disturb their peace of mind.
+
+Then one night the moon came out with such dazzling brilliance that
+Betty was seized with a strong desire to be out in it.
+
+“Let’s go for a moonlight swim,” she suggested excitedly, as they all
+stood on the porch of the lodge staring up through the trees to where
+the moon shone glitteringly down. “We haven’t done it since we came,
+and surely our vacation wouldn’t be complete without one.”
+
+“Or more,” said Mollie, seconding the plan with enthusiasm, “Come on.
+Let’s tell Mrs. Irving where we are going. Maybe she will wish to go
+along, but I doubt it.”
+
+Mollie was right: Mrs. Irving did not wish to go, and the girls rushed
+upstairs to don bathing suits in preparation for the lark.
+
+A few minutes later they were racing like slim young ghosts through the
+woods, laughing and calling to each other and entirely abandoned to the
+joy of the moment.
+
+“Race you to the old swimming hole,” Mollie called out, as they neared
+the river; and away they all raced in response to the challenge.
+
+Betty won, in spite of the fact that Mollie had had a short head start,
+and the girls, wild in their exuberance, would have lifted her to their
+shoulders had not Betty herself laughingly fought them off.
+
+“I have another challenge,” she cried. “My fresh box of candy to
+whoever swims to the other side of the swimming hole first. Are you
+on?”
+
+“We’re on!” yelled Grace enthusiastically, adding: “I’d swim from here
+to Jericho for that box of candy, Betty.”
+
+As a matter of fact, whether it was really the thought of the candy or
+whether it was because the other girls were tired from the last spurt,
+Grace really did get to the other side of the swimming pool first, and,
+pulling herself up on the other bank, dripping and triumphant, demanded
+the prize.
+
+“You surely did win it, and you shall have that box of candy! much as I
+hoped to keep it in the family,” laughed Betty, shaking the water from
+her eyes and drawing herself up beside her chum. “Goodness, isn’t that
+water delicious to-night?” she added, wriggling her toes luxuriously in
+the rippling wavelets. “Just cool enough to be refreshing and not cold
+enough to chill you!!” She broke off suddenly and sat staring, her eyes
+widening and her body tense.
+
+“Girls,” she said in a queer voice, for Mollie and Amy had also drawn
+themselves up on the bank, “have I gone crazy, or what is the matter
+with me? Do you see! what! I see! up there?”
+
+Alarmed, the girls followed the direction of her strained gaze, and
+suddenly they seemed to feel themselves congeal with momentary horror.
+
+Far above them on the bank near the falls and on the other side of the
+river, stood the crouched-up, animal-like figure of! the “Thing!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+RECOVERED
+
+
+The sight was almost too much for the girls. What they felt was sheer
+animal panic and they wanted to run away! anywhere! just so they put
+distance enough between them and that figure on the bank.
+
+“Sit still,” Betty commanded them, recovering her presence of mind.
+“That is Professor Dempsey up there, and if we make any sudden sound we
+are sure of frightening him away.”
+
+“But he was killed! we saw it,” moaned Amy. “That must be his g-ghost.”
+
+“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Mollie, her thoughts working along with
+Betty’s “You know you don’t believe in ghosts.”
+
+“But how!” Amy was beginning when Betty interrupted sharply.
+
+“Listen,” she said. “I came across an old derelict of a rowboat the
+other day when we were exploring the upper river, but I didn’t say
+anything to you girls about it because I thought it was too much of a
+wreck to bother with. For all I know it isn’t even water tight
+
+“Betty,” Mollie broke in excitedly, “I see what you mean! We can row
+across the upper river to where Professor Dempsey is! Were there oars
+in the boat?” she broke off to ask.
+
+“A couple of old sticks that would serve for oars,” Betty answered. “Of
+course it’s taking a big chance!!”
+
+“Say no more,” cried Mollie, jumping to her feet and wringing out her
+bathing suit. “Big chance is our middle name anyway. Lead on, Betty.
+Where do we find this craft?”
+
+“I’m not quite sure that I can find it,” said Betty, leading the way
+into the woods, “but it was down this way somewhere. Don’t make any
+noise, girls, and let’s hurry, or we won’t get there before he
+disappears again.”
+
+Grace and Amy were now entering into the spirit of the thing, and they
+followed at Betty’s heels eagerly, careful not to step on stick or
+stone that might betray their presence.
+
+Luckily Betty managed to stumble directly on the old derelict rowboat
+where it lay in ancient helplessness in the concealment of a thick
+grove of bushes along the upper reach of the stream.
+
+“Goody! This is almost too much luck,” cried Betty exultantly. “You get
+in the stern, Amy, and Grace in the bow. Mollie and I will do the
+rowing.”
+
+“I only hope the old thing doesn’t take in too much water,” said Amy,
+as she and Grace got gingerly into the rickety old craft and Betty and
+Mollie pushed it off from the shore.
+
+“That remains to be seen,” answered the Little Captain as she handed
+one of the ancient oars to Mollie. “There is one thing we shall have to
+remember, Mollie,” she said, as they pushed clear of the bank and
+glided out into the swift water of the river, “and that is to keep far
+enough this side of the falls to guard against being swept over it.
+Bear hard on your right hand, Mollie honey. It wouldn’t be much fun if
+we upset here, you know.”
+
+“Oh!” gasped Grace, holding fast to the side of the boat and noting
+with dismay how plainly the roar of the falls came to them. “I wish we
+had another oar, I’d help!”
+
+“You can help most, Gracie,” cut in the Little Captain briskly, “by
+keeping your nerve and helping us to keep ours. Mollie,” she called in
+a whisper that carried the length of the boat, “can you see! It! yet?”
+
+“Yes,” Mollie telegraphed back in the same tense whisper. “It’s got its
+back to us, I think.”
+
+“Good,” said Betty softly, adding as she threw all her weight against
+her oar, “now let’s keep still and work.”
+
+It was queer how they referred to that presence at the head of the
+falls as “It.” Some way, in the weird moonlight, under the more than
+unusual circumstances, it seemed almost impossible to give the thing a
+name.
+
+“Was it Professor Dempsey?” they kept asking themselves over and over
+again. But he had committed suicide. Or at least they had seen him fall
+into the river, and they could have vowed that he did not come out
+again. They had searched both sides of the river. How could they have
+missed him? And yet, if that motionless figure at the head of the falls
+was really Professor Dempsey, he must have been washed ashore that day
+and evaded them as he had succeeded in evading them so many times
+before.
+
+And all the time the roar of the falls was growing louder and louder in
+their ears and they knew that theirs was a race with life and death.
+
+Could they succeed in reaching the opposite bank before the deadly
+current of the river should suck them over the falls; to almost certain
+annihilation?
+
+The answer to the question came a moment later when, without warning,
+the prow of the little boat struck on an unexpected projection of the
+shore and they came to a standstill.
+
+“Thank heaven!” said Betty under her breath as Mollie jumped out and
+pulled the craft further in to shore. “That was nearly the riskiest
+thing you ever did, Betty Nelson.”
+
+Once on shore again, the girls’ confidence returned and they hurried
+silently through the woods toward the spot where they had seen the
+figure. Then Betty, who had taken the lead, suddenly motioned to them
+to stop.
+
+She had caught a glimpse through the trees of the man, who resembled
+more than ever a scarecrow in his crazy makeshift garments! and at the
+sight of him her heart unaccountably skipped a beat.
+
+Her thoughts had not gone beyond this moment. Strangely enough all her
+energy had been concentrated upon reaching the man before he
+disappeared. But now that they had succeeded so far she was at a loss
+what to do next.
+
+But at that moment she inadvertently stepped on a dry twig that snapped
+sharply under her foot, and at the sound the man had turned fiercely,
+like an animal at bay. Then he wheeled about and made as though to flee
+for the shelter of the woods.
+
+In this emergency Betty followed impulse. She ran out into the open,
+calling to him wildly that his sons were alive. Not to run away,
+because his sons were safe and well. They were coming to him!!
+
+The pitiful wreck of a man paused in his flight as the import of the
+words seemed to sink into his befuddled brain, but he turned upon the
+Little Captain a look of ferocious hatred that would have terrified a
+less courageous girl than Betty. But her whole heart was in her
+mission, and she had utterly forgotten herself.
+
+“Won’t you please believe me?” she said, advancing toward him, hands
+outstretched pleadingly. “I know what I’m talking about. Your sons,
+Arnold and Jimmy!!”
+
+As though the names of his boys had released some cord in his brain,
+the man cried out hoarsely:
+
+“Jimmy and Arnold! my sons, my little boys!” Then, turning fiercely to
+Betty, he cried: “You’re not lying to me, are you? Because I’ll throw
+you into the river! I’ll cut you into little pieces!”
+
+As the man advanced menacingly, Grace screamed and Mollie ran forward
+with some wild idea of protecting her chum, but Betty waved them back.
+
+“I’m not lying to you,” she told the crazy man, looking straight into
+his glaring eyes. “Your boys were wounded, but not seriously, and they
+sailed a few days ago for this country on a hospital ship. They want to
+see you more than anything else in the world,” she added, playing on
+the sudden softness that had crept into his wild eyes. “And they sent
+their love to their dad.”
+
+At sound of the old loving name all the fight went out of the old man
+and he sank to his knees on the grass, sobbing horribly.
+
+They let him alone for a moment, then Betty motioned to Mollie, and
+together they lifted him to his feet. The sight of his tear-stained,
+unkempt old face, creased and lined with suffering, but with the
+wildness gone out of the eyes, stirred a profound pity in the girls and
+they wished more than anything in the world to make him happy again.
+
+“We are going to take you home, Professor Dempsey,” Betty told him
+soothingly, as with Mollie’s help she half led, half carried, him
+through the woods toward the spot where they had left the boat, Amy and
+Grace following awed and silent behind them. “And as soon as your boys
+reach home we will bring them to you. Be careful of this big rock. Ah,
+here’s the boat.” And talking all the time, softly and soothingly as
+one would to a child, Betty at last succeeded in seating the derelict
+old man in the equally derelict old boat.
+
+The girls tumbled in after him, and with a prayer in her heart Betty
+pushed off from shore.
+
+That ride back across the river was as weird and unreal as any
+nightmare the girls had ever lived through. Their queer passenger,
+seeming the most unreal of all, was quiet for the most part but
+occasionally he would sit up and look about him wildly and could only
+be soothed back to reason by Betty’s sweet voice telling him of his
+boys! Jimmy and Arnold.
+
+Somehow they reached the opposite shore, and, after pulling the boat up
+among the bushes once more, they started back, the old man with them,
+to Wild Rose Lodge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+THE OLD CROWD AGAIN
+
+
+Mrs. Irving, who had been worried by their prolonged absence, met the
+girls at the door as they stumbled with the almost exhausted old man up
+the steps of the porch.
+
+At sight of the latter she grew deathly pale, and leaned against the
+door for support. She felt that all the world was growing black!!
+
+“Oh, please, please don’t faint!” she heard Betty’s young voice calling
+to her desperately as it seemed from a long distance. “We’ve depended
+upon you to help us.”
+
+With a great effort she fought off the dizziness and drew herself away
+from Betty’s supporting arm.
+
+“It’s all right,” she said dazedly, “The shock, I guess. Betty what!
+who! is that!!”
+
+“Oh, please don’t ask any questions now,” Betty begged feverishly.
+“Just help us, and we will tell you all about it later. This is
+Professor Dempsey,” she added, turning to the broken old man who stood
+staring at them uncomprehendingly. “He can have Mollie’s and my room,
+can’t he, Mrs. Irving? and we will bunk somewhere else.”
+
+Mrs. Irving nodded automatically, still too dazed by the suddenness of
+the thing even to think, and they helped the old man into Betty’s room
+and laid him on the bed. The tired, ragged, unkempt old head had hardly
+touched the pillow before its owner had sunk into a heavy sleep.
+
+For a moment the girls were startled, for it almost seemed as though he
+were dead, but Betty put her hand on the ragged old shirt above the
+heart and found that the action was strong and regular.
+
+“Perhaps it is the very best thing that could happen to him,” she said
+softly, and, laying a light cover over him, tip-toed from the room,
+followed quietly by Mrs. Irving and the other girls.
+
+Once in the other room, with the need for action over, the girls felt
+weak and spent, and it was only then that they realized that they had
+been through a terrible ordeal.
+
+In broken sentences they told Mrs. Irving all that had happened and as
+she listened she grew more and more appalled at the risk they had run
+and the danger they had gone through.
+
+“Girls, girls,” she cried when they had finished, “I was half wild
+about you as it was. But if I had known the truth I think I should have
+gone crazy. Just the same,” she added and her eyes shone with pride in
+them, “it was a glorious thing for you to do! an unselfish, wonderfully
+courageous thing. I’m proud of you!”
+
+In spite of the fact that they were tired out, the girls insisted upon
+standing watch and watch that night. They felt that some one should be
+with Professor Dempsey all the time in case he should wake in the night
+with his old madness upon him.
+
+It was the longest night any of them had ever spent, and the morning
+dawned upon a hollow-eyed, worn-out set of Outdoor Girls.
+
+“I never,” said Betty, looking around at her white-faced chums wearily,
+“spent such a terrible night in my life. How is the patient?” she
+added, taking up the subject that had not left their minds for a
+minute. “Who was in there last?”
+
+“I,” said Grace, brushing out her hair, listlessly. “He is still
+asleep.”
+
+That report continued good all morning, and it was almost noon before
+the ragged, unbelievably unkempt old man on the bed opened his eyes.
+
+The girls had been looking forward to, yet dreading, this minute. It
+had been decided that only one of them should be in the room with him
+when he awoke, but the rest were hovering close to the door ready to
+give assistance if it should become necessary.
+
+But they need not have worried. The magic of his long sleep, together
+with the glad news he had heard the night before, seemed to have
+transformed the man overnight to his old gentle self.
+
+To be sure, he was amazed at his strange surroundings, and looked
+uncomprehendingly into Betty’s face is she bent compassionately over
+him. But all he said was:
+
+“I declare, this is all very strange, young lady! very strange. Would
+you mind! er! telling me where I am?”
+
+At the tone, even more than the words, the girls felt a wild desire to
+shout aloud their relief. For the tone was the same, gentle, polite one
+that they remembered hearing that day when the little man had
+entertained them in his cabin in the woods.
+
+Then Betty, as gently as she knew how, told him a little of what had
+happened to him, and the girls could see by the surprise on his face
+that he had no recollection whatever of the matters of which she was
+speaking.
+
+“I declare it is most strange! most strange,” he declared when she had
+finished, adding as he looked down and plucked distastefully at his
+tattered shirt: “And this is the result of my! er! temporary
+aberration, is it? Ah, but I remember,” he sat up suddenly, a gleam of
+fear in his eyes. “It was when I read of the death of my boys.
+Something snapped in my brain, I think. You say”! he turned to Betty,
+grasping her hand imploringly! “you say that my sons are well! that
+they are coming to me?”
+
+“Yes,” said Betty soothingly, pressing him back upon the pillow. “They
+are well and safe and will be with you soon! in a few days, perhaps.”
+
+“Ah,” said the little man, submitting to Betty’s touch, a happy smile
+on his lips, “that is good. That is very! very! good!” and with a sigh
+like a tired child’s, he fell asleep again!
+
+“Did you hear what he said?” whispered Betty, her eyes shining as she
+tip-toed from the room, closed the door softly behind her and faced her
+awed and incredulous chums. “He’s well, girls. He’s completely sane
+again.”
+
+“It’s a miracle,” said Mollie breathlessly.
+
+And so it came to pass that some little time later four good-looking
+young fellows, recently in the service of the greatest country on the
+earth, and one of them still wearing his regimentals, saw a rather
+unexpected sight as they swung down the path toward Wild Rose Lodge.
+
+On the porch sat an elderly, contented looking man, clad in garments
+that would easily have accommodated two men of his size! garments
+belonging to Mollie’s Uncle John, and seated about him in attitudes of
+lazy comfort were four young girls.
+
+These young girls who were, at least from the standpoint of the four
+young men, exceedingly good to look upon, were engaged in doing some
+sort of fancy work. All but one of them, that is; for the fourth, a
+girl with wavy brown hair and bright brown eyes, pink cheeks, and a
+dream of a mouth, was reading to the elderly man who sat in the chair
+of state.
+
+“Gee, Allen,” whispered one of the tall youths to the one who still
+wore the uniform of his country’s service, “I feel as though we were
+crabbing your act. Can’t we fellows do the disappearing act!!”
+
+But just at the moment the girl with the brown eyes and the pink cheeks
+looked up, gave one little startled cry, and dropped the book to the
+porch.
+
+The other girls looked up and then followed a scene that very nearly
+made the temporarily forgotten and neglected old man on the porch drop
+out of his chair in surprise.
+
+“Allen!” screamed the girls, all except the brown-haired, pink-cheeked
+one, who, for some unaccountable reason hung back behind the others.
+“You perfect angel!”
+
+“Why didn’t you let us know you were coming so that we could have been
+prepared?”
+
+“Oh, isn’t your uniform lovely!”
+
+“And look at the dressed-up leggings!”
+
+These and various other exclamations like them, coupled to the fact
+that all the girls, except the one that he wanted to most, had kissed
+him, rather overwhelmed young Lieutenant Washburn and took his breath
+away.
+
+His three companions, however, finding themselves neglected and out in
+the cold, interfered at this point and saved his life.
+
+“Betty, what are you hiding away back there for?” cried Mollie to the
+Little Captain, whose cheeks were pinker than ever and whose eyes were
+shining very brightly with a sort of mixture of joy and fright. “Don’t
+you know Allen in his uniform?”
+
+“Aren’t you going to kiss him?” chimed in Grace wickedly.
+
+“We all did,” added Amy.
+
+But Betty had no intention of kissing Allen, although he begged her to
+with his laughing eyes and she continued backing into the doorway,
+until Mrs. Irving, coming up behind her, caught her up and pushed her
+out upon the porch again.
+
+However, the chaperon monopolized Allen for a few minutes and gave
+Betty time to catch her breath. She found Mollie introducing Professor
+Dempsey to the astonished boys. These young soldiers wanted to ask a
+hundred questions, but, catching a warning look from Betty, decided to
+wait till later, when the little man himself was not present.
+
+Frank, who was perhaps more glad than any of them to see the father of
+his chums alive and well, settled himself near the man and began to
+pour into his starved and eager ears news of his sons and tales of
+adventures in which they had figured.
+
+And while Betty was still smiling in sympathy with the look of absolute
+happiness on Professor Dempsey’s face, Allen dragged himself away from
+the group of his admirers and came over to her.
+
+Boldly he pulled her hand through his arm and led her past the laughing
+boys and girls, down the steps, and along the path that led into the
+woods.
+
+“Be back in time for supper,” Will called after them. “Something tells
+me we are going to have some feed.”
+
+“Oh, don’t bother them,” they heard Mollie’s voice in laughing reproof.
+“Remember, you were young yourself, once!”
+
+“And now,” said Allen, when they had gone just far enough for the trees
+and bushes to screen them from the view of the people on the porch, “I
+want you to look at me, Betty. You haven’t yet, you know.”
+
+“I c-can’t,” said Betty in a muffled voice. “I guess!” she added
+whimsically, “I guess I’m a little afraid of you, Lieutenant Allen
+Washburn.”
+
+With a glad laugh Allen put his strong young arms about her.
+
+“Do you think you can keep on all your life being afraid of me! like
+that?” he asked. “Little Betty?”
+
+And Betty, with the radiant joy of all youth in her heart, slowly
+nodded.
+
+
+And what glorious days followed! The young folks never tired of their
+tramps through the woods and walks in the vicinity of Moonlight Falls.
+They gave themselves up to a good time and had it in full measure.
+
+“Gee, what an improvement over the trenches in France!” remarked Will
+one day. “No more wars for me!”
+
+“So say we all of us!” sang out Frank.
+
+When they had to return to Deepdale the boys took Professor Dempsey
+with them and Frank saw to it that the old man was made comfortable
+until his wounded sons returned to him. Both of the hurt soldiers were
+recovering, and the reunion of father and sons was most affecting.
+
+“Now for a final swim below the falls!” cried Mollie one day, when the
+outing was coming to an end,
+
+“We ought to have a good time! now there is no ghost to disturb us,”
+put in Amy.
+
+“A chocolate for the first one to enter the water!” exclaimed Grace,
+waving her ever-present candy box in the air.
+
+“That settles it! I’m off!” burst out Betty; and then all made a wild
+dash for the swimming pool. And here let us say good-bye to the Outdoor
+Girls.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT WILD ROSE LODGE ***
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