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