He plunged into the racing stream and disappeared. The huge timber rode over the smaller log and buried it from sight. But its tail swung around and the great log was headed straight down the river again.

As its smaller end swung near, Rafe leaped for it and secured a footing on the rolling, plunging log. How he kept his feet under him Nan could not imagine. A bareback rider in a circus never had such work as this. Rafe rode his wooden horse in masterly style.

There, ahead of him in the boiling flood, an arm and head appeared. Turner came to the surface with his senses unimpaired and he strove to clutch the nearest log. But the stick slipped away from him.

Rafe ran forward on the plunging timber he now rode the huge stick that had made all the trouble, and tried to reach the man in the water. No use!

Of course, there was no way for Rafe to guide his log toward the drowning man. Nor did he have anything to reach out for Turner to grasp. The axe handle was not long enough, and the foreman's canthook had disappeared.

Below, the men were struggling to get the big boat out from under the bank into the stream. Two of them stood up with their canthooks to fend off the drifting logs; the others plied the heavy oars.

But the boat was too far from the man in the river. He was menaced on all sides by plunging logs. He barely escaped one to be grazed on the shoulder by another. A third pressed him under the surface again; but as he went down this second time, Rafe Sherwood threw away his axe and leaped into the flood!



Chapter XIX. OLD TOBY VANDERWILLER

Nan was sure her Cousin Rafe would be drowned, as well as his foreman. She covered her eyes for a moment, and could not look.

Then a great cheer arose from the men in the boat and those still remaining on the bank of the river. Her uncle, beside her, muttered:

"Plucky boy! Plucky boy!"

Her eyes flew open and she looked again. In the midst of the scattering foam she saw a small log over which her cousin had flung his left arm; his other arm was around the foreman, and Rafe was bearing his head above water. Turner had been struck and rendered senseless by the blow.

The small log slipped through a race between two shallows, ahead of the greater timber. The latter indeed grounded for a moment and that gave the victim of the accident and his rescuer a chance for life.

They shot ahead with the log to which Rafe clung. The men in the boat shouted encouragement, and rowed harder. In a minute the boat came alongside the log and two of the rivermen grabbed the boy and the unconscious foreman. They had them safely in the boat, and the boat was at the shore again in three minutes.

By that time the big boss himself, Mr. Blackton, was tearing out over the logs from the other shore, axe in hand, to cut the key log of the jam, the formation of which Turner had tried to prevent. A hundred logs had piled up against the stoppage by this time and there promised to be a bad time at the bend if every one did not work quickly.

Before Nan and her uncle could reach the foot of the bluff, Turner had regained consciousness and was sitting on a stranded log, holding his head. Rafe, just as he had come out of the river, was out on the logs again lending a hand at the work so necessary to the success of the drive.

"Oh, dear me!" cried Nan, referring to her cousin, "he ought to go home and change his clothes. He'll get his death of cold."

"He'll work hard enough for the next hour to overcome the shock of the cold water. It's lucky if he isn't in again before they get that trouble over," responded Uncle Henry. Then he added, proudly: "That's the kind of boys we raise in the Big Woods, Nannie. Maybe they are rough-spoken and aren't really parlor-broke, but you can depend on 'em to do something when there's anything to do!"

"Oh, Uncle!" cried the girl. "I think Rafe is just the bravest boy I ever saw. But I should think Aunt Kate would be scared every hour he is away from home, he is so reckless."

She was very proud herself of Rafe and wrote Bess a lot about him. Slow Tom did not figure much in Nan Sherwood's letters, or in her thoughts, about this time. Thoughts and letters were filled with handsome Rafe.

It was while the Blackton drive was near Pine Camp that Nan became personally acquainted with old Toby Vanderwiller. It was after dinner that day that she met Margaret and Bob Llewellen and the three went down to the river bank, below the bridge, to watch the last of the Blackton drive.

The chuck-boat had pushed off into the rough current and was bobbing about in the wake of the logs; but all the men had not departed.

"That's old Toby," said Bob, a black-haired boy, full of mischief. "He don't see us. Le's creep up and scare him."

"No," said Nan, decidedly; "don't you dare!"

"Aw, shucks! Girls ain't no fun," the boy growled. "Mag's bad enough, but you air wuss'n she, Nan Sherwood. What's old Toby to you? He's allus as cross as two sticks, anyway."

"We won't make him any crosser," said Nan, laughing. "What's the good?"

Nan saw that the old man had his coat off, and had slipped down the right sleeve of his woolen shirt to bare his shoulder and upper right arm. He was clumsily trying to bandage the arm.

"He's got hurt," Nan cried to Margaret. "I wonder how?"

"Dunno," returned the smaller girl, carelessly. Although she was not mischievous like her brother, Margaret seldom showed traits of tenderness or affection. Nan was in some doubt as to whether the strange girl liked her. Margaret often patted Nan's cheeks and admired her smooth skin; but she never expressed any real affection. She was positively the oddest little piece of humanity Nan had ever met.

Once Nan asked her if she had a doll. "Doll?" snarled Margaret with surprising energy. "A'nt Matildy give me one once't an' I throwed it as far as I could inter the river, so I did! Nasty thing! Its face was all painted and rough."

Nan could only gasp. Drown a doll-baby! Big girl as she considered herself, she had a very tender spot in her heart for doll-babies.

Margaret Llewellen only liked people with fair faces and smooth complexions; she could not possibly be interested in old Toby Vanderwiller, who seemed always to need a shave, and whose face, like that of Margaret's grandfather, was "wizzled."

Nan ran down to him and asked: "Can't I help you, Mr. Vanderwiller? Did you get badly hurt?"

"Hullo!" grunted Toby. "Ain't you Hen Sherwood's gal?"

"I'm his niece," she told him. "Can I help?"

"Well, I dunno. I got a wallop from one o' them logs when we was breakin' that jam, and it's scraped the skin off me arm——"

"Let me see," cried Nan, earnestly. "Oh! Mr. Vanderwiller! That must be painful. Haven't you anything to put on it?"

"Nothin' but this rag," grunted Toby, drily. "An' ye needn't call me 'Mister,' Sissy. I ain't useter bein' addressed that way."

Nan laughed; but she quickly washed the scraped patch on the old man's arm with clean water and then bound her own handkerchief over the abrasion under the rather doubtful rag that Toby himself supplied.

"You're sure handy, Sissy," he said, rising and allowing her to help him into the shirt again and on with his coat. "Now I'll hafter toddle along or Tim will give me a call-down. Much obleeged. If ye get inter the tam'rack swamp, come dry-foot weather, stop and see me an' my old woman."

"Oh! I'd love to, Mr. Vanderwiller," Nan cried. "The swamp must be full of just lovely flowers now."

The old man's face wrinkled into a smile, the first she had seen upon it. Really! He was not a bad looking man, after all.

"You fond of posies, sissy?" he asked.

"Indeed I am!" she cried.

"There's a-plenty in the swamp," he told her. "And no end of ferns and sich. You come see us and my old woman'll show ye. She's a master hand at huntin' up all kind o' weeds I tell her."

"I'll surely come, when the weather gets warmer," Nan called after Toby as the old man dogtrotted down the bank of the river. But he did not answer and was quickly out of sight.



Chapter XX. NAN'S SECRET

But Margaret Llewellen declared she would not go with her!

"It's nasty in the Tam'rack swamp; and there's frogs and, and snakes. Ketch me! And as fur goin' ter see Tobe and his old woman, huh! They're both as ugly as sin."

"Why, Margaret!" exclaimed Nan, in horror. "How you talk!"

"Wal, it's so. I don't like old, wizzled-up folks, I don't, now I tell ye!"

"That sounds awfully cruel," said Nan, soberly.

"Huh!" snorted Margaret, no other word would just express her manner of showing disgust. "There ain't no reason why I should go 'round makin' believe likin' them as I don't like. Dad useter take the hide off'n me and Bob for lyin'; an' then he'd stand an' palaver folks that he jest couldn't scurce abide, fur I heard him say so. That's lyin', too ain't it?"

"I, I don't believe it is right to criticize our parents," returned Nan, dodging the sharp girl's question.

"Mebbe yourn don't need criticizin'," responded Margaret, bluntly. "My dad ain't no angel, you kin bet."

And it was a fact that the Llewellen family was a peculiar one, from "Gran'ther" down to Baby Bill, whom Margaret did not mind taking care of when he was not "all broke out with the rash on his face." The girl's dislike for any countenance that was not of the smoothest, or skin of the softest texture, seemed strange indeed.

Margaret's mother was dead. She had five brothers and sisters of assorted ages, up to 'Lonzo, who was sixteen and worked in the woods like Nan's cousins.

Aunt Matilda kept house for the motherless brood, and for Gran'ther and Mr. Fen Llewellen. They lived in a most haphazard fashion, for, although they were not really poor, the children never seemed to have any decent clothing to wear; and if, by chance, they got a new garment, something always happened to it as, for instance, the taking of Margaret's new gingham by Bob as a dress for old Beagle.

As the Llewellens were close neighbors of the Sherwoods, Nan saw much of Margaret. The local school closed soon after the visitor had come to Pine Camp, and Nan had little opportunity of getting acquainted with other girls, save at the church service, which was held in the schoolhouse only every other Sunday. There was no Sunday School at Pine Camp, even for the very youngest of the children.

Nan talked to Aunt Kate about that. Aunt Kate was the very kindest-hearted woman that ever lived; but she had little initiative herself about anything outside her own house. "Goodness knows, I'd like to see the kiddies gathered together on Sunday afternoon and taught good things," she signed; "but lawsy, Nan! I'm not the one to do it. I'm not good enough myself."

"Didn't you teach Tom and Rafe, and—and—" Nan stopped. She had almost mentioned the two older boys of her aunt's, whom she had heard were destroyed in the Pale Lick fire. Aunt Kate did not notice, for she went on to say:

"Why—yes; I taught Tom and Rafe to say their prayers, and I hope they say 'em now, big as they are. And we often read the Bible. It's a great comfort, the main part of it. I never did take to the 'begats,' though."

"But couldn't we," suggested Nan, "interest other people and gather the children together on Sundays? Perhaps the old gentleman who comes here to preach every fortnight might help."

"Elder Posey's not here but three hours or so, any time. Just long enough to give us the word and grab a bite at somebody's house. Poor old man! He attends three meetings each Sunday, all different, and lives on a farm at Wingate weekdays where he has to work and support his family.

"He doesn't get but fifty dollars a year from each church, it's not making him a millionaire very fast," pursued Aunt Kate, with a soft little laugh. "Poor old man! I wish we could pay him more; but Pine Camp's not rich."

"You all seem to have enough and to spare, Auntie," said Nan, who was an observant girl for her age. "Nobody here is really poor."

"Not unless he's right down lazy," said her aunt, vigorously.

"Then I should think they'd build a proper church and give a minister some more money, so that he could afford to have a Sunday School as well."

"Lawsy me, Nan!" exclaimed her aunt. "The men here in Pine Camp haven't been woke up to such things. They hate to spend that fifty dollars for Elder Posey, they'd get a cheaper man if there were such. There's never been much out of the common happen here at Pine Camp. It takes trouble and destruction to wake folks up to their Christian duty in these woods. Now, at Pale Lick they've got a church——-"

She stopped suddenly, and her face paled, while the ugly scar on her neck seemed to glow; but that may have been only in contrast. Aunt Kate turned away her head, and finally arose and went into her own room and closed the door. Nan dared not continue the subject when the good woman came out again, and the talk of a Sunday School for Pine Camp, for the time being, was ended.

There were hours when the girl from Tillbury was very lonely indeed. Writing to Bess and other girl friends in her old home town and penning long letters on thin paper to Momsey and Papa Sherwood in Scotland, did not fill all of these hours when Nan shut herself into that east room.

Sometimes she pulled down the paper shades and opened the clothes closet door, bringing out the long box she had hidden away there on the first day she had come to Pine Camp. In that box, wrapped in soft tissue paper, and dressed in the loveliest gown made by Momsey's own skillful fingers, was the great doll that had been given to Nan on her tenth birthday.

When girls went to high school, of course they were supposed to put away dolls, together with other childish things. But Nan Sherwood never could neglect her doll-babies and had often spent whole rainy days playing with them in secret in the attic of the little house on Amity Street.

Her other dolls had been left, carefully wrapped and shielded from the mice, at Tillbury; but Nan had been unable to leave Beautiful Beulah behind. She packed her in the bottom of her trunk, unknown even to Momsey in the hurry of departure. She had not told a soul here at Pine Camp that she possessed a doll; she knew the boys would make fun of her for sure.

But she often sat behind the drawn shades nursing the big doll and crooning softly to it as she swung back and forth in the spring rocking-chair. Tom had oiled the springs for her so that it no longer creaked.

She did not confide even in Aunt Kate about the big doll. They were all very kind to her; but Nan had a feeling that she ought to be grown up here among her backwoods relatives. How could she ever face roguish Rafe if he knew she liked to "play dolls?"

Fearing that even Margaret would tell, Nan had never shown the woods girl Beautiful Beulah. Once she was afraid Margaret had come to the window to peep in when Nan had the doll out of her hiding place; but she was not sure, and Nan hoped her secret was still inviolate. At least, Margaret never said a word about it.

Margaret's sisters had dolls made of corncobs, and rag babies with painted faces like the one Margaret had thrown into the river and drowned; but Margaret turned up her nose at them all. She never seemed to want to "play house" as do most girls of her age. She preferred to run wild, like a colt, with Bob in the woods and swamp.

Margaret did not wish to go into the swamp with Nan, however, on her first visit to Toby Vanderwiller's little farm. This was some weeks after the log drives, and lumbering was over for the season. Uncle Henry and the boys, rather than be idle, were working every acre they owned, and Nan was more alone than she had ever been since coming to Pine Camp.

She had learned the way to Toby's place, the main trail through the swamp going right by the hummock on which the old man's farm was situated. She knew there was a corduroy road most of the way—that is, a road built of logs laid side by side directly over the miry ground. Save in very wet weather this road was passable for most vehicles.

The distance was but three miles, however, and Nan liked walking. Besides, nobody who has not seen a tamarack swamp in late spring or early summer, can ever imagine how beautiful it is. Nan never missed human companionship when she was on the long walks she so often took in the woods.

She had learned now that, despite her adventure with the lynx in the snow-drifted hollow, there was scarcely any animal to fear about Pine Camp. Bears had not been seen for years; bobcats were very infrequently met with and usually ran like scared rabbits; foxes were of course shy, and the nearest approach to a wolf in all that section was Toby Vanderwiller's wolfhound that had once frightened Nan so greatly.

Hares, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and many, many birds, peopled the forest and swamp. In sunken places where the green water stood and steamed in the sun, turtles and frogs were plentiful; and occasionally a snake, as harmless as it was wicked looking, slid off a water-soaked log at Nan's approach and slipped under the oily surface of the pool.

On the day Nan walked to Toby's place the first time, she saw many wonders of plant life along the way, exotics clinging to rotten logs and stumps; fronds of delicate vines that she had never before heard of; ferns of exquisite beauty. And flashing over them, and sucking honey from every cuplike flower, were shimmering humming-birds and marvelously marked butterflies.

The birds screamed or sang or chattered over the girl's head as she tripped along. Squirrels peeped at her, barked, and then whisked their tails in rapid flight. Through the cool, dark depths where the forest monarchs had been untouched by the woodsmen, great moths winged their lazy flight. Nan knew not half of the creatures or the wonderful plants she saw.

There were sounds in the deeps of the swamplands that she did not recognize, either. Some she supposed must be the voices of huge frogs; other notes were bird-calls that she had never heard before. But suddenly, as she approached a turn in the corduroy road, her ear was smitten by a sound that she knew very well indeed.

It was a man's voice, and it was not a pleasant one. It caused Nan to halt and look about for some place to hide until the owner of the voice went by. She feared him because of his harsh tones, though she did not, at the moment, suspect who it was.

Then suddenly she heard plainly a single phrase: "I'd give money, I tell ye, to see Hen Sherwood git his!"



Chapter XXI. IN THE TAMARACK SWAMP

The harsh tone of the unseen man terrified Nan Sherwood; but the words he spoke about her Uncle Henry inspired her to creep nearer that she might see who it was, and hear more. The fact that she was eavesdropping did not deter the girl.

She believed her uncle's life to be in peril!

The dampness between the logs of the roadway oozed up in little pools and steamed in the hot blaze of the afternoon sun. Insects buzzed and hummed, so innumerable that the chorus of their voices was like the rumble of a great church-organ.

Nan stepped from the road and pushed aside the thick underbrush to find a dry spot to place her foot. The gnats danced before her and buzzed in her ears. She brushed them aside and so pushed on until she could see the road again. A lean, yellow horse, tackled to the shafts of a broken top-buggy with bits of rope as well as worn straps, stood in the roadway. The man on the seat, talking to another on the ground, was Mr. Gedney Raffer, the timberman who was contending at law with Uncle Henry.

It was he who had said: "I'd give money, I tell ye, to see Hen Sherwood git his."

There had fallen a silence, but just as Nan recognized the mean looking old man on the carriage seat, she heard the second man speak from the other side of the buggy.

"I tell you like I done Hen himself, Ged; I don't wanter be mixed up in no land squabble. I ain't for neither side."

It was Toby. Nan knew his voice, and she remembered how he had answered Uncle Henry at the lumber camp, the first day she had seen the old lumberman. Nan could not doubt that the two men were discussing the argument over the boundary of the Perkins Tract.

Gedney Raffer snarled out an imprecation when old Toby had replied as above. "Ef you know which side of your bread the butter's on, you'll side with me," he said.

"We don't often have butter on our bread, an' I ain't goin' ter side with nobody," grumbled Toby Vanderwiller.

"S-s!" hissed Raffer. "Come here!"

Toby stepped closer to the rattletrap carriage. "You see your way to goin' inter court an' talkin' right, and you won't lose nothin' by it, Tobe."

"Huh? Only my self-respect, I s'pose," grunted the old lumberman, and Nan approved very much of him just then.

"Bah!" exclaimed Raffer.

"Bah, yourself!" Toby Vanderwiller returned with some heat. "I got some decency left, I hope. I ain't goin' to lie for you, nor no other man, Ged Raffer!"

"Say! Would it be lyin' ef you witnessed on my side?" demanded the eager Raffer.

"That's my secret," snapped the old lumberman. "If I don't witness for you, be glad I don't harm you."

"You dare!" cried Raffer, shaking his fist at the other as he leaned from the buggy seat.

"You hearn me say I wouldn't go inter court one way or 'tother," repeated Toby, gloomily.

"Wal," snarled Raffer, "see't ye don't see't ye don't. 'Specially for any man but me. Ye 'member what I told ye, Tobe. Money's tight and I oughter call in that loan."

Toby was silent for half a minute. Then Nan heard him sigh.

"Well, Ged," he observed, "it's up to you. If you take the place it'll be the poorhouse for that unforchunit boy of mine and mebbe for the ol' woman, 'specially if I can't strike a job for next winter. These here lumber bosses begin to think I'm too stiff in the j'ints."

"Wal, wal!" snarled Raffer. "I can't help it. How d'ye expec' I kin help you ef you won't help me?"

He clucked to the old horse, which awoke out of its drowse with a start, and moved on sluggishly. Toby stood in the road and watched him depart. Nan thought the old lumberman's to be the most sorrowful figure she had ever seen.

Her young heart beat hotly against the meanness and injustice of Gedney Raffer. He had practically threatened Toby with foreclosure on his little farm if the old lumberman would not help him in his contention with Mr. Sherwood. On the other hand, Uncle Henry desired his help; but Uncle Henry, Nan knew, would not try to bribe the old lumberman. Under these distressing circumstances, which antagonist's interests was Toby Vanderwiller likely to serve?

This query vastly disturbed Nan Sherwood. All along she had desired much to help Uncle Henry solve his big problem. The courts would not allow him to cut a stick of timber on the Perkins Tract until a resurvey of the line was made by government-appointed surveyors, and that would be, when?

Uncle Henry's money was tied up in the stumpage lease, or first payment to the owners of the land. It was a big contract and he had expected to pay his help and further royalties on the lease, from the sale of the timber he cut on the tract. Besides, many valuable trees had been felled before the injunction was served, and lay rotting on the ground. Every month they lay there decreased their value.

And now, it appeared, Gedney Raffer was doing all in his power to influence old Toby to serve as a witness in his, Raffer's, interests.

Had toby been willing to go into court and swear that the line of the Perkins Tract was as Mr. Sherwood claimed, the court would have to vacate the injunction and Uncle Henry could risk going ahead and cutting and hauling timber from the tract. Uncle Henry believed Toby knew exactly where the line lay, for he had been a landloper, or timber-runner in this vicinity when the original survey was made, forty-odd years before.

It was plain to Nan, hiding in the bushes and watching the old man's face, that he was dreadfully tempted. Working as hard as he might, summer and winter alike, Toby Vanderwiller had scarcely been able to support his wife and grandson. His occasional attacks of rheumatism so frequently put him back. If Raffer took away the farm and the shelter they had, what would become of them?

Uncle Henry was so short of ready money himself that he could not assume the mortgage if Raffer undertook to foreclose.

"Oh, dear me! If Momsey would only write to me that she is really rich," thought Nan, "I'd beg her for the money. I'll tell her all about poor Toby in my very next letter and maybe, if she gets all that money from the courts in Scotland, she will let me give Toby enough to pay off the mortgage."

She never for a moment doubted that Uncle Henry's contention about the timber tract line was right. He must be correct, and old Toby must know it! That is the way Nan Sherwood looked at the matter.

But now, seeing Toby turning back along the corduroy road, and slowly shuffling toward home, she stepped out of the hovering bushes and walked hastily after him. She overtook him not many yards beyond the spot where he had stood talking with Raffer. He looked startled when she spoke his name.

"Well! You air a sight for sore eyes, Sissy," he said; but added, nervously, "How in Joe Tunket did you git in the swamp? Along the road?"

"Yes, sir," said Nan.

"Come right erlong this way?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did ye meet anybody?" demanded old Toby, eyeing her sharply.

"Mr. Raffer, driving his old buckskin horse. That's all."

"Didn't say nothin' to ye, did he?" asked Toby, curiously.

"Not a word," replied Nan, honestly. "I'm afraid of him and I hid in the bushes till he had gone by."

"Huh!" sighed Toby, as though relieved. "Jest as well. Though Ged wouldn't ha' dared touch ye, Sissy."

"Never mind. I'm here now," said Nan, brightly. "And I want you to show me your house and introduce me to Mrs. Vanderwiller."

"Sure. My ol' woman will be glad to see ye," said the man, briskly. "'Tain't more'n a mile furder on."

But first they came to a deserted place, a strip more than half a mile wide, where the trees had been cut in a broad belt through the swamp. All Nan could see was sawdust and the stumps of felled trees sticking out of it. The sawdust, Toby said, was anywhere from two to twenty feet deep, and there were acres of it.

"They had their mill here, ye kin see the brick work yonder. They hauled out the lumber by teams past my place. The stea'mill was here more'n two years. They hauled the sawdust out of the way and dumped it in ev'ry holler, jest as it come handy."

"What a lot there is of it!" murmured Nan, sniffing doubtfully at the rather unpleasant odor of the sawdust.

"I wish't 'twas somewhere else," grunted Toby.

"Why-so?"

"Fire git in it and it'd burn till doomsday. Fire in sawdust is a mighty bad thing. Ye see, even the road here is made of sawdust, four foot or more deep and packed as solid as a brick walk. That's the way Pale Lick went, sawdust afire. Ha'f the town was built on sawdust foundation an' she smouldered for weeks before they knowed of it. Then come erlong a big wind and started the blaze to the surface."

"Oh!" murmured Nan, much interested. "Didn't my Uncle Henry live there then?"

"I sh'd say he did," returned Toby, emphatically. "Didn't he never tell ye about it?"

"No, sir. They never speak of Pale Lick."

"Well, I won't, nuther," grunted old Toby. "'Taint pretty for a young gal like you to hear about. Whush! Thar goes a loon!"

A big bird had suddenly come into sight, evidently from some nearby water-hole. It did not fly high and seemed very clumsy, like a duck or goose.

"Oh! Are they good to eat, Mr. Vanderwiller?" cried Nan. "Rafe brought in a brace of summer ducks the other day, and they were awfully good, the way Aunt Kate cooked them."

"Well!" drawled Toby, slyly, "I've hearn tell ye c'd eat a loon, ef 'twas cooked right. But I never tried it."

"How do you cook a loon, Mr. Vanderwiller?" asked Nan, interested in all culinary pursuits.

"Well, they tell me thet it's some slow process," said the old man, his eyes twinkling. "Ye git yer loon, pluck an' draw it, let it soak overnight in vinegar an' water, vitriol vinegar they say is the best. Then ye put it in the pot an' let it simmer all day."

"Yes?" queried the perfectly innocent Nan.

"Then ye throw off that water," Toby said, soberly, "and ye put on fresh water an' let it cook all the next day."

"Oh!"

"An' then ye throw in a piece of grin'stone with the loon, and set it to bilin' again. When ye kin stick a fork in the grin'stone, the loon's done!"

Nan joined in Toby's loud laugh at this old joke, and pretty soon thereafter they came to the hummock on which the Vanderwillers lived.



Chapter XXII. ON THE ISLAND

In the winter it was probably dreary enough; but now the beauty of the swelling knoll where the little whitewashed house stood, with the tiny fields that surrounded it, actually made Nan's heart swell and the tears come into her eyes.

It seemed to her as though she had never seen the grass so green as here, and the thick wood that encircled the little farm was just a hedge of blossoming shrubs with the tall trees shooting skyward in unbroken ranks. A silver spring broke ground at the corner of the paddock fence. A pool had been scooped out for the cattle to drink at; but it was not muddied, and the stream tinkled down over the polished pebbles to the wider, more sluggish stream that meandered away from the farm into the depths of the swamp.

Toby told her, before they reached the hummock, that this stream rose in the winter and flooded all about the farm, so that the latter really was an island. Unless the ice remained firm they sometimes could not drive out with either wagon or sled for days at a time.

"Then you live on an island," cried Nan.

"Huh! Ye might say so," complained Toby. "And sometimes we feel like as though we was cast away on one, too."

But the girl thought it must really be great fun to live on an island.

They went up to the house along the bank of the clear stream. On the side porch, vine-covered to the eaves, sat an old woman rocking in a low chair and another figure in what seemed at a distance, to be a child's wagon of wickerwork, but with no tongue and a high back to it.

"Here's Gran'pop!" cried a shrill voice and the little wagon moved swiftly to the edge of the steps. Nan almost screamed in fear as it pitched downward. But the wheels did not bump over the four steps leading to the ground, for a wide plank had been laid slantingly at that side, and over this the wheels ran smoothly, if rapidly.

"You have a care there, Corson!" shrilled the old lady after the cripple. "Some day you'll break your blessed neck."

Nan thought he was a little boy, until they met. Then she was surprised to see a young man's head set upon a shriveled child's body! Corson Vanderwiller had a broad brow, a head of beautiful, brown, wavy hair, and a fine mustache. He was probably all of twenty-five years old.

But Nan soon learned that the poor cripple was not grown in mind, more than in body, to that age. His voice was childish, and his speech and manner, too. He was bashful with Nan at first; then chattered like a six-year-old child to her when she had once gained his confidence.

He wheeled himself about in the little express wagon very well indeed, old Toby having rigged brakes with which he moved the wagon and steered it. His arms and hands were quite strong, and when he wished to get back on to the piazza, he seized a rope his grandfather had hung there, and dragged himself, wagon and all, up the inclined plane, or gangplank, as it might be called.

He showed Nan all his treasures, and they included some very childish toys, a number of them showing the mechanical skill of his grandfather's blunt fingers. But among them, too, were treasures from the swamp and woods that were both very wonderful and very beautiful.

Old Toby had made Corson a neatly fitted cabinet in which were specimens of preserved butterflies and moths, most of them of the gay and common varieties; but some, Nan was almost sure, were rare and valuable. There was one moth in particular, with spread wings, on the upper side of the thorax of which was traced in white the semblance of a human skull. Nan was almost sure that this must be the famous death's-head moth she had read about in school; but she was not confident enough to say anything to old Toby Vanderwiller. A few specimens of this rare insect have been found in the swamps of America, although it was originally supposed to be an Old World moth.

Nan did say, however, to Toby that perhaps some of these specimens might be bought by collectors. The pressed flowers were pretty but not particularly valuable. In the museum at the Tillbury High School there was a much finer collection from the Indiana swamps.

"Sho!" said Toby, slowly; "I wouldn't wanter sell the boy's pretties. I brung most on 'em home to him; but he mounted 'em himself."

Nan suspected that old Mrs. Vanderwiller had much to do with the neat appearance of the cabinet. She was a quiet, almost a speechless, old lady. But she was very kind and she set out her best for Nan's luncheon before the girl from Tillbury returned home.

"We ain't got much here on the island," the old lady said; "but we do love to have visitors. Don't we, Corson?"

"Nice ones," admitted the cripple, munching cake.

He had heard something of what Nan suggested to Toby about the moths and other specimens. So when the old lady was absent from the porch he whispered:

"Say, girl!"

"Well?" she asked, smiling at him.

"Is what's in that cabinet wuth as much as a dollar?"

"Oh! I expect so," said Nan. "More."

"Will you give me a dollar for 'em?" he asked, eagerly.

"Oh, I couldn't! But perhaps I can write to somebody who would be interested in buying some of your things, and for much more than a dollar."

Corson looked disappointed. Nan asked, curiously: "Why do you want the dollar?"

"To git Gran'mom a silk dress," he said promptly. "She's admired to have one all her life, and ain't never got to git it yet."

"I'm sure that's nice of you," declared Nan, warmly. "I'll try to sell some of your collection."

"Well!" he jerked out. "It's got to be pretty soon, or she won't git to wear it much. I heard her tell Gran'pop so."

This impressed Nan Sherwood as being very pitiful, for she was of a sympathetic nature. And it showed that Corson Vanderwiller, even if he was simple-minded, possessed one of the great human virtues, gratitude.



Chapter XXIII. A MYSTERY

On this, her first visit to the island in the swamp, Nan said nothing to old Toby Vanderwiller about the line dispute between her uncle and Gedney Raffer, which the old lumberman was supposed to be able to settle if he would.

Mrs. Vanderwiller insisted upon Toby's hitching up an old, broken-kneed pony he owned, and taking her over the corduroy road to Pine Camp, where she arrived before dark. To tell the truth, little Margaret Llewellen was not the only person who thought it odd that Nan should want to go to see the Vanderwillers in the heart of the tamarack swamp. Nan's uncle and aunt and cousins considered their guest a little odd; but they made no open comment when the girl arrived at home after her visit.

Nan was full of the wonders she had seen, commonplace enough to her relatives who had lived all their lives in touch with the beautiful and queer things of Nature as displayed in the Michigan Peninsula. Perhaps none but Tom appreciated her ecstasy over crippled Corson Vanderwiller's collection.

Rafe was inclined to poke good-natured fun at his young cousin for her enthusiasm; but Tom showed an understanding that quite surprised Nan. Despite his simplicity regarding some of the commonest things of the great outside world, he showed that he was very observant of the things about him.

"Oh, Tom was always like that," scoffed Rafe, with ready laughter at his slow brother. "He'd rather pick up a bug any day and put it through a cross-examination, than smash it under the sole of his boot."

"I don't think bugs were made to smash," Tom said stoutly.

"Whew! What in thunder were they made for?" demanded the mocking Rafe.

"I don't think God Almighty made things alive just for us to make 'em dead," said Tom, clumsily, and blushing a deep red.

Rafe laughed again. Rafe had read much more in a desultory fashion than Tom.

"Tom ought to be one of those Brahmas," he said, chuckling. "They carry a whisk broom to brush off any seat they may sit on before they sit down, so's they sha'n't crush an ant, or any other crawling thing. They're vegetarians, too, and won't take life in any form."

"Now, Rafe!" exclaimed his mother, who was never quite sure when her younger son was playing the fool. "You know that Brahmas are hens. I've got some in my flock those big white and black, lazy fowls, with feathers on their legs."

Nan had to laugh at that as well as Rafe. "Brahma fowl, I guess, came from Brahma, or maybe Brahmaputra, all right. But Rafe means Brahmans. They're a religious people of India," the girl from Tillbury said.

"And maybe they've got it right," Tom said stubbornly. "Why should we kill unnecessarily?"

Nan could have hugged him. At any rate, a new feeling for him was born at that moment, and she applauded. Aunt Kate said:

"Tom always was soft-hearted," and her big son became silent. She might as well have called him "soft-headed"; but Nan began better to appreciate Tom's worth from that time on.

Rafe remained in her eyes still the reckless, heroic figure he had seemed when running over the logs the day of the timber drive. But she began to confide in Tom after this evening of her return from the tamarack swamp.

However, this is somewhat in advance of the story. The pleasant evening passed as usual until bedtime came for Nan. She retired to her east chamber, for the windows of which Tom had made screens to keep out the night-flying insects. No matter how tired she was at night there was one thing Nan Sherwood seldom forgot.

Possibly it was silly in a girl who was almost through her freshman year at high school, but Nan brought out Beautiful Beulah and rocked her, and hugged her, and crooned over her before she went to bed. She was such a comfort!

So Nan, on this evening, went first of all to the closet and reached down to draw out the box in which she had kept the doll hidden ever since coming to Pine Camp.

It was not there!

At first Nan Sherwood could not believe this possible. She dropped on her knees and scrambled over the floor of her closet, reaching under the hanging skirts and frocks, her fear rising, second by second.

The box was not in its place. She arose and looked about her room wildly. Of course, she had not left it anywhere else, that was out of the question.

She could scarcely believe that any member of the family had been in her room, much less would disturb anything that was hers. Not even Aunt Kate came to the east chamber often. Nan had insisted upon taking care of the room, and she swept and dusted and cleaned like the smart little housewife she was. Aunt Kate had been content to let her have her way in this.

Of course Nan never locked her door. But who would touch a thing belonging to her? And her doll! Why, she was sure the family did not even know she had such a possession.

Almost wildly the girl ran out of her chamber and into the sitting room, where the family was still gathered around the evening lamp, Rafe cleaning his shot-gun, Tom reading slowly the local paper, published at the Forks, Aunt Kate mending, and Uncle Henry sitting at the open window with his pipe.

"Oh, it's gone!" gasped Nan, as she burst into the room.

"What's gone?" asked Aunt Kate, and Uncle Henry added: "What's happened to you, honey-bird?"

"My Beulah!" cried Nan, almost sobbing. "My Beulah, she's been taken!"

"My mercy, child!" cried Aunt Kate, jumping up. "Are you crazy?"

"Who's Beulah?" demanded Rafe, looking up from his gun and, Nan thought, showing less surprise than the others.

"My Beulah doll," said Nan, too troubled now to care whether the family laughed at her or not. "My Beautiful Beulah. Somebody's played a trick."

"A doll!" shouted Rafe, and burst into a chatter of laughter.

"Mercy me, child!" repeated Aunt Kate. "I didn't know you had a doll."

"Got a baby rattle, too, Sissy?" chuckled Rafe. "And a ring to cut your teeth on? My, my!"

"Stop that, Rafe!" commanded his father, sternly, while Tom flushed and glared angrily at his brother.

"I didn't know you had a doll, Nannie," said Mrs. Sherwood, rather weakly. "Where'd you have it?"

"In my closet," choked Nan. "She's a great, big, beautiful thing! I know somebody must be playing a joke on me."

"Nobody here, Nannie," said Uncle Henry, with decision. "You may be sure of that." But he looked at Rafe sternly. That young man thought it the better part of wisdom to say no more.

In broken sentences the girl told her innocent secret, and why she had kept the doll hidden. Aunt Kate, after, all, seemed to understand.

"My poor dear!" she crooned, patting Nan's hand between her hard palms. "We'll all look for the dolly. Surely it can't have been taken out of the house."

"And who'd even take it out of her closet?" demanded Tom, almost as stern as his father.

"It surely didn't walk away of itself," said Aunt Kate.

She took a small hand lamp and went with Nan to the east chamber. They searched diligently, but to no good end, save to assure Nan that Beulah had utterly disappeared.

As far as could be seen the screens at the windows of the bedroom had not been disturbed. But who would come in from outside to steal Nan's doll? Indeed, who would take it out of the closet, anyway? The girl was almost sure that nobody had known she had it. It was strange, very strange indeed.

Big girl that she was, Nan cried herself to sleep that night over the mystery. The loss of Beulah seemed to snap the last bond that held her to the little cottage in Amity street, where she had spent all her happy childhood.



Chapter XXIV. THE SMOKING TREE

Nan awoke to a new day with the feeling that the loss of her treasured doll must have been a bad dream. But it was not. Another search of her room and the closet assured her that it was a horrid reality.

She might have lost many of her personal possessions without a pang; but not Beautiful Beulah. Nan could not tell her aunt or the rest of the family just how she felt about it. She was sure they would not understand.

The doll had reminded her continually of her home life. Although the stay of her parents in Scotland was much more extended than they or Nan had expected, the doll was a link binding the girl to her old home life which she missed so much.

Her uncle and aunt had tried to make her happy here at Pine Camp. As far as they could do so they had supplied the love and care of Momsey and Papa Sherwood. But Nan was actually ill for her old home and her old home associations.

On this morning, by herself in her bedroom, she cried bitterly before she appeared before the family.

"I have no right to make them feel miserable just because my heart, is, breaking," she sobbed aloud. "I won't let them see how bad I feel. But if I don't find Beulah, I just know I shall die!"

Could she have run to Momsey for comfort it would have helped, Oh, how much!

"I am a silly," Nan told herself at last, warmly. "But I cannot help it. Oh, dear! Where can Beulah have gone?"

She bathed her eyes well in the cold spring water brought by Tom that she always found in the jug outside her door in the morning, and removed such traces of tears as she could; and nobody noticed when she went out to breakfast that her eyelids were puffy and her nose a bit red.

The moment Rafe caught sight of her he began to squall, supposedly like an infant, crying:

"Ma-ma! Ma-ma! Tum an' take Too-tums. Waw! Waw! Waw!"

After all her hurt pride and sorrow, Nan would have called up a laugh at this. But Tom, who was drinking at the water bucket, wheeled with the full dipper and threw the contents into Rafe's face. That broke off the teasing cousin's voice for a moment; but Rafe came up, sputtering and mad.

"Say! You big oaf!" he shouted. "What you trying to do?"

"Trying to be funny," said Tom, sharply. "And you set me the example."

"Now, boys!" begged Aunt Kate. "Don't quarrel."

"And, dear me, boys," gasped Nan, "please don't squabble about me."

"That big lummox!" continued Rafe, still angry. "Because dad backs him up and says he ought to lick me, he does this. I'm going to defend myself. If he does a thing like that again, I'll fix him."

Tom laughed in his slow way and lumbered out. Uncle Henry did not hear this, and Nan was worried. She thought Aunt Kate was inclined to side with her youngest boy. Rafe would always be "the baby" to Aunt Kate.

At any rate Nan was very sorry the quarrel had arisen over her. And she was careful to say nothing to fan further the flame of anger between her cousins. Nor did she say anything more about the lost doll. So the family had no idea how heartsore and troubled the girl really was over the mystery.

It hurt her the more because she could talk to nobody about Beulah. There was not a soul in whom she could confide. Had Bess Harley been here at Pine Camp Nan felt that she could not really expect sympathy from her chum at this time; for Bess considered herself quite grown up and her own dolls were relegated to the younger members of her family.

Nan could write to her chum, however, and did. She could write to Momsey, and did that, too; not forgetting to tell her absent parents about old Toby Vanderwiller, and his wife and his grandson, and of their dilemma. If only Momsey's great fortune came true, Nan was sure that Gedney Raffer would be paid off and Toby would no longer have the threat of dispossession held over him.

Nan Sherwood wrote, too, to Mr. Mangel, the principal of the Tillbury High School, and told him about the collection the crippled grandson of the old lumberman had made, mentioning those specimens which had impressed her most. She had some hope that the strange moth might be very valuable.

Nan was so busy writing letters, and helping Aunt Kate preserve some early summer fruit, that she did not go far from the house during the next few days, and so did not see even Margaret Llewellen. The other girl friends she had made at Pine Camp lived too far away for her to visit them often or have them come to call on her.

A long letter from Papa Sherwood about this time served to take Nan's mind off the mystery, in part, at least. It was a nice letter and most joyfully received by the girl; but to her despair it gave promise of no very quick return of her parents from Scotland:

"Those relatives of your mother's whom we have met here, Mr. Andrew Blake's family, for instance, have treated us most kindly. They are, themselves, all well-to-do, and gentlefolk as well. The disposal by Old Hughie Blake, as he was known hereabout, of his estate makes no difference to the other Blakes living near Emberon," wrote Mr. Sherwood.

"It is some kin at a distance, children of a half sister of Old Hughie, who have made a claim against the estate. Mr. Andrew Blake, who is well versed in the Scotch law, assures us these distant relatives have not the shadow of a chance of winning their suit. He is so sure of this that he has kindly offered to advance certain sums to your mother to tide us over until the case is settled.

"I am sending some money to your Uncle Henry for your use, if any emergency should arise. You must not look for our return, my dear Nancy, too soon. Momsey's health is so much improved by the sea voyage and the wonderfully invigorating air here, that I should be loath to bring her home at once, even if the matter of the legacy were settled. By the way, the sum she will finally receive from Mr. Hugh Blake's estate will be quite as much as the first letter from the lawyer led us to expect. Some of your dearest wishes, my dear, may be realized in time."

"Oh! I can go to Lakeview Hall with Bess, after all!" cried Nan, aloud, at this point.

Indeed, that possibility quite filled the girl's mind for a while. Nothing else in Papa Sherwood's letter, aside from the good news of Momsey's improved health, so pleased her as this thought. She hastened to write a long letter to Bess Harley, with Lakeview Hall as the text.

Summer seemed to stride out of the forest now, full panoplied. After the frost and snow of her early days at Pine Camp, Nan had not expected such heat. The pools beside the road steamed. The forest was atune from daybreak to midnight with winged denizens, for insect and bird life seemed unquenchable in the Big Woods.

Especially was this true of the tamarack swamp. It was dreadfully hot at noontide on the corduroy road which passed Toby Vanderwiller's little farm; but often Nan Sherwood went that way in the afternoon. Mr. Mangel, the school principal, had written Nan and encouraged her to send a full description of some of Corson Vanderwiller's collection, especially of the wonderful death's-head moth, to a wealthy collector in Chicago. Nan did this at once.

So, one day, a letter came from the man and in it was a check for twenty-five dollars.

"This is a retainer," the gentleman wrote. "I am much interested in your account of the lame boy's specimens. I want the strangely marked moth in any case, and the check pays for an option on it until I can come and see his specimens personally."

Nan went that very afternoon to the tamarack swamp to tell the Vanderwillers this news and give Toby the check. She knew poor Corson would be delighted, for now he could purchase the longed-for silk dress for his grandmother.

The day was so hot and the way so long that Nan was glad to sit down when she reached the edge of the sawdust strip, to rest and cool off before attempting this unshaded desert. A cardinal bird—one of the sauciest and most brilliant of his saucy and brilliant race, flitted about her as she sat upon a log.

"You pretty thing!" crooned Nan. "If it were not wicked I'd wish to have you at home in a cage. I wish—"

She stopped, for in following the flight of the cardinal her gaze fastened upon a most surprising thing off at some distance from the sawdust road. A single dead tree, some forty feet in height and almost limbless, stood in solemn grandeur in the midst of the sawdust waste. It had been of no use to the woodcutters and they had allowed the shell of the old forest monarch to stand. Now, from its broken top, Nan espied a thin, faint column of blue haze rising.

It was the queerest thing! It was not mist, of course and she did not see how it could be smoke. There was no fire at the foot of the tree, for she could see the base of the bole plainly. She even got up and ran a little way out into the open in order to see the other side of the dead tree.

The sky was very blue, and the air was perfectly still. Almost Nan was tempted to believe that her eyes played her false. The column was almost the color of the sky itself, and it was thin as a veil.

How could there be a fire in the top of that tall tree?

"There just isn't! I don't believe I see straight!" declared Nan to herself, moving on along the roadway. "But I'll speak to Toby about it."



Chapter XXV. THE TEMPEST

Nan, however, did not mention to Toby the haze rising from the dead tree. In the first place, when she reached the little farm on the island in the tamarack swamp, old Toby Vanderwiller was not at home. His wife greeted the girl warmly, and Corson was glad to see her. When Nan spread the check before him and told him what it was for, and what he could do with so much money, the crippled boy was delighted.

It was a secret between them that the grandmother was to have the black silk dress that she had longed for all her married life; only Nan and Corson knew that Nan was commissioned to get the check cashed and buy the dress pattern at the Forks; or send to a catalogue house for it if she could not find a suitable piece of goods at any of the local stores.

Nan lingered, hoping that Toby would come home. It finally grew so late that she dared not wait longer. She had been warned by Aunt Kate not to remain after dusk in the swamp, nor had she any desire to do so.

Moreover there was a black cloud rolling up from the west. That was enough to make the girl hurry, for when it rained in the swamp, sometimes the corduroy road was knee deep in water.

The cloud had increased to such proportions when Nan was half way across the sawdust desert that she began to run. She had forgotten all about the smoking tree.

Not a breath of air was stirring as yet; but there was the promise of wind in that cloud. The still leaves on the bushes, the absence of bird life overhead, the lazy drone of insects, portended a swift change soon. Nan was weather-wise enough to know that.

She panted on, stumbling through the loose sawdust, but stumbling equally in the ruts; for the way was very rough. This road was lonely enough at best; but it seemed more deserted than ever now.

A red fox, his tail depressed, shot past her, and not many yards away. It startled Nan, for it seemed as though something dreadful was about to happen and the fox knew it and was running away from it.

She could not run as fast as the fox; but Nan wished that she could. And she likewise wished with all her heart that she would meet somebody.

That somebody she hoped would be Tom. Tom was drawing logs from some point near, she knew. A man down the river had bought some timber and they had been cut a few weeks before. Tom was drawing them out of the swamp for the man; and he had mentioned only that morning at breakfast that he was working within sight of the sawdust tract and the corduroy road.

Nan felt that she would be safe with big, slow Tom. Even the thought of thunder and lightning would lose some of its terrors if she could only get to Tom.

Suddenly she heard a voice shouting, then the rattle of chain harness. The voice boomed out a stave of an old hymn:

"On Jordan's stormy bank I stand, And cast a wishful eye."

"It's Tom!" gasped Nan, and ran harder.

She was almost across the open space now. The cooler depths of the forest were just ahead. Beyond, a road crossed the mainly-traveled swamp track at right angles to it, and this was the path Tom followed.

He was now coming from the river, going deeper into the swamp for another log. Nan continued to run, calling to him at the top of her voice.

She came in sight of the young timberman and his outfit. His wagon rattled so that he could not easily hear his cousin calling to him. He sat on the tongue of the wagon, and his big, slow-moving horses jogged along, rattling their chains in a jingle more noisy than harmonious.

The timber cart was a huge, lumbering affair with ordinary cartwheels in front but a huge pair behind with an extended reach between them; and to the axle of the rear pair of wheels the timber to be transported was swung off the ground and fastened with chains. Nan ran after the rumbling cart and finally Tom saw her.

"My mercy me!" gasped the boy, using one of his mother's favorite expressions. "What you doing here, Nan?"

"Chasing you, Tom," laughed the girl. "Is it going to rain?"

"I reckon. You'll get wet if it does."

"I don't care so much for that," confessed Nan. "But I am so afraid of thunder! Oh, there it comes."

The tempest muttered in the distance. Tom, who had pulled in his horses and stopped, looked worried. "I wish you weren't here, Nan," he said.

"How gallant you are, I declare, Tommy Sherwood," cried Nan, laughing again, and then shuddering as the growl of the thunder was repeated.

"Swamp's no place for a girl in a storm," muttered the boy.

"Well, I am here, Tommy; what are you going to do with me?" she asked him, saucily.

"If you're so scared by thunder you'd better begin by stopping your ears," he drawled.

Nan laughed. Slow Tom was not often good at repartee. "I'm going to stick by you till it's over, Tom," she said, hopping up behind him on the wagon-tongue.

"Cracky, Nan! You'll get soaked. It's going to just smoke in a few minutes," declared the anxious young fellow.

And that reminded Nan again of the smoking tree.

"Oh, Tom! Do you know I believe there is a tree afire over yonder," she cried, pointing.

"A tree afire?"

"Yes. I saw it smoking."

"My mercy me!" exclaimed Tom again. "What do you mean?"

Nan told him about the mystery. The fact that a column of smoke arose out of the top of the dead tree seemed to worry Tom. Nan became alarmed.

"Oh, dear, Tom! Do you really think it was afire?"

"I, don't know. If it was afire, it is afire now," he said. "Show me, Nan."

He turned the horses out of the beaten track through the brush and brambles, to the edge of the open place which had been heaped with sawdust from the steam-mill.

Just as they broke cover a vivid flash of lightning cleaved the black cloud that had almost reached the zenith by now, and the deep rumble of thunder changed to a sharp chatter; then followed a second flash and a deafening crash.

"Oh, Tom!" gasped Nan, as she clung to him.

"The flash you see'll never hit you, Nan," drawled Tom, trying to be comforting. "Remember that."

"It isn't so much the lightning I fear as it is the thunder," murmured Nan, in the intermission. "It just so-o-ounds as though the whole house was coming down."

"Ho!" cried Tom. "No house here, Nan."

"But——-"

The thunder roared again. A light patter on the leaves and ground announced the first drops of the storm.

"Which tree was it you saw smoking?" asked the young fellow.

Nan looked around to find the tall, broken-topped tree. A murmur that had been rising in the distance suddenly grew to a sweeping roar. The trees bent before the blast. Particles of sawdust stung their faces. The horses snorted and sprang ahead. Tom had difficulty in quieting them.

Then the tempest swooped upon them in earnest.



Chapter XXVI. BUFFETED BY THE ELEMENTS

Nan knew she had never seen it rain so hard before. The falling water was like a drop-curtain, swept across the stage of the open tract of sawdust. In a few minutes they were saturated to the skin. Nan could not have been any wetter if she had gone in swimming.

"Oh!" she gasped into Tom's ear. "It is the deluge!"

"Never was, but one rain 't didn't clear up yet," he returned, with difficulty, for his big body was sheltering Nan in part, and he was facing the blast.

"I know. That's this one," she agreed. "But, it's awful."

"Say! Can you point out that tree that smoked?" asked Tom.

"Goodness! It can't be smoking now," gasped Nan, stifled with rain and laughter. "This storm would put out Vesuvius."

"Don't know him," retorted her cousin. "But it'd put most anybody out, I allow. Still, fire isn't so easy to quench. Where's the tree?"

"I can't see it, Tom," declared Nan, with her eyes tightly closed. She really thought he was too stubborn. Of course, if there had been any fire in that tree-top, this rain would put it out in about ten seconds. So Nan believed.

"Look again, Nan," urged her cousin. "This is no funning. If there's fire in this swamp."

"Goodness, gracious!" snapped Nan. "What a fuss-budget you are to be sure, Tom. If there was a fire, this rain would smother it. Oh! Did it ever pelt one so before?"

Fortunately the rain was warm, and she was not much discomforted by being wet. Tom still clung to the idea that she had started in his slow mind.

"Fire's no funning, I tell you," he growled. "Sometimes it smoulders for days and days, and weeks and weeks; then it bursts out like a hurricane."

"But the rain"

"This sawdust is mighty hard-packed, and feet deep," interrupted Tom. "The fire might be deep down."

"Why, Tom! How ridiculously you talk!" cried the girl. "Didn't I tell you I saw the smoke coming out of the top of a tree? Fire couldn't be deep down in the sawdust and the smoke come out of the tree top."

"Couldn't, heh?" returned Tom. "Dead tree, wasn't it?"

"Oh, yes."

"Hollow, too, of course?"

"I don't know."

"Might be hollow clear through its length," Tom explained seriously. "The butt might be all rotted out. Just a tough shell of a tree standing there, and 'twould be a fine chimney if the fire was smouldering down at its old roots."

"Oh, Tom! I never thought of such a thing," gasped Nan.

"And you don't see the tree now?"

"Let me look! Let me look!" cried Nan, conscience-stricken.

In spite of the beating rain and wind she got to her knees, still clinging to her big cousin, and then stood upon the broad tongue of the wagon. The horses stood still with their heads down, bearing the buffeting of the storm with the usual patience of dumb beasts.

A sheer wall of water seemed to separate them from every object out upon the open land. Behind them the bulk of the forest loomed as another barrier. Nan had really never believed that rain could fall so hard. It almost took her breath.

Moreover, what Tom said about the smoking tree began to trouble the girl. She thought of the fire at Pale Lick, of which she had received hints from several people. That awful conflagration, in which she believed two children belonging to her uncle and aunt had lost their lives, had started in the sawdust.

Suddenly she cried aloud and seized Tom more tightly.

"Cracky! Don't choke a fellow!" he coughed.

"Oh, Tom!"

"Well"

"I think I see it."

"The tree that smoked?" asked her cousin.

"Yes. There!"

For the moment it seemed as though the downpour lightened. Veiled by the still falling water a straight stick rose high in the air ahead of them. Tom chirruped to the horses and made them, though unwilling, go forward.

They dragged the heavy cart unevenly. Through the heavy downpour the trail was hard to follow, and once in a while a rear wheel bumped over a stump, and Nan was glad to drop down upon the tongue again, and cling more tightly than ever to her cousin's collar.

"Sure that's it?" queried Tom, craning his neck to look up into the tall, straight tree.

"I, I'm almost sure," stammered Nan.

"I, don't, see, any, smoke," drawled Tom, with his head still raised.

The rain had almost ceased, an intermission which would not be of long duration. Nan saw that her cousin's prophecy had been true; the ground actually smoked after the downpour. The sun-heated sawdust steamed furiously. They seemed to be crossing a heated cauldron. Clouds of steam rose all about the timber cart.

"Why, Tommy!" Nan choked. "It does seem as though there must be fire under this sawdust now."

Tom brought his own gaze down from the empty tree-top with a jerk. "Hoo!" he shouted, and leaned forward suddenly to flick his off horse with the whiplash. Just then the rear wheel on that side slumped down into what seemed a veritable volcano.

Flame and smoke spurted out around the broad wheel. Nan screamed. The wind suddenly swooped down upon them, and a ball of fire, flaming sawdust was shot into the air and was tossed twenty feet by a puff of wind.

"We're over an oven!" gasped Tom, and laid the whip solidly across the backs of the frightened horses.

They plunged. Another geyser of fire and smoke spurted from the hole into which the rear wheel had slumped. Again and again the big horses flung themselves into the collars in an endeavor to get the wheel out.

"Oh, Tommy!" cried Nan. "We'll be burned up!"

"No you won't," declared her cousin, leaping down. "Get off and run, Nan."

"But you—"

"Do as I say!" commanded Tom. "Run!"

"Where, where'll I run to?" gasped the girl, leaping off the tongue, too, and away from the horses' heels.

"To the road. Get toward home!" cried Tom, running around to the rear of the timber cart.

"And leave you here?" cried Nan. "I guess not, Mr. Tom!" she murmured.

But he did not hear that. He had seized his axe and was striding toward the edge of the forest. For a moment Nan feared that Tom was running away as he advised her to do. But that would not be like Tom Sherwood!

At the edge of the forest he laid the axe to the root of a sapling about four inches through at the butt. Three strokes, and the tree was down. In a minute he had lopped off the branches for twenty feet, then removed the top with a single blow.

As he turned, dragging the pole with him, up sprang the fire again from the hollow into which the wheel of the wagon had sunk. It was a smoking furnace down there, and soon the felloe and spokes would be injured by the flames and heat. Sparks flew on the wings of the wind from out of the mouth of the hole. Some of them scattered about the horses and they plunged again, squealing.

It seemed to Nan impossible after the recent cloudburst that the fire could find anything to feed upon. But underneath the packed surface of the sawdust, the heat of summer had been drying out the moisture for weeks. And the fire had been smouldering for a long time. Perhaps for yards and yards around, the interior of the sawdust heap was a glowing furnace.

Nan would not run away and Tom did not see her. As he came plunging back to the stalled wagon, suddenly his foot slumped into the yielding sawdust and he fell upon his face. He cried out with surprise or pain. Nan, horrified, saw the flames and smoke shooting out of the hole into which her cousin had stepped. For the moment the girl felt as if her heart had stopped beating.

"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" she shrieked, and sprang toward him.

Tom was struggling to get up. His right leg had gone into the yielding mass up to his hip, and despite his struggles he could not get it out. A long yellow flame shot out of the hole and almost licked his face. It, indeed, scorched his hair on one side of his head.

But Nan did not scream again. She needed her breath, all that she could get, for a more practical purpose. Her cousin waved her back feebly, and tried to tell her to avoid the fire.

Nan rushed in, got behind him, and seized her cousin under the arms. To lift him seemed a giant's task; but nevertheless she tried.



Chapter XXVII. OLD TOBY IN TROUBLE

The squealing and plunging of the horses, the rattling of their chains, the shrieking of the wind, the reverberating cracks of thunder made a deafening chorus in Nan's ears. She could scarcely hear what the imperiled Tom shouted to her. Finally she got it:

"Not that way! Pull sideways!"

He beat his hands impotently upon the crust of sawdust to the left. Nan tugged that way. Tom pulled, too, heaving his great body upward, and scratching and scrambling along the sawdust with fingers spread like claws. His right leg came out of the hole, and just then the rain descended torrentially again.

The flames from this opening in the roof of the furnace were beaten down. Tom got to his feet, shaking and panting. He hobbled painfully when he walked.

But in a moment he seized upon the pole he had dropped and made for the smoking timber cart. The terrified horses tried again and again to break away; but the chain harnesses were too strong; nor did the mired wheel budge.

"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" begged Nan. "Let us make the poor horses free, and run ourselves."

"And lose my wagon?" returned her cousin, grimly. "Not much!"

The rain, which continued to descend with tropical violence, almost beat Nan to the ground; but Tom Sherwood worked furiously.

He placed the butt of the lever he had cut under the hub of the great wheel. There was a sound stump at hand to use as a fulcrum. Tom threw himself upon the end of the lever. Nan ran to add her small weight to the endeavor. The wheel creaked and began to rise slowly.

The sawdust was not clinging, it was not like real mire. There was no suction to hold the wheel down. Merely the crust had broken in and the wheel had encountered an impediment of a sound tree root in front of it so that, when the horses tugged, the tire had come against the root and dragged back the team.

Out poured the flames and smoke again, the flames hissing as they were quenched by the falling water. Higher, higher rose the cart wheel. Nan, who was behind her cousin, saw his neck and ears turn almost purple from the strain he put in the effort to dislodge the wheel. Up, up it came, and then——-

"Gid-ap! 'Ap, boys! Yah! Gid-ap!"

The horses strained. The yoke chains rattled. Tom gasped to Nan:

"Take my whip! Quick! Let 'em have it!"

The girl had always thought the drover's whip Tom used a very cruel implement, and she wished he did not use it. But she knew now that it was necessary. She leaped for the whip which Tom had thrown down and showed that she knew its use.

The lash hissed and cracked over the horses' backs. Tom voiced one last, ringing shout. The cart wheel rose up, the horses leaped forward, and the big timber cart was out of its plight.

Flames and smoke poured out of the hole again. The rain dashing upon and into the aperture could not entirely quell the stronger element. But the wagon was safe, and so, too, were the two cousins.

Tom was rather painfully burned and Nan began to cry about it. "Oh! Oh! You poor, poor dear!" she sobbed. "It must smart you dreadfully, Tommy."

"Don't worry about me," he answered. "Get aboard. Let's get out of this."

"Are you going home?"

"Bet you!" declared Tom. "Why, after this rain stops, this whole blamed place may be in flames. Must warn folks and get out the fire guard."

"But the rain will put out the fire, Tom," said Nan, who could not understand even now the fierce power of a conflagration of this kind.

"Look there!" yelled Tom, suddenly glancing back over her head as she sat behind him on the wagon tongue.

With a roar like an exploding boiler, the flames leaped up the heart of the hollow tree. The bursted crust of the sawdust heap had given free ingress to the wind, and a draught being started, it sucked the flames directly up the tall chimney the tree made.

The fire burst from the broken top. The flames met the falling rain as though they were unquenchable. Indeed the clouds were scattering, and second by second the downfall was decreasing. The tempest of rain was almost over; but the wind remained to fan the flames that had now broken cover in several spots, as well as through the tall and hollow tree.

Tom hastened his team toward the main road that passed through the tamarack swamp. At one end of it was Pine Camp; in the other direction, after passing the knoll on which the Vanderwillers lived, the roadway came out upon a more traveled road to the forks and the railroad.

Pine Camp was the nearest place where help could be secured to beat down the fire, if, indeed, this were at all possible. There was a telephone line there which, in a roundabout way, could be made to carry the news of the forest fire to all the settlements in the Big Woods and along the railroad line.

But Nan seized Tom's arm and shook it to call his attention as the horses neared the road.

"Tom! For goodness' sake!" she gasped.

"What's the matter now?" her cousin demanded, rather sharply, for his burns were painful.

"Toby, the Vanderwillers! What will become of them?"

"What d'you mean?" asked Tom, aghast.

"That poor cripple! They can't get away, he and his grandmother. Perhaps Toby hasn't come home yet."

"And the wind's that way," Tom interrupted.

It was indeed. The storm had come up from the west and the wind was still blowing almost directly into the east. A sheet of flame flew from the top of the old dead tree even as the boy spoke, and was carried toward the thick forest. It did not reach it, and as the blazing brand fell it was quenched on the wet surface of the sawdust.

Nevertheless, the fire was spreading under the crust and soon the few other dead trees left standing on the tract would burst into flame. As they looked, the fire burst out at the foot of the tree and began to send long tongues of flame licking up the shredded bark.

The effect of the drenching rain would soon be gone and the fire would secure great headway.

"Those poor folks are right in the track of the fire, I allow," admitted Tom. "I wonder if he's got a good wide fire strip ploughed?"

"Oh! I know what you mean," Nan cried. "You mean all around the edge of his farm where it meets the woods?"

"Yes. A ploughed strip may save his buildings. Fire can't easily cross ploughed ground. Only, if these woods get really ablaze, the fire will jump half a mile!"

"Oh no, Tom! You don't mean that?"

"Yes, I do," said her cousin, gloomily. "Tobe's in a bad place. You don't know what a forest fire means, nor the damage it does, Nannie. I'm right troubled by old Tobe's case."

"But there's no danger for Pine Camp, is there?" asked the girl, eagerly.

"Plenty of folks there to make a fire-guard. Besides, the wind's not that way, exactly opposite. And she's not likely to switch around so soon, neither. I, don't, know"

"The folks at home ought to know about it," Nan interrupted.

"They'll know it, come dark," Tom said briefly. "They'll be looking for you and they'll see the blaze. Why! After dark that old dead tree will look like a lighthouse for miles 'n' miles!"

"I suppose it will," agreed Nan. "But I do want to get home, Tom."

"Maybe the storm's not over," said her cousin, cocking an eye towards the clouded heavens. "If it sets in for a long rain (and one's due about this time according to the Farmer's Almanac) it would keep the fire down, put it out entirely, maybe. But we can't tell."

Nan sighed and patted his shoulder. "I know it's our duty to go to the island, Tommy. You're a conscientious old thing. Drive on."

Tom clucked to the horses. He steered them into the roadway, but headed away from home. Another boy with the pain he was bearing would not have thought of the old lumberman and his family. They were the only people likely to be in immediate danger from the fire if it spread. The cousins might easily reach the Vanderwiller's island, warn them of the fire, and return to town before it got very late, or before the fire crossed the wood-road.

They rumbled along, soon striking the corduroy road, having the thick forest on either hand again. The ditches were running bank full. Over a quagmire the logs, held down by cross timbers spiked to the sleepers, shook under the wheels, and the water spurted up through the interstices as the horses put down their heavy feet.

"An awful lot of water fell," Tom said soberly.

"Goodness! The swamp is full," agreed Nan.

"We may have some trouble in reaching Toby's place," the boy added. "But maybe—"

He halted in his speech, and the next instant pulled the horses down to a willing stop. "Hark-a-that!" whispered Tom.

"Can it be anybody crying? Maybe it's a wildcat," said Nan, with a vivid remembrance of her adventure in the snow that she had never yet told to any member of the family.

"It's somebody shouting, all right," observed Tom. "Up ahead a way. Gid-ap!"

He hurried the horses on, and they slopped through the water which, in places, flowed over the road, while in others it actually lifted the logs from their foundation and threatened to spoil the roadway entirely.

Again and again they heard the faint cry, a man's voice. Tom stood up and sent a loud cry across the swamp in answer:

"We're coming! Hold on!

"Don't know what's the matter with him," he remarked, dropping down beside Nan again, and stirring the horses to a faster pace. "S'pose he's got into a mud-hold, team and all, maybe."

"Oh, Tom! Maybe he'll be sucked right down into this awful mud."

"Not likely. There aren't many quicksands, or the like, hereabout. Never heard tell of 'em, if there are. Old Tobe lost a cow once in some slough."

They came to a small opening in the forest just then. Here a great tree had been uprooted by the wind and leaned precariously over a quagmire beside the roadway. Fortunately only some of the lower branches touched the road line and Tom could get his team around them.

Then the person in trouble came into sight. Nan and her cousin saw him immediately. He was in the middle of the shaking morass waist deep in the mire, and clinging to one of the small hanging limbs of the uprooted tree.

"Hickory splits!" ejaculated Tom, stopping the team. "It's old Tobe himself! Did you ever see the like!"



Chapter XXVIII. THE GIRL IN THE HOLLOW TREE

Just why old Toby Vanderwiller was clinging to that branch and did not try to wade ashore, neither Nan nor Tom could understand. But one thing was plain: the old lumberman thought himself in danger, and every once in a while he gave out a shout for help. But his voice was growing weak.

"Hey, Tobe!" yelled Tom. "Why don't you wade ashore?"

"There ye be, at last, hey?" snarled the old man, who was evidently just as angry as he could be. "Thought ye'd never come. Hearn them horses rattling their chains, must ha' been for an hour."

"That's stretching it some," laughed Tom. "That tree hasn't been toppled over an hour."

"Huh! Ye can't tell me nothin' 'beout that!" declared Toby. "I was right here when it happened."

"Goodness!" gasped Nan.

"Yep. And lemme tell ye, I only jest 'scaped being knocked down when she fell."

"My!" murmured Nan again.

"That's how I got inter this muck hole," growled the old lumberman. "I jumped ter dodge the tree, and landed here."

"Why don't you wade ashore?" demanded Tom again, preparing in a leisurely manner to cast the old man the end of a line he had coiled on the timber cart.

"Yah!" snarled Toby. "Why don't Miz' Smith keep pigs? Don't ax fool questions, Tommy, but gimme holt on that rope. I'm afraid ter let go the branch, for I'll sink, and if I try ter pull myself up by it, the whole blamed tree'll come down onter me. Ye see how it's toppling?"

It was true that the fallen tree was in a very precarious position. When Toby stirred at all, the small weight he rested on the branch made the head of the tree dip perilously. And if it did fall the old man would be thrust into the quagmire by the weight of the branches which overhung his body.

"Let go of it, Toby!" called Tom, accelerating his motions. "Catch this!"

He flung the coil with skill and Toby seized it. The rocking tree groaned and slipped forward a little. Toby gave a yell that could have been heard much farther than his previous cries.

But Tom sank back on the taut rope and fairly jerked the old man out of the miry hole. Scrambling on hands and knees, Toby reached firmer ground, and then the road itself.

Nan uttered a startled exclamation and cowered behind the cart. The huge tree, groaning and its roots splintering, sagged down and, in an instant, the spot there the old lumberman had been, was completely covered by the interlacing branches of the uprooted tree.

"Close squeal, that," remarked Tom, helping the old man to his feet.

Toby stared at them both, wiping the mire from his face as he did so. He was certainly a scarecrow figure after his submersion in the mud; gut Nan did not feel like laughing at him. The escape had been too narrow.

"Guess the Almighty sent you just in time, Tom, my boy," said Toby Vanderwiller. "He must have suthin' more for the old man to do yet, before he cashes in. And little Sissy, too. Har! Henry Sherwood's son and Henry Sherwood's niece. Reckon I owe him a good turn," he muttered.

Nan heard this, though Tom did not, and her heart leaped. She hoped that Toby would feel sufficient gratitude to help Uncle Henry win his case against Gedney Raffer. But, of course, this was not the time to speak of it.

When the old lumberman heard about the fire in the sawdust he was quite as excited as the young folk had been. It was fast growing dark now, but it was impossible from the narrow road to see even the glow of the fire against the clouded sky.

"I believe it's goin' to open up and rain ag'in," Toby said. "But if you want to go on and plow me a fire-strip, Tommy, I'll be a thousand times obleeged to you."

"That's what I came this way for," said the young fellow briefly. "Hop on and we'll go to the island as quickly as possible."

They found Mrs. Vanderwiller and the crippled boy anxiously watching the flames in the tree top from the porch of the little house on the island. Nan ran to them to relate their adventures, while Toby got out the plow and Tom hitched his big horses to it.

The farm was not fenced, for the road and forest bounded it completely. Tom put the plow in at the edge of the wood and turned his furrows toward it, urging the horses into a trot. It was not that the fire was near; but the hour was growing late and Tom knew that his mother and father would be vastly anxious about Nan.

The young fellow made twelve laps, turning twelve broad furrows that surely would guard the farm against any ordinary fire. But by the time he was done it did not look as though the fire in the sawdust would spread far. The clouds were closing up once more and it was again raining, gently but with an insistence that promised a night of downpour, at least.

Old Mrs. Vanderwiller had made supper, and insisted upon their eating before starting for Pine Camp. And Tom, at least, did his share with knife and fork, while his horses ate their measure of corn in the paddock. It was dark as pitch when they started for home, but Tom was cheerful and sure of his way, so Nan was ashamed to admit that she was frightened.

"Tell yer dad I'll be over ter Pine Camp ter see him 'fore many days," Old Toby jerked out, as they were starting. "I got suthin' to say to him, I have!"

Tom did not pay much attention to this; but Nan did. Her heart leaped for joy. She believed that Toby Vanderwiller's words promised help for Uncle Henry.

But she said nothing to Tom about it. She only clung to his shoulder as the heavy timber cart rattled away from the island.

A misty glow hung over the sawdust strip as they advanced; but now that the wind had died down the fire could not spread. Beside the road the glow worms did their feeble best to light the way; and now and then an old stump in the swamp displayed a ghostly gleam of phosphorus.

Nan had never been in the swamp before at night. The rain had driven most of the frogs and other croaking creatures to cover. But now and then a sudden rumble "Better-go-roun'!" or "Knee-deep! Knee-deep!" proclaimed the presence of the green-jacketed gentlemen with the yellow vests.

"Goodness me! I'd be scared to death to travel this road by myself," Nan said, as they rode on. "The frogs make such awful noises."

"But frogs won't hurt you," drawled Tom.

"I know all that," sighed Nan. "But they sound as if they would. There! That one says, just as plain as plain can be, 'Throw 'im in! Throw 'im in!"

"Good!" chuckled Tom. "And there's a drunken old rascal calling: 'Jug-er-rum! Jug-er-rum!'!"

A nighthawk, wheeling overhead through the rain, sent down her discordant cry. Deep in a thicket a whip-poor-will complained. It was indeed a ghostly chorus that attended their slow progress through the swamp at Pine Camp.

When they crossed the sawdust tract there was little sign of the fire. The dead tree had fallen and was just a glowing pile of coals, fast being quenched by the gently falling rain. For the time, at least, the danger of a great conflagration was past.

"Oh! I am so glad," announced Nan, impetuously. "I was afraid it was going to be like that Pale Lick fire."

"What Pale Lick fire?" demanded Tom, quickly. "What do you know about that?"

"Not much, I guess," admitted his cousin, slowly. "But you used to live there, didn't you?"

"Rafe and I don't remember anything about it," said Tom, in his quiet way. "Rafe was a baby and I wasn't much better. Marm saved us both, so we've been told. She and dad never speak about it."

"Oh! And Indian Pete?" whispered Nan.

"He saved the whole of us—dad and all. He knew a way out through a slough and across a lake. He had a dug-out. He got badly burned dragging dad to the boat when he was almost suffocated with smoke," Tom said soberly.

"'Tisn't anything we talk about much, Nan. Who told you?"

"Oh, it's been hinted to me by various people," said Nan, slowly. "But I saw Injun Pete, Tom."

"When? He hasn't been to Pine Camp since you came."

Nan told her cousin of her adventure in the hollow near Blackton's lumber camp. Tom was much excited by that.

"Gracious me, Nan! But you are a plucky girl. Wait till Rafe hears about it. And marm and dad will praise you for being so level-headed today. Aren't many girls like you, Nan, I bet!"

"Nor boys like you, Tom," returned the girl, shyly. "How brave you were, staying to pull that old wagon-wheel out of the fire."

"Ugh!" growled Tom. "A fat time I'd have had there if it hadn't been for you helping me out of the oven. Cracky! I thought I was going to have my leg burned to a cinder.

"That would have been terrible!" shuddered Nan. "What would poor Aunt Kate have said?"

"We can't tell her anything about it," Tom hastened to say. "You see, my two older brothers, Jimmy and Alfred, were asleep in the garret of our house at Pale Lick, and marm thought they'd got out. It wasn't until afterward that she learned they'd been burned up with the house. She's never got over it."

"I shouldn't think she would," sighed Nan.

"And you see she's awfully afraid of fire, even now," said Tom.

They rattled on over the logs of the road; here and there they came to bad places, where the water had not gone down; and the horses were very careful in putting their hoofs down upon the shaking logs. However, it was not much over an hour after leaving the island that they spied the lights of Pine Camp from the top of the easy rise leading out of the tamarack swamp.

They met Rafe with a lantern half way down the hill. Uncle Henry was away and Aunt Kate had sent Rafe out to look for Nan, although she supposed that the girl had remained at the Vanderwillers' until the rain was over, and that Toby would bring her home.

There was but one other incident of note before the three of them reached the rambling house Uncle Henry had built on the outskirts of Pine Camp. As they turned off the swamp road through the lane that ran past the Llewellen cottage, Rafe suddenly threw the ray of his lantern into a hollow tree beside the roadway. A small figure was there, and it darted back out of sight.

"There!" shouted Rafe. "I knew you were there, you little nuisance. What did you run out of the house and follow me for, Mar'gret Llewellen?"

He jumped in and seized the child, dragging her forth from the hollow of the big tree. He held her, while she squirmed and screamed.

"You lemme alone, Rafe Sherwood! Lemme alone!" she commanded. "I ain't doin' nothin' to you."

"Well, I bet you are up to some monkey-shines, out this time of night," said Rafe, giving her a little shake. "You come on back home, Mag."

"I won't!" declared the girl.

"Yes, do, Margaret," begged Nan. "It's going to rain harder. Don't hurt her, Rafe."

"Yah! You couldn't hurt her," said Rafe. "She's as tough as a little pine-knot, and don't you forget it! Aren't you, Mag?"

"Lemme go!" repeated Margaret, angrily.

"What did you chase down here after me for?" asked Rafe, the curious.

"I, I thought mebbe you was comin' to hunt for something," stammered the girl.

"So I was. For Nancy here," laughed Rafe.

"Thought 'twas somethin' of mine," said the girl. "Lemme go now!"

She jerked away her hand and scuttled into the house that they were then just passing.

"Wonder what the little imp came out to watch me for?" queried Rafe.

After they had arrived at home and the excitement o the return was over; after she and Tom had told as much of their adventures as they thought wise, and Nan had retired to the east chamber, she thought again about Margaret and her queer actions by the roadside.

"Why, that tree is where Margaret hides her most precious possessions," said Nan, suddenly, sitting up in bed. "Why, what could it be she was afraid Rafe would find there? Why can that child have hidden something there that she doesn't want any of us to see?"

Late as it was, and dark as it was, and stormy as the night was, she felt that she must know immediately what Margaret Llewellen had hidden in the hollow tree.



Chapter XXIX. GREAT NEWS FROM SCOTLAND

Nan put two and two together, and the answer came right.

She got out of bed, lit her lamp again and began to dress. She turned her light down to a dim glimmer, however, for she did not want her aunt to look out of the window of her bedroom on the other side of the parlor and catch a glimpse of her light.

In the half darkness Nan made a quick toilet; and then, with her raincoat on and hood over her head, she hesitated with her hand upon the knob of the door.