"Wal, I want to know!" he responded. "Out o' gasoline, heh? Wal, that can be mended."

"Tom Cameron has gone on foot for some."

"Which way did he go, Ma'am?"

"East," she said, pointing.

"Towards Ridgeton? Wal, he'll have a fine walk."

"But we have not seen any gasoline sign for ever so far back on the road."

"That's right. Ain't no reg'lar place. But I guess I might be able to scare up enough gas to help you folks out. Ye see, we got a saw mill right up this gully and we got a gasoline engine to run her. I'm a-watchin' the place till the gang come in to work next month. That there Whosis got me out in the rain——"

"Oh! Where do you suppose the poor thing has gone?" interrupted Ruth. "We should do something for her."

"Wal, if she don't belong to you folks——"

"She doesn't. But she should not be allowed to wander about in this awful way. Is she a woman grown, or a child?"

"I couldn't tell ye. I ain't been close enough to her. By the way, my name is Peterby Paul, and I'm well and fav'rably knowed about this mounting. I did have my thoughts about you, same as that Whosis, I must say. But you 'pear to be all right. Wait, and I'll bring ye down a couple of cans of gasoline, and you can go on and pick up the feller that's started to walk to Ridgeton."

"But that poor creature I followed up here, Mr. Paul? We must find her."

"You say she ain't nothin' to you folks?"

"But she is alone, and frightened."

"Wal, I expect so. She did give me a start for fair. I don't know where she could have come from 'nless she belongs over toward Ridgeton at old Miz Abby Drake's. She's got some city folks stopping with her—"

"There she is!" cried Ruth, under her breath.

A hobbling figure appeared for a moment on the side of the ravine. The rain had ceased now, but it still dripped plentifully from the trees.

"I'm going after her!" exclaimed Ruth.

"All right, Ma'am," said Mr. Peterby Paul. "I guess she ain't no Whosis, after all."

Ruth could run much faster than the strange person who had so startled both the woodsman and herself. And running lightly, the girl of the Red Mill was almost at her quarry's elbow before her presence was suspected by the latter.

The woman turned her face toward Ruth and screeched in evident alarm. She looked wild enough to be called a "Whosis," whatever kind of supernatural apparition that might be. Her silk dress was in rags; her hair floated down her back in a tangled mane; altogether she was a sorry sight, indeed.

She was a woman of middle age, dark, slight of build, and of a most pitiful appearance.

"Don't be frightened! Don't be afraid of me," begged Ruth. "Where are your friends? I will take you to them."

"It is the voice of God," said the woman solemnly. "I am wicked. He will punish me. Do you know how wicked I am?" she added in a tense whisper.

"I have no idea," Ruth replied calmly. "But I think that when we are nervous and distraught as you are, we magnify our sins as well as our troubles."

Really, Ruth Fielding felt that she might take this philosophy to herself. She had been of late magnifying her troubles, without doubt.

"I have been a great sinner," said the woman. "Do you know, I used to steal my little sister's bread and jam. And now she is dead. I can never make it up to her."

Plainly this was a serious matter to the excited mind of the poor woman.

"Come on down the hill with me. I have got an automobile there and we can ride to Mrs. Drake's in it. Isn't that where you are stopping?"

"Yes, yes. Abby Drake," said the lost woman weakly. "We—we all started out for huckleberries. And I never thought before how wicked I was to my little sister. But the storm burst—such a terrible storm!" and the poor creature cowered close to Ruth as the thunder muttered again in the distance.

"It is the voice of God——"

"Come along!" urged Ruth. "Lots of people have made the same mistake. So Aunt Alvirah says. They mistake some other noise for the voice of God!"

The woman was now so weak that the strong girl could easily lead her. Mr. Peterby Paul looked at the forlorn figure askance, however.

"You can't blame me for thinkin' she was a Whosis," he said to Ruth. "Poor critter! It's lucky you came after her. She give me such a start I might o' run sort o' wild myself."

"Perhaps if you had tried to catch her it would only have made her worse," Ruth replied, gently patting the excited woman's hand.

"The voice of God!" muttered the victim of her own nervousness.

"And she traipsing through these woods in a silk dress!" exclaimed Mr. Paul. "I tell 'em all, city folks ain't got right good sense."

"Maybe you are right, Mr. Paul," sighed Ruth. "We are all a little queer, I guess. I will take her down to the car."

"And I'll be right along with a couple of cans of gasoline, Ma'am," rejoined Peterby Paul. "Ain't no use you and your friends bein' stranded no longer."

"If you will be so kind," Ruth said.

He turned back up the ravine and Ruth urged the lost woman down the hill. The poor creature was scarcely able to walk, even after she had put on her lost shoe. Her fears which had driven her into this quite irresponsible state, were the result of ungoverned nervousness. Ruth thought seriously of this fact as she aided her charge down the hillside.

She must steady her own nerves, or the result might be quite as serious. She had allowed the loss of her scenario to shake her usual calm. She knew she had not been acting like herself during this automobile journey and that she had given her friends cause for alarm.

Then and there Ruth determined to talk no more about her loss or her fears regarding the missing scenario. If it was gone, it was gone. That was all there was to it. She would no longer worry her friends and disturb her own mental poise by ruminating upon her misfortune.

When she and the lost woman got out of the ravine, Ruth could hear the girls calling her. And there was Colonel Marchand's horizon-blue uniform in sight as he toiled up the ascent, looking for her.

"Don't be frightened, dear," Ruth said to the startled woman. "These are my friends."

Then she called to Helen that she was coming. Colonel Marchand hurried forward with an amazed question.

"Never mind! Don't bother her," Ruth said. "The poor creature has been through enough—out in all this storm, alone. We must get her to where she is stopping as soon as possible. See the condition her clothes are in!"

"But, Mademoiselle Ruth!" gasped the Frenchman. "We are stalled until Captain Tom comes back with the gasoline—is it not?"

"We are going to have gas in a very few minutes," returned Ruth gaily. "I did more than find this poor woman up on the hill. Wait!"

Helen and Jennie sprang at Ruth like a pair of terriers after a cat, demanding information and explanation all in a breath. But when they realized the state of mind of the strange woman, they calmed down.

They wrapped her in a dry raincoat and put her in the back of the big car. She remained quietly there with Jennie's Aunt Kate while Ruth related her adventure with Mr. Peterby Paul and the "Whosis."

"Goodness!" gasped Helen, "I guess he named her rightly. There must be something altogether wrong with the poor creature to make her wander about these wet woods, screeching like a loon."

"I'd screech, too," said Jennie Stone, "if I'd torn a perfectly good silk dress to tatters as she has."

"Think of going huckleberrying in a frock like that," murmured Ruth. "I guess you are both right. And Mr. Peterby Paul did have good reason for calling her a 'Whosis'."



CHAPTER XII

ALONGSHORE

Mr. Peterby Paul appeared after a short time striding down the wooded hillside balancing a five-gallon gasoline can in either hand.

"I reckon you can get to Ridgeton on this here," he said jovially. "Guess I'd better set up a sign down here so's other of you autermobile folks kin take heart if ye git stuck."

"You are just as welcome as the flowers in spring, tra-la!" cried Helen, fairly dancing with delight.

"You are an angel visitor, Mr. Paul," said the plump girl.

"I been called a lot o' things besides an angel," the bearded woodsman said, his eyes twinkling. "My wife, 'fore she died, had an almighty tart tongue."

"And now?" queried Helen wickedly.

"Wal, wherever the poor critter's gone, I reckon she's l'arned to bridle her tongue," said Mr. Peterby Paul cheerfully. "Howsomever, as the feller said, that's another day's job. Mr. Frenchy, let's pour this gasoline into them tanks."

Ruth insisted upon paying for the gasoline, and paying well. Then Peterby Paul gave them careful directions as to the situation of Abby Drake's house, at which it seemed the lost woman must belong.

"Abby always has her house full of city folks in the summer," the woodsman said. "She is pretty near a Whosis herself, Abby Drake is."

With which rather unfavorable intimation regarding the despised "city folks," Mr. Peterby Paul saw them start on over the now badly rutted road.

Helen drove the smaller car with Ruth sitting beside her. Henri Marchand took the wheel of the touring car, and the run to Boston was resumed.

"But we must not over-run Tom," said Ruth to her chum. "No knowing what by-path he might have tried in search of the elusive gasoline."

"I'll keep the horn blowing," Helen said, suiting action to her speech and sounding a musical blast through the wooded country that lay all about. "He ought to know his own auto-horn."

The tone of the horn was peculiar. Ruth could always distinguish it from any other as Tom speeded along the Cheslow road toward the Red Mill. But then, she was perhaps subconsciously listening for its mellow note.

She tacitly agreed with Helen, however, that it might be a good thing to toot the horn frequently. And the signal brought to the roadside an anxious group of women at a sprawling farmhouse not a mile beyond the spot where the two cars had been stalled.

"That is the Drake place. It must be!" Ruth exclaimed, putting out a hand to warn Colonel Marchand that they were about to halt.

A fleshy woman with a very ruddy face under her sunbonnet came eagerly out into the road, leading the group of evidently much worried women.

"Have you folks seen anything of——"

"Abby!" shrieked the woman Ruth had found, and she struggled to get out of the car.

"Well, I declare, Mary Marsden!" gasped the sunbonneted woman, who was plainly Abby Drake. "If you ain't a sight!"

"I—I'm so scared!" quavered the unforunate victim of her own nerves, as Ruth ran back to help her out of the touring car. "God is going to punish me, Abby."

"I certainly hope He will," declared her friend, in rather a hard-hearted way. "I told you, you ought to be punished for wearing that dress up there into the berry pasture, and—— Land's sakes alive! Look at her dress!"

Afterward, when Ruth had been thanked by Mrs. Drake and the other women, and the cars were rolling along the highway again, the girl of the Red Mill said to Helen Cameron:

"I guess Tom is more than half right. Altogether, the most serious topic of conversation for all kinds and conditions of female humans is the matter of dress—in one way or another."

"How dare you slur your own sex so?" demanded Helen.

"Well, look at this case," her chum observed. "This Mary Marsden had been lost in the storm and killed for all they knew, yet Abby Drake's first thought was for the woman's dress."

"Well, it was a pity about the dress," Helen remarked, proving that she agreed with Abby Drake and the bulk of womankind—as her twin brother oft and again acclaimed.

Ruth laughed. "And now if we could see poor dear Tommy——"

The car rounded a sharp turn in the highway. The Drake house was perhaps a mile behind. Ahead was a long stretch of rain-drenched road, and Helen instantly cried:

"There he is!"

The figure of Tom Cameron with the empty gasoline can in his hand could scarcely be mistaken, although he was at least a mile in advance. Helen began to punch the horn madly.

"He'll know that," Ruth cried. "Yes, he looks back! Won't he be astonished?"

Tom certainly was amazed. He proceeded to sit down on the can and wait for the cars to overtake him.

"What are you traveling on?" he shouted, when Helen stopped with the engine running just in front of him. "Fairy gasoline?"

"Why, Tommy, you're not so smart!" laughed his sister. "It takes Ruth to find gas stations. We were stalled right in front of one, and you did not know it. Hop in here and take my place and I'll run back to the other car. Ruth will tell you all about it."

"Perhaps we had better let Colonel Marchand and Jennie have this honeymoon car," Ruth said doubtfully.

"Humph!" her chum observed, "I begin to believe it will be just as much a honeymoon car with you and Tom in it as with that other couple. 'Bless you, my children!'"

She ran back to the big car with this saucy statement. Tom grinned, slipped behind the wheel, and started the roadster slowly.

"It must be," he observed in his inimitable drawl, "that Sis has noticed that I'm fond of you, Ruthie."

"Quite remarkable," she rejoined cheerfully. "But the war isn't over yet, Tommy-boy. And if our lives are spared we've got to finish our educations and all that. Why, Tommy, you are scarcely out of short pants, and I've only begun to put my hair up."

"Jimminy!" he grumbled, "you do take all the starch out of a fellow. Now tell me how you got gas. What happened?"

Everybody has been to Boston, or expects to go there some time, so it is quite immaterial what happened to the party while at the Hub. They only remained two days, anyway, then they started off alongshore through the pleasant old towns that dot the coast as far as Cape Ann.

They saw the ancient fishing ports of Marblehead, Salem, Gloucester and Rockport, and then came back into the interior and did not see salt water again until they reached Newburyport at the mouth of the Merrimac.

The weather remained delightfully cool and sunshiny after that heavy tempest they had suffered in the hills, and they reached Portsmouth and remained at a hotel for three days when it rained again. The young folks chafed at this delay, but Aunt Kate declared that a hotel room was restful after jouncing over all sorts of roads for so long.

"They never will build a car easy enough for auntie," Jennie Stone declared. "I tell pa he must buy some sort of airship for us——"

"Never!" cried Aunt Kate in quick denial. "Whenever I go up in the air it will be because wings have sprouted on my shoulder blades. And I should not call an aeroplane easy riding, in any case."

"At least," grumbled Tom, "you can spin along without any trouble with country constables, and that's a blessing."

For on several occasions they had had arguments with members of the police force, in one case helping to support a justice and a constable by paying a fine.

They did not travel on Sunday, however, when the constables reap most of their harvest, so they really had little to complain of in that direction. Nor did they travel fast in any case.

After the rainy days at Portsmouth, the automobile party ran on with only minor incidents and no adventures until they reached Portland. There Ruth telegraphed to Mr. Hammond that they were coming, as in her letter, written before they left Cheslow, she had promised him she would.

Herringport, the nearest town to the moving picture camp at Beach Plum Point, was at the head of a beautiful harbor, dotted with islands, and with water as blue as that of the Bay of Naples. When the two cars rolled into this old seaport the party was welcomed in person by Mr. Hammond, the president and producing manager of the Alectrion Film Corporation.

"I have engaged rooms for you at the hotel here, if you want them," he told Ruth, after being introduced to Aunt Kate and Colonel Marchand, the only members of the party whom he had not previously met.

"But I can give you all comfortable bunks with some degree of luxury at the camp. At least, we think it luxurious after our gold mining experience in the West. You will get better cooking at the Point, too."

"But a camp!" sighed Aunt Kate. "We have roughed it so much coming down here, Mr. Hammond."

"There won't be any black ants at this camp," said her niece cheerfully.

"Only sand fleas," suggested the wicked Tom.

"You can't scare me with fleas," said Jennie. "They only hop; they don't wriggle and creep."

"My star in the 'Seaside Idyl,' Miss Loder, demanded hotel accommodations at first. But she soon changed her mind," Mr. Hammond said. "She is now glad to be on the lot with the rest of the company."

"It sounds like a circus," Aunt Kate murmured doubtfully.

"It is more than that, my dear Madam," replied the manager, laughing. "But these young people——"

"If Aunt Kate won't mind," said Ruth, "let us try it, while she remains at the Herringport Inn."

"I'll run her back and forth every day for the 'eats'," Tom promptly proposed.

"My duty as a chaperon——" began the good woman, when her niece broke in with:

"In numbers there is perfect safety, Auntie. There are a whole lot of girls down there at the Point."

"And we have chaperons of our own, I assure you," interposed Mr. Hammond, treating Aunt Kate's objection seriously. "Miss Loder has a cousin who always travels with her. Our own Mother Paisley, who plays character parts, has daughters of her own and is a lovely lady. You need not fear, Madam, that the conventions will be broken."

"We won't even crack 'em, Aunt Kate," declared Helen rouguishly. "I will watch Jen like a cat would a mouse."

"Humph!" observed the plump girl, scornfully. "This mouse, in that case, is likely to swallow the cat!"



CHAPTER XIII

THE HERMIT

"Now, tell me, Miss Ruth," said Mr. Hammond, having taken the girl of the Red Mill into his own car for the short run to Beach Plum Point, "what is this trouble about your new scenario? You have excited my curiosity during all these months about the wonderful script, and now you say it is not ready for me."

"Oh, Mr. Hammond!" exclaimed Ruth, "I fear it will never be ready for you."

"Nonsense! Don't lose heart. You have merely come to one of those thank-you-ma'ams in story writing that all authors suffer. Wait. It will come to you."

"No, no!" sighed Ruth. "It is nothing like that. I had finished the scenario. I had it all just about as I wanted it, and then——"

"Then what?" he asked in wonder at her emotion.

"It—it was stolen!"

"Stolen?"

"Yes. And all my notes—everything! I—I can't talk about it. And I never could write it again," sobbed Ruth. "It is the best thing I ever did, Mr. Hammond."

"If it is better than 'The Heart of a Schoolgirl', or 'The Forty-Niners', or 'The Boys of the Draft', then it must be some scenario, Miss Ruth. The last two are still going strong, you know. And I have hopes of the 'Seaside Idyl' catching the public fancy just when we are all getting rather weary of war dramas.

"If you can only rewrite this new story——"

"But Mr. Hammond! I am sure it has been stolen by somebody who will make use of it. Some other producer may put it on the screen, and then my version would fall flat—if no worse."

"Humph! And you have been so secret about it!"

"I took your advice, Mr. Hammond. I have told nobody about it—not a thing!"

"And somebody unknown stole it?"

"We think it was a vagrant actor. A tramp. Just the sort of person, though, who would know how to make use of the script."

"Humph! All actors were considered 'vagrants' under the old English law—in Shakespeare's younger days, for instance," remarked Mr. Hammond.

"You see how unwise it would be for me to try to rewrite the story—even if I could—and try to screen it."

"I presume you are right. Yes. But I hoped you would bring a story with you that we could be working on at odd times. I have a good all-around company here on the lot."

"I had most of your principals in mind when I wrote my scenario," sighed Ruth. "But I could not put my mind to that same subject now. I am discouraged, Mr. Hammond."

"I would not feel that way if I were you, Miss Ruth," he advised, trying, as everybody else did, to cheer her. "You will get another good idea, and like all other born writers, you will just have to give expression to it. Meantime, of course, if I get hold of a promising scenario, I shall try to produce it."

"I hope you will find a good one, Mr. Hammond."

He smiled rather ruefully. "Of course, there is scarcely anybody on the lot who hasn't a picture play in his or her pocket. I was possibly unwise last week to offer five hundred dollars spot cash for a play I could make use of, for now I suppose there will be fifty to read. Everybody, from Jacks, the property man, to the old hermit, believes he can write a scenario."

"Who is the hermit?" asked Ruth, with some curiosity.

"I don't know. Nobody seems to know who he is about Herringport. He was living in an old fish-house down on the Point when we came here last week with the full strength of the company. And I have made use of the old fellow in your 'Seaside Idyl'.

"He seems to be a queer duck. But he has some idea of the art of acting, it seems. Director Jim Hooley is delighted with him. But they tell me the old fellow is scribbling all night in his hut. The scenario bug has certainly bit that old codger. He's out for my five hundred dollars," and the producing manager laughed again.

"I hope you get a good script," said Ruth earnestly. "But don't ask me to read any of them, Mr. Hammond. It does seem as though I never wanted to look at a scenario again!"

"Then you are going to miss some amusement in this case," he chuckled.

"Why so?"

"I tell you frankly I do not expect much from even those professional actors. It was my experience even before I went into the motion picture business that plays submitted by actors were always full of all the old stuff—all the old theatrical tricks and the like. Actors are the most insular people in existence, I believe. They know how plays should be written to fulfill the tenets of the profession; but invention is 'something else again'."

The young people who had motored so far were welcomed by many of Mr. Hammond's company who had acted in "The Forty-Niners" and had met Ruth and her friends in the West, as related in "Ruth Fielding in the Saddle."

The shacks that had been built especially for the company's use were comfortable, even if they did smell of new pine boards. The men of the company lived in khaki tents. There were several old fish-houses that were likewise being utilized by the members of the company.

Beach Plum Point was the easterly barrier of sand and rock that defended the beautiful harbor from the Atlantic breakers. It was a wind-blown place, and the moan of the surf on the outer reef was continually in the ears of the campers on the Point.

The tang of salt in the air could always be tasted on the lips when one was out of doors. And the younger folks were out on the sands most of the time when they were not working, sleeping, or eating.

"We are going to have some fun here," promised Tom Cameron to Ruth, after their party had got established with its baggage. "See that hard strip of beach? That's no clamflat. I am going to race my car on that sand. Palm Beach has nothing on this. Jackman, the property man (you remember Jacks, don't you, Ruth?), says the blackfish and bass are biting off the Point. You girls can act in movies if you like, but I am going fishing."

"Don't talk movies to me," sighed the girl. "I almost wish we had not come, Tom."

"Nonsense! You shall go fishing with me. Put on your oldest duds and—well, maybe you will have to strip off your shoes and stockings. It is both wet and slippery on the rocks."

"Pooh! I'll put on my bathing suit and a sweater. I never was afraid of water yet," Ruth declared.

This was the morning after their arrival. Tom had been up to the port and brought down Aunt Kate for the day. Aunt Kate sat under an umbrella near where the company was working on location, and she scribbled all day in a notebook. Jennie whispered that she, too, was bitten by the scenario bug!

"I feel it coming over me," announced Helen. "I've got what I think is a dandy idea."

"Oh, there's too much to do," Jennie Stone said. "I couldn't find time to dabble in literature."

"My, oh, my!" gasped Helen, with scorn. "How busy we are! You and Henri spend all your time making eyes at each other."

"But just think, Nell!" cried the plump girl. "He's got to go back to France and fight——"

"And so has my Tom."

"But Tom is only your brother."

"And Henri is nothing at all to you," rejoined Helen cruelly. "A fiance is only an expectation. You may change your mind about Henri."

"Never!" cried Jennie, with horror.

"Well, he keeps you busy, I grant. And there go Tom and Ruth mooning off together with fish lines. Lots of fishing they will do! They are almost as bad as you and Henri. Why!" ejaculated Helen in some heat, "I am just driven to writing scenarios to keep from dying of loneliness."

"I notice that 'juvenile lead,' Mr. Simmons, is keeping you quite busy," remarked Jennie slyly, as she turned away.

It was a fact that Ruth and Tom enjoyed each others' company. But Helen need not have been even a wee bit jealous. To tell the truth, she did not like to "get all mussed up," as she expressed it, by going fishing. To Ruth the adventure was a glad relief from worriment. Much as she tried, she could not throw off all thought of her lost scenario.

She welcomed every incident that promised amusement and mental relaxation. Some of the troupe of actors—the men, mostly—were bathing off the Point.

"And see that man in the old skiff!" cried Ruth. "'The Lone Fisherman'."

The individual in question sat upon a common kitchen chair in the skiff with a big, patched umbrella to keep the sun off, and was fishing with a pole that he had evidently cut in the woods along the shore.

"That is that hermit fellow," said Tom. "He's a queer duck. And the boys bother him a good deal."

He was angrily driving some of the swimmers away from his fishing location at that moment. It was plain the members of the moving picture company used the hermit as a butt for their jokes.

While one fellow was taking up the hermit's attention in front, another bather rose silently behind him and reached into the bottom of the skiff. What this second fellow did Tom and Ruth could not see.

"The old chap can't swim a stroke," explained one of the laughing bathers to the visitors. "He's as afraid of water as a cat. Now you watch."

But Tom and Ruth saw nothing to watch. They went on to the tip of the Point and Tom prepared the fishing tackle and baited the hooks. Just as Ruth made her first cast there sounded a scream from the direction of the lone fisherman.

"What is it?" she gasped, dropping her pole.

The bathers had deserted the old man in the skiff, and were now at some distance. He was anchored in probably twenty feet of water.

To the amazement of Ruth and her companion, the skiff had sunk until its gunwales were scarcely visible. The hermit had wrenched away his umbrella and was now balanced upon the chair on his feet, in danger of sinking. His fear of this catastrophe was being expressed in unstinted terms.



CHAPTER XIV

A QUOTATION

"Do help him, Tom!" cried Ruth Fielding, and she started for the spot where the man and the skiff were sinking.

Tom cast aside his sweater, kicked his sneakers off, and plunged into the tide. Ruth was quite as lightly dressed as Tom; but she saw that he could do all that was necessary.

That was, to bring the frightened man ashore. This "hermit" as they called him, was certainly very much afraid of the water.

He splashed a good deal, and Tom had to speak sharply to keep him from getting a strangle-hold about his own neck.

"Jimminy! but that was a mean trick," panted Tom, when he got ashore with the fisherman. "Somebody pulled the plug out of the bottom of the skiff and first he knew, he was going down."

"It is a shame," agreed Ruth, looking at the victim of the joke curiously.

He was a thin-featured, austere looking man, scrupulously shaven, but with rather long hair that had quite evidently been dyed. Now that it was plastered to his crown by the salt water (for he had been completely immersed more than once in his struggle with Tom Cameron) his hair was shown to be quite thin and of a greenish tinge at the roots.

The shock of being dipped in the sea so unexpectedly was plainly no small one for the hermit. He stood quite unsteadily on the strand, panting and sputtering.

"Young dogs! No respect for age and ability in this generation. I might have been drowned."

"Well, it's all over now," said Tom comfortingly. "Where do you live?"

"Over yonder, young man," replied the hermit, pointing to the ocean side of the point.

"We will take you home. You lie down for a while and you will feel better," Ruth said soothingly. "We will come back here afterward and get your skiff ashore."

"Thank you, Miss," said the man courteously.

"I'll make those fellows who played the trick on you get the boat ashore," promised Tom, running for his shoes and sweater.

The hermit proved to be a very uncommunicative person. Ruth tried to get him to talk about himself as they crossed the rocky spit, but all that he said of a personal nature was that his name was "John."

His shack was certainly a lonely looking hovel. It faced the tumbling Atlantic and it seemed rather an odd thing to Ruth that a man who was so afraid of the sea should have selected such a spot for his home.

The hermit did not invite them to enter his abode. He promised Ruth that he would make a hot drink for himself and remove his wet garments and lie down. But he only seemed moderately grateful for their assistance, and shut the door of the shack promptly in their faces when he got inside.

"Just as friendly as a sore-headed dog," remarked Tom, as they went back to the bay side of the Point.

"Perhaps the others have played so many tricks on him that he is suspicious of even our assistance," Ruth said.

Thus speaking, she stooped to pick up a bit of paper in the path. It had been half covered by the sand and might have lain there a long time, or only a day.

Just why this bit of brown wrapping paper had caught her attention, it would be hard to say. Ruth might have passed it a dozen times without noticing it.

But now she must needs turn the paper over and over in her hands as she watched Tom, with the help of the rather abashed practical jokers, haul the water-logged skiff ashore.

She had forgotten the fishing poles they had abandoned on the rocks, and sat down upon a boulder. Suddenly she discovered that there was writing on the bit of paper she had picked up. It was then that her attention really became fixed upon her find.

The characters had been written with an indelible pencil. The dampness had only blurred the writing instead of erasing it. Her attention thus engaged, she idly scrutinized more than the blurred lines. Her attitude as she sat there on the boulder slowly stiffened; her gaze focused upon the paper.

"Why! what is it?" she murmured at last.

The blurred lines became clearer to her vision. It was the wording of the phrase rather than the handwriting that enthralled her. This that follows was all that was written on the paper:

"Flash:—

"As in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be——"

To the ordinary observer, with no knowledge of what went before or followed this quotation, the phrase must seem idle. But the word "flash" is used by scenario writers and motion picture makers, indicating an explanatory phrase thrown on the screen.

And this quoted phrase struck poignantly to Ruth Fielding's mind. For it was one she had used in that last scenario—the one that had so strangely disappeared from the summer-house back at the Red Mill!

Amazed—almost stunned—by this discovery, she sat on the boulder scarcely seeing what Tom and the others were doing toward salvaging the old hermit's skiff and other property.

Thoughts regarding the quotation shuttled back and forth in the girl's mind in a most bewildering way. The practical side of her character pointed out that there really could be no significance in this discovery. It could not possibly have anything to do with her stolen script.

Yet the odd phrase, used in just this way, had been one of the few "flashes" indicated in her scenario. Was it likely that anybody else, writing a picture, would use just that phrase?

She balanced the improbability of this find meaning anything at all to her against the coincidence of another author using the quotation in writing a scenario. She did not know what to think. Which supposition was the more improbable?

The thought was preposterous that the paper should mean anything to her. Ruth was about to throw it away; and then, failing to convince herself that the quotation was but idly written, she tucked the piece of paper into the belt of her bathing suit.

When Tom was ready to go back to their fishing station, Ruth went with him and said nothing about the find she had made.

They had fair luck, all told, and the chef at the camp produced their catch in a dish of boiled tautog with egg sauce at dinner that evening. The company ate together at a long table, like a logging camp crew, only with many more of the refinements of life than the usual logging crew enjoys. It was, however, on a picnic plane of existence, and there was much hilarity.

These actor folk were very pleasant people. Even the star, Miss Loder, was quite unspoiled by her success.

"You know," she confessed to Ruth (everybody confided in Ruth), "I never would have been anything more than a stock actress in some jerkwater town, as we say in the West, if the movies hadn't become so popular. I have what they call the 'appealing face' and I can squeeze out real tears at the proper juncture. Those are two very necessary attributes for a girl who wishes to gain film success."

"But you can really act," Ruth said honestly. "I watched you to-day."

"I should be able to act. I come of a family who have been actors for generations. Acting is like breathing to me. But, of course, it is another art to 'register' emotion in the face, and very different from displaying one's feelings by action and audible expression. You know, one of our most popular present-day stage actresses got her start by an ability to scream off-stage. Nothing like that in the movies."

"You should hear Jennie Stone with a black ant down her back," put in Helen, with serious face. "I am sure Heavy could go the actress you speak of one better, and become even more popular."

"I am not to be blamed if I squeal at crawly things," sniffed the plump girl, hearing this. "See how brave I am in most other respects."

But that night Jennie exhibited what Tom called her "scarefulness" in most unmistakable fashion, and never again could she claim to be brave. She gave her chums in addition such a fright that they were not soon over talking about it.

The three college girls had cots in a small shack that Mr. Hammond had given up to their use. It was one of the shacks nearest the shore of the harbor. Several boat-docks near by ran out into the deep water.

It was past midnight when Jennie was for some reason aroused. Usually she slept straight through the night, and had to be awakened by violent means in time for breakfast.

She was not startled, but awoke naturally, and found herself broad awake. She sat up in her cot, almost convinced that it must be daylight. But it was the moon shining through a haze of clouds that lighted the interior of the shack. The other two girls were breathing deeply. The noises she heard did not at first alarm Jennie.

There was the whisper of the tide as it rolled the tiny pebbles and shells up the strand and, receding, swept them down again. It chuckled, too, among the small piers of the near-by docks.

Then the listening girl heard footsteps—or what she took to be that sound. They approached the shack, then receded. She began to be curious, then felt a tremor of alarm. Who could be wandering about the camp at this grim hour of the night?

She was unwise enough to allow her imagination to wake up, too. She stole from her bed and peered out of the screened window that faced the water. Almost at once a moving object met her frightened gaze.

It was a figure all in white which seemed to float down the lane between the tents and out upon the nearest boat-dock.

Afterward Jennie declared she could have suffered one of these spirit-looking manifestations in silence. She crammed the strings of her frilled nightcap between her teeth as a stopper!

This spectral figure was going away from the shack, anyway. It appeared to be bearing something in its arms. But then came a second ghost, likewise burdened. Gasping, Jennie waited, clinging to the window-sill for support.

A third spectre appeared, rising like Banquo's spirit at Macbeth's feast. This was too much for the plump girl's self-control. She opened her mouth, and her half-strangled shriek, the partially masticated cap-strings all but choking her, aroused Ruth and Helen to palpitating fright.

"Oh! What is it?" demanded Helen, bounding out of bed.

"Ghosts! Oh! Waw!" gurgled Jennie, and sank back into her friend's arms.

Helen was literally as well as mentally overcome. Jennie's weight carried her to the straw matting with a bump that shook the shack and brought Ruth, too, out of bed.



CHAPTER XV

AN AMAZING SITUATION

"'Ghost'?" cried Ruth Fielding. "Let me see it! Remember the campus ghost back at old Briarwood, Helen? I haven't seen a ghost since that time."

"Ugh! Get this big elephant off of me!" grunted her chum, impolitely as well as angrily. "She's no ghost, I do assure you. She's of the earth, earthy, and no mistake! Ouch! Get off, Heavy!"

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned the plump girl. "I—I saw them. Three of them!"

"Sounds like a three-ring circus," snapped Helen.

But Ruth was peering through the window. She saw nothing, and complained thereof:

"Jen has had a nightmare. I don't see a thing."

"Nightmare, your granny!" sputtered the plump girl, finally rolling off her half crushed friend. "I saw it—them—those!"

"Your grammar is so mixed I wouldn't believe you on oath," declared Helen, getting to her own bare feet and paddling back to her cot for slippers and a negligee.

"O-o-oh, it is chilly," agreed Ruth, grabbing a wrap, too.

"Do tell us about it, Jennie," she begged. "Did you see your ghost through the window here?"

"It isn't my ghost!" denied the plump girl. "I'm alive, ain't I?"

"But you're not conscious," grumbled Helen.

"I can see!" wailed Jennie. "I haven't lost my eyesight."

"Stop!" Ruth urged. "Let us get at the foundation of this trouble. You say you saw——"

"I saw what I saw!"

"Oh, see-saw!" cried Helen. "We're all loony, now."

Ruth was about to ask another question, but she was again looking through the window. She suddenly bit off a cry of her own. She had to confess that the sight she saw was startling.

"Is—is that the ghost, Jennie?" she breathed, seizing the plump girl by her arm and dragging her forward.

Jennie gave one frightened look through the window and immediately clapped her palms over her eyes.

"Ow!" she wailed in muffled tones. "They're coming back."

They were, indeed! Three white figures in Indian file came stalking up the long dock. They approached the camp in a spectral procession and had she been awakened to see them first of all, Ruth might have been startled herself.

Helen peered over her chum's shoulder and in teeth-chattering monotone breathed in Ruth's ear the query:

"What is it?"

"It—it's Heavy's ghost."

"Not mine! Not mine!" denied the plump girl.

"Oh!" gasped Helen, spying the stalking white figures.

It was the moonlight made them appear so ghostly. Ruth knew that, of course, at once. And then——

"Who ever saw ghosts carrying garbage cans before?" ejaculated the girl of the Red Mill. "Mercy me, Heavy! do stop your wailing. It is the chef and his two assistants who have got up to dump the garbage on the out-going tide. What a perfect scare-cat you are!"

"You don't mean it, Ruth?" whimpered the plump girl. "Is that all they were?"

Helen began to giggle. And it covered her own fright. Ruth was rather annoyed.

"If you had remained in bed and minded your own business," she said to Jennie, "you would not have seen ghosts, or got us up to see them. Now go back to sleep and behave yourself."

"Yes, ma'am," murmured the abashed Jennie Stone. "How silly of me! I was never afraid of a cook before—no, indeed."

Helen continued to giggle spasmodically; but she fell asleep soon. As for Jennie, she began to breathe heavily almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. But Ruth must needs lie awake for hours, and naturally the teeth of her mind began to knaw at the problem of that bit of paper she had found in the sand.

The more she thought of it the less easy it was to discard the idea that the writing on the paper was a quotation from her own scenario script. It seemed utterly improbable that two people should use that same expression as a "flash" in a scenario.

Yet, if this paper was a connecting link between her stolen manuscript and the thief, who was the thief?

It would seem, of course, if this supposition were granted, that some member of the company of film actors Mr. Hammond had there at Beach Plum Point had stolen the scenario. At least, the stolen scenario must be in the possession of some member of the company.

Who could it be? Naturally Ruth considered this unknown must be one of the company who wished Mr. Hammond to accept and produce a scenario.

Ruth finally fell into a troubled sleep with the determination in her mind to take more interest in the proposed scenario-writing contest than she had at first intended.

She could not imagine how anybody could take her work and change it so that she would not recognize it! The plot of the story was too well wrought and the working out of it too direct.

She did not think that she had it perfect. Only that she had perfected the idea as well as she was able. But changing it would not hide from her the recognition of her own brain-child.

So after breakfast she went to Mr. Hammond to make inquiry about the scenario contest.

"Ha, ha! So you are coming to yourself, Miss Ruth!" he chuckled. "I told you you would feel different. I only wish you would get a real smart idea for a picture."

"Nothing like that!" she told him, shaking her head. "I could not think of writing a new scenario. You don't know what it means to me—the loss of that picture I had struggled so long with and thought so much about. I——

"But let us not talk of it," she hastened to add. "I am curious regarding the stories that have been offered to you."

"You need not fear competition," he replied. "Just as I told you, all these perfectly good acting people base their scenarios on dramas they have played or seen played. They haven't got the idea of writing for the screen at all, although they work before the camera."

"And that is no wonder!" exclaimed Ruth. "The way the directors take scenes, the actors never get much of an idea of the continuity of the story they are making. But these stories?"

"So far, I haven't found a possible scenario. And I have looked at more than a score."

"You don't mean it!"

"I most certainly do," he assured her. "Want to look at them?"

"Why—yes," confessed Ruth. "I am curious, as I tell you."

"Go to it!" exclaimed Mr. Hammond, opening a drawer of his desk and pointing to the pile of manuscripts within. "Consider yourself at home here. I am going over to the port with Director Hooley and most of the members of the company. We have found just the location for the shooting of that scene in your 'Seaside Idyl' where the ladies' aid society holds its 'gossip session' in the grove—remember?"

"Oh, yes," Ruth replied, not much interested, as she took the first scenario out of the drawer.

"And Hooley's found some splendid types, too, around the village. They really have a sewing circle connected with the Herringport Union Church, and I have agreed to help the ladies pay for having the church edifice painted if they will let us film a session of the society with our principal character actors mixed in with the local group. The sun is good to-day."

He went away, and a little later Ruth heard the automobiles start for Herringport. She had the forenoon to herself, for the rest of her party had gone out in a motor boat fishing—a party from which she had excused herself.

Eagerly she began to examine the scenarios submitted to Mr. Hammond. The possibility that she might find one of them near enough like her own lost story to suggest that it had been plagiarized, made Ruth's heart beat faster.

She could not forget the quotation on the scrap of brown paper. Somebody on this Point—and it seemed that the "somebody" must be one of the moving picture company—had written that quotation from her scenario. She felt that this could not be denied.



CHAPTER XVI

RUTH SOLVES ONE PROBLEM

Had Ruth Fielding been confronted with the question: "Did she expect to find a clue to the identity of the person who had stolen her scenario before she left the Red Mill?" she could have made no confident answer. She did not know what she would find when she sat down at Mr. Hammond's desk for the purpose of looking over the submitted stories.

Doubt and suspicion, however, enthralled her mind. She was both curious and anxious.

Ruth had no particular desire to read the manuscripts. In any case she did not presume Mr. Hammond desired her advice about selecting a script for filming.

She skimmed through the first story. It had not a thing in it that would suggest in the faintest way any familiarity of the author with her own lost scenario.

For two hours she fastened her attention upon one after another of the scenarios, often by main will-power, because of the utter lack of interest in the stories the writers had tried to put over.

Without being at all egotistical, Ruth Fielding felt confident that had any one of these scenario writers come into possession of her lost script, and been dishonest enough to use it, he would have turned out a much better story.

But not a trace of her original idea and its development was to be found in these manuscripts. Her suspicion had been needlessly roused.

Ruth could not deny that the scrap of paper found in the sand was quite as mysterious as ever. The quotation on it seemed to be taken directly from her own scenario. But there was absolutely nothing in this pile of manuscripts to justify her suspicions.

She was just as dissatisfied after scanning all the submitted scenarios as Mr. Hammond seemed to be with the day's work when the company came back from Herringport in the late afternoon.

"I suppose it is a sanguine disposition that keeps me at this game, Miss Ruth," he sighed. "I always expect much more than I can possibly get out of a situation; and when I fail I go on hoping just the same."

"I am sure that is a commendable disposition to possess," she laughed. "What has gone so wrong?"

"It is the old story of leading the horse to water, and the inability of making him drink. This is a balky horse, and no mistake!"

"Do tell me what you mean, Mr. Hammond?"

"Why, I told you we had got what the ladies call 'perfectly lovely' types for that scene to-day. You ought to see them, Miss Ruth! You would be charmed. Just what the dear public expects a back-country sewing circle should look like."

"Oh!"

"And they all promised to be on hand at the location—and they were. I have had my experiences with amateurs before. I had begged the ladies to dress just as they would were they going to an actual meeting of their sewing society——"

"And they all dressed up?" laughed Ruth, clasping her hands.

"Well, that I expected to contend with. And most of them even in their best bib and tucker were not out of the picture. Not at all! That was not the main difficulty and the one that has spoiled our day's work."

"Indeed?"

"I am afraid Jim Hooley will have to fake the whole scene after all," continued the manager. "Those women came all dressed up 'to have their pictures took,' it is true. But the worst of it is, they could not be natural. It was impossible. They showed in every move and every glance that they were sitting with a bunch of actors and were not at all sure that what they were doing was altogether the right thing.

"We worked over them as though it were a 'mob scene' and there were five hundred in it instead of twenty. But twenty wooden dummies would have filmed no more unnaturally. You know, in your story, they are supposed to be discussing the bit of gossip about your heroine's elopement with the schoolteacher. I could not work up a mite of enthusiasm in their minds about such a topic."

Ruth laughed. But she saw that the matter was really serious for Mr. Hammond and the director. She became sympathetic.

"I fancy that if they had had a real scandal to discuss," she observed, "their faces would have registered more poignant interest."

"'Poignant interest'!" scoffed the manager in disgust. "If these Herringport tabbies had the toothache they would register only polite anguish—in public. They are the most insular and self-contained and self-suppressed women I ever saw. These Down-Easters! They could walk over fiery ploughshares and only wanly smile——"

Ruth went off into a gale of laughter at this. Mr. Hammond was a Westerner by birth, and he found the Yankee character as hard to understand as did Henri Marchand.

"Have you quite given up hope, Mr. Hammond?" Ruth asked.

"Well, we'll try again to-morrow. Oh, they promised to come again! They are cutting out rompers, or flannel undervests, I suppose, for the South Sea Island children; or something like that. They are interested in that job, no doubt.

"I wanted them to 'let go all holts,' as these fishermen say, and be eager and excited. They are about as eager as they would be doing their washing, or cleaning house—if as much!" and Mr. Hammond's disappointment became too deep for further audible expression.

Ruth suddenly awoke to the fact that one of her best scenes in the "Seaside Idyl" was likely to be spoiled. She talked with Mr. Hooley about it, and when the day's run was developed and run off in one of the shacks which was used for a try-out room, Ruth saw that the manager had not put the matter too strongly. The sewing circle scene lacked all that snap and go needed to make it a realistic piece of action.

Of course, there were enough character actors in the company to use in the scene; but naturally an actor caricatures such parts as were called for in this scene. The professional would be likely to make the characters seem grotesque. That was not the aim of the story.

"I thought you were not going to take any interest in this 'Seaside Idyl,' at all," suggested Helen, when Ruth was talking about the failure of the scene after supper that night.

"I can't help it. My reputation as a scenario writer is at stake, just as much as is Mr. Hooley's reputation as director," Ruth said, smiling. "I really didn't mean to have a thing to do with the old picture. But I can see that somebody has got to put a breath of naturalness into those ladies' aid society women, or this part of the picture will be a fizzle."

"And our Ruth," drawled Jennie, "is going to prescribe one of her famous cure-alls, is she?"

"I believe I can make them look less like a lot of dummies while they are cutting out rompers for cannibal island pickaninnies," laughed Ruth. "Tom, I am going to the port with you the first thing in the morning."

"By all means," said Captain Cameron. "I am yours to command."

Her newly aroused interest in the scenario at present being filmed, was a good thing for Ruth Fielding. Having found nothing at all in the submitted stories that suggested her own lost story, the girl of the Red Mill tried to put aside again the thing that so troubled her mind. And this new interest helped.

In the morning before breakfast she and Tom ran over to the port in the maroon roadster. While they were having breakfast at the inn, Ruth asked the waitress, who was a native of this part of the country, about the Union Church and some of the more intimate life-details of the members of its congregation.

It is not hard to uncover neighborhood gossip of a kind not altogether unkindly in any similar community. The Union Church had a new minister, and he was young. He was now away on his vacation, and more than one local beauty and her match-making mamma would have palpitation of the heart before he returned for fear that the young clergyman would have his heart interests entangled by some designing "foreigner."

Tom had no idea as to what Ruth Fielding was getting at through this questioning of the beaming Hebe who waited on them at breakfast. And he was quite as much in the dark as to his friend's motive when Ruth announced their first visit to be to the office of the Herringport Harpoon, the local news sheet.



CHAPTER XVII

JOHN, THE HERMIT'S, CONTRIBUTION

A man with bushy hair, a pencil stuck over his ear, and wearing an ink-stained apron, met them in the office of the Harpoon. This was Ezra Payne, editor and publisher of the weekly news-sheet, and this was his busiest day. The Harpoon, Ruth had learned, usually went into the mails on this day.

"Tut, tut! I see. Is this a joke?" Mr. Payne pursed his lips and wrinkled his brow in uncertainty.

"A whole edition, Miss? Wall, I dunno. I do have hard work selling all the edition some weeks. But I have reg'lar subscribers——"

"This will not interfere with your usual edition of the Harpoon," she hastened to assure him.

"How's that, Miss?"

"I want to buy an edition of one copy."

"One copy!"

"Yes, sir. I want something special printed in one paper. Then you can take it out and print your regular edition."

"Tut, tut! I see. Is this a joke?" Mr. Payne asked, his eyes beginning to twinkle.

"It is the biggest joke you ever heard of," declared Ruth.

"And who's the joke on?"

"Wait and see what I write," Ruth said, sitting down at the battered old desk where he labored over his editorials and proofsheets.

Opening a copy of the last week's Harpoon that lay there, she was able to see the whole face of the paper.

"I've got the inside run off," said Mr. Payne, still doubtfully. "So you can't run anything on the second and third pages."

"Oh, I want the most prominent place for my item," laughed Ruth. "Front page, top column—— Here it is!"

He bent over her. Tom stared in wonder, too, as Ruth pointed to an item under a certain heading at the top of the middle column of the front page of the sheet.

"That is just where I want my item to appear," she said briskly to the editor. "You run that—that department there every week?"

"Oh, yes, Miss. The people expect it. You know how folks are. They look for those items first of all in a country paper."

"Yes. It is so. One of the New York dailies is still printed with that human foible in mind. It caters to this very curiosity that your Harpoon caters to."

"Yes, Miss. You're right. Most folks have the same curiosity, city or country. Shakespeare spoke of the 'seven ages of man'; but there are only three of particular interest—to womankind, anyway; and they are all here."

"There you go! Slurring the women," she laughed. "Or do you speak compliments?"

"I guess the women have it right," chuckled Mr. Payne. "Now, what is it you want me to print in one paper for you?"

Ruth drew a scratch pad to her and scribbled rapidly for a couple of minutes. Then she passed the page to the newspaper proprietor.

Mr. Payne read it, stared at her, pursed his lips, and then read it again. Suddenly he burst into a cackle of laughter, slapping his thigh in high delight.

"By gravy!" he chortled, "that's a good one on the dominie. By gravy! wait till I tell——"

"Don't you tell anybody, Mr. Payne," interrupted Ruth, smiling, but firmly. "I am buying your secrecy as well as your edition of one copy."

"I get you! I get you!" declared the old fellow. "This is to be on the q.t.?"

"Positively."

"You sit right here. The front page is all made up on the stone, Marriages, Births, Death Notices, and all. I'll set the paragraph and slip it in at the top o' the column. My boy is out, but this young man can help me lift the page into the press. She's all warmed up, and I was going to start printing when Edgar comes back from breakfast."

He grabbed the piece of copy and went off into the printing room, chuckling. Half an hour later the first paper came from the press, and Ruth and Tom bent over it. The item the girl had written was plainly printed in the position she had chosen on the front page of the Harpoon.

"Now, you are to keep still about this," Ruth said, threatening Mr. Payne with a raised finger.

"I don't know a thing about it," he promised, pocketing the bill she took from her purse, and in high good humor over the joke.

Tom helped him take the front page from the press again. The printer unlocked the chase, and removed and distributed the three lines he had set up at Ruth's direction.

The crowd from Beach Plum Point came over in the cars about noontime. Aunt Kate had remained at the inn on this morning, and she and Ruth walked to the "location," which was a beautiful old shaded front yard at the far end of the village.

Helen and Jennie had come with the real actors, and were to appear in the picture. The story related incidents at a Sunday-school picnic, and most of the comedy had already been filmed on the lot.

The scene around the long sewing table under the trees, when the ladies' aid was at work with needle and tongue, should be the principal incident of this reel devoted to the picnic.

The heroine, to the amazement of the village gossips, has run away with the schoolmaster and married him in the next county. A certain character in the picture runs in with this bombshell of news and explodes it in the midst of the group about the sewing table.

The day before this point had failed to make much impression upon the amateur members of the company engaged in this typical scene. The Herringport ladies were not at all interested in such a thing happening to the town's schoolmaster, for to tell the truth the local schoolmaster was an old married man with a house full of children and nothing at all romantic about him.

Ruth took Mr. Hooley aside and showed him the copy of the Harpoon she had had printed, and whispered to him her idea of the change in the action of the scenario. He seized upon the scheme—and the paper—with gusto.

"You are a jewel, Miss Fielding!" he declared. "If this doesn't make those old tabbies come to life and act naturally, nothing ever will!"

Ruth left the matter in the director's hands and retired from the location. She had no intention herself of appearing in the picture. She found Mr. Hammond sitting in his automobile in a state of good-humor.

"You seem quite sure that the work will go better to-day, Mr. Hammond," Ruth observed, with curiosity as to the reason for his apparent enjoyment.

"Whether it does or not, Miss Ruth," he responded. "There is something that I fancy is going to be more than a little amusing."

He tapped a package wrapped in a soiled newspaper which lay on the seat beside him. "Thank goodness, I can still enjoy a joke."

"What is the joke? Let me enjoy it, too," she said.

"With the greatest of pleasure. I'll let you read it, if you like—as you did those other scenarios."

"What! Is it a movie story?" she asked.

"So I am assured. It is the contribution of John, the hermit. He brought it to me just before we started over here this morning. Poor old codger! Just look here, Miss Ruth."

Mr. Hammond turned back the loose covering of the package on the automobile seat. Ruth saw a packet of papers, seemingly of roughly trimmed sheets of wrapping paper and of several sizes. At the top of the upper sheet was the title of the hermit's scenario. It was called "Plain Mary." She glanced down the page, noting that it was written in a large, upright, hand and with an indelible pencil.

Ruth Fielding had not the least idea that she was to take any particular interest in this picture-story. She smiled more because Mr. Hammond seemed so amused than for any other reason. Secretly she thought that most of these moving picture people were rather unkind to the strange old man who lived alone on the seaward side of the Beach Plum Point.

"Want to read it over?" Mr. Hammond asked her. "I would consider it a favor, for I've got to go back and try to catch up with my correspondence. I expect this is worse than those you skimmed through yesterday."

Ruth did not hear him. Suddenly she had seen something that had not at first interested her. She read the first few lines of the opening, and saw nothing in them of importance. It was the writing itself that struck her.

"Why!" she suddenly gasped.

She was reminded of something that she had seen before. This writing——

"Let me go back to the camp with you, Mr. Hammond," she said, slipping into the seat and taking the packet of written sheets into her lap. "I—I will look through this scenario, if you like. There is something down there on the Point that I want."

"Sure. Be glad to have your company," he said, letting in his clutch after pushing the starter. "We're off."

Ruth did not speak again just then. With widening eyes she began to devour the first pages of the hermit's manuscript.



CHAPTER XVIII

UNCERTAINTIES

The automobile purred along the shell road, past the white-sided, green-blinded houses of the retired ship captains and the other well-to-do people of Herringport. The car ran so smoothly that Ruth might have read all the way.

But after the first page or two—those containing the opening scenes of "Plain Mary"—she dared not read farther.

Not yet. It was not that there was a familiar phrase in the upright chirography of the old hermit. The story merely suggested a familiar situation to Ruth's mind. Thus far it was only a suggestion.

There was something else she felt she must prove or disprove first of all. She sat beside Mr. Hammond quite speechless until they came to the camp on the harbor shore of Beach Plum Point.

He went off cheerfully to his letter writing, and Ruth entered the shack she occupied with Helen and Jennie. She opened her locked writing-case. Under the first flap she inserted her fingers and drew forth the wrinkled scrap of paper she had picked up on the sands.

A glance at the blurred writing assured her that it was the same as that of the hermit's scenario.

"Flash:

"As in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be——"

Shakingly Ruth sat down before the cheap little maple table. She spread open the newspaper wrapper and stared again at the title page of "Plain Mary."

That title was nothing at all like the one she had given her lost scenario. But a title, after all, meant very little.

The several scenes suggested in the beginning of the hermit's story did not conflict with the plot she had evolved, although they were not her own. She had read nothing so far that would make this story different from her own. The names of the characters were changed and the locations for the first scene were different from those in her script. Nevertheless the action and development of the story might prove to be exactly like hers.

She shrank from going deeper into the hermit's script. She feared to find her suspicions true; yet she must know.

Finally she began to read. Page after page of the large and sprawling writing she turned over, face down upon the table. Ruth grew so absorbed in the story that she did not note the passing of time. She was truly aware of but one thing. And that seized upon her mind to wring from it both bitterness and anger.

"Want to go back to the port, Miss Ruth?" asked Mr. Hammond. "I want to mail my letters."

His question startled her. She sprang up, a spot of crimson in either cheek. Had he looked at her, the manager would certainly have noted her strange look.

"I'll come in a minute," she called to him in a half-stifled voice.

She laved her eyes and cheeks in cool water, removing such marks of her emotion as she could. Then she bundled up the hermit's scenario and joined Mr. Hammond in the car.

"Did you look at this?" she asked the producer as he started the motor.

"Bless you, no! What is it? As crazy as the old codger himself?"

"Do you really think that man is crazy?" she asked sharply.

"Why, I don't really know. Just queer perhaps. It doesn't seem as though a sane man would live all stark alone over on that sea-beaten point."

"He is an actor," declared Ruth. "Your director says so."

"At least, he does not claim to be, and they usually do, you know," chuckled Mr. Hammond. "But about this thing——"

"You read it! Then I will tell you something," said the girl soberly, and she refused to explain further.

"You amaze me," said the puzzled manager. "If that old codger has succeeded in turning out anything worth while, I certainly shall believe that 'wonders never cease.'"

"He has got you all fooled. He is a good actor," declared Ruth bitterly. Then, as Mr. Hammond turned a puzzled frown upon her, she added, "Tell me what you think of the script, Mr. Hammond, before you speak to—er—John, or whatever his name may be."

"I certainly am curious now," he declared.

They got back to the place where the director had arranged to "shoot" the sewing circle scene just as everything was all set for it. Mother Paisley dominated the half circle of women about the long table under the trees. Ruth marveled at the types Mr. Hooley had found in the village. And she marveled further that any group of human beings could appear so wooden.

"Oh, Ruth!" murmured Helen, who was not in this scene, but was an interested spectator, "they will surely spoil the picture again. Poor Mr. Hooley! He takes such pains."

It was like playing a child's game for most of the members of the Herringport Union congregation. They were selfconscious, and felt that they were in a silly situation. Those who were not too serious of demeanor were giggling like schoolgirls.

Yet everything was ready for the cameras. Mr. Hooley's keen eye ran over all the group. He waved a hand to the camera men.

"Ready camera—action—go!"

The women remained speechless. They merely looked at each other in a helpless way. It was evident they had forgotten all the instructions the director had given them.

But suddenly into the focus of the cameras ran a barefooted urchin waving a newspaper. This was the Alectrion Company's smartest "kid" actor and a favorite wherever his tousled head, freckled face, and wide grin appeared on the screen. He plunged right at Mother Paisley and thrust the paper into her hand, while he pointed at a certain place on the front page.

"Read that, Ma Bassett!" cried the news vender.

Mrs. Paisley gave expression first to wonder, then utter amazement, as she read the item Ruth had had inserted in this particular "edition" of the Harpoon. She was a fine old actress and her facial registering of emotion was a marvel. Mr. Hooley had seldom to advise her.

Now his voice was heard above the clack of the cameras:

"Pass it to the lady at your left. That's it! Cling to the paper. Get your heads together—three of you now!"

The amateur players looked at each other and began to grin. The scene promised to be as big a "fizzle" as the one shot the previous day.

But the woman next to Mrs. Paisley, after looking carelessly at the paper, of a sudden came to life. She seized the Harpoon with both hands, fairly snatching it out of the actress' hands. She was too startled to be polite.

"What under the canopy is this here?" she sputtered.

She was a small, wiry, vigorous woman, and she had an expressive, if a vinegary, face. She rose from her seat and forgot all about her "play-acting."

"What d'you think it says here?" she demanded of her sister-members of the ladies' aid.

"Sh!"

"Ella Painter, you're a-bustin' up the show!" admonished a motherly old person at the end of the table.

But Mrs. Painter did not notice these hushed remarks. She read the item in the paper aloud—and so extravagantly did she mouth the astonishing words that Ruth feared they might be read on her lips when shown on the screen.

"Listen!" Mrs. Painter cried. "Right at the top of the marriage notices! 'Garside—Smythe. At Perleyvale, Maine, on August twenty-second, the Reverend Elton Garside, of Herringport, and Miss Amy Smythe, of Perleyvale.' What do you know about that?"

The gasp of amazement that went up from the women of the Herringport Union Church was almost a chorus of anguish. The paper was snatched from hand to hand. Nobody could accuse the amateurs now of being "wooden."

Not until Mrs. Paisley in the character of Ma Bassett, at the signal from Mr. Hooley, fell back in her chair, exclaiming: "My mercy me! Luella Sprague and the teacher! Who'd have thought it?" did the company in general suspect that something had been "put over on them."

"All right! All right!" shouted Jim Hooley in high delight, stopping his camera men. "That's fine! It's great! Miss Fielding, your scheme worked like a charm."

The members of the sewing circle began to ask questions.

"Do you mean to say this is in the play?" demanded Mrs. Ella Painter, waving the newspaper and inclined to be indignant.

"Yes, Mrs. Painter. That marriage notice is just a joke," the director told her. "It certainly gave you ladies a start and—— Well, wait till you see this scene on the screen!"

"But ain't it so?" cried another. "Why, Mr. Garside—— Why! it's in the Harpoon."

"But you won't find it in another Harpoon," laughed the director, recovering possession of the newspaper. "It's only a joke. But I positively had to give you ladies a real shock or we'd never have got this scene right."

"Well, of all the impudence!" began Mrs. Painter.

However, she joined in the laughter a minute later. At best, the women had won from Mr. Hammond enough money to pay for the painting of their church edifice, and they were willing to sacrifice their dignity for that.



CHAPTER XIX

COUNTERCLAIMS

"I declare, Ruth! that was a ridiculous thing to do," exclaimed Helen, when they were on their way back to the Point. "But it certainly brought the sewing circle women all up standing."

"I've been wondering all day what Ruth was up to," said Tom, who was steering the big car. "I was in on it without understanding her game."

"Well, it was just what the directer needed," chuckled Jennie. "Oh, it takes our Ruth to do things."

"I wonder?" sighed the girl of the Red Mill, in no responsive mood.

She had something very unpleasant before her that she felt she must do, and nothing could raise her spirits. She did not speak to anybody about the hermit's scenario. She waited for Mr. Hammond to express his opinion of it.

At the camp she found a letter for her from the doctor's wife who had promised to keep her informed regarding Arabella Montague Fitzmaurice Pike. That young person was doing well and getting fat at the Perkins' farm. But Mrs. Holmes was quite sure that she had not heard from her father.

"You've got another half-orphan on your hands, Ruth," said Helen. She made it a point always to object to Ruth's charities. "I don't believe that man will ever show up again. If he went away with a medicine show——"

"No, no," said Ruth firmly. "No child would ever respect and love her father as Bella does if he was not good to her. He will turn up."

Just then Tom called from outside the door of the girls' shack.

"What say to a moonlight dip off the Point?" he asked. "The tide is not very low. And I missed my splash this morning."

"We're with you, Tommy," responded his sister. "Wait till we get into bathing suits."

Even Ruth was enthusiastic—to a degree—over this. In twenty minutes they were running up the beach with Tom and Henri toward the end of the Point.

"Let's go over and get the surf," suggested Jennie. "I do love surf bathing. All you have to do is to bob up and down in one place."

"Heavy is lazy even in her sport," scoffed Helen. "But I'm game for the rough stuff."

They crossed the neck of land near the hermit's hut. There was a hard beach almost in front of the hut, and up this the breakers rolled and foamed delightfully. The so-called hermit, hearing their voices, came out and sat on a rock to watch them. But he did not offer to speak until Ruth went over to him.

"Mr. Hammond let me read your script, John," she said coldly.

"Indeed?" he rejoined without emotion.

"Where did you get the idea for that scenario?"

He tapped his head with a long forefinger. "Right inside of that skull. I do my own thinking," he said.

"You did not have any help about it? You originated the idea of 'Plain Mary?'"

He nodded. "You ain't the only person who can write a picture," he observed. "And I think that this one they are filming for you is silly."

Ruth stared down at him, but said nothing more. She was ready to go back to camp as soon as the others would, and she remained very silent. Mr. Hammond had been asking for her, Miss Loder said. When Ruth had got into something more presentable than a wet bathing suit, she went to his office.

"What do you know about this?" he demanded in plain amazement. "This story the old man gave me to read is a wonder! It is one of the best ideas I ever saw for the screen. Of course, it needs fixing up a bit, but it's great! What did you think of it, Miss Ruth?"

"I am glad you like it, Mr. Hammond," she said, steadying her voice with difficulty.

"I do like it, I assure you."

"It is my story, Mr. Hammond!" she exclaimed. "It is the very scenario that was stolen from me at home. He's just changed the names of the characters and given it a different title, and spoiled some of the scenes. But a large part of it is copied word for word from my manuscript!"

"Miss Fielding!" gasped the president of the Alectrion Film Corporation.

"I am telling you the truth," Ruth cried, rather wildly, it must be confessed, and then she broke down and wept.

"My goodness! It can't be possible! You—you've let your mind dwell upon your loss so much——"

"Do you think I am crazy?" she demanded, flaring up at him, her anger drying her tears.

"Certainly not," he returned gently; yet he looked at her oddly. "But mistakes have been made——"

"Mistakes, indeed! It is no mistake when I recognize my own work."

"But—but how could this old man have stolen your work—and away back there at the Red Mill? I believe he has lived here on the Point for years. At least, every summer."

"Then somebody else stole it and he got the script from them. I tell you it is mine!" cried Ruth.

"Miss Fielding! Let us be calm——"

"You would not be calm if you discovered somebody trying to make use of something you had originated, and calling it theirs—no you wouldn't, Mr. Hammond!"

"But it seems impossible," he said weakly.

"That old man is an actor—an old-school actor. You can see that easily enough," she declared. "There was such a person about the Red Mill the day my script was lost. Oh, it's plain enough."

"Not so plain, Miss Ruth," said Mr. Hammond firmly. "And you must not make wild accusations. That will do no good—and may do harm in the end. It does not seem probable to me that this old hermit could have actually stolen your story. A longshore character like him——"

"He's not!" cried Ruth. "Don't you see that he is playing a part? He is no fisherman. No longshore character, as you call him, would be as afraid of the sea as he is. He is playing a part—and he plays it just as well as the parts Mr. Hooley gives him to play."

"Jove! There may be something in that," murmured the manager.

"He got my script some way, I tell you!" declared Ruth. "I am not going to let anybody maul my story and put it over as his own. No, sir!"

"But—but, Miss Ruth!" exclaimed Mr. Hammond. "How are you going to prove what you say is true?"

"Prove it?"

"Yes. You see, the burden of proof must be on you."

"But—but don't you believe me?" she murmured.

"Does it matter what I believe?" he asked her gently. "Remember, this man has entrusted me with a manuscript that he says is original. At least it is written in his own hand. I cannot go back of that unless you have some means of proof that his story is your story. Who did you tell about your plot, and how you worked it out? Did you read the finished manuscript—or any part of it—to any person who can corroborate your statements?"

"Oh, Mr. Hammond!" she cried, with sudden anguish in her voice. "Not a soul! Never to a single, solitary person. The girls, nor Aunt Alvirah, nor Tom——"

She broke down again and he could not soothe her. She wept with abandon, and Mr. Hammond was really anxious for her. He went to the door, whistled for one of the boys, and sent for Mrs. Paisley.

But Ruth recovered her composure—to a degree, at least—before the motherly old actress came.

"Don't tell anybody! Don't tell anybody!" she sobbed to Mr. Hammond. "They will think I am crazy! I haven't a word of proof. Only my word——"

"Against his," said the manager gravely. "I would accept your word, Miss Ruth, against the world! But we must have some proof before we deliberately accuse this old man of robbing you."

"Yes, yes. I see. I will be patient—if I can."

"The thing to do is to find out who this hermit really is," said Mr. Hammond. "Through discovering his private history we may put our finger on the thing that will aid you with proof. Good-night, my dear. Try to get calm again."



CHAPTER XX

THE GRILL

Ruth did not go back to her chums until, under Mother Paisley's comforting influence, she had recovered a measure of her self-possession. The old actress asked no questions as to the cause of Ruth's state of mind. She had seen too many hysterical girls to feel that the cause of her patient's breakdown was at all important.

"You just cry all you want to, deary. Right here on Mother Paisley's shoulder. Crying will do you good. It is the Good Lord's way of giving us women an outlet for all our troubles. When the last tear is squeezed out much of the pain goes with it."

Ruth was not ordinarily a crying girl. She had wept more of late, beginning with that day at the Red Mill when her scenario manuscript had been stolen, than in all her life before.

Her tears were now in part an expression of anger and indignation. She was as mad as she could be at this man who called himself "John, the hermit." For, whether he was the person who had actually stolen her manuscript, he very well knew that his scenario offered to Mr. Hammond was not original with him.

The worst of it was, he had mangled her scenario. Ruth could look upon it in no other way. His changes had merely muddied the plot and cheapened her main idea. She could not forgive that!

The other girls were drowsy when Ruth kissed Mother Paisley good-night and entered the small shack. She was glad to escape any interrogation. By morning she had gained control of herself, but her eyes betrayed the fact that she had not slept.

"You certainly do not look as though you were enjoying yourself down here," Tom Cameron said to her at breakfast time, and with suspicion. "Maybe we did come to the wrong place for our vacation after all. How about it, Ruth? Shall we start off in the cars again and seek pastures new?"

"Not now, Tom," she told him, hastily. "I must stay right here."

"Why?"

"Because——"

"That is no sensible reason."

"Let me finish," she said rather crossly. "Because I must see what sort of scenario Mr. Hammond finds—if he finds any—in this contest."

"Humph! And you said you and scenarios were done forever! I fancy Mr. Hammond is taking advantage of your good nature."

"He is not."

"You are positively snappish, Ruth," complained Tom. "You've changed your mind——"

"Isn't that a girl's privilege?"

"Very well, Miladi!" he said, with a deep bow as they rose from the table. "However, you need not give all your attention to these prize stories, need you? Let's do something besides follow these sun-worshippers around to-day."

"All right, Tommy-boy," acclaimed his sister. "What do you suggest?"

"A run along the coast to Reef Harbor where there are a lot of folks we know," Tom promptly replied.

"Not in that old Tocsin," cried Jennie. "She's so small I can't take off my sweater without tipping her over."

"Oh, what a whopper!" gasped Helen.

"Never mind," grinned her twin. "Let Jennie run to the superlatives if she likes. Anyway, I would not dream of going so far as the Harbor in that dinky little Tocsin. I've got my eye on just the craft, and I can get her over here in an hour by telephoning to the port. It's the Stazy."

"Goody!" exclaimed Jennie Stone. "That big blue yacht! And she's got a regular crew—and everything. Aunty won't be afraid to go with us in her."

"That's fine, Tom," said his sister with appreciation.

Even Ruth seemed to take some interest. But she suggested:

"Be sure there is gasoline enough, Tom. That Stazy doesn't spread a foot of canvas, and we are not likely to find a gas station out there in the ocean, the way we did in the hills of Massachusetts."

"Don't fear, Miss Fidget," he rejoined. "Are you all game?"

They were. The girls went to "doll up," to quote the slangy Tom, for Reef Harbor was one of the most fashionable of Maine coast resorts and the knockabout clothing they had been wearing at Beach Plum Point would never do at the Harbor hotels.

The Stazy was a comfortable and fast motor-yacht. As to her sea-worthiness even Tom could not say, but she looked all right. And to the eyes of the members of Ruth Fielding's party there was no threat of bad weather. So why worry about the pleasure-craft's balance and her ability to sail the high seas?

"It is only a short run, anyway," Tom said.

As for Colonel Marchand, he had not the first idea about ships or sailing. He admitted that only continued fair weather and a smooth sea had kept him on deck coming over from France with Jennie and Helen.

At the present time he and Jennie Stone were much too deeply engrossed in each other to think of anything but their own two selves. In a fortnight now, both the Frenchman and Tom would have to return to the battle lines. And they were, deep in their hearts, eager to go back; for they did not dream at this time that the German navy would revolt, that the High Command and the army had lost their morale, and that the end of the Great War was near.

Within Tom's specified hour the party got under way, boarding the Stazy from a small boat that came to the camp dock for them. It was not until the yacht was gone with Ruth Fielding and her party that Mr. Hammond set on foot the investigation he had determined upon the night before.

The president of the Alectrion Film Corporation thought a great deal of the girl of the Red Mill. Their friendship was based on something more than a business association. But he knew, too, that after her recent experiences in France and elsewhere, her health was in rather a precarious state.

At least, he was quite sure that Ruth's nerves were "all out of tune," as he expressed it, and he believed she was not entirely responsible for what she had said.

The girl had allowed her mind to dwell so much upon that scenario she had lost that it might be she was not altogether clear upon the subject. Mr. Hammond had talked with Tom about the robbery at the Red Mill, and it looked to the moving picture producer as though there might be some considerable doubt of Ruth's having been robbed at all.

In that terrific wind and rain storm almost anything might have blown away. Tom admitted he had seen a barrel sailing through the air at the height of the storm.

"Why couldn't the papers and note books have been caught up by a gust of wind and carried into the river?" Mr. Hammond asked himself. "The river was right there, and it possesses a strong current."

The president of the Alectrion Film Corporation knew the Lumano, and the vicinity of the Red Mill as well. It seemed to him very probable that the scenario had been lost. And the gold-mounted fountain pen? Why, that might have easily rolled down a crack in the summer-house floor.

The whole thing was a matter so fortuitous that Mr. Hammond could not accept Ruth's version of the loss without some doubt, in any case. And then, her suddenly finding in the only good scenario submitted to him by any of his company, one that she believed was plagiarized from her lost story, seemed to put a cap on the whole matter. Ruth might be just a little "off soundings," as the fishermen about Herringport would say. Mr. Hammond was afraid that she had been carried into a situation of mind where suspicion took the place of certainty.

She had absolutely nothing with which to corroborate her statement. Nobody had seen Ruth's scenario nor had she discussed the plot with any person. Secrecy necessary to the successful production of anything new in the line of picture plays was all right. Mr. Hammond advised it. But in this case it seemed that the scenario writer had been altogether too secret.

Had Ruth not chanced to read the hermit's script before making her accusation, Mr. Hammond would have felt differently. Better, had she been willing to relate to him in the first place the story of the plot of her scenario and how she had treated it, her present accusation might have seemed more reasonable.

But, having read the really good story scrawled on the scraps of brown paper that John, the hermit, had put in the manager's hands, the girl had suddenly claimed the authorship of the story. There was nothing to prove her claim. It looked dubious at the best.

John, the hermit, was a grim old man. No matter whether he was some old actor hiding away here on Beach Plum Point or not, he was not a man to give up easily anything that he had once said was his.

The manager was far too wise to accuse the hermit openly, as Ruth had accused him. They would not get far with the old fellow that way, he was sure.

First of all he called the company together and asked if there were any more scenarios to be submitted. "No," being the answer, he told them briefly that out of the twenty-odd stories he had accepted one that might be whipped into shape for filming—and one only.