"And so they are," declared Ruth, struggling to her feet. "We must do something. A rousing fire against this rock will keep us warm. We can heat the rock and then draw the fire out and get behind it. It will be fine!"

"Oh, I can't move!" wailed Lluella.

"Luella doesn't want to work," said Madge. "But you get up and do your share, Miss! If you freeze to death here your mother will never forgive me."

Of course, it would be Heavy that got into trouble. She made a misstep off the platform and sunk to her arm-pits in a soft bank of snow, and it was all the others could do to pull her out. But this warmed them, and actually got them to laughing.

"I believe that laughing warms one as much as anything," said Madge.

"Ha, ha!" croaked Heavy, grimly. "Your laughing hasn't warmed me any. I'm wet to my waist, I do believe!"

"We shall have to have a fire now to dry Jennie," said Ruth. "Now take care."

They had all abandoned their snowshoes long since, and the racquettes would have been of no use to them in the present emergency, anyway. But Ruth and Madge got to the nearest tree, and fortunately it was half dead. They could break off many of the smaller branches, and soon brought to the platform a great armful of the brush.

Ruth's matches were dry and they heaped up the leaves and rubbish and started a blaze. The other girls brought more fuel and soon a hot fire was leaping against the side of the rock and its circle of warmth cheered them. They got green branches of spruce and pine and brushed away the snow and banked it up in a wall all about the platform, which served them for a camp. Then they scraped the fire out from the rock, threw on more branches (for the green ones would burn now that the fire was so hot) and crowded in between the blaze and the rock.

"This is just scrumptious!" declared Heavy. "We sha'n't freeze now."

"Not if we can keep the fire going," said Helen.

Being warm, they all tried to be cheerful thereafter. They told stories, they sang their school songs, and played guessing games.

Meanwhile, the wind shrieked through the forest above their "hideout," and the snow continued to fall as though it had no intention of ever stopping. The hours dragged by toward dark—and an early dark it would be on this stormy day.

"Oh, if we only had something to eat!" groaned Heavy. "Wish I'd saved my snow-shoes."

"What for?" demanded Bell. "What possible good could they have been to you, silly?"

"They were strung with deer-hide, and I have heard that when castaway sailors get very, very hungry, they always chew their boots. I can't spare my boots," quoth Jennie Stone, trying to joke to the bitter end.

The wind wheezed above them, the darkness fell with the snow. Beyond the glow of the pile of coals on the rocky ledge, the curtain of snow looked gray—then drab—then actually black. Moon and stars were far, far away; none of their light percolated through the mass of clouds and falling snow that mantled these big wastes of the backwoods.

"Oh! I never realized anything could be so lonely," whispered Helen in Ruth's ear.

"And how worried your father and Mrs. Murchiston will be," returned her chum. "Of course, we shall get out of it all right, Helen; but did you ever suppose so much snow could fall at one time?"

"Never!"

"And no sign of it holding up at all," said Madge, who had overheard.

"Sh! Belle and Lluella have curled up here and gone to sleep," said Helen.

"Lucky Infants," observed Madge.

"I'm going to sleep, too," said Heavy, with a yawn.

"There is no danger now. We're as warm as can be here," Ruth said. "Why don't you take a nap, Helen? Madge and I will keep the first watch—and keep the fire burning."

"Suppose there should be wolves—or bears," whispered Helen.

"Ridiculous! no self-respecting beast would be out in such a gale. They'd know better," declared Madge Steele, briskly.

"And if one does come here," muttered Jennie, sleepily, "I shall kill and eat him."

She nodded off the next moment and Helen followed her example. Madge and Ruth talked to keep each other awake. Occasionally they fought their way to the half-dead tree and brought back armfuls of its smaller branches.

"It's a shame," declared Miss Steele, "that girls don't carry knives, and such useful things. Did you ever know a girl to have anything in her pocket that was worth carrying—if she chanced by good luck to have a pocket at all? Now, with a knife, we could get some better wood."

"I know," Ruth admitted. "I know more about camping out than ever I did before. Next time, I'm going to carry things. You never know what is going to happen."

As the evening advanced the cold became more biting. They stirred up the fire with a long stick and the glowing coals threw out increased warmth. The four sleeping girls stirred uneasily, and Madge, putting her hand against the back wall of rock, found that it had cooled.

"When it comes ten o'clock," she said, consulting the watch she carried, "we'll wake them up, make them stir around a bit, and we'll drag all these coals over against the rock again. Then we'll heap on the rubbish and heat up the stones once more. We ought to keep warm after that till near daylight."

"The smut is spoiling our clothes," said Ruth.

"I don't know as that matters much. I'd rather spoil everything I've got on than run the risk of freezing," declared Madge, with conviction.

They did what they could to keep the other girls warm; but before the hour Madge had proposed to awaken them, Lluella roused and cried a little because she was so chilly.

"My goodness me, Lu!" yawned Heavy, who was awakened, too, "you are just the leakiest person that I ever saw! You must have been born crying!"

"I never heard that we came into the world laughing," said Madge; "so Lluella isn't different from the rest of us on that score."

"But thank goodness we're not all such snivelers," grumbled Heavy. "Want me to get up? What for?"

But when Madge and Ruth explained what they intended to do, all the girls willingly bestirred themselves and helped in the moving of the fire and the gathering of more fuel.

"Of course we can't expect any help to-night," said Helen. "But I know that they'll start out hunting for us at daybreak, no matter whether it keeps on snowing, or not."

"And a nice time they'll have finding us down in this hole," complained Belle Tingley.

"Lucky I fell into this hole, just the same," remarked Heavy. "It just about saved our lives."

"But I guess we would have been a whole lot better off if we hadn't moved from the first big tree Ruth got us to creep under," Helen said, thoughtfully. "We couldn't have been more than two miles from Snow Camp then. Now we don't know where we are."

"Never mind that, Helen," advised Madge. "Help get in the wood. Now, we want a big, rousing fire. We'll just heat that old rock up so that it will stay warm all night. It will be like sleeping as the Russian peasants do—on top of their stoves."

They had piled the brush on the coals, after scraping the coals back upon the ledge, and the firelight was dancing far up the rock, and shining out into the steadily drifting snow, when suddenly Helen seized her chum's hand and cried:

"Listen! what's that?"

The girls grew silent instantly—and showing no little fear. From somewhere out in the storm a cry came to their ears.

"There it is again," gasped Helen. "I heard it twice before."

"I hear it," repeated Madge. "Wait."

Again the distant sound came forlornly to their ears. That time they all distinguished it. And they knew that their first hope was quenched. It was no sound of a rescuing party searching for them in the storm, for the word—repeated several times, and unmistakable— they all identified.

"Help!"



CHAPTER XXIII

A DOUBLE CAPTIVITY

"It's a ghost!" gasped Belle as the voice out of the storm died away down the wind.

"So are you!" snapped Madge. "What would a ghost want any help for? Ridiculous!"

"Goodness me!" drawled Heavy. "Seems to me even a disembodied spirit might feel the need of help if it was out in such a gale as this."

"I mean that we only thought we heard the voice," chattered Belle.

"Funny we should all think with such unanimity," scoffed Ruth. "That was certainly a very able-bodied spirit—There!"

Again the cry came brokenly through the storm.

"Somebody lost like ourselves," said Lluella, with a shiver.

"And he sees the light of our fire," Jennie Stone urged.

"We must help, whoever it is," Ruth cried. "Shout, girls! Maybe he wants to know the way—"

"The fire will show him," said Madge, quickly.

"Perhaps he is hurt!" said Helen.

"Shout!" commanded Ruth.

They raised their voices in a ragged chorus of cries. "Again!" cried Ruth, and that time they sent their halloo out into the storm with more vigor and unanimity. Once more, after they had waited a full minute, they could plainly distinguish the word "Help!"

"This won't do," said Ruth, briskly. "Whoever it is cannot get to us."

"And we can't get to him!" cried Lluella.

"I am going to try. I'll go alone. You girls keep hollering. I won't go out of earshot," promised Ruth.

"Don't do it, Ruthie! You'll be lost," cried Helen. "Then whatever should we do?"

"I won't get lost—not if you girls continue to shout," returned her chum.

She had buttoned her coat about her and pulled the skating cap she wore down over her ears, yet not too low to muffle them. Again the cry came wandering through the storm. Ruth started down the bank of the gully; the cry came from the other side of the hollow, she was sure—almost directly opposite the ledge on which they had taken shelter.

When she plunged off the ledge she at once entered the wall of driving, smothering snow. It almost took her breath, it was so deep under her feet and shrouded her about so much like a mantle. Had she ventured this way when first she and her friends had descended to the ledge, Ruth must have actually sunk out of sight in the soft drifts.

But the sifting snow had packed harder and harder as the storm increased. After all, she sank only to her knees and soon found that she was plunging over rather than through the great drifts that filled the gully. How broad this gully was—or how deep when the snow was out of it—she could not imagine. Nor did she give a thought to these things now.

Again she heard the muffled cry for help; but it sounded louder. She had made no mistake in the direction she had taken. The person needing succor was directly in front of the ledge, but could not get over to the fire.

She glanced back over her shoulder. The leaping flames she could not see; but their glow made a round spot of rosy light against the screen of the falling snow. The mystery of the sight terrified her for a moment. Would she ever be able to fight her way back to that ledge?

"Our Father, help me!" was her unspoken prayer, and then she plunged on.

She heard the shrill cries of her friends behind; ahead the lost one shouted out once more.

"Here! here! This way! Help!"

"I'm coming!" responded Ruth Fielding and, beaten as she was by the gale behind, kept steadily on.

The way began to rise before her. She was ascending the other bank of the gully. Suddenly through the snow-wreath that surrounded her she saw something waving. She sprang forward with renewed courage, crying again:

"I'm coming!"

The next moment she seized somebody's gloved hand. "Oh, oh!" cried a shrill, terrified voice. "Who are you? Help me! I am freezing. can't walk—"

"Fred Hatfield!" gasped the amazed girl. "Is it you? What is the matter?"

"Take me to that house. I see the light, but I cannot reach it Help me, for God's sake!" cried the boy.

She could see his white, pinched face as he lay there more than half buried in the snow. His eyes were feverish and wild and he certainly did not know Ruth.

"Help me out! help me out!" he continued to beg. "My leg is caught."

But it was more weakness and exhaustion than aught else that held the boy in the drift, as Ruth very soon found out when she laid hold of his shoulders and exerted her strength. In a few moments, what with her pulling and his scrambling, the boy was out of the drift.

He had clung to the rifle—Tom Cameron's weapon, of course—and into his belt was stuck a knife and a camp hatchet.

"Why, how did you get here in this storm?" demanded Ruth, as he lay panting at her feet.

"I got lost—from my—my camp," he responded. "I'm frozen! I can't feel my feet at all—"

"Come across to the fire," urged Ruth. "We girls are lost from Snow Camp. But we're all right so far. My! how the snow blows."

Facing the storm they could hardly make headway at all. Indeed, the youth fell within a few yards and Ruth was obliged to drag him through the drifts.

Her friends continued to shout, and occasionally she stood upright, made a megaphone of her hands, and returned their hail. But her strength—all of it—finally had to be given to the boy. She seized him by the shoulders and fairly dragged him toward the other side of the gully, thus walking against the wind, backwards. Occasionally she threw a glance over her shoulder to make sure that she was making straight for the campfire.

The girls' voices drew nearer and finally, at the foot of the slope leading up to the camp, she was forced to halt and drop her burden.

"Come down and help me, Madge!" she cried. "It's a boy—a boy! He can't help himself. Come quick!"

The girls were only a few yards away, but so fiercely did the wind blow that Ruth had to repeat her call for help before Madge Steele understood. Then the big girl dropped down off the ledge and plowed her way toward Ruth and her burden.

"The poor fellow! who is he?" gasped Madge, as together they raised the strange boy and started up the sharp ascent.

"Not Tom! Oh! it's never Tom?" shrieked Helen at the top of the hill.

"No, no!" gasped Ruth. "It's—the—boy—that—ran away."

They got him upon the dry ledge of rock before the fire. His cheeks showed frostbitten spots, and Jennie began to rub them with snow. "That's the way to treat frostbite," she declared. "Take off his boots. If his feet are frosted we'll have to treat them the same way."

Helen and Belle obeyed Heavy, who seemed quite practical in this emergency. Ruth had no strength, or breath, for the time being, but lay Reside die fire herself. Meanwhile Madge and Lluella scrapped the red coals out from the rock and swept the platform clean with green branches. Ruth and the runaway boy were drawn into this cozy retreat and soon the boy began to weep and cry out as the heat got into his feet. It was very painful to have the frost drawn out in this manner.

It was now after midnight and the storm still raged. Madge and Jennie floundered out for more fuel. The hatchet the boy carried was of great aid to them in this work and soon they had piled on the ledge sufficient wood to keep the blaze alive until dawn.

By this time the strange youth had been thawed lout and was dropping asleep against the warm rock. Helen and Belle agreed to stand the next watch, and to feed the fire. Both Ruth and Madge needed sleep, the former aching in every muscle from her fight to bring the rescued one in,

"We're doubly captives now," the girl of the Red Mill whispered to Madge before she dropped asleep. "If it should stop snowing we couldn't try to get back to camp and leave this chap here. And it is certain sure that he could not travel himself, nor could we carry him."

"You are right, Ruth," returned Madge. "This addition to our party makes our situation worse instead of better."

"But maybe it will all come out right in the end, dear."

"Let us hope so."

"What a boy of mystery he is!"

"Yes."

"Do you think we'll ever get to the bottom of his trouble?"

"Let us hope so."

Then both girls turned over, to get what sleep they could under such trying circumstances.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE SEARCH

It was a most anxious night for everybody at Snow Camp. The thought of the six girls adrift in the blizzard kept most of the household awake, Long Jerry Todd, the guide, remained in the kitchen, on the watch for the first break in the storm. The others retired, all but Mr. Cameron and Tom, who sat before the fire in the living hall.

"I couldn't sleep anyway," said Tom, "with Helen and Ruth out in the cold. It's dreadful, Dad. I feel that we boys are partly to blame, too."

"How's that?" his father asked him.

"Why, the girls were mad with us. I let Isadore go too far with his joking," and he told Mr. Cameron about the spoiled taffy. "If we hadn't done that to them of course they wouldn't have gone into the woods without us—"

"But I am afraid you lads would have been no more cautious than the girls," interposed Mr. Cameron. "This storm would have taken you by surprise just the same."

"But we could have been with them and helped them."

"I have great faith in that little Fielding girl's good sense—and Madge Steele is to be trusted," said his father. "Don't blame yourself, boy. It was something entirely unforeseen."

Several times during the night Mr. Cameron tried to communicate with the neighbors over the telephone; but some disaster had overtaken the line and it probably could not be repaired until after the storm.

About five o'clock Long Jerry came into the room. He had been out into the storm, for he was covered with snow.

"How does it look?" asked Mr. Cameron, earnestly.

"She's going to break with sun-up," prophesied the woodsman. "I've been feeding the cattle and I've got the other men up. If it breaks at all, we three'll start for the neighbors and rouse a gang to help beat the woods."

"But hadn't we better try to find the girls at once, Jerry?" queried Tom.

"We'll need a large party, Master Tom," said the guide. "We must cover a deal of ground, and the more men we have who are used to the trail, the better. If it stops snowing we can get around to the neighbors on snowshoes easier than any other way. The drifts are packed hard. I had to tunnel out of the kitchen door. The snow has banked up to the second story gallery."

"They'll be buried yards under this snow," groaned Tom.

"Keep up your courage," said Long Jerry, cheerfully. "If them gals was sharp at all they'd find some shelter and make a fire."

"If they had matches," said Mr. Cameron, doubtfully.

"Ruth had matches, I know," said Tom.

"Oh, we'll find them safe and sound," declared the guide.

One of Long Jerry's prophecies was fulfilled within the hour. The storm broke. Tom had aroused his friends and the three boys had enlarged the tunnel through the snow from the back porch into the yard, and were shoveling a passageway to the stables. The last flakes of the blizzard fluttered down upon them, and the tail of the gale blew the clouds to tatters and revealed the almost black sky with the stars sparkling like points of living fire.

"Hurrah!" cried Bob Steele. "It's over!"

The guide and the two other men were already getting on their snowshoes, having eaten hurriedly by the kitchen fire. They started out at once to rouse the neighbors. By sunrise the sky was entirely clear and the visitors to the backwoods could climb to the second floor gallery of the lodge and look out over the great drifts. In places the snow was heaped fifteen feet high; but the men shuffled off over these drifts and back again as easily as they would have walked on six inches of snow.

They brought with them six other men, who also sat down to breakfast in the big kitchen, while Mr. Cameron and the boys and Mrs. Murchiston finished their meal in the dining-room. To the surprise of the visitors to the camp, one of the men whom Long Jerry had brought in to help find the girls was the Rattlesnake Man, as he was called.

"We found him poking about the woods by himself, sir," said Long Jerry, privately, to Mr. Cameron. "He says there's been a boy staying with him for a while back, and that he started out hunting just before the storm. The old hermit was looking for him. By what he says, I believe it's the same boy you folks was bringing up here-the one that claims to be Fred Hatfield."

"That poor fellow may have lost himself in the blizzard, too, eh?" returned the merchant. "Let us hope we will find them all safely."

In fifteen minutes the whole party started from the lodge on snowshoes, the boys dragging their toboggans and the men carrying food and hot coffee in vacuum bottles. They separated into four parties; the three boys and Jerry Todd kept together. Jerry believed that the girls would have drifted some with the storm and therefore he struck off due east from the house.

In an hour they came back to the bank of the stream near where Ruth and Reno had their adventure with the panther.

"If old Reno had been well enough to come with us, he would have scented them in a hurry," declared Tom. "See the creek! it's completely smothered in snow."

They followed the course of the stream for some distance and found the banks growing more steep. Suddenly Jerry began to sniff the keen air, and in a moment he cried:

"There's a fire near, boys. Somebody is burning pine boughs—and there isn't any house near, that I can swear to!"

They hurried on. Inside of half a mile Isadore descried a column of blue smoke ahead. They began to shout at once, and it was not long before answering cries delighted them.

"That's Madge yelling," declared Bob. "I'd know her warwhoop anywhere."

Tom had set out as fast as he could travel, the toboggan jumping after him over the drifts. Even Busy Izzy grew excited, and yelled like a good fellow as he joined in the chase. They all ran down the bed of the stream and reached a deep cut where the banks were very high on either hand.

Up the white slope of the left hand bank was a small plateau on which the fire was burning. Some sort of a camp had been established, surrounded by an embankment of tramped snow. Over this fortress the heads of all six of the girls became visible, all crying out to their rescuers in such a medley of exclamations that no one was understandable.

"Helen! Ruth!" cried Tom. "Are you all right?"

"We're right as right can be, Tommy," returned his sister, gaily.

"We're not!" squealed Jennie Stone. "We're almost starved to death. If you haven't brought anything for us to eat, don't dare come up here, for we've turned cannibals and we're just about to cast lots to see who should first be sacrificed to the general good!"

But there was more than laughter to season this rescue. Some tears of relief were shed, and even Isadore Phelps showed some shame-faced joy that the catastrophe had resulted in no worse hardships for the girls. He said to Heavy:

"I'm sorry I spoiled that old taffy. If you'd eaten your full share of that the other day, I expect you wouldn't have suffered so from hunger."

The only person who was seriously troubled by the adventure was the strange boy. He had suffered severely In the storm and now he could scarcely move for pains in his back and legs. Otherwise it is doubtful if he would not have run when he heard Long Jerry's voice among the rescuers.

"Great turtle soup!" roared the guide, when he beheld the shrinking, cowering boy. "How did you get here? Do you mean to say you are alive, Fred Hatfield? Why, they buried you—"

"No, they didn't!" snarled the boy. "They only thought they did."

"And you've let 'em think all this time that you were shot—and poor 'Lias in jail? Well! you always was a mean little scamp, Fred Hatfield!"

But Ruth would not let the guide scold the boy any more. "He's very sick, Mr. Todd," she said. "He'll have to be carried to the lodge. I believe it is rheumatism, and he ought to have a doctor at once."

"Lucky he is down and out, then," muttered the guide, "or I'd be tempted to lay him across my knee and spank him right here and now!"

The girls were very thankful indeed for the hot drink and the food that had been brought. Jerry signaled with his rifle and brought the whole party to the spot within the hour, including the Rattlesnake Man. But when the old hermit saw that the boy was found he would stop no longer.

"Let his folks look after him. I gave him shelter; but he's a bad boy, I reckon. And he doesn't like my children. I don't want anybody about my place that doesn't like my children. Now, that little girl," he added, pointing to Ruth, "she wasn't afraid of them; was you?"

"Not much," returned Ruth, bravely. "And I'm coming to see you again, sir, if I can."

"You may come at any time, and welcome," answered the Rattlesnake Man, with a low bow. "Maybe you would like to learn how to handle my pets," he added, with a queer grin.

"What, the snakes!" screamed Helen.

"No, I don't think I'd care to do that," replied Ruth.

"They would not hurt you-they soon learn to know their friends-and they get to be as friendly as kittens," returned the hermit. "I have a name for each one of them," he went on, somewhat proudly.

"Maybe I'll-I'll look at them-but I won't want to touch them," answered Ruth. A few minutes later the strange Rattlesnake Man took his departure.

Fred Hatfield and the girls were all packed upon the sleds and drawn over the snow to the camp, where the rescued and rescuers arrived in safety before noon. But the girls had been through such an experience, and were so exhausted, that as soon as dinner was over they were commanded to go to bed, while one of the men started to town for a doctor to attend young Hatfield.

"And be sure and take this letter to the sheriff," said Mr. Cameron. "This foolish boy's brother must be released from jail at once. And if his folks want him, they can come here to Snow Camp and take him home," added the merchant, in some disgust. "I must say that it seems as though pity would be wasted on Fred Hatfield."



CHAPTER XXV

CERTAIN EXPLANATIONS

But the boy was more seriously ill than any of them suspected at the time. Before night, when the doctor arrived (walking over on snow-shoes with the guide) Fred was in a high fever and was rambling in his speech. None of the girls was seriously injured by the adventure in the snow; but the doctor shook his head over Hatfield.

Mrs. Murchiston gave the youth good attention, however, and the doctor promised to come again as soon as a horse could get through the roads. Two days passed before anybody got to Snow Camp saving on snowshoes. The governess was so kind to the sick boy that he broke down and confessed all his wretched story to her.

His home life had not been very happy since his father's death. His brother 'Lias, and the other big boys, were hard-working woodsmen and thought Fred ought to work hard, too, in the woods and on their poor little farm. He had finally had a fierce quarrel with 'Lias and the older boy had thrashed him.

"I only meant to scare him," Fred confessed, "when he shot at me and thought it was a deer. The bullet whistled right by my head. When I jumped I dislodged a stone in the bank, and that rolled down the hill and splashed into Rolling River. I hid.

"I saw 'Lias was frightened, and I thought it served him right— shooting so carelessly. Lots of folks are shot for deer up here in the hunting reason, and 'Lias is real careless with a gun. So I stayed hid. Then I heard two men talking at night and they said they guessed marm would be glad to get rid of me—I was no good.

"So I got a ride off on the railroad, and I wasn't going back. I didn't know 'Lias had been arrested until Mr. Cameron brought me back up this way and I heard about it from a logger that didn't know me. He said my body had been found. Of course, it wasn't me. Somebody else was drowned in Rolling River. There's been a little French Canadian feller missing since last fall and he was supposed to have been drowned. It was his body they found, I reckon. The man told me the body was so broken and disfigured that nobody could recognize the features—and the clothing was torn all off it.

"I don't know what marm and the boys will do to me if they find me," wailed Hatfield, who seemed to be more afraid of the rough usage of his big half-brothers than anything else.

But the first sled to get through to Snow Camp brought, besides the doctor, the boy's mother and 'Lias Hatfield himself. The backwoods woman showed considerable tenderness when she met her lost boy, and the young fellow who had suffered in jail for some weeks held no anger against his brother because of it.

"Why, Mr. Cam'ron," he said to the merchant, "I reckon it sarved me out right. I was purty ha'sh with the boy. He ain't naught but a weakling, after all. Marm, she does her best by us all, and we stick to her; but if Fred ain't fitten to work in the woods, or on the farm, we'll find him something to do in town—if he likes it better. I don't hold no grudge."

Two days later the boy was well enough to move, and they all went away from Snow Camp; but! Mr. Cameron had agreed, before they went, to give Fred Hatfield a chance in his store in the city, if they would send him down there in the spring.

"He's not fit for the rough life up here," he told Tom and Helen and Ruth, when they talked it over. "He's not an attractive boy, either. But he needs a chance, and I will give him one. If we only helped those people in the world who really deserved helping, we wouldn't boost many folks."

Meanwhile the girls had all recovered from their adventure in the blizzard, and the entire party of young folk found plenty of amusement in the snow-bound camp. In one monstrous heap in the yard the boys excavated a good-sized cavern—big enough so that all the girls as well as the boys could enter it at once; and they lit it up at night with candles and held a "party" there, at which plenty of walnut taffy was served—without shells in it!

"This is heaping coals of fire on your head, young man," said Madge, tartly, as she passed the pan to Busy Izzy.

"All right," he returned, with a grin. "Keep on heaping. I can stand it."

"If you girls had been right smart," drawled Bob Steele, "when you were lost the other day, you'd have scooped you out a hole like this in a snowbank and hived up as snug as a bug in a rug till the storm was over."

"Oh, yes! we all know lots of things to do when we are lost again," returned Helen. "But I hope that our next vacation won't have any such unpleasant experience in store for us."

"I'm with you in that wish," cried Belle Tingley.

"Well, now, yo've all promised to go with me to our cottage at Lighthouse Point for two weeks next summer," cried Heavy. "I guarantee you won't be lost in the snow down there."

"Not at that time of year, that's sure," laughed Ruth. "But we don't know yet, Jennie, that we can go with you."

However, it is safe to state here that Ruth, at least, was able to accept the stout girl's invitation, for we shall meet her next in a story entitled: "Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point; Or, Nita, the Girl Castaway."

There was plenty of fun around Snow Camp for the remainder of the ten days they spent there, and when the time came to go back to civilization both girls and boys assured good Mr. Cameron that they had had a most delightful time. They traveled as far as Cheslow together, where Heavy and Belle and Lluella went to their homes for a day or two, to finish out the tag-end of the vacation, while the Steeles and Isadore went home with the Camerons, and Ruth returned to the Red Mill.

And how glad Aunt Alvirah was to see Ruth! Uncle Jabez didn't display his feelings so openly; but Ruth had learned how to take the miller, and how to understand him. She helped him with his accounts, made out his bills for the year, and otherwise made herself of use to him.

"You just wait, Uncle Jabez," she told him, earnestly. "I'm going to make your investment in my schooling at Briarwood pay you the biggest dividend of anything you ever speculated in—you see."

"I'm sure I hope so, Niece Ruth," he grumbled. "I don't much expect it, though. They teach you too many folderols up there. What's this now?" he asked, pointing his stubbed forefinger to the little gold and black enamel pin she wore on her blouse.

"'S. B.'"

"Is them the letters?"

"Yes, sir. My society emblem. We're the Sweetbriars, of Briarwood Hall. And you wait! we're going to be the most popular club in the school before long. We've had Mrs. Tellingham, the Preceptress, at one of our meetings."

"What good is that?" he demanded, shaking his grizzled head.

"Fraternity—fellowship—helpfulness—hope—oh! it stands for lots of things. And then, Uncle Jabez, I am learning to sing and play. Maybe before long I can open the old cottage organ you've got stowed away in the parlor and play for you."

"That won't lower the price of wheat, or raise the price of flour," he grumbled.

"How do you know it won't, until we've tried it?" she answered him, gaily.

And so she made the old mill, and the farmhouse adjoining, a much brighter, gayer, pleasanter place while she was in it. Her cheerfulness and sweetness were contagious. Aunt Alvirah complained less frequently of her back and bones when Ruth was about, and in spite of himself, the old miller's step grew lighter.

"Ah, Jabez," Aunt Alvirah said, as they watched Ruth get into the Cameron automobile to be whisked away to the station, and so to Briarwood for her second half, "that's where our endurin' comfort an' hope is centered for our old age. We've only got Ruthie."

"She's a mighty expensive piece of property," snarled the old man.

"Ye don't mean it, Jabez, ye don't mean it," she returned, softly. "You're thawin' out—and Ruth Fielding is the sun that warms up your cold old heart!"

But this last was said so low that Jabez Potter did not hear it as he stumped away toward the Red Mill.

In the automobile the young folks were having a gay time. Helen was with Ruth, and Tom was on the front seat.

"Say, we sure did have some excitement in Snow Camp as well as fun," came from Tom.

"And that catamount!" gasped Helen.

"And Ruth's shot!" broke in her twin brother. "Ruth, you ought to try for a marksmanship badge!"

"And wasn't it fine how it came out about Fred," said Ruth, her face beaming with satisfaction. "I am so glad to know he is no longer a homeless wanderer!"

"All due to you," said Tom. "Ruth, you're a wonder!" he added, admiringly.

"Oh, Tom!" she answered. Nevertheless, she looked much pleased.

And here let us say good-bye.

THE END