"I don't doubt it," said Katherine.

Beside the fried fish there was tomato soup for supper. It was Mrs. Evans' prize recipe and one of the favorite camp dishes. Nobody could make tomato soup which quite equalled hers, in the opinion of the family on Ellen's Isle. It didn't make any difference where she made it, up in the kitchen tent on the gasoline stove or down on the beach, as now, over an open fire.

"Nothing ever tasted so good," sighed Sahwah rapturously, dipping her spoon diligently into the big tin cup in which her soup was served.

"I like more pepper in mine," said Anthony, adding a touch from the pepper pot, which stood on the ground beside him.

The rest made no comments. They were too busy.

"Slim," said Sahwah suspiciously, when her cup was empty, "just how much soup have you eaten?"

"Four cupfuls," replied Slim.

"Mercy!" cried Aunt Clara. "That's more than a quart. It's a wonder you didn't burst! I never saw a boy with such a capacity!"

"Ho, that's nothing," said Anthony. "I could eat twice as much, just as easy."

"Let's see you do it!" said Slim suddenly.

Anthony looked rather taken aback.

"Yes," said Uncle Teddy, "let's see you do it. Make good your boast. We're not in the habit of saying things around here that we can't back up. Twice four cups is eight. You've had one; that leaves seven. We challenge you to drink seven cups of soup. You've either got to drink them or do anything else Slim tells you to do. Slim, what's the alternative?"

"Eat soap," said Slim promptly.

Katherine grinned appreciatively at him. "Do you hear that, Anthony?"

Anthony began to look sick. "I'll do it tomorrow," he said.

"No, you'll not!" said Slim. "You'll do it right here and now before all these folks."

Anthony looked beseechingly at Uncle Teddy, but the latter was looking at him sternly. "You brought it upon yourself," he said. "Now either make good your boast or take the alternative."

Slim filled the cup and handed it to Anthony. "I bet I can do it," he said defiantly, and set it to his lips. With the first mouthful his face puckered up. The soup was red hot with pepper. He himself had sprinkled a generous quantity into the kettle after touching up his own cupful. But he had been more generous than he knew.

"I can't drink that stuff," he sputtered. "It's all pepper."

"That doesn't make any difference," said Slim, unmoved. "Drink it anyway."

And they made him do it. Cupful after cupful they forced upon him, threatening an immediate diet of soap whenever he paused. After the fifth cup Anthony began to suspect that it was not wise to make rash statements about the capacity of the human stomach; after the sixth he was entirely convinced. The results of that sixth cup made the judges decide to suspend the last of the sentence. Anthony had got all that was coming to him.

A sorrier or more subdued boy never lived than Anthony that night.

"It was heroic treatment," said Uncle Teddy thoughtfully to Aunt Clara, as they wandered off by themselves in the moonlight, "but it took something like that to make any impression on him. He is the most insufferable little braggart that ever lived. I only hope the impression made was deep enough."

And beyond a doubt it was, for never again was Anthony heard to utter a boast in the presence of the rest.



CHAPTER IX

THE DARK OF THE MOON SOCIETY

Gladys stood in her tent under the big murmuring pine tree washing handkerchiefs in her washbasin. "I haven't enough left to last any time at all now," she confided plaintively to Sahwah, "and I had three dozen when I came. They're all gone where the good handkerchiefs go, I guess. Somebody is forever getting cut and needing a bandage in a hurry and my handkerchief is invariably the one to be sacrificed to the emergency."

"That's what you get for always having a clean one," remarked Sahwah. "Mine are never in fit condition to be used for bandages, consequently I still have them all."

"But you never know where they are," said Gladys. "If you don't keep your things in order you might as well not own them, for you never have them when you want them anyway."

"And if you do keep them in order somebody else always borrows them and then you don't have them when you want them either," said Sahwah.

"Life is awfully complicated, isn't it?" sighed Gladys.

"I should say it was awfully simple," said Sahwah, laughing at Gladys's solemn tone. "No matter what you do it turns out the same way anyway. I shouldn't call that complicated."

Gladys hung her handkerchiefs on the tent ropes where they would dry in the wind and emptied the basin of water out of the end of the tent, which opened directly on the bluff. A dismal shriek from below proclaimed that somebody had received a shower bath. Gladys and Sahwah leaned over the tent railing at a perilous angle and peered down. Half way down the bluff, "between the devil and the deep sea," as Sahwah remarked, sat Katherine on a narrow ledge of rock, dangling her feet over the edge and leaning her head dejectedly on her hands. The descending flood had landed on her head and was running in streams over her face from the ends of her wispy hair, making her look more dejected than ever. Her appearance made both the girls above think immediately of Fifi on the occasion of his memorable bath.

"Oh, Katherine, I'm sorry," said Gladys contritely. "I ought to have looked before I poured. But I never expected anybody to be sitting there like a fly on the wall. What are you doing there anyway?"

"Just sitting," replied Katherine in her huskiest tones.

"What's the matter?" asked Gladys, catching the doleful note in her voice and having inward qualms.

"Just low in my mind," replied Katherine lugubriously.

"Goodness gracious!" exclaimed Gladys. "What about? Can't we come down and cheer you up? Is there room for two more on that ledge?"

"Always plenty of room on the mourners' bench," said Katherine, moving over.

"All right, we'll come," said Gladys. "How do you get down? Oh, I see, there's a sort of path going down behind mother's tent. Look out, we're coming."

Sahwah and Gladys crawled backward down the bluff, hanging on to the grass and roots, and dropped to the ledge beside Katherine. They settled themselves comfortably and swung their feet over the edge.

"Now, tell us your trouble," said Gladys, mopping Katherine's head with her last clean handkerchief and getting it as wet as those up on the tent ropes.

Katherine hunched her shoulders and drooped her head until it almost touched her chest. "I can't bear to think of going home!" she said heavily.

"Going home!" echoed Sahwah and Gladys, nearly falling off the ledge in alarm. "You're not going home, are you? Don't tell us that you——" Words failed them and they stared in blank dismay.

It was Katherine's turn to look alarmed when she caught their meaning. "Oh, I don't mean that I'm going home now," she said hastily. "I mean that I can't bear to think of going home at the end of the summer."

"Gracious!" said Gladys weakly. "Who's thinking about the end of the summer already? Why, it's hardly begun. You don't mean to say that you're worrying now about going home in September?"

Katherine nodded, without cheering up one bit. "That's the trouble," she said laconically. "I know it's a crazy thing to worry about, but when we were having such a good time on the lake this morning I got to thinking how I hated to leave it, even to go to college, and started to get blue right away. And the more I thought about it the bluer I got, and the bluer I got the more I thought about it, and—that's all there is to it!" she finished with a characteristic gesture of her long arms. "And now I can't stop thinking about it and I've just got the indigoes!"

"Well, of all things!" exclaimed Sahwah. "Aren't some people the funniest things, though?"

She and Gladys leaned back and regarded Katherine curiously. Here was the girl who stood unmoved by fire or flood, who never worried about an exam; the girl who had calmly rallied the demoralized volley ball team and snatched victory in the face of overwhelming odds, who seemed to have optimism in her veins instead of blood, at the very beginning of the most charming summer in her life, worrying because some time or other it must come to an end! Katherine's "indigoes" were as startling and unaccountable as her inspirations. And it was not put on for momentary effect, either. She sat limp and listless, the very picture of dejection, and no amount of rallying on the part of the two served to bring her back to her breezy, merry self.

They left her at last in despair, and wearily climbed back to the tents. "I wish we hadn't talked to her at all," wailed Sahwah. "Now the thought of going home makes me so blue I can't bear to think about it." And her voice had such a suspicious catch in it that it made a sympathetic moisture rise in Gladys's eyes, and she declared she wished they had never come, because it would be so hard to leave!

"Oh, mercy! What geese we are!" said Sahwah, coming to herself with a start. "Worrying about something that's miles off! Cheer up. We may all get drowned and never have to go home at all. You always want to look on the bright side of things!" And then the pendulum swung the other way, and the two leaned against each other and laughed until their sides ached at their foolishness.

"But poor Katherine was really blue," said Gladys, when they were themselves again. "She has those awful spells once in a long while and they last for days unless she gets mixed up in something exciting and forgets herself. I was really worried on her account once and asked Nyoda about it and she said it was because Katherine has always had to work too hard all her life and it's done something to her nerves, or whatever you call them, and that's what makes her have the blues sometimes. She said we should always try to give her something else to think about right off when she got that way and she'd get over it sooner and by and by when she grew stronger she wouldn't have them at all any more."

"Poor, dear old Katherine!" said Sahwah fervently. "I wish something would happen to cheer her up. If she doesn't get over it soon she will have the whole family feeling as she does, and think how dreadful it would be!" And then the Captain and the Bottomless Pitt appeared between the trees and challenged them to a canoe race and they speedily forgot Katherine and her woes.

That evening the twins got into a dispute as to who should sit on the bow of the launch on the trip to St. Pierre with the mail and neither would give in, so Uncle Teddy suggested that they settle the point by a crab race on the beach. The crab race consisted of traveling on all fours in a sidewise direction and was as difficult as it was ridiculous. Anthony won because Antha stepped on her skirt and lost her balance. Then Sahwah spoke up and said she must insist on her sex having fair play and that in order to make the race fair and above board Anthony must wear a skirt, too. Anthony protested loudly, but the Chiefs ruled that it was right and just, and Anthony, still protesting, was hustled into a skirt of his sister's and made to run the race over again. The spectators wept with laughter as he fell all over himself, first to one side and then to the other, as he stepped on the skirt, and Antha touched the goal before he had completed half the distance.

"Oh, Anthony," jeered Pitt, "can't you make a better showing than that?"

"He probably did as well as any of you would," said Hinpoha.

"Bet I could do better," said the Captain.

"Let's see you do it," said Hinpoha.

"I will if the other fellows will," said the Captain, looking around at the rest. "Will you, Slim?"

"Sure," said Slim.

"Slim will do anything—once," said Sahwah.

A few minutes later, an old turtle who had been sitting on a log near the water all afternoon poked his head out of his shell in astonishment at the sight of the enormous human crabs who suddenly swarmed over the beach, laughing, tripping, shrieking and rolling over on the sand. The Captain did beautifully, because he was tall and the skirt that fell to him was short and did not impede his progress, but Slim, to whom Sahwah had wickedly given one of Katherine's longest, got so tangled up that he finally turned a somersault right into the water, where he lay kicking and splashing. Katherine rescued him and the skirt, which was rather the worse for the experience, while Uncle Teddy, who was judge, declared the Captain to be the winner. He was the only one who had finished without falling once.

"You're elected to take a lady's part in the next play we give," said Gladys. "Such talent shouldn't be wasted on a desert isle."

The Captain smiled a ladylike smile and minced along, holding an imaginary parasol over his head. "Bertha the Beautiful Cloak Model," he said, laughing. "Now won't somebody rescue Pitt. He's all tied up in a knot back there."

"And he has my skirt on," wailed Gladys. "Do rescue him, somebody."

"Never again," said Pitt solemnly, when he had been helped to his feet and separated from the hampering garment. "How you girls do anything at all with those horrible things on is more than I can see."

"Hurry up, all you who want to go in the launch," called Uncle Teddy, and there was a general scramble. In the excitement of the big crab race the twins had forgotten their quarrel and both sat side by side on the bow.

"Wasn't that crab race the funniest ever?" said Gladys to Katherine, as they gathered up the skirts and wended their way up the path.

"The funniest of all was when Slim fell over backward into the lake," said Sahwah from behind them.

"Funny for you, perhaps," replied Katherine, who still was steeped in her indigoes, "but that was my skirt he had on. And he burst it open in three places. It's ruined."

"Cheer up," said Sahwah. "Consider in what a good cause it perished. You'd have ruined it sooner or later anyhow, but minus the grand spectacle Slim made."

"Maybe so," grumbled Katherine, "but I was thinking that perhaps this one would escape the usual fate. I had a fondness for that skirt."

"Then what did you let him take it for?" asked Hinpoha.

"I didn't give it to him, Sahwah did," replied Katherine.

"Well, you said I might," retorted Sahwah, "and, anyway, I'm as badly off as you. Mine is finished, too."

"Let's not argue over it," said Gladys hastily. "We're getting as bad as the twins. We started the business, so let's be game and not let the boys hear us say anything about the skirts."

"All right," said Sahwah, and the subject was dropped.

"What's this?" asked Hinpoha, as they came to the top of the hill.

"A piece of paper tacked to a tree," said Sahwah. "What does it say?"

They all stopped to read. The only writing on the paper was the legend, THE DARK OF THE MOON SOCIETY. Above it there were three marks done in red paint, which gave them a curiously lurid effect. They consisted of a circle with two diamond-shaped marks underneath it.

"What on earth——!" said Hinpoha.

"Those funny-shaped marks are a blaze," said Sahwah. "It was one of the number we learned, don't you remember, Hinpoha? I believe it means 'warning,' or something like that. 'Important warning,' that's it. Now I remember. This message is supposed to read:

"'IMPORTANT WARNING! THE DARK OF THE MOON SOCIETY.'"

"What on earth is The Dark of the Moon Society?" asked Katherine.

They all shook their heads. "It's something the boys are up to," said Gladys. "I suppose they are going to play some joke on us in return for our neat little trick the day we climbed the trees and watched them get supper. Just watch out, something will be doing before very long."

"Let's find out what it is and get ahead of them," said Katherine, her eyes beginning to sparkle.

From that time on there was a suppressed feeling of excitement on Ellen's Isle. The Winnebagos watched every movement the Sandwiches made, and it seemed that there was something suspicious about the glances that were constantly being exchanged between the Captain, Slim and the Bottomless Pitt.

"Those three are at the bottom of it," declared Katherine to the other girls who were gathered on her bed. "I don't believe the rest of the Sandwiches know a thing about it. I heard Dan Porter asking the Captain what they were talking about down on the beach awhile ago and the Captain said, 'Oh, nothing,' in that tone of voice that means, 'It's none of your business.'"

"But I saw Slim and Dan and the Monkey slipping off into the woods by themselves just now," said Sahwah, "and they were laughing to themselves and acting mighty mysterious."

The next day Hinpoha found a piece of birchbark in Eeny-Meeny's wooden hand, bearing the now familiar warning blaze and signed with the initials D. M. S.

"The handwriting on the wall again," she said to Gladys. "What can the Dark of the Moon Society be, anyhow?"

After that mysterious warnings appeared all over camp. The girls would find them tacked to the trees in front of their tents, tied to the handles of the water pails and slipped in between the logs piled ready for firewood. True to their agreement they never said a word about finding them to the Sandwiches, but were constantly on the lookout for the joke, which they knew would be sprung sooner or later. Katherine, who had flung her indigoes to the winds at the first hint of mystery, was the most intent on finding out what the boys were planning to do and meant to get ahead of them if she could possibly do it.

"The thing to do first," said she with the air of a general, "is to find out which ones are the Dark of the Moon Society. Then we can watch those particularly."

"They're probably all in it," said Gladys.

"I don't think they are," said Katherine. "I'll lay my wager on the Captain, Slim and the Bottomless Pitt. Those three are mighty chummy all of a sudden. And I saw them go right past one of those signs on a tree and never look at it. That looks suspicious. They saw me and pretended they didn't notice the sign."

That night, Katherine, restless and unable to sleep, developed a thirst from rolling around on her pillow, and rising quietly, made for the water pail at the door of the tent. It was empty. Thirsts had been prevalent that night. She stood a moment irresolute and then, putting on her slippers and her gown, started boldly for the little spring on the hillside. It was bright moonlight and she could find her way easily. She took a drink from the cup hanging on a broken branch beside the spring, and filling the pail so as to be prepared for a return of the thirst, she started back up the hill. Half way up she paused and stood still, looking out over the silvered surface of the lake, drinking in the magic beauty of the scene with eager soul.

"Oh, you wonderful, wonderful lake!" she murmured to herself.

A branch cracked sharply behind her and a small stone came rolling down the hillside. She turned hastily and looked up. Someone was moving among the trees up there. "The Dark of the Moon Society!" thought Katherine, and, dropping the pail of water, she ran up the path. The person above made no effort at flight or concealment, but walked out of the shadow of the trees onto a moonlit rock at the edge of the bluff. Then Katherine saw that it was Sahwah.

"Are you thirsty, too?" she called up. Sahwah made no answer. She took a step nearer the edge of the cliff and stood looking out over the lake.

"She's walking in her sleep again!" exclaimed Katherine. Since the memorable night of the Select Sleeping Party when Sahwah had wandered out into the snow, the Winnebagos lived in constant expectation of some new performance.

As Katherine started toward her to lead her gently back to the tent, Sahwah began to raise her arms slowly above her head, palms together. "Mercy!" exclaimed Katherine, "she's going to dive off the cliff!" And rushing up pell-mell she seized her around the waist and dragged her back unceremoniously, regardless of the accepted rule about waking sleep walkers suddenly.

"Goodness, how you scared me!" said Katherine, when she had deposited Sahwah in her bed and answered her yawning inquiries as to what was the matter. "You can't be trusted without a bodyguard." And in spite of Sahwah's protests that she had never in her life "walked" twice in the same night, Katherine insisted upon tying a string to her ankle and fastening the other end around her own. Sahwah was asleep again in five minutes, but Katherine lay and watched her for hours, expecting to see her rise and try to wander forth a second time.

Once she thought she heard footsteps on the path along the bluff and rose hastily to investigate, but the string she had tied around her ankle tripped her and jerked Sahwah, who bade her lie down and be quiet. Katherine subsided, rubbing her knee, which had received a smart bump, and grimacing with pain in the darkness. She heard the footsteps no more, but she had her suspicions that they belonged to the Dark of the Moon Society.

The next day at noon she called a hasty council on her bed. "Girls," she said in a thrilling whisper, "I've found the place where the Dark of the Moon Society meets!"

"Where? Where?" they all cried.

"In a cave under the east bluff. I just discovered it today. The entrance is all covered by trees. I found the ashes of a little fire inside. That's where they're cooking up their plans and preparing something to spring as a surprise on us."

"Oh, if we could only hide back in that cave when they are there and hear and see what they are doing," said Sahwah.

"How are we going to know when they will be there?" asked Gladys.

Nobody was able to answer this.

"If we're smart enough we'll find out," said Katherine, waving her long arms. She was as keen on the scent of the mysterious Dark of the Moon Society as a hound after a stag.

That night darkness had hardly fallen when the Captain, Slim and the Bottomless Pitt complained of being utterly tired out and announced their intention of going to bed.

"What made you so tired, boys?" asked Mrs. Evans solicitously. "Are we expecting you young people to do too much? I don't want you to go home worn out."

"Oh, it was probably from running up and down the path so often with the boards for the dock," said the Captain. "That's all." He yawned widely behind his hand. "We're not doing too much every day, really we aren't. You mustn't feel anxious."

Mrs. Evans made a mental resolve to see that the boys and girls all had a definite rest hour each day.

Katherine's thoughts went into a widely different channel. At the first mention of going to bed before the others she became suspicious, and, looking closely, she was positive that the Captain's yawn was feigned. Lying on her back on the sand so that her head was behind Sahwah and Gladys she whispered very quietly, "D. M. S. meeting." Gladys and Sahwah squeezed her arm to let her know they understood and as soon as the three boys had started up the hill they rose also, saying they were going up on the Council Rock. Hinpoha rose and followed them; Migwan and Nakwisi apparently did not catch on, and remained where they were.

There was no time to follow the boys. The girls must be in the cave before the Sandwiches got there to be able to overhear anything. Taking a short cut, they came out on the bluff just above the cave. They could hear the boys stopping for a drink at the spring on the other side of the island.

"How'll we get down?" asked Gladys in a whisper.

"Crawl down the face of the cliff," said Sahwah. "And we'll probably skin our whole mortal frames doing it."

"Sh!" said Katherine. "There's no time to crawl down. We've got to hurry. Go half way down and jump the rest of the way. It's all soft sand underneath."

"We'll be killed," said Gladys.

"Nonsense!" said Katherine scornfully. "Didn't I say it was all soft sand underneath? Sh! I'll go first Sh-h!"

She swung over the edge, poised on the little ledge, flung out her arms and leapt into the darkness below. There was a crash, a smash, a plump, and a startled wail.

"What is it?" cried Gladys, throwing caution to the winds and shouting.

"I'm in the lake, I guess," called Katherine from below. "First I jumped in and then the sky fell on me." Her voice sounded oddly muffled and far away.

Gladys flashed her little bug light over the cliff and then shrieked with laughter at the spectacle below. Flat on the beach sat Katherine, her feet straight out in front of her and a tin washtub upside down on her head, completely hiding the upper half of her. From the edge of it the water was dripping in tiny streamlets. The main deluge had already descended. All around her lay the clothes which had been soaking in the tub ready to be washed out bright and early the next morning.

Of course her yell and the shouts of those above brought the rest of the family on the run, and after one look at her nobody had strength enough to lift the tub off her head. Uncle Teddy recovered first and removed the eclipse.

"I forgot to tell you folks I had set the tub there," said Aunt Clara. "But how could I guess that one of you would jump into it? Whatever induced you to jump off the cliff in the dark anyway?"

"I was just 'exploragin','" replied Katherine meekly, rising and shaking the water from her clothes like a dog.

There was no spying on the Dark of the Moon Society that night. Mrs. Evans ordered Katherine off to bed at once, because it was too late to get into dry clothes and the air was too cool to keep the wet clothes on, and as Katherine was chief spy there was nothing doing unless she headed it. So if there was a meeting in the cave after all that commotion it went unobserved.

But a day or two later there was consternation in Katherine's tent. The rumor had just gone around that the Dark of the Moon Society was going to kidnap Eeny-Meeny and burn her at the stake. Sahwah had overheard a bit of conversation in the woods that gave her the clue. It was going to happen that night.

Katherine went "straight up in the air." "They sha'n't burn Eeny-Meeny!" she declared, shaking her fist above her head. "They'll only touch her over my prostrate body!"

Many were the elaborate plans made for Eeny-Meeny's defense. Katherine's plan was voted the simplest and best. "Hide her!" she suggested, and this course was agreed upon. But simple as this plan sounded it presented unexpected difficulties. They couldn't get a chance to do it. No matter when they approached Eeny-Meeny there was always one of the Sandwiches close at hand.

"They're picketing her!" announced Katherine, baffled in several attempts. "I pretended I wanted to touch her up with color and carried her away from the Council Rock, and the Captain came right along, so I had to do it, and the minute I was through he insisted on carrying her back and I couldn't object without rousing his suspicions, so back she went. Now Slim's sitting and leaning his head against her."

"The thing to do," said Hinpoha, "is to have a counter attraction at the other end of the island that will draw them all away, and in the meantime one of us can hide her."

"Good," said Katherine, "what shall we do?"

"It ought to be a panic," said Hinpoha, "and then if we yell loud enough they'll forget everything and run to the rescue."

"What would we scream for?" asked Gladys.

"Oh, for most anything," answered Hinpoha. "The main idea is to scream loud enough to start a panic. I'll think up something in a minute."

"Well, let us know when you're ready, and we'll bring our voices," said Gladys.

Hinpoha departed to attend to her dinner duties and Katherine went out into the woods to look for berries. In a little hollow she stumbled over Antha, sitting in a heap against a tree shedding tears into her handkerchief. "What's the matter?" asked Katherine, sinking down beside her. She was so used to seeing Antha in tears that she was not greatly concerned, but out of general sympathy she inquired what was the matter.

"I want to go home!" wailed Antha. "This is a horrible mean old place and I can't have any fun at all."

"Why can't you have any fun?" asked Katherine.

"Because you girls are always running away from me and having secrets that you won't tell me," said Antha with a gulp. "You're doing something now that you won't let me know about."

True enough. They hadn't told Antha about the danger threatening Eeny-Meeny nor the plan for her defense. Katherine reflected. "It was kind of mean to leave her out of that. I wouldn't like it myself if I were the younger one of a group and they kept having secrets from me. I'm not being a real nice big sister at all."

"Never mind, Antha," she said, patting her hand. "I'll tell you about it. The boys are planning to steal Eeny-Meeny tonight and burn her at the stake and we're trying to keep them from doing it. We're going to hide her. You may help us if you like. Won't that be fun?"

Antha sniffed, and with the perverseness of her nature lost interest in the secret as soon as she found out what it was, and didn't seem to care whether Eeny-Meeny was burned at the stake or not. And when Katherine went farther and invited her to be her special helper in everything, and offered to show her where the oven bird's nest was that everybody was looking for, Antha declined to come along, preferring to go into the kitchen where dinner was being prepared.

So Katherine went out alone to pay the oven bird's nest a visit and on the way found a chipmunk with a broken leg, hopping around on the other three and cheeping shrilly in distress. She tried to coax it to her with peanuts and succeeded in getting it to take one, when suddenly from the direction of the kitchen came the sound of a terrific explosion, shaking the earth and making the air ring with echoes. The sound had scarcely died away when there was a second report more violent than the first, followed in a moment by a third.

"The gasoline stove!" thought Katherine. "Antha's been trying to fill it and it's exploded!" And she set off like the wind toward the kitchen, from which direction terrible shrieks were puncturing the air. She did not know it, but she was yelling like a Comanche Indian all the way. She staggered into the clearing, expecting to find the kitchen tent in flames, but it was lying on the ground in a tangled mass from which apparently detached hands and feet were waving wildly. "What exploded?" she demanded.

Hinpoha was leaning against a tree, pale as death, and she grasped Katherine by the arm and led her out of earshot of the others. "The cans of beans," she said faintly. "Don't look so scared, Katherine, it's only—the—panic!"

"What on earth did you do?" asked Katherine.

"I remembered that Migwan set a can of beans in the fire to heat once when we were camping and it exploded, and I thought that would be a fine way to start a panic here. So to make sure I took three cans—great big ones—and buried them in the hot ashes. When they exploded I was going to scream and make everybody come running."

"Well, they exploded all right," said Katherine drily. "I thought the island blew up."

"So did I," said Hinpoha. "They went up just like dynamite. The kettle was blown off the hanger and landed fifty feet away."

"To say nothing of blowing the tent down," said Katherine.

"Oh," said Hinpoha hastily, "that didn't blow down. The boys and Uncle Teddy had taken it down this morning to fix it differently and they were just setting it up again when the awful explosion came. They all yelled and jumped and the whole thing came down on their heads."

Katherine looked over to where the arms and legs were still waving under the billows of canvas and doubled up against a tree in silent spasms. Then she suddenly straightened up. "Who is hiding Eeny-Meeny?" she asked.

"Why," gasped Hinpoha, "you are!"

"I?" said Katherine.

"Yes, you!" said Hinpoha.

"I had forgotten all about the panic," said Katherine, "and the noise scared everything out of my head."

"Quick, before it's too late!" said Hinpoha. "Run down and do it now while everybody's still up here. It'll take at least five minutes to get the boys out from under that tent."

Katherine fled from the scene as quietly as possible and ran to the Council Rock. That whole end of the island was deserted. But when she came to the place where Eeny-Meeny had always been she stood still in amazement. Eeny-Meeny was not there. She had vanished mysteriously and entirely, and in her place was a twig stuck upright into the ground, topped with a piece of paper on which was drawn a picture of an Indian maiden tied to the stake with the flames mounting around her, and underneath was drawn in scrawling capitals: THE DARK OF THE MOON SOCIETY.

Katherine pulled the twig from the earth and stood looking at it, fascinated. Slowly the truth dawned on her. The Sandwiches had gotten ahead of them again. Without having planned the panic they had instantly seen the value of it and one of them had spirited Eeny-Meeny away during the confusion. "Boys are smarter than girls," she admitted ruefully to herself. "At least, some are."

Then another thought flashed through her mind. She had told Antha not half an hour ago that they were planning to hide Eeny-Meeny. Antha had told the boys and they had decided to do the same thing themselves. Her eyes filled with tears of rage and disappointment. After her championship of Antha her action cut her to the quick. Her philosophy had received a rough jolt. Utterly crushed, she returned to the girls and spread the news that Eeny-Meeny had disappeared into the hands of the Dark of the Moon Society. The Winnebagos were sunk in despair, but were rallied by Katherine's oratory. Anyone hearing her would have thought she was speaking on a matter of life and death, so eloquent did she wax and so emphatic were her gestures, as she bade them rise up and rescue Eeny-Meeny at the last minute.

"Not a word to any of them until we are ready to pour the water down into the fire," cautioned Katherine, after she had outlined her plans for rescue. "They must not guess what we intend to do or they'll change their plans and get ahead of us again."

Needless to say, Antha was not admitted into this last council. The suspicion of her perfidy had gone around the circle and it was agreed that she was a horrid little tattletale and deserved to be left out of everything that went on thereafter. As Sahwah had overheard the plot, a large fire was to be built on the beach that night and then at a signal Eeny-Meeny was to be flung into it from above.

"We'll get her first, never fear," said Katherine with a warlike gesture. At times like this she became a creature inspired. Her hair bristled up, her eyes shone, her husky voice gained strength until it rang like a trumpet.

Rather to their surprise, immediately after supper the tom-tom sounded its monotonous call, summoning them to the Council Rock. "What is this?" asked Hinpoha uneasily. "Something new?"

"I don't know," said Katherine agog, with curiosity and on the alert for anything.

Both exclaimed in wonder when they reached the Council Rock. Around it, in a circle, low seats had been placed, built of rustic logs with comfortable back rests. There was one for each person.

"Where did they come from?" all the Winnebagos were asking.

"We made them," announced the Captain with pride. "What do you think of them? Don't you like them?"

"Splendid!" said Aunt Clara. "How did you ever get them made without our knowing?"

"Down in a cave under the east bluff," said the Captain. "That's where we had our workshop. We used to slip away quietly one or two at a time and work on them whenever we had a chance. Sit in them and see how comfortable they are."

The Sandwiches were circling around like polite shopkeepers, begging the girls to try first this seat and then that, to find out which suited them best. Wondering, the girls sank back into the seats, trying to get the meaning of this new development.

"There's something else coming," said Slim importantly, going off with the Captain.

Soon they reappeared, carrying a sort of pedestal with a flagpole attached to it. "It's for Eeny-Meeny to stand on," explained the Captain proudly, "and we put up the pole so the Stars and Stripes could float over her and the people going by in boats could see her."

He set the pedestal down and turned toward the tree where Eeny-Meeny had stood. "Why, where's Eeny-Meeny?" he asked in amazement.

"Where is she?" echoed Slim.

The girls sat dumb. "You ought to know where she is," said Katherine accusingly to the Captain at last. "You took her during the panic yesterday."

"We—took—her—during—the—panic?" said the Captain wonderingly. "We never did! What do you mean? I never noticed until just now that she wasn't in her place."

"You have too got her," said Hinpoha. "The sign of the Dark of the Moon Society was left tied to a twig where she had stood."

"The sign of the what?" asked the Captain.

"The Dark of the Moon Society," said Katherine sharply. It struck her that the Captain was trying to appear dense.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said. He looked perplexed for a moment and then strode over to Anthony and caught him by the neck. "Where's Eeny-Meeny?" he said in an ominously even voice.

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Anthony, struggling to pull out of his grasp. "Ouch! Quit your pinching me."

The Captain took a little firmer hold. "You'd better tell," he advised. "It might not be healthy for you to keep it to yourself. So that's what you meant when you said you knew something we didn't."

Anthony still wiggled and tried to free himself, protesting his innocence.

Uncle Teddy pounded on the tom-tom. "Will somebody please tell me," he said, "what's the matter with you boys and girls. There's been something going on under the surface for the last week. Just now one of you mentioned a 'Dark of the Moon Society.' Will whoever it is please tell?"

There was a rustle from where the girls sat and Sahwah rose to her feet. "The time has come," she said with twinkling eyes, "for all dread secrets to be revealed. You just asked who the Dark of the Moon Society was. I've known for quite a while, and now I'm going to tell."

You could have heard a pin drop and all eyes were fixed on her expectantly. "There isn't any DARK OF THE MOON SOCIETY!" she announced. "Or rather, I'm it."

An incredulous murmur went around the circle.

Sahwah continued. "I kidnapped Eeny-Meeny during the panic yesterday and hid her in that roll of sail cloth. The whole thing is a joke, gotten up for Katherine's benefit. She was having such a terrible fit of blues Gladys was afraid she would never get over it unless she had something to occupy her mind, so I started this business to give her something to think about. I wrote those mysterious warning notices and posted them around the camp. When I saw what a beautiful effect it was having on Katherine I couldn't resist the temptation to keep it up. I knew how fond she was of Eeny-Meeny and decided that if anything threatened her Katherine would think of nothing else night and day. I pretended I had heard voices of the boys plotting to take Eeny-Meeny and burn her up tonight.

"That night when Katherine thought I was walking in my sleep I had been up putting a notice on Eeny-Meeny. When I saw Katherine I was afraid she would be suspicious of my being out at that hour and the only thing I could think of was to pretend that I was asleep." Here Sahwah interrupted herself with a convulsive giggle. "And she tied a string to my foot and kept ahold of it for the rest of the night!"

"And I jumped into that tub of water thinking I was on the trail of the Dark of the Moon Society!" exclaimed Katherine, righteous wrath and amazement struggling for possession of her.

"And I destroyed three perfectly good cans of beans getting up a panic!" said Hinpoha.

"And brought down the house," added the Captain, who had been one of those caught in the fall of the tent.

"And you mean to say," demanded Katherine, "that those boys never intended to burn up Eeny-Meeny?"

"Perish the thought," said Sahwah, enjoying herself in the extreme. "They're as innocent as day old lambs."

"Then so is Anthony," said Hinpoha.

"That's right," said the Captain. Then, turning to Anthony, he made a frank apology for accusing him of hiding Eeny-Meeny.

And all the Winnebagos were filled with remorse when they thought how they had blamed Antha for that same disappearance.

Katherine lay back overcome and fanned herself with a bunch of leaves.

"Well, I'll—be—jiggered!" she exclaimed feelingly. "All that trouble to bring me out of a fit of the blues!"

"Boys," she went on in her best oratorical manner, "you certainly did give us a surprise party tonight, much more of a one than you planned. We came prepared to rescue Eeny-Meeny from a fiery death—witness the water buckets concealed behind every bush on the hillside—and we find some perfectly gorgeous council seats that you have been toiling to make in secret while we suspected you of plotting base deeds. Instead of seeking to destroy Eeny-Meeny you plan to honor her. Girls, let's make fruit punch and drink to the health of the Sandwiches, and a long life to the council seats, and to Eeny-Meeny on her pedestal."

"And don't forget the Dark of the Moon Society," added Sahwah, and once more the woods resounded with laughter.



CHAPTER X

TWO MARINERS AND SOME MIST

"There's one thing about those girls that always takes my breath away," said Mr. Evans, "and that is their ability to get up a show on a moment's notice. The most common circumstance seems to be charged with dramatic possibilities for them. And nothing seems too ambitious for them to attempt." Having delivered this speech, Mr. Evans leaned back against the cliff and watched with amused eyes the performance of the "latest."

Mrs. Evans and Uncle Teddy and Aunt Clara, who were sitting with him, agreed that "our girls," aided and abetted by "our boys," were equal to anything.

The dramatic representation then in progress was another inspiration of Katherine's, which had come to her when Sandhelo, getting lonesome in his high pasture ground, had followed the others to the beach, walking down a steep side of the cliff by a path so narrow and perilous that it was never used by the campers. But Sandhelo, being a trick mule, accomplished the feat without difficulty. The bathers watched his descent in fascinated silence. They feared to shout at him and so make him miss his step.

"Doesn't it remind you of that piece in the Fourth Reader about the mule?" said Hinpoha. "The one that goes:

'And near him a mule bell came tinkling Midway on the Paso del Mar.'

I forgot how it begins."

"Oh, you mean 'The Fight of the Paso del Mar,'" said Migwan. "The one where the two fight and tumble over into the sea. I wore the page that poem was on completely out of the book reading it so often, and wished and wished I had been there to see it happen."

"So did I," said Hinpoha.

"Let's do it," said Katherine suddenly. "We have all the props. Here's the mule, and the rocky shore—that low wedge around the base of the cliff will do beautifully for the Paso del Mar. And 'gusty and raw is the morning,' just the way the poem says, and if there isn't enough fog to 'tear its skirts on the mountain trees,' we can pretend this light mist is a real fog. Everything is here, even the bell on the mule. I'll be Pablo of San Diego and, Hinpoha, you be Bernal."

"Migwan would make a better Bernal," said Hinpoha modestly. "No," said Katherine decidedly, "you'll make a better splash when you fall into the lake, and anyway, Migwan always wanted to see it done, not do it. Hurry up and get your blanket, and get it wrapped gloomily around you. Sandhelo and I will start out from the hills behind."

Hinpoha fetched a blanket and strode across the beach, her fair forehead puckered into what she fondly believed to be a ferocious scowl, while the bathers ranged themselves into an audience. Katherine, between clucks and commands, designed to keep Sandhelo's feet in the straight and narrow path, i.e., the low-jutting ledge of the cliff just above the water line, raised her cracked voice in a three-part harmony and "sang through the fog and wind." Sandhelo moved forward willingly enough. Since Katherine had taken him seriously in hand that summer he had learned to carry a rider without the accompaniment of music. If he hadn't, Katherine would never have been able to make him stir, for he certainly would not have classed her husky, bleating tones as music.

Bernal advanced cautiously onto the Paso del Mar, taking care not to slip on the wet stones, and encountered the blithe Pablo midway on the pass, holding tight to his mule's bridle strap with one hand and covering up a rent in the waist of his bathing suit with the other.

"Back!" shouted Bernal full fiercely.

And "Back!" shouted Pablo in wrath, and then things happened. Sandhelo, with the sensitiveness of his artistic temperament, thought that all remarks made in his presence were intended to be personal. So when Hinpoha looked him in the eye and shouted "Back!" and Katherine jerked his bridle and screamed "Back!" he cannot be blamed if he did what any gentleman would have done when commanded by a lady. He backed.

"Whoa!" shouted Katherine, taken unawares and nearly falling off his small saddle area. But Sandhelo considered that his first orders had been pretty definite and he continued to back along the narrow ledge. "Stop!" screamed Katherine, while the audience roared with laughter, "'We turn not on Paso del Mar!'"

The word "turn" seemed to give Sandhelo a brilliant new idea, and, without warning, he rose on his hind legs, whirled around in a dizzy semi-circle, and started back in the direction whence he had come. Katherine, unable to check his inglorious flight, hung on grimly. He left the narrow ledge and started climbing the hill, leaving the black-hearted Bernal in full possession of the Paso del Mar. At the top of the hill Katherine slid off Sandhelo's back, the soft grass breaking her fall, and lay there laughing so she could not get up, while Sandhelo raced on to his favorite grazing ground.

"To think it had to turn out that way, when I was dying to see the part where you fall into the lake," lamented Migwan, when the cast had collected itself on the beach. "It wasn't at all the real thing."

"Some of it was," said Sahwah. "The beginning was all right."

"And the mule did go home 'riderless' eventually," said Katherine, rubbing her bumped elbow. "Didn't he make speed going around that narrow, slippery ledge, though?" she went on. "I expected him to go overboard every minute. But he tore along as easily as if he were running on a velvetine road."

"On a what?" asked Slim.

"She means a corduroy road, I guess," said Gladys, and they all shouted with laughter.

"Ho-ho-ho!" chuckled Slim, "that's pretty good. Velvetine road! Would there be any binnacles on it, do you suppose?" he added teasingly.

"That's right, everybody insult a poor old woman what ain't never had a chance to get an eddication!" sobbed Katherine, shedding mock tears into her handkerchief. "What's the difference? Doesn't velvetine sound just as good as corduroy? And, anyhow, it's better style this year than corduroy."

"Hear the poor, ignorant, old lady talk about style," jeered Sahwah. "I didn't think you ever came out of your abstraction long enough to know what was in style."

"Even in her absentmindedness she seems to have a preference for fine things, though," said Gladys, beginning to giggle reminiscently. "Do you remember the time she walked out of Osterland's with a thirty-dollar hat on her head?"

Katherine rose as if to forcibly silence her, but Sahwah held her back and Gladys proceeded for the edification of the boys. "You see," said Gladys, "she was in there trying on hats all by herself because the saleswomen were busy with other people. She had put on a mink hat and was roaming around looking for a handglass to see how it looked from the back, when she suddenly got an idea for a story she was to write for that month's club meeting. She forgot all about having the hat on her head and started for home as fast as she could. Out on the sidewalk she met Nyoda, who admired the hat. Then she came to."

"Mercy!" said Aunt Clara to Katherine, "weren't you frightened when you discovered it?"

"Not she," said Gladys. "She walked right back inside, big as life, hunted around until she found her own hat, and handed the mink one to the saleswoman, who had just sent a store detective out after her. The detective escorted her to the door that time, but it didn't worry her in the least. She went right back into the store the next day and tried the same hat on again and couldn't imagine why the saleswoman left another customer and was so attentive to her. The simplicity of some people is perfectly touching."

"I won't stay and be made fun of," said Katherine, and marched up the hill with an injured air, calling back over her shoulder, "all people who ordered fudge today might as well cancel their orders, because I'm not going to make any, so there!"

"Oh, I say, don't get mad," said Slim in alarm, whereat everybody laughed. He was the one for whom Katherine's words were intended, nobody else having "ordered" any fudge.

"Honest, I forgot I promised not to tell about the binnacles," said Slim pleadingly.

But Katherine was adamant and would not forgive him. Slim grunted ruefully and exclaimed: "Shucks! I always manage to get in bad with her. Always in bad," he repeated dolefully.

"We'll have to re-christen you 'In-Bad the Sailor!'" said Sahwah.

"Really!" said the Captain, making a grimace of comical surprise at her. "Who would have thought the child was so deucedly clevah, bah Jove!"

But the name of In-Bad the Sailor struck the others as being such a good one that they adopted it right away, and Slim had to answer to it half the time for the rest of the summer.

Slim shadowed Katherine so closely and volunteered so gallantly to do all her dinner chores that she relented in the middle of the afternoon and brought out the brown and white "makin's" that Slim's sweet tooth so delighted in. The Captain looked at them and jeered as he went past on his way down to the landing.

"Slim would eat his words any day if he could roll them in a piece of fudge," he called. Slim only smiled sweetly as he watched the experimental spoonful being dropped into the cup of water. Nothing could ruffle him now.

The Captain walked briskly down the hill and untied the small launch.

"Where are you going?" called Hinpoha from the log where she was sitting all by herself reading.

"Over to St. Pierre, to mail a Special Delivery letter for Uncle Teddy," replied the Captain.

"Do you need any help getting it over?" asked Hinpoha.

"Why, yes," said the Captain, laughing, "come along if you want to." Hinpoha tripped gaily over the beach and seated herself in the launch with him.

"Hadn't you better wear your sweater?" asked the Captain, looking rather doubtfully at Hinpoha's low-necked and short-sleeved middy. "There's a raw wind today and cutting against it will make it worse."

Hinpoha shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not a bit cold," she replied carelessly. "I always go like this; even in lots colder weather. I'm so hardened down to it that I never catch cold. Besides, we're not going to be out after dark, are we? You're just going straight over to St. Pierre and back?"

"That's all," said the Captain. "Just to mail this letter and buy some alcohol for Uncle Teddy and some peanuts for the chippies. Hadn't ought to take more than an hour and a half altogether." He started the engine and off they chugged. They reached St. Pierre in good time, mailed the letter, bought the alcohol and the peanuts and a postcard with a picture of a donkey on it to give to Katherine and some lollypops for Slim and started back.

"What's happened to the sun?" asked Hinpoha. It had been feeble and watery on the way over, but now it had vanished from the sky, and a fine mist seemed to be falling all over. Hinpoha shivered involuntarily as they started off.

"You really should have brought your sweater along," said the Captain. "Here, spread this tarpaulin over you, it'll keep you warm a little."

Hinpoha declared she wasn't very cold, but, nevertheless, she availed herself of the protection the tarpaulin afforded and was glad to have it. The mist thickened until it looked like steam, and almost before they knew it they were surrounded on all sides by a dense fog. They could not see a boat length ahead of them.

"Nice pickle," said the Captain, buttoning his collar around his throat. "How are we ever going to find our way back to Ellen's Isle in this mess?"

Hinpoha strained her eyes trying to peer through the white curtain. "I don't know," she said, "unless you can guide yourself by the fog horn in the harbor of St. Pierre. Keep it behind us, you know."

"But the sound seems to come from all around," said the Captain.

"It will at first, but afterwards you can tell," said Hinpoha. "Nyoda used to keep making us tell the direction from which sounds came and we can almost always do it. The fog horn is behind us now."

The Captain kept on in the direction they had been going and ran very slowly. "It'll take us all evening to get home at this rate," he said. "If we don't run past the island," he added under his breath.

A few minutes later the chugging of the engine ceased and their steady, if slow, progress was arrested. "What's the matter?" asked Hinpoha.

"I don't know," said the Captain in a vexed tone. "It can't be that we're out of gasoline—I filled up before we left. The engine's gone dead."

He struck match after match in an effort to see what the trouble was, but they only made a feeble glare in the fog and he could not locate the trouble. "What are we going to do now?" he exclaimed in a tone of concern.

"Sit here until the fog lifts, I suppose," said Hinpoha calmly.

Finally, satisfied that he could do absolutely nothing to fix the trouble until he could see, the Captain settled back to await the lifting of the fog. The chill in the air was getting sharper all the time, and, although Hinpoha did everything she could to prevent it, her teeth chattered and the Captain could feel her convulsive shivers, even under the tarpaulin.

"Here," he said, taking off his coat and putting it around her shoulders, "put this on."

Hinpoha shoved it away resolutely, shaking her head. She could not speak articulately. But the Captain was determined and made her put it on in spite of her protests.

"Y-you'll t-t-take c-c-c-cold," she said.

"No, I won't," said the Captain, "but you will." Hinpoha made him take the tarpaulin as she began to warm through in the coat.

"It's kind of fun," she said in a natural voice again. "It's a new experience."

"Is there anything you girls don't think is fun?" asked the Captain in an admiring tone. "Most girls would be wringing their hands and declaring they would never go out in a boat again. Aren't you really afraid?"

"Not the least bit," said Hinpoha emphatically.

"You're a good sport," said the Captain.

"'Thank you kindly, sir, she said,'" replied Hinpoha. But she was pleased with the compliment, nevertheless, because she knew it was sincere. The Captain never said anything he did not mean.

They sat there drifting back and forth with the current for several hours, and then suddenly there was a break in the white curtain and two bright eyes looked down at them from above. "It's the Twins!" cried Hinpoha delightedly. "The Sailors' Stars. They have come to guide us back. Don't you remember, they're always directly in front of us when we come home from St. Pierre in the evening."

The fog was breaking and drifting away before a fresh breeze which had sprung up and first one star and then another came into view. Soon they could see a bright red light in the distance and knew it was a signal fire, which the folks on Ellen's Isle had built to guide them. Hinpoha held her little bug light down while the Captain searched for the trouble in the launch engine and he was not long in discovering that it was nothing serious. A few pokes in her vitals and the launch began chugging again.

The whole family was lined up on the beach awaiting their arrival and they were welcomed back as though they had been gone a year. It was nearly nine o'clock. They had been out on the lake more than four hours.

"Stop hugging Hinpoha, Gladys," bade her mother, "and let her eat something. Those blessed children must be nearly starved."

This was not quite true, because they had eaten the two quarts of peanuts and the half dozen lollypops originally consigned to the camp, which had saved them from starving very nicely.

The clearing wind, which had dispelled the fog, came from the north and blew colder and colder as the night wore on. In the morning the Captain woke stiff and chilled and with a very sore throat. "I'm all right," he protested when Aunt Clara came in to administer remedies, but his voice was a mere croak. Aunt Clara felt of his head and found a high fever. She promptly ordered him to stay in bed and set herself to the task of breaking up the cold. Hinpoha wandered around distracted all day.

"It was my fault, all my fault," she wailed. "If I had only had sense enough to take my sweater he wouldn't have made me take his coat. Is he very sick, Aunt Clara?"

By night the Captain was very much worse. He had developed a bad case of bronchitis and his breath rattled ominously.

Hinpoha, crouching anxiously at the foot of a big tree near the tent, overheard a low-voiced conversation between Uncle Teddy and Aunt Clara, who were standing in the path. "It would be pretty serious if he were to develop pneumonia out here," said Uncle Teddy in an anxious tone.

"We're doing our best," said Aunt Clara, "but he's a very sick boy. In the morning you must bring the doctor from St. Pierre."

They passed on and Hinpoha heard no more. But her heart sank like a lump of lead. The Captain was going to have pneumonia and it was all her fault! If he died she would be a murderer. How could she ever face Uncle Teddy again? She was afraid to go back with the rest, but sat crouched there under the tree almost beside herself with remorse until Aunt Clara herself found her and made her go to bed.

In the morning Uncle Teddy brought a doctor from St. Pierre who stayed on the job all day and by night announced that there was no danger of pneumonia, although the Captain had had a very narrow escape.

"Now what are you crying for?" demanded Katherine, coming upon Hinpoha all by herself in the woods.

"Be-c-cause I'm s-so g-glad," said Hinpoha from the depths of a thankful heart.

"You make me tired," said Katherine, and brushed a tear out of her own eye.



CHAPTER XI

HARE AND HOUNDS

Once the tide was turned the Captain mended fast. A spell of beautiful, warm, dry weather followed the cold week, when the sun shone from morning until night and the pine-scented breezes bore health and strength on their pinions. Hinpoha outdid herself cooking delicate messes for him and Slim nearly died with envy when he saw the choice dishes being loaded on the invalid's tray.

"Pretty soft, pretty soft, I call it," he would say to the Captain, and the Captain would laugh and reply he was willing to change places.

The Captain's return to the ranks of the "huskies" was celebrated with a program of water sports and a great clam-bake on the beach. Of course, the Winnebagos got up a pageant, which on this occasion was a canoe procession, each canoe representing one of the seven points of the Camp Fire Law. "Seek Beauty" held a fairy creature dressed in white and garlanded with flowers; "Give Service" was the big war canoe, which went on ahead and towed all the others but one; "Pursue Knowledge" held a maiden who scanned the heavens with a telescope; "Be Trustworthy" held up a bag conspicuously labeled CAMP FUNDS; "Hold on to Health" was Katherine holding up a huge paper clock dial, its painted hands pointing to half past three A. M. with the slogan "Early to bed and early to rise make a crew healthy, wealthy and wise." "Glorify Work" paddled its own canoe, scorning to be towed by "Give Service," and "Be Happy" came along singing such rollicking songs and shouting so with laughter that they set the audience into a roar.

After the pageant came fancy drills in the war canoe. The crew were in fine practice by this time and the paddles rose, dipped, cross rested, clicked and water wheeled all as one in obedience to the commands shouted by Uncle Teddy. Just before the war canoe started out on her exhibition trip the Stars and Stripes was nailed to her prow with much ceremony and "floated proudly before" her throughout the manoeuvers.

Of course, no water sports could be complete without swimming races and a stunt contest, and Slim drew great applause by floating with his hands behind his head and one leg crossed over the other in his favorite position in the couch hammock.

Then Sahwah's stunt was announced and she went to Hinpoha, Migwan and Gladys and invited them to take tea with her that afternoon. They accepted with pleasure and withdrew to prink. In the meantime, Sahwah took a plate in her hand and dove under the surface. She swam to a large, flat rock, which was plainly visible through the clear water, set the plate on the rock and weighed it down with a stone. She did this three more times, setting four plates in all. Then she put a pear on each plate under the stone. This finished, she came to the surface and sat on a rock to await the coming of her guests.

When they arrived she greeted them affably and bade them make themselves comfortable beside her. They were chatting merrily when suddenly a black figure rose from the water almost at their feet so suddenly that Mrs. Evans screamed. The black figure was the Monkey, who had quietly slipped into the water behind a large rock while all attention was focussed on the girls, and swimming under water came up in front of them. The new arrival on the scene turned out to be the waiter who announced that tea was ready. "We will be down immediately, Thomas," said Sahwah in her best society manner and promptly dove off the rock, the others following suit. They found their plates on the submerged rock, ate the pears under water and came up, amid the prolonged applause and shouting of the audience, who couldn't see "how they did it without choking." Of course that stunt was voted the best and the clever divers were crowned with ground pine in lieu of laurel and treated to lollypops.

Sahwah was just recovering the last plate when a sudden gust of wind tore the flag from the prow of the war canoe, riding at anchor a short distance away, and sent it flying through the air. It flew right over her head as she came up, and, reaching out her hand, she caught it. Then she swam back to the dock holding the flag above her head well out of the water so that not a drop stained it. The watchers cheered mightily as she came in waving it.

"'The old flag never touched the ground,'" she said, holding her head up proudly, "and it'll never fall into the water while I'm around."

"If only all young people had that same spirit of reverence toward their country's flag!" said Uncle Teddy fervently. "It is becoming a rarer sight all the time to see a young man take off his hat to the Stars and Stripes. We have come to regard it as a sort of decorative rag, and of no more significance than any other decoration. I think it is up to you Camp Fire Girls to foster this spirit of respect for the flag among young folks. I am very glad you did this thing today, Sahwah. It was a fine act."

Sahwah hung her head as she always did when praised, but the others declared that she grew an inch taller from that minute on.

"By the way, what's become of the Principal Diversion for this week?" asked Katherine at breakfast one morning the week following the clam-bake in honor of the Captain's recovery. "Maybe I was asleep in Council Meeting Monday night, but I don't seem to recollect hearing one announced. Did I miss the announcement?" she asked of Sahwah, who with the Monkey was Chief for that week.

"There wasn't any announcement made," said Sahwah, trying to look dignified behind the coffee pot, and so busy filling up the plates of the others that she had scarcely eaten a mouthful herself. "We simply couldn't think of a thing that had not been done before, and we're still thinking."

"We haven't had a hare and hound chase yet," remarked Gladys. It was merely an idle suggestion, but the others pounced upon it immediately.

"The very thing!" said Sahwah promptly. "All our Principal Diversions so far have been trips by water; it's time we did a little scouting on foot. Thanks for the idea. We'll put it into action immediately. Today is a fine day for tramping. Munson can be leader of the Hares and I'll take the Hounds. All those sitting above the toast plate at the table will be Hares; all those on this side of it, Hounds. Hares will start right after breakfast and have an hour's start. Dinner will be carried along and eaten when the Hounds catch up with the Hares. If the Hounds catch the Hares before they reach their destination the Hares will do the cooking and give a show; if they have to wait for the Hounds to come up the Hounds will do the catering, watering and celebrating. The Hares will demonstrate their knowledge of scouting by blazing the trail in the proper manner, both by marking trees and by placing stones in the path."

The Hares scurried around and were ready to start in a jiffy. These were Munson McKee as leader, with Katherine, the Captain, Gladys, Pitt, Nakwisi and Antha. Sahwah's band consisted of Hinpoha and Slim, Migwan and Peter Jenkins, Dan Porter and Anthony. The elders had decided not to go on this trip. Mrs. Evans and Aunt Clara were still somewhat tired from their siege of nursing the Captain and were glad to have a day of quiet, and Uncle Teddy and Mr. Evans wanted to work on the boat landing, which was sinking into the water.

Uncle Teddy took the Hares across the lake in the launch and set them down at the edge of the woods. They struck out through the trees, chipping the trail on the trunks with a sharp hatchet, and working their way around the curve of the shore line to St. Pierre. There they rested and bought ice cream and while they were eating it Katherine had one of her periodical inspirations.

"Let's keep right on going until we get back to camp, and not stop anywhere at all," she suggested. "Won't we lead the others a fine chase, though? They'll be dead by the time they get there."

"What about us?" asked Gladys. "We'll be dead ourselves."

"I suppose we will," admitted Katherine, who hadn't thought of this before, "but it will be worth it. Who'll be game?"

"I know a way to fix it so we won't be dead," said Pitt, the crafty. Pitt could always use his head to save his heels, and was a very Ulysses for cunning.

"How?" they all asked.

"Leave a note for the others on that last tree we blazed, telling them to follow the sand beach around to the Point of Pines. There aren't any trees along the beach so they won't think anything about our not blazing a trail. Then we'll simply rent a boat and cut straight across the lake to the Point of Pines. From there we'll go on blazing the trail back to the place opposite Ellen's Isle where we are to signal Uncle Teddy. By cutting across the corner of the lake that way we'll save three miles that the others will have to walk, and they'll wonder and wonder how we got so far ahead of them." The prospect of turning the hare and hound chase into a joke on the Hounds was too funny to pass up, and with giggles and chuckles they pinned the note on the tree back at the edge of the woods where the road ran toward St. Pierre; then they rented two rowboats and piled into them. Some distance to the east of St. Pierre stood the old abandoned lighthouse, and they had to row past it. It stood out in the water, several hundred feet from the shore, on an island so tiny that it did no more than give a foothold for the tower.

"Let's stop and go into it," said Katherine. "I've never seen a lighthouse close up before. And you ought to get a grand view of the lake and the islands from that little balcony that runs around the top. Maybe we can see the others trailing after us."

The rest were also anxious to see the old lighthouse and as their short cut across the lake would gain them at least an hour they decided there was plenty of time to go inside. So the boys rowed alongside and made the boats fast and they all went up.

"It's horribly dilapidated and messy," said Gladys, viewing with fastidious distaste a pile of crumbled bricks and mortar which lay at the foot of the stairway, the result of an explosion which had blown a hole in the wall.

"'If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year, Do you suppose,' the Walrus said, 'that they could get it clear?'"

quoted Gladys, waving her hand in the direction of the heap.

"No doubt, but for a job like that I really wouldn't keer!" answered Katherine. "Come on, you can climb over it." And suiting the action to the word she took a long step over the pile of bricks and then reached down and pulled Gladys up after her.

It was fun standing up in the top of the lighthouse and looking out over the lake in all directions. The boats in the harbor of St. Pierre looked like cute little toys, and Ellen's Isle seemed to have shrunk to half its size.

"Come, Munson," said Katherine, "you get into the lantern and be the beacon. You can see that red hair of yours a mile. Too bad Hinpoha isn't here, she's a regular signal light."

"Get in yourself," retorted the Monkey. "Your nose is as red as my hair."

Far out over the lake they could see the black trail of smoke made by an approaching steamer.

"Here comes the Huronic," said Gladys.

"Let's stay out here until she goes past, and wave at the people," said Katherine.

"We won't have time, if we want to get to the Point of Pines ahead of the others," said the Captain. Katherine reluctantly admitted that he was right and they picked their way down the littered stairs again. But there were so many fascinating corners to poke into that another half hour ticked by before they could finally tear themselves away.

"Where are the boats?" asked Katherine, who was the first through the door. Yes, where were they? They were no longer fastened where the Captain had left them. Far out in the lake they saw them, still tied together, bobbing up and down on the baby waves.

The girls uttered a shriek of dismay, all except Katherine, who exclaimed in comical amazement, "What do you know about that?"

"I thought I had them tied fast," said the Captain ruefully. "What in the name of goodness are we going to do now?"

"Don't ask me," said the Monkey, gazing in a fascinated way at the swiftly fleeing boats. There was a strong current among the islands up here which was sweeping the runaways very fast toward the channel.

"Stranded!" exclaimed the Captain.

"Marooned!" said the Bottomless Pitt.

"Shipwrecked!" said the Monkey.

"Desoited!" cried Katherine, wringing her hands and rolling her eyes. "Left to perish miserably in the middle of the sea! Now, Count Flamingo, you have your revenge!"

"Just the same," said Gladys when she had finished laughing at Katherine's absurd heroics, "we're in a fine pickle. Just how are we going to get out of here?"

"Let's see," said Katherine, puckering her brow. "What do people usually do on such occasions? We've been in 'fine pickles' before, and we've always gotten out of them. Isn't the proper thing to do when you're locked up in a lonely tower to sing siren-like music until the noble hero hears you and comes to the rescue? Do you suppose my secret lover would ever mistake my sweet voice for anyone else's, once he heard it wafted in on the breeze?"

"Oh, stop your nonsense, Katherine," said Gladys. "You make me laugh so I can't think of a thing to do. Captain, how are we going to attract people's attention?"

"Run up a distress signal, I suppose," replied the Captain, "if we have anything to run up."

"Well, there's one thing about it," declared Katherine flatly, "I refuse to be the distress signal this time. Every time we've had to have one in the past my belongings have been sacrificed."

"Don't get worried, injured one," said Gladys soothingly. "We can wave the two towels I brought along."

"Just the thing!" said Katherine. "We can wave them when the steamer goes by and they'll send a lifeboat for us. How romantic! She's just coming into the channel now. Everybody get ready to call."

The big Huronic, the magnificent white steamer that stopped at St. Pierre once a week on her way down to Chicago, swung into sight around a long point of land.

"Now wave!" commanded Katherine, when the Huronic was almost opposite them, and the towels fluttered frantically over the edge of the little balcony. Dozens of handkerchiefs were waved in answer from the deck of the big liner. "They think we're just waving at them for fun," said Katherine, when nothing took place that looked like an effort at rescue.

Making trumpets of their hands they all shrieked in unison, "Help!" But the wind was toward them and carried the sound back. The stately Huronic proceeded serenely on her way without a pause.

"They aren't going to stop!" said Gladys.

"Oh, let them go on then," said Katherine crossly. Then she added, "I suppose it was kind of foolish to expect a big boat like that to stop and pick up a bunch of folks that didn't know any better than to climb into an old lighthouse and let their boats float away."

"Isn't she a beauty, though?" said Gladys, looking after the ship in admiration. The sun shining on the broad, white side of the Huronic as she turned toward St. Pierre made her look like a gleaming, white bird.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again," said Katherine optimistically. "Even if the fair Huronic did spurn us we can no doubt get the attention of a fishing boat. Some of them are always going round. Cheer up, Antha, and don't look so scared. Remember, you're with me, and I bear a charmed life!"

And joking over their situation, but, nevertheless, keeping a sharp lookout for anything on the horizon, they settled down to pass the time.

Meanwhile, the Hounds had reached the woods before St. Pierre, found the directions on the tree and turned off toward the beach to follow the shore to the Point of Pines. But after plodding through the thick, soft sand for a while they decided that that mode of traveling was altogether too fatiguing, and went back into the woods where they found a path which ran in the general line of the shore and which was much easier traveling. But even at that they were pretty well tired when they reached the Point of Pines where they supposed the others would be waiting for them. But there was no glimpse of the Hares at the Point of Pines.

"Where do you suppose they are?" asked Hinpoha, mystified.

"Hiding, I suppose," said Sahwah wearily, sitting down in the soft grass. "Let's let them stay hidden until we get rested up. It's up to us to get dinner I suppose, but I'm just too tired to begin."

"But you will pretty soon, won't you?" asked Slim anxiously.

"You aren't hungry already, are you, Slim?" asked Hinpoha teasingly.

"Already!" said Slim, looking at his watch. "Do you folks know what time it is? It's half past two!"

"Mercy!" said Sahwah. "It's taken us ages to get here. Maybe the beach would have been shorter, anyway."

"Let's call for the Hares," said Hinpoha. "It'll take too much time to try to find them. And I'm too tired to go hunting through the woods."

So they called, "Come out, we give up." Their voices echoed against the opposite shore, but there was no other answer. They called again with the same result.

"They're not here!" said Hinpoha with a prophetic feeling. "Where are we, anyway? Is this the Point of Pines? I believe we've come to the wrong place! We should have stuck to the shore after all and not gone off into that path through the woods that turned and twisted so many times. Are you sure this is the Point of Pines?"

"I don't know whether I'm sure or not," said Sahwah in perplexity. "I certainly thought it was all the time. I may be mistaken."

"I think you are," said Hinpoha. "There isn't a sign of the Hares here. How will we find them?"

"I think the best thing to do," said Sahwah calmly, displaying her great talent for leadership in this emergency, "is to stay where we are and let them find us. If we start hunting around for each other in these woods we'll never get together. We'll just stay here and build two signal fires. You know that two columns of smoke is the sign for 'I'm lost.' Well, we'll just put up the 'lost' signal and if they're hunting for us they'll see that and come straight over here."

The others agreed that this was the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances. There was plenty of driftwood, and two good fires were soon going, and the green branches piled on top of them sent up the most gratifying signal smokes.

"Now let's get our dinner," said Hinpoha, when that was accomplished, "without waiting any longer."

The seven marooned sailors looked and looked in all directions without seeing a single thing to wave at.

"It's too bad," said Katherine. "Here's a fine opportunity for some likely young fisherman to make a hero of himself rescuing a band of shipwrecked lady fairs and winning their undying gratitude. Maybe we'd take up a collection and buy him an Ingersoll as a reward. But nobody seems to be around anywhere to jump at the chance. It's a wasted opportunity."

"There seems to be a boat around the other side of that point of land," said Gladys, shading her eyes with her hand. "See those two columns of smoke going up?"

"It must be standing still," said the Captain. "The smoke is going up in the same place all the while."

"It's two boats," said Katherine, "or does a boat have two smokestacks?"

"That's not boat smoke," said the Captain with a knowing air. "That's from fires on the shore. They must be on that farther point, just beyond the one we're looking against."

"Isn't that the Point of Pines?" asked Gladys.

"It is!" said Katherine. "And I'll bet you a cooky it's the Hounds who have built those fires. They've been walking all this while and have reached the Point."

"What would they want with two fires, though?" asked Gladys. "And such thick smoke! They can't possibly be cooking anything over them."

"I know!" cried the Captain. "They're signal fires. You know Uncle Teddy showed us how to make them. Two smokes mean 'We're lost.' They don't know what to make of it because they didn't find us there and are signalling for us."

"How perfectly rich!" said Katherine, laughing until her hair tumbled down. "Here we are, cooped up in a lighthouse trying to signal someone to come and get us away, and there they are, wanting us to come and help them. It's the funniest thing you ever saw!"

And the Hares watched the two smokes ascending into the blue sky and laughed helplessly.

Meanwhile, there was a panic on the Point of Pines. In the middle of the peaceful dinner party two rowboats tied together came floating in toward the shore. The boys waded out and brought them up on the beach.

"Look," cried Hinpoha, picking up something that lay in the bottom of one of them. It was a battered tan khaki hat with the frayed cord hanging down over one side and a picture of a Kewpie drawn on the big button in front. There was no mistaking it. It was Katherine's hat.

Migwan screamed. "They're drowned! They've gone out in boats and upset! That's why they're not here. Oh, what will we do?"

"Take it easy," said Sahwah soothingly. "They haven't upset. There isn't a speck of water in the boats. They've simply floated off and left the folks somewhere. What were the Hares doing out in boats, anyway?" she mused. "But if they're along the shore here somewhere we ought to go and look for them. Maybe we missed directions by not keeping to the beach. That must be it. They probably told us about the boats in a later note that we didn't get."

With an air of relief they finished their dinner and then piled into the boats and started coasting along the shore, looking for the Hares.

"This is getting to be a real hare and hound chase," observed Hinpoha, as they proceeded slowly, looking into every little cove and inlet. Soon they rounded the last point and were spied by the anxious watchers in the lighthouse, who waved their towels and shrieked at the tops of their voices.

The Hounds got the surprise of their lives when they heard that hail and looking up saw the Hares perched up in the lighthouse, "just exactly like crows on a telephone pole," said Sahwah, telling Aunt Clara about it later.

The stranded Hares were taken ashore under a running fire of pleasantry about their plight, and were told moral stories about people who tried to play jokes on others and got the worst of it themselves, and Sahwah advised them gravely never to go out in a rowboat that wouldn't stand without hitching, and so on and so forth until the poor Hares did not know which way to turn.

So the members of the chase went homeward, hunters and hunted side by side, laughing at the events of the day and agreeing that the chief charm of nearly all their expeditions lay in the fact that they never turned out the way they had expected them to.

"Good gracious, Slim, you aren't hungry again?" said Sahwah, as Slim, stooping among the leaves, brought up a bunch of bright blue berries and started to put them all into his mouth at once.

"Don't eat those berries!" said Anthony suddenly. "They aren't real blueberries. They make your throat feel as if it were full of red hot needles and it hurts for hours. I ate some one day and I know."

Slim dropped the berries hastily. "Thanks, old man, for telling me," he said warmly.

"Whew! What a chance for a comeback he would have had on Slim!" said the Captain that night as the campers sat around in an informal family council while the twins were out in the launch with Mr. Evans. "The fact that he didn't take it shows that he's a pretty good sort after all. I didn't think he had it in him."

"Do you know," said Katherine seriously, "I believe I know what's been the trouble with Anthony. He was spoiled when he was little and allowed to talk all the time and that made people dislike him. It made him unpopular with his boy friends and he's been unpopular so long that he expects everybody he meets to dislike him. So he starts to patronize and bully his new acquaintances right away because he thinks they won't like him anyway and it's his way of getting even. But I believe that underneath it he's the loneliest boy that ever lived. Nobody can have a very good time or really enjoy life when they're disliked by everybody.

"Now I think we made a mistake in our treatment of him from the start. We didn't like him when we first saw him and we let him know it. We froze him out in the beginning. I know how I feel toward people that I think don't like me. They bring out the worst side of me every time. Now Anthony must have a lot of good stuff in him or he couldn't have acted the way he did today. It's up to us to bring it out, and I think the way to do it is to treat him as if we thought there was nothing but a 'best' side to him. We mustn't act as if we thought he was going to do something mean all the time. Take, for instance, the time we thought somebody had hidden Eeny-Meeny, and you jumped on him as a matter of course."

"We thought he'd be likely to do it," said the Captain, trying to justify himself before Katherine's reproach.

"That's exactly the trouble," said Katherine. "We always thought he'd be 'likely' to do something mean, but we never thought he'd be 'likely' to do something good. Everything that has happened around here has been blamed on Anthony as a matter of course. We've never given him a fair chance. You boys didn't let him in on the secret of those council seats because you were afraid he'd give it away. That was wrong. You should have let him help and never doubted him for a minute. People generally do just what you expect them to do. If we took Anthony seriously and acted as though we could rely on his judgment he'd soon have a judgment we could rely on. I say we've had ahold of the wrong handle of Anthony all the while. We knocked the boasting out of him with a sledgehammer and that was all right in that case; but for the rest of it we've got to show that we respect and trust him, and take my word for it, he won't disappoint us. Don't you think that's what's been the trouble, Uncle Teddy?"

"My dear Katherine," said Uncle Teddy, "the way you put things it would take a blind beetle not to see them. You certainly have put Anthony up in an entirely new light. I've nearly got gray hair wondering why he did not profit by our illustrious example here; now you've put the whole thing in a nutshell. It isn't half as much to sit and look at a parade as it is to ride in the band wagon. But from now on we'll see that Anthony is made part of the show.

"If only everybody had such faith in mankind as you have, what a world this would be!"



CHAPTER XII

ANTHA'S RESPONSIBILITY

"Katherine, are you low in your mind again?" Gladys peered suspiciously over the edge of the cliff to where Katherine was sitting in her favorite fly-on-the-wall position midway between earth and sky, her head leaned thoughtfully back against the stone wall behind her.

"No'm," answered Katherine meekly, and grinned reassuringly through the wisp of hair that hung down over her face. She put the lock carefully back into place with a critical hand and continued: "I was just exercising my young brain thinking."

Gladys heaved a sigh of relief and prepared to join Katherine on the ledge. "I'm so glad it isn't the indigoes this time," she said, swinging her feet over the edge and scraping her shoulder blades along the rock until they found a certain groove which fitted them like a glove, "because I don't think Sahwah could think up another conspiracy like the Dark of the Moon Society to bring you out of it. But why were you looking so solemn?"

"I was merely wondering about Antha," replied Katherine. "Now we've got Anthony where we understand him; but Antha is still the spiritless cry baby she was when she came. She hasn't a particle of backbone. I'm getting discouraged about her." She pulled a patch of moss from the rock beside her and tore it moodily into shreds.

"Are you quite, quite sure you're not low in your mind?" asked Gladys.

Katherine sat up with a jerk, sending a loosened particle of stone bounding and clattering down the face of the cliff. "Of course not!" she said energetically. "I was just wondering, that's all. I haven't lost faith in Antha and I don't doubt but what she'll brace up before the summer is over. If we only knew a recipe for developing grit!"

"Stop worrying about that child and let's go out in a canoe," said Gladys, catching hold of Katherine's hand and pulling her up.

Katherine rose and smoothed out her skirts—a new action for her. "Do I look any neater?" she inquired.

"Quite a bit," replied Gladys, looking her over with a critical eye.

"I hope I do," said Katherine with a sigh. "I've spent most of the week sewing on buttons. But my hair is absolutely hopeless," and she shook the fringe back out of her eyes viciously.

"Let me do it for you some day," said Gladys, "and I'll see what can be done with those loose ends."

"All right," said Katherine wearily, and they went down the path together.

"We won't have time to go out in a canoe," said Gladys when they reached the beach. "Here comes the launch back from St. Pierre with the mail."

"I wonder if there's a letter for me," said Katherine rather wistfully. "I haven't had a word from father and mother for three weeks." And she hopefully joined the throng that stood with outstretched hands around the pack of letters Uncle Teddy was holding out of reach above his head.

"Oh, I say," he begged, "can't you wait a minute until I show you my newest treasure? If I give you your letters first you'll all sneak off into corners and read them and then you never will look at it."

"What is it?" cried an eager chorus, for it must be something splendid that would delay the distribution of the mail.

Uncle Teddy opened a carefully packed box and drew forth an exceedingly fine camera, which he exhibited with all the pride of a boy. "I've had my heart set on this little machine for years," he said happily, "but I've never had the two hundred dollars to spend for it. But now a wealthy gentleman whom I guided on a canoe trip last May and whom I was able to render some slight service when he was taken ill in the woods, has made me a present of it. Did you ever hear of such generosity?"

He did not mention the fact that the "slight service" had consisted of carrying the sick man on his back for fifteen miles through the woods.

The boys and girls looked at the camera with awe and were half afraid to touch it. A thing that had cost two hundred dollars was not to be handled lightly.

"It has a speed of one thousandth of a second," announced Uncle Teddy, displaying all the fine points of his treasure like an auctioneer. "Won't I get some great pictures of you folks diving, though!" And he stood looking at the thing in his hands as if he did not quite believe it was real. Then he came to himself with a start and tossed the pack of letters to Katherine to distribute, remarking that his good fortune had quite robbed him of his manners.

Katherine handed out the letters in short order, for she saw one addressed to her, and when they had all been given out she climbed back to her seat on the ledge to enjoy the news from home in peace and quiet.

Supper was an unusually hilarious meal. Uncle Teddy was so happy that he nearly burst trying to be witty and agreeable and his mood was so contagious that before long everybody else was as bad as he.

"Make a speech, Katherine," somebody called, and Katherine obligingly climbed up on a chair and made such a screamingly funny oration on "What Is Home without a Camera?" that over half the company choked and there were not enough unchoked ones left to pat them all on the back.

"Katherine," said Mr. Evans feelingly, "if you don't turn out to be a second Cicero I'm no prophet. Your eloquence would melt a concrete dam. See, it's melted the butter already. You are the joy of life to me. How I would like to go with you on your triumphal way through college! By the way, what college did you say you were going to?"

"Sagebrush University, Spencer, Arkansas," replied Katherine drily.

"Ha-ha-ha! That's a good one!" laughed Slim, choking again.

"Please stop joking and tell us," begged Hinpoha.

"I have told you," replied Katherine quietly.

"Is there really a college out where you live?" asked Nakwisi. "We all thought you were going to college in the East."

"She is," said Hinpoha. "She's only joking."

Mrs. Evans sat looking at Katherine closely. She had just noticed something. Although Katherine had been the most hilarious one at the table she had not eaten a mouthful. The delicious roast chicken and corn fritters, her favorite dish, lay untouched upon her plate. And the whimsical dancing light had gone out of her eyes.

"My dear," she said, leaning across the table, "what is the matter with you? Has anything happened to change your plans about going to college?"

Katherine looked at her calmly. "It's all off," she said nonchalantly, raising her water glass to her dry lips. "Father made a little investment in oil this summer—and now we're back to where we were the year of the drought. So it's back to the soil for mine, to the sagebrush and the pump in the dooryard, and maybe teaching in the little one-story schoolhouse in between chores. I knew my dream of college was too sweet to be true."

"Oh, Katherine," cried Hinpoha in dismay, "you must go to college, it would be a terrible pity if you couldn't."

"Kindly omit flowers," said Katherine brusquely.

"My dear child," said Mr. Evans quickly, "I will gladly advance the sum needed for your education. You may regard it as a loan if you will"—for Katherine's chin had suddenly squared itself at the beginning of his speech—"but I would consider the pleasure all mine."

"You are very kind," said Katherine huskily, "but I couldn't do it. You see, my mother's health has broken down from the years of hard work and this sudden trouble, and dad's thoroughly discouraged, and they need me on the job to put life into them and keep the farm going."

Gratefully but firmly she refused all their offers of help. She was the calmest one in the group, but the white lines around her mouth and the drooping slant to her shoulders told what a disappointment she had suffered.

"Will you have to go home right away?" asked Gladys in a tragic voice.

"No," said Katherine. "The folks aren't home yet and won't be for three weeks. So I can stay here as long as the rest of you do and when you go East I shall go West."

She made her plans calmly and frowned on all demonstrations of sympathy. Hinpoha found her after supper sitting on the Council Rock watching the sunset, and creeping up behind her slipped her arms around her neck. "Poor old K!" she whispered caressingly.

Katherine shook herself free from Hinpoha's embrace. "Don't act tragic," she said crossly. "And don't cry down the back of my neck. It gives me the fidgets." And rebuffed, Hinpoha crept away.

The same thing happened to the other girls who tried to console her. It was hard to find a way to show their sympathy. She didn't weep, she didn't bewail her lot, she didn't cast a gloom over the company by making a long face. Katherine in trouble seemed suddenly older, stronger, more experienced in life than the others. They felt somehow young and childish before her and stood abashed. Yet their hearts ached for her because they knew that beneath her outward scorn of weakness she was suffering anguish of spirit.

Katherine was still sitting all alone on the rock some time later when a very wide shadow fell across it, and Slim came puffing along and dropped down beside her, his moon face red with exertion and suppressed emotion.

"It's a measly shame!" he said explosively and with so much vehemence that Katherine almost smiled.

"Say," he said in a confidential tone after a moment of silence, "I have seven hundred dollars that my grandmother left me to pay my tuition at college. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll lend it to you and I'll work my way through. Won't you take it from me, even if you won't from the others?" His face was so earnest and his offer so sincere that Katherine was touched.

"Bless you, Slim!" she said heartily. "You're a nice boy. And I'm very sorry I can't accept your offer."

"Can't you?" said Slim pleadingly.

"No," said Katherine firmly. "I must go home."

"Well," Slim burst out, "you're a real sport, that's what you are!"

Katherine smiled at his compliment, but tingled within with a warm feeling.

"And you're a 'real sport' for offering to give me your money and work your way. Let's shake on it."

Slim gripped her lean, brown hand in his big paw and gave it such a squeeze that she cried out. "Let go my hand, Slim, you're hurting me." Slim dropped her hand abruptly.

"Why did you offer to lend me your money?" she asked curiously. "I never did anything for you."

"Because I like you," said Slim emphatically, "better than any girl I ever knew." And blushing like a peony, he departed hastily from the scene.

Katherine smiled whimsically as she looked after him. "My first 'romance,'" she thought. "With a baby elephant! Slim is a dear boy and I hate myself now because I used to make such fun of him." And where the passionate laments of the girls had failed to move her, the thought of Slim's offered sacrifice brought the tears to her eyes. "'Oh, was there ever such a knight in friendship or in war?'" she quoted softly to herself.

Katherine put her trouble resolutely in the background and refused to discuss it, and activities went on just as before on Ellen's Isle. "Captain, will you go for the mail this afternoon?" asked Uncle Teddy one day not long after the event of the new camera. "Mr. Evans and I want to spend the day over on the mainland trying to get some bird pictures. One of you boys can run us over to the Point of Pines in the launch and get us again when you come home with the mail. We don't want to be bothered looking after a boat."

"All right, sir," said the Captain.

Aunt Clara and the girls departed to put up a lunch basket for the men while Uncle Teddy and Mr. Evans gathered up the various impedimenta they wanted to take along. The boys took them over to the Point of Pines and then started off on a long ride in the launch, taking all the girls with them except Antha, who had a headache. Not long after they had gone Aunt Clara came out of Uncle Teddy's tent, which she had seized the opportunity to straighten up, and declared that her husband would forget his head if it weren't fastened on. She was carrying in her hand the new camera.

"If that isn't just like him!" she scolded. "He wouldn't let me carry it down to the boat for him and then he goes off and forgets it himself. He must have thought he had it when he carried down that case of film plates. Won't he be in a fine stew when he finds out he's left it behind and has no boat to come back in? And I've got all the stuff ready to start making that new Indian pudding, and if I take the time to row over to the Point of Pines I won't get it done for dinner and the boys and girls will be so disappointed! And poor Mrs. Evans has just fallen asleep after being up all night with a jumping tooth; I can't ask her to go." Then her eye fell on Antha, swinging in the hammock. "I don't suppose I could send Antha over with it," she said to herself, remembering how Antha always clung to the others, and had never been out in a boat by herself. "I might as well make up my mind to give up the Indian pudding and go over myself." But the materials were all out and some half prepared and it seemed such a shame not to be able to finish it. "Gracious!" she thought to herself, looking in Antha's direction again, "that girl ought to be able to take that camera over there. The lake is as smooth as glass. I just won't take the time."