With all her light-heartedness, which was sometimes termed "light- headedness," Grace was fast developing a new sense, somewhat related to our old friend Common Sense. Ever since she tried her girl scout knot in the woods, and had eventually received a real letter from the actual victim, she had been planning to "confess" to the other girls, and seek their advice. First, she made up her mind to tell Madaline, as that friend already knew a part of the secret, but the fact that Cleo was credited with better judgment swayed her toward that counsel. Then came such a succession of busy days, busy afternoons and busy evenings, Grace could find no available time for the portentous, confidential conventions of chums. So no one but Benny had, as yet, heard anything of the mysterious letter found in the holly rock in River Bend Woods.

But this evening during all the scout ceremony Grace and her conscience were having a silent battle on the score of the prolonged secrecy. Grace wished to wait a little while longer but her conscience fought for immediate confession. Only the importance of Captain Clark's speech seemed sufficiently strong to drag her attention from this mental conflict.

"In striving for honors," the captain was now stating, "Girl Scouts must be careful to use prudence and wisdom. It will not do to rush into personal danger to do something that may seem to be brave and noble, when a less hazardous means of accomplishing the same end may be found, if intelligently sought for."

Grace sank back in her seat. The captain's eyes seemed to be directed straight at her! Could anyone have told Captain Clark?

"All our special honor and merit badges are tokens of noble deeds, done for humanity according to the principles laid down by our rules, and explained in our manual, but none of these should be interpreted as involving unnecessary risk to us, or the use of our guns, our ropes, our staffs in any violence which might be avoided!"

"Ropes!" repeated Grace under her breath. "We should not—use—our ropes—"

"Grace!" whispered Madaline. "See that big bunch of roses over there!"

"Yes!" nodded Grace.

"They are for Margaret Slowden when she gets her new merit badge, and nobody knows who sent them!"

"Uh-hum-m!" breathed Grace in assent.

When Captain Clark finished her practical talk, the ceremony of bestowing the substitute badge on Margaret was the nest feature of the evening's exercises.

"You all recall our lovely ceremony on the evening of Margaret's original presentation of her merit badge," the captain said, "but this time we have merely to call attention to that great occasion and our minds are filled with its pleasant memories. The noble deed done to acquire this badge was one of unusual heroism and peculiar wisdom," she went on, "for Margaret stayed at her post in a dreary, lonely room, guarding her hats and cloaks with the same spirit of attention to duty which at that same hour was bringing her distinguished brother his consecrated D.S.C. We will now pin upon Margaret's breast—a badge to take the place of that one, lost some time ago, and we all hope she will be doubly rewarded by the second badge of merit!"

There was a stir in the audience and Margaret was conducted to the platform by her patrol leader. Captain Clark then pinned on her coat the new badge, with the words of commendation, and this concluded, an usher advanced with the bouquet. The captain glanced at the card before indicating that the testimonial be presented. It was inscribed merely—"A Friend."

Everyone was puzzled. It was very unusual to give hot-house flowers in May. Then a side door was heard to creak on its hinges and the pretty stranger, Rose Dixon, was just seen passing out.

"I wonder why she left?" Madaline asked Grace.

"Oh, I don't know, but I would like to leave myself," unexpectedly retorted Grace.

"Sick?" persisted Madaline.

"No—just tired," and no one knew better than Grace what a conscience prodder such a meeting as this proved to be—that is "no one" except, perhaps, Rose Dixon.



CHAPTER X

TELLING SECRETS

Determined to wait no longer than the very next afternoon, Grace asked both Cleo and Madaline over to her front porch directly after school, assuring their acceptance to her invitation by the lure of "a big secret to tell them." Needless to say, they came, and there, in the shadow of the yellow and white honeysuckle blossoms, with busy bees buzzing in and out of the honey-filled cups, Grace disclosed the story of her second trip to River Bend Woods.

The girls were fascinated. To think the tied-up man had written a letter!

"Yes, but," argued Grace. "I am a little timid ever since. See, he says he hopes he can lasso me some day with my own rope! Just suppose he does!"

"Oh, I am sure he was just joking there," wise little Cleo ventured. "He just said that to tease you, for teasing him."

"Maybe," replied Grace rather tonelessly.

"Let me see it again," begged Madaline, reaching for the well- fingered little sheet of paper. "But he says," she read, "he liked your courage, and he hated to spoil all your nice scout knots. That must mean he is a good friend."

"Oh, it might just mean the opposite," gloomed Grace, who had read the letter so many times every syllable weighed a clause to her. "He may have meant that merely in sarcasm."

"Who ever do you suppose he was?" asked Madaline foolishly.

"Is, you mean," corrected Grace. "He didn't die, so he still is."

"Of course, that's what I mean. Only he isn't there now, so he was, I think," insisted Madaline, without taking any offence at the crispness of Grace's manner.

"Whether he is or whether he was, we might get along better if we tried to guess who he could possibly be," Cleo assisted. "Have you the least idea?"

"Not the slightest. You see, that sheet of paper came out of a notebook, and anyone could own a notebook or even find one," Grace speculated.

"Let me read the whole letter through?" asked Cleo. "We can't make sense out of single sentences."

Grace handed over the much-criticized little missive. She read aloud:

"LITTLE SCOUT BANDIT:

"I hate to spoil all your pretty knots, but I can't stay tied up any longer. I am taking the rope along, and some day I hope to lasso you in return. You gave me a merry chase after my bag—quite a little runner you are. When I chance this way again I will look for an answer in our hollow rock. Good luck, Scout Bandit—

"THE VICTIM."

"There!" exclaimed Madaline, "only an educated man could write that!"

"But many wicked men are wonderfully educated!" Grace insisted on worrying.

"He seems jolly," mused Cleo.

"All tramps joke," said Grace.

"Well, if you want a tramp, have one," laughed Cleo. "We won't mind, Gracie."

"I'm not Gracie, and I hate tramps. I tried to be nice to one when I was a little girl. Mother was giving him pie and coffee, and I said it was hard for men to be tramps. He turned right around and hissed: 'You're too gabby!' That's the way tramps appreciate kindness."

"And you called him a tramp to his face!" exclaimed Madaline.

"Oh, girls, leave the old tramp alone and let's get to the new wild-westerner," begged Cleo. "I'll tell you what we'll do. Let's write an answer to his letter, and explain we only wanted to do something brave for our Scout honors, but we understand better now, and Grace, do you want to say you're sorry you tied him up?"

"No, indeed I do not!" snapped Grace. "Why should I, when I was trying to get Mrs. Johnston's wash!"

"Oh, Cleo doesn't know about that," Madaline reminded Grace. "We forgot that. You see, Cleo," she continued, "the man had a bag of clothes beside him, and Grace got a hook made of a good strong stick. She tied this to her rope (she had a lot of ropes with her to practice her knots, you know), but when she saw the bag, and thought she saw things like Mrs. Johnston's wash, why, of course, she just tried to get it."

"And I did, too," insisted Grace, "I dragged it all the way to the big rock. Then we heard some one coming, but I held fast, I never lost it until the bag got stuck behind the rock. I wanted so much to get poor Mrs. Johnston's wash," she lamented.

"Well, shall we write the letter?" Cleo followed up.

"I have to say I am afraid to go in the woods now," admitted Grace. "Suppose he should capture us all!"

"We could make some excuse to bring a lot of girls along," Madeline suggested. "He couldn't capture a whole troop."

"Wouldn't it be better to get some big strong boy to fetch the letter out there for us?" proposed the practical Cleo.

"Whom could we trust?" Grace asked.

"I wouldn't depend on brothers. They are too tricky. But how about Hal Crane? He is always interested in our troop doings, and besides he's a good scout himself. I think I would ask him," Cleo determined.

"All right," agreed Grace, "and Cleo dear," with her arms around the girl at the end of the bench, "won't you be a darling and write the letter?"

"And get lassoed?" laughed her chum. "Well, I don't mind. I think he must be a very nice man, and maybe I shall adopt him for my hero."

"You may. I would be very glad to get rid of him," Grace confessed. "I was so worried all this time, and I couldn't get a chance to tell you a word about it."

"And I can imagine every rope you saw you just imagined was coming your way," teased Cleo.

"Just about. But say, girls, another thing. Did you see that pretty girl who came in last night with the lieutenant from Franklin?"

"Oh, yes, the pretty blonde with the blue crocheted tam, I saw her. I guess everyone did," Madaline replied.

"Well, she was so pretty I couldn't help watching her, and I am sure she acted awfully nervous when the flowers were sent up to Margaret."

"She went out directly the ushers took up the bouquet," Madaline added. "And never came back for the ice cream," went on Grace. "Well, what I wanted to say is, I have seen that pretty girl before and I sort of think she was the one who used to be with the dark-eyed girl they say ran away."

"Why, she came with Lieutenant Cosgrove, and surely wouldn't be a companion to a runaway mill girl!" protested Madaline.

"You forget, newly second class, that we are taking in the mill girls in our troop, and are all pledged to do our best to help them," Grace declared. "I know more than one very nice girl in Fluffdown. Daddy is one of the superintendents there."

"Yes, of course," Cleo acquiesced. "And my daddy is in charge of the main office."

"I am sure we should be interested in that line, and our scouting is so practical. I understand Lieutenant Lindsley is going to call a special meeting of True Tred to make definite plans. Some of our girls need education in social latitude, quite as much as do the mill girls, she told us last night, and, judging from the way Hattie Thompson laughed when a mill girl slipped in the mud the other day, I think some of the girls need a special course in common politeness," said Madaline.

"There come Ben's boys," Grace announced. "Let's go out on the lawn and have a game of 'Heel and Toe.'"

"I can't, Grace. I have some shopping to do for mamma, and we have been talking nearly an hour," Cleo declared, glancing at her wrist watch. "You stay, Madaline. Don't go because I have to."

"I really must go," Madaline also insisted. "But be sure, Grace, that Cleo understands all about the letter," she added.

"I will write it and call a meeting of this committee to consider it," proposed Cleo. "Isn't it lovely and exciting?"

"You may think so, but I am glad I no longer have to lug that secret around all alone," said Grace, as the girls were preparing to leave.

"Almost as heavy as Mrs. Johnston's wash," teased Madaline. "Well, good-bye, Grace. We will do all we can to find—you know."

Benny was almost close enough to hear the parting words, but in his boyish head, chuck full of sports and frolics, he had little room for girls' secrets, and even the knowledge thrust upon him by Grace in her trip to the woods had long ago gone the way of his lost game of "Bear in the Pit." Boys have a wonderful way of forgetting failures, and it is that trait which later entitles them to the claims of being good sports, using the title "sport" in its best and most vigorous application.

"Well, that's over, thank goodness!" breathed Grace, referring to her "confession," as she smilingly turned to her piano practice, a duty indifferently done since her encounter with the writer of the mysterious letter.



CHAPTER XI

THE TANGLED WEB

While the Girl Scouts of Flosston were arranging to extend their troop activities so that they would include the girls from Fluffdown mills, who wished to join, two other girls were becoming more and more involved in an influence, seemingly subtle, but surely sufficiently powerful to "win out" eventually.

Tessie Wartliz was enmeshed in that oftquoted "tangled web," coincident with the first attempt at deception.

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive!"

Reading those lines mean very little to the girl who has never been so unfortunate as to know their fullest meaning, but Tessie knew not the lines, it was their threat she felt, their dark story she was living through.

Rose returned from the rally of the True Tred Troop with deeper blue in her eyes and brighter pink in her cheeks. It had been so wonderful! To see all those girls promising to do so much, not only for one another, but for all girls, then the inspiring ceremony, the lovely exercises, the music! It did not seem possible that all this came to the good fortune of some girls in that mill town, while others struggled to gain advantage over their companions, as they worked in gloomy surroundings, prone to some sort of rebellion.

And to think Rose had been asked to help carry this new story to her former companions, and to those with whom she was now associated!

Sitting for a few precious moments in her little room at Mrs. Cosgrove's, although her light had been extinguished, and it was too late to enjoy the tempting reverie, Rose, even in the dark, could feel the comfort and sense the luxury of that simple, well- ordered home. How strange that she should have been picked up from the peril of waywardness, and become so safely sheltered by these benevolent strangers! Was it because Molly Cosgrove, too, taught and practiced the girl scout principles, and because Mrs. Cosgrove was a pioneer from whom such principles emanate?

Gradually Rose sensed the difference in American and foreign ideals, and now it was as if the curtain had lifted, and her own mind was cleared of the confusing doubts and suspicions she had heretofore struggled with.

The soft, sweet air of young summer wafted from the flowery vines, caressed her pretty face as she stared out of the low window into the velvet night, and she was glad, so glad she had sent those roses!

"If only I could have returned that badge!" she pondered; "why did Tessie run off with it!"

The dark thought immediately cast a shadow over her happiness just at that moment, a vagrant cloud in a sky almost untarnished, deliberately sailed into the moon, and blackened the window through which Rose gazed.

"I guess that means bed!" she decided and promptly slipped between the grateful covers. But not to sleep. The thoughts of Tessie and her insinuating letters were too persistent to be immediately banished. Try as she might, Rose could find no key to the problem of how to reach the girl and reclaim the innocent badge, now serving as a baneful influence in the uncertain career of Tessie Wartliz.

"If only I could talk with her just a few minutes," Rose kept repeating, and that wish became the source of a plan, from which sprung a new resolve.

She must see Tessie!

Fixed in her brain, that resolve actually took root, and even in sleep it seemed to grow, to get stronger with the hours, and to mature with courage silently imparted through tired nature's sweet restorer. Balmy sleep!

Troubled dreams discovered the runaway girl in strange surroundings, now working in a dark gloomy mill, and flashing her black eyes like lighted coals at every word of correction offered by her superiors, again Tessie seemed to be enjoying the soft luxury of some favored home, a wild flower in a garden of hot- house blooms.

But it was all a dream, and Rose knew nothing of Tessie's adventure, beyond the suspicions conveyed in the two sketchy letters sent since the escapade.

A few days later the Leader, an evening paper, contained a story startling to the girls of Flosston, and positively shocking to Rose Dixon. This told of a young girl claiming to be a girl scout, running off with a lot of ticket money, the funds she had obtained by pretending to assist an entertainment being conducted for the benefit of the Violet Circle of Shut-ins.

That a girl scout should rob cripples! And that a clue should lead back to Flosston, inferring the culprit might belong in that town! Instantly Rose knew the mystery meant Tessie, and that the purloined badge had served as her scout credential!

Panic seized her! She had seen the paper on her way home from work, and at table, when Molly Cosgrove discussed the item, Rose felt her own guilt must be obvious to those around her. Yet no one knew Tessie had taken the badge. No one knew Rose had found the pretty emblem!

"How could a girl scout act so dishonorably?" Molly questioned indignantly.

"And she actually got away with the money," Mrs. Cosgrove repeated. "Some young bold girls can cover their tracks better than hardened men."

Rose felt her cheeks pale. She had never known the antics of nervous chill, but just now a series of "goose-flesh-flashes" chased all over her.

"You must be very tired, Rose," remarked Molly keenly. "Better go to bed early and omit the meeting. Mrs. Brennen, the welfare leader at Conit, is coming over, but you can hear her another time. You had nervous work on those scarfs to-day. I heard the girls say that floss stuck like chiffon."

"It was sticky," Rose was glad to comment, "and I guess I won't go over to the school house if you don't mind. Perhaps I will just take a walk in the air and later write a few letters."

"The fresh air is what you want," Mrs. Cosgrove unconsciously assisted in the plans seething through the troubled brain of Rose. "I've noticed you are a bit pale lately. But we can't expect to make a robust Rose out of you all at once. You feel all right, don't you?"

"Oh, yes, thank you. I have a little headache, the reds and pinks glare so, I guess they hurt the eyes a little," Rose qualified.

"They do indeed," agreed Mrs. Cosgrove. "Have you heard from your folks?"

"Yes, I had a letter to-day," answered Rose truthfully. "They are getting along splendidly, and father says he thinks he will soon have a good place for me."

"That's fine. We are glad to have you with us, Rose, but with your own folks will be better, when things get all nicely fixed up."

"Yes," put in Molly. "When you go off to take your own place now, Rose, you will understand American ways much better than you did when you came. And wherever you go, I am going to send word ahead to the Girl Scouts so that you may join at once and keep up your training. Our own troop is going to organize to-morrow night. We are going to call ourselves the Venture Troop, as we will be the first troop yet formed in a manufacturing plant."

"Then the Franklin's will be organized before the True Treds take in the mill girls of Flosston?" queried Rose.

"They also meet this week to initiate a group of a dozen girls from Fluffdown. These are to be scattered in two troops and they will try the plan of putting the strangers in with the girls who have had scout experience. You see, we have no troop at all in Franklin, and I am ambitious to have the first formed of our own girls exclusively. They are very enthusiastic."

"I will be sorry if I have to go away," Rose murmured, and her eyes darkened into violet tones with deeper emotion.

"And I can't tell you how I shall miss you if you do have to go," spoke Molly. "But you are not gone yet. At least you will be made a troop leader before you go from Franklin. Then, in your new surroundings you will be able to assist others to do what you have seen done here."

"I never knew how much girls could help girls until I saw the scouts at that meeting the other night," said Rose, a note of sadness in her subdued voice. "If only I had such a chance before —before—"

"No regrets. Remember all our trials bring compensations. For instance, if you had not made the mistake of leaving home that night, you would never, perhaps, have met the Cosgroves," and she smiled happily in an attempt to cheer the drooping spirits of the girl sitting opposite, who had not touched her cake or even sipped her tea.

"Yet I did not do it. My mistake was not the—the real clue," Rose managed to say, her hold on useful English betraying its uncertain foundation. "It was your mother's good nature, not my mistake," she clarified.

"I'll accept the honors. Drink your tea and take your cake. It is not much of a compliment to turn aside from the cake I gave up the home lecture this afternoon to bake for you two. Marty is gone out of town on business, and won't be back for three days, and our big officer wants pie, and scorns cake. So you see it is the plain duty of you two to eat this," and Mrs. Cosgrove helped herself to a real sample of the iced pyramid.

"I cannot help thinking of that girl who ran off with the crippled children's money," Molly reverted to the earlier conversation. "I don't believe she was a girl scout at all," she declared emphatically.

"But the paper said she was," Rose spoke, fearing her voice would shake her into a full confession of her own conspiracy to shield Tessie.

"Oh, no, it did not state she was a scout," Molly corrected, "the paragraph read she claimed to be. There is a great difference."

"Well, it is very queer our own good officer," meaning Jim Cosgrove, "never found trace of that girl. She must have covered her tracks in some unusual way," declared Mrs. Cosgrove, "for Jim is not one to be easily fooled. So Rose, if you are not going out I am sure you will be glad to help with the tea things. Molly, I pressed your waist when I had the irons for Marty's neckties, so I treated you as well."

"Momsey, you are perfect in your plans. Never use an iron for one without applying it to the other. And I will be joyous in my fresh blouse. Rose, please put a tag on my piece of cake, I'll enjoy that end when I come in. I have only a little time to get ready now, as I must make out a programme for our preliminary drill. I'll tell you all about it, Rose. Take a walk when you finish helping mother. You don't get any too much air, you know," and Molly hummed her newest waltz song as she capered around in preparation for the evening's activities. Molly was always jolly, if not singing she would be "chirping" as her brother Martin termed the queer sort of lispy whistle she indulged in, and even while dressing, it was a practice of hers to vary the operations with home-made jazz.

During all this Rose was making up her mind to go straight out in the big world and find Tessie Wartliz. She did not know just how she would set about it, but her mind was made up on the one important point, namely, that the finding must be undertaken and at once. Rose could no longer stand the misery of secrecy concerning the lost scout pin. Every headline in a paper glared out at her as if threatening to expose her guilty knowledge. Every letter she received through the busy little post-office sent a frightened chill over her delicate form, and now she felt certain her benefactors, the Cosgrove family, must know she had heard from the runaway girl, and they were too generous to ask a single question concerning the matter. They trusted her, and she must deceive them!

"I will have to say that mother has sent for me," she decided after a bitter hour alone in her room, "and when I find Tessie——"

She paused. She was baffled! What would she do if she did find Tessie?



CHAPTER XII

TESSIE

Again our scene shifts, and, as in the screen play, that retrospective distant picture brings one back to an earlier vision, so from the distance we now see the runaway, Tessie.

Step by step, along the dark, uncertain road of offences which in themselves were trivial, but which brought such dire results upon the erring girl as to make her all but an outcast, Tessie, after the first foolish blunder, found herself confronted with a seeming necessity for keeping up the false role she had almost unwittingly assumed. The girl was not wicked. Her untrained and unrestrained tongue was her worst enemy, and it very often belied her honest, generous heart.

In inducing Dagmar to leave home she actually believed she was assisting a friend—her intention was to better that friend's circumstances, but the methods! How could she know that right could not result from deliberate wrong! That doctrine had never been made a part of such education as she had the opportunity of acquiring. True, the girl learned right from wrong, also her religion was very clear on the point, but she could not then believe it was wrong to fly from the horrors of mill drudgery, made unbearable by the more intimate environment of a miserable home.

So Tessie Wartliz was suffering from an inherited disease commonly called "Greed." Her parents were greedy for money, and she was greedy for good times. She wanted much of anything she enjoyed, and had little care how that abnormal amount was obtained.

The fatal night she and Dagmar (now our own Rose Dixon) landed so suddenly in Franklin, where the jitney dropped them almost into the arms of Officer Cosgrove, Tessie, as we will remember, escaped, and carried with her the pocketbook she had been carrying for her companion, and in that little soiled purse was the much- prized, lost and found, scout badge of merit.

Tessie at first thought little or nothing of the trinket. As she had scoffed at its purpose, when Rose respected it, so she brushed it aside as of no importance when she emptied the pitiful pittance of her forsaken companion into her own pocketbook, when forced to use the funds or beg from strangers.

On the step of the last jitney that rumbled through Franklin making no stops, and being entirely unoccupied by passengers, Tessie managed to hide as the car slowed up at a turn, and later she crawled inside, when the sleepy driver, his day and night work finished, allowed the motor to "take its head" as we might say to a horse-drawn vehicle. Her heart almost ceased beating when the officer who commanded the line between the two villages, stopped Frank and demanded to know if he carried any passengers.

"Three empty dinner pails that came out full of supper," the driver called back, and Tessie actually under the seat, felt free to breathe again and keep watch for some turn where a kindly house light might gleam out to save her from a dreaded night, under a tree or behind some rugged, wild world shelter.

Just as Frank, the driver, slowed down, preparatory to turning for the big shed, under which the modern carry-all would be laid up until daylight next morning, Tessie decided she would ask this rustic to assist her. Believing that most men, especially those not too old, were apt to be kind-hearted or maybe "softhearted," she climbed from her hiding place, and timidly tapped Frank on his astonished shoulder.

"Gosh!" he exclaimed, "where'd you come from?"

"I lost my way!" she answered not altogether untruthfully. "Can you help me? Where do you live?"

"Say," Frank challenged, "you look pretty near big enough to talk to traffic cops. How'd you get in this boat, anyhow?"

His voice was not friendly. That anyone should have climbed into the "Ark" without signalling him was evidently opposed to his sense of humor. Tessie did not reply as glibly as she had intended to. Instead she threw herself on his mercy, as actors might say in melodrama.

"Honest I did get lost. I'm on my way to the Woolston mills, and I missed so many trains, and caught so many jitneys I lost count. Then, when I saw you come along I was so glad I almost—well, I just flopped. I was dog-tired. First I hailed you, but you were dozing I guess, then I was scared to death you would jolt by and leave me, so I had to climb on."

"Oh," replied Frank, not altogether convinced, but evidently on the way to conviction. "I did fall off a little, I'm out since four A.M. Now, young lady, what's your idea of fixin' for the night? My old lady, meaning a first-rate little mother, is awful strict about girls ridin' in this bus not accompanied by their parents, and I don't see my way clear to tote you home at this unearthly hour. I see by—the make-up" (with an inclusive glance over the now thoroughly frightened Tessie) "that you are a mill girl, and I know they are takin' on new hands at Woolston's, so that sounds natural, but findin' you like this in the Ark—even mother might think that a little bit stretched."

"Well, tell me the name of some one out this way, and I can say I'm goin' there, and you can fix it by objectin' to takin' me. Say, you didn't know when I got on how far I wanted to go."

"Some cute little fixer, you are," Frank admitted, and this was the story Tessie clung to when Frank Apgar brought the girl into his mother's house a few minutes later.

Thus began her adventure weeks ago. Each day and every night adding new and more serious complications to the seemingly innocent quest for a broader life than could be lived in the mill end of Flosston, Tessie was compelled to add falsehood to fabrication, to bear out her original story, and save herself from being "picked up" and forcibly returned to her parents.

She knew the Franklin officer would trace her easily if she went by frequented ways, so instead of looking for work in a mill she sought and obtained employment in a family of rather influential suburbanites. The scarcity of domestic help assisted her in this enterprise, and being really skilled in handling machinery and materials, it was not difficult for her to follow orders, and assist a cook who was overjoyed to have help of any sort in the big country residence.

But the little human butterfly had tried her wings, and she very quickly found life at Appleton too tame for her liking. Directly upon receiving pay for her first two weeks of service, Tessie (her assumed name meant nothing to her or to us) said good-bye to Rebecca the cook, and taking no chances with members of the family who were "interested in her," she left Appleton and journeyed forth again.

She had now acquired a new accomplishment. She could serve as waitress or second girl, and this advantage almost assured her of success in any sort of well-built community.

But it would be tame, slow, as Tessie figured it out, and only a big city could possibly satisfy her ambition "to be somebody."

Then came the temptation which resulted so disastrously.

Out in Elmhurst, her next stop, a troop of girl scouts was drilling when she stepped off the train. New clothes and a better appearance, the result of that first pay at housework, had converted the mill girl into quite an attractive young lady, and as she waited at the pretty little square, watching the girl scouts drill, something like envy possessed her.

Why did they always seem so settled, so prosperous and satisfied! What was there in a mere society that could do all that for any girl?

This question she asked almost audibly, for her lips moved and her face betrayed a puzzled and aggressive look of defiance.

It was always that way with Tessie. She fought first and investigated later. This unfortunate characteristic was responsible for much of her perversity. She set herself against conditions instead of trying to overcome them.

Never had her unhappy self felt more aggressive than now, as she watched those girl scouts drill, every peal of laughter they sent over the velvet green seemed to hiss at her, and every graceful valiant maneuver of wig-wagging or physical drill added deeper envy to her smoldering jealousy.

"That's the kind of thing Dagmar likes," she told herself. "Pity some movie man couldn't get that picture. It would go fine at a Sunday School mixup."

This last was another thrust at organized authority, but the thought of Dagmar recalled the scout badge.

"Humph!" she scoffed. "Guess I could fool them if I wanted to. I'll bet none of them has this grand marshall headlight!"

Her hand was on the little bag wherein lay that badge. Its pin was entangled in threads of torn handkerchiefs, and its pretty clover leaf was enameled with caked face powder and candy dust.

For a few moments she considered slipping her hand in the bag and quickly pinning the badge on her pretty rose-colored sweater. Then she could walk over to the drilling troop, and introduce herself as a visiting scout, sure to be made welcome in Elmhurst.

"But they might catch me on their sign language," she decided. "Guess I better wait until I get on to some of their deaf and dumb stuff."

So for the moment she was saved, but the temptation was too alluring to be easily vanquished. It was certain to return, and that in an hour when seeming necessity offered a more urgent excuse for its fulfillment. The scout badge in hands unconsecrated was like a holy thing surrounded by evil—it would maintain its own pure character unsullied, but evil mocked it—and the good, like a frightened little fairy, hid itself deep in girl-scout idealism, waiting for rescue.

Tessie was restive and unhappy. She had failed to gain by all her risks and daring adventure. Not only had she lost her place, but she had likewise lost her companions, and while unwilling to admit it the girl felt keenly the separation from Dagmar.

"All the same," she declared, taking a last look at the girls in their brown uniforms on the green square, "I'll be one of them some day. They don't have to be too particular about girls they are supposed to help. I'll give them a good chance to help little old Tessie," and with that prophetic statement, more important to her than the unhappy girl had any way of guessing, Tessie tried for one more "place" to earn a little more money, that she might eventually make her way toward a big city.



CHAPTER XIII

BROKEN FAITH

Following the directions given in her little printed slip cut from the "Help Wanted" column in the Leader, Tessie had no trouble in finding the place offered in such glowing terms. Every sort of inducement was held out in the printed lines, for obtaining help was a problem affording the most original methods of advertising, and each month wages seemed to climb another round in the ladder of higher salaries. The term "wages" went by the boards when the fifty-dollar-a-month notch was knocked in prosperity's payroll.

The position, it was not the old time "situation," demanded little of the applicant in the way of reference, and Tessie, already wise in her new craft-knew well a telephone call from Mrs. Elmwood to Mrs. Appleton would be sufficient guarantee of her honesty. She had been strictly honest even to the point of picking up a few scattered dimes, ostensibly dropped accidently, but really set down as "bait" to test her honesty. She was also very wise for so inexperienced a girl.

So with affirmative smiles the erstwhile employer engaged the nice-looking, bright-looking young girl, whose olive skin and dark eyes made her pretty, if a bit foreign and rather saucy.

"If Dagmar could see me now!" she mocked, patting the lace butterfly cap on her neat hair and smoothing the lace sample of an apron in the most approved screen world style. "This dress must have been made for me, it fits so well," she commented, twirling around in front of the modern mirror furnished in the second maid's room, "and this house suits me very well," with a glance at the fine fixings all about her. "Now for the china and silver. I'll bet I'll surprise this shebang with my knowledge of right and left, and my juggling with the forks and spoons. A new place is all right while it's new, but it gets old awful quick after—well, after pay day."

The black dress was stylishly short and gave Tessie a very chic appearance, in fact although she was seventeen years she looked much younger in the uniform, and she knew it.

Inevitably among the members of that household were two young girls from the scout troop she had seen drilling that afternoon, and quite as inevitably the table talk was entirely of the drill and other scout activities.

It was all so simple after that. There in the sisters' rooms were scout manuals, and these little blue books gave Tessie all the information she needed. Each day while arranging the rooms she was able to learn a lesson, and just when her statement was sure to make the best effect she treated the girls to a story of her "girl scout work." It was just like real fiction to Tessie, while Marcia and Phillis Osborne could hardly believe their pretty puff-hidden ears that they should have right in their own home a real girl scout who had won a merit badge! Tessie positively declined to discuss the "brave deed" she had consummated to obtain that badge, also she refused just as positively to take any part in the scout work of Elmhurst. It was delectable to have the girls beg her to come to drill, and assure her no one need know she was employed as a waitress.

But Tessie "adored the pose" as she learned to think herself, and she had no idea of being caught in the official net of a scout meeting, where all sorts of questions might be asked, the answers to which could not even be hinted at in a scout manual.

Alma Benitz was the name she chose that night when Frank Apgar escorted her from his "ark" to his mother's hospitality, and that means of identification was serving her beautifully in the home of Mrs. J. Bennington Osborne, Terrace End, Elmhurst.

It was all perfectly thrilling and Tessie felt each day she mingled her "better days' smile" with a sob or a grin, for the benefit of her sympathetic spectators, she would have given a week's pay to have Dagmar seen the "hit" she was making.

"They'll be giving me French lessons if I don't watch out," she told her looking-glass one night, and the confidential mirror noticed the new girl actually sounded her "gs." Tessie was an apt pupil, but brains more than hands need training to execute exact science of "putting things over" all the time.

Also a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weakest link in this adventurer's chain was the fact that she had no means of communicating with her own folks or Dagmar, and receiving any reply from them. She knew her own father too well to risk letting him know anything of her whereabouts, and her two letters to Dagmar could not be answered for lack of address. Now Tessie had new clothes, and she would soon have more money—if only she could get hold of Dagmar, and start off again on that trip to the big city.

"Maybe the poor kid's in jail," she reflected. "She's just the kind to get sent up to one of those dumps where they train girls! Train them!" she repeated mockingly. "Swell training a girl gets behind bars!

"But it would cost twenty-five dollars for both of us, and I'll never live through earning that here," she followed. This general summing up of the situation took place in her room, the night before her first "afternoon off" and suppose—just suppose she took a bunch of those scout tickets, and went out to the next town and sold them! She might use that money to send to Dagmar and replace it with her next week's pay!

So there was the temptation.

And she did not realize its dangers.

Nothing had ever been easier. Everyone wanted tickets for the Violet Shut-in Benefit and every ticket brought fifty cents to the attractive girl wearing the scout badge of merit.

"I call this luck, the kind that grows on bushes," she was thinking, as in that strange town she hurried from door to door with the violet bits of pasteboard that were printed to bring cheer to the Shut Ins.

"Of course I'll replace this at once," she also decided. "I wouldn't really touch a cent of this, even for one day, only I must get Daggie out of her trouble wherever she is. It isn't fair to leave her all alone to face the music."

Then came the thought of the possible joy she might experience if she could but surprise Phyllis and Marcia with the sale of all their tickets!

Still another consideration. Each girl was obliged to sell in a certain territory and she was covering enough ground for the whole troop.

"I guess I'm out of luck," she decided, "but this isn't so bad. I believe I'd make a hit as a first rate book agent. Maybe I'll try that next."

It was important that all her ground should be covered before the public school would be dismissed, hence she quickened her steps, and she had but two more tickets to dispose of when the rumbling of a jitney attracted her attention.

It was Frank Apgar on the high front seat of his Ark.

"Without thought of danger, and only the prospect of a pleasant chat with someone she knew, Tessie hailed Frank and climbed to the seat beside him.

"Oh, I'm so glad to see you, Frank! How's the good old lady who saved my life? I'll always remember her as my guardian angel. And boy, those flap-jacks!"

"Mother's fine and she always asks if I see you. Now I'll have a report to make," and he stared so at Tessie she felt uncomfortable.

"What are you looking at?" she asked, her tone of voice condoning the rudeness of her words.

"I'm just thinkin' you look a lot like some one I've been asked to watch for. Did you light in from Flosston the night you crawled on this Ark without botherin' the gong or brakes?"

For a single second Tessie felt her fright would betray her. Then recovering her poise, with the keen necessity so obvious, she laughed a merry laugh empty in ring, but full enough in volume.

"Flosston!" she repeated. "Say, when I get enough money I'm going on an excursion there. I've always had a feeling it must be the original rest cure. But say, Frank, if you want to know more than I can tell you about my history, I have a little book with all the facts in, and even a few baby pictures, I'd like to show you. I have a swell place living out down in Como (opposite direction to the Elmhurst address) and if you tell me what time you're due here tomorrow I'll fetch along my illustrated pedigree!"

"Say, Sis, do you think you're funny, or is it some disease you've got?"

"No, really, Frank, I'm not fooling. I have an album with my name and all that in it, and when I come out for an airing to-morrow I'll just bring it along."

How glad she was she had hidden the scout badge and the two unsold tickets! The velvet bag rather heavy with silver, the proceeds of ticket sales, Tessie handled carefully to avoid jingling.

Here was real danger! If Frank should decide she was the girl from Flosston—runaway Tessie Wartliz!

"Well, all the same," Frank added, turning on the gas after a slow-down for an old lady with a small boy and a large bundle, "I have some regard for a girl who wants to cut loose and make good. Can't see why a boy always gets away with it, and a girl is slammed behind the shutters if she happens to disagree with the opinions of the town council on the sort of toothbrush best for grown girls! Now, Alma, I promised Jim Cosgrove I'd keep a lookout, and sure thing you do tally with his illustrated funny page he's been handin' out every trip I made since that stowaway ride. I'm durned glad I didn't mention the stowaway. He'd be apt to tear the gears apart to make sure you're not distributed in the lubricating oil. He is sure set on findin' the girl who gave him the slip. Can't stand a little thing like that against his golden record."

Tessie determined to slip off the car at the next side street, and make a detour to hide the route she must take to return to the Osborne home.

"Well, so long, Frank. Here's where I detrain. Maybe I'll see you to-morrow. Give my love to your mother, and I hope you find the runaway girl," and she waved a merry good-bye that seemed to burn the tips of the fingers she shook it from. Tessie was frightened, she was panic stricken! The whole situation was becoming more and more dangerous! She was using an assumed name, she had run away from home, she had deceived the girl scouts, had sold their tickets and—oh, what would she do now if Frank should tell that officer!

Just in time to don her black dress and white cap, Tessie reached the Osborne home. She was so nervous the silver rattled and the china clicked, but the color in her cheeks was ascribed to the "long walk" she had taken "away out Pembroke way."

During dinner Marcia and Phyllis talked continuously about the benefit, and made all their plans for ticket selling. It would be a notable benefit.

Later that evening Mrs. Osborne paid Tessie her first week's wages and complimented her on her "splendid service." She was a woman imbued with the wisdom of a keen appreciation of values, and she knew well the value of encouragement to a young girl like Tessie, but the latter was very miserable, and could scarcely hide the fact.

Now why did the ghost of a small mistake have to haunt her just when everything looked so rosy?

If only her mother and father could be counted on for a reasonable understanding of the whole matter, but the loss of their daughter's wages for so long would surely enrage the avaricious father and anger the unreasonable mother. Not much hope crept into poor Tessie's heart as late that night she packed her little bag, and with many misgivings, overcome only by the strongest resolutions to pay back the money, did she put the ticket proceeds beside her week's wages in the well-worn purse.

The scout badge fairly begged her to reconsider. Its little wreath and clover emblem, the meaning of which Tessie had learned from Marcia's manual, mutely pleaded the cause of honor, and urged her to sacrifice instead of deceit.

But Tessie was frightened and untrained, so that the new reverence, with which she folded that badge in her best ironed handkerchief, was not yet strong enough to call louder than the voice of mockery which hissed of dangers and threatened disgrace.

It was very early next morning that the dew on the hedge was shocked by a passing form making a rude getaway through the hawthorne blossoms, and not even the gardener saw the girl who jumped across the little creek instead of passing over the rustic bridge.

"Something has happened to that girl," insisted Mrs. Osborne. "I am not often mistaken, and I know she is not a common thief. Marcia and Phyllis, you may refund the ticket money privately, and I will consult with father about following up the child." This was the verdict in the Osborne home upon the complex discovery of stolen tickets and missing maid; but in spite of the mother's warning, some one must have trusted some one else with the story, for a brief account was used in the LEADER that night.

So this was the story that surprised the Girl Scouts of Flosston and shocked Rose Dixon.

Surely the strings of our mythical May-pole are winding in a circle of promise and surprise, for Tessie is gone and Rose is going!

Coincidently, out in Flosston our own little girl scouts, Cleo, Grace and Madaline, are worrying their pretty little heads over the mystery of the woodsman who wrote the queer letter.

Would they risk writing and awaiting a reply from the hiding place in the dark little cave of the hollow stone?



CHAPTER XIV

WOODLAND MAGIC

"Oh come on, girls! Don't bother waiting for the big girls. They're going to drill. I can't wait to see the letter, Cleo. Did you get Hal Crane? And will he surely take it for us?"

It was Grace who, dragging Cleo and attempting to lasso Madaline with her book strap, besought her friends to hide away from their companions that they might read the wonderful letter, and then dispatch it to its post box under the stone in the River Bend Woods.

"I'm so excited," Grace confessed. "I honestly do feel, girls, something wonderful will come from our woodman mystery. His letter proves he is nice."

"So you have given up the tramp idea, Grace," Cleo smilingly remarked. "I'm glad of that. I didn't just fancy writing my best stationery letters to some hobo."

"I'm perfectly sure he is a nice clean man," declared Grace, "for there wasn't a smudge on that little note, and I have noticed since that the paper is a fine quality. Oh, I am perfectly sure he is a very nice young man," and the bright-eyed, pink-cheeked girl laughed at her own deductions.

"But Mrs. Johnston's wash?" Madaline reminded her. "What about that?"

"Why, perhaps he didn't steal that at all. He might even have rescued the bag from a real tramp," replied the resourceful Grace.

"Hal is going to meet us at three-thirty down at the stone wall," injected Cleo, "and if you girls want to see this letter before he flies off with it you had best come along. Of course he is coming on his bicycle."

"Oh, yes, let's hear it," pleaded Grace. "I'm sure it's splendid. I never could have answered that note myself."

Cleo accepted the compliment and the three little second-grade scouts hurried along in the direction of the young willows, behind which an ancient stone wall gave historic prestige to the now modern Flosston.

Nimbly they sprang the wall and quickly they devoured the letter. It read, from the hands of Grace, as follows:

"DEAR WOODSMAN: We girl scouts of True Tred Troop have decided to answer your letter. Perhaps you need friends. If you do, could we help you? Our rules oblige us to assist all fellow beings in distress. Are you in need of help? You see, we not only can assist others, but in doing so we earn promotion. When one of us tied you up she thought it was brave to do so, but now we feel that may have been a mistake."

Grace paused. She did not like the idea of admitting a mistake even thus remotely.

"Couldn't we leave that out?" she asked Cleo.

"Why, no, how could we apologize and expect to make friends with him if we didn't try to fix that tieing-up business?" Cleo inquired.

"Oh, all right. I like the letter, Cleo. I was only wondering if we couldn't forget that. I'll read the rest. Where was I? Oh, yes, now listen!" and she continued:

"If there is any way we can help you or if you know any girls who would like to join our troop, please leave another letter in this same place.

"Very truly, THREE GIRLS OF TRUE TRED."

There was no time to discuss the last few paragraphs, for Hal Crane was now seen flying along the macadam road.

"Be sure he knows just where to go," Cleo warned Grace, who had sealed the letter and now stood waiting the courier.

"What's the idea, anyhow?" demanded Hal. "Isn't the post-office good enough for your troop?"

"Oh, you see, Hal," Grace explained, "maybe our friend can't leave the woods."

"Got something the matter that makes him hide out there, and you don't mind exposing me to it?" Hal was laughing good-naturedly. He evidently was just as keen on the adventure as were the girls.

"Now, you have promised to keep our secret, you know, Hal, and we are sure we will find out something awfully interesting if he answers this letter."

"Suppose he gobbles me up?" returned the big boy, thrusting out his right arm expectantly.

"Oh, you know you have scoured and scouted these woods lots of times, and I suppose you know every squirrel by name," Madaline said. "But go on, Hal, and we'll wait here for you till you come back. There may be another letter under the stone," and her cheeks fairly burned in anticipation.

"Well, so long! Take a good look at me, girls. Your cave man may turn me into a monkey or some other forest creature," and waving his free hand, Hal Crane sped off like the modern boy-scout courier he was.

"Nothing could possibly happen to him, do you think?" Grace asked just a little anxiously. The memory of her own thrilling experience in those woods had grown to something like a big black shadow that dragged from her the bag supposed to contain Mrs. Johnston's wash. And Grace also recalled the mysterious note pointed out the fact that the writer still held on to the historic piece of rope Grace had left around the figure at the tree, and, just suppose the man should take revenge on Hal!

"Oh, goosey!" Cleo replied to her expressed fear. "Don't you suppose a boy scout like Hal can take care of himself! Why, when the men went out hunting for little Angelo Botana, Hal was the very bravest of all. He even waded in the swamp knee deep when the men couldn't manage the big drag nets. Why, Hal is as strong as any man," Cleo valiantly insisted.

It was not now a simple matter for the scout girls to occupy their time while awaiting the return of the messenger, even walking the stone wall, and jumping the breaks, usually a popular pastime, seemed flat and uninteresting now to them.

"Let's hunt four-leaf clovers," suggested Madaline, "and we will give any we find to Captain Clark as a new pledge, like our own clover-leaf badge."

"But ours are three-leaf, not four," Cleo reminded her. "Suppose we hunt the oddest, the prettiest, and the biggest number of varieties? See these lovely variegated ones. They come with the pink blossoms. We might mount a whole display of leaves on one of brother's butterfly glasses. I think it would do for a nature study, also."

"Oh, yes, that's a perfectly splendid idea," applauded Grace. "I haven't added a single discovery to my list this whole week."

So absorbed did they become in this newly invented task no one noticed a wheel-chair being driven along the pleasant country footpath. In the chair was a little girl about the age of the scouts—perhaps fourteen years. Her pretty face betrayed not the slightest hint of the infirmity which compelled her to recline in that chair, in fact her cheeks were as pink as the much-lauded color Grace was so often complimented upon, but which to herself seemed rudely healthy.

Directly in line with the three scouts who were crawling through the grass, hunting clovers, the nurse propelling the chair drew her little passenger to the roadside and stopped.

All the girls hunched up on their knees like human "bunnies" and the little girl in the wheel chair laughed outright.

Cleo stared her surprise.

"Oh, please excuse me for laughing," spoke the child, "but you look too cunning—just like—like colored animals," she faltered.

Cleo smiled her forgiveness, while at that moment Madaline shouted the find of the first four-leaf clover.

"And such a lovely big fat one!" she qualified, now skipping over the tall grasses quite kangaroo fashion.

"A four-leaf clover!" exclaimed the girl in the wheel chair as her nurse moved on.

"Oh, why didn't we show it to her!" lamented Cleo. "She can't walk to pick them!"

"But she didn't tell us who she was," objected Grace.

"I don't care. I'm just going to run after her and give her this four-leaf clover," declared the warm-hearted Madaline. "I think we were awfully stiff and snippy," and without waiting for approval she hurried after the disappearing chair, just as it turned into the avenue.

"Would you like this!" offered Madaline, almost breathless as she overtook the two strangers.

"Oh, I should love it!" exclaimed the little girl, the sincerity in her voice and expression vouching for the truth of her simple words.

Madaline wanted to say something else, but feared to touch on the delicate subject of the little girl's infirmity. So she merely smiled, and said she could find plenty more, and that she was a girl scout doing a little nature work.

"Oh, a girl scout!" exclaimed the little invalid, her eyes fairly blazing enthusiasm.

"Yes," replied Madaline, edging away. "We have a lot of fun being scouts. Good-bye!" and she ran off without affording herself a chance to say anything else.

"Did she take it!" asked Grace unnecessarily.

"Yes, and she just loved it. But I couldn't think what to say, and I said we had fun in being scouts, when I saw she couldn't move for any kind of fun. Wasn't that awful?" wailed Madaline.

"No," the practical Cleo assured her embarrassed companion. "It is always well to speak of scout work. Perhaps she will take an interest in it now. But look! Here comes Hal. Oh, I wonder what news he has!"

The girl in the wheel chair was quickly forgotten with the approach of the boy.

"Oh, he has a letter! See how he wags his head!" exclaimed Grace.

"Yep, I got one!" the boy called, now near enough to make himself heard. "Do I hear the good news?" he inquired, handing over the yellow envelope.

"It's for me!" Grace insisted, making sure of the prize.

"It's addressed to the 'Scout Bandit'" announced Hal. "I don't know that I would stand for that, Grace," but the girl, nervously attempting to open the yellow envelope, paid no attention to the insinuation. "Thank you so much, Hal," Cleo had the politeness to express. "Come on over to the bridge, and maybe we will tell you what's in the letter."

"No, thank you," he refused. "I'm due at a baseball practice and late now. So long, girls. Hope you make your points, whatever they are, by all that woodland stuff," and with commendable disregard for possible thrills, Hal turned his wheel in the direction of the ball field.

Now what girl could possibly have resisted the chance of sharing the woodland secret? Yet, being a boy, Hal ignored the offer and happily raced off to his belated ball practice.

"We can all squat down in this patch of grass," suggested Madaline, who, as yet, had not even glimpsed the envelope Grace had passed on to Cleo. "Do let's read it!" she begged impatiently.

"All right!" and Grace did squat down beside the others on the little patch of grass that hung over the deep gutter. "Now listen!" (Needless admonition.)

"'Little Bandits,'" she began, "'if you find this I will know you are going to play our game. First I must tell you I have to keep my identity secret for some time yet. My reason for doing so is a worthy one, which I will some day make clear to you. But I am not a lazy tramp, nor a wild woodsman in the ordinary sense, so, if you will keep faith, we can play a wonderful game.'"

Grace paused and breathed audibly.

"There!" she exclaimed. "I knew he would be nice."

"After you decided not to have him a horrid old tramp," teased Madaline.

"Oh, read it, Grace," Cleo insisted. "What does he want us to do?"

She resumed reading the rather broad sheet that might have been called typewriter paper, if the girls had been familiar with its style.

"Let me see. Oh, yes. 'Will you do something for me?'" she continued reading. "'If you have any little book of your rules and plans, and if you will leave one in the hollow stone for me, some day I will repay you for your confidence.

"'Your victim, "'THE MAN BY THE TREE.'"

"Oh, what can he want a scout book for?" eagerly asked Grace, folding the letter.

"We couldn't give it, without permission—unless, it would be too bad to give away our secret to get permission," pouted Grace.

"We might get permission without telling all about it," suggested Cleo adroitly. "We could say we wanted to influence a stranger, and besides, anyone can buy a manual in the stores."

"Of course," decided Madaline, happy that the secret would not be spoiled. "Perhaps he wants—"

"To be a scout!" roared Grace in one of her gales of laughter. "Wouldn't it be too funny if he were to fall in love with Captain Clark!"

"And marry her!" topped off Cleo.

"Then your noble deed, Grace, would be noble indeed," added Madaline.

"I guess Miss Clark can marry whom she pleases. She's very pretty."

"And her dad is rich too, so I don't believe we can solve our mystery that way," finished Cleo, and none of the three had quite decided just how she would like to end it when the five o'clock bell from the "Home" out Clinton way chimed a warning hour.

"So late!" exclaimed Grace, "and I have to practice before tea."

"And I have to help mother, for Martha's out," added Madaline.

"Let's run," suggested Cleo, and those who happened to see the trio scampering along never could have guessed they guarded so carefully the mystery of the woodsman's letter.



CHAPTER XV

VENTURE TROOP

The girls of Franklin Mills were finally organized and began work just as Molly Cosgrove had planned. Venture Troop immediately became a band of active, enthusiastic and withal capable girls, bringing to the scout movement a new vigor and promise, the result of individual self-discipline and the indispensible power of personal responsibility.

It must be understood here that girls employed in factories may lack social education, but they are always more self-reliant, more capable of handling emergencies and difficulties, and more surely skilled in precision and mechanical accuracy than are the girls of same age situated in the more fortunate walks of life, the difference in comparison being always in favor of normal conditions, and general education, because of the balance and mental ability acquired through our modern schools and progressive methods.

But the mill girl is never an inferior, and in the exact science of skill, she can easily and at any time outdistance the most brilliant high-school graduate, for skill is her education, and she handles, and fingers, and computes sometimes many thousands of delicate threads, or intricate bits of metal, the slightest fumble of which might throw out of gear a powerful machine. This is applied mathematics, is it not? She uses no pencil nor paper, but counts by allowing one line to overlap another at every five hundred cards, done in some fine print work, and when ten five hundred cards show that almost invisible margin, she knows she has pasted five thousand!

Thus we may realize at the outset that the Venture Troop of Franklin Scouts comprises a formidable array of certain talent, and this must be respected, while education in broader lines is recorded through our little story.

Rose now felt her responsibility with a thrill of delight. Even her anxiety concerning Tessie was allayed in this newly found service. It was no longer a question of one girl, but the matter of many; nor would Rose attempt to desert her post as patrol leader, when the young, eager, enthusiastic members of that troop looked to her for a leadership expected from one who so thoroughly understood their characters.

Lieutenant Cosgrove, now Captain of the Venture Troop, had impressed upon the girl her duties in leading, gently but firmly, along the scout lines, which had been modified to fit in reasonably with the scheme of Americanization.

While it was perfectly true that the parents of Rose would welcome her in the Connecticut town, they had not urged her to leave Franklin, in fact a late letter hinted labor conditions around the Brodix family were not as yet all satisfactorily adjusted, but Dagmar (Rose) "could come if she wanted to," her brother had written. This meant it would be wise for her not to go just yet.

Leaving the meeting room that evening after the organization, and in company with a number of her patrol, Rose quite forgot Tessie, and the stigma of publicity concerning that ticket money, and the possible unlawful use of the lost merit badge.

Buzzing like bees, asking volumes of questions, and pouring out enough suggestions to furnish programmes for troops rather than planning for a single patrol, the girls surrounded Rose with such confidence as to almost sweep the little blonde off her feet. Perhaps her intimacy with Captain Cosgrove placed her in this preferred class, at any rate as a patrol leader Rose found herself both popular and influential.

Mary Furniss insisted on planning a hike for the following Saturday afternoon. Dora Silber believed a long trolley ride would be more enjoyable, while Mona Markovitz urged the formation of a girls' ball team to rival the players of Branchville.

"It's just like having our own union," remarked Jennie Dupre, a pretty little Canadian, "only we are sure to be safe from picket duty in the scouts."

"We're not either," corrected Marie Engelka. "We may have to patrol in case of any local trouble. Wouldn't we look swell in our uniforms?" and she marched on ahead with arm thrust bolt upright in lieu of a gun, while Dora Silber sounded the tattoo of a drum on Mona Markowitz's new straw sailor hat. Mona was short and had to stand the consequences.

"And all the brave things we have to do! Say, Rose, what did you do to get by all those tests?" demanded Erica Jentz.

"Oh, I just studied," faltered Rose, "and then I did without things to send money to the folks. I don't like to talk about sacrifices, but I am only trying to show you what you can do to make good," she finished rather lamely. There was one brave act Rose longed to accomplish, but just then the chances for its undertaking seemed remote.

"Our folks better watch out," cautioned Mary Furniss, "I'm to learn bed-making, and I have to leave home at six-thirty. That means an early dumping for sister Jane, who goes to English School. We always used to call her Jennie, but now she's Jane," and Mary mocked the plain American title with a shrill rising inflection.

"Wasn't it funny how we all laughed on the question of earning fifty cents," remarked Jeanette. "Looked as if we thought earning money was a big joke."

"No, that wasn't it, Jean," corrected Dora. "It was making it fifty cents. Why, that wouldn't tip the 'chink' who irons our shirtwaists," and the original laugh was encored.

"Are your folks all gone from Flosston, Rose?" Mary Furniss inquired, just as the little procession was about to break ranks for respective individual "barracks."

"Oh, yes. Father got good work in Connecticut, and I may go soon," replied Rose frankly.

"You've got a swell boardin' house," commented Nora Noon, the one Irish girl in the new patrol, "and I heard some one say Mrs. Cosgrove was going to start a big lunch-counter for us girls. They call it a cafeteria. Can you picture little Nora sittin' up against anything like that for her corned beef and cabbage!" and the joke epidemic went the usual rounds.

"If anyone could make a lunch counter go, it surely ought to be Mrs. Cosgrove," affirmed Erica Jentz, "for she just keeps her tea- pot going all the time, and my mother says she never lets her cake run out for fear some one would come in between meals."

"Well, it's a sure thing if they come in at meals, they need cake, and if they come in between meals they would be glad to have cake, so it seems to me on that plan Mrs. Cosgrove must need a home bakery," analyzed Dora Silber. "But I'll say, girls, a cafeteria, whatever it is, would be lots better than a lunch-box, and I hope we get it. So long, scouts. Here's where I turn in. Rose, I'll be ready for drill any time you say, if I'm not eatin' or sleepin'. Don't worry about the other 'dooties' of life. S'long, girls! Olive-oil, Jean! That's French for good-bye, isn't it?" and while Jean insisted au revoir was no relation to the term used, the girls paired off, and left Rose with Nora to finish her two more blocks to the Cosgrove cottage.

"I think it will be great for all of us," Nora conceded. "You know, Rose, they're all a jolly lot, but they don't have a great deal of fun. They can laugh at almost anything, but that's because they're so healthy and good natured. I often lend them books. Father has a lot of them, and I do believe our club will be just the thing for all of us," and the girl called Irish, but who was really a solid little American, emphasized her statement by kicking over the only loose stone in the well-tended driveway that bordered the "big house" at Oak Corners.

"Yes, I think it will be fine," agreed Rose. "But I hope I will be able to—to be a wise leader," she qualified.

"That's why Captain Cosgrove selected you," said Nora. "We are to be self-governing, and every member must be a business girl. That's better than being just mill girls," Nora declared. "But it's lots nicer to have a leader who just knows all about us. It will give the girls more courage and all that! Don't you worry about being wise enough. If there is anything to be learned you can count on a double quick education from us, Rosie. Good-night. Tell Mrs. Cosgrove we can smell the doughnuts all ready!" and Nora skipped off in the direction of a gentle light that shone from the reading lamp of Thomas Noon, one time caretaker of a famous Celtic estate, but now plain worker as gateman in Franklin Silk Mills.

Alone for the few moments occupied in reaching the Cosgrove's home, Rose turned the problem of Tessie over and over in her troubled mind. She felt keenly the need of confidence, but could not bring herself to tell this story now to Molly Cosgrove.

"How could I make her understand why I delayed all this time?" she reflected. "No, I must wait for another letter. Perhaps I'll get one to-morrow. Anyhow our new troop is just fine, and I mean to be a real patrol leader," decided the girl, imbued with the same enthusiasm that seemed to permeate the entire girl-scout movement.

Have you ever been called upon to lead others?

Do you know the joy of using your own personal power in a well- organized and carefully directed plan?

If so, you may share the enthusiasm of Rose Dixon, the young patrol leader of Venture Troop of Girl Scouts.

Back once more with her own congenial companions, she almost wished she had not so altered her name. True, Rose Dixon was not far removed from Dagmar Rosika Brodix. Rose was Rosika, and Dixon from the last syllable of Brodix with the usual suffix "on" did not really seem so far from the original, and in the sensational days, when the two towns were stirred up with the gossip of the runaway girls, the change seemed the only plan, but now Rose felt a shadow of deceit in the use of the American name.

"At the same time," she decided finally, "lots of people change to more simple-sounding names, and it was better to start out without that mistake following me. I suppose Tessie has changed her name as often as she does her sleeping places. Poor girl! I do wish she could come back and get a start such as I have."

And another girl in another town was thinking just that in another way.



CHAPTER XVI

MORE MYSTERIES

"I know what we'll do," decided Grace as the three young scouts discussed the secret correspondence with the man o' the woods. "We must tell Margaret Slowden. She knows best and Margy wonders what we are whispering about all the time."

"Yes," promptly agreed Madaline. "I think that is the best plan. Margaret said the other day we were acting as if we had a troop of our own instead of being True Treds."

"We would be perfectly safe in telling Margaret," Cleo followed. "And she can help us best because she has already received a merit badge."

"And lost it," added Grace.

"Received another," amended Madaline.

"I feel a little timid about all the woodsy part," admitted Cleo, "because we haven't any way of finding out about our cave man except spying on him, and that would be so risky it would demerit instead of meriting us. You know we all had to promise to be prudent," she finished.

"But we won't tell the twins," Grace restricted, "that would spoil the whole secret."

So it was arranged that Margaret Slowden should be admitted to the inner circle, and after school that afternoon the marvelous story was told.

Margaret finally gasped. She swallowed something like a tiny bug with the intake. The girls were all squatted in the little tepee made from the school-house shutters, and Margaret always chewed clovers and sweet grass. After a coughing fit she was able to hear the remainder of the weird story of Grace and her man o' the woods.

"And why couldn't you see him?" demanded Margaret.

"Why!" exclaimed the indignant Grace. "Do you think you would be able to take notes on appearances with a coil of rope in one hand and a big slip knot ready to work off in the other, when you had to run around a tree without waking the man!"

"But what did he look like?" demanded the inquisitor.

"All I could see was feet—no, it was shoes—and a hat pulled down."

"All movie men have their hats pulled down," interrupted Margaret. "Maybe some one was working a camera on the other side of a tree."

"You're just horrid, Margaret," Grace pouted, "and I won't tell you another word about it!"

"Why, Grace, I'm not teasing! You know, all big things like that turn out to be movie stunts—making the pictures, you know. Although, of course, your mystery may be real. But what are you going to do about it?"

"We planned to send the scout book just as, he asked, and then wait, also as he asked, until something happens we don't know what. Then we expect he will reveal his identity," and this last clause had a very dignified tone to the girlish ears.

"That seems perfectly all right," Margaret rendered her verdict, "and none of our rules in any way could oppose that. The only thing is, we girls would be obliged to shun the woods because we are ordered, you know, to avoid unnecessary danger, and cave men are supposed to be very wild and woozy."

Details were all finally arranged, and Hal Crane was to pay one more trip to the woods, there to deposit the small blue book of scout data in the big hollow of the charmed rock.

"Suppose he turns out to be some great man who might give us a new park or something like that," ventured Madaline rather hazily, "then we would all come in for honors, wouldn't we?"

"I would rather come in for the park," Cleo inserted. "We need a few more if we are going to do much drilling this summer."

"That man might be a writer, camping out there, who wants material," speculated Margaret. "You know, the River Bend Wood is considered very romantic. An artist painted the falls once."

"Too snaky for camping, though," objected Cleo. "Well, at any rate, girls, we have got to practice wig-wagging this afternoon, so let's wiggle along. Have you heard all about the Venture Troop, of Franklin? That awfully pretty little blonde girl, who was at our meeting one night, you know, is a patrol leader, and they have wonderful things planned."

"I heard something the other day that gave me the creeps," confessed Margaret. "I wasn't going to say anything about it, but since you all have mysteries, I might as well share mine."

"Oh, what's it about? Scout stuff?" demanded Grace, her cheeks toning up to the excitement key.

"Yes, of course. You all remember the night I lost my precious badge? Well, that was the same night two girls ran away from Flosston. Mother offered all sorts of rewards for the return of my badge, for I did prize it so," and the brown eyes glinted topaz gleams at the memory.

"Oh, yes. We called it your D. S. C. because you got it for guarding the cloakroom the night your brother received his decoration," recalled Cleo.

"Yes, and it was very strange in this town, where every one knew all about it, that I never heard from it since," went on Margaret with a show of considerable importance. "Now here is my mystery. One day last week I received an anonymous letter, just two lines long. It said, 'Don't give up. You will get your badge back some day soon.' Now, why, do you suppose, anyone who has it is holding it?"

"Maybe some of the boys just playing a joke," suggested Grace.

"Oh, no, the boys wouldn't wait all this time for their joke; besides, there's no fun in that," analyzed Margaret. "Please don't say anything about it, girls, but since you told me your secret, I thought I ought to tell you mine. There come the other girls. Come on for the wig-wagging. I just love to stand up on the library steps and wave. Hope Captain Clark gives me that place," and the quartette were off to join forces with others of the True Treds, with their signal flags of red and white.

It was usual to have spectators on wig-wagging practice days, and this afternoon an unusual number seemed to take time to stop and notice the picturesque scouts. The troop girls had worn their uniforms, to school that afternoon, so as to be ready for an early start, and in the glorious sunshine, striking in golden rays through the deep green elms for which the village was noted, the troop girls, with their signal flags, made an attractive picture.

Captain Clark stood far off on a mound of green, waving her "questions," and each girl answered the code as the messages were relayed and transmitted. The younger girls were promptly qualifying, and it was very evident the coming tests for higher degrees would find our especial little friends ready to advance.

Coming down from the terraces where they had been stationed, Grace and Cleo observed a handsome limousine drawn up to the curb where the occupants could have viewed the wig-wagging to advantage.

"Oh, there's that lovely girl that was in the wheel-chair!" exclaimed Madaline.

"I believe she would speak to us if she were near enough," commented Cleo.

"What a stunning car!" added Madaline. "What a pity the little girl cannot walk."

"That's about the way generally," finished Cleo vaguely. "But run! There go Margaret and Winnie McKay," and the bright-eyed, pink- cheeked child, so eagerly watching the girl scouts through the open window of the big gray car, was soon forgotten in the more urgent demands of the wig-wag report.

The lesson had been noted "Satisfactory" and Captain Clark had good reason to be proud of her True Treds.



CHAPTER XVII

JACQUELINE

The words of Frank Apgar still rang in the frightened ears of Tessie, when she stole away from the Osborne place, so very early the following morning. Now her continued failures were assuming discouraging proportions indeed, and she knew the result of "borrowing" that ticket money. She could never hope for a good word of recommendation from Mrs. Osborne, and without it she could not obtain employment. To seek work in the mills now would be equivalent to throwing herself on the mercy of the public, for she knew perfectly well every mill had been notified to watch for her.

To her obsessed mind her faults were now serious beyond belief— she had actually stolen money! What at first seemed a mere matter of "borrowing" until she could work one more little week to pay it back, had suddenly become a crime impossible to atone.

Desperately she tramped through the long country roads, tugging her bag, using it often as a stool to rest on. No one noticed the girl—maids often left employment in Elmhurst and journeyed out to the trolley line just as she was doing.

Childish laughter and the capering of a very white toy poodle dog attracted Tessie's attention, as she stopped in front of the entrance to a very handsome estate. Through the iron rails of a very high fence could be seen the girl responsible for the silvery laughter. She was seated in a small wheel-chair, and at her feet lay a young man lounging on the velvet grass, that was cropped so close the blades looked like a woven tapestry of magic green.

"Now, Jack," Tessie heard the young man say, "I will do all the things thou badest me, but please don't ask a fellow to climb trees. I'm too big for the limbs, and I should hate to break the pretty branches. Necks don't count, of course." His voice was so jolly Tessie listened behind the iron post of the open gateway.

"Well, all right, Prince Charming. I won't ask you to climb the tree, but Jerry—I can hardly wait. Oh, isn't it too wonderful?" and the pretty little girl clapped her hands quite like any ordinary youngster.

Here was Tessie's chance. These were a different sort of people and perhaps they would take her on without any reference!

Acting on the moment's impulse, she picked her bag up and entered the gate. The young man sat bolt upright and seemed inclined to laugh.

"Oh, wherever did you come from?" asked the girl in the chair. "We were just telling fairy stories," and she smiled as if Tessie had been a sequence to the tale.

"I'm looking for work," spoke Tessie bravely, "and this seemed such a big place, do you know if they need any extra help?"

The child shot a volley of meaning glances at the young man. Anyone could have interpreted the code as signifying interest and pleasure.

"We would have to consult the housekeeper," the young man answered quickly. He gave his head a defiant toss, contradicting the joy expressed by his sister.

"Oh, but perhaps—" faltered the girl. "Gerald, don't you think maybe you and I might manage to take this nice girl to work? I'd just love to have a very young person to talk to when I can't have you," and the big blue eyes rolled oceans of appeal into the face of the handsome brother.

"Jack, you know I'm your slave," he answered. "But even I cannot always manage Mrs. Bennet. But we can ask her," smiling at Tessie. "Come along!" He sprang to his position at the wheel-chair. "Mrs. Bennet should be glad enough to grant any favor on so perfect a morning."

"Then don't forget our plans, Jerry," the sister cautioned mysteriously. "If it all works out as I am dreaming, brother, oh, what a glorious time we will have! Come on"—to Tessie—"I'm just going to make Mrs. Bennet take you on. She's awfully particular, but since I haven't been able to walk I just impose on brother Gerald. And he has been so kind," patting the hand resting round her chair, "and couldn't you and I have good times together? What shall I call you?" she asked naively.

"Stacia Wertz," replied Tessie, assuming another name to cover her knowledge of the Osborne situation.

"That's from Anastasia, isn't it?"

"Now, Jacqueline," spoke the brother, "I have to run in town early this morning, so if we are going to storm the Bennet we had best mass for the attack. Suppose we sit here," as they reached a rustic bench, "and prepare our story."

A half-hour later, in spite of all protests from the particular Mrs. Bennet, who as housekeeper for Gerald Douglass and his young sister Jacqueline, had good reason to value her reputation, Tessie (now Stacia) was engaged. Her especial duties were to be with Jacqueline, and Mrs. Bennet deplored to Mr. Gerald the fact that this young girl brought no reference.

"But she is so young, Margaret," he had replied. "I am sure we can supervise. And you know, Jack has been taking a lot of my time lately. Yet the doctor says her ultimate cure depends on her cheerful frame of mind, and she is getting along so beautifully. He expects to try the strength of her limbs in ten days more."

It was this arrangement that won the day for Tessie, and once more the black clouds of anxiety rolled away to disclose a rift of new interest, and a gleam of new-found joy. No one could touch the life of Jacqueline Douglass without sharing its delight. The child, temporarily disabled through an acute ailment, had been enjoying every delight her handsome big brother could procure for her, and even in this almost unbelievable paradise "Jack" remained unspoiled, and her active brain was still capable of inventing new wonders.

The home was nothing short of paradise to Tessie. Even the lovely Osborne home seemed unimportant compared with Glenmoor, the country estate of wealthy Gerald Douglass and his pet sister.

The house was of stone and brick, its trimmings beautifully grained oak and its decorations, all in mellow golds and browns, were as soft yet as varied as the tones of the early chestnut burr. Jacqueline was a russet blonde, just gold enough in her hair to deepen the glints, and with the blue eyes and that incomparable complexion so often associated with "red gold hair," it seemed to Tessie nature had been very partial indeed in bestowing her gifts when Jacqueline Douglass was fashioned.

It was the second day of her service at Glenmore that Tessie overheard her young mistress use the name "Marcia" when calling over the telephone.

"Marcia! Might it be Marcia Osborne!" Tessie almost gasped. Then when she heard further a "good-bye, and Jacqueline hoped they would all have a lovely trip west," Tessie breathed freely. Yes, the Osbornes had planned a trip west, and no doubt they were going. This seemed to Tessie rare good luck. Marcia, Phillis and Mrs. Osborne were surely off for their trip.

"Now I'm going to write Dagmar," decided Tessie—"poor little kid! I feel like a quitter to have left her alone all this time. I wonder if I couldn't go out there and look for her? Everything seems to be blown over, and even mother and father might be glad to see me."

With a girl's unqualified impulse, Tessie quickly wrote an effectionate letter to her mother and sealed in it a five-dollar bill. This would surely prepare the way. Then she wrote a second letter, this one to Dagmar, care of the Flosston post-office, and as the mail for Rose Dixon and Dagmar Brodix was promptly mailed to Mrs. Cosgrove at Franklin, Tessie planned better than she knew in hoping thus to reach her abandoned companion. Her letters finished, Tessie (for the time Stacia) slipped down the palatial hall to the door of Jacqueline's sunset room, to inquire if the young mistress needed any attention. It was one of those prolonged days in early summer when night seems unable to break in on the soft, pelucent shadows of sunset meeting twilight. Tessie found Jacqueline sitting in her Sleepy Hollow chair, the shaded green robes tossed about giving the picture such tones as a pastel might embody.

"Oh, do come in, Stacia," called Jacqueline. "I am just reading this girl scout manual and can't understand these signal tests. Did you ever see one of these manuals?" and again Tessie was confronted with the persistent little blue book which had so conspicuously affected her life.

"I have something you would just love!" exclaimed Tessie, taking impulse from Jacqueline's enthusiasm. "I—that is, a friend of mine found it. It's a merit medal," she had declared almost before she realized what she was about.

"Oh, a real merit badge?" asked Jacqueline. "Not really a genuine badge of merit? Those are all registered and can only be used by the original owners."

"I'll show you," agreed Tessie, and now there was no turning back. The girl, too helpless to share in scout activities, was examining and fondling that merit badge a moment later, and seeing her delight, Tessie felt amply repaid for her generosity.

"I'll tell you!" decided the child, pinning the little wreathed clover leaf on her silk negligee, "I'll keep it carefully, and every day you and I can make our scout pledges. Then, when I know you long enough to be awfully sure you understand it, I am going to let you into a wonderful secret. Won't that be splendid?" and her blue eyes begged confidence from the brown eyes, as both girls thrilled with scout magic.

"Oh, yes, I would love to know your secret," Tessie felt obliged to reply, "and maybe some day we will find the girl who lost the badge."

This ended the transfer of the much-prized emblem, and in giving its story Tessie succeeded in covering the detail of locality by vaguely stating "a girl friend found it and gave it to her." So Jacqueline had no means of knowing of its connection with the Girl Scouts of True Tred Troop.

That night Tessie felt a peculiar relief. It was as if some great burden had been lifted from her. To give to dear Jacqueline anything worthy of her was in itself a thing worth doing, and to make good use of the badge was also an important consideration.

"I never had any luck since I carried that around with me!" she decided, but that was a false statement. There never is, nor never was any question of "luck." The real fact of the matter was simply that Tessie, while in possession of the little badge, was continually reminded of its purpose, and the ideals it stood for, so that in her rather reckless career the emblem confronted her with constant mute appeal.

Meanwhile, Jacqueline refused the urgent demands of her nurse that she retire.

"No, nursie dear. Do be lovely to me tonight," she pleaded, "and let me wait for Jerry. I have the most glorious news for him."

"If all of this nonsense does you good, Jacqueline, I am sure I shall not oppose it," replied the nurse. "But personally, it is beyond my experience. There is Mr. Gerald now. Just ring when you want me."

So Jacqueline was left to tell the handsome big brother about her wonderful acquisition.

The merit badge of True Tred Troop!



CHAPTER XVIII

DAISIES AND DANGERS

In the week following Tessie made a number of acquaintances about Glenmoor, not the least among such being Frank Pierson, the grocer boy, and glad to see a young girl on the big estate, Frank promptly asked Tessie to take a ride out in the country with him some afternoon, and quite as promptly, Tessie accepted the invitation.

"I have to deliver out Flosston way tomorrow," said Frank. "What do you say to coming along?"

"Flosston!" repeated Tessie. She hesitated. Would she risk taking a look at the town in the mill end of which were still located the deserted members of her family?

"What's the matter? Don't you want to go?" pressed Frank, as she withheld her reply.

"Oh, yes, of course I'll go," Tessie answered then, and having said she would go, the question of caution seemed to have solved itself. After all, the grocer would have no business in the factory district, and it would be so good to see the familiar places again. Since her coming to Jacqueline's everything seemed so much brighter, her old fears of capture and perhaps detention in a corrective institution, had almost disappeared, and the prospect of a country ride with Frank Pierson afforded pleasant speculation indeed.

"You may bring me a big bunch of daisies," Jacqueline told her, in granting permission for the afternoon out. "Since you came I have almost lost Jerry. But then, he was so very good, I am sure he should have been given a vacation."

The little grocery wagon did not have to delay for its passenger when next afternoon Prank, with a clean blouse and his cap at exactly the right tilt, called to deliver goods and "collect" Tessie.

Starting out along the broad avenue, Gyp, the brown horse, jauntily drew the light yellow wagon, holding his head up quite as proudly as any flashy cob that passed with the fancy equipage in turn-out for the lovely afternoon driving. Presently, from the fashionable thoroughfare Frank turned into the "Old Road," that wended along railroad and river lines out Flosston way.

"You can drive here," he conceded, handing the reins to Tessie. "I don't have to make another stop for half a mile."

"I used to drive long ago, when I was a little girl with pigtails," she answered, taking the lines. "Gyp is gentle, isn't he?"

"Yep, mostly he is. But he scares up, once in a while. Doesn't like an umbrella shot up under his nose, and I've seen him dance at a postal card flaring up with the wind."

Entering Flosston, Tessie felt more emotion than she expected to experience. That last night in the town, when she and Dagmar waited at the station; their dispute over the road they should take; the finding of the badge, and the return of the girl scouts in search of it: all this surged over her like a cloud, covering the bright sunshine that danced through the trees. Frank evidently observed her preoccupation, for he made frantic efforts to be especially entertaining.