CHAPTER VII.

PHOEBE.

Fate had chosen a very simple way of bringing about events of great importance to persons in this history. A doctor off on a walking trip had idly lifted his telescope to scan the village in the valley. As he swept his glass over the country, it had brought near to him glimpses of white farmhouses, men working in the fields and then looming quite close and unexpectedly large to his eye, a woman brandishing a long knife over the head of a person in white.

The doctor lost no time in idle speculation.

"It's in that camp on the lower ledge," he said to himself as he dashed down the path, and in some twenty minutes or more entered the living room of Sunrise Camp.

It is not pleasant to think of what might have happened to Miss Helen Campbell if the doctor's alert, intelligent eyes had not caught and instantly comprehended the significance of the picture brought to him by the telescope. How long might she have lain there unconscious, or how dealt with the half-intoxicated Lupo if he had mounted the steps in search of his wife? Then, as the hours slipped on and no human soul came near to minister to her and comfort her, and she had finally realized that her young people had never returned, how would she have endured that second shock?

Fate had brought the doctor in the nick of time to perform an inestimable service to the Motor Maids and to all those who knew and loved Miss Helen Campbell.

And through this service to the friends of Miss Campbell, another was to follow,—one filled with danger and interest, which would require all the skill of his profession.

About ten o'clock Miss Campbell awoke, refreshed and rested. She took the milk and bread with an appetite. Then she examined the stranger at her bedside with some curiosity.

"I suppose they sent for you from the village?" she asked.

"I happened to be nearer than that," he answered.

Memory was returning by slow degrees.

"I had a shock of some sort; or was it a fall? I remember fainting and the next thing I recall was aromatic ammonia and you." The doctor smiled. "I suppose they are all in bed now. They were too tired to sit up."

"It was so late, you see," he said apologetically.

"They needn't have left me this enormous porch to myself. I know they will hate sleeping down there. Can't Billie come and speak to me?"

"I am afraid he's sound asleep by now."

"He?" ejaculated the patient. "But, of course, how could you be expected to know my young cousin by name. She is the tall girl with the gray eyes. I think she is beautiful. Perhaps you might not—but you would—"

The doctor started. He had heard a stealthy step on the porch below.

"You will not think me impertinent if I ask you not to talk?" he said. "Just a few more hours' quiet and you'll be quite fit. I'm going to leave you a moment."

Miss Campbell gave him a good natured smile. She liked his fine face and his clear brown eyes.

"Very well, doctor," she said. "I see you know your business. I'll be obedient."

Taking the lamp he went downstairs.

It could hardly be the gray-eyed Billie and her friends returning, he argued. They would never come creeping back in that stealthy manner.

"Well, who is it?" he called in a low voice.

Mrs. Lupo came out of the shadows and stood before him.

"Lady going die?" she asked in a terrified whisper.

"Pretty ill, but she's coming around."

The woman looked vastly relieved.

"Young lady know?"

"She has never come back."

Mrs. Lupo raised both hands in a gesture of despair.

"The marsh—I never told—I'm wicked woman!" she exclaimed.

"Good heavens!" said the doctor, "you mean to say you sent them through that bog? It's full of suck holes. You have done enough wickedness for one day. Where is your husband? Hurry up, quick. Wake up the villagers. Get lanterns. Go find them!"

Mrs. Lupo seized a lantern from the gallery.

"I go myself," she said, and disappeared. All that night Mrs. Lupo searched Table Top. She knew the trail as intimately as the mountain girl, but at dawn she had found nothing. But as the light spread over the marsh, she saw something lying on the very edge of the most dangerous quicksand in the place. It was Nancy's hobble skirt.

"Oh, oh!" groaned the poor woman over and over with a kind of savage chant. "Oh, oh! I'm punished now."

Rolling the skirt into a bundle she turned her face from Sunrise Camp and disappeared in the pine forests.

About an hour after Mrs. Lupo had left the camp, the doctor heard the noise of hurrying footsteps on the gallery at the front and hastening downstairs he found Ben Austen and his guide.

"Miss Campbell—how has she stood it? Is she all right?" demanded Ben breathlessly.

"Not so loud," answered the doctor. Then he told Ben in a few words what had happened. "She doesn't even know you have been lost," he said.

While the two men were talking together in whispers, the girl looked about her with much curiosity. Was she in a palace? The high roof, the rugs and chairs were things new to her. And this was called a "camp"! What was the inside of a real house like, she wondered.

"That virago!" she heard Ben say. "No wonder she drives Lupo to drink. This young lady here has saved us all and guided me back through the swamp." He indicated the barefooted girl. "I suppose we would have been there yet if she hadn't heard us call."

"You must sit down," said the doctor kindly. "I'll just have a look at my patient and then help this young man get some supper. Your name is—?"

"Phoebe," she answered, shrinking with shyness.

"Phoebe what?"

"I have no other name."

Phoebe had been accustomed all her life to the courtesy and gentleness of one man, her father. The few others she had known were rough mountaineers, and here was she, barefooted and ragged, treated like a princess by two men.

While the doctor fried ham and eggs, the staple of every camp, Ben made a pot of tea, and presently drew up a table in front of her and placed on it a tray set as neatly as he knew how. Phoebe watched the proceedings with wide frightened eyes. She tried to hide her bare feet under her ragged dress and to draw down the sleeves over her hands, brown and stained with blackberry juice. Later, when they had made her a bed on one of the divans and left her to sleep until daylight, she was too bewildered to say good-night.

All her life Phoebe had lived in the little mountain cabin. She had never known a mother and she had never had a friend. Her father had taught her many things, however, and one was to read from the books on the shelf. There were several books on astronomy; Pilgrim's Progress; the Bible; a volume of Shakespeare; a history of England; a translation of the "Iliad", and some volumes of poetry:—Keats, Tennyson and Browning. Where her father had got these books and the silver and the blue china, she knew no more than he. He had tried and tried to remember, but he had forgotten. He had no identity, no past. His name, his family, everything connected with his early life had gone. His past life had stopped when he had gone for a physician. He had taught his little girl to read, as we have said, and when old enough she had often read aloud in the long winter evenings. He had seemed to listen with absorbed interest, but it is difficult to say how much he grasped of the words he heard, or whether they were mere words to him with no collective significance.

With a certain instinct left to him from that mysterious dead past, he had imparted to his daughter an unmistakable refinement of speech and manner. About some things he was even fastidious,—her way of eating, the appearance of the table and the silver. He himself was excessively neat and orderly and had periods of great industry, weaving baskets of sweet grass and carving wood, not crudely, but with unusual taste, boxes and chalets, napkin rings and figures of animals. Where he had learned these arts his daughter never knew, but she imagined from an old Indian who had lived in the little cabin in the early days and had died when Phoebe was still quite small. As far as a man may be sane whose memory extends back only some eighteen years and who has only one illusion, Phoebe's father was sane. The baskets and woodcarving he and his daughter peddled through the country with success, because they were exceedingly well done, and the money earned was sufficient for their small needs.

Too excited from the unusual events of the night to sleep, Phoebe lay on the divan in the living room and reviewed the mysteries that filled her life. She had a strange smattering of knowledge for a girl of eighteen. It would seem that she had been gifted with a memory for two since her father had none, and whatever she learned from the row of books on the shelves she remembered. That is, whatever interested her.

She knew the constellations and the planets, and on summer nights had located them in the heavens by means of the book chart. She would point them out to her father, who glanced at them vaguely, smiled and went on playing the zither, his consolation in idle moments.

She had read and re-read the history of England so many times that some of the chapters she could repeat word for word. She understood little of the poetry, but the rhythm of the lines sang in her head, and without knowing the meaning she could repeat in a sing-song voice long poems and sonnets. "Pilgrim's Progress" and the "Iliad" and the New Testament with the Psalms were her solace on the long winter evenings. One after the other she read them with unending pleasure. She would read slowly so as not to finish too soon, as a child nibbles at her sweet cake to make it last the longer, and having finished one volume she would take up another with all the eagerness of one about to plunge into a new book. Just how much she had gained from the teachings of Christ was hidden deep in her own soul, but we will find later that Phoebe had learned a secret which those who have had the advantage of broad education have often passed by.

When at last the first pipings of the birds came to herald the dawn, she rose and went out to the gallery. The last star was fading into the grayness of the sky and already morning was at hand. In the growing light it might be seen that Phoebe had an unusually beautiful face. Her eyes, of very dark blue, were almost black at times; her reddish brown hair, coiled into a thick knot on her neck, grew low on her forehead. Her features were well molded, her mouth fine and strong, and a full, rounded chin added sweetness to her expression.

Standing in the very spot where she had first seen Billie and Mary, she turned her face toward the east and watched for the sun.

"I believe my prayers are answered," she said.

Some twenty minutes later, seated by Ben in the motor car, she guided him along a mountain road, which led at last to a point near her father's cabin.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE GYPSY COOKS.

"Dearest Papa:" (wrote Billie) "Cousin Helen has entirely recovered from her fright,—anger she calls it. She is not afraid of either of the Lupos, although the dent in the plank where the knife was still standing when we finally did get home will always make me feel trembly. Dr. Hume is making us a visit. Cousin Helen will not hear of his leaving us. She says she will certainly have another attack of heart failure if he goes away, but that it's of a different variety from the last. I think we all have a touch of that kind of heart disease as a matter of fact, boys and girls. He is a wonderful man and has taken us on some beautiful walks over the mountain. Nancy and Percy always stay behind with Cousin Helen, and we are finally beginning to understand that it's as much preference as self-denial. Nancy and I are doing the cooking with some help from Ben and Dr. Hume. It's great fun. We cook on a camp fire outside and not on that wretched little stove, which is like a bad child and never behaves when it is expected to. Ben and Percy wash the dishes. Thank heavens for that. I could never make a living as a scullery maid. It's a dog's life. Elinor and Mary make up our cots and keep things tidy. It is really and truly camping now, and such a relief not to have those Lupos. But there is trouble about the laundry. Nobody in these high places will stoop to wash clothes. If you could send us up a strong, fearless girl, it doesn't matter how little she knows, it would be fine. We want her strong to scour pans and wash clothes, and fearless enough to be left at the camp alone when we all go off in the 'Comet' on a picnic.

"The mountain girl who saved us is named Phoebe. Her father is not insane, but he has no memory. His accent might be English. At any rate it's better than ours. Nobody on the mountain knows anything about them. An old Indian brought them to the cabin when Phoebe was a baby and took care of them both for several years. The people call the man 'Frenchy,' why I'm sure I can't imagine, perhaps because he seems foreign. He does really beautiful wood carving and basket weaving and he seemed quite pleased over getting orders from us. We all of us want to do something for Phoebe but she is not the kind you can approach easily. I would not dare even offer her a pair of shoes, and she's generally barefooted. Cousin Helen thought perhaps she might like to work for us, but I would as soon think of asking our dear cousin herself. I'm the best coffee maker in the compound and I've learned by the cookbook how to poach eggs, after breaking six to get the hang of it. Dr. Hume knows a Scotch dish that's a dream and so easy to make. Nancy and I are going to give them a surprise. It's 'Mock Duck,' made of beefsteak stuffed with many things, and then rolled up like a mummy and tied with strings. We shall roast it over hot embers on a spit Ben has rigged up, with a thing he calls a 'gutter' to catch the juices. Good-by, dearest Papa. Don't forget the strong, fearless girl.

Your devoted daughter, Billie."

In due time a telegram was telephoned from the railroad station to the nearest hotel and from thence to the postoffice in the village at the foot of Sunrise Mountain. Here it was written down on a scrap of paper and in the course of events reached Billie Campbell. It said:

"Meet Alberdina, fearless Swiss-German. 4.30 train Saturday. Father."

Ben brought the message with the evening mail Friday afternoon while Nancy and Billie, much heated and excited, were in the act of cooking the mock duck.

"What are you roasting? An Indian papoose?" he demanded, after they had laughed over the name of the new, fearless maid.

The spurious fowl made of a large flat piece of meat stuffed out to plump proportions and tied at each end did resemble a fat little Indian baby.

"Don't worry us," exclaimed Nancy. "We have enough to bother us now. The potatoes are taking forever to cook and the beans are almost done."

"The onions are just as bad," put in Billie.

"Why don't you put the onions and potatoes in the same pot with the beans? Maybe it will bring them luck," suggested Ben.

"Do you think it would affect the flavor?" Billie asked eagerly.

But Nancy, of a more adventurous spirit in cooking, recklessly dumped all the vegetables together into one pot and set it on the kerosene stove, which had been carried out by the ever-useful Ben and placed at no great distance from the open fire.

Percy came up just then.

"How are the Gypsy cooks? Is the pot boiling? What's that thing that looks like a pig in a blanket? Or is this a cannibal feast?"

"Run away, Algernon Percival, and don't ask so many questions," replied Billie, stirring the pot.

"I've brought the dinner horn along," said Percy in an insinuating tone of voice.

Even the Gypsy cooks laughed at this. Percy was the last person to rise in the morning. He usually appeared with the coffee and eggs, but the moment he waked up, he seized the trumpet from a nail in the wall at the side of his bed and blew a long triumphant aria with variations. Then from the camp fire at a safe distance from the log hut would come shouts of derision from the others who had been up quite an hour. The table had been carried out under the trees, and here in the early morning they had their breakfast. Here also, they had their supper if it was ready before dark and there were no lights to attract the myriads of night-flying insects. But it did look this evening as if they would be obliged to transfer all dishes and stools, table and eatables into the house, unless the potatoes and onions could be impressed with the importance of submitting to the inevitable.

Dr. Hume, just in from a long walk, tired and mortally hungry, now made his appearance, and Miss Helen Campbell in dainty white, and without any traces whatever of her recent experience with Mrs. Lupo, came trailing across the clearing. There was an expectant expression on her face, as of one who is thinking with inward pleasure of dinner. Elinor came with a bowl of Michaelmas daisies and Mary brought up the procession, carrying a platter of bread sliced so as not to destroy the shape of the loaf, an accomplishment she was proud of.

Percy, seeing the gathering of the company, promptly lifted the trumpet to his lips and blew a blast so startling and unexpected that Mary gave a nervous shriek and dropped the bread to the ground.

"Oh, you wretch," she cried, "see what you have done! And what was the use anyway, since dinner isn't ready and we are all here?"

"Don't be so hasty in your judgments, Lady Mary," answered Percy, composedly gathering up the slices of bread. "That was a song of joy because a beautiful damozel approached with bread for the hungry."

"Hungry?" repeated Miss Campbell, watching, unmoved, the process of shaking the pine needles from the bread. "Starving, rather. If I don't have my dinner in a minute, I shall be light enough to float away like a thistledown."

"Who said starving?" cried Dr. Hume, joining the circle. "If there were a stronger word, I'd use it."

"Famished?" suggested Ben.

"Perishing for want of food," added Elinor.

Nancy and Billie exchanged glances of dismay and Billie impotently poked the pot of vegetables with a long peeled wand.

"What's that thing that looks like an emigrant's roll?" demanded the doctor.

"It won't explode, I hope," remarked Miss Campbell, noticing that the roll of meat seemed to be bursting its bonds in the process of roasting.

"Poor thing, it does seem to be suffering," said Dr. Hume gravely. "There is some enlargement taking place in its internal organs, due to heat expansion, I judge."

"I guess that animal, whatever it is, feels something like an early Christian martyr," put in Percy.

"What is the creature?" inquired Miss Campbell, raising her tortoise shell lorgnette in order the better to see the writhing form over the flames.

"It's a duck," answered Billie, desperately stirring the kettle of vegetables.

"Duck?" they shouted in a loud chorus.

"There never was a duck on land or sea that looked like that."

"Where are its legs?"

"Was it a winged duck?"

"Perhaps it's a species of wingless, legless mountain duck, unknown to low countries?"

"Well, if you must know," cried Billie, now very hot and red over the fire, and wishing devoutly that that brutally truthful speech about watched pots had never been made, "if you demand the truth, it's mock duck——"

"It sounds like the name of a Chinese laundry-man," put in Percy.

"Made by a famous Southern recipe. We didn't know it would take so long to cook." She was ashamed to mention the potatoes and onions. "If you are all so famished, you might start on the bread and butter."

Instantly they gathered around the table and Percy passed around the bread tray. From bread they turned to the salad of tomatoes and cucumbers. Lettuce did not seem to flourish in that country. They drank the ginger ale and ate all the olives, and still the spurious fowl remained a mockery to cooks. It sent forth rivulets of juices and made a great to do over the fire, like people who are all promises and talk and no action, but it would not get done. Then the doctor slipped away and presently returned with his contribution to the supper. He had made it in the morning and it had been standing in the ice chest all day.

"I thought we might help this so as there would be no delays after we had dispatched that talkative fat person in the blanket," he said. "I hope you will like it. My mother used to call it 'piddling.' It was a wash-day dessert and we always had it Mondays, made from Sunday's cake."

Elinor busied herself serving the wash-day dessert into china saucers. It was made of slices of cake soaked in fruit juice and spread with jam.

"When there is cream in the house, it adds of course," observed the doctor with some pride over his success as a cook.

"The flavor's delicious," observed Miss Campbell, testing a small piece daintily on the edge of her spoon.

"It's bully," exclaimed Ben.

The doctor was really vain over his efforts.

"And I made it from memory," he informed them, "without any recipe. I call that pretty good for a first attempt."

They wondered if he had ever done anything in his profession that gave him as much childish delight as making this simple dessert of his boyhood.

After a brief silence, broken only by the tinkle of spoons against saucers, the campers around the table glanced at each other guiltily. Except for the portions reserved for the two cooks, there was not a crumb of piddling left.

"Better hide the plates and cover the dish," said the doctor in a conspirator's whisper. "It's enough to provoke them into a mutiny. Time enough to break the news after they have eaten their mock turtle."

"Duck," choked Percy.

But the Gypsy cooks had noticed nothing. They were too absorbed with straining the beans and the onions now cooked to shreds, from the adamantine potatoes. The cooked vegetables they arranged in the bottom of a large meat platter as a becoming bed for the mock duck which Billie, with mingled feelings of fear and triumph, now prepared to loose from his fastenings with a long fork and the historic carving knife. But Mock Duck to the end was a rogue and a trickster. The poor little cook had just loosened him from the spit and was holding him precariously on the prong of a fork, when he gave a malicious leap into the air and plunged into the very centre of the hot embers. Instantly a circle of flames rose high about him and the air was charged with the fumes of burning flesh.

"Oh, oh!" shrieked Billie. "Help! Help!"

They did what they could to save the remnants of Mock Duck. Ben singed his eyebrows in an effort to spear him on a fork and raise him from his fiery bed. They were all very quick but the flames were quicker, and when at last Mock Duck was lifted from the embers his form was no longer recognizable and the surface of his outer covering was burned to a cinder.

The two little Gypsy cooks wept with disappointment. They had worked so hard and were so hot and tired and hungry.

Their friends were consumed with pity.

"There, there," cried Dr. Hume, too tender hearted to look upon tears without being moved. "Don't cry, little cooks. Look at all this nice gravy and these delicious vegetables."

"Why, my dearest children, you mustn't mind," exclaimed Miss Campbell. "See what a beautiful mixture we can have. Pour the gravy right into the platter with the beans and onions. We'll eat it on bread."

How callous do the most fastidious become after a few weeks in camp!

"Come, come, there's no time to be lost," exclaimed the starving Percy.

But the two disappointed cooks had nothing to say. They choked back their tears and fell to with an appetite on beans and onions ingloriously mixed with bread and gravy. And as a final delicacy, the campers, who had commenced with dessert and salad, finished off with two very delicious mealy potatoes apiece.

"If we stayed in this wilderness long, we'd revert to savages," Miss Campbell remarked, stirring a large cup of black coffee. "But on the whole, I think I am enjoying the reversion and my appetite is getting better every day."

"If I were starving in the wilderness and somebody offered me Mock Duck, I'd refuse it," ejaculated Billie irrelevantly, for nobody had mentioned mock duck for a long time.

THE BALLAD OF MOCK DUCK.

(Poem by Percy.)

There was a haughty animal, Lived in a meadow fine; A domesticated lady Of the genus called bovine.

Like many other females, Beast or human or divine, This domesticated lady Of the family of kine

Gazed with rapture at her features, As reflected in a brook, When with unblushing ecstasy Each morn she took a look.

As she smiled at her reflection In the mirror of the stream, She indulged in gentle rev'ries Of complacency supreme.

"Besides my gift of beauty And my cultivated mind, I have other choice attractions Of a very varied kind.

"My roasts and steaks are luscious, On my hash all have relied, My youthful veal's delicious, And my milk is certified."

On these pleasing meditations Broke a mother with her brood, Sailing o'er that calm reflection In a most ungracious mood.

"You may be steaks and roast beef And hash of quality, But you stoop to imitations Of poor humble little me.

"You may be a benefactor, But I'll just remind you, ma'am, That in one small particular You are a blooming sham.

"Don't let your sweet milk curdle And don't let it sour your luck, If I make so bold to mention That imposture called 'Mock Duck'!"

So this web-footed lady, With a malice quite feline, Disturbed the calm reflections Of that innocent bovine.



CHAPTER IX.

A LESSON BY THE WAYSIDE.

Promptly at nine o'clock Saturday morning the "Comet" might have been seen crawling down the side of the mountain with Billie at the wheel. Dr. Hume sat beside her and Elinor and Ben were in the back seat. It was with something of a holiday feeling that they went forth to meet Alberdina, the new maid, whose presence was becoming a pressing necessity.

"I don't mind the cooking a bit, Doctor," Billie was saying. "Especially with Nancy, although I suppose I am really her assistant. She makes things exciting enough. I think she's a kind of culinary speculator and takes a lot of chances, but she's awfully lucky. She takes all sorts of rag-tag ends of things, chops them into bits and turns out what she calls ragouts."

"They're mighty good," said the doctor. "Experimenting cooks generally have a sub-conscious instinct that carries them along when they seem to be going blindly. But it's difficult to work with them. They are always dictatorial and inclined to treat the assistant as a scullery maid."

Billie groaned.

"I hope Alberdina, strong and fearless, will relieve us of that awful scullery work. I have a feeling it would be a reflection on my character and on the Campbell family if I didn't leave every pan bright and shining, but oh, dear, it's work! I think if I had to keep it up I should cook everything together, vegetables and meat, in one big kettle full of boiling water."

"That wouldn't be such a bad mess," laughed the doctor. "The vegetable and meat juices would make a rich broth and you could serve soup, meat and vegetables all in one plate. Think of the saving of that."

"As Cousin Helen said, it wouldn't take campers long to revert to savagery," ejaculated Billie. "We are already as brown as Indians. We keep our sleeves rolled up and our collars turned in and wear creepers instead of shoes, and always khaki skirts, and never dress for supper. Even Cousin Helen has slipped back a peg—"

"It's the only possible way to enjoy camping," broke in the doctor. "But you would never get to be an all the way savage. Look at that remarkable young woman, Miss Phoebe, who has never had anything else in all her life,—she is far from being a savage."

"Indeed she is," said Billie. "She has never been to school in her life, but she knows a great deal more about some things than I do—astronomy, for instance, and English history."

"There is more than that," put in Elinor, leaning over to join in the conversation. "Phoebe has learned something else that keeps her from ever being ill or tired or unhappy. I asked her what it was and she said it was a secret."

"Speaking of angels," remarked Ben, "there is Phoebe in front of us now, carrying a basket. I suppose she is going to the Antler's Inn to sell some of her father's work."

Far ahead of them, swinging along the dusty road, was Phoebe. Her tall, slender figure swayed gracefully with the movement of the walk, but her shoulders did not bend under the burden of the large basket. A hot, dry wind blew her skirts about her and flapped the brim of her jimmie hat. Since the night at Sunrise Camp, Phoebe had never gone barefooted again, and she now wore a pair of canvas creepers that gave a spring to her step as she hurried along.

Keeping time to the rhythm of her steps, Phoebe chanted softly in a rich, clear voice:

"'The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want.

"'He maketh me to lie down in the green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.'"

The whir of the motor car interrupted the chanting, and, with an absent-minded glance over her shoulder, she stepped to the side of the road to wait for it to pass.

But the "Comet" stopped short and all the occupants called out, "Good morning," with an especial cordiality.

Phoebe bowed her head gravely. Her eyes had a remote expression as if she had been awakened from a dream. Ben opened the door of the car and jumped out, while Billie exclaimed:

"I am so glad we met you, Phoebe, because now you will let us give you a lift."

Phoebe looked into Billie's kind gray eyes for a moment and then smiled as if she had found something there that pleased her.

"I will come," she said, as Ben took the basket from her arm and helped her into the car.

"Have you walked across the mountain this morning?" he asked, when they had started on their way again.

"I started early," she said, "when it was cool."

"And you are not tired?" asked the doctor.



"No, no, I am not tired. Why should I be? This was my work for to-day. If I had been tired, I could not have done it."

The doctor looked at her curiously.

"You believe, then, you are given strength for each day's task?"

Phoebe did not reply. She was not accustomed to conversation and it was impossible to find words in which to express herself.

She turned her dark beautiful eyes on him with a gaze that was almost disconcerting while searching her mind for an answer.

The doctor put his question in a different way.

"When it's your day's work to take a long walk across the mountain in the hot sun, what keeps you from getting tired?"

"I sing," answered Phoebe, and settled back in the seat between Elinor and Ben, her brown hands folded loosely in her lap.

The ride over to meet the new maid was intended to be something in the nature of a picnic, and they had made an early start in order to eat lunch in the woods after the first stage of the journey. And now, as the sun crept up toward the meridian, their appetites began to clamor for food. About that time, too, they came near to the road which led to the Antlers, where Phoebe hoped to sell some of her baskets. She lifted the big basket into her lap and touched Billie on the shoulder as a dumb signal to stop.

"But we are not going to let you go, Phoebe," exclaimed Billie. "You must lunch with us in the woods. Then we'll have time I think to drop you at the Antlers and stop for you again on the way back."

"I do not see why Miss Phoebe needs to visit the inn at all," put in Dr. Hume. "I wanted to get presents for my nieces and nephews. I will buy the basketful and that will save me no end of trouble searching for things in the village."

Phoebe thoughtfully considered these generous and hospitable propositions before she replied with great seriousness of tone and manner:

"Thank you, but it is too much; I cannot accept. It is too much."

"But it is not, Phoebe," protested Billie. "We want you. We like to have you with us."

"And I want the baskets, too," went on the doctor. "It will save me a hot, stupid journey to the village."

Phoebe looked from one to the other. Her pride was struggling with her yearning to be with these new and wonderful friends.

"We won't take 'No'," cried Billie. "We are depending on you to show us a good place for our picnic and you can guide us over the last of the road to the station. You see, we have a reason for asking you. We want your help."

The mountain-girl was therefore persuaded to remain with them for the rest of the trip, and presently they drew up near a pine forest where there was a little stream. Ben lifted out the luncheon hamper and the tea basket, and while the girls unpacked the food, Phoebe stood shyly by and watched the proceedings. With a heightened color she glanced from Billie's and Elinor's neat skirts and pongee blouses to her own faded calico dress. She spread out her brown fingers stained with berry juice, and looked at them sadly. Then her face brightened.

"I was almost forgetting," she said out loud, but to no one. "I am always in too great a hurry. I have waited a long time and now it is beginning to come. It was too soon last summer, but now at last it is time."

Dr. Hume noticed Phoebe talking to herself and shook his head.

"Too much alone," he thought.

Meanwhile, Billie, piling sandwiches on the lunch cloth, was busy thinking of something far different. Her glance shifted from Dr. Hume to Phoebe and back again. She closed her eyes and the thought which at first she saw dimly in the dark recesses of her mind advanced to the open, took form and shape and presently boldly showed itself as a full-grown plan. Billie, sitting abstractedly on the ground, piling and re-piling the sandwiches, was startled by Ben's rather impatient voice.

"I'll have to fall-to unless you give the word, Billie; I'm famished."

"Excuse my absent-mindedness, Ben," laughed Billie. "I had just thought up a wild, though perfectly feasible scheme, and I couldn't turn my mind to mere food for a moment."

"And the scheme is?" demanded Elinor, seating herself at the lunch table while she waited for the water to boil.

"I shall have to wait to tell you until it's ready to serve up," answered Billie, "nice and brown and done through."

"Why, Billie, what kind of kitchen talk is that?" exclaimed Elinor, laughing. "You'll be seeing with the eyes of a cook next. Sunsets will remind you of tomato soup and clouds will make you think of meringues and—"

Elinor broke off, her eyes wide with astonishment, and the others following the direction of her gaze saw that she was looking at a man who had crept into their midst so silently that no one had noticed him. In that haggard and unshaved face they recognized Mr. Lupo.

"Something to eat," he demanded fiercely. "I'm almost starved."

Without a word Billie handed him several sandwiches and some fruit.

"Eat it over there," she ordered, pointing to a distant tree, "and afterwards you can tell us what is the matter."

The others admired her calm assurance with the half-breed, but Billie was tired of the Lupos. The wife had come near being the death of her beloved cousin, and the husband was a lazy, loafing fellow. Such was her judgment of them.

"Come, Phoebe. Come, Dr. Hume," she said, and the others gathered around the lunch cloth. Mr. Lupo lifted his sodden, bloodshot eyes at the word "Phoebe," and saw with astonishment the young girl, whom Billie knew the couple hated, now drinking tea and mingling on equal terms with the people of Sunrise Camp.

His eyes narrowed into little slits. After choking down the sandwiches greedily, he stalked over into their midst.

"What have you done with my wife?" he demanded.

"We know nothing of your wife, Lupo," answered Dr. Hume, who knew all about the couple by this time. "You had better go on now, if you have had enough food."

"I don't want any more of your cursed food," answered Lupo, looking very much like his namesake, the wolf, at that moment. "But I tell you if you've given my wife money to leave me, you will have to pay for it in another coin."

"Nobody has ever given your wife any money. She has never been back since the day she threatened Miss Campbell with a carving knife. If anybody has driven her away, it's you, with your drunken, low habits."

Lupo moved a step nearer and pointed his thumb at Phoebe.

"So you're trying to make a lady of her, are you?"

Phoebe took not the slightest notice. She was watching the antics of a squirrel leaping in the branches of a giant oak tree, but she turned her eyes gratefully toward Billie, when that young woman burst out with:

"She is a lady and my friend. I think you'd better go now, Mr. Lupo."

"Whoever meddles with those two shall pay for it," cried the man fiercely, just as Ben seized him by the collar and flung him into a thicket of bushes, from where he presently crawled away out of sight, occasionally pausing to shake his fist in their direction.

"A nice return for hospitality," exclaimed Billie.

"He's a dangerous fellow," said the doctor. "But I imagine he's mostly talk. What do you know of him, Miss Phoebe?"

"I only know that years ago they tried to drive us away from our house. But an old man who lived with us, protected us. He owned the cabin and he left it to father and me. There was a will that made it ours. It became a home." They smiled at her quaint expression. "And the Lupos have been turned against us always, but God has protected us from our enemies."

They looked at her silently. It was impossible not to feel deeply impressed with the earnestness of her tone. Billie felt ashamed. With all her advantages and the opportunities money and travel had brought her, Phoebe, raised in a cabin on the mountain side, had learned something she had not.

Presently she went over and sat beside the mysterious girl.

"I wish you would teach me a few things, Phoebe. I feel that I am very ignorant."

"But I have never been to school," replied Phoebe in astonishment.

"There are some things one doesn't learn at school," answered Billie.



CHAPTER X.

ALBERDINA SCHOENBACHLER

"You no lig I shall dos clothes coog?" asked Alberdina, the Monday after her arrival.

"Boil, you mean?" corrected Miss Campbell. "Certainly. There is a clothes boiler, and goodness knows the things need it, and a good bleaching afterwards in the sun. They are as yellow as gold."

When Alberdina, the new German-Swiss maid, had alighted from the train with her absurd little iron-bound trunk, about as big as a bread basket, Billie had felt no misgivings. Here, indeed, was a creature too healthy to know the name of fear, and too good-natured to object to hard work. The brilliant red cheeks and broad engaging smile immediately decided Billie to put all her accumulated linen in wash at once.

On top of Alberdina's large peasant head was perched a small round hat, positively the most ludicrous thing ever seen in the shape of millinery. With its band of red satin ribbon and tiny bunch of field flowers, it seemed to defy the world to find anything funnier.

"It's a real comedy hat," Dr. Hume observed. "The kind they wear when they sing:

"'Hi-lee-hi-lo-hi-lee-hi-lo, I joost come over; I joost come over.'"

"But she's really a ministering angel, you know," said Billie, "sent to do the washing and ironing and scullery work. Except for cooking meals, we expect to take life easy from now on."

And so, right gladly, they had carried Alberdina Schoenbachler over the twenty-five miles of mountain road and established her in Sunrise Camp.

"I think she is the very person we needed, Cousin Helen," Billie said. "Not accomplished, you know, or trained in any way, but good enough for camping. And there is no reason now why we shouldn't take the trip to the lower lake if you feel well enough. The weather is perfect."

"Do you think we ought to leave her on the first day?" Miss Campbell replied somewhat doubtfully.

"Why not? She has enough to occupy her, goodness knows, with all that washing."

"But suppose she should get lonely or frightened—?"

Just then a melodious Swiss yodel broke the stillness of the early morning and Billie laughed.

"She isn't going to be lonesome. She is accustomed to the mountains. Do let's take a holiday, Cousin Helen, please," and with Miss Helen's assent, Billie rushed off to find the others and tell the good news.

Perhaps some people would regard it as a fault in Billie's character that, having formed a plan, she was always filled with wild impatience to carry it out. But when we consider that Billie's plans concerned the pleasure and entertainment of other people and that her impatience was only another form of earnest enthusiasm, it would be difficult to criticise her.

While three of the Motor Maids busied themselves preparing the luncheon, Billie and Ben worked over the motor car, putting it in condition for a long trip, and Percy, in blue overalls, washed the body of the car.

"I am so glad to save you this drudgery," he observed, with an ingratiating smile.

"You're not half as glad as we are, Percival Algernon," answered Ben. "It's a double blessing, because it's good discipline for you and it gives us a chance to show how much we know about machinery."

"Don't boast, my son. You may have a sure enough chance before the sun sets," remarked Percy in the tone of a prophet.

"After you have washed him off well, rub him down with those cloths," ordered Billie from under the car. "Then stow the rubber curtains inside and see to the lights. It may be late before we get back."

"All right, Captain," answered Percy respectfully.

It was still not nine o'clock when the "Comet," polished and oiled and looking as neat in his dark blue and buff uniform as a soldier on parade, stood ready for departure. The hamper of luncheon was strapped on behind, and underneath the middle seats in a pan of ice were bottles of root beer and ginger ale. Presently he started down the steep road with his load. The rustic camp, perched on the ledge in the side of the mountain, with its guard of pine trees crowding almost to its doors, never looked more alluring.

"I declare I hate to leave the place," said Miss Campbell, peeping through the glass window in the back curtain of the car.

"It's in good hands," laughed the doctor, as the voice of Alberdina floated to them, singing in fulsome tones:

"Ach, mein lieber Augustine, Augustine, Augustine!"

But the motor car with its load of campers had not been long gone when Alberdina withdrew her arms, elbow deep in soapsuds, from the wash tub, and looked around her.

"Ach, mein lieber Gott," she said turning her large cow-like eyes on the pile of linen, "I dis worg nod much lige. It is too many. I mag to coog dos clothes and rest. Dis life it all hard worg ees."

She lifted an armful of linen garments from the tub and stuffed them into the clothes boiler which she filled with water and set on the coal oil stove. Then drawing up a steamer chair, she settled herself comfortably and closed her eyes, not noticing that in the boilerful of white things she had plunged a red silk handkerchief of Percy's. Nearly an hour had passed when Alberdina awoke from her healthy, conscienceless slumber with a start. Turning her head lazily, she noticed that the clothes were boiling and the water was running over the sides of the boiler.

"Mein Gott!" she said in German. "That little mistress will make of me the Hamburger. I must do some work."

But to her horror and astonishment, when Alberdina made an effort to rise from the low, easy chair, she could not move. She had been bound to the chair with a stout rope, the clothes line in fact. Each fat red hand was secured to an arm of the chair, her feet tied together and her body strapped to the seat and back.

Alberdina groaned and her stupid eyes became humid with terror.

"Helb! Helb!" she called. "Helb bring. Mein Gott in himmel, helb!"

No answer came from the silent camp.

"Ees it for dis, den, I haf to you come?" she cried, addressing the circle of mountains shimmering in opalescent light. Far down from the valley below came the long clear note of a bugle, probably of some coaching party. An impudent woodpecker seated on a limb above her commenced an insistent, aggravating tapping.

Alberdina made another struggle to loose her bonds and then settled back weeping. At last merciful sleep brought her oblivion. The mountains shimmered in the heat waves. The sunlight slanting through the trees cast flickering golden shadows on the carpet of pine needles. The tinkle of a cowbell broke the stillness. In her dreams the Swiss girl was reminded of her own cherished uplands, where in the festive cheese-making time she had gathered with other maids and youths and danced to the music of the zither. Zither, did she say? But, had she been dreaming then, all the while? Was not that a zither now mingling its fairy music with the notes of the cow bell? Alberdina opened her eyes.

"Helb! Helb! I asg you helb!" she called.

The music stopped instantly and a man, tall, slender, with an indescribably distinguished air, approached, carrying the zither under his arm.

"You called?" he asked courteously.

Alberdina burst into a torrent of excited German. She rolled her prominent eyes to indicate her bonds. Streams of tears flowed down her cheeks, or taking a short cut, ran over the bridge of her nose and dropped down a precipice to her heaving bosom. Phoebe's father watched her with an expression of gentle bewilderment. He seemed to be trying to recall something an infinite distance away, like one of those inexplicable reminiscences that flash through our minds and are gone before we can grasp their significance.

"It's useless," he said, shaking his head. "But something has happened to you? Oh, yes, you have been tied up."

Taking a bone-handled clasp knife from his pocket, he carefully cut the ropes wound about her. Alberdina bounded out of the chair like a big, fleshy catapult.

"Ach, himmel, I thangs mag to you, sir," she cried respectfully, for there was something in this wanderer which commanded deference, although he did wear a threadbare suit and mountain brogans.

"You know who did this, my girl?" he asked.

She shook her head and ran into the camp beyond. The locker rooms on the two sleeping porches were in confusion. The contents of drawers and trunks had been dumped to the floor and writing portfolios overhauled. But, apparently, nothing had been taken, because there was nothing valuable enough to tempt the most eager burglar. What little ready money they had the campers had carried with them, and there was no jewelry to steal. Only Alberdina had been robbed. With many deep guttural exclamations she found that her own little emigrant trunk had not been overlooked in the pillage and her purse, containing ten dollars, was gone.

The gentleman with the zither turned to go.

"I came to find a physician," he said. "Is there none here?"

"I know nod," answered the girl, shaken with sobs.

He lifted his old slouch hat.

"I bid you good day," he said, and started away, then turning back, he exclaimed: "Perhaps I ought not to leave you here alone. But I must not stay away so long. Phoebe will be frightened. Will you come with me to my home?"

Alberdina shook her head. She was half afraid of the strange man. Who knows but it might have been this stranger, himself, who had robbed her of her savings?

"No, no; I vill stay here. The vorst is over yet already. Dey haf me robbed of my moneys. I no more haf. Dey vill not come bag."

Having so spoken, she returned to her labors and was presently hanging on the line a long row of deep pink clothing, headed by the red silk handkerchief, the iniquitous author of the wicked deed.

In the meantime the motorists had proceeded joyfully on their way. They sang and joked and made so merry that Dr. Hume felt that he had gone back fifteen years in his busy life and was a boy himself. The road as indicated on the map in the road book was cut through forests of primeval growth. Sometimes it descended into the valley past villages and farm houses. Once it took them through a splendid tract of land dedicated with its club house to St. Hubert, patron saint of the hunt. At last it began by degrees to climb upward, and with a sudden turn around the mountain side, they came into view of an exquisite little lake, reflecting in its mirrored depths the peaks of the high mountains encircling it. Hundreds of silver birches, slender and elegant, fringed its edges, gleaming white against a background of impenetrable green.

At one corner of the lake were a small boathouse and restaurant, where customers are perpetually served with tea and maple cake. Long ago they had eaten lunch and were quite ready for more refreshments. Then everybody but Miss Campbell took a dip in the lake. The hours sped past and the sun was well on its downward grade before they realized it was time to return.

In the meantime, Billie, always eager to find out about new roads and new trails, had been questioning one of the guides at the boathouse.

"He says there's a walk called the 'river trail' only two miles long that we could take, and meet the 'Comet' at a bridge at the end. Don't you think some of us could take it, Dr. Hume? It's right through the most wonderful pine forests,—one of the most beautiful walks in the Adirondacks, he says."

"But who will run the motor car?" asked the doctor, beetling his shaggy eyebrows.

"I will," Ben volunteered, and it was accordingly arranged that Dr. Hume and Percy should conduct the girls along the river trail while Miss Campbell and Ben proceeded by the road in the car.

It was all very simple. Miss Campbell was to take a nap while Ben looked after the "Comet's" needs and in the course of half an hour, or at their leisure, they were to take the road. In the meantime, the others, with good walking, would have ample time to make the two miles through the forest. They bade each other a casual farewell since they were to meet again so soon, and led by the doctor, plunged into the forest.

The ground had been cleared of undergrowth, so that looking up the side of the mountain, at the foot of which gurgled a little river, one could see a vast multitude of tall straight pine trees and occasionally the flash of a silver birch. Rank on rank they stood in infinite perspective; and sometimes an aged beech tree generalled their march and sometimes a magnificent oak spread out his venerable arms with a gesture of command. But the rank and file were pines; gray grenadiers, still upright with the years; young stripling pines, eager to be on the march. And always they seemed to be going the same way over the mountains to the frontiers of the world, and always through their branches came the murmur of their martial song.

Nowhere had Billie seen so impressive, so magnificent a forest. She thought of the cryptomerias in Japan, but they were more like the gigantic pillars of a cathedral, while these hurrying hordes of pines and birches were like human beings. They suggested romances: lovers in the forests; knights in armor; wicked enchantresses.

Once Dr. Hume paused and pointed to a cleared space beyond. There, standing under a great pine tree looking at them with startled eyes were a doe and her young. In another instant they were gone, leaving the campers holding their breath.

In a little more than an hour they reached the end of the trail, where a foot bridge made of two logs took them over the turbulent little river. But no "Comet" stood waiting for them at the rendezvous with Ben at the wheel and Miss Campbell on the back seat. To be sure the road was twice as long, as the trail had wound around the side of the mountain for some five miles, but that was nothing to a motor car.

"Might as well sit down and wait," suggested the doctor.

They seated themselves in a row on a log expecting every minute to see the familiar blue car loom into sight.

But the lagging moments dragged themselves into half an hour and still the "Comet" lingered.

"I think we'd better walk back," said Billie, beginning to feel just a tinge of uneasiness.

"Perhaps it would be as well," echoed the doctor. "They have had a breakdown, no doubt."

The band of wayfarers feeling very weary after the rough walk along the river trail began their march back toward the lake.



CHAPTER XI.

A COMEDY OF ERRORS.

The original lake party might have served as an excellent illustration of the history of many principalities and nations. Having suffered a division and then a subdivision and finally a breaking up into fractional groups, it became as a weakened and shattered government, powerless to help itself.

It soon became evident that Mary Price was too weary to take the long walk back to the lake.

She was left therefore by the roadside with Percy and Elinor, while Dr. Hume, Nancy and Billie went on.

"It will probably be no time at all before we pick them up," said the doctor cheerfully, but they made the entire walk to the lake house and there was no "Comet" to be seen.

"It left here two hours ago," the boatman informed them. "Maybe they went on to the second bridge. That's half a mile beyond the first one. They'll tell a person anything, these people here will."

"I suppose that's exactly what happened," Billie exclaimed, much relieved. "They have been waiting at the second bridge and will be on their way back by this time. But I think they will have to come all the way. Nancy has a blister on her heel."

"Now, don't blame it all on me, Billie," said Nancy. "You know you are dead tired yourself."

Billie smiled guiltily.

"I am played out," she said.

"I wouldn't think of allowing either of you young ladies to start on another tramp," put in Dr. Hume. "I am too good a doctor for that. You must stay right here and rest and I'll start back. I may meet the whole party any time, now."

Billie and Nancy, therefore, settled themselves to rest on two benches near the lake while the good doctor trudged off along the dusty road.

In the meantime, Mary, who had more than overtaxed her strength that day, gave Percy and Elinor a bad fright by toppling over in a faint. They brought her to with water which Percy carried from a brook in his hat, and then carried her into the wood a bit where she could lie on the pine needles and rest her head in Elinor's lap. But Percy hurried back to the road to keep watch, and seeing a motor car broken down in the distance hastened to catch up with it. It was a strange car, however, and the chauffeur had not seen the "Comet."

And all this while, Ben and Miss Campbell, having waited an incalculable time at the second bridge, had gone on for half a mile. Few people can stand the test of being kept waiting. Their patience may be inexhaustible but their judgments are apt to take a bad twist and bring them right about face in the wrong direction.

It is true that Ben had yielded to Miss Campbell in going beyond the supposed meeting place, and now to make matters worse, the "Comet" came to an inexplicable standstill. Poor Ben, with small knowledge of what to do, began a long and wearisome investigation of unfamiliar machinery.

There was something of the dumb driven animal in Ben when he entered unfamiliar territory, and his slow plodding methods had been known to irritate Miss Campbell profoundly.

And now, one more separation remained to complete the disbandment of this innocent party of pleasure. Ben, shamefaced and very humble, was obliged to confess to Miss Campbell that he could not locate the trouble with the "Comet." Deeply he regretted his inefficiency, but there was nothing to do but give up.

"I'm thinking," he said, "that maybe I had better walk back a little ways and see if the others aren't coming up behind us."

"Very well," answered Miss Campbell with dignity. "You may go. I suppose nobody would wish to harm an old woman."

Presently, therefore, she found herself alone in the wilderness. There was something almost human and comforting about the "Comet," however, that faithful mechanism that had borne them on so many pilgrimages, and Miss Campbell addressed herself to him as to a human companion.

"I just believe you had more sense than that stupid Ben Austen," she said. "You wouldn't go on because you knew perfectly well that your mistress was behind you. You're a nice, good old thing."

She paused and peered out of the car. Darkness was falling and the road was filled with somber shadows cast by the far-reaching branches of the trees on either side. As far as she could see along the white strip of road there was no human soul behind her. Her eyes swept the road in front. It was criss-crossed with light and shadow and it was difficult to make out anything moving, but Miss Campbell thought she saw an object approaching. Yes, it was unquestionably an object. Something large and white—a van. Great heavens, it was a Gypsy van!

"Ben!" she called, but Ben was quite a quarter of a mile away by now.

The only thing to do was to get out and hide behind a tree in the woods. She could not bring herself to face a band of Gypsies. Hurriedly climbing down from the car, Miss Campbell concealed herself in a thicket of trees near the road.

Presently the van drew up alongside the empty car.

"By Jove, here's an abandoned motor. Where do you suppose the people are?" said a man walking at one side of the van and driving the horse.

Two women were comfortably seated in rocking chairs in the little front compartment of the vehicle.

"How strange!" said one of them. "It's like finding a derelict at sea. Where are the Captain and the crew? Where are the passengers?"

"Where indeed?" thought the lady behind the tree.

"It's like the mystery of the 'Maria Theresa,'" pursued the man. "A perfectly good ship abandoned in mid-ocean without the slightest explanation and all on board lost forever."

This gruesome comparison made Miss Campbell decidedly uncomfortable.

"Shall we leave her to drift, ladies?" he asked affably.

"I will protect the 'Comet' with my life," she thought. "I don't believe they are Gypsies anyhow. Their accent is too good, and a Gypsy would never address the women of his family as 'ladies.'"

"I am afraid I am at present the sole survivor of the crew," she said politely to the young man. "If you would be kind enough to advise me, sir, I should be greatly indebted."

Immediately the man lifted his broad-brimmed hat and the women in the rocking chairs leaned forward in order the better to see this dainty, mysterious little lady in gray who had emerged apparently from a primeval forest.

"With the greatest pleasure, ma'am," answered the young man, filled with curiosity, and they all listened with courteous attention while she related the history of the afternoon's mishaps.

"And now that stupid Ben, who is really a very nice boy under ordinary circumstances, has gone off and left me and almost anything could have happened,—wolves, Indians, half-breeds—" she added, thinking of the treacherous Lupos.

After she had finished, the young man stood for a moment thinking.

"My name is Richard Hook, ma'am, at your service," he said. "The only thing I could suggest is for me to unhitch Dobbin here and ride him down the road to look for your party and leave you with my sister, Maggie, and her friend. This is as good a place as any other for us to put up for the night. You might as well start supper, girls. Perhaps this lady is hungry."

"I am," interjected Miss Campbell fervently.

So it happened that Richard Hook went ambling off into the twilight on old Dobbin while Maggie Hook and her friend, Amy Swinnerton, made Miss Campbell comfortable in the van and prepared to cook supper.

"And you are not Gypsies after all?" asked the little lady, watching one of the girls light a bracket lamp on the wall of the van.

"No, indeed," laughed Maggie Hook. "Not by birth at least, but I think we have something of the Gypsy spirit because we love to spend our summers in this way. Have you never seen a van?"

Miss Campbell could not say that she had and looked about her with much interest.

"These are our beds, you see," Amy explained. "The top one folds up and we use the lower one for a divan. Richard sleeps in a tent. This is the dressing room," she continued with as much pride as a custodian showing a sightseer over an ancient castle.

A little space had been curtained off in the back and behind this hung a mirror over a small dressing table, and a row of hooks for clothes.

"And this is your kitchen?" asked Miss Campbell, indicating a row of plates and cups on a plate rack and a small kerosene stove, at one side opposite the beds.

"That and a chafing dish and a camp fire," answered Maggie Hook. "But we mostly prefer the fire. I'll get things started here to-night and when Richard comes he can make us a fire if he dares. I believe the laws around here are pretty strict about fires."

"Well, my dears, it is assuredly the most complete and delightful little traveling home I ever saw," exclaimed Miss Campbell, after she had looked over the entire van and then seated herself in a rocking chair to watch preparations for supper. It did not take long for her to make friends with these nice young girls who were indeed about the age of her own charges.

"How many are in your party, Miss Campbell?" asked Maggie, in the act of breaking eggs into a bowl.

"There are eight of us, but I hope you aren't thinking——"

"Oh, but I am," insisted Maggie. "I am sure they will be very tired and hungry, and, besides, we have plenty in the larder for everyone,—a whole ham!" she added archly.

"Dear me, I wish Billie were here," said Miss Campbell. "I believe she always keeps things stored away in the 'Comet' for an emergency."

"I'll beat up some Johnnie cakes," announced Amy. "We can cook those on the wood fire later."

In the meantime, the waiters who had waited in vain and the wanderers who had wandered fruitlessly, began to realize that the situation was serious. Billie grew desperately impatient. At last she succeeded in engaging a carry-all and two horses from a man at the moat house and soon she and Nancy, seated face to face, were hurrying along the road. Dr. Hume had met Percy. Ben had discovered Elinor and Mary standing fearfully on the edge of the forest. By the time that Richard Hook had got anywhere at all with his old nag, the lake-party, with the exception of Miss Campbell, was re-united in Billie's carry-all and driving comfortably in the direction of the "Comet."

They were very tired and hungry but a graven image would have melted to laughter over this comedy of errors, and Richard Hook, hearing the gay chorus of voices approaching, was quite sure it was another picnic party. But he was not a young man to take chances, and having taken his position across the middle of the road, he waved his arms and yelled, "Stop!"

"Do you know anything about a little lady in gray and an abandoned automobile?" he asked.

"Cousin Helen and the 'Comet,'" cried Billie, consumed with anxiety. "Oh, Ben, how could you have left them?"

"But——" began Ben.

"I assure you the lady is in good hands," interrupted Richard. "My sister is looking after her."

There were more explanations and presently they started on their way again, and in a little while drew up beside the Gypsy van and the abandoned motor car. And the upshot of the whole adventure was that the two parties joined forces and provisions.

The boys built a fire against a great boulder on the river bank and there was a wonderful supper. All the very best of everything was brought out for the occasion. They ate Johnnie cakes from wooden platters and drank black coffee from glasses, Russian fashion. Later they sang songs and told stories around the camp fire. Never did people commingle so agreeably as the caravanners and the motorists. Somehow Sunrise Camp and Alberdina Schoenbachler faded into the dim recesses of their memories.

"Of course you can't go home," Richard Hook remarked to Billie. "We'll camp out to-night. You'll never be able to mend that car in all this blackness, and it would be a pretty hard road to follow at night anyhow. We've just come over it. Dobbin can pull the car over to one side of the road, and Miss Campbell and Miss Price can sleep in the van."

"And we'll show you what a bed really is," Ben went on eagerly. "Not a motor car cushion affair either."

To their surprise, Miss Campbell was agreeable to the plan.

"There's nobody at home to worry but Alberdina," she said, "and it won't hurt her to lose a little flesh, anyhow."

The boys worked hard over the beds. Springy couches they made of spruce branches, covered with blankets, and, at last as care-free as a lot of Gypsies, they all slept as soundly as they had ever slept in their own beds at home.



CHAPTER XII.

THE RETURN.

With the exception of her three best friends, Billie Campbell had never met people who pleased her so much on short acquaintance as the Hooks and their guest. It had not taken them half an hour to bridge over the gap of unfamiliarity.

"What is it?" she asked of Maggie Hook, Richard's small, whimsical sister, black haired, black eyed, with quick alert movements like a bird's.

"I can tell you exactly the reason," replied Maggie. "It's because we all belong to the road. There is a bond between us. We go Gypsying in our van and you go Gypsying in your car. We be all of one blood like Kipling's Mowgli and the animals in the jungle."

"Only we aren't the real thing as much as you," said Billie modestly. "The 'Comet' is a dear old thing, but he's not a house."

"You wouldn't enjoy it if he were," said Maggie. "A motor traveling van would never do. You see the point of this kind of life is that it's lazy and contemplative. We just amble along and it doesn't matter whether we make ten miles or five. We are not attempting long distance records. We are just getting intimate with the ups and downs of the country; the streams and rivers; the little valleys and bits of green by the roadside. Sometimes, if we find a place that's secluded enough, a little glen or a grove that screens off the road, we stay there for several days."

"But what do you do?"

"We all do the things we like best. Richard reads and takes long walks or fishes, if there is a stream. I clean the van from top to bottom and polish everything up and bake a cake in the little oven. Then I darn all the stockings and mend the clothes."

Billie laughed.

"You're not a Gypsy," she said, "if you are a black-eyed wanderer. They never mend or clean anything. But what does Miss Swinnerton like to do? Is she fond of housework, too?"

"Amy? No, not specially. She sketches and paints in water colors, and botanizes, and looks for bits of stones and rocks which she examines through a glass, and translates French and generally potters around. She's always busy. She can do anything from making an omelette to painting a picture."

Billie turned her eyes half wistfully toward the plump brown-haired Amy Swinnerton. She felt suddenly very inefficient and worthless.

"I can't do anything," she said, frowning. "I'm ashamed of myself."

"You can run a motor car and keep it in order," answered the new friend. "I never knew another girl who could."

"That's ground into me by experience. But I hate sewing. I'm not a good cook and I can't draw or paint or play the piano. We met a girl this summer who has been brought up in a cabin on the mountain and has never been to school in her life, who knows a lot more than I do."

Billie told what little she knew of the strange history of Phoebe.

"It would make a wonderful story," observed Maggie. "I should like to put it into a book."

"Do you write, too?" asked Billie eagerly.

Maggie blinked her dark, bright eyes.

"When you see my name appear in book reviews and magazines and things, then you'll know I write," she replied.

This conversation occurred the next morning at breakfast. Billie had risen at dawn and repaired the "Comet" and the motor party was soon now to start on its homeward journey.

Richard Hook presently joined his sister and Billie. Sitting cross-legged on the ground at their feet, he munched a bacon sandwich and sipped black coffee from a tin cup. He reminded Billie of one of Shakespeare's wise fools. All he lacked were the cap and bells. His whimsical, humorous eyes were rather far apart; his dark hair, cropped close, stood up straight over his forehead. His nose was distinguished in shape and his flexible mouth turned up at the corners. He talked slowly with a sort of twang like a farmer from the east coast and there was a kind of hidden humor under whatever he said. He had charming old-world manners, and an old-fashioned way of saying "I thank you," or "Permit me, ma'am," or "At your service, ma'am." He was really quite a delightful person, they unanimously decided; and so was his sister and so was her friend.

Billie wondered what Richard Hook's work was; or whether perhaps he was still in college. She wondered a great many things about him, and she felt quite sure that he was not well off. Presently she said:

"It's too bad when we are all just beginning to be friends that we must part so soon. Why can't you turn old Dobbin right about face and come back and see us at Camp Sunrise?"

"Why not, indeed?" answered Richard.

"Do come," urged Billie, never dreaming that in giving this invitation she had been moved by something stronger than her own friendly wish to know more of these nice people, and that destiny itself had a hand in the business.

Richard Hook took a little calendar from his pocket and contemplated it gravely.

"Another month has perished with her moon," he remarked. "We're in August, little sister. Did you realize that? I see no reason why we shouldn't travel toward Sunrise Camp before——"

"Before——" repeated Maggie, and the brother and sister exchanged a swift glance.

"Then you do accept," exclaimed Billie joyfully.

"With the greatest pleasure," answered Richard, "if you think old Dobbin can climb the hill."

"Of course he can," replied Billie.

"But, Richard, do you think we dare?" asked Maggie in a low voice.

Richard's mouth turned up at the corners and his eyes gave a humorous blink.

"We dare anything," he said. "Pray excuse this little aside, Miss Billie. It's only that we are obliged to consider certain complications that arise to vex us at times. I think we can easily arrange to go to Camp Sunrise."

Billie was more certain than ever that money was the complication. But surely that was an inexpensive way of spending one's vacation, provided one owned the van and the horse.

"How much longer does your vacation last, Mr. Hook?" she asked.

"It depends. My boss is a very notionate old party. He might let me go wandering on like this for several weeks longer or he might suddenly decide to send for me, and I should have to go hiking back in the midst of my holiday."

Maggie laughed, and Billie wondered what kind of work this unusual young man did that sent out sudden calls in the very middle of hard-earned vacations.

However, it was arranged that the caravanners should meander back toward Sunrise Camp and in the course of time stop there for a visit.

"They are delightful young people," Miss Campbell said. "I don't know who they are, I'm sure, nor what the young man does, but I find them quite the most charming young people with the exception of my own that I ever met."

"It's rather strange about his work," remarked Dr. Hume. "I don't know what he does now, but he wishes above all things to be a farmer, he informed me. He's always looking for farms as he journeys along the road. That's one of the reasons why he got the van, in order to see the country and decide where he'd like best to locate."

They were not so merry on the journey back as they had been on the trip of the morning before. For one reason those who had slept in open camp had not had off their clothes for twenty-four hours, and all of them felt the crying need of baths after the two dusty journeys. But there was another reason besides these physical ones. They were beginning to feel conscience-stricken about Alberdina. How had she taken their long, unexplained absence? Would she still be singing "Ach, mein lieber Augustine!" when they returned, and would there be a long clothes line bowed under the weight of clean white linen bleaching in the sun ready to be ironed? So restless did they grow under these speculations, that they did not pause for lunch and, urging the "Comet" to the limit of his speed, they reached home a little before noon. Alberdina was there. Thank heavens for that. They could see her plainly as they turned the curve in the road. But her appearance was not promising. Perched on her head was that absurd comedy hat. She was sitting down, quite low, on the iron-bound trunk, in fact, leaning on her large cotton umbrella, as one prepared to depart on a journey.

If you have ever lived in a remote spot with an uncertain maid, you will recall how apologetic you were to her for your own shortcomings.

"Oh, dear, what shall I say to her?" exclaimed Miss Campbell. "She looks as if she were ready to go this minute."

"Why can't we tell her the truth? We simply couldn't help it," said Billie. "She ought not to be angry over something we couldn't control."

"You don't know them, but I'll just brazen it out. I know we're entirely dependent on the creature for the comforts of life, but I won't let her bully me. Well, Alberdina," she called, as the car drew up at the camp door, "have you been lonesome?"

"Lonesome?" repeated Alberdina, not moving from her ridiculous trunk. "I no time haf had for lonesomes. Many peoples to dis house come—crazy peoples—men and vimmen, hein? They haf my moneys took already yesterday! Ach, Gott! They haf me tied wid ropes. They have nogged and nogged in the night times. Dos vimmens, I hear the boice already yet. I no lig dees place. I to my home go bag to-day. Dey have robbed dis house. Dey haf made to turn red dos vite clothes."

In dead silence they descended from the motor car and filed into the house to investigate Alberdina's wild, incoherent story.

There were certainly signs of an invasion in the locker rooms, everything tipsy turvy on the floor. Alberdina showed them the ropes that had bound her. With rivers of tears she mentioned her loss of ten dollars.

"And the red clothes?" asked Billie doubtfully.

This had been reserved to the last by the wily-innocent Swiss girl. With cries of sorrow they beheld their underclothing and blouses all tinged a deep pink.

Suddenly Miss Campbell marched up and stood in front of the girl with a very cold steely look in her cerulean eyes.

"Answer me this instant," she said, "and speak the truth. You boiled those clothes with a red silk handkerchief?"

Alberdina broke down and wept copiously.

"I knew not about dos red," she exclaimed.

"But when you saw the clothes were turning red, why didn't you take them off the fire?" asked Billie.

"I did nod see."

"Not see? And why not, pray?" demanded Miss Campbell.

"I was asleeb and when I wog, I was wit rope tied."

"Who cut the rope?" asked Dr. Hume, beginning to doubt the whole story.

"A gentlemans who mag to play music on the zither."

"Phoebe's father!" exclaimed the girls.

They glanced at each other with a wild surmise.

"It couldn't have been——"

"No, no, I'm sure he never would——"

"Hush," said Ben, "here comes Phoebe."

The mountain girl, looking pale and distraught, her hair flying, her face and hands scratched from contact with brambles, rushed into their midst.

"My father," she cried. "He has been lost all night. I have looked and looked and I cannot find him. Oh, if he should be in the marshes——"

She fell on her knees at Billie's feet and broke into sobbing.



CHAPTER XIII.

BILLIE AND THE DOCTOR.

Several things had to be done before any steps could be taken to find Phoebe's father. First Alberdina must be roundly scolded for her carelessness about the clothes and then placated with a ten dollar bill to compensate her for her loss. There must be lunch prepared for hungry travelers, and Phoebe, herself, must be given food and made to rest. In the meantime they questioned her concerning her father's movements. He had left the cabin with his zither the morning of the day before and had not been seen since, except when he had appeared at the camp and cut Alberdina's bonds.

"Has he ever stayed away before at night?" asked Dr. Hume.

"No, never. When he is not weaving baskets or carving, he is very restless and often is away for hours, but he always comes back before bed time. He never forgets me. That is why I am so uneasy now," she went on, clasping and unclasping her hands in the agony of her uncertainty.

"Phoebe," said the doctor, "what is it that gives you strength to do your day's work, even if it means walking across a mountain in the hot sun carrying a heavy basket?"

Phoebe lowered her eyes and a flush spread over her sunburned face.

"I forgot," she said. "I was so unhappy that I forgot. It has helped me, oh, so many times when we have had no money. Many times we have been snowed in on the mountain without food and it has always come. It saved us from the Lupos. I was lonesome and it brought me friends." She glanced at the girls busily preparing lunch and at Ben and Percy talking in low voices on the porch.

"Don't you think it will help you now?"

"It has left me. I can't find it," replied poor Phoebe. "It is because I am so frightened. It never comes if you are frightened."

"My child," said the good doctor, "you are worn out. You must have lunch and take a good rest. In the meantime we will do everything we can to find your father. Perhaps he has lost his way and is wandering in the woods somewhere."

"No," said Phoebe, shaking her head miserably, "he never loses his way. He knows the trails better than I do myself."

The doctor himself brought Phoebe a tray of lunch. She was ravenously hungry.

"The poor little thing hasn't eaten for hours," he thought, glancing at her covertly, as he returned with a basin of water, a soft towel and Miss Campbell's private bottle of eau de cologne. When she had finished eating, he made her stretch out on the divan while he gave her face and hands and wrists an aromatic bath. Never before had Phoebe been ministered to and waited on. She smiled at the doctor with dumb gratitude.

"When people are hungry and tired and discouraged, they have a pretty hard time holding on to their faith, Phoebe," he said. "Even when they haven't anything to worry about, it's hard enough. You go to sleep now and I promise you we will start on the search for your father at once."

Phoebe raised her eyes gratefully to his. In those clear brown depths she read strength, gentleness and sympathy. She felt she was looking into the face of an angel with a shiny bald head and shaggy red-gray eyebrows.

"I believe God sent you," she said, and in a few moments dropped off into a deep exhausted sleep.

After luncheon or dinner, whatever that meal might be called in camp, Percy got out his motor cycle and proceeded to the Antler's Inn to ask for news of Phoebe's father. Ben took the trail to Indian Head and Billie and Dr. Hume went down to the village in the motor car to drum up a search party or find guides to help them scour the mountains. In neither attempt were they in the least successful.

On the way down the mountain, Billie decided to unburden herself of something that had been on her mind for a long time.

"You have never seen Phoebe's father, have you, Dr. Hume?"

The doctor shook his head.

"Have you ever heard of a case like his? I mean forgetting one's past."

"Oh, yes. I have seen a number of cases. The patient usually loses his memory altogether in time and goes insane."

"But he's not insane, doctor. He's not even going insane. Really and truly, except about always trying to find a physician, his brain is as clear as anybody's."

The doctor smiled. He liked this earnest, enthusiastic girl who was always doing things for other people and modestly disclaiming credit. There was something masculine in her disregard for small things and the largeness of her views.

"A very nice man has instilled her with extremely big ideas about life," he reflected. "She is furthermore a wholesome, healthy young creature with a high order of intelligence and a very warm, tender heart."

So much engaged was he in his diagnosis of Billie's character that he had almost forgotten the subject of the conversation when she spoke up again rather timidly.

"What I'm driving at is this, doctor, and I've been thinking about it for days. Don't you think you could operate on Phoebe's father, put a silver plate on his skull or lift whatever's pressing on his memory bump? Don't you think you could undertake it, doctor? I know you are a famous surgeon. Papa wrote that to me long ago, but I knew it before he told me. I could tell just from seeing and being with you that you were a great man."

The doctor laughed over these artless compliments.

"Are you a mind reader, Miss Billie?"

"But you will undertake it, doctor?" she urged.

"We must first catch our man, my child, and then have a look at him. A good many things would have to be considered: whether he would consent himself; whether he would be able to stand the shock of a serious operation, and whether he may not have some disease an operation wouldn't help; paralysis or softening of the brain."

"At any rate, you will undertake it?" cried Billie joyfully.

"Do you wish it so much?" he asked, watching her face as she guided the car down the steep road.

"I do, I do! Think what it would mean to Phoebe to have this mystery cleared; think what it would mean to him, too!"

"I was thinking of it," answered the doctor gravely. "That's just the point. Suppose Phoebe's father would not thank me for bringing his past back? Suppose, after all, he would be happier in this state than with his memory restored. Do you realize that a man like that, a man of education and refinement, I mean, must have had some very good reason for hiding himself away in these mountains? That he may have been flying from something?"

The enthusiasm died out of Billie's face.

"Oh, Dr. Hume," she began, "I hadn't thought of that. Indeed, I couldn't connect anything of the sort with Phoebe and her father. They are not a bit like that."

"You never can tell. The people who have given way to some wild impulse that will cause them everlasting regret are not always bad people by any means. His reasons for hiding himself and his wife in a cabin in these mountains of course may have been entirely innocent; or he may have hoped to find oblivion and forgetfulness up here out of the world. If I give him back his memory, providing of course I can do it, I may give him the very thing he is running away from."

"Don't you think he has been punished enough and that Phoebe ought to have a chance?" argued Billie.

"Is there anything to prevent Phoebe's having a chance without knowing her father's past?" asked the doctor.

"Nothing, except there would always be that mystery hanging over her. Don't you think it would be very unpleasant not to know who you were or even your father's name?"

"I am a living example to the contrary," said the doctor with a laugh. "My father and mother were really my adopted parents. They took me out of an orphan asylum when I was a little lad about five years old. I remember it vividly. Afterwards they had other children, but they always treated me like a beloved eldest son. I never knew any difference and I never bothered my head about my real parents. Whoever they were, they had died or shuffled me off on an institution. My adopted mother was the finest woman I have ever known and if Hume isn't my real name, it doesn't matter. I shall do everything I can to make it an honored one."

"You are a wonderful man, doctor," exclaimed Billie, quite overcome by this bit of confidence about his past. "It was because you were so fine that they were good to you. Perhaps God picked you out from all the other orphans to have a good home because he saw what fine material there was in you."

"No indeed, my dear young lady," laughed the doctor. "It was just a matter of chance. The little orphans were like the two women sitting in the market place. The one was taken and the other left. If they chose me for anything, it was solely and entirely because I had brown eyes."

"You may say what you please," protested Billie. "They looked deeper than that, I am certain."

"Simply luck, Miss Billie. I have always been lucky. The fellows at college called me 'Lucky Bill.' But to return to the original subject of the discussion: I don't want to disappoint an unselfish, fine young woman like you,—you see I can pay compliments, too,——" he added, watching the flush of pleasure mount to Billie's face; "I don't want to make any promises about this man I can't carry out, but I promise this much: I will do what I can."

"Thank you a thousand times, Dr. Hume," said Billie gratefully. "I would just like to shake hands with you if I could, but you see I have to guide the 'Comet.' It will be a wonderful thing to give a man back his senses after eighteen years."

"Maybe so; maybe not," answered the doctor as the car turned into the village street.

They stopped in front of the only hostelry in the place, a cheap two-story wooden house with a horse trough in front of it. Here usually could be found several guides for camping trips and driving parties, and here Dr. Hume looked for help in rescuing Phoebe's father.

The owner of the house, a thin sallow-faced man with pale shifting eyes came out to speak to them.

"You ain't meanin' it's old crazy Frenchy you're after?" he asked. "I don't wonder he's lost if it's him."

"That's the man," answered Dr. Hume, "but I don't understand what you mean."

"I guess he's got wind he's suspected of settin' Razor Back Mountain on fire and he's vamoosed. He ought to be shut up anyhow. He's a dangerous character runnin' around the country."

Billie was shocked and angry.

"He is not," she burst out. "I know Mr.—Mr. French quite well——"

The man broke into a loud rasping laugh.

"Mr. French!" he repeated.

"He's incapable of setting a mountain on fire and he is as gentle and courteous as possible."

There was another laugh. This time it came from within the house and Billie and the doctor recognized the voice of Mr. Lupo.

"You're a friend of Lupo, I see," remarked the doctor looking very hard at the man.

"I guess that's none of your affair," answered the other angrily. "And nothin' agin' him nor me either, for the matter o' that."

The doctor lifted his eyebrows.

"I'd like to hire two or three guides. Are there any about?"

"There ain't no guides connected with this here establishment goin' to go huntin' for crazy Frenchy," announced the man roughly, "if that's what you're wantin' with them. Most of 'em is fightin' the flames anyhow."

The doctor sat silently for a moment looking at the mountaineer, whose eyes shifted uneasily under his steady gaze.

"I would advise you and your friend, Lupo, not to meddle too much in this affair," he said, as the inn keeper with a snarling laugh shuffled back into the house.

Billy turned the automobile and they went slowly down the street.

"If we were in the Kentucky or the Virginia mountains, I should call this a feud," remarked the doctor, "but up here there is something more than a revenge for a quarrel two generations old that creates a situation of this kind. That man has got some ugly reason for withholding his guides. He's a sinister looking wretch, and no man with a shifting pair of eyes can be trusted around the corner."

"But what are we to do?" asked Billie.

"If we can't get guides,—we'll just go alone," answered Dr. Hume. "I think we'll have to find your Mr. French, Miss Billie, seeing that a lot of cut-throats are trying to keep us from doing it."



CHAPTER XIV.

CHANCE NEWS.

Billie and the doctor were indeed in something of a quandary as to what to do about Phoebe's father. It was evident from further inquiry that the tide of general opinion had been turned against Crazy Frenchy; not one soul could be interested in the search for him, not even after an offer of liberal pay.

"He ain't no good anyhow," one man said. "He and his daughter holds themselves above common people even when they don't have enough to keep body and soul together. They lives on property that ain't theirs by rights, and they don't belong in this section of the country. The father's crazy and the neighborhood will be glad to git rid of him."

"An' I'd jes' like to mention," added another man, "the people as takes up for 'em ain't goin' to find it no ways a easy proposition."

Certainly Lupo had enlisted the sympathies of the entire village in his own behalf.

"I told your friend at the hotel a moment ago," said the doctor, "that he and Lupo had better be careful how they meddled in this business. If you don't want to engage yourself to me to find this unfortunate man, you have a perfect right to refuse. It's only a common act of kindness at any rate. But I would warn you that if you and your friends intend to make trouble, you will get into trouble. That's all."

The mountaineer scowled.

"We can prove he set Razor Back on fire," he said. "He was seen in the neighborhood prowling about with a can of oil yesterday morning."

"At what time?" demanded Billie quickly.

"I don't know the exact hour, lady, but it was some time in the forenoon."

"Well," ejaculated Billie angrily, "that shows how much evidence you have to go upon. There's not a word of truth in it and you have no right to spread that wicked report founded on a falsehood. Mr. French was at Sunrise Camp just about that time and he couldn't have got anywhere near Razor Back Mountain in hours. We have a witness to prove what we say."

"It may not have been forenoon, come to think of it," said the man doggedly.

"Nonsense," exclaimed the exasperated Billie, as the "Comet" dashed away with a contemptuous honk-honk, leaving the defeated mountaineer standing in the middle of the road.

Only one person was awake in all the camp when the doctor and Billie returned: Alberdina, busy ironing pink-tinted clothes in the lean-to. Miss Campbell and the girls were napping on the upper porch and Phoebe still slept on a couch in the living room, while Ben and Percy had not returned from their search for news of her father.

"Miss Billie," remarked the doctor, "if you will be kind enough to fix me up a lunch, I think I'll pack my knapsack and start on the road again. I can't say how long I shall be gone, but you mustn't be uneasy if I don't get back for a day or two. The boys will look after you and if you have any real trouble, you had better telegraph your father. If possible, try and keep Phoebe right here. Those men will go no further than threats in regard to us. They know we are too powerful for them, but I couldn't say the same for that poor girl and her father. I suppose jealousy and Lupo's treachery are the motives behind it. The father does better work than any of them can do and the mountaineers resent the difference between them, whatever it is, birth, breeding, education. But we can't judge them by the usual standards, of course. They have never had any chances, these people, shut in by this wall of mountains. There is not much inspiration to be charitable and kind, living in one of these little shanties during the long cold winters. It's a pretty fine nature that doesn't get warped and narrowed by the life."

"Phoebe's didn't," thought Billie, while she sliced bread for the doctor's lunch.

After he had departed with his staff and his telescope and his knapsack, Billie sat down in a steamer chair under the trees and began to think. She lifted her eyes to the wall of mountains now mystical and unreal under their mantle of blue shadow. How could treachery and hatred and jealousy exist where there was so much beauty? It seemed to her that she had only to look about her to be inspired and uplifted; but Billie was too young to realize that it takes more than scenery to furnish that kind of inspiration.

"I am not tired and I am not sleepy," she thought. "Must I sit here all the afternoon waiting for the others to wake?" She glanced at her watch. "Only a quarter to three. Why can't I take a walk? It's against the rules as laid down by papa for women members, but that was only a joke anyhow and I shan't go far."

Billie chose a trail they often took after supper for the reason that it was brought to an early finish by the bed of a creek dry in summer, though probably a brave stream in the spring after the thaws. But it was a pretty walk, tunneled through the forest, carpeted with dried pine needles and bordered on either side by ferns.

Strolling along, Billie thought of many things; of the mountain on the other side of Indian Head on which fires had started and where bands of men were now fighting the flames. That was a dreadful thing to do, to set a forest on fire; a crime against nature as well as against man. She thought of Phoebe's father, perhaps injured, or worse, who could tell? Then with a mental leap she thought of Richard Hook and his sister Maggie; the charm of their personalities; their simplicity; their joy in living. Billie wondered if she could be happy if she were poor, really quite poor. It was rather fun cooking, with Alberdina to clean up after them. It was only for a little while and it was just a sort of game.

"It would be a dog's life to keep up forever," thought Billie, "but Richard and Maggie Hook would never admit it. They make the best of being poor and pretend that living like Gypsies is the most delightful way of spending one's vacation. I think they are just fine. There is Phoebe, too. How well she has got on without anything, education, money, friends. She is wonderful."

Who was Phoebe? Who was her father? Were they not mysterious people? When the veil was lifted at last, Billie felt convinced that it would disclose no ordinary identity. They had the marks of distinguished people in exile. There was a look of family about them both that no ragged attire could disguise.

Toward the end of the trail, Billie saw an old woman hobbling toward her, leaning on a stout stick. She looked remarkably like one of the aged forest trees unexpectedly come to life. A gnarled, brown, weather-beaten old creature she was, who reminded Billie of a dwarfed apple tree she had seen in Japan, a little old bent thing said to have been over two hundred years old. Attached to the woman's waist was a pocket apron bulging with herbs, camomile and catnip, wood sorrel and sassafras root.

"Now, if Mary were here," thought Billie, "she would at once make a story of this: 'The Princess and the Old Witch.' I am sure Mary would call me a princess," she added modestly.

When the young girl and the old witch met, they paused without exactly knowing why. The herb gatherer had a strange, small, yellow face, crossed and re-crossed with wrinkles.

"Good afternoon," said Billie politely, not knowing what else to say.

The old woman waved aside this greeting with her stick.

"You come from Sunrise Camp?" she asked in a voice as cracked as her face was wrinkled.

Billie nodded.

"I bring message. You look for somebody?"

"Yes," replied Billie eagerly.

"You not find him now. Too much enemies."

"Where is he?" she demanded.

No answer came to this question.

"You will not tell me?"

"No tell," answered the old creature.

"Is he ill or hurt?"

The herb gatherer touched her forehead.

"He safe," she answered. "But people not safe who look for him. Too much enemies."

After that not another word could Billie get out of the obstinate old creature.

Who had sent her? Who was looking after Phoebe's father, if he were hurt or a prisoner? Could not Phoebe see him? Nothing would she reply to all these questions.



"I'm much obliged for that much anyhow," said Billie at last. "You must be tired and hungry. Won't you come back to the camp and let me give you——" she paused to consider. What could an old stunted apple tree like? Somehow it didn't seem as if she could live on real food. "Will you drink a cup of tea?" she added hastily.

The wrinkled face remained inscrutable.

"Or coffee?"

"Coffee?" repeated the old soul, and suddenly without the faintest warning, smiled and Billie smiled back.

"I can make delicious strong coffee," announced the girl proudly. "You will come, won't you?"

"I come," answered the herb-gatherer. "Coffee? I come!"

They walked briskly back to camp, this ill-assorted couple, and it was not long before Billie had established her companion in a chair under the trees and the coffee pot on the kerosene stove, where it was soon sending out a fragrant aroma.

"Don't you get very tired gathering herbs on the mountains?" asked Billie, by way of making conversation.

"When I tired, I rest," answered the other briefly.

Presently Billie brought out a tray with a cup and saucer, sugar and cream and some thin slices of buttered bread. From the upper gallery there came to her the low hum of conversation. The sleepers had awakened and were getting bathed and dressed.