"Do you know Phoebe?" she asked, while she poured the coffee.

The herb-gatherer smacked her lips and sniffed the air expectantly. "I've seen her."

"Don't you feel sorry for her to lose her father? She is very unhappy."

"No sugar," exclaimed the old woman, ignoring the question. "Good!" she exclaimed. "Fine coffee!"

Presently Billie poured out another cup and finally another.

"You like coffee, don't you?" she said.

"This fine coffee."

"We send away for it. The village coffee is not good."

"I never tasted the like before."

"If you will answer me a question," said Billie suddenly, "I will get my father to send you enough of this coffee to last all winter."

The old woman picked up the coffee pot and drained it to the last drop.

"If I tell," she said, warmed and stimulated by the hot drink, "it make lot trouble."

"Trouble for whom?"

"Much trouble for all."

"All I am to say to Phoebe then is that her father is in good hands and she is not to look for him?"

The herb-gatherer nodded.

"How soon will he be coming back?"

She shook her head and seizing her staff, rose to go.

"Are you a friend of the Lupos?"

There was no answer. Billie tried again.

"Did Mrs. Lupo ever go back to her husband?"

"Lupo very angry. She not go back."

"She needn't stay away on our account. My cousin forgave her long ago."

"I go now," announced the old woman, not taking the slightest notice of Billie's remarks.

"I am very much obliged to you for the news of Phoebe's father. Every time you bring us any news, you may have coffee, and if you show us where he is,—quite secretly, you know,—you shall have a great deal of coffee and money, too."

"I go now," repeated the strange old creature, pretending not to understand Billie's offer, and she promptly took her leave without another word.

Billie gathered up the tray and the coffee things and carried them into the kitchen.

"It looks like rain, Alberdina. I think we had better eat indoors to-night," she said.

Something, perhaps the east wind charged with wet, had made her feel dispirited and uneasy. She was homesick for her father and she wished that Dr. Hume had not gone away. She almost wished they had never set eyes on Phoebe and her father at all. How complicated life had suddenly become! They were just a party of well-meaning campers taking a summer holiday on the mountainside, meaning no harm to anybody on earth; and having done a little kindness to a poor girl and her half-crazed father, they had obtained the enmity of an entire village. How cruel and ignorant these people were! How warped and uncharitable!

"Have Percy and Ben got back yet?" asked Nancy, appearing at the door of the lean-to in a fresh blue linen dress, her hair all dewy from her bath, her eyes bright and clear from the long rest.

"Heavens, Nancy, you make me feel like a dusty old shoe," exclaimed Billie, realizing for the first time that she was tired and hot and crushed. "No, no one has come and Dr. Hume has gone to look for Phoebe's father." Then she told Nancy of the experiences of the afternoon.

"If the old woman spoke the truth all we have to do is to lie low and say nothing, like Br'er Rabbit," said Nancy.

"Do you know what I intend to do, Nancy," announced Billie, glancing through the open door at Phoebe in the distance on the divan. "Phoebe's awake. You see she's sitting up. I am going to set her fears at rest about her father first. Then I'm going to take her upstairs and after she's bathed, I'll dress her in some of my things. She shall swallow her pride. Cousin Helen shall ask her to visit us until her father is able to come back, and to-morrow I mean to take her down to the village in the 'Comet.' She shall wear my best and only pink linen. Won't she be stunning? I'm glad I took your advice and brought it along now, and we'll just show these people that Phoebe is not a poor ragged mountain girl."

"Take anything of mine you want," said Nancy generously. "Phoebe's taller than I am, but she can wear my 'undies,' I suppose."

"I think I have plenty," replied Billie, "that is, if Alberdina Schoenbachler ever gets through ironing the pink wash."

Phoebe was a good deal cheered by the message of the old herb gatherer.

"Oh, yes, I know her quite well. She likes me. Once when I had a fever she came and nursed me for several days and gave me herb tea."

Phoebe also submitted to being dressed up, after a good deal of persuasion.

"You know we are under a great obligation to you and you must give us a chance to get rid of a little of it," Billie said. "Besides, Dr. Hume said that on no account were you to leave the camp. You wouldn't like to disobey him, would you?"

"No, no," Phoebe answered, and finally permitted herself to be led to the women's quarter of the camp, where for the first time in her life she bathed in a porcelain bath tub, with scented soap and toilet water and sweet smelling talcum powder and violet ammonia and all kinds of women's luxuries at her service on a hand shelf by the tub.

When Billie proudly led Phoebe downstairs that evening, the others, already gathered around the supper table, were filled with amazement. Instead of the ragged, disheveled mountain girl, they saw a beautiful young woman in a white duck skirt and a muslin blouse. Her throat rose like a slender column from the lace yoke of the blouse and her soft hair was rolled into a loose knot on her neck.

"I know now she is a princess," said Mary.

Ben and Percy, returned from their search, had brought no news.



CHAPTER XV.

A WARNING.

The next day Billie had much difficulty in persuading Phoebe to put on the beautiful pink linen.

"It is not right," Phoebe kept saying, although her eyes shone with a new luster when she gazed at the pretty frock. "I am very grateful for what you have done but you must not do too much. I am sure my father would not approve of my accepting so many favors."

"Nonsense," exclaimed Billie. "Can't one girl lend another a few clothes without its being called 'favors'? I shouldn't hesitate to borrow from you, Phoebe, if I were—well—in your situation. And it seems to me that this dress would be very becoming to you. It suits your complexion better than mine because it matches your cheeks. I usually wear blue but I was over-persuaded by Nancy-Bell to get pink."

In the end, Phoebe was induced to put on the pink dress. It had been wonderful enough to wear a neatly fitted duck skirt and a lace-trimmed blouse, but in this embroidered linen frock the color of wild roses Phoebe was in a dream.

"Oh," she exclaimed, glancing at her flushed image in the mirror, "I never understood that clothes would make so much difference. I feel like someone else." She looked down at her white canvas pumps, which were, as a matter of fact, a shade too long for her, although she had run barefoot over the mountains. "And my feet look really small."

When Billy placed on her head a white Panama hat trimmed with a broad band of black velvet, Phoebe's eyes filled with tears.

"Am I Phoebe?" she ejaculated. "Phoebe without a name, who lives in a log house? Oh, Miss Campbell——"

"Not Miss Campbell," interrupted Billie. "You must call me Billie. Aren't you my guest and almost the same age? Besides, I never recognize myself with 'Miss' tucked on before my name."

"Billie, then," went on Phoebe, blushing because she had never known a girl before to call by the first name. "Do you think it is right that I should dress up so beautifully when—when my father is hidden away somewhere?"

"But I feel perfectly sure he is safe," said Billie. "Perhaps someone has told him it would be safer to keep away for a while."

"But why? He has never injured anyone in his life."

"It is all Lupo's doings and that is one reason why we want you to go with us down to the village and show yourself, so that they can see you have a number of very good friends to look after your interests."

The girls all left off their khaki camping clothes and attired themselves in light summer frocks that morning. There was a reason for this unusual "hike" as Percy called it, and it pleased Nancy extremely, who took that opportunity to wear her best blue batiste and her prettiest hat. Billie wore no hat. It annoyed her when she drove the car, she said; but as a matter of fact she had lent her only hat to Phoebe.

From time to time, as the car went down the mountain road, Miss Campbell glanced admiringly at the mountain girl beside Billie in front.

"Dear, dear," she exclaimed in a low voice, "what clothes will do for one. And how well the child wears them. She might have been accustomed to pretty things all her life."

"She puts us all in the shade," whispered Nancy.

If Billie had intended to create a sensation in the village, she succeeded beyond her wildest hopes. At first Phoebe was not recognized, but at the village store where everything was sold from groceries to Indian moccasins, a man loafing at the door exclaimed:

"By golly, that there's Phoebe from up on the mountains!"

Phoebe blushed scarlet and then smiled.

"I suppose it will be a surprise to them," she said.

They waited some time at the general store for purchases and letters, and by the time the "Comet" had borne them slowly onward to the small hotel, the news had spread down the street. At the water trough, they came to a full stop. They had no errands at the hotel, but Billie pretended to examine the "Comet's" interior mechanism with careful interest. Pretty soon, nearly two dozen people had gathered at the trough. The innkeeper himself appeared, pale-eyed and sly; and Lupo made bold to show his face.

"Look at Crazy Frenchy's gal diked out in all them duds," one of the company exclaimed.

"She do look good, crazy or no crazy," remarked a swarthy-faced guide eying Phoebe with admiration.

The young girl seemed entirely unconscious of all the attention she was attracting. She looked straight ahead down the village street and never even glanced at the group of rough men gathered near the car.

"How do we know but she didn't aid and abet Frenchy?" burst out the innkeeper. "How do we know but she didn't help him start them fires on Razor Back? The two is always together, 'ceptin' now when he's a-hidin' and she's put on fine clothes to drive around with her rich friends."

Phoebe turned her startled gaze on the man. Her lips parted.

"Don't answer them," whispered Billie, and with a grand flourish she swept the "Comet" around in a circle and turned his nose up the street.

"Do they accuse my father of setting Razor Back on fire?" asked Phoebe, tremulously.

"They tried to, but they couldn't prove it," answered Billie.

"My father loves the mountains," protested poor Phoebe. "He loves the forests. He wouldn't harm even one tree. How cruel these people are! Always they have hated us and we have never injured any of them. Oh, Billie, I feel that I must go to my father. I know he needs me."

"You remember the doctor's message," answered Billie; "that it would be dangerous for you to leave camp. I am certain he knew what he was saying. Besides, didn't you say the old herb woman was a friend? She would not have deceived you, would she?"

"No," answered Phoebe, half smiling. "Once I pulled a thorn out of old Granny's foot and washed and bound it, and she has been good to me ever since. The time she nursed me, she never left me day or night until I was well."

"So you see," said Billie, "it would be foolish for you to start out to hunt your father when you know old Granny can be depended upon and Dr. Hume, too."

Phoebe was not the only one who felt restless in camp that afternoon. All of them had the sensation of waiting for something. Only Alberdina seemed placidly content. Having been forgiven the pink clothes and having had her stolen money refunded, she went about her work, singing and yodelling in a melodious voice, and for lunch surprised them with a German cinnamon cake she had made during their absence in the village.

"Why, you can cook, Alberdina?" exclaimed Billie, on whom cooking was beginning to pall.

"I can a leedle coog."

"Then you shall cook the dinner," announced Billie firmly, and Alberdina, who had not mentioned cooking in the bond, quailed before her stern gray eye and consented.

The afternoon dragged slowly along. It was very hot and the women members of the camp lay on their cots in kimonos reading and napping. Percy, underneath, snored lustily, and Ben chopped wood and piled up the logs scientifically for a fire that evening.

Alberdina's supper was distinctly German in flavor, but it was good and Billie and Nancy enjoyed freedom from the bondage of cooking the evening meal. After supper the wind freshened and it grew much cooler.

"It's going to be a dark night. There's no moon," remarked Ben, wistfully. "Shall I light the camp fire? And then we can sit around and tell stories and sing songs," and because no one either assented or objected, owing to the peculiar restlessness that possessed them, he put a match to the pile of logs and presently the clearing was illuminated. The camp house stood out in bold relief against the background of the mountains. Little clouds were scurrying across the sky like schools of fish, and an occasional flash of heat lightning lit up the mountains and valley with strange distinctness. Elinor had brought out her guitar and they had just begun one of the old familiar songs, when a ragged boy appeared in their midst so suddenly that he might have sprung up full grown from the earth.

He faced Ben without looking at the others.

"The doctor wants both gem'man to come. I show the way. Quick."

Phoebe sat up very straight and looked at the boy.

"I don't know you," she said. "Who are you?"

"I come from that away," answered the boy, pointing with his thumb toward Indian Head. "The doctor said you would know it was all right by this here," he added, unbuttoning his coat and taking out the doctor's well remembered cane. "An' he don't want none of the ladies to come. Jes' the men."

"But I will go," exclaimed Phoebe. "My father——"

"Is your father Frenchy?"

"Yes," answered the girl, lowering her eyes.

"The doctor says Frenchy's gal was not to be skeered. Frenchy is safe and well."

"Are you sure?" demanded Phoebe.

"So help me," answered the boy, raising his hand to heaven.

"But what does it mean?" broke in Miss Campbell. "I don't like the sound of it at all. Why has the doctor sent for both of you boys? Why should we be left alone? It's not like the doctor at all."

"They ain't got to go no distance much, lady," the boy assured her. "They'll be back inside of fifteen minutes," and being the prince of liars and an actor of precocious ability, he succeeded in persuading them that Ben and Percy must follow him without delay.

The girls were still gathering up the rugs and cushions preparatory to going into the house, when there came another interruption that frightened Miss Campbell so much that she gave a little cry and seized Billie's arm.

"It's only old Granny, the herb-woman," Billie assured her. "What is it, Granny?"

"Phoebe! They gona' tar and feather Phoebe an' her father if they can find him. Go, quick. Lupo an' his men comin' up mountain. Hurry and shut house."

"But I don't want to bring this danger on my friends," exclaimed Phoebe. "I will go with you, Granny."

"No, no, too dangerous," answered the old woman. "Lupo, he see in dark."

"Indeed, you shall not go," broke in Miss Campbell indignantly. "You'll stay right here and they shall not tar and feather you or anybody else. The low wretches!"

"Shut up house, quick," was Granny's last piece of advice as she melted away in the darkness.

Nobody paused to beat down the camp fire or gather up the rugs and cushions. Into the house they scurried and lost no time in drawing the great iron-bound winter doors across the openings into the living room, and bolting them. The doors to the sleeping porches were all carefully closed and locked from the inside. Then they sat down in the immense vaulted room and waited.

Phoebe, sitting apart from the others, seemed very quiet and calm in the face of the danger which threatened her, and Billie knew she was calling on the faith which had never failed her.



CHAPTER XVI.

THE ATTACK.

They were filled with hot indignation over the situation. They felt sure now that Ben and Percy had been lured away, but they were not uneasy for their safety. Billie had told them what Dr. Hume had said: that the mountaineers would not dare injure any of the campers. But all of them realized that Phoebe might be treated with cruel indignities. Only a few weeks before, Billie had read an account in a newspaper of how a pretty young school teacher had been tarred and feathered by a mob of people who were jealous of her beauty and refinement. If Lupo could persuade the villagers that Phoebe and her father were responsible for the forest fires, Billie felt certain they would have a very unreasonable lot of visitors to deal with that night. She wished with all her heart that someone with an eloquent tongue would appear and address these narrow, stupid men, someone who understood their natures and knew how to deal with them. She believed that violence would only aggravate their rage. Someone would have to talk to them.

The other Motor Maids sat on a divan whispering together, and Miss Campbell, calm as was her wont in the presence of danger, paced up and down the room, examining the bolts of the heavy shutters. Alberdina, with her little iron bound trunk beside her, sat grumbling in a corner.

"Is it for thees I haf gome?" she murmured. "I to New Yorg return to-morrow. They will keel me already yet."

"You are perfectly safe, Alberdina," said Miss Campbell, "and you are not to go back to New York to-morrow. You are to stay with us and see this thing through. I shall telegraph Mr. Campbell in the morning and have the law on these people. I am sick and tired of their savagery and injustice. The cruel wretches! I——"

A long shrill whistle interrupted her outburst. It penetrated the stout walls of their fortress so unexpectedly that it brought them all to their feet with low exclamations.

"There they are," whispered Mary.

Alberdina groaned, "Mein lieber Gott," and sank upon a couch with the expression of a condemned man about to be executed.

It was some moments after the whistle before the enemy made its next advance. That also was unexpected and terrifying,—loud knocks on the wooden shutters of the large entrance.

Nobody moved or spoke. Again the knocks came and a voice called:

"We want that gal and her father. You ain't got no right to shelter criminals. Open in the name of the law. I reckon a sheriff will make you listen to reason."

"Break the door down, Lupo," said another voice. "The law's in its right to git what it wants. They ain't nobody that kin refuse the law without payin' for it."

Although they were so confident of the law, the girls felt sure the mention of a sheriff was a blind, and that the mountaineers were not going to do anything so incriminating as to break in the doors. Then there followed a period of consultation outside. Footsteps could be heard along the galleries; the stout shutters on all the openings were shaken and pounded upon; but Sunrise Camp was indeed as strong as a fortress when it was closed. Storms had beaten against it in vain, and unless the mob outside resorted to hatchets and saws, it would not be easy to break in.

At last the voice of Lupo spoke from the front gallery.

"Ladies, I'm only askin' justice. You got two dangerous people in this here house. The law wants 'em. We don't mean no harm to you an' we'll leave peaceable if you'll hand over the prisoners. I'm goin' to give you five minutes to decide in an' if you don't open the door, we're goin' to break it open with this here axe."

"You'll do nothing of the sort, Lupo," cried Miss Campbell, her voice ringing with indignation. "And I warn you that unless you wish to serve a long term in the penitentiary, you'd better leave this place at once with your friends. Mr. Campbell would never stop until he saw all of you well punished for this night's work. You've already broken into the house and robbed our maid——"

"Who said I did?" shouted Lupo. "It was Frenchy done that, too. He's a dangerous man to live in a peaceable place. We've been puttin' up with him and his daughter for too long, and we citizens ain't goin' to put up with 'em no longer. They gona' be punished first, and then they gona' give up that there home that ain't theirs by rights and leave this here part of the country forever."

Miss Campbell decided not to reply to Lupo's outburst. It only excited him and it was evident her arguments had no effect.

And now, after what seemed an interminable time, the door resounded with the blows of a woodman's axe.

"Go up into the gallery, Phoebe," ordered Miss Campbell, trembling in spite of her determination not to be frightened.

Phoebe rose and walked to the middle of the room. Her face was transfigured and she looked almost unearthly.

"I am not afraid," she said. "I believe that I will be saved from my enemies. God is sending someone to save me."

But the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell had no such faith to bolster up their faltering courage. During the long, lonely evenings on the mountainside when Phoebe had read aloud to her father from the New Testament, which he seemed to like best, there had grown in her mind a belief as strong as it was simple. There had never been any people to shake her convictions with arguments, nor books to suggest doubts. And now in her soul she had called for help and she believed it would come even at the eleventh hour.

Billie, whose faith in prayer was not unmixed with a desire for action of a very vigorous and immediate variety, seized an old rifle hung from a nail on the wall. She had no idea whether there were any loads in it, but she had made up her mind to use the butt-end on the first man who entered the room. In the meantime, the axe had crashed through one of the thick, hardwood panels, making a slit broad enough to see through.

"I'll shoot any man who comes into this room," called Billie. "Keep out."

An eye was placed at the hole in the door. Billie felt instinctively it was Lupo's.

"That there old rusty gun ain't got no loads in it, Miss. You kin shoot all you like."

There was another pause, and the blows began again. Alberdina gave evidence of wishing to speak, but Miss Campbell interrupted her.

"Never mind, Alberdina," she said impatiently. "You may go up into the gallery if you like. You are quite safe. They only want Miss Phoebe."

But Alberdina would not be silenced. Perhaps somewhere in the remote history of her ancestors there had been a warrior who had ranged the German forests dressed in the skins of wild beasts, his helmet decorated with a pair of fierce upstanding horns. Who knows but a drop of his fighting blood had come down through the generations to stir this sluggish descendant into action just at this particular moment when something had to be done?

"Come," she called, with unexpected energy. "I asg you, come. We will a high wall mag already. You will see. Hein?"

Again the axe crashed through the door and without a word they followed her into the gallery, Billie carrying the rifle and Elinor the breakfast horn. Alberdina hurried into the locker room and presently returned with a trunk hoisted on her shoulders. This she placed at the top of the stairs.

"Good," exclaimed Billie. "Why didn't we think of that before? It will keep them off for a little longer, at any rate."

Alberdina did not listen to these honeyed words of praise, however. She never paused until she had piled three trunks, one on top of the other in a very effective barricade. At the far end of the gallery, Elinor and Mary appeared to be very much occupied at a little window placed in the roof for ventilation, but now closed. Finding the bolt rusty, Elinor took off her slipper and broke a pane of glass. Mary, her lieutenant, then handed her the breakfast horn. It was like Elinor to wipe off the mouth piece carefully with her handkerchief before she placed it to her lips. But the blast she blew must have startled the mountaineers outside, for the blows on the door ceased for a moment. Again and again she signaled, always the same long agitated note.

"I think anybody would recognize that as a call for help," she said, pausing for breath; and while the axe crashed through the door, she continued to blow the bugle with all her strength.

Billie, however, felt fairly certain that a trunk barricade and a bugle blast for help would not keep off the savages long.

"We need some kind of ammunition, Nancy," she said. "If only this rifle was loaded."

"Did you look through the barrel?" asked Nancy, slightly more experienced with firearms than Billie. She seized the rifle and held it up before a lamp that Alberdina had set in a corner of the gallery, cocked it and looked through with one eye professionally squinted.

"Why, it is loaded," she announced. "It only has two empty what do you call them—chambers?"

"Must I shoot at somebody?" asked Billie.

"You could try and I could try," answered Nancy, "but I don't think either one of us would hit an elephant."

Just then Miss Campbell put out the light. At the same moment the axe made a breach in the door and a man crawled through. Billie lifted the rifle and, taking a long breath, aimed at his foot. The man was looking about him in a bewildered way. It was the innkeeper, second leader of the gang. Billie pulled and pulled, but nothing happened, and in another moment a dozen mountaineers had crawled through the opening. The one lamp cast a small circle of light near the fire-place. The rest of the room was in darkness. In the gallery the anxious watchers were invisible to the band of men, but the watchers themselves could see the outlaws plainly now gathered in a group in the center of the room, rather uneasy after breaking down the door of Sunrise Camp.

"Ladies, I'd advise you to give up the prisoners," called Lupo, addressing the darkness. "We ain't goner touch none of you, but we wants them two furriners right away."

"Git some torches," ordered the innkeeper, who seemed really to be the boldest man in the lot.

Several men disappeared and in a moment returned with pitch torches which cast a lurid, flickering light through the room. It was a weird scene, looking down from the gallery. All of the men wore masks except Lupo and the innkeeper, who were boldly undisguised. They peered about the room. Suddenly Lupo's eye caught a corner of the staircase at the far end.

"They're upstairs. Come on, men," he called.

Billie raised the shotgun to her shoulder.

"I'll shoot the old thing off this time if it flies to pieces," she said, and pulled the trigger with all her might.

"Bang!" went the gun, and down she sat very hard, not knowing where she had aimed. There was a great confusion of voices below and she thought she heard someone cry out with pain.

"Could I have shot anyone?" she asked herself tremulously as she picked herself up from the floor. Her shoulder ached and her finger was bruised, but she put the gun into position again.

"I'll shoot any man who comes up those steps," she called.

The outlaws had gathered under the gallery now, holding their torches high and gazing with some curiosity at the women grouped above them. Miss Campbell stood with her arm around Phoebe's waist. Elinor and Mary were still at the window. Nancy was with Billie, and Alberdina crouched behind the barricade.

Lupo fell back angrily.

"I guess you ain't got but one load in your old shotgun," he called. "Come on, men. We'll make a run for it."

Billie turned the gun straight on him. She felt almost more afraid of the unwieldy thing than she did of the man himself.

"If it jumps again," she thought, "it'll break my shoulder. And it's so undignified to have to sit down every time I shoot it off."

The innkeeper made a leap for the steps and Lupo followed him. Billie ran to the other end of the gallery so as to get a better aim, and pulled at the trigger. The trunks were swaying and Alberdina had rushed from behind them.

"Oh, Nancy, I can't make it go off," Billie sobbed under her breath.

"Give it to me," whispered Nancy, seizing the gun and leveling it with trembling hands at Lupo.

"Look out, Lupo," called a man below, as the barricade went down with a crash.

But Lupo was in no mood to listen to warnings. Bounding over a fallen trunk, he wrenched the gun from Nancy's hand.

At this moment, a man walked into the room and marched straight up to the group of mountaineers.

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," he said in a voice loud enough to be heard by everybody, "is this Sunrise Camp?"



CHAPTER XVII.

THE FORCE OF ELOQUENCE.

Phoebe gazed at the newcomer as if she were seeing a visitor from heaven. All the women in the gallery experienced enormous sensations of relief and Alberdina smiled down at him broadly.

"Mein lieber Gott, helb has gome already yet," she exclaimed.

They hardly seemed to comprehend in their relief that one man had to deal with a dozen or more.

"Who are you?" demanded Lupo, roughly, coming to the top of the stairs.

"My name is Hook, at your service. May I ask if you are giving a performance of private theatricals? The scene is a good deal like a band of highwaymen attacking a number of helpless women."

"We're in the rights of the law," put in the innkeeper.

"Why wear masks then?" asked Richard Hook.

There was no answer to this pointed question and three of the maskers slunk toward the door.

"We've come here to git two criminals hiding illegally in this here camp," burst out Lupo.

"Have you a warrant for their arrest?"

"We don't need no warrants in these here mountains."

"Oh, yes you do," insisted Richard politely. "Law and order must be respected just as much on the mountains as in the valleys. People who don't respect them soon find out what happens."

Two more men slunk toward the door.

"I think," went on Richard, "that you had better follow your friends out quietly and go to your homes. I am certain most of you have wives who would be glad to see you again after this dangerous little adventure. Jail isn't a pleasant place, you know, especially to people who are in the habit of breathing mountain air."

Only six men remained now of the original number. Even Lupo had been silenced, but at the mention of wives he flared up again.

"They have taken my wife away from me," he cried, shaking his fist at the women in the gallery. "They have given her money to leave me. I ain't so forgivin'."

"Do you want to know the real reason why your wife left you?" said Richard in a tone of such conviction that Lupo was deceived into thinking this perfect stranger knew all about him. "She was afraid of you and your lawless ways. When you have been drinking, as you have to-night, you're a dangerous man. You begin by breaking into private houses. You're disorderly and violent. Men like you end in the penitentiary. You hide yourselves perhaps for a while, but these mountains are difficult to hide in nowadays. You would be caught sooner or later, and do you think you'll get much sympathy with the court after one of these ladies, perhaps, has told the history of to-night's work? Fifteen years would be a short sentence. Your wife is right, I think. You're not a very safe companion."

Lupo looked about him bewildered. Only one of the band remained: the watery-eyed innkeeper.

"I was in the rights of the law," exclaimed Lupo, half-crying as he crept down the gallery steps.

"I am afraid not," said Richard gently. "But you take a little trip to another county and get some good honest work, and you will soon find out how much happier and safer it is to be within the limits of the law. Decidedly more agreeable than being hunted through the mountains by a sheriff with his bloodhounds, sleeping out in the cold, going hungry, slinking around the edges of villages when everybody is asleep for a chance piece of bread. Earning honest money with your wife happy beside you is heaven in comparison, I assure you."

Lupo hung his head until his eyes were hidden by the brim of his felt hat.

"I'm goin'," he said sullenly. "I guess your argyments is too good for the likes of me to try an' answer. I wants my wife back more'n I wants to git even with Frenchy and his gal. They done me a injury once, but I'm willin' to call it square if you are."

"Call it square," said Richard, and the two mountaineers slunk out of the room and disappeared in the night.

And now the ladies of Sunrise Camp and Richard Hook found themselves quite alone in the vast living room. The danger was over and the last and most impious of the outlaws departed. Miss Campbell and her girls standing in a row in the gallery looked down into the whimsical face of their deliverer. Billie recalled that only a little while before she had wished for someone with a persuasive tongue to appear and address the outlaws. Phoebe, too, had believed that God would send a deliverer. Whose prayer had brought the young man to Sunrise Camp in the nick of time? Hers or Phoebe's, Billie wondered. Perhaps it was their combined wishes. She understood little about the psychology of wishes. At any rate, here they all stood, safe and sound, and presently they found themselves laughing at the ludicrous thing that might have turned into a tragedy but for Richard Hook's persuasive tongue.

Already Alberdina was removing the barriers.

"Whose idea was that? Yours, Miss Billie?" asked Richard.

"No, no. We really owe our temporary safety to Alberdina, there. She thought of it herself."

The German girl was well pleased over the fame the one intelligent act of her life had brought her. She smiled broadly at Richard as she cleared the way for the ladies to descend.

"Before we settle down to talk," remarked the young man, "suppose we open the doors and windows and light the lights. This room is fairly close and it would be a good idea to illuminate for the sake of your friends who might happen to be returning. By the way, where are the criminals?"

"Here is one of them," answered Miss Campbell, smiling. "This is our friend, Miss Phoebe—" she hesitated, "Miss Phoebe French. Does she look like a criminal?"

Phoebe, who all this time had been watching Richard with a sort of rapt expression, was startled out of her dream. She blushed and looked down at the floor. The girls had never seen her so shy.

"This is Mr. Hook, Phoebe," continued Miss Campbell. "I think we ought all to offer him our united thanks for his courage."

"I do thank you, sir, with all my heart," said Phoebe fervently, timidly offering her hand.

Richard stretched out his left hand.

"I—I ask your pardon for giving you my left hand," he said, and for the first time they noticed that his right arm was hanging limply at his side.

"Oh, Rich—Oh, Mr. Hook," cried Billie, as red as a beet. "What have I done—I shot you—Oh, dear, I am so sorry!"

"Don't you worry, Miss Billie. It's just a coat sleeve wound. The bullet cut through the cloth and scratched my arm. It's lodged there in the wall now, I suppose, as a memento of your nerve."

"Why, boy, your sleeve is soaked in blood," exclaimed Miss Campbell. "And you're as white as a ghost. Sit down here quick. Alberdina, a basin of water. Billie, some bandages. Hurry, all of you. Why are you standing around like a lot of wooden images?"

Phoebe was too inexperienced to join in the general rush for bandages, peroxide of hydrogen, absorbent cotton and witch hazel: all the first-aid-to-the-injured the camp afforded. She stood at the foot of the couch and watched Richard Hook with large innocent eyes. His own eyes, very dark gray, wide apart and extremely intelligent, returned her gaze with a kind of amused admiration.

In the meanwhile, Miss Helen Campbell snipped up his shirt sleeve with a pair of small scissors and Billie, overwhelmed with contrition, stood ready to bathe the wound, which was more bloody than serious.

"I call this pretty nice," remarked Richard, glancing at the circle of anxious faces leaning over him. "It's worth being shot to have so many ministering angels about one; and a Seraph with a flaming sword at the foot of my couch to guard me," he added, glancing again at Phoebe, now holding a lamp high with a perfectly steady arm, so that the others could see to work.

Having washed and bound the wound, they propped his head on two pillows and drew their chairs about the couch. Never was a young man so coddled before.

"You haven't explained to us yet, Mr. Hook, how you happened to drop down from the skies," said Miss Campbell.

"I dropped up and not down, on the contrary, Miss Campbell. The van isn't so very far away. The girls wanted to put up for the night at the foot of the mountain, but I was stubborn for once and we worked old Dobbin until his limbs refused to go any farther. After they had got settled for the night, I thought I'd take a stroll. I supposed you would all have gone to bed but I had a feeling I'd like to see Sunrise Camp by starlight. I wouldn't have found it, however, if I had not heard the calls for help on the bugle. There wasn't a light to be seen from the road."

Elinor felt a secret pride at this statement. It was she, then, who had brought the rescuer! Billie felt sure it was her own strong wish that had drawn Richard to them in their great need, while Phoebe, filled with the conviction of her faith, believed he had been sent in answer to her fervent prayers.

If Richard had been consulted about this and had spoken the truth from his heart, could he have explained the irresistible impulse that had urged him to climb the steep road up the mountain on that dark night?

At this juncture, Ben and Percy, more dead than alive from running, almost fell into the room.

"Great Caesar's ghost," Percy ejaculated in a weak voice, "but we have had a fright about you, and here you are giving an evening reception!"

"Nothing has happened, then?" Ben managed to gasp.

"That little arch fiend led us into a jungle and lost us," went on Percy. "We heard the bugle calls for help. Gee! But we have had a run."

"And you're all right? You're safe?" cried Ben, counting them over. "And Mr. Hook has been protecting you? Thank heavens for that."

"My dear young man," observed Miss Campbell with some irritation, "will you please to turn around and look at that front door or slide or whatever you call the thing? I wish you to know that we have had one of the most exciting evenings of our lives. This house was attacked and broken into by a dozen ruffians and if it hadn't been for Alberdina, there, who has the mind of a general and knew exactly how to build a barricade with trunks, Phoebe would certainly have been tarred and feathered, even before Mr. Hook came to our rescue——"

"He heard my bugle," announced Elinor.

"I wished for him," thought Billie.

"I prayed for him," said Phoebe in a low voice.

"If Richard Hook had not appeared and permitted himself to be shot by Billie without uttering a sound——"

"Oh, I let out a yell," broke in Richard.

"We would have all been murdered, like enough."

"But where are your sister and Miss Swinnerton?" asked Ben.

"I suppose I had better be getting back to them," said Richard, who had quite forgotten that he had left two unprotected maidens asleep in a traveling van on a ledge half a mile below.

Percy and Ben offered to go back for him, but he would not consent, and Billie, solicitous and full of contrition for her reckless shooting, had the "Comet" out in a jiffy although Richard had asked to be allowed to walk. They found the van dark and quiet. Evidently the girls had heard nothing of the rumpus on the mountain and had felt no uneasiness about Richard, who was accustomed to taking strolls at untimely hours.

It did not take long to bring the motor car back to camp and before midnight a peaceful calm had settled over the log hut.

Phoebe, stretched on her cot in the living room, lay staring up into the darkness of the unceiled roof. She tried to think of her father somewhere out on the mountain, but always her thoughts reverted to the new young man with the kind, smiling eyes. Once she chanted in a low voice:

"'How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings!'"



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE MORNING AFTER.

Miss Campbell felt no ill effects from the visit of the mountaineers. She had not even thought of ill effects, in fact. Somehow, the presence of Phoebe, unruffled and calm through all the danger, had had its influence on all of them. Even Alberdina's emotions had been hushed by contact with that peaceful nature.

It was well past six o'clock before the exhausted household awakened next morning at Percy's trumpet call. Hurrying down before the others, Billie was amazed to see the traveling van drawn up in a clearing at the edge of the grove. Old Dobbin, tethered to a rope, stood nearby peaceably munching his breakfast from a wooden pail. Amy Swinnerton was seated in front of an easel sketching the log cabin and from inside of the van came the crisp voice of Maggie Hook, singing:

"'I loved a lass, a fair one, As fair as e'er was seen; She was indeed a rare one, Another Sheba Queen: But, fool as then I was, I thought she loved me, too: But, now alas! she's left me, Falero, lero, loo!'"

"Good morning!" cried Billie, running over to the van. "You must have muffled old Dobbin's feet to have crept in so quietly. How is Ri—Mr. Hook?" she added, all in one breath.

Maggie popped her head out of the front of the van. She reminded Billie of a little bird peeping from a bird house.

"Not 'Mister,'" she called, smiling brightly. "Remember, Billie, that we brothers and sisters of the road never use titles."

"Oh, yes, I mustn't forget that I'm one of the fraternity," answered Billie, smiling.

"'—Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood Ever the wide world over,'"

called Maggie, with much animation, from the top step of the van.

"You'll have to know her better to understand her dual nature, Billie," observed Amy Swinnerton, glancing up from her easel. "After she's been a good housewife and got things shipshape and free from the dust of the road she loves so much, she's ready to turn Gypsy and muss them all up again."

"I never mussed anything up in my life," broke in Maggie. "I only clean up other people's musses."

"But how is your brother Richard?" persisted Billie. "You see I feel some natural anxiety because I was the one who shot him last night. Has the wound been dressed?"

"Shot him?" repeated the other girls.

"That was why he made me drive old Dobbin this morning," said Amy.

"And to think he never told," broke in Maggie, "and he's gone off now, goodness only knows where."

"And he didn't tell you about the attack and how he saved us?" demanded Billie.

"Not a word."

Billie gave them an account of what had happened the evening before. It was exciting enough to tell about and the girls listened breathlessly. Richard's courage and tact with the outlaws when all the time his sleeve was soaked with blood from the wound in his arm, fired her with unusual eloquence.

"I don't think they intended to harm any of us," she finished. "It was Phoebe they wanted, and her father, who is hiding somewhere on the mountain. But we shall be thankful to him all our lives for what he did. Why didn't he tell you?"

"It's too like him," said Maggie. "I don't know whether it's modesty or indifference, but he never, never tells stories where he figures as a hero."

"Do you wish us to stop here now after so much excitement?" Amy asked. "I don't think it's any time for outsiders to intrude in spite of Maggie's rhymes about Gypsy blood and brothers of the road."

"Indeed, we wouldn't think of letting you go," cried Billie hospitably. "You are not strangers to us, I assure you, after all your kindness. But I do wish I could find your brother. The place on his arm bled a lot last night. I am certain a wound like that should be washed and dressed every few hours. Do you think he could have gone very far away?"

"Oh, dear," exclaimed Maggie. "Richard is incorrigible. He does make me so uneasy sometimes."

"There is nothing to do but wait patiently until the spirit moves him to come back," put in Amy calmly. "He is so strong and well that perhaps his wounds don't have to be dressed as often as other people's. There seems to be a special Providence that looks after him anyhow. It would be foolish to worry."

Nevertheless, Billie did worry considerably in her heart, and even Phoebe, who presently joined them and was introduced to the girls, looked startled and uneasy when she heard that Richard Hook, her deliverer, had gone away without having his wound dressed.

The caravanners were greatly interested in seeing Phoebe, whose history they had heard.

"She is very beautiful," Amy observed, "but she doesn't look human, somehow. She has the expression of a person who sees visions, air pictures invisible to other people."

"She is very religious," Billie replied. "Not like the religious people we know, but—well like people in the time of Christ might have been. You see she got it all herself without any outside teaching. She just learned it out of the New Testament mostly, and she practices it all the time. It's part of her life. Sometimes, I think it would be a pity to interfere with it."

"How can you interfere with it, Billie?" asked Nancy.

"By taking her back to wicked West Haven with all its temptations," laughed Billie.

"But shall you?" they asked in a chorus.

"We can't leave her in this wild place."

"And her father?" put in Mary.

"You'll have to ask Dr. Hume about that," answered Billie, and not another word would she say on the subject.

That morning the "Comet" conveyed a load of young people down to the village. Miss Campbell ordered a telegram to be sent to her cousin, demanding his immediate presence at the camp. Also a carpenter was secured to build a new door for the living room. This time the village street was singularly empty. No faces peeped from the half opened doors and no crowd gathered at the town pump. The rickety old wooden hotel was closed and the blinds drawn at every window. Evidently Richard Hook had frightened Lupo and the innkeeper very effectually.

"I don't think they will ever trouble us again, Phoebe," Billie remarked as they circled the pump and started home.

"They are sorry," said Phoebe compassionately. "They are like children, and Mr. Hook understood that when he spoke to them as children. He is very wonderful and very good."

"He is indeed," agreed Billie. "He is a very remarkable young man."

Phoebe seemed about to speak again, but kept silent. It was difficult for her to carry on a conversation.

"I love him," she said at last, so simply and innocently that Billie smiled in spite of the earnestness of Phoebe's expression.

"You love everyone, do you not, Phoebe? It is what you have learned by yourself up here in the mountain."

"I cannot do that," answered Phoebe. "I have tried but I cannot. But I love Mr. Hook. May God protect him always and reward him for his kindness."

Billie looked away abashed. She had never heard anyone speak like that before outside of a church. She, too, hoped that God would protect Richard, but she would not have said it for worlds. She hoped also that Richard would be waiting for them at Sunrise Camp when they returned. He was not there, however. Miss Campbell, with Nancy and Percy, had looked for him in vain.

"No, he has not come back," said the little lady. "And neither has Dr. Hume. Where is that foolish man? He shouldn't have left us without news all this time."

"Richard should remember that he is a guest and not an independent traveler," exclaimed Maggie Hook. "I don't think he has any right to go off and stay like this."

"Now, Maggie, you are worrying and it's very foolish," put in practical Amy Swinnerton. "You know perfectly well he'll be back by nightfall."

Nobody felt quite in the humor to do anything. The day was exceedingly hot and the sun on its downward course in the heavens was like a red ball. Most of the party scattered for naps and letter writing and did not meet again until sunset.

That afternoon as they gathered around the supper table, Alberdina brought a note to Miss Campbell, written in a strange, old-fashioned handwriting on a scrap of paper. It read:

"Do not be uneasy. I have gone in search of Mr. Hook. Phoebe."

Miss Campbell groaned as she read the message aloud.

"Really, Billie," she exclaimed reproachfully, "you and your father between you induced me to come to this place for peace and rest——"

Billie's eyes filled with tears.

"Never mind, child," added the distracted lady. "It's not your fault."

"It all came about," remarked Mary, who was fond of tracing things to their beginnings, "because Billie bought a pail of blackberries from Phoebe one morning and Mrs. Lupo was angry."

This might be considered an interesting and perfectly true statement, but nobody heard it, because they were busy organizing a search party. A few moments later Billie and Ben went down to the village in the motor car for guides, and this time guides were forthcoming.



CHAPTER XIX.

THE MILLS OF GOD.

It was not often that Billie lost a night's rest from anxiety, but that night her eyes refused to close and she lay staring into the darkness, straining her ears for sounds in the forest. Even Richard's sister, Maggie, was not so abjectly miserable as Billie. She tried to explain to herself that it was all because she had been the one to shoot the young man in the arm.

"I'd much rather have shot that horrid Lupo," she sobbed under her breath. "Suppose I've killed Richard? The wound may be much worse than we thought it was." She wiped her eyes on the sheet and lay very still listening. Away off on the mountain somewhere a dog began to howl. The weird sound made her shiver and hide her face in the pillow.

"Oh, God protect him," she whispered, and then blushed furiously. "I suppose I have a perfect right to pray for a friend?" she thought in reply to some unspoken thought.

Besides the anxiety she felt, all sorts of new and unusual sensations were disturbing her peace of mind that wakeful night. She experienced a kind of irritation against Phoebe, which she could not explain to herself.

"He'll think she's lots braver than I am," she thought, naming no names, "because I wouldn't dare go out in the woods alone at night to hunt for him. She is braver and better than I am. She is wonderful and—and so beautiful. I—I wish my hair wasn't so straight," she added to the pillow into which she had poured these girlish secrets.

At last when the first gray streaks of dawn appeared, Billie rose and, quietly dressing, crept downstairs.

"How silly I have been," she was admonishing herself, irritably, when she saw Phoebe run around the side of the house and stand looking up at the sleeping porch.

Billie dashed across the clearing.

"Phoebe, have you found him? Is he all right?" she demanded, grasping the girl's shoulders and shaking her in her impatience.

"Yes. I found him and took him to my home," answered Phoebe proudly. "He was lost in the marsh just as you were. His arm was bleeding and he was very weak."

"He is very ill?"

"No, no. It was from losing so much blood, they said."

"They?"

"Old Granny and Dr. Hume. My father is there, too." Phoebe clasped her hands. "Oh, God is good to me," she cried. "That I should find my father and Mr. Hook on the same day."

Billie felt strangely irritated, and then reproachful of herself.

"And your father, Phoebe," she asked kindly. "What happened to him?"

"On the day he came to the camp, he said, the language of the German girl stirred up something in his mind. After he went away he must have been very confused and he only remembers walking for a long time and then falling. You would not guess who found and has cared for him all this time? Old Granny and Mrs. Lupo. They brought him to Granny's cabin, where Mrs. Lupo has been hiding. Then the doctor came, and they got a wagon and moved him down the mountain to our home. That was yesterday."

"I am so glad," said Billie, endeavoring to be sympathetic, but feeling really much more relieved over the safety of Richard Hook.

"The doctor has sent you some written messages," went on Phoebe, giving Billie a little note book. "They are inside."

* * * * *

"My dear Miss Billie," the note read, "not long ago you asked me to restore the sleeping memory of our friend and I told you it was sometimes best to let sleeping memories lie. Since that time I have become deeply interested in the personality of Phoebe's father. He is a gentleman, undoubtedly, in birth and breeding. He is perfectly aware that he has lost his memory and has discussed the mystery of his identity with me so intelligently that I may say I feel it my duty to do what I can. Even his illusion regarding the physician is more in the nature of a deep and lasting impression evidently made just before he took the plunge into forgetfulness. I have mentioned that to him, too. He has never talked to people before on these subjects because there has never been anyone to talk to, but I have suggested the operation and he is keen to have it done. I must confess I am filled with curiosity about him. Who knows what distinguished niche he may have occupied once somewhere? I may be restoring—well, never mind. There is no use making guesses now. In spite of his broken leg, he is in good physical condition and I am going to have the thing over with. I am therefore asking you to send the telegrams you will find further over, to two young surgeons I know who will be interested enough in the case to put up with the inconvenience of the place. I would not risk exciting this mysterious person by moving him to a hospital. Mrs. Lupo appears anxious to make amends and will remain to cook and help generally. I think you had better bring over the 'Comet' to take back your friend, Mr. R. Hook, who seems strangely eager to return, although I have done my best to entertain him. I wonder if it could be a princess disguised as a beggar girl or a princess undisguised, who has so stirred young Richard's soul. I need not say which princess has stirred mine.

"Faithfully, William Hume."

* * * * *

Now, what did the doctor mean by all this nonsense, Billie asked herself. It was true that Phoebe, when she had gone in search of Richard had put on her old faded gingham, and certainly Richard owed a great deal to the beggar maid in disguise, but she—Billie—did wish the doctor wouldn't tease.

Billie blessed the "Comet" that morning from the bottom of her heart. It was a busy time and the swift, faithful machine enabled them to accomplish in a few hours what with a horse and wagon might have taken them at least a day to do. After breakfast he carried them down to the village, where Dr. Hume's telegrams were sent, and where something happened that set Billie wondering about the identity of Phoebe and her father.

While Ben sent the telegrams and Maggie Hook and Mary looked over the souvenir post cards in the general store, Billie sat on the steps outside reading a letter from her father. Only Phoebe, once more attired in the white blouse and duck skirt, remained in the car. A big touring car containing two men and a chauffeur drew up alongside the "Comet," and while one of the men went into the store, the other paced up and down outside. He was a man about Mr. Campbell's age, tall and foreign looking with a soldierly bearing. Billie glanced at him only once and went on reading her letter. Presently she noticed that he was standing in front of her, his hat in his hand.

"Will you pardon me if I interrupt you?" he asked in good English with an accent. "May I take the liberty of asking you a question?"

"Oh, certainly," answered Billie politely.

"May I inquire the name of the young lady in the motor car, if it is not too great an impertinence? I ask not from curiosity, but because I perceive a strong likeness."

"Her name is 'Phoebe,'" Billie answered.

"And her surname?"

Billie hesitated. After all it was absurd to assert that Phoebe's last name was "French."

"You do not know her last name?"

"Well,—you see—she hasn't any," Billie stammered. "She—her father has forgotten who he was."

"So?" ejaculated the stranger. "And they live?"

"They live on Indian Head Mountain in a little cabin."

"Will you pardon me if again I seem inquisitive? The young lady—you say she lives in what you call a cabeen and yet she seems not to be poor—that is, in appearance, I mean."

Billie flushed again. It did seem very much like gossiping to answer all these questions, but this stranger was commanding,—rather elegant in his manner.

"The young lady has friends, perhaps? People who have helped her?"

"Yes, that is it," said Billie.

"Another question and I shall not trouble you further. Where is this—er—cabeen?"

"It is on a ledge over 'Table Top' on 'Indian Head Mountain,'" answered Billie promptly, having good reason to remember that location. "Take the road to the right at the end of this street and it takes you straight there. It's called 'Indian Head Road.'"

The stranger took a notebook and pencil from his pocket and wrote down the names. When he closed the book, Billie saw that it was of Russian leather with a coat of arms in dull gilt embossed on the back. The pencil fitted into a flat gold case on which also was the coat of arms. She glanced quickly at Phoebe and her heart gave a leap. It was not difficult to connect coats of arms and grand things with Phoebe. Billie could easily picture her in the midst of fine surroundings.

"She is a princess," she thought wistfully. "And beautiful and good."

The stranger also was watching Phoebe. His face worked with emotion and he said something in German in a low voice.

"And her father?" he asked suddenly. "Where is he?"

"At the cabin," answered Billie.

"You are indeed very kind," and the stranger, making a low foreign bow, joined his companion in the touring car and in two minutes the great machine was lost in the distance.

Billie's mind was filled with conjectures on the journey to Phoebe's home a little later. When they left the car to climb the path to the cabin, she lingered behind the others, thinking deeply, although she had seen Richard from below standing on the very edge of a rocky shelf scanning the road with the doctor's telescope.

With a shy obstinacy new to her candid nature she pretended not to notice him or to mind that Phoebe with ingenuous joy had run ahead to speak to him first.

"I've been waiting for you a long time, Miss Billie," he exclaimed, having left the others and run down the path to meet her.

"We had to go to the village first," answered Billie.

"No, no. I mean it has seemed an infernal long time since the 'Comet' pulled up down there in the road and you lagged behind."

"Not ten minutes."

"I guess it would have seemed long to you if you had been sitting here since eight A. M. watching every vehicle that passed. Not long ago a big black car stopped down there and I was pretty sure it had come to fetch me."

He gave her one of his ingratiating smiles.

"Who was it?" asked Billie.

"I don't know. They saw the doctor for a minute and then went on. But I don't want to talk about them. Why didn't you hurry?"

"I always heard that sick men were children," laughed Billie, "and I can see that you are quite ill because you are such a child. We shall take you home now and feed you up on cream and eggs, providing we can get any."

Billie was glad to see Dr. Hume again. They clasped hands like old comrades. There was a peculiar radiance in his brown eyes as he looked at her.

"You've had a great honor paid you, Miss Billie," he said.

"What in the world?"

"The gods have chosen you to turn their mills a while and you are turning them pretty fast, I can tell you."



CHAPTER XX.

A LONG SLEEP.

The song of the "Comet's" motor broke the stillness of the afternoon some ten days later as he cheerfully pushed upward on the Indian Head road. Mr. Campbell was at the wheel and beside him sat Billie, glancing up at him from time to time with eyes full of loving devotion. On the back seat was Phoebe, silently contented beside Richard Hook, and the other occupant was Alberdina Schoenbachler, that absurd little hat perched atop her big smiling face.

There had been many days of anxiety and suspense for the people at Sunrise Camp. It was impossible not to feel deeply interested in the strange things that were transpiring in the little cabin on Indian Head. The two young surgeons had arrived; a tent had been pitched alongside the cabin, and one morning early the operation was performed. Since that time the patient had lain in a stupor. And now Dr. Hume had sent Mrs. Lupo, tamed and domestic, to take Alberdina's place at the camp, and Alberdina was to come at once to the cabin. Mrs. Lupo could give no reason; that was all the message stated, except that the patient was doing well.

The doctor went down the path to meet them, when the car stopped under the brow of the hill. He shook hands with Richard Hook, patted Phoebe on the cheek, and said:

"Hang on to your faith, little girl. It's a wonderful reservoir to draw on."

Then he grasped hands with Mr. Campbell, whom he had met several times now and liked immensely, nodded to Alberdina, and drawing Billie's arm through his, marched on ahead.

"Anybody might think my little girl was a consulting physician," remarked Mr. Campbell, amused at the earnest conversation the young girl and the great surgeon had plunged into,—and proud, too, that it should be so.

"Oh, they have lots of secrets from us, Mr. Campbell," replied Richard Hook. "Miss Billie is confidential adviser to the doctor. I don't believe he takes a step without consulting her first."

"Wise man," answered Billie's father. "He'll get some good sound advice, if not entirely professional."

In the meantime, Billie was saying:

"Oh, doctor, what has happened? Is he conscious? Has he spoken? Does he recognize anyone?"

"How could he, child, when there is no one for him to recognize? Recollect that in coming to, the man has taken up the thread of his life of eighteen or twenty years ago. I would not trust him to see Phoebe at this point. Only the faces of strangers are safe for him for the time being."

"And the stranger never came back who inquired about him that day?"

"No. I told him two weeks would be safer. There is no doubt the man was a personage of some sort. His companion said, 'Yes, Excellency,' as they went down the path. I suppose he's got some kind of a title."

"Did he seem excited?" asked Billie.

"I could hardly say excited. He appeared a good deal moved by the story of Phoebe and her father. He asked me if any money was needed."

"Of course you said 'no'?" observed Billie.

"I did. It's my turn now. His turn may come later. I explained to him that any excitement or sudden recognition immediately after the operation might prove fatal or disastrous, and he took himself off. But I consider that Phoebe's father is practically identified."

"Is he conscious?" asked Billie with subdued excitement.

"Not only conscious, but, my dear child, what do you think? Speaking German; not English."

Billie gasped.

"That's why you wanted Alberdina."

"Yes, I needed someone who could speak with him, and a servant would be excellent; better, really, than an educated German. Just now the man's mind is in terrible confusion. He is back in another country somewhere, but he is holding his own, and if he can get over the shock which must come when he links his past with his present, I believe we need have no fear for his reason; but it will be a pretty ticklish moment."

The doctor looked down into Billie's eager, earnest face, and his eyes were filled with admiration.

"Oh, doctor," she exclaimed, "you are so wonderful. Next to Papa, the most wonderful man I have ever met. Richard and I——"

"What!" interrupted the doctor, smiling, "do you mean to say that that young whipper snapper, with his Gypsy notions and his clever tongue, has already photographed himself on your mind? I should never have bathed and bound his wounds if I had guessed it."

"You know you would," laughed Billie, blushing a little. "But he's only a comrade."

The doctor looked into her eyes again.

"That's what they all should be, Miss Billie," he said. "Comrades. And if I were only fifteen years younger, I should be looking for just such a comrade as you."

"But I am your comrade," protested the young girl. "Just as much as Richard's. I'm proud to be. It's the greatest honor that's ever been paid to me."

"Oh, to be young again," sighed the doctor with a humorous lift to his eyebrows. "Oh, to be young, like young Richard, there. But I must remember that I am a very busy middle-aged person with an extremely interesting patient to pull through. I trust he'll thank me for the job."

"Don't you honestly believe he is some distinguished person?"

"I couldn't say, little comrade, but I could guess that he's no ordinary one."

They had reached the cabin now. The others had come up, and they all stood outside talking in low voices. After a brief word with Alberdina, Dr. Hume conducted her into the little room where the Motor Maids and their friends had once found refuge. From the doorway, Billie could see the silver candlesticks on the mantel shelf. Mrs. Lupo had kept them brightly polished and they lent a strange charm and refinement to the bare apartment. Phoebe crept in and knelt outside her father's door.

"Now, Alberdina," said the doctor as a last caution, "you understand that you are not to speak unless the gentleman inside asks you a question in German. Answer him in three words if you can. Then come out quietly. If he calls, you may go back."

Alberdina laid aside her comedy hat and followed the doctor into the sick room. The others gathered noiselessly outside the window and listened. There was a long silence. Then the man on the bed spoke in a low, weak voice. It was only a mumble of sounds to Billie and Richard, but Mr. Campbell understood German and listened intently.

Alberdina replied not in three words but in a long voluble speech.

They held their breath.

"Come out," called the doctor softly.

The sick man had begun to speak again. He seemed to be giving orders.

At the door Phoebe was weeping softly. Her father, restored to himself, was a stranger who spoke in a foreign tongue. Billie was fairly shaking with excitement.

"Do you suppose he's forgotten English?" she whispered to Richard, who made the most absurd reply that had nothing whatever to do with Phoebe's father and lost memories.

"I think the doctor had better take you in hand," said Billie.

"I have an incurable disease," answered the young man, not in the least ashamed.

Mr. Campbell had joined the doctor and Alberdina at the other end of the house where their voices could not be heard in the sick room. The young surgeons were also in the group. When Billie and Richard came up, the German girl was saying:

"I cannot from the German English mag. He is a German already yet?"

"Of course," answered the doctor impatiently, "but what did he ask you?"

Alberdina broke into German.

"No, no. In English."

"He very sig yet ees——"

The doctor gave poor Alberdina a withering glance.

"I think I can tell you most of the conversation, Doctor," put in Mr. Campbell. "The patient asked Alberdina if she were one of the maids at the palace. She answered at great length that she was laundress at Sunrise Camp. 'This was not a palace,' she explained, 'but a hut.'

"'I have been in an accident?'" the sick man asked, as Mr. Campbell translated it.

"When Alberdina acquiesced, he told her to call Franz or Karl.

"Seeing her shake her head, he said:

"'The Baron von Metz is here?'

"'No,' answered Alberdina.

"'None of the household?'"

Then he gave her orders to telegraph the Baron von Metz at an address in Dresden and sign it A. J. Mr. Campbell had failed to catch the telegram, although he distinctly heard the second telegram to a "Miss Phoebe Jones," at an address in England. It said she was not to worry. He had been detained by illness. Twice he made the blundering maid repeat the telegram, and finally exhausted with the mental effort, dropped into unconsciousness.

Was it not strange and terrible to take up the thread of one's life where it had been so ruthlessly snapped off some two decades ago?

Richard and Billie, seated on a rock out of hearing distance of the cabin, discussed the anomaly together.

"It's like Rip Van Winkle," Billie observed, "only worse because there have been so many inventions."

"Yes, there are motor cars, for instance. They were only on trial then; and flying machines."

"And hobble skirts," added Billie with an inward laugh, remembering Nancy's.

"It's very interesting," said Richard, "a good deal like missing the middle act of a drama."

"Don't you imagine that Phoebe's father belonged to a noble family? Perhaps he was a younger son, and fell in love with a pretty English girl named Phoebe Jones. They eloped to America and hid themselves in the mountains, and the old Archduke or Prince or Baron who was the father perhaps gave it out that his son was insane. They always do that, you know."

"Very romantic," said Richard, "but why has he been speaking only English all these years?"

"Don't ask me anything so scientific, please."

"It would go hard with me," pursued Richard, "if I got a blow on the head over my English-language bump, because I wouldn't have any other to take its place."

Having arranged the history of the sick man to their own satisfaction, and as a matter of fact, to the doctor's and Mr. Campbell's also, they returned to Sunrise Camp, leaving Alberdina and Phoebe behind them.

Poor Phoebe had watched Billie and Richard together from the doorstep of the cabin. Then she had folded her hands with a gesture of resignation and closed her eyes. Something had hurt her. She still felt the pain and not all her faith nor prayers could ease it.

That night the campers gathered around the fire and discussed the mystery of the "Prince in Exile," as they had named Phoebe's father. They told stories of similar cases, of men with double identities who had been lost for years, of men who had made new lives for themselves and even earned fortunes.

"I knew he was a prince the first time I saw him," Mary exclaimed.

"And now Phoebe will be a princess and perhaps very rich," observed Elinor.

"Think of stepping from a cabin to a palace," went on Amy Swinnerton. "From being a barefooted girl selling blackberries on the mountain to being a noble lady with a retinue of servants."

And so they all talked and discussed and enjoyed themselves immensely until a motor horn interrupted them. A car had evidently stopped in front and someone now hurried over to the group around the fire.

"Well, children," called Dr. Hume, "I daresay you'll be interested in the news I am bringing you."

"Wasn't I right?" cried Billie.

"He was a prince?"

"Or a duke, perhaps?"

"Even a baron is pretty good."

There was a long pause.

"You are wonderful guessers," said the doctor. "He lived in a palace."

"I knew it," cried Mary.

"Would it disappoint you very much if I were to tell you that the gentleman without a memory who lived in a palace was not a prince, nor a duke, nor a baron, but at one time a clergyman?"

"Oh!" they exclaimed in varying tones of surprise and disappointment.

"Then how the palace?" asked Maggie Hook.

"The Rev. Archibald Jones, a highly educated English gentleman of no means to speak of, was tutor in a noble family in Germany."

"But his wife? She was a princess?" cried Mary, almost weeping.

"Every woman is a princess, my dear young lady," replied the gallant doctor.

"But a real one, Doctor? One who lived in a palace?"

"She lived in the palace, yes. She was attached to the household as English governess. The tutor and the governess met, as well they might even in a grand castle, and being in the same boat as regards teaching and birth, they fell in love. The lady was very beautiful, I understand."

"And then?" demanded the chorus.

"Then they came to America where the field was larger even than in a palace with the noblesse. The young wife fell sick and the young husband, having saved a bit of money, brought her up into the mountains. The night Phoebe was born he tried to take a short cut down the mountainside to get a doctor who was stopping at a hotel now in ruins——"

Percy bowed his head.

"I recognize the spot," he said.

"And the young tutor husband not of the nobility fell and hit his head against a rock. He was brought back insensible by an old Indian grandfather of Mrs. Lupo. The beautiful young wife only lived a few days, and when the father was better and the baby stronger the Indian took them and their belongings across the valley to Indian Head, where they have lived ever since."

"Poor things," exclaimed Miss Campbell. "What a pitiful, sad story!"

"And the wife's name was Phoebe Jones?" asked Billie.

"Wrong again," replied the doctor. "Would you have a Jones marry a Jones?"

"Then who, pray, was Miss Phoebe Jones?"

"Aunt of the Rev. Archibald. For some reason he remembered the name and I suppose gave it to the child."

"Then who was the German gentleman who recognized Phoebe?"

"Now you are getting down to real romance," replied the doctor.

"He was the young noble for whom the Rev. Archibald acted as tutor." Here the doctor spoke slowly and impressively. "He loved the English governess and when she married the poor tutor, his noble heart was broken and never has been mended."

"And he never married another?" piped up Mary's small voice.

"Oh yes, my dear. The nobility always marries. Singleness is against the rules. He married and has a family of six."

"And is that the end of the story?" asked Billie.

"No, there is a sequel. It seems that when the Rev. and Mrs. Archibald Jones disappeared from the stage of life without explanation only one person, after a decade or more, still clung to the belief that they were not dead. None other than Miss Phoebe Jones herself, spinster, living in Surrey, England. She recently died leaving her property to her nephew, his wife or possible heirs. It seems that the gentlemen who just now dropped me at your door——"

"The disappointed lover?"

"Yes. The broken-hearted noble with a wife and six children, knew about this will because the lawyers in trying to trace Mr. Jones and his wife had got into communication with him."

"And so they won't be poor," said Nancy. "I'm glad of that. Phoebe looked beautiful in good clothes."

Everybody laughed, and then the doctor remarked:

"And so the story has a plain ending, after all. Phoebe is not a princess and you are all disappointed."

"No, no, no," they protested, but the doctor knew better.



CHAPTER XXI.

COMRADES OF THE ROAD.

Already the scarlet sumac lit the road with its flaming torch, and here and there on the mountainside a flash of scarlet like a redbird's wing appeared among the masses of foliage. Autumn was at hand, the autumn of the Adirondacks, when the evening air is nipped with the hint of frosts to come and the sky is a deeper blue than ever it is at mid-summer.

Summer comrades of the road may not linger in the hills at this enchanting season. There is work to be done in the valleys where the busy people live. In a few days now the shutters of log cabin camps will be closed and traveling vans will be sent to winter quarters.

The boys and girls who have lingered around the campfire, singing songs and telling stories under the great harvest moon, all comrades of the road, must turn their thoughts to soberer things than roasting apples and school day reminiscences. The grown people, too, stretched out in their steamer chairs, have been idling away the hours. Vaguely, as in a mist, a great surgeon recalls that there is a hospital somewhere he has been neglecting for weeks. An engineer is thinking of his tunnel only just started through the heart of a mountain. A little old spinster, fair and fresh as a rose, recalls with a start that for many weeks she has been sleeping under the stars and eating strange food on a bare deal table; and down in the valley her beautiful old home, filled with memories of her girlhood, is waiting to shelter her.

Near the spinster sits a tall man with a delicate, nervous face. He sits with folded arms, his eyes fixed on the back wall of mountains across the valley. He is thinking not of the future of the little home in Surrey that awaits him, but of the twenty black years behind him, as blank and empty as the years of a prisoner spent in solitary confinement. Sometimes, with a curious, startled gaze, he turns his eyes toward his daughter, seated in the circle with the young people.

While we have been taking this leisurely view of our friends, Alberdina has approached, smiling broadly over a great tray of cakes and ginger ale. Mrs. Lupo is hovering in the background.

"It was that skirt of the young lady's that brought me really back to my senses," Mrs. Lupo had confessed to Miss Campbell. "I thought the young lady had sunk in the mire. The misery that come to me then made me see things different; that and the prayer you taught me. Lupo, he's workin' now in the valley and when the camp is broke up, I guess we'll forgive and forgit."

Miss Campbell, glancing at Mrs. Lupo now in the background, wondered if that awful memory of the carving knife was not a dream.

"Papa," Billie called from her place near the campfire, "you mustn't forget to send pounds and pounds of really good coffee to old Granny, the herb gatherer, enough to last her all winter."

"I'll make a note of it, daughter. Are there any other old parties you wish to pension off with coffee or tea this winter?"

"No, papa. But I'd like to keep old Granny in coffee for the rest of her life because she loves it so."

"Ladies and gentlemen," called Percy, rising and flourishing an apple on the end of a long stick, "I made a discovery this morning through a letter from a friend, and I've been saving it until this moment to spring it on the Motor Maids and company."

"About whom is this discovery?" asked Richard uneasily, raising his eyebrows and blinking his humorous eyes.

"It's about two impostors who travel around in a little wooden house on wheels and live like Gypsies——"

"Oh, dear," cried Maggie, "now what have you been finding out about us, pray?"

"I know," said Richard. "You've found that we are really Gypsies and only pretending to be amateurs."

"Nothing of the sort. I've discovered that you have been traveling under a disguise——"

"My name is certainly 'Hook,'" put in Richard.

"And mine is Maggie," piped his sister.

"Maybe so," went on Percy. "That's not the disguise. You've been wearing the cloak of poverty, when you are really as rich as cream, the pair of you, with an old grandfather in England who has a title and castles and much pleasing property; and every now and then the old grandpapa sends for you and you have to give up Gypsying and fly."

"And he's your boss who's always interfering with your vacations?" interrupted Billie.

"And you just pretend to be poor for the novelty of the experience?" asked Nancy. "I wish I could pretend to be rich in the same way."

"But we are Gypsies at heart," put in Maggie, "and I do love to scrub and cook. Grandpapa's is so dull."

"And where does Grandpapa think you are now? Not in a traveling van, I'll wager," said Miss Campbell.

Maggie laughed.

"We are supposed to be visiting Aunt Lucretia. She's our American aunt, Papa's sister, who brought us up, before Grandpapa decided to recognize us. You see Mamma would marry Papa, who was poor then, and came from Maine. He looked just like Richard and I don't blame her. Grandpapa lets us come every summer to visit Aunt Lucretia now."

"And where does Aunt Lucretia think you are?"

"Why, visiting Amy Swinnerton."

Who could keep from laughing over this brother and sister who loved the life on the road and the campfire?

"Thank fortune, I'm not in line for the title," Richard whispered to Billie under cover of the conversation of the others, "and Grandpapa or no Grandpapa, I shall buy that farm,—do you guess where?"

"I can't imagine," answered Billie.

"In West Haven. I've never seen it, but that is the place you like best, isn't it?"

"I think I like the traveling van best," answered Billie irrelevantly,—"that is, next to the 'Comet,'" she added with a sudden feeling of loyalty toward the faithful motor car.

"The traveling van would be a part of it and the 'Comet,' too, for that matter."

Then he calmly slipped his hand over hers under the folds of her scarlet cape.

"Shall we be comrades of the road?" he whispered.

"Some day, perhaps," Billie answered, not taking her hand away, but glancing shyly at her father, who was watching her face in the fire light.

Then she smiled at Richard. After all, she was past eighteen and Richard,—well, Richard was the most delightful person she had ever met in all her life.

Let us take leave of our young people before they go back to the valleys where work is waiting for them. Brown and strong and happy, they sit in a circle talking and laughing, as boys and girls will, under the light of the harvest moon.

While they are still comrades of the road, we will bid them good-night.

Good-night, little Mary, calm and sweet, watching the stars twinkling through the tree tops. Good-night to you, Nancy, dimpling and smiling, while Percy whispers in your ear; and Elinor, too, talking quietly and happily to Ben. And now a last good-night to Billie, best of comrades, kindest and truest of friends.

THE END.



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THE END