Up she popped, stepping lightly over the cold grass so as not to arouse her mates and Mrs. Havel, and reached the opening. She peered through. To the east the horizon was aglow with melting shades of pink, amber, turquoise and rose. The sun was coming!

Wyn snapped open the flap and ran out to welcome His Majesty. Then, however, she remembered that she was in pajamas, and glanced around swiftly to see if she was observed.

Not a soul was in sight. At that moment the first chorus of the feathered choir that welcomes the day in the wilds, had ceased. Silence had fallen upon the forest and upon the lake.

Only the lap, lap, lap of the little waves upon the shore was audible. The wind did not stir the tree branches. There was a little chill in the air after the storm, and the ground was saturated.

Wyn was doubtful about that "early morning plunge" in the lake that she had heard the boys talk about, and which she had secretly determined to emulate. But the boys' camp was at the far end of Gannet Island and she could not see it at all. She wondered if Dave and his friends would plunge into that awfully cold-looking water on this chilly morning?

To assure herself that the water was cold she ran down to where the canoes lay and poked one big toe into the edge of the pool. Ouch! it was just like ice!

"No, no!" whispered Wyn, and scuttled up the bank again, hugging herself tight in both arms to counteract the chill.

But she couldn't go back to bed. It was too beautiful a morning. And all the others were sleeping soundly.

Wyn decided that she would not awaken them. But she slipped inside, selected her own clothing, and in ten minutes was dressed. Then she ran down to the pool again, palmed the water all over her face, rubbing her cheeks and forehead and ears till they tingled, and then wiped dry upon the towel she had brought with her.

Another five minutes and her hair was braided Indian fashion, and tied neatly. Then the sun popped up—broadly agrin and with the promise in his red countenance of a very warm day.

"Good-morning, Mr. Sun!" quoth Wyn, dancing a little dance of her own invention upon the summit of the green knoll that overhung the lake before the tent. "I hope you give us a fine day, and that we all enjoy it."

With a final pirouette she ran back to the tent. Still Mrs. Havel and the others slept.

"What lazy folk!" she told them, in a whisper, and then caught up a six-quart pail and ran back through the open place and found the wood road that Polly had written her about.

She knew that to her left lay the way to the landing where Mr. Jarley kept his boats, and where their stores were under cover in a shed. But breakfast was the first consideration, and in the other direction lay Windmill Farm, at which Polly told her she had arranged for the Go-Aheads to get milk, fresh eggs, and garden vegetables.

So Wyn tripped along this right hand extension of the wood path and, within half an hour, came out of the forest upon the edge of the cleared farm. Before her lay sloping fields up, up, up to a high knoll, on the top of which stood a windmill, painted red.

The long arms of the mill, canvas-covered, rose much higher in the air than the gilt vane that glistened on the very peak of the roof. The rising sun shone full upon the windmill and made it a brilliant spot of color against the blue sky; but the wind was still and the sails did not cause the arms to revolve.

Just below the mill, upon the leisurely slope of the knoll, was set the white-painted farmhouse, with well-kept stables and out-buildings and poultry yards and piggery at the rear.

"What a pretty spot!" cried Wyn, aloud. "And the woods are so thick between it and the lake that one would never know it was here."

She hurried on, for she knew by the smoke rising from the house chimney and the bustle of sound from the barnyard that the farmer and his family were astir.

Before she reached the side porch a number of cows, one with a bell on her neck leading the herd, filed out through the side yard and took a lane for the distant pasture. Horses neighed for their breakfasts, the pigs squealed in their sties and there was a pretty young woman singing at the well curb as she drew a great, splashing bucket of water.

"Oh! you're one of the girls Polly Jarley told us were coming to the lake to camp?" said the farmer's wife, graciously. "And did you get here in the storm last night? How do you all like it?"

"I can only answer for myself," declared Wyn, laughing. "They were all asleep when I came away. But I guess if we have nothing worse to trouble us than that shower we shall get along all right."

"You're a plucky girl—for a city one," said the woman. "Now, do you want milk and eggs?"

Wyn told her what she wanted, and paid for the things. Then she started back to camp, laden with the brimming milk pail and a basket which the farmer's wife had let her have.

The sun was now mounting swiftly in his course across the sky. Faintly she heard the sawmill at the Forge blowing a whistle to call the hands, and knew that it was six o'clock. She hurried her steps and reached the opening where the tent was pitched just as the first sleepy Go-Ahead was creeping out to see what manner of day it might be.

"For goodness' sake, Wyn Mallory!" cried this yawning nymph in blue pajamas. "Have you been up all night?"

"Aren't you cute in those things, Percy?" returned Wyn. "You look just like a doll in a store window. Come on and dress. It's time you were all up. Why! the day will be gone before you know it."

"Oh—ow—ouch!" yawned Percy, and then jumped quickly through the opening of the tent because Grace Hedges pushed her.

"Why! the sun's up!" cried the big girl. "Why! and there's Wyn with milk—and eggs—and pretty red radishes—and peas. Mercy me! Look at all the things in this basket. Whose garden have you been robbing, Wyn?"

"Come on!" commanded the captain of the Go-Ahead Club. "I brought a bag of meal in my canoe. And there is salt, and aluminum bowls, and spoons. We can make a good breakfast of eggs and mush. Hurry up, all you lazy folk, and help get breakfast."

"O-o-o! isn't the grass cold!" exclaimed one girl who had just stepped out from between woolen blankets.

"I—I feel as though I were dressing outdoors," gasped another, with chattering teeth. "D-don't you suppose anybody can see through this tent?"

"Nonsense, goosey!" ejaculated Frank. "Hurry up and get into your clothes. You take up more room than an elephant."

"Did you ever share a dressing room with an elephant, Frank?" demanded Bess.

"Not before," returned the thin girl, grimly. "But I am preparing for that experience when I try to dress in the same tent with Gracie."

But they were all eager to get outside when they sniffed the smoke of the campfire, and, a little later, the odor of eggs "frying in the pan." Despite the saturated condition of most of the underbrush Wyn knew where to get dry wood for fuel, Dave had long ago taught her that bit of woodcraft.

With a small camp hatchet she had attacked the under branches of the spruce and low pine trees, and soon had a good heap of these dead sticks near the tent. She turned over a flat stone that lay near by for a hearth. Before the other girls and Mrs. Havel were dressed and had washed their faces at the lakeside, Captain Wyn was stirring mush in a kettle and frying eggs in pork fat in a big aluminum pan.

"Sunny side up; or with a veil of brown drawn over their beautiful faces, Frankie?" asked Wyn, referring to the sizzling eggs. "How do you like 'em?"

"I like 'em on toast—'Adam and Eve on a raft' Brother Ed calls 'em. And when he wants 'em scrambled he says, 'Wreck 'em!'"

"You'll get no toast this morning," declared Wyn. "You'll be satisfied with crackers—or go without."

"Cruel lady!" quoth Frank. "I expect I'll have to accept my yoke of eggs——"

"Only the yolk of the eggs, Frank?"

"No, I mean the pair I want," laughed Frankie. "And I'll take 'em without the toast and—'sunny side up.'"

"Good! I can't turn an egg without breaking it—never could. Now, girls! bring your plates. I'll flop a pair of eggs onto each plate. There's crackers in the box. Hand around your bowls. The cornmeal mush is nice, and there is lovely milk and sugar if you want it. For 'them that likes' there is coffee."

"M-m-m! Doesn't it smell good?" cried Grace, as the party came trooping to the fire with their kits.

"I—I thought I'd miss the sweet butter," said Bess, sitting down cross-legged on the already dry grass. "But somehow I've got such an appetite."

"I hope the boys are having as good a time," sighed Wyn, sitting back upon her heels and spooning up her mush, flooded with the new milk. "Isn't this just scrumptious, Mrs. Havel?"

"It is the simple life," replied that lady, smiling. "Plenty of fresh air, no frills, plain food—that ought to do much for you girls this summer. I am sure if you can endure plain food and simple living for these several weeks before us, you will all be improved in both health and mind."



CHAPTER IX

JOHN JARLEY, EXILE

This could be no day of leisure for the Go-Ahead Club. To get settled in camp was the first task—and that no small one.

There was the plank flooring to be laid in the big tent, the cook-tent to be erected, and the floor laid in that. There was a sheet-iron stove to erect, with a smoke pipe to the outside, and an asbestos "blanket" to wrap around the pipe to keep the canvas of the tent-top from scorching.

There were the swinging shelves to put up, fastened to the ridge-pole of the cook-tent, on which certain supplies could be kept out of the reach of the wood mice and other small vermin. Indeed, there were a dozen and one things of moment to see about, beside bringing over to the camp a selection of the stores—and their extra clothes—from John Jarley's shack by the boat landing.

Wyn was a competent girl and knew something about using a hammer and a saw. The flooring planks for both tents had been assembled at Denton, and were numbered; but after they got the sleepers laid Wyn realized that she and her mates had tackled more of a task than they had expected.

"And the boys will be just as busy as they can be to-day," she said to the other girls. "It's a wonder if everything they owned didn't get soaked last evening.

"Now, we can't depend upon the Busters to give us any assistance just now. Doubt if we see 'hide nor hair' of them to-day. But we need somebody to make these floors properly. There! Bess has stuck a splinter into her hand already."

"Plague take the old board!" snapped Bess, dropping it and sucking on a ragged little wound in her hand.

"You see," Wyn said, quickly. "I'm going to get some help. Anybody want to walk over to Jarley's with me?"

"Are you going to get that man to come here?" demanded Bess, sharply.

"Don't see what else there is to do—do you, Bessie?"

"Isn't there anybody else to help us around here? There must be other squatters."

"I do not know of any. We chance to know the Jarleys——"

"Not I!" cried Bess, shaking her head. "I don't know them—and I won't know them."

"All right. You and Grace and Percy take the pails and try for some berries in the woods yonder. I saw some ripe ones this morning. Fresh picked berries will add nicely to our bill-of-fare; isn't that so, Mrs. Havel?"

"Quite so, my dear," replied the widow, and buried herself in her book again, for, as she had told the girls, she had not come here to work; they must treat her as a guest.

"Are you going to stop with Mrs. Havel, Mina?" continued Wyn. "Then come along with me, Frank. We'll go over and see if the Jarleys bite. Bess is afraid they will!"

"She was telling us all about John Jarley," said Wyn's chum, as the two left the camp on the green knoll. "Do you suppose he stole that motor boat and the box of silver statuettes?"

* * * * *

"I don't know anything about it," said Wyn, briskly. "But I know that he and Polly are very poor, and with a motor boat and five thousand dollars' worth of silver, it looks to me as though they would be very foolish to suffer the privations they do. It's nasty gossip, that's all it is."

"Well, Bess says the man stole from her father years ago——"

"I don't know much about that, either," interrupted Wynifred. "But I think Bess is overstepping the line of exact truth when she says John Jarley stole from her father. They were doing business together, and Mr. Lavine accused Jarley of 'selling him out' in a real estate deal.

"I asked my father about it. Father says the whole business was a little misty, at best. If Jarley did all Lavine said, he merely was guilty of being false to his friend and partner. It is doubtful if he made much out of it. But Lavine talked loudly and long; he had lots of friends even then. The talk and all fairly hounded the Jarleys out of town.

"And now," said Wyn, warmly, "the Lavines are rich and the Jarleys have always been poor. Mr. Jarley is an exile from his old home and such friends as he had in Denton. It is really a shame, I think—and you'll say so, too, when you see what a splendid girl Polly is."

The two girls had followed the edge of the lake toward the landing, instead of taking the path through the wood. Suddenly they came in sight of the float and shack, with the several boats in Mr. Jarley's keeping.

Back from the shore was a tiny cottage, painted red, its window sash and door striped with yellow. It was a gay little cot, and everything about it was as neat and as gaily painted as a Dutch picture.

As Wyn and Frank came down the hill they saw Polly Jarley run out of the house and down to the landing. Her father was busy there at an overturned boat—evidently caulking the seams.

The boatman's girl did not see her visitors coming; but Wyn and Frank got a good view of her, and the latter exclaimed to Wyn:

"Why! she's as pretty as a picture! She's handsome! If she only had on nice clothes she would be a perfect beauty."

"Wouldn't she?" returned Wyn, happily. "I think my Polly Jolly is just the dearest looking creature. Isn't she brown? And what pretty feet and hands she has!"

Polly wore a very short skirt, patched and stained. Her blouse was open at the throat, so that the soft roundness of the curve of her shoulder was plainly visible.

Out of the open neck of the blouse her deeply tanned throat rose like a bronze column; the roses in her cheeks and on her lips relieved the sun-darkened skin. Her hair was in two great plaits and it was evident that she seldom troubled about a hat. She was lithe, graceful as she could be, and bubbling over with good health if not good spirits.

And this was a morning—after the rain—to make even a lachrymose person lively. The smell of all growing things was in the nostrils—the warmth of the sun lapped one about like a mantle—it was a beautiful, beautiful day,—one to be remembered.

Wyn shouted and started running down the hill. Polly heard her, turned to see who it might be who called, and recognizing her friend, set out to meet her quite as eagerly.

"Oh, Miss Wynifred!" cried the boatman's daughter.

"Polly Jolly! This is Frank Cameron." She kissed Polly warmly. "How fine you look, Polly! Tell me! will all we girls look as healthy and be as strong as you are, by the autumn? You're a picture!"

"A pretty shabby one, I fear, Miss Wyn," protested Polly, yet smiling. "I am in the very oldest clothes I have, for there is much dirty work to be done around here. We have hardly got ready for the summer yet. Father has been so lame."

"And you must introduce me to your father, Polly," Wyn said, quickly. "We have something for him to do—if he will be so kind."

"All you need to do is to say what it is, Wynifred," responded Polly, warmly. "If either of us can do anything for you we will only be too glad."

The three girls walked to the spot where Mr. Jarley was engaged upon his boat. He was not at all the sort of a person whom the girls from town had expected to see. The boatmen and woodsmen who sometimes drifted into Denton were rough characters. This man, after being ten years and more in the woods, savored little of the rough life he had followed.

He was a small man, very neat in his suit of brown overalls, with grizzled hair, a short-cropped gray mustache, and without color in his face save the coat of tan his out-of-door life had given him.

There was a gentle, deprecatory air about him that reminded Wyn strongly of Polly herself. But this manner was almost the only characteristic that father and daughter had in common.

Mr. Jarley was low-spoken, too; he listened quietly and with an air of deference to what Wyn had to propose.

"Surely I will come around and do all I can to aid you, Miss Mallory," he said. "You shall pick out the stores you think you will need, and we will take a boat around to your camp. Your stores will be perfectly safe here—if you wish to risk them in my care," he added.

"Of course, sir. And we expect to pay you for keeping them. If we have a long spell of rainy weather the dampness would be bound to spoil things in our tents."

"True. This corrugated iron shack will keep the stores dry, and the door has a good padlock," returned Mr. Jarley. "Now, you young ladies pick out what you wish carried over to the camp and I will soon be at your service."

"Isn't he nice?" whispered Wyn to Frank, when Polly had run into the house for something, and Mr. Jarley himself was out of hearing.

"Why! he is a perfect gentleman!" exclaimed Frank. "How can Bess talk as she does about him? I am surprised at her."

"And these other people about here, too!" declared Wyn, warmly. "What an evil tongue Gossip has! That man—Shelton, is his name?—at the other end of the lake, who has accused Mr. Jarley of stealing his boat and the silver statues, ought to be punished."

"Well—of course—we don't know anything more about the Jarleys than these other people," observed Frank, doubtfully.

"I judge people by their appearance a good deal, I suppose," admitted Wyn. "And mother tells me that is a poor way to judge. Just the same, I feel that the Jarleys are being maligned. And I would love to help them."

"Well! there isn't much chance to do that unless you can prove that he is honest, after all," remarked Frank.

"I know it. Everything is going to tell against him unless the lost boat and the images can be found. I wonder where it was sunk? Do you suppose Polly would tell us just where the accident happened?"

"Ask her."

"I will, if I get a chance," declared Wyn. "And wouldn't it be fine if we girls could find the sunken boat and the box belonging to Dr. Shelton, and clear up the whole trouble?"

"Even that would not satisfy Bessie Lavine," said Frankie, with a little laugh. "You know—Bess is 'awful sot in her ways.' When she has made up her mind that a thing is so, you can't shake it out of her with a charge of dynamite!"

"You never tried the dynamite; did you, Frank?" queried Wyn, smiling.

"No! But I've wanted to—at times."

"Bessie is like her father—obstinate. It is a family trait Yet, once get her turned around—show her that she has been wrong and unfair to anybody—and she can't do too much for her to prove how sorry she is."

"That's right! look how she talked against the boys—especially against Dave Shepard. And now you can just wager she won't be able to do enough for him to show how grateful she is for being pulled out of the water," laughed Frank.

Mr. Jarley was ready to load the boat for them, and Polly came back with the key to the shack. Polly could not go over to the camp, for both she and her father could not leave the landing at once. Some fishermen might come along at any time to hire a boat. The season was opening now, and after the "lean months" that had gone by, the Jarleys had to be on the watch for every dollar that might come their way.

"It seems an awfully hard life for such a man—and for Polly," whispered Wyn to her companion. "I'd just love to have Polly for a member of our club."

"So would I," agreed Frank. "She's just as sweet as she can be. But Bess would go right up in the air!"

"Oh, I know it," sighed Wyn. "Somehow we have got to make Bessie Lavine see the error of her ways. Oh, dear! why can't people be nice to each other all the time?"

"Goodness me, Wyn Mallory!" exclaimed Frank. "What do you expect while there still remains 'original sin' in the world? That seems to have been left out of your constitution; but most of the rest of us have our share."



CHAPTER X

THE "HAPPY DAY"

That day the camp upon the hill overlooking Lake Honotonka was completed. Mr. Jarley was very helpful, for beside laying the floors of the two tents, and setting up the stove, he built for the girls an open-air fireplace of flat rocks, dragged up from the shore; set up their plank dining table, cut and set three posts for their clothes-line (for they were to do their own laundry work), dug shallow ditches all around the tents, with a drain to carry off any water that might collect; built an "overlook-seat" at the foot of a big birch which overhung the water, and did countless other little services which most of the Go-Ahead Club appreciated.

Bessie Lavine did not come back from the berrying expedition until Mr. Jarley had gone back to the landing; and of course she hadn't much to say about the change in the appearance of things. But the other girls were enthusiastic.

"And now we must have a name for the camp," said Mrs. Havel, as they sat down to the oilcloth-covered table to dinner.

The arrangements for cooking and eating were of the simplest; yet everything was neat. Using oilcloth saved laundry, and using paper napkins was likewise a help. The food was served daintily, if simply, and although all the girls were used to much finer table service at home, the hearty appetites engendered by the pure air of lake and forest made even coarse food taste delicious.

They were all instantly enthusiastic over their chaperone's suggestion. Half a dozen names were suggested on the spur of the moment; but no particular one met the approval of all the girls, immediately.

"We'll have to draw lots," suggested Mina.

"No! let's each write down the best names we can think of, and then vote on them," said Bess.

"Goody!" cried Frank. "We must have a name that fits, but is pretty and not too 'hifalutin',' as my grandmother would say."

"Naming the camp is all very well, girls," said Wyn, seriously, rapping on the table for order. "But there are more important things to decide. The work of the camp is to be properly apportioned——"

"Oh, dear me!" groaned Grace. "Have we got to work? After traipsing over four miles of huckleberry pasture all the morning I feel as though I had done my share for to-day."

"And she ate as many as she picked!" cried Bess. "Oh, I'm going to tell on you, Miss! You're not going to crawl out of your fair share."

"I didn't enlist to work," declared Grace, with some sullenness. "What's the fun of camping out if one has to work like a slave all the time?"

"And we haven't even begun!" cried Frank. "For shame, Gracie!"

"Now, none of the members of the Go-Aheads, I feel sure," quoth Wyn, quietly, "will try to escape her just burden. To have the fun of camping out under canvas we must each do our share of the work quickly and cheerfully. We will divide up the tasks, and change them about weekly. Of course, Mrs. Havel is not supposed to lift her hand. She is our guest."

"Oh, but auntie is going to show us how to make pancakes," cried Percy.

"I'll learn to do that," said Grace, brightening up. "For I love 'em."

"Of course—piggy-wiggy!" scoffed Bess. "Come, Wyn, you set us our tasks and any girl who kicks about 'em shall be fined."

"We'll do better than that. We will use Mina's idea of drawing lots about the work. There are certain things to be done each week—each day, of course. Two girls must 'tend fires and cook; two girls must air and make beds, clean up about the tents, and wait on table if needed; the other two must get up early and go for the milk and vegetables, gather berries, and do odd jobs. The girls who do the 'chamber work' should wash the dishes, too, for the cooks will be too tired and heated after preparing the meals to clean up the tables and mess with the dishwashing.

"Now are those three divisions satisfactory? Every third week, you see, the two who go for the milk, etcetera, will have an easy job. Is it agreed?"

There was no objection raised to this plan, and the girls paired off as they usually did—Wyn and Frank together, Grace and Percy, and Bess and Mina.

Then they drew straws—really grass blades of three lengths—to see which couple should do which. It fell to the lot of Bess and Mina to cook for a week. Grace and Percy Havel were "chambermaids," and Wyn and Frank Cameron had the good luck to get the shortest blade of grass.

"Of course, I'd have to work hard two weeks before getting a chance to rest," grumbled Grace. "Probably something will happen after we're here a fortnight, and we'll all have to go home."

"It would take something awful to send me home from this beautiful spot in a fortnight," cried Mina.

"Just my luck if you all got smallpox, or something equally contagious," growled Grace.

"Then you certainly would be fortunate for once—if you escaped it," chuckled Wyn.

"Not a bit of it. They'd quarantine you here, and have nurses, and lots of nice jellies and ices for you; while poor unlucky me would be packed back to Denton for the rest of the summer—and after working like a slave, dishwashing, and sweeping, and making beds, and cooking, and the like, for two whole weeks."

Despite Grace's complaints, the club as a whole was satisfied with the arrangements for taking care of the camp. There had been a secondary consideration in the minds of all their mothers when permission was obtained for the Go-Aheads to spend the summer under canvas. Mrs. Evelyn Havel was a wondrously good housekeeper. She had been trained in domestic science, too. And she had promised to have an oversight of each girl's work and to teach them, from time to time, many helpful domestic things.

This phase of the camping-out plan Wyn had "played up" in getting the consent of all the parents; and for one, Wyn was determined to carry the scheme through. When they went back to Denton in the fall she proposed to be a good "plain cook" herself, and she hoped the other girls would fall in cheerfully with the project also. She knew Mrs. Havel would do all she could toward teaching them.

The work once apportioned to them, the girls' minds could be given more particularly to the naming of the camp. But they would not decide upon it until bedtime. However, all six cudgeled their brains to invent striking names.

It was decided that only one name could be suggested by each girl, and this would give them a list of six to choose from. Oddly enough both Mina and Grace chose the same—Camp Pleasant. It looked as though that name had a lead at the start.

Frank suggested Birch Tree Camp—for there was an enormous birch on the knoll at the foot of which Mr. Jarley had set up a bench for them.

"Now you, Bess?" said Wyn, as mistress of ceremonies.

"Camp Pleasant is all right," admitted Miss Lavine; "only it is not very distinctive. I expect there are thousands of Camp Pleasants—don't you think so?"

"What's the matter with my name?" demanded Frank Cameron.

"I find the same fault with it," replied Bess. "It is not distinctive enough. Now, I don't know that I have the right idea; but I believe that calling the camp after our club wouldn't be so bad. And it would mean something."

"Go-Ahead Camp? Or Camp Go-Ahead?" cried Grace.

"There's nothing romantic about it, that's sure," objected Mina.

"Goodness me! we're not looking for romance, I hope," cried the strong-minded Bess.

"Bess is a suffragette in embryo—I declare!" cried Frank, laughing.

"How does Camp Cheer sound?" suggested Percy. "Now, that's real nice, I think."

"Say, we've got to vote on them, anyway," said Grace. "We've got two votes for Camp Pleasant, Mina."

"But hold on!" cried Frank. "Here's one hasn't been heard from. The shrinking violet of all our crew! What's the matter, Wynnie? Can't you decide on a name?"

"I thought of one last evening when we were paddling over here from the Forge—before the rain," admitted the captain.

"Well! for pity's sake!" gasped Grace. "That's before we even knew it was to have a name."

"I didn't think particularly about naming the camp," said Wyn, reflectively, "but from the water, with the squall working up behind us, and the last light of the day lingering on this little hill, the name flashed into my mind."

"What is it?" chorused the others. "Do tell us, Wyn!"

"Green Knoll."

"Just that?" cried Grace. "'Green Knoll'? Why! It was green; wasn't it?"

"I remember how green it seemed from the lake," added Bess. "It's not a silly name, either. It means something."

"I take it all back about 'Birch Tree Camp,'" declared Frank. "'Green Knoll.' There's a dignity about that—as our assistant principal, Miss Hutchins, would say."

"It's a fine name, I think," admitted Percy Havel, slowly. "I withdraw Camp Cheer. It may not be so cheerful here all the time—especially if we catch smallpox, as Grace says. But it will always be green up here on the knoll."

"As long as we are here to see it, at least," agreed Frankie, nodding.

"Say! our Camp Pleasant is swamped!" cried Grace. "What say, Mina? Shall we surrender?"

"Green Knoll sounds very pretty," agreed the sweet-tempered Mina Everett.

"Oh, girls! do you really all like it?" Wyn cried.

"I vote aye!" said Frank, with emphasis. The other four followed in quick succession.

"Why, that's lovely of you!" cried the captain of the club. "I—I was afraid nobody would like it but myself."

"It's so appropriate," said Bess.

"It's all right," Frank declared. "I wonder what the Busters will call their camp?"

"They named it last fall," said Wyn. "Dave told me. It is Cave-in-the-Wood Camp. Not so bad—eh?"

"Pretty good for a parcel of boys," observed Bess.

"Well, I'm glad the worry's over," yawned Grace. "Let's go to bed. You know, Percy, we've got to work like slaves to-morrow, so it behooves us to get to bed betimes."

"Mercy!" cried Frankie, "they'll be wanting to make up the cots before we are out of them in the morning. Come on! let's all turn in."

There was a general roll-call at daybreak the next morning. Wynifred and Frank were not the only ones to get up as soon as day approached, although to them had been allotted the task of going to Windmill Farm for the milk and the day's supply of vegetables.

They had agreed the night before to venture into the water. The boys always bragged about this early morning dip, which was a rule of their camp.

"I don't see why we shouldn't be able to do anything those boys do," declared Bess, with her usual contempt for the vaunted superiority of the other sex. "If they can run down and plunge right into the water, right out of bed, why can't we?"

So even Grace—who had her doubts about it—ventured on this second morning. They slipped out of their sleeping clothes and into bathing suits. There was a little chill in the air; but Wyn assured them the water would be warmer than the air and—if they remained in half an hour, or so—the sun would be up and his rays would warm them when they came out.

And Wyn's prophecy was proven right. The six girls disported in the lake like a flock of ducks. Mrs. Havel, however, would not let them remain more than twenty minutes. The sun had shot up, then, and already the green knoll was warm in his first rays.

Wyn and Frank scurried into their clothes and hurried away to the farm for the milk and vegetables. Frank saw the windmill on the summit of the hill, and nothing would do but she must run up and inspect it. The breeze was rising and the farmer, who was likewise the miller, was preparing to "grind a grist."

"We've got a good bit of grain on hand; but we've not had wind enough of daytimes lately to grind a handful," he said. "I can't invite you inside, young ladies, because when they set up this mill for me they made the door, as you see, right behind the sails. When the arms are in motion I am shut in till the grist is ground; or I stop the sails with this lever just inside the door—d'ye see?"

As the girls went back toward the house the arms began turning with a groaning sound. The wind became fresher. Round and round the long arms turned, while the canvas bellied like the sails on a boat.

Louder and louder grew the hum of the mill. The miller threw in the clutch and the stones began to grind. They heard the corn poured into the hopper, and then the shriek of the kernels as they were ground between the stones. The whole building began to shake.

"What a ponderous thing it is!" exclaimed Frank. "And see! there's a tiny window in the roof facing the lake. I imagine you could see clear to Meade's Forge from that window."

"Farther than that, my dear—much farther," said the farmer's wife, handing Frank the basket of fresh vegetables over the garden fence. "On a clear day you can see 'way across the lake to Braisely Park. The tower of Dr. Shelton's fine house is visible from that window. And the whole spread of the lake. But the air must be very clear."

"Goody! We'll bring the other girls up here some day when the mill is not running and climb to the top of the mill for the view," declared Frank.

Bess and Mina, with some advice from Mrs. Havel, made a very good breakfast. Although neither was very domestic in her tastes, the two young cooks were on their mettle, and did the best they could. If the hot biscuits were not quite so flaky as their mothers' own cooks made them at home, and some of the poached eggs broke in the poacher, and the broiled bacon got afire several time and "fussed them all up," as Mina said, the general opinion of the occupants of Green Knoll Camp was that "there was no kick coming"—of course, expressed thus by the slangy Frank Cameron.

Grace would dawdle over the dishwashing, and Percy was a good second. Therefore, those two still had work on their hands when Bess sighted a motor boat coming swiftly toward their camp from the direction of Gannet Island.

"Now somebody's going to butt in and bother us," declared Bess. "It can't be the Busters, I s'pose?"

"That's exactly who it is!" cried Wyn, delightedly. "That's the Happy Day. Dave said if his cousin, Frank Dumont, could come up here, he would bring his father's motor boat. And he must have come yesterday when we were busy and did not see him."

"Hurrah!" cried Frank. "A motor boat beats a canoe all to pieces."

"The Busters are aboard, all right," sighed Bess, after another look. "Now we'll have a noisy time."

"Now there'll be something doing!" quoth Frank. "That's the trouble with a crowd of girls. After they have played 'Ring Around the Rosy' and 'London Bridge is Falling Down' they don't know another living thing to do except to sit down and look prim and be prosy. But with boys it's different. There's something doing all the time."

"You should have been a boy, Frank," declared Bess, with some disgust.

"If I was one, I'd be hanging around your house all the time, Bessie mine," laughed the other, hugging the boy-hater.

"Get away! I'd have Patrick turn the hose on you if you did!" cried Bess, in mock wrath.

But secretly, Miss Lavine, as well as her mates, was glad of the break in the quiet affairs of Green Knoll Camp made by the appearance of Dave Shepard and his spirited chums.

"Oh, crackey, girls! you ought to see our camp! We've got a regular pirates' cave," declared Ferdinand Roberts.

"Did your stores get wet in that awful storm?" demanded Wyn from the top of the knoll.

"Not much. We managed to cover them with the canvas. And now we've cleaned out the cave and it's great. All we need is some captives to take over there and chain to the rocks," laughed Dave.

"And fatten 'em up till they're fit to eat," drawled Tubby Blaisdell.

"Stop it, Tub!" cried one of his mates. "We're not going to play cannibals, but pirates."

"Well, in either case," declared Bess, "you will not get captives at Green Knoll Camp."

"Is that what you call this pretty hillock?" cried Dave. "Well, it is a beauty spot! And how nice you girls have made everything. Why! you don't need any boys around at all."

"That's what I've always told them," murmured Bess. "They're only a nuisance."

"We came over to see if we could help you," continued Dave. "Here's my cousin, Frank Dumont, girls. Some of you know him, anyway. This is his motor boat, and if there really is nothing we can do to help you here, why, Frank wants to take you all—with Mrs. Havel, if she is agreeable—for a trip around the lake. We've got supplies aboard and we'll stop somewhere and make a picnic dinner."

"Goody!" cried Mina. "Then we will not have to make dinner here, Bess."

"Agreed!" announced Grace. "There will be no more dishes to wash until evening, then."

"Well, I don't know," Dave said, slowly. "Of course we like to have you girls go along; but usually girls do the grub-getting and dishwashing on a picnic."

"Nothing doing, then," declared Frank, laughing at him. "This crowd of girls are going as invited guests, or not at all. We promise to be ornamental, but not useful."

"You're ornamental, all right, in those blouses and bloomers," declared Ferd, for the girls had discarded skirts about the camp, and felt much more free and comfortable than they usually did.

"If worse comes to worst," said Mrs. Havel, smiling, "I will be the camp drudge, boys, for I want to see the lake shore in panorama."

"Oh, let 'em come," drawled Tubby, still lying on his back on the little deck of the Happy Day. "They'll get hungry some time and have to cook for us."

And so, amid much bustle, and laughter, and raillery, the girls of Green Knoll Camp joined the boys of Cave-in-the-Wood Camp in the motor boat for a trip around the big lake.



CHAPTER XI

WHERE THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED

"And where is Professor Skillings?" asked Mrs. Havel, as the well-laden launch drew away from the little natural landing which defended one end of the girls' bathing beach at Green Knoll Camp.

"Bless your heart, ma'am," said Ferdinand Roberts, laughing, "the old gentleman is trying to figure out one of Tubby's unanswerable arguments—that is, I believe, what you'd call it."

"One of Tubby's unanswerable arguments?" cried Wyn. "For pity's sake! what can that be?"

"Why, at breakfast this morning the professor got to 'dreaming,' as he sometimes does. He tells us lots of interesting things when he begins talking that way; but sometimes, if we are in a hurry to get away, we have to put the stopper in," chuckled Ferd.

"Tubby usually does it. Tubby really is good for something beside eating and sleeping, girls—you wouldn't believe it!"

"You do surprise us," admitted Bess Lavine, cuttingly.

"All right. But just wait and listen. We wanted to get away early and come over here after you," said Ferd. "And the professor began to give us one of his talks. This time it was on literature. By and by he says:

"'We are told that it took, Gray, author of 'An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,' seven years to write that famous poem."

"'Gee!' exclaimed Tubby. 'If he'd only known stenography how much better off he'd been.'

"'Ahem! how do you prove that, Mr. Blaisdell?' inquired the professor, quite amazed.

"'Why, we took that as a lesson in the shorthand class of the Commercial Department last spring,' said Tubby, 'and some of the real good ones could do Gray's Elegy, from dictation, in seven minutes. See what Gray would have saved if he'd known shorthand!'

"And that completely shut up the professor," said Ferd, as the laughter broke out. "He hasn't recovered from the shock yet."

The Happy Day was turned toward the Forge first, skirting the shore all the way. That brought them, of course, close to Jarley's Landing. Polly was just pushing out in a little skiff.

Wyn and Frank waved to her; but the other girls did not know her, of course, and only watched the boatman's daughter curiously.

"How well she rows!" exclaimed Percy.

"Say! but she's a fine looking girl," said Dave, earnestly. "What handsome arms she's got."

"Handsome is as handsome does," remarked Bess, snappishly.

"She's as brown as an Indian," observed Mina.

"That doesn't hurt her," declared Dave, stoutly. "Is she the girl you were speaking about, Wyn?"

"She is Polly Jarley, and she is my friend," responded Wynifred, quietly. "And I believe her to be as good as she is beautiful."

"Then there are wings sprouting under her blouse," laughed Frank; "for there's no girl I ever saw who could hold a candle to Polly for right down beauty."

"She looks so sad," said Mina, softly.

"Why shouldn't she be sad?" Wyn demanded, "with everybody talking about her father the way they do?"

"Come, girls!" commanded Mrs. Havel. "Don't gossip. Find some other topic of conversation."

"Ha! quite so," cried Frank, with a grimace upon her own homely face. "A girl may be as pretty as a picture and spoil it all by an ugly frame of mind. How's that for a spark thrown from the wheel?"

"Stand back, audience!" exclaimed Dave. "Something like that is likely to happen any minute."

"I don't really see how the old professor gets on with you boys at all," remarked Bessie Lavine, with a sigh. "You'd worry the life out of an angel."

"But Professor Skillings is not an angel—thanks be!" exclaimed Dave.

"He's a good old scout!" drawled Tubby.

"He just hasn't forgotten what it is to be a boy," began Ferd.

"But, goodness me!" cried Frankie. "He's forgotten about everything else, at some time or other; hasn't he?"

"Not what he's learned out of books and from observation," declared Dave. "But my goodness! he is absent-minded. Yesterday a couple of us fellows chopped up a good heap of firewood. We don't have a fancy stove like you girls, but just an out-of-doors fireplace. After supper the dear old prof, said he'd wash the dishes, and we dumped all the pots and pans together and—what do you think?"

"Couldn't think," drawled Frank. "I'm too lazy. Tell us without making your story so complicated."

"Why, we found he had carried an armful of firewood down to the shore and was industriously swashing the sticks up and down in the water, thinking he was washing the supper dishes."

With similar conversation, and merry badinage, the journey around Lake Honotonka progressed. The shores of the lake, in full summer dress, were beautiful. There was an awning upon the motor boat, so the rapidly mounting sun did not trouble the party. But it was hot at noonday, and through Dave's glasses they could see that the sails on the mill behind Windmill Farm were still. There wasn't air enough stirring, even at that height, to keep the arms in motion, and down here on the water the temperature grew baking.

They ran into a cool cove and went ashore for dinner. Nobody wanted anything hot, and so, as there was a splendid spring at hand, they made lemonade and ate sandwiches of potted chicken and hard-boiled eggs which the boys had been thoughtful enough to bring along. The girls had crisp salad leaves to go with the chicken, too, and some nice mayonnaise. Altogether even Tubby was willing to pronounce the "cold bite" satisfying.

"And I'm no hypocrite," declared the fat youth, earnestly. "When I say a thing I mean it."

"What is your idea of a hypocrite, Tubby?" demanded Wyn, laughing.

"A boy who comes to school smiling," replied Tubby, promptly.

After a while a little breeze ruffled the surface of the lake again and the Happy Day was made ready for departure. They continued then toward the west, where lay the preserve known as Braisely Park, in which there were at least a dozen rich men's lodges. They were all in sight from the lake—at some point, at least. Each beautiful place had a water privilege, and the landings and boathouses were very picturesque. There was a whole fleet of craft here, too, ranging in size from a cedar canoe to a steam yacht. The latter belonged to Dr. Shelton, the man who had accused John Jarley of stealing the motor boat Bright Eyes and the five thousand dollars' worth of silver images from the ruined temples of Yucatan.

"And of course," said Wyn, warmly, "that is nonsense. For if Polly and her father had done such a thing, they would turn the silver into money; wouldn't they, and stop living in poverty?"

"Well, it looks mighty funny where that boat and all could have gone," Bessie remarked.

"If she sank as quickly as he says, the wreck must lie off Gannet Island somewhere," remarked Dave, reflectively.

"Oh! I wish we could find it," commented Wyn.

"If it ever sank at all," sneered Bessie.

But it was almost impossible to quarrel with Wyn Mallory. Frank would have "got hot" a dozen times at Bess while the party chanced to discuss the Jarleys and their troubles. But the captain of the Go-Ahead Club was patient.

Bye and bye—and after mid-afternoon—the Happy Day came around to the west end of Gannet Island. Up among the trees a glint of white betrayed the presence of the boys' tent. In a little sheltered cove below the site of Cave-in-the-Wood Camp, danced the fleet of canoes.

Nothing would do but the girls and Mrs. Havel must go ashore and see the cave and the camp.

"And we can have tea," said Ferd. "How's that, girls? Professor Skillings has got a whole canister of best gunpowder in his private stores—and there he is on that log, examining specimens."

"Oh, dear me!" cried Frankie, "tea isn't going to satisfy the gnawing of my appetite."

"How about a fish-fry?" demanded Dave, swerving the motor boat suddenly away from the landing.

"Where'll you get your fish?" cried Percy Havel.

"In the fish store at Meade's Forge," scoffed Ferdinand Roberts.

"That's too far to run for supper—and back again—this afternoon, boys," said Mrs. Havel.

"Just you wait," cried Dave. "I caught sight of something just now—there she is!"

The Happy Day rounded a wooded point of the island. Near the shore floated Polly Jarley's skiff and Polly was just getting up her anchor.

"She's been fishing all day!" exclaimed Wyn.

"And I'll wager she's got a fine mess of perch," said Dave. "Hi, Miss Jarley!" he shouted. "Hold on a minute."

Polly had heard the chugging of the motor boat. Now she stood up suddenly and waved both hands in some excitement.

"What does she want?" demanded Bess.

"Get out! farther out!" the boatman's daughter shouted, her clear voice echoing from the wooded heights of the island. "Danger here!"

"What's the matter with her?" demanded Bess again. "Is there a submarine mine sunk here?"

But Dave veered off, taking a wider course from the shore.

"What is the matter, Polly?" shouted Wyn, standing up and making a megaphone of her hands.

"Snags!" replied the other girl. "Here's where father ran Dr. Shelton's boat on a root. The shallow water here is full of them. Look out"

"Say!" cried Frank Dumont "We don't want to sink the old Happy Day."

"So this is where the accident happened; is it?" observed Wyn, looking around at the shores of the little cove and the contour of the island's outline.

"Humph!" snapped Bessie Lavine, sitting down quickly. "I don't believe there was any accident at all. It was all a story."



CHAPTER XII

AN OVERTURN

Dave Shepard had stopped the motor boat land now he hailed the pretty girl in the skiff.

"I say, Miss Jarley! did you have any luck?"

"I've got a good string of white perch. They love to feed among these stumps," returned Polly.

"Oh, Polly Jolly! sell us some; will you?" cried Wyn, eagerly. "We're so hungry."

"Do, do!" chorused several of the other girls and boys aboard the Happy Day.

Polly, smiling, held up a long withe on which wriggled at least two dozen silvery fish. "Aren't they beauties?" she demanded. "Wait! I'll row out."

She had already raised her anchor. Now she sat down, seized the short oars, and plunged them into the water. How she could row! Even Bessie Lavine murmured some enthusiastic praise of the boatman's daughter.

Her skiff shot alongside the motor boat. She caught the gunwale, and then held up the string of fish again.

"How much, Miss Jarley?" asked Dave.

"Half a dollar. Is that too much?"

"It looks too little; but I suppose you know what you can get for them at the Forge," he said.

"And this saves me rowing down there," returned the brown girl, smiling and blushing under the scrutiny of so many eyes.

Wyn leaned over the rail, took the fish, and kissed Polly on her brown cheek.

"Dreadfully glad to see you, dear," she declared. "Won't you come over to the camp to-morrow and show us girls where—and how—to fish, too? We're crazy for a fishing trip."

"Why—if you want me?" said Polly, her fine eyes slowly taking in the group of girls aboard the motor boat.

All looked at her in a friendly way save Bessie, and she had her back to the girl.

"I'll come," said Polly, blushing again; and then she pocketed, the piece of money Dave gave her, and pushed off a bit.

"Is this really where your father came so near losing his life, Polly?" asked Wyn, seriously.

"Yes, Miss Wyn. Right yonder. It was so thick he could not see the shore. A limb of that tree yonder—you can see where it was broken off; see the scar?"

There was a long yellow mark high up on the tree trunk overhanging the pool where Polly had been fishing.

"That limb brushed father out of the boat just as she struck. The snag must have torn a big hole in the bottom of the Bright Eyes. Lightened by his going overboard, she shot away—somewhere—toward the middle of the lake, perhaps. He knows that he gave the wheel a twirl just as he went overboard and that must have driven the nose of the boat around.

"She shot away into the fog. He never saw or heard of her again. We paddled about for a week afterward—the bateau men and I—and we couldn't find it. Poor father was abed, you see, for a long time and could not help."

"All a story, I believe," whispered Bess, to Mina.

"Oh, don't!" begged the tender-hearted girl.

Perhaps Polly heard this aside. She plunged her oars into the water again and the skiff shot away. She only nodded when they sang out "Good-bye" to her.

The Happy Day carried the party quickly back to the cove under the hill on which Cave-in-the-Wood Camp had been established. The girls and boys landed and were met by Professor Skillings—who could be a very gallant man indeed, where ladies were concerned. He helped Mrs. Havel out of the motor boat, which Dave had brought alongside of a steep bank, where the water was deep, and which made a good landing place.

"My dear Mrs. Havel! I am charmed to see you again," said the professor. "You are comfortably situated over there on the shore, I hope?"

"My girls are as successful in making me comfortable as are your boys in looking after you, I believe, Professor Skillings," returned the lady, laughing.

"More so—I have no doubt! More so," admitted the professor.

"Treason! treason!" shouted Dave Shepard.

"What's the matter with you?" demanded Wyn, who had hopped ashore behind the chaperone.

"Professor Skillings is going back on us, boys," declared Dave.

"Why, Professor!" cried Ferdinand. "Where would you find in all the five zones such a set of boys as we-uns?"

"Five zones? Correct, my boy," declared the professor, seriously. "But name those five zones; will you, please?"

"Sure!" wheezed Tubby, before Ferd could reply. "Temperate, Intemperate, Canal, Torrid, and Ozone."

"Goodness gracious, Agnes!" gasped Dave. "Can you beat Tubby when he lays himself out to be real erudite?" while the others—even the professor and Mrs. Havel—could not forbear to chuckle.

But Dave and Ferd got busy at once while the others laughed, and chaffed, and looked over the boys' camping arrangements. Dave was cook and Ferd made and fed the fire. These boys had all the approved Scout tricks for making fire and preparing food—they could have qualified as first-class scouts.

Ferd started for an armful of wood he had cut down at the bottom of the steep bank and suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, he slipped, his feet pointed heavenward, and he skated down the bank upon the small of his back.

"My goodness me!" exclaimed Frank Cameron. "Did you see that?"

"Sure," said Dave, amid the laughter of the crowd. "Poor Ferdy! the whole world is against him!"

"You bet it is," growled Ferd, picking himself up slowly at the bottom of the bank. "And it's an awful hard world at that."

"Come on! Come on!" whined Tubby Blaisdell. "Aren't you ever going to get supper? You're wasting time."

Dave was expertly cleaning fish. Wyn ran to his help, finding the flour, cracker-crumbs, and salt pork. The pan was already heating over the blaze that the unfortunate Ferdinand had started in the fireplace.

"If you're so blamed hungry," said Dumont to the wailing Tubby, "start on the raw flour. It's filling, I'll be bound."

"Say! I don't just want to get filled. I want to enjoy what I eat. I could be another Nebuchadnezzar and eat grass, if it was just filling I wanted."

"Ha!" cried Dave. "Tubby is as particular as the Western lawyer—a perfectly literal man—who entered a restaurant where the waiter came to him and said:

"'What'll you 'ave, sir? I 'ave frogs' legs, deviled kidneys, pigs' feet, and calves' brains.'

"'You look it,' declared the lawyer man. 'But what is that to me? I have come here to eat—don't tell me your misfortunes.'"

Amid much laughter and chaffing they finally sat down to the fish-fry—and if there is anything more toothsome than perch, fresh from the water, and fried crisply in a pan with salt pork over the hot coals of a campfire, "the deponent knoweth not," as Frank Cameron put it.

Then Tubby got his banjo, Dumont his mandolin, Dave his ocarina, and they sang, and played, and told jokes, until a silver crescent moon rising over the lake warned them that the hour was growing late. The feminine visitors then boarded the Happy Day and under the escort of Dave and Ferdinand to work the boat, the girls and their chaperone made the run back to Green Knoll Camp, giving the cove where Polly Jarley had caught the perch a wide berth.

Dave insisted upon going ashore at Green Knoll and searching the camp "for possible burglars," as he laughingly said.

"Do, do look under my bed, Dave!" squealed Frank, in mock distraction. "I've always expected to find a man under my bed."

"But it was real nice of him, just the same," admitted Mina Everett, when the Happy Day had chugged away. "I feel a whole lot better now that he has beaten up the camp."

On the next morning Grace and Percy were not allowed to lag over the breakfast dishes till all hours.

"This shall be no lazy girls' camp," declared Mrs. Havel. "The quicker you all get your tasks done, the better. Then you can have games, and go fishing, and otherwise enjoy yourselves."

The fish-fry they had enjoyed at Cave-in-the-Wood Camp the evening before had given them all an appetite for more, and as Polly Jarley appeared early, according to promise, Wyn began to bustle around and hunt out the fishing tackle.

There probably wasn't a girl in the crowd who was afraid to put a worm on a hook, save Mina. She owned up to the fact that they made her "squirmy" and she hated to see live bait on a hook.

"But that's what we have to use for lake fish—or river fish, either," Wyn told her. "You're not going to be much good to this fishing party."

"I know it, Wynnie. And I sha'n't go," said the timid one. "Mrs. Havel is not going fishing, and I can stay with her."

"You'll have company," snapped Bessie Lavine. "I'm sure I'm not going," and she said it with such a significant look at Polly Jarley, who had come ashore, that the boatman's daughter, as well as the other girls, could not fail to understand why she made the declaration.

"Why, Bess Lavine!" exclaimed Frankie, the outspoken.

Polly's face had flushed deeply, then paled. Bess had avoided her before; but now she had come out openly with her animosity.

"Is your name Miss Lavine?" asked the boatman's daughter, her voice quivering with emotion.

"What if it is?" snapped Bess.

"Then I guess I know why you speak to me so——"

"Don't flatter yourself, Miss! I don't care to speak to you," said Bess.

"Nor do I care to have anything to do with you," said Polly, plucking up a little spirit herself under this provocation. "You are Henry Lavine's daughter. I am not surprised at your speech and actions. He has done all he could to hurt my father's reputation for years—and you seem to be just like him."

"Hurt your father's reputation—Bosh!" cried Bess. "You can't spoil a——"

But here Wyn Mallory came to the rescue.

"Stop, Bess! Don't you pay any attention to what she says, Polly. If this quarrel goes on, Bess, I shall tell Mrs. Havel immediately. You come with us, Polly; if Bessie doesn't wish to go fishing, she can remain at camp. Come, girls!"

Bess and Mina remained behind.

"I told you how 'twould be, Miss Wyn," said Polly, her eyes bright and hard and the angry flush in her cheek making her handsomer than ever. "I shall only make trouble among your friends."

"You don't notice any of the rest of us running up the red flag; do you?" interposed Frank Cameron. "Bess's crazy."

"The Lavines have been our worst enemies—worse than Dr. Shelton," said Polly, with half a sob. "Mr. Lavine is up here at the lake in the spring and fall, usually, and he will always talk to anybody who will listen about his old trouble with father. And he is an influential man."

"Don't you cry a tear about it!" exclaimed Frank, wiping her own eyes angrily.

Wyn had put a comforting arm over the shoulder of the boatman's daughter. "We'll just forget it, my dear," she said, gently.

But it was not so easy to forget—not so easy for Polly, at least, although the other girls treated her as nicely as they could. Her face remained sad, and she could not respond to their quips and sallies as the fleet of four canoes and Polly's skiff got under weigh.

Polly pulled strongly along the shore in her light craft; but of course the canoes could have left her far behind had the girls so wished. Their guide warned them finally against loud talking and splashing, and soon they came to a quiet cove where the trees stood thickly along the lake shore, and the water was not much ruffled by the morning breeze.

Polly had brought the right kind of bait for perch, and most of the girls of the Go-Ahead Club had no difficulty in arranging their rods and lines and casting for the hungry fish. Perch, "shiners," roaches, and an occasional "bullhead" began to come into the canoes. These latter scared some of the girls; but they were better eating than any of the other fish and both Wyn and Frank, as well as Polly, knew how to take them off the hook without getting "horned."

Polly did not remain with them more than an hour. She was sure the girls would get all the fish they would want right at this spot, and so, excusing herself, she rowed back to the landing.

"It's a shame!" exclaimed Frank, the minute she was out of hearing. "I don't see what possesses Bess to be so mean."

"I am sorry," rejoined Wyn. "Polly will not come to the camp again—I can see that."

"A shame!" cried Percy. "And she seems such a nice girl."

"Bessie ought to be strapped!" declared Frank.

"I am sure Polly seems just as good as we are," Grace remarked. "I don't see why Bess has to make herself so objectionable."

"She should be punished for it," declared Percy.

"Turn the tables on her," suggested Frank. "If she will not have anything to do with Polly, let's give her the cold shoulder."

"No," said Wyn, firmly. "That would be adding fuel to the flames—and would be unfair to Bess."

"Well, Bess is unfair to your Polly Jolly," said Frankie.

"Two wrongs never yet made a right," said the captain of the Go-Ahead Club.

"Well!"

"Bessie is a member of our club. She has greater rights at Green Knoll Camp than Polly. It is true Polly will not come again, unless Bessie is more friendly. The thing, then is to convince Bess that she is wrong."

"Well!" exclaimed Frank again. "I'd like to see you do it."

"I hope you will see me," returned Wyn, placidly. "Or, at least, I hope you will see Bessie's mind changed, whether by my efforts, or not. Oh, dear! it's so much easier to get along pleasantly in this world if folks only thought so. Query: Why is a grouch?"

Percy suddenly uttered a yell and almost plunged out of her canoe. She had whipped in her line and there was a small eel on the hook.

It is really wonderful what an excited eel can do in a canoe with a girl as his partner in crime! Mr. Eel tangled up Percy's line in the first place until it seemed as though somebody must have been playing cat's cradle with it.

Percy shrieked and finally bethought her to throw the whole thing overboard—tangled line, rod, and Mr. Eel. In his native element, the slippery chap in some mysterious way got off the hook; but the linen line was a mess, and that stopped the fishing for that morning.

They had a nice string, however, and when the odor of the frying fish on the outdoor fire began to spread about Green Knoll Camp, Frank declared:

"The angels flying overhead must stop to sniff—that smell is so heavenly!"

"Nonsense, child!" returned Grace. "That thing you see 'way up there isn't an angel. It's a fish-hawk."

There were letters to take to the Forge that afternoon, and the girls all expected mail, too. But after the fishing bout, and the heavy dinner they ate, not many of the Go-Aheads cared to paddle to town.

"The duty devolves on your captain," announced Wyn, good-naturedly. "Of course, if anybody else wants to go along——"

"Don't all speak at once," yawned Frank, and rolled over in the shade of the beech.

"It's a shame! I'll go with you," said Bessie Lavine, getting up with alacrity.

"All right, Bess," said Wyn, cheerfully. "I am glad to have you go."

The other girls had been a little distant to Bess since their return from the fishing trip; but not Wyn. She had given no sign that she was annoyed by Bessie's demeanor towards Polly Jarley.

Nor did she "preach" while she and Bess paddled to the Forge. That was not Wynifred Mallory's way. She knew that, in this case, taking Bess to task for her treatment of Polly would do only harm.

Bess had probably offered to come with Wyn for the special purpose of finding opportunity to argue the case with the captain of the club. But Wyn gave her no opening.

The girls got to the Forge, did their errands, and started back in the canoes. Not until they got well out into the lake did they notice that there were angry clouds in the northwest. And very soon the sun became overcast, while the wind whipped down upon them sharply.

"Oh, dear, me!" cried Bess. "Had we better turn back, Wyn?"

"We're about as far from the Forge as we are from Green Knoll Camp," declared the other girl.

"Then let's run ashore——"

But they had struck right out into the lake from the landing, and it was a long way to land—even to the nearest point. While they were discussing the advisability of changing their course, there came a lull in the wind.

"Maybe we'll get home all right!" cried Bess, and the two bent to their paddles again, driving the canoes toward distant Green Knoll.

And almost at once—her words had scarcely passed—the wind whipped down upon them from a different direction. The surface of the lake was agitated angrily, and in a minute the two girls were in the midst of a whirlpool of jumping waves.

In ordinary water the canoes were safe enough. But when Bess tried to paddle, a wave caught the blade and whirled the canoe around. She was up-set before she could scream.

And in striving to drive her own craft to her friend's assistance, Wyn Mallory was caught likewise in a flaw, and she, too, plunged into the lake, while both canoes floated bottom upward.



CHAPTER XIII

A SERIOUS ADVENTURE

Wyn Mallory was a pretty cool-headed girl; nor was this the first time she had been in an accident of this nature.

Naturally, in learning to handle the light cedar craft as expertly as they did, the members of the Go-Ahead Club had much experience. While the weather was good the girls plied their paddles up and down the Wintinooski, but seldom was the river as rough as this open lake in which Wyn and Bessie Lavine had been so unexpectedly overturned.

"Oh! am I not the unluckiest girl that—that ever happened?" wailed Bess, when she came up puffing.

"N-o-no more than I, Bess," stammered Wyn.

"Get your canoe, Wyn!" cried Bess.

"Oh, yes; but we can't turn them over in this sea. Oh! isn't that horrid!" as another miniature wave slapped the captain of the club in the face and rolled her companion completely over.

Bess lost her grip on her canoe. The latter floated beyond her reach while Wyn was striving to get her friend to the surface again.

"Why! we're going to be drowned!" shrieked Bess, suddenly horror-stricken.

"Don't you dare lose your nerve," commanded Wynifred. "If we lose courage we certainly will be lost."

"Oh, but, Wyn——"

"Oh, but, Bess! Don't you dare. Here! get hold of the keel of my canoe."

"But it won't bear us both up," groaned Bessie Lavine.

"It's got to," declared Wyn. "Have courage; don't be afraid."

"You needn't try to tell me you're not afraid yourself, Wyn Mallory!" chattered her friend.

"Of course I am, dear; but I mean, don't lose your head because you are afraid," said Wyn. "Come, now! Paddle with one hand and cling to the keel with the other. I'll do the same."

"Oh, dear, me! if we were only not so far from the shore," groaned Bess.

"Somebody may see us and come to our help," said Wyn, with more confidence in her tone than she really felt.

"The canoes couldn't live in this gale."

"It's only a squall."

"That's all very well; but they wouldn't dare to start out for us from Green Knoll."

"But the boys——"

"Their camp isn't in sight of this place, Wyn," moaned Bess. "Oh! we will be drowned."

But Wyn had another hope. She remembered, just before the overturn, that she had caught a glimpse of the red and yellow cottage behind Jarley's Landing.

"Oh, Bess!" she gasped. "Perhaps Mr. Jarley will see us. Perhaps Polly——"

Another slapping wave came and rolled them and the canoe over. The frail craft came keel up, level full of water. The least weight upon it now would send it to the bottom of the lake.

"Oh, oh!" shrieked Bess, when she found her voice. "What shall we do now?"

They could both swim; but the lake was rough. The sudden and spiteful squall had torn up the surface for many yards around. Yet, as they rose upon one of the waves, they saw the sun shining boldly in the westward. The squall was scurrying away.

"Come on! we've got to swim," urged Wyn.

"That's so hard," wailed Bess, but striking out, nevertheless, in the way she had been so well taught by the instructor in Denton. All these girls had been trained in the public school baths.

"There's the other canoe," said Wyn, hopefully.

"But we—we don't want to go that way," gasped Bess. "It's away from land."

Now Wyn knew very well that they had scarcely a chance of swimming to the distant shore. In ordinarily calm weather—yes; but in this rough sea, and hampered as they were by their bloomers and other clothing—no.

The two girls swam close together, but Wyn dared not offer her comrade help. She wanted to, but she feared that if she did so Bess would break down and become helpless entirely; and Wyn hoped they would get much farther inshore before that happened.

The squall had quite gone over and the sun began to shine. It seemed a cruel thing—to drown out there in the sunlight. And yet the buffeting little waves, kicked up by the wind-flaw, were so hard to swim through.

Had the waves been of a really serious size the struggle would have been less difficult for the two girls. They could have ridden over the big waves and managed to keep their heads above water; but every once in a while a cross wavelet would slap their faces, and every time one did so Bess managed to get a mouthful of water.

"Oh! what will papa do?" moaned Bess.

And Wyn knew what the poor girl meant. She was her father's close companion and chum. The other girls in the Lavine family were smaller and their mother was devoted to them; but Bess and Mr. Lavine were pals all the time.

Bess repeated this exclamation over and over again, until Wyn thought she should shriek in nervous despair. She realized quite fully that their chance for life was very slim indeed; but moaning and groaning about it would not benefit them or change the situation in the slightest degree.

Wyn kept her head and saved her breath for work. She raised up now and then, breast high in the water, and tried to scan the shore.

Suddenly the sun revealed Green Knoll Camp to her—bathing the little hillock, with the tents upon it, in the full strength of his rays. But it was quite two miles away.

Wyn could see no moving figures upon the knoll. Nor could her friends see her and Bess struggling in the water at that distance. If their overset had not been sighted, Mrs. Havel and the four other members of the Go-Ahead Club would not be aware of their peril.

And, Wyn believed, the swamping of the canoes could only have been observed through a glass. Had anybody along shore been watching the two canoes as the squall struck the craft and overset them?

In that possibility, she thought, lay their only hope of rescue.



CHAPTER XIV

THE REPULSE

As the squall threatened in the northwest, it had been observed by many on the shores of Lake Honotonka—and many on the lake itself, as well. Sailing craft had run for havens. The lake could be nasty at times and there might be more than a capful of wind in the black cloud that spread so quickly over a sky that had—an hour before—been of azure.

Had the two girls from Green Knoll Camp been observed by the watermen as they embarked in their canoes at Meade's Forge, they might have been warned against venturing far from the shore in those cockleshells. But Wynifred and Bessie had not been observed, so were not warned.

The squall had come down so quickly that they were not much to be blamed. It had startled other people on the lake—and those much more used to its vagaries.

In a cove on the north shore a small cat-rigged boat had been drifting since noon-time, its single occupant having found the fishing very good. This fisher was the boatman's daughter, Polly Jarley.

She had now a splendid catch and she knew that, if the wind held true, a sharp run to the westward would bring her to Braisely Park. At some one of the private landings there her fish would be welcomed—she could get more for them than she could at the Forge, which was nearer.

But the squall gathered so fast that she had to put aside the thought of the run down the lake. The wind would switch about, too, after the squall. That was a foregone conclusion.

She waited until the blow was past and then saw that it would be quite impossible to make the park that afternoon and return to the landing in time for tea. And if she was later her father would be worried.

Mr. Jarley did not like to have his girl go out this way and work all day; but there seemed nothing else to be done this summer. They owed so much at the stores at the Forge; and the principal and interest on the chattel mortgage must be found before New Year or they would lose their fleet of boats. And as yet few campers had come to the lake who wished to hire Mr. Jarley's boats.

So by fishing (and none of the old fellows who had fished Honotonka for years was wiser about the good fishing places than Polly) the girl added from one to two dollars every favorable day to the family income. Sometimes she was off by light in one boat or another; but she did not often come to this northern side of the lake. This cove was at least ten miles from home.

As the last breath of the squall passed, the wind veered as she had expected, and Polly, having reeled in her two lines and unjointed the bamboo poles, stowed everything neatly, raised the anchor, or kedge, and set a hand's breadth of the big sail.

The canvas filled, and with the sheet in one hand and the other on the arm of the tiller, the girl steered the catboat out of the cove and into the rumpus kicked up by the passing squall.

The girls of the Go-Ahead Club would surely have been frightened had they been aboard the little Coquette, as the catboat was named. She rocked and jumped, and the spume flew over her gunwale in an intermittent shower. But in this sea, which so easily swamped the canoes, the catboat was as safe as a house.

Polly was used to much rougher weather than this. In the summer Lake Honotonka was on its best behavior. At other seasons the tempests tore down from the north and west and sometimes made the lake so terrible in appearance that even the hardiest bateau man in those parts would not risk himself in a boat.

Polly knew, however, that the worst of the squall was over. The lake would gradually subside to its former calm. And the change in the wind was favorable now to a quick passage either to the Forge or to her father's tiny landing.

"Can't get any fancy price for the fish at Meade's," thought Polly. "I have a good mind to put them in our trap and try again for Braisely Park to-morrow morning."

As she spoke she was running outside the horns of the cove. She could get a clear sweep now of the lake—as far as it could be viewed from the low eminence of the boat—and she rose up to see it.

"Nobody out but I," she thought. "Ah! all those folk at the end of the lake ran in when the squall appeared. And the girls and boys over yonder——"

She was peering now across the lake ahead of the Coquette's nose, toward the little island where was Cave-in-the-Wood Camp, and at Green Knoll Camp, where the girls from Denton were staying.

Her face fell as she focused her gaze upon the bit of high, green bank on which the sun was now shining again so brilliantly. She remembered how badly she had been treated by Bess Lavine only that morning.

"I can't go over there any more," she muttered. "That girl will never forget—or let the others forget—that father has been accused of being a thief. It's a shame! A hateful shame! And we're every bit as good as she is——"

Her gaze dropped to the tumbling wavelets between her and the distant green hillock. She was about to resume her seat and catch the tiller, which she had held steady with her knee.

But now her breath left her and for a moment she stood motionless—only giving to the plunge and jump of the Coquette through the choppy waves.

"Ah!" she exclaimed again, after a little intake of breath.

There were two round objects rising and falling in the rough water—and far ahead. They looked like cocoanuts.

But a little to one side was a long, black something—a stick of timber drifting on the current? No! An overturned boat.

There was no mistaking the cocoanut-like objects. They were human heads. Two capsized people were struggling in the lake.

Polly, in thirty seconds, was keenly alive to what she must do. There was no time lost in bewailing the catastrophe, or wondering about the identity of the castaways.

Who or whatever they were they must be saved. There was not another boat on the lake. And the swimmers were too far from land to be observed under any conditions.

The wind was strong and steady. The wavelets were still choppy, but Polly Jarley never thought of a wetting.

Up went the sail—up, up, up until the unhelmed catboat lay over almost on beam ends. The girl took a sailor's turn of the sheet around the cleat and then swung all her weight against the tiller, to bring the boat's head up. She held the sheet ready to let go if a warning creak from the mast should sound, or the boat refuse to respond.

But in half a minute the Coquette righted. It had been a perilous chance—she might have torn the stick out. The immediate peril was past, however. The great canvas filled. Away shot the sprightly Coquette with the wind—a bone in her teeth.

Now and then she dipped and the spume flew high, drenching Polly. The boatman's daughter was not dressed for this rough work, for she was hatless and wore merely a blouse and old skirt for outside garments. She had pulled off her shoes and stockings while she fished and had not had time to put them on again.

So the flying spray wet her through. She dodged occasionally to protect her eyes from the spoondrift which slatted so sharply across the deck and into the cockpit. The water gathered in the bottom of the old boat and was soon ankle-deep.

But Polly knew the craft was tight and that this water could be bailed out again when she had time. Just now her mind and gaze were fixed mainly upon the round, bobbing objects ahead.

For some minutes, although the catboat was traveling about as fast as Polly had ever sailed, save in a power boat, the girl could not be sure whether the swamped voyagers were girls or boys. It might be two of the Busters, from Gannet Island, for all she knew. She had made up her mind that the victims of the accident were from one camp or the other. There were no other campers as yet on the shore at this end of the lake.

Then Polly realized that the heads belonged to girls. She could see the braids floating out behind. And she knew that they were fighting for their lives.

They swam near together; once one of them raised up breast high in the water, as though looking shoreward. But neither turned back to see if help was coming from behind.

With both hands engaged with sheet and tiller Polly could not make a megaphone to carry her voice; but several times she shouted as loud as she could:

"Ahoy! Hold on! I'm coming!"

Her voice seemed flung right back into her face—drowned by the slatting spray. How viciously that water stung!

The Coquette was traveling at racing speed; but would she be in time?

How long could those two girls bear up in the choppy sea?

One of the heads suddenly disappeared. Polly shrieked; but she could do nothing to aid.

The spray filled her eyes again and, when she had shaken them free, Polly saw that the other swimmer—the stronger one—had gotten her comrade above the surface once more.

Indeed, this one was swimming on her back and holding up the girl who had gone under. How brave she was!

The sun shone clear upon the two in the water and Polly recognized Wynifred Mallory.

"Wyn! Wynnie! Hold to her! Hold up!" cried the boatman's daughter. "I'll help you!"

But she was still so far away—it seemed as though the catboat never would come within hailing distance. But before she turned over in the water to swim with Bessie's hand upon her shoulder, the captain of the Go-Ahead Club beheld the catboat rushing down upon them.

She could only wave a beckoning hand. She could not cry out. Wyn was well-nigh breathless, and Bessie's only hope was in her. The captain of the canoe club had to save her strength.

Down swooped the catboat. Polly was shouting madly; but not for an instant did she lose control of the boat or ignore the work she had in hand. She wanted to encourage Wyn and the other; but she was taking no chances.

Suddenly she let the sheet run and loosed the halliards. The canvas fluttered down on the deck with a rustle and crash. The catboat sprang to even keel, but shot on under the momentum it had gained in swooping down upon the swamped girls.

"Wyn! hold hard! I've got you!"

But it was the other girl Polly grasped. Wyn had turned, thrust the half-drowned Bessie before her, and Polly, leaning over the gunwale of the tossing boat, seized her by the shoulders.

In a moment she heaved up, struggled, dragged the other girl forward, and together rescuer and rescued tumbled flat into the cockpit of the Coquette.

Polly shouted again:

"Wyn! Wyn! I'll come back for you——"

"Give me a hand!" cried Wyn, hanging to the rudder. "Polly! you old darling! If you hadn't got here when you did——"

Polly left Bess to her own resources and rushed to the stern. She helped Wyn clamber into the boat. Then she hoisted the sail again, and got way upon the boat. She raised the canvas only a little, for she had risked all the weight she dared upon the mast before.

"Are you all right, Bess?" cried Wyn.

"I—I'm alive. But, oh! I'm so—so sick," gasped Miss Lavine.

"Brace up, Bess! We're all right now. Polly has saved us."

"Polly?" cried Bess, sitting up, the better to see the boatman's daughter as the latter sat again at the helm. "Oh, Polly!"

"You'd better both lie down till we get to the camp. I'll take you right there," said the other girl, briefly.

"We'd have been—been drowned, Wyn!" gasped Bess.

"I guess we would. We are still a long way from shore."

"And Polly saved us? All alone? How wonderful!"

But Polly's face was stern. She scarcely spoke to the two Denton girls as the Coquette swept across the lake. Wyn told her just how it all happened and the condition of the two canoes when they lost sight of them.

"I saw one; maybe the other can be found," Polly said. "I'll speak to father and, if the moon comes up clear bye and bye, we'll run out and see if we can recover them."

But for Bess she had no word, or look, and when the other put out her hand timidly and tried to thank her, as they neared the shore, Polly only said:

"That's all right. We're used to helping people who get overturned. It really is nothing."

She would not see Bessie's hand. The latter felt the repulse and Wyn, who watched them both anxiously, dared not say a word.



CHAPTER XV

TROUBLE "BRUIN"

The other girls and Mrs. Havel were all down on the beach to meet the catboat and her passengers. To see Wyn and Bessie returning across the lake in the sailboat, instead of the canoes, forewarned the Go-Aheads that an accident had happened.

But although the girls were wet and bedraggled, the captain of the club made light of the affair.

"Where are your canoes?"

"What's happened?"

"Who is it with you?"

"What under the sun did you do—go overboard?"

Wyn answered all questions in a single sentence:

"We were capsized and lost the letters and things; but Polly picked us up and brought us home."

Then, amid the excited cries and congratulations, her voice rose again:

"Isn't she brave? What do you think of my Polly Jolly now? Can you blame me for being proud of her?"

"I tell you wh—what she is!" gasped Bessie. "She's the bravest and smartest girl I ever heard of."

"Good for you, Bess!" shouted Frank Cameron, helping the castaways ashore. "You're coming to your senses."

"And—and I'm sorry," blurted out Bess, "that I ever treated her so——"

Polly shoved off the catboat and proceeded to get under way again.

"Oh, do come ashore, Polly!" begged Grace.

"I want to hug you, Miss Jarley!" cried Percy.

"What? All wet as I am now?" returned the boatman's daughter, laughing—although the laugh was not a pleasant one. "You make too much of this matter. We're used to oversets on the lake. It is nothing."

"You do not call saving two girls' lives nothing, my dear—surely?" proposed Mrs. Havel.

"If I saved them, I am very, very glad of it," returned Polly, gravely. "Anybody would be glad of that, of course, But you are making too much of it——"

"My father will not think so!" exclaimed the almost hysterical Bess. "When he learns of this he will not be able to do enough for you——"

"Your father can do nothing for me, Bessie Lavine!" cried the boatman's daughter, with sharpness.

"Oh, Polly!" said Wyn, holding out her arms to her.

"He'll—he'll want to," pursued Bess, eagerly. "Oh! he will! He'd do anything for you now——"

"There's only one thing Henry Lavine can do for me," cried Polly, turning an angry face now toward the shore. "He can stop telling stories about my father. He can be kind to him—be decent to him. I don't want anything else—and I don't want that as pay for fishing you out of the lake!"

She had got the sail up again and now the breeze filled it. The Coquette laid over and slipped away from the shore. Her last words had silenced all the girls—even Mrs. Havel herself.

Bess burst into tears. She was quite broken down, and Wyn went off with her to the tent, her arm over her shoulder, and whispering to her comfortingly.

"I don't care. Polly's served her right," declared Frank Cameron.

"I do not know that Polly can be blamed," Mrs. Havel observed. "But—but I wish she was more forgiving. It is not for herself that she speaks, however. It is for her father."

"And I'll wager he's just as nice a man as ever was," declared Frank. "I'm going to ask my father if he will not do something for Mr. Jarley."

"Do so, Frances," advised the chaperon. "I think you will do well."

The accident cast a cloud over Green Knoll Camp for the evening. The girls who had been swamped went to bed and were dosed with hot drinks brewed over the campfire by Mrs. Havel. And when the boys came over in their fleet for an evening sing and frolic, they were sent back again to the island almost at once.

The boys did not take altogether kindly to this rebuff, and Tubby was heard to say:

"Isn't that just like girls? Because they got a little wet they must go to bed and take catnip tea, or something, and be quiet. Their nerves are all unstrung! Gee! wouldn't that make your ears buzz?"

"Aw, you're a doubting Thomas and always will be, Tub," said Ferd Roberts. "You never believe what you're told. You're as suspicious as the farmer who went to town and bought a pair of shoes, and when he'd paid for 'em the clerk says:

"'Now, sir, can't I sell you a pair of shoe trees?'

"'Don't you get fresh with me, sonny,' says the farmer, his whiskers bristling. 'I don't believe shoes kin be raised on trees any more 'n I believe rubbers grow on rubber trees, or oysters on oyster plants, b'gosh!'"

"Well," snarled the fat youth, as the other Busters laughed, "the girls are always making excuses. You can never tell what a girl means, anyway—not by what she says."

"You know speech was given us to hide our thoughts," laughed Dave.

"Say! I'll get square just the same—paddlin' clear over here for nothing. Humph! I know that Hedges girl is afraid there's bears in the woods? Say, fellers! I've got it! Yes, I've got it!"

When Tubby spoke in this way, and his eyes snapped and he began to look eager, his mates knew that the fat youth's gigantic mind was working overtime, and they immediately gathered around and stopped paddling.

As Dave said, chuckling, a little later, "trouble was bruin!"

In the morning the girls found the two lost canoes on the shore below the camp. Polly and her father had evidently gone out in the evening, after the moon rose, and recovered them. Neither, of course, was damaged.

"And we must do something nice to pay them for it!" cried Grace.

Bessie was still deeply concerned over Polly's attitude.

"I am going to write father at once, and tell him all about it," she said. "And I am sorry for the way I treated Polly at first. Do you suppose she will ever forgive me, Wyn?"

Just as Wyn had once said in discussing Bessie's character: when the latter realized that she was in the wrong, or had been unfair to anyone, she was never afraid to admit her fault and try to "make it up." But this seemed to be a case where it was very difficult for Bessie to "square herself."

The boatman's daughter had shown herself unwilling to be friendly with Bess. Nor was Polly, perhaps, to be blamed.

However, on this particular morning the girls of Green Knoll Camp had something besides Bessie's disturbance of mind and Polly Jarley's attitude to think about.

And this "something" came upon them with a suddenness that set the entire camp in an uproar. Grace, the dilatory, was picking berries before breakfast along the edge of the clearing, and popping them into her mouth as fast as she could find ripe ones.

"Come here and help, Grace!" called Percy from the tent where she was shaking out the heavy blankets. "I'm not going to do all my work and yours, too."

"You come and help me. It's more fun," returned Grace, laughing at her.

Then the lazy girl turned and reached for a particularly juicy blackberry, in the clump ahead of her. Percy saw her struck motionless for a second, or two; then the big girl fairly fell backward, rolled over, picked herself up, and raced back to the tents, her mouth wide open and her hair streaming in the wind.

"What is the matter?" gasped Percy.

"Oh, Grace! you look dreadful! Tell us, what has happened!" begged Bessie, as the big girl sank down by the entrance to the tent, her limbs too weak to bear her farther.

"What has scared you so, Grace?" demanded Wyn, running up.

Grace's eyes rolled, she shut and opened her mouth again several times. Then she was only able to gasp out the one word:

"Bear!"

The other girls came crowding around. "What do you mean, Grace?" "Stop trying to scare us, Grace!" "She's fooling," were some of the cries they uttered.

But Wyn saw that her friend was really frightened; she was not "putting it on."

"You don't mean that it was a real bear?" cried Frank Cameron.

"A bear, I tell you!" moaned Grace, rocking herself to and fro. "I told you they were here in the woods."

"Oh, dear me!" screamed Mina. "What shall we do?"

"You didn't see it, Grace?" demanded Wyn, sternly. "You only heard it."

"I saw it, I tell you!"

"Not really?"

"Do—do you think I don't know a bear when I see one?" demanded Grace. "He—he'll be right after us——"

"No. If it was a real, wild bear he would be just as scared at seeing you as you would be at seeing him," remarked the decidedly sensible captain.

"He—he couldn't be as scared as I am," moaned Grace, with considerable emphasis.

"I don't believe there's a bear within miles and miles of here!" declared Frank.

"Well! I declare I hope there isn't," cried Bess.

"I'll look," offered Wyn. "Grace just thought she saw something."

"A great, black and brown hairy beast!" moaned Grace. "He stood right up on his hind legs and stretched out his arms to me——"

"Enamored of all your young charms," giggled Frank.

"It's no joke!" gasped the frightened one.

"It might be a bear, you know," quavered Mina.

The breakfast was being neglected. Mrs. Havel was down at the edge of the lake washing out some bits of lace. She had not heard the rumpus.

"I'm going to see," announced Frank, and ran back over the course Grace had come.

She reached the berry bushes. She parted them and peered through. She began to enter the jungle, indeed, in search of bruin.

And then the girls all heard a sort of snuffling growl—just the sort of a noise they thought a bear must make. Frank jumped out of those bushes as though they had become suddenly afire!

"Wha—what did I tell you?" screamed Grace.

"He's there!" groaned Mina.

Then suddenly a dark object appeared among the saplings and underbrush.

"Look out, Frank! Run!" cried the other girls, in chorus; but Miss Cameron needed no urging; she ran with all her might!



CHAPTER XVI

TIT FOR TAT

But instead of returning toward the tents she ran straight across the clearing. Possibly she did not stop to think where she was going, for she came against the underbrush again and that terrific growl was once more repeated.

Frankie stopped as though she had been shot. Right in front of her loomed a second black, hairy figure.

She glared around wildly. At the back of the clearing was the opening into the wood path leading from Windmill Farm down to the boat-landing at John Jarley's place. And in that opening, and for an instant, appeared likewise a threatening form!

"Come here! Come here, Frank!" shrieked Bess. "There's another of them—we're surrounded."

The Cameron girl started again, and let out the last link of speed that there was in her. She ran straight down to the shore where Mrs. Havel just aroused by the shrieks, was starting to return to camp.

The other girls piled after her. But Wyn brought up the rear. She looked around now and then. Three bears! In a place where no bears had been seen for years and years! Wyn was puzzled.

"There are bears in the woods, Mrs. Havel!" gasped Grace.

"Nonsense, child!"

"I saw 'em. One almost grabbed me," declared the big girl.

"And I saw them, Auntie," urged Percy Havel.

"This way! this way!" cried Frank, running along the shore under the high knoll on which the camp was pitched. "They can't see us down here."

Mrs. Havel was urged along by her niece and Grace. Wyn brought up the rear. Oddly enough, none of the bears came out of the bushes—that she could see.

The girls plunged along the sand, and through the shallow water for several yards. Here the bushes grew right down to the edge of the lake. Suddenly Wyn caught sight of something ahead, and uttered a sharp command:

"Stop! every one of you! Do you hear me, Frank? Stop!"

"Oh, dear! they can eat us here just as well as anywhere," groaned Grace.

"Now be quiet!" said Wynifred, in some heat. "We've all been foolish enough. Those were not bears."

"Cows, maybe, Wynnie?" asked Mrs. Havel. "But I am quite as afraid of cows——"

"Nor cows, either. I guess you wouldn't have been fooled for a minute if you had seen them," said Wyn.

"What do you mean, Wyn?" cried Frank. "I tell you I saw them with my own eyes——"

"Of course you did. So did I," admitted Wyn. "But we did not see them right. They are not bears, walking on their hind legs; they are just boys walking on the only legs they've got!"

"The Busters!" ejaculated Frank.

"Oh, Wyn! do you think so?" asked Mina, hopefully.

"Look ahead," commanded Wyn. "There are the boys' canoes. They paddled over here this morning and dressed up in those old moth-eaten buffalo robes they had over there, on the island, and managed to frighten us nicely."

"That's it! They played a joke on us," began Frank, laughing.

But Mrs. Havel was angry. "They should be sent home for playing such a trick," she said, "and I shall speak to Professor Skillings about it."

"Pooh!" said Wyn. "They're only boys. And of course they'll be up to such tricks. The thing to do is to go them one better."

"How, Wyn, how?" cried her mates.

"I do not know that I can allow this, Wynifred," began Mrs. Havel, doubtfully.

"You wish to punish them; don't you, Mrs. Havel?"

"They should be punished—yes."

"Then we have the chance," cried Wyn, gleefully. "You go back to the camp, Mrs. Havel, and we girls will take their canoes—every one of them. We'll call them the trophies of war, and we'll make the Busters pay—and pay well for them—before they get their canoes back. What do you say, girls?"