“‘Unless physically unable, all persons must appear at breakfast promptly at six-thirty. Penalty for not appearing—general housework for a day.“‘Every camper, except Captain Helen E. Campbell, must make his own bed and keep his part of the dormitory in first rate order.“‘There will be inspection twice a week by Captain H. E. Campbell.’”
“‘Unless physically unable, all persons must appear at breakfast promptly at six-thirty. Penalty for not appearing—general housework for a day.
“‘Every camper, except Captain Helen E. Campbell, must make his own bed and keep his part of the dormitory in first rate order.
“‘There will be inspection twice a week by Captain H. E. Campbell.’”
Miss Campbell bowed her head in acknowledgment of the honor.
“‘Dinner at twelve-thirty, unless picnics interfere.“‘Supper at six.
“‘Dinner at twelve-thirty, unless picnics interfere.
“‘Supper at six.
“‘Sub-rules for Women Members.
“‘Females unattended or with each other are expressly forbidden to wander off bounds; that is, off the three trails which pass near this camp.“‘Picnics are forbidden without male attendants.’”
“‘Females unattended or with each other are expressly forbidden to wander off bounds; that is, off the three trails which pass near this camp.
“‘Picnics are forbidden without male attendants.’”
“Dear me,” interrupted Billie, “aren’t there any laws for the men to follow? These are all against women.”
“They are merely for your protection, my dear.”
“That’s what the men always say when they begin to trample on women’s rights,” declared Billie.
“All right, Miss Suffragette, just wait a minute. There’ll be a few for the men.
“‘Sub-rules for Women Members—Continued.
“‘Hobble skirts are forbidden.’”Mr. Campbell gave a jovial wink and glanced at Nancy.
“‘Any individual who introduces a Parisian Alpine climbing suit into camp must pay the penalty by being made to climb a mountain in it.’”
“Now, you know that’s not on the list. You’re making it up,” exclaimed Nancy, blushing.
“‘The tail feather of a pheasant is not recommended as trimming for a camp hat,’”he went on blandly.
“‘No woman member is permitted to wear a lavender silk polonaise with lace ruffles.’”
“Polonaise?” cried Miss Campbell. “What on earth are you talking about, Duncan? Do you mean negligée?”
“Oh, excuse my ignorance. I thought it was calledpolonaise,” he answered humbly.
“Polonaise,” exclaimed the little lady, amid a wild whoop of laughter. “It’s a good thing you brought your daughter to a woman member to have her education finished. Goodness me!”
“Dearest Papa,” said Billie, kissing him, “don’t you wear negligée shirts most all the time? It’s the same thing.”
“I thought all ladies worepolonaises,” insisted Mr. Campbell. “It certainly was the fashion in my youth, at any rate.”
“Fashions change with the times and manners, my boy,” said Miss Campbell. “But do give us the rules for the men of this household before you forget it.”
“‘Sub-rules for Men Members.
“‘Men are required to look after the wants of the ladies and see that they obey their set of rules to the letter.’”
“And is that all?” demanded the women members with a great show of indignation. “Why, we have no rights at all and they have everything!”
“No indeed, children,” answered Mr. Campbell. “When a man is required to look after the wants of five ladies, he at once gives up all rights of his own and becomes a slave. There is no need of making any more rules for the men, but there is one more rule for general obedience.
“‘All questions and disputes arising shall be settled by Helen Eustace Campbell, Captain of Sunrise Camp.’”
“Three cheers for Captain Campbell,” cried Percy.
Miss Campbell rose and lifted her little crinkled hand for silence.
“I accept the responsibility of Sunrise Camp,” she said, “under the conditions I am about to state: that I am not asked to go canoeing in one of those tippy little boats without seats; that I am not persuaded against my better judgment to climb to the top of a mountain, for I simply won’t, I tell you beforehand; and that nothing shall interfere with my afternoon nap.”
“I am sure that these mild requests will be agreeable to all concerned,” said Mr. Campbell. “Will the company state objections, if any?”
There was a dead silence.
“Captain Campbell, consider yourself installed as absolute ruler in this camp.”
“Papa, why be so businesslike?” asked Billie.
“Because there must always be a certain amount of system in a camp or it won’t run. I’ve lived in camp so much more than in houses that I know, and since I can’t be with you until later, I think it wise to get things started in this way before I go——”
“The car is ready, sir,” said the village chauffeur at the door.
The Motor Maids had begun to learn by this time that it was invariably Mr. Campbell’s way to leave his guests in a cheerful frame of mind, and they all knew perfectly well that “Rules for Sunrise Camp” had been prepared chiefly for Billie’s sake, that she would be still laughing when her father kissed her good-by and still smiling when he turned to wave his hat for the last time. She had been very homesick for him lately during his absences from West Haven, perhaps because she had been run down in health and tired out. And to-day, in spite of all thelaughing and joking, her eyes filled with tears as she watched the car creep down the mountain road to the valley.
For a little while the camp seemed lonely and remote.
“The truth is,” thought Mary, wandering down the path to look at the view, “Mr. Campbell is so splendid that when he goes away he always leaves a big empty space that doesn’t seem to fill up. And Billie is just like him. Nobody ever could fill the emptiness she would leave.”
As if drawn by these loyal and devoted thoughts, Billie had followed Mary, and the two girls stood with clasped hands watching the distant motor, now a black speck in the valley.
“Dearest, dearest Papa,” exclaimed Billie under her breath, as the tears welled into her eyes and slipped down her cheeks.
Mary pressed close to her side with silent sympathy.
Presently Billie wiped her eyes and began to smile.
“Don’t tell on me, Mary dear. I’m just like a foolish little girl. But I do love Papa so, and sometimes I can’t bear to have him leave me. Then I wish I had been born his twin brother and we never could be separated.”
Mary was about to dispute this argument on the grounds that marriage would have separated them, when they noticed coming up the steep road a small bony horse drawing a little cart. A girl was walking at one side, holding the reins. She wore a broad-brimmed jimmy hat and an old gingham dress faded to a soft mellowed pink. The two girls watched her with admiration as she swung along the road, swaying slightly at the waist like one who had adopted the easiest way of walking up hill. They were so intent upon her that they hardly noticed the blackberries and vegetables in the back of the cart.
Presently the girl paused and turned her beautiful dark blue eyes on them without any embarrassment.
“Want to buy any vegetables?” she asked.
“Perhaps they will up at the camp,” said Billie. “Ask Mrs. Lupo.”
The mountain girl looked at her strangely and shook her head.
“Do you know Mrs. Lupo?” asked Billie.
“Yes, but I will not ask her.”
“Very well, I’ll buy something myself. What have you got?”
“Blackberries, onions and beets.”
Billie bought a pail of berries.
“You had better come up to the camp and let me empty them,” she said.
“Keep the pail,” answered the mountain girl, and swung on up the road, flicking the little old horse with a long switch.
Billie and Mary followed with the berries, which they presently left in the kitchen where Mrs. Lupo was working.
“I bought these from a mountain girl, Mrs. Lupo,” said Billie.
The woman went on working without looking up. Billie repeated what she had said. There was still no answer, and the girls went out of the kitchen somewhat disconcerted.
“She’s a queer, shy creature,” said Billie, and thought no more about it.
CHAPTER IV.TABLE TOP.
Miss Campbell was quite willing to trust her brood with Ben Austen.
“He was always reliable,” she remarked. “When he was a baby, his mother could depend on him not to cry at the wrong time, although, of course, he was only human.”
On the whole, she was relieved that her cousin had asked Ben to make them a visit. Mr. Lupo was all very well and had guided their walking parties up the trails, or, seated beside Billie in the “Comet,” had pointed out good roads for motoring; but Miss Campbell did not consider him as entirely to be trusted, because, as you probably recall, she never liked mixed bloods nor mixed colors, either.
Some days after their arrival, when they hadquite recovered from that unconquerable disposition to sleep, which always attacks lowlanders visiting the mountains, Billie proposed that they take a walking trip across a tableland which separated their mountain from the one behind, and finally scale the peak beyond, where the view, it was said, was magnificent.
“Let’s go to-day while the spirit moves us and it’s so delightfully cool,” she suggested at breakfast.
“But Mr. Lupo isn’t here,” objected Miss Campbell. “He’s gone to the village.”
“We know the way, don’t we, Ben? Mr. Lupo showed us the trail yesterday. Most of it goes through the woods. It’s only two miles across ‘Table Top’ and then we get to the other mountain. I’m wild to go. I’m beginning to feel shut in, and I want to see what’s on the other side of this Chinese wall.”
“More Chinese walls,” observed Ben gravely.
“Mr. Lupo is such a restraining influence,” putin Nancy. “When he’s along, we have no real conversation.”
“He is a kind of a wet blanket,” observed Percy. “You never know whether he has heard you or not. You generally have a feeling he has, but that your remarks are too trivial for comment.”
“All of which means,” said Miss Campbell, “that you want to go off for the day without a guide.”
“Please, Cousin Helen,” pleaded Billie.
“Dear Miss Campbell, won’t you let us?” cried the other Motor Maids.
“Not because that feather-top Percy is with you, but because Ben is here, I suppose I might as well consent,” said Miss Campbell.
“Old Ben is just as much of a feather-top as I am, Miss Campbell,” protested Percy. “He deceives people because he looks like an Indian. I’ve got a serious mind underneath all this curl and color.”
“I don’t believe it,” answered Miss Campbell. “But I wouldn’t have you changed, my boy. I like you as you are.”
After this two-sided compliment, they took it for granted that consent had been given and Billie rushed off to see Mrs. Lupo about the lunch.
They had come to learn during that first week in camp that Mrs. Lupo was a law unto herself. For one thing, the blackberries that Billie had purchased of the mountain girl had never come to the table, although the girls kept looking for them to appear in the form of a cobbler or a roly-poly pudding. What had become of them they never learned, but Billie had an uncomfortable suspicion that they had been tossed into the garbage pail.
“We can’t do anything about it, my dear,” Miss Campbell had informed Billie. “The woman certainly holds us in the hollow of her hand unless we want to do our own cooking.”
Billie smiled. Miss Campbell was never known to boil a kettleful of water, let alone cook a meal. If there was any culinary work to be done the Motor Maids would do it, and Miss Campbell might possibly arrange the salt cellars or offer to go over the silver with a polishing cloth.
Mrs. Lupo dumbly acquiesced to the lunch.
“We will be glad to make the sandwiches, Mrs. Lupo,” said Billie timidly. “Please let us have some cold meat. I suppose there is plenty of bread? Will you hard-boil a dozen eggs?”
Mrs. Lupo rarely replied to any question addressed to her, but she went about getting the things for the lunch and Billie breathed a sigh of silent thanks.
“It’s really terrible to be a slave to one’s cook,” she thought. “But I know perfectly well that if I ever tried to subjugate Mrs. Lupo I’d get mad, and she would just fold her tent like the Arab and silently steal away, and one morning there would be no breakfast.”
Billie had tried several methods with Mrs. Lupo. She had said good morning with a polite smile, but received no response. Once she had added:
“How do you feel this morning, Mrs. Lupo?”
A dead silence had followed this courteous inquiry.
“Wires crossed,” Percy had cried. “Try again, Central.”
They had all laughed at this witticism and Billie had hoped Mrs. Lupo had not understood.
“If you had lived in the mountains all your life I guess you wouldn’t be very communicative, either,” she had admonished Percy, after Mrs. Lupo had glided noiselessly out of the room.
“I guess I wouldn’t miss a call,” answered Percy. “If there was any one to call, I wouldn’t hang up the receiver.”
There were times, however, when Billie could scarcely conceal her irritation, and this morning nothing went quite as she had planned.
There was only enough bread for a dozen sandwiches and there were only six eggs.
“But I said a dozen eggs, Mrs. Lupo,” she said, after she had sliced and buttered the bread and glancing up saw six eggs cooling in a pan. “You know we are going to take a long walk across Table Top to Indian Head.”
The silence was profound.
“And we need more bread. Will you get me another loaf, please?”
No reply. Mrs. Lupo was quietly stringing beans on a bench by the door of the lean-to which served the camp as a kitchen.
“Did you hear what I asked?” demanded Billie.
Nancy and Mary, placing ham between the slices of bread, looked up quickly, half amused and half frightened.
“Did you hear me ask you a question, Mrs. Lupo?” repeated Billie, exasperated beyond endurance.
Mrs. Lupo went on stringing beans.
Brandishing the long carving knife, Billie went over and stood in front of the strange woman. Percy, peeping through the half open door, was grinning, and Nancy stifled a giggle.
“When I speak to you I expect an answer, Mrs. Lupo,” said Billie, trying to keep her voice smooth and even. “Now, answer me at once.”
Mrs. Lupo looked up mildly surprised.
“There ain’t no more bread and there ain’t no more eggs,” she said, in a voice that sounded like an echo.
Billie went back to her work without a word, and later, when they had started on the walk with the small allowance of lunch packed in a candy box, Percy teased her and called her the javelin thrower.
“Iwasalmost tempted to pitch it at her,” said Billie. “She is the most aggravating human being I ever saw. I’ll certainly never address another word to her, but it’s so hard to remember not to be agreeable.”
The placid depths of Billie’s amiable nature had been so stirred by the incident that it took her some time to calm down, and she went blindly along the trail following Ben without seeing anything or anybody.
“Don’t let her jar you, Billie,” said Ben, soothingly. “If you want to forget your troubles, just have a look at Nancy-Bell. She looks like a fashion plate lady standing on the top of Mont Blanc.”
Nancy had disappeared just when they were ready to start and kept them waiting fifteen minutes, which had also served to aggravate Billie’s ruffled temper.
“Goodness me,” exclaimed Billie, laughing, “the child has put on her new walking costume made by Delosia Moxley’s mother! When the climbing part comes, what will she do, Ben?”
Ben shook his head doubtfully.
“How do you like it, Billie dear?” asked Nancy in a honeyed tone, noticing her friend’s backward glances.
“It’s awfully pretty, Nancy. Lovely color, but——”
“You see, the skirt’s quite broad,” interrupted Nancy, anticipating objections and endeavoring to spread the skirt to the full limit of its yard and a quarter.
“Just about as broad as one trouser leg,” teased Ben.
Nancy ignored the remark, and the pheasant’s feather in her hat seemed to quiver with indignation.
“Where’s the crook?” asked Mary politely.
“I’m her crook,” put in Percy. “You’ll find she’ll be using me as a staff presently when she has to take a step six inches instead of five.”
“We’ll be carrying her yet,” Ben predicted.
“I think you are all perfectly horrid,” ejaculated Nancy, who indeed looked as pretty as a picture in the blue velveteen. There was the coral tie at her throat, as she had planned, and perched on her curls was the jauntiest little hatimaginable that served only to keep the sun off the top of her head and was no protection whatever to her tip-tilted freckled nose. Mary and Elinor wore jimmies bought in the village, and Billie wore no hat at all.
“No, we aren’t, Nancy dear. We’re just teasing,” said Billie. “You look sweet, but why have you never worn it before?”
“To tell the truth, I was afraid of the scorn of Mr. Lupo,” said Nancy. “All of you are just like a family, so it didn’t matter, but Mr. Lupo might have thought me, well—an amateur. I’ve been dying to wear it,” she added, giving a dance step and looking down with pride at the snug-fitting skirt. “Of course, I know the skirt is a bit narrow. You know how Mrs. Moxley is,—just determined to have her own way. It was all I could do to get her to put the extra quarter of a yard in the skirt. But I think I can manage it if we don’t walk too fast. There is so much level ground on this walk, too,—all that table land, you know.”
Ben gave a covert smile and the others laughed openly.
“You funny child,” said Billie. “It’s really beautiful to see a person enjoy clothes like that. You look sweet enough to charm a snake, and if the walking is too stiff, we’ll just carry you.”
“So far so good,” said Ben, “but on the other side of Table Top there’ll be some climb.”
Nancy did not hear this prediction.
So far, indeed, the trail was a broad and honest path leading through the pine forest; but after a while, as it descended toward the tableland, it grew so narrow as to be imperceptible to everybody but Ben, whose eyes, trained by long months of camping and vacation walking trips, could pick out the faintest indication of a path where the others saw nothing at all.
It was well past noon when at last they arrived at a scooped out area of land between the two mountains, connecting them half way to their summit, like the web foot of a duck.
Here, hungry and tired, they paused for lunch, and somehow, two sandwiches and a boiled egg apiece didn’t seem to go very far.
“I have to apologize,” said Billie. “There was nothing in the camp to eat. I suppose that’s why Mr. Lupo made his mysterious visit to the village: to get supplies.”
“I’m thankful it’s all gone and there is no more,” announced Percy. “It’s something less to carry,” he added, tying a cord around Nancy’s coat and his own and hanging them over his back like a peddler’s pack.
“Be still,” whispered Elinor, raising a warning hand, “I was certain I heard music off in that direction.”
The six friends sat silently listening for strains of music. In the stillness of the forest they heard nothing but the songs of the birds, broken occasionally by the caw of a crow or the tapping of a woodpecker. But it was good to stop chattering for a while in this peaceful place, andBillie, lying on her back looking up into the interlacing branches of the trees, smiled happily.
How could she have been out of humor when just at their very doorstep lay the most wonderful enchanted forest? It would not be easy to recall silly domestic troubles in the midst of all this beauty.
“Curious. I was certain I heard the sound of some instrument like a mandolin or a zither,” said Elinor. “It was just one strain, almost as if the wind had blown over an aeolian harp.”
“It was fairy music,” put in Mary.
“Like enough,” said Ben; “and we had better be moving on,” he added, rising and leading the way. “The fairies don’t like human ears to hear their music and they might be playing tricks on us. Then we’d be in the deuce of a fix out in the wilderness.”
“They don’t mind at all,” said Mary. “You’re entirely mistaken, Ben. You are thinking of elves. The fairies are kind little people who never harm anyone.”
They had been walking for some time when they heard cries behind them.
“Help! Help!” screamed the voice of Nancy from around a curve in the trail.
“What did I tell you,” said Ben, running back with the others to see what had happened, and then bursting into a perfect roar of laughter.
There was Percy in the act of killing a long black snake, which was curled up with head thrust out in an attitude of defence, and there was Nancy, who had evidently started to run and, missing the trail, had rushed into a tall clump of bramble bushes. The brambles had wrapped themselves about her like the tentacles of an octopus, and the jaunty feather was caught in an overhanging branch.
“Don’t kill the snake, Percy,” objected Ben. “There are lots more just like him, and it won’t help any to kill one. Besides, they never start a quarrel.”
“All right, old S. P. C. A.,” said Percy, asrelieved as the snake, which immediately glided off into the bushes as if it had actually understood that Ben was making a plea for its life.
With subdued giggles they released Nancy from the clutches of the brambles. The feather was broken in half and dragged dejectedly over the crown of her hat, and there was a long scratch across her left cheek.
“Do you remember Jim Phipps in the Fourth Grade, Ben,” began Percy, pointing to Nancy’s hat. “Do you remember the poem called ‘Absalom’ he recited? That is, he began it but he never got any farther than the first line, because he started out by saying, ‘Abalsom, my son Abalsom.’”
The laugh was against Nancy, but she took it good-naturedly and joined in, while she broke the feather in half and left the lower end standing up in the band in a straight cockade.
And now the path, although it was on level ground, seemed to grow more and more difficult.Ben, glancing behind him, doubtfully remarked:
“As long as there are only two miles of this, I suppose we can stand it, but if any person feels tired, sing out and we’ll start back without trying to make Indian Head.”
“We are all right,” they assured him.
For a long time they walked on in silence. The ground was soft and squashy under foot, and Billie privately believed that the trail lay only in Ben’s imagination.
“Ben,” she said at last. “I think maybe we had better start back. We don’t seem to be getting anywhere, and this ground is like a sponge.”
Silently they turned their faces in the other direction, feeling all at once chilled and tired and hungry. Ben, leading the way with Billie, began to look serious.
“Billie,” he said in a low voice after a while, “I am afraid I am not worthy the confidence Miss Campbell has placed in me. I am afraid I’ll have to confess that we are lost.”
CHAPTER V.IN THE BOG.
It was not an unique experience to Billie to be lost. She had once known what it was to be out of sight of every human habitation on a Western plain, and furthermore half dead with hunger and thirst. You will recall how the “Comet” once carried the Motor Maids safely over an old wagon trail through a tropical forest in Florida, and perhaps also you have not forgotten how Billie and Mary Price were lost in the sacred groves of Nikko in Japan. Therefore, Billie was not in the least frightened when Ben confided to her private ear that he had missed the trail.
“We can’t be very much lost,” she answered. “‘Table Top’ is only two miles broad, and we’ll have to reach one side or the other pretty soon.”
“I hope so,” said Ben, “but don’t tell the othersyet. If they lose confidence in me, it will only make matters worse. I wasn’t prepared for this bog. I should think Mr. Lupo might have mentioned it.”
“There couldn’t be a trail through a bog anyhow, could there?”
“Sometimes there is. I’ve seen a swamp with just a narrow path running through it. But a swamp path is the sneakiest kind of a trail. It hides itself wherever it can under tall grasses and bushes. Of course, Mr. Lupo didn’t know we were going, or he would certainly have stopped us, but do you suppose Mrs. Lupo understood we were taking this particular trail?”
“She certainly did. I told her myself just before I drew the knife on her.”
Ben smiled at the mental picture of Billie brandishing a carving knife.
“Hey, Ben,” called Percy. “Is this a trail? I think it’s a channel. I’m up to my knees.”
Ben made no reply. He was deeply mortified,and hung his head with a kind of animal-like humiliation.
“What’s the matter, old man?” demanded Percy, putting his arm affectionately on his friend’s shoulder. “You look like my collie did when I caught him sucking eggs.”
“I’ve missed the trail,” Ben burst out with a choke in his voice.
The others had gathered around now. Their shoes were wet, their stockings torn with brambles, and their skirts splattered and stained with grasses and the juices of wild berries. But they were a valiant little company, even Mary Price, the weakest and frailest among them, and the sight of Ben’s unhappiness and remorse only added to their courage.
“It’s all right, Ben,” said Elinor. “We’ll find the trail again. We’re obliged to. There is the mountain right over there. Why not walk until we get to it?”
“I’m afraid it looks nearer than it is,” saidBen, “and besides, it’s not Sunrise Mountain. It’s Indian Head. I thought some time ago we were getting well away from it, but these infernal bogs are so deceiving.”
“I move we start on,” put in Billie, briskly. “We’re obliged to get somewhere some time.”
“I’ll put it to the vote, then,” announced Ben. “Shall we go toward Indian Head or Sunrise? We are nearer to Indian Head, and we may strike a farm and hire a horse and wagon to take us home.”
This seemed a good suggestion, and they accordingly turned their faces toward the mountain, the rugged outline of which resembled the profile of an Indian.
Anything to get on solid dry land again was the unspoken thought of the six friends. Once on dry surfaces and out of the level treacherous monotony of the bog, they felt they might be equal to anything. For nearly two hours they worked their way through the morass withoutmaking any apparent progress toward the mountain. And now the sun was sinking behind the Western range. Ben watched the lessening rays with feelings very much like despair.
“If I had been alone or with some of the fellows it wouldn’t have mattered,” he thought, “but with the girls——”
In a little while Table Top took on the appearance of a vast plain shut in by high walls. It was a weird, lonely place.
“It reminds me of the Valley of the Shadow of Death in ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’,” Mary whispered to Ben, who was helping her over the rough, uneven ground. “Don’t you remember the Wilderness that Christian had to pass through before he reached the Celestial City?”
“I’m afraid I never read ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’,” Ben confessed in grief-stricken tones, “but I can see what you mean, and the white mist that’s rolling in looks like a troop of spirits.”
“Would any person or persons care to hear mesing some cheerful ditty?” asked Percy, and he forthwith began to sing in a rollicking tenor voice:
“‘It was a robber’s daughter and her name was Alice Brown;Her father was the terror of a small Italian town,Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing,But it isn’t of her parents that I’m going for to sing.
“‘As Alice was a-sitting at her window sill one day,A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way,She cast her eyes upon him and he looked so good and trueThat she thought, “I could be happy with a gentleman like you.”’”
“Help! Help!” screamed Nancy. “Oh, Ben, Oh, Percy, Oh, Billie, save me!”
“What is the matter?” they cried.
“Don’t come near me,” she interrupted. “Don’t, don’t! Keep away. They’ll kill you, too.”
Nancy was jumping up and down in a perfect agony of fear, wringing her hands one moment and tearing at her skirts the next.
“It’s a hornet’s nest,” exclaimed Ben. “Keep still, Nancy. Don’t run. They won’t sting you if you are perfectly still.”
But it was needless to tell Nancy not to run. What with her narrow skirt and the spongy ground she could scarcely walk.
“There are dozens of them crawling inside my skirt,” she sobbed, “and you tell me to keep still.”
“Don’t be frightened, Nancy-Bell. I’ll stand with you,” announced Percy, boldly offering himself as a sacrifice to hornets, as he drew Nancy’s arm through his.
“Come on, hornets,” he cried. “Sting a man. Don’t attack a helpless girl.”
The others could not keep from laughing at the picture of Nancy and Percy standing arm in arm in the wilderness.
“You remind me of a bridal couple walking up the aisle,” exclaimed Billie. But Nancy was too frightened to withdraw her arm from Percy’s even at this witticism. She leaned on him in an attitude of relief and extreme confidence.
“Didn’t I tell you I would be her staff before the day was over?” he remarked with a grin.
“I’ve been stung in a dozen different places,” sobbed Nancy.
“Stand still,” ordered Ben. “They will leave you and go back to their nest if you are quiet.”
And as he had predicted, the hornets did leave off their attack and return to their home, but not until Percy had been stung several times without a murmur. For the sake of Nancy Brown, he would voluntarily have stepped into any number of hornets’ nests.
At last the procession started on. In the mistytwilight, they were a company of gray shadows moving silently along. When people are lost, really and unquestionably lost, their true natures rise to the surface: if there is any selfishness hidden away, it develops into complainings and reproaches; the faint-hearted make unhappy predictions; the lazy ones get tired before they have any right to. Ben had always admired the Motor Maids, but never more than now when he saw them quiet and courageous in the face of a night in the swamp. Nancy might shriek over hornets and snakes, but she would never confess to being tired or frightened. Not once had they complained or reproached him, and now when the will-o’-the-wisps began their ghostly dance through the mists, and the great wall of mountain loomed up in front of them black and threatening, it seemed to poor Ben that it would make it easier for him to bear his sorrows if some one would only make one little complaint.
It was Mary who gave out first. She was justsinking to her knees when Billie called out cheerfully:
“I see a light and it’s not a will-o’-the-wisp.”
There indeed was a light sending out a kindly beam in the darkness, and while they watched it, it went out.
“Listen,” exclaimed Elinor, “I hear the music again.” There came to them the sweet fairy notes of the zither.
“Halloo!” called Ben again and again, and presently the others joined in the chorus.
“What is it?” answered a voice quite near, and a figure bounded toward them through the mists.
“We have been lost,” answered Ben. “Do you think you could let these young ladies rest in your cabin while we get a vehicle and drive them home?”
“Yes,” answered the voice, and Billie then recognized the mountain girl who had sold them the blackberries that Mrs. Lupo had pitched out.
After a stiff climb up a rocky path, they reached a little cabin.After a stiff climb up a rocky path, they reacheda little cabin.—Page77.
“Come this way,” she added, and they presently realized they were on rising ground and that the morass with its glimmering will-o’-the-wisps and its floating veils of thin mist was now well below them. After a stiff climb up a rocky path they reached a little cabin built in a clearing, commanding a wide vista of the treacherous Table Top and the mountains beyond. At the door of the cabin sat the zither player, his hands traveling aimlessly over the strings while he listened to the approaching footsteps.
“Father,” called the girl, “visitors!”
“Eh? Eh?” answered the man. “Physicians, with medicines? Will they save her? Come in! Come in!”
They filed slowly into the cabin wondering what sort of a person it was sitting in the darkness and calling for physicians. The girl struck a match and lighted two candles, and at least three of the visitors noticed that the candlesticks were of silver, tall and graceful in design, and as bright as rubbing could make them.
The father like the daughter was tall and slender, with the same dark blue eyes, although his had a strange unseeing look in them. His hair was very thick and almost white, his frame spare to emaciation, but he carried himself erect and his shoulders were broad and well developed.
“Make a fire, father,” the girl ordered, and he obediently left the room, presently returning with an armful of wood.
Oh, the joy of sinking to the floor in front of that warm blaze! Ben consulted with the girl at the door of the cabin, and the strange father, rubbing his hands and smiling absently, remarked with an accent that was very different from Mr. Lupo’s or any of the natives thereabouts:
“Not half bad, this fire, eh? Rather cheerful on a dull night.”
Presently his daughter began preparing supper on a little wood stove in the lean-to back of the house. Swiftly and silently, with Ben’s assistance, she made coffee, scrambled eggs and fried bacon.
“You may set the table,” she said to Percy, pointing to some shelves at one end of the cabin.
Percy obediently placed on the plain deal table six blue plates, nicked and cracked in a dozen places, but undoubtedly of Canton; also in a tin box he found knives and forks and spoons, all shining as brightly as the candlesticks, and, he felt perfectly certain, all of silver. It was necessary to revive Mary with some hot coffee before she could eat a mouthful, and after she had taken a little food, Ben hoisted her in his arms and carried her into a small adjoining room where he laid her on a cot; all this under the supervision of the young mistress of the cabin.
There was no attempt at conversation while they satisfied their ravenous appetites, but later, when the wanderers had risen and Billie was consulting with Ben and Percy what was best to do, the father pointed to Nancy sitting in the darkest corner of the room in a small huddled heap.
“Rosalind has come out of the Forest of Arden,” he said.
All eyes were turned on Nancy who shrank into the shadow. Suddenly Percy seized one of the tall candlesticks and held it over her head.
“Why, Nancy-Bell,” he cried, “what has happened to your——”
Nancy spread her hands over her lap and turned her large blue eyes to them with a piteous expression.
“I took it off and threw it away in the swamp,” she said tremulously. “I did hate the thing so, and it was full of hornets and not big enough to take a decent step in anyhow. I hoped no one would notice.”
They were tired, but not too tired to laugh.
“If I had been dying, I should have died laughing,” Billie often afterwards remarked in telling of this incident.
Nancy, minus her narrow velveteen skirt, was really a beguiling figure in blue pongee knickerbockers. The straight velveteen jacket reached just below her waist, and with her rumpled curlsand weary expression she might easily have been taken for Rosalind, just arrived at the Forest of Arden with Celia and Touchstone.
But the wonder of it was how a half-crazed mountaineer could know anything about the greatest comedy in the world. This did not trouble them until afterwards, however.
“Billie,” observed Ben presently, “I’ve been consulting with—with this young lady here. She knows the trail through the swamp and has consented to guide me back to the camp to-night. We may be able to make it in less than two hours by a short cut, she says, and we ought to start at once. Miss Campbell will be half wild with uneasiness. As soon as it’s daylight, I’ll come back by the road in the ‘Comet.’ There are some bearskins and blankets. You can all put up here for the night. Percy will stay of course.”
“But isn’t that a great deal to ask of you, to take that long trip to-night?” asked Billie gratefully, turning to the girl.
“It is nothing,” she answered shortly and set about lighting a lantern. Then she beckoned to Ben and they silently left the cabin.
In a few moments, the father, who had been smoking a pipe at the cabin door, took one of the silver candlesticks from the mantel.
“Good night,” he said courteously. “I trust you will have a pleasant rest after your journey. I presume you have been shown your rooms?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Percy.
The man paused at the door of his bedroom at the other side of the cabin.
“I trust the physician will come soon,” he said. “With luck he may reach there before I do.”
“That’s the man who sent me to the old ruined hotel,” whispered Percy. “He’s certainly touched, but he’s harmless.”
They found two steamer rugs and several blankets in a heap on a bench, left there by the mountain girl for their comfort; and it was not long before they lay in a circle around the fire, sound asleep.