Thecampers failed to find the tramps. Grace and Roy stumbled across an old hut, where it was evident somebody had been living recently, but the place was empty and gave every appearance of desertion. So, after searching thoroughly through the surrounding woods, the two were forced to return to camp with only this meager find to report.
However, as the rest of the party had found no trace whatever of the tramps, Grace and Roy were consoled and began to think that they had, after all, come away with what small honors there were.
The next day the young people took up the search again and pursued it faithfully, but they met with no greater success than they had the day before.
“I’m beginning to think the tramps must live in a hole in the ground,” said Grace, disconsolately, as they sat about the campfire Sunday evening recounting the day’s experiences.
“If they do, they’ll have to come up for air sometime,” said Betty, adding belligerently: “And when they do, we’ll get ’em!”
“’At a boy,” said Frank, adding, as he lazily poked the fire with a stick: “And now what do you say we change the subject? I’m sick of the very name of tramp.”
It was with decided reluctance that Allen said good-by to Betty the following morning.
“I wish you’d chuck it all and come back with me,” he pleaded for perhaps the fiftieth time. But Betty only shook her head.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “It would be running away. And besides, we’re perfectly safe here.”
Allen was not a bit sure about it, but as he had already used all the arguments he could think of, he was forced to give in.
Roy decided to accompany Allen back to Deepdale, saying that, as much as he deplored the fact, duty called him, and the girls, after loud lamentations, finally surrendered to the inevitable.
“I don’t see why you pull such long faces,” Frank reproached them once. “Won’t you have Will and me still with you?”
“Humph,” Mollie retorted, “and do you think you’re the whole universe?”
And then Allen and Roy were gone, promising to return at the earliest possible moment.
The Outdoor Girls and their two remaining escorts returned to camp to discuss plans for the day. Betty was unusually thoughtful. She was remembering what Allen had said about the injustice that had been done by that old man who had died with something on his mind.
“I hope Allen sees that justice is done, and pretty soon,” she mused, rather wistfully. “He is so absorbed and queer these days that he isn’t like the old Allen a bit.”
She came out of her reverie to find that the boys and girls were in the midst of an animated discussion as to whether they should go fishing or not. It seemed that the boys were for the sport and the girls against it.
“Not for me, thank you,” said Grace, decidedly. “Mollie and I spent the whole afternoon a while ago trying for trout and never caught one.”
“Oh, well,” said Frank, patronizingly, “you just didn’t know how to go about it, that’s all.”
“I tell you what let’s do,” proposed Betty, wading boldly into the fray. “If you boys want to go fishing, go ahead. And while you’re wasting your perfectly good time, we’ll go to see the Old Maid of the Mountains.”
“The what?” asked both boys together, and at their comical look of perplexity, the girls giggled.
They told of their discovery of the little old lady, and, somewhat to the surprise of the girls, the boys evinced a very real interest. And when Betty graphically related the feast they had had in the cabin of the Old Maid of the Mountains, Frank, in an injured tone, declared:
“It wasn’t fair to pull off a party like that without giving us a bid.”
After the boys had started out gayly, promising to bring home at least a dozen fish, the girls set out in a different direction. They felt rather penitent because they had not seen the little old lady for two days and they wondered if she had been frightened at all during the storm. Also they were anxious to see more of her exquisite embroideries.
“It certainly is queer,” marveled Mollie, as they neared the little house on the top of the hill, “that we just happened to run across the little old lady and find out she’s the same one the girl in the Woman’s Exchange told us of.”
The girls agreed that it was, Amy adding something unoriginal to the effect that “it was a pretty small world, after all.”
The girls found the little old woman as gentle and uncomplaining as ever, although they thought they could sense under the calmness of her manner how much she had missed them.
When Grace asked to see some more of her needlework, the old lady’s eyes brightened and she hurried into the next room, returning with two or three pieces of such elaborate and exquisite workmanship that the girls were newly astonished.
“How in the world did you ever learn to do it?” asked Betty.
“My mother taught me when I was a child,” returned the queer little person, evidently much pleased and flattered by their admiration. “My mother did wonderful work.”
“It couldn’t have been better than this,” protested Amy, at which the little old lady shook her head doubtfully, although she looked more proud and pleased than ever.
They spent a happy afternoon with their Old Maid of the Mountains, listening to her sprightly reminiscences of “the days when she was young.” But as the hours passed there seemed to be a good deal of sadness mixed with her mood and she fell frequently into long silences from which the girls found it difficult to arouse her.
They were worried about her, for she seemed to have grown even more feeble since they had last seen her and she had formed the habit of muttering to herself.
Once Betty heard her say, so softly that theLittle Captain could hardly be sure she heard the words at all:
“The injustice of it, oh, theinjusticeof it!”
Betty wrinkled her pretty brows in a thoughtful expression and sighed, wishing she could do something to help.
“I don’t suppose anything can be done, after all,” she thought with another sigh. “The world is full of injustice.”
During one of her talkative spells the girls learned that the real name of the Old Maid of the Mountains was Isabella Weeks and that the little cabin she now occupied once belonged to her grandfather.
“It’s about the only thing I have left,” the old lady had said in a burst of confidence and had immediately relapsed into one of her long silences.
On their way back to camp that night the girls were unusually thoughtful. Through Betty’s head kept running persistently the refrain of the little old lady’s muttered words:
“The injustice of it, oh, theinjusticeof it!”