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Title: Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions

Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart

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TISH
The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions

By MARY ROBERTS RINEHART




CONTENTS

MIND OVER MOTOR

LIKE A WOLF ON THE FOLD

THE SIMPLE LIFERS

TISH'S SPY

MY COUNTRY TISH OF THEE



TISH

Mind Over Motor

How Tish Broke The Law And Some Records

I

So many unkind things have been said of the affair at Morris
Valley that I think it best to publish a straightforward account
of everything. The ill nature of the cartoon, for instance,
which showed Tish in a pair of khaki trousers on her back under
a racing-car was quite uncalled for. Tish did not wear the khaki
trousers; she merely took them along in case of emergency. Nor
was it true that Tish took Aggie along as a mechanician and
brutally pushed her off the car because she was not pumping
enough oil. The fact was that Aggie sneezed on a curve and fell
out of the car, and would no doubt have been killed had she not
been thrown into a pile of sand.

It was in early September that Eliza Bailey, my cousin, decided
to go to London, ostensibly for a rest, but really to get some
cretonne at Liberty's. Eliza wrote me at Lake Penzance asking me
to go to Morris Valley and look after Bettina.

I must confess that I was eager to do it. We three were very
comfortable at Mat Cottage, "Mat" being the name Charlie Sands,
Tish's nephew, had given it, being the initials of "Middle-Aged
Trio." Not that I regard the late forties as middle-aged. But
Tish, of course, is fifty. Charlie Sands, who is on a newspaper,
calls us either the "M.A.T." or the "B.A.'s," for "Beloved
Aunts," although Aggie and I are not related to him.

Bettina's mother's note:--

 Not that she will allow you to do it, or because she
 isn't entirely able to take care of herself; but because
 the people here are a talky lot. Bettina will probably
 look after you. She has come from college with a feeling
 that I am old and decrepit and must be cared for. She
 maddens me with pillows and cups of tea and woolen
 shawls. She thinks Morris Valley selfish and idle, and
 is disappointed in the church, preferring her
 Presbyterianism pure. She is desirous now of learning
 how to cook. If you decide to come I'll be grateful if
 you can keep her out of the kitchen.

 Devotedly,   ELIZA.

        P.S. If you can keep Bettina from getting married while
        I'm away I'll be very glad. She believes a woman should
        marry and rear a large family!   E.

We were sitting on the porch of the cottage at Lake Penzance
when I received the letter, and I read it aloud. "Humph!" said
Tish, putting down the stocking she was knitting and looking
over her spectacles at me--"Likes her Presbyterianism pure and
believes in a large family! How old is she? Forty?"

"Eighteen or twenty," I replied, looking at the letter. "I'm not
anxious to go. She'll probably find me frivolous."

Tish put on her spectacles and took the letter. "I think it's
your duty, Lizzie," she said when she'd read it through. "But
that young woman needs handling. We'd better all go. We can
motor over in half a day."

That was how it happened that Bettina Bailey, sitting on Eliza
Bailey's front piazza, decked out in chintz cushions,--the
piazza, of course,--saw a dusty machine come up the drive and
stop with a flourish at the steps. And from it alight, not one
chaperon, but three.

After her first gasp Bettina was game. She was a pretty girl in
a white dress and bore no traces in her face of any stern
religious proclivities.

"I didn't know--" she said, staring from one to the other of
us. "Mother said--that is--won't you go right upstairs and have
some tea and lie down?" She had hardly taken her eyes from Tish,
who had lifted the engine hood and was poking at the carbureter
with a hairpin.

"No, thanks," said Tish briskly. "I'll just go around to the
garage and oil up while I'm dirty. I've got a short circuit
somewhere. Aggie, you and Lizzie get the trunk off."

Bettina stood by while we unbuckled and lifted down our
traveling trunk. She did not speak a word, beyond asking if we
wouldn't wait until the gardener came. On Tish's saying she had
no time to wait, because she wanted to put kerosene in the
cylinders before the engine cooled, Bettina lapsed into silence
and stood by watching us.

Bettina took us upstairs. She had put Drummond's "Natural Law in
the Spiritual World" on my table and a couch was ready with
pillows and a knitted slumber robe. Very gently she helped us
out of our veils and dusters and closed the windows for fear of
drafts.

"Dear mother is so reckless of drafts," she remarked. "Are you
sure you won't have tea?"

"We had some blackberry cordial with us," Aggie said, "and we
all had a little on the way. We had to change a tire and it made
us thirsty."

"Change a tire!"

Aggie had taken off her bonnet and was pinning on the small lace
cap she wears, away from home, to hide where her hair is growing
thin. In her cap Aggie is a sweet-faced woman of almost fifty,
rather ethereal. She pinned on her cap and pulled her crimps
down over her forehead.

"Yes," she observed. "A bridge went down with us and one of the
nails spoiled a new tire. I told Miss Carberry the bridge was
unsafe, but she thought, by taking it very fast--"

Bettina went over to Aggie and clutched her arm. "Do you mean to
say," she quavered, "that you three women went through a
bridge--"

"It was a small bridge," I put in, to relieve her mind; "and
only a foot or two of water below. If only the man had not been
so disagreeable--"

"Oh," she said, relieved, "you had a man with you!"

"We never take a man with us," Aggie said with dignity. "This
one was fishing under the bridge and he was most ungentlemanly.
Quite refused to help, and tried to get the license number so he
could sue us."

"Sue you!"

"He claimed his arm was broken, but I distinctly saw him move
it." Aggie, having adjusted her cap, was looking at it in the
mirror. "But dear Tish thinks of everything. She had taken off
the license plates."

Bettina had gone really pale. She seemed at a loss, and
impatient at herself for being so. "You--you won't have tea?"
she asked.

"No, thank you."

"Would you--perhaps you would prefer whiskey and soda."

Aggie turned on her a reproachful eye. "My dear girl," she said,
"with the exception of a little home-made wine used medicinally
we drink nothing. I am the secretary of the Woman's Prohibition
Party."

Bettina left us shortly after that to arrange for putting up
Letitia and Aggie. She gave them her mother's room, and whatever
impulse she may have had to put the Presbyterian Psalter by the
bed, she restrained it. By midnight Drummond's "Natural Law" had
disappeared from my table and a novel had taken its place. But
Bettina had not lost her air of bewilderment.

That first evening was very quiet. A young man in white flannels
called, and he and Letitia spent a delightful evening on the
porch talking spark-plugs and carbureters. Bettina sat in a
corner and looked at the moon. Spoken to, she replied in
monosyllables in a carefully sweet tone. The young man's name
was Jasper McCutcheon.

It developed that Jasper owned an old racing-car which he kept
in the Bailey garage, and he and Tish went out to look it over.
They very politely asked us all to go along, but Bettina
refusing, Aggie and I sat with her and looked at the moon.

Aggie in her capacity as chaperon, or as one of an association
of chaperons, used the opportunity to examine Bettina on the
subject of Jasper.

"He seems a nice boy," she remarked. Aggie's idea of a nice boy
is one who in summer wears fresh flannels outside, in winter
less conspicuously. "Does he live near?"

"Next door," sweetly but coolly.

"He is very good-looking."

"Ears spoil him--too large."

"Does he come around--er--often?"

"Only two or three times a day. On Sunday, of course, we see
more of him."

Aggie looked at me in the moonlight. Clearly the young man from
the next door needed watching. It was well we had come.

"I suppose you like the same things?" she suggested. "Similar
tastes and--er--all that?"

Bettina stretched her arms over her head and yawned.

"Not so you could notice it," she said coolly. "I can't thick of
anything we agree on. He is an Episcopalian; I'm a Presbyterian.
He approves of suffrage for women; I do not. He is a Republican;
I'm a Progressive. He disapproves of large families; I approve
of them, if people can afford them."

Aggie sat straight up. "I hope you don't discuss that!" she
exclaimed.

Bettina smiled. "How nice to find that you are really just nice
elderly ladies after all!" she said. "Of course we discuss it.
Is it anything to be ashamed of?"

"When I was a girl," I said tartly, "we married first and
discussed those things afterward."

"Of course you did, Aunt Lizzie," she said, smiling alluringly.
She was the prettiest girl I think I have ever seen, and that
night she was beautiful. "And you raised enormous families who
religiously walked to church in their bare feet to save their
shoes!"

"I did nothing of the sort," I snapped.

"It seems to me," Aggie put in gently, "that you make very
little of love." Aggie was once engaged to be married to a young
man named Wiggins, a roofer by trade, who was killed in the act
of inspecting a tin gutter, on a rainy day. He slipped and fell
over, breaking his neck as a result.

Bettina smiled at Aggie. "Not at all," she said. "The day of
blind love is gone, that's all--gone like the day of the
chaperon."

Neither of us cared to pursue this, and Tish at that moment
appearing with Jasper, Aggie and I made a move toward bed. But
Jasper not going, and none of us caring to leave him alone with
Bettina, we sat down again.

We sat until one o'clock.

At the end of that time Jasper rose, and saying something about
its being almost bedtime strolled off next door. Aggie was sound
asleep in her chair and Tish was dozing. As for Bettina, she had
said hardly a word after eleven o'clock.

Aggie and Tish, as I have said, were occupying the same room. I
went to sleep the moment I got into bed, and must have slept
three or four hours when I was awakened by a shot. A moment
later a dozen or more shots were fired in rapid succession and I
sat bolt upright in bed. Across the street some one was raising
a window, and a man called "What's the matter?" twice.

There was no response and no further sound. Shaking in every
limb, I found the light switch and looked at the time. It was
four o'clock in the morning and quite dark.

Some one was moving in the hall outside and whimpering. I opened
the door hurriedly and Aggie half fell into the room.

"Tish is murdered, Lizzie!" she said, and collapsed on the floor
in a heap.

"Nonsense!"

"She's not in her room or in the house, and I heard shots!"

Well, Aggie was right. Tish was not in her room. There was a
sort of horrible stillness everywhere as we stood there
clutching at each other and listening.

"She's heard burglars downstairs and has gone down after them,
and this is what has happened! Oh, Tish! brave Tish!" Aggie
cried hysterically.

And at that Bettina came in with her hair over her shoulders and
asked us if we had heard anything. When we told her about Tish,
she insisted on going downstairs, and with Aggie carrying her
first-aid box and I carrying the blackberry cordial, we went
down.

The lower floor was quiet and empty. The man across the street
had put down his window and gone back to bed, and everything was
still. Bettina in her dressing-gown went out on the porch and
turned on the light. Tish was not there, nor was there a body
lying on the lawn.

"It was back of the house by the garage," Bettina said. "If only
Jasper--"

And at that moment Jasper came into the circle of light. He had
a Norfolk coat on over his pajamas and a pair of slippers, and
he was running, calling over his shoulder to some one behind as
he ran.

"Watch the drive!" he yelled. "I saw him duck round the corner."

We could hear other footsteps now and somebody panting near us.
Aggie was sitting huddled in a porch chair, crying, and Bettina,
in the hall, was trying to get down from the wall a Moorish
knife that Eliza Bailey had picked up somewhere.

"John!" we heard Jasper calling. "John! Quick! I've got him!"

He was just at the corner of the porch. My heart stopped and
then rushed on a thousand a minute. Then:--

"Take your hands off me!" said Tish's voice.

The next moment Tish came majestically into the circle of light
and mounted the steps. Jasper, with his mouth open, stood below
looking up, and a hired man in what looked like a bed quilt was
behind in the shadow.

Tish was completely dressed in her motoring clothes, even to her
goggles. She looked neither to the right nor left, but stalked
across the porch into the house and up the stairway. None of us
moved until we heard the door of her room slam above.

"Poor old dear!" said Bettina. "She's been walking in her
sleep!"

"But the shots!" gasped Aggie. "Some one was shooting at her!"

Conscious now of his costume, Jasper had edged close to the
veranda and stood in its shadow.

"Walking in her sleep, of course!" he said heartily. "The trip
today was too much for her. But think of her getting into that
burglar-proof garage with her eyes shut--or do sleep-walkers
have their eyes shut?--and actually cranking up my racer!"

Aggie looked at me and I looked at Aggie.

"Of course," Jasper went on, "there being no muffler on it, the
racket wakened her as well as the neighborhood. And then the way
we chased her!"

"Poor old dear!" said Bettina again. "I'm going in to make her
some tea."

"I think," said Jasper, "that I need a bit of tea too. If you
will put out the porch lights I'll come up and have some."

But Aggie and I said nothing. We knew Tish never walked in her
sleep. She had meant to try out Jasper's racing-car at dawn,
forgetting that racers have no mufflers, and she had been, as
one may say, hoist with her own petard--although I do not know
what a petard is and have never been able to find out.

We drank our tea, but Tish refused to have any or to reply to
our knocks, preserving a sulky silence. Also she had locked
Aggie out and I was compelled to let her sleep in my room.

I was almost asleep when Aggie spoke:--

"Did you think there was anything queer about the way that
Jasper boy said good-night to Bettina?" she asked drowsily.

"I didn't hear him say good-night."

"That was it. He didn't. I think"--she yawned--"I think he
kissed her."

II

Tish was down early to breakfast that morning and her manner
forbade any mention of the night before. Aggie, however, noticed
that she ate her cereal with her left hand and used her right
arm only when absolutely necessary. Once before Tish had almost
broken an arm cranking a car and had been driven to arnica
compresses for a week; but this time we dared not suggest
anything.

Shortly after breakfast she came down to the porch where Aggie
and I were knitting.

"I've hurt my arm, Lizzie," she said. "I wish you'd come out and
crank the car."

"You'd better stay at home with an arm like that," I replied
stiffly.

"Very well, I'll crank it myself."

"Where are you going?"

"To the drug store for arnica."

Bettina was not there, so I turned on Tish sharply. "I'll go, of
course," I said; "but I'll not go without speaking my mind,
Letitia Carberry. By and large, I've stood by you for twenty-
five years, and now in the weakness of your age I'm not going to
leave you. But I warn you, Tish, if you touch that racing-car
again, I'll send for Charlie Sands."

"I haven't any intention of touching it again," said Tish,
meekly enough. "But I wish I could buy a second-hand racer
cheap."

"What for?" Aggie demanded.

Tish looked at her with scorn. "To hold flowers on the dining-
table," she snapped.

It being necessary, of course, to leave a chaperon with Bettina,
because of the Jasper person's habit of coming over at any hour
of the day, we left Aggie with instructions to watch them both.

Tish and I drove to the drug store together, and from there to a
garage for gasoline. I have never learned to say "gas" for
gasoline. It seems to me as absurd as if I were to say "but" for
butter. Considering that Aggie was quite sulky at being left, it
is absurd for her to assume an air of virtue over what followed
that day. Aggie was only like a lot of people--good because she
was not tempted; for it was at the garage that we met Mr. Ellis.

We had stopped the engine and Tish was quarreling with the man
about the price of gasoline when I saw him--a nice-looking young
man in a black-and- white checked suit and a Panama hat. He came
over and stood looking at Tish's machine.

"Nice lines to that car," he said. "Built for speed, isn't she?
What do you get out of her?"

Tish heard him and turned. "Get out of her?" she said. "Bills
mostly."

"Well, that's the way with most of them," he remarked, looking
steadily at Tish. "A machine's a rich man's toy. The only way to
own one is to have it endowed like a university. But I meant
speed. What can you make?"

"Never had a chance to find out," Tish said grimly. "Between
nervous women in the machine and constables outside I have the
twelve-miles-an-hour habit. I'm going to exchange the
speedometer for a vacuum bottle."

He smiled. "I don't think you're fair to yourself. Mostly--if
you'll forgive me--I can tell a woman's driving as far off as I
can see the machine; but you are a very fine driver. The way you
brought that car in here impressed me considerably."

"She need not pretend she crawls along the road," I said with
some sarcasm. "The bills she complains of are mostly fines for
speeding."

"No!" said the young man, delighted. "Good! I'm glad to hear it.
So are mine!"

After that we got along famously. He had his car there--a low
gray thing that looked like an armored cruiser.

"I'd like you ladies to try her," he said. "She can move, but
she is as gentle as a lamb. A lady friend of mine once threaded
a needle as an experiment while going sixty-five miles an hour."

"In this car?"

"In this car."

Looking back, I do not recall just how the thing started. I
believe Tish expressed a desire to see the car go, and Mr. Ellis
said he couldn't let her out on the roads, but that the race-
track at the fair-ground was open and if we cared to drive down
there in Tish's car he would show us her paces, as he called it.

>From that to going to the race-track, and from that to Tish's
getting in beside him on the mechanician's seat and going round
once or twice, was natural. I refused; I didn't like the look of
the thing.

Tish came back with a cinder in her eye and full of enthusiasm.
"It was magnificent, Lizzie," she said. "The only word for it is
sublime. You see nothing. There is just the rush of the wind and
the roar of the engine and a wonderful feeling of flying. Here!
See if you can find this cinder."

"Won't you try it, Miss--er--Lizzie?"

"No, thanks," I replied. "I can get all the roar and rush of
wind I want in front of an electric fan, and no danger."

He stood by, looking out over the oval track while I took three
cinders from Tish's eye.

"Great track!" he said. "It's a horse-track, of course, but it's
in bully shape--the county fair is held there and these fellows
make a big feature of their horse-races. I came up here to
persuade them to hold an automobile meet, but they've got cold
feet an the proposition."

"What was the proposition?" asked Tish.

"Well," he said, "it was something like this. I've been turning
the trick all over the country and it works like a charm. The
town's ahead in money and business, for an automobile race
always brings a big crowd; the track owners make the gate money
and  the racing-cars get the prizes. Everybody's ahead. It's a
clean sport too."

"I don't approve of racing for money," Tish said decidedly.

But Mr. Ellis shrugged his shoulders. "It's really hardly racing
for money," he explained. "The prizes cover the expenses of the
racing-cars, which are heavy naturally. The cars alone cost a
young fortune."

"I see," said Tish. "I hadn't thought of it in that light. Well,
why didn't Morris Valley jump at the chance?"

He hesitated a moment before he answered. "It was my fault
really," he said. "They were willing enough to have the races,
but it was a matter of money. I made them a proposition to
duplicate whatever prize money they offered, and in return I was
to have half the gate receipts and the betting privileges."

Tish quite stiffened. "Clean sport!" she said sarcastically.
"With betting privileges!"

"You don't quite understand, dear lady," he explained. "Even in
the cleanest sport we cannot prevent, a man's having an opinion
and backing it with his own money. What I intended to do was to
regulate it. Regulate it."

Tish was quite mollified. "Well, of course," she said, "I
suppose since it must be, it is better--er,--regulated. But why
haven't you succeeded?"

"An unfortunate thing happened just as I had the deal about to
close," he replied, and drew a long breath. "The town had raised
twenty-five hundred. I was to duplicate the amount. But just at
that time a--a young brother of mine in the West got into
difficulties, and I--but why go into family matters? It would
have been easy enough for me to pay my part of the purse out of
my share of the gate money; but the committee demands cash on
the table. I haven't got it."

Tish stood up in her car and looked out over the track.

"Twenty-five hundred dollars is a lot of money, young man."

"Not so much when you realize that the gate money will probably
amount to twelve thousand."

Tish turned and surveyed the grandstand.

"That thing doesn't seat twelve hundred."

"Two thousand people in the grandstand--that's four thousand
dollars. Four thousand standing inside the ropes at a dollar
each, four thousand more. And say eight hundred machines parked
in the oval there at five dollars a car, four thousand more.
That's twelve thousand for the gate money alone. Then there are
the concessions to sell peanuts, toy balloons, lemonade and palm-
leaf fans, the lunch-stands, merry-go-round and moving-picture
permits. It's a bonanza! Fourteen thousand anyhow."

"Half of fourteen thousand is seven," said Tish dreamily. "Seven
thousand less twenty-five hundred is thirty-five hundred dollars
profit."

"Forty-five hundred, dear lady," corrected Mr. Ellis, watching
her. "Forty-five hundred dollars profit to be made in two weeks,
and nothing to do to get it but sit still and watch it coming!"

I can read Tish like a book and I saw what was in her mind.
"Letitia Carberry!" I said sternly. "You take my warning and
keep clear of this foolishness. If money comes as easy as that
it ain't honest."

"Why not?" demanded Mr. Ellis. "We give them their money's
worth, don't we? They'd pay two dollars for a theater seat
without half the thrills--no chances of seeing a car turn turtle
or break its steering-knuckle and dash into the side-lines. Two
dollars' worth? It's twenty!"

But Tish had had a moment to consider, and the turning-turtle
business settled it. She shook her head. "I'm not interested,
Mr. Ellis," she said coldly. "I couldn't sleep at night if I
thought I'd been the cause of anything turning turtle or dashing
into the side-lines."

"Dear lady!" he said, shocked; "I had no idea of asking you to
help me out of my difficulties. Anyhow, while matters are at a
standstill probably some shrewd money-maker here will come
forward before long and make a nice profit on a small
investment."

As we drove away from the fair grounds Tish was very silent; but
just as we reached the Bailey place, with Bettina and young
Jasper McCutcheon batting a ball about on the tennis court, Tish
turned to me.

"You needn't look like that, Lizzie," she said. "I'm not even
thinking of backing an automobile race--although I don't see why
I shouldn't, so far as that goes. But it's curious, isn't it,
that I've got twenty-five hundred dollars from Cousin Angeline's
estate not even earning four per cent?"

I got out grimly and jerked at my bonnet-strings.

"You put it in a mortgage, Tish," I advised her with severity in
every tone. "It may not be so fast as an automobile race or so
likely to turn turtle or break its steering-knuckle, but it's
safe."

"Huh!" said Tish, reaching for the gear lever. "And about as
exciting as a cold pork chop."

"And furthermore," I interjected, "if you go into this thing now
that your eyes are open, I'll send for Charlie Sands!"

"You and Charlie Sands," said Tish viciously, jamming at her
gears, "ought to go and live in an old ladies' home away from
this cruel world."

Aggie was sitting under a sunshade in the broiling sun at the
tennis court. She said she had not left Bettina and Jasper for a
moment, and that they had evidently quarreled, although she did
not know when, having listened to every word they said. For the
last half-hour, she said, they had not spoken at all.

"Young people in love are very foolish," she said, rising
stiffly. "They should be happy in the present. Who knows what
the future may hold?"

I knew she was thinking of Mr. Wiggins and the icy roof, so I
patted her shoulder and sent her up to put cold cloths on her
head for fear of sunstroke. Then I sat down in the broiling sun
and chaperoned Bettina until luncheon.

III

Jasper took dinner with us that night. He came across the lawn,
freshly shaved and in clean white flannels, just as dinner was
announced, and said he had seen a chocolate cake cooling on the
kitchen porch and that it was a sort of unwritten social law
that when the Baileys happened to have a chocolate cake at
dinner they had him also.

There seemed to be nothing to object to in this. Evidently he
was right, for we found his place laid at the table. The meal
was quite cheerful, although Jasper ate the way some people play
the piano, by touch, with his eyes on Bettina. And he gave no
evidence at dessert of a fondness for chocolate cake sufficient
to justify a standing invitation.

After dinner we went out on the veranda, and under cover of
showing me a sunset Jasper took me round the corner of the
house. Once there, he entirely forgot the sunset.

"Miss Lizzie," he began at once, "what have I done to you to
have you treat me like this?"

"I?" I asked, amazed.

"All three of you. Did--did Bettina's mother warn you against
me?"

"The girl has to be chaperoned."

"But not jailed, Miss Lizzie, not jailed! Do you know that I
haven't had a word with Bettina alone since you came?"

"Why should you want to say anything we cannot hear?"

"Miss Lizzie," he said desperately, "do you want to hear me
propose to her? For I've reached the point where if I don't
propose to Bettina soon, I'll--I'll propose to somebody. You'd
better be warned in time. It might be you or Miss Aggie."

I weakened at that. The Lord never saw fit to send me a man I
could care enough about to marry, or one who cared enough about
me, but I couldn't look at the boy's face and not be sorry for
him.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Come for a walk with us," he begged. "Then sprain your ankle or
get tired, I don't care which. Tell us to go on and come back
for you later. Do you see? You can sit down by the road
somewhere."

"I won't lie," I said firmly. "If I really get tired I'll say
so. If I don't--"

"You will." He was gleeful. "We'll walk until you do! You see
it's like this, Miss Lizzie. Bettina was all for me, in spite of
our differing on religion and politics and--"

"I know all about your differences," I put in hastily.

"Until a new chap came to town--a fellow named Ellis. Runs a
sporty car and has every girl in the town lashed to the mast.
He's a novelty and I'm not. So far I have kept him away from
Bettina, but at any time they may meet, and it will be
one-two-three with me."

I am not defending my conduct; I am only explaining. Eliza
Bailey herself would have done what I did under the
circumstances. I went for a walk with Bettina and Jasper shortly
after my talk with Jasper, leaving Tish with the evening paper
and Aggie inhaling a cubeb cigarette, her hay fever having
threatened a return. And what is more, I tired within three
blocks of the house, where I saw a grassy bank beside the road.

Bettina wished to stay with me, but I said, in obedience to
Jasper's eyes, that I liked to sit alone and listen to the
crickets, and for them to go on. The last I saw of them Jasper
had drawn Bettina's arm through his and was walking beside her
with his head bent, talking. I sat for perhaps fifteen minutes
and was growing uneasy about dew and my rheumatism when I heard
footsteps and, looking up, I saw Aggie coming toward me. She was
not surprised to see me and addressed me coldly.

"I thought as much!" she said. "I expected better of you,
Lizzie. That boy asked me and I refused. I dare say he asked
Tish also. For you, who pride yourself on your strength of mind--
 "

"I was tired," I said. "I was to sprain my ankle," she observed
sarcastically. "I just thought as I was sitting there alone--"

"Where's Tish?"

"A young man named Ellis came and took her out for a ride," said
Aggie. "He couldn't take us both, as the car holds only two."

I got up and stared at Aggie in the twilight. "You come straight
home with me, Aggie Pilkington," I said sternly.

"But what about Bettina and Jasper?"

"Let 'em alone," I said; "they're safe enough. What we need to
keep an eye on is Letitia Carberry and her Cousin Angeline's
legacy."

But I was too late. Tish and Mr. Ellis whirled up to the door at
half-past eight and Tish did not even notice that Bettina was
absent. She took off her veil and said something about Mr.
Ellis's having heard a grinding in the differential of her car
that afternoon and that he suspected a chip of steel in the
gears. They went out together to the garage, leaving Aggie and
me staring at each other. Mr. Ellis was carrying a box of tools.

Jasper and Bettina returned shortly after, and even in the dusk
I knew things had gone badly for him. He sat on the steps,
looking out across the dark lawn, and spoke in monosyllables.
Bettina, however, was very gay.

It was evident that Bettina had decided not to take her
Presbyterianism into the Episcopal fold. And although I am a
Presbyterian myself I felt sorry.

Tish and Mr. Ellis came round to the porch about ten o'clock and
he was presented to Bettina. From that moment there was no
question in my mind as to how affairs were going, or in Jasper's
either. He refused to move and sat doggedly on the steps, but he
took little part in the conversation.

Mr. Ellis was a good talker, especially about himself.

"You'll be glad to know," he said to me, "that I've got this
race matter fixed up finally. In two weeks from now we'll have a
little excitement here."

I looked toward Tish, but she said nothing.

"Excitement is where I live," said Mr. Ellis. "If I don't find
any waiting I make it."

"If you are looking for excitement, we'll have to find you
some," Jasper said pointedly.

Mr. Ellis only laughed. "Don't put yourself out, dear boy," he
said. "I have enough for present necessities. If you think an
automobile race is an easy thing to manage, try it. Every man
who drives a racing-car has a coloratura soprano beaten to death
for temperament. Then every racing-car has quirky spells;
there's the local committee to propitiate; the track to look
after; and if that isn't enough, there's the promotion itself,
the advertising. That's my stunt--the advertising."

"It's a wonderful business, isn't it?" asked Bettina. "To take a
mile or so of dirt track and turn it into a sort of stage, with
drama every minute and sometimes tragedy!"

"Wait a moment," said Mr. Ellis; "I want to put that down. I'll
use it somewhere in the advertising." He wrote by the light of a
match, while we all sat rather stunned by both his personality
and his alertness. "Everything's grist that comes to my mill. I
suppose you all remember when I completed the speedway at
Indianapolis and had the Governor of Indiana lay a gold brick at
the entrance? Great stunt that! But the best part of that story
never reached the public."

Bettina was leaning forward, all ears and thrills. "What was
that?" she asked.

"I had the gold brick stolen that night--did it myself and
carried the brick away in my pocket--only gold-plated, you know.
Cost eight or nine dollars, all told, and brought a million
dollars in advertising. But the papers were sore about some
passes and wouldn't use the story. Too bad we can't use the
brick here. Still have it kicking about somewhere."

It was then, I think, that Jasper yawned loudly, apologized,
said good-night and lounged away across the lawn. Bettina hardly
knew he was going. She was bending forward, her chin in her
palms, listening to Mr. Ellis tell about a driver in a motor
race breaking his wrist cranking a car, and how he--Ellis--had
jumped into the car and driven it to victory. Even Aggie was
enthralled. It seemed as if, in the last hour, the great world
of stress and keen wits and endeavor and mad speed had sat down
on our door-step.

As Tish said when we were going up to bed, why shouldn't Mr.
Ellis brag? He had something to brag about.

IV

Although I felt quite sure that Tish had put up the prize money
for Mr. Ellis, I could not be certain. And Tish's attitude at
that time did not invite inquiry. She took long rides daily with
the Ellis man in his gray car, and I have reason to believe that
their objective point was always the same--the race-track.

Mr. Ellis was the busiest man in Morris Valley. In the daytime
he was superintending putting the track in condition, writing
what he called "promotion stuff," securing entries and forming
the center of excited groups at the drug store and one or other
of the two public garages. In the evenings he was generally to
be found at Bettina's feet.

Jasper did not come over any more. He sauntered past, evening
after evening, very much white-flanneled and carrying a tennis
racket. And once or twice he took out his old racing-car, and
later shot by the house with a flutter of veils and a motor coat
beside him.

Aggie was exceedingly sorry for him, and even went the length of
having the cook bake a chocolate cake and put it on the window
sill to cool. It had, however, no perceptible effect, except to
draw from Mr. Ellis, who had been round at the garage looking at
Jasper's old racer, a remark that he was exceedingly fond of
cake, and if he were urged--

That was, I believe, a week before the race. The big city papers
had taken it up, according to Mr. Ellis, and entries were
pouring in.

"That's the trouble on a small track," he said--"we can't crowd
'em. A dozen cars will be about the limit. Even with using the
cattle pens for repair pits we can't look after more than a
dozen. Did I tell you Heckert had entered his Bonor?"

"No!" we exclaimed. As far as Aggie and I were concerned, the
Bonor might have been a new sort of dog.

"Yes, and Johnson his Sampler. It's going to be some race--eh,
what!"

Jasper sauntered over that evening, possibly a late result of
the cake, after all. He greeted us affably, as if his defection
of the past week had been merely incidental, and sat down on the
steps.

"I've been thinking, Ellis," he said, "that I'd like to enter my
car."

"What!" said Ellis. "Not that--"

"My racer. I'm not much for speed, but there's a sort of feeling
in the town that the locality ought to be represented. As I'm
the only owner of a speed car--"

"Speed car!" said Ellis, and chuckled. "My dear boy, we've got
Heckert with his ninety-horse-power Bonor!"

"Never heard of him." Jasper lighted a cigarette. "Anyhow,
what's that to me? I don't like to race. I've got less speed
mania than any owner of a race car you ever met. But the honor
of the town seems to demand a sacrifice, and I'm it."

"You can try out for it anyhow," said Ellis. "I don't think
you'll make it; but, if you qualify, all right. But don't let
any other town people, from a sense of mistaken local pride,
enter a street roller or a traction engine."

Jasper colored, but kept his temper.

Aggie, however, spoke up indignantly. "Mr. McCutcheon's car was
a very fine racer when it was built."

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum," remarked Mr. Ellis, and getting up
said good-night.

Jasper sat on the steps and watched him disappear. Then he
turned to Tish.

"Miss Letitia," he said, "do you think you are wise to drive
that racer of his the way you have been doing?"

Aggie gave a little gasp and promptly sneezed, as she does when
she is excited.

"I?" said Tish.

"You!" he smiled. "Not that I don't admire your courage. I do.
But the other day, now, when you lost a tire and went into the
ditch--"

"Tish!" from Aggie.

"--you were fortunate. But when a racer turns over the results
are not pleasant."

"As a matter of fact," said Tish coldly, "it was a wheat-field,
not a ditch."

Jasper got up and threw away his cigarette. "Well, our departing
friend is not the only one who can quote Latin," he said.
"Verbum sap., Miss Tish. Good-night, everybody. Good-night,
Bettina."

Bettina's good-night was very cool. As I went up to bed that
night, I thought Jasper's chances poor indeed. As for Tish, I
endeavored to speak a few word of remonstrance to her, but she
opened her Bible and began to read the lesson for the day and I
was obliged to beat a retreat.


It was that night that Aggie and I, having decided the situation
was beyond us, wrote a letter to Charlie Sands asking him to
come up. Just as I was sealing it Bettina knocked and came in.
She closed the door behind her and stood looking at us both.

"Where is Miss Tish?" she asked.

"Reading her Bible," I said tartly. "When Tish is up to some
mischief, she generally reads an extra chapter or two as
atonement."

"Is she--is she always like this?"

"The trouble is," explained Aggie gently, "Miss Letitia is an
enthusiast. Whatever she does, she does with all her heart."

"I feel so responsible," said Bettina. "I try to look after her,
but what can I do?"

"There is only one thing to do," I assured her--"let her alone.
If she wants to fly, let her fly; if she wants to race, let her
race--and trust in Providence."

"I'm afraid Providence has its hands full!" said Bettina, and
went to bed.

For the remainder of that week nothing was talked of in Morris
Valley but the approaching race. Some of Eliza Bailey's friends
gave fancy-work parties for us, which Aggie and I attended. Tish
refused, being now openly at the race-track most of the day.
Morris Valley was much excited. Should it wear motor clothes, or
should it follow the example of the English Derby and the French
races and wear its afternoon reception dress with white kid
gloves? Or--it being warm--wouldn't lingerie clothes and
sunshades be most suitable?

Some of the gossip I retailed to Jasper, oil-streaked and
greasy, in the Baileys' garage where he was working over his
car.

"Tell 'em to wear mourning," he said pessimistically. "There's
always a fatality or two. If there wasn't a fair chance of it
nothing would make 'em sit for hours watching dusty streaks
going by."

The face was scheduled for Wednesday. On Sunday night the cars
began to come in. On Monday Tish took us all, including Bettina,
to the track. There were half a dozen tents in the oval, one of
them marked with a huge red cross.

"Hospital tent," said Tish calmly. We even, on permission from
Mr. Ellis, went round the track. At one spot Tish stopped the
car and got out.

"Nail," she said briefly. "It's been a horse-racing track for
years, and we've gathered a bushel of horse-shoe nails."

Aggie and I said nothing, but we looked at each other. Tish had
said "we." Evidently Cousin Angeline's legacy was not going into
a mortgage.

The fair-grounds were almost ready. Peanut and lunch stands had
sprung up everywhere. The oval, save by the tents and the repair
pits, was marked off into parking-spaces numbered on tall
banners. Groups of dirty men in overalls, carrying machine
wrenches, small boys with buckets of water, onlookers round the
tents and track-rollers made the place look busy and
interesting. Some of the excitement, I confess, got into my
blood. Tish, on the contrary, was calm and businesslike. We were
sorry we had sent for Charlie Sands. She no longer went out in
Mr. Ellis's car, and that evening she went back to the kitchen
and made a boiled salad dressing.

We were all deceived.

Charlie Sands came the next morning. He was on the veranda
reading a paper when we got down to breakfast. Tish's face was a
study.

"Who sent for you?" she demanded.

"Sent for me! Why, who would send for me? I'm here to write up
the race. I thought, if you haven't been out to the track, we'd
go out this morning."

"We've been out," said Tish shortly, and we went in to
breakfast. Once or twice during the meal I caught her eye on me
and on Aggie and she was short with us both. While she was
upstairs I had a word with Charlie Sands.

"Well," he said, "what is it this time? Is she racing?"

"Worse than that," I replied. "I think she's backing the thing!"

"No!"

"With her cousin Angeline's legacy." With that I told him about
our meeting Mr. Ellis and the whole story. He listened without a
word.

"So that's the situation," I finished. "He has her hypnotized,
Charlie. What's more, I shouldn't be surprised to see her enter
the race under an assumed name."

Charlie Sands looked at the racing list in the Morris Valley
Sun.

"Good cars all of them," he said. "She's not here among the
drivers, unless she's--Who are these drivers anyhow? I never
heard of any of them."

"It's a small race," I suggested. "I dare say the big men--"

"Perhaps." He put away his paper and got up. "I'll just wander
round the town for an hour or two, Aunt Lizzie," he said. "I
believe there's a nigger in this woodpile and I'm a right nifty
little nigger-chaser."

When he came back about noon, however, he looked puzzled. I drew
him aside.

"It seems on the level," he said. "It's so darned open it makes
me suspicious. But she's back of it all right. I got her bank on
the long-distance 'phone."

We spent that afternoon at the track, with the different cars
doing what I think they called "trying out heats." It appeared
that a car, to qualify, must do a certain distance in a certain
time. It grew monotonous after a while. All but one entry
qualified and Jasper just made it. The best showing was made by
the Bonor car, according to Charlie Sands.

Jasper came to our machine when it was over, smiling without any
particular good cheer.

"I've made it and that's all," he said. "I've got about as much
chance as a watermelon at a colored picnic. I'm being
slaughtered to make a Roman holiday."

"If you feel that way why do you do it?" demanded Bettina
coldly. "If you go in expecting to slaughtered--"

He was leaning on the side of the car and looked up at her with
eyes that made my heart ache, they were so wretched.

"What does it matter?" he said. "I'll probably trail in at the
last, sound in wind and limb. If I don't, what does it matter?"

He turned and left us at that, and I looked at Bettina. She had
her lips shut tight and was blinking hard. I wished that Jasper
had looked back.

V

Charlie Sands announced at dinner that he intended to spend the
night at the track.

Tish put down her fork and looked at him. "Why?" she demanded.

"I'm going to help the boy next door watch his car," he said
calmly. "Nothing against your friend Mr. Ellis, Aunt Tish, but
some enemy of true sport might take a notion in the night to
slip a dope pill into the mouth of friend Jasper's car and have
her go to sleep on the track to-morrow."

We spent a quiet evening. Mr. Ellis was busy, of course, and so
was Jasper. The boy came to the house to get Charlie Sands and,
I suppose, for a word with Bettina, for when he saw us all on
the porch he looked, as you may say, thwarted.

When Charlie Sands had gone up for his pajamas and dressing-
gown, Jasper stood looking up at us.

"Oh, Association of Chaperons!" he said, "is it permitted that
my lady walk to the gate with me--alone?"

"I am not your lady," flashed Bettina.

"You've nothing to say about that," he said recklessly. "I've
selected you; you can't help it. I haven't claimed that you have
selected me."

"Anyhow, I don't wish to go to the gate," said Bettina.

He went rather white at that, and Charlie Sands coming down at
that moment with a pair of red-and-white pajamas under his arm
and a toothbrush sticking out of his breast pocket, romance, as
Jasper said later in referring to it, "was buried in Sands."

Jasper went up to Bettina and held out his hand. "You'll wish me
luck, won't you?"

"Of course." She took his hand. "But I think you're a bit of a
coward, Jasper!"

He eyed her. "Coward!" he said. "I'm the bravest man you know.
I'm doing a thing I'm scared to death to do!"

The race was to begin at two o'clock in the afternoon. There
were small races to be run first, but the real event was due at
three.

>From early in the morning a procession of cars from out of town
poured in past Eliza Bailey's front porch, and by noon her
cretonne cushions were thick with dust. And not only automobiles
came, but hay-wagons, side-bar buggies, delivery carts--anything
and everything that could transport the crowd.

At noon Mr. Ellis telephoned Tish that the grand-stand was sold
out and that almost all the parking-places that had been
reserved were taken. Charlie Sands came home to luncheon with a
curious smile on his face.

"How are you betting, Aunt Tish?" he asked.

"Betting!"

"Yes. Has Ellis let you in on the betting?"

"I don't know what you are talking about," Tish said sourly.
"Mr. Ellis controls the betting so that it may be done in an
orderly manner. I am sure I have nothing to do with it."

"I'd like to bet a little, Charlie," Aggie put in with an eye on
Tish. "I'd put all I win on the collection plate on Sunday."

"Very well." Charlie Sands took out his notebook. "On what car
and how much?"

"Ten dollars on the Fein. It made the best time at the trial
heats."

"I wouldn't if I were you," said Charlie Sands. "Suppose we put
it on our young friend next door."

Bettina rather sniffed. "On Jasper!" she exclaimed.

"On Jasper," said Charlie Sands gravely.

Tish, who had hardly heard us, looked up from her plate.

"Bettina is betting," she snapped. "Putting it on the collection
plate doesn't help any." But with that she caught Charlie Sands'
eye and he winked at her. Tish colored. "Gambling is one thing,
clean sport is another," she said hotly.

I believe, however, that whatever Charlie Sands may have
suspected, he really knew nothing until the race had started. By
that time it was too late to prevent it, and the only way he
could think of to avoid getting Tish involved in a scandal was
to let it go on.

We went to the track in Tish's car and parked in the oval. Not
near the grandstand, however. Tish had picked out for herself a
curve at one end of the track which Mr. Ellis had said was the
worst bit on the course. "He says," said Tish, as we put the top
down and got out the vacuum bottle--oh, yes, Mr. Ellis had sent
Tish one as a present--"that if there are any smashups they'll
occur here."

Aggie is not a bloodthirsty woman ordinarily, but her face quite
lit up.

"Not really!" she said.

"They'll probably turn turtle," said Tish. "There is never a
race without a fatality or two. No racer can get any life
insurance. Mr. Ellis says four men were killed at the last race
he promoted."

"Then I think Mr. Ellis is a murderer," Bettina cried. We all
looked at her. She was limp and white and was leaning back among
the cushions with her eyes shut. "Why didn't you tell Jasper
about this curve?" she demanded of Tish.

But at that moment a pistol shot rang out and the races were on.

The Fein won two of the three small races. Jasper was entered
only for the big race. In the interval before the race was on,
Jasper went round the track slowly, looking for Bettina. When he
saw us he waved, but did not stop. He was number thirteen.

I shall not describe the race. After the first round or two,
what with dust in my eyes and my neck aching from turning my
head so rapidly, I just sat back and let them spin in front of
me.

It was after a dozen laps or so, with number thirteen doing as
well as any of them, that Tish was arrested.

Charlie Sands came up beside the car with a gentleman named
Atkins, who turned out to be a county detective. Charlie Sands
was looking stern and severe, but the detective was rather
apologetic.

"This is Miss Carberry," said Charlie Sands. "Aunt Tish, this
gentleman wishes to speak to you."

"Come around after the race," Tish observed calmly.

"Miss Carberry," said the detective gently, "I believe you are
back of this race, aren't you?"

"What if I am?" demanded Tish.

Charlie Sands put a hand on the detective's arm. "It's like
this, Aunt Tish," he said; "you are accused of practicing a
short- change game, that's all. This race is sewed up. You
employ those racing-cars with drivers at an average of fifty
dollars a week. They are hardly worth it, Aunt Tish. I could
have got you a better string for twenty-five."

Tish opened her mouth and shut it again without speaking.

"You also control the betting privileges. As you own all the
racers you have probably known for a couple of weeks who will
win the race. Having made the Fein favorite, you can bet on a
Brand or a Bonor, or whatever one you chance to like, and win
out. Only I take it rather hard of you, Aunt Tish, not to have
let the family in. I'm hard up as the dickens."

"Charlie Sands!" said Tish impressively. "If you are joking--"

"Joking! Did you ever know a county detective to arrest a
prominent woman at a race-track as a little jest between
friends? There's no joke, Aunt Tish. You've financed a phony
race. The permit is taken in your name--L. L. Carberry. Whatever
car wins, you and Ellis take the prize money, half the gate
receipts, and what you have made out of the betting--"

Tish rose in the machine and held out both her hands to Mr.
Atkins.

"Officer, perform your duty," she said solemnly. "Ignorance is
no defense and I know it. Where are the handcuffs?"

"We'll not bother about them, Miss Carberry", he said. "If you
like I'll get into the car and you can tell me all about it
while we watch the race. Which car is to win?"

"I may have been a fool, Mr. County Detective," she said coldly;
"but I'm not a knave. I have not bet a dollar on the race."

We were very silent for a time. The detective seemed to enjoy
the race very much and ate peanuts out of his pocket. He even
bought a red-and-black pennant, with "Morris Valley Races" on
it, and fastened it to the car. Charlie Sands, however, sat with
his arms folded, stiff and severe.

Once Tish bent forward and touched his arm.

"You--you don't think it will get in the papers, do you?" she
quavered.

Charlie Sands looked at her with gloom. "I shall have to send it
myself, Aunt Tish," he said; "it is my duty to my paper. Even my
family pride, hurt to the quick and quivering as it is, must not
interfere with my duty."

It was Bettina who suggested a way out--Bettina, who had sat
back as pale as Tish and heard that her Mr. Ellis was, as
Charlie Sands said later, as crooked as a pretzel.

"But Jasper was not--not subsidized," she said. "if he wins,
it's all right, isn't it?"

The county detective turned to her.

"Jasper?" he said.

"A young man who lives here." Bettina colored.

"He is--not to be suspected?"

"Certainly not," said Bettina haughtily; "he is above suspicion.
Besides, he--he and Mr. Ellis are not friends."

Well, the county detective was no fool. He saw the situation
that minute, and smiled when he offered Bettina a peanut. "Of
course," he said cheerfully, "if the race is won by a Morris
Valley man, and not by one of the Ellis cars, I don't suppose
the district attorney would care to do anything about it. In
fact," he said, smiling at Bettina, "I don't know that I'd put
it up to the district attorney at all. A warning to Ellis would
get him out of the State."

It was just at that moment that car number thirteen, coming
round the curve, skidded into the field, threw out both Jasper
McCutcheon and his mechanician, and after standing on two wheels
for an appreciable moment of time, righted herself, panting,
with her nose against a post.

Jasper sat up almost immediately and caught at his shoulder. The
mechanician was stunned. He got up, took a step or two and fell
down, weak with fright.

I do not recall very distinctly what happened next. We got out
of the machine, I remember, and Bettina was cutting off Jasper's
sweater with Charlie Sands' penknife, and crying as she did it.
And Charlie Sands was trying to prevent Jasper from getting back
into his car, while Jasper was protesting that he could win in
two or more laps and that he could drive with one hand--he'd
only broken his arm.

The crowd had gathered round us, thick. Suddenly they drew back,
and in a sort of haze I saw Tish in Jasper's car, with Aggie, as
white as death, holding to Tish's sleeve and begging her not to
get in. The next moment Tish let in the clutch of the racer and
Aggie took a sort of flying leap and landed beside her in the
mechanician's seat.

Charlie Sands saw it when I did, but we were both too late. Tish
was crossing the ditch into the track again, and the moment she
struck level ground she put up the gasoline.

It was just then that Aggie fell out, landing, as I have said
before, in a pile of sand. Tish said afterward that she never
missed her. She had just discovered that this was not Jasper's
old car, which she knew something about, but a new racer with
the old hood and seat put on in order to fool Mr. Ellis. She
didn't know a thing about it.

Well, you know the rest--how Tish, trying to find how the gears
worked, side-swiped the Bonor car and threw it off the field and
out of the race; how, with the grandstand going crazy, she
skidded off the track into the field, turned completely round
twice, and found herself on the track again facing the way she
wanted to go; how, at the last lap, she threw a tire and,
without cutting down her speed, bumped home the winner, with the
end of her tongue nearly bitten off and her spine fairly driven
up into her skull.

All this is well known now, as is also the fact that Mr. Ellis
disappeared from the judges' stand after a word or two with Mr.
Atkins, and was never seen at Morris Valley again.

Tish came out of the race ahead by half the gate money--six
thousand dollars--by a thousand dollars from concessions, and a
lame back that she kept all winter. Even deducting the twenty-
five hundred she had put up, she was forty-five hundred dollars
ahead, not counting the prize money. Charlie Sand brought the
money from the track that night, after having paid off Mr.
Ellis's racing- string and given Mr. Atkins a small present. He
took over the prize money to Jasper and came back with it,
Jasper maintaining that it belonged to Tish, and that he had
only raced for the honor of Morris Valley. For some tine the
money went begging, but it settled itself naturally enough, Tish
giving it to Jasper in the event of--but that came later.

On the following evening--Bettina, in the pursuit of learning to
cook, having baked a chocolate cake--we saw Jasper, with his arm
in a sling, crossing the side lawn.

Jasper stopped at the foot of the steps. "I see a chocolate cake
cooling on the kitchen porch," he said. "Did you order it, Miss
Lizzie?"

I shook my head.

"Miss Tish? Miss Aggie?"

"I ordered it," said Bettina defiantly--"or rather I baked it."

"And you did that, knowing what it entailed? He was coming up
the steps slowly and with care.

"What does it entail?" demanded Bettina.

"Me."

"Oh, that!" said Bettina. "I knew that."

Jasper threw his head back and laughed. Then:--

"Will the Associated Chaperons," he said, "turn their backs?"

"Not at all," I began stiffly. "If I--"

"She baked it herself!" said Jasper exultantly. "One--two. When
I say three I shall kiss Bettina."

And I have every reason to believe he carried out his threat.


Eliza Bailey forwarded me this letter from London where Bettina
had sent it to her:--

 Dearest Mother: I hope you are coming home soon. I
 really think you should. Aunt Lizzie is here and she
 brought two friends, and, mother, I feel so responsible
 for them! Aunt Lizzie is sane enough, if somewhat
 cranky; but Miss Tish is almost more than I can manage--
 I never know what she is going to do next--and I am worn
 out with chaperoning her. And Miss Aggie, although she
 is very sweet, is always smoking cubeb cigarettes for
 hay fever, and it looks terrible! The neighbors do not
 know they are cubeb, and, anyhow, that's a habit,
 mother. And yesterday Miss Tish was arrested, and ran a
 motor race and won it, and to-day she is knitting a
 stocking and reciting the Twenty-third Psalm. Please,
 mother, I think you should come home.

 Lovingly,   BETTINA.

 P.S. I think I shall marry Jasper after all. He says he
 likes the Presbyterian service.

I looked up from reading Eliza's letter. Tish was knitting
quietly and planning to give the money back to the town in the
shape of a library, and Aggie was holding a cubeb cigarette to
her nose. Down on the tennis court Jasper and Bettina were idly
batting a ball round.

"I'm glad the Ellis man did not get her," said Aggie. And then,
after a sneeze, "How Jasper reminds me of Mr. Wiggins."

The library did not get the money after all. Tish sent it, as a
wedding present, to Bettina.




Like A Wolf On The Fold

I

Aggie has always been in the habit of observing the anniversary
of Mr. Wiggins's death. Aggie has the anniversary habit, anyhow,
and her life is a succession: of small feast-days, on which she
wears mental crape or wedding garments--depending on the
occasion. Tish and I always remember these occasions
appropriately, sending flowers on the anniversaries of the
passing away of Aggie's parents; grandparents; a niece who died
in birth; her cousin, Sarah Webb, who married a missionary and
was swallowed whole by a large snake,--except her shoes, which
the reptile refused and of which Aggie possesses the right,
given her by the stricken husband; and, of course, Mr. Wiggins.

For Mr. Wiggins Tish and I generally send the same things each
year--Tish a wreath of autumn foliage and I a sheaf of wheat
tied with a lavender ribbon. The program seldom varies. We drive
to the cemetery in the afternoon and Aggie places the sheaf and
the wreath on Mr. Wiggins's last resting-place, after first
removing the lavender ribbon, of which she makes cap bows
through the year and an occasional pin-cushion or fancy-work
bag; then home to chicken and waffles, which had been Mr.
Wiggins's favorite meal. In the evening Charlie Sands generally
comes in and we play a rubber or two of bridge.

On the thirtieth anniversary of Mr. Wiggins's falling off a roof
and breaking his neck, Tish was late in arriving, and I found
Aggie sitting alone, dressed in black, with a tissue-paper
bundle in her lap. I put my sheaf on the table and untied my
bonnet-strings.

"Where's Tish?" I asked.

"Not here yet."

Something in Aggie's tone made me look at her. She was eyeing
the bundle in her lap.

"I got a paler shade of ribbon this time," I said, seeing she
made no comment on the sheaf. "It's a better color for me if
you're going to make my Christmas present out of it this year
again. Where's Tish's wreath?"

"Here." Aggie pointed dispiritedly to the bundle in her lap and
went on rocking.

"That! That's no wreath."

In reply Aggie lifted the tissue paper and shook out, with hands
that trembled with indignation, a lace-and-linen centerpiece.
She held it up before me and we eyed each other over it. Both of
us understood.

"Tish is changed, Lizzie," Aggie said hollowly. "Ask her for
bread these days and she gives you a Cluny-lace fandangle. On
mother's anniversary she sent me a set of doilies; and when
Charlie Sands was in the hospital with appendicitis she took him
a pair of pillow shams. It's that Syrian!"

Both of us knew. We had seen Tish's apartment change from a
sedate and spinsterly retreat to a riot of lace covers on the
mantel, on the backs of chairs, on the stands, on the pillows--
everywhere. We had watched her Marseilles bedspreads give way to
hem-stitched covers, with bolsters to match. We had seen Tish go
through a cold winter clad in a succession of sleazy silk
kimonos instead of her flannel dressing-gown; terrible kimonos--
green and yellow and red and pink, that looked like fruit salads
and were just as heating.

"It's that dratted Syrian!" cried Aggie--and at that Tish came
in. She stood inside the door and eyed us.

"What about him?" she demanded. "If I choose to take a poor
starving Christian youth and assist him by buying from him what
I need--what I need!--that's my affair, isn't it? Tufik was
starving and I took him in."

"He took you in, all right!" Aggie sniffed. "A great, mustached,
dirty, palavering foreigner, who's probably got a harem at home
and no respect for women!"

Tish glanced at my sheaf and at the centerpiece. She was dressed
as she always dressed on Mr. Wiggins's day--in black; but she
had a new lace collar with a jabot, and we knew where she had
got it. She saw our eyes on it and she had the grace to flush.

"Once for all," she snapped, "I intend to look after this
unfortunate Syrian! If my friends object, I shall be deeply
sorry; but, so far as I care, they may object until they are
purple in the face and their tongues hang out. I've been sending
my money to foreign missions long enough; I'm doing my
missionary work at home now."

"He'll marry you!" This from Aggie.

Tish ignored her. "His father is an honored citizen of Beirut,
of the nobility. The family is impoverished, being Christian,
and grossly imposed on by the Turks. Tufik speaks French and
English as well as Mohammedan. They offered him a high
government position if he would desert the Christian faith; but
he refused firmly. He came to this country for religious
freedom; at any moment they may come after him and take him
back."

A glint of hope came to me. I made a mental note to write to the
mayor, or whatever they call him over there, and tell him where
he could locate his wandering boy.

"He loves the God of America," said Tish.

"Money!" Aggie jeered.

"And he is so pathetic, so grateful! I told Hannah at noon
today--that's what delayed me--to give him his lunch. He was
starving; I thought we'd never fill him. And when it was over,
he stooped in the sweetest way, while she was gathering up the
empty dishes, and kissed her hand. It was touching!"

"Very!" I said dryly. "What did Hannah do?"

"She's a fool! She broke a cup on his head."

Mr. Wiggins's anniversary was not a success. Part of this was
due to Tish, who talked of Tufik steadily--of his youth; of the
wonderful bargains she secured from him; of his belief that this
was the land of opportunity--Aggie sniffed; of his familiarity
with the Bible and Biblical places; of the  search the Turks
were making for him. The atmosphere was not cleared by Aggie's
taking the Cluny-lace centerpiece to the cemetery and placing
it, with my sheaf, on Mr. Wiggins's grave.

As we got into Tish's machine to go back, Aggie was undeniably
peevish. She caught cold, too, and was sneezing--as she always
does when she is irritated or excited.

"Where to?" asked Tish from the driving-seat, looking straight
ahead and pulling on her gloves. From where we sat we could
still see the dot of white on the grass that was the
centerpiece.

"Back to the house," Aggie snapped, "to have some chicken and
waffles and Tufik for dinner!"

Tish drove home in cold silence. As well as we could tell from
her back, she was not so much indignant as she was determined.
Thus we do not believe that she willfully drove over every rut
and thank-you-ma'am on the road, scattering us generously over
the tonneau, and finally, when Aggie, who was the lighter, was
tossed against the top and sprained her neck, eliciting a
protest from us. She replied in an abstracted tone, which showed
where her mind was.

"It would be rougher on a camel," she said absently. "Tufik was
telling me the other day--"

Aggie had got her head straight by that time and was holding it
with both hands to avoid jarring. She looked goaded and
desperate; and, as she said afterward, the thing slipped out
before she knew she was more than thinking it.

"Oh, damn Tufik!" she said.

Fortunately at that moment we blew out a tire and apparently
Tish did not hear her. While I was jacking up the car and Tish
was getting the key of the toolbox out of her stocking, Aggie
sat sullenly in her place and watched us.

"I suppose," she gibed, "a camel never blows out a tire!"

"It might," Tish said grimly, "if it heard an oath from the lips
of a middle-aged Sunday-school teacher!"

We ate Mr. Wiggins's anniversary dinner without any great
hilarity. Aggie's neck was very stiff and she had turned in the
collar of her dress and wrapped flannels wrung out of lamp oil
round it. When she wished to address either Tish or myself she
held her head rigid and turned her whole body in her chair; and
when she felt a sneeze coming on she clutched wildly at her head
with both hands as if she expected it to fly off.

Tufik was not mentioned, though twice Tish got as far as Tu- and
then thought better of it; but her mind was on him and we knew
it. She worked the conversation round to Bible history and
triumphantly demanded whether we knew that Sodom and Gomorrah
are towns today, and that a street-car line is contemplated to
them from some place or other--it developed later that she meant
Tyre and Sidon. Once she suggested that Aggie's sideboard needed
new linens, but after a look at Aggie's rigid head she let it go
at that.

No one was sorry when, with dinner almost over, and Aggie
lifting her ice-cream spoon straight up in front of her and
opening her mouth with a sort of lockjaw movement, the bell
rang. We thought it was Charlie Sands. It was not. Aggie faced
the doorway and I saw her eyes widen. Tish and I turned.

A boy stood in the doorway--a shrinking, timid, brown-eyed young
Oriental, very dark of skin, very white of teeth, very black of
hair--a slim youth of eighteen, possibly twenty, in a shabby
blue suit, broken shoes, and a celluloid collar. Twisting
between nervous brown fingers, not as clean as they might have
been, was a tissue-paper package.

"My friends!" he said, and smiled.

Tish is an extraordinary woman. She did not say a word. She sat
still and let the smile get in its work. Its first effect was on
Aggie's neck, which she forgot. Tufik's timid eyes rested for a
moment on Tish and brightened. Then like a benediction they
turned to mine, and came to a stop on Aggie. He took a step
farther into the room.

"My friend's friend are my friend," he said. "America is my
friend--this so great God's country!"

Aggie put down her ice-cream spoon and closed her mouth, which
had been open.

"Come in, Tufik," said Tish; "and I am sure Miss Pilkington
would like you to sit down."

Tufik still stood with his eyes fixed on Aggie, twisting his
package.

"My friend has said," he observed--he was quite calm and
divinely trustful--"My friend has said that this is for Miss
Pilk a sad day. My friend is my mother; I have but her and God.
Unless--but perhaps I have two new friend also--no?"

"Of course we are your friends," said Aggie, feeling for the
table-bell with her foot. "We are--aren't we, Lizzie?"

Tufik turned and looked at me wistfully. It came over me then
what an awful thing it must be to be so far from home and
knowing nobody, and having to wear trousers and celluloid
collars instead of robes and turbans, and eat potatoes and fried
things instead of olives and figs and dates, and to be in danger
of being taken back and made into a Mohammedan and having to
keep a harem.

"Certainly," I assented. "If you are good we will be your
friends."

He flashed a boyish smile at me.

"I am good," he said calmly--"as the angels I am good. I have
here a letter from a priest. I give it to you. Read!"

He got a very dirty envelope from his pocket and brought it
round the table to me. "See!" he said. "The priest says: 'Of all
my children Tufik lies next my heart.'"

He held the letter out to me; but it looked as if it had been
copied from an Egyptian monument and was about as legible as an
outbreak of measles.

"This," he said gently, pointing, "is the priest's blessing. I
carry it ever. It brings me friends." He put the paper away and
drew a long breath; then surveyed us all with shining eyes. "It
has brought me you."

We were rather overwhelmed. Aggie's maid having responded to the
bell, Aggie ordered ice cream for Tufik and a chair drawn to the
table; but the char Tufik refused with a little, smiling bow.

"It is not right that I sit," he said. "I stand in the presence
of my three mothers. But first--I forget--my gift! For the
sadness, Miss Pilk!"

He held out the tissue- paper package and Aggie opened it.
Tufik's gift proved to be a small linen doily, with a Cluny-lace
border!

We were gone from that moment--I know it now, looking back.
Gone! We were lost the moment Tufik stood in the doorway,
smiling and bowing. Tish saw us going; and with the calmness of
the lost sat there nibbling cake and watching us through her
spectacles--and raised not a hand.

Aggie looked at the doily and Tufik looked at her.

"That's--that's really very nice of you," said Aggie. "I thank
you."

Tufik came over and stood beside her.

"I give with my heart," he said shyly. "I have had nobody--in
all so large this country--nobody! And now--I have you!" Aggie
saw-- but too late. He bent over and touched his lips to her
hands. "The Bible says: 'To him that overcometh I will give the
morning star!' I have overcometh--ah, so much!--the sea; the
cold, wet England; the Ellis Island; the hunger; the aching of
one who has no love, no money! And now--I have the morning
star!"

He looked at us all three at once--Charlie Sands said this was
impossible, until he met Tufik. Aggie was fairly palpitant and
Tish was smug, positively smug. As for me, I roused with a start
to find myself sugaring my ice cream.

Charlie Sands was delayed that night. He came in about nine
o'clock and found Tufik telling us about his home and his people
and the shepherds on the hills about Damascus and the olive
trees in sunlight. We half-expected Tufik to adopt Charlie Sands
as a father; but he contented himself with a low Oriental
salute, and shortly after he bowed himself away.

Charlie Sands stood looking after him and smiling to himself.
"Pretty smooth boy, that!" he said.

"Smooth nothing!" Tish snapped, getting the bridge score. "He's
a sad-hearted and lonely boy; and we are going to do the kindest
thing--we are going to help him to help himself."

"Oh, he'll help himself all right!" observed Charlie Sands.
"But, since his people are Christians, I wish you'd tell me how
he knows so much about the inside of a harem!"

Seeing that comment annoyed us, he ceased, and we fell to our
bridge game; but more than once his eye fell on Aggie's doily,
and he muttered something about the Assyrian coming down like a
wolf on the fold.

II

The problem of Tufik's future was a pressing one. Tish called a
meeting of the three of us next morning, and we met at her
house. We found her reading about Syria in the encyclopedia,
while spread round her on chairs and tables were numbers of silk
kimonos, rolls of crocheted lace, shirt-waist patterns, and
embroidered linens.

Hannah let us in. She looked surly and had a bandage round her
head, a sure sign of trouble--Hannah always referring a pain in
her temper to her ear or her head or her teeth. She clutched my
arm in the hall and held me back.

"I'm going to poison him!" she said. "Miss Lizzie, that little
snake goes or I go!"

"I'm ashamed of you, Hannah!" I replied sternly. "If out of the
breadth of her charity Miss Tish wishes to assist a fellow man--"

Hannah reeled back and freed my arm.

"My God!" she whispered. "You too!"

I am very fond of Hannah, who has lived with Tish for many
years; but I had small patience with her that morning.

"I cannot see how it concerns you, anyhow, Hannah," I observed
severely.

Hannah put her apron to her eyes and sniffled into it.

"Oh, you can't, can't you!" she wailed. "Don't I give him half
his meals, with him soft-soapin' Miss Tish till she can't see
for suds? Ain't I fallin' over him mornin', noon, and night, and
the postman telling all over the block he's my steady company--
that snip that's not eighteen yet? And don't I do the washin'?
And will you look round the place and count the things I've got
to do up every week? And don't he talk to me in that lingo of
his, so I don't know whether he's askin' for a cup of coffee or
insultin' me?"

I patted Hannah on the arm. After all, none of the exaltation of
a good deed upheld Hannah as it sustained us.

"We are going to help him help himself, Hannah," I said kindly.
"He hasn't found himself. Be gentle with him. Remember he comes
from the land of the Bible."

"Humph!" said Hannah, who reads the newspapers. "So does the
plague!"

The problem we had set ourselves we worked out that morning. As
Tish said, the boy ought to have light work, for the Syrians are
not a laboring people.

"Their occupation is--er--mainly pastoral," she said, with the
authority of the encyclopedia. "Grazing their herds and
gathering figs and olives. If we knew some one who needed a
shepherd--"

Aggie opposed the shepherd idea, however. As she said, and with
reason, the climate is too rigorous. "It's all well enough in
Syria," she said, "where they have no cold weather; but he'd
take his death of pneumonia here."

We put the shepherd idea reluctantly aside. My own notion of
finding a camel for him to look after was negatived by Tish at
once, and properly enough I realized.

"The only camels are in circuses," she said, "and our duty to
the boy is moral as well as physical. Circuses are dens of
immorality. Of course the Syrians are merchants, and we might
get him work in a store. But then again--what chance has he of
rising? Once a clerk, always a clerk." She looked round at the
chairs and tables, littered with the contents of Tufik's
pasteboard suitcase, which lay empty at her feet. "And there is
nothing to canvassing from door to door. Look at these exquisite
things!--and he cannot sell them. Nobody buys. He says he never
gets inside a house door. If you had seen his face when I bought
a kimono from him!"

At eleven o'clock, having found nothing in the "Help Wanted"
column to fit Tufik's case, Tish called up Charlie Sands and
offered Tufik as a reporter, pro- vided he was given no
nightwork. But Charlie Sands said it was impossible--that the
editors and owners of the paper were always putting on their
sons and relatives, and that when there was a vacancy the big
advertisers got it. Tish insisted--she suggested that Tufik
could run an Arabian column, like the German one, and bring in a
lot of new subscribers. But Charlie Sands stood firm.

At noon Tufik came. We heard a skirmish at the door and Hannah
talking between her teeth.

"She's out," she said.

"Well, I think she is not out," in Tufik's soft tones.

"You'll not get in."

"Ah, but my toes are in. See, my foot wishes to enter!" Then
something soft, coaxing, infinitely wistful, in Arabian followed
by a slap. The next moment Hannah, in tears, rushed back to the
kitchen. There was no sound from the hallway. No smiling Tufik
presented himself in the doorway.

Tish rose in the majesty of wrath. "I could strangle that
woman!" she said, and we followed her into the hall.

Tufik was standing inside the door with his arms folded, staring
ahead. He took no notice of us.

"Tufik!" Aggie cried, running to him. "Did she-- did she dare--
Tish, look at his cheek!"

"She is a bad woman!" Tufik said somberly. "I make my little
prayer to see Miss Tish, my mother, and she--I kill her!"

We had a hard time apologizing to him for Hanna. Tish got a
basin of cold water so he might bathe his face; and Aggie
brought a tablespoonful of blackberry cordial, which is
soothing. When the poor boy was calmer we met in Tish's bedroom
and Tish was quite firm on one point--Hannah must leave!

Now, this I must say in my own defense--I was sorry for Tufik;
and it is quite true I bought him a suit and winter flannels and
a pair of yellow shoes--he asked for yellow. He said he was
homesick for a bit of sunshine, and our so somber garb made him
heart-sad. But I would never have dismissed a cook like Hannah
for him.

"I shall have to let her go," Tish said. "He is Oriental and
passionate. He has said he will kill her--and he'll do it. They
hold life very lightly."

"Humph!" I said. "Very well, Tish, that holding life lightly
isn't a Christian trait. It's Mohammedan--every Mohammedan wants
to die and go to his heaven, which is a sort of sublimated
harem. The boy's probably a Christian by training, but he's a
Mohammedan by blood."

Aggie thought my remark immoral and said so. And just then
Hannah solved her own problem by stalking into the room with her
things on and a suitcase in her hand.

"I'm leaving, Miss Tish!" she said with her eye-rims red. "God
knows I never expected to be put out of this place by a dirty
dago! You'll find your woolen stockings on the stretchers, and
you've got an appointment with the dentist tomorrow morning at
ten. And when that little blackguard has sucked you dry, and you
want him killed to get rid of him, you'll find me at my
sister's."

She picked up her suitcase and Tish flung open the door. "You're
a hard-hearted woman, Hannah Mackintyre!" Tish snapped. "Your
sister can't keep you. You'll have to work."

Hannah turned in the doorway and sneered at the three of us.

"Oh, no!" she said. "I'm going to hunt up three soft-headed old
maids and learn to kiss their hands and tell 'em I have nobody
but them and God!"

She slammed out at that, leaving us in a state of natural
irritation. But our rage soon faded. Tufik was not in the
parlor; and Tish, tiptoeing back, reported that he was in the
kitchen and was mixing up something in a bowl.

"He's a dear boy!" she said. "He feels responsible for Hannah's
leaving and he's getting luncheon!  Hannah is a wicked and
uncharitable woman!"

"Man's inhumanity to man, Makes countless thousands mourn!"
quoted Aggie softly. From the kitchen came the rhythmic beating
of a wooden spoon against the side of a bowl; a melancholy
chant--quite archaic, as Tish said--kept time with the spoon, and
later a smell of baking flour and the clatter of dishes told us
that our meal was progressing.

"'The Syrians,'" read Tish out of her book, "'are a peaceful and
pastoral people. They have not changed materially in nineteen
centuries, and the traveler in their country finds still the
life of Biblical times.' Something's burning!"

Shortly after, Tufik, beaming with happiness and Hannah clearly
forgotten, summoned us to the dining-room. Tufik was not a cook.
We realized that at once. He had made coffee in the Oriental
way--strong enough to float an egg, very sweet and full of
grounds; and after a bite of the cakes he had made, Tish
remembered the dentist the next day and refused solid food on
account of a bad tooth. The cakes were made of lard and flour,
without any baking-powder or flavoring, and the tops were
sprinkled thick with granulated sugar. Little circles of grease
melted out of them on to the plate, and Tufik, wide-eyed with
triumph, sweetly wistful over Tish's tooth, humble and joyous in
one minute, stood by the cake plate and fed them to us!

I caught Aggie's agonized eye, but there was nothing else to do.
Were we not his friends? And had he not made this delicacy for
us? On her third cake, however, Aggie luckily turned blue round
the mouth and had to go and lie down. This broke up the meal and
probably saved my life, though my stomach has never been the
same since. Tish says the cakes are probably all right in the
Orient, where it is hot and the grease does not get a chance to
solidify. She thinks that Tufik is probably a good cook in his
own country. But Aggie says that a good many things in the Bible
that she never understood are made plain to her if that is what
they ate in Biblical times--some of the things they saw in
visions, and all that. She dropped asleep on Tish's lounge and
distinctly saw Tufik murdering Hannah by forcing one of his
cakes down her throat.

The next month was one of real effort. We had planned to go to
Panama, and had our passage engaged; but when we broke the news
to Tufik he turned quite pale.

"You go--away?" he said wistfully.

"Only for a month," Tish hastened to apologize. "You see, we--we
are all very tired, and the Panama Canal--"

"Canal? I know not a canal."

"It is for ships--"

"You go there in a ship?"

"Yes. A canal is a--"

"You go far--in a ship--and I--I stay here?"

"Only for a month," Aggie broke in. "We will leave you enough
money to live on; and perhaps when we come back you will have
found something to do--"

"For a month," he said brokenly. "I have no friends, no Miss
Tish, no Miss Liz, no Miss Pilk. I die!"

He got up and walked to the window. It was Aggie who realized
the awful truth. The poor lonely boy was weeping--and Charlie
Sands may say what he likes! He was really crying--when he
turned, there were large tears on his cheeks. What made it worse
was that he was trying to smile.

"I wish you much happiness on the canal," he said. "I am wicked;
but my sad heart--it ache that my friends leave me. I am sad! If
only my seester--"

That was the first we had known of Tufik's sister, back in
Beirut, wearing a veil over her face and making lace for the
bazaars. We were to know move.

Well, between getting ready to go to Panama and trying to find
something Tufik could do, we were very busy for the next month.
Tufik grew reconciled to our going, but he was never cheerful
about it; and finding that it pained him we never spoke about it
in his presence.

He was with us a great deal. In the morning he would go to Tish,
who would give him a list of her friends to see. Then Tish would
telephone and make appointments for him, and he would start off
hopefully, with his pasteboard suitcase. But he never sold
anything--except a shirt-waist pattern to Mrs. Ostermaier, the
minister's wife. We took day about giving him his carfare, but
this was pauperizing and we knew it. Besides, he was very
sensitive and insisted on putting down everything we gave him in
a book, to be repaid later when he had made a success.

The allowance idea was mine and it worked well. We figured that,
allowing for his washing,--which was not much, as he seemed to
prefer the celluloid collar,--he could live in a sort of way on
nine dollars a week. We subscribed equally to this; and to save
his pride we mailed it to him weekly by check.

His failure to sell his things hurt him to the soul. More than
once we caught tears in his eyes. And he was not well--he could
not walk any distance at all and he coughed. At last Tish got
Charlie Sands to take him to a lung specialist, a stupid person,
who said it was a cigarette cough. This was absurd, as Tufik did
not smoke.

At last the time came for the Panama trip. Tish called me up the
day she packed and asked me to come over.

"I can't. I'm busy, Tish," I said.

She was quite disagreeable. "This is your burden as well as
mine," she snapped. "Come over and talk to that wretched boy
while I pack my trunk. He stands and watches everything I put in,
and I haven't been able to pack a lot of things I need."

I went over that afternoon and found Tufik huddled on the top
step of the stairs outside Tish's apartment, with his head in his
hands.

"She has put me out!" he said, looking up at me with tragic eyes.
"My mother has put me out! She does not love Tufik! No one loves
Tufik! I am no good. I am a dirty dago!"

I was really shocked. I rang the bell and Tish let me in. She had
had no maid since Hannah's departure and was taking her meals
out. She saw Tufik and stiffened.

"I thought I sent you away!" she said, glaring at him.

He looked at her pitifully.

"Where must I--go?" he asked, and coughed.

Tish sighed and flung the door wide open. "Bring him in," she
said with resignation, "but for Heaven's sake lock him in a
closet until I get my underwear packed. And if he weeps--slap
him."

The poor boy was very repentant, and seeing that his cough
worried us he fought it back bravely. I mixed the white of an
egg with lemon juice and sugar, and gave it to him. He was
pathetically grateful and kissed my hand. At five o'clock we
sent him away firmly, having given him thirty-six dollars. He
presented each of us with a roll of crocheted lace to take with
us and turned in the doorway to wave a wistful final good-bye.

We met at Tish's that night so that we might all go together to
the train. Charlie Sands had agreed to see us off and to keep an
eye on Tufik during our absence. Aggie was in a palpitating
travel ecstasy, clutching a patent seasick remedy and a map of
the Canal Zone; Tish was seeing that the janitor shut off the
gas and water in the apartment; and Charlie Sands was jumping on
top of a steamer trunk to close it. The taxicab was at the door
and we had just time to make the night train. The steamer sailed
early the next morning.

"All ready!" cried Charlie Sands, getting the lid down finally.
"All off for the Big Ditch!"

We all heard a noise in the hall--a sort of scuffling, with an
occasional groan. Tish rushed over and threw open the door. On
the top step, huddled and shivering, with streams of water
running off his hair down over his celluloid collar, pouring out
of his sleeves and cascading down the stairs from his trousers
legs, was Tufik. The policeman on the beat was prodding at him
with his foot, trying to make him get up. When he saw us the
officer touched his hat.

"Evening, Miss Tish," he said, grinning. "This here boy of yours
has been committing suicide. Just fished him out of the lake in
the park!"

"Get up!" snapped Charlie Sands. "You infernal young idiot! Get
up and stop sniveling!"

He stooped and took the poor boy by the collar. His brutality
roused us all out of our stupor. Tish and I rushed forward and
commanded him to stand back; and Aggie, with more presence of
mind than we had given her credit for, brought a glass
containing a tablespoonful of blackberry cordial into which she
had pored ten drops of seasickness remedy. Tufik was white and
groaning, but he revived enough to sit up and stare at us with
his sad brown eyes.

"I wish to die!" he said brokenly. "Why you do not let me die?
My friends go on the canal! I am alone! My heart is empty!"

Tish wished to roll him on a barrel, but we had no barrel; so,
with Charlie Sands standing by with his watch in his hand,
refusing to assist and making unkind remarks, we got him to
Tish's room and laid out on her mackintosh on the bed. He did
not want to live. We could hardly force him to drink the hot
coffee Tish made for him. He kept muttering things about his
loneliness and being only a dirty dago; and then he turned
bitter and said hard things about this great America, where he
could find no work and must be a burden on his three mothers,
and could not bring his dear sister to be company for him. Aggie
quite broke down and had to lie down on the sofa in the parlor
and have a cracker and a cup of tea.

When Tish and I had succeeded in making Tufik promise to live,
and had given him one of his own silk kimonos to put on until
his clothing could be dried--Charlie Sands having disagreeably
refused to lend his overcoat--and when we had given the officer
five dollars not to arrest the boy for attempting suicide, we
met in the parlor to talk things over.

Charlie Sands was sitting by the lamp in his overcoat. He had
put our railway and steamer tickets on the table, and was
holding his cigarette so that Aggie could inhale the fumes, she
having hay fever and her cubebs being on their way to Panama.

"I suppose you know," he said nastily, "that your train has gone
and that you cannot get the boat tomorrow?"

Tish was in an exalted mood--and she took off her things and
flung them on a chair.

"What is Panama," she demanded, "to saving a life? Charlie, we
must plan something for this boy. If you will take off your
overcoat--"

"And see you put it on that little parasite? Not if I melt! Do
you know how deep the lake is? Three feet!"

"One can drown in three feet of water," said Aggie sadly, "if
one is very tired of life. People drown themselves in bathtubs."

Tish's furious retort to this was lost, Tufik choosing that
moment to appear in the doorway. He wore a purple-and-gold
kimono that had given Tish bronchitis early in the winter, and
he had twisted a bath towel round the waist. He looked very
young, very sad, very Oriental. He ignored Charlie Sands, but
made at once for Tish and dropped on one knee beside her.

"Miss Tish!" he begged. "Forgive, Miss Tish! Tufik is wicked. He
has the bad heart. He has spoil the going on the canal. No?"

"Get up!" said Tish. "Don't be a silly child. Go and take your
shoes out of the oven. We are not going to Panama. When you are
better, I am going to give you a good scolding."

Charlie Sands put the cigarette on a book under Aggie's nose and
stood up.

"I guess I'll go," he said. "My nerves are not what they used to
be and my disposition feels the change."

Tufik had risen and the two looked at each other. I could not
quite make out Tufik's expression; had I not known his
gentleness I would have thought his expression a mixture of
triumph and disdain.

"'The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, and his
cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold!'" said Charlie Sands,
and went out, slamming the door.


III

The next day was rainy and cold. Aggie sneezed all day and Tish
had neuralgia. Being unable to go out for anything to eat and
the exaltation of the night before having passed, she was in a
bad humor. When I got there she was sitting in her room holding
a hot-water bottle to her face, and staring bitterly at the
plate containing a piece of burned toast and Tufik's specialty--
a Syrian cake crusted with sugar.

"I wish he had drowned!" she said. "My stomach's gone, Lizzie! I
ate one of those cakes for breakfast. You've got to eat this
one."

"I'll do nothing of the sort! This is your doing, Tish Carberry.
If it hadn't been for you and your habit of picking up stray
cats and dogs and Orientals and imposing them on your friends
we'd be on the ocean today, on our way to a decent climate. The
next time your duty to your brother man overwhelms you, you'd
better lock yourself in your room and throw the key out the
window."

Tish was not listening, however. Her eye and her mind both were
on the cake.

"If you would eat it and then take some essence of pepsin--" she
hazarded. But I looked her full it the eye and she had the grace
to color. "He loves to make them," she said--"he positively
beamed when he brought it.  He has another kind he is making
now--of pounded beans, or something like that. Listen!" I
listened.

>From back in the kitchen came a sound of hammering and Tufik's
voice lifted in a low, plaintive chant. "He says that song is
about the valleys of Lebanon," said Tish miserably. "Lizzie, if
you'll eat half of it, I'll eat the rest."

My answer was to pick up the plate and carry it into the
bathroom. Heroic measures were necessary: Tish was not her
resolute self; and, indeed, through all the episode of Tufik,
and the shocking denouement that followed, Tish was a spineless
individual who swayed to and fro with every breeze.

She divined my purpose and followed me to the bathroom door.

"Leave some crumbs on the plate!" she whispered. "It will look
more natural. Get rid of the toast too."

I turned and faced her, the empty plate in my hands.

"Tish," I said sternly, "this is hypocrisy, which is just next
door to lying. It's the first step downward. I have a feeling
that this boy is demoralizing us! We shall have to get rid of
him."

"As for instance?" she sarcastically asked.

"Send him back home," I said with firmness. "He doesn't belong
here; he isn't accustomed to anything faster than a camel. He
doesn't know how to work--none of them do. He comes from a
country where they can eat food like this because digestion is
one of their occupations."

I was right and Tish knew it. Even Tufik was satisfied when we
put it up to him. He spread his hands in his Oriental way and
shrugged his shoulders.

"If my mothers think best," he said softly. "In my own land
Tufik is known--I sell in the bazaar the so fine lace my sister
make. I drink wine, not water. My stomach--I cannot eat in this
America. But--I have no money."

"We will furnish the money," Tish said gently. "But you must
promise one thing, Tufik. You must not become a Mohammedan."

"Before that I die!" he said proudly.

"And--there is something else, Tufik,--something rather
personal. But I want you to promise. You are only a boy; but
when you are a man--" Tish stopped and looked to me for help.

"Miss Tish means this," I put in, "you are to have only one
wife, Tufik. We are not sending you back to start a harem. We--
we disapprove strongly of--er--anything like that."

"Tufik takes but one wife," he said. "Our people--we have but
one wife. My first child--it is called Tish; my next, Lizzie;
and my next, Aggie Pilk. All for my so kind friends. And one I
call Charlie Sands; and one shall be Hannah. So that Tufik never
forget America."

Aggie was rather put out when we told her what we had done; but
after eating one of the cakes made of pounded beans and sugar,
under Tufik's triumphant eyes, she admitted that it was probably
for the best. That evening, while Tufik took his shrunken and
wrinkled clothing to be pressed by a little tailor in the
neighborhood who did Tish's repairing, the three of us went back
to the kitchen and tried to put it in order. It was frightful--
flour and burned grease over everything, every pan dirty, dishes
all over the place and a half-burned cigarette in the sugar bin.
But--it touched us all deeply--he had found an old photograph of
the three of us and had made a sort of shrine of the
clock-shelf--the picture in front of the clock and in front of
the picture a bunch of red geraniums.

While we were looking at the picture and Aggie was at the sink
putting water in the glass that held the geraniums, Tufik having
forgotten to do so, Tish's neighbor from the apartment below, an
elderly bachelor, came up the service staircase and knocked at
the door. Tish opened it.

"Humph!" said the gentleman from below. "Gone is he?"

"Is who gone?"

"Your thieving Syrian, madam!"

Tish stiffened.

"Perhaps," she said, "if you will explain--"

"Perhaps," snarled the visitor, "you will explain what you have
done with my geraniums! Why don't you raise your own flowers?"

Tish was quite stunned and so was I. After all, it was Aggie who
came to the rescue. She slammed the lid on to the teakettle and
set it on the stove with a bang.

"If you mean," she said indignantly, "that you think we have any
geraniums of yours--"

"Think! Didn't my cook see your thieving servant steal 'em off
the box on the fire-escape?"

"Then, perhaps," Aggie suggested, "you will look through the
apartment and see if they are here. You will please look
everywhere!"

Tish and I gasped. It was not until the visitor had made the
rounds of the apartment, and had taken an apologetic departure,
that Tish and I understood. The teakettle was boiling and from
its spout coming a spicy and familiar odor. Aggie took it off
the stove and removed the lid. The geraniums, boiled to a pulp,
were inside.

"Back to Syria that boy goes!" said Tish, viewing the floral
remains. "He did it out of love and we must not chide him. But
we have our own immortal souls to think of."

The next morning two things happened. We gave Tufik one hundred
and twenty dollars to buy a ticket back to Syria and to keep him
in funds on the way. and Tish got a note from Hannah:--

 Dear Miss Tish: I here you still have the dago--or, as
 my sister's husband says, he still has you. I am redy to
 live up to my bargen if you are.  HANNAH.

 P.S. I  have lerned a new salud--very rich, but
 delissious. H.

In spite of herself, Tish looked haunted. It was the salad, no
doubt. She said nothing, but she looked round the untidy rooms,
where everything that would hold it had a linen cover with a
Cluny-lace edge--all of them soiled and wrinkled. She watched
Tufik, chanting about the plains of Lebanon and shoving the
carpet-sweeper with a bang against her best furniture; and, with
Hannah's salad in mind, she sniffed a warning odor from the
kitchen that told of more Syrian experiments with her digestion.
Tish surrendered: that morning she wrote to Hannah that Tufik
was going back to Syria, and to come and brink the salad recipe
with her.

That was, I think, on a Monday. Tufik's steamer sailed on
Thursday. On Tuesday Aggie and I went shopping; and in a spirit
of repentance--for we felt we were not solving Tufik's question
but getting rid of him--we bought him a complete new outfit. He
almost disgraced us by kissing our hands in the store, and while
we were buying him some ties he disappeared--to come back later
with the rims of his eyes red from weeping. His gentle soul was
touched with gratitude. Aggie had to tell him firmly that if he
kissed any more hands he would get his ears boxed.

The clerks in the store were all interested, and two or three
cash- boys followed us round and stood, open-mouthed, staring at
us. Neither Aggie nor I knew anything about masculine attire,
and Tufik's idea was a suit, with nothing underneath, a shirt-
front and collar of celluloid, and a green necktie already tied
and hooking on to his collar-button. He was dazed when we bought
him a steamer trunk and a rug, and disappeared again, returning
in a few moments with a small paper bag full of gumdrops. We
were quite touched.

That, as I say, was on Tuesday. Tufik had been sleeping in
Tish's guest-room since his desperate attempt at suicide, and we
sent his things to Tish's apartment. That evening Tufik asked
permission to spend the night with a friend in the restaurant
business--a Damascan. Tish let him go against my advice.

"He'll eat a lot of that Syrian food," I objected, "and get sick
and miss his boat, and we'll have the whole thing over again!"

But Tish was adamant. "It's his last night," she said, "and he
has promised not to smoke any cigarettes and I've given him two
pepsin tablets. This is the land of the free, Lizzie."

We were to meet Tufik at the station next morning and we
arranged a lunch for him to eat on the train, Aggie bringing
fried chicken and I sandwiches and cake. Tish's domestic
arrangements being upset, she supplied fruit, figs and dates
mostly, to make him think of home.

The train left early, and none of us felt very cheerful at
having to be about. Aggie sat in the station and sneezed; Tish
had a pain above her eye and sat by a heater. We had the
luncheon in a large shoebox, wrapped in oiled paper to keep it
moist.

He never appeared! The train was called, filled up, and left.
People took to staring at us as we sat there. Aggie sneezed and
Tish held her eye. And no Tufik! In a sort of helpless,
breakfastless rage we called a taxicab and went to Tish's. No
one said much. We were all thinking.

We were hungry; so we spread out the shoebox lunch on one of the
Cluny-lace covers and ate it, mostly in silence. The steamer
trunk and the rug had gone. We let them go. They might go to
Jerusalem, as far as we were concerned! After we had eaten,--
about eleven o'clock, I think,--Tish got up and surveyed the
apartment. Then, with a savage gleam in her eye, she whisked off
all the fancy linens, the Cluny laces, the hemstitched
bedspreads, and piled them in a heap on the floor.  Aggie and I
watched her in silence. She said nothing, but kicked the whole
lot into the bottom of a cupboard. When she had slammed the
door, she turned and faced us grimly.

"That roll of fiddle-de-dees has cost me about five hundred
dollars," she said. "It's been worth it if it teaches me that
I'm an old fool and that you are two others! If that boy shows
his face here again, I'll hand him over to the police."

However, as it happened, she did nothing of the sort. At four
o'clock that afternoon there was a timid ring at the doorbell
and I answered it. Outside was Tufik, forlorn and drooping, and
held up by main force by a tall, dark-skinned man with a heavy
mustache.

"I bring your boy!" said the mustached person, smiling. "He has
great trouble--sorrow; he faint with grief."

I took a good look at Tufik then. He was pale and shaky, and his
new suit looked as if he had slept in it. His collar was bent
and wilted, and the green necktie had been taken off and
exchanged for a ragged black one.

"Miss Liz!" he said huskily. "I die; the heart is gone! My
parent--"

He broke down again; and leaning against the door jamb he buried
his face in a handkerchief that I could not believe was one of
the lot we had bought only yesterday. I hardly knew what to do.
Tish had said she was through with the boy. I decided to close
them out in the hallway until we had held a council; but Tufik's
foot was on the sill, and the more I asked him to move it, the
harder he wept.

The mustached person said it was quite true. Tufik's father had
died of the plague; the letter had come early that morning.
Beirut was full of the plague. He waved the letter at me; but I
ordered him to burn it immediately--on account of germs. I
brought him a shovel to burn it on; and when that was over Tufik
had worked out his own salvation. He was at the door of Tish's
room, pouring out to Aggie and Tish his grief, and offering the
black necktie as proof.

We were just where we had started, but minus one hundred and
twenty dollars; for, the black-mustached gentleman having gone
after trying to sell Tish another silk kimono, I demanded
Tufik's ticket--to be redeemed--and was met with two empty
hands, outstretched.

"Oh, my friends,--my Miss Tish, my Miss Liz, my Miss Ag,--what
must I say? I have not the ticket! I have been wikkid--but for
my sister--only for my sister! She must not die--she so young,
so little girl!"

"Tufik," said Tish sternly, "I want you to tell us everything
this minute, and get it over."

"She ees so little!" he said wistfully. "And the body of my
parent--could I let it lie and rot in the so hot sun? Ah, no;
Miss Tish, Miss Liz, Miss Ag,-- not so. To-day I take back my
ticket, get the money, and send it to my sister. She will bury
my parent, and then--she comes to this so great America, the
land of my good friends!"

There was a moment's silence. Then Aggie sneezed!


IV

I shall pass over the next month, with its unpleasantnesses;
over Charlie Sands's coming one evening with a black tie and, on
the strength of having killed a dog with his machine, asking for
money to bury it, and bring another one from Syria! I shall not
more than mention Hannah, who kept Tish physically comfortable
and well fed and mentally wretched, having a teakettle of
boiling water always ready if Tufik came to the apartment; I
shall say nothing of our success in getting him employment in
the foreign department of a bank, and his ending up by washing
its windows; or of the position Tish got him as elevator boy in
her hospital, where he jammed the car in some way and held up
four surgeons and three nurses and a patient on his way to the
operating-room--until the patient changed his mind and refused
to be operated on.

Aggie had a brilliant idea about the census-- that he could make
the census reports in the Syrian district. To this end she
worked for some time, coaching Tufik for the examination, only
to have him fail--fail absolutely and without hope. He was
staying in the Syrian quarter at that time, on account of
Hannah; and he brought us various tempting offers now and then--
a fruit stand that could be bought for a hundred dollars; a
restaurant for fifty; a tailor's shop for twenty-five. But, as
he knew nothing of fruits or restaurants or tailoring, we
refused to invest. Tish said that we had been a good while
getting to it, but that we were being businesslike at last. We
gave the boy nine dollars a week and not a penny more; and we
refused to buy any more of his silly linens and crocheted laces.
We were quite firm with him.

And now I come to the arriving of Tufik's little sister--not
that she was really little. But that comes later.

Tufik had decided at last on what he would be in our so great
America. Once or twice, when he was tired or discouraged, Tish
had taken him out in her machine, and he had been thrilled--
really thrilled. He did not seem able to learn how to crank it--
Tish's car is hard to crank--but he learned how to light the
lamps and to spot a policeman two blocks away. Several times,
when we were going into the country, Tish took him because it
gave her a sense of security to have a man along.

Having come from a country where the general travel is by camel,
however, he had not the first idea of machinery. He thought Tish
made the engine go by pressing on the clutch with her foot, like
a sewing machine, and he regarded her strength with awe. And
once, when we were filling a tire from an air bottle and the
tube burst and struck him, he declared there was a demon in the
air bottle and said a prayer in the middle of the road. About
that time Tish learned of a school for chauffeurs, and the three
of us decided to divide the expense and send him.

"In three months," Tish explained, "we can get him a state
license and he can drive a taxicab. It will suit him, because he
can sit to do it."

So Tufik went to an automobile school and stood by while some
one drew pictures of parts of the engine on a blackboard, and
took home lists of words that he translated into Arabic at the
library, and learned everything but why and how the engine of an
automobile goes. He still thought--at the end of two months--
that the driver did it with his foot! But we were ignorant of
all that. He would drop round in the evenings, when Hannah was
out or in bed, and tell us what "magneto" was in Arabic, and how
he would soon be able to care for Tish's car and would not take
a cent for it, doing it at night when the taxi-cab was resting.

At the end of six weeks we bought him a chauffeur's outfit. The
next day the sister arrived and Tufik brought her to Aggie's,
where we were waiting. We had not told Hannah about the sister;
she would not have understood.

Charlie Sands telephoned while we were waiting and asked if he
might come over and help receive the girl. We were to greet her
and welcome her to America; then she was to go to the home of
the Syrian with the large mustache. Charlie Sands came in and
shook hands all round, surveying each of us carefully.

"Strange!" he muttered. "Curious is no name for it! What do we
know of the vagaries of the human mind? Three minds and one
obsession!" he said with the utmost gentleness. "Three maiden
ladies who have lived impeccable lives for far be it from me to
say how many years; and now--this! Oh, Aunt Tish! Dear Aunt
Tish!"

He got out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. Tish was
speechless with rage, but I rose to our defense.

"We don't want to do it and you know it!" I said tartly. "But
when the Lord sends want and suffering to one's very door--"

"Want, with large brown eyes and a gentle voice!" he retorted.
"My dear ladies, it's your money; and I dare say it costs you
less than bridge at five cents a point, or the Gay White Way.
But, for Heaven's sake, my respected but foolish virgins, why
not an American that wants a real job? Why let a sticky Oriental
pull your legs--"

"Charlie Sands!" cried Tish, rising in her wrath. "I will not
endure such vulgarity. And when Tufik takes you out in a
taxicab--"

"God forbid!" said Charlie Sands, and sat down to wait for
Tufik's sister.

She did not look like Tufik and she was tired and dirty from the
journey; but she had big brown eyes and masses of dark hair and
she spoke not a single word of English. Tufik's joy was
boundless; his soft eyes were snapping with excitement; and
Aggie, who is sentimental, was obliged to go out and swallow
half a glass of water without breathing to keep from crying.
Charlie Sands said nothing, but sat back in a corner and watched
us all; and once he took out his notebook and made a memorandum
of something. He showed it to us later.

Tufik's sister was the calmest of us all, I believe. She sat on
a stiff chair near the door and turned her brown eyes from one
to the other. Tish said that proper clothing would make her
beautiful; and Aggie, disappearing for a few minutes, came back
with her last summer's foulard and a jet bonnet. When the poor
thing understood they were for her, she looked almost
frightened, the thing being unexpected; and Tufik, in a paroxysm
of delight, kissed all our hands and the girl on each cheek.

Tish says our vulgar lip-osculation is unknown in the Orient and
that they rub noses by way of greeting. I think, however, that
she is mistaken in this and that the Australians are the nose-
rubbers. I recall a returned missionary's telling this, but I
cannot remember just where he had been stationed.

Things were very quiet for a couple of weeks. Tufik came round
only once--to tell us that, having to pay car fare to get to the
automobile school, his nine dollars were not enough. We added a
dollar a week under protest; and Tish suggested with some
asperity that as he was only busy four hours a day he might find
some light employment for the balance of the day. He spread out
his hands and drew up his shoulders.

"My friends are angry," he said sadly. "It is not enough that I
study? I must also work? Ver' well, I labor. I sell the
newspaper. But, to buy newspapers, one must have money--a
dollar; two dollars. Ver' leetle; only--I have it not."

We gave him another dollar and he went out smiling and hopeful.
It seemed that at last we had solved his problem. Tish recalled
one of her Sunday-school scholars who sold papers and saved
enough to buy a second-hand automobile and rear a family. But
our and hopes were dashed to the ground when, the next morning,
Hannah, opening the door at Tish's to bring in the milk bottles,
found a huge stack of the night-before's newspapers and a note
on top addressed to Tish, which said:-

 Deer Mother Tish : You see now that I am no good. I wish
 to die! I hav one papier sold, and newsboys kell me on
 sight. I hav but you and God--and God has forget!

 TUFIK.

We were discouraged and so, clearly, was Tufik. For ten days we
did not hear from him, except that a flirty little Syrian boy
called for the ten dollars on Saturday and brought a pair of
Tufik's shoes for us to have resoled. But one day Tish
telephoned in some excitement and said that Tufik was there and
wanted us to go to a wedding.

"His little sister's wedding!" she explained. "The dear child is
all excited. He says it has been going on for two days and this
is the day of the ceremony."

Aggie was spending the afternoon with me, and spoke up hastily.

"Ask her if I have time to go home and put on my broadcloth,"
she said. "I'm not fixed for a wedding."

Tish said there was no time. She would come round with the
machine and we were to be ready in fifteen minutes. Aggie
hesitated on account of intending to wash her hair that night
and so not having put up her crimps; but she finally agreed to
go and Tish came for us. Tufik was in the machine. He looked
very tidy and wore the shoes we had had repaired, a pink
carnation in his buttonhole, and an air of suppressed
excitement.

"At last," he said joyously while Tish cranked the car--"at last
my friends see my three mothers! They think Tufik only talks--
now they see! And the priest will bless my mothers on this so
happy day."

Tish having crawled panting from her exertion into the driver's
seat and taken the wheel, in sheer excess of boyish excitement
he leaned over and kissed the hand nearest him.

The janitor's small boy was on the curb watching, and at that he
set up a yell of joy. We left him calling awful things after us
and Tish's face was a study; but soon the care of the machine
made her forget everything else.

The Syrian quarter was not impressive. It was on a hillside
above the Russian Jewish colony, and consisted of a network of
cobble-paved alleys, indescribably dirty and incredibly steep.
In one or two of these alleys Tish was obliged to turn the car
and go up backward, her machine climbing much better on tire
reverse gear. Crowds of children followed us; dogs got under the
wheels and apparently died, judging by the yelps--only to follow
us with undiminished energy after they had picked themselves up.
We fought and won a battle with a barrel of ashes and came out
victorious but dusty; and at last, as Tufik made a lordly
gesture, we stopped at an angle of forty-five degrees and Tufik
bowed us out of the car. He stood by visibly glowing with
happiness, while Tish got a cobblestone and placed it under a
wheel, and Aggie and I took in our surroundings.

We were in an alley ten feet wide and paved indiscriminately
with stones and tin cans, babies and broken bottles. Before us
was a two-story brick house with broken windows and a high,
railed wooden stoop, minus two steps. Under the stoop was a door
leading into a cellar, and from this cellar was coming a curious
stamping noise and a sound as of an animal in its death throes.

Aggie caught my arm. "What's that?" she quavered.

I had no time to reply. Tufik had thrown open the door and stood
aside to let us pass.

"They dance," he said gravely. "There is always much dancing
before a wedding. The music one hears is of Damascus and he who
dances now is a sheik among his people."

Reassured as to the sounds, we stepped down into the basement.
That was at four o'clock in the afternoon.

I have never been fairly clear as to what followed and Aggie's
memory is a complete blank. I remember a long, boarded-in and
floored cellar, smelling very damp and lighted by flaring gas
jets. The center was empty save for a swarthy gentleman in a fez
and his shirt-sleeves, wearing a pair of green suspenders and
dancing alone--a curious stamping dance that kept time to a
drum. I remember the musicians too--three of them in a corner:
one playing on a sort of pipes-of-Pan affair of reeds, one on a
long- necked instrument that looked like a guitar with zither
ambitions, and a drummer who chanted with his eyes shut and kept
time to his chants by beating on a sheepskin tied over the mouth
of a brass bowl. Round three sides of the room were long, oil
cloth-covered tables; and in preparation for the ceremony a
little Syrian girl was sweeping up peanut shells, ashes, and
beer bottles, with absolute disregard of the guests.

All round the wall, behind rows of beer bottles, dishes of
bananas, and plates of raw liver, were men,--soft-eyed Syrians
with white teeth gleaming and black hair plastered close and
celluloid collars,--gentle-voiced, urbane-mannered Orientals,
who came up gravely one by one and shook hands with us; who
pressed on us beer and peanuts and raw liver.

Aggie, speaking between sneezes and over the chanting and the
drum, bent toward me. "It's a breath of the Orient!" she said
ecstatically. "Oh, Lizzie, do you think I could buy that drum
for my tabouret?"

"Orient!" observed Tish, coughing. "I'm going out and take the
switch-key out of that car. And I wish I'd brought Charlie
Sands!"

It was in vain we reminded her that the Syrians are a pastoral
people and that they come from the land of the Bible. She looked
round her grimly.

"They look like a lot of bandits to me," she sniffed. "And
there's always a murder at a wedding of this sort. There isn't a
woman here but ourselves!"

She was exceedingly disagreeable and Aggie and I began to get
uncomfortable. But when Tufik brought us little thimble-sized
glasses filled with a milky stuff and assured us that the women
had only gone to prepare the bride, we felt reassured. He said
that etiquette demanded that we drink the milky white stuff.

Tish was inclined to demur. "Has it any alcohol in it?" she
demanded. Tufik did not understand, but he said it was harmless
and given to all the Syrian babies; and while we were still
undecided Aggie sniffed it.

"It smells like paregoric, Tish," she said. "I'm sure it's
harmless."

We took it then. It tasted sweet and rather spicy, and Aggie
said it stopped her sneezing at once. It was very mild and
pleasant, and rather medicinal in its flavor. We each had two
little glasses--and Tish said she would not bother about the
switch-key. The car was insured against theft.

A little later Aggie said she used to do a little jig step when
she was a girl, and if they would play slower she would like to
see if she had forgotten it. Tish did not hear this--she was
talking to Tufik, and a moment later she got up and went out.

Aggie had decided to ask the musicians to play a little slower
and I had my hands full with her; so it was with horror that,
shortly after, I heard the whirring of the engine and through
the cellar window caught a glimpse of Tish's machine starting
off up the hill. I rose excitedly, but Tufik was before me,
smiling and bowing.

"Miss Tish has gone for the bride," he said softly. "The taxicab
hav' not come. Soon the priest arrive, and so great shame--the
bride is not here! Miss Tish is my mother, my heart's delight!"

When Aggie realized that Tish had gone, she was rather upset--
she depends a great deal on Tish--and she took another of the
little glasses of milky stuff to revive her.

I was a little bit nervous with Tish gone and the sun setting
and another tub of beer bottles brought in--though the people
were orderly enough and Tufik stood and near. But Aggie began to
feel very strange, and declared that the man with the sheepskin
drum was winking at her and that her head was twitching round on
her shoulders. And when a dozen or so young Syrians formed a
circle, their hands on each other's shoulders, and sang a
melancholy chant, stamping to beat time, she wept with sheer
sentiment.

"Ha! Hoo! Ta, Ta, Ta!" they chanted in unison; and Tufik bent
over us, his soft eyes beaming.

"They are shepherds and the sons of shepherds from Palestine,"
he whispered. "That is the shepherd's call to his sheep. In my
country many are shepherds. Perhaps some day you go with me back
to my country, and we hear the shepherd call his sheep--'Ha!
Hoo! Ta, Ta, Ta!'--and we hear the sleepy sheep reply: 'Maaaa!'"

"It is too beautiful!" murmured Aggie. "It is the Holy Land all
over again! And we should never have known this but for you,
Tufik!"

Just then some one near the door clapped his hands and all the
noise ceased. Those who were standing sat down. The little girl
with the broom swept the accumulations of the room under a chair
and put the broom in a corner. The music became loud and
stirring.

Aggie swayed toward me. "I'm sick, Lizzie!" she gasped. "That
paregoric stuff has poisoned me. Air!"

I took one arm and Tufik the other, and we got her out and
seated on one of the wooden steps. She was a blue-green color
and the whites of her eyes were yellow. But I had little time
for Aggie. Tufik caught my hand and pointed.

Tish's machine was coming down the alley. Beside her sat Tufik's
sister, sobbing at the top of her voice and wearing Aggie's
foulard, a pair of cotton gloves, and a lace curtain over her
head. Behind in the tonneau were her maid of honor, a young
Syrian woman with a baby in her arms and four other black-eyed
children about her. But that was not all. In front of the
machine, marching slowly and with dignity, were three bearded
gentlemen, two in coats and one in a striped vest, blowing on
curious double flutes and making a shrill wailing noise. And all
round were crowds of women and children, carrying tin pans and
paper bags full of parched peas, which they were flinging with
all their might.

I caught Tish's eye as the procession stopped, and she looked
subdued--almost stunned. The pipers still piped. But the bride
refused to move. Instead, her wails rose higher; and Aggie, who
had paid no attention so far, but was sitting back with her eyes
shut, looked up.

"Lizzhie," she said thickly, "Tish looks about the way I feel."
And with that she fell to laughing awful laughter that mingled
with the bride's cries and the wail of the pipes.

The bride, after a struggle, was taken by force from the machine
and placed on a chair against the wall. Her veil was torn and
her wreath crooked, and she observed a sulky silence. To our
amazement, Tufik was still smiling, urbane and cheerful.

"It is the custom of my country, my mothers," he said. "The
bride leave with tears the home of her good parents or of her
friends; and she speak no word--only weep--until she is
marriaged. Ah--the priest!"

The rest  of the story is short and somewhat blurred. Tish
having broken her glasses, Aggie being, as one may say, hors de
combat, and I having developed a frightful headache in the dust
and bad air, the real meaning of what was occurring did not
penetrate to any of us. The priest officiated from a table in
the center of the room, on which he placed two candles, an
Arabic Bible, and a sacred picture, all of which he took out of
a brown valise. He himself wore a long black robe and a beard,
and looked, as Tish observed, for all the world as if he had
stepped from an Egyptian painting. Before him stood Tufik's
sister, the maid of honor with her baby, the black-mustached
friend who had brought Tufik to us after his tragic attempt at
suicide, and Tufik himself.

Everybody held lighted candles, and the heat was frightful. The
music ceased, there was much exhorting in Arabic, much reading
from the book, many soft replies indiscriminately from the four
principals--and then suddenly Tish turned and gripped my arm.

"Lizzie," she said hoarsely, "that little thief and liar has
done us again! That isn't his sister at all. He's marrying her--
for us to keep!"

Luckily Aggie grew faint again at that moment, and we led her
out into the open air. Behind us the ceremony seemed to be over;
the drum was beating, the pipes screaming, the lute thrumming.

Tish let in the clutch with a vicious jerk, and the whir of the
engine drowned out the beating of the drum and the clapping of
the hands. Twilight hid the tin cans and ash-barrels, and the
dogs slept on the cool pavements. In the doorways soft-eyed
Syrian women rocked their babies to drowsy chants. The air
revived Aggie. She leaned forward and touched Tish on the
shoulder.

"After all," she said softly, "if he loves her very much, and
there was no other way--Do you remember that night she arrived--
how he looked at her?"

"Yes," Tish snapped. "And I remember the way he looked at us
every time he wanted money. We've been a lot of sheep and we've
been sheared good and proper! But we needn't bleat with joy
about it!"

As we drew up at my door, Tish pulled out her watch.

"It's seven o'clock," she said brusquely. "I am going to New
York on the nine-forty train and I shall take the first steamer
outward bound--I need a rest! I'll go anywhere but to the Holy
Land!"

We went to Panama.


Two months afterward, in the dusk of a late spring evening,
Charlie Sands met us at the station and took us to Tish's in a
taxicab. We were homesick, tired, and dirty; and Aggie, who had
been frightfully seasick, was clamoring for tea.

As the taxicab drew up at the curb, Tish clutched my arm and
Aggie uttered a muffled cry and promptly sneezed. Seated on the
doorstep, celluloid collar shining, the brown pasteboard
suitcase at his feet, was Tufik. He sat calmly smoking a
cigarette, his eyes upturned in placid and Oriental
contemplation of the heavens.

"Drive on!" said Tish desperately. "If he sees us we are lost!"

"Drive where?" demanded Charlie.

Tufik's gaze had dropped gradually--another moment and his brown
eyes would rest on us. But just then a diversion occurred. A
window overhead opened with a slam and a stream of hot water
descended. It had been carefully aimed--as if with long
practice. Tufik was apparently not surprised. He side-stepped it
with a boredom as of many repetitions, and, picking up his
suitcase, stood at a safe distance looking up. First, in his
gentle voice he addressed the window in Arabic; then from a
safer distance in English.

"You ugly old she-wolf!" he said softly. "When my three old
women come back I eat you, skin and bones,--and they shall say
nothing! They love me--Tufik! I am their child. Aye! And my
child--which comes--will be their grandchild!"

He kissed his fingers to the upper window which closed with a
slam. Tufik stooped, picked up his suitcase, and saw the taxi
for the first time. Even in the twilight we saw his face change,
his brown eyes brighten, his teeth show in his boyish smile. The
taxicab driver had stalled his engine and was cranking it.

"Sh!" I said desperately, and we all cowered back into the
shadows.

Tufik approached, uncertainty changing to certainty. The engine
was started now. Oh, for a second of time! He was at the window
now, peering into the darkness.

"Miss Tish!" he said breathlessly. No one answered. We hardly
breathed. And then suddenly Aggie sneezed! "Miss Pilk!" he
shouted in delight. "My mothers! My so dear friends--"

The machine jerked, started, moved slowly off. He ran beside it,
a hand on the door. Tish bent forward to speak, but Charlie
Sands put his hand over her mouth.

And so we left him, standing in the street undecided, staring
after us wistfully, uncertainly--the suitcase, full of Cluny-
lace centerpieces, crocheted lace, silk kimonos, and embroidered
bedspreads, in his hand.

That night we hid in a hotel and the next day we started for
Europe. We heard nothing from Tufik; but on the anniversary of
Mr. Wiggins's death, while we were in Berlin, Aggie received a
small package forwarded from home. It was a small lace doily,
and pinned to it was a card. It read:--

 For the sadness, Miss Pilk! TUFIK.

Aggie cried over it.




The Simple Lifers

I


I suppose there is something in all of us that harks back to the
soil. When you come to think of it, what are picnics but
outcroppings of instinct? No one really enjoys them or expects
to enjoy them, but with the first warm days some prehistoric
instinct takes us out into the woods, to fry potatoes over a
strangling wood fire and spend the next week getting grass
stains out of our clothes. It must be instinct; every atom of
intelligence warns us to stay at home near the refrigerator.

Tish is really a child of instinct. She is intelligent enough,
but in a contest between instinct and brains, she always follows
her instinct. Aggie under the same circumstances follows her
heart. As for me, I generally follow Tish and Aggie, and they've
led me into some curious places.

This is really a sort of apology, because, whereas usually Tish
leads off and we follow her, in the adventure of the Simple Life
we were all equally guilty. Tish made the suggestion, but we
needed no urging. As you know, this summer two years ago was a
fairly good one, as summers go,--plenty of fair weather, only
two or three really hot spells, and not a great deal of rain.
Charlie Sands, Tish's nephew, went over to England in June to
report the visit of the French President to London for his
newspaper, and Tish's automobile had been sent to the factory to
be gone over. She had been teaching Aggie to drive it, and owing
to Aggie's thinking she had her foot on the brake when it was
really on the gas, they had leaped a four-foot ditch and gone
down into a deep ravine, from which both Tish and Aggie had had
to be pulled up with ropes.

Well, with no machine and Charlie Sands away, we hardly knew how
to plan the summer. Tish thought at first she would stay at home
and learn to ride. She thought her liver needed stirring up. She
used to ride, she said, and it was like sitting in a rocking-
chair, only perhaps more so. Aggie and I went out to her first
lesson; but when I found she had bought a divided skirt and was
going to try a man's saddle, I could not restrain my indignation.

"I'm going, Tish," I said firmly, when she had come out of the
dressing-room and I realized the situation. "I shan't attempt to
restrain you, but I shall not remain to witness your shame."

Tish eyed me coldly. "When you wish to lecture me," she snapped,
"about revealing to the public that I have two legs, if I do
wear a skirt, don't stand in a sunny doorway in that linen dress
of yours. I am going to ride; every woman should ride. It's good
for the liver."

I think she rather wavered when they brought the horse, which
looked larger than usual and had a Roman nose. The instructor
handed Tish four lines and she grabbed them nervously in a
bunch.

"Just a moment!" said the instructor, and slipped a line between
each two of her fingers.

Tish looked rather startled. "When I used to ride--" she began
with dignity.

But the instructor only smiled. "These two are for the curb," he
said--"if he bolts or anything like that, you know. Whoa, Viper!
Still, old man!"

"Viper!" Tish repeated, clutching at the lines. "Is--is he--er--
nasty?"

"Not a bit of it," said the instructor, while he prepared to
hoist her up. "He's as gentle as a woman to the people he likes.
His only fault is that he's apt to take a little nip out of the
stablemen now and then. He's very fond of ladies."

"Humph!" said Tish. "He's looking at me rather strangely, don't
you think? Has he been fed lately?"

"Perhaps he sees that divided skirt," I suggested.

Tish gave me one look and got on the horse. They walked round
the ring at first and Tish seemed to like it. Then a stableman
put a nickel into a player-piano and that seemed to be a signal
for the thing to trot. Tish said afterward that she never hit
the horse's back twice in the same place. Once, she says, she
came down on his neck, and several times she was back somewhere
about his tail. Every time she landed, wherever it might be, he
gave a heave and sent her up again. She tried to say "Whoa," but
it came out in pieces, so to speak, and the creature seemed to
be encouraged by it and took to going faster. By that time, she
said, she wasn't coming down at all, but was in the air all the
time, with the horse coming up at the rate of fifty revolutions
a second. She had presence of mind enough to keep her mouth shut
so she wouldn't bite her tongue off.

After four times round the music stopped and the horse did also.
They were just in front of us, and Tish looked rather dazed.

"You did splendidly!" said Aggie. "Honestly, Tish, I was
frightened at first, but you and that dear horse seemed one
piece. Didn't they, Lizzie?"

Tish straightened out the fingers of her left hand with her
right and extricated the lines. Then she turned her head slowly
from right to left to see if she could.

"Help me down, somebody," she said in a thin voice, "and call an
osteopath. There is something wrong with my spine!"

She was in bed three days, having massage and a vibrator and
being rubbed with chloroform liniment. At the end of that time
she offered me her divided skirt, but I refused.

"Riding would be good for your liver, Lizzie," she said, sitting
up in bed with pillows all about her.

"I don't intend to detach it to do it good," I retorted. "What
your liver and mine and most of the other livers need these days
isn't to be sent out in a divided skirt and beaten to a jelly:
they need rest--less food and simpler food. If instead of taking
your liver on a horse you'd put it in a tent and feed it nuts
and berries, you wouldn't be the color you are to-day, Tish
Carberry."

That really started the whole thing, although at the time Tish
said nothing. She has a way of getting an idea and letting it
simmer on the back of her brain, as you may say, when nobody
knows it's been cooking at all, and then suddenly bringing it
out cooked and seasoned and ready to serve.

On the day Tish sat up for the first time, Aggie and I went over
to see her. Hannah, the maid, had got her out of bed to a
window, and Tish was sitting there with books all about her. It
is in times of enforced physical idleness that most of Tish's
ideas come to her, and Aggie had reminded me of that fact on the
way over.

"You remember, Lizzie," she said, "how last winter when she was
getting over the grippe she took up that correspondence-school
course in swimming. She's reading, watch her books. It'll
probably be suffrage or airships."

Tish always believes anything she reads. She had been quite sure
she could swim after six correspondence lessons. She had all the
movements exactly, and had worried her trained nurse almost into
hysteria for a week by turning on her face in bed every now and
then and trying the overhand stroke. She got very expert, and
had decided she'd swim regularly, and even had Charlie Sands
show her the Australian crawl business so she could go over some
time and swim the Channel. It was a matter of breathing and of
changing positions, she said, and was up to intelligence rather
than muscle.

Then when she was quite strong, she had gone to the natatorium.
Aggie and I went along, not that we were any good in emergency,
but because Tish had convinced us there would be no emergency.
And Tish went in at the deep end of the pool, head first,
according to diagram, and did not come up.

Well, there seemed to be nothing threatening in what Tish was
reading this time. She had ordered some books for Maria Lee's
children and was looking them over before she sent them. The
"Young Woods-man" was one and "Camper Craft" was another. How I
shudder when I recall those names!

Aggie had baked an angel cake and I had brought over a jar of
cookies. But Tish only thanked us and asked Hannah to take them
out. Even then we were not suspicious. Tish sat back among her
pillows and said very little. The conversation was something
like this:--

 Aggie: Well, you're up again: I hope to goodness it will
 be a lesson to you. If you don't mind, I'd like Hannah
 to cut that cake. It fell in the middle.

 Tish: Do you know that the Indians never sweetened their
 food and that they developed absolutely perfect teeth?

 Aggie: Well, they never had any automobiles either, but
 they didn't develop wings.

 Lizzie: Don't you want that window closed? I'm in a
 draft.

 Tish: Air in motion never gave any one a cold. We do not
 catch cold; we catch heat. It's ridiculous the way we
 shut ourselves up in houses and expect to remain well.

 Aggie:  Well, I'b catchig sobethig.

 Lizzie (changing the subject): Would you like me to help
 you dress? It might rest your back to have your corset
 on.

 Tish (firmly): I shall never wear a corset again.

 Aggie (sneezing): Why? Didn't the Iddiads wear theb?

Tish is very sensitive to lack of sympathy and she shut up like
a clam. She was coldly polite to us for the remainder of our
visit, but she did not again refer to the Indians, which in
itself was suspicious.

Fortunately for us, or unfortunately, Tish's new scheme was one
she could not very well carry out alone. I believe she tried to
induce Hannah to go with her, and only when Hannah failed her
did she turn to us. Hannah was frightened and came to warn us.

I remember the occasion very well. It was Mr. Wiggins's birthday
anniversary, and we usually dine at Aggie's and have a cake with
thirty candles on it. Tish was not yet able to be about, so
Aggie and I ate together. She always likes to sit until the last
candle is burned out, which is rather dispiriting and always
leaves me low in my mind.

Just as it flickered and went out, Hannah came in.

"Miss Tish sent over Mr. Charlie's letter from London," said
Hannah, and put it in front of Aggie. Then she sat down on a
chair and commenced to cry.

"Why, Hannah!" said Aggie. "What in the world has happened?"

She's off again!" sniveled Hannah; "and she's worse this time
than she's ever been. No sugar, no tea, only nuts and fruit, and
her windows open all night, with the curtains getting black. I
wisht I had Mr. Charlie by the neck."

I suppose it came over both of us at the same time- the "Young
Woodsman," and the "Camper Craft," and no stays, and all that. I
reached for Charlie Sands's letter, which was always sent to
Tish and meant for all of us. He wrote:--

 Dear Three of a Kind: Well, the French President has
 came and went, and London has taken down all the
 brilliant flags which greeted him, such tactful bits as
 bore Cressy and Agincourt, and the pretty little
 smallpox and "plague here" banners, and has gone back to
 such innocent diversions as baiting cabinet ministers,
 blowing up public buildings, or going out into the woods
 seeking the Simple Life.

 The Simple Lifers travel in bands--and little else. They
 go barefooted, barearmed, bareheaded and barenecked.
 They wear one garment, I believe, let their hair hang
 and their beards grow, eat only what Nature provides,
 such as nuts and fruits, sleep under the stars, and
 drink from Nature's pools. Rather bully, isn't it?
 They're a handsome lot generally, brown as nuts. And I
 saw a girl yesterday--well, if you do not hear from me
 for a time it will be because I have discarded the
 pockets in which I carry my fountain pen and my stamps
 and am wandering bare- foot through the Elysian fields.

 Yours for the Simple Life,

 CHARLIE SANDS.

As I finished reading the letter aloud, I looked at Aggie in
dismay. "That settles it," I said hopelessly. "She had some such
idea before, and now this young idiot--" I stopped and stared
across the table at Aggie. She was sitting rapt, her eyes fixed
on the smouldering wicks of Mr. Wiggins's candles.

"Barefoot through the Elysian fields!" she said.


II

I am not trying to defend myself. I never had the enthusiasm of
the other two, but I rather liked the idea. And I did restrain
them. It was my suggestion, for instance, that we wear sandals
without stockings, instead of going in our bare feet, which was
a good thing, for the first day out Aggie stepped into a
hornet's nest. And I made out the lists.

The idea, of course, is not how much one can carry, but how
little. The "Young Woodsman" told exactly how to manage in the
woods if one were lost there and had nothing in the world but a
bootlace and a wire hairpin.

With the hairpin one could easily make a fair fish-hook--and
with a bootlace or a good hemp cord one could make a rabbit
snare.

"So you see," Tish explained, "there's fish and meat with no
trouble at all. And there will be berries and nuts. That's a
diet for a king."

I was making a list of the necessaries at the time and under
bootlaces and hairpins I put down "spade."

"What in Heaven's name is the spade for?" Tish demanded.

"You've got to dig bait, haven't you?"

Tish eyed me with disgust.

"Grasshoppers!" she said tersely.

There was really nothing Tish was not prepared for. I should
never have thought of grasshoppers.

"The idea is simply this," observed Tish: "We have surrounded
ourselves with a thousand and one things we do not need and
would be better without--houses, foolish clothing, electric
light, idiotic servants--Hannah, get away from that door!--rich
foods, furniture and crowds of people. We've developed and cared
for our bodies instead of our souls. What we want is to get out
into the woods and think; to forget those pampered bodies of
ours and to let our souls grow and assert themselves."

We decided finally to take a blanket apiece, rolled on our
shoulders, and Tish and I each took a strong knife. Aggie,
instead of the knife, took a pair of scissors. We took a small
bottle of blackberry cordial for emergencies, a cake of soap, a
salt-cellar for seasoning the fish and rabbits, two towels, a
package of court-plaster, Aggie's hay-fever remedy, a bottle of
oil of pennyroyal to use against mosquitoes, and a large piece
of canvas, light but strong, cut like the diagram.

Tish said it was the regulation Indian tepee, and that a squaw
could set one up in an hour and have dinner cooked inside it in
thirty minutes after. She said she guessed we could do it if an
Indian squaw could, and that after we'd cut the poles once, we
could carry them with us if we wished to move. She said the tent
ought to be ornamented, but she had had no time, and we could
paint designs on it with colored clay in the woods when we had
nothing more important to do!

It made a largish bundle, but we did not intend to travel much.
We thought we could find a good place by a lake somewhere and
put up the tent, and set a few snares, and locate the nearest
berry-bushes and mushroom-patches, and then, while the rabbits
were catching themselves, we should have time to get acquainted
with our souls again.

Tish put it in her terse manner most intelligently. "We intend
to prove," she stated to Mrs. Ostermaier, the minister's wife,
who came to call and found us all sitting on the floor trying to
get used to it, for of course there would be no chairs, "we
shall prove that the trappings of civilization are a delusion
and a snare. We shall bring back 'Mens sana in corpore sano'."

The minister's wife thought this was a disease, for she said, "I
hope not, I'm sure," very hastily.

"We shall make our own fire and our own shelter," said Tish from
the floor. "We shall wear one garment, loose enough to allow
entire freedom of movement. We shall bathe in Nature's pools and
come out cleansed. On the Sabbath we shall attend divine service
under the Gothic arches of the trees, read sermons in stones,
and instead of that whining tenor in the choir we shall listen
to the birds singing praise, overhead."

Mrs. Ostermaier looked rather bewildered. "I'm sure I hope so,"
she said vaguely. "I don't like camping myself. There are so
many bugs."

As Tish said, some ideas are so large that the average person
cannot see them at all.

We had fixed on Maine. It seemed to combine all the necessary
qualities: woods and lakes, rabbits, game and fish, and--
solitude. Besides, Aggie's hay fever is better the farther north
she gets. On the day we were leaving, Mr. Ostermaier came to see
us.

"I--I really must protest, ladies," he said. "That sort of thing
may be all right for savages, but--"

"Are we not as intelligent as savages?" Tish demanded.

"Primitive people are inured to hardships, and besides, they
have methods of their own. They can make fire--" "So can I,"
retorted Tish. "Any fool can make a fire with a rubbing-stick.
It's been done in thirty-one seconds."

"If you would only take some matches," he wailed, "and a good
revolver, Miss Letitia. And--you must pardon this, but I have
your well--being at heart--if I could persuade you to take along
some--er--flannels and warm clothing!"

"Clothing," said Tish loftily, "is a matter of habit, Mr.
Ostermaier."

I think he got the idea from this that we intended to discard
clothing altogether, for he went away almost immediately,
looking rather upset, and he preached on the following Sunday
from "Consider the lilies of the field . . . . Even Solomon in
all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

We left on Monday evening, and by Tuesday at noon we were at our
destination, as far as the railroad was concerned. Tish had a
map with the lake we'd picked out, and we had figured that we'd
drive out to within ten miles or so of it and then send the
driver back. The lake was in an uninhabited neighborhood, with
the nearest town twenty-five miles away. We had one suitcase
containing our blankets, sandals, short dresses, soap, hairpins,
salt-box, knives, scissors, and a compass, and the leather
thongs for rabbit snares that we had had cut at a harness shop.
In the other suitcase was the tepee.

We ate a substantial breakfast at Tish's suggestion, because we
expected to be fairly busy the first day, and there would be no
time for hunting. We had to walk ten miles, set up the tent,
make a fire and gather nuts and berries. It was about that time,
I think, that I happened to recall that it was early for nuts.
Still there would be berries, and Tish had added mushrooms to
our menu.

We found a man with a spring wagon to drive us out and Tish
showed him the map.

"I guess I can get you out that way," he said, "but I ain't
heard of no camp up that direction."

"Who said anything about a camp?" snapped Tish. "How much to
drive us fifteen miles in that direction?"

"Fifteen miles! Well, about five dollars, but I think--"

"How much to drive us fifteen miles without thinking?"

"Ten dollars," said the man; and as he had the only wagon in the
town we had to pay it.

It was a lovely day, although very warm. The morning sun turned
the woods to fairylike glades. Tish sat on the front seat, erect
and staring ahead.

Aggie bent over and touched my arm lightly. "Isn't she
wonderful!" she whispered; "like some adventurer of old--Balboa
discovering the Pacific Ocean, or Joan of Arc leading the what-
you-call-'ems."

But somehow my enthusiasm was dying. The sun was hot and there
were no berry-bushes to be seen. Aggie's fairy glades in the
woods were filled, not with dancing sprites, but with gnats. I
wanted a glass of iced tea, and some chicken salad, and talcum
powder down my neck. The road was bad, and the driver seemed to
have a joke to himself, for every now and then he chuckled, and
kept his eyes on the woods on each side, as if he expected to
see something. His manner puzzled us all.

"You can trust me not to say anything, ladies," he said at last,
"but don't you think you're playing it a bit low down? This
ain't quite up to contract, is it?"

"You've been drinking!" said Tish shortly.

After that he let her alone, but soon after he turned round to
me and made another venture.

"In case you need grub, lady," he said,"--and them two suitcases
don't hold a lot,--I'll bring out anything you say: eggs and
butter and garden truck at market prices. I'm no
phylanthropist," he said, glaring at Tish, "but I'd be glad to
help the girl, and that's the truth. I been married to this here
wife o' mine quite a spell, and to my first one for twenty
years, and I'm a believer in married life."

"What girl?" I asked.

He turned right round in the seat and winked at me.

"All right," he said. "I'll not butt in unless you need me. But
I'd like to know one thing: He hasn't got a mother, he says, so
I take it you're his aunts. Am I on, ladies?"

We didn't know what he was talking about, and we said so. But he
only smiled. A mile or so from our destination the horse scared
up a rabbit, and Tish could hardly be restrained from running
after it with a leather thong. Aggie, however, turned a little
pale.

"I'll never be able to eat one, never!" she confided to me. "Did
you see its eyes? Lizzie, do you remember Mr. Wiggins's eyes?
and the way he used to move his nose, just like that?"

At the end of fifteen miles the driver drew up his horses and
took a fresh chew of tobacco.

"I guess this is about right," he said. "That trail there'll
take you to the lake. How long do you reckon it'll be before
you'll need some fresh eggs?"

"We are quite able to look after ourselves," said Tish with
hauteur, and got out of the wagon. She paid him off at once and
sat down on her suitcase until he had driven out of sight. He
drove slowly, looking back every now and then, and his last view
of us must have been impressive--three middle-aged and
determined women ready to conquer the wilderness, as Tish put
it, and two suitcases.

It was as solitary a place as we could have wished. We had not
seen a house in ten miles, and when the last creak of the wagon
had died away there was a silence that made our city-broke ears
fairly ache. Tish waited until the wagon was out of sight; then
she stood up and threw out her arms.

"At last!" she said. "Free to have a lodge in some vast
wilderness--to think, to breathe, to expand! Lizzie, do you
suppose if we go back we can get that rabbit?"

I looked at my watch. It was one o'clock and there was not a
berry-bush in sight. The drive had made me hungry, and I'd have
eaten a rabbit that looked like Mr. Wiggins and called me by
name if I'd had it. But there was absolutely no use going back
for the one we'd seen on our drive.

Aggie was opening her suitcase and getting out her costume,
which was a blue calico with short sleeves and a shoe-top skirt.

"Where'll I put it on?" she asked, looking about her.

"Right here!" Tish replied. "For goodness sake, Aggie, try to
discard false modesty and false shame. We're here to get close
to the great beating heart of Nature. Take off your switch
before you do another thing."

None of us looked particularly well, I admit; but it was
wonderful how much more comfortable we were. Aggie, who is very
thin, discarded a part of her figure, and each of us parted with
some pet hypocrisy. But I don't know that I have ever felt
better. Only, of course we were hungry.

We packed our things in the suitcases and hid them in a hollow
tree, and Tish suggested looking for a spring. She said water
was always the first requisite and fire the second.

"Fire!" said Aggie. "What for? We've nothing to cook."

Well, that was true enough, so we sent Aggie to look for water
and Tish and I made a rabbit snare. We made a good many snares
and got to be rather quick at it. They were all made like this
illustration.

First Tish, with her book open in front of her, made a running
noose out of one of the buckskin thongs. Next we bent down a
sapling and tied the noose to it, and last of all we bound the
free part of the thong round a snag and thus held the sapling
down. The idea is that a rabbit, bounding along, presumably with
his eyes shut, will stick his head through the noose, kick the
line clear of the snag and be drawn violently into the air. Tish
figured that by putting tip half a dozen snares we'd have three
or four rabbits at least each day.

It was about three when we finished, and we drew off to a safe
distance to watch the rabbit bound to his doom. But no rabbits
came along.

I was very empty and rather faint, but Tish said she had never
been able to think so clearly, and that we were all overfed and
stodgy and would be better for fasting.

Aggie came in at three-thirty with a hornet sting and no water.
She said there were no springs, but that she had found a place
where a spring had existed before the dry spell, and there was a
naked footprint in the mud, quite fresh! We all went to look at
it, and Tish was quite positive it was not a man's footprint at
all, but only a bear's.

"A bear!" said Aggie.

"What of it?" Tish demanded. "The 'Young Woodsman' says that no
bear attacks a human unless he is hungry, and at this time of
the year with the woods full of food--"

"Humph!"--I could not restrain myself--"I wish you would show me
a little of it. If no rabbit with acute melancholia comes along
to commit suicide by hanging on that gallows of yours, I think
we'll starve to death."

"There will be a rabbit," Tish said tersely; and we started back
to the snare.

I was never so astonished in my life. There was a rabbit! It
seems we had struck a runway without knowing it, although Tish
said afterward that she had recognized it at once from the
rabbit tracks. Anyhow, whether it died of design or curiosity,
our supper was kicking at the top of the sapling, and Tish
pretended to be calm and to have known all along that we'd get
one. But it was not dead.

We got it down somehow or other and I held it by the ears while
it kicked and scratched. I was hungry enough to have eaten it
alive, but Aggie began to cry.

"You'll be murderers, nothing else," she wailed. "Look at his
little white tail and pitiful baby eyes!"

"Good gracious, Aggie," Tish snapped, "get a knife and cut its
throat while I make a fire. If it's any help to you, we're not
going to eat either its little white tail or its pitiful baby
eyes."

As a matter of fact Aggie wouldn't touch the rabbit and I did
not care much about it myself. I do not like to kill things. My
Aunt Sarah Mackintosh once killed a white hen that lived twenty
minutes without its head; two weeks later she dreamed that that
same hen, without a head, was sitting on the footboard of the
bed, and the next day she got word that her cousin's husband in
Sacramento had died of the hiccoughs.

It ended with Tish giving me the fire-making materials and
stalking off into the woods with the rabbit in one hand and the
knife in the other.

Tish is nothing if not thorough, but she seemed to me
inconsistent. She brought blankets and a canvas tepee and
sandals and an aluminum kettle, but she disdained matches. I
rubbed with that silly drill and a sort of bow arrangement until
my wrists ached, hut I did not get even a spark of fire. When
Tish came back with the rabbit there was no fire, and Aggie had
taken out her watch crystal and was holding it in the sun over a
pile of leaves.

Tish got out the "Young Woodsman" from the suitcase. It seems I
had followed cuts I and II, but had neglected cut III, which is:
Hold the left wrist against the left shin, and the left foot on
the fireblock. I had got my feet mixed and was trying to hold my
left wrist against my right shin, which is exceedingly difficult.
Tish got a fire in fourteen minutes and thirty-one seconds by
Aggie's watch, and had to wear a bandage on her hand for a week.

But we had a fire. We cooked the rabbit, which proved to be much
older than Aggie had thought, and ate what we could. Personally
I am not fond of rabbit, and our enjoyment was rather chastened
by the fear that some mushrooms Tish had collected and added to
the stew were toadstools incognito. To make things worse, Aggie
saw some goldenrod nearby and began to sneeze.

It was after five o'clock, but it seemed wisest to move on toward
the lake.

"Even if we don't make it," said Tish, "we'll be on our way, and
while that bear is likely harmless we needn't thrust temptation
in his way."

We carried the fire with us in the kettle and we took turns with
the tepee, which was heavy. Our suitcases with our city clothes
in them we hid in a hollow tree, and one after the other, with
Aggie last, we started on.

The trail, which was a sort of wide wagon road at first, became
a footpath; as we went on even that disappeared at times under
fallen leaves. Once we lost it entirely, and Aggie, falling over
a hidden root, stilled the fire. She became exceedingly
disagreeable at about that time, said she was sure Tish's
mushrooms were toadstools because she felt very queer, and
suddenly gave a yell and said she had seen something moving in
the bushes.

We all looked, and the bushes were moving.


III

It was dusk by that time and the path was only a thread between
masses of undergrowth. Tish said if it was the bear he would be
afraid of the fire, so we put dry leaves in the kettle and made
quite a blaze. By its light Tish read that bears in the summer
are full fed and really frolicsome and that they are awful
cowards. We felt quite cheered and brave, and Tish said if he
came near to throw the fire kettle at him and he'd probably die
of fright.

It was too late to put up the tepee, so we found a clearing near
the path and decided to spend the night there. Aggie still
watched the bushes and wanted to spend the night in a tree; but
Tish's calmness was a reproach to us both, and after we had
emptied the kettle and made quite a fire to keep off animals, we
unrolled our blankets and prepared for sleep. I could have slept
anywhere, although I was still rather hungry. My last view was
of Tish in the firelight grimly bending down a sapling and
fastening a rabbit snare to it.

During the night I was wakened by somebody clutching my arm. It
was Aggie who lay next to me. When I raised my head she pointed
off into the woods to our left. At a height of perhaps four feet
from the ground a ghastly red glow was moving rapidly away from
us. It was not a torch; it was more a radiance, and it moved not
evenly, but jerkily. I could feel the very hair rising on my
head and it was all I could do to call Tish. When we had roused
her, however, the glow had faded entirely and she said we had
had a nightmare.

The snare the next morning contained a skunk, and we moved on as
quickly as possible, without attempting to secure the thong, of
which we had several. We gathered some puffballs to soak for
breakfast and in a clearing I found some blackberry bushes. We
were very cheerful that morning, for if we could capture rabbits
and skunks, we were sure of other things, also, and soon we
would be able to add fish to our menu. True, we had not had much
time to commune with our souls, and Aggie's arms were so
sunburned that she could not bend them at the elbows. But, as
Tish said, we had already proved our contention that we could
get along without men or houses or things. Things, she said,
were the curse of modern life; we filled our lives with things
instead of thoughts.

It was when we were ready to cook the puffballs that we missed
the kettle! Tish was very angry; she said it was evident that
the bear was mischievous and that all bears were thieves. (See
the "Young Woodsman.") But I recalled the glow of the night
before, and more than once I caught Aggie's eyes on me, filled
with consternation. For we had seen that kettle leaving the camp
with some of our fire in it, and bears are afraid of fire!

We reached the lake at noon and it seemed as if we might soon
have time to sit down and rest. But there was a great deal to
do. Aggie was of no assistance on account of her arms, so Tish
and I put up the tent. The "Young Woodsman" said it was easy.
First you tied three long poles together near the top and stood
them up so they made a sort of triangle. Then you cut about a
dozen and filled in between the three. That looked easy, but it
took an afternoon, and our first three looked like this first
cut.

AS THE FIRST THREE LOOKED

AS THEY SHOULD HAVE LOOKED

We had caught a rabbit by noon, and Aggie being unfit for other
work, and the kettle being gone, Tish set her to roasting it. It
was not very good, but we ate some, being ravenous. The method
was simplicity itself--two forked sticks in the ground, one
across to hang the rabbit to and a fire beneath. It tasted rather
smoky.

In the afternoon we finished putting up the tepee, and Tish made
a fishhook out of a hairpin and tied it to a strong creeper I
had found. But we caught no fish. We had more rabbit for supper,
with some puffballs smoked and a few huckleberries. But by that
time the very sight of a rabbit sickened me, and Aggie began to
talk about broiled beefsteak and fried spring chicken.

We had seen no sign of the bear, or whatever it was, all day, and
it seemed likely we were not to be again disturbed. But a most
mysterious thing occurred that very night.

As I have said, we had caught no fish. The lake was full of them.
We sat on a bank that evening and watched them playing leapfrog,
and talked about frying them on red-hot stones, but nothing came
near the hairpin. At last Tish made a suggestion.

"We need worms," she said. "A grasshopper loses all his spirit
after he's been immersed for an hour, but a worm will keep on
wriggling and attracting attention for half a day."

"I wanted to bring a spade," said I.

But Tish had read of a scheme for getting worms that she said the
game warden of some place or other had guaranteed officially.

"You stick a piece of wood about two feet into the ground in a
likely spot," she said, "and rub a rough piece of bark or plank
across the top. This man claims, and it sounds reasonable, that
the worms think it is raining and come up for water. All you have
to do is to gather them up."

Tish found a pole for the purpose on the beach and set to work,
while Aggie and I prepared several hooks and lines. The fish
were jumping busily, and it seemed likely we should have more
than we could do to haul them in.

The experiment, however, failed entirely, for not a single worm
appeared. Tish laid it to the fact that it was very late and
that the worms were probably settled down for the night. It may
have been that, or it may have been the wrong kind of wood.

The mysterious happening was this: We rose quite early because
the tepee did not seem to be well anchored and fell down on us at
daybreak. Tish went down to the beach to examine the lines that
had been out all night, and found nothing. She was returning
rather dispirited to tell us that it would be rabbit again for
breakfast, when she saw lying on a flat stone half a dozen
beautiful fish, one or two still gasping, in our lost kettle!

Tish said she stood there, opening and shutting her mouth like
the fish. Then she gave a whoop and we came running. At first we
thought they might have been jumping and leaped out on to the
beach by accident, but, as Tish said, they would hardly have
landed all together and into a kettle that had been lost for two
nights and a day. The queer thing was that they had not been
caught with a hook at all. They hadn't a mark on them.

We were so hungry that we ate every one of then for breakfast.
It was only when we had eaten, and were sitting gorged and not
caring whether the tent was set up again or not, that we fell to
wondering about the fish. Tish fancied it might have been the
driver of the spring wagon, but decided he'd have sold us the
fish at thirty cents a pound live weight.

All day long we watched for a sign of our benefactor, but we saw
nothing. Tish set up more rabbit snares; not that she wanted
rabbits, but it had become a mania with her, and there were so
many of them that as they grew accustomed to us they sat round
our camp in a ring and criticized our housekeeping. She thought
if she got a good many skins she could have a fur robe made for
her automobile. As a matter of fact she found another use for
them.

It was that night, then, that we were sitting round the camp-
fire on stones that we had brought up from the beach. We had
seen nothing more of the bear, and if we had been asked we
should have said that the nearest human being was twenty-five
miles away.

Suddenly a voice came out of the woods just behind us, a man's
voice.

"Please don't be alarmed," said the voice. "But may I have a
little of your fire? Mine has gone out again."

"G-g-g-good gracious!" said Aggie. "T-Tish, get your revolver!"

This was for effect. Tish had no revolver.

All of us had turned and were staring into the woods behind, but
we could see no one. After Aggie's speech about the revolver it
was some time before the voice spoke again.

"Never mind, Aggie," Tish observed, very loud. "The revolver is
here and loaded--as nice a little thirty-six as any one needs
here in the woods."

She said afterward that she knew all the time there was no
thirty-
six caliber revolver, but in the excitement she got it mixed with
her bust measure. Having replied to Aggie, Tish then turned in
the direction of the voice.

"Don't skulk back there," she called. "Come out, where we can see
you. If you look reliable, we'll give you some fire, of course."

There was another pause, as if the stranger were hesitating.
Then:--

"I think I'd better not," he said with reluctance in his voice.
"Can't you toss a brand this way?"

By that time we had grown accustomed to the darkness, and I
thought I could see in the shadow of a tree a lightish figure.
Aggie saw it at the same instant and clutched my arm.

"Lizzie!" she gasped.

It was at that moment that Tish tossed the brand. It fell far
short, but her movement caught the stranger unawares. He ducked
behind the tree, but the flare of light had caught him. With the
exception of what looked like a pair of bathing-trunks he was as
bare as my hand!

There was a sort of astonished silence. Then the voice called
out:--"Why in the world didn't you warn me?" it said, aggrieved.
"I didn't know you were going to throw the blamed thing."

We had all turned our backs at once and Tish's face was awful.

"Take it and go," she said, without turning. "Take it and go."

>From the crackling of leaves and twigs we judged that he had
come out and got the brand, and when he spoke again it was from
farther back in the woods.

"You know," he said, "I don't like this any more than you do.
I've got forty-two mosquito bites on my left arm."

He waited, as if for a reply; but getting none he evidently
retreated. The sound of rustling leaves and crackling twigs grew
fainter, fainter still, died away altogether. We turned then
with one accord and gazed through the dark arches of the forest.
A glowing star was retreating there--a smouldering fire, that
seemed to move slowly and with an appearance of dejection.

It was the second time Aggie and I had seen fire thus carried
through the wood; but whereas about the kettle there had been a
glow and radiance that was almost triumphant, the brand we now
watched seemed smouldering, dejected, ashamed. Even Tish felt
it.

"The wretch!" she exclaimed. "Daring to come here like that! No
wonder he's ashamed."

But Aggie, who is very romantic, sat staring after the distant
torch.

"Mr. Wiggins suffered so from mosquitoes," she said softly.


IV

The next morning we found more fish awaiting us, and on the
smooth sand of the beach was a message written with a stick:--

 If you will leave a wire hairpin or two on this stone I
 can get bigger fish. What do you mean to do with all
 those rabbit skins?   (Signed) P.

Tish was touched by the fish, I think. She smoothed off the sand
carefully and wrote a reply:--

 Here are the hairpins. Thank you. Do you want the rabbit
 skins?   L. C.

All day we were in a state of expectancy. The mosquitoes were
very bad, and had it not been for the excitement of the P--
person I should have given up and gone home. I wanted mashed
potatoes and lima beans with butter dressing, and a cup of hot
tea, and muffins, and ice--in fact, I cannot think of anything I
did not want, except rabbits and fish and puffballs and such
blackberries as the birds did not fancy. Although we were well
enough--almost too well--the better I felt the hungrier I got.

Tish thought the time had now come to rest and invite our souls.
She set the example that day by going out on a flat rock in the
lake and preparing to think all the things she'd been waiting
most of her life to consider.

"I am ready to form my own opinions about some things," she said.
"I realize now that all my life the newspapers and stupid people
and books have formed my opinions. Now I'm going to think along
my own lines. Is there another life after this? Do I really
desire the suffrage? Why am I a Baptist?"

Aggie said she would like to invite her soul that day also, not
to form any opinions,--Tish always does that for her,--but she
had to get some clothes in September and she might as well think
them out.

So it happened that I was alone when I met the P-- person's
young woman.

I had intended to wander only a short way along the trail, but
after I had gone a mile or two it occurred to me as likely that
the spring-wagon driver would come back that way before long out
of curiosity, and I thought I might leave a message for him to
bring out some fresh eggs and leave them there. I could tell
Tish I had found a nest, or perhaps, since that would be lying,
I could put them in a nest and let her find them. I'd have
ordered tea, too, if I could have thought of any way to account
for it.

"I'm going to do some meditating myself to-day," I remarked,
"but I think better when I'm moving. If I don't come back in an
hour or so don't imagine I've been kidnaped."

Tish turned on her stone and looked at me.

"You will not be kidnaped," she said shortly. "I cannot imagine
any one safer than you are in that costume."

Well, I made my way along the trail as rapidly as I could. It
was twenty miles there and back and I've seen the day when two
city blocks would send me home to soak my feet in hot water. But
the sandals were easy to walk in and my calico skirt was short
and light.

I had no paper to write my message on, of course, but on the way
I gathered a large white fungus and I scraped a note on it with
a pin. With the fungus under mp arm I walked briskly along,
planning an omelet with the eggs, if we got any, and gathering
mushrooms here and there. It was the mushrooms that led me to
the discovery of a camping-place that was prehistoric in its
primitiveness--a clearing, surrounded by low bushes, and in the
center a fireplace of stones with a fire smouldering. At one
side a heap of leaves and small twigs for a bed, a stump for a
seat, and lying on top of it a sort of stone axe, made by
inserting a sharp stone into the cleft of a sapling and tying it
into place with a wild-grape tendril. Pegged out on the ground
to cure was a rabbit skin, indifferently scraped. It made our
aluminum kettle and canvas tepee look like a marble-vestibuled
apartment on Riverside Drive.

The whole thing looked pitiful, hungry. I thought of Tish sitting
on a stone inviting her soul, while rabbits came from miles round
to stick their heads through our nooses and hang themselves for
our dinner; and it seemed to me that we should share our plenty.
I thought it probable that the gentleman of the woods lived here,
and from the appearance of the place he carried all his
possessions with him when he wore his bathing-trunks. If I had
been in any doubt, the sight of Aggie's wire hairpin, sharpened
and bent into a serviceable fishhook, decided me. I scratched a
message for him on another fungus and left it:--

 If you need anything come to the Indian tepee at the
 lake. We have no clothing to spare, but are always glad
 to help in time of trouble.

 (Signed) ONE OF THE SIMPLE LIFERS.

I went on after that and about noon reached our point of exodus
from the wagon. I was tired and hot and I kept thinking of my
little dining-room at home, with the electric fan going, and
iced cantaloupe, and nobody worrying about her soul or thinking
her own thoughts, and no rabbits.

Our suitcases were safe enough in the hollow tree, and I thought
the spring wagon had been back already, for there were fresh
tracks. This discouraged me and I sat down on a log to rest. It
was then that I heard the girl crying.

She was crying softly, but in the woods sounds travel. I found
her on her face on the pine needles about twenty yards away,
wailing her heart out into a pink automobile veil, and she was
so absorbed in her misery that I had to stoop and touch her
before she looked up.

"Don't cry," I said. "If you are lost, I can direct you to a
settlement."

She looked up at me, and from being very red and suffused she
went quite pale. It seems that with my bare legs and sandals and
my hair down, which was Tish's idea for making it come in thick
and not gray, and what with my being sunburned and stained with
berries, she thought I was a wild woman. I realized what was
wrong.

"Don't be alarmed," I said somewhat grimly. "I'm rational
enough; if I hop about instead of walking, it's because I'm the
tomb of more rabbits than I care to remember, but aside from
that I'm all right. Are you lost?"

She sat up, still staring, and wiped her eyes.

"No. I have a machine over there among the trees. Are there--are
there plenty of rabbits in the woods? "

"Thousands." She was a pretty little thing, very young, and
dressed in a white motor coat with white shoes and hat.

"And--and berries?"

"There aren't many berries," I admitted. "The birds eat 'em. We
get the ones they don't fancy."

Now I didn't think for a moment that she was worried about my
diet, but she was worried about the food supply in the woods,
that was sure. So I sat down on a stump and told her about
puffballs, and what Tish had read about ants being edible but
acid, and that wood mice, roasted and not cooked too dry, were
good food, but that Aggie had made us liberate the only ones we
had caught, because a man she was once engaged to used to carry
a pet mouse in his pocket.

Nothing had really appealed to her until I mentioned Mr.
Wiggins. Then unexpectedly she began to cry again. And after
that I got the whole story.

It seems she was in love with a young man who was everything a
young man ought to be and had money as well. But the money was
the barrier really, for the girl's father wouldn't believe that
a youth who played polo, and did not have to work for a living,
and led cotillons, and paid calls in the afternoon could have
really good red blood in him. He had a man in view for her, she
said, one who had made his money himself, and had to have his
valet lay out his clothes for fear he'd make a mistake. Once the
valet had to go to have a tooth pulled and the man had to
decline a dinner.

"Father said," finished the little girl tearfully, "that if
Percy--that's his name, and it counted against him too--that if
Percy was a real man he'd do something. And then he hap-happened
on a book of my small brother's, telling how people used to live
in the woods, and kill their own food and make their own fire--"

"The 'Young Woodsman,' of course," I put in.

"And how the strong survived, but the weak succumbed, and he
said if Percy was a man, and not a t-tailor's dummy, he'd go out
in the woods, j-just primitive man, without anything but a pair
of bathing trunks, and keep himself alive for a month. If he s-
stood the test father was willing to forget the 'Percy.' He said
that he knew Mr. Willoughby could do it--that's the other man--
and that he'd come in at the end of the time with a deed for the
forest and mortgages on all the surrounding camps."

"And Percy agreed?"

"He didn't want to. He said it took mentality and physical
endurance as well as some courage to play polo. Father said it
did--on the part of the pony. Then s-some of the men heard of
it, and there were bets on it--ten to one he wouldn't do it and
twenty to one he couldn't do it. So Percy decided to try. Father
was so afraid that some of the campers and guides would help him
that he had notices sent out at Mr. Willoughby's suggestion
offering a reward if Percy could be shown to have asked any
assistance. Oh, I know he's sick in there somewhere, or starving
or--dead!"

I had had a great light break over me, and now I stooped and
patted the girl on the shoulder.

"Dead! Certainly not," I said. "I saw him last night."

"Saw him!"

"Well, not exactly saw him--there wasn't much light. But he's
alive and well, and--do you really want him to win?"

"Do I?" She sat up with shining eyes. "I don't care whether he
owns anything in the world but the trunks. If I didn't think I'd
add to his troubles I'd go into the woods this minute and find
him and suffer with him."

"You'd have to be married to him first," I objected, rather
startled.

But she looked at me with her cheeks as red strawberries. "Why?"
she demanded. "Father's crazy about primitive man--did primitive
man take his woman to church to be married, with eight brides
maids and a reception after the ceremony? Of course not. He
grabbed her and carried her off."

"Good Heavens! You're not in earnest?" "I think I am," she said
slowly. "I'd rather live in the woods with Percy and no ceremony
than live without him anywhere in the world. And I'll bet
primitive man would have been wiped off the earth if he hadn't
had primitive woman to add her wits to his strength. If Percy
only had a woman to help him!"

"My dear," I said solemnly, "he has! He has, not one, but
three!"

It took me some time to explain that Percy was not supporting a
harem in the Maine woods; but when at last she got my idea and
that the other two classed with me in beauty and attractiveness,
she was overjoyed.

"But Percy promised not to ask for help," she said suddenly.

"He needn't. My dear, go away and stop worrying about Percy--
he's all right. When is the time up?"

"In three weeks."

"I suppose father and the Willoughby person will come to meet
him?"

"Yes, and all the fellows from the club who have put money up on
him. We're going to motor over and father's bringing the
physical director of the athletic club. He's not only got to
survive, but he's got to be in good condition."

"He'll be in good condition," I said grimly. "Does he drink and
smoke?"

"A little, not too much. Oh, yes, I had forgotten!" She opened
up a little gold cigarette case, which she took from her pocket,
and extracted a handful of cigarettes.

"If you are going to see him," she said, "you might put them
where he'll find them?"

"Certainly not."

"But that's not giving them to him."

"My dear child," I said sternly, "Percy is going to come out of
these woods so well and strong that he may not have to work, but
he'll want to. And he'll not smoke anything stronger than corn-
silk, if we're to take charge of this thing."

She understood quickly enough and I must say she was grateful.
She was almost radiant with joy when I told her how capable Tish
was, and that she was sure to be interested, and about Aggie's
hay fever and Mr. Wiggins and the rabbit snares. She leaned over
and kissed me impulsively.

"You dear old thing!" she cried. "I know you'll look after him
and make him comfortable and--how old is Miss Letitia?"

"Something over fifty and Aggie Pilkington's about the same,
although she won't admit it."

She kissed me again at that, and after looking at her wrist
watch she jumped to her feet.

"Heavens!" she said. "It's four o'clock and my engine has been
running all this time!"

She got a smart little car from somewhere up the road, and the
last I saw of her she was smiling back over her shoulder and the
car running on the edge of a ditch.

"You are three darlings!" she called back. "And tell Percy I
love him--love him--love him!"

I thought I'd never get back to the lake. I was tired to begin
with, and after I'd gone about four miles and was limping with a
splinter in my heel and no needle to get it out with, I found I
still had the fungus message to the spring-wagon person under my
arm.

It was dark when I got back and my nerves were rather unstrung,
what with wandering from the path here and there, with nothing
to eat since morning, and running into a tree and taking the
skin off my nose. When I limped into camp at last, I didn't care
whether Percy lived or died, and the thought, of rabbit stew
made my mouth water.

It was not rabbit, however. Aggie was sitting alone by the fire,
waving a brand round her head to keep off mosquitoes, and in
front of her, dangling from the spit, were a dozen pairs of
frogs' legs in a row.

I ate six pairs without a question and then I asked for Tish.

"Catching frogs," said Aggie laconically, and flourished the
brand.

"Where?"

"Pulling them off the trees. Where do you think she gets them?"
she demanded.

A large mosquito broke through her guard at that moment and she
flung the torch angrily at the fire.

"I'm eaten alive!" she snapped. "I wish to Heaven I had smallpox
or something they could all take and go away and die."

The frogs' legs were heavenly, although in a restaurant I loathe
the things. I left Aggie wondering if her hay fever wasn't
contagious through the blood and hoping the mosquitoes would get
it and sneeze themselves to death, and went to find Tish.

She was standing in the margin of the lake up to her knees in
water, with a blazing torch in one hand and one of our tent
poles in the other. Tied to the end the pole was a grapevine
line, and a fishing-hook made of a hairpin was attached to it.

Her method, which it seems she'd heard from Charlie Sands and
which was not in the "Young Woodsman," was simple and effectual.

"Don't move," she said tensely when she heard me on the bank.
"There's one here as big as a chicken!"

She struck the flare forward, and I could see the frog looking
at it and not blinking. He sat in a sort of heavenly ecstasy,
like a dog about to bay at the moon, while the hook dangled just
at his throat.

"I'm half-ashamed to do it, Lizzie, it's so easy," she said
calmly, still tickling the thing's throat with the hook. "Grab
him as I throw him at you. They slip off sometimes."

The next instant she jerked the hook up and caught the creature
by the lower jaw. It was the neatest thing I have ever seen.
Tish came wading over to where I stood and examined the frog.

"If we only had some Tartare sauce!" she said regretfully. "I
wish you'd look at my ankle, Lizzie. There's something stuck to
it."

The something was a leech. It refused to come off, and so she
carried both frog and leech back to the camp. Aggie said on no
account to pull a leech off, it left its teeth in and the teeth
went on burrowing, or laid eggs or something. One must leave it
on until it was full and round and couldn't hold any more, and
then it dropped off.

So all night Tish kept getting up and going to the fire to see
if it was swelling. But toward morning she fell asleep and it
dropped off, and we had a terrible feeling that it was somewhere
in our blankets.

But the leech caused less excitement that evening than my story
of Percy and the little girl in the white coat. Aggie was
entranced, and Tish had made Percy a suit of rabbit skin with a
cap to match and outlined a set of exercises to increase his
chest measure before I was half through with my story.

But Percy did not appear, although we had an idea teat he was
not far off in the woods. We could hear a crackling in the
undergrowth, but when we called mere was no reply. Tish was
eating a frog's leg when the idea came to her.

"He'll never come out under ordinary circumstances in that--er--
costume," she said. "Suppose we call for help. He'll probably
come bounding. Help!" she yelled, between bites, as one may say.

"Help! Fire! Police!"

"Help!" cried Aggie. "Percy, help!" It sounded like "Mercy,
help!"

It worked like a charm. The faint cracking became louder,
nearer, turned from a suspicion to a certainty and from a
certainty to a fact. The bushes parted and Percy stood before
us. All he saw was three elderly women eating frogs' legs round
a fire under a cloud of mosquitoes. He stopped, dum-founded, and
in that instant we saw that he didn't need the physical
exercises, but that, of course, he did need the rabbit-skin
suit.

"Great Scott!" he panted. "I thought I heard you calling for
help."

"So we did," said Tish, "but we didn't need it. Won't you sit
down?"

He looked dazed and backed toward the bushes.

"I--I think," he said, "if there's nothing wrong I'd better not--
 "

"Fiddlesticks!" Tish snapped. "Are you ashamed of the body the
Lord gave you? Don't you suppose we've all got skins? And didn't
I thrash my nephew, Charlie Sands, when he was almost as big as
you and had less on, for bathing in the river? Sit down, man,
and don't be a fool."

He edged toward the fire, looking rather silly, and Aggie passed
him a frog's leg on a piece of bark.

"Try this, Percy," she said, smiling.

At the name he looked ready to run. "I guess you've seen the
notices," he said, "so you'll understand I cannot accept any
food or assistance. I'm very grateful to you, anyhow."

"You may take what food you find, surely," said Aggie. "If you
find a roasted frog's leg on the ground--so--there's nothing to
prevent you eating it, is there?"

"Nothing at all," said Percy, and picked it up. "Unless, of
course--"

"It's not a trap, young man," said Tish. "Eat it and enjoy it.
There are lots more where it carne from."

He relaxed at that, and on Tish's bringing out a blanket from
the tent to throw over his shoulders he became almost easy. He
was much surprised to learn that we knew his story, and when I
repeated the "love him" message, he seemed to grow a foot taller
and his eyes glowed.

"I'm holding out all right," he said. "I'm fit physically. But
the thing that gets my goat is that I'm to come out clothed.
Dorothea's father says that primitive man, with nothing but his
hands and perhaps a stone club, fed himself, made himself a
shelter, and clothed himself in skins. Skins! I'm so big that
two or three bears would hardly be enough. I did find a hole
that I thought a bear or two might fall into, and got almost
stung to death robbing a bee tree to bait the thing with honey.
But there aren't any bears, and if there were how'd I kill 'em?
Wait until they starve to death?"

"Rabbits!" said Tish.

He looked down at himself and he seemed very large in the
firelight. "Dear lady," he said, "there aren't enough rabbits in
the county to cover me, and how'd I put 'em together? I was a
fool to undertake the thing, that's all."

"But aren't you in love with her?" asked Aggie.

"Well, I guess I am. It isn't that, you know. I'm a good bit
worse than crazy about her. A man might be crazy about a mint
julep or a power boat, but--he'd hardly go into the woods in his
skin and live on fish until he's scaly for either of them. If I
don't get her, I don't want to live. That's all."

He looked so gloomy and savage that we saw he meant it, and
Aggie was perceptibly thrilled. Trish, however, was thinking
hard, her eyes on the leech. "Was there anything in the
agreement to prevent your accepting any suggestions?"

He pondered. "No, I was to be given no food, drink, shelter, or
any weapon. The old man forgot fire--that's how I came to beg
some."

"Fire and brains," reflected Tish. "We've given you the first
and we've plenty of the second to offer. Now, young man, this is
my plan. We'll give you nothing but suggestions. If now and then
you find a cooked meal under that tree, that's accident, not
design, and you'd better eat it. Can you sew?"

"I'm like the Irishman and the fiddle--I never tried, but I
guess I can." He was much more cheerful.

"Do you have to be alone?"

"I believe he took that for granted, in this costume."

"Will it take you long to move over here?"

"I think I can move without a van," he said, grinning. "My sole
worldly possessions are a stone hatchet and a hairpin fishhook."

"Get them and come over," commanded Tish. "When you leave this
forest at the end of the time you are going to be fed and
clothed and carry a tent; you will have with you smoked meat and
fish; you will carry under your arm an Indian clock or sundial;
you will have a lamp--if we can find a clamshell or a broken
bottle-- and you will have a fire-making outfit with your
monogram on it."

"But, my dear friend," he said, "I am not supposed to have any
assistance and--"

"Assistance!" Tish snapped. "Who said assistance? I'm providing
the brains, but you'll do it all yourself."

He moved over an hour or so later and Tish and I went into the
tent to bed. Somewhat later, when she limped to the fire to see
how the leech was filling up, he and Aggie were sitting together
talking, he of Dorothea and Aggie of Mr. Wiggins. Tish said they
were both talking at the same time, neither one listening to the
other, and that it sounded like this:--"She's so sweet and
trusting and honest--well, I'd believe what she said if she--"

"--fell off a roof on a rainy day and was picked up by a man
with a horse and buggy quite unconscious."

V

The next three weeks were busy times for Percy. He wore Tish's
blanket for two days, and then, finding it in the way, he
discarded it altogether. Seen in daylight it was easy to
understand why little Dorothea was in love with him. He was a
handsome young giant, although much bitten by mosquitoes and
scratched with briers.

The arrangement was a good one all round. He knew of things in
the wood we'd never heard of--wild onions and artichokes, and he
had found a clump of wild cherry trees. He made snares of the
fibers of tree bark, and he brought in turtles and made plates
out of the shells. And all the time he was working on his
outfit, curing rabbit skins and sewing them together with fibers
under my direction.

When he'd made one sleeve of his coat we had a sort of
celebration. He'd found an empty bottle somewhere in the woods,
and he had made a wild-cherry decoction that he declared was
cherry brandy, keeping it in the sun to ferment. Well, he
insisted on opening the brandy that day and passing it round. We
had cups made of leaves and we drank to his sleeve, although the
stuff was villainous. He had put the sleeve on, and it looked
rather inadequate. "Here's fun," he said joyously. "If my
English tailor could see this sleeve he'd die of envy. A
sleeve's not all of a coat, but what's a coat without a sleeve?
Look at it-- grace, ease of line, and beauty of material."

Aggie lifted her leaf.

"To Dorothea!" she said. "And may the sleeve soon be about her."

Tish thought this toast was not delicate, but Percy was
enchanted with it.

It was on the evening of the fourth day of Percy's joining our
camp that the Willoughby person appeared. It happened at a most
inauspicious tune. We had eaten supper and were gathered round
the camp-fire and Tish had put wet leaves on the blaze to make a
smudge that would drive the mosquitoes away. We were sitting
there, Tish and I coughing and Aggie sneezing in the smoke, when
Percy came running through the woods and stopped at the foot of
a tree near by.

"Bring a club, somebody," he yelled. "I've treed the back of my
coat."

Tish ran with one of the tent poles. A tepee is inconvenient for
that reason. Every time any one wants a fishing-pole or a
weapon, the tent loses part of its bony structure and sags like
the face of a stout woman who has reduced. And it turned out
that Percy had treed a coon. He climbed up after it, taking
Tish's pole with him to dislodge it, and it was at that moment
that a man rode into the clearing and practically fell off his
horse. He was dirty and scratched with brambles, and his once
immaculate riding- clothes were torn. He was about to take off
his hat when he got a good look at us and changed his mind.

"Have you got anything to eat?" he asked. "I've been lost since
noon yesterday and I'm about all in."

The leaves caught fire suddenly and sent a glow into Percy's
tree. I shall never forget Aggie's agonized look or the way Tish
flung on more wet leaves in a hurry.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but supper's over."

"But surely a starving man--"

"You won't starve inside of a week," Tish snapped. "You've got
enough flesh on you for a month."

He stared at her incredulously.

"But, my good woman," he said, "I can pay for my food. Even you
itinerant folk need money now and then, don't you? Come, now,
cook me a fish; I'll pay for it. My name is Willoughby--J. K.
Willoughby. Perhaps you've heard of me."

Tish cast a swift glance into the tree. It was in shadow again
and she drew a long breath. She said afterward that the whole
plan came to her in the instant of that breath.

"We can give you something," she said indifferently. "We have a
stewed rabbit, if you care for it."

There was a wild scramble in the tree at that moment, and we
thought all was over. We learned later that Percy had made a
move to climb higher, out of the firelight, and the coon bad
been so startled that he almost fell out. But instead of looking
up to investigate, the stranger backed toward the fire.

"Only a wildcat," said Tish. "They'll not come near the fire."

"Near!" exclaimed Mr. Willoughby. "If they came any nearer,
they'd have to get into it!"

"I think," said Tish, "that if you are afraid or them--although
you are safe enough if you don't get under the trees; they jump
down, you know--that you would better stay by the fire to-night.
In the morning we'll start you toward a road."

All night with Percy in the tree! I gave her a savage glance,
but she ignored me.

The Willoughby looked up nervously, and of course there were
trees all about.

"I guess I'll stay," he agreed. "What about that rabbit?"

I did not know Tish's plan at that time, and while Aggie was
feeding the Willoughby person and he was grumbling over his
food, I took Tish aside.

"Are you crazy?" I demanded. "Just through your idiocy Percy
will have to stay in that tree all night--and he'll go to sleep,
likely, and fall out."

Tish eyed me coldly.

"You are a good soul, Lizzie," she observed, "but don't overwork
your mind. Go back and do something easy--let the Willoughby
cross your palm with silver, and tell his fortune. If he asks
any questions I'm queen of the gypsies, and give him to
understand that we're in temporary hiding from the law. The
worse he thinks of us the better. Remember, we haven't seen
Percy."

"I'm not going to lie," I said sternly.

"Pooh!" Tish sneered. "That wretch came into the woods to gloat
over his rival's misery. The truth's too good for him."

I did my best, and I still have the silver dollar he gave me. I
told him I saw a small girl, who loved him but didn't realize it
yet, and there was another man.

"Good gracious," I said, "there must be something wrong with
your palm. I see the other man, but he seems to be in trouble.
His clothing has been stolen, for he has none, and he is hungry,
very hungry."

"Ha!" said Mr. Willoughby, looking startled. "You old gypsies
beat the devil! Hungry, eh? Is that all?"

The light flared up again and I could see clearly the pale spot
in the tree, which was Percy. But Mr. Willoughby's eyes were on
his palm.

"He has about decided to give up something--I cannot see just
what," I said loudly. "He seems to be in the air, in a tree,
perhaps. If he wishes to be safe he should go higher."

Percy took the hint and moved up, and I said that was all there
was in the palm. Soon after that Mr. Willoughby stretched out on
the ground by the fire, and before long he was asleep.

During the night I heard Tish moving stealthily about in the
tepee and she stepped on my ankle as she went out. I fell asleep
again as soon as it stopped aching. Just at dawn Tish came back
and touched me on the shoulder.

"Where's the blackberry cordial?" she whispered I sat up
instantly.

"Has Percy fallen out of the tree?"

"No. Don't ask any questions, Lizzie. I want it for myself. That
dratted horse fell on me."

She refused to say any more and lay down groaning. But I was too
worried to sleep again. In the morning Percy was gone from the
tree. Mr. Willoughby had more rabbit and prepared to leave the
forest. He offered Tish a dollar for the two meals and a bed,
and Tish, who was moving about stiffly, said that she and her
people took no money for their Hospitality. Telling fortunes was
one thing, bread and salt was another. She looked quite haughty,
and the Willoughby person apologized and went into the woods to
get his horse.

The horse was gone!

It was rather disagreeable for a time. He plainly thought we'd
taken it, although Tish showed him that the end of the strap had
been chewed partly through and then jerked free.

"If the creature smelled a wildcat," she said, "nothing would
hold it. None of my people ever bring a horse into this part of
the country."

"Humph!" said Mr. Willoughby. "Well, I'll bet they take a few
out!"

He departed on foot shortly after, very disgusted and
suspicious. We showed him the trail, and the last we saw of him
he was striding along, looking up now and then for wildcats.

When he was well on his way, Percy emerged from the bushes. I
had thought that he had helped Tish to take the Willoughby
horse, but it seems he had not, and he was much amazed when Tish
came through the wood leading the creature by the broken strap.

"I'll turn it loose," she said to Percy, "and you can capture
it. It will make a good effect for you to emerge from the forest
on horseback, and anyhow, what with the rabbit skin, the tent,
and the sundial and the other things, you have a lot to carry.
You can say you found it straying in the woods and captured it."

Percy looked at her with admiration not unmixed with reverence.
"Miss Letitia," he said solemnly, "if it were not for Dorothea,
I should ask you to marry me. I'd like to have you in my
family."


I am very nearly to the end of my narrative.

Toward the last Percy was obliged to work far into the night,
for of course we could not assist him. He made a full suit of
rabbit skins sewed with fibers, and a cap and shoes of coonskin
to match. The shoes were cut from a bedroom-slipper pattern that
Tish traced in the sand on the beach, and the cap had an eagle
feather in it. He made a birch-bark knapsack to hold the fish he
smoked and a bow and arrow that looked well but would not shoot.
When he had the outfit completed, he put it on, with the stone
hatchet stuck into a grapevine belt and the bow and arrow over
his shoulder, and he looked superb.

"The question is," he reflected, trying to view himself in the
edge of the lake: "Will Dorothea like it? She's very keen about
clothes. And gee, how she hates a beard!"

"You could shave as the Indians do," Tish said.

"How?"

"With a clamshell."

He looked dubious, but Tish assured him it was feasible. So he
hunted a clamshell, a double one, Tish requested, and brought it
into camp.

"I'd better do it for you," said Tish. "It's likely to be slow,
but it is sure."

He was eyeing the clamshell and looking more and snore uneasy.

"You're not going to scrape it off?" he asked anxiously. "You
know, pumice would be better for that, but somehow I don't like
the idea."

"Nothing of the sort," said Tish. "The double clamshell merely
forms a pair of Indian nippers. I'm going to pull it out."

But he made quite a fuss about it, and said he didn't care
whether the Indians did it or not, he wouldn't. I think he saw
how disappointed Tish was and was afraid she would attempt it
while he slept, for he threw the Indian nippers into the lake
and then went over and kissed her hand.

"Dear Miss Tish," he said; "no one realizes more than I your
inherent nobility of soul and steadfastness of purpose. I admire
them both. But if you attempt the Indian nipper business, or to
singe me like a chicken while I sleep, I shall be--forgive me,
but I know my impulsiveness of disposition--I shall be really
vexed with you."

Toward the last we all became uneasy for fear hard work was
telling on him physically. He used to sit cross- legged on the
ground, sewing for dear life and singing Hood's "Song of the
Shirt" in a doleful tenor.

"You know," he said, "I've thought once or twice I'd like to do
something--have a business like other fellows. But somehow
dressmaking never occurred to me. Don't you think the expression
of this right pant is good? And shall I make this gore bias or
on the selvage?"

He wanted to slash one trouser leg.

"Why not?" he demanded when Tish frowned him down. "It's awfully
fetching, and beauty half-revealed, you know. Do you suppose my
breastbone will ever straighten out again? It's concave from
stooping."

It was after this that Tish made him exercise morning and
evening and then take a swim in the lake. By the time he was to
start back, he was in wonderful condition, and even the horse
looked saucy and shiny, owing to our rubbing him down each day
with dried grasses.

The actual leave-taking was rather sad. We'd grown to think a
lot of the boy and I believe he liked us. He kissed each one of
us twice, once for himself and once for Dorothea, and flushed a
little over doing it, and Aggie's eyes were full of tears.

He rode away down the trail like a mixture of Robinson Crusoe
and Indian brave, his rubbing-fire stick, his sundial with
burned figures, and his bow and arrow jingling, his eagle
feather blowing back in the wind, and his moccasined feet thrust
into Mr. Willoughby's stirrups, and left us desolate. Tish
watched him out of sight with set lips and Aggie was whimpering
on a bank.

"Tish," she said brokenly, "does he recall anything to you?"

"Only my age," said Tish rather wearily, "and that I'm an
elderly spinster teaching children to defy their parents and
committing larceny to help them."

"To me," said Aggie softly, "he is young love going out to seek
his mate. Oh, Tish, do you remember how Mr. Wiggins used to ride
by taking his work horses to be shod!"


We went home the following day, which was the time the spring-
wagon man was to meet us. We started very early and were
properly clothed and hatted when we saw him down the road.

The spring- wagon person came on without hurry and surveyed us
as he came.

"Well, ladies," he said, stopping before us, "I see you pulled
it off all right."

"We've had a very nice time, thank you," said Tish, drawing on
her gloves. "It's been rather lonely, of course."

The spring-wagon person did not speak again until he had reached
the open road. Then he turned round.

"The horse business was pretty good," he said. "You ought to hev
seen them folks when he rode out of the wood. Flabbergasted
ain't the word. The was ding-busted."

Tish whispered to us to show moderate interest and to say as
little as possible, except to protest our ignorance. And we got
the story at last like this:--

It seems the newspapers had been full of the attempt Percy was
to make, and so on the day before quite a crowd had gathered to
see him come out of the wood.

"Ten of these here automobiles," said the spring-wagon person,
"and a hay-wagon full of newspaper fellows from the city with
cameras, and about half the village back home walked out or druv
and brought their lunches--sort of a picnic. I kep' my eye on
the girl and on a Mr. Willoughby.

"The story is that Willoughby who was the father's choice--
Willoughby was pale and twitching and kep' moving about all the
time. But the girl, she just kep' her eyes on the trail and
waited. Noon was the time set, or as near it as possible.

"The father talked to the newspaper men mostly. 'I don't think
he'll do it, boys!' he said. 'He's as soft as milk and he's
surprised me by sticking it out as long as he has. But mark my
words, boys,' he said, 'he's been living on berries and things
he could pick up off the ground, and if his physical condition's
bad he loses all bets!"

"It seems that, just as he said it, somebody pulled out a watch
and announced "noon." And on the instant Percy was seen riding
down the trail and whistling. At first they did not know it was
he, as they lead expected him to arrive on foot, staggering with
fatigue probably. He rode out into the sunlight, still
whistling, and threw an unconcerned glance over the crowd.

He looked at the trees, and located north by the moss on the
trunks, the S.-W. P. said, and unslinging his Indian clock he
held it in front of him, pointing north and south. It showed
exactly noon. It was then, and not until then, that Percy
addressed the astonished crowd.

"Twelve o'clock, gentlemen," he said. "My watch is quite
accurate."

Nobody said anything, being, as the S.-W. P. remarked, struck
dumb. But a moment afterward the hay-wagon started a cheer and
the machines took it up. Even the father "let loose," as we
learned, and the little girl sat back in her motor car and
smiled through her tears.

But Willoughby was furious. It seems he had recognized the
horse. "That's my horse," he snarled. "You stole it from me."

"As a matter of fact," Percy retorted, "I found the beast
wandering loose among the trees and I'm perfectly willing to
return him to you. I brought him out for a purpose."

"To make a Garrison finish!"

"Not entirely. To prove that you violated the contract by going
into the forest to see if you could find me and gloat over my
misery. Instead you found--By the way, Willoughby, did you see
any wild-cats?"

"Those three hags are in this!" said Willoughby furiously. "Are
you willing to swear you made that silly outfit?"

"I am, but not to you."

"And at that minute, if you'll believe me," said the S.-W. P.,
"the girl got out of her machine and walked right up to the
Percy fellow. I was standing right by and I heard what she said.
It was, curious, seeing he'd had no help and had gone in naked,
as you may say, and came out clothed head to foot, with a horse
and weapons and a watch, and able to make fire in thirty-one
seconds, and a tent made of about a thousand rabbit skins."

Tish eyed him coldly.

"What did she say?" she demanded severely. "She said: 'Those
three dear old things!'" replied the S.-W. P. "And she said: 'I
hope you kissed them for me.'"

"He did indeed," said Aggie dreamily, and only roused when Tish
nudged her in a rage.


Charlie Sands came to have tea with us yesterday at Tish's. He
is just back from England and full of the subject.

"But after all," he said, "the Simple Lifers take the palm.
Think of it, my three revered and dearly beloved spinster
friends; think of the peace, the holy calm of it! Now, if you
three would only drink less tea and once in a while would get
back to Nature a bit, it would be good for you. You're all too
civilized."

"Probably," said Tish, pulling down her sleeves to hide her
sunburned hands. "But do you think people have so much time in
the--er--woods?"

"Time!" he repeated. "Why, what is there to do?"

Just then the doorbell rang and a huge box was carried in. Tish
had a warning and did not wish to open it, but Charlie Sands
insisted and cut the string. Inside were three sets of sable
furs, handsomer than any in the church, Tish says, and I know
I've never seen any like them.

Tish and I hid the cards, but Aggie dropped her, and Charlie
Sands pounced on it.

"'The sleeve is now about Dorothea,'" he read aloud, and then,
turning, eyed us all sternly.

"Now, then," said Charlie Sands, "out with it! What have you
been up to this time?"

Tish returned his gaze calmly. "We have been in the Maine woods
in the holy calm," she said. "As for those furs, I suppose a
body may buy a set of furs if she likes." This, of course, was
not a lie. "As for that card, it's a mistake." Which it was
indeed.

"But--Dorothea!" persisted Charlie Sands.

"Never in my life knew anybody named Dorothea. Did you, Aggie?"

"Never," said Aggie firmly.

Charlie Sands apologized and looked thoughtful. On Tish's
remaining rather injured, he asked us all out to dinner that
night, and almost the first thing he ordered was frogs' legs.
Aggie got rather white about the lips.

"I--I think I'll not take any," she said feebly. "I--I keep
thinking of Tish tickling their throats with the hairpin, and
how Percy--"

We glared at her, but it was too late. Charlie Sands drew up his
chair and rested his elbows on the table.

"So there was a Percy as well as a Dorothea!" he said
cheerfully. "I might have known it. Now we'll have the story!"



TISH'S SPY

The Adventure of the Red-Headed Detective, the Lady Chauffeur,
and the Man Who Could Not Tell the Truth

I

It is easy enough, of course, to look back on our Canadian
experience and see where we went wrong.  What I particularly
resent is the attitude of Charlie Sands.

I am writing this for his benefit. It seems to me that a clean
statement of the case is due to Tish, and, in less degree, to
Aggie and myself.

It goes back long before the mysterious cipher. Even the
incident of our abducting the girl in the pink tam-o'-shanter
was, after all, the inevitable result of the series of
occurrences that preceded it.

It is my intention to give this series of occurrences in their
proper order and without bias. Herbert Spencer says that every
act of one's life is the unavoidable result of every act that
has preceded it.

Naturally, therefore, I begin with the engagement by Tish of a
girl as chauffeur; but even before that there were contributing
causes. There was the faulty rearing of the McDonald youth, for
instance, and Tish's aesthetic dancing.  And afterward there was
Aggie's hay fever, which made her sneeze and let go of a rope at
a critical moment. Indeed, Aggie's hay fever may be said to be
one of the fundamental causes, being the reason we went to
Canada.

It was like this: Along in June of the year before last, Aggie
suddenly announced that she was going to spend the summer in
Canada.

"It's the best thing in the world for hay fever," she said,
avoiding Tish's eye. "Mrs. Ostermaier says she never sneezed
once last year. The Northern Lights fill the air with ozone, or
something like that."

"Fill the air with ozone!" Tish scoffed. "Fill Mrs. Ostermaier's
skull with ozone, instead of brains, more likely!"

Tish is a good woman--a sweet woman, indeed; but she has a vein
of gentle irony, which she inherited from her maternal
grandfather, who was on the Supreme Bench of his country.
However, that spring she was inclined to be irritable. She could
not drive her car, and that was where the trouble really
started.

Tish had taken up aesthetic dancing in Mareb, wearing no stays
and a middy blouse and short skirt; and during a fairy dance,
where she was to twirl on her right toes, keeping the three
other limbs horizontal, she twisted her right lower limb
severely. Though not incapacitated, she could not use it
properly; and, failing one day to put on the brake quickly, she
drove into an open-front butter-and-egg shop.

[This was the time one of the newspapers headed the article:
"Even the Eggs Scrambled."]

When Tish decided to have a chauffeur for a time she advertised.
There were plenty of replies, but all of the applicants smoked
cigarettes--a habit Tish very properly deplores. The idea of
securing a young woman was, I must confess, mine.

"Plenty of young women drive cars," I said, "and drive well.
And, at least, they don't light a cigarette every time one stops
to let a train go by."

"Huh!" Tish commented. "And have a raft of men about all the
time!"

Nevertheless, she acted on the suggestion, advertising for a
young woman who could drive a car and had no followers. Hutchins
answered.

She was very pretty and not over twenty; but, asked about men,
her face underwent a change, almost a hardening. "You'll not be
bothered with men," she said briefly. "I detest them!"

And this seemed to be the truth. Charlie Sands, for instance,
for whose benefit this is being written, absolutely failed to
make any impression on her. She met his overtures with cold
disdain. She was also adamant to the men at the garage,
succeeding in having the gasoline filtered through a chamois
skim to take out the water, where Tish had for years begged for
the same thing without success.

Though a dashing driver, Hutchins was careful. She sat on the
small of her back and hurled us past the traffic policemen with
a smile.

[Her name was really Hutchinson; but it took so long to say it
at the rate she ran the car that Tish changed it to Hutchins.]

Really the whole experiment seemed to be an undoubted success,
when Aggie got the notion of Canada into her head. Now, as it
happened, owing to Tish's disapproval, Aggie gave up the Canada
idea in favor of Nantucket, some time in June; but she had not
reckoned with Tish's subconscious self. Tish was interested that
spring in the subconscious self.

You may remember that, only a year or so before, it had been the
fourth dimension.

[She became convinced that if one were sufficiently earnest one
could go through closed doors and see into solids. In the former
ambition she was unsuccessful, obtaining only bruises and
disappointment; but she did develop the latter to a certain
extent, for she met the laundress going out one day and, without
a conscious effort, she knew that she had the best table napkins
pinned to her petticoat. She accused the woman sternly--and she
had six!]

"Nantucket!" said Tish. "Why Nantucket?"

"I have a niece there, and you said you hated Canada."

"On the contrary," Tish replied, with her eyes partly shut, "I
find that my subconscious self has adopted and been working on
the Canadian suggestion. What a wonderful thing is this buried
and greater ego! Worms, rifles, fishing-rods, 'The Complete
Angler,' mosquito netting, canned goods, and sleeping-bags, all
in my mind and in orderly array!"

"Worms!" I said, with, I confess, a touch of scorn in my voice.
"If you will tell me, Tish Carberry--"

"Life preservers," chanted Tish's subconscious self, "rubber
blankets, small tent, folding camp-beds, a camp-stove, a meat-
saw, a wood-saw, and some beads and gewgaws for placating the
Indians." Then she opened her eyes and took up her knitting.
"There are no worms in Canada, Lizzie, just as there are no
snakes in Ireland. They were all destroyed during the glacial
period."

"There are plenty of worms in the United States," I said with
spirit. "I dare say they could crawl over the border--unless, of
course, they object to being British subjects."

She ignored me, however, and, getting up, went to one of her
bureau drawers. We saw then that her subconscious self had
written down lists of various things for the Canadian excursion.
There was one headed Foodstuffs. Others were: Necessary
Clothing: Camp Outfit; Fishing-Tackle; Weapons of Defense: and
Diversions. Under this last heading it had placed binoculars,
yarn and needles, life preservers, a prayer-book, and a cribbage-
 board.

"Boats," she said, "we can secure from the Indians, who make
them, I believe, of hollow logs. And I shall rent a motor boat.
Hutchins says she can manage one. When she's not doing that she
can wash dishes."

[We had been rather chary of motor boats, you may remember,
since the time on Lake Penzance, when something jammed on our
engine, and we had gone madly round the lake a number of times,
with people on various docks trying to lasso us with ropes.]

Considering that it was she who had started the whole thing, and
got Tish's subconscious mind to working, Aggie was rather
pettish.

"Huh!" she said. "I can't swim, and you know it, Tish. Those
canoe things turn over if you so much as sneeze in them."

"You'll not sneeze," said Tish. "The Northern Lights fill the
air with ozone."

Aggie looked at me helplessly; but I could do nothing. Only the
year before, Tish, as you may recall, had taken us out into the
Maine woods without any outfit at all, and we had lived on
snared rabbits, and things that no Christian woman ought to put
into her stomach. This time we were at least to go provisioned
and equipped.

"Where are we going?" Aggie asked.

"Far from a white man," said Tish. "Away from milk wagons and
children on velocipedes and the grocer calling up every morning
for an order. We'll go to the Far North, Aggie, where the red
man still treads his native forests; we'll make our camp by some
lake, where the deer come at early morning to drink and fish
leap to see the sunset."

Well, it sounded rather refreshing, though I confess that, until
Tish mentioned it, I had always thought that fish leaped in the
evening to catch mosquitoes.

We sent for Hutchins at once. She was always respectful, but
never subservient. She stood in the doorway while Tish
explained.

"How far north?" she said crisply. Tish told her. "We'll have no
cut-and-dried destination," she said. "There's a little steamer
goes up the river I have in mind. We'll get off when we see a
likely place."

"Are you going for trout or bass?"

Tish was rather uncertain, but she said bass on a chance, and
Hutchins nodded her approval.

"If it's bass, I'll go," she said. "I'm not fond of trout-
fishing."

"We shall have a motor boat. Of course I shall not take the
car."

Hutchins agreed indifferently. "Don't you worry about the motor
boat," she said. "Sometimes they go, and sometimes they don't.
And I'll help round the camp; but I'll not wash dishes."

"Why not?" Tish demanded.

"The reason doesn't really matter, does it? What really concerns
you is the fact."

Tish stared at her; but instead of quailing before Tish's
majestic eye she laughed a little.

"I've camped before," she said. "I'm very useful about a camp. I
like to cook; but I won't wash dishes. I'd like, if you don't
mind, to see the grocery order before it goes."

Well, Aggie likes to wash dishes if there is plenty of hot
water; and Hannah, Tish's maid, refusing to go with us on
account of Indians, it seemed wisest to accept Hutchins's
services.

Hannah's defection was most unexpected. As soon as we reached
our decision, Tish ordered beads for the Indians; and in the
evenings we strung necklaces, and so on, while one of us read
aloud from the works of Cooper. On the second evening thus
occupied, Hannah, who is allowed to come into Tish's sitting-
room in the evening and knit, suddenly burst into tears and
refused to go.

"My scalp's as good to me as it is to anybody, Miss Tish," she
said hysterically; and nothing would move her.

She said she would run no risk of being cooked over her own camp-
 fire; and from that time on she would gaze at Tish for long
periods mournfully, as though she wanted to remember how she
looked when she was gone forever.

Except for Hannah, everything moved smoothly. Tish told Charlie
Sands about the plan, and he was quite enthusiastic.

"Great scheme!" he said. "Eat a broiled black bass for me. And
take the advice of one who knows: don't skimp on your fishing-
tackle. Get the best. Go light on the canned goods, if
necessary; but get the best reels and lines on the market.
Nothing in life hurts so much," he said impressively, "as to get
a three-pound bass to the top of the water and have your line
break. I've had a big fellow get away like that and chase me a
mile with its thumb on its nose." This last, of course, was
purely figurative.

He went away whistling. I wish he had been less optimistic. When
we came back and told him the whole story, and he sat with his
mouth open and his hair, as he said, crackling at the roots, I
reminded him with some bitterness that he had encouraged us. His
only retort was to say that the excursion itself had been
harmless enough; but that if three elderly ladies, church
members in good standing, chose to become freebooters and
pirates the moment they got away from a corner policeman, they
need not blame him.

The last thing he said that day in June was about fishing-worms.

"Take 'em with you," he said. "They charge a cent apiece for
them up there, assorted colors, and there's something stolid and
British about a Canadian worm. The fish aren't crazy about 'em.
On the other hand, our worms here are--er--vivacious, animated.
I've seen a really brisk and on-to-its-job United States worm
reach out and clutch a bass by the gills."

I believe it was the next day that Tish went to the library and
read about worms. Aggie and I had spent the day buying tackle,
according to Charlie Sands's advice. We got some very good rods
with nickel-plated reels for two dollars and a quarter, a dozen
assorted hooks for each person, and a dozen sinkers. The man
wanted to sell us what he called a "landing net," but I took a
good look at it and pinched Aggie.

"I can make one out of a barrel hoop and mosquito netting," I
whispered; so we did not buy it.

Perhaps he thought we were novices, for he insisted on showing
us all sorts of absurd things--trolling- hooks, he called them;
gaff hooks for landing big fish and a spoon that was certainly
no spoon and did not fool us for a minute, being only a few
hooks and a red feather. He asked a dollar and a quarter for it!

[I made one that night at home, using a bit of red feather from
a duster. It cost me just three cents. Of that, as of Hutchins,
more later.]

Aggie, whose idea of Canada had been the Hotel Frontenac, had
grown rather depressed as our preparations proceeded. She
insisted that night on recalling the fact that Mr. Wiggins had
been almost drowned in Canada.

"He went with the Roof and Gutter Club, Lizzie," she said, "and
he was a beautiful swimmer; but the water comes from the North
Pole, freezing cold, and the first thing he knew--"

The telephone bell rang just then. It was Tish.

"I've just come from the library, Lizzie," she said. "We'd
better raise the worms. We've got a month to do it in. Hutchins
and I will be round with the car at eight o'clock to-night.
Night is the time to get them."

She refused to go into details, but asked us to have an electric
flash or two ready and a couple of wooden pails. Also she said
to wear mackintoshes and rubbers. Just before she rang off, she
asked me to see that there was a package of oatmeal on hand, but
did not explain. When I told Aggie she eyed me miserably.

"I wish she'd be either more explicit or less," she said. "We'll
be arrested again. I know it!"

[Now and then Tish's enthusiasms have brought us into collision
with the law--not that Tish has not every respect for law and
order, but that she is apt to be hasty and at times almost
unconventional.]

"You remember," said Aggie, "that time she tried to shoot the
sheriff, thinking he was a train robber? She started just like
this--reading up about walking-tours, and all that. I--I'm
nervous, Lizzie."

I was staying with Aggie for a few days while my apartment was
being papered. To soothe Aggie's nerves I read aloud from
Gibbon's "Rome" until dinner-time, and she grew gradually
calmer.

"After all, Lizzie," she said, "she can't get us into mischief
with two wooden pails and a package of oatmeal."

Tish and Hutchins came promptly at eight and we got into the
car. Tish wore the intent and dreamy look that always preceded
her enterprises. There was a tin sprinkling-can, quite new, in
the tonneau, and we placed our wooden pails beside it and the
oatmeal in it. I confess I was curious, but to my inquiries Tish
made only one reply:--

"Worms!"

Now I do not like worms. I do not like to touch them. I do not
even like to look at them. As the machine went along I began to
have a creepy loathing of them. Aggie must have been feeling the
same way, for when my hand touched hers she squealed.

Over her shoulder Tish told her plan. She said it was easy to
get fishing-worms at night and that Hutchins knew of a place a
few miles out of town where the family was away and where there
would be plenty.

"We'll put them in boxes of earth," she said, "and feed them
coffee or tea grounds one day and oatmeal water the next. They
propagate rapidly. We'll have a million to take with us. If we
only have a hundred thousand at a cent apiece, that's a clear
saving of a thousand dollars."

"We could sell some," I suggested sarcastically; for Tish's
enthusiasms have a way of going wrong.

But she took me seriously. "If there are any fishing clubs
about," she said, "I dare say they'll buy them; and we can turn
the money over to Mr. Ostermaier for the new organ."

Tish had bought the organ and had an evening concert with it
before we turned off the main road into a private drive.

"This is the place," Hutchins said laconically.

Tish got out and took a survey. There was shrubbery all round
and a very large house, quite dark, in the foreground.

"Drive onto the lawn, Hutchins," she said. "When the worms come
up, the lamps will dazzle them and they'll be easy to capture."

We bumped over a gutter and came to a stop in the middle of the
lawn.

"It would be better if it was raining," Tish said. "You know,
yourself, Lizzie, how they come up during a gentle rain. Give me
the sprinkling-can."

I do not wish to lay undue blame on Hutchins, who was young; but
it was she who suggested that there would probably be a garden
hose somewhere and that it would save time. I know she went with
Tish round the corner of the house, and that they returned in
ten minutes or so, dragging a hose.

"I broke a tool-house window," Tish observed, "but I left fifty
cents on the sill to replace it. It's attached at the other end.
Run back, Hutchins, and turn on the water; but not too much. We
needn't drown the little creatures."

Well, I have never seen anything work better. Aggie, who had
refused to put a foot out of the car, stood up in it and held
the hose. As fast as she wet a bit of lawn, we followed with the
pails. I spread my mackintosh out and knelt on it.

The thing took skill. The worms had a way of snapping back into
their holes like lightning.

Tish got about three to my one, and talked about packing them in
moss and ice, and feeding them every other day. Hutchins,
however, stood on the lawn, with her hands in her pockets, and
watched the house.

Suddenly, without warning, Aggie turned the hose directly on my
left ear and held it there.

"There's somebody coming!" she cried. "Merciful Heavens, what'll
I do with the hose?"

"You can turn it away from me!" I snapped.

So she did, and at that instant a young man emerged from the
shrubbery.

He did not speak at once. Probably he could not. I happened to
look at Hutchins, and, for all her usual savoir-faire, as
Charlie Sands called it, she was clearly uncomfortable.

Tish, engaged in a struggle at that moment and sitting back like
a robin, did not see him at once.

"Well!" said the young man; and again: "Well, upon my word!"

He seemed out of breath with surprise; and he took off his hat
and mopped his head with a handkerchief. And, of course, as
though things were not already bad enough, Aggie sneezed at that
instant, as she always does when she is excited; and for just a
second the hose was on him.

It was unexpected and he almost staggered. He looked at all of
us, including Hutchins, and ran his handkerchief round inside
his collar. Then he found his voice.

"Really," he said, "this is awfully good of you. We do need rain-
 - don't we?"

Tish was on her feet by that time, but she could not think of
anything to say.

"I'm sorry if I startled you," said the young man. "I--I'm a bit
startled myself."

"There is nothing to make a fuss about!" said Hutchins crisply.
"We are getting worms to go fishing."

"I see," said the young man. "Quite natural, I'm sure. And where
are you going fishing?"

Hutchins surprised us all by rudely turning her back on him.
Considering we were on his property and had turned his own hose
on him, a little tact would have been better.

Tish had found her voice by that time. "We broke a window in the
tool- house," she said; "but I put fifty cents on the sill."

"Thank you," said the young man.

Hutchins wheeled at that and stared at him in the most
disagreeable fashion; but he ignored her.

"We are trespassing," said Tish; "but I hope you understand. We
thought the family was away."

"I just happened to be passing through," he explained. "I'm
awfully attached to the place--for various reasons. Whenever I'm
in town I spend my evenings wandering through the shrubbery and
remembering--er--happier days."

"I think the lamps are going out," said Hutchins sharply. "If
we're to get back to town--"

"Ah!" he broke in. "So you have come out from the city?"

"Surely," said Hutchins to Tish, "it is unnecessary to give this
gentleman any information about ourselves! We have done no
damage- -"

"Except the window," he said.

"We've paid for that," she said in a nasty tone; and to Tish:
"How do we know this place is his? He's probably some newspaper
man, and if you tell him who you are this whole thing will be in
the morning paper, like the eggs."

"I give you my word of honor," he said, "that I am nothing of
the sort; in fact, if you will give me a little time I'd--I'd
like to tell all about myself. I've got a lot to say that's
highly interesting, if you'll only listen."

Hutchins, however, only gave him a cold glance of suspicion and
put the pails in the car. Then she got in and sat down.

"I take it," he said to her, "that you decline either to give or
to receive any information."

"Absolutely!"

He sighed then, Aggie declares.

"Of course," he said, "though I haven't really the slightest
curiosity, I could easily find out, you know. Your license
plates- -"

"Are under the cushion I'm sitting on," said Hutchins, and
started the engine.

"Really, Hutchins," said Tish, "I don't see any reason for being
so suspicious. I have always believed in human nature and seldom
have I been disappointed. The young man has done nothing to
justify rudeness. And since we are trespassing on his place--"

"Huh!" was all Hutchins said.

The young man sauntered over to the car, with his hands thrust
into this coat pockets. He was nice-looking, especially then,
when he was smiling.

"Hutchins!" he said. "Well, that's a clue anyhow. It--it's an
uncommon name. You didn't happen to notice a large 'No-
Trespassing!' sign by the gate, did you?"

Hutchins only looked ahead and ignored him. As Tish said
afterward, we had a good many worms, anyhow; and, as the young
man and Hutchins had clearly taken an awful dislike to each
other at first sight, the best way to avoid trouble was to go
home. So she got into the car. The young man helped her and took
off his hat.

"Come out any time you like," he said affably. "I'm not here at
all in the daytime, and the grounds are really rather nice. Come
out and get some roses. We've some pretty good ones--English
importations. If you care to bring some children from the
tenements out for a picnic, please feel free to do it. We're not
selfish."

Hutchins rudely started the car before he had finished; but he
ignored her and waved a cordial farewell to the rest of us.

"Bring as many as you like," he called. "Sunday is a good day.
Ask Miss--Miss Hutchins to come out and bring some friends
along."

We drove back at the most furious rate. Tish was at last
compelled to remonstrate with Hutchins.

"Not only are we going too fast," she said, "but you were really
rude to that nice young man."

"I wish I had turned the hose on him and drowned him!" said
Hutchins between her teeth.


II

Hutchins brought a newspaper to Tish the next morning at
breakfast, and Tish afterwards said her expression was
positively malevolent in such a young and pretty woman.

The newspaper said that an attempt had beer made to rob the
Newcomb place the night before, but that the thieves had
apparently secured nothing but a package of oatmeal and a tin
sprinkling-can, which they had abandoned on the lawn. Some
color, however, was lent to the fear that they had secured an
amount of money, from the fact that a silver half-dollar had
been found on the window sill of a tool-house. The Newcomb
family was at its summer home on the Maine coast.

"You see," Hutchins said to Tish, "that man didn't belong there
at all. He was just impertinent and--laughing in his sleeve."

Tish was really awfully put out, having planned to take the
Sunday school there for a picnic. She was much pleased, however,
at Hutchins's astuteness.

"I shall take her along to Canada," she said to me. "The girl
has instinct, which is better than reason. Her subconsciousness
is unusually active."

Looking back, as I must, and knowing now all that was in her
small head while she whistled about the car, or all that was
behind her smile, one wonders if women really should have the
vote. So many of them are creatures of sex and guile. A word
from her would have cleared up so much, and she never spoke it!

Well, we spent most of July in getting ready to go. Charlie
Sands said the mosquitoes and black flies would be gone by
August, and we were in no hurry.

We bought a good tent, with a diagram of how to put it up, some
folding camp-beds, and a stove. The day we bought the tent we
had rather a shock, for as we left the shop the suburban youth
passed us. We ignored him completely, but he lifted his hat.
Hutchins, who was waiting in Tish's car, saw him, too, and went
quite white with fury.

Shortly after that, Hannah came in one night and said that a man
was watching Tish's windows. We thought it was imagination, and
Tish gave her a dose of sulphur and molasses--her liver being
sluggish.

"Probably an Indian, I dare say," was Tish's caustic comment.

In view of later developments, however, it is a pity we did not
investigate Hannah's story; for Aggie, going home from Tish's
late one night in Tish's car, had a similar experience,
declaring that a small machine had followed them, driven by a
heavy-set man with a mustache. She said, too, that Hutchins,
swerving sharply, had struck the smaller machine a glancing blow
and almost upset it.

It was about the middle of July, I believe, that Tish received
the following letter:--

 Madam: Learning that you have decided to take a fishing-
 trip in Canada, I venture to offer my services as guide,
 philosopher, and friend. I know Canada thoroughly; can
 locate bass, as nearly as it lies in a mortal so to do;
 can manage a motor launch; am thoroughly at home in a
 canoe; can shoot, swim, and cook--the last indifferently
 well; know the Indian mind and my own--and will carry
 water and chop wood.

 I do not drink, and such smoking as I do will, if I am
 engaged, be done in the solitude of the woods.

 I am young and of a cheerful disposition. My object is
 not money, but only expenses paid and a chance to forget
 a recent and still poignant grief. I hope you will see
 the necessity for such an addition to your party, and
 allow me to subscribe myself, madam,

 Your most obedient servant,

 J. UPDIKE.

Tish was much impressed; but Hutchins, in whose judgment she
began to have the greatest confidence, opposed the idea.

"I wouldn't think of it," she said briefly.

"Why? It's a frank, straightforward letter."

"He likes himself too much. And you should always be suspicious
of anything that's offered too cheap."

So the Updike application was refused. I have often wondered
since what would have been the result had we accepted it!

The worms were doing well, though Tish found that Hannah
neglected them, and was compelled to feed them herself. On the
day before we started, we packed them carefully in ice and moss,
and fed them. That was the day the European war was declared.

"Canada is at war," Tish telephoned. "The papers say the whole
country is full of spies, blowing up bridges and railroads."

"We can still go to the seashore," I said. "The bead things will
do for the missionary box to Africa."

"Seashore nothing!" Tish retorted. "We're going, of course,--
just as we planned. We'll keep our eyes open; that's all. I'm
not for one side or the other, but a spy's a spy."

Later that evening she called again to say there were rumors
that the Canadian forests were bristling with German wireless
outfits.

"I've a notion to write J. Updike, Lizzie, and find out whether
he knows anything about wireless telegraphy," she said, "only
there's so little time. Perhaps I can find a book that gives the
code."

[This is only pertinent as showing Tish's state of mind. As a
matter of fact, she did not write to Updike at all.]

Well, we started at last, and I must say they let us over the
border with a glance; but they asked us whether we had any
firearms. Tish's trunk contained a shotgun and a revolver; but
she had packed over the top her most intimate personal
belongings, and they were not disturbed.

"Have you any weapons?" asked the inspector.

"Do we look like persons carrying weapons?" Tish demanded
haughtily. And of course we did not. Still, there was an untruth
of the spirit and none of us felt any too comfortable. Indeed,
what followed may have been a punishment on us for deceit and
conspiracy.

Aggie had taken her cat along--because it was so fond of fish,
she said. And, between Tish buying ice for the worms and Aggie
getting milk for the cat, the journey was not monotonous; but on
returning from one of her excursions to the baggage-car, Tish
put a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"That boy's on the train, Lizzie!" she said. "He had the
impudence to ask me whether I still drive with the license
plates under a cushion. English roses--importations!" said Tish,
and sniffed. "You don't suppose he went into that tent shop and
asked about us?"

"He might," I retorted; "but, on the other hand, there's no
reason why our going to Canada should keep the rest of the
United States at home!"

However, the thing did seem queer, somehow. Why had he told us
things that were not so? Why had he been so anxious to know who
we were? Why, had he asked us to take the Sunday-school picnic
to a place that did not belong to him?

"He may be going away to forget some trouble. You remember what
he said about happier days," said Tish.

"That was Updike's reason too," I relied. "Poignant grief!"

For just a moment our eyes met. The same suspicion had occurred
to us both. Well, we agreed to say nothing to Aggie or Hutchins,
for fear of upsetting them, and the next hour or so was
peaceful.

Hutchins read and Aggie slept. Tish and I strung beads for the
Indians, and watched the door into the next car. And, sure
enough, about the middle of the afternoon he appeared and stared
in at us. He watched us for quite a time, smoking a cigarette as
he did so. Then he came in and bent down over Tish.

"You didn't take the children out for the picnic, did you?" he
said.

"I did not!" Tish snapped.

"I'm sorry. Never saw the place look so well!"

"Look here," Tish said, putting down her beads; "what were you
doing there that night anyhow? You don't belong to the family."

He looked surprised and then grieved.

"You've discovered that, have you?" he said. "I did, you know--
word of honor! They've turned me off; but I love the old place
still, and on summer nights I wander about it, recalling happier
days."

Hutchins closed her book with a snap, and he sighed.

"I perceive that we are overheard," he said. "Some time I hope
to tell you the whole story. It's extremely sad. I'll not spoil
the beginning of your holiday with it."

All the time he had been talking he held a piece of paper in his
hand. When he left us Tish went back thoughtfully to her beads.

"It just shows, Lizzie," she said, "how wrong we are to trust to
appearances. That poor boy--"

I had stooped into the aisle and was picking up the piece of
paper which he had accidentally dropped as he passed Hutchins. I
opened it and read aloud to Tish and Aggie, who had wakened:--

"'Afraid you'll not get away with it! The red-haired man in the
car behind is a plain-clothes man.'"

Tish has a large fund of general knowledge, gained through
Charlie Sands; so what Aggie and I failed to understand she
interpreted at once.

"A plain-clothes man," she explained, "is a detective dressed as
a gentleman. It's as plain as pikestaff! The boy's received this
warning and dropped it. He has done something he shouldn't and
is escaping to Canada!"

I do not believe, however, that we should have thought of his
being a political spy but for the conductor of the train. He
proved to be a very nice person, with eight children and a
toupee; and he said that Canada was honeycombed with spies in
the pay of the German Government.

"They're sending wireless messages all the time, probably from
remote places," he said. "And, of course, their play now is to
blow up the transcontinental railroads. Of course the railroads
have an army of detectives on the watch."

"Good Heavens!" Aggie said, and turned pale.

Well, our pleasure in the journey was ruined. Every time the
whistle blew on the engine we quailed, and Tish wrote her will
then and there on the back of an envelope. It was while she was
writing that the truth came to her.

"That boy!" she said. "Don't you see it all? That note was a
warning to him. He's a spy and the red-haired man is after him."

None of us slept that night though Tish did a very courageous
thing about eleven o'clock, when she was ready for bed. I went
with her. We had put our dressing-gowns over our nightrobes, and
we went back to the car containing the spy.

He had not retired, but was sitting alone, staring ahead
moodily. The red-haired man was getting ready for bed, just
opposite. Tish spoke loudly, so the detective should hear.

"I have come back," Tish said, "to say that we know everything.
A word to the wise, Mister Happier Days! Don't try any of your
tricks!"

He sat, with his mouth quite open, and stared at us: but the red-
 haired man pretended to hear nothing and took off his other
shoe.

None of us slept at all except Hutchins. Though we had told her
nothing, she seemed inherently to distrust the spy. When, on
arriving at the town where we were to take the boat, he offered
to help her off with Aggie's cat basket, which she was carrying,
she snubbed him.

"I can do it myself," she said coldly; "and if you know when
you're well off you'll go back to where you came from. Something
might happen to you here in the wilderness."

"I wish it would," he replied in quite a tragic manner.

[As Tish said then, a man is probably often forced by
circumstances into hateful situations. No spy can really want to
be a spy with every brick wall suggesting, as it must, a firing-
squad.]

Well, to make a long story short, we took the little steamer
that goes up the river three times a week to take groceries and
mail to the logging-camps, and the spy and the red-haired
detective went along. The spy seemed to have quite a lot of
luggage, but the detective had only a suitcase.

Tish, watching the detective, said his expression grew more and
more anxious as we proceeded up the river. Cottages gave place
to logging-camps and these to rocky islands, with no sign of
life; still, the spy stayed on the steamer, and so, of course,
did the detective.

Tish went down and examined the luggage. She reported that the
spy was traveling under the name of McDonald and that the
detective's suitcase was unmarked. Mr. McDonald had some boxes
and a green canoe. The detective had nothing at all. There were
no other passengers.

We let Aggie's cat out on the boat and he caught a mouse almost
immediately, and laid it in the most touching manner at the
detective's feet; but he was in a very bad humor and flung it
over the rail. Shortly after that he asked Tish whether she
intended to go to the Arctic Circle.

"I don't know that that's any concern of yours," Tish said.
"You're not after me, you know."

He looked startled and muttered something into his mustache.

"It's perfectly clear what's wrong with him," Tish said. "He's
got to stick to Mr. McDonald, and he hasn't got a tent in that
suitcase, or even a blanket. I don't suppose he knows where his
next meal's coming from."

She was probably right, for I saw the crew of the boat packing a
box or two of crackers and an old comfort into a box; and Aggie
overheard the detective say to the captain that if he would sell
him some fishhooks he would not starve anyhow.

Tish found an island that suited her about three o'clock that
afternoon, and we disembarked. Mr. McDonald insisted on helping
the crew with our stuff, which they piled on a large flat rock;
but the detective stood on the upper deck and scowled down at
us. Tish suggested that he was a woman-hater.

"They know so many lawbreaking women," she said, "it's quite
natural."

Having landed us, the boat went across to another island and
deposited Mr. McDonald and the green canoe. Tish, who had talked
about a lodge in some vast wilderness, complained at that; but
when the detective got off on a little tongue of the mainland,
in sight of both islands, she said the place was getting crowded
and she had a notion to go farther.

The first thing she did was to sit on a box and open a map. The
Canadian Pacific was only a few miles away through the woods!

Hutchins proved herself a treasure. She could work all round the
three of us; she opened boxes and a can of beans for supper with
the same hatchet, and had tea made and the beans heated while
Tish was selecting a site for the tent.

But--and I remembered this later--she watched the river at
intervals, with her cheeks like roses from the exertion. She was
really a pretty girl--only, when no one was looking, her mouth
that day had a way of setting itself firmly, and she frowned at
the water.

We, Hutchins and I, set up the stove against a large rock, and
when the teakettle started to boil it gave the river front a
homy look. Sitting on my folding-chair beside the stove, with a
cup of tea in my hand and a plate of beans on a doily on a
packing-box beside me, I was entirely comfortable. Through the
glasses I could see the red- haired man on the other shore
sitting on a rock, with his head in his hands; but Mr. McDonald
had clearly located on the other side of his island and was not
in sight.

Aggie and Tish were putting up the tent, and Hutchins was
feeding the tea grounds to the worms, which had traveled
comfortably, when I saw a canoe coming up the river. I called to
Tish about it.

"An Indian!" she said calmly. "Get the beads, Aggie; and put my
shotgun on that rock, where he can see it." She stood and
watched him. "Primitive man, every inch of him!" she went on.
"Notice his uncovered head. Notice the freedom, almost the
savagery, of the way he uses that paddle. I wish he would sing.
You remember, in Hiawatha, how they sing as they paddle along?"

She got the beads and went to the water's edge; but the Indian
stooped just then and, picking up a Panama hat, put it on his
head.

"I have called," he said, "to see whether I can interest you in
a set of books I am selling. I shall detain you only a moment.
Sixty-three steel engravings by well-known artists; best hand-
made paper; and the work itself is of high educational value."

Tish suddenly put the beads behind her back and said we did not
expect to have any time to read. We had come into the wilderness
to rest our minds.

"You are wrong, I fear," said the Indian. "Personally I find
that I can read better in the wilds than anywhere else. Great
thoughts in great surroundings! I take Nietzsche with me when I
go fishing."

Tish had the wretched beads behind her all the time; and, to
make conversation, more than anything else, she asked about
venison. He shrugged his shoulders. J. Fenimore Cooper had not
prepared us for an Indian who shrugged his shoulders.

"We Indians are allowed to kill deer," he said; "but I fear you
are prohibited. I am not even permitted to sell it."

"I should think," said Tish sharply, "that, since we are miles
from a game warden, you could safely sell us a steak or two."

He gazed at her disapprovingly. "I should not care to break the
law, madam," he said.

Then he picked up his paddle and took himself and his scruples
and his hand-made paper and his sixty-three steel engravings
down the river.

"Primitive man!" I said to Tish, from my chair. "Notice the
freedom, almost the savagery, with which he swings that paddle."

We had brought a volume of Cooper along, not so much to read as
to remind us how to address the Indians. Tish said nothing, but
she got the book and flung it far out into the river.

There were a number of small annoyances the first day or two.
Hutchins was having trouble with the motor launch, which the
steamer had towed up the day we came, and which she called the
"Mebbe." And another civilized Indian, with a gold watch and a
cigarette case, had rented us a leaky canoe for a dollar a day.

[We patched the leak with chewing gum, which Aggie always
carried for indigestion; and it did fairly well, so long as the
gum lasted.]

Then, on the second night, there was a little wind, and the tent
collapsed on us, the ridgepole taking Aggie across the chest. It
was that same night, I think, when Aggie's cat found a porcupine
in the woods, and came in looking like a pincushion.

What with chopping firewood for the stove, and carrying water,
and baling out the canoe, and with the motor boat giving one
gasp and then dying for every hundred times somebody turned over
the engine, we had no time to fish for two days.

The police agent fished all day from a rock, for, of course, he
had no boat; but he seemed to catch nothing. At times we saw him
digging frantically, as though for worms. What he dug with I do
not know; but, of course, he got no worms. Tish said if he had
been more civil she would have taken something to him and a can
of worms; but he had been rude, especially to Aggie's cat, and
probably the boat would bring him things.

What with getting settled and everything, we had not much time
to think about the spy. It was on the third day, I believe, that
he brought his green canoe to the open water in front of us and
anchored there, just beyond earshot.

He put out a line and opened a book; and from that time on he
was a part of the landscape every day from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. At
noon he would eat some sort of a lunch, reading as he ate.

He apparently never looked toward us, but he was always there.
It was the most extraordinary thing. At first we thought he had
found a remarkable fishing-place; but he seemed to catch very
few fish. It was Tish, I think, who found the best explanation.

"He's providing himself with an alibi," she stated. "How can he
be a spy when we see him all day long? Don't you see how clever
it is?"

It was the more annoying because we had arranged a small core
for soap-and-water bathing, hanging up a rod for bath-towels and
suspending a soap-dish and a sponge-holder from an overhanging
branch. The cove was well shielded by brush and rocks from the
island, but naturally was open to the river.

It was directly opposite this cove that Mr. McDonald took up his
position.

This compelled us to bathe in the early morning, while the water
was still cold, and resulted in causing Aggie a most
uncomfortable half-hour on the fourth morning of our stay.

She was the last one in the pool, and Tish absent-mindedly took
her bathrobe and slippers back to the camp when she went. Tish
went out in the canoe shortly after. She was learning to use
one, with a life preserver on--Tish, of course, not the canoe.
And Mr. McDonald arriving soon after, Aggie was compelled to sit
in the water for two hours and twenty minutes. When Hutchins
found her she was quite blue.

This was the only disagreement we had all summer: Aggie's
refusing to speak to Tish that entire day. She said Mr. McDonald
had seen her head and thought it was some sort of swimming
animal, and had shot at her.

Mr. McDonald said afterward he knew her all the time, and was
uncertain whether she was taking a cure for something or was
trying to commit suicide. He said he spent a wretched morning.
At five o'clock that evening we began to hear a curious tapping
noise from the spy's island. It would last for a time, stop, and
go on.

Hutchins said it was woodpeckers; but Tish looked at me
significantly.

"Wireless!" she said. "What did I tell you?"

That decided her next move, for that evening she put some tea
and canned corn and a rubber blanket into the canoe; and in fear
and trembling I went with her.

"It's going to rain, Lizzie," she said, "and after all, that
detective may be surly; but he's doing his duty by his country.
It's just as heroic to follow a spy up here, and starve to death
watching him, as it is to storm a trench--and less showy. And
I've something to tell him."

The canoe tilted just then, and only by heroic effort, were we
able to calm it.

"Then why not go comfortably in the motor boat?"

Tish stopped, her paddle in the air. "Because I can't make that
dratted engine go," she said, "and because I believe Hutchins
would drown us all before she'd take any help to him. It's my
belief that she's known him somewhere. I've seen her sit on a
rock and look across at him with murder in her eyes."

A little wind had come up, and the wretched canoe was leaking,
the chewing gum having come out. Tish was paddling; so I was
compelled to sit over the aperture, thus preventing water from
coming in. Despite my best efforts, however, about three inches
seeped in and washed about me. It was quite uncomfortable.

The red-haired man was asleep when we landed. He had hung the
comfort over a branch, like a tent, and built a fire at the end
of it. He had his overcoat on, buttoned to the chin, and his
head was on his suit-case. He sat up and looked at us, blinking.

"We've brought you some tea and some canned corn," Tish said;
"and a rubber blanket. It's going to rain."

He slid out of the tent, feet first, and got up; but when he
tried to speak he sneezed. He had a terrible cold.

"I might as well say at once," Tish went on, "that we know why
you are here--"

"The deuce you do!" he said hoarsely.

"We do not particularly care about you, especially since the way
you acted to a friendly and innocent cat--one can always judge a
man by the way he treats dumb animals; but we sympathize with
your errand. We'll even help if we can."

"Then the--the person in question has confided in you?"

"Not at all," said Tish loftily. "I hope we can put two and two
together. Have you got a revolver?"

He looked startled at that. "I have one," he said; "but I guess
I'll not need it. The first night or two a skunk hung round;
two, in fact--mother and child--but I think they're gone."

"Would you like some fish?"

"My God, no!"

This is a truthful narrative. That is exactly what he said.

"I'll tell you what I do need, ladies," he went on: ""If you've
got a spare suit of underwear over there, I could use it. It'd
stretch, probably. And I'd like a pen and some ink. I must have
lost my fountain pen out of my pocket stooping over the bank to
wash my face."

"Do you know the wireless code?" Tish asked suddenly.

"Wireless?"

"I have every reason to believe," she said impressively, "that
one of the great trees on that island conceals a wireless
outfit."

"I see!" He edged back a little from us both.

"I should think," Tish said, eyeing him, "that a knowledge of
the wireless code would be essential to you in your occupation."

"We--we get a smattering of all sorts of things," he said; but
he was uneasy--you could see that with half an eye.

He accompanied us down to the canoe; but once, when Tish turned
suddenly, he ducked back as though he had been struck and
changed color. He thanked us for the tea and corn, and said he
wished we had a spare razor--but, of course, he supposed not.
Then:--

"I suppose the--the person in question will stay as long as you
do?" he asked, rather nervously.

"It looks like it," said Tish grimly. "I've no intention of
being driven away, if that's what you mean. We'll stay as long
as the fishing's good."

He groaned under his breath. "The whole d--d river is full of
fish," he said. "They crawled up the bank last night and ate all
the crackers I'd saved for to-day. Oh, I'll pay somebody out for
this, all right! Good gracious, ladies, your boat's full of
water!"

"It has a hole in it," Tish replied and upturned it to empty it.

When he saw the hole his eyes stuck out. "You can't go out in
that leaky canoe! It's suicidal!"

"Not at all," Tish assured him. "My friend here will sit on the
leak. Get in quick, Lizzie. It's filling."

The last we saw of the detective that night he was standing on
the bank, staring after us. Afterward, when a good many things
were cleared up, he said he decided that he'd been asleep and
dreamed the whole thing--the wireless, and my sitting on the
hole in the canoe, and the wind tossing it about, and everything-
 - only, of course, there was the tea and the canned corn!

We did our first fishing the next day. Hutchins had got the
motor boat going, and I put over the spoon I had made from the
feather duster. After going a mile or so slowly I felt a tug,
and on drawing my line in I found I had captured a large fish. I
wrapped the line about a part of the engine and Tish put the
barrel hoop with the netting underneath it. The fish was really
quite large-- about four feet, I think--and it broke through the
netting. I wished to hit it with the oar, but Hutchins said that
might break the fin and free it. Unluckily we had not brought
Tish's gun, or we might have shot it.

At last we turned the boat round and went home, the fish
swimming alongside, with its mouth open. And there Aggie, who is
occasionally almost inspired, landed the fish by the simple
expedient of getting out of the boat, taking the line up a bank
and wrapping it round a tree. By all pulling together we landed
the fish successfully. It was forty-nine inches by Tish's tape
measure.

Tish did not sleep well that night. She dreamed that the fish
had a red mustache and was a spy in disguise. When she woke she
declared there was somebody prowling round the tent.

She got her shotgun and we all sat up in bed for an hour or so.

Nothing happened, however, except that Aggie cried out that
there was a small animal just inside the door of the tent. We
could see it, too, though faintly. Tish turned the shotgun on it
and it disappeared; but the next morning she found she had shot
one of her shoes to pieces.

III

It was the day Tish began her diary that we discovered the red-
haired man's signal. Tish was compelled to remain at home most
of the day, breaking in another pair of shoes, and she amused
herself by watching the river and writing down interesting
things. She had read somewhere of the value of such records of
impressions:--

 10 A.M. Gull on rock. Very pretty. Frightened away by
 the McDonald person, who has just taken up his customary
 position. Is he reading or watching this camp?

 10.22.  Detective is breakfasting--through glasses, he
 is eating canned corn. Aggie--pickerel, from bank.

 10.40. Aggie's  cat, beside her, has caught a small
 fish. Aggie declares that the cat stole one of her worms
 and held it in the water. I think she is mistaken.

 11. Most extraordinary thing--Hutchins has asked
 permission to take pen and ink across to the detective!
 Have consented.

 11.20.  Hutchins is still across the river. If I did not
 know differently I should say she and the detective are
 quarreling. He is whittling something. Through glasses,
 she appears to stamp her foot.

 11.30. Aggie has captured a small sunfish. Hutchins is
 still across the river. He seems to be appealing to her
 for something--possibly the underwear. We have none to
 spare.

 11.40. Hutchins is an extraordinary girl. She hates men,
 evidently. She has had some sort of quarrel with the
 detective and has returned flushed with battle. Mr.
 McDonald called to her as she passed, but she ignored
 him.

 12, noon. Really, there is something mysterious about
 all this. The detective was evidently whittling a
 flagpole. He has erected it now, with a red silk
 handkerchief at end.  It hangs out over the water. Aggie-
  -bass, but under legal size.

 1.15 P.M. The flag puzzles Hutchins. She is covertly
 watching it. It is evidently a signal-- but to whom? Are
 the secret-service men closing in on McDonald?

 1. Aggie--pike!

 2. On consulting map find unnamed lake only a few miles
 away. Shall investigate to-morrow.

 3. Steamer has just gone. Detective now has canoe, blue
 in color. Also food. He sent off his letter.

 4. Fed worms. Lizzie thinks they know me. How kindness
 is its own reward! Mr. McDonald is drawing in his
 anchor, which is a large stone fastened to a rope. Shall
 take bath.

Tish's notes ended here. She did not take the bath after all,
for Mr. McDonald made us a call that afternoon.

He beached the green canoe and came up the rocks calmly and
smilingly. Hutchins gave him a cold glance and went on with what
she was doing, which was chopping a plank to cook the fish on.
He bowed cheerfully to all of us and laid a string of fish on a
rock.

"I brought a little offering," he said, looking at Hutchins's
back. "The fishing isn't what I expected but if the young lady
with the hatchet will desist, so I can make myself heard, I've
found a place where there are fish! This biggest fellow is three
and a quarter pounds."

Hutchins chopped harder than ever, and the plank flew up,
striking her in the chest; but she refused all assistance,
especially from Mr. McDonald, who was really concerned. He
hurried to her and took the hatchet out of her hand, but in his
excitement he was almost uncivil.

"You obstinate little idiot!" he said. "You'll kill yourself
yet."

To my surprise, Hutchins, who had been entirely unemotional
right along, suddenly burst into tears and went into the tent.
Mr. McDonald took a hasty step or two after her, realizing, no
doubt, that he had said more than he should to a complete
stranger; but she closed the fly of the tent quite viciously and
left him standing, with his arms folded, staring at it.

It was at that moment he saw the large fish, hanging from a
tree. He stood for a moment staring at it and we could see that
he was quite surprised.

"It is a fish, isn't it?" he said after a moment. "I-I thought
for a moment it was painted on something."

He sat down suddenly on one of our folding-chairs and looked at
the fish, and then at each of us in turn.

"You know," he said, "I didn't think there were such fish! I--
you mustn't mind my surprise." He wiped his forehead with his
handkerchief. "Just kick those things I brought into the river,
will you? I apologize for them."

"Forty-nine inches," Tish said. "We expect to do better when we
really get started. This evening we shall go after its mate,
which is probably hanging round."

"Its mate?" he said, rather dazed. "Oh, I see. Of course!"

He still seemed to doubt his senses, for he went over and
touched it with his finger. "Ladies," he said, "I'm not going
after the- the mate. I couldn't land it if I did get it. I am
going to retire from the game--except for food; but I wish, for
the sake of my reason, you'd tell me what you caught it with."

Well, you may heartily distrust a person; but that is no reason
why you should not answer a simple question. So I showed him the
thing I had made--and he did not believe me!

"You're perfectly right," he said. "Every game has its secrets.
I had no business to ask. But you haven't caught me with that
feather-duster thing any more than you caught that fish with it.
I don't mind your not telling me. That's your privilege. But
isn't it rather rubbing it in to make fun of me?"

"Nothing of the sort!" Aggie said angrily. "If you had caught it-
 -"

"My dear lady," he said, "I couldn't have caught it. The mere
shock of getting such a bite would have sent me out of my boat
in a swoon." He turned to Tish. "I have only one
disappointment," he said, "that it wasn't one of _our_ worms
that did the work."

Tish said afterward she was positively sorry for him, he looked
so crestfallen. So, when he started for his canoe she followed
him.

"Look here," she said; "you're young, and I don't want to see
you get into trouble. Go home, young man! There are plenty of
others to take your place."

He looked rather startled. "That's it exactly," he said, after a
moment. "As well as I can make out there are about a hundred. If
you think," he said fiercely, raising his voice, "that I'm going
to back out and let somebody else in, I'm not. And that's flat."

"It's a life-and-death matter," said Tish.

"You bet it's a life-and-death matter."

"And--what about the--the red-headed man over there?"

His reply amazed us all. "He's harmless," he said. "I don't like
him, naturally; but I admire the way he holds on. He's making
the best of a bad business."

"Do you know why he's here?"

He looked uneasy for once.

"Well, I've got a theory," he replied; but, though his voice was
calm, he changed color.

"Then perhaps you'll tell me what that signal means?"

Tish gave him the glasses and he saw the red flag. I have never
seen a man look so unhappy.

"Holy cats!" he said, and almost dropped the glasses. " Why, he--
 he must be expecting somebody!"

"So I should imagine," Tish commented dryly. "He sent a letter
by the boat to-day."

"The h--l he did!" And then: "That's ridiculous! You're
mistaken. As a--as a matter of fact, I went over there the other
night and commandeered his fountain pen."

So it had not fallen out of his pocket!

"I'll be frank, ladies," he said. "It's my object just now to
keep that chap from writing letters. It doesn't matter why, but
it's vital."

He was horribly cast down when we told him about Hutchins and
the pen and ink.

"So that's it!" he said gloomily. "And the flag's a signal, of
course. Ladies, you have done it out of the kindness of your
hearts, I know; but I think you have wrecked my life."

He took a gloomy departure and left us all rather wrought up.
Who were we, as Tish said, to imperil a fellow man? And another
thing- -if there was a reward on him, why should we give it to a
red- haired detective, who was rude to harmless animals and ate
canned corn for breakfast?

With her customary acumen Tish solved the difficulty that very
evening.

"The simplest thing," she said, "of course, would be to go over
during the night and take the flag away; but he may have more
red handkerchiefs. Then, too, he seems to be a light sleeper,
and it would be awkward to have him shoot at us."

She sat in thought for quite a while. Hutchins was watching the
sunset, and seemed depressed and silent. Tish lowered her voice.

"There's no reason why we shouldn't have a red flag, too," she
said. "It gives us an even chance to get in on whatever is about
to happen. We can warn Mr. McDonald, for one thing, if any one
comes here. Personally I think he is unjustly suspected."

[But Tish was to change her mind very soon.]

We made the flag that night, by lantern light, out of Tish's red
silk petticoat. Hutchins was curious, I am sure; but we
explained nothing. And we fastened it obliquely over the river,
like the one on the other side.

Tish's change of heart, which occurred the newt morning, was due
to a most unfortunate accident that happened to her at nine
o'clock. Hutchins, who could swim like a duck, was teaching Tish
to swim, and she was learning nicely. Tish had put a life-
preserver on, with a clothes-line fastened to it, and Aggie was
sitting on the bank holding the rope while she went through the
various gestures.

Having completed the lesson Hutchins went into the woods for red
raspberries, leaving Tish still practicing in the water with
Aggie holding the rope. Happening to sneeze, the line slipped
out of her hand, and she had the agonizing experience of seeing
Tish carried away by the current.

I was washing some clothing in the river a few yards down the
stream when Tish came floating past. I shall never forget her
expression or my own sense of absolute helplessness.

"Get the canoe," said Tish, "and follow. I'm heading for Island
Eleven."

She was quite calm, though pale; but, in her anxiety to keep
well above the water, she did what was almost a fatal thing--she
pushed the life-preserver lower down round her body. And having
shifted the floating center, so to speak, without warning her
head disappeared and her feet rose in the air.

For a time it looked as though she would drown in that position;
but Tish rarely loses her presence of mind. She said she knew at
once what was wrong. So, though somewhat handicapped by the
position, she replaced the cork belt under her arms and emerged
at last.

Aggie had started back into the woods for Hutchins; but, with
one thing and another, it was almost ten before they returned
together. Tish by that time was only a dot on the horizon
through the binocular, having missed Island Eleven, as she
explained later, by the rope being caught on a submerged log,
which deflected her course.

We got into the motor boat and followed her, and, except for a
most unjust sense of irritation that I had not drowned myself by
following her in the canoe, she was unharmed. We got her into
the motor boat and into a blanket, and Aggie gave her some
blackberry cordial at once. It was some time before her teeth
ceased chattering so she could speak. When she did it was to
announce that she had made a discovery.

"He's a spy, all right!" she said. "And that Indian is another.
Neither of them saw me as I floated past. They were on Island
Eleven. Mr. McDonald wrote something and gave it to the Indian.
It wasn't a letter or he'd have sent it by the boat. He didn't
even put it in an envelope, so far as I could see. It's probably
in cipher."

Well, we took her home, and she had a boiled egg at dinner.

The rest of us had fish. It is one of Tish's theories that fish
should only be captured for food, and that all fish caught must
be eaten. I do not know when I have seen fish come as easy.
Perhaps it was the worms, which had grown both long and fat, so
that one was too much for a hook; and we cut them with scissors,
like tape or ribbon. Aggie and I finally got so sick of fish
that while Tish's head was turned we dropped in our lines
without bait. But, even at that, Aggie, reeling in her line to
go home, caught a three- pound bass through the gills and could
not shake it off.

We tried to persuade Tish to lie down that afternoon, but she
refused.

"I'm not sick," she said, "even if you two idiots did try to
drown me. And I'm on the track of something. If that was a
letter, why didn't he send it by the boat?"

Just then her eye fell on the flagpole, and we followed her
horrified gaze. The flag had been neatly cut away!

Tish's eyes narrowed. She looked positively dangerous; and
within five minutes she had cut another flag out of the back
breadth of the petticoat and flung it defiantly in the air. Who
had cut away the signal--McDonald or the detective? We had
planned to investigate the nameless lake that afternoon, Tish
being like Colonel Roosevelt in her thirst for information, as
well as in the grim pugnacity that is her dominant
characteristic; but at the last minute she decided not to go.

"You and Aggie go, Lizzie," she said. "I've got something on
hand."

"Tish!" Aggie wailed. "You'll drown yourself or something."

"Don't be a fool!" Tish snapped. "There's a portage, but you and
Lizzie can carry the canoe across on your heads. I've seen
pictures of it. It's easy. And keep your eyes open for a
wireless outfit. There's one about, that's sure!"

"Lots of good it will do to keep our eyes open," I said with
some bitterness, "with our heads inside the canoe!"

We finally started and Hutchins went with us. It was Hutchins,
too, who voiced the way we all felt when we had crossed the
river and were preparing for what she called the portage.

"She wants to get us out of the way, Miss Lizzie," she said.
"Can you imagine what mischief she's up to?"

"That is not a polite way to speak of Miss Tish, Hutchins," I
said coldly. Nevertheless, my heart sank.

Hutchins and I carried the canoe. It was a hot day and there was
no path. Aggie, who likes a cup of hot tea at five o'clock, had
brought along a bottle filled with tea, and a small basket
containing sugar and cups.

Personally I never had less curiosity about a lake. As a matter
of fact I wished there was no lake. Twice--being obliged, as it
were, to walk blindly and the canoe being excessively heavy--I,
who led the way, ran the front end of the thing against the
trunk of a tree, and both Hutchins and I sat down violently,
under the canoe as a result of the impact.

To add to the discomfort of the situation Aggie declared that we
were being followed by a bear, and at the same instant stepped
into a swamp up to her knees. She became calm at once, with the
calmness of despair.

"Go and leave me, Lizzie!" she said. "He is just behind those
bushes. I may sink before he gets me--that's one comfort."

Hutchins found a log and, standing on it, tried to pull her up;
but she seemed firmly fastened. Aggie went quite white; and,
almost beside myself, I poured her a cup of hot tea, which she
drank. I remember she murmured Mr. Wiggins's name, and
immediately after she yelled that the bear was coming.

It was, however, the detective who emerged from the bushes. He
got Aggie out with one good heave, leaving both her shoes gone
forever; and while she collapsed, whimpering, he folded his arms
and stared at all of us angrily.

"What sort of damnable idiocy is this?" he demanded in a most
unpleasant tone.

Aggie revived and sat upright.

"That's our affair, isn't it?" said Hutchins curtly.

"Not by a blamed sight!" was his astonishing reply.

"The next time I am sinking in a morass, let me sink," Aggie
said, with simple dignity.

He did not speak another word, but gave each of us a glance of
the most deadly contempt, and finished up with Hutchins.

"What I don't understand," he said furiously, "is why you have
to lend yourself to this senile idiocy. Because some old women
choose to sink themselves in a swamp is no reason why you should
commit suicide!"

Aggie said afterward only the recollection that he had saved her
life prevented her emptying the tea on him. I should hardly have
known Hutchins.

"Naturally," she said in a voice thick with fury, "you are in a
position to insult these ladies, and you do. But I warn you, if
you intend to keep on, this swamp is nothing. We like it here.
We may stay for months. I hope you have your life insured."

Perhaps we should have understood it all then. Of course Charlie
Sands, for whom I am writing this, will by this time, with his
keen mind, comprehend it all; but I assure you we suspected
nothing.

How simple, when you line it up: The country house and the
garden hose; the detective, with no camp equipment; Mr. McDonald
and the green canoe; the letter on the train; the red flag; the
girl in the pink tam-o'-shanter--who has not yet appeared, but
will shortly; Mr. McDonald's incriminating list--also not yet,
but soon.

How inevitably they led to what Charlie Sands has called our
crime!

The detective, who was evidently very strong, only glared at
her. Then he swung the canoe up on his head and, turning about,
started back the way we had come. Though Hutchins and Aggie were
raging, I was resigned. My neck was stiff and my shoulders
ached. We finished our tea in silence and then made our way back
to the river.

I have now reached Tish's adventure. It is not my intention in
this record to defend Tish. She thought her conclusions were
correct. Charlie Sands says she is like Shaw--she has got a
crooked point of view, but she believes she is seeing straight.
And, after a while, if you look her way long enough you get a
sort of mental astigmatism.

So I shall confess at once that, at the time, I saw nothing
immoral in what she did that afternoon while we were having our
adventure in the swamp.

I was putting cloths wrung out of arnica and hot water on my
neck when she came home, and Hutchins was baking biscuit--she
was a marvelous cook, though Aggie, who washed the dishes,
objected to the number of pans she used.

Tish ignored both my neck and the biscuits, and, marching up the
bank, got her shotgun from the tent and loaded it.

"We may be attacked at any time," she said briefly; and, getting
the binocular, she searched the river with a splendid sweeping
glance. "At any time. Hutchins, take these glasses, please, and
watch that we are not disturbed."

"I'm baking biscuit, Miss Letitia."

"Biscuit!" said Tish scornfully. "Biscuit in times like these?"

She walked up to the camp stove and threw the oven door open;
but, though I believe she had meant to fling them into the
river, she changed her mind when she saw them.

"Open a jar of honey, Hutchins," she said, and closed the oven;
but her voice was abstracted. "You can watch the river from the
stove, Hutchins," she went on. "Miss Aggie and Miss Lizzie and I
must confer together."

So we went into the tent, and Tish closed and fastened it.

"Now," she said, "I've got the papers."

"Papers?"

"The ones Mr. McDonald gave that Indian this morning. I had an
idea he'd still have them. You can't hurry an Indian. I waited
in the bushes until he went in swimming. Then I went through his
pockets."

"Tish Carberry!" cried Aggie.

"These are not times to be squeamish," Tish said loftily. "I'm
neutral; of course; but Great Britain has had this war forced on
her and I'm going to see that she has a fair show. I've ordered
all my stockings from the same shop in London, for twenty years,
and squarer people never lived. Look at these--how innocent they
look, until one knows!"

She produced two papers from inside her waist. I must confess
that, at first glance, I saw nothing remarkable.

"The first one looks," said Tish, "like a grocery order. It's
meant to look like that. It's relieved my mind of one thing--
McDonald's got no wireless or he wouldn't be sending cipher
messages by an Indian."

It was written on a page torn out of a pocket notebook and the
page was ruled with an inch margin at the left. This was the
document: -

 1 Dozen eggs.

 20 Yards fishing-line.

 1 pkg. Needles--anything to sew a button on.

 1 doz. A B C bass hooks.

 3 lbs. Meat--anything so it isn't fish.

 1 bot. Ink for fountain pen.

 3 Tins sardines.

 1 Extractor.

Well, I could not make anything of it; but, of course, I have
not Tish's mind. Aggie was almost as bad.

"What's an extractor?" she asked.

"Exactly!" said Tish. "What is an extractor? Is the fellow going
to pull teeth? No! He needed an _e_; so he made up a word."

She ran her finger down the first letters of the second column.
"D-y-n-a-m-i-t-e!" she said triumphantly. "Didn't I tell you?"

IV

Well, there it was--staring at us. I felt positively chilled. He
looked so young and agreeable, and, as Aggie said, he had such
nice teeth. And to know him for what he was--it was tragic! But
that was not all.

"Add the numbers!" said Tish. "Thirty-one tons, perhaps, of
dynamite! And that's only part," said Tish. "Here's the most
damning thing of all--a note to his accomplice!"

"Damning" is here used in the sense of condemnatory. We are none
of us addicted to profanity.

We read the other paper, which had been in a sealed envelope,
but without superscription. It is before me as I write, and I am
copying it exactly:--

 I shall have to see you. I'm going crazy! Don't you
 realize that this is a matter of life and death to me?
 Come to Island Eleven to-night, won't you? And give me a
 chance to talk, anyhow. Something has got to be done and
 done soon. I'm desperate!

Aggie sneezed three times in sheer excitement; for anyone can
see how absolutely incriminating the letter was. It was not
signed, but it was in the same writing as the list.

Tish, who knows something about everything, said the writing
denoted an unscrupulous and violent nature.

"The _y_ is especially vicious," she said. "I wouldn't trust a
man who made a _y_ like that to carry a sick child to the
doctor!"

The thing, of course, was to decide at once what measures to
take. The boat would not come again for two days, and to send a
letter by it to the town marshal or sheriff, or whatever the
official is in Canada who takes charge of spies, would be
another loss of time.

"Just one thing," said Tish. "I'll plan this out and find some
way to deal with the wretch; but I wouldn't say anything to
Hutchins. She's a nice little thing, though she is a fool about
a motor boat. There's no case in scaring her."

For some reason or other, however, Hutchins was out of spirits
that night.

"I hope you're not sick, Hutchins?" said Tish.

"No, indeed, Miss Tish."

"You're not eating your fish."

"I'm sick of fish," she said calmly. "I've eaten so much fish
that when I see a hook I have a mad desire to go and hang myself
on it."

"Fish," said Tish grimly, "is good for the brain. I do not care
to boast, but never has my mind been so clear as it is to-
night."

Now certainly, though Tish's tone was severe, there was nothing
in it to hurt the girl; but she got up from the cracker box on
which she was sitting, with her eyes filled with tears.

"Don't mind me. I'm a silly fool," she said; and went down to
the river and stood looking out over it.

It quite spoiled our evening. Aggie made her a hot lemonade and,
I believe, talked to her about Mr. Wiggins, and how, when he was
living, she had had fits of weeping without apparent cause. But
if the girl was in love, as we surmised, she said nothing about
it. She insisted that it was too much fish and nervous strain
about the Mebbe.

"I never know," she said, "when we start out whether we're going
to get back or be marooned and starve to death on some island."

Tish said afterward that her subconscious self must have taken
the word "marooned" and played with it; for in ten minutes or so
her plan popped into her head.

"'Full-panoplied from the head of Jove,' Lizzie," she said.
"Really, it is not necessary to think if one only has faith. The
supermind does it all without effort. I do not dislike the young
man; but I must do my duty."

Tish's plan was simplicity itself. We were to steal his canoe.

"Then we'll have him," she finished. "The current's too strong
there for him to swim to the mainland."

"He might try it and drown," Aggie objected. "Spy or no spy,
he's somebody's son."

"War is no time to be chicken-hearted," Tish replied.

I confess I ate little all that day. At noon Mr. McDonald came
and borrowed two eggs from us.

"I've sent over to a store across country, by my Indian guide,
philosopher, and friend," he said, "for some things I needed;
but I dare say he's reading Byron somewhere and has forgotten
it."

"Guide, philosopher, and friend!" I caught Tish's eye. McDonald
had written the Updike letter! McDonald had meant to use our
respectability to take him across the border!

We gave him the eggs, but Tish said afterward she was not
deceived for a moment.

"The Indian has told him," she said, "and he's allaying our
suspicions. Oh, he's clever enough! "Know the Indian mind and my
own!'" she quoted from the Updike letter. "'I know Canada
thoroughly.' 'My object is not money.' I should think not!"

Tish stole the green canoe that night. She put on the life
preserver and we tied the end of the rope that Aggie had let
slip to the canoe. The life- preserver made it difficult to
paddle, Tish said, but she felt more secure. If she struck a
rock and upset, at least she would not drown; and we could start
after her at dawn with the Mebbe.

"I'll be somewhere down the river," she said, "and safe enough,
most likely, unless there are falls."

Hutchins watched in a puzzled way, for Tish did not leave until
dusk.

"You'd better let me follow you with the launch, Miss Tish," she
said. "Just remember that if the canoe sinks you're tied to it."

"I'm on serious business to-night, Hutchins," Tish said
ominously. "You are young, and I refuse to trouble your young
mind; but your ears are sharp. If you hear any shooting, get the
boat and follow me."

The mention of shooting made me very nervous. We watched Tish as
long as we could see her; then we returned to the tent, and
Aggie and I crocheted by the hanging lantern. Two hours went by.
At eleven o'clock Tish had not returned and Hutchins was in the
motor boat, getting it ready to start.

"I like courage, Miss Lizzie," she said to me; "but this thing
of elderly women, with some sort of bug, starting out at night
in canoes is too strong for me. Either she's going to stay in at
night or I'm going home."

"Elderly nothing!" I said, with some spirit. "She is in the
prime of life. Please remember, Hutchins, that you are speaking
of your employer. Miss Tish has no bug, as you call it."

"Oh, she's rational enough," Hutchins retorted: "but she is a
woman of one idea and that sort of person is dangerous."

I was breathless at her audacity.

"Come now, Miss Lizzie," she said, "how can I help when I don't
know what is being done? I've done my best up here to keep you
comfortable and restrain Miss Tish's recklessness; but I ought
to know something."

She was right; and, Tish or no Tish, then and there I told her.
She was more than astonished. She sat in the motor boat, with a
lantern at her feet, and listened.

"I see," she said slowly. "So the--so Mr. McDonald is a spy and
has sent for dynamite to destroy the railroad! And--and the red-
haired man is a detective! How do you know he is a detective?"

I told her then about the note we had picked up from beside her
in the train, and because she was so much interested she really
seemed quite thrilled. I brought the cipher grocery list and the
other note down to her.

"It's quite convincing, isn't it?" she said. "And--and exciting!
I don't know when I've been so excited."

She really was. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked exceedingly
pretty.

"The thing to do," she said, "is to teach him a lesson. He's
young. He mayn't always have had to stoop to such--such
criminality. If we can scare him thoroughly, it might do him a
lot of good."

I said I was afraid Tish took a more serious view of things and
would notify the authorities. And at that moment there came two
or three shots--then silence.

I shall never forget the ride after Tish and how we felt when we
failed to find her; for there was no sign of her. The wind had
come up, and, what with seeing Tish tied to that wretched canoe
and sinking with it or shot through the head and lying dead in
the bottom of it, we were about crazy. As we passed Island
Eleven we could see the spy's camp-fire and his tent, but no
living person.

At four in the morning we gave up and started back, heavy-
hearted. What, therefore, was our surprise to find Tish sitting
by the fire in her bathrobe, with a cup of tea in her lap and
her feet in a foot-tub of hot water! Considering all we had gone
through and that we had obeyed orders exactly, she was
distinctly unjust. Indeed, at first she quite refused to speak
to any of us.

"I do think, Tish," Aggie said as she stood shivering by the
fire, "that you might at least explain where you have been. We
have been going up and down the river for hours, burying you
over and over."

Tish took a sip of tea, but said nothing.

"You said," I reminded her, "that if there was shooting, we were
to start after you at once. When we heard the shots, we went, of
course."

Tish leaned over and, taking the teakettle from the fire, poured
more water into the foot-tub. Then at last she turned to speak.

"Bring some absorbent cotton and some bandages, Hutchins," she
said. "I am bleeding from a hundred wounds. As for you"--she
turned fiercely on Aggie and me--"the least you could have done
was to be here when I returned, exhausted, injured, and weary;
but, of course, you were gallivanting round the lake in an
upholstered motor boat."

Here she poured more water into the foot-tub and made it much
too hot. This thawed her rather, and she explained what was
wrong. She was bruised, scratched to the knees, and with a bump
the size of an egg on her forehead, where she had run into a
tree.

The whole story was very exciting. It seems she got the green
canoe without any difficulty, the spy being sound asleep in his
tent; but about that time the wind came up and Tish said she
could not make an inch of progress toward our camp.

The chewing gum with which we had repaired our canoe came out at
that time and the boat began to fill, Tish being unable to sit
over the leak and paddle at the same time. So, at last, she gave
up and made for the mainland.

"The shooting," Tish said with difficulty, "was by men from the
Indian camp firing at me. I landed below the camp, and was
making my way as best I could through the woods when they heard
me moving. I believe they thought it was a bear."

I think Tish was more afraid of the Indians, in spite of their
sixty-three steel engravings and the rest of it, than she
pretended, though she said she would have made herself known,
but at that moment she fell over a fallen tree and for fifteen
minutes was unable to speak a word. When at last she rose the
excitement was over and they had gone back to their camp.

"Anyhow," she finished, "the green canoe is hidden a couple of
miles down the river, and I guess Mr. McDonald is safe for a
time. Lizzie, you can take a bath to-morrow safely."

Tish sat up most of the rest of the night composing a letter to
the authorities of the town, telling them of Mr. McDonald and
enclosing careful copies of the incriminating documents she had
found.

During the following morning the river was very quiet. Through
the binocular we were able to see Mr. McDonald standing on the
shore of his island and looking intently in our direction, but
naturally we paid no attention to him.

The red-haired man went in swimming that day and necessitated
our retiring to the tent for an hour and a half; but at noon
Aggie's naturally soft heart began to assert itself.

"Spy or no spy," she said to Tish, "we ought to feed him."

"Huh!" was Tish's rejoinder. "There is no sense is wasting good
food on a man whose hours are numbered."

We were surprised, however, to find that Hutchins, who had
detested Mr. McDonald, was rather on Aggie's side.

"The fact that he has but a few more hours," she said to Tish,
"is an excellent reason for making those hours as little
wretched as possible."

It was really due to Hutchins, therefore, that Mr. McDonald had
a luncheon. The problem of how to get it to him was a
troublesome one, but Tish solved it with her customary sagacity.

"We can make a raft," she said, "a small one, large enough to
hold a tray. By stopping the launch some yards above the island
we can float his luncheon to him quite safely."

That was the method we ultimately pursued and it worked most
satisfactorily.

Hutchins baked hot biscuits; and, by putting a cover over the
pan, we were enabled to get them to him before they cooled.

We prepared a really appetizing luncheon of hot biscuits,
broiled ham, marmalade, and tea, adding, at Aggie's
instructions, a jar of preserved peaches, which she herself had
put up.

Tish made the raft while we prepared the food, and at exactly
half-past twelve o'clock we left the house. Mr. McDonald saw us
coming and was waiting smilingly at the upper end of the island.

"Great Scott!" he said. "I thought you were never going to hear
me. Another hour and I'd have made a swim for it, though it's
suicidal with this current. I'll show you where you can come in
so you won't hit a rock."

Hutchins had stopped the engine of the motor boat and we threw
out the anchor at a safe distance from the shore.

"We are not going to land," said Tish, "and I think you know
perfectly well the reason why."

"Oh, now," he protested; "surely you are going to land! I've had
an awfully uncomfortable accident--my canoe's gone."

"We know that," Tish said calmly. "As a matter of fact, we took
it."

Mr. McDonald sat down suddenly on a log at the water's edge and
looked at us.

"Oh!" he said.

"You may not believe it," Tish said, "but we know everything--
your dastardly plot, who the red-haired man is, and all the
destruction and wretchedness you are about to cause."

"Oh, I say!" he said feebly. "I wouldn't go as far as that. I'm--
 I'm not such a bad sort."

"That depends on the point of view," said Tish grimly.

Aggie touched her on the arm then and reminded her that the
biscuits were getting cold; but Tish had a final word with him.

"Your correspondence has fallen into my hands, young man," she
said, "and will be turned over to the proper authorities."

"It won't tell them anything they don't know," he said doggedly.
"Look here, ladies: I am not ashamed of this thing. I--I am
proud of it. I am perfectly willing to yell it out loud for
everybody to hear. As a matter of fact, I think I will."

Mr. McDonald stood up suddenly and threw his head back; but here
Hutchins, who had been silent, spoke for the first time.

"Don't be an idiot!" she said coldly. "We have something here
for you to eat if you behave yourself."

He seemed to see her then for the first time, for he favored her
with a long stare.

"Ah!" he said. "Then you are not entirely cold and heartless?"

She made no reply to this, being busy in assisting Aggie to
lower the raft over the side of the boat.

"Broiled ham, tea, hot biscuits, and marmalade," said Aggie
gently. "My poor fellow, we are doing what we consider our duty;
but we want you to know that it is hard for us--very hard."

When he saw our plan, Mr. McDonald's face fell; but he stepped
out into the water up to his knees and caught the raft as it
floated down.

Before he said "Thank you" he lifted the cover of the pan and
saw the hot biscuits underneath.

"Really," he said, "it's very decent of you. I sent off a
grocery order yesterday, but nothing has come."

Tish had got Hutchins to start the engine by that time and we
were moving away. He stood there, up to his knees in water,
holding the tray and looking after us. He was really a pathetic
figure, especially in view of the awful fate we felt was
overtaking him.

He called something after us. On account of the noise of the
engine, we could not be certain, but we all heard it the same
way.

"Send for the whole d--d outfit!" was the way it sounded to us.
"It won't make any difference to me."

V

The last thing I recall of Mr. McDonald that day is seeing him
standing there in the water, holding the tray, with the teapot
steaming under his nose, and gazing after us with an air of
bewilderment that did not deceive us at all.

As I look back, there is only one thing we might have noticed at
the time. This was the fact that Hutchins, having started the
engine, was sitting beside it on the floor of the boat and
laughing in the cruelest possible manner. As I said to Aggie at
the time: "A spy is a spy and entitled to punishment if
discovered; but no young woman should laugh over so desperate a
situation."

I come now to the denouement of this exciting period. It had
been Tish's theory that the red-haired man should not be taken
into our confidence. If there was a reward for the capture of
the spy, we ourselves intended to have it.

The steamer was due the next day but one. Tish was in favor of
not waiting, but of at once going in the motor boat to the town,
some thirty miles away, and telling of our capture; but Hutchins
claimed there was not sufficient gasoline for such an excursion.
That afternoon we went in the motor launch to where Tish had
hidden the green canoe and, with a hatchet, rendered it useless.

The workings of the subconscious mind are marvelous. In the
midst of chopping, Tish suddenly looked up.

"Have you noticed," she said, "that the detective is always
watching our camp?"

"That's all he has to do," Aggie suggested.

"Stuff and nonsense! Didn't he follow you into the swamp? Does
Hutchins ever go out in the canoe that he doesn't go out also?
I'll tell you what has happened: She's young and pretty, and
he's fallen in love with her."

I must say it sounded reasonable. He never bothered about the
motor boat, but the instant she took the canoe and started out
he was hovering somewhere near.

"She's noticed it," Tish went on. "That's what she was
quarreling about with him yesterday."

"How are we to know," said Aggie, who was gathering up the
scraps of the green canoe and building a fire under them--"how
are we to know they are not old friends, meeting thus in the
wilderness? Fate plays strange tricks, Tish. I lived in the same
street with Mr. Wiggins for years, and never knew him until one
day when my umbrella turned wrong side out in a gust of wind."

"Fate fiddlesticks!" said Tish. "There's no such thing as fate
in affairs of this sort. It's all instinct--the instinct of the
race to continue itself."

This Aggie regarded as indelicate and she was rather cool to
Tish the balance of the day.

Our prisoner spent most of the day at the end of the island
toward us, sitting quietly, as we could sec through the glasses.
We watched carefully, fearing at any time to see the Indian
paddling toward him.

[Tish was undecided what to do in such an emergency, except to
intercept him and explain, threatening him also with having
attempted to carry the incriminating papers. As it happened,
however, the entire camp had gone for a two-days' deer hunt, and
before they returned the whole thing had come to its surprising
end.]

Late in the afternoon Tish put her theory of the red-haired man
to the test.

"Hutchins," she said, "Miss Lizzie and I will cook the dinner if
you want to go in the canoe to Harvey's Bay for water-lilies."

Hutchins at once said she did not care a rap for water-lilies;
but, seeing a determined glint in Tish's eye, she added that she
would go for frogs if Tish wanted her out of the way.

"Don't talk like a child!" Tish retorted. "Who said I wanted you
out of the way?"

It is absolutely true that the moment Hutchins put her foot into
the canoe the red-haired man put down his fishing-rod and rose.
And she had not taken three strokes with the paddle before he
was in the blue canoe.

Hutchins saw him just then and scowled. The last we saw of her
she was moving rapidly up the river and the detective was
dropping slowly behind. They both disappeared finally into the
bay and Tish drew a long breath.

"Typical!" she said curtly. "He's sent here to watch a dangerous
man and spends his time pursuing the young woman who hates the
sight of him. When women achieve the suffrage they will put none
but married men in positions of trust."

Hutchins and the detective were still out of sight when supper-
time came. The spy's supper weighed on us, and at last Tish
attempted to start the motor launch. We had placed the supper
and the small raft aboard, and Aggie was leaning over the edge
untying the painter,--not a man, but a rope,--when unexpectedly
the engine started at the first revolution of the wheel.

It darted out to the length of the rope, where it was checked
abruptly, the shock throwing Aggie entirely out and into the
stream. Tish caught the knife from the supper tray to cut us
loose, and while Tish cut I pulled Aggie in, wet as she was. The
boat was straining and panting, and, on being released, it
sprang forward like a dog unleashed.

Aggie had swallowed a great deal of water and was most
disagreeable; but the Mebbe was going remarkably well, and there
seemed to be every prospect that we should get back to the camp
in good order. Alas, for human hopes! Mr. McDonald was not very
agreeable.

"You know," he said as he waited for his supper to float within
reach, "you needn't be so blamed radical about everything you
do! If you object to my hanging round, why not just say so? If
I'm too obnoxious I'll clear out."

"Obnoxious is hardly the word," said Tish. "How long am I to be
a prisoner?"

"I shall send letters off by the first boat."

He caught the raft just then and examined the supper with
interest.

"Of course things might be worse," he said; "but it's dirty
treatment, anyhow. And it's darned humiliating. Somebody I know
is having a good time at my expense. It's heartless! That's what
it is--heartless!"

Well, we left him, the engine starting nicely and Aggie being
wrapped in a tarpaulin; but about a hundred yards above the
island it began to slow down, and shortly afterward it stopped
altogether. As the current caught us, we luckily threw out the
anchor, for the engine refused to start again. It was then we
saw the other canoes.

The girl in the pink tam-o'-shanter was in the first one.

They glanced at us curiously as they passed, and the P.T.S.--
that is the way we grew to speak of the pink tam-o'-shanter--
raised one hand in the air, which is a form of canoe greeting,
probably less upsetting to the equilibrium than a vigorous
waving of the arm.

It was just then, I believe, that they saw our camp and headed
for it. The rest of what happened is most amazing. They stopped
at our landing and unloaded their canoes. Though twilight was
falling, we could see them distinctly. And what we saw was that
they calmly calmly took possession of the camp.

"Good gracious!" Tish cried. "The girls have gone into the tent!
And somebody's working at the stove. The impertinence!"

Our situation was acutely painful. We could do nothing but
watch. We called, but our voices failed to reach them. And Aggie
took a chill, partly cold and partly fury. We sat there while
they ate the entire supper!

They were having a very good time. Now and then somebody would
go into the tent and bring something out, and there would be
shrieks of laughter.

[We learned afterward that part of the amusement was caused by
Aggie's false front, which one of the wretches put on as a
beard.]

It was while thus distracted that Aggie suddenly screamed, and a
moment later Mr. McDonald climbed over the side and into the
boat, dripping.

"Don't be alarmed!" he said. "I'll go back and be a prisoner
again just as soon as I've fired the engine. I couldn't bear to
think of the lady who fell in sitting here indefinitely and
taking cold." He was examining the engine while he spoke. "Have
visitors, I see," he observed, as calmly as though he were not
dripping all over the place.

"Intruders, not visitors!" Tish said angrily. "I never saw them
before."

"Rather pretty, the one with the pink cap. May I examine the
gasoline supply?" There was no gasoline. He shrugged his
shoulders. "I'm afraid no amount of mechanical genius I intended
to offer you will start her," he said; "but the young lady--
Hutchins is her name, I believe?--will see you here and come
after you, of course."

Well, there was no denying that, spy or no spy, his presence was
a comfort. He offered to swim back to the island and be a
prisoner again, but Tish said magnanimously that there was no
hurry. On Aggie's offering half of her tarpaulin against the
wind, which had risen, he accepted.

"Your Miss Hutchins is reckless, isn't she?" he said when he was
comfortably settled. "She's a strong swimmer; but a canoe is
uncertain at the best."

"She's in no danger," said Tish. "She has a devoted admirer
watching out for her."

"The deuce she has!" His voice was quite interested. "Why, who
on earth--"

"Your detective," said Aggie softly. "He's quite mad about her.
The way he follows her and the way he looks at her--it's
thrilling!"

Mr. McDonald said nothing for quite a while. The canoe party had
evidently eaten everything they could find, and somebody had
brought out a banjo and was playing.

Tish, unable to vent her anger, suddenly turned on Mr. McDonald.
"If you think," she said, "that the grocery list fooled us, it
didn't!"

"Grocery list?"

"That's what I said."

"How did you get my grocery list?"

So she told him, and how she had deciphered it, and how the word
"dynamite" had only confirmed her early suspicions.

His only comment was to say, "Good Heavens!" in a smothered
voice.

"It was the extractor that made me suspicious," she finished.
"What were you going to extract? Teeth?"

"And so, when my Indian was swimming, you went through his
things! It's the most astounding thing I ever--My dear lady, an
extractor is used to get the hooks out of fish. It was no
cipher, I assure you. I needed an extractor and I ordered it.
The cipher you speak of is only a remarkable coincidence."

"Huh!" said Tish. "And the paper you dropped in the train--was
that a coincidence?"

"That's not my secret," he said, and turned sulky at once.

"Don't tell me," Tish said triumphantly, "that any young man
comes here absolutely alone without a purpose!"

"I had a purpose, all right; but it was not to blow up a
railroad train."

Apparently he thought he had said too much, for he relapsed into
silence after that, with an occasional muttering.

It was eight o'clock when Hutchins's canoe came into sight. She
was paddling easily, but the detective was far behind and moving
slowly.

She saw the camp with its uninvited guests, and then she saw us.
The detective, however, showed no curiosity; and we could see
that he made for his landing and stumbled exhaustedly up the
bank. Hutchins drew up beside us. "He'll not try that again, I
think," she said in her crisp voice. "He's out of training. He
panted like a motor launch. Who are our visitors?"

Here her eyes fell on Mr. McDonald and her face set in the dusk.

"You'll have to go back and get some gasoline, Hutchins."

"What made you start out without looking?"

"And send the vandals away. If they wait until I arrive, I'll be
likely to do them some harm. I have never been so outraged."

"Let me go for gasoline in the canoe," said Mr. McDonald. He
leaned over the thwart and addressed Hutchins. "You're worn
out," he said. "I promise to come back and be a perfectly well-
behaved prisoner again."

"Thanks, no."

"I'm wet. The exercise will warm me."

"Is it possible," she said in a withering tone that was lost on
us at the time, "that you brought no dumb-bells with you?"

If we had had any doubts they should have been settled then; but
we never suspected. It is incredible, looking back.

The dusk was falling and I am not certain of what followed. It
was, however, something like this: Mr. McDonald muttered
something angrily and made a motion to get into the canoe.
Hutchins replied that she would not have help from him if she
died for it.  The next thing we knew she was in the launch and
the canoe was floating off on the current. Aggie squealed; and
Mr. McDonald, instead of swimming after the thing, merely folded
his arms and looked at it.

"You know," he said to Hutchins, "you have so unpleasant a
disposition that somebody we both know of is better off than he
thinks he is!"

Tish's fury knew no bounds, for there we were marooned and two
of us wet to the skin. I must say for Hutchins, however, that
when she learned about Aggie she was bitterly repentant, and
insisted on putting her own sweater on her. But there we were
and there we should likely stay.

It was quite dark by that time, and we sat in the launch,
rocking gently. The canoeing party had lighted a large fire on
the beach, using the driftwood we had so painfully accumulated.

We sat in silence, except that Tish, who was watching our camp,
said once bitterly that she was glad there were three beds in
the tent. The girls of the canoeing party would be comfortable.

After a time Tish turned on Mr. McDonald sharply. "Since you
claim to be no spy," she said, "perhaps you will tell us what
brings you alone to this place? Don't tell me it's fish--I've
seen you reading, with a line out. You're no fisherman."

He hesitated. "No," he admitted. "I'll be frank, Miss Carberry.
I did not come to fish."

"What brought you?"

"Love," he said, in a low tone. "I don't expect you to believe
me, but it's the honest truth."

"Love!" Tish scoffed.

"Perhaps I'd better tell you the story," he said. "It's long and-
 - and rather sad."

"Love stories," Hutchins put in coldly, "are terribly stupid,
except to those concerned."

"That," he retorted, "is because you have never been in love.
You are young and--you will pardon the liberty?--attractive; but
you are totally prosaic and unromantic."

"Indeed!" she said, and relapsed into silence.

"These other ladies," Mr. McDonald went on, "will understand the
strangeness of my situation when I explain that the--the young
lady I care for is very near; is, in fact, within sight."

"Good gracious!" said Aggie. "Where?"

"It is a long story, but it may help to while away the long
night hours; for I dare say we are here for the night. Did any
one happen to notice the young lady in the first canoe, in the
pink tam-o'-shanter?"

We said we had--all except Hutchins, who, of coarse, had not
seen her. Mr. McDonald got a wet cigarette from his pocket and,
finding a box of matches on the seat, made an attempt to dry it
over the flames; so his story was told in the flickering light
of one match after another.

VI

"I am," Mr. McDonald said, as the cigarette steamed, "the son of
poor but honest parents. All my life I have been obliged to
labor. You may say that my English is surprisingly pure, under
such conditions.  As a matter of fact, I educated myself at
night, using a lantern in the top of my father's stable."

"I thought you said he was poor," Hutchins put in nastily. "How
did he have a stable?"

"He kept a livery stable. Any points that are not clear I will
explain afterward. Once the thread of a narrative is broken, it
is difficult to resume, Miss Hutchins. Near us, in a large
house, lived the lady of my heart."

"The pink tam-o'-shanter girl!" said Aggie. "I begin to
understand."

"But," he added, "near us also lived a red-headed boy. She liked
him very much, and even in the long-ago days I was fiercely
jealous of him. It may surprise you to know that in those days I
longed--fairly longed--for red hair and a red mustache."

"I hate to interrupt," said Hutchins; "but did he have a
mustache as a boy?"

He ignored her. "We three grew up together. The girl is
beautiful- -you've probably noticed that--and amiable. The one
thing I admire in a young woman is amiability. It would not, for
instance, have occurred to her to isolate an entire party on the
bosom of a northern and treacherous river out of pure temper."

"To think," said Aggie softly, "that she is just over there by
the camp-fire! Don't you suppose, if she loves you, she senses
your nearness?"

"That's it exactly," he replied in a gloomy voice, "if she loves
me! But does she? In other words, has she come up the river to
meet me or to meet my rival? She knows we are here. Both of us
have written her. The presence of one or the other of us is the
real reason for this excursion of hers. But again the question
is- -which?"

Here the match he was holding under the cigarette burned his
fingers and he flung it overboard with a violent gesture.

"The detective, of coarse," said Tish. "I knew it from the
beginning of your story."

"The detective," he assented. "You see his very profession
attracts. There's an element of romance in it. I myself have
kept on with my father and now run the--er--livery stable. My
business is a handicap from a romantic point of view.

"I am aware," Mr. McDonald went on, "that it is not customary to
speak so frankly of affairs of this sort; but I have two
reasons. It hurts me to rest under unjust suspicion. I am no
spy, ladies. And the second reason is even stronger. Consider my
desperate position: In the morning my rival will see her; he
will paddle his canoe to the great rock below your camp and sing
his love song from the water. In the morning I shall sit here
helpless-- ill, possibly--and see all that I value in life slip
out of my grasp. And all through no fault of my own! Things are
so evenly balanced, so little will shift the weight of her
favor, that frankly the first one to reach her will get her."

I confess I was thrilled. And even Tish was touched; but she
covered her emotion with hard common sense.

"What's her name?" she demanded.

"Considering my frankness I must withhold that. Why not simply
refer to her as the pink tam-o'-shanter--or, better still and
more briefly, the P.T.S.? That may stand for pink tam-o'-
shanter, or the Person That Smiles,--she smiles a great deal,--
or--or almost anything."

"It also stands," said Hutchins, with a sniff, "for Pretty Tall
Story."

Tish considered her skepticism unworthy in one so young, and
told her so; on which she relapsed into a sulky silence.

In view of what we knew, the bonfire at our camp and the small
figure across the river took on a new significance.

As Aggie said, to think of the red-haired man sleeping calmly
while his lady love was so near and his rival, so to speak,
_hors de combat!_ Shortly after finishing his story, Mr.
McDonald went to the stern of the boat and lifted the anchor
rope.

"It is possible," he said, "that the current will carry us to my
island with a little judicious management. Even though we miss
it, we'll hardly be worse off than we are."

It was surprising we had not thought of it before, for the plan
succeeded admirably. By moving a few feet at a time and then
anchoring, we made slow but safe progress, and at last touched
shore. We got out, and Mr. McDonald built a large fire, near
which we put Aggie to steam. His supper, which he had not had
time to eat, he generously divided, and we heated the tea.
Hutchins, however, refused to eat.

Warmth and food restored Tish's mind to its usual keenness. I
recall now the admiration in Mr. McDonald's eyes when she
suddenly put down the sandwich she was eating and exclaimed:--

"The flags, of course! He told her to watch for a red flag as
she came up the river; so when the party saw ours they landed.
Perhaps they still think it is his camp and that he is away
overnight."

"That's it, exactly," he said. "Think of the poor wretch's
excitement when he saw your flag!"

Still, on looking back, it seems curious that we overlooked the
way the red-headed man had followed Hutchins about. True, men
are polygamous animals, Tish says, and are quite capable of
following one woman about while they are sincerely in love with
somebody else. But, when you think of it, the detective had
apparently followed Hutchins from the start, and had gone into
the wilderness to be near her, with only a suitcase and a
mackintosh coat; which looked like a mad infatuation.

[Tish says she thought of this at the time, and that; from what
she had seen of the P.T.S., Hutchins was much prettier. But she
says she decided that men often love one quality in one girl and
another in another; that he probably loved Hutchins's beauty and
the amiability of the P.T.S. Also, she says, she reflected that
the polygamy of the Far East is probably due to this tendency in
the male more than to a preponderance of women.]

Tish called me aside while Mr. McDonald was gathering firewood.
"I'm a fool and a guilty woman, Lizzie," she said. "Because of
an unjust suspicion I have possibly wrecked this poor boy's
life."

I tried to soothe her. "They might have been wretchedly unhappy
together, Tish," I said; "and, anyhow, I doubt whether he is
able to support a wife. There's nothing much in keeping a livery
stable nowadays."

"There's only one thing that still puzzles me," Tish observed:
"granting that the grocery order was a grocery order, what about
the note?"

We might have followed this line of thought, and saved what
occurred later, but that a new idea suddenly struck Tish. She is
curious in that way; her mind works very rapidly at times, and
because I cannot take her mental hurdles, so to speak, she is
often impatient.

"Lizzie," she said suddenly, "did you notice that when the
anchor was lifted, we drifted directly to this island? Don't
stare at me like that. Use your wits."

When I failed instantly to understand, however, she turned
abruptly and left me, disappearing in the shadows.

For the next hour nothing happened. Tish was not in sight and
Aggie slept by the fire. Hutchins sat with her chin cupped in
her hands, and Mr. McDonald gathered driftwood.

Hutchins only spoke once. "I'm awfully sorry about the canoe,
Miss Lizzie," she said; "it was silly and--and selfish. I don't
always act like a bad child. The truth is, I'm rather upset and
nervous. I hate to be thwarted--I'm sorry I can't explain any
further."

I was magnanimous. "I'm sure, until to-night, you've been
perfectly satisfactory," I said; "but it seems extraordinary
that you should dislike men the way you do."

She only eyed me searchingly.

It is my evening custom to prepare for the night by taking my
switch off and combing and braiding my hair; so, as we seemed to
be settled for the night, I asked Mr. McDonald whether the camp
afforded an extra comb. He brought out a traveling-case at once
from the tent and opened it.

"Here's a comb," he said. "I never use one. I'm sorry this is
all I can supply."

My eyes were glued to the case. It was an English traveling-
case, with gold-mounted fittings. He saw me staring at it and
changed color.

"Nice bag, isn't it?" he said. "It was a gift, of course. The--
the livery stable doesn't run much to this sort of thing."

But the fine edge of suspicion had crept into my mind again.


Tish did not return to the fire for some time. Before she came
back we were all thoroughly alarmed. The island was small, and a
short search convinced us that she was not on it!

We wakened Aggie and told her, and the situation was very
painful. The launch was where we had left it. Mr. McDonald
looked more and more uneasy.

"My sane mind tells me she's perfectly safe," he said. "I don't
know that I've ever met a person more able to take care of
herself; but it's darned odd--that's all I can say."

Just as he spoke a volley of shots sounded from up the river
near our camp, two close together and then one; and somebody
screamed.

It was very dark. We could see lanterns flashing at our camp and
somebody was yelling hoarsely. One lantern seemed to run up and
down the beach in mad excitement, and then, out of the far-off
din, Aggie, whose ears are sharp, suddenly heard the splash of a
canoe paddle.

I shall tell Tish's story of what happened as she told it to
Charlie Sands two weeks or so later.

"It is perfectly simple," she said, "and it's stupid to make
such a fuss over it. Don't talk to me about breaking the law!
The girl came; I didn't steal her."

Charlie Sands, I remember, interrupted at that moment to remind
her that she had shot a hole in the detective's canoe; but this
only irritated her.

"Certainly I did," she snapped; "but it's perfectly idiotic of
him to say that it took off the heel of his shoe. In that stony
country it's always easy to lose a heel."

But to return to Tish's story:--

"It occurred to me," she said, "that, if the launch had drifted
to Mr. McDonald's island, the canoe might have done so too; so I
took a look round. I'd been pretty much worried about having
called the boy a spy when he wasn't, and it worried me to think
that he couldn't get away from the place. I never liked the red-
haired man. He was cruel to Aggie's cat--but we've told you
that.

"I knew that in the morning the detective would see the P.T.S.,
as we called her, and he could get over and propose before
breakfast. But when I found the canoe--yes, I found it-- I
didn't intend to do anything more than steal the detective's
boat."

"Is that all?" said Charlie Sands sarcastically. "You disappoint
me, Aunt Letitia! With all the chances you had--to burn his
pitiful little tent, for instance, or steal his suitcase--"

"But on my way," Tish went on with simple dignity, "it occurred
to me that I could move things a step farther by taking the girl
to Mr. McDonald and letting him have his chance right away.
Things went well from the start, for she was standing alone,
looking out over the river. It was dark, except for the
starlight, and I didn't know it was she. I beached the canoe and
she squealed a little when I spoke to her."

"Just what," broke in Charlie Sands, "does one say under such
circumstances? Sometime I may wish to abduct a young woman and
it is well to be prepared."

"I told her the young man she had expected was on Island Eleven
and had sent me to get her. She was awfully excited. She said
they'd seen his signal, but nothing of him. And when they'd
found a number of feminine things round they all felt a little--
well, you can understand. She went back to get a coat, and while
she was gone I untied the canoes and pushed them out into the
river. I'm thorough, and I wasn't going to have a lot of people
interfering before we got things fixed."

It was here, I think, that Charlie Sands gave a low moan and
collapsed on the sofa. "Certainly!" he said in a stifled voice.
"I believe in being thorough. And, of course, a few canoes more
or less do not matter."

"Later," Tish said, "I knew I'd been thoughtless about the
canoes; but, of course, it was too late then."

"And when was it that you assaulted the detective?"

"He fired first," said Tish. "I never felt more peaceable in my
life. It's absurd for him to say that he was watching our camp,
as he had every night we'd been there. Who asked him to guard
us? And the idea of his saying he thought we were Indians
stealing things, and that he fired into the air! The bullets
sang past me. I had hardly time to get my revolver out of my
stocking."

"And then?" asked Charlie Sands.

"And then," said Tish, "we went calmly down the river to Island
Eleven. We went rapidly, for at first the detective did not know
I had shot a hole in his canoe, and he followed us. It stands to
reason that if I'd shot his heel off he'd have known there was a
hole in the boat. Luckily the girl was in the bottom of the
canoe when she fainted or we might have been upset."

It was at this point, I believe, that Charlie Sands got his hat
and opened the door.

"I find," he said, "that I cannot stand any more at present,
Aunt Tish. I shall return when I am stronger."


So I shall go back to my own narrative. Really my justification
is almost complete. Any one reading to this point will realize
the injustice of the things that have been said about us.

We were despairing of Tish, as I have said, when we heard the
shots and then the approach of a canoe. Then Tish hailed us.

"Quick, somebody!" she said. "I have a cramp in my right leg."

[The canoeing position, kneeling as one must, had been always
very trying for her. She frequently developed cramps, which only
a hot footbath relieved.]

Mr. McDonald waded out into the water. Our beach fire
illuminated the whole scene distinctly, and when he saw the
P.T.S. huddled in the canoe he stopped as though he had been
shot.

"How interesting!" said Hutchins from the bank, in her cool
voice.

I remember yet Tish, stamping round on her cramped limb and
smiling benevolently at all of us. The girl, however, looked
startled and unhappy, and a little dizzy. Hutchins helped her to
a fallen tree.

"Where--where is he?" said the P.T.S.

Tish stared at her. "Bless the girl!" she said. "Did you think I
meant the other one?"

"I--What other one?"

Tish put her hand on Mr. McDonald's arm. "My dear girl," she
said, "this young man adores you. He's all that a girl ought to
want in the man she loves. I have done him a grave injustice and
he has borne it nobly. Come now--let me put your hand in his and
say you will marry him."

"Marry him!" said the P.T.S. "Why, I never saw him in my life
before!"

We had been so occupied with this astounding scene that none of
us had noticed the arrival of the detective. He limped rapidly
up the bank--having lost his heel, as I have explained--and,
dripping with water, confronted us. When a red-haired person is
pale, he is very pale. And his teeth showed.

He ignored all of us but the P.T.S., who turned and saw him, and
went straight into his arms in the most unmaidenly fashion.

"By Heaven," he said, "I thought that elderly lunatic had taken
you off and killed you!"

He kissed her quite frantically before all of us; and then, with
one arm round her, he confronted Tish.

"I'm through!" he said. "I'm done! There isn't a salary in the
world that will make me stay within gunshot of you another day."
He eyed her fiercely. "You are a dangerous woman, madam," he
said. "I'm going to bring a charge against you for abduction and
assault with intent to kill. And if there's any proof needed
I'll show my canoe, full of water to the gunwale."

Here he kissed the girl again.

"You--you know her?" gasped Mr. McDonald, and dropped on a tree-
trunk, as though he were too weak to stand.

"It looks like it, doesn't it?"

Here I happened to glance at Hutchins, and she was convulsed
with mirth! Tish saw her, too, and glared at her; but she seemed
to get worse. Then, without the slightest warning, she walked
round the camp-fire and kissed Mr. McDonald solemnly on the top
of his head.

"I give it up!" she said. "Somebody will have to marry you and
take care of you. I'd better be the person."


"But why was the detective watching Hutchins? " said Charlie
Sands. "Was it because he had heard of my Aunt Letitia's
reckless nature? I am still bewildered."

"You remember the night we got the worms?"

"I see. The detective was watching all of you because you stole
the worms."

"Stole nothing!" Tish snapped. "That's the girl's house. She's
the Miss Newcomb you read about in the papers. Now do you
understand?"

"Certainly I do. She was a fugitive from justice because the cat
found dynamite in the woods. Or--perhaps I'm a trifle confused,
but--Now I have it! She had stolen a gold-mounted traveling-bag
and given it to McDonald. Lucky chap! I was crazy about Hutchins
myself. You might tip her the word that I'm badly off for a
traveling-case myself. But what about the P.T.S.? How did she
happen on the scene?"

"She was engaged to the detective, and she was camping down the
river. He had sent her word where he was. The red flag was to
help her find him."

Tish knows Charlie Sands, so she let him talk. Then:--

"Mr. McDonald was too wealthy, Charlie," she said; "so when she
wanted him to work and be useful, and he refused, she ran off
and got a situation herself to teach him a lesson. She could
drive a car. But her people heard about it, and that wretched
detective was responsible for her safety. That's why he followed
her about."

"I should like to follow her about myself," said Charlie Sands.
"Do you think she's unalterably decided to take McDonald, money
and all? He's still an idler. Lend me your car, Aunt Tish.
There's a theory there; and--who knows?"

"He is going to work for six months before she marries him,"
Tish said. "He seems to like to work, now he has started."

She rang the bell and Hannah came to the door.

"Hannah," said Tish calmly, "call up the garage and tell
McDonald to bring the car round. Mr. Sands is going out."



MY COUNTRY TISH OF THEE--

We had meant to go to Europe this last summer, and Tish would
have gone anyhow, war or no war, if we had not switched her off
onto something else. "Submarines fiddlesticks!" she said. "Give
me a good life preserver, with a bottle of blackberry cordial
fastened to it, and the sea has no terrors for me."

She said the proper way to do, in case the ship was torpedoed,
was to go up on an upper deck, and let the vessel sink under
one.

"Then without haste," she explained, "as the water rises about
one, strike out calmly. The life-belt supports one, but swim
gently for the exercise. It will prevent chilling. With a
waterproof bag of crackers, and mild weather, one could go on
comfortably for a day or two."

I still remember the despairing face Aggie turned to me. It was
December then, and very cold.

However, she said nothing more until January. Early in that
month Charlie Sands came to Tish's to Sunday dinner, and we were
all there. The subject came up then.

It was about the time Tish took up vegetarianism, I remember
that, because the only way she could induce Charlie Sands to
come to dinner was to promise to have two chops for him.
Personally I am not a vegetarian. I am not and never will be. I
took a firm stand except when at Tish's home. But Aggie followed
Tish's lead, of course, and I believe lived up to it as far as
possible, although it is quite true that, stopping in one day
unexpectedly to secure a new crochet pattern, I smelled broiling
steak. But Aggie explained that she merely intended to use the
juice from a small portion, having had one of her weak spells,
the balance to go to the janitor's dog.

However, this is a digression.

"Europe!" said Charlie Sands. "Forget it! What in the name of
the gastric juice is this I'm eating?"

It was a mixture of bran, raisins, and chopped nuts, as I recall
it, moistened with water and pressed into a compact form. It was
Tish's own invention. She called it "Bran-Nut," and was talking
of making it in large quantities for sale.

Charlie Sands gave it up with a feeble gesture. "I'm sorry, Aunt
Letitia," he said at last; "I'm a strong man ordinarily, but by
the time I've got it masticated I'm too weak to swallow it. If--
if one could have a stream of water playing on it while working,
it would facilitate things."

"The Ostermaiers," said Aggie, "are going West."

"Good for the Ostermaiers," said Charlie Sands. "Great idea. See
America first. 'My Country Tish of Thee,' etc. Why don't you
three try it?"

Tish relinquished Europe slowly.

"One would think," Charlie Sands said, "that you were a German
being asked to give up Belgium."

"What part of the West?" she demanded. "It's all civilized,
isn't it?"

"The Rocky Mountains," said Charlie Sands, "will never be
civilized."

Tish broke off a piece of Bran-Nut, and when she thought no one
was looking poured a little tea over it. There was a gleam in
her eye that Aggie and I have learned to know.

"Mountains!" she said. "That ought to be good for Aggie's hay
fever."

"I'd rather live with hay fever," Aggie put in sharply, "than
cure it by falling over a precipice."

"You'll have to take a chance on that, of course," Charlie Sands
said. "I'm not sure it will be safe, but I am sure it will be
interesting."

Oh, he knew Tish well enough. Tell her a thing was dangerous,
and no power could restrain her.

I do not mind saying that I was not keen about the thing. I had
my fortune told years ago, and the palmist said that if a
certain line had had a bend in it I should have been hanged. But
since it did not, to be careful of high places.

"It's a sporting chance," said Charlie Sands, although I was
prodding him under the table. "With some good horses and a bag
of this--er--concentrated food, you would have the time of your
young lives."

This was figurative. We are all of us round fifty.

"The--the Bran-Nut," he said, "would serve for both food and
ammunition. I can see you riding along, now and then dropping a
piece of it on the head of some unlucky mountain goat, and
watching it topple over into eternity. I can see--"

"Riding!" said Aggie. "Then I'm not going. I leave never been on
a horse and I never intend to be."

"Don't be a fool," Tish snapped. "If you've never been on a
horse, it's time and to spare you got on one."

Hannah had been clearing the table with her lips shut tight.
Hannah is an old and privileged servant and has a most
unfortunate habit of speaking her mind. So now she stopped
beside Tish.

"You take my advice and go, Miss Tish," she said. "If you ride a
horse round some and get an appetite, you'll go down on your
knees and apologize to your Maker for the stuff we've been
eating the last four weeks." She turned to Charlie Sands, and
positively her chin was quivering. "I'm a healthy woman," she
said, "and I work hard and need good nourishing food. When it's
come to a point where I eat the cat's meat and let it go
hungry," she said, "it's time either I lost my appetite or Miss
Tish went away."

Well, Tish dismissed Hannah haughtily from the room, and the
conversation went on. None of us had been far West, although
Tish has a sister-in-law in, Toledo, Ohio. But owing to a
quarrel over a pair of andirons that had been in the family for
a time, she had never visited her.

"You'll like it, all of you," Charlie Sands said as we waited
for the baked apples. "Once get started with a good horse
between your knees, and--"

"I hope," Tish interrupted him, "that you do not think we are
going to ride astride!"

"I'm darned sure of it."

That was Charlie Sands's way of talking. He does not mean to be
rude, and he is really a young man of splendid character. But,
as Tish says, contact with the world, although it has not
spoiled him, has roughened his speech.

"You see," he explained, "there are places our there where the
horses have to climb like goats. It's only fair to them to
distribute your weight equally. A side saddle is likely to turn
and drop you a mile or two down a crack."

Aggie went rather white and sneezed violently.

But Tish looked thoughtful. "It sounds reasonable," she said.
"I've felt for along time that I'd be glad to discard skirts.
Skirts," she said, "are badge of servitude, survivals of the
harem, reminders of a time when nothing was expected of women
but parasitic leisure."

I tried to tell her that she was wrong about the skirts. Miss
MacGillicuddy, our missionary in India, had certainly said that
the women in harems wore bloomers. But Tish left the room
abruptly, returning shortly after with a volume of the
encyclopedia, and looked up the Rocky Mountains.

I remember it said that the highest ranges were, as compared
with the size and shape of the earth, only as the corrugations
on the skin of an orange. Either the man who wrote that had
never seen an orange or he had never seen the Rocky Mountains.
Orange, indeed! If he had said the upper end of a pineapple it
would have been more like it. I wish the man who wrote it would
go to Glacier Park. I am not a vindictive woman, but I know one
or two places where I would like to place him and make him
swallow that orange. I'd like to see him on a horse, on the
brink of a canon a mile deep, and have his horse reach over the
edge for a stray plant or two, or standing in a cloud up to his
waist, so that, as Aggie so plaintively observed, "The lower
half of one is in a snowstorm while the upper part is getting
sunburned."

For we went. Oh, yes, we went. It is not the encyclopaedia's
fault that we came back. But now that we are home, and nothing
wrong except a touch of lumbago that Tish got from sleeping on
the ground, and, of course, Aggie's unfortunate experience with
her teeth, I look back on our various adventures with pleasure.
I even contemplate a return next year, although Aggie says she
will die first. But even that is not to be taken as final. The
last time I went to see her, she had bought a revolver from the
janitor and was taking lessons in loading it.

The Ostermaiers went also. Not with us, however. The
congregation made up a purse for the purpose, and Tish and Aggie
and I went further, and purchased a cigar-case for Mr.
Ostermaier and a quantity of cigars. Smoking is the good man's
only weakness.

I must say, however, that it is absurd to hear Mrs. Ostermaier
boasting of the trip. To hear her talk, one would think they had
done the whole thing, instead of sitting in an automobile and
looking up at the mountains. I shall never forget the day they
were in a car passing along a road, and we crossed unexpectedly
ahead of them and went on straight up the side of a mountain.

Tish had a sombrero on the side of her head, and was resting
herself in the saddle by having her right leg thrown negligently
over the horse's neck. With the left foot she was kicking our
pack-horse, a creature so scarred with brands that Tish had
named her Jane, after a cousin of hers who had had so many
operations that Tish says she is now entirely unfurnished.

Mr. Ostermaier's face was terrible, and only two days ago Mrs.
Ostermaier came over to ask about putting an extra width in the
skirt to her last winter's suit. But it is my belief that she
came to save Tish's soul, and nothing else.

"I'm so glad wide skirts have come in," she said. "They're so
modest, aren't they, Miss Tish?"

"Not in a wind," Tish said, eying her coldly.

"I do think, dear Miss Tish," she went on with her eyes down,
"that to--to go about in riding-breeches before a young man is--
well, it is hardly discreet, is it?"

I saw Tish glancing about the room. She was pretty angry, and I
knew perfectly well what she wanted. I put my knitting-bag over
Charlie Sands's tobacco-pouch.

Tish had learned to roll cigarettes out in Glacier Park. Not
that she smoked them, of course, but she said she might as well
know how. There was no knowing when it would come in handy. And
when she wishes to calm herself she reaches instinctively for
what Bill used to call, strangely, "the makings."

"If," she said, her eye still roving,--"if it was any treat to a
twenty-four-year-old cowpuncher to see three elderly women in
riding-breeches, Mrs. Ostermaier,--and it's kind of you to think
so,--why, I'm not selfish."

Mrs. Ostermaier's face was terrible. She gathered up her skirt
and rose. "I shall not tell Mr. Ostermaier what you have just
said," she observed with her mouth set hard. "We owe you a great
deal, especially the return of my earrings. But I must request,
Miss Tish, that you do not voice such sentiments in the Sunday
school."

Tish watched her out. Then she sat down and rolled eleven
cigarettes for Charlie Sands, one after the other. At last she
spoke.

"I'm not sure," she said tartly, "that if I had it to do over
again I'd do it. That woman's not a Christian. I was thinking,"
she went on, "of giving them a part of the reward to go to
Asbury Park with. But she'd have to wear blinders on the bathing-
 beach, so I'll not do it."

However, I am ahead of my recital.

For a few days Tish said nothing more, but one Sunday morning,
walking home from church, she turned to me suddenly and said:--

"Lizzie, you're fat."

"I'm as the Lord made me," I replied with some spirit.

"Fiddlesticks!" said Tish. "You're as your own sloth and
overindulgence has made you. Don't blame the Good Man for it."

Now, I am a peaceful woman, and Tish is as my own sister, and
indeed even more so. But I was roused to anger by her speech.

"I've been fleshy all my life," I said. "I'm no lazier than
most, and I'm a dratted sight more agreeable than some I know,
on account of having the ends of my nerves padded."

But she switched to another subject in her characteristic
manner.

"Have you ever reflected, either of you," she observed, "that we
know nothing of this great land of ours? That we sing of loving
'thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills'--although the
word 'templed' savors of paganism and does not belong in a
national hymn? And that it is all balderdash?"

Aggie took exception to this and said that she loved her native
land, and had been south to Pinehurst and west to see her niece
in Minneapolis, on account of the baby having been named for
her.

But Tish merely listened with a grim smile. "Travel from a car
window," she observed, "is no better than travel in a
nickelodeon. I have done all of that I am going to. I intend to
become acquainted with my native land, closely acquainted. State
by State I shall wander over it, refreshing soul and body and
using muscles too long unused."

"Tish!" Aggie quavered. "You are not going on another walking-
tour?"

Only a year or two before Tish had read Stevenson's "Travels
with a Donkey," and had been possessed to follow his example. I
have elsewhere recorded the details of that terrible trip. Even
I turned pale, I fear, and cast a nervous eye toward the table
where Tish keeps her reading-matter.

Tish is imaginative, and is always influenced by the latest book
she has read. For instance, a volume on "Nursing at the Front"
almost sent her across to France, although she cannot make a bed
and never could, and turns pale at the sight of blood; and
another time a book on flying machines sent her up into the air,
mentally if not literally. I shall never forgo the time she
secured some literature on the Mormon Church, and the difficulty
I had in smuggling it out under my coat.

Tish did not refute the walking-tour at once, bud fell into a
deep reverie.

It is not her custom to confide her plans to us until they are
fully shaped and too far on to be interfered with, which
accounts for our nervousness.

On arriving at her apartment, however, we found a map laid out
on the table and the Rocky Mountains marked with pins. We
noticed that whenever she straightened from the table she
grunted.

"What we want," Tish said, "is isolation. No people. No crowds.
No servants. If I don't get away from Hannah soon I'll murder
her."

"It wouldn't hurt to see somebody now and then, Tish," Aggie
objected.

"Nobody," Tish said firmly. "A good horse is companion enough."
She forgot herself and straightened completely, and she groaned.

"We might meet some desirable people, Tish," I put in firmly.
"If we do, I don't intend to run like rabbit."

"Desirable people!" Tish scoffed. "In the Rocky Mountains! My
dear Lizzie, every desperado in the country takes refuge in the
Rockies. Of course, if you want to take up with that class--"

Aggie sneezed and looked wretched. As for me, I made up my mind
then and there that if Letitia Carberry was going to such a
neighborhood, she was not going alone. I am not much with a
revolver, but mighty handy with a pair of lungs.

Well, Tish had it all worked out. "I've found the very place,"
she said. "In the first place, it's Government property. When
our country puts aside a part of itself as a public domain we
should show our appreciation. In the second place, it's wild.
I'd as soon spend a vacation in Central Park near the Zoo as in
the Yellowstone. In the third place, with an Indian reservation
on one side and a national forest on the other, it's bound to be
lonely. Any tourist," she said scornfully, "can go to the
Yosemite and be photographed under a redwood tree."

"Do the Indians stay on the reservation?" Aggie asked feebly.

"Probably not," Tish observed coldly. "Once for all, Aggie--if
you are going to run like a scared deer every time you see an
Indian or a bear, I wish you would go to Asbury Park."

She forgot herself then and sat down quickly, an action which
was followed by an agonized expression.

"Tish," I said sharply, "you have been riding a horse!

"Only in a cinder ring," she replied with unwonted docility.
"The teacher said I would be a trifle stiff."

"How long did you ride?"

"Not more than twenty minutes," she said. "The lesson was to be
an hour, but somebody put a nickel in a mechanical piano, and
the creature I was on started going sideways."

Well, she had fallen off and had to be taken home in a taxicab.
When Aggie heard it she simply took the pins out of the map and
stuck them in Tish's cushion. Her mouth was set tight.

"I didn't really fall," Tish said. "I sat down, and it was
cinders, and not hard. It has made my neck stiff, that's all."

"That's enough," said Aggie. "If I've got to seek pleasure by
ramming my spinal column up into my skull and crowding my
brains, I'll stay at home."

"You can't fall out of a Western saddle," Tish protested rather
bitterly. "And if I were you, Aggie, I wouldn't worry about
crowding my brains."

However, she probably regretted this speech, for she added more
gently: "A high altitude will help your hay fever, Aggie."

Aggie said with some bitterness that her hay fever did not need
to be helped. That, as far as she could see, it was strong and
flourishing. At that matters rested, except for a bit of
conversation just before we left. Aggie had put on her sweater
vest and her muffler and the jacket of her winter suit and was
getting into her fur coat, when Tish said: "Soft as mush, both
of you!"

"If you think, Tish Carberry," I began, "that I--"

"Apple dumplings!" said Tish. "Sofa pillows! Jellyfish! Not a
muscle to divide between you!"

I drew on my woolen tights angrily.

"Elevators!" Tish went on scornfully. "Street cars and taxicabs!
No wonder your bodies are mere masses of protoplasm, or
cellulose, or whatever it is."

"Since when," said Aggie, "have you been walking to develop
yourself, Tish? I must say--"

Here anger brought on one of her sneezing attacks, and she was
unable to finish.

Tish stood before us oracularly. "After next September," she
said, "you will both scorn the sloth of civilization. You will
move about for the joy of moving about. You will have cast off
the shackles of the flesh and be born anew. That is, if a plan
of mine goes through. Lizzie, you will lose fifty pounds!"

Well, I didn't want to lose fifty pounds. After our summer in
the Maine woods I had gone back to find that my new tailor-made
coat, which had fitted me exactly, and being stiffened with
haircloth kept its shape off and looked as if I myself were
hanging to the hook, had caved in on me in several places. Just
as I had gone to the expense of having it taken in I began to
put on flesh again, and had to have it let out. Besides, no
woman over forty should ever reduce, at least not violently. She
wrinkles. My face that summer had fallen into accordion plaits,
and I had the curious feeling of having enough skin for two.

Aggie had suggested at that time that I have my cheeks filled
out with paraffin, which I believe cakes and gives the
appearance of youth. But Mrs. Ostermaier knew a woman who had
done so, and being hit on one side by a snowball, the padding
broke in half, one part moving up under her eye and the second
lodging at the angle of her jaw. She tried lying on a hot-water
bottle to melt the pieces and bring them together again, but
they did not remain fixed, having developed a wandering habit
and slipping unexpectedly now and then. Mrs. Ostermaier says it
is painful to watch her holding them in place when she yawns.

Strangely enough, however, a few weeks later Tish's enthusiasm
for the West had apparently vanished. When several weeks went by
and the atlas had disappeared from her table, and she had given
up vegetarianism for Swedish movements, we felt that we were to
have a quiet summer after all, and Aggie wrote to a hotel in
Asbury Park about rooms for July and August.

There was a real change in Tish. She stopped knitting abdominal
bands for the soldiers in Europe, for one thing, although she
had sent over almost a dozen very tasty ones. In the evenings,
when we dropped in to chat with her, she said very little and
invariably dozed in her chair.

On one such occasion, Aggie having inadvertently stepped on the
rocker of her chair while endeavoring by laying a hand on Tish's
brow to discover if she was feverish, the chair tilted back and
Tish wakened with a jerk.

She immediately fell to groaning and clasped her hands to the
small of her back, quite ignoring poor Aggie, whom the chair had
caught in the epigastric region, and who was compelled for some
time to struggle for breath.

"Jumping Jehoshaphat!" said Tish in an angry tone. It is rare
for Tish to use the name of a Biblical character in this way,
but she was clearly suffering. "What in the world are you doing,
Aggie?"

"T-t-trying to breathe," poor Aggie replied.

"Then I wish," Tish said coldly, "that you would make the effort
some place else than on the rocker of my chair. You jarred me,
and I am in no state to be jarred."

But she refused to explain further, beyond saying, in reply to a
question of mine, that she was not feverish and that she had not
been asleep, having merely closed her eyes to rest them. Also
she affirmed that she was not taking riding-lessons. We both
noticed however, that she did not leave her chair during the
time we were there, and that she was sitting on the sofa cushion
I had made her for the previous Christmas, and on which I had
embroidered the poet Moore's beautiful words: "Come, rest in
this bosom."

As Aggie was still feeling faint, I advised her to take a
mouthful of blackberry cordial, which Tish keeps for emergencies
in her bathroom closet. Immediately following her departure the
calm of the evening was broken by a loud shriek.

It appeared, on my rushing to the bathroom, while Tish sat
heartlessly still, that Aggie, not seeing a glass, had placed
the bottle to her lips and taken quite a large mouthful of
liniment, which in color resembled the cordial. I found her
sitting on the edge of the bathtub in a state of collapse.

"I'm poisoned!" she groaned. "Oh, Lizzie, I am not fit to die!"

I flew with the bottle to Tish, who was very calm and stealthily
rubbing one of her ankles.

"Do her good," Tish said. "Take some of the stiffness out of her
liver, for one thing. But you might keep an eye on her. It's
full of alcohol."

"What's the antidote?" I asked, hearing Aggie's low groans.

"The gold cure is the only thing I can think of at the moment,"
said Tish coldly, and started on the other ankle.

I merely record this incident to show the change in Tish. Aggie
was not seriously upset, although dizzy for an hour or so and
very talkative, especially about Mr. Wiggins.

Tish was changed. Her life, which mostly had been an open book
to us, became filled with mystery. There were whole days when
she was not to be located anywhere, and evenings, as I have
stated, when she dozed in her chair.

As usual when we are worried about Tish, we consulted her
nephew, Charlie Sands. But like all members of the masculine sex
he refused to be worried.

"She'll be all right," he observed. "She takes these spells. But
trust the old lady to come up smiling."

"It's either Christian Science or osteopathy," Aggie said
dolefully. "She's not herself. The fruit cake she sent me the
other day tasted very queer, and Hannah thinks she put ointment
in instead of butter."

"Ointments!" observed Charlie thoughtfully. "And salves! By
George, I wonder--I'll tell you," he said: "I'll keep an eye
open for a few days. The symptoms sound like--But never mind.
I'll let you know."

We were compelled to be satisfied with this, but for several
days we lingered in anxiety. During that painful interval
nothing occurred to enlighten us, except one conversation with
Tish.

We had taken dinner with her, and she seemed to be all right
again and more than usually active. She had given up the Bran-
Nut after breaking a tooth on it, and was eating rare beef,
which she had heard was digested in the spleen or some such
place, thus resting the stomach for a time. She left us,
however, immediately after the meal, and Hannah, her maid,
tiptoed into the room.

"I'm that nervous I could scream," she said. "Do you know what
she's doing now?

"No, Hannah," I said with bitter sarcasm. "Long ago I learned
never to surmise what Miss Tish is doing."

"She's in the bathroom, standing on one foot and waving the
other in the air. She's been doing it," Hannah said, "for weeks.
First one foot, then the other. And that ain't all."

"You've been spying on Miss Tish," Aggie said. "Shame on you,
Hannah!"

"I have, Miss Aggie. Spy I have and spy I will, while there's
breath in my body. Twenty years have I--Do you know what she
does when she come home from these sneakin' trips of hers? She
sits in a hot bath until the wonder is that her blood ain't
turned to water. And after that she uses liniment. Her
underclothes is that stained up with it that I'm ashamed to hang
'em out."

Here Tish returned and, after a suspicious glance at Hannah, sat
down. Aggie and I glanced at each other. She did not, as she had
for some time past, line the chair with pillows, and there was
an air about her almost of triumph.

She did not, however, volunteer any explanation. Aggie and I
were driven to speculation, in which we indulged on our way
home, Aggie being my guest at the time, on account of her
janitor's children having measles, and Aggie never having had
them, although recalling a severe rash as a child, with other
measly symptoms.

"She has something in mind for next summer," said Aggie
apprehensively, "and she is preparing her strength for it. Tish
is forehanded if nothing else."

"Well," I remarked with some bitterness, "if we are going along
it might be well to prepare us too."

"Something," Aggie continued, "that requires landing on one foot
with the other in the air."

"Don't drivel," said I. "She's not likely going into the Russian
ballet. She's training her muscles, that's all."

But the mystery was solved the following morning when Charlie
Sands called me up.

"I've got it, beloved aunt," he said.

"Got what?" said I.


"What the old lady is up to.  She's a wonder, and no mistake.
Only I think it was stingy of her not to let you and Aunt Aggie
in."

He asked me to get Aggie and meet him at the office as soon as
possible, but he refused to explain further. And he continued to
refuse until we had arrived at our destination, a large brick
building in the center of the city.

"Now," he said, "take a long breath and go in. And mind--no
excitement."

We went in. There was a band playing and people circling at a
mile a minute. In the center there was a cleared place, and Tish
was there on ice skates. An instructor had her by the arm, and
as we looked she waved him off, gave herself a shove forward
with one foot, and then, with her arms waving, she made a double
curve, first on one foot and then on the other.

"The outside edge, by George!" said Charlie Sands. "The old
sport!"

Unluckily at that moment Tish saw us, and sat down violently on
the ice. And a quite nice-looking young man fell over her and
lay stunned for several seconds. We rushed round the arena,
expecting to see them both carried out, but Tish was uninjured,
and came skating toward us with her hands in her pockets. It was
the young man who had to be assisted out.

"Well," she said, fetching up against the railing with a bang,
"of course you had to come before I was ready for you! In a week
I'll really be skating."

We said nothing, but looked at her, and I am afraid our glances
showed disapproval, for she straightened her hat with a jerk.

"Well?" she said. "You're not tongue-tied all of a sudden, are
you? Can't a woman take a little exercise without her family and
friends coming snooping round and acting as if she'd broken the
Ten Commandments?"

"Breaking the Ten Commandments!" I said witheringly. "Breaking a
leg more likely. If you could have seen yourself, Tish Carberry,
sprawled on the at your age, and both your arteries and your
bones brittle, as the specialist told you,--and I heard him
myself,--you'd take those things off your feet and go home and
hide your head."

"I wish I had your breath, Lizzie," Tish said.  "I'd be a
submarine diver."

Saying which she skated off, and did not come near us again. A
young gentleman went up to her and asked her to skate, though I
doubt if she had ever seen him before. And as we left the
building in disapproval they were doing fancy turns in the
middle of the place, and a crowd was gathering round them.

Owing to considerable feeling being roused by the foregoing
incident, we did not see much of Tish for a week. If a middle-
aged woman wants to make a spectacle of herself, both Aggie and
I felt that she needed to be taught a lesson. Besides, we knew
Tish. With her, to conquer a thing is to lose interest.

On the anniversary of the day Aggie became engaged to Mr.
Wiggins, Tish asked us both to dinner, and we buried the
hatchet, or rather the skates. It was when dessert came that we
realized how everything that had occurred had been preparation
for the summer, and that we were not going to Asbury Park, after
all.

"It's like this," said Tish. "Hannah, go out and close the door,
and don't stand listening. I have figured it all out," she said,
when Hannah had slammed out. "The muscles used in skating are
the ones used in mountain-climbing. Besides, there may be times
when a pair of skates would be handy going over the glaciers.
It's not called Glacier Park for nothing, I dare say. When we
went into the Maine woods we went unprepared. This time I intend
to be ready for any emergency."

But we gave her little encouragement. We would go along, and
told her so. But further than that I refused to prepare. I would
not skate, and said so.

"Very well, Lizzie," she said. "Don't blame me if you find
yourself unable to cope with mountain hardships. I merely felt
this way: if each of us could do one thing well it might be
helpful. There's always snow, and if Aggie would learn to use
snowshoes it might be valuable."

"Where could I practice?" Aggie demanded.

But Tish went on, ignoring Aggie's sarcastic tone. "And if you,
Lizzie, would learn to throw a lasso, or lariat,--I believe both
terms are correct,--it would be a great advantage, especially in
case of meeting ferocious animals. The park laws will not allow
us to kill them, and it would be mighty convenient, Lizzie. Not
to mention that it would be an accomplishment few women
possess."

I refused to make the attempt, although Tish sent for the
clothesline, and with the aid of the encyclopoedia made a loop
in the end of it. Finally she became interested herself, and
when we left rather downhearted at ten o'clock she had caught
the rocking- chair three times and broken the clock.

Aggie and I prepared with little enthusiasm, I must confess. We
had as much love for the rocks and rills of our great country as
Tish, but, as Aggie ob- served, there were rocks and rocks, and
one could love them without climbing up them or falling off
them.

The only comfort we had was that Charlie Sands said that we
should ride ponies, and not horses. My niece's children have a
pony which is very gentle and not much larger than a dog, which
comes up on the porch for lumps of sugar. We were lured to a
false sense of security, I must say.

As far as we could see, Tish was making few preparations for the
trip. She said we could get everything we needed at the park
entrance, and that the riding was merely sitting in a saddle and
letting the pony do the rest. But on the 2lst of June, the
anniversary of the day Aggie was to have been married,  we went
out to decorate Mr. Wiggins's last resting-place, and coming out
of the cemetery we met Tish.

She was on a horse, astride!

She was not alone. A gentleman was riding beside her, and he had
her horse by a long leather strap.

She pretended not to see us, and Aggie unfortunately waved her
red parasol at her. The result was most amazing. The beast she
was on jerked itself free in an instant, and with the same
movement, apparently, leaped the hedge beside the road. One
moment there was Tish, in a derby hat and breeches, and the next
moment there was only the gentleman, with his mouth open.

Aggie collapsed, moaning, in the road, and beyond the hedge we
could hear the horse leaping tombstones in the cemetery.

"Oh, Tish!" Aggie wailed.

I broke my way through the hedge to find what was left of her,
while the riding-master bolted for the gate. But to my intense
surprise Tish was not on the ground. Then I saw her. She was
still on the creature, and she was coming back along the road,
with her riding-hat on the back of her head and a gleam in her
eye that I knew well enough was a gleam of triumph.

She halted the thing beside me and looked down with a
patronizing air.

"He's a trifle nervous this morning," she said calmly. "Hasn't
been worked enough. Good horse, though,--very neat jump."

Then she rode on and out through the gates, ignoring Aggie's
pitiful wail and scorning the leading-string the instructor
offered.

We reached Glacier Park without difficulty, although Tish
insisted on talking to the most ordinary people on the train,
and once, losing her, we found her in the drawing-room learning
to play bridge, although not a card-player, except for casino.
Though nothing has ever been said, I believe she learned when
too late that they were playing for money, as she borrowed ten
dollars from me late in the afternoon and was looking rather
pale.

"What do you think?" she said, while I was getting the money
from the safety pocket under my skirt. "The young man who
knocked me down on the ice that day is on the train. I've just
exchanged a few words with him. He was not much hurt, although
unconscious for a short time. His name is Bell--James C. Bell."

Soon after that Tish brought him to us, and we had a nice talk.
He said he had not been badly hurt on the ice, although he got a
cut on the forehead from Tish's skate, requiring two stitches.

After a time he and Aggie went out on the platform, only
returning when Aggie got a cinder in her eye.

"Just think," she said as he went for water to use in my eye-
cup, "he is going to meet the girl he is in love with out at the
park. She has been there for four weeks. They are engaged. He is
very much in love. He didn't talk of anything else."

She told him she had confided his tender secret to us, and
instead of looking conscious he seemed glad to have three people
instead of one to talk to about her.

"You see, it's like this," he said: "She is very good looking,
and in her town a moving-picture company has its studio. That
part's all right. I suppose we have to have movies. But the fool
of a director met her at a party, and said she would photograph
well and ought to be with them. He offered her a salary, and it
went to her head. She's young," he added, "and he said she could
be as great a hit as Mary Pickford."

"How sad!" said Aggie. "But of course she refused?"

"Well, no, she liked the idea. It got me worried. Worried her
people too. Her father's able to give her a good home, and I'm
expecting to take that job off his hands in about a year. But
girls are queer. She wanted to try it awfully."

It developed that he had gone to her folks about it, and they'd
offered her a vacation with some of her school friends in
Glacier Park.

"It's pretty wild out there," he went on, "and we felt that the
air, and horseback riding and everything, would make her forget
the movies. I hope so. She's there now. But she's had the bug
pretty hard. Got so she was always posing, without knowing it."

But he was hopeful that she would be cured, and said she was to
meet him at the station.

"She's an awfully nice girl, you understand," he finished. "It's
only that this thing got hold of her and needed driving out."

Well, we were watching when the train drew in at Glacier Park
Station, and she was there. She was a very pretty girl, and it
was quite touching to see him look at her. But Aggie observed
something and remarked on it.

"She's not as glad to see him as he is to see her," she said.
"He was going to kiss her, and she moved back."

In the crowd we lost sight of them, but that evening, sitting in
the lobby of the hotel, we saw Mr. Bell wandering round alone.
He looked depressed, and Aggie beckoned to him.

"How is everything?" she asked. "Is the cure working?"

He dropped into a chair and looked straight ahead.

"Not so you could notice it!" he said bitterly. "Would you
believe that there's a moving-picture outfit here, taking scenes
in the park"

"No!"

"There is. They've taken two thousand feet of her already,
dressed like an Indian," he said in a tone of suppressed fury.
"It makes me sick. I dare say if we tied her in a well some fool
would lower a camera on a rope."

Just at that moment she sauntered past us with a reddish-haired
young man. Mr. Bell ignored her, although I saw her try to catch
his eye.

"That's the moving-picture man with her," he said in a low,
violent tone when they had passed. "Name's Oliver." He groaned.
"He's told her she ought to go in for the business. She'd be a
second Mary Pickford! I'd like to kill him!" He rose savagely
and left us.

We spent the night in the hotel at the park entrance, and I
could not get to sleep. Tish was busy engaging a guide and going
over our supplies, and at eleven o'clock Aggie came into my room
and sat down on the bed.

"I can't sleep, Lizzie," she said. "That poor Mr. Bell is on my
mind. Besides, did you see those ferocious Indians hanging
round?"

Well, I had seen them, but said nothing.

"They would scalp one as quick as not," Aggie went on. "And
who's to know but that our guide will be in league with them?
I've lost my teeth," she said with a flash of spirit, "but so
far I've kept my hair, and mean to if possible. That old Indian
has a scalp tied to the end of a stick. Lizzie, I'm nervous."

"If it is only hair they want, I don't mind their taking my
switch," I observed, trying to be facetious, although uneasy. As
to the switch, it no longer matched my hair, and I would have
parted from it without a pang.

"And another thing," said Aggie: "Tish can talk about ponies
until she is black in the face. The creatures are horses. I've
seen them."

Well, I knew that, too, by that time. As we walked to the hotel
from the train I had seen one of than carrying on. It was
arching its back like a cat that's just seen a strange dog, and
with every arch it swelled its stomach. At the third heave it
split the strap that held the saddle on, and then it kicked up
in the rear and sent saddle and rider over its head. So far as I
had seen, no casualty had resulted, but it had set me thinking.
Given a beast with an India-rubber spine and no sense of honor,
I felt I would be helpless.

Tish came in just then and we confronted her.

"Ponies!" I said bitterly. "They are horses, if I know a horse.
And, moreover, it's well enough for you, Tish Carberry, to talk
about gripping a horse with your knees. I'm not built that way,
and you know it.  Besides, no knee grip will answer when a
creature begins to act like a cat in a fit."

Aggie here had a bright idea. She said that she had seen
pictures of pneumatic jackets to keep people from drowning, and
that Mr. McKee, a buyer at one of the stores at home, had taken
one, fully inflated, when he crossed to Paris for autumn suits.

"I would like to have one, Tish," she finished. "It would break
the force of a fall anyhow, even if it did puncture."

Tish, who was still dressed, went out to the curio shop in the
lobby, and returned with the sad news that there was nothing of
the sort on sale.

We were late in getting started the next morning owing partly to
Aggie's having put her riding-breeches on wrong, and being
unable to sit down when once in the saddle. But the main reason
was the guide we had engaged. Tish heard him using profane
language to one of the horses and dismissed him on the spot.

The man who was providing our horses and outfit, however,
understood, and in a short time returned with another man.

"I've got a good one for you now, Miss Carberry," he said. "Safe
and perfectly gentle, and as mild as milk. Only has one fault,
and maybe you won't mind that. He smokes considerably."

"I don't object, as long as it's in the open air," Tish said.

So that was arranged. But I must say that the new man did not
look mild. He had red hair, although a nice smile with a gold
tooth, and his trousers were of white fur, which looked hot for
summer.

"You are sure that you don't use strong language?" Tish asked.

"No, ma'am," he said. "I was raised strict, and very particular
as to swearing. Dear, dear now, would you look at that cinch!
Blow up their little tummies, they do, when they're cinched, and
when they breathe it out, the saddle's as loose as the tongues
of some of these here tourists."

Tish swung herself up without any trouble, but owing to a large
canvas bag on the back of my saddle I was unable to get my leg
across, and was compelled to have it worked over, a little at a
time. At last, however, we were ready. A white pack-horse,
carrying our tents and cooking-utensils, was led by Bill, which
proved to be the name of our cowboy guide.

Mr. Bell came to say good-bye and to wish us luck. But he looked
unhappy, and there was no sign whatever of the young lady, whose
name we had learned was Helen.

"I may see you on the trail," he said sadly. "I'm about sick of
this place, and I'm thinking of clearing out."

Aggie reminded him that faint heart never won fair lady, but he
only shook his head.

"I'm not so sure that I want to win," he said. "Marriage is a
serious business, and I don't know that I'd care to have a wife
that followed a camera like a street kid follows a brass band.
It wouldn't make for a quiet home."

We left him staring wistfully into the distance.

Tish sat in her saddle and surveyed the mountain peaks that rose
behind the hotel.

"Twenty centuries are looking down upon us!" she said. "The
crest of our native land lies before us. We will conquer those
beetling crags, or die trying. All right, Bill. Forward!"

Bill led off, followed by the pack-horse, then Tish, Aggie and
myself. We kept on in this order for some time, which gave me a
chance to observe Aggie carefully. I am not much of a horsewoman
myself, having never been on a horse before. But my father was
fond of riding, and I soon adapted myself to the horse's gait,
especially when walking. On level stretches, however, where Bill
spurred his horse to a trot, I was not so comfortable, and Aggie
appeared to strike the saddle in a different spot every time she
descended.

Once, on her turning her profile to me in a glance of despair, I
was struck by the strange and collapsed appearance of her face.
This was explained, however, when my horse caught up to hers on
a wider stretch of road, and I saw that she had taken out her
teeth and was holding them in her hand.

"Al-almost swallowed them," she gasped. "Oh, Lizzie, to think of
a summer of this!"

At last we left the road and turned onto a footpath, which
instantly commenced to rise. Tish called back something about
the beauties of nature and riding over a carpet of flowers, but
my horse was fording a small stream at the time and I was too
occupied to reply. The path--or trail, which is what Bill called
it--grew more steep, and I let go of the lines and held to the
horn of my saddle. The horses were climbing like goats.

"Tish," Aggie called desperately, "I can't stand this. I'm going
back! I'm--Lordamighty!"

Fortunately Tish did not hear this. We had suddenly emerged on
the brink of a precipice. A two-foot path clung to the cliff,
and along the very edge of this the horses walked, looking down
in an interested manner now and then. My blood turned to water
and I closed my eyes.

"Tish!" Aggie shrieked.

But the only effect of this was to start her horse into a trot.
I had closed my eyes, but I opened them in time to see Aggie
give a wild clutch and a low moan.

In a few moments the trail left the edge, and Aggie turned in
her saddle and looked back at me.

"I lost my lower set back there," she said. "They went over the
edge. I suppose they're falling yet."

"It's a good thing it wasn't the upper set," I said, to comfort
her. "As far as appearance goes--"

"Appearance!" she said bitterly. "Do you suppose we'll meet
anybody but desperadoes and Indians in a place like this? And
not an egg with us, of course."

The eggs referred to her diet, as at different times, when
having her teeth repaired, she can eat little else.

"Ham," she called back in a surly tone, "and hard tack, I
suppose! I'll starve, Lizzie, that's all. If only we had brought
some junket tablets!"

With the exception of this incident the morning was quiet. Tish
and Bill talked prohibition, which he believed in, and the tin
pans on the pack-horse clattered, and we got higher all the
time, and rode through waterfalls and along the edge of death.
By noon I did not much care if the horses fell over or not. The
skin was off me in a number of places, and my horse did not like
me, and showed it by nipping back at my leg here and there.

At eleven o'clock, riding through a valley on a trail six inches
wide, Bill's horse stepped on a hornets' nest. The insects were
probably dazed at first, but by the time Tish's horse arrived
they were prepared, and the next thing we knew Tish's horse was
flying up the mountain-side as if it had gone crazy, and Bill
was shouting to us to stop.

The last we saw of Tish for some time was her horse leaping a
mountain stream, and jumping like a kangaroo, and Bill was
following.

"She'll be killed!" Aggie cried. "Oh, Tish, Tish!"

"Don't yell," I said. "You'll start the horses. And for Heaven's
sake, Aggie," I added grimly, "remember that this is a pleasure
trip."

It was a half-hour before Tish and Bill returned. Tish was a
chastened woman. She said little or nothing, but borrowed some
ointment from me for her face, where the branches of trees had
scraped it, while Bill led the horses round the fatal spot. I
recall, however, that she said she wished now that we had
brought the other guide.

"Because I feel," she observed, "that a little strong language
would be a relief."

We had luncheon at noon in a sylvan glade, and Aggie was
pathetic. She dipped a cracker in a cup of tea, and sat off by
herself under a tree. Tish, however, had recovered her spirits.

"Throw out your chests, and breathe deep of this pure air
unsullied by civilization," she cried. "Aggie, fill yourself
with ozone."

"Humph!" said Aggie. "It's about all I will fill myself with."

"Think," Tish observed, "of the fools and dolts who are living
under roofs, struggling, contending. plotting, while all Nature
awaits them."

"With stings," Aggie said nastily, "and teeth, and horns, and
claws, and every old thing! Tish, I want to go back. I'm not
happy, and I don't enjoy scenery when I'm not happy. Besides, I
can't eat the landscape."

As I look back, I believe it would have been better if we had
returned. I think of that day, some time later, when we made the
long descent from the Piegan Pass under such extraordinary
circumstances, and I realize that, although worse for our
bodies, which had grown strong and agile, so that I have, later
on, seen Aggie mount her horse on a run, it would have been
better for our nerves had we returned.

We were all perfectly stiff after luncheon, and Aggie was
sulking also. Bill was compelled to lift us into our saddles,
and again we started up and up. The trail was now what he called
a "switchback." Halfway up Aggie refused to go farther, but on
looking back decided not to return either.

"I shall not go another step," she called. "Here I am, and here
I stay till I die."

"Very well," Tish said from overhead. "I suppose you don't
expect us all to stay and die with you. I'll tell your niece
when I see her."

Aggie thought better of it, however, and followed on, with her
eyes closed and her lips moving in prayer.  She happened to open
them at a bad place, although safe enough, according to Bill,
and nothing to what we were coming to a few days later. Opening
them as she did on a ledge of rock which sloped steeply for what
appeared to be several miles down on each side, she uttered a
piercing shriek, followed by a sneeze. As before, her horse
started to run, and Aggie is, I believe Bill said, the only
person in the world who ever took that place at a canter.

We were to take things easy the first day, Bill advised. "Till
you get your muscles sort of eased up, ladies," he said. "If you
haven't been riding astride, a horse's back seems as wide as the
roof of a church. But we'll get a rest now. The rest of the way
is walking."

"I can't walk," Aggie said. "I can't get my knees together."

"Sorry, ma'am," said Bill. "We're going down now, and the
animals has to be led. That's one of the diversions of a trip
like this. First you ride and than you walk. And then you ride
again. This here's one of the show places, although easy of
access from the entrance. Be a good place for a holdup, I've
always said."

"A holdup?" Tish asked. Her enthusiasm seemed to have flagged
somewhat, but at this she brightened up.

"Yes'm. You see, we're near the Canadian border, and it would be
easy for a gang to slip over and back again. Don't know why
we've never had one. Yellowstone can boast of a number."

I observed tartly that I considered it nothing to boast of, but
Bill did not agree with me.

"It doesn't hurt a neighborhood none," he observed. "Adds
romance, as you might say."

He went on and, happening to slide on a piece of shale at that
moment, I sat down unexpectedly and the horse put its foot on
me.

I felt embittered and helpless, but the others kept on.

"Very well," I said, "go on. Don't mind me. If this creature
wants to sit in my lap, well and good. I expect it's tired."

But as they went on callously, I was obliged to shove the
creature off and to hobble on. Bill was still babbling about
holdups, and Aggie was saying that he was sunstruck, but of
course it did not matter.

We made very slow progress, owing to taking frequent rests, and
late in the afternoon we were overtaken by Mr. Bell, on foot and
carrying a pack. He would have passed on without stopping, but
Aggie hailed him.

"Not going to hike, are you?" she said pleasantly. Aggie is fond
of picking up the vernacular of a region.

"No," he said in a surly tone quite unlike his former urbane
manner, "I'm merely taking this pack out for a walk."

But he stopped and mopped his face.

"To tell you the truth, ladies," he said, "I'm working off a
little steam, that's all. I was afraid, if I stayed round the
hotel, I'd do something I'd be sorry for. There are times when I
am not a fit companion for any one, and this is one of them."

We invited him to join us, but he refused.

"No, I'm better alone," he said. "When things get too strong for
me on the trail I can sling things about. I've been throwing
boulders down the mountain every now and then. I'd just as soon
they hit somebody as not. Also," he added, "I'm safer away from
any red-headed men."

We saw him glance at Bill, and understood. Mr. Oliver was red-
headed.

"Love's an awful thing," said Bill as the young man went on,
kicking stones out of his way. "I'm glad I ain't got it."

Tish turned and eyed him. "True love is a very beautiful thing,"
she rebuked him. "Although a single woman myself, I believe in
it. 'Come live with me and be my love,'" she quoted, sitting
down to shake a stone out of her riding-boot.

Bill looked startled. "I might say," he said hastily. that I may
have misled you, ladies. I'm married."

"You said you had never been in love," Tish said sharply.

"Well, not to say real love," he replied. "She was the cook of
an outfit I was with and it just came about natural. She was
going to leave, which meant that I'd have to do the cooking,
which I ain't much at, especially pastry. So I married her."

Tish gave him a scornful glance but said nothing and we went on.

We camped late that afternoon beside Two Medicine Lake, and
while Bill put up the tents the three of us sat on a log and
soaked our aching feet in the water which was melted glacier,
and naturally cold.

What was our surprise, on turning somewhat, to see the angry
lover fishing on a point near by. While we stared he pulled out
a large trout, and stalked away without a glance in our
direction. As Tish, with her usual forethought, had brought a
trout rod, she hastily procured it, but without result.

"Of course," Aggie said, "no fish! I could eat a piece of
broiled fish. I dare say I shall be skin and bone at the end of
this trip- -and not much skin."

Bill had set up the sleeping-tent and built a fire, and it
looked cozy and comfortable. But Tish had the young man on her
mind, and after supper she put on a skirt which she had brought
along and went to see him.

"I'd take him some supper, Bill," she said, "but you are
correct: you are no cook."

She disappeared among the bushes, only to return in a short
time, jerking off her skirt as she came.

"He says all he wants is to be let alone," she said briefly. "I
must say I'm disappointed in him. He was very agreeable before."

I pass without comment over the night. Bill had put up the tent
over the root of a large tree, and we disposed ourselves about
it as well as we could. In the course of the night one of the
horses broke loose and put its head inside the tent. Owing to
Aggie's thinking it was a bear, Tish shot at it, fortunately
missing it.

But the frightened animal ran away, and Bill was until noon the
next day finding it. We cooked our own breakfast, and Tish made
some gems, having brought the pan along. But the morning
dragged, although the scenery was lovely.

At twelve Bill brought the horse back and came over to us.

"If you don't mind my saying it, Miss Carberry," he observed,
"you're a bit too ready with that gun. First thing you know
you'll put a hole through me, and then where will you be?"

"I've got along without men most of my life," Tish said sharply.
"I reckon we'd manage."

"Well," he said, "there's another angle to it. Where would I
be?"

"That's between you and your Creator," Tish retorted.

We went on again that afternoon, and climbed another precipice.
We saw no human being except a mountain goat, although Bill
claimed to have seen a bear. Tish was quite calm at all times,
and had got so that she could look down into eternity without a
shudder. But Aggie and I were still nervous, and at the steepest
places we got off and walked.

The unfortunate part was that the exercise and the mountain air
made Aggie hungry, and there was little that she could eat.

"If any one had told me a month ago," she said, mopping her
forehead, "that I would be scaling the peaks of my country on
crackers and tea, I wouldn't have believed it. I'm done out,
Lizzie. I can't climb another inch."

Bill was ahead with the pack horse, and Tish, overhearing her,
called back some advice.

"Take your horse's tail and let him pull you up, Aggie," she
said. "I've read it somewhere."

Aggie, although frequently complaining, always does as Tish
suggests. So she took the horse's tail. when a totally
unexpected thing happened. Docile as the creature generally was,
it objected at once, and kicked out with both rear feet. In a
moment, it seemed to me, Aggie was gone, and her horse was
moving on alone.

"Aggie!" I called in a panic.

Tish stopped, and we both looked about. Then we saw her, lying
on a ledge about ten feet below the trail. She was flat on her
back, and her riding-hat was gone. But she was uninjured,
although shaken, for as we looked she sat up, and an agonized
expression came over her face.

"Aggie!" I cried. "Is anything broken?"

"Damnation!" said Aggie in an awful voice. "The upper set is
gone!"

I have set down exactly what Aggie said. I admit that the
provocation was great. But Tish was not one to make allowances,
and she turned and went on, leaving us alone. She is not without
feeling, however, for from the top of the pass she sent Bill
down with a rope, and we dragged poor Aggie to the trail again.
Her nerves were shaken and she was repentant also, for when she
found that her hat was gone she said nothing, although her eyes
took on a hunted look.

At the top of the pass Tish was sitting on a stone. She had
taken her mending-box from the saddle, where she always kept it
handy, and was drawing up a hole in her stocking. I observed to
her pleasantly that it was a sign of scandal to mend clothing
while still on, but she ignored me, although, as I reflected
bitterly, I had not been kicked over the cliff.

It was a subdued and speechless Aggie who followed us that
afternoon along the trail. As her hat was gone, I took the spare
dish towel and made a turban for her, with an end hanging down
to protect the back of her neck. But she expressed little
gratitude, beyond observing that as she was going over the edge
piecemeal, she'd better have done it all at once and be through
with it.

The afternoon wore away slowly. It seemed a long time until we
reached our camping-place, partly because, although a small
eater ordinarily, the air and exercise had made me feel
famished. But the disagreement between Tish and Aggie, owing to
the  latter's unfortunate exclamation while kicked over the
cliff, made the time seem longer. There was not the usual
exchange of pleasant nothings between us.

But by six o'clock Tish was more amiable, having seen bear
scratches on trees near the camp, and anticipating the sight of
a bear. She mixed up a small cup cake while Bill was putting up
our tent, and then, taking her rod, proceeded to fish, while
Aggie and I searched for grasshoppers. These were few, owing to
the altitude, but we caught four, which we imprisoned in a match-
 box.

With them Tish caught four trout and, broiling them nicely, she
offered one to poor Aggie. It was a peace offering, and taken as
such, so that we were soon on our former agreeable footing, and
all forgotten.

The next day it rained, and we were obliged to sit in the tent.
Bill sat with us, and talked mainly of desperadoes.

"As I observed before," he said, "there hasn't been any tourist
holdup yet. But it's bound to come. Take the Yellowstone, now,--
one holdup a year's the average, and it's full of soldiers at
that."

"It's a wonder people keep on going," I observed moving out of a
puddle.

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "In one way it's good business. I
take it this way: When folks come West they want the West
they've read about. What do they care for irrigation and apple
orchards? What they like is danger and a little gunplay, the
sort of thing they see in these here moving pictures."

"I'm sure I don't," Aggie remarked. It was growing dusk, and she
peered out into the forest round us. "There is something
crackling out there now," she said.

"Only a bear, likely," Bill assured her. "We have a sight of
bears here. No, ma'am, they want danger. And every holdup's an
advertisement. You see, the Government can't advertise these
here parks; not the way it should, anyhow. But a holdup's news,
so the papers print it, and it sets people to thinking about the
park. Maybe they never thought of the place and are arranging to
go elsewhere. Then along comes a gang and raises h--, raises
trouble, and the park's in every one's mouth, so to speak. We'd
get considerable business if there was one this summer."

At that moment the crackling outside increased, and a shadowy
form emerged from the bushes. Even Bill stood up, and Aggie
screamed.

It was, however, only poor Mr. Bell.

"Mind if I borrow some matches?" he said gruffly.

"We can't lend matches," Tish replied. "At least, I don't see
the use of sending them back after they've been lighted. We can
give you some."

"My mistake," he said.

That was all he said, except the word "Thanks" when I reached
him a box.

"He's a surly creature," Tish observed as he crackled through
the brush again. "More than likely that girl's better off
without him."

"He looks rather downhearted," Aggie remarked. "Much that we
think is temper is due to unhappiness."

"Much of your charitable view is due to a good dinner too," Tish
said. "Here we are, in the center of the wilderness, with great
peaks on every hand, and we meet a fellow creature who speaks
nine words, and begrudges those. If he's as stingy with money as
with language she's hard a narrow escape."

"He's had kind of a raw deal," Bill put in. "The girl was stuck
on him all right, until this moving-picture chap came along. He
offered to take some pictures with her in them, and it was all
off. They're making up a play now, and she's to be in it."

"What sort of a play?" Tish demanded.

"Sorry not to oblige," Bill replied. "Can't say the nature of
it."

But all of us felt that Bill knew and would not say.

Tish, to whom a mystery is a personal affront, determined to
find out for herself; and when later in the evening we saw the
light of Bell's camp-fire, it was Tish herself who suggested
that we go over and visit with him.

"We can converse about various things," she said, "and take his
mind from his troubles. But it would be better not to mention
affairs of the heart. He's probably sensitive."

So we left Bill to look after things, and went to call on Mr.
Bell. It was farther to his camp than it had appeared, and Tish
unfortunately ran into a tree and bruised her nose badly. When
it had stopped bleeding, however, we went on, and at last
arrived.

He was sitting on a log by the fire, smoking a pipe and looking
very sad. Behind him was a bit of a tent not much larger than an
umbrella.

Aggie touched my arm. "My heart aches for him," she said. "There
is despair in his very eyes."

I do not believe that at first he was very glad to see us, but
he softened somewhat when Tish held out the cake she had
brought.

"That's very nice of you," he said, rising. "I'm afraid I can't
ask you to sit down. The ground's wet and there is only this
log."

"I've sat on logs before," Tish replied. "We thought we'd call,
seeing we are neighbors. As the first comers it was our place to
call first, of course."

"I see," he said, and poked up the fire with a piece of stick.

"We felt that you might be lonely," said Aggie.

"I came here to be lonely," he replied gloomily. "I want to be
lonely."

Tish, however, was determined to be cheerful, and asked him, as
a safe subject, how he felt about the war.

"War?" he said. "That's so, there is a war. To tell the truth, I
had forgotten about it. I've been thinking of other things."

We saw that it was going to be difficult to cheer him. Tish
tried the weather, which brought us nowhere, as he merely
grunted. But Aggie broached the subject of desperadoes, and he
roused somewhat.

"There are plenty of shady characters in the park," he said
shortly. "Wolves in sheep's clothing, that's what they are."

"Bill, our guide, says there may be a holdup at any time."

"Sure there is," he said calmly. "There's one going to be pulled
off in the next day or two."

We sat petrified, and Aggie's eyes were starting out of her
head.

"All the trimmings," he went on, staring at the fire. "Innocent
and unsuspecting tourists, lunch, laughter, boiled coffee, and
cold ham. Ambush. The whole business--followed by highwaymen in
flannel shirts and revolvers. Dead tourist or two, desperate
resistance--everything."

Aggie rose, pale as an aspen. "You--you are joking!" she cried.

"Do I look like it?" he demanded fiercely. "I tell you there is
going to be the whole thing. At the end the lovely girl will
escape on horseback and ride madly for aid. She will meet the
sheriff and a posse, who are out for a picnic or some such
damfool nonsense, and--"

"Young man," Tish said coldly, "if you know all this, why are
you sitting here and not alarming the authorities?"

"Pooh!" he said disagreeably. "It's a put-up scheme, to
advertise the park. Yellowstone's got ahead of them this year,
and has had its excitement, with all the papers ringing with it.
That was a gag, too, probably."

"Do you mean--"

"I mean considerable," he said. "That red- headed movie idiot
will be on a rise, taking the tourists as they ride through. Of
course he doesn't expect the holdup--not in the papers anyhow.
He happens to have the camera trained on the party, and gets it
all. Result--a whacking good picture, revolvers firing blank
cartridges, everything which people will crowd to see. Oh, it's
good business all right. I don't mind admitting that."

Tish's face expressed the greatest rage. She rose, drawing
herself to her full height.

"And the tourists?" she demanded. "They lend themselves to this
imposition? To this infamy? To this turpitude? "

"Certainly not. They think it's the real thing. The whole
business hangs on that. And as the sheriff, or whoever it is in
the fool plot, captures the bandits, the party gets its money
back, and has material for conversation for the next twenty
years."

"To think," said Tish, "of our great National Government lending
itself to such a scheme!"

"Wrong," said the young man. "It's a combination of Western
railroads and a movie concern acting together."

"I trust," Tish observed, setting her lips firmly, "that the
tourists will protest."

"The more noise, the better." The young man, though not more
cheerful as to appearance, was certainly more talkative. "Trust
a clergyman for yelling when his pocket's picked."

With one voice the three of us exclaimed: "Mr. Ostermaier!"

He was not sure of the name, but "Helen" had pointed the
clergyman out to him, and it was Mr. Ostermaier without a doubt.

We talked it over with Bill when we got back, and he was not as
surprised as we'd expected.

"Knew they were cooking up something. They've got some Indians
in it too. Saw them rehearsing old Thunder Mountain the other
day in nothing but a breech-clout."

Tish reproved him for a lack of delicacy of speech, and shortly
afterward we went to bed. Owing to the root under the tent, and
puddles here and there, we could not go to sleep for a time, and
we discussed the "nefarious deed," as Tish aptly termed it, that
was about to take place.

"Although," Tish observed, "Mr. Ostermaier has been receiving
for so many years that it might be a good thing, for his soul's
sake, to have him give up something, even if to bandits." I
dozed off after a time, but awakened to find

Tish sitting up, wide awake.

"I've been thinking that thing over, Lizzie," she said in a low
tone. "I believe it's our duty to interfere."

"Of course," I replied sarcastically; "and be shown all over the
country in the movies making fools of ourselves."

"Did you notice that that young man said they would be firing
blank cartridges?"

Well, even a blank cartridge can be a dangerous thing. Then and
there I reminded her of my niece's boy, who was struck on the
Fourth of July by a wad from one, and had to be watched for
lockjaw for several weeks.

It was at that moment that we heard Bill, who had no tent, by
choice, and lay under a tree, give a loud whoop, followed by
what was unmistakably an oath.

"Bear!" he yelled. "Watch out, he's headed for the tent! It's a
grizzly."

Tish felt round wildly for her revolver, but it was gone! And
the bear was close by. We could hear it snuffing about, and to
add to the confusion Aggie wakened and commenced to sneeze with
terror.

"Bill!" Tish called. "I've lost my revolver!"

"I took it, Miss Carberry. But I've been lying in a puddle, and
it won't go off."

All hope seemed gone. The frail walls of our tent were no
protection whatever, and as we all knew, even a tree was no
refuge from a bear, which, as we had seen in the Zoological
Garden at home, can climb like a cat, only swifter. Besides,
none of us could climb a tree.

It was at that moment that Tish had one of those inspirations
that make her so dependable in emergencies. Feeling round in the
tent for a possible weapon, she touched a large ham, from which
we had broiled a few slices at supper. In her shadowy form there
was both purpose and high courage. With a single sweeping
gesture she flung the ham at the bear so accurately that we
heard the thud with which it struck.

"What the hell are you doing?" Bill called from a safe distance.
Even then we realized that his restraint of speech was a pose,
pure and simple. "If you make him angry he'll tear up the whole
place."

But Tish did not deign to answer. The rain had ceased, and
suddenly the moon came out and illuminated the whole scene. We
saw the bear sniffing at the ham, which lay on the ground. Then
he picked it up in his jaws and stood looking about.

Tish said later that the moment his teeth were buried in the ham
she felt safe. I can still see the majestic movement with which
she walked out of the tent and waved her arms.

"Now, scat with you!" she said firmly. "Scat!"

He "scatted." Snarling through his nose, for fear of dropping
the ham, he turned and fled up the mountainside. In the open
space Tish stood the conqueror. She yawned and glanced about.

"Going to be a nice night, after all," she said. " Now, Bill,
bring me that revolver, and if I catch you meddling with it
again I'll put that pair of fur rugs you are so proud of in the
fire."

Bill, who was ignorant of the ham, emerged sheepishly into the
open. "Where the--where the dickens did you hit him, Miss Tish?"
he asked.

"In the stomach," Tish replied tartly, and taking her revolver
went back to the tent.

All the next day Tish was quiet. She rode ahead, hardly noticing
the scenery, with her head dropped on her chest. At luncheon she
took a sardine sandwich and withdrew to a tree, underneath which
she sat, a lonely and brooding figure.

When luncheon was over and Aggie and I were washing the dishes
and hanging out the dish towels to dry on a bush, Tish
approached Bill, who was pouring water on the fire to extinguish
it.

"Bill," she stated, "you came to us under false pretenses. You
swear, for one thing."

"Only under excitement, Miss Tish," he said. "And as far as that
goes, Miss Aggie herself said--"

"Also," Tish went on hastily, "you said you could cook. You
cannot cook."

"Now, look here, Miss Tish," he said in a pleading tone, "I can
cook. I didn't claim to know the whole cookbook. I can make
coffee and fry bacon. How'd I know you ladies wanted pastry? As
for them canned salmon croquettes with white sauce, I reckon to
make them with a little showing, and--"

"Also," said Tish, cutting in sternly, "you took away my
revolver, and left us helpless last night, and in peril of wild
beasts."

"Tourists ain't allowed to carry guns."

He attempted to look injured, but Tish ignored him.

"Therefore," she said, "if I am not to send you back--which I
have been considering all day, as I've put up a tent myself
before this, and you are only an extra mouth to feed, which, as
we are one ham short, is inconvenient--you will have to justify
my keeping you."

"If you will just show me once about them gems, Miss Tish--" he
began.

But Tish cut him off. "No," she said firmly, "you are too casual
about cooking. And you are no dish-washer. Setting a plate in a
river and letting the current wash it may satisfy cow-punchers.
It doesn't go with me. The point is this: You know all about the
holdup that is going to take place. Don't lie. I know you know.
Now, you take us there and tell us all you know about it."

He scratched his head reflectively. "I'll tell you," he said.
"I'm a slow thinker. Give me about twenty minutes on it, will
you? It's a sort of secret, and there's different ways of
looking at it."

Tish took out her watch. "Twenty minutes," she said. "Start
thinking now."

He wandered off and rolled a cigarette. Later on, as I have
said, he showed Tish how to do it--not, of course, that she
meant to smoke, but Tish is fond of learning how to do things.
She got so she could roll them with one hand, and she does it
now in the winter evenings, instead of rolling paper spills as
formerly. When Charlie Sands comes, she always has a supply
ready for him, although occasionally somewhat dry from waiting
for a few weeks.

At the end of twenty minutes Tish snapped her watch shut.

"Time!" she called, and Bill came back.

"Well, I'll do it," he said. "I don't know as they'll put you in
the picture, but I'll see what I can do."

"Picture nothing!" Tish snapped. "You take us there and hide us.
That's the point. There must be caves round to put us in,
although I don't insist on a cave. They're damp usually."

Well, he looked puzzled, but he agreed. I caught Aggie's eye,
and we exchanged glances. There was trouble coming, and we knew
it. Our long experience with Tish had taught us not to ask
questions. "Ours but to do and die," as Aggie later said. But I
confess to a feeling of uneasiness during the remainder of that
day.

We changed our course that afternoon, turning off at Saint
Mary's and spending the night near the Swiss Chalet at Going-to-
the-Sun. Aggie and I pleaded to spend the night in the chalet,
but Tish was adamant.

"When I am out camping, I camp," she said. "I can have a bed at
home, but I cannot sleep under the stars, on a bed of pine
needles, and be lured to rest by the murmur of a mountain
stream."

Well, we gave it up and went with her. I must say that the trip
had improved us already. Except when terrified or kicked by a
horse, Aggie was not sneezing at all, and I could now climb into
the saddle unassisted. My waistbands were much looser, too, and
during a short rest that afternoon I put a dart in my riding-
breeches, during the absence of Bill after the pack-horse, which
had strayed.

It was on that occasion that Tish told us as much of her plan as
she thought it wise for us to know.

"The holdup," she explained, "is to be the day after to-morrow
on the Piegan Pass. Bill says there is a level spot at the top
with rocks all about. That is the spot. The Ostermaiers and
their party leave the automobiles at Many Glaciers and take
horses to the pass. It will be worth coming clear to Montana to
see Mrs. Ostermaier on a horse."

"I still don't see," Aggie observed in a quavering voice, "what
we have to do with it."

"Naturally not," said Tish. "You'll know as soon as is good for
you."

"I don't believe it will ever be good for me," said poor Aggie.
"It isn't good for anybody to be near a holdup. And I don't want
to be in a moving picture with no teeth. I'm not a vain woman,"
she said, "but I draw the line at that."

But Tish ignored her. "The only trouble," she said, "is having
one revolver. If we each had one--Lizzie, did you bring any
ink?"

Well, I had, and said so, but that I needed it for postcards
when we struck a settlement.

Tish waved my objection aside. "I guess it can be managed," she
observed. "Bill has a knife. Yes, I think it can be done."

She and Bill engaged in an earnest conference that afternoon. At
first Bill objected. I could see him shaking his head. Then Tish
gave him something which Aggie said was money. I do not know.
She had been short of cash on the train, but she may have had
more in her trunk. Then I saw Bill start to laugh. He laughed
until he had to lean against a tree, although Tish was quite
stern and serious.

We reached Piegan Pass about three that afternoon, and having
inspected it and the Garden Wall, which is a mile or two high at
that point, we returned to a "bench" where there were some
trees, and dismounted.

Here, to our surprise, we found Mr. Bell again. As Tish
remarked, he was better at walking than at talking. He looked
surprised at seeing us, and was much more agreeable than before.

"I'm afraid I was pretty surly the other night," he said. "The
truth is, I was so blooming unhappy that I didn't give a damn
for anything."

But when he saw that Bill was preparing to take the pack off the
horse he looked startled.

"I say," he said, "you don't mean to camp here, do you?"

"Such is my intention," Tish observed grimly.

"But look here. Just beyond, at the pass, is where the holdup is
to take place to-morrow."

"So I believe," said Tish. "What has that to do with us? What
are you going to do?"

"Oh, I'm going to hang round."

"Well, we intend to hang round also."

He stood by and watched our preparations for camp. Tish chose a
small grove for the tent, and then left us, clambering up the
mountain-side. She finally disappeared. Aggie mixed some muffins
for tea, and we invited the young man to join us. But he was
looking downhearted again and refused.

However, when she took them out of the portable oven, nicely
browned, and lifting the tops of each one dropped in a
teaspoonful of grape jelly, he changed his mind.

"I'll stay, if you don't mind," he said. "Maybe some decent food
will make me see things clearer."

When Tish descended at six o'clock, she looked depressed. "There
is no cave," she said, "although I lave gone where a mountain
goat would get dizzy. But I have found a good place to hide the
horses, where we can get them quickly when we need them."

Aggie was scooping the inside out of her muffin, being unable to
eat the crust, but she went quite pale.

"Tish," she said, "you have some desperate plan in view, and I
am not equal to it. I am worn with travel and soft food, and am
not as young as I once was."

"Desperate nothing!" said Tish, pouring condensed milk into her
tea. "I am going to teach a lot of idiots a lesson, that's all.
There should be one spot in America free from the advertising
man and his schemes, and this is going to be it. Commercialism,"
she went on, growing oratorical, "does not belong here among
these mighty mountains. Once let it start, and these towering
cliffs will be defaced with toothpowder and intoxicating-liquor
signs."

The young man knew the plans for the holdup even letter than
Bill. He was able to show us the exact spot which had been
selected, and to tell us the hour at which the Ostermaier party
was to cross the pass.

"They'll lunch on the pass," he said, "and, of course, they
suspect nothing. The young lady of whom I spoke to you will be
one of their party. She, however, knows what is coming, and is,
indeed, a party to it. The holdup will take place during
luncheon."

Here his voice broke, and he ate an entire muffin before he went
on: "The holdup will take place on the pass, the bandits having
been hidden on this 'bench' right here. Then the outlaws, having
robbed the tourists, will steal the young lady and escape down
the trail on the other side. The guide, who is in the plot, will
ride ahead in this direction and raise the alarm. You
understand," he added, "that as it's a put-up job, the tourists
will get all their stuff back. I don't know how that's to be
arranged."

"But the girl?" Tish asked.

"She's to make her escape later," Mr. Bell said grimly, "and
will be photographed galloping down the trail, by another idiot
with a camera, who, of course, just happens to be on the spot.
She'll do it too," he added with a pathetic note of pride in his
voice. "She's got nerve enough for anything."

He drew a long breath, and Aggie poured him a third cup of tea.

"I dare say this will finish everything," he said dejectedly. "I
can't offer her any excitement like this. We live in a quiet
suburb, where nobody ever fires a revolver except on the Fourth
of July."

"What she needs," Tish said, bending forward, "is a lesson, Mr.
Bell--something to make her hate the very thought of a moving
picture and shudder at the sound of a shot."

"Exactly," said Mr. Bell. "I've thought of that. Something to
make her gun-shy and camera-shy. It's curious about her. In some
ways she's a timid girl. She's afraid of thunder, for one
thing."

Tish bent forward. "Do you know," she said, "the greatest weapon
in the world?"

"Weapon? Well, I don't know. These new German guns--"

"The greatest weapon in the world," Tish explained, "is
ridicule. Man is helpless against it. To be absurd is to be
lost. When the bandits take the money, where do they go?"

"Down the other side from the pass. A photographer will
photograph them there, making their escape with the loot."

"And the young lady?"

"I've told you that," he said bitterly. "She is to be captured
by the attacking party."

"They will all be armed?"

"Sure, with blanks. The Indians have guns and arrows, but the
arrows have rubber tips."

Tish rose majestically. "Mr. Bell," she said, "you may sleep to-
night the sleep of peace. When I undertake a thing, I carry it
through. My friends will agree with me. I never fail, when my
heart is set on it. By the day after to-morrow the young lady in
the case will hate the sight of a camera."

Although not disclosing her plan, she invited the young man to
join us. But his face fell and he shook his head.

Tish said that she did not expect to need him, but that, if the
time came, she would blow three times on a police whistle, which
she had, with her usual foresight, brought along. He agreed to
that, although looking rather surprised, and we parted from him.

"I would advise," Tish said as he moved away, "that you conceal
yourself in the valley below the pass on the other side."

He agreed to this, and we separated for the night. But long
after Aggie and I had composed ourselves to rest Tish sat on a
stone by the camp-fire and rolled cigarettes.

At last she came into the tent and wakened us by prodding us
with her foot.

"Get all the sleep you can," she said. "We'll leave here at dawn
to-morrow, and there'll be little rest for any of us to-morrow
night."

At daylight next morning she roused us. She was dressed, except
that she wore her combing-jacket, and her hair was loose round
her face.

"Aggie, you make an omelet in a hurry, and, Lizzie, you will
have to get the horses."

"I'll do nothing of the sort," I said, sitting up on the ground.
"We've got a man here for that. Besides, I have to set the
table."

"Very well," Tish replied, "we can stay here, I dare say. Bill's
busy at something I've set him to doing."

"Whose fault is it," I demanded, "that we are here in
'Greenland's Icy Mountains'? Not mine. Id never heard of the
dratted place. And those horses are five miles away by now, most
likely."

"Go and get a cup of tea. You'll have a little sense then," said
Tish, not unkindly. "And as for what Bill's doing, he's making
revolvers. Where's your writing ink?"

I had none! I realized it that moment. I had got it out at the
first camp to record in my diary the place, weather,
temperature, and my own pulse rate, which I had been advised to
watch, on account of the effect of altitude on the heart, and
had left the bottle sitting on a stone.

When I confessed this to Tish, she was unjustly angry and a
trifle bitter.

"It's what I deserve, most likely, for bringing long two
incompetents," was her brief remark. "Without ink we are
weaponless."

But she is a creature of resource, and a moment later she
emerged from the tent and called to Bill in a cheerful tone.

"No ink, Bill," she said, "but we've got black- berry cordial,
and by mixing it with a little soot we may be able to manage."

Aggie demurred loudly, as there are occasions when only a
mouthful of the cordial enables her to keep doing. But Tish was
firm. When I went to the fire, I found Bill busily carving
wooden revolvers, copying Tish's, which lay before him. He had
them done well enough, and could have gone for the horses as
easy as not, but he insisted on trimming them up. Mine, which I
still have, has a buffalo head carved on the handle, and Aggie's
has a wreath of leaves running round the barrel.

In spite of Aggie's wails Tish poured a large part of the
blackberry cordial into a biscuit pan, and put in a chip of
wood.

"It makes it red," she said doubtfully. "I never saw a red
revolver, Bill."

"Seems like an awful waste," Bill said. But having now completed
the wreath he placed all three weapons --he had made one for
himself--in the pan. The last thing I saw, as I started for the
horses, was the three of them standing about, looking down, and
Aggie's face was full of misery.

I was gone for a half-hour. The horses had not wandered far, and
having mounted mine, although without a saddle, I copied as well
as I could the whoop Bill used to drive them in, and rounded
them up. When I returned, driving them before me, the pack was
ready, and on Tish's face was a look of intense satisfaction. I
soon perceived the reason.

Lying on a stone by the fire were three of the shiniest black
revolvers any one could want. I eyed Tish and she explained.

"Stove polish," she said. "Like a fool I'd forgot it. Gives a
true metallic luster, as it says on the box."

Tish is very particular about a stove, and even on our camping-
trips we keep the portable stove shining and clean.

"Does it come off?"

"Well, more or less," she admitted. "We can keep the box out and
renew when necessary. It is a great comfort," she added, "to
feel that we are all armed. We shall need weapons."

"In an emergency," I observed rather tartly, "I hope you will
not depend on us too much. While I don't know what you intend to
do, if it is anything desperate, just remember that the only way
Aggie or I can do any damage with these things is to thrust them
down somebody's throat and strangle him to death."

She ignored my remark, however, and soon we were on our horses
and moving along the trail toward the pass.


It will be unnecessary to remind those familiar with Glacier
Park of the trail which hugs the mountain above timber-line, and
extends toward the pass for a mile or so, in a long semicircle
which curves inward.

At the end it turns to the right and mounts to an acre or so of
level ground, with snow and rocks but no vegetation. This is the
Piegan Pass. Behind it is the Garden Wall, that stupendous mass
of granite rising to incredible heights. On the other side the
trail drops abruptly, by means of stepladders which I have
explained.

Tish now told us of her plan.

"The unfortunate part is," she said, "that the Ostermaiers will
not see us. I tried to arrange it so they could, but it was
impossible. We must content, ourselves with the knowledge of a
good deed done."

Her plan, in brief, was this: The sham attacking party was to
turn and ride away down the far side of the pass, up which the
Ostermaiers had come. They were, according to the young man, to
take the girl with them, with the idea of holding her for
ransom. She was to escape, however, while they were lunching in
some secluded fastness, and, riding back to the pass, was to
meet there a rescue party, which the Ostermaiers were to meet on
the way down to Gunsight Chalet.

Tish's idea was this: We would ride up while they were lunching,
pretend to think them real bandits, paying no attention to them
if they fired at us, as we knew they had only blank cartridges,
and, having taken them prisoners, make them walk in ignominy to
the nearest camp, some miles farther.

"Then," said Tish, "either they will confess the ruse, and the
country will ring with laughter, or they will have to submit to

arrest and much unpleasantness. It will be a severe lesson."

We reached the pass safely, and on the way down the other side
we passed Mr. Oliver, the moving-picture man, with his outfit on
a horse. He touched his hat politely and moved out on a ledge to
let us by.

"Mind if I take you as you go down the mountain?" he called.
"It's a bully place for a picture." He stared at Aggie, who was
muffled in a cape and had the dish towel round her head. "I'd
particularly like to get your Arab," he said. "The Far East and
the Far West, you know."

Aggie gave him a furious glance. "Arab nothing!" she snapped.
"If you can't tell a Christian lady from a heathen, on account
of her having lost her hat, them you belong in the dirty work
you're doing."

"Aggie, be quiet!" Tish said in an awful voice.

But wrath had made Aggie reckless. "'Dirty work' was what I
said," she repeated, staring at the young man.

"I beg your pardon. I'm sure I--"

"Don't think," Aggie went on, to Tish's fury, "that we don't
know a few things. We do."

"I see," he said slowly. "All right. Although I'd like to know--
"

"Good-morning," said Aggie, and kicked her horse to go on.

I shall never forget Tish's face. Round the next bend she got
off her horse and confronted Aggie.

"The older I get, Aggie Pilkington," she said, "the more I
realize that to take you anywhere means ruin. We are done now.
All our labor is for nothing. There will be no holdup, no
nothing. They are scared off."

But Aggie was still angry. "Just let some one take you for a
lousy Bedouin, Tish," she said, "and see what you would do. I'm
not sorry anyhow. I never did like the idea."

But Tish dislikes relinquishing an idea, once it has taken hold.
And, although she did not speak to Aggie again for the next
hour, she went ahead with her preparations.

"There's still a chance, Lizzie," she said. "It's not likely
they'll give up easy, on account of hiring the Indians and
everything."

About a mile and a half down the trail, she picked out a place
to hide. This time there was a cave. We cleared our saddles for
action, as Tish proposed to let them escape past us with the
girl, and then to follow them rapidly, stealing upon them if
possible while they were at luncheon, and covering them with the
one real revolver and the three wooden ones.

The only thing that bothered us was Bill's attitude. He kept
laughing to himself and muttering, and when he was storing
things in the cave, Tish took me aside.

"I don't like his attitude, Lizzie," she said. "He's likely to
giggle or do something silly, just at the crucial moment. I
cannot understand why he thinks it is funny, but he does. We'd
be much better without him."

"You'd better talk to him, Tish," I said. "You can't get rid of
him now."

But to tell Tish she cannot do a thing is to determine her to do
it.

It was still early, only half-past eight, when she came to me
with an eager face.

"I've got it, Lizzie," she said. "I'll send off Mona Lisa, and
he will have to search for her. The only thing is, she won't
move unless she's driven. If we could only find a hornet's nest
again, we could manage. It may be cruel, but I understand that a
hornet's sting is not as painful to a horse as to a human
being."

Mona Lisa, I must explain, was the pack-horse. Tish had changed
her name from Jane to Mona Lisa because in the mornings she was
constantly missing, and having to be looked for.

Tish disappeared for a time, and we settled down to our long
wait. Bill put another coat of stove polish on the weapons, and
broke now and then into silent laughter. On my giving him a
haughty glance, however, he became sober and rubbed with
redoubled vigor.

In a half-hour, however, I saw Tish beckoning to me from a
distance, and I went to her. I soon saw that she was holding her
handkerchief to one cheek, but when I mentioned the fact she
ignored me.

"I have found a nest, Lizzie," she cried. "Slip over and
unfasten Mona Lisa. She's not near the other horses, which is
fortunate."

I then perceived that Tish's yellow slicker was behind her on
the ground and tied into a bundle, from which emerged a dull
roaring. I was wondering how Tish expected to open it, when she
settled the question by asking me to cut a piece from the
mosquito netting which we put in the doorway of the tent at
night, and to bring her riding-gloves.

Aggie was darning a hole in the tablecloth when I went back and
Bill was still engaged with the weapons. Having taken what she
required to Tish, under pretense of giving Mona Lisa a lump of
sugar, I untied her. What followed was exactly as Tish had
planned. Mona Lisa, not realizing her freedom, stood still while
Tish untied the slicker and freed its furious inmates. She then
dropped the whole thing under the unfortunate animal, and
retreated, not too rapidly, for fear of drawing Bill's
attention. For possibly sixty seconds nothing happened, except
that Mona Lisa raised her head and appeared to listen. Then,
with a loud scream, she threw up her head and bolted. By the
time Bill had put down the stove brush she was out of sight
among the trees, but we could hear her leaping and scrambling
through the wood.

"Jumping cats!" said Bill, and ran for his horse. "Acts as
though she'd started for the Coast!" he yelled to me, and flung
after her.

When he had disappeared, Tish came out of the woods, and,
getting a kettle of boiling water, poured it over the nest. In
spite of the netting, however, she was stung again, on the back
of the neck, and spent the rest of the morning holding wet mud
to the affected parts.

Her brain, however, was as active as ever, and by half-past
eleven, mounting a boulder, she announced that she could see the
Ostermaier party far down the trail, and that in an hour they
would probably be at the top. She had her field-glasses, and she
said that Mrs. Ostermaier was pointing up to the pass and
shaking her head, and that the others were arguing with her.

"It would be just like the woman," Tish said bitterly, "to
refuse to come any farther and spoil everything."

But a little later she announced that the guide was leading Mrs.
Ostermaier's horse and that they were coming on.

We immediately retreated to the cave and waited, it being Tish's
intention to allow them to reach the pass without suspecting our
presence, and only to cut off the pseudo-bandits in their
retreat, as I have explained.

It was well that we had concealed the horses also, for the party
stopped near the cave, and Mrs. Ostermaier was weeping. "Not a
step farther!" she said. "I have a family to consider, and Mr.
Ostermaier is a man of wide usefulness and cannot be spared."

We did not dare to look out, but we heard the young lady
speaking, and as Aggie remarked later, no one would have
thought, from the sweetness of her voice, that she was a
creature of duplicity.

"But it is perfectly safe, dear Mrs. Ostermaier," she said "And
think, when you go home, of being able to say that you have
climbed a mountain pass."

"Pass!" sniffed Mrs. Ostermaier. "Pass nothing! I don't call a
wall a mile high a pass."

"Think," said the girl, "of being able to crow over those three
old women who are always boasting of the things they do.
Probably you are right, and they never do them at all, but you--
there's a moving-picture man waiting, remember, and you can show
the picture before the Dorcas Society. No one can ever doubt
that you have done a courageous thing. You'll have the proof."

"George," said Mrs. Ostermaier in a small voice, "if anything
happens, I have told you how I want my things divided."

"Little devil!" whispered Aggie, referring to the girl. "If that
young man knows when he is well off, he'll let her go."

But beyond rebuking her for the epithet, Tish made no comment,
and the party moved on. We lost them for a time among the trees,
but when they moved out above timber-line we were able to watch
them, and we saw that Mrs. Ostermaier got off her horse, about
halfway up, and climbed slowly on foot. Tish, who had the
glasses, said that she looked purple and angry, and that she
distinctly saw the guide give her something to drink out of a
bottle. It might, however, have been vichy or some similar
innocent beverage. and I believe in giving her the benefit of
the doubt.

When at last they vanished over the edge of the pass, we led out
our horses and prepared for what was to come. Bill had not
returned, and, indeed, we did not see him until the evening of
the second day after that, when, worn but triumphant, we emerged
from the trail at the Many Glaciers Hotel. That, however, comes
later in this narrative.

With everything prepared, Tish judged it best to have luncheon.
I made a few mayonnaise-and-lettuce sandwiches, beating the
mayonnaise in the cool recesses of the cave, and we drank some
iced tea, to which Aggie had thoughtfully added sliced lemon and
a quantity of ginger ale. Feeling much refreshed, we grasped our
weapons and waited.

At half-past twelve we heard a loud shriek on the pass, far
overhead, followed almost immediately by a fusillade of shots.
Then a silence, followed by more shots. Then a solitary horseman
rode over the edge of the pass and, spurring his horse, rode
recklessly down the precipitous trail. Aggie exclaimed that it
was Mr. Ostermaier, basely deserting his wife in her apparent
hour of need. But Tish, who had the glasses, reported finally
that it was the moving-picture man.

We were greatly surprised, as it had not occurred to us that
this would be a part of the program.

As he descended, Tish announced that there must be another
photographer on top, as he was "registering" signs of terror--a
moving-picture expression which she had acquired from Charlie
Sands--and looking back frequently over his shoulder.

We waited until he reached timber-line, and then withdrew to a
group of trees. It was not our intention to allow him to see us
and spoil everything. But when he came near, through the woods,
and his horse continued at unabated speed, Tish decided that the
animal, frightened by the shots, was running away.

She therefore placed herself across the trail to check its
headlong speed, but the animal merely rushed round her. Mr.
Oliver yelled something at us, which we were, however, unable to
hear, and kept madly on.

Almost immediately four men, firing back over their shoulders,
rode into sight at the pass and came swiftly down toward us.

"Where's the girl?" Tish cried with her glasses to her eyes.
"The idiots have got excited and have forgotten to steal her."

That was plainly what had happened, but she was determined to be
stolen anyhow, for the next moment she rode into view, furiously
following the bandits.

"She's kept her head anyhow," Tish observed with satisfaction.
"Trust a lot of men to go crazy and do the wrong thing. But
they'll have to change the story and make her follow them."

At timber-line the men seemed to realize that she was behind
them, and they turned and looked up. They seemed to be at a loss
to know what to do, in view of the picture. But they were quick
thinkers, too, we decided. Right then and there they took her
prisoner, surrounding her.

She made a desperate resistance, even crying out, as we coed
plainly see. But Tish was irritated. She said she could not see
how the story would hold now. Either the girl should have
captured them, they being out of ammunition, or the whole thing
should have been done again, according to the original plan.
However, as she said, it was not our affair. Our business was to
teach them a lesson not to impose on unsuspecting tourists, for
although not fond of Mrs. Ostermaier, we had been members of Mr.
Ostermaier's church, and liked him, although his sermons were
shorter than Tish entirely approved of.

We withdrew again to seclusion until they had passed, and Tish
gave them ten minutes to get well ahead. Then we rode out.

Tish's face was stern as she led off. The shriek of Mrs.
Ostermaier was still, as she said in a low tone, ringing in her
ears. But before we had gone very far, Tish stopped and got off
her horse. "We've got to pad the horses' feet," she said. "How
can we creep up on them when on every stony place we sound like
an artillery engagement?"

Here was a difficulty we had not anticipated. But Tish overcame
it with her customary resource, by taking the blanket from under
her saddle and cutting it into pieces with her scissors, which
always accompany her. We then cut the leather straps from our
saddles at her direction, and each of us went to work. Aggie,
however, protested.

"I never expected," she said querulously, "to be sitting on the
Rocky Mountains under a horse, tying piece of bed quilt on his
feet. I wouldn't mind," she added, "if the creature liked me.
But the way he feels toward me he's likely to haul off and
murder me at any moment."

However, it was done at last, and it made a great change. We
moved along silently, and all went well except that, having
neglected to draw the cinch tight, and the horse's back being
slippery without the padding, my saddle turned unexpectedly,
throwing me off into the trail. I bruised my arm badly, but Tish
only gave me a glance of scorn and went on.

Being above carelessness herself, she very justly resents it in
others.

We had expected, with reason, that the so-called highwaymen,
having retreated to a certain distance, would there pause and
very possibly lunch before returning. It was, therefore, a
matter of surprise to find that they had kept on.

Moreover, they seemed to have advanced rapidly, and Tish, who
had read a book on signs of the trail, examined the hoofprints
of their horses in a soft place beside a stream, and reported
that they had been going at a lope.

"Now, remember," she said as she prepared to mount again, "to
all intents and purposes these are real bandits and to be
treated accordingly. Our motto is 'No quarter.' I shall be
harsh, and I expect no protest from either of you. They deserve
everything they get."

But when, after another mile or two, we came to a side trail,
leading, by Tish's map, not to Many Glaciers, but up a ravine to
another pass, and Tish saw that they had taken that direction,
we were puzzled.

But not for long.

"I understand now," she said. "It is all clear. The photographer
was riding ahead to get them up this valley somewhere. They've
probably got a rendezvous all ready, with another camera in
place. I must say," she observed, "that they are doing it
thoroughly."

We rode for two hours, and no sign of them. The stove polish had
come off the handles of our revolvers by that time, and Aggie,
having rubbed her face ever and anon to remove perspiration,
presented under her turban a villainous and ferocious expression
quite at variance with her customary mildness.

I urged her to stop and wash, but Tish, after a glance, said to
keep on.

"Your looking like that's a distinct advantage, Aggie," she
said. "Like as not they'll throw up their hands the minute they
see you. I know I should. You'd better ride first when we get
near."

"Like as not they'll put a hole in me," Aggie objected. "And as
to riding first, I will not. This is your doing, Tish Carberry,
and as for their having blank cartridges--how do we know someone
hasn't made a mistake and got a real one?"

Tish reflected on that. "It's a possibility," she agreed. "If we
find that they're going to spend the night out, it might be
better to wait until they've taken off all the hardware they're
hung with."

But we did not come up with them. We kept on finding traces of
the party in marshy spots, and once Tish hopped off her horse
and picked up a small handkerchief with a colored border and
held it up to us.

"It's hers," she said. "Anybody would know she is the sort to
use colored borders. They're ahead somewhere."

But it seemed strange that they would go so far, and I said so.

"We're far enough off the main trail, Tish," I said. "And it's
getting wilder every minute. There's nothing I can see to
prevent a mountain lion dropping on us most any time."

"Not if it gets a good look at Aggie!" was Tish's grim response.

It began to grow dark in the valley, and things seemed to move
on either side of the trail. Aggie called out once that we had
just passed a grizzly bear, but Tish never faltered. The region
grew more and more wild. The trail was broken with mudholes and
crossed by fallen logs. With a superb disdain Tish rode across
all obstacles, not even glancing at them. But Aggie and I got
off at the worst places and led our horses. At one mudhole I was
unfortunate enough to stumble. A horse with a particle of
affection for a woman who had ridden it and cared for it for
several days would have paused.

Not so my animal. With a heartlessness at which I still shudder
the creature used me as a bridge, aril stepped across, dryfoot,
on my back. Owing to his padded feet and to the depth of the mud-
 - some eight feet, I believe--I was uninjured. But it required
ten minutes of hard labor on the part of both Tish and Aggie to
release me from the mud, from which I was finally raised with a
low, hissing sound.

"Park!" said Aggie as she scraped my obliterated features with a
small branch. "Park, indeed! It's a howling wilderness. I'm fond
of my native land," she went on, digging out my nostrils, so I
could breathe, "but I don't calculate to eat it. As for that
unfeeling beast of yours, Lizzie, I've never known a horse to
show such selfishness. Never."

Well, we went on at last, but I was not so enthusiastic about
teaching people lessons as I had been. It seemed to me that we
might have kept on along the trail and had a mighty good time,
getting more and more nimble and stopping now and then to bake a
pie and have a decent meal, and putting up our hair in crimps at
night, without worrying about other folks' affairs.

Late in the afternoon of that day, when so far as I could see
Tish was lost, and not even her gathering a bunch of wild
flowers while the horses rested could fool me, I voiced my
complaint.

"Let me look at the map, Tish," I suggested. "I'm pretty good at
maps. You know how I am at charades and acrostics. At the church
supper--"

"Nonsense, Lizzie," she returned. "You couldn't make head or
tail of this map. It's my belief that the man who made it had
never been here. Either that or there has been an earthquake
since. But," she went on, more cheerfully, "if we are lost, so
are the others."

"If we even had Bill along!"

"Bill!" Tish said scornfully. "It's my belief Bill is in the
whole business, and that if we hadn't got rid of him we'd have
been the next advertising dodge. As far as that goes," she said
thoughtfully, "it wouldn't surprise me a particle to find that
we've been taken, without our knowing it, most any time. Your
horse just now, walking across that bridge of size, for one
thing."

Tish seldom makes a pun, which she herself has said is the
lowest form of humor. The dig at my figure was unkind, also, and
unworthy of her. I turned and left her.

At last, well on in the evening, I saw Tish draw up her horse
and point ahead.

"The miscreants!" she said.

True enough, up a narrow side canon we could see a camp-fire. It
was a small one, and only noticeable from one point. But Tish's
keen eye had seen it. She sat on her horse and gazed toward it.

"What a shameful thing it is," she said, "to prostitute the
beauties of this magnificent region to such a purpose. To make
of these beetling crags a joke! To invade these vast gorges with
the spirit of commercialism and to bring a pack of movie actors
to desecrate the virgin silence with ribald jests and laughter!
Lizzie, I wish you wouldn't wheeze!"

"You would wheeze, too, Tish Carberry," I retorted, justly
indignant, "if a horse had just pressed your spinal column into
your breast bone. Goodness knows," I said, "where my lungs are.
I've missed them ever since my fall."

However, she was engrossed with larger matters, and ignored my
petulance. She is a large-natured woman and above pettiness.

We made our way slowly up the canon. The movie outfit was
securely camped under an overhanging rock, as we could now see.
At one point their position commanded the trail, which was
hardly more than a track through the wilderness, and before we
reached this point we dismounted and Tish surveyed the camp
through her glasses.

"We'd better wait until dark," Tish said. "Owing to the padding
they have not heard us, but it looks to me as if one of them is
on a rock, watching."

It seemed rather strange to me that they were keeping a lookout,
but Tish only shrugged her shoulders.

"If I know anything of that red-headed Oliver man," she said,
"he hates to let a camera rest. Like as not he's got it set up
among the trees somewhere, taking flashlights of wild animals.
It's rather a pity," she said, turning and surveying Aggie and
myself, "that he cannot get you two. If you happen to see
anything edible lying on the ground, you'd better not pick it
up. It's probably attached to the string that sets off the
flash."

We led our horses into the woods, which were very thick at that
point, and tied them. My beast, however, lay down and rolled,
saddle and all, thus breaking my mirror--a most unlucky omen--
and the bottle of olive oil which we had brought along for
mayonnaise dressing. Tish is fond of mayonnaise, and, besides,
considers olive oil most strengthening. However, it was gone,
and although Aggie comforted me by suggesting that her boiled
salad dressing is quite tasty, I was disconsolate.

It was by that time seven o'clock and almost dark. We held a
conference. Tish was of the opinion that we should first lead
off their horses, if possible.

"I intend," she said severely, "to make escape impossible. If
they fire, when taken by surprise. remember that they have only
blank cartridges. I must say," she added with a confession of
unusual weakness, "that I am glad the Indians escaped the other
way. I would hardly know what to do with Indians, even quite
tame ones. While I know a few letters of the deaf-and-dumb
language, which I believe all tribes use in common, I fear that
in a moment of excitement I would forget what I know."

The next step, she asserted, was to secure their weapons.

"After all," she said, "the darkness is in our favor. I intend
to fire once, to show them that we are armed and dangerous. And
if you two will point the guns Bill made, they cannot possibly
tell that they are not real."

"But we will know it," Aggie quavered. Now that the quarry was
in sight she was more and more nervous, sneezing at short
intervals in spite of her menthol inhaler. "I am sorry, Tish,
but I cannot feel the same about that wooden revolver as I would
about a real one. And even when I try to forget that it is only
wood the carving reminds me."

But Tish silenced her with a glance. She had strangely altered
in the last few minutes. All traces of fatigue had gone, and
when she struck a match and consulted her watch I saw in her
face that high resolve, that stern and matchless courage, which
I so often have tried to emulate and failed.

"Seven o'clock," she announced. "We will dine first. There is
nothing like food to restore failing spirits."

But we had nothing except our sandwiches, and Tish suggested
snaring some of the stupid squirrels with which the region
abounded.

"Aggie needs broth," she said decidedly. "We have sandwiches,
but Aggie is frail and must be looked to."

Aggie was pathetically grateful, although sorry for the
squirrels, which were pretty and quite tame. But Tish was firm
in her kindly intent, and proceeded at once to set a rabbit
snare, a trick she had learned in the Maine woods. Having done
this, and built a small fire, well hidden, we sat down to wait.

In a short time we heard terrible human cries proceeding from
the snare, and, hurrying thither, found in it a young mountain
lion. It looked dangerous, and was biting in every direction. I
admit that I was prepared to leave in haste, but not so Tish.
She fetched her umbrella, without which she never travels, and
while the animal set its jaws in it--a painful necessity, as it
was her best umbrella--Tish hit it on the head--not the
umbrella, but the lion--with a large stone.

Tish's satisfaction was unbounded. She stated that the flesh of
the mountain lion was much like veal, and so indeed it proved.
We made a nourishing soup of it, with potatoes and a can of
macedoine vegetables, and within an hour and a half we had dined
luxuriously, adding to our repast what remained of the
sandwiches, and a tinned plum pudding of English make, very
nutritious and delicious.

For twenty minutes after the meal we all stood. Tish insists on
this, as aiding digestion. Then we prepared for the night's
work.

I believe that our conduct requires no defense. But it may be
well again to explain our position. These people, whose camp-
fire glowed so brazenly against the opposite cliff, had for
purely mercenary motives committed a cruel hoax. They had posed
as bandits, and as bandits they deserved to be treated. They had
held up our own clergyman, of a nervous temperament, on a
mountain pass, and had taken from him a part of his stipend. It
was heartless. It was barbarous. It was cruel.

My own courage came back with the hot food, which I followed by
a charcoal tablet. And the difference in Aggie was marked.
Possibly some of the courage of the mountain lion, that bravest
of wild creatures, had communicated itself to her through the
homely medicine of digestion.

"I can hardly wait to get after them," she said.

However, it was still too early for them to have settled for the
night. We sat down, having extinguished our fire, and I was just
dozing off when Tish remembered the young man who was to have
listened for the police whistle.

"I absolutely forgot him," she said regretfully. "I suppose he
is hanging round the foot of Piegan's Pass yet. I'm sorry to
have him miss this. I shall tell him, when I see him, that no
girl worth having would be sitting over there at supper with
four moving-picture actors without a chaperon. The whole
proceeding is scandalous. I have noticed," she added, "that it
is the girls from quiet suburban towns who are really most prone
to defy the conventions when the chance comes."

We dozed for a short time.

Then Tish sat up suddenly. "What's that?" she said.

We listened and distinctly heard the tramp of horses' feet. We
started up, but Tish was quite calm.

"They've turned their horses out," she said. "Fortune is with
us. They are coming this way."

But at first it did not seem so fortunate, for we heard one of
the men following them, stumbling along, and, I regret to say,
using profane language They came directly toward us, and Aggie
beside me trembled. But Tish was equal to the emergency.

She drew us behind a large rock, where, spreading out a raincoat
to protect us from the dampness, we sat down and waited.

When one of the animals loomed up close to the rock Aggie gave a
low cry, but Tish covered her mouth fiercely with an ungentle
hand.

"Be still!" she hissed.

It was now perfectly dark, and the man with the horses was not
far off. We could not see him, but at last he came near enough
so that we could see the flare of a match when he lighted a
cigarette. I put my hand on Aggie, and she was shaking with
nervousness.

"I am sure I am going to sneeze, Lizzie," she gasped.

And sneeze she did. She muffled it considerably, however, and we
were not discovered. But, Tish, I knew, was silently raging.

The horses came nearer.

One of them, indeed, came quite close, and took a nip at the toe
of my riding-boot. I kicked at it sharply, however, and it moved
away.

The man had gone on. We watched the light of his cigarette, and
thus, as he now and then turned his head, knew where he was. It
was now that I felt, rather than heard, that Tish was crawling
out from the shelter of the rock. At the same time we heard, by
the crunching of branches, that the man had sat down near at
hand.

Tish's progress was slow but sure. For a half-hour we sat there.
Then she returned, still crawling, and on putting out my hand I
discovered that she had secured the lasso from her saddle and
had brought it back. How true had been her instinct when she
practiced its use! How my own words, that it was all
foolishness, came back and whispered lessons of humility in my
ear!

At this moment a deep, resonant sound came from the tree where
the movie actor sat. At the same moment a small creature dropped
into my lap from somewhere above, and ran up my sleeve. I made
frantic although necessarily silent efforts to dislodge it, and
it bit me severely.

The necessity for silence taxed all my strength, but managing
finally to secure it by the tail, I forcibly withdrew it and
flung it away. Unluckily it struck Aggie in the left eye and
inflicted a painful bruise.

Tish had risen to her feet and was standing, a silent and
menacing figure, while this event transpired. The movements of
the horses as they grazed, the soft breeze blowing through the
pines, were the only sounds. Now she took a step forward.

"He's asleep!" she whispered. "Aggie, sit still and watch the
horses. Lizzie, come with me."

As I advanced to her she thrust her revolver into my hand.

"When I give the word," she said in a whisper, "hold it against
his neck. But keep your finger off the trigger. It's loaded."

We advanced slowly, halting now and then to listen. Although
brush crackled under our feet, the grazing horses were making a
similar disturbance, and the man slept on. Soon we could see him
clearly, sitting back against a tree, his head dropped forward
on his breast. Tish surveyed the scene with her keen and
appraising eye, and raised the lasso.

The first result was not good. The loaded end struck a branch,
and, being deflected, the thing wrapped itself perhaps a dozen
times round my neck. Tish, being unconscious of what had
happened, drew it up with a jerk, and I stood helpless and
slowly strangling. At last, however, she realized the difficulty
and released me. I was unable to breathe comfortably for some
time, and my tongue felt swollen for several hours.

Through all of this the movie actor had slept soundly. At the
second effort Tish succeeded in lassoing him without difficulty.
We had feared a loud outcry before we could get to him, but
owing to Tish's swiftness in tightening the rope he was able to
make, at first, only a low, gurgling sound. I had advanced to
him, and was under the impression that I was holding the
revolver to his neck. On discovering, however, that I was
pressing it to the trunk of the tree, to which he was now
secured by the lariat, I corrected the error and held it against
his ear.

He was now wide awake and struggling violently. Then, I regret
to say, he broke out into such language as I have never heard
before. At Tish's request I suppress his oaths, and substitute
for them harmless expressions in common use.

"Good gracious!" he said. "What in the world are you doing
anyhow? Jimminy crickets, take that thing away from my neck!
Great Scott and land alive, I haven't done anything! My word,
that gun will go off if you aren't careful!"

I am aware that much of the strength of what he said is lost in
this free translation. But it is impossible to repeat his real
language.

"Don't move," Tish said, "and don't call out. A sound, and a
bullet goes crashing through your brain."

"A woman!" he said in most unflattering amazement. "Great
Jehoshaphat, a woman!"

This again is only a translation of what he said.

"Exactly," Tish observed calmly. She had cut the end off the
lasso with her scissors, and was now tying his feet together
with it. "My friend, we know the whole story, and I am ashamed,
ashamed," she said oratorically, "of your sex! To frighten a
harmless and well-meaning preacher and his wife for the purpose
of publicity is not a joke. Such hoaxes are criminal. If you
must have publicity, why not seek it in some other way?"

"Crazy!" he groaned to himself. "In the hands of lunatics! Oh,
my goodness!" Again these were not exactly his words.

Having bound him tightly, hand and foot, and taken a revolver
from his pocket, Tish straightened herself.

"Now we'll gag him, Lizzie," she said. "We have other things to
do to-night than to stand here and converse." Then she turned to
the man and told him a deliberate lie. I am sorry to record
this. But a tendency to avoid the straight and narrow issues of
truth when facing a crisis is one of Tish's weaknesses, the only
flaw in an otherwise strong and perfect character.

"We are going to leave you here," she said. "But one of our
number, fully armed, will be near by. A sound from you, or any
endeavor to call for succor, will end sadly for you. A word to
the wise. Now, Lizzie, take that bandanna off his neck and tie
it over his mouth."

Tish stood, looking down at him, and her very silhouette was
scornful.

"Think, my friend," she said, "of the ignominy of your position!
Is any moving picture worth it? Is the pleasure of seeing
yourself on the screen any reward for such a shameful position
as yours now is? No. A thousand times no."

He made a choking sound in his throat and writhed helplessly.
And so we left him, a hopeless and miserable figure, to ponder
on his sins.

"That's one," said Tish briskly. "There are only three left.
Come, Aggie," she said cheerfully--"to work! We have made a good
beginning."

It is with modesty that I approach that night's events,
remembering always that Tish's was the brain which conceived and
carried out the affair. We were but her loyal and eager
assistants. It is for this reason that I thought, and still
think, that the money should have been divided so as to give
Tish the lion's share. But she, dear, magnanimous soul, refused
even to hear of such a course, and insisted that we share it
equally.

Of that, however, more anon.

We next proceeded to capture their horses and to tie them up. We
regretted the necessity for this, since the unfortunate animals
had traveled far and were doubtless hungry. It went to my heart
to drag them from their fragrant pasture and to tie them to
trees. But, as Tish said, "Necessity knows no law," not even
kindness. So we tied them up. Not, however, until we had moved
them far from the trail.

Tish stopped then, and stared across the canon to the enemy's
camp-fire.

"No quarter, remember," she said. "And bring your weapons."

We grasped our wooden revolvers and, with Tish leading, started
for the camp. Unluckily there was a stream between us, and it
was necessary to ford it. It shows Tish's true generalship that,
instead of removing her shoes and stockings, as Aggie and I were
about to do, she suggested getting our horses and riding across.
This we did, and alighted on the other side dryshod.

It was, on consulting my watch, nine o'clock and very dark. A
few drops of rain began to fall also, and the distant camp-fire
was burning low. Tish gave us each a little blackberry cordial,
for fear of dampness, and took some herself. The mild glow which
followed was very comforting.

It was Tish, naturally, who went forward to reconnoiter. She
returned in an hour, to report that the three men were lying
round the fire, two asleep and one leaning on his elbow with a
revolver handy. She did not see Mr. Oliver, and it was possible
that it was he we had tied to the tree. The girl, she said, was
sitting on a log, with her chin propped in her hands.

"She looked rather low-spirited," Tish said. "I expect she liked
the first young man better than she thought she did. I intend to
give her a piece of my mind as soon as I get a chance. This
playing hot and cold isn't maidenly, to say the least."

We now moved slowly forward, after tying our horses. Toward the
last, following Tish's example, we went on our hands and knees,
and I was thankful then for no skirts. It is wonderful the
freedom a man has. I was never one to approve of Doctor Mary
Walker, but I'm not so sure she isn't a wise woman and the rest
of us fools. I haven't put on a skirt braid since that time
without begrudging it.

Well, as I have stated, we advanced, and at last we were in full
sight of the camp. I must say I'd have thought they'd have a
tent. We expected something better, I suppose, because of the
articles in the papers about movie people having their own
limousines, and all that. But there they were, open to the wrath
of the heavens, and deserving it, if I do say so.

The girl was still sitting, as Tish had described her. Only now
she was crying. My heart was downright sore for her. It is no
comfort, having made a wrong choice, to know that it is one's
own fault.

Having now reached the zone of firelight Tish gave the signal,
and we rose and pointed our revolvers at them. Then Tish stepped
forward and said:--

"Hands up!"

I shall never forget the expression on the man's face.

He shouted something, but he threw up his hands also, with his
eyes popping out of his head. The others scrambled to their
feet, but he warned them.

"Careful, boys!" he yelled. "They're got the drop on us."

Just then his eyes fell on Aggie, and he screeched:--

"Two women and a Turk, by ___." The blank is mine.

"Lizzie," said Tish sternly, as all of them, including the girl,
held their hands up, "just give me your weapon and go over
them."

"Go over them?" I said, not understanding.

"Search them," said Tish. "Take everything out of their pockets.
And don't move," she ordered them sternly. "One motion, and I
fire. Go on, Lizzie."

Now I have never searched a man's pockets, and the idea was
repugnant to me. I am a woman of delicate instincts. But Tish's
face was stern. I did as commanded, therefore, the total result
being:--

Four revolvers.

Two large knives.

One small knife.

One bunch of keys.

One plug of chewing-tobacco.

Four cartridge belts.

Two old pipes.

Mr. Ostermaier's cigar-case, which I recognized at once, being
the one we had presented to him.

Mrs. Ostermaier's wedding-ring and gold bracelet, which her
sister gave her on her last birthday.

A diamond solitaire, unknown, as Mrs. Ostermaier never owned
one, preferring instead earrings as more showy.

And a considerable sum of money, which I kept but did not count.

There were other small articles, of no value.

"Is that all the loot you secured during the infamous scene on
Piegan Pass?" Tish demanded, "You need not hide anything from
us. We know the facts, and the whole story will soon be public."

"That's all, lady," whined one of the men. "Except a few boxes
of lunch, and that's gone. Lady, lemme take my hands down. I've
got a stiff shoulder, and I--"

"Keep them up," Tish snapped. "Aggie, see that they keep them
up."

Until that time we had been too occupied to observe the girl,
who merely stood and watched in a disdainful sort of way. But
now Tish turned and eyed her sternly.

"Search her, Lizzie," she commanded.

"Search me!" the girl exclaimed indignantly. "certainly not!"

"Lizzie," said Tish in her sternest manner, "go over that girl.
Look in her riding-boots. I haven't come across Mrs.
Ostermaier's earrings yet."

At that the girl changed color and backed off.

"It's an outrage," she said. "Surely I have suffered enough."

"Not as much," Tish observed, "as you are going to suffer. Go
over her, Lizzie."

While I searched her, Tish was lecturing her.

"You come from a good home, I understand," she said, "and you
ought to know better. Not content with breaking an honest heart,
you join a moving- picture outfit and frighten a prominent
divine- - for Mr. Ostermaier is well known--into what may be an
illness. You cannot deny," she accused her, "that it was you who
coaxed them to the pass. At least you needn't. We heard you."

"How was I to know--"the girl began sullenly.

But at that moment I found Mrs. Ostermaier' chamois bag thrust
into her riding-boot, and she suddenly went pale.

Tish held it up before her accusingly. "I dare say you will not
deny this," she exclaimed, and took Mrs. Ostermaier's earrings
out of it.

The men muttered, but Aggie was equal to the occasion.
"Silence!" she said, and pointed the revolver at each in turn.

The girl started to speak. Then she shrugged her shoulders. "I
could explain," she said, "but I won't. If you think I stole
those hideous earrings you're welcome to."

"Of course not," said Tish sarcastically. "No doubt she gave
them to you--although I never knew her to give anything away
before."

The girl stood still, thinking. Suddenly she said "There's
another one, you know. Another man."

"We have him. He will give no further trouble," Tish observed
grimly. "I think we have you all, except your Mr. Oliver."

"He is not my Mr. Oliver," said the girl. "I never want to see
him again. I--I hate him."

"You haven't got much mind or you couldn't change it so
quickly."

She looked sulky again, and said she'd thank us for the ring,
which was hers and she could prove it.

But Tish sternly refused. "It's my private opinion," she
observed, " that it is Mrs. Ostermaier's, and she has not worn
it openly because of the congregation talking quite considerably
about her earrings, and not caring for jewelry on the minister's
wife. That's what I think."

Shortly after that we heard a horse loping along the road. It
came nearer, and then left the trail and came toward the fire.
Tish picked up one of the extra revolvers and pointed it. It was
Mr. Oliver!

"Throw up your hands!" Tish called. And he did it. He turned a
sort of blue color, too, when he saw us, and all the men with
their hands up. But he looked relieved when he saw the girl.

"Thank Heaven!" he said. "The way I've been riding this country--
 "

"You rode hard enough away from the pass," she replied coldly.

We took a revolver away from him and lined him up with the
others. All the time he was paying little attention to us and
none at all to the other men. But he was pleading with the girl.

"Honestly," he said, "I thought I could do better for everybody
by doing what I did. How did I know," he pleaded, "that you were
going to do such a crazy thing as this?"

But she only stared at him as if she hated the very ground he
stood on.

"It's a pity," Tish observed, "that you haven't got your camera
along. This would make a very nice picture. But I dare say you
could hardly turn the crank with your hands in the air."

We searched him carefully, but he had only a gold watch and some
money. On the chance, however, that the watch was Mr.
Ostermaier's, although unlikely, we took it.

I must say he was very disagreeable, referring to us as
highwaymen and using uncomplimentary language. But, as Tish
observed, we might as well be thorough while we were about it.

For the nonce we had forgotten the other man. But now I noticed
that the pseudo-bandits wore a watchful and not unhopeful air.
And suddenly one of them whistled--a thin, shrill note that had,
as Tish later remarked, great penetrative power without being
noisy.

"That's enough of that," she said. "Aggie, take another of these
guns and point them both at these gentlemen. If they whistle
again, shoot. As to the other man, he will not reply, nor will
he come to your assistance. He is gagged and tied, and into the
bargain may become at any time the victim of wild beasts."

The moment she had said it, Tish realized that it was but too
true, and she grew thoughtful. Aggie, too, was far from
comfortable. She said later that she was uncertain what to do.
Tish had said to fire if they whistled again. The question in
her mind was, had it been said purely for effect or did Tish
mean it? After all, the men were not real bandits, she
reflected, although guilty of theft, even if only for
advertising purposes. She was greatly disturbed, and as
agitation always causes a return of her hay fever, she began to
sneeze violently.

Until then the men had been quiet, if furious. But now they fell
into abject terror, imploring Tish, whom they easily recognized
as the leader, to take the revolvers from her.

But Tish only said: "No fatalities, Aggie, please. Point at an
arm or a leg until the spasm subsides."

Her tone was quite gentle.

Heretofore this has been a plain narrative, dull, I fear, in
many places. But I come now to a not unexciting incident--which
for a time placed Tish and myself in an unpleasant position.

I refer to the escape of the man we had tied.

We held a brief discussion as to what to do with our prisoners
until morning, a discussion which Tish solved with her usual
celerity by cutting from the saddles which lay round the fire a
number of those leather thongs with which such saddles are
adorned and which are used in case of necessity to strap various
articles to the aforesaid saddles.

With these thongs we tied them, not uncomfortably, but firmly,
their hands behind them and their feet fastened together. Then,
as the night grew cold, Tish suggested that we shove them near
the fire, which we did.

The young lady, however, offered a more difficult problem. We
compromised by giving her her freedom, but arranging for one of
our number to keep her covered with a revolver.

"You needn't be so thoughtful," she said angrily, and with a
total lack of appreciation of Tish's considerate attitude. "I'd
rather be tied, especially if the Moslem with the hay fever is
going to hold the gun."

It was at that moment that we heard a whistle from across the
stream, and each of the prostrate men raised his head eagerly.
Before Tish could interfere one of them had whistled three times
sharply, probably a danger signal.

Without a word Tish turned and ran toward the stream, calling to
me to follow her.

"Tish!" I heard Aggie's agonized tone. "Lizzie! Come back. Don't
leave me here alone. I--"

Here she evidently clutched the revolver involuntarily, for
there was a sharp report, and a bullet struck a tree near us.

Tish paused and turned. "Point that thing up into the air,
Aggie," she called back. "And stay there. I hold you
responsible."

I heard Aggie give a low moan, but she said nothing, and we kept
on.

The moon had now come up, flooding the valley with silver
radiance. We found our horses at once, and Tish leaped into the
saddle. Being heavier and also out of breath from having
stumbled over a log, I was somewhat slower.

Tish was therefore in advance of me when we started, and it was
she who caught sight of him first.

"He's got a horse, Lizzie," she called back to me. "We can get
him, I think. Remember, he is unarmed."

Fortunately he had made for the trail, which was here wider than
ordinary and gleamed white in the moonlight. We had, however,
lost some time in fording the stream, and we had but the one
glimpse of him as the trail curved.

Tish lashed her horse to a lope, and mine followed without
urging. I had, unfortunately, lost a stirrup early in the chase,
and was compelled, being unable to recover it, to drop the lines
and clutch the saddle.

Twice Tish fired into the air. She explained afterward that she
did this for the moral effect on the fugitive, but as each time
it caused my horse to jump and almost unseat me, at last I
begged her to desist.

We struck at last into a straight piece of trail, ending in a
wall of granite, and up this the trail climbed in a switchback.
Tish turned to me.

"We have him now," she said. "When he starts up there he is as
much gone as a fly on the wall. As a matter of fact," she said
as calmly as though we had been taking an afternoon stroll, "his
taking this trail shows that he is a novice and no real
highwayman. Otherwise he would have turned off into the woods."

At that moment the fugitive's horse emerged into the moonlight
and Tish smiled grimly.

"I see why now," she exclaimed. "The idiot has happened on Mona
Lisa, who must have returned and followed us. And no pack-horse
can be made to leave the trail unless by means of a hornet.
Look, he's trying to pull her off and she won't go."

It was true, as we now perceived. He saw his danger, but too
late. Mona Lisa, probably still disagreeable after her
experience with the hornets, held straight for the cliff.

The moon shone full on it, and when he was only thirty feet up
its face Tish fired again, and the fugitive stopped.

"Come down," said Tish quietly.

He said a great many things which, like his earlier language, I
do not care to repeat. But after a second shot he began to
descend slowly.

Tish, however, approached him warily, having given her revolver
to me.

"He might try to get it from me, Lizzie," she observed. "Keep it
pointed in our direction, but not at us. I'm going to tie him
again."

This she proceeded to do, tying his hands behind him and
fastening his belt also to the horn of the saddle, but leaving
his feet free. All this was done to the accompaniment of bitter
vituperation. She pretended to ignore this, but it made an
impression evidently, for at last she replied.

"You have no one to blame but yourself," she said. "You deserve
your present humiliating position, and you know it. I've made up
my mind to take you all in and expose your cruel scheme, and I
intend to do it. I'm nothing if I am not thorough," she
finished.

He made no reply to this, and, in fact, he made only one speech
on the way back, and that, I am happy to say, was without
profanity.

"It isn't being taken in that I mind so much," he said
pathetically. "It's all in the game, and I can stand up as well
under trouble as any one. It's being led in by a crowd of women
that makes it painful."

I have neglected to say that Tish was leading Mona Lisa, while I
followed with the revolver.

It was not far from dawn when we reached the camp again. Aggie
was as we had left her, but in the light of the dying fire she
looked older and much worn. As a matter of fact, it was some
weeks before she looked like her old self.

The girl was sitting where we had left her, and sulkier than
ever. She had turned her back to Mr. Oliver, and Aggie said
afterward that the way they had quarreled had been something
terrible.

Aggie said she had tried to make conversation with the girl, and
had, indeed, told her of Mr. Wiggins and her own blasted life.
But she had remained singularly unresponsive.

The return of our new prisoner was greeted by the other men with
brutal rage, except Mr. Oliver, who merely glanced at him and
then went back to his staring at the fire. It appeared that they
had been counting on him to get assistance, and his capture
destroyed their last hope. Indeed, their language grew so
unpleasant that at last Tish hammered sharply on a rock with the
handle of her revolver.

"Please remember," she said, "that you are in the presence of
ladies!"

They jeered at her, but she handled the situation with her usual
generalship.

"Lizzie," she said calmly, "get the tin basin that is hanging to
my saddle, and fill it with the water from that snowbank. On the
occasion of any more unseemly language, pour it over the
offender without mercy."

It became necessary to do it, I regret to state. They had not
yet learned that Tish always carries out her threats. It was the
one who we felt was the leader who offended, and I did as I had
been requested to. But Aggie, ever tender-hearted, feared that
it would give the man a severe cold, and got Tish's permission
to pour a little blackberry cordial down his throat.

Far from this kindness having a salubrious effect, it had the
contrary. They all fell to bad language again, and, realizing
that they wished the cordial, and our supply being limited, we
were compelled to abandon the treatment.

It had been an uncomfortable night, and I confess to a feeling
of relief when "the rift of dawn" broke the early skies.

We were, Tish calculated, some forty miles from breakfast, and
Aggie's diet for some days had been light at the best, even the
mountain-lion broth having been more stimulating than staying.
We therefore investigated the camp, and found behind a large
stone some flour, baking-powder, and bacon. With this equipment
and a frying-pan or two we were able to make some very fair
pancakes-- or flapjacks, as they are called in the West.

Tish civilly invited the girl to eat with us, but she refused
curtly, although, on turning once, I saw her eyeing us with
famished eyes. I think, however, that on seeing us going about
the homely task of getting breakfast, she realized that we were
not the desperate creatures she had fancied during the night,
but three gentlewomen on a holiday--simple tourists, indeed.

"I wish," she said at last almost wistfully--"I wish that I
could understand it all. I seem to be all mixed up. You don't
suppose I want to be here, do you?"

But Tish was not in a mood to make concessions. "As for what you
want," she said, "how are we to know that? You are here, aren't
you? --here as a result of your own cold-heartedness. Had you
remained true to the very estimable young man you jilted you
would not now be in this position."

"Of course he would talk about it!" said the girl darkly.

"I am convinced," Tish went on, dexterously turning a pancake by
a swift movement of the pan, "that sensational movies are
responsible for much that is wrong with the country to-day. They
set false standards. Perfectly pure-minded people see them and
are filled with thoughts of crime."

Although she had ignored him steadily, the girl turned now to
Mr. Oliver.

"They don't believe anything I tell them. Why don't you
explain?" she demanded.

"Explain!" he said in a furious voice. "Explain to three
lunatics? What's the use?"

"You got me into this, you know."

"I did! I like that! What in the name of Heaven induced you to
ride off the way you did?"

Tish paused, with the frying-pan in the air. "Silence!" she
commanded. "You are both only reaping what you have sowed. As
far as quarreling goes, you can keep that until you are married,
if you intend to be. I don't know but I'd advise it. It's a pity
to spoil two houses."

But the girl said that she wouldn't marry him if he was the last
man on earth, and he fell back to sulking again.

As Aggie observed later, he acted as if he had never cared for
her, while Mr. Bell, on the contrary, could not help his face
changing when he so much as mentioned her name.

We made some tea and ate a hearty breakfast, while the men
watched us. And as we ate, Tish held the moving-picture business
up to contumely and scorn.

"Lady," said one of the prostrate men, "aren't you going to give
us anything to eat?"

"People," Tish said, ignoring him, "who would ordinarily cringe
at the sight of a wounded beetle sit through bloody murders and
go home with the obsession of crime."

"I hope you won't take it amiss," said the man again, "if I say
that, seeing it's our flour and bacon, you either ought to feed
us or take it away and eat it where we can't see you."

"I take it," said Tish to the girl, pouring in more batter,
"that you yourself would never have thought of highway robbery
had you not been led to it by an overstimulated imagination."

"I wish," said the girl rudely, "that you wouldn't talk so much.
I've got a headache."

When we had finished Tish indicated the frying-pan and the
batter. "Perhaps," she said, "you would like to bake some cakes
for these friends of yours. We have a long trip ahead of us."

But the girl replied heartlessly that she hoped they would
starve to death, ignoring their pitiful glances. In the end it
was our own tender-hearted Aggie who baked pancakes for them
and, loosening their hands while I stood guard, saw that they
had not only food but the gentle refreshment of fresh tea. Tish
it was, however, who, not to be outdone in magnanimity,
permitted them to go, one by one, to the stream to wash. Escape,
without horses or weapons, was impossible, and they realized it.

By nine o'clock we were ready to return. And here a difficulty
presented itself. There were six prisoners and only three of us.
The men, fed now, were looking less subdued, although they
pretended to obey Tish's commands with alacrity.

Aggie overheard a scrap of conversation, too, which seemed to
indicate that they had not given up hope. Had Tish not set her
heart on leading them into the great hotel at Many Glaciers, and
there exposing them to the taunts of angry tourists, it would
have been simpler for one of us to ride for assistance, leaving
the others there.

In this emergency Tish, putting her hand into her pocket for her
scissors to trim a hangnail, happened to come across the
policeman's whistle.

"My gracious!" she said. "I forgot my promise to that young
man!"

She immediately put it to her lips and blew three shrill blasts.
To our surprise they were answered by a halloo, and a moment
later the young gentleman himself appeared on the trail. He was
no longer afoot, but was mounted on a pinto pony, which we knew
at once for Bill's.

He sat on his horse, staring as if he could not believe his
eyes. Then he made his way across the stream toward us.

"Good Heavens!" he said. "What in the name of--" Here his eyes
fell on the girl, and he stiffened.

"Jim!" cried the girl, and looked at him with what Aggie
afterward characterized as a most touching expression.

But he ignored her. "Looks as though you folks have been pretty
busy," he observed, glancing at our scowling captives. "I'm a
trifle surprised. You don't mind my being rather breathless, do
you?"

"My only regret," Tish said loftily, "is that we have not
secured the Indians. They too should be taught a lesson. I am
sure that the red man is noble until led away by civilized
people who might know better."

It was at this point that Mr. Bell's eyes fell on Mr. Oliver,
who with his hands tied behind him was crouching over the fire.

"Well!" he said. "So you're here too! But of course you would
be." This he said bitterly.

"For the love of Heaven, Bell," Mr. Oliver said, "tell those mad
women that I'm not a bandit."

"We know that already," Tish observed.

"And untie my hands. My shoulders are about broken."

But Mr. Bell only looked at him coldly. "I can't interfere with
these ladies," he said. "They're friends of mine. If they think
you are better tied, it's their business. They did it."

"At least," Mr. Oliver said savagely, "you can tell them who I
am, can't you?"

"As to that," Mr. Bell returned, "I can only tell them what you
say you are. You must remember that I know nothing about you.
Helen knows much more than I do."

"Jim," cried the girl, "surely you are going to tell these women
that we are not highway robbers. Tell them the truth. Tell them
I am not a highway robber. Tell them that these men are not my
accomplices, that I never saw them before."

"You must remember," he replied in an icy tone, "that I no
longer know your friends. It is some days since you and I parted
company. And you must admit that one of them is a friend of
yours- -as well as I can judge, a very close friend."

She was almost in tears, but she persisted. "At least," she
said, "you can tell them that I did not rob that woman on the
pass. They are going to lead us in to Many Glaciers, and--Jim,
you won't let them, will you? I'll die of shame."

But he was totally unmoved. As Aggie said afterward, no one
would have thought that, but a day or two before, he had been
heartbroken because she was in love with someone else.

"As to that," he said, "it is questionable, according to Mrs.
Ostermaier, that nothing was taken from you, and that as soon as
the attack was over you basely deserted her and followed the
bandits. A full description of you, which I was able to correct
in one or two trifling details, is now in the hands of the park
police."

She stared at him with fury in her eyes. "I hope you will never
speak to me again," she cried.

"You said that the last time I saw you, Helen. If you will
think, you will remember that you addressed me first just now."

She stamped her foot.

"Of course," he said politely, "you can see my position. You
maintain and possibly believe that these--er--acquaintances of
yours"--he indicated the men--"are not members of the moving-
picture outfit. Also that your being with them is of an
accidental nature. But, on the other hand--"

She put her fingers in her ears and turned her back on him.

"On the other hand," he went on calmly, "I have the word of
these three respectable ladies that they are the outfit, or part
of it, that they have just concluded a cruel hoax on
unsuspecting tourists, and that they justly deserve to be led in
as captives and exposed to the full ignominy of their position."

Here she faced him again, and this time she was quite pale. "Ask
those--those women where they found my engagement ring," she
said. "One of those wretches took it from me. That ought to be
proof enough that they are not from the moving-picture outfit."

Tish at once produced the ring and held it out to him. But he
merely glanced at it and shook his head.

"All engagement rings look alike," he observed. "I cannot
possibly say, Helen, but I think it is unlikely that it is the
one I gave you, as you told me, you may recall, that you had
thrown it into a crack in a glacier. It may, of course, be one
you have recently acquired."

He glanced at Mr. Oliver, but the latter only shrugged his
shoulders.

Well, she shed a few tears, but he was adamant, and helped us
saddle the horses, ignoring her utterly. It was our opinion that
he no longer cared for her, and that, having lost him, she now
regretted it. I know that she watched him steadily when he was
not looking her way. But he went round quite happily, whistling
a bit of tune, and not at all like the surly individual we had
at first thought him.

The ride back was without much incident. Our prisoners rode with
their hands tied behind them, except the young lady.

"We might as well leave her unfastened," the young man said
casually. "While I dare say she would make her escape if
possible, and particularly if there was any chance of getting
filmed while doing it, I will make myself personally
responsible."

As a matter of fact she was exceedingly rude to all of us, and
during our stop for luncheon, which was again bacon and
pancakes, she made a dash for her horse. The young man saw her,
however, in time, and brought her back. From that time on she
was more civil, but I saw her looking at him now and then, and
her eyes were positively terrified.

It was Aggie, at last, who put in a plea for her with him,
drawing him aside to do so. "I am sure," she said, "that she is
really a nice girl, and has merely been led astray by the search
for adventure. Naturally my friends, especially Miss Tish, have
small sympathy with such a state of mind. But you are younger--
and remember, you loved her once."

"Loved her once!" he replied. "Dear lady, I'm so crazy about her
at this minute that I can hardly hold myself in."

"You are not acting much like it."

"The fact is," he replied, "I'm afraid to let myself go. And if
she's learned a lesson, I have too. I've been her doormat long
enough. I tried it and it didn't work. She's caring more for me
now, at this minute, than she has in eleven months. She needs a
strong hand, and, by George! I've got it--two of them, in fact."

We reached Many Glaciers late that afternoon, and Tish rode
right up to the hotel. Our arrival created the most intense
excitement, and Tish, although pleased, was rather surprised. It
was not, however, until a large man elbowed his way through the
crowd and took possession of the prisoners that we understood.

"I'll take them now," he said. "Well, George, how are you?"

This was to the leader, who merely muttered in reply.

"I'd like to leave them here for a short time," Tish stated.
"They should be taught a severe lesson and nothing stings like
ridicule. After that you can turn them free, but I think they
ought to be discharged."

"Turn them free!" he said in a tone of amazement. "Discharged!
My dear madam, they will get fifteen years' hard labor, I hope.
And that's too good for them."

Then suddenly the crowd began to cheer. It was some time before
Tish realized that they were cheering us. And even then, I shall
have to confess, we did not understand until the young man
explained to ms.

"You see," he said, "I didn't like to say anything sooner, for
fear of making you nervous. You'd done it all so well that I
wanted you to finish it. You're been in the right church all
along, but the wrong pew. Those fellows aren't movie actors,
except Oliver, who will be freed now, and come after me with a
gun, as like as not! They're real dyed-in- the-wool desperadoes
and there's a reward of five thousand dollars for capturing
them."

Tish went rather white, but said nothing. Aggie, however, went
into a paroxysm of sneezing, and did not revive until given
aromatic ammonia to inhale.

"I was fooled at first too," the young man said. "We'd been
expecting a holdup and when it came we thought it was the faked
one. But the person" --he paused and looked round--"the person
who had the real jolt was Helen. She followed them, since they
didn't take her for ransom, as had been agreed in the plot.

"Then, when she found her mistake, they took her along, for fear
she'd ride off and raise the alarm. All in all," he said
reflectively, "it has been worth about a million dollars to me."

We went into the hotel, with the crowd following us, and the
first thing we saw was Mrs. Ostermaier, sitting dejectedly by
the fire. When she saw us, she sprang to her feet and came to
meet us.

"Oh, Miss Tish, Miss Tish!" she said. "What I have been through!
Attacked on a lonely mountain-top and robbed of everything. My
reason is almost gone. And my earrings, my beautiful earrings!"

Tish said nothing, but, reaching into her reticule, which she
had taken from the horn of her saddle, she drew out a number of
things.

"Here," she said. "Are your earrings. Here also is Mr.
Ostermaier's cigar-case, but empty. Here is some money too. I'll
keep that, however, until I know how much you lost."

"Tish!" screeched Mrs. Ostermaier. "You found them!"

"Yes," Tish said somewhat wearily, "we found them. We found a
number of things, Mrs. Ostermaier,--four bandits, and two
lovers, or rather three, but so no longer, and your things, and
a reward of five thousand dollars, and an engagement ring. I
think," she said, "that I'd like a hot bath and something to
eat."

Mrs. Ostermaier was gloating over her earrings, but she looked
up at Tish's tired and grimy face, at the mud encrusted on me
from my accident the day before, at Aggie in her turban.

"Go and wash, all of you," she said kindly, "and I'll order some
hot tea."

But Tish shook her head. "Tea nothing!" she said firmly. "I want
a broiled sirloin steak and potatoes. And"-- she looked Mrs.
Ostermaier full in the eye--"I am going to have a cocktail. I
need it."

Late that evening Aggie came to Tish's room, where I was sitting
with her. Tish was feeling entirely well, and more talkative
than I can remember her in years. But the cocktail, which she
felt, she said, in no other way, had gone to her legs.

"It is not," she observed, "that I cannot walk. I can, perfectly
well. But I am obliged to keep my eyes on my feet, and it might
be noticed."

"I just came in," Aggie said, "to say that Helen and her lover
have made it up. They are down by the lake now, and if you will
look out you can see them."

I gave Tish an arm to the window, and the three of us stood and
looked out. The moon was rising over the snow-capped peaks
across the lake, and against its silver pathway the young people
stood outlined. As we looked he stooped and kissed her. But it
was a brief caress, as if he had just remembered the strong hand
and being a doormat long enough.

Tish drew a long breath.

"What," she said, "is more beautiful than young love? It will be
a comfort to remember that we brought them together. Let go of me now,
Lizzie. If I keep my eye on the bedpost I think I can get back."





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Tish, by Mary Roberts Rinehart

