thing!"

"I wish we knew why they did it, or why Mr. Holmes wants them to do such things. It's easy enough to see why they did it—they wanted the money he had promised to pay if they got Zara and me away from here."

"You remember what I told you. Mr. Holmes expects to make a lot of money out of you two, in some fashion. I know you laughed at me when I said that before, and said he had so much money already that that couldn't be the reason. But there simply can't be any other, Bessie; that's all there is to it."

Bessie sighed wearily.

"I wish it was all over," she said. "Sometimes I'm sorry they haven't caught me and taken me back."

"Why, Bessie, that's an awful thing for you to say! Don't you want to be with us?"

"Of course I do, Dolly! I've never been so happy in my whole life as I have been since that morning when I saw you girls for the first time. But I hate to think of the trouble my staying makes, and when I think that maybe there's danger for the rest of you, as there was last night—"

"Don't you worry about that, Bessie! I guess we can stand it if you can. That's what friends are for—to share your troubles. You musn't get to feeling that way—it's silly."

"Well, it doesn't make much difference, Dolly. I don't seem to be able to help it. But I wish it was all over. And do you know what worries me most of all?"

"No. What?"

"Why, what that nasty lawyer, Isaac Brack, said to me one time. Do you remember my telling you? That unless I went with him, and did what he and his friends wanted, I'd never find out about my father and my mother."

"I don't believe it, Bessie! I don't believe he knows anything at all about them, and I don't believe, either, that that's the only way you'll ever hear anything about them."

"But it might be true!"

"Oh, come on, Bessie, cheer up! You're going to be all right. And I'll bet that when you do find out about your parents, and why they left you with Maw Hoover so long, you'll be glad you had to wait so long, because it will make you so happy when you do know."

Just then Eleanor's voice called the girls together.

"All hands to work rebuilding the camp," she said. "We want to have the new tents set up, and everything ready for the night. I'd like those people to know, if they come snooping around here again, that it takes more than a fire to put the Camp Fire Girls out of business!"

"My, but you're a slave driver, Nell," said Charlie Jamieson, jovially. He winked in the direction of Trenwith. "I'm sorry for your husband when you get married. You'll keep him busy, all right!"

Hearing the remark, Trenwith grinned, while Eleanor flushed. His look said pretty plainly that he wouldn't waste any sympathy on the man lucky enough to marry Eleanor Mercer, and Dolly, catching the look, drew Bessie aside. Her observation in such matters was amazingly keen.

"Did you see that!" she whispered, excitedly. "Why, Bessie, I do believe he's fallen in love with her already!"

"Well, I should think he would!" said Bessie, surprisingly. "I wouldn't think much of any man who didn't! She's the nicest girl I ever saw or dreamed of seeing."

"Oh, she's all of that," agreed Dolly, loyally. "You can't tell me anything nice about Miss Eleanor that I haven't found out for myself long ago. But Mr. Jamieson isn't in love with her—and he's known her much longer than Mr. Trenwith has."

"That hasn't got anything at all to do with it," declared Bessie. "People don't have to know one another a long time to fall in love—though sometimes they don't always know about it themselves right away. And, besides, I think she and Mr. Jamieson are just like brother and sister. They're only cousins, of course, but they've sort of grown up together, and they know one another awfully well."

"You may know more about things like that than I do," agreed Dolly, dubiously. "But I know this much, anyhow. If I were a man, I'd certainly be in love with Miss Eleanor, if I knew her at all."

She stopped for a moment to look at Eleanor.

"Better not let her catch us whispering about her," she went on. "She wouldn't like it a little bit."

"It isn't a nice thing to do anyhow, Dolly. You're perfectly right. I do think Mr. Trenwith's a nice man. Maybe he's good enough for her. But I think I'll always like Mr. Jamieson better, because he's been so nice to us from the very start, when he knew that we couldn't pay him, the way people usually do lawyers who work so hard for them."

"He certainly is a nice man, Bessie. But then so is Mr. Trenwith."

"Look out, Dolly!" cautioned Bessie, with a low laugh. "You'll be getting jealous and losing your temper first thing you know."

"Oh, I guess not. Talking about losing one's temper, I wonder if Gladys Cooper is still mad at us?"

"Oh, I hope not! That was sort of funny, wasn't it, as well as unpleasant? Why do you suppose she was so angry, and got the other girls in their camp at Lake Dean to hating us so much when we first went there?"

"Oh, she couldn't help it, Bessie, I guess. It's the way she's been brought up. Her people have lots of money, and they've let her think that just because of that she is better than girls whose parents are poor."

"Well, the rest of them certainly changed their minds about us, didn't they?"

"Yes, and it was a fine thing! I guess they realized that we were better than they thought, when Gladys and Marcia Bates got lost in the woods that time, and you and I happened to find them, and get them home safely."

"I think they were mighty nice girls, Dolly—much nicer than you would ever have thought they could be from the way they acted when we first met them, and they ordered us off their ground, just as if we were going to hurt it. When they found out that they'd been in the wrong, and hadn't behaved nicely, they said they were sorry, and admitted that they hadn't been nice. And I think that's a pretty hard thing for anyone to do."

"Oh, it is, Bessie. I know, because I've found out so often that I'd been mean to people who were ever so much nicer than I. But there's one thing about it—it makes you feel sort of good all over when you have owned up that way. I wish Gladys Cooper had acted like the rest of them. But she was still mad."

"Oh, I think you'll find she's all right when you see her again, Dolly. I guess she's just as nice as the rest of them, really."

"That's one reason I'm sorry she acted that way. Because she's as nice as any girl you ever saw when she wants to be. I was awfully mad at her when it happened, but now, somehow, I've got over feeling that way about her, altogether, and I just want to be good friends with her again."

"You lose your temper pretty quickly, Dolly, but you get over being angry just as quickly as you get mad, don't you?"

"I seem to, Bessie. And I guess that's helping me not to get angry at people so much, anyhow. I'm always sorry when I do get into one of my rages, and if I'm going to be sorry, it's easier not to get mad in the first place."

While they talked, Bessie and Dolly were not idle, by any means. There was plenty of work for everyone to do, for the fire had made a pretty clean sweep, after all, and to put the whole camp in good shape, so that they could sleep there that night, was something of a task.

Trenwith and Jamieson, laughing a good deal, and enjoying themselves immensely, insisted on doing the heavy work of setting up the ridge poles, and laying down the floors of the new tents, but when it came to stretching the canvas over the framework, they were not in it with the girls.

"You men mean well, but I never saw anything so clumsy in my life!" declared Eleanor, laughingly. "It's a wonder to me how you ever come home alive when you go out camping by yourselves."

"Oh, we manage somehow," boasted Charlie Jamieson.

"That's just about what you do do! You manage—somehow! And, yet, when this Camp Fire movement started, all the men I knew sat around and