the lake smoke rose in the calm evening air.

"Oh, how beautiful!" cried Bessie. "It's the loveliest place I ever saw. And how wonderful the smell is."

"That's from the pine trees," said Eleanor. She sighed, as if overcome by the calm beauty of the scene, as, indeed, she was. "It's always beautiful here—but Sometimes I think it's most beautiful in winter, when the lake is covered with ice, and the trees are all weighed down with snow. Then, of course, you can walk or skate all over the lake—it's frozen four and five feet deep, as a rule, by January."

Dolly shivered.

"But isn't it awfully cold here?" she inquired "Oh, yes; but it's so dry that one doesn't mind the cold half as much as we do at home when it's really ten or fifteen degrees warmer, Dolly. One dresses for it, too, you see, in thick, woolen things, and furs, and there's such glorious sport. You can break holes through the ice and fish, and then there are ice boats, and skating races, and all sorts of things. Oh, it's glorious. I've been up here in winter a lot, and I really do think that's best of all."

Then she looked at the rising smoke.

"Well, we mustn't stay here and talk any more," she said. "Come along, girls, it's getting near to supper time."

"Have we got to cook supper?" asked Dolly, anxiously.

"No, not to-night," said Eleanor, with a laugh. "The guides have done it for us, because I knew we'd all be tired and ready for a good rest, without any work to do. But with breakfast tomorrow we'll start in and do all our own work, just as we've done when we've been in camp before."

Half an hour's brisk walk took them to the site of the camp. There there was a little sandy beach, and the tents had been pitched on ground was slightly higher. Behind each tent a trench had been dug, so that, in case of rain, the water flowing down from the high ground in the rear would be diverted and carried down into the lake.

Before the tents a great fire was burning, and the girls cried out happily at the sight of plates, with knives and forks and tin pannikins set by them, all spread out in a great circle near the fire. At the fire itself two or three men were busy with frying pans and great coffee pots, and the savory smell of frying bacon, that never tastes half as good as when it is eaten in the woods, rose and mingled with the sweet, spicy smell of the balsams and the firs, the pines and the spruces.

"Oh, but I'm glad we're here!" cried Dolly, with a huge sigh of content. "And I'm glad to see supper—and smell it!"

And what a supper that was! For many the girls, like Bessie, and Zara, and Dolly, it the first woods meal. How good the bacon was, and the raised biscuit, as light and flaky as snowflakes, cooked as only woods guides know how to cook them! And then, afterward, the great plates heaped high with flapjacks, that were to be eaten with butter and maple syrup that came from the trees all about them. Not the adulterated, wishy-washy maple syrup that is sold, as a rule, even in the best grocery stores of the cities, but the real, luscious maple syrup that is taken from the running sap in the first warm days of February, and refined in great kettles, right under the trees that yielded the sap.

And then, when it was time to turn in, how they did sleep! The air seemed to have some mysterious qualities of making one want to sleep. And the peace of the great out-of-doors brooded over the camp that night.

CHAPTER IV

A RECKLESS EXCURSION

In the morning, when the girls awoke, there was no sign of the guides who had cooked that tempting and delicious supper the night before.

"Well, we're on our own resources now, girls," said the Guardian. "This may be a sort of Eden—I hope we'll find it so. But it's going to be a manless one. There'll be no men here until we get ready to go away, if I can help it—except as visitors."

"Well, I guess we can get along without them all right, for a change," said Dolly, blushing a little.

"Some of the men I know who are interested in the Boy Scouts think the Camp Fire Girls are a good deal of a joke," said Eleanore, with a light in her eyes that might have made some of the scoffers she referred to anxious to eat their words. "They say we get along all right because we always have some man ready to help us out if we get into any trouble. So I planned this camp just to show them that we can do just as well as any troop of Boy Scouts ever did."

"I bet we can, too," said Dolly, eagerly. "Why, with such a lot of us to do the work, it won't be very hard for any one of us."

"Not if we all do our share, Dolly," said Eleanor, looking at her rather pointedly. "But if some of us are always managing to disappear just when there's work to be done, someone will have to do double duty—and that's not fair."

"I won't—really I won't, Miss Eleanor," said Dolly. "I know I've shirked sometimes, but I'm not going to this time. I'm going to work hard now to be a Fire Maker. I think I've been a Wood Gatherer long enough, don't, you?"

"You've served more time than is needed for promotion, Dolly. It's all up to you, as the boys say. As soon as you win the honors you need you can be a Fire Maker. You can have your new rank just as soon as you earn it."

"Bessie and I are going to be made Fire Makers together, if we can, Miss Eleanor. We talked that over the other day, at the farm, and I think well be ready at the first camp fire we have after we get home."

"Well, you'll please me very much if you do. It's time the other girls were getting up now—we've got to cook breakfast now. I'll call them while you two build a fire—there's plenty of wood for to-day, piled up over there."

AS Dolly had said, with each girl doing her share, the work of the camp was light. While some of the girls did the cooking, others prepared the "dining table"—a smooth place on the ground—and others pinned up the bottom flaps of; the tents, after turning out the bedding, so that the floors of the tents might be well aired. And then they all sat down, happily and hungrily, to a breakfast that tasted just as good as had supper the night before.

"Can we swim in the lake, Miss Eleanor?" asked Margery Burton.

"If you want to," said Eleanor, with a smile. "It's pretty cold water, though; a good deal colder than it was at the sea shore last year. You see, this lake is fed by springs, and in the spring the ice melts, and the water in April and May is just like ice water. But you'll get used to it, if you only stay in a couple of minutes at first, and get accustomed to the chill gradually. But remember the rule: no one is ever to go unless I'm right at hand, and there must always be someone in a boat, ready to help if a girl gets a cramp or any other sort of trouble."

"Oh, are there boats?" cried Dolly. "That's fine! Where are they, Miss Eleanor?"

"You shall see them after we've cleared away the breakfast things and washed up. But there's a rule about the boats, too: no one is to go out in them except in bathing suits. And remember this, when you're out on the lake. It's very narrow, and it looks very calm and safe, now.

"But at this time of the year there are often severe squalls up here, and they come over the hills so quickly that it's easy to get caught unless you're very careful. I think there had better always be two girls in each boat. We don't want any accidents."

"Can we go for walks through the woods, Miss Eleanor?"

"Oh, yes; that's the most beautiful part of being up here. But it's easy to get lost. When you start on a trail always stick to it. Don't be tempted to go off exploring. I'm going to give you all some lessons in finding your way in the woods. You know, the moss is always on the south side of a tree, and there are other ways of telling direction, by the leaves. I expect you all to be regular woodsmen when we go away from here, and I'm sure you'll learn things about the woods that will give you a good