a glorious trip, don't you, girls?"

"I certainly do!" said Bessie King. "I'm like Margery. I've always wanted to see the real mountains. I used to dream about them, and sometimes I'd think I'd really been there. But I guess it was just because I dreamed so much that I got to thinking so."

Eleanor looked at her curiously.

"Maybe your people came from the mountains, Bessie," she said. "It's very strange that some natural things seem to get into the blood of peoples and races. Like the mountains, and the sea, and great rivers. Sometimes all the men in a family, for generations, will be sailors, even if their parents have planned something else for them. The sea is in their blood, and it calls them."

"Sometimes I think the mountains are calling me just that way," said Bessie. "But I never really understood that before."

"It's the same way with mountaineers. The Swiss are never really happy except among their mountains. And that's true of every mountainous race. The people who live along the Mississippi, here, and along the Don and the Vistula, and the other great rivers in Russia, never seem to be able to live happily unless they can see the great river rolling by their homes every day. If they go far away they get homesick."

"I'm not a bit like that!" exclaimed Dolly. "One place is just as good as another for me, if I like the people. I like to travel and see new places. I'd like to be on the move all the time."

"I think a great many Americans are getting to be that way," said Eleanor, reflectively. "It's natural, in a way, you see. For generations the young men and women have been moving on, from settled parts of the country to new land, where there were greater opportunities to make a fortune."

"I've read about that," said Dolly. "You mean like the people from New England, who went west to Oregon and Washington?"

"Yes. But that can't go on forever, you see, because about all the new land is taken up and settled now. Of course, out in the far west, there's still room for people; lots and lots of room. But this whole country is settled now. Law and order have been established about everywhere. And we'll begin to settle down soon, and our people will love their homes, and the places where they were born, just as the Virginians and the other Southerners do now."

"Oh, it isn't that I don't like my own home!" said Dolly. "If I were away from it very long I know I'd get dreadfully homesick, and want to go back. But I don't want to stay there or anywhere else all the time."

"You're a wanderer," laughed Eleanor. "That's what's the matter with you, Dolly. You want to see everything that's to be seen. Well, I'm a little that way myself. When I was a little bit of a kiddie I always got tremendously excited if we were going on a journey. I guess it's a pretty good thing, really, that we are that way. It's the reason this country has grown so wonderfully, that spirit of enterprise and adventure. That's what made the pioneers."

"It isn't just Americans who do it, either, is it?" said Margery. "The Italians and the other foreigners who come here seem to be just as anxious to find new places—"

"Oh, but that's different," said Zara, the silent one, quickly. "I know, because my father and I are foreigners. And do you know why we came here? It was because we couldn't live happily in our own country!"

The girls looked at her curiously, so fiery was her speech, and so much in earnest was she.

"We come from Poland," she said. "Over there, a man can't call his soul his own. Soldiers and policemen used to come to our house, and wake us up in the middle of the night to look for papers. And often and often they would steal anything we had that they liked. Oh, how I hate the Russians!"

Eleanor sighed. Gradually, slowly but surely, she felt that she was finding her way into the secret of Zara and her father.

"Then you came here because you had heard that this was a free country and a refuge for those who were oppressed?" she ventured, gently.

"Yes," said Zara. "And it's not true! There are kind people here, like you, and Bessie, and Mr. Jamieson. But haven't they put my father in prison, just the way they did in Poland and in Sicily, when we tried to live there quietly? And didn't all the people in Hedgeville persecute him, and tell lies about both of us? We haven't been happy here."

"I'm afraid that's true, Zara. But you are going to be, remember that. You have good friends working for you now, you and your father both. And it isn't the fault of this country that there are bad and wicked men in it, who are willing to do wrong if they see a chance to make money by doing so."

"But if this country is all that people say about it, they shouldn't be allowed to do it. The law is helping them. In Poland, it was just the same. The law was against my father there—"

"Listen, Zara! The law may seem to help them at first, but you may be very sure of one thing. If your father has done nothing wrong, and his enemies have lied and deceived the people in authority in order to get the law on their side, they will pay bitterly, for it in the end."

"But the law ought to know that my father is right—"

"The law works slowly, Zara, but in the end it is sure to be right. You see, your father's case is a very exceptional one. The people who made the law in the beginning couldn't have expected it to come. But the wonderful thing about the law is that, while it is often very hard, it will always find out the truth sooner or later.

"Sometimes, for a little while, people who are innocent have to suffer because they are unjustly accused. But the law will free them if they have really done no wrong, and, what is more, it will punish those who swear falsely against them. Be patient, and you will find that you and your father made no mistake when you believed that this was the land of the free and the home of those who are oppressed in their own countries."

Zara's eyes, dark and sombre, seemed to be full of fire.

"Oh, I hope so," she cried, passionately. "For my father's sake! He has been disappointed and deceived so often."

"We'll have a good long talk sometime, Zara," she said, finally. "Then maybe I'll be able to explain some things to you better, and make you understand the real difference between this country and the ones you have known."

Then she brightened, and turned to the other girls, who had all been rather sobered by the sudden revelation, through Zara, of a side of life hidden from them as a rule.

"We're not going to take that trip just for ourselves and our own fun," she said. "We're going to be missionaries, in a way; we want to spread the light of the Camp Fire, and see if we can't get a lot of new Camp Fires organized in the places we pass through. It's just in such lonely, country places that the girls need the Camp Fire most, I believe."

"That will be splendid," said Margery Burton. "We could stay and teach them all the ceremonies, and the songs, and how to organize new Camp Fires, couldn't we?"

"Yes. We want to make them see how much it has done for us. When they know that they'll do the rest for themselves, I think. I shall expect all you girls to help, because you can do ever so much more than I. It's the girls who really count—not the Guardians, you know."

CHAPTER IV

A FRIEND IN TROUBLE

The next morning Eleanor Mercer, summoned from the group of girls with whom she was discussing some details of the coming contest with the Boy Scouts by the appearance of a man who had rowed up to the little landing stage, accompanied by one of the guides, old Andrew, called Bessie King and Dolly Ransom to her with a grave face.

"This is Deputy Sheriff Rogers, from Hamilton," she explained. "He says that you must go there today to testify against those gypsies."

"Sorry, ma'am, if it's awkward jest now," said the officer. "But law's