started the fire."

"But how could they have done that, if there were none of them here on the beach, Dolly?"

"She says that if they were on the bluff, above the tents, they could very easily have thrown down bombs that would smoulder, and soon set the canvas on fire. And there was a high wind last night, and it wouldn't have taken long, once a spark had touched the canvas, for everything to blaze up. They couldn't have picked a much better night."

"I don't suppose that can be proved, though, Dolly."

"I'm afraid not. That's what Miss Eleanor says, too. She says you can often be so sure of a thing yourself that it seems that it must have happened, without being able to prove it to someone else. That's where they are so clever, and that's what makes them so dangerous. They can hide their tracks splendidly."

"I don't see why men who can do such things couldn't keep straight, and really make more money honestly than they can by being crooked."

"It does seem strange, doesn't it, Bessie? Oh, look, there's the Sally S. with our breakfast—and there's another boat coming in. I wonder if Mr. Jamieson can be here already?"

In a moment his voice proved that it was possible, and a few minutes later, while the girls were helping Captain Salters to unload the stores he had brought with him, Eleanor was greeting her attorney from Bay City.

CHAPTER II

A NEW ALLY

"I guess you haven't met Billy Trenwith properly yet, Eleanor," said Charlie Jamieson, smiling.

"Maybe not," said Eleanor, returning the smile, "but I regard him as a friend already, Charlie. He was splendid this morning. If he hadn't understood so quickly, and acted at once, the way he did, I don't know what would have happened."

"I'm afraid I didn't really understand at all, Miss Mercer," said Trenwith, a good looking young fellow, with light brown hair and grey blue eyes, that, although mild and pleasant enough now, had been as cold as steel when Bessie had seen him on the yacht. "But I could understand readily enough that you were in trouble, and I knew that Charlie's cousin wouldn't appeal to me unless there was a good reason. So I didn't feel that I was taking many chances in doing what you wished."

"I'm afraid you took more chances than you know about, Billy," said Charlie, gravely. "You're in politics, aren't you? And you have ambitions for more of a job than you've got now?"

"Oh, yes, I'm in politics, after a fashion," admitted Trenwith. "But I guess I could manage to keep alive if I never got another political office. I had a bit of a practice before I became district attorney, and I think I could build it up again."

"Well, I hope this isn't going to make any difference, Billy. But it's only fair for you to know the sort of game you're running into. I don't want to feel that you're going ahead to help us without understanding the situation just as it is."

"You talk as if this might be a pretty complicated bit of business, Charlie. Suppose you loosen up and tell me about it. Then I may be able to figure better on how I can help you."

"That's just what I'm going to do, old man. I want you to meet two of cousin's protegees here—Bessie King and Zara, the mysterious. If we knew more about Zara and her affairs this wouldn't be such a Chinese puzzle. But here goes! Ask me all the questions you like. And you girls—if I go wrong, stop me.

"In the first place, Miss Mercer here took a party of her Camp Fire Girls, these same ones that you can see there so busy about getting breakfast, over the state line, and they went to a camp on a lake a little way from a village called Hedgeville."

"I know the place," nodded Trenwith. "Never been there, but I know where it is."

"Well, one morning they discovered these two—Bessie and Zara. And they'd had a strange experience. They were running away!"

"Bad business, as a rule," commented Trenwith. "But I suppose there was a good reason?"

"You bet there was, old chap! Bessie had lived for a good many years with an old farmer called Hoover and his wife. They had a son, too, a worthless young scamp named Jake, lazy and ready for any sort of mischief that turned up."

"Is she related to them in any way, Charlie?"

"Not a bit of it! When she was a little bit of a kid her parents left her there as a boarder, and they were supposed to send money to pay for her keep until they came back to get her. For a while they did, but then the money stopped coming."

"But they kept her on, just the same?"

"Yes, as a sort of unpaid servant. She did all the work she could manage, and she didn't have a very good time. Zara, here, has a father. How long ago did Zara and her father come to Hedgeville, Bessie?"

"They'd been there about two years when we—we had to run away, Mr. Jamieson. They came from some foreign country, you know."

"Yes. And the people around Hedgeville couldn't make much out about them, so they decided, of course, being unable to understand them, that there must be something wrong about Zara's dad. No real reason at all, except that he only spoke a little English, and liked to keep his business to himself."

Trenwith laughed.

"I know," he said. "I see a lot of that sort of thing."

"Well, the day before the two of them ran away—or the day before they found the girls, rather—there'd been a fine shindy at the Hoovers. Zara went over to see Bessie, and Jake Hoover locked her in a tool shed. Then he managed, without meaning to do it, to set the tool shed afire, and said he was going to say that Bessie had done it."

"Fine young pup, he must be!"

"Yes—worth knowing! Anyhow, Bessie had only too good reason to know that his mother would believe him and take his word, no matter what she and Zara said. So, being scared, she just ran. I don't blame her; I'd have done the same thing myself. You and I both know that knowing he's innocent doesn't keep a man who is unjustly accused from being afraid."

"No," said Trenwith, thoughtfully. "I've had to learn that it doesn't pay to think a man's guilty because he's scared and confused. It's an old theory that innocence shows in a prisoner's eyes, and it's very pretty—only it isn't true."

"Well, even so, they might not have run away if it hadn't happened that that was the day Zara's father was arrested. Apparently with an old miser and money lender called Weeks as the moving spirit, a charge of counterfeiting was cooked up against him, and they took him off to my town to jail."

"But it's in another state!"

"United States case, you see. My town's the centre of the Federal district. Zara and Bessie happened to get on to this, and when they crept up to Zara's house to find out if it was true, they overheard enough to show them that it was—and, what was more, that old Weeks meant to get himself appointed Zara's guardian, and take her home with him."

"Oh, that was his game, eh?"

"Yes, and if you'd ever seen him, you wouldn't blame Zara for being ready to run away before she went with him. He's the meanest old codger you ever saw. But he had a big pull in that region, because he held mortgages on about all the farms, and he could do about as he liked."

"Well, I don't see why they didn't have a perfect right to run away," said Trenwith, "legally and morally. They didn't owe anything in the way of gratitude to any of these people."

"That's just what I said!" declared Eleanor, vehemently. "I looked into the story they told me, and I found out it was perfectly true. So we helped them, and took them into this state."

"Yes. And old Weeks chased them, and got Zara away from them once. Bessie tricked him and got her back," said Jamieson. "And then the old rip got a court order making him Zara's guardian, but he tried to serve it across the state line, and got dished for his trouble. So it looked as if they'd shaken him pretty well."

"I should say so!