and watching.

“When the little gray fellows come back to play, I’ll risk it,” she told herself.

As she sat there waiting, feeling the cool caress of the mountain night air upon her cheek, listening, watching, she allowed her eyes to wander away to the half dozen little peaks that formed the crest of Pine Mountain.

“How dark and mysterious they seem in the night,” she thought to herself. “How—”

Her meditations were suddenly cut short. Her eyes had caught a yellow gleam that had suddenly appeared on the very crest of the highest peak of the mountain.

“Wha—what can it mean?” she whispered. “It can’t be—but it is!”

Even as she looked, the yellow gleam blinked out for a second, glowed again, only to vanish, then to glow steadily once more.

The girl’s heart grew warm, her cheeks flushed. Whereas only the moment before she had felt herself utterly alone in an unknown and hostile world, now she knew that on the crest of yonder mountain there stood a friend, her very best friend, Marion Norton. Between her and that peak lay many a long and tangled trail. What of that? That golden glow spoke warmly of friendship.

“The Silent Alarm,” she murmured as she hastily drew from her pocket two dark cylinders. One of the cylinders she placed before her on the window ledge. The other she grasped at either end, drawing it out to four times its original length. The thing was a pocket telescope such as is often carried in the mountains. From the ends of this she unscrewed the lenses. After that, lying flat upon the dusty floor that was all but level with the sill of the small shuttered door, she glanced along the tube of the dismantled telescope. Slowly, surely, as if the thing were a rifle, she aimed it at the distant yellow gleam. Then, without allowing the tube to move, she picked up the other shorter one which had all this time rested on the window sill. Having placed the end of this against the end of the hollow tube, she pressed a button, and at once a needle point of glowing light shot forth into the night. The second cylinder was a small but powerful flashlight.

“The Silent Alarm,” she whispered once more.

She had kept the small flashlight aimed at the distant yellow flash of fire less than a moment when, with a suddenness that was startling, the glow on the distant mountain crest vanished. It was as if someone had thrown a shovel of earth or a bucket of water upon a small camp fire.

The little tableau was not at an end. Florence, by moving her hand before her tube, sent out successive flashes, some short, some long. Now a short one, now two long ones, now three short; so it went on for some time.

“The Silent Alarm,” she thought. “I only hope she gets it right. She might try to come to me. That would be too terrible.”

This had scarcely passed her mind when, of a sudden, from that same distant hillside there gleamed a star. Or was it a star? If a star, then a tree branch must wave before it, for now it appeared, only to disappear and reappear again.

It was no star. At once, with a pencil and a scrap of paper, the girl was marking down dots and dashes, taking the message being sent by signal code from the distant mountain crest.

As she scratched down the last dash, the star vanished, not to reappear. Once more darkness brooded over the foothills of Pine Mountain and the somber peaks beyond were lost in the glooms of night.

For a time, by the steady gleam of her flashlight, the girl studied her dots and dashes. Then, as she closed her tired eyes for a moment, she murmured:

“Oh! I had hoped for a real message, a message that would mean success.”

As she opened her eyes she glanced down to the spot of golden moonlight on the grass. The rabbits had returned to complete their frolic.

“Time to try it,” she whispered as she drew herself up on her knees.

CHAPTER II
STRANGE SENTRIES

“Thanks, jolly little friends,” she whispered to the rabbits. “Sorry to disturb you, but it really has to be done.”

Clutching at her heart in a vain effort to still its wild beating, she slid slowly out of the window. A gripping of the beams, a swinging down, a second of clinging, a sudden drop, a prayer of thanksgiving that her alighting place was grass cushioned and noiseless, and the next instant she was lost from sight in the brush whither the three rabbits had fled.

For a full moment she crouched there motionless, scarcely breathing, listening intently.

There came no sound. Her guard was dozing in his chair.

Her mind was in a whirl. Now that she was free, where should she go? Where could she go? Home, if she could find the way, or to Everett Faucet’s cabin. Everett lived at the back of the mountain.

Yes, she might go to either place if only she knew the way. Truth was, she didn’t know the way. She had been carried about on horseback by her mysterious captors, covering strange trails, and at night. She was lost. Only one thing she knew—she was still on the back of Pine Mountain. The way home led up this side of the mountain and down the other.

A great wave of fear and despair swept over her. The whole affair, she told herself, was a useless adventure.

“I’ll go back home to our cabin; give it up,” she declared.

She began the upward climb. Beating her way through the brush, she struggled forward. It was heart-breaking work, making her way through brush and timber. Here a dense thicket tore at her, and there a solid wall of rock blocked her progress.

“Ought to find a trail. Have to,” she panted.

With this in mind, she began to circle the slope. She felt the need of haste. Night was wearing away. The early morning would soon reveal her, a lone girl in a strange and apparently hostile country.

Panic seized her. She fairly flew through the brush until, with a sudden compact that set her reeling, she came upon a rail fence.

Beyond the fence was a narrow trail. To her immense relief she found that this trail wound away up the mountain.

That mountain trail was the longest she had ever taken. It wound on and on, up and up until there seemed no end.

The cool damp of night hung over everything. The moon, swinging low in the heavens, cast long, deep shadows far down the trail. Now a startled rabbit, springing into the brush, sent the girl’s heart to her mouth. Now the long-drawn bay of a hound at some distant cabin sent a chill running up her spine. Frightened, alone, quite without means of protection, she hurried on.

Then suddenly, as she rounded a corner, she caught the sound of voices.

“Men,” she said to herself with a shudder.

The next instant she was silently pushing herself back into the depths of a clump of mountain ivy that grew beside the trail.

The men were coming down the trail. Now their voices sounded more clearly; now she caught the shuffle of their rough shoes, and now heard the heavy breathing of one as if carrying a load.

As they came abreast of her, she saw them dimly through the leaves. Then for a second her heart seemed to stop beating.

“A dog,” she breathed. “A long-eared hound!”

As the hound, with nose to the ground, came upon the spot where she had left the trail, he stopped short, gave a loud snort, then started straight into the bush.

“Come on, you!” one of the men grumbled, seizing him by the collar. “It’s only a rabbit.”