“Look at it over your left shoulder and wish,” advised Marie.
“I don’t see—” began Natalie, when the woods echoed to a weird yell.
“Oh!” screamed all the girls at once, and even Mrs. Bonnell clutched the arm of Mabel who was next to her.
“The boys are here, O maidens of the camp fire!” came in hollow tones from the ring of darkness surrounding the blaze. “Answer to your names!”
“Here,” answered Marie, with a sigh of relief.
“The breath of the pine tree calls me to slumber,” answered Natalie.
“Quite poetical,” complimented the voice of Blake Lathrop.
“And, last but not least, ‘Guardian-of-the-pretty-maidens’!” went on the voice calling the roll.
“Guilty!” answered Mrs. Bonnell, with a laugh. “Come on out, boys, and explain why you weren’t here when you were most needed. We came near never getting our tents up, because we forgot to put the poles under, and couldn’t understand why they toppled down.”
“That’s a good one!” cried Jack, as he and the others emerged from the shadows into the light of the first camp fire.
“Where were you?” demanded Alice of her brother.
“We went down to meet you,” he replied. “We couldn’t understand why you didn’t come. We waited until the last boat, and then gave you up.”
“And we here all the while!” cried Marie. “Oh, you boys! Didn’t I tell you we would come on the first afternoon boat?” she demanded of Jack.
“If you did I guess I lost the letter,” he confessed. “We’ve had a time getting our own camp in shape. Those fellows forgot half the stuff I told them to order.”
“We didn’t forget any more than you did,” retorted Phil.
“Let us have peace,” urged Blake. “At last we are here, and the girls are safe.”
“No thanks to you, though,” remarked Alice a trifle sharply. “We had help, however.”
“I demand his name!” cried Blake, in mock heroics.
“I think he called himself Mr. Rossmore,” answered Natalie.
“Oh, Old Hanson,” said Jack. “Yes, he’s quite a character around here.”
“What is his secret?” asked Mrs. Bonnell. “He stared at Natalie in the queerest way, and asked her if she had come back to him after all these years, and all sorts of nonsense like that.”
“A little, yes,” admitted Alice. “What is the matter with him?”
“Oh, disappointed in love when he was young—same as I’ve been half a dozen times,” put in Blake. “His sweetheart died, or ran away with some one else I believe. He lives all alone in a haunted mill not far away, and——”