"Guess you think it isn't a girl, then," chuckled Betty, as she pulled the string and heard the bar inside click as it was drawn out of the slot.
With the shovel Bob pushed the door inward. The cabin would have been quite dark had it not been for a little fire crackling on the hearth. Over this a figure stooped--huddled, it seemed, for warmth. The room was almost bare.
"Why, you poor thing!" Betty cried, running into the hut. "Are you here all alone?"
She had seen instantly that it was a girl. And evidently the stranger was in much misery. But at Betty's cry she started up from the hearth and whirled about in both fear and surprise.
Her hair was disarranged, and there was a great deal of it. Her face was swollen with weeping, and she was all but blinded by her tears. At Betty's sympathetic tone and words she burst out crying again. Betty gathered her right into her arms--or, as much of her as she could enfold, for the other girl was bigger than Betty in every way.
"You?" gasped the crying girl. "How--how did you come up here? And in all this snow? Oh, this is a wilderness--a wilderness! How do people ever live here, even in the summer? It is dreadful--dreadful! And I thought I should freeze."
"Ida Bellethorne!" gasped Betty. "Who would ever have expected to find you here?"
"I know I haven't any more business here than I have in the moon," said the English girl. "I--I wish I'd never left Mrs. Staples."
"Mrs. Staples told us you had come up this way," Betty said.
Immediately the other girl jerked away from her, threw back her damp hair, and stared, startled, at Betty.
"My poor girl!" interrupted Betty, quite misunderstanding Ida's look, "I know all about your coming up here to find your aunt. And that was foolish, for the notice you saw in the paper was about Mr. Bolter's black mare."
"Now, tell me!" urged the excited Betty. "Didn't you come to Cliffdale to look for your aunt?"
"Yes. That I did. But she isn't up here at all."
By this time Uncle Dick and the others were gathered about the door of the hut. Jaroth, with a glance now and then at his horses, had even stepped inside.
"By gravy!" ejaculated the man, "this here's a pretty to-do. What you been doing to Bill Kedders' chattels, girl?"