GLADYS TURNED THE CAR INTO THE FIELD AND
STARTED AFTER THE BULL AT FULL SPEED.

The Camp Fire Girls

At Onoway House

OR

The Magic Garden

By HILDEGARD G. FREY

AUTHOR OF

“The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods,” “The Camp

Fire Girls at School,” “The Camp Fire

Girls Go Motoring.”

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers—New York

Copyright, 1916

By A. L. Burt Company

THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS AT ONOWAY HOUSE

THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS AT ONOWAY HOUSE

CHAPTER I.—ONOWAY HOUSE.

“What a lovely quiet summer we’re going to have, we two,” exclaimed Migwan to Hinpoha, as they stood looking out of the window of their room into the garden, filled with rows of young growing things and bordered by a shallow stony river. Migwan, we remember, had come to spend the summer on the little farm owned by the Bartletts and earn enough money to go to college by selling vegetables. The house in the city had been rented for three months, and her mother, Mrs. Gardiner, and her brother Tom and sister Betty had come to the country with her. Hinpoha was temporarily without a home, her aunt being away on her wedding trip with the Doctor, and she was to stay all summer with Migwan.

“Yes, it will be lovely,” agreed Hinpoha. “I’ve never lived in such a quiet place before. And I’ve never had you to myself for so long.” Migwan replied with a hug, in schoolgirl rapture. She felt a little closer to Hinpoha than she did to the other Winnebagos. As they stood there looking out of the window together they heard the honk of an automobile horn and the sound of a car driving into the yard, and ran out to see who the guests were.

“Gladys Evans!” exclaimed Migwan, spying the new comers. “And Nyoda! Welcome to our city!”

“Please mum,” said Gladys, making a long face, “could ye take in a poor lone orphan what’s got no home to her back?”

“What’s up?” asked Migwan, laughing at Gladys’s tone.

“Mother and father started for Seattle to-day,” replied Gladys, “and from there they are going to Alaska, where they will spend the summer. I hinted that I was a good traveling companion, but they decided that three was a crowd on this trip, and as I had done so well for myself last summer they informed me that it was their intention to put me out to seek my own fortune once more. So, hearing that there were pleasant country places along this road, one in particular, I am looking for a place to board for the summer.”

“Well, of all things!” exclaimed Migwan. “To think that we are to have you with us this vacation after all, after thinking that you were going to disport yourself in California! The guest chamber stands ready; ‘will you walk into my parlor?’ said the Spider to the Fly.”

At this point “Nyoda,” Guardian of the Winnebago Camp Fire group, formally known as Miss Kent, also advanced with a long face, holding her handkerchief to her eyes. “Could you take in a poor shipwrecked sailor,” she sobbed, “one whose ship went right down under her feet and left her nothing to stand on at all?”

“It might even be arranged,” replied Migwan. “What is your tale of woe, my ancient mariner?”

“My cherished landlady’s gone to the Exposition,” said Nyoda, with a fresh burst of grief, “and I can’t live with her and be her boarder this summer! It’s a cruel world! And me so young and tender!”

“Two flies in the guest chamber,” said Migwan, hospitably. “Thomas, my good man, carry the boarders’ bags up to their room, for I see they have brought them right with them.”

“Save the trouble of going back after them,” said Nyoda and Gladys, in chorus. “We knew you couldn’t refuse to take us in.”

“If ever a maiden had a look on her face which said, ‘Come, come to this bosom, my own stricken dear,’” continued Nyoda, “it’s yon poet who is going to seed.”

“Going to seed!” exclaimed Migwan, “and this after I have just opened my hospitable doors to you!”

“By going to seed, my innocent maid, I only meant to express in a veiled and delicate way the fact that you were turning into a farmer,” said Nyoda.

In spite of the fact that Migwan and Hinpoha had just expressed such great pleasure at the prospect of being alone together for the summer, they rejoiced in the arrival of Nyoda and Gladys as only two Winnebagos could at the thought of having two more of their own circle under the same roof with them, and their hearts beat high with anticipation of the coming larks.

Supper was a merry meal indeed that night, eaten out on the screened-in back porch. “We are seven!” exclaimed Nyoda, counting noses at the table. “The mystic number as well as the poetic one. ‘Seven Little Sisters;’ ‘The Seven Little Kids;’ ‘the seventh son of a seventh son.’ All mysterious things take place on the seventh of the month, and something always happens when the clock strikes seven.” As she paused to take breath the old-fashioned clock in the kitchen slowly struck seven. The last stroke was still vibrating when there came a ring at the doorbell. “What did I tell you?” said Nyoda. “Enter the villain.”

The villain proved to be Sahwah. She looked rather astonished to see Nyoda and Gladys at the table with the family. “Oh, Migwan,” she said, “could you possibly take me in for the summer? Mother got a telegram to-day saying that Aunt Mary, that’s her sister in Pennsylvania, had fallen down-stairs and broken both her shoulder blades. Mother packed up and went right away to take care of her and the children. She hasn’t any idea how long she’ll be gone. Father started for a long business trip out west this week and Jim is camping with the Boy Scouts. If you have room——” A shout of laughter interrupted her tale.

“Always room for one more,” said Migwan. “You’re the third weary pilgrim to arrive.”

Sahwah looked at Nyoda and Gladys in astonishment. “You don’t mean that you’re here for the summer, too?” When she heard that this was the truth she twinkled with delight. “It’s going to be almost as much fun as going camping together was last year,” she said, burying her nose in the mug of milk which Migwan hospitably set before her.

“What do you call this house by the side of the road?” asked Nyoda after supper, when they were all sitting on the porch. Mrs. Gardiner sat placidly rocking herself, undisturbed by the unexpected addition of three members to her family. This whole summer venture was in Migwan’s hands, and she washed hers of the whole affair. Tom sat on the top step of the porch, unnaturally quiet, with the air of a boy lost among a whole crowd of girls. Betty, fascinated by Nyoda, sat at her feet and watched her as she talked.

“It has no name,” said Migwan, in answer to Nyoda’s question.

“Then we must find one immediately,” said Nyoda. “I refuse to sleep in a nameless place.”

“Did the place where you used to live have a name?” asked Hinpoha, banteringly.

“It certainly did ‘have a name,’” replied Nyoda, with a twinkle in her eye. Gladys caught her eye and laughed. She was more in Nyoda’s confidence than the rest of the girls.

“What was the name?” asked Betty.

“It was Peacock Plaza,” said Nyoda, “painted on a gold sign over the door, where all who read could run.”

“That wasn’t what you called it,” said Gladys.

“No, my beloved,” returned Nyoda, “from the character and appearance of most of the inmates of the Widder Higgins’ establishment, I have been moved to refer to it as ‘The Rookery.’”

“Now,” said Gladys sternly, when the laughter over this title had subsided, “tell the ladies the real reason why you had to seek a new boarding place so abruptly.”

“I told you before,” said Nyoda, “that my venturesome landlady went to the Exposition and left me out in the cold.”

“That’s not the real reason,” said Gladys, severely. “If you don’t tell it immediately, I will!”

“I’ll tell it,” said Nyoda submissively, alarmed at this threat. “You see, it was this way,” she began in a pained, plaintive voice. “This Gladys woman over here came up to take supper with me last night—only she smelled the supper cooking in the kitchen and turned up her nose, whereupon I was moved with compassion to cook supper for her in my chafing-dish unbeknownst to the landlady, who has been known to frown on any attempts to compete with her table d’hôte.”

“I never!” murmured Gladys. “She invited me to a chafing-dish supper in the first place.”

“Well, as I was saying,” continued Nyoda, not heeding this interruption, “to save her from starvation I dragged out my chafing-dish and made shrimp wiggle and creamed peas, and we had a dinner fit for a king, if I do say it as shouldn’t. The crowning glory of the feast was a big onion which Gladys’s delicate appetite required as a stimulant. All went merry as a marriage bell until it came to the disposal of that onion after the feast was over, as there was more than half of it left. We didn’t dare take it down to the kitchen for fear the Widder would pounce on us for cooking in our rooms, and even my stout heart quailed at the thought of sleeping ferninst that fragrant vegetable. Suddenly I had an inspiration.” Here Nyoda paused dramatically.

“Yes,” broke in Gladys, impatient at her pause, “and she calmly chucked it out of the second story window into the street!”

“All would still have been mild and melodious,” continued Nyoda, in a solemn tone which enthralled her hearers, “if it hadn’t been for the fact that the fates had their fingers crossed at me last night. How otherwise could it have happened that at the exact moment when the onion descended the old bachelor missionary should have been prancing up the walk, coming to call on the Widder Higgins? Who but fate could have brought it about that that onion should bounce first on his hat, then on his nose, and then on his manly bosom?”

“And he never waited to see what hit him!” put in Gladys, for whom the recital was not going fast enough. “He ran as if he thought somebody had thrown a bomb at him.”

“And the Widder Higgins was standing behind the lace curtain watching his approach with maidenly reserve,” resumed Nyoda, “and so had a box seat view of the tragedy, and the last act of the drama was a moving one, I can assure you.”

“Oh, Nyoda,” cried Hinpoha and Sahwah and Migwan, pointing their fingers at her, “a nice person you are to be Guardian of the Winnebagos! Fine example you are setting your youthful flock! You need a guardian worse than any of us!”

“Do as you like with me,” said Nyoda, covering her face with her hands in mock shame, whereupon Hinpoha and Migwan and Gladys fell upon her neck with one accord.

“But we haven’t named this house yet,” said Nyoda, uncovering her face and smoothing out her black hair.

“I thought of a name while you were telling about the onion,” said Migwan. “It’s Onoway House.”

“What does that mean?” asked Nyoda.

“It’s a symbolic word, like Wohelo,” said Migwan. “It’s made from the words, Only One Way. You see there was only one way of getting that money to go to college and that was by coming here.”

“I think that is a very good name,” said Nyoda. “It is clever as well as pretty. It sounds like the song, ‘Onaway, awake beloved,’ from Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.”

“It sounds like the water going over the stones in the river,” said romantic Hinpoha.

And so Onoway House was named.

CHAPTER II.—NEIGHBORS.

Onoway House stood on the Centerville Road, on a farm of about four acres. All of the land was not worked, just the part that was laid out as a garden and a small orchard of peach trees. The rest was open meadow running down to the river. It had originally been a much larger farm—Old Deacon Waterhouse’s place—but after his death it had been divided up and sold in sections. Onoway House was the original home built by the deacon when he bought the farm as a young man. It was a very old place, large and rambling, and full of queer corners and passageways, and a big echoing cobwebby attic, crowded with old furniture and trunks. The house had been sold with all its furnishings at the Deacon’s death, and the old things were still in the rooms when the Bartletts bought it twenty-five years later. This made it unnecessary for the Gardiners, when they came, to bring any of their own furniture. The Bartletts had never lived on the place, hiring a caretaker to work the garden, and it was the sudden departure of this man that had given Migwan her chance.

On either side of Onoway House was a farm of much larger proportions. To the right there stood a big, homelike looking farmhouse painted white, with porches and vines and a lawn in front running down to the road; on the left was a smaller house, painted dark red, with a vegetable bed in front. The garden at Onoway House had been given a good start and the strawberries and asparagus and sundry other vegetables were ready to market when Migwan took possession. The Winnebagos looked on the gardening as a grand lark and pitched in with a will to help Migwan make her fortune from the ground.

“Did you ever see anything half so delicate as this little new pea-vine?” asked Migwan, puttering happily over one of the long beds.

“Or anything half so indelicate as this plantain bush?” asked Nyoda, busily grubbing weeds. “‘Scarce reared above the parent earth thy tender form,’” she quoted, “‘and yet with a root three times as long as the hair of Claire de Lorme!’”

“Burns would relish hearing that line of his applied to weeds,” said Migwan, laughing. “I wonder what he would have written if he had turned up a plantain weed with his plough instead of a mountain daisy.”

“He wouldn’t have turned up a plantain weed,” said Nyoda, with a vicious thrust of the long knife with which she was weeding, “it would have turned him up.”

Migwan rose from the ground slowly and painfully. “Oh dear,” she sighed, “I wonder if Burns ever got as stiff in the joints from close contact with Nature as I am?”

“He certainly must have,” observed Nyoda, straining her muscles to uproot the weedy homesteader, “haven’t you ever heard the slogan, ‘Omega Oil for Burns?’”

Migwan laughed as she straightened up and held her aching back. “Earth gets its price for what earth gives us,” she quoted, with a mixture of ruefulness and humor.

“Listen to the poetry floating around on the breeze,” cried Sahwah, passing them as she ran the wheel hoe up and down between the rows of plants.

“Come and trip it as you go
On the light fantastic hoe,”

she sang. “Oh, I say,” she called over her shoulder, “do I have to hoe up the surface of the river around the watercress, too?”

“You certainly do,” said Nyoda gravely, “and while you’re at it just loosen up the air around that air fern of Mrs. Gardiner’s.” Sahwah made a grimace and trundled off with her wheel hoe.

“Are you looking for any field hands?” called a cheery voice. The girls looked up to see a white-haired, pleasant-faced old man of about seventy years standing in the garden. “My name’s Landsdowne, Farmer Landsdowne,” he said by way of introduction, with a friendly smile, which included all the girls at once, “and I’ve come to have a look at the new caretaker.”

“I’m the one,” said Migwan, stepping forward. “My name is Gardiner, and I am a gardener just now.”

“And are all these your sisters?” asked Farmer Landsdowne, quizzically. Migwan laughed and introduced the girls in turn. They all liked Farmer Landsdowne immediately. He walked up and down among the rows of vegetables, and gave Migwan quantities of advice about soil cultivation, insects and diseases and various other things pertaining to gardening, for which she thanked him heartily. “Come over and see us,” he said hospitably, as he took his departure, “I live there,” and he pointed to the friendly looking white house on the right of Onoway House.

“Isn’t he a dear?” said Gladys, when he was gone. “I’m glad he’s our next door neighbor. What do you suppose the people on the other side are like?”

“Red isn’t nearly so pretty as white,” said Hinpoha, squinting at the bare looking house to the left of them. As they looked a man came along the edge of the land on which the red house stood. When he reached the fence which separated the two farms he stood still for a few minutes looking hard at Onoway House; then, seeing that the girls were looking in his direction he turned and went back to the house.

The strawberries were ready to pick the first week that the girls were at Onoway House, and Migwan had an idea about marketing them. She gave each picker two baskets with instructions to put only the largest and finest in one and the medium-sized and small ones in the other.

“What are you going to take them to town in?” asked Gladys. Although there was a large barn on the place there were no horses, for Mr. Mitchell, the last caretaker, had owned his own horse and taken it away with him when he left.

“I’ll have to hire one from some of the neighbors,” said Migwan. Mr. Landsdowne, when interviewed, would have been extremely glad to let them take a horse and wagon, but this was a busy time and one of his teams was sick so none could be spared. Feeling considerably more shy than she had when she went to Mr. Landsdowne, Migwan went over to the red house. As she went around the path to the back door she heard sounds of loud talking in a man’s voice, which ceased as she came up on the porch. A red faced man, (he almost matched the house, thought Migwan) came to the door. “I am your new neighbor, Elsie Gardiner,” said Migwan, “and I wonder if I could hire a horse and wagon from you three times a week to take my vegetables to town.”

“So you’ve come to live on the place, have you?” said the man. “How long are you going to stay?”

“All summer,” replied Migwan. She was not drawn to this man as she was to Farmer Landsdowne. There was something about him that seemed to repel her, although she could not have told what it was.

“Yes, I can let you have a horse and wagon,” he said, after a moment. “When do you want it?”

“In about an hour,” said Migwan.

“I’ll send it over,” said the master of the red house. “My name’s Smalley, Abner Smalley,” he said, as she took her leave.

In an hour the horse was at the door. It was brought over by a pleasant-faced, light-haired lad of about seventeen, who introduced himself as Calvin Smalley.

“You don’t look a bit like your father,” said Migwan.

“That’s not my father,” said Calvin, “that’s my uncle. My father’s dead. He was Uncle Abner’s brother. I live with Uncle Abner and Aunt Maggie. But the farm’s really mine,” he said proudly, as though he did not want anyone to think he was living on charity even though he was an orphan, “for Grandfather willed it to Father. Uncle Abner’s holding it in trust for me until I’m of age.”

There was something so frank and manly about him that the girls liked him at once. But if Calvin Smalley made such a good impression, the horse which he had brought over for the girls to drive to town was less fortunate. He was a hoary, moth-eaten looking creature that might easily have been the first white horse born west of the Mississippi. In looking at him you would be left with a lingering doubt in your mind as to whether he had originally been white or had turned white with age. He tottered so that each step threatened to be his last The wagon to which he was fastened with a patched and rotten harness had probably been on the scene some years before he was born. Migwan was much taken aback when she inspected him. “I wouldn’t dare attempt to drive that beast all the way to town,” she thought to herself. “He’d never get beyond the first bend in the road. And if he did make it he’d go so slowly that my berries would be out of season before I got to my customers.”

“Isn’t he rather—old?” she said, aloud. “I’m afraid he isn’t able to work much.”

Calvin blushed fiery red and his eyes sought the ground in distress. “It’s a shame,” he said, fiercely, “to try to hire out such a horse. I don’t blame you for not wanting it.” Without another word he climbed into the wagon and urged the feeble horse back to his home pasture.

“Didn’t you feel sorry for that poor boy?” said Migwan. “He felt ashamed clear down to his shoes at having to bring that old wreck of a horse over. I should have died if I had been in his place. He’s such a nice looking boy, too. I suppose his uncle is one of those stingy, grasping farmers who work everybody to death on the place. Anybody who plants vegetables in his front yard must be stingy. That horse probably couldn’t work on the farm any more so he thought he would make some money out of it by hiring it to us. He must have thought girls didn’t know a horse when they saw one. I didn’t exactly fall in love with Mr. Smalley when I went over. He wasn’t a bit friendly like Mr. Landsdowne.”

“I foresee where we will have little to do with our neighbors in the Red House,” said Sahwah. “I’m sorry, because I like to have lots of people to visit, and like to have them running in at odd times, the way Mr. Landsdowne appeared.”

“Let’s not have any hard feelings against Calvin Smalley, though,” said Migwan. “He isn’t to blame for his uncle’s stinginess. I dare say he isn’t very happy over there. Let’s have him over as often as we can.”

“Spoken like a true Winnebago,” said Nyoda, approvingly.

“But in the meantime,” said Migwan, in perplexity, “what are we going to do for a horse and wagon to take our things to town?”

“Why not use our car?” said Gladys. The machine she had come in was still in the barn at Onoway House. “It’s a good thing I learned to run the big one—father said I might use it all summer if I would be a good girl and stay at home when they went out west.”

“Could we get everything in?” asked Migwan.

“I think so,” said Gladys, “if we arrange them carefully.” The berries and asparagus were loaded into the back of the machine and Gladys and Migwan drove off.

“What shall we do now, Nyoda?” asked Hinpoha, after the two girls were gone.

“I know what I’m going to do,” said Nyoda, moving in the direction of her bedroom. “Now,” she said, as she threw herself on the bed with a great yawn and stretch, “if anyone asks you what kind of a farmer I am you may tell them that I’m a retired one!” Nyoda had been up since four o’clock that morning, and was unused to such early rising. Hinpoha drew down the shade to shut out the strong sunlight and tiptoed from the room.

Gladys and Migwan stopped first at a large grocery store to inquire the prices of strawberries and asparagus. The proprietor offered to buy the whole load, but they would not sell, as they could get more for them by peddling them at retail prices. Migwan examined the berries in the store, and mentally fixed her middle grade berries at the same price with them, and her finest grade ones at three cents higher.

“I’ve an idea,” said Gladys, “that some of mother’s friends would take the berries at our own price.” Thus it was that Mrs. Davis, whose speculations about the financial standing of the Evans family had resulted in Gladys’s mother giving her such an elaborate party the winter before, was surprised by a call from Gladys at ten o’clock in the morning.

“Ah, good morning, my dear,” she said effusively, seating Gladys in the parlor, “you have come to spend the day, I hope? Caroline is not up yet—she was out late last night—but I shall make her get up right away.”

“Please don’t call Caroline,” said Gladys, “it’s you I came to see.”

“Oh, yes,” purred Mrs. Davis, “a message from your mother, I see.”

Gladys came to the point directly. “Have you canned your strawberries yet, Mrs. Davis?”

“No,” replied Mrs. Davis, a little puzzled by the question.

“Would you like to buy some extra fine ones?” continued Gladys.

“Why, yes, I suppose so,” said Mrs. Davis, “who has any for sale?”

“I have,” said Gladys, “right out here in the machine.” Mrs. Davis bought the whole eight quarts of large berries, paying fifteen cents a quart straight, and ordered another eight quarts as soon as they should be ripe. She also took two bunches of asparagus.

“Whatever are you doing, Gladys Evans?” she asked, curiously. “Peddling berries?”

Gladys laughed at her evident mystification, and tingled with a desire to keep her guessing. “We decided that I had better work this summer,” she said, gravely, “so I am peddling berries for a friend of ours who is a farmer. We will have to go on a farm ourselves, father said, if things to eat get much dearer, so I am getting the practice. Wouldn’t you like to be a regular customer, and have me bring you fresh vegetables and fruit three times a week all through the summer?”

“Why, yes,” stammered Mrs. Davis in a daze, “of course, certainly.”

“All right, then,” said Gladys, “I’ll put you down.” She drove off in high glee, and Mrs. Davis went into the house with a knowing smile on her face. So the Evanses were losing money after all, and Gladys was working this summer instead of traveling. Poor Gladys! She flew up-stairs to communicate the news to her energetic daughter Caroline who was just beginning to think about getting up. “I do feel so sorry for poor Gladys,” she said. “You must be very kind to her whenever you meet her.”

The rest of the berries and vegetables were disposed of to other friends of Gladys’s and Migwan’s, all for topnotch prices, and there were at least half a dozen names in the little note book when they started homeward, of people who wanted to be supplied regularly. To some of her friends Gladys told frankly whose fruit she was selling, and enlisted their sympathies in the enterprise, while to others, like the Davises and the Joneses, who were thorough snobs, she could not resist pretending that she was actually working for a farmer to earn money. She could not remember when she had enjoyed anything so much as the expressions on the various faces when she made her little speech at the door and offered her basket of fruit for inspection. “Wait until I tell dad about it,” she chuckled to Migwan.

When they returned to Onoway House they found that during their absence the girls, with the help of Mr. Landsdowne, had constructed a raft about seven feet square, which they were setting afloat on the river. “Oh, what fun!” cried Migwan when she saw it. “We needed another rapid vessel to go boating in. There’s only one rowboat and we could never all go out at once. What shall we call it?”

“Let’s name it the Tortoise,” said Hinpoha, “and call the rowboat the Hare.”

“Oh, no,” said Sahwah, “let’s call it the Crab, because it travels sort of sidewise.” Hinpoha held out for her name and Sahwah would not yield hers.

“Contest of arms!” cried Nyoda. “Decide the question by a test of physical prowess. Whichever one of you can pole the raft straight across the river and back again without mishap in the shortest time may have the privilege of naming it. Is that fair?”

“It is!” cried all the girls. Hinpoha and Sahwah, dressed in their bathing-suits, prepared for the contest. Hinpoha had the first trial because she had spoken first. Getting onto the raft and seizing the stout pole, she pushed off from the shore. It was difficult to keep the unwieldy craft going toward the opposite bank, because it had a strong inclination to be carried down-stream with the current. Halfway across she grounded on a rock and stood marooned. Sahwah watched the moments tick off on Nyoda’s watch with ill-concealed delight while Hinpoha pushed and strained on the pole to set the raft free. Finally she leaned all her weight, which was no small item, on the pole and shoved with her feet against the raft. It freed itself and glided away under her feet, leaving her clinging to the pole in the middle of the river, while her solid footing of a few moments ago swung into the current and floated off beyond her reach. She looked so comical clinging to the pole, which was fast losing its upright position under her weight, that the girls were unable to help her for laughter, and a minute later she plunged into the river with a mighty splash and swam disgustedly to shore.

“Our new boat will not be called the TORTOISE, it seems,” said Nyoda. “Cheer up, Hinpoha, you have made yourself more immortal by the picture you presented hanging over the water than you would have by naming the raft. As Hinpoha, the Polehanger, you will have your portrait in the Winnebago Hall of Fame. Now then, Sahwah, show her how it should be done.”

Sahwah, ever more skilful in watercraft than Hinpoha, poled the raft neatly across the stream to the opposite shore, paused a moment to see that the feat was properly registered by the judges, and then started back. Unlike Hinpoha, who forged blindly ahead, she felt carefully with her pole to locate the points of the rocks and then avoided them. “Here I come,” she hailed, when she was nearly back to the starting point, “on my new raft, the CRAB.” Striking a heroic attitude with arms crossed and one foot out ahead of the other she stepped to the edge of the raft, when the floating floor tipped under her weight and she lost her balance and fell head first into the water. The raft, released from her guiding hand, went off with the current as it had done before. The look of stupefaction on her face when she came up out of the water was even funnier than the sight of Hinpoha marooned on the pole.

“The raft will not be named the CRAB, either, it seems,” said Nyoda.

“I don’t care what it’s called,” said Sahwah, her temper up, “I’m going to pole that raft across the river.”

“So’m I,” said Hinpoha, her eye gleaming with resolution.

“Let’s do it together,” said Sahwah.

Thanks to Sahwah’s skill with the pole and Hinpoha’s judicious balancing of the raft at the right places, they made the trip over and back without mishap.

“Two heads are better than one,” said Sahwah, as they landed, “what neither of us could do alone we can do in combination.”

“Then why not combine the names?” said Nyoda. “You have each won equal rights in the contest.”

“Good idea,” said Sahwah. “We couldn’t find a better one than the Tortoise-Crab.” So the name was painted across the floor of the raft, this being the only space big enough.

Delighted with their new sport, the girls spent the whole evening on the river, all five Winnebagos and Betty and Tom on the raft at once, floating down-stream with the current and being towed up again by the rowboat. It was bright moonlight, and the air was full of romance. At one place along the riverbank there stood a high rock, grey on the moonlit side and black on the other. “It reminds me of the Lorelei Rock,” said Nyoda.

“Let’s play Lorelei,” said Sahwah.

“What do you mean?” asked Nyoda.

“Why,” answered Sahwah, “let Hinpoha climb up on the rock and comb her hair and sing, and we come along on the raft and listen to her song and run into the rock and upset. We want to go swimming before we go to bed anyhow.”

“I can’t sing,” objected Hinpoha.

“That doesn’t make any difference,” said Sahwah, “sing anyway.”

So Hinpoha mounted the moonlit rock and shook her long, red hair down over her shoulders, combing it out with her sidecomb and singing “Fairy Moonlight,” while the raft floated lazily down-stream toward the base of the cliff, its passengers sitting in attitudes of enraptured listening, and pointing ecstatically to the figure silhouetted against the moon. Sahwah adroitly steered the raft toward the rock and it struck with a great jar. It disobligingly kept its balance, however, and refused to upset. Sahwah deliberately rolled off the edge, tipping it as she did so, and the rest went off on all sides, giggling and splashing in the water. Hinpoha on the rock above wrung her hands in mock horror at the effect of her song. That instant a figure came running at top speed along the river bank. “I’ll save you, girls,” he shouted, jumping into the water with all his clothes on. Catching hold of Migwan, who was hanging on to the raft, he pulled her out of the water and set her on the shore. It was Calvin Smalley, their neighbor from the Red House.

“Oh,” gasped Migwan, trying not to laugh at him, “I thank you ever so much, but we’re not really drowning. We upset the raft on purpose.”

“Upset it on purpose!” said Calvin, in astonishment.

“Yes,” answered Migwan, “we were playing Lorelei, you know.”

Then Calvin noticed for the first time that the victims of the upset were all dressed in bathing-suits, and that they seemed to be very much at home in the water. “It looked like a dreadful smashup,” he said, “and I forgot that the river isn’t very deep here. Do you generally play such quiet games?”

“Sometimes we play much more quiet ones,” said Sahwah meaningly.

“It was too bad to frighten you so,” said Nyoda. “We’ll have to warn spectators the next time we do anything. We’ll have to have a flag that says ‘Stunt coming; look out for the splash!’ and whoever runs may read.” At this moment Hinpoha jumped from the rock, out into the middle of the stream, where it was deep, swam under water toward the bank, and came up suddenly beside Calvin so that he was quite startled.

“Say,” he said, looking around at the group of girls who were doing various astonishing things, “do you belong to the circus?”

The girls laughed at this inquiry. “Oh, no,” said Migwan, “we are only Camp Fire Girls.”

“Camp Fire Girls?” said Calvin. “I’ve heard of them, but I never knew any. Is that why you call each other by such funny names?”

“Yes,” answered Migwan, and she told him their names and their meanings.

“It must be great fun to be a Camp Fire Girl,” said Calvin thoughtfully.

“Come for a ride on the raft with us,” said Migwan, “we are going back now. We aren’t going to upset again,” she added reassuringly, “and if we did you couldn’t get any wetter.” Calvin smiled at the pleasantry, but said he must be going in. He was on his way home when he saw the raft upset. The Lorelei Rock was just on the other side of the Smalley farm. He bade them a friendly good-night, promising to come over to Onoway House soon, and took his way home across the fields.

“What a nice boy he is,” said Migwan. “He wasn’t a bit cross when he found that the joke was on him, as some would have been.”

Migwan woke up in the night and could not go to sleep again immediately. As she lay smiling to herself about the fun they had had with the raft that evening, she heard a sound as of something dropped on the attic floor above her room, followed by a faint creaking as of someone walking over bare boards. She clutched Hinpoha’s arm and woke her up. “There’s someone in the attic,” she whispered. Hinpoha yawned.

“I don’t hear anything,” she said.

“There it is again,” said Migwan, “listen.” Again there came a faint creak, accompanied by a far-away rustle as of crinkling paper.

“It’s mice,” said Hinpoha, “or maybe rats. They get between the walls and make noises that way.”

Migwan breathed a sigh of relief and composed herself to slumber again. “I suppose these dreadfully old houses are just overrun with things of that kind,” she said. “But for a moment it did give me a scare.”

CHAPTER III.—OPHELIA.

“They’ve come! They’ve come!” shrieked Migwan, running into the dining-room where the rest of the family were peacefully finishing their breakfast.

“Who’ve come?” said Nyoda, excitedly, “the Mexicans?”

“The bean weevils,” said Migwan, tragically. “Mr. Landsdowne said to watch out for them, although they were hardly ever found up north, but they’re here. He just found a bush with them on.”

“To arms!” cried Sahwah, springing up. “The Flying Column to the rescue!

“Forward the Bug Brigade,
Is there a leaf unsprayed?”——

Here she tripped over the carpet and her Amazonian shout came to an abrupt end.

“Where are the weevils?” she asked, when they had all gathered around the bean patch.

“On here,” said Migwan, indicating a hill of beans.

“Oh,” said Sahwah, in a disappointed tone.

“Where did you think they were?” asked Migwan.

“From the noise you were making,” said Sahwah, “I expected to find them drawn up in battle lines, waiting to charge the garden with fixed bayonets.”

“They’ll do just as much damage as if they had bayonets,” remarked Farmer Landsdowne.

“Do be cautious in approaching such deadly foes,” said Sahwah in a tone of mock anxiety, as Migwan came along with the sprayer, “take careful aim, and don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

“I’ll spray you in a minute if you don’t keep still,” said Migwan.

“What must it feel like to be a weevil,” said Gladys, musingly, “and be hunted down remorselessly wherever you went?”

“Gladys has gone over to the side of the enemy,” said Sahwah, teasingly. “There is the subject for your next book, Migwan, ‘Won by a Weevil’, by the author of ‘Enthralled by a Thrip’! It must have been weevils Tennyson meant when he wrote ‘The Lotus Eaters.’”

“Battle over?” asked Hinpoha, as Migwan laid down the sprayer. “Then let’s celebrate the victory. Cheer the bean crop.” To the tune of “We will, We will Cheer,” they sang,

“Weevil, weevil, weevil, weevil,
Weevil cheer our bean crop,
Weevil, weevil, weevil, weevil,
Weevil cheer our bean crop,
Weevil cheer our bean crop,
Weevil cheer our bean crop,
Weevil cheer our bean crop, O!”

“Don’t crow too soon,” said Farmer Landsdowne, picking up his sprayer preparatory to taking his departure, “there may be twice as many on to-morrow.”

“I flatly refuse to worry about to-morrow,” said Nyoda, “‘sufficient unto the day is the weevil thereof!’”

Calvin Smalley, working in the vegetable patch in front of the Red House, heard that cheer and paused in his work to look over at the other garden. He was wondering what was so funny about gardening. “I wish,” he sighed, as he turned back to his endless task, “that those girls were my sisters!”

Gladys went into town alone when the last of the strawberries were ripe, for none of the other girls could be spared that day. The squash bugs had descended on the garden and all hands were required on deck to save the squash and melon vines from being eaten alive. On the way she passed Mr. Smalley, driving the identical wreck of a horse he had tried to hire out to the girls. He had a heavy load of vegetables, and the poor, broken down creature would hardly move it from the spot. He started nervously as the machine passed him on the narrow road, and Mr. Smalley pulled him up sharply and brought the whip down on his back with a heavy cut. “Ain’t you used to automobiles yet, you stupid brute?” he growled.

Gladys delivered the eight quarts of extra large berries to Mrs. Davis first. “Wouldn’t you like to stay in town and have lunch with us and go to the theatre afterward?” Mrs. Davis said in such a patronizing tone that Gladys quite started, and then laughed inwardly.

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t sold all of my berries yet,” she answered soberly, “and I have to hurry back and help pick bugs.”

“Pick bugs?” exclaimed Mrs. Davis, in a horrified tone.

“Yes,” said Gladys, with a relish, “nice juicy, striped bugs that crunch beautifully when you step on them.”

“Oh, oh,” said Mrs. Davis, putting her hands over her ears. “Give my love to your poor, dear mamma,” she said gushingly, when Gladys was departing. “Tell her she has my fullest sympathy.” As Gladys’s poor, dear mamma was, at that moment, seated on the observation platform of a luxurious railway coach, speeding through the mountains of Washington while Mrs. Davis was obliged to stay in town for the time being, she was not really in as much need of Mrs. Davis’s sympathy as that lady fondly imagined.

Gladys disposed of the remaining berries to other amused or patronizing friends, and then decided to look up a laundress she knew of and get her to come out to Onoway House once in a while to do the heavy washing. The street where the laundress lived was narrow and crowded with children playing in the middle of the road, and progress was rather slow. One little girl in particular made Gladys extremely nervous by running across the street right in front of the machine and daring her to run over her, shaking her fists at her and making horrible grimaces. She got across the street once in safety and then started back again. Just then a small child sprang up from the ground right under the very wheels of the machine and Gladys turned sharply to one side. The fender struck the saucy little girl who was daring her to run over her and she rolled under the car, screaming. Gladys jammed down the emergency brake with a jerk that almost wrenched the machinery of the automobile asunder. White as a sheet she jumped out and picked the girl up. In an instant an angry crowd of women and children had surrounded the machine. “Darn yer!” cried the child shrilly, shaking a dirty fist in Gladys’s face, while the other arm hung limp. “I thought yer didn’t dast run into me.”

“Get into the car,” said Gladys, terrified, “and I’ll take you home.”

“I dassent go home,” shrieked the child, “Old Grady’ll lick the tar out of me if I go home without sellin’ me papers.”

“Then let me take you to the hospital, or somewhere,” said Gladys, anxious to get away from the threatening crowd.

“What’s the matter?” asked one voice after another, as the tenements poured their human contents into the street.

“Ophelia’s run over,” explained a powerful Irish woman, with a shawl over her head, who kept her hand on the handle of the car door. “Lady speedin’ run her down like a dog.” An angry murmur rose from the crowd. Gladys shook in her shoes and wondered if she dared start the car with all those children hanging on the front of it. She looked around helplessly for someone who would help her out of her difficulty. Just then a policeman turned into the street, attracted by the crowd.

“Cheese it, de cop!” screamed a ragged gamin, who stood on the step of the car, and the women and children began to slink into the doorways. Gladys waited until he came up, and then explained the whole matter and asked where the nearest hospital was.

“Can’t blame you for hitting that brat,” said the policeman, “she’s the terror of drivers for two blocks.” Ophelia stuck out her tongue at him. Gladys drove her to the hospital where it was discovered that the left arm was broken below the elbow. Painful as the setting may have been there was “never a whang out of her,” as the doctor remarked, although she hung on tightly to Gladys’s white sleeve with her dirty hand. Her waist was taken off to find the extent of the damage, and Gladys was frightened to see that the other arm was fearfully bruised and scratched, and there was a ring of purple and green blotches around her neck like a collar.

“She must have been thrown down harder than I thought,” said Gladys to the nurse.

“Thrown down nothin’,” answered Ophelia, “Old Grady did that the other day when I threw a stone through the winder.” And she held up the mottled arm where all might see.

“Oh,” said Gladys, with a shudder, “cover it up.” Putting Ophelia into the machine again she drove back to the scene of the accident and entered the squalid tenement in which the child said she lived.

“Won’t Old Grady beat me up though, when she finds I’ve busted me wing,” said Ophelia, as they mounted the rickety stairs. Hardly had she spoken when the door at the head of the stairs flew open and a large, red-faced, coarse-looking woman strode out and shook her fist over the banisters.

“I’ll fix ye fer stayin’ out afther I tell ye ter come in, ye little devil,” she shouted. “I’ll break every bone in yer body. Gimme the money for the papers first.”

“Go chase yerself,” said Ophelia, standing still on the stairs with a spiteful gleam in her eye, “there ain’t no money. I ain’t had time ter peddle this afternoon.”

“What yer mean, no money?” screamed the woman. “Just wait till I get me hands on yer!”

Gladys shrank back against the wall in terror, then collecting herself she thrust Ophelia behind her and faced the angry woman. “Ophelia has had an accident,” she explained. “I ran over her with my machine and broke her arm.” The woman brushed past her and grabbed Ophelia by the shoulder. Overcome with fury at the thought that her household drudge would be of no use to her for several weeks, she boxed her ears again and again, calling her every name she could think of. Finally she let go of her with a push that sent Ophelia stumbling down half a dozen stairs.

“Get out o’ my sight!” she shrieked. “Do yer think I’m going ter house an’ feed a worthless brat that ain’t doin’ nothin’ fer her keep? Get out an’ live in the streets yer like ter play in so well!” With a final exclamation she strode back into the room and slammed the door after her. Ophelia picked herself up from the step, shaking her one useful fist at the closed door at the head of the stairs.

Gladys was inexpressibly shocked at this heartless treatment of an injured child. “Come—come home with me,” she said faintly. Seated beside her in the big car, Ophelia ran out her tongue and made faces at the jeering children who watched her ride away.

“This is the life!” she exclaimed, as she settled herself comfortably in the cushioned seat. People in the streets turned to stare at the dirty little ragamuffin riding beside the daintily gowned young girl, shouting saucily at the passers-by, or making jeering remarks in a voice audible above the noise of traffic.

The girls were all out in front watching for her as Gladys drove up. It was past supper time and they were wondering what had become of her. What a chorus of surprised exclamations arose when Ophelia was set down in their midst! Gladys explained the situation briefly and asked Migwan if they could not keep her there awhile. Migwan consented hospitably and went off to find a place for her to sleep, while Gladys proceeded to wash the accumulated layers of dirt from Ophelia’s face and divest her of her spotted rags. She came to the table in a kimono of Gladys’s, for there were no clothes in the house that would fit her. She was nine years old, she said, but small and thin for her age, with arms and legs like pipe-stems which fairly made one shiver to look at. She had a little, pinched, sharp featured face, cunning with the knowledge of the world gained from her life on the streets, big grey-green eyes filled with dancing lights, and black hair that tumbled around her face in tangled curls, which Gladys was not able to smooth out in her hasty going over before supper.

Not in the least shy in her new surroundings, nor complaining of discomfort from the broken arm, she sat at the table and kept up a cheerful stream of talk, racy with slang and the idiom of the streets. Hinpoha was instantly dubbed “Firetop.” “Is it red inside of yer head?” she asked, after gazing steadfastly at Hinpoha’s hair for several minutes. To all questions about her father and mother she shrugged her shoulders. “Ain’t never had any,” she replied. “I was born in the Orphan Asylum. Old Grady got me there.” Here a spasm of rage distorted her face at the remembrance of Old Grady’s ministrations, followed by a wicked chuckle when she thought how that tender guardian’s plan for turning her out homeless into the street had been frustrated by this lucky stroke of fate. What her last name was she did not know. “I guess I never had one,” she said cheerfully. “I’m just Ophelia.” Gladys was much distressed because she would not drink milk. “No,” she said, shoving it away, “that’s for the babies. Gimme coffee or nothin’.” Disdaining the aid of fork or spoon, she conveyed her food to her mouth with her fingers. “Say,” she said, after staring fixedly at Nyoda in a disconcerting way she had, “are yer teeth false?”

“Certainly not!” said Nyoda indignantly. “What made you think so?”

“They’re so white and even,” said Ophelia. “Nobody ever had such teeth of their own.”

“Did you bleach yer hair?” she asked next, turning her attention to Gladys’s pale gold locks. Gladys merely laughed.

Ophelia waxed more loquacious as she filled up on the good things on the table. “Did yer husband leave yer?” she inquired sociably of Mrs. Gardiner. Gladys rose hastily and bore Ophelia away to her room, where a cot had been set up for her.

“Three flies in the spider’s parlor,” said Migwan.

“And one in the ointment, or my prophetic soul has its signals crossed,” said Nyoda.

CHAPTER IV.—THE MEDICINE LODGE.

Nyoda’s prophetic soul proved to be a true prophet, and there were trying times to follow the establishment of Ophelia at Onoway House. That very first night Nyoda woke with a strangling sensation to find Ophelia sitting on her chest. “I want ter sleep in the bed wid yer,” she said, in answer to Nyoda’s startled inquiry. “I’m afraid ter sleep alone.” She had been trying to creep in between Nyoda and Gladys and lost her balance, which accounted for her position when Nyoda woke up.

“But there’s nothing in the room to hurt you,” Nyoda said, reassuringly.

“It’s them hop-toads,” she wailed, stopping her ears against the pillow, “they give me th’ pip with their everlastin’ screechin’. They sound right under the bed.” Gladys woke up in time to hear her and offered to take the cot herself and let Ophelia sleep with Nyoda.

The next morning Gladys made a hurried trip to town to buy Ophelia some clothes, while Nyoda washed her hair, much to Ophelia’s disgust. The curls were so matted that it was impossible to comb them out and there was nothing left to do but cut them short. When all the foreign coloring matter had been removed and the hair had begun to dry in the warm wind, Nyoda stopped beside her in bewildered astonishment. On the top of her head, just about in the center, there was a circular patch of light hair about three inches in diameter. All the rest was black. “Ophelia,” said Nyoda, looking her straight in the eyes, “how did you bleach the top of your hair?”

“It’s a fib,” said Ophelia, politely, “I never bleached it.”

“Then somebody did,” said Nyoda.

“Didn’t neither,” contradicted Ophelia.

“We’ll see whether they did or not,” said Nyoda, “when the hair grows out from the roots.”

Dressed in the pretty clothes Gladys bought for her she was not at all a bad looking child, but her language and her knowledge of evil absolutely appalled the dwellers at Onoway House. “Did yer old man beat yer up?” she asked sympathetically of Mrs. Landsdowne, when that gentle lady came to call. Mrs. Landsdowne had run into the barn door the day before and had a bruise on her forehead.

Ophelia’s sins in the garden were too numerous to chronicle. When set to weeding she pulled weeds and plants impartially, working such havoc in a short time that she was forbidden to touch a single growing thing. Her ignorance of everything pertaining to the country was only equalled by her curiosity.

“What would happen to the cow if you didn’t milk her?” she demanded of Farmer Landsdowne, as she watched him milking one day. “She’d bust, I suppose,” she went on, answering her own question while Farmer Landsdowne was scratching his head for a reply. “Say, are yer whiskers fireproof?” she asked, scrutinizing his white beard with interest. “Because if they ain’t yer don’t dast smoke that pipe. The Santa Claus in Lefkovitz’s window told me so. Say, what do you do when they get dirty?”

Leaving her alone in the barn for a few moments he heard a mighty squawking and cackling and hastened to investigate. He found the old setting hen running distractedly around one of the empty horse stalls, frantically trying to get out, while Ophelia was holding the big rooster on the nest with her one hand, in spite of the fact that he was flapping his wings and pecking at her furiously. “He ought to do some of the settin’,” she remarked, when taken to task for her act, “he ain’t doin’ nothin’ fer a livin’.”

The squash bugs had descended once more, and were making hay of the squash bed while the sun shone, and the girls worked a whole, long weary afternoon clearing the vines. As the bugs were picked off they were put into tin cans to be destroyed. Tired to death and heartily sick of handling the disagreeable insects the girls quit the job at sundown, having just about cleared the patch. They gathered in Migwan’s big room before supper to make some plans for the Winnebago Ceremonial Meeting which was to be held at Onoway House on the Fourth of July. Ophelia promptly followed them and demanded admittance. “You can’t come in,” said Migwan rather crossly, for there were secrets being told which they did not want her to hear.

Ophelia wandered off in search of amusement. Mr. Bob had fled at her approach and was hiding under the porch, and Betty had been admitted to the council of the Winnebagos, for Migwan and Nyoda had decided at the beginning of the summer that if there was to be any peace with her she would have to be a party to all their doings, and as she was to be put into a Camp Fire Group in the fall she was given this opportunity of learning to qualify for the various honors by watching the intimate workings of the Winnebago group. Tom was over at the Landsdowne’s and Mrs. Gardiner was getting supper and invited Ophelia to stay out of the kitchen when she came down to see if there was any fun to be had there. Ophelia had been allowed to help once or twice and had broken so many dishes with her one-handed way of doing things that Mrs. Gardiner lost all patience and refused to have her around.

Strolling out into the garden in her quest for something to do she came upon the big tin pail containing all the squash bugs, which Migwan intended taking over to Farmer Landsdowne for disposal. A mischievous impulse seized her, and taking off the cover she emptied the bugs back into the bed, where they crawled eagerly back to their interrupted feast of tender leaves. When the prank was discovered Migwan sank wearily down beside the patch she had tried so hard to save from destruction. “Whatever possessed you?” said Nyoda, seizing Ophelia with the firm determination of boxing her ears. But Ophelia shrank back with such evident expectation of a blow that Nyoda loosened her hold.

“Well, ain’t yer goin’ ter punish me?” asked Ophelia, still eyeing her warily for an unexpected attack, with the attitude of an animal at bay. To her surprise there were no blows forthcoming, but she was ordered to pick off all the squash bugs again, and before the job was done she had plenty of time to regret her rash act. All that beautiful long summer evening, when the girls were on the front porch playing games and shouting with laughter, she sat in the squash bed, undoing the mischief she had done. When bed time came she was told to sleep in the cot by herself, and Gladys and Nyoda took no notice of her at all, whispering secrets to each other in bed with never a word to her. The next morning she was awakened at four o’clock and set to work again, and so missed the merry breakfast with the family. Gladys had promised to take her to town in the machine that day, but, of course, this pleasure was forfeited, as the beetles were not yet all picked off. The family was all invited over to the Landsdowne’s for supper that night, but by four o’clock Ophelia realized with a pang of disappointment that she would not even be through by five. Accustomed as she was to brutal treatment, this was the worst punishment she had ever experienced, but she realized that she deserved it and was gamely paying the price without a murmur. When Migwan came out shortly after four and helped her so that she would be done in time to go to Farmer Landsdowne’s with the others her penitence was complete.

Preparations for the big Fourth of July Council meeting were going forward apace. It was to be a house party, they decided, and the other three Winnebagos, Nakwisi, Chapa and Medmangi, were to be invited to spend the night. Sleeping quarters caused some debate, when Sahwah had a brilliant idea. “Let’s build a tepee,” she said, “and all sleep on the ground inside of it with our feet toward the center. Then we can hold the Council Fire in there and dance a war dance around the fire and make shadows on the sides to scare the natives.” No sooner said than begun. The front lawn was chosen as the site of the tepee, as that was the only spot big enough. Dick, Tom and Mr. Landsdowne set the poles in a circle to make the supporting framework, and the girls made the covering of heavy sail cloth, which fitted snugly over the poles and had an opening in the center of the top, and another one lower down for the entrance. When done it would easily accommodate fifteen or sixteen persons. An iron kettle was sunk into the ground in the center of the tepee. This would hold sticks of wood soaked in kerosene, which is the secret of a quickly lighted council fire, and also the alcohol and salt mixture which is an indispensable part of all ghost story telling parties. The grass around the kettle was pulled up, leaving a ring of bare earth, which would prevent accident from the fire spreading.

The whole thing was completed two days before the Fourth. A big sign, WINNEBAGO MEDICINE LODGE, was hung over the entrance. Underneath it a sign in smaller letters proclaimed that at the Fourth Sundown of the Thunder Moon the big medicine man Face-Toward-the-Mountain would “make medicine” in the lodge for the benefit of the Winnebago tribe and their paleface friends. The “paleface friends” referred to were Mrs. Gardiner, Betty and Tom and Ophelia, Mr. and Mrs. Landsdowne and Calvin Smalley, who were invited to see the show.

“It’s a shame Aunt Phœbe and the Doctor have to miss it,” said Hinpoha.

It was rumored that a real Indian princess would be present at the medicine making, i.e., Sahwah in her Indian dress that Mr. Evans had sent her from Canada, and excitement ran high among the invited guests as hint after hint trickled out as to the elaborateness of the ceremonial, which was to eclipse anything yet attempted in that line by the Winnebagos, which was saying a great deal. Migwan had been seen doing a great deal of surreptitious writing of late and at bed time the Winnebagos had taken to congregating in the big, back bedroom and locking the doors, and soon there would issue forth sounds of much talking and laughter, so that a really experienced listener would almost suspect there was a play in process of rehearsal. “Let’s reh—you know,” said Migwan to Gladys, when the last touches had been put on the tepee, suddenly cutting her words short and making a hand sign to finish her sentence.

“Do you mind if I don’t just now,” answered Gladys, “I have such a bad headache I think I will lie down for a while. It must have been the sun glaring on the white canvas.”

“I have one too,” said Hinpoha, “it must have been the sun. I’ll come later when Gladys does,” she said to Migwan, with an aggravatingly mysterious hand sign.

At supper time Ophelia refused to eat and moped in a manner quite foreign to her. Her eyes were red and it looked as though she had been crying. After supper she still sat by herself in a corner of the porch and made no effort to trap the girls into telling their plans for the Fourth as she had been doing all day. “Come and play Blind-Man’s-Buff on the lawn,” called Migwan. Ophelia raised her head and looked at her listlessly, but made no effort to join in the merry game.

“Don’t you feel well?” asked Nyoda, noting her languid manner. “Child, what makes your eyes so red?” she said, turning Ophelia’s face toward the light.

“I don’t know,” said Ophelia, wriggling out of her grasp, and putting her head down on her knee.

“Come, let me put you to bed,” said Nyoda. “I’m afraid you’re going to be sick.” In the morning Ophelia’s face was all broken out and Nyoda groaned when she realized the truth. Ophelia had the measles. All preparations for the Fourth of July Ceremonial had to be called off, and the three girls in town telephoned not to come out. The sight of the tepee and all the plans it suggested called out a wail of despair every time the girls went out in the yard. On the morning of the Glorious Fourth Gladys woke to find herself spotted like a leopard.

“That must be the reason why I had such a fearful headache the other day,” she said, as she took her place with the other sick one, half amused and wholly disgusted at herself for having fallen a victim.

“I had a headache too,” said Hinpoha, in alarm, “I hope I’m not coming down with them. I’ve had them once.”

“That doesn’t help much,” said Nyoda, “for I had them three times.” Hinpoha’s fears were realized, and by night there was a third case developed. And so, instead of a grand council on the Fourth of July there was real medicine making at Onoway House. None of the sufferers were very ill, although they must remain prisoners, and they had such a jolly time in the “contagious disease ward” that Migwan and Sahwah, who were finding things rather dull on the outside, wished fervently that they had taken the measles too.

As soon as the three invalids were pronounced entirely well there was a celebration held in honor of the occasion in the tepee. At sundown Nyoda went around beating on a tin pan covered with a cloth in lieu of a tom-tom, which was always the signal for the tribe to come together. Tom, as runner, was dispatched to fetch the Landsdownes and Calvin Smalley. When the tribe came trooping in answer to the call, followed by the guests, they were marched in solemn file around the lawn and into the tepee. Inside there was a fire kindled in the center, with a circle of ponchos and blankets spread around it on the ground. “Bless my soul, but this is cozy,” said Farmer Landsdowne, dropping down on a poncho and stretching himself comfortably.

“Now, what shall we do?” asked Nyoda, who was mistress of ceremonies, “play games or tell stories?”

“Tell stories,” begged Migwan, “we haven’t ‘wound the yarn’ for an age.”

“All right,” agreed Nyoda, “shall we do it the way several of the Indian tribes do?”

“How do they do it?” asked Migwan.

“Well,” said Nyoda, “there is a tradition among certain tribes that if anyone refuses to tell a story when he is asked he will grow a tail like a donkey. Sometimes, however, they do not wait for Nature to perform this miracle, but fasten a tail themselves onto the one who will not entertain the crowd when he is bidden, and he must wear it until he tells a story. Their way of asking one of their number to tell one is to remark ‘There is a tail to you,’ as a delicate way of expressing the fate that will be his if he refuses.”

“Oh, what fun!” cried Sahwah.

“And now Gladys,” said Nyoda, “‘there is a tail to you.’”

Gladys placed more wood on the fire, which was burning low, and returned to her seat on the blanket. “Did I ever tell you,” she began, “about my Aunt Beatrice? She and my Uncle Lynn were visiting here from the West with my little cousin Beatrice, who was only six months old. They were staying in a big hotel downtown. One night they went to a party, leaving Beatrice in their room at the hotel in the care of her nurse. At the party there was a fortune teller who amused the guests by reading their palms. When it came my aunt’s turn the woman said to her, ‘You have had one child, who is dead.’ Everybody laughed because they knew Aunt Beatrice had never lost a baby, and little Beatrice was safe and sound in the hotel that very minute. But it worried my aunt almost to death, and she couldn’t enjoy herself the rest of the evening.

“Finally she said to my uncle, ‘I can’t stand it any longer, I must go home,’ so they left the party just as the guests were sitting down to a midnight supper, and everybody made fun of her for being such a fussy young mother. When they got downtown they found the hotel in flames and the streets blocked for a long distance around. Aunt Beatrice finally broke through the fire lines and ran right past the firemen who tried to keep her out, into the burning building, and fought her way up-stairs through the smoke to her room, where she could hear a baby crying. She was blind from the smoke and could hardly see where she was going, but she picked up a rug from the floor, wrapped it around the baby and carried her out in safety. When she got outside they found it was not little Beatrice at all that she had saved, it was a strange baby. She had mistaken the room up-stairs in the smoke and carried out someone else’s child. The building collapsed right after she came out and no one could go in any more. Beatrice and her nurse were lost in the fire.” A murmur of horrified sympathy went around the circle in the tepee. “And,” continued Gladys, “my Aunt Beatrice has never been herself since. She can’t bear even to see a baby.”

“Is that the reason you wouldn’t let me bring Marian Simpson’s baby over the day she left it with me to take care of?” asked Hinpoha. “I remember you said your aunt was visiting you.”

“Yes, that was why,” said Gladys. “And now, Mr. Landsdowne,” she added, “‘there is a tail to you!’”

Farmer Landsdowne stared thoughtfully into the fire for a moment, and then a reminiscent smile began to wrinkle the corners of his eyes. “Would you like to hear a story about the old house?” he asked.

“You mean Onoway House?” asked Migwan.

Mr. Landsdowne nodded. “Only it seems strange to be calling it ‘Onoway House.’ It has always been known as ‘Waterhouse’s Place,’ because old Deacon Waterhouse built it. Well, like most old houses, there are different stories told about it, but whether they are true or not, no one knows. People are so apt to believe anything they want to believe. Well, I started out to tell you the story about the gas well. But before I tell you about the gas well I suppose I ought to tell you about the Deacon’s son. Mind you, the things I am telling you are only what I have heard from the folks around here; I never knew Deacon Waterhouse. He was dead and the house empty before the farm was split up, and it wasn’t until the part that I now own was offered for sale that I ever came into this neighborhood. Well, to return to the Deacon’s son. They say that there never was a finer looking young fellow than Charley Waterhouse. He was a regular prince among the country boys. But he didn’t care a rap about farming. All he wanted to do was read; that and take the horse and buggy and drive to town. The old Deacon was terribly disappointed, of course, for Charley was his only son, and he couldn’t see that the boy wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. He railed about his love of books and wouldn’t give him money for schooling. Charley stood it until he was eighteen and then he ran away, after forging the Deacon’s name to a check. The folks around here never saw him again. Mrs. Waterhouse died of a broken heart, they say. They also say,” he added with a twinkle in his eye, “that she died before she had her attic cleaned, and that her ghost comes back at night and sets the old furniture straight up there.” Migwan and Hinpoha exchanged glances.

“Now about the gas well,” resumed Mr. Landsdowne. “The Deacon was digging for water on the farm. The old well had dried up during a long, hot spell and he was bound to go deep enough this time. Down they went—two, three hundred feet, and still no good water. The ground had turned into slate and shale. The well digger lit a match down in the hole when suddenly there was a terrific explosion which caved in the sides of the well and all the dirt which was piled around the outside slid in again, completely filling it up. A vein of gas had been struck. That very day the Deacon received word that his son was in San Francisco, dying, and wanted to see him. He forgot his anger over Charley’s disgrace and started west that very night. He never came back. He stayed in San Francisco a whole year and then died out there. While he was there he mentioned the gas well to several people, or they say he did, and that’s how the story got round. But if such a thing did happen, there was never any trace of it afterward. Personally I do not believe it ever happened. But superstitious folks around here say they can still hear the buried well digger striking with his pick against the earth that covers him.”

“Two ghosts at Onoway House!” said Nyoda, “we are uncommonly well supplied,” and the girls shivered and drew near together in mock fear. Thus, with various stories the evening wore away, until Farmer Landsdowne, looking at his big, old-fashioned silver watch with a start, remarked that he should have been in bed an hour ago, whereupon the company broke up. Calvin Smalley went home reluctantly. That evening spent by the fire in the tepee had been a sort of wonderland to him, unused as he was to family festivities of any kind.

Nyoda lingered after the rest had gone to see that the fire in the tepee was properly extinguished. As she watched the glowing embers turn black one by one she became aware of a figure standing in the doorway. The moonlight fell directly on it and she could see that it was robed in flowing white, and instead of a face there was a hideous death’s head. Horribly startled at first she recovered her composure when she remembered that she was living in a household which were given to playing jokes on each other. Flinging up her hands in mock terror, she recited dramatically,

“Art thou some angel, some devil, or some ghost?” The figure in the doorway never moved. Nyoda picked up the thick stick with which she had stirred the fire and rushed upon the ghost as if she intended to beat it to a pulp. It flung out its arm, covered with the flowing drapery, and Nyoda dropped her weapon and staggered back against the side of the tepee, sneezing with terrible violence, her eyes smarting and watering horribly. When the force of the paroxysm had spent itself and she could open her eyes again the ghost had vanished. Blind and choking, she made her way back to the house, intent on finding out who the ghost was, who had thrown red pepper into her eyes. That it was none of the dwellers at Onoway House was clear. The girls were already partly undressed, Ophelia was in bed, and Tom was taking a foot-bath in the kitchen under the watchful supervision of his mother to see that he got himself clean. A chorus of indignation rose on every side at the outrage, when Nyoda had told her tale.

“Could it have been Calvin Smalley?” somebody asked. But this no one would believe. The boy was too gentle and manly, and too evidently delighted with his new neighbors to have done such a dastardly deed. Then who had dressed up as a ghost and thrown red pepper at Nyoda in the tepee?

CHAPTER V.—SAHWAH MAKES A DISCOVERY.

As there was no one of their acquaintance whom they could suspect of being the ghost, the trick was laid at the door of some unknown dweller along the road with a fondness for horseplay. The girls spent the morning working quietly in the garden, and in the afternoon they went to the city in Gladys’s automobile, all but Sahwah, who wanted to work on a waist she was making. Then, after the automobile was out of sight she discovered that she did not have the right kind of thread and could not work on it after all. With the prospect of a whole afternoon to herself, she decided to take a long walk. The Bartlett farm was not very large and she was soon at its boundary, and over on the Smalley property. In contrast to their little orchard and garden and meadow, the Smalley farm stretched out as far as she could see, with great corn and wheat fields, and acres of timber land. Somewhere on the place Calvin Smalley was working, and Sahwah made up her mind to find him and ask him over to Onoway House that night. But the extent of the Smalley farm was ninety-seven acres, and it was not so easy to find a person on it when one had no definite knowledge of that person’s whereabouts. Sahwah walked and walked and walked, up one field and down another, shading her eyes with her hand to catch sight of the figure she was looking for. But Calvin was somewhere near the center of the cornfield, stooping near the ground, and the high stalks waved over his head and concealed him completely. Sahwah passed by without discovering him and crossed an open field that was lying fallow. Beyond this was a strip of marsh land which was practically impassable. Under ordinary circumstances Sahwah would have turned back, but being badly in want of something better to do she tried to cross it. She had seen two boards lying in the field, and securing these she laid them down on the treacherous mud, and by standing on one and laying the other down in front of her and then advancing to that one she actually got across in safety.

On the other side of the bog she spied a little clump of trees and headed toward them, for the sun was very hot in the open and the thought of a rest in the shade was attractive. When she came nearer she saw that this little copse sheltered a cottage, old and weatherbeaten and evidently deserted. Weeds grew around it, higher than the steps and the floor of the porch, and the crumbling chimney, which ran up on the outside of the house, was covered with a thick growth of Japanese ivy. “It’s a regular House in the Woods,” said Sahwah to herself, “only there are no dwarfs. I wonder what it’s like inside,” she went on in her thoughts. “Maybe we could come here sometime and build a fire—there must be a fireplace somewhere because there’s a chimney—and have a Ceremonial Meeting or a picnic. How delightfully private it is!” The trees hid the house from view until one almost stumbled upon it, and then the marsh and the broad vacant field stretched between it and the farm, and behind it was the river, its banks hidden by a thick growth of willows and alders, so that the cottage was not visible to a person coming along the river in a boat. There was not a sound to be heard anywhere except the zig-a-zig of the grasshoppers in the field and the swish of the hidden water as it flowed over the stones. “A grand place to have a secret meeting of the Winnebagos,” said Sahwah to herself, “where we wouldn’t always be interrupted by Ophelia pounding on the door and wanting to come in. I wonder if it’s open?”

She stepped up on the porch and tried the door. It was locked. She peered into the window. The room she saw was absolutely empty. She could not see whether there was a fireplace or not. She was seized with a desire to enter that cottage. It was deserted and tumble down and fascinating. Whoever owned it—if anyone did, for she was not sure whether it stood on the Smalley property or not—had evidently abandoned it to the elements. There was no harm at all in trying to get in. She pushed on the window. It apparently was also locked. But she pushed again and this time she heard a crack. The rotten wood was splitting away from the rusty catch. She pushed again and the window slid up. She stepped over the sill into the room.

The window was so thick with dirt that the light seemed dim inside. At one end of the room there was an open fireplace, long unused, with the mortar falling out between the bricks. There was another door in the wall opposite the front door, so evidently there was another room beyond. This door was also locked, but the key was in the lock and it turned readily under her hand and the door swung open. Sahwah stood still in surprise. This room was as full of furniture as the other had been empty. Around all four walls stood cabinets and bookcases, and besides these there was a couch, a desk, a table and several chairs. The table was covered with screws, little wheels and the works of clocks, and before it sat an old man, busily working with them. He had on a long, shabby grey dressing-gown and a high silk hat on his head. He did not look up as she opened the door, but went right on working, apparently oblivious to her presence. She stared at him in amazement for a moment, and then, remembering her manners, realized that she had deliberately walked into a gentleman’s room without knocking.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, in embarrassment, “I didn’t know there was anyone here.”

The old man looked up and saw her standing in the doorway. “Come in, come in,” he said, affably, in a deep voice. Sahwah took a step into the room. The old man went back to his wheels and rods and took no more notice of her.

“What is that you’re making?” asked Sahwah, curiously.

“It’s a long story,” said the man, taking off his hat, pulling a handkerchief out of it and putting it back on his head, and then falling to work again.

“Must be a genius,” thought Sahwah, “that’s what makes him act so queerly.” She waited a few minutes in silence and then curiosity got the better of her. “Is it too long to tell?” she asked.

“Eh? What’s that?” asked the man, turning toward her. He took off his hat, put his handkerchief back in again and then put the hat back on his head.

“I asked you,” said Sahwah, politely, “if the story of what you are making is too long to tell.”

“Not at all, not at all,” said the man, and resumed his work without another word.

“How impolite!” thought Sahwah. “To urge me to stay and then refuse to answer my questions.” Her eyes strayed around the room at the bookcases and cabinets. Every cabinet was filled with clocks or parts of clocks. The books as far as she could see were all about machinery. One was a book of such astounding width of binding that she leaned over to read the title. The letters were so faded that they were hardly visible. “L,” she read, “E, F, E——”

“It’s a machine for saving time,” said the man at the table, so suddenly that Sahwah jumped.

“How interesting!” she said. “How does it work?”

The man fitted a rod into a wheel and apparently forgot her existence. She sat silent a few minutes more and then decided she had better go home. She rose softly to her feet. “It’s something like a clock,” said the man, without looking up from his work.

“It’s coming after all,” she thought, and sat down again.

After a silence of about five minutes the man spoke again. “It measures the time just like any clock,” he explained, “only, as the minutes are ticked off, they are thrown into a little compartment at the side,—this thing,” he said, holding up a little metal box. He lapsed into silence again and after an interval resumed where he had left off. “This compartment,” he said, “holds just an hour, and when it is full a bell rings and the compartment opens automatically, throwing the block of time, carefully wrapped to prevent leakage of seconds, out into this basket.” He took off his hat, brought out his handkerchief, polished a bit of glass with it, put it carefully back into the crown and replaced the hat on his head.

It suddenly came over Sahwah that her ingenious host was not quite right in his mind, so rising abruptly she hastened out of the room. The man took no notice of her departure. She locked the door carefully after her, and went out by the window whence she had entered the house, pulling it shut from the outside. She did not undertake to cross the marsh again, but made a wide detour around it. When she was once more in the fallow field she looked back, but the house was invisible among the trees and bushes which surrounded it. As she sped past the rows of standing corn on her way home, Abner Smalley, bending low among them, saw her and straightened up with a suspicious look in his eyes. He glanced in the direction from which she had come. On one side was the empty field bordered by the marsh and the woody copse, and on the other was the path from the river which went in the direction of Onoway House. He breathed a sigh of relief. The girl had come from the direction of Onoway House, of course. The next day he put his bull to graze in the empty field before the copse. Then, in different places along the rail fence which enclosed this field he put signs reading: BEWARE THE BULL. HE IS UGLY.

When the girls came back from town Sahwah told her discovery. “Nyoda,” said Gladys, suddenly, “do you suppose it could have been this man who threw the pepper at you?”

“Perhaps,” said Nyoda, and all the girls shuddered at the thought. Before Sahwah’s discovery they had agreed among themselves to say nothing about the ghost episode to anyone outside the family, so that the perpetrator of the joke, if he were one of the farmer boys living near, would not have the satisfaction of knowing that they were wrought up about it. In the meantime they would send Tom to get acquainted with all the boys on the road and try to find out something about it from them.

Calvin Smalley was over that evening and something was said about Sahwah’s adventure of the afternoon. “Calvin,” said Nyoda, directly, “who is the old man who lives in that house?”

Calvin looked very much distressed, and frightened too, it must be admitted. Then he laughed, although to Nyoda his laugh seemed a trifle forced, and said in his usual straightforward manner, “The man in the old house among the trees? That is my great uncle Peter, grandfather’s brother. He was something of an inventer and invented a time clock, but the patent was stolen by another and he never got the credit for inventing it. He worried about it until his mind became unbalanced. For years he has worked around with wheels and things, making strange contrivances for clocks. He is perfectly harmless and wouldn’t hurt a fly. He will not live in a house with people and he will not leave the cottage he lives in even for an hour, he is so afraid something will happen to his machine while he is away. We don’t like to have people know that he is there because they would say we ought to send him away, but Uncle Abner won’t do that because Uncle Peter hates to be with folks and he might not be allowed to play with his machine in an institution the way he can here. So as long as he is happy what is the difference? But you know how country people talk. So would it be asking a great deal to request you not to say anything about this to anyone, not even the Landsdownes? If Uncle Abner ever found out you knew he would be very angry, and would sure think I told you. I don’t see how you ever got in, anyway; the door is usually kept locked, and to all appearances the house is empty.” Sahwah looked decidedly uncomfortable as she met the eyes of several of the girls, but no one mentioned the manner in which she had gained entrance. Inasmuch as she had pried into this secret she felt it was no more than right to promise to keep it.

“All right, we won’t say anything,” she said, reassuringly. All the others gave an equally solemn promise, and were glad that Ophelia had heard none of the talk about the matter, for she had been over at the Landsdowne’s since before Sahwah told her adventure. Little pitchers have wide mouths as well as big ears.

The girls all looked at each other when Calvin asserted that his Uncle Peter never left the house even for an hour. Clearly then, he had not been the ghost.

Migwan had bad dreams that night. Just before going to bed she had been reading a volume of Poe, which is not the most sleep producing literature known. She dreamed that she was lying awake in her bed, looking at a big square of moonlight on the floor, when suddenly a black shadow fell across it, and the figure of a monkey appeared on the windowsill, stood there a moment and then jumped into the room. Shuddering with fright she woke up, and could hardly rid herself of the impression of the dream, it had seemed so real. There was a big square of moonlight on the floor. “I must have seen it in my sleep,” she thought, “it’s exactly like the one in my dream.” She lay wondering if it were possible to see things with your eyes closed, when all of a sudden her heart began to thump madly. Into the moonlight there was creeping a black shadow. It remained still for a few seconds, a grotesque-shaped thing with a long tail, and then something came hurtling through the window and landed on the floor beside the bed. Migwan gave a scream that roused the house. Hinpoha, starting up wildly, jumped from bed and landed squarely on the black specter on the floor. The form struggled and squirmed and sent forth a long wailing ME-OW-W-W.