mured the black-eyed girl. "'Oft in the stilly night'----Or is it
'Oft in the silly night'?" and she laughed, for it was not often nor for
long that the sentiment that lay deep in Helen's heart rose to the
surface. "Oh! What's that light over there, Ruth?" she added, with quick
apprehension.

"That is what I have been looking at," Ruth said.

"But you don't tell me what it is!" cried Helen.

"Because I don't know. But I suspect."

"Suspect what?"

"That it is a campfire," said Ruth. "Yes. It seems to be in one spot.
Only the wind makes the flames leap, and at one time they are plainly
visible while again they are partly obscured."

"Who ever would camp over on Bliss Island on a night like this?" gasped
Helen.

"I don't see why you put such mysteries up to me," returned Ruth, with a
shrug. "I'm no prophet. But----"

"But what?"

"Do you remember that girl we saw on the island this afternoon?"

"Goodness! Yes."

"Well, mightn't it be she, or a party she may be with?"

"Campers on the island in a snow storm? No girls from this college would
be so silly," Helen declared.

"I'm not at all sure she was an Ardmore girl," said Ruth, reflectively.

"Who under the sun could she be, then?"

"Almost anybody else," laughed Ruth. "It is going to stop snowing
altogether soon, Helen. See! the moon is breaking through the clouds."

"It will be lovely out," sighed Helen. "But hard walking."

Ruth gestured towards their two pairs of snowshoes crossed upon the
wall. "Not on those," she said.

"Oh, Ruthie! Would you?"

"All we have to do is to tighten them and sally forth."

"Gracious! I'd be willing to be Sally Fifth for a spark of fun,"
declared Helen, eagerly.

"How about Heavy?" asked Ruth, as Helen hastened to take down the
snowshoes which both girls had learned to use years before at Snow Camp,
in the Adirondacks.

"Dead to the world already, I imagine," laughed Helen. "I saw her to her
room, and I believe she was so tired and so full of dinner that she
tumbled into bed almost before she got her clothes off. You'd never get
her out on such a crazy venture!"

Helen was as happy as a lark over the chance of "fun." The two girls
skilfully tightened the stringing of the shoes, and then, having put on
coats, mittens, and drawn the tam-o'-shanters down over their ears, they
crept out of their rooms and hastened downstairs and out of the
dormitory building.

There was not a moving object in sight upon the camp