d. "_Do_ come
away, Ruth."

"Ha!" exclaimed the strange girl, suddenly looking at Ruth more
intently. "Are you called Ruth?"

"Yes. Ruth Fielding is my name."

"Oh!" and the girl's face changed in its expression and a little flush
came into her cheeks. "I've--I've heard of you."

"Indeed! How?" cried Ruth, eagerly. She felt that this girl must really
have some connection with Maggie at the mill, she looked so much like
the waif.

"Oh," said the other girl slowly, looking away, "I heard you wrote
picture plays. I saw one of them. That's all."

Ruth was silent for a moment. Helen kept tugging at her arm and urging
her to go.

"We--we can do nothing for you?" queried the girl of the Red Mill at
last.

"You can get off the island--that's as much as I care," said the strange
girl, with a harsh laugh. "You're only intruding where you're not
wanted."

"Well, I do declare!" burst out Helen again. "She is the most impolite
thing. _Do_ come away, Ruthie."

"We really came with the best intentions," Ruth added, as she turned
away with her chum. "It--it doesn't look right for a girl to be alone at
a campfire on this island--and at night, too."

"I sha'n't stay here all night," the girl said shortly. "You needn't
fret. If you want to know, I just built the fire to get warm by before I
started back."

"Back where?" Ruth could not help asking.

"_That_ you don't know--and you won't know," returned the strange girl,
and turned her back upon them.

CHAPTER XVI

WHAT WAS IN REBECCA'S TRUNK

The two chums did not speak a word to each other until they had
recovered their snowshoes and set out down the rough side of Bliss
Island for the ice. Then Helen sputtered:

"People like _that_! Did you ever see such a person? I never was so
insulted----"

"Pshaw! She was right--in a way," Ruth said coolly. "We had no real
business to pry into her affairs."

"Well!"

"I got you into it. I'm sorry," the girl of the Red Mill said. "I
thought it really was Maggie, or I wouldn't have come over here."

"She's something like that Maggie girl," proclaimed Helen. "_She_ was
nice, I thought."

"Maybe this girl is nice, taken under other circumstances," laughed
Ruth. "I really would like to know what she is over here for."

"No good, I'll be bound," said the pessimistic Helen.

"And another thing," Ruth went on to say, as she and her chum reached
the level of the frozen lake, "did you notice that pick handle?"

"That