E SCREAM FROM THE CASTLE

Ned White thought he knew all the roads about Ferndale and the Birchlands,
but on this afternoon he stumbled with his party into a perfectly strange
byway. It did not seem to lead to any place in particular, but was one of
those wagon roads cut through private property and public places alike,
without regard to direction or terminus.

This meant that the Fire Bird was lost--couldn't tell which way to fly,
and its driver did not know which way to direct the big red machine.

"Where in the world is this?" asked Tom, noting Ned looking from one side
to the other in a puzzled sort of way.

"Well, if it is only in this world we are lucky," answered Ned. "I rather
feared we had slipped off into another planet."

"It's cold, too," murmured Joe, for as the afternoon sun slowly set the
bleak winter day hastened forward in all its penetrating bitterness.

"What time is it, anyway?" asked Roland of Ned.

"Four, and going to get dark in an hour. Jingo! I wish we had found some
greens. The girls want to get the wreaths made up to-morrow."

"Why didn't we go to Tanglewood Park?" asked Roger. "There were plenty of
nice evergreens there."

"Yes, why didn't we? That's the question. Let's try this road," and Ned
turned into a branch of the highway he was driving on. "Perhaps we may get
out there yet."

"Now, see here," interrupted Roland. "I've got a dinner date to-night.
Sort of a 'return of the prodigal,' you know. I can't be late. So please
don't go too far from Mother Earth. If necessary we can get the greens
some other day."

"All right," agreed Ned. "If we can't make the park in half an hour we'll
turn back. But I wonder some of you smart ones did not think of it before.
There certainly were plenty of green bushes out there."

The turn brought our friends out on the road they had been looking for,
and it took but a short time to reach the lane to Tanglewood Park.

Under the heavy trees it was almost like night, and it was not an easy
task to distinguish one bush from another, especially as Roland kept
hurrying everybody, in his anxiety to be on time at the dinner party.

Joe and Roger secured some fine branches of the spruces that Dorothy had
wished for, Ned got quite a supply of pine branches, which he declared,
"could go up just as they were," while the other boys devoted themselves
to the laurel hunt. Finally a large hedge of this all-winter green shrub
was discovered, and in a short ti