don't mind
going to Mrs. Phillips's in the morning, but if we should happen to get
caught there after the sun goes down I shouldn't like it."

"We needn't get caught late," Polly protested, "besides, it is so much
more mysterious to go around when it is a little bit duskish. It isn't
as if any one of us would be alone; there will be four and nobody
around here would do anything to hurt us, anyhow."

"No, I don't suppose any one really would," Molly returned weakly, her
objections over-ruled. And therefore when the cottages began to loom
darkly against the evening sky, the four little girls sallied forth,
draped in white sheets, and made their way over the hilltop to the road
beyond. They had usually confined their visits to their acquaintances
in the immediate neighborhood, so their aunt did not trouble herself to
inquire where they were going that evening, otherwise she might have
forbidden the walk they had in mind.

"Don't they look like four dear little Arabs?" said Miss Ada to her
brother. "They make a perfect picture as they go over the hill in the
evening light. How much they enjoy these little frolics." She turned
from watching the white-sheeted four who soon disappeared down the road.

It was great fun, thought the girls, to call upon their various friends
and pretend they were foreigners who did not understand the language of
those whom they were visiting; yet they understood enough to accept
refreshments offered them, and managed to say, "thank you" and
"good-bye."

It was after they had been regaled upon cakes and lemonade at Mrs.
Phillips's that the moment came which Molly had been dreading. The
shadows had deepened and the stars were trying to come out, while a
little light still lingered in the western sky. "We'd better not take
the short cut," said Molly. "It is so rough that way, and it is muddy
in places; we'll go around by the road." The lights were twinkling out
from the fishermen's homes and from the vessels anchored in the cove.
There were not many persons on the road, and the four little girls
hastened their steps.

Presently a shout, then the bark of a dog arose from behind them, and
in another minute they were surrounded by a crowd of jeering boys and
barking dogs. "Yaw! Yaw! Yaw!" shouted the boys. "Sic 'em, Sailor!
Sick 'em, Towser!" The dogs nipped at the retreating heels and the
boys twitched the flowing robes of the four Arabs.

"Oh, let us alone! Let us alone!" shr