?

She tried every crack, every window, the old door, even the hole that
opened out on the slant roof.

Barred! Locked! Everything was locked against her!

"Oh, must I die here?" she murmured. Then she fell back on the bed, on
the red and white quilt. Sobbing, too weak to cry, too weak to think,
but not too weak to know!

CHAPTER XIV

TAVIA'S MISTAKE

Meanwhile Tavia Travers, the light-hearted, reckless Tavia, realized
that she had made a dreadful mistake. It was the second afternoon
since she had left the camp, and she was at the railroad station,
waiting for something unforseen to develop that would enable her to
get back to her friends.

It was such a lonely place--away out there in the woods, and she had
spent one awful night locked up in that station!

"I'll walk," she declared, "if I cannot get away from here before
dark!"

Walk! Fifteen miles to Innernook! With hardly a chance of a single
town in between!

It was at the little rustic bridge that she had met the man, according
to the appointment made under the harvest apple tree.

"Come with me and I will prove to you that what I say is absolutely
correct," he declared. "I have an old uncle out at Breakaway, and he
will tell you about the fortune with his own lips--I shall make him
do so."

"But is it far?" Tavia had demurred, for she did not just like that
glassy stare in the man's eyes, handsome though he was.

"Only a pleasant little train ride--it will do you good to get away
from this place. They call it camp--I would call it 'cramp,'" and he
chuckled at his attempted joke.

Tavia had not been inclined to go. He had seen that she hesitated.

"Well, if you think I am not brotherly enough, I can take you to my
sister Belle. She is surely sisterly enough--she will meet us at
Durham."

This had convinced Tavia. Surely if they met his sister at the first
station, there could be no harm in her going. And though the story
about the fortune might be vapory, it was fun to have had such an
experience--to actually run away!

Poor foolish Tavia! _Was_ it fun to run away?

At the station, of course, there had been no sister Belle, but Tavia
could not turn back now. This man seemed so compelling--so completely
her master! What was his strange power?

On they had gone, he telling all sorts of absurd stories about the
money, which, he claimed, was actually secreted in his uncle's house.
But long before he reached the station at Breakaway Ta