in
discovered that David was following them. She had not looked at him, not
spoken to him since he had so rudely refused her simple request.

Now she walked on, with her head in the air. Lillian did not like David,
but now she was almost sorry for the boy: she knew the weight of Madge's
displeasure. "David Brewster wants to speak to you, Madge, dear," she
whispered in her friend's ear.

Madge made no answer, nor glanced behind her.

"Miss Morton!"--David's face was very white; he was bitterly ashamed--"I
am sorry, beastly sorry, I was so rude to you this morning. I was angry,
not with you, but about something else. I don't seem to know how to
control my temper. Perhaps it is because I am not a gentleman. I would
do anything I knew how to serve you." David was not looking at Madge,
but on the ground in front of him.

Madge's expression cleared as though by magic. "Never mind, David," she
said impulsively. "Let's not think anything more about it. I lose my
temper quite as often as any one else. And don't say it is because you
are not a gentleman; you _are_ a gentleman, if you wish to be."

The other young people came hurrying on. The clouds were now heavy
overhead and the thunder seemed ominously near. The lightning began to
streak in forked flames across the summer sky.

"I think everybody had better run for the farm," suggested Phyllis. "Sam
says it is only a short distance away."

No one cared to linger any longer in the deserted grounds. The story of
the tragic old house, oddly mixed as it was with Harry Sears's ghostly
tale and Lillian's fancied apparition of a girl's white face at the
window, did not leave a pleasant recollection of the morning spent near
Sam's "ha'nted house."

CHAPTER XI

THE FEAST OF MONDAMIN

"Minnehaha, Laughing Water, otherwise known as Madge Morton, you are the
loveliest person I ever saw," announced Phyllis Alden, while Eleanor and
Lillian gazed at Madge in her Indian costume with equally admiring eyes.

"See, here is the description of Minnehaha. Doesn't it sound like
Madge?" Phil went on, reading from a volume of Longfellow:

"'Wayward as the Minnehaha,
With her moods of shade and sunshine,
Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate,
Feet as rapid as the river,
Tresses flowing like the water,
And as musical a laughter.'"

Phyllis paused and Madge swept her a low curtsey. "Thank you, Phil," she
said, her blue eyes suddenly misty at her