ng to stand upon. There in the corner was a roughly
made footstool.

In a moment Nan had the footstool set in position, and had stepped upon
it. Her hand darted to the back of the shelf. There was a long box, a
pasteboard box.

Nan dropped her lamp with a little scream of ecstasy, and of course the
light went out. But she had the long box clasped in her arms. She could
not wait to get home with it, but tumbled off the stool and sat down
upon it, picked up the torch, held it so the round spot-light gave her
illumination, and untied the string.

Off came the cover. She peeped within. The pink and white loveliness of
Beulah's wax features peered up at her.

In fifteen minutes Nan was back in her room, without being discovered by
anybody, and with the doll safely clasped in her arms. Indeed, she went
to bed a second time that night with her beloved playmate lying on the
pillow beside her, just as she had done when a little girl.

"I suppose I'm foolish," she confessed to Aunt Kate the next morning
when she told her about it. "But I loved Beulah so much when I was
little that I can't forget her now. If I go to Lakeview Hall I'm going
to take her with me. I don't care what the other girls say!"

"You are faithful in your likes, child," said Aunt Kate nodding. "'Tis a
good trait. But I'd like to lay that Marg'ret Llewellen across my knee,
for her capers."

"And I didn't think she cared for dolls," murmured Nan.

But it was young Bob who betrayed the mysterious reason for his sister's
act.

"Huh!" he said, with a boy's disgust for such things. "Mag's crazy about
pretty faces, if they're smooth, an' pink. She peeked into that Sherwood
gal's room and seed her playin' doll; then she had ter have it for
herself 'cause it was so pretty and had a smooth face, not like the
kids' dolls that Aunt Matildy buyed."

Poor little Margaret was greatly chagrined at the discovery of her
secret. She ran away into the woods whenever she saw Nan coming, for a
long time thereafter. It took weeks for the girl from Tillbury to regain
the half-wild girl's confidence again.

Nan was just as busy and happy as she could be, considering the
uncertain news from Scotland and Uncle Henry's unfortunate affair with
Gedney Raffer. She helped Aunt Kate with the housework early every
morning so that they might both hurry into the woods to pick berries.

Pine Camp was in the midst of a vast huckleberry country, and at the
Forks a cannery had been es