hear me!"

There was a murmur from below. Ann cried out in alarm, but Curly
exclaimed: "I believe that's Amy, Ruth! She must be hurt--the silly thing.
She's tumbled down this old well."

"How will we get to her?" cried Ruth. "Amy! how did you get down there?
Are you hurt, Amy?"

"Go away!" said a faint voice from below.

"Old Scratch! Isn't that just like her?" groaned Curly. "She was hiding
from us."

"Here," said Ruth, drawing up the lantern and setting it on the floor. "It
can't be very deep. I'm going to drop down there, Curly, and then you pass
down the lantern to me."

"You'll break your neck, Ruth!" cried Ann.

"No. I'm not going to risk my neck at all," Ruth calmly affirmed.

She set the lantern on the broken floor and swung herself down into the
black hole. She hung by her hands and her feet did not touch the bottom.
Suddenly she felt a qualm of terror. Perhaps the cellar was a good deal
deeper than she had supposed!

She could not raise herself up again, and she almost feared to drop. "Let
down the light, Curly!" she whispered.

CHAPTER XXII

DISASTER THREATENS

Before Curly could comply with Ruth's whispered request, her fingers
slipped on the edge of the flooring. "Oh!" she cried out, and--dropped as
much as three inches!

"Goodness me, Ruth!" gasped Ann Hicks. "Are you killed?"

"No--o. But I might as well have been as to be scared to death," declared
the girl of the Red Mill. "I never thought the cellar was so shallow."

There was a rustling near by. Ruth thought of rats and almost screamed
aloud. "Give me the lantern--quick!" she called up to Curly Smith.

"Here you are," said that youth. "And if Amy is down there she ought to be
ashamed of herself--making us so much trouble."

Amy was there, as Ruth saw almost immediately when she could throw the
radiance of the lantern about her. But Ruth did not feel like scolding the
younger girl.

Amy had crept away into a corner. Her movements made the rustling Ruth
had heard. She hid her face against her arm and sobbed with abandonment.
Her dress was torn and muddy, her shoes showed that she had waded in mire.
She had lost her hat and her flaxen hair was a tangle of briers and green
burrs.

"My _dear_!" cried Ruth, kneeling down beside her. "What does it mean? Why
did you come here? Oh, you're sick!"

A single glance at the flushed face and neck of the smaller girl, and a
tentative touch upon her wrist, assured Ruth of that last f