t of it. If this is the way you
are going to take a little bad luck," she finished her tirade in a fury
that whipped the girls like a lash, "then I'm through, that's all. I
refuse to be one of four Outdoor Girls that don't deserve the name."

She paused, and the girls were silent for a moment, feeling a little
dazed. The tongue-lashing had been just what they needed, as Betty very
well knew. It made them angry.

"Oh well," said Mollie sullenly, "if you are so much better than the
rest of us, Betty, perhaps you can tell us what to do. I'm sure we would
be just as glad to get out of this as you."

"Then help me think of some way to do it," Betty retorted, more quietly.
"Surely we can't accomplish it by making up our minds ahead of time that
we are doomed."

"Suppose you suggest something, yourself," said Grace resentfully.

"All right," said Betty, whose quick mind had been working busily. "I am
as sure as you girls are that the possibility of rescue from anybody
outside is slight. Of course," she added breathlessly, "when we don't
come home dad and mother would become worried and start a search party."

"They wouldn't miss us before night though," said Grace.

"Exactly," Betty caught her up. "And at night they wouldn't be as apt to
discover the landslide as they would in the daylight. They would
naturally think of the woods first. But the next day, anybody familiar
with the trail would be sure to notice that there had been a landslide
and they would be almost sure to connect it with us----"

"But Betty," wailed Grace, forgetting that a moment before she had been
angry with the Little Captain, "all that is just supposition, and you
know as well as we do that we are likely not to be discovered
until--until----"

"It's too late," finished Mollie. "Why don't you say it? It's the
truth."

"And since it is the truth," Betty took her up briskly, "there is all
the more reason why we should take things in our own hands and work out
our own salvation."

Betty impatiently cut short Amy's discouraged "How?"

"Now listen," she said. "There are plenty of stones in this cave----"

"My toes cry aloud that they know it," interjected Grace, but no one
laughed--they were too intent upon Betty. They were beginning to realize
what she had in mind, and the realization brought a thrill of hope.

"If we could find any sharp enough--stones I mean," Betty went on, "we
might use them as a sort of shovel and try to dig our way out.