shaken the girl's belief in herself. It was a
strange situation, indeed. She thought of the woman she had found
wandering about the mountain in the storm who had lost control of both her
nerves and her mind, and Ruth wondered if it could be possible that she,
too, was on the verge of becoming a nervous wreck.

Had she deceived herself about this hermit's story? Had she allowed her
mind to dwell on her loss until she was quite unaccountable for her mental
decisions? To tell the truth, this thought frightened the girl of the Red
Mill a little.

Practical as Ruth Fielding ordinarily was, she must confess that the shock
she had received when the hospital in France was partly wrecked, an
account of which is given in "Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound," had shaken
the very foundations of her being. She shuddered even now when she thought
of what she had been through in France and on the voyage coming back to
America.

She realized that even Tom and Helen looked at her sometimes when she
spoke of her lost scenario in a most peculiar way. Was it a fact that she
had allowed her loss to unbalance--well, her judgment? Suppose she was
quite wrong about that scenario the hermit had submitted to Mr. Hammond?
The thought frightened her!

At least, she had nothing to say upon the puzzling subject, not even to
her best and closest friends. She was sorry indeed two hours later when
they were at lunch on the porch of the Reef Harbor House with some of the
Camerons' friends that Helen brought the conversation around again to the
Beach Plum Point "hermit."

"A _real_ hermit?" cried Cora Grimsby, a gay, blonde, irresponsible little
thing, but with a heart of gold. "And is he a hermit for revenue only,
too?"

"What do you mean by that?" Helen demanded.

"Why, we have a hermit here, you see. Over on Reef Island itself. If you
give us a sail in your motor yacht after lunch I'll introduce our hermit
to you. But you must buy something of him, or otherwise 'cross his palm
with silver.' He told me one day that he was not playing a nut for summer
folks to laugh at just for the good of his health."

"Frank, I must say," laughed Tom Cameron.

"I guess he's been in the hermit business before," said Cora, sparkling at
Tom in his uniform. "But this is his first season at the Harbor."

"I wonder if he belongs to the hermit's union and carries a union card,"
suggested Jennie Stone soberly. "I don't think we should patronize
non-union hermits."

"