u poor thing!" Betty cried, running into the hut. "Are you here
all alone?"

She had seen instantly that it was a girl. And evidently the stranger was
in much misery. But at Betty's cry she started up from the hearth and
whirled about in both fear and surprise.

Her hair was disarranged, and there was a great deal of it. Her face was
swollen with weeping, and she was all but blinded by her tears. At Betty's
sympathetic tone and words she burst out crying again. Betty gathered her
right into her arms--or, as much of her as she could enfold, for the other
girl was bigger than Betty in every way.

"You?" gasped the crying girl. "How--how did you come up here? And in all
this snow? Oh, this is a wilderness--a wilderness! How do people ever live
here, even in the summer? It is dreadful--dreadful! And I thought I should
freeze."

"Ida Bellethorne!" gasped Betty. "Who would ever have expected to find you
here?"

"I know I haven't any more business here than I have in the moon," said
the English girl. "I--I wish I'd never left Mrs. Staples."

"Mrs. Staples told us you had come up this way," Betty said.

Immediately the other girl jerked away from her, threw back her damp hair,
and stared, startled, at Betty.

"Then you--you found out? You know----"

"My poor girl!" interrupted Betty, quite misunderstanding Ida's look, "I
know all about your coming up here to find your aunt. And that was
foolish, for the notice you saw in the paper was about Mr. Bolter's black
mare."

"Mr. Bolter's mare?" repeated Ida.

"Now, tell me!" urged the excited Betty. "Didn't you come to Cliffdale to
look for your aunt?"

"Yes. That I did. But she isn't up here at all."

By this time Uncle Dick and the others were gathered about the door of the
hut. Jaroth, with a glance now and then at his horses, had even stepped
inside.

"By gravy!" ejaculated the man, "this here's a pretty to-do. What you been
doing to Bill Kedders' chattels, girl?"

"I--I burned them. I had to, to keep warm," answered Ida Bellethorne
haltingly. "I burned the table and the chairs and the boxes and then
pulled down the berths and burned them. If you hadn't come I don't know
what I should have done for a fire."

"By gravy! Burned down the shack itself to keep you warm, I reckon!"
chuckled Jaroth. "Well, we'd better take this girl along with us, hadn't
we, Mr. Gordon? She'll set fire to the timber next, if we don't, after
she's used up the shack."

"We most surel