th fascinated interest at the old woman in her remarkable garb, and
the brown-haired child, with the strange, glaring eyes, that seemed to
affix themselves on the three scout girls. Altogether she seemed quite
unlike other children. Her heavy brown braids hung over her shoulders
like a picture of Marguerite in the opera, while her white gauzy dress
was banded around with rows of black velvet, just like the artistic
costumes worn in Greek plays. This style on so young a child gave a
very stagy and quaint effect. She, like the woman, had a piece of lace
on her head, but the one was white, the other black.

"See, they have been gathering flowers," decided Cleo, and at that
moment the woman picked up the book, and attempted to drag the child
away in spite of the latter's very evident desire to stare longer at
the faces in the big touring car. "I should like to know where they
live. We must find out if Aunt Audrey knows them."

"Can't get at my note book," remarked Grace, as Collins started in the
drive, "but I am sure not to forget that girl."

"Nor the old woman," added Madaline. "I shouldn't want her for a
nurse." And the last glimpse of the strangers showed the child still
dragging behind the woman.

The excitement of arriving at Cragsnook, with its joys of new-found
interest, however, soon erased the picture of the pathetic little child
and her caretaker from the minds of the three scouts, and when next
morning Mrs. Harris bade them good-by and started back to New York, she
had no idea what part that first incident of their arrival would play
in the children's vacation at Bellaire. In the care of Mrs. Guy
Dunbar, otherwise Audrey Harris, sister to Cleo's father, the girls
were indeed well placed and safely established, but Bellaire, being a
mountain town near New York, possessed many possibilities for
exploration, and at this delightful task the girls determined to set
out promptly, for even vacation is not interminable.

"You may roam as far as you like," Aunt Audrey told them next morning,
when the call of summer fairly shouted in each pair of expectant ears.
"The girls next door, Lucille and Lalia, are coming over to meet you,
and they will show you all the roads, and ways to get lost and found
in."

"But, Aunt Audrey," began Cleo, "we saw the queerest woman yesterday
just as we arrived. She was dressed like--well, like a circus person,
and she had a little girl with her who just looked scared to deat