, while in her
own hands she carried a deep, woven basket, heavy with some articles
surely too weighty and compact to be clothing.

Finally "embarked," as Grace called it, they were just turning out into
the roadway when Reda appeared alone. Seeing the car she stopped stock
still in her tracks, so that Tom was obliged to jam on the brakes or
run her down. He did not shift his gears and execute the change of
speed without uttering the usual man's grumble, and no one could blame
him for this.

"Reda!" called Mary, "we are going out with some friends. You lock up
and take care of things. Go on now," she told Tom. "We don't want to
hear what she thinks about it."

It was well they did not hear, for a more surprised and excited old
woman than the self-same Reda it would not have been difficult to
imagine. She gurgled, choked, gulped and stuttered in the foreign
dialect, which only the professor and Mary could have understood.

Last seen she was going toward the Imlay studio, that was, and the
house of terrors, as it had that evening proved to be for the young
visitors at Bellaire.

But the evening was now delightfully changed, and just as her
association with the girls had noticeably stimulated and enlivened
Mary, so the meeting with the very much alive party had an encouraging
effect on Professor Benson. He was now sufficiently recovered to sit
up and talk with Mary, and seemed very much relieved to be saved from a
bad night in the studio. He insisted he could walk unassisted when Tom
drew up to Crow's Nest Retreat, and as he imparted a volume of
mysterious instructions and warnings to Mary, besides offering the most
profuse attestation of thanks to his rescuers, no one would have
imagined him other than a man suffering from a slight nervous attack.

Mary went to the door of the sanitarium with him, and her friends
discreetly allowed these two a few moments to themselves.

"Isn't it too wonderful!" breathed Grace as they passed from hearing.

"To think we are going to have Mary with us to-night," added Cleo with
a gust of anticipation.

"Can she sleep with me?" asked Madaline. "My bed is the largest."

"Whatever Aunt Audrey says, of course," Cleo felt obliged to answer.

Tom and Mary were returning, and although it was fully dark now, as
Mary stepped again in the car the girls realized she had been crying.

"I have never been away from him before since Loved One asked him to
care for me," she explaine