lessed thing
you had it to keep you warm!"

"Grace's sweater! What are you talking about, Ruth? I didn't have it with
me. I was nearly frozen. You or Bab must have brought it with you. I
found it over my shoulders when I awoke," protested Mollie.

Ruth and Bab said nothing. There was nothing to be said. It was all a
puzzle! Where was the clue to the mystery?

The two girls were leading poor, tired Mollie through the thick tangle of
shrubs, along which Ruth's bits of torn paper gleamed white and cheerful
pointing their pathway home. Even Mollie smiled on seeing them.

"If only I had remembered to play 'Hop-o-my-thumb,' Ruth, dear," Mollie
whispered, "I needn't have created all this trouble. Do you think Miss
Sallie will ever forgive me?"

"Indeed she will," Ruth assured her. "She will be so happy to see you
again, you poor, tired Mollie, she'll forget to scold!"

By this time the girls could hear the noise of voices and the beating of
bushes. "Here we are!" Ruth called out cheerfully. "Don't worry. We have
found Mollie!"

Naki burst through the opening. Ceally and Grace were with him and two
strange men from the farm below them on the hill.

Naki picked up Mollie in his arms as though she had been a baby, and the
party trudged on to their little log cabin.

At the top of the fateful ravine they found Miss Sallie. She could bear
the suspense of waiting no longer and had climbed up alone.

"Home for sure!" proclaimed Naki briefly, as he deposited Mollie, still
wrapped in Grace's red sweater, on the couch before the fire in their
cosy living room.

CHAPTER IX

SPIRIT OF THE FOREST

"It is perfectly incredible!" exclaimed Miss Sallie.

She and Bab were discussing Mollie's adventure the next morning at
breakfast.

"The more I try to reason out the whole thing, the more in the dark I
am," Bab answered.

"Have you talked with Mollie?" Miss Sallie inquired.

Bab nodded, and replied thoughtfully: "The truth of the matter is, Mollie
knows less on the subject than the rest of us. All that she can tell is
that she was sitting quietly at the bottom of the ravine, when suddenly a
shower of leaves fell over her head, and she heard the noise of feet
running along the bank above her. Determined to discover what had
startled her, Mollie climbed up the ravine and kept on with her pursuit
until she was completely lost. She must have wandered around all day.
Finally she was so tired she sat down to rest. When sh