."

"Then how in tarnation did you come to be lost, too? You was, wasn't
you? They told us two girls was missin'."

"Well, we were asleep in the open air, outside the tent, and I woke up
just as he was carrying Dolly off. I didn't wake up until he'd got out
of the firelight, and there wasn't any use calling anyone else. So I
just followed myself."

"She says anyone would have done it," Dolly broke in, her eyes shining.
"But I don't believe it, do you?"

"No, by Godfrey!" he said, emphatically. "A greenhorn, goin' out in them
woods at night, in the dark, and a girl, at that? I guess not!"

He looked at Bessie, as if puzzled to learn that she had actually done
such a thing.

"Well, you're all right now," he said. "Here, I'll just give the signal
we fixed up. Listen, now!"

He raised his rifle, and, pointing it straight in the air, fired two
shots, and then, after a brief interval, two more.

"The sound of that'll carry a long way," he explained, "and that means
that you're both found. The other fellows who are searchin' for you will
quit lookin', now, and come into Long Lake. If I'd fired just two shots,
and hadn't fired the second two, that would have meant that one of you
was found, and they'd have kept right on a-lookin' fer the other. I'll
walk along with you now, an' I guess that varmint won't bother you no
more. If he does--"

He patted his rifle with a gesture that spoke more plainly than words
could have done.

"Tell me all about it as we go along," he said. "I guess maybe there'll
be some work for us to do after we all get together--runnin' those
gypsies out. They're a bad lot, but this is the fust time they ever
done anythin' around here that give us a real chance to get even with
them. We've suspected them of doin' lots of things, but a deer can't
tell you who killed him out o' season, 'specially when all you find of
the deer is a little skin and bones."

He listened admiringly as Bessie told her story. At the tale of Lolla's
treachery he laughed.

"They're all tarred with the same brush," he said. "One's as bad as
another."

And when he heard of the trick by which Dolly had worked on the
superstitious fears of Lolla and Peter his merriment knew no bounds, and
he absolutely refused to keep on the trail until Dolly had given him a
demonstration of just how she had managed it.

"Well, by Godfrey!" he said, when she had thrown her voice far overhead,
and once so that it seemed to come from just