but it's
really pleasanter with it up. It seemed rather airy to me at
first, but now I wouldn't have it down for anything."

"Don't trouble yourself," said Gladys.

"Sure, I'll put it down," said Migwan, making a motion to rise,
but just then the second bugle rang out and she subsided.

Gladys got into bed and pulled the blankets over her head. It
was the first time she had ever slept out of doors. She felt
very small and lonesome and neglected. She had not wanted to
come to this camp the least bit. Other summers she had always
gone to Atlantic City or some other crowded, lively summer resort
with her parents, where she had received considerable attention
from young men, just like the older girls with whom she
associated. Here, banished to the silent woods, she saw the
summer stretch out endlessly before her, intolerably dull and
uninteresting. She loved fluffy clothes and despised the
bloomers and middies which the girls wore. She loved dainty table
service and hated to cook. Up here she would be expected to help
with the meals, and all there was to cook on was an open fire and
a gasoline stove! What could her father have been thinking of to
want her to join such a club! These girls were not in her own
class; they went to public school, they were rough and horrid and
threw each other into the water!

Gladys could not go to sleep. She tossed restlessly, thinking
rebellious thoughts, and shuddering at the night noises in the
woods. The lapping of the water on the rocks below had a
lonesome sound. She had not yet learned to hear its soft
crooning lullaby. The wind rustled in the pine trees with a
ghostly, mysterious sound. From somewhere in the woods came a
mournful cry that sent the chills up and down her spine. It was
only a whippoorwill, but Gladys did not know a whippoorwill from
a bluebird. Then the frogs in a distant pool began their
concert. "Blub!" "Blub!" "Knee-deep!" "Better go round!"
"Knee-deep!" "Better go round!" "Skeel!" "Skeek!" "Skeel!"
"Skeek!" "Blub!" "Glub!" "Chralk!" Gladys's eyes started out of
her head at the unearthly noises. Her nerves were just about on
edge from their incessant piping when suddenly a long, eerie
laugh rang out over the water.

"Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

She screamed aloud and sat up in bed. "What's the matter?" said
Migwan, waking up.

"What was it? Oh, what was it?" asked Gladys in a voice cold
with terror.

"What