she said in a hushed voice, "I suppose you'll laugh at me, but
I'd just love to follow that path into the woods a little way. You don't
need to come if you don't want to. You can wait for me here in the road."

"Oh, no," said Laura, with a little sigh of resignation. "If you are
going to be crazy we might as well be crazy with you. Come on, Vi, if we
didn't go along, she would probably get lost all over again--just for the
fun of it."

Billie made a little face at them and plunged into the woods. Laura
followed, and after a minute's hesitation Vi trailed at Laura's heels.

They were so used to Billie's sudden impulses that they had stopped
protesting and merely went along with her, which, as Billie herself had
often pointed out, saved a great deal of argument.

They might have saved themselves all worry on Billie's account this time,
though, for she had not the slightest intention of getting lost
again--once was enough.

She went only as far as the end of the path, and when the other girls
reached her she was peering off into the forest as if she hoped to see
the mysterious hut--although she knew as well as Laura and Vi that they
had walked some distance through the woods the other night before they
had finally reached the path.

"Well, are you satisfied?" Laura asked, with a patient sigh. "If you
don't mind my saying it, I'm getting hungry."

"Goodness! after all that ice cream?" cried Billie, adding with a little
chuckle: "You're luckier than I am, Laura. I feel as if I shouldn't want
anything to eat for a thousand years."

She was just turning reluctantly to follow her chums back along the path
when a dark, bulky-looking object lying in a clump of bushes near by
caught her eye and she went over to examine it.

"Now what in the world----" Laura was beginning despairingly when
suddenly Billie gave a queer little cry.

"Come here quick, girls!" she cried, reaching down to pick up the bulky
object which had caught her attention. "I do believe--yes, it is--it must
be----"

"Well, say it!" the others cried, peering impatiently over her shoulder.

"Miss Arbuckle's album," finished Billie.

CHAPTER VII

STRANGE ACTIONS

Instead of seeming excited, Laura and Vi stared. Vi had not even heard
that Miss Arbuckle had lost an album, and Laura just dimly remembered
Billie's having said something about it.

But Billie's eyes were shining, and she