NAN SHERWOOD AT PINE CAMP

or, The Old Lumberman's Secret

By Annie Roe Carr

Chapter I. THE YELLOW POSTER

"Oh, look there, Nan!" cried Bess Harley suddenly, as they turnedinto High Street from the avenue on which Tillbury's high school wassituated. 

"Look where?" queried Nan Sherwood promptly. "Up in the air, down on theground or all around?" and she carried out her speech in action, finally spinning about on one foot in a manner to shock the more staidElizabeth. 

"Oh, Nan!"

"Oh, Bess!" mocked her friend. 

She was a rosy-cheeked, brown-eyed girl, with fly-away hair, a bluetam-o'-shanter set jauntily upon it, and a strong, plump body that shehad great difficulty in keeping still enough in school to satisfy herteachers. 

"Do behave, Nan, " begged Bess. "We're on the public street. "

"How awful!" proclaimed Nan Sherwood, making big eyes at her chum. "Whyfolks know we're only high-school girls, so, of course, we're crazy!Otherwise we wouldn't BE high-school girls. "

"Nonsense!" cried Bess, interrupting. "Do be reasonable, Nan. And lookyonder! What do you suppose that crowd is at the big gate of the AtwaterMills?"

Nan Sherwood's merry face instantly clouded. She was not at all athoughtless girl, although she was of a sanguine, cheerful temperament. 

The startled change in her face amazed Bess. 

"Oh dear!" the latter cried. "What is it? Surely, there's nobody hurt inthe mills? Your father-----"

"I'm afraid, Bess dear, that it means there are a great many hurt in themills. "

"Oh, Nan! How horridly you talk, " cried Bess. "That is impossible. "

"Not hurt in the machinery, not mangled by the looms, " Nan went on tosay, gravely. "But dreadfully hurt nevertheless, Bess. Father has beenexpecting it, I believe. Let's go and read the poster. "

"Why it is a poster, isn't it?" cried Bess. "What does it say?"

The two school girls, both neatly dressed and carrying their bags oftext books, pushed into the group before the yellow quarter-sheet posterpasted on the fence. 

The appearance of Nan and Bess was distinctly to their advantage whencompared with that of the women and girls who made up the most of thecrowd interested in the black print upon the poster. 

The majority of these whispering, staring people were foreigners. Allbore marks of hard work and poverty. The hands of even the girls in thegroup were red and cracked. It was sharp winter weather, but none woregloves. 

If they wore a head-covering at all, it was a shawl gathered at thethroat by the clutch of frost-bitten fingers. There was snow on theground; but few wore overshoes. 

They crowded away from the two well-dressed high-school girls, lookingat them askance. Bess Harley scarcely noticed the mill-hands' wives anddaughters. She came of a family who considered these poor people littlebetter than cattle. Nan Sherwood was so much interested in the posterthat she saw nothing else. It read:

NOTICE: Two weeks from date all departments of these mills will beclosed until further notice. Final payment of wages due will be madeon January 15th. Over-supply of our market and the prohibitive priceof cotton make this action a necessity. ATWATER MILLS COMPANY. December28th. 

"Why, dear me!" murmured Bess. "I thought it might really be somethingterrible. Come on, Nan. It's only a notice of a vacation. I guess mostof them will be glad to rest awhile. "

"And who is going to pay for their bread and butter while the poorcreatures are resting?" asked Nan seriously, as the two girls moved awayfrom the group before the yellow poster. 

"Dear me, Nan!" her chum cried. "You do always think of the mostdreadful things. It troubles me to know anything about poverty andpoor people. I can't help them, and I don't want to know anything aboutthem. "

"If I didn't know that you are better than your talk, Bess, " said Nan, still gravely, "I'd think you a most callous person. You just don'tunderstand. These poor people have been fearing this shut-down formonths. And all the time they have been expecting it they have beenhelpless to avert it and unable to prepare for it. "

"They might have saved some of their wages, I suppose, " said Bess. "Iheard father say the other night how much money the mills paid out in ayear to the hands, some perfectly en_or_mous sum. "

"But just think how many people that has to be divided among, " urgedNan. "Lots of the men earn only eight or nine dollars a week, and havefamilies to support. "

"Well, of course, they don't have to be supported as we are, " objectedthe easy-minded Bess. "Anyway my father says frugality should be taughtto the poor just the same as reading and writing. They ought to learnhow to save. "

"When you earn only just enough to supply your needs, and no more, howcan you divide your income so as to hoard up any part of it?"

"Dear me! Don't ask questions in political economy out of school, Nan!"cried Bess, forgetting that she had started the discussion herself. "Ijust HATE that study, and wish we didn't have to take it! I can't answerthat question, anyway. "

"I'll answer it then, " declared Nan. "If you are a mill-hand yourstomach won't let you save money. There probably won't be a dozenfamilies affected by this shut-down who have more than ten dollarssaved. "

"Goodness! You don't mean that that's true? Why, dad gives me that muchto spend on myself each month, " Bess cried. "The poor things! Evenif they are frowsy and low, I am sorry for them. But, of course, theshut-down doesn't trouble you, Nan. Not personally, I mean. Your fatherhas had a good position for so many years-----"

"I'm not at all sure that it won't trouble us, " Nan interposed gravely. "But of course we are not in danger of starvation. "

She felt some delicacy about entirely confiding in Bess on the subject. Nan had heard the pros and cons of the expected closing of the millsdiscussed at home almost every day for weeks past; but family secretsshould never be mentioned outside the family circle, as Nan very wellknew. 

"Well, " signed Bess, whose whole universe revolved around a centralsun called Self, as is the case with many girls brought up by indulgentparents. "I hope, dear, that this trouble won't keep you from enteringLakeview with me next fall. "

Nan laughed. "There never was a chance of my going with you, Bess, andI've told you so often enough-----"

"Now, don't you say that, Nan Sherwood!" cried her chum. "I've just madeup my mind that you shall go, and that's all there is to it! You've justgot to go!"

"You mean to kidnap me and bear me off to that ogre's castle, whether ornot?"

"It's the very nicest school that ever was, " cried Bess. "And such aromantic place. "

"Romantic?" repeated Nan curiously. 

"Yes, indeed! A great big stone castle overlooking Lake Michigan, aregular fortress, they say. It was built years ago by Colonel GilpatrickFrench, when he came over from Europe with some adventurous Irishmenwho thought all they had to do was to sail over to Canada and the wholecountry would be theirs for the taking. "

"Goodness me! I've read something about that, " said Nan, interested. 

"Well, Lakeview Hall, as the school is called, was built by that richColonel French. And they say there are dungeons under it. "

"Where they keep their jams and preserves, now, I suppose?" laughed Nan. 

"And secret passages down to the shore of the lake. And the great hallwhere the brave Irishmen used to drill is now the assembly hall of theschool. "

"Sounds awfully interesting, " admitted Nan. 

"And Dr. Beulah Prescott, who governs the hall, the preceptress, you know, is really a very lovely lady, my mother says, " went on theenthusiastic Bess. "MY mother went to school to her at Ferncliffe. "

"Oh, Bess, " Nan said warmly, "It must be a perfectly lovely place! But Iknow I can never go there. "

"Don't you say that! Don't you say that!" cried the other girl. "I won'tlisten to you! You've just got to go!"

"I'm afraid you'll have to kidnap me, then, " repeated Nan, with arueful smile. "I'm very sure that my father won't be able to afford it, especially now that the mills will close. "

"Oh, Nan! I think you're too mean, " wailed her friend. "It's my petproject. You know, I've always said we should go to preparatory schooltogether, and then to college. "

Nan's eyes sparkled; but she shook her head. 

"We sat together in primary school, and we've always been in the samegrade through grammar and into high, " went on Bess, who was really veryfaithful in her friendships. "It would just break my heart, Nan, if wewere to be separated now. "

Nan put her arm about her. They had reached the corner by Bess's bighouse where they usually separated after school. 

"Don't you cry, honey!" Nan begged her chum. "You'll find lots of nicegirls at that Lakeview school, I am sure. I'd dearly love to go withyou, but you might as well understand right now, dear, that my folks arepoor. "

"Poor!" gasped Bess. 

"Too poor to send me to Lakeview, " Nan went on steadily. "And with themills closing as they are, we shall be poorer still. I may have to get acertificate as Bertha Pike did, and go to work. So you mustn't think anymore about my going to that beautiful school with you. "

"Stop! I won't listen to you another moment, Nan Sherwood!" cried Bess, and sticking her fingers in her ears, she ran angrily away and up thewalk to the front door. 

Nan walked briskly away toward Amity Street. She did not turn back towave her hand as usual at the top of the hill. 

Chapter II. THE COTTAGE ON AMITY STREET

The little shingled cottage stood back from the street, in a deeper yardthan most of its neighbors. It was built the year Nan was born, so theroses, the honeysuckle, and the clematis had become of stalwart growthand quite shaded the front and side porches. 

The front steps had begun to sag a little; but Mr. Sherwood had blockedthem up. The front fence had got out of alignment, and the same ablemechanic had righted it and set the necessary new posts. 

The trim of the little cottage on Amity Street had been painted twicewithin Nan's remembrance; each time her father had done the work in hisspare time. 

Now, with snow on the ground and frozen turf peeping out from underthe half-melted and yellowed drifts, the Sherwood cottage was not soattractive as in summer. Yet it was a cozy looking house with the earlylamplight shining through the kitchen window and across the porch as Nanapproached, swinging her schoolbooks. 

Papa Sherwood called it, with that funny little quirk in the cornerof his mouth, "a dwelling in amity, more precious than jewels or finegold. "

And it was just that. Nan had had experience enough in the houses of herschool friends to know that none of them were homes like her own. 

All was amity, all was harmony, in the little shingled cottage on thisshort by-street of Tillbury. 

It was no grave and solemn place where the natural outburst of childishspirits was frowned upon, or one had to sit "stiff and starched" uponstools of penitence. 

No, indeed! Nan had romped and played in and about the cottage all herlife. She had been, in fact, of rather a boisterous temperament untillately. 

Her mother's influence was always quieting, and not only with her littledaughter. Mrs. Sherwood's voice was low, and with a dear drawl in it, soNan declared. 

She had come from the South to Northern Illinois, from Tennessee, tobe exact, where Mr. Sherwood had met and married her. She had grace andgentleness without the languor that often accompanies those qualities. 

Her influence upon both her daughter and her husband was marked. Theydeferred to her, made much of her, shielded her in every way possiblefrom all that was rude or unpleasant. 

Yet Mrs. Sherwood was a perfectly capable and practical housekeeper, andwhen her health would allow it she did all the work of the little familyherself. Just now she was having what she smilingly called "one of herlazy spells, " and old Mrs. Joyce came in to do the washing and cleaningeach week. 

It was one of Mrs. Sherwood's many virtues that she bore with a smilerecurrent bodily ills that had made her a semi-invalid since Nan was avery little girl. But in seeking medical aid for these ills, much of theearnings of the head of the household had been spent. 

The teakettle was singing when Nan entered the "dwelling in amity", andher mother's low rocker was drawn close to the side-table on which thelamp stood beside the basket of mending. 

Although Mrs. Sherwood could not at present do her own laundry-work, sheinsisted upon darning and patching and mending as only she could darnand patch and mend. 

Mr. Sherwood insisted that a sock always felt more comfortable on hisfoot after "Momsey" had darned it than when it was new. And surely shewas a very excellent needlewoman. 

This evening, however, her work had fallen into her lap with an idleneedle sticking in it. She had been resting her head upon her hand andher elbow on the table when Nan came in. But she spoke in her usualbright way to the girl as the latter first of all kissed her and thenput away her books and outer clothing. 

"What is the good word from out of doors, honey?" she asked. 

Nan's face was rather serious and she could not coax her usualsmile into being. Her last words with Bess Harley had savored of amisunderstanding, and Nan was not of a quarrelsome disposition. 

"I'm afraid there isn't any real good word to be brought from outsidetonight, Momsey, " she confessed, coming back to stand by her mother'schair. 

"Can that be possible, Daughter!" said Mrs. Sherwood, with her low, caressing laugh. "Has the whole world gone wrong?"

"Well, I missed in two recitations and have extras to make up, in thefirst place, " rejoined Nan ruefully. 

"And what else?"

"Well, Bess and I didn't have exactly a falling out; but I couldn't helpoffending her in one thing. That's the second trouble. "

"And is there a 'thirdly, ' my dear?" queried little Mrs. Sherwoodtranquilly. 

"Oh, dear, yes! The worst of all!" cried Nan. "The yellow poster is upat the mills. "

"The yellow poster?" repeated her mother doubtfully, not at firstunderstanding the significance of her daughter's statement. 

"Yes. You know. When there's anything bad to announce to the handsthe Atwater Company uses yellow posters, like a small-pox, or typhoidwarning. The horrid thing! The mills shut down in two weeks, Momsey, andno knowing when they will open again. "

"Oh, my dear!" was the little woman's involuntary tribute to theseriousness of the announcement. 

In a moment she was again her usual bright self. She drew Nan closerto her and her own brown eyes, the full counterpart of her daughter's, winkled merrily. 

"I tell you what let's do, Nan, " she said. 

"What shall we do, Momsey?" repeated the girl, rather lugubriously. 

"Why, let's not let Papa Sherwood know about it, it will make him feelso bad. "

Nan began to giggle at that. She knew what her mother meant. Of course, Mr. Sherwood, being at the head of one of the mill departments, wouldknow all about the announcement of the shut-down; but they would keepup the fiction that they did not know it by being particularly cheerfulwhen he came home from work. 

So Nan giggled and swallowed back her sobs. Surely, if Momsey couldpresent a cheerful face to this family calamity, she could!

The girl ran her slim fingers into the thick mane of her mother's coiledhair, glossy brown hair through which only a few threads of white werespeckled. 

"Your head feels hot, Momsey, " she said anxiously. "Does it ache?"

"A wee bit, honey, " confessed Mrs. Sherwood. 

"Let me take the pins out and rub your poor head, dear, " said Nan. "Youknow, I'm a famous 'massagist. ' Come do, dear. "

"If you like, honey. "

Thus it was that, a little later, when Mr. Sherwood came home with feetthat dragged more than usual on this evening, he opened the door upon avery beautiful picture indeed. 

His wife's hair was "a glory of womanhood, " for it made a tent all abouther, falling quite to the floor as she sat in her low chair. Out of thiscanopy she looked up at the brawny, serious man, roguishly. 

"Am I not a lazy, luxurious person, Papa Sherwood?" she demanded. "Nan is becoming a practical maid, and I presume I put upon the childdreadfully, she is good-natured, like you, Robert. "

"Aye, I know our Nan gets all her good qualities from me, Jessie, " saidher husband. "If she favored you she would, of course, be a very hatefulchild. "

He kissed his wife tenderly. As Nan said, he always "cleaned up" at themills and "came home kissable. "

"I ought to be just next door to an angel, if I absorbed the virtues ofboth my parents, " declared Nan briskly, beginning to braid the wonderfulhair which she had already brushed. "I often think of that. "

Her father poked her tentatively under the shoulder blades with a bluntforefinger, making her squirm. 

"I don't feel the wings sprouting yet, Nancy, " he said, in his dry way. 

"I hope not, yet!" exclaimed the girl. "I'd have to have a new wintercoat if you did, and I know we can't afford that just now. "

"You never said a truer word, Nan, " replied Mr. Sherwood, his voicedropping to a less cheerful level, as he went away to change his coatand light the hanging lamp in the dining room where the supper table wasalready set. 

Mother and daughter looked at each other rather ruefully. 

"Oh, dear me!" whispered Nan. "I never do open my mouth but I put myfoot in it!"

"Goodness!" returned her mother, much amused. "That is an acrobatic featthat I never believed you capable of, honey. "

"We-ell! I reminded Papa Sherwood of our hard luck instead of beingbright and cheerful like you. "

"We will give him a nice supper, honey, and make him forget histroubles. Time enough to call to order the ways and means committeeafterward. " Her husband came back into the kitchen as Nan finishedarranging the hair. "Come, Papa Sherwood!" cried the little lady. "Hotbiscuit; the last of the honey; sweet pickles; sliced cold ham; and abeautiful big plum cake that our Nan made this morning before schooltime, her own self. You MUST smile at all those dainties. "

And the husband and father smiled. They all made an effort to help eachother. But they knew that with the loss of his work would doubtless comethe loss of the home. During the years that had elapsed, Mr. Sherwoodhad paid in part for the cottage; but now the property was deterioratinginstead of advancing in value. He could not increase the mortgage uponit. Prompt payment of interest half-yearly was demanded. And how couldhe meet these payments, not counting living expenses, when his incomewas entirely cut off?

Mr. Sherwood was forty-five years old, an age at which it is difficultfor a man to take up a new trade, or to obtain new employment at his oldone. 

Chapter III. "FISHING"

Nan told of Bess Harley's desire to have her chum accompany her toLakeview Hall the following autumn, as a good joke. 

"I hope I'll be in some good situation by that time, " she said to hermother, confidentially, "helping, at least, to support myself instead ofbeing a burden upon father and you. "

"It's very unselfish of you to propose that, honey, " replied her mother. "But, perhaps, such a sacrifice as the curtailment of your educationwill not be required of you. "

"But, my DEAR!" gasped Nan. "I couldn't go to Lakeview Hall. It wouldcost, why! a pile!"

"I don't know how much a pile is, translated into coin of the realm, honey, " responded Mrs. Sherwood with her low, sweet laugh. "But the onlything we can give our dear daughter, your father and I, is an education. That you MUST have to enable you to support yourself properly when yourfather can do no more for you. "

"But I s'pose I've already had as much education as most girls inTillbury get. So many of them go into the mills and factories at my age. If they can get along, I suppose I can. "

"Hush!" begged her mother quickly. "Don't speak of such a thing. Icouldn't bear to have you obliged to undertake your own support in anysuch way. 

"Both your father and I, honey, had the benefit of more than theordinary common-school education. I went three years to the TennesseeTraining College; I was prepared to teach when your father and I metand married. He obtained an excellent training for his business in atechnical college. We hoped to give our children, if we were blessedwith them, an even better start in life than we had. 

"Had your little brother lived, honey, " added Mrs. Sherwood tenderly, "we should have tried to put him through college, and you, as well. Itwould have been something worthwhile for your father to work for. But Iam afraid all these years that his money has been wasted in attempts tobenefit my health. "

"Oh, Momsey! Don't say it, that way, " urged Nan. "What would we everdo without you? But I sometimes think how nice it would be had I been aboy, my own brother, for instance. A boy can be so much more help than agirl. "

"For shame!" cried her mother, laughing. "Do you dare admit a boy issmarter than a girl, Nan?"

"Not smarter. Only better able to do any kind of work, I guess. Theywouldn't let me work in the file shop, or drive a grocery wagon. "

"Goodness! Listen to the child!" gasped Mrs. Sherwood. "I should hopenot! Why, honey, is your mind running continually on such dreadfulthings? I am afraid your father and I allow you to hear us talk toofrequently about family matters. You must not assume the family'sburdens at your age. "

There was that trend to Nan Sherwood's character, however. With allher blithesomeness and high spirits she was inclined to be serious inthought. 

This conversation occurred several days after the evening when, on theirway home from school, Nan and her school chum, Bess Harley, had read theyellow poster at the gate of the Atwater Mills. 

The district surrounding the mills, in which most of the hands lived, had put on an aspect of mourning. Some of the workmen and their familieshad already packed up and gone. Most of the houses occupied by the handswere owned by the Atwater Company, and if the poor people remained tillJanuary 15th, the wages due them then would be eaten up by the rent ofthe tenements. 

So they were wise to leave when they could. Many who remained would be aburden upon the taxpayers of Tillbury before the winter was over. 

Nan and her folks were not in such a sad situation as the laborers, ofcourse. Mr. Sherwood had a small sum in bank. He had, too, a certainstanding in the community and a line of credit at the stores that hemight have used. 

Debt, however, save that upon their house, he had fought to keep out ofall his married life. That his equity in the Amity Street cottage was sosmall was not his fault; but he owed not any man. 

"Now we must go fishing, " Mrs. Sherwood said, in her sprightly way, whenthe little family really discussed the unfortunate situation after theannouncement of the shut-down of the mills was made public. 

"Goodness, Momsey! What a reckless creature you are, " laughed Mr. Sherwood. "Waste our precious time in such employment, and in the deadof winter, too?"

"Now, Papa Sherwood, I don't mean that kind of fishing at all!" criedthe little woman gaily. "We are going to fish for employment for you, perhaps for a new home. "

"Oh!" gasped Nan. The thought of deserting the little cottage on AmityStreet was a dreadful shock. 

"We must face that possibility, " said her mother firmly. "It may be. Tillbury will see very hard times now that the mills are closed. Othermills and shops will follow suit. "

"Quite true, Momsey, " agreed the husband and father. 

"I am a very logical person, am I not?" said the smiling little lady. 

"But the fishing?" cried Nan curiously. 

"Ah, yes. I am coming to that, " said her mother. "The fishing, to besure! Why, we are going to write letters to just everybody we know, andsome we only know by hearsay, and find out if there isn't a niche forPapa Sherwood somewhere outside Tillbury. "

"So we can!" cried Nan, clapping her hands. 

"I am afraid there is general depression in my line of businesseverywhere, " suggested Mr. Sherwood. "For some years the manufacturershave been forcing cotton goods upon a false market. And the recentattempt to help the cotton growers by boosting the price of raw cottonwill come near to ruining the mills and mill workers. It is alwaysso. In an attempt to benefit one class of the people another class isinjured. "

"Now, never mind politics, sir!" cried his little wife. "We poor, weakwomen aren't supposed to understand such things. Only when Nan and I getthe vote, and all the other millions of women and girls, we will have noclass legislation. 'The greatest good for the greatest number' will beour motto. "

Mr. Sherwood only smiled. He might have pointed out that in that verystatement was the root of all class legislation. He knew his wife'sparticular ideas were good, however, her general political panacea wasrather doubtful. He listened thoughtfully as she went on:

"Yes, we must fish for a new position for papa. We may have to go awayfrom here. Perhaps rent the house. You know, we have had good offers forit. "

"True, " admitted Mr. Sherwood. 

"Oh, dear!" sighed Nan, but below her breath so that Momsey and PapaSherwood did not hear the sigh. 

"I am going to write to Cousin Adair MacKenzie, in Memphis. He is quiteprominent in business there, " pursued Mrs. Sherwood. "We might find afooting in Memphis. "

Mr. Sherwood looked grave, but said nothing. He knew that the enervatingclimate of the Southern river city would never do for his wife. Changeof climate might benefit her greatly; the doctors had all said so oflate; but not that change. 

"Then, " continued Nan's mother, "there is your brother, Henry, up inMichigan. "

"Oh! I remember Uncle Henry, " cried Nan. "Such a big, big man!"

"With a heart quite in keeping with the size of his body, honey, " hermother quickly added. "And your Aunt Kate is a very nice woman. Youruncle has lumber interests. He might find something for your fatherthere. "

"I'll write to Hen, Jessie, " Mr. Sherwood said decisively. "But a lumbercamp is no place for you. Let's see, his mail address is Hobart Forks, isn't it? Right in the heart of the woods. If you weren't eaten up byblack gnats, you would be by ennui, " and he chuckled. 

"Goodness!" cried Mrs. Sherwood, making big eyes at him. "Are those anew kind of mosquito? Ennui, indeed! Am I a baby? Is Nan another?"

"But think of Nan's education, my dear, " suggested Mr. Sherwood. 

"I ought to work and help the family instead of going to school anylonger, " Nan declared. 

"Not yet, Daughter, not yet, " her father said quickly. "However, I willwrite to Hen. He may be able to suggest something. "

"It might be fun living in the woods, " Nan said. "I'm not afraid ofgnats, or mosquitoes, or, or on-wees!"

She chanced to overhear her father and Dr. Christian talking the nextday on the porch, and heard the wise old physician say:

"I'm not sure I could countenance that, Robert. What Jessie needs is aninvigorating, bracing atmosphere. A sea voyage would do her the greatestpossible good. "

"Perhaps a trip to Buffalo, down the lakes?"

"No, no! That's merely an old woman's home-made plaster on the wound. Something more drastic. Salt air. A long, slow voyage, overseas. Itoften wracks the system, but it brings the patient to better and morestable health. Jessie may yet be a strong, well woman if we take theright course with her. "

Nevertheless, Mr. Sherwood wrote to his brother. He had to do so, itseemed. There was no other course open to him. 

And while he fished in that direction, Momsey threw out her line towardMemphis and Adair MacKenzie. Mr. Sherwood pulled in his line first, without much of a nibble, it must be confessed. 

"Dear Bob, " the elder Sherwood wrote: "Things are flatter than astepped-on pancake with me. I've got a bunch of trouble with old GedRaffer and may have to go into court with him. Am not cutting a stickof timber. But you and Jessie and the little nipper, "("Consider!"interjected Nan, "calling me 'a little nipper'! What does he consider abig 'nipper'?") "come up to Pine Camp. Kate and I will be mighty glad tohave you here. Tom and Rafe are working for a luckier lumberman than I, and there's plenty of room here for all hands, and a hearty welcome foryou and yours as long as there's a shot in the locker. "

"That's just like Hen, " Nan's father said. "He'd divide his last crustwith me. But I don't want to go where work is scarce. I must go where itis plentiful, where a man of even my age will be welcome. "

"Your age, Papa Sherwood! How you talk, " drawled Nan's mother in herpretty way. "You are as young as the best of 'em yet. "

"Employers don't look at me through your pretty eyes, Momsey, " hereturned, laughing. 

"Well, " said his wife, still cheerfully, "my fishing seems to beresultless yet. Perhaps the bait's gone off the hook. Had I better haulin the line and bait again? I was always doing that when I went fishingwith Adair and his brothers, years ago, when I was a little girl. "

Her husband shook his head. "Have patience, Jessie, " he said. 

He had few expectations from the Memphis letter; yet there was a mostsurprising result from it on the way, something which by no possibilitycould the little family in the Amity Street cottage have suspected. 

Chapter IV. SWEEPING CLEAN

"My goodness me!" ejaculated Bess Harley. "Talk about the 'leaden wingsof Time. ' Why! Time sweeps by us on electrically-driven, ball-bearingpinions. Here's another week gone, Nan, and tomorrow's Saturday. "

"Yes, " Nan agreed. "Time flies all too quickly, for me, anyway. Themills have been closed a week now. "

"Oh, dear! That's all I hear, " complained Bess. "Those tiresome oldmills. Our Maggie's sister was crying in the kitchen last night becauseher Mike couldn't get a job now the mills were closed, and was drinkingup all the money they had saved. That's what the mill-hands do; theirmoney goes to the saloon-keepers!"

"The proportion of their income spent by the laboring class foralcoholic beverages is smaller by considerable than that spent bythe well-to-do for similar poison!" quoted Nan decisively. "Mike isdesperate, I suppose, poor fellow!"

"My goodness me!" cried Bess again. "You are most exasperating, NanSherwood. Mike's case has nothing to do with political Economy, and I dowish you'd drop that study out of school----"

"I have!" gasped Nan, for just then her books slipped from her strap;"and history, rhetoric, and philosophical readings along with it, " andshe proceeded cheerfully to pick up the several books mentioned. 

"You can't mean, " Bess said, still severely, "that you won't go toLakeview with me, Nan?"

"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that, Bess, " Nan Sherwood cried. "Is itmy fault? Don't you suppose I'd love to, if I could? We have no money. Father is out of work. There is no prospect of other work for him inTillbury, he says, and, " Nan continued desperately, "how do you supposeI can go to a fancy boarding school under these circumstances?"

"Why-----"

For once Elizabeth was momentarily silenced. Suddenly her facebrightened. "I tell you!" she exclaimed. "I'll speak to my father aboutit. He can fix it so that you will be able to go to the Hall with me, Iknow. "

"I'd like to see myself an object of charity!" Nan cried, with heat. "I, guess, not! What I can't earn, or my father can't give me, I'll gowithout, Bess. That's all there is to that!"

Bess stared at her with quivering lips. "You can't be so mean, Nan, " shefaltered. 

"I'm not mean!" denied the other. 

"I'd like to know what you call it? Why, father'd never miss yourtuition money in the world. And I know he'd pay your way if I asked himand told him how bad I felt about your not going. "

"You're a dear, Bess!" declared Nan, impulsively hugging her friendagain. "But you mustn't ask him, honey. It wouldn't be right, and Icouldn't accept. 

"Don't you understand, honey, that I have some pride in the matter?So have Papa Sherwood and Momsey. What they can't do for me their ownselves I wouldn't want anybody to do. "

"Why, that sounds awfully silly to me, Nan!" said Bess. "Why not takeall you can get in this world? I'm sure I should. "

"You don't know what you are saying, " Nan returned seriously. "And, then, you are not poor, so you can afford to say it, and even do it. "

"Poor! I'm getting to hate that word, " cried Bess stormily. "It neverbothered me before, much. We're not poor and none of our friends werepoor. Not until those old mills closed. And now it seems all I hear isabout folks being POOR. I hate it!"

"I guess, " said Nan ruefully, "you don't hate it half as much as thoseof us who have to suffer it. "

"I'm just going to find some way of getting you to Lakeview Hall, mydear, " Bess rejoined gloomily. "Why! I won't want to go myself if youdon't go, Nan. "

Her friend thought she would better not tell Bess just then that theprospect was that she, with her father and mother, would have to leaveTillbury long before the autumn. Mr. Sherwood was trying to obtaina situation in Chicago, in a machine shop. He had no hope of gettinganother foreman's position. 

Nothing had been heard from Mr. Adair MacKenzie, of Memphis. Mrs. Sherwood wanted to write again; but her husband begged her not to. Hehad a proper pride. It looked to him as though his wife's cousin did notcare to be troubled by the necessities of his relations. 

"We'll get along!" was Mr. Sherwood's repeated and cheerful statement. "Never say die! Hope is our anchor! Fate shall not balk us! And all theother copy-book maxims. "

But it was Mrs. Sherwood and Nan who managed to save and scrimp andbe frugal in many infinitesimal ways, thus making their savings lastmarvelously. 

Nan gave up her entire Saturdays to household tasks. She insisted onthat, and urged the curtailment of the weekly expense by having Mrs. Joyce come in to help but one day. 

"I can iron, Momsey, and if I can't do it very well at first, I canlearn, " declared the plucky girl. "And, of course, I can sweep. That'sgood for me. Our physical instructor says so. Instead of going to thegym on Saturday, I'll put in calisthenics and acrobatic stunts with abroom and duster. "

She was thorough, too. She could not have been her father's daughterwithout having that virtue. There was no "lick and a promise" in NanSherwood's housekeeping. She did not sweep the dust under the bureau, or behind the door, or forget to wipe the rounds of the chairs and thebaseboard all around the rooms. 

Papa Sherwood, coughing in the lower hall as the dust descended fromabove, declared she went through the cottage like a whirlwind. It wasnot as bad as that, but her vigorous young arms wielded the broom withconsiderable skill. 

One Saturday, with every other room swept but the front hall, she closedthe doors into that, and set wide open the outer door. There was moresnow on the ground now; but the porch was cleaned and the path to thefront gate neatly dug and swept. The tinkle of sleigh bells and thelaughter of a crowd of her school friends swept by the corner of AmityStreet. Nan ran out upon the porch and waved her duster at them. 

There she stood, smiling out upon her little world for a minute. Shemight not see Amity Street, and the old neighbors, many weeks longer. Ahalf-promise of work from the Chicago machine shop boss had reached Mr. Sherwood that morning by post. It seemed the only opening, and itmeant that they would have to give up the "dwelling in amity" and go tocrowded Chicago to live. For Momsey was determined that Papa Sherwoodshould not go without her. 

Nan came back into the hall and began to wield the broom again. Shecould not leave the door open too long, for it was cold outside and thewinter chill would get into the house. They had to keep all the rooms atan even temperature on account of Momsey's health. 

But she swept vigorously, moving each piece of furniture, and throwingthe rugs out upon the porch for a special sweeping there. The rough matat the door was a heavy one. As Nan stooped to pick it up and toss itafter the other small rugs, she saw the corner of a yellow envelopesticking from under the edge of the hall carpet. 

"Wonder what that is?" murmured Nan. "Somebody has thrust a circular, or advertisement, under our door, and it's gone under the carpet. Yes!There's a tack out there. "

She seized the corner of the envelope with thumb and finger. She drew itout. Its length surprised her. It was a long, official looking envelope, not bulky but most important looking. In the upper left-hand corner wasprinted:

ADAIR MACKENZIE & CO. STOCKS AND BONDS MEMPHIS

It was properly stamped and addressed to her mother. By the postmark onit Nan knew it must have been tucked under the door by the postman morethan a week before. Somehow he had failed to ring their bell when heleft the letter. The missing tack in the edge of the hall carpet hadallowed the document to slide out of sight, and it might have beenhidden for weeks longer had chance not shown the small corner ofstraw-colored paper to Nan. 

She felt breathless. Her knees trembled. Somehow, Nan just KNEW that theletter from her mother's cousin must be of enormous importance. Sheset her broom in the corner and closed the door. It was fated that sheshould do no more sweeping that day. 

Chapter V. GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Mr. Sherwood, in overalls and an old cap, had been sifting cinders outbehind the shed. They had to be careful of fuel as well as of most otherthings. Momsey would not open the long envelope until he had been calledand had come in. Nan still wore the bright colored bandana wound abouther head, turban-wise, for a dust cap. Papa Sherwood beat the ashes fromhis hands as he stood before the glowing kitchen range. 

"What is it?" he asked calmly. "A notice of a new tax assessment? Or acure-all advertisement of Somebody's Pills?"

"It's from Cousin Adair, " said Momsey, a little breathlessly. "And it'sbeen lying at our door all the time. "

"All what time?" asked Mr. Sherwood curiously. 

"All the time we have been so disappointed in our inquiries elsewhere, "said Momsey soberly. 

"Oh!" responded her husband doubtfully, and said no more. 

"It makes my knees shake, " confessed Nan. "Do open it, Momsey!"

"I, I feel that it is important, too, " the little lady said. 

"Well, my dear, " her husband finally advised, having waited in patience, "unless it is opened we shall never know whether your feeling isprophetic or not. 'By the itching of my thumb, ' and so forth!"

Without making any rejoinder to this, and perhaps without hearing hisgentle raillery, Mrs. Sherwood reached up to the coils of her thick hairto secure woman's never-failing implement, a hairpin. 

There were two enclosures. Both she shook into her lap. The sealed, foreign-looking letter she picked up first. It was addressed in aclerkly hand to, "MISTRESS JESSIE ADAIR BLAKE, "KINDNESS OF MESSRS. ADAIR MACKENZIE & CO. 

"MEMPHIS, TENN. , U. S. A. "

"From England. No! From Scotland, " murmured Nan, looking over hermother's shoulder in her eagerness. She read the neatly printed card inthe corner of the foreign envelope:

KELLAM & BLAKE HADBORNE CHAMBERS EDINBURGH

Mrs. Sherwood was whispering her maiden name over to herself. She lookedup suddenly at her husband with roguish eyes. 

"I'd almost forgotten there ever was such a girl as Jessie Adair Blake, "she said. 

"Oh, Momsey!" squealed Nan, with clasped hands and immense impatience. "Don't, DON'T be so slow! Open it!"

"No-o, " her mother said, with pursed lips. "No, honey. The other comesfirst, I reckon. "

It was a letter typewritten upon her cousin's letter-head; but itwas not dictated by Mr. Adair MacKenzie. Instead, it was from Mr. MacKenzie's secretary, who stated that her employer had gone to Mexicoon business that might detain him for several weeks. 

"A letter addressed by you to Mr. MacKenzie arrived after his departureand is being held for him with other personal communications untilhis return; but being assured that you are the Jessie Adair Blake, nowSherwood--to whom the enclosed letter from Scotland is addressed, I takethe liberty of forwarding the same. The Scotch letter reached us afterMr. MacKenzie's departure, likewise. Will you please acknowledge thereceipt of the enclosure and oblige?"

This much of the contents of the secretary's letter was of particularinterest to the Sherwoods. Momsey's voice shook a little as she finishedreading it. Plainly she was disappointed. 

"Cousin Adair, I am sure, would have suggested something helpful hadhe been at home, " she said sadly. "It, it is a great disappointment, Robert. "

"Well, well!" replied Mr. Sherwood, perhaps not without some secretrelief. "It will all come out right. At least, your cousin hasn'trefused his assistance. We shall be established somewhere before hereturns from his Mexican trip. "

"I, I did depend so much upon Adair's good will and advice, " signedMomsey. 

"But, dear me suz!" gasped Nan impatiently. "What are you folksbothering over that for? It isn't Cousin Adair that I want to knowabout. It's this letter, Momsey, " and she seized the thin yet importantenvelope from Scotland and shook it before her mother's eyes. 

"Better look into it, Momsey, " advised Mr. Sherwood easily, preparing toreturn to the cinder sifting. "Maybe it's from some of your relatives inthe Old Country. I see 'Blake' printed in the corner. Didn't your fatherhave an uncle or somebody, who was steward on the estate of a ScotchLaird of some renown?"

"Heck, mon!" cried Momsey, with her usual gaiety, and throwing off thecloud of gloom that had momentarily subdued her spirit. "Ye air a wisecheil. Ma faither talked muckle o' Uncle Hughie Blake, remimberin' himfra' a wee laddie when his ain faither took him tae Scotland, and taeCastle Emberon, on a veesit. "

Nan and Papa Sherwood laughed at her when she assumed the Scotch burr ofher forebears. With precision she cut the flap of this smaller envelope. She felt no excitement now. She had regained control of herself afterthe keen disappointment arising from the first letter. 

She calmly opened the crackly sheet of legal looking paper in her lap. It was not a long letter, and it was written in a stiff, legal hand, instead of being typewritten, each character as precise as the legalmind that dictated it:

"Mistress Jessie Adair Blake, (Known to be a married woman, but weddedname unknown to writer. )

"Dear Madam: It is my duty to inform you that your father (the lateRandolph Hugh Blake) was made sole beneficiary of his late uncle, Mr. Hugh Blake, the Laird of Emberon's steward, by a certain testament, orwill, made many years ago. Mr. Hugh Blake has recently died a bachelor, and before his demise he added a codicil to the above testament, orwill, naming you, his great niece, his sole heir and beneficiary. 

"There are other relatives who may make some attempt to oppose yourclaim; but none of near blood. Your title to the said estate is clear;but it is quite necessary that you should appear before our Courts withproofs of identity, and so forth. On receipt from you of acknowledgmentof this letter, with copies of identification papers (your grandfather'snaturalization papers, your father's discharge from army, your own birthcertificate and marriage lines, and so forth) I will give myselfthe pleasure of forwarding any further particulars you may wish, andlikewise place at your command my own services in obtaining possessionfor you of your great uncle's estate. 

"The said estate of Mr. Hugh Blake, deceased, amounts, in real andpersonal property, including moneys in the bank, to about the sum, roughly estimated, of 10, 000 pounds. 

"Respectfully, your servant, "Andrew Blake, Solicitor and Att'y. "

Nan had leaned over her mother's shoulder, big-eyed, scarce believingthe plainly written words she read. It was preposterous, ridiculous, fanciful, a dream from which she must awake in a moment to the fullrealization of their dreadful need of just such a godsend as this. 

It was her father's voice that roused the girl. He had not seen theletter and Momsey had read it silently to herself. 

"Look out, Nancy! What is the matter with your mother?"

With a cry the girl caught the frail little lady in her arms as theletter slipped unheeded from her lap to the floor. Mrs. Sherwood's eyeswere closed. She had fainted. 

Chapter VI. A SPRAT FOR A HERRING

"I don't need the doctor this time, honey; joy never killed yet. "

So said Mrs. Sherwood, opening her eyes to see the scared face of Nanclose above her. Then she saw her husband at her feet, quietly chafingher hands in his own hard, warm palms. She pulled hers gently from hisclasp and rested them upon his head. Mr. Sherwood's hair was iron-gray, thick, and inclined to curl. She ran her little fingers into it andclung tightly. 

"Let, let me get my breath!" she gasped. Then, after a moment she smiledbrilliantly into the wind-bitten face of the kneeling man. "It's allover, Robert, " she said. 

"My dear!" he cried thickly; while Nan could not wholly stifle the cryof fear that rose to her lips. 

"It's all over, " repeated the little woman. "All the worry, all thepoverty, all the uncertainty, all the hard times. "

Mr. Sherwood looked startled indeed. He had no idea what the letterfrom Scotland contained, and he feared that his wife, who had alreadysuffered so much, was for the moment quite out of her head. 

"My poor Jessie, " he began, but her low, sweet laugh stopped him. 

"Not poor! Never poor again, Robert!" she cried. "God is very good tous. At the very darkest hour He has shown us the dawn. Robert, we arerich!"

"Great goodness, Jessie! What do you mean? Exclaimed Mr. Sherwood, stumbling to his feet at last. 

"It's true! It's true, Papa Sherwood!" Nan cried, clapping her hands. "Don't you call ten thousand dollars riches?"

"Ten, thousand, dollars?" murmured her father. He put his hand tohis head and looked confusedly about for a seat, into which he weaklydropped. Nan had picked up the letter and now she dramatically thrust itinto his hand. 

"Read that, Papa Sherwood!" she said commandingly. 

He read the communication from the Scotch attorney, first with immensesurprise, then with profound doubt. Who but a young imaginative girl, like Nan, or a woman with unbounded faith in the miracles of God, likeher mother, could accept such a perfectly wonderful thing as being real?

"A hoax, " thought the man who had worked so hard all his life withoutthe least expectation of ever seeing a penny that he did not earnhimself. "Can it be that any of those heedless relatives of my wife's inMemphis have attempted a practical joke at this time?"

He motioned for Nan to bring him the envelope, too. This he examinedclosely, and then read the communication again. It looked all regular. The stationery, the postmark, the date upon it, all seemed perfectly inaccord. 

Mrs. Sherwood's gay little laugh shattered the train of her husband'sthought. "I know what the matter is with you, Papa Sherwood, " she said. "You think it must be a practical joke. "

"Oh!" gasped Nan, feeling a positive pain at her heart. This awfulpossibility had never entered her mind before. 

"But it isn't, " went on her mother blithely. "It is real. Mr. HughBlake, of Emberon, must have been very old; and he was probably assaving and canny as any Scotchman who ever wore kilts. It is notsurprising that he should have left an estate of considerable size-----"

"Ten thousand dollars!" breathed Nan again. She loved to repeat it. There was white magic in the very sound of such a sum of money. But herfather threw a conversational bomb into their midst the next instant. 

"Ten thousand dollars, you goosey!" he said vigorously. "That's the maindoubt in the whole business. It isn't ten thousand dollars. It's fiftythousand dollars! A pound, either English or Scotch, is almost five ofour dollars. Ten thousand dollars would certainly be a fortune for us;fifty thousand is beyond the dreams of avarice. "

"Oh, dear me!" said Nan weakly. 

But Mrs. Sherwood merely laughed again. "The more the better, " she said. "Why shouldn't we be able to put fifty thousand dollars to good use?"

"Oh, we can, Momsey, " said Nan eagerly. "But, will we be let?"

Mr. Sherwood laughed grimly at that; but his wife continued confidently:

"I am sure nobody needs it more than we do. "

"Why!" her daughter said, just as excitedly, "we'll be as rich as BessHarley's folks. Oh, Momsey! Oh, Papa Sherwood! Can I go to LakewoodHall?"

The earnestness of her cry showed the depths to which that desire hadplumbed during these last weeks of privation and uncertainty. It wasNan's first practical thought in relation to the possibility of theirchanged circumstances. 

The father and mother looked at each other with shocked understanding. The surprise attending the letter had caused both parents to forget, for the moment, the effect of this wonderful promise of fortune, whethertrue or false, on imaginative, high-spirited Nan. 

"Let us be happy at first, Nan, just in the knowledge that some money iscoming to us, " Mrs. Sherwood said more quietly. "Never mind how much, orhow little. Time will tell all that. "

"Now you talk like father, " cried Nan, pouting. 

"And let father talk a little, too, " Mr. Sherwood said, smiling, "andto you both. " His right forefinger struck the letter emphatically in hisother hand. "This is a very wonderful, a blessed, thing, if true. But ithas to be proven. We must build our hopes on no false foundation. "

"Oh, Papa Sherwood! How can we, when the man says there-----"

"Hush!" whispered Momsey, squeezing her excited little daughter's hand. 

"In the first place, " continued Mr. Sherwood quietly and gravely, "theremay be some mistake in the identification of your mother, child, as theniece mentioned in this old man's will. "

"Oh!" Nan could not help that gasp. 

"Again, there may be stronger opposition to her claim than this lawyerat present sees. Fifty thousand dollars is a whole lot of money, andother people by the name of Blake will be tempted by it. "

"How mean of them!" whispered Nan. 

"And, above all, " pursued Mr. Sherwood, "this may be merely a scheme byunprincipled people to filch small sums of money from gullible people. The 'foreign legacy swindle' is worked in many different ways. Theremay be calls for money, by this man who names himself Andrew Blake, forpreliminary work on the case. We haven't much; but if he is baiting forhundreds of Blakes in America he may secure, in the aggregate, a verytidy sum indeed. "

"Oh, Father!" cried Nan. "That's perfectly horrid!"

"But perfectly possible. Let us not swallow this bait, hook, line andsinker. You see, he sends no copy of the will in question, orthat codicil relating to your mother's legacy; nor does he offeridentification or surety as to his own standing. Don't let thepossibilities of this wonderful thing carry you off your feet, my dear. "

Nan's lip was quivering and she could scarcely crowd back the tears. Tohave one's hopes rise so high only to be dashed-----. 

"Don't completely crush us, Papa Sherwood, with your perfectlyunanswerable logic, " said his wife lightly. "We'll remember all thesestrictures, and more. We can at least put the matter to the test. "

"Quite so, " agreed her husband. "We will prepare the papers requestedby this Scotch attorney. I will even inquire of a good lawyer heresomething regarding the Scotch laws in such a matter as this, if it willbe necessary to make a personal appearance before the local courtsover there. And perhaps we can find out the true standing of Mr. AndrewBlake, of Kellam & Blake, Edinburgh. It will cost us a little money, andwe can ill spare it now; but to satisfy ourselves-----"

"We will throw a sprat to catch a herring, " quoted Momsey cheerfully. 

"Quite so, " repeated Mr. Sherwood. 

"But, dear, DEAR!" moaned Nan. "Is that all it is going to amount to?Don't you really believe it's all true, Papa Sherwood?"

"I can't say that I do, my dear, " returned her father gravely. "Suchromantic things as this do not often happen outside of story books. "

"Then, I declare!" cried Nan desperately, "I wish we lived in a storybook!"

"Your father will make inquiries at once, honey, " said Momsey easily, seemingly very little disturbed herself by her husband's doubts andfears. To her mind this wonderful turn of fortune's wheel was in directanswer to prayer. Nothing could shake her faith in the final resultof her husband's inquiries. Yet, she was proud of his caution and goodsense. 

"I do think it is dreadful, " murmured Nan, "to believe one's self richfor only a minute!"

"Have patience, honey, " said her mother. 

"Meanwhile, " added Mr. Sherwood, rising, "I will go back to siftingcinders. "

But Nan did no more sweeping that day. 

Chapter VII. A VISTA OF NEW FORTUNES

Nan said nothing to Bess Harley, her particular chum and confidant, about the wonderful letter that had come from Scotland. Although Momseyand Nan talked the legacy over intimately that Saturday afternoon, andplanned what they would really do with some of the money "when theirship came in, " the young girl knew that the matter was not to bediscussed outside of the family circle. 

Not even the hope Nan now cherished of accompanying her chum to LakeviewHall when the next school year opened was divulged when the two girlswere together on Sunday, or on the days that immediately followed. 

Nan Sherwood went about her household and school tasks in a sort ofwaking dream. Imagination was continually weaving pictures in her mindof what might happen if the vista of new fortunes that had opened beforethe little family in the Amity Street cottage really came true. 

Papa Sherwood's first reports on the matter of the Scotch legacy werenot inspiring. 

"Mr. Bludsoe says we'd better go slow, " he said seriously. Mr. Bludsoewas a lawyer of high repute in Tillbury. "This letter may be written byan attorney in Edinburgh; but there are rascally lawyers there as wellas elsewhere. Bludsoe had correspondents in London. They may be able toinform him regarding the firm of solicitors, Kellam & Blake, if the firmreally is entered at the Scotch bar. "

"Oh! But won't that mean delay?" murmured Nan. 

"Meanwhile, " said her father, smiling at her impatience, "we willprepare the papers identifying your dear mother so that, if thiswonderful new fortune should be a reality, we can put in a proper claimfor it. Just the same, " he added to his wife, when Nan had left theroom, "I have written to that machine shop boss in Chicago that I amready to come to work any day he may send for me. "

"Oh, Robert!" gasped the little lady. "Won't you believe?"

"Like the darkey who was asked if he believed the world was round, andsaid, 'Ah believes it, but Ah ain't dead sho' of it. ' I presume thisgreat fortune is possible, Jessie, but I haven't perfect and abidingfaith in its existence, FOR us, " said her husband. 

But Momsey had just that quality of faith. She went singing about herhousehold tasks and her usual smile beamed quite beatific. So said Dr. Christian, who stepped in to see her, as was his custom every few days. 

"What's this? What's this?" the old medical practitioner demanded of Mr. Sherwood, on the porch, where he usually made his report, and to whichNan often stole to listen openly to them discuss her mother's case. "I find her in a state of happy excitement, and that is quite right, Robert, quite right, if the hopes that are the wellspring of it arenot quenched. What does it mean? Have you arranged the sea voyage Iadvised?"

Papa Sherwood's face changed suddenly. He looked oddly, Nan thought, at the doctor. "I don't know but that is it, Doc, " he said. "That seavoyage may be in the offing. "

"Best thing that could happen to her, best thing that could happen toher!" declared the old physician with emphasis, as he stumped away. 

Nan wondered what that could mean. A sea voyage for Momsey? Of course, for all of them. She could not imagine Momsey going anywhere without herand Papa Sherwood. 

She knew she was not to say anything about what she heard pass betweenher father and the doctor on the porch. Indeed, Nan was no bearerof tales in any event. But she was very curious. The steam from thecauldron of Mystery seldom arose in the little "dwelling in amity"save about Christmas time or just previous to Nan's birthday. But PapaSherwood certainly was enigmatical and Momsey was mysteriously happy, asDr. Christian had said. 

"And we'll put steam heat in the little house. You know, Robert, we'vealways wanted to, " Nan's mother suddenly said one evening as they allsat around the reading lamp, and quite apropos of nothing at all. Thenshe laughed, flushing prettily. "There! You see what my mind runs on. Ireally can't help it. "

It was only a day or two later that the second letter came from Memphis. Mr. Adair MacKenzie had returned from Mexico and evidently one ofthe first duties he performed was to write his Cousin Jessie hiscongratulations. 

"A letter on quite another matter, " this epistle read, "from our distantkinsman, Andrew Blake, of Kellam & Blake, apprised me that the ancientHugh Blake, steward to the Lairds of Emberon for so many years, was deadand that his property was willed to your father, whose appearance as alad at Emberon pleased the old man greatly. 

"You are to be congratulated. The estate is considerable, I understand. Your husband's troubles which are mentioned in your letter that Ifound awaiting my return will now be over. For, although Andrew Blakeintimates that there may be considerable opposition in the courts there, over the money going to an American heir, you will be able in the end toestablish your rights. 

"Believe me, my dear Jessie, I know of nobody in our family to whom Iwould rather see fortune come than to yourself and your dear ones. IfI can be of any assistance, financially, or otherwise, in helping youobtain your rights in this event, believe me, I stand ready to give suchaid. Do not hesitate to call upon me. My regards to your husband andlittle girl whom I have never seen; Alice and John join me in expressingour good wishes for your happy future. I remain, with the old love Ialways had for you, Your cousin, Adair MacKenzie. "

"Now, Robert, what have you to say?" cried Momsey triumphantly, whileNan danced a fandango about the room. 

"This much, " replied her husband, smiling. "Our minds are relieved onone point, at least. Kellam & Blake are respectable attorneys. We willsend our communication to Mr. Blake at once, without waiting for Mr. Bludsoe's enquiries to bear fruit. Your Cousin Adair knows the Scotchfirm, and of course vouches for their trustworthiness. "

"Dear me, Papa Sherwood, you are so practical!" sighed Nan. She meant"vexing;" they were interchangeable terms to her mind at this excitingpoint. "Can't you work up any enthusiasm over Momsey's wonderfulfortune?"

"Its existence is established, it would seem, beyond peradventure, " saidMr. Sherwood drily. "But our attempt to obtain the fortune is not yetbegun. "

"Why, ee!" squealed Nan. "You don't really suppose anybody will try tokeep Momsey from getting it?"

"Exactly that, " said her father. "The Blakes are a widely scatteredclan. There are probably a number of people as close in blood-tie to theold man who has just died as your mother, my dear. These people may allbob up, one after another, to dispute Momsey's claim. "

"But, dear me!" gasped Nan. "The money was willed to Momsey. "

"Nevertheless, these other relatives, if there be such--can keep Momseyout of the enjoyment of her rights for a long time. Court processes areslow, and especially so, I should judge, among the canny and carefulScotch. I think we would better leave it to the lawyers to settle. Wecannot hasten the courts by worrying over the fortune. 

"I think, " pursued Papa Sherwood judiciously, "that instead of spendingour time discussing and dreaming of the fortune in Scotland, we wouldbetter go right on with our tasks here as though there were really nofortune at all. "

"Oh, my!" whispered Nan, her eyes clouding. "That's because of my lastfortnightly report. I know I fell behind in history and rhetoric. "

"Don't be too hard on us, Papa Sherwood, " said Momsey brightly. "Anticipation is more than half of every pleasure. I lie awake everynight and spend this great fortune of ours to the very last penny. "

"Of course, " the little lady added, with more gravity, "I wouldn'treally spend fifty thousand dollars so recklessly as I do in my mind. But I can found schools, and hospitals, and educate Nan, and give you, Papa Sherwood, a great big business, and buy two automobiles, and-----"

"Enough! Enough!" cried Mr. Sherwood, in mock seriousness. "You are aborn spendthrift, Momsey. That you have had no chance to really be onethus far will only make your case more serious when you have this legacyin your possession. Two automobiles, no less!"

"But I want you both, my dears, to bear one very important fact in mind. Roughly estimated the fortune is ten thousand pounds. To be exact, itmay be a good deal less at the start. Then, after the lawyers and thecourts get through with the will and all, the remainder that dribblesinto your pocket, Momsey, may be a very small part of ten thousandpounds. "

"Oh, how horrid, Papa Sherwood!" cried Nan. "We won't listen to him, will we, Momsey?"

"Oh, yes we will, " her mother said quietly, but smiling. "But we willstill believe that the world is good and that God has given us greatgood fortune. Papa talks very sensibly; but I know that there is nothingto fear. We are going to be very well off for the rest of our lives, andI cannot be thankful enough for it. "

At that Mr. Sherwood literally threw up his hands. "Nevertheless, "he said, "I expect to go to Chicago next Monday, to begin work in themachine shop. The boss writes me that I can come at that time. "

"I will get your clothes ready for you, Robert, " said Momsey calmly. "Perhaps you will feel better in your mind if you keep busy during thistime of waiting. "

Chapter VIII. TWO IMPORTANT HAPPENINGS

It happened, however, that Mr. Sherwood did not go to Chicago to work inthe machine shop. Something happened before the week was out, that quiteput his intention aside. 

Indeed, Nan declared that two important happenings just then changed thecurrent of affairs at the little cottage on Amity Street and that shehad a principal part in the action of the first of these unexpectedhappenings. 

It was lovely skating on Norway Pond, and both Nan and her chum, BessHarley, were devoted to the sport. Nan had been unable to be on the iceSaturdays, because of her home tasks; but when her lessons were learned, she was allowed to go after supper. 

It happened to be just at the dark of the moon this week; that kept manyoff the ice, although the weather was settled and the ice was perfectlysafe. Sometimes the boys built a bonfire on Woody Point, with refusefrom the planing mill, and that lit up a good bit of the ice. 

But once out on the pond, away from the shadows cast by the high banks, the girls could see well enough. They were both good skaters, and witharms crossed and hands clasped, they swung up the middle of the pond infine style. 

"I just love to skate with you, Nan, " sighed Bess ecstatically. "Youmove just like my other self. We're Siamese twins. We strike outtogether perfectly. Oh, my dear! I don't see whatever I am to do if yourefuse to go to Lakeview with me. "

Nan could scarcely keep from telling Bess of the wonderful new fortunethat seemed about to come to her; but she was faithful to her hometraining, and only said:

"Don't fret about it, honey. Maybe something will turn up to let me go. "

"If you'd let my father pay your way-----?" insinuated Bess. 

"Don't talk of that. It's impossible, " said Nan decisively. "It's a longtime yet to fall. Maybe conditions will be different at home. A dozenthings may happen before school opens in September. "

"Yes! But they may not be the right things, " sighed Bess. 

She could not be too melancholy on such a night as this, however. It wasperfectly quiet, and the arch of the sky was like black velvet prickedout with gold and silver stars. Their soft radiance shed some light uponthe pond, enough, at least, to show the girl chums the way before themas they skimmed on toward Powerton Landing. 

They had left a noisy crowd of boys behind them, near the stamp Factory, mostly mill boys, and the like. Bess had been taught at home to shrinkfrom association with the mill people and that is why she had urged Nanto take this long skate up the pond. Around the Tillbury end of it theywere always falling in with little groups of mill boys and girls whomBess did not care to meet. 

There was another reason this evening for keeping away from the stampfactory, too. The manager of that big shop had hired a gang of icecutters a few days before, and had filled his own private icehouse. Themen had cut out a roughly outlined square of the thick ice, sawed itinto cakes, and poled it to shore and so to the sleds and the manager'sicehouse. 

It was not a large opening in the ice; but even if the frost continued, it would be several days before the new ice would form thickly enough tobear again over that spot. 

Elsewhere, however, the ice was strong, for all the cutting for thebig icehouses had been done long before near the Landing. The lights ofPowerton Landing were twinkling ahead of them as the two friends swepton up the long lake. The wind was in their faces, such wind as therewas, and the air was keen and nippy. 

The action of skating, however, kept Nan and Bess warm. Bess in her fursand Nan in her warm tam-o'-shanter and the muffler Momsey had knittedwith her own hands, did not mind the cold. 

The evening train shrieked out of the gap and across the long trestlejust beyond the landing, where it halted for a few seconds forpassengers to embark or to leave the cars. This train was from Chicago, and on Monday Papa Sherwood expected to go to that big city to work. 

The thought gave Nan a feeling of depression. The little family in theAmity street cottage had never been separated for more than a daysince she could remember. It was going to be hard on Momsey, with PapaSherwood away and Nan in school all day. How were they going to getalong without Papa Sherwood coming home to supper, and doing the hardchores?

Bess awoke her chum from these dreams. "Dear me, Nan! Have you lost yourtongue all of a sudden? Do say something, or do something. "

"Let's race the train down the pond to Tillbury, " proposed Naninstantly. 

The lights of the long coaches were just moving out of the station atthe Landing. The two girls came about in a graceful curve and struckout for home at a pace that even the train could not equal. The railsfollowed the shore of the pond on the narrow strip of lowland at thefoot of the bluffs. They could see the lights shining through the carwindows all the way. 

The fireman threw open the door of his firebox to feed the furnace anda great glare of light, and a shower of sparks, spouted from thesmokestack. The rumble of the wheels from across the ice seemed louderthan usual. 

"Come on, Bess!" gasped Nan, quite excited. "We can do better than this!Why, that old train will beat us!"

For they were falling behind. The train hooted its defiance as it sweptdown toward Woody Point. The girls shot in toward the shore, where theshadow of the high bluff lay heavily upon the ice. 

They heard the boys' voices somewhere below them, but Bess and Nan couldnot see them yet. They knew that the boys had divided into sides andwere playing old-fashioned hockey, "shinny-on-your-own-side" as it waslocally called. Above the rumbling of the train they heard the crack ofthe shinny-stick against the wooden block, and the "z-z-z-zip!" of themissile as it scaled over the ice. 

"Those boys will get into the ice-hole if they don't look out, " Nan hadjust said to her chum, when suddenly a wild yell arose from the hockeyplayers. 

The train was slowing down at the signal tower, and finally stoppedthere. A freight had got in on the main track which had to be clearedbefore the passenger train could go into Tillbury station. The coachesstood right along the edge of the frozen pond. 

But it was nothing in connection with the evening train that caused sucha commotion among the skaters near the stamp factory. There was a crashof breaking ice and a scrambling of skaters away from the spot. Theboys' yells communicated panic to other people ashore. 

"He's in! He's in!" Nan and Bess heard the boys yelling. Then a man'svoice took up the cry: "He'll be drowned! Help! Help!"

"That's old Peter Newkirk, " gasped Nan, squeezing Bess' gloved handstightly. "He's night watchman at the stamp works, and he has only onearm. He can't help that boy. "

The youngsters who had been playing hockey so recklessly near the thinice, were not as old as Nan and Bess, and the accident had thrown theminto utter confusion. Some skated for the shore, screaming for ropesand fence-rails; others only tried to get away from the danger spotthemselves. None did the first thing to help their comrade who hadbroken through the ice. 

"Where are you going, Nan?" gasped Bess, pulling back. "You'll have usboth in the water, too. "

"We can save him! Quick!" returned her chum eagerly. 

She let go of Bess and unwound the long muffler from about her own neck. "If we could only see him!" the girl said, over and over. 

And then a brilliant idea struck Nan Sherwood, and she turned to shoutto old Peter Newkirk on the shore. "Peter! Peter! Turn on the electriclight sign! Turn it on so we can see where he's gone in!"

The watchman had all his wits about him. There was a huge electric signon the stamp works roof, advertising the company's output. The glare ofit could be seen for miles, and it lit up brilliantly the surroundingsof the mill. 

Peter Newkirk bounded away to the main door of the works. The switchthat controlled the huge sign was just inside that door. Before Nanand Bess had reached the edge of the broken ice, the electricity wassuddenly shot into the sign and the whole neighborhood was alight. 

"I see him! There he is!" gasped Nan to her chum. "Hold me tight by theskirt, Bess! We'll get him!"

She flung herself to her knees and stopped sliding just at the edge ofthe old, thick ice. With a sweep of her strong young arm she shot theend of the long muffler right into the clutching hands of the drowningboy. 

Involuntarily he seized it. He had been down once, and submersion inthe ice water had nearly deprived him of both consciousness and powerto help save himself. But Nan drew him quickly through the shatteredice-cakes to the edge of the firm crystal where she knelt. 

"We have him! We have him!" she cried, in triumph. "Give me your hand, boy! I won't let you go down again. "

But to lift him entirely out of the water would have been too much forher strength. However, several men came running now from the stalledpassenger train. The lighting of the electric sign had revealed to themwhat was going on upon the pond. 

The man who lifted the half-drowned boy out of the water was not one ofthe train crew, but a passenger. He was a huge man in a bearskin coatand felt boots. He was wrapped up so heavily, and his fur cap was pulleddown so far over his ears and face, that Nan could not see what hereally looked like. In a great, gruff voice he said:

"Well, now! Give me a girl like you ev'ry time! I never saw the beat ofit. Here, mister!" as he put the rescued boy into the arms of a man whohad just run from a nearby house. "Get him between blankets and he'll beall right. But he's got this smart little girl to thank that he's aliveat all. "

He swung around to look at Nan again. Bess was crying frankly, with hergloved hands before her face. "Oh, Nan! Nan!" she sobbed. "I didn't do athing, not a thing. I didn't even hang to the tail of your skirt as youtold me. I, I'm an awful coward. "

The big man patted Nan's shoulder lightly. "There's a little girl thatI'm going to see here in Tillbury, " he said gruffly. "I hope she turnsout to be half as smart as you are, sissy. " Then he tramped back to thetrain that was just then starting. 

Nan began to laugh. "Did you hear that funny man?" she asked Bess. "Dostop your crying, Bess! You have no reason to cry. You are not hurt. "

"But, but you might have been, been drowned, too, " sobbed her chum. "Ididn't help you a mite. "

"Bother!" exclaimed Nan Sherwood. "Don't let's talk about it. We'll gohome. I guess we've both had enough skating for tonight. "

Bess wiped away her tears and clung to Nan's hand all the way to theirusual corner for separating. Nan ran home from there quickly and burstinto the kitchen to find Momsey and Papa Sherwood in the midst of a veryserious conference. 

"What is the matter?" cried Nan, startled by the gravity of her fatherand the exaltation upon her mother's face. "What's happened?"

"A very great thing, Nan, honey, " said Momsey, drawing her daughter toher side. "Tell her, Papa Sherwood. "

He sighed deeply and put away the letter they had been reading. "It'sfrom Mr. Blake, of Edinburgh, " he said. "I can no longer doubt theexistence of the fortune, my dears. But I fear we shall have to strivefor it in the Scotch courts. "

"Oh!" cried Nan, under her breath. 

"Mr. Blake tells us here that it is absolutely necessary for us to cometo Scotland, and for your mother to appear in person before the courtthere. The sum of money and other property willed to Momsey by her greatuncle is so large that the greatest care will be exercised by the Scotchjudges to see that it goes to the right person. "

"As your mother once said, we must throw a sprat to catch a herring. Inthis case we shall be throwing a sprat to catch a whale! For the amountof money we may have to spend to secure the fifty thousand dollars leftby Mr. Hugh Blake, of Emberon, is small, in comparison to the fortuneitself. 

"We must go to Scotland, " finished Mr. Sherwood firmly. "And we muststart as soon as possible. "

Chapter IX. ON THE WAY TO THE WILDERNESS

It seemed to Nan Sherwood that night as though she never could get tosleep. Her mind and imagination worked furiously. 

Momsey and Papa Sherwood had sent her to bed early. There had been notime to tell them about the accident on the ice and her part in it. Her parents had much to discuss, much to decide upon. The Scotch lawyerurged their presence before the court having jurisdiction in the matterof the late Mr. Hugh Blake's will, and that as soon as they could crossthe ocean. 

Transportation from the little Illinois town, across the interveningstates to the seaport, and thence, over the winter ocean to Glasgow, andso on by rail to Edinburgh, was a journey the contemplation of which, tosuch a quiet family as the Sherwoods, was nothing less than appalling. 

And there were many things to take into consideration that Nan did notwholly understand. Mrs. Sherwood would require her husband's undividedattention while she made the long and arduous journey. The sea voyagewas right in line with the physician's opinion of what was needed torestore her health; but it was a venture at best. 

Had the family possessed plenty of money it is doubtful if Mr. Sherwoodwould have risked more than a coasting voyage. Conditions rising out ofthe legacy from the great uncle in Scotland spelled necessity in thiscase. Of the little sum left in bank, most of it would be required topay the fares of Mr. And Mrs. Sherwood to Edinburgh, and their modestliving there for a few weeks. There was not enough money in hand to paya third passage and the expenses of a third person in Scotland, untilthe court business should be settled. 

Mr. Sherwood had already taken Mr. Bludsoe, the lawyer, into hisconfidence. He could make arrangements through him to mortgage thecottage if it became absolutely necessary. He shrank from acceptingfinancial help from Mrs. Sherwood's relatives in Memphis. 

Besides, decision must be made immediately. Plans must be made almostovernight. They must start within forty-eight hours to catch a certainsteamer bound for the Scotch port of Glasgow, as Mr. Sherwood hadalready found out. And all their questions resolved finally into thisvery important one:

"WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT NAN?"

Nan, in her little white bed, had no idea that she was the greatestdifficulty her parents found in this present event. It never entered herbusy mind that Papa Sherwood and Momsey would dream of going to Scotlandwithout her. 

"What shall we do with Nan?" Momsey said over and over again. Sherealized as well as did Mr. Sherwood that to take the child was anutter impossibility. Their financial circumstances, as well as otherconsiderations would not allow it. 

Yet, what should they do with her, with whom to trust her during theiruncertain absence on the other side? No answer that came to their mindsseemed the right one. They rose that wintry morning without having thismost important of all questions decided. 

This was Sunday and Mrs. Joyce always came over for breakfast; for shelived alone and never had any too much to eat, Nan was sure. As for theold woman's eating with the family, that was a fiction she kept upfor appearance's sake, perhaps, or to salve her own claims to formergentility. She always set a place for herself at the family table in thedining room and then was too busy to eat with them, taking her own mealin the kitchen. 

Therefore it was she only who heard the commanding rap at the kitchendoor in the midst of the leisurely meal, and answered it. 

Just then Nan had dropped her knife and fork and was staring fromMomsey's pitying face to Papa Sherwood's grave one, as she cried, in awhisper:

"Not me? Oh, my dears! You're never going without me, all that longjourney? What, whatever shall I do without you both?"

"Don't, honey! Don't say it that way!" begged Momsey, putting herhandkerchief to her eyes. 

"If it was not quite impossible, do you think for a moment, daughter, that we would contemplate leaving you at home?" queried Mr. Sherwood, his own voice trembling. 

"It, it seems impossible!" gasped Nan, "just as though it couldn't be. I won't know what to do without you, my dears. And what will you dowithout me?"

That seemed to be unanswerable, and it quite broke Momsey down. Shesobbed openly into her handkerchief. 

"Who's going to be her little maid?" demanded Nan, of her father. "Who'sgoing to 'do' her beautiful hair? Who's going to wait on her when shehas her dreadful headaches? And who's going to play 'massagist' like me?I want to know who can do all those things for Momsey if you take heraway from me, Papa Sherwood?" and she ended quite stormily. 

"My dear child!" Mr. Sherwood said urgently. "I want you to listen tome. Our situation is such that we cannot possibly take you with us. That is final. It is useless for us to discuss the point, for there isnothing to be gained by discussing it from now till Doomsday. "

Nan gulped down a sob and looked at him with dry eyes. Papa Sherwood hadnever seemed so stern before, and yet his own eyes were moist. She beganto see that this decision was very hard upon her parents, too. 

"Now do you understand, " he asked gently, "that we cannot take ourlittle daughter with us, but that we are much worried by the fact, andwe do not know what to do with her while we are gone?"

"You, you might as well put me in an orphan asylum, " choked Nan. "I'llbe an orphan till you get back. "

"Oh, honey!" cried her mother. 

"There now!" said Nan, jumping up quickly and going around the table toher mother's side. "You poor dear! I won't say anything more to hurt andtrouble you. I'm a selfish thing, that's what I am. "

Momsey wound her arms about her. Papa Sherwood still looked grave. "Weget no nearer to the proper solution of the difficulty, " he said. "Ofcourse, Nancy, the orphan asylum is out of the question. "

"I'll stay here, of course, " Nan said, with some difficulty keeping hervoice from quavering. 

"Not alone in the house, honey, " Momsey said quickly. 

"With Mrs. Joyce?" suggested Nan tentatively. 

"No, " Mr. Sherwood said. "She is not the person to be trusted with you. "

"There's Mrs. Grimes' boarding house around the corner?" suggested Nan. 

Momsey shuddered. "Never! Never! My little girl in a boarding house. Oh, Papa Sherwood! We must find somebody to care for her while we are away, who loves Nan. "

And it was just here that a surprisingly gruff voice took up the matterand decided it in a moment. 

"That's me, " said the voice, with conviction. "She's just the sort oflittle girl I cotton to, sister Jessie. And Kate'll be fairly crazyabout her. If you're going anywhere for a long spell, just let me takeher up to Pine Camp. We have no little girls up there, never had any. But I bet we know how to treat 'em. "

"Hen!" shouted Mr. Sherwood, stumbling up from the table, and puttingout both hands to the big man whom Mrs. Joyce had ushered in from thekitchen so unexpectedly. 

"Henry Sherwood!" gasped Momsey, half rising herself in her surprise anddelight. 

"Why!" cried Nan, "it's the bear-man!" for Mr. Henry Sherwood wore thegreat fur coat and cap that he had worn the evening before when he hadcome to Nan's aid in rescuing the boy from Norway Pond. 

Afterward Nan confessed, naively, that she ought to have known he washer Uncle Henry. Nobody, she was quite sure, could be so big and brawnyas the lumberman from Michigan. 

"She's the girl for me, " proclaimed Uncle Henry admiringly. "Smart as awhip and as bold as a catamount. Hasn't she told you what she did lastnight? Sho! Of course not. She don't go 'round blowing about her deedsof valor, I bet!" and the big man went off into a gale of laughter thatseemed to shake the little cottage. 

Papa Sherwood and Momsey had to learn all the particulars then, and bothglowed with pride over their little daughter's action. Gradually, afternumerous personal questions were asked and answered on both sides, theconversation came around to the difficulty the little family was in, andthe cause of it. 

Henry Sherwood listened to the story of the Scotch legacy with wide-openeyes, marveling greatly. The possibility of his brother's wife becomingwealthy amazed and delighted his simple mind. The fact that they had totake the long journey to Scotland to obtain the money troubled him butlittle. Although he had never traveled far himself, save to Chicago fromthe Michigan woods, Mr. Henry Sherwood had lived in the open so muchthat distances did not appall him. 

"Sure you'll go, " he proclaimed, reaching down into a very deep pocketand dragging to light a long leather pouch, with a draw-string ofhome-cured deer skin. "And if you are short, Bob, we'll go down intothis poke and see what there is left. 

"I came down to Chicago to see about a piece of timber that's owned bysome sharps on Jackson Street. I didn't know but I might get to cut thattimber. I've run it careless-like, and I know pretty near what there isin it. So I said to Kate:

"'I'll see Bob and his wife, and the little nipper-----"

"Goodness!" ejaculated Nan, under her breath. 

Uncle Henry's eyes twinkled and the many wrinkles about them screwedup into hard knots. "Beg pardon!" he exclaimed, for his ears were verysharp. "This young lady, I should have said. Anyhow, I told Kate I'd seeyou all and find out what you were doing. 

"Depending on mills and such for employment isn't any very safe way tolive, I think. Out in the woods you are as free as air, and there aren'tso many bosses, and you don't have to think much about 'the market' and'supply and demand, ' and all that. "

"Just the same, " said Mr. Robert Sherwood, his own eyes twinkling, "youare in some trouble right now, I believe, Hen?"

"Sho! You've got me there, " boomed his brother with a great laugh. "But there aren't many reptiles like old Ged Raffer. And we can thanka merciful Creator for that. I expect there are just a few miserly oldhunks like Ged as horrible examples to the rest of us. "

"What is the nature of your trouble with this old fellow?" asked Mr. Robert Sherwood. 

"We've got hold on adjoining options. I had my lines run by one of thebest surveyors in the Peninsula of Michigan. But he up and died. Gedclaims I ran over on his tract about a mile. He got to court first, gotan injunction, and tied me all up in a hard legal knot until the statesurveyors can go over both pieces of timber. The land knows when that'llbe! Those state surveyors take a week of frog Sundays to do a job. 

"I can't cut a stick on my whole piece 'cause Ged claims he'll have aright to replevin an equal number of sticks cut, if the surveyors backup his contention. Nasty mess. The original line was run years and yearsago, and they're not many alive today in the Big woods that know therights of it. 

"I expect, " added Uncle Henry, shaking his bushy head, "that old TobyVanderwiller knows the rights of that line business; but he won't tell. Gedney Raffer's got a strangle hold on Toby and his little swamp farm, and Toby doesn't dare say his soul's his own. 

"Well!" continued the lumberman, with another of his big laughs. "Thishas nothing to do with your stew, Bob. I didn't want to come to thehouse last night and surprise you; so I stayed at the hotel. And all thetime I was thinking of this little nip, Beg pardon! This young lady, andhow smart and plucky she was. 

"And lo and behold, " pursued Uncle Henry, "she turns out to be my ownniece. I'm going to take her back with me to Pine Camp. Kate's got tosee and know her. The boys will be tickled out of their boots to have agirl like her around. That's our one lack at Pine Camp. There never wasa girl in the family. 

"Seems that this was just foreordained. You and Jessie have got to go'way off, over the water; can't leave this plucky girl alone. Her olduncle and aunt are the proper folks to take care of her. What do you sayyourself, young lady?"

Nan had liked the big man from the very beginning. She was a sensiblechild, too. She saw that she must settle this matter herself, for it wastoo hard a question for either Momsey or Papa Sherwood to decide. She gained control of herself now; but nobody will ever know how muchcourage it took for her to say, promptly:

"Of course I will go home with you, Uncle Henry. It will be fun, Ithink, to go into the woods in the winter. And, and I can come rightback as soon as Momsey and Papa Sherwood return from Scotland. "

So it was settled, just like that. The rush in which both parties gotunder way on Monday made Nan's head whirl. Momsey was to buy a fewnecessary things in New York before she boarded the steamer. Nan had aplentiful supply of warm winter clothing, and she took a trunkful. 

Mrs. Joyce was left to take a peep at the little, locked cottage onAmity Street, now and then. Nan could say "Goodbye" only very hastilyto Bess Harley and her other school friends. Her school had to be brokenoff at a bad time in the year, but there was the prospect of a change inNan's method of education the next fall. 

Momsey and Papa Sherwood took the train east an hour before Nan andUncle Henry boarded that for Chicago. All went with a rush and clatter, and Nan found herself at last rumbling out of Tillbury, on her way tothe northern wilderness, while a thin drive of fine snowflakes tapped onthe car windows. 

Chapter X. GEDNEY RAFFER

It was fortunate for Nan Sherwood that on the day of parting with herparents she had so much to do, and that there was so much to see, and somany new things of which to think. 

She had never traveled to Chicago before, nor far from Tillbury at all. Even the chair car was new to the girl's experience and she found itvastly entertaining to sit at a broad window with her uncle in theopposite chair, gazing out upon the snowy landscape as the train hurriedover the prairie. 

She had a certain feeling that her Uncle Henry was an anomaly in thechair car. His huge bearskin coat and the rough clothing under it; hisfelt boots, with rubber soles and feet; the fact that he wore no linenand only a string tie under the collar of his flannel shirt; his greatbronzed hands and blunted fingers with their broken nails, all thesethings set him apart from the other men who rode in the car. 

Papa Sherwood paid much attention to the niceties of dress, despite thefact that his work at the Atwater Mills had called for overalls and, frequently, oily hands. Uncle Henry evidently knew little about stiffcollars and laundered cuffs, or cravats, smart boots, bosomed shirts, orother dainty wear for men. He was quite innocent of giving any offenceto the eye, however. Lying back in the comfortable chair with his coatoff and his great lumberman's boots crossed, he laughed at anything Nansaid that chanced to be the least bit amusing, until the gas-globes rangagain. 

It seemed to Nan as though there never was such a huge man before. Shedoubted if Goliath could have looked so big to young David, when theshepherd boy went out with his sling to meet the giant. Uncle Henrywas six feet, four inches in height and broad in proportion. The chaircreaked under his weight when he moved. Other people in the car gazed onthe quite unconscious giant as wonderingly as did Nan herself. 

"Uncle Henry, " she asked him once, "are all the men in the Big Woods astall as you are?"

"Goodness me! No, child, " he chuckled. "But the woods don't breed manyrunts, that's a fact. There's some bigger than I. Long Sam Dorgan isnear seven feet he isn't quite sure, for he's so ticklish that you can'tever measure him, " and Uncle Henry's chuckle burst into a full-fledgedlaugh. "He's just as graceful as a length of shingle lathing, too. Andfreckles and liver spots on his hands and face, well, he certain sure isa handsome creature. 

"He went to town once and stayed over night. Wasn't any bed long enoughat the hotel, and Sam had got considerably under the weather, anyhow, from fooling with hard cider. So he wasn't particular about where hebedded down, and they put him to sleep in the horse trough. "

"The horse trough!" gasped Nan. 

"Yes. It was pretty dry when Sam went to bed; but right early in themorning a sleepy hostler stumbled out to the trough and began to pumpwater into it for the cattle. Maybe Long Sam needed a bath, but not justthat way. He rose up with a yell like a Choctaw Indian. Said he wasjust dreaming of going through the Sault Ste. Marie in a barrel, and hereckoned the barrel burst open. "

Nan was much amused by this story, as she was by others that the oldlumberman related. He was full of dry sayings and his speech had manyqueer twists to it. His bluff, honest way delighted the girl, althoughhe was so different from Papa Sherwood. As Momsey had said, UncleHenry's body had to be big to contain his heart. One can excuse muchthat is rough in a character so lovable as that of Uncle Henry's. 

The snow increased as the train sped on and the darkness graduallythickened. Uncle Henry took his niece into the dining car where theyhad supper, with a black man with shiny eyes and very white teeth, whoseemed always on the broad grin, to wait upon them. Nan made a mentalnote to write Bess Harley all about the meal and the service, for Besswas always interested in anything that seemed "aristocratic, " and to theunsophisticated girl from Tillbury the style of the dining car seemedreally luxurious. 

When the train rolled into the Chicago station it was not yet late;but it seemed to Nan as though they had ridden miles and miles, throughlighted streets hedged on either side with brick houses. The snow wasstill falling, but it looked sooty and gray here in the city. Nan beganto feel some depression, and to remember more keenly that Momsey andPapa Sherwood were flying easterly just as fast as an express traincould take them. 

It was cold, too. A keen, penetrating wind seemed to search throughthe streets. Uncle Henry said it came from the lake. He beckoned to ataxicab driver, and Nan's trunk was found and strapped upon the roof. Then off they went to the hotel where Uncle Henry always stopped when hecame to Chicago, and where his own bag was checked. 

Looking through the cab windows, the girl began to take an immediateinterest in life again. So many people, despite the storm! So manyvehicles tangled up at the corners and waiting for the big policemento let them by in front of the clanging cars! Bustle, hurry, noise, confusion!

"Some different from your Tillbury, " drawled Uncle Henry. "And just asdifferent from Pine Camp as chalk is from cheese. "

"But so interesting!" breathed Nan, with a sigh. "Doesn't it ever get tobe bedtime for children in the city?"

"Not for those kids, " grumbled Uncle Henry. "Poor creatures. They sellpapers, or flowers, or matches, or what-not, all evening long. Andstores keep open, and hotel bars, and drug shops, besides theatres andthe like. There's a big motion picture place! I went there once. Itbeats any show that ever came to Hobart Forks, now I tell you. "

"Oh, we have motion picture shows at Tillbury. We have had them in theschool hall, too, " said Nan complacently. "But, of course, I'd liketo see all the people and the lights, and so forth. It looks veryinteresting in the city. But the snow is dirty, Uncle Henry. "

"Yes. And most everything else is dirty when you get into these brickand mortar tunnels. That's what I call the streets. The air even isn'tclean, " went on the lumberman. "Give me the woods, with a fresh windblowing, and the world looks good to me, " then his voice and face fell, as he added, "excepting that snake-in-the-grass, Ged Raffer. "

"That man must make you a lot of trouble, Uncle Henry, " said Nansympathetically. 

"He does, " growled the lumberman. "He's a miserable, fox-facedscoundrel, and I've no more use for him than I have for an egg-suckingdog. That's the way I feel about it. "

They reached the hotel just then, and Uncle Henry's flare of passion wasquenched. The hostelry he patronized was not a new hotel; but it wasa very good one, and Nan's heart beat high as she followed the porterinside, with Uncle Henry directing the taxicab driver and a secondporter how to dispose of the trunk for the night. 

Nan had her bag in which were her night clothes, toilet articles, andother necessities. The porter carried this for her and seated her ona comfortable lounge at one side while Uncle Henry arranged about therooms. 

To do honor to his pretty niece the lumberman engaged much betterquarters than he would have chosen for himself. When they went up to therooms Nan found a pretty little bath opening out of hers, and the maidcame and asked her if she could be of any help. The girl began to feelquite "grown up. " It was all very wonderful, and she loved Uncle Henryfor making things so pleasant for her. 

She had to run to his door and tell him this before she undressed. Hehad pulled off his boots and was tramping up and down the carpeted floorin his thick woolen socks, humming to himself. 

"Taking a constitutional, Nan, " he declared. "Haven't had any exercisefor this big body of mine all day. Sitting in that car has made me ascramped as a bear just crawling out of his den in the spring. "

He did not tell her that had he been alone he would have gone out andtramped the snowy streets for half the night. But he would not leaveher alone in the hotel. "No, sir, " said Uncle Henry. "Robert wouldnever forgive me if anything happened to his honey-bird. And fire, orsomething, might break out here while I was gone. "

He said nothing like this to Nan, however, but kissed her good night andtold her she should always bid him good night in just that way as longas she was at Pine Camp. 

"For Kate and I have never had a little girl, " said the big lumberman, "and boys get over the kissing stage mighty early, I find. Kate and Ialways did hanker for a girl. "

"If you owned a really, truly daughter of your own, Uncle Henry, Ibelieve you'd spoil her to death!" cried Nan, the next morning, when shecame out of the fur shop to which he had taken her. 

He had insisted that she was not dressed warmly enough for the woods. "Wesee forty and forty-five below up there, sometimes, " he said. "You thinkthis raw wind is cold; it is nothing to a black frost in the Big Woods. Trees burst as if there were dynamite in 'em. You've never seen thelike. 

"Of course the back of winter's about broken now. But we may have somecold snaps yet. Anyhow, you look warmer than you did. "

And that was true, for Nan was dressed like a little Esquimau. Her coathad a pointed hood to it; she wore high fur boots, the fur outside. Hermittens of seal were buttoned to the sleeves of her coat, and she couldthrust her hands, with ordinary gloves on them, right into these warmreceptacles. 

Nan thought they were wonderfully served at the hotel where theystopped, and she liked the maid on her corridor very much, and the boywho brought the icewater, too. There really was so much to tell Bessthat she began to keep a diary in a little blank-book she bought forthat purpose. 

Then the most wonderful thing of all was the message from Papa Sherwoodwhich arrived just before she and Uncle Henry left the hotel for thetrain. It was a "night letter" sent from Buffalo and told her thatMomsey was all right and that they both sent love and would telegraphonce more before their steamship left the dock at New York. 

Nan and Uncle Henry drove through the snowy streets to another stationand took the evening train north. They traveled at first by theMilwaukee Division of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad; and nowanother new experience came Nan's way. Uncle Henry had secured a sectionin the sleeping car and each had a berth. 

It was just like being put to sleep on a shelf, Nan declared, when theporter made up the beds at nine o'clock. She climbed into the upperberth a little later, sure that she would not sleep, and intending tolook out of the narrow window to watch the snowy landscape fly by allnight. 

And much to her surprise (only the surprise came in the morning) shefell fast asleep almost immediately, lulled by the rocking of the hugecar on its springs, and did not arouse until seven o'clock and the carstood on the siding in the big Wisconsin city. 

They hurried to get a northern bound train and were soon off on whatUncle Henry called the "longest lap" of their journey. The train sweptthem up the line of Lake Michigan, sometimes within sight of the shore, often along the edge of estuaries, particularly following the contourof Green By, and then into the Wilderness of upper Wisconsin and theMichigan Peninsula. 

On the Peninsula Division of the C. & N. W. They did not travel as fastas they had been running, and before Hobart Forks was announced on thelast local train they traveled in, Nan Sherwood certainly was tiredof riding by rail. The station was in Marquette County, near theSchoolcraft line. Pine Camp was twenty miles deeper in the Wilderness. It seemed to Nan that she had been traveling through forests, or thebarren stumpage where forests had been, for weeks. 

"Here's where we get off, little girl, " Uncle Henry said, as he seizedhis big bag and her little one and made for the door of the car. Nanran after him in her fur clothing. She had found before this that he wasright about the cold. It was an entirely different atmosphere up here inthe Big Woods from Tillbury, or even Chicago. 

The train creaked to a stop. They leaped down upon the snowy platform. Only a plain station, big freight house, and a company of roughlydressed men to meet them. Behind the station a number of sleighs andsledges stood, their impatient horses shaking the innumerable bells theywore. 

Nan, stumbling off the car step behind her uncle, came near to collidingwith a small man in patched coat and cowhide boots, and with a rope tiedabout his waist as some teamsters affect. He mumbled something in angerand Nan turned to look at him. 

He wore sparse, sandy whiskers, now fast turning gray. The outthrust ofthe lower part of his face was as sharp as that of a fox, and he reallylooked like a fox. She was sure of his identity before uncle Henrywheeled and, seeing the man, said:

"What's that you are saying, Ged Raffer? This is my niece, and if youlay your tongue to her name, I'll give you something to go to law aboutin a hurry. Come, Nan. Don't let that man touch so much as your coatsleeve. He's like pitch. You can't be near him without some of hismeanness sticking to you. "

Chapter XI. PINE CAMP AT LAST

It was the first shade upon Uncle Henry's character that displeasedNan. He was evidently a passionate man, prone to give way to elementalfeelings, literally, "a man of wrath. "

Gedney Raffer, weazened, snakelike, sly, and treacherous, had doubtlesswronged Uncle Henry deeply. But this fact could not excuse the hugelumberman's language on the platform of the Hobart Forks station. 

Nan wanted to stop her ears with her fingers and run from the spot. The tough fellows standing around enjoyed the war of words hugely. Mr. Sherwood was too big to strike Gedney Raffer, and of course the latterdared not use his puny fists on the giant. 

The blunt club of the lumberman's speech was scarcely a match for thesharp rapier of Raffer's tongue. As the crowd laughed it was evidentthat the fox-faced man was getting the verbal best of the controversy. 

Nan's ears burned and tears stood in her eyes. Uncle Henry descended topersonal threats and the smaller man called out:

"You jest put your hand on me, you big, overgrown sawney! That's all I'ma-waitin' for. You 'tack me and I'll have you in the caboose, sure's myname's Gedney Raffer. Try it!"

The quarrel was most distressing. Nan pulled at her uncle's coat sleeve. The rough men eyed her curiously. She had never felt so ashamed in herlife. 

"Do come, Uncle Henry, " she whispered. "I'm cold. "

That statement started the fuming giant at once. Nan's sensitivenessto a rude quarrel did not impress the man; but her sensitiveness to theweather shocked him immediately. 

"My goodness, girl! We'll go right up to the hotel, " he said, kindly. "Any of you fellows seen Rafe or Tom in town this morning with the sledand roans?"

"Hey, Hen!" cried the station master, waving a yellow paper. "Here's atelegraph despatch for you. "

It was really for Nan, and from Papa Sherwood filed just before theAfton Castle sailed from New York:

"Momsey and papa send love and kisses. Be cheerful and good. Writeoften. We think of you always. Kind wishes for Henry, Kate and boys. We look forward to fair voyage and safe landing. Will cable from otherside. Expect happy meeting in spring. R. And J. Sherwood. "

"They got a good start, " commented Uncle Henry, putting all thought ofhis quarrel with Ged Raffer behind him at once. "We'll hope they have asafe voyage. Now! Where are those boys of mine?"

The town of Hobart Forks was by no means a lumber town. Millions of feetof timber was boomed on the river within the limits of the town everyseason, and there were great mills along the banks of the stream, too. But there were other industries, as well as churches, amusement placesand many pleasant dwellings. It was no settlement of "slab shanties"with a few saloons and a general store. Nan had yet to see this latterkind of settlement. 

But what she saw about the central market place of Hobart Forks openedher eyes considerably to an appreciation of the rough country she hadcome to, and the rough people to be met therein. 

The storekeepers she saw through the frosted windows were dressed likestorekeepers in Tillbury; and there were well dressed women on thestreets, a few, at least. 

But most of the men striding through the snow were as roughly dressed asher uncle, and not many were as good looking as Mr. Sherwood. Some whocame out of the swinging doors of saloons staggered, and were very noisyin their speech and rude in their actions. Of course nobody spoke toNan, or troubled her; Henry Sherwood was undoubtedly a man of standingin the settlement and highly respected. 

Not far from the market place they came upon a sprawling old tavern, with a fenced yard at one side. As they approached, a sled drawn by awild looking pair of rough, red-roan ponies, dashed out of the yard andstopped at the broad front portico of the hotel. 

"Hey, Tom! What's the matter with you?" called Uncle Henry. "Here weare!"

The driver turned a broad, good-humored face to look over his burlyshoulder. Nan saw that Tom Sherwood strongly resembled his father. 

"That you, Dad?" he drawled. "I'd about given you up. I didn't want todrive down to the depot with these crazy creatures. And if I'd left 'emstanding they'd have kicked Phil's shed to pieces, I do believe. Thetrain's been in half an hour and more. "

"I know, " said his father. "I had a mess of words with Ged Raffer. Thatdelayed me. "

"You ought to give him the back of your hand, and say no more about it, "declared Tom, in a tone that showed he warmed in his bosom the familygrudge against the fox-faced man. 

"Here's your Cousin Nan, Tom, " said his father, without making rejoinderto the young man's observation. "She must go into Phil's and get warmand have a cup of hot coffee. I'll take some in a new-fangled bottle Ibought down in Chicago, so we can all have a hot drink on the way home. "

"'Twon't keep warm twenty miles, " said Tom. 

"Yes 'twill. It'll keep HOT for twenty miles and more. They call it athermos bottle. It'll keep coffee hot, or cold, for a day, just as youplease. "

"Jehosaphat, Dad! What kind of a swindle's that? How does the bottleknow whether you want your drink hot or cold? Huh! Those city folkscouldn't make me believe any such thing, " objected the son. 

Nan had to giggle at that, and Uncle Henry demanded: "Did you ever seesuch a gump? Go on down to the station and tell Abe to fling that trunkand the bags into the back of the sled. We'll have our coffee, and getthe thermos bottle filled, too, by the time you come back. "

Nan liked tom Sherwood. He was about nineteen and almost as big ashis father. He was gentle with her, and showed himself to be an expertdriver of the roan colts. Otherwise Nan might have been much afraidduring the first mile of the journey to Pine Camp, for certainly she hadnever seen horses behave so before. 

"Haven't been out of the stable for a week, " explained Tom cooly as theroans plunged and danced, and "cut up didos" generally, as Uncle Henryremarked. 

"We had a big fall of snow, " Tom went on to say. "Bunged us all up inthe woods; so Rafe and I came in. Marm's all right. So's everybody elsearound the Camp, except Old Man Llewellen. He's down with rheumatism, ortic-douloureux, or something. He's always complaining. "

"I know, " said Uncle Henry, and then went on to relate for his son'sbenefit the wonderful thing that had happened to his brother and hisbrother's wife, and why Nan had come up into Michigan without herparents. 

"We'll be mighty proud to have her, " said Tom simply. He was only agreat boy, after all, and he blushed every time he caught Nan looking athim. The girl began to feel very much grown up. 

They were glad of the hot coffee, and Tom was shown how and why themysterious bottle kept the drink hot. They only made that single halt(and only for a few minutes for the horses to drink) before reachingPine Camp. They traveled through the snow-covered woods most of the way. There were few farms and no settlements at all until they reached PineCamp. 

The road was not well beaten and they could not have got through some ofthe drifts with less spirited ponies than the roans. When they crossedthe long bridge over the river and swept into the village street, Nanwas amazed. 

Likewise, her heart sank a little. There was not a building in the placemore than a story and a half in height. Most of them were slab cottages. Few yards were fenced. There were two stores, facing each other on thesingle street of the town, with false-fronts running up as tall as thesecond story would have been had there been a second story. 

The roans dashed through the better beaten path of the street, witheverybody along the way hailing Henry Sherwood vociferously. The giantwaved his hand and shouted in reply. Nan cowered between him and Tom, on the seat, shielding her face from the flying snow from the ponies'hoofs, though the tears in her eyes were not brought there only by thesting of the pelting she received. 

Chapter XII. "HOME WAS NEVER LIKE THIS"

The roan ponies dashed through the slab settlement, past the blacksmithand wheelwright shop and the ugly red building Tom told Nan was theschool, and reached a large, sprawling, unpainted dwelling on theoutskirts of the village. 

There were barns back of the Sherwood house; there was no fence betweenthe yard and the road, the windows of the house stared out upon thepasserby, blindless, and many of them without shades. There was such apainful newness about the building that it seemed to Nan the carpentersmust have just packed their tools and gone, while the painters had notyet arrived. 

"Well! Here we are, " announced Mr. Henry Sherwood, as Tom held in thestill eager ponies. He stepped out and offered Nan his hand. "Homeagain, little girl. I reckon Kate will be mighty glad to see you, thatshe will. "

Nan leaped out and began to stamp her feet on the hard snow, while UncleHenry lifted out the trunk and bags. Just as the ponies sprang awayagain, a door in the ugly house opened and a tall, angular woman lookedforth. 

"Bring her in, Hen!" she cried, in a high-pitched voice. "I want to seeher. "

Nan went rather timidly up the path. Her aunt was almost as tall as herhusband. She was very bony and was flat-chested and unlovely in everyway. That is, so it seemed, when the homesick girl raised her eyes toAunt Kate's face. 

That face was as brown as sole-leather, and the texture of the skinseemed leathery as well. There was a hawklike nose dominating theunfeminine face. The shallows below the cheekbones were deep, asthough she had suffered the loss of her back molars. The eyebrows werestraggly; the eyes themselves of a pale, watery blue; the mouth a thinline when her colorless lips were closed; and her chin was as square anddetermined as Uncle Henry's own. 

As Nan approached she saw something else about this unlovely woman. Onher neck was a great, livid scar, of a hand's breadth, and which lookedlike a scald, or burn. No attempt was made to conceal this unsightlyblemish. 

Indeed, there was nothing about Aunt Kate Sherwood suggesting asoftening of her hard lines. Her plain, ugly print dress was cut low atthe throat, and had no collar or ruff to hide the scar. Nan's gaze wasfastened on that blemish before she was half way to the door, and shecould see nothing else at first. 

The girl fought down a physical shudder when Aunt Kate's clawlike handsseized her by both shoulders, and she stooped to kiss the visitor. 

"Welcome, dear Nannie, " her sharp voice said, and Nan thought that, withease, one might have heard her in the middle of the village. 

But when Aunt Kate's lips touched the girl's forehead they wereWarm, and soft as velvet. Her breath was sweet. There was a wholesomecleanliness about her person that pleased Nan. The ugly dress wasspotless and beautifully laundered. She had a glimpse of the unplasteredkitchen and saw a row of copper pots on the shelf over the dresser thatwere scoured to dazzling brightness. The boards of the floor werewhite as milk. The big, patent range glistened with polish, and itsnickel-work was rubbed till it reflected like a mirror. 

"Welcome, my dear!" said Aunt Kate again. "I hope you will be happywhile you stay with us. "

Happy! With Momsey and Papa Sherwood on the ocean, and the "littledwelling in amity" closed and deserted? Nan feared she would break downand cry. 

Her Aunt Kate left her to herself a minute just then that she mightovercome this weakness. Uncle Henry came up the path with the bags, smiling broadly. 

"Well, old woman!" he said heartily. 

"Well, old man!" she returned. 

And then suddenly, Nan Sherwood had a new vision. She was used toseeing her pretty mother and her handsome father display their mutualaffection; it had not seemed possible that rough, burly Uncle Henry andugly Aunt Kate could feel the same degree of affection for each other. 

Uncle Henry dropped the bags. Aunt Kate seemed to be drawn toward himwhen he put out his hands. Nan saw their lips meet, and then the giantgently, almost reverently, kissed the horrid scar on Aunt Kate's neck. 

"Here's Nan!" cried the big lumberman jovially. "The pluckiest andsmartest little girl in seven states! Take her in out of the cold, Kate. She's not used to our kind of weather, and I have been watching for thefrost flowers to bloom on her pretty face all the way from the forks. "

The woman drew Nan into the warm kitchen. Uncle Henry followed in aminute with the trunk. 

"Where'll I put this box, Kate?" he asked. "I reckon you've fixed upsome cozy place for her?"

"The east room, Hen, " Aunt Kate replied. "The sun lies in theremornings. I took the new spring rocker out of the parlor, and with thewhite enameled bedstead you bought in Chicago, and the maple bureauwe got of that furniture pedlar, and the best drugget to lay over thecarpet I reckon Nannie has a pretty bedroom. "

Meanwhile Nan stared openly around the strange kitchen. The joists andrafters were uncovered by laths or plaster. Muslin, that had once beenwhite, was tacked to the beams overhead for a ceiling. The smoke fromthe cookstove had stained it to a deep brown color above the stove andto a lighter, meerschaum shade in the corners. 

The furniture was of the rudest plainest kind much of it evidentlyhome-made. Uncle Henry was not unhandy with tools. She learned, later, that he and the boys had practically built the house by themselves. Theywere finishing it inside, as they had time. In some of the rooms theinside window and door frames were not yet in place. 

There was an appetizing smell from the pots upon the stove, and thelong table was set for dinner. They would not let Nan change from hertraveling dress before sitting down to the table. Tom and Rafe came inand all three men washed at the long, wooden sink. 

Rafe was of slighter build than his brother, and a year or more younger. He was not so shy as Tom, either; and his eyes sparkled with mischief. Nan found that she could not act "grown up" with her Cousin Rafe. 

The principal dish for dinner was venison stew, served with vegetablesand salt-rising bread. There was cake, too, very heavy and indigestible, and speckled with huckleberries that had been dried the fall previous. Aunt Kate was no fancy cook; but appetite is the best sauce, after all, and Nan had her share of that condiment. 

During the meal there was not much conversation save about the wonderfulfortune that had fallen to Nan's mother and the voyage she and herhusband were taking to Scotland to secure it. Nan learned, too, thatUncle Henry had telegraphed from Tillbury of Nan's coming to Pine Camp, and consequently Aunt Kate was able to prepare for her. 

And that the good woman had done her best to make a nest for her littleniece in the ugly house, Nan was assured. After dinner she insisted uponthe girl's going to the east room to change her dress and lie down. Thecomparison between this great chamber and Nan's pretty room at home wasappalling. 

The room had been plastered, but the plaster was of a gray color andunfinished. The woodwork was painted a dusty, brick red with mineralpaint. The odd and ugly pieces of furniture horrified Nan. The druggeton the floor only served to hide a part of the still more atrociouslypatterned carpet. The rocking chair complained if one touched it. Thetop of the huge maple dresser was as bald as one's palm. 

Nan sat down on the unopened trunk when her aunt had left her. Shedabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. Home certainly was never likethis! She did not see how she was ever going to be able to stand it. 

Chapter XIII. MARGARET LLEWELLEN

"If Momsey or Papa Sherwood knew about this they'd be awfully sorry forme, " thought Nan, still sitting on the trunk. "Such a looking place!Nothing to see but snow and trees, " for the village of Pine Camp wasquite surrounded by the forest and all the visitor could see from thewindows of her first-floor bedroom were stumps and trees, with deep snoweverywhere. 

There was a glowing wood stove in the room and a big, chintz-coveredbox beside it, full of "chunks. " It was warm in the room, the atmospherebeing permeated with the sweet tang of wood smoke. 

Nan dried her eyes. There really was not any use in crying. Momsey andPapa Sherwood could not know how bad she felt, and she really was notselfish enough to wish them to know. 

"Now, Nanny Sherwood!" she scolded herself, "there's not a particle ofuse of your sniveling. It won't 'get you anywhere, ' as Mrs. Joyce says. You'll only make your eyes red, and the folks will see that you're nothappy here, and they will be hurt. 

"Mustn't make other folks feel bad just because I feel bad myself, " Nandecided. "Come on! Pluck up your courage!

"I know what I'll do, " she added, literally shaking herself as shejumped off the trunk. "I'll unpack. I'll cover up everything ugly that Ican with something pretty from Tillbury. "

Hurried as she had been her departure from the cottage on Amity Street, Nan had packed in her trunk many of those little possessions, dear toher childish heart, that had graced her bedroom. These appeared from thetrunk even before she hung away her clothes in the unplastered closetwhere the cold wind searched through the cracks from out-of-doors. Intothat closet, away back in the corner, went a long pasteboard box, tiedcarefully with strong cord. Nan patted it gently with her hand beforeshe left the box, whispering:

"You dear! I wouldn't have left you behind for anything! I won'tlet them know you are here; but sometimes, when I'm sure nobody willinterrupt, you shall come out. "

She spread a fringed towel over the barren top of the dresser. Itwould not cover it all, of course; but it made an island in a sea ofemptiness. 

And on the island she quickly set forth the plain little toilet-set hermother had given her on her last birthday, the manicure set that was apresent from Papa Sherwood, and the several other knickknacks thatwould help to make the big dresser look as though "there was somebody athome, " as she whispered to herself. 

She draped a scarf here, hung up a pretty silk bag there, placedMomsey's and Papa Sherwood's portraits in their little silver filigreeeasels on the mantelpiece, flanking the clock that would not run andwhich was held by the ugly china shepherdess with only one foot anda broken crook, the latter ornament evidently having been at one timeprized by the babies of her aunt's family, for the ring at the top wasdented by little teeth. 

Nothing, however, could take the curse of ugliness off the staringgray walls of the room, or from the horrible turkey-red and whitecanton-flannel quilt that bedecked the bed. Nan longed to spill thecontents of her ink bottle over that hideous coverlet, but did not dare. 

The effort to make the big east room look less like a barn made Nan feelbetter in her mind. It was still dreary, it must be confessed. Therewere a dozen things she wished she could do to improve it. Therewere nothing but paper shades at the windows. Even a simple scrimcurtain-----

And, in thinking of this, Nan raised her eyes to one window to see aface pressed close against the glass, and two rolling, crablike eyesglaring in at her. 

"Mercy!" ejaculated Nan Sherwood. "What is the matter with that child'seyes? They'll drop out of her head!"

She ran to the window, evidently startling the peeper quite as much asshe had been startled herself. The girl, who was about Nan's own age, fell back from the pane, stumbled in the big, men's boots she wore, andungracefully sprawled in the snow upon her back. She could not get awaybefore Nan had the window open. 

The sash was held up by a notched stick. Nan put her head and shouldersout into the frosty air and stared down at the prostrate girl, whostared up at her in return. 

"What do you want?" Nan asked. 

"Nothin', " replied the stranger. 

"What were you peeping in for?"

"To see you, " was the more frank reply. 

"What for?" asked Nan. 

"Ain't you the new gal?"

"I've newly come here, yes, " admitted Nan. 

"Well!"

"But I'm not such a sight, am I?" laughed the girl from Tillbury. "Butyou are, lying there in the snow. You'll get your death of cold. Get up. "

The other did so. Beside the men's boots, which were patched and old, she wore a woollen skirt, a blouse, and a shawl over her head andshoulders. She shook the snow from her garments much as a dog freeshimself from water after coming out of a pond. 

"It's too cold to talk with this window open. You're a neighbor, aren'tyou?"

The girl nodded. 

"Then come in, " urged Nan. "I'm sure my aunt will let you. "

The girl shook her head in a decided negative to this proposal. "Don'twant Marm Sherwood to see me, " she said. 

"Why not?"

"She told me not to come over after you come 'ithout I put on my newdress and washed my hands and face. "

"Well!" exclaimed Nan, looking at her more closely. "You seem to have aclean face, at least. "

"Yes. But that dress she 'gin me, my brother Bob took and put on OldBeagle for to dress him up funny. And Beagle heard a noise he thoughtwas a fox barking and he started for the tamarack swamp, lickety-split. I expect there ain't enough of that gingham left to tie around a sorethumb. "

Nan listened to this in both amusement and surprise. The girl was a newspecimen to her. 

"Come in, anyway, " she urged. "I can't keep the window open. "

"I'll climb in, then, " declared the other suddenly, and, suiting theaction to the word, she swarmed over the sill; but she left one hugeboot in the snow, and Nan, laughing delightedly, ran for the poker tofish for it, and drew it in and shut down the window. 

The strange girl was warming her hands at the fire. Nan pushed a chairtoward her and took one herself, but not the complaining spring rockingchair. 

"Now tell me all about yourself, " the girl demanded. 

"I'm Nan Sherwood, and I've come here to Pine Camp to stay while myfather and mother have gone to Scotland. "

"I've heard about Scotland, " declared the girl with the very prominenteyes. 

"Have you?"

"Yes. Gran'ther Llewellen sings that song. You know:

"'Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning! Where, where? Where, where?Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Pour on water! Pour on water! Fire's out! Fire'sout!'"

Nan laughed. "I've heard that, too, " she said. "But it was anotherScotland. " Then: "So your name is Llewellen?"

"Marg'ret Llewellen. "

"I've heard your grandfather is sick, " said Nan, remembering Tom'sreport of the health of the community when he had met her and her uncleat Hobart Forks. 

"Yes. He's got the tic-del-rew, " declared Margaret, rather unfeelingly. "Aunt Matildy says he's allus creakin' round like a rusty gate-hinge. "

"Why! That doesn't sound very nice, " objected Nan. "Don't you love yourgrandfather?"

"Not much, " said this perfectly frank young savage. "He's so awfullywizzled. "

"'Wizzled'?" repeated Nan, puzzled. 

"Yes. His face is all wizzled up like a dried apple. "

"But you love your aunt Matilda?" gasped Nan. 

"Well, she's wizzled some, " confessed Margaret. Then she said: "Idon't like faces like hern and Marm Sherwood's. I like your face. It'ssmooth. "

Nan had noticed that this half-wild girl was of beautifully faircomplexion herself, and aside from her pop eyes was quite petty. But shewas a queer little thing. 

"You've been to Chicago, ain't you?" asked Margaret suddenly. 

"We came through Chicago on our way up here from my home. We stayed onenight there, " Nan replied. 

"It's bigger'n Pine Camp, ain't it?"

"My goodness, yes!"

"Bigger'n the Forks?" queried Margaret doubtfully. 

"Why, it is much, much bigger, " said Nan, hopeless of making oneso densely ignorant understand anything of the proportions of themetropolis of the lakes. 

"That's what I told Bob, " Margaret said. "He don't believe it. Bob's mybrother, but there never was such a dunce since Adam. "

Nan had to laugh. The strange girl amused her. But Margaret saidsomething, too, that deeply interested the visitor at Pine Camp beforeshe ended her call, making her exit as she had her entrance, by thewindow. 

"I reckon you never seen this house of your uncle's before, did you?"queried Margaret at one point in the conversation. 

"Oh, no. I never visited them before. "

"Didn't you uster visit 'em when they lived at Pale Lick?"

"No. I don't remember that they ever lived anywhere else beside here. "

"Yes, they did. I heard Gran'ther tell about it. But mebbe 'twas beforeyou an' me was born. It was Pale Lick, I'm sure. That's where they losttheir two other boys. "

"What two other boys?" asked Nan, amazed. 

"Didn't you ever hear tell you had two other cousins?"

"No, " said Nan. 

"Well, you did, " said Margaret importantly. "And when Pale Lick burnedup, them boys was burned up, too. "

"Oh!" gasped Nan, horrified. 

"Lots of folks was burned. Injun Pete come near being burned up. Heain't been right, I reckon, since. And I reckon that's where MarmSherwood got that scar on the side of her neck. "

Nan wondered. 

Chapter XIV. AT THE LUMBER CAMP

Nan said nothing just then about her queer little visitor. Aunt Kateasked her when she came out of the east room and crossed the chilldesert of the parlor to the general sitting room:

"Did you have a nice sleep, Nannie?"

"Goodness, Auntie!" laughed Nan. "I got over taking a nap in the daytimea good while ago, I guess. But you come and see what I have done. Ihaven't been idle. "

Aunt Kate went and peeped into the east chamber. "Good mercy, child! Itdoesn't look like the same room, with all the pretty didos, " she said. "And that's your pretty mamma in the picture on the mantel? My! Yourpapa looks peaked, doesn't he? Maybe that sea voyage they are takingwill do 'em both good. "

Nan had to admit that beside her uncle and cousins her father did look"peaked. " Robust health and brawn seemed to be the two essentials in theopinion of the people of Pine Camp. Nan was plump and rosy herself andso escaped criticism. 

Her uncle and aunt, and the two big boys as well, were as kind to heras they knew how to be. Nan could not escape some of the depressionof homesickness during the first day or two of her visit to the woodssettlement; but the family did everything possible to help her occupyher mind. 

The long evenings were rather amusing, although the family knew littleabout any game save checkers, "fox and geese, " and "hickory, dickory, dock. " Nan played draughts with her uncle and fox and geese and theother kindergarten game with her big cousins. To see Tom, with hiseyes screwed up tight and the pencil poised in his blunt, frost-crackedfingers over the slate, while he recited in a base sing-song:

 "Hick'ry, dick'ry, dock The mouse ran up the clock, The clock struck one, An' down he come Hick'ry, dick'ry, dock, "

was side-splitting. Nan laughed till she cried. Poor, simple Tom didknow just what amused his little cousin so. 

Rafe was by no means so slow, or so simple. Nan caught him cheatingmore than once at fox and geese. Rafe was a little sly, and he wascontinually making fun of his slow brother, and baiting him. Uncle Henrywarned him:

"Now, Rafe, you're too big for your Marm or me to shingle your pants;but Tom's likely to lick you some day for your cutting up and I sha'n'tblame him. Just because he's slow to wrath, don't you get it in yourhead that he's afraid, or that he can't settle your hash in fiveminutes. "

Nan was greatly disturbed to hear so many references to fisticencounters and fighting of all sorts. These men of the woods seemed tobe possessed of wild and unruly passions. What she heard the boys saycaused her to believe that most of the spare time of the men in thelumber camps was spent in personal encounters. 

"No, no, deary. They aren't so bad as they sound, " Aunt Kate told her, comfortably. "Lots of nice men work in the camps all their lives andnever fight. Look at your Uncle Henry. "

But Nan remembered the "mess of words" (as he called it) that UncleHenry had had with Gedney Raffer on the railroad station platform at theForks, and she was afraid that even her aunt did not look with the samehorror on a quarrel that Nan herself did. 

The girl from Tillbury had a chance to see just what a lumber camp waslike, and what the crew were like, on the fourth day after her arrivalat her Uncle Henry's house. The weather was then pronounced settled, andword came for the two young men, Tom and Rafe, to report at Blackton'scamp the next morning, prepared to go to work. Tom drove a team whichwas then at the lumber camp, being cared for by the cook and foreman;Rafe was a chopper, for he had that sleight with an ax which, more thanmere muscle, makes the mighty woodsman. 

"Their dad'll drive 'em over to Blackton's early, and you can go, too, "said Aunt Kate. "That is, if you don't mind getting up right promptly inthe morning?"

"Oh, I don't mind that, " Nan declared. "I'm used to getting up early. "

But she thought differently when Uncle Henry's heavy hand rapped on thedoor of the east chamber so early the next morning that it seemed to NanSherwood that she had only been in bed long enough to close her eyes. 

"Goodness, Uncle!" she muttered, when she found out what it meant. "Whattime is it?"

"Three o'clock. Time enough for you to dress and eat a snack before westart, " replied her uncle. 

"Well!" said Nan to herself. "I thought the house was afire. "

Uncle Henry heard her through the door and whispered, shrilly: "Sh!Don't let your aunt hear you say anything like that, child. "

"Like what?" queried Nan, in wonder. 

"About fire. Remember!" added Uncle Henry, rather sternly, Nan thought, as he went back to the kitchen. 

Then Nan remembered what the strange little girl, Margaret Llewellen, had said about the fire at Pale Lick that had burned her uncle's formerhome. Nan had not felt like asking her uncle or aunt, or the boys, either, about it. The latter had probably been too young to remembermuch about the tragedy. 

Although Nan had seen Margaret on several fleeting occasions since herfirst interview with the woods girl, there had been no opportunity oftalking privately with her. And Margaret would only come to the window. She was afraid to tell "Marm Sherwood" how she had lost the new dressthat had been given to her. 

It was now as black outside Nan's window as it could be. She lit her oillamp and dressed swiftly, running at last through the cold parlor andsitting room into the kitchen, where the fire in the range was burningbriskly and the coffee pot was on. Tom and Rafe were there comfortablygetting into thick woolen socks and big lumbermen's boots. 

There was a heaping pan of Aunt Kate's doughnuts on the table, flankedwith the thick china coffee cups and deep saucers. Her uncle and theboys always poured their coffee into the saucers and blew on it to takethe first heat off, then gulped it in great draughts. 

Nan followed suit this morning, as far as cooling the coffee in thesaucer went. There was haste. Uncle Henry had been up some time, and nowhe came stamping into the house, saying that the ponies were hitchedin and were standing in readiness upon the barn floor, attached to thepung. 

"We've twenty-five miles to ride, you see, Nannie, " he said. "The boyshave to be at Blackton's so's to get to work at seven. "

They filled the thermos bottle that had so puzzled Tom, and then salliedforth. The ponies were just as eager as they had been the day Nan hadcome over from the Forks. She was really half afraid of them. 

It was so dark that she could scarcely see the half-cleared road beforethem as the ponies dashed away from Pine Camp. The sky was completelyovercast, but Uncle Henry declared it would break at sunrise. 

Where the track had been well packed by former sleighs, the ponies'hoofs rang as though on iron. The bits of snow that were flung off bytheir hoofs were like pieces of ice. The bells on the harness jingled avery pretty tune, Nan thought. She did not mind the biting cold, indeed, only her face was exposed. Uncle Henry had suggested a veil; but shewanted to see what she could. 

For the first few miles it remained very dark, however. Had it not beenfor the snow they could not have seen objects beside the road at all. There was a lantern in the back of the pung and that flung a stream ofyellow light behind them; but Uncle Henry would not have the radiance ofit shot forward. 

"A light just blinds you, " he said. "I'd rather trust to the roans'sense. "

The ponies galloped for a long way, it seemed to Nan; then they cameto a hill so steep that they were glad to drop to a walk. Their bodiessteamed in a great cloud as they tugged the sleigh up the slope. Darkwoods shut the road in on either hand. Nan's eyes had got used to thefaint light so that she could see this at least. 

Suddenly she heard a mournful, long-drawn howl, seemingly at a greatdistance. 

"Must be a farm somewhere near, " she said to Rafe, who sat beside her onthe back seat. 

"Nope. No farms around here, Nan, " he returned. 

"But I hear a dog howl, " she told him. 

Rafe listened, too. Then he turned to her with a grin on his sharp facethat she did not see. "Oh, no, you don't, " he chuckled. "That's no dog. "

Again the howl was repeated, and it sounded much nearer. Nan realized, too, that it was a more savage sound than she had ever heard emitted bya dog. 

"What is it?" she asked, speaking in a low voice to Rafe. 

"Wolves!" responded her cousin maliciously. "But you mustn't mind alittle thing like that. You don't have wolves down round where you live, I s'pose?"

Nan knew that he was attempting to plague her, so she said: "Not forpets, at least, Rafe. These sound awfully savage. "

"They are, " returned her cousin calmly. 

The wolf cry came nearer and nearer. The ponies had started on a trotagain at the top of the hill, and her uncle and Tom did not seem tonotice the ugly cry. Nan looked back, and was sure that some greatanimal scrambled out of the woods and gave chase to them. 

"Isn't there some danger?" she asked Rafe again. 

"Not for us, " he said. "Of course, if the whole pack gathers and catchesus, then we have to do something. "

"What do you do?" demanded Nan quickly. 

"Why, the last time we were chased by wolves, we happened to have a hamand a side of bacon along. So we chucked out first the one, and then theother, and so pacified the brutes till we got near town. "

"Oh!" cried Nan, half believing, half in doubt. 

She looked back again. There, into the flickering light of the lantern, a gaunt, huge creature leaped. Nan could see his head and shouldersnow and then as he plunged on after the sleigh, and a wickeder lookingbeast, she hoped never to see. 

"Oh!" she gasped again, and grabbed at Rafe's arm. 

"Don't you be afraid, " drawled that young rascal. "I reckon he hasn'tmany of his jolly companions with him. If he had, of course, we'd haveto throw you out to pacify him. That's the rule--youngest and prettiestgoes first-----"

"Like the ham, I s'pose?" sniffed Nan, in some anger, and just then Tomreached over the back of the front seat and seized his brother by theshoulder with a grip that made Rafe shriek with pain. 

Nan was almost as startled as was Rafe. In the half-darkness Tom's dullface blazed with anger, and he held his writhing brother as though hewere a child. 

"You ornery scamp!" he said, almost under his breath. "You try to scarethat little girl, and I'll break you in two!"

Nan was horrified. She begged Tom to let his brother alone. "I was onlyfooling her, " snarled Rafe, rubbing his injured shoulder, for Tom hadthe grip of a pipe wrench. 

Uncle Henry never turned around at all; but he said: "If I had a gunI'd be tempted to shoot that old wolf hound of Toby Vanderwiller's. He'salways running after sleds and yelling his head off. "

Nan was glad the creature following them was not really a wolf; but sheknew she should be just as much afraid of him if she met him alone, asthough he really were a wolf. However, mostly, she was troubled by thepassionate nature of her two cousins. She had never seen Tom show anyanger before; but it was evident that he had plenty of spirit if it werecalled up. And she was, secretly, proud that the slow-witted young giantshould have displayed his interest in her welfare so plainly. Rafe satand nursed his shoulder in silence for several miles. 

The cold was intense. As the sky lightened along the eastern horizon itseemed to Nan as though the frost increased each moment. The bricks attheir feet were getting cool; and they had already had recourse to thethermos bottle, which was now empty of the gratefully hot drink it hadcontained. 

As the light gradually increased Nan saw Rafe watching her with suddenattention. After his recent trick she was a little afraid of Rafe. Stillit did not seem possible that the reckless fellow would attempt anysecond piece of fooling so soon after his brother's threat. 

But suddenly Rafe yelled to his father to pull down the roans, and asthe ponies stopped, he reached from the sled into a drift and secured abig handful of snow. Seizing Nan quickly around the shoulders he beganto rub her cheek vigorously with the snow. Nan gasped and almost losther breath; but she realized immediately what Rafe was about. 

The frost had nipped her cheek, and her cousin had seen the white spotappear. "The rubbing stung awfully, and the girl could not keep back thetears; but she managed to repress the sobs. 

"There!" exclaimed Rafe. "You are a plucky girl. I'm sorry I got some ofthat snow down your neck, Nan. Couldn't help it. But it's the only thingto do when the thermometer is thirty-two degrees below zero. Why! Afellow went outside with his ears uncovered at Droomacher's camp oneday last winter and after awhile he began to rub his ears and one of 'emdropped off just like a cake of ice. "

"Stop your lying, boy!" commanded his father. "It isn't as bad as that, Nan. But you want to watch out for frost bite here in the woods, justthe same as we had to watch out for the automobiles in crossing thosemain streets in Chicago. "

With a red sun rising over the low ridge of wooded ground to the east, the camp in the hollow was revealed, the smoke rising in a pillar ofblue from the sheet-iron chimney of the cookhouse; smoke rising, too, from a dozen big horses being curried before the stables. 

Most of the men had arrived the night before. They were tumbling outof the long, low bunkhouse now and making good use of the bright tinwashbasins on the long bench on the covered porch. Ice had been brokento get the water that was poured into the basins, but the men lavedtheir faces and their hairy arms and chests in it as though it weresummer weather. 

They quickly ran in for their outer shirts and coats, however, and thentrooped in to the end of the cook shed where the meals were served. Tomturned away to look over his horses and see that they were all ready forthe day's work. Rafe put up the roan ponies in a couple of empty stallsand gave them a feed of oats. 

Uncle Henry took Nan by the hand, and, really she felt as though sheneeded some support, she was so stiff from the cold, and led her intothe warm room where the men were gathering for the hearty meal the cookand his helper had prepared. 

The men were boisterous in their greeting of Uncle Henry, until they sawNan. Than, some bashfully, some because of natural refinement, loweredtheir voices and were more careful how they spoke before the girl. 

But she heard something that troubled her greatly. An old, grizzled manin a corner of the fireplace where the brisk flames leaped high amongthe logs, and who seemed to have already eaten his breakfast and wasbusily stoning an axe blade, looked up as Nan and her uncle approached, saying:

"Seen Ged Raffer lately, Hen?"

"I saw him at the Forks the other day, Toby, " Mr. Sherwood replied. 

"Yaas. I heard about that, " said the old man drawlingly. "But sincethen?"

"No. "

"Wal, he was tellin' me that he'd got you on the hip this time, Hen. Ifyou as much as put your hoof over on that track he's fighting you about, he'll plop you in jail, that's what he'll do! He's got a warrant allmade out by Jedge Perkins. I seen it. "

Uncle Henry walked closer to the old man and looked down at him fromhis great height. "Tobe, " he said, "you know the rights of that businesswell enough. You know whether I'm right in the contention, or whetherGed's right. You know where the old line runs. Why don't you tell?"

"Oh, mercy me!" croaked the old man, and in much haste. "I ain't goin'to git into no land squabble, no, sir! You kin count me out right now!"And he picked up his axe, restored the whetstone to its sheath on thewall, and at once went out of the shack. 

Chapter XV. A CAT AND HER KITTENS

That was a breakfast long to be remembered by Nan Sherwood, notparticularly because of its quality, but for the quantity served. Shehad never seen men like these lumbermen eat before, save for the fewdays she had been at Uncle Henry's house. 

Great platters of baked beans were placed on the table, flanked by thelumps of pork that had seasoned them. Fried pork, too, was a "main-stay"on the bill-of-fare. The deal table was graced by no cloth or napery ofany kind. There were heaps of potatoes and onions fried together, andgolden cornbread with bowls of white gravy to ladle over it. 

After riding twenty-five miles through such a frosty air, Nan would havehad to possess a delicate appetite indeed not to enjoy these viands. Shefelt bashful because of the presence of so many rough men; but they lefther alone for the most part, and she could listen and watch. 

"Old Toby Vanderwiller tell you what Ged's been blowin' about, Henry?"asked one of the men at the table, busy ladling beans into his mouthwith a knife, a feat that Nan thought must be rather precarious, to saythe least. 

"Says he's going to jail me if I go on to the Perkins Tract, " growledUncle Henry, with whom the matter was doubtless a sore subject. 

"Yaas. But he says more'n that, " said this tale bearer. 

"Oh, Ged says a whole lot besides his prayers, " responded Uncle Henry, good-naturedly. Perhaps he saw they were trying to bait him. 

"Wal, 'tain't nothin' prayerful he's sayin', " drawled the first speaker, after a gulp of coffee from his thick china cup. "Some of the boys atBeckett's, you know, they're a tough crowd, was riggin' him about whatyou said to him down to the Forks, and Ged spit out that he'd give alump of money to see you on your back. "

"Huh!" grunted Uncle Henry. 

"And some of 'em took him up, got the old man right down to cases. "

"That so?" asked Mr. Sherwood curiously. "What's Ged going to do?Challenge me to a game of cat's cradle? Or does he want to settle thebusiness at draughts, three best out o' five?"

"Now you know dern well, Hen, " said the other, as some of the listenerslaughed loudly at Mr. Sherwood's sally, "that old Ged Raffer will neverlock horns with you 'ceptin' it's in court, where he'll have the fullpertection of the law, and a grain the best of it into the bargain. "

"Well, I s'pose that's so, " admitted Nan's uncle, rather gloomily, shethought. 

"So, if Beckett's crowd are int'rested in bumping you a whole lot, youmay be sure Ged's promised 'em real money for it. "

"Pshaw!" exclaimed Uncle Henry. "You're fooling now. He hasn't hired anyhalf-baked chip-eaters and Canucks to try and beat me up?"

"I ain't foolin'. "

"Pshaw!"

"You kin 'pshaw' till the cows come home, " cried the other heatedly. "Igot it straight. "

"Who from?"

"Sim Barkis, him what's cookin' for Beckett's crew. "

"Good man, Sim. Never caught him in a lie yet. You are beginning tosound reasonable, Josh, " and Mr. Sherwood put down his knife and forkand looked shrewdly at his informant. "Now tell me, " he said, "how muchis Sim going to get for helping to pay Ged Raffer's debts?"

"Har!" ejaculated the other man. "You know Sim ain't that kind. "

"All right, then. How much does he say the gang's going to split between'em after they've done me up brown according to contract?" scoffed UncleHenry, and Nan realized that her giant relative had not the least fearof not being able to meet any number of enemies in the open. 

"Sim come away before they got that far. Of course Ged didn't say rightout in open meetin' that he'd give so many dollars for your scalp. Buthe got 'em all int'rested, and it wouldn't surprise him, so Sim said, ifon the quiet some of those plug-uglies had agreed to do the job. "

Nan shuddered, and had long since stopped eating. But nobody paid anyattention to her at the moment. 

Uncle Henry drawled: "They're going to do the hardest day's job for thesmallest pay that they ever did on this Michigan Peninsula. I'm muchobliged to you, Josh, for telling me. I never go after trouble, as youfellows all know; but I sha'n't try to dodge it, either. "

He picked up his knife and fork and went quietly on with his breakfast. But Nan could not eat any more at all. 

It seemed to the gently nurtured girl from Tillbury as though she hadfallen in with people from another globe. Even the mill-hands, whom BessHarley so scorned, were not like these great, rough fellows whose mindsseemed continually to be fixed upon battle. At least, she had never seenor heard such talk as had just now come to her ears. 

The men began, one by one, to push back the benches and go out. Therewas a great bustle of getting under way as the teams started for thewoods, and the choppers, too, went away. Tom hurried to start his bigpair of dapple grays, and Nan was glad to bundle up again and run out towatch the exodus. 

They were a mighty crew. As Uncle Henry had said, the Big Woods did notbreed runts. 

Remembering the stunted, quick-moving, chattering French Canadians, andthe scattering of American-born employees among them, who worked in theTillbury mills, Nan was the more amazed by the average size ofthese workmen. The woodsmen were a race of giants beside thenarrow-shouldered, flat-chested pygmies who toiled in the mills. 

Tom strode by with his timber sled. Rafe leaped on to ride and Tomplayfully snapped his whiplash at him. Nan was glad to see that thetwo brothers smiled again at each other. Their recent tiff seemed to beforgotten. 

Some of the choppers had already gone on ahead to the part of the tractwhere the marked trees were being felled. Now the pluck, pluck, pluck ofthe axe blows laid against the forest monarchs, reached the girl's ears. She thought the flat stuttering sound of the axes said "pluck" veryplainly, and that that was just the word they should say. 

"For it does take lots of pluck to do work of this kind, " Nanconfided to her uncle, who walked up and down on the porch smoking anafter-breakfast pipe. 

"Yes. No softies allowed on the job, " said he, cheerfully. "Some of theboys may be rough and hard nuts to crack; but it is necessary to havejust such boys or we couldn't get out the timber. "

"But they want to fight so much!" gasped Nan. 

"Sho!" said her uncle, slowly. "It's mostly talk. They feel the itchfor hard work and hard play, that's all. You take lively, full-muscledanimals, and they are always bucking and quarreling--trying to see whichone is the best. Take two young, fat steers they'll lock horns at thedrop of a hat. It's animal spirits, Nan. They feel that they've gotto let off steam. Where muscle and pluck count for what they do in thelumber camps, there's bound to be more or less ructions. "

Perhaps this might be; but Nan was dreadfully sorry, nevertheless, thatUncle Henry had this trouble with Mr. Gedney Raffer. The girl fearedthat there had been something besides "letting off steam" in thechallenge her uncle had thrown down to his enemy, or to the men thatenemy could hire to attack him. 

The timber sledges soon began to drift back, for some of the logs hadbeen cut before the big storm, and had only to be broken out of thedrifts and rolled upon the sleds with the aid of the men's canthooks. Itwas a mystery at first to Nan how they could get three huge logs, someof them three feet in diameter at the butt, on to the sled; two at thebottom and one rolled upon them, all being fastened securely with thetimber-chain and hook. 

How the horses strained in their collars to start the mighty load! Butonce started, the runners slipped along easily enough, even through thedeep snow, packing the compressible stuff in one passage as hard as ice. Nan followed in this narrow track to the very bank of the river wherethe logs were heaped in long windrows, ready to be launched into thestream when the waters should rise at the time of the spring freshet. 

Tom managed his team alone, and unloaded alone, too. It was marvelous(so Nan thought) that her cousin could start the top log with the greatcanthook, and guide it as it rolled off the sled so that it should lietrue with timbers that had been piled before. The strain of his workmade him perspire as though it were midsummer. He thrust the calks onhis bootsoles into the log and the shreds of bark and small chips flewas he stamped to get a secure footing for his work. Then he heavedlike a giant, his shoulders humping under the blue jersey he wore, andfinally the log turned. Once started, it was soon rolled into place. 

Nan ran into the cook shed often to get warm. Her uncle was busy withthe boss of the camp, so she had nobody but the cook and his helper tospeak to for a time. Therefore it was loneliness that made her startover the half-beaten trail for the spot where the men were at work, without saying a word to anybody. 

None of the teams had come by for some time; but she could hear faintlythe sound of the axes and the calling of the workmen to each other andtheir sharp commands to the horses. 

She went away from the camp a few hundred yards and then found that thetrail forked. One path went down a little hill, and as that seemed easyto descend, Nan followed it into a little hollow. It seemed only onesled had come this way and none of the men were here. The voices andaxes sounded from higher up the ridge. 

Suddenly she heard something entirely different from the noise of thewoodsmen. It was the snarling voice of a huge cat and almost instantlyNan sighted the creature which stood upon a snow-covered rock beside thepath. It had tasseled ears, a wide, wicked "smile, " bristling whiskers, and fangs that really made Nan tremble, although she was some yards fromthe bobcat. 

As she believed, from what her cousins had told her, bobcats are notusually dangerous. They never seek trouble with man, save under certainconditions; and that is when a mother cat has kittens to defend. 

This was a big female cat, and, although the season was early, she hadlittered and her kittens, three of them, were bedded in a heap of leavesblown by the wind into a hollow tree trunk. 

The timberman driving through the hollow had not seen the bobcat and herthree blind babies; but he had roused the mother cat and she was now allready to spring at intruders. 

That Nan was not the person guilty of disturbing her repose made nodifference to the big cat. She saw the girl standing, affrighted andtrembling, in the path and with a ferocious yowl and leap she crossedthe intervening space and landed in the snow within almost arm's reachof the fear-paralyzed girl. 

Chapter XVI. "INJUN PETE"

Nan Sherwood could not cry out, though she tried. She opened her lipsonly to find her throat so constricted by fear that she could not uttera sound. Perhaps her sudden and utter paralysis was of benefit atthe moment, after all; for she could not possibly have escaped theinfuriated lynx by running. 

The creature's own movements were hampered by the deep drift in whichshe had landed. The soft snow impeded the cat and, snarling still, shewhirled around and around like a pinwheel to beat a firmer foundationfrom which to make her final spring at her victim. 

Nan, crouching, put her mittened hands before her face. She saw nochance for escape and could not bear to see the vicious beast leap ather again. "Momsey! Papa Sherwood!" she thought, rather than breathedaloud. 

Then, down the hill toward her, plunged a swift body. She rather feltthe new presence than saw it. The cat yowled again, and spit. There wasthe impact of a clubbed gun upon the creature's head. 

"Sacre bleu! Take zat! And zat!" cried a sharp voice, between the blowsthat fell so swiftly. The animal's cries changed instantly from rage topain. Nan opened her eyes in time to see the maddened cat flee swiftly. She bounded to the big tree and scrambled up the trunk and out upon thefirst limb. There she crouched, over the place where her kittens werehidden, yowling and licking her wounds. There was blood upon her headand she licked again and again a broken forefoot between her yowls ofrage and pain. 

But Nan was more interested just then in the person who had flown toher rescue so opportunely. He was not one of the men from the camp, oranybody whom she had ever seen before. 

He was not a big man, but was evidently very strong and active. Hisdress was of the most nondescript character, consisting mainly of atattered fur cap, with a woolen muffler tied over his ears; a patchedand parti-colored coat belted at the waist with a frayed rope. His legsdisappeared into the wide tops of a pair of boots evidently too big forhim, with the feet bundled in bagging so that he could walk on top ofthe snow, this in lieu of regular snowshoes. 

His back was toward Nan and he did not turn to face her as he said:

"Be not afeared, leetle Man'zelle. Le bad chat is gone. We shall now dofamous-lee, eh? No be afeared more. "

"No, no, sir, " gasped Nan, trying to be brave. "Won't, won't it comeback?"

"Nev-air!" cried the man, with a flourish of the gun which was arusty-barreled old weapon, perhaps more dangerous at the butt end thanat its muzzle. "Ze chat only fear for her babies. She have zem in dattree. We will go past leeving zem streectly alone, eh?"

"No!" cried Nan hastily. "I'm going back to the camp. I didn't knowthere were such dangerous things as that in these woods. "

"Ah! You are de strange leetle Mam'zelle den?" responded the man. "Youdo not know ze Beeg Woods?"

"I guess I don't know anything about this wilderness, " confessed Nan. "My uncle brought me to the camp up yonder this morning, and I hopehe'll go right home again. It's awful!"

"Eet seem terrifying to ze leetle Mam'zelle because she is unused--eh?Me! I be terrified at ze beeg city where she come from, p'r'aps. Zeytell Pete 'bout waggings run wizout horses, like stea'mill. Ugh! Nowanter see dem. Debbil in 'em, " and he laughed, not unpleasantly, makinga small joke of the suggestion. 

Indeed his voice, now that the sharpness of excitement had gone out ofit, was a very pleasant voice. The broken words he used assured Nan thathis mother tongue must be French. He was probably one of the "Canucks"she had heard her cousins speak of. French Canadians were not at allstrange to Nan Sherwood, for in Tillbury many of the mill hands were ofthat race. 

But she thought it odd that this man kept his face studiously turnedfrom her. Was he watching the bobcat all the time? Was the danger muchmore serious than he would own?

"Why don't you look at me?" cried the girl, at length. "I'm awfully muchobliged to you for coming to help me as you did. And my uncle will wantto thank you I am sure. Won't you tell me your name?"

The man was silent for a moment. Then, when he spoke, his voice waslower and there was an indescribably sad note in it. 

"Call me 'Injun Pete', zat me. Everybody in de beeg Woods know InjunPete. No odder name now. Once ze good Brodders at Aramac goin' makescholar of Pete, make heem priest, too, p'r'aps. He go teach amonghe's mudder's people. Mudder Micmac, fadder wild Frinchman come to deeslakeshore. But nev-air can Pete be Teacher, be priest. Non, non! Jes'Injun Pete. "

Nan suddenly remembered what little Margaret Llewellen had said aboutthe fire at Pale Lick, and "Injun Pete. " The fact that this man kepthis face turned from her all this time aroused her suspicion. She wasdeeply, deeply grateful to him for what he had just done for her, and, naturally, she enlarged in her mind the peril in which she had beenplaced. 

Margaret had suggested this unfortunate half-breed was "not right in hishead" because of the fire which had disfigured him. But he spoke verysensibly now, it seemed to Nan; very pitifully, too, about his blastedhopes of a clerical career. She said, quietly:

"I expect you know my uncle and his family, Pete. He is Mr. Sherwood ofPine Camp. "

"Ah! Mis-tair Hen Sherwood! I know heem well, " admitted the man. "Henice-a man ver' kind to Injun Pete. "

"I'd like to have you look at me, please, " said Nan, still softly. "Yousee, I want to know you again if we meet. I am very grateful. "

Pete waved her thanks aside with a royal gesture. "Me! I be glad to beof use, oh, oui! Leetle Man'zelle mus' not make mooch of nottin', eh?"

He laughed again, but he did not turn to look at her. Nan reached out atentative hand and touched his sleeve. "Please, Mr. Pete, " she said. "I, I want to see you. I, I have heard something about your having been hurtin a fire. I am sure you must think yourself a more hateful sight thanyou really are. "

A sob seemed to rise in the man's throat, and his shoulders shook. Heturned slowly and looked at her for a moment over his shoulder. Then hewent swiftly away across the snow (for the bobcat had disappeared intoher lair) and Nan stumbled back up the trail toward the camp, the tearsblinding her own eyes. 

The disfigured face of the half-breed HAD been a shock to her. She couldnever speak of it afterward. Indeed, she could not tell Uncle Henryabout her meeting with the lynx, and her rescue--she shrank so fromrecalling Injun Pete's disfigured face. 

Chapter XVII. SPRING IN THE BIG WOODS

That visit to the lumber camp was memorable for Nan Sherwood in moreways than one. Her adventure with the lynx she kept secret from herrelatives, because of the reason given in the previous chapter. Butthere was another incident that marked the occasion to the girl's mind, and that was the threat of Gedney Raffer, reported to her Uncle Henry. 

Nan thought that such a bad man as Raffer appeared to be wouldundoubtedly carry out his threat. He had offered money to have Mr. Sherwood beaten up, and the ruffians he had bribed would doubtless beonly too eager to earn the reward. 

To tell the truth, for weeks thereafter, Nan never saw a rough-lookingman approach the house on the outskirts of Pine Camp, without fearingthat here was coming a ruffian bent on her uncle's injury. 

That Uncle Henry seemed quite to have forgotten the threat only made Nanmore keenly alive to his danger. She dared not discuss the matterwith Aunt Kate, for Nan feared to worry that good woman unnecessarily. Besides, having been used to hiding from her own mother all unpleasantthings, the girl naturally displayed the same thoughtfulness for AuntKate. 

For, despite Mrs. Henry Sherwood's bruskness and masculine appearance, Nan learned that there were certain matters over which her aunt showedextreme nervousness. 

For instance, she was very careful of the lamps used in the house--sheinsisted upon cleaning and caring for them herself; she would not allowa candle to be used, because it might be overturned; and she saw to itherself that every fire, even the one in Nan's bedroom, was properlybanked before the family retired at night. 

Nan had always in mind what Uncle Henry said about mentioning fireto Aunt Kate; so the curious young girl kept her lips closed upon thesubject. But she certainly was desirous of knowing about that fire, solong ago, at Pale Lick, how it came about; if Aunt Kate had really gother great scar there; and if it was really true that two members of heruncle's family had met their death in the conflagration. 

She tried not to think at all of Injun Pete. That was too terrible!

With all her heart, Nan wished she might do something that would reallyhelp Uncle Henry solve his problem regarding the timber rights on thePerkins Tract. The very judge who had granted the injunction forbiddingMr. Sherwood to cut timber on the tract was related to the presentowners of the piece of timberland; and the tract had been the basis of afeud in the Perkins family for two generations. 

Many people were more or less interested in the case and they came tothe Sherwood home and talked excitedly about it in the big kitchen. Someadvised an utter disregard of the law. Others were evidently mindedto increase the trouble between Raffer and Uncle Henry by malicioustale-bearing. 

Often Nan thought of what Uncle Henry had said to old Toby Vanderwiller. She learned that Toby was one of the oldest settlers in this part of theMichigan Peninsula, and in his youth had been a timber runner, that is, a man who by following the surveyors' lines on a piece of timber, andweaving back and forth across it, can judge its market value so nearlyright that his employer, the prospective timber merchant, is able to bidintelligently for the so-called "stumpage" on the tract. 

Toby was still a vigorous man save when that bane of the woodsman, rheumatism, laid him by the heels. He had a bit of a farm in thetamarack swamp. Once, being laid up by his arch enemy, with his jointsstiffened and muscles throbbing with pain, Toby had seen the gauntwolf of starvation, more terrible than any timber wolf, waiting at hisdoorstone. His old wife and a crippled grandson were dependent on Toby, too. 

Thus in desperate straits Toby Vanderwiller had accepted help fromGedney Raffer. It was a pitifully small sum Raffer would advance uponthe little farm; but it was sufficient to put Toby in the usurer'spower. This was the story Nan learned regarding Toby. And Uncle Henrybelieved that Toby, with his old-time knowledge of land-boundaries, could tell, if he would, which was right in the present contentionbetween Mr. Sherwood and Gedney Raffer. 

These, and many other subjects of thought, kept the mind of Nan Sherwoodoccupied during the first few weeks of her sojourn at Pine Camp. Shehad, too, to keep up her diary that she had begun for Bess Harley'sparticular benefit. Every week she sent off to Tillbury a bulky sectionof this report of her life in the Big woods. It was quite wonderful howmuch there proved to be to write about. Bess wrote back, enviously, thatnever did anything interesting, by any possibility, happen, now thatNan was away from Tillbury. The town was "as dull as ditch water. " She, Bess, lived only in hopes of meeting her chum at Lakeview Hall the nextSeptember. 

This hope Nan shared. But it all lay with the result of Momsey's andPapa Sherwood's visit to Scotland and Emberon Castle. And, Nan thought, it seemed as though her parents never would even reach that far distantgoal. 

They had taken a slow ship for Momsey's benefit and the expectedre-telegraphed cablegram was looked for at the Forks for a week beforeit possibly could come. 

It was a gala day marked on Nan's calendar when Uncle Henry, coming homefrom the railroad station behind the roan ponies, called to her tocome out and get the message. Momsey and Papa Sherwood had sent it fromGlasgow, and were on their way to Edinburgh before Nan received theword. Momsey had been very ill a part of the way across the ocean, butwent ashore in improved health. 

Nan was indeed happy at this juncture. Her parents were safely overtheir voyage on the wintry ocean, so a part of her worry of mind waslifted. 

Meanwhile spring was stealing upon Pine Camp without Nan's being reallyaware of the fact. Uncle Henry had said, back in Chicago, that "the backof winter was broken"; but the extreme cold weather and the deep snowshe had found in the Big Woods made Nan forget that March was passingand timid April was treading on his heels. 

A rain lasting two days and a night washed the roads of snow and turnedthe fast disappearing drifts to a dirty yellow hue. In sheltered fencecorners and nooks in the wood, the grass lifted new, green blades, andqueer little Margaret Llewellen showed Nan where the first anemones andviolets hid under last year's drifted leaves. 

The river ice went out with a rush after it had rained a few hours;after that the "drives" of logs were soon started. Nan went down to thelong, high bridge which spanned the river and watched the flood carrythe logs through. 

At first they came scatteringly, riding the foaming waves end-on, andsometimes colliding with the stone piers of the bridge with sufficientforce to split the unhewn timbers from end to end, some being laid openas neatly as though done with axe and wedge. 

When the main body of the drive arrived, however, the logs were likeherded cattle, milling in the eddies, stampeded by a cross-current, bunching under the bridge arches like frightened steers in a chute. Andthe drivers herded the logs with all the skill of cowboys on the range. 

Each drive was attended by its own crew, who guarded the logs on eitherbank, launching those that shoaled on the numerous sandbars or in theshallows, keeping them from piling up in coves and in the mouths ofestuaries, or creeks, some going ahead at the bends to fend off andbreak up any formation of the drifting timbers that promised to become ajam. 

Behind the drive floated the square bowed and square sterned chuck-boat, which carried cook and provisions for the men. A "boom", logs chainedtogether, end to end, was thrown out from one shore of the wide streamat night, and anchored at its outer end. Behind this the logs weregathered in an orderly, compact mass and the men could generally gettheir sleep, save for the watchman; unless there came a sudden rise ofwater in the night. 

It was a sight long to be remembered, Nan thought, when the boom wasbroken in the morning. Sometimes an increasing current piled the logs upa good bit. It was a fear-compelling view the girl had of the riveron one day when she went with Uncle Henry to see the first drive fromBlackton's camp. Tom was coming home with his team and was not engagedin the drive. But reckless Rafe was considered, for his age, a verysmart hand on a log drive. 

The river had risen two feet at the Pine Camp bridge overnight. It was aboiling brown flood, covered with drifting foam and debris. The roarof the freshet awoke Nan in her bed before daybreak. So she wasnot surprised to see the river in such a turmoil when, after a hastybreakfast, she and Uncle Henry walked beside the flood. 

"They started their drive last night, " Uncle Henry said, "and boomed herjust below the campsite. We'll go up to Dead Man's Bend and watch hercome down. There is no other drive betwixt us and Blackton's. "

"Why is it called by such a horrid name, Uncle?" asked Nan. 

"What, honey?" he responded. 

"That bend in the river. "

"Why, I don't know rightly, honey-bird. She's just called that. Many aman's lost his life there since I came into this part of the country, that's a fact. It's a dangerous place, " and Nan knew by the look on heruncle's face that he was worried. 

Chapter XVIII. AT DEAD MAN'S BEND

Nan and her uncle came out on the bluff that overlooked the sharp bendwhich hid the upper reaches of the river from Pine Camp. Across thestream, almost from bank to bank, a string of gravel flats made abarrier that all the rivermen feared. 

Blackton was no careless manager, and he had a good foreman in TimTurner. The big boss had ridden down to the bend in a mud-splashedbuggy, and was even prepared to take a personal hand in the work, ifneed be. The foreman was coming down the river bank on the PineCamp side of the stream, watching the leading logs of the drive, anddirecting the foreguard. Among the latter Nan spied Rafe. 

"There he is, Uncle!" she cried. "Oh! He's jumped out on that log, see?"

"He's all right, girl, he's all right, " said Uncle Henry comfortingly. "Rafe's got good calks on his boots. "

The boy sprang from log to log, the calks making the chips fly, and witha canthook pushed off a log that had caught and swung upon a small bank. He did it very cleverly, and was back again, across the bucking logs, inhalf a minute. 

Below, the foreman himself was making for a grounded log, one of thefirst of the drive. It had caught upon some snag, and was swingingbroadside out, into the stream. Let two or three more timbers catch withit and there would be the nucleus of a jam that might result in muchtrouble for everybody. 

Tim Turner leaped spaces of eight and ten feet between the logs, landingsecure and safe upon the stranded log at last. With the heavy canthookhe tried to start it. 

"That's a good man, Tim Turner, " said Mr. Sherwood, heartily. "He'sworked for me, isn't afraid of anything, Ha! But that's wrong!" hesuddenly exclaimed. 

Turner had failed to start the stranded log. Other logs were hurtlingdown the foam-streaked river, aimed directly for the stranded one. Theywould begin to pile up in a heap in a minute. The foreman leaped toanother log, turning as he did so to face the shore. That was when UncleHenry declared him wrong. 

Turner was swinging his free arm, and above the roar of the riverand the thunder of the grinding and smashing logs they could hear himshouting for somebody to bring him an axe. One of his men leaped toobey. Nan and Mr. Sherwood did not notice just then who this second manwas who put himself in jeopardy, for both had their gaze on the foremanand that which menaced him. 

Shooting across on a slant was a huge log, all of three feet through atthe butt, and it was aimed for the timber on which Turner stood. He didnot see it. Smaller logs were already piling against the timber he hadleft, and had he leaped back to the stranded one he would have beencomparatively safe. 

Mr. Sherwood was quick to act in such an emergency as this; but he wastoo far from the spot to give practical aid in saving Turner from theresult of his own heedlessness. He made a horn of his two hands andshouted to the foreguard at the foot of the bluff:

"He's going into the water! Launch Fred Durgin's boat below the bend!Get her! Quick, there!"

Old riverman that he was, Uncle Henry was pretty sure of what was aboutto happen. The huge log came tearing on, butt first, a wave of troubledwater split by its on-rush. Turner was watching the person bringing himthe axe, and never once threw a glance over his shoulder. 

Suddenly Nan cried out and seized Uncle Henry's arm. "Look! Oh, Uncle!It's Rafe!" she gasped, pointing. 

"Aye, I know it, " said her uncle, wonderfully cool, Nan thought, andcasting a single glance at the figure flying over the bucking logstoward the endangered foreman. "He'll do what he can. "

Nan could not take her eyes from her cousin after that. It seemed tobe a race between Rafe and the charging log, to see which should firstreach the foreman. Rafe, reckless and harebrained as he was, flew overthe logs as sure-footed as a goat. Nan felt faint. Her cousin's perilseemed far greater to her than that of the foreman. 

A step might plunge Rafe into the foaming stream! When a log rolledunder him she cried out under her breath and clamped her teeth down onto her lower lip until the blood almost came. 

"He'll be killed! He'll be killed!" she kept repeating in her own mind. But Uncle Henry stood like a rock and seemingly gave no more attentionto his son than he did to Turner, or to the men running down the bank toseize upon and launch the heavy boat. 

Rafe was suddenly balked and had to stop. Too great a stretch of waterseparated him from the next floating log. Turner beckoned him on. It wasdifficult to make the foreman hear above the noise of the water and thecontinual grinding of the logs, but Rafe yelled some warning and pointedtoward the timber now almost upon Turner's foothold. 

The man shot a glance behind him. The butt of the driving log rosesuddenly into the air as though it would crush him. 

Turner leaped to the far end of the log on which he stood. But toogreat a distance separated him from the log on which Rafe had secured afoothold. 

Crash!

Nan heard, on top of the bluff, the impact of the great timber as it wasflung by the current across the smaller log. Turner shot into the airas though he were flung from a catapult. But he was not flung in Rafe'sdirection, and the boy could not help him. 

He plunged into the racing stream and disappeared. The huge timber rodeover the smaller log and buried it from sight. But its tail swung aroundand the great log was headed straight down the river again. 

As its smaller end swung near, Rafe leaped for it and secured a footingon the rolling, plunging log. How he kept his feet under him Nan couldnot imagine. A bareback rider in a circus never had such work as this. Rafe rode his wooden horse in masterly style. 

There, ahead of him in the boiling flood, an arm and head appeared. Turner came to the surface with his senses unimpaired and he strove toclutch the nearest log. But the stick slipped away from him. 

Rafe ran forward on the plunging timber he now rode the huge stick thathad made all the trouble, and tried to reach the man in the water. Nouse!

Of course, there was no way for Rafe to guide his log toward thedrowning man. Nor did he have anything to reach out for Turner to grasp. The axe handle was not long enough, and the foreman's canthook haddisappeared. 

Below, the men were struggling to get the big boat out from under thebank into the stream. Two of them stood up with their canthooks to fendoff the drifting logs; the others plied the heavy oars. 

But the boat was too far from the man in the river. He was menaced onall sides by plunging logs. He barely escaped one to be grazed on theshoulder by another. A third pressed him under the surface again; butas he went down this second time, Rafe Sherwood threw away his axe andleaped into the flood!

Chapter XIX. OLD TOBY VANDERWILLER

Nan was sure her Cousin Rafe would be drowned, as well as his foreman. She covered her eyes for a moment, and could not look. 

Then a great cheer arose from the men in the boat and those stillremaining on the bank of the river. Her uncle, beside her, muttered:

"Plucky boy! Plucky boy!"

Her eyes flew open and she looked again. In the midst of the scatteringfoam she saw a small log over which her cousin had flung his left arm;his other arm was around the foreman, and Rafe was bearing his headabove water. Turner had been struck and rendered senseless by the blow. 

The small log slipped through a race between two shallows, ahead of thegreater timber. The latter indeed grounded for a moment and that gavethe victim of the accident and his rescuer a chance for life. 

They shot ahead with the log to which Rafe clung. The men in the boatshouted encouragement, and rowed harder. In a minute the boat camealongside the log and two of the rivermen grabbed the boy and theunconscious foreman. They had them safely in the boat, and the boat wasat the shore again in three minutes. 

By that time the big boss himself, Mr. Blackton, was tearing out overthe logs from the other shore, axe in hand, to cut the key log of thejam, the formation of which Turner had tried to prevent. A hundred logshad piled up against the stoppage by this time and there promised to bea bad time at the bend if every one did not work quickly. 

Before Nan and her uncle could reach the foot of the bluff, Turner hadregained consciousness and was sitting on a stranded log, holding hishead. Rafe, just as he had come out of the river, was out on the logsagain lending a hand at the work so necessary to the success of thedrive. 

"Oh, dear me!" cried Nan, referring to her cousin, "he ought to go homeand change his clothes. He'll get his death of cold. "

"He'll work hard enough for the next hour to overcome the shock of thecold water. It's lucky if he isn't in again before they get that troubleover, " responded Uncle Henry. Then he added, proudly: "That's the kindof boys we raise in the Big Woods, Nannie. Maybe they are rough-spokenand aren't really parlor-broke, but you can depend on 'em to dosomething when there's anything to do!"

"Oh, Uncle!" cried the girl. "I think Rafe is just the bravest boy Iever saw. But I should think Aunt Kate would be scared every hour he isaway from home, he is so reckless. "

She was very proud herself of Rafe and wrote Bess a lot about him. SlowTom did not figure much in Nan Sherwood's letters, or in her thoughts, about this time. Thoughts and letters were filled with handsome Rafe. 

It was while the Blackton drive was near Pine Camp that Nan becamepersonally acquainted with old Toby Vanderwiller. It was after dinnerthat day that she met Margaret and Bob Llewellen and the three went downto the river bank, below the bridge, to watch the last of the Blacktondrive. 

The chuck-boat had pushed off into the rough current and was bobbingabout in the wake of the logs; but all the men had not departed. 

"That's old Toby, " said Bob, a black-haired boy, full of mischief. "Hedon't see us. Le's creep up and scare him. "

"No, " said Nan, decidedly; "don't you dare!"

"Aw, shucks! Girls ain't no fun, " the boy growled. "Mag's bad enough, but you air wuss'n she, Nan Sherwood. What's old Toby to you? He's allusas cross as two sticks, anyway. "

"We won't make him any crosser, " said Nan, laughing. "What's the good?"

Nan saw that the old man had his coat off, and had slipped down theright sleeve of his woolen shirt to bare his shoulder and upper rightarm. He was clumsily trying to bandage the arm. 

"He's got hurt, " Nan cried to Margaret. "I wonder how?"

"Dunno, " returned the smaller girl, carelessly. Although she wasnot mischievous like her brother, Margaret seldom showed traits oftenderness or affection. Nan was in some doubt as to whether the strangegirl liked her. Margaret often patted Nan's cheeks and admired hersmooth skin; but she never expressed any real affection. She waspositively the oddest little piece of humanity Nan had ever met. 

Once Nan asked her if she had a doll. "Doll?" snarled Margaret withsurprising energy. "A'nt Matildy give me one once't an' I throwed it asfar as I could inter the river, so I did! Nasty thing! Its face was allpainted and rough. "

Nan could only gasp. Drown a doll-baby! Big girl as she consideredherself, she had a very tender spot in her heart for doll-babies. 

Margaret Llewellen only liked people with fair faces and smoothcomplexions; she could not possibly be interested in old TobyVanderwiller, who seemed always to need a shave, and whose face, likethat of Margaret's grandfather, was "wizzled. "

Nan ran down to him and asked: "Can't I help you, Mr. Vanderwiller? Didyou get badly hurt?"

"Hullo!" grunted Toby. "Ain't you Hen Sherwood's gal?"

"I'm his niece, " she told him. "Can I help?"

"Well, I dunno. I got a wallop from one o' them logs when we wasbreakin' that jam, and it's scraped the skin off me arm----"

"Let me see, " cried Nan, earnestly. "Oh! Mr. Vanderwiller! That must bepainful. Haven't you anything to put on it?"

"Nothin' but this rag, " grunted Toby, drily. "An' ye needn't call me'Mister, ' Sissy. I ain't useter bein' addressed that way. "

Nan laughed; but she quickly washed the scraped patch on the old man'sarm with clean water and then bound her own handkerchief over theabrasion under the rather doubtful rag that Toby himself supplied. 

"You're sure handy, Sissy, " he said, rising and allowing her to help himinto the shirt again and on with his coat. "Now I'll hafter toddle alongor Tim will give me a call-down. Much obleeged. If ye get inter thetam'rack swamp, come dry-foot weather, stop and see me an' my oldwoman. "

"Oh! I'd love to, Mr. Vanderwiller, " Nan cried. "The swamp must be fullof just lovely flowers now. "

The old man's face wrinkled into a smile, the first she had seen uponit. Really! He was not a bad looking man, after all. 

"You fond of posies, sissy?" he asked. 

"Indeed I am!" she cried. 

"There's a-plenty in the swamp, " he told her. "And no end of ferns andsich. You come see us and my old woman'll show ye. She's a master handat huntin' up all kind o' weeds I tell her. "

"I'll surely come, when the weather gets warmer, " Nan called after Tobyas the old man dogtrotted down the bank of the river. But he did notanswer and was quickly out of sight. 

Chapter XX. NAN'S SECRET

But Margaret Llewellen declared she would not go with her!

"It's nasty in the Tam'rack swamp; and there's frogs and, and snakes. Ketch me! And as fur goin' ter see Tobe and his old woman, huh! They'reboth as ugly as sin. "

"Why, Margaret!" exclaimed Nan, in horror. "How you talk!"

"Wal, it's so. I don't like old, wizzled-up folks, I don't, now I tellye!"

"That sounds awfully cruel, " said Nan, soberly. 

"Huh!" snorted Margaret, no other word would just express her manner ofshowing disgust. "There ain't no reason why I should go 'round makin'believe likin' them as I don't like. Dad useter take the hide off'n meand Bob for lyin'; an' then he'd stand an' palaver folks that he jestcouldn't scurce abide, fur I heard him say so. That's lyin', too ain'tit?"

"I, I don't believe it is right to criticize our parents, " returned Nan, dodging the sharp girl's question. 

"Mebbe yourn don't need criticizin', " responded Margaret, bluntly. "Mydad ain't no angel, you kin bet. "

And it was a fact that the Llewellen family was a peculiar one, from"Gran'ther" down to Baby Bill, whom Margaret did not mind taking careof when he was not "all broke out with the rash on his face. " The girl'sdislike for any countenance that was not of the smoothest, or skin ofthe softest texture, seemed strange indeed. 

Margaret's mother was dead. She had five brothers and sisters ofassorted ages, up to 'Lonzo, who was sixteen and worked in the woodslike Nan's cousins. 

Aunt Matilda kept house for the motherless brood, and for Gran'ther andMr. Fen Llewellen. They lived in a most haphazard fashion, for, althoughthey were not really poor, the children never seemed to have any decentclothing to wear; and if, by chance, they got a new garment, somethingalways happened to it as, for instance, the taking of Margaret's newgingham by Bob as a dress for old Beagle. 

As the Llewellens were close neighbors of the Sherwoods, Nan saw muchof Margaret. The local school closed soon after the visitor had cometo Pine Camp, and Nan had little opportunity of getting acquaintedwith other girls, save at the church service, which was held in theschoolhouse only every other Sunday. There was no Sunday School at PineCamp, even for the very youngest of the children. 

Nan talked to Aunt Kate about that. Aunt Kate was the verykindest-hearted woman that ever lived; but she had little initiativeherself about anything outside her own house. "Goodness knows, I'd liketo see the kiddies gathered together on Sunday afternoon and taught goodthings, " she signed; "but lawsy, Nan! I'm not the one to do it. I'm notgood enough myself. "

"Didn't you teach Tom and Rafe, and--and--" Nan stopped. She had almostmentioned the two older boys of her aunt's, whom she had heard weredestroyed in the Pale Lick fire. Aunt Kate did not notice, for she wenton to say:

"Why--yes; I taught Tom and Rafe to say their prayers, and I hope theysay 'em now, big as they are. And we often read the Bible. It's a greatcomfort, the main part of it. I never did take to the 'begats, ' though. "

"But couldn't we, " suggested Nan, "interest other people and gather thechildren together on Sundays? Perhaps the old gentleman who comes hereto preach every fortnight might help. "

"Elder Posey's not here but three hours or so, any time. Just longenough to give us the word and grab a bite at somebody's house. Poor oldman! He attends three meetings each Sunday, all different, and lives ona farm at Wingate weekdays where he has to work and support his family. 

"He doesn't get but fifty dollars a year from each church, it's notmaking him a millionaire very fast, " pursued Aunt Kate, with a softlittle laugh. "Poor old man! I wish we could pay him more; but PineCamp's not rich. "

"You all seem to have enough and to spare, Auntie, " said Nan, who was anobservant girl for her age. "Nobody here is really poor. "

"Not unless he's right down lazy, " said her aunt, vigorously. 

"Then I should think they'd build a proper church and give a ministersome more money, so that he could afford to have a Sunday School aswell. "

"Lawsy me, Nan!" exclaimed her aunt. "The men here in Pine Camp haven'tbeen woke up to such things. They hate to spend that fifty dollars forElder Posey, they'd get a cheaper man if there were such. There's neverbeen much out of the common happen here at Pine Camp. It takes troubleand destruction to wake folks up to their Christian duty in these woods. Now, at Pale Lick they've got a church-----"

She stopped suddenly, and her face paled, while the ugly scar on herneck seemed to glow; but that may have been only in contrast. Aunt Kateturned away her head, and finally arose and went into her own room andclosed the door. Nan dared not continue the subject when the good womancame out again, and the talk of a Sunday School for Pine Camp, for thetime being, was ended. 

There were hours when the girl from Tillbury was very lonely indeed. Writing to Bess and other girl friends in her old home town and penninglong letters on thin paper to Momsey and Papa Sherwood in Scotland, didnot fill all of these hours when Nan shut herself into that east room. 

Sometimes she pulled down the paper shades and opened the clothes closetdoor, bringing out the long box she had hidden away there on the firstday she had come to Pine Camp. In that box, wrapped in soft tissuepaper, and dressed in the loveliest gown made by Momsey's own skillfulfingers, was the great doll that had been given to Nan on her tenthbirthday. 

When girls went to high school, of course they were supposed to put awaydolls, together with other childish things. But Nan Sherwood never couldneglect her doll-babies and had often spent whole rainy days playingwith them in secret in the attic of the little house on Amity Street. 

Her other dolls had been left, carefully wrapped and shielded from themice, at Tillbury; but Nan had been unable to leave Beautiful Beulahbehind. She packed her in the bottom of her trunk, unknown even toMomsey in the hurry of departure. She had not told a soul here at PineCamp that she possessed a doll; she knew the boys would make fun of herfor sure. 

But she often sat behind the drawn shades nursing the big doll andcrooning softly to it as she swung back and forth in the springrocking-chair. Tom had oiled the springs for her so that it no longercreaked. 

She did not confide even in Aunt Kate about the big doll. They were allvery kind to her; but Nan had a feeling that she ought to be grown uphere among her backwoods relatives. How could she ever face roguish Rafeif he knew she liked to "play dolls?"

Fearing that even Margaret would tell, Nan had never shown the woodsgirl Beautiful Beulah. Once she was afraid Margaret had come to thewindow to peep in when Nan had the doll out of her hiding place; but shewas not sure, and Nan hoped her secret was still inviolate. At least, Margaret never said a word about it. 

Margaret's sisters had dolls made of corncobs, and rag babies withpainted faces like the one Margaret had thrown into the river anddrowned; but Margaret turned up her nose at them all. She never seemedto want to "play house" as do most girls of her age. She preferred torun wild, like a colt, with Bob in the woods and swamp. 

Margaret did not wish to go into the swamp with Nan, however, on herfirst visit to Toby Vanderwiller's little farm. This was some weeksafter the log drives, and lumbering was over for the season. Uncle Henryand the boys, rather than be idle, were working every acre they owned, and Nan was more alone than she had ever been since coming to Pine Camp. 

She had learned the way to Toby's place, the main trail through theswamp going right by the hummock on which the old man's farm wassituated. She knew there was a corduroy road most of the way--that is, aroad built of logs laid side by side directly over the miry ground. Savein very wet weather this road was passable for most vehicles. 

The distance was but three miles, however, and Nan liked walking. Besides, nobody who has not seen a tamarack swamp in late spring orearly summer, can ever imagine how beautiful it is. Nan never missedhuman companionship when she was on the long walks she so often took inthe woods. 

She had learned now that, despite her adventure with the lynx in thesnow-drifted hollow, there was scarcely any animal to fear about PineCamp. Bears had not been seen for years; bobcats were very infrequentlymet with and usually ran like scared rabbits; foxes were of courseshy, and the nearest approach to a wolf in all that section was TobyVanderwiller's wolfhound that had once frightened Nan so greatly. 

Hares, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and many, many birds, peopledthe forest and swamp. In sunken places where the green water stood andsteamed in the sun, turtles and frogs were plentiful; and occasionally asnake, as harmless as it was wicked looking, slid off a water-soaked logat Nan's approach and slipped under the oily surface of the pool. 

On the day Nan walked to Toby's place the first time, she saw manywonders of plant life along the way, exotics clinging to rotten logsand stumps; fronds of delicate vines that she had never before heardof; ferns of exquisite beauty. And flashing over them, and sucking honeyfrom every cuplike flower, were shimmering humming-birds and marvelouslymarked butterflies. 

The birds screamed or sang or chattered over the girl's head as shetripped along. Squirrels peeped at her, barked, and then whisked theirtails in rapid flight. Through the cool, dark depths where the forestmonarchs had been untouched by the woodsmen, great moths winged theirlazy flight. Nan knew not half of the creatures or the wonderful plantsshe saw. 

There were sounds in the deeps of the swamplands that she did notrecognize, either. Some she supposed must be the voices of huge frogs;other notes were bird-calls that she had never heard before. Butsuddenly, as she approached a turn in the corduroy road, her ear wassmitten by a sound that she knew very well indeed. 

It was a man's voice, and it was not a pleasant one. It caused Nan tohalt and look about for some place to hide until the owner of the voicewent by. She feared him because of his harsh tones, though she did not, at the moment, suspect who it was. 

Then suddenly she heard plainly a single phrase: "I'd give money, I tellye, to see Hen Sherwood git his!"

Chapter XXI. IN THE TAMARACK SWAMP

The harsh tone of the unseen man terrified Nan Sherwood; but the wordshe spoke about her Uncle Henry inspired her to creep nearer that shemight see who it was, and hear more. The fact that she was eavesdroppingdid not deter the girl. 

She believed her uncle's life to be in peril!

The dampness between the logs of the roadway oozed up in little poolsand steamed in the hot blaze of the afternoon sun. Insects buzzed andhummed, so innumerable that the chorus of their voices was like therumble of a great church-organ. 

Nan stepped from the road and pushed aside the thick underbrush to finda dry spot to place her foot. The gnats danced before her and buzzed inher ears. She brushed them aside and so pushed on until she could seethe road again. A lean, yellow horse, tackled to the shafts of abroken top-buggy with bits of rope as well as worn straps, stood in theroadway. The man on the seat, talking to another on the ground, was Mr. Gedney Raffer, the timberman who was contending at law with Uncle Henry. 

It was he who had said: "I'd give money, I tell ye, to see Hen Sherwoodgit his. "

There had fallen a silence, but just as Nan recognized the mean lookingold man on the carriage seat, she heard the second man speak from theother side of the buggy. 

"I tell you like I done Hen himself, Ged; I don't wanter be mixed up inno land squabble. I ain't for neither side. "

It was Toby. Nan knew his voice, and she remembered how he had answeredUncle Henry at the lumber camp, the first day she had seen the oldlumberman. Nan could not doubt that the two men were discussing theargument over the boundary of the Perkins Tract. 

Gedney Raffer snarled out an imprecation when old Toby had replied asabove. "Ef you know which side of your bread the butter's on, you'llside with me, " he said. 

"We don't often have butter on our bread, an' I ain't goin' ter sidewith nobody, " grumbled Toby Vanderwiller. 

"S-s!" hissed Raffer. "Come here!"

Toby stepped closer to the rattletrap carriage. "You see your way togoin' inter court an' talkin' right, and you won't lose nothin' by it, Tobe. "

"Huh? Only my self-respect, I s'pose, " grunted the old lumberman, andNan approved very much of him just then. 

"Bah!" exclaimed Raffer. 

"Bah, yourself!" Toby Vanderwiller returned with some heat. "I got somedecency left, I hope. I ain't goin' to lie for you, nor no other man, Ged Raffer!"

"Say! Would it be lyin' ef you witnessed on my side?" demanded the eagerRaffer. 

"That's my secret, " snapped the old lumberman. "If I don't witness foryou, be glad I don't harm you. "

"You dare!" cried Raffer, shaking his fist at the other as he leanedfrom the buggy seat. 

"You hearn me say I wouldn't go inter court one way or 'tother, "repeated Toby, gloomily. 

"Wal, " snarled Raffer, "see't ye don't see't ye don't. 'Specially forany man but me. Ye 'member what I told ye, Tobe. Money's tight and Ioughter call in that loan. "

Toby was silent for half a minute. Then Nan heard him sigh. 

"Well, Ged, " he observed, "it's up to you. If you take the place it'llbe the poorhouse for that unforchunit boy of mine and mebbe for the ol'woman, 'specially if I can't strike a job for next winter. These herelumber bosses begin to think I'm too stiff in the j'ints. "

"Wal, wal!" snarled Raffer. "I can't help it. How d'ye expec' I kin helpyou ef you won't help me?"

He clucked to the old horse, which awoke out of its drowse with a start, and moved on sluggishly. Toby stood in the road and watched him depart. Nan thought the old lumberman's to be the most sorrowful figure she hadever seen. 

Her young heart beat hotly against the meanness and injustice of GedneyRaffer. He had practically threatened Toby with foreclosure on hislittle farm if the old lumberman would not help him in his contentionwith Mr. Sherwood. On the other hand, Uncle Henry desired his help; butUncle Henry, Nan knew, would not try to bribe the old lumberman. Underthese distressing circumstances, which antagonist's interests was TobyVanderwiller likely to serve?

This query vastly disturbed Nan Sherwood. All along she had desired muchto help Uncle Henry solve his big problem. The courts would not allowhim to cut a stick of timber on the Perkins Tract until a resurvey ofthe line was made by government-appointed surveyors, and that would be, when?

Uncle Henry's money was tied up in the stumpage lease, or first paymentto the owners of the land. It was a big contract and he had expected topay his help and further royalties on the lease, from the sale of thetimber he cut on the tract. Besides, many valuable trees had been felledbefore the injunction was served, and lay rotting on the ground. Everymonth they lay there decreased their value. 

And now, it appeared, Gedney Raffer was doing all in his power toinfluence old Toby to serve as a witness in his, Raffer's, interests. 

Had toby been willing to go into court and swear that the line of thePerkins Tract was as Mr. Sherwood claimed, the court would have tovacate the injunction and Uncle Henry could risk going ahead and cuttingand hauling timber from the tract. Uncle Henry believed Tobyknew exactly where the line lay, for he had been a landloper, ortimber-runner in this vicinity when the original survey was made, forty-odd years before. 

It was plain to Nan, hiding in the bushes and watching the old man'sface, that he was dreadfully tempted. Working as hard as he might, summer and winter alike, Toby Vanderwiller had scarcely been able tosupport his wife and grandson. His occasional attacks of rheumatism sofrequently put him back. If Raffer took away the farm and the shelterthey had, what would become of them?

Uncle Henry was so short of ready money himself that he could not assumethe mortgage if Raffer undertook to foreclose. 

"Oh, dear me! If Momsey would only write to me that she is really rich, "thought Nan, "I'd beg her for the money. I'll tell her all about poorToby in my very next letter and maybe, if she gets all that money fromthe courts in Scotland, she will let me give Toby enough to pay off themortgage. "

She never for a moment doubted that Uncle Henry's contention about thetimber tract line was right. He must be correct, and old Toby must knowit! That is the way Nan Sherwood looked at the matter. 

But now, seeing Toby turning back along the corduroy road, and slowlyshuffling toward home, she stepped out of the hovering bushes and walkedhastily after him. She overtook him not many yards beyond the spot wherehe had stood talking with Raffer. He looked startled when she spoke hisname. 

"Well! You air a sight for sore eyes, Sissy, " he said; but added, nervously, "How in Joe Tunket did you git in the swamp? Along the road?"

"Yes, sir, " said Nan. 

"Come right erlong this way?"

"Yes, sir. "

"Did ye meet anybody?" demanded old Toby, eyeing her sharply. 

"Mr. Raffer, driving his old buckskin horse. That's all. "

"Didn't say nothin' to ye, did he?" asked Toby, curiously. 

"Not a word, " replied Nan, honestly. "I'm afraid of him and I hid in thebushes till he had gone by. "

"Huh!" sighed Toby, as though relieved. "Jest as well. Though Gedwouldn't ha' dared touch ye, Sissy. "

"Never mind. I'm here now, " said Nan, brightly. "And I want you to showme your house and introduce me to Mrs. Vanderwiller. "

"Sure. My ol' woman will be glad to see ye, " said the man, briskly. "'Tain't more'n a mile furder on. "

But first they came to a deserted place, a strip more than half a milewide, where the trees had been cut in a broad belt through the swamp. All Nan could see was sawdust and the stumps of felled trees stickingout of it. The sawdust, Toby said, was anywhere from two to twenty feetdeep, and there were acres of it. 

"They had their mill here, ye kin see the brick work yonder. They hauledout the lumber by teams past my place. The stea'mill was here more'ntwo years. They hauled the sawdust out of the way and dumped it in ev'ryholler, jest as it come handy. "

"What a lot there is of it!" murmured Nan, sniffing doubtfully at therather unpleasant odor of the sawdust. 

"I wish't 'twas somewhere else, " grunted Toby. 

"Why-so?"

"Fire git in it and it'd burn till doomsday. Fire in sawdust is a mightybad thing. Ye see, even the road here is made of sawdust, four foot ormore deep and packed as solid as a brick walk. That's the way Pale Lickwent, sawdust afire. Ha'f the town was built on sawdust foundation an'she smouldered for weeks before they knowed of it. Then come erlong abig wind and started the blaze to the surface. "

"Oh!" murmured Nan, much interested. "Didn't my Uncle Henry live therethen?"

"I sh'd say he did, " returned Toby, emphatically. "Didn't he never tellye about it?"

"No, sir. They never speak of Pale Lick. "

"Well, I won't, nuther, " grunted old Toby. "'Taint pretty for a younggal like you to hear about. Whush! Thar goes a loon!"

A big bird had suddenly come into sight, evidently from some nearbywater-hole. It did not fly high and seemed very clumsy, like a duck orgoose. 

"Oh! Are they good to eat, Mr. Vanderwiller?" cried Nan. "Rafe broughtin a brace of summer ducks the other day, and they were awfully good, the way Aunt Kate cooked them. "

"Well!" drawled Toby, slyly, "I've hearn tell ye c'd eat a loon, ef'twas cooked right. But I never tried it. "

"How do you cook a loon, Mr. Vanderwiller?" asked Nan, interested in allculinary pursuits. 

"Well, they tell me thet it's some slow process, " said the old man, his eyes twinkling. "Ye git yer loon, pluck an' draw it, let it soakovernight in vinegar an' water, vitriol vinegar they say is the best. Then ye put it in the pot an' let it simmer all day. "

"Yes?" queried the perfectly innocent Nan. 

"Then ye throw off that water, " Toby said, soberly, "and ye put on freshwater an' let it cook all the next day. "

"Oh!"

"An' then ye throw in a piece of grin'stone with the loon, and set itto bilin' again. When ye kin stick a fork in the grin'stone, the loon'sdone!"

Nan joined in Toby's loud laugh at this old joke, and pretty soonthereafter they came to the hummock on which the Vanderwillers lived. 

Chapter XXII. ON THE ISLAND

In the winter it was probably dreary enough; but now the beauty of theswelling knoll where the little whitewashed house stood, with the tinyfields that surrounded it, actually made Nan's heart swell and the tearscome into her eyes. 

It seemed to her as though she had never seen the grass so green ashere, and the thick wood that encircled the little farm was just a hedgeof blossoming shrubs with the tall trees shooting skyward in unbrokenranks. A silver spring broke ground at the corner of the paddock fence. A pool had been scooped out for the cattle to drink at; but it was notmuddied, and the stream tinkled down over the polished pebbles to thewider, more sluggish stream that meandered away from the farm into thedepths of the swamp. 

Toby told her, before they reached the hummock, that this stream rose inthe winter and flooded all about the farm, so that the latter really wasan island. Unless the ice remained firm they sometimes could not driveout with either wagon or sled for days at a time. 

"Then you live on an island, " cried Nan. 

"Huh! Ye might say so, " complained Toby. "And sometimes we feel like asthough we was cast away on one, too. "

But the girl thought it must really be great fun to live on an island. 

They went up to the house along the bank of the clear stream. On theside porch, vine-covered to the eaves, sat an old woman rocking in a lowchair and another figure in what seemed at a distance, to be a child'swagon of wickerwork, but with no tongue and a high back to it. 

"Here's Gran'pop!" cried a shrill voice and the little wagon movedswiftly to the edge of the steps. Nan almost screamed in fear as itpitched downward. But the wheels did not bump over the four stepsleading to the ground, for a wide plank had been laid slantingly at thatside, and over this the wheels ran smoothly, if rapidly. 

"You have a care there, Corson!" shrilled the old lady after thecripple. "Some day you'll break your blessed neck. "

Nan thought he was a little boy, until they met. Then she was surprisedto see a young man's head set upon a shriveled child's body! CorsonVanderwiller had a broad brow, a head of beautiful, brown, wavy hair, and a fine mustache. He was probably all of twenty-five years old. 

But Nan soon learned that the poor cripple was not grown in mind, morethan in body, to that age. His voice was childish, and his speech andmanner, too. He was bashful with Nan at first; then chattered like asix-year-old child to her when she had once gained his confidence. 

He wheeled himself about in the little express wagon very well indeed, old Toby having rigged brakes with which he moved the wagon and steeredit. His arms and hands were quite strong, and when he wished to get backon to the piazza, he seized a rope his grandfather had hung there, anddragged himself, wagon and all, up the inclined plane, or gangplank, asit might be called. 

He showed Nan all his treasures, and they included some very childishtoys, a number of them showing the mechanical skill of his grandfather'sblunt fingers. But among them, too, were treasures from the swamp andwoods that were both very wonderful and very beautiful. 

Old Toby had made Corson a neatly fitted cabinet in which were specimensof preserved butterflies and moths, most of them of the gay and commonvarieties; but some, Nan was almost sure, were rare and valuable. Therewas one moth in particular, with spread wings, on the upper side of thethorax of which was traced in white the semblance of a human skull. Nanwas almost sure that this must be the famous death's-head moth she hadread about in school; but she was not confident enough to say anythingto old Toby Vanderwiller. A few specimens of this rare insect have beenfound in the swamps of America, although it was originally supposed tobe an Old World moth. 

Nan did say, however, to Toby that perhaps some of these specimensmight be bought by collectors. The pressed flowers were pretty but notparticularly valuable. In the museum at the Tillbury High School therewas a much finer collection from the Indiana swamps. 

"Sho!" said Toby, slowly; "I wouldn't wanter sell the boy's pretties. Ibrung most on 'em home to him; but he mounted 'em himself. "

Nan suspected that old Mrs. Vanderwiller had much to do with the neatappearance of the cabinet. She was a quiet, almost a speechless, oldlady. But she was very kind and she set out her best for Nan's luncheonbefore the girl from Tillbury returned home. 

"We ain't got much here on the island, " the old lady said; "but we dolove to have visitors. Don't we, Corson?"

"Nice ones, " admitted the cripple, munching cake. 

He had heard something of what Nan suggested to Toby about the mothsand other specimens. So when the old lady was absent from the porch hewhispered:

"Say, girl!"

"Well?" she asked, smiling at him. 

"Is what's in that cabinet wuth as much as a dollar?"

"Oh! I expect so, " said Nan. "More. "

"Will you give me a dollar for 'em?" he asked, eagerly. 

"Oh, I couldn't! But perhaps I can write to somebody who would beinterested in buying some of your things, and for much more than adollar. "

Corson looked disappointed. Nan asked, curiously: "Why do you want thedollar?"

"To git Gran'mom a silk dress, " he said promptly. "She's admired to haveone all her life, and ain't never got to git it yet. "

"I'm sure that's nice of you, " declared Nan, warmly. "I'll try to sellsome of your collection. "

"Well!" he jerked out. "It's got to be pretty soon, or she won't git towear it much. I heard her tell Gran'pop so. "

This impressed Nan Sherwood as being very pitiful, for she was of asympathetic nature. And it showed that Corson Vanderwiller, even if hewas simple-minded, possessed one of the great human virtues, gratitude. 

Chapter XXIII. A MYSTERY

On this, her first visit to the island in the swamp, Nan said nothingto old Toby Vanderwiller about the line dispute between her uncle andGedney Raffer, which the old lumberman was supposed to be able to settleif he would. 

Mrs. Vanderwiller insisted upon Toby's hitching up an old, broken-kneedpony he owned, and taking her over the corduroy road to Pine Camp, whereshe arrived before dark. To tell the truth, little Margaret Llewellenwas not the only person who thought it odd that Nan should want to goto see the Vanderwillers in the heart of the tamarack swamp. Nan's uncleand aunt and cousins considered their guest a little odd; but they madeno open comment when the girl arrived at home after her visit. 

Nan was full of the wonders she had seen, commonplace enough to herrelatives who had lived all their lives in touch with the beautiful andqueer things of Nature as displayed in the Michigan Peninsula. Perhapsnone but Tom appreciated her ecstasy over crippled Corson Vanderwiller'scollection. 

Rafe was inclined to poke good-natured fun at his young cousin for herenthusiasm; but Tom showed an understanding that quite surprised Nan. Despite his simplicity regarding some of the commonest things of thegreat outside world, he showed that he was very observant of the thingsabout him. 

"Oh, Tom was always like that, " scoffed Rafe, with ready laughter at hisslow brother. "He'd rather pick up a bug any day and put it through across-examination, than smash it under the sole of his boot. "

"I don't think bugs were made to smash, " Tom said stoutly. 

"Whew! What in thunder were they made for?" demanded the mocking Rafe. 

"I don't think God Almighty made things alive just for us to make 'emdead, " said Tom, clumsily, and blushing a deep red. 

Rafe laughed again. Rafe had read much more in a desultory fashion thanTom. 

"Tom ought to be one of those Brahmas, " he said, chuckling. "They carrya whisk broom to brush off any seat they may sit on before they sitdown, so's they sha'n't crush an ant, or any other crawling thing. They're vegetarians, too, and won't take life in any form. "

"Now, Rafe!" exclaimed his mother, who was never quite sure when heryounger son was playing the fool. "You know that Brahmas are hens. I've got some in my flock those big white and black, lazy fowls, withfeathers on their legs. "

Nan had to laugh at that as well as Rafe. "Brahma fowl, I guess, camefrom Brahma, or maybe Brahmaputra, all right. But Rafe means Brahmans. They're a religious people of India, " the girl from Tillbury said. 

"And maybe they've got it right, " Tom said stubbornly. "Why should wekill unnecessarily?"

Nan could have hugged him. At any rate, a new feeling for him was bornat that moment, and she applauded. Aunt Kate said:

"Tom always was soft-hearted, " and her big son became silent. Shemight as well have called him "soft-headed"; but Nan began better toappreciate Tom's worth from that time on. 

Rafe remained in her eyes still the reckless, heroic figure he hadseemed when running over the logs the day of the timber drive. Butshe began to confide in Tom after this evening of her return from thetamarack swamp. 

However, this is somewhat in advance of the story. The pleasant eveningpassed as usual until bedtime came for Nan. She retired to her eastchamber, for the windows of which Tom had made screens to keep out thenight-flying insects. No matter how tired she was at night there was onething Nan Sherwood seldom forgot. 

Possibly it was silly in a girl who was almost through her freshman yearat high school, but Nan brought out Beautiful Beulah and rocked her, andhugged her, and crooned over her before she went to bed. She was such acomfort!

So Nan, on this evening, went first of all to the closet and reacheddown to draw out the box in which she had kept the doll hidden eversince coming to Pine Camp. 

It was not there!

At first Nan Sherwood could not believe this possible. She dropped onher knees and scrambled over the floor of her closet, reaching under thehanging skirts and frocks, her fear rising, second by second. 

The box was not in its place. She arose and looked about her roomwildly. Of course, she had not left it anywhere else, that was out ofthe question. 

She could scarcely believe that any member of the family had been in herroom, much less would disturb anything that was hers. Not even Aunt Katecame to the east chamber often. Nan had insisted upon taking care ofthe room, and she swept and dusted and cleaned like the smart littlehousewife she was. Aunt Kate had been content to let her have her way inthis. 

Of course Nan never locked her door. But who would touch a thingbelonging to her? And her doll! Why, she was sure the family did noteven know she had such a possession. 

Almost wildly the girl ran out of her chamber and into the sittingroom, where the family was still gathered around the evening lamp, Rafecleaning his shot-gun, Tom reading slowly the local paper, published atthe Forks, Aunt Kate mending, and Uncle Henry sitting at the open windowwith his pipe. 

"Oh, it's gone!" gasped Nan, as she burst into the room. 

"What's gone?" asked Aunt Kate, and Uncle Henry added: "What's happenedto you, honey-bird?"

"My Beulah!" cried Nan, almost sobbing. "My Beulah, she's been taken!"

"My mercy, child!" cried Aunt Kate, jumping up. "Are you crazy?"

"Who's Beulah?" demanded Rafe, looking up from his gun and, Nan thought, showing less surprise than the others. 

"My Beulah doll, " said Nan, too troubled now to care whether the familylaughed at her or not. "My Beautiful Beulah. Somebody's played a trick. "

"A doll!" shouted Rafe, and burst into a chatter of laughter. 

"Mercy me, child!" repeated Aunt Kate. "I didn't know you had a doll. "

"Got a baby rattle, too, Sissy?" chuckled Rafe. "And a ring to cut yourteeth on? My, my!"

"Stop that, Rafe!" commanded his father, sternly, while Tom flushed andglared angrily at his brother. 

"I didn't know you had a doll, Nannie, " said Mrs. Sherwood, ratherweakly. "Where'd you have it?"

"In my closet, " choked Nan. "She's a great, big, beautiful thing! I knowsomebody must be playing a joke on me. "

"Nobody here, Nannie, " said Uncle Henry, with decision. "You may be sureof that. " But he looked at Rafe sternly. That young man thought it thebetter part of wisdom to say no more. 

In broken sentences the girl told her innocent secret, and why she hadkept the doll hidden. Aunt Kate, after, all, seemed to understand. 

"My poor dear!" she crooned, patting Nan's hand between her hard palms. "We'll all look for the dolly. Surely it can't have been taken out ofthe house. "

"And who'd even take it out of her closet?" demanded Tom, almost asstern as his father. 

"It surely didn't walk away of itself, " said Aunt Kate. 

She took a small hand lamp and went with Nan to the east chamber. Theysearched diligently, but to no good end, save to assure Nan that Beulahhad utterly disappeared. 

As far as could be seen the screens at the windows of the bedroom hadnot been disturbed. But who would come in from outside to steal Nan'sdoll? Indeed, who would take it out of the closet, anyway? The girlwas almost sure that nobody had known she had it. It was strange, verystrange indeed. 

Big girl that she was, Nan cried herself to sleep that night over themystery. The loss of Beulah seemed to snap the last bond that held herto the little cottage in Amity street, where she had spent all her happychildhood. 

Chapter XXIV. THE SMOKING TREE

Nan awoke to a new day with the feeling that the loss of her treasureddoll must have been a bad dream. But it was not. Another search of herroom and the closet assured her that it was a horrid reality. 

She might have lost many of her personal possessions without a pang;but not Beautiful Beulah. Nan could not tell her aunt or the rest ofthe family just how she felt about it. She was sure they would notunderstand. 

The doll had reminded her continually of her home life. Although thestay of her parents in Scotland was much more extended than they or Nanhad expected, the doll was a link binding the girl to her old home lifewhich she missed so much. 

Her uncle and aunt had tried to make her happy here at Pine Camp. As faras they could do so they had supplied the love and care of Momsey andPapa Sherwood. But Nan was actually ill for her old home and her oldhome associations. 

On this morning, by herself in her bedroom, she cried bitterly beforeshe appeared before the family. 

"I have no right to make them feel miserable just because my heart, is, breaking, " she sobbed aloud. "I won't let them see how bad I feel. Butif I don't find Beulah, I just know I shall die!"

Could she have run to Momsey for comfort it would have helped, Oh, howmuch!

"I am a silly, " Nan told herself at last, warmly. "But I cannot help it. Oh, dear! Where can Beulah have gone?"

She bathed her eyes well in the cold spring water brought by Tom thatshe always found in the jug outside her door in the morning, and removedsuch traces of tears as she could; and nobody noticed when she went outto breakfast that her eyelids were puffy and her nose a bit red. 

The moment Rafe caught sight of her he began to squall, supposedly likean infant, crying:

"Ma-ma! Ma-ma! Tum an' take Too-tums. Waw! Waw! Waw!"

After all her hurt pride and sorrow, Nan would have called up a laughat this. But Tom, who was drinking at the water bucket, wheeled with thefull dipper and threw the contents into Rafe's face. That broke off theteasing cousin's voice for a moment; but Rafe came up, sputtering andmad. 

"Say! You big oaf!" he shouted. "What you trying to do?"

"Trying to be funny, " said Tom, sharply. "And you set me the example. "

"Now, boys!" begged Aunt Kate. "Don't quarrel. "

"And, dear me, boys, " gasped Nan, "please don't squabble about me. "

"That big lummox!" continued Rafe, still angry. "Because dad backshim up and says he ought to lick me, he does this. I'm going to defendmyself. If he does a thing like that again, I'll fix him. "

Tom laughed in his slow way and lumbered out. Uncle Henry did not hearthis, and Nan was worried. She thought Aunt Kate was inclined to sidewith her youngest boy. Rafe would always be "the baby" to Aunt Kate. 

At any rate Nan was very sorry the quarrel had arisen over her. And shewas careful to say nothing to fan further the flame of anger betweenher cousins. Nor did she say anything more about the lost doll. So thefamily had no idea how heartsore and troubled the girl really was overthe mystery. 

It hurt her the more because she could talk to nobody about Beulah. There was not a soul in whom she could confide. Had Bess Harley beenhere at Pine Camp Nan felt that she could not really expect sympathyfrom her chum at this time; for Bess considered herself quite grown upand her own dolls were relegated to the younger members of her family. 

Nan could write to her chum, however, and did. She could write toMomsey, and did that, too; not forgetting to tell her absent parentsabout old Toby Vanderwiller, and his wife and his grandson, and of theirdilemma. If only Momsey's great fortune came true, Nan was sure thatGedney Raffer would be paid off and Toby would no longer have the threatof dispossession held over him. 

Nan Sherwood wrote, too, to Mr. Mangel, the principal of the TillburyHigh School, and told him about the collection the crippled grandsonof the old lumberman had made, mentioning those specimens which hadimpressed her most. She had some hope that the strange moth might bevery valuable. 

Nan was so busy writing letters, and helping Aunt Kate preserve someearly summer fruit, that she did not go far from the house during thenext few days, and so did not see even Margaret Llewellen. The othergirl friends she had made at Pine Camp lived too far away for her tovisit them often or have them come to call on her. 

A long letter from Papa Sherwood about this time served to take Nan'smind off the mystery, in part, at least. It was a nice letter and mostjoyfully received by the girl; but to her despair it gave promise of novery quick return of her parents from Scotland:

"Those relatives of your mother's whom we have met here, Mr. AndrewBlake's family, for instance, have treated us most kindly. They are, themselves, all well-to-do, and gentlefolk as well. The disposal byOld Hughie Blake, as he was known hereabout, of his estate makes nodifference to the other Blakes living near Emberon, " wrote Mr. Sherwood. 

"It is some kin at a distance, children of a half sister of Old Hughie, who have made a claim against the estate. Mr. Andrew Blake, who is wellversed in the Scotch law, assures us these distant relatives have notthe shadow of a chance of winning their suit. He is so sure of this thathe has kindly offered to advance certain sums to your mother to tide usover until the case is settled. 

"I am sending some money to your Uncle Henry for your use, if anyemergency should arise. You must not look for our return, my dear Nancy, too soon. Momsey's health is so much improved by the sea voyage and thewonderfully invigorating air here, that I should be loath to bring herhome at once, even if the matter of the legacy were settled. By the way, the sum she will finally receive from Mr. Hugh Blake's estate will bequite as much as the first letter from the lawyer led us to expect. Someof your dearest wishes, my dear, may be realized in time. "

"Oh! I can go to Lakeview Hall with Bess, after all!" cried Nan, aloud, at this point. 

Indeed, that possibility quite filled the girl's mind for a while. Nothing else in Papa Sherwood's letter, aside from the good news ofMomsey's improved health, so pleased her as this thought. She hastenedto write a long letter to Bess Harley, with Lakeview Hall as the text. 

Summer seemed to stride out of the forest now, full panoplied. After thefrost and snow of her early days at Pine Camp, Nan had not expectedsuch heat. The pools beside the road steamed. The forest was atune fromdaybreak to midnight with winged denizens, for insect and bird lifeseemed unquenchable in the Big Woods. 

Especially was this true of the tamarack swamp. It was dreadfully hotat noontide on the corduroy road which passed Toby Vanderwiller's littlefarm; but often Nan Sherwood went that way in the afternoon. Mr. Mangel, the school principal, had written Nan and encouraged her to send a fulldescription of some of Corson Vanderwiller's collection, especially ofthe wonderful death's-head moth, to a wealthy collector in Chicago. Nandid this at once. 

So, one day, a letter came from the man and in it was a check fortwenty-five dollars. 

"This is a retainer, " the gentleman wrote. "I am much interested in youraccount of the lame boy's specimens. I want the strangely marked mothin any case, and the check pays for an option on it until I can come andsee his specimens personally. "

Nan went that very afternoon to the tamarack swamp to tell theVanderwillers this news and give Toby the check. She knew poor Corsonwould be delighted, for now he could purchase the longed-for silk dressfor his grandmother. 

The day was so hot and the way so long that Nan was glad to sit downwhen she reached the edge of the sawdust strip, to rest and cool offbefore attempting this unshaded desert. A cardinal bird--one of thesauciest and most brilliant of his saucy and brilliant race, flittedabout her as she sat upon a log. 

"You pretty thing!" crooned Nan. "If it were not wicked I'd wish to haveyou at home in a cage. I wish--"

She stopped, for in following the flight of the cardinal her gazefastened upon a most surprising thing off at some distance from thesawdust road. A single dead tree, some forty feet in height and almostlimbless, stood in solemn grandeur in the midst of the sawdust waste. Ithad been of no use to the woodcutters and they had allowed the shell ofthe old forest monarch to stand. Now, from its broken top, Nan espied athin, faint column of blue haze rising. 

It was the queerest thing! It was not mist, of course and she did notsee how it could be smoke. There was no fire at the foot of the tree, for she could see the base of the bole plainly. She even got up and rana little way out into the open in order to see the other side of thedead tree. 

The sky was very blue, and the air was perfectly still. Almost Nan wastempted to believe that her eyes played her false. The column was almostthe color of the sky itself, and it was thin as a veil. 

How could there be a fire in the top of that tall tree?

"There just isn't! I don't believe I see straight!" declared Nan toherself, moving on along the roadway. "But I'll speak to Toby about it. "

Chapter XXV. THE TEMPEST

Nan, however, did not mention to Toby the haze rising from the deadtree. In the first place, when she reached the little farm on the islandin the tamarack swamp, old Toby Vanderwiller was not at home. His wifegreeted the girl warmly, and Corson was glad to see her. When Nan spreadthe check before him and told him what it was for, and what he could dowith so much money, the crippled boy was delighted. 

It was a secret between them that the grandmother was to have the blacksilk dress that she had longed for all her married life; only Nan andCorson knew that Nan was commissioned to get the check cashed and buythe dress pattern at the Forks; or send to a catalogue house for it ifshe could not find a suitable piece of goods at any of the local stores. 

Nan lingered, hoping that Toby would come home. It finally grew so latethat she dared not wait longer. She had been warned by Aunt Kate not toremain after dusk in the swamp, nor had she any desire to do so. 

Moreover there was a black cloud rolling up from the west. Thatwas enough to make the girl hurry, for when it rained in the swamp, sometimes the corduroy road was knee deep in water. 

The cloud had increased to such proportions when Nan was half way acrossthe sawdust desert that she began to run. She had forgotten all aboutthe smoking tree. 

Not a breath of air was stirring as yet; but there was the promise ofwind in that cloud. The still leaves on the bushes, the absence of birdlife overhead, the lazy drone of insects, portended a swift change soon. Nan was weather-wise enough to know that. 

She panted on, stumbling through the loose sawdust, but stumblingequally in the ruts; for the way was very rough. This road was lonelyenough at best; but it seemed more deserted than ever now. 

A red fox, his tail depressed, shot past her, and not many yards away. It startled Nan, for it seemed as though something dreadful was about tohappen and the fox knew it and was running away from it. 

She could not run as fast as the fox; but Nan wished that she could. Andshe likewise wished with all her heart that she would meet somebody. 

That somebody she hoped would be Tom. Tom was drawing logs from somepoint near, she knew. A man down the river had bought some timber andthey had been cut a few weeks before. Tom was drawing them out of theswamp for the man; and he had mentioned only that morning at breakfastthat he was working within sight of the sawdust tract and the corduroyroad. 

Nan felt that she would be safe with big, slow Tom. Even the thought ofthunder and lightning would lose some of its terrors if she could onlyget to Tom. 

Suddenly she heard a voice shouting, then the rattle of chain harness. The voice boomed out a stave of an old hymn:

"On Jordan's stormy bank I stand, And cast a wishful eye. "

"It's Tom!" gasped Nan, and ran harder. 

She was almost across the open space now. The cooler depths of theforest were just ahead. Beyond, a road crossed the mainly-traveled swamptrack at right angles to it, and this was the path Tom followed. 

He was now coming from the river, going deeper into the swamp foranother log. Nan continued to run, calling to him at the top of hervoice. 

She came in sight of the young timberman and his outfit. His wagonrattled so that he could not easily hear his cousin calling to him. Hesat on the tongue of the wagon, and his big, slow-moving horses joggedalong, rattling their chains in a jingle more noisy than harmonious. 

The timber cart was a huge, lumbering affair with ordinary cartwheels infront but a huge pair behind with an extended reach between them; andto the axle of the rear pair of wheels the timber to be transportedwas swung off the ground and fastened with chains. Nan ran after therumbling cart and finally Tom saw her. 

"My mercy me!" gasped the boy, using one of his mother's favoriteexpressions. "What you doing here, Nan?"

"Chasing you, Tom, " laughed the girl. "Is it going to rain?"

"I reckon. You'll get wet if it does. "

"I don't care so much for that, " confessed Nan. "But I am so afraid ofthunder! Oh, there it comes. "

The tempest muttered in the distance. Tom, who had pulled in his horsesand stopped, looked worried. "I wish you weren't here, Nan, " he said. 

"How gallant you are, I declare, Tommy Sherwood, " cried Nan, laughingagain, and then shuddering as the growl of the thunder was repeated. 

"Swamp's no place for a girl in a storm, " muttered the boy. 

"Well, I am here, Tommy; what are you going to do with me?" she askedhim, saucily. 

"If you're so scared by thunder you'd better begin by stopping yourears, " he drawled. 

Nan laughed. Slow Tom was not often good at repartee. "I'm going tostick by you till it's over, Tom, " she said, hopping up behind him onthe wagon-tongue. 

"Cracky, Nan! You'll get soaked. It's going to just smoke in a fewminutes, " declared the anxious young fellow. 

And that reminded Nan again of the smoking tree. 

"Oh, Tom! Do you know I believe there is a tree afire over yonder, " shecried, pointing. 

"A tree afire?"

"Yes. I saw it smoking. "

"My mercy me!" exclaimed Tom again. "What do you mean?"

Nan told him about the mystery. The fact that a column of smoke aroseout of the top of the dead tree seemed to worry Tom. Nan became alarmed. 

"Oh, dear, Tom! Do you really think it was afire?"

"I, don't know. If it was afire, it is afire now, " he said. "Show me, Nan. "

He turned the horses out of the beaten track through the brush andbrambles, to the edge of the open place which had been heaped withsawdust from the steam-mill. 

Just as they broke cover a vivid flash of lightning cleaved the blackcloud that had almost reached the zenith by now, and the deep rumble ofthunder changed to a sharp chatter; then followed a second flash and adeafening crash. 

"Oh, Tom!" gasped Nan, as she clung to him. 

"The flash you see'll never hit you, Nan, " drawled Tom, trying to becomforting. "Remember that. "

"It isn't so much the lightning I fear as it is the thunder, " murmuredNan, in the intermission. "It just so-o-ounds as though the whole housewas coming down. "

"Ho!" cried Tom. "No house here, Nan. "

"But-----"

The thunder roared again. A light patter on the leaves and groundannounced the first drops of the storm. 

"Which tree was it you saw smoking?" asked the young fellow. 

Nan looked around to find the tall, broken-topped tree. A murmur thathad been rising in the distance suddenly grew to a sweeping roar. Thetrees bent before the blast. Particles of sawdust stung their faces. Thehorses snorted and sprang ahead. Tom had difficulty in quieting them. 

Then the tempest swooped upon them in earnest. 

Chapter XXVI. BUFFETED BY THE ELEMENTS

Nan knew she had never seen it rain so hard before. The falling waterwas like a drop-curtain, swept across the stage of the open tract ofsawdust. In a few minutes they were saturated to the skin. Nan could nothave been any wetter if she had gone in swimming. 

"Oh!" she gasped into Tom's ear. "It is the deluge!"

"Never was, but one rain 't didn't clear up yet, " he returned, withdifficulty, for his big body was sheltering Nan in part, and he wasfacing the blast. 

"I know. That's this one, " she agreed. "But, it's awful. "

"Say! Can you point out that tree that smoked?" asked Tom. 

"Goodness! It can't be smoking now, " gasped Nan, stifled with rain andlaughter. "This storm would put out Vesuvius. "

"Don't know him, " retorted her cousin. "But it'd put most anybody out, Iallow. Still, fire isn't so easy to quench. Where's the tree?"

"I can't see it, Tom, " declared Nan, with her eyes tightly closed. Shereally thought he was too stubborn. Of course, if there had been anyfire in that tree-top, this rain would put it out in about ten seconds. So Nan believed. 

"Look again, Nan, " urged her cousin. "This is no funning. If there'sfire in this swamp. "

"Goodness, gracious!" snapped Nan. "What a fuss-budget you are to besure, Tom. If there was a fire, this rain would smother it. Oh! Did itever pelt one so before?"

Fortunately the rain was warm, and she was not much discomforted bybeing wet. Tom still clung to the idea that she had started in his slowmind. 

"Fire's no funning, I tell you, " he growled. "Sometimes it smouldersfor days and days, and weeks and weeks; then it bursts out like ahurricane. "

"But the rain"

"This sawdust is mighty hard-packed, and feet deep, " interrupted Tom. "The fire might be deep down. "

"Why, Tom! How ridiculously you talk!" cried the girl. "Didn't I tellyou I saw the smoke coming out of the top of a tree? Fire couldn't bedeep down in the sawdust and the smoke come out of the tree top. "

"Couldn't, heh?" returned Tom. "Dead tree, wasn't it?"

"Oh, yes. "

"Hollow, too, of course?"

"I don't know. "

"Might be hollow clear through its length, " Tom explained seriously. "The butt might be all rotted out. Just a tough shell of a tree standingthere, and 'twould be a fine chimney if the fire was smouldering down atits old roots. "

"Oh, Tom! I never thought of such a thing, " gasped Nan. 

"And you don't see the tree now?"

"Let me look! Let me look!" cried Nan, conscience-stricken. 

In spite of the beating rain and wind she got to her knees, stillclinging to her big cousin, and then stood upon the broad tongue ofthe wagon. The horses stood still with their heads down, bearing thebuffeting of the storm with the usual patience of dumb beasts. 

A sheer wall of water seemed to separate them from every object outupon the open land. Behind them the bulk of the forest loomed as anotherbarrier. Nan had really never believed that rain could fall so hard. Italmost took her breath. 

Moreover, what Tom said about the smoking tree began to trouble thegirl. She thought of the fire at Pale Lick, of which she had receivedhints from several people. That awful conflagration, in which shebelieved two children belonging to her uncle and aunt had lost theirlives, had started in the sawdust. 

Suddenly she cried aloud and seized Tom more tightly. 

"Cracky! Don't choke a fellow!" he coughed. 

"Oh, Tom!"

"Well"

"I think I see it. "

"The tree that smoked?" asked her cousin. 

"Yes. There!"

For the moment it seemed as though the downpour lightened. Veiled by thestill falling water a straight stick rose high in the air ahead of them. Tom chirruped to the horses and made them, though unwilling, go forward. 

They dragged the heavy cart unevenly. Through the heavy downpour thetrail was hard to follow, and once in a while a rear wheel bumped overa stump, and Nan was glad to drop down upon the tongue again, and clingmore tightly than ever to her cousin's collar. 

"Sure that's it?" queried Tom, craning his neck to look up into thetall, straight tree. 

"I, I'm almost sure, " stammered Nan. 

"I, don't, see, any, smoke, " drawled Tom, with his head still raised. 

The rain had almost ceased, an intermission which would not be of longduration. Nan saw that her cousin's prophecy had been true; the groundactually smoked after the downpour. The sun-heated sawdust steamedfuriously. They seemed to be crossing a heated cauldron. Clouds of steamrose all about the timber cart. 

"Why, Tommy!" Nan choked. "It does seem as though there must be fireunder this sawdust now. "

Tom brought his own gaze down from the empty tree-top with a jerk. "Hoo!" he shouted, and leaned forward suddenly to flick his off horsewith the whiplash. Just then the rear wheel on that side slumped downinto what seemed a veritable volcano. 

Flame and smoke spurted out around the broad wheel. Nan screamed. The wind suddenly swooped down upon them, and a ball of fire, flamingsawdust was shot into the air and was tossed twenty feet by a puff ofwind. 

"We're over an oven!" gasped Tom, and laid the whip solidly across thebacks of the frightened horses. 

They plunged. Another geyser of fire and smoke spurted from the holeinto which the rear wheel had slumped. Again and again the big horsesflung themselves into the collars in an endeavor to get the wheel out. 

"Oh, Tommy!" cried Nan. "We'll be burned up!"

"No you won't, " declared her cousin, leaping down. "Get off and run, Nan. "

"But you--"

"Do as I say!" commanded Tom. "Run!"

"Where, where'll I run to?" gasped the girl, leaping off the tongue, too, and away from the horses' heels. 

"To the road. Get toward home!" cried Tom, running around to the rear ofthe timber cart. 

"And leave you here?" cried Nan. "I guess not, Mr. Tom!" she murmured. 

But he did not hear that. He had seized his axe and was striding towardthe edge of the forest. For a moment Nan feared that Tom was runningaway as he advised her to do. But that would not be like Tom Sherwood!

At the edge of the forest he laid the axe to the root of a sapling aboutfour inches through at the butt. Three strokes, and the tree was down. In a minute he had lopped off the branches for twenty feet, then removedthe top with a single blow. 

As he turned, dragging the pole with him, up sprang the fire again fromthe hollow into which the wheel of the wagon had sunk. It was a smokingfurnace down there, and soon the felloe and spokes would be injured bythe flames and heat. Sparks flew on the wings of the wind from out ofthe mouth of the hole. Some of them scattered about the horses and theyplunged again, squealing. 

It seemed to Nan impossible after the recent cloudburst that the firecould find anything to feed upon. But underneath the packed surface ofthe sawdust, the heat of summer had been drying out the moisture forweeks. And the fire had been smouldering for a long time. Perhaps foryards and yards around, the interior of the sawdust heap was a glowingfurnace. 

Nan would not run away and Tom did not see her. As he came plungingback to the stalled wagon, suddenly his foot slumped into the yieldingsawdust and he fell upon his face. He cried out with surprise or pain. Nan, horrified, saw the flames and smoke shooting out of the hole intowhich her cousin had stepped. For the moment the girl felt as if herheart had stopped beating. 

"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" she shrieked, and sprang toward him. 

Tom was struggling to get up. His right leg had gone into the yieldingmass up to his hip, and despite his struggles he could not get it out. A long yellow flame shot out of the hole and almost licked his face. It, indeed, scorched his hair on one side of his head. 

But Nan did not scream again. She needed her breath, all that she couldget, for a more practical purpose. Her cousin waved her back feebly, andtried to tell her to avoid the fire. 

Nan rushed in, got behind him, and seized her cousin under the arms. Tolift him seemed a giant's task; but nevertheless she tried. 

Chapter XXVII. OLD TOBY IN TROUBLE

The squealing and plunging of the horses, the rattling of their chains, the shrieking of the wind, the reverberating cracks of thunder madea deafening chorus in Nan's ears. She could scarcely hear what theimperiled Tom shouted to her. Finally she got it:

"Not that way! Pull sideways!"

He beat his hands impotently upon the crust of sawdust to the left. Nantugged that way. Tom pulled, too, heaving his great body upward, andscratching and scrambling along the sawdust with fingers spread likeclaws. His right leg came out of the hole, and just then the raindescended torrentially again. 

The flames from this opening in the roof of the furnace were beatendown. Tom got to his feet, shaking and panting. He hobbled painfullywhen he walked. 

But in a moment he seized upon the pole he had dropped and made for thesmoking timber cart. The terrified horses tried again and again to breakaway; but the chain harnesses were too strong; nor did the mired wheelbudge. 

"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" begged Nan. "Let us make the poor horses free, andrun ourselves. "

"And lose my wagon?" returned her cousin, grimly. "Not much!"

The rain, which continued to descend with tropical violence, almost beatNan to the ground; but Tom Sherwood worked furiously. 

He placed the butt of the lever he had cut under the hub of the greatwheel. There was a sound stump at hand to use as a fulcrum. Tom threwhimself upon the end of the lever. Nan ran to add her small weight tothe endeavor. The wheel creaked and began to rise slowly. 

The sawdust was not clinging, it was not like real mire. There was nosuction to hold the wheel down. Merely the crust had broken in and thewheel had encountered an impediment of a sound tree root in front of itso that, when the horses tugged, the tire had come against the root anddragged back the team. 

Out poured the flames and smoke again, the flames hissing as they werequenched by the falling water. Higher, higher rose the cart wheel. Nan, who was behind her cousin, saw his neck and ears turn almost purple fromthe strain he put in the effort to dislodge the wheel. Up, up it came, and then-----

"Gid-ap! 'Ap, boys! Yah! Gid-ap!"

The horses strained. The yoke chains rattled. Tom gasped to Nan:

"Take my whip! Quick! Let 'em have it!"

The girl had always thought the drover's whip Tom used a very cruelimplement, and she wished he did not use it. But she knew now that itwas necessary. She leaped for the whip which Tom had thrown down andshowed that she knew its use. 

The lash hissed and cracked over the horses' backs. Tom voiced one last, ringing shout. The cart wheel rose up, the horses leaped forward, andthe big timber cart was out of its plight. 

Flames and smoke poured out of the hole again. The rain dashing upon andinto the aperture could not entirely quell the stronger element. But thewagon was safe, and so, too, were the two cousins. 

Tom was rather painfully burned and Nan began to cry about it. "Oh! Oh!You poor, poor dear!" she sobbed. "It must smart you dreadfully, Tommy. "

"Don't worry about me, " he answered. "Get aboard. Let's get out ofthis. "

"Are you going home?"

"Bet you!" declared Tom. "Why, after this rain stops, this whole blamedplace may be in flames. Must warn folks and get out the fire guard. "

"But the rain will put out the fire, Tom, " said Nan, who could notunderstand even now the fierce power of a conflagration of this kind. 

"Look there!" yelled Tom, suddenly glancing back over her head as shesat behind him on the wagon tongue. 

With a roar like an exploding boiler, the flames leaped up the heart ofthe hollow tree. The bursted crust of the sawdust heap had given freeingress to the wind, and a draught being started, it sucked the flamesdirectly up the tall chimney the tree made. 

The fire burst from the broken top. The flames met the falling rain asthough they were unquenchable. Indeed the clouds were scattering, andsecond by second the downfall was decreasing. The tempest of rain wasalmost over; but the wind remained to fan the flames that had now brokencover in several spots, as well as through the tall and hollow tree. 

Tom hastened his team toward the main road that passed through thetamarack swamp. At one end of it was Pine Camp; in the other direction, after passing the knoll on which the Vanderwillers lived, the roadwaycame out upon a more traveled road to the forks and the railroad. 

Pine Camp was the nearest place where help could be secured to beat downthe fire, if, indeed, this were at all possible. There was a telephoneline there which, in a roundabout way, could be made to carry the newsof the forest fire to all the settlements in the Big Woods and along therailroad line. 

But Nan seized Tom's arm and shook it to call his attention as thehorses neared the road. 

"Tom! For goodness' sake!" she gasped. 

"What's the matter now?" her cousin demanded, rather sharply, for hisburns were painful. 

"Toby, the Vanderwillers! What will become of them?"

"What d'you mean?" asked Tom, aghast. 

"That poor cripple! They can't get away, he and his grandmother. PerhapsToby hasn't come home yet. "

"And the wind's that way, " Tom interrupted. 

It was indeed. The storm had come up from the west and the wind wasstill blowing almost directly into the east. A sheet of flame flew fromthe top of the old dead tree even as the boy spoke, and was carriedtoward the thick forest. It did not reach it, and as the blazing brandfell it was quenched on the wet surface of the sawdust. 

Nevertheless, the fire was spreading under the crust and soon the fewother dead trees left standing on the tract would burst into flame. Asthey looked, the fire burst out at the foot of the tree and began tosend long tongues of flame licking up the shredded bark. 

The effect of the drenching rain would soon be gone and the fire wouldsecure great headway. 

"Those poor folks are right in the track of the fire, I allow, " admittedTom. "I wonder if he's got a good wide fire strip ploughed?"

"Oh! I know what you mean, " Nan cried. "You mean all around the edge ofhis farm where it meets the woods?"

"Yes. A ploughed strip may save his buildings. Fire can't easily crossploughed ground. Only, if these woods get really ablaze, the fire willjump half a mile!"

"Oh no, Tom! You don't mean that?"

"Yes, I do, " said her cousin, gloomily. "Tobe's in a bad place. Youdon't know what a forest fire means, nor the damage it does, Nannie. I'mright troubled by old Tobe's case. "

"But there's no danger for Pine Camp, is there?" asked the girl, eagerly. 

"Plenty of folks there to make a fire-guard. Besides, the wind's notthat way, exactly opposite. And she's not likely to switch around sosoon, neither. I, don't, know"

"The folks at home ought to know about it, " Nan interrupted. 

"They'll know it, come dark, " Tom said briefly. "They'll be looking foryou and they'll see the blaze. Why! After dark that old dead tree willlook like a lighthouse for miles 'n' miles!"

"I suppose it will, " agreed Nan. "But I do want to get home, Tom. "

"Maybe the storm's not over, " said her cousin, cocking an eye towardsthe clouded heavens. "If it sets in for a long rain (and one's due aboutthis time according to the Farmer's Almanac) it would keep the firedown, put it out entirely, maybe. But we can't tell. "

Nan sighed and patted his shoulder. "I know it's our duty to go to theisland, Tommy. You're a conscientious old thing. Drive on. "

Tom clucked to the horses. He steered them into the roadway, but headedaway from home. Another boy with the pain he was bearing would not havethought of the old lumberman and his family. They were the only peoplelikely to be in immediate danger from the fire if it spread. The cousinsmight easily reach the Vanderwiller's island, warn them of the fire, andreturn to town before it got very late, or before the fire crossed thewood-road. 

They rumbled along, soon striking the corduroy road, having the thickforest on either hand again. The ditches were running bank full. Overa quagmire the logs, held down by cross timbers spiked to the sleepers, shook under the wheels, and the water spurted up through the intersticesas the horses put down their heavy feet. 

"An awful lot of water fell, " Tom said soberly. 

"Goodness! The swamp is full, " agreed Nan. 

"We may have some trouble in reaching Toby's place, " the boy added. "Butmaybe--"

He halted in his speech, and the next instant pulled the horses down toa willing stop. "Hark-a-that!" whispered Tom. 

"Can it be anybody crying? Maybe it's a wildcat, " said Nan, with a vividremembrance of her adventure in the snow that she had never yet told toany member of the family. 

"It's somebody shouting, all right, " observed Tom. "Up ahead a way. Gid-ap!"

He hurried the horses on, and they slopped through the water which, inplaces, flowed over the road, while in others it actually lifted thelogs from their foundation and threatened to spoil the roadway entirely. 

Again and again they heard the faint cry, a man's voice. Tom stood upand sent a loud cry across the swamp in answer:

"We're coming! Hold on!

"Don't know what's the matter with him, " he remarked, dropping downbeside Nan again, and stirring the horses to a faster pace. "S'pose he'sgot into a mud-hold, team and all, maybe. "

"Oh, Tom! Maybe he'll be sucked right down into this awful mud. "

"Not likely. There aren't many quicksands, or the like, hereabout. Neverheard tell of 'em, if there are. Old Tobe lost a cow once in someslough. "

They came to a small opening in the forest just then. Here a great treehad been uprooted by the wind and leaned precariously over a quagmirebeside the roadway. Fortunately only some of the lower branches touchedthe road line and Tom could get his team around them. 

Then the person in trouble came into sight. Nan and her cousin saw himimmediately. He was in the middle of the shaking morass waist deep inthe mire, and clinging to one of the small hanging limbs of the uprootedtree. 

"Hickory splits!" ejaculated Tom, stopping the team. "It's old Tobehimself! Did you ever see the like!"

Chapter XXVIII. THE GIRL IN THE HOLLOW TREE

Just why old Toby Vanderwiller was clinging to that branch and did nottry to wade ashore, neither Nan nor Tom could understand. But one thingwas plain: the old lumberman thought himself in danger, and every oncein a while he gave out a shout for help. But his voice was growing weak. 

"Hey, Tobe!" yelled Tom. "Why don't you wade ashore?"

"There ye be, at last, hey?" snarled the old man, who was evidently justas angry as he could be. "Thought ye'd never come. Hearn them horsesrattling their chains, must ha' been for an hour. "

"That's stretching it some, " laughed Tom. "That tree hasn't been toppledover an hour. "

"Huh! Ye can't tell me nothin' 'beout that!" declared Toby. "I was righthere when it happened. "

"Goodness!" gasped Nan. 

"Yep. And lemme tell ye, I only jest 'scaped being knocked down when shefell. "

"My!" murmured Nan again. 

"That's how I got inter this muck hole, " growled the old lumberman. "Ijumped ter dodge the tree, and landed here. "

"Why don't you wade ashore?" demanded Tom again, preparing in aleisurely manner to cast the old man the end of a line he had coiled onthe timber cart. 

"Yah!" snarled Toby. "Why don't Miz' Smith keep pigs? Don't ax foolquestions, Tommy, but gimme holt on that rope. I'm afraid ter let go thebranch, for I'll sink, and if I try ter pull myself up by it, the wholeblamed tree'll come down onter me. Ye see how it's toppling?"

It was true that the fallen tree was in a very precarious position. WhenToby stirred at all, the small weight he rested on the branch made thehead of the tree dip perilously. And if it did fall the old man wouldbe thrust into the quagmire by the weight of the branches which overhunghis body. 

"Let go of it, Toby!" called Tom, accelerating his motions. "Catchthis!"

He flung the coil with skill and Toby seized it. The rocking treegroaned and slipped forward a little. Toby gave a yell that could havebeen heard much farther than his previous cries. 

But Tom sank back on the taut rope and fairly jerked the old man outof the miry hole. Scrambling on hands and knees, Toby reached firmerground, and then the road itself. 

Nan uttered a startled exclamation and cowered behind the cart. Thehuge tree, groaning and its roots splintering, sagged down and, inan instant, the spot there the old lumberman had been, was completelycovered by the interlacing branches of the uprooted tree. 

"Close squeal, that, " remarked Tom, helping the old man to his feet. 

Toby stared at them both, wiping the mire from his face as he did so. He was certainly a scarecrow figure after his submersion in the mud; gutNan did not feel like laughing at him. The escape had been too narrow. 

"Guess the Almighty sent you just in time, Tom, my boy, " said TobyVanderwiller. "He must have suthin' more for the old man to do yet, before he cashes in. And little Sissy, too. Har! Henry Sherwood's sonand Henry Sherwood's niece. Reckon I owe him a good turn, " he muttered. 

Nan heard this, though Tom did not, and her heart leaped. She hoped thatToby would feel sufficient gratitude to help Uncle Henry win his caseagainst Gedney Raffer. But, of course, this was not the time to speak ofit. 

When the old lumberman heard about the fire in the sawdust he was quiteas excited as the young folk had been. It was fast growing dark now, butit was impossible from the narrow road to see even the glow of the fireagainst the clouded sky. 

"I believe it's goin' to open up and rain ag'in, " Toby said. "But if youwant to go on and plow me a fire-strip, Tommy, I'll be a thousand timesobleeged to you. "

"That's what I came this way for, " said the young fellow briefly. "Hopon and we'll go to the island as quickly as possible. "

They found Mrs. Vanderwiller and the crippled boy anxiously watching theflames in the tree top from the porch of the little house on the island. Nan ran to them to relate their adventures, while Toby got out the plowand Tom hitched his big horses to it. 

The farm was not fenced, for the road and forest bounded it completely. Tom put the plow in at the edge of the wood and turned his furrowstoward it, urging the horses into a trot. It was not that the fire wasnear; but the hour was growing late and Tom knew that his mother andfather would be vastly anxious about Nan. 

The young fellow made twelve laps, turning twelve broad furrows thatsurely would guard the farm against any ordinary fire. But by the timehe was done it did not look as though the fire in the sawdust wouldspread far. The clouds were closing up once more and it was againraining, gently but with an insistence that promised a night ofdownpour, at least. 

Old Mrs. Vanderwiller had made supper, and insisted upon their eatingbefore starting for Pine Camp. And Tom, at least, did his share withknife and fork, while his horses ate their measure of corn in thepaddock. It was dark as pitch when they started for home, but Tom wascheerful and sure of his way, so Nan was ashamed to admit that she wasfrightened. 

"Tell yer dad I'll be over ter Pine Camp ter see him 'fore many days, "Old Toby jerked out, as they were starting. "I got suthin' to say tohim, I have!"

Tom did not pay much attention to this; but Nan did. Her heart leapedfor joy. She believed that Toby Vanderwiller's words promised help forUncle Henry. 

But she said nothing to Tom about it. She only clung to his shoulder asthe heavy timber cart rattled away from the island. 

A misty glow hung over the sawdust strip as they advanced; but now thatthe wind had died down the fire could not spread. Beside the road theglow worms did their feeble best to light the way; and now and then anold stump in the swamp displayed a ghostly gleam of phosphorus. 

Nan had never been in the swamp before at night. The rain had drivenmost of the frogs and other croaking creatures to cover. But now andthen a sudden rumble "Better-go-roun'!" or "Knee-deep! Knee-deep!"proclaimed the presence of the green-jacketed gentlemen with the yellowvests. 

"Goodness me! I'd be scared to death to travel this road by myself, " Nansaid, as they rode on. "The frogs make such awful noises. "

"But frogs won't hurt you, " drawled Tom. 

"I know all that, " sighed Nan. "But they sound as if they would. There!That one says, just as plain as plain can be, 'Throw 'im in! Throw 'imin!"

"Good!" chuckled Tom. "And there's a drunken old rascal calling:'Jug-er-rum! Jug-er-rum!'!"

A nighthawk, wheeling overhead through the rain, sent down herdiscordant cry. Deep in a thicket a whip-poor-will complained. It wasindeed a ghostly chorus that attended their slow progress through theswamp at Pine Camp. 

When they crossed the sawdust tract there was little sign of the fire. The dead tree had fallen and was just a glowing pile of coals, fastbeing quenched by the gently falling rain. For the time, at least, thedanger of a great conflagration was past. 

"Oh! I am so glad, " announced Nan, impetuously. "I was afraid it wasgoing to be like that Pale Lick fire. "

"What Pale Lick fire?" demanded Tom, quickly. "What do you know aboutthat?"

"Not much, I guess, " admitted his cousin, slowly. "But you used to livethere, didn't you?"

"Rafe and I don't remember anything about it, " said Tom, in his quietway. "Rafe was a baby and I wasn't much better. Marm saved us both, sowe've been told. She and dad never speak about it. "

"Oh! And Indian Pete?" whispered Nan. 

"He saved the whole of us--dad and all. He knew a way out through aslough and across a lake. He had a dug-out. He got badly burned draggingdad to the boat when he was almost suffocated with smoke, " Tom saidsoberly. 

"'Tisn't anything we talk about much, Nan. Who told you?"

"Oh, it's been hinted to me by various people, " said Nan, slowly. "But Isaw Injun Pete, Tom. "

"When? He hasn't been to Pine Camp since you came. "

Nan told her cousin of her adventure in the hollow near Blackton'slumber camp. Tom was much excited by that. 

"Gracious me, Nan! But you are a plucky girl. Wait till Rafe hears aboutit. And marm and dad will praise you for being so level-headed today. Aren't many girls like you, Nan, I bet!"

"Nor boys like you, Tom, " returned the girl, shyly. "How brave you were, staying to pull that old wagon-wheel out of the fire. "

"Ugh!" growled Tom. "A fat time I'd have had there if it hadn't been foryou helping me out of the oven. Cracky! I thought I was going to have myleg burned to a cinder. 

"That would have been terrible!" shuddered Nan. "What would poor AuntKate have said?"

"We can't tell her anything about it, " Tom hastened to say. "You see, mytwo older brothers, Jimmy and Alfred, were asleep in the garret of ourhouse at Pale Lick, and marm thought they'd got out. It wasn't untilafterward that she learned they'd been burned up with the house. She'snever got over it. "

"I shouldn't think she would, " sighed Nan. 

"And you see she's awfully afraid of fire, even now, " said Tom. 

They rattled on over the logs of the road; here and there they came tobad places, where the water had not gone down; and the horses were verycareful in putting their hoofs down upon the shaking logs. However, itwas not much over an hour after leaving the island that they spied thelights of Pine Camp from the top of the easy rise leading out of thetamarack swamp. 

They met Rafe with a lantern half way down the hill. Uncle Henry wasaway and Aunt Kate had sent Rafe out to look for Nan, although shesupposed that the girl had remained at the Vanderwillers' until the rainwas over, and that Toby would bring her home. 

There was but one other incident of note before the three of themreached the rambling house Uncle Henry had built on the outskirts ofPine Camp. As they turned off the swamp road through the lane that ranpast the Llewellen cottage, Rafe suddenly threw the ray of his lanterninto a hollow tree beside the roadway. A small figure was there, and itdarted back out of sight. 

"There!" shouted Rafe. "I knew you were there, you little nuisance. Whatdid you run out of the house and follow me for, Mar'gret Llewellen?"

He jumped in and seized the child, dragging her forth from the hollow ofthe big tree. He held her, while she squirmed and screamed. 

"You lemme alone, Rafe Sherwood! Lemme alone!" she commanded. "I ain'tdoin' nothin' to you. "

"Well, I bet you are up to some monkey-shines, out this time of night, "said Rafe, giving her a little shake. "You come on back home, Mag. "

"I won't!" declared the girl. 

"Yes, do, Margaret, " begged Nan. "It's going to rain harder. Don't hurther, Rafe. "

"Yah! You couldn't hurt her, " said Rafe. "She's as tough as a littlepine-knot, and don't you forget it! Aren't you, Mag?"

"Lemme go!" repeated Margaret, angrily. 

"What did you chase down here after me for?" asked Rafe, the curious. 

"I, I thought mebbe you was comin' to hunt for something, " stammered thegirl. 

"So I was. For Nancy here, " laughed Rafe. 

"Thought 'twas somethin' of mine, " said the girl. "Lemme go now!"

She jerked away her hand and scuttled into the house that they were thenjust passing. 

"Wonder what the little imp came out to watch me for?" queried Rafe. 

After they had arrived at home and the excitement o the return was over;after she and Tom had told as much of their adventures as they thoughtwise, and Nan had retired to the east chamber, she thought again aboutMargaret and her queer actions by the roadside. 

"Why, that tree is where Margaret hides her most precious possessions, "said Nan, suddenly, sitting up in bed. "Why, what could it be she wasafraid Rafe would find there? Why can that child have hidden somethingthere that she doesn't want any of us to see?"

Late as it was, and dark as it was, and stormy as the night was, shefelt that she must know immediately what Margaret Llewellen had hiddenin the hollow tree. 

Chapter XXIX. GREAT NEWS FROM SCOTLAND

Nan put two and two together, and the answer came right. 

She got out of bed, lit her lamp again and began to dress. She turnedher light down to a dim glimmer, however, for she did not want her auntto look out of the window of her bedroom on the other side of the parlorand catch a glimpse of her light. 

In the half darkness Nan made a quick toilet; and then, with herraincoat on and hood over her head, she hesitated with her hand upon theknob of the door. 

"If I go through the parlor and out the side door, Aunt Kate will hearme, " thought Nan. "That won't do at all. "

She looked at the further window. Outside the rain was pattering andthere was absolutely no light. In the pocket of her raincoat Nan hadslipped the electric torch she had brought from home, something of whichAunt Kate cordially approved, and was always begging Uncle Henry to buyone like it. 

The pocket lamp showed her the fastenings of the screen. Tom had madeit to slide up out of the way when she wanted to open or close the sash. And, as far as she could see, any one could open it from the outside aseasily as from the room itself. 

"And that's just what she did, " decided Nan. "How foolish of me not tothink of it before. "

With this enigmatical observation Nan prepared to leave the room by thisvery means. She was agile, and the sill of the window was only threefeet from the ground. It was through this opening that she had helpedMargaret Llewellen into her room on the first occasion that odd childhad visited her. 

Nan jumped out, let the screen down softly, and hurried across theunfenced yard to the road. She knew well enough when she reached thepublic track, despite the darkness for the mirey clay stuck to her shoesand made the walking difficult. 

She flashed her lamp once, to get her bearings, and then set off downthe lane toward the swamp road. There was not a light in any house shepassed, not even in Mr. Fen Llewellen's cottage. "I guess Margaret'sfast asleep, " murmured Nan, as she passed swiftly on. 

The rain beat down upon the girl steadily, and Nan found it shiveryout here in the dark and storm. However, her reason for coming, Nanconceived, was a very serious one. This was no foolish escapade. 

By showing her light now and then she managed to follow the dark lanewithout stepping off into any of the deep puddles which lay beside thepath. She came, finally, to the spot where Rafe had met her and Tom withhis lantern that evening. Here stood the great tree with a big hollow init, Margaret Llewellen's favorite playhouse. 

For a moment Nan hesitated. The place looked so dark and there might besomething alive in the hollow. 

But she plucked up courage and flashed her lamp into it. The white rayplayed about the floor of the hollow. The other Llewellen children darednot come here, for Margaret punished them if they disturbed anythingbelonging to her. 

What Nan was looking for was not in sight. She stepped inside, andraised the torch. The rotting wood had been neatly scooped out, andwhere the aperture grew smaller at the top a wide shelf had been made bythe ingenious Margaret. Nan had never been in this hide-out before. 

"It must be here! It must be here!" she kept telling herself, and stoodon her tiptoes to feel along the shelf, which was above her head. 

Nan discovered nothing at first. She felt along the entire length of theshelf again. Nothing!

"I know better!" she almost sobbed. "My dear, beautiful. "

She jumped up, feeling back on the shelf with her right hand. Herfingers touched something, and it was not the rotting wood of the tree!

"It's there!" breathed the excited girl. She flashed her lamp around, searching for something to stand upon. There in the corner was a roughlymade footstool. 

In a moment Nan had the footstool set in position, and had stepped uponit. Her hand darted to the back of the shelf. There was a long box, apasteboard box. 

Nan dropped her lamp with a little scream of ecstasy, and of course thelight went out. But she had the long box clasped in her arms. She couldnot wait to get home with it, but tumbled off the stool and sat downupon it, picked up the torch, held it so the round spot-light gave herillumination, and untied the string. 

Off came the cover. She peeped within. The pink and white loveliness ofBeulah's wax features peered up at her. 

In fifteen minutes Nan was back in her room, without being discovered byanybody, and with the doll safely clasped in her arms. Indeed, she wentto bed a second time that night with her beloved playmate lying on thepillow beside her, just as she had done when a little girl. 

"I suppose I'm foolish, " she confessed to Aunt Kate the next morningwhen she told her about it. "But I loved Beulah so much when I waslittle that I can't forget her now. If I go to Lakeview Hall I'm goingto take her with me. I don't care what the other girls say!"

"You are faithful in your likes, child, " said Aunt Kate nodding. "'Tis agood trait. But I'd like to lay that Marg'ret Llewellen across my knee, for her capers. "

"And I didn't think she cared for dolls, " murmured Nan. 

But it was young Bob who betrayed the mysterious reason for his sister'sact. 

"Huh!" he said, with a boy's disgust for such things. "Mag's crazy aboutpretty faces, if they're smooth, an' pink. She peeked into that Sherwoodgal's room and seed her playin' doll; then she had ter have it forherself 'cause it was so pretty and had a smooth face, not like thekids' dolls that Aunt Matildy buyed. "

Poor little Margaret was greatly chagrined at the discovery of hersecret. She ran away into the woods whenever she saw Nan coming, for along time thereafter. It took weeks for the girl from Tillbury to regainthe half-wild girl's confidence again. 

Nan was just as busy and happy as she could be, considering theuncertain news from Scotland and Uncle Henry's unfortunate affair withGedney Raffer. She helped Aunt Kate with the housework early everymorning so that they might both hurry into the woods to pick berries. 

Pine Camp was in the midst of a vast huckleberry country, and at theForks a cannery had been established. Beside, the Forks was a bigshipping centre for the fresh berries. 

Uncle Henry bought crates and berry "cups, " and sometimes the wholefamily picked all day long in the berry pasture, taking with them a coldluncheon, and eating it picnic fashion. 

It was great fun, Nan thought, despite the fact that she often came homeso wearied that her only desire was to drop into bed. But the best partof it, the saving grace of all this toil, was the fact that she wasearning money for herself! Account was faithfully kept of every cup ofberries she picked, and, when Uncle Henry received his check from theproduce merchant to whom he shipped the berries, Nan was paid her share. 

These welcome earnings she saved for a particular purpose, and for noselfish one, you may be sure. Little Margaret Llewellen still ran fromher and Nan wished to win the child back; so she schemed to do this. 

After all, there was something rather pitiful in the nature of the childwho so disliked any face that was "wizzled, " but loved those faces thatwere fair and smooth. 

Margaret only possessed a feeling that is quite common to humanity; shebeing such a little savage, she openly expressed an emotion that many ofus have, but try to hide. 

The Llewellen children picked berries, of course, as did most of theother neighbors. Pine Camp was almost a "deserted village" during theseason when the sweet, blue fruit hung heavy on the bushes. 

Sometimes the Sherwood party, and the Llewellens, would cross eachothers' paths in the woods, or pastures; but little Margaret alwaysshrank into the background. If Nan tried to surprise her, the half wildlittle thing would slip away into the deeper woods like one of its owndenizens. 

Near the river one day Margaret had an experience that should havetaught her a lesson, however, regarding wandering alone in the forest. And the adventure should, too, have taught the child not to shrink sofrom an ugly face. 

Nan had something very important to tell Margaret. Her savings hadamounted to quite a goodly sum and in the catalog of a mail-orderhouse she had found something of which she wished to secure Margaret'sopinion. The child, as usual, ran away when they met, and even Bob couldnot bring her back. 

"She's as obstinate as dad's old mu-el, " grunted the disgusted boy. "Can't do a thing with her, Nan Sherwood. "

"I'll just get her myself!" declared Nan, laughing, and she started intothe thicker woods to circumvent Margaret. She did not follow the riveras the smaller girl had, but struck into the bush, intending to circlearound and head Margaret off. 

She had not pushed her way through the clinging vines and brush for tenminutes before she heard somebody else in the jungle. She thought it wasthe little girl, at first; then she caught sight of a man's hat and knewthat Margaret did not wear a hat at all. 

"Goodness! Who can that be?" thought Nan. She was a little nervous aboutapproaching strange people in the wood; although at this season therewas nothing to apprehend from stragglers, there were so many berrypickers within call. 

Nan did not seek to overtake the man, however, and would have kept onin her original direction, had she not heard a cry and a splitting crashtoward the river bank. Some accident had happened, and when Nan heardthe scream repeated, she was sure that the voice was that of Margaret. 

So she set off directly, on a run, tearing her dress and scratching herhands and face, but paying no attention to either misfortune. She onlywanted to get to the scene of the accident and lend her aid, if it wasneeded. 

And it would have been needed if it had not been for the man whose hatshe had seen a few moments before. He made his passage through the bushmuch quicker than could Nan, and when the latter reached an openingwhere she could see the river, the stranger was just leaping into thedeep pool under the high bank. 

It was plain to be seen what had happened. A sycamore overhung theriver and somebody had climbed out upon a small branch to reach a fewhalf-ripened grapes growing on a vine that ran up the tree. 

The branch had split, drooping downward, and the adventurousgrape-gatherer had been cast into the water. 

"Oh, Margaret!" screamed Nan, confident that it was the reckless childthat was in peril. 

She hurried to the brink of the low bluff, from which the rescuer hadplunged. He had already seized the child (there was an eddy here underthe bank) and was striking out for the shore. Nan saw his wet face, withthe bedraggled hair clinging about it. 

It was the awfully scarred face of Injun Pete; but to the excited Nan, at that moment, it seemed one of the most beautiful faces she had everseen!

The Indian reached the bank, clung to a tough root, and lifted up thegasping Margaret for Nan to reach. The girl took the child and scrambledup the bank again; by the time she was at the top, Injun Pete was besideher. 

"She not hurt, Little missy, " said the man, in his soft voice, andturning his face so that Nan should not see it. "She just scared. "

Margaret would not even cry. She was too plucky for that. When she gother breath she croaked:

"Put me down, Nan Sherwood. I ain't no baby. "

"But you're a very wet child, " said Nan, laughing, yet on the verge oftears herself. "You might have been drowned, you WOULD have been had itnot been for Mr. Indian Pete. "

"Ugh!" whispered Margaret. "I seen him when I come up out o' that nastywater. I wanted to go down again. "

"Hush, Margaret!" cried Nan, sternly. "You must thank him. "

The man was just then moving away. He shook himself like a dog comingout of the stream, and paid no further attention to his own wetcondition. 

"Wait, please!" Nan called after him. 

"She all right now, " said the Indian. 

"But Margaret wants to thank you, don't you, Margaret?"

"Much obleeged, " said the little girl, bashfully. "You air all right, you air. "

"That all right, that all right, " said the man, hurriedly. "No need tothank me. "

"Yes, there is, " said Nan, insistently. "Come here, please. Margaretwants to kiss you for saving her life. "

"Oh!" The word came out of Margaret's lips like an explosion. Nan staredvery sternly at her. "If you don't, " she said in a low tone, "I'll tellyour father all about how you came to fall into the river. "

Under this threat Margaret became amenable. She puckered up her lipsand stretched her arms out toward Indian Pete. The man stumbled back andfell on his knees beside the two girls. Nan heard the hoarse sob in histhroat as he took little Margaret in his arms. 

"Bless you! Bless you!" he murmured, receiving the kiss right upon hisscarred cheek. But Nan saw that Margaret's eyes were tightly closed asshe delivered the caress, per order!

The next moment the man with the scarred face had slipped away anddisappeared in the forest. They saw him no more. 

However, just as soon as the catalog house could send it, Margaretreceived a beautiful, pink-cheeked, and flaxen-haired Doll, not as fineas Beulah, but beautiful enough to delight any reasonable child. 

Nan had won back Margaret's confidence and affection. 

Meanwhile the hot summer was fast passing. Nan heard from her chum, BessHarley, with commendable regularity; and no time did Bess write withoutmany references to Lakeview Hall. 

Nan, advised by her former teacher in Tillbury, had brought her books toPine Camp, and had studied faithfully along the lines of the high schoolwork. She was sure she could pass quite as good an entrance examinationfor Lakeview Hall as Bess could. 

And at last good news came from Scotland:

"I am not quite ready to bring Momsey home, " Papa Sherwood wrote. "Butthe matter of her fortune is at least partially settled. The claims ofthe other relatives have been disallowed. Mr. Andrew Blake is preparedto turn over to your Momsey a part of her wonderful fortune. The restwill come later. She will tell you all about it herself. 

"What I wish to say to you particularly in this letter, " pursued Mr. Sherwood, "is, that arrangements have been made for you to attendLakeview Hall this coming semester. You will meet your friend, ElizabethHarley, in Chicago, and will go with her to the school. I am writing bythis mail to the principal of the Hall. Mr. Harley has made all othernecessary arrangements for you. "

"Oh!" cried Nan, clasping her hands. "It's too good to be true! It can'tbe possible! I just know I'll wake up in a minute and find all this anexciting dream, and that's all!"

But Nan was wrong on that point, as the reader will see if her furtheradventures are followed in the next volume of the series, entitled, "NanSherwood at Lakeview Hall, or, The Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse. "

While Nan was still intensely excited over this letter from Scotland, Toby Vanderwiller drove up to the Sherwood house behind his broken-kneedpony. This was the first time any of the Sherwoods had seen him sincethe day of the big storm and the fire in the sawdust. 

Chapter XXX. OFF FOR LAKEVIEW HALL

Nan ran out immediately to speak to the old lumberman; but Toby wascalling for Uncle Henry:

"Hey, Hen! Hen Sherwood! Come out yere, " he cried. 

Uncle Henry halloaed from the stables, and came striding at the call. Nan reached the old rattletrap wagon first. 

"Oh, Mr. Vanderwiller!" she said. "I am glad to see you! And how is yourwife and Corson?"

He looked down at her reflectively, and for a moment did not say a word. Then he swallowed something and said, jerkily:

"An' you're the one that done it all, Sissy! The ol' woman an' the boyair as chipper as bluejays. An' they air a honin' for a sight on you. "

"Yes. I haven't been over lately. But that man from Chicago came, didn'the?"

"I sh'd say 'yes'! He come, " said Toby, in awe. "An' what d'ye s'pose?He done buyed a heap of Corson's spec'mens an' paid him more'n a hundreddollars for 'em. And that ain't countin' that there dead-head butterflyye made sech a time about. 

"I reckoned, " pursued Toby, "that you was right crazy about that therebug. One bug's as bad as another to my way of thinkin'. But it seemsthat Chicago feller thinked dif'rent. "

"It really was one of the very rare death's-head moths?" cried Nan, delighted. 

"So he said. And he was willin' ter back up his belief with cold cash, "declared Toby, smiting his leg for emphasis. "He paid us harnsome forit; and he said he'd take a lot more spec'mens if--

"Har! Here ye be, Hen, " he added, breaking off to greet Nan's uncle. "Igot suthin' to say to you. I kin say it now, for I ain't beholden ternobody. With what me and the ol' woman had scrimped and saved, an' whatthis feller from Chicago give Corson, I done paid off my debt to ol' GedRaffer, an' the little farm's free and clear. "

"I'm glad to hear it, Tobe, " Uncle Henry declared, shaking hands withthe old lumberman again. "I certain sure am glad to hear it! I'm pleasedthat you shouldn't have that worry on your mind any longer. "

"And it has been a worry, " said Old Toby, shaking his head. "More'n youthink for. Ye see, it snarled me all up so's I warn't my own master. "

"I see. "

"Ye see, Ged was allus after me to go inter court an' back up his claimag'in you on that Perkins Tract. "

"I see, " said Henry Sherwood again, nodding. 

"On the other hand, you wanted me, if I knowed which was right, towitness, too. If I'd witnessed for Ged, ev'rybody wuld ha' thought Idone it because he had a mortgage on the farm. "

"I s'pose so, " admitted Uncle Henry. 

"Or, if I helped you, they'd ha' thought you'd bribed me--mebbe helpedme git square with Ged. "

"I couldn't. Too poor just now, " said Uncle Henry, grimly. "But I'd themind for it, Toby. "

"Well, there ye be. Whichever way the cat jumped, I'd lost the respectof the community, " said the old lumberman. "But now I am independent, Idon't give a dern!"

Mr. Sherwood looked at him expectantly. Toby's "wizzled" face shone. 

"I got a debt owin' to that leetle gal you got here, and somethin' topay off to Tommy, too. But money won't do it, ef I had money. I am goin'to tell what I know about that boundary, though, Hen, and it will do YOUgood! I can find another old feller, livin' down Pale Lick way, that cancorroborate my evidence. 

"You can git that injunction vacated at once, Hen, if you want, and putyour axe-men right back into the Perkins Tract to work. That's what Icome 'round to tell ye. "

Aunt Kate was moved to tears, an unusual expression of emotion on herpart. Being of pioneer stock, and having suffered much in the past, Nan's aunt was not easily moved. Uncle Henry was delighted. It was agreat day for the Sherwoods. 

It was another great day when, a week later, the roan ponies werebrought to the door and Nan's trunk was strapped upon the back of thebuckboard. Uncle Henry was to drive her to the train; but she wouldtravel alone to Chicago to meet her chum, Bess Harley. 

"And go to Lakeview Hall! I never did really expect I'd get there, " Nansighed, as she clung to Aunt Kate's neck. "It almost makes me forgetthat Momsey and Papa Sherwood are not at home yet. 

"But, my dear!" she added, "if such a thing could be, you and UncleHenry have taken the place of my own dear parents all these months Ihave been at Pine Camp. I've had a dee-lightful time. I'll never forgetyou all. I love you, love you, love you. "

The roan ponies started on the jump. The boys cheered her from thecorner of the house, having bashfully remained in the background. EvenMargaret Llewellen and her impish brother, Bob, appeared and shrillybade her goodbye. 

Nan was off for school, and wonderful adventures lay before her!