A chorus of glad cries greeted the reading of the letter. "Sherry's going to get well! Isn't it wonderful?"
Hinpoha and Migwan flung their arms around each other in an exuberance of feeling just at the same moment that Sahwah and Gladys did the same thing, and they all laughed and hugged each other for joy.
"Dear Nyoda! Think of her, going without sleep for three nights and keeping up through it all!"
"And helping to take care of the other injured ones! Isn't that Nyoda all over, though—Give Service, no matter how badly she might feel herself!"
"But, she never said a word about Veronica," said Sahwah in a puzzled tone, when the first excitement had subsided. "I can't understand it."
"She probably forgot it, she was so thankful about Sherry," said Gladys.
"Not she," replied Sahwah positively. "She couldn't have gotten our letter. I'm going to write again."
The day of the great contest had arrived. It was the 15th of August, the day on which Oakwood celebrated the one hundred and seventieth anniversary of its founding. An elaborate celebration had been prepared, with parades and pageants in the daytime, and fireworks and a sham battle at night. The military drill contest had been a part of this celebration, that Oakwood's victory over Hillsdale might have a more spectacular setting. Oakwood was making much more of an occasion out of that contest than the Winnebagos had expected and their sporting blood began to tingle. The thought of winning before all that crowd thrilled them through and through.
Agony was in a high feather. Hers was a nature which expanded in the limelight; crowded audiences inspired her to outdo herself instead of "fussing" her as they did Oh-Pshaw. She could hardly wait for their hour to strike.
The contest was at five in the afternoon, after the parade and before the evening's program of fireworks. At four o'clock the Hillsdale delegation drove into town in hayracks decorated with flags and bunting, the troop of Girl Scouts who were going to drill in the first rack, and after them several racks full of Hillsdale girls and boys, coming to watch the contest.
"There they come!" whispered the Oakwood girls to each other, and the thrill of the coming struggle began to go through them at the sight of their adversaries.
"Oh, I'm afraid I'm going to make a mistake!" said Oh-Pshaw, turning quite cold. "I'll never get through that field formation wheel, I know."
"You will not make a mistake," said Agony emphatically. "Don't think about the audience, just think about that trip to Washington we're going to get, and keep cool. I don't see what you're so excited for anyway. I'm not a bit scared." Then she added, "How are you ever going to be a Torch Bearer if you can't keep cool?" It was a home thrust, and Agony knew it. Oh-Pshaw wanted to be a Torch Bearer more than anything else and she considered this occasion a test of her fitness. She must not get rattled!
The contest took place on Commons Field. A tent had been set up on either end of the field for the use of the people in the pageant, and the two drill companies used these tents as points of entry upon the drill grounds, forming their squads inside. The judges, who were three military men belonging neither to Oakwood nor Hillsdale, sat half way up the hill overlooking the center of the grounds. The Hillsdales, being the visitors, were given the privilege of drilling first.
The Oakwood girls looked on critically as their rivals marched out on the field and began their maneuvers. The Hillsdale supporters began to cheer and kept it up incessantly. The spirits of the Oakwood girls rose as they watched. The Hillsdale Scouts did their steps perfectly, they had to admit, but they lacked "pep." The Winnebagos knew they could put a dash into their performance that would beat this mere mechanical perfection all hollow. Their nervousness left them; the music of the band, the presence of the crowd, the sight of themselves in their natty white uniforms had gone to their heads like wine. They were inspired; they could hardly wait to get out on the drill grounds; they knew they would march as they had never marched before.
The Hillsdale Scouts finished their maneuvers and marched off amid a wild outbreak of applause from their friends, and Oakwood, tingling with eagerness, sprang to attention at Miss Raper's command. The bugle blew its signal for their entrance, the band crashed into a march and the squads began to move forward. A roar of applause went up from the crowds on the hillside; Oakwood citizens hailed their champions with all their powers of heart and voice.
"CAMP FIRE GIRLS!" yelled several thousand enthusiastic throats. The Winnebagos thrilled as they had never thrilled before. Here was the whole town honoring them, them, depending upon them to lead the Oakwood girls to victory over the ancient rival, Hillsdale. Agony was nearly suffocating with pride; applause was the breath of life to her.
The company came to a halt opposite the judges, one squad behind the other.
"Squads Left—Hunch!" Miss Raper's sharp command pierced them like a bullet. With the ease of long practice the squads moved in obedience to the command. The maneuvers had commenced. Command after command rang out, which they obeyed with conscious snap and finish, pivoting, wheeling, rear marching, left and right flanking in perfect step and rhythm. Applause was continuous, Oakwood citizens had recognized the "pep" in their performance and knew what the decision of the judges would be.
The first half of the maneuvers was over; there remained now only the prize figure of the drill, the difficult field formation, in which the squads wheeled into the form of a cross and then revolved by fours around a common center, like the spokes of a wheel going around. It was a complicated figure and required rapid thinking as to whether to turn to right or left in certain places.
The first half of the figure was executed without a flaw; the squads stood ready to form the cross. "Ready—Wheel!"
Alas for Oh-Pshaw! When the critical moment arrived and she got to thinking how dreadful it would be if she should make a mistake, she went all to pieces, lost her head and marched forward instead of backward, crashing violently into Agony, who was marching with the four ahead. Not prepared for the collision, Agony lost her footing and went down in a heap on the ground, covering her white suit with dust from head to foot. A simultaneous gasp of dismay went up from the audience and the company, while the Hillsdale-ites laughed triumphantly. One of the Hillsdale boys, a youth of eighteen, who considered himself superlatively funny, called out, "Oakwood Squad, Awkw'd Squad!"
Agony scrambled to her feet, white with anger, and Oh-Pshaw stood still where the collision had occurred, too horrorstruck to move. A low command from Miss Raper and the squads righted themselves into line and proceeded with the maneuver. There was no vim left, however. Oakwood had lost. They heroically struggled through the remainder of the figure, but Oh-Pshaw, completely demoralized, made one misturn after the other. The bugler "sounded off" and the contest was over.
The Winnebagos and their company would have fled away and hidden themselves, but no, they must march back onto the field with the Hillsdale company to hear the decision of the judges. It was a fearful ordeal, that standing up before the disappointed citizens of Oakwood to hear their triumphantly smiling rivals pronounced the victors, one that taxed the courage and composure of the girls to the utmost. With a desperate effort to appear blandly indifferent to the decision they stood frozen stiff at attention, carefully avoiding every eye in the audience. The spokesman of the judges stood up and prolonged the torture five long minutes, by complimenting first one company and then the other upon different points of their performance. It seemed he would never come to the point and pronounce Hillsdale the winner. All that time Agony stood there, acutely conscious of the dust on her dress, boiling with fury at Oh-Pshaw because she had caused her to make a spectacle of herself. The taunt, "Oakwood Squad, Awkw'd Squad," still rankled in her breast.
The spokesman came to the point at last, and with much flowery language announced that "all things considered, Hillsdale had displayed a greater degree of excellency," etc. A splitting cheer went up from the Hillsdale visitors; the Oakwood citizens were glum and silent. With a last desperate effort to maintain an outwardly Stoic attitude the Winnebagos marched with their company from the field. It was all over. Oakwood had trusted in them, and they had not fulfilled the trust.
Once inside the shelter of their tent the company gave way to tears in some spots and to wrath in others. Agony turned furiously upon Oh-Pshaw and vented her rage and disappointment in angry up-braidings; Hinpoha wept unconsolably; Gladys looked a world of reproach whenever she turned to Oh-Pshaw, and even gentle Migwan exclaimed in a voice that was sharp with disappointment, "Oh, Oh-Pshaw, how could you?"
Poor Oh-Pshaw! She felt as though she could never hold up her head again. She could never be a Torch Bearer now; she had disgraced the Winnebagos, they would never have anything more to do with her. Agony, her beloved twin, had turned against her; there was nothing left in the world for her now. With quivering lips and smarting eyes she slipped out of the tent and lost herself in the crowd outside. The rest did not notice her going; they were too busy lamenting. By and by Sahwah looked around and missed her.
"Where's Oh-Pshaw?" she asked.
"I don't know," replied Hinpoha, noticing for the first time that she was no longer in the tent. "She was here a minute ago."
"She'd better run and hide," sputtered Agony, still vindictive in her wounded pride.
Sahwah stared at Agony thoughtfully and her sympathy went out to Oh-Pshaw, having to bear the whole brunt of their disaster, her whole day spoiled for her. Other features of the celebration were going on in Oakwood; the pageant of the Early Founders was beginning. "Come on out and see what's going on," said Sahwah, who hated to miss anything, even for the melancholy pleasure of crying over spilt milk.
So they drifted back into the celebration and their interest in the proceedings soon began to dull the sharpness of their disappointment. Oh-Pshaw was nowhere to be seen, however, and by-and-by Sahwah slipped away from the others and went in search of her. She guessed that Oh-Pshaw might have gone home, to get away from the girls, and went to the house, but it was closed and locked, and there was no sign of Oh-Pshaw in the garden anywhere. Then Sahwah remembered that Oh-Pshaw had a favorite nook out in the woods where she went when she wanted to be alone, a wide-spreading, low-boughed chestnut tree in a dense, shady grove, away from the singing brook with its terrifying gurgle; into the branches she climbed and sat as in a great wide armchair, secure from interruption. She had taken Sahwah with her once. Of course that was where she would go.
Sahwah hesitated a moment. Over on Main Street the fun was going at full blast; it was just about time for the balloon to go up. If she went out to look for Oh-Pshaw she would miss it. After all, Oh-Pshaw might not have gone to the woods; she might be in the crowd somewhere, watching the performance where the girls couldn't see her. But Sahwah knew Oh-Pshaw, and knew that she considered herself disgraced and that she would have no heart to look at the rest of the performance. She had a vision of Oh-Pshaw sitting disconsolate out in the woods, hiding away from the festivities, and that vision refused to go away.
"I'll go and see, anyway," Sahwah decided resolutely, "and if she is there I'll make her come back with me, and if she isn't, there's no harm done by going. I've seen balloons before, and I'll see them again."
Turning her back on the festive town she took the path to the woods, and hurried along with light, swift footsteps, humming as she went. Just inside the woods she pounced on something in the path with a little exclamation of triumph. It was a red, white and blue arm band, undoubtedly Oh-Pshaw's. She had come to the woods after all. Sahwah sped on to the big chestnut tree, finding it without difficulty, although she had only been there once. Sure enough, there was Oh-Pshaw, all curled up in the embrace of the wide branches, her face in her arms, the picture of abandoned woe. Sahwah swung up beside her and called her gently by name. Oh-Pshaw raised her head with a start and looked surprised when she saw who it was.
"Hello," she responded forlornly to Sahwah's greeting.
"Don't take it so to heart," said Sahwah cheerfully. "It wasn't as bad as you think."
"The girls will never speak to me again," said Oh-Pshaw dismally, "and you can't blame them, either."
"Oh, come, they will, too," said Sahwah. "They're all over it already and out enjoying the rest of the show. Come on back. You wouldn't want to miss the sham battle for anything."
Oh-Pshaw's woebegone look began to fade from her face and her heart was warmed clear to the bottom at the thought of Sahwah's leaving the celebration and coming all the way out here to find her. The world took on a cheerful hue again; she sat up and dried her eyes and began to smooth out her crumpled uniform. Sahwah jumped lightly from the tree and Oh-Pshaw followed her, but Oh-Pshaw's foot had gone to sleep from sitting on it so long and she jumped stiffly and came down on a jagged stump, skinning her shin from ankle to knee and giving the knee itself a bad bump.
"Anything broken?" asked Sahwah, bending solicitously over the injured member and inspecting the damage.
"I guess not," replied Oh-Pshaw, wincing with the pain, "though it hurts like fury. I guess it's just skinned."
Sahwah bound up the two places that were bleeding the most with her handkerchief and Oh-Pshaw's and was gently replacing the stocking when her ears caught a sound—a noise like the humming of a giant bee. "What's that noise?" asked Oh-Pshaw.
"It's an aeroplane," said Sahwah. "It must be the aeroplane that's coming over from Philadelphia to take part in the sham battle. The one has been in Oakwood all day, but the other hadn't arrived yet when I started out to look for you. It's coming in this direction, over the woods. Come on, let's run to the open space by the Devil's Punch Bowl and see if he flies over there." Sahwah seized Oh-Pshaw by the hand and started away on a run, and Oh-Pshaw followed as best she could for the pain in her knee. The humming noise grew louder and louder as they ran, and then suddenly it stopped altogether.
"Where is he, is he gone?" asked Oh-Pshaw in disappointment.
"I can't imagine," replied Sahwah, looking up in bewilderment when they came out beside the Punch Bowl. "No, there he is," she cried, as the machine suddenly shot into sight directly above them. "Oh-Pshaw!" she screamed, "it's coming down!"
Rooted to the spot, they watched it, as nose downward the machine came rushing toward them, struck against the rock cliffs high above them and dropped with a terrific splash into the Devil's Punch Bowl.
CHAPTER XVIII
OUT OF A CLEAR SKY
It happened so quickly that the two girls had no time to jump back out of the way; they were caught in the deluge of water that shot out from the Punch Bowl on every side. When they got their eyes open again the luckless flying machine lay before them in the water, a mass of wreckage. Oh-Pshaw gave a little muffled shriek and sat down on a log, hiding her face in her hands. Sahwah shook her roughly by the shoulder.
"Oh-Pshaw! The man's under the machine, in the water!"
Oh-Pshaw shuddered and did not look up.
"Oh-Pshaw! Oh-Pshaw! He'll drown!"
Oh-Pshaw looked up, still shuddering, and gazed in fascinated horror at the thing in front of her. "Isn't he—dead?" she asked in a hoarse whisper.
"No, he isn't, he's struggling. Don't you see the water moving? I'm going out and help him," Sahwah exclaimed with sudden resolution.
She waded swiftly out into the water until it became too deep for her to stand and then swam out to the wrecked machine, in the clutches of which the unfortunate flyer was held fast. As she reached it, the man's head came up above the surface for a moment and then immediately disappeared again. Sahwah held on to the machine with one hand and with the other reached down and brought his head up out of the water again. His eyes were closed and he was quite limp. He had fainted. Try as she might she could not free him from the wreck of the machine entirely; he was securely pinioned. All she could do was hold his head out of the water.
"Run! Get help!" she called out sharply to Oh-Pshaw. "I can't get him out." Oh-Pshaw sprang up and hobbled off as fast as she could go.
Sahwah pulled herself up on top of the machine, which was partly above the surface of the water, and sat there in a tolerably secure position holding the unconscious man up. A red stream flowing from the side of his head began to spread in the water and lengthen out in the flowing cataract of the Punch Bowl. It gave Sahwah the shivers, that ever lengthening red stream; she averted her eyes and held on grimly, trying to calculate how long it would take Oh-Pshaw to bring help. Then a new danger arose. The wrecked machine began to tilt and settle and finally with a sickening lurch went down under Sahwah, dragging her and her unconscious burden into the depths of the Devil's Punch Bowl. When she came up and struck out for the bank she found she was still clutching the collar of the unconscious man, for by some lucky chance the tipping of the machine had released him. She brought him to shore and worked over him to expel the water from his lungs and soon was relieved to see that he was breathing again. She took off the great goggles that covered half his face and opened the coat that was so tightly buttoned around his neck, which it seemed must be choking him. There was something hauntingly familiar about the face; it came over Sahwah that she had seen it before, where, she could not remember. It was a young face; the aviator looked little more than a boy.
Although breathing, the man remained unconscious, and Sahwah thought about Sherry and his injury and wondered if this man's skull were fractured. She rolled the collar still farther back from his throat to give him more air. Then she noticed a slender gold chain around his neck, and pulling at it brought up a gold locket. It was a girl's locket, heart-shaped, with a monogram engraved on the outside. Impulsively Sahwah opened it. Then she uttered an exclamation of surprise and gazed in round-eyed wonder at the picture inside. It was her own picture! The little snapshot she had given Hinpoha to wear in her locket! Why, it was Hinpoha's locket! There were her initials, D.M.B., entwined in Old English letters on the outside. It was the locket Hinpoha had lost on the train coming to Nyoda's. How came it in the possession of this strange aviator? It was a puzzle Sahwah could not solve. She was still lost in wonder over it when she heard footsteps and looked around to see Oh-Pshaw appear between the trees, limping painfully and weeping.
"I couldn't make it," sobbed Oh-Pshaw. "My knee—I don't know what's the matter with it, I can't walk on it, it keeps doubling up under me. I fell down on it every other step and each time it hurt worse. I only got a little way and then I knew it would take me hours to get back to town, so I came back to tell you. H-how did you get the m-man loose and up on shore?"
Sahwah explained briefly.
"You run and get help, I'll stay here with him," said Oh-Pshaw, looking fearfully around her at the shadows which were lengthening in the gully. There were no lingering sunsets in the Devil's Punch Bowl; night fell swiftly as the dropping of a curtain when the sun got behind the great cliff on the western side. Little did Sahwah dream what an ordeal Oh-Pshaw was committing herself to when she bravely turned around and returned to the Devil's Punch Bowl when she realized that her slow progress was likely to endanger the life of the injured man. To sit beside the Devil's Punch Bowl in the dark, and listen to the terrible gurgling of the water through the basin! The blood curdled in her veins at the mere thought of it, and yet she choked back her terror with a stern hand and said no word as Sahwah rose from beside the unconscious man, called "All right!" over her shoulder and disappeared between the trees like an arrow shot from a bow.
Inside of five minutes after Sahwah left it was dark as midnight in the Punch Bowl, dark with an inky blackness that clutched at Oh-Pshaw as with hands while the hideous gurgling filled her ears and turned her blood to water. She was going to faint, she knew it; the strength went out of her limbs; icy drops gathered on her forehead. Then she remembered. She dared not faint. She must keep her hand pressed tightly over the wound in the man's head to keep the blood from flowing. Sahwah had said so. Sahwah said he would bleed to death if she did not. Sahwah had just started to do it, when she had come back and reported her failure to bring help. Now she had to do it. She pressed her hands tightly over the wound as Sahwah had showed her, and tried to close her ears to the gurgling. But the old terror had her by the throat, suffocating her, paralyzing her hands. They dropped uselessly at her sides; she crouched limp and panting and nerveless beside the helpless man. Then, for the first time in her life Oh-Pshaw began to fight the fear. She forced her clammy hands back over the wound, she cast desperately around for something to think about beside the murmuring horror at her feet. She began to sing, in a scarcely audible voice, and through chattering teeth:
Over and over she sang it, through chattering teeth, keeping in her mind the picture of a warm, glowing fire and herself sitting beside it, cozy and comfortable, and finally the picture became so real that she forgot about the gurgling water and gave herself up to pleasant fire dreams. Oh-Pshaw herself was master, not of the Hidden Fire, but of the Hidden Fear! She was still sitting beside her imaginary fire when footsteps startled her and in another minute the place was ablaze with searchlights and swarming over with people.
CHAPTER XIX
KAISER BILL MIXES IN
"Isn't it just too wonderful for anything?" said Hinpoha in an awed tone. Then she burst out triumphantly, "I told her there was a light-haired man coming into her life—and he did! Did you ever hear of anything so romantic as this, anyway? He said she was a dream of his come to life! When he first saw her in the train that day he thought she wasn't real! And then finding my locket on the floor that way and seeing her picture in it and thinking it was her locket, and wearing it all this time! I never heard of anything so wonderful. It's better than anything I ever read in a book. Such a nice-sounding name he has, too—Robert Allison; it's so—unanimous."
"Don't you mean 'euphonious'?" asked Migwan with a smile.
"Well, 'euphonious,' then," amended Hinpoha. Wrapped up as she was in this marvel of romance that had happened in the placid, everyday lives of the Winnebagos, she was not bothering about any carping correctness of words. She sat at the foot of Oh-Pshaw's bed, where Oh-Pshaw lay with her knee propped up on a pillow, and went over the details of Sahwah's case for the twentieth time with Agony and Migwan and Gladys, all of them foregathered in Oh-Pshaw's room to keep her company.
"It was just like a book!" Hinpoha went on impressively. "Sahwah passed by the door of his room over there last night after the doctors had gone, and it was open, and nobody was in the room with him because your grandmother had gone downstairs for something, and she saw that the curtain was blowing out of the window. She went in to pull it back and while she was in the room he opened his eyes and said, 'Is it really you?' He thought he was dreaming and she wasn't real at all. Then he told her all about his dream girl, and about seeing her in the train that day, and finding the locket, and everything. He said the locket had brought him good luck wherever he went, for half a dozen times he had escaped as by a miracle from being killed in accidents to his plane. And to think that the last time it was she herself who saved his life!" The utter romance of the thing struck Hinpoha momentarily speechless.
Then she thought of something else, and broke out afresh.
"Don't you remember, when I was telling her fortune there in the train, I told her that the light-haired man had already come into her life, and she made fun of me and said it must have been the Swede brakeman? Well, what I told her was true, because Lieutenant Allison had already seen her then! Now, will you say there isn't any truth in fortunes?"
The Winnebagos could only gasp at the workings of fate!
"But what about the other man you said you saw in her fortune, the light-haired man who was going to turn dark after a while?" asked Migwan.
"I don't know," replied Hinpoha. Then she added, "Give him time! He hasn't shown up yet, but he will, you see if he doesn't."
And in view of the success of her former prophecy the Winnebagos could not very well have any doubts.
"Wasn't it a miracle that Sahwah happened to be in the woods when the plane came down?" said Agony in a hushed voice.
"Yes, but she wouldn't have been there if we hadn't lost the contest," said Migwan musingly. "Isn't it queer the way things work out sometimes? Here, we wanted to win that contest so badly, and were disappointed when we didn't, and yet if we had won it Lieutenant Allison would have been killed!"
The rest looked at each other in silent awe at this marvelous working of fate! In a dim, groping way they all felt the touch of an unseen, mighty hand in their affairs, guiding them this way or that as it chose, regardless of their own plans or intentions.
"It was really Oh-Pshaw that saved his life," said Gladys, "because she made the mistake that made us lose."
"And I was so hateful about it, and said such mean things!" said Agony contritely. "I take it all back, Oh-Pshaw. It was the luckiest thing you ever did to get rattled then."
Oh-Pshaw smiled forgivingly and all was serene between the twins once more.
While the Winnebago tongues were wagging busily in Oh-Pshaw's room and Lieutenant Allison was lying quite comfortable in bed in the big square bedroom of the Wing home, where he had been carried when brought in from the woods the night before with a ragged cut in his left temple and a fractured arm, Sahwah, breathless with wonder at the strange new thing that had come into her life, fled from the chattering girls and went wandering by herself in the silence of the woods, where she could think and dream undisturbed.
So preoccupied was she that she had passed out of the gate of Carver House without even noticing Kaiser Bill, who had broken out of his confines and was pulling the honeysuckle vine off the fence. The Kaiser stopped pulling for a moment as she came out and eyed her warily, on guard for a well-aimed stone, but she passed by unheeding. It betokened deep abstraction indeed when Sahwah ignored the depredations of Kaiser Bill. The Kaiser executed a defiant caper under her very nose and then returned blandly to his vine pulling, sending a suspicious look after her from time to time as she passed down the hill.
Through the troubles that had overtaken Carver House, Kaiser Bill had gained a temporary reprieve. In the excitement over Nyoda's going away he had been forgotten entirely for a whole week, and of course nothing would be done about his execution until she returned. Kaiser Bill was making the most of his reprieve by breaking bounds every day and damaging property to his heart's content.
But not even Kaiser Bill in mischief could hold Sahwah's attention now. She walked on in the golden afternoon sunshine, her heart attuned to the song of the wild thrush that came pouring out of the stillness of the woods. She sought her own favorite haunt, a mossy seat beside the little singing stream, where she loved to sit and watch the water tumble and foam over the rocks, but when she got there she found the place already occupied. Eugene Prince, the artist, sat there, his head tilted back against the trunk of a tree, sound asleep, with his sketching portfolio beside him on the ground and his hat on the other side. Sahwah scowled at the sleeping man and passed swiftly on. She had no desire to sit near him, even if he was asleep. She found another place, far downstream, where there was a rocky seat close to the water, and, curling herself down in it, she watched the water tumble and foam, and gave herself over to pondering on the delightful mystery of life and fate.
Upstream, in Sahwah's own private nook, the invader reclined at ease, steeped in the sound slumber of a drowsy midsummer afternoon. Upon this peaceful scene there appeared a sinister and menacing apparition, a shaggy body mounted on slender, adventurous legs, and terminating in a mischievous-shaped head with evilly glittering eyes and wicked-looking horns. It was none other than Kaiser Bill, on whom the taste of honeysuckle had palled, wandering far afield in search of something to tickle his discriminating palate. He stood still and surveyed the scene, eyeing the various articles spread out before him with an appraising eye, like a man in a Thompson's restaurant looking over the articles on the counter and trying to make up his mind what he will have. He looked at the pencil, he looked at the sketch pad; he sniffed experimentally at the hat and then at the portfolio. The portfolio went to the spot; it was made of leather with brass corners. He had not had such a treat in many a day. He licked his chops; the water of anticipation began to gather in his mouth. With a greedy movement he sank his teeth into the portfolio and began his feast In his sportive delight he played with his prize, tossing it to the ground and attacking it from all sides, while his eyes glittered maliciously at the sleeping artist. Then he; moved on down the wood path, dragging the portfolio with him until he found a place which struck him as a suitable banquet Chamber, and there he stood still and began chewing.
Sahwah, sitting on the rock beside the water, gazing off into space with her chin in her hand, suddenly became aware of a champing sound directly in her ear, accompanied by the noise of tearing. She raised her head, and there was Kaiser Bill right beside her tearing something to pieces. She put out her hand and snatched the thing away so quickly that it was gone before Kaiser Bill knew what had happened; then, realizing that to stay in the neighborhood after such a daring act was decidedly perilous, Sahwah sprang up into the branches of a great old willow tree that leaned invitingly near, drew herself up out of his reach and from her safe vantage point made triumphant grimaces down at him. Kaiser Bill, baffled, dashed his head against the tree several times in fury, then rushed into the woods.
Left to herself, Sahwah examined the thing she had rescued, and then it was that she recognized the artist's sketching portfolio. Her first feeling was regret that she hadn't let Kaiser Bill go on eating it Then she felt ashamed of such vicious thoughts and began looking over the portfolio to see how badly it was damaged. It was a sorry wreck, she decided, after a moment's inspection. Most of the seams were burst open and the soft leather which lined the stiffer outside was torn away in a dozen places. It was empty of sketches, these having been scattered along the path in the progress of Kaiser Bill's capers. Sahwah fingered the torn lining and wondered if the artist would make them pay for the damage. While she was wondering her fingers found something under the lining, and she drew out several sheets of paper, written over in a close hand. Under these were dozens of other sheets, thin as tissue, but very tough and strong, covered with lines and angles and circles and letters in complicated designs. She rummaged still further under the lining and drew out a black ribbon about an inch wide. On it in gold letters was stamped S.M.S. Eitel Friederich. After that out came a narrow envelope of exceedingly heavy correspondence paper addressed in a beautifully shaded handwriting to "Lieutenant Waldemar von Oldenbach, S.M.S. Eitel Friederich." Sahwah turned it over in her hands. It was sealed on the other side with a wafer of gold wax, the seal being a coronet The envelope was open at the top, disclosing a letter inside. Sahwah looked at it curiously, but did not open it. It was the superscription on the envelope and the gold letters on the black ribbon that were holding her attention. Sahwah knew from reading the papers that the S.M.S. Eitel Friederich was one of the German warships caught in American ports at the outbreak of the war and interned. The ribbon had evidently come from the ship, but what was it doing here under the lining of Eugene Prince's portfolio? Why was he carrying around a ship's ribbon from an interned German vessel? Who was Waldemar von Oldenbach? Evidently a lieutenant on the Eitel Friederich, from the address on the letter. But what was a letter addressed to such a person doing in the possession of the artist? A letter from a woman, it undoubtedly was. Something heavy was in the envelope beside the letter; it fell out into Sahwah's lap as she handled the letter. It was a little Maltese cross made of gray metal, with letters stamped in the ends of the crosspieces. Sahwah held it in her hand and spelled out the letters, and then all at once she knew what it was. She had seen a picture of such a thing in a magazine only a few days before. It was an Iron Cross of the First Class. She stared at it, fascinated, for a moment, then shuddered and dropped it back into the envelope.
She looked over the thin sheets of paper, but could make nothing of them; she then turned back to the first letter that had come to light. The sheets were open and she felt no hesitancy about reading them.
What Sahwah read sent her heart wildly pounding against her throat. "Atterbury?" "Strikes?"—and signed by Prince Karl Augustus of Hohenburg? This must be the very letter that was stolen from Mr. Wing's desk—the letter they accused Veronica of taking! Eugene Prince, the artist, had taken it and hidden it under the lining of his sketch book. But no one had ever thought of suspecting him! He had been so sure that Veronica was an enemy agent, and here he was one himself! She had been right after all, Veronica was innocent, and her faith in her had not been betrayed. For a moment that one great dazzling fact blotted out all other facts. It was not too late yet to save Veronica from internment. She must get to Mr. Wing as fast as she could with her great discovery. She must----Here Sahwah looked down, and directly into the face of Eugene Prince, standing on the ground beside the tree, his eye on the portfolio and the articles spread out in her lap. For a moment "they looked at each other, tense, speechless, then the artist sprang into the tree, snatched the portfolio and the letter away from her and darted away into the woods. Stunned by surprise Sahwah slid limply to the ground, vainly looking around to see where the artist had gone. The woods had swallowed him. At Sahwah's feet lay the gilt-lettered ship's ribbon, the letter addressed to Waldemar von Oldenbach and the thin sheets of paper, and in her hand she still clutched the bottom half of one of the pages of the stolen letter, the half that bore the prince's signature and the name of Atterbury in one of the lines."
CHAPTER XX
ANOTHER'S SECRET
"Tell me something about this artist who called himself Eugene Prince," said Lieutenant Allison, who, propped up in bed with Mr. Wing and the Winnebagos around him, had been looking over the contents of the sketching portfolio which Sahwah had just brought in.
Mr. Wing, still dazed from the shock of learning that the man he had looked upon as such a good friend had played him false, described the artist as well as he could. The lieutenant listened with a puzzled frown until he heard about the funny little drawings that the artist used to make, and then he interrupted with a triumphant exclamation.
"That's he!" he exclaimed. "The very same! Eugene Prince is Waldemar von Oldenbach himself!"
Then he told about him.
"Waldemar von Oldenbach! His father is a German count, his mother was an American. He was educated in England and afterward came to America and entered Cornell. That's where I met him. He was the cleverest scapegrace that ever lived. He could sing like an angel, draw like St. Peter, and knew more languages than an Ellis Island interpreter. He made friends wherever he went. To look at him and hear him talk you would never think he was a German; he's the picture of his American mother, and being in England so much he had learned English perfectly. At the same time he could make himself up like a Frenchman and you'd swear that he and all his ancestors were born in the shadow of Notre Dame. He was a great old actor, all right. After he'd been in America a year or so he went back to Germany and entered the navy and became a first lieutenant on the Eitel Friederich. That's where he was when the war broke out and the Eitel Friederich was interned. But Von Oldenbach wasn't interned with her, not much. He got away before they had a chance to photograph him and label him, and so no official search was ever made for him as it was in the cases of the other sailors from the Eitel Friederich who escaped. I have often wondered what became of him, because I knew he was on the Eitel Friederich when she first came into port, but his name didn't show up among the ship's officers when they were interned. Someone on board said he had died the day before the ship was seized and that was all anybody knew about him. He must have been quietly cruising around the country ever since, disguised and posing as an artist, working himself into one locality after another where he could get information that was of service to his fatherland. These drawings here are mostly of airplane parts which he's picked up in various places and his sketches are mostly all rivers and bridges.
"Eugene Prince, indeed! 'Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter,' that's what they used to call him in college, after an old student song. He had such winning ways he could take up with anybody. Nobody on earth was proof against his charm. You see how it has worked with yourself, Mr. Wing. He made himself such a delightful companion, and became of such real service to you in your work of trailing enemy agents that you never suspected he wasn't the most patriotic American alive. You would have staked your soul on it. When he found out you had this letter which tied up old Prince Karl Augustus with your strike case, he managed to get it away from you and so scored one for the Prince, who is a good friend of his. At the same time he was clever enough to throw suspicion over onto this little Hungarian girl friend of yours, and if this goat hadn't butted in just at the right time he probably never would have been found out. As it is, he'll probably never be caught now. He's too clever. He'll fool the officers yet, as he's done before." Sleep came slowly to the girls that night, there had been so much excitement during the day, but one by one they dropped off at last, even Sahwah, who was so wide awake she thought she would never sleep again. Sometime after midnight the doorbell rang, a loud, ferocious peal that clanged through the silent house like a fire alarm and fetched Sahwah sitting upright in bed with a beating heart. "What's that?" came in a startled tone from Hinpoha's room.
"The doorbell," answered Sahwah, jumping out of bed and putting on her slippers. The other girls were awake by this time, calling to each other. The bell pealed again.
"Don't you go to the door!" cried Hinpoha hoarsely, as she saw Sahwah preparing to go down. "It may be the artist coming back to kill us. I've heard of such things. They come to the door at night and ring the doorbell and then they shoot you through the door when you open it. Don't you dare go down!"
"Oh-h-h-h-wow-w!" shrieked Gladys, with a smothered squeal, her nerves giving away beneath the shock of being wakened so suddenly from sound sleep, together with the picture of horror conjured up by Hinpoha's awful suggestion.
Fright overtook the rest of them then and they stood in a shivering group in the upper hall. Another peal clanged through the house, louder and more insistent than before.
"I'm going to see who's there," said Sahwah hardily. "Come on, all of you, come down with me."
"Wait until we get armed," said Hinpoha, casting about for something that would serve as a weapon of defense. There was nothing in sight but a two-quart bottle of spring water, which she picked up. Gladys went into the kitchen and picked up a frying pan, Sahwah climbed up on the mantel and pulled down the Revolutionary musket that hung there and brought down a three-foot sword for Migwan. It dropped with a clatter upon the hearthstone when Migwan tried to take it from her hand, and the four stood petrified with alarm. Another furious peal at the bell.
"Come on," whispered Sahwah. "I'll open the door a crack and you stand right behind me. I'm not going to turn on the light, because it's easier to rush out and make an attack in the dark." Holding their breath they approached the door with shaking knees. Sahwah turned the key in the lock as quietly as she could and opened the door a tiny crack. "Who's there?" she called in a bold voice, at the same time bringing her gun down on the floor with a warning bang.
"It's I, Nyoda," answered the dearest voice in the world. "Oh, I thought I'd never make you hear!"
The next minute she was inside the room and the light was switched on. One look at the four girls, armed to the teeth, and Nyoda doubled up on the stairs and laughed until she cried, while the Winnebagos looked sheepish and laid their weapons down in a hurry.
"Didn't you get my wire saying I was coming?" asked Nyoda in surprise. "I sent one yesterday saying I would reach Oakwood at eight to-night. Trains were delayed all along the line and I didn't get in until nearly one this morning."
"We never got any telegram," said Migwan.
"I suppose it'll get here to-morrow," said Nyoda resignedly. "The telegraph operator in St. Margaret's was also the postmaster, and I have a suspicion that he was also the expressman, and his messages piled up on him at times. I got your letter about Veronica yesterday and started for home immediately. Now tell me everything exactly as it happened."
She listened with wide-open eyes to the tale which Sahwah, assisted by the other three, poured out excitedly.
At the mention of Veronica's mysterious errands from the house, which had brought suspicion down upon her, Nyoda suddenly turned white and clutched the newel post for support.
"Oh, if I had only known!" she cried wildly. "If I had only been here! Oh, the poor, poor child, why didn't she tell?" Nyoda sank down on the stairs and buried her face in her hands, while the Winnebagos stood around with wondering, startled faces.
Then she looked up at the girls and began to speak.
"Girls," she said in an awed tone, "I simply can't find words to tell you what Veronica has done. No one could express in seven languages the depth of her loyalty to a friend. She has kept a promise of silence about a certain matter at a cost to herself that surpasses belief. But here and now I absolve her from that promise, and propose to tell you the whole matter which has so puzzled and tormented you with its mystery, although it is a matter I urgently wished to keep secret.
"You probably do not know that my husband has a younger brother, Clement, who was a brilliant scholar and a fine musician. His health had always been frail, and he overstudied in college, with the result that in the middle of his junior year he broke down altogether and was ill for a long time. Worry about his condition finally affected his mind and he became quite melancholy at times and mentally unbalanced. It was nothing permanent, the doctors said, and the mental trouble would pass away if he regained his health, but Clement was morbidly sensitive about it and was terribly afraid people would find it out and consider him crazy all the rest of his life, and that his career would be ruined by it
"His distress was so keen that my husband brought him to a little cottage here on the outskirts of Oakwood that stands far back from one of the unfrequented roads, almost hidden by the trees, and established him there with a young doctor friend and an old housekeeper who had been in the family for years and had looked after Clem since he was a youngster. None of his friends knew where he was nor what was the matter with him, so he was safe from the publicity he feared. He began to improve with the quiet outdoor life he led, but still there were times when he grew so melancholy that they feared he would kill himself. He was passionately fond of violin music, and we soon found out he could be speedily brought out of his melancholy fits by the sound of his favorite instrument.
"So I brought Veronica down here this summer, and her playing worked a miracle every time. Whenever Clem grew despondent they would telephone for Veronica and she would go over and play for him. When she went out of the house in the daytime to go over, she went through the cellar passage that opens out into the spring house on the side of the hill, so you girls would not see her leaving with her violin."
A light broke in Sahwah's brain. That was why she had not heard Veronica going out of the front door that afternoon when she disappeared so mysteriously!
"But he usually had those spells at night," continued Nyoda, "because he was always sleepless, but no matter what time it was she would always go and play for him, and the magic strains of her violin would put him to sleep and drive away the melancholy. Of course, I asked her to keep the matter a secret, and never breathe a word about Clem's existence to anybody, and she promised. How little did I guess what it was going to cost her to keep that secret!"
The Winnebagos looked at each other in wonder and awe at the thought of this fiery little wisp of nobility who would not break her word of honor even to clear herself of unjust suspicion. Then with one voice they broke out in a wild cheer of admiration and acclaim that sent the echoes flying through the quiet old house: