The Lass of the Silver Sword

Early one bright, fresh morning, a fortnight after Commencement, the Albany station was invaded by a troop of girls, laden with a variety of outing gear. Nancy Newcomb and Helen Westover, who headed the band, carried bundles of fishing rods. Marion Gaylord was armed with a canoe-paddle, and Eunice had a field-glass slung over her shoulder. Hope Lamont, Ruth Whitney, Dorothy Stone and Olive Spencer carried kodaks. Gladys Pearson, Winifred Russell and Ethel Merryman had caddy bags. Katrina Van Horn and Louise Phillips each had a guide-basket, and Grace Gardner, Pamela Kirkland, Betty and Jean swung tennis rackets. As for Carol, she had evidently taken up the professions of troubadour and musketeer, for in one hand she bore a mandolin case and in the other a rifle. She seemed to be acting as body-guard to little Fräulein Bunsen, who, with Miss Hamersley, had brought the merry maidens by the night boat from New York.

Five minutes later another traveler entered the station, a little gipsy in a jaunty suit, followed by a dignified looking gentleman, no doubt her father.

“Frisky!” “Frances!” Betty and Jean rushed to meet the newcomer.

“Ach, but we shall have a summer of pranks, if the little Mouse is to go to camp!” exclaimed Fräulein Bunsen in some dismay.

“Shall I fire?” Carol demanded. “We’d better nip her pranks in the bud.”

Frances dashed straight for the girls and proclaimed triumphantly, “I’m going to camp! It’s because of the whooping-cough!”

“Good gracious, child! Go away from me, then!” cried Nancy, and there was a general backing away from the Mouse.

“Oh. I’m not catching!” said Frances. “I was away visiting when my small brother came down with it, and I can’t go home for fear I’ll get it. So Daddy telegraphed to Mrs. Brook, and I’m going with you! Isn’t it too jolly! My! but I had to scramble to get off! Dick only began to whoop day before yesterday. Wasn’t he a lamb to catch it? Oh, isn’t it splendid I can go!”

“Perfectly fine, Mousie!” said Jean. “It’ll be stacks of fun to have you! Now there’ll be four of us battle maids together all summer.”

A few minutes more and they were all in the parlor-car, rolling out of the station on their way to the Adirondacks. They left the train in the cool of the afternoon, and the mountain-wagons sent to meet them carried them miles away from the railroad to the shores of Halcyon. It was in the rosy light of sunset that they had their first glimpse of the beautiful lake, with its fringe of woods and its encircling hills. But it was only a glimpse, for the next moment they turned into the darkness of the forest road again.

“Carolie!”

“Madam!”

“I’m thinking up a poem about the lake,” said Jean, “and I want to know if it sounds right.” And she recited softly to her confidant:

“That’s a darling verse,” said Carol. “I thought genius must be burning, you kept so quiet.” Encouraged by this, Jean went on:

“Magnificent, Jean! But why don’t you make it gray squirrel?”

“Gray squirrel?” Jean repeated, wonderingly.

“Yes, you dressed your lake up in sable fur, didn’t you? And I thought gray squirrel wouldn’t be so extravagant.”

“Carolie! how hateful of you! Oh, pshaw! it does sound as if my lake had a muff and a boa! I’ll have to fix it. You don’t mind ‘run down,’ do you? I do. I hate it, but I had to get something to rhyme with sundown.”

“Oh, I like ‘run down,’” said Carol. “It shows the fawns were athletic.”

“You needn’t make fun of it! It’s terrific, trying to make poetry when you’re going jigglety-bounce every minute,” said Jean. “Wait a minute! Let me think.” A pause, and then, “How’s this?” she asked:

Carol considered that this might be handed down in American literature, but before Jean could introduce the fawns gracefully there came a surprise that sent rhyming out of her head.

Suddenly a light shone out in the gloom; a sharp bark was heard, and a large dog bounded into the road and rushed almost under the wheels of the first wagon.

“Rod! Rod! come here!” called a familiar voice, and the leading carriage-load saw standing at the side of the way a girl in white holding a lantern.

“Cecily! Cecily!” chorused six glad voices. There was a medley of happy greetings, and before the horses could stop Jean had made a daring spring from one side and Frances from the other. The next minute Betty, Carol, Eunice and Nancy were with them; Cecily was flying from one to another, and the whole seven were laughing and talking at once.

“Roderick Dhu and I have been waiting perfect ages! I thought you’d never come! Oh, it’s so lovely to have you here!” cried Cecily.

“It’s so lovely to be here!” returned Jean. “You darling, beautiful old doggy! Stay still and let me pet you!” And she went down on her knees to fondle the shaggy collie.

“Now I’m going to take you up through the labyrinth,” said Cecily, when the other divisions of the party had joined them, and she had welcomed every one. “The carriages have to go way around and you’d be joggled all to pieces. Roderick, old boy! lead the way!”

“What’s the labyrinth?” asked Jean.

“It’s the foot-path up to camp. We call it that because the trail winds and winds all sorts of ways and tangles you all up,” Cecily explained. She parted the overhanging boughs by the wayside, and disclosed a path leading, so it seemed, into the very heart of the forest.

“Oh, how good the woods smell! Isn’t it delicious!” The girls sniffed and drew deep breaths as they set out on the trail.

“It’s just like going through a tunnel! I love the labyrinth!” said Jean, delighted with the winding, perplexing path.

“But where is the lake?” asked Betty.

“And where’s the camp?” asked Frances.

“Just a little way ahead,” said Cecily, flitting on like a will-o’-the-wisp with her lantern, “but if I ran away from you, you wouldn’t find your way if you tried all night.”

“Where are we? Where are we?” cried girl after girl.

“Where are we?” mimicked Cecily. “That’s what everybody always says. We’ll come out on Camp Hide-and-Seek in just a minute.”

“Is that its name?” asked Betty.

“I call it that,” said Cecily. “It’s real name is not a bit appropriate now,—‘Black Bear Camp!’ The boys we had here named it that because once a bear really did come into our woods, but we’ve never seen one from that day to this. I wish somebody would think up a new name.”

“Call it ‘Camp Where-are-we,’ if that’s what everybody says,” Carol suggested.

“That’s just the thing!” cried Cecily.

“And spell it some crazy way,” proposed Jean.

The new name met with general approbation, and by the time that it had been decided to spell it “Huairarwee,” the trail ended. The girls stepped out of the thick woods and found themselves in a grove of birches on a little bluff above the lake. A camp-fire was blazing on a great rock and in its light they saw a line of white tents, a bungalow built of logs, and, below, a rustic boat-house and a dock.

“Mother! Mo-ther! Here we are!” sang Cecily.

“Welcome to camp!” answered a clear, sweet voice, and Mrs. Brook came out of the bungalow and gave the girls a motherly greeting.

“Come and have a peep at the tents,” said she, “and then we’ll have supper. It’s just ready.”

“Isn’t it fun!” said Cecily. “We’re to sleep three or four in a tent!”

There were eight tents, built on platforms well raised above the ground, and connected by a narrow veranda. The furniture consisted of cots and camp-stools, and chintz-covered boxes for wash-stands and dressing-tables.

“Cecily has planned out just how you girls are to sleep,” said Mrs. Brook. “She says Miss Armstrong and Miss Stanley and Miss Newcomb are inseparable friends, so we’ll put them together in this first tent.”

“Jolly!” said Carol. “But please, Mrs. Brook, don’t ‘Miss’ us,—except when we’re away.”

“No, please call us by our first names. We want to be your summer daughters,” said Eunice.

“And so you shall be,—all of you,” answered Mrs. Brook heartily.

She had not forgotten her own girlhood, and was ready with quick sympathy to win the love and confidence of her young guests.

“I’ll let you call her Motherling,” said Cecily. “It’s my pet name for her.” And Mrs. Brook was adopted as mother by the whole camp.

“Now for the four maids of the ‘Silver Sword,’” said she, when Carol, Eunice, and Nancy had taken possession of their tent. “I’m going to put you next door.” She led the way to the second tent in which were four cozy cots.

Hardly had the travelers been installed in their tents when a horn sounded, calling them to supper in the bungalow. Japanese lanterns, hanging from the stag’s head over the door, shed a soft light over the bungalow veranda, and a brighter glow welcomed the girls as they entered the “living-room” where a magnificent fire of spruce-logs leaped up the rough brick chimney. They found themselves in what might have been the interior of a hunter’s lodge. Antlers and deers’ heads adorned the walls here and there, fox skins and a bearskin lay on the floor, and in one corner a stuffed raccoon glared at the company with his yellow glass eyes. Weather-stained fence-boards, beautiful with silvery lichen, formed the mantel-shelves, which were decorated with bright-colored fungi and balloon-like hornets’ nests, a stuffed blue heron, with wings outspread, presiding over the whole. The living-room was parlor and dining-room combined, and there stood the table decked with ferns, and beside it a pretty, dark-eyed French-Canadian waitress smiling hospitably on the guests.

Nothing had ever tasted so good as that delicious supper of broiled chicken, waffles, crisp lettuce, and strawberries and cream; and it was followed by an enchanting twilight hour down by the water’s edge. The girls gathered around “Camp-fire Rock” and fed their cheery blaze with logs, a cloud of golden sparks shooting up whenever they threw on more fuel. The lake grew black; the stars came out to laugh with the laughing group below; the weird cry of a hoot-owl kept piercing the evening hush. A sense of possession thrilled the girls. This camp was theirs, the lake was theirs, those dark, mysterious woods were theirs; they were far away from the outer world, hidden in their own forest fairy-land.

Drowsiness came at length, and drove the campers back to their tents, and the last murmurs of conversation and the last sparks of the fire on the rock died out at about the same time.

“Isn’t it too perfect for anything to sleep in a tent, just like soldiers!” said Jean from her cot.

“It’s just the thing for battle maids!” said Cecily. “Oh, dear! Mammykins said we mustn’t stay awake talking!”

“All right, good-night!” cried sleepy Frances. “Larks to-morrow, girls!”

“Good-night,” said Betty, yawning. “Oh, Cece, just tell me,—Halcyon’s Indian, isn’t it?”

“No, ma’am! It’s poetical for kingfisher. There are lots of kingfishers here,” answered Cecily.

“And ‘halcyon days’ means happy days, doesn’t it?” said Jean, “and this is just the happiest, loveliest place in the world!”

“It’s the right place to live,” said Cecily. “You’ll be as roly-poly as Betty before you go home! But you’re looking perfectly fine, now! Do you know you’re getting real pretty?”

“Pretty!” Jean repeated in amazement.

“Yes, indeed you are,” said the young artist. “You have such a dear little color in your cheeks! It’s ever so becoming. That two weeks with Carol did you ever so much good.”

“I had such a splendid time! The Armstrongs are just too dear,—and Carolie’s the dearest of all!” said Jean, whom her Big Sister had once more rescued from a visit to Aunt Lucretia Pyncheon. Cecily’s compliment put the climax to her felicity, and murmuring drowsily, “Oh, I’m so happy!” Jean lay with the cool sweet air touching her forehead with a good-night kiss.