The squealing and plunging of the horses, the rattling of their chains, the shrieking of the wind, the reverberating cracks of thunder made a deafening chorus in Nan's ears. She could scarcely hear what the imperiled 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. Nan tugged that way. Tom pulled, too, heaving his great body upward, and scratching and scrambling along the sawdust with fingers spread like claws. His right leg came out of the hole, and just then the rain descended torrentially again.
The flames from this opening in the roof of the furnace were beaten down. Tom got to his feet, shaking and panting. He hobbled painfully when he walked.
But in a moment he seized upon the pole he had dropped and made for the smoking timber cart. The terrified horses tried again and again to break away; but the chain harnesses were too strong; nor did the mired wheel budge.
“Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!” begged Nan. “Let us make the poor horses free, and run ourselves.”
“And lose my wagon?” returned her cousin, grimly. “Not much!”
The rain, which continued to descend with tropical violence, almost beat Nan to the ground; but Tom Sherwood worked furiously.
He placed the butt of the lever he had cut under the hub of the great wheel. There was a sound stump at hand to use as a fulcrum. Tom threw himself upon the end of the lever. Nan ran to add her small weight to the endeavor. The wheel creaked and began to rise slowly.
The sawdust was not clinging, it was not like real mire. There was no suction to hold the wheel down. Merely the crust had broken in and the wheel had encountered an impediment of a sound tree root in front of it so that, when the horses tugged, the tire had come against the root and dragged back the team.
Out poured the flames and smoke again, the flames hissing as they were quenched by the falling water. Higher, higher rose the cart wheel. Nan, who was behind her cousin, saw his neck and ears turn almost purple from the 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 cruel implement, and she wished he did not use it. But she knew now that it was necessary. She leaped for the whip which Tom had thrown down and showed 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, and the big timber cart was out of its plight.
Flames and smoke poured out of the hole again. The rain dashing upon and into the aperture could not entirely quell the stronger element. But the wagon 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 of this.”
“Are you going home?”
“Bet you!” declared Tom. “Why, after this rain stops, this whole blamed place 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 not understand even now the fierce power of a conflagration of this kind.
“Look there!” yelled Tom, suddenly glancing back over her head as she sat behind him on the wagon tongue.
With a roar like an exploding boiler, the flames leaped up the heart of the hollow tree. The bursted crust of the sawdust heap had given free ingress to the wind, and a draught being started, it sucked the flames directly up the tall chimney the tree made.
The fire burst from the broken top. The flames met the falling rain as though they were unquenchable. Indeed the clouds were scattering, and second by second the downfall was decreasing. The tempest of rain was almost over; but the wind remained to fan the flames that had now broken cover in several spots, as well as through the tall and hollow tree.
Tom hastened his team toward the main road that passed through the tamarack swamp. At one end of it was Pine Camp; in the other direction, after passing the knoll on which the Vanderwillers lived, the roadway came 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 down the fire, if, indeed, this were at all possible. There was a telephone line there which, in a roundabout way, could be made to carry the news of the forest fire to all the settlements in the Big Woods and along the railroad line.
But Nan seized Tom's arm and shook it to call his attention as the horses neared the road.
“Tom! For goodness' sake!” she gasped.
“What's the matter now?” her cousin demanded, rather sharply, for his burns 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. Perhaps Toby 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 was still blowing almost directly into the east. A sheet of flame flew from the top of the old dead tree even as the boy spoke, and was carried toward the thick forest. It did not reach it, and as the blazing brand fell it was quenched on the wet surface of the sawdust.
Nevertheless, the fire was spreading under the crust and soon the few other dead trees left standing on the tract would burst into flame. As they looked, the fire burst out at the foot of the tree and began to send long tongues of flame licking up the shredded bark.
The effect of the drenching rain would soon be gone and the fire would secure great headway.
“Those poor folks are right in the track of the fire, I allow,” admitted Tom. “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 of his farm where it meets the woods?”
“Yes. A ploughed strip may save his buildings. Fire can't easily cross ploughed ground. Only, if these woods get really ablaze, the fire will jump half a mile!”
“Oh no, Tom! You don't mean that?”
“Yes, I do,” said her cousin, gloomily. “Tobe's in a bad place. You don't know what a forest fire means, nor the damage it does, Nannie. I'm right 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 not that way, exactly opposite. And she's not likely to switch around so soon, 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 for you and they'll see the blaze. Why! After dark that old dead tree will look 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 towards the clouded heavens. “If it sets in for a long rain (and one's due about this time according to the Farmer's Almanac) it would keep the fire down, 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 the island, Tommy. You're a conscientious old thing. Drive on.”
Tom clucked to the horses. He steered them into the roadway, but headed away from home. Another boy with the pain he was bearing would not have thought of the old lumberman and his family. They were the only people likely to be in immediate danger from the fire if it spread. The cousins might easily reach the Vanderwiller's island, warn them of the fire, and return to town before it got very late, or before the fire crossed the wood-road.
They rumbled along, soon striking the corduroy road, having the thick forest on either hand again. The ditches were running bank full. Over a quagmire the logs, held down by cross timbers spiked to the sleepers, shook under the wheels, and the water spurted up through the interstices as 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. “But maybe—”
He halted in his speech, and the next instant pulled the horses down to a willing stop. “Hark-a-that!” whispered Tom.
“Can it be anybody crying? Maybe it's a wildcat,” said Nan, with a vivid remembrance of her adventure in the snow that she had never yet told to any 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, in places, flowed over the road, while in others it actually lifted the logs from their foundation and threatened to spoil the roadway entirely.
Again and again they heard the faint cry, a man's voice. Tom stood up and 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 down beside Nan again, and stirring the horses to a faster pace. “S'pose he's got 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. Never heard tell of 'em, if there are. Old Tobe lost a cow once in some slough.”
They came to a small opening in the forest just then. Here a great tree had been uprooted by the wind and leaned precariously over a quagmire beside the roadway. Fortunately only some of the lower branches touched the road line and Tom could get his team around them.
Then the person in trouble came into sight. Nan and her cousin saw him immediately. He was in the middle of the shaking morass waist deep in the mire, and clinging to one of the small hanging limbs of the uprooted tree.
“Hickory splits!” ejaculated Tom, stopping the team. “It's old Tobe himself! Did you ever see the like!”
Just why old Toby Vanderwiller was clinging to that branch and did not try to wade ashore, neither Nan nor Tom could understand. But one thing was plain: the old lumberman thought himself in danger, and every once in 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 just as angry as he could be. “Thought ye'd never come. Hearn them horses rattling their chains, must ha' been for an hour.”
“That's stretching it some,” laughed Tom. “That tree hasn't been toppled over an hour.”
“Huh! Ye can't tell me nothin' 'beout that!” declared Toby. “I was right here when it happened.”
“Goodness!” gasped Nan.
“Yep. And lemme tell ye, I only jest 'scaped being knocked down when she fell.”
“My!” murmured Nan again.
“That's how I got inter this muck hole,” growled the old lumberman. “I jumped ter dodge the tree, and landed here.”
“Why don't you wade ashore?” demanded Tom again, preparing in a leisurely manner to cast the old man the end of a line he had coiled on the timber cart.
“Yah!” snarled Toby. “Why don't Miz' Smith keep pigs? Don't ax fool questions, Tommy, but gimme holt on that rope. I'm afraid ter let go the branch, for I'll sink, and if I try ter pull myself up by it, the whole blamed 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. When Toby stirred at all, the small weight he rested on the branch made the head of the tree dip perilously. And if it did fall the old man would be thrust into the quagmire by the weight of the branches which overhung his body.
“Let go of it, Toby!” called Tom, accelerating his motions. “Catch this!”
He flung the coil with skill and Toby seized it. The rocking tree groaned and slipped forward a little. Toby gave a yell that could have been heard much farther than his previous cries.
But Tom sank back on the taut rope and fairly jerked the old man out of the miry hole. Scrambling on hands and knees, Toby reached firmer ground, and then the road itself.
Nan uttered a startled exclamation and cowered behind the cart. The huge tree, groaning and its roots splintering, sagged down and, in an instant, the spot there the old lumberman had been, was completely covered 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; gut Nan 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 Toby Vanderwiller. “He must have suthin' more for the old man to do yet, before he cashes in. And little Sissy, too. Har! Henry Sherwood's son and 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 that Toby would feel sufficient gratitude to help Uncle Henry win his case against Gedney Raffer. But, of course, this was not the time to speak of it.
When the old lumberman heard about the fire in the sawdust he was quite as excited as the young folk had been. It was fast growing dark now, but it was impossible from the narrow road to see even the glow of the fire against the clouded sky.
“I believe it's goin' to open up and rain ag'in,” Toby said. “But if you want to go on and plow me a fire-strip, Tommy, I'll be a thousand times obleeged to you.”
“That's what I came this way for,” said the young fellow briefly. “Hop on and we'll go to the island as quickly as possible.”
They found Mrs. Vanderwiller and the crippled boy anxiously watching the flames 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 plow and 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 furrows toward it, urging the horses into a trot. It was not that the fire was near; but the hour was growing late and Tom knew that his mother and father would be vastly anxious about Nan.
The young fellow made twelve laps, turning twelve broad furrows that surely would guard the farm against any ordinary fire. But by the time he was done it did not look as though the fire in the sawdust would spread far. The clouds were closing up once more and it was again raining, gently but with an insistence that promised a night of downpour, at least.
Old Mrs. Vanderwiller had made supper, and insisted upon their eating before starting for Pine Camp. And Tom, at least, did his share with knife and fork, while his horses ate their measure of corn in the paddock. It was dark as pitch when they started for home, but Tom was cheerful and sure of his way, so Nan was ashamed to admit that she was frightened.
“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 to him, I have!”
Tom did not pay much attention to this; but Nan did. Her heart leaped for joy. She believed that Toby Vanderwiller's words promised help for Uncle Henry.
But she said nothing to Tom about it. She only clung to his shoulder as the heavy timber cart rattled away from the island.
A misty glow hung over the sawdust strip as they advanced; but now that the wind had died down the fire could not spread. Beside the road the glow worms did their feeble best to light the way; and now and then an old stump in the swamp displayed a ghostly gleam of phosphorus.
Nan had never been in the swamp before at night. The rain had driven most of the frogs and other croaking creatures to cover. But now and then a sudden rumble “Better-go-roun'!” or “Knee-deep! Knee-deep!” proclaimed the presence of the green-jacketed gentlemen with the yellow vests.
“Goodness me! I'd be scared to death to travel this road by myself,” Nan said, 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 'im in!”
“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 her discordant cry. Deep in a thicket a whip-poor-will complained. It was indeed a ghostly chorus that attended their slow progress through the swamp 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, fast being quenched by the gently falling rain. For the time, at least, the danger of a great conflagration was past.
“Oh! I am so glad,” announced Nan, impetuously. “I was afraid it was going to be like that Pale Lick fire.”
“What Pale Lick fire?” demanded Tom, quickly. “What do you know about that?”
“Not much, I guess,” admitted his cousin, slowly. “But you used to live there, didn't you?”
“Rafe and I don't remember anything about it,” said Tom, in his quiet way. “Rafe was a baby and I wasn't much better. Marm saved us both, so we'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 a slough and across a lake. He had a dug-out. He got badly burned dragging dad to the boat when he was almost suffocated with smoke,” Tom said soberly.
“'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 I saw 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's lumber camp. Tom was much excited by that.
“Gracious me, Nan! But you are a plucky girl. Wait till Rafe hears about it. 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 for you helping me out of the oven. Cracky! I thought I was going to have my leg burned to a cinder.
“That would have been terrible!” shuddered Nan. “What would poor Aunt Kate have said?”
“We can't tell her anything about it,” Tom hastened to say. “You see, my two older brothers, Jimmy and Alfred, were asleep in the garret of our house at Pale Lick, and marm thought they'd got out. It wasn't until afterward that she learned they'd been burned up with the house. She's never 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 to bad places, where the water had not gone down; and the horses were very careful in putting their hoofs down upon the shaking logs. However, it was not much over an hour after leaving the island that they spied the lights of Pine Camp from the top of the easy rise leading out of the tamarack swamp.
They met Rafe with a lantern half way down the hill. Uncle Henry was away and Aunt Kate had sent Rafe out to look for Nan, although she supposed that the girl had remained at the Vanderwillers' until the rain was over, and that Toby would bring her home.
There was but one other incident of note before the three of them reached the rambling house Uncle Henry had built on the outskirts of Pine Camp. As they turned off the swamp road through the lane that ran past the Llewellen cottage, Rafe suddenly threw the ray of his lantern into a hollow tree beside the roadway. A small figure was there, and it darted back out of sight.
“There!” shouted Rafe. “I knew you were there, you little nuisance. What did 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 of the big tree. He held her, while she squirmed and screamed.
“You lemme alone, Rafe Sherwood! Lemme alone!” she commanded. “I ain't doin' 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 hurt her, Rafe.”
“Yah! You couldn't hurt her,” said Rafe. “She's as tough as a little pine-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 the girl.
“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 then just 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 thought wise, and Nan had retired to the east chamber, she thought again about Margaret 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 was afraid Rafe would find there? Why can that child have hidden something there 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, she felt that she must know immediately what Margaret Llewellen had hidden in the hollow tree.
She got out of bed, lit her lamp again and began to dress. She turned her light down to a dim glimmer, however, for she did not want her aunt to look out of the window of her bedroom on the other side of the parlor and catch a glimpse of her light.
In the half darkness Nan made a quick toilet; and then, with her raincoat on and hood over her head, she hesitated with her hand upon the knob of the door.
“If I go through the parlor and out the side door, Aunt Kate will hear me,” thought Nan. “That won't do at all.”
She looked at the further window. Outside the rain was pattering and there was absolutely no light. In the pocket of her raincoat Nan had slipped the electric torch she had brought from home, something of which Aunt Kate cordially approved, and was always begging Uncle Henry to buy one like it.
The pocket lamp showed her the fastenings of the screen. Tom had made it 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 as easily as from the room itself.
“And that's just what she did,” decided Nan. “How foolish of me not to think of it before.”
With this enigmatical observation Nan prepared to leave the room by this very means. She was agile, and the sill of the window was only three feet from the ground. It was through this opening that she had helped Margaret Llewellen into her room on the first occasion that odd child had visited her.
Nan jumped out, let the screen down softly, and hurried across the unfenced yard to the road. She knew well enough when she reached the public track, despite the darkness for the mirey clay stuck to her shoes and made the walking difficult.
She flashed her lamp once, to get her bearings, and then set off down the lane toward the swamp road. There was not a light in any house she passed, not even in Mr. Fen Llewellen's cottage. “I guess Margaret's fast asleep,” murmured Nan, as she passed swiftly on.
The rain beat down upon the girl steadily, and Nan found it shivery out here in the dark and storm. However, her reason for coming, Nan conceived, was a very serious one. This was no foolish escapade.
By showing her light now and then she managed to follow the dark lane without stepping off into any of the deep puddles which lay beside the path. She came, finally, to the spot where Rafe had met her and Tom with his lantern that evening. Here stood the great tree with a big hollow in it, Margaret Llewellen's favorite playhouse.
For a moment Nan hesitated. The place looked so dark and there might be something alive in the hollow.
But she plucked up courage and flashed her lamp into it. The white ray played about the floor of the hollow. The other Llewellen children dared not come here, for Margaret punished them if they disturbed anything belonging to her.
What Nan was looking for was not in sight. She stepped inside, and raised the torch. The rotting wood had been neatly scooped out, and where the aperture grew smaller at the top a wide shelf had been made by the ingenious Margaret. Nan had never been in this hide-out before.
“It must be here! It must be here!” she kept telling herself, and stood on her tiptoes to feel along the shelf, which was above her head.
Nan discovered nothing at first. She felt along the entire length of the shelf again. Nothing!
“I know better!” she almost sobbed. “My dear, beautiful.”
She jumped up, feeling back on the shelf with her right hand. Her fingers 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 roughly made footstool.
In a moment Nan had the footstool set in position, and had stepped upon it. Her hand darted to the back of the shelf. There was a long box, a pasteboard box.
Nan dropped her lamp with a little scream of ecstasy, and of course the light went out. But she had the long box clasped in her arms. She could not wait to get home with it, but tumbled off the stool and sat down upon it, picked up the torch, held it so the round spot-light gave her illumination, and untied the string.
Off came the cover. She peeped within. The pink and white loveliness of Beulah's wax features peered up at her.
In fifteen minutes Nan was back in her room, without being discovered by anybody, and with the doll safely clasped in her arms. Indeed, she went to bed a second time that night with her beloved playmate lying on the pillow beside her, just as she had done when a little girl.
“I suppose I'm foolish,” she confessed to Aunt Kate the next morning when she told her about it. “But I loved Beulah so much when I was little that I can't forget her now. If I go to Lakeview Hall I'm going to 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 a good 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's act.
“Huh!” he said, with a boy's disgust for such things. “Mag's crazy about pretty faces, if they're smooth, an' pink. She peeked into that Sherwood gal's room and seed her playin' doll; then she had ter have it for herself 'cause it was so pretty and had a smooth face, not like the kids' dolls that Aunt Matildy buyed.”
Poor little Margaret was greatly chagrined at the discovery of her secret. She ran away into the woods whenever she saw Nan coming, for a long time thereafter. It took weeks for the girl from Tillbury to regain the half-wild girl's confidence again.
Nan was just as busy and happy as she could be, considering the uncertain news from Scotland and Uncle Henry's unfortunate affair with Gedney Raffer. She helped Aunt Kate with the housework early every morning 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 the Forks a cannery had been established. Beside, the Forks was a big shipping centre for the fresh berries.
Uncle Henry bought crates and berry “cups,” and sometimes the whole family picked all day long in the berry pasture, taking with them a cold luncheon, and eating it picnic fashion.
It was great fun, Nan thought, despite the fact that she often came home so wearied that her only desire was to drop into bed. But the best part of it, the saving grace of all this toil, was the fact that she was earning money for herself! Account was faithfully kept of every cup of berries she picked, and, when Uncle Henry received his check from the produce merchant to whom he shipped the berries, Nan was paid her share.
These welcome earnings she saved for a particular purpose, and for no selfish one, you may be sure. Little Margaret Llewellen still ran from her 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 child who so disliked any face that was “wizzled,” but loved those faces that were fair and smooth.
Margaret only possessed a feeling that is quite common to humanity; she being such a little savage, she openly expressed an emotion that many of us have, but try to hide.
The Llewellen children picked berries, of course, as did most of the other neighbors. Pine Camp was almost a “deserted village” during the season when the sweet, blue fruit hung heavy on the bushes.
Sometimes the Sherwood party, and the Llewellens, would cross each others' paths in the woods, or pastures; but little Margaret always shrank into the background. If Nan tried to surprise her, the half wild little thing would slip away into the deeper woods like one of its own denizens.
Near the river one day Margaret had an experience that should have taught her a lesson, however, regarding wandering alone in the forest. And the adventure should, too, have taught the child not to shrink so from an ugly face.
Nan had something very important to tell Margaret. Her savings had amounted to quite a goodly sum and in the catalog of a mail-order house she had found something of which she wished to secure Margaret's opinion. The child, as usual, ran away when they met, and even Bob could not 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 into the thicker woods to circumvent Margaret. She did not follow the river as the smaller girl had, but struck into the bush, intending to circle around and head Margaret off.
She had not pushed her way through the clinging vines and brush for ten minutes before she heard somebody else in the jungle. She thought it was the little girl, at first; then she caught sight of a man's hat and knew that Margaret did not wear a hat at all.
“Goodness! Who can that be?” thought Nan. She was a little nervous about approaching strange people in the wood; although at this season there was nothing to apprehend from stragglers, there were so many berry pickers within call.
Nan did not seek to overtake the man, however, and would have kept on in her original direction, had she not heard a cry and a splitting crash toward the river bank. Some accident had happened, and when Nan heard the 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 her hands and face, but paying no attention to either misfortune. She only wanted to get to the scene of the accident and lend her aid, if it was needed.
And it would have been needed if it had not been for the man whose hat she had seen a few moments before. He made his passage through the bush much quicker than could Nan, and when the latter reached an opening where she could see the river, the stranger was just leaping into the deep pool under the high bank.
It was plain to be seen what had happened. A sycamore overhung the river and somebody had climbed out upon a small branch to reach a few half-ripened grapes growing on a vine that ran up the tree.
The branch had split, drooping downward, and the adventurous grape-gatherer had been cast into the water.
“Oh, Margaret!” screamed Nan, confident that it was the reckless child that was in peril.
She hurried to the brink of the low bluff, from which the rescuer had plunged. He had already seized the child (there was an eddy here under the bank) and was striking out for the shore. Nan saw his wet face, with the 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 ever seen!
The Indian reached the bank, clung to a tough root, and lifted up the gasping Margaret for Nan to reach. The girl took the child and scrambled up the bank again; by the time she was at the top, Injun Pete was beside her.
“She not hurt, Little missy,” said the man, in his soft voice, and turning 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 got her 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 of tears herself. “You might have been drowned, you WOULD have been had it not been for Mr. Indian Pete.”
“Ugh!” whispered Margaret. “I seen him when I come up out o' that nasty water. 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 coming out of the stream, and paid no further attention to his own wet condition.
“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 to thank me.”
“Yes, there is,” said Nan, insistently. “Come here, please. Margaret wants to kiss you for saving her life.”
“Oh!” The word came out of Margaret's lips like an explosion. Nan stared very sternly at her. “If you don't,” she said in a low tone, “I'll tell your father all about how you came to fall into the river.”
Under this threat Margaret became amenable. She puckered up her lips and stretched her arms out toward Indian Pete. The man stumbled back and fell on his knees beside the two girls. Nan heard the hoarse sob in his throat as he took little Margaret in his arms.
“Bless you! Bless you!” he murmured, receiving the kiss right upon his scarred cheek. But Nan saw that Margaret's eyes were tightly closed as she delivered the caress, per order!
The next moment the man with the scarred face had slipped away and disappeared in the forest. They saw him no more.
However, just as soon as the catalog house could send it, Margaret received a beautiful, pink-cheeked, and flaxen-haired Doll, not as fine as 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, Bess Harley, with commendable regularity; and no time did Bess write without many references to Lakeview Hall.
Nan, advised by her former teacher in Tillbury, had brought her books to Pine Camp, and had studied faithfully along the lines of the high school work. She was sure she could pass quite as good an entrance examination for 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. “But the matter of her fortune is at least partially settled. The claims of the other relatives have been disallowed. Mr. Andrew Blake is prepared to turn over to your Momsey a part of her wonderful fortune. The rest will 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 attend Lakeview Hall this coming semester. You will meet your friend, Elizabeth Harley, in Chicago, and will go with her to the school. I am writing by this mail to the principal of the Hall. Mr. Harley has made all other necessary arrangements for you.”
“Oh!” cried Nan, clasping her hands. “It's too good to be true! It can't be possible! I just know I'll wake up in a minute and find all this an exciting dream, and that's all!”
But Nan was wrong on that point, as the reader will see if her further adventures are followed in the next volume of the series, entitled, “Nan Sherwood 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-kneed pony. This was the first time any of the Sherwoods had seen him since the day of the big storm and the fire in the sawdust.