But there was more to follow. Laura had sent one of the boys to a store for a hundred yards of clothes line. This was attached by one end to the kite string, and the man on the steeple cut the kite loose and drew up the clothes line.
When he held the heavier line a piece of stronger rope was attached to the clothes line and that was raised, too. Down fell the coil of clothes line, and they saw the steeple-jack rig himself a new sling, by which he soon descended to the ladder, and by the ladder to the church roof and safety.
The crowd cheered when this was accomplished, and Colonel Swayne broke through the throng about Laura.
“You are certainly a quick-witted girl,” he said, shaking her by the hand. “You are her teacher, are you?” he added to Mrs. Case. “Humph! from Central High, are you? Well, if all your young ladies are as quick-witted as she it must be a pleasure to teach them.”
He placed a ten dollar gold piece in Laura’s hand, and Laura whispered to Mrs. Case that she wanted to get away quickly from the spot.
“Those other men are coming, too,” she whispered. “Let’s go before they all want to shake hands. Do, do come away, Mrs. Case!”
The athletic instructor laughed and nodded, and Laura and Jess took up the line of march again. But when they were well away from the crowd, Jess began to laugh.
“Who says we can’t get money from Colonel Swayne for our Athletic Association?” she cried. “What a smart girl you are, Laura!”
“I’m going to give this ten dollars into the treasury. And it won’t be the last money I get from Colonel Swayne for the same object—now you see!”
Now there was one girl of that walking party, you may be sure, who did not congratulate Laura Belding upon her happy thought in aiding the man on the steeple of St. Cecelia’s Church. That was Hester Grimes.
Since the evening previous Hester had had little to say to anybody—even to her chum. The fires of wrath always burned deeply in Hester; she hugged an injury—or a supposed injury—to her, and made it greater therefore than it was.
In the first place, she had hoped much that the M. O. R.’s would give her the “touch.” For months—ever since she had become a soph at Central High, indeed, she had been looking forward to that end. She wanted to “make” the secret society more than she wanted anything else in her school life.
And now it would be another year, at least, before she could stand her chance again, while Laura Belding, whom she hated, was one of the favored candidates. She could not understand it. Hester had toadied to juniors and seniors alike—especially to those who were members of the secret society. Of course, she had paid little attention to such girls as Mary O’Rourke. She could not understand how the daughter of a laborer, who had neither money nor influence, could have become a prominent member of the M. O. R.’s. But by the girls of wealthy parents Hester had tried to make herself noticed.
She could not understand her lack of popularity, when Laura, and Jess Morse, and Dr. Agnew’s daughter and the Lockwood twins had received the touch. And rage burned hotter in her heart.
Besides, Bobby’s impudent trick had made Hester appear ridiculous, she could not forget that. And she insisted upon holding Laura responsible for the joke. She told Lily she was sure that Laura Belding had put Bobby up to it. And it was nothing that would pass over quickly. Already, on this Saturday, she had heard some of the lines of the doggerel repeated by giggling girls—and she hated them all for it!
“I’ll get square—you just see,” she whispered to Lily Pendleton. “No girl like Laura Belding can treat me so——”
“But it was those freshies and Bobby Hargrew,” interposed her chum.
“Laura was back of it—believe me!” declared Hester, shaking her head. “I should think you would feel the slight, too, Lily. For those stuck-up M. O. R.’s to choose Belding, and Morse, and those other girls of our class, and overlook us.”
“But the candidates had nothing to do with it,” said Lily, weakly.
“Belding and the others benefited, just the same—didn’t they?”
“Um—m. They’re in and we’re out.”
“Well!” said Hester, with flashing eyes.
“But what are you going to do about it? What can we do?”
“Never mind. You’ll see,” promised the butcher’s daughter, darkly.
It would not have changed Hester’s attitude at all—for she was not one to easily forgive—had she known that Laura Belding had taken occasion that very morning to take Bobby Hargrew to task for what she had done the evening before. Bobby came into Mr. Belding’s store while Laura was dusting and re-arranging the show cases.
“Have a scrumptious time at the club house, Laura?” asked the irrepressible.
“Oh, it is nice, Bobby!” cried Laura. “I wish you had been touched.”
“Me? Huh! I’d have about as much chance of ever being an M. O. R. as Hester Grimes,” and she chuckled.
“Less chance than Hester, I fear,” said Laura, with sudden gravity. “Especially after last evening. Bobby Hargrew, I never knew you to do so mean a thing before.”
“Well, wasn’t she mean to me?”
“That does not excuse you. And I told Mr. Sharp that you had never done a really mean thing within my knowledge——”
“Ah! Now I see why I have not been promoted to the outside of Central High,” cried Bobby, quickly. “You have been interceding for me.”
“I—I—— Well, it was nothing much I said, dear,” said Laura.
“I’m grateful,” said Bobby, really moved. “But I can’t tell you how much.”
“Show me, then,” urged Laura.
“How do you mean?”
“Give up this practical joking. Stop making trouble for the teachers——”
“I have! Gee Gee hasn’t had a chance to criticize me all this week. And sometimes I feel as though I should burst,” cried the spirited girl.
“But I did tell the principal that you never did anything mean—and see what you have done to Hester!”
“And see what she has done to me,” snapped Bobby.
“Perhaps she thought she saw you throw something into that basket.”
“No, she didn’t. She and I sassed each other,” declared Bobby, who was plain if not elegant of speech at all times, “right there in the principal’s office when Miss Gee Gee sailed out into the music room. Hessie was the last girl to leave me—true enough. But she did not see me near that basket, for I started for the corridor when she was going out of the room.”
“But she might have been mistaken——”
“You don’t more than half believe me yourself, Laura Belding!” accused Bobby.
“I do. I believe just what you say about it.”
“Then you can take it from me,” said the emphatic Bobby, “that Hester Grimes told that story to Miss Carrington for the sake of getting me into trouble—and for no other reason.”
“I’d hate to think her so mean,” sighed Laura.
“I’d hate to be foolish enough to believe she was anything but mean,” growled Bobby, sullenly. “We’ve always known what she was. Why so tender of her all of a sudden?”
“But she must be hurt dreadfully by that trick you played on her last evening.”
“Serves her right, then. I’ve no love for her, I confess. But if you don’t want me to I’ll let her strictly alone hereafter. I guess I’ve squared things pretty well with her anyway,” and Bobby Hargrew laughed lightly.
“I want you to be good, Bobby,” said Laura, yet smiling at the younger girl. “Show them there is something in you besides mischief. The teachers have a wrong idea of you. You want to change all that.”
“Gee! I couldn’t be a Miss Nancy,” chuckled the other.
“Just see how you are cut out of all our good times,” warned Laura. “And we need you in athletics, Bobby! Our eight-oared shell will be without its cox—and we hoped to have a boat of our own this season. You see, Bobby, one girl can’t do wrong without hurting the rest of us. ‘All for one and one for all’ is the motto of Central High, you know.”
“Oh, dear, Laura, I didn’t set that fire,” cried Bobby, suddenly, and almost in tears.
“I don’t believe for a minute that you did,” returned her friend. “But you might use your superabundance of wit in finding out who did set it. I’ve racked my brains, I am sure, and I can’t see the answer.”
“Then, how do you expect me to do so—and you always so ingenious?” complained Bobby.
Laura’s ingenuity about the kite and the steeple-jack delighted most of the girls who were with her on that Saturday afternoon tramp. And when they knew she intended giving the gold eagle presented to her by Colonel Swayne to the treasury of the Girls’ Branch they cheered her—all but Hester and Lily.
The explanation of the fire in Mr. Sharp’s office eluded Laura, however, as it did everybody else. But she gave considerable thought to the problem as the days passed.
The Athletic Field was being put in shape as rapidly as possible. Already the high board fence was being erected and a large shed with lockers for the girls. As the field joined their old bathing pavilion there were shower and plunge baths already at hand. Mrs. Case promised the school that, other things being well, the girls should have an exhibition field day for parents and friends before many weeks. The indoor exercises were practiced assiduously, and most of the advanced classes, at least, tried to stand well in these so as to take part in the outdoor games.
With the regular school work, the physical instruction, and the after-hour athletics, the girls of Central High found their time filled. But Laura Belding and her close friends had the added excitement and interest of the coming M. O. R. initiation.
A full week elapsed from the Day of the Touch to the hour when the candidates were to be made full members of the secret society. This initiation was usually a novel affair, and on this occasion it was announced to the candidates that Robinson’s Woods was the scene and Saturday at four o’clock the time of the exercises. Secrecy was maintained—or should have been. No one but members of the M. O. R., or the candidates, was to know the time and place; but events which followed showed that there was a “leak” somewhere.
Robinson’s Woods was a fine picnicking ground, back among the hills. One of the Market Street cars passed a road which led to the grove; one needed to walk but half a mile, and through a pleasant byway. But once at the Woods, it was as though the primeval forest surrounded the place.
There was a small hotel, tables and benches in the open, swings and a carousel, and a dancing pavilion. But the M. O. R.’s did not propose to hold their exercises in so exposed a place. Up from the regular grounds devoted to entertainment led a narrow, rocky path through the thicker wood. The goal to which this path led was a high, open plateau in the midst of the forest, from which one could overlook a winding country road and a more winding, tumbling, noisy brook which came down from the heights.
Two special cars awaited the M. O. R. girls and the candidates for initiation, and it was a merry party that debarked at the head of the wood road. They marched straight away from the regular picnic grounds and were soon on the plateau.
The sun was going down and the view over the valley, in which lay the City of Centerport, was beautiful indeed. There were nearly a hundred girls, and in their bright dresses they made a very pretty picture in the open space in the forest.
They were far from human habitation. Indeed there was no house in sight, save an abandoned farmhouse at the upper end of the clearing. Surrounded by a straggling fence, with a gate hanging from one hinge, and the out-houses behind it fallen in ruins, this old dwelling presented a rather ghostly appearance. It did, indeed, go by the name of “Robinson’s Haunted House”; but in the late afternoon sunlight none of the visitors thought of the grewsome stories told of it.
Every girl had brought a box of luncheon, and besides, somebody had “toted” two huge pots for chocolate and the little individual cups they all carried made sufficient drinking vessels. Mary O’Rourke, with the help of Laura and another girl who knew something about wood-lore, built a campfire, while two other girls climbed down to the road and followed it across the brook on the stepping-stones and up the hill to the nearest farmhouse for milk. There was a spring of clear water in the hillside at the edge of the plateau.
The red sun dropped behind the forest-clad hills upon the distant shore of Lake Luna. They could see the rippling water sparkle in the last rays of the sun. A white sail was set in this background of red and purple glory, like a single, flashing diamond. The birds were winging homeward to their nests in the hills behind the girls’ camp.
“What a quiet, soothing picture,” sighed one of the seniors.
“It might be altogether too quiet up here after dark if there weren’t such a bunch of us,” said Josephine Morse. “Ugh!”
“The haunted house, eh?” suggested Laura.
“Don’t say a word! I bet there are ghosts in it,” declared another girl, with a shiver.
“I’ll guarantee there are rats in it,” laughed Laura.
“You’re so brave!” exclaimed Jess, with scorn. “But you wouldn’t want to go into that house even in the daytime.”
“I don’t like rats,” admitted her chum.
“That’s all right,” put in Celia Prime. “But there really is a ghost connected with the old Robinson house.”
“There always is,” laughed Laura.
“Mary will tell you about it,” said the senior, gravely. “You have been brought here for that purpose, you candidates. Wait until after supper.”
“Oh!” squealed one of the Lockwood twins. “A real ghost story?”
“Just as real as any ghost story possibly can be,” said Mary O’Rourke, laughing. “Gather around the fire, you infants. Never mind the smoke—it will keep away the mosquitoes. Here come Jennie and Belle with the milk, and we can make the chocolate. The table is spread—and we’ve got to hurry so as to get our share away from the black ants.”
“Oh—o! Don’t!” begged somebody. “Don’t remind us of them. I feel them crawling all over me now!”
“To say nothing of the spiders,” laughed the wicked Mary.
“Oo—h! That’s the only trouble with picnics. Somebody ought to go ahead and sweep off the grass,” declared Dorothy Lockwood.
“That would surely be ‘adorning nature’—‘painting the lily’—and all that,” laughed Mary.
The shadows were creeping up from the valley. The electric lights flashed out all over the city and made a brilliant spectacle below them. The night wind rustled the trees and the whip-poor-will began his complaint from his pitch upon a dead branch.
A bell began to toll at intervals from somewhere far up the hillside. Some wandering cow wore this bell, but it sounded ghostly.
“Listen!” commanded Mary O’Rourke, standing beyond the fire where she could be seen and heard by all the candidates, at least, who were grouped in one place. “And especially you infants who this night appear before our solemn body for initiation into its ancient rites and mysteries. Listen!
“Before it grew dark we could all see right down there beyond the fording place in the brook, where the road crosses a ploughed field on the other side. Not a year ago, this farmer from whom Bell bought the milk, Mr. Sitz, was driving home just on the edge of the evening, with his son and his father-in-law, in a spring wagon. He drove a pair of young horses, and was giving them particular attention, so he says. But as they came up the hill toward the brook he saw a light moving down the road between them.
“In his opinion it was a lantern under a carriage. He saw the light flash back and forth, low above the ground, as though a horse’s legs were between the lantern and those approaching it.
“‘Here comes a carriage, Dad,’ said his son.
“‘It’s a top-buggy, Israel,’ declared the old gentleman on the other side of Mr. Sitz.
“The young horses sprang forward nervously as they reached the ford. The wagon splashed through the brook and out upon the hard road. The horses had crowded over to the left hand, and Mr. Sitz knew that he was not giving the coming carriage sufficient room to pass.
“But as he pulled his team back to the right hand side of the road he glanced ahead again and saw that the light had disappeared. Black as the night was he was confident there was no vehicle there—where he had expected to see one.
“‘What’s come o’ that carriage, Father?’ he asked the old man.
“‘Why—why it went by, didn’t it?’ returned his father-in-law.
“‘I didn’t see it,’ declared the son.
“‘It did not pass us on the high side,’ Mr. Sitz declared.
“‘Must have turned into the ploughed field,’ suggested the boy again.
“Mr. Sitz stopped his horses and gave the lines to his son to hold. He climbed down with his own lantern and searched for wheel tracks in the field beside the road. He was positive no vehicle had passed his wagon on the right hand side of the road. He could find no marks of the wheels anywhere in the soft ground. But as he turned back to climb into his wagon again he saw a light flash up for an instant in the windows of that front room yonder—in the haunted house,” said Mary, with emphasis and pointing dramatically.
“Mr. Sitz will tell you about it, if you ask him. He will also tell you what the mysterious carriage and the mysterious light in the haunted house meant.”
“Oh, dear!” murmured Jess in Laura’s ear. “Doesn’t she make you feel creepy?”
“Not yet,” whispered Laura. “Lots of people have seen intermittent lights on marshy ground, and the flare of light in the window of the old house was the reflection of his own lantern, perhaps.”
“Silence!” commanded Mary, sternly. “No comments. Besides, those who try to explain ghost stories have a thankless job on their hands,” and she laughed. “We all are like the old woman who declared she didn’t believe in ghosts, but she was awfully afraid of them!
“This is the weird tale: Years ago an old man named Robinson and his unmarried sister lived in that house. They were the last of their family, and both were miserly. For that reason they had never married, for fear the other would get the larger share of the property here on the side of the mountain. And they had money, too.
“Sarah Robinson,” pursued Mary, “was of that breed of misers who delight in handling their gold, and worshipping it. She could not enjoy figures in a bank-book as she enjoyed handling the actual money. But John Robinson was of a more practical turn, and he banked his money as he made it.
“One day a man who had borrowed of John paid him a large sum of money—took up a mortgage, in fact. It was wild spring weather and the stream yonder was running full. But although it rained so hard John Robinson would not risk his money in the house over night.
“His sister and he quarreled about it. She said he was a fool to go to town to bank his money on such a day. She would have been glad to sit up all night and watch it—and every night, too. But John harnessed his decrepit mare to his ramshackle buggy, and started for town.
“‘You put the lamp in the east window for me when it comes dark, and I’ll get back all right,’ he told her.
“Sarah scolded all the time until he was gone. She even said she hoped he’d be drowned in the river—he and his money together. Oh! she was quite a savage old creature, they say.
“Along towards evening a dreadful tempest burst up in the hills—a regular cloudburst. A thunderous torrent overflowed the banks of that pretty brook yonder. It became dark and they say old Sarah did not set the lamp in the window as she usually did when John was away from home.
“In the midst of the storm and darkness she must have seen his lantern jogging along the road, under the hind axle of his carriage, just as Mr. Sitz saw it,” continued Mary, in a solemn voice. “But the old woman would not light her lamp. The old man came down to the brook in the pitch darkness, missed the ford, drove into the deeper water below the crossing, and was swept away, horse, carriage and all, by the flood!”
“Oh—oh!” was the murmured chorus.
“How awful!” cried one girl.
“What an old witch!” exclaimed Jess Morse.
“But Sarah ran to set her light in the window—when it was too late,” pursued Mary, the story teller. “And every night for years thereafter, while she lived alone here in the old house, Sarah Robinson put her lamp in the window just after dark. And they say she often puts it in the window now! But usually the ghost light is preceded by the light and carriage on the road beyond the ford.”
“I declare! I thought I saw a light flare up in the old house just then!” cried one of the girls on the outskirts of the sitting crowd of listeners.
“Very likely,” returned Mary O’Rourke, in a sepulchral voice; “for it is on a night like this that the ghost of Sarah Robinson is supposed to walk.”
The end of Mary’s story seemed to be a signal awaited by the M. O. R.’s, for they all began to rise now and quickly surrounded the little group of candidates for initiation. Some of these girls started to rise, too, but Mary commanded:
“Wait! Candidates for the honors and the secrets of the M. O. R.’s must show both bravery and obedience. The hour has arrived for those candidates who desire to enter into the confidence and trust of the older members of the society, to show such desire. Obedience and courage are our watch words to-night. Those of the candidates who desire to go back—who dare not submit to The Test—may now make final decision. But she who puts her hand to the plough may not turn back after this decision.”
“Well, I’m going to stick it out, ploughing and all!” giggled Jess in her chum’s ear.
None of the candidates expressed a desire to back out in the silence that ensued, although the mournful bell tinkled on the hillside and now a “booby” owl added its mournful complaint to the note of the whip-poor-will.
“We are ready for the test, then,” said Mary, still solemnly. “Let the ballot-box be brought. In it have been placed the names of the candidates, each on a separate slip of paper. They will be drawn in quartettes, and each quartette will be given a task which will require both courage and obedience.”
There was a little rustle among the girls as one of them brought forward one of the lunch boxes.
“The first test,” said Mary O’Rourke, “will be for the first four candidates drawn to take each three nails and this hammer and go together to the haunted house, enter by the front door, go into the east front room where Old Sarah is wont to show her light, and drive the nails, one after another, in the floor of the room.”
“O—o—oh!” moaned the candidates, in a horrified chorus.
“Silence, infants!” commanded the president of the M. O. R.’s. “Each girl must drive her own three nails. There must be no balking. The nails will be examined—er—later—by daylight—to make sure that the test has been honestly performed. I will now draw the slips and announce the names of the first quartette.”
“How dreadful!” whispered one of the Lockwood twins. “I’ll faint if I have to do that.”
“Dora Lockwood,” announced Mary the next instant.
“Oh!” squealed the twin named; but nobody save the twins themselves knew which one spoke.
“Josephine Morse.”
Jess grabbed Laura by the arm. “I—I’m scared to death!” she whispered in her chum’s ear.
“Helen Agnew.”
The doctor’s daughter grabbed Jess. “We’ve got to do it!” she murmured. “Isn’t it awful?”
“Laura Belding.”
“Goody!” exclaimed Jess, aloud. “You’ve got to go, too, Laura.”
“The four candidates named will step forward and receive the nails and the hammer,” said Mary, sternly; but a good many of the older girls were laughing.
It was no laughing matter to the candidates in question, however. Only three approached the president at first.
“Miss Lockwood!” commanded Mary.
“Which one?” giggled somebody in the background.
“Both of them are ‘Dorothy’ now,” said Celia Prime. “This is one time when either is willing that the other should take her place. They declare that on Touch Day Dora was touched twice, once for herself and once for her sister.”
“Then Dora is doubly called now,” said Mary O’Rourke, sternly.
One of the twins pushed the other forward suddenly.
“Oh!” cried the girl pushed. “I’m not Dora!”
“The right one had better come,” cried Mary. “The next Test may be a good deal worse than this one.”
“Oh, then I’ll take it!” cried the Lockwood twin who had been pushed.
“No, you don’t, Miss!” exclaimed her sister, elbowing her way to the front. “I’m Dora.”
“Well,” said Mary, “if I shut my eyes and you girls changed places I couldn’t tell you apart. I wish one of you had a different dimple in her cheek—or even a mole——”
“O—oh! How horrid!” chorused the Lockwoods.
“Then the right one must come forward. As Gee Gee says: ‘On your honor, young ladies!’”
The twins finally decided to own up to their rightful names, and Dora joined the other three candidates and accepted the three nails. To Laura was given the hammer.
“Remember what you have been told. Each must drive her own nails. And mark well where you drive them, for they will be examined—by daylight,” finished Mary, with a chuckle.
The crowd of girls parted and left an open lane for the four candidates to pass through. The owl hooted again and the cowbell tinkled upon the hillside. The quartette started on their mission slowly. It was very dark about the haunted house, for big trees overshadowed it.
“I’m scared clear down to the soles of my feet,” whispered Jess to Laura.
“Never mind. Don’t let the rest of them know it,” was her chum’s reply.
They came to the ruined gate and pushed it open. The path was weed-grown, and as they rustled through, keeping close together, the owl hooted again—right over their heads.
“Ouch!” screamed Nellie Agnew.
A chorus of giggles answered from the crowd in the rear. But her companions saw nothing to laugh at. The owl had startled all four.
“Oh, dear!” whispered Dora. “Let’s go back.”
Laura marched straight on to the step of the porch. The boards creaked under her feet as she mounted to the door. The door hung from one hinge and when she pushed upon it, it creaked frightfully.
“Oh!” squealed Nellie again.
“Do come on!” muttered Jess. “I’m just as scared as you are; but don’t let those girls know how bad we feel. They’re just enjoying themselves.”
“And of course there’s nothing, or nobody, here,” Laura added. “They are just having fun with us. Even if something does startle us in this old house, it will be nothing worse than rats.”
“But I don’t like ra—rats,” wailed Dora, under her breath.
“Does anybody?” snapped Jess. “Come on!”
They entered the house, Laura leading. The door of the east room was open and some light entered through the broken windows—light enough to show them the way. Laura stepped carefully over the floor, fearing that some broken board might trip them.
But once in the big, empty, musty room, there seemed nothing to bother them. Even the owl had flown away.
“Now we’ll drive the nails as quickly as possible and get out again,” said Laura in a low, but perfectly even, tone.
She stooped and fumbled her first nail for a moment. Then she smote the head of it a sharp blow with the hammer.
On the heels of that sound came a scream from Nellie.
“Look! Oh, look!” she shrieked.
She was standing erect, pointing through the east window.
“The light! The ghost light!” cried Jess.
Laura raised up a little and saw a light, dancing close to the ground, and on the other side of the brook. It was just about where a lantern under a carriage would have been.
“Come away!” gasped Jess, and she turned and ran. Nell and Dora ran with her. And it must be confessed that Laura was heartily frightened herself, and their panic was communicated to her.
She scrambled to her feet and tried to run. But something seized her skirt and dragged her back to the floor!
Laura screamed aloud then, herself. She tried to get up once more, but the ghostly hand again tugged at her garments and dragged her back upon the floor of the haunted house.
For a moment or two Laura Belding held to some shreds of courage. Of course she did not believe in ghosts! It was no supernatural thing that had either appeared as light to them, or had attacked her.
Yet when she essayed a third attempt to rise, she was cast to the floor once more, seemingly by the same strong hand, and this time she turned her ankle sharply. Her terror and pain made her cry out, and she lay there for a moment, helpless, watching the moving reflection of the ghostly lantern on the wall!
Suddenly between her and this reflected light, appeared a figure in white. It seemed immensely tall. It glided out of the shadowy portion of the room and came toward her.
The figure of old Sarah Robinson!
Outside the running girls shrieked appallingly. And their cries were re-echoed by the larger number of their schoolmates down by the campfire.
Laura closed her eyes for a moment. Consciousness left her.
The white-clad figure moved nearer. It stooped above the prostrate girl. With swift hands it tied Laura’s hands together before her tightly. Then a thick veil, doubled many times, was passed across the helpless girl’s mouth and tied tightly so that her voice would be muffled should she attempt to cry out.
It took less than a minute for this very palpable ghost to do this. Then, as silently as it had appeared, it glided away and, a moment later, a door might have been heard to bang at the back of the old house.
But the girls without had been so terrified that none of them heard this sound. The bobbing lantern light across the brook had been seen by those around the campfire as well as by the girls who had entered the haunted house. Mary O’Rourke’s story had made a strong impression upon the minds of them all. Mary herself was startled by the appearance of the light.
Besides, panic is catching. And the three girls who ran from the house were certainly panic-stricken. Their screams of horror started many of the other girls off, and some of the waiting ones turned and ran from the plateau and down the steep path before Jess, and Dora, and Nellie reached the fire.
“The ghost! the ghost! It’s after us!” shrieked the doctor’s daughter, and kept right on, following the girls who had already decamped.
It was useless for any of the braver ones to try to stop the stampede. Nobody wanted to remain in the vicinity of the haunted house. They had all seen enough.
An early rising moon cast a ghostly light on the path through the wood, and the girls’ feet fairly flew over this way. Celia Prime and Mary O’Rourke were among the last to run; but they did run finally, and never had a hundred or more girls become so entirely panic-stricken as the members of the M. O. R.’s and their candidates for initiation. The ceremony was there and then, and without a dissenting voice, postponed to a more favorable time!
“Where is Laura?” gasped Jess, running hard behind the Lockwood twins.
“Oh, yes! she’s so brave!” panted Dora. “She ran first of all, I believe. I bet she’s ’way ahead of us.”
Jess knew that Laura could outrun most of the girls, whether they were frightened or not. So she took this statement for the truth.
But when they arrived at the inn and the regular picnic grounds, Laura was not there. But some of the girls who had started first had already passed through the gates and were on the road to the cars.
Of course, most of them had stopped running now. They were ashamed of their fright, and did not want to explain it to the people at the inn. But you couldn’t have hired one of them to return to the plateau before the haunted house just then.
“I think Laura is just too mean not to wait for us,” panted Nellie Agnew.
“She’s ashamed, I expect,” said one of the twins.
“It isn’t like her,” Jess said.
“She was scared, all right,” said Nellie.
“Well! who wouldn’t be?” demanded Jess.
They went on to the car tracks at a slower pace. Some of the first girls to arrive, however, had not waited for the two special cars that stood upon the side track, but took a regular one back to town.
“I believe I saw Hester Grimes get aboard that car that just passed,” said one of the twins. “I wonder what she was doing out here?”
“Lots of people ride out this way in the evening,” returned another girl. “I suppose Hessie has a right to come, too.”
“Wish she’d been up there in that house to get scared.” muttered Jess.
“And Laura seems to have taken a car back to town, likewise,” said Nellie.
Laura’s absence began to trouble Jess. She searched among the other girls, but could get no word of her chum.
“She beat us,” laughed Mary O’Rourke, when Jess approached her with the question. “She’s gone home.”
There was a deal of bustle and laughter as the girls climbed into the special cars. They had recovered from their fright now, and some laughed at it. But not a girl could say what the light was they had seen bobbing over the ground. And the three who had been in the house were half tempted to believe that they had seen something supernatural in that uncanny east room.
“At any rate, I felt there was something there the moment I went in,” declared Nellie.
“It was an awfully spooky place,” agreed Dora.
“And it smelled—just like a tomb,” said Jess.
“I wouldn’t go into the house again for a farm!” declared Nellie.
“Not after dark, at any rate,” Jess said, more bravely.
“Never again—dark or light,” declared Dora. “And I guess the seniors and juniors were scared just as much as we were. They can’t laugh at us.”
“My! I hope the rest of the initiation won’t be as bad as this,” said Nellie.
“If it is, I’ll want to renig,” said Dora. “It costs too much to be an M. O. R.”
“We certainly are a brave lot of ‘Mothers of the Republic,’” laughed Mary, who heard the sophomores conversing.
“That’s all right!” spoke up Jess. “But you didn’t go into that house yourself.”
“Quite true. It wasn’t my place. I was only sending you infants there,” returned Mary.
But when the girls all left the cars on Market Street and Jess finally separated from the others at the corner of Whiffle Street, she began to worry about Laura again. It seemed strange that her chum should have run right home.
There was the Belding house ahead. There were figures on the porch. Jess halted at the gate.
“Hullo!” exclaimed Chet Belding. “Where’s Laura, Jess?”
He and Lance came down the walk hastily. Jess leaned weakly on the gate, smitten now with the fear that something must have happened to her chum.
“Isn’t she here, Chet?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
“Didn’t she come home with you?” demanded Lance, hastily.
“No. Oh, oh! Something dreadful has happened. Tell me honest, boys—isn’t she here?”
“No, she’s not,” they both assured her, and Chet opened the gate.
“Tell us what’s happened,” he said. “But speak low. Mother’s gone to bed with a head-ache and father’s gone to the lodge. Why! Jess! you’re crying!”
And Jess was sobbing nervously. She could not help it. Her fear for Laura’s safety had taken form now, and for a minute she could not answer the boys’ excited question at all.
Launcelot Darby was rather impatient with Jess Morse. He would have shaken her had not Chet interfered.
“Hold on! hold on!” said Laura’s brother, yet quite as anxious as his chum. “You tell us your own way, Jess. But do hurry. We’re dreadfully anxious.”
“I—I mean to tell you,” sobbed Jess. “Something dreadful has happened—and I ran away and left her.”
“Ran away and left who—Laura?” gasped Lance.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Up in Robinson’s Woods.”
“At the picnic place?”
“No.”
“Back in the woods, then?” demanded Chet.
“Up on the side of the mountain. You—you know that—that old house——”
“The haunted house!” exclaimed Lance.
“The old Robinson house?” cried Chet.
“Yes.”
“What under the sun were you doing there?”
“I—I can’t tell you. It—it was something about the initiation——”
“Those blessed Mary O’Rourkes!” cried Lance, smiting his hands together.
“The M. O. R.’s,” said Chet. “You girls were all up there?”
“Ye—es.”
“In the dark?”
“We had a campfire.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, Laura and two other girls and I had to go into the house.”
“That old wreck!” ejaculated Lance again.
“Ye—es.”
“Weren’t you afraid?” demanded Chet.
“That—that’s the trouble. We were frightened.”
“Somebody played a trick on you,” declared Chet.
“No, they didn’t!” gasped Jess. “It was a real ghost.”
At that both boys chuckled, and Chet said:
“Aw, say, now, Jess. How could there be a real ghost?”
“Never mind. That’s not the point,” Lance interposed, eagerly. “We want to know what’s become of Laura.”
“So we do,” admitted Chet.
“Was she scared, too?” asked Lance.
“Of course she was. You’d have been——”
“Wouldn’t either!” snapped Lance. “No ghost would ever scare me. Some of the other girls played a trick on you.”
“Of course, that’s it,” said Chet. “But that don’t explain why Laura——”
“That’s it!” interrupted Lance. “Tell us where she is.”
“She must be there,” declared Jess, in an awestruck voice.
“Where?”
“In the house.”
“In Robinson’s old house?” gasped Chet.
“That’s where we left her. I thought she got out ahead of us. But she didn’t.”
“And none of you were brave enough to go back and look for her?” demanded Lance, with scorn.
“We thought she was ahead. All the girls ran——”
“What made you run?” asked Chet, trying to soothe her.
“You saw a ghost light, eh?” demanded Chet. “I bet you’d been hearing that old story they tell about the Robinsons.”
Jess nodded.
“And the ghost lantern appeared?”
“Yes. It did. It was really there, Chetwood.”
“All right. I didn’t think Laura would fall for a thing like that,” scoffed the absent girl’s brother.
“Say!” demanded Lance, who admired Laura greatly and would not let even her brother laugh at her. “All those other girls ran, didn’t they? Jess ran. Why should Laura be any braver than the rest of the bunch?”
“Well! she ought to be,” grunted her brother. Then he turned again to Jess, who was fast recovering her composure now. “And you didn’t see Laura leave the house after your scare?”
“No.”
“How many of you girls were in the house?”
“Only four of us.”
“And three got away?”
“Yes.”
“Supposedly, then, the ghost got Laura?”
“She didn’t come out, Chet. You needn’t laugh. Something bad has happened to her.”
“Of course, if you are sure she didn’t come out of the house——?”
“Just as sure as I stand here!” declared the girl, emphatically. “I didn’t think so until just now. It seemed as though she must have run ahead and taken one of the regular cars to town. But now I know that wouldn’t have been Laura’s way, whether she was scared or not.”
“I should say not,” said Lance, in disgust. “You girls are all alike—all but Laura! She wouldn’t have left you in such a mess.”
“Now, stop that!” commanded Chet. “Such talk won’t lead to anything but angry feelings. Jess thought Laura was ahead. Now we’ll go back and find her.”
“Oh, Chet! if you only would,” begged Jess, too miserable to even be offended at Lance.
“We’ll get out the car. Father won’t mind. And I got my license to run it only last month.”
“Bully!” ejaculated Lance.
“I’m going, too,” said Jess, wiping her eyes vigorously.
“Had you better?” returned Chet, doubtfully. “You’re all strung up yourself over this, you know.”
“I won’t cry any more, Chet—don’t you fear,” declared the girl. “Let me go.”
“Just as you say, only I thought you wouldn’t go back to that house again.”
“I’ll go with you boys.”
“Ghosts and all?”
“If it’s a ghost it’s gone by now.”
“All right,” said Chet. “But it’s half after nine already. What will your mother say?”
“She’s at the Academic Club, and won’t be home for ever so long,” declared Jess. “Let me go with you to the garage.”
She followed the two boys to the rear of the Belding premises. Chet unlocked and slid back the garage doors. The touring car which his father owned was ready at a moment’s notice to be taken out. They kept no chauffeur, for both Mr. Belding and Chet could manage the machine, and had she been old enough to take out a license Laura could herself have spun the car over the roads about Centerport.
“Hop in, Jess,” said Chet, kindly. “That is, if you are sure you won’t be frightened. I’m going to drive her some.”
“I’m never scared when you are driving, Chet,” returned the girl.
“I guess I’ll get you to the inn at the picnic grounds in safety, at least,” and the boy laughed. “You can wait there for us.”
“No?”
“I’m not going to be left there to watch the car while you boys hunt for Laura.”
“But we may have to get a party of neighbors there and beat up the woods.”
“But I believe now she was left behind in the old house,” declared Jess.
“Not likely,” said Lance. “She ran out some other door. Got turned around in those woods. That’s what happened.”
“You may be right,” Jess admitted. “But I have a feeling that it isn’t so. Something happened to Laura right there in the haunted house.”
“You feel that way because you were so frightened there yourself,” said Chet.
“I don’t know why I feel so; but it is a fact,” said Jess, confidently.
“Come on!” cried Lance, who was already in the front seat.
Chet helped Jess into the tonneau and closed the door. Then he hopped in beside Lance, tried his various levers, and started the car. It slid quietly out of the garage and they left the door open. The big car began to purr almost at once, and running smoothly, soon left the hill section and raced out along Market Street, now quiet save for the electric cars and other automobiles at this hour of the evening.
It was not long after ten when the car turned into the quiet road, with its few electric lights, leading to Robinson’s Woods. There were a few other cars at the inn, and some people on the porch. Chet went at once to the manager and told him of the absence of his sister.
“I saw those girls all going to the car; but they never said anything about one of their number being lost,” said the gentleman.
“They didn’t know it then. They don’t all know it now, in fact. But when Laura didn’t come home her chum was sure that she was left behind. And she thinks she is in the old house up yonder,” explained Chet.
“In the haunted house?”
“Yes.”
“Nice place for girls to go!” exclaimed the man. “What did they want to go into that old ruin for?”
“Well, that isn’t just the point,” said Chet. “I’d like to get all the men you can raise to help us beat up the woods. She may have wandered into the wood at the back of the house——”
“But she’d know she was going the wrong way then, wouldn’t she?” returned the manager of the hotel. “For it’s uphill, you know.”
“I suppose that’s so,” said Chet. “But something has happened to her and we’re worried.”
“Don’t blame you. I’ll go with you myself. And there are some other men here who will accompany us,” said the manager, and he bustled away.
In five minutes the party was ready, with lanterns and clubs—though why the clubs, Chet could not imagine. Ghosts were not to be laid with such carnal weapons!
Jess insisted upon going along. “I left her alone, and I am ashamed,” she told Chet. “I want to hunt for Laura, too.”
She and Chet walked straight up the path to the plateau, Chet carrying one of the car lanterns. The others, including Lance, beat up through the wood, halloaing to each other, and shouting Laura’s name. The lost girl’s brother and her chum came first to the haunted house, however.
“If you’re afraid to go in you stay here,” advised Chet, when they came to the place.
“I’m not afraid to go anywhere with you, Chet,” declared the girl, warmly.
That made Chet feel even more bold than before. He started right up the steps, with Jess clinging slily to his coat-tail.
They entered the house. The lamp light was flashed into the east room. It was empty!
Not quite empty, after all. On the floor was a three-cornered bit of cloth—a piece of Laura’s skirt—nailed to the boards.
And where was Laura herself all this time?
She had returned to consciousness almost at once. Indeed, the pulling of the bonds upon her wrists and the veil tied so tightly across the lower part of her face would naturally have aroused her.
But for a moment she could neither rise nor move. It seemed as though she was paralyzed. Her ankle began to pain, then, and at the first throb the girl came fully to her senses.
“Oh! where am I?” she thought.
But she couldn’t have spoken the words aloud. The muffler was too tight across her lips.
The ghostly figure that had flitted out of the room had scarcely gone when Laura opened her eyes. The frightened girl looked all around for it. She remembered how awful it had looked. But nothing was in sight—nothing but the wavering reflection of the ghost-light on the wall.
To her ears, however, came the screaming of the frightened girls on the plateau before the house. It was not alone her three comrades screaming; but the chorus of the whole party of M. O. R.’s who had given voice to their terror. And the sounds were swiftly receding. The girls were leaving her alone, bound and helpless, in this awful house!
Never for a moment did Laura Belding believe that the thing was a trick, or joke. It could not be part of the M. O. R. initiation. Mary O’Rourke and Celia Prime and the other seniors governing the secret society were not the girls to make up any such plan as this with which to frighten new members of the order. Nor would the school authorities allow such action by the M. O. R.’s.
Nevertheless, Laura knew that something strange had happened to her. There had been no person in this big room when she and her three friends had entered to drive the nails. Yet, when the fright occurred and she had attempted to run, she was hauled back by the skirt.
Something seemed to have grabbed her. Was it a hand—the same hand that had lashed her wrists and gagged her with this veil?
Yet, any person beside the four girls would have betrayed his presence—for the room had never been wholly dark—only in the far corners. And no arm would be long enough to reach out of those shadows and seize the bottom of Laura’s skirt and pull her to the floor again when she started to run.
The girl was still frightened—desperately frightened, indeed. But the possibility of anything supernatural having happened to her had long since departed from her mind. Even the flickering reflection of the ghost-light did not trouble her.
No ghost could have bound her hands and gagged her.
The voices of the girls had died away into the distance ere this. With a groan of pain because of her ankle, Laura rolled over and tried again to rise. Something jerked her back!
She threw herself over and rolled away from the point of contact. There was a tearing sound—and she was free!
She scrambled to her feet. Then she saw what manner of “ghostly hand” had held her. In stooping to drive the first nail into the floor, she had driven it through the hem of her skirt—that was what had jerked her to the floor when she tried to run with her comrades.
“Well! I am silly!” mumbled the girl.
Instantly she heard somebody cry out, but outside of the house.
“What’s the matter mit you, Otto?” growled a deeper voice.
“I heard a voice, fader! Not nearer to dat house would I go—so hellup me! It iss de ha’nt!”
Laura’s muffled voice was audible a few yards away, but she could not tell them who she was, and how situated. She ran to the window. One sash was gone. Boys had used the windows as targets in times past.
“Ouch!” yelled the younger voice, in a long-drawn wail. “Dere iss oldt Sarah!”
“Be still! you are a fool!” commanded the gruffer voice.
Laura saw that a man and a boy were outside the fence. The man carried a lantern. It had been this light coming along the road that had so terrified the M. O. R.’s and the candidates for initiation.
The farmer raised his lantern so that the light fell full upon the face of the girl in the house. He saw the veil-bandage, and her tied wrists. In a moment he hopped over the broken-down fence and hurried to the casement.
“Come here, Otto!” he commanded. “See your ghost—fool! It is a harmless girl—and she is in trouble. What does this mean, eh?” he asked, in his queer English. “Somebody been fooling you, no?”
Then seeing that Laura could not answer him save by a murmur from behind the muffler, the farmer said:
“Run in there undt untie her, Otto! Do you hear?”
“But the ghost, fader!” gasped the fat boy, who had followed his parent to the house, and seemed much the more cowardly of the two.
“Bah! Ghost indeed! There iss no ghost here——”
“But we know de house iss haunted. Are you sure dat iss not old Sarah?” demanded Otto, in much fear.
“It is a girl—a madchen—I tell you! A mere child—yes!” cried the father. “Go in there and unloose her hands—dolt!” and he boxed his son’s ear soundly.
“Oh! I can come out myself!” Laura tried to say.
She darted away from the window, found the open door, and so staggered out of the house to meet the farmer and his half-grown boy, with the lantern, on the porch of the haunted dwelling.
“Ah-ha!” exclaimed the man. “We heardt de oder girls screeching—yah? Undt dey tie you undt leave you here?”
He was fumbling with the knotted veil as he spoke, having passed the lantern to Otto, and now unfastened it so that Laura could reply.
“No, no!” she said. “Something frightened us all. First your lantern coming along the road. We thought it was the ghost light.”
“Ouch!” wailed Otto again. He was very much afraid of the ghost.
“And then—I nailed my skirt to the floor and could not get away quickly. I—I am afraid I have been a dreadful fool,” admitted Laura, with some chagrin.
“But you did not tie yourself—so,” growled the farmer, working on her wrist bonds.
“No. I fell and something—somebody, I should say—came and tied my wrists and put that veil over my face—give me the veil, please.”
“Some of your companions play a choke onto you—eh?” said the farmer.
“No. They would not be so cruel. And they were all as badly frightened by your lantern as I was.”
“Den you haf an enemy—eh?” queried the man.
“I do not know who. I don’t know what it means. Oh!”
“You are hurt, Miss?”
“I can scarcely hobble on my foot. I turned my ankle,” explained Laura.
“Then Otto and I will help you home—to our house yet,” said the farmer. “We were hunting a stray cow. My name iss Sitz. I lif’ back up de road—yonder. Two of your girls friendts bought milk at my house to-night.”
“Yes. I know who you are,” admitted Laura. “Do you suppose you could get me to your house and then send word to the city so that my father or brother will get it—without frightening mother?”
“Ach!” ejaculated the farmer. “We can carry you—Otto undt me; if he iss a fool-boy, he iss strong. Undt we haf de telephone. Sure we can carry you.”
They made a “chair” with their four hands, in which Laura sat, leaning back against their arms, and so maintaining her balance. She carried the lantern to light the way, and very soon after her girl friends had left the plateau in their stampede, she was being carried across the brook and up the country road to the Sitz farmhouse.
Laura had recovered from her fright ere this; but the mystery of what had happened to her continued to puzzle and amaze her.
Who had done this to her? What had been the object of the attack? And why should anybody desire to so maltreat and frighten her? These questions were repeated over and over in her mind, even while she was talking with Mr. Sitz and Otto. And there seemed to be no sane and sensible answer to them!
It surely was not any of the M. O. R.’s who had done this. They had all been just as frightened as they could be by the light of Mr. Sitz’s lantern. Of course, Mary’s foolish story of the ghost had started the girls off on the stampede when Jess and Nellie and Dora had run from the haunted house.
Laura remembered very vividly what she had seen in the room after her friends had left her. The figure in white had tied her hands and adjusted that veil across her mouth.
Surely, she must have some enemy—some person who really hated her. For nobody else, it seemed to Laura Belding, could have done so cruel a thing. She had no idea who this enemy could be, however.
Nevertheless, she had stuffed the veil into the front of her blouse and intended to hold on to it. That veil might prove to be a clue to the identity of the person who had bound and gagged her.