CHAPTER VIII.—NANCY’S HOME.

Nancy’s father was the very picture of a sea captain, sunburned, ruddy, eyes very blue and little side whiskers like an English Squire’s. He had a hundred stories to tell of the sea, and Billie could have listened to him all day without tiring. Nancy’s mother was a gay, cheerful little body who kept her house polished like a ship’s cabin, and Nancy’s brother, Merry, was the image of his father. He felt the call of the sea, too, as his father and grandfather had before him, but he was not to be the captain of a merchant ship. He intended to go to Annapolis.

Three weeks had passed since the great fire at Shell Island, when, one Saturday afternoon, a red motor car wound its way in and out of the country vehicles on Main Street, stopped at the express office, where the young mistress of the car alighted for a moment, returning with a package, and then, with a reckless flourish, turned into lower Cliff Street and presently stopped in front of Nancy’s house.

Billie entered without ceremony, so intimate had she now become with the Brown household. Concealing the package in her gray ulster, she left it in the hall. Then, with the boyish freedom which seemed to characterize all her ways, pulling off her gray hat and gloves, she marched into the parlor.

Nancy was huddled up on the settle doing the family darning, a Saturday task she loathed. Elinor was playing softly on the square piano between the front windows and Mary Price was reading a book.

“I hope I don’t disturb any one,” said Billie, laughing as she burst into the room. “Everybody seems to be so busy here. I’m the only idle creature living to-day. Even Cousin Helen is at work.”

“I hope she is doing something more to her taste than this,” said Nancy mournfully. “I’d rather dig for clams any day. Merry would wear out a sock made of steel chains.”

“Hark, a doleful voice from the tombs,” cried Merry, who always made it an excuse to hunt for something in the parlor when Billie appeared.

“It’s the truth,” complained Nancy. “If you would just keep still two minutes at a time, I wouldn’t have to give up my Saturdays slaving for you.”

“‘When I hear the music play, I can’t keep right still,’” sang Merry, executing a double shuffle on the floor to a jig tune Elinor had struck up.

“You’ll have to dance to a different tune when you go to Annapolis,” cried Nancy. “And who’ll do your darning there?”

“Don’t borrow trouble, Nancy,” answered her brother. “Perform your daily task and cease to murmur. You’ll be a professional grumbler like Belle Rogers if you keep on.”

“Do you know that she and her whole family are denouncing me as a sort of would-be murderer?” put in Billie. “All because I lost Ben and the rest of you at the Shell Island fire and took her into the wrong room.”

“I heard that she was an early Christian martyr who had come near to being burned at the stake,” said Merry.

“Yes,” continued Billie, “she tells how I enticed her into the room, and then climbed up onto the roof and left her, so that she had to follow and she even blames me because she would slide down the rope first and cut her hands so that she will never be able to play the piano. I am very sorry for that, because she liked music, but it was her own fault.”

“It’s really making a sort of split-up in the town,” observed Elinor. “Mrs. Rogers and mamma almost had words on the subject the other day. As much as mamma will ever have words with any one. Mrs. Rogers tried to tell her that Belle was going one way and you made her go another, and all mamma said was, ‘My dear Julia, I have heard the correct version of the story,’ and swept away.”

“Exactly as you will do, Elinor, when you begin to wear long dresses,” said Nancy.

“Oh, she can sweep without a train,” cried Merry, giving a very good imitation of Elinor as he made for the door with his baseball bat and glove.

“Now, don’t be silly, Americus Brown,” called Elinor after him. “Remember that you are to be a soldier of the nation some day, and you’ll have to stop walking pigeon-toed, then, and keep your bow-legs straight and stop grinning. It will be very difficult, I fear.”

Merry shot a coffee bean at her with his thumb and forefinger as he left the room.

“That boy will be the death of me,” exclaimed Nancy. “He reminds me of our sailor weather-cock in the garden that waves his arms and legs and turns every time there is the slightest breeze.”

“He’s a nice boy,” said Billie, who always took Merry’s side in the arguments. “But I am here this morning, as the preacher says, to ask your advice in a grave matter. Several grave matters, in fact.”

“Have you heard from Mr. Lafitte?” demanded the three girls in unison.

“No,” said Billie, “and it’s been nearly three weeks since we sent my name and address. Perhaps there hasn’t been time, but I should think they might have cabled, or something.”

“It only postpones the evil day of telling them the jewels were lost in the fire,” observed Mary.

Billie disappeared in the hall for a moment and returned with the package she had hidden in her ulster.

“The jewels came back by express this morning,” she said.

“For heaven’s sake!” cried the others.

“I don’t know whether to be glad or sorry,” said Billie. “I am sure Pandora’s box didn’t have any more troubles locked inside of it than this one has. What shall I do with it now?”

“Why don’t you tell Miss Campbell all about it?” suggested Elinor, for the second time.

“But, Elinor, it wouldn’t be right,” answered Billie. “Didn’t we give the woman our word of honor, Nancy, that we would keep the box for her until she sent for it, and tell no one? Even you and Mary would not have known about it if you hadn’t attacked Nancy like two wild Comanche Indians and knocked the box open.”

“Don’t you think the woman was crazy, honestly now?” Elinor asked for the hundredth time. This was an old argument between the girls.

“No, I don’t,” answered Billie emphatically.

“She was much too beautiful and fascinating to be crazy,” put in Nancy.

“They are the craziest of all sometimes,” said Elinor.

“But to return to the jewels,” interrupted Mary, the peacemaker. “Did the hotel people send them back?”

“No, that’s the queerest thing of all, and that’s what I’m here for to tell you now. The hotel people wrote me a letter which came this morning, saying that it was believed that the fire had been started by thieves who robbed the safe and that they, therefore, were not responsible for things lost.

“In the same mail came another very nice letter from a strange man named Johnston. He said the night of the fire he saw a man who was carrying this package faint dead away on the bridge. He believes now the man was one of the thieves. Anyway, he took him into his automobile and the thief must have come to and not known where he was, because he escaped somehow, probably to go back and look for the package, which Mr. Johnston has expressed to me.”

“Well, of all the strange stories!”

“But the question is now, what to do with the thing?” continued Billie.

If Billie had been a few years older, she would probably have gone straight to Miss Campbell, or to Miss Campbell’s lawyer, Mr. Richard Butler, Elinor’s uncle, for advice. The jewels would then have been stored in the bank for safe-keeping and proper means taken to find the owner. But it seemed to her that having given her word she must keep it, and hide the jewels herself in some safe place until she heard from Mr. Lafitte. After all, he might be on a journey somewhere, and they could only wait patiently.

“Let’s go and consult our guide, counsellor, and friend,” suggested Mary.

“Who?” asked the other girls, in some doubt.

“Why, the motor car, of course. Isn’t he the cheerfullest, finest friend in the world; always ready to give pleasure; always smiling and ruddy, and ready to come and go, stay still or move on—bless him?”

“He is a dear,” said Billie, pleased with this extravagant praise of her beloved car.

The girls had come to consider “The Comet” almost as a living thing, like a pet horse or a favorite dog. They loved it as ardently as children love a pony which has borne them all on his back at one time around the garden.

It was decided then to take a spin in the car and the four friends were soon in their accustomed places on the red leather seats.

The scarlet car, full of young girls, was no longer an unusual sight in the town of West Haven, and people had ceased now to turn and stare at the “Motor Maids,” as Captain Brown had christened them one morning when they had taken him for a drive in the automobile.

Through the town they sped and out to the open road. The crisp autumn air nipped their cheeks and brought the color to their faces. As they passed Boulder Lane they looked curiously at the fisherman’s house in the distance.

“I am certain those men who took your car were smugglers,” announced Nancy. “Father says there are lots of them.”

“Perhaps,” said Billie, “and I am certain of another thing: that it was the same one-armed man who was on the roof of the hotel the night of the fire.”

“But there are lots of one-armed men in the world, child,” replied Nancy.

“Perhaps, but there was something familiar about him. And, besides, why did he ask me those questions about the girls at the hotel in the red automobile?”

“And, ‘curiser and curiser,’ what did he want with the box of jewels? And how did he know we had them?” said Elinor.

“I really couldn’t say,” answered Nancy. “Ask me something easier.”

Seeing nothing ahead of them in the road, Billie had let the car go full speed. It was what they all loved, even Mary Price, who had gradually got over a certain timidity she used to feel when the car shot through the air like a sky-rocket, and it was Mary Price now, grown unusually bold from familiarity with speeding, who suddenly jumped up and cried in her high, sweet voice:

“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”

“Got what?” demanded the others.

“Why, a place to put the jewels in, of course. Mother’s safe.”

“But would she like us to use her safe?” asked Billie.

“She won’t mind. I’ll tell her it’s something of yours. She never uses it. We haven’t anything to keep in it now,” Mary added simply. “Father used it in his life time and Mother has just kept it since because we are always expecting to make lots of money, you know, and then we might need it. I know the combination, and we can go straight home and put them in. No one would ever think of looking for jewels in our little house, and they ought to be as safe there as any place in the world.”

“Mary, dear, you are a trump,” exclaimed Billie. “It’s a perfect idea.”

In another moment, they had faced about and were on their way back to town.

“Dear old car,” ejaculated Elinor, patting the red leather tenderly. “Mary’s right, we couldn’t get on without you. We consult you exactly as the ancients consulted oracles. I think all your cushions must be stuffed with good advice, instead of horse hair, and your big all-seeing eye is always on the lookout for danger——”

“And his heart is true to his jolly crew,” sang Nancy.

“He is better than a horse,” put in Mary, “because he never gets tired.”

“And when he’s empty we fill him with gasoline, and he’ll go ahead as fresh as ever,” went on Billie.

“And he always avoids broken glass and tacks in the road,” Elinor was saying, when “bang!” went one of the rear tires with a report as loud as a pistol shot.

The “jolly crew” could not restrain their ever-ready laughter at this disconcerting behavior on the part of “The Comet” just at the very moment when their boasts were loudest.

“Oh, well,” said Billie apologetically, “it’s time we had a puncture. We’ve never had one yet. We’ll take him to the garage and have him mended properly.”

“Chocolates, marshmallows, peanut brittle, and other candies, fresh and dee-lishus!” called a voice from behind the motor as they pulled into the garage.

It was Percival Algernon St. Clair, wearing a most engaging smile on his rosy, good-natured face, as he tipped his boyish cap at Nancy in particular in the most approved grown-up fashion.

“Have you any ice cream sodas, Percy-Algy?” demanded Nancy impudently.

“I don’t think the fountain’s dry yet, Nancy, and we’ll have a party, if you say so. The gang is close by. Shall I give the signal?”

“I have no objections,” said Nancy, “if the girls haven’t.”

“Why should we?” answered Billie. “Isn’t pineapple soda water my favorite beverage?”

Percy put two fingers to his lips and gave three whistles, and, as if by magic, Ben Austen, Charlie Clay, and Merry Brown emerged from the shadow of a neighboring doorway.

In spite of his theatrical name, his girlish complexion, and blond hair, Percy was a great favorite with his friends. He had received a spoiling from his doting and indulgent mother that would have turned many another boy into a selfish, vain egoist. But Percy had been saved from this wretched fate partly by his own frank and engaging disposition and partly by association with his three chums, Charlie, Ben, and Merry, wholesome, manly boys, who had never been mollycoddled in their lives.

“Will some one carry this parcel then?” asked Billie, pulling the box of jewels from under the seat, and tearing the wrapping paper off of a corner as she did so.

“I will,” said Merry promptly, taking charge of the box. “Why, it’s rather heavy,” he observed, weighing it in his hand. “It must be full of gold nuggets.”

Billie was silent. She was beginning to be a little superstitious about that box, and she could have wished that the punctured tire and the soda water party, pleasant as was this last diversion, had not interrupted their plan to store the box in Mrs. Price’s safe.

But Billie enjoyed being with girls and boys of her own age so much that she soon forgot her doubts and joined in the gay conversation of the little company.

On Saturday afternoons a crowd of High School boys and girls was always congregated around the soda water fountain in the West Haven Pharmacy, as it was called, and the place was filled with gay talk and laughter, when the Motor Maids and their friends pushed their way up to the marble counter, while Percy, who had more pocket money in a week than some of the others had in a year, paid for the checks.

As luck would have it, Billie and Americus Brown had found places next to Belle Rogers, who, very daintily and delicately, though with some thoroughness, was consuming a maple-nut sundae.

Merry pushed the box onto the counter while he plunged into a glass of chocolate soda water without even noticing that Belle had turned a scornful glance, first at him and then at the much soiled and travel-stained wrapper on the package. Then, suddenly, something very particular claimed her attention. Mary Price, who was standing around the curve of the counter, saw the whole thing and reported it later to the girls. Where Billie had torn the paper, the polished rosewood surface of the box, with its silver mounting, was plainly visible. Belle gave one long, astonished stare of recognition.

“After we leave this package at Mary’s, I invite all of you to take a ride in the motor,” Billie was saying to Merry Brown. “Do you think eight can sit where five are in the habit of sitting?”

“One seat will be big enough for the midgets,”—a nickname given to Mary and Charlie,—Merry answered. “One of us can sit on the floor and the other four can squeeze onto the back seat. The chauffeur is the only person who must have plenty of room.”

“Can’t you move up and give us a little room?” interrupted Nancy, pushing her way between her brother and his neighbor, while Percy stood patiently by with two glasses of soda water.

Without meaning it, she had jostled Belle Rogers. The two girls turned and faced each other.

“How do you do, Belle? Are you quite well again?” asked Nancy politely, but with a look in her eyes which meant mischief.

Belle had not been back to school since the fire.

“Miss Brown,” said Belle, bowing stiffly.

“How well your hair stays in curl this foggy weather, Belle,” continued Nancy, in a high, pleasant voice, which could be heard by all the boys and girls at the counter. “You must put it up almost every night now, don’t you?”

“Nancy!” expostulated Billie, as Belle sailed from the drug store, followed by several of her loyal friends.

CHAPTER IX.—AT THE SIGN OF THE BLUE TEA POT.

The inscription might have stated further that the plucky mistress of the little shop was as dainty and pretty as any of the articles for sale on the counter.

As the soda water fountain was the Saturday afternoon meeting place of the boys and girls of West Haven, so the Sign of the Blue Tea Pot attracted the older crowd. It had seemed a bold undertaking for the widow to mortgage her home and put all the money in the chintz hangings and wicker furniture of those two charming tea rooms. Her old friends, Mr. Butler and Captain Brown, had strongly advised against it, but her venture had been a success from the first, although a mortgage still hung over the place like a black cloud and small debts would accumulate every time she got a little ahead.

When the red motor with its load of young people drew up at the door of Mary’s home, the buzz of conversation from inside reached them out in the street.

Mary’s mother appeared for a moment in the doorway, and smiled at them.

“She’s as beautiful as an angel,” thought Billie, who never told how often she had yearned for a real mother of her very own as other girls had.

Could any one else have looked so charming in a perfectly plain homemade gray chambray dress, with a white muslin fichu, and little white apron to set it off?

“Won’t you come in and have some tea and cake, children?” Mrs. Price called to the young people, while she put an arm around Mary and shook hands with Billie, who had followed her friend to the front door with the troublesome box.

“No, thank you, Mrs. Price,” replied Billie, as spokesman of the party. “I only came to ask a favor,” she added, in a lower voice. “Would you let me keep this box in your safe for a while? I have no place, I mean——” Billie hesitated and blushed. Of all things, she detested subterfuge, and yet here she was making all sorts of lame excuses instead of saying frankly that she was keeping the box for a friend.

“You mean the old safe upstairs?” asked Mrs. Price, somewhat astonished.

“Yes, mother,” put in Mary. “I told Billie I knew you wouldn’t mind locking this box up for her for a while.”

“Certainly, dear, you are welcome to hide anything in it you like. Mary knows the combination better than I do. I always have to look it up in one of Captain Price’s old note books. I am sorry you won’t have some tea and cake, but I suppose you are all off for a spin this afternoon. It has done Mary more good than I can tell you, your motor car. The child is always studying so hard to hurry up and be a teacher and take care of her old mother, so she says.”

“Only a few years more, Mother, and you shall never have to work again,” said Mary. “Some day I shall be the Principal of West Haven High School, when Miss Gray gets too old to work——”

“What’s this?” exclaimed Miss Gray herself, at the door. She had been drinking tea inside with some friends. “Who’s going to lay me on the shelf before my time?”

“Mary intends to step into your shoes, Miss Gray,” laughed Mrs. Price. “Look out for her. She is a dangerous rival. She means to pay off all our mortgages and things, and provide for her mother’s old age.”

Miss Gray pinched Mary’s cheek.

“Yes,” insisted Mary stoutly, “all I want is money, money, money.”

The Principal patted the young girl’s cheek kindly.

“Don’t be too mad about it, child. It won’t buy everything, you know.”

It was only an idle speech of Mary’s but you all know how much meaning can sometimes be given to words spoken thoughtlessly and the day was to come when Mary was to regret very deeply having used those words.

All this time Billie had been standing quietly waiting for the moment when they could leave the older people and consign the box to the iron safe upstairs.

But before they could get away the tea room began to empty itself. Billie’s Cousin Helen appeared in the doorway, with Mrs. Butler, looking like Elinor grown middle-aged, the beautiful aquiline nose slightly more pronounced, the blue eyes a little faded, but the same erect carriage which made her look an inch or more taller than the other women.

Mme. Alta, the music teacher, was there with Miss Gray. She was a fierce looking, dark-haired woman, her two upper teeth protruding over her lower lip like the tusks of a walrus, giving her a cruel animal expression. Mrs. Rogers, Belle’s mother, a small faded, intensely nervous little woman, joined the group, followed by Percival Algernon St. Clair’s doting parent, “the Widow St. Clair,” as she was known, a charming, plump, pretty woman, as good-natured as she was comfortably self-indulgent.

“Why, Wilhelmina, my darling, what is that large package you are carrying?” demanded Miss Campbell anxiously. “Has your papa sent you a present?”

“Oh, no, just—just a package of things I was going to leave here. We are going motoring for a while. You don’t mind, do you Cousin Helen?”

“No, my child, as long as you don’t go too fast. But do put down that box. You will injure yourself carrying it so long. Why don’t you put it in the motor? Why do you leave it here?”

“Oh, it isn’t mine,” said Billie.

Mrs. Price looked up at this.

“But I thought——” she commenced, when Mary pressed her hand.

“I mean I am keeping it for some one,” went on Billie lamely.

“My dear Miss Campbell,” put in Miss Gray—and Billie thanked her for the intervention—“it is a Blue Bird secret, you may depend upon it. You do not know school girls as well as I do.”

“It ees a ver-ry eenter-resting looking package,” here remarked Mme. Alta. “It appears to be a ver-ry handsome box, as I can plainly see by one corner-r which protrudes. You perhaps use if for your club’s segrets, eh?”

Billie turned the box guiltily around. She had not noticed that the torn end was in view.

Mme. Alta looked at her unnecessarily hard, Billie thought. She had never liked the strange woman and had preferred not to take piano lessons of her, after one glance at those hard, cruel eyes and the fierce walrus teeth.

“I’m sure it contains much more beautiful and interesting things than stupid secrets,” exclaimed good-natured, pretty Mrs. St. Clair, who disliked to see anybody around her uncomfortable and Billie looked very uncomfortable. “Now, dear,” she continued, giving Billie a little squeeze, “do go and hide your box, if you like. It’s not fair to quiz young girls about their secrets, any more than it is to quiz older people,” and she pushed Billie gently into the hall. Mary quickly followed and the two girls ran upstairs, glad to get away from the group of inquisitive ladies, and infinitely relieved to consign the unlucky box into the small safe in the hall closet.

“What a joy to be rid of the thing,” exclaimed Billie, as they shoved the box inside, turned the combination lock, and fled downstairs.

“I feel as if we need a good dose of fresh air, Mary, to revive us after that inquisition,” she added, as they hurried past the company of tea drinkers, who still lingered chatting in the doorway, and joined the others in the motor car.

“Percival, my son,” called Mrs. St. Clair, “don’t lean out so far. You might fall and break your nose. Oh, oh, my precious boy, they’ll kill him!” she shrieked, as Charlie and Merry seized him by the arms and pretended to pitch him overboard.

CHAPTER X.—RUMORS AT SCHOOL.

Exactly what the complaint was no one knew except those who had made it. It was kept a careful secret. But in school rumors arise in the most subtle way. They are whispered about behind doors at recess; written on the margins of text books in class and hastily rubbed out; vaguely hinted at here and there until they spread from room to room and class to class and gradually the whole school is bursting with the news. And the poor victim may all this time be entirely unconscious that she is the very centre of a seething, boiling pot of gossip.

This is how the present rumor started in West Haven High School:

One afternoon when the last gong had sounded the sophomore class gathered in the locker room to put on their coats and hats. The lockers were only so in name. There had never been any keys to them, because there had never been any need to keep belongings under lock and key in West Haven High School, where most of the pupils had known each other all their lives.

On this particular afternoon, every incident of which our four friends will remember as long as they live, Nancy was prinking at the glass, as usual; Elinor and Billie, with their heads bent over an automobile map, were making plans for a motor trip, and Mary Price was studying her Latin for the next day. It was that lingering, lazy time after school is over, which all school girls know.

Fannie Alta hurried into the room and flung open the door of her locker, next to that of Belle Rogers, who was at that moment engaged in looking at herself in her own private mirror, hung on the inside of her locker door.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” exclaimed Fannie Alta, with a very excited and strange manner. “I have lost something. Something which my mamma gave me to keep for her. What shall I do? What shall I do?”

“Why, what was it, Fannie?” asked the other girls, gathering around her sympathetically. “Let us help you find it.”

“Oh, oh, it is terrible!” cried the young Spanish girl, wringing her hands and weeping in her handkerchief alternately. “What shall I do? What shall I do?”

“Was it money you lost?” asked Billie, in her usual rather abrupt manner.

“Yes, yes; how did you know?”

“I didn’t know, I guessed,” answered Billie.

“Did you leave it in your locker?” some one else asked.

“Yes, yes. I left it there at noon to-day. Twenty dollars my mamma gave to me to keep for her. Oh, is it not terrible? She will eat me with her anger.”

Billie could hardly keep the corners of her mouth from curving with an irrepressible smile when she remembered those two front tusks of Mme. Alta’s, which seemed to be uncovered, ready for work at any moment.

“Are you sure it is not there still?” asked Elinor quietly. “I happened to look up when you came into the room. You simply flung open your locker door and then began to cry. Why don’t you look in your pockets before you decide that you have lost the money?”

Fannie flashed an angry glance at Elinor.

“How did you know that I had not looked before; that I have not looked twice, many times?”

“I didn’t,” answered Elinor. “Have you?”

Fannie did not reply and from that moment she and Elinor disliked each other intensely.

Then the girls began looking carefully about the room.

“I feel as if I had it hidden about me,” said Nancy, giggling, as she helped in the search.

The others laughed, too, which somewhat relieved the situation. Nothing is more uncomfortable than for money to be lost mysteriously in a company of people.

“We do look as guilty as the forty thieves,” ejaculated Rosomond McLane, a fat, funny girl, who was popular with the whole class.

No one was more active in the search than Belle Rogers. She shook Fannie’s text books violently and scattered the papers about, to Fannie’s intense annoyance. She felt in Fannie’s pockets, examined the lining of her hat, and made herself so officious and numerous that Fannie herself exclaimed with much irritation:

“Please do not, Belle. You know it is not there.”

Only Elinor sat quietly on the window sill watching the search, with just the faintest shadow of scornful incredulity on her handsome face.

“Elinor Butler, do you believe I have been telling a falsehood?” Fannie finally exclaimed in exasperation.

“What a little spitfire you are, Fannie,” answered Elinor. “Just because I don’t choose to grovel on the floor looking for your money. I can help you quite as much by thinking, and I am thinking very hard, I can assure you.”

At last the search was abandoned. The pocketbook containing the money could not be found, and the young girls, swinging their book straps,—bags were too childish for High School girls,—strolled up the street in groups discussing the strange disappearance of Fannie’s twenty dollars.

In the meantime, the Motor Maids, laughing and talking together, tossed their books into the red car and then climbed in themselves. Somehow, Fannie’s loss did not seem very real. Billie had cranked up the machine and was about to back out when Fannie’s voice called from the locker room:

“Wait! Stop!”

“Well, you see we haven’t gone yet,” answered Elinor severely.

“Elinor, you are so hard on Fannie Alta. I’m sorry for her,” said Mary. “Mother wouldn’t bite me if I lost twenty dollars, but I’d hate to lose it just the same.”

“I didn’t mean to be hard on her,” answered Elinor, “but my instincts tell me not to trust her.”

“When did they tell you, Elinor?” laughed Billie.

Elinor’s instincts were a great joke to her three devoted friends. But the appearance of Fannie running breathlessly, with Belle following at a dignified pace, interrupted Elinor’s invariable reply to jests about her instincts: “You know they are never wrong.”

“What is the matter now, Fannie?” asked Billie, who was standing in the front of her car, her arms folded, like a captain on the hurricane deck of his ship.

“Would you mind——” Fannie stammered. “I mean—I think I have a right to ask—I want you to look in your pockets. I believe——” she continued, getting bolder every moment. “I am sure that one of you will find my pocketbook——”

Billie’s frank, candid face flushed as scarlet as her motor car, while the color left Elinor’s cheeks as white as death. Nancy gave a little frightened giggle, and Mary Price neither flushed nor turned white, but looked quietly on.

“Really, Fannie,” spoke Elinor, “you are not in the lawless South American country you came from, whatever it is. You are among decent people, not thieves, and perhaps you had better remember that hereafter. Start on, Billie,” she commanded, sitting as erect as a queen at her own coronation.

“But I insist!” screamed Fannie.

“She has a right,” put in Belle.

“Get out of the road,” cried Billie, backing recklessly out of the shed, turning with a wide, flourishing curve and whizzing out of the gate at full speed.

“Well, of all the insolence,” cried Elinor. “What does she mean and how does she dare——” her voice choked with indignation.

“Don’t you think it was Belle Rogers who put her up to it out of revenge?” suggested Mary.

“If it was, I can’t see what she had to gain by it,” said Billie. “Elinor sailed into them and we nearly sailed over them. It seems to me we had a good deal the best of it.”

Billie dropped the girls at their homes, as she was in the habit of doing every afternoon after school, and whirled up Cliff Street to the old Campbell homestead. On the way she passed Belle Rogers, who also lived in that fashionable section, but she did not ask her to get in and ride up the hill. Billie had a frank, open nature, but with her whole soul she distrusted that pink and white doll-baby face and those innocent china blue eyes.

In the meantime Mary had taken off her rather threadbare little jacket and hung it in the closet. Her mother was resting on the couch. She looked pale and tired that day, and Mary walked softly so as not to disturb her. Slipping off her mittens, she thrust them into her coat pocket. Her fingers encountered something and she pulled out a flat, foreign-looking pocketbook. Mary’s face turned white and she leaned against the wall of the closet and closed her eyes.

“They must have put it in my pocket,” she whispered. “What shall I do?”

“Mary, dearest,” called her mother.

“Yes, mother,” she answered, quietly slipping the purse into the pocket again. “I won’t tell her now,” she thought. “She is worried enough already.” And when presently she kissed her mother, no one could have told that the young girl was more frightened than she had ever been in all her lifetime.

The next morning Mary hurried to school without waiting for Billie and her car. She had something to study, she said. But Fannie was there before her, waiting in the locker room. Mary tried to calm her beating heart as she looked steadily at the other girl. Then, with a sudden resolution, she marched straight up to Fannie, and thrust the pocketbook into her hand.

“You put this in my pocket,” she said. “I don’t know what you have against me, or what I ever did to you, but if you ever do it again, I shall go straight to Miss Gray.”

Fannie took the pocketbook without a word, and after that a very different version of the story got out. Finally it reached Miss Gray’s ears.

But the most serious thing of all was that things began disappearing every day out of the girls’ lockers.

CHAPTER XI.—SEVEN LEAGUE ISLAND.

“Good-by, Miss Campbell,” called the others, while she smiled and bowed and waved her handkerchief like a favorite actress before an enthusiastic audience.

What a difference the young people had made in her life, she thought, as the carload of boys and girls flashed down the street and the sound of their talk and laughter, growing fainter and fainter, floated back to her like a pleasant memory.

It was a real seaside October day. Nothing could have been bluer than the bay, unless it was the sky. A warm, dry land breeze swept over the moors about West Haven. Wild asters and golden rod colored the roadside, and the stillness of Indian summer pervaded the whole country.

“There was no need of the top to-day,” observed Billie, looking up at the cloudless sky. “I am glad we decided not to put it on. We might as well have left the rugs and wraps behind, too. They take up room and won’t be used, I am certain.”

“I hope not,” answered Ben. “I see only one cloud on the horizon and that’s no larger than a man’s hand; but clouds do grow.”

“Don’t borrow trouble, Rain-in-the-Face,” exclaimed Percy. “The last time you looked into the future we had a fire.”

“All right, dummy,” answered his friend. “I am not predicting anything. I only mentioned the possibilities of a very small cloud. And the night of the Shell Island fire I said what certainly proved to be perfectly true—that the hotel was a regular fire trap.”

“Are you really a good weather prophet, Ben?” asked Billie anxiously. She did not like to have her parties turn out disastrously.

“He—he’s the poorest ever,” cried Merry.

“Don’t go on what he says, Billie,” put in Percy. “The last camping trip we went on, he predicted fair weather and it rained for a week.”

“Well, just to prove that I know what I’m talking about,” cried Ben, “I predict that it rains before night.”

This unpopular prophecy was greeted by hoots of derision from the others.

“What makes you think so, Ben?” asked Elinor. “It’s as clear as a bell now.”

“Certain signs,” he answered.

“Now, Ben Austen,” ejaculated Nancy. “Don’t go spoil our day before it’s begun. You know just as well as I do that it’s Indian summer, and it never rains in Indian summer.”

“Never, Miss Nancy-Bell?” repeated Ben, smiling. He minded as little being teased by his friends as a big, good-natured dog minds the antics of a lot of puppies.

“All right, Big Injun Ben,” said Merry, “let it rain before night. We’ve got a good many hours to enjoy ourselves in and get home, too, before dark. We’ll be at the ferry-boat landing in an hour, and if we’re lucky enough to catch the boat, we’ll reach Seven League Island by eleven o’clock. That will give us plenty of time to eat everything in sight, see Smugglers’ Cave, and all the other sights, and get home by seven o’clock.”

“Of course, we can,” replied Ben. “I was only teasing Percival Algernon St. Clair, because he hates the rain worse than poison. I never saw a finer day in my life.”

“Thank goodness!” exclaimed Billie, in tones of relief. She really had great faith in Ben’s judgment about most things.

Seven League Island, a rocky strip of land some twenty-one miles long, was one of the most romantic places in the vicinity of West Haven. It was three miles from the mainland and, during the season when the summer resorts and camps which clustered on its shores were open, several ferry-boats carried passengers back and forth from the mainland to the island. In winter the place was almost deserted. The land was too poor for farming and few people cared to remain on that lonely, mournful island, where, in stormy weather, the waves thundered through the caves in the cliffs, and the wind in the pine trees made a mournful sound like the wail of a lost soul.

To-day, however, it was as serene and smiling as the Islands of the Blest. The southwest wind stirred the pine needles gently, making a pleasant quiet song. The tiny waves, as they lapped the sides of the ferry, gave out a “cloop, cloop” sound that still water makes against the bow of a canoe.

“What time does the last ferry go back, Captain?” asked Ben, of the old ferryman, whose face was as weather beaten and seamed as the hide of a hippopotamus.

“Six, in good weather.”

“What time in bad?”

“Depends on the weather,” answered the old man briefly.

“How many other ferry stations are there?” asked Charlie.

“Three.”

“Good,” exclaimed happy-go-lucky Americus Brown. “We’ll take the one that’s nearest when the time comes to go back and ride before the wind, and beat the rain and put old Ben out of business as a weather prophet.”

The ferryman said nothing, but his small eyes twinkled with amusement.

They were the only passengers on the boat that trip, and as the motor whirled up the hard-beaten road from the ferry landing, they noticed that the bungalows and summer cottages along the shore were closed for the season.

“It’s because it’s so hard to get food,” Percy explained. He had once visited some friends at Flag Point, the first settlement, and was to be their guide this morning to the great cave, which had been used, it was said, in the days when smugglers were common in the land.

The others were familiar only with the shore, where they had come on bathing and fishing excursions, and the boys and girls were eager to explore the rocky caverns, the fort, the little inlets, where pirates were supposed to have anchored their ships, and above all the smugglers’ cave, which Percy told them was a great vaulted chamber in the rocks, with an entrance no broader than a narrow door.

“Take the road going to the right,” called Percy, as Billie paused at the top of the cliff for directions. “It’s the best one for motoring and it goes past the old rifle-pit where we can eat lunch. We can leave the car there and climb down to the caves afterwards.”

“The Comet” turned obediently to the right and shot down the interminable expanse of empty white road, like a shooting star on the milky way.

Even Mary, who had been pale and silent all morning, regained her spirits on that glorious ride, when Merry, with head thrown back, began to sing:

    “The sailor’s wife the sailor’s star shall be,
    Yo-ho, yo-ho-ho, yo-ho, yo-ho-ho!”

and she joined in the chorus with the others, her clear, sweet voice piping out like the notes of a field lark in a chorus of birds.

At last Billie pulled up at the side of the road under a cliff, on top of which was an old grass-grown fort used during the Indian wars.

“This must be it,” she said. “It’s peaceful enough looking now to make a good picnicing ground, but I don’t suppose it was much of a picnic for the people who built it to shoot Indians from.”

“Nor much of a picnic for the Indians, either,” said Ben, helping Billie out while Charlie Clay assisted the other girls to the ground and Percy and Merry unstrapped the luncheon hamper.

“Let’s eat up high,” suggested Billie. “That is, if you can carry the basket up that steep incline.”

“The pack mules are here for that work,” said Ben, pointing to Merry and Percy. “Charlie, you bring the rugs for the ladies to sit on and I’ll help the ladies.”

“Will you listen to Nervy Nat,” cried Percy, as he obediently shouldered his end of the luncheon hamper and followed Merry up the hill.

How they laughed and scrambled and shoved as they clambered up the pebbly path. Once Mary, with a shrill cry, slipped and stumbled back on Nancy who fell against Charlie, who, in his turn, tumbled against Ben, and that pillar of strength, grasping a branch of a pine tree with each hand, supported the whole human weight without a tremor.

It was like picnicing in the tops of the trees, when they finally spread the cloth in the grass-grown enclosure of the fort, and beyond them stretched the entire expanse of the ocean glimmering blue in the sunshine, with an occasional ship outlined on the horizon.

“I hope the ginger ale is still cold,” cried Merry.

“And the mayonnaise hasn’t melted,” said Nancy.

“What, nothing to eat but victuals and drink?” exclaimed Percy.

When they had waded through the piles of sandwiches and pyramids of cake, and drained the last drop of ginger ale, silent Charlie, who had an enormous appetite, remarked:

“How hungry this piney-salty combination does make a fellow!”

“Why, Charlie,” said Billie, “don’t say you are still hungry. You remind me of the elephant in Merry’s song:

    “‘The elephant ate all night,
    The elephant ate all day,
    And feed as they would, as much as they could,
    The cry was still more hay.’”

Charlie pulled out his mouth organ and began to play such a rollicking dance tune that the boys and girls, almost before they knew it, were two-stepping over the grass as madly as a lot of wild young colts. Then Charlie, seizing Mary about the waist and still playing vigorously on his “harp,” as it was called in that section, joined the dancers himself.

If they had not all of them been so absorbed in executing the Dutch twirl, or racing over the ground like Cossack dancers on the Russian Steppes, they would have been somewhat disturbed to have seen a man peering down at them from the top of a mound. He had crawled up the steep incline and was lying flat on his stomach in the tall grass. His face is familiar enough to us by now, for he had only one eye, but that one, like the eye of the three mythological witches, gleamed brilliantly and wickedly and nothing escaped its range. He smiled as if he rather enjoyed watching the dancers, and especially his one wicked eye followed the movements of Ben and Charlie and Billie Campbell. Presently when the whirling couples had tumbled breathlessly on the grass, fanning themselves with their hats and Ben had called out: “We’d better be getting along now,” the man slipped away as silently as a snake and disappeared somewhere below.

“To the caves,” cried Percy, as they gathered up the rugs and cushions and hastened down the cliff to the motor.

“I suppose it’s safe to leave ‘The Comet’ here without any one to look after him,” Billie had observed, and the others had agreed that it was.

“As safe as on any other desert island,” Ben had answered.

It seemed impossible that anything could happen in that lonely, quiet place, which was like a deserted paradise to the girls and boys that beautiful afternoon. There was nothing about the locality or the weather to arouse uncomfortable suspicions. The patch of sky, which was revealed to them just overhead between the tall, straight pine trees, was like a beautiful deep blue canopy. Even the watchful Ben could not have told that the cloud, so short a time ago no larger than a man’s hand, now stretched itself across the horizon in a long, thick line of black.

“The caves are the most fun of all,” said Percy, leading the way to the cliffs overlooking the ocean. “There are dozens of them, some little and some very large. The lower ones fill up at high tide, but the upper ones are safe enough.”

The cliff was honeycombed with small rocky chambers, and as they clambered, Indian file, along the narrow path which nature had so thoughtfully cut in the rocks they heard the boom of the incoming tide thundering through the caves on the beach.

“I suppose people could live in these little caverns,” Percy continued, “if it wasn’t so all-fired lonely and inconvenient; but wait until you see Smugglers’ Cave. It has as many natural conveniences as a real house built by human beings.”

“Here it is,” he cried at last, to the others who had run all the way down a steep embankment to see this romantic place.

Certainly it might well have been a favorite spot for smugglers and robbers on the high seas. Too high for the tide to reach and still well hidden from above by a thick growth of scrubby pine and oak trees, the cave was as secret and safe a place as could be imagined. Rock-hewn steps led up from the smooth pebbly beach below and the curve of the coast made a charming little haven for ships and a natural landing place for small boats. The eight friends stood in a row on the beach.

“This is called ‘Pirates’ Cove,’ you know,” went on Percy. “They say the pirates used to anchor their ships in this little haven and come ashore and have pirate tea parties on the beach.”

“Here comes a sea rover now,” called Merry, scanning the entrance to the harbor where a ship could be seen outlined against the blue.

“Oh, she isn’t coming this way, Old Tar,” answered Percy. “It’s too late in the season, for yachts and ships rarely come in here unless there is a storm. There’s nothing to come for and it takes them out of their course.”

“She’s headed this way,” continued Merry, not taking any notice of Percy’s interruption, while he scanned the ship with his far-seeing sailor’s eyes. “She’s a brigantine, and she’s making for this cove.”

“Oh, well, what of it?” put in Billie. “Perhaps she is coming here for the rest cure. But she doesn’t interest me half as much as Smugglers’ Cave. Let’s not waste any more time here,” and she ran up the steps, followed by the others.

The entrance to the cave had been as cleverly concealed as if nature had conspired with the outlaws to provide them with a safe hiding place for their contraband goods. The steps appeared to lead to nothing more than a blank wall, but, following Percy around the edge of an enormous rock which, in ages past must have slipped its fastenings above, they presently came to a narrow opening between the rock and the side of the cave, just large enough for a man to go through.

“The smugglers must have had to do up their bales of silk pretty flat to get them through here,” said Ben, measuring the opening with his handkerchief, as he stooped to keep from bumping his head on the top.

“How beautiful! How wonderful!” cried the four girls, when their eyes had become used to the change from the brilliant sunlight outside to the semi-twilight of the great vaulted chamber where they now found themselves.

“Now, I’ll show you what a jim-dandy architect nature is,” said Percy. “Here’s the bathroom. No hot water, of course, but a perfectly good tub and cold water always on tap.”

He pointed out a natural basin, probably worn in the rocks by the constant dripping of water from a spring that trickled down the wall of the cave.

“Here’s the bedroom, that nice, comfortable shelf over there. Here’s your easy chair,” he continued, showing them a curious formation of rocks really resembling a big armchair with a high back.

“It’s a rocky chair and not a rocking chair,” observed Charlie, taking a seat and rising quite suddenly. “Nature is as mischievous as a little boy if she is a good architect. Look at this,” and he pointed to a very sharp, almost needle-like, piece of stone in one corner of the seat.

The others laughed gayly as they hurried after Percy and a hundred reverberating echoes startled them into silence.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have saved the most interesting sight for the last. You are about to see the store-room of the smugglers.” He led the way down two steps into another chamber.

“By Jove!” he cried suddenly and stopped short.

“What is it?” exclaimed the others, peering over his shoulder into the darkness.

“Don’t you see?” he said, in a low voice. “They are still using it for a store-room.”

They blinked their eyes with amazement, when presently there loomed up in the shadows a pile of long, flat packing boxes.

Ben lit a candle, which he had thoughtfully brought along in his coat pocket, and they examined the boxes, which crowded one entire end of the smugglers’ store-room.

“Will you look at this?” he called. “Elinor, you are in this.”

Ben held the candle high and pointed to a sign on the nearest box, which read: “Automobile Supplies—Butler Brothers—West Haven——”

“Why,” cried Elinor, “you surely don’t suppose Uncle Tom and Uncle Richard could be storing their goods here, do you?”

No one answered her for a moment. Their thoughts were busy searching for an explanation to this strange discovery.

“Elinor,” said Mary presently, “don’t you remember what those men who borrowed Billie’s automobile said about killing every Butler in the county who interfered?”

“Yes,” said Elinor, in a frightened voice, “but what could these boxes have to do with it?”

“They may have a great deal,” said Ben. “Those men are probably smuggling your uncles’ auto supplies out of the country. The boxes are smuggled up to this cave by degrees, I suppose, and then loaded on some ship when they have got enough to make it worth while. And, if it’s the same man we had dealings with that night, he is a pretty desperate kind of an individual.”

“I don’t want any more fights,” exclaimed Billie. “Both of those men carried pistols and knives; I suppose all first-class smugglers do, but I don’t propose that my party is going to be ruined by any bloodshed. It is getting late, and we had better be going.”

They quite agreed with Billie, although the boys would have liked to linger in the Smugglers’ Cave for a while.

The outer air seemed very warm and oppressive after the cold damp atmosphere of the cave. They blinked their eyes and shivered as they hurried along the path which led to the road and in the change from dark to light they did not at first notice that the sun was hidden by a great cloud, as black as ink, which stretched from horizon to horizon. A hot, heavy wind stirred the pine needles and that sense of impending trouble which always comes before a great storm sobered the spirits of the boys and girls.

Nobody spoke of the cloud. It seemed to be a question of honor with them not to mention it, but they hurried on silently, and in a few minutes reached the automobile.

With a sigh of relief, the four girls were about to jump in, while Ben cranked up, when suddenly Nancy gave a little, pent-up scream.

“Look!” she cried, pointing to a piece of paper stuck on the cushion of the back seat.

This message was printed with a lead pencil on the paper:

“He laughs best who laughs last.”

“It was that man,” said Billie, examining the tires ruefully, each one of which had been slashed with a sharp knife.