The place where they were to spend that night and the next was an abandoned sugar camp. It had once been a fine grove of trees, but so many had been killed by the boring worms that it was no longer profitable. Two cabins remained standing and were used on and off by hunters during the season.

“Oh-h-h, ours is a real log cabin,” cried Sahwah, dancing around in ecstasy when quarters had been assigned. “It’s lots nicer than the old board shack the boys are going to have. I’ll feel just like Abraham Lincoln to-night, only so much more elegant, because Abraham Lincoln had to split his own rails, and we can sit at ease and let the boys tote our wood for us.”

“But—where are the beds?” cried Hinpoha, in perplexity, as they went inside.

“Why, those,” said Aunt Clara, pointing to some bin-like things ranged in a double tier along one wall. “Those are our bunks.”

“Bunks!” echoed the girls in rather a dismayed tone. “We didn’t think we’d have to sleep in bunks. We expected camp beds, at least.”

“They’re quite comfortable,” said Aunt Clara reassuringly, “when they’re filled with clean straw. Our blankets are in that big box and we’d better get our beds made the first thing, so we can roll into them as soon as we get tired.” She bustled around, smoothing out the straw in the bunks with a practised hand and showing the girls how to fold their blankets to the best advantage. “Be sure you have just as much under you as over you,” she advised them again and again. “Camping in winter is a very different proposition from sleeping out in summer.”

Now that the girls had gotten used to the idea of the bunks, they began to think it was a jolly good lark to sleep in them. “If bunks it must be, bunks it is,” said Katherine, in a lugubrious tone that sent them all into gales of laughter, “but I never thought I’d live to see the day!”

“Me for the upper berth,” said Sahwah, standing on a table to accomplish the spreading of her blankets. It was not long before they were all singing:

And they raised such a din with the chorus that the boys came streaming over to see what the fun was about and to inquire casually if supper wasn’t nearly ready.

“Goodness, no,” answered Nyoda; “we’ve just got our beds made. Go overpower Slim, if you are hungry, and take his bottle away from him. By the way, which cabin is to be honored by the smell of the cooking?”

“The log cabin is the largest,” said Uncle Teddy, “and it has both the fireplace and the little stove. The other is just a sleeping cabin. I guess the honor is yours. All aboard for the dining car! Where’s that canned soup? Bring in the wood, boys, and make a cooking fire in the stove. You know what a cooking fire is, I suppose. Everybody get to work. Too many cooks can’t spoil this broth.”

They flew around, getting in each other’s way dreadfully, but under Uncle Teddy’s and Aunt Clara’s able management they did contrive to accomplish the things they were trying to do, and in less than no time the supper was steaming on the table.

“Maybe I won’t do anything to that soup and that creamed fish!” sighed Slim, his face beaming at the sight of the banquet spread before him.

“Maybe it won’t do anything to him!” said Katherine in an aside to Sahwah. “I got a whole teaspoonful of Hinpoha’s old talcum powder in the cream sauce before I discovered it wasn’t flour, and then it was too late to take it out again.”

“Never mind,” Sahwah giggled back, “it’s so hot you can’t taste it, and it won’t last long enough to get cold. Your secret is safe in our stomachs!”

The paper plates made a grand glare in the fireplace after supper was over and in its light Katherine and Slim gave a Punch and Judy show until Slim showed symptoms of bursting from want of breath, whereupon the play came to an end and it was discovered that Bottomless Pitt had fallen asleep in a corner.

“Hide his shoes!” suggested the Monkey, and promptly took them off and tied them by strings to a tack in the ceiling.

“Let’s enchant him altogether,” said the gifted Katherine, and fastened the little mustache to his lip. Then they stuck his head full of paper curls and powdered his face with flour. The effect when he woke up was all they had hoped for. They had set a small wall mirror on the floor beside him, so he got the full benefit of his altered appearance on his first glance around. Uttering a startled yell, he sprang to his feet, looking wildly around. Brought to himself by the laughter on all sides, he shook his fist fiercely at Slim and the Captain, declaring that he would make the fellow who did that eat soap. As Katherine was the “fellow” in question this only increased the merriment at his expense. Slim leaned against the wall so helpless from laughter that he didn’t even resist when Pitt climbed on his shoulders to haul down his shoes, but went on chuckling violently until he sagged to one side and down came both boys in a heap, shoes, tack and all.

“I wish you boys would go home,” said Katherine primly. “You’re altogether too rough for us little girls to play with. I think it’s horrid and nasty to play tricks on people when they’re asleep.” From her gently shocked and disapproving expression you never would have guessed that she was the one who had started it all.

“Come on home, fellows, we’re invited out,” said Uncle Teddy, with a pretended injured air. “It’s time we little gentlemen were in the hay—I mean the straw. Come on, Pitt, never mind looking for the tack; Mother will find it when she gets up in her stocking feet to see if she locked the door!” With which shot he retired in haste through the doorway and over to the other cabin, and just in time, for Aunt Clara sent a snowball flying after him that fell short by a bare inch.

Then she closed and barred the door, fixed the fire with hardwood which would last the rest of the night, plastered adhesive strips over the various blisters which the Winnebago feet had acquired on the long march, and tucked them all in warmly with a motherly pat and a goodnight kiss. After a twenty-mile walk in the open air a hard plank would be a comfortable resting place, and the straw filled and blanket padded bunks were far from the hard plank class. For the first time in the history of Winnebago sleeping parties there was strictly “nothing doing” after they were tucked in. Most of them fell asleep during the process of tucking.

Thus it was that when the first thump came at the door nobody stirred. A second thump followed like a blow from a battering ram. Aunt Clara sat up.

“Who’s there?” she called. No answer save a series of blows and thumps that threatened to break the door down. The rest were awake by this time, trembling in their beds.

“Theodore, is that you?” shrieked Aunt Clara above the noise. “What do you want?” Again came a shower of blows, as if somebody were trying to force their way in with an axe. This time the bars gave way and the door swung inward. There was a loud bellowing, roaring sound, which seemed to their startled ears like a deep-throated whistle, and into the cabin there walked a cow. The girls shrieked and disappeared under the bed-clothes, for to their excited fancy she looked like a wild animal.

“Shoo, get out!” shouted Aunt Clara, throwing her slipper with neat aim into the cow’s face. Bossy looked reproachfully at her and walked farther into the cabin, standing close beside the row of bunks.

Katherine raised her head from the blanket to see what was going on and looked right into the open mouth of the creature as it stood over her. “Murder! It’s going to eat me up!” she shrieked, diving under the covers with a prolonged howl.

By this time Aunt Clara had found the whistle with which she always summoned her husband when she needed him and blew a long, shrill blast. A few minutes later Uncle Teddy appeared at the door, with a string of startled boys running out of their cabin behind him, and at a word of command from him, accompanied by several emphatic pokes and proddings, Mrs. Bossy meekly turned and walked out through the doorway, which was considerably the worse for her entrance. She had probably strayed from the nearest farmhouse and was suffering from the intense cold. Attracted by the light streaming from the little window of the cabin she had come to find shelter, and when nobody answered her first gentle knocks with her horns, she had taken matters into her own hands and become housebreaker. She was stabled in a lean-to shelter for the rest of the night and made comfortable with straw and a blanket.

“Isn’t it funny how all the suffering critters come to our hospitable door for shelter?” said Katherine at the breakfast table. “Just like Sandhelo. He came of his own accord, also.”

“They must know that we keep the Fire Law,” answered Hinpoha. “‘Whose house is bare and dark and cold, whose house is cold, this is his own’!”

“Isn’t it strange that she came to our door, and not to the boys’,” said Gladys. “They had a light shining, too, but her footprints show that she came past their door to stop at ours.”

“That’s because she was a lady,” replied Uncle Teddy, helping himself to his fifth slice of fried bacon, “and no lady would come bustling into a gentleman’s apartment like that. Hurry up and get your chores done, you housekeepers and wood-gatherers, and let’s go out and make a snow man.”

“Let’s make a totem-pole,” suggested Katherine, when they were all out playing in the snow. “It’s lots more epic than making a snow man.”

“You mean a ‘snowtem pole,’” observed Uncle Teddy.

So they set to work and made a marvellous totem-pole, higher than the cabin, with figures carved into its sides such as were never on land or sea. Then Uncle Teddy and the boys, who had done less carving on their sections and consequently were finished first, set up a barber pole on the other side of the doorway, containing the stripes with a crimson of their own concocting, which was a secret, but which involved several trips to the kitchen and the food supply box. All this time the Captain had never spoken one word to Hinpoha. Whenever he would have relented under the spell of the jolly larks they were having, something whispered to him, “She called me Cicero! I won’t stand that from anyone!”

“Who’s ripe for a trifling sprint of five miles this afternoon?” asked Uncle Teddy at the dinner table, taking three scones at once from the plate.

“I! I! I!” cried a chorus of voices, and a dozen hands waved frantically above the table.

“Have you any special place in mind?” asked Aunt Clara, pretending not to see Uncle Teddy stealing yet another buttered scone from her plate.

“Well,” said Uncle Teddy, “I happen to know that there’s a real sugar camp in action somewhere about here, and I think five miles covers it, there and back. It might not be the worst idea in the world to look in and see how they are getting on. I dare say most of these folks here have never seen maple syrup outside of a can.”

A sigh of delight ran around the table. “Hurry up, everybody, and put everything you have left into your mouths, so I can collect the plates,” said Sahwah, impatient to start at once.

But when the time came to start Hinpoha had developed such a dizzy headache that going along was out of the question. “It’s nothing serious,” she stoutly maintained, in reply to anxious inquiries. “Too much noise, that’s all. We might call it ‘Mal de racket’!” She would not hear of any of them staying at home with her, however, although Aunt Clara and Nyoda both insisted. “Go on, all of you,” she begged, pressing her hand to her throbbing temples. “It would make it so much worse if I thought I had kept you away from the fun. All I want is to lie down quietly. I’ll be perfectly all right here. If I feel better soon I’ll follow your tracks and either catch up with you or meet you there and come back home with you. Please go.” And so insistent was she that they went without her.

“Be sure you lock the door carefully,” called Aunt Clara.

“And be sure you put out a sign, NO COWS ADMITTED,” said Sahwah. And laughing they set out, leaving her tucked in her bunk. With the cessation of the noise that had almost lifted the roof of the cabin during the dinner hour, the headache gradually disappeared, and in an hour Hinpoha was herself again. Swiftly buckling on her snowshoes she ran out into the stinging air, which seemed like a cool hand laid on her forehead.

She found the trail of the others easily, for the crust was slightly dented in by every step. The way led through a thick strip of woods. Hinpoha noticed that there were many tracks of animals here and wished with all her heart that she knew what they were. “It would be such a grand thing to say to the folks at home, ‘I followed the trail of a ’coon,’ and be sure it was a ’coon,” she said to herself, and then laughed aloud at the ridiculous mistake of the Captain. Then she stood still in delight, for just before her a dark, furry body was slipping along over the snow. “I believe that really is one,” she said to herself joyfully. “I can’t catch him, of course, but maybe he’ll run up a tree—people always talk about ’coons being treed—and then I can see what he looks like.” And she sped after the little animal, who took alarm at her first step and disappeared between the trunks of the trees.

Hinpoha looked for him for a while and then realized it was a hopeless search and with a sigh turned to resume her own way through the woods. Then she stopped in dismay. The broad trail she had been following so easily had vanished from the earth! The only marks on the white ground were those of her own snowshoes. “Of course,” she said, coming to herself with a shake, “I got off the trail when I followed that ’coon. I’ll follow my own tracks back.” But her own tracks led her round and round in a circle, in and out among the tree trunks, and did not end up in what she sought. It took her some minutes to realize that she was actually lost in the woods. Then, of course, the first thing she did was to go into a panic, and run wildly back and forth. “Come, this will never do,” she told herself severely, standing still. “I must stop and think before I do anything else. Let me see, what was it Migwan did the time she was lost up in the Maine woods? She sat down on the ground and wrote poetry, and waited until we came and found her! I can’t write poetry, that’s out of the question, and I can’t sit on the ground, either, it’s too cold. I’ll have to stand up and wait.” But that proved a dreary amusement. It was getting bitterly cold, and a strong wind whistled through the bare branches till it made her flesh creep. To make things worse, an early twilight was setting in and the light was rapidly fading. To keep from taking cold she walked up and down bravely among the trees, growing more terrified every minute. She tried to sing, to call, to shout, to make her voice carry across the snow, but it was lost in the moaning of the wind. Her feet grew numb with the cold and she stamped them vigorously to start up the blood. The crust broke through, and down she went through several feet of snow to her waist. She braced herself with her hands and tried to draw her feet out, but they went through also and she floundered with her face in the icy snowflakes. Then with a growing sense of horror she realized what had happened. The ends of her snowshoes had become firmly wedged under the roots of a tree, and she was unable to pull them out. And her feet, tightly bound to the snowshoes by the pretty straps and buckles, were trapped. She struggled furiously, and only sank deeper in the snow.

As the “syrup party,” as they called themselves, were just ready to cool off the bit of boiled sap that had been given them to taste, the Captain suddenly sprang to his feet and smote his forehead. “Daggers and dirks!” he exclaimed, “I left my sweater hanging right in front of the fire when we came away—you remember it got all wet in the snowball fight this morning—and I bet it’s scorched to cinders by this time. Do you folks mind if I go back to the cabin in a hurry? I got that sweater for Christmas and I hate to lose it so soon. I’m all right, uncle, I can find the way, even if it is getting dark. Don’t hurry yourselves. Give my share of the syrup to Slim. He’s getting thin.” And adjusting his snowshoes with a skilled “jiffy twist,” he was off down the trail.

Now the Captain, although he had been mistaken about the tracks the day before, was nevertheless an observant lad, and when he came to the place where Hinpoha had left the trail, he noticed the marks going off in another direction and stood still and looked at them. He knew that they most likely belonged to Hinpoha, and he knew also that she had not arrived at the sugar camp and he had not met her on the trail coming home, so, putting two and two together, he decided that she must be in the woods somewhere. A mean little instinct whispered to him to go on his way and let her be wherever she was, and get a good fright until the rest found her; then his better nature rose to the top and he decided to hunt her up and show her the trail to meet the others.

“Glory, she certainly did mess up the trail some,” he said to himself, as he followed the marks which wandered up and down and doubled back on themselves and crisscrossed everywhere. It was slow going, for the darkness was hiding the footprints and he had to bend down to the ground to see them clearly. He almost stepped on her at last when he did find her. She was numb from the cold and very nearly asleep and he thought she was dead. The imprisoned snowshoes held her down and he could not pull her out of the snow at first. Finally he suspected what had happened and dug down in and loosened the buckles. It took a good deal of working after she was freed to get life back into the numb feet and ankles, but it was accomplished at last and Hinpoha was ready to walk home.

Then a moment of embarrassment fell between them. Hinpoha flushed and looked uncomfortable. “I’m sorry I called you Cicero,” she said, with a sneeze between every word. “You aren’t a Cissy at all. You’re a hero!” And then for no reason at all, except that the afternoon’s strenuous adventure had unstrung her nerves, she burst into tears.

“Here,” said the Captain, entirely light-hearted again, and holding up the little bucket he had carried away from the sugar camp, “cry into the pail. Evaporate the water. Save the salt. It’s worth money.”

And Hinpoha giggled foolishly and dried her tears and raced back to the cabin as fast as she could go, to stave off pneumonia on her arrival with hot blankets and steaming drinks.

“He is a hero,” she murmured dreamily to Gladys, who hovered around her like an anxious grandmother, after the others were satisfied that she was all right, and had set to work getting supper; “he never once said, ‘I told you so’!”

CHAPTER XII
HINPOHA’S ROMANCE

An indistinct murmur floated down from the Winnebago room of the Open Door Lodge, punctuated by little squeals and exclamations. The firelight shown on four tense faces, and four pairs of eyes were riveted on the two figures in the center of the group who were engaged in a very singular occupation. Balanced between two stiffly outstretched and quivering right forefingers hung a key, and suspended from it by a string was a black-covered book, supposed to be set apart from all secular uses. In a breathless undertone Hinpoha—for she was the owner of one of the aforesaid fingers—was chanting a passage of scripture designed for a widely different application. A strained hush was followed by another outbreak of exclamations. “Look, it’s turning! It began to turn the minute she said, ‘Turn, my beloved.’ What letter did it turn on, ’Poha?”

“D,” replied Hinpoha, in a solemn whisper.

“D,” repeated the chorus, “what does that stand for?”

“Daniel,” supplied Sahwah promptly.

“His name’s going to be Daniel,” chanted the chorus. “Now try for the last name.”

Again the mystic rite was performed. At “I” the Bible trembled with a premonitory movement. “It’s turning!” whispered the chorus in an awed tone. “No, it isn’t either; it’s still again.” After that one tremor the soothsaying volume remained bafflingly motionless through the recitation of the mysteries which accompanied the letter J. K likewise began uneventfully. But no sooner had Hinpoha uttered the fateful words, “Turn, my beloved,” when with a suddenness that scared them half out of their wits the key turned sharply in the supporting fingers, twisted itself free and fell to the floor with an emphatic bang.

“It’s K,” cried Hinpoha, covering her face with her hands. “What names begin with K?”

“King,” said Gladys.

“Knight,” suggested Katherine.

“All the noble names,” said Nakwisi dreamily.

“Mrs. Daniel King,” said Sahwah experimentally, whereupon Hinpoha hid her face in the bearskin rug.

“You try it, Katherine,” said Gladys. “I’ll hold the key with you.”

“Oh, I’m afraid to try it,” said Katherine, hanging back and looking uncomfortable. “It’s no use, anyway; nobody’d have me for a gift.”

“It always tells the truth,” said the blushing Hinpoha. “You know Miss Vining, Clara Morrison’s old maid aunt? Well, Clara persuaded her to try it and it wouldn’t turn for her at all, and they went through the alphabet three times in succession.”

With a skeptical expression Katherine suffered herself to be placed on the box covered with an old piece of tapestry displaying a threadbare figure of the three fates, which was the seat of those engaged in the mysteries. “My beloved is mine, and I am his,” she recited jerkily, keeping her eyes glued to the key. “He feedeth upon a row of lilies——”

“It’s ‘He feedeth upon the lilies,’ just ‘the lilies’; the ‘row’ part comes later,” interrupted Gladys in a sharp whisper.

“He feedeth upon the lilies, just the lilies, the row part——” repeated Katherine dutifully.

“No, no; it’s all wrong,” said Gladys impatiently. “Begin again.”

“My beloved is mine——”

“Katherine! Oh-h-h-h Katherine! Are you up there?” the voice of Slim suddenly called from below.

The girls all started guiltily and fell into confusion. “Sh! Hide the Bible, quick!” cried Hinpoha in a sibilant whisper, darting forward and snatching it from Katherine’s hand and concealing it under the bear rug.

“What are you girls doing up there?” came from below.

“Oh, nothing,” floated down the illuminating reply from above.

If Nyoda had not been so completely engrossed in her private affairs just at this time she would have noticed the subtle undercurrent which seemed to have caught hold of the toes of the entire feminine half of the senior class at Washington High. It was not the Winnebagos only. In fact, they had caught it from the others. Every class has its epidemic, be it tonsillitis, friendship link bracelets or Knox hats. This year it was fortune telling. Where the mystic rite described above originated nobody could exactly tell, but in less than a week every girl in the class had been initiated into the secret, and was busy discovering what her future initials were to be. The performance was always carried on behind locked doors or in places otherwise secure from adult eyes, and was often interrupted right at the most exciting point by approaching footsteps, but questions as to how the innocent maids had been improving the shining hour invariably brought out the reply, “Oh, we weren’t doing anything—much.” Missing keys and books of family worship led to embarrassing questions once in a while, but somehow the situation was always bridged over and parents and teachers never really did find out what the fascinating something was that drew their young friends off into groups by themselves from which they emerged to day dream instead of getting their lessons and to make mysterious references to certain initials.

The book and key oracle reigned supreme for several weeks and then gave place to the horoscope. For ten cents in stamps a certain seer dwelling in a remote town in Oregon offered to “cast” the principal events, past, present and future, in the lives of all young lady correspondents. It was not long before intimate heads were bent over scraps of paper comparing horoscopes. Hinpoha’s was acknowledged by all to be the gem of the collection.

“You have a brilliant future before you,” it read. “You will have a romantic love affair and will marry your first lover. He is a great scholar who will afterwards become president. You will meet him when you are very young.” Then followed a dozen lines more of brilliant prophecy. The special friends of Hinpoha, who had been allowed to peep at her fortune, Gladys, Sahwah, Katherine, Nakwisi and Medmangi, and one or two others, who had fore-gathered ostensibly to rehearse a school song, sat back and regarded their fortunate friend with awe. None of their fortunes had contained anything so dazzling.

“You’re going to be the President’s wife!” murmured Sahwah. “You won’t forget us, will you?”

“Never!” declared Hinpoha magnanimously, stealing a sly glance into the mirror.

“I hope you won’t be ashamed of me when I’m married and come calling at the White House,” said Katherine, rather dolefully. “All I drew was a farmer.”

“I only got an automobile manufacturer,” echoed Gladys.

“That’s what comes of having red hair,” said Sahwah enviously. “Her fortune said he would be drawn to her by her beautiful tresses.”

When Hinpoha was preparing for bed that night she stood fully an hour before the mirror and regarded her shining curls. Up until now she had never paid much attention to them except when the boys called her redhead and pretended to light matches on her head, and then she wished with all her heart, like the little girl in the song, that she had been “born a blonde.” Now for the first time her hair appeared beautiful to her. She arranged the curls this way and that, piling them on her head and letting them fall over her white shoulders. And all night she dreamed of standing up in a carriage and bowing graciously to cheering multitudes and clasping in her arms the forms of her girlhood friends who were among the crowd.

The horoscopes had their day and gave way to something still more exciting, something so secret that at first it could not be mentioned in words, but was only alluded to by mysterious references.

“Marjorie King went,” said Gladys to Hinpoha, “and she won’t tell a thing she found out, but she says it was the grandest thing.”

“I don’t believe it’s worth fifty cents,” said Sahwah skeptically. “Anyhow, I haven’t that much to spend.”

“You don’t ever dare tell anybody, they say, not a soul,” reported Gladys later. “If you do, the nice things won’t happen and the bad ones surely will.”

“She’s the Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter,” observed Hinpoha in an awe-stricken tone. “Did you ever hear of anything so wonderful?”

“Are you?” asked Sahwah anxiously, of Hinpoha.

This last question was entirely unrelated to the preceding statement concerning the Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter. It was part of the cryptic jargon employed in the discussion of a momentous question.

“I don’t know,” answered Hinpoha uncertainly. “Would you?”

“Oh, do,” begged Gladys, “and then if you find out something nice we’ll go in after you. Oh, I forgot, you can’t tell us anything.”

“Would your mother mind if you did?” asked Hinpoha, hesitating on the brink.

“She really wouldn’t mind, but she’d think it awfully silly,” answered Gladys, “so I don’t believe I’ll tell her.”

“You might find out the whole name,” said Sahwah, looking at Hinpoha.

“And just when it’s going to happen,” finished Gladys.

Hinpoha suddenly made up her mind. “I believe I will,” she said, looking at Sahwah.

Where Hinpoha’s thoughts were the next day in school nobody knew, but they were certainly not on her lessons. She failed signally in every class.

“And what were the initials of the great poet, Longfellow?” cooed Miss Snively, in her honeydrip voice.

The word “initials” penetrated Hinpoha’s wandering mind. “D. K.,” she murmured dreamily.

“Indeed?” purred Miss Snively. “Can it be that I have been misinformed?” But today sarcasm was lost on Hinpoha.

After school was out a select group, half of which seemed to be hanging back and being coaxed on by the other half, walked ten blocks to an unfamiliar car line and transferred to a cross-town line. There was a much more direct route to their destination, but that laid them open to the risk of meeting friends and relatives who might casually inquire whither they were bound. Just wherein lay the crime in what they were doing, no one could have told, nor why it should be kept such a dark secret, but singly and collectively they would have died rather than reveal the nature of the latest epidemic.

By devious ways they reached the end of their journey and stood irresolute on the sidewalk before a house which bore a plate on the door announcing that that same roof sheltered the object of their desire.

“Shall we all go in together?” whispered Gladys. There was no need of whispering, for no one was within earshot, but with one accord they lowered their voices. They went up the steps and held another consultation. “You ring the bell,” said Gladys.

“No, you ring it,” said Hinpoha. Thus encouraged, Hinpoha pushed the button, the door swung inward and they passed through. An hour later they stood on the corner again, waiting for the car to take them home.

“Did she say anything about—about——” inquired Gladys.

Hinpoha clapped her hand over her mouth and made inarticulate sounds beneath it, but her eyes were sparkling, as they never sparkled before.

“Excuse me,” gasped Gladys; “I forgot you mustn’t tell.”

“Can’t you give us a hint?” begged Sahwah, who had gone along for moral support.

Hinpoha shook her head and retained her finger on her lips to stop any leaks.

“Well, it couldn’t have been any nicer than mine,” said Gladys, with an air of satisfaction. “Mine was just splendid. Maybe yours wasn’t—favorable?” she added, stricken with a sudden doubt as to the superiority of Hinpoha’s future.

“It was, too!” declared Hinpoha. “If you took all the nice things out of ten fortunes it wouldn’t be as nice as mine!”

Gladys looked unconvinced. “Well, we’ll wait a year or two until they begin to come true, and then we’ll see which had the nicer,” she remarked.

Hinpoha laughed outright. “I don’t have to wait a year or two before mine comes true,” she announced triumphantly. “It’s coming true in the very near future. I’m going to meet a light-haired young man and he’s going to admire my hair and fall in love with me, so there! Is yours any nicer than that?”

“Oh, you told,” cried Sahwah. “Now it won’t come true.”

Hinpoha stopped in dismay. “Well, Gladys made me,” she wailed. “If she hadn’t said hers was better——” The car came along then and a truce was patched up. Such a delicate subject could not be discussed openly in the street-car, even to quarrel about it.

But if Hinpoha spent a bad night mourning because she had broken the spell of her good fortune, the next day sent all doubts flying to the winds. The week before the bald-headed teacher of the literature class had occasioned a bad break in the routine of the course by inconsiderately dying of pneumonia in the middle of the term. For several days thereafter the grief of the class was tempered by the fact that there were no recitations. But on the day after Gladys and Hinpoha, with Sahwah and Katherine as chaperones, had visited the Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter, an announcement appeared on the session room blackboard to the effect that literature recitations would be resumed that morning. As they filed into the literature class room they were greeted by the sight of the new teacher standing beside the desk.

“Boys and girls,” said the principal, who was doing the honors, “this is Mr. David Knoblock, who will have charge of this class in the future.” And he hurried out.

“David Knoblock!” whispered the wit of the class to his neighbor. “Knoblock, No Block, see?” And a titter ran through the class.

“David Knoblock!” said Katherine to herself. “He looks as though his name might be Percy Pimpernell.”

“David Knoblock!” repeated Hinpoha to herself, and sat mute before the workings of fate. David Knoblock. D. K. The Car of Destiny had stopped before her door and from it had alighted the fair-haired stranger!

Standing before the class in the glory of his yellow hair, pale, sprouting mustache, blue eyes and pink cheeks, Mr. Knoblock seemed to them a composite of Adonis, Paris and Apollo Belvidere, whose mythical charms had been impressed upon them by the late lamented instructor.

“What has the class been reading, Miss—ah—Miss Katherine?” he inquired, consulting the class roll.

“Tennyson, Mr. Knoblock,” answered Katherine briefly.

“Professor Knoblock, if you please,” he corrected gently. “Ah, yes; Tennyson.” And turning the pages of his book with a manicured finger, he found the place and began to read aloud, glancing up at one or another of his girl pupils from time to time. More and more often that glance rested on Hinpoha, for with the sun shining through the window on her hair she was the most vivid spot of color in the room. Finally he did not take his eyes away at all, and, looking her straight in the face, he read in sentimental tones:

In the blaze of that glance Hinpoha’s romantic heart melted like a lump of wax. The room swam in a rose-colored mist. The great thing that she had read about in books had happened to her; she was in love! It was not long before the whole school knew about the affair. Whenever there was a sentimental passage in the book Professor Knoblock looked at Hinpoha and at her alone. He often detained her a moment after class to inquire if that last paragraph had been entirely clear to her; he thought she had looked not quite satisfied with his explanation. As he roomed in the next street to her home he generally met her on the corner in the morning and walked to school with her. Certain sour-dispositioned damsels in the class, who had made eyes at the new Lochinvar in vain, made sneering remarks about a girl who had so few boy friends in the class that she had to ogle a teacher; others sighed enviously when they looked at her woman’s crown of glory and realized their handicap; the Winnebagos regarded the whole thing as the workings of fate, pure and simple, for was it not even as the Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter had predicted?

As for Hinpoha herself, she was too transported to care what anyone else thought about it. She was surrounded by a rarified atmosphere and the voices of earth troubled her not. Just now she sat blushing deeply and crushing in her hand a note which had appeared mysteriously between the pages of her Selections from the Standard English Poets. It was written in Mr. Knoblock’s slanting backhand, and read:

“My Dear Miss Bradford:

“Never have I seen such glorious hair as yours. I cannot take my eyes from it while you are in the room, and it haunts me by night. May I ask a great favor of you—that you grant me one lock, one small lock, as a keepsake? I fear you will be too modest to make this gift in person, and all I ask is that you slip it into the dictionary on my desk.”

The signature was a long ornamental K, with a running vine entwined about its upright stroke.

Hinpoha scarcely raised her eyes above the level of her book during the whole recitation. She sat nervously toying with a long perfect curl that hung down over her shoulder. Toward the close of the recitation period she came out of her abstraction and touched the boy in front of her on the shoulder. “Lend me your penknife,” she whispered in answer to his look of inquiry. The Senior Literature Class occupied the last hour of the day, and as Mr. Knoblock had no session room, the passing of the class left the room empty. On this day Mr. Knoblock left the room with the class on the stroke of the bell, and the boys and girls, trooping out in a hurry to get home, did not notice that Hinpoha loitered. She glanced around nervously, satisfied herself that she was unobserved and then darted toward the dictionary on Mr. Knoblock’s desk. Going out of the door a minute later she ran violently into Katherine, who had carried out her inkwell instead of her English book, and was coming back to replace it. Katherine looked at her curiously.

“Excuse me,” said Hinpoha in a flustered tone, “I really didn’t see you. I was thinking about something.”

Hinpoha looked at Mr. Knoblock with an air of expectancy when she entered the room the next morning, looking for some sign of gratitude for the lock of hair, but he said, “Good morning, Miss Bradford,” in his usual tone and made no further remarks. But before the hour was over he took occasion to borrow her book for a moment, and directly after he returned it a note fell from its pages into her lap. With starry eyes she unfolded it and read:

The lines were from “Gareth and Lynette.” The universe turned into song. It was getting altogether too much for Hinpoha to hold and that afternoon before the fire in the Open Door Lodge she revealed the progress of her romance to the other Winnebagos.

“Did you really give him a lock of your hair?” asked Gladys.

Hinpoha nodded. “Just a tiny curl. It doesn’t show much at all where I cut it out.”

“Collecting locks of hair doesn’t mean so terribly much,” said Katherine dryly. “I read about a boy once who begged a lock of hair from every girl he met and then had his sister embroider a sofa cushion with them. And another one used them for paint brushes.”

“Oh, but this is—different,” said Hinpoha with lofty pity. It had just dawned on her that Katherine was jealous. The same miracle that had dropped the scales from her eyes and revealed to her the fact that she was beautiful had also made her realize that Katherine was hopelessly plain.

“And then the verse he wrote afterward,” said Gladys, hastening to uphold Hinpoha. “That proves he is in earnest. And, anyway, it must be true. Didn’t all the fortunes say he was fair and his initials were D. K., and he was a great scholar, and would be president, and he would fall in love with Hinpoha’s hair?” And Katherine had to admit that whatsoever was written in the stars was written.

It mattered little to any of them, Hinpoha least of all, that Professor Knoblock had thus far said nothing openly upon the subject to Hinpoha.

“Isn’t his bashfulness adorable?” cooed Gladys. “He’s too shy to express himself face to face with her; he puts all his—his passion into writing.”

“Won’t those notes be lovely to read over together when you’re old?” said Sahwah, also stricken with a sentimental fit. But at the mere mention of such a thing Hinpoha fled with burning cheeks.

“Hello, Red,” said a cheerful voice in her ear, as she went dreaming down the street one day. “Where have you been keeping yourself for the last few weeks? You haven’t been down in the gym once.”

“Hello, Captain,” she said sweetly. (How young he was, she was thinking. How hopelessly kiddish beside the manly form of Professor Knoblock!)

“Say, you must have your tin ear on today,” remarked the Captain jovially. “I had to call you three times before you answered.”

“I was thinking,” said Hinpoha, and blushed.

“Must have been an awful hard think,” remarked the Captain, stooping to throw a stone at a cat. (He’s nothing but a kid, thought Hinpoha for the second time.)

It was on this occasion that the Captain, happily believing all was well between himself and Hinpoha, invited her to go to the Senior dance at Washington High with him.

“I’m awfully sorry, Captain,” she said kindly, “but I’m going with—someone else.”