A week before the birthdays were celebrated, a challenge had come to Huairarwee. There were four boys’ camps, all within a radius of twenty miles from Halcyon: Poke-o’-Moonshine at Blue Heron Pond, Pitch-off at Crystal Lake, Tamarack and Catamount at Lake Algonquin,—and the time had come for their annual regatta. Halcyon Lake had been chosen for the contest on account of its central position and as the region of Huairarwee was to be invaded, the boys had gallantly sent the girls a challenge for the doubles, offering them a good handicap. The girls accepted with enthusiasm, and immediately selected Carol and Cecily as their champions.

The course was to run from Big Pine Camp on the opposite shore, around a stake-boat and back again,—a distance of half a mile; and on hearing that the girls were to take part Mr. Clinton offered a cup as the prize.

Carol sent home for her own beautiful cedar canoe, the Hist-oh-Hist, and the night before the regatta it arrived, revarnished and polished smooth and consigned to the care of Hiram Bolster, the Halcyon boatman, who had pledged himself to have it unpacked and delivered at Huairarwee in ample time for the race.

The eventful morning came; nine o’clock passed,—no Bolster, no canoe. Douglas was despatched to hurry up matters, and brought back a message from Hiram’s wife that “Pa was off somewheres, but he wouldn’t fergit.”

“I’d like to dynamite that old Bolster!” exclaimed Carol. “He promised faithfully he’d have that canoe up in time, and here it’s five minutes after ten! Well, we’ll simply have to take one of these canoes. Oh, dear! but it’s too maddening! I want my own little Hist-oh-Hist. We’re chums and we understand each other! Hiram Bolster, you’re a double-dyed fraud! Well, come along!” she added. “Let’s take the Yale. That ought to bring us luck!”

Carol took her place in the Yale with Eunice and Nancy to paddle her to the rendezvous; and Cecily embarked with Helen and Betty in the Glide-away. Most of the girls were going by boat to the races, but Jean and Frances were among those left to drive with Fräulein Bunsen and Stella around the head of the lake to Big Pine Camp.

“Jean!” Carol called back, “if Bolster should come before you start, make him bring the Hist on after us as fast as he can. There’s just a chance we might get it in time!”

“I will,” Jean promised, “I’ll stay right here and watch for him.” She and Frances stayed on the beach skipping stones over the water, while the other girls waited in the road for the carriage.

“Hello!” a voice like a foghorn roared behind them. Both girls jumped. There stood Bob and Ted Talcott, who had just emerged from the Hurricane trail, and stolen softly up to them. The older boy had a megaphone at his lips.

“Gracious! How you scared me!” cried Jean.

“You nearly made me deaf for life!” declared Frances. “Aren’t you boys going to the races?”

“Nope,” said Bob.

“Why not?”

“We went shooting with Douglas’s rifle, and Dr. Hamilton found it out, so he’s keeping us out of the fun.”

“But we’re going up in your big hemlock,” added Ted. “We can see the stake-boat, anyhow, and holler at ’em through the megaphone. Come on up, too!”

“I just will!” cried Jean. “Then if we see Bolster I’ll megaphone to him not to stop, but to take the canoe right on as quick as he can. The old poke hasn’t brought Carol’s canoe yet,” she explained. “Hurry up, before the carriage comes!”

“I’m going up, too,—we’ll break our necks, but what do we care!” said Frances gaily.

“We’ll go ahead and pull you up when you get stuck,” said Bob.

“We don’t need to be helped. We can get up as well as you can!” said Frances scornfully.

Mrs. Brook’s hemlock was famous—a real giant, dwarfing all the other trees for miles around. Years before, a series of steps had been nailed up the trunk, and a platform built far up among the lofty branches, the lowest of which were at a dizzy height. If Mrs. Brook had not forbidden the campers to climb the hemlock it was because she had not dreamed that even the leader of the battle maids would be fired with such an ambition.

Jean and Frances felt their hearts fail them a little as they gazed up. The steps were mere wooden chunks, and the rickety platform looked alarmingly near the clouds. But the honor of Huairarwee was at stake, and they would not show the white feather. Ted put himself at the head of the climbers; Bob followed; Frances was a shrieking, giggling third, and Jean brought up the rear. Step by step the procession mounted. The wooden chunks were slippery, and some of them wobbled in a nerve-shaking manner. Jean found that to glance down was to turn giddy, and to look up was to feel discouragingly far below the branches. But at last the lowest branch was reached, and working their way from bough to bough they gained the platform. Far in the distance they could see the stake-boat with its flags, but there was no sign of the recreant Bolster.

“There’s a boat going to the races!” exclaimed Frances.

“Those must be the Fultons who came to our festival! Give me the megaphone, quick!” cried Jean, seized with a brilliant idea, and she called through the great horn, “Hello! hello! Tell them to wait for Miss Armstrong’s canoe!” The others helped her in her wild hallooing by shouting at the top of their lungs, Frances executing a very war-dance in her excitement. The young people in the boat looked up and waved, but Jean dropped the megaphone. “Horrors! It isn’t the Fultons at all!” she groaned. “I’ve been yelling at strangers!”

A whistle sounded from below. Douglas was coming to announce that the buckboard was waiting. “Hello! How did you get up there?” he called, stopping beneath the hemlock.

“Lay low! Here comes teacher! Now we’ll catch it!” said Ted, for at that moment Fräulein came out to see what the shouting meant.

If Jean and Frances had waved their hands to her from an air-ship Fräulein could not have been more amazed. Her exclamation ran up the scale to high “C” as she rushed to the foot of the tree.

“We came up to signal to Bolster,” Jean called down.

“Come up too, Fräulein! It’s as easy as pie!” shouted Frances.

“You ask me to climb up! to kill myself!” cried Fräulein. “No, but I make Douglas go after you to help you down—dat you break not your necks! You, Bob and Ted, it is you vat took my girls up dat tree! I tell Dr. Hamilton, and he vill export you from his camp!”

Douglas went up the tree as easily as a monkey. “Well, you’re great old climbers!” he said admiringly, when he reached the platform. “It was mighty nervy work for girls!”

“Do you think we’ll be in time for the doubles?” asked Jean.

“We’ll have to hustle,” replied Douglas.

They came down slowly and cautiously, poor Fräulein watching them anxiously.

“Meine kinder, how could you!” said Fräulein, reproachfully, as they reached the ground. “Suppose you had been killed,—den vat vould de poor parents do?”

“Mine would say I was a child without a fault,” replied the Mouse.

“Dis is no laughing matter, Frances,” said Fräulein severely. “It is a vunder you did not lose your lives! You did very, very wrong! Ach, did you not know better? Ach, weh, your frocks,—how dirty! And Jean, how you haff torn your skirt!”

Then for the first time the girls noticed the state of their apparel. Frances ruefully examined the sleeves of her white guimpe which were torn and soiled, though her brown linen skirt had withstood the climb. Jean looked down aghast at her blue chambray, ripped at the belt and displaying a jagged rent.

“Too bad! That’s such a dinky dress!” said Douglas, sympathetically.

“My children,” said Fräulein, her kind heart aching, “it does me much sorrow to tell you, but if ve start not directly, ve shall be too late to see our girls race, and so ve haff to leaf you behind. Dere is no time to vait for you to change your frocks.”

“It won’t take a second,” said Frances.

“Why, Fräulein, we can’t stay at home!” cried Jean. “We must see Carol and Cecily race! We’ll be ready in five minutes!”

“Can’t we wait for them? I’ll drive fast,” said Douglas.

But Fräulein was firm. “If ve vait for you no vun vill see our race,” she said. “I cannot disappoint Gladys and Grace and Pamela.”

“Then we’ll go without changing our dresses!” cried Jean, with growing excitement. “People won’t be looking at us! They’ll be looking at the races! I must go, Fräulein! I will! My best friends are going to race, and I must see them! They’ll feel dreadfully if I don’t!”

“They can roll up in the carriage robes,—then they won’t show,” Douglas suggested. “Say, Jean, if you had a pin,—”

“No, you cannot go to de Clintons’ camp like vild Indians; all de summer people vill be dere,” said Fräulein. “Ve cannot disgrace Mrs. Brook. You vould haff to dress your hair too, and dere is no time; ve are late now. I am sorry, dear girls, but if you vill be jimboys!”

“Jimboys!” tittered Frances. “Jean, you and I are jimboys!”

“Go to your tent, Frances!” Fräulein commanded sternly. “And you, naughty boys, go home immediately!” Sheepishly the young squires departed.

“I will not stay at home!” declared Jean, her eyes flashing. But Fräulein could not stay to argue. She hurried Douglas away, and Jean could only follow Frances to their tent. She changed her dress in a fury, throwing the torn chambray across the floor.

While Jean was still in the tent, storming in the bitterness of her disappointment, Frances, in a clean guimpe, went off to the kitchen to console herself with cookies, and came running back with the tidings; “The canoe’s come!” Out flew Jean, fastening a last button. Sure enough, there, floating jauntily, tied to the stern of a guide-boat, was the cedar canoe, a dainty little queen of the water.

“Bolster must have come while we were dressing, and now he’s gone!” exclaimed Jean. “Frances, I’m going to take it over, myself! There may be time yet!”

“Good for you, Giraffe! I’ll go too, and we’ll have a jolly old lark!” said Frances, joyously.

“We’ll have to take the guide-boat and tow the canoe,” said Jean. “Let me row,—I’m the stronger.”

They had a good deal of difficulty in pushing the boat off, but finally succeeded in getting afloat. Jean took the oars and began to pull vigorously for the opposite shore.

“I’m going to untie the canoe and tow it myself,” said Frances. Suddenly she exclaimed, “What am I kicking?” and bending over she picked up a can. “Ooh! Ugh! It’s bait! Horrid little worms!”

“What’s bait doing here in one of our boats?” asked Jean in disgust.

“This isn’t our boat, child!” replied the Mouse calmly. “It’s Bolster’s. He’s in the kitchen, hobnobbing with Marie.”

“My senses! And you knew it, and you never breathed a word!” Jean burst into a peal of laughter. “Well, I can’t help it, now. I’ve got to get that canoe to Carol in time.”

The fear of being late grew strong, and Jean toiled on until they were nearly abreast of Pleasure Island, off which the stake-boat, gay with flags, was anchored. There were two men on board, and as their skiff drew near they hailed the girls with warning shouts.

“They’re yelling for us to go back!” said Frances.

“I can’t help it!” answered Jean, and she called, “We’re bringing Miss Armstrong’s canoe! Canoe for the race! Canoe for the race!”

The obstinate little rowboat rounded the island, and then,—a cry from Frances! “Oh, Jean, there come the canoes! Go into shore, quick!”

Jean looked over her shoulder. A quarter of a mile up the lake she could see Big Pine Camp and the crowd of boats. But between the girls and their goal four canoes were shooting toward them. Jean pulled with all her might to bring the boat nearer the island. On came the canoes, rounded the stake-boat, and shot down the lake again. It was the race of the younger boys.

“Oh, dear! We won’t be in time!” sighed Jean. She rowed desperately, with aching arms and back, but before she had cleared a quarter of the distance that lay before her, the first race was over and another had begun.

“Good gracious! The motor boats are coming now!” screamed Frances, and Jean looked again.

A friend of the Hamiltons had lately lent them a motor boat, and in this race Court and Jack with the Shark and Tom Clinton with his Lightning were the competitors. Now the Shark and the Lightning came rushing down upon the frightened girls. Jean tried to turn in toward the mainland, but in her excitement she pulled on the wrong oar. Frances was shouting at her, her brain was in a whirl, and the boat was gyrating in every direction.

The Lightning in the lead suddenly swerved and darted by, giving the rowboat a wide berth. The Shark followed suit the next moment.

“Get in to shore!” the brothers shouted. They whizzed by, and the rowboat was left tossing in the swells.

“Go in to shore, can’t you?—before those old things come back!” cried Frances. “What’s the matter with you, Jean? You’re crazy! Pull on your right oar,—I mean your left!”

“Well, do stop screeching,—you rattle me so! I’d like to see you get to shore!” returned Jean. She collected her wits sufficiently to pull the proper oar, and brought the boat well in toward the land. Frances, looking forward, could see the crowded dock and the judge’s stand, a float with flags waving over it. Jean, facing the other way, could watch the race as it swept around the stakeboat.

“Good! Court and Jack are catching up! Look, Frisk!” she cried. Unlucky order! The sudden turn which Frances made sent her cookies off her lap. She dived for them, and upset, not the boat,—but the bait! Over went the can, and forth crawled the earthworms.

“Ooh! The horrid wiggly worms! Ooh!” Frances drew her feet out of harm’s way.

“Frances, the canoe!” At Jean’s shriek of anguish, Francis looked back. She had been towing the canoe carelessly with one hand and had let go in her excitement. The Hist-oh-Hist was putting a distance between herself and the rowboat as fast as the breeze could carry her, and making coquettish little bows of farewell as she danced on the wavelets.

“Give me an oar, quick!” cried Frances.

Jean wrenched an oar from the rowlock and passed it to Frances, but the Mouse in her frantic haste missed it, and with a splash it went swimming away after the canoe.

“You idiot! Why didn’t you catch it? Now we’re stuck—we’ll lose the canoe! Oh, what made you!” scolded Jean, backing water madly with one oar and sending the boat around in a circle.

“Well, I couldn’t help it!” said Frances, with injured innocence. “Let’s yell for somebody to come and get us!” Both girls waved their hands and screamed, “Help! Help!” at the top of their voices. But they had already become objects of curiosity, and a skiff was pushing off to their relief.

The motor boats came rushing back, the Shark now abreast of the Lightning.

“Take it easy! Well come back for you after the race!” shouted Court. But the course for the motor boats was to be three times around the stake-boat, and meanwhile the rescuer in the skiff was speeding toward the girls.

“It’s Douglas!” they cried.

“Keep cool! You’re all right!” he called as he came skimming up to them. “Hooray! You got here after all, didn’t you! And brought the canoe within hailing distance, anyway!”

Jean and Frances greeted him with the story of the lost Hist.

“You’re in time,” said he. “They put off our race. It comes next.”

“Oh, joy!” exclaimed Jean. “Go after the canoe, Douglas! Leave us here.”

“No, I’ve got to get you into port,” said the boy, seizing their painter. “Court and Jack’ll get her after the race. Well, you have got pluck! First you go up the big hemlock, and then you get into the races! I’d like to see the thing you’re afraid of!”

“We were afraid of those motor boats!” laughed Jean.

“It looked as if you were going to get rammed, sure thing!” said Douglas. “Wasn’t it lucky,—I’d just put the horses up and got into the boat when you started waving. Say! you must have worked like blazes to get that boat up!”

Keeping well in shore he towed the boat up to the dock. The Huairarwee-ites were wrought up to a high pitch of excitement at finding who the girls were who had run foul of the races.

“We’ve brought the Hist!” called Jean, “only Frances let go and we lost her! She’s way down there!”

“You loves! You lambkins! You little bricks! You’ve saved the day!” cried Carol. “How in the world did you do it without being drowned?”

The heroines disembarked amid a babel of questioning, and told their tale, both speaking at once in a wild jumble.

“Girls, it was perfectly splendid of you!” said Cecily. “You were terribly plucky!”

“I’m so glad you won’t have to miss the race!” said Carol. “I was ready to wring my hands and tear my hair when I found they’d left you at home, and St. Cecilia nearly wept!”

But poor Fräulein tragically declared, “Never, never again vill I trust you out of my sight!”

The Shark was in the lead as the motor boats came back to the goal for the third time, and as she reached the red flag ten seconds ahead of her rival a cheer hailed the Hamiltons. But the brothers did not stop to be congratulated. They shot down the lake again after the fugitive Hist.

It was while awaiting their return that Jean heard a young lady behind her say, “That looks like one of the girls that were up in that great tree! Isn’t she the one that shouted at us through the megaphone?”

“Yes,” a man’s voice responded, “that tree must be their signal station. They must have a strenuous lot of girls over at Black Bear Camp! They’ve named it ‘Camp Huairarwee,’ now,—haven’t they? They ought to call it ‘Camp Hurrah-wee!’”

Jean’s cheeks grew hot. Involuntarily she glanced back and recognized two of the young people whom she had mistaken for the Fultons. Carol glanced back too. Then, putting her arm around Jean, she said to the speakers, “Excuse me,—the girls mistook you for people they knew. They were trying to send a message to have my race postponed till my own canoe could get here.” Her cheeks as well as Jean’s were flushed, and the quiet dignity of her manner was enough to check any further comment on the strenuous girls of Huairarwee.

Jean forgot her embarrassment as she saw the Shark returning with the Hist-oh-Hist in tow, bobbing gaily over the water. Court and Jack presented the captured canoe to Carol and had their reward in the thanks of the radiant girl.

Then it became a reality—the race that had already been lost and won in Carol’s and Cecily’s dreams. The ten competitors became the center of interest: eight bronzed, athletic young fellows, a tall, lithe lass, the bonniest of all the girl campers, and a fair-haired slip of a damsel in whom the spirit of a battle maid was stirring. The girls took their places first, Carol in the stern of the Hist, Cecily in the bow, and paddled away to their starting point, fifty yards beyond that of their rivals. The blue canoes of Pitch-off and Tamarack, green Catamount, and red Poke-o’-Moonshine were brought into line. A pistol was fired,—the paddles, ready poised, cut the clear water, and the race began!

Thrilling, tingling exultation and delight Carol and Cecily found it at first, as they plunged their paddles downward and lifted them again from the foaming water to cleave it once more, quick as lightning, with another strong, perfect stroke. Muscle and will-power, they threw all into the work. Carol felt almost as if the Hist was consciously obeying her, and as if she could infuse her own spirit into this summer friend of hers; and Cecily, doing her best to bring glory to Huairarwee, could feel how Carol’s skill and greater strength were helping to keep them ahead. On and on they rushed. Larger and larger the stake-boat loomed, but as they neared it the splash of other paddles made them throw one backward look. Poke-o’-Moonshine seemed to be fast gaining on them; Catamount was pressing her hard; Pitch-off and Tamarack were closing in.

Now they were nearly up to the boat with its rainbow of flags, and they could hear “Go it, Huairarwee!” “Hit her up, Poke-o’-Moonshine!” Arms aching, wills resolute, the girls gathered up that reserve strength that lies ready for the moment of need. The Hist fairly leaped forward, and with a dextrous turn of her paddle Carol made her sweep round the stake-boat, almost grazing its stern. They heard a cheer, and were on the homeward course. Less than a quarter of a mile more! but the exultation in the work was gone. The race had become for them nothing but desperate effort—dizzying swiftness of motion. Poke-o’-Moonshine was fast eating up the distance between them. Every stroke was pain now, but both girls had the same resolve, “I don’t care what happens to me. I will do it! I will!” They gathered up all their remaining strength and threw it into the last moments of the contest.

The crowd of onlookers saw the Hist darting up to the finish with her red antagonist almost bumping her, the three others following them close. Boys were shouting to their champions to “Hit her up!” and girls, half mad with excitement, were calling encouragement to their sisters in the cedar canoe.

“Oh, Carol! Cecily! beat, beat, beat!” Jean’s whole eager soul was crying out. As if in answer, the Hist shot forward. Again, again, again, the paddles left the water, the foam boiled up around the bows, and then—a cheer! The Hist-oh-Hist had passed the scarlet flag half a canoe’s length ahead of Poke-o’-Moonshine! Amid the storm of applause the winners glided up to the dock.

Court, at the top pitch of enthusiasm, helped them from the canoe, and while he was congratulating them Jean hurled herself on Carol’s neck, then on Cecily’s, and hugged them tight.

Freak races and tilting followed; and then, the regatta over, the victors received their prizes. Each of the boys was presented with a banner, and a blue and gold flag was soon flaunting proudly at the stern of the Shark.

“The cup is awarded to Miss Carol Armstrong and Miss Cecily Brook, of Camp Huairarwee!” Mr. Clinton announced. The girl champions stepped forward and received a great two-handled silver cup beautifully embossed.

“We present this cup to Camp Huairarwee,” said Carol, and, while Cecily held the silver trophy aloft, she took Jean and Frances each by the hand. “We four won it together,” she said. And Huairarwee cheered again.

But two of the victorious quartette found themselves soon tumbling down from the mountain-top of glory. After the triumphant return to camp, and the merry dinner in honor of the day, Miss Hamersley, with an ominous face, called Jean and Frances to her tent.

“Now for a squelching,” quoth the Mouse. Jean’s head went up proudly.

“Keep a grip on your sword, now, Queenie,” whispered Carol, with a sympathizing pat on Jean’s shoulder, as the two battle maids marched past her to the court-marshal.

Miss Hamersley sternly reproved her adventurous charges for having run headlong into danger, warning them that if they showed themselves so foolhardy again they might expect to find themselves sent home. With a sarcastic smile she also reminded Jean that Bob might have been entrusted with the intended megaphone message to Bolster, and she assured them that she considered the hemlock escapade not only dangerous but hoydenish and unladylike. This cut Jean to the quick, and though she closed her teeth tight to imprison the Storm Child spirit, she retired to her own tent with angry steps, there to pace up and down burning with indignation.

“I never knew anything so unjust! We helped to win the race, and in return we’re told we may be sent home and disgraced forever!”

Suddenly, with a rush like a mountain gale, Carol came in, caught Jean, whirled her round, pulled her down on a cot, and gave her a warm kiss. “What’s all this declaiming about?” she asked, laughing.

“Was I talking aloud?” asked Jean.

“Were you? I thought it was Hamlet at least! Poor little Queenie! Did Miss Hamersley hammer so hard that she had to go off and play Shakespeare all by her little lonesome?”

“Carol, Miss Hamersley’s too unjust for anything! She threatened to send us away from camp!”

“That was only a warning, to keep you from drowning yourselves, childie!”

“We weren’t in any real danger,” said Jean.

“Yes, Jean, you were.” Carol’s merry face grew serious. “You don’t know yet how to manage a boat in a sudden emergency. Suppose you’d been swamped by those motor boats! And it was dreadfully risky, climbing the hemlock, too! Jean,”—and the clear brown eyes looked steadily into the blue ones—“promise me you won’t do such things again. It would break my heart if anything happened to my Little Sister.”

“But I had to get that canoe up to you somehow,” Jean protested. “You said yourself it helped you to win.”

“Yes, I’m sure it did,” said Carol. “And you were a splendid, brave Joan of Arc to do it. Cecily’s name for you suits you to a ‘t.’ And you pretty nearly did get burned at the stake in those dreadful woods, didn’t you, poor little martyr? But, Jean darling, which do you think I care most about, you or winning races?”

“Me, I suppose,” said Jean with a laugh.

“I should rather think I did! millions and millions of times! If anything had happened to you to-day, Jean, I wouldn’t have gotten over it as long as I lived.”

Jean’s eyes were fixed on her friend’s earnest face. Suddenly she threw her arms around Carol’s neck. “I’ll never do anything to worry you again, Carolie dear!” she said. “I promise.”

“Come out, Giraffe!” sang a merry voice. Frances was peeping around the tent-flap.

“Come in, Mousie, and comfort your Queen,” said Carol.

“Carol,” said Frances, dropping down on the cot beside her, “don’t you think Miss Hamersley’s terribly old-maidy to call us hoydens? I don’t see why it was any worse for us to be yelling at strangers from the top of a tree than it was for Bob and Ted. We’re only little girls, anyway.”

“Rather sizable and imposing girls, I should say,” remarked Carol.

“But wasn’t it hateful of those people to talk about my shouting, and say we must be a strenuous lot of girls!” said Jean. “I’m glad you spoke up for us, Carol. My, but you looked high and haughty!”

“I was furious!” said Carol. “But we poor ‘Hurrah-wee girls’ have bobbed up serenely from our troubles by this time—haven’t we?”

“Yes, indeed, and I’ll look three times before I shout, after this,” said Jean, laughing. “You’ve smoothed me out beautifully, you dear, old Big Sister!”

* * *

That evening around the camp-fire, an exultant ring of girls woke the echoes with the latest Huairarwee yell: