A NEW PLAN
"Why, there couldn't be anything they could do to us then, I should
think!" exclaimed Dolly.
"I hope not," said Miss Mercer. "But, well, we've had reason to learn
to be careful when we're dealing with these people. And Mr. Jamieson
seems to think that the thing to fear most is the other gypsies."
"I thought of that, too," said Bessie, gravely. "They stick to one
another, don't they?"
"Yes, they certainly do. They're very clannish. And Mr. Holmes, I'm
afraid, is clever enough and unscrupulous enough to be willing to use
them for his own purposes. He wouldn't tell them directly what he
wanted, you see. He'd just hire someone who was clever enough to get
them inflamed and worked up to the point of being willing to hurt you
two, and, if they could get at her, Zara, too, by way of revenge."
"We can't help going down there if they send for us, I suppose, Miss
Eleanor?"
"No. There's no way out of it. You see, if someone does you an
injury--borrows money from you and doesn't pay it back, say--the law
will help you get it, if you want to be helped. You can decide whether
you want to do anything or not. But if a crime is committed, then it's
a different matter, and you've got to get the law's help, whether you
want to or not.
"For instance, if someone robs your house, you might be willing to
forgive the robber, but the law has to be satisfied, because that's the
sort of crime that affects everyone, and not just you alone."
"I see. And I suppose that this time the law feels that if they are
not punished, those gypsies might try to kidnap someone else?"
"Yes. The idea isn't just punishment. It's the way people who live
together in towns and countries have to protect themselves. In the
early days there wasn't any law. If a man was robbed, and he was
strong enough, he protected himself by going out and fighting the
robber. But that wouldn't work very well, because if a man was very
strong, and wicked as well, he could rob his neighbors, and no one of
them was strong enough to protect himself.
"So it wasn't very long before people began to find out that, while no
one of them was strong enough to stop such robbers, a whole lot of them
banded together were stronger than any one man. And so they made the
first laws."
"Oh, I see," said Dolly. "Bessie isn't strong enough by herself to do
anything to Mr. Holmes, or to stop him from doing what he likes to her,
because he's rich. But if all the other people who live in the state
take her side he can't fight against them. That's it, isn't it?"
For a day or two after that peace reigned over the camp by Long Lake.
The girls looked forward eagerly to the field day that had been
planned, but they looked forward to it, too, with a certain degree of
regret, for it would mark the climax and the end, as well, of their
stay at the lake, which, though it had been so exciting, had also been
so delightful that all the girls wished for nothing better than to stay
there indefinitely. But they could not do that, as Miss Mercer
explained to them.
"We've got to make way for others," she said, in telling them of the
new plans. "You see, my father is only one of the owners of this
preserve, and we take it in turns to use this lake for a camping site.
Now Mr. Spurgeon, one of the other owners, is going to bring up a party
of his friends, and we must make room for them."
"Are we going home?" asked Margery Burton, disappointedly.
"Why, don't you want to go home?" asked Eleanor, with a laugh, which
was echoed by the other girls, who heard the note of sorrow in the
question.
"Oh, I suppose so," said Margery. "But one is home quite a good deal,
after all, in the winter, and we do have such a good time when we're
out in the woods this way. I love to get right close to nature."
"Well, you needn't be frightened, Margery, because I've got a plan that
will keep us as close to nature as anyone could want to be."
A chorus of excited voices was raised at that.
"Where are we going next, Miss Mercer?"
"What are we going to do?"
"Shall we get to the seashore this summer?"
"Later on, I expect," she answered, to the last question. "You do love
the beach and the surf, don't you? Well, so do I, and I expect we
shall want to spend a little time there. But first I've a plan I think
some of you will like even better."
"We're sure to like anything you plan, Miss Eleanor," said Dolly, with
enthusiasm. "I don't believe any Camp Fire has as nice a Guardian as
you. It seems to me you spend all your time thinking up ways of giving
us a good time."
"What is the new plan?" asked Margery. "I wonder if I can guess?"
"I don't know. You might all try, and see how near you come to it."
"I think we're going to go home by walking!" said Margery.
"I believe we'll go through the chain of lakes that begins at Little
Bear in a boat, or in boats!" said Dolly.
But, though they all took turns in guessing, Eleanor only smiled wisely
when the last guess had been made.
"You were very nearly right, Margery," she said. "We are going to
tramp home, but not the way we came. We're going to take the long way
round. We're going straight up and through the mountains and down the
other side, and then we'll have a long trip on fairly level ground, but
we won't go straight home."
"Where, then?" asked Dolly.
"Why, we'll combine everything on the one trip, Dolly, and we'll wind
up at the seashore. By the time we've had a little swimming and
sailing there it'll be time to think about what we're going to do in
the autumn--school, and, work, and all the other things."
"Oh, that's splendid!" cried Margery, her eyes shining. "I've always
wanted to go up in the real mountains, where you were so high that you
could see all around the country. We'll do that, won't we? Here we're
in the mountains, really, but it doesn't seem like it. Everything's so
high, you can't see over."
Eleanor pointed to the distant hills, blue in the haze that hung over
them.
"Do you see Mount Grant, the big one in the center, there?" she said.
"And do you see that other mountain that seems to be right next to it?
That's Mount Sherman. And right between them there's a little gap.
Really, it's quite wide, though you can't tell that from here. Well,
that's Indian Notch, and we get through the mountain range by going
through it. It's a fine, wild country, but there's a good road through
the notch now, and sometimes one meets quite a lot of automobiles going
through. I think it will be a glorious trip, don't you, girls?"
"I certainly do!" said Bessie King. "I'm like Margery. I've always
wanted to see the real mountains. I used to dream about them, and
sometimes I'd think I'd really been there. But I guess it was just
because I dreamed so much that I got to thinking so."
Eleanor looked at her curiously.
"Maybe your people came from the mountains, Bessie," she said. "It's
very strange that some natural things seem to get into the blood of
peoples and races. Like the mountains, and the sea, and great rivers.
Sometimes all the men in a family, for generations, will be sailors,
even if their parents have planned something else for them. The sea is
in their blood, and it calls them."
"Sometimes I think the mountains are calling me just that way," said
Bessie. "But I never really understood that before."
"It's the same way with mountaineers. The Swiss are never really happy
except among their mountains. And that's true of every mountainous
race. The people who live along the Mississippi, here, and along the
Don and the Vistula, and the other great rivers in Russia, never seem
to be able to live happily unless they can see the great river rolling
by their homes every day. If they go far away they get homesick."
"I'm not a bit like that!" exclaimed Dolly. "One place is just as good
as another for me, if I like the people. I like to travel and see new
places. I'd like to be on the move all the time."
"I think a great many Americans are getting to be that way," said
Eleanor, reflectively. "It's natural, in a way, you see. For
generations the young men and women have been moving on, from settled
parts of the country to new land, where there were greater
opportunities to make a fortune."
"I've read about that," said Dolly. "You mean like the people from New
England, who went west to Oregon and Washington?"
"Yes. But that can't go on forever, you see, because about all the new
land is taken up and settled now. Of course, out in the far west,
there's still room for people; lots and lots of room. But this whole
country is settled now. Law and order have been established about
everywhere. And we'll begin to settle down soon, and our people will
love their homes, and the places where they were born, just as the
Virginians and the other Southerners do now."
"Oh, it isn't that I don't like my own home!" said Dolly. "If I were
away from it very long I know I'd get dreadfully homesick, and want to
go back. But I don't want to stay there or anywhere else all the time."
"You're a wanderer," laughed Eleanor. "That's what's the matter with
you, Dolly. You want to see everything that's to be seen. Well, I'm a
little that way myself. When I was a little bit of a kiddie I always
got tremendously excited if we were going on a journey. I guess it's a
pretty good thing, really, that we are that way. It's the reason this
country has grown so wonderfully, that spirit of enterprise and
adventure. That's what made the pioneers."
"It isn't just Americans who do it, either, is it?" said Margery. "The
Italians and the other foreigners who come here seem to be just as
anxious to find new places--"
"Oh, but that's different," said Zara, the silent one, quickly. "I
know, because my father and I are foreigners. And do you know why we
came here? It was because we couldn't live happily in our own country!"
The girls looked at her curiously, so fiery was her speech, and so much
in earnest was she.
"We come from Poland," she said. "Over there, a man can't call his
soul his own. Soldiers and policemen used to come to our house, and
wake us up in the middle of the night to look for papers. And often
and often they would steal anything we had that they liked. Oh, how I
hate the Russians!"
Eleanor sighed. Gradually, slowly but surely, she felt that she was
finding her way into the secret of Zara and her father.
"Then you came here because you had heard that this was a free country
and a refuge for those who were oppressed?" she ventured, gently.
"Yes," said Zara. "And it's not true! There are kind people here,
like you, and Bessie, and Mr. Jamieson. But haven't they put my father
in prison, just the way they did in Poland and in Sicily, when we tried
to live there quietly? And didn't all the people in Hedgeville
persecute him, and tell lies about both of us? We haven't been happy
here."
"I'm afraid that's true, Zara. But you are going to be, remember that.
You have good friends working for you now, you and your father both.
And it isn't the fault of this country that there are bad and wicked
men in it, who are willing to do wrong if they see a chance to make
money by doing so."
"But if this country is all that people say about it, they shouldn't be
allowed to do it. The law is helping them. In Poland, it was just the
same. The law was against my father there--"
"Listen, Zara! The law may seem to help them at first, but you may be
very sure of one thing. If your father has done nothing wrong, and his
enemies have lied and deceived the people in authority in order to get
the law on their side, they will pay bitterly, for it in the end."
"But the law ought to know that my father is right--"
"The law works slowly, Zara, but in the end it is sure to be right.
You see, your father's case is a very exceptional one. The people who
made the law in the beginning couldn't have expected it to come. But
the wonderful thing about the law is that, while it is often very hard,
it will always find out the truth sooner or later.
"Sometimes, for a little while, people who are innocent have to suffer
because they are unjustly accused. But the law will free them if they
have really done no wrong, and, what is more, it will punish those who
swear falsely against them. Be patient, and you will find that you and
your father made no mistake when you believed that this was the land of
the free and the home of those who are oppressed in their own
countries."
Zara's eyes, dark and sombre, seemed to be full of fire.
"Oh, I hope so," she cried, passionately. "For my father's sake! He
has been disappointed and deceived so often."
"We'll have a good long talk sometime, Zara," she said, finally. "Then
maybe I'll be able to explain some things to you better, and make you
understand the real difference between this country and the ones you
have known."
Then she brightened, and turned to the other girls, who had all been
rather sobered by the sudden revelation, through Zara, of a side of
life hidden from them as a rule.
"We're not going to take that trip just for ourselves and our own fun,"
she said. "We're going to be missionaries, in a way; we want to spread
the light of the Camp Fire, and see if we can't get a lot of new Camp
Fires organized in the places we pass through. It's just in such
lonely, country places that the girls need the Camp Fire most, I
believe."
"That will be splendid," said Margery Burton. "We could stay and teach
them all the ceremonies, and the songs, and how to organize new Camp
Fires, couldn't we?"
"Yes. We want to make them see how much it has done for us. When they
know that they'll do the rest for themselves, I think. I shall expect
all you girls to help, because you can do ever so much more than I.
It's the girls who really count--not the Guardians, you know."