THE LOST GIRL
"That ain't Bill!" exclaimed Jaroth. "That's as sure as you're a foot
high. Nor yet it ain't his wife. If either one of them has cried since
they were put into short clothes I miss my guess. Huh!"
He hesitated, standing in the snow half way between the pung and the
snow-smothered door of the hut. Sheltered as it had been by the hill and
by the woods, the hut was not masked so much by the drifted snow on its
front. They could see the upper part of the door-casing.
"By gravy!" ejaculated Mr. Jaroth, "it don't sound human. I can't make it
out. Funny things they say happen up here in these woods. I wouldn't be a
mite surprised if that crying--or----"
He hesitated while the boys and girls, and even Mr. Gordon, stared
amazedly at him.
"Who do you think it is?" asked Uncle Dick finally.
"Well, it ain't Bill," grumbled Jaroth.
The sobbing continued. So engaged was the person weeping in the sorrow
that convulsed him, or her, that the jingling of the bells as the horses
shook their heads or the voices of those in the pung did not attract
attention.
Jaroth stood in the snow and neither advanced nor retreated. It really did
seem as though he was afraid to approach nearer to the hut on the
mountain-side!
"That is a girl or a woman in there," Bob declared.
"Huh!" exclaimed Bobby sharply. "It might be a boy. Boys cry sometimes."
"Really?" said Timothy. "But you never read of crying boys except in
humorous verses. They are not supposed to cry."
"Well," said Betty, suddenly hopping out of the sleigh, "we'll never find
out whether it is a girl or a boy if we wait for Mr. Jaroth, it seems."
She started for the door of the hut. Bob hopped out after her in a hurry.
And he took with him the snow-shovel Jaroth had brought along to use in
clearing the drifts away if they chanced to get stuck.
"You'd better look out," said Jaroth, still standing undecided in the
snow.
"For what?" asked Bob, hurrying to get before Betty.
"That crying don't sound natural. Might he a ha'nt. Can't tell."
"Fancy!" whispered Betty in glee. "A great big man like him afraid of a
ghost--and there isn't such a thing!"
"Don't need to be if he is afraid of it," returned Bob in the same low
tone. "You can be afraid of any fancy if you want to. It doesn't need to
exist. I guess most fears are of things that don't really exist Come on,
now. Let me shovel this drift away."
He set to work vigorously on the snow heap before the door. Mr. Gordon,
seeing that everything possible was being done, let the young people go
ahead without interference. In two minutes they could see the frozen
latch-string that was hanging out. Whoever was in the hut had not taken
the precaution to pull in the leather thong.
"Go ahead, Betty," said Bob finally. "You push open the door. I'll stand
here ready to beat 'em down with the shovel if they start after you."
"Guess you think it isn't a girl, then," chuckled Betty, as she pulled the
string and heard the bar inside click as it was drawn out of the slot.
With the shovel Bob pushed the door inward. The cabin would have been
quite dark had it not been for a little fire crackling on the hearth. Over
this a figure stooped--huddled, it seemed, for warmth. The room was almost
bare.
"Why, you poor thing!" Betty cried, running into the hut. "Are you here
all alone?"
She had seen instantly that it was a girl. And evidently the stranger was
in much misery. But at Betty's cry she started up from the hearth and
whirled about in both fear and surprise.
Her hair was disarranged, and there was a great deal of it. Her face was
swollen with weeping, and she was all but blinded by her tears. At Betty's
sympathetic tone and words she burst out crying again. Betty gathered her
right into her arms--or, as much of her as she could enfold, for the other
girl was bigger than Betty in every way.
"You?" gasped the crying girl. "How--how did you come up here? And in all
this snow? Oh, this is a wilderness--a wilderness! How do people ever live
here, even in the summer? It is dreadful--dreadful! And I thought I should
freeze."
"Ida Bellethorne!" gasped Betty. "Who would ever have expected to find you
here?"
"I know I haven't any more business here than I have in the moon," said
the English girl. "I--I wish I'd never left Mrs. Staples."
"Mrs. Staples told us you had come up this way," Betty said.
Immediately the other girl jerked away from her, threw back her damp hair,
and stared, startled, at Betty.
"Then you--you found out? You know----"
"My poor girl!" interrupted Betty, quite misunderstanding Ida's look, "I
know all about your coming up here to find your aunt. And that was
foolish, for the notice you saw in the paper was about Mr. Bolter's black
mare."
"Mr. Bolter's mare?" repeated Ida.
"Now, tell me!" urged the excited Betty. "Didn't you come to Cliffdale to
look for your aunt?"
"Yes. That I did. But she isn't up here at all."
By this time Uncle Dick and the others were gathered about the door of the
hut. Jaroth, with a glance now and then at his horses, had even stepped
inside.
"By gravy!" ejaculated the man, "this here's a pretty to-do. What you been
doing to Bill Kedders' chattels, girl?"
"I--I burned them. I had to, to keep warm," answered Ida Bellethorne
haltingly. "I burned the table and the chairs and the boxes and then
pulled down the berths and burned them. If you hadn't come I don't know
what I should have done for a fire."
"By gravy! Burned down the shack itself to keep you warm, I reckon!"
chuckled Jaroth. "Well, we'd better take this girl along with us, hadn't
we, Mr. Gordon? She'll set fire to the timber next, if we don't, after
she's used up the shack."
"We most surely will take her along to Mountain Camp," declared Betty's
uncle. "But what puzzles me, is how she ever got here to this, lonely
place."
"I was trying to find the Candace Farm," choked Ida Bellethorne.
"I want to know!" said Jaroth. "That's the stockfarm where they pasture so
many sportin' hosses. Candace, he makes a good thing out of it. But it's
eight miles from here and not in the direction we're going, Mr. Gordon."
"We will take her along to Mountain Camp," said Uncle Dick. "One more will
not scare Mrs. Canary, I am sure."
Ida brought a good-sized suitcase out of the hut with her. She had
evidently tried to walk from Cliffdale to the stockfarm, carrying that
weight. The girls were buzzing over the appearance of the stranger and the
boys stared.
"Oh, Betty!" whispered Bobby Littell, "is she Ida Bellethorne?"
"One of them," rejoined Betty promptly.
"Then do you suppose she has your locket?" ventured Bobby.
To tell the truth, Betty had not once thought of that!