University of Virginia Library

I

MR. PERCY ALGERNON SMITH, familiarly known as "Cinnamon" Smith, thrust his hands deeper into his trousers pockets. "I am not going," he remarked with an air of decision.

"Not going!" cried the joint proprietors of Lone Pine Camp in a chorus. "Not going! Why?"

Mr. Smith vouchsafed no immediate reply; he had fixed an experienced eye upon the coffee-pot, which at the moment threatened to inundate the camp- fire with its furious contents. "Here, you, Jake," he said peremptorily; "the coffee's boiling over!"

The campers at Lone Pine were on the point of starting out for an all- day's fishing excursion up Sunday Brook. It may as well be explained right here that the party consisted of four undergraduates of C---- University who were temporarily pursuing their education in the bracing air of the Adirondacks.

That these young gentlemen were thus studiously engaged during that portion of the year commonly exempt from mental pursuits argues nothing. Great minds have ever been remarkable for concentration of purpose; and everybody knows that the late football, rowing, and bicycle seasons were of unusual and engrossing

interest. It is to be hoped that a future and more enlightened generation will so arrange the dull and comparatively unimportant scholastic pursuits that they shall not clash with live interests. In a word, to quote from their own forceful if inelegant phraseology--Messrs. "Cinnamon" Smith, "Piggy" Brewster, "Herodotus" Jones, and "Tommy" Pettigrew had been "plucked" in their examinations, and were now "cramming" with more or less enthusiasm and diligence under the able direction of Prof. John Gearing.

Mr. Smith's announcement occasioned considerable badinage of a personal and even damaging nature, all of which was received by that young man with commendable stoicism and equanimity.

"Cin's lazy!" drawled "Piggy" Brewster, as he ensconced himself comfortably in the stern of the boat, armed with the lightest paddle

"Cinnamon's going to write to his best girl!" shouted Herodotus Jones, shying a mighty quid of spruce-gum at the auburn head of the young gentleman on the shore. "Do it in poetry on birch-bark, old boy! Little wavelets a-kissin' the beach; green leaves all whisperin' of thee; my heart a-tremblin' with rapture at the call of the lone loon across the moonlit waters! Hey, Cin?"

"Aw--get along with you!" growled the recipient of these graceful sallies. "I'm going to bone all day on Greek--that's what I'm going to do."

A burst of derisive laughter greeted this saying. Then the boat shot out into the sparkling waters of

Beaver Lake, and speedily disappeared behind the wooded island.

Left to himself, it appeared that Mr. Smith had not remained behind to indulge in solitary ease, for no sooner did the last echo of oars and voices die away than he fell to work with extraordinary energy and diligence. He swept out the camp--being not over-particular as to corners--gathering in the process a goodly heap of bacon-rinds, egg- shells, torn paper, and tin cans, which he bestowed in the bushes. A motley array of old shoes of various sizes, four and one-half pairs of ragged socks, a nondescript assortment of party-colored garments in various stages of dilapidation were retired, in company with the camp frying-pan, to a dark corner under the bunks, this position being further defended by an artistic arrangement of balsam boughs. As a finishing touch, two pairs of muddy trousers, a half-emptied tin of condensed milk--to the wrath and discomfiture of an industrious swarm of Adirondack flies--and three dog-eared novels followed the bacon-rinds into the comfortable obscurity of the huckle-berry bushes.

Mr. Smith paused long enough to wipe his heated brow. "It looks pretty slick," he murmured approvingly. "And now for the grub; girls are always hungry."

A rapid but thoughtful investigation of the camp cupboard ensued, with the following-named results: item--two small and somewhat wizened lemons; item--one damp and dubious paper bag, containing

ginger-snaps minus the snap; item--one box of marshmallows.

"The lemonade'll be on the Sunday-school-picnic order," meditated the youth, as he surveyed these tempting articles with a doubtful grimace; "and the less said about the snaps the better; but they'll cotton to the marshmallows all right.--Jerusalem crickets! there they are now, t'other side of the lake, and I haven't even washed my hands!"

Exactly seven minutes later, Mr. Percy Algernon Smith, arrayed in a golf suit of the latest fashionable cut and an immaculate flannel shirt, set off by a neck-tie of flaming red--which, he flattered himself, subdued the tint of his auburn locks to a positive brown--sauntered jauntily down to the boat-landing.

"How de do, Miss Daisy! (Jove, but she's a stunner, and no mistake!) Glad to see you, Miss Terrill! Won't you come ashore?"

The elder of the two young persons in the boat hesitated; but the one addressed as Miss Daisy was on her feet in a twinkling.

"Just for an instant, Kate!" she said deprecatingly. "What a sweet place for a camp--ours isn't nearly so pretty!--Lemonade?" went on this sprightly damsel, fanning her flushed face with a big green fan; "yes, indeed, and it's awfully kind of you to think of it Mr. Smith! Aren't you thirsty, Kate?"

The person addressed as Kate looked about her tentatively. "It certainly is a very pretty place," she said sedately; "but we ought not to stop, Margaret."

"The fellows are all off on the trail to Sunday

Brook," remarked the astute Mr. Smith, setting out three glasses on the pine board which did duty as a table. "They won't be back before evening. The old man's out bug-hunting."

"Who is the old man?" cried Miss Margaret with and irrelevant gurgle of laughter. "And bug-hunting--ugh! Who ever heard of such a thing!"

"Oh, I mean Gearing! He's bossing the cramming for exams," replied Mr. Smith with elegant brevity. "Two lumps of sugar, or three, Miss Daisy?"

"Three, please. Is he married?"

"Married! Who--the old man? Ha! ha!--that's a good one! Why, Miss Daisy, Gearing never even looks at anything but books and bugs, and is more afraid of a pretty girl than he'd be of a boa constrictor!"

"The idea! How funny! Kate, do look at that big spool up there on the tree! What is that for, Mr. Smith?"

"That spool? Aw--that's another of Gearing's notions. He likes to get off all by himself after his bugs--don't want even a guide along to bother him. So he ties up one end of a string in camp and unwinds a monstrous spool as he goes along. When he gets through with his investigations he winds up, and the string brings him into camp again as right as a trivet. See?"

"The very idea!"

"Bright man!" chorused the fair voyagers.

"His spools hold a mile of string, and he generally carries his pockets full of 'em," pursued Mr.

Smith, gallantly presenting a toasted marshmallow to each of his guests. "You can bet the fellows don't raise many objections to his travels!--I say, Miss Margaret," he added guilelessly, "don't you want some pink water-lilies? I know where there's a grist of 'em--beauties too."

"You go, Margaret," said Miss Terrill indulgently; "I'll stop here and rest. I'm too deliciously comfortable to move."

And producing a volume from the pocket of her jacket, the young lady settled back in her luxurious chair--cunningly fashioned out of a barrel and a piece of burlap--with the air of an experienced chaperon.

Before proceeding further with this narrative, it must be distinctly understood that Miss Katherine Terrill was a young person in whose veins ran certain saving streams of genuine blue blood. Not only was she a Colonial dame by virtue of both lines of descent, but through her maternal grandmother she was still further linked with greatness in a manner which defied question.

To quote the often-repeated admonition of Madam Carter Stockard herself, "You must never forget, my dear Katherine, what your position as a descendant of Col. Brayton Carter, of Virginia, implies."

"I should require a memory as long as that of Methuselah, dear grandmama, if I remembered all that it implies," was the somewhat flippant answer.

"I am grieved and astonished, my dear Katherine," once remarked Miss Penelope Scidmore, principal of

the Sadmore Select School for Young ladies, "to learn that you, a young person of the most admirable birth and breeding, should for one moment have countenanced such a breach of the proprieties!" Miss Scidmore had made the painful discovery that certain of her "select" young ladies, under the leadership of Miss Terrill, had walked out of the protecting walls of the S. S. S. Y. L. without a chaperon; and that, thus alone and unprotected, they had pressed into service a team of horses and an empty hay-wagon which they found on a side street, and had actually taken a ride therein through the principal street of the little towns to the consternation (when he saw them) of the old farmer who owned the wagon, and to the still greater consternation (when she heard of it) of Miss Scidmore.

"Why," continued that lady in impassioned tones, "have you thus forgotten what is due to yourself and your family?"

"I am sure I don't know, Miss Scidmore," Katherine had replied with honest contrition; "I--I just did it!" By which it will be seen that this young lady of high birth was, on occasion, as much the sport of freakish impulse as Katie O'Flarity, the daughter of the gardener at Brayton manor. All this by way of explanation--though it is in no sense an excuse for what is to follow.

The day was warm, as has been intimated, and the claims of "The Scarlet Doom" on the interest of the reader wavered after a little. Historical novels, dealing with the sanguinary past from a cold-blooded

American standpoint, were decidedly out of place--thought this sapient young person--amid the fresh breezy wilds of the Adirondacks. She dropped the book, to fix her undivided attention upon the antics of a pair of squirrels which were frisking in primal gladness from bough to bough of the big pine. Her eyes followed them with a certain distinct satisfaction in the lawless freedom of these creatures of the wilderness, whose ancestors cast no chilling shadow upon the joyous present.

At this point in the course of her aimless meditations her vagrant fancy was again arrested by the big spool dangling by a scarlet thread from the branch just above her head. As she gazed at this simple object, Miss Terrill completely forgot her position in society and the august character of her lineage. After full five minutes of reflection, which--as subsequent events proved--might have been spent to better advantage, the descendant of the Brayton Carters deliberately stood up on her chair and detached the big spool from its position.

"This is a cobweb party," she said solemnly; "the scientific old professor and his box of bugs is the prize." With that, this "model of all the proprieties" began to walk away into the woods, winding up the scarlet cord as she went.

From fragrant, low-dropping balsam to white-limbed birch; from sunny knoll, crowded with purple-fruited huckleberries, to solemn stretches of forest, where the winds loitered in the odorous branches of the pines, whispering strange, ancient secrets of earth and sky;

through trackless wastes of sweet fern, where the gnats bit fiercely; through dense blackberry thickets, which clutched her savagely in their thorny arms; over fallen logs, half rotted away and carpeted deep with softest emerald mosses; past swampy spots, where the trim boots sank ankle deep in the black mud--deeper and deeper into the pathless wilderness led the fine slender clew.

"It's simply barrels of fun!" sighed the bold adventurer, lapsing into the camp vernacular, as she sank breathless on to a bank to rest, "but--I believe I'll go back without my prize. It must be nearly dinner-time."

She reached out after a sprig of wintergreen, where gay scarlet berries glimmered like live coals amid the overarching ferns, her brown cheeks dimpling as she reflected upon the undoubted consternation of the water- lily hunters. Then she sprang to her feet with an air of decision. "I must go back at once; we ought not to have stopped at all."

She glanced down at the bulky form of the big brown spool, and the full extent of her folly dawned suddenly upon her. "How can I go back? I've wound up the cord!"

It was characteristic of this young person that, preliminarily to a careful consideration of the question, she sank down and laughed--till she cried; this to the great astonishment and dismay of divers small woodsfolk, who paused in the business of the hour to observe the new and peculiar animal which produced such strange noises.

"I have come a mile," she reflected, sitting up and wiping her eyes; "for this spool is full, and number two hangs in the bushes yonder."

The idea of surprising an elderly student of science at his labors had been gradually growing less and less attractive; and now after a period of serious reflection it ceased to appear either funny or fascinating in the slightest degree.

"He is undoubtedly a person who would be politely, sarcastically, and crushingly disagreeable because I had ventured to meddle with his absurd spools," decided Miss Terrill soberly. "I am very glad that I stopped in time; I shall have no trouble in reaching the camp from this point. Of course I shall put the spool exactly where I found it."

She rose slowly to her feet and looked meditatively about her. "I came by that big tree; I remember the dead branch hanging down to the ground."

Ah, foolish maid! keener eyes than those pretty brown ones of yours have been deceived by the wonderful likeness of everything to every other thing in the big woods. The tree with the dead branch certainly led to a perfectly familiar-looking bush; and the bush beguiled the weary little feet to an odorous group of balsams, where bright-eyed squirrels chattered angrily at the wearer of the jaunty red tam. And beyond the balsams there was a cup-like hollow where the beautiful deadly "Fly Amanita" thrust its golden globes through the black-leaf mould. Then the brambles clutched at her with their thorny fingers, and the treacherous mud tried to hold her away from the

ripe huckleberries. And all the while the gnats and mosquitoes followed hard after--like the hosts of an avenging fate.

But, yes; it was all perfectly plain and not at all far. She would soon catch a sparkle of blue water through the trees, and then dinner and a long, delicious rest in the hammock! The grewsome tales of wayfarers lost and starving in the woods were--she decided--simply figments of weak and elderly imaginations; mere bugaboos to keep small children within bounds. Any person of sound judgment and educated powers of observation could easily--

"Gracious!" Miss Terrill rarely made use of such vulgar exclamations, but the exigency of the occasion wrung it from her lips. The spool was again empty! She looked wildly about her; there was no welcome glimmer of blue water, no pervasive odor of a smoky camp-fire, no dinner, no hammock anywhere in sight.

"Well, there is only one thing to do," decided the girl after a second period of reflection, during which the humorous nature of the adventure did not once recur to her mind. "I will go back to the second spool once more, and try again. One can always do what one must do," she added sententiously, and with the air of one who combats an unpleasant suggestion.

Two hours later, as she wearily retraced her steps for the third time to the spot where the second spool hung in the bushes, the situation had resolved itself in her mind (she had been a "special" in mathematics) into the following concise form:

"Let A represent the camp, and B the position of

the second spool, one mile distant from A. How many miles might a person travel in endeavoring to reach A, supposing he started from B in a different direction each time?"

"If the traveler started out from B and traveled in a perfectly straight line each time," she murmured--a diagram of the problem presenting itself with appalling distinctness before her mental vision--"he might easily travel several hundred miles without reaching A. If he traveled in curved lines--as he certainly would--why--"

The undeniable conclusions were too harrowing to contemplate with calmness, therefore Miss Katherine Carter Terrill sat down upon a mossy log and shed tears for full five minutes. She beheld herself, as it were, the wandering radius of an unknown circle, returning innumerable times to point B. and at last lying cold and unconscious on the forest leaves, the fatal spool clutched tight in her stiffened fingers.

"I shall never find it--never!" she wailed, grinding the innocent cause of her misadventure beneath her boot-heels. "But, oh, how can I let that man find me, as he certainly will, if I hold on to this wretched spool! I can't, if I have to die of slow starvation--and I am so hungry! But suppose I leave the spool here, the unsuspecting old gentleman will wind up to it, and then he will have nothing to go by--not even point B!"

A vision of her oven revered grandparent wandering gaunt and famished through interminable wastes of desolate forest filled her with a lively anguish.

"No, I must not leave him to perish--it would be murder!" she said with a shudder. "I will find him and tell him what I have done."