halo since the adventure of the other night that the girls slowed up. Then it was Billie who did the slowing up.

   “Girls,” she said in a hushed voice, “I suppose you’ll laugh at me, but I’d just love to follow that path into the woods a little way. You don’t need to come if you don’t want to. You can wait for me here in the road.”

   “Oh, no,” said Laura, with a little sigh of resignation. “If you are going to be crazy we might as well be crazy with you. Come on, Vi, if we

   didn’t go along, she would probably get lost all over again—just for the fun of it.”

   Billie made a little face at them and plunged into the woods. Laura followed, and after a minute’s hesitation Vi trailed at Laura’s heels.

   They were so used to Billie’s sudden impulses that they had stopped protesting and merely went along with her, which, as Billie herself had often pointed out, saved a great deal of argument.

   They might have saved themselves all worry on Billie’s account this time, though, for she had not the slightest intention of getting lost again—once was enough.

   She went only as far as the end of the path, and when the other girls reached her she was peering off into the forest as if she hoped to see the mysterious hut—although she knew as well as Laura and Vi that they had walked some distance through the woods the other night before they had finally reached the path.

   “Well, are you satisfied?” Laura asked, with a patient sigh. “If you don’t mind my saying it, I’m getting hungry.”

   “Goodness! after all that ice cream?” cried Billie, adding with a little chuckle: “You’re luckier than I am, Laura. I feel as if I shouldn’t want anything to eat for a thousand years.”

   She was just turning reluctantly to follow her chums back along the path when a dark, bulky-looking

   object lying in a clump of bushes near by caught her eye and she went over to examine it.

   “Now what in the world——” Laura was beginning despairingly when suddenly Billie gave a queer little cry.

   “Come here quick, girls!” she cried, reaching down to pick up the bulky object which had caught her attention. “I do believe—yes, it is—it must be——”

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