“What shall we do?”

“Let’s run!”

“Oh, if—the boys were only here!”

Thus three voices whispered. Natalie was so busy listening at the chimney, turning her head this way and that, to better catch the sound that came down the flue, that she did not speak.

“Girls, be sensible!” commanded Mrs. Bonnell in a low voice. “It isn’t anything but the wind in the chimney.”

“It is not the wind,” said Natalie, softly. “Listen!”

Overcoming their natural eerie fears the Camp Fire Girls did listen. The sobbing was fainter now.

“Girls!” exclaimed Natalie firmly, seeming to become imbued with a new courage, “that’s some poor creature in trouble. We’ve got to help!”

“But—but suppose it’s one of those criminals,” suggested Alice, giving a glance over her shoulder.

“Criminals don’t cry—that way,” declared Natalie. “They aren’t sorry enough to cry—until after they’re arrested.”

“But how can we help this—this person when he is up the chimney?” asked Mabel.

“How do you know it’s a ‘he’?” asked Marie.

“Well, call it the ghost, then,” admitted Mabel. “How are we going to rescue the ghost from the chimney.”

“It isn’t in the chimney,” went on Natalie, who seemed to have assumed charge of matters. “Only the sound comes down that way. I understand it all now. The secret room is near the chimney. The ghost is in the secret room.”

“She will have that secret room!” murmured Marie.

“There is some poor person in trouble,” went on Natalie. “Maybe he fell and sprained its ankle and she can’t walk, just as I did.”

“Oh, what a beautiful mixture of personal pronouns!” laughed Alice, and the laugh seemed to relieve the strain on the nerves of all of them. “Well, Nat, what are your plans?”

“We must find that secret room.”

“Yes; but how?”

“Listen, girls. It must be near the chimney. Probably some stovepipe hole leads into this flue, and the draught carried the sound downward. All we have to do is to make another search upstairs near where the chimney passes through.”

“Simple as a problem in geometry,” murmured Alice, who detested the study. “Lead on, Nat!”

“Will you come?” asked breath-of-the-pine-tree, lookin............