“Oh, girls, isn’t it just splendid?”

“And the rings are too sweet for anything; aren’t they, really?”

“But what are they for—those seven marks, I mean? I heard Mrs. Bonnell mention it, but there was so much going on that I’ve forgotten.”

“Oh, Alice! Don’t you recall that those seven ‘marks’, as you call them, are the seven points of the law of the Camp Fire Girls?”

“To which delightful organization we now belong,” added another of the quartette.

“Oh, Natalie!” exclaimed Alice Lathrop, “you’re a dear, but you always did have the most remarkable remembrancer,” and, with a laugh she put her arms around her chum, whose dark, olive-tinted complexion, with that calm brow, and eyes, in the depths of which woodland pools seemed to lie, gave her the appearance of an Indian maid, especially when she plaited her hair in two, long black braids.

“It’s quite symbolic,” went on Mabel Anderson, as she looked at the silver ring on one of the slim fingers of her pretty hand, a hand of which she was perhaps a trifle vain—excusably so, in the opinion of some of her friends.

“And now we are really ‘Wood Gatherers,’” spoke Marie Pendleton. “It’s the first step. I wonder if we will take the others?”

“I intend to,” declared Alice. “It only takes three months to become a ‘Fire Maker,’ and three more to be a ‘Torch Bearer.’”

“Oh, but there are lots of things to do in that time,” sighed Mabel Anderson. “Think of the test of getting two meals for—for you girls!” and she looked with pretended dismay at her three pretty chums. “I—I don’t even know how to peel potatoes!” and she covered her face with her hands.

“It’s time you learned,” declared Marie, who, since the death of her mother kept house, with the assistance of a maid, for her father, and her brother Jack.

“I can see all sorts of jolly times ahead of us!” exclaimed Alice. “We will get to know ever so many nice girls—really we four are too much by ourselves.”

“We always have been,” said Mabel. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t continue to go together. Just because we have joined the Camp Fire Girls doesn’t mean that we’re going to separate, I hope. Shall we make new friends and lose our old ones?”

“Not at all,” went on Alice. “But we are too—too—what was it Professor Battell said in class to-day—too inscribed—no, that wasn’t it——”

“Circumscribed,” put in Natalie.

“That’s it. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you for a memo. pad, Nat!” and once more Alice embraced her chum.

“Why so pensive?” asked Marie, as, to give entrance for her friends she opened the door of the little cottage, over which she presided as mistress. “Has anything happened, Natalie? Did you miss in Latin to-day?” and Marie, dropping her books on a chair in the hall ushered her chums into the little library. The girls were on their way home from the Academy and from class had gone to a meeting of the Camp Fire Girls Association, which had recently been started in their town. They had been initiated as “Wood Gatherers” of the Dogwood Camp Fire, which name Mrs. Pierce Bonnell, the Guardian, had chosen for the group.

“No, nothing has happened,” said Natalie slowly. “I was just thinking what delightful fun we would have this summer if we could really gather around a camp fire of our own, out in the open.”

“Well, why couldn’t we?” asked Marie. “Let’s think about it, anyhow. I’m going to ask Nellie to make tea. It’s real chilly, even if the bluebirds are here and the flowers almost out. Oh, I have it, I’m going to choose the name Bluebird—I wonder what that is in Indian?”

“Che-no-sag-ak!” exclaimed a guttural voice, as Marie opened the door of the dining room. “Che-no-sag-ak! Wah! Pale face maiden heap talk much. Ugh!”

“Oh Jack! How you startled me!” cried Marie, shrinking back, with her hands to her breast, as she beheld her brother and his two intimate chums, Phil Anderson and Blake Lathrop, calmly seated at the dining room table, luxuriously regaling themselves on water crackers and old cheese, with some ginger ale which they had evidently smuggled in from the corner grocery.

“What is it?” echoed the voice of Mabel, as she and the other two girls crowded to the portal. “Phil!” she went on, “and Blake! Have you been listening to what we were saying?” she demanded as she marched out and stood half-threateningly over her brother.

“How could we help it—the way you talked?” he inquired, defensively.

“And so Marie is going to be a bluebird; is she?” went on Jack with a grin. “Fine! That’s the Indian for it that I was reciting—‘Che-no-sag-ak!’ Little bluebird of the wildwood, come and let me have thy feathers—have thy feathers for my new hat, for my new hat made of satin. Little——”

His voice died off into a gurgle for Alice, with the intimacy of a chum of Jack’s sister, had clapped her hands over his mouth, to the destruction of a cracker he had been about to munch.

“Look out for that cheese!” warned Phil.

“And the carpet!” added Blake.

“Well, let him stop making fun!” snapped Alice, as she glided away before Jack could take a fair revenge.

“What’s it all about, anyhow?” asked Blake, when quiet had been somewhat restored. “Why all this Indian hocus-pocus? Has a medicine show come to town?”

“It’s the Camp Fire Girls,” declared Jack, trying to get up from the carpet some of the cracker crumbs before Nellie, the maid came in, for Jack and his chums were only in the dining room on sufferance. “Sis has been mooning around the house about it for the last three weeks.”

“I have not, Jack Pendleton!”

“Gibbering about Wood-gatherers, Fire-makers, and what not,” went on the irrepressible brother. “She’s been looking in the back of the dictionary for something or other—I thought she had fallen down on her Latin, and was trying to work off a condition.”

“I was looking for Indian words,” declared Marie, “only I couldn’t find any. You know we can each choose an Indian name,” she went on to her girl chums, ignoring the three boys. “It may be anything, only it ought to mean something in English. But my dictionary doesn’t have any Indian information in it.”

“I have an Indian book at home,” said Blake Lathrop quietly, speaking to all, but looking rather more intently at Natalie. “I think it has a lot of names such as ‘bluebird’ in it. If you girls want to pick out titles for yourselves I’ll bring it over.”

“Oh, will you, really?” cried Mabel. “I want an Indian name, too, if the rest are going to have them.”

“Say, what is this Camp Fire Girls’ racket, anyhow?” asked Phil. “I’ve heard you talking about it, Mabel, but I thought it was one of the Academy societies.”

“It’s nothing of the sort,” declared Alice, while Natalie went to the piano and softly played a weird Indian song, in a haunting minor key.

“Well, what is it?” asked Jack, finishing the last of his crackers and cheese, and gallantly offering Alice what was left of the ginger ale.

“No, thank you,” interposed his sister. “I’m going to ask Nellie to make us some tea. We’re all shivering.”

“The Camp Fire Girls is an organization something like the Boy Scouts,” went on Alice.

“I used to belong,” remarked Blake, as he walked over ostensibly to look at the picture on the wall—the said picture being very close to the piano at which Natalie was softly playing.

“Well, the Camp Fire Girls are like the Scouts,” continued Alice, “only different. It isn’t so military. The camp fire is our symbol, and our seven laws are—‘seek beauty’——”

“None of you have to!” declared Jack gallantly, bowing with his hand on his heart.

“Thank you!” chorused the trio, Marie being out in the kitchen interviewing the maid.

“Go on, Alice,” urged Natalie.

“‘Seek beauty,’” resumed the girl, “‘give service—pursue knowledge—be trustworthy—hold on to health—glorify work—be happy.’ There, I think I’ve said them right.”

“You have,” murmured Mabel.

“Very nice,” asserted Phil.

“And there are three degrees,” proceeded Alice. “We have just joined, so we are humble wood-gatherers, may it please your gracious highnesses,” and she dropped a pretty courtesy to the boys. “After three months’ service as such, we may become fire-makers, and that’s a lot harder. And then the next is torch-bearer, which is harder still. But we’re not worrying about that. See our rings—aren’t they dears?” and she held out her hand which Jack promptly captured, to the discomfiture of Phil, who had also made an attempt at the slim fingers.

Then from the piano, which had suddenly ceased its melody there came a voice:

“No, Blake, you mustn’t take off my ring—really. Oh, stop—there, you’ve dropped it!”

“Shame on you Blake!” mocked Phil, “to treat a poor girl so. Let me see your ring, Marie,” he went on, as the pretty hostess came into the room again.

“I’m too busy,” she called to him. “You may help me get out the cups and saucers if you will, though,” she added.

“Let me be a wood-gatherer,” pleaded Jack.

“Me for the fire-maker!” declared Blake.

“You’ve got enough to do right there,” mocked Jack. “We will call you the Greek chorus.”

And thus the merry quips and gibes went on until tea was served, the boys stoically remaining, and, perforce requiring to be fed, though Marie remarked to Jack sotto-voice that she thought he had had one lunch since school.

“I am always open for more,” he replied.

“And so you girls are really going to be members of the Camp Fire club,” spoke Phil, when the rattle of teacups had ceased.

“Of Dogwood Camp,” added Natalie, daintily removing a bit of butter from the tip of her finger encircled by the new silver ring.

“Well, it may all be very nice and romantic, and that sort of thing,” began Jack, “but——”

“It isn’t romantic at all,” interrupted Alice. “It’s practical—at least I think that’s the proper word,” and she looked rather doubtfully at Natalie.

“Oh, say, we’re forgetting all about our Indian names,” exclaimed Marie. “I wonder what signified bluebird?”

“Wash-ton-su-goo!” gurgled her brother.

“Jack!” she cried. “If you don’t stop I’ll never let you stay in when we have tea again. You’re too——”

“All right, sis!” he laughed. “I’ll be good. Only it’s such a joke.”

“We’re really in earnest,” explained Natalie. “You should see our rules, and learn how we can acquire merit——”

“Like the Hindoo Yogis,” declared Phil. “Natalie, the dreamer, talking of acquiring merit. Say, if you girls get to have any more merit you’ll be too good for this earth.”

“Be quiet!” begged Mabel. “Blake, did you say you had an Indian book at home?”

“I have. Shall I get it?”

“Listen, girls!” called Mabel. “Why can’t you all come over to my house this evening, and we’ll select our names. Blake only lives around the corner. He can leave the book, and——”

“Leave it!” exclaimed Blake, with peculiar emphasis. “Perhaps I had better mail it, or send it parcels post, or call a messenger from the telegraph office. Only there’s none there after supper. However——”

“Oh, I suppose you can bring it—and stay—if you want to,” conceded Mabel.

“Not a pressing invitation, but—shall we take it, fellows?” and Blake looked quizzically at his chums.

“We can tell them how to make a camp fire, anyhow,” declared Jack.

“Thank you, we’re going to learn by practical experience, Jack,” spoke his sister.

“Then all come to my house this evening,” went on Mabel. “And, Blake, please bring the Indian book. Phil can entertain you and Jack while we look up some names.”

“And who will entertain you?” inquired Jack.

“Thank you—we don’t need it,” spoke Natalie.

“Well, I’m willing to wager my new hat against a hair ribbon,” declared Phil, “that with all you girls talking about wood-gathering and camp fires, not one of your crowd would dare go camping and build a real camp fire—I mean a party of you. It’s all very well to talk about being like the boy scouts, but when it comes down to the real thing, you’ll be so afraid of an ant crawling on a stick of wood that you’ll want an oil stove to cook on. Camp fire girls may be——”

“Stop!” commanded Mabel. “In the first place, Phil, the Camp Fire Girls’ organization wasn’t formed to go out in the woods, though lots of them do. We can have just as good a time at home. But, for all that, we do intend to go camping, and to make our own camp fires, too!”

“Mabel!” gasped Natalie.

“Oh, Mabel!” whispered Marie.

“Who ever said that?” demanded Alice.

There was a momentous pause.

“We seem to have stirred up trouble,” said Blake softly.

“They’ll never go camping!” came from Jack. “Here, I’ll offer a challenge—we all will. If you girls go to a genuine, bonafide camp, live by yourselves in tents, make the camp fire, cook your own meals, the same as we fellows do—why we’ll come up and see you once in a while. How’s that?”

“And bring you each a two-pound box of the best candy in town,” added Phil.

“And take back all we’ve said,” went on Blake.

“Boys,” began Mabel, somewhat solemnly, “we never gave this consideration until now. That is the others didn’t. But it has been in my mind since we thought of becoming Camp Fire Girls. I don’t see why we can’t go off in the woods this summer. It would be jolly,—I think.”

“Lovely,” breathed Natalie.

“I’ll go if the others do,” conceded Alice.

“We’d have to have a chaperone,” remarked Marie.

“Mrs. Bonnell, our Guardian, would come, I think,” suggested Mabel.

“Then let’s accept the boys’ challenge!” exclaimed Natalie. “I don’t see why we can’t make a fire as well as they. As for cooking, there is so much that comes canned now that it’s really no trouble at all. We always live on canned things when our girl leaves.”

“Then it’s decided!” echoed Mabel, clapping her hands. “We’ll become real Camp Fire Girls. Now I must be going. Don’t forget—come over this evening. And, Phil, bring that Indian book.”

“I will,” he promised.

“Say, do you think they will go camping?” asked Jack, as his two chums took their leave, while his sister led her girl friends to her room to show a new dress she had bought.

“Never!” cried Blake. “They’re just bluffing.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad plan for us to go camping ourselves this summer,” remarked Phil.

“I’ll go you!” cried Jack.

“I’ll think about it,” agreed Blake.

“He means he’ll go if the girls do,” put in Jack. “Well, I’ll see you this eve.,” and with that he pretended to dig into some of his Academy studies, for he and his friends, as did the girls, went to the same institution in the little semi-country town of Middleford.

“Did you really mean what you said, Mabel, about going camping?” asked Natalie, as the three walked away from Marie’s house, some time later, having in the interim found many matters about which to chat.

“I didn’t at first—but when I saw how the boys took me up I did. I don’t see why we can’t do it—and be real Camp Fire Girls.”

“We can,” declared Alice with decision.

“There goes a real Camp Fire Girl now,” added Natalie in a low voice, as she indicated, walking slowly down the village street ahead of them, a figure clad in rather a gaudy skirt, a Zouave jacket, and a sash of oriental hues.

“A Gypsy,” murmured Alice.

“Yes, there is an encampment of them just outside of town,” went on Natalie. “One came to our house the other day, wanting to tell fortunes. It’s romantic, in a way, I suppose, but she didn’t tell our girl anything that I couldn’t have told her myself.”

“It’s the out-door life that appeals to me!” declared Alice. “That’s why I like the Camp Fire Girls. We can make our organization an excuse for all sorts of adventures.”

“Well, we certainly may have some if we go camping,” suggested Natalie, as they separated at a corner. “Good-bye.”

“Until to-night,” suggested Mabel.

“Until to-night,” echoed Alice.

And little did the girls realize what the events of that night were to bring forth; nor how they were to exert an influence on their lives. For that Gypsy played a strange part in the experience of the Camp Fire Girls.