“We must keep on!”

“Yes, we can’t stay here in this lonesome place!”

“Oh, if we could only see some house—and ask our way.”

“I believe it’s going to rain—I felt a drop on my nose.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a tear, Natalie?”

Thus talked the Camp Fire Girls as they gathered in a group after Marie had admitted the dismal failure to lead the way back from Bear Pond.

“No, though I do feel badly enough to cry,” answered breath-of-the-pine-tree. “It’s really raining!”

“It can’t melt us,” declared Alice. “I only hope it doesn’t thunder and lightning.”

“It won’t be that kind of a storm at all,” was Mrs. Bonnell’s opinion. “It’s going to turn into a miserable drizzle.”

“My hair always curls in the wet,” cried Marie. “That’s one consolation, anyhow.”

“You poor girl!” came from Alice. “Really it’s no one’s fault that we got lost,” for Marie appeared to think that she bore the responsibility of leading her forces thus into terra incognita.

“Of course not,” added Mrs. Bonnell. “It couldn’t be helped. Now I want you all to be real Camp Fire Girls!” she went on. “We must be brave and loyal. This is only a little trouble. We may be tired and wet but we’ve got to get back to our tents sometime, and then we can thaw out, and take enough hot lemonade to ward off colds. Now I’m going to assume charge, and I’m going to give orders. Wood-Gatherers, attention!”

The girls stood up.

“Get all the dry fuel you can,” ordered the Guardian. “We are going to make a little fire, and devour the remainder of our sandwiches. We’ll get good and warm, rest, eat and then we’ll consider our case. This is a good place for a fire, under the pine tree. Come, No-moh-te-nah—Sweeper-of-the-tepee,” she went on, addressing Alice, “you arrange some seats for us. I’ll get out the lunch. The others gather wood, and get some dried leaves to start the fire.”

Soon they were all busy, forgetting their troubles in the gospel of work—the best secular gospel in the world. A little later a cheerful blaze was crackling under the wide-spreading branches of a giant pine tree. For Mrs. Bonnell had a dependable match box.

“Isn’t this jolly,” exclaimed Natalie.

“It’s really fun!” declared Marie.

“If the boys could only see us now!” came from Alice.

“And hear about the hairpin-blazed trees that we couldn’t locate after we scratched them,” added Mabel.

“Girls, if you ever tell on me I’ll never forgive you!” insisted Mrs. Bonnell. “After this I’m going to carry one of those boy-scout axes that fold up into a sort of leather card case, and which can be carried as a watch charm. Then I can chip off the bark so we can see it at midnight. Only my sense of proportion as one of the members of the society for the conservation of forests prompted me to use a hairpin.”

“Are there any more olives left?” asked Natalie.

“Yes—a few, but they’ll make you dreadfully thirsty, and we have only a little water,” answered Mabel, for they had brought a little water in a bottle from a spring they passed on their homeward wanderings.

They had been unable to find the path back to the cove, after coming to the conclusion that they were lost, and had come to a halt in a little glade, where they had made the fire.

The cheerful blaze did more than warm them, for the summer rain was chilling. It put new hearts into them, and made them more hopeful. Then too, the little food they had remaining aided in the work of regeneration.

What though it be dusk, and they far from camp—what though it rained? They had a fire, they were warm and had been fed after a fashion.

“‘Fate cannot harm me—I have dined to-day!’” quoted Natalie. “Which is not saying that I could not eat more,” she added, as she shook her long braids to free them from the moisture that had gathered as she collected the wood for the fire.

“But we mustn’t stay here,” went on Mrs. Bonnell after they had devoured—and I use the word advisedly—the last crumbs of the sandwiches. “We must k............