The Camp Fire Girls; Or, The Secret of an Old Mill

Instinctively the four girls, and Mrs. Bonnell, drew nearer together, shrinking away from the old man who had come up out of his boat to help them erect the tents. On his part h...

“That doesn’t make it so,” retorted Alice. “I never knew such poor directions as those given by persons who have lived in a place nearly all their lives. You scarcely ever can d...

“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...

Four girls, gathered about a table in the library of the Anderson home, listened as the tramp of feet was heard on the porch that May evening. There were whispers, and then a we...

Cots creaked as four forms rose to sitting positions on them. There were gasping intakes of breath. Natalie, cowering amid the coverings pointed with a shaking finger toward the...

“Don’t suggest it!” cried Natalie. “We don’t want to think of the unpleasant features. Think of the birds, and the green trees, and the land of the sky-blue water and——”

There was wisdom in this, as Blake well knew, and, though he would have dared anything to make the rescue, he realized that Jack’s plan was best. The latter had already thrown o...

“Ah—ha!” the man finally managed to gasp, as he steadied himself by seizing a slender sapling. “What do you mean, young man? How dare you lay hands on me? I represent the law, I...

“Well, it isn’t as bad as it might be,” said Dr. Morse after he had examined Hadee. “Of course it would have been better to have had the bone set sooner, but there’s no great ha...

“I guess that’s the only way to get it off his head,” answered Mrs. Bonnell, still laughing. “Poor little fellow! He must have thought it contained something good to eat.”

It was Mrs. Bonnell who uttered the last, and Natalie, Marie, Alice and Mabel who, in turn, gave voice to the other expressions, following the gladsome cry of Alice that she had...

“But we have enough!” declared Mrs. Bonnell, looking at what she carried, and then at the burdens borne by the girls. It was two days after the episode of the hornets, and the m...

Camp Fire Girls and camping boys gathered in a little group on the edge of the lake, standing about Jack, who was mutely pointing to a stake in the water.

“Where was that noise, fellows?” demanded practical Jack. Before any of them could answer him the groan sounded again, louder than before. With a bound Marie was out of the door...

“There doesn’t seem to be,” went on the Guardian, whose rather short breath bore to her the unwelcome intelligence that she was getting stout. “I really must exercise more,” she...

Mrs. Bonnell was sure something was wrong in the Gypsy camp. So were the girls. So much so that none of them listened with much attention to the jargon poured fourth by the vari...

The boys did not stop to see who gave the advice. It seemed good to follow, and they did. Regardless of their clothes, which were of light weight, easily dried, they ran toward...

“They’ll always take a trinket if they get their hands on one,” declared Phil. “I suppose she saw it glittering there on the table, and while she was holding the girls’ hands, a...

They hesitated for a moment in the shrubbery, before going forward. They had come upon the camp before they had quite expected to, and, truth to tell, they had formed no definit...

It was Jack who demanded this of his sister and the other Camp Fire devotees as they filed past Stony Point a day or so after the fiasco in the old mill.

“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 _te...

“Say, if those girls were smart enough to find Bear Pond and the Gypsy camp they’d find out about us coming here and then backing out,” declared Jack. “No, we’ve got to stick no...

“The police ought to be able to,” asserted Mabel with rather fierce energy. “Oh, if I were a man I’d get right after those thieving Gypsies, and make them give up the ring! Why...

“No, thank you, Marie. It’s too strong. The salts are better,” spoke Natalie protestingly. She was sitting up on a cot in the tent, while the boys clustered at the flap outside,...

Thus the girls greeted the return of—shall I say our three heroes—a little later that morning. They certainly did not feel like heroes, however, as they rowed up to the little d...

“Of course it is,” he admitted, “and it may be that Nat is in it. But that’s a long way from saying she is drowned. Nat knows how to manage a boat.”

“No,” answered Mabel. “I didn’t pay much attention. I was looking after that beef stew, and I didn’t want it to burn, so I kept going in the tent ever so often.”

The Camp Fire Girls were trudging through the woods, whither the path led them—wet, miserable and unhappy, yet not utterly discouraged. The little pocket lamp of the Guardian wa...

Thus the girls questioned and commented as they had gathered about an indiscriminate collection of canvas, boards, ropes and other things at the campsite on Green Lake. They had...

“I have not! There isn’t a thing up here to read anyhow, if I wanted to. I was thinking of sending for a few. But I _did_ see a face at that window,” and Natalie shook her prett...

Natalie grasped the edges of the doorway so unexpectedly opened before her, and clung there. The light shot into the secret room, revealing a figure huddled up in one corner—a t...

“Stop it!” demanded Natalie with a stamp of her small foot, encased in a boating shoe, while the red surged up under her olive coat of tan. “Some one _has_ been here!” she added.

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 no...