FOR days thereafter Helen went about the campus in thin, high-heeled slippers that made her feet ache. But she bore it all like a martyr, without a murmur, and would not even buy a new pair of shoes in Holyoke or let her friends lend her some. She was a martyr to the cause indeed, and would not allow herself be outdone for the pleasure of any "horrid little Sophomore." For it was her neighbor, Edith, she accused as being leader of the whole raiding conspiracy. She recognized Edith's tendency toward flourishes in the sign on the dummy. If she needed further evidence, she got it from the big-hearted Irish cook, Maggie, who being neither Senior nor Freshman, had come up from the maids' apartments to watch the fun on the eventful evening. For Tommy had got to be Maggie's pet, and the latter always saved her one or two doughnuts or cookies when she was baking, or got some dinner for her when she came home late from a shopping trip to Holyoke.
Tommy waited patiently for her revenge.
Two weeks passed, and the leaves were beginning to turn. Prospect, a wall of many shades of green with scarlet and golden patches, hung its reflection over the lake. The lawns of mornings were covered with a fine carpet of dew, and the air was crisp and buoyant. Mountain Day must come very soon -- a day kept secret by the college Faculty and not announced until breakfast of the very day. Many rumors were spread and died out, and still no announcement; but, late one Wednesday afternoon, what the students claimed to be sure signs became evident. The odor of boiling ham pervaded the house from the kitchen, and news came that they were boiling ham in other halls. Maggie, with a mystifying grin on her face, was baking cookies; the college wagons were leaving large quantities of bananas and grapes at kitchen doors; and surely -- surely --
Although the Faculty at supper vowed they knew nothing, the evidence was so certain that nobody in Paradise Alley studied any more that night or prepared the next day's recitations; instead, they sat together and made plans about where to go. Up Mount Holyoke received the majority vote, and so it was decided. One of the girls set her alarm clock for four in the morning. If it should be bright and clear, she was to go back to bed again; if it should be raining, she was to wake up the rest of the Freshmen, that they might do the studying necessary for a recitation day. So certain were they of the signs!
But there was no need next morning to wake anybody up too early. It was God's own day, and as beautiful as could be wished for. Everybody was down to breakfast, casting eager glances at Miss Foster, the head of the house, and trying to discover something telltale in her smile or her words. They did not have long to wait, for when the telephone bell rang in the matron's dining room, and the head of the house was summoned to it, they knew that the message she would bring back to them would be Mountain Day.
And it was!
For the next hour the kitchen and the serving room hummed like a beehive, and the girls clung about the tables and the pantry like bees around the honeycomb -- buttering, buttering, buttering bread, making sandwiches, packing up bananas, grapes, and cookies in boxes and grape baskets. And all these goodies were supplemented by chocolates and bottles of olives and what not from Brad's.
It was like an army marching out for a day's journey. The village was filled with streams of girls headed for Mount Tom, Mount Holyoke, Bear Mountain, and the fastnesses of Mount Norwottuck, where one would have to follow an uncertain blazed trail through a mile of wooded ups and downs to get to the summit. Many forehanded people had been able to secure teams from Reynolds's livery stable, and were going to take just civilized drives to old Hadley, Deerfield with its Bloody Brook, or Sugar Loaf Mountain.
It was half past nine o'clock when our girls set out on the road to Mount Holyoke. Decked in coats or sweaters, hatless or with tam o'shanters, with grape baskets full of lunch swinging in their hands or slung by straps from their shoulders, they were a healthy looking party. Tommy's buoyant young strength was set off finely in the white middy blouse she wore, with its blue collar and soft sailor tie, and the soft white hat set jauntily on her head. Only her dancing slippers, badly worn down at the heels from so much use and cracked, were out of keeping with the rest of her costume.
They were a care-free lot of Freshmen, and they put their feelings into expression when they struck the open country, where they began singing -- a wide repertoire from "Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party" to "Under the Bamboo Tree." Cows in the meadows raised their heads from their feeding to look at them, and birds alighted on rail fences to make sure of what was coming and then flew away with alarmed twitters. Farmers waved to them as they passed, knowing what the day was, and offered them all the apples they could pick from the ground.
Nearer and ever nearer came the mountains, like a great varicolored panorama, wet and smelling of the dew. In an hour's time the girls went through the "Pass of Thermopylae," the place where the road cuts around through the mountain spur, and where the cliffs on every side are here and there scratched and inscribed with such legends as "Amherst, 1900," "1903," et cetera, engraved by picnic parties of other years. The girls halted long enough for one of them to climb up and, with a sharp piece of rock, cut into a soft place on the face of the boulder: "Holyoke, 1908." Then they were satisfied.
Just beyond the "Pass of Thermopylae" there was a wonderful view. Grim and forbidding, the rocky "Devil's Kitchen" towered up to the right, and from there, rising and falling, stretched Mount Holyoke back for over a mile, with the road skirting uphill along its foot. Beyond on the left rose Mount Nonotuck, a blaze of autumn color, where Old Man Jones lived out his hermit life in a tumble-down mountain house for many years closed to guests. It was said he kept pens of rattlesnakes around his hotel, and fed and cared for the reptiles. The Freshmen were told that he let them loose in the spring to be a plague to mankind, a fact they were not loath to believe. However true this may be, certain it is that Mount Nonotuck is full of rattlers, though Old Man Jones is long since dead and his mountain house burnt down in forest fires.
Cutting Mount Nonotuck from the Holyoke range flowed the passive Connecticut, smooth and still, but deep and dreadfully swift below at Titan's Pier, where the fierce beauty of the place has served as a background for tragedies.
But this was no day to think of such things and shiver. Everything was bracing and buoyant and full of life, and on trudged the Freshmen up the hilly road which was to~bring them to the halfway house. Only the fear of rattlesnakes bothered some, and these kept well in the middle of the road.
At the bottom of the elevator chute to the mountain house they met several other parties, and though told the mountain house was closed at so late a season, they all decided to take the path to the top anyhow. It was about noon when they gained the summit. All thought of lunch -- always uppermost in the minds of picnicking girls -- was forgotten in admiration of the view they had from the promenade of the mountain house.
On the west side, to the north, Old Hadley with its broad, tree-bordered streets, and Sugar Loaf rising up boldly in the distance. Straight below, Northampton, with the towers and gables of Smith College. Along the sweep of the Connecticut, patches of harvest of various colors, in fields that fitted together like the squares of a quilt. Toward the southwest, the graceful, eccentric winding of the Ox-bow, where the Connecticut River bent back on itself. Faint, on the south, were the towers of Mount Holyoke College itself and long country roads, like white threads in the landscape, with an occasional speck of a wagon creeping along. To the extreme north lay Amherst; and to the east, beyond the fourteen peaks, Belchertown and Granby and other villages, with here and there the white steeple of a church. 'Way beyond in the faint distance, the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire.
The fresh, bracing air and the long tramp had played havoc with the appetites of the girls. Boxes were opened on the grassy top and lunches spread out. A little down from the crest, in a bare spot edged by a clump of white birch saplings, an unconventional party had built a fire, and were roasting potatoes and bacon and boiling coffee in a can. Everywhere the ogre Appetite was being appeased.
After lunch our Paradise Alley friends got up to walk and survey the beautiful panorama, where, far below, the wooded stretches of the valley were a carpet of color, thick and variegated.
"Fanny, wouldn't you like to walk on top of that, now? It looks so thick and woolly and warm."
"Yes, isn't it beautiful! We must get some ferns afterwards for our room, Helen; somewhere down in the gorge. We can start earlier."
"Oh, Tommy," put in Molly, "wouldn't you like some chestnuts? I think I see some trees farther down the side of the mountain. Let's go and see if we can get some."
So Helen and Molly left the others to amuse themselves in a more civilized fashion, while they scrambled down a precipitous declivity to where they thought some chestnut trees stood.
Well for them they were out of the way; for hardly had they gone when a party of what proved to be Sophomores and Juniors swooped upon the various camps and invited them one and all to an entertainment where "stunts" were in order.
"We are all going to perform," they said. "Come along; Freshmen especially invited!"
"Freshmen must have precedence. Freshmen first," said some upperclassmen.
"Yes, yes!" cried others. "We must have new stunts first off. Ours are all stale."
They took good care not to let a Freshman escape. For who knew what talent might be hidden in a modest little person?
"Come along, Edith," said a Junior. "You be interlocutor."
"Yes, up with your jokes. You'll make a dandy one," put in another.
"Oh, well," said Edith Brewster, "since you insist on it, 'Barkis is willing.'"
And Edith, who formed one of the bonfire party below, acquiesced and became master of ceremonies. In a large, cleared, grassy space on the brow of the mountain, overlooking Northampton and the Ox-bow, she dexterously arranged the various invitees about.
"Freshmen will take front seats -- reserved seats," she said. "Miss Rodney, you are a Freshman. I am surprised that you have no more class loyalty than that! Front seats, please. Where is Miss Thompson -- and Miss Walsh? We want them especially."
"Out looking for chestnuts, I think."
"Ah, yes! Chestnuts are the usual thing with them. But we can't wait, though I hope we won't lose their choice contributions entirely. The show will now commence. Please volunteer, as we don't know your talents."
No Freshman moved. They were not anxious to make themselves conspicuous.
"Come, you mustn't be bashful about it. What can you do?"
"Tell us what to do," suggested some Freshmen on one end. " Maybe we'll get up courage then."
"Dance, or sing, or recite. I declare! How shy you all are! This will never do. I'm afraid we will have to pick you out. This young lady -- What is your name, please?"
"Miss Simpson."
"Oh! Miss Simpson. Miss Simpson, please, where do you hail from?"
"Chelsea, Mass.," responded the flushing Freshman.
"What are your qualifications for this entertainment?"
The Freshman was in a panic.
"I -- I -- haven't any," she said.
"Oh, pshaw ! You're as badly off as your relative, Simple Simon. It's rather poor spirit -- don't you think? But haven't I seen you in the choir?"
"Ye-es."
"I hope you don't mean to cast a slur on Professor Howard's judgment. You sing?"
"Yes -- I sing -- in concert."
"Oh, then, please sing in concert. We will now have the ancient ballad of 'Rosy O'Grady.'"
Laughter that had long been bubbling all around now broke out in full, and even the candidate fell in with the game.
"But," she still protested, "I can't sing without accompaniment."
"Oh, of course not. You could not be expected to. Miss What's-er-name laughing over there. I know you'll be delighted to accompany this young lady on the piano."
"Why -- I --"
"That's right; come right along. Please take possession of the steps to the promenade. It's not exactly a Steinway baby grand, and the keys may be out of order. But you can oblige us by making a noise like a piano."
Laughing and pert, Miss What's-er-name arose from the grass and stepped toward the "piano," her two braids dancing and swaying to every toss of her head. She squatted on the lower step of the stairs, playing on the one above, and going through many virtuosolike sweeps and flourishes along the "keys," while the other Miss What's-er-name rendered, with the exaggerated expression of a prima donna, the ancient lyric.
After the applause had subsided, and an encore was given to the general satisfaction, Miss Brewster proceeded:
"Now this young lady here. What name? Miss Ainsworth. You seem to be very quiet indeed; aren't you enjoying the concert?"
"Oh, yes, yes!"
"Then show your appreciation by rendering --"
"But I can't do anything," was the anxious interruption.
"Then it's a wonder to me how you entered college."
"I took examinations."
"Indeed! I thought as much. Had you entered on a certificate there would have been some hope of making a man of you! I fear me you are too studious."
The girl hung her head, but with a secret pride; for she was two thirds "shark" and one third "grind."
"Pray, what is your favorite study?" continued Miss Brewster.
"A-Astronomy," was the response.
"Ah, a star gazer and a dreamer. Do you know the signs of the Zodiac?"
"Yes, indeed -- Aries, Taurus, Gemini --"
"Wait, wait, wait! I asked do you know them. But since you seem to be able to sing them, we shall not be satisfied until we hear them sung to an appropriate tune. Let me see. Sing them to the tune of "There'll be a hot time in the old town to-night.' "
"But I don't know that selection."
"What! Then your education has been neglected. How did you pass? But you must sing, you know."
"Well, I can't sing."
"This is shocking! Haven't you yet learned that there is no such word as 'can't' in the Freshman vocabulary? Freshmen, never say 'can't' or you will never graduate from Mount Holyoke."
Secretly, the Freshmen were rather tickled at the discomfiture of Number 3; for as a student she had shown in all classes such a marked aptitude at recitation, with a badly hidden superiority over those who had "flunked" or "semi-flunked," that she made them "simply tired."
"But I -- my voice is not in training just at present," proceeded the girl facetiously.
"Oh -- oh, indeed. Of course! Miss -- this young lady. You sing."
"Ye-es."
"Please sing us this gentle lay."
"But -- but, really, I don't know the signs of the Zodiac!"
"Now, here's a pretty pickle! One knows the signs of the Zodiac and will not sing, and the other will sing and does not know the signs of the Zodiac! What -- haven't you ever had your fortune told?"
"Only with tea leaves," laughed the Freshman.
"Mercy on us! Well, Holyoke seems to be just the place for old maids. But assuredly the Zodiac has nothing to do with tea leaves --"
"Really, the only sign I know is 'Jiminy.'"
"Take care, Miss Freshman. No bad language to be used before all these children. Well, I'm at my wits' end with your limitations --"
"I have it," put in a Junior; "make them go it together -- one sings, while the other recites."
"A duet--the very thing. Miss One-that-sings, sing la-la-la with your most profound expression -- 'There'll be a hot time.' This is serious work. Miss Astronomy, this is your entrance examination to show if you are worthy of staying in college. Say your little stunt as rhythmically as possible, tragically as it deserves, musically if you can. Now see that you pull together like a good team."
"Aries, Taurus, Gemini --"
"Not -- not so fast, Miss Shark!"
"Cancer, Leo, Vir-ir-go --"
"More expression -- more tearfully."
"Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius,
Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces."
It was upon this exhibition that Helen and Molly came when they again struck camp. They stopped short among the varicolored bushes some fifty feet in back of the crowd.
"Oh, Tommy," giggled Molly, "they're making them do stunts!"
"Yes, isn't it rich," whispered Helen, without any need to be told who "they" and "them" referred to. "Don't let them see us, for Heaven's sake. We'll catch it, if they do."
"We'd better hide hereabouts and then go home early. Then I guess we can see the fun, too."
"Yes - -oh, quick --"
But they were not fast enough; two Sophomores saw them and raised hue and cry after them. The two Freshmen took to their heels.
"Oh, Molly, Molly! Now we did it!" moaned Helen, panting as they ran down the cleared path of the mountain.
"This way--we'll go through the Gorge!" whispered Molly, leaving the path and dragging Helen down a declivity into some underbrush.
Their shoes were torn by the prickly vines underfoot, and their skirts were caught and jabbed on protruding branches; but they never halted a moment. The pursuers, thinking they had the Freshmen treed, waited up by the path, feeling sure that they must come back sooner or later. But they had not counted on Paradise Alley courage.
"Oh, Molly," panted Helen, "these slippers are killing me."
"Never mind, we'll soon be out of it. Look at me. My skirt and the rest of my outfit are a hol-y show!"
"Well," laughed Helen, "I don't care about my clothes getting torn, if we only get out of here. Do you know the way?"
"I've heard of it," said Molly.
"Heard! Goodgracious! How -- Why, I won't go a step with you!"
"Do you want the Sophomores to get you, 'ef y' don't watch out?'"
"No."
"Well, they're up above squatted by the path now, and since we can't go back we'll have to keep on till we get to the bottom. This part of the mountain runs north and south, and when we get down to the Gorge we'll go along the bottom -- south."
"Well -- all right. My, how these vines are cutting my feet! I don't care a rap for the old slippers. Nou don't suppose we'll get lost?"
"No, so long as we keep together. The only thing I'm afraid of is rattlesnakes."
"Rattlesnakes!" ejaculated Helen, stopping stock still. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I knew you wouldn't come."
"And I shouldn't blame myself. I won't go another step."
"Oh, come, don't be silly," said Molly, edging over the top of a large boulder and breaking off a stick. "There are just as many snakes above us now as there are below. See, if one comes, I'll hit him with my little stick."
'' Much good!" laughed Helen. "But come on. I'm game, if you are. And we might as well be out of it as soon as we can."
And on down they tramped again, avoiding every suspicious-looking thicket and stepping gingerly along on all available bare ground. Time and again Helen jerked Molly to an abrupt stop, and the two listened to the tapping of some woodpecker or to some hissing sound wherein they thought they detected the fatal rattle of the abhorred reptile. Then on again, more gingerly than before.
At last they struck the level, where the mountain towered above them, a mass of yellow and red and green, and they seemed to be in a well at the bottom of things.
"We're in the Gorge now, I think," said Molly.
"It looks like the Garden of Eden," suggested Helen, as they stepped along among tall ferns. "We might take some of these home, don't you think, Tommy?"
"Not yet; can't we get some farther out? And do you suppose there are any rattlesnakes in here?"
''There's no use in our thinking about it. We can only look out, that's all."
So they kept on, through the wet, swampy, fern-covered bottom of the mountain, where a tentative foot sucked into treacherous tufts of grass. They only wondered every once in a while where they were coming out, and if they were coming out at all.
"We shall probably die like babes in the woods," suggested Helen disgustedly, as she raised her foot from a hidden pool where she had sunk in over the top of her slipper.
"But if we can't get home to-night," said Molly, now really anxious, "we can eat our chestnuts. We won't starve anyway."
"And it will be moonlight, too. It's past three o'clock now."
Of a sudden, as they went along, they discovered something that looked like a rude road, where there seemed to be no tall growth as far as they could see. Keeping along this, they came to a small bridge, made of a few rotten planks, over a brook.
"This looks like civilization!" exclaimed Helen joyfully, crushing the edge of the worm-eaten wood with her foot. "Man has been here! And look -- isn't that a fence 'way down?"
The girls fairly ran to it--a rail fence built into a low stone wall. Suddenly in their exultation they recoiled in fright. Stretched along the wall, taking its afternoon siesta, was a snake -- a good six feet long and fully two inches in diameter. It did not rattle at them. But it stared in surprise -- for it probably had never seen college girls before. Not satisfied with its inspection, it ducked its head and dived under the stone wall along which it had been lying.
"Come, let's climb over as fast as we can and get out of this," said Helen, recovering first from the scare.
"This is a veritable Garden of Eden," commented Molly, shaking her head.
"Will you come on over!" exclaimed Helen impatiently, from the top of the rail fence. Down she jumped on the other side, followed soon by Molly. "I guess they keep cows here," she commented, "or they wouldn't have that fenced up so."
"Do you think so?" exclaimed Molly. "I hate cows."
"Oh, 'fraid cat!" cried Helen, glad to see the other had a weakness. "I shouldn't think you'd mind a cow, if you don't a rattlesnake."
"Well - -cows give nice milk," said Molly irrelevantly.
They struck the little brook again farther on, and it was splendidly dry and wooded along it. Brown fallen leaves filled the sloping sides, and ferns grew among them. A dash of sunshine came here and there through the branches above, and a wood bird, frightened from its hiding place, flew out in front of them.
The rush of a waterfall came to their ears, and they followed the sound to a little cascade, where the waters tumbled and frothed and splashed over rocks, into a small, clear basin beneath.
"Isn't it lovely in here!" cried Helen, drawing in the cool, sweet, woody air. "And, oh, wouldn't you like to take off your shoes and wade?"
"Wouldn't I? It's the very thing. Let's."
In two minutes they had taken off what remained of their shoes and stockings, and, sitting on an overlooking rock, were hanging their sore, tired feet in the cool basin.
But the spirit of exploration was upon them. They felt safe alone in here; so they wandered happily down the course of the brook, paddling, and singing like larks. When they got thirsty, they lay face down upon the leafy banks and dipped their lips into the water and drank -- like true woodsmen. And they found splendid ferns which they uprooted -- Christmas ferns, and maidenhairs snuggling in the crevices of rocks, and some tiny maidenhair spleenworts that clung to the side of the cliff overhanging the basin at the fall, which they poked off with a long stick.
Indeed, this little tramp along the brook was worth all of Mountain Day to them, and it was nearly five o'clock before they came to themselves and saw that the sun was no longer very strong in their hollow. They hurried back along the brook for their things, to the foot of the little cataract, where they thought they had left them. But nothing was to be seen of them.
"What do you suppose has become of our shoes and stockings?" cried Molly.
"I'm sure we left them around here," said Helen. "See, here is the stick you cut off to kill rattlers with, Molly."
"And here's one of our grape baskets -- but no chestnuts in it," added Molly.
"Do you suppose any squirrels --"
"Squirrels don't wear shoes and stockings."
"No, but maybe -- What's that!"
"C' boss! C' boss! C' boss!"
A strange, throaty voice reached them from above the fall, and an uncouth man towered up, with rough, unshaven face and discolored teeth. He looked like a satyr, and his voice mingled with the splashing of the cascade and sounded like weird music.
"Nice wadin', ain't it?" quoth he good-naturedly, catching sight of the girls.
The girls fell back and gazed in dismay at the queer creature that appeared to them so suddenly. But the old codger only slapped his knees delightedly and shook his sides laughing at the girls' consternation.
"Ugh!" groaned Molly. "He looks like an ogre. I wish we were home! I wonder if he's seen --"
"Have you seen my Dinah?" queried the man, sobering.
"Wh-what does he mean?" whispered Helen in alarm.
"She's a Jersey," went on the man, kicking a stone splashing into the pool.
"A jersey --" repeated Molly, staring up at the mysterious creature. "Is he crazy, or --"
But he only looked down at the girls, who stared at him frightened and pale-faced, and laughed again -- a peculiar, discordant cackle that sounded like a hen frightened off her nest.
"Molly! Come away from here!" cried Helen, catching her friend by the hand.
With hearts palpitating, they ran away from the weird cackle. Pell mell they went along the brook; their one thought was to get away. For still came the voice to them, and that throaty "C' boss! C' boss! C' boss!" followed them, and multiplied from every cranny of the glen. Their feet tore on jagged rocks as they went; frightened birds scooted flapping before them. Then suddenly a snorting from a thicket and the hot breath of something on their faces threw them to hugging each other in affright. With an impatient bellow the thing broke through the tangle of bushes, and -- ambled back toward the waterfall. It was only a cow that had strayed, and was now making for the voice of her master.
"Well, did you ever!" cried the girls, laughing nervously, though hot and cold from the fright.
"And that is Dinah, if you please," giggled Molly. "I thought he meant some black ogress."
"And now I remember that 'C' boss' is meant for cows! But I've never heard it anywhere but in books. It scared the life out of us!"
They were poking along the brook again, splashing the water as they went, when Molly's sharp eyes caught something, and she ran forward with a cry.
"What is it, Molly?" cried Helen, running up.
"Well, I declare! Our shoes!"
And she dipped her hand into the water and drew out one of Helen's slippers, sopped to a shapeless pulp. Farther down, half in, half out of the water, were the rest of the things.
"Aren't we the dunces!" cried Molly. "Why, of course we left them here, after toting them all the way for safekeeping! But how did they get in the water?"
"His Dinah! See, she's been trampling about here!"
The girls laughed with relief and shivered as they tried to put on the wet things.
"Tommy," laughed Molly, "you remind me of the 'man with one sandal' -- Jason, you know, of the Golden Fleece."
"Make it golden cow while you are about it," giggled Helen. "Oh, Molly, isn't it a shame! How can we get home like this! What will they say when they see us!"
"Well, I hope they won't see us. It's a mean shame! That beast of a cow! I don't care for what's left of my shoes -- they're old enough -- but we'll be hooted if they see us go home like this."
"I guess it will be dark, though, before we get there. It's past five now."
"Well, there's one consolation -- the crowd on Mount Holyoke are 'way past us by this time. They were going to start home by four o'clock."
"I don't believe we'll be very long getting out now. I'm glad I snatched up our empty grape basket to put the ferns in. I shouldn't like to leave them."
The brook led out into an open space, a few moments afterwards plunging into a small but thick pine forest. It was all strangely still and dark and mysterious in there, with even the sound of the wind shut out, and only the incense of the pines to show there was life.
Emerging from this shortly, they came upon a rather uncompromisingly marshy hollow that edged the tiny forest, where tracks of cows' hoofs were plain. They crossed a log that bridged it at a narrow place and gained the foot of a hill.
One trial more was left them; up the short, steep, hilly place they went, that sloped like the side of a cup, at the bottom of which was the marsh. Up above they found the cows, waiting at the bars, to be let in and go home.
"Well," exclaimed Molly, "I didn't think I'd be glad to see kine before, but I am! This is really, truly civilization."
"Yes, and there's the farmhouse. Hurray! That must be the road. We are saved!"
They walked carefully among the bossies and scrambled over the bars. Then, with one more regretful look at their torn shoes, they trotted through the barnyard, where a man was putting the chickens to bed. But in the dim twilight he did not pay much attention to their dress and only went on with his work.
"Molly," said Helen, when they were on the dusty road at last, "we'll sleep in our beds to-night, after all!"
"Glory be!" responded Molly.
It was dusk. A big, yellow harvest moon sat low on the horizon and made the twilight golden. Trees and fences were softened up in the mellow half light, and a house here and there, with its windows lighted, rose up in the dimness to break the monotony. Two hunters, gun slung over shoulder, passed them with their dog, that nosed and pawed among the autumn leaves in the ditches.
Under the influence of the evening, the girls broke out into a soft melody, as only those two could sing it:
"Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea;
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon and blow,
Blow him again to me --
While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps!"
Close behind the vague figures of the hunters they followed for protection, plodding along in the dust that stuck to their wet stockings, and they at length reached the village. The college houses were all alight; the girls were in their rooms taking off the dust of the day's expeditions and preparing for supper. There was hardly a soul on the campus, only a belated student or so coming from the post office with her mail or hurrying home from some laboratory. As they passed, from the heavy dusk above them the clock on Mary Lyon boomed the hour of six.
Softly they stole into Porter Hall; for none must see their condition. Fortunately for them, there was nobody in the entrance hall or in the students' parlor anticipating the supper bell; there was nobody out on the second floor corridor. They burst into Helen's room.
Fanny was undressed and in bed, having been put there by Elinor Haskell, who was ministering to her. The ten-mile tramp had completely done her up.
"Why, here are the prodigals! Where did you girls go to? We nearly died of worry!" came from little Fanny. And she held out her arms for Helen.
"Why, children!" exclaimed Elinor. "What's the matter with you? You're all torn! And your shoes --"
She burst out laughing, as Helen held up a shapeless mass of a slipper she had carried all the way home.
"That's good for the dust-shaft now. Listen; we'll tell you about it -- but you must never breathe it to a soul!"
And the whole tale of woe was graphically told by Helen, sitting on the edge of her roommate's couch, laughingly supplemented and vouched for by Molly and appreciated immensely by the listeners.
"And now," concluded the tired Helen, "I suppose I'll have to wear my bedroom slippers round the campus or go barefoot. But never mind! My bedroom slippers will do!"
In spite of her valiant determination, she did not have to carry it out. For next morning, brought there by whom she never found out, Helen's shoebag was discovered hanging to the knob of the door when the rising bell rang.