"Why! she can"t be _poor_," gasped Helen. "Look at all those trunks she brought with her to Ardmore. And her dresses are tremendously fancy--although we"ve not seen many of them yet."
Ruth stared at her chum for a moment without replying. It was right there and then that she came near to guessing the secret of Rebecca Frayne"s trouble. But she forbore to say anything about it at the time, and went on beside her chum toward the white island, much disturbed in her mind.
Now and then they caught sight of the dancing flames of the campfire.
But when they were nearer the island, the hill was so steep that they lost sight completely of the light.
"Suppose it"s a _man_?" breathed Helen, suddenly, as they began to climb the sh.o.r.e of Bliss Island.
"He won"t eat us," returned Ruth.
"No. They don"t often. Only cannibals, and they are not prevalent in this locality," giggled Helen. "But if it _is_ a man----"
"Then we"ll turn around and go back," said Ruth, coolly. "I haven"t come out here to get acquainted with any male person."
"Bluie! Suppose he"s a real nice boy?"
"There"s no such an animal," laughed Ruth. "That is, not around here at the present moment."
"Oh yes. I see," Helen rejoined drily. "The nearest _nice_ one is at the Seven Oaks Military Academy."
"So you say," Ruth said demurely. "But if it were Tom?"
"Dear old Tom and some of his chums!" cried Helen. "Wouldn"t it be great? This Adamless Eden is rather palling on me, Chum. The other girls have visitors, but our friends are too far away."
"Hush!" advised Ruth. "Whoever it is up there will hear you."
Helen was evidently not at all enamored of this adventure. She lagged behind a little. Yet she would not allow Ruth to go on alone to interview the mysterious camper.
"I tell you what," the black-eyed girl said, after a moment and in a whisper. "I believe that fire is up near the big boulder we looked at--you remember? The Stone Face, do they call it?"
"Quite possibly," Ruth rejoined briskly. "Come on if you"re coming. I"m sure the Stone Face won"t hurt us."
"Not unless it falls on us," giggled Helen.
The grove of big trees that covered this part of the hillside was open, and the chums very easily made their way toward the fire, even on snowshoes. But the shoes naturally made some noise as they scuffed over the snow, and in a minute Ruth stopped and slipped her feet out of the straps, motioning Helen to do the same. They wore overshoes so there was no danger of their getting their feet wet in the snow.
Hand in hand, Ruth and Helen crept forward. They saw the fire flickering just before them. There was a single figure between the fire and the very boulder of which Helen had spoken.
Reaching the edge of the grove the girls gazed without discovery at the camp in the snow. The boulder stood in a small open s.p.a.ce, and it was so high and bulky that it sheltered the fire and the camper quite comfortably. As Ruth had suspected, the latter was the girl she had seen walking upon the southern sh.o.r.e of Bliss Island. She knew her by her figure, if not by her face, which was at the moment hidden.
"She"s alone," whispered Helen, making the words with her lips more than with her voice.
"What _can_ she be doing out here?" was the black-eyed girl"s next demand.
Her chum put out a hand in a gesture of warning and at once walked out of the shelter of the trees and approached the fire. Helen lingered behind. After all, it was so strange a situation that she did not feel very courageous.
The moon had quite broken through the clouds now and as Ruth drew nearer to the fire and the girl, her shadow was projected before her upon the snow. The girl who looked like Maggie suddenly espied this shadow, raised her head, and leaped up with a cry.
"Don"t be frightened, Maggie," said Ruth. "It"s only us two girls."
"My--my name is--isn"t Maggie," stammered the strange girl.
And sure enough, having once seen her closely, Ruth Fielding saw that she was quite wrong in her identification. This was not the girl who had drifted down the Lumano River to the Red Mill and taken refuge with Aunt Alvirah.
This was a much more a.s.sertive person than Maggie--a girl with plenty of health, both of body and mind. Maggie impressed one as being mentally or nervously deficient. Not so this girl who was camping here in the snow on Bliss Island. Yet there was a resemblance to Maggie in the figure of the stranger, and Ruth noted a resemblance in her features, too.
"My goodness me!" she said, laughing pleasantly. "If you"re not our Maggie you look near enough like her to be her sister."
"Well, I haven"t any sister in that college," said the strange girl, shortly. "You"re from Ardmore, aren"t you?"
"Yes," Ruth said, Helen now having joined them. "And we saw your light----"
"My _what_?" demanded the camping girl, who was warmly, though plainly dressed.
"Your campfire. You see," explained Ruth, finding it rather difficult after all to talk to this very self-possessed girl, "we skated around the island to-day----"
"I saw you," said the stranger gruffly. "There were three of you."
"Yes. And I thought you looked like Maggie, then."
"Isn"t this Maggie one of you?" sharply demanded the stranger.
"She"s a girl whom--whom I know," Ruth said quickly. "A really nice girl. And you do look like her. Doesn"t she, Helen?"
"Why--yes--something like," drawled Helen.
"And did you have to come out here to see if I were your friend?" asked the other girl.
"When I saw the campfire--yes," Ruth admitted. "It seemed so strange, you know."
"What seemed strange?" demanded the girl, very tartly. It was plain that she considered their visit an intrusion.
"Why, think of it yourself," Ruth cried, while Helen sniffed audibly. "A girl camping alone on this island--and in a snowstorm."
"It isn"t snowing now," said the girl, smiling grimly.
"But it was when we saw the fire at first," Ruth hastened to say. "You know yourself you would be interested."
"Not enough to come clear out here--must be over a mile!--to see about it," was the rejoinder. "I usually mind my own business."
"So do we, you may be sure!" spoke up Helen, quick to take offence.
"Come away, Ruth."
But the girl of the Red Mill was not at all satisfied. She said, frankly:
"I do wish that you would tell us why you are here? Surely, you won"t remain all night in this lonely place? There is n.o.body else on the island, is there?"
"I should hope not!" exclaimed the girl. "Only you two busybodies."