They had played a few games before starting back, but to walk back five miles and arrive in time for lunch, even a late one, precluded a long stay at the picnic grounds. Besides this was a _hike_. It was about ten-thirty when Betty received her invitation. The girls strolled along, not caring much whether they made any "record time" or not. This would be their last hike, they supposed, while the country was still so pretty.

Chet, who had asked the privilege of "seeing Betty home" with much fun and nonsense, had gotten separated from her group and was seen in the distance with Carolyn and Peggy. Kathryn was nowhere in sight.

And now they had reached that wild stretch through which the early hikers had come and where Carolyn, Peggy, Lucia and Mathilde had rested, on one of the hills. That one they avoided but crossed the little stream on stones recently provided by the hikers. Lightly they jumped from one to the other, balancing uncertainly on the log which was left by former waters, turned from its proper position, as Marcella said. "There must have been a big current here," said Marcella, "to move that old thing that's been here for years!"

"There ought to be some flowers along the little stream, ought there not?" asked Lucia, whose English was often a bit formal.

"I think those frosts were pretty bad on the wild flowers, Lucia,"

replied Marcella. But Lucia was strolling up stream along a low bank lined with bushes, and the other girls followed her. Betty heard another meadow lark and turned to follow with her eyes the course of a hawk that flew from a dead tree back from the stream. "That's a marsh hawk," she said, turning to Lucia, only to find Lucia rising with an exclamation from where she had been stooping close to Betty. She held up her hand, looking at it. "I've been bitten!" she exclaimed. "What sort of snakes do you have here, Betty?"

"Oh--a lot of them, most of them harmless!" said Betty, startled, but not wanting to frighten Lucia, who was white, yet with her lips pressed together in perfect self-control. She whipped out her handkerchief hastily. "We must make a tourniquet at once. Let me wipe this off--and I'll suck out the poison, Lucia. I did once when Doris was bitten."

Betty's memory went back to one awful experience alone in the woods with Doris.

"You will not," firmly replied Lucia. "It is dangerous for you might have some broken spot in your mouth. Reach in my pocket, Betty. I carry stuff for this sort of thing. Mother told me to bring it."

As she talked, Lucia, though white and trembling, was squeezing the wound, now bleeding a little, while Betty shakily was tying the handkerchief about Lucia's wrist, just above the scars and stooped for a stick to draw it tightly. Marcella, meantime, was at hand without a word and reached in Lucia's pocket instead of Betty.

"Look out!" cried Lucia as when Betty stooped there was a rustle in the gra.s.s and something long and slim darted across the little path between the thickly lined stream and other bushes at this point. It all happened almost too quickly to describe. Betty recoiled, Marcella s.n.a.t.c.hing the little stick from her hand and not losing a minute in tightening the bandage or tourniquet.

"Lucia--I saw it! I think it's only a garter snake!"

Betty gave one quick glance at Lucia, seeing that Lucia herself was pouring something from a tiny vial into the wound. The snake was lying under the fallen leaves, Betty thought, where a maple tree had been shedding its brown and golden foliage. There was a stone of good size at the very foot of the tree and this Betty seized, standing a moment to locate the snake if she could. She thought that she detected a slight movement under a pile of leaves and launched the stone, stepping back immediately after to pick up a branch, thick and broken, that also lay fairly near.

But the stick was not needed then. The stone, to Betty's own surprise, had hit the mark. There was a great whipping of leaves for a few moments. In spite of weeds and other growth Betty could see the pattern on the little snake, not so long after all--oh, thanks be--it was a garter snake! Betty had dreaded its being either a rattler or a copperhead. There were what the boys called vipers, too, she had heard.

How sensible of Lucia to have come prepared!

"You've got it, Betty," said Marcella with excitement. "It's only a garter snake, Lucia--I'm sure. How do you feel?"

"All right," said Lucia, though her pale face did not bear testimony to her words. "I ought to have used my knife to open up the place a little.

You do it, Marcella! No, you'd hate to hurt me, wouldn't you?"

Bracing up with her words, Lucia drew a little pearl-handled knife from her other pocket and carefully enlarged the punctures made by the snake.

She paid not a bit of attention to Betty or the struggles of the snake caught by the stone.

Betty, who had seen d.i.c.k kill snakes but had always felt rather sorry for the snake and had never killed one herself, was bracing herself to finish what she had begun. But when she cleared away the leaves with her stick and could see the results of her throw, she saw that the stone had crushed the snake's head and that the demise would not take long.

Nothing more was necessary and she turned from the painful sight to Lucia, who had succeeded in what she had attempted. My, but Lucia was brave!

"I can't be sure, girls, that that was the snake that bit me," said Lucia, "so I'll just do everything, just as if it were something very poisonous. There isn't any of the venom that's very good to get into your system, I imagine. Can we sit down somewhere?"

The girls helped Lucia to a spot safe and clear where the hill began to rise. None of the others were in sight, though it had been only a few minutes since they had separated from several of them. Mathilde, to be sure, was there, but useless.

"You feel all wobbly, I know, Lucia," said Betty, her arm around Lucia, who sat without a word, though her brows were drawn together in a frown.

"Yes, yes. It is painful. Betty, you could loosen the tourniquet now, I'm sure, and suppose you tie it again a little higher up."

"Oh, I wish we had some way of getting you home," said Marcella. "I'll watch and hail somebody. Lean over on Betty, Lucia."

Marcella was afraid that Lucia was going to faint. But that did not happen. "I do feel a bit sick, Marcella, but I never fainted in my life and I'll not begin now. I can walk home. It isn't so much, but not being sure what sort of a bite it is, I've had to hurt myself more, you see.

I'd rather look for flowers and birds, Betty, than for snakes. I thought I saw a flower under the leaves and stooped for it--and found a snake instead!"

"Oh, it's just too bad--your first hike and everything!" Betty was loosening the tourniquet and making ready to put it on again. Marcella had run around the hill.

Presently two girls made their appearance and Marcella came back. "We'll make our way over to the road, Lucia. I've got a guard stationed to stop any automobile that looks as if it were being driven by anybody safe--n.o.body that would kidnap us for ransom, I mean. Come on, if you think you can walk as far as the road."

"I could walk all the way home, Marcella," said Lucia, smiling for the first time. "There is nothing the matter with me but a scare. Wait till I take a look at that snake!"

By this time Betty dared push the stone off the snake's head, and they all regarded it. They all agreed that it was a "big garter snake,"

though Lucia remarked that she could tell better about its belonging to the dangerous group if she could have seen the shape of the head. "But it's shapeless now, poor thing," said Betty. "You did a bad thing for yourself, snakey, when you bit Lucia!"

"It was only protecting itself," said Lucia.

"What was that medicine, Lucia?"

"I don't know how Mother fixed it, but I heard her ask Uncle if he kept any permanganate of potash crystals, and when he said no, she sent to the drug store. She wrapped this bottle in cotton and told me not to lose it. I had full instructions what to do if I got bitten by a--rattler, I believe. Mother makes a lot of fuss over me!" Lucia closed her remark rather apologetically, but the other girls were far from any critical thought. The Countess Coletti had "fussed" to some purpose this time. If it had been a diamond-backed rattlesnake! And perhaps it wasn't the garter snake that had bitten Lucia. Mathilde now kept bringing that up with little sympathetic remarks like, "It is such a shame, Lucia! I do hope that it will prove to be nothing serious. I don't think that it _could_ have been a rattlesnake, do you, Betty?"

Mathilde had screamed and run to a safe distance before she knew what it was all about. Cautiously she had approached to see what had happened and ran again as Betty started after the snake. Again she had tried to come up and be sympathetic, but could not stand it to see the wound. "I faint so easily, girls," she had said, weakly, when the knife came out.

"I'll have to go away."

"Well if there's any fainting to be done," Marcella had said, "don't do it here!"

But the girls scarcely thought of Mathilde at all until it was all over and she sat down by Lucia on the hillside. Alas for Mathilde, and she had wanted to join the sorority to which Marcella belonged! Yet Mathilde had not been trained to courage or helpfulness and was not altogether to blame for her inefficiency on this occasion. It had been a difficult situation, when speed was a necessary element and knowing what to do another.

"I looked out for the stick," said Mathilde, handing the alpenstock to Lucia, who took it with a smile.

"I'm glad you did," she replied courteously. "No, Betty, with this I'll need no help. I'm getting along famously now and don't feel sick any more. Come on."

They made their way to the little dirt road and walked slowly toward the city, relieving the guard, as Marcella put it. The other girls hurried on, promising to send back any conveyance that they might come across, provided it were possible to engage it. "Don't take the trouble," urged Lucia.

But when they had walked about a mile further, Lucia was not sorry when the Allen car with Chauncey and Kathryn came speeding toward them.

Without a word Lucia climbed in, smiling her welcome. Marcella, Mathilde and Betty followed, Betty asking Kathryn how it happened.

"One of the girls went to a house and telephoned," replied Kathryn.

"Chauncey had just gotten home after taking the things Miss Fox wanted brought back to wherever she wanted 'em. He picked me up on the way--some of us were just getting into town, and so we're here. Now tell me, are you all right, Lucia?"

"Yes; just tired from being scared. I wonder why the girl didn't telephone for our car."

"Afraid of scaring your mother, she said," Kathryn replied. "We'll take you right up home."

"I want Betty, too, please," said Lucia. "Will you come?"

"Of course I'll come," said Betty, though wondering how she would get a chance to telephone her mother.

It was Betty's first near look at the beautiful Murchison place when Chauncey drove in and stopped at its impressive front, but Betty had other thoughts and dreaded the coming interview with the countess.

Perhaps she would not be at home, however, and that would be worse.

A butler admitted the two girls, though Lucia did not ring and hurried through the hall and up the stairs. "I need you as a shock absorber,"

said Lucia in a low tone, a half smile twisting her lips, and Betty made a low response. But Betty thought that she would not enjoy being a shock absorber and felt none too comfortable. Still, she thought to herself, the important thing was to make sure that Lucia was "all right."