"But, really, we came because we were interested in what went on here.

It seems so strange for a girl, alone----"

"You've said that before," was the dry reply. "I am a girl alone. I am here on my own business. And _that_ isn't yours."

"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Helen, angrily.

"Well, if you don't like being spoken to plainly, you needn't stay," the strange girl flung at her.

"I see that very well," returned Helen, tossing her head. "_Do_ come away, Ruth."

"Ha!" exclaimed the strange girl, suddenly looking at Ruth more intently. "Are you called Ruth?"

"Yes. Ruth Fielding is my name."

"Oh!" and the girl's face changed in its expression and a little flush came into her cheeks. "I've--I've heard of you."

"Indeed! How?" cried Ruth, eagerly. She felt that this girl must really have some connection with Maggie at the mill, she looked so much like the waif.

"Oh," said the other girl slowly, looking away, "I heard you wrote picture plays. I saw one of them. That's all."

Ruth was silent for a moment. Helen kept tugging at her arm and urging her to go.

"We--we can do nothing for you?" queried the girl of the Red Mill at last.

"You can get off the island--that's as much as I care," said the strange girl, with a harsh laugh. "You're only intruding where you're not wanted."

"Well, I do declare!" burst out Helen again. "She is the most impolite thing. _Do_ come away, Ruthie."

"We really came with the best intentions," Ruth added, as she turned away with her chum. "It--it doesn't look right for a girl to be alone at a campfire on this island--and at night, too."

"I sha'n't stay here all night," the girl said shortly. "You needn't fret. If you want to know, I just built the fire to get warm by before I started back."

"Back where?" Ruth could not help asking.

"_That_ you don't know--and you won't know," returned the strange girl, and turned her back upon them.

CHAPTER XVI

WHAT WAS IN REBECCA'S TRUNK

The two chums did not speak a word to each other until they had recovered their snowshoes and set out down the rough side of Bliss Island for the ice. Then Helen sputtered:

"People like _that_! Did you ever see such a person? I never was so insulted----"

"Pshaw! She was right--in a way," Ruth said coolly. "We had no real business to pry into her affairs."

"Well!"

"I got you into it. I'm sorry," the girl of the Red Mill said. "I thought it really was Maggie, or I wouldn't have come over here."

"She's something like that Maggie girl," proclaimed Helen. "_She_ was nice, I thought."

"Maybe this girl is nice, taken under other circ.u.mstances," laughed Ruth. "I really would like to know what she is over here for."

"No good, I'll be bound," said the pessimistic Helen.

"And another thing," Ruth went on to say, as she and her chum reached the level of the frozen lake, "did you notice that pick handle?"

"That what?" demanded Helen, in amazement.

"Pickaxe handle--I believe it was," Ruth said thoughtfully. "It was thrust out of the snow pile she had sc.r.a.ped away from the boulder. And, moreover, the ground looked as though it had been dug into."

"Why, the ground is as hard as the rock itself," Helen cried. "There are six or eight inches of frost right now."

"I guess that's so," agreed Ruth. "Perhaps that's why she built such a big fire."

"What _do_ you mean, Ruth Fielding?" cried her chum.

"I think she wanted to dig there for something," Ruth replied reflectively. "I wonder what for?"

When they had returned to Dare Hall and had got their things off and were warm again, they looked out of the window. The campfire on the island had died out.

"She's gone away, of course," sighed Ruth. "But I would like to know what she was there for."

"One of the mysteries of life," said Helen, as she made ready for bed.

"Dear me, but I'm tired!"

She was asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. Not so Ruth. The latter lay awake some time wondering about the odd girl on the island and her errand there.

Ruth Fielding had another girl's troubles on her mind, however--and a girl much closer to her. The girl on the island merely teased her imagination. Rebecca Frayne's difficulties seemed much more important to Ruth.

Of course, there was no real reason for Ruth to take up cudgels for her odd cla.s.smate. Indeed, she did not feel that she could do that, for she was quite convinced that Rebecca Frayne was wrong. Nevertheless, she was very sorry for the girl. The trouble over the tam-o'-shanter had become the most talked-of incident of the school term. For the several following days Rebecca was scarcely seen outside her room, save in going to and from her cla.s.ses.

She did not again appear in the dining hall. How she arranged about meals Ruth and her friends could not imagine. Then the housekeeper admitted to Ruth that she had allowed the lonely girl to get her own little meals in her room, as she had cooking utensils and an alcohol lamp.

"It is not usually allowed, I know. But Miss Frayne seems to have come to college prepared to live in just that way. She is a small eater, anyway. And--well, anything to avoid friction."

"Of course," Ruth said to Helen and Jennie Stone, "lots of girls live in furnished rooms and get their own meals--working girls and students. But it is not a system generally allowed at college, and at Ardmore especially. We shall hear from the faculty about it before the matter is done with."

"Well, we're not doing it," scoffed Jennie. "And that Rebecca Frayne is behaving like a chump."

"But how she does stick to that awful tam!" groaned Helen.

"Stubborn as a mule," agreed Jennie.