"She should be punished for this," agreed Ruth. "I wonder where the child's father is."

"Didn't you find out last night?" Helen asked.

"Only that he is 'resting'."

"Some poor, miserable loafer, is he?" demanded Aunt Kate, with acrimony.

"No. It seems that he is an actor," Ruth explained. "He is out of work."

"But he can't think anything of his daughter to see her treated like this," concluded Aunt Kate.

"She is very proud of him. His professional name is Montague Fitzmaurice."

"Some name!" murmured Jennie.

"Their family name is Pike," said Ruth, still seriously. "I do not think the man can know how this aunt treats little Bella. There's Tom!"

The young captain appeared behind the enraged housekeeper at the open door of the loft. One glance told him what Bella had done. He placed a firm hand on Miss Timmins' shoulder.

"If you had made that girl fall you would go to jail," Tom said sternly.

"You may go, yet. I will try to put you there. And in any case you shall not have the management of the child any longer. Go back to the house!"

For once the housekeeper was awed. Especially when Henri Marchand, too, appeared in the loft.

"Madame will return to the house. We shall see what can be done for the child. _Gare!_"

Perhaps the woman was a little frightened at last by what she had done--or what she might have done. At least, she descended the ladders to the ground floor without argument.

The two young men planned swiftly how to rescue the sobbing child. But when Tom first spoke to Bella, proposing to help her down, she looked over the edge of the roof at him and shook her head.

"No! I ain't coming down," she announced emphatically. "Aunt Suse will near about skin me alive."

"She shall not touch you," Tom promised.

"She'll give me my nevergitovers, just as she says. You can't stay here and watch her."

"But we'll find a way to keep her from beating you when we are gone," Tom promised. "Don't you fear her at all."

"I don't care where you put me, Aunt Suse will find me out. She'll send Elnathan Spear after me."

"I don't know who Spear is----"

"He's the constable," sobbed Bella.

"Well, he sha'n't spear you," declared Tom. "Come on, kid. Don't be scared, and we'll get you down all right."

He found the clothes-stick Miss Timmins had abandoned and used it for a brace. With a rope tied to the handle of the plank door and drawn taut, it was held half open. Tom then climbed out upon and straddled the door and raised his arms to receive the girl when she lowered herself over the eaves.

She was light enough--little more than skin and bone, Tom declared--and the latter lowered her without much effort into Henri's arms.

When the three girls and Aunt Kate at the tavern window saw this safely accomplished they hurried back to their rooms to dress.

"Something must be done for that poor child," Ruth Fielding said with decision.

"Are you going to adopt her?" Helen asked.

"And send her to Briarwood?" put in Jennie.

"That might be the very best thing that could happen to her," Ruth rejoined soberly. "She has lived at times in a theatrical boarding house and has likewise traveled with her father when he was with a more or less prosperous company.

"These experiences have made her, after a fashion, grown-up in her ways and words. But in most things she is just as ignorant as she can be. Her future is not the most important thing just now. It is her present."

Helen heard the last word from the other room where she was dressing, and she cried:

"That's it, Ruthie. Give her a present and tell her to run away from her aunt. She's a spiteful old thing!"

"You do not mean that!" exclaimed her chum. "You are only lazy and hate responsibility of any kind. We must do something practical for Bella Pike."

"How easily she says 'we'," Helen scoffed.

"I mean it. I could not sleep to-night if I knew this child was in her aunt's control."

A knock on the door interrupted the discussion. Ruth, who was quite dressed now, responded. A lout of a boy, who evidently worked about the stables, stood grinning at the door.

"Miz Timmins says you folks kin all get out. She won't have you served no breakfast. She don't want none of you here."

"My goodness!" wailed Jennie. "Dispossessed--and without breakfast!"

"Where is the proprietor of this hotel, boy?" Ruth asked.

"You mean Mr. Drovers? He ain't here. Gone to Boston. But that wouldn't make no dif'rence. Suse Timmins is boss."

"Oh, me! Oh, my!" groaned Jennie, to whom the prospect was tragic.

Jennie's appet.i.te was never-failing.

The boy slouched away just as Tom and Henri Marchand appeared with Bella between them.

"You poor, dear child!" cried Ruth, running along the hall to meet them.

Bella struggled to escape from the boys. But Tom and Colonel Marchand held her by either hand.

"Easy, young one!" advised Captain Cameron.

"I never meant to do no harm, Miss!" cried Bella. "I--I just wanted to see how I'd look in them clothes. I never do have anything decent to wear."

"Why, my dear, don't mind about that," said Ruth, taking the lathlike girl in her arms. "If you had asked us we would have let you try on the things, I am sure."

"Aunt Suse would near 'bout give me my nevergitovers--and she will yet!"