"Just the same," the smallest Corner House girl murmured in Tess' ear.

"I'm _not_ going to throw my Alice-doll overboard, either for wolfs or linkses--so there!"

CHAPTER XI

EMBERS IN THE GRATE

Mr. Durkin of the c.o.xford Hotel had furnished the party with a hearty lunch to eat while they were en route to Red Deer Lodge, and Ruth had brought two big thermos bottles of hot tea, likewise prepared at the hotel. The drivers had their own lunches, and at noon the party halted in the shelter of a windbreak to breathe the horses and allow them to eat their oats.

Mrs. MacCall and the older girls complained of stiffness from sitting so long in the sledges. Riding so far in the cold was not altogether pleasant; there was no sunshine at all now. The gathering storm had overcast the entire sky, and as they went on after lunch a rising wind began moaning through the forest.

"I don't see why the trees have to make such a meachin' noise," sighed Dot, as they climbed a steep hill so slowly that the rueful sound of the rising gale was quite audible.

"Where did you get such a word, Dot?" demanded Ruth, smiling at her.

"It is a good word. Uncle Rufus uses it," declared the smallest Corner House girl. "And Uncle Rufus never uses bad words."

"Granted," Ruth said. "But what does 'meachin' mean?"

"Why, just as though the wind felt bad and was whimpering about it,"

said Dot, with a.s.surance. "It makes you all shivery to listen to it.

And after we heard that link, and know that there are bears and wolfs about--O-o-oh! what's that, Ruthie?"

Something white had flashed right up in front of the noses of the first team of horses, and with great leaps broke away from the road.

Tom Jonah was at the rear of the procession and did not at first see this bounding shape.

Neale stood up in the second sleigh and clapped his hands sharply together. The white ball stopped--halting right in a snow-patch; being so much like the snow itself in color that those in the sledges could scarcely see it. The sharp crack of Neale's ungloved palms seemed to make the creature cower in the snow. It halted for a moment only, however.

"Oh! The bunny!" gasped Tess, standing up to see.

"A big white hare," Mr. Howbridge said. "I had no idea there were such big ones around here."

The hare burst into high speed again and disappeared, almost before Tom Jonah set out for him.

"Come back, Tom Jonah!" shouted Tess. "Why, you couldn't catch that bunny if you had started ahead of him."

"Wow! that's a good one," said Neale O'Neil. "Tell you what, Aggie, those small sisters of yours are right full of new ideas."

"That is what teacher says is the matter with Robbie Foote," remarked Sammy, thoughtfully.

"How is that?" asked Agnes, expecting some illuminating information from the standpoint of a lower grade pupil.

"Why," Sammy explained, "teacher asked Rob what was the plural of man.

Rob told her 'men.' Then, of course, she had to keep right on at it.

If you do answer her right she goes right at you again," scoffed Sammy. "That's why I don't often answer her right if I can help it. It only makes you trouble."

"Oh! Oh!" chuckled Neale. "A Daniel come to judgment."

"Wait. Let's hear the rest of Sam's story," begged Agnes. "What was Robbie Foote's idea?"

"That's what teacher said--he was full of ideas, only they were silly," went on Sammy. "When he'd told her 'men' was the plural of 'man,' she said: 'What is the plural of child?' He told her 'twins.'

What d'you know about that? She said his ideas were silly."

"I'm not so sure he was silly," laughed Neale.

"I wonder what has become of those Birdsall twins," Agnes said thoughtfully. "Up here in this wild country--"

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Neale. "You don't know anything of the kind.

Those two girls that fisher-woman spoke about--"

"One of them was a boy."

"Well, that doesn't prove anything. We don't even know that the two at the fisher-village were twins."

"But they were brother and sister roaming about--runaways and alone."

"Oh, Aggie!" he cried, "don't make up your mind a thing is so without getting some real evidence first. Mr. Howbridge asked, and he is not at all sure those stragglers were the twins."

"Somehow I just feel that they were," sighed the second Corner House girl, with a confidence that Neale saw it was useless to try to shake.

When Agnes Kenway made up her mind to a thing Neale wagged his head and gave it up.

The party was quite too jolly, however, to bother much about the lost Birdsall twins just then. Even Mr. Howbridge had said nothing about them since his cross-examination of the hotel-keeper back at c.o.xford.

If the twins had come this way, for instance, attempting to reach Red Deer Lodge, surely some of the people of c.o.xford or the woodsmen going back and forth on the tote-road would have met and recognized them.

And if Ralph was dressed in some of his sister's clothing, they would have been the more surely marked.

Two girls of twelve or so traveling into the woods? It seemed quite ridiculous.

For this was indeed a wild country through which the tote-road ran.

The fact of its being a wilderness was marked even to the eyes of those so unfamiliar with such scenes.

Now and then a fox barked from the brakes in the lowland. Jays in droves winged across the clearings with raucous cries. More than one trampled place beside the thickets of edible brush showed where the deer herd had browsed within stone's throw of the tote-road.

And then, as the party came closer to the ridge on which Red Deer Lodge was built, and the twilight began to gather, the big white owls of these northern forests went flapping through the tree-lanes, skimming the snowcrust for the rabbits and other small animals that might be afoot even this early in the evening.

The spread of the wings of the first of these monster owls that they saw was quite six feet from tip to tip, and it almost scared Dot Kenway. With an eerie "Hoo! Hoo! Hoo-oo!" and a swish of wings it crossed the road just ahead of the horses, and made even those plodding beasts toss their heads and p.r.i.c.k up their ears.

"Oh, look at that 'normous great white chicken!" shouted Dot. "Did you ever?"

"It is an owl, child," said Tess.

"An owl as big as _that_?" gasped the smaller girl. "Why--why--it could carry you right off like the eagle that Mr. Lycurgus Billet set his Sue for bait! Don't you 'member?"

"I guess I do remember!" Tess declared. "But an owl isn't like an eagle. It isn't so savage."