Alberdina groaned and her stupid eyes became humid with terror.

"Helb! Helb!" she called. "Helb bring. Mein Gott in himmel, helb!"

No answer came from the silent camp.

"Ees it for dis, den, I haf to you come?" she cried, addressing the circle of mountains shimmering in opalescent light. Far down from the valley below came the long clear note of a bugle, probably of some coaching party. An impudent woodp.e.c.k.e.r seated on a limb above her commenced an insistent, aggravating tapping.

Alberdina made another struggle to loose her bonds and then settled back weeping. At last merciful sleep brought her oblivion. The mountains shimmered in the heat waves. The sunlight slanting through the trees cast flickering golden shadows on the carpet of pine needles. The tinkle of a cowbell broke the stillness. In her dreams the Swiss girl was reminded of her own cherished uplands, where in the festive cheese-making time she had gathered with other maids and youths and danced to the music of the zither. Zither, did she say? But, had she been dreaming then, all the while? Was not that a zither now mingling its fairy music with the notes of the cow bell? Alberdina opened her eyes.

"Helb! Helb! I asg you helb!" she called.

The music stopped instantly and a man, tall, slender, with an indescribably distinguished air, approached, carrying the zither under his arm.

"You called?" he asked courteously.

Alberdina burst into a torrent of excited German. She rolled her prominent eyes to indicate her bonds. Streams of tears flowed down her cheeks, or taking a short cut, ran over the bridge of her nose and dropped down a precipice to her heaving bosom. Phoebe's father watched her with an expression of gentle bewilderment. He seemed to be trying to recall something an infinite distance away, like one of those inexplicable reminiscences that flash through our minds and are gone before we can grasp their significance.

"It's useless," he said, shaking his head. "But something has happened to you? Oh, yes, you have been tied up."

Taking a bone-handled clasp knife from his pocket, he carefully cut the ropes wound about her. Alberdina bounded out of the chair like a big, fleshy catapult.

"Ach, himmel, I thangs mag to you, sir," she cried respectfully, for there was something in this wanderer which commanded deference, although he did wear a threadbare suit and mountain brogans.

"You know who did this, my girl?" he asked.

She shook her head and ran into the camp beyond. The locker rooms on the two sleeping porches were in confusion. The contents of drawers and trunks had been dumped to the floor and writing portfolios overhauled.

But, apparently, nothing had been taken, because there was nothing valuable enough to tempt the most eager burglar. What little ready money they had the campers had carried with them, and there was no jewelry to steal. Only Alberdina had been robbed. With many deep guttural exclamations she found that her own little emigrant trunk had not been overlooked in the pillage and her purse, containing ten dollars, was gone.

The gentleman with the zither turned to go.

"I came to find a physician," he said. "Is there none here?"

"I know nod," answered the girl, shaken with sobs.

He lifted his old slouch hat.

"I bid you good day," he said, and started away, then turning back, he exclaimed: "Perhaps I ought not to leave you here alone. But I must not stay away so long. Phoebe will be frightened. Will you come with me to my home?"

Alberdina shook her head. She was half afraid of the strange man. Who knows but it might have been this stranger, himself, who had robbed her of her savings?

"No, no; I vill stay here. The vorst is over yet already. Dey haf me robbed of my moneys. I no more haf. Dey vill not come bag."

Having so spoken, she returned to her labors and was presently hanging on the line a long row of deep pink clothing, headed by the red silk handkerchief, the iniquitous author of the wicked deed.

In the meantime the motorists had proceeded joyfully on their way. They sang and joked and made so merry that Dr. Hume felt that he had gone back fifteen years in his busy life and was a boy himself. The road as indicated on the map in the road book was cut through forests of primeval growth. Sometimes it descended into the valley past villages and farm houses. Once it took them through a splendid tract of land dedicated with its club house to St. Hubert, patron saint of the hunt.

At last it began by degrees to climb upward, and with a sudden turn around the mountain side, they came into view of an exquisite little lake, reflecting in its mirrored depths the peaks of the high mountains encircling it. Hundreds of silver birches, slender and elegant, fringed its edges, gleaming white against a background of impenetrable green.

At one corner of the lake were a small boathouse and restaurant, where customers are perpetually served with tea and maple cake. Long ago they had eaten lunch and were quite ready for more refreshments. Then everybody but Miss Campbell took a dip in the lake. The hours sped past and the sun was well on its downward grade before they realized it was time to return.

In the meantime, Billie, always eager to find out about new roads and new trails, had been questioning one of the guides at the boathouse.

"He says there's a walk called the 'river trail' only two miles long that we could take, and meet the 'Comet' at a bridge at the end. Don't you think some of us could take it, Dr. Hume? It's right through the most wonderful pine forests,--one of the most beautiful walks in the Adirondacks, he says."

"But who will run the motor car?" asked the doctor, beetling his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows.

"I will," Ben volunteered, and it was accordingly arranged that Dr. Hume and Percy should conduct the girls along the river trail while Miss Campbell and Ben proceeded by the road in the car.

It was all very simple. Miss Campbell was to take a nap while Ben looked after the "Comet's" needs and in the course of half an hour, or at their leisure, they were to take the road. In the meantime, the others, with good walking, would have ample time to make the two miles through the forest. They bade each other a casual farewell since they were to meet again so soon, and led by the doctor, plunged into the forest.

The ground had been cleared of undergrowth, so that looking up the side of the mountain, at the foot of which gurgled a little river, one could see a vast mult.i.tude of tall straight pine trees and occasionally the flash of a silver birch. Rank on rank they stood in infinite perspective; and sometimes an aged beech tree generalled their march and sometimes a magnificent oak spread out his venerable arms with a gesture of command. But the rank and file were pines; gray grenadiers, still upright with the years; young stripling pines, eager to be on the march.

And always they seemed to be going the same way over the mountains to the frontiers of the world, and always through their branches came the murmur of their martial song.

Nowhere had Billie seen so impressive, so magnificent a forest. She thought of the cryptomerias in j.a.pan, but they were more like the gigantic pillars of a cathedral, while these hurrying hordes of pines and birches were like human beings. They suggested romances: lovers in the forests; knights in armor; wicked enchantresses.

Once Dr. Hume paused and pointed to a cleared s.p.a.ce beyond. There, standing under a great pine tree looking at them with startled eyes were a doe and her young. In another instant they were gone, leaving the campers holding their breath.

In a little more than an hour they reached the end of the trail, where a foot bridge made of two logs took them over the turbulent little river.

But no "Comet" stood waiting for them at the rendezvous with Ben at the wheel and Miss Campbell on the back seat. To be sure the road was twice as long, as the trail had wound around the side of the mountain for some five miles, but that was nothing to a motor car.

"Might as well sit down and wait," suggested the doctor.

They seated themselves in a row on a log expecting every minute to see the familiar blue car loom into sight.

But the lagging moments dragged themselves into half an hour and still the "Comet" lingered.

"I think we'd better walk back," said Billie, beginning to feel just a tinge of uneasiness.

"Perhaps it would be as well," echoed the doctor. "They have had a breakdown, no doubt."

The band of wayfarers feeling very weary after the rough walk along the river trail began their march back toward the lake.

CHAPTER XI.

A COMEDY OF ERRORS.

The original lake party might have served as an excellent ill.u.s.tration of the history of many princ.i.p.alities and nations. Having suffered a division and then a subdivision and finally a breaking up into fractional groups, it became as a weakened and shattered government, powerless to help itself.

It soon became evident that Mary Price was too weary to take the long walk back to the lake.

She was left therefore by the roadside with Percy and Elinor, while Dr.

Hume, Nancy and Billie went on.

"It will probably be no time at all before we pick them up," said the doctor cheerfully, but they made the entire walk to the lake house and there was no "Comet" to be seen.

"It left here two hours ago," the boatman informed them. "Maybe they went on to the second bridge. That's half a mile beyond the first one.