Billie was shocked and angry.

"He is not," she burst out. "I know Mr.--Mr. French quite well----"

The man broke into a loud rasping laugh.

"Mr. French!" he repeated.

"He's incapable of setting a mountain on fire and he is as gentle and courteous as possible."

There was another laugh. This time it came from within the house and Billie and the doctor recognized the voice of Mr. Lupo.

"You're a friend of Lupo, I see," remarked the doctor looking very hard at the man.

"I guess that's none of your affair," answered the other angrily. "And nothin' agin' him nor me either, for the matter o' that."

The doctor lifted his eyebrows.

"I'd like to hire two or three guides. Are there any about?"

"There ain't no guides connected with this here establishment goin' to go huntin' for crazy Frenchy," announced the man roughly, "if that's what you're wantin' with them. Most of 'em is fightin' the flames anyhow."

The doctor sat silently for a moment looking at the mountaineer, whose eyes shifted uneasily under his steady gaze.

"I would advise you and your friend, Lupo, not to meddle too much in this affair," he said, as the inn keeper with a snarling laugh shuffled back into the house.

Billy turned the automobile and they went slowly down the street.

"If we were in the Kentucky or the Virginia mountains, I should call this a feud," remarked the doctor, "but up here there is something more than a revenge for a quarrel two generations old that creates a situation of this kind. That man has got some ugly reason for withholding his guides. He's a sinister looking wretch, and no man with a shifting pair of eyes can be trusted around the corner."

"But what are we to do?" asked Billie.

"If we can't get guides,--we'll just go alone," answered Dr. Hume. "I think we'll have to find your Mr. French, Miss Billie, seeing that a lot of cut-throats are trying to keep us from doing it."

CHAPTER XIV.

CHANCE NEWS.

Billie and the doctor were indeed in something of a quandary as to what to do about Phoebe's father. It was evident from further inquiry that the tide of general opinion had been turned against Crazy Frenchy; not one soul could be interested in the search for him, not even after an offer of liberal pay.

"He ain't no good anyhow," one man said. "He and his daughter holds themselves above common people even when they don't have enough to keep body and soul together. They lives on property that ain't theirs by rights, and they don't belong in this section of the country. The father's crazy and the neighborhood will be glad to git rid of him."

"An' I'd jes' like to mention," added another man, "the people as takes up for 'em ain't goin' to find it no ways a easy proposition."

Certainly Lupo had enlisted the sympathies of the entire village in his own behalf.

"I told your friend at the hotel a moment ago," said the doctor, "that he and Lupo had better be careful how they meddled in this business. If you don't want to engage yourself to me to find this unfortunate man, you have a perfect right to refuse. It's only a common act of kindness at any rate. But I would warn you that if you and your friends intend to make trouble, you will get into trouble. That's all."

The mountaineer scowled.

"We can prove he set Razor Back on fire," he said. "He was seen in the neighborhood prowling about with a can of oil yesterday morning."

"At what time?" demanded Billie quickly.

"I don't know the exact hour, lady, but it was some time in the forenoon."

"Well," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Billie angrily, "that shows how much evidence you have to go upon. There's not a word of truth in it and you have no right to spread that wicked report founded on a falsehood. Mr. French was at Sunrise Camp just about that time and he couldn't have got anywhere near Razor Back Mountain in hours. We have a witness to prove what we say."

"It may not have been forenoon, come to think of it," said the man doggedly.

"Nonsense," exclaimed the exasperated Billie, as the "Comet" dashed away with a contemptuous honk-honk, leaving the defeated mountaineer standing in the middle of the road.

Only one person was awake in all the camp when the doctor and Billie returned: Alberdina, busy ironing pink-tinted clothes in the lean-to.

Miss Campbell and the girls were napping on the upper porch and Phoebe still slept on a couch in the living room, while Ben and Percy had not returned from their search for news of her father.

"Miss Billie," remarked the doctor, "if you will be kind enough to fix me up a lunch, I think I'll pack my knapsack and start on the road again. I can't say how long I shall be gone, but you mustn't be uneasy if I don't get back for a day or two. The boys will look after you and if you have any real trouble, you had better telegraph your father. If possible, try and keep Phoebe right here. Those men will go no further than threats in regard to us. They know we are too powerful for them, but I couldn't say the same for that poor girl and her father. I suppose jealousy and Lupo's treachery are the motives behind it. The father does better work than any of them can do and the mountaineers resent the difference between them, whatever it is, birth, breeding, education. But we can't judge them by the usual standards, of course. They have never had any chances, these people, shut in by this wall of mountains. There is not much inspiration to be charitable and kind, living in one of these little shanties during the long cold winters. It's a pretty fine nature that doesn't get warped and narrowed by the life."

"Phoebe's didn't," thought Billie, while she sliced bread for the doctor's lunch.

After he had departed with his staff and his telescope and his knapsack, Billie sat down in a steamer chair under the trees and began to think.

She lifted her eyes to the wall of mountains now mystical and unreal under their mantle of blue shadow. How could treachery and hatred and jealousy exist where there was so much beauty? It seemed to her that she had only to look about her to be inspired and uplifted; but Billie was too young to realize that it takes more than scenery to furnish that kind of inspiration.

"I am not tired and I am not sleepy," she thought. "Must I sit here all the afternoon waiting for the others to wake?" She glanced at her watch. "Only a quarter to three. Why can't I take a walk? It's against the rules as laid down by papa for women members, but that was only a joke anyhow and I shan't go far."

Billie chose a trail they often took after supper for the reason that it was brought to an early finish by the bed of a creek dry in summer, though probably a brave stream in the spring after the thaws. But it was a pretty walk, tunneled through the forest, carpeted with dried pine needles and bordered on either side by ferns.

Strolling along, Billie thought of many things; of the mountain on the other side of Indian Head on which fires had started and where bands of men were now fighting the flames. That was a dreadful thing to do, to set a forest on fire; a crime against nature as well as against man. She thought of Phoebe's father, perhaps injured, or worse, who could tell?

Then with a mental leap she thought of Richard Hook and his sister Maggie; the charm of their personalities; their simplicity; their joy in living. Billie wondered if she could be happy if she were poor, really quite poor. It was rather fun cooking, with Alberdina to clean up after them. It was only for a little while and it was just a sort of game.

"It would be a dog's life to keep up forever," thought Billie, "but Richard and Maggie Hook would never admit it. They make the best of being poor and pretend that living like Gypsies is the most delightful way of spending one's vacation. I think they are just fine. There is Phoebe, too. How well she has got on without anything, education, money, friends. She is wonderful."

Who was Phoebe? Who was her father? Were they not mysterious people?

When the veil was lifted at last, Billie felt convinced that it would disclose no ordinary ident.i.ty. They had the marks of distinguished people in exile. There was a look of family about them both that no ragged attire could disguise.

Toward the end of the trail, Billie saw an old woman hobbling toward her, leaning on a stout stick. She looked remarkably like one of the aged forest trees unexpectedly come to life. A gnarled, brown, weather-beaten old creature she was, who reminded Billie of a dwarfed apple tree she had seen in j.a.pan, a little old bent thing said to have been over two hundred years old. Attached to the woman's waist was a pocket ap.r.o.n bulging with herbs, camomile and catnip, wood sorrel and sa.s.safras root.

"Now, if Mary were here," thought Billie, "she would at once make a story of this: 'The Princess and the Old Witch.' I am sure Mary would call me a princess," she added modestly.

When the young girl and the old witch met, they paused without exactly knowing why. The herb gatherer had a strange, small, yellow face, crossed and re-crossed with wrinkles.

"Good afternoon," said Billie politely, not knowing what else to say.

The old woman waved aside this greeting with her stick.

"You come from Sunrise Camp?" she asked in a voice as cracked as her face was wrinkled.