to examine the boat. Although it was
somewhat marred, it was not damaged, and Uncle Jabez was satisfied that
if nobody claimed the boat he would be amply repaid for his trouble.

Naturally, the two girls fluttered about the stranger a good deal when
Aunt Alvirah had brought her out of her faint. Ruth was particularly
attracted by "Maggie" as the stranger announced her name to be.

"I was working at one of those summer-folks' camps up the river. Mr.
Bender's, it was," she explained to Ruth, later. "But all the folks went
last night, and this morning I was going across the river with my
bag--oh, did you find my bag, Miss?"

"Surely," Ruth laughed. "It is here, beside your bed."

"Oh, thank you," said the girl. "Mr. Bender paid me last night. One of
the men was to take me across the river, and I sat down and waited, and
nobody came, and by and by I fell into a nap and when I woke up I was
out in the river, all alone. My! I was frightened."

"Then you have no reason for going back to the camp?" asked Ruth,
thoughtfully.

"No--Miss. I'm through up there for the season. I'll look for another
situation--I--I mean job," she added stammeringly.

"We will telephone up the river and tell them you are all right," Ruth
said.

"Oh, thank you--Miss."

Ruth asked her several other questions, and although Maggie was
reserved, her answers were satisfactory.

"But what's goin' to become of the gal?" Uncle Jabez asked that evening
after supper, when he and his niece were in the farmhouse kitchen alone.

Aunt Alvirah had carried tea and toast in to the patient and was sitting
by her.

The girl of the Red Mill thought Maggie did not seem like the usual
"hired help" whom she had seen. She seemed much more refined than one
might expect a girl to be of the class to which she claimed to belong.

Ruth looked across the table at her cross-grained old relative and made
no direct reply to his question. She was very sure that, after all, he
would be kind to the strange girl if Maggie actually needed to be
helped. But Ruth had an idea that Maggie was quite capable of helping
herself.

"Uncle Jabez," the girl of the Red Mill said to the old man, softly, "do
you know something?"

"Huh?" grunted Uncle Jabez. "I know a hull lot more than you young
sprigs gimme credit for knowin'."

"Oh! I didn't mean it that way," and Ruth laughed cheerily at him. "I
mean that I have discovered something, and I wondered if you had
discovered the same