, her enthusiasm was almost equally
great.

Later on the girls found a tiny restaurant in the village where they
drank hot coffee and ate innumerable delicious German cookies. For they
had left word that they were not to be expected at home for luncheon,
since the best of their excursion was to take place after the trip to
the village.

For a long time Betty had a place in mind she had particularly wished
Esther and Polly to see and now this was their first opportunity since
Polly's arrival for a long walk.

"It is only a specially lovely bit of woods with a little house inside,
which looks as though it might be the place where the old witch lived in
the story of 'Hansel and Gretel,'" she explained. "The house is built of
logs, but there are the same tiny window panes and a front door with a
great bolt across it. It is so gloomy and terrifying that it is
perfectly delicious," she concluded gaily, for they had been walking for
some distance to get into her enchanted forest and so far no sign of it
had appeared. Plainly the other two girls were growing weary.

Half an hour later, however, both Esther and Polly were sufficiently
good sportsmen to confess that their long walk had not been in vain. For
Betty's forest, as they chose to call the place, was entrancingly
lovely, the greenest, darkest, coolest spot in all that country round.
And so curiously secluded! Hundreds of great forest trees and shrubbery
so thick that it must have been left uncut and untrampled upon for many
years. Indeed, except for Betty's previous acquaintance with a path that
led to the house in the woods, there could have been no possibility of
the girls' discovering it. For once having climbed a low stone fence,
they had seen and heard nothing except a solitary deer that had fled at
their approach and an unusual number of wild birds.

Not far away from the little house Polly and Esther found seats within a
few feet of each other on the trunks of two old trees, while Betty
stretched herself along the ground, closing her eyes as though she had
been a veritable Sleeping Princess. The three girls had no thought of
being disturbed, for the little house was locked and barred and entirely
deserted.

Then in the midst of the peace and silence of the scene a bullet
whistled through the air. And following the report of a rifle Esther
tumbled quietly off her resting place.

CHAPTER XI

And Its Consequences

Betty bent over her sister first,