leaving that task entirely
to Richard Ashton. And though under ordinary circumstances neither girl
would have needed help, tonight Esther was strangely tired. All day,
since the early hour of leaving their little German cottage, she had
been under unusual strain. So that now, though she was ashamed of it,
remembering her long training in outdoor life, now and then she did
manage to stumble and to have to clutch either at Polly or at Dr. Ashton
for support.

In one of these moments of delay, Carl von Renter did hesitate for an
instant, calling back over his shoulder: "We will reach the path in a
short time. It is the same path which you took through the woods to my
hunting lodge several weeks ago."

But when they finally reached this path their leader had disappeared
into the distance ahead of them, leaving the three strangers to stumble
on through the darkness alone.

And if ever in her life Polly O'Neill was to recognize the need which
any woman may some day require of a knowledge of the woods and fields,
she needed it tonight. For here the three of them were in an unknown
forest in a strange land with no light except that made by the dark
lantern which some one in the village had loaned Dick. Esther was too
tired to be of much assistance, and Richard Ashton did not understand
half so much of outdoor life as the two Camp Fire girls. Always he had
been too devoted a student of books for the right kind of acquaintance
with nature. Moreover, Dick was extremely angry at Lieutenant von
Reuter's desertion of them. Of course Betty must be found as promptly as
possible, if it were true that she was signaling for their aid from some
place in the woods. But if Dick had realized it, in his prejudice
against their new acquaintance, he would honestly have preferred that
Betty should have to wait for her deliverance a few moments longer than
that this young foreigner should manage to be her deliverer. And this in
spite of the fact than an occasional drop of rain was beginning to fall
and that now and then a line of lightning streaked the sky.

Under other circumstances nothing would have persuaded Carl von Reuter
to have so failed in courtesy as his present action showed. For whatever
the difference in points of view between an American and a foreigner,
there is little difference in the code of good breeding between one
civilized nation and another. And Lieutenant von Reuter was a member of
the old German nobility. Indeed, one o