arge touring
car, empty of occupants. Within a few yards of this car the young man
paused, frowning, and then gazed anxiously up toward the closed door of
the house. A short time afterwards this door opened when a girl, wearing
a scarlet coat and a felt hat of the same shade pinned carelessly on her
dark hair, hurried forth and with her eyes cast down and an air of
suppressed excitement moved off in the opposite direction, without
becoming aware of the onlooker. And although the bystander's lips moved
once as if forming her name with the intention of calling after her, his
impulse must have immediately died, for he continued motionless in the
same spot until the girl had finally turned a corner and was lost to his
view. Then the young man walked on again, but not so rapidly or
resolutely as at first.

Indeed, he was so intensely absorbed in his own line of thought as to be
unconscious of the other passers-by, until some one stopped directly in
front of him and a familiar voice pronounced his name.

"Why, Billy Webster, where are you going?" Meg Everett demanded. "You
look as if you were giving Atlas a holiday this afternoon and had
transferred the weight of the world to your own shoulders."

Two years had changed the greater number of the old Sunrise Hill Camp
Fire members from girls to young women, but they had not made a
conspicuous difference in Margaret Everett. Her sunny yellow hair was
tucked up, but today the April winds had loosened it, and though she was
dressed with greater care than before the Camp Fire influence, she would
never altogether approach her brother John's ideal of quiet elegance, as
the Princess always had. Yet her eyes were so gay and friendly and her
face so full of quick color and sympathy, that there were few other
young men besides her older brother who found much to criticize in her.
And certainly not the small boy at her side, who had once been "Hai-yi,"
the Indian name for "Little Brother," to the twelve girls at Sunrise
Hill.

Returning Meg's interested gaze, Billy Webster, who was never given to
subterfuges, had a sudden impulse to seek information and possible aid
from her.

"Is it true, Meg," he asked, "that Miss Adams, the actress, is here in
Woodford visiting her cousin and that Polly O'Neill has been going to
see her every day and riding over the country in her motor car? I
thought Mrs. Wharton had insisted that Polly was to have nothing to do
with anything or anybody connect