d maidens, the elfin tassels of their
Tam-o'-shanters waving, and of demented birds for the Pinnacle's tallest
crag.

Poised upon that gray rock-shelf, high above the ground, her slight face
with the shining eyes, framed in the radiant torch-light as in a golden
miniature, the signaler's right arm held the blazing knot with its
ragged, foot-long flame at arm's length above her head, then described a
brief quarter circle to the left with it, quick, snappy--once,
twice--the arm being extended on a level with the young shoulder so
slim, so stiffened!

"See!--See! That stands for I: two dots! I, three times repeated, gives
the call," breathed the Guardian at Pem's elbow, her mature face a
gold-set miniature of excitement, too.

"Oh--oh! I wonder if they'll 'get us', those boys--those joking Henkyl
Hunters?" The throbbing question was on every girlish lip. Eyes burned,
like the torch, across the valley.

The mountains were falling asleep in their night-caps of mist.

But suddenly one of them, far away, grim and dim, lifted an eyelid--and
responded.

The drowsy valley caught its breath--as old Round-top winked back.

Caught its breath with many a waking scintilla of light in the pointed
flash of pool and stream!

A momentary, broken arc, a shattered rainbow dividing the flood of dusk
above from the gulf of darkness below; and then--and then the triumphant
cry in each gasping throat:

"They've got us! They see us! Now--now for the message: 'Two strange
girls with us. You....'"

But there the Lightning's lore suddenly gave out, her signaling memory,
as the news was vivaciously transmitted by staccato dot and lengthier
dash, the latter being the same quarter-circle once described in a
single movement to the right.

Over the valley the message was hung up. It was hung up in Pem's heart,
too,--and the honor, the fair grace, of boyhood with it.

If old Round-top unhesitatingly played up, "came across" with an
invitation--an invitation to that alluring Get Together at the winter
palace of the Snowbirds, then she would feel that a nickum's rudeness
was atoned for--and Jack at a Pinch might go his graceless road, never
to prove a friend in need to her again--not if she knew it!

"Invite them to the picnic ... and don't forget the cocoa!"

The valley fairly bristled with the promptness of it--the skilled
directness of the message, so rapidly, so spontaneously given that the
poised Lightning on the crag was hard-presse