ountain breeze came soothingly across the lake to lull
their slumbers as they lay down to rest, side by side, in the little
bungalow cots of which a dozen ranged the length of the great water-side
dormitory half-open, half-screened.

Yet Pem fell asleep imploring Ta-Te--and lost the little record
altogether in her dreams!

Up and down old Greylock she plodded, looking for it, hand in hand with
Toandoah,--but ever it eluded them!

Muttering, bereft, she tossed; then for a moment awoke, blinkingly sat
up, to see the moonlight flickering--Mammy Moon's own smile--upon the
pearl-woven prophecy beside her, from which she could hardly be parted
by night or day.

Sleep again! And now it was not only the diary but the Thunder Bird,
itself, that was lost,--astray in space, and she with it!

She was trying to catch it by the fiery tail-feathers when, all of a
sudden--all of a sober sudden--those feathers became soft, flopping,
buffeting,--real.

They brushed her parted lips. They flopped against her cheek. They even
mopped the dews of slumber from her eyes.

"Hea-vens! W-what is it-t?"

Wildly she sat up--a second time--to see the dawn poking at her with a
pink finger and the lake shimmering without, a great pearl found by the
morning in an iridescent oyster-shell of mist.

And, within, a bumping, buffeting something, soft as moss, dun-gray as
terror--blundering into every sleeper's face, as if testing its warmth,
bowling its way along the line of cots.

"Cluck! Cluck! Flutter! Flutter! Awake! Awake! I'm lost! I'm lost!" it
said.

"What is it? _What is it?_"

Never was such an exciting reveille as girl by girl bounded
up--elastic--fingering a brushed, a tickled cheek.

The answer was a screech that made the morning blush, as if a ghost had
invaded the Tom Tiddler's ground of open day light.

Una shrieked in echo.

Morale was undermined. Cots were vacated. Maiden jostled maiden, all
colliding upon a gaping question that fanned sensation sky-high--until
the bungalow fairly rocked upon a hullabaloo.

CHAPTER XVII

A NOVEL SANTA CLAUS

"It's an Owl!"

"Only an owl--a little screech owl! Not--not so little, either! Where
did it come from?"

"Yes! How on earth did it get in? Doors--windows--all are screened."

"Glory halleluiah! It came down the chimney. Look--look at the black on
its feathers, the wood-smuts clinging to it! Down the big chimney of the
living room!"

"Like Santa Claus down the chim