to the fans. And
when the Greylock coach cornered him he palmed it off as Selkirk. But my
cousin who's pitcher on the team says in his opinion that was just
'throwing a tub to a whale'--something fishy about it, see?" Stud
winked. "For 'Starry' an' his father--who's a queer fish, if ever there
was one--had a camp then up on Greylock peak, and the postmaster in
charge o' the Greylock mail owned that he received letters for them
addressed to another name--only he couldn't--wouldn't--give it away."

"_Wha-at!_"

Pem's hand suddenly smote her lips.

Her wide eyes were no patchwork now. Stud had not thought that a girl's
eyes could be so blue. It almost gave him the "Willies", their remote,
peculiar sky-glow, as if afar--afar--they were seeing things.

"What!" she gasped again, while that vivid glow faded, became bluish,
blank, the tint of "Moonshine"--of a strange, wild, nondescript dream.

Moonshine that seemed flooding her whole being!

And yet--although she was a quick-witted girl--it was too vague for her
to draw from it one clear thought--only an uneasy, unreal, absolutely
breathless feeling!

And then the queer, air-drawn sensation as suddenly passed--and with it
the blue moon which had momentarily turned her world to
nothing--"shooed" off by a very real, very tangible, quite pressing
apprehension:

"He--he's not coming to the da-nce?"

She sprang up hurriedly, pointing to the boat below; to its one
preoccupied figure, clad neither in rough sweater nor May-fly gaudiness,
now, but, if the sunset didn't exaggerate, in a very becoming dark suit.

"Humph! I don't know! I guess he is! Didn't think he could pull it off
for some reason or other--" Stud's shoulders were shrugged. "But, maybe,
he's found where there's a will there's a way."

"Why-y?" The girl's lips were parted breathlessly, her foot
involuntarily stamping.

"Oh! you know you told us to invite our friends to the party; not you,
but the other girls did, when they signaled across that night from the
green Pinnacle--gee! and it was some signaling, too." The scout's glance
was teasing now as it shot up from the grass. "So--so one of the older
boys he ran across that bunch o' fellows who were blooming round in the
cave the other day--they're all from camps on the lake--and invited the
whole five. This one thought he couldn't accept, but I guess he's making
a dash at it--at coming just the same!"

"Oh!... Oh, _dear_! I wish he wasn't!"

"Why?" Now