as soon as she feels
like coming. That's Tavia!"

But they little knew the danger to which the younger girl had
unwittingly exposed herself.

No wonder Tavia could not be found within or without the precincts of
the camp.

CHAPTER XI

WHEN THE BOYS CAME

Dorothy had always loved her cousins, Ned and Nat, but when they
arrived at the camp, the day after Tavia's disappearance, she fancied
she had never before fully appreciated them. They came in the
_Firebird_, their automobile, and declared that they would camp out in
the open Maine woods, cook in the open, make soups of lily bulbs,
stirred with the aromatic boughs of the spruce, and otherwise conform
to all the glorious hardships peculiar to the pioneers--according to
the stories told by said pioneers.

But the absence of Tavia put a damper on everything.

"We have got to start out and trace her," Jack Markin told Ned and
Nat. "It is inconceivable where she could have gone to."

"We certainly shall start out at once," declared Nat, who was always
Tavia's champion, to say nothing of his being her special friend and
admirer. "I have known her to do risky things before, but this is the
utmost."

"I never saw such a girl," growled Ned. "Just when a fellow expects to
have a first-rate time, she puts up something that knocks it out."

Dorothy was disconsolate. Her eyes showed the result of a sleepless
night, and her usually pink cheeks were quite pale.

"She would never stay away of her own accord over night," she sighed,
"whatever she might do during the day."

"Now, Doro, dear," consoled Cologne, "you must not look at it that
way. It is perfectly surprising what may happen, in a perfectly safe
way, after one has found out, while before that time such things seem
utterly impossible. Haven't we had lots of that at Glenwood?"

"Yes, things do happen that seem anything but likely," Dorothy
admitted. "And I do hope that such will be the case this time. I wish
we knew!"

"We had a great time in Dalton," said Nat, "the day we went over to
see the old place--your old place, Dorothy. The major asked us to go
in to look after a leak in the roof, and just as we went into the old
plumbing shop we heard a racket. It seems that a fellow named
Mortimer Morrison, a stage-struck chap, played a part on the local
stage, and while delivering his lines he gave his audience a
treat--the real thing in tragics. He went crazy--wild, stark, staring
mad! He was an escaped