d her; while Mark was sitting up, rubbing a bump on his forehead
ruefully, and Lil Artha had taken out a handkerchief to dab at his
bleeding nose.

Still, nothing short of an earthquake could ever bottle up the flow of
animal spirits that usually possessed the lanky one.

While he applied his handkerchief until it looked particularly gory, he
was bent upon giving expression to his views.

"Wow! and again I say, wow! What cyclone was that we ran up against,
Elmer? Did you let fly with that club of yours, or did the old shack
just take a notion to fall over on us? It felt like I was being kicked
by an army mule."

"Same here, Elmer," lamented Mark, as he succeeded in struggling to his
feet.

"Well, it wasn't anything like that at all," declared Elmer, hastily;
"and if you take the trouble to look yonder, before your eyes begin to
close up, you'll see what hit you, running away like a scared
hippopotamus."

"Glory be! Was it that dago woman?" yelled Lil Artha, now on his feet
again.

"Yes, she burst the door open when she saw me, and as you chanced to be
in the way, why, you got the benefit, that's all," Elmer remarked.

"Don't let her get away, fellows! Come on, who's afraid? We can cover
three feet to her one. Let's make her a prisoner," shouted Lil Artha,
whose usually even temper seemed to have been decidedly ruffled by his
recent mishap.

So the three scouts left the shack and began to rush after the fleeing
Italian woman.

Of course she knew immediately that she was being pursued. She tried to
increase her pace, but evidently with little success. Short, dumpy
people can never hope to compete with slim, long-legged greyhounds like
Lil Artha.

And so, almost from the start, the three scouts began to close in upon
the fleeing Italian woman.

"Say, she's got a bloody old knife," gasped Lil Artha, as they struggled
on through the woods where the creeping vines and the underbrush, not to
mention frequent logs and occasional woodchuck holes, made running a
desperate business.

"That's so, Elmer," piped up Mark, "I saw her shake it at us then."

"I know it, fellows," said the scout master, "and that's what I was
shouting about, to warn you."

"Are we gaining any, Elmer? I can't see just as well as I'd like, with
this thing up to my nose," the lanky runner asked.

"Pulling up on her fast, my boy," came the reassuring answer.

"And what're we goin' to do when she turns on us?" demanded Lil Artha.

"Fir