pray, was Miss Phoebe Jones?"

"Aunt of the Rev. Archibald. For some reason he remembered the name and
I suppose gave it to the child."

"Then who was the German gentleman who recognized Phoebe?"

"Now you are getting down to real romance," replied the doctor.

"He was the young noble for whom the Rev. Archibald acted as tutor."
Here the doctor spoke slowly and impressively. "He loved the English
governess and when she married the poor tutor, his noble heart was
broken and never has been mended."

"And he never married another?" piped up Mary's small voice.

"Oh yes, my dear. The nobility always marries. Singleness is against the
rules. He married and has a family of six."

"And is that the end of the story?" asked Billie.

"No, there is a sequel. It seems that when the Rev. and Mrs. Archibald
Jones disappeared from the stage of life without explanation only one
person, after a decade or more, still clung to the belief that they were
not dead. None other than Miss Phoebe Jones herself, spinster, living in
Surrey, England. She recently died leaving her property to her nephew,
his wife or possible heirs. It seems that the gentlemen who just now
dropped me at your door----"

"The disappointed lover?"

"Yes. The broken-hearted noble with a wife and six children, knew about
this will because the lawyers in trying to trace Mr. Jones and his wife
had got into communication with him."

"And so they won't be poor," said Nancy. "I'm glad of that. Phoebe
looked beautiful in good clothes."

Everybody laughed, and then the doctor remarked:

"And so the story has a plain ending, after all. Phoebe is not a
princess and you are all disappointed."

"No, no, no," they protested, but the doctor knew better.

CHAPTER XXI.

COMRADES OF THE ROAD.

Already the scarlet sumac lit the road with its flaming torch, and here
and there on the mountainside a flash of scarlet like a redbird's wing
appeared among the masses of foliage. Autumn was at hand, the autumn of
the Adirondacks, when the evening air is nipped with the hint of frosts
to come and the sky is a deeper blue than ever it is at mid-summer.

Summer comrades of the road may not linger in the hills at this
enchanting season. There is work to be done in the valleys where the
busy people live. In a few days now the shutters of log cabin camps will
be closed and traveling vans will be sent to winter quarters.

The boys and girls who have lingered around the ca