y in this
picture we are about to make up on the St. Lawrence."

"Fine!" exclaimed Helen Cameron. "There is going to be something doing
besides picture making. Why, Ruth! you couldn't keep me from going with
you to-morrow. And I know Tommy-boy will be crazy to be in it, too."

Ruth made an appealing gesture as Helen began to back and turn the car.

"Don't frighten Aunt Alvirah," she whispered.

Helen was delighted with any prospect for action. It must be confessed
that she did not think much about disappointment or trouble accruing to
other people in any set of circumstances; she never had been particularly
thoughtful for others. But she was brave to the point of recklessness,
and she was at once excited regarding the suggested danger to her chum's
plans.

Bilby had already, Ruth understood, offered more money to Wonota and
Totantora for their services than Mr. Hammond thought it wise to risk in
the venture. And, after all, the temptation of money was great in the
minds of the Indians. It might be that Bilby could get them away from
Ruth's care. And then what would the Alectrion Film Corporation do about
this next picture that had been planned?

Aunt Alvirah made no complaint as to how or where the car went--as long
as it went somewhere. She admitted she liked to travel fast. Having been
for so many years crippled by that enemy, rheumatism, she seemed to find
some compensation in the speed of Helen's car.

The inn was several miles away from the Long Bridge; but the road was
fairly straight, and as the car went over the ridges they could now and
then catch glimpses of the hotel. On the right were cornfields, the dark
green blades only six or eight inches high; and scattered over them the
omnipresent scarecrows which, in the spring, add at least picturesqueness
to the New England landscape.

Above the purring of the motor Aunt Alvirah raised her voice to remark to
the chums on the front seat:

"I don't see it now--did it fall down?"

"Did what fall down, Aunty?" asked Ruth, who, though troubled as she was
by her suspicions, could not ignore the little old woman.

"That scarecrow I see coming up. I thought 'twas a gal picking up stones
in that field--the one this side of the hotel. It had a sunbonnet on, and
it was just as natural! But it's gone."

"I don't see any scarecrow there," admitted Ruth, turning to look.

At that moment, however, the car she had seen parked in the bushes
wheeled out into the highw