were
continually visiting, or calling back and forth. Where you found one you
would find the others, and their parents used to say they never knew
when to expect their daughters home to meals--for they were like one
family in respect to dining out.

And, as usual, this beautiful summer day found the girls together in the
auto, when the accident had thrown them into such consternation.

"Did you find any water?" called Betty, who had made a pillow of the lap
robe, and supported on it the head of the unconscious girl.

"Yes," answered Mollie, her hand trembling as she extended a collapsible
cup of the fluid she had dipped from a nearby spring, "I'll get more
when she takes that."

"I'm afraid I can't get her to take much of it," said Betty. "But I can
bathe the cut and see how large it is."

She tried to get a little water between the lips of the strange girl,
while Amy and Grace held her head up; Mollie, with another cup provided
by Betty, going off after more water.

"She took a little," whispered Grace.

The girl turned her head to one side as though to avoid drinking. Then
she muttered a few words.

"What did she say?" asked Amy.

"I couldn't understand it," answered Betty.

Again the stranger murmured something, and this time the girls caught:

"No, no! I will not go back to him! Anything but the life I have been
leading. Oh, why must I do it? Why?"

There was pathetic pleading in the words.

"There, my dear, you will be taken care of," spoke Betty, soothingly.
"We will take you to your friends."

"I--I have none! Oh, I can't go back to--him!"

Her eyes did not open, and she appeared to be in a delirium.

"Poor thing!" said Amy, softly. "Bathe her head, Betty."

"Yes, I think that will be better than trying to force her to drink."
Dipping her handkerchief in the water Betty wiped away the blood from
the cut. It was seen to be a small one.

"That ought not to make her unconscious," said Betty. "More likely she
has some additional injury; possibly a blow on some other part of her
head. Girls, did you ever see such glorious hair!" Betty caressed it.
Truly there was a mass of it, and it was of beautiful silkness and
softness. It was still partly bound up, but the autoists could easily
tell that it must reach almost to the ground when the girl stood up.

"What in the world could she have been doing up the tree?" asked Grace,
as Mollie came back with more water.

"It is the oddest thing," agreed Be