flooding the rag-carpet for yards around.

"Fire! Fire!" Jennie continued to shriek.

Helen dashed in from the next room, dressed quite as lightly as Ruth, and
just in time to see the can spilled.

"Oh! Water! Water!"

"Drat that young one!" barked Miss Timmins, ignoring the flood and
everything else save her niece--even the conventions.

She dashed after Bella. The latter had disappeared into the hall through
the anteroom.

"Oh, the poor child!" cried sympathetic Ruth, and followed in the wake of
the angry housekeeper.

"Fire! Fire!" moaned Jennie Stone.

"Cat's foot!" snapped Helen Cameron. "It's water--and it is flooding the
whole room."

She ran to set the can upright--after the water was all out of it. Without
thinking of her costume, Ruth Fielding ran to avert Bella's punishment if
she could. She knew the aunt was beside herself with rage, and Ruth feared
that the woman would, indeed, give Bella her "nevergetovers."

The corridor of the hotel was long, running from front to rear of the main
building. The window at the rear end of it overlooked the roof of the back
kitchen. This window was open, and when Ruth reached the corridor Bella
was going head-first through the open window, like a circus clown diving
through a hoop.

She had discarded Jennie's shirt-waist between the bedroom and the window.
But Ruth's skirt still flapped about the child's thin shanks.

Miss Timmins, breathing threatenings and slaughter, raced down the hall in
pursuit. Ruth followed, begging for quarter for the terrified child.

But the housekeeper went through the open window after Bella, although in
a more conventional manner, paying no heed to Ruth's plea. The frightened
girl, however, escaped her aunt's clutch by slipping off the borrowed
skirt and descending the trumpet-vine trellis by the kitchen door.

"Do let her go, Miss Timmins!" begged Ruth, as the panting woman, carrying
Ruth's skirt, returned to the window where the girl of the Red Mill stood.
"She is scared to death. She was doing no harm."

"I'll thank you to mind your own business, Miss," snapped Miss Timmins
hotly. "I declare! A girl growed like you running 'round in men's
overalls--or, what be them things you got on?"

At this criticism Ruth Fielding fled, taking the skirt and Jennie's
shirt-waist with her. But Aunt Kate was aroused now and the four women of
the automobile party swiftly slipped into their negligees and appeared in
the hall again, to meet