red her eyes with her hands that she might not see the reckless child
fall--if she did fall.

"Name of a name!" murmured Henri Marchand. "_Au secours!_ Come, Tom, _mon
ami_--to the rescue!"

He turned and ran lightly along the hall and down the stairs. But Tom went
through the window, almost as precipitately as had Bella Pike herself, and
so over the roof of the kitchen ell and down the trumpet-vine trellis.

Tom was in the yard and running to the barn before Marchand got out of the
kitchen. Several other people, early as the hour was, appeared running
toward the rear premises of Drovers' Tavern.

"See that crazy young one!" some woman shrieked. "I know she'll kill
herself yet."

"Stop that!" commanded Tom, looking up and shaking a threatening hand at
Miss Timmins.

For in her rage the woman was trying to strike her niece with the stick,
as Bella clung to the door.

"Mind your own business, young man!" snapped the virago. "And go back and
put the rest of your clothes on. You ain't decent."

Tom was scarcely embarrassed by this verbal attack. The case was too
serious for that. Miss Timmins struck at the girl again, and only missed
the screaming Bella by an inch or so.

Helen and Jennie screamed in unison, and Ruth herself had difficulty in
keeping her lips closed. The cruel rage of the hotel housekeeper made her
quite unfit to manage such a child as Bella, and Ruth determined to
interfere in Bella's behalf at the proper time.

"I wish she would pitch out of that door herself!" cried Helen recklessly.

Tom had run into the barn and was climbing the ladders as rapidly as
possible to the highest loft. Scolding and striking at her victim, Miss
Susan Timmins continued to act like the mad woman she was. And Bella, made
desperate at last by fear, reached for the curling edges of the shingles
on the eaves above her head.

"Don't do that, child!" shrieked Jennie Stone.

But Bella scrambled up off the swinging door and pulled herself by her
thin arms on to the roof of the barn. There she was completely out of her
aunt's reach.

"Oh, the plucky little sprite!" cried Helen, in delight.

"But--but she can't get down again," murmured Aunt Kate. "There is no
scuttle in that roof."

"Tom will find a way," declared Ruth Fielding with confidence.

"And my Henri," put in Jennie. "That horrid old creature!"

"She should be punished for this," agreed Ruth. "I wonder where the
child's father is."

"Didn't you find out