tly
toward the third track.

Ruth, with a startled scream, forgetting self, ignoring the man's former
scowls and harshness, sprang forward and again seized the old
gentleman's coat, this time with firmness and a determination not to
allow herself to be repulsed.

While Ruth Kenway is struggling to save this stranger from accident and
probable death, it is a good time to turn back and give those readers
who are making the acquaintance of the Corner House girls for the first
time in this present volume a little sketch of who these girls are and
of their adventures and pleasures as set forth in the previous volumes
of this series.

In the first book of the series, entitled "The Corner House Girls," the
sisters are introduced as living in a larger city and in very poor
circumstances. Their father and mother being dead, Ruth had to manage
for the family on a very small pension from the Government. Aunt Sarah
Maltby, who was peculiar in more ways than one, was a liability instead
of an asset to the family.

This queer old woman was always expecting that a large fortune would be
left to her when Mr. Peter Stower, of Milton, should die. Mr. Stower had
quarreled with all his relatives. Especially had he quarreled with his
half-sister Sarah. Nevertheless, Aunt Sarah believed his money and the
old homestead would come to her.

Instead, Mr. Stower willed it all to the four Kenway girls, making Mr.
Howbridge the administrator of the estate and the guardian of the girls.
Therefore, Miss Sarah Maltby was still a pensioner on the bounty of the
Corner House girls, and the fact perhaps made her more crabbed of temper
than she otherwise might have been.

Having settled down in the old Corner House to live, with Mrs. MacCall
as housekeeper and Uncle Rufus as man of all work, the girls next took
up the matter of education, as related in "The Corner House Girls at
School." The four sisters got acquainted with their new environment and
made new friends and a few enemies. Particularly they became chummy with
Neale O'Neil, the boy who had run away from a circus to get an
education. Neale became a fixture in the neighborhood, living with Mr.
Con Murphy, the cobbler, on the street back of the Corner House. He
became Agnes Kenway's particular and continual boy chum.

During the summer vacation Ruth and her sisters went to Pleasant Cove
where they thoroughly enjoyed themselves and had adventures galore, as
told in the third volume, entitle