thing. We must
help her."

"Here, Bess," directed Nan, "you hold her head while I see if any bones
are broken. And you other girls take turns in chafing her hands. If she
lives near here we'll take her home and send for a doctor. If not,
we'll take her up to the Hall."

The others followed Nan's directions and worked with frantic energy. And
while the girls are trying to revive the unconscious stranger, it may be
well for the sake of those who have not yet read the earlier volumes of
this series to tell who Nan Sherwood is, and what experiences and
adventures she and her friends have had up to the time at which the
present story opens.

Mr. Sherwood was a foreman in the Atwater Mills in Tillbury, and "Papa
Sherwood" and "Momsey" and Nan were a devoted and happy family in their
pretty little cottage on Amity Street. Then the mills shut down for an
indefinite length of time. The Sherwoods, with others even less well
able to face the future, were staring poverty and the loss of their
pretty home in the face, when suddenly, in the case of the Sherwoods,
fortune took a hand and sent relief in the shape of a legacy from a
distant relative of Mrs. Sherwood's.

To settle the business in connection with this legacy, Mr. and Mrs.
Sherwood were called to Scotland. To the grief of all three, it was
necessary that Nan should be left behind, but it was arranged that she
should stay with her Uncle Henry, her father's brother, in a lumber camp
in the Michigan Peninsula. What exciting adventures Nan had there and
what she accomplished for good, can be found in the first volume of
this series, entitled: "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp; or, The Old
Lumberman's Secret."

Nan's best girl friend in Tillbury was Bess Harley. Bess was looking
forward to going to school at Lakeview Hall, and, never having known any
lack of money, could not understand why Nan would not say that she, too,
would go. When the loss of Mr. Sherwood's position made even Bess see
that it would be out of the question for Nan to go, she was
inconsolable, for she was devoted to her friend, and rather dependent on
her.

Nan Sherwood herself wanted to go to Lakeview Hall more than she had
told either Bess or her parents, and when the legacy from Scotland made
this possible the two girls were delighted and went wild with joy.

What they did at the Hall, the plucky spirit Nan showed on more than one
occasion, and the friends they made are told of in the volume entitled: