eave Lieutenant Wingate?" asked Grace.

"About ten miles down the trail. I got here as quickly as possible. To
be brief, we were attacked from ambush. The lieutenant's horse was shot
from under him. We both began shooting, but he yelled to me, 'Go on,
Doc. They need you at Thompson's. I'll get out of it somehow.'

"Well, I saw that he was right, so I rode for keeps till I got out of
range of the bullets. Lively neighborhood up here, eh? I'll see the
patients, if you please."

Elfreda conducted the doctor into the cabin, Grace remaining to comfort
Nora and to consider what was best to be done in the circumstances. Nora
was urging her to start out in search of Hippy, but Grace pointed out
that they were as likely to miss as to find him, and that the best
course appeared to be to wait until later in the day, then, should
Lieutenant Wingate not return, a searching party must be organized to go
out for him. Grace then entered the cottage and the girls led Nora out
to the shady side of the barn where they consoled her as best they
could.

"I will sit right down here and con-centrate," promised Emma. "You will
see that it will fetch him back. If it doesn't never, never again will I
con-centrate on Hippy. The trouble is that he resists the instant he
feels the magnetic current, which makes con-centrating very difficult
and takes so much of the imponderable quality out of one--"

"Emma! Emma!" cried Anne. "For mercy sake come up and get a breath of
air. You will drown if you stay down another second."

Nora laughed heartily.

In the meantime Grace and Elfreda were leaning over the bed watching the
doctor's diagnosis. Elfreda told him what had been done for the two
children, naming the few home remedies that she had been able to find
and administer to them.

"Good, Miss Lizzie might have been dead by this time if you had not done
what you did. Susie is not in quite such bad shape."

"What is the matter with them?" questioned Grace.

"Scarlet fever--both of them," was the terse answer. "Have your party
all been exposed?"

Elfreda informed him that, not knowing what the children's trouble was,
they had thought best not to permit the Overland Riders to enter the
cabin.

Grace questioned the doctor further on the attack that had been made on
himself and Hippy, and asked him to indicate, as nearly as possible, the
spot where the attack was made.

The doctor was giving them the details when the door of the cabin was
ro