ad been looking for.

"We'll turn off here," she said, "Cheer up, Zara. It won't be long now
before we can go to sleep."

The full moon made it easy to pick their way along the wood path that
Bessie followed, and before long they came to a small lake. On its far
side, among the trees near the shore, a fire was burning, flickering up
from time to time, and sending dancing shadows on the beach.

"There's someone over there, Bessie," said Zara, frightened at the sign
of human habitation.

"They won't hurt us, Zara," said Bessie, stoutly. "Probably they won't
even know that we're around, if we don't make any noise, or any fire of
our own. Here we are--here's the hut! See? Isn't it nice and
comfortable? Hurry now and help me to pick up some of these branches of
pine trees. They'll make a comfortable bed for us, and well sleep just
as well as if we were at home--or a lot better, because there'll be no
one to be cross and make trouble for us in the morning."

Bessie arranged the branches, and in a few moments they were asleep,
lying close together. Pine branches make an ideal bed, but, even had
their couch been uncomfortable, the two girls would have slept well that
night; they were too tired to do anything else. It was long after
midnight, and both had been through enough to exhaust them. The sense of
peace and safety that they found in this refuge in the woods more than
made up for the strangeness of their surroundings, and when they awoke
the sun was high. It was the sound of singing in the sweet, fresh voices
of girls that aroused them in the end. And Bessie, the first to wake up,
aroused Zara, and then peeped from the door of the cabin.

There on the beach, their hair spread out in the sun, were half a dozen
girls in bathing dresses. Beside them were a couple of canoes, drawn up
on the beach, and they were laughing and singing merrily as they dried
their hair. Looking over across the lake, in the direction of the fire
she had seen the night before, Bessie saw that it was still burning. A
pillar of smoke rose straight in the still air, and beyond it, gleaming
among the trees, Bessie saw the white sides of three or four tents.
Astonished, she called Zara.

"They're not from around here, Zara," she whispered, not ready yet for
the strangers to discover her. "Girls around here don't swim--it's only
the boys who do that."

"I'll bet they're from the city and here on a vacation," said Zara.

"They look awful happy, Za