call, given in imitation of a whip-poor-will, but badly done. No bird
had uttered that cry, and Bessie, country bred, listening intently, knew
it. Silently she rose and slipped on moccasins that belonged to
Minnehaha, and a dress. And then, making no more noise than a cat would
have done, she crept to the opening in the front of the tent and peeped
out. For Bessie had recognized the author of that imitation of the
bird's call, and she knew that there was mischief afoot.

Still intent on keeping the alarm she felt from the others, until she
knew whether there was a real cause for it, Bessie slipped out of the
tent and into the shadow of the trees. The camp fire still burned,
flickering in the darkness, and making great, weird shadows, as the
light fell upon the trees. It had been built up and banked before the
camp went to sleep, and in the morning it would still be burning,
although faintly, ready for the first careful attentions of the
appointed Wood-Gatherers, whose duty it was to see that the fire did not
die.

Bessie, fearing that she might be spied upon, had to keep in the
darkness, and she twisted and turned from the trunk of one tree to the
next, bending over close to the ground when she had to cross an open
space where firelight or moonbeams might reveal her to watching eyes.

And now and again, crudely given, as crudely answered, from further down
the lake, the call of the mock whip-poor-will guided her in her quest.
And Bessie, plucking up all the courage she could muster, still trembled
slightly, more from nervousness than from actual fear, for she knew
whose voice it was that was imitating the plaintive bird--Jake Hoover's!

All Hedgeville, as she well knew, must know that this camp of girls was
at the lake--and it would be just like Jake and some of the bullying,
reckless crowd of boys that he made his chief friends, to think that it
would be a fine joke to play some tricks on the sleeping camp, and alarm
these girls who were trying to enjoy themselves with outdoor life, just
as if they had been boys. Bessie, setting her teeth, determined that
they shouldn't succeed, that in some fashion she would turn the joke on
them.

Gradually she drew nearer to the sound, and she made up her mind,
thankfully, that she had waked in time, before all the jokers had
arrived. She had snatched up a sheet as she left the camp, without a
clear idea of what she meant to do with it, but now, as she stole among
the trees, a