thing, and everybody knows how hard it is for me
to talk. I can do things sometimes, but I can't say them. Just now
Edith Norton used the word, 'loyalty.' I am glad she did, because it
is just what I want to speak of--because it seems to me that loyalty is
the very foundation stone of all our Camp Fires. Of course Polly has
broken a part of our law. She has failed to be trustworthy, but I am
not going into that, since each one of you can have your own opinion of
her behavior and would have it anyway no matter what I said. But the
whole point is, won't every single girl in the Sunrise Hill Camp Fire
Club possibly break some of the rules some day? As we are only human,
I think we are pretty sure to. So I move that we say nothing more
about Polly. Perhaps others of us have done things nearly as bad or
will do them. But more important and what I would so much like to
persuade you to feel about as I feel is this:"--and Sylvia's plain face
worked with the strength of an emotion which few people had ever seen
her display before--"I want us to promise ourselves and one another
that no matter what any fellow member of the Sunrise Hill Camp Fire
Club ever does, or what mistake she may make, or even what sin she may
commit, that no one of us will ever turn her back upon her or fail to
do anything and everything in our power to help her and to make things
happy and comfortable again. I wish I could talk like Betty and Polly,
but you do understand what I mean," Sylvia concluded with tears
compounded of embarrassment and earnestness standing in her light blue
eyes.

"Hear, hear!" whispered Miss McMurtry a little uncertainly.

Rose Dyer clapped her hands softly together. The sound gave the
necessary suggestion to the other girls, and poor Sylvia crept back to
her place in the circle in a storm of applause. It was the simplest
method by which the girls could reveal their deeper emotions. A few
moments afterward Sylvia's proposal was put into the form of a regular
motion and carried without a dissenting voice.

CHAPTER XVII

A FIGURE IN THE NIGHT

"Polly," a muffled voice murmured in so low a tone that the sound was
scarcely audible. Then a cold hand was slid beneath the bed clothes,
clasping a warm, relaxed one and pressing it with sudden intensity.

"Betty, did you call me?" Polly O'Neill inquired, turning over sleepily
and trying to pierce the darkness so as to get a view of her companion.
Now that she was