ce was that the explanation was that some of my ancestors, far
back in the dim shadows of the early hours of the world, were birds of
the air. Just think of it, girls! Birds! Flying through the air and--"

"Darting yon and hither," finished Hippy.

"_Alors!_ Let's fly," cried Elfreda Briggs amid a shout of laughter from
the Overland Riders.

"So say we all of us," answered Grace, springing up and beginning to
pack away her mess kit. "It will be long after dark before we reach
Bisbee's Corners."

The girls were still laughing as they rode away, Emma Dean silently
resentful, her chin in the air, her face flushed.

"Do you really think she is in earnest about that nature stuff?"
questioned Anne.

"She thinks she is, but of course she isn't. Emma, like many others,
must have a hobby to ride. She, fortunately, is fickle in her hobbies,
and rides one but a short time before she tires of it and casts it
aside. What would we do on these journeys without her?" laughed Grace.

"Yes. Our Emma is a joy and a delight," nodded Anne.

After a brisk ride at a steady gallop, the Overlanders jogged into the
one street that Bisbee's Corners possessed shortly after nine o'clock
that evening, all thoroughly tired but happy, with Hindenburg sound
asleep in the saddle bag.

The streets, they saw, were thronged with men, mostly lumberjacks, some
singing, others shouting, and here and there a pair of them engaged in
fist battles.

"Must have been paid off," observed Tom Gray. "We are getting near the
Big Woods, folks."

"I should say we are," replied Grace, taking in the scene with keen
interest. "I hear a fiddle. There must be a dance going on."

"A dance? Oh, let's go," cried Emma.

"Better listen to the voices of nature," answered Tom laughingly. "A
lumberjack dance is no place for a refined woman, or man either, for
that matter. Where to, Grace?"

"The general store. I'll go in. The girls had better stay on their
horses, for I don't like the looks of things in Bisbee's."

"Lumber-jacks are rough, but let them alone and they will let you
alone," said Lieutenant Wingate.

Tom Gray said this might be true in theory, but that it was not always
true in fact.

Pulling up before the general store, Grace dismounted and elbowed her
way through a crowd of men, smilingly demanding "gangway," which was
readily granted, though accompanied by quite personal remarks about her,
to which, of course, the Overland girl gave not the sligh