own to work. By-the-way, do you know that we are all hermits
here?"

"Hermits?" said the other. "What's that?"

"Why, hermits," said Matlack, "is individ'als who get up early in the
mornin' and attend to their own business just as hard as they can, without
lookin' to the right or left, until it's time to go to bed."

The young man looked at him in some surprise. "There's nothing so very
uncommon in that," said he.

"No," replied the guide, "perhaps there ain't. But as you might hear them
talkin' about hermits here, I thought I'd tell you just what sort of
things they are."

CHAPTER XXIV

A DISSOLVING AUDIENCE

When a strange young man assisted Matlack at the supper-table that
evening, Mr. Archibald asked what had become of Martin.

"Peter Sadler has sent him away," answered the guide. "I don't know where
he sent him or what he sent him for. But he's a young man who's above this
sort of business, and so I suppose he's gone off to take up something
that's more elevated."

"I am sorry," said Mrs. Archibald, "for I liked him."

Mr. Archibald smiled. "This business of insisting upon our own
individualities," he said, "seems to have worked very promptly in his
case. I suppose he found out he was fitted for something better than a
guide, and immediately went off to get that better thing."

"That's about the size of it," said Matlack.

Margery said nothing. Her heart sank. She could not help feeling that what
she had said to the young man had been the cause of his sudden departure.
Could he have done such a thing, she thought, as really to go and ask Mr.
Sadler, and, having found he did not mind, could he have gone to see her
mother? Her appetite for her supper departed, and she soon rose and
strolled away, and as she strolled the thought came again to her that it
was a truly dreadful thing to be a girl.

Having received no orders to the contrary, Matlack, with his new
assistant, built and lighted the camp-fire. Some of the hermits took this
as a matter of course, and some were a little surprised, but one by one
they approached; the evening air was beginning to be cool, and the
vicinity of the fire was undoubtedly the pleasantest place in camp. Soon
they were all assembled but one, and Mrs. Archibald breathed freer when
she found that Arthur Raybold was not there.

"I am delighted," said Corona, as soon as she took her usual seat, which
was a camp-chair, "to see you all gather about the fire. I was afra