Carolyn of the sunny heart
Date: 2025-03-03T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Dogs -- Fiction; Girls -- Fiction; Mystery fiction; Families -- Fiction; Block Island (R.I. : Island) -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Carolyn of the sunny heart

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Carolyn of the sunny heart

Author: Ruth Belmore Endicott

Illustrator: Edward C. Caswell

Release date: March 3, 2025 [eBook #75509]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1919

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75509

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAROLYN OF THE SUNNY HEART ***

CAROLYN OF THE SUNNY HEART

BY RUTH BELMORE ENDICOTT

AUTHOR OF
CAROLYN OF THE CORNERS

ILLUSTRATED BY
EDWARD C. CASWELL

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1919
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

I. | The Pale Lady
II. | A Problem to Solve
III. | A New Friend
IV. | A Puzzle
V. | The Red-Haired Girl—and Others
VI. | A New Bangle for Prince
VII. | "If I Were Rich"
VIII. | A Great Deal Happens
IX. | The Griffin
X. | Carolyn May Is Puzzled
XI. | At the Corners
XII. | New Scenes
XIII. | Wooden Legs
XIV. | The Dog with the Bushy Tail
XV. | An Unanswered Query
XVI. | Arrivals
XVII. | Renewed Acquaintance
XVIII. | The Night Alarm
XIX. | A Removal
XX. | Great Expectations
XXI. | Cross Currents
XXII. | The Cockatoo Man in Trouble
XXIII. | Into Mischief and Out
XXIV. | He Turns Up Again
XXV. | Almost
XXVI. | Cousin Oly's Accident
XXVII. | Ten Thousand Dollars
XXVIII. | "Murder Will Out"
XXIX. | Both Sides of the Question
XXX. | It All Comes Out Right

ILLUSTRATIONS

The little girl's interest was closely held
"Wait—let me speak to her first, Carolyn!"
"What did he do with the ten thousand dollars?"
"You!" he said explosively

CAROLYN OF THE SUNNY HEART

CHAPTER I

THE PALE LADY

The craggy heights of upper Central Park trailed a skirt of afternoon shadow across the narrow strip of greensward and the asphalt path. One felt the chill of spring in the shadow; but the sunshine was warm and odorous with budding shrubs and trees.

The little girl in the blue tam-o'-shanter and the mongrel dog straining at his leash sniffed these pungent odours with approbation. The dog wrinkled his nose and sneezed softly. His little mistress smiled and dimpled, saying aloud:

"This is such a nice day, Princey! If the angels make each day new for us, they must have taken par-tic-'lar pains with this one. Now, Princey, you must not do that!"

The dog had made a playful dive for the wheel of a baby go-cart that rolled across the path, and might have done it some damage with his strong teeth.

The child halted the runaway cart and wheeled it back to the settee where it had stood, while Prince, his tongue a-loll and "smiling" broadly, watched both his mistress and the strange woman who sat on the bench with a baby in her lap.

She was a very pale lady, and the baby did not seem well nourished, either. He had wide eyes now for the dog, putting out his little hands and cooing to Prince.

"Thank you, my dear," the woman said sweetly; but she drew the baby back hastily from the approach of the dog.

"Oh, don't be afraid of Princey, ma'am," urged the little girl. "He wouldn't hurt the baby. Why, Princey just loves babies! Edna Price has a little baby brother. That's why Edna didn't come to walk with us today. She had to stay at home to mind Eldred. That's her baby's name. I think it's a very pretty name. Edna's mamma got it out of a moving picture.

"Why," chattered on Prince's mistress, as the encouraged baby began gaily to maul the dog's head and cropped ears, "they put Eldred right down on the floor beside Princey, and the baby climbs all over him—and sometimes goes to sleep on him. Isn't that funny?" and her own laugh chimed out clearly. "And Prince behaves just as goo-od! He lies right there and blinks his eyes and won't even snap at a fly for fear of waking up the baby."

"I see that your dog," said the pale lady, smiling, "is very intelligent, as well as kind."

"Oh, yes, ma'am," the little girl agreed. "He's not only intelligent. He's quite interlectial. He knows lots more than other dogs."

She was staring quite frankly at the pale lady, who had beautiful, heavy coils of golden-red hair upon her shapely head. Her neck, slim and graceful, seemed scarcely strong enough to hold the heavy head erect, and it drooped like a flower above the cooing baby. Had she not been so very, very thin and had she been granted some colour in her cheeks, the little girl thought the lady would be beautiful indeed.

The baby was pretty, too, in a delicate, fragile way. The little girl was used to seeing sturdy, pink-cheeked, plump infants on her block—and she knew them all. This little man was nothing at all like Eldred Price, or Johnny O'Harrity's baby sister who lived in the basement of their house. It seemed to the little girl that if she were choosing a baby—

"Don't—don't you think you'd rather have a fatter baby?" she burst forth at last.

A little colour rose into the mother's pale cheek, and she hugged the baby tighter for a moment.

"Of course, I s'pose some-body's got to choose the thin babies, or they wouldn't have any homes at all. But if we ever find a baby—my mamma and I—I hope it will be a fat one."

"We hope the little mannie will be big and fat and strong some day," said the pale lady, and managed to smile again.

The friendly little girl hitched herself up on the bench beside the woman, her feet dangling almost a foot from the ground.

"So there is no baby at your house," remarked the pale lady, bending again over her own little one.

"No, ma'am. There's just Princey and me and my papa and mamma, and sometimes Aunty Rose Kennedy, who comes to our house from Sunrise Cove and the Corners and stays with us. She's just gone back home now to make her garden. She says she cert'nly would have a conniption fit if she didn't dig in the dirt in the spring. She says it's in her blood, you know. But she doesn't take anything for it like I have to when it comes spring. My mamma says a spring tonic's quite nec'sary."

"I see," said the pale lady. "It must be nice to have a garden. But one cannot have a garden in the city."

"Oh, some folks can!" cried the child, her eyes shining. "I'm 'quainted with a very nice gentleman here in the park—his name is Mr. M'Cooey—and he's got a lovely big garden up yonder," she added, pointing to the heights.

"There's going to be jonquils, and crocuses, and hy'cinths in it. He told me so; and he ought to know, for he buried their feet in the ground last fall. I saw him bury 'em. Princey wanted to dig 'em up; he has always to be on his leash up in that part of the park.

"Mr. M'Cooey's awful glad to work in the garden again, now it's come spring. In the winter he has to go around with a bag and spear papers with a stick—you know, papers and peanut bags where folks have been feeding the squirrels. That's quite int'resting work, too. Mr. M'Cooey let me try it once, and I speared a lot of papers for him."

"I think you must make many friends, little girl," said the pale lady—was it said wistfully? "Do you come to the park often?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am! But lots of times we come very early in the morning, when other folks aren't up. My papa and Princey and I. You see, my papa gets home from his paper awful early, and sometimes when it's pleasant I get up and we take a walk while mamma gets breakfast.

"That's how I come to know Mr. M'Cooey and the policeman who lets Princey run without his leash," the little girl proceeded. "He's a very nice man, too. His name is Mr. Lonergan, and he's got ten children at home. And what do you s'pose? He says he wouldn't sell one of them for a million dollars, but he wouldn't give ten cents for another baby!"

The child's laugh chimed out again. Even the pale lady must smile in response. The baby crowed and pulled at the ears of the mongrel dog. But the lengthening shadows warned the woman of the time. She shook out the baby's blanket and wrapped his feet and limbs in it, laying the little man over her shoulder as she rose.

"I must take him home, my dear," she said to the little girl, who also climbed down from the bench. "Do you go this way, too?"

She turned toward the avenue, pushing the go-cart with her free hand. The child and her dog accompanied her, the former still gaily talking. The avenue crossing was a whirlpool of flying motors, of trucks and cars passing on the wide crosstown street, and of pedestrians dodging this way and that. There were, too, many homing baby carriages at this hour. The traffic officer had his hands full. He really could not see everything and everywhere at the same moment.

The pale lady, seeing what she thought was a clearing in the tangle of traffic, let the little go-cart slip over the edge of the curbing into the gutter. The child suddenly screamed.

"Oh, don't! Oh, don't! Princey, don't let her!"

The dog uttered a single bark and seized the skirt of the pale lady from behind. Around the corner into the avenue, making a sharp turn, came a great motor-car—all shiny varnish, beautiful upholstering, and polished nickel trimmings—a car which told of wealth and ease, and the occupants of which seemed of a world quite apart from that of the pale lady and her baby.

The wheel of the motor-car crushed the go-cart against the curbing only a second following the child's warning cry. The pale lady fell back from the peril, the dog dragging upon her skirt. The baby, crowing and fearless, confronted the man and woman in the tonneau of the car, which was brought to a stop by the chauffeur within its own length.

The little girl was breathless with excitement, but she was, too, vastly observant. She noted that the man in the car was of a florid complexion, grey-haired, and exceedingly stern looking. The lady was very fashionably dressed and revealed a cold and selfish nature in her manner and her gaze. Through a shell-mounted lorgnette she stared at the baby held so high and shielding his trembling mother's face.

"How could that person be so careless?" demanded this woman sharply. "Suppose the child had been in the carriage? I shudder to think of it!"

The pale lady withdrew from the vicinity of the motor-car. She seemed only desirous of effacing herself in the crowd that was loitering and curious.

"Dear me!" proceeded the woman in the car, "people like that do not deserve to have children. And it is a pretty child, too." Then she added to her husband: "What will you do, Henry?"

The little girl standing sturdily aside with her dog, and with strong disapproval set upon her flowerlike face, had attracted the attention of the man. He looked up.

"The woman's gone!" he said. "She's a fool! Run away! Must be something wrong with her. See here, child," he added harshly to Prince's little mistress, "is she your mother, too?"

"No, sir," said the little girl gravely. "She's just a friend of mine. And I don't think it was nice at all of you to smash her baby's carriage. You see, it will be no good at all any more."

The woman put up her lorgnette again and stared disapprovingly at the little girl. But her husband was much amused.

"Indeed?" he said, grimly smiling. "So she is a friend of yours! And who are you?"

"Oh, I am Carolyn May Cameron," said the little girl, and mentioned the name of the apartment house in which she lived, only a few blocks away.

"Very well, Carolyn May Cameron," said the man, leaning from the car to place in her hand a folded bank note, "give this money to your friend and tell her to buy another go-cart with it."

"Why should you?" objected the woman beside him.

"Drive on, Ren," said the man briefly, and the motor-car rolled away, leaving the amazed little girl with twenty dollars in one hand and the leash of the mongrel dog in the other.

Carolyn May did not know anything about the pale lady who had run away—her name, nor where she lived. She did not see how she was going to give that money to her.

CHAPTER II

A PROBLEM TO SOLVE

A boy with a pair of crutches beside him sat on the steps of the apartment house where Carolyn May lived.

"'Lo, Carolyn May!" he said when the greatly, excited little girl and the mongrel dog arrived, "Your Pop's got home."

"Oh, Johnny O'Harrity, I am so glad!" she said with relief. "I'd most forgotten this was his night for getting home early. So much has happened this afternoon," and she sighed ecstatically.

"There's always something happening to you, Carolyn May, let you tell it," said the janitor's boy, enviously. "What is it now?"

"Oh, I couldn't stop to tell you all, Johnny," declared the little girl, slipping Prince's leash and letting him free to scramble up the steps. "Just the won-derfulest thing happened—"

"Aw, pshaw!" scoffed the boy, unwilling to admit that a mere girl could fall upon Adventure so easily. "Like my grandmother says, you're always taking mice for monsters."

"I'm not either!" gasped the little girl. "You are an awfully impolite boy to say so—and I don't like mice! You just look at that, Johnny O'Harrity!" and she thrust her hand clutching the twenty dollar bill under his freckled nose. "What would you say if a man just gave you that and you didn't know who it belonged to? So there!"

She refolded the banknote and marched into the house with her head in the air, leaving Johnny O'Harrity speechless. The possession of a bill of such large denomination was too tangible evidence of "just the won-derfulest thing" having happened for the young sceptic to doubt longer. Visions of a wealth of ice-cream cones, lollipops and all-day suckers danced in the lame boy's mental vision.

"Aw, Carolyn, I didn't mean to make you mad!" he cried after her. "I was only foolin'."

But Carolyn May went on without reply. Perhaps she had reason to suspect Johnny O'Harrity's disingenuousness.

Prince was whining at the apartment door when she reached the top of the two flights of stairs in the semi-lighted stairwell. She put a dimpled finger on the annunciator button, and at once a muffled step approached along the private hall of the Cameron apartment. It wasn't mother's light and busy step, so Carolyn May shrank back beside the doorframe and clapped a pink palm upon her mouth to smother the giggles that immediately arose to her lips.

The door opened. A man in his shirtsleeves, with a beard and twinkling blue eyes, appeared in the opening. He peered sharply into the hall and seemed not to recognize the small figure in the tam-o'-shanter, although Prince slipped in between his legs with a joyful snuffle and made his way kitchenward, from which direction certain delightful odours proclaimed that dinner was in preparation.

"How do you do, little girl?" said the man. "Did you wish to see anybody in particular?"

"Does—does Miss Carolyn May Cameron live here?" asked the little girl, struggling to keep down the giggles.

"Why, yes. She does live here—when she's at home," admitted the man doubtfully. "But she isn't at home much."

"When is she home the most?" asked Carolyn May, "for I'd like to see her, please."

"She's home the most when she's out the least," declared Mr. Cameron. "Almost always she seems to be out when her papa comes home for his once-a-week dinner."

"Oh, Papa!"

"Oh, Snuggy!"

So the make-believe ended as she flung herself into his arms and he caught her up bodily and hugged her—oh, so tightly!—to his breast.

"It will be hard sledding, as your Uncle Joe would say, Snuggy, when you are too big for me to pick up this way," he declared, bearing her off to the front room, there to reseat himself in an arm-chair and hold her on his lap.

"Shall I ever be as big as that?" Carolyn asked, rather seriously.

Her father laughed, and then Carolyn May suddenly remembered her "won-derfulest" happening.

"See here, Papa Cameron!" she cried, and opened her hand to reveal the twenty dollar bill.

"'Pitcher of George Washington!' as your friend, Tim the hackman, says," cried her father, with dancing eyes. "Is there really so much money in this work-a-day world? Twenty whole dollars? My!"

"Oh," said Carolyn May, dimpling, "the man who gave it to me must have lots more than this. He was an awfully rich looking man."

"And he gave it to you?" questioned her father, his curiosity excited.

"Oh, yes, Papa. For a friend of mine. She's a pale lady, and the baby's just as sweet! But he's awfully skinny. I should think she would have choosed a fatter baby. And the man gave me this money for her because he didn't run over the baby," went on Carolyn May with absolute indifference to her persons and tenses. But Mr. Cameron was used to what he called the little girl's "fearlessness in the use of the English language." She was bound by few hard-and-fast rules of grammar.

"Yes. I should think that would have pleased him quite twenty dollars' worth," agreed Mr. Cameron. "But now suppose you tell me all about it, Snuggy, from the very start. I think likely I shall get a clearer idea of how my little girl became possessed of so much wealth."

So Carolyn May went back to the pale lady and her baby on the bench in the park, and how she and Prince had made their acquaintance. The resultant adventure when the pale lady had wrecked her baby's go-cart reminded Papa Cameron of the perils confronting his little daughter whenever she went out on the streets.

"It was a narrow escape," he said with a sigh. "I hope you, Snuggy, are just as careful as you can be when you come to a crossing?"

"Oh, yes, I am!" she cried. "And so is Princey. He barks if he sees anything coming. And he grabbed the pale lady's skirt with his teeth. But now, Papa Cameron, how shall I find her and give her this money for a new baby carriage?"

That was a question which was the text for much discussion around the dinner table. Mamma Cameron was quite as deeply interested in the problem as her husband and her little daughter. Mamma Cameron was a very sweet looking woman, and a single glance was all one needed to be assured that Carolyn May was her daughter.

"The poor woman doubtless needs that twenty dollars, Lewis," she said to Carolyn's father. "How careless people with plenty of money sometimes are!"

"Careless in giving away money to small girls, Hannah?" asked Mr. Cameron quizzically; "or careless in running their cars?"

"Careless in thinking that the giving of twenty dollars in this case absolves them from all responsibility. It would seem as if that man did not care whether the money ever reached the woman or not. He considered his conscience salved."

"Perhaps you are right, my dear," rejoined Mr. Cameron. "The more reason, then, why we should carry through his good intention. We must find the pale lady."

"Of course we must!" cried Carolyn May with enthusiasm. "Shall we put an advertisement in your paper?"

"'Advertising pays'—we are agreed on that," said her father, smiling. "But in this case we may assume that a less bald method of publicity had better be tried first. Did you never see the pale lady in the park before, Snuggy?"

"No, Papa, never before. But, then, she might come there often just the same. You know, Princey and I don't often go there in the afternoon."

"Perhaps you and Mamma can go tomorrow and look for her," Mr. Cameron suggested. "She cannot live far away, or she would not have been sitting in that particular quarter of Central Park. And we may assume, also, that her home is in an easterly direction, as that was the way she was going when the automobile literally crossed her path."

"I wonder who the people were in the auto, Lewis," said Mrs. Cameron.

"It is not likely that we shall learn that," her husband replied. "But Carolyn's friend, the pale lady, we must find.

"Carolyn's suggestion of advertising in the paper may not be far out of the way," he pursued. "A personal, advising the pale lady to communicate with the advertiser, and mentioning the incident and the fact that she will learn something to her financial advantage, would possibly attract her attention. We'll see about that later."

"Maybe we'll have to send for Uncle Joe Stagg to find her," put in Carolyn May excitedly. "You know, he found Miss Mandy and me when the whole forest was burning up, and brought us safe back to the Corners."[1]

"It shocks me," her mother said, with a sigh, "to remember what dangers the child experienced while we were away, Lewis. Sometimes I feel that I cannot bear to have her out of my sight again."

"Yes, our Snuggy has experienced perils by flood and fire with a vengeance. I had no idea, Hannah," he went on, "that my assignment to an Italian post for the Beacon was to result in so much excitement and adventure for Carolyn May. When our reported loss with the Dunraven seemed a fact, of course there was nothing for Mr. Price to do but to send Snuggy to your brother."

Carolyn May was busy with her dinner and her own particular thoughts. Her parents could speak freely before her at the moment.

"I believe her going to the Corners was the making of Joseph Stagg," said Mrs. Cameron thoughtfully.

"At least, it was his making over," her husband rejoined, with a boylike grin.

"He had been a business automaton almost, it seems to me, since I could remember," said Hannah Cameron. "Now, how he has changed!"

"I fancy," said Carolyn May's father, with a little smile, "that Miss Amanda Parlow, 'that was,' as the Corner folks say, has had something to do with the metamorphosis of Joe Stagg."

"But Carolyn began it. Joseph Stagg would never have awakened and married Mandy if it had not been for our child. Never! Even Aunty Rose Kennedy says that."

"She certainly is a wonderful little matchmaker," chuckled the man. "They have much to thank her for, Hannah. No wonder they are so eager to have you and the child spend a part of the summer at Sunrise Cove and the Corners.

"But, now! about this twenty dollar bill, and the pale lady. Will you be able to give some time to it, Hannah?"

"I certainly will try, Lewis. But I do not think Carolyn May should carry that money about herself."

Mr. Cameron tapped his breast pocket. "It is in my wallet right now," he said. "Let the pale lady be found and we will soon put the money into her hands. Still, the responsibility lies heavily upon the Cameron family until the actual owner of the twenty dollar note comes to light."

"Of course we shall find her, Papa," Carolyn May said with assurance. "Princey and I and mamma are sure to meet the pale lady. And mamma will just love her I know. She is a very, very nice lady."

"And that is also her opinion of Bridget Dorgan who comes to do the scrubbing and smells of beer," sighed Mrs. Cameron aside. "Sometimes I really think, Lewis, that Carolyn May's taste in friendships is altogether too catholic."

Her husband merely chuckled.

CHAPTER III

A NEW FRIEND

The next day was a holiday, so Carolyn May did not have to get up at half past seven and hurry to school. Nevertheless she and Prince were early abroad.

Prince always kept perfect count of the school days. That was one reason why Carolyn May was so sure he was "quite an interlectial dog." On the school days when the little girl started forth, Prince went only to the apartment door with her. But on this morning he ran ahead down the stairs, leaping and barking and wagging his ridiculous tail, confident that he and his little mistress were going for a walk.

The moment Carolyn May reached the vestibule and snapped the leash on to Prince's collar, the little girl exclaimed:

"Oh, dear, me! where's the funeral?"

"There ain't no fun'ral, Car'lyn May," vouch-safed Johnny O'Harrity who stood poised on his crutches at the bottom of the steps.

"Has the ambulance come for somebody, then?" demanded Carolyn May.

"Naw! There ain't no amb'lance!"

"What is the matter?" cried the little girl, gazing in amazement at the throng of children around the door. It seemed as though half of those about her own age living on the block were present. And how they all eyed Carolyn May!

"What ever is the matter?" she repeated. "Have—have I done anything?"

"Come on, Car'lyn May," said one bolder child—a girl with red hair and a hole in her stocking. "You're goin' down to the candy store, ain't you?"

"Why, no," said Carolyn May.

"I bet she's goin' to the drug store first off. I would," declared another, a boy this time.

"Why—why—"

"Let's go over to Maxey's. You get lots more for your money at Maxey's than you do at the drug store."

"For—goodness—gracious—sake!" gasped Carolyn May. "Who ever told you I was going to give all you children a treat? Of course I'm not! Why, I couldn't! I've only got ten cents, and five of that's for Prince's dinner."

"Aw, stingy!" went up the cry. "We know you've got lots of money, Carolyn May."

"Who says so?" flashed back the badgered little girl. Then her gaze fell upon the face of the janitor's boy. "Johnny O'Harrity!" she gasped. "I do believe you've been telling stories about me."

"Ain't nuther," snapped the lame boy. "I seen all that money that man gave you."

"He said it was two hundred dollars, Carolyn May," put in the red-haired girl.

"Oh! Oh!" exploded Carolyn May.

"Never!" snarled Johnny. "I said it was twenty. I saw it. Carolyn May said a man gave it to her."

"And of course the stingy thing wants to spend it all on herself," sneered the red-haired girl.

"Why, if I really had twenty dollars, of course I would treat you all," admitted Carolyn May, with an expansive smile. "Wouldn't it be nice? We could all have ice-cream cones. I'd just love to! But of course that money the man gave me for my friend doesn't belong to me."

"Stingy! Stingy!" was the unbelieving chorus.

For a moment Carolyn May almost "clouded up." She was hurt as well as angered. Finally indignation over-rode the smart of the attack.

"Why, Johnny O'Harrity, you are a good-for-nothing! I told you that money was given to me for a friend. It never belonged to me at all." Then she went on to the clamorous urchins surrounding her and Prince: "I'd like to treat you, but I can't—and that's just all there is to it. But I shouldn't s'pose you'd expect such a thing. Why! I'm not even acquainted with some of you," and she looked sternly and directly at the red-haired girl.

With Prince tugging at his leash she walked through the disappointed crowd. The red-haired girl made a face at her, but nobody dared touch Carolyn May when Prince was with her.

She held her head very high and her sweet eyes flashed. She would not show them how bad she felt. And she did feel bad, for the far-flung cry of "Stingy!" hurt her generous little soul. Carolyn May was learning a lesson—the lesson of the evanescence of popularity.

"That mean, mean Johnny O'Harrity!" she told Prince. "Just as his grandma says, he is a 'good-for-nothing.' I don't believe I shall give him a single, solitary treat ever again, so there!"

Yet half an hour later, when she returned with Prince's meat scraps in a paper and a bag of candy for which she had expended her own five cents, the wobegone picture of the lame boy huddled down on the apartment house steps, smote the little girl to the quick.

Misled by Johnny's tale of treasure, the other children had deserted the janitor's boy. Because he wore a brace on his foot and could only hobble around, the others did not care much to play with Johnny. He had to use his wits to gain their companionship even for a little while. His tale of Carolyn May's wealth had brought him a certain publicity for a brief time. Now he was marooned, like a shipwrecked sailor, on the apartment house steps.

He turned his head away as the little girl and her dog came blithely along the walk. Carolyn May's sunny nature had asserted itself again. The cloud had passed. She saw that Johnny had been crying. There was a mark on his face, too, where somebody had slapped him. Carolyn May was sure it had been that red-haired girl!

No boy wishes to be openly sympathized with when he has been unmanly enough to weep—and pitied by a girl least of all. Johnny O'Harrity looked determinedly away as Carolyn May mounted the steps.

The little girl hesitated above him, looking down on his huddled figure. Then, after releasing the eager Prince, who at once darted into the vestibule, she opened the paper bag and transferred some of the candy to her pocket.

Then she dropped the bag with a goodly share of sweets in it right into Johnny's cap as it lay in his lap, and immediately ran, giggling, into the house.

When Papa Cameron went downtown that day, Carolyn May went with him. It was a holiday jaunt indeed when she was allowed to go to his office. Later, her mother would go downtown, too, and they expected to shop together. The delights of shopping in the big department stores never palled on Carolyn May.

One never knows what may happen in this world. That, Carolyn May often said, was what made it so very delightful. If one went forth expecting to coast downhill and it proved to be warm enough to pick violets, she only considered it a pleasant surprise. The unexpected gave zest to existence.

This day the unexpected surely happened, and it became a day long to be remembered by Carolyn May.

Mr. Cameron's position on the Beacon was that of city editor. First he was busy looking over the clippings from the other papers which the exchange editors had put upon his desk, and then with his assignment book. Not many reporters had as yet put in an appearance, and Carolyn May was free to wander about the big room, which was always a delight to her.

Everybody knew her, or made believe they did. Even the copy boys grinned at Carolyn May, and the make-up man, whose hands were so terribly grimy, was her particular friend.

Wandering back to her father's big flat-topped desk, she was in season to see him greet a young man who had quickly followed his card in from the gate where the messenger sat.

"Mr. Bassett?" questioned the city editor, scanning the caller rather doubtfully.

The young man was not unattractive looking. He possessed a wealth of waving brown hair which he tossed back now and then from his broad brow by a quick, nervous gesture. His expression was frank, and if he was not exactly a handsome lad he certainly was good to look upon.

There was nothing dissipated in his appearance; yet his clothing was shabby, and a brilliant shine attempted to hide the ravages time had made on his footwear. His whole manner and presence spoke loudly of "putting his best foot forward."

"Mr. Bassett?" repeated Carolyn May's father. "You are, I take it, a son of Mr. Henry Bassett, of Wall Street fame?"

"I haven't come to you boasting of my family connections—or otherwise," replied the young man. "I cannot very well help my name, and there is nothing about it of which I am ashamed. I am here on my own behalf, to ask you for a chance, not as Henry Bassett's son, but as Joe Bassett, Yale graduate, and quite unafraid of work. I am willing to do anything that's clean."

"You have not been very successful since leaving college?" Mr. Cameron suggested.

"You can easily guess that," the caller said bitterly. "But I do not consider myself a failure," he quickly added. "Merely, all the holes I have found have been round; and I am a square peg, Mr. Cameron."

"I see," said the city editor, nodding. "And why do you think you have the germ of journalism within you? Many aspirants become failures in this field, first of all."

"Then give me credit for the grace of originality," answered Bassett. "I have tried almost everything else first. But of course I can write English. I wrote with a certain facility for the college press. I heard of a vacancy here. Mr. Mudge sent me to you, Mr. Cameron. If you can—"

"Oh! I will give you a trial," Mr. Cameron answered quickly. "Let me see, Mr. Bassett; you are a married man, are you not? Sit down."

For some reason the applicant flushed slowly as he took the creaky chair at the end of the editor's desk. "I have that honour," he said briefly.

"Excuse me one moment," said Carolyn May's father as his telephone rang and he put the receiver to his ear. The little girl drew nearer. Mr. Joe Bassett caught her eye and Carolyn smiled and flushed.

"Who are you, little girl?" the young man asked.

Carolyn May told him. She was usually quite frank with new acquaintances, though never bold. She approved of Mr. Joe Bassett, and began to chatter to him very companionably. Perhaps Mr. Cameron neglected to give the young man his immediate attention purposely for a few moments that he might watch Carolyn May's way with him. The little girl's father often said that he was willing to rely on Carolyn May's intuition.

The city editor looked up from his assignment book at length.

"Here!" he said. "I take it you know the city well?"

"Quite," said Bassett, giving his attention at once to Mr. Cameron.

"Here's a matter that should make half a column of human interest stuff. It is exclusive, too. The City News people evidently got nothing of it."

Briefly he related Carolyn May's adventure with the pale lady the previous afternoon.

"Here is the twenty dollar bill. Find the woman and give it to her. Get her story. I have a hunch it will be worth telling. Little chance, of course, of linking up the people who smashed her baby carriage with the tale. Unless the traffic officer noted the automobile license number, and that's not likely.

"But," added Mr. Cameron, smiling, "I'll give you a side-partner to help you. How would you like to go up to the park with Mr. Bassett, and see if you can find your pale lady, Carolyn May?"

"Oh! My! Yes!" ejaculated the little girl, her eyes shining.

"I'll telephone mamma and she will postpone her shopping trip, I know. Business before pleasure always," and Mr. Cameron smiled. "How about it, Bassett? Will you take care of her to the upper end of the park? Carolyn knows her way home from there."

"At your orders, Mr. Cameron," said the young man, folding the banknote and slipping it into a phantom-thin wallet as he rose to go.

"Humph!" The editor scanned the young man's wardrobe again. "By the way, stop at the cashier's window for an advance on expense account," and he scribbled something on an order form and handed it to the new reporter.

"Mr. Bassett, get all the facts you can and weave them into a readable story. No fancy writing. Our readers are plain people. There's nothing likely to break today of any account, so I'll hold half a column for you."

The editor kissed Carolyn May and she started forth with Joe Bassett, giving that young man her hand.

"Oh, I do hope we find my lady friend," she said eagerly. "And her baby! I know she will be pleased to have a new baby carriage. That one that got broken was a second-hand one, I think. There's a man sells 'em, and lots of other second-hand things, only two or three blocks away from where I live. The pale lady's carriage was awfully old and shabby looking."

Joe Bassett looked down at her curiously.

CHAPTER IV

A PUZZLE

Setting forth on this adventure promised to Carolyn May all that a hazard of new fortunes ever yields the young. She accompanied the Beacon's new reporter with the conviction that "wonderful things" were sure to happen. To find one particular mother and baby amid the five and more million persons in the Greater City was, to her mind, a simple thing.

"And I couldn't be mistaken once I saw that pale lady," she confided to Bassett, as they descended into the subway. "You see, she's got such b-e-a-u-tiful hair! And the baby is just as cunning! But he's an awfully thin little thing."

"Your taste runs to plump babies, I fancy," suggested her companion, and he smiled upon Carolyn May. There was a serious cast to his countenance despite its naturally frank expression.

"My!" exclaimed the little girl, "all babies ought to be fat. If they don't start out fat how can they ever hope to grow up to be big men and women? I guess that's what the matter is with some of these awfully thin people you see. They must have been skinny babies.

"My Auntie Rose Kennedy—You don't know her, do you?"

"I haven't that pleasure," he said.

"Well, she's awfully nice. You'd like her. Though some folks think she's stern—just at first. I did, myself," confessed Carolyn May. "And if you'd seen her spank General Bolivar with a lath—"

"Spank who with what?" gasped Bassett, suddenly aroused by her statement.

"Why, yes. General Bolivar is Uncle Joe Stagg's big white turkey gob-ble-er. And he chased me. So Aunty Bose spanked him with a lath. She's very stern when she wants to be. But she had skinny babies. 'Puny' she says they were, all three of them. So they couldn't live to grow up, and they've got three stones like three white lozenges in the churchyard at the Corners."

All this information rather staggered Joe Bassett. But he could not help being amused by the little girl's chatter. While they rode uptown on the subway train the journey was enlivened by similar monologues on the part of Carolyn May. There had been times when Aunty Rose Kennedy was wont to say that Carolyn's tongue "was hung in the middle and ran at both ends."

The two new friends left the subway and crossed the park to that glade where the little girl had made the acquaintance of the pale lady the day before. Early as was the hour in the afternoon there were already many babies with their nurses and carriages about the benches bordering the walks.

"Of course," Carolyn May said, "we don't have to look for a carriage. The pale lady won't have any, for it was all smashed. There! It was right down yonder that Princey and I found the pale lady. Oh! There she is!"

"Where? Are you sure?" asked Bassett, feeling rather embarrassed. This was his first attempt at such an interview as Mr. Cameron had proposed. Suppose the "pale lady" should resent it?

Carolyn May was pointing eagerly down the path to a woman sitting with a baby in her lap, alone on a bench. The little girl might have started off on a run to greet her friend the next moment, had not Bassett detained her.

"Wait!" he said, dropping a restraining hand upon her shoulder. He had paled; now he flushed warmly. "Wait! Let me speak to her first, Carolyn. Are you sure that is the lady of the accident?"

"Wait—let me speak to her first, Carolyn!"

"Why, of course!" declared the child confidently. "Don't you see she has no go-cart? And how pale she is? And how thin the baby is? Of course I know her!"

"Wait here, Carolyn," said Bassett, a strange tremour in his voice. "I want to speak to the—er—the lady alone."

Carolyn May, not altogether pleased, and somewhat puzzled as well, watched the tall young man approach the pale lady. Bassett stood between the child and her friend when the latter first looked up and observed his approach.

What she said, how she looked, or how Bassett looked and what he said, the little girl had no means of knowing. But what followed quickly filled Carolyn's small heart with trouble and her usually sunny face began to cloud over.

The pale lady rose from the bench with her baby. She and Bassett seemed to be talking very earnestly together. They began to move slowly down the walk—quite in the opposite direction from that point where Carolyn May stood, as she had been told to stand. Disobedience was not one of her sins.

A lump rose in her throat. Salt tears stung the child's eyelids. She beheld the pale lady and Mr. Bassett walk quite out of sight, and neither of them turned to look at her!

Of course Carolyn knew her way home. Mr. Bassett must know that, too, for this was the spot where her adventure had occurred the previous afternoon. He had been assigned to interview the pale lady and get her story; he was not supposed to act as nursemaid for Carolyn May.

But the latter felt very much hurt. Neither the pale lady nor Mr. Bassett had asked her to join them! She wanted to hear all about it. She wanted to see how the pale lady would look when she was given the twenty dollar bank note for a new baby carriage.

And they had ignored her—left her out of it entirely! She might never know at all just how glad the pale lady was to receive the twenty dollars. And—

They were out of sight! Carolyn suddenly came to life and started after them. But when she reached the exit of the park and the busy avenue crossing, Mr. Bassett and the pale lady and her baby were utterly gone. Carolyn May went on home feeling very disconsolate indeed.

But, after all, this was a holiday. She could not be unhappy for long. Here was mamma ready to take her on the shopping tour after all; and when Carolyn May had had her hands and face washed, and her hair combed, and her ribbons freshened a bit, they set off, for the department stores on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, of course, for it was too late to go "'way down town."

There was plenty to see in Harlem's business mart, and the little girl enjoyed herself. For she had money of her own to spend; Papa Cameron saw to that. She bought a new rubber dog for Baby Eldred Price, and a new "bangle" for Prince's collar, that being a fad just then among local dog owners.

"But you have bought yourself nothing, Carolyn May," said her mother. "I thought you wanted one of those pretty lace collars such as Edna wears? You have been looking at it and admiring it. Now, I fear," said Mamma, seriously, "you have not enough money left from your allowance to buy a collar equally as nice as your little friend's."

"We-ell," the little girl said slowly, "I—I guess I won't care much. You know, Mamma, I can look at Edna's just the same, and it's ever so pretty. Why! I can enjoy it better seeing it on her than as if I wored it myself. For you see," concluded this small philosopher, "I should have to go to the looking-glass to see a collar on me; but when Edna wears hers I can look at it all I like. Yes, it will be lots more convenient."

This was indeed a holiday, for, as Papa Cameron did not some home to dinner, when the electric advertising signs began to sparkle on the wide thoroughfare, the little girl and her mother went to the "very nicest restaurant there was" for their evening meal, where there was a "cute" little shaded lamp on each table, and an orchestra that played lovely music while people danced on the open floor in the middle of the great hall.

The waiter who attended to the needs of Mrs. Cameron and Carolyn was a very nice man indeed, the little girl thought. He saw to it that her water glass was filled and he said "Yes, Mam'zelle" and "No, Mam'zelle" with an air that made Carolyn feel thoroughly grown up. She shook hands with the waiter when they departed, he was such a very nice man.

She was very sleepy when they came out upon the busy street. The big stores were closed and the theatre-going crowd jostled her. Even the suggestion of her favourite moving picture house did not tempt her on this night, and she fairly staggered the last few blocks, clinging to her mother's hand; "and I never did know just how I got to bed," she told her father the next day.

It had been quite a wonderful day to look back upon, despite her disappointment about the pale lady and Mr. Joe Bassett. Regarding that, Mr. Cameron had something to tell his wife when he sat down to the breakfast table. It was Carolyn's and her mother's breakfast, but Mr. Cameron's supper.

"Of course, Carolyn May knew her way home from the park," her mother said. "But Mr. Bassett seemed to take the fact too easily for granted when he deserted her there. Or shall we lay it to the eagerness of the unfledged reporter?"

She had already heard the story of Joe Bassett and knew who he was and as much about his personal affairs as her husband.

Just why Mr. Henry Bassett, disrespectfully known far and wide as "the Griffin of Wall Street," had disowned his son, the newspaper reading public and the newspaper writers who catered to that public could only surmise. One day Joe was high in favour in his father's office downtown, as well as in the Riverside Drive mansion where the Bassetts dwelt; the next, Joe was out in the world and frankly admitting to friends who asked that he never expected to touch a cent of his father's vast fortune or be received by him again.

Of course one could surmise that the estrangement had something to do with the younger Bassett's marriage, although that had occurred after his break with his father. It was not the usual tawdry rich-man's-son-and-stage-girl marriage. Young Mrs. Bassett was born and brought up "to the purple" just as Joe had been. But her family had lost its property and rumour kept whispering that the girl had nowhere to turn but to that "easiest way" of marriage.

It might be said that she had captured a rich man's son. But she had wedded Joe Bassett after he had been disowned; and those knowing Henry Bassett well said that he would not have put his son out of the house without a good reason, and because of that good reason he would never take him back.

This was all two years old now. The general public had quite forgotten the young Bassetts.

"Or shall we lay it to the eagerness of the unfledged reporter?" Mrs. Cameron had asked.

"Scarcely that," observed her husband in a somewhat scornful tone of voice. "Joe Bassett—no matter how smart a man his father is—will never set the North River afire. At least, not in the newspaper field."

"Tell me about it," said Hannah Cameron, for she was one of those wise women who always retain a refreshing though not an undue interest in their husband's work. Besides, before she married she had worked in the Beacon office and had never lost interest in the newspaper "game."

"Can you imagine what the fellow said when he came back to the office from that assignment? He was prompt enough. He wasted no time. And he had the story—more of it than I expected him to get. He had in some way discovered (and that's a mystery, too) the name of the man whose automobile smashed the woman's baby carriage and who gave the twenty dollar bill to Carolyn."

"Oh! Who was that man, Papa?" asked the little girl, her interest, too, aroused.

"Why, Bassett would not tell me even that. Nor the name of your friend, 'the pale lady.' He got all the information needed to make a whacking good story, but refused to turn it in and offered his resignation instead, if I considered that necessary."

"Oh!" cried Hannah Cameron, dropping her knife and fork to stare at her husband. "Why did he do that?"

"Because he said he considered it bald impudence to put the story of the woman's private affairs into the papers for the public to read. She had begged him not to print anything about it. I asked him how he thought papers were made readable if not by just such stories, and he told me if that was newspaper work he could not do it."

"It it is not without reason—his point," murmured Mrs. Cameron.

Her husband smiled grimly. "I have always told you, Hannah, that you lacked an essential for sound newspaper work—you possess no nose for news. But Bassett was very high and mighty about it. Yet, somehow, I like the fellow," the husband added, musingly.

"I hope you were not obliged to discharge him," his wife said seriously, and plainly more moved by her husband's story than she cared to let him see.

"No. I gave him another chance. Put him on police and City Hall work. He cannot run against many people in that end of the game who will stir his latent chivalry. He seemed much impressed by Carolyn's friend. Said she was a lady and should not have her misfortunes spread upon the news sheet.

"He had sent the twenty dollar bill to the man who gave it to Carolyn May. Somehow he discovered his identity. The woman refused to accept the money. Bassett offered to make good the twenty if I did not believe him; but it was impossible to distrust the young idiot."

"That is a harsh word, Lewis," said Mrs. Cameron.

"It fits him," her husband said in disgust. "No wonder Joe Bassett has not got along any better."

"But, Papa Cameron!" cried Carolyn May suddenly, "then my pale lady won't have any new go-cart for her baby."

"She will not buy it with that twenty dollars your friend in the automobile gave you."

"And—and maybe she can't get another at all! I wonder—Why!" exclaimed the child, aghast, "we don't know where she lives or what her name is at all, do we?"

"Oh," said her mother kindly, "if you so easily found your pale lady over there in the park yesterday, you will be able to see her again."

To Carolyn's disappointment, however, she looked every afternoon in the park for a week; but the pale lady and her baby did not reappear.

CHAPTER V

THE RED-HAIRED GIRL—AND OTHERS

The red-haired girl became very soon Carolyn May's b te noire. She had but recently moved into the neighbourhood and even the best of the Harlem blocks sometimes have a sprinkling of ill-bred children. The progeny of the vulgar is mixed in with well-behaved girls and boys both at school and at play.

The red-haired girl, who was called "Sade" by her fellows, soon led the wilder children, both boys and girls, in all manner of mischief. She had the shrillest voice and the liveliest legs in the neighbourhood. She never, in fact, spoke otherwise than at top-register, and she travelled like a comet—at full speed all the time.

More, she was like a comet because of that flaming aura of hair when she ran, was Sade. None of her mates called her "Comet" of course. Instead they dubbed her "Ginger," "Brick-top," "Redney," "Scarlet," or "Carrot-top."

"Though," Carolyn May confessed to her father of this last, "I don't just see why they call her 'carrot-top.' Carrots aren't red at the top. I stopped at the vegetable stand on the corner and looked partic'lar. The tops are green. It's the bottom that is red."

However, Carolyn May herself called Sade none of these names. In the first place she was much too polite and well taught. Again, she never spoke to the red-haired girl if she could help it, for Sade called Carolyn "stingy" and "stuck up" and made other derogatory remarks calculated to grieve a child like Carolyn May.

Not that Carolyn was what is known among children as a "softie." She could take care of herself in most arguments. Children, if they attend the mixed public schools, have to fight their way, and she had battled up the educational heights as far as grade 3-A.

She was looking forward now to her graduation in June from the 3-A grade to the 4-B. The girls she knew in the latter division of her school were almost grown up. At least, so Carolyn thought And she had peeped into some of the books they studied and really, they seemed so deep and "wonderful," that she feared her own father might have difficulty in understanding them.

Naturally Carolyn was beloved of her teachers. Sometimes they did not altogether understand her. Her present teacher—a fluffy-haired, short-skirted, rattle-pated creature, herself more of a child than many of her pupils—delighted in saying that Carolyn was "so quaint."

"And I don't think much of Miss Solomons calling me that," Carolyn said to her mother. "I looked 'quaint' up in papa's Big Dick, and I'm not 'antique looking.' Antiques and horribles, are what they have in the Thanksgiving Day parades—and I ain't one."

"Nor do you speak as though you were taught very well by Miss Solomons," was her mother's comment. "I am sure she does not tell you to say 'ain't.'"

"M-m. No, ma'am. Perhaps she doesn't know herself if it's right or not—when she calls me quaint. I ain't quaint! Oh, my! isn't that funny? You only have to leave off that funny 'q' letter and it makes 'quaint' 'ain't.' 'Quaint' ain't right; and 'ain't' ain't right—"

"Oh, dear me, Carolyn!" cried her mother, stopping both ears. "You clatter just like a mill wheel. Do stop."

"Anyway," murmured the little girl, subsiding, "I don't like Miss Solomons as I did Miss Minnie Lester, who taught the red schoolhouse at the Corners."

Carolyn was never through talking about the Corners and Sunrise Cove, where Uncle Joe Stagg lived and had his hardware store, and all her friends thereabout, as well as the adventures which had befallen her while her father and mother were away.

Yet she had plenty of friends about her Harlem home—as odd, perhaps, and as curious a collection as she had found in the country where she had spent the greater part of a year. The sunny heart of Carolyn May appealed to almost everybody whom she met.

There was Dominick, the "ice, wood and coal" man in the corner cellar. She had been fain to call him at first (she was only a very little girl then, so she often said) the Nicewoodencoalman—all run together just like that!

"And he is a 'nice' man as well as an 'ice' man," she declared. "He has a nice wife, too, and a nice 'bambino.' That's a baby. It is Italian. I expect I'll learn all the Italian there is pretty soon if I talk much with Dominick.

"We've a little girl at our school, Maria Maretta, who is an Italian I'm quite sure. Only she won't talk it for us. She says it's 'wop talk' and she is an American. But Dominick talks Italian all the time. He says: 'I sella da coal, sella da wood, sella da ice, an' maka da mon'—maka nottings.' That is Italian. It is funny talk. It sounds almost like a kind of English!"

The butcher's clerk—whoever he might be—was always a friend of Carolyn, for she had daily and serious discussions with him about Prince's scraps. Carolyn "marketed" for her dog with the same care that her mother selected provisions for their table. Otto, the butcher's boy, was teaching her German. She could already say "wie geht es."

"The child will be a linguist," observed Papa Cameron in his joking way.

Mrs. Dorgan, the "scrub lady," who always spoke in a hoarse whisper and was very devout if her calling upon the saints was any criterion, was likewise well up on Carolyn's list of friends. Mrs. Dorgan was a very mysterious woman, the little girl thought, for while she worked she told Carolyn out of the corner of her mouth endless tales of her relatives and how badly they treated her, and of her son Jimmy in the Canadian army who was bound to be sent home before long by his general because he had killed so many "av thim Germans that there won't be none lift for the other byes to kill, at all at all, if they don't stop the gossoon!"

Carolyn was usually willing to go on errands, for in that way lay adventure. Around the corner, up and across the avenue, and easterly on another and much poorer block, was a small grocery and delicatessen store much patronized by frugal housewives of the neighbourhood.

The little girl never went to this store without taking Prince with her. Prince was only a "mongorel," as Carolyn herself admitted. But he had a fighting strain of blood in him and he was afraid of nothing that went on four legs or two.

But all dogs were not like Prince, as Carolyn May very well knew. On one corner of the block where the delicatessen store was situated was a very bad "store." Some corner "stores" were bad. Carolyn did not just know how it was; but she knew it to be a fact.

This particular "store" was such that she often crossed the street and walked on the other side to avoid it, and recrossed again when she arrived opposite the delicatessen shop. Sometimes a big pursy man with a very red face and wearing a white apron stood outside the swinging two-leaved door of the corner "store," while at his feet squatted a blear-eyed bulldog of a dirty white colour.

Now, a thoroughbred bulldog is never a coward and always a gentleman. But the saloon man's fat dog was a crossbreed and had only the bulldog's savage appearance without the faithfulness and kindness that makes the bull an aristocrat among dogs.

If one showed fear of the corner store dog that cowardly creature bristled up directly, showed his ugly fangs, and put on so threatening a front that the victim immediately felt himself in peril of his life.

The mere appearance of the bowlegged dog with his undershot jaw and hanging dewlaps "all a-slobber," frightened most of the neighbourhood children to a respectful distance from his owner's place of business. But sometimes they forgot and got a good scare, if nothing worse, by coming too near the bulldog. It was said that once the ugly dog had bitten a child and "Gus," the big man in the white apron, had had to pay damages.

One afternoon Carolyn May was sent by her mother to the delicatessen store in question, and of course she took Prince on his leash. Unfortunately when Carolyn came out of the house, there was the red-haired girl with some of her friends right across the way.

Now, there can be nothing that so fills the soul with rage, whether one be eight years old or eighty, as to be made ridiculous in the eyes of one's fellows. The more silly the means by which one is flouted and belittled the sharper the smart.

As soon as Sade saw Carolyn and her dog, she began to make faces. These grimaces were ignored by Carolyn. She walked away in a manner quite as dignified as that of Prince himself. Prince paid no attention to "faces" made at him by other dogs unless he meant to punish his opponents in proper fashion. Prince was no "bluffer."

So Carolyn might have followed a much worse example than that set by her dog. Sade continued to make faces; but finding the other armoured against that she went to other extremes.

The red-haired girl dared not come to close quarters. She was not above pulling Carolyn's hair, or snatching her hair ribbons away, or even slapping her. And there were plenty of missiles lying about to fling at the girl whom Sade considered "too stuck up to live!"

But there was Prince. Prince had never been seen to bite anybody—not even a cat, though he delighted to chase them. But he had such a threatening aspect when Carolyn appeared to be in danger that it was a legend in the block that the mongrel had fairly "chewed up" several tramps and a big fat policeman.

It was known that a man delivering coal at the apartment where Carolyn lived had offered to put a very black hand upon Carolyn's clean dress, and when she squealed half in fear and half in fun, Prince had growled terribly and showed a set of fearsome teeth which made the coal man hastily retreat.

Therefore the red-haired girl had a hearty respect for Prince. This did not keep her on this afternoon from aping Carolyn from the safe side of the street, walking as Carolyn was supposed to walk, "with her nose in the air," picking her way daintily over the crossing, and otherwise suggesting that Carolyn felt herself to be too good and much too "stuck up" to yield her attention to ordinary folk.

Carolyn May's face reddened and her eyes flashed, the hot rage of her glance quite burning up the tear drops that started involuntarily. The impudent Sade was followed by an ever increasing rabble of children, much amused by the gyrations of the impish one and even more entertained by the evident annoyance it caused Carolyn May.

They strung out behind her and her dog, after turning the corner into the avenue, in a sidewalk procession. The red-haired girl was now on the same side of the street as her victim. First she was ahead of Carolyn, then beside her, then behind her, almost walking in her steps. The impish behaviour of Sade caused many of the passers-by to smile.

Carolyn really felt bad! She could not reply to Sade's impudence in kind. Not a word was said, and therefore the retort stinging was denied her. And of course she would not attempt to strike the red-haired girl.

If she quickened her steps the rabble would keep up. And Carolyn May was no coward. She would not run from her enemy. But she was so confused when she came to the corner of the block on which was the delicatessen store, that, without thinking, she crossed over directly toward the store where the white bulldog lived.

It chanced that he was squatting like a great frog at his master's feet, as the troop of children came toward him. The big brute raised himself with a savage growl, but red-haired Sade did not see or hear him. She was running backward just then in front of Carolyn, sticking out a very red and pointed tongue and dancing up and down in a most tantalizing manner.

"Yah! Yah! Yah!" singsonged the red-haired girl.

Why it is a fact that these syllables are the most impudent and maddening of all cries, has never been explained. And how unanswerable they are!

Carolyn May kept steadily on, while the red-haired girl danced backward. The avenue was crowded. Sade came close to the white bulldog.

Suddenly there was a deep-throated growl, a wild shriek from Sade, and a scramble and scratching of heavy paws on the sidewalk.

Sade slipped, but in falling managed to escape the first dash of the bulldog. The other children screamed and scattered like chickens when a hawk is sighted. Carolyn was stricken motionless.

The red-haired girl got away from the bulldog that first time, although he tore a big mouthful from her skirt. But the man who owned him did not succeed in calling him off. The creature knew the child was afraid of him and took delight in giving pursuit.

As poor Sade started running into the side street the bulldog followed. The child was utterly terrified. The strength left her limbs. Falling against the wall of the saloon she looked back, and, seeing the brute coming, she sank down, helpless and in his power.

The dog's master had not aroused himself to the seriousness of the situation. Perhaps he was befuddled by some of his own stock-in-trade, for he actually laughed as he waddled after the brute.

CHAPTER VI

A NEW BANGLE FOR PRINCE

A woman screamed somewhere from above. She was doubtless looking down upon the corner and saw the frightened children scatter and the grey-white bulldog charging upon the fallen Sade. That scream seemed to awaken Carolyn May.

She was no more courageous at heart, perhaps, than many of her mates—many, even, of those who ran. Carolyn had been held spellbound by the frightful picture of the bulldog attacking the red-haired girl.

But the woman's scream and the straining of Prince at his leash, awoke his little mistress. Prince had dragged her half way across the sidewalk before she could beseech him to stop.

"Prince! Prince! You mustn't!"

Prince had usually quite ignored the saloon man's bulldog. He had taken that creature's measure long since. The bulldog never even growled at Prince as he passed by the corner.

But suddenly Carolyn May's brave comrade took a vital interest in the bigger brute. He dragged the little girl on as the bulldog made his second dash for the unfortunate Sade.

The red-haired girl was helpless. With all her daring and impishness, her courage had never compassed such peril as this. She was first a victim of her own terror, and now the victim of the bulldog's rage.

"Come away from dot—you Fritz!" commanded the dog's owner, wheezingly, and at last fearful of what the beast might do.

For all the man might do to balk the bulldog's intention, however, he might as well have been a mile away from his corner store. There was just one individual who could save the red-haired girl. Carolyn May suddenly realized that.

"Oh, Prince!" she cried, and let go of the loop of Prince's leash.

With a challenging roar—something between a bark and a growl—Prince charged along the sidewalk. He dived fairly between the saloonkeeper's bowed legs, and that astonished and frightened merchant was cast ponderously on his back upon the sidewalk, his short legs in the air.

Prince perhaps had long since in his doggish mind decided just how he should tackle the white bulldog if ever he came to a clinch with him. The bulldog wore a broad, rivet-studded collar which defended his most vulnerable part—the throat.

But there was another hold which quickly brings a fighting dog to grief unless he is a thoroughbred. It will never be known what inspired Prince to seize the white bulldog by one fore paw!

The dog was on top of the fallen child, his slobbering jaws open. He would have seized the tender morsel in another second had not Prince made his grab first.

In a riot of doggish sounds the two animals rolled over and over on the sidewalk. The bulldog forgot his prey; but Prince did not forget his object. He hung on with grimness, growling all the while and grinding his antagonist's flesh and bones between his clamped jaws.

The women and children near by scattered; even the red-haired girl found renewed strength to rise and flee. But certain men ran up, surrounding the fighting dogs in an eager group. The bulldog's owner had risen and was yelling distractedly for somebody to "pull dot dog off'n Fritz."

Carolyn May saw a policeman running across the avenue toward the spot, his stick gripped aggressively in his hand. He was a young, lean, nattily uniformed policeman, one of the recently appointed patrolmen whose lack of bulk and brute strength is made up to them in training, science, and brains.

Carolyn May knew this policeman. She did not want him to misunderstand the situation and consider Prince at fault.

"Oh, it's my dog! You know my dog, Mr. Policeman! And he isn't off his leash!"

"I get you, little girl," said the officer with twinkling eyes and pushed his way into the centre of the wrangle.

The owner of the bulldog was not very successfully kicking at Prince. The bulldog was searching his soul for sounds to tell how bad he felt, while Prince was still holding on. The officer bent over the struggling dogs and dealt a single skilful blow with his stick.

"Blockhead!" squealed the fat saloonkeeper. "You haf hit mein Fritz yet!"

"That's the one I meant to hit, Gus," said the officer, grimly, as the white bulldog rolled over and immediately ceased struggling.

Prince, seeing his antagonist hors de combat, unclamped his jaws and stood back, eying his rival sharply, but not offering to attack again. The officer secured the end of the leash and put it into Carolyn May's hand.

"You've been warned often enough, Gus, to keep your dog both muzzled and on a leash. He might have chewed that red-haired kid to sausage meat. You take your Fritz inside your saloon, or I'll call up the dog wagon."

The ill-mannered bulldog was twitching with all four feet and otherwise gave signs of returning consciousness. His owner took the policeman's advice, while the crowd thronged admiringly about Carolyn May and her dog.

Her fright having passed, Prince's mistress was very proud of him. Even the policeman patted him, for he knew Prince quite as well as he did Carolyn May.

"That's a fine dawg," declared one woman from the tenement near by, her arms akimbo as she looked at Prince, and who had a little plaid shawl pinned tightly across her ample bosom. "Sure that mangy cur of Gus's ought to been killed long ago. Would you sell your dawg, little girl?"

"Oh, no, ma'am! I couldn't sell Princey," Carolyn May cried. "Why, he'd be broken-hearted, I guess, if I did that."

Prince shook himself and his bangles jangled. He was undoubtedly proud. He knew well enough when he was being praised.

"Sure the dawg should have a new bangle for the battle he fought," said the woman who wished to buy him. "With the date on it, an' commemoratin' his battle wid Gus's cur-dog. I'll give a quarter towards it myself."

"And I'll make the medal and engrave it," declared the man who made keys and mended locks in the little shop next the corner saloon.

Carolyn May never knew all those who subscribed to Prince's new bangle, or just how it was done. But a few days later the "key man" came to the Camerons' door and brought a very shiny medal and attached it to Prince's collar. On it was stamped:

PRINCE: A GOOD DOG
From His Friends

Already a silver plate on Prince's collar commemorated "the brave deed" he had performed at the Corners in saving Miss Minnie, Carolyn's dearly beloved school teacher, from being robbed by a tramp.

"That dog," remarked Mr. Cameron, "will soon have more medals than a dock policeman."

But this is quite ahead of our story. The red-haired girl had run home. But Carolyn May had to go on to the delicatessen store and buy the articles her mother had sent her for. And as though there had not been enough excitement for one afternoon, she looked up curiously at the woman beside her when she stood at the counter, and—

It was the pale lady with her baby in her arms!

"Oh, my dear!" gasped Carolyn May. "This is just the most wonderful day! Do you know what Princey just did?" and she proceeded to tell the pale lady all.

Prince stood by "smiling" and with his tongue hanging out (Carolyn never could break him of that habit—which she felt was not exactly polite—especially when he was happy) and the baby must needs maul his ears and muzzle again.

"I am quite sure he is a very brave and kind dog," the woman said; for if she had a secret reason for not wishing to meet Carolyn again, how could she hurt the child's feelings? Carolyn was quite determined to be friends with her.

"Prince loves your baby a whole lot," the little girl said wistfully, "and I know he would like to come to see him."

"You must bring Prince, then," said the pale lady, seriously. Yet her eyes danced. "I will tell you how to get to where I live, Carolyn May. But you must first ask your mother if you may come."

"Oh, yes," agreed the little girl quickly. "I couldn't go anywhere without asking mother first. But I know she'll let me come, and if nothing happens we will come tomorrow afternoon."

"Very well."

The pale lady told her how to find the house and what floor she lived on and in which tenement on that floor. It was on Park Avenue, but in that section where the railroad is tracked on an elevated structure and where the houses are very poor and unpleasantly situated. These facts made slight impression on Carolyn's mind, however; and she went home more excited over finding the pale lady again than about Prince's fight with the white bulldog.

The news of the latter semi-tragic happening had travelled before her. Mrs. Cameron was on the point of setting forth to hunt for her little daughter, for the children in the block were wildly excited over the escape of the red-haired girl from the jaws of the bulldog. It was not often that Mrs. Cameron allowed herself to be so worried regarding Carolyn, for with Prince by her side the child was able to take complete care of herself in any emergency.

The red-haired girl was reported to be in hysterics; and she was screaming that Carolyn May was being eaten up by Gus's big dog.

"Why, of course not!" Carolyn said disgustedly. "Prince wouldn't have let him, anyway. And he never even tried to bite me. Dear me! you can't really believe a word that red-haired girl says—not even when she's historical."

But Prince had won for Carolyn deliverance from one great annoyance. After what had happened even the ill-bred Sade could not bring herself to the point of making faces at the brave dog's mistress. On the way to school one day she presented Carolyn with a huge hothouse tomato—brilliantly scarlet and embarrassingly juicy.

This peace offering Carolyn felt herself obliged to accept; yet she had not the first idea what use to make of it. She never ate tomatoes except with a dressing on them that her mamma made. She could not eat it "raw" in any case, for if she tried to set her teeth in it the juice would surely squirt out all over her dress "and everything."

Sade, embarrassed by her own generous impulse, ran shrieking away the moment she had placed the tomato in Carolyn's hand; so the latter could not give it back. And she could not make up her mind to give it to any of her other schoolmates.

To drop it in the gutter was against Carolyn's idea of civic neatness. So she found herself entering the schoolhouse with the plump and overripe tomato still in her possession.

There was Miss Solomons. Public school teachers, especially those of the lower grades, are the recipients of all manner of gifts from their loyal and adoring pupils. Sometimes the ledge of Miss Solomons' desk held a long row of such bestowed articles of commerce, and there were several gifts there now.

The red-haired girl was not in Carolyn May's grade and would never know. The little girl marched up to Miss Solomons' desk and gravely deposited the big and squashy tomato with the collection of gifts already on parade.

"This is for you, Miss Solomons," she said seriously, and went on to her seat.

The startled Miss Solomons was sure after that that Carolyn May was more "quaint" than ever.

"What shall we do," asked Hannah Cameron of her husband, "about letting Carolyn May go to call on her 'pale lady,' as she calls the woman? You know, that block is in a very poor and dirty section."

"Um! Maybe. But the pale lady is not likely to be a dirty lady, even if she is poor. Otherwise I could not imagine Joe Bassett's extreme chivalry in her case. For, after all is said and done, dirt cannot inspire such feelings. Nor does Carolyn May ever take one of her sudden and violent fancies for anybody who is not clean and neatly dressed."

"Yes. I know," admitted his wife, but continuing in deep thought.

"Besides," added Carolyn's father, "there's Prince. Prince has a deep-rooted prejudice against people who are ragged and dirty. With Prince I have no doubt she will be as safe on that particular block as on any other in New York."

CHAPTER VII

"IF I WERE RICH"

After school the next day, as Carolyn had promised, she took Prince to call on the pale lady's baby.

Little did she mark the locality as being fearsome or unpleasant. She was in Prince's care, and Carolyn May usually found something interesting, and therefore pleasant, wherever she went.

Here were children of all ages, and so many, many babies! Of course they were dirty-faced and raggedly clothed in most instances. Quite in contrast to the babies on her own block or most of those she saw in the park when she went there to walk.

"I s'pose," thought the observant little girl, "that these children are so dirty because their mothers have so many to take care of. While they are washing one baby the others are getting dirty in this awfully dirty street. So, if they keep on all day washing them, they would never be all clean at once! But," admitted the philosophical Carolyn May, slowly, "it's funny not to see any clean babies here at all. I wonder where those are that have just been scrubbed."

The house, the number of which the pale lady had given the little girl, seemed slightly less disreputable than many of its neighbours. It was merely a slice of the brick block, but had been recently painted. There were four apartments on each floor, two in front and two in the rear.

The pale lady lived in one of the rear apartments, one flight up from the street. The children who crowded the stairway made way for Prince and watched him narrowly. Without him Carolyn might have found some difficulty in getting up to the pale lady's rooms.

She might, too, have found some of these children as unpleasant as the red-haired Sade had been, had Prince not been her companion. But, as it was, she went boldly to the pale lady's door and knocked.

The latter welcomed Carolyn and Prince cheerfully. Her little, dark rooms were scrupulously clean; but in the kitchen, to which the lady took her small friend, the evidences of poverty were not to be hidden.

The kitchen had two big windows overlooking a littered and dirty backyard. These windows were really the only ones of any account in the place; for those of the sitting room and bedroom between looked out into airshafts. The smells of cooking and boiling clothes rose through the house, and odours from the yard were such that it was far pleasanter to keep the windows closed than open.

The lady, with her beautiful hair, her beautifully clean and sweet-smelling skin, her well-cared-for hands, her warm if rather wistful smile, all appealed strongly to the little girl. Poor as the pale lady must be, Carolyn saw that she was quite as careful of her personal appearance as was her own mamma. And the baby was as sweet as a rose!

They put him down on the floor on a folded quilt and let him play with Prince to his heart's content. Meanwhile the pale lady and Carolyn became very well acquainted.

Of course, it began with babies; but "babies" is such a fruitful subject for discussion that they branched off into a dozen topics, all leading from, or appertaining to, babies. Carolyn could not remember much about her own babyhood—and that was funny, she said, because she certainly ought to be the one to recall most clearly what happened to her at that time. But she had known about babies, she told the pale lady, "for years and years."

"You see," she said, "there is always somebody in our apartment house who has a new baby. Why! it's so surprising, sometimes. There's Mrs. Price and Edna. Edna's my par-tic'lar friend, you know. They had no more idea of finding Baby Eldred than nothing 'tall. Why! Edna wasn't even at home when the baby came—and she certainly wouldn't have gone to Brooklyn to her auntie's to stay for a week that time, if she or her mother had had any idea that they were to find Baby Eldred.

"No! It's really quite startling when you come to think of it. I said to my mamma that I really wouldn't want to be alone in our house if we found a baby. Suppose I opened my closet door and—and—there—he—was! Wouldn't it startle you?"

"I am sure it would be quite shocking," admitted the pale lady gravely.

For her part she told Carolyn a great many things about her baby, and how much she and his father thought of him. His father she called "Laird" and that, Carolyn presumed, was his surname. Bridget Dorgan always spoke of her husband as "Dorgan." Carolyn rather thought that some men did not possess any given names at all. Her own father was particularly rich in that he had two.

So "Mrs. Laird" and "Baby Laird" the pale lady and her baby became in Carolyn May's mind, and she chattered about them so much at home that soon Mr. Cameron and Carolyn's mother spoke of the little girl's new friend as "Mrs. Laird."

Her little daughter having shown herself to be so enamoured of her new friend, Mrs. Cameron would most certainly have soon visited the pale lady; but just at this time she was extremely busy preparing for the summer. It had been decided that she and Carolyn should spend the long vacation away from the hot city.

Mr. Cameron's increased salary now made these plans possible. Besides, his wife and child were to go to a seaside resort, Block Island, which he could easily visit for the week end himself.

It was planned, however, that Carolyn and her mother should spend the first fortnight of the long vacation at the Corners, and the little girl looked forward more eagerly to that than to the unknown delights of the ocean-girt island they were later to visit.

Mrs. Cameron's sewing machine was very busy, and Carolyn May had to spend what seemed to her long, long hours being fitted and refitted with the pretty summer frocks that her mother made for her. Carolyn was delighted with all these new fineries, but she confessed she found the trying-on process very trying indeed.

"You see, my arms and legs get so squirmy," she said to Papa Cameron. "I can just feel worms crawling and creeping all under my skin, and up and down my whole body. Of course, I know they aren't really worms. Mamma says they are nerves. But if they feel like worms they might as well be worms, I should think."

"My goodness!" gasped Papa Cameron, entering into the spirit of his little daughter's imaginings, as he almost always did, "you wouldn't really want to know that you were wormy, would you, Snuggy? My goodness! Just like a wormy chestnut, or a wormy apple! I couldn't love a wormy little girl, I am afraid."

Carolyn, sitting on his lap, allowed herself to shudder deliciously at the thought.

"Mamma says the nerves are under my skin and that they spread all over me, like a fine net. Like a hair-net, I spect. And if they were worms crawling under my skin I don't believe they would feel any worse."

So Carolyn's visits with her dog to the pale lady were curtailed because of the dressmaking activities. Nevertheless, within the following few weeks the little girl became very good friends indeed with Mrs. Laird. She never saw Mr. Laird, but they often spoke of him, for the pale lady evidently loved him very much and believed heartily that he was a much more worthy man than their circumstances seemed to suggest. What Mr. Laird did for a living Carolyn was never told; but it was evident he did not earn much money. The pale lady was continually taking medicine, so the doctor must get a good part of what her husband earned; and the baby had cost a great deal, of course.

"Yes; they always do," agreed Carolyn May, commenting upon this final fact. "It seems just as though nobody ever finds a baby that doesn't need a doctor, and nurses, and clothes, and a baby carriage, and a whole lot of things. It would be lots nicer," observed Carolyn May, stating an obvious fact as though it were quite original, "if babies were left right outside your door in a nice carriage all dressed up, and with a boxful of clothes. Then there wouldn't be a single, sol'tary thing to worry about."

"I believe, Carolyn May," said the pale lady, laughing faintly, "that if you could make this old world over you would have things much more nicely arranged than they now are. I am sure we should all be happier."

"Oh, as for being happy," said the little girl, "that is altogether in our own hands. So my papa says. It's just like burning a tiny, tiny candle in a very dark place, he says. Never mind how small the light is, right close to it there is plenty to see by. We may not light up the whole big world with our little candle; but we can light ourselves, anyway. Papa Cameron," added the small philosopher, who came honestly enough by her optimism, "says always to look out and up, never to look inside us at our troubles. You know," and the giggles bubbled up and the little girl's eyes danced. "You know, he always says he works for the firm of 'Grin and Bearit' and so, no matter what happens, he is prepared for it.

"It's an awful nice way to be," added the little girl. "My papa's a real comferble man to have about the house. My mamma often says so."

The pale lady thought that cheerful little Carolyn was most "comferble" to have around one too. In spite of the frock fittings the child came frequently, if only for half an hour at a time.

The pale lady went out but seldom with her baby. Although he was such a "skinny" child in Carolyn's opinion, the baby was a good deal of a burden for the frail mother. And lacking a carriage now, it was too great a task for her to carry the baby as far as Central Park.

The little girl wanted very much to know why Mrs. Laird would not use the twenty-dollar bill sent her by the rich man with which to buy another go-cart; but she was too polite to ask. Indeed, although she realized that her new friend was poor, she said or did nothing to show that she noticed the deficiencies in housekeeping arrangements and the like that were so apparent in the pale lady's apartment. The latter might have felt much embarrassed had Mrs. Cameron called; but one could not experience that feeling for long with friendly little Carolyn May.

The weather was growing hotter and harder to bear. The sun poured into the kitchen windows of the cramped little apartment in the afternoon and made the place almost stifling. The big-eyed baby showed the effects of the heat, and the pale lady grew more pale and wan every day.

Carolyn May's visits, however, cheered her friend immensely. Sometimes the little girl carried some plaything she had bought for the baby with her own money. She saw that, unlike other babies she knew—Eldred Price for instance—the pale lady's baby woefully lacked toys.

Then, on several occasions, she brought sweets which her mother made, carrying the confection carefully in a flowered bowl and wrapped in a damask napkin under the outside cover of paper. They had a little feast in the pale lady's kitchen at such times, all four of them; for of course Prince had to have his share. He certainly had a sweet tooth!

"Only, if he wouldn't gollop everything down so!" sighed his little mistress. "One lick of his tongue and a swallow, and his share is gone. And then he begs with his eyes and mouth all the time you are eating your share. It's no use. You can't teach a dog much etiquette, I guess."

They played games as well as gossiped. Carolyn had one favourite "solitaire" game which she had made up herself and which she often played on rainy days when she might not go out and when her mother was too busy to stop her work to play with her. It was a most fascinating form of exercise for the imagination, for Carolyn called it, "If I Were Rich" and it consisted of "spending money in your mind."

"You know," she told the pale lady, "I could spend a million if I had the time. And it's lots of fun to 'supposing.' Why! I guess half the fun in the world is 'supposing' about things."

But Carolyn was too generous to wish to enjoy entirely this imaginary good fortune.

"You tell what you'd buy, and where you'd live, and how many servants and all you'd have, if you owned a million, million dollars," she urged the lady.

"That must be a great deal of money, Carolyn May," said the other thoughtfully. She had a bit of sewing in her lap—oh! something ever so coarse and commonplace. And she let her white hands remain idle while she stared out through the window at a picture the little girl could not see.

"That must be a great deal of money," she repeated.

"What would you do with part of it?" asked Carolyn. "What kind of house would you live in?"

"Oh, I can see the house, Carolyn May," sighed the pale lady. "It would be a big, sprawling, brown stone house with white pillars before it holding up a veranda roof at the level of the second floor windows. And, oh! the cool, wide veranda itself, deep and quiet, with chairs and benches and swinging seats. It was lovely in the hot weather."

"Yes, yes," said the little girl. "That would be nice! I like hammocks and swings."

"And a maid to wheel out the tea wagon in the afternoon, and real orange-pekoe tea and cupcakes made by Margaret—"

"Who is Marg'ret?" asked Carolyn May quickly.

"Oh!" said the pale lady. "That is what I will call a dear old nurse who, perhaps, has been in the family for years and years. And she makes lovely cupcakes."

"Like my Aunty Rose Kennedy. She makes jumbles, too," said Carolyn, nodding. "Yes?"

"And a beautiful, old, shady lawn sloping down to the river, the far bank of which rises in terraces of green forest and grey rock on, oh! the most beautiful stretch of the Hudson. And in the cool of the day a lovely, smoothly running car would come around from the garage and we would go to drive in it, over the hills and far away—sometimes as far, even, as Poughkeepsie.

"Sometimes we would stop for dinner at a roadside hotel, where there was music and dancing. And often we went to the Country Club and there we had regular parties."

"I love parties!" gasped Carolyn, with shining eyes and clasping her hands.

"Do you?" almost whispered the pale lady, still with her vision set upon things a great way off. Her baby was asleep. So was Prince—brokenly—on the floor at their feet. It was hot in the kitchen, and Prince twitched his legs and occasionally snapped at a fly.

"Do you?" the pale lady repeated. "It was at a party given for me by some friends that I first met Laird. Then—then—the beautiful old home was already lost; the dear old people who had owned it and who had brought me up to know nothing but the good things of life, had lost their all—everything had been swept away, and they had died, broken-hearted. Other friends had taken me in—for a time. I met Laird. Of course I had to marry. All my friends said so. There was nothing else for me to do—absolutely penniless as I was. But," and she smiled suddenly, and it was such a lovely, revealing smile that Carolyn, too, broke into smiles, "they did not have to urge me to marry Laird. I loved him from the first, you see."

"Oh, yes," said Carolyn May, earnestly. "That is just how it was with my Uncle Joe Stagg and Miss Amanda Parlow. They were loving each other for years an' years and at last they just had to get married."

"We did not have to wait years and years," said Carolyn's friend. "People said we ought, for Laird—well! he had nothing at all when I married him but his two bare hands. But he is going to earn plenty for us—for Baby and me—some day."

She sighed. She looked around the poor room. All the glory of remembrance went out of her face and her eyes misted with unbidden tears. It was some time before she spoke again and the game of "If I Were Rich" was ended for that afternoon.

"But," said Carolyn May, in telling her mother all about it, "my pale lady must have been truly rich once. She don't have to supposing when she plays my game. She lived in a great house—big as the public library down on Fifth Avenue, I guess—only without those funny lions in front. And she had automobiles and everything.

"But of course," concluded the little girl, within whose breast stirred already the true instinct of motherhood, "I s'pose she thinks Baby Laird makes up for everything she's lost."

CHAPTER VIII

A GREAT DEAL HAPPENS

There was a mystery about the pale lady, and a mystery delighted Carolyn May just as it delights something like nine-tenths of the human race. The mystery of the fourth dimension, or perpetual motion, or the problems of alchemy thrill the scientific mind no more than do their neighbours' secrets interest the ordinary person.

The little girl wanted very much to know why the pale lady's husband was so poor. Even if she had been poor, Laird, as the pale lady called him, must have come of wealthy people; or how had she met him at the party given by her friends?

Now, this was rather an involved thought for a little girl to work out in her mind; but Carolyn May's was not an ordinary child's mind. She was no prodigy. However, she had spent most of her time with grown folk. She had few playmates of her own age. And her father made Carolyn May much his companion.

"Now, think it out for yourself, Snuggy," was often his answer when the little girl came to him with a question. If she sometimes came to a conclusion more astonishing than illuminating, Mr. Cameron merely chuckled and told her mother that the exercise of Carolyn's imagination was good for her.

"I really do not think it needs exercising, Lewis," Hannah Cameron once said seriously. "She was playing 'having visitors' the other day when it rained and she was kept in, and I allowed her to 'receive' in the parlour. But when I went in myself after a while there really wasn't a chair I could sit on. She had filled them all with her imaginary friends and objected strenuously to my sitting in their laps!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed her husband. "Why didn't you try holding one of her callers in your lap?"

"I never thought of that," answered Mrs. Cameron. "It is plain to be seen from which side of the family Carolyn May gets her gift of imagination."

The little girl exercised this trait much on the affairs of the pale lady during the next few weeks. She saw the bald poverty of the young couple and yet realized that they were people to whom one could not offer charity of any description.

"Of course, Mamma," she said, "we can give papa's old clothes to Mrs. Dorgan and even some of my outgrown frocks to Mrs. O'Harrity, in the basement, for little Elsie. But somehow—I guess—it wouldn't be nice to offer Mrs. Laird one of your dresses that you could spare."

"I appreciate the fact that your friend cannot be very well helped in that way," mused Mrs. Cameron. "Her refusing the twenty-dollar bill for a new baby go-cart showed that."

There were a multitude of interests in Carolyn May's busy life just now. The end of the school term was in close view. And preparations for the long outing away from the city greatly delighted the child.

"I wish you and the baby were going with us," she said to the pale lady one day, just before the school graduating exercises. It was probably the last time Carolyn May and Prince would be able to call on the pale lady until their return to the city in the autumn.

"I sincerely wish we were, Carolyn May," said the young woman, with a tired sigh.

She had just laid her baby on the bed and spread a fly net over him. She was more pale than ever today and her head seemed so heavy with its red-gold hair piled so high, that it drooped like a broken-stemmed flower.

"You know," said the little girl, "our house is lots cooler than this; yet we are going away and you—you, I s'pose, can't go?"

"Oh, no!" murmured her friend. "Laird cannot compass it this summer, I fear. There are too many bills. We must catch up—"

She stopped. Carolyn looked up suddenly, for the pale lady did not speak again. She saw her sinking slowly sideways from her chair to the floor.

"Oh!" screamed the little girl, and then muffled the cry behind her palm for fear of waking the baby.

She sprang from her own chair to lean above her friend who had sunk to the floor in a heap, her hair tumbling down and straying all about her head and shoulders.

"Oh! Oh! Don't!" gasped the little girl.

She ventured to touch the pale lady's arm. Then she tried to shake her by it, and the lax body of the young woman slipped down further from its leaning posture against the chair. Oh! It seemed, dreadful to Carolyn May.

She had never seen anybody faint before. The pale lady might be dead!

And whom should she tell? Whom ask for help? The little girl had not the least idea what to do in this emergency. It seemed just as though her friend were dead and she was left alone with her.

There was nobody near to whom Carolyn could speak. She was actually afraid of the rough people in the house. She knew that the pale lady had absolutely nothing to do with her neighbours. Whether this was a wise way to do or not, Mrs. Laird never even replied when spoken to by the people in the house.

Carolyn began quietly to sob herself. That was her nervousness. But she did not lose her self-control.

She knew that some help must be brought to the pale lady. A doctor ought to come. Carolyn knew no doctor save the Camerons' own family physician and he lived far over on the West Side.

The poor woman lay so white and helpless that the child's heart was torn with pity for her. Somebody must come—and "somebody" meant Mamma Cameron! There was nobody else in the world, she thought, who would know so well what to do for the pale lady in this event.

She started for the door, and of course Prince followed her. He had been snuffing questioningly at the fallen young woman.

"No, Prince," sobbed little Carolyn May. "You can't come. You must stay here while I run for Mamma. Watch her, Prince! Wait—that's a good dog—till I come back with Mamma Cameron."

She unlocked the door and withdrew the key from the lock. She knew the pale lady always kept herself locked in and she could not leave her now, even with Prince on guard, with the door unfastened.

Slipping out into the half-darkened, ill-smelling hall, the child quickly inserted the key in the lock again and turned it. Then she pocketed the key and ran lightly to the head of the stairway. Without Prince she really was afraid of the children who flocked about the house; but the venture must be made alone for the pale lady's sake.

Fortunately the stairway to the street door chanced to be clear. She stole down it and had almost reached the lower floor when a door there opened. She had a glimpse of a tawdry interior, and a slovenly woman holding the door open for a caller to pass out.

Carolyn May stopped, shivering. The man coming out of the apartment was very well dressed—a sharp-featured, dark man with eyebrows that met above his aquiline nose, and the eyes beneath them so keen and threatening in their glance that when they were turned on Carolyn May she could not for the moment move from where she stood.

"There's a young one that goes up to see 'em frequent, sir," shrilled the woman. "He an' she goes in an' out without a word to us—like we was the dirt under their feet. But that kid knows 'em."

The man looked at Carolyn May with more curiosity. "She doesn't seem to belong around here," he said.

"No more than them. She's all that ever's come to see 'em, since they lived here, so fur as I know."

The man turned his back upon the child, and Carolyn May hurried down the few remaining steps and out of the door of the tenement house. The shrieking, dirty children were playing on other steps. She got away without further delay.

She was still sobbing and tears were trickling down Carolyn May's face as she ran through the streets toward home. She pictured to herself all the time the pale lady, senseless and helpless upon the floor of the hot kitchen, with her beautiful hair flowing about her. The very worst that could happen to her friend the little girl believed to have occurred.

So when she arrived at home at last she was scarcely able to explain the trouble. As it chanced, it was Papa Cameron's afternoon at home—he had one partial holiday each week—and it was he who met Carolyn and caught her up in his arms when she sank, sobbing and moaning, at the entrance to their apartment.

"My little Snuggy!" he cried, "what is the matter?"

"Where is Prince?" asked Carolyn's mother. "What has become of the dog, do you suppose, Lewis?"

"Prince—Prince—is—is—watching her!" sobbed the child.

"Watching who?" demanded the man anxiously.

Carolyn was able to tell them in broken sentences what had happened—how she had left the pale lady and her baby with Prince on guard. She showed them the key to the apartment.

"And the poor woman locked in there all alone!" exclaimed Hannah Cameron, hurrying to put on her street things. "I must go over there at once. Probably she should have a doctor, too. It may be no ordinary faint. Of course her husband will not be at home at this hour."

"What does he do?" asked Mr. Cameron, curiously. "Do you know?"

His wife glanced at him rather oddly. "I can guess," she said. "And I am pretty sure my guess is right." But that did not explain the matter in the least, as far as Mr. Cameron could see.

"Well, you and Carolyn go on," he said, "and I'll bring a doctor with me. If she is as frail and delicate a woman as Snuggy intimates she shouldn't be living in such a place, anyway. I wonder what sort of chap her husband is and what he is thinking of to keep her and her baby in that place."

"Oh, Papa!" said Carolyn, with another sob, "they can't help it. Mr. Laird don't earn enough to send them away for the summer, and they have lots of bills to pay. My pale lady told me so."

"'Mr. Laird'!" repeated Mrs. Cameron, in a peculiar tone. "I shouldn't wonder. Come, Carolyn May. Can you show me the nearest way to your friend's house, do you think?"

The little girl had recovered from her fright now. She was so anxious about the pale lady that she would have run all the way back as fast as she had run home; only Mamma Cameron held her by the hand and restrained her.

Although the sun was going down it was a stifling day. What air was stirring seemed to blow from a red hot furnace lying somewhere to the west of the panting city. In the shade the unfortunate occupants of the close tenements sought relief on steps and even on the sidewalks.

Crying babies, quarrelling children, chattering women of several races, raised a clatter to deafen one. Hawkers peddled the remains of vegetables and fruit that had once been fresh, but were now over-ripe, and fast decaying. Vendors of the tempting if not too cleanly made

"Tutti-frutti, penny a lump,

The more you eat, the more you want!"

clanged their bells at every corner. Penny slices of red watermelon wilting under fly nets adorned every fruit stand. The cheap drinks of soda-water and other so-called "temperance beverages" flaunted their colourings and flavours at tiny stands; and the lemonade that never knew a lemon or any other citrus fruit was everywhere present.

Left to themselves the ignorant would breed pestilence as they did in the Middle Ages. But the better informed have learned to defend their own health by forcing some rules of sanitation on the slums. The most refreshing and grateful attempt to counteract heat and disease were the "White Wings," flushing down the streets with fire hose, while the half-naked children danced, screaming, in the way of the flood.

Carolyn May and her mother reached the house where the pale lady lived. The slovenly woman whom the child had seen bidding the sharp-faced man good-bye at her door, now sat upon the steps. She stared impudently at Mrs. Cameron as she and the child mounted past her and went up to the second floor.

As the key rattled in the lock of the pale lady's door Prince barked. Then he whined a welcome to his little mistress and to Mrs. Cameron.

"What a place!" gasped Carolyn's mother. "It is worse than I thought. I never should have let you come here, Carolyn May."

But the baby had begun to whimper from the bed and Carolyn ran to soothe him. Her mother was immediately stricken by the appearance of the young woman, lying unconscious and forlorn on the kitchen floor. She noted the cleanliness of the room and the neatness of the woman's dress; but the sun streaming into the kitchen windows, and the flies and the smells from out of doors, horrified Hannah Cameron.

She brought water and knelt beside the young woman to lave her face and hands. But the pale lady was not to be so easily roused. Her heart merely fluttered. Her lips were colourless. Her eyes remained closed.

Mrs. Cameron was anxious for her husband to come with the doctor. And she desired Mr. Cameron's presence for another reason. She looked about the apartment for something that might identify this young couple—that might prove her suspicions true; suspicions that she had felt from the very first. She found the evidence she looked for.

Carolyn May was playing with the baby and keeping him quiet when her father and a neighbouring doctor came. She brought the baby out into the kitchen and sat down with him in her lap while Prince crouched beside her. He knew that something had gone altogether wrong with his little mistress' friend.

They raised the pale lady and placed her on the bed. Mrs. Cameron helped the physician loosen and remove her clothing.

But first she showed Mr. Cameron the marriage certificate she had found in a Bible on a side table.

"My goodness! will wonders never cease?" murmured Carolyn's father. "And I never suspected it!"

"It is what I believed must be the fact ever since you told me how Mr. Bassett acted regarding his first assignment on the Beacon. Now go out and telephone to the office, Lewis, and have him come up here at once."

She went back to the bedside where the physician was some time in bringing the patient to her senses.

"A very nervous and frail person, Mrs. Cameron," the medical man said. "No more fit to live in a place like this than a butterfly is fit to live in a cage."

"And you know, Prince," murmured Carolyn May who overheard this professional statement, "butterflies aren't even like birds. Of course, butterflies would just pine away, like Aunty Rose Kennedy's babies, if they were caged up."

CHAPTER IX

THE GRIFFIN

The doctor went away and came back again before the pale lady's husband, for whom Mr. Cameron telephoned, arrived at the little apartment. The patient was then better, but still very weak.

"A general breakdown," said the physician to Mr. Cameron. "No more than I expected. I have treated her now and then—and the baby. He is a fine little fellow, but not robust. How could he be?

"I've got to tell that young man a thing or two. He can't keep this woman and the child here—"

"And why does he? I happen to know that he is earning a fair salary," Mr. Cameron said.

"Yes. He is—now. But they are burdened with debts. At the time the baby was born they got very deeply into debt. You can see what sort they are. Come of wealthy families, both of them. Trouble somewhere. And the young folks did not know how to help themselves, nor what to do. Not as poor people do. After all, the poor have the best of it when it comes to work and living," said the practical physician.

"This young fool had to have a specialist for his wife when the baby came. And those fellows don't work for nothing, and have to have cash on the nail. And with the specialist came the day and night nurses and all that folderol. They did not live here then, I can assure you. Nor did I attend the woman and her child until after they did come here.

"At first, I presume, people made it easy for him to go into debt because of his father's name. But when he had spent all he had, and gone in as deep as he could to make her and the baby comfortable, the girl finally awoke to the situation. She is a good deal of a woman, frail as she appears. She insisted in curtailing and cutting down expenses. Oh, they are both as square as can be; but she has the push and determination, after all.

"They are paying their debts now. She insists on it. They do not owe me anything—not a penny. I would not take money for this call. I am no specialist," said the medical practitioner, bitterly. "But I feel it my duty to talk straight out to the young man. If his wife and baby remain here it will be the undertaker, not the doctor, who will be called!"

"I'm going to tell him a thing or two myself," promised Mr. Cameron huskily.

But when Joe Bassett ran up the narrow stairway and burst into the crowded kitchen to face the doctor and Carolyn's father, neither of those gentlemen could really scold the young fellow. That he was very, very anxious about his wife and child was plainly shown in his countenance and his manner.

"Is she—is she—"

"She's better," said the doctor briskly. "For the time being. Your friends here—especially the lady—have done all they can for your wife. A doctor can't do much, Mr. Bassett. I have told Mrs. Bassett so before. The city is no place for her and your baby through the hot weather. The summer is only beginning. Find some way of getting them out of this place—and at once. That is all I can tell you. You are likely to lose them both if you do not take this advice."

"That advice is harder to take, Doctor, than your medicine," said Bassett faintly. "I will do my best—"

"And why did you not tell me?" demanded Carolyn's father, as the busy medical man made off. "My wife suspected who Carolyn's 'pale lady' was. But I did not dream—

"See here, Bassett! Something must be done about this at once. Your wife and baby must get out of here. It is evident she is not used to the city's heat, and most certainly she is not used to such a locality and such a house as this."

"Don't you suppose I know all that?" groaned the young man. "But fixed as we are—"

"Are you in debt?" demanded Mr. Cameron bluntly.

"Yes."

"And have you worried about the bills you owe?"

"Of course."

"Let the other fellow do the worrying," was Mr. Cameron's iconoclastic declaration. "To sacrifice your wife and child for the sake of paying debts is nothing less than a crime."

"But she is so very anxious for us to pay those bills."

"Put your foot down. Be boss in your own house for once!" exclaimed Mr. Cameron, smiling rather grimly. "I am usually in favour of a woman having her own way—she almost always gets it in any case. But this is a matter about which your wife's judgment cannot be trusted. See what you can do, and I'll talk with you again tomorrow, Bassett. I see Mrs. Cameron is about ready to go. Something must be done about it."

Carolyn had been standing by, the loop of Prince's leash in her hand, and staring with all her might at Joe Bassett. At last she ejaculated:

"Then your real name is Mr. Laird! I never!"

The young man was too much troubled at the moment to give Carolyn any answer. The latter and her father and Prince went down to the sidewalk to wait for Mrs. Cameron to join them; where they were eyed by the neighbours and the children, who considered the Camerons as beings from another world.

Carolyn and her parents had their dinner in a restaurant that evening, for it was altogether too late to get it at home. Carolyn May might have enjoyed the occasion more had she not been so sleepy; and Prince sank frankly into slumber under the restaurant table, and snored.

So the little girl did not hear all that was said by her father and mother regarding the young couple whose troubles seemed to be forced upon the Camerons' attention; nor did the little girl understand the plans made at the time for the Bassetts.

However, Mr. Cameron left for downtown much earlier than usual the next morning. First of all he telephoned to a certain Wall Street office and after a great deal of trouble he obtained the favour of a tentative appointment with the great man known as the Griffin of Wall Street.

"An interview with St. Peter at the heavenly portals would be little more difficult to arrange," Mr. Cameron told his wife, "than an appointment with the Griffin." Only that the magnate had found from long experience that it was the part of wisdom to treat the newspaper representatives well, was Mr. Cameron able to get the attention of one of Mr. Henry Bassett's secretaries.

This individual the newspaper editor had first to see when he reached the offices of the Griffin. He was a sharp-featured man, very dark and with black eyebrows stenciled distinctly over his nose.

"You did not explain your business very clearly to me over the 'phone, Mr. Cameron," said the secretary. "Only because you are from the Beacon did I take the chance of having you come here; but Mr. Bassett does not know yet that you wish to see him."

"My business with him is quite a personal matter, Mr.—?"

"Inness," finished the secretary.

"Mr. Inness. A private matter entirely."

"You mean it is something personal concerning yourself, Mr. Cameron?"

"Not at all. It is intimately connected with Mr. Bassett's affairs. So intimately, indeed, that I could not possibly explain it to you, Mr. Inness."

The man was evidently of a mind to bid Mr. Cameron curtly begone. Yet the Beacon was a powerful party organ, and just at this time the Griffin had political ends to serve. Although Mr. Cameron did not ask for the interview in the name of his paper, Inness was a cautious man. That is why he had held his lucrative situation with the Griffin for ten years or more.

"I will take your card, Mr. Cameron," he said at last, holding out his hand for the caller's bit of pasteboard. "But I cannot promise you an interview under the circumstances. Mr. Bassett does not like mysteries."

"No. He is not going to like this one," rejoined the editor. "Nor do I like it. But I feel it to be my duty to see him."

"Mr. Cameron," said Inness dryly, "I would not possess your overpowering sense of duty for worlds," and he walked out of the reception room with the card in his hand.

Had the newspaper man come on his own behalf he might have felt some trepidation; but consideration for Joe Bassett and his wife and baby had brought him to the Griffin's office, and he felt no burden of a personal nature upon his mind. When Inness finally beckoned him from the door of the private suite, the caller went quite cheerfully to meet the man whose reputation for being a Tartar was as broad as his financial activities were known.

Mr. Henry Bassett beat no round of the bushes; he came directly to the point. "You are John Lewis Cameron, of the Beacon," he said. "I do not know you. Inness says your call is not on business for your paper. What do you want?"

"I wish to interest you, Mr. Bassett, in the needs of an unfortunate family in which I am interested—but because of no ordinary charitable instinct upon my part or yours. I am no charity collector, nor is this case of destitution one that can be brought to the attention of anybody but yourself."

"What do you mean?" demanded the Griffin roughly. "Mrs. Bassett usually attends to all such matters. I do not consider myself a judge of their worth."

"There are certain elements in this matter which preclude my speaking to anybody but you about it, Mr. Bassett."

The financier looked startled. His continued silence enabled Mr. Cameron to go on:

"The people I speak of are a man and his wife and child. They are not ordinary people. I have not known much about them until lately. I find that they live in a frightfully unpleasant neighbourhood, that their surroundings are most uncongenial, and that they lack all the luxuries—even those necessities—which people of respectable bringing-up must have."

"Why do you tell me all this?" demanded the millionaire.

"Because it concerns you, concerns you deeply. The young woman and her baby may not live through the summer if she is obliged to stay in that horrible apartment which is the best her husband has been able to afford."

"Who is he?" shot in Henry Bassett.

"He is your son. And his wife and your grandchild are dying in that place they live in. What are you going to do about it?"

The change that came over Henry Bassett's face shook even Mr. Cameron. The editor's experience with all sorts and conditions of men enabled him to hide his own feelings well; so he merely stared back into the passion-distorted countenance of the Wall Street man.

"You dare to come to me from that cur? He has sent you to try to squeeze money out of me—for himself and that wretched woman, and her ill-begotten brat?"

"You are quite wrong, Mr. Bassett," his caller said coldly. "Your son has no idea that I have come to you in his behalf. Nor does your daughter-in-law know of it. I merely believe that you should be told their circumstances."

Henry Bassett actually snorted. He tried to speak, but for the moment his rage would not let him.

"The boy is doing the very best he can. He has not yet made any very great success it is true. He happens at present to be working on the Beacon. That is how I come to know something about his circumstances. He got woefully into debt when your grandchild was born, and is still struggling to square himself with his creditors."

"Bah!" suddenly roared the rich man, starting half out of his chair and unable to control himself further. "What did he do with the ten thousand dollars he had when he walked out of my house determined to marry that wasteful, useless, luxury-loving woman? Oh, I knew what she was and I knew what she would bring him to."

"What did he do with the ten thousand dollars?"

The phrases came raspingly from Henry Bassett's lips. It was plain that he felt deeply his son's defection. But the mention of ten thousand dollars—

"The boy is a fool," went on the millionaire. "Worse, he is a knave. But she made him that. The story was brought to me how he hung about certain cheap brokerage houses all that first winter that he left me. That is where that ill-gotten money went. He gambled it away, of course. Ten thousand wouldn't suit My Lady! She must have more, and the young fool doubtless tried to pyramid his capital—and lost it, instead, and as he deserved.

"Sin brings its own punishment," said the millionaire harshly but impressively. "That boy was determined to marry against my command and his mother's wishes. The girl was nothing but a flibbertigibbet—a useless baggage. She had been brought up by Wetherby Gaines and his foolish wife to do nothing; and when they were dead she had nothing. All she could do was to lead my son into extravagance.

"To please her—to meet her extravagant demands—he tried to double that stolen ten thousand in the market."

"Stolen?" gasped Mr. Cameron.

The millionaire was silent. He licked his lips, glaring at his visitor like a wolf. In his rage he had gone farther and said more than he had intended. But he was too angry to retract or deny the truth.

"You have learned something that I have not even told to my wife," he said hoarsely. "It is a shame that I shall never get over. When I threatened that boy with dismissal from his home if he insisted upon marrying the girl, he knew I had brought ten thousand dollars home for a special purpose. It was in the library safe which he knew how to open as well as I did.

"He made his choice and left the house the next morning. When he was gone I found the money had gone with him. That is what this woman you prate of brought my son to. Fool he was, but never knave before! If it had not been for her luxurious tastes and her wasteful extravagance, he would never have taken that money. He was crazy about her. And nothing but ready money would buy her for him. That is the sum and substance of the sordid affair.

"There! I have never told a soul before of this fact, not even his mother. And I trust to your honour not to repeat it. But do not come to me for charity for that boy, or for the woman who has wasted his life. They are nothing to me—nor will they ever be! I long since washed my hands of them."

CHAPTER X

CAROLYN MAY IS PUZZLED

The closing day of Carolyn May's school was so close at hand that she could not get to see the pale lady again. There was, too, something about the Bassetts, whom the little girl knew as "the Lairds," that made further association with them quite impossible as far as Carolyn was concerned.

She could not at all understand it. She heard more of the discussion between her father and mother about the "Lairds" than her parents dreamed. And she was vastly puzzled thereby.

Carolyn learned that Mr. Bassett, or Mr. Laird, or whatever his real name was, had done something very wrong indeed. Papa Cameron considered him unworthy of any help or consideration whatsoever. Nor could Mamma Cameron, after hearing the report of his interview with the Griffin, disagree with her husband on this point.

Be that as it may, the little girl could not understand why the pale lady and the poor little baby should be made to suffer for Mr. Laird's wrongdoing. Mrs. Laird was in a very bad way and her baby was panting his life out in those close, hot rooms.

Hannah Cameron had even suggested that evening after Carolyn's friend had suffered such a serious turn, that the little family be allowed to occupy the Cameron apartment while she and Carolyn were away in the country and at the seashore. But after Papa Cameron had interviewed the father of Joe Bassett, nothing more was said about that.

"I have offered Joseph Laird Bassett the loan of a hundred dollars, if he will take it, to get his wife and child out of that place and to send them out of town. That, I think, Hannah, should end our interest in their affairs. Like enough I shall never see the hundred again. If he had ten thousand dollars, come by either honestly or dishonestly, and wasted it gambling in stocks, he is not much to be pitied."

"Oh, the poor baby!" murmured Carolyn's mother.

"I know. But there are thousands of other babies in this city quite as deserving of pity. And to help a wastrel like Joe, and that woman who is evidently the cause of his downfall, seems to me to be positively wrong. Such a fellow as he, is not to be trusted in any particular. I shall watch him very closely as long as he remains with the Beacon. And unless he shows more promise than he has so far, he won't last long."

"The poor woman!" murmured his wife.

"As for that," said Papa Cameron, "taking all Henry Bassett says about her with more than a grain of salt, it was her influence that caused Joe Bassett's downfall. And—well, it makes me wonder now what ever became of that twenty-dollar note I gave him for the broken go-cart. We don't know that it was returned to the man who gave it to Carolyn. Not at all! Of course, it was his wife's to do with as she pleased. But—but—Well! I am sorry Snuggy ever got acquainted with her."

"It is what I have always said," declared Hannah Cameron. "Letting her go about so much alone, with only Prince, as we do, and picking up acquaintances just as she sees fit, is all wrong."

"Oh, now, Mamma!" exclaimed Mr. Cameron. "Snuggy doesn't often pick 'em wrong."

This all puzzled Carolyn May very much. The poor little baby! And the pale lady whom she had last seen so weak and wan! Why should they be made to suffer if Mr. Laird had been naughty? Why, it was just as though Prince should be punished because she did wrong!

Faithful as Carolyn May was in her friendships, she could not give her thoughts entirely to the pale lady and her troubles just at this time. Carolyn and her particular friend, Edna Price, who lived across the hall from the Camerons, were having dresses made for graduation day, just alike. Their mothers had used the same pattern in cutting out the frocks, the material was the same, the trimming was the same, and the only difference was in the hue of the broad sashes the little girls wore—Edna's being cherry-red and Carolyn's blue.

"If we aren't twins," Carolyn observed, "our dresses are. So of course they must have different coloured ribbons so as to tell 'em apart."

Carolyn May stood well in her classes. She was, indeed, a prize scholar, and even Johnny O'Harrity had to admit her high standing.

"For Johnny, you know," whispered Carolyn to her mother, as they came home from the school exercises, "didn't get a prize at all. He only got horrible mention!"

The very next day Carolyn and her mother and Prince started for the country. The apartment was made dark for the summer, with covers on the furniture, and each picture in its own particular fly net.

It seemed too bad that the comparatively cool rooms would be almost disused while the pale lady and her baby must suffer so in their hot little apartment. For Carolyn had learned that "Mr. Laird" had refused the loan of the hundred dollars her papa had offered him.

"I don't know why," Mr. Cameron told Carolyn's mother. "He certainly can't hope to get more out of me by holding off. I don't understand the fellow. He seems as proud as Lucifer; yet he certainly cannot be trusted, according to his own father's story. And the Griffin must know what he is talking about."

Mr. Cameron was only to sleep in their apartment, taking all his meals out of the house. Later, when Carolyn and her mother would be established at the island summer resort where a reservation had been made for them at a hotel, Mr. Cameron would sometimes spend Saturday and part of Sunday with them.

This going away for the long vacation was a gay adventure indeed for Carolyn May. She began to meet people she knew almost as soon as they started. There was the nice man in the baggage car who had taken Prince under his special protection when first the little girl and her dog entrained for Sunrise Cove and the Corners. That time Carolyn had to ride in the baggage coach a part of the way herself, to keep Prince quiet.

But the dog was an old traveller now, and he settled down quite resignedly in the car when Carolyn and her father went back to the coach where Mrs. Cameron and the little girl were established for the long ride.

Papa Cameron kissed them and bade them a cheerful good-bye. He expected to see them at Block Island in a fortnight. The long train, filled with vacationists for the most part, pulled out of the Grand Central Terminal. On the platform of the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street station stood Edna Price and her mother and lame Johnny O'Harrity who had insisted on coming to bid Carolyn May good-bye.

"And it's a wonder that red-haired Sade Gompretz isn't here, too," sniffed Carolyn. "I know she would be if she had known about it."

But she waved gaily to her friends as the train quickly started again. They were really off now. The conductor came through to punch their tickets, and who should he prove to be but the same conductor who had been so very kind to Carolyn on a previous occasion when the little girl had run away from Sunrise Cove, all alone and so very, very miserable.

All such troubles were ancient history now to Carolyn May. She had, indeed, almost forgotten about that adventure. But she had not forgotten any of her friends, however, and late in the afternoon, when they arrived at the Sunrise Cove station the little girl was all eagerness to get out and hail those whom she knew so well.

Of course, first of all there was Uncle Joe Stagg, looking wonderfully young and prosperous, ready to hand them into Tim the hackman's turnout for the drive to the Corners.

"You're looking well, Hannah," said Uncle Joe. "And if Car'lyn looked any better we should have to take her to the doctor at once."

"Pitcher of George Washington!" gasped the hack driver, "how that young 'un has growed! And here's Prince that tackled that consarned wood-pussy that time. Lively as one of his own fleas, ain't he? Wal, Hannah Stagg, I admire to see ye. This here model of yourn is better knowed in Sunrise Cove and at the Corners than ever you was when you was a gal."

"Yes, Uncle Tim. I fancy Carolyn is more popular up here than I ever was. But, then, Carolyn May is popular everywhere."

The little girl did not notice this. She rode with half of her body out of the carriage window, waving her hand and calling greetings to people whom she knew along the main street.

And when they came to Uncle Joe's hardware store there was Chet Gormley, one huge and complete smile, standing on the porch beside the agricultural tools and rolls of poultry netting, and looking, as Uncle Joe said, almost as fat as a rake handle. He wore a starched white suit and a flowing red tie and shoes that were very yellow. It was evident that Chet had dressed for the occasion.

"Oh, Chet," cried Carolyn May, "how nice you look! And you've gro-o-own—"

"Up and down ways—ye-as," agreed the gangling youth. "They don't make overalls no longer than I be now. Maw's got to buy bed tickin' and make 'em for me herself if I grow any more."

While Mr. Stagg was in the store for a moment and Hannah Cameron was speaking with somebody she knew through the other window of Tim's hack, Chet drew near to Carolyn May and confided to her:

"You see how your uncle trusts things to me now, don't you? Sometimes I'm here all day by myself. Why, if I didn't know my job as well as I do, folks might think Mr. Joseph Stagg was neglectin' his business since he got married."

"Oh, I am sure you are perfectly able to tend the store, Chet," said the little girl admiringly.

"Of course. I'm ready any time Mr. Stagg wants to change the sign to 'Stagg and Gormley' to do my full share," declared the lanky youth, nodding his head seriously.

If Chet really was of as much importance as he thought he was to the hardware dealer, the latter could not have done business when the youth was not in the store. Nevertheless, Chet was to be commended for his faithfulness and for the interest he took in his employer's affairs.

It was very surprising to see Joseph Stagg leave the store a full two hours before supper time and ride home with his sister and Carolyn, as though such neglect of business was quite a matter of course.

Carolyn was kept busy nodding to people on the way, or calling out greetings to them. Mrs. Maine, the dressmaker, peered near-sightedly through her blinds as they drove by, and Carolyn could imagine the woman biting off her threads and her words together, as she commented on the arrival of the little girl and her mother.

A few steps beyond the dressmaker's was Jedidiah Parlow's carpenter shop. And here Tim, the hackman, positively had to stop, for the carpenter was Mrs. Amanda Stagg's father and one of Carolyn's very closest friends.

"I declare, Hannah!" Mr. Parlow said, warmly shaking the hand of the woman he had known as a girl, "you'd be a sight for sore eyes in any case. But you air twice welcome, comin' as you do with Car'lyn. Car'lyn May jest about owns us, up along this road, and no two ways about it!"

Carolyn kissed his wrinkled cheek warmly. "I hope you've got lots of nice long, curly shavings for me and Prince, Mr. Parlow," said the little girl. "I'm going to bring Freda Payne, too, and we'll play in your shavings—if you please."

"You shall have 'em," replied the old carpenter, his eyes twinkling. "If there ain't enough I'll shave up a hull spruce board for ye."

As Tim, the hackman, drove on Mrs. Cameron mentioned to her brother the change she observed in Mr. Jedidiah Parlow.

"And it's no 'leventh hour conversion, Hannah, that your Car'lyn brought about in his case—believe me!" said Mr. Stagg energetically. "He's a vigorous old man yet. He's taken in a worthy woman and her son to do for him, and keeps on about his work just as he used when Mandy was with him. Only a sight more pleasant and neighbourly. Mandy says her father's taken a new lease on life."

Prince was growing more restive as they approached the little hamlet of the Corners. He was out and in the hack half a dozen times, and finally, when Hiram Lardner's blacksmith shop and the store and the church and parsonage came into view, the dog ran barking ahead, displaying the fact that he recognized the locality.

When Tim's hack stopped before the Stagg homestead they heard a great commotion among the poultry in the rear—the cackling of hens, quacking of ducks, the honking of the big gander, the squawking of guinea fowl, and over all the "Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!" of General Bolivar, the White Holland turkey.

"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Carolyn May, flashing out of the carriage. "That bad, bad Prince has run to talk to the hens and all, and he ought to know by this time that they don't like him. And old Bolivar will chase him and maybe get spanked again, if Aunty Rose hears it."

She started around the house on the run to quell the panic among the feathered denizens of the rear premises, and to scold Prince. Aunty Rose did not appear and the little girl thought she must be at her own little house around the corner from the Stagg homestead. And where was Aunt Mandy? There was nobody on the back porch to welcome their arrival!

She heard Uncle Joe and her mother coming around from the front of the house. The main door of the Stagg homestead was seldom opened, except when the minister came to call. Carolyn bounded upon the porch, with Prince crazily barking beside her. And then with her hand upon the latch she halted, transfixed by a sound from within the kitchen.

"Down, Prince! Be still!" Carolyn May murmured, with a gesture to silence the dog. She clutched the latch almost as though to keep herself from falling, and her ear remained close to the panel.

She heard it again—a thin, wailing sound that signalled unmistakably the discomfort of an infant. Then came the tap, tap, tapping of a soft-shod foot upon the kitchen floor and the crooning voice of Aunty Rose.

Carolyn burst open the door. Round-eyed and quite speechless for the moment, she peered in at the picture there displayed.

The old woman, in her very plain, quakerish garb, sat in a low chair by the dresser, with a squirming bundle which she was jogging on her knee. At her elbow was a cup and spoon, and the smell of anise was strong in the room.

"A baby!" gasped Carolyn May. "Oh, Aunty Rose Kennedy! where did you find a baby?"

Aunty Rose smiled kindly above the infant's puckered little face.

"Come here, Car'lyn May," she said, "and look at your little cousin. Her name is Car'lyn, too."

CHAPTER XI

AT THE CORNERS

"Oh! Aunty Rose Kennedy!" cried the little girl, finally recovering her voice. "I wondered and wondered why you didn't come back to us. It wasn't your garden that kept you up here at the Corners, now was it?"

"Not altogether, Carolyn May. Your Aunt Mandy couldn't take care of this sweet little girl all by herself," replied Mrs. Kennedy. "You see, there is something, after all, for old Aunty Rose to do in the world besides sitting down to twiddle her thumbs."

In came Mamma Cameron and Uncle Joe with the bags then, and the baby was made much of. That she should have a real, live baby named after her quite amazed as well as delighted Carolyn May. The baby cousin was named "Carolyn Amanda."

"That sounds ever so pretty," stated the little girl. "I'm going to write Edna about it right away. You see, she couldn't have their baby named after her because it was a boy. Isn't it nice, Mamma Cam'ron, that there is another girl in our family?"

Later she was allowed to go in to see her Aunt Mandy, who was propped up in bed and looked very pretty in cap and bedgown. Mrs. Joseph Stagg's face fairly shone her delight when Aunty Rose brought in the baby to her; and it was plain now why Uncle Joe looked so proud and happy.

"You see," he said seriously to Carolyn, "we found that we could not get along at all in this big old house without a little girl in it. Your being here for so long quite spoiled Amanda and me for living without young company. So we got a Carolyn of our own."

"Yes. And weren't you lucky?" observed Carolyn May. "For you might have found a boy, you know."

She hoped the new Carolyn would be as happy as she had been for some months at the old homestead.

On the very next morning the little girl began to run about the Corners to renew acquaintance with all the neighbours, while Prince chased ancient feline enemies and became friendly again with the dogs of the hamlet, which he had not seen for more than a year.

Carolyn must needs search out Freda Payne, who had been her dearest school friend when she had attended the red schoolhouse; and with Freda she went to call on Miss Minnie, who had been their much loved teacher but was now married to the school committeeman who most frequently came to visit the school.

"There!" said Carolyn May wisely. "I always thought something would come of that."

Miss Minnie warmly welcomed Prince, as well as the little girls, for she had reason to feel friendly toward Carolyn's dog.

Then, when dinner was over, and the baby was asleep, Carolyn and her "cayenne friend," as Chet Gormley had once called Prince, went over into the churchyard. Already the shadows of the church and its steeple had begun to lengthen. The windows of the minister's study looked out upon this quiet nook; chancing to glance up from his work the Reverend Afton Driggs saw a familiar little figure digging industriously with a trowel about the three little lozenge-shaped stones that marked the graves of Aunty Rose Kennedy's little ones who were too "puny" to grow up and around the bigger stone, "sacred to the memory of Frank Kennedy, beloved spouse."

"If I believed in ghosts, I surely should think I saw one now," said the minister, putting his head out of the window. "Is it really, truly you, Carolyn May?"

Carolyn laughed delightedly. Everybody seemed so glad to see her! She came to stand beneath the window and reached up to the minister a rather grubby hand.

"And are you still in the 'Look Up' business, Carolyn May?" he asked. "Still brightening the world? Still seeing the sunshine and blue sky rather than the grey clouds and gloomy days?"

"Why, Mr. Driggs!" cried Carolyn, aghast, "there aren't any such days. Leastways, I never see 'em. You know, there is always so much that's pleasant going on that I forget to think of anything unpleasant."

Yet that was not altogether so. There was one thing deep in the child's heart that pricked her thought frequently. Hers was not a nature, however, to thrust her own troubles upon the attention of others.

This particular thing was a very real trouble, nevertheless. She continued to think of the pale lady and her baby. That they should have to remain in the hot city and in that hopelessly uncomfortable apartment, caused the child positive heartache.

The worst of it was, it was a case in which Carolyn could not interfere, no matter how good her intentions might be. Papa Cameron was seldom as stern as he was in his decision to do nothing more for Mr. and Mrs. Laird and Baby Laird. The pale lady's husband must have done something very dreadful, or Carolyn's father would not have come to the determination he had.

The memory of her poor friends and their unfortunate situation thrust itself into the way of Carolyn May's enjoyment more frequently than even her mother dreamed. Faithful little soul that she was, in the midst of a most enjoyable time—when she and Freda Payne were revelling in the delights of a "shavings party" at Mr. Parlow's carpenter shop, for instance—thought of the pale lady and her baby made Carolyn suddenly grave.

"What is the matter, Car'lyn May?" demanded Freda. "Don't look like that—so big eyed and all—all—Well! my grandmother would say somebody must be walking on your grave when you look like that."

"Why!" said Carolyn May, "I haven't any grave—yet. Uncle Joe owns a lot in the churchyard at the Corners, and so does Aunty Rose. But I haven't picked out my grave yet. Why, of course not! I shan't need a grave for ever and ever so long.

"But I was just thinking when you spoke to me, Freda."

"What ever were you thinking about?" demanded her friend, to whom Carolyn was always a source of wonder because of her "oddities."

"Why," said Carolyn May very earnestly, "I was thinking how too bad it is that folks who do wrong don't have to go off by themselves and keep away from the good folks. Then good folks wouldn't have to suffer for the bad folks' doin's."

"Why—!" squealed Freda. "That's dividin' the sheep from the goats, like it says in the Bible. And that can't be done till we get to heaven."

"Can't it?" murmured Carolyn.

"Of course not! And I guess it's wicked for you to even think of its bein' done now," added Freda complacently.

"Oh, dear!" sighed her little friend. "It does seem an awful long while to wait for lots of sensible things to be done. It's too bad we can't have 'em changed for the better here, and not have to wait till we get to heaven."

Such unorthodox doctrines as this quite shocked Freda; but there was something daring and enticing about Carolyn's flights of fancy even upon religious subjects. The little country girl wondered if all city-born girls were like Carolyn May. The latter had become noted for her "imagination" during the few months she had attended the red schoolhouse at the Corners.

What other little girl, indeed, could have found so much to "supposing" with the wealth of shavings that were to be found in Mr. Parlow's carpenter shop? When the two were about to start for home they were trimmed with the long curly shavings—to say nothing of Prince—to an extent to amaze the beholder. Amos Bartlett, who came along from the direction of the Cove, was very greatly astonished when he first beheld the decorated little girls and the dog.

"I declare to Peter!" Amos ejaculated, big-eyed, "I didn't see you girls under them shavin's—not at first. How-do, Car'lyn?"

"Thank you," said the visitor to the Corners, "I'm well. Your nose is just as big as ever, isn't it, Amos?"

The small boy felt of it to make sure before he answered: "Seems to be."

"Where've you been, Amos?" asked Freda.

Amos displayed the music roll under his arm. "To Miss Spellman's," he said. "Maw makes me go ev'ry week. Take lessons. I hate it!"

"Piano lessons?" cried Carolyn May. "Oh!"

"He don't like it," Freda explained with disgust. "I'd be just crazy 'bout it if my mother'd let me take of Miss Spellman. But we haven't any piano."

"Aw, it's all bosh!" whined Amos. "I'd ruther pound a dishpan with a hammer. My maw thinks she can make a mu-sican out o' me. I dunno what it's all about. Whad you think Miss Spellman told me to find out today?"

"What?" chorused the little girls.

"She asked me—now, le's see—it was how many carrots there are in a bushel."

"What?" Freda gasped. "How many carrots in a bushel? She never!"

"Did so!" declared Amos, more confident the moment his statement was doubted. "That's what she asked me. And I've got to find out before next week."

"What's carrots got to do with music?" demanded the stunned Freda.

But Carolyn began to giggle. She clapped a hand over her own lips to stifle the laughter that would well up to them; but her shavings-curls shook as though disturbed by a stiff breeze.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Freda, while the none-too-bright Amos stared, round-eyed, at Carolyn.

"Why! Why!" gasped the latter. "Miss Spellman didn't ask about carrots. Now did she really, Amos? Wasn't it about beets?"

"Wal," drawled he of the big nose, "it was 'bout some vegertable."

"I want to know what beets have got to do with music then?" Freda cried.

"She asked him," explained the other little girl, much amused, "how many beats there were in the measure. Now, didn't she, Amos Bartlett?"

"Guess she did," admitted the abashed small boy. "But what's the diff'rence? Ev'rything about pianner playin' is foolish."

Mr. Jedidiah Parlow, an amused but until now a silent auditor, observed:

"Miz Bartlett's got a crazy notion she can make that Amos a musical prodigal. Amos'll make it 'bout the time pigs fly—but pigs air mighty onsartain birds."

With Amos the little girls and Prince started back along the dusty but pleasant road to the Corners. It was nearly two years since Carolyn May had first walked this way to the carpenter shop to play in Mr. Parlow's shavings. Everything along the road seemed just the same as in that long past time. Perhaps it was the very same squirrel Prince had then chased that he set out after now, full yelp, and scattering his ornaments of shavings to the four winds.

"I don't know how it is," his little mistress observed, "but Prince never will learn that he can't climb trees and lamp-posts. If a cat runs up a post he thinks he can get her by jumping. And see him now, trying to climb that tree after that squirrel! I'm ashamed of you, Princey Cameron. You act just as if you didn't have good sense."

Behind them sounded the harsh roar of a heavy touring car. Automobiles were not plentiful in the roads about Sunrise Cove and the Corners. The condition of the highways themselves were the cause of that. Where much timber-hauling is done the roads are always deeply rutted and otherwise badly cut up.

So Carolyn, with the less sophisticated country children, stood aside to watch the big car pass. To their surprise it slowed down and was finally halted by the driver right beside them.

The driver was a liveried chauffeur. Carolyn stared at him with growing wonder in her eyes. The only passenger sat beside the driver, and he it was who first spoke:

"Are you sure you do not know this road, Ren?"

"I'm all up in the air, Boss, like I tol' you," the chauffeur said, clipping his words as a French Canadian often does. "And these roads! They will rattle the fine car of M'sieu to little bits."

"We won't do that," drawled the other. "The Old Man would say something, sure enough. Here, children! How far is it to a service station?"

Amos was dumb. Freda looked at Carolyn for advice upon this weighty point. Freda had never heard of an automobile service station.

Carolyn May tore her gaze away from the liveried chauffeur and looked at the man who had asked the question, only to be stricken with further amazement.

The driver of the car called René she had recognized as the chauffeur of those "awfully rich people" who had smashed the pale lady's go-cart! And the dark-faced, unpleasant looking man beside him on the front seat, Carolyn identified too. She had seen him the day on which the pale lady had fainted. The man had come out of one of the apartments under that of the Lairds, and had turned his keen gaze upon the little girl in what Carolyn had thought at the time a threatening way.

He did not recognize the little girl now. He merely repeated his question more sharply. "These backwoods kids," he said, sotto voce, to René, "are all dumb."

Carolyn heard this and she did not like it at all. Indeed, she did not like the dark man, with his very black brows and saturnine expression of countenance. But she said politely:

"There aren't many automobiles go this way; but Mr. Hiram Lardner, that keeps the blacksmith shop, has got a sign out, 'Autos Repaired,' and you can buy gasoline at Mr. Albert Sprague's store."

"Where's that?" asked the man.

"At the Corners. You know, Mr. Albert Sprague; the storekeeper. His father, Mr. Jackson Sprague, is the oldest inhabitant."

"Ha!" laughed the dark man shortly. "I've read of him in the papers then."

"Oh, yes," Carolyn said placidly. "And maybe you saw his picture, too. He took ten bottles of Wormwood Bitters and they cured him."

"What of?" chuckled the man. "Cured him of being the oldest inhabitant?"

"Oh, no, sir. I guess he's always been that, for he looks dreadfully old. But the bitters cured him of whatever it was ailed him. He didn't say just what it was. You know: 'Doctors were of no avail, and he gave up hope at the early age of sixty-two. But at eighty-seven he is still hale and hearty and lays his wonderful preservation exclusively to Wormwood Bitters. Copyright.' He let me read the article once, that he had cut out of the Wormwood Farmers' Almanac."

The dark man was grinning widely by this time—and he was not used much to smiling, it was evident. He said:

"You young ones jump on the runningboard—and hang on—and show Ren where to drive to this blacksmith who can repair automobiles."

"Oh, you can't miss of it!" blurted out Amos Bartlett. But Freda smacked her palm over his mouth in a hurry.

"Hush, you!" she ordered in a fierce whisper. "Don't you want to ride on that shiny thing?"

The three stepped up and clung to the machine. They would have been doubly delighted, especially the little girls, to have ridden in the tonneau, the upholstery of which was all shrouded with linen covers. But the dark man did not offer them this superlative pleasure.

The big car started, and Prince, who had been sitting on his tail with his tongue lolling out, started likewise and ran, barking, beside the automobile. The road was rough and the car bumped up and down a good deal; but René did not drive fast, although the children thought it a very exciting ride indeed.

In five minutes they reached the Corners. As the big car came to a halt, Mr. Lardner, in leather apron and with his shoeing hammer in his hand, came to the door of his shop, deep within which the forge fire glowed like an unwinking eye.

"Oh, Mr. Lardner!" cried Carolyn May, "we brought you a customer."

"Much obleeged to you, Car'lyn May," the blacksmith said, smiling, and then gave his attention to René and the matter the chauffeur wished attended to.

Amos remained to gape at the car, at its occupants, and at the blacksmith repairing it. But the two little girls walked away.

"My!" sighed Freda Payne, "I don't see how you can talk to folks as you do, Car'lyn May. I'm just tongue-tied when I see strangers. You certainly have got the gift of gab!"

Carolyn might have framed some retort to this rather uncomplimentary statement; but at the moment her thoughts were fixed upon a puzzling problem.

It was surprising to see here at the Corners the car and chauffeur of the rich man who had given her the twenty-dollar bank note for the pale lady. It was likewise astonishing to see here the keen-eyed, dark-complexioned man who had made an unpleasant impression upon her mind the day the pale lady had fainted.

To see the two together was a still more amazing fact!

Disturbed as little Carolyn May's mind had been on the occasion when she had first seen the saturnine looking man, she remembered now something important about the incident. The man had been talking with the pale lady's neighbour about the Lairds themselves, when Carolyn came down the stairs.

The dark man was interested in the Lairds. His presence here, in this handsome automobile, and with the chauffeur of the rich man who had smashed the Lairds' baby go-cart, linked him with the owner of the automobile.

This was a mystery—a mystery that piqued Carolyn's curiosity just as had the mystery about the identity of the Lairds and their baby. Had there not been so much going on at the Stagg homestead and in the neighbourhood, the little girl certainly would have conferred with Mamma Cameron about it.

CHAPTER XII

NEW SCENES

"'Flow Gently, Sweet Afton' certainly gave us a sermon out of the common today," declared Uncle Joe on Sunday, after meeting. "And I believe I can see Car'lyn May's fine Italian hand in it."

"Why, Uncle Joe!" cried the little girl. "Neither of my hands is Italian. I'm 'Merican, through and through! Besides," she added thoughtfully, "most of the Italians—Dominick, the ice-coal-and-wood man, and Angelo, the fruit man, and the man that goes through our street with the ice-cream-cone cart—most always have got dirty hands. Mine never get as dirty as an Italian hand."

But at that, perhaps Uncle Joe was right about the sermon. If the Reverend Afton Driggs was influenced by the prattle of the sunny-hearted Carolyn, he was not the only one so brightened by the little girl's second coming to the Corners.

"I declare!" Mrs. Hiram Lardner was heard to say, "that young 'un gets ev'rybody on the broad grin. And she's as good as she can be. Though that ain't sayin' Car'lyn ain't a reg'lar ticket when she wants to be. I don't forget how she encouraged Amos Bartlett to taste our soft-soap that time, thinking it was a hogshead of merlasses."

In this brief visit, however, Carolyn May managed to get into no mischief of a serious nature. For one thing, a great deal of her time during the fortnight was given to Baby Carolyn Amanda. Much as she had enjoyed taking care of Baby Laird, her little cousin was a more delightful plaything than the pale lady's baby.

In the first place, Carolyn Amanda quite filled the little girl's idea of what an infant should be. She was no "skinny" baby. And she was good as good!

Then Carolyn had to call on all her old friends about Sunrise Cove and the Corners. She positively had to spend an afternoon with Chet Gormley's mother; and she took tea there as well. Mrs. Gormley's belief in the ultimate business success of her son, now that Mr. Stagg seemed to consider him of some importance in the hardware store, was more than touching. Much as Carolyn May liked Chet she realized that he was, like his mother, just a little "queer." Mr. Jedidiah Parlow observed:

"If that Chet Gormley ain't a ha'f-innocent 'tain't his mother's fault. She's been fillin' up his head with fool idees ever since he got into short pants. My soul! Does seem a pity that some boys has to have mothers at all. If they could have two fathers instead, they'd turn out some good in the world, I vow!" But, then, Mr. Parlow made out that he was a regular woman hater and could only see their foibles.

But Mrs. Gormley was undeniably silly about Chet.

"Of course," Chet's mother said to Carolyn May, eying the little girl with a birdlike slyness, "I don't s'pose Mr. Stagg's ready to make Chet a full partner in the store right at first. But I guess he's dreadful keen about keepin' Chet satisfied, ain't he?"

"Oh, I am sure Uncle Joe thinks a great deal of Chet," the little girl agreed kindly.

"Um-m! Yes!" Mrs. Gormley said, and nodded her head seriously, but a good deal like one of those automatons Carolyn had often seen in candy-store windows. "Last Christmas he raised Chet's wages a whole ha'f dollar a week and now he's promised him another raise this Fourth. That's two raises in a year."

"Isn't that nice!" exclaimed her visitor.

"And if he keeps on," said the sanguine mother, "it'll soon be cheaper for Mr. Stagg to make Chet a partner in the business than to pay him a salary."

That the woman (and perhaps Chet himself) expected the good offices of Carolyn May to help boost the boy in the estimation of Mr. Joseph Stagg, did not detract from the fact that they both loved the little girl and were delighted by having her to tea. She was regaled with the very nicest eatables from Mrs. Gormley's larder; and Prince was given a great platter of chicken bones which were really only half picked.

Chet walked home with Carolyn to the Corners after supper. It made her feel very much grown up. Never had she been escorted home by a boy before. She had to write Edna Price about it the very next day.

"Uncle Joes at the Corners, Juley 1.

"Dear Edna:

"I am havvin a awful good time with Mamma and Aunty Rose and we hav got a luvly Baby. Its lots fater than the pal lady's Baby I tole you about. And it truly blongs to my Uncel Joe and Mis Mandy. But its just as good as mine whil I stay hear they sed so.

"But we wont be hear fore much longer but will be gon to blok Iland like I tole you where you are cummin to see me and we will play in the sand and ro botes. But not go fishin for I dont like wurms.

"There is a boy hear. His name is Chett Gormley. He works for Uncel Joe. He cam home last nite with me from his mother house and she calld him my boo. But he is not a boo—he is only Chett. He is a nice boy and awful tall and this will be all—"

"Why!" gasped Carolyn May at this point. "Isn't that funny? That rhymes! I never knew before I was a poet.

"'He's awful tall.

And this will be all.'

My!"

The letter was signed and sent to Edna Price just as Carolyn wrote it; for, although she was rather weak in spelling, the little girl, as her mother saw, made her meaning quite plain save, perhaps, in the matter of Chet Gormley being a "boo."

And now the visit to the Corners had drawn to its end. Carolyn had had such a good time that she would have postponed, had it been her own will, the journey out of the woods, across the pleasant plains and through the rich valleys of Massachusetts, and so finally down to Rhode Island's former summer capital by the sea.

It was by no means an unadventurous journey, and the day and night they spent at Newport was long to be remembered, too. Almost anything can happen when one travels with a dog like Prince.

There was a rule of the hotel at which Carolyn and her mother stopped which forbade dogs in the rooms of the guests, and the management undertook to make them leave Prince in some part of the rear premises.

"I don't believe he'll be good down there," Carolyn May said to the white-waistcoated and very precise-looking managerial person who insisted on leading Prince away. "He never will make a mite of trouble if he is with us. He's quite used to living with us. But to be tied up—down in a cellar—Well! I just know he won't be good."

"Sorry, little girl," said the stiff and haughty manager. "But rules are rules."

When next they saw the man he was neither "stiffly starched" nor haughty looking. His white vest and immaculate shirtfront were much ruffled—and so was his temper. His black coat and trousers were a sight!

"Here!" he gasped, struggling at the far end of Prince's leash, having pounded on the door of the room in which Mrs. Cameron and the little girl were just going to bed. "Take this dog. Dog! He's a hyena! I would not turn an unprotected woman and child out of my house at this hour of the night; but I would not allow this dog to remain here over another night for anything or for any money."

Prince possibly proved his "hyena strain" by laughing just as plainly as a dog could laugh. Seeing that his little mistress and her mother were all right in this strange place, he immediately curled down on a mat at the foot of the bed and blinked his eyes at them all in an apathetic way.

"I told you," said Carolyn's small voice, "that I just knew he wouldn't be good in an old cellar."

"You may shut the door," said Carolyn's mother rather sternly to the man. "You will hear nothing from the dog for the rest of the night."

The man backed out rather abashed. But wherever they went the succeeding morning they were obliged to take Prince with them. He was persona non grata at that hotel.

It was a most delightful day, and they set sail for Block Island at the very pleasantest hour of it. The little steamer sailed out of the bay, passed the Dumplings and Fort Adams, breasting the heavy groundswell running between Point Judith on the mainland and Sands Point, the extreme northern tip of Block Island.

Lying but twenty-five miles or so from Newport, the island soon came into view; and the sun-bathed Crescent Beach and the Clay Cliffs of divers hues offered a very attractive picture to the passengers on the steamboat.

They swept past the reach of the Neck in sight of the stony beach of it and of the crescent-curled bathing beach with its sands hard enough to drive upon with a brake and pair of horses; and so around the end of the breakwater into the Old Harbour. Along the main street and up on the hills behind the little hamlet, were the freshly painted hotels and boarding houses, making a colourful picture.

Backed up to the wharf where the steamboat docked were several brakes from the larger hotels, as well as a collection of surreys and carryalls as quaint as Tim the hackman's vehicle at Sunrise Cove. The island was no place for automobiles. There was a single street-car running during the summer months from the South Side to the bathing beach and the New Harbour at the Great Salt Pond.

Carolyn May and Prince, on the upper deck of the steamboat, were deeply interested while the vessel approached the landing. The clang of the bellbuoy at the mouth of the harbour excited Prince, and the little girl was obliged to speak sternly to him to make him cease barking.

"That's not a fire engine bell, Princey," she told the excited beast. "Why! they don't have fire department automobiles 'way out here in the ocean. I should think you'd have more sense."

The men and boys who drove the buses and other vehicles were a nondescript lot in appearance; but most of them wore yachting caps and were dressed in a seamanlike way that distinguished them from the visitors to the island. One old man caught Carolyn's eager attention because of a certain physical peculiarity, if for no other reason.

His was a sturdy if undersized body. His face was tanned by salt winds and tropical sun to a deep, mahogany hue. He wore a fringe of grey beard masking his throat from ear to ear, but his lips and cheeks were scrupulously shaven. He moved smartly and was dressed neatly; and those observant persons who were familiar with his type would never have mistaken him for anything but the ex-navalman he was.

He wore a cap, on the band of which was printed "Truefelt House" and he stood beside the rear step of the bus on the roof-sign of which the name of the hotel was repeated in black letters.

Somehow his roving, humorous eye caught that of Carolyn May. It twinkled at once a friendly greeting. He waved a brown hand on the back of which, even at that distance, she could see the deep indigo markings of a tattooed pattern. He was one of the friendliest looking persons the little girl had ever seen. Even Prince smiled widely at the brown-faced man and uttered a sharp bark of greeting.

Aside from the pleasant countenance of the man from the Truefelt House and his attractive manner, there was that particular thing about him that interested Carolyn May immensely. The right leg of his breeches was rolled up more than half way to his knee, revealing the varnished, brass-ferruled end of a wooden leg braced firmly upon the wharf.

"Why," murmured Carolyn, wide-eyed, "he's a wooden-legged man! How funny! I wonder how long he has had that wooden leg and—and if it hurts him much."

It did not appear to inconvenience the man a great deal, for he got to the head of the gangplank when it was run aboard as sprily as anybody.

"Truefelt House! Truefelt House, Ma'am!" he was saying, when Carolyn May and her mother came up the plank.

A salesman with two big sample cases was just ahead of the Camerons, and he thrust the heavy valises at the wooden-legged man.

"Here you are," he said. "I'm for the Truefelt House."

"And so is the lady and the leetle gal. Am I right, Ma'am?" queried the wooden-legged man. "Lemme have your bag. That's it. You go right ahead, Mister," he added to the travelling man. "The good Lord has blessed ye with two arms and two laigs, as yet. There's the bus just ahead of ye."

Prince, in his eagerness, came near to getting his leash tangled around the man's wooden leg.

"Belay there!" sang out the bus driver. "You take a turn around that spar, dog, an' ye'll likely lay me on my beam ends. What do you call him when he's to home, Sissy?" he asked Carolyn.

"He's Prince. And if you please," said the little girl politely but with emphasis, "I'm not 'Sissy.' I am Carolyn May Cameron. And this is my mamma."

"Proud to know ye, Ma'am," said the wooden-legged man. "I'm bussin' jest now for Ben Truefelt and his marm who run the Truefelt House since his dad died. I'm Ozias Littlefield. One o' the 'riginal Littlefields. They moved on to this island while the Injuns was still here, an' helped cut down all the timber so's to ketch an' kill the savages the better, I cal'late.

"You git right aboard, Ma'am," he added, helping Mrs. Cameron up the rear step of the bus after the salesman. "Yaas'm; you can give me your checks. A man with two laigs'll come down after the trunks when them deckhan's of Cap'n Ball set 'em off on to the wharf. You'm welcome, I am sure, Ma'am."

"Now, leetle gal," he added, "you want to ride on the front seat with me?"

"Oh!" and Carolyn's eyes danced. "But there's Prince."

"He can ride up there, too," declared Mr. Littlefield, and stubbed around to the front of the bus. He lifted Carolyn up on to the high seat, and grabbing Prince by the collar and his stump of a tail, tossed him sprawling after her.

"Make him sit up side o' ye, leetle gal," said Mr. Littlefield, and, securing the lines from the backs of the patient horses, began clambering up himself. "I ain't so graceful as one o' these here gazelles they tell about," he added. "I'm more like a crab—look one way and travel t'other. But I manage to git there."

He ended, puffing a little, and falling upon the hard cushion of the seat with his left foot on the brake release and the wooden leg sticking straight out over the fat back of the nigh horse.

"All right astarn?" he called. "For we're goin' to cast off."

"All clear here, Skipper," said the salesman. "You can haul up your mudhook."

"And you can haul in your slack," retorted the wooden-legged man. "I remember you from a previous v'y'ge, young man. I dunno as Mr. Ben'll want you an' your bags at all at the Truefelt House after you fillin' the sugar bowls out'n the salt crock and the salt cellars vice varsy. Fun is fun; but some people's idee of fun ought to bring 'em to the gallus.

"Come up, Trouble! Hi, Worry! Shack along now. I guess we don't git no more passengers this tide."

The fat, sleek horses awoke and ambled through the broad esplanade before the docks. Carolyn was greatly interested in all she saw; but particularly was she interested in the wooden-legged man and how he came to have a wooden leg.

The horses, Worry and Trouble, drew the bus across the main street, along the landward side of which were set most of the hamlet's shops, the post-office, and some of the smaller hotels; while the other side of the street dropped easily away to the harbour beach. They rattled through a lane where the occupants of the fishermen's cottages could almost shake hands from opposite doorstones; and then up a little green rise into the premises of the Truefelt House—a sprawling frame building with a porch on two sides and a big cupola on the roof with a quarterdeck-walk outside the cupola.

Captain Solon Truefelt, who had built the house when he retired from the sea, had still to pace his quarterdeck in all weathers. From the cupola he could overlook the whole island and the surrounding seas through an old-fashioned jointed telescope, that still hung in beckets up in the glass-encased hut on the roof-top.

The Truefelt House was comfortably and well built, and had been modernized to meet the requirements of the present generation of summer visitors. Captain Solon's daughter-in-law and his grandson now managed the hotel to much better advantage than had the old sea captain; and the Truefelt fortunes were on the march.

Mr. Littlefield hopped down sprily, having halted Worry and Trouble before the main entrance of the hotel, and lifted down Carolyn. There was a sprinkling of guests on the porch who showed the usual vague interest of summering people in the arrival of additional guests. The little girl and the dog perhaps attracted rather unfavourable comment in some quarters. Other people's children and dogs are generally considered a nuisance.

A brisk young man, bare-headed, came out to greet Mrs. Cameron, whom he helped descend with her bag from the bus. He nodded coolly to the salesman and said to the lady:

"Your rooms are ready for you, Mrs. Cameron. I understand from your husband that he will be with us on Saturday?"

"If he is permitted," Carolyn's mother agreed, following Mr. Ben Truefelt, who had relieved her of the bag.

The little girl and Prince lingered. Carolyn was watching the wooden-legged man climbing back to the driver's seat.

"He couldn't have been born with it," Carolyn May murmured. "I wonder where he got it?"

CHAPTER XIII

WOODEN LEGS

Really, there was a great deal at and about the Truefelt House besides wooden legs for Carolyn May to be interested in; but it must be confessed that her mind was more set on Captain Ozias Littlefield's artificial limb than upon the soughing of the surf along the beaches, the salt tang of the breeze, the passing in continual procession off shore of sail and steam vessels, or the lovely view of rolling country from the windows of her mother's room on the second floor of the hotel.

They went down to dinner, and Carolyn listened for the step, clump! step, clump! of Mr. Littlefield's passage through the hall and out on the porch more faithfully than she attended to her meal. The wooden-legged man not only "bussed," as he called it, for the Truefelt House, but he acted as handy man. He cleaned the porches early in the morning, Carolyn learned; and at the dinner hour he put on a white apron and a black coat, and served those guests who lingered on the porch and desired refreshments from the café.

The Truefelt House, indeed, was short-handed.

"Part the crew mutinied a week ago an' desarted the ship," Mr. Littlefield was heard to say to a group of guests on the porch after dinner. "Mr. Ben has to act as his own clerk as well as checker at the kitchen door. And the Good Book does say that a man can't sarve two masters—not an' suit both on 'em."

Mrs. Truefelt bustled about making her guests welcome. She was a motherly but shrewd-faced, woman. She clipped her words when she spoke and had the true island intonation, although she had been a "foreigner" when she married Ben's father. She had a kindly pat on the head for Prince, hugged Carolyn, and expressed herself in most friendly fashion to Mrs. Cameron.

"It used to be, when Ben was at college, that we could get plenty of good help in summer. He brought the boys right over to the island from New Haven. Some of them were glad of the job between college terms, and others just came for the fun of it. Why! once we had for a clerk all one summer the son of one of the wealthiest men in Wall Street."

"Indeed?" responded Mrs. Cameron. "What was his name?"

"Why, the other boys called him 'Griffin Junior.' I declare! I don't remember his real name. You know how boys are—always calling each other out o' name. Why! they called my Ben 'Quahaug' because he was naterally such a silent feller. Like his Grandfather Solon Truefelt. It positive is a cross for Ben to talk to folks like he has to when he acts as clerk. I heard him say only today that he'd give a pretty penny to have Grif here again."

Carolyn's mother displayed a warmer interest in the matter than one might have expected a mere guest of the hotel to feel.

"Do you not remember the young man's name?" she asked again.

"Him they called 'Griffin Junior'? I declare! No. I'll ask Ben," said Mrs. Truefelt, bustling away.

Sunrise the next morning saw Carolyn May and Prince awake and at one of the windows in Mamma's big room where they could watch the seafog roll away before the red, level rays of the sun just then appearing above the sea-line. As the fog fled and the smooth sea came into view, its surface seemed to be a sheet of glass.

"Oh, Princey!" gasped Carolyn May, "I believe we could walk right out on it. I just believe we could do that very thing!"

Prince sniffed. That did not appeal much to him—walking on the water. He might have enjoyed, nevertheless, a plunge into the sea. At this present time, however, he wanted his usual morning run.

Carolyn hastened the completion of her toilet. As a usual thing she compassed all the buttons and buttonholes herself. Mamma was still asleep. The little girl and the dog crept out of the room as softly as possible.

But once down the stairs they dashed for the out-of-doors in noisy delight. It was then Carolyn learned that her friend of the wooden leg, Captain Ozias Littlefield, washed down and holystoned the decks, as he called it, at this early hour.

There he was with both trouser-legs rolled up to his knees, exposing one bona fide leg with an anklet of blue and red tattooing, and the varnished "peg-leg" which was strapped to the stump of the other leg at the knee. He first scrubbed, or "holystoned," the porch in sections, and then washed it down with a garden hose.

"Mornin', leetle gal," he said cheerfully. "How are you and your dog?"

"Very well, I thank you," said Carolyn May, wishing much that she felt herself sufficiently acquainted with Captain Littlefield to ask him, point-blank, how he came to have a wooden leg. But she did ask: "Can I go anywhere I want to?"

"I guess so. All but into the kitchen. Don't you put your head in there this airly. The cook—'chef' he likes us to call him—gets up with a grouch. I've noticed—dunno why it is!—most cooks at sea are grouchy. And if you wanter git into a flare with a woman ashore, you try to moor alongside o' one on bakin' day. Been me that had to decide this here present war," went on Mr. Littlefield, "I'd recruit all the cooks and send 'em over against them Germans right at the start. Cooks is fighters, take it from me."

"Oh, dear me!" murmured Carolyn, "I hope nobody'll have to go to war from over here. If we were in the war, wouldn't it be dang'rous for us to stay 'way out here in the ocean? Maybe submarine boats would surround the island. Then what would we do?"

"Jest like a whaleboat surrounded by sharks? Uh-huh! That would be tough, leetle gal, and no mistake." Then his eyes twinkled and he favoured her with a sly smile. "Never mind. Won't never be no war on this island."

"Oh! Are you sure?" demanded Carolyn May.

"Sure as sure."

"Why not?" asked she, falling into the trap.

"'Cause there's so many Littlefields here that the Motts and the Allens couldn't never Dodge the Balls," chuckled the wooden-legged man. "Ye won't jest understand that till ye get acquainted with more folks here. But the Balls and the Motts, and the Allens, and the Dodges, to say nothin' of us Littlefields, purt' nigh inhabit this island and all the outskirts thereof."

Carolyn May laughed politely, although she did not understand the punning on the islanders' family names. She and Prince ran off the porch and found a rutted path leading through the fields behind the hotel. A long way to the southward and outlined clearly in the morning light was the shaft of the South, or Highland, Light. To the right hand and near the middle of the island was another shaft with long arms attached. Carolyn had seen pictures of windmills. There was one in Papa Cameron's Don Quixote. Carolyn knew she would like to go to that windmill and see the miller grind corn. Beyond the mill, and on the highest point of land of any she could see, was a tower with a railed platform built around the top of it.

Prince found something much nearer at hand to interest him; he ran into a flock of young turkeys and became almost cross-eyed trying to follow them all as they scattered.

"Now, Princey!" exclaimed Carolyn, as he came back to her much abashed under the lash of her tongue. "Are you always going to be bad like that when you see anything that wears feathers? I am ashamed of you! Now we have come to a new place, you must behave. Nobody will love you at all if you are so obnox-u-ous."

That last word, perhaps, quenched the dog's ardour. He walked back to the hotel with his little mistress in a very sedate fashion. Others of the guests were up and out now. There were sounds from kitchenward that announced the fact that breakfast was in preparation.

She did not see Captain Littlefield; but from the front porch Carolyn heard the step, clump! step, clump! of a man with a wooden leg. She thought it must be her friend walking up and down the "for'ard deck" in the morning sunshine.

Prince evidently thought it was the friendly captain, too. He dashed around the corner of the house, and the next moment there was a vocal explosion that might have shocked more sophisticated ears than those of Carolyn May.

"What the Dancin' Doolittles is this here?" bawled a shrill and unmelodious voice. "Get out, you brute! Scat, I say!"

Carolyn hastened to the rescue. She knew it could never be Captain Littlefield. And she was right. Her friend was not in sight.

Instead, gyrating about in a clumsy circle on the front porch was a tall man with a very red face, a great white moustache, and a topknot of white hair that made him look like an angry cockatoo.

This old man, whose fiery eyes and great beak added to his birdlike appearance, was dancing about on one slippered foot, while his other leg, finished with a wooden limb much like that of Captain Littlefield's, was thrust out in a mad attempt to keep Prince at a distance.

"Get out, you brute!" he bawled, almost overturning himself in another attempt to kick the dog.

His white linen suit flapped about his lean body like dishcloths hangin' on a pole in a strong breeze. Prince, much excited and enraged by the attack made upon him by the old man, dashed in just as Carolyn appeared and fastened his teeth upon the part of the "peg-leg" that would have been the ankle had the limb been of actual flesh and bone.

"Whoo! Scat!" shouted the red-faced man, continuing to hop about on his sound foot.

"Prince!" shrieked Carolyn May.

But Prince hung right on to the wooden leg, and as the old fellow swung around he fairly lifted the dog from the porch and swung him in a circle, too.

The hullabaloo aroused everybody on the lower floor of the hotel, and maids, waiters, and kitchen help, as well as the early risen guests, came running to the front porch.

Lastly appeared Captain Ozias Littlefield, who had been shaving and had one side of his face masked with lather, while he flourished his razor in his hand.

"Belay all!" cried he, clumping forward. "What's afoul the ship hawse now?"

"Take this dog off'n me, Ozy Littlefield!" shouted the red-faced man. "Gimme that razor and I'll near 'bout chop his head off!"

At that terrible threat Carolyn shrieked again. Prince held his firm grip on the leg, and the red-faced man kicked out more strenuously than before. He actually kicked himself over backward and landed with a crash on the porch floor.

The straps holding the wooden leg to the stump of his real leg broke, and the dog flew off at a tangent, still gripping the timber in his jaws.

"What th' Dancing Doolittles!" yelled the old fellow, lying there on his back. "Now see what that dog's done."

"Fer the land's sake, Oly! what kind of a conniption fit do you call this? Can't you keep out o' trouble long enough for me to git shaved an' rid up a mite? I told ye I'd be right out," declared the exasperated Captain Littlefield. "Gimme your hand and let me help you up."

"No use gettin' up with only one laig, Ozy," complained the overturned one. "Git me that timber-toe away from that savage beast. What ye keepin' here—a menagerie 'stead of a hotel, I wanter know?"

"Since ever I knowed ye, Oly Littlefield—an' that was when both of us was in petticuts—you've allus managed to git into trouble more'n any other human bein' I ever met up with. Sit up in this chair like I tell ye, an' I'll git yer laig all right."

Captain Littlefield showed a great deal of latent muscular strength in lifting the bigger man into one of the porch chairs. There he left him, fuming and fussing, while he went to the rescue of the wooden leg.

Carolyn had snapped the leash to Prince's collar and the dog was merely mumbling the wooden leg. He evidently considered the whole business some kind of new play. The little girl's face was almost as red as that of the old fellow who had lost his leg. She felt sure that the trouble had not been of Prince's making; but she feared everybody would blame him.

"Don't you fret yourself, Sissy," said Captain Littlefield, kindly. "Cousin Oly ain't responsible for what he does and says, anyway. He'd oughter been a cook. He's got the temper of one, sure 'nough."

CHAPTER XIV

THE DOG WITH THE BUSHY TAIL

The trouble was all over long before Mamma Cameron came down; and to Carolyn's relief nobody seemed to think her dog was much to blame save the cockatoo looking man, Mr. Oliver Littlefield.

Captain Ozias patched up the broken straps of his cousin's wooden leg, finished shaving himself, and stumped off with "Oly" as he called his cousin, toward the beach. It seemed that the two old men lived together in a little house that belonged to Mr. Oliver Littlefield, and had done so ever since Captain Ozias had retired from the sea.

"He's as dumb and helpless about housekeepin'," Carolyn heard one of the women say, "as though he had lost a hand instead of a laig. If 'twarn't for Cap'n Ozy, Oliver Littlefield'd never have a decent mess o' victuals."

"That's right," agreed another of the hotel "help." "If Cap'n Littlefield hadn't come home to the island 'bout the time Oliver's wife died, I reckon he'd ha' starved to death down there in that little house o' his. For nobody would ha' gone there to housekeep for him. He's jest as pleasant to get along with, Oly Littlefield is, as a wild tagger."

Captain Littlefield came clumping back to the hotel before Carolyn went in with her mother to breakfast, and with rather a rueful grin on his mahogany face.

"Jes' like I told you," he said to Mr. Ben Truefelt. "Never see sech a gump in all my born days. He was all out o' merlasses an' couldn't find the stopper to the 'lasses jug. Went plumb crazy 'bout it, as usual. I found the 'lasses jug stopper stickin' in the vinegar jug, an' the vinegar jug plug on the dresser right in plain sight. It does git past me how the good Lord makes some folks so helpless. They might's well stay in swaddlin' clo'es all their lives an' be done with it."

All this might be very interesting, thought Carolyn, but it did not explain the great mystery. And that mystery had doubled within the hour. If the little girl had desired to know how Captain Ozias Littlefield lost his leg, how much greater was her longing to know how both he and his cousin had lost their legs! Captain Littlefield wore a timber extension on the stump of his right leg, while Mr. Oliver Littlefield wore a similar extension on the stump of his left leg.

How did they both come to lose their limbs? It was amazing!

"Oh, Mr. Ben!" she finally called to Mr. Truefelt, addressing him as most of the hotel employ s did. "Oh, Mr. Ben," she went on, "how ever did Captain Littlefield and his cousin both come to lose their legs?"

"Mighty careless of 'em, wasn't it, Miss Carolyn?" returned the young man, chuckling. "So you are curious about the 'Double O's,' are you?"

"The 'Double O's'?" repeated the little girl.

"That is what we call them. Oliver and Ozias—Oly and Ozy. And they are both just as funny in their different ways as they can be. But how they happened to both have wooden legs—well, that I could not tell you, for I don't know. I'm not altogether sure that they were not born with them."

"Born with wooden legs?" gasped Carolyn. "I—nev-er—did—hear of such a thing! I don't believe that can be so, Mr. Ben."

"Well, to tell the truth, my dear," said Mr. Ben Truefelt, "neither did I ever hear of folks being born that way. It would be curious, wouldn't it? But the first I can remember of either of the Double O's, they had those timber-toes strapped to 'em. And I never heard say how they got 'em. Why don't you ask them?"

"Oh, I couldn't do that! Not on such short acquaintance!" murmured Carolyn.

"No?"

"Could I?"

"I don't know just how well you think you've got to know a person before you can ask him how he came to have an artificial limb," said Mr. Ben seriously. "Perhaps it would be best to refrain from any such inquisition of Mr. Oliver Littlefield. Mr. Oliver is noted for his short temper. But Cap'n Ozy is all right. You might ask him almost any time, I should say. He is quite domesticated," concluded Mr. Ben.

But for the moment, and suddenly, Carolyn May's thought was switched to something entirely different. She sighed.

"I felt real 'quainted with my pale lady almost at first," she said. "You don't know my pale lady, Mr. Ben, and her baby. Oh, dear! They can't come to Block Island."

"Why not?" asked Mr. Ben, smiling down upon her. "We still have some rooms vacant at the Truefelt House."

"Oh, dear me, no!" said Carolyn, shaking her head. "They couldn't come. Not this summer. You see, they are too poor."

"Oh!"

"Yes. He isn't earning enough for them to go away for a vacation. But the doctor says she and the baby should get out of the city. It's dreadful. You ought to see that baby. He's such a skinny little thing."

Ben Truefelt glanced up to see Mrs. Cameron standing by them. He bade Carolyn's mother a courteous good-morning and asked her how she had slept with rather boyish diffidence. Then he added, quickly:

"Oh, Mrs. Cameron, mother told me she thought you were interested in one of my college friends who clerked for us here at the Truefelt House for a season. It was after our junior year. He was in my class, good old Grif was."

"'Grif'?" repeated Carolyn's mother.

"That's what we called him," Ben Truefelt said with a smile. "And 'Griffin Junior.' Very disrespectful of us, Mrs. Cameron. But college boys aren't strong on respect, you know. The newspapers called Grif's father 'the Griffin of Wall Street,' so we called him 'Griffin Junior.'"

"Do you speak of Mr. Joe Bassett?" demanded Carolyn's mother.

"Yes, Mrs. Cameron."

"I chanced to overhear what my little girl was saying to you," she continued. "Do you know, Mr. Truefelt, she was speaking of Joe Bassett's wife and child?"

He stared at her, his very good brown eyes opening more widely and the smile quite gone from his face.

"You do not really mean that, Mrs. Cameron? This 'pale lady' the little girl speaks of and the 'skinny' baby? Can they be Joe Bassett's wife and child?"

"Exactly. Did you not know that he married two years ago against his father's command, and was disowned?"

"Good old Grif? Never!"

"Not only that, but there was something about his break with his father," said Hannah Cameron cautiously, "that has put him in bad odour. Nor has he been successful in anything that he has undertaken. I happen to know that he is about to lose his position on the New York Beacon, where he has lately been working as reporter. He is not a good reporter."

"By George!" exclaimed Ben Truefelt with vigour, "he made a mighty good hotel clerk, and I wish I had him right now."

"That is my reason for speaking to you," went on Mrs. Cameron quickly. "His wife and child are suffering in the hot city. I believe he loves them. If they could all three come here—"

"If Grif will do it, I'm sure mother will agree," the young man said.

"You understand, do you not," said Carolyn's mother, "that I do not recommend Mr. Bassett? I cannot vouch for his character."

"Why, nobody need recommend Grif to me, Mrs. Cameron. I know him. I can't imagine why he broke with his father; but whatever Grif says will go a long way with me. You see, I knew him for years. And if there is any time in life when fellows get to know each other, it is in those college years."

"I am glad to hear you say that," Hannah Cameron observed. She had not felt that her husband's decision regarding the Bassetts was altogether right. "I hope you will get them here quickly. I will give you the address, and you might send a special delivery letter—"

"I'll do better than that," said Ben Truefelt eagerly. "I'll go right over to the Weather Bureau and cable. I'll tell him to drop everything and bring his wife and child right over here. Think of old Grif a family man!" added the young fellow, boyishly.

"We'll find a place for Mrs. Bassett and the baby with some of the islanders over on the West Side, where board is cheap. They'll get plenty of fresh milk and eggs and fish and vegetables. I'll go and tell mother. I'm a thousand times obliged, Mrs. Cameron."

Carolyn had been playing with Prince during this conversation. Now her mother called the child to come in to breakfast.

"What would you say, Carolyn May," she asked the little girl, "if your pale lady and her baby and her husband should come here for the summer?"

"Oh—ee! Truly, Mamma?"

"Truly."

"My! wouldn't that be nice?" exclaimed Carolyn. "And I could push the baby around in his carriage—Oh, no, I couldn't! He hasn't any carriage now!"

"Perhaps we can find means of supplying that deficiency," said her mother.

Mr. Ben Truefelt came back from the cable office, where the weather signal flags were displayed on a pole, about the time Carolyn and her mother were ready to go for a stroll to the post-office. He bore the reply to his cable in his hand, and flourished it joyfully.

"See here!" he cried. "It's all settled. The dishwashers and the rest of the crew can walk out on us all they please. I'd rather wash dishes and wait on table than be clerk. Grif is coming."

He held out the message so that Mrs. Cameron could read it:

"You're on. Thursday boat."

"I cabled him fifty on account, and it seems he didn't take long to make up his mind," said Mr. Ben. "I guess he isn't in love with reporting."

He went on to tell Mrs. Truefelt of what he considered their good fortune, while Carolyn May and her mother, with Prince off his leash, went down into the Old Harbour, as the village around the docks was called.

Picture postal cards were the very first thing to buy. Carolyn wanted to purchase a number of every island scene she saw, and send them broadcast through the mails to all her friends in New York and the Corners and around Sunrise Cove. Fortunately for the over-burdened post-office department her purse would not compass her desire, so she had to content herself with a much more modest selection.

"Well, when my papa comes, he can buy 'em all," sighed Carolyn. "We'll send the rest then. I do want to send that picture of the ocean to Amos Bartlett. You know, he's the boy that told Miss Minnie in school that he didn't believe the world was round, 'cause if it was, the ocean would slide off. And that picture will show him that the ocean hasn't slid yet."

Prince was having a joyous time running at large; but being a good tempered dog he paid little attention to the island dogs that chanced to challenge him. As they walked past a fish cleaning shanty, however, Prince made a discovery that quite startled him.

There was a big basket on the stone before the door of the hut that seemed filled with wet seaweed. The inquisitive Prince was about to run his muzzle inquiringly into this sea herbage. Suddenly out of the middle of it appeared a pair of clashing claws, just the colour of the seaweed.

Prince jumped back and barked. The lobster waved its claws in a most threatening fashion, and Carolyn could now see all its hard-shelled body nestling in the seaweed. The pointed, funny nose, with its long feelers waving about, was plainly visible; and the jointed claws clashed a challenge that Prince was altogether too wise to accept.

"There, now, Princey Cameron," exclaimed Carolyn, "see what you've done! You've woke up that poor fish when maybe he wanted to sleep. And he came near to catching you. You'd better not fool with him. Come away!"

Her mother was walking on, her parasol spread to shelter her from the sun's rays that were now getting uncomfortably warm. But Prince had suddenly a new source of interest. A big dog with a bushy tail came dashing across the road and stopped abruptly beside Prince and the lobster basket.

The bigger dog's plume was waving gently, but whether in friendly greeting or not, was hard to decide. His eyes were red and fierce, and he was much bigger than Prince.

"I do wish you'd come away, Princey!" said the little girl anxiously. "I b'lieve he's one of those treachersome dogs that you never know what they mean—There!"

The dog with the bushy tail snapped at Prince without any provocation whatever.

"Oh! You stop that!" cried Carolyn, stamping her foot.

Prince had growled a warning and jumped; then he put his nose to the snarling muzzle of the bushy-tailed dog. The latter was not very brave. He was just a bully, after all. He backed away from Prince and his tail drooped. Unfortunately it drooped directly across the lobster basket.

The lobster played no favourites. It made no difference to it which dog was punished for arousing him. It reached up both claws and clamped them with true lobster-like tenacity to the bushy tail.

Then was there a great to-do. Yelp upon yelp was emitted by the dog with the bushy tail as he started for home with a three pound lobster attached to his tail. The dog went so fast and so wildly that the lobster never hit the ground for twenty yards, and then only to bound into the air again and sail on with the panic-stricken animal.

The owner of the lobster plunged out of the shack, wildly demanding:

"Who's that? Who took my lobster?"

"I'm sure, Mister, you can't blame Prince," said Carolyn May, with severity. "He wouldn't steal your lobster, anyway. And of course he hasn't got a long enough tail for a lobster to get hold of."

CHAPTER XV

AN UNANSWERED QUERY

Carolyn could scarcely wait in patience for Thursday to come and the pale lady and her baby to arrive at the island. But meanwhile there were many things to occupy her time and to interest her.

She and mamma went to the bathing beach every afternoon, donning their bathing suits in their room and riding over to the beach with other hotel guests in the bus, driven by Captain Littlefield. He waited and drove them back to the Truefelt House if the bathers did not linger too long. The hotel bus must never miss the boats at both the Old and the New Harbour.

Carolyn had been to the Coney Island beaches several times and was familiar with the surf. But this Block Island beach was never crowded, all the people on it were always kindly, friendly people, and the water was free from any kind of rubbish.

Prince was having the time of his life. He was in and out of the water, racing on the sands, barking at the waves that chased him up the strand, plunging into the rough little seas to bring out bits of wood that were thrown in for him to retrieve, and otherwise behaving as though the sea had been made particularly for him.

Of course he got into trouble. He almost always did. Prince never could learn anything save through experience.

Once there were little schools of pinky-white jelly-fish in the surf, and the surfman who was so wonderfully brown all over his body, and who went without a hat no matter how hot the sun was, told everybody to keep away from the pests because they stung all flesh that they touched.

Of course Carolyn knew enough to mind what he said; but would Prince keep away from those very innocent looking, helpless appearing things? No, indeed! Prince had to dash right in and try to nose the jelly-fish out of the way. He couldn't bite them, for the moment he tried to shut his jaws on them they slid right out from between his teeth; he could not step on them and hold them down; and he could not easily drag them ashore.

"That dog of yours will be sorry enough, little lady," warned the surfman, speaking to Carolyn May.

Carolyn and her mother really had to cut their bath short that day so as to take the dog away. By and by his muzzle was hot and feverish and he pawed at it in a way to show that it smarted. He was a very miserable looking dog indeed all that evening, and Carolyn went down and begged cracked ice for him. She improvised an icebag out of her bathing cap and tried to fix it on Prince's muzzle.

But, sting as his cheeks and lips undoubtedly did, the cracked ice did not please the dog and he did not take kindly to the bathing cap.

"There! He always did hate a muzzle," Carolyn sighed. "He thinks this is some kind of a muzzle. I guess I'll have to sit right here by him all night, Mamma Cameron, and sponge off his poor nose with the ice water."

She fell asleep doing this, and her mother picked her up and put her into bed. Prince was all right in the morning; but he was wary thereafter of anything floating in the surf.

One morning Carolyn rode over to the West Side with Captain Littlefield, who went to make arrangements for the boarding of the pale lady and her baby when they should arrive. Captain Littlefield drove Worry alone on this journey, attached to a single-seated buckboard. Carolyn sat beside the wooden-legged man on the seat and Prince crouched between them, clinging on "with teeth and toenails," as the captain said, when the buckboard bumped more than usual over the rough road.

During the journey across the hilly island Carolyn and Captain Littlefield became good friends. And yet, the important query that fretted the little girl's mind was hard to come at. It seemed so very illbred, as she had been taught, to remark upon the personal peculiarities of "grown-ups."

Finally the subject was fairly jolted to the surface. As the buckboard went over a particularly rugged "thank-you-ma'am" in the road, the wooden-legged man was all but thrown off the seat and his artificial limb waved wildly before he got his balance again.

"Oh!" cried Carolyn.

"Purt' near went overboard that time, didn't I?" he chuckled. "Tell the truth, a feller with a wooden laig ought to be lashed with a lubber line in a rough sea like this."

"Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield!" burst forth the little girl, unable to hold in the question any longer, "how do people get wooden legs?"

"How do they get 'em? Why, they buy 'em," said he, his eyes suddenly twinkling.

"Oh! But I mean, why do they have to wear them?"

"To keep 'em from listin' to stab'board or port, as the case may be—whichever side they need the timber-toe on."

"Yes. I know. But I mean," Carolyn desperately tried to explain, "how do they come to lose their real legs so's to have to buy wooden ones?"

"Oh! Ah! I see," Captain Littlefield said with much gravity. "There's sev'ral ways a feller might lose a laig. Why, I did see a man once't—he was in a show at New York—that was born without laigs. They forgot, an' just attached his ankles to his waist, as ye might say. But he was what they call a freak."

"Yes, sir," said Carolyn, breathlessly. "But you an' Mr. Oliver Littlefield didn't get born that way, did you?"

"Me an' Oly? I sh'd say not! Why, Oly, when he was a kid no older than you, was the fastest runner of his age on the island. Yes-sir-ree-sir! He didn't sport no timber-toe then. An' me—Why! when I was apprenticed in the Navy I could go up the shrouds quicker'n a cat. I was always first top-man on a sailing craft. Yes, indeedy! I was some spry, leetle gal."

"Git up, Worry!"

He seemed to consider the subject closed. But Carolyn's appetite for information was only whetted.

"Oh! But how do they lose legs, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield?" she begged.

"Wal, now! Not like lobsters lose their claws. Ye know, lobsters git to fightin' an' shed a claw now and then. But new ones grow on. Ye often see lobsters with one big foreclaw and a little one on t'other side."

"I'm not much acquainted with lobsters," admitted Carolyn May. "Only I saw that big dog take one home on his tail the other day."

"Oh, yes," chuckled Captain Ozias. "That was Tulliver Hicks' lobster. And he went over to Dave-Ed Mott's, that owns that dog, and tried to collect for the lobster. Couldn't collect the lobster itself, for it got battered to smash on the stones 'fore the dog fetched his moorings.

"They had quite an argument, Tulliver Hicks and Dave-Ed did, as to whether Dave-Ed owed Tulliver for the lobster, or Tulliver owed Dave-Ed for damage to the dog. The dog got under the barn floor and ain't come out since; and he was a right sassy dog afore that lobster got a holt on him."

"The poor dog!" the little girl murmured. But she was not at all satisfied. Captain Littlefield had not given her the information she so very much desired. She ventured again: "I didn't really s'pose folks could lose legs and have 'em grow on again like lobsters. But how do they lose 'em?"

"I knew a feller once't," said the captain ruminatively, "that got his mudhook caught so't the chain parted when he tried to git it up again. He'd anchored, ye see, right over a sunken reef. This here was down in the Caribbean Sea and he had oughter knowed better than to go overboard in them waters. 'Tain't safe for nobody but niggers to go over the side thereabout. Sharks will nose right in among niggers, but they'll take a white man ev'ry time.

"Wal, this feller counted his anchor wuth more to him than his body was to his fam'ly, and he dropped a weighted line overboard and skinned off his clo'es and slid down to the rocky bottom with a jackbar in his hand. Jest as he thought, a fluke of the anchor was squeezed in under a big scale of the reef, and he started to pry it out.

"Whilst he was workin'—and, mind you, he had to work mighty fast, for a minute and a ha'f without air was his limit—he seen a shadow overhead. For a second he thought 'twas the schooner driftin' over him. But when he glanced around he seen it was a shark—a big, blunt-nosed critter that was slantin' right down toward him, and was a'ready turned on his side, and opening his jaws."

"Oh!" gasped Carolyn May, her eyes big with that delightful horror that is always roused by such tales of adventure.

"Yep. Reg'lar shark, he was," said Captain Littlefield, pursing his lips and nodding his head. "And he come down at this feller I tell ye of, with a full head o' steam.

"Warn't no use to fight. A feller can't use a ten-pound steel bar, under five fathom o' blue water, to punch out the teeth of a man-eatin' shark. Nos-sir!"

Carolyn May did not understand all this. But the thrill of the story held her just the same.

"And did he eat him?" she asked.

"Did that schooner skipper eat the shark?" responded Captain Littlefield, his eyes twinkling. "Nop. He'd been too much of a mouthful for the skipper. Nor the shark didn't eat all of that skipper. The skipper dropped his bar and sprung up'ard on a slant, tryin' to go over the head of the shark.

"But the tarnal critter whirled over and took a nip at the man as he shot up to the surface. Crunch! Jest one bite was all that was needed. That feller was foreshortened on one side just like 'twas done with a pair o' sheers."

"Oh, dear me!" murmured Carolyn May. "What a wicked, wicked shark!"

"You'm right, leetle gal," agreed Captain Littlefield. "He was some wicked. He likely swum with a school of other sharks; but 'twarn't no Sunday School," and the sailor chuckled. "If that feller hadn't come right up in the bight of a rope that trailed overboard, he'd never escaped as he did. His mates hauled him in, they trimmed his laig off neater than the shark done it, tied the arteries, an' he got over it. 'Twarn't a method of amputation that the doctors would recommend, I guess. Anyway, that's how come of the way that feller lost his laig."

Carolyn was a good deal puzzled as well as interested.

"That wasn't you, was it, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield?" she asked. "You didn't have your leg bit off by a shark, did you?"

"Oh, bless you, no!" said the captain. "No, indeedy."

"Was it your cousin, Mr. Oly Littlefield?"

"Oh, no!" again the sailor assured her. "Oly never seen a shark unless it was caught in the pound nets at Dorris Cove. Ah! Well, here we be," he added, turning Worry in at a long lane that wound up between rocky pastures fenced with stone, toward a little house that was set at the very edge of the bank against which the Atlantic surf moaned. "Here's Barzilla Ball's place, and I cal'late that's Molly Icivilla herself out in her bean patch. If your friends—the lady and the baby—can get to stay here, they'll be treated fine, for Molly I. Ball is as good a cook as they make on this island, and she's well tempered."

The young woman in the sunbonnet saw the visitors coming, and left her hoe in the garden and came up toward the house. It was a low-roofed cottage with a great chimney in the middle of the roof which itself sloped down almost to the top of the doorframe. The walls were of unhewn stone quarried from the island. The house was evidently very low ceiled, and most of the rooms were on the first floor, which was but a step up from the ground. There was no cellar, and the loft was lighted by one small window in either peak of the end walls.

There was a small barn, a shed, a chicken house, and drying racks for fish in the grassy yard. Everything was very clean and neat, the grass was the greenest grass in the world, Carolyn May thought, and the contrast between it and the white-washed buildings was startling.

Green and white, with the blue, tumbling sea beyond and the white froth dashing over the can-buoy half-way to Montauk Point—as Captain Littlefield pointed out to his small passenger—and with the blue of the sky overhead, made almost a poster-picture of the land and sea-scape. The fresh gale with the strong tang of salt in it expanded the little girl's lungs. Her eyes shone and her cheeks were delightfully flushed. Miss Ball, looking at her, lost her heart to Carolyn May at once.

"Where'd you get that little girl, Ozy Littlefield?" she asked. "She's an off child, I warrant."

"She's stoppin' over to Truefelt's," said the captain. "How be ye, Molly I.?"

"Fair to middlin'. How's the rheumatics in your wooden leg, Ozy?"

"I get a kink in it now and then," said the captain with gravity. "Get any boarders yet, Molly I.?"

"No. Them folks I had last summer, the children got the measles, so they can't travel. And I certain sure was glad. Children are all right; but measly ones—How are you, little girl? What's your name?" and she came closer to the buckboard to smile at Carolyn.

She was a broad-faced, stocky, good-natured girl, "rising thirty," as the islanders would say. She was unfreckled because of the shelter of the blue-checked sunbonnet. She had a strong, uncorseted figure and wore a pair of men's brogans to work in. She smiled so warmly at Carolyn May that the little girl could not help returning it with interest, as she politely replied:

"I'm Carolyn May Cameron, and I am living with my mamma at Mrs. Truefelt's house, and my papa is coming here Saturday to see us."

"I want to know!" was Miss Ball's observation.

"Say!" said the captain. "Ann Truefelt wants to know if you'll take in a woman and a baby, Molly I.? The man is going to clerk for us—be our new supercargo, as ye might say."

"I declare! Is that what you come for, Ozy? I thought you was looking for Barzilla, and he's out in the Snatch It today."

"Swordfishin'?"

"Yes. If them auxilary engines folks so favour now don't scare all the swordfish as far as the Georges. Now, are you sure Miz Truefelt wants I should take these folks?"

"You got the room and the time to do it, ain't you?" demanded Captain Littlefield.

"I s'pose so. What kind o' folks are they?"

"Oh," put in Carolyn, unable longer to keep still, "if you only would just take the pale lady and her baby! I know they'd get well and strong here. And you'd like 'em, too, Miss Eyeball. The baby's just as cute."

"Huh!" fairly grunted the island girl, her black eyes flashing an accusing glance at the amused captain. "So you had to tell even this little girl that poor joke, did you? I'm most tempted to marry the first man that comes along so's to get shet of it. Can't understand what my mother an' father were thinking of to put that 'I' in the middle of my name. They were right sensible people in other ways, too. 'Peared to be, anyway."

"I cal'late," agreed Captain Littlefield, still grinning. "But how 'bout them folks to board, Molly I.?"

"When they comin'?" demanded Miss Ball, more briskly.

"Thursday."

"And you know 'em, do you, little girl?" she asked Carolyn, smiling again.

"Oh, yes'm. And you will just love the baby!"

"Shouldn't wonder. Well, you bring 'em over, Ozy. I'll have the place rid up and ready for 'em." Then she said to Carolyn: "Don't you want a drink of milk, little girl? And a slice of warm loaf with sweet butter on it?"

It was mid-forenoon, and it seemed a long time since breakfast and a longer time still to lunch.

"Oh, yes, ma'am," the little girl cried, and she hopped down gaily from the buckboard, with Prince leaping and barking beside her.

"I don't know about that dog," said Miss Ball. "Does he bite?"

"Only other dogs if they pitch on him—and his food," declared Carolyn earnestly. "He never eats humans."

"Well, I sh'd hope not!" chuckled Miss Ball.

She led the little girl (and of course, Prince) into the kitchen. Out of this opened a small milk-room with shelves of rough-hewn stone. She skimmed a pan of milk by drawing the leathery sheet of yellow cream together with two spoons and lifting it bodily into the waiting cream jar. Then she poured the milk into a tall glass pitcher where it almost foamed over.

It was cool and sweet when Carolyn put her lips to the glass Molly Ball handed her. On the corner of the kitchen table the island girl set the great steamed brown "loaf," a slice of which she buttered and placed before her little guest. Bakery brown bread was well enough known to the little city girl; but this was made of windmill ground cornmeal and rye meal, and had a flavour that she had never tasted before.

Prince likewise approved of Miss Ball's cooking, for he sampled a well buttered piece of the loaf.

"I see he only acts savage at his food," said the island girl, complacently feeding Prince bits of buttered loaf with her fingers. "He's a nice dog."

Naturally Carolyn's heart warmed toward her for that opinion. Miss Molly "Eyeball" seemed a very delightful acquaintance indeed. She was one of those persons, like the pale lady, to whom Carolyn May was immediately drawn.

The little girl peeped out of the kitchen door at Captain Littlefield smoking his pipe, shrugged far down in the seat of the buckboard, with his wooden leg sticking almost straight up into the air. She whispered to the island girl:

"Oh, say! Do you know how Mr. Cap'n Littlefield lost his leg? Say! do you?"

"Why, no. I don't know that. When he came home here to the island to settle down he had that wooden leg and he'd had it, they say, some years. He's told enough yarns about it to fill a book; but I don't b'lieve anybody ever got the rights of it from him. Ozy Littlefield can be as close-mouthed as a clam if he wants to be."

"Oh, dear!" sighed the disappointed little girl. "And don't you know how the other Mr. Littlefield lost his leg?"

"Oly Littlefield? Land's sake! He says he was powder-monkey with Farragut, runnin' the Mississippi blockade in the Civil War, and lost it then. That would make him 'bout eighty years old, if he was a day," said Miss Ball. "But anybody can see he ain't more'n sixty or so. I guess Oly Littlefield is a dog-awful story-teller—that's what I guess. But everybody on the island seems to have forgot—if they ever knew—just when and how Oly come by that wooden laig.

"I can't remember when Oly didn't have it, 'cept the time he lay down an' fell asleep over on Dicken's Point, and some of the West Side school children stole the laig and Oly stayed there all night before he was found. He roared for help half the night, but the folks at Dickenses thought it was a seal roarin' on the rocks, and paid no 'tention to him till daybreak."

Carolyn May shook her head in much disappointment. The mystery of the wooden legs seemed just as puzzling—and quite as unlikely to be solved—as ever.

CHAPTER XVI

ARRIVALS

I was sometimes a sharp race for the bus drivers from the Old Harbour to the New Harbour and return, when the two regular boats came in. But on Thursday the boat due to make the breach of the Great Salt Pond and disembark her passengers at the New Harbour landing, was sighted almost an hour before the boat from Newport came into view. So there was plenty of time for Captain Littlefield to drive over with Worry and Trouble to meet the new clerk of the Truefelt House and his family; and the captain took Carolyn and Prince on the driver's seat with him.

"I'm so excited!" said Carolyn May, fairly bounding up and down on the slippery cushion. "To think that my pale lady and her baby are really, truly coming here to Block Island for the summer! Do you know, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield, this island is a very nice place and the folks on it are awfully nice—most of them, anyway; but there's not anybody just like my pale lady. You'll see!"

It was quite true that Captain Littlefield had never seen many people like Baby Laird's mother, as Carolyn insisted upon calling her friend when her husband helped her off the boat and into the hotel bus. And the poor little baby! They were both at the point of exhaustion.

"Dear little Carolyn May," murmured the pale lady, snuggling the little girl beside her upon the seat of the bus. "It was so dear of you to remember us. I feel already that I shall get better—Baby Laird, too."

Even her husband seemed to think that Carolyn had much to do with opening the way for their coming to the island. He shook hands gravely with the little girl.

"I fancy your father is right, Carolyn," he said. "You are prone to interfere in everybody's affairs, but always to a good end. I thank you for recalling me to Ben Truefelt's mind."

"Oh, but I didn't do that!" cried the little girl honestly. "He 'membered you his own self. Mr. Cap'n Littlefield says the crew mutinied, includin' the supercargo, and Mr. Ben just hates to talk to folks—"

"Yes. I know he always was a regular quahaug," observed the pale lady's husband, smiling.

"Why!" murmured the little girl; "not a reg'lar quahaug, you know. That's a clam; and Mr. Ben's got legs like any other party—'ceptin' Mr. Cap'n Littlefield and his Cousin Oly. They both have wooden sticks on one side for legs."

Motherly Mrs. Truefelt welcomed the pale lady and her baby very kindly indeed. A room for the little family was found for that night. Mrs. Cameron, too, greeted Carolyn's friend warmly. "Mr. Laird," as Carolyn insisted upon calling the new clerk, went to work at once, to Mr. Ben Truefelt's open satisfaction.

The next morning the wooden-legged man drove the pale lady and her little one over to Barzilla Ball's place in the two-seated buckboard; and of course Carolyn May and Prince went, too.

"It's got so," said Captain Littlefield to the baby's mother, "that I dunno as I could steer a proper course about this island 'nless I had this young 'un with me—an' the dog. They are gre't comp'ny, for a fact."

"Carolyn May is the friendliest little soul alive," replied the pale lady, her wan countenance lighting with appreciation.

"Ain't she, jest?" agreed the wooden-legged man. "I dunno but if she had a chance't she might cure Cousin Oly of the megrums—an' Oly's some settled in his ways! Dunno how poor old Sue-Betsey ever got along with him all the ten year they was married and livin' together. But they do say," and his eyes began to twinkle, "that when Oly got too much upsot for even her to stand, she useter steal his wooden leg and go out to the neighbours to get shet of Oly's tongue."

"Then," said the pale lady in some wonderment, "you are not the only member of your family that has the misfortune to need an artificial limb?"

"Tell ye what," chuckled the captain, "wooden laigs do run in our family, an' no mistake. There air Littlefields that have a full suit o' limbs; but Oly an' me—Wal, it does seem as though we'd been mighty careless, or sumpin'. Both on us air shy a laig. But we manage to git on purt' well considerin', as the feller said."

Carolyn listened with stretched ears to the wooden-legged man's speech; but not a hint did he drop about the catastrophe that cost him—and Cousin Oly—the missing limb. It was a mystery!

The ride across the island was just as delightful as it had been before, and they were as warmly welcomed at the Ball cottage. Besides Molly Icivilla, her brother was present. He was a tall, pleasant, good looking young man, dressed in brown sea boots and a blue guernsey, with a tarpaulin pushed back from his sea-browned face. He sat in the sun mending a seine.

While his sister ushered the pale lady into the little house on the edge of the bluff, Captain Littlefield and Barzilla talked, Carolyn and her dog standing by with much interest in the net-mending.

"How ye makin' out with the Snatch It, this season, Barzilla?" asked the wooden-legged man. "They tell me swordfish is leavin' the island waters an' gettin' to be as scurce as hen's teeth."

"I dunno, Ozy," said the younger man. "Swordfish made our livin' in my father's time an' in poor old gran'ther's time. They were both swordfishers; and I would be sorry to change, myself. Seems as though what was good enough for them ought to be good enough for me."

"Times is changed, Barzilla—and fashions with it," said the captain.

"True as you're born!" agreed Mr. Ball. "But swordfish don't change none. They are still to be found sleepin' on top of the water, and can be come upon in the same old way as when the first double-ender ever put out o' this port.

"While them fellers from Nantucket and the Cape go out to the Georges in their steam tugs and put out dories an' crews to fight for the swordfish, I can take one man in the old Snatch It, creep up on a fish like I was shown by my father, an' put an iron in him from the pulpit nine times out o' ten. Them noisy tugs scare off the fish half the time, and the dories lose 'em. Change of fashion ain't always an improvement, Ozy."

"No. You'm right there," agreed Captain Littlefield. "But them rattle-de-bang motor boats and sech seem to be drivin' all the fish off shore."

"I can foller 'em, Ozy. I can foller 'em in the Snatch It. Let them furriners with their motor boats go after the tunny fish if they want. They're nothin' more than blackfish, an' we didn't use to think blackfish was wuth more'n pilot-whales. But for swordfish there's always a market."

"Yes, yes. You'm right, Barzilla," agreed the wooden-legged man again. "But it's a short season."

"'Twouldn't be a short season if I had capital," said Mr. Ball, nodding his head with confidence. "I guess you are right on one point, Ozy. Fashions do change. If I could salt down swordfish like they do mack'rel—Wal! no use talkin' 'bout it. They do so at New London, and make money on't. No reason why we couldn't do it here. We're nearer the banks. The fish are out there. I ain't satisfied to be just a fisherman, I admit, and live all my life on potatoes and pollock."

"Uh-huh! But 'taters and pollock are a sight better than nothing," chuckled Captain Littlefield. "That's a dish that no true islander will deny, Barzilla. Well, we'd better be gettin' home, leetle gal. I 'spect ye'll be over here to see Molly I. and Barzilla often enough, now't your friends have come here to stop."

"Oh, yes, sir, if I may," said Carolyn, shaking hands with the young fisherman. But it was to Captain Littlefield she addressed the question that was troubling her mind. She asked it before the buckboard rattled out of the lane:

"Mr. Cap'n Littlefield, do swordfishes have real swords?"

"You'd think so," he responded. "An' purt' average savage with 'em they be, too."

"But swords are kept in scabbards. Mr. Price, Edna's father, has got one. He b'longs to the Knights of Pythias. And if the swordfish's sword is in a scabbard, how does he manage to draw it? Not with his fin?"

"My cracky, what a young 'un!" chuckled Captain Littlefield. "No. 'Tain't rigged jest that way. Ye see, he has his sword on his nose."

"Oh! Mis-ter—Cap'n—Littlefield!" gasped Carolyn May, shocked by this statement, for it seemed utterly impossible.

"Sure thing," he said. "Why, that isn't so wonderful, is it? Look at an elephant's trunk. Ain't that spliced on to his nose? Wal, a swordfish's sword is spliced on same way. And it's some sword, too! I've seen 'em two-three feet long."

"Dear me! Isn't that funny?" gasped Carolyn. "Fishes with swords! Do any of 'em have guns, I wonder?"

"Wal, I ain't never seen 'em myself. But they do say that in Australia there's a fish that shoots drops of water like bullets and knocks down little birds an' insects along the banks of the streams. And of course," he added, ruminatively, "there's whales. They shoot a stream of spray right up through their blowholes. I've been near enough in a whaleboat more'n once to git showered by that—an' with blood, too, in a death waller."

Carolyn May thought all this, of course, very wonderful; and in her estimation Captain Ozias Littlefield was a very entertaining man. So different from his cousin!

She saw the cockatoo-looking old fellow down in the Old Harbour more than once. He usually carried a cane and a basket, and he always shook the former threateningly at Prince.

"But don't you and your dog pay Oly a mite of attention," Captain Ozias advised. "His bark is a whole lot worse than his bite, in any case. And after all, I shouldn't wonder if he'd be glad to be friends with ye, only he's stuffy and won't play."

For it did fret Carolyn that anybody should not like her—and Prince. She was happiest when she could temper all about her with her own sunniness. She felt that Mr. Oliver Littlefield, like his cousin, must be a very interesting man to be friends with—if only for the reason that he, too, had a wooden leg!

The excitement of the coming of the pale lady and her family to the island, and she and the baby being settled on Friday at the Ball cottage on the West Side, was merely the forerunner of greater excitement for Carolyn May. She had not seen Papa Cameron for almost three weeks, and now he was expected to arrive on the Saturday boat that connected with the Long Island train at Sag Harbour.

They walked over to the New Harbour landing, for the Shinnecock was late, and Captain Littlefield, with Worry and Trouble, was detained at the other dock. The sparkling blue waters of the Great Salt Pond were dotted with the fishing boats and pleasure craft at their moorings.

Barzilla Ball came ashore in a dory from his Snatch It that lay at her moorings in the well protected harbour—almost the last double-ender to be built at the island and still in commission. As her description implied, she was as sharp at one end as she was at the other.

Barzilla halted to speak to Carolyn and Prince, and thereby became acquainted with Mrs. Cameron. He was a pleasant young man with more than ordinary intelligence.

"You'll be coming over to the West Side to see us, you and the little girl, now your friends are with my sister," the fisherman said. "We'll be proud to have you come."

"Thank you, Mr. Ball. I shall find some means of getting to your house, I have no doubt. Carolyn considers it quite the nicest house she has ever seen, and wants to live in one situated just like it—right over the ocean."

"Yes. Great-gran'ther Ball built it so's he'd be sure to hear the surf and know when the wind changed at night. I wonder if he wasn't hard o' hearing?" said Barzilla, smiling. "Sometimes the sea cuts up so we can't hear ourselves think."

"But, dear me!" said Carolyn May, "how handy it is to go bathing. All you have to do, I guess, Mamma, is to jump out of the window in your bathing suit, and there you are!"

"There you would be, or thereabout," chuckled the fisherman. "So, your daddy is coming on the Shinnecock today, is he?"

The gaze of Carolyn's eyes scarcely left the steamboat that was now coming through the breach. She nodded joyfully.

"Oh, yes!" she said. "He is coming. And he will bring us things. And we'll go walking. And he'll buy picture post-cards. Why, there's just loads and loads of folks I want to send them to."

There were a number of summer people gathered at the dock when the boat made her landing. The hotel vehicles came racing over from the Old Harbour where the Newport boat had already landed her passengers.

Mr. Cameron had been waving to Carolyn and her mother, and to Prince, from the upper deck with his paper, and he was now one of the first ashore. He carried a good-sized hamper, as well as his bag. And how glad Carolyn was to see him!

"Dear me, Papa Cameron," she declared, "it seems almost as though I'd grown up since I saw you. Don't I look different?"

"I would scarcely have known you, Snuggy, if you had not been with mamma and Prince," he told her with gravity. "And my! you look almost like a red Indian. Are you sure, mamma, that you haven't changed our Carolyn May for an Indian papoose?"

"'Papoose!' How very ridiculous!" laughed the little girl. "Why, a papoose is an Indian baby, and they keep them strapped to a board and carry them on their backs like soldiers do knapsacks. And they never cry."

"Who never cry? The knapsacks or the soldiers?" demanded her father, looking very much surprised.

"The papooses never cry. You know soldiers don't cry, Papa Cameron," admonished Carolyn May.

She was very eager to introduce him to her particular friend, the wooden-legged Captain Littlefield; but there was so much confusion and so many passengers for the Truefelt House bus, that the Camerons decided to ride over in one of the carryalls. So Mr. Cameron's introduction to Ozias was postponed.

With their bags they got into a rather creaking old vehicle driven by a boy whom Carolyn already knew as Tommy Trivett, and who was about the age—and almost the gangling length—of Chet Gormley at Sunrise Cove. She begged the privilege of having Prince with her on the front seat, and he finally managed to scramble in by himself over the front wheel and squat down between his little mistress and Tommy Trivett.

"Old Oly Littlefield," drawled the youthful driver, "says this dog o' yourn oughter be shot."

"Oh—ee! he wouldn't be so wicked, would he?" gasped Carolyn.

"Says he's dang'rous to be runnin' at large. Says he'll carry the marks of the dog's teeth to his grave. And if he gits hydrophoby the Town of New Shoreham'll hafter pay damages to his heirs an' assigns, for ever an' ever, amen!"

"My!" said Carolyn, "you sound just like you were in church, don't you? But if Mr. Oly Littlefield runs mad 'cause Prince bit his wooden leg, do you s'pose he'll be much diff'rent from what he us'ally is? Mr. Captain Littlefield says his Cousin Oly is most always mad."

"He! he!" chuckled Tommy Trivett. "Ozy ought to know. Ozy has summered and wintered him now a good many years. If I'd been your dog, I'd ha' nipped a piece out o' Oly's sound laig—that's what I'd've done."

Carolyn May looked sideways at the not altogether prepossessing Tommy.

"Well," she said, with evident relief in her tone, "you're not my dog, are you?"

CHAPTER XVII

RENEWED ACQUAINTANCE

Mr. Cameron's stay at the Truefelt House was brief enough. He returned to New York by boat and train on Sunday evening. Nevertheless he found time for a serious conversation with the new clerk of the hotel.

"This chance for the wife and baby to be here, Bassett, is providential," the newspaper editor said. "I hope the summer on the island will do them a world of good. But when the season closes—"

"I've got that on my mind," groaned Joe Bassett. "Very true, Mr. Cameron, I shall be just as much at sea, then, as ever. If I could once get into something that would be steady and make us a living! Of course I thank you for the chance on the Beacon that you gave me. I know I am not fitted for that sort of work. I might try for a situation as clerk at some winter resort hotel."

"You might," agreed Mr. Cameron gravely. "I do not feel that I can advise you. What I have to speak to you about is a telephone call that came for you after you left the Beacon offices the other day."

"Yes? Of what nature was the call? I thought I had settled all my affairs as far as they could be settled before accepting Ben's offer here," and the young man flushed.

"The person who called you seemed to know nothing regarding your intention of coming to Block Island. He said his name was Inness."

"'Inness'?" repeated Bassett in a puzzled tone.

"He said you would remember him," said Mr. Cameron, watching the hotel clerk warily. "His message was, that if you would consider leaving New York—leaving the East, in fact—there was an opening for you at a distance. He spoke of the climate as probably being beneficial to Mrs. Bassett."

"Inness said that?" responded the hotel clerk.

"You know who he is?"

"I know him very well," answered the other slowly. "But I do not understand his sudden interest in me or his knowledge of the state of Mrs. Bassett's health. That he should feel any interest in my affairs whatever surprises me."

The flush did not die out of his cheek. Mr. Cameron did not seek to draw the young man's confidence.

"I merely repeat what he said over the telephone. He seemed to think you would know how to communicate with him if you wished to do so."

"I presume I do," admitted the clerk thoughtfully. "But—I wonder what is behind it? I never have considered Inness a friend of mine." And there the conversation came to an end.

"He is the Griffin's secretary—that Inness," said Carolyn's father, speaking to her mother about it afterward. "Whether the inquiry over the 'phone was instigated by Mr. Bassett or not, of course I do not know. Perhaps the Griffin wants to get Joe out of the way. If anything should really happen to the young woman or her baby the newspapers would probably get hold of it and rake up all the scandal. These wealthy people do not like to have such affairs aired in the public press."

"And do you suppose that is all Mr. Bassett cares about his son, and his wife and child?" queried Hannah Cameron thoughtfully.

"I wish you had heard him when I put young Joe's situation up to him that time. The Griffin is as hard as nails. Yet it might fret him to have the young fellow so near if anything happened to him. Or, perhaps, he may be trying to save Joe's mother unpleasant knowledge of the son's affairs."

"I wonder what sort of woman the older Mrs. Bassett is?" Mrs. Cameron murmured. "Does she care nothing about her son and his wife and baby?"

"The less we know about it—or worry about it—the better, I fancy," returned Mr. Cameron.

"But isn't that a very selfish way of looking at it, Lewis?" sighed his wife. However, she said no more about the Bassetts at the time.

When Carolyn got up on Monday for her early morning run with Prince, her father's visit to the island seemed almost like a dream. He had brought her a new sun hat and some goodies; but now that he was gone she missed him as she had missed him for all the three weeks since she had left New York.

"When we get real rich, Princey," she told her closest companion, "Papa Cameron will have vacations just like we do. Then we shall all be together all the time."

There was so much to interest her almost every hour of the day that Carolyn was seldom unhappy. The corroding thoughts of the pale lady and her baby were blessedly removed. That very Monday she and Prince went with mamma in the buckboard, drawn by a hired horse, across the island to the Ball cottage to call on the hotel clerk's wife. Hannah Cameron being herself a country-bred girl had not forgotten how to drive.

The pale lady's husband was to walk across the island three or four evenings each week to be with his family, and altogether the pale lady was happier. She had been brought up in luxury and had known nothing of poverty until her marriage, but she was not a complaining, fault-finding person. That she and her baby had a chance for life again, and that her husband had work, were two blessings for which she could not fail to be thankful.

Yet there was a weight upon the pale lady's mind and this fact was observed by more than Carolyn. How could young Mrs. Bassett escape anxiety under the circumstances?

As her husband had admitted to Mr. Cameron, their outlook for the future was very, very uncertain. Nor did the offer made Joe Bassett by Inness, his father's secretary, encourage the pale lady much. To go away—far, far away from familiar surroundings—is not a cheering thought.

In addition, she was quite sure the offer was made her husband merely for the purpose of getting them out of the way. His father desired them all at a distance. Even the innocent little baby! He wished not to run the chance of having his son and the latter's family where he might cross their path. In no other way could she look at this offer of distant employment.

There was, too, in the young woman's mind a corroding thought. It had begun troubling her soon after her marriage.

It had been a reckless marriage. She was forced to admit this. She would not have untied the knot the Church had tied; but she feared she had done Joe a wrong in wedding him.

They loved. They were happy despite their poverty—especially after the baby came. But she realized that Joe, like herself, had been brought up to do nothing useful. His naturally sweet disposition had been all that saved him, under his mother's indulgence, from being a perfectly useless member of society.

As it was he lacked initiative, self-confidence, and real ability to work. He was not lazy, but nothing he had as yet undertaken seemed fitted to such business talents as he might possess.

Baby Laird's mother, therefore, was by no means relieved of her mental trouble by coming to the island. If one's mind is not at peace one may not gain much benefit from the most healthful surroundings. She was too anxious of mind to absorb energy and happiness in these new and better conditions. Baby Laird almost immediately began to improve; but his mother remained the pale lady.

Carolyn considered Barzilla Ball and his sister, Molly I., very interesting persons. By this time she had learned her mistake and knew that the island girl's surname was not "Eyeball." Molly Icivilla, however, seemed to the little Carolyn to be a very odd name.

Most island names, however, appeared to be rather odd. The parents seemed to have tricked the children out with queer given names, while local custom added to the peculiar nomenclature.

The little girl began to understand Captain Littlefield's joke about the impossibility of carrying on a war on Block Island. The families had so intermarried that it was difficult to distinguish some of the men and their wives from other couples of the same surname.

Perhaps that is why Miss Ball's parents had called her "Icivilla"; there was not likely to be another with that name on the island—or anywhere else.

On this Monday evening the Camerons remained to supper and did not start homeward until after the pale lady's husband arrived. He and Barzilla Ball were already good friends, and they sat down on the stone bench beside the cottage door to discuss the swordfishing business. Barzilla was pretty nearly a man of one idea. At least, his mind and heart were set upon the trade he followed.

It was a clear and starlit evening, and sleepy as Carolyn May was, she managed to stay awake during most of the ride back to the hotel to watch the stars which hung between sky and sea and seemed almost within touch if one might climb the steeple of the West Side church.

"If we could climb up that steeple, Princey and me," she prattled to her mother, "I believe we might catch that star—see! It winked at me then."

"Why, Carolyn! You don't really suppose that you are of so much importance that the star sees you and you alone, do you?" asked her mother curiously.

The little girl was quite warmly argumentative. "Why not, Mamma?" she asked. "Look at all those stars up there. Surely there are enough to go around. Papa says there are millions and millions in the Milky Way alone. There! That star winked at me again." And she finally fell asleep on the buckboard seat trying to count the "winks" with which the star favoured her.

It was the very next day that Carolyn experienced a curious adventure—a meeting that she could scarcely believe was real, much as she was given to the expectation of strange adventures. As she ran on the bathing beach with Prince she came face to face with the stern looking man whose automobile she had seen for a second time at the Corners, and who had given her at their first meeting outside of Central Park a twenty dollar bank note for the pale lady.

His appearance rather shocked the little girl for a few moments. She stopped stock-still on the sands while Prince raced wildly ahead of her. The man was walking with his cigar and cane beside a wheel chair in which was being rolled by a negro the haughty looking woman whom Carolyn May supposed must be the man's wife.

They passed the little girl in her dripping bathing suit and cap without a second glance. Of course, they would not know Carolyn May again; but she could not forget them so easily. The incident of the wrecked go-cart had been too exciting for her ever to forget it, she was sure.

The chair rolled on, away from the line of bathing houses, leaving scarcely a mark upon the hard strand. Prince came racing back to his little mistress and stopped for a moment to make friends with these new people whom he had not observed before.

The stern looking man relaxed sufficiently to drag his cane on the sand for the mongrel to jump at. The querulous voice of the woman in the chair was almost immediately raised in complaint:

"Drive that dog away, George! He is wet, and if he shakes himself he will spoil my gown."

The coloured man left the back of the chair to drive Prince away. The latter was all for play—and perhaps he noted a twinkle in the eye of the man, who continued to drag his cane. Prince barked and made a playful dive for the coloured man's shoes.

"Ma soul an' body!" gasped the serving man. "Dat dawg'll sho' 'nuff eat me up!"

"Oh, no, he won't!" cried Carolyn. "He's had his dinner. Prince, don't do that! Come here, Prince."

The gentleman turned, then, to look at the child. He smiled as the mongrel returned to the side of his little mistress.

"Who are you?" he asked. "Do you and your dog come from the sea?"

"No, sir," said Carolyn. "We come from New York."

"Well, well! Then this is not a little mermaid and her dog!" went on the man.

"Oh, no, sir! I know what mermaids are. They have tails."

"Well, your dog has a tail. At least, an apology for one," said the man, his eyes still twinkling. "It may be that he is a merdog."

"Come away, George," said the woman.

The coloured man promptly pushed on the chair; but the gentleman lingered, smiling at Carolyn.

"Did I ever see you before?" he asked, curiously.

"Oh, yes, sir!" Carolyn replied.

"I thought there was something familiar about you—or your dog," he said whimsically. "Where did I have the pleasure of meeting you before, young lady?"

"It wasn't a pleasure," returned the little girl frankly. "You smashed my pale lady's baby's go-cart."

"What!" exclaimed the man, and a rising flush altered the expression of his grey face. "Are you that child?"

"Yes, sir. You gave me twenty dollars for my pale lady."

"And who sent it back to me?" the man demanded sharply.

"Indeed, I didn't, sir," said Carolyn May, rather startled by his sharp tone.

"But it was returned, with an impudent note. 'Money cannot pay for everything.'"

"I—I don't know anything about that," stammered the little girl. "I think maybe Mr. Laird is too proud to take money from anybody."

"'Laird,' eh? So that's the name, is it?" and the gentleman suddenly calmed himself. "Proud, indeed? Are you sure your friends are not planning to bring a shyster's suit against me?"

Carolyn stared. She did not know what the man meant. But she saw his momentary anger was passing.

"Well," he said, "you are no party to it at least. I am glad to have met you again, little girl. Are you staying on the island for long?"

"Oh, yes, sir. Me and mamma and Prince are going to live here all summer. And my papa comes here over Sunday, when he can."

"I shall see you again, then," said the man, and moved on.

Carolyn May was quite full of this curious adventure when she rejoined her mother.

"I wish," she said thoughtfully, "that he had given my pale lady another go-cart instead of a twenty dollar bill. Then she could not so easily have sent it back, could she?"

"Perhaps not," agreed her mother.

"And then, you see," went on the little girl, "I could go over there to Miss Molly I. Ball's house and wheel Baby Laird out along the path. You know, there's an awful nice path there right along on top of that bank, where the life saving men walk. It's just as smooth! And I could wheel him there."

"Maybe we can find a carriage here on the island," said her mother. "Even a secondhand one would do, don't you think?"

"Why, yes. Baby Laird wouldn't mind, I'm sure," said Carolyn May, eagerly. "Let us look for a secondhand store."

Better than that, they asked Captain Ozias Littlefield, and he knew almost at once just where a baby carriage could be bought.

"Miz John-Will Mott has got a baby cart. Had it when her Stella Ietta was little. Stella I. is married five-six year now, and it looks as though she'll never need a baby shay. You leave it to me, Miz Cameron, and I'll git it for you cheap. If Miz Mott suspected an off woman wanted that old carriage, the price would go up like one o' these her hydroplanes ye see, yes-sir-ree-sir! 'Cordin' to her doctrine, summer visitors was made to be gouged. If all us islanders was like that woman, Block Island would be a howlin' wilderness in summer, as well as winter—and the visitors would do the howlin'!"

Captain Ozias made the bargain, and the baby carriage, in very good condition, was sent over to the West Side cottage for Baby Laird's use. The hotel clerk warmly thanked Carolyn and her mother for their thoughtfulness.

"I believe this little girl is our good angel," he said. "She is a ministering spirit and nothing very bad can happen where she is."

It seemed that the hotel clerk was rather a poor prophet; that was proved to be the case before the next morning.

Carolyn had been sleeping as soundly for hours as a little girl could sleep in her small room off Mrs. Cameron's larger one. Prince usually curled down on the rug beside his little mistress's bed; but now she heard him pattering about over the straw matting that covered the floors of both rooms. His claws made a scratchy sound on the matting, and he trotted from door to window and from window to door.

It had been cool when they went to bed, with rain and a fresh gale blowing; so the windows were only open an inch or two at bottom and top. Prince went to the hall door and crouched down, sniffing at the crack. Then he whined.

"Prince!" said the little girl sleepily. "Come here. You'll wake mamma."

He seemed to come to her reluctantly, squatted down beside her bed and laid his head on the coverlet where her hand could rest lightly upon his muzzle. Then she fell asleep again and she dreamed a very unpleasant dream. She dreamed two men came into her room and took hold of her. One held her body so that she could not squirm and the other put his hand over her mouth and nose so that she could not breathe. Carolyn knew the men. They were the chauffeur of the man who had given her the twenty-dollar bill for the pale lady and the dark man with the very black eyes and eyebrows—both of whom she had last seen at the Corners when she visited Uncle Joe Stagg. The black-browed man was he who in her dream put his hand over her mouth.

The little girl woke up struggling and trying to scream. She was very much frightened, and when she got her eyes open she was even more surprised than she was terrified.

It really was very difficult for her to breathe. There was a feeling of oppression on her chest. She could not see very clearly, for the air was thick and there was a strange, lurid glow in it. Prince had dropped down upon the mat and was curled in a round ball. He was sleeping sterterously.

"Oh, Mamma! Mamma Cameron!" Carolyn called, panting for the breath which, when she drew it in, seemed to hurt her.

She could not hear her mother at all. She crept out of bed, and almost fell over Prince, who roused with none of his usual promptness. He, too, seemed oppressed by the stifling quality of the atmosphere in the rooms.

"Mamma! Oh, Mamma Cameron!" sobbed the little girl again.

She was very much frightened as she stumbled into the larger chamber with Prince whining and coughing at her heels.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE NIGHT ALARM

At first the light was so hazy in her mother's bedroom that Carolyn May was not sure she was in bed. And when the little girl did see her, Mamma Cameron lay so still that she was the more frightened.

Carolyn remembered how the pale lady looked that time she fainted in her hot little apartment. Mamma Cameron lay just as still in the bed, one bare arm outside the covering, her face strangely buried in the pillow. The room was filled with a choking, yellowish vapour.

The child seized her mother's shoulder suddenly—desperately—and with both hands tried to shake her. The woman's body lay limp and seemingly lifeless. The gasping cry of the terrified little girl did not arouse her in the least. She made no sound, nor did she move!

"Oh! Oh!" choked Carolyn. "Princey, something awful's happened to mamma!"

She stumbled to the nearest window. It was open barely a crack at the bottom; but the sash was easily raised, even by the child's failing strength. A rush of cool, salt air swept into Carolyn's face. It revived her, for the little girl herself had been almost overcome by the stifling vapour.

Prince got his forepaws on the windowsill, sniffed the breeze, and uttered a short, enquiring bark.

"Hush! You mustn't, Prince," commanded the child, remembering the necessity for keeping the dog quiet at night in the hotel room.

Then she turned abruptly from the window. She must get help for mamma. Something bad had happened, and Carolyn's thoughts turned to the doctor, who she knew was staying in the Truefelt House.

She knew where his office was—at the other end of the house, on this same floor, and around the front stairwell in a side corridor. He was a very nice man, Doctor Warren, so thought Carolyn.

She had reached the door into the hall by this time and was fumbling with the key and bolt. It did not seem so hard to breathe now. Prince was coughing softly right behind her.

When the door opened, quite suddenly, Carolyn almost screamed aloud. But the necessity for closing her mouth and eyes instantly stifled her involuntary cry. The hotel corridor was filled with yellow smoke!

There had been a squall from the east before midnight, and somebody had shut the hall windows against the beating rain. The middle of the house thereby was made a closed compartment when the first floor doors were shut, and the smoke was so thick that the little girl was very much terrified.

She dropped to the floor. Prince crouched with her and coughed.

"Princey," she choked, admonishingly, "if you don't stop you'll wake up everybody in the house."

The open window across mamma's room created a draught that sucked the smoke out of the corridor. And it was not so thick near the floor. On her hands and knees Carolyn May could breathe with much greater ease.

She crept out of the room under the rolling cloud of smoke, and moved on all fours along the cocoa-runner through the middle of the hall. There were two lamps burning here; but they were turned low, anyway, and gave little light. The yellow murk caused by the smoke made every object appear queer.

Although the draught through Mrs. Cameron's room began at once to clear the smoke out of the corridor, more was rolling up the open stairway. From below Carolyn heard a strange crackling sound. There was a growing light down there, too.

But the child did not at all understand it. She was thinking mainly of Mamma Cameron and that she must get the doctor to her as soon as possible.

The dog crept close after her as she scrambled over the cocoa-matting. He hung his muzzle near the floor. Instinct told Prince that the yellow cloud which rolled above them was not good to breathe.

Left to himself the dog surely would have howled and barked to betray his fear. But he was usually obedient to his little mistress's word, and Carolyn had warned him to keep silence.

Her tender little feet and knees were scratched by the harsh matting. She could see but a little way through the murk. But she scrambled along just as bravely, and just as fast, as she could.

Soon she rounded the stairwell and found the side corridor into which the doctor's office opened. All these rooms on either hand were occupied; but nobody in the hotel save herself and Prince seemed to have been aroused.

In this side hall the stifling smoke was not so thick. There was a window at the end and it was open at the top. Therefore some fresh air was being sucked in from outside.

Carolyn May had no thought for these things; merely the difficulty of breathing troubled the child.

Here was the doctor's door. She could not mistake it, for he had a little sign on it: "E. Warren, M.D." She knew that those two letters at the end stood for "medical doctor;" although Johnny O'Harrity, the lame boy at home, had once told her they stood for "More Drugs."

The little girl, panting and sobbing, stood up against the door and began to batter upon it with both plump fists.

"Doctor Warren! Doctor Warren! Please, please, Doctor Warren, open the door!"

Her cry was not very loud, nor did her fists make any great noise; but the physician was used to calls in the night. Or perhaps he, too, was troubled in his sleep by the growing volume of smoke from below stairs which was, by now, penetrating the rooms even as far from the kitchen as this.

"What's the matter? Great Scott! where's all the smoke from?" demanded Dr. Warren, appearing in his robe and slippers, and forgetting to remove the tasselled nightcap from his bald head, which during the day and in public was usually covered by a brown toupé.

He saw the little girl and her dog almost under his feet.

"What do you want, child? Why, it's little Carolyn May!" for there was scarcely a person about the hotel who did not know her.

"Oh, Dr. Warren! Come to mamma! Please come to mamma!"

"What's all the smoke about? Where's the fire?" cried the doctor. "What's the matter with your mother, child?"

"She won't speak to me. I can't wake her up," and Carolyn burst into frightened sobs.

"My goodness, child!" The doctor was already at the corner of the corridor. He saw the main hall full of swirling smoke while from below the crackling of flames was unmistakable. To Carolyn's shocked amazement the physician began to shout:

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

"Why—why, Dr. Warren!" choked Carolyn May. "You'll wake everybody up in the house."

Prince, encouraged by the physician's outbreak, began barking and running up and down the hall. Immediately there were sounds indicating that some, at least, of the hotel guests were aroused. Two or three doors were opened and the occupants of the rooms, in greater or less dishabille, showed themselves anxious to know what the cries meant.

The clouds of smoke swirling about in the hall told the story immediately, for it set everybody to coughing. Much as he must have been anxious regarding his own possessions, Dr. Warren first ran to Mrs. Cameron's room, with Carolyn and Prince close behind him. The atmosphere in that chamber had cleared somewhat, but Carolyn's mother was not aroused.

The physician used drastic measures in this case. He seized the water pitcher and drenched Mrs. Cameron's pillow with its contents as he dashed the water into her face.

"Oh!" shrieked Carolyn. "You—you've drown-ded her!"

Her mother awoke, sputtering and gasping. The doctor was now shaking her energetically by the shoulder.

"Get up and dress! The hotel is in flames, Mrs. Cameron! Look out for your child!"

"Oh, Carolyn! Carolyn!" cried the frightened woman, as the excited doctor dashed from the room.

"I'm here! I'm here, Mamma!" Carolyn assured her. "Me and Prince are both here."

Mr. Ben Truefelt, in his shirt and trousers, appeared for a moment at the door.

"All right, Mrs. Cameron," he said cheerfully. "There's time for you to dress and throw your things into your trunk. The fire is confined to the kitchen ell and the cellar under it. I don't think we shall have to get out of the main building. But it is best to pack your things and be on the safe side."

He disappeared. They heard a great deal of shouting outside. Some kind of fire apparatus had arrived, and a great crowd of the neighbours and people from other hotels.

Mrs. Cameron, once she was awake, and despite the effects of the smoke, which she still felt, was eminently practical. When she and Carolyn were dressed she did not hurry out of the room, panic-stricken. She followed Mr. Ben's advice and packed her trunks and locked them.

Then she took Carolyn by the hand and they started for the main stairway, followed by Prince. Most of the other guests had already got out of the hotel—some of them in rather light attire.

The doors and windows having been opened on the first floor, the hall and stairway were relieved of most of the smoke. But the fire was still being fought in the rear premises.

When Carolyn and her mother came forth they were hailed by many of their acquaintances.

"Oh, isn't this terrible, Mrs. Cameron?" said one nervous woman. "That such a catastrophe should happen to us here!"

"It truly is a serious affair; but it might have been much worse," said the little girl's mother.

"We might have been smothered in our beds," agreed another guest. "A fire is an awful thing."

"But," cried Carolyn May, almost plaintively, "I didn't see any fire. Why! that fire that burned up the woods at Uncle Joe Stagg's house just flamed right up and burned everything."

"I am glad this is not that kind of fire," her mother said quickly.

Just then Dr. Warren came out, staggering under the weight of two great bags.

"I thought I'd better make sure of my drugstore, anyway," he said. "No knowing when you folks will need my services. How do you feel now, Mrs. Cameron?"

"Not very sprightly," she told him. "I believe I must have been almost asphyxiated."

"I believe you!" he agreed. "And here," the doctor added, patting Carolyn's shoulder, "is the little girl who perhaps saved more of us from the same fate. She came pounding at my door to tell me her mamma was sick, in just the nick of time."

Everybody had to hear the story then of the rousing of the doctor by Carolyn and Prince. They praised her so much that the little girl felt uncomfortable, although like most children, Carolyn May could absorb a vast amount of praise.

The larger crowd was around at the back of the hotel, and she and Prince ran there to watch the fight against the fire. It had originated in the cellar. The dynamo room was gutted and the electric plant put out of commission. The flames, too, had swept the kitchen and pantries.

In the rooms above the kitchen, the help slept. Even Captain Littlefield had a room here which he occupied during the season, for his services were needed both early and late.

The wooden-legged man was now greatly excited. He was stumping about, talking loudly and mopping his brow with a bandanna. Somebody caught him by the sleeve and stayed his steps.

"Why, Ozy! you act like you warn't all here."

"You'm right. I ain't all here," declared Captain Littlefield. "My Sunday-go-to-meeting laig is up there in that dratted room, burnin' up so fur as I know."

CHAPTER XIX

A REMOVAL

The fire was finally put out without even the loss of Captain Ozias Littlefield's spare artificial limb; but the kitchen ell was entirely gutted.

Little but smoke-damage was done to the main part of the hotel; but the whole house must be redecorated before it could be made really habitable. And with the kitchen unusable the season was ruined for Mrs. Truefelt and her son. They could not care properly for their guests.

They did not hurry away those who could not at once obtain new lodgings; but most of the guests were able to get accommodations at other hotels and boarding houses.

The new clerk was not in the hotel when the fire occurred. He had been across the island with his family at Barzilla Ball's place; and he came to Mrs. Cameron at once, when he arrived and heard what had happened, to remind her of the fact that the Balls had room for other boarders if she and Carolyn could get along without hotel accommodations.

"I had thought of Molly Ball," Carolyn's mother said. "After all, I believe I should be just as contented there; and I am sure Mr. Cameron would not mind."

"The Balls are very kind people," remarked the clerk.

"I agree with you. Do you suppose Molly would take us?"

"Why don't you go over at once and ask her? Somebody may get ahead of you. My wife would be delighted to have you and your little girl for company. I am very sorry this has happened. It is going to bother Mrs. Bassett greatly, I fear, when she learns of it. She—she does not get along as well as I hoped, Mrs. Cameron."

"I am sorry for that," Carolyn's mother returned. "Let us hope for improvement."

Bassett was greatly disturbed, Mrs. Cameron could see, by the catastrophe. As he had said, it seemed that he was playing in very hard luck. Scarcely was he settled in his position as clerk of the hotel when he was again out of work.

"Old Mr. Trouble seems camping close on my trail, Ben," he said to his friend whimsically. "I am a Jonah."

Carolyn's mother prepared their possessions for removal and then engaged Tommy Trivett (Captain Littlefield being busy) to drive her and Carolyn and Prince over to the West Side. They reached the Ball place before noon, bringing the first news of the hotel fire.

"And can you take us poor, burned-out people in, Molly Ball?" asked Carolyn's mother. "Carolyn and me—to say nothing of the dog?"

"My soul and body!" ejaculated the capable island girl, "I'll take you in, Miz Cameron, and do for you as best I can. But this ain't no St. Regicide like you New York people are used to."

"But, Molly," laughed Carolyn's mother, "do you know, I never was in the St. Regis? I promise not to compare your accommodations to their disparagement even with those of the Truefelt House."

So an agreement was made, and the Camerons were established in two of those very delightful old-fashioned rooms overlooking the sea at the back of the cottage, out of the windows of which Carolyn had suggested they might jump for a bath.

But the Ball cottage was not quite so near the edge of the bank as that implied. The unfenced brink of the fifty foot precipice, however, was only a few yards away. Along its ragged verge ran a hard path, deeply worn by many feet. To the south was the West Side life saving station. The surfmen followed this beaten path to the breach of the Great Salt Pond where there was a key-box on a post. They could shout across the strait there to the patrol from the new life saving station near Sands Point. In the other direction they met the Old Harbour patrol at a point on the South Side.

But Carolyn thought little of these coast guards just now. She was running about getting more thoroughly acquainted than heretofore with the immediate vicinity of the Ball cottage.

"Come on, Princey," she said to her dog blithely. "We've got to look down and see where's the best path to the shore. Miss Molly says sometimes the edge of this hill falls down on to the shore. We'll have to be careful 'bout that."

However, it did not appear that the sea had bitten a mouthful out of the bluff of late, although the edge was very ragged and broken. The patrol path was not broken, and at present the sea at the foot of the cliff seemed comparatively quiet.

They sat down on the edge of the cliff, the little girl and the dog, and watched the sea hissing among the fallen boulders below. These great and small stones—bushels of them the size of one's fist, but many as large as a wagon, and several as big as moving vans or small houses—littered the shore as far as Carolyn could see in either direction.

The sands below high water mark were packed as hard and as smooth as a road by the action of the tide. Above this mark the loose sand was filled with all manner of rubbish—driftwood, much of which was the remains of wrecked boats; big shells torn from the bottom of the sea in storms and tossed here by the breakers; all manner of dried seaweeds and other sea cultch.

Carolyn's eyes sparkled, while Prince sniffed the airs off the ocean and found no scent of "good hunting" in them. But as they went back around the house the two friends found something that promised real sport to Prince.

Up out of a grass bed at the side of the house sprang a little creature that amazed Carolyn quite as much as it did Prince—all bandy legs, jerking head, and bleating voice. It started at a stumbling run away from the newcomers, and naturally Prince wanted to investigate.

"Stop, Princey!" commanded his mistress. "Don't you chase that poor little—little—well, whatever it is! It's got such a curly coat. And hasn't it a funny, ugly black nose? I—never—did—see!"

"Baa-a-a!" bleated the hobbling creature, turning to stare at the little girl and her dog with quite as much curiosity as they stared at it.

Molly I. Ball suddenly appeared at the corner of the house.

"Don't let your dog chase Nebuchadnezzar," she cried.

"Goodness gracious me!" gasped Carolyn May, "is that what he is? It sounds too big for him, Miss Molly."

"What sounds too big?"

"That you called him," declared the little girl. "Is he one?"

"Is he one what?" demanded the puzzled Molly.

"Why, a 'nebuchad—chad'—Well, whatever it was you called him?"

"Nebuchadnezzar?" repeated Molly Ball, laughing. "That's his name. But he's a lamb. Didn't you ever see a lamb before?"

"A lamb? My!" cried the little city girl. "I never saw one before 'cept in the butcher shop with all his—his clothes off. And then it don't look like that."

"No. I imagine not," said Molly Ball. "Come here, Nebby! Coo! Coo! Coo!"

She approached the funny little creature that stood with all four long legs braced apart, head down, and looking as though undecided whether to run or to butt.

"I've seen goats up in the Bronx," murmured Carolyn May. "I've seen the—the herd of sheep in Central Park. But I guess there weren't any lambs with 'em. Oh, isn't he funny?"

"He gits around almost as graceful as Ozy Littlefield, don't he?" laughed Molly Ball. "Here, Nebby!"

"Why did you call him that awful name? Nebuchad—What is it?"

"Nebuchadnezzar."

"That's it," smiled the little girl, who loved the sound of long words even if she could not pronounce them. "Why did you?"

"Because he eats grass," declared Molly I., enigmatically.

"Oh!"

Carolyn May gave her close attention to the lamb. She made Prince "lie down and be good" while she gathered a handful of juicy grass and approached Nebuchadnezzar, who was now nuzzling in Molly Ball's apron as she squatted down, and was letting her scratch his ears and "buttons."

"See," said his mistress. "Those buttons will be horns some day. He's going to have funny little curly horns, and if he gets old enough he'll stamp his little hoofs when he is mad and will butt right into a stone wall."

"Oh! He must have a temper almost as bad as Mr. Oly Littlefield's," murmured the astonished Carolyn.

"Shouldn't wonder," agreed Molly. "Now, you pat him, Carolyn."

"Won't he bite?"

"No. Nor butt. Not yet," laughed the island girl. "And by and by when I salt 'em, you shall go with me and see our whole flock. Nebuchadnezzar was a late spring lamb and his mother died. He's a cosset."

Carolyn's eyes grew big and she exclaimed emphatically: "Oh, Miss Molly! Why, that can't be so!"

"What ain't so?"

"What you just said. This Nebu—Nebu—Well, what-you-call-him, can't be a corset, for that's what ladies wear."

"Oh, bless you!" laughed Molly I. "Nebby ain't that kind of a corset. He's a cosset lamb—brought up by hand. He was tagging me about the kitchen and milk-room for two months. It's only lately he's lived out of doors and I named him Nebuchadnezzar. I sartain sure was glad to see him take to eatin' grass the way he done. He's a right smart lamb."

"Have you any more like him, Miss Molly?" asked the little girl.

"Not just like him. All this year's lambs are pretty well grown but him. But they were like him when they were little. He looks all laigs an' wool now; but he'll be a goodly sized critter next winter."

As she had been promised, Carolyn went late in the afternoon with Miss Molly Ball to salt the sheep in a rocky hollow which was out of sight of the house on the bluff. There were more than a score of the grey-brown creatures cropping the short grass and the tall weeds that grew between the rocks.

"If our sheep pasture had many more rocks in it," complained Molly I., "we'd have to file the sheep's noses so't they could feed between the rocks."

"Amos Bartlett tried that," cried Carolyn. "He's got such a big nose, you know. But it only made his nose sore and bigger than ever."

Miss Ball chuckled. "Maybe it wouldn't do much good, child. And the sheep clean up the pastures pretty good. That's what we keep 'em for on the island—to have 'em eat up the wild carrot. They like it; but I don't believe nothing else in the world does. It's all over the farm."

She showed the little girl the stalky plant, with its flat flowers. Carolyn thought it very pretty.

"Pretty is, as pretty does," quoted Miss Molly. "That tarnal weed don't look pretty to me. Comin' from church t'other Sunday I picked more'n twenty dif'rent kinds of wild carrot. If it keeps on there won't be nothin' else growin' on the island but it."

If Carolyn had been busy while she stayed at the hotel, now her time was even more fully occupied. It was quite surprising how much there was to do and to see and to talk about around the little house on the bluff.

The Balls had a horse and a cow and chickens and turkeys, as well as Nebuchadnezzar and all his relations. There were a surprising number of things Carolyn and Prince could "help" about.

The little girl soon learned how to feed the flock of poultry which Molly I. kept fenced in for the good of their souls and the garden. The turkeys ran at large, of course. But turkeys do not scratch and they can be trusted to chase bugs through the garden rows without destroying the crops.

She watched Barzilla curry Beppo, the old horse, named for a Portuguese fisherman who had once lived near Dorris Cove. When Molly I. milked the cow, Carolyn stood by and watched the milk stream into the pail as she had watched Aunty Rose Kennedy milk the cow at the Corners.

On the mornings that Barzilla Ball went out in the Snatch It to the fishing grounds, he and his sister got up while it was still pitch dark and Molly made him coffee and put up a big lunch of cooked food, for neither Barzilla nor the man who went with him as "crew" on the double-ender, would have time to cook much after they got outside.

Carolyn May awoke and pattered out into the kitchen in her bedroom slippers and bathrobe to watch sleepily these preparations, to drink a sip of Barzilla's coffee, and be kissed by him when he went away with his oilskins, the basket, and other "gear" over his arm, while the stars were burning still brightly in the velvet sky.

Then she would cuddle into Molly I.'s bed with the island girl and go to sleep again until it was time for "all hands and the cook" to be called, as Molly expressed it.

All these joys were in addition to being with the pale lady and Mamma Cameron for part of every day, and wheeling Baby Laird out in the carriage that had been purchased for that little man.

The pale lady did not go far with the baby, and she rested much of the day. It did seem (and even Carolyn May remarked it) that the good Island air, and Molly Ball's cooking, and the quiet existence they all enjoyed, did not do the baby's mother very much good. The baby himself, however, grew rosy and hearty as the days passed.

Carolyn had become so fond of her little cousin at the Corners, Carolyn Amanda, that she missed her sorely. Now she revelled in the delights of Baby Laird's bath, of his being dressed fresh and sweet afterward, in the getting of him to sleep after his bottle, and finally in pushing him about in his carriage.

It was while she was engaged in this last occupation one day, soon after she had taken up her abode in the cottage on the bluff, that she met again the man and his wife who had already so puzzled and interested her.

She had wheeled Baby Laird down the long lane to the public road, and with Prince was about to turn around and retrace her steps, when a two-seated carriage drawn by a pair of sleek horses and driven by the liveried negro whom Carolyn had previously seen pushing the wheelchair on the sands, came suddenly into view around a spur of Beacon Hill. She knew the carriage came from one of the larger hotels.

On the back seat were the man with whom she considered herself quite well acquainted, and his very unhappy looking wife. It seemed to the sunny-hearted Carolyn as though the poor lady needed cheering up, and she smiled up at her as the carriage came near with her very bravest smile.

The woman in the carriage, who had been so languid and so distrait the moment before, became suddenly interested in Carolyn and the baby, and even the man sat up with quick attention and signalled the driver to stop.

"Hullo!" the man said. "So I find you again, do I? Let me see: Your name is Carrie, isn't it?"

"Carolyn May, if you please, sir," the little girl said.

"To be sure! Carolyn May. And do you live away over here with your mamma?"

"We do now, sir. Since the hotel got burned," explained the child.

"Why! the little girl must have been turned out of the Truefelt House," said the woman, showing some interest. "And the baby!"

"Oh, no, ma'am," said Carolyn May, politely but firmly. "Baby Laird wasn't in our hotel when it got burned. He was right up there, where mamma and I are staying now," and she pointed to the Ball cottage.

"What a quaint old place," said the woman. But her gaze came back to the baby, who was awake and playing in his carriage. "Whose child is that, little girl? Is it your brother?"

"Oh, no, ma'am. He's just a friend of mine," explained Carolyn May.

The baby laughed up into the woman's face. He even dropped his rubber dog and put out his hands as though to be taken up. The woman in the carriage leaned forward, and for the moment the mask of discontent seemed to drop from her countenance. Even Carolyn saw the change and wondered.

"The dear!" murmured the woman. "What an attractive child!" she added to her husband. "Do you know, he reminds me—Ah, see him laugh! Just as friendly as—as my baby used to be. Not afraid of strangers at all, is he?"

The stern man looked straight ahead, over the horse's ears, and across the fourteen-mile stretch of blue water to where the sun shone on the white staff of the old Montauk Light.

CHAPTER XX

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Of course, Mrs. Cameron had written all the particulars of the fire at the hotel to her husband, and how Carolyn May and Prince had alarmed the household and perhaps saved her mamma's life.

Mrs. Cameron did not believe it was wise to praise the little girl too much for her part in the affair, or to allow others to do so. Besides, Carolyn did not understand what she had done, or the full degree of peril they had all escaped.

The hotel fire had been different from that forest fire at the Corners, of which Carolyn so often spoke. The little girl had seen the ravening flames then lick up the vegetation of the woods and sweep devouringly over the acres and acres of ground. The flames of the hotel fire had been scarcely visible.

Papa Cameron, learning of his family's change of lodging, had to come back to the island the very next Saturday to make sure that Snuggy and mamma, herself, were safe. Barzilla chanced to have the time, and he drove Beppo over to the landing to meet the Shinnecock and bring Mr. Cameron to the little house on the bluff.

They picked up Joe Bassett at the Old Harbour where Barzilla bought provisions, and the three men rode back to the West Side together.

"This fire at the Truefelt House makes it bad for you, Bassett," Carolyn's father said sympathetically.

"Didn't I say I was Jonahed?" returned the young man, and there was a note of bitterness in his voice that the newspaper editor had not heard before. "We have another week's work at the hotel, clearing up. Ben Truefelt is very decent about it. But after next Saturday——"

"Nothing doing, eh?"

"And so far as I can see, nothing doing on the whole island for me," Bassett said. "All the hotels have their clerks for the season, of course. I declare! I envy Barzilla, here."

The fisherman laughed. "Maybe you wouldn't envy me if you had my job."

"I'm not so sure of that," Bassett returned. "At least, you're sure of your bite and sup. You've salted your fish for next season. Your crops are growing. You are making a tidy little bale of wool. You'll have a sheep to salt down if you want it. You've turkeys to sell—and turkeys are rare birds nowadays. I tell you, Mr. Cameron, I've been thinking that these Block Islanders are well off."

"Perhaps we don't all know it," said Barzilla, dryly.

"All they lack on this island is ambition," Mr. Cameron said, looking rather doubtfully at Joe Bassett. "I am afraid we city folks would easily fall into the dolce far niente life if we settled here. The islanders work; we would look on."

"You don't haf to look on," put in Barzilla. "A smart man like Mr. Bassett—with a little money—could get into something here that would pay him well."

"That 'with' is in the way, Barzilla," Bassett said wearily.

"What is the scheme?" asked Mr. Cameron with curiosity.

"Oh," said Bassett more cheerfully, "Barzilla's got a good idea, no doubt. Let him explain it to you sometime, Mr. Cameron. But as I tell him, it's nothing to interest me," and his tone dropped again. "I'll have to write to Inness and take up his offer."

"Ah!" ejaculated the editor. "Have you already heard from your friend?"

"From Inness? Yes. I wrote him. He tells me that there is a mining company in Arizona with the directors of which he has some influence. There is a clerkship open there. It will give us a livelihood; and I suppose the climate would be all right for my wife."

"There ain't no finer climate in the world than this we got right here—summer an' winter," Mr. Ball declared with vehemence. "Why! you can see your baby grow."

"It is true," said Joe Bassett with gravity. "I can see life coming back to the baby, Mr. Cameron. I wish his mother showed equal improvement."

"It's a far way to Arizona," observed the editor. "Do you think that climate would do more for your wife, Bassett?"

"I do not know."

"It will cost a lot to get there."

"That—that is another thing," observed young Bassett hesitatingly. "Inness offers to pay our fares."

"Yes? Is there any reason why he should want to get you out of the way—out of New York?" asked Mr. Cameron curiously.

"Well, not exactly. But it may be that somebody whose mouthpiece he is, prefers to have me at a distance," replied Bassett, and then fell silent.

Carolyn's father thought he understood that. He said to his wife that evening after Carolyn was in bed and asleep:

"I am not sure that my interview that time with the Griffin did any real good; but it is bearing fruit, I believe. Through this man Inness—and he did not impress me as being a very pleasant person—Bassett is trying to send the young fellow somewhere, well out of the way, where he and his little family will have a chance for their lives at least."

"I am sorry they are not to remain here," Mrs. Cameron remarked. "The girl is a lovely creature, and, despite her bringing up, her character seems unspoiled."

"That does not gibe with what the Griffin stated as his opinion. He said her extravagance was the cause of Joe's downfall—that she was a perfectly useless creature."

"I am convinced he knows very little about her," declared Hannah Cameron with vigour. "She's nothing like that. For a girl brought up as she was, she is doing wonderfully well. And she has a heart of gold. I believe he maligns her."

"Well, it's too bad. But what can we do? There's no chance for Joe Bassett on this island."

"Nor am I sure that is so," rejoined his wife slowly. "He and Mr. Ball have become great friends. Molly says she never saw her brother take to anybody as he has to Mr. Bassett."

"Humph! I don't suppose Bassett can do Barzilla any harm."

"Oh, Lewis!"

"There's no use talking," her husband said emphatically. "I cannot so easily forget what the Griffin said. He was talking about his own son. Ten thousand dollars was stolen and wasted in the bucket shops along the fringe of the financial district. I believe it is the truth, for I have talked with some of the boys who cover the district and they declare Joe Bassett was hanging about certain brokers' offices down there for some weeks after his father turned him out."

"I hate to believe it," murmured Mrs. Cameron.

"The young fellow is all wrong. He's such an attractive chap that I don't wonder Barzilla Ball is interested in him. Perhaps I should put a flea in his ear."

"Don't do that, Lewis!" cried his wife. "I admit that, in this case, you are not your brother's keeper; neither is it your duty to tell tales out of school that may injure the poor fellow. Now, promise me!"

"I am sure," said Mr. Cameron, "that I do not wish to say anything to hurt Joe Bassett. Let others find out about him, as we did."

"And did we find out the truth, I wonder?" Carolyn's mother thought. But she did not utter this aloud.

When Mr. Cameron came to the island the next time, he brought with him Edna Price to stay a week with Carolyn. There had been great preparations made for the visit of Carolyn May's "partic'lar friend," and great expectations in the little girl's mind regarding that visit.

By this time Carolyn was quite used to the little oddities of speech, characteristic of the native Block Islander. She knew that they looked upon people from off the island, too, as being quite as foreign as though they came from Europe!

Being born and bred upon a bit of land quite disconnected from the mainland, breeds an oddly independent and aloof people—a people who are prone to have their own peculiar outlook upon life and to hold almost a code of morals of their own.

Carolyn was widening her acquaintance every day with the neighbours. There was a cross-country path over stiles and through stone fences, winding through the various farms from Dorris Cove to the Free Baptist Church, and everybody who passed the house took toll of Carolyn May's friendliness. On Sunday, before and after service, that path was dotted with members of the congregation who almost all lingered at the Ball place for a neighbourly chat.

Week days there were occasional passersby who followed the footpath along the edge of the bluff, beaten originally by the feet of the coast patrol. Had it not been the season when the life saving service men, with the exception of the captain of the crew who lived at the station all the year round, were relieved from duty, Carolyn would have already added the surfmen to her growing list of acquaintances.

As it was, she considered that some of the neighbours she knew very well. There was Aunt Ardelia Dodge and her husband, Uncle Smith Dodge, an elderly couple whose place adjoined the Balls' on the north. The Dodges owned an old carryall, and when it was known that Edna was coming, Mrs. Cameron borrowed this vehicle to bring her husband and the little visitor from the landing, Barzilla's buckboard having but a single seat.

As the ancient vehicle had not been in use for some time, it must first be backed down into the "tughole" behind the Dodge barn for the wheels to soak a couple of days, or the spokes might have rattled out of the rims and hubs.

The tughole was a shallow patch of black water where the ducks and geese played. It was not a natural pond, but one of those innumerable artificial pools made by the cutting of peat for fuel in the old days before coal was brought in any quantity to the island.

There is no wood for fuel on Block Island save what may be cast on the beaches by the tides. There are few trees, and those mostly of stunted growth. Heavily timbered when the first settlers came, their unwisdom and thriftlessness made of the beautiful if rocky island almost a barren waste.

Carolyn learned what the little black pools were, and why they were called "tugholes." She knew what peat was. Papa Cameron had told her all about the age-long growth of coal, and peat was coal which had not been put under sufficient pressure to make it hard.

"Them old fellers," said Uncle Smith Dodge, who was old enough himself in all good conscience, Carolyn thought, "called it 'tug,' 'cause they had ter tug it out'n them hollers an' up to the houses on stone drags. Oh, I can 'member when some of 'em still cut an' stacked tug, an' ev'rybody had a tughouse instead of a coalshed."

However, they soaked the wheels of the old carryall so the spokes would not rattle, washed the top and cushions, and otherwise made the vehicle presentable. On Saturday afternoon they harnessed Beppo between the shafts, and Mrs. Cameron and Carolyn drove over to meet Papa Cameron and Carolyn's little friend.

All the farms they passed were cut up into small fields with stone fences between—everywhere stone walls and heaps of stones which were turned up by the plough each spring.

"Where do all the stones come from?" wondered Carolyn May.

Some of the walls were broad and so well built that one might have driven an ox-team on them; others were only windrows of stone seemingly thrown together to get them out of the open, more than for any other purpose.

There were some post-and-wire barriers supplementing the stone walls, especially around the sheep pastures; for sheep will breach if they can; and where one sheep goes the whole silly flock will follow—even if it is over a cliff into the sea.

"Back there in Bible times," said Barzilla, "they had to make that drove of pigs they tell about crazy to get 'em to run into the sea. But sheep'll jest naturally run into the sea, or into any old place, get an old bell-wether to lead 'em." This, while he was mending a break in his sheep pasture fence.

Mrs. Cameron and Carolyn arrived safely at the landing with the ancient rig and Barzilla's plodding pony. Before the steamboat was half way across the Great Salt Pond Carolyn saw her father and the red-coated figure of Edna Price by his side. Carolyn and Prince fairly danced upon the stringpiece of the wharf in impatience at the steamer's deliberate approach.

Mr. Oly Littlefield, in his starched linen suit, scowled at Carolyn and shook a threatening cane at Prince.

"That dratted dog ought to be in the town pound," he declared. "Chawin' up people's laigs! Might jest as well turn a wild tagger loose in the c'mmunity, I swan!"

"He's got his eye on you now, Oly," chuckled one of the idlers, as Prince turned that way. "I b'lieve I'd speak a little less upshus of the critter. I don't doubt he's got it in for you."

The wooden-legged man drifted away from the dog's vicinity, viciously stabbing the wharf with his cane. But Prince and his little mistress paid very little attention just then to Captain Littlefield's crotchety cousin.

The Shinnecock bumped gently into the piles, then ground them harshly against her side as the mooring lines tightened. A bell jangled in the engineroom. The wheels ceased turning.

"Oh, Car'lyn May!" Edna's voice came down from the upper deck so clearly that everybody on the dock heard—and most of them laughed. "Oh, Car'lyn May! Johnny O'Harrity's cat's got five kittens, only they drowned four of them in the wash tub; and that red-haired Sade Gompretz has sent you an all-day sucker."

CHAPTER XXI

CROSS CURRENTS

Carolyn May had seen her friend and his wife, who had become interested in Baby Laird, on several occasions since they had first driven by the Ball place. They often came over to the West Side in a hotel carriage, and always stopped at the bottom of the lane where it debouched upon the public highway.

Carolyn would usually spy them if she did not chance to be wheeling the baby that way; and if he was asleep or with his mother she would run down alone to speak with her friends. Even the woman unbent to Carolyn May—who could resist the little girl's sunny ways?—and she was openly interested in Baby Laird.

"How is the little dear?" she would ask eagerly, if the baby was not to be seen on that particular occasion. "He reminds me so much of my own little one—years and years ago."

The little girl felt there was something about the woman's own baby that was not to be talked about. Her husband looked very stern and never said a word about it. Perhaps, like Aunty Rose Kennedy's three little ones, this woman's baby had been too puny to grow up.

Carolyn's mother—nor the pale lady—asked few questions regarding these new friends of Carolyn's. The child became acquainted with so many people. And Carolyn never chanced to mention that the couple in the hotel turnout were the same whose automobile had crushed the pale lady's baby go-cart in New York.

Molly I. informed her boarders that "those folks Car'lyn's struck up such an acquaintance with stop at the Orowoc House and have a suite of rooms and a maid for her and what they call a vally for him, b'sides that black man. They're richer'n a clam-flat at low water."

Now that Edna had come to spend the week, Carolyn was so busy that she almost forgot these newer friends. And as Edna was "fed up," as Barzilla called it, on baby-minding, her own Brother Eldred being her immediate care at home, the little girls did not spend much time with the pale lady's little one.

There really was a great deal to show Edna. Even the cow was a wonder to the little city girl, who had never seen milk drawn from anything save a bottle or a can.

"And I can't see, Carolyn, why she has horns, or why she mews all night," remarked Edna.

"Why, Edna Prince! Flory Ball doesn't mew; it's cats that mew. And what you heard last night wasn't a cow anyway. It was foggy out at sea, and that was the steam foghorn at the South Light. Barzilla told me."

"Well, I don't care. It sounded just like that cow," declared Edna.

They played in their bathing suits for part of every pleasant day. Carolyn was as brown as a berry; but Edna had to be careful about getting sunburned.

There was a path down the face of the bluff behind the cottage that led to a smooth stretch of beach. Mamma Cameron and Baby Laird's mother, with sometimes Molly I., took their dip with the little girls on this beach. But Carolyn and Edna were forbidden to descend the bluff alone.

There was a wealth of treasure along the shore, shells, pebbles, seaweeds—the drift and flotsam of the flowing tide that twice each day took the island in its arms.

Talk about Mr. Jedidiah Farlow's shavings! Why, the seaweeds were made a hundred times more decorative than ever shavings could be.

There were lacy kinds that made splendid veils and collars for the little girls; and kinds with green and purple fronds like the leaves of palm trees; thick, leathery sea-green weed that could be cut into different shapes with a sharp knife. Then there was that kind of seaweed that had seed pods which, when partly dried, popped delightfully; while tangled in the various growths were all manner of odd little shells and deep-sea monsters. Why! Carolyn even found a seahorse about four inches long.

And how Prince tore up and down the beach! He found other monsters than those the little girls came across—horseshoe crabs for one thing, which Carolyn had no idea were good to eat until Molly I. rescued several live ones from the surf and they ate them, prepared deliciously, for supper. No ordinary softshell crab is the equal of these monsters.

Then Carolyn and Edna had an awful fright. Prince saw something in the surf and went in after it.

"Oh, see that thing!" cried Edna. "It's got a round, shiny head."

"Why," responded Carolyn, "it must be a rubber ball."

But when Prince tried to seize it, they saw a short arm thrown into the air as though the Thing were mutely pleading for rescue.

"Oh!" shrieked Edna. "It's a baby!"

"Come back here, Prince!" commanded Carolyn, fully as horrified as her friend.

"A drowned baby!" moaned Edna, covering her eyes.

"Maybe it isn't drowned," gasped Carolyn. "Prince!"

Prince returned to the shore. The Thing whirled around and around in a miniature whirlpool; then another incoming breaker rolled the Thing almost to the little girls' feet. Prince barked at it wildly.

"Sh! Hush, Princey!" begged his little mistress. "If it's dead—But, then, maybe it isn't dead."

"Oh, it must be," wailed Edna.

"Maybe not. There are Water Babies, you know. Papa read about them out of a book to me. And a little chimney-sweep, who wanted to be clean, was washed all nice and made round and rosy and just like a land baby, because he'd never had a chance before to get a bath."

Edna listened to this with both ears; but she looked at the Thing in the surf with both eyes.

"It is black," she said. "Maybe it is another chimney-sweep trying to get clean. But—but, it looks awful dead!"

The Thing retreated with the receding surf to meet another incoming wave. The pebbles scratched and squeaked as they rolled down the strand, as if it might have been the voice of the Thing crying for help.

"Oh, it can't be that it is alive!" whispered Edna. "But see! See its arm waving!"

The Thing rolled over again and again. The incoming wave caught it and lifted it high upon its front. The little girls saw almost all of the Thing for a moment.

"Oh!" shrieked Edna. "It's got a tail!"

"It's a baby mermaid," murmured Carolyn May, all but stricken dumb by this discovery.

"Do you believe so?" demanded her friend. "And is it alive?"

"It can't be," said Carolyn. "Else it would be swimming. And it wouldn't let us see him. You know, my papa says it is almost as hard to see mermaids as it is to see sea serpents—and the sea serpents only come around when it is a very dull season at the seaside resorts. I am sure this is a good season at Block Island. See how many people there are here."

"The poor baby!" crooned Edna. "The poor mermaid baby! Isn't it awful?"

The sea rolled in and deposited the dead Thing almost at the feet of the two little girls. Prince could not restrain himself any longer, and he leaped upon the body and held it down so it could not slide back with the tide.

At that moment a voice startled the little girls, and there was Captain Ozias Littlefield, with a short handled clam hoe in a basket on his arm, stumping along the hard sand toward them. The staff of his wooden leg made strange holes in the beach beside his shoe print, as though some prehistoric monster had passed that way.

"Hullo, little girls—and little dog!" he said jovially. "How fare ye?"

"Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield!" cried Carolyn almost in tears. "Come and look at this poor little dead merbaby."

"Dead what?" gasped the old sailor.

"Merbaby."

"Er—mer—Oh, my soul and body! Ye mean a mermaid's young 'un?"

"Yes, sir. And the poor thing's dead. Don't worry it, Princey. It's half human, anyway, even if it has got a tail and such short arms."

"Them arms is flippers. That's a fur seal," said the wooden-legged captain. "Got his foolish head battered on the rocks somehow. Or mebbe he was hit by a propeller. Them critters air awful cur'ous. Don't seem to know enough to keep out of trouble. If seals had any sense at all they wouldn't go year after year to the same rookery to sit and wait for the sealers to come and knock 'em over the head with iron clubs."

"Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield!" exclaimed Carolyn, yet much relieved to learn that the dead Thing was not even "half human," "do wicked men do that to the poor seals?"

"I dunno how wicked they be. A livin's a livin' wherever and however you make it. And I bet your marm's got a sealskin coat or cape or muff or somethin'."

"A coat?" cried Carolyn in wonder. "Oh! Is that what they make sealskin coats out of?"

"Takes more'n one skin to make a proper coat for a lady as big as your marm."

"Oh, I'm sure she doesn't know that sealskins come from things that look so like dead babies. I'm sure she doesn't."

"My mamma," said Edna virtuously, "hasn't got a sealskin coat. She's got a ponyskin."

"Well!" ejaculated Carolyn quickly, "don't you s'pose it hurts a pony to be skinned just as much as it does a seal?"

She then proceeded to introduce Edna to the captain. He told them that as the fire had relieved him of his job at the Truefelt House, he and "Cousin Oly" had come across the island, as they did every spring and fall, to catch and cure fish for the winter.

"We're stopping in old Beppo's shack down by Dorris Cove," he said. "It's rigged kind of Portugoosy; but it's all right in fair weather or foul. Course, Oly kicks. He'd kick if his feet was tied—Hi cracky! he ain't got but one foot to tie, has he?" and the captain stubbed away, chuckling.

The little girls did not immediately lose their interest in the dead seal.

"It looks so much like humans," Carolyn said. "See its poor eyes! Aren't they beautiful, Edna? And so sad."

"Well, anybody's eyes would be sad if they were dead," declared her friend.

"I don't think it's decent to let the poor thing lie here. He might have been a Water Baby, you know. Let's bury it," said Carolyn.

And so they dug with their shovels a deep, deep hole in the loose sand above highwater mark. Prince helped in this, for he could dig faster and throw out more sand with his feet and nose than both little girls could with their shovels. There they laid the poor dead seal and made a mound over him. They covered the mound with shells and pebbles and seaweed in a very decorative pattern, and so left the seal to his long rest.

The children were not, however, engaged always in such beach pursuits during that week of Edna's visit. They raced the downs between the Ball cottage and the Free Baptist Church like wild colts. They rolled down the smooth, moss-covered sides of the many hollows (the moss was grey and had tiny red blossoms); and once Edna rolled right into the Dodges' tughole and frightened all the ducks and geese playing there. And she was in a mess!

They made a chum of Nebuchadnezzar, and when he grew used to having Prince around, he showed himself to be a lively playfellow indeed. He was fast learning to butt, and on one occasion he almost butted Carolyn into the barn cellar through the trapdoor behind old Beppo's stall.

One day they met on the road with their negro driver, the couple who were Carolyn May's friends. Carolyn ran back to the cottage to get Baby Laird, who was awake, and wheeled him down to the highroad, that the woman might see him and hold him in her arms. She had brought him a beautiful rattle made of walrus ivory—"scrimshaw work," Captain Littlefield would have called it—which she had bought of a Portuguese fisherman who lived on the South Side.

Edna thought the woman quite a wonderful person, and could not keep her gaze off her rich garments, her jewels, and her beautifully manicured hands.

That she was a semi-invalid was quite evident, and even the children understood that her fault-finding and nervousness arose from mental and bodily troubles. Her husband was vastly patient with her; he never crossed her even by a word. It seemed as though she must have everything she desired, they were so very wealthy. She did not have to play "If I Were Rich," Carolyn thought!

Carolyn had had many interesting conversations with the man whenever they met. On one occasion she said to him:

"Do you know, I saw your big, fine car this summer and you weren't in it?"

"Before you left New York, do you mean?"

"Oh, no, sir," said Carolyn May. "I saw it while I was up at my Uncle Joe Stagg's, at the Corners."

"And where, pray, is 'the Corners'?"

"Why, that's where Uncle Joe lives. It's near Sunrise Cove. He sells hardware and ploughs and things in his store at Sunrise Cove."

"Indeed? And are you sure it was my machine you saw?" asked the man, with curiosity.

"Oh, yes, sir. Your chauffeur was with it, and another gentleman."

"What sort of looking man was he?" asked Carolyn's friend, and his face grew much more stern in its expression.

The little girl explained, prattling away about the dark-browed man and his personal peculiarities without the first idea that she was "telling tales out of school"; for she would have scorned to be a "tattle-tale" had she realized. She did wonder, however, what her friend meant when he muttered:

"It was more than an ordinary joy ride that took them away up there—and René was not at the bottom of it. I'll look into that. Somebody will have to explain."

He put aside his ill-temper in a moment. There was a plan for a picnic the next day but one. Evidently it was a plan he and his wife had already talked over. They would come for the children in the morning and drive them to the South Light, there to have a picnic luncheon.

Of course, Mrs. Cameron had to be asked if Carolyn and Edna could go, and the former raced up to the cottage and led her mother down by the hand to give her permission for the outing. It was evident that the haughty looking woman approved of Carolyn's mother.

Mrs. Cameron had heard Carolyn talk so much about these people that she felt quite as though she knew them. And yet, she did not even know their name. As neither the man nor the woman mentioned it, she felt some embarrassment at the thought of asking them, pointblank, for that information. She had heard enough about them from Molly Ball and other Island people. They were by far the wealthiest and most important guests at the Orowoc House.

She might have been more curious had Carolyn not failed to mention the fact that these very people were those whose motor-car had crushed Baby Laird's go-cart so many weeks before. The invalid's interest in the pale lady's baby, however, did cause Mrs. Cameron some thought at a later time. She could see no reason for refusing to allow the little girls to accompany these people on the proposed outing.

"I would love to take the baby, too; but that, I fear, would be impossible," the invalid said. "Do you think his mother would consent?"

"I am afraid not. She is watching up there for his return now," said Mrs. Cameron, smiling, and drawing the woman's attention to the figure of Baby Laird's mother with the fresh gale blowing her skirts about her as she stood by the house on the bluff.

"Ah, yes," rejoined the invalid, looking at the pale lady's figure in the distance carelessly. "Remarkable what fine children some of these island women have. This baby looks much as my own son did when he was this child's age."

Her husband cleared his throat and said sharply:

"We shall have to be going. We will stop for the little girls about eleven. Good afternoon. Drive on, George."

The coloured man drove on. Not until they had quite gone did Hannah Cameron remember that she had not explained that Baby Laird was not a Block Island child.

CHAPTER XXII

THE COCKATOO MAN IN TROUBLE

The knowledge that the Double O's (Captain Ozias Littlefield and his cousin, Oliver) were near by, excited again Carolyn May's curiosity regarding the artificial limbs worn by the two old men. She easily interested Edna in the mystery, for Edna possessed her full share of inquisitiveness. They determined to make a combined raid upon the "Portugoosy" cabin by Dorris Cove and attempt to extort the longed-for confidences from the Cousins Littlefield.

Mrs. Cameron would not allow the little girls to walk along the beach as far as Beppo's hut; but after many careful directions from Molly Ball and admonitions from Carolyn's mother, they started for that attractive point by way of the patrol path above the beach.

There were several houses to pass in this direction, and the little girls had to go over or through many stiles. At most of the houses Carolyn was acquainted, for the neighbourhood women had learned to appreciate the quaint little "off" girl.

Aunt Ardelia Dodge never saw Carolyn near her house but that she made offering of the contents of her doughnut crock to tempt the little girl to "stop awhile." To Aunt Ardelia's mind a child's stomach was as an aching void, only to be appeased by continual "stuffing."

"You an' your little friend set right down on the doorstun an' I'll pop a hot doughnut into each o' your laps in a minute," declared the generous old woman. "Lucky you come along just as you did. This is Thursday and I always fry doughnuts on Thursday. Jest like I bake beans an' steam loaf on Sat'day.

"Smith, he never kin see why I have reg'lar days for cookin' sartain things. But if a body don't have some method in doin' things, where'll they be? That's what I say. Man's work is always helter-skelter, an' ketch-as-ketch-can. They air always waitin' on the weather, or on the tide, or on the moon, or some sech foolishness. Men's work is never systematic—nor judgmatic, neither."

"Oh, but my papa goes very regular to his work," objected Carolyn May. "He goes downtown at just a certain time, and gets back home at a certain time. Don't he, Edna? And your papa, too."

Edna nodded vigorously; but her mouth was too full of hot doughnut at the moment to agree audibly.

"Wal, I wish't I'd married an off man, then," said Aunt Ardelia. "For Smith never did 'preciate reg'larity, not even in cookin'. Why!" chuckled the voluble woman, "there was one time Smith Dodge took it inter his head he didn't want beans on a Sat'day night. Puffictly foolish idee. Everybody has baked beans for Sat'day night supper. But men will git them fits. It's the way the good Lord made 'em, I cal'late.

"'Ardely,' says he to me, 'I'm plumb sick o' smellin' beans ev'ry time I come nigh the house on Sat'day afternoon. Can't we have suthin' else for Sat'day supper for once't—fried sounds, or pollock an' potaters, or even fishcakes or chowder? This here reg'larity is a-drivin' of me wild.'

"I jest laughed at him. No use gettin' mad with a man. If ye do, ye can scratch yerself and get glad again. So I baked beans jest like I always do on Sat'days.

"An' when Smith, he come up from the shore where he'd been stackin' seaweed an' smelt the beans, he never says nothin', but he washes up, an' shaves, an' puts on his Sunday-go-to-meetin' clo'es, and says he:

"'I'm goin' over to Lucy Ann Mott's for supper, Ardely. An' I'll prob'bly stop the night.'

"So he went off. I knowed what he went for. He cal'lated he'd 'scape eatin' beans one Sat'day night. Lucy Ann's his niece. She thinks a heap o' Smith Dodge, an' Smith thinks a heap o' her. They was all glad to see him. When he come up into the yard Lucy Ann run to put another plate on the table, and says she:

"'You'm more than welcome, Uncle Smith. I'm jest a-goin' to take a pot o' beans out o' the oven. I hope they air as good as A'nt Ardely's?'

"Wal," chuckled the old woman, "ain't nothin' cramped about Uncle Smith's brains, if he has got tar on his breeches. He spoke right up quick-like, an' says he:

"'Lucy Ann, I can't stop along o' you folks to supper, though I'm just as obleeged. I was on my way to Peke Rose's, an' I got to see Peke about somethin' afore dark. Jest stopped here to pass the time o' day.'

"So he goes on to Peke's. Peke's wife," continued Aunt Ardelia, "is a might' good cook. Smith cal'lated he'd struck on good when he reached Peke's jest as they was settin' down to supper.

"'Set right up with us, Uncle Smith,' says Peke, givin' him a cheer. They all hailed him like he was a sight for sore eyes, and he got seated an' Peke axed Smith to ax a blessin'.

"An' when he opened his eyes after axin' that blessin', what d'ye s'pose he seen on the table right in front of him? A big, fat, brown beanpot!" chuckled Aunt Ardelia.

"Oh!" Carolyn's mouth was as round as the hole in the fresh doughnut the old woman dropped into her napkin-covered lap.

"But Smith Dodge," continued the narrator of this tale, "he warn't to be overdone that-a-way. He'd set out to find somethin' b'sides beans, and after supper he went on to Mrs. John-Ed Allen's. John-Ed is Smith's nevvy. They was all for havin' Uncle Smith stop all night an' they would take him to church, come Sunday mornin', in their surrey. So he stopped.

"Come Sunday mornin' he was up airly same as common," pursued Aunt Ardelia, "an' whad he see but Mrs. John-Ed puttin' the beanpot into the oven to warm up for breakfast! Smith, he was so mad, he never said a word but hiked right out cross-lots, intendin' to come home. But he come by Peter Littlefield's, an' Peter hailed him and he couldn't get away, and they sot him down to a big breakfast of pork an' beans!" and Aunt Ardelia went off into such a gale of chuckles that she could scarcely fork the brown doughnuts out of the smoking fat.

"He sez to me, Smith did, after he come home, 'No use, Ardely. Nobody can't say I don't know beans! I'm full an' plenty acquainted with 'em. They say "variety is the spice o' life." There ain't no spice left in life on this island. I cal'late ev'ry woman from Sands P'int to the heel of the Killies has her mind sot on baked beans for Sat'day night an' Sunday.'"

The little girls listened to the story of Uncle Smith's revolt with less appreciation, perhaps, than more mature persons might; but they appreciated Aunt Ardelia's doughnuts to the full.

Carolyn with her friend and Prince went on toward the cove and the cabin where the Double O's were staying. The shack stood at the foot of one slope of the great, barren sand hill which shut out the view of Dorris Cove from the south. The children and the dog followed the patrol path, which here dipped to the shore, and skirted the hill and soon came to the fisherman's shack.

It was empty. The door stood open and they could see all the interior. There were the two berths in which the cousins slept, both neatly made up with the cornhusk pillows plumped at the heads. The floor was swept and the little round pot-stove was well polished. The Double O's were as neat housekeepers as one could wish.

But there were some things which had not been changed since the departure of the original owner of the shack. Several religious pictures were tacked to the walls and there was a harpoon hung in beckets over the fireplace, for Beppo had been a famous boat-steerer in the old whaling days and that harpoon had "struck on" to many a deep sea monster.

Beside the mantel was a tiny altar and a figure of the Virgin hanging on the wall before which Beppo had burned a candle now and then in gratitude for favours received or expected. These oddities of furnishings were why Captain Ozias Littlefield had called the hut "Portugoosy."

"But I guess we can't go in," said Carolyn to her friend, "for Mr. Cap'n Littlefield isn't here."

"And can't we find out about his wooden leg?"

"Doesn't seem so," admitted the equally disappointed Carolyn.

"What'll we do, then?" asked Edna. "I wanted to see both their wooden legs. Are they just alike, Car'lyn?"

"Why, no," confessed her friend. "Their wooden legs aren't just alike. You see, one's a lefthand leg and the other's a righthand leg."

"Goodness! What's the difference?"

"Why, I don't suppose they can swap them, do you?" Carolyn replied, using an expression she had picked up from her longshore friends. "A right leg wouldn't fit on a left stump, would it?"

"Why not?" demanded Edna, inclined to argue the point.

Just then Prince, who had run around a spur of the hill, began to bark. A high-pitched, explosive voice was raised, warning the dog off:

"Don't you come a-nigh me, you pesky critter you! Git out!"

"Oh, dear me!" gasped Carolyn. "There's Mr. Oly Littlefield now—and he's mad. Prince!" she shrieked, and set off for the hidden spot where the cockatoo man and the mongrel had clashed. The path led up behind the fisherman's shanty and around the spur of the sand hill. In half a minute the two little girls were in sight of the wrangle.

Prince was bounding about the angry, red-faced old fellow, and barking. The cockatoo man was endeavouring to reach the dog with his cane.

Suddenly he over-reached himself in trying to hit Prince, and to save his balance, dropped the basket of groceries with which he had evidently walked from the Center, where the nearest store was.

The basket turned over and spilled out every package in it; and some of the packages burst. A hail of beans went hopping down the slant of the hill. Ground coffee, sugar, flour and what looked like hominy-grits mixed with the sand for yards around. Four lemons bounded down the hill, and Prince gave chase, perhaps thinking they were yellow rats.

"Prince! Prince, you behave!" cried Carolyn May.

"Dancin' Doolittles!" yelled Mr. Oly Littlefield. "Will ye look at that now? Ev'rything broke loose an' cast adrift. I vow! if they could, I wish't them lemons would p'ison that dratted dog. What'll Ozy say to this mess?"

Again he made a rush at Prince, who had returned at his mistress' call. Carolyn cried out again, for the heavy cane came near to hitting the dog. But disaster rode fast upon the old fellow's incautious attack. His wooden leg sank into the sand beside the path, and Mr. Littlefield was all but pitched headlong down the hill.

To save himself he threw his body sideways and wrenched the leg free. But that was only a momentary help. He could not regain his balance, and the force with which he dragged the wooden leg from the sand threw him too far in the other direction.

"Dancin' Doolittles!" he blared, striving to recover himself. "Hi! Drat that dog!"

His wooden leg kicked straight out. He pawed at the empty air with both hands, dropping his cane, which followed the basket and the groceries, hippity-hop, down the hill.

For an old man, and a wooden-legged man, Mr. Oliver Littlefield proved to be very agile. He made a wild leap, and landed in the soft sand. His wooden leg sank in this until he was more than knee deep in the shifting comminuted rock on that side, while his right leg was bent under him.

And in this position the catastrophe caught him. In his dancing around and stabbing the shifting sand with his wooden leg he started an avalanche. Carolyn May was the first to see the slide coming and she screamed:

"Oh! Come away, Princey, quick! You'll be drownd-ed in the sand!"

Several tons of the hill started slowly, and then with a swish like the sound of the surf, spread out and surrounded the struggling cockatoo man. It buried him to his waist.

Prince was fairly barking his head off. The little girls, quite out of the line of the avalanche, could only dance up and down and squeal. At this tragic juncture even the explosive ejaculation of "Dancing Doolittles!" failed to relieve the feelings of Mr. Oly Littlefield.

CHAPTER XXIII

INTO MISCHIEF AND OUT

The cockatoo looking man, as Carolyn May often called Mr. Oly Littlefield, was for once stricken dumb, as well as helpless. His hat had flown off his head and followed his cane, the basket, the groceries, and the bouncing lemons down the hill. But he was stuck right where he had landed in the sand and the avalanche was piling up around him.

He sat in such a position, with his left leg completely buried and his right drawn up, that he could not of his own strength drag his body out of the sand. He might just as well have tried to lift himself out by his bootstraps!

The old fellow's face was really growing pale. The situation was not laughable in the least to him. And as far as the children were concerned, they were very much frightened.

The sand was still sliding down all about him, and he was slowly being buried, deeper and deeper. He could not see anybody to help him, for from this angle of the hill no dwelling was in sight.

At Dorris Cove were two fish houses, and he could see their roofs, and the dories drawn well up on the shore. The poundmen, however, had drawn the traps long since and gone home. Aside from the two little girls and the dog, Mr. Oly Littlefield was alone.

"In the name o' the Dancin' Doolittles!" he groaned. "I'm complete' swamped here and no two ways about it. How'm I ever goin' to get out?"

It did look as though his chance for escape was very slim. The sands kept running down, and the more he struggled the deeper he seemed to slide—just as though he were in a quicksand.

"What ever shall we do?" cried Edna. "Oh, Carolyn, he's going to be all buried up!"

"He mustn't! He mustn't!" shrieked Carolyn quite as loudly, and she ran toward the half-entombed man.

Her light feet did not greatly disturb the sliding sand. Besides, she addressed herself to the cockatoo man from the side of the path where the hill had not fallen. Edna followed her friend's example, and both little girls seized upon his right hand and dragged at him, while he fought with his left to loosen his body from the engulfing sand.

Even Prince helped. He seized Mr. Oly Littlefield by the tail of his short linen coat. He almost dragged the coat over the man's head; but the buttons held and the dog was of some aid in pulling the cockatoo man out of the pit.

He managed to raise himself a little and then fell sideways, prying his wooden leg from the sand. The little girls, with screams, fell over backward as the cockatoo man came free. Prince lost his hold on the coat and slithered half way down the hill.

"Oh! Oh! OH!" shrieked Edna in crescendo.

"It's all over!" Carolyn gasped.

"What the Dancin' Doolittles!" ejaculated the old fellow. "And now who's to go back and git more groceries, I want to know? I wish't I'd let Ozy do it in the first place."

Carolyn expected him to turn his wrath upon, them—especially upon Prince. She stood off a little, clutching Edna's hand, and staring at him. The cockatoo man turned his head stiffly, where he sat on the hillside with his wooden leg sticking straight out before him, and blinked at the children and the dog.

"I declare to man!" he said. "You young 'uns was good to me. Even that dog, I reckon he meant well by me, though I think he's tored the coat purt' near off my back. I thank ye! Merciful—Dancin'—Doolittles!" as he rose to an erect position. "How'll I git my basket—an' my cane?"

He really was much subdued, and Carolyn May began to feel sympathetic.

"Oh, sir! we'll help you if you'll let us," she cried.

"I ain't in a position to object, I reckon," returned Mr. Littlefield dryly.

They ran after the basket and his cane, and even picked up the lemons. But most of the dry groceries he had bought were under the loose sand that was still pouring down the hillside in various little streams. Mr. Littlefield accepted his possessions with good grace and thanked the little girls.

"I'll hobble on to the shack and wait for Ozy to come back from the fishin'. I declare! I ain't able now to make another v'y'ge to Peleg Rose's store and back again—nossir! Much obleeged to you, I'm sure, leetle gals. Good-bye."

He hobbled down the path toward the cabin on the shore. Edna grabbed Carolyn's arm and shook her.

"Oh, Carolyn May! Now is the time to ask him."

"Ask him what?"

"How he came to have that wooden leg?"

"Oh, no," Carolyn said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't ask him that now. Maybe Mr. Littlefield wouldn't like to talk about his wooden leg just when it got him into so much trouble," she added with tact. "I guess we'd better ask Mr. Cap'n Littlefield first."

They did not, however, have the opportunity to put the query to the captain at that time. He was not at the shore cabin, and his cousin was in no mood to entertain visitors.

So the little girls and Prince plodded home again. Knowing the way by the highroad, they followed that instead of the patrol path, although it was longer. The dusty road brought them around by Barzilla's sheep pasture which at one end was separated by a stone wall only from the highway.

"Oh, dear, me, Car'lyn!" exclaimed Edna. "Look at all those sheep."

A flock of a score or more was milling in the road. A black-faced old ewe was trying to lead the flock over or through the stone wall into the Ball pasture.

"My goodness, won't Miss Molly be sot all aback!" cried Carolyn, repeating an expression she had lately learned and thought well of. "Those are all Nebuchadnezzar's relations."

"How do you know?" asked her friend.

"Of course they are. Don't you see they've all got black faces? And they are trying to get into our pasture! And they can't, the poor things!"

"That big sheep is going to push that rock over. If it can do it," Edna said as "judgmatically" as Aunt Ardelia Dodge would have said it, "they can all go through the wall."

"Let's help 'em," Carolyn suggested.

"Let's," agreed Edna promptly.

So, telling Prince to stay back and behave, the children ran up along the toppling stone wall. The old ewe backed away and stamped her feet.

"Do you s'pose it'll bite, Carolyn?" murmured Edna, stopping and preparing to withdraw at any further sign of antagonism on the part of the black-faced ewe.

"Certainly not," declared Carolyn. "It's got only one set of teeth, anyway."

"The poor thing! Is it as old as all that?" queried Edna, who was not as familiar with the split-hoof herbivorous animals as Carolyn claimed to be. "It must be as old as old Mrs. Junkins at home, for she hasn't got but a few teeth left, and she says they don't hit!"

"This sheep'll never hurt you," Carolyn bravely declared, and she approached the stone on the wall. Seeing that it was already wabbling, she managed to push it over into the pasture without any great difficulty. It rolled down a little gully, and several other stones followed it, for the wall was built in a very haphazard fashion.

She stepped back, and at once the old ewe dashed for the opening. She plunged through, and the other sheep, old and young, crowding and bleating, followed after.

"I s'pose," said Carolyn, seriously, "we ought to stop up that place again so that they can't get out."

"But we can't lift those stones," objected Edna. "We've done enough," the little visitor added, taking credit for what Carolyn had really accomplished alone.

"I guess that's so. Well, let's hurry and tell Miss Molly. She can lift them. Miss Molly's awful strong."

The sheep were now feeding composedly, and were heading down the hollow, the other end of which could not be seen from the roadside. The little girls quickened their steps and turned up the Ball lane. As they approached the cottage Molly I. came out to ask:

"Did you children see Abel Mott's sheep along the road anywhere? They've broke out again."

"Oh, no," Carolyn assured her. "We only saw your sheep. They had got out of the pasture."

"Nonsense, child!" said Molly I. "I saw our sheep grazin' up in this end of our pasture not ha'f an hour ago."

"Oh, no, Miss Molly, you couldn't," Carolyn said earnestly. "They were all out in the road and trying their hardest to get into your pasture-lot. So I helped 'em."

"You helped 'em?"

"Yes. I threw down a stone so that they could get through the wall, and they all went through—just as slick! But Edna and I couldn't put up the stone again. It was too big."

"For the land's sake!" exclaimed Molly I., and she started across the fields toward the pasture, dishcloth in hand. The little girls trotted with her, realizing that something was wrong but not understanding what.

They came in sight of the upper end of the pasture. There were the two flocks of sheep feeding together, and hopelessly mixed!

"Now you have done it, children," said Molly Ball, in despair. "It'll take Barzilla a full day to separate them an' git Abel Mott's out into the road again. Abel will never lift his hand to sort 'em out. His pasture is poor anyway, and he don't mind how long his sheep stay away from home, if they come back with their fleece on. He's mighty careful 'bout foldin' them when it comes shearin' time."

"Oh!" gasped Carolyn, at last. "Did—did I let in the wrong sheeps?"

"I cal'late you did. But they likely would ha' broke in somewhere," said the island girl more mildly. "Don't fret about it, child."

But Carolyn May was a good deal chagrined that she should have made such a mistake.

"Sheeps are so much alike," she complained to Edna. "Even Nebuchadnezzar is getting to look like all his relations. And those sheeps of Mr. Abel Mott acted just like they belonged in that pasture."

"Next time," Edna said, solemnly, "I wouldn't turn a herd of giraffes into one of these lots."

"But goodness!" cried Carolyn, "you wouldn't find giraffes on Block Island."

Nobody scolded them much for the mistake, and everybody was vastly amused by the little girls' account of Mr. Oly Littlefield's mishap.

Baby Laird's papa was no longer going to the Old Harbour daily, for there was nothing more he could do for Mr. Ben Truefelt about the hotel. He began to go out with Barzilla in the Snatch It, and they were sometimes gone the better part of two days.

The pale lady, as Carolyn always thought of her friend, continued to look worried and Carolyn heard now and then hints of the departure of the trio for some distant place. The thought of losing the pale lady and Baby Laird made the little girl feel very sad. To stop to think of unpleasant possibilities, however, was not Carolyn May's way. She had a firm belief in the silver lining to every cloud. She hoped her pale lady and Baby Laird and his father would not be obliged to go so far away that she could not see them some times.

"Don't you s'pose I could come in the cars to see you at Arizona?" she asked the baby's mother wistfully. "You know, I went all the way to Sunrise Cove alone once; and I came back home from there by myself—me and Princey. I'm sure I wouldn't lose my way."

"Ah, but Arizona is much, much farther away than your uncle's house," sighed the pale lady.

"Oh! Farther away than Block Island is from New York?"

"Yes, my dear."

"Then Arizona must be almost as far as Heaven!" gasped Carolyn. "And Aunty Rose Kennedy says that's a 'fur ways.' Won't I see you and Baby Laird, ever, again?"

"I cannot say, my dear—I cannot say," said her friend faintly. "I feel that if we go we shall leave what few friends we have—and all hope, even—behind."

The little girl was moved by the pale lady's sorrow; but she did not understand just what this speech meant. And there really was so much to enjoy that she could not always give her thought to her friends' troubles.

Here was the picnic, for instance, which had been set for the next morning. How could Carolyn remember much else when she and Edna went to bed that night in Carolyn's little room at the back of the Ball cottage?

The surf grumbled on the shore below the window. She only had to sit up in bed beside the sleeping Edna to see the blinking lamps of the lighthouses on the Long Island shore. The stars spattered the firmament thickly.

"Oh, it's going to be a clear day tomorrow," whispered Carolyn May with a happy little bounce. "We'll have a nawful nice time at the picnic."

CHAPTER XXIV

HE TURNS UP AGAIN

At the Orowoc House the largest and best furnished of the private suites was occupied by Carolyn's stern looking friend and his wife. The latter's maid, who was a French-woman, slept in the room next to her mistress. The valet and George, the coloured man, were otherwise bestowed.

For two hours each morning—from eight to ten—and after a plain and ample breakfast, the master of the wealth which this style of living revealed, sat in the room he used personally, at a table on which was a telephone. The hotel help discussed with much gusto what it must have cost to have a private wire to his New York office opened for those two hours. With certain memoranda and a notebook before him, this master of men and gold called his secretaries and managers, one by one, and gave them instructions for the day. Each made his report, too, of the previous twenty-four hour's activities. The master jotted down his notes and finally conversed at some length with his chief secretary.

After that he was free to spend the remainder of the day with his wife. He refused to answer any telephone call save during those two hours, and mail and telegraph messages piled up on his table as they pleased. He gave them not even a glance until the next morning. This was the busy man's vacation time. He had spent several summer weeks in this fashion for three years—ever since that time when the haughty lady had become such a burden to him and to herself.

The day following his conversation with Carolyn May wherein she had spoken of his automobile being at the Corners, this master of men sent a special message to one of his employ s in his New York office:

"Come here with René and the White Streak, tomorrow."

There was no explanatory phrase attached to the message. This man was not in the habit of explaining in any case.

Therefore a little before noon the next day a forty foot turbine launch was sighted off the neck, heading islandwards with a bone in her teeth. She was painted white, she was as narrow as a shark, and her speed was something to marvel at as she approached the narrow waterway that the islanders called "the breach."

Beating up for the same point was the Snatch It, Barzilla Ball's double-ender. She had been out to the banks since the previous morning, and Barzilla proposed to put his catch aboard the New London steam smack that left the port that afternoon. It was this handling of his catch by a middleman that rasped the young fisherman on the raw. It was too far for the Snatch It to make market herself.

"Look at that thing coming, Mr. Bassett," said Barzilla, "She throws up a wave two feet high, if it's an inch."

"Turbine," returned Baby Laird's father. "I used to—Well, they are fast craft. If your boat had a quarter of her speed, Barzilla, you'd be fixed good."

"Ain't it so? Le's see which of us will make the breach first."

He shifted his helm a little. Bassett went forward, in readiness to drop the jib when the Snatch It shot into the narrow waterway. He had been used to sailing boats and small yachts since boyhood, and his previous summers at Block Island had added to his sea-knowledge until, as Barzilla said, he was as good as any "blooded banker." Barzilla had let his crew go and insisted on paying Joe Bassett instead.

The latter kept a curious gaze upon the White Streak, which indeed did leave a white streak in her wake as well as push a foaming wave before her. The city man was not long puzzled as to the turbine's identity; but he was amazed by seeing her in these waters.

"I've seen that thing before," drawled Barzilla. "Her owner's some big bug. Looks like she was sent for an' was trying to git there, eh?"

"She can travel. But surely her owner isn't on Block Island?"

"Dunno. Ain't heard. Mebbe he's aboard her now."

Bassett turned his back on the swiftly sailing launch, which shot across the bows of the double-ender and took the strait in advance. The Snatch It had to tack and beat across the pond to the steam trawler, the skipper of which was buying fish and lobsters for the New London market. The turbine had already docked.

The moment the White Streak was tied up, the saturnine man whom Carolyn May had twice had occasion to observe, landed and set his feet toward the Orowoc House. René, who acted as engineer of the turbine as he did chauffeur of the large car, was left aboard with two Japanese boys who made up the crew.

The black-browed man addressed himself to the clerk of the hotel with an assurance that made that functionary give him his best attention. He asked for the man so well known in the financial world, and mentioned his own name.

"He expects me. Shall I go right up?" he asked.

"I am sorry, sir. The gentleman and his lady have just gone to drive—not ten minutes ago. They'll remain all day. I am instructed to tell you that they will lunch at the South Light and that you are to come across the island and meet him there. First they drive to the West Side, I understand. You can hire a rig, sir."

"I know the island," said the dark man, briefly. "I'll walk."

The hotel carriage had appeared according to promise at the lower end of the Ball lane on this forenoon. Carolyn and Edna, with Prince barking madly before them, raced down from the cottage in the dooryard of which Mrs. Cameron, the baby's mother, and Molly Ball stood to watch the departure of the picnic party.

"I presume it is perfectly safe to let the children go with those people," Carolyn's mother said. "They seem very nice—and somehow I pity that woman. She looks so unhappy and discontented, except when she is talking to Carolyn or playing with your baby," she added, smiling at the pale lady.

"Land sake! you needn't fret 'bout them," declared the confident Molly I. "If they've taken a shine to the baby, Miz Bassett, mebbe they'll do something harnsome for him. You read 'bout rich folks doing such things."

"But," murmured the baby's mother, hugging him more closely at the thought, "we do not want people to patronize us, Laird and I. Even for the baby's sake. We will not always be poor. I am sure if Laird once gets into some business for which he is really fitted our hard times will be over. We do not wish to be objects of charity."

"Wal, I dunno," said the practical island girl. "Wouldn't call it charity. What you get is so much gained, 'cording to my notion. I'm as independent as the next one; but these folks that have got too much money ought to be let to spend it. And if they wanted to spend it on me or mine, I sh'd let 'em!"

"Here come the Block Island Indians!" exclaimed the man in the carriage. "Think you can stand such a wild crew for all day, Mother?"

"Let them climb right in here by me," said his wife, moving over on the rear seat of the carriage to make room for the little girls, and smiling more warmly upon them than Carolyn remembered having seen her smile before. "I only wish Baby Laird were coming too."

"Oh, I know he'd be glad to come," said Carolyn, getting into the carriage after Edna. "But, you see, he wouldn't have his bottle. And it's awfully important that he should have his bottle on time, you know."

"It's awfully important that we all have our meals on time," said their host, laughing. "That is why I had the hotel people pack that hamper for us that is strapped on behind."

That was a wonderfully interesting drive for the little girls. The man seemed to know quite as much about Block Island as Captain Ozias Littlefield.

The road took them within sight of the West Side life-saving station; but they did not stop there on this occasion. They drove on past the stone cottage and the strip of stone wall built by the last Indian who lived on the island. His forefathers had owned Block Island in the beginning and called it Manisses. This last Indian had built stone fences all his life and built them so well that they would never fall unless the island suffered an earthquake shock.

There were a good many gates to open and shut during the drive, for the party passed through private property most of the way to the lighthouse. They viewed all that was visible of the ancient wreck of the Killies, and the black reefs and dashing waves along the south shore of the island looked dangerous even to the little girls.

"What an awful thing it would be if a ship sailed right in here and bumped its nose on these rocks!" Edna exclaimed. "I wouldn't want to see that."

"I guess the folks couldn't jump ashore from, the ship, could they?" queried Carolyn.

"Not very well," their friend and host agreed. "That is why they have life savers all around the island. The life savers help to get people off the wrecks—when there are any wrecks."

"My goodness!" Edna gasped. "I shall be scared to go home. Suppose the steamboat is wrecked? Why don't they have railroads running to this island? Then there would be no ships wrecked here."

"Why, how you talk, Edna Price!" said Carolyn. "They can't build railroads on water!"

"One of these ox teams would be safe to ride over here on, wouldn't it?" chuckled their host.

"But there isn't any street," cried Carolyn again with emphasis. "Why, that's just as ridiculous as Edna wanting a railroad built!"

"Perhaps it is," admitted her friend meekly.

They came at length to the wind-blown downs and the lighthouse. The face of the bluff here was very steep and rocky. The Atlantic billows rolled in ponderously from the open sea and dashed their spray in places half way to the brink of the bank. Out at sea many great sailing ships as well as steam-propelled craft went past—coastwise ships and those European-bound and returning from distant ports.

There were naval vessels in sight, too—several submarine chasers and a destroyer or two; while in the distance a smudge of smoke against the sky, the children were told, marked the swift passage of a dreadnaught.

Then their friend took them to the lighthouse, the keeper of which treated them very nicely indeed. He allowed them to climb to the lamp room and showed them all about the working of the great lantern. They went out on the gallery, too, and the keeper let them look through his glasses at a triangular white spot which he said was the riding sail of the lightship on Nantucket Shoals, thirty miles from the island.

Beside the lighthouse itself was another building in which was housed the fog siren—that solemn-toned horn the voice of which Edna had at first believed was the "mewing" of a cow. And when she had seen the mechanism that governed it, Edna declared that it "ought to sound as loud as an elephant, let alone a cow."

"But you never heard an elephant, Edna Price!" cried Carolyn. "How do you know an elephant's voice is any louder than a cow's?"

"My goodness! Isn't an elephant bigger?"

"Why, voices don't go according to size. Baby Laird, when he wants to, can scream louder than I can—and he isn't half as big," said the philosophical Carolyn. "And that old bullfrog in Uncle Smith Dodge's tughole can make more noise when he barks than Prince."

They might have had to argue the case before their host had there not been a welcome call to dinner by the shining-faced George, who had spread a cloth upon a flat rock in the shade of another rock, and under his mistress' direction set forth such a repast that the little girls' eyes sparkled when they saw it.

"Isn't it nice to be rich?" Edna whispered to Carolyn. "Oh, how I love that salad! And lady fingers! Dear me, Car'lyn May, don't you wish you could eat every day like this?"

"No," responded Carolyn, promptly. "For I know I should make myself sick if I did. This is a party, and parties would be no fun if we had 'em ev'ry day."

This practical statement brought no rejoinder from Carolyn's friend, for she was staring at a stranger who was approaching. Carolyn turned her head to look, too. It was the saturnine man who had unpleasantly impressed Carolyn on two previous occasions—once at the Corners and once in the poor tenement house in New York where Baby Laird had lived.

"Ah! Here he is now!" their host said quickly, and rose to meet the newcomer. Although he seemed to have expected the saturnine man, Carolyn did not think his employer was glad to see him. His brow bent sternly.

What they at first said the little girls did not hear, for they met some yards from the flat rock at which the party was lunching. The lady gave the person who had interrupted their repast no attention whatever.

But suddenly Carolyn heard her name called. She looked over her shoulder and saw her friend beckoning to her.

"My husband wishes to speak to you, child," said the lady.

Carolyn May got up, excused herself politely, and ran to join her host and the dark-browed fellow. The latter stared at the little girl with surprise as well as chagrin, when she drew near.

"I recognize your informant," he said harshly, turning from the child to his employer. "Heaven—and René—only know where we were. Up in some backwoods settlement. We were actually lost, sir. Otherwise we would not have got so far off the right trail to Boston."

"Boston! You were no more on the road to Boston where you were due, than you were to the moon," said the gentleman sharply. "You knew better—both you and René. Go back to the dock and wait till I return tonight. I'll have something to say to you then."

He turned his back on the dark complexioned man, whose brow was more deeply corrugated than usual. The latter's angry gaze was fixed upon Carolyn and it seemed to threaten the unconscious child. Had she observed this malevolent glance the little girl might have recalled the dream she had had regarding this man and the chauffeur the night the Truefelt House caught fire.

CHAPTER XXV

ALMOST

Barzilla Ball was, like most single-minded people, thoroughly confident that the project he had evolved regarding the swordfishing industry had no flaw in it. And perhaps it was perfect. As Joe Bassett pointed out, Barzilla made his sole mistake in determining that he, Bassett, was turned up by the plough of Good Luck particularly to be the partner Barzilla was looking for.

"You don't have to repeat your patter in relation to the swordfishing game to me. I believe it all," Bassett said, as they landed after mooring the Snatch It at her buoy. "And if I had the money I would strike hands with you on the spot."

"That's what I want to hear you say, Mr. Bassett," declared the swordfisher.

"But what good does it do you—or me? That 'if' is in the way. You need a partner with at least two thousand dollars. Where would I get such a sum?"

"I don't know, Mr. Bassett. But I feel that you could get it if you would only believe you could."

"Great Scott! You talk like Carolyn's father. He was for ever telling me while I was on the Beacon that I had no self-confidence. But I can't go up to a man and knock him down and take his purse away from him," and he laughed rather bitterly.

"I dunno," drawled Barzilla, "but even that would be less of a sin than lettin' opportunity slip right by you without a-grabbing of his fetlock."

"Forelock you mean, Barzilla."

"Fetlock, or forelock—it amounts to the same. Gettin' a strangle hold on opportunity is the meanin'. And that's what you ought to be doin' of right now."

"How?"

"You've got slathers of friends. You went to college with a bunch of men who have plenty of money. You can borrow on your bare word more than I could scrape together by givin' my note to ev'ry man on the island."

"The responsibility would be more than I could bear, Barzilla," Joe Bassett answered quietly. "I have been neck deep in debt. I still owe some money. Believe me, I would starve—and so would my wife—rather than be borne down by the weight of debt again."

"But this is a dead-open-an'-shut business proposition."

"May be. I believe it is. But who could I go to who is within reach to ask for money? On this island, for instance?"

"How 'bout Ben Truefelt?"

"Ben's got his hands full after that fire in his hotel."

"I s'pose so. Wish't you knowed the big bug Carolyn's goin' picnickin' with, today. They say he's got plenty o' money."

"Who are those people?" asked Bassett curiously.

"I dunno. He's a mighty st'arn lookin' old guy. I'm so desp'rit, Mr. Bassett, I'm near 'bout tempted to tackle him on my own hook nex' time I see him talkin' to Car'lyn May. And his wife's so stuck on that baby o' yourn—"

"Good heavens, Barzilla! I can't make profit because those people are interested in little Laird," cried Bassett in something like horror. It seemed his wife's opinion and his own were much alike on this point.

The two young men, having tramped across the island with their gear, on approaching the lane leading up to the cottage on the bluff saw the hotel carriage standing in the highroad. Carolyn and Edna had come home from the picnic. The moneyed man sat on the front seat beside the driver.

"There he is now!" exclaimed Barzilla. "And they say he's so rich that two thousand wouldn't be a fleabite to him."

"You don't realize how tender the financial skin of the wealthy may be. It sometimes seems that the more money a man has the more he groans over a fleabite."

But Bassett gazed at the man in the carriage with keen scrutiny. When Barzilla again glanced at him the former hotel clerk had pulled the peak of his tarpaulin over his face and did not look again in the direction of the carriage. Indeed, taking a short-cut path over the roadside ditch, he headed toward the house without further word.

The fisherman approached the carriage with curiosity. Carolyn had run up for Baby Laird and he was now crowing and kicking in the lady's arms. Carolyn was saying to their host:

"We're awf'ly obliged, Edna and me, for the picnic. It was one of the very nicest parties I was ever to."

"Yes," agreed Edna, who was suddenly tongue-tied.

"We never would have seen so much of this island if it hadn't been for you," continued Carolyn May. "And I think it is an awfully interesting place, don't you, sir?"

"If you mean that it is as dead as a doornail, and therefore an ideal place for a vacation, I agree with you," said her friend, grimly smiling. "Have you ever sailed around the island—seen it from all sides?"

"Oh, no, sir. Barzilla's going to take us out in his Snatch It some day when he isn't swordfishin'. But he hasn't got to it, yet. Why! here's Barzilla now."

"The baby's father, Henry," the lady whispered. Baby Laird was putting out his arms to the broadly-smiling fisherman who could not fail to be a favourite with the little man.

"You've a fine baby here," said Carolyn's friend.

"I cal'late we have," replied Barzilla, coming nearer to the carriage. "Your servant, Marm."

The invalid bowed. "The little girl says you are a swordfisher," continued the man, who never found any other man too uninteresting to talk to—on his vacations!

"I am," agreed Barzilla. "Got the last double-ender ever built in this port."

"Is it still a paying business?"

"It makes us a livelihood. But 'twould pay better if me an' my partner had the capital we need to build a shed for saltin' swordfish when the market's low, and so go at it right."

"That your partner?" asked the man, nodding toward the departing Joe Bassett.

"Yes, sir. And a mighty nice feller, if he is a city man. You know, we don't us'ally think much of off men about boat an' gear. But he's all right. If he had two thousand dollars to put into my scheme I cal'late he'd be put' nigh perfect," said Barzilla, smiling again broadly.

Carolyn's friend continued to stare after the figure plodding up the lane toward the cottage on the bluff. The baby, in his eagerness, almost leaped into Barzilla's arms.

"He knows his father, it seems," said the woman, in a more friendly tone than was usually her way.

"I cal'late he do, Marm," said Barzilla politely. "But I ain't his father."

"No?" she said in well-bred surprise.

"No, Marm. There goes his pop," pointing to Joe Bassett in the distance. "This little Tom-cod's an off child. But he's might' nice folks."

"Who is his father?" asked the woman quickly, staring now as did her husband after the figure plodding up the lane.

"My partner, Marm," replied Barzilla, simply. "Or, he would be my partner, fair an' full, if he could scrape together 'bout two thousand dollars to put into the firm against my Snatch It and my 'know how.'"

The woman turned swiftly to look at her husband. "The dear little baby!" she murmured.

There must have been something more in her look and tone than was apparent in the mere words she said, for the man spoke to Barzilla as the carriage rolled away:

"Tell Mr. Laird to come to see me. I may be able to help you boys out. I take a flyer sometimes for old times' sake. I was longshore-bred, myself."

"Good-bye! Good-bye!" shouted the children after the carriage.

Barzilla said: "He ain't got Mr. Bassett's name jest right, has he? But, hi gummy! looks though there might be a chance't for us to git what we want. Glad I spoke as I did."

Mr. Cameron came again, and when he returned to New York on Sunday afternoon, Edna went home with him. She departed with one desire unsatisfied. There had been no opportunity for the little girls to make another attempt to unveil the mystery of the Double O's wooden legs.

"But you just keep at 'em till they tell you, Carolyn May," commanded Edna. "I shall expect to hear all about 'em when you come back home. To think of it! Two cousins and both wearing wooden legs. I never did!"

Carolyn and her mother and Prince drove over to the dock in Uncle Smith Dodge's carriage to see Edna and Papa Cameron off.

The White Streak still lay in the Great Salt Pond; but Carolyn saw nothing of her friends who were staying at the Orowoc House. And the turbine meant nothing to her, for she did not see the dark complexioned man or René about the dock.

The little girl might have been rather lonesome when Edna was gone, except that there was so very much to do about the cottage on the bluff—and elsewhere. She had always Prince and Nebuchadnezzar to play with; and when she could go down on the shore, there were so many curious things to find and to make playthings of that the child seldom thought about being lonely.

She realized that there was something wrong with her friends, "the pale lady" and her husband. It came to the little girl's mind that Baby Laird's father was supposed to have done something very wrong when they were all at home in New York. Her papa had been very angry with him for it and Carolyn wondered if he had "done it again."

The baby's mother often talked very seriously with Baby Laird's father. Even Barzilla looked oddly at him. Once Carolyn heard the fisherman say:

"Looks to me like 'twas your chance't, Mr. Bassett. Old Man Opportunity, like we was talking about once, is right where you can grab his fetlock."

But the young man shook his head silently and his eyes were so grave and sad that, had he not been such a very, very naughty man Carolyn would certainly have tried to comfort him. Even the pale lady seemed to think he was not doing the right thing in refusing to approach the capitalist at the Orowoc House as he had been bidden; so how could Carolyn seek to sympathize with Mr. Joe Bassett?

She sat with the pale lady and her baby more than she had before. Was it because the child felt that her hopeful chatter and the radiance of her sunny heart was helpful to her sorrowful friend? Even her mother was often puzzled to know just what went on in Carolyn May's busy brain.

These days the little girl did not play "If I Were Rich" in the pale lady's hearing. It seemed to Carolyn May that her friend's heartache and despair was so closely connected with her husband's lack of money that the mere suggestion of her former state of wealth might add to the pale lady's unhappiness.

And that she was unhappy none could doubt who saw her. The pallor of her cheek, her feebleness, and her mental as well as physical weariness, were so marked that everybody noticed it. Molly Ball said she never knew an "off" person to come to the island and seem to get so little good of it as Baby Laird's mother.

The crew were now recalled to the life saving station, and Captain Ozias Littlefield sent word by one of the surfmen that he was going to be at home at the Portuguese's cabin on a certain day, for he and Oly had a boatload of pollock to split and salt. Carolyn was invited to visit the shack and stay "over chowder time." Barzilla was going down to the cove for a wagon load of shack fish to bury under the seaweed pile for next year's garden fertilizer; and the little girl rode with him behind Beppo, the pony.

At a certain point on the road Barzilla stopped the pony to let Carolyn get down. She was going across the spur of the sandhill by the path on which Mr. Oly Littlefield had once come to grief. This was the nearer way to the cabin.

For once Prince was content to trail at his mistress' heels. He had trotted all the way behind Barzilla's empty wagon, and Barzilla was in a hurry and had urged the pony.

So Carolyn was the first to come in sight of the open beach. She could see the roof of the fisherman's shanty; but nearer—right under the bank where she stopped suddenly—two men sprawled.

Carolyn could see them plainly. They had evidently been walking the beach and had thrown themselves down in this sheltered place to rest. She knew them both—René, the chauffeur, and the dark man whom Carolyn May so disliked.

She squatted down in the sand, with a warning hand upon the back of Prince's neck. She had a feeling that she did not wish to let these men know that she was so near to them.

CHAPTER XXVI

COUSIN OLY'S ACCIDENT

Carolyn May had no intention of eavesdropping. She was not that sort of little girl. If she listened on occasion to what her elders were saying, she had perfect confidence in her right to do so; for Mamma and Papa Cameron never indulged in those regrettable half-speeches and hints which so often serve to impress little folk with the very things that they are expected not to hear.

If Carolyn's mother and father had anything private to discuss, they discussed it privately.

In addition, if Carolyn May chanced to report what she might hear, it was done in no spirit of tale bearing. Even in the matter of telling her friend that she had seen his motor-car at the Corners, Carolyn had been perfectly innocent of guile.

Here was the man she so disliked—not to say feared—and the chauffeur, again. She kept Prince quiet. After his long run behind the pony the dog was quite willing to go to sleep in the sand. Carolyn was tempted to go back by the path to the road, and so follow Barzilla Ball and Beppo around to the shore where the pound fishermen brought in the fish from the nets.

The two men below her were talking. René said:

"But I get nothing, Boss! I only run the risk of giving M'sieu offence and losing my job."

"Get nothing?" ejaculated the dark man in evident anger. "I saw Calvin Cummings hand you a hundred dollars in crisp twenties when he and his friends left us at Sunrise Cove. What do you mean—get nothing?"

"Ha! A hundred dol'?" cried the French Canadian excitedly. "And what is that compare' with what you make in that deal of the paper-pulp mills, Boss? Think you I do not understand what you are about? Ha! Cal Cummings and his crowd let you in on it on the ground floor, eh? You make the big money while me, René Miett, have to satisfy myself with the tip—is it not?"

He talked so queerly and so excitedly, that the little girl's interest was held closely and she remained where she was. But of course she did not understand all that the two were talking about.

The little girl's interest was closely held.

"I have to take risks, too—greater than yours, René," the dark man said, by his tone evidently wearied of the chauffeur's complaints.

"I lose my job, maybe."

"And so may I. Especially if the old man finds out who sold him out to the Cummings crowd in that matter of the pulp-mills," and the speaker laughed shortly. "He's in no pleasant mood just now. He is keeping me here at the hotel muddling over accounts like any junior clerk, while his secret agents I am sure are going through my office accounts, if not my private papers. He is suspicious."

"Ah!"

"He trusts nobody—you know that—since—Well, since the time we both have reason to remember, René."

"Sure. I 'member," growled the other sourly. "Who does not? And there you won a fortune, while I—"

The dark man sprang up angrily. He used words that showed his wrath but that made no lasting impression on Carolyn May's innocent mind.

"And you had five hundred that time for merely keeping your mouth shut," he finished. "Ungrateful dog!"

"While you got ten thousand dollars, eh?" snarled René. "I believe it! I haf always believe' it. The money came from the bank, and M'sieu was most particular about it. Then we go a second time for ten thousand—Oh, yes! I am convince' you got that first ten thousand dol', Boss. I cannot believe the young one, he take it. No!"

"What if I did?" demanded the other. "Do you think ten thousand dollars lasts forever?"

"Not when a man lives as you do, Boss. If M'sieu knew—"

"If he knew the truth about that ten thousand dollars we would both lose our jobs," growled the dark man. "And he hates to lose even ten cents—let alone ten thousand dollars."

"Who would not shrink from losing that sum? Ah!" groaned René, as they walked away.

Carolyn May had heard the sum of "ten thousand dollars" repeated so often that she was not likely to forget it at once, nor the circumstances under which she had heard it. It was clear in her mind, too, that in some way her friend who lived at the Orowoc House had lost the sum of money in question.

She waited until the chauffeur and the saturnine man had walked some distance away before she ran down to the beach and around the foot of the hill to the cabin.

The two wooden-legged men were hard at work splitting and salting the dory load of pollock they had obtained the day before. There was a big tub of salt water by the cabin door into which the fish were thrown as fast as Captain Littlefield gutted and split them. Mr. Oly Littlefield was salting the split fish, fresh from the tub, and stacking them under the lean-to, in tiers. In a few days the fish would be spread on the drying racks for more complete curing.

"Here's the leetle gal and the dog," said Captain Littlefield jovially. "How fare ye?"

"Oh, I am very well, I thank you, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield," she said. "I hope you are well—and your Cousin Oly?"

"I'm purt' pert," said the other wooden-legged man very graciously for him. "Thank ye."

Prince went and snuffed at the cockatoo man's wooden leg, and he made no objection to the dog's familiarity. Carolyn May thought he must be quite changed from what he used to be! Perhaps his having been buried in the sand had served a good purpose.

The remainder of the fish were soon split and salted and stacked. The vicinity was redolent enough of fishy odours; but Carolyn May had become pretty well used to such smells since she had begun her sojourn on Block Island.

The cousins dragged the skids of offal down to the outgoing tide and dumped it into the water. Then they washed out the tubs and cleaned up about the cabin, making all "shipshape," as Captain Ozias said.

"Sailors make purt' good housekeepers, they tell me," said the captain. "Of course, Oly don't count. He never was no sailor. Most sailin' he ever done was goin' out in that Snatch It of Barzilla's. 'Twas Enos Ball, Barzilla's father, sailed the Snatch It in them days. Oly was by way of bein' a swordfisher till his accident."

"What accident?" asked Carolyn eagerly. "When he lost his leg?"

"Yep. When he lost one of 'em," returned Captain Littlefield placidly.

"Oh, Mister Cap'n Littlefield! he hasn't got two wooden legs."

"Who said he had? Oh, I see! This here accident wasn't the cause of Oly wearing that timber-toe of his'n. Nossir!" chuckled the captain. "'Twarn't no accident that cost Oly his left laig."

"Oh!" murmured Carolyn, in much disappointment. She had thought she was on the verge of learning just how Cousin Oly, at least, came to be a cripple. But Captain Littlefield's reminiscence seemed to take him right away from that subject.

"Ye see, Oly had an accident, and he ain't never been swordfishin' since." The cockatoo man had stubbed off with a pail to a neighbour's for milk, while the captain peeled onions and potatoes for the chowder. "Fact is, he ain't no gre't love for salt water noways. One of the few Littlefields that ain't got more salt water than blood in their veins, I do assure ye! Wal, he was lucky to have a leetle prop'ty left him, Oly was, an' Sue-Betsey that he married had some cash-in-bank. So he's purt' well fixed.

"Some folks is that way," said the philosophical captain; "while some is like me—hafter work right along, fair weather or foul. Reckon if I'd lost both laigs an' my arms inter the bargain, I'd had to work for my pollock an' p'taters, jest the same."

Captain Littlefield said it cheerfully and went on before Carolyn could interpose a single question.

"Yep. Oly used to go out in the Snatch It. He never was no good in the pulpit—natcherly—'cause of his wooden laig."

"In the pulpit, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield?" queried Carolyn in surprise. "Do you mean preaching? Like Elder Knox at the Free Baptist Church?"

"My soul and small fish hooks! No!" chuckled the captain. "Pulpit's the thing Barzilla leans up against when he harpoons a fish."

"Oh! I know," said Carolyn May, nodding. "I've seen Barzilla's boat. You mean that stalky thing up in front."

"Exactly," agreed Captain Ozias. "Oly's wooden laig wouldn't let him balance out on the sprit that-a-way. But he can pull a dory as well as the next man. He'd set himself out with a harpoon an' line and a pair of oars, and he made his sheer and keep, with Enos Ball.

"Then one time Oly seen a swordfish an' Cap'n Enos seen another from the crosstrees. Enos headed for his critter; but nothin' would do but Oly had to slip overboard in his dory an' row t'other way. Ye know how con-tra-ry he is.

"Wal, Oly pulled up close on his fish—an' no denyin' a dory is fur quieter than a sailin' boat to make the kill from. Swordfishes have got the sharpest ears.

"Oly stood up, balanced his harpoon, braced his old timber-toe ag'in the thwart, an' jest before the boat nosed that swordfish's flipper, Oly made his cast. 'Twas a purty one, an' the harpoon held for fair.

"He dropped back onto the thwart and grabbed his oars. Them swordfishes is lively critters, leetle gal. They sure be," pursued the captain. "They don't sulk none when ye strike on. They fling themselves about like a whale in its death-flurry."

"The poor thing!" murmured Carolyn.

"You better save your sympathy for Oly," chuckled the story-teller. "Wait till I tell ye. That fish sounded. A swordfish with an iron in him is a mighty onsartain critter. Oly pulled hard, but he didn't know where the swordfish was. Jest the same the fish had spotted that dory."

"Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield! what happened to the swordfish?" asked Carolyn, excitedly.

Captain Littlefield chuckled once more. "Still more worried about that critter than ye be about Oly, eh? Well, he done purt' well, the swordfish did. He come right up underneath that dory and drove his sword smash through her bottom-boards like 'twas a see-gar box. Oly had his feet braced an' was pullin' like all kildee. Up come that sword an' spears bottom-boards an' Oly's laig, jest like ye'd spear a pickle on a fork."

"Oh!"

"An' there the sword stuck fast," pursued the captain. "The fish, he wriggled an' tried to pull out again, shakin' the dory like a dog playin' with a dishcloth. An' Oly was hung fast to the sword—couldn't think o' nothin' to do but to hang onto the sides of the dory an' yell blue murder!"

"Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield! was it his good leg that got stabbed by the swordfish's sword?"

"No, no! 'Twas his wooden laig, I tell ye. Held the critter's sword jammed through the thick of the timber. He made such a hullabaloo that Enos and the crew seen what was up an' they left the critter they was stalkin' an' made sail for Oly's dory. But there's no knowin' what a swordfish'll do when he gets to lashin' around permisc'ous like.

"This one Oly had struck onto was a big feller. Oly's got the sword to home now—two foot, four inches and a ha'f. That's somethin' of a sword. An' 'twas jammed tight through the bottom of the dory and Oly's laig.

"'Cast loose, Oly!' yelled Cap'n Enos when the Snatch It comes near. But Oly was rattled. All he seemed able to do was to grab the oars again and pull hard's he could.

"An' him pullin' one way and the swordfish jerkin' t'other, somethin' was bound to give, fin'ly. An' what give fust, was the straps of Oly's laig."

"Oh, my!" gasped the little girl.

"Yep. He was cast loose for fair. He went over back'ard in the dory, his good laig and the stump of t'other one an' the oars, kicking up in the air. The swordfish twitched that dory crosswise of the seas. 'Nother minute an' she was swamped an' Oly Littlefield was overboard."

"Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield!"

"That's right. That's what happened. And the water was mighty wet, too," chuckled the narrator of the tale. "Ye know how a one-laiged man swims—without his laig on him? Jest as graceful as a flat-bottomed scow goin' through a tide-rip.

"And the dory was sinkin' and fair drownin' of that swordfish," he went on. "While ev'ry time Oly came bobbin' up an' got his head out o' water, he bawled to Cap'n Enos and the crew to save his oars and the dory. Nev' mind the swordfish an' him."

"Dear me! And were they drowned after all?" queried the little girl.

"Wal, Oly warn't. And they saved his oars an' most of his gear. But they had to grapple the dory with a kedge anchor and tore it purt' near to pieces floatin' it. The swordfish tore himself loose from both harpoon and his sword, and so got away."

"My, my!" gasped Carolyn May. "Wasn't that exciting?"

"I sh'd say 'twas. 'Twas too much for Oly. He never did go swordfishin' again after that accident. It cost him a new laig, ye see."

"But—but that wasn't how he came to lose his real leg," observed the little girl.

"Who? Oly? I sh'd say not," agreed Captain Littlefield. "No, no! He'd long had a wooden laig when he got mixed up with that swordfish."

"But how did he lose his leg?" cried Carolyn May, with desperation.

"Why, I declare!" exclaimed the captain, but with a twinkle in his eyes that she did not see. "He never said a word about it to me, for a fac'. One time I come home from sea on shore leave from the old Sandusky, and here Oly was hoppin' 'round on one laig. I dunno as I ever axed him what he done with his good laig."

CHAPTER XXVII

TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS

Captain Ozias Littlefield's lack of curiosity regarding his cousin's wooden leg might have impressed a more mature mind than Carolyn May's as being rather suspicious. The little girl had suffered so many disappointments in this very matter that she merely sighed and hoped for a better occasion.

For here came Mr. Oly Littlefield himself with the pail of milk, and the matter could not be further discussed. While the captain had been relating the swordfish story he had put the chowder kettle on the pot-stove in which a brisk fire of driftwood was burning, and was trying out the pork.

Into the hot fat went the sliced onions to be browned to a golden hue; then the clam liquor into which when it was boiling the captain dumped the potatoes cut into cubes. When these were almost tender the chopped clams were put in, the mess was seasoned, and the scalded milk added carefully that it might not curdle in the chowder. When this was simmering several ship's biscuits were thrown in and the covered pot set upon the stove shelf until the seasoning should be well worked through the chowder.

"This here's a re'l fisherman's chowder," Mr. Oly Littlefield said. "I can make it myself but it never turns out same's Ozy's does. I'm like either to scorch mine or curdle it. There's a knack about gittin' it jest right, I don't dispute."

"There's a knack about doin' most things," said the captain dryly. "And it's practice gives ye the knack. Ye never did have the patience to l'arn a thing right, Oly."

The cousins wrangled in an apathetic way all through the meal. But Carolyn May knew that was their habit, and perhaps they would not have been happy had they lived together in perfect peace.

Altogether the little girl spent a very pleasant day with the Double O's, and Captain Littlefield "set her a piece on the way" when she started homeward along the patrol path.

They met Surfman Number Two, who was the captain's nephew, walking his beat to the key-box at the breach, having set forth from the life-saving station at four o'clock. It was foggy off at sea, and he said it would be thick inshore in an hour or so.

"This leetle gal will get to Barzilla's long before that," said Captain Littlefield. "So I'll stub back along o' you, Cephas. Good-bye, Car'lyn."

"Good-bye, sir," said Carolyn May. "And I had a nawful nice time with you and Mr. Oly. Come on, Princey! We must run home now."

"Guess 'twill be safe 'nough to let the child go home alone?" said the captain to Cephas.

"Ain't nobody but Island folks along yon', 'cept two fellers 't took supper with us at the station," said Cephas. "Nice 'nough men, fur off folks. Give us all see-gars. I notice they set off after me an' Alec Rose started out on our beats at eight bells. Yon's them, now."

He waved his hand. Two figures were coming over the distant rise beyond Barzilla Ball's cottage, at that distance seeming no larger than Carolyn May herself. The little girl and the dog were running blithely, following the patrol path.

"All right," returned Captain Littlefield, and turned back along the beaten track with his nephew.

The little girl and her dog had passed Uncle Smith Dodge's house before she noticed the two men approaching. Although the dusk was falling, she recognized the saturnine man at that distance.

Now, Carolyn May was no "'fraid-cat." She would have scorned such a title had any of her schoolmates flung it at her. But that dark-faced man with his black, thick brows and glittering eyes, made her shudder. Nor did she like René much, and she soon recognized the chauffeur as the second man coming along the path.

She ran back of Uncle Smith's calf pen to hide until the two men should have passed. From that spot she suddenly observed a third man who had just climbed from the beach. It was Baby Laird's father, and he was headed homeward, too. She was about to join him, when the two others showed that they knew and were about to speak to the baby's father.

It was the saturnine man who addressed himself to Joe Bassett, while René held back.

"Well, well!" he said, advancing with hand outstretched. "I wondered why I did not run across you. I declare! You look well. Brown as a berry. It must agree with you here. And the wife and baby?"

"Are well," said the young man. He quite ignored the extended hand of the secretary. His glance went to the chauffeur and he nodded. "Howdy, René?" he said.

"Thank you, sir. I enjoy my health," the French Canadian said; but he did not draw near.

"I failed to hear from you in regard to that proposition I was enabled to make you, Mr. Joe," the other man said, dropping his voice. "That Arizona proposition is still open for you."

"The offer was inspired, I presume?" young Bassett ventured.

"Naturally I could not have spoken of the mining company's need without his permission," was the reply.

"And if I do not accept?"

"Mr. Joe," said the man, urgently, "you know without being told by me that when the old man is determined on a thing he will carry it through, in spite of everything. If he has made up his mind that you and yours will suit him better in Arizona than here, to Arizona you'll go, or you'll be sorry."

"If I can make my living here in the East—Why! Inness, I've a chance to stay right here on this island and go into partnership with a man in a good, paying business."

"If you do you'll be sorry," snapped the secretary. "And perhaps your partner will suffer, too. The old man is ruthless—you know that! Once he is determined—"

Joe Bassett's head had come up like that of a spurred horse, and his shoulders squared themselves with a gesture of decision.

"Who is he, that he should rule all the world?" he demanded hotly. "I'll not be driven, Inness!"

"You mean you do not wish to be driven," said the other, with sarcasm. "But he will reach you."

"Let him try."

"You make my duty very unpleasant," said the dark man, in a different tone. "You know that what I am told to do I must do."

"Yes. I know your kind," returned Bassett, not without a sneer. "If the lion hunts, the jackal follows the trail."

"Is that the best word you have for a man who would be your friend, Mr. Bassett?" exclaimed the secretary, with anger.

"I think it is," Bassett said coldly. "I doubt your friendship, Inness. I have always doubted it. And I don't feel like being driven from pillar to post by anybody. If I suffer him to do this to me now, he'll do it again if he feels so inclined. If he is going to hound me, let him begin it here—around New York, where he is known and I am known. You can give him that word, if you like."

"I tell you right now," Inness returned warmly, "that if you try to establish yourself in any way on this island, for instance, he will ruin you, and whoever you are in partnership with."

"It was quite unintentional, I assure you, that I selected this island to live on. He never used to come here. With half a dozen summer homes to select from, what brings him to Block Island, I wonder?"

"It is his wife, I believe. She doesn't care for the old places," said the secretary.

"Oh!" and Bassett turned away his face that the other should not see its expression. After a moment Inness said:

"I'd like a straight answer, Mr. Joe. Will you take this chance I—we—offer you?"

"You have had a straight answer. It is, 'No.'"

Bassett turned on his heel and pushed on along the patrol path toward the Ball cottage. The secretary and René stood for a minute whispering and looking after him before they moved in the opposite direction. The seafog was now trailing in long whisps over the edge of the bluff. The night was falling.

Not until the two were quite hidden in the mist did Carolyn May come out of hiding. She had not heard much of what passed between the secretary and Joe Bassett, and she had not understood what it signified at all. But she felt that she could not join Baby Laird's father on the way home.

Besides, if the baby's father was mixed up with that dark-complexioned man whom she so disliked, she felt that she could speak to nobody regarding this meeting on the patrol path.

It did not, however, cause her to forget the ten thousand dollars she had heard the secretary and René talking about earlier in the day. To Carolyn, who loved to play the game of "If I Were Rich," ten thousand dollars opened a vista of possibilities that fed her imagination for several days.

She had gained the impression from what the two men had said that her friend at the Orowoc House had lost the ten thousand dollars. She wondered if he knew he had lost it. Perhaps he had so much money that he couldn't count it all, and he had not yet missed the ten thousand in question.

If she or the pale lady had ten thousand dollars, how much they could do with it! Why, perhaps the pale lady could buy back the beautiful old home she had more than once told Carolyn about—the rambling old Colonial house with the pillars in front and the lawn slanting down to the Hudson River. And she could go to Country Clubs, and have parties, and ride in automobiles, just as she had before she had married Baby Laird's father.

Sometimes Carolyn May had wondered if her friend was not just a little sorry that she had ever married at all. She had been so poor, and had seen so much trouble since that time. And she was still so beautiful, with her shining hair and delicate complexion, that it seemed almost wicked (Carolyn had heard her mother say this) that the pale lady could not wear clothes befitting her beauty.

Here they were—the "Lairds," as Carolyn May always thought of them—living again almost from hand to mouth; for what the man could do for Barzilla barely paid for their food and lodging. In the evening he often sat alone on the stone bench outside the cottage smoking, and did not even speak to the pale lady, nor to anybody else.

Indeed, he must have done something very, very wrong, Carolyn thought sadly, for everybody to so look at him askance. She was tempted—her tender little heart was fairly wrenched by the sight of his silent woe—to climb up beside him and try to give him comfort. But somehow, from the very first, Carolyn of the Sunny Heart had found Joe Bassett difficult. He was one who shrank from revealing his heart even to a child.

She understood that it was money matters that troubled him. If they only had that ten thousand dollars those two men had talked about! If the pale lady had so much money, the little girl was sure, she would buy nothing less than a gold carriage for Baby Laird and a beautiful fur robe to put in it for the winter. And then the baby's father could do what Barzilla wanted him to do, whatever that was, and they would all be happy again.

"Wouldn't you?" she asked the pale lady one day, as she sat beside her and the baby was asleep.

Carolyn had been thinking so hard about the ten thousand dollars and about her friend's trouble, that she came out plump with this query without realizing that she spoke aloud.

"Wouldn't I what, Carolyn May?" asked the pale lady from the hammock.

"Be happy again if you had all that money?" said the child.

"I do not know what you are talking about, my dear," the pale lady confessed.

"Oh, of course you don't!" exclaimed Carolyn, laughing. "What am I thinking of? You don't know about that ten thousand dollars, do you?"

"What ten thousand dollars, child?"

"That my friend from the Orowoc House lost."

"Your friend—Did he tell you he lost such a sum?" the pale lady asked with surprise.

"Oh, no! Maybe he doesn't know about it. But I do."

"Goodness, Carolyn May!" exclaimed her friend, "how could you learn such a secret if the gentleman did not tell you himself? And you don't suppose for a moment that he could lose such a sum without knowing it?"

"Why, I'm sure," the little girl explained, "that those two men who know all about it never told him."

The pale lady saw that there really was something in this matter besides a flight of Carolyn's imagination. She tried to get at the foundation of the little girl's surprising statement.

On her part Carolyn May endeavoured to explain about the dark-browed man and René the chauffeur. The little girl felt some embarrassment, as she had all along, about speaking of the time when her friend's baby carriage was wrecked by the automobile that René drove, so she slurred over that fact now. The pale lady did not grasp the significance of the couple at the Orowoc House being the same who had occupied the automobile when the accident near Central Park had happened.

She did, however, gain the idea that there were men about of whom Carolyn felt some fear. She did not wish to create any anxiety in Mrs. Cameron's mind by speaking to her about it. But when her husband came home, she took him into her confidence regarding Carolyn May's remarkable story.

"I wonder if it is quite safe for her to run about this wild country as she does?" was her concluding observation. "Those men—"

Joe Bassett had a suspicion as to who the two men were, in spite of the description Carolyn had given his wife: "One of them's a dark, scowly man, and the other talks funny."

"I'll look them up," Bassett said hastily to his wife. "I do not think they are people who will harm Carolyn May."

"But what do you suppose it was they were talking about when she overheard them? Ten thousand dollars! Can they be intending to rob that man at the Orowoc House?"

"More likely they have robbed him already," her husband said. "But I will look into it, if you are afraid for Carolyn. I won't go out with Barzilla tomorrow."

"Oh, Laird! Can't we possibly meet Barzilla's offer? 'Great trees from little acorns grow,' you know, my dear," and she tried to smile. "A fish-packing business may lead to greater things. And this seems so good a chance for you—"

"But if we have no money, Girl?"

"Isn't it possible for you to borrow it of any friend? Oh, my dear! I shrink from that journey to Arizona. Think! if we got there and were stranded? This may be a trick of that man you call Inness. You know, Laird, you do not trust him."

"True. But his employer must be behind the offer. It is the first spark of interest he has shown in our affairs since I left home."

"And is it interest in our well-being now?" she cried. "Oh! I wish I could believe it, Laird. But I am afraid of your father—I am! I am!"

"Hush, Girl! Don't talk that way. Yet, I have no means of knowing what is in his mind regarding us," he added, sadly.

"Why, Laird!" she cried desperately, "the man who thinks so much of Carolyn and whose wife has taken such a fancy to the baby would be more our friend than your father. Why won't you go to see him at the Orowoc House? Barzilla says he made an open offer to help you—"

"Without knowing who I am," interrupted Bassett hoarsely.

"What of that? Are you too proud to accept a business favour—for my sake? For Baby Laird's sake?"

"You know whether I love you or not, Girl," he said, his voice broken, but turning his face aside that she should not see his emotion. "If it was possible I would do as you—and Barzilla—ask. I will accept what my father offers me, through Inness, if I must; but I cannot beg money of any man. And to go to the Orowoc House on such an errand would be begging."

She said no more. Her beautiful eyes filled and she bent her head, hiding her face from him. Bassett stared down at her with strange yearning in his countenance. Yet he whispered: "I cannot do that—I cannot!"

It was a significant moment in their lives. After that even Carolyn May saw that there was a rift in the bond of perfect love and confidence that had heretofore existed between the pale lady and her husband.

CHAPTER XXVIII

"MURDER WILL OUT"

The sunny heart of Carolyn was vastly troubled by the unhappiness she saw about her. As Aunty Rose Kennedy would have said, "everything was at sixes and sevens."

"And I truly-looly wish we hadn't come away from there, Mamma Cam'ron," she sighed.

"Come away from where, dear?" her mother asked.

"From the Corners, and Uncle Joe, and Aunt Mandy, and Aunty Rose Kennedy, and Freda, and dear little Car'lyn Mandy, too! I love Baby Laird; but Car'lyn Amanda is our owniest own—isn't she?"

"Well," agreed her mother, "she is a near relative, at least."

"Yes. She is a relative of ours, isn't she? And you can do more for relatives—and they can do more for you—than other folks. Now, wouldn't it be nice if my friend at the Orowoc House was a relative of Baby Laird's father? Then he could go to him and get all the money he wanted—couldn't he?"

"Sh! It isn't nice to talk about other people's private affairs, Carolyn," admonished her mother.

"Why, mamma! 'tisn't private affairs, is it? It's the pale lady's affairs and Mr. Laird's affairs. And both Miss Molly and Barzilla are int'rested in it. And I'm sure Papa Cam'ron and you and me are awf'ly anxious 'bout Mr. Laird getting money so he can salt swordfish with Barzilla.

"So if he was related to my friend at the Orowoc House I guess likely he could go to him and get the money he wants. Barzilla thinks so," concluded Carolyn.

Her mother's curiosity was suddenly aroused again.

"Carolyn May," she asked, "what is that gentleman's name?"

"My friend?" the little girl asked complacently.

"Yes."

"His name is Henry. That is what the lady calls him. I heard her."

"I mean his last name."

"Oh, I never did ask him that," confessed Carolyn May. "Must all folks have last names? My friend's wife doesn't call him by it, like Mrs. Bridget Dorgan calls her husband."

"No; I presume she doesn't," smiled Mrs. Cameron. "Really, I suppose I should know more about these people with whom you spend so much time," she added reflectively.

"Why, my dear!" her little daughter exclaimed, "I know just lots about them. They live on a street named Riverside Drive. Didn't Papa Cam'ron take me and Prince there, Mamma? And I am to come to see them there after we all go back home in the fall. And they have a great big automobile, and the lady will come after me in it. She said she would. And bring me home again. Of course, if you are willing, Mamma. It is a be-a-u-ti-ful automobile. You just ought to see it."

"But Carolyn May!" gasped her mother in surprise. "Where did you ever see that automobile?"

"Why, that is so!" laughed the little girl. "I never told you 'bout that, did I? I forgot. Why, Mamma Cam'ron, this man and his wife are those people whose auto ran down my pale lady's go-cart. Don't you 'member? Wasn't it funny that they came to Block Island for the summer, too? And of course they didn't mean to smash Baby Laird's carriage. I didn't say anything to my pale lady 'bout their being the same folks," added the thoughtful little girl, "because maybe she would be afraid to have Baby Laird with them. But they just love babies. The lady had one herself once—a baby boy like Laird. But—but I guess she must have lost it, from what she said. Just like Aunty Rose lost her three, you know, Mamma."

"Those people ran down the baby's go-cart with their car?" murmured Mrs. Cameron. "And to whom Joe Bassett returned the twenty dollars the man gave Carolyn? He was not too proud to accept a carriage from Carolyn and me; but he refused assistance from those people! How did Mr. Bassett know to whom the money should be returned? Ah! his wife must have recognized the couple," decided Mrs. Cameron. "I declare! if these are the same people, then the Bassetts know their identity. If Mr. Bassett would not accept the twenty dollars for the wrecked carriage, of course he would accept no greater favour from that man.

"It is plain who they are," she decided, though, not aloud. "Lewis must be told about it. I wish he were here right now to advise me."

But Carolyn's father was not expected for another fortnight. Meanwhile there was something that might arise to force Joe Bassett and his wife and baby to leave Block Island hurriedly.

Bassett was grim-lipped, if not sullen looking. He was a man whose nature it was to bear trouble alone and silently. He might, Mrs. Cameron feared, accept the Arizona offer and start with his family for the West almost any day.

Carolyn May did not suspect this possibility as being at all immediate. She felt deeply for "the Lairds" nevertheless, and did all that her sunny heart dictated in the matter of cheerful prattle and friendly acts for the pale lady and her baby.

She was a very thoughtful little girl these days, too. The ten thousand dollars she had heard the secretary and René talking about made a lasting impression on her mind; and because the pale lady was in such trouble because of the lack of money, it was only natural that thought of the money loss of the man at the Orowoc House should be continually stirring in her busy brain.

"It is wonderful—" Carolyn said to him the next time she saw him. He was driving alone with his negro coachman on this occasion. She climbed into the back of the hotel carriage with him to ride to the life-saving station, Mamma Cameron having given her permission. "It's wonderful what folks can do with money," she went on.

"Indeed?" questioned the man with sudden harshness. "Are you money-mad, too, my little lady?"

"Oh, no! I'm not mad at all. I'm just as pleasant," explained Carolyn, rather puzzled. "But sometimes, you know, I spend money in my 'magination. I call it playing 'If I Were Rich.' And my pale lady used to play it with me. Only, she did used to be rich her own self, and she can tell all about it."

"You are speaking of the baby's mother?" he asked with sudden attention. "Isn't that what you called the woman whose carriage our car crushed that time in New York? 'The pale lady'?"

"Oh, yes, sir."

"And was it she who sent back that twenty dollar bill to me?" he demanded, eying the child curiously.

"I guess her husband sent it back."

"Mr. Laird?"

"Yes, sir."

"Proud, are they?" snapped the man. "Can they afford pride, I wonder?"

But Carolyn May could not answer that. She only said slowly:

"Well, the pale lady doesn't care to play my game any more. I spect it's 'cause they want real money so bad that she don't feel like talking 'bout make-believe money."

"What do they want money for?" asked her friend.

"I don't just know. But it's something Barzilla wants him to do, I guess, and he can't do it without money—quite a lot of money," said Carolyn innocently. "Of course, I've got some money myself. But the pale lady and her husband aren't folks you could give money to. They are not like Johnny O'Harrity's folks who live in our basement."

"No?"

"No, indeed! They—they respect themselves too much, my mamma says. But my! they could do lots if they had—well—maybe ten thousand dollars."

"Quite a sum, for a fact. What would you do, Carolyn May, if you had that amount of money?"

"Oh!" the little girl cried suddenly. "There's that ten thousand dollars that you lost. You 'member that?"

The change of expression in her friend's face would have startled the little girl had she seen it. It was full half a minute before he spoke again.

"What do you know about that, Carolyn?" he asked harshly.

"Why, I thought you must know about it!" she prattled on. "But those men spoke as though maybe you didn't."

"What men?"

"The one who works for you—that came to the picnic, you know. You 'member? The dark, scowly man. And that other one who is your chauffeur."

"My secretary and René? Tell me what they said," the man commanded sternly. "When did you hear them talking—and where?"

"Why," explained Carolyn, fearing now that she had done or said something altogether wrong, "it was when I went down to call on the wooden-legged gentlemen at the Portugoosy cabin."

"The—the who? And where were you going?" demanded the man in amazement.

"Why, don't you know Mr. Cap'n Littlefield and his Cousin Oly? They're real int'resting characters. That's what my papa calls 'em. And they've got wooden legs. But I don't know how they got 'em," continued the little girl, "'cepting that they buy new ones when the old ones are worn out. And Mr. Cap'n Littlefield keeps a spare one that he only wears, so he says, on 'state and date occasions.'"

"Indeed!" murmured her friend.

"And that Portugoosy cabin is where Beppo used to live. Not Barzilla's pony, Beppo, but the man the pony is named after," added Carolyn May, eagerly. "Mr. Cap'n Littlefield and his cousin are living over there at the cabin just now."

"Hold on!" urged the man from the Orowoc House finally. "There is something that interests me more. About this ten thousand dollars you were talking of."

"Yes, sir?"

"Are you sure they said ten thousand, Carolyn May?"

"Oh, yes, sir!"

"And that it was money belonging to me?"

"My! didn't you know 'bout it at all?" she asked in surprise. "Just think! Those two men knew all about it and never told you."

"Inness and René?" demanded the man, his brow clouded again.

"Oh, yes, sir!"

"You must tell me," said her friend very seriously, "just what they said about the ten thousand dollars. It is something I must be sure of, my dear. All this time I have thought—Well, I have charged, perhaps, an innocent person with a terrible crime." He said this to himself rather than to the little girl and his countenance displayed more emotion than ever she had seen in it before. "Tell me all they said."

"Oh, I'm afraid I couldn't tell all," began Carolyn May.

"Listen!" exclaimed he eagerly. "Did they speak as though I had already lost the ten thousand dollars, or was about to lose it?"

"Oh, it's money you lost a long time ago. 'Cause the dark, scowly man told your chauffeur that he had spent it all. He must be a bad man to spend money that you lost, without saying anything to you about it."

"Undoubtedly he is," said her friend grimly. He encouraged Carolyn May to repeat all that she could remember of the conversation of the two men. He listened patiently to a deal of inconsequential prattle; but he finally got at the meat in the nut. He considered the result in information worth his effort. Being of a sharp, as well as a suspicious, mind, there was now constructed in his understanding an almost perfect theory regarding the loss of a certain ten thousand dollars, thought of which had long seared his memory.

He hardened his heart against his two unfaithful employ s while he listened to the child's story. They were still within his reach. He was the more bitter because the circumstantial evidence of the crime had pointed toward his own son.

"I'll get at René," he muttered. "I'll make him tell me all!"

Now, René was a weakling. Pressure brought to bear upon the chauffeur must quickly bring to light the truth. "Murder will out" is an old and true saying. Time brings most crime to the surface, and in this case its revelation must free the innocent of all suspicion connected with the loss of the ten thousand dollars!

CHAPTER XXIX

BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION

If her friend was disturbed in his secret thoughts by the little girl's prattle about the ten thousand dollars that had been lost, Carolyn was not likely to know it. Especially when a visit to the life-saving station was in view.

By this time the coast guard crew—captain, cook and all hands—were Carolyn May's friends, and Prince had his own plate of scraps by the kitchen door of the station.

The visitors were in time for drill. Carolyn's friend held his stop-watch at practice. From the captain's word "Go!" to the second the supposed wrecked mariner (in this case the station cook) was landed in the breeches-buoy, the time was just over three minutes.

It was very exciting, and Prince raced the sands, barking with all his might at the man flying through the air in the life-saving apparatus. Then they tried it all over and Cephas, Captain Littlefield's nephew, brought Carolyn in on the buoy, the aerial ride delighted her greatly.

"My! I must tell Edna all about this," she panted. "Edna was afraid to be wrecked; but I never shall be again. I think it must be just fun!"

"Like enough! Like enough!" said Cephas. "Just the same, leetle gal, you're some safer ashore than on a wreck."

Afterward Carolyn's friend told the negro to drive slowly back along the road and wait at the foot of Barzilla Ball's lane.

"The little girl and I will walk back along the shore and I will climb up over the bluff at the cottage and meet you," the man said to the driver.

"Oh, goody! Goody!" cried Carolyn May, clapping her hands. "That will be ever so nice!"

She had no suspicion that what she had said about the pale lady and her baby and the pale lady's husband, had stirred any curiosity in the man's mind. But this topic held quite as important a place in his thoughts at the time as the mystery of the ten thousand dollars.

He wanted to know what manner of people these Lairds were. Because of the baby, his wife had become deeply interested in them. Baby Laird reminded her so much, she said, of her own "Baby Joe" of a quarter of a century before. And, then, that this stranger baby should bear her own child's middle name—that piqued his wife's curiosity; although, to tell the truth, Carolyn May's friend had never given it his attention before.

In addition, he had given Barzilla Ball an invitation for the baby's father to come to see him, and the man had not appeared. There was something in that which the capitalist could not understand. Usually people did not have to be coaxed when he offered financial favours.

They walked along the shore as the red sun slipped down into a feather bed of cloud resting on the sea and on Montauk.

"'Red in the morning,
Sailors take warning;
Red at night,
Sailors delight,'"

chanted Carolyn, repeating what Barzilla had taught her. She clung to her friend's forefinger and skipped joyfully along the sand.

He looked down at her with a grim smile playing about his lips. He thought that this child was actually the first whom he had ever had time to get acquainted with. In the case of his own son he had been too busy—too eager at money-getting—to know much about him.

His wife talked now, in her nervous, irresponsible way, of "her baby." It was a fact. The son of their house had been her baby; never his; for he had been in no mood to give the lad a father's care.

When he was grown (and a manly fellow he was, no thanks to his father) the latter had found the young man as stubborn a character as he was himself. If he was the "Old Griffin," this boy just out of college was "Young Grif." He was not to be ordered about as the man was in the habit of ordering his employ s.

The trouble had begun there and then. An order to the son was like a lash across the withers of an unbroken and high-spirited colt. The old man realized the trouble, but believed it could be mended. Now he knew he had taken his son into his own hands too late. His character was already moulded.

Yet the Griffin would not blame the mother. It was his own fault that the boy was not an automaton—as were his employ s, even his managers. The Griffin had become used to unquestioned obedience, and to silence when he spoke. His son did not fit into that system.

And so, after all, it was more because his son was not what he expected him to be than anything else, that bred discord between them. The girl was but an excuse.

It was true that the girl came of stock that the Griffin could not tolerate. The man who had brought her up as his own and who, in dying, left her portionless, had been one the Griffin hated—and he was a good hater.

To put forth a command and find his son as unbendable as cast iron to his will, had utterly enraged him. He had threatened dismissal from house and fortune. Joe had coolly taken him at his word. It was maddening. But the matter might have been eased over. The boy was not then married. And for his mother's sake the Griffin would have gone far on the road to a better understanding.

Then came the discovery of the missing ten thousand dollars. As he had so fiercely told Carolyn's father, that ended all hope of reconciliation. Yet he could not tell the boy's mother about it. Their son a thief? Better to bear her frequent complaints and accusations of harshness to the boy, than to tell the mother who bore him that he had turned out a thief.

So this man, who commanded men and gold and affairs, and who was a vast power in the financial world, was not happy. He worked as he always had; but he worked without an object in view—for the mere sake of working. He often told his wife that he "hung on because he couldn't let go," like a drowning man to a rope. Money, power, notoriety—all, all were Dead Sea fruit. There was nobody to enjoy it after him, for he had spent much to make it legally impossible for a thief ever to benefit by his or his wife's death.

He walked on the beach with the prattling Carolyn and remembered it all. It was a mile and a half to the foot of the path up the bluff behind the Ball cottage; but they were not long on the smooth way. Late in the afternoon as it was, Molly Ball's boarders were still on the beach.

"Oh, there's Mamma Cameron!" cried Carolyn May. "And the baby and his mamma."

She broke away from her friend to run with Prince to her mother. Baby Laird lay upon his mother's lap where she sat on a weed-covered rock. Her back was to the man as he approached. All he saw was the graceful curve of her shoulder and the aureole of red-gold hair surrounding the head that bent so lovingly from the slender neck above the baby.

The man halted. Curious as he was about these people, he hesitated to force himself upon them. If the Lairds did not wish to be befriended by him or by his wife, the situation would be made rather difficult if he approached them unbidden.

He had never been able to understand why that twenty dollar bill was sent back to him with the brusque note accompanying it. With his usual suspicion of all mankind, at the time he had presumed the woman and her husband, whose baby go-cart had been wrecked, planned to begin suit for damages.

When nothing like that happened, and when, later, he discovered those same people were these whom he was willing to help at his wife's request, his interest was further aroused.

That baby! He remembered keenly, as he stood here unnoticed, of once looking down at his own baby son, years before, as the laughing, crowing infant lay just as this one did across his mother's lap. That was before men had begun to call him the Griffin of Wall Street.

The tenderer feelings of the man's nature were stirred. Opening his heart to little Carolyn, who at first had only amused him and piqued his curiosity, had made a breach for thoughts other than those of mere business to enter in. He had learned of late to smile at her prattle, therefore he could now smile down upon the baby.

The Griffin cleared his throat.

"Beg pardon, young woman. So you are the baby's mother?" he asked mildly.

She sprang up with a half-stifled scream, startled from her reverie. She clutched the baby to her breast as though she feared for his safety as she whirled to face the man.

Which of them was the more amazed as they stared at each other it would have been difficult to tell. But as the young woman shrank from him, the Griffin's scowl grew black.

"You?" he said, explosively.

"You!" he said, explosively.

She feared him. She stepped back, ever so lightly, holding her baby tight, tight. But the little one, recognizing a friend, put out both his arms and crowed.

The baby's mother had but seldom before seen her husband's father. And on those few occasions he had shown himself so plainly her enemy that there was good reason why she should be frightened in his presence.

Besides, was he not attempting through his secretary, Inness, to cut her and her husband and baby off from the few friends they had remaining—to drive them across the continent that they might not by chance cross his path?

These thoughts, bruising her heart for days, had brought the young woman—gently as she had been bred—to the border of revolt. It was this man's fault—and his wife's fault—that Joe Bassett was unsuccessful, was timid, and was hopeless under trial. He had been brought up to a life of ease, and his only rugged trait was that of stubbornness. He would not be driven. But that stubbornness of character had not yet been transformed, she thought, into a firmness and determination to win against any odds.

She laid her husband's faults, which of late had seemed so magnified, entirely to his parents. She not alone feared this hard-featured, grey-faced man who stood before her; but she displayed a rooted dislike for him.

While the baby put out his hands and babbled to the Griffin, the young woman retired from his vicinity. Carolyn and Prince came romping back, the child's eyes aglow, her cheeks flushed, and all alive with happiness and love—a contrast to his own emotions that the man could not fail to mark.

"Oh, I've been having the best-est time!" the little girl cried to the baby's mother. "Me and my friend's been to the life saving station. And just think! I've been saved from a wreck (course, 'twas a make-believe wreck) and Cephas gave me a ride in an aeroplane made like a big pair of pants. What do you know about that?"

She had seized the Griffin's hand with both of hers and swung upon it. Her confidence in his kindness and the baby's evident approval of the man, made Mrs. Joe Bassett take thought.

If the children so loved him, he could not be utterly bad after all.

She began to look at him with more speculative eyes. He was Joe's father. There must be some of Joe's better traits in his character. And she had loved Joe at the very first for his single-heartedness and his gentle manner.

The baby, squirming in her arms, tried to go to his grandfather once more. She observed in the man's eyes the reflection of unshed tears! That grim face was but a mask, after all. Back of the man's apparent harshness his nature was softening to the influence of childish affection.

The baby and Carolyn May!

The young woman began to appreciate what was going on beneath the surface of the Griffin's rugged nature.

CHAPTER XXX

IT ALL COMES OUT RIGHT

Upon that tableau, flying down the steep path with a step lighter than she had heard it for many a long day, came the pale lady's husband—or, as Carolyn May would call him to the end, "Baby Laird's father."

"Girl," he cried, "I've put it through! Barzilla is up there trying to make Molly I. understand the good news. I wrote Harvey Deering and he made no bones of lending me the money. I could not tell you until I was sure. We'll not have to go to Arizona after all. Harvey has sent a certified check for two thousand and his blessing, and the firm of Bassett and Ball is already born. By gad! Whom have we here?"

His wife had stumbled against him, her strength going from her; he caught both her and the baby in his arms. He flashed a second glance at the man who stood before them so straight and uncompromising—but much greyer and older than when Joe Bassett had seen his father last.

"So, I have been making friends with my own grandson, have I?" said the Griffin grimly. "And without knowing it!"

"I fancied so," Joe Bassett replied. "I only discovered the other day that it was you and the mater who had taken such a liking to little Laird. My wife didn't know."

"'Laird,' eh? We never called you that, Joe. I'd almost forgotten you had a middle name. Humph!" muttered his father. "And this is why the baby's father did not come to see me to talk over a loan, is it?"

"It is," responded his son shortly.

"Your mother is awfully taken with the baby, Joe," said the older man, almost wistfully. "She has been quite cut-up that his father would accept no favour from me."

"How about if she had known who I was?" asked the young man bitterly.

"Come away, Laird!" begged the pale lady.

"Hold on!" ejaculated the Griffin, harshly. "Am I a bear that I should bite the child, perhaps?"

There was a momentary twinkle in Joe Bassett's eye. The success he had achieved in raising the money needed for his partnership with Barzilla had lent him a new confidence.

"You're a Griffin, sir," he said. "That's worse than a bear. And once, you must remember, you came near running down the baby with your automobile. His mother received a shock at that time from which she has not even now wholly recovered."

"So I did! I remember well enough. And the money I gave little Carolyn for her, you returned!"

"We could scarcely accept anything under the circumstances," Joe Bassett said, stiffly. "For the same reason I have refused your offer, through Inness, of that position in Arizona."

"What offer?" demanded his father. "I made you no offer through Inness. That scalawag has been up to other mischief, has he? But was that man Cameron's visit to me on your behalf unknown to you, Joe?"

"Cameron? You mean Carolyn's father?" demanded Joe Bassett in surprise. "I know nothing of it."

"Ha! It might have been the child's father," exclaimed the Griffin. "I had not remembered that was her last name."

He turned to look at the little girl who was now dragging her mother forward. Mrs. Cameron had already seen that her suspicions were correct. She hesitated to approach the Bassetts at this moment; but Carolyn May was insistent.

"Oh, please, sir!" she cried to the Griffin. "My mamma wants to thank you too for giving me such a splendid time."

"This is the baby's grandfather?" Mrs. Cameron observed quietly. "I see!"

"Let me introduce my father," said Joe Bassett. "I think," he added, with a warmer smile than usual, "that this lady and her husband are our very good friends. I know Carolyn May is."

The Griffin was fast recovering his composure. He offered his hand again to Carolyn May and she clung to it with both of hers.

"I fancy Carolyn is a friend to almost everybody," he remarked. "Your mother, Joe, has been much more cheerful of late because of this little girl—and the baby. You won't deny her the pleasure of seeing the boy frequently, will you?" and he looked directly at the pale lady when he made this humble request. It was a good deal to ask under the circumstances, and the Griffin seemed to realize it.

Joe Bassett likewise looked down into his wife's face. Perhaps what they had suffered—all their trials and difficulties—could be traced directly to the harshness of this grey old man. But the very worst he had thought of his son and the girl beside him, they would never know!

Little Carolyn suddenly felt the tenseness of the situation without understanding what it meant. She let go of the Griffin's hand with one of her own and reached for that of the pale lady, hanging timidly at her side.

"Why!" she cried, "you didn't interduce my pale lady to my friend, Mr. Laird. This is the baby's mother, you know, sir," and the child drew the fragile hand of the pale lady into that of the Griffin.

A group gathered in the grassy yard before the Ball cottage on an afternoon not long thereafter showed that the younger Bassetts, if of independent spirit, held no rancour in their hearts regarding the elder Bassetts.

In the group sat the three women, the grandmother with the baby in her lap, while his mother and Mrs. Cameron sewed. Molly Ball was getting supper for all, to be served when Barzilla and Joe Bassett should return from the fishing.

"I used to wait like this for Henry to come home from work," the elder Mrs. Bassett said reflectively, with a smile upon her lips that altogether softened her haughty look. "We lived in a seaboard village, too, and we were much poorer than we are now—and much happier."

Her husband and Carolyn, with Prince and Nebuchadnezzar trailing them, went hand in hand to meet the young men who were already in sight.

"And Baby Laird and his mamma and papa are going to live right here with Molly and Barzilla all winter. Won't that be fine?" Carolyn cried. "I 'most wish we were going to stay here, too. It's a lovely place, I think."

"Humph! No bath in the winter," said her friend, but more to himself than to her. "Don't see how they can stand it. But I'm going to build a house for 'em right on the shoulder of Beacon Hill yonder. They can't help my doing that, even if Joe is stubborn about beginning for himself—laying the foundation of his own fortune.

"Yet, why not?" added the man ruminatively. "Swordfish may be just as good a foundation as coopering. I made barrels for the herring fishers when I began."

Carolyn scarcely appreciated this, and she ran ahead to greet the two younger men. She came back swinging on one of Barzilla's great, brown hands. The elder Bassett got into step with his son, who carried his oilskins and other gear on one arm. They loitered behind the others.

"I would have sent Inness where he belonged, Joe, if it wasn't for raking up the whole scandal. It would make a mess in the papers. And he was scheming to get you as far out of the way as Arizona! He feared we'd meet. He has been selling me out to the Cal Cummings crowd, too. René got everything off his chest when once I put the screws on him. So all I could really do was to discharge both of them.

"René I hired over again," he added rather ruefully. "I didn't know where to find another chauffeur as good, or one who could handle the White Streak as well. And he was very penitent."

Carolyn May was a full week bidding good-bye to everybody with whom she had become acquainted on the island.

"Never did see such a young 'un for cheerin' a body up," declared Aunt Ardelia Dodge. "Smith an' me will miss her like she was a grandchild. And she's a sight better than any of Smith's grandchildren ever dared to be. You'm right. His branch of the Dodges ain't none too smart."

The wooden-legged Littlefields had gone back to their little cottage near the Old Harbour; but Carolyn May spent an afternoon with them before her departure for New York. She felt that she had a duty to perform, and that she could ignore it no longer. Edna would expect her to bring the information she craved and, polite or not, the little girl felt that she just had to ask again about those wooden legs.

"How did Oly come to have his'n?" Captain Ozias repeated. "Wal, I'll tell ye, if ye promise not to say a word to him about it. For it does make him mad. 'Twarn't no accident at all—like I told you once. Anybody could have told Oly he was fixin' for broken bones—only they'd 've said 'twas his neck he'd break, 'stead of his laig.

"Ye see that high, rocky head up yonder?" pointing to the rise of the bluff almost behind the little cottage. "Wal, Oly would come down that hill 'stead o' goin' 'round by the path proper, when he'd been to the store. 'Twas a short cut. An' he took it on a winter's evening, when 'twas mistin' an' freezin'; an' he slipped."

"Oh!" cried Carolyn. "And did he fall right down here?"

"That's what he done. And he laid out 'most all night, unconscious. Then he woke up and blatted and one of the surfmen from Station One heard him and gathered him in. But that, and the delay in gettin' a surgeon from the Main, and all, made it necessary fin'ly to ampertate. So since then Oly's hopped around on a wooden stump.

"And me? Why, I don't talk none about it, leetle gal. 'Tain't nothin' to crow over, as ye might say. I went through the Battle of Manila 'thout gittin' hurt; I was aboard the old Olympia when she made her dash from ocean to ocean so's to git into the fightin' around Cuby. I was at the Battle of Santiago. All them, an' never got a scratch!

"But after I was mustered out o' the Navy and went into merchant service and commanded my own three-stick windjammer, I was ashore at Punta Arenas one trip and went to a feller's shop to sharpen some knives, and what happens but a grin'stone fell on that laig and busted it all to flinders!"

"Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield!"

"Yep. That's the rights of it. I don't talk none about it—no more than Oly talks about his laig. Ye see, an' ol' feller longshore with a wooden laig is expected to be a hero. But there ain't nothin' a mite heroic 'bout neither me nor Oly Littlefield. We was just plumb unlucky—that's all!"

The elder Bassetts were going to remain longer. The season had ended, and the Orowoc House would have closed as did most of the other hotels. But a man with the money and the influence, to say nothing of the determination (he called it "stubbornness" when it was repeated in his son), that the Griffin possessed, would have changed the laws of the Medes and Persians! He and his wife were comfortable where they were; he could run to New York in a few hours in the White Streak when it was necessary. So they remained, and at least a part of the hotel help remained likewise.

He wanted to see the foundation laid for the house he purposed to build for his son. It was to be of island stone in the rough to the eaves of the bungalow roof. That house, on a shoulder of the highest hill on the island, would be seen for miles at sea and probably would be the most expensive dwelling that a swordfisherman ever lived in.

His son, however, was in business with Barzilla in earnest. A comfortable and cheaply-built shack on the shore of Dorris Cove would satisfy the firm at first. That was being erected, too. Joe Bassett gave more attention to the building of that shack than he did to the plans for the bungalow.

"Business before pleasure," said the young man. "I've learned that lesson."

"There is something in Joe Bassett," Carolyn's father observed to his wife. "I didn't think much of him at first. In spite of the shadow that overhung his character, though, I believe you, Hannah, thought well of him."

"I could not believe that Joe Bassett was what his father said he was," Carolyn's mother said softly.

"Well, guess the Griffin is sorry enough now that he ever said it, or ever believed it. He thought that nobody but he or Joe could open that library safe; but Inness was smarter than he knew. He had duplicate keys and copies of the combinations of safe-locks. He had been sifting the most secret matters of the elder Bassett for years. And he went free after all!

"That was bad. But I don't suppose Mr. Bassett could bring himself to giving us newspaper chaps such a fat bit of news as it would have been. Well, all's well that ends well!"

"But all wells don't end well," interposed Carolyn, who had only heard and understood a part of what her father said. "You see, there's Uncle Smith Dodge's well. He's been digging it, off an' on Aunt Ardelia says, ever since they was married; and that was an awful long time ago. And he ain't never struck water yet, 'ceptin' when it rains into it. It does seem, she says, Aunt Ardelia does, that a woman could ha' done better—or she'd a-filled up the hole!"

"Carolyn May!" gasped Mamma Cameron. "It is time we take the child back, Papa Cameron, or I am very much afraid she'll never speak English again."

Papa Cameron only laughed, and said:

"Snuggy, you are a budding feminist, without a doubt." But Carolyn May did not know what that meant.

THE END

[1] See "Carolyn of the Corners."

[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAROLYN OF THE SUNNY HEART ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works provided that:

- • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

- • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

- • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

- • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516, Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

- CAROLYN OF THE SUNNY HEART
- CONTENTS
- ILLUSTRATIONS
- CAROLYN OF THE SUNNY HEART
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER XI
- CHAPTER XII
- CHAPTER XIII
- CHAPTER XIV
- CHAPTER XV
- CHAPTER XVI
- CHAPTER XVII
- CHAPTER XVIII
- CHAPTER XIX
- CHAPTER XX
- CHAPTER XXI
- CHAPTER XXII
- CHAPTER XXIII
- CHAPTER XXIV
- CHAPTER XXV
- CHAPTER XXVI
- CHAPTER XXVII
- CHAPTER XXVIII
- CHAPTER XXIX
- CHAPTER XXX
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE