CHAPTER XIX

THE MASQUERADE

"Steady! Back water!"

It was Hazel who gave the command, and the momentary feeling of panic that had swept over Alice passed.

"Over that way!" Hazel went on, nodding to indicate that she meant to steer their canoe toward a bit of still water, an eddy formed under an overhanging bank of the stream.

"All right!" was the tense reply of her chum, and a moment later the light craft shot past the rolling overturned one of Sylvia and Rose, and was in quiet water.

Meanwhile, after the first sudden plunge into the stream--a plunge that deprived them of their breath for an instant--the two girls who had been spilled out regained control of themselves.

The Nowadays Girls had the almost invaluable faculty of remaining cool, or quickly becoming cool in emergencies.

This had been proved in a number of instances in times past, when they had been in no little danger. Once there was an incipient fire at Miss Stevenson's school, and the alarm drill was called for. It remained for our four friends and a few others, to lead to safety the majority of the school, and for this bravery there had been no small thanks and honour.

So now, in this time of danger, the two girls who were in a place of safety remained calm and collected and were ready for rescue work. Fortunately, however, the water of the stream was not deep. It could hardly be so and fuss and foam over the rapids in the way it did. So Rose and Sylvia, after having been rolled over and over a number of times, during which period they clung to the paddles, found themselves in comparatively still water, and struck out for shore.

It was then that the wisdom of Hazel and Alice showed itself, for they were at the bank, waiting for their companions. There was no need for them to leap in to the rescue, for they saw that Sylvia and Rose were both swimming well, in spite of their wet and clinging garments. Their dresses were light summer ones, which were not much more hampering than bathing suits would have been. And they wore light, rubber-soled boating shoes.

"Catch hold!" cried Hazel, flinging to Rose, who was in advance of Sylvia, a long rope they carried in the canoe for mooring purposes. The coils straightened out, and the end of the line fell near the swimming girl.

"All right!" Rose answered, as she caught hold, and a moment later she was being pulled toward the bank, suspending her swimming strokes, for she was a little exhausted, not only by her efforts, but by the rolling and tumbling process to which she had been subjected when the canoe upset.

"We'll be ready for you in a moment, Sylvia!" called Hazel.

"Don't worry, I can touch bottom," was the reassuring answer, and, to prove it, Sylvia stood up, a dripping and dishevelled figure, but a smiling one, nevertheless. It took more than a ducking to disturb Sylvia Pursell.

Rose, who had taken a little different course from that followed by her companion in misfortune, now found herself in water that was not so deep but that she could stand up, which she did, still keeping hold of the rope.

"Well," said Sylvia, finally, after she had caught her breath, and wrung enough water from her fallen hair so that it ceased to run in little rivulets down her face. "Well!"

"Most decidedly--well!" exclaimed Alice. "A very wet well indeed! How did it happen?"

"Don't ask me--ask Rose," laughed Sylvia. She could laugh now, though it had seemed serious enough for the moment.

"It wasn't my fault," her companion asserted, smiling across the water that separated them. Behind them foamed the little rapid, filling the air with its insistent murmur.

"I guess we didn't make allowances for the speed and strength of the current," Sylvia said. "It seemed to grip the canoe in a moment."

"By the way, where is the canoe?" asked Hazel.

They looked down-stream, and saw their boat apparently moving by itself over the tops of the low bushes. It was turned upside down and was bobbing about in a most unaccountable manner.

"Look--look at that!" fairly gasped Alice, from her position on the bank.

"Why, what does it mean?" asked Hazel, faintly.

The four girls watched the canoe with increasing astonishment. It seemed to be moved by spirit hands, gliding, upside down, over the tops of the bushes in a curious undulating fashion.

"Could it have struck a rock, and bounced out on shore?" asked Rose.

"If it struck a rock with enough force for that, it would be in pieces, instead of whole, as it seems to be," Sylvia answered.

"But isn't it remarkable?" murmured Alice.

"To say the least--yes," agreed Rose.

Then, as the girls watched, the canoe seemed to sink down in the bushes, as a magician causes a certain card to appear from the centre of the pack, and to descend again.

"This must be seen to," Sylvia declared, with energy. "We can't have any white magic like this going on without making an investigation. Come on, Rose."

She started wading toward shore.

"Better wait until we pull Rose in, and then we'll fling you the rope," advised Alice.

"Oh, I don't need the rope, I can walk without that," declared Rose.

"Better not try," suggested Sylvia. "There may be some deep holes between here and shore. Keep hold of the rope, then I'll use it. And after that we'll see if our canoe has taken unto itself wings and flown away."

There was no need for the line from shore, as it developed, and soon Rose and Sylvia, after safely wading to the bank, joined their more fortunate companions. Alice and Hazel made fast their canoe, and Rose and Sylvia wrung as much water as possible from their skirts, then all four started toward the place where the canoe had been observed to so oddly nestle amid the underbrush.

The girls found a fairly good path along the shore, and following this, they turned in and out, as the trail led, bending itself to the curves of the stream, until they suddenly emerged into a small clearing.

And there, sitting by the canoe, which had been turned in a most favorable position so that the sun might dry it out, was a bronzed young man who was gravely contemplating his wet and dripping legs that were clad in khaki trousers.

"Oh!" exclaimed Sylvia, faintly, as she saw the young man slowly turn his head in the direction of the sound caused by the girls pushing their way past the bushes that overhung the trail.

"So, _that_ was what made the canoe behave in such a mysterious way!" murmured Hazel.

"He must have pulled it out of the water," suggested Alice.

Rose stood looking at the young man, saying nothing.

As for the youth himself, he rose to his feet, thereby disclosing the fact that he was rather tall. He wore no hat, but a half-military salute toward his brown, curling hair made up for what doubtless would have been a deferential removal of his head-gear had he worn any.

"Are you looking for a lost, strayed or otherwise missing canoe?" he asked, at the same time motioning toward the one on the grass near him.

"Yes, that is ours," said Sylvia. "We had an upset in the rapids."

"I guessed as much," the stranger said. "I was about to go in search of the owners, fearing some accident might have happened, but you have saved me a journey. Perhaps I can be of some assistance?"

"Thank you, I believe we are all right now," Sylvia said. "We held on to our paddles. We----"

She started forward, as though to prove her claim to the canoe by exhibiting the paddles, but Rose pulled her back.

"Don't go!" came the half-frantic whisper. "You're a sight, and so am I! Let Hazel and Alice walk ahead. They aren't dripping wet and their hair isn't hanging seven ways for Sunday. Let them go ahead!"

"Oh!" exclaimed Sylvia, comprehendingly. "Yes, I guess you're right, Rose. We don't look exactly presentable."

The young man had waited inquiringly as this little discussion was in progress, and if he understood the nature of it he gave no sign.

Concealed by the friendly and effectual screen of bushes the change was made, bringing Alice and Hazel into the vanguard, and letting Sylvia and Rose take up a position in the rear. A hasty glance over the trail they had come showed no enemy at their backs, and they were sufficiently guarded by underbrush on either side of the path to prevent a flank attack.

"I'll put the canoe back in the stream for you, in a few minutes," the young man went on. "I was letting the water drain out of it. I was fishing just about here," he said, "when I saw it coming down-stream. I guessed what had happened and waded out to get it. Then I put it over my head and took it to shore."

"Oh! That was what made it look so funny!" exclaimed Hazel.

"Funny?" the young man questioned.

"We could only see the boat from where we were," explained Alice, "and it looked as though it were floating on top of the bushes, upside down."

"Oh, I see," he went on, comprehendingly. "You couldn't see me because my head was under the canoe, and you couldn't see the rest of me because the bushes formed a screen. Yes, it must have been rather odd."

"It was," said Sylvia, and she could not restrain a merry laugh.

"Oh!" exclaimed the young man, and it seemed as though the laugh had come in answer to some question he asked himself. And the question might have been in regard to the disappearance of the two wet and dripping girls he had first observed, for Alice and Hazel were now in front of Rose and Sylvia.

"It was very good of you to save the canoe," Hazel said. "It might have been dashed to pieces on the rocks."

"Oh, it was past the danger spot when I got it," the youth said, with a smile that seemed to illuminate his brown face. "Don't credit me with too much. I just grabbed it as it was floating past."

"I'm afraid we spoiled your fishing," said Alice, at the same time voicing to her chums a hoarsely whispered aside to the effect: "Why don't you two do something? Going to leave it all to Hazel and me?"

"What shall we say?" demanded Rose.

"Oh, say 'pleased to meet you,' if you can't think of anything else," retorted Alice.

"Are you sure I can't do anything for you?" the youth asked, as he prepared to put the canoe over his head and shoulders, in the most approved guide "carry" position, and start for the water with it. "I'd like to help you."

"Thank you, we are all right," Alice said. "We are going back to camp."

"Oh, then you are camping here?" he asked, and Rose said afterward that his voice had a "hopeful" sound.

"Just for a little while," Hazel answered, waving her hand indefinitely toward the woods.

"Ah, I see. I'm a camper also," he added, but he gave no further information about himself.

"If I might suggest," he said, as he shouldered the light canoe, "it might be better for me to take this for you past the rapids. They are rather hard to traverse up-stream, and they are high from the rain. You won't have any trouble once you get past the rough place, however. Let me put the boat in the water for you a little farther up."

"Oh, that is entirely too much trouble!" protested Sylvia.

"No, indeed!" he said, quickly. "I'm glad to be able to help you."

The girls turned to go back along the trail they must follow in order to get past the rapids. This turn brought Sylvia and Rose in the rear, and directly behind them was the youth with the canoe.

"Oh!" exclaimed Rose, as she thought of her dripping garments and dishevelled hair. It was the very thing they had sought to avoid.

"He can't see us with the canoe over his head," declared Sylvia. "If we change now he'll laugh! Go on!"

And go on they did.

The other canoe was found safely floating in the deep eddy where it had been moored, and a little later the one that had overturned, now righted and comparatively dry, was put in the stream at a point past the rapids.

"Now I'll carry the other one there for you, and you won't have much trouble paddling back," the young man said. And in spite of the rather half-hearted protests of the girls, this he did.

By this time the warm sun and the wind had done much toward drying the garments of Sylvia and Rose. And they had managed to put up their hair in some sort of fashion that, though they did not realize it, was wonderfully becoming.

"Now I think you'll be all right," the young man said, when the four girls, in the two boats, were ready to paddle back.

"Yes, indeed. And thank you _so_ much!" said Sylvia, warmly. Her thanks were echoed in a chorus by the others.

Again with that graceful, half-military salute toward his bared head, the bronzed youth watched them paddle away. And it was not until they were around the bend of the stream that Alice exclaimed:

"Oh, we never asked his name!"

"Nor told ours!" added Hazel.

"Why should we?" demanded Sylvia.

"Oh, I don't know," was Hazel's slow retort.

They paddled slowly back to camp, where Mrs. Brownley was not a little exercised over the upset.

"It was nothing!" Sylvia said. "We get used to such things nowadays."

This was really the only little accident that marred the camping outing, and that did not so much mar it as it marked it. Two or three days afterward the girls went canoeing, and successfully passed the rapids. But they saw nothing of the young man. Indeed, though the eyes of all four roved through the woods and along the wilderness trails, not one would admit that she was looking for anything or any one in particular.

Then came the day when they went back to the Antlers. They had spent a glorious week in the woods.

As the campers reached the porch, to be made welcome by their hotel friends, they saw a group gathered about the bulletin board.

"I wonder what that means?" asked Rose.

"Let's look," suggested Sylvia.

They found it was an announcement of a masquerade dance to be given two nights hence.

"Oh, we simply must go to that!" cried Hazel.

"Surely!" agreed Alice.

"But what about costumes?" asked Rose.

"We'll make our own. Masks will be easy to get, I fancy," Sylvia said. "We'll make inquiries."

They found that masks of various sorts were easily obtainable, and some costumes also, though most of the ladies were going to make their own, out of simple materials.

Preparations for the masque fête went merrily on, and none took more interest in it than our Nowadays Girls.

"The usual penny," said Rose, suddenly, one day, as the four sat in Sylvia's room, sewing. Rose looked at Hazel as she thus challenged her.

"Penny? For what?"

"Your thoughts, of course. You're in a brown study and the shade doesn't at all match your dress."

"Oh, I was thinking----" Hazel stopped suddenly.

"She was thinking of the young man of the woods," declared Sylvia, with a laugh.