CHAPTER XXXIV

FOUND

Silence followed this, to the girls at least, momentous announcement. That is as much silence as was possible under the circumstances, with the noise of the storm reverberating through the forest.

"Did--did you hear that?" gasped Sylvia, after a pause.

"Of course," answered Hazel, and she spoke a bit sharply, as if her nerves were near the breaking point.

"Was it--was it a voice?" Sylvia went on, as though she could not quite believe the evidence of her own ears. "Was it a voice, or one of those loons, or owls?"

"It was a _voice_," declared Mrs. Brownley. "I heard it distinctly. It must be some of our party searching for us. You had better call once more, girls. My voice simply refuses to make itself heard."

"Mr. Russman! Pete! Harry!" called Sylvia. "Where are you? Come to us!"

A crashing noise sounded in the underbrush, but it was too dark to see by whom it was made. Now and then a flash of lightning would vividly light up the scene, but it was of such brief duration, and produced such a glare, that the girls and their chaperon could really see nothing beyond a black and dripping circle of trees that girt them about. Following Sylvia's cry, though, there came an answer.

"Stay where you are! We're coming. Don't move. There's a bad fall near where you are and you may slip over. Stand still."

"That doesn't sound like any of our friends!" exclaimed Alice.

"No," agreed Hazel. "But it's some one, at all events. And I never was so glad in all my life before to hear a human voice. It may be some of the other guides--those of Sam's party."

"Could it be--could it be--Roy?" faltered Rose.

"That isn't Roy's voice," declared Sylvia, with decision. "I only wish it were he! But he is probably too weak to answer in those firm tones."

"We're coming," the unseen rescuers went on. "Be there in just a few seconds now!"

The girls could see lights flashing among the trees and bushes. Lights that were not the vivid glares of the sky-electricity. The storm seemed to be dying out, at least the thunder was not so loud nor the flashes so frequent, but the drizzle of rain still kept up.

The girls huddled around Mrs. Brownley, wet and rather miserable, yet, aside from the depression caused by the failure to find Roy, there was plenty of spirit and spunk left in each and every one. They were wet, tired and hungry, but they had not given up hope, not even when they knew they were lost.

"Oh, but to think of the walk back to the bungalow," half groaned Hazel. "Can we make it to-night, girls?"

"We'll _have_ to!" insisted Sylvia.

"And there may be good news of Roy waiting for us," said Rose, eagerly. "That is, if this isn't a party that has already found him."

"I don't believe they are any of our friends." Sylvia spoke in a low voice. "They would know who we were, and they'd call us by name. And if they had found poor Roy they'd let us know that the first thing."

"But who can they be?" asked Alice.

"We'll know in another moment. Here they are!"

A number of lights flashed all around. They came from the pocket electric torches without which no camp is now complete. And the tiny glows were in the hands of four young men who crowded up along the dripping trail to face the lost ones.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting," said the leader, flashing his light in Sylvia's face. "But we didn't expect company, and we had gone to bed. We heard you call and----"

He interrupted himself suddenly to exclaim:

"Great pines and little fir trees! It is Night! Miss Pursell! What in the world are you doing here?" he cried.

"Oh! oh!" gasped Roy's sister, weakly. In an instant she had recognised Felton Ware--the Knight of the Overturned Canoe--the cavalier of the dance. And with him were his three companions who had helped to give the girls such a good time at the hotel.

"Look here, fellows!" Felton cried. "Here are our friends--the pretty girls."

He said it--shamelessly--openly, and none resented it. The said pretty girls were only too glad to see the boys.

"Well, if this isn't a go!" exclaimed Jimmie Pendleton.

"Is it true, or am I dreaming?" Bert Young wanted to know.

"If I am dreaming, don't wake me up," pleaded Carroll Beach.

"But I say!" went on Felton, eagerly. "What are you doing here? Out in the rain at night! Where's your camp? What has happened? You look----"

"Don't mention our looks, young man!" interrupted Aunt Theodora. "We know we must be frights. But is there any place around here where we can stay--a hotel or boarding-house? We are lost!"

"Why, come to our tent!" urged the Knight of the Overturned Canoe, eagerly. "We came up here to camp, but never expected to see you folks again. We have a big extra tent, ready for some more of the fellows we expect next week. You can all fit into that nicely. There are cots in it. We can get you up some kind of a meal. You can't possibly travel through the woods now. Stay with us until morning, please."

"It sounds most inviting," sighed Sylvia.

"Welcome to our woodland camp, Princess of the Night," said Felton, whimsically, with a low bow. "I'm sorry we haven't a red velvet carpet to spread to the tent, but truth compels me to state that the trail is so winding that it would take a very large magic carpet to cover it. But what has happened?" he asked.

Sylvia told him, and her companions told him, singly, in a chorus, by duets, in a trio and then filled in any gaps that were left with a grand ensemble that left nothing unrelated.

Then the boys led the way back to their camp. A fire in the midst of a circle of tents was dying down, but there was dry wood to pile on, and soon there was a roaring blaze adding heat to its cheerfulness. Coffee was quickly made, food set out, and in the seclusion of a large tent Sylvia and her friends, with Mrs. Brownley, made themselves comfortable.

"If those young men aren't providential I never saw any persons who were," declared the chaperon, as she sat on the edge of a cot, munching a sandwich from one hand and waving an empty coffee cup with the other, to emphasise her point.

"They certainly are," agreed Rose.

The boys did everything possible for their unexpected visitors, and said they would escort them back to the bungalow the first thing in the morning. One of the young men was quite familiar with the woodland trails, having camped in that neighbourhood before.

"And we'll help you look for your brother," added Felton. "Bald Mountain is not a great way from here. But you certainly took the wrong trail. However, we're glad to see you again!"

"Well?" remarked Hazel, in a questioning tone, as she sat on the edge of her cot, after the boys had said "good-night;" and she looked at the others, the while swinging her stockinged feet to and fro to aid in drying them, for their shoes had been wet through.

"I don't know that I'd call it well," commented Sylvia, reflectively, "but I suppose we ought to be thankful that none of us is really ill. That's one blessing."

"Yes," agreed Mrs. Brownley, "that is a blessing. We came out of the predicament very fortunately, I think."

"And it certainly was a predicament," added Rose, as she went to the flap of the tent to peer out.

"Looking for anything in particular?" asked Alice.

"Or any one?" inquired Sylvia, with decided emphasis.

Rose turned quickly, her cheeks showing redder than ever in the glow of the lantern. Perhaps it was from the excitement of the day, however.

"I just wanted to see what the boys were doing," she answered. "I believe they are drying our shoes over an oil stove," she went on. "I can just see inside their cooking-tent--it's open."

"Gracious! I hope they don't cook our shoes!" exclaimed Alice, with a laugh, and a most commendable effort to lend a little gaiety to a situation that was certainly in need of it. "I have read of starving sailors eating their shoe laces. Fortunately my walking boots are button ones," she added, with another little laugh.

"It's only when laces are of some sort of hide that they make soup of them," put in Mrs. Brownley, deciding to do what she could to help remove the load from Sylvia's mind.

"That's so," chimed in Hazel. "The ordinary cloth shoe lace would not make a very appetising meal. Though I suppose they could boil the tongue of a shoe, and serve it in some sort of an _entrée_," she went on. "And the shoe wouldn't be much the worse after the operation. Look, Rose, since you have undertaken the post of observer, and tell us if the boys are taking the tongues out of our shoes."

"So they won't talk in their sleep?" demanded Sylvia, rising to the occasion with a joke--"alleged," as she designated it afterward; when they were going over all the points of the momentous time.

"Aren't we silly?" demanded Hazel.

"It's just as well to try to be cheerful," said the chaperon. "Nothing is so bad as to lose hope, and while we haven't in the least done that, still it is just as well to try to have a little reserve fund of good-humor to fall back on in times of emergency. Oh, I didn't quite mean that!" she added, quickly, as she caught a look of alarm on Sylvia's face.

"It doesn't matter," was the quiet comment of Roy's sister. "It is just as well to recognise the fact that we--that I--may have to face an--emergency."

She halted and stumbled over the word, but the others knew how hard it must have been for her to speak it. And they all realised what a grim emergency might confront them.

But the little cloud soon passed, for Rose--brave little Rose--rising gallantly to the occasion, exclaimed:

"Those silly boys!"

"What are they up to now?" asked Hazel, for Rose was still at the tent-flap.

"Why, they're dancing around, holding our shoes, one on each hand, and actually they are waltzing--doing the hesitation with the shoes on their hands, held in the air."

"Really?" demanded Sylvia, and there was a rush on the part of the three girls to join Rose at the flap. Mrs. Brownley remained sitting with dignity on the edge of a cot. That is with dignity, but with certain reservations, for she had taken off some of her damp garments and she was just then engaged in the process of shuffling her stockinged feet along a strip of carpet in the middle of the tent.

"It was the only way to bring back the circulation and get them warm," she explained afterward.

"The hesitation? It's a onestep!" declared Hazel, as she peered from their tent into the lighted and partly-open one where the boys were engaged in some mysterious rite.

"Yes, that's what they're doing," she continued, peering over Sylvia's shoulder. "I wonder which one has my shoes?"

"As if it made any difference," mocked Alice.

"Doesn't it make a difference with whom one dances?" asked Hazel.

"If you call that a dance!" said Alice.

"It is one--by proxy," suggested Sylvia. "Oh, the silly boys!"

The Knight of the Overturned Canoe and his chums had offered to dry the water-soaked shoes of their guests. And now the lads were holding the footwear on their hands, over the blaze of their cooking-tent oil stove, and to vary the proceeding, I suppose, now and then one of them would glide off, whistling some merry air, meanwhile waving aloft his hands (on which were the shoes) in a sort of syncopated dance rhythm.

"Well, they are trying to be cheerful," said Mrs. Brownley, as she came to have a peep.

"The more credit to them, considering what company they have on their hands," said Hazel.

"Nothing on their hands but shoes," said Alice, laughing.

"Besides, they were very glad to meet us," added Rose.

"They certainly are very nice boys," declared Sylvia. "And, oh, I am so glad they found us! Think of what we would have done if we had had to stay in the woods all night!"

"I never would have stayed," declared Alice. "I simply would have expired then and there."

"Then it certainly is a good thing the boys found us," Mrs. Brownley remarked. "Now, girls, I don't want to dictate to you, but really, I think you ought to get to bed. We are all cold and damp, and if we get off some of our wet things, and crawl in between the blankets, it may prevent us from taking cold. The sheets are not at all clammy," she went on, as she turned back the covers of her cot, and felt of the linen. "I must say those boys are clever housekeepers! I would not have believed it."

"Which is praise, indeed, even if it is not from--Oh, I never can think of his name!" cried Alice.

"Sir Hubert Stanley?" queried Rose.

"Yes, that's the one. And so you think the boys--I'm going to call them our boys," went on Alice, "are good housekeepers, Aunt Theodora?"

"Very good indeed--for boys," and she thus qualified it.

"Well, I think we'll take your advice, at any rate," said Sylvia. "I'm beginning to feel chilly."

"The boys have stopped their shoe-dance," reported Rose. "Oh! and one of them is coming this way!" she cried, as she scurried away from the tent-flap, for the girls, as well as Mrs. Brownley, were not in a presentable condition.

However, there was no cause for alarm, for when still at a distance from the tent, Bert Young called out:

"I say, wouldn't you like an oil stove in there, to dry yourselves out?"

"Indeed we would," answered Mrs. Brownley. "Please bring it, unlighted, and leave it outside the tent. We'll get it."

"Sounds like an order for fried oysters," commented Alice.

"Right-O!" came the reply, and a little later a modern oil stove was glowing in the girls' tent. Its warmth was grateful, and they hung some of their garments on chairs near it before getting into the cots.

They did not go to sleep at once--it would have been a physical impossibility under the circumstances--so they talked, while Mrs. Brownley kept one eye on the stove, fearing it might smoke or explode, so she said.

But it was a very well-behaved stove, and, when the tent was comfortably warmed, the flame was turned out, and the wayfarers tried to get a little rest.

It cannot be said that Sylvia or any of her chums passed a restful or comfortable night. They were given the best of the young men's hospitality, but one cannot be wet through in the woods on a lost trail, torn by anxiety regarding a missing loved one, be anxious about those of a party from whom one is separated, and have pleasant dreams. It is too much to expect.

But the night finally passed, and with it the rain. The sun came up warm, with a promise of soon drying the woods, and after breakfast the party of young men prepared to accompany their guests back to the Russman bungalow. The camp of Felton and his chums, in the locality where the girls found them, had been planned long before they met at the dance, but neither party was aware of the other's intention.

"But it was the luckiest thing in the world," declared Felton, "that you stopped and called when you did. Look," and he showed Sylvia how the trail they were on when they had come to a halt led dangerously near a high cliff. Sylvia shuddered when she saw it.

"When we head back for the bungalow, can't we go by way of Bald Mountain?" asked Sylvia, as they were about to start. "It is barely possible that my poor brother may be there."

"It is a little longer way," Felton explained, "but of course we can use that route."

"And we may meet some of the guides, or others on the way," put in Rose, "who will give us good news."

"Perhaps," agreed Alice.

The girls were in better spirits now, though the strain was showing on Sylvia. However, she kept up bravely, and Rose, too, who had her own grief, put it aside to comfort Roy's sister.

They tramped through the woods, now glorious with sunshine. Finally Bald Mountain loomed before them. They must cross it to get on the trail that led to the Russman bungalow.

Sylvia and Felton were in the lead, the girl pressing on eagerly, and both of them, as well as every other member of the party, looked closely for any signs of the missing one. Occasionally they would stop and shout, but they neither saw nor heard aught of the other seekers--the guides or the Russman party.

It was near the top of Bald Mountain, when Sylvia, who was a few steps in advance, passed around a turn in the trail. Before her was an overhanging stone, forming a sort of niche in the side of the shaling rock of which the hill was formed. A huddled heap in the niche attracted her attention.

She caught her breath sharply, and grasped the arm of her companion.

"Look! Look!" Sylvia whispered.

[Illustration: "LOOK! LOOK!" SYLVIA WHISPERED.]

"It's--it's a man," answered Felton. "Can it be----"

"It's Roy! It's my brother!" Sylvia cried aloud. "I've found him!"