A Series of Stories for Camp Fire Girls
Endorsed by the Officials of theCamp Fire Girls Organization
By HILDEGARD G. FREY
The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woodsor, The Winnebago's Go Camping
The Camp Fire Girls at Schoolor, The Wohelo Weavers
The Camp Fire Girls at Onoway Houseor, The Magic Garden
The Camp Fire Girls Go Motoringor, Along the Road That Leads the Way
The Camp Fire Girls Larks and Pranksor, The House of the Open Door
The Camp Fire Girls on Ellen's Isleor, the Trail of the Seven Cedars
The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Roador, Glorify Work
The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bitor, Over The Top With the Winnebago's
1919
The long train, which for nearly an hour had been gliding smoothlyforward with a soothing, cradling motion of its heavy trucked Pullmans,and a crooning, lullaby sound of its droning wheels, came to a jarringstop at one of the mountain stations, and Lieutenant Allison wakenedwith a start. The echo of the laugh that he had heard in his dream stillsounded in his ears, a tantalizing, compelling note, elusive as thePipes of Pan, luring as a will-o'-the-wisp. Above the bustle ofdeparting and incoming passengers, the confusion of the station and thegrinding of the wheels as the train started again that haunting peal oflaughter still rang in his ears, still held him in its thrall, callinghim back into the dream from which he had just awakened. Still heavywith sleep and also somewhat light-headed—for he had been travelingfor two days and the strain was beginning to tell on him, although thedoctors had at last pronounced him able to make the journey home for amonth's furlough—he leaned his head against the cool green plushback-rest and stared idly through half-closed eyelids down the longvista of the Pullman aisle. Then his pulses gave a leap and the bloodbegan to pound in his ears and he thought he was back in the basehospital again and the fever was playing tricks on him. For down in theshadowy end of the aisle there moved a figure which his sleep-heavy eyesrecognized as the Maiden, the one who had flitted through his weeks ofdelirium, luring him, beckoning him, calling him, eluding him, vanishingfrom his touch with a peal of silvery laughter that echoed in his earswith a haunting sweetness long after she and the fever had fled awaytogether in the night, not to return. And now, weeks afterward, here shestood, in the shadowy end of a Pullman aisle, watching him from afar,just as she had stood watching in those other days when he and the feverwere wrestling in mortal combat.
He had known her years before he had the fever. Somewhere in his dreamy,imaginative boyhood he had read the Song of Hiawatha, and his glowingfancy had immediately fastened upon the lines which described the Indiangirl, Minnehaha, Laughing Water, daughter of the old arrow-maker in theland of the Dacotahs:
"With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter,
Wayward as the Minnehaha,
With her moods of shade and sunshine,
Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate,
Feet as rapid as the river,
...