The Camp Fire Girls at the Seashore

harlie. Suppose you loosen up and tell me about it. Then I may be able to figure better on how I can help you."

"That's just what I'm going to do, old man. I want you to meet two of cousin's protegees here--Bessie King and Zara, the mysterious. If we knew more about Zara and her affairs this wouldn't be such a Chinese puzzle. But here goes! Ask me all the questions you like. And you girls--if I go wrong, stop me.

"In the first place, Miss Mercer here took a party of her Camp Fire Girls, these same ones that you can see there so busy about getting breakfast, over the state line, and they went to a camp on a lake a little way from a village called Hedgeville."

"I know the place," nodded Trenwith. "Never been there, but I know where it is."

"Well, one morning they discovered these two--Bessie and Zara. And they'd had a strange experience. They were running away!"

"Bad business, as a rule," commented Trenwith. "But I suppose there was a good reason?"

"You bet there was, o