I am too lame to help?”
Again Esther nodded. She generally had done whatever Betty Ashton had asked of her since the day of her coming to the great Ashton homestead in Woodford a little more than half a year before. But as Betty outlined her plan Esther grew interested and in half a moment jumping up began stamping her feet and swinging her arms to get the warmth and vigor back into her body.
“Why, Betty Ashton, of course we can manage even to stay here in the woods all night and not have such a horrid time! It won’t be so difficult, I’ll have things fixed in the least little while.”
A short time afterwards and Esther had brought up from their broken sleigh a portion of the precious grocery supplies which she and Betty had driven into Woodford early that afternoon to obtain – a can of coffee, crackers, a side of bacon and, most welcome of all, a bundle of kindling tied as neatly together as toothpicks. For several weeks of having to gather wood out of doors, oftentimes in the snow and rain, and then drying it under cover, had made an occasional supply of kindling from the shops in town extremely grateful to the camp fire makers. Fortunately, Betty had filled the last remaining space in their sleigh with kindling wood before starting back to camp.
And in Esther’s several absences she had been diligently preparing a place for a fire, first by scooping away the snow with her hands and then by scraping it with a three-pronged stick which she had found nearby.
However, a fire in the snow was not easy to start even by a Camp Fire girl, so that fifteen minutes must have passed and an entire box of matches been consumed before the paper collected from about their packages had persuaded even the kindling to light. And then by infinite patience and coaxing, wet pine twigs and cones were added to the fire until finally the larger logs, discovered under the surrounding trees, also blazed into heat and light.
And while Betty was cherishing the fire, Esther managed to make a partial canopy over their heads with brushwood.
There are but few things in this world though that do not take a longer time to accomplish than we at first expect and require a longer patience. So that when the two girls had finally arranged their temporary winter shelter, the twilight had come down and both of them were extremely weary. Nevertheless, the most wonderful coffee was made with melted snow in the tin can, bacon sliced and fried with the knife no Camp Fire girl fails to carry and the crackers toasted into a smoky but delicious brown. And then when supper was over Betty crept close to Esther under their rug resting her head on her shoulder.
“No one knows where we are to-night, Esther, so no one will worry. The girls will think we stayed in town on account of the storm and our friends in the village that we are now safe back in Sunrise cabin. So do let us make the best of things,” she whispered. “To-night, at least, we are real Camp Fire girls from necessity and not choice, and I believe I can better understand why our ancestors once used to worship the fire as the symbol of home. Then, too, I am glad we chose the pine trees for our refuge. I wonder if you know this legend? When Mary was in flight to Egypt to save our Lord from Herod, she stopped beneath a pine tree and rested there safe from her enemies in a green chamber filled with its balsamy fragrance, the tree proving its love for the Christ Child by lowering its limbs when Herod’s soldiers passed by. And then when the Baby raised its hand to bless the tree, it so marked it that when the pine cone is cut lengthwise it shows the form of a hand – the hand of Christ.”
With the telling of her story Betty’s voice was sinking lower and lower, and as her cheeks were now so flushed with her nearness to the fire and with fever from the pain in her foot, Esther hoped she might soon fall asleep. So she made no reply, but instead began singing the “Good-Night Song” of the Camp Fire girls which has been set to the beautiful old melody “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.” And though she began very softly, meaning her song to reach only Betty’s ears, by and by forgetting herself in the pleasure her music always brought her, she let her voice increase in power, until the final notes could have been heard some distance through the woods and even a little way up the hill which stood like a solid white wall before them. The snow had stopped falling and the wind had died down, but the coldness and the stillness were therefore the more profound.
“The sun is sinking in the west,
The evening shadows fall;
Across the silence of the lake
We hear the loon’s low call.
So let us, too, the silence keep,
And softly steal away,
To rest and sleep until the morn
Brings forth another day.”
“Betty, Betty!” Instead of allowing her friend to sleep Esther began shaking her nervously only a few moments after the closing of her song.
And Betty started suddenly, giving a little cry of pain and surprise, for evidently she had been dreaming and found it hard to come back to so strange a reality. Here she and Esther were alone in the winter woods not many miles from shelter and yet unable to find it, while she had been dreaming of herself as a poor half-frozen waif somewhere out in a city street listening to strains of music, which were not of Esther’s song but of some instrument. The girl rubbed her eyes and laughed.
“Dear me, Esther, it’s too cold to sleep, isn’t it? Let us put some more wood on our fire and stay awake and talk. I think the Winter Manitou, Peboan, must have been visiting me with the wind playing the strings of his harp, for I have just dreamed I was listening to music.”
“You didn’t dream it; I wasn’t asleep and I heard it also. There, listen!”
The two girls caught hold of one another’s hands and silently they stared ahead of them through the opening in their curious, Esquimaux-like tent. Could anything be more improbable and yet without doubt the notes of a violin could be heard approaching nearer and nearer.
Transfixed with surprise and pleasure Esther kept still but Betty, who in spite of her whims was a really practical person, shook her head in a somewhat annoyed fashion. “It is perfectly absurd you know, Esther, for any human being to be strolling through the New Hampshire woods on a winter’s night playing the violin. We are not in Germany or the Alps or in a story book. But if it really is a person and not the Spirit of Winter, as I still believe, why he might as well help us out of our difficulty. I don’t feel so romantic as I did an hour or so ago.”
At this instant a dim figure did appear around a turn in the road where the girls had previously met disaster and putting her cold fingers to her lips Betty cried “Halloo, Halloo,” in as loud a voice as possible and at the same time seizing one of their burning logs she waved it as a signal of distress.
CHAPTER II
“Sunrise Cabin”
“Ach, gnädige Fräuleins, it ist not possible.”
“No, I know it isn’t,” Betty returned with her most demure expression, although there were little sparks of light at the back of her gray-blue eyes. She rose stiffly from the ground with Esther’s assistance and stood leaning on her arm, while both girls without trying to hide their astonishment surveyed a middle aged, shabbily dressed German with his violin case under one arm and his violin under the other.
“I haf been visiting the Orphan Asylum in this neighborhood where I haf friends,” he explained. “I am in Woodford only a few days now and after supper when the storm is over I start back to town. Then I thought I heard some one singing, calling, perhaps it is you?” He looked only at Betty, since in the semi-darkness with the fire as a background it was difficult to distinguish but one object at a time and that only by concentrated attention. But as she shook her head he turned toward Esther.
“When I hear the singing I play my violin, thinking
