“At least this will serve for our camp log! The other girls can see how Kara looked during this interminable night. She will be able to write the account of her fall. I remember that I was diligently at work upon an impossible drawing of a line of hills when I heard the noise of a landslide. There was a sound of earth and rocks being torn from their foundation and tumbling and sliding down an embankment. I scarcely looked up. Kara had disappeared for a walk, so there was no one to whom I might mention the fact. Certainly I had no thought of associating the noise with her.”

Again Tory arose. This time she moved farther from the fire, walking restlessly up and down toward the clearing which opened into a dark forest of evergreens.

The night was a mild summer night. There was in the atmosphere the coolness of the wooded places surrounding them.

Her fire signals had not been observed on either side of the hill. Tory’s impression was that their camp of “The Eagle’s Wing” lay to the west of the hill, although by no means immediately below it. On the eastern slope and nearer by was the Boy Scout camp. This camp the girls of her own Troop had been deliberately ignoring.

At present Tory realized that she would gladly accept aid from either or any direction.

Had Kara been well and awake, or if they had been able to dream beside one another, the long night would have proved a delightful experience.

From the depth of the woods an owl was crying. Tory repressed a slight shudder, controlling her nerves by an effort. The sound recalled the vague moaning that first aroused her to any knowledge of Kara’s accident. Once more she could see Kara lying at the bottom of a tiny precipice. Her face was covered with rocks and earth, but there was no sign that she had fallen any distance or been seriously hurt.

Now in retrospection Tory could see Kara smiling up at her in the old humorous fashion. She could hear her voice with the gentle drawl that had attracted her so strongly at their original meeting.

“Most extraordinary thing, Tory darling. I slid off that small embankment a short time ago, bringing most of it along with me. I was considerably bumped and I presume bruised, but not hurt. However, I decided to lie still here for a while until I recovered my nerves and disposition. Then I tried to climb back to you for consolation and found that my legs would crumple under me in the most absurd fashion. So I fell to making disagreeable noises so you would come and find me. What are we going to do, Tory? I can’t walk and I weigh too much for you to carry.”

Yet she must have carried her, or else Kara must have been able to walk a little! Somehow they had managed to reach this clearing nearer the summit of the hill. Here a fire signal could be more plainly observed.

Six hours had passed. Not for five minutes had Tory allowed the fire signal to die down. No one had replied either by another signal or by coming to their rescue.

Fortunately Kara slept the greater part of the time. Now that the night was fully advanced she would be more comfortable where she was than carried down the mountainside, where there was no well defined path. One had to seek the easiest way between the trees.

For her own part Tory concluded that she might as well attempt to sleep for as long as her fire could be trusted to continue burning.

The pine wood was filled with brush and the night so bright she could find without difficulty what she was seeking.

Returning, Tory smothered over the fire so that it might burn for some time without replenishing. She then lay down beside Kara.

Toward morning she must have dreamed. She woke with the impression that a number of years had passed, or what seemed a long passage of time, and in the interval she and Kara had been searching the world over for each other and unable to meet.

Glad she was to reach over and touch her companion, who scarcely had stirred.

Already the sky was streaked with light, palest rose and blue.

Strengthened and refreshed, Tory set to work again. The summer morning was exquisite, the odor of the pine trees never so fragrant, nor the air so delicious.

Failing in her signals for help the evening before, she now determined to make a more strenuous effort. Intending to return to camp before dusk, she and Kara had neglected to bring a flashlight or a lantern which might have proved more effective.

With the coming of darkness she had not relied on solid columns of black smoke being seen at any distance. Now on a farther ridge of the hill she arranged two such smoke columns, remembering that two steady smokes side by side mean “I am lost, come and help me.”

If she failed a second time, she determined to go down the hill until she was able to secure aid. But this meant leaving Kara alone, which even for a short time she did not wish to do.

The waiting was the difficult task. To her own embarrassment Tory realized that she was thinking more of her own hunger than of Kara’s need as the minutes wore on and no one arrived. Fortunately she had saved a small quantity of coffee in their thermos bottle the day before. This must be for Kara when she finally awakened.

There was nothing to occupy one save to rise now and then and stir the hot ashes to a fresh blaze, covering them afterwards with the green wood of the small beeches that straggled up the hill away from the shadow of the pines.

The noise of footsteps up the mountainside actually failed to arouse Tory until they were not far away.

She first heard an exclamation from Kara. She had not been so sound asleep for the past hour as she had preferred to pretend.

Kara sat up, her arms outstretched as if she were a child begging to be lifted up.

Tory started toward her. She then turned and ran forward with a cry of relief. Had Fate allowed her to choose her own and Kara’s rescuers she would have selected the two figures now appearing at the brow of the east side of the hill. They wore the uniforms of Boy Scouts and were the brothers of one of the girls in her own Patrol. They were also her own intimate friends.

“Don, Lance!” Tory exclaimed, a little breathless and incoherent. “How in the world did you find this impossible place? Kara and I have been fearing we might have to stay here always!”

Don held out his hand and caught Tory’s, giving it a reassuring pressure. He was a big, blue-eyed fellow with fair hair and a splendid physique.

In contrast Victoria Drew appeared small and fragile and incapable.

Lance McClain was entirely unlike his brother in appearance. He was dark and small. He went directly to the girl who seemed most to require his help.

As she struggled to rise at his approach and was not able, Lance knelt down on the grass beside her, while Kara explained what had occurred.

Never, Tory Drew decided, would she forget the aspect of their own camp in Beechwood Forest, when an hour or more later she, in the lead, caught the first glimpse of it. It was as if one had struggled through one of the circles of Purgatory to reach Paradise at last.

Actually a few lines from Dante that her father had recited many times returned to Tory’s memory: