Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays; Or, Rescuing the Runaways

E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Project Gutenberg Beginners Projects,
Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Or, Rescuing the Runaways
1916
Ta-ra! ta-ra! ta-ra-ra-ra! ta- rat!
Professor Krenner took the silver bugle from his lips while the strain echoed flatly from the opposite, wooded hill. That hill was the Isle of Hope, a small island of a single eminence lying half a mile off the mainland, and not far north of Freeling.
The shore of Lake Huron was sheathed in ice. It was almost Christmas time. Winter had for some weeks held this part of Michigan in an iron grip. The girls of Lakeview Hall were tasting all the joys of winter sports.
The cove at the boathouse (this was the building that some of the Lakeview Hall girls had once believed haunted) was now a smooth, well-scraped skating pond. Between the foot of the hill, on the brow of which the professor stood, and the Isle of Hope, the strait was likewise solidly frozen. The bobsled course was down the hill and across the icy track to the shore of the island.
Again the professor of mathematics—and architectural drawing—put the key-bugle to his lips and sent the blast echoing over the white waste:
Ta-ra! ta-ra! ta-ra-ra-ra! ta- rat!
The road from Lakeview Hall was winding, and only a short stretch of it could be seen from the brow of Pendragon Hill. But the roof and chimneys of the great castle-like Hall were visible above the tree-tops.
Now voices were audible—laughing, sweet, clear, girls' voices, ringing like a chime of silver bells, as the owners came along the well-beaten path, and suddenly appeared around an arbor-vitae clump.