THE LAYING OF A SPOOK
"It's the banshee! It's the banshee!" screamed a score of voices.
What they had seen had been enough to startle the bravest person. A figure had suddenly appeared out of the gloom, a huge towering figure that looked to the startled girls to be almost as high as the trees themselves, though it was not more than eight feet tall. The figure was clad in long, flowing white robes that hung gracefully to its feet. Two arms almost as long as the figure was high, were waving frantically in the air. The face was small and as white as the garb of the strange weird creature. It did, indeed, look as though it might be the fabled banshee from the moors of County Mooreland.
"Woo-oo-oo," wailed the apparition.
"Come back, girls!" cried Mrs. Livingston. "Come back, I tell you!" The Chief Guardian had herself been startled at first. Standing their ground were half a dozen other girls, among them was Hazel Holland. Patricia Scott and Cora Kidder had long since retired to a safe distance from the apparition.
The words of the Guardian somehow seemed to reassure the trembling Tommy. Then, too, she saw that Harriet did not run. Harriet had thrown herself upon the ground and was sitting with her head in hands, her shoulders shaking. What Tommy did not know was that Harriet was not shaking with fear, but with laughter.
The apparition was slowly approaching the little group of girls, with arms waving and the weird "woo-oo-oo" becoming louder and louder. Two of the half dozen who had stood their ground now turned and fled precipitately.
Tommy Thompson still stood her ground, with trembling limbs. All at once her eyes narrowed. A crafty expression took the place of the look of fear on her small face. Then to the amazement of the girls who still remained, Tommy crept cautiously around until she got to the rear of the approaching figure. Now and then as she thought the giant banshee was about to turn around, Tommy would leap back as lightly as a cat.
Mrs. Livingston forgot her dignity and laughed until her eyes were dimmed with tears.
The little girl made a sudden dive and a grab. Her fingers closed over a piece of the banshee's robe. She felt something else in her grasp and gave a mighty tug.
There was a shrill scream from the banshee. Harriet sprang away believing that the apparition was about to fall on her. The girls fled. This was too much for them. They did not think far enough to realize that what they had heard was a most human scream and that it could have come only from a human throat.
Down came the giant banshee in a mighty fall.
"Save me!" wailed the gigantic falling figure.
It was now too late to do anything toward saving the luckless banshee. The drapery fell away in its struggles to right itself and the terrified apparition perched upon a pair of stilts fell sprawling close to the fire which by this time had burned very low, else the banshee's robes might have been permanently singed.
Tommy uttered a little shriek.
"It'th Crathy Jane! It'th Crathy Jane! Thomebody thave her!"
Harriet Burrell was the "somebody" who sprang to the rescue. No sooner had Jane touched the ground than Harriet was dragging her away, rolling her on the ground, patting out the little flames that sprang up here and there from her clothing. This was made the more difficult because of the long stilts upon which the daring Jane McCarthy had walked. The long arms had been sticks on which sheets had been draped. The arms had dropped when Jane took her mighty fall and now lay on the ground on the other side of the campfire.
"Are you hurt?" begged Harriet anxiously.
"Oh, my darlin'! I'm killed entirely."
"Wait till I take off your stilts. You will be all right as soon as you get to your feet."
"Tommy has laid the ghost," cried a girl who had last run away. At this the others came hesitatingly back. Mrs. Livingston half laughing, half crying was assisting Jane to her feet. Jane's face wore a sheepish grin as she shrugged her shoulders to make sure that they had not been dislocated. Harriet had thrown off her mask. Her white robe was blackened from the smoke and the fire from which she had rescued the singed banshee, and Margery upon returning to the scene was complaining that she had bursted half the buttons off her waist.
"There is your ghost, young ladies," smiled Mrs. Livingston. "Let it be a lesson to you to never forget your self-possession, never to be carried away by your impulses. Always use reason."
"Yeth. That ith what I did," declared Tommy.
"Why didn't you run?" asked Miss Partridge, who had remained near the scene, but at what she considered a safe distance from the apparition.
"I thaw a lock of Crathy Jane'th hair thlipping out from behind her mathk. The minute I thaw that hair I knew it. Then when I got behind her I thaw the thtiltth. You thee the light wath on the other thide. I could thee right through her drapery."
Now that the banshee had been "laid" the frightened girls could afford to laugh and they did.
Mrs. Livingston spoke again.
"Miss Burrell has fairly won an honor. Some of you observed her presence of mind when she rolled Miss McCarthy on the ground to put out the fire in the latter's clothing, thus possibly saving that young woman's life. For this you are awarded five red beads, Miss Burrell, for fire is red and fire is the enemy that you overcame."
"Do I get a bead for laying the ghotht?" interrupted Grace.
"Yes, you do," answered the Chief Guardian with a smile. "Miss McCarthy also shall have two beads, one for making the finest molasses candy we have ever eaten, the second for providing the most unusual amusement ever known at Camp Wau-Wau. And now we will go to our quarters. It has been a most entertaining evening, even if it did cause some of us apprehension."
Jane McCarthy stepped up to Mrs. Livingston, looking the latter squarely in the eyes.
"Mrs. Livingston, I do not think I am entitled to either of those rewards," she said.
"No? And why not?"
"I never made any candy in my life before. I didn't even know whether you used baking-soda or flour in it. Harriet helped with the recipe and told me all she could about how to go to work. Oh, I want to be perfectly honest about it all. Harriet suggested the ghost party too, though the big banshee and the idea of the story were mine. I don't want the beads, Mrs. Livingston. I want Harriet Burrell to have them. She earned them, I didn't."
"Fine! Splendid! You are a Camp Girl in reality now. The spirit of Wau-Wau has taken possession of you. My dear I congratulate you. The beads are yours. Your truthfulness and unselfishness would win them for you even though nothing else could. The fire-makers will subdue the flames after the others have reached their tents."
Three happy girls went arm in arm to the camp street. They were Crazy Jane, Harriet Burrell and Tommy Thompson, the latter more proud than she had ever been in her life, because she had done what not one of some forty others had dared to do—she had laid the ghost. Tommy expressed her admiration for herself that night when snuggling down under the blankets she murmured:
"Well, I gueth I'm thome folkth."