With the eleventh volume of the series Ruth and her chums, Helen Cameron and Jennie Stone, begin their life at Ardmore College. As freshmen their experiences are related in “Ruth Fielding at College; Or, The Missing Examination Papers.” This volume is followed by “Ruth Fielding in the Saddle; Or, College Girls in the Land of Gold,” wherein Ruth’s first big scenario is produced by the Alectrion Film Corporation.
As was the fact with so many of our college boys and girls, the World War interfered most abruptly and terribly with Ruth’s peaceful current of life. America went into the war and Ruth into Red Cross work almost simultaneously.
In “Ruth Fielding in the Red Cross; Or, Doing Her Bit for Uncle Sam,” the Girl of the Red Mill gained a very practical experience in the work of the great peace organization which does so much to smooth the ravages of war. Then, in “Ruth Fielding at the War Front; Or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier,” the Red Cross worker was thrown into the very heart of the tremendous struggle, and in northern France achieved a name for courage that her college mates greatly envied.
Wounded and nerve-racked because of her experiences, Ruth was sent home, only to meet, as related in the fifteenth volume of the series, “Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; Or, A Red Cross Worker’s Ocean Perils,” an experience which seemed at first to be disastrous. In the end, however, the girl reached the Red Mill in a physical and mental state which made any undue excitement almost a tragedy for her.
The mysterious disappearance of the moving picture scenario, which had been on her heart and mind for months and which she had finally brought, she believed, to a successful termination, actually shocked Ruth Fielding. She could not control herself for the moment.
Against Tom Cameron’s uniformed shoulder she sobbed frankly. His arm stole around her.
“Don’t take on so, Ruthie,” he urged. “Of course we’ll find it all. Wait till this rain stops——”
“It never blew away, Tom,” she said.
“Why, of course it did!”
“No. The sheets of typewritten manuscript were fastened together with a big brass clip. Had they been lose and the wind taken them, we should have seen at least some of them flying about. And the notebooks!”