A Busy Year at the Old Squire's

by C. A. Stephens

Startled, the other two girls slammed the door shut, and hastily set the heavy old camp table against it.

"It's only a fox!" Kate cried. "But it has gone mad, I think. I was afraid it would bite me."

Peering out of the one little window and the cracks between the logs, they saw the animal run past the camp. It was still yapping weirdly, and it snapped at bushes and twigs as it passed. Suddenly it turned back and ran by the camp door again. Afterward they heard its cries first up the slope behind the camp, and then down by the brook.

"We mustn't go out," Kate whispered. "If it were to bite us, we, too, should go mad."

There was no danger of the beast's breaking into the camp, and after a while the girls kindled a fire, thawed out their luncheon and ate it. The December sun was sinking low, and soon set behind the tree tops. It was a long way home, and they had their baskets of mitchella to carry. Hoping that the distressed creature had gone its way, they listened for a while at the door, and at last ventured forth; but when they drew near the place where Kate had gathered the dry spruce branches they heard the creature yapping in the thickets ahead. In a panic they ran back to the camp.

Their situation was not pleasant. They dared not venture out again. Darkness had already set in; the camp was cold and they had little fuel. The prospect that any one from home would come to their aid was small, for they were now a long way from Dunham's open, where they had said they were going, and where, of course, search parties would look for them. Kate, however, remained cheerful.

"It's nothing!" she exclaimed. "I can soon get wood for a fire." Under the bunk she had found an old axe, and with it she proceeded to chop up the camp table.

"The only thing I'm afraid of," she said, "is that the boys will start out to look for us, and that if they find our tracks in the snow, they'll come on up here and run afoul of that fox before they know it."

"We can shout to them," Ellen suggested.

Not much later, in fact, they began to make the forest resound with loud, clear calls. For a long while the only answer to their cries came from two owls; but Kate was right in thinking that we boys would set out to find them.