The swim and the clean clothing had a refreshing effect upon all the girls; they returned to the camp in brighter spirits. Marjorie felt positively exhilarated.
Supper that night was perhaps the gayest meal of the trip; everyone seemed to have some joke to tell, or some story to add to the enjoyment of the occasion. It was not until long afterward when the whole party was sitting around the camp fire that Arthur Hilton introduced the first unlucky stroke. He could not resist the opportunity to tell a harrowing story of an attack by a bear.
The men listened with the keenest relish to this exciting adventure, but the girls began to edge up closer and closer to each other, breathing a sigh of relief when Arthur finished.
Mrs. Hilton, as usual, made the first move to go to bed. The girls were only too glad to follow her example.
Still impressed by Alice’s rebuke of the afternoon, Doris had resolutely succeeded in keeping her fears to herself. Now she crept hastily into bed, pulling her blanket up tight about her, as if to shut out the darkness and the sounds of the night.
She was almost dropping to sleep, when her senses were suddenly aroused by a queer howl—the weirdest noise she had ever heard, she thought. She listened, terrified, too much afraid even to sit up in bed.
“Marjorie!” she called to her nearest tent-mate, “do you hear that howl?”
Marjorie sat up in bed. She had heard it, but had not thought much about it.
“Yes, I do,” she replied. “But I don’t know what it is. Listen again!”
They were perfectly still, and the sound was repeated. It was not like anything they had ever heard before.