An early rising moon cast a ghostly light on the path through the wood, and the girls’ feet fairly flew over this way. Celia Prime and Mary O’Rourke were among the last to run; but they did run finally, and never had a hundred or more girls become so entirely panic-stricken as the members of the M. O. R.’s and their candidates for initiation. The ceremony was there and then, and without a dissenting voice, postponed to a more favorable time!
“Where is Laura?” gasped Jess, running hard behind the Lockwood twins.
“Oh, yes! she’s so brave!” panted Dora. “She ran first of all, I believe. I bet she’s ’way ahead of us.”
Jess knew that Laura could outrun most of the girls, whether they were frightened or not. So she took this statement for the truth.
But when they arrived at the inn and the regular picnic grounds, Laura was not there. But some of the girls who had started first had already passed through the gates and were on the road to the cars.
Of course, most of them had stopped running now. They were ashamed of their fright, and did not want to explain it to the people at the inn. But you couldn’t have hired one of them to return to the plateau before the haunted house just then.
“I think Laura is just too mean not to wait for us,” panted Nellie Agnew.
“She’s ashamed, I expect,” said one of the twins.
“It isn’t like her,” Jess said.
“She was scared, all right,” said Nellie.