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.