"Will the Squirrel climb?" demanded the voice.
"Yeth, the Thquirrel will climb," she acquiesced, with surprising docility. "Where ith the tree?"
"Just behind you."
Grace was turned about, her hands were placed against the trunk of the tree, and the towel was suddenly removed from about her head.
The tree was a small one with limbs hanging low, almost within reach of Grace Thompson's hands. Some one gave her a boost. Tommy took advantage of it and with the help of the hazers clambered to the lower limb. In the intense darkness she was unable to see clearly anything about her. Feeling her way, cautiously, she climbed to the next limb. Her bathrobe, however, sadly impeded her progress, but by determined efforts she managed at last to reach the top of the tree.
"Come on up, girlth. It ith fine up here."
Tommy's courage was rapidly returning to her. Then again she could afford to speak pleasantly to her captors for she was about to turn the tables on them in a most unexpected manner.
"You're all 'fraid catth, 'fraid catth and I'm going to thhow you that you are. In a minute I'm going to thcare you half to death. Now watch me."
Tommy did all she had promised to do, and just as Harriet and her captors were moving toward the camp, Tommy uttered a wild, piercing cry. Then she uttered another and still another. About that time half a dozen girls might have been observed fleeing toward the camp. They were running as perhaps they had never run before. Harriet was left standing alone on the bank of the stream. She was too startled at first to realize what the cries meant. All at once she discovered that the voice was Tommy's. But Harriet was considerably puzzled, for there was not the least note of alarm in the cries. They were intended solely to arouse the camp and cause the downfall of the girls who were running for their tents. So far as arousing the camp was concerned, Tommy's plan worked to perfection for girls in every tent were tumbling out in alarm.
Then Tommy discovered that she was alone, and becoming alarmed at being left out in the woods without company, she began to scream in earnest. At the same time she endeavored to scramble down from her lofty position scratching her hands on the projections of the tree in her hasty descent. Suddenly she missed her footing. Her hands slipped from the limb to which she had been clinging, and she felt herself falling. She did not reach the ground, however, for the heavy cord confining her bathrobe at the waist caught on a projecting limb of the tree, and Tommy dangled helplessly in the air.