Mrs. Lupo seized a lantern from the gallery.
“I go myself,” she said, and disappeared. All that night Mrs. Lupo searched Table Top. She knew the trail as intimately as the mountain girl, but at dawn she had found nothing. But as the light spread over the marsh, she saw something lying on the very edge of the most dangerous quicksand in the place. It was Nancy’s hobble skirt.
“Oh, oh!” groaned the poor woman over and over with a kind of savage chant. “Oh, oh! I’m punished now.”
Rolling the skirt into a bundle she turned her face from Sunrise Camp and disappeared in the pine forests.
About an hour after Mrs. Lupo had left the camp, the doctor heard the noise of hurrying footsteps on the gallery at the front and hastening downstairs he found Ben Austen and his guide.
“Miss Campbell—how has she stood it? Is she all right?” demanded Ben breathlessly.
“Not so loud,” answered the doctor. Then he told Ben in a few words what had happened. “She doesn’t even know you have been lost,” he said.
While the two men were talking together in whispers, the girl looked about her with much curiosity. Was she in a palace? The high roof, the rugs and chairs were things new to her. And this was called a “camp”! What was the inside of a real house like, she wondered.
“That virago!” she heard Ben say. “No wonder she drives Lupo to drink. This young lady here has saved us all and guided me back through the swamp.” He indicated the barefooted girl. “I suppose we would have been there yet if she hadn’t heard us call.”
“You must sit down,” said the doctor kindly. “I’ll just have a look at my patient and then help this young man get some supper. Your name is—?”