"Wasn't it dreadful!" exclaimed Tavia. "I was just scared stiff!"
"We do get into such awful predicaments," mused Dorothy. "But I suppose the others are almost as frightened as we are now,—I was dreadfully afraid when the woman shouted to us."
"Wasn't she a scarecrow? Just like an old witch in a story book. Listen! I thought I heard the girls!"
"Hark!" echoed Dorothy. "I am sure that was Edna's yoddle. Answer it!"
At the top of her voice Tavia shouted the familiar call. Then she listened again.
"Yes," declared Dorothy, "that's surely Ned. Oh, do let's run! They might turn off on another road! This place seems to be all turns."
When the welcome sounds of that call were heard by both parties little time was lost in reaching the lost ones. What had seemed to be nightfall was really only the blackness of the storm, and now, on the turnpike, a golden light shot through the trees, and wrapt its glory about the happy girls, who tried all at once to embrace the two who had gone through such a reign of terror.
"Hurry! Hurry!" called Miss Crane, skipping along like a schoolgirl herself.
To tell the story of their adventures, the Dalton girls marched in the center of the middle row—everyone wanted to hear, and everyone wanted to be just as near as possible to Tavia and Dorothy.
Taking refuge under the cliff seemed exciting enough, but when Dorothy told how they had lost the trail to the mountain top, and how all the footing slipped down as they tried to make the ascent, the girls were spell-bound. Then to hear Tavia describe, in her own inimitable way, the call of "the witch"—made some shout, ad the entire party ran along as if the same "witch" was at their heels.