The Camp Fire Girls Across the Seas

by Margaret Vandercook

By some magic he seemed to know the open spaces between the trees and where the underbrush could be safely trodden down. Neither did he make any effort to assist either of the two girls, leaving that task entirely to Richard Ashton. And though under ordinary circumstances neither girl would have needed help, tonight Esther was strangely tired. All day, since the early hour of leaving their little German cottage, she had been under unusual strain. So that now, though she was ashamed of it, remembering her long training in outdoor life, now and then she did manage to stumble and to have to clutch either at Polly or at Dr. Ashton for support.

In one of these moments of delay, Carl von Renter did hesitate for an instant, calling back over his shoulder: "We will reach the path in a short time. It is the same path which you took through the woods to my hunting lodge several weeks ago."

But when they finally reached this path their leader had disappeared into the distance ahead of them, leaving the three strangers to stumble on through the darkness alone.

And if ever in her life Polly O'Neill was to recognize the need which any woman may some day require of a knowledge of the woods and fields, she needed it tonight. For here the three of them were in an unknown forest in a strange land with no light except that made by the dark lantern which some one in the village had loaned Dick. Esther was too tired to be of much assistance, and Richard Ashton did not understand half so much of outdoor life as the two Camp Fire girls. Always he had been too devoted a student of books for the right kind of acquaintance with nature. Moreover, Dick was extremely angry at Lieutenant von Reuter's desertion of them. Of course Betty must be found as promptly as possible, if it were true that she was signaling for their aid from some place in the woods. But if Dick had realized it, in his prejudice against their new acquaintance, he would honestly have preferred that Betty should have to wait for her deliverance a few moments longer than that this young foreigner should manage to be her deliverer. And this in spite of the fact than an occasional drop of rain was beginning to fall and that now and then a line of lightning streaked the sky.

Under other circumstances nothing would have persuaded Carl von Reuter to have so failed in courtesy as his present action showed. For whatever the difference in points of view between an American and a foreigner, there is little difference in the code of good breeding between one civilized nation and another. And Lieutenant von Reuter was a member of the old German nobility. Indeed, one of the objections to him which both Esther and Polly had expressed was that he was almost too formal, too conventional in his manner and behavior for their simpler American taste. So of course there was some unusual impulse, some strong emotion and design now urging him ahead almost to the complete forgetting of his other companions.

But not since the hour of their original meeting had the young German failed to acknowledge to himself that Betty Ashton had a charm for him which no other girl had ever before possessed. He had known no other American girls until now, and his acquaintance with German girls of his own position in life had been at solemn parties, where they were usually too frightened and self-conscious to have much to say for themselves. Of course he had always been told that American girls were unlike any others and yet had failed to imagine that they could have the beauty and fascination that Betty Ashton had for him. Why, he had not even tried to find out anything about her family, about her position in the world! For it is a curious fact that foreigners who care so much for class distinctions in their own countries have no such attitude toward Americans. Because we have no titles, because a family that is poor and obscure in one generation may be rich and distinguished in the next, they consider that all Americans are of equal position except in the matter of wealth. And this fact Carl von Reuter had learned in connection with Betty Ashton. She was poor, there was no possibility of doubting it. One could see it plainly enough in the simple fashion in which they were living and through their ordinary conversation. Moreover, Betty had made no effort to hide the fact. Indeed, it had seemed at times as if she were anxious to speak of it for some secret reason of her own. Yet she need not have felt this necessary, since there could be no uncertainty in the young count's mind. Frederick von Reuter, who seemed to have almost forgotten his own emotion in his deep interest in his cousin's, having made careful inquiries through his bank, had sadly reported that Miss Ashton could not possibly be regarded as an American heiress.

This information, tragic as it may have sounded at the time, had no place in Carl's thoughts tonight. He was only possessed of the one thought that the girl whom he admired and liked so much was alone in the woods, probably hurt and needing his aid. And that at any moment she might be caught in a fierce thunderstorm.

As the young fellow strode swiftly along—he had hunted too frequently in his own forests not to be entirely familiar with them—he began to realize that the signal which his two girl companions had recognized first was coming from the same neighborhood where he had had a previous meeting with them. For as he drew nearer, once again the signals flashed, though dimmer now because of the increasing strength of the storm.

Curiously enough, as he strode along he was recalling the story of Siegfried and Brunhilde which he had repeated to the three girls at Polly's request. And the words of Siegfried's song came back to his mind. This was not just an idle coincidence. The Germans are a far more sentimental and music-loving race of people than we can fully understand. And from the hour when Carl von Reuter had first seen Betty, the beauty of her gold-red hair had suddenly made him think of his small boy dream of this best-loved heroine in all the old German legends. There was hardly a time in his childhood when he had not been devoted to this story, which is usually unfamiliar to American boys and girls until such time as they are grown and begin seeing Wagner's wonderful operas, written about these tales of the Nibelung.

And in truth the young man found Betty Ashton as much encircled by fire as ever the famous Brunhilde could have been and with the thunder and lightning playing over her head like the final scene in "Siegfried."