The latter drew a knife from his pocket and in a moment was severing the rope that bound the child to the chair. After he had released the boy, who looked gratefully toward him as a protector, the man threw cold water on little Glen’s natural feeling of confidence toward him by saying:
“Now, mind you, Mrs. Graham, my interference is not moved by any sentiment of sympathy for the kid. I merely want to inform you that things are coming to such a pass that I may be forced to drop out of this game purely as a move of self-salvation. For instance, it appears very unwise to make any further attempts to frighten that bunch of girls. They simply don’t scare. See that?”
Langford indicated the object of his question by taking off his hat, which he had neglected to remove when he entered the house, and caressing gently with two or three fingers a badly swollen wound on the side of his head almost directly over his right ear. Mrs. Graham looked at it curiously, not sympathetically.
“Where did you get that?” she inquired.
“Those girls did it, or one of them, I presume. I thought my make-up would paralyze them, but instead they nearly paralyzed me. I think they fired some rocks at me, for something of that description struck my head, and you see the result.
“I drove my machine into the timber a little farther up the road and put on my ghost outfit. Then I walked through the woods to the girls’ camp and stalked past them. You would have thought my appearance was enough to freeze their veins and arteries. Well, they pretty nearly put mine in cold storage for eternity. Now, what do you know about ‘first aid to the injured?’ Will you get some cold water and alcohol or liniment? I’m going to have a fierce swelling. I don’t suppose I can keep it down much now, but I’m going to have an awful headache and I’d like to prevent that as much as possible. Let the kid go to bed, and do something for me.”
Glen took advantage of this suggestion and went into another room. Mrs. Graham and the lawyer returned to the living room. Katherine and Hazel watched them for about twenty minutes, but heard little more conversation. Then Langford left the house and Mrs. Graham and her son prepared to retire. As it appeared that they would be able to get no further information of interest to them at the Graham cottage that night, Katherine and Hazel and the other two girls who waited at the edge of the clearing returned to their camp and reported the success of their expedition.
Early next day, Miss Ladd, Katherine, and Hazel went by boat to Twin Lakes and appeared before a magistrate and swore out a warrant for the arrest of Mrs. Graham on a charge of cruel and inhuman treatment of a child in her custody. Before leaving Fairberry she had been given authority to take this move if in her judgment such emergency action were advisable. She also asked that Glen Irving be removed from the custody of the Grahams. Then Miss Ladd sent a telegram to Mrs. Hutchins asking her to “come at once.”
Mrs. Hutchins arrived at Twin Lakes next day. Meanwhile Mrs. Graham was arrested and the boy was taken temporarily as a ward of the court. When she was confronted with the charges against her and the evidence of the two Camp Fire Girls who had witnessed one instance of outrageous cruelty, her cold resistance was broken and she promised to accede to Mrs. Hutchins demands if the prosecution were dropped.