Alice's announcement caused her sister to start in surprise. Ruth looked as if she could not understand, and Alice repeated:

"See, the man who fell is Dan Merley—the one who says daddy owes him five hundred dollars."

"I believe you're right!" agreed Russ, who had had a good look at the impudent fellow the night he invaded the DeVere rooms. "And I know one of those other men—at least by sight. His name is Jagle. Let's see what is going on here."

Fortunately no very large crowd gathered, so the girls felt it would be proper for them to remain, particularly as the accident was not of a distressing nature.

The motorman had stopped his car and had run back to the scene with the conductor.

"What's the matter here? What did you want to get in the way of the car for, anyhow?" demanded the motorman. He was nervously excited, and the reaction at finding, after all, he had not killed a man, made him rather angry.

"Matter? Matter enough, I should say!" replied one of the men with Merley. "My friend is badly hurt. Someone get an ambulance! Fripp, you call one."

"That was Jagle who spoke," Russ whispered to the girls. "But I don't know the other one."

"He doesn't seem to be badly hurt," remarked the motorman. The conductor, with a little pad and pencil, was getting the names of witnesses to be used in case suit was brought. This is always done by street car companies, in order to protect themselves.

"Hurt? Of course he's hurt!" exclaimed the man Russ called Jagle. "See that cut on his head!"

There was a slight abrasion on Merley's forehead, but it did not seem at all serious.

"Aren't you hurt, Dan?" asked Jagle.

"Of course I am!" was the answer. "I'm hurt bad, too. Get me home, Jim."

"If he's hurt the best place for him is a hospital," remarked the motorman. "But I can't see where he's hurt."

"I can't walk, I tell you," whined Merley, and he attempted to get up, but fell back. One of his friends caught him in his arms.

"There, you see! Of course he's hurt!" declared Jagle. "Go call an ambulance, Fripp."

"I'll get an ambulance if he really needs one," spoke a policeman, who had just come up on seeing the crowd. "Where are you hurt?"

"Something's the matter with my legs," declared Merley. "I can't use my right one, and the left one is hurt, too. My foot got caught between the rail and a piece of ice, and I couldn't get loose. My friends tried to help me, but they couldn't get me away in time. I'm hurt, and I'm hurt bad, I tell you! I think one of my legs must be run over."

"Nothing like that!" declared the motorman. "There's been no legs run over by my car!"

That was very evident.

"Get me away from here," groaned Merley.

"Well, if you're really hurt I'll call an ambulance and have you taken to the hospital," offered the policeman as he went to turn in a call.

"I sure am hurt," insisted Merley. "Why, I can hardly move now," and he seemed to stiffen all over, though there was no visible sign of injury.

"Why doesn't someone get a doctor?" a boy in the crowd asked.

"There'll be one in de hurry-up wagon!" exclaimed another urchin. "A feller in a white suit—dem's doctors. I know, cause me fadder was in de 'ospital onct."

Merley's two friends carried him to a drug store not far from the scene of the accident. Ruth and Alice shrank back as he was borne past them, for they feared he might recognize them, and cause a scene. But if he saw them, which is doubtful, he gave no sign.

"Here comes de hurry-up wagon!" cried the lad who had thus designated the ambulance. "Let's see 'em shove him on de stretcher! Say dis is great!"

"I think we had better be going, Alice, dear," said Ruth. "Daddy wouldn't like us to be in this crowd."

"Oh, I want to stay and see what happens. Besides, it might be important," Alice objected. "This is Dan Merley, who might make trouble for papa. We ought to see what happens to him. I think that whole accident was queer. He didn't seem to be hit at all, and yet he says he can't move. We ought to stay."

"If you want to go, I'll stay and let you know what happens," offered Russ. "I don't mind."

"Perhaps that would be best," said Ruth.

"All right," agreed Alice, and she and her sister, with a last look at the crowd around the ambulance, started for their apartment.

Russ came along a little later.

"What happened?" asked Ruth, when he had knocked on the door of their hall and had been admitted.

"Not much," he replied. "They took Merley home, instead of to a hospital. He wouldn't go to an institution, he said."

"Did those other two men go with him?" asked Alice.

"Who, Fripp and Jagle? No, they wouldn't be allowed to ride on the ambulance. But they got a taxicab and went off in that. I heard Jagle say to the ambulance surgeon, that he was a doctor, and that he'd attend his friend when he got him home."

"Is Jagle a doctor?" asked Alice. "He didn't look like one."

"He's a sort of doctor," Russ replied. "I think he's a quack, myself. I wouldn't have him for a sick cat. But he calls himself a doctor and surgeon. So that's all that happened."

"It was enough, anyhow," remarked Ruth. "I don't like to see anybody hurt."

"I'm not so sure that fellow was hurt," said Russ, slowly.

"What do you mean?" Alice asked, curiously.

"Well, he might have imagined he was. I guess he was pretty well scared at seeing that car come down on him. But I watched when he was put in the ambulance and he seemed as well as either of his friends. Only he kept insisting that he could not walk."

"It was certainly a queer accident," said Alice. "But, in spite of the fact that he is a bad man, and wants to make trouble for daddy, I hope he isn't seriously hurt."

"I don't believe it is serious," said Russ. "But it might easily have been, though, if he had fallen in front of the car instead of away from it."

"Well, there is nothing that hasn't its good side," remarked Ruth. "Emerson's idea of the law of compensation works out very nicely in this case."

"Kindly translate, sister mine," invited Alice, laughingly.

"Why, you know Emerson holds that one advantage makes up for each defect. In this case Merley has had an accident—a defect. That may cause him to stop annoying daddy—a distinct advantage to us."

"Oh, Ruth, how queer you are!" exclaimed Alice with a laugh. "I never heard of such an idea."

"Who was this Emerson—a moving picture fellow?" asked Russ.

"No, he was a great writer," explained Ruth. "I'll let you take one of his books."

"I wish you would," said Russ, seriously. "I never had much of a chance to get an education, but I like to know things."

"So do I," agreed Ruth. "I never tire of Emerson."

Mr. DeVere was surprised when he heard about the accident to Merley.

"I can't understand it," said the girls' father. "He must have been hurt, and yet—er—was he in a sensible condition, Russ?"

"Oh, yes, he seemed to be himself, all right," the young moving picture operator replied, thoughtfully. "I haven't gotten to the bottom of it myself."

And indeed it developed that there was a strange plot back of the accident—a plot which involved the moving picture girls in an amazing way, as will soon appear.

But puzzle over the odd accident as they might, neither Mr. DeVere, his daughters, nor Russ could understand what it involved.

"At any rate, as you say, Ruth," the actor remarked with a smile, "there is some compensation. He may not annoy me for some time; and, meanwhile, I may think of a plan to prove I really paid that money."

"I hope so, Daddy!" she exclaimed. "Is your throat any better?"

"Yes, much," he replied with a smile. "Dr. Rathby is going to try a new kind of spray treatment, and I had the first one this afternoon. It helped me wonderfully."

"That's good!" exclaimed Alice.

The next day's papers contained a slight reference to the accident. It was not important enough to warrant much space, and about all that was said was that Merley claimed to have received an injury that made him helpless, though its nature was a puzzle to the physician sent around by the street car company.

"Well, if he's helpless, and the Lord knows I wish that to no man," said Mr. DeVere, reverently, "he will not come here bothering you girls again. If he confines his attacks to me I do not so much mind, but he must leave you alone."

"That's what I say!" cried Russ.

When Mr. DeVere and his daughters arrived at the moving picture studio that afternoon, for they were not to report until then, they found notices posted, requesting all members of the company to remain after rehearsal to hear an "important announcement."

"I wonder what it can be?" said Ruth.

"Probably it's about the new plans Mr. Pertell has been working on," suggested Alice.

"I think so," Russ said. He knew something of them, but had not permission to reveal them.

And this proved to be the case. After the day's work was ended, and it included the filming of several scenes for important dramas, Mr. Pertell called his players together, and said:

"Ladies and gentlemen—also Tommy and Nellie, for you will be in on this, I hope—we are going to leave New York City again, and be together in a new place to make a series of plays."

"Leave New York!" gasped Miss Pennington.

"I hope we don't go to Oak Farm again!" cried Miss Dixon. "I want to be in some place where I can get a lobster now and then."

"There will be no lobsters at Deerfield!" said Mr. Pertell, with a smile, "unless there are some of the canned variety."

"How horrid!" complained Miss Pennington.

"Will there be deers there?" asked Tommy, with big eyes.

"I think there will, sonny," answered the manager.

"Reindeers—like Santa Claus has?" little Nellie wanted to know.

"Well, I guess so!" laughed Mr. Pertell. "At any rate, I plan to take you all there."

"Where is Deerfield, if one may ask?" inquired Miss Dixon, pertly.

"Deerfield is a sort of backwoods settlement, in one of our New England States," explained the manager. "It is rather isolated, but I want to go there to get some scenes for moving pictures with good snow, and ice effects as backgrounds."

"Are there good hotels there?" Miss Pennington demanded.

"We are going to stop in a big hunting lodge, that I have hired for the occasion," Mr. Pertell replied. "I think you will like it very much."

"Hold on! One moment!" exclaimed Mr. Sneed, the grouchy actor. "You may count me out of this! I shall go to no backwoods, in the middle of winter, and freeze. I cannot stand the cold. I shall resign at once!"

"One moment. Before you decide that, I have something else to say to you," said Mr. Pertell, and there was a smile on his face.