“We must lift him out of the mud! Oh-h! even if it hurts him–terribly–we’ll have to lift him to a dry spot.”

It was Pemrose Lorry who spoke. Together with her Camp Fire sisters she had taken some training in first aid. And one agonizing accident which she had been told how to deal with was the case of a knee-cap displaced or broken.

There almost seemed to be a broken head on her own young shoulders through which wild, streaky lights and shadows came stealing, like moonlight through cracked shutters whose chinks are not wide enough to reveal clearly any object in a room.

It was the same breathlessly unreal feeling–the same dim moonlit groping, that she had felt as she sat on the cliff-brow with Stud, when he talked of the nickum and his father–and called the latter a “queer fish!”

For one thing she knew at a glance! She had seen the injured man, who lay calling for help in a miry spot of the Man Killer trail, before. Three times before, said lightning perception!

And it came upon her now, as emergency’s stiff breeze blew the cobwebs from her brain, the occasion of the second time, sandwiched in between that zero day when he had dragged her up a snow-bank, the youth who saved her addressing him as Dad, and the smiling June one when he lay on a fernbed before his lake-shore camp, grumpily fishing.

“I–I saw him: I know I saw him–again–crossing the street outside Una’s home on the day when the last installment of the Will was read,” she realized, her hands coming together convulsively at the thought of the blighting codicil which hung up the fortunes of the moon-going Thunder Bird for twelve long years.

“He–he was wearing the same gray cap!” was the next cleaving flash of memory.

He was not really wearing it now. It bobbed in the rill beside him.

As one eye turned feverishly towards it, the third thunder clap of perception came in the staggering sense of how like he was to Una.

She might have been his daughter–Una–with that little fixed star of feeling set like a shining pebble now in her right, fascinated eye, reflected, exaggerated in the glazed cast of pain in the stone-gray eye of the man beneath her, whose climber’s suit of homespun was daubed with mountain mud,–whose tweed cap was the brooklet’s toy.

He had been trying to scoop up water in it.

And that brought Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl, to herself again, within quarter of a minute of her first laying eyes on him.

For there is one gallant anchor that will hold in any pinch,–when thought is shattered and speculation the maddest blur: the Camp Fire law: Give Service!

She unhooked her little camper’s cup from where it hung at her green belt, and offered him a drink.

She dipped her handkerchief in the trickle of water and wiped the cold drops of faintness and agony from his forehead.

And then, when he had confided to Andrew, who knelt beside him, that he had slipped upon the wet, slimy moss beside the rill, as he ascended the trail, and broken his knee-cap by striking heavily against a confronting rock, she said that they must lift him to a dry spot.

“That’s–r-right. She knows what to–do. Ouch! a–a knee-cap slipped, or broken–is–the deuce of a rack,” groaned the victim, as they proceeded to raise him, the girls supporting, each, a knickerbockered leg, Pemrose the injured one, while Andrew took the main weight of the writhing body, until they laid it upon some dry moss.

Yes! and she knew further what to do, that Camp Fire Girl who wore the Fire Maker’s bracelet upon her wrist, for plucking off her soft, green sweater she rolled it into a wad and placed it under the hollow of the injured knee, so flexing it, supporting it, while Una doubled hers into a pillow for his head,–Una who moved as if in a fantastic dream.

And then arose the question as to the next move; how to go about obtaining further help.

“We might–might make a stretcher with poles, saplings, with our sweaters, your coat, Andrew, and–and carry him down to the nearest farmhouse,” Pem suggested.

“No-o thank–you!” The injured man shifted his shoulders ever so slightly upon one elbow and looked at her; the tiniest laugh shot the rapids of pain in his eye. “My son said you had a whole lot of ‘pep’–same that’s in your inventor-father, I suppose, who wants to bombard the moon!... My son who’s play-ing baseball now down on the Greylock field–mountain’s foot!” The sufferer here appealed to Andrew. “If you could–only–get him up here, I’d be all right! There’s an auto at the nearest farmhouse–maybe they’d let you take it. Any one–any one can point out ‘Starry’”–in a lame rush of pride–“player who made that home run–”

“Hadna I better bid him bring a doctor along too–a stretcher as weel?” put in the Scotchman dryly.

The victim nodded, looking at the other’s cap.

“You’re a chauffeur,” he pleaded; “you’ll drive fast?”

“Aye, fegs! Fast as God and gasoline will let me!” answered Andrew devoutly, with an anxious glance at the two girls.

As his tall, spare figure scrambled on down the trail, the sufferer raised his eyes to Pemrose.

“If–if you could t-twist my knapsack round from under me,” he murmured; “there’s a restorative in it–a few drops of ammonia–I’m faint!”

She did so–and turned for the moment as faint as he was.

The whole trail swam, grew black–black as the wisp of thin, ebony silk, parachute silk, with a fraction of a bent wire frame peeping out from one corner of that roomy knapsack.

“Well! are you going to desert me now-ow?... Now that the thief is so-o nice-ly bagged!”

The man looked up at her, some dash of whimsical fire in him mastering weakness; at the girl kneeling, bolt upright, with the black rag between her hands, and the twisted scrap of frame,–the frame which had drifted down two hundred miles.

“Ar-re you–going–to desert me now?”

Again the anchor held; the noble anchor: Give Service: it was as if a voice outside of her numbed self spoke the words.

The raven rags dropped from between her fingers,–their reflection from her face.

Steadily enough, she found the little vial lying amid the top layer in that pigskin knapsack, shook a few drops from it, into the thimble-like glass accompanying, mixed them with water, held them to his lips.

At the same time she dipped her handkerchief again and passed it over his forehead.

“Ha! Pity as well as ‘pep’ in you, eh? Good!” The sufferer actually winked one eye as the stimulant trickled down. “Well! my dear, the little recording apparatus is in that knapsack too; I–I make you a present of it–and of the codicil to my brother’s will, as well.... You won’t have to wait twelve years.”

Then, indeed, the trail seemed to double up, to wind itself around Pem’s brain, rocks and all,–only every rock was gold-edged, a nugget.

Her eyes stared straight before her,–blue as the June violet that caught a drop from the spring near.

“Who–who are you?” screamed Una, forgetting that she was speaking to a broken man.

“How about my being your uncle, Treffrey Graham, my dear, who–who was such a mad fellow–in–youth; s-such an oddity? Oh-h! you’ve heard of him–have–you?”

The whimsical light in the pain-reddened eyes burned to mockery now. It showed the hippogriff, the “hot tamale”, still there. Evidently eccentricity wasn’t all dead.“Humph! By Jove! I’m having some fun out of my broken knee, after all–electrifying you girls,” gurgled the still racked voice. “Dramatic setting for a denouement, too, the old Man Killer trail!”

“But why–oh! why-y did you do it?” Pem snatched up the rag of parachute again, her eyes going wildly from the soot-like scrap of silk to a wonderful, antique ring upon the little finger of the pale hand which twitched so strangely below her.

“What! S-steal the little record, you mean!” The bushy eyebrows were twitching, too. “Well! maybe I want-ed to make sure, for myself, that the rocket really had gone higher than anything earthly ever flew yet, before–before I resigned a fortune to it.”

That was the moment when the nuggets all turned to rocks again for Pemrose. He saw the change in her face.

“Oh! I don’t mean anything der-og-a-tory to your father, my dear”–pain snatched at the man’s breath–“or to his invention, either. I knew him before you did. ‘Why did I do it?’ Curiosity–eccentricity, I suppose–anything you like to call it! I always was such a ‘terror’–a regular zany, my college friends used to call me.”

A flash from those prankful days, erratic as a shooting star, shot the glaze in the sufferer’s eye.

“And, then–and then, I really am interested in everything connected with the conquest of the air–of space–myself,” the hampered speaker went on. “I’ve done a little flying, out West,–my son, too! I found out when the experiments with your father’s in-vention–”

“We call it the Thunder Bird,” put in Una, as pain again called for a break.

“Ha! Good name for it! Piles up the moon-going romance, eh? Well-ll,” wearily, “having found out the par-ti-cu-lar night on which the lit-tle model rocket was to fly, I came up the mountain to a small camp that my son and I have ne-ar the summit–east side of Greylock. I was standing on the edge of the spruce woods, watching the whole performance. Then–then, when the parachute dragging the little recording apparatus blew towards me in the darkness, almost into my hand, I–why! I snatched it up and ran with it. Why? Oh, because I suppose the boy has never died in me: the boy that’s ‘part pirate, part pig!’” with a grating chuckle.

Incredible as it seemed, the low laughter, the treacherous tinkle, was echoed by girlish lips as that renascent urchin momentarily swaggered in the glaze of the suffering eye!

“And then–and then something told me–an aberration, I suppose, as my impulses usually are–that I had some sort of r-right to see the very first record man had ever got of that upper air, of Space, if–if I was go-ing to turn over a couple of hundred thousand dollars, for the pursuit of the–sov-er-eign invention.”

“I–I can’t believe it,” murmured Pem into the stony teeth of the Man Killer.

“I meant to return the record next morning, but I was a-fraid your father might shoot me,” to Pemrose. “Then, later, I heard he had gone down the mountain–that was yesterday and a mistake–I went-down, too, to beard him. A–a little more water, please! I could not climb again until to-day; I took the Man Killer trail, as being the shortest. And–here I am!” grimly.

“Incidentally, I gave our family lawyer a shock, little niece,” he went on, as Una, plucking up courage, adjusted her sweater under his head; she began to like this uncle with the pebble-like cast in his stone-gray eye, she began to think that girls–Camp Fire Girls, especially, with their love of the fanciful–might have more patience with him than others had had.“Yes! you bet I gave old Cartwright the staggers!” He laughed down the twinge of agony in his voice. “Called him up on the long distance telephone, told him I was Treffrey Graham back; that I had been in the East nearly six months, with my son; that I came pretty near disclosing myself on the–on the day when the third installment of my brother’s will was read–actually walked up to the door of my sister’s house, then shied off, because ... Oh, gosh! this knee.”

The voice broke; it had really become a feverish babble of excitement now–pain’s wild excitement.

“Well! What was I saying–yes! I didn’t ring the bell because I hadn’t made up my mind whether I wanted to claim any share of my brother’s fortune, or not; you see he hadn’t been very fair to me in youth–taking away my sweetheart. None of my family had–for–that–matter! I didn’t know whether I wanted to meet them again. Although I liked the look of my little niece; I had seen her, at a distance, with her mother. And then, we didn’t need the money, my boy and I! Had enough of our own; Treffrey Graham may be a terror, but he isn’t a failure–financially!”

No–not by a long shot! said the flame of the pigeon-blood ruby upon the pale little finger, now curling significantly in air,–the gem whose fire in this wild spot seemed as erratic as his own, seeing that none but a zany would have worn it here.

“So–so I told old Cartwright this morning that I stepped out of that strung-out will,” a smile curled the pallid lips now; “that I authorized him to make preparations, at once, for the turning over of the remainder of my brother’s wealth, in his name and mine, to the University of our native city, to be used for the furtherance of Professor Lorry’s won-der-ful invention for r-reaching in-de-finite heights.”“My father!... Oh! my fa-ther!” It was a wild little cry to which the Man Killer rang now, as the head of Pemrose Lorry went down upon her knees.

“Yes, I’m glad his way is clear–though, I suppose, only a man ‘whose head grew under his arm’ would have managed the thing as I have done.” The sufferer winked through the veil of pain. “Now! my son is different. He’s a dare-devil too–but he knows where to stop. You couldn’t have bribed him to steal that record–though somebody played a trick on him the other night–robbed him of his oars and a dance–just when he had ‘taken the bit between his teeth’, too; said he was tired of this camouflage business, and he was going–going whether I liked it, or not!”

“Ah-h!” That was the moment when Pem’s shoulders trembled like the needles upon the little green cedar sapling that grew by the rill: all because the Wise Woman in her was shaking the Elf, bidding her go to sleep for ever–which the Elf, very properly, refused to do, for, after all, undiluted wisdom would be a colorless cloak for any young back.

“Well! he–he wouldn’t speak to us when we just wanted to thank him for saving us in that terrible train-accident,” put in Una defensively.

“Ha! That was my fault, little niece. I made him promise, on coming East, that he wouldn’t go near any of his relatives, risk being identified by them, until I had decided what to do about the legacy–and whether I was going to make myself known to them, or not. Now-ow, I hope you’ll be friends. He’s your own cousin–Treff junior.”

And so Jack at a Pinch at last came into his own in the shape of a name!

“Yes, called after me, he is! Goodness! don’t I wish he’d hurry up and get here, now–with the doctor?”

It was a hollow groan. Pain was, at length, getting the better of that capricious spirit.“Can’t–can’t I do–anything–to make you more comfortable?” Pemrose asked.

Then suddenly remembering that it was he who was making the Thunder Bird’s fortune, as impulsively as the little cedar tree leaned to the swollen rill, she bent and kissed the cold sweat of pain from his forehead.

“That–that’s worth coming East for,” murmured the man, his own eyes growing wet. “Little niece! don’t you want to–follow–suit? I suppose, a year from now, your Thunder Bird will fly.”