“The night is heavy-hearted,” said the Guardian.

“It’s ‘up to us’, then, to put a good face on its heavy heart by being extra chipper,” laughed Dorothy Bush—a fair-haired girl. “We’ll be in luck if it doesn’t rain more than it has done,” she shrugged herself together, witch-like, “just little ‘neezly-noozly’ showers, that fit into each other even-end-ways,” with a brooding pout, “at the moment when you think each one is going to be over—bah! beastly.”

“The clouds have been following us all day,” wailed Frances. “And I don’t believe they’ve done with us yet. Who’s to light the fire?”

“Pemrose. I believe she could light a fire with a piece of damp bark and a snowball, as the saying is.” Madeline Fitch threw a chuckling glance in the direction of the girl with the blue-lit face, who was “ilka body’s body”, a general favorite. “Hereditary ingenuity, I suppose.” Madeline pursed up her lips. “If I had a father like hers.... Well! never mind, a fire will drive the dumps from Hidden Valley. There, I’ve named it!”

“I don’t like Hidden Valley. Gloomiest old place we’ve struck yet!” murmured Una glancing up and down the heart-shaped glen, hoarding the evening shadows between its narrowing head-walls.

“You—you won’t know it when we get a blaze going.” Pemrose was chopping away with a light axe—the handle symbolically carved—at a dead limb of a larch tree, to strip off outside layers, damped by the ‘noozly’ showers and get at the dry wood, inside.

Already she had her roll of curly birch bark, stripped from a withering bough, on the hike, before afternoon rain came on—and kept dry in her pack.

Soon the fire was lighting up the tall walls of the V-shaped valley, between two ragged mountains which seemed, at some time or other, to have thrust their heads up, promiscuously, out of the earth—just to have a look around. A peculiarity of most of the hills through which the girls had passed!

Away to the north loomed the rounded outline of a taller mountain, the Dome; and in the dim distance, before the evening shadows herded on the trail—the day’s long trail—there had been mighty glimpses of giant Mount Mansfield and Camel’s Hump.

“The old farmer whom we met, back there, said that this valley was where two brooks had ‘gouged out a hollow’, eaten the heart out of a hill,” remarked Terry Ross, Assistant Guardian, her brown eyes blinking at the blaze; “that we had ‘civ’lization’, at a ‘far-come’, on either side of us—nothing between.”

“Yes! he cheerfully told us that, here, we were ‘two miles an’ a half beyond God bless you’!”? came with a sidelong wink from Pemrose, who was using her vigorous young lungs as bellows. “Humph! He’s beyond the pale himself; his farm’s right here in Hidden Valley—not quarter of a mile away. If it should come on a reckless downpour, we may have to storm his old barn, before morning.”

“We must wait till he’s asleep then—otherwise he’d turn us out; he was the crankiest mountaineer we’ve run across yet; you—you could hear him ‘cur-murring’ a mile off.” Una knelt, stretching her hands to the fire that valiantly defied the tail end of a shower.

“Yes, he said this country was only ‘fit for b’ars’, that they ought to chase all the folks out of it,” pouted Dorothy; “then, I suppose, he’d be quite at home.”

“He seemed awf’ly peeved over something, out of luck, somehow. But don’t you remember he did drawl out—” Pemrose wrinkled up a moist little nose, with a smut on the end of it, to imitate the high-pitched twang of the old Green Mountaineer—“he did drawl out, looking us over: ‘Wal! I reckon you birds can stand more’n most city folks!’ Bah! this ‘bird’ can’t stand another thing until she’s been fed—with crumbs. Has any one filled the kettle?”

“Yes.” Dorothy produced it. “We filled it at the clearest of the two brooks, the one with the stony bed, which that peeved old farmer said made the noise of the devil’s pans and kettles—the devil at his dish-washing.”

“But what a ‘solemncholy’ old demon he must be, judging by the night,” laughed Terry Ross.

For now, indeed, the night was growing heavy-hearted—even to bitterness.

The moon, as she rose, was in mourning. Rain stole, sighing, through Hidden Valley. Thunder hummed-and-hawed, afar.

But the blaze kindled by a fire-witch, who wore brown honors for building a fire in wind and rain, put a fair face on everything—that and the toasted bacon, the steaming flapjacks, to say nothing of the evening star of anticipation radiantly in the ascendant.

“Well! this will be our last night of sleeping out,” said the Guardian, “our fourth and last, so even if it isn’t very comfortable, we’ll make the best of it. To-morrow, if we cover our ten miles—we made nine to-day—’twill bring us to Mount Pocohosette, the horse-farm at the foot—our snug camp on the side-hill!”

“And Revel and Revelation!... Revel and Revelation—in more than horseflesh, too!”? laughed blissful voices. “Oh! to-night we’ll just dream of the Long Pasture; the horses to be caught with chaff—no, oats—saddled, bridled.”

“The radio concerts of an evening! A morning ‘hamfest’—gossip with father—space obliterated,” supplemented Pemrose. “Let’s turn in early—and bring it nearer—all nearer! Hush! Here comes the dream man.”

They were not afraid of less flexible footsteps than his, to-night, as they piled the fire up and lay down beside it.

Two quiet nights in the open had lent a green seasoning even to tenderfoot nerves.

But some stronger “pep” was needed in Hidden Valley—as this side of midnight proved.

Eleven o’clock—and not the soothing Dream Man, but the black Rain Hand, was upon them—groping for their faces with chilling fingers!

“Goodness! It’s going to be a deluge—a bitter downpour.” The Guardian sat up, gasping under the wet blanket. “I’m not sure but that we had better break camp quickly, girls—fly for shelter—that barn isn’t far off.”

“Nor the old b’ar who said we were ‘beyond God bless you!’ either,” piped Dorothy glumly.

“Pshaw! he’d be ‘beyond praying for’, if he were to shoo us out,” came from Madeline. “Ugh! How cold the rain is! I was just falling asleep—dr-reaming of the horses.”

“Um-m. Novel experience, any way, breaking camp by flash light! My shoes! Oh! where are my shoes? My ring! I have that safe! One teeny drop of rain would spoil that new crystal—as a detector, a ‘radio soul!’” Pemrose was excitedly tucking away the ring and paraphernalia—tucking it away in her bosom.

“The fancy paper-rolls! Oh! don’t let the colored paper-rolls get wet—all wet an’ pulpy—then, there would be no flower party on my birthday!” wailed Una.

“Bah! You and your last straw! They’re done up in oilskin,” hooted Pemrose. “What—what are you looking for Dorothy?”

“My—toothbrush.”

“Oh-h! come; we’ve no time for tomfoolery.” Whereat every one laughed—the lightning, too!

“My-y hair-brushes; where did I lay them?” Rain was pelting pitilessly on Lura’s burnished “nob”, as she knelt, feeling round in the sodden grass.

“Before a storm everything goes wrong!” hooted the jeering thunder.

“Cheep! Cheep! Tweak! Tweak! Very wrong, indeed!” echoed the poor little birds in their rocking nests, complaining of the pecking rain-crow.

“But it isn’t as bad as if we had a tent to take down, girls.” The Guardian was searching for a silver lining, mislaid among other things. “That’s—weird. Pulling tent pegs in a hurry, tent collapsing, just shuddering down, canvas grating on the rough edge, something sure to be left under.... What!”

The tent had collapsed, indeed—the tabernacle of human spirits—and the silver lining was left under.

The flash light had gone out.

The flash light had fainted, at the very most inopportune moment that a craven battery could have chosen to give out.

If confusion had reigned before—and hurry-scurry—now it was extremity—the “neb-end” of extremity! The camp fire black as a “tinker’s pot”, with a dismal brew of shrieks and groanings! The rain-hand slapping right and left in the darkness! Faces running into trees, toes stubbed against stone and stump—wet hair caught on dripping branches that tweaked and plucked at it.

“But—but there was a second battery! Who had charge of—that?”

“Pemrose.”

“I’ll find it in a ‘twink’,” said Pemrose manfully. “I hid it under this bush—lest somebody should step on it.”

But the bush protested that she didn’t, laughing in her face, as lightning played through it—while she felt all round it in the wet grass.

“No-o—oh! dear, I remember—it was at the foot of this little tree.”

“Out again!” said the sapling—and deluged her all over, for her pains.

“Give it up,” said the Guardian desperately. “We can find our way to shelter, without it.”

“What! Go home and tell Father that I lost—mislaid—a battery, our only other live battery.” The hapless wail of the traitor was in Pem’s voice now—traitor to precise laboratory training, where vigilance meant safety. “Not—oh! not if I stay here till I dr-rown,” miserably.

She was groping round upon her knees now, others with her, in the black wet, feeling amid vine and scrub.

“I do believe they’re passing it from one to the other, the dark bushes—playing hunt-the-slipper—”

“The host of paradise are with us!” cried one suddenly. “She’s found it.”

The hosts of paradise are always on the side of light—even a “spunky” flash light.

With heaven reinstated in sundry hearts, led by a triumphant torch-bearer, the barnstorming party set out, a shadowy horde, wrapped in ponchos for raincoats.

“The light went out in the farmhouse quite a while ago,” said the Guardian. “Perhaps we can get into the barn, find the stairs, the ladder—find our way up into the barn, without disturbing anybody—”

“Without rousing the old bear from his lair, who said we were beyond ‘God bless you!’” muttered Dorothy vindictively. “We’re not. The hosts of heaven are with us still. The door’s open.”

“And now for clover—dry clover—the hay above!” cried Pemrose, swinging her flash light. “Oh! come on, girls. The menagerie—that’s nothing!”

For at the heavy reek of animal bodies streaming out through a broad doorway; at the snorting stamp of great farmhorses, rolling the whites of their eyes in nocturnal curiosity, at the grunt of cows rattling their chains against the stall-head, baaing of sheep—from somewhere the squeal of a distressed little piggie—Una and others drew squeamishly back.

“Steady now! Keep the hush up! We don’t want to wake that old bear of a farmer. The stairs—the ladder—is at the far end, I guess, leading up to the hayloft.”

Pemrose was tiptoeing along the straw-littered aisle, on the trail of her own whisper, the flash light in her hand a cynosure for every blinking, brute-eye in the barn; tap, tap, patter, patter, came the staccato stamp of sheep’s feet, saluting it, from the pen behind the horses’ stall.

The Guardian brought up the rear.

“Careful now! Don’t make a sound. Keep the hush—”

But eighteen barn raiding girls, seeing the midnight adventure now in the light of a huge joke, crowding up a dark and narrow ladder are not likely to be too circumspect.

A false step, a rung missed—and one was back upon the shoulders of the others amid an hubbub of shrieks, poorly stifled.

Simultaneously a near-by bedroom window was flung up. A hoarse old voice was shouting:

“Heaven an’ earth! What’s all this hally-baloo? What’s all this uproar, I say? Now—now you stay right there till I come!”

“Up! Up! Up—girls!” cried Pemrose. “If he tries to mount the ladder to turn us out—we’ll push him down!”

But as girls crouched in the hay at the ladder-head, arms down-stretched to oust the besieger, that besieger, when he thrust a wild gray head up into the light, showed signs of amazement—blank amazement—rather than hostility.

“My soul! So it’s you birds!” He wagged a crinkly beard. “You city birds that I met ’way back there on the trail—dark-benighted, wet-benighted!... An’ I thought ’twas Her. An’ s’elp me, if it had bin Her, I’d ha’ come within a cow’s thumb o’ shootin’ Her.”

He pulled his right hand, with something in it, up the ladder.