One Saturday morning early in September Miss Helen Campbell gave a breakfast party to her four favorite Blue Birds. It was to be the beginning of an eventful day for the young girls, three of whom were to take their first long motor trip, and, furthermore, the motor party was to end with a visit to Shell Island, where this excited and happy company of young people were to spend the night, motoring back to West Haven next day.

Miss Campbell herself was excited.

“It’s a novelty for me, my dears,” she exclaimed, beaming on her guests from behind the silver urn at the head of the breakfast table. “I’m a very dull, lonesome old woman, and having this nice child here with me is going to wake me into life again. I shall never be able to give you up, Wilhelmina. You had better write your father that you have been adopted by a very obstinate old party, who believes that possession is nine points of the law.”

“I’m quite willing to be possessed, Cousin Helen,” answered Billie. “If I could only see papa sometimes, I think I could say that I never was so gloriously happy in all my life.”

Miss Campbell smiled with pleasure and the girls thought they had never seen her look more beautiful. Her white hair glistened like a bank of snow in the sunshine and her soft eyes were as blue as patches of West Haven Bay on a clear, still morning in summer.

There were times when the lonely spinster looked faded and worn, and at such times she used to shut herself up in her big gray stone house on Cliff Street and refuse to see even her most intimate friends.

“It’s just one of my lonesome moods,” she used to say, “and I would not for worlds inflict myself on innocent people when one is on me.”

But Miss Campbell had not had a single attack of loneliness since Billie had come to live with her. The vigorous, active young girl had awakened the entire household which had run on its steady even course for so many years, and now the place hardly recognized itself, filled with the happy voices and gay laughter of Billie and her friends.

It was an unusual sight for the big mahogany table in the dining room to be loaded with the best cut glass and silver and adorned with delicate lace doilies, which had belonged to Miss Campbell’s grandmother. These thing had been laid away for many years. In the centre of the table was a crystal vase filled with forget-me-nots.

“They are the only flowers I could think of which were the color of your blue birds,” Miss Campbell had explained. “Besides, they are my favorite color. You know, I always wear blue when I don’t wear gray. Sometimes I wear black——”

“Black, Cousin Helen?” repeated Billie. “I didn’t know you ever wore anything so mournful.”

“You shall never see me in it, child, if I can help it. But I have a black dress, only one, and I do wear it at times in my bedroom.”

Some thirty years before Miss Campbell, then a young and beautiful girl, had come to West Haven to live with her grandfather and there she had lived ever since, except for an occasional trip abroad. It was supposed that she had suffered a great sorrow at some time in her life, but the real story had never been known. Captain Campbell, her grandfather, had been a jovial, pleasure loving old man, fond of company and entertaining. He liked to have his beautiful granddaughter stand at his side and receive his guests in a brocaded ball gown, with the famous Campbell diamonds blazing in her hair and the diamond and sapphire necklace around her throat.

But after General Campbell’s death there were no more balls and dinners in the big, old house. The long parlors were seldom opened except to be cleaned and aired, and Miss Campbell, now a somewhat shrivelled pink and white little lady of fifty-five, interested herself only in the charities of West Haven.

“Yes, my dear children, this household and its mistress have got into such a lethargy that it is time they were waked up. We have been sunk in so deep a rut, my old servants and I, that it might have closed over our heads and the world gone on just the same.”

“Lots of poor families would have gone begging at Christmas, then, Miss Campbell,” put in Elinor.

“And what would all those poor old seamen have done?” went on Nancy.

“And the Blue Birds,” added Mary Price. “We should have had to use a corner of the gymnasium at school for our most secret society meetings.”

Miss Campbell paid the rent of the Blue Bird club rooms.

“And, pray, what should I have done?” finished Billie. “I should have been knocking around still with papa, trying to get on with the queer people who live in hotels, and never have had nice girls to go with or a delightful home to stay in.”

Miss Campbell blushed with pleasure.

“I have a great many surprises up my sleeve for my little Motor Maids. I shall only tell you one, though. What would you say to a Blue Bird Thanksgiving ball?”

“Oh, oh, oh! How splendid!” cried the young girls.

“Honk, honk!” went the motor horn at the front entrance, which was a signal for breakfast to come to an end and the party to be off.

A hamper of luncheon had been strapped behind the car with the suit cases. Miss Campbell sat between Elinor and Mary in the back, while Nancy took the seat now understood to be hers always, beside her friend Billie, in front. The four Campbell servants, who had grown old in their mistress’s service, stood in a row on the gravel walk to witness the strange sight of their beloved “Miss Helen” sailing away in a red infernal machine, her blue automobile veil streaming out behind like a piece of flying cloud.

“Don’t go too fast, Billie,” she exclaimed, as they turned the corner of Cliff Street, and whirled down the steep, rather slippery Main street of West Haven. “Remember that you have got a decrepit old woman in the back who has never ridden behind anything faster than a pair of ambling carriage horses in all her life.”

“How about the five-thirty express, Cousin Helen?” Billie called over her shoulder.

“A locomotive with an engineer is a very different thing from a young girl guiding a scarlet comet,” the little lady answered; but as they left the street for the country road and Billie gradually increased the speed, Miss Campbell leaned back with a look of blissful enjoyment on her face.

“It is one of the most exhilarating things I have ever experienced,” she confided to Elinor.

At noon they stopped for lunch. The road now lay along a high cliff overlooking the ocean, which on this calm September morning was as serenely blue and still as a mill pond. White sails dotted it here and there, and an occasional wave rippled on the pebbly beach with a murmuring, drowsy sound.

They had pulled up at the side of a little pine grove just off the road and spread the lunch cloth on a carpet of pine needles.

Then the delicious cakes and sandwiches which Miss Campbell had ordered from Mrs. Price were arranged in neat piles, while Elinor opened her tea basket, a present from an aunt in Ireland, and made tea for the company.

It was all very delightful and they were enjoying themselves thoroughly, when Billie and Nancy, who were seated facing the others, received a slight shock. A tall, slender woman, dressed in black, with a long black chiffon veil completely concealing her face, suddenly emerged from behind a clump of dwarf oak and bay trees at the far end of the grove and beckoned to them.

The two girls exchanged glances of amazement and Nancy was about to say: “Why, look at that woman!” when the woman, herself, put her finger to her lips and shook her head violently.

“I think she’s crazy, Nancy,” said Billie, in a low voice, under cover of the conversation of the others. “We had better not take any notice. It would just alarm Cousin Helen and spoil the day.”

Nancy agreed with her, and the two girls were about to suggest that they start on again, when the woman began making the most extraordinary motions of entreaty, imploring them with outstretched arms, beseeching them with every gesture to come to her. And still the two girls hung back. Then the woman raised the sleeve of her loose black silk wrap and showed her arm bound with a bloody handkerchief.

Nancy gasped at this. The sight of blood was always sickening to her. But, seeing Billie’s meaning glance in Miss Campbell’s direction, she pretended that she had choked on her tea.

The other three were deep in a conversation. Miss Campbell was describing a beautiful ball she had once been to where she had danced with a real prince, and they hardly noticed when Nancy and Billie strolled over to the clump of bushes.

The woman, who had been waiting for them, seized Billie’s arm and in a low, rapid voice said:

“I see that you are both unusually nice girls whom I can trust. I am in great trouble. You will help me, will you not? It is very simple, what I am going to ask you. You see, I have been in a wreck.”

“A motor wreck?” asked Billie.

“Yes, yes,” replied the woman, not impatiently but as if she were very much pressed for time. “The car rolled over the embankment. You will see it below there. It happened just in the curve of the road. There was no excuse except that we were going too fast and the wheels did—what is it you call it? Skidded? We saved ourselves, all three, by jumping. Fortunately the back wheels were caught in the sand and there was just time to climb out as the car was overturned. The others have left me. They will return at any moment now with another car. Hidden under the seat of the wrecked car is a small box. I must have it. I must indeed. I cannot get it myself. I have sprained my knee, and can stand only by supporting myself against this tree. Will you get that box for me and place me in your debt always, always? You cannot understand how important it is for me to have it.”

“Of course, we will,” Billie assured her, “and won’t you let us help you over to our party, or make you comfortable here with the cushions until your friends come back?”

“No, no, no,” replied the stranger. “I do not wish to be seen if possible. I only beg you to make haste. I will wait here.”

As the woman grew more in earnest, her voice seemed to deepen and vibrate like a musical instrument, and the girls almost forgot to listen to her words under the spell of its wonderful tones; and when she threw back her veil, they still stood rooted to the spot, for she was really quite the most beautiful person they had either of them ever seen. Her eyes and hair were dark, her skin rather creamy in texture; there was a generous curve to her lips, a straight nose and full, rounded chin. She smiled a little as she noticed the admiration of the two girls, showing two rows of white, even teeth.

“You will not refuse?” she asked again.

And they helped her to sit down on the ground and hurried out of the grove to the roadside. There, sure enough, lying on its side in the sand, some forty feet below the road, was the wrecked motor car.

“Nancy, I would do anything for her,” observed Billie, as they clambered down the embankment.

“Isn’t she perfect?” exclaimed Nancy. “And still, Billie, I can’t help believing that she’s slightly off in her upper story. She was so queer. But a shock like that would be enough to turn anybody delirious, jumping out of an automobile as it turned over an embankment.”

“It’ll all depend on whether we find the box. If it is just a delirious dream, there won’t be any box and we will have had our climb for nothing.”

They searched the upturned car and there was nothing in it. The ground was strewn with wreckage. Cushions and rugs were scattered about in wild confusion. The girls searched the place hurriedly all the way down to the foot of the cliff.

“There is no need of wasting any more time, Nancy, dear,” said Billie at last. “It’s very evident to me that the beautiful lady was out of her mind and we’ve been ‘stung,’ as the boys say. Let’s go back. Perhaps she will let us help her get somewhere.”

“Yes, I am afraid it’s just a case of King George’s men marched up the hill and then marched down again,” said Nancy.

“And I got two grass stains when I fell down just now,” added Billie, looking ruefully at her white serge skirt.

“My shoes are full of sand, and I’ve soiled my white stockings,” went on Nancy. “Look,” she cried suddenly; “look, Billie, here it is right under our noses. I suppose that little bay tree hid it from us on our way down. I ask the beautiful lady’s pardon; but I still can’t imagine why her own friends couldn’t have got it for her just as well as we could.”

Half buried in the sand was a small box of highly polished wood, six or eight inches square. Two broad bands of silver reinforced it at the back and sides, and a little silver combination lock took the place of the keyhole. In the middle of the box was a small, round silver plate, on which a coat of arms was engraved.

“This is the box, all right enough,” said Billie, examining it with much curiosity. “Now let’s return it to that mysterious lovely person and go on our ways, rejoicing.”

But they were not destined to get rid of the box that day nor for many another day. Just as they reached the top of the cliff they heard the whirring of a motor engine. A car was just starting from the grove. Two men were on the front seat, while the owner of the box was lying almost helplessly in the back seat, her veil thrown back and her face white and drawn. There was no top to the car and the girls could see her plainly. They thought she must have fainted, but when Nancy called: “Wait, please wait,” she raised herself quickly, put her finger to her lips in token of silence and dropped a card into the road.

The next instant the strange motor car was lost to sight around the curve. Billie picked up the card with some irritation.

“How silly,” she exclaimed, “What are we to do with this thing? Why couldn’t she have waited a minute?”

“Because she didn’t want the men to know she had the box, goosey,” answered Nancy. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face. What does the card say?”

It was a man’s business card and read:

“Pierre Lafitte, Avocat,
Rue——21. Paris.”

On the back of the card had been painfully written with a pencil:

“I knew when you were gone so long that you would be too late. If you are merciful and kind, keep the box a secret from all the world. You will not regret it. Send your name to this address and you shall be relieved at once.”

“Burdened with another secret,” cried Billie, in a resigned voice. “Where can we hide the thing?”

“I’ll sit on it for the time being,” answered Nancy, laughing. “There come the girls.”

“What are you two infants up to?” called Elinor, appearing just then at the edge of the grove. “We thought you had gone in the other direction and we’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“We have—er——” hesitated Billie, who never could tell fibs. “What have we been doing, Nancy?”

“We’ve been looking at a wreck. Don’t you want to see it?”

“Nancy Brown,” cried her friend Mary, putting her hands on Nancy’s shoulders and gazing into her face, “you’ve got a secret. I can tell by your expression. You are hiding something.”

“I’m trying to hide it, but I find it rather difficult. I feel like a bantam hen sitting on a goose egg.”

“Let’s push her off her goose egg,” cried Elinor, “and see what it really is.”

“Help, Billie, help!” screamed Nancy, while the four friends engaged in a school girl romp, and Miss Campbell, who was dozing in the grove, half opened her eyes and smiled.

“Is there anything more charming and sweeter than the sound of children’s voices out of doors?” she said to herself. She could never get used to the idea that Billie was not still the little eight-year-old girl who had spent a summer in West Haven seven years before.

In the meantime, the guardian of the box was well defended by Billie until she began to laugh, and when Nancy was taken with the giggles her father used to say she was nothing but an abandoned lunatic. The place rang with the joyous peals and the other girls were obliged to pause in the struggle and join in. Then this foolishly happy child rolled helplessly onto the ground, upsetting the box.

But there came a sudden end to the laughter, for the top of the box had sprung open and its contents were scattered on the roadside.

The girls clasped their hands excitedly and gazed at each other with wide-eyed amazement, for at their feet glittered dozens of the most beautiful jewels. There were a diamond and sapphire necklace, strings of pearls, earrings, rings, and broaches.

“Great heavens, what have you girls been doing?” exclaimed Mary.

“Nancy, you explain,” answered Billie, grown very grave, all of a sudden. “I’ll gather these things up and get them out of sight as quickly as possible. I think my suit case is the safest place for the time being, and we can take it into the front of the car with us. Then we can discuss later what we had better do.”

While the girls listened to Nancy’s strange story of the beautiful injured woman, Billie collected and replaced the jewels in the box with the card, and packed it in the bottom of her suit case.

In another ten minutes the motor party was on the road again, the younger members somewhat sobered by the secret responsibility which had been thrust upon them.