Chapter I: “i Hear a Noise”

“I hear a noise,” declared Dot, holding her Alice-doll more firmly and staring all about into the aisles of the chestnut grove.

“What kind of noise?” asked Tess, mildly curious.

“Where does the sound come from?” demanded Agnes in her abrupt way, but very carefully picking brown chestnuts out of a prickly burr—and with gloves on one may be sure. Catch Agnes Kenway, the “beauty sister,” ever doing anything to spoil her hands!

“Say! Is this a game? Like ‘cum-je-cum’?” grumbled Sammy Pinkney, who did not wear gloves and therefore had already got plenty of “prickers” in his stubbed fingers, although the nutting party had not been in the grove half an hour. “I’ll bite. How big is the noise?”

“Well,” said Dot seriously, and answering Sammy’s query first, “it is not a big noise at all. I just manage to hear it. And it’s gone now.”

“It can’t be a wolf, or anything like that,” said the eminently practical Tess, whose proper name, Theresa, was seldom heard save from the lips of her Aunt Sarah Maltby.

“O-oo!” squealed Dot, squeezing her Alice-doll harder. “Don’t, Tess! A wolf!”

“There’d be some fun in that,” declared Sammy, inspired instantly to romantic imagination. “We’d have to hitch up the horses again, and take to the sledge, and flee——”

“There are no horses, and it’s our automobile,” interrupted Tess, with disdain.

“Aw—_you_!” gruffly exclaimed Sammy. “Can’t you play this is the Russian steppes?”

“What’s Russian steps, Sammy? Aren’t they like American steps?” asked Dot, who had a bump of inquisitiveness second to none. “I know what Russian sables are, and a Russian samovar, for Ruth has one, an awful ugly thing. And Russian car—caviar. Little black seeds that come in a can and you eat ’em—if you are Russian. But I’m not Russian and I don’t like ’em.”

“That steppes means plains, I guess. Anyway, they are like the western prairies, and there are wolves on ’em. And when they chase you they are faster than the horses can run.”

“But our automobile would beat ’em,” announced Tess confidently. “Neale O’Neil would drive it so fast that no wolf could catch us, Dot.”

“But we’re not in the automobile now,” said the littlest Corner House girl who, if the truth were known, loved to be thrilled.

“Sure not. We’re in a Russian sledge,” declared Sammy, his own excitement feeding on his vivid imagination. “And here come the wolves!”

“O-oo!” shrieked Dot. “Where?”

Sammy pointed dramatically into the deeper woods; but just where he pointed at that moment Neale O’Neil appeared with a heavy sack on his shoulder.

“That’s no wolf,” sighed Dot, disappointed. “It’s only Neale.”

“Well, it might have been a pack of wolves with a leader with slavering tongue.”

“Er—what’s _that_?” demanded the littlest girl, hearing another new word. “What do they do to ‘slaver’?”

“I—I——Oh, well, what does it matter? Wolves’ tongues always do that,” rejoined the small boy in some disgust. “Anyway, here they come!”

Dot murmured an appreciative and tremulous “o-oo!”

“We got to whip up the horses like mad!” cried Sammy, beating a fallen log with the stick he had used to search the fallen leaves for chestnuts. “See ’em come! They’ll get us——”

“Oh, Sammy,” cried Dot all in a quiver, “don’t let ’em _quite_ get us.”

“Only one way to save our lives!” gasped the almost breathless Sammy, glaring all about him.

“How? How?” cried Dot, in pretended alarm.

Tess Kenway remained rather unmoved by all this. She was getting older, and the stimulant of Sammy’s eager imagination had small effect upon her mind. Besides, she took the attitude of her eldest sister, Ruth, that most boys were a trial.

“You’re mussing that fresh dress of your Alice-doll, grabbing her that way,” Tess said reprovingly to Dot.

But Dot was still enthralled. She saw the flying sledge and the leaping wolves, and she hugged Alice tighter than ever.

“O-oo!” she moaned.

“Only one way to save our lives!” repeated Sammy, beating off imaginary wolves over the back of the imaginary sledge. “Give me that baby!”

“Wha-a-at?” shrieked Dot, in real alarm now, her voice mounting to a higher pitch. “My Alice-doll?”

“Only way to stop the wolves! They always throw the children to them so the men and women can escape!” declared Sammy, with as much confidence as though he believed that in Russia children were born and bred for that purpose, and no other.

“Sammy Pinkney!” gasped Tess, herself disturbed now by Dot’s agony.

“You want to be eat up by the wolves?” demanded the panting Sammy, glaring at Dot and reaching forth one hand to seize the Alice-doll while he beat at the phantom wolves with the other. “Give her here!”

“I shan’t either!” declared Dot, recovering herself in some degree. “Sammy Pinkney! You always get up just the meanest plays—so there! I’d be eaten up by the wolves myself first, before I’d give ’em my Alice-doll!”

“Huh!” grumbled Sammy. “That’s just like a girl. Spoil everything every time and everywhere! Let the old wolves eat you, then! I don’t care,” and he shuffled away through the brown and gold leaves to uncover more shiny, brown nuts.

Agnes and Neale, who had looked on in some amazement, burst into laughter.

“Such young ones!” murmured the beauty sister.

“Can you beat ’em?” demanded Neale, who was about her own age and Agnes’ closest and dearest friend, bar none. “Where are Ruth and Luke?”

“I saw them wandering off through the woods,” replied Agnes, chuckling. “His hand was in her’n and her hand was in his’n——”

“You be good!” exclaimed Neale, grinning. “Dear me! They are getting soft on each other, aren’t they?”

“Well,” said Agnes, more kindly, “I can’t blame Ruth. She was awfully worried about him there in the summer when he was hurt, and was ill so long. She can’t forget that she pretty nearly lost him.”

“Luke’s a good scout,” agreed Neale. “But,” and his eyes twinkled, “you wouldn’t let me hold your hand that way, and moon about with you.”

“I believe in one form of holding hands only,” declared Agnes sagely.

“What’s that?” he asked quickly.

“At the manicure’s. And, dear me, after this rough work my hands will need just that treatment,” sighed the girl.

“And you with gloves on! Say, Aggie, you are getting too finicky for words.”

Promptly she stuck out the tip of her tongue at him. Agnes Kenway was not wholly past the hoydenish stage, in spite of her grown-up airs.

Suddenly Dot broke into the talk again with a repeated statement:

“I hear a noise.”

“There you go again!” exclaimed Sammy. “Is it a game?”

“Oh, dear me!” cried Tess suddenly, “I hear it, too. I guess it’s no game. It’s somebody calling.”

“Calling the cows, maybe,” said Agnes carelessly.

“Calling the sheep,” joined in Neale O’Neil.

“No,” said Dot soberly, “It’s calling humans. It said ‘Help!’ and they don’t call cows or sheep that way.”

“Right for you, Dotums!” agreed Agnes.

“Wait,” advised Neale. “All keep still and listen. Of course it isn’t Ruth and Luke? They wouldn’t get so far away——”

“Listen!” broke in Agnes warningly.

They all heard it that time—a cry of faint voices, and certainly the only word distinguishable was “help.”

“What can it be?” demanded Agnes.

“Like to know what they want us to help ’em about,” said Sammy. “Maybe it’s some fun.”

“‘Fun!’” repeated Tess scathingly, looking at him.

Just then Ruth, the eldest sister of the four Corner House girls, and Luke Shepard, the young collegian, appeared walking hastily toward the place where the party had been gathering nuts.

“They are all right, Luke!” was Ruth’s first exclamation.

“I told you so, Miss Fussbudget,” he laughed. “Did you hear somebody shouting, Neale?”

“Yes, for help. What do you suppose it is?”

“We’d better go to see,” Ruth said confidently.

She, too, was a pretty girl; but she did not have Agnes’ vivid coloring or volatile manner. Ruth Kenway was graceful, rather mature in figure and manner, and with the kindest smile in the world. Having had to mother her younger sisters when she was so young, the girl had acquired this matronly appearance, although she was still in her teens.

“Say!” broke in Sammy, who, from natural obstinacy, opposed almost everything he did not himself suggest, “let ’em come and ask us to help. Maybe somebody will steal our nuts while we’re gone. Or the auto.”

“Can’t steal the machine,” said Neale. “It’s locked and the key is in my pocket.”

“Come on,” Luke remarked. “I feel with Ruth that we ought to look into this. It is easy for something to happen in the woods.”

“Huh!” grumbled Sammy. “What could happen in this chestnut wood except getting prickers into your hands? Huh!”

“You stay here and keep watch, Sammy,” Agnes advised.

But that would not have suited Sammy in any case. If there was a chance of something happening, he wanted to be on the spot. So he went along with the Kenway girls and the two young fellows who accompanied them.

The faint calling was repeated and became plainer as the party went forward. It was evident they had started in the right direction. The cries grew nearer and nearer.

“They are children lost in the wood!” exclaimed Ruth, with confidence, hurrying forward.

“The poor children!” said Tess thoughtfully.

Suddenly, through a break in the thicker wood, they saw three little figures. They were two girls and a boy, and the oldest was not more than Tess’ age, if as much. They screamed again when they saw the Kenway party, and began to run to meet them.

“Oh, oh!” screamed one. “Daddy’s hurt! He’s killed! Come help him!”

“Where is he?” Ruth demanded.

“How is he hurt?” asked Luke, quite as practical.

The oldest child answered Luke’s question first. “He fell out of a tree. He was shaking down chestnuts to us. And we can’t wake him up.”

The older members of the Kenway party looked at each other seriously. It might be, as this little girl intimated, that her father had been killed in falling from the tree.