it the “patchwork style.”  Eurie from necessity rather than choice adopted it, and it was also her misfortune rather than her taste that the colors were too light to be really according to the mode.  Her gloves were of an entirely different shade from the rest of the attire, and were mended with a shade of silk that did not quite match Altogether, Eurie’s dress did not suit Miss Erskine.  But, for that matter, neither did it suit herself, with this difference, that it was, after all, a matter of minor importance to her.

Miss Wilbur’s dress can be disposed of in a single sentence:  It was a black alpaca skirt, not too long, and severely plain, covered to within three inches with a plain brown linen polonaise; her black hat with a band of velvet about it, fastened by a single heavy knot, and her somewhat worn black gloves completed her toilet, and she looked every inch a lady.  The very people who would have curled their aristocratic lips at Eurie’s attempt at style, turned and gave Miss Wilbur a second thoughtful respectful look.

There was a Mr. Wayne who deserves attention.  He possessed himself of Miss Erskine’s fan, and played with it carelessly, while he said: 

“You are a queer set.  What are you all going off there for, to bury yourselves in the woods?  I don’t believe one of you has an idea what you are about.  And it is the very height of the season, too.”

“That is the trouble,” Miss Erskine said, with a little toss of her handsome head.  “We are sick of the season, and want to get away from it.  I want something new.  That is precisely what I am going for.”

“I have no doubt you will find it,” and the gentleman gave a disdainful shrug to his shoulders.  “Out in the backwoods attending a hallelujah meeting!  I am sure I envy you.”

“You don’t know what we will find,” Eurie Mitchell said, with a defiant air.  “Nor what may happen to us before we return.  We may meet our destinies.  I have no doubt they are lurking for us behind some of the trees.  Just you meet the evening train of Wednesday, two weeks hence, and see if you can not discover the finger of fate having been busy with us.  Wonderful things can happen in two weeks.”

Just then the train gave its last warning howl, and Mr. Wayne made rapid good-bys, a trifle more lingering in the case of Miss Erskine than the others, and with that prophetic sentence still ringing in his ears he departed.  And the four girls were actually en route for Chautauqua.

CHAPTER III.

Entering the current.