But the woman seemed of a different mind, and made such a desperate effort to raise herself that Betty had no alternative but to help her to her feet.

The girls supported the unsteady little figure while the dim old eyes roved questioningly about.

“I—­got—­hurt!” she gasped, and then quite suddenly fainted again.

“Oh, Betty!” moaned Mollie, her face white with pity.  “She’s hurt worse, much worse, than we thought she was!  Oh, what shall we do?”

“There’s only one thing to do,” replied Betty, trying to hide the tremor in her voice.  “We’ll have to get her to the hospital, and in a hurry.”

“But Grace and Amy!” gasped Mollie.  “We can’t go without them.”

“We can at least get her into the car,” Betty said, indicating the limp little figure in the roadway.  “You take her feet, Mollie, and I’ll take her head.  We haven’t spent all our lives outdoors for nothing.”

Between them they succeeded in carrying their burden to the car and settled her gently in the tonneau.

“Oh, if Grace and Amy would only come!” Mollie was crying distractedly when the girls themselves burst through the underbrush, crying despairingly that they had not been able to find water, that there was not a house anywhere for miles around.

But Betty cut their lamentations short and hurried them into the car.

“But where do I come in?” gasped Grace, as Betty dropped into the back seat beside the little old woman and took the poor unconscious head in her arms.

“Oh, anywhere,” answered Betty indifferently, her mind on one object only.  “On the floor or on the roof or anywhere, only hurry.  Now, Mollie dear, drive as you never drove before.”

Mollie obediently threw in the clutch, and the heavy car shot forward, throwing Grace to a seat on the floor where she fell with more haste than dignity.

Nobody noticed her, however, and even a growing bump on her forehead received scant attention.  All were too intent upon the matter at hand.

At this spot the road was very narrow and on each side sloped down sharply about ten or twelve feet to the level of the fields.  It seemed almost an impossibility to turn the car in that narrow space without precipitating it down either one or the other of the steep banks.

After many fruitless attempts and barely escaped tragedies, however, Mollie finally succeeded, and the car was sent flying down the white stretch of road that led to Camp Liberty and the hospital.

“Oh, I hope we’ll get there in time,” Amy murmured over and over again, and kept looking at the pathetic little victim.  “Is she still breathing, Betty?  Are you sure?”

To this Betty always nodded in the affirmative, her little mouth grimly set, her eyes fixed steadily ahead, as though she would draw their destination nearer to them by the very force of her desire.

“I wonder,” Mollie flung back at them from between clenched teeth, “what that motorcyclist looked like.  I’d like to meet him again—­with a firing squad.”