“We most surely will take her along to Mountain Camp,” declared Betty’s uncle.  “But what puzzles me, is how she ever got here to this, lonely place.”

“I was trying to find the Candace Farm,” choked Ida Bellethorne.

“I want to know!” said Jaroth.  “That’s the stockfarm where they pasture so many sportin’ hosses.  Candace, he makes a good thing out of it.  But it’s eight miles from here and not in the direction we’re going, Mr. Gordon.”

“We will take her along to Mountain Camp,” said Uncle Dick.  “One more will not scare Mrs. Canary, I am sure.”

Ida brought a good-sized suitcase out of the hut with her.  She had evidently tried to walk from Cliffdale to the stockfarm, carrying that weight.  The girls were buzzing over the appearance of the stranger and the boys stared.

“Oh, Betty!” whispered Bobby Littell, “is she Ida Bellethorne?”

“One of them,” rejoined Betty promptly.

“Then do you suppose she has your locket?” ventured Bobby.

To tell the truth, Betty had not once thought of that!

CHAPTER XVI

THE CAMP ON THE OVERLOOK

Mountain Camp was rightly named, for it was built on the side of one mountain and was facing another.  Between the two eminences was a lake at least five miles long and almost as broad.  The wind had blown so hard during the blizzard that the snow had not piled upon the ice at all, although it was heaped man-high along the edges.  The pool of blue ice stretched away from before Mountain Camp like a huge sheet of plate glass.

The two storied, rambling house, built of rough logs on the outside, stood on a plateau called the Overlook forty feet above the surface of the lake.  Indeed the spot did overlook the whole high valley.

The hills sloped down from this height in easy descents to the plains.  Woods masked every topographical contour of the surrounding country.  Such woods as Betty Gordon and her friends had never seen before.

“Virginia forests are not like this,” confessed Louise Littell.  “The pines are never so tall and there is not so much hardwood.  Dear me! see that dead pine across the lake.  It almost seems to touch the sky, it is so tall.”

This talk took place the next morning when they had all rested and, like all healthy young things, were eager for adventure.  They had been welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. Canary in a way that put the most bashful at ease.

Even Ida Bellethorne had soon recovered from that sense of strangeness that had at first overpowered her.  The girls had been able to help her out a little in the matter of dress.  She appeared at the dinner table quite as one of themselves.  Betty would not hear of Ida’s withdrawing from the general company, and for a particular reason.

In truth, Betty felt a little condemned.  She had considered a suspicion of Ida’s honesty, and afterward she knew it could not be so!  The English girl had no appearance of a dishonest person.  Betty saw that Uncle Dick was favorably disposed toward Ida.  If he did not consider her all right he surely would not have introduced her to Mr. and Mrs. Canary as one of his party.