She could not raise herself up again, and she almost feared to drop.  “Let down the light, Curly!” she whispered.

CHAPTER XXII

DISASTER THREATENS

Before Curly could comply with Ruth’s whispered request, her fingers slipped on the edge of the flooring.  “Oh!” she cried out, and—­dropped as much as three inches!

“Goodness me, Ruth!” gasped Ann Hicks.  “Are you killed?”

“No—­o.  But I might as well have been as to be scared to death,” declared the girl of the Red Mill.  “I never thought the cellar was so shallow.”

There was a rustling near by.  Ruth thought of rats and almost screamed aloud.  “Give me the lantern—­quick!” she called up to Curly Smith.

“Here you are,” said that youth.  “And if Amy is down there she ought to be ashamed of herself—­making us so much trouble.”

Amy was there, as Ruth saw almost immediately when she could throw the radiance of the lantern about her.  But Ruth did not feel like scolding the younger girl.

Amy had crept away into a corner.  Her movements made the rustling Ruth had heard.  She hid her face against her arm and sobbed with abandonment.  Her dress was torn and muddy, her shoes showed that she had waded in mire.  She had lost her hat and her flaxen hair was a tangle of briers and green burrs.

“My dear!” cried Ruth, kneeling down beside her.  “What does it mean?  Why did you come here?  Oh, you’re sick!”

A single glance at the flushed face and neck of the smaller girl, and a tentative touch upon her wrist, assured Ruth of that last fact.  Amy seemed burning up with fever.  Ruth had never seen a case of scarlet fever, but she feared that might be Amy’s trouble.

“How long have you been here?” she asked Amy.

“Si—­since—­since it got dark,” choked the girl.

“Is your throat sore?” asked Ruth, anxiously.

“Yes, it is; aw—­awful sore.”

“And you’re feverish,” said Ruth.

“I—­I’m aw—­all shivery, too,” wept Amy Gregg, quite given up to misery now.

Ruth was confident that the smaller girl had developed the fever that she feared.  Chill, fever, sore throat, and all, made the diagnosis seem quite reasonable.

“How did you get into this cellar?” she asked Amy.

“There’s a hole in the underpinning over yonder,” said the culprit.

“Come on, then; we’ll get out that way.  Can you walk?”

“Oh—­oh—­yes,” choked Amy.

She proved this by immediately starting out of the cellar.  Ruth lit the way with the lantern.

“Hi!” shouted Curly Smith, “where are you going with that light?”

“Come back to the door,” commanded Ruth’s muffled voice in the cellar.  “You can find your way all right.”

“What do you know about that?” demanded Ann.  “Leaves us in the lurch for that miserable child, who ought to be walloped.”