“I’m—­I’m up a tree,” wailed Grace.

“Why don’t you come down?”

“I can’t.  I’m fatht.”

“Be quiet.  I’ll climb up and release you,” soothed Harriet, starting to climb up the small tree trunk.  “Some one is coming from the camp.  I see the lights.  This is too bad.  I was in hopes they might not know about it.  Now we shall never hear the last of it.”

“I don’t care if we don’t.  I want to get down,” wailed Grace.

Harriet succeeded in, climbing the tree to a point where she could reach out and touch her companion.  Perhaps suspecting something of the truth, Harriet moved very cautiously.  She discovered what the trouble was almost at once.

“Tommy I’m afraid when I loosen this cord that holds you you will fall,” said Harriet.

“How far will I fall?” quavered Tommy.

“Only a few feet,” replied Harriet.  “You aren’t more than six or seven feet from the ground.  The ground is soft.  It’s all moss and mold under this tree.”

“I don’t want to fall,” wailed the little girl “I want to thtay here.  Don’t you dare touch me, Harriet Burrell.”

“Then wait until the others get here.  They are almost here now.”

“There it is,” cried a voice.  Harriet thought the voice belonged to Miss Elting.  It proved to belong to Cora Kidder.  “My gracious, girls what is it?”

“It ith I,” answered a plaintive voice from above their heads.

“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the girls as they gazed up at the limb of the tree from where Tommy was suspended.

“Young woman what are you doing up there?” demanded Mrs. Livingston.  “Are you Miss Thompson?”

“I wath.  I don’t know who I am now, Mithith Livingthton.  Pleathe help me down.”

“If you will stand below to catch her I think I shall be able to release her,” called Harriet from her perch in the tree.

Harriet had not been seen before in the darkness, screened by the foliage as she was, Mrs. Livingston called to know who she was.  Harriet gave her name.  Then the Chief Guardian directed that Harriet should release the prisoner from her difficulty while several of the guardians stood in a circle under the tree with arms outstretched ready to stop the fall of the little figure hanging over their heads.

“Are you going to drop me?” questioned Tommy in great alarm.

“Yes, but it won’t hurt you,” answered Harriet.

“I don’t want to.  I——­”

Tommy did not complete the sentence.  Instead she finished with a scream as Harriet unfastened the cord from the stub that had held it and with one hand lowered Tommy into the arms of her friends.  This Harriet did with one hand, clinging with the other to one of the lower limbs of the tree.  As several of the girls held up their lanterns to aid the others in catching Grace, there were exclamations of admiration at Harriet’s exhibition of strength.

“Who would think her so strong?” exclaimed a guardian.