“I don’t know that I can do it, but I can try,” muttered Harriet.  She was barely able to breathe.  “Hurry!” she called.  “We can’t stand it much longer.”  The girl braced herself, arched her back and stiffened her muscles.  To her joy, she found herself able to raise the cots a trifle.  The weight that had last crushed them down, was not so great but that she could raise it, though when she desisted from her efforts the weight above, held her down firmly across the bodies of two of her companions.

“Here we are darlin’s,” came the welcome voice of Crazy Jane close at hand.  “Hurry, now.  This old house may tumble in again.”

“Tell me when you are ready.  Help Patricia out first.  I’ll lift the cots while you pull her out.  All ready?”

“Yes.”

Harriet threw all her strength into the task of raising the cots, underneath which she had burrowed.  Patricia was quickly dragged out.  The cots sagged under the weight that bore them down and Harriet Burrell sagged under the weight of both.

“Cora!  Be quick!” she gasped.

“I—­I can’t move.”

Harriet put forth a greater effort of strength.  Cora Kidder was dragged out from under the cots gasping.  Then came Tommy more dead than alive, uttering frightened little moans.  Harriet suddenly collapsed under the weight she had been holding up, her three companions in the meantime being on their way to safety.

Jane heard the crackling of the limbs of the tree and the snap of a brace on a cot.  Her frantic calls to Harriet were unanswered.  Crazy Jane knew that Harriet Burrell was in mortal danger.

Jasper was still holding the lantern, just outside the danger line, so that Jane was now working in the dark.  Making her way to the pile of cots she groped helplessly about, her hands at length coming in contact with Harriet’s feet.  Five seconds later Jane was bending all her energies to the work of raising the cot from the body of her friend.  It was useless—­Harriet was pinned down under the weight of the tree pressing upon the cot.

“Jasper, where are you?” cried Jane.

“I’m holding the lantern out here.”

“Bring it nearer, you wooden Indian!” cried the girl indignantly.

Jasper obeyed with alacrity, holding the lantern as close to where Jane worked as was possible.

Jane made one more frantic effort to raise the cot, then finding it useless she clambered back to where Jasper stood peering anxiously at the fallen tent.  Glancing hastily about, she instantly formed her plan for rescuing Harriet.

Seizing one of the side poles of the tent she ran one end of it under the cot; then bracing her shoulder against it, used it as a lever in the endeavor to pry the weight off her friend.  The pole broke in the middle.

Nothing daunted, she placed the two broken ends of it together under the cot, and thus doubling their strength, she shouted excitedly to Jasper: