“Did you hear what Colonel Wayne told mamma as we left?” asked Ranald.  “He told her that it was reported that some of the animals had escaped from the circus that was in Louisville yesterday, and that a panther and some other kind of a beast had been seen in these woods.  He laughed and asked her if she didn’t want him to send a guard over to our camp.  Of course he was only joking, but when she saw that I had heard what he said, she told me not to tell the girls; not to even mention such a thing, or they’d be so frightened they’d want to break camp and go straight home.”

“It would be fun to scare them,” said Rob, “but you’d better believe I’ll not say anything if there’s any danger of having to go home sooner on account of it.”

“We’ve got to go day after to-morrow anyhow,” said Keith, gloomily.  “I wish I could miss another week of school, but I know papa wouldn’t let me, even if the camp didn’t break up.”

“Come on!” called Ranald, who had pushed on ahead.  “Let’s hurry back and have a good swim before supper.”

Not satisfied with the excitement of the day, the girls were no sooner out of the wagon than some one started a wild game of prisoners’ base.  Then they played hide-and-seek among the rocks and trees around the waterfall, and while they were wiping their flushed faces, panting after the long run, Kitty proposed that they should have a candy pulling.

Dinah made the candy, but the girls pulled it, running a race to see whose would be the whitest in a given time.  Their arms ached long before they were done.  By the time the boys came stumbling up the hill from their long swim in the creek, it would be hard to say which group was most tired.

“I’m sure we’ll all want to turn in early to-night,” said Mrs. Walton at supper.  Freddy was yawning widely, and Elise was almost asleep over her plate.  “You are all tired.”

“All but Hero,” said Miss Allison, offering him a chicken bone.  “He rested while the others played.  You’d like to go through your game every day.  Wouldn’t you, old boy?”

There was no story-telling around the camp-fire that night.  They gathered around it, even before the light died out in the sky.  Ranald had his guitar and Allison her mandolin, and they thrummed accompaniments awhile for the others to sing.  But a mighty yawn catching Margery in the middle of a verse, and Mrs. Walton discovering both Jamie and Freddy sound asleep on the rug beside her, she proposed that they all go to bed an hour earlier than usual.

The Little Captain vowed he was too sleepy to blow a single toot on his bugle, so they went to their tents without the usual sounding of taps.  It was not long before every child was asleep, worn out by the day’s hard play.  Mrs. Walton lay awake sometime listening to the sounds outside the tent.  The crackling of underbrush and rustle of dry leaves was familiar enough in the daytime, but they seemed strangely ominous now that the lights