“The girl was not in her right mind,” Mrs. Eddy said.  “She was in a delirium.  It was about 10 o’clock at night, and evidently she had been tramping the streets for hours in the storm.”

“How is she now?  Oh!  I must go right to her!  Did she get lost in the storm?  Girls, girls!  Come here!  Helen’s found!  Is she—­is she—­ill—­very ill, Mrs. Eddy?”

“I don’t think she is seriously ill,” the woman replied, with an expression of sweet encouragement.  “I had a doctor call, and he didn’t seem to think there was any immediate danger, although she hasn’t talked rationally yet.  She is in bed, and has considerable fever.”

“Would it be all right for me to go and see her—­is it against the doctor’s orders?  I’d be very careful; and, besides, I’m a nurse—­in fact, we all are nurses.”

“Oh, to be sure—­it will be all right for you to come—­all of you may come if you wish.  You can go in one at a time, quietly.  Then a couple of you may remain and help nurse her.  I really need help, for I am all alone, and sat up all night with her, and have been close to her most of the day.  Perhaps it would be well for you girls to make arrangements for relief nursing watches.  You are perfectly welcome to keep her at my home until she is well, if you will relieve me of the necessity of nursing her.”

“Come on, girls; get your wraps; we will all go over.  It’s only a couple of blocks.  Hurry, everybody!”

“Wait, and I’ll tell Kitty we’re going out,” Marion said.

She ran through several rooms, calling “Kittie!  Kittie!” but received no response.

“I wonder where she is,” the hostess said, in a puzzled manner.  “Well, we haven’t time to find her.  Come on.”

“I think I saw her go out more than half an hour ago,” Harriet Newcomb said.  “She called someone up on the telephone, and then put her hat and coat on and went out the side way, and I haven’t seen her since.”

“That’s strange,” Marion commented.  Then the subject was forgotten.  The twelve girls and their leader were walking rapidly toward the place where Mrs. Eddy, the good Samaritan, had taken in and cared for the girl whom every one of them loved as they would have loved a sister.

The house they stopped in front of was rather dingy and forbidding.  It was a large brick structure, set back a hundred feet from the street on a plot of ground nearly an acre in extent.  Most of the windows were darkened with green blinds two generations out of date.

Mrs. Eddy put a key into the lock and opened the door.  Then she stepped aside and motioned the girls to enter, and they did so as if moved by a spell that they were unable to resist.  Then the woman herself entered, closed the door and put the key into the lock and turned it.  If the twelve Camp Fire Girls had no suspicions as to the genuineness of the motives of the woman up to this time, they had good and sufficient reason to anticipate something dreadful when they saw her take the key from the lock and put it in her coat pocket.