“What’s this?” asked Jack, picking up the nurse’s garb from the bottom of the sanitarium canoe.  “I declare!  Dorothy has been masquerading!”

He held up the linen skirt, and the white cap.  Of course the very next thing he did was to put the cap on his head.

Every one but Cologne laughed—­she seemed too stunned to so soon forget the horror of the loss of Dorothy.

The young ladies from the neighboring camp had decided not to go on the water—­in fact their chaperon had refused to allow them to go; “there had been so many horrible accidents around there of late,” she declared.

Major Dale stood upon the bank, and watched his daughter.  To the others it might seem like a dream, but to him it was very real.  Dorothy had been such a daughter, and even now she was proving herself the Major’s “little corporal.”  Nor did Dorothy miss the look that had buried the smile on her father’s face.

“Now, when we get that naughty Tavia back,” she called, “we will have a celebration, Daddy.”

“You bet we will,” replied the major warmly.  And then the party started down the river.

“I cannot see how Tavia could be along the river bank and not hear us,” argued Ned.  “Dorothy, you have not told us your story at all.  Were you both kidnapped?”

“I have never seen Tavia since that morning we went for berries,” she declared.  “But my!  What an age it has been since then!”

“I guess it has,” blustered Nat, in his whole-hearted way, and he bent over his oars.  “I don’t want another batch of time as long as the last.”

“And, of course, you could not get us any word,” ventured Ned.  “We fell down on that—­it was my one mile-stone.”

“But it is strange how secret some places can be kept,” said Dorothy, cautiously.  “It seems that they are so afraid of—­publicity.  There!  That looks like the place where the canoeists went ashore.  No, it is farther up, near the willow.  We must pull in there and search.  I do wish I could have—­but what is the use of wishing.”

“Mere waste of tissue,” said Ned with a smile.  He was only a boy—­a big boy, but the fright of having lost Dorothy had not left him unscathed.

The others in the boats took the signal from Nat, and were making for shore.  It was a rough place indeed; first rocky, then a matter of holes, and after that it was trees—­dense, stubborn trees.

A sense of horror stole over Dorothy as she again stepped into the woods, but in her brave way she instantly decided that it was merely a matter of reflection, and the question in hand was not one of memory, but one of facts.  Tavia was still somewhere in those woods, or she was—­No, she must be in the woods!

First calling, then running from point to point, the party searched, but Cologne would not lose her hold on Dorothy.

“You are not going to get away from me this time,” declared the girl.  “I shall always blame myself for losing sight of you.”