“Your poor, starving girls!” exclaimed their liberator, reproachfully.  “At last I am convinced you are not fairies.  And for once I am glad that my mother is always certain that I am on the point of starving.”

He reached back into his pocket and brought out a package and a flask.  “Here is some good, strong coffee.  I am sorry it is cold, but it is better than nothing.”  He turned to Madge, who looked exhausted.

She shook her head, though she gazed at the flask wistfully.  “I won’t drink first.  I don’t need it as much as the other girls.”

Eleanor took the bottle from his hands and held it to Madge’s lips.  The exhausted girl took a long drink.  Then the others followed suit, while the young man watched them, smiling with satisfaction.  He was tall and strong, and not particularly handsome, but he had fine brown eyes, a firm chin and thick, curly, light hair.  After the girls had finished the coffee he broke open his package of sandwiches and found exactly four inside.

“Please take them,” he urged, handing the open package to Lillian.

“We mustn’t take them from you,” protested Lillian.  “We thank you for the coffee.  That will do nicely until we get back to our boat.”

The stranger laughed.  “See here,” he protested, “not an hour ago, when I left the hotel, where my mother and I are spending the summer, I ate three eggs, much bacon, four Maryland biscuit and drank two cups of coffee.  Fragile creature that I am, I believe I can exist on that amount of refreshment for another hour or so.  But whenever I go out on a few hours’ hunting trip, my mother insists that the steward at the hotel put me up a luncheon.  She is forever imagining that I am likely to get lost and starve, a modern ‘Babe in the Woods,’ you know.  By the way, I haven’t introduced myself.  My name is Curtis, Thomas Stevenson Curtis, if you please, but I am more used to plain, everyday Tom.”

The girls acknowledged the introduction, then by common consent they began walking away from the cabin.

A short distance was traversed in silence, then Madge said abruptly, “Who do you suppose locked us in, Mr. Curtis?”

“I don’t know,” answered Tom Curtis darkly, clenching his fist.  “But wouldn’t I like to find out!  Have you an enemy about here?”

Madge shook her head.  “No; as I said, we came to the neighborhood only yesterday.  We have met only the farmer and his wife, who allowed us to land.”

“I’ll make it my business to find out who served you such a dastardly trick, Miss Morton,” Tom returned.  “I expect to be in this neighborhood all summer.  My mother isn’t very well, and we like this quiet place.  Our home is in New York.  I was a freshman last year at Columbia.”

Only the day before Tom Curtis had informed his mother that he found the neighborhood too slow, and that if she didn’t object he would be glad to move on.  But a great deal can happen in a short time to make a young man of twenty change his mind.