“Oh, Jane, is it really you?” stammered Harriet, trying to keep from lying back and again going to sleep.

“Oh, my stars, darlin’s!  And we thought all the time that you were both drowned.  Don’t tell me a thing now.  I’ll go right back and get some of the girls to help me get you back to camp.”

“No, no; we can walk.  There is nothing the matter with us except that we are tired out.  Tommy, Tommy, wake up!  It is morning and we are safe and dry.  Think of it!”

“I—­I don’t want to think.  I want to go to thleep.”

Jane lifted and shook the little lisping girl until Tommy begged for mercy, declaring that she would rather go to sleep than return to camp.  It required no little effort to get the girl to try to walk.  Harriet herself would have much preferred going back to sleep, but after a time, with their arms about Tommy, they managed to get her started, upon which they took up their weary trudge to the camp, more than a mile away, stumbling along with Tommy, half asleep nearly every minute of the time.

It was almost an hour later when a great shout arose from the camp as the girls were discovered slowly approaching.  There was a wild rush to meet them.  Every girl in camp, including the guardians, joined in the rush to welcome the returning Meadow-Brook Girls.

CHAPTER X

SUMMONED TO THE COUNCIL

“They’re saved!  They’re saved!” shouted fifty voices, their owners almost wild with delight.  With one common impulse they gathered up Tommy and Harriet and started to carry them into camp.  Tommy offered no resistance.  She submitted willingly.  With Harriet it was different.  She struggled, freed herself from the detaining arms, and sprang away from her rejoicing companions, laughing softly.

“I am perfectly able to take care of myself, thank you,” she said.

“You certainly do not look it,” declared the Chief Guardian.  Harriet’s face was pale, her eyes sunken, with dark rings underneath them, but in other ways she appeared to be her old self.  “We shall both be as well as ever after we have had something warm to eat and drink.”

“Tell us, oh, tell us about it,” cried several girls in chorus.

“Not a word until after the girls have had something to eat and drink.  They are completely exhausted.”  Mrs. Livingston gazed wonderingly at Harriet Burrell, knowing full well that the latter had borne the greater share of the burden in the battle that she must have had to fight through the long, dark night.

The cook girls were already making coffee and warming up food left over from their own breakfast, as being the quickest way to prepare something for the returned Meadow-Brook Girls.  That meal strengthened and cheered them wonderfully.  Tommy began to chatter after having drunk her first cup of coffee.  Their companions sat about in a semi-circle watching them, scarcely able to restrain their curiosity as to what had happened during the night.  Jane opened the recital by a question.