After supper a short time was spent in visiting among the girls principally to discuss the marvelous experience of the two Meadow-Brook Girls; then one by one the girls left to go to their tents to don their ceremonial dress, and in place of the regulation serge uniform of the Camp Girls figures clad in the ceremonial dress, their hair hanging in two braids over their shoulders, and beads glistening about their necks, began to make their appearance.

Barely had the girls put on their ceremonial costumes before a moccasined Wau-Wau girl ran at an Indian lope through the camp, crying out the call for the council fire: 

    “Gather round the council fire,
    The chieftain waits you there,”

chanted the runner, circling the camp after having gone straight through the center from her own tent.  The girls began moving toward a dark spot in the young forest where the wood for the fire had been piled, but not yet lighted.

“What are we going to do?” questioned Tommy.

Miss Elting said she could not say; that the Chief Guardian had called the council.  Silent figures took their places, sitting on the ground, curling their feet underneath them, speaking no words, waiting for the flame that would open the Wau-Wau council.  At last all were seated.  From among the number there stepped forward a dark figure who halted before the pile of dry wood, then, stooping, began rubbing two sticks together, while the circle of Camp Girls chanted: 

    “Flicker, flicker, flicker, flame;
    Burn, fire, burn!”

A tiny blaze sprang from the two sticks, then the chant rose higher and higher, figures rose up, swaying their bodies from side to side in unison as the blaze grew into a flame and the flame into a roaring fire, the tongues of which reached almost to the tops of the slender trees that surrounded the camp of the Wau-Wau Girls.

“I light the light of health for Wau-Wau,” announced the firemaker, turning her back to the flames and facing part of the circle of expectant faces on which the lights and shadows from the fire were playing weirdly.

This completed the opening ceremony.  The council fire was in order, the purpose of the meeting would soon be explained, thus relieving the curiosity of some fifty girls who were burning to know what it was all about.  Not the least curious of these was Tommy Thompson.

CHAPTER XI

A REWARD WELL-EARNED

“I’m just perishing to know what it’s about,” confided Margery Brown to the girl next to her.  “What do you suppose it is?”

“I think it has something to do with last night,” answered the Camp Girl.

“Oh! you mean about Harriet and Tommy?”

“Yes.  Be quiet, the C.G. is going to say something.”

The Chief Guardian had already risen.  Passing about the circle, she extended a hand to each of the girls there assembled.  There were no other greetings than the warm clasp of friendship and good-fellowship, but it meant much to these brown-faced, strong-limbed young women who had been members of the organization for a year or more.