“Thave me!” Tommy’s screams had now become despairing wails.

“Just make believe you’re watching a bird fly through the air,” was Jane’s sarcastic advice.  “Lean back and take it easy.”

“We will save you, Tommy.  Pull her up, Mr. Grubb,” urged Harriet, her sympathy overcoming her laughter.

“What, that way?” inquired Janus doubtfully.

“Yes, certainly.”

Janus grinned, then began hauling in on the rope with both hands.  He did it rapidly.  Tommy began to move up the slope, her feet still entangled with the rope.  Janus pulled stolidly, paying no attention to the torrent of expostulations that Tommy shrieked at him.  Her companions were shouting, cheering and offering aggravating suggestions to the little girl, Margery Brown’s voice being heard above the rest.  It was the happiest moment she had known since the Meadow-Brook Girls had started out to spend their vacations in the open.  Janus was grinning almost from ear to ear.  Tommy lay on her back, gazing scowlingly up into the grinning face of the guide.  Suddenly her expression changed.  A look of cunning appeared in her eyes.  Then Tommy Thompson turned the tables on her tantalizers in a way that set the party in a greater uproar.  Janus Grubb, too, learned a lesson that he did not soon forget.

CHAPTER XI

THE TRAGEDY OF CHOCORUA

“Pull harder!” screamed Tommy.  “I’m getting a ruthh of blood to my head.  Pull fatht, Mr. Januth.”

This sally was greeted with another shout from the girls.  Tommy, having turned her head to one side to glance up the slope, had discovered something.  That something was a little nub or projection that protruded from the rock directly in her path.  Unless they changed her course she would be scraped over the projection, which the girl well knew would cause her some pain as well as tear her skirt.  But it was not of this latter that she was thinking when she called to the guide to hurry.  The little, lisping girl had evolved a plan; but, that they might not suspect her of any trickery, she screamed the louder.

In her quick survey of the situation above her she also discovered that the upper end of the rope was tied to a rock, so that the rope could not get away.

“Fathter, fathter!” urged Tommy.

“The little one is planning mischief,” declared Jane, gazing narrowly up the slope.

“Yes, I know.  Get to one side,” replied Harriet laughingly.

“What is it, honey?” whispered Jane.

“Wait!  You’ll see some fun in a moment.  You may trust Tommy to get even every time.  There he comes!”

Janus, under Tommy’s urging, had leaned well forward.  He was grinning even more broadly than before, pulling on the line with all his might, the perspiration dripping from his forehead.  All at once Tommy swung in the foot that was free and thrust it straight up the slope.  The little projection caught her foot.  Tommy stiffened one leg and stopped short with a jolt which shook her slender body.  But she didn’t care.