“Roll up when you are ready,” directed the guide.

Each girl, except Tommy, lay down on her blanket, and, tucking in one edge, proceeded to roll herself up in it Indian-fashion, leaving only her head and face exposed to the air.  Tommy sat up, observing them solemnly.

“You look like a lot of mummieth,” she declared.

“And we feel like them, darlin’,” answered Jane.

The guide now proceeded to wrap the free end of rope about each girl’s waist over the blanket, except in Tommy’s case.  She preferred to have the rope about her waist before rolling up in her blanket, determining in her own mind to slip the loop off after the others had gone to sleep.  Fortunately, however, Tommy Thompson’s eyes grew heavy and she dropped to sleep ahead of her companions.  The guide lay down with his blanket half folded over him without a single worry on his mind, knowing that his charges could not get far away without a pulling on the lines that would awaken him.

But when the pulling on the lines did come, Janus Grubb was not prepared for it, and the camp of the Meadow-Brook Girls was thrown into wild excitement by what followed.

CHAPTER XII

TOMMY FALLS OUT OF BED

The night was far spent, and the air at their altitude was crisp and chill.  Below them a fog had settled over the canyons and gullies, blotting the landscape entirely from the sight of any one above the mist line.  But, though there was no moon, objects could be made out with reasonable distinctness on Sokoki Leap, where the girls, their guardian and the guide were sleeping more or less soundly.  Toward morning, however, Tommy awoke with a start.  She twitched and jerked, rolled herself into a ball, straightened out again and twisted and turned, wide awake and nervous.  Her rope being long, the guide was not disturbed—­at least, not then.

An owl hooted high in a ledge above their camping place.  It hooted three times.  Tommy rose, throwing off her blanket.  She stood shivering in her kimono, for the air had grown chilly, undecided whether to awaken the camp or lie down again.  Finally she sank down and rolled over and over in her blanket, this time determined to wrap up so snugly that the cold could not reach her.

Then came the interruption, starting with a scream so terrifying as to awaken every member of the party and to frighten the owl into sudden silence.  Shouts were heard from all sides.  The girls began struggling to free themselves from their blankets.  To do this some of them rolled toward the guide, others from him, according to the way they had rolled themselves in their blankets before going to sleep.  Harriet was the first to free herself from the folds of the gray blanket that enveloped her.  She leaped to her feet, crying out, “What is the matter now?”

A strange sight met her gaze.  Janus was sliding over the shelf, half rolling, half slipping, in a mysterious fashion.  At the same time the others of the party were performing strangely, getting up, falling down, as, entangled in their blankets, they staggered dangerously near the edge of the rocky shelf, apparently unmindful of their peril.