Part 10 (1/2)

”How strange! We were going over there, too, weren't we, Mr. Bolling?”

quizzed Tom.

”Then catch us if you can!” challenged Phyllis. With a sign to Madge the two girls began rowing their boat through the water with the speed of an arrow. The first spurt told, for the island was not far away, and the girls' boat grated on the beach before the boys had time to land. But Tom and Jack did jump out and run through the water to pull the ”Water Witch” ash.o.r.e, much to Phil's disgust.

”I really have an errand to do on this island, Miss Morton,” continued Tom, as the party started up the beach. ”I wanted first to ask you if I could bring my mother to call on you and your chaperon this afternoon? I am awfully anxious to have an all-day sailing party to-morrow. And I thought perhaps you and your friends and chaperon would go with us? There is an old fellow over here who takes people out sailing, and I am anxious to have a talk with him. Don't think I am such a duffer that I can't sail a boat myself, but my mother is so nervous about the water that I take a professional sailor along to keep her from worrying. She has had a great deal to make her nervous,” Tom ended. ”I wonder if you and your friends would mind walking over to the other side of the island with me to see this man? It is not a long walk.”

The party started off, Phyllis keeping strictly in the background.

Madge walked with Tom and Lillian with Jack, so she felt a little out of it.

”If you don't mind,” she proposed, after the party had walked a few yards, ”I will sit down here on the beach and wait until you come back from your talk with the sailor man. I will stay right here, so you can find me when you return.”

Phil found herself a comfortable, flat rock, and sat looking idly out over the bay. Gradually she fell into a little reverie.

A sudden cry of pain roused Phil from her daydream. Springing to her feet, she rushed down the beach, seeing nothing, but following the direction of the cry. Rounding a curve of the beach she came upon a dirty, half-tumbled down tent. In front of it stood a burly man with both hands on the shoulders of a young girl, whom he was shaking violently. So intent was he upon what he was doing, he did not notice Phil approaching. She saw him shove the girl inside the tent and close the outside flap. ”Now, stay in there till you git tired of it,” he growled as he turned and walked away.

A sound of low sobbing greeted Phil's ears as she came up in front of the tent and stood waiting, hardly knowing what to do. The sobs continued, with a note of pain in them that went straight to Phil's tender heart. The sight or sound of physical suffering made a special appeal to her. It was Phyllis's secret ambition some day to study medicine, an ambition which she had confided to no one save Madge.

Although the figure she had seen was almost that of a woman, the sobbing sounded like that of a child. There was no other noise in the tent, so Phil knew the girl was alone.

”Won't you please come out?” she called softly, not knowing what else to do or say. ”Tell me what is grieving you so. I am only a girl like yourself, and I would like to help you.”

”I dare not come out,” the other girl answered. ”My father said I must stay in here.”

Phil opened the flap of the old tent and walked inside. ”What is the matter?” she inquired gently, bending over the figure lying on the ground and trying to lift her.

The girl sat up and pushed back her unkempt hair. She had a deep, glowing scar just over her temple. But her hair was a wonderful color, and only once before Phil remembered having seen eyes so deeply blue.

”Why,” Phil exclaimed with a start of surprise, ”I have seen you somewhere before. Don't you remember me?”

The girl shook her head. ”I do not remember anything,” she answered quietly.

”But I saw you on the ca.n.a.l boat. Your father was the man who helped us secure our houseboat. What are you doing here?”

”We have come here for many years, I think,” the girl answered confusedly. ”In the early spring my father catches shad along the bay.

Then all summer he takes people out sailing from the big place over there.” She pointed across the water in the direction of the hotel.

”Our boat is on the other side of the island.” The girl clasped her head in her long, sun-burned hands. ”It is there that it hurts,” she declared, touching the ugly, jagged scar.

Phil gave a little, sympathetic cry and put her hand on the girl's shoulder.

”When I work a long time in the sun my head hurts,” the girl went on listlessly. ”I have been was.h.i.+ng all day on the beach. I came up here to hide, and my father found me. He was angry because I had stopped work.”

”Did he strike you?” Phil cried in horror, gazing at the slender, delicate creature and thinking of the rough, coa.r.s.e man.

”Not this time,” the girl replied. ”Sometimes they strike me and then I am afraid. Only there is one thing I shall never, never do, no matter how much they beat me. I can not remember everything, but I know that I will not do this one thing.”

”What is it?” asked Phil. ”Whom do you mean by 'they,' and what do 'they' wish you to do?”

The girl shook her head. ”I can not tell you.” She shuddered, and Phil felt she had no right to insist on knowing.

”I like to hide in this tent,” the girl went on sorrowfully. ”I come here whenever I can get away from the others. I would like to stay here always. But, now he has found me, there is no place where I can rest.”