Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp | Page 2

got so much to do to-night, Ruthie!" cried Helen. "Have
you got your things packed?"
"Aunt Alvirah said she would look my clothes over," said Ruth, in
reply. "I don't really see as I've much to take, Helen. We only want
warm things up there in the woods."
"And plenty of 'em," advised Tom. "Bring your skates. We may get a
chance to use them if the snow isn't too heavy. But up there in the
backwoods the snow hasn't melted, you can bet, since the first fall in
November."
"We'll have just the loveliest time!" went on Helen, with her usual
enthusiasm. "Tom and I spent a week-end at Snow Camp when Mr.
Parrish owned it, and when we knew he was going to sell, we just
begged papa to buy it. You never saw such a lovely old log cabin--"

"I never saw a log cabin at all," responded Ruth, laughing.
They had climbed the steep bank now and started across the pasture in
what Tom called "a catter-cornering" direction, meaning to come out
upon the main road to Osago Lake within sight of the Red Mill, which
was the property of Mr. Jabez Potter, Ruth's uncle.
Ruth Fielding, after her parents died, had come from Darrowtown to
live with her mother's uncle at the Red Mill, as was told in the first
volume of this series, entitled "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill; Or,
Jasper Parloe's Secret." The girl had found Uncle Jabez very hard to get
along with at first, for he was a good deal of a miser, and his finer
feelings seemed to have been neglected during a long life of hoarding
and selfishness.
But through a happy turn of circumstances Ruth was enabled to get at
the heart of her crotchety uncle, and when Ruth's very dear friend,
Helen Cameron, planned to go away to school, Uncle Jabez was won
over to the idea of sending Ruth with her. The girls were now home for
the winter holidays after spending their first term at Briarwood Hall,
where they had made many friends as well as learning a good many
practical and necessary things. The fun and work of this first term is all
related in "Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall; Or, Solving the Campus
Mystery," which is the second volume of the Ruth Fielding Series.
And now another frolic was in immediate prospect. Mr. Cameron, who
was a very wealthy dry-goods merchant, had purchased a winter camp
deep in the wilderness, up toward the Canadian line, and Christmas
itself now being over, Helen and Tom had obtained his permission to
take a party of their friends with them to the lodge in the backwoods
--Snow Camp.
It was really Helen's party. Besides Ruth, she had invited Madge Steele,
Jennie Stone, Belle Tingley, and Lluella Fairfax to be of the party. She
had invited one other girl from Briarwood, too; but Mary Cox had
refused the invitation. "The Fox," as her school-fellows called her, had
been under a cloud at the end of the term, and perhaps she might have
felt somewhat abashed had she joined the party of her school-fellows at

Snow Camp.
Tom had invited his chum at school, who was Madge Steele's brother
Bob, and another boy named Isadore Phelps. With Mr. Cameron
himself and Mrs. Murchiston, the lady who had been the twins'
governess when they were small, and several servants, the party were to
take train at Cheslow the next day for the northern wilderness.
The trio of friends, as they hurried across Hiram Bassett's pasture, were
full of happy anticipations regarding the proposed trip, and they chatted
merrily as they went on. Halfway across the field they passed along the
edge of a bush-bordered hollow. Their skating caps-- Tom's white,
Ruth's blue, and Helen's of a brilliant scarlet--bobbed up and down
beside the hedge, and anybody upon the other side, in the hollow,
might have been greatly puzzled to identify the bits of color.
"For mercy's sake! what's that?" ejaculated Helen, suddenly.
The others fell silent. A sudden stamping upon the frozen ground arose
from beyond the bushes. Then came a reverberating bellow.
Tom leaped through the bushes and looked down the hill. There
sounded the thundering of pounding hoofs, and the boy sprang back to
the side of his sister and her chum with a cry.
"Run!" he gasped. "The bull is there--I declare it is! He's coming right
up the hill and will head us off. We've got to go back. He must have
seen us through the bushes."
"Oh, dear me! dear me!" cried his sister. "What will we do--"
"Run, I tell you!" repeated Tom, seizing her hand.
Ruth had already taken her other hand. With their skates rattling over
their shoulders, the trio started back