Still intent on keeping the alarm she felt from the others, until she knew whether there was a real cause for it, Bessie slipped out of the tent and into the shadow of the trees. The camp fire still burned, flickering in the darkness, and making great, weird shadows, as the light fell upon the trees. It had been built up and banked before the camp went to sleep, and in the morning it would still be burning, although faintly, ready for the first careful attentions of the appointed Wood-Gatherers, whose duty it was to see that the fire did not die. Bessie, fearing that she might be spied upon, had to keep in the darkness, and she twisted and turned from the trunk of one tree to the next, bending over close to the ground when she had to cross an open space where firelight or moonbeams might reveal her to watching eyes. And now and again, crudely given, as crudely answered, from further down the lake, the call of the mock whip-poor-will guided her in her quest. And Bessie, plucking up all the courage she could muster, still trembled slightly, more from nervousness than from actual fear, for she knew whose voice it was that was imitating the plaintive bird--Jake Hoover's! All Hedgeville, as she well knew, must know that this camp of girls was at the lake--and it would be just like Jake and some of the bullying, reckless crowd of boys that he made his chief friends, to think that it would be a fine joke to play some tricks on the sleeping camp, and alarm these girls who were trying to enjoy themselves with outdoor life, just as if they had been boys. Bessie, setting her teeth, determined that they shouldn't succeed, that in some fashion she would turn the joke on them. Gradually she drew nearer to the sound, and she made up her mind, thankfully, that she had waked in time, before all the jokers had arrived. She had snatched up a sheet as she left the camp, without a clear idea of what she meant to do with it, but now, as she stole among the trees, a dim figure, flitting from one dark place to the next, a wild idea formed in her mind. It was risky--but Bessie was not timid. If Jake Hoover caught her--well, she knew what that would mean. He would not spare her, as his father had done, and there would be trouble for her, and for Zara and, worst of all, for Wanaka and her other new friends. And there was another danger. It might not, after all, be Jake Hoover that she heard.