"You touch her and I'll run you in," he said, angrily. "We don't stand for men laying their hands on girls and women in this town. Get away with you now! If I catch you hanging around here five minutes from now, I'll take you to the lock-up, and you can spend the night in a cell." "But--" began Weeks. "Not a word more--or I'll do as I say," said the policeman. He was energetic, if he was fat, and he had put a protective arm about Zara. Weeks looked at him and then he slunk off. And, as he went, the girls heard a merry chorus, "Wo-he-lo, Wo-he-lo," just as another train puffed in. CHAPTER XI THE CALL OF THE FIRE "Wo-he-lo!" How they did thrill at the sound of the watchword of the Camp Fire! How clearly, now, they understood the meaning of the three syllables, that had seemed to them so mysterious, so utterly without meaning, when they had first heard them on the shores of the lake, as, surprised, they peeped out and saw the merry band of girls who had awakened them after their flight from Hedgeville. For a moment, so overjoyed were they, they couldn't move at all. But then the spell was broken, as the call sounded again, loud and clear, rising above the noises of the engine that was puffing and snorting on the other side of the station. Farmer Weeks, a black look in his eyes as he shot them a parting glance full of malice, was forgotten as he slunk off. "Thank you, oh, thank you!" cried Bessie to the astonished policeman, who looked as if he were about to begin asking them questions. "Come on, Zara!" And, hand in hand, they raced around to the other side of the station again, but blithely, happily this time, and not in terror of their enemy, as they had come. And there, looking about her in all directions, was Eleanor Mercer, and behind her all the girls of the Manasquan Camp Fire. "Oh, I'm so glad! I was afraid something had happened to you!" cried Eleanor. "But now it's all right! We're all here, and safe. In this state no one can hurt you--either of you!" Laughing and full of questions, the other girls crowded around Zara and Bessie, so happily restored to them. "We feel as if you were real Camp Fire Girls already!" said Eleanor Mercer, half crying with happiness. "The girls were wild with anxiety when they found you had gone away, too, Bessie, even though we hadn't told them everything. But they were delighted when I got back and told them you were safe." "We were, indeed," said Minnehaha. "But it was awful, Bessie, not to know what had become of you, or how to help you! We'd have done anything we could, but we didn't know a single thing to do. So we had just to wait, and that's the hardest thing there is, when someone you love is in trouble." Bessie almost broke down at that. Until this wonderful meeting with the Camp Fire Girls no one but Zara had loved her, and the idea that these girls really did love her as they said--and had so nobly proved--was almost too much for her. She tried to say so.