"Oh! you know you told us to invite our friends to the party; not you, but the other girls did, when they signaled across that night from the green Pinnacle--gee! and it was some signaling, too." The scout's glance was teasing now as it shot up from the grass. "So--so one of the older boys he ran across that bunch o' fellows who were blooming round in the cave the other day--they're all from camps on the lake--and invited the whole five. This one thought he couldn't accept, but I guess he's making a dash at it--at coming just the same!" "Oh!... Oh, _dear_! I wish he wasn't!" "Why?" Now it was the scout's turn to hang, breathless, upon the interrogation as he too jumped to his feet. "Because--oh! because I'd be--be ever so much more comfortable without him--enjoy myself more." Pem caught her breath wildly. "Then 'twill be A. W. O. L. for him! ... A. W. O. L. for him--if I perish for it!" "What--what does that mean?" "Absent With-Out Leave, as they set it down in the Army!" Mischief leaped to the Henkyl Hunter's eye. He beckoned Peagreen from the grass to follow him. A whisper in the tender-foot's ear and down the winding sod-steps of the cliff they scrambled! Pem knew that she ought to call them back; knew it from the white parting at the side of her throbbing little head to the toe of her satin slipper tumultuously beating the ground, as she sank down, an orchid amid her chiffons, to watch. But it was a moment when the spice of her chowchow name had all spilled over; when the Vain Elf which, according to her father, slept in the shadow of the Wise Woman, was broadly--mutinously--awake. The boat had drawn in alongside the decked float now. It was gently rocking there, on and off, the rower having shipped his oars and laid them beside him, his strong fingers now and again hooking the wharf when there was danger of his drifting away, while his obsessed nose was bent closer still to the newspaper sheet, catching the last rays of daylight on it. He did not look up when the scouts, running out over the plank bridge, spoke to him. Suddenly one of them--Stud it was--leaned down and snatched the oars, lifted them high in the air, the nickum's evil genius having prompted him to lay them in the boat's side nearest the wharf; perhaps it was the demon which he had dared by sitting in the Devil's Chair. At the same time Peagreen gave the boat a strong shove outward to where a current caught it and swept it further--mockingly further, towards the darkening center of the Bowl. "Oh! I say--I say, you fellows, that's no stunt to pull off!" roared the nickum wrathfully. "I'm due at the dance now!" "You're not coming to the dance. There's a girl here who doesn't want you!" rang back the voice of callow chivalry in the barbarous pipe of the tenderfoot.