Just back of the house, over the spring, the boys discovered the inevitable house for cooling milk, and here they delayed to drink from their pocket cups. "What's in the other side?" asked Walter, peering through the broken boards into a second room or shed, for the shack was divided into two parts. "More spring, I suppose," replied Jack, taking his third drink from the small cup. Walter and Ed had finished drinking just as the girls came up, and Jack attended to their various degrees of thirst for pure spring water. "What a quaint old place," remarked Belle. "What's in the other little house?" "We are just about to find out," said Jack. "The other fellows couldn't wait, and are in there now." Hurrying out, they all entered, through the battered door, into the "other side." "Well, I declare!" exclaimed Ed. "What does this mean?" "I also declare, 'what does this mean?'" added Jack, picking up from a queer sort of wooden platform in the place, the unmistakable blue bonnet of a child or young girl. "And this!" exclaimed Cora, picking up a hat. "This is--Nellie's hat! Nellie from the strawberry patch!" "They have run away!" gasped Bess, without further investigation, "and here are the remains of their lunch!" The fragments of a very meager meal--some crusts of dry bread--and an empty strawberry box, told the story. "Surely this had been the lunch of the runaways." "They must have slept here," went on Cora. "Poor little dears! What a shame! How frightened they must have been to sleep in such a place." "When you young ladies get through with the allegory, I hope you will give us the libretto," interrupted Jack. "Who may be the fair maids who have slept in this shack, and eaten the bread of freedom?" "Why, the girls from the strawberry patch, of course," said Bess, as if that explained everything. "Why 'of course,'" said Jack mockingly. "Certainly, of course," put in Ed, in the same tone of voice. "And, to be sure, of course," went on Walter, provokingly. "Why, we didn't tell you, did we?" spoke Cora finally. Then she did tell as much as she thought it wise to divulge about Nellie and Rose. This information "caused a stir," (as Jack put it) among the boys. Instantly they began up-turning stones, pulling down boards, and doing all sorts of foolish things searching for the runaways. But no other evidences were unearthed of the stay of the two girls in the spring house. "I hope they hear us," called Jack, finally, raising his voice almost to a shout. "I must find Rose," he called. "Rose is all the world to me! My own little garden flower without a thorn----" Walter interrupted with: "I must see Nellie home! Nellie! Nellie! Pretty little Nellie!" "Do be quiet," begged Cora, "you will arouse the ghosts in the old house." "Let's," suggested Walter. "Haven't seen a ghost in an age, and a ghost would be just pie for us in this place." "Please don't," almost sobbed Belle. "I am really awfully creepy in here."