"Ben is a safe guide. They are safe with him. Wake me when they arrive," and turning over on her side, Miss Campbell went back to sleep. Occasionally the doctor scanned the side of the mountain with his telescope. "The children are taking a long time," he said to himself. "They had better look alive, if they want to make it before nightfall." But night fell and there was no sign of the wanderers. The doctor lit a cigar and watched the shadows creep up the side of the mountains. He listened to the last twittering of the birds and then a silence, profound and deep, settled on the camp. Again he descended to the living room of the camp now in darkness. Presently he lighted the green shaded lamp and two lanterns, hanging one at the front of the house and the other at the back. He unpacked the market basket and cooked himself some supper, and finally with a glass of milk and a slice of bread for Miss Campbell when she waked, returned to the upper sleeping porch. "A telescope is an excellent thing," he observed, settling himself in a steamer chair, a lamp on the floor beside him with a tin protector to keep draughts from the flame. "I saw the woman plainly enough flourishing the carving knife. It must have been sheer force of will on the part of this little lady that made her drop it." And now the darkness had indeed fallen, a black, impenetrable curtain. Only the outline of the opposite range could be seen. It seemed to have closed in on the camp, and like a gigantic wall, to shut it off from the outer world. An owl hooted in a tree not far away and from a cleft in the mountains came the weird song of the whippoorwill. CHAPTER VII. PHOEBE. Fate had chosen a very simple way of bringing about events of great importance to persons in this history. A doctor off on a walking trip had idly lifted his telescope to scan the village in the valley. As he swept his glass over the country, it had brought near to him glimpses of white farmhouses, men working in the fields and then looming quite close and unexpectedly large to his eye, a woman brandishing a long knife over the head of a person in white. The doctor lost no time in idle speculation. "It's in that camp on the lower ledge," he said to himself as he dashed down the path, and in some twenty minutes or more entered the living room of Sunrise Camp. It is not pleasant to think of what might have happened to Miss Helen Campbell if the doctor's alert, intelligent eyes had not caught and instantly comprehended the significance of the picture brought to him by the telescope. How long might she have lain there unconscious, or how dealt with the half-intoxicated Lupo if he had mounted the steps in search of his wife? Then, as the hours slipped on and no human soul came near to minister to her and comfort her, and she had finally realized that her young people had never returned, how would she have endured that second shock?