Page:Betty Gordon at Boarding School.djvu/142

132 carry them up high enough and leave them, they will be perfectly safe."

The wind and the rain made shouting necessary if one's voice were to carry above the storm. The boys lifted the light boats and carried them into the woods, turning them over so that the keels were up.

"Now the question is," said Bob, who seemed by common consent to have been elected leader, "shall we walk along the shore and get drenched, or take a chance of finding our way through the woods?"

To their astonishment, Libbie burst into a fit of hysterical weeping.

"Don't go through the woods," she begged, her teeth chattering. "We'll fall into that awful Indian Chasm."

Bobby's heart reproached her for her thoughtless joke and she put an arm around her cousin.

"Libbie, you never thought I was serious about pushing you into the chasm, did you?" she asked anxiously. "Is that what has been making you act so queerly ever since? I was only fooling."

So, thought Betty, Bobby, too, had noticed Libbie's unnatural behavior.

"Oh, it isn't that," sobbed Libbie. "I can't explain—but If we go through the woods, I'm sure I shall go crazy."

"Well, then, that settles it," said Bob