He listened admiringly as Bessie told her story. At the tale of Lolla's
treachery he laughed.

"They're all tarred with the same brush," he said. "One's as bad as
another."

And when he heard of the trick by which Dolly had worked on the
superstitious fears of Lolla and Peter his merriment knew no bounds, and
he absolutely refused to keep on the trail until Dolly had given him a
demonstration of just how she had managed it.

"Well, by Godfrey!" he said, when she had thrown her voice far overhead,
and once so that it seemed to come from just above his shoulder. "Don't
that beat the Dutch! I don't wonder you skeered 'em! You'd have had me
goin', I guess, an' I ain't no chicken, nor easy to skeer, neither. You
two certainly done a smart job gettin' away from them."

And so, when they reached Long Lake, the girls and the guides, who had
scattered all over the woods searching for them, agreed, when they
straggled in, one party after another. Eleanor Mercer was one of the
first to return, and when she had finished proving her gratitude for
their safe return, she turned a laughing face toward the chief guide.

"Do you know the thing that pleases me best about this, Andrew?" she
asked him.

"I can guess, ma'am," he said, with a grin. "You told us when you come
up here that you was goin' to prove that a party of girls could get
along without help from men. And I reckon it looked to you this morning
as if you was goin' to need us pretty bad, didn't it?"