The girl in question – who was odd looking, indeed – had been paying the cabman who had brought her to the head of the dock. The dock was on West Street, New York City, and the chums from Cheslow and the Red Mill had never been in the metropolis before. So they were naturally observant of everything and everybody about them.

The strange girl, after paying her fare, started to thrust her purse into the shabby handbag she carried. Just then one of the colored porters hurried forward and took up the suitcase that the girl had set down on the ground at her feet when she stepped from the cab.

“Right dis way, miss,” said the porter politely, and started off with the suitcase.

“Hey! what are you doing?” demanded the girl in a sharp and shrill voice; and she seized the handle of the bag before the porter had taken more than a step.

She grabbed it so savagely and gave it such a determined jerk, that the porter was swung about and almost thrown to the ground before he could let go of the handle.

“I’ll ‘tend to my own bag,” said this vigorous young person, and strode away down the dock, leaving the porter amazed and the bystanders much amused.

“My goodness!” gasped the negro, when he got his breath. “Dat gal is as strong as a ox – sho’ is! I nebber seed her like. She don’t need no he’p, she don’t.”

“Let him take our bags – poor fellow,” said Helen, turning around after paying their own driver. “Wasn’t that girl rude?”

“Here,” said Ruth, laughing and extending her light traveling bag to the disturbed porter, “you may carry our bags to the boat. We’re not as strong as that girl.”

“She sho’ was a strong one,” said the negro, grinning. “I declar’ for’t, missy! I ain’ nebber seed no lady so strong befo’.”

“Isn’t he delicious?” whispered Helen, pinching Ruth’s arm as they followed the man down the dock. “He’s no Northern negro. Why, he sounds just as though we were as far as Virginia, at least, already! Oh, my dear! our fun has begun.”

“I feel awfully important,” admitted Ruth. “And I guess you do. Traveling alone all the way from Cheslow to New York.”

“And this city is so big,” sighed Helen. “I hope we can stop and see it when we come back from the Land of Cotton.”

They were going aboard the boat that would take them down the coast of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia to the Capes of Virginia and Old Point Comfort. There they were to meet their Briarwood Hall schoolmate, Nettie Parsons, and her aunt, Mrs. Rachel Parsons.

The girls and their guide passed a gang of stevedores rushing the last of the freight aboard the boat, their trucks making a prodigious rumbling.

They came to the passenger gangway along which the porter led them aboard and to the purser’s office. There he waited, clinging to the bags, until the ship’s officer had looked at their tickets and stateroom reservation, and handed them the key.

“Lemme see dat, missy,” said the porter to Ruth. “I done know dis boat like a book, I sho’ does.”

“And, poor fellow, I don’t suppose he ever looked inside a book,” whispered Helen. “Isn’t he comical?”

Ruth was afraid the porter would hear them talking about him, so she fell back until the man with the bags was some distance ahead. He was leading them to the upper saloon deck. Their reservation, which Tom Cameron, Helen’s twin brother, had telegraphed for, called for an outside stateroom, forward, on this upper deck – a pleasantly situated room.

Tom could not come with his sister and her chum, for he was going into the woods with some of his school friends; but he was determined that the girls should have good accommodations on the steamboat to Old Point Comfort and Norfolk.

“And he’s just the best boy!” Ruth declared, fumbling in her handbag as they viewed the cozy stateroom. “Oh! here’s Mrs. Sadoc Smith’s letter.”

Helen had tipped the grinning darkey royally and he had shuffled out. She sat down now on the edge of the lower berth. This was the first time the chums had ever been aboard a boat for over night, and the “close comforts” of a stateroom were quite new to Helen and Ruth.

“What a dinky little washstand,” Helen said. “Oh, my! Ruth, see the ice-water pitcher and tumblers in the rack. Guess they expect the boat to pitch a good deal. Do you suppose it will be rough?”

“Don’t know. Listen to this,” Ruth said shortly, reading the letter which she had opened. “I only had a chance to glance at Mrs. Smith’s letter before we started. Just listen here: She says Curly has got into trouble.”

“Curly?” cried Helen, suddenly interested. “Never! What’s he done now?”

“I guess this isn’t any fun,” said Ruth, seriously. “His grandmother is greatly disturbed. The constable has been to the house looking for Curly and threatens to arrest him.”

“The poor boy!” exclaimed Helen. “I knew he was an awful cut-up – ”

“But there never was an ounce of meanness in Henry Smith!” Ruth declared, quite excited. “I don’t believe it can be as bad as she thinks.”

“His grandmother has always been so strict with him,” said Helen. “You know how she treated him while we were lodging with her when the new West Dormitory at Briarwood was being built.”

“I remember very clearly,” agreed Ruth. “And, after all, Curly wasn’t such a bad fellow. Mrs. Smith says he threatens to run away. That would be awful.”

“Goodness! I believe I’d run away myself,” said Helen, “if I had anybody who nagged me as Mrs. Sadoc Smith does Henry.”

“And she doesn’t mean to. Only she doesn’t like boys – nor understand them,” Ruth said, as she folded the letter with a sigh. “Poor Curly!”

“Come on! let’s get out on deck and see them start. I do just long to see the wonderful New York skyline that everybody talks about.”

“And the tall buildings that we couldn’t see from the taxicab window,” added Ruth.

“Who’s going to keep the key?” demanded Helen, as Ruth locked the stateroom door.

“I am. You’re not to be trusted, young lady,” laughed Ruth. “Where’s your handbag?”

“Why – I left it inside.”

“With all that money in it? Smart girl! And the window blind is not locked. The rules say never to leave the room without locking the window or the blind.”

“I’ll fix that,” declared Helen, and reached in to slide the blind shut. They heard the catch snap and were satisfied.

As they went through the passage from the outer deck to the saloon they saw a figure stalking ahead of them which made Helen all but cry out.

“I see her,” Ruth whispered. “It’s the same girl.”

“And she’s going into that stateroom,” added Helen, as the person unlocked the door of an inside room.

“I’d like to see her face,” Ruth said, smiling. “I see she has curly hair, and I believe it’s short.”

“We’ll look her up after the steamboat gets off. Her room is number forty-eight,” Helen said. “Come on, dear! Feel the jar of the engines? They must be casting off the hawsers.”

The girls went up another flight of broad, polished stairs and came out upon the hurricane deck. They were above the roof of the dock and could look down upon it and see the people bidding their friends on the boat good-bye while the vessel backed out into the stream. The starting was conducted with such precision that they heard few orders given, and only once did the engine-room gong clang excitedly.

The steamer soon swung its stern upstream, and the bow came around, clearing the end of the pier next below, and so heading down the North River. Certain tugboats and wide ferries tooted their defiance at the ocean-going craft, for the vessel on which Ruth and Helen were traveling was one of the largest coast-wise steamers sailing out of the port.

It was a lovely afternoon toward the close of June. The city had been as hot as a roasting pan, Helen said; but on the high deck the breeze, breathed from the Jersey hills, lifted the damp locks from the girls’ brows. A soft mist crowned the Palisades. The sun, already descending, drew another veil before his face as he dropped behind the Orange Mountains, his red rays glistening splendidly upon the towers and domes of lower Broadway.

They passed the Battery in a few minutes, with the round, pot-bellied aquarium and the immigration offices. The upper bay was crowded with craft of all kind. The Staten Island ferries drummed back and forth, the perky little ferryboat to Ellis Island and the tugboat to the Statue of Liberty crossed their path. In their wake the small craft dipped in the swell of the propeller’s turmoil.

The Statue of Liberty herself stood tall and stately in the afternoon sunlight, holding her green, bronze torch aloft. The girls could not look at this monument without being impressed by its stateliness and noble features.

“And we’ve read about it, and thought so much about this present of Miss Picolet’s nation to ours! It is very wonderful,” Ruth said.

“And that fort! See it?” cried Helen, pointing to Governor’s Island on the other bow. “Oh, and see, Ruth! that great, rusty, iron steamship anchored out yonder. She must be a great, sea-going tramp.”

Every half minute there was something new for the chums to exclaim over.

In fifteen minutes they were passing through the Narrows. The two girls were staring back at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, when a petty officer above on the lookout post hailed the bridge amidships.

“Launch coming up, sir. Port, astern.”

There was a sudden rush of those passengers in the bows who heard to the port side. “Oh, come on. Let’s see!” cried Helen, and away the two girls went with the crowd.

The perky little launch shoved up close to the side of the tall steamer. It flew a pennant which the girls did not understand; but some gentleman near them said laughingly:

“That is a police launch. I guess we’re all arrested. See! they’re coming aboard.”

The steamer did not slow down at all; but one of the men in the bow of the pitching launch threw a line with a hook on the end of it, and this fastened itself over the rail of the lower deck. By leaning over the rail above Ruth and Helen could see all that went on below.

In a moment deckhands caught the line and hauled up with it a rope ladder. This swung perilously – so the girls thought – over the green-and-white leaping waves.

A man started up the swinging ladder. The steamer dipped ever so little and he scrambled faster to keep out of the water’s reach.

“The waves act just like hungry wolves, or like dogs, leaping after their prey,” said Ruth reflectively. “See them! They almost caught his legs that time.”

Another man started up the ladder the moment the first one had swarmed over the rail. Then another came, and a fourth. Four men in all boarded the still fast-moving steamer. Everybody was talking eagerly about it, and nobody knew what it meant.

These men were surely not passengers who had been belated, for the launch still remained attached to the steamer.

Ruth and Helen went back into the saloon. There they saw their smiling porter, now in the neat black dress of a waiter, bustling about. “Any little t’ing I kin do fo’ yo’, missy?” he asked.

“No, thank you,” Ruth replied, smiling. But Helen burst out with: “Do tell us what those men have come aboard for?”

“Dem men from de po-lice launch?” inquired the black man.

“Yes. What are they after? Are they police?”

“Ya-as’m. Dem’s po-lice,” said the darkey, rolling his eyes. “Dey tell me dey is wantin’ a boy wot’s been stealin’ – an’ he’s done got girl’s clo’es on, missy.”

“A boy in girl’s clothing?” gasped Ruth.

“‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing!’” laughed her chum.

“Ya-as indeedy, missy. Das wot dey say.”

“Are they sure he came aboard this boat?” asked Ruth anxiously.

“Sho is, missy. Dey done trailed him right to de dock. Das wot de head steward heard ’em say. De taxicab man remembered him – he acted so funny in dem girl’s clo’es – he, he, he! Das one silly trick, das wot dat is,” chuckled the darkey. “No boy gwine t’ look like his sister in her clo’es – no, indeedy.”

But Ruth and Helen were now staring at each other with the same thought in their minds. “Oh, Helen!” murmured Ruth. And, “Oh, Ruth!” responded Helen.

“Ought we to tell?” pursued Helen, putting all the burden of deciding the question on her chum as usual. “It’s that very strange looking girl we saw going into number forty-eight; isn’t it?”

“It is most certainly that person,” agreed Ruth positively.

CHAPTER II – THE WORM TURNS

Ruth Fielding was plentifully supplied with good sense. Under ordinary circumstances she would not have tried to shield any person who was a fugitive from justice.

But in this case there seemed to her no reason for Helen and her to volunteer information – especially when such information as they might give was based on so infirm a foundation. They had seen an odd looking girl disappear into one of the staterooms. They had really nothing more than a baseless conclusion to back up the assertion that the individual in question was disguised, or was the boy wanted by the police.

Of course, whatever Ruth said was best, and Helen would agree to it. The latter had learned long since that her chum was gifted with judgment beyond her years, and if she followed Ruth Fielding’s lead she would not go far wrong.

Indeed, Helen began to admire her chum soon after Ruth first appeared at Jabez Potter’s Red Mill, on the banks of the Lumano, near which Helen’s father had built his all-year-around home. Ruth had come to the old Red Mill as a “charity child.” At least, that is what miserly Jabez Potter considered her. Nor was he chary at first of saying that he had taken his grand-niece in because there was no one else to whom she could go.

Young as she then was, Ruth felt her position keenly. Had it not been for Aunt Alvirah (who was nobody’s relative, but everybody’s aunt), whom the miller had likewise “taken in out of charity” to keep house for him and save the wages of a housekeeper, Ruth would never have been able to stay at the Red Mill. Her uncle’s harshness and penurious ways mortified the girl, and troubled her greatly as time went on.

Ruth succeeded in finding her uncle’s cashbox that had been stolen from him at the time a freshet carried away a part of the old mill. These introductory adventures are told in the initial volume of the series, called: “Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill; or, Jacob Parloe’s Secret.”

Because he felt himself in Ruth’s debt, her Uncle Jabez agreed to pay for her first year’s tuition and support at a girls’ boarding school to which Mr. Cameron was sending Helen. Helen was Ruth’s dearest friend, and the chums, in the second volume, “Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall,” entered school life hand in hand, making friends and rivals alike, and having adventures galore.

The third volume took Ruth and her friends to Snow Camp, a winter lodge in the Adirondack wilderness. The fourth tells of their summer adventures at Lighthouse Point on the Atlantic Coast. The fifth book deals with the exciting times the girls and their boy friends had with the cowboys at Silver Ranch, out in Montana. The sixth story is about Cliff Island and its really wonderful caves, and what was hidden in them. Number seven relates the adventures of a “safe and sane” Fourth of July at Sunrise Farm and the rescue of the Raby orphans. While “Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies,” the eighth volume of the series, relates a very important episode in Ruth’s career; for by restoring a valuable necklace to an aunt of one of her school friends she obtains a reward of five thousand dollars.

This money, placed to Ruth’s credit in the bank by Mr. Cameron, made the girl of the Red Mill instantly independent of Uncle Jabez, who had so often complained of the expense Ruth was to him. Much to Aunt Alvirah’s sorrow, Uncle Jabez became more exacting and penurious when Ruth’s school expenses ceased to trouble him.

“I could almost a-wish, my pretty, that you hadn’t got all o’ that money, for Jabez Potter was l’arnin’ to let go of a dollar without a-squeezin’ all the tail feathers off the eagle that’s onto it,” said the rheumatic, little, old woman. “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! It’s nice for you to have your own livin’ pervided for, Ruthie. But it’s awful for Jabez Potter to get so selfish and miserly again.”

Aunt Alvirah had said this to the girl of the Red Mill just before Ruth started for Briarwood Hall at the opening of her final term at that famous school. In the story immediately preceding the present narrative, “Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures; Or, Helping the Dormitory Fund,” Ruth and her school chums were much engaged in that modern wonder, the making of “movie” films. Ruth herself had written a short scenario and had had it accepted by Mr. Hammond, president of the Alectrion Film Corporation, when one of the school dormitories was burned. To help increase the fund for a new structure, the girls all desired to raise as much money as possible.

Ruth was inspired to write a second scenario – a five-reel drama of schoolgirl life – and Mr. Hammond produced it for the benefit of the Hall. “The Heart of a Schoolgirl” made a big hit and brought Ruth no little fame in her small world.

With Helen and the other girls who had been so close to her during her boarding school life, Ruth Fielding had now graduated from Briarwood Hall. Nettie Parsons and her Aunt Rachel had invited the girl of the Red Mill and Helen Cameron to go South for a few weeks following their graduation; and the two chums were now on their way to meet Mrs. Rachel Parsons and Nettie at Old Point Comfort. And from this place their trip into Dixie would really begin.

Ruth had stated positively her belief that the odd looking girl they had seen going into the stateroom numbered forty-eight was the disguised boy the police were after. But belief is not conviction, after all. They had no proof of the identity of the person in question.

“So, why should we interfere?” said Ruth, quietly. “We don’t know the circumstances. Perhaps he’s only accused.”

“I wish we could have seen his face,” said Helen. “I’d like to know what kind of looking girl he made. Remember when Curly Smith dressed up in Ann Hick’s old frock and hat that time?”

“Yes,” said Ruth, smiling. “But Curly looks like a girl when he’s dressed that way. If his hair were long and he learned to walk better – ”

“That girl we saw going into the stateroom was about Curly’s size,” said Helen reflectively.

“Poor Curly!” said Ruth. “I hope he is not in any serious trouble. It would really break his grandmother’s heart if he went wrong.”

“I suppose she does love him,” observed Helen. “But she is so awfully strict with him that I wonder the boy doesn’t run away again. He did when he was a little kiddie, you know.”

“Yes,” said Ruth, smiling. “His famous revolt against kilts and long curls. You couldn’t really blame him.”

However, the girls were not particularly interested in the fate of Henry Smith just then. They did not wish to lose any of the sights outside, and were just returning to the open deck when they saw a group of men hurrying through the saloon toward the bows. With the group Ruth and Helen recognized the purser who had viséd their tickets. One or two of the other men, though in citizen’s dress, were unmistakably policemen.

“Here’s the room,” said the purser, stopping suddenly, and referring to the list he carried. “I remember the person well. I couldn’t say he didn’t look like a young girl; but she – or he – was peculiar looking. Ah! the door’s locked.”

He rattled the knob. Then he knocked. Helen seized Ruth’s hand. “Oh, see!” she cried. “It is forty-eight.”

“I see it is. Poor fellow,” murmured Ruth.

“If she is a fellow.”

“And what will happen if he is a girl?” laughed Ruth.

“Won’t she be mad!” cried Helen.

“Or terribly embarrassed,” Ruth added.

“Here,” said one of the police officers, “he may be in there. By your lief, Purser,” and he suddenly put his knee against the door below the lock, pressed with all his force, and the door gave way with a splintering of wood and metal.

The officer plunged into the room, his comrades right behind him. Quite a party of spectators had gathered in the saloon to watch. But there was nobody in the stateroom.

“The bird’s flown, Jim,” said one policeman to another.

“Hullo!” said the purser. “What’s that in the berth?”

He picked up a dress, skirt, and hat. Ruth and Helen remembered that they were like those that the strange looking girl had worn. One of the policemen dived under the berth and brought forth a pair of high, fancy, laced shoes.

“He’s dumped his disguise here,” growled an officer. “Either he went ashore before the boat sailed, or he’s in his proper clothes again. Say! it would take us all night, Jim, to search this steamer.”

“And we’re not authorized to go to the Capes with her,” said the policeman who had been addressed as Jim. “We’d better go back and report, and let the inspector telegraph to Old Point a full description. Maybe the dicks there can nab the lad.”

The stateroom door was closed but could not be locked again. The purser and policemen went away, and the girls ran out on deck to see the police officers go down the ladder and into the launch.

They all did this without accident. Then the rope ladder was cast off and the launch chugged away, turning back toward the distant city.

The steamer had now passed Romer Light and Sandy Hook and was through the Ambrose Channel. The Scotland Lightship, courtesying to the rising swell, was just ahead. Ruth and Helen had never seen a lightship before and they were much interested in this drab, odd looking, short-masted vessel on which a crew lived month after month, and year after year, with only short respites ashore.

“I should think it would be dreadfully lonely,” Helen said, with reflection. “Just to tend the lights – and the fish, perhaps – eh?”

“I don’t suppose they have dances or have people come to afternoon tea,” giggled Ruth. “What do you expect?”

“Poor men! And no ladies around. Unless they have mermaids visit them,” and Helen chuckled too. “Wouldn’t it be fun to hire a nice big launch – a whole party of us Briarwood girls, for instance – and sail out there and go aboard that lightship? Wouldn’t the crew be surprised to see us?”

“Maybe,” said Ruth seriously, “they wouldn’t let us aboard. Maybe it’s against the rules. Or perhaps they only select men who are misanthropes, or women-haters, to tend lightships.”

“Are there such things as women-haters?” demanded Helen, big-eyed and innocent looking. “I thought they were fabled creatures – like – like mermaids, for instance.”

“Goodness! Do you think, Helen Cameron, that every man you meet is going to fall on his knees to you?”

“No-o,” confessed Helen. “That is, not unless I push him a little, weeny bit! And that reminds me, Ruthie. You ought to see the great bunch of roses Tom had the gardener cut yesterday to send to some girl. Oh, a barrel of ’em!”

“Indeed?” asked Ruth, a faint flush coming into her cheek. “Has Tom a crush on a new girl? I thought that Hazel Gray, the movie queen, had his full and complete attention?”

“How you talk!” cried Helen. “I suppose Tom will have a dozen flames before he settles down – ”

Ruth suddenly burst into laughter. She knew she had been foolish for a moment.

“What nonsense to talk so about a boy in a military school!” she cried. “Why! he’s only a boy yet.”

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