Near the cone-shaped rock two arrows had been lightly stuck into the
ground, this forming a sort of altar to which each maiden must come,
touching first the stone and then the arrows as she declares her purity.
As she stood by the side of this altar Edith's voice trembled so that it
was with difficulty her first words could be understood. The girls who
knew pretty well what to expect understood her immediately, however, but
not Polly!
"Sorrow and much uneasiness have lately crept into our midst, my
maidens," she announced, trying to preserve a certain likeness to the
Indian speech in the form of her words, "and many of us there are who go
about heavy of heart because the sin of one of us must be the burden of
us all, until guilt is established and the innocent cleared. Some days
ago there vanished from the possession of one of us fifty dollars in
bank notes enclosed in an envelope containing no address. This money
has not been found, but the envelope has been recognized as crumpled up
and thrown away a few feet from the tent of its rightful owner. Now no
member of the Sunrise Camp can feel it possible that any one of its
members has been guilty of this sin and yet no visitor has stepped foot
within our camp limits within the time when the deed must have occurred.
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