"I tell you I won't go," the boy cried. "I won't go."

"But we're all going up there this very day," said Ruth, slowly."
Mr. Cameron, and Helen and Tom, and some other girls and boys. I'm
going, too--"

"_Going where_?" shrieked Fred Hatfield, actually shaking with terror,
and as pale as a ghost.

"We're off for the backwoods--up Scarboro way. Mr. Cameron is going
to take us for a fortnight to Snow Camp. And you--"

With another wild cry Fred Hatfield crumpled down upon the ice and
burst into a tempest of sobbing. He beat his ungloved hands upon the
ice, and although Ruth could not help feeling contempt for a boy who
would so give way to weakness she could not help but pity him, too.

For Ruth Fielding had more than an inkling of the trouble that so
weighed Fred Hatfield down, and had made him an outcast from his home
and friends.




CHAPTER VI

ON THE TRAIN


When the Cameron automobile arrived at the Red Mill that forenoon