"Come--help me push!" he cried to Amy and Grace, who were still standing
dumbly in the middle of the road. A moment later he had thrown himself
with all his might against the machine, striving to push it out of the
path of the falling tree.

In an instant of time the girls had added their strength to his and the
automobile was moving slowly down the road. Luckily the car was on a down
grade or they never could have managed it. As it was, there was just time
to get out of the way when the great tree came crashing down, its
outermost branches just brushing Amy's skirt. The giant had fallen on the
very spot where the car had been only a moment before!

"Girls," breathed Betty, with a shaky little attempt at a laugh, "I guess
we've never in our lives been nearer death than we were just then."

And while the girls are marveling at their almost miraculous escape from a
terrible death, time will be taken to introduce the Outdoor Girls to those
readers who have not yet met them and also to review briefly a few of the
exciting and interesting adventures they have had up to the time of this
present narrative.

There were four of them. Betty Nelson, or the "Little Captain" as the
girls often called her because she had such a decided talent for knowing
just the right thing to do at just the right moment, was eighteen,
dark-haired and dark-eyed. She had a fund of vitality and more than her
share of sense and good judgment--all of which went toward making her what
she was, the most popular girl in Deepdale.

Grace Ford, tall, slender and willowy, was almost the same age as Betty,
but that fact and her love of the outdoors were the only things she had in