12559	----	THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT WASHINGTON or, Checkmating the Plots of Foreign Spies By LAURA DENT CRANE Author of The Automobile Girls at Newport, The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires, The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson, The Automobile Girls at Chicago, The Automobile Girls at Palm Beach, etc. 1913 [Illustration: A Fat Chinese Gentleman Stood Regarding Her. (Frontispiece)] CONTENTS Chapter I. A Chance Meeting II. Cabinet Day in Washington III. Mr. Tu Fang Wu IV. At the Chinese Embassy V. Sub Rosa VI. The Arrest VII. Mollie's Temptation VIII. At the White House IX. Bab's Discovery X. The Confession XI. In Mr. Hamlin's Study XII. Barbara's Secret Errand XIII. A Foolish Girl XIV. "Grant No Favors!" XV. Bab Refuses to Grant a Favor XVI. Barbara's Unexpected Good Luck XVII. The White Veil XVIII. A Tangled Web or Circumstance XIX. Harriet in Danger XX. Foiled! XXI. The Discovery XXII. Oil on the Troubled Waters XXIII. Suspense and the Reward XXIV. Home at Laurel Cottage CHAPTER I A CHANCE MEETING Barbara Thurston stood at the window of a large old-fashioned house, looking out into Connecticut Avenue. It was almost dark. An occasional light twinkled outside in the street, but the room in which Barbara was stationed was still shrouded in twilight. Suddenly she heard a curtain at the farther end of the drawing-room rustle faintly. Bab turned and saw a young man standing between the curtains, peering into the shadows with a pair of near-sighted eyes. Barbara started. The stranger had entered the room through a small study that adjoined it. He seemed totally unaware of any other presence, for he was whistling softly: "Kathleen Mavourneen." "I beg your pardon," Bab began impulsively, "but are you looking for some one?" The newcomer flashed a charming smile at Barbara. He did not seem in the least surprised at her appearance. "No," he declared cheerfully, "I was not looking for any one or anything. The butler told me Mr. Hamlin and Harriet were both out. But, I say, don't you think I am fortunate to have found you quite by accident! I came in here to loaf a few minutes." Barbara frowned slightly. The young man's manner was surprisingly familiar, and she had never seen him before in her life. "I hope I am not disturbing you," he went on gayly. "I am an attaché of the Russian legation, and a friend of Miss Hamlin's. I came with a message for Mr. Hamlin. I was wondering if it were worth while to wait for him. But I can go away if I am troublesome." "Oh, no, you are not disturbing me in the least," Barbara returned. "I expect Miss Hamlin and my friends soon. We arrived in Washington last night, and the other girls have gone out to a reception. I had a headache and stayed at home. Won't you be seated while I ring for the butler to turn on the lights?" The newcomer sat down, gravely watching Barbara. "Would you like me to guess who you are?" he asked, after half a minute's silence. Bab laughed. "I am sure you will give me the first chance to tell you your name. I did not recognize you at first. But I believe Harriet told us about you last night. She described several of her Washington friends to us. You are Peter Dillon, aren't you?" "At your service," declared the young attaché, who looked almost boyish. "But now give me my opportunity. I do not know your name, but I have guessed this much. You are an 'Automobile Girl!' Permit me to bid you welcome to Washington." Barbara nodded her head decidedly. "Yes, I am Barbara Thurston, one of the 'Automobile Girls.' There are four of us. Harriet has probably explained to you. My sister, Mollie Thurston, Grace Carter, Ruth Stuart and I form the quartet. Mr. William Hamlin is Ruth's uncle. So we are going to spend a few weeks here with Harriet and see the Capital. I have never been in Washington before." "Then you have a new world before you, Miss Thurston," said the young man, his manner changing. "Washington is like no other city in the world, I think. I have been here for four years. Before that time I had lived in Dublin, in Paris, in St. Petersburg." "Then you are not an American!" exclaimed Bab, regarding the young man with interest. "I am a man without a country, Miss Thurston." Bab's visitor laughed carelessly. "Or, perhaps, I had better say I am a man of several countries. My father was an Irishman and a soldier of fortune. My mother was a Russian. Therefore, I am a member of the Russian legation in Washington in spite of my half-Irish name. Have you ever been abroad?" "Oh, no," Bab returned, shaking her head. "For the past two years, since I have known Ruth Stuart, the 'Automobile Girls' have traveled about in this country a good deal. But we are only school girls still. We have never really made our début in society, although we mean to forget this while we are in Washington, and to see as much of the world as we can. I do wish I knew something about politics. It would make our visit in Washington so much more interesting." "It is the most interesting game in the world," declared Barbara's companion, dropping for an instant his expression of indifference. His blue eyes flashed. Then he said quickly: "Perhaps you will let me teach you something of the political game at Washington. I am sure you will be quick to learn and to enjoy it." "Thank you," Bab answered shyly. "But I am much too stupid ever to understand." "I don't quite believe that. You know, you will, of course, hear a great deal about politics while you are the guests of the Assistant Secretary of State. Mr. Hamlin is one of the cleverest men in Washington. I am sure you will be instructing me in diplomacy by the end of a week. But good-bye; I must not keep you any longer. Will you tell Mr. Hamlin that I left the bundle of papers he desired on his study table? And please tell Harriet that I shall hope to be invited very often to see the 'Automobile Girls.'" The young man looked intently at Barbara, as though trying to read her very thoughts while she returned his scrutiny with steady eyes. Then with a courteous bow, he left the room. When Barbara found herself alone she returned to the window. "I do wish the girls would come," she murmured to herself. "I am just dying to know what Mollie and Grace think of their first reception in Washington. Of course, Ruth has visited Harriet before, so the experience is not new to her. I am sorry I did not go with the girls, in spite of my headache. I wonder if some one is coming in here again! I seem to be giving a reception here myself." By this time the room was lighted, and Barbara saw a young woman of about twenty-five years of age walk into the drawing-room and drop into a big arm chair with a little tired sigh. "You are Miss Thurston, aren't you?" she asked briskly as Bab came forward to speak to her, wondering how on earth this newcomer knew her name and what could be the reason for this unexpected call. "Yes," Barbara returned in a puzzled tone, "I am Miss Thurston." "Oh, don't be surprised at my knowing your name," Bab's latest caller went on. "It is my business to know everybody. I met Mr. Dillon on the corner. He told me Harriet Hamlin was not at home and that I had better not come here this afternoon. I did not believe him; still I am not sorry Miss Hamlin is out, I would ever so much rather see you. Harriet Hamlin is dreadfully proud, and she is not a bit sympathetic. Do you think so?" Bab was lost in wonder. What on earth could this talkative young woman wish of her? Did her visitor believe Bab would confide her opinion of Harriet to a complete stranger? But the young woman did not wait for an answer. "I want to see you about something awfully important," she went on. "Please promise me you will do what I ask you before I tell you what it is." Bab laughed. "Don't ask me that. Why you may be an anarchist, for all I know." The new girl shook her head, smiling. She looked less tired now. She was pretty and fragile, with fair hair and blue eyes. She was very pale and was rather shabbily and carelessly dressed. "No; I am not an anarchist," she said slowly. "I am a newspaper woman, which is almost as bad in some people's eyes, I suppose, considering the way society people fight against giving me news of themselves and their doings. I came to ask you if you would give me the pictures of the 'Automobile Girls' for my paper? Oh, you need not look so surprised. We have all heard of the 'Automobile Girls.' Everybody in Washington of importance has heard of you. Couldn't you let me write a sketch about you and your adventures, and put your photographs on the society page of our Sunday edition? It would be such a favor to me." Barbara looked distressed. She was beginning to like her visitor. Though Barbara had been associated mainly with wealthy people in the last two years of the "Automobile Girls'" adventures, she could not help feeling interested in a girl who was evidently trying to make her own way in the world. "I am awfully sorry," Bab declared almost regretfully, but before she finished speaking the drawing-room door opened and Ruth Stuart and Harriet Hamlin entered the room together. "How is your head, Bab, dear?" Ruth cried, before she espied their caller. Harriet Hamlin bowed coldly to the newspaper woman in the big arm chair. The young woman had flushed, looked uncomfortable at sight of Harriet and said almost humbly: "I am sorry to interrupt you, Miss Hamlin, but my paper sent me to ask you for the pictures of your guests. May I have them?" "Most certainly not, Miss Moore," Harriet answered scornfully. "My friends would not dream of allowing you to publish their pictures. And my father would not consent to it either. Just because he is Assistant Secretary of State I do not see why my visitors should be annoyed in this way. I hope you don't mind, Ruth and Barbara." Harriet's voice changed when she turned to address her cousin and friend. "Forgive my refusing Miss Moore for you. But it is out of the question." Ruth and Bab both silently agreed with Harriet. But Barbara could not help feeling sorry for the other girl, who flushed painfully at Harriet's tone and turned to go without another word. Bab followed the girl out into the hall. "I am so sorry not to give you our photographs," Barbara declared. "But, of course, we cannot let you have them if Mr. Hamlin would object. And, to tell you the honest truth, the 'Automobile Girls' would not like it either." Barbara smiled in such a frank friendly way that no one could have been vexed with her. The older girl's eyes were full of tears, which she bravely winked out of sight. "Everyone has his picture published in the papers nowadays," she replied. "I am sure I intended no discourtesy to you or to Miss Hamlin." Then the girl's self-control gave way. She was very tired, and Bab's sympathy unnerved her. "I hate Harriet Hamlin," she whispered, passionately. "I am as well bred as she is. Because I am poor, and have to support my mother, is no reason why she should treat me as though I were dust under her feet. I shall have a chance to get even with her, some day, just as certainly as I live. Then, won't I take my revenge!" Barbara did not know what to reply, so she went on talking quietly. "I am sure your asking us for our pictures was a very great compliment to us. Only important people and beauties and belles have their pictures in the society papers. It is just because the 'Automobile Girls' are too insignificant to be shown such an honor that we can't consent. But please don't be angry with us. I am sure Harriet did not intend to wound your feelings, and I hope I shall see you soon again." Marjorie Moore shook Barbara's hand impulsively before she went out into the gathering darkness. "I like you," she said warmly. "I wish we might be friends. Good-night." "Where are Mollie and Grace?" was Bab's first question when she rejoined Ruth and Harriet. "They would not come away from the reception," Harriet returned, smiling. She was quite unconscious of having treated Marjorie Moore unkindly. "Ruth and I were worried about your headache, so we did not wish to leave you alone any longer. Strange to relate, Father offered to stay until Mollie and Grace were ready to come home. That is a great concession on his part, as he usually runs away from a reception at the first opportunity that offers itself. Mrs. Wilson, a friend of Father's is helping him to look after Mollie and Grace this afternoon. Bab, did some boxes come for me this afternoon? I left orders at the shop to send them when Father would surely be out. Come on upstairs, children, and see my new finery." "Why, Harriet, are you getting more clothes?" Ruth exclaimed. "You are like 'Miss Flora McFlimsey, of Madison Square, who never had anything good enough to wear.'" "I am no such thing, Ruth Stuart," returned her cousin, a little peevishly. "You don't understand. Does she, Barbara? Ruth has so much money she simply cannot realize what it means to try to make a good appearance on a small allowance, especially here in Washington where one goes out so much." "I was only joking, Harriet," Ruth apologized as she and Barbara obediently followed their hostess upstairs. Bab, however, secretly wondered how she and Mollie were to manage in Washington, with their simple wardrobes, if their young hostess thought that clothes were the all-important thing in Washington society. Harriet Hamlin was twenty years of age, but she seemed much older to Bab and Ruth. In the first place, Harriet was an entirely different type of girl. She had been mistress of her father's house in Washington since she was sixteen. She had received her father's guests and entertained his friends; and at eighteen she had made her début into Washington society, and had taken her position as one of the women of the Cabinet. Harriet's mother, Ruth's aunt, had died a few months before Mr. Hamlin had received his appointment as Assistant Secretary of State. Since that time Harriet had borne the responsibilities of a grown woman, and being an only child she had to a certain extent done as she pleased, although she was secretly afraid of her cold, dignified father. Mr. William Hamlin was one of the ablest men in Washington. He was a quiet, stern, reserved man, and although he was proud of his daughter, of her beauty and accomplishments, he was also very strict with her. He was a poor man, and it was hard work for Harriet to keep up the appearance necessary to her father's position on his salary as Assistant Secretary of State. Harriet, however, never dared tell her father of this, and Mr. Hamlin never offered Harriet either sympathy or advice. Barbara and Ruth could only watch with admiring eyes and little exclamations of delight the exquisite garments that Harriet now lifted out of three big, pasteboard boxes; a beautiful yellow crêpe frock, a pale green satin evening gown and a gray broadcloth tailor-made suit. Harriet was tall and dark, with very black hair and large dark eyes. She was considered one of the beauties of the "younger set" in Washington society. Ruth had not seen her cousin for several years, until she received the invitation to bring the "Automobile Girls" to Washington. Ruth Stuart and Barbara Thurston had changed very little since their last outing together at Palm Beach. Barbara was now nearly eighteen. At the close of the school year she was to be graduated from the Kingsbridge High School. And she hoped to be able to enter Vassar College the following fall. Yet the fact that she was in Washington early in December requires an explanation. Two weeks before Bab had walked slowly home to Laurel Cottage at about three o'clock one November afternoon with a great pile of books under her arm. On the front porch of their little cottage she found her mother and Mollie, greatly excited. A telegram had just come from Ruth Stuart. The "Automobile Girls" were invited to visit Ruth's cousin in Washington, D.C. Ruth wished them to start at the end of the week. Bab's face flushed with pleasure at the news. She had not been with her beloved Ruth since the Easter before. Then the color died out of her face and her cheeks showed an unaccustomed pallor. "I am so sorry, Mother," Bab responded. "I would give anything in the world to see Ruth. But I simply can't stop school just now, or I shall lose the scholarship. Mollie, you can accept Ruth's invitation. You and Grace Carter can go to Washington together. You won't mind going without me." "I shall not stir a single step without you," blue-eyed Mollie returned firmly. "And Mother thinks you can go!" Mollie and Mrs. Thurston, aided by Bab's teachers, at last persuaded Barbara to take a few weeks' holiday. Bab could study to make up for lost time during the Christmas holidays. For no one, except the young woman herself, doubted Barbara's ability to win the desired Vassar scholarship. And so it was arranged that Bab and Mollie should go with Ruth to Washington. Bab had grown taller and more slender in the past few months. Her brown braids are now always coiled about her graceful head. Her hair was parted in the middle, although a few little curls still escaped in the old, careless fashion. Ruth Stuart, too, was looking sweeter and fresher than ever, and was the same ingenuous, unspoiled girl, whose sunny disposition no amount of wealth and fashion could change. Readers of the first volume in the "Automobile Girls Series," entitled "The Automobile Girls At Newport," will recall how, nearly two years ago, Ruth Stuart, with her father and her aunt, Miss Sallie Stuart, came from their home in far away Chicago to spend the summer in Kingsbridge, New Jersey. The day that Barbara Thurston stopped a pair of runaway horses and saved Ruth Stuart from death she did not dream that she had turned the first page in the history of the "Automobile Girls." A warm friendship sprang up between Ruth and Bab, and a little later Ruth Stuart invited Barbara, her younger sister, Mollie Thurston, and their friend, Grace Carter, to take a trip to Newport in her own, red automobile with Ruth herself as chauffeur and her aunt, Miss Sallie Stuart, as chaperon. Exciting days at Newport followed, and the four girls brought to bay the "Boy Raffles," the cracksman, who had puzzled the fashionable world! There were many thrilling adventures connected with the discovery of this "society thief," and the "Automobile Girls" proved themselves capable of meeting whatever emergencies sprang up in their path. In "The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires," the second volume of the "Automobile Girls Series," the scene is laid in a little log cabin on top of one of the highest peaks in the Berkshire hills, where the four girls and Miss Sallie spent a happy period of time "roughing it." There it was that they discovered an Indian Princess and laid the "Ghost of Lost Man's Trail." In the third volume of the series, "The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson," the quartet of youthful travelers, accompanied by Miss Sallie Stuart, motored through the beautiful Sleepy Hollow country, spending several weeks at the home of Major Ted Eyck, an old friend of the Stuarts. There many diverting experiences fell to their lot, and before leaving the hospitable major's home they were instrumental in saving it from destruction by forest fires. The fourth volume of the series, "The Automobile Girls at Chicago," relates the adventures of the four friends during the Christmas holidays, which Mollie, Grace and Bab spent with Ruth at Chicago and at "Treasureholme," the country estate of the Presbys, who were cousins of the Stuart family. While there, principally through the cleverness of Barbara Thurston, the hiding place of a rich treasure buried by one of The ancestors of the Presbys was discovered in time to prevent the financial ruin of both Richard Presby and Robert Stuart, who had become deeply involved through speculation in wheat. Before Mollie, Grace and Barbara returned to Kingsbridge, Mr. Stuart had promised that they should see Ruth again in March at Palm Beach, where he had planned a happy reunion for the "Automobile Girls." There it was that they had, through a series of happenings, formed the acquaintance of a mysterious countess and become involved in the net of circumstances that was woven about her. How they continued to be her friend in spite of dark rumors afloat to the effect that she was an impostor and how she afterwards turned out to be a princess, is fully set forth in "The Automobile Girls at Palm Beach." "Really, Bab," said Ruth, as the two girls went upstairs to their rooms to dress for dinner, "I have not had a chance to talk to you, alone, since we arrived in Washington. How is your mother?" "As well as can be," Bab answered. "How is darling Aunt Sallie? I am so sorry she did not come to Washington with you to chaperon us. There is no telling what mischief we may get into without her." Ruth laughed. "I have special instructions for the 'Automobile Girls' from Aunt Sallie. We are to be particularly careful to mind our 'P's' and 'Q's' on this visit, for Aunt Sallie wishes us to make a good impression in Washington." Barbara sighed. "I'll try, Ruth," she declared, "but you know what remarkable talent I have for getting into mischief." "Then you are to be specially par-tic-u-lar, Mistress Bab!" Ruth said teasingly. "For Aunt Sallie's last words to me were: 'Tell Barbara she is to look before she leaps.'" Barbara shook her brown head vigorously. "I am not the impetuous Bab of other automobile days. But, just the same, I wish Aunt Sallie had come along with you." "Oh, she may join us later," Ruth returned. "To tell you the truth, Bab, Aunt Sallie is not fond of Harriet. She thinks Harriet is clever and pretty, but vain and spoiled. Here come Mollie and Grace. Home from that reception at last!" The other two girls burst into Ruth's room at this moment. "Whom do you think we have seen?" called out Miss Mollie rapturously. "Oh, Washington is the greatest fun! I feel just like a girl in a book, we have been presented to so many noted people. I tell you, Barbara Thurston, we are country girls no longer! Now we have been traveling about the country so much with Ruth and Mr. Stuart, that we know people everywhere. Just guess whom we know in Washington?" "I can guess," Ruth rejoined, clapping her hands. "You have seen Mrs. Post and Hugh. Surely, you had not forgotten that they live in Washington. Hugh has finished college and has a position in the Forestry Department. I had a note from him this morning." "And didn't tell! Oh, Ruth!" teased Grace Carter. "But, Bab, what about our Lenox friends, who spend their winters in Washington?" "You mean Dorothy and Gwendolin Morton, the British Ambassador's daughters, and funny little Franz Haller, the German secretary, I hope we shall see them. But do hurry, children. Please don't keep the Assistant Secretary of State waiting for his dinner. That would surely be a bad beginning for our Washington visit. No, Mollie Thurston; don't you put on your very best dress for dinner to-night. I have just gotten out your white muslin." "But Harriet wears such lovely clothes all the time, Bab," Mollie pleaded, when she and Barbara were alone. "Never mind, child. Harriet Hamlin is not Mollie Thurston," Barbara concluded wisely. CHAPTER II CABINET DAY IN WASHINGTON It was Harriet Hamlin's reception day. There are certain times appointed in Washington when the members of the President's Cabinet hold receptions. The "Automobile Girls" had come to Washington in time for one of these special entertainments. For, as Harriet explained, they could see everyone worth seeing at once. Not only would the diplomats, the senators and congressmen call with their wives, but the Army and Navy officers, all official Washington would appear to pay their respects to Mr. William Hamlin and his lovely daughter. "Then there will be a crowd of unimportant people besides," Harriet had continued. "People who are never asked to any small parties come to this reception just because they can get in. So you girls will have to entertain yourselves this morning. I have a thousand things to do. Why not take the girls to look at the White House, Ruth? That is the first thing to do in Washington. I am sorry I can't go with you. But you just walk straight down Connecticut Avenue and you can't miss it." It was a perfect day. Although it was early in December, the atmosphere was like Indian summer. Washington shone sparkling white through a dim veil of haze. The "Automobile Girls" walked briskly along toward the White House, chatting every step of the way. "Where are the poplar trees planted along this avenue by Thomas Jefferson, Ruth?" Grace Carter demanded. "I read somewhere that Jefferson meant to make this avenue look like the famous street called '_Unter den Linden_' in Berlin." "He did, child, but most of the poplar trees died," Ruth rejoined, "and some one else planted these oaks and elms. Why are you so silent, Barbara? Are you tired?" "I think Washington is the most beautiful city in the whole world," Bab answered with sudden enthusiasm. "Wait until you have seen it," Ruth teased. "Uncle William wants to take us through the Capitol. But I suppose there is no harm in our looking at the outside of the White House. Later on, when we go to one of the President's receptions, we can see the inside of it." "Shall we ever see the President?" Mollie asked breathlessly. "Won't it be wonderful? I never dreamed that even Mr. Hamlin could take us to the President's home." "Here we are at the White House," said Ruth. The "Automobile Girls" stood silent for a moment, looking in through the autumn foliage at the simple colonial mansion, which is the historic "White House." "I am glad our White House looks like that," Bab said, after half a moment's pause. "I was so afraid it would be pretentious. But it is just big and simple and dignified as our President's home ought to be. It makes me feel so glad to be an American," Barbara ended with a flush. She was afraid the other girls were laughing at her. "I think so too, Bab," Ruth agreed. "I don't see why girls cannot be as patriotic as boys. We may be able to serve our country in some way, some day. I hope we shall have the chance." The "Automobile Girls" had entered the White House grounds and were strolling along through the park. Bab and Ruth were talking of the beauties of Washington. But no such thoughts were engrossing pretty Mollie's attention. Mollie's mind was dwelling on the society pleasures the "Automobile Girls" expected to enjoy at the Capital City. Grace Carter was listening to Barbara's and Ruth's animated conversation. From the very first days at Newport, Mollie Thurston had cared more for society than had her sister and two friends. Her dainty beauty and pretty manners made her a favorite wherever she went. Mollie's friends had spoiled her, and since her arrival in Washington the old story had repeated itself. Harriet Hamlin had already taken Mollie under her special protection. And Mollie was wildly excited with the thought of the social experiences ahead of her. The four girls spent some time strolling about the White House grounds. Then Ruth proposed that they take a car and visit the Congressional Library. "I think it is the most beautiful building in Washington, and, in fact, one of the finest in the world," she said enthusiastically, and later when the "Automobile Girls" were fairly inside the famous library, they fully agreed with her. It was particularly hard to tear Barbara away from what seemed to her the most fascinating place she was ever in, and she announced her intention of visiting it again at the first opportunity. The sightseers arrived home in time for luncheon and at four o'clock that afternoon they stood in a row, beside Harriet Hamlin and her father, helping to receive the guests who crowded in to the reception. Some of the women wore beautiful gowns, others looked as though they had come from small towns where the residents knew nothing of fashionable society. Mollie and Bab wore the white chiffon frocks Mr. Prescott had presented them with in Chicago. But Grace and Ruth wore gowns that had been ordered for this particular occasion. Bab thought their white frocks, which looked as though they were new, as pretty as any of the gowns worn there. But little Mollie was not satisfied. She hated old clothes, no matter how well they looked. And Harriet Hamlin was rarely beautiful in an imported gown of pale, yellow crêpe. After receiving for an hour, Bab slipped quietly into a chair near a window. She wished to examine the guests at her leisure. Mollie and Ruth were deep in conversation with Mrs. Post and Hugh. Grace was talking to Dorothy and Gwendolin Morton. Barbara's eyes wandered eagerly over the throng of people. Suddenly some one touched her on the shoulder. "You do not remember me, do you?" Bab turned and saw a young woman. "I am Marjorie Moore," said the newcomer. "I am the girl who came to ask you for your pictures. Perhaps you think it is strange for me to come to Harriet Hamlin's reception when she was so rude to me last night. But I am not a guest. Besides, newspaper people are not expected to have any feelings. My newspaper sent me to find out what people were here this afternoon. So here I am! I know everybody in Washington. Would you like me to point out some of the celebrities to you? See that stunning woman just coming in at the door? She has the reputation of being the most popular woman in Washington. But nobody knows just where she comes from, or who she is, or how she gets her money. But I must not talk Washington gossip. You'll meet her soon yourself." "How do you do, Miss Moore?" broke in a charming contralto voice. "You are the very person I wish to see. I can give you some news for your paper. It is not very important, but I thought you might like to have it." "You are awfully good, Mrs. Wilson," Marjorie Moore replied gratefully. "I have just been talking to Miss Thurston about you. May I introduce her? She has just arrived in Washington, and I told her, only half a second ago, that you were the nicest woman in this town." Mrs. Wilson laughed quietly. "I know Miss Thurston's sister and her friend, Miss Carter. Mr. Hamlin let me help chaperon them at a reception yesterday afternoon. But Miss Moore has been flattering me dreadfully. I am a very unimportant person, though I happen to have the good fortune to be a friend of Mr. Hamlin's and Harriet's. I am keeping house in Washington at present. Some day you must come to see me." Bab thanked her new acquaintance. She thought she had never seen a more unusual looking woman. It was impossible to guess her age. Mrs. Wilson's hair was snow-white, but her face was as young as a girl's and her eyes were fascinatingly dark under her narrow penciled brows. She was gowned in a pale blue broadcloth dress, and wore on her head a large black hat trimmed with a magnificent black plume. "The top of the afternoon to you!" declared a new arrival in Bab's sheltered corner. "How is a man to find you if you will hide behind curtains?" This time Bab recognized Peter Dillon, her acquaintance of the afternoon before. Mrs. Wilson, whose manner suggested a charming frankness and innocence, took Peter by the arm. "Which of the three Graces do you mean to devote yourself to this afternoon, Peter? You shall not flatter us all at once." "I flatter?" protested Peter, in aggrieved tones. "Why truthfulness is my strong point." Marjorie Moore gave a jarring laugh. "Is it, Mr. Dillon?" she returned, not too politely. "Please count me out of Mr. Dillon's flatteries. He does not include a woman who works in them." Marjorie Moore hurried away. "Whew-w!" ejaculated Peter. "Miss Moore does not love me, does she? I came up only to say a few words. Miss Hamlin is keeping me busy this afternoon. Come and have some coffee, Miss Thurston. I am sure you look tired." "I would rather not," Barbara protested. "I am going to run away upstairs for a minute, if you will excuse me." Before Barbara could make her escape from the drawing-room she saw that Peter Dillon and Mrs. Wilson had both lost their frivolous manner and were deep in earnest conversation. CHAPTER III MR. TU FANG WU Bab knew that at the rear of this floor of Mr. Hamlin's house there was a small room that was seldom used. She hoped to find refuge in it for a few minutes, and then to return to her friends. The room was empty. Bab sank down into a great arm chair and closed her eyes. A few moments later she opened them though she heard no sound. A fat little Chinese gentleman stood regarding her with an expression of amusement on his face. Barbara jumped hastily to her feet. Where was she? She felt frightened. Although the man before her was yellow and foreign, and wore strange Chinese clothes, he was evidently a person of importance. Had Barbara awakened at the Court of Pekin? Her companion wore a loose, black satin coat, heavily embroidered in flowers and dragons and a round, close fitting silk cap with a button on top of it. "I beg your pardon," Bab exclaimed in confusion. "Whom did you wish to see? There is no one in here." The Chinese gentleman made Bab a stately bow. "No one," he protested. "This is the first time, since my residence in America, that I have heard an American girl speak of herself as no one. Miss United States is always some one in her own country. But may I therefore present myself to little 'Miss No One'? I am Dr. Tu Fang Wu, His Imperial Chinese Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States." "I am very proud to meet you, Mr. Minister," Barbara returned, wondering if "Mr. Minister" was the proper way to address a foreign ambassador. She thought Mr. Hamlin had told her so, only the night before. Bab did not know in the least what she should do or say to such a distinguished Oriental. She might make a mistake at any minute. For Bab had been learning, every hour since her arrival in Washington, that in no place is social etiquette more important than in the Capital City. "May I find Mr. Hamlin for you?" Bab suggested, hoping to make her escape. The Chinese Minister shook his head slowly. "Mr. Hamlin is engaged with his other guests." "Then won't you be seated?" Bab asked in desperation. Really she and this strange yellow gentleman could not stand staring at each other the whole afternoon. It made Bab feel creepy to have a Chinaman regard her so steadfastly and without the slightest change of expression, even if he were a foreign minister. Bab felt this meeting to be one of the strangest experiences of her whole life. She had never seen a Chinaman before, except on the street carrying a basket of laundry. But here she was forced into a tête-à-tête with one in the highest social position. "Have you any daughters?" Barbara asked in her effort to break the awful silence. Mr. Tu Fang Wu again bowed gravely. "I have one daughter and one small son. My daughter is not here with me this afternoon. Chinese girls do not go to entertainments where there are young men. My daughter has been brought up according to the customs of our country. But she has been in Washington for several years. I fear she, too, would like to be emancipated, like the American girl. It is not possible, although she enjoys many privileges she will not have when she returns to China. My daughter is betrothed to a nobleman in her own country. Perhaps you would like to meet my daughter, Wee Tu? She is fifteen years old. I shall ask Miss Hamlin to bring you to luncheon at the Embassy." To Barbara's relief Mr. William Hamlin now appeared at the door. The Chinese minister again bowed profoundly to Barbara. "I was looking for your smoking-room," he laughed, "but I found this young woman instead." As the two men went out of the room, Bab had difficulty in making sure that she had not been dreaming of this fat, yellow gentleman. "Barbara Thurston, what do you mean by running away by yourself?" exclaimed Grace Carter, a moment later. "We have been looking for you for ten minutes." Hugh Post, Mollie and a strange young man were close behind Grace. "I want to present my friend, Lieutenant Elmer Wilson," Hugh announced. "He is a very important person in Washington." "Not a bit of it," laughed the young man. "I am one of the President's aides. I try to make myself generally useful." "Your work must be very interesting," Barbara said quickly. "Do you--" Just then a soft contralto voice interrupted her. "Are you ready to go with me, Elmer?" it said. Barbara recognized the voice as belonging to the Mrs. Wilson whom she had met in the drawing room not an hour before. Could it be that this young and lovely looking woman was the mother of Elmer Wilson? Surely the young man was at least twenty-two years old. "Coming in a moment, Mother," Elmer replied. "Have you said good-bye to Harriet?" "Harriet is not in the reception room now. Nearly all her guests have gone," Mrs. Wilson murmured softly. "Mr. Hamlin is angry. But poor Harriet ought to have a chance to talk for a few minutes to the richest young man in Washington. I will leave you, Elmer. If you see Harriet, you may tell her I did not think it fair to disturb her." Barbara went back to the drawing-room to search for Ruth. She found Ruth standing next her uncle, Mr. Hamlin, saying the adieux in Harriet's place. A few moments later the last visitor had withdrawn and Mr. Hamlin quickly left Ruth and Bab alone. Mr. Hamlin was a small man, with iron gray hair, a square jaw and thin, tightly closed lips. He seldom talked, and the "Automobile Girls" felt secretly afraid of him. "Uncle is dreadfully angry with Harriet," Ruth explained to Bab, after Mr. Hamlin was out of hearing. "But he is awfully strict and I do not think he is exactly fair. He does not give Harriet credit for what she does, but he gets awfully cross if she makes any mistakes. Harriet is upstairs, in her own sitting-room, talking to a great friend of hers. He is a man Uncle hates, although he has known Charlie Meyers since childhood. He is immensely rich, but he is very ill-bred, and that is why Uncle dislikes him. I don't think Harriet cares a bit more for this young man than she does for half a dozen others. But if Uncle doesn't look out Harriet will marry him for spite. Harriet hates being poor. She is not poor, really. But I am afraid she is terribly extravagant. Promise not to laugh when you see Charlie Meyers. He looks a little like a pig, he is so pink and fat." "Girls!" called Harriet's voice. "Are you still in here? Mr. Meyers has just gone, and I wanted you to meet him. He is going to have a motor party and take you to see Mount Vernon. We can drive along the Potomac and have our supper somewhere in the country." "I'm going to drive Mr. A. Bubble, Harriet," Ruth replied. "As long as I brought my car to Washington I must use it. But I suppose we can get up guests enough to fill two automobiles, can't we?" "Where's Father?" Harriet inquired, trying to conceal a tremor in her voice. "Did he know I was upstairs?" "I am afraid he did, Harriet," Ruth replied. "Well, I don't care," declared Harriet defiantly. "I will select my own friends. Charlie Meyers is stupid and ill-bred, but he is good natured, and I am tired of position and poverty." "You are no such thing, Harriet," protested Ruth, taking her cousin by the hand and leading her to a long mirror. "There, look at yourself in your yellow gown. You look like a queen. Please don't be silly." "It's clothes that make the woman, Ruth," Harriet replied, kissing Ruth unexpectedly. "And this yellow gown is just one of the things that troubles me. Dear me, I am glad the reception is over!" CHAPTER IV AT THE CHINESE EMBASSY "Shall we eat our luncheon with chopsticks to-day?" Mollie Thurston asked Harriet Hamlin an hour before the "Automobile Girls" and their hostess were to start for the Chinese Embassy. Harriet laughed good-humoredly at Mollie's question. "You absurd child, don't you know the Chinese minister is one of the most cultivated men in Washington! When he is in America he does what the Americans do. But his wife, Lady Tu, is delightfully Chinese. She paints her face in the Chinese fashion and wears beautiful Chinese clothes in her own home. And the little Chinese daughter is a darling. Really, Mollie, you will feel as though you had been on a trip to the Orient when you meet dainty little Wee Tu." "Oh, I don't believe a Chinese girl can be attractive," Mollie argued, her eyes fixed on the pile of pretty gowns which Harriet was laying out on her bed. "Do wear the rose-colored gown to-day, Harriet!" Mollie pleaded. "It is such a love of a frock and so becoming to you with your white skin and dark hair. Dear me, it must be nice to have such lovely clothes!" Mollie paused for a minute. Harriet turned around to find her little friend blushing. "I do hope," Mollie went on, "that you are not going to feel ashamed of Bab and me while we are your guests in Washington. You can see for yourself that we are poor, and have only a few gowns. Of course it is different with Grace and Ruth. But our father is dead, and--" Mollie stopped. She did not know how to go on with her explanation. Somehow she did not feel that Barbara or her mother would approve of her apologizing to Harriet for their simple wardrobes. "Mollie!" Harriet exclaimed reproachfully. "You know I think you and Barbara are so pretty and clever that it does not matter what your clothes are like. Besides, if you should ever want anything special to wear while you are here, why, I have a host of gowns." Mollie shook her head. Of course she could not borrow Harriet's gowns. And, though Harriet was trying to comfort her, her tone showed very plainly that she had noticed the slimness of the Thurston girls' preparations in the matter of wardrobe for several weeks of gayety in Washington. At a little before one o'clock the "Automobile Girls" and Harriet were ushered into the reception room of the Chinese Embassy by a grave Chinese servant clad in immaculate white and wearing his long pig-tail curled on top of his head. The minister and his wife came forward. Lady Tu wore a dress of heavy Chinese embroidery with a long skirt and a short full coat. Her hair was inky black and built out on each side of her head. She had a band of gold across it and golden flowers set with jewels hung above each ear. Her face was enameled in white and a small patch of crimson was painted just under her lip. Bab could hardly restrain an exclamation of delight at the beauty of the reception room. The walls were covered with Chinese silk and heavy panels of embroidery. A Chinese banner, with a great dragon on it, hung over the mantel-piece. The furniture was elaborately carved teakwood. The girls at once glanced around for the Chinese minister's daughter. But she was no where to be seen. Instead, Peter Dillon, Bab's first chance acquaintance in Washington, was smiling a welcome. Mrs. Wilson and her son were also present. The two or three other visitors were unknown to the "Automobile Girls." Even when luncheon was served the little Chinese girl did not make her appearance. The four girls were beginning to feel rather disappointed. They had come to the Embassy chiefly to see Wee Tu, and they were evidently not going to be granted that pleasure. Just as they were about to go back to the reception room, Mr. Tu Fang Wu suggested courteously to his girl guests: "If it pleases you, will you now go up to my daughter's apartments? She does not eat her meals with us when we entertain young men guests. It is not the custom of our country." The Chinese minister touched a bell and another Chinese servant appeared, his slippered feet making no noise. At the top of the stairs a Chinese woman met the "Automobile Girls" and conducted them to the apartment of Wee Tu, the minister's daughter. Wee Tu bowed her head to the floor when the "Automobile Girls" entered. But when she raised her face her little black eyes were glowing, and a faint pink showed under her smooth, yellow skin. Think what it meant to this little Chinese maid, with her shut-in life, to meet four American girls like Barbara, Ruth, Grace and Mollie! Harriet had lingered behind for a few moments. "Your most honorable presence does my miserable self much honor," stated Wee Tu automatically. Bab laughed. She simply could not help it. Wee Tu's greeting seemed so absurd to her ears, though she knew it was the Chinese manner of speaking. But Bab's merry laugh saved the situation, as it often had done before, for the little Chinese maid laughed in return, and the five girls sat giggling in the most intimate fashion. The servant passed around preserved Chinese fruits, nuts and dried melon seed. "Is Miss Hamlin not with you?" the Chinese minister's daughter asked finally, in broken English. At this moment Harriet's voice was heard in the corridor. She was talking gayly to Peter Dillon. The Chinese girl caught the sound of the young man's charming laugh. Bab was gazing straight at Wee Tu. Wee Tu looked like a beautiful Chinese doll, not a bit like a human being. At the entrance to Wee Tu's apartment Peter bowed gracefully. He waited until Harriet entered. "Your most honorable ladyship," he inquired. "Have I your permission to enter your divine apartment? Your most noble father has waived ceremony in my favor and says I may be allowed to see you in company with your other guests. You are to pretend you are an American girl to-day." Wee Tu again made a low bow, almost touching the soft Chinese rug with her crown of black hair. Her mantle was of blue silk crepe embroidered in lotus flowers, and she wore artificial lotus blossoms drooping on either side of her head. After Peter's entrance, Wee Tu did not speak nor smile. She sat with her slender yellow hands clasped together, her nails so long they were tipped with gold to prevent their breaking. Her tiny feet in their embroidered slippers looked much too small for walking. Peter made himself agreeable to all the girls. He chatted with Harriet, joked with Bab and Ruth. Now and then he spoke to the Chinese girl in some simple gentle fashion that she could understand. "Peter Dillon is awfully attractive," Bab thought. "I wonder why I was prejudiced against him at first because of what that newspaper girl said." Peter walked with Barbara back to Mr. Hamlin's house. "Would you mind my asking you a question?" Bab demanded when they were fairly on the way. Peter laughed. "It's a woman's privilege, isn't it?" "Well, how do you happen to be so intimate at the Chinese minister's?" was Barbara's direct question. "They seemed so formal and then all of a sudden Mr. Tu Fang Wu let you come up to see his daughter." "I know them very well," Peter returned simply. "I often dine at the Chinese minister's with his family. So I have met his daughter several times before. I have made myself useful to Mr. Tu Fang Wu once or twice, and my legation likes me to keep in touch with the people in authority." "Oh," exclaimed Barbara. She remembered that Peter was equally intimate at Mr. Hamlin's, and she wondered how he managed to keep up such a variety of acquaintances. "I wonder if you would do a fellow a favor some day?" Peter asked. "I'll bet you have lots of nerve. Harriet is apt to get frightened at the critical minute." "It would all depend on what you asked me to do," Bab returned puzzled by Peter's remark. "Oh, I won't ask you until I have managed to do something for you first. It is only that I think you can see a joke and I have a good one that I mean to try some day," Peter replied. CHAPTER V SUB ROSA The next morning, Peter Dillon was lounging in Mrs. Wilson's library, chatting with her on apparently easy terms. "I think it is a special dispensation of Providence that sent the 'Automobile Girls' to Washington to visit Harriet Hamlin just at this particular time, Mrs. Wilson," declared Peter Dillon. Mrs. Wilson walked back and forth across her drawing room floor several times before she answered. She looked older in the early morning light. But her restlessness did not disturb Peter, who was reclining gracefully in a chair, smoking a cigarette. "I am not sure you have reason to bless Providence, Peter Dillon," Mrs. Wilson protested. "What a man you are! You simply cannot judge all girls by the same standard. Some day you are going to meet a girl who is cleverer than you are. And then, where will you be?" "Oh, I'll go slowly," Peter argued. "I know I am taking chances in making friends with the clever one. But she has more nerve and courage than the others. I am sure it will be much better to leave Harriet out of the whole business, if possible." "All right, Peter," Mrs. Wilson agreed. "Manage your own affairs, since this happens to be your own special joke. But you had much better have left the whole matter to me." "And spoil my good time with five charming girls?" Peter protested, smiling. "No, Mrs. Wilson; that is too much to ask of me. If I can't carry the thing off successfully, you will come to the rescue and help me. You've promised that. We have had our little jokes together before. But this strikes me as being about the best of the whole lot. We will have everybody in Washington laughing up his sleeve pretty soon. There will be a few people who won't laugh, but so long as we keep quiet we need not worry about them. Has Elmer gone to work? I know I have made you a dreadfully early visit. It is very charming of you to be up in time to see me." "Don't flatter me, Peter; it is not worth while," Mrs. Wilson said angrily. Then she smiled. "Never mind, Peter; you can no more help flattering than you can help breathing, whether your reason is a good or a bad one. I suppose it is because you are an Irishman. By the way, Elmer admires one of these charming 'Automobile Girls.' He has talked of no one else except Mollie Thurston since Harriet's tea. Be careful what you say or do before him." "I shall be careful," Peter returned easily. "My attentions are directed toward the other sister. How have you managed to keep that big boy of yours so much in the dark about--oh, a number of things?" finished Peter. "It is because Elmer has perfect faith in me, Peter," Mrs. Wilson answered, passing her hand over her eyes to hide their expression. "As all other men have had before him, my lady," Peter avowed. "Is it true that Mr. William Hamlin is now a worshiper at your shrine?" "Absurd!" protested Mrs. Wilson. "Here comes Elmer." "Why, Peter Dillon, this is a surprise!" exclaimed the young lieutenant, walking into the room in search of his mother. "I never knew Mother to get up so early before. I have just been inquiring of your maid, Mother, to know what had become of you. Harriet Hamlin wants you to chaperon us on an automobile ride out to Mt. Vernon and along the Potomac River. Charlie Meyers is giving the party, and Harriet thinks her father won't object if you will go along to look after us. That Charlie Meyers is an awful bounder! But Harriet wants to show her little Yankee visitors the sights. Do come along with us, Mother. For I have a fancy I should like to stroll through the old Washington garden with 'sweet sixteen.'" "I will chaperon you with pleasure, Elmer," Mrs. Wilson agreed. "But what about you, Peter? Are you not invited?" Peter looked chagrined. "No; I am not invited, and I call it unkind of Harriet. She knows I am dreadfully impressed with the 'Automobile Girls.'" Mrs. Wilson and Elmer both laughed provokingly. "That is just what's the trouble with you, Peter. Harriet is accustomed to your devotion to her. Now that you have turned your thoughts in another direction, she may look upon you as a faithless swain," Mrs. Wilson teased. "Don't undertake more than you can manage, Peter," teased Elmer Wilson. "That is good advice for Peter. Remember, Peter, I have warned you. Some day you will run across a girl who is cleverer than you are. Then look out, young man," Mrs. Wilson repeated. But Peter only laughed cheerfully. "What girl isn't cleverer than a man?" he protested. "_Au revoir_. I shall do my best to persuade Harriet to let me go along with her party this afternoon. I suppose we shall be starting soon after luncheon, as it is Saturday." "Mother, can you let me have some money?" Elmer asked, as soon as Peter was out of hearing. "I am ashamed to ask you for it. But going out in society does cost a fellow an awful lot." Mrs. Wilson shook her head. "I am sorry, Boy; I can't let you have anything just now. I am short of money myself at present. But I expect to have some money coming in, say in about two weeks, or even ten days. Then I can let you have what you like." * * * * * "How shall we divide our party for the motor ride, Ruth?" asked Harriet Hamlin about two o'clock on the afternoon of the same day. Ruth's red car was standing in front of Mr. Hamlin's door with another larger one belonging to Harriet's friend, Charlie Meyers, waiting behind it. The automobile party stood out on the side walk and Peter Dillon had somehow managed to be one of them. "Suppose, Barbara, Grace and Hugh Post go along with me, Harriet?" Ruth proposed. "Mr. Meyers' car is larger than mine. He can take the rest of the party." "What a division!" protested Peter Dillon, as he climbed into Ruth's automobile and took his seat next Bab. "Do you suppose, for one instant, that we are going to see Hugh Post drive off, the only man among three girls? Not if I can help it!" The two automobiles traveled swiftly through Washington allowing the four "Automobile Girls" only tantalizing glimpses of the executive buildings which they passed on the way. In about an hour the cars covered the sixteen miles that lay between the Capital City and the home of its first President. Such a deep and abiding tranquillity pervaded the atmosphere of Mt. Vernon that the noisy chatter of the young people was, for an instant, hushed into silence, as they drove through the great iron gates at the entrance to Mt. Vernon, and on up the elm-shaded lawn to the house. Although it was December, the fall had been unusually warm and the trees were not yet bare of their autumn foliage; the grass still looked smooth and green under foot. The "Automobile Girls" held their breath as their eyes rested on the most famous historic home in America. "Oh, Ruth!" exclaimed Bab. But when she saw Peter's eyes smiling at her enthusiasm she stopped and would not say another word. Of course, Mt. Vernon was an old story to Mrs. Wilson, to Harriet, and indeed to the entire party, except the four girls. But they wished to see every detail of the Washington house. They went into the wide hall and there beheld the key to the Bastile presented by Lafayette to General Washington. They examined the music room, with its queer, old-fashioned musical instruments; went up to Martha Washington's bedroom and even looked upon the white-canopied bed where George Washington died. Indeed, they wandered from garret to cellar in the old house. But it was a beautiful afternoon and the outdoors called them at last. And, after all, it is the outdoors at Mt. Vernon that is most beautiful. The house is a simple country home with a wide, old-fashioned portico and gallery built of frame and painted to look like stone. But there is no palace on the Rhine, no castle in Spain, that has a more beautiful natural situation than Mt. Vernon. It stands on a piece of gently swelling land that slopes gradually down to the Potomac, and commands a view of many miles of the broad and noble river. Bab and Ruth managed to get away from the rest of their party and to slip out on the wide colonnaded veranda. "How peaceful and beautiful it is out here," Ruth exclaimed, with her arm around her friend's waist. "It seems to me that, if I lived in Washington, I would just run out here whenever anything uncomfortable happened to me. I am sure, if I spent the day at Mt. Vernon, I should not feel trouble any more." Barbara stood silent. A vague premonition of some possible trouble overtook her. "Ruth," Bab asked suddenly, "do you like Harriet's friend, Peter Dillon? Every now and then he talks to me in the most mysterious fashion. I don't understand what he means." Ruth looked unusually grave. Then she answered Bab in a very curious tone. "I know you have lots of common sense, Bab, dear," Ruth began. "But promise me you won't put any special faith in Peter Dillon. He is not one bit like Hugh, or Ralph Ewing, or the boys we met at the Major's house party. When I meet any one who is such a favorite with everyone I always wonder whether he has any real feelings or whether he is trying to accomplish some end. I suppose Peter Dillon can't help striving to be agreeable to everyone." Bab laughed a little. "Why, Ruth," she protested, "that idea does not sound a bit like you. You are sweet to everyone yourself, dear, and everyone loves you. But I do know what you mean about Peter Dillon. I--" "Hello," cried Mollie's sweet voice. She waved a long blue scarf toward Ruth and Bab. Mollie and Elmer Wilson were standing on the lawn, examining the motto on the sun dial. It read, "I record none but sunny hours." "Let me write down that motto for you, Miss Thurston," Elmer Wilson suggested. "I hope you may follow the old sun dial's example and record none but sunny hours yourself." "Ruth!" called Hugh, coming around from the other side of the porch with Peter Dillon. "Well, here you are, at last! It is not fair for you two girls to run off together like this. Harriet has disappeared, and Mrs. Wilson is hiding somewhere. Do you remember, Ruth, you promised to go with me to see the old Washington deer park. It has just been restocked with deer. Won't you come, too, Bab?" Barbara shook her head as Hugh and Ruth walked off together. Bab felt sure that Hugh would like to have a chance to talk with Ruth alone, for they had never ceased to be intimate friends since the early days at Newport. Peter Dillon stood looking out at the river, whistling softly, "Kathleen Mavourneen." It was the song Barbara had first heard him whistle in the drawing-room of Mr. Hamlin's house. The young man said nothing, for a few moments, even when he and Bab were alone. But when Bab came over toward him, Peter smiled. He had his hat off and he had run his hands through his dark auburn hair. "I say, Miss Thurston, why can't you make up your mind to like me?" he questioned. "Surely you don't suspect me of dark designs, do you? You American people are so strange. Just because I am half a Russian you think I have some sinister purpose in my mind. I am not an anarchist, and I don't want to go about trampling on the poor. I wish you could meet the Russian ambassador. He is about the most splendid-looking man you ever saw. I know him, well, you see, because my mother was a distant cousin of his." Barbara laughed good-humoredly. "You seem to be a kind of connecting link between three or four nations--Russia, America, China. What are your real duties at your legation?" Barbara looked at her companion with a real question in her brown eyes--a question she truly desired to have answered. She was interested to know what duties an attaché performed for his embassy. Peter, in spite of his frivolities, claimed to be a hard worker. "You have not seen the loveliest part of Mt. Vernon yet, Miss Thurston," Peter Dillon interposed just at this instant. "I want to show you the old garden, and we must hurry before the gates are closed. Yes; I know I did not answer your question. An attaché just makes himself generally useful to his chief. But if you really want to know what my ambition is, and how I work to achieve it, why some day I will tell you." Peter looked at Bab so seriously that she answered quickly: "Yes, I should dearly love to see the garden." Bab and Peter Dillon wandered together through the paths formed by the box hedges planted in Martha Washington's garden more than a century ago. Neither seemed to feel like talking. The young man had seen the gardener as they entered the enclosure, and had persuaded him to allow them to go through the lovely spot alone. Bab's vivid imagination brought to life the old colonial ladies who had once wandered in this famous garden. She saw their white wigs, their powder and patches and full skirts. So Bab forgot all about her companion. Suddenly she heard Peter give a slight exclamation. They had both come to the end of the garden walk. There before them stood a great rose tree. Blooming in the unusually warm sunshine were two rose-buds, gently tipped with frost. "Ah, Miss Thurston, how glad I am we found the garden first!" Peter cried. "This is the famous Mary Washington rose, which Washington planted here in his garden, and named in honor of his mother. Wait here until I find the gardener. I am going to make him let us have these two tiny rose-buds." "How nice Peter Dillon really is," Bab thought. "Ruth was mistaken in warning me against him. Of course, he does not show on the surface what he actually feels. But perhaps I shall find out he is a finer fellow than we think he is. Mr. Hamlin says Harriet is wrong in believing Peter is never in earnest about anything." "It's all right, Miss Thurston," called Peter, returning in a few minutes with his eyes shining. "The gardener says we may have the roses." The young fellow dropped down on his knees before the rose bush without a bit of affectation or self-consciousness. He skilfully cut the two half faded rose-buds from the stalk and handed one to Barbara. "Keep this, Miss Thurston," he said earnestly. "And if ever you should wish me to do you a favor, just send the flower to me and I shall perform whatever task you set me to do to the best of my skill." Peter looked at his own rose. "May I keep my rose-bud for the same purpose?" he begged quietly. "Perhaps I shall send my flower to you some day and ask you to do me a service. Will you do it for me?" "Yes, Mr. Dillon, I will do you any favor that I can," Bab returned steadily. "But I don't make rash promises in the dark. And I have very little opportunity to do people favors. You make me think of the newspaper girl, Marjorie Moore. She tried to force me into a promise without letting me know what she wanted, the first day I saw her. Does everyone try to get some one to do something for him in Washington?" At the mention of Marjorie Moore's name the change in Peter Dillon's face was so startling that Barbara was startled. Just now he did not look in the least like an Irishman. His lips tightened into a fine, cruel line, his eyes grew almost black and had a queer, Chinese slant to them. It suddenly dawned on Barbara, that Russians have Asiatic blood in their veins and are often more like Oriental people than they are like those of the western world. But Peter only said carelessly, after he had regained control of his face: "Miss Moore doesn't like me; and frankly, I don't like her. She told you she did society work for her newspaper. She does a great deal more. She is constantly watching at the legations to see if she can spy on any of their secret information. It is not good form to warn one girl against another. But if I were you, Miss Thurston, I would take with a grain of salt any information that Miss Moore might give you." Barbara answered quietly: "Oh, I don't suppose Miss Moore will tell me any of her secrets. She does not come to Mr. Hamlin's except on business. Harriet does not like her." "Good for Harriet!" Peter muttered to himself. "It may be Harriet, after all!" "Barbara Thurston, you and Peter come along this minute," Harriet ordered unexpectedly. "Don't you know we shall be locked up in Mt. Vernon if we stay here much longer. Ruth's automobile is already filled and she is waiting to start. You and Peter are to get into Mr. Meyers' car with me. We have another hour before sunset. We are going to motor along the river and have our supper at an inn a few miles from here." As Peter Dillon ran ahead to join Harriet Hamlin, a small piece of paper fell out of his pocket. Barbara picked it up and slipped it inside her coat, intending to hand it back to Mr. Dillon as soon as she had an opportunity. But there were other things that seemed of more importance to absorb her attention for the rest of the evening. And Barbara was not to remember the paper until some time later. CHAPTER VI THE ARREST After eating supper, and spending the evening at an old-fashioned Southern Inn on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, the two automobile parties started back to Washington. Barbara and Peter Dillon occupied seats in the car with Harriet and Mr. Meyers, Mrs. Wilson, and two Washington girls who had been members of their party. As Ruth did not know the roads it was decided that she keep to the rear and follow the car in front of her. It was a clear moonlight night, and, though the roads were not good, no member of the party dreamed of trouble. Bab sat next to Charlie Meyers, and her host was in a decidedly sulky temper. For Harriet had grown tired of his devotion, after several hours of it during the afternoon, and was amusing herself with Peter. No sooner had the two cars sped away from the peaceful shadows of Mt. Vernon, than Peter began to play Prince Charming to Harriet. Charlie Meyers did not know what to do. He was a stupid fellow, who expected his money to carry him through everything. He would hardly listen to Barbara's conversation or take the slightest interest in anything she tried to say. Every time Harriet's gay laugh rang out from the next seat Charlie Meyers would drive his car faster than ever, until it fairly bounded over the rough places in the road. Several times Mrs. Wilson remonstrated with him. "You are going too fast, Mr. Meyers. It is dark, and I am afraid we shall have an accident if you are not more careful. Please go slower." For an instant, Mr. Meyers would obey Mrs. Wilson's request to lessen the speed of his car. Then he would dash ahead as though the very furies were after him. As for Ruth, she had to follow the automobile in front in order to find her way, so it was necessary for her to run her car at the same high speed. Neither Ruth nor her companions knew the pitfalls along the road. Hugh did not keep his automobile in Washington, and, though he had a general idea of the direction they should take, he had never driven along the particular course selected by Mr. Meyers for their return trip. Ruth felt her face flush with temper as her car shook and plunged along the road. In order to keep within a reasonable distance of the heavier car, she had to put on full power and forge blindly ahead. Once or twice Ruth called out: "Won't you go a little slower in front, please? I can't find my way along this road at such a swift pace." But Ruth's voice floated back on the winds and the leading car paid no heed to her. Then Elmer and Hugh took up the refrain, shouting with all their lung power. They merely wasted their breath. Charlie Meyers either did not hear them or pretended not to do so. He never once turned his head, or asked if those back of him were making a safe journey. Barbara was furious. She fully realized Ruth's predicament, although she was not in her chum's car. "Please don't get out of sight of Ruth's car, Mr. Meyers," Bab urged her companion. But he paid not the slightest attention to her request. Bab looked anxiously back over the road. Now and then she could see Mr. A. Bubble's lamps; more often Ruth's car was out of sight. Patience was not Barbara's strong point. "Harriet," she protested, "Won't you ask Mr. Meyers to slow down so that Ruth can follow him. He will not pay the least attention to me." "What is your hurry, Charlie!" asked Harriet, in a most provoking tone. She knew the young fellow was not a gentleman, and that he was showing his anger against her by making them all uncomfortable. But Harriet was in a wicked humor herself, and she would not try to appease their cross host. She was having an extremely pleasant time with Peter Dillon, and really did not realize Ruth's difficulties. The front car slowed imperceptibly, then hurried on again. At about half past ten o'clock, Mr. Meyers turned into one of the narrow old-fashioned streets of the town of Alexandria, which is just south-west of Washington. The town was only dimly lighted and the roads made winding turns, so that it was impossible to see any great distance ahead. Ruth had managed to keep her car going, though she had long since lost her sweet temper, and the others of her party were very angry. "It serves us right," Hugh Post declared to Ruth. "We ought never to have accepted this fellow's invitation. I knew he wasn't a gentleman, and I know Mr. Hamlin does not wish Harriet to have anything to do with him. Yet, just because the fellow is enormously rich and gives automobile parties, here we have been spending the evening as his guests. Look here, Ruth, do you think I can forget I have enjoyed his hospitality, and punch his head for him when we get back to Washington, for leading you on a chase like this?" Ruth smiled and shook her head. She was seldom nervous about her automobile after all her experiences as chauffeur. Yet this wild ride at night through towns of which she knew little or nothing, was not exactly her idea of sport. Mr. Bubble was again outdistanced. As the streets were deserted, Ruth decided to make one more violent spurt in an effort to catch up with the front car. Poor Mr. A. Bubble who had traveled so far with his carload of happy girls was shaking from side to side. But Ruth did not think of danger. Alexandria is a sleepy old Southern town and nearly all its inhabitants were in bed. "Aren't there any speed regulations in this part of the world, Hugh?" Ruth suddenly inquired. But she was too late. At this instant everyone in her car heard a loud shout. "Hold up there! Stop!" A figure on a bicycle darted out of a dark alley in hot pursuit of them. "Go it, Ruth!" Hugh whispered. But Ruth shook her head. "No," she answered. "We must face the music." Ruth put on her stop brake and her car slowed down. "What do you mean," cried a wrathful voice, "tearing through a peaceful town like this, lickitty-split, as though there were no folks on earth but you. You just come along to the station with me! You'll find out, pretty quick, what twenty-five miles an hour means in this here town." "Let me explain matters to you," Hugh protested. "It is all a mistake." "I ain't never arrested anybody for speeding yet that they ain't told me it was just a mistake," fumed the policeman. "But you will git a chance to tell your story to the chief of police. You're just wasting good time talkin' to me. I ain't got a mite of patience with crazy automobilists." "Don't take us all to the station house, officer!" Hugh pleaded. "Just take me along, and let the rest of the party go on back to Washington. It's awfully late. You surely wouldn't keep these young ladies." "It's the lady that's a-runnin' the car, ain't it? She's the one that is under arrest," said the policeman obstinately. Ruth had not spoken since her automobile was stopped. She had a lump in her throat, caused partly by anger and partly by embarrassment and fright. Then, too, Ruth was wondering what her father would say. In the years she had been running her automobile, over all the thousands of miles she had traveled, Ruth had never before been stopped for breaking the speed laws. She had always promised Mr. Stuart to be careful. And one cannot have followed the fortunes of Ruth Stuart and her friends in their adventures without realizing Ruth's high and fine regard for her word. Yet here were Ruth and her friends about to be taken to jail for breaking the laws of the little Virginia city. It was small wonder that Ruth found it difficult to speak. "I will go with the policeman," she assented. "Perhaps he will let you take Mollie and Grace on home." Of course no one paid the slightest attention to Ruth's ridiculous suggestion. Her friends were not very likely to leave her alone to argue her case before the justice of the peace. "I say, man, do be reasonable," Hugh urged. He would not give up. "You can hold me in jail all night if you will just let the others go." "Please don't argue with the policeman, Hugh," Ruth begged. "He is only doing his duty. I am so sorry, Mollie darling, for you and Grace. But I know you won't leave me." "Oh, we don't mind," the two girls protested. "I suppose we can pay the fine and they will let us go at once." Hugh said nothing, for he knew that he had only a few dollars in his pocket. When Ruth's car finally reached the station house it was almost eleven o'clock. The policeman took the automobile party inside the station. It was bitter cold in the room, for the winter chill had fallen with the close of the December day. The fire had died out in the air-tight iron stove in the room, and Mollie, Ruth and Grace could hardly keep from shivering. "Well, where is the justice of the peace or whatever man we ought to see about this wretched business?" Hugh demanded. At last the policeman looked a little apologetic. "I'll get some one to make up a fire for you," he answered. "I have got to go out and wake up the justice to look after your case. It's bed-time and he's home asleep." "Do you expect us to sit here in this freezing dirty old room half the night while you go around looking up a magistrate?" Hugh demanded, wrathfully. "I told you I would have the fire built up," the policeman answered sullenly. "But it ain't my fault you got into this trouble. You ought not to have broken the law. We have had about as much trouble with automobilists in this here town as we are willing to stand for. And I might as well tell you, right now, the court will make it pretty hot for you. It may be I can't get the justice to hear your case until to-morrow, and you'll have to stay here all night." "Stay here all night!" cried the five young people, as they sank down into five hard wooden chairs in utter despair. "Harriet, have you seen Ruth's automobile?" Bab asked, as Charlie Meyers' car got safely out of Alexandria and started on the road toward Washington. Harriet and Peter both looked around and strained their eyes in the darkness. But there was no sign of Ruth or her party. "Don't you think we had better go back a little, Charlie?" Harriet now suggested. "I am afraid you have gotten too far ahead of Ruth for her to follow you." "What has Miss Stuart got Hugh Post and Elmer Wilson with her for, if they can't show her the way to town?" argued the impolite host of the automobile parties. "I think Charlie is right, Harriet. I would not worry," interposed Mrs. Wilson, in her soft tones. "Elmer may not have known the road during the early part of our trip, but neither one of the boys is very apt to lose his way between Alexandria and Washington." Mrs. Wilson laughed at the very absurdity of the idea. Harriet said nothing more, and, although Bab was by no means satisfied, she felt compelled to hold her peace. "Will you leave me at my house, Charlie?" Mrs. Wilson demanded, as soon as their automobile reached Washington. "I know Harriet expects to make a Welsh rarebit for you at her home, but I am going to ask you to excuse me. I am a good deal older than you children, and I am tired." When Barbara reached the Hamlin house she hoped ardently to see the familiar lights of her old friend, A. Bubble waiting outside the door. But the street was bare of automobiles. There was nothing to do but to follow the other young people into the house and take off her hat and coat. But Bab had not the heart to join Harriet in the dining-room where the preparations for making the rarebit were now going on. She lingered forlornly in the hall. Every now and then she would peer anxiously out into the darkness. Still there was no sign of Ruth or any member of her party! Barbara was wretched. She was now convinced that some accident had befallen them. "Come in, Barbara," called Harriet cheerfully. "The Welsh rarebit is done and it has to be eaten on the instant. I will make another for Ruth's crowd when they get in. They are certainly awfully slow in arriving." "Harriet!" Barbara's white face appeared at the dining-room door. "I hate to be a nuisance, but I am dreadfully worried about the other girls. I know they would have gotten home by this time if nothing had happened to them." Poor Barbara had to make a dreadful effort to swallow her pride, for Charlie Meyers had been dreadfully rude to her all afternoon. "Mr. Meyers," she pleaded, "won't you take me back in your car to look for my friends? I simply can't bear the suspense any longer." Barbara's eyes were full of tears. "Oh, Bab, you are foolish to worry," Harriet protested. "It would not be worth while for you and Mr. Meyers to go back now. You would only pass Ruth on the road. It is nearly midnight." "I know it is," Bab agreed. "And that is why I am so frightened. Don't you think you could take me to look for them? Please do, Mr. Meyers." The ill-bred fellow shrugged his shoulders. "What do you take me for, Miss Thurston? I am not going to let my rarebit get cold. There is nothing the matter with your friends. They are likely to be along at any minute." Barbara did not know what to do. Mr. Hamlin had not yet come in. Yet she must find out what had happened to Ruth, Mollie and Grace. Bab once thought of starting out alone and on foot, back up the long country road, but she gave up the idea as sheer foolishness. At that moment the grandfather's clock in the hall chimed midnight. Almost two hours had passed since the two automobiles had entered Alexandria, and the little town was only eight miles from Washington. Bab felt she was going to cry before Harriet's guests. She slipped her hand in her pocket to find her handkerchief. As she silently pressed her handkerchief against her trembling lips she smelt a delicate perfume. Something fresh and cool and aromatic touched her face. It was the tiny rose-bud Peter Dillon had presented to her in the garden! Now Bab had determined never to ask Peter to do her a favor. She felt that, once she returned his pledge to him, he had the same right to ask a favor of her. But what could Barbara do? Her beloved sister and friends had certainly come to grief somewhere. And Bab was helpless to find them alone. "Mr. Dillon," Bab spoke under her breath, just showing her handkerchief to him with the rose-bud crushed between its damp folds, "won't you help me to find Ruth?" Bab only glanced at the flower with a shy smile. But Peter saw it. He jumped to his feet, his face flushing. "Put the flower back, Miss Thurston," he said quietly to Barbara. "You do not need to ask me to help you look for your friends as a favor to you. I am ashamed of myself to have waited until you asked me. Harriet, I am going back to look for your guests." Harriet, who was also feeling uneasy without being willing to confess it, cheerfully agreed. "I am going to take your car, Meyers," declared Peter Dillon without saying so much as by your leave. Bab and Peter Dillon hurried out to the waiting automobile. Both stopped only to take coats and caps from the rack in the hall. If Peter Dillon wished to make a friend of Barbara Thurston, his prompt response to her plea for help came nearer accomplishing it than anything else in the world. When Peter refused Bab's proffered rose-bud she then determined to do him any favor that she could whenever he might desire to ask it of her. CHAPTER VII MOLLIE'S TEMPTATION The next morning the "Automobile Girls" were sitting in the library of Mr. Hamlin's home. Ruth, Mollie and Grace were there, for Peter and Bab had secured their release from the Alexandria jail. "But how do you think he ever accomplished it?" Mollie inquired. Harriet laughed and flushed. "Oh, Peter accomplished it in the same way he does everything else--by making friends with people," she declared. "Girls, I hope you realize how ashamed I am of last night's proceedings. I never dreamed that anything had happened to you, or I should have certainly forced Charlie Meyers to turn back. But I think I have learned a lesson. Charlie Meyers was horribly rude to you, Bab, and I told him what we thought of him after you left. I don't want to see him again. So Father, at least, will be glad. Though how I am to get on in this world without a husband with money, I don't know." And Harriet sighed. "Still I would like to have my questions answered," Mollie repeated. "How did Peter Dillon get us away from that wretched jail in such a short time when we thought we might have to stay there all night?" "Why, he just found the justice of the peace, arranged about Ruth's fine, mentioned Mr. Hamlin's name and did a few more things," Bab laughed. "So, at last, you were permitted to come home." "Poor Hugh and Elmer were so mortified at not having enough money with them to pay the fine. It was just an accident. Yet it was truly my fault," Ruth argued. "Father has always insisted that I take my pocket-book whenever I go out of the house. But, of course, I forgot it yesterday." "Will Uncle Robert be very angry with you, Ruth, for being arrested?" Harriet asked. "He need never find out anything about it. Your fine wasn't so very large, and you always have money enough to pay for anything." Ruth laughed. "Oh, I always tell Father every thing! I don't think he will be very angry with me, when he hears how we happened to get into trouble." "Do you really tell your father everything?" Harriet asked, in a surprised tone. "Why, yes; why not?" Ruth questioned. Harriet shook her head. "Well, I do not tell my father all my affairs. Oh, dear me, no!" "I suppose I shall have to go back to Alexandria to-day, and appear at court," Ruth lamented. "I just dread it." "Oh, no you won't," Bab explained. "Mr. Dillon said he would talk matters over with Mr. Hamlin, and that he had some influential friends over there. You will have to pay your fine, Ruth, but you probably will not have to appear at the trial. They will settle it privately." "Girls," exclaimed Harriet, "I forgot to tell you something. There is a big reception at the White House to-morrow evening, and Father says he wishes to take the 'Automobile Girls' to present them to the President." "How exciting!" exclaimed Grace Carter. "To think that the 'Automobile Girls' are going to meet the President, and yet you speak of it as calmly, Harriet Hamlin, as though it were an everyday affair." "Oh, nonsense, Grace," Harriet begged. "It will be fun to go to the White House with you. You girls are so interested in everything. But a White House reception is an old story to me, and I am afraid there will be a frightful crowd. But which one of you will go shopping with me this morning?" "I will," cried Mollie. "I'd dearly love to see the shops. We don't have any big stores in Kingsbridge." "Is there anything I can get for you, girls?" Harriet asked. Ruth called her cousin over in the corner. "Will you please order flowers for us to-morrow night!" Ruth requested. "Father told me to be sure to get flowers whenever we wanted them." "Lucky Ruth!" sighed Harriet. "I wish I had such a rich and generous father as you have!" "What can we wear to the President's reception to-morrow, Bab?" Mollie whispered in her sister's ear, while Harriet and Ruth were having their conference. Bab thought for a moment. "You can wear the corn-colored frock you wore to dinner with the Princess Sophia at Palm Beach. It is awfully pretty, and you have never worn it since." "That old thing!" cried Mollie, pouting. "Suppose you get some pale yellow ribbons, Mollie, and I will make you a new sash and a bow for your hair," Bab suggested. Pretty Mollie frowned. "All right," she agreed. Harriet and Mollie did not go at once to the shops. They drove first to Harriet's dressmaker, the most fashionable in Washington. "I must try on a little frock," Harriet explained. "We can do our shopping afterwards. I want you to see a beautiful coat I am having made, from a Chinese crepe shawl the Chinese Minister's wife gave me." Madame Louise, the head of the dressmaking establishment, came in to attend to Harriet. The new coat was in a wonderful shade of apricot, lined with satin and embroidered in nearly every color of silk. "Oh, Harriet, how lovely!" Mollie exclaimed. "Yes, isn't it?" Harriet agreed. "But I really ought not to have had this coat made up. It has cost almost as much as though I had bought it outright. And I don't need it. I hope you have not made my dress very expensive, Madame. I told you to get me up a simple frock." "Ah, but Miss Hamlin, the simple frocks cost as much as the fancy ones," argued the dressmaker. "This little gown is made of the best satin and lace. But how charming is the effect." Mollie echoed the dressmaker's verdict as she gazed at Harriet with admiring eyes. Harriet's gown was white satin. Her black hair and great dusky eyes looked darker from the contrast and her skin even more startlingly fair. Harriet could not help a little smile of vanity as she saw herself in the long mirror in the fitting room. "Be sure to send these things home by to-morrow, Madame Louise," she demanded. "Father and I are going to take our guests to one of the President's receptions and I want to wear this gown." Mollie gave a little impatient sigh. "What is the matter, Mollie?" inquired Harriet, seeing that her little friend looked tired and unhappy. "I am awfully sorry to have kept you waiting like this. It is a bore to watch other people try on their clothes. I will come with you directly." "Oh, I am not tired watching you, Harriet," pretty Mollie answered truthfully. "I was only wishing I had such a beautiful frock to wear to the reception to-morrow." Madame Louise clapped her hands. "Wait a minute, young ladies. I have something to show you. You must wait, for it is most beautiful." The dressmaker turned and whispered to one of her girl assistants. The girl went out and came back in a few minutes with another frock over her arm. Mollie gave a deep sigh of admiration. "How exquisite!" Harriet exclaimed. "Whose dress is that, Madame? It looks like clouds or sea foam, or anything else that is delicately beautiful." Madame shook out a delicate pale blue silk, covered with an even lighter tint of blue chiffon, which shaded gently into white. "This dress was an order, Miss Hamlin," Madame Louise explained. "I sent to Paris for it. Of course it was some time before it arrived in Washington. In the meanwhile a death occurred in the family of the young woman who had ordered the dress. She is now in mourning, and she left the dress with me to sell for her. She is willing to let it go at a great bargain. The little frock would just about fit your young friend. Would she not be beautiful in it, with her pale yellow hair and her blue eyes? Ah, the frock looks as though it had been created for her! Do you think she would allow me to try it on her?" "Do slip the frock on, Mollie," Harriet urged. "It will not take much time. And I would dearly love to see you in such a gown. It is the sweetest thing I ever saw." Mollie shook her head. "It is not worth while for me to put it on, Harriet. Madame must understand that I cannot possibly buy it." "But the frock is such a bargain, Mademoiselle," the dressmaker continued. "I will sell it to you for a mere song." "But I haven't the song to pay for it, Madame," Mollie laughed. "Come on, Harriet. We must be going." "Of course you can't buy the dress, Mollie," Harriet interposed. "But Madame will not mind your just slipping into it. Try it on, just for my sake. I know you will look like a perfect dream." Mollie could not refuse Harriet's request. "Shut your eyes, Mollie, while Madame dresses you up," Harriet proposed. Mollie shut her eyes tightly. Madame Louise slipped on the gown. "It fits to perfection," she whispered to Harriet. Then the dressmaker, who was really an artist in her line, picked up Mollie's bunch of soft yellow curls and knotted them carelessly on top of Mollie's dainty head. She twisted a piece of the pale blue shaded chiffon into a bandeau around her gold hair. "Now, look at yourself, Mademoiselle," she cried in triumph. "Mollie, Mollie, you are the prettiest thing in the world!" Harriet exclaimed. Mollie gave a little gasp of astonishment when she beheld herself in the mirror. Certainly she looked like Cinderella after the latter had been touched with the fairy wand. She stood regarding herself with wide open eyes of astonishment, and cheeks in which the rose flush deepened. "The dress must belong to Mademoiselle! I could not have made such a fit if I had tried," repeated the dressmaker. "How much is the dress worth, Madame?" Harriet queried. "Worth? It is worth one hundred and fifty dollars! But I will give the little frock away for fifty," the dressmaker answered. "Can't you possibly buy it, child?" Harriet pleaded with Mollie. "It is a perfectly wonderful bargain, and you are too lovely in it. I just can't bear to have you refuse it." "I am sorry, Harriet," Mollie returned firmly. "But I have not the money. Won't you please take the gown off me, Madame!" "Your friend can take the frock from me now and pay me later. It does not matter," said the dressmaker. "She can write home for the money." For one foolish moment Mollie did dream that she might write to her mother for the price of this darling blue frock. Mollie was sure she had never desired anything so keenly in her life. But in a moment Mollie came to her senses. Where would her mother get such a large sum of money to send her? It had been hard work for Mrs. Thurston to allow Barbara and Mollie the slight expenses of their trip to Washington. No; the pretty gown was impossible! "Do unbutton the gown for me, please, Harriet," Mollie entreated. "I really can't buy it." Mollie felt deeply embarrassed, and was sorry she had allowed herself to be persuaded into trying on the gown. "Mollie!" exclaimed Harriet suddenly. "Don't you have a monthly allowance?" Mollie nodded her head. Silly Mollie hoped Harriet would not ask her just what her allowance was. For Mrs. Thurston could give her daughters only five dollars a month apiece for their pin money. "Then I know just what to do," Harriet declared. "You must just buy this frock, Mollie dear. I expect to have a dividend from some stock I own, and when it comes in, I shall pay Madame for the dress, and you can pay me back as it suits you. Do please consent, Mollie. Just look at yourself in the glass once more and I know you can't resist my plan." Mollie did take one more peep at herself in the mirror. But if she had only had more time to think, and Harriet and the dressmaker had not argued the point with her, she would never have fallen before her temptation. "You are sure you won't mind how long I take to pay you back, Harriet?" Mollie inquired weakly. "Sure!" Harriet answered. "All right then; I will take it," Mollie agreed in a sudden rush of recklessness, feeling dreadfully excited. For little Mollie Thurston had never owned a gown in her life that had cost more than fifteen dollars, except the two or three frocks which had been given to her on different occasions. "Madame, you will send Miss Thurston's gown with mine, so she can wear it to the White House reception," Harriet insisted. "Certainly; I shall send the frocks this evening," the dressmaker agreed, suavely. "But are you sure you will be in? I want you to be at home when the frocks arrive." Several other customers had entered Madame Louise's establishment. Harriet Hamlin flushed at the dressmaker's question. But she replied carelessly: "Oh, yes; I shall be in all the afternoon. You can send them at any time you like." Before Mollie and Harriet had gotten out into the street, Mollie clutched Harriet's arm in swift remorse. "Oh, Harriet, dear, I have done a perfectly awful thing! I must go back and tell Madame that I cannot take that gown. I don't see how I could have said I would take it. Why, it will take me ages to pay you so much money!" Mollie's eyes were big and frightened. Her lips were trembling. "Sh-sh! You silly child!" Harriet protested. "Here comes Mrs. Wilson. You can't go to tell Madame Louise you have changed your mind before so many people. And what is the use of worrying over such a small debt? The dress was a wonderful bargain. You would be a goose not to buy it." Now, because Harriet was older than Mollie, and Mollie thought her very beautiful and well trained in all the graces of society, foolish little Mollie allowed herself to be silenced, and so made endless trouble for herself and for the people who loved her. "Don't tell Barbara about my buying the frock, Harriet," Mollie pleaded, as the two girls went up the steps of the Hamlin home, a short time before luncheon. "I would rather tell Bab about it myself, when I get a chance." "Oh, I won't tell. You may count on me," promised Harriet, in sympathetic tones. "Will Bab be very cross!" "Oh, not exactly that," Mollie hesitated. "But I am afraid she will be worried. I am glad we are at home. I want to lie down, I feel so tired." Not long after Harriet and Mollie had started off on their shopping expedition, Bab came across from her room into Ruth's. "Ruth, do you think I could telephone Mr. Dillon?" she asked. "I picked up a piece of paper that he dropped in the garden yesterday, and I forgot to return it to him." "Give it to me, child. I told you yesterday that I did not wish you to grow to be an intimate friend of that man. But I am writing him a note to thank him for his kindness to us last night. I can just put your paper in my letter and explain matters to him." Bab carelessly tossed the sheet of paper on Ruth's desk. It opened, and Ruth cried out in astonishment. "Oh, Bab, how queer! This note is written in Chinese characters. What do you suppose Peter Dillon is doing with a letter written in Chinese?" "I don't know I am sure, Ruth," Bab demurred. "It is none of our business." "Did you get the yellow ribbon, Mollie?" Barbara asked her sister, two hours later, when Mollie and Harriet came in from their shopping. "I have been fixing up your dress all morning. It is awfully pretty. Now I want to make the sash." "I did not get any ribbons, Bab." Mollie answered peevishly. "I told you I would not wear that old yellow dress." CHAPTER VIII AT THE WHITE HOUSE Mollie Thurston was not well the next day. She stayed in bed and explained that her head ached. And Harriet Hamlin behaved very strangely. She was shut up in the room with Mollie for a long time; when she came out Mollie's eyes were red, and Harriet looked white as a sheet. But neither of the girls would say what was the matter. Just before the hour for starting to the White House reception, Mollie got out of bed and insisted on dressing. "I am afraid you are not well enough to go out to-night, Mollie," Bab protested. "I hope you won't be too disappointed. Shall I stay at home with you?" Mollie shook her head obstinately. "I am quite well now," she insisted. "Bab, would you mind leaving me alone while I dress? I do feel nervous, and I know Ruth and Grace won't care if you go into their room." "All right, Mollie," Barbara agreed cheerfully, wondering what had come over her little sister. "Call me when you wish me to button your gown. I have put the yellow one out on the lounge, if you should decide to wear it." When Mollie was left alone two large tears rolled down her cheeks. Once she started to crawl back into bed and to give up the reception altogether. But, after a while, she walked over to her closet and drew out a great box. With trembling fingers Mollie opened it and gazed in upon the exquisite blue frock that had already caused her so much embarrassment and regret. Should she wear the frock that night? Mollie Thurston asked herself. And what would Bab say when she saw it? For Mollie had not yet mustered up the courage to make her confession. Well, come what might, Mollie decided to wear her new frock this one time. She had risked everything to own it, so she might as well have this poor pleasure. When Mollie joined Mr. Hamlin and the other girls downstairs a long party cape completely concealed her gown. Mr. Hamlin did not keep a private carriage; so, as long as Ruth's automobile was in Washington, he decided to take his party to the White House in Ruth's car. The girls were ready early, for Mr. Hamlin explained to them that they would have to take their position in the line of carriages that slowly approached the White House door, and that sometimes this procession was nearly a mile in length. "I suppose you girls won't mind the waiting as much as we older people do, because you always have so much to say to each other. And perhaps this is my best chance to learn to know you better. I have been so busy that I have seen little of you during your visit to Harriet." But Mollie and Harriet were strangely silent, and Bab felt absolutely tongue-tied before Mr. Hamlin. Fortunately, Grace and Ruth sat on each side of him. "Mr. Hamlin," Grace asked timidly, "would you mind telling me what are the duties of the Secretary of State? Washington is like a new, strange world to us. I have learned the titles of the different members of the President's Cabinet, but I have not the faintest idea what they do. Mollie and I looked over the cards of the guests who came to your reception. Some of the cards just read: 'The Speaker,' 'The Chief of Staff,' 'L'Ambassadeur de France,' without any personal names at all." Mr. Hamlin seemed pleased. The stern, half-embarrassed expression, that he usually wore before the girls relaxed a little at Grace's eager questioning. "I am glad, Miss Carter, to find you take an interest in Washington affairs," he answered. "It is most unusual in a young girl. I wish Harriet cared more about them, but she seems devoted only to society." Mr. Hamlin sighed under his breath. "Yes; it is the custom for the officials in Washington to put only the titles of their office on their visiting cards. You are sure you wish to know the duties of the Secretary of State? I don't want to bore you, my child." Grace nodded her head eagerly. "Well, let me see if I can make it plain to you. The Secretary of State has charge of all the correspondence between the foreign countries and their representatives in the United States," Mr. Hamlin continued. "Do you understand?" "I think I do," Grace answered hesitatingly, while Bab leaned over from the next seat to see if she could understand what Mr. Hamlin was explaining. "The Secretary of State also receives all kinds of information from the consuls and diplomatic officers, who represent the United States abroad," Mr. Hamlin went on. "Sometimes this information is very important and very secret. It might bring on serious trouble, perhaps start a war with another country, if some of these secrets were discovered. The Secretary of State has other duties; he keeps the Great Seal of the United States. But my chief business as Assistant Secretary is just to look after the important private correspondence with all the other countries." "Father," exclaimed Harriet, "why are you boring the girls to death with so much information? They don't understand what you mean. I have been living in Washington for four years, and I have not half an idea of what your duties are. But thank goodness, we have arrived at the White House at last!" Their motor car had finally drawn up before the entrance to the Executive Mansion at the extremity of the eastern wing. The house was a blaze of lights; the Marine Band was playing a national air. Harriet, who was familiar with all the rules that govern the President's receptions, quickly marshaled her guests into the lobby, where they had to take off their coats and hats. Bab was so overcome at the enormous number of people about her, that she did not see Mollie remove her cape. Mollie slipped quietly into a corner, and was waiting by Harriet's side, when Harriet called the other girls to hurry up the broad stairs to the vestibule above, where the guests were forming in line to enter the reception room. Barbara, Ruth and Grace gave little gasps of astonishment when they first beheld Mollie. If little Mollie Thurston's heart was heavy within her on this brilliant occasion, she held her pretty head very high. The worry and excitement had given her a slight fever; her cheeks were a deep carmine and her eyes glittered brightly. "Why, Mollie! What a vision you are!" exclaimed Ruth and Grace together. "Where did you get that wonderful gown? You have been saving it to surprise us to-night, haven't you?" But Bab did not say a single word. She only looked at Mollie, her face paling a little with surprise and curiosity. How had Mollie come by a gown that was more beautiful than anything Bab had ever seen her sister wear? Barbara knew Mollie had not had the gown when they left home together, for she had packed her sister's trunk for her. But this was not the time to ask questions. Bab's mind was divided between the wonder and delight she felt at the scene before her, and amazement at Mollie's secret. "I do hope," she thought, as she followed Mr. Hamlin up the steps, "that Mollie has not borrowed that gown of Harriet. But no; it fits her much too well. Some one must have given it to her as a present and she has kept the secret until to-night to surprise me." The "Automobile Girls" stood behind Mr. Hamlin and Harriet in the great vestibule just outside the famous Blue Room of the White House, where the President and his wife were waiting to receive their guests. The line was moving forward so slowly that the girls had a chance to look about them. Never had any one of them beheld such a beautiful spectacle. Of course the "Automobile Girls" had been present at a number of receptions during their brief social careers, but for the first time to-night they saw men in other than ordinary evening dress. The diplomats from other countries wore their superb court costumes with the insignia of their rank. The American Army and Navy officers had on their bright full dress uniforms. Bab thought the Russian Ambassador the most superb looking man she had ever seen, and Mollie blushed when Lieutenant Elmer Wilson bowed gallantly to her across the length of the hall. When the girls first took up their positions in the line, they believed they would never grow weary of looking about them. But by and by, as they waited and the number of people ahead of them only slowly decreased, they grew tired. A girl passed by Barbara and smiled. It was Marjorie Moore. She was not going to try to shake hands with the President. She had a note book and a pencil in her hand and was evidently bent on business. Barbara also caught a glimpse of Peter Dillon, but he did not come up to speak to them. Mr. Hamlin's charges at last entered the Blue Room. The President and his receiving party stood by a pair of great windows hung with heavy silk portieres. It was now almost time for the "Automobile Girls" to shake hands with the President. They were overcome with nervousness. Harriet was next to her father; Bab stood just behind Harriet, followed by Ruth, Grace and Mollie. "You are just supposed to shake hands with the President, not to talk to him," Harriet whispered. "Then the President's wife is next and you may greet the other women in the receiving line as you pass along. The Vice-President's wife stands next to the President's wife and the ladies of the Cabinet just after her." Bab watched Harriet very carefully. She was determined to make no false moves. Finally, Barbara heard her name announced by the Master of Ceremonies. She felt her heart stop beating for a moment, and the color mount to her cheeks. The next moment her hand was clasped in that of the President of the United States. Barbara said a little prayer of thankfulness when she had finished speaking to all the receiving ladies. She felt glad, indeed, when Mr. Hamlin drew her behind a thick blue silk cord, where the President's special guests were talking in groups together. Bab then watched Ruth, Grace and Mollie go through the same formality. Now nobody had ever warned Mollie that it was not good form to speak to the President before he spoke to her. She thought it was polite to make some kind of a remark when she was introduced to him. So all the way up the line she had been wondering what she ought to say. As the President took Mollie's little hand he bent over slightly. For a very small voice said, "I like Washington very much, Mr. President." The President smiled. "I am glad you do," he answered. A little later, Mr. Hamlin took the girls through all the state apartments of the White House. One of these rooms was less crowded than the others. Groups of Mr. Hamlin's friends were standing about laughing and talking together. Barbara was next Mr. Hamlin when she happened to glance toward a far corner of the room. There she saw her newspaper friend. The girl made a mysterious sign to Barbara to come over to her and to come alone. But Bab shook her head. Still she felt the girl's eyes on her. Each time she turned, Marjorie Moore again made her strange signal. Once she pointed significantly toward a group of people. But Bab only saw the broad back of the little Chinese Minister and the stately form of the Russian Ambassador. The two men were talking to a number of Washington officials whose names Barbara did not even know. Of course, Marjorie Moore's peculiar actions could not refer to them. But to save her life Bab could not find any one else nearby. Womanlike, Barbara's curiosity was aroused. What could the girl want with her? Evidently, her news was a secret, for Miss Moore did not come near Mr. Hamlin's party and Bab simply could not get away without offering some explanation to them. Barbara was growing tired of the reception. She had been introduced to so many people that her brain was fairly spinning in an effort to remember their names. Again Bab looked across at Miss Moore. This time the newspaper girl pointed with her pencil through a small open door, near which she was standing. Her actions said as plainly as any words could speak: "Follow me when you have a chance. There is something I must tell you!" The next instant Marjorie Moore vanished through this door and was lost to sight. A few minutes later Bab managed to slip over to that side of the room. She intended merely to peep out the open door to see whether Miss Moore were waiting for her in the hall. Bab carefully watched her opportunity. Mr. Hamlin and the girls were not looking. Now was her chance. She was just at the door, when some one intercepted her. "Ah! Good evening, Miss Thurston," said a suave voice. Barbara turned, blushing again to confront the Chinese Minister looking more magnificent than ever in his Imperial robes of state. The young girl paused and greeted the official. Still the Chinese Minister regarded her gravely with his inscrutable Oriental eyes that seemed to look her through and through. He seemed always about to ask her some question. Of course, Barbara was obliged to give up her effort to follow Marjorie Moore, though she was still devoured with curiosity to know what the girl had wished to say to her. The next ten minutes, wherever Bab went, she felt the Chinese Minister's gaze follow her. It was not until Barbara Thurston discovered that the Oriental gentleman had himself withdrawn from the reception room that she mustered up a sufficient courage to try her venture the second time. "Miss Moore, of course, is not expecting me now," Barbara thought. "But as I have a chance, I will see what has become of her." Bab peeped cautiously out through the still open door. She saw only an empty corridor with a servant standing idly in the hall. Should she go forward? No; Barbara did not, of course, dare to wander through the White House halls alone. She was too likely to find herself in some place to which visitors were not admitted. The servant who waited in the hall saw Barbara hesitate, then turn back. He leaned over and whispered mysteriously: "You are to come to the door at the west side, which opens on the lawn. The young woman left a message that she would wait for you there." "But I don't know the west side," Bab faltered hesitatingly, feeling that she ought to turn back, yet anxious to go on. "The young woman said it was most important for her to see you; I can show you the way to the west door," the man went on. Barbara now quickly made up her mind. Marjorie Moore was only a girl like herself. If she needed her or if she wanted to confide in her, Bab meant to answer the summons. Bab found the portico deserted. There was no one in sight. Down on the lawn, some distance ahead, she thought she saw a figure moving. Barbara drew her chiffon scarf more closely over her shoulders and ran quickly out into the garden without thinking. It was, of course, Marjorie Moore ahead of her. But Bab had not gone far, when the figure disappeared, and she realized her own foolishness. She must get back into the White House in a hurry before any one found out what she had done. It was exceedingly dark out on the lawn in contrast with the brilliant illumination of the house, and Barbara was running swiftly. She had begun to wonder what explanation she could make if Harriet or Mr. Hamlin asked where she had been. As usual, Barbara was repenting a rash impulse too late. She ran obliquely across the yard in order to return in a greater hurry. Between a clump of bushes set at some distance apart her feet struck against something soft and heavy and Bab pitched forward across the object. CHAPTER IX BAB'S DISCOVERY Then Barbara Thurston's heart turned sick with horror. She recognized, in the same instant, that she had fallen over a human body. In getting back on her own feet, Bab was obliged to touch the figure over which she had fallen. She shuddered with fright. It could not be possible that any one had been murdered in the grounds of the White House, while a great ball was being given on the inside. Had Marjorie Moore expected foul play and called on Bab to help her guard some one from harm? Barbara did not know what to do--to go on with her search for the newspaper girl, or go back to the White House and raise an alarm. Bab was standing up, but she dared not look at the figure at her feet. She was now more accustomed to the darkness and she did not know what one glance might reveal. "What a coward I am!" Bab thought. Trembling, she put out her hand and touched the body. It was warm, but the figure had fallen forward on its face. As Bab's hand slipped along over the object that lay so still on the hard ground, an even greater horror seized her. Her hand had come in contact with a skirt. The figure was that of a woman! Barbara dropped on her knees beside the figure. She gently turned the body over until it was face upward. One long stare at the face was enough. The woman who lay there was the young newspaper girl who had summoned Bab to follow her but a short time before. She still had on her shabby evening dress. The pad and pencil with which she took down her society items lay at her side. But Marjorie Moore's face was pale as death. Bab's tears dropped down on the girl's face. "My dear Miss Moore, what has happened? Can't you hear me?" Bab faltered. "It is Barbara Thurston! I tried to come to help you, but I could not get here until now." The figure lay apparently lifeless, but Bab knew now that the girl was still alive. Bab did not like to leave her, for what dreadful person might not stumble over the poor, unconscious girl? Yet how else could Bab get help? At this moment Bab looked up and saw a number of lighted cigars in the garden near the White House. Evidently a group of men had come out on the lawn to smoke. As Bab ran forward she saw one of the men move away from the others. He was whistling softly, "Kathleen Mavourneen, the bright stars are shining." "Oh, Mr. Dillon!" cried Bab. "Poor Miss Moore has been dreadfully hurt and is lying unconscious out here on the grass. Won't you please find Mr. Hamlin, or some one, to come to her aid?" "Miss Moore!" exclaimed Peter Dillon in a shocked tone. "I wonder whom the girl could have been spying upon to have gotten herself into such trouble? But, Miss Thurston, you ought not to be out here. Come back with me to the reception rooms. I will get some one to look after Miss Moore at once. It is best to keep this affair as quiet as possible." "I can't leave the poor girl alone," Bab demurred. "So please find Mr. Hamlin as soon as you can. I will ask two of these other men to take Miss Moore up on a side porch, out of the way of the guests." The rest of the group of men now came forward; their uniforms showed they were young Army and Navy officers. One of them was Lieutenant Elmer Wilson. "What a dreadful thing!" he exclaimed, as he and another officer, under Bab's directions, picked up Marjorie Moore's limp form and carried it into the light. "Some one has struck Miss Moore over the temple with a stick. She has a nasty bruise just there. But she is only stunned. She will come to herself presently." Mr. Hamlin now hurried out with Peter Dillon, followed by Ruth and Harriet. "Find our automobile; have it brought as near as possible. We must put the poor girl into it," Mr. Hamlin declared authoritatively. "Mr. Dillon is right. This affair must be kept an entire secret. It is incredible! Above all things, the newspapers must not get hold of it. It would be a nine days' wonder! Mr. Dillon, will you go to Miss Moore's paper? Say you feel sure the President himself would not wish this story to be published. Then you can find out where Miss Moore's mother lives, and see that she is told. The girl is not seriously injured, but she must be seen by a physician." "But you are not going to take Marjorie Moore to our house, Father," Harriet protested. "She is so--" Harriet checked herself just in time. She realized it would not be well to express her feeling toward the injured girl before so large a group of listeners. "I most certainly do intend to take Miss Moore to our house," interrupted Mr. Hamlin sternly. "Her father was an old friend of mine whom changes in politics made poor just before his death. His daughter is a brave girl. I have a great respect for her." In the excitement of helping their wounded visitor to bed, Barbara forgot all about Mollie's wonderful gown, and the questions she intended asking her. Bab and Ruth undressed Marjorie Moore, and stayed with her until the doctor and a nurse arrived. Then Bab went quickly to her own room and undressed by a dim light, so as not to disturb her sister. Mollie's face was turned toward the wall and she seemed to be fast asleep. There was no sign of the blue gown about to reawaken Bab's curiosity. Barbara was too weary from the many impressions of the evening and the fright that succeeded them, and hurriedly undressing she crept quietly to bed and was soon fast asleep. CHAPTER X THE CONFESSION It was almost dawn when Barbara began to dream that she heard low, suppressed sobs. No; she must be wrong, she was not dreaming. The sounds were too real. The sobs were close beside her, and Bab felt Mollie's shoulders heaving in an effort to hold them back. "Why, little sister," cried Bab in a frightened tone, putting out her hand and taking hold of Mollie, "what is the matter with you! Are you ill?" "No," sobbed Mollie. "There is nothing the matter. Please go to sleep again, Bab, dear. I did not mean to wake you up." "You would not cry, Mollie, if there was nothing the matter. Tell me at once what troubles you," pleaded Barbara, who was now wide awake. "If you are not ill, then something pretty serious is worrying you and you must tell me what it is." Mollie only buried her head in her pillow and sobbed harder than ever. "Tell me," Bab commanded. "It's the blue gown!" whispered Mollie under her breath. "The gown?" queried Barbara, suddenly recalling Mollie's wonderful costume at the President's reception. "Oh, yes. I have not had an opportunity to ask you where you got such a beautiful frock and how you happened not to tell me about it." "I was ashamed," Mollie sobbed. Barbara did not understand what Mollie meant, but she knew her sister would tell her everything now. "I bought the frock," Mollie confessed after a moment's hesitation. "That is I did not exactly buy it, for I did not have the money to pay for it. But Harriet was to pay for it and I was to give her back the money when I could." "How much did the gown cost, Mollie?" Bab inquired quietly, although her heart felt as heavy as lead. "It cost fifty dollars!" Mollie returned in a tired, frightened voice. "Oh, Mollie!" Bab exclaimed just at first. Then she repented. "Never mind, Molliekins; it can't be helped now. The dress is a beauty, and I suppose Harriet won't mind how long we take to pay her back. We must just save up and do some kind of work when we go home. I can coach some of the girls at school. So please don't cry your pretty eyes out. There is an old story about not crying over spilt milk, kitten. Go to sleep. Perhaps some one will have left us a fortune by morning." Barbara felt more wretched about her sister's confession than she was willing to let Mollie know. She thought if Mollie could once get to sleep, she could then puzzle out some method by which they could meet this debt. For fifty dollars did look like an immense sum to the two poor Thurston girls. "But, Bab dear, I have not told you the worst," Mollie added in tones of despair. "Mollie, what do you mean?" poor Bab asked, really frightened this time. "Harriet can't let me owe the money to her. Something perfectly awful has happened to Harriet, too. Promise me you will never tell, not even Ruth! Well, Harriet thought she could lend me the money. But, the day after we got home from the dressmaker's, that deceitful Madame Louise wrote poor Harriet the most awful note. She said that Harriet owed her such a dreadfully big bill, that she simply would not wait for her money any longer. She declared if Harriet did not pay her at once she would take her bill straight to Mr. Hamlin and demand the money. Now Harriet is almost frightened to death. She says her father will never forgive her, if he finds out how deeply in debt she is, and that he would not let her go out into society again this winter. Of course, Harriet went to see Madame Louise. She begged her for a little more time, and the dressmaker consented to let us have a week. But she says that at the end of that time she must have the money from me and from Harriet. Harriet is dreadfully distressed. She simply can't advance the money to me for, even if the dividend she expects comes in time, she will have to pay the money on her own account. Oh, Bab, what can we do? I just can't have Mr. Hamlin find out what I have done! He is so stern; he would just send me home in disgrace, and then what would Mother and Aunt Sallie and Mr. Stuart say? I shall just die of shame!" "Mr. Hamlin must not know," Barbara answered, when she could find her breath. Somehow her own voice sounded unfamiliar, it was so hoarse and strained. Yet Bab knew she must save Mollie. How was she to do it? "Do you think, Bab," Mollie asked, "that we could ask Ruth to lend us the money? I should be horribly ashamed to tell her what I have done. But Ruth is so sweet, and she could lend us the money without any trouble." "I have thought of that, Mollie," Barbara answered. "But, oh, we could not ask Ruth for the money! It is because she has been so awfully good to us, that I can't ask her. She has already done so much for us and she would be so pleased to help us now that somehow I would rather do most anything than ask her. Don't you feel the same way, Mollie?" "Yes, I do," Mollie agreed. "Only I just can't think what else we can do, Bab. I have worried and worried until I am nearly desperate. We have only one week in which to get hold of the money, Bab." "Yes, I know. But go to sleep now, Mollie. You are too tired to try to think any more. I will find some way out of the difficulty. Don't worry any more about it now." Bab kissed her sister's burning cheeks, whereat Mollie could only throw her arms about Barbara and cry: "Oh, Bab, I am so sorry and so ashamed! I shall never forget this as long as I live." Bab never closed her eyes again that night. A little while later she saw the gray dawn change into rose color, and the rose to the blue of the day-time sky. She heard several families of sparrows discussing their affairs while they made their morning toilets on the bare branches of the trees. At last an idea came to Barbara. She could pawn her jewelry and so raise the money they needed. She had the old-fashioned corals her mother had given to her on her first trip to Newport. There was also the beautiful ruby, which had been Mr. Presby's gift to her from the rich stores of his buried treasure. And the Princess Sophia had made Bab a present of a beautiful gold star when they were at Palm Beach. Barbara's other jewelry was marked with her initials. Now Bab had very little knowledge of the real value of her jewelry, and she had an equally dim notion of what a pawn shop was. But she did know that at pawn shops people were able to borrow money at a high rate of interest on their valuable possessions, and this seemed to be the only way out of their embarrassment. But how was Barbara to locate a pawn shop in Washington? And how was she to find her way there, without being found out either by Mr. Hamlin or any one of the girls? Bab was still puzzling over these difficulties when she went down to breakfast. "Miss Moore says she would like to see you, Barbara," Harriet Hamlin explained, when Bab had forced down a cup of coffee and eaten a small piece of toast. "Miss Moore is much better this morning, and a carriage is to take her home in a few hours. I have just been up to inquire about her. Father," continued Harriet, turning to Mr. Hamlin, "Miss Moore wants me to thank you for your kindness in bringing her here, and to say she hopes to be able to repay you some day. Marjorie Moore seems to think you discovered her out on the White House lawn, Barbara. However did you do it? I suppose you were out there walking with Peter Dillon. But it is against the rules." "Does Miss Moore happen to know how she was hurt, Daughter?" Mr. Hamlin queried. "Lieutenant Wilson declares the girl was struck a glancing blow on the head with the end of a loaded cane. And the doctor seemed to have the same idea last night." "Miss Moore does not understand just what did happen to her," Harriet replied. "Or at least she won't tell me. She declares she was out in the grounds looking for some one, when she was knocked down from behind. She never saw who struck her. How perfectly ridiculous for her to be running about the White House park alone at night! I wonder the guards permitted it. What do you suppose she was doing?" "Attending to her business, perhaps, Daughter," Mr. Hamlin returned dryly. "Miss Moore works exceedingly hard. It cannot always be pleasant for a refined young woman to do the work she is sometimes required to do. I hope you will be kind to her, Harriet, and help her when it is within your power." But Harriet only shrugged her shoulders and looked obstinate. "I should think Miss Moore would find the society news for her paper inside the reception rooms, rather than outside in the dark. It looks to me as though she went out into the grounds either to meet some one, or to find out what some one else was doing." None of the "Automobile Girls" or Mr. Hamlin made response to Harriet's unkind remark and they were all glad when breakfast was over and the discussion ended. Barbara at once went upstairs to the room that had been allotted to their wounded guest the night before. She found Marjorie Moore dressed in a shabby serge suit, lying on the bed looking pale and weak. A refined, middle-aged woman, with a sad face, sat by her daughter holding her hand. She was Marjorie's mother. The two women were waiting for the carriage to take them home. "I want to thank you, Miss Thurston," Marjorie Moore spoke weakly. "I believe it was you who found me. I ought not to have asked you to come out into the yard, but I did not dream there would be any danger to either one of us. I want you to believe that I did have a real reason for persuading you to join me, a reason that I thought important to your happiness, not to mine. But I cannot tell you what it was, now; perhaps because I may have made a mistake. I must have been struck by a tramp, who had managed to hide in the White House grounds. I have no other explanation of what happened to me. But--" Miss Moore stopped and hesitated. "I have an explanation of the reason I wanted to talk to you alone. Yet I cannot tell you what I mean to-day. I want to ask you to trust me if ever you need a friend in Washington." Bab thought the only friend she was likely to need was some one who could lend her fifty dollars. And Marjorie Moore was too poor to do that. She would have liked to ask the newspaper girl where she could find a pawn shop, but was ashamed to make her strange request before that gentle, sad-eyed woman, Marjorie Moore's mother. So Barbara only pressed the other girl's hand affectionately, and said she was glad to know she was better, and that she appreciated her friendship. CHAPTER XI IN MR. HAMLIN'S STUDY All morning Barbara pondered on how she could find a pawn shop in Washington, without asking questions and without being discovered. Her cheeks burned with humiliation and disgust at the very name pawn shop! Still Mollie must never know how much she dreaded her errand, and her mother must be spared the knowledge of their debt at any cost. About noon the Hamlin house was perfectly quiet. Grace and Ruth had gone out sight-seeing and Harriet and Mollie were both in their rooms. Mr. Hamlin was over at his office in the State Department. Bab had taken a book and gone downstairs to the library, pretending she meant to read, but really only desiring to think. She was feeling almost desperate. A week seemed such a little time in which to raise fifty dollars. Bab wished to try the pawn shop venture at once, so that in case it failed her, she would have time to turn somewhere else to secure the sum of money she needed. Barbara was idly turning over the pages of her book, staring straight ahead of her at nothing in particular, when she unexpectedly leaped to her feet. Her face flushed, but her lips took on a more determined curve. When Barbara Thurston undertook to accomplish a thing she usually found a way. Only weak people are deterred by obstacles. Bab had remembered that she had heard Mr. Hamlin say that he kept a Washington directory in his private study. She knew that by searching diligently through this book she could find the address of a pawn shop. Now was the time, of all others, to accomplish her purpose. With Bab, to think, was to do. Barbara knew that no one was expected to enter Mr. Hamlin's study. She did not dream, however, that she would be doing any harm just to slip quietly into it, find the directory and slip quickly out again, without touching a single other thing in the room. As has already been explained, Mr. Hamlin's study was a small room adjoining the drawing-room, and separated from it by a pair of heavy curtains and folding doors, which were occasionally left open, when Mr. Hamlin was not in the house, so that the room could be aired and at the same time shut it off from public view. Bab went straight through the hall and entered Mr. Hamlin's study through a small back door. The room was dark, and Bab thought empty when she entered it. The inside blinds were closed, but there was sufficient light through the openings for Barbara to see her way about perfectly. She was bent upon business and went straight to her task without pausing to open the window, for she wished to take no liberties with Mr. Hamlin's apartment. The four walls of the study were lined with books, reports from Congress; everything pertaining to the business of the government at Washington. Certainly finding that old-time needle in a haystack was an easy duty compared with locating the city directory in such a wilderness of books. First on her hands and knees, then on tip-toe, Bab thoroughly searched through every shelf. No directory could be found. "I can hardly see," Bab decided at last. "It will not do any harm for me to turn on an electric light." Bab was so intent on her occupation that, even after she had turned on the light, which hung immediately over Mr. Hamlin's private desk, she still thought she was alone in the room. Lying under a heap of magazines and pages of manuscript on Mr. Hamlin's desk, was a large book, which looked very much as though it might be the desired directory. Still Bab wavered. She knew no one was ever allowed to lay a hand on Mr. Hamlin's desk. Even Harriet herself never dared to touch it. But what harm could it do Mr. Hamlin for Barbara to pick up the book she desired? She would not disarrange a single paper. Bab reached out, intending to secure what she wished. But immediately she felt her arm seized and held in a tight grip. A low contralto voice said distinctly: "What do you mean by stealing in here to search among Mr. Hamlin's papers?" The vise-like hold on Bab's arm continued. The fingers were slender, but strong as steel, and the grip hurt Barbara so, she wanted to cry out from the pain. "Answer me," the soft voice repeated. "What are you doing, prying among Mr. Hamlin's papers, when he is out of the house? You know he never allows any one to touch them." [Illustration: Bab Felt Her Arm Seized In a Tight Grip.] "I am not prying," cried Bab indignantly. "I only came in here to look for the city directory. I thought it might be on Mr. Hamlin's desk." "A likely story," interrupted Bab's accuser scornfully. "If you wished the directory, why did you not ask Mr. Hamlin to lend it to you? You wanted something else! What was it? Tell me?" The hold on Barbara's arm tightened. "Let go my arm, Mrs. Wilson," returned Barbara firmly. "I am telling you the truth. How absurd for you to think anything else! What could I wish in here? But I needed to look into the directory at once--for a--for a special purpose," Barbara finished lamely. Then her eyes flashed indignantly. "I am a guest in Mr. Hamlin's house," she said, coldly. "How do you know, Mrs. Wilson, that I have not received his permission to enter this room? But you! Will you be good enough to explain to me why you were hiding behind the curtains in Mr. Hamlin's study when I came in? You, too, knew Mr. Hamlin was not at home. Besides, Harriet receives her guests in the drawing-room, not in here." "I came to see Mr. Hamlin on private business," Mrs. Wilson replied haughtily. "He is an old and intimate friend of mine, so I took the liberty of coming in here to wait for his return. But seeing you enter, and suspecting you of mischief, I did conceal myself behind the curtains. I shall be very glad, however, to remain here with you until Mr. Hamlin returns from his office. I can readily explain my intrusion and you will have an equal opportunity to tell Mr. Hamlin what you were doing in here." Now Barbara, who had slept very little the night before, and had worried dreadfully all morning, did a very foolish thing. She blushed crimson at Mrs. Wilson's request. She might very readily have agreed to stay, and could simply have explained later to Mr. Hamlin that she had come into his private room because she needed to see the directory. But would Mr. Hamlin have inquired of Barbara her reason for desiring the directory? This is, of course, what Barbara feared, and it caused her to behave most unwisely. She trembled and fixed on Mrs. Wilson two pleading brown eyes. "Please do not ask me to wait here until Mr. Hamlin returns," she entreated. "And, if you don't mind, you will not mention to Mr. Hamlin that I came into his study without asking his permission. Truly I only wanted to look at the directory, and I will tell Harriet that I have been in here." Mrs. Wilson eyed Bab, with evident suspicion. "Why are you so anxious to see the directory?" she inquired. "If you wish to know a particular address why do you not ask your friends, the Hamlins, about it?" "That is something that I cannot explain to you, Mrs. Wilson," said Barbara, a look of fear leaping into her eyes that was not lost on her companion. "Very well, if you cannot explain yourself, I shall lay the whole matter before Mr. Hamlin the instant he comes home," returned Mrs. Wilson cruelly. "It looks very suspicious, to say the least, when a guest takes advantage of his absence to prowl among his private papers." Tears of humiliation sprang to Barbara's eyes. It was bad enough to have Mrs. Wilson doubt her integrity, but it would be infinitely worse if stern Mr. Hamlin were told of her visit to his study. Bab felt that he would be sure to believe that she was deliberately meddling with matters that did not concern her. She looked at Mrs. Wilson. The forbidding expression on her face left no doubt in Bab's mind that the older woman would carry out her threat. Suddenly it flashed across the young girl that perhaps if Mrs. Wilson really knew the truth she would agree to drop the affair without saying anything to Mr. Hamlin. "Perhaps it will be better after all for me to tell you my reason for being here," Bab said with a gentle dignity that caused Mrs. Wilson's stern expression to soften. "What I am about to say, however, is in strictest confidence, as it involves another person besides myself. I shall expect you to respect my confidence, Mrs. Wilson," she added firmly. Mrs. Wilson made a jesture of acquiescence. Then Barbara poured forth the story of Mollie's extravagance and her subsequent remorse over the difficulties into which her love of dress had plunged both of the Thurston girls. "It is just this way, Mrs. Wilson," Bab concluded. "We have very little money of our own and we simply can't ask Mother to pay this debt. I won't ask Ruth to lend it to us because we are too deeply indebted to her already. I have some jewelry that is valuable; a ring, a pin and several trinkets, and I intend to take them to a pawn shop and borrow enough money on them to free Mollie of this debt. Then we will save our allowance money and redeem the things. I have never been in a pawn shop and don't know anything about them, so I thought I would find the address of a pawn broker in the directory and go there this afternoon. That is why I wanted the directory and why I came into Mr. Hamlin's study. Now that I have told you, perhaps you will feel differently about saying anything to Mr. Hamlin. He is so stern and cold that he would never forgive me if he knew of all this, although I am doing nothing wrong. It is very humiliating to be placed in this position, but now that the mischief has been done we shall have to pay for the gown and set it all down under the head of bitter experience." Mrs. Wilson regarded Barbara steadily while she was speaking. There was a look of admiration in the older woman's eyes when Barbara had finished. "You are a very brave girl, Miss Thurston, to take your sister's trouble on your own shoulders. I am very glad that you saw fit to tell me what you have. I hope you will forgive me for my seeming cruelty, but I simply cannot endure anything dishonorable or underhanded. To show you that I believe what you have told me, and to prove to you that your confidence in me is well founded, I propose to help you out of your difficulty." "You?" queried Bab in surprise. "I--I don't understand." "I will lend you the money to pay the modiste," exclaimed Mrs. Wilson. "Then you shall pay it back whenever it is convenient for you to do so, and no one will ever be the wiser. We need tell no one that we met here in the study this afternoon." "But--I--can't," protested Barbara rather weakly. "It wouldn't be right. It would be asking entirely too much of you and--" Mrs. Wilson held up her hand authoritatively. "My dear little girl," she said quickly. "I insist on lending you this money. I am a mother, and if my son were in any little difficulty and needed help, I should like to feel that perhaps some one would be ready to do for him the little I am going to do for you. Come to my house this afternoon and I will have the money ready for you. Will you do this, Barbara?" she asked extending her hand to the young girl. Barbara hesitated for a second, then she placed her hand in that of Mrs. Wilson's. "I will take the money," she said slowly, "and I thank you for your kindness. I hope I shall be able to do something for you in return to show my appreciation." "Perhaps you may have the opportunity," replied Mrs. Wilson meaningly. "Who knows. I think I won't wait any longer for Mr. Hamlin. Come to my house at half past four o'clock this afternoon. I shall expect you. Good-bye, my dear." "Good-bye," replied Bab mechanically, as she accompanied Mrs. Wilson to the vestibule door. "I'll be there at half past four." CHAPTER XII BARBARA'S SECRET ERRAND After the older woman had departed, Bab remained in a brown study. Had she been wise in accepting Mrs. Wilson's offer? Would it have been better after all to ask Ruth for the loan of the money? Bab sighed heavily. She had been so happy and so interested in Washington, and now Mollie's ill-advised purchase had changed everything. For a moment Barbara felt a little resentment toward Mollie, then she shook off the feeling as unworthy. Mollie had experienced bitter remorse for her folly, and Bab knew that her little sister had learned a lesson she would never forget. As for the money, it should be paid back at the earliest opportunity. Barbara turned and went slowly upstairs to prepare for luncheon. She found Mollie sitting by the window in their room. Her pretty mouth drooped at the corners and her eyes were red with weeping. "Cheer up, Molliekins!" exclaimed Bab. "I've found a way out of the difficulty." "Oh, Bab," said Mollie in a shamed voice. "Did you have to tell Ruth?" "No, dear," responded Bab. "Ruth knows nothing about it. Bathe your face at once. It is almost time to go down to luncheon, and your eyes are awfully red. While you are fixing up I'll tell you about it." "Oh, Bab!" Mollie said contritely when her sister had finished her account of what had happened in the study. "You're the best sister a girl ever had. I don't believe I'll ever be so silly about my clothes again. This has cured me. I'm so sorry." "Of course you are, little Sister," soothed Bab. "Don't say another word. Here comes Ruth and Grace." The two girls entered the room at that moment and a little later the four descended to luncheon. "I am going to do some shopping this afternoon," announced Ruth. "Would you girls like to do the stores with me?" "I'll go," replied Grace. "I want to buy a pair of white gloves and I need a number of small things." "I have an engagement this afternoon," said Harriet enigmatically. "I must ask you to excuse me, Ruth." "Certainly, Harriet," returned Ruth. "How about you and Mollie, Bab?" "Mollie can go with you," answered Bab, coloring slightly. "But would you be disappointed if I do not go? I have something else that I am obliged to see to this afternoon." "Of course, I'd love to have you with me, Bab, but you know your own business best." Suspecting that Bab wished to spend the afternoon in going over her own and Mollie's rather limited wardrobe, Ruth made no attempt to persuade Bab to make one of the shopping party, and when a little later A. Bubble carried the three girls away, she went directly upstairs to prepare for her call on Mrs. Wilson. It was a beautiful afternoon, and Bab decided that she would walk to her destination. As she swung along through the crisp December air the feeling of depression that had clung to her ever since Mollie had made her tearful confession vanished, and Bab became almost cheerful. She would save every penny, she reflected hopefully, and when she and Mollie received their next month's pocket money, she would send that to Mrs. Wilson. It would take some time to pay back the fifty dollars, but Mrs. Wilson had assured her that she could return it at her own convenience. Bab felt that her vague distrust of this whole-souled, generous woman had been groundless, and in her impulsive, girlish fashion she was ready to do everything in her power to make amends for even doubting this fascinating stranger who had so nobly come to her rescue. By following carefully the directions given her by Mrs. Wilson for finding her house, Bab arrived at her destination with very little confusion. She looked at her watch as she ascended the steps and saw that it was just half past four o'clock. "I'm on time at any rate," she murmured as she rang the bell. "Is Mrs. Wilson here?" she inquired of the maid who answered the bell. "Come this way, please," said the maid, and Bab followed her across the square hall and through a door hung with heavy portieres. She found herself in what appeared to be half library, half living room, and seemed especially designed for comfort. A bright fire burned in the open fire place at one side of the room, and before the fire stood a young man, who turned abruptly as Bab entered. "How do you do, Miss Thurston," said Peter Dillon, coming forward and taking her hand. "Why--I thought--" stammered Barbara, a look of keen disappointment leaping into her brown eyes, "that Mrs. Wilson--was--" "To be here," finished Peter Dillon, smiling almost tantalizingly at her evident embarrassment. "So she was, but she received a telephone message half an hour ago and was obliged to go out for a little while. I happened to be here when the message came and she told me that she expected you to call at half past four o'clock and asked me if I would wait and receive you. She left a note for you in my care. Here it is." Peter Dillon handed Bab an envelope addressed to "Miss Barbara Thurston," looking at her searchingly as he did so. Bab colored hotly under his almost impertinent scrutiny as she reached out her hand for the envelope. She had an uncomfortable feeling at that moment that perhaps Peter Dillon knew as much about the contents of the envelope as she did. "Thank you, Mr. Dillon," she said in a low voice. "I think I won't wait for Mrs. Wilson. Please tell her that I thank her and that I'll write." "Very well," replied the young man. "I will deliver your message." He held the heavy portieres back for Bab as she stepped into the hall and accompanied her to the vestibule door. "Good-bye, Miss Thurston," he said with a peculiar, meaning flash of his blue eyes that completed Bab's discomfiture. "I shall hope to see you in a day or two." Bab hurried down the steps and into the street. The shadows were beginning to fall and in another hour it would be dark. When she reached the corner she looked about her in bewilderment, then with a little impatient exclamation she wheeled and retraced her steps. She had been going in the wrong direction. She had passed Mrs. Wilson's house, when a murmur of familiar voices caused her to start and look back at it in amazement. Stepping off the walk and behind the trunk of a great tree, Barbara stared from her place of concealment, hardly able to believe the evidence of her own eyes. Peter Dillon was standing just outside the vestibule door, his hat in his hand and just inside stood Mrs. Wilson. The two were deep in conversation and Bab heard the young man's musical laugh ring out as though something had greatly amused him. Filled with a sickening apprehension that she was the cause of his laughter, Bab stepped from behind the tree unobserved by the two on the step above and walked on down the street assailed by the disquieting suspicion that Mrs. Wilson had had a motive far from disinterested in lending her the fifty dollars. She glanced down at the envelope in her hand. She felt positive that it contained the money, and her woman's intuition told her that Peter Dillon's presence in the house had not been a matter of chance. She experienced a strong desire to run back to the house and return the envelope unopened, and at the same time ask Mrs. Wilson why Peter had untruthfully declared that she was not at home. Bab paused irresolutely. Then a vision of Mollie's tearful face rose before her, and squaring her shoulders, she marched along through the gathering twilight, determined to use the borrowed money to pay Mollie's debt and face the consequences whatever they might be. When Bab reached home she found that Harriet had come in and gone to her room, while the other girls had not yet returned. Barbara was glad that no one had discovered her absence, and divesting herself of her hat and coat she hurried up to her room. Closing and locking the door, she sat down and tore open the envelope and with hands that trembled, drew out a folded paper. Inside the folded paper was a crisp fifty dollar bill. Mrs. Wilson had kept her word. While she sat fingering the bill, she heard voices downstairs and a moment later Mollie tried the door, then knocked. Bab rose and unlocked the door for her sister. "Did you get it, Bab?" asked Mollie eagerly, a deep flush rising to her face. "Yes, Molliekins, here it is," answered Barbara quietly, holding up the money. "To-morrow you and I will go to Madame Louise and pay the bill." "Oh, Bab," said Mollie, her lips quivering. "I'm so sorry. I've been so much trouble, but I'll save every cent of my pocket money and pay Mrs. Wilson as soon as I can. It was so good of her to lend us the money wasn't it?" Barbara merely nodded. Her early gratitude toward Mrs. Wilson had vanished, in spite of her efforts to believe in Mrs. Wilson, her first feeling of distrust had returned. She thought gloomily, as she listened to Mollie's praise of Mrs. Wilson's generosity, that perhaps after all it would have been better to pay a visit to the pawn broker. CHAPTER XIII A FOOLISH GIRL In the meantime Harriet Hamlin was equally as unhappy as Bab and Mollie. For, instead of owing Madame Louise a mere fifty dollars, she owed her almost five hundred and she dared not ask her father for the money to pay the bill. The dividend, with which she had tempted Mollie to make her ill-advised purchase, amounted to only twenty-five dollars. It had seemed a sufficient sum to Harriet to pay down on her friend's investment, but she knew the amount was not large enough to stay the wrath of her dressmaker, as far as her own account was concerned. Now, Harriet had never intended to let her bill mount up to such a dreadful sum. She was horrified when she found out how large it really was. Yet month by month Harriet had been tempted to add to her stock of pretty clothes, without inquiring about prices, and she now found herself in this painful predicament. Harriet, also, thought of every possible scheme by which she might raise the money she needed. On one thing she was determined. Her father should never learn of her indebtedness. She would take any desperate measure before this should happen; for Harriet stood very much in awe of her father, and knew that he had a special horror of debt. Since Charlie Meyers had behaved so rudely to Barbara, on the night of their automobile ride to Mt. Vernon, Harriet had had nothing to do with him. But now, in her anxiety, she decided to appeal to him. She could think of no other plan. Charlie Meyers was immensely rich and a very old friend. Five hundred dollars could mean very little to him, and Harriet could, of course, pay him back later on. She fully intended to live within her allowance in the future and save her money until she had paid every dollar that she owed. But how was Harriet to see Charlie Meyers? After all she had said about him to the "Automobile Girls," she was really ashamed to invite him to her house. So Harriet dispatched a note to the young man, making an appointment with him to meet her on a corner some distance from the house on the same afternoon that Bab made her uncomfortable visit to Mrs. Wilson. Charlie Meyers was highly elated when he read Harriet Hamlin's note. He had known her since she was a little girl in short frocks and was very fond of her. He had been deeply hurt by her coldness to him since their automobile party, but he was such an ill-bred fellow that he simply had not understood how badly he had behaved. He did know that Mr. Hamlin disliked him and did not enjoy his attentions to his daughter; so he hated Mr. Hamlin in consequence. When Harriet's note arrived, he interpreted it to mean that she was sorry she had treated him unkindly, and that she did care for him in spite of her father's opposition. So he drove down to the designated corner in his car, feeling very well pleased with himself. Harriet, however, started out to meet the young man feeling ashamed of herself. She knew that she was behaving very indiscreetly, but she believed that Charlie Meyers would be ready to help her and that she could make him do anything she wished. She accepted his invitation to take a ride, but she put off the evil moment of voicing her request as long as possible, and as they glided along in Meyers' car, she made herself as agreeable to her escort as she knew how to be. After they had driven some distance out from Washington in the direction of Arlington, the old home of General Robert E. Lee, Charlie Meyers said bluntly to Harriet: "Now, Harriet, what's the matter? You said in your note that you wanted to see me about something important. What is it?" Harriet stopped abruptly and looked rather timidly at Meyers. She had been trying in vain to lead up to the point of asking her favor, and here her companion had given her the very opportunity she required. Yet Harriet hesitated, and the laughter died away on her lips. She knew she was doing a very wrong thing in asking this young man to lend her money. But Harriet had been spoiled by too much admiration and she had had no mother's influence in the four years of her life when she most needed it. She was determined not to ask her father's help, and she knew of no one else to whom she could appeal. "I am not feeling very well, Charlie," Harriet answered queerly, turning a little pale and trying to summon her courage. "You've been entertaining too much company!" Charlie Meyers exclaimed. "I don't think much of that set of 'Automobile Girls' you have staying with you. They are good-looking enough, but they are kind of standoffish and superior." "No, indeed; I am not having too much company," Harriet returned indignantly, forgetting she must not let herself grow angry with her ill-bred friend. "I am perfectly devoted to every one of the 'Automobile Girls,' and Ruth Stuart is my first cousin." Harriet and Charlie were both silent for a little while after this unfortunate beginning to their conversation, for Harriet did not know exactly how to go on. "I am worried," she began again, after a slight pause in which she counted the trees along the road to see how fast their car was running. "I am worried because I am in a great deal of trouble." "You haven't been getting engaged, have you, Harriet?" asked the young man anxiously. "If you want to break it off, just leave matters to me." Harriet laughed in spite of herself. It seemed so perfectly absurd to her to be expected to leave a matter as important to her happiness as her engagement to a person like Charlie Meyers to settle. Charlie Meyers was twenty-two years of age. He had refused to go to college and had never even finished high school. His father had died when he was a child, leaving him to the care of a stepmother who had little affection for him. At the age of twenty-one the boy came into control of his immense fortune. So it was not remarkable that Charlie Meyers, who had almost no education, no home influence and a vast sum of money at his disposal, thought himself of tremendous importance without making any effort to prove himself so. "No, I am not engaged, Charlie," Harriet answered frankly. "But I do want you to do me a favor, and I wonder if you will do it?" The young man flushed. His red face grew redder still. What was Harriet going to ask him? He began to feel suspicious. Now this rich young man had a peculiarity of which Harriet had not dreamed, or she would never have dared to ask him for a loan. He was very stingy, and he had an abnormal fear that people were going to try to make use of him. Harriet had started with her request, so she went bravely on: "I'll just tell you the whole story, Charlie," she declared, "so you will see what an awful predicament I am in. I know you won't tell Father, and you may be able to help me out. I owe Madame Louise, my dressmaker, five hundred dollars! She has threatened to bring suit against me at the end of a week unless I pay her what I owe before that time. Would you lend me the money, Charlie? I am awfully ashamed to ask you. But I could pay you back in a little while." Harriet's voice dropped almost to a whisper, she was so embarrassed. Her companion must have heard her, for he was sitting beside her in the automobile, but he made no answer. Poor Harriet sat very still for a moment overcome with humiliation. She had trampled upon her pride and self-respect in making her request, and she had begun to realize more fully how very unwise she had been in asking such a favor of this young man. Yet it had really never dawned on the girl that Charlie Meyers could refuse her request. When he did not answer, she began to feel afraid. Harriet could not have spoken again for the world. Her usually haughty head was bent low, and her lids dropped over her eyes in which the tears of humiliation were beginning to gather. "Look here, Harriet," protested the young man at last. "Five hundred dollars is a good deal of money even for me to lend. What arrangements do you want to make about paying it back?" "Why, Charlie!" Harriet exclaimed. "You can have the interest on the money, if you like. I never thought of that." "You can pay me back the interest if you wish," Charlie replied sullenly. "But you know, Harriet, that I like you an awful lot, and for a long time I've been wanting you to marry me. But you've always refused me. Now if you'll promise to marry me, I'll let you have the money. But if you won't, why you can't have it--that's all! I am not going to lend my good money to you, and then have you go your way and perhaps not have anything more to do with me for weeks. I tell you, Harriet, I like you an awful lot and you know it; but I am not going to be made a fool of, and you might as well find it out right now." Harriet was so angry she simply could not speak for a few minutes. The enormity of her mistake swept over her. But silence was her best weapon, for Charlie Meyers began to feel ashamed. He was dimly aware that he had insulted Harriet, and he really did care for her as much as he was capable of caring for any one. "I didn't mean to make you angry, Harriet," he apologized in a half frightened voice. "I don't see why you can't care for me anyhow. I've asked you to marry me over and over again. And I can just tell you, you won't have to worry over debts to dressmakers ever again, if you marry me. I've got an awful lot of money." "I am very glad you have, Mr. Meyers," Harriet answered coldly, with a slight catch in her voice. "But I am certainly sorry I asked you to lend any of it to me. Will you never refer to this conversation again, and take me home as soon as you can? I don't think it is worth while for me even to refuse your offer. But please remember that my affection is something that mere money cannot buy." Harriet's tone was so scornful that the young man winced. He could think of nothing to reply, and turned his car around in shame-faced silence. Harriet too was very quiet. She would have liked to tell her companion what she truly thought of him, how coarse and ill-bred he was, but she set her lips and remained silent. She did not wish to make an enemy of Charlie Meyers. After that day's experience, she would simply drop him from her list of acquaintances and have nothing more to do with him. Stupid though he was, the discomfited young man felt Harriet's silent contempt. He wanted to apologize to her, to explain, to say a thousand things. But he was too dense to know just what he should say. It was better for him that he did wait to make his apology until a later day, when Harriet's anger had in a measure cooled and she was even more miserable and confused than she was at that time. "I am awfully sorry, Harriet," Charlie Meyers stumbled over his words as he helped her out of his machine. "You know I didn't exactly mean to refuse your request. I'll be awfully glad to--" But Harriet's curt good-bye checked his apologetic speech, and he turned and drove swiftly away. CHAPTER XIV "GRANT NO FAVORS!" "Mrs. Wilson's tea is at four o'clock, girls, remember," Harriet announced a day or so later, looking up from the note she was writing. "Are you actually going sight-seeing again to-day before the reception? Truly, I never imagined such energy!" "Oh, come, Harriet Hamlin, don't be sarcastic," Ruth rejoined. "If you had not lived so long in Washington you would be just as much interested in everything as the 'Automobile Girls' are. But Bab and I are the only ones to go sight-seeing to-day. Mollie isn't feeling well, and Grace is staying to console her. We shall be back in plenty of time. Why don't you lie down for a while! You look so tired." "Oh, I am all right," Harriet answered gently. "Good-bye, children. Be good and remember you have promised not to be late." Ruth and Bab were highly anxious for a walk and talk together, and they had a special enterprise on hand for this afternoon. Bab had received a mysterious summons from her newspaper friend, Marjorie Moore. The note had asked Bab to bring Ruth, and to come to the Visitors' Gallery in the Senate Chamber at an appointed time. Marjorie Moore chose this strange meeting place because she had a "special story" of the Senate to write for her paper and was obliged to be in the gallery. Barbara was not particularly surprised at the request. She knew that Marjorie Moore had been wishing to make her a confidant ever since the reception at the White House. And she knew that the girl could not come to Mr. Hamlin's house because of Harriet's hostile attitude toward her. So Bab confided the whole story to Ruth, and feeling much mystified and excited, the two girls set out for the Capitol. During the long walk Barbara thought of her own secret, which she longed to confide to Ruth, but she dared not tell Ruth of the borrowed money for fear Ruth would at once insist on paying her debt. The money had to be paid, of course, and Bab hoped to pay it back at an early date, but she had not yet come to the point where she could bear to ask Ruth for it. When Ruth and Bab finally reached the Capitol building, and made their way to the Visitors' Gallery in the Senate Chamber, Marjorie Moore was not there. She had failed to keep her appointment. "I am not so very sorry Miss Moore has not come," Barbara remarked to Ruth. "She seems to be such a mysterious kind of person, always suggesting something and never really telling you what it is." Ruth laughed. "The 'Automobile Girls' hate mysteries, don't they, Bab? But goodness knows, we are always being involved in them!" The two visitors sat down to listen to the speeches of United States Senators. There was some excitement in the Chamber, Bab decided, but neither she nor Ruth could exactly understand what was going on. Both girls listened and watched the proceedings below them with such intensity that they forgot all about Marjorie Moore and her strange request. A few moments later she dropped down into the vacant seat next to Barbara. She looked more hurried and agitated than ever. Her hat was on one side, and her coat collar was half doubled under. She was a little paler from her trying experience of a few nights before, and an ugly bruise showed over her temple. But she made no reference to her accident. "I am sorry I am late," she whispered. "But come back here in the far corner of the gallery with me. I want to talk with you just half a minute. I am so busy I can't stay with you any longer. I just felt I must see you, Miss Thurston, before you go to tea with Mrs. Wilson this afternoon." "Tea with Mrs. Wilson!" Bab ejaculated. "How did you know we were going to Mrs. Wilson's tea? And has that anything to do with your message to me?" Barbara did not speak in her usual friendly tones. She was getting decidedly cross. It seemed to her that she had been under some one's supervision ever since her arrival in Washington. "Yes, it has, Miss Thurston," the newspaper girl replied quickly. "I want to ask you something. Promise me you will grant no one a favor, no matter who asks it of you to-day?" Barbara flushed. "Why how absurd, Miss Moore. I really cannot make you any such promise. It is too foolish." "Foolish or not, you must promise me," Marjorie Moore insisted. Then she turned earnestly to Ruth. "I know you have a great deal of influence with your friend. If she will not agree to what I ask her, won't you make her promise you this: She is not to consent to do a favor for any one this afternoon, no matter how simple the favor seems to be. Do you understand?" Ruth looked at Marjorie Moore blankly, but something in the newspaper girl's earnest expression arrested her attention. "I don't see why you won't make Miss Moore the promise she begs of you, Bab," Ruth argued. "It seems a simple thing she has asked you. And I don't think it is very nice of you, dear, to refuse her, even though her request does seem a little absurd to you." "But won't you tell me why you ask me to be so exceedingly unaccommodating, Miss Moore?" Bab retorted. Marjorie Moore shook her head. "That's just the trouble. Again I can't tell you why I ask this of you. But I want to assure you of one thing. It would mean a great deal more to me, personally, to have you agree to do the favor that may or may not be asked of you this afternoon. I am the only outside person in Washington who knows of a certain game that is to be played. It would mean a big scoop for my paper and a lot of money for me if I would just let things drift. But I like you too well to hold my tongue, though I am not going to tell you anything more. And I certainly won't beg you to do what I ask of you. Of course you may do just as you please. Good-bye; I am too busy to talk any more to-day." Before Barbara could make up her mind what to answer, the newspaper woman hurried away. Ruth looked decidedly worried after Marjorie Moore's departure. But Barbara was still incredulous and a little bored at being kept so completely in the dark. "Look here, Bab," Ruth advised, as the two girls walked slowly home together, "you did not promise Miss Moore to do what she asked of you. But you must promise me. Oh, I know it seems absurd! And I am not exactly blaming you for refusing to make that promise to Miss Moore. But, Bab, we cannot always judge the importance of little things. So I, at least, shall be much happier at this particular tea if you will promise me not to do a single thing that any one asks you to do." Both girls laughed gayly at Ruth's request. "Won't I be an agreeable guest, Ruth?" Bab mimicked. "If any one asks me to sit down, I must say, 'No; I insist on standing up. Because I have promised my friend Miss Stuart not to do a single thing I am requested to do all afternoon.' I wish I did not have to go to Mrs. Wilson's tea to-day." "You need not joke, Bab," Ruth persisted. "And you need not pretend you would have to behave so foolishly. I only ask you to promise me what you would not agree to, when Marjorie Moore asked it of you: 'Don't do any favor for any one, no matter who asks it of you this afternoon!'" Bab gave up. "All right, Ruth, dear; I promise," she conceded. "You know very well that I can't refuse you anything, though I do think you and Miss Moore are asking me to be ridiculous. I do hereby solemnly swear to be, for the rest of this day, the most unaccommodating young person in the whole world. But beware, Ruth Stuart! The boomerang may return and strike you. Don't dare request me to do you a favor until after the bells chime midnight, when I shall be released from my present idiotic vow." Mrs. Wilson's afternoon teas were not like any others in Washington. They were not crowded affairs, where no one had a chance to talk, but small companies of guests especially selected by Mrs. Wilson for their congeniality. So Mrs. Wilson was regarded as one of the most popular hostesses at the Capital and distinguished people came to her entertainments who could not be persuaded to go anywhere else. Harriet and the four "Automobile Girls" were delighted to see a number of service uniforms when they entered the charming French drawing-room of their hostess, which was decorated in old rose draperies against ivory tinted walls. Lieutenant Elmer Wilson's friends, young Army and Navy officers, were out in full force. They were among the most agreeable young men in Washington society. Lieutenant Elmer at once attached himself to Mollie; and his attentions might have turned the head of that young woman if she had not been feeling unusually sobered by her recent experience with debt. Barbara soon recognized the two young men who had helped her carry Marjorie Moore from the lawn to the White House veranda. But neither one of them referred to the incident while there were other people surrounding them. Finally an opportunity came to one of the two men to speak to Barbara. He leaned over and whispered softly: "How is the young woman we rescued the other night? I almost thought she had been killed. We have been sworn to secrecy. But one of my friends has an idea that he saw the man who may have attacked Miss Moore. He was out on a porch before the rest of us joined him, and he swears he saw two figures at some distance across the lawn." Bab shuddered. "I was on the lawn. Perhaps he saw me." "No," her companion argued, unconvinced. "My friend is sure he saw two men; one of them was rather heavily built--" Peter Dillon's approach cut short the conversation and the young Army officer turned away, as Peter joined Bab. Barbara hardly turned around to greet the newcomer. She did not like Peter Dillon and she was very anxious to hear what her previous companion had to say. So Bab only gave Mr. Dillon her haughtiest bow. Peter did not appear discouraged; he stood for a moment smiling at Bab good humoredly, the boyish look shining in his near-sighted dark blue eyes. Barbara was forced to speak to him. "How do you do, Mr. Dillon?" she asked at last. "Very well indeed," replied the young man cheerfully. "Did you arrive home safely the other day?" Barbara colored hotly. She felt certain now that despite her promise of secrecy Mrs. Wilson had betrayed her confidence and told Peter Dillon about the borrowed money. Why she had done so was a mystery and why he had lied to Bab in saying Mrs. Wilson was out was also a problem Bab could not solve. While all this was passing through her mind Peter stood regarding her with a quizzical smile. Then he said smoothly: "Miss Thurston, will you do me a favor?" Bab flashed a peculiar glance at him. "No," she replied abruptly. The young man looked surprised. "I am sorry," he declared. "I was only going to ask you to go in the other room to look at a picture with me." A little later in the afternoon, Harriet managed to get the four "Automobile Girls" together. "Mrs. Wilson wishes us to stay to dinner with her," Harriet explained. "She has asked eight or ten other people and Father has telephoned that he will come in after dinner to take us home." CHAPTER XV BAB REFUSES TO GRANT A FAVOR The dinner party was delightful. The "Automobile Girls" had not had such a good time since their arrival in Washington. Mrs. Wilson was a charming hostess. She was particularly gracious to Bab, and the young girl decided to forget the disquieting suspicions she had harbored against this fascinating woman and enjoy herself. It was almost ten o'clock. Mr. Hamlin had not yet arrived at Mrs. Wilson's. Bab was sitting in one corner of the drawing-room talking gayly with a young Annapolis graduate, who was telling her all about his first cruise, when Elmer Wilson interrupted them. "I am terribly sorry to break into your conversation like this, Miss Thurston," he apologized. "But Mother wishes to have a little talk with you in the library before you leave here. I am sure I don't know what she wishes to see you about; she told me to give you her message and ask no questions. May I show you the way to her!" Bab's gay laughter died on her lips. She rose at once and signified her willingness to accompany Elmer to the library, but both young men noticed that her face had grown grave and she seemed almost embarrassed. Elmer Wilson wondered why Miss Thurston had taken his mother's simple message so seriously. He was almost as embarrassed as Bab appeared to be. When Barbara entered the room where she had received the envelope from Peter Dillon the room was but dimly lighted. Two rose-colored shades covered the low lamps, and great bunches of pink roses ornamented the mantel. Mrs. Wilson wore a black and white chiffon gown over white silk and had a little band of black velvet about her throat from which hung a small diamond star. Her beautiful white hair looked like a silver crown on her head. She was leaning back in her chair with closed eyes when Bab entered the room, and she did not open them at once. She let the young girl stand and look at her, expecting her unusual beauty to influence Bab, as it had many other older people. Mrs. Wilson looked tired and in a softened mood. Her head rested against a pile of dark silken cushions. Her hands were folded, in her lap. She opened her dark eyes finally and smiled at Barbara. "Come here, Barbara," she commanded, pointing to a chair opposite her. Bab looked at her beautiful hostess timidly, but her brown eyes were honest and clear. "You sent for me?" Bab queried, sitting down very stiff and straight among the soft cushions. "Of course I did," Mrs. Wilson smiled. "And I should have done so before, only you and I have both been too busy. I am so glad you came to my tea to-day." Mrs. Wilson reached out her slender white hand and took hold of Barbara's firm brown one. "I want to make you a very humble apology," she continued. "I am very sorry that I was obliged to be away the other day when you called. I left the envelope with Mr. Dillon. I received your note yesterday, so I know that it was delivered into your hands. I did not return until after seven o'clock the other night, so it was just as well you didn't wait for me. I knew I could trust Mr. Dillon to give it to you." The girl made no reply. She did not dare raise her eyes to the other woman's face for fear Mrs. Wilson would divine from their expression that Bab knew she had lied. At the same time a thrill of consternation swept over her. What had been Mrs. Wilson's object in lending her the money? Bab was now sure that the loan had not been made disinterestedly. But what had Peter Dillon to do with it? It looked very much as though Mrs. Wilson and the attaché were playing a game, and were seeking to draw her into it. She resolved at that moment that she would write to her mother for the money, or ask Ruth for it. She would do anything rather than remain in Mrs. Wilson's debt. There was something about the intent way in which her hostess looked at her that aroused fresh suspicion in her mind. Bab braced herself to hear what she knew instinctively was to follow. "I am so glad I was able to help you," Mrs. Wilson purred, continuing to watch the young girl intently. "I know that you meant what you said when you declared that you hoped to some day be able to do some favor for me. I did not think then that I should ever wish to take you at your word, but strange as it may seem, you are the very person I have been looking for to help me with a joke that I wish to play upon Mr. Hamlin. You know, Mr. Hamlin is a very methodical man. Well, I wagered him a dozen pairs of gloves, the other day, that he would misplace one of his beloved papers. And I hope to win the wager. What I wish you to do is to secure a certain paper from his desk and give it to me. He will never know how I obtained it. Of course I shall return it to him in a day or so, after he acknowledges his defeat and pays his wager." Barbara shook her head. "I don't think I can take any part in any such joke, Mrs. Wilson," she said, looking appealingly at her hostess. "You don't really mean that you wish me to take one of Mr. Hamlin's papers without his knowledge, and then give the paper to you?" "Certainly, child, I do mean just that thing," Mrs. Wilson said, laughing lightly. "You need not take my request so seriously. Mr. Hamlin will appreciate the joke more than any one else when I have explained it to him. Won't you keep your word and grant me this favor?" "I can't do what you ask, Mrs. Wilson," Bab said slowly. "I'm awfully sorry, but it wouldn't be honorable." Mrs. Wilson turned away her head, so that Barbara could not see the expression of her face. "Very well, Miss Thurston," she said sharply. "Don't trouble about it, if you think you will be committing one of the cardinal sins in doing me this favor. But don't you think you are rather ungrateful? You were perfectly willing to accept my offer the other day when you were in need of money to pay your sister's debt, but now you are in no hurry to cancel your obligation. I consider you an extremely disobliging young woman." Barbara sat silent and ashamed. Yet she made no effort to propitiate her angry hostess. The butler came to the library door to announce the arrival of Mr. Hamlin. Barbara rose quickly. "I am so sorry not to be able to do you the favor you asked of me, Mrs. Wilson," she said in a low tone. Mrs. Wilson did not reply. Then in a flash Barbara Thurston remembered something! It was the promise Marjorie Moore had asked of her, and which Ruth Stuart had insisted upon her making. Without recalling that promise at the time, Bab had still kept her word. She had been asked to do some one a favor--and she had refused. But of course Marjorie Moore must have had some other thing in mind when she made her curious demand. Now that Barbara thought again of her vow, she determined to be wary for the rest of the evening and to keep as far away from Peter Dillon as possible. "I am going to play chaperon at your house in the near future, Harriet," Mrs. Wilson announced, as her guests were saying good night. "Your father says he is to be out of town on business and that I may look after you." "We shall be delighted to have you, Mrs. Wilson," Harriet returned politely, though she wondered why her father had suddenly requested Mrs. Wilson to act as chaperon. Harriet had often stayed at home alone with only their faithful old servants to look after her, when her father went away for a short time. And now that she had the four "Automobile Girls" as her guests, she did not feel in need of a chaperon. Peter Dillon had not spoken to Bab again during the evening, but had studiously avoided her, and Bab was exceedingly glad that he had kept his distance. But as she put on her coat to go home, she heard the rustle of a small piece of paper. Barbara glanced down at it, of course, and found that some one had pinned a folded square of paper to the inner lining of her coat. She blushed furiously, for fear one of the other guests would discover what had happened. Bab hated sentimentality and secrecy more than anything in the world. Inside the folded square of paper she found the tiny faded rose-bud, Peter Dillon had placed in his pocket that day when he had picked the two buds in the old Washington garden at Mt. Vernon. On the way downstairs, Barbara still kept the flower in her hand. But when she found Peter's eyes were upon her she deliberately crushed the little rose-bud, then defiantly tossed it away. CHAPTER XVI BARBABA'S UNEXPECTED GOOD LUCK It was the second day after Mrs. Wilson's dinner when Barbara made up her mind to tell Ruth of her debt to Mrs. Wilson and to ask her friend to lend her the money to relieve her of her obligation. Bab could endure the situation no longer. She simply determined to tell Ruth everything, except the part that poor Mollie had played in the original difficulty. She meant to explain to Ruth that she had needed fifty dollars, that she had intended going to a pawn shop to secure the money, her interview with Mrs. Wilson and her acceptance of the loan offered by the beautiful woman. She would not tell Ruth, however, why she had suddenly required this sum of money. Now, Bab knew Ruth would ask her no questions and would grant her request without a moment's hesitation or loss of faith. The sympathy between Ruth and Barbara was very deep and real. It was one thing for Barbara Thurston to decide to appeal to Ruth's ever-ready generosity, but another thing actually to make her demand. The two girls lay on Ruth's bed, resting. They had been to a dance at the British Embassy the night before. Mollie and Grace were together in the next room and Harriet was alone. "Barbara!" exclaimed Ruth suddenly. "If you could have one wish, that would surely be granted, what would you wish?" "I would like to have some money in a hurry," flashed through Bab's mind, but she was ashamed to make such a speech to Ruth, so she said rather soberly. "I have so many wishes its hard to single out one." "Well what are some of them?" persisted Ruth. "Do you wish to be rich, or famous, or to write a great book or a play?" "Oh, yes; I wish all those things, Ruth," Bab agreed. "But you were not thinking of such big things. What little private wish of your own did you have in your mind? Please don't wish for things that will take you far away from me," Bab entreated. Ruth's blue eyes were misty when she replied: "Oh, no, Bab! I was just going to wish that something would happen so that you and I need never be separated again. I love you just as though you were my sister, and I am so lonely at home without you and Mollie. Yet, as soon as our visit to Harriet is over, you must go back to school in Kingsbridge and I have to go home to Chicago. Who knows when we shall see each other again? I don't suppose that our motor trips can go on happening forever." Bab pressed Ruth's hand silently, her own thoughts flying toward the future, when she would perhaps be working her way through college, and teaching school later on, and Ruth would be in society, a beauty and a belle in her Western home. "Why don't you say something, Bab?" queried Ruth, feeling slightly offended at Bab's silence. "Can't you say you wish the same thing that I do, and that you believe our motor trips will last forever?" A knock at the door interrupted Bab's answer. When she went to open it a maid handed her three letters. Two of them were for Ruth and one for Barbara. Ruth opened her letters quickly. The handwriting on one of them was her Aunt Sallie's. The other was from Ruth's father. The postmark on Bab's letter was unfamiliar, however, so she did not trouble to open it, until she heard what Ruth had to say. "Oh, I am so sorry!" Ruth ejaculated. "See here, Bab, Aunt Sallie writes us that she cannot come on to Washington. She has rheumatism, or something, in her shoulder and does not want to make the long trip. She says I had better come home in a week or ten days, and that Father will probably come for me. Of course, Aunt Sallie sends love and kisses all around to her 'Automobile Girls.' She ends by declaring I must bring you home with me." Bab gave a deep sigh. "I do wish Miss Sallie had been here with us," she murmured. Ruth looked reflective. "Have you any special reason for needing Aunt Sallie, Bab? I have an idea you have something on your mind. Won't I do for your confidant!" "Yes, you will, Ruth!" Bab said slowly, turning her face to hide her painful embarrassment. "Ruth will you--" Bab had picked up her own letter. More to gain time than for any other reason, she opened it idly. A piece of paper fluttered out on the bed, which Ruth picked up. "Why, Bab!" she cried. "Look! Here is a check for fifty dollars! And there is some strange name on it that I never heard of before." But Ruth could not speak again, for Bab had thrown her arms about her and was embracing her excitedly. "Oh, Ruth, I am so glad, I am so glad!" Bab exclaimed, half laughing, half crying. "Just think of it--fifty dollars! And just now of all times. I never dreamed of such luck coming to me. It is just too wonderful!" "Barbara Thurston, will you be quiet and tell me what has happened to you?" Ruth insisted. "You haven't lost your wits, have you, child?" "No, I have found them," Bab declared. "More wits than I ever dreamed I had. Now, Ruth, don't be cross with me because I never confided this to you before. But I have not told a single person until to-day, not even Mother or Mollie. Months before I came to Washington, just before school commenced, I saw a notice in a newspaper, saying that a prize would be given for a short story written by a schoolgirl between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. So, up in the little attic at Laurel Cottage, I wrote a story. I worked on it for days and days, and then I sent it off to the publisher. I was ashamed to tell any one that I had written it, and never dreamed I should hear of it again. But now I have won the prize of fifty dollars," Bab stood up on the bed waving her check in one hand and, holding the skirt of her blue kimono in the other, executed a few jubilant dance steps. "Oh, Barbara, I am so proud!" Ruth rejoined, looking fully as happy as Bab. "Just think how clever you are! The fame of being an author is more desirable than the money. I must tell Mollie and Grace all about it." [Illustration: "Oh, Ruth, I Am So Glad!"] But Mollie and Grace had been attracted by the excitement in the next room, and now rushed in to hear the news. Mollie's eyes filled with tears as she embraced her sister. She knew how Bab's fifty dollars must be used, and why her sister was so delighted with her success. "What are you going to do with the fifty dollars, Bab?" Grace inquired. "I suppose you will put it away for your college money." Bab did not reply. She was already longing for a little time to herself, a pen, and ink and note paper. Harriet came in now with a message: "Children," she said, "it is time to dress for dinner. I have just had a telephone call from Father. He is going out of town to-night, but Mrs. Wilson is to stay with us. Father is not going until after dinner, and Mrs. Wilson and Elmer and Peter Dillon will be here to dine with us. So we shall have rather a jolly party. You girls had better dress." Harriet's was at once informed of Bab's good luck, and in offering Barbara her congratulations she forgot to tell the rest of her story. Harriet had asked her father to come home half an hour before his guests arrived. She had almost persuaded herself to make a full confession of her fault. But the tangle of circumstance was not to be so easily unraveled. Before Bab went down to dinner she slipped over to her desk and indorsed the check, put it in an envelope, and hid the envelope inside her dress. Her heart was lighter than it had been in weeks, for she believed her own and Mollie's share in the Washington trouble was over. Mr. William Hamlin was late to dinner and his guests were compelled to hurry through the meal on his account, as he wished to catch a special train out of the city. But they had a gay dinner party nevertheless and Harriet did not know whether she was sorry or glad that her confession had been delayed. After Mr. Hamlin had said good-bye to his visitors Harriet followed her father out into the hall. She thought if she told him of her fault just before he went away his anger would have time to cool before he could have opportunity to do more than reproach her for her extravagance. "Father," Harriet whispered timidly, "can't you wait a few minutes longer? I told you there was something I had to tell you." Mr. Hamlin shook his head impatiently. "No, Harriet, this is not the time nor the place for confidences. I am in far too much of a hurry. If you want to ask me for money I positively haven't any to give you. Now run on back to your guests." Harriet turned slowly away, and so Mr. Hamlin lost his chance to set matters straight. Just before he went out the door, he called back to his daughter: "Oh, Harriet, I have left the key to my strong box on my study table. Don't forget to put it away for me; it is most important that you do so, for I really have not time to turn back." During the entire evening Peter Dillon devoted himself exclusively to Harriet, and Bab was vastly relieved that he did not approach her. She decided that he fully understood that she did not consider the pledge of the faded rose-bud, binding. Mrs. Wilson had apparently forgotten Bab's refusal of her request. She was as cordial to Barbara as she was to Harriet, or to any of the "Automobile Girls." It was after midnight when Mrs. Wilson told Elmer and Peter that they must both go home. Bab's envelope was still tucked inside her dress. She had had no chance so far to give it to Mrs. Wilson. After Peter and Elmer had gone, however, and the girls trooped upstairs to bed, laughing and chatting gayly, Bab found a chance to slip the troublesome envelope into Mrs. Wilson's hand. With a whispered, "In the envelope is a check for the money I borrowed. I thank you so much for your kindness," Bab ran down the hall to her own room, feeling more at ease in her mind than she had since Mollie's confession. As for Harriet, she was so fully occupied with her guests that her father's command to secure the key of his strong box, which he had left on his study table, slipped from her mind and she retired without giving the matter a second thought. CHAPTER XVII THE WHITE VEIL Long after every one had retired Ruth Stuart lay wide awake. Try as she might, sleep refused to visit her eyelids. At last, after she had counted innumerable sheep and was wider awake than ever, she resolved to go and waken Bab. Ruth moved about in the dark carefully, in order not to arouse Grace, with whom she roomed, found her dressing-gown and slippers, and tip-toed softly into Barbara's room. She knew that Barbara would not resent being awakened even at that unseasonable hour. "Barbara, are you awake?" she whispered, coming up to Bab's bed and laying a gentle hand on her friend's face. "I want to talk with you and I am so thirsty. Won't you come downstairs with me to get a drink of water?" Bab turned over sleepily and yawned: "Isn't there always some water in the hall, Ruth? I am so tired I can't wake up," she declared. But Ruth gave her another shake. Barbara crawled slowly out of bed, while Ruth found her bedroom slippers and wrapped her in her warm bathrobe. Then both girls stole softly out into the dark hall. At the head of the stairs there was a broad landing. On this landing, just under a stained glass window, there was a leather couch and a table, which always held a pitcher of drinking water. On the window ledge the servants were required to keep a candle, so that anyone who wished to do so might find his way downstairs at night, without difficulty. The two girls made their way slowly to this spot, and Bab felt along the sill for the candle. It was not in its accustomed place. "I can't find the candle, Ruth," Bab whispered. "But you know where to find the water. Just fumble until you get hold of the pitcher." "Won't you have a glass of water?" Ruth invited, pushing the tumbler under Bab's very nose. Then the two girls began to giggle softly. "No, thank you," Bab answered decidedly. "Come, thirsty maiden! Who took me from my nice warm bed? Ruth Stuart! Let's go back upstairs and get to sleep again in a hurry." But for answer, Ruth drew Barbara down on the old leather couch in the complete darkness and put her arms about her. "Don't go back to bed, Bab. I'm not a bit sleepy. That's why I dragged you out of bed. I couldn't go to sleep and I just had to have company. Be a nice Bab and let's sit here and exchange conversation." "All right," Bab replied amiably, snuggling up closer to her friend. "Dear me, isn't it cold and dark and quiet out here!" Ruth gave a faint shiver. Then both girls sat absolutely still without speaking or moving--they had heard an unmistakable sound in the hall below them. The noise was so slight it could hardly be called a sound. Yet even this slight movement did not belong to the night and the silence of the sleeping household. The sound was repeated. Then a stillness followed, more absolute than before. "Is it a burglar, Bab?" Ruth breathed. Barbara's hand pressure meant they must listen and wait. "It may be possible," Bab thought, "that a dog or cat has somehow gotten into the house downstairs." At this, the girls left the sofa and, going over to the banister, peered cautiously down into the darkness. This time the two girls saw a light that shone like a flame in the darkness below. Quietly there floated into their line of vision something white, ethereal--perchance a spirit from another world. It vanished and the blackness was again unbroken. The figure had seemed strangely tall. It appeared to swim along, rather than to walk, draperies as fine as mist hanging about it. "What on earth was that, Barbara?" Ruth queried, more curious than frightened by the apparition. "If I believed in spirits I might think we had just seen the ghost of Harriet's mother. Harriet's old black Mammy has always said that Aunt Hattie comes back at night to guard Harriet, if she is in any special trouble or danger." "I suppose we had better go downstairs and find out what we have seen," whispered more matter-of-fact Bab. "Mr. Hamlin is not here. I don't think there is any sense in our arousing the family until we know something more. I should not like to frighten Mrs. Wilson and Harriet for nothing." The two girls slipped downstairs without making a sound. Everything on the lower floor seemed dark and quiet. Ruth and Bab both began to think they had been haunted by a dream. They were on their way upstairs again, when Ruth suddenly turned and glanced behind her. "Bab," she whispered, clutching at Barbara's bathrobe until that young woman nearly tumbled backwards down the steps, "there is a light in Uncle's study! I suppose it is Harriet who is down there." It flashed across Bab's mind to wonder, oddly, if Harriet's visit to her father's study at night could have anything to do with her debt to her dressmaker of five hundred dollars! For Mollie had reported to her sister that Harriet was feeling desperate over her unpleasant situation. "If it is Harriet downstairs I don't think we ought to go down," Bab objected. "We would frighten her if we walked in on her so unexpectedly." "Harriet ought not to be alone downstairs," Ruth insisted. "Uncle would not like it. I am going to peep in on her, and then make her come on upstairs to bed." Ruth led the way, with Bab at her heels. But it occurred to Barbara that the midnight visitor to Mr. Hamlin's study might be some one other than his daughter. Bab did not know whether Mr. Hamlin kept any money in his strong box in the study. She and Ruth were both unarmed, and might be approaching an unknown danger. Quick as a flash Bab arranged a little scheme of defense. There were two old-fashioned square stools placed on opposite sides of the hall. Without a word to Ruth, who was intent on her errand, Bab drew out these two stools and placed them side by side in the immediate centre of the hall. Any one who tried to escape from the study would stumble over these stools and at once alarm the household. Of course, if Bab and Ruth found Harriet in her father's study Bab could warn them of her trap. "What shall we do, Bab?" Ruth asked when Barbara joined her. "The light is still shining in the study. But I do not want to knock on the door; it would frighten Harriet. And it would terrify her even more if we walked right into the study out of this darkness. But we can't wait out here all night. I am catching cold." Barbara did not reply. They were in a difficult situation. Suppose Harriet were in the study? They did not wish to frighten her. In case the veiled figure was not Harriet any speech of theirs would give their presence away. "I think we had better open the door quickly and rush in," Ruth now decided. "Then Harriet can see at once who we are." Without waiting for further consultation with Bab, Ruth flung wide the study door. In the same instant the light in the room went out like a flash. "Harriet, is that you?" Ruth faltered. There was no answer, save some one's quick breathing. Ruth and Bab could both perceive that an absolutely white figure was crouched in a corner of the room in the dark. Bab moved cautiously toward the spot where she knew an electric light swung just above Mr. Hamlin's desk. But it was so dark that she had to move her hand gropingly above her head, for a moment, in order to locate the light. The veiled being in the corner must have guessed her motive. Like a zephyr it floated past the two girls. So light and swift was its movement that Bab's hand was arrested in its design. Surely a ghost, not a human creature, had passed by them. The next sound that Ruth and Bab heard was not ghostlike. It was very human. First came a crash, then a cry of terror and surprise. At the same moment Bab found the light she sought, turned it on, and Ruth rushed out into the hall. There on the floor Ruth discovered a jumble of stools and white draperies. And, shaking with the shock of her fall and forced laughter, was--not Harriet, but her guest, Mrs. Wilson! She had a long white chiffon veil over her head, a filmy shawl over her shoulders, and a white gown. With her white hair she made a very satisfactory picture of a ghost. "My dear Mrs. Wilson!" cried Ruth, in horrified tones, "What has happened to you? Were you walking in your sleep! Do let me help you up. I did not know these stools were out here where you could stumble over them." Bab stood gravely looking on at the scene without expressing such marked surprise. Mrs. Wilson gave one curious, malignant glance at Bab, then she smiled: "Help me up, children. I am fairly caught in my crime." Bab took hold of Mrs. Wilson by one arm, Ruth grasped her by the other, and they both struggled to lift her. Mrs. Wilson gave a slight groan as she got fairly on her feet. Her right hand clutched Bab for added support. In falling over the stools Mrs. Wilson had given her knee a severe wrench. At the moment she staggered, Barbara saw a large, oblong envelope fall to the floor from under Mrs. Wilson's soft white draperies. "What is the trouble?" called Harriet, Mollie and Grace, poking their three sleepy heads over the banisters. At this interruption Bab stooped down and quickly caught up the envelope, while Mrs. Wilson's attention was distracted by the three girls who were rapidly descending the steps. "Mrs. Wilson came downstairs for something," Ruth explained in her quiet, well-bred fashion. "Bab and I heard a noise and, as we did not recognize her, we followed her. We frightened Mrs. Wilson so that she stumbled over these stools out in the hall. I am afraid she is a little hurt. I think you had better call the servants, Harriet." Ruth did not, for an instant, let the surprise she felt at Mrs. Wilson's extraordinary conduct appear in her voice. "No, don't call any of the servants to-night, Harriet," Mrs. Wilson demurred. "I am all right now. I owe you children an apology for my conduct to-night and also an explanation. But I think I can explain everything much more satisfactorily if we wait until morning. I think Miss Thurston already understands my escapade. I have taken her into my confidence." Mrs. Wilson directed at Barbara a glance so compelling that it was almost hypnotic. Bab did not return her look or make any answer. A little while later Barbara disappeared. She went back alone to Mr. Hamlin's study. On top of his desk she discovered a box about a foot and a half long. It had been opened and a key was lying beside it on the desk. Barbara could see that there was no money in the box, only a collection of papers. Bab returned the long envelope, which she had found at Mrs. Wilson's feet in the hall to its place, turned the key in the lock of the box, and then carried the key upstairs, intending to hand it over to Harriet. But Bab did not know whether or not she ought to explain to Harriet how she had come by the key. Harriet was in the room with Mrs. Wilson, seeing her guest to bed for the second time, when Barbara went upstairs. Bab had no desire to face Mrs. Wilson again that night. The distrust of the woman that was deepening in the girl's mind was too great to conceal. "Come into my room in the morning before breakfast, Harriet, dear," Mrs. Wilson entreated, as she kissed her young hostess good night. "I know you will forgive my foolishness, when I have had a little talk with you. It is too late now for explanations." It was between two and three o'clock in the morning before the household of the Assistant Secretary of State again settled itself to sleep. Under her pillow Barbara Thurston had the key to Mr. William Hamlin's strong box, in which valuable state papers were sometimes temporarily placed. CHAPTER XVIII A TANGLED WEB OF CIRCUMSTANCE Harriet Hamlin spent half an hour in the room with Mrs. Wilson before she came down to the breakfast table the next morning. "It is all right, girls," she announced promptly, as soon as the maid left the room. "Mrs. Wilson is going to have her breakfast in bed. She is a little upset by the happenings of last night. But she has explained everything to me. For some time, Mrs. Wilson has been trying to play a joke on Father, and last night she made another attempt. I promised her none of us would mention to him what had occurred. Will you give me your word, all of you, not to tell?" "Certainly, Harriet," Ruth agreed seriously. The other three "Automobile Girls" quietly nodded their heads. "I don't know that I quite approve of Mrs. Wilson's method of practical joking," Harriet went on. "She frightened all of us. But then, if no one had discovered her, no harm would have been done." Mollie and Grace gazed at Harriet, without trying to conceal their surprise, but Ruth and Bab only looked steadfastly at their plates. "Father is so strict and good all the time, I just wish somebody would play a trick on him," Harriet went on angrily. She was annoyed at the attitude of the "Automobile Girls," and she was still smarting under the hurt of her father's speech the night before. As long as her father had refused her money before she had even asked him for it, Harriet had decided that it would be worse than useless to appeal to him again. She was now waiting for disaster to break over her head. "Mrs. Wilson rather blames you, Barbara," Harriet continued. "She says she did not succeed in her joke, after all, because you came down stairs at the wrong time and foiled the whole thing. She could not find the silly old paper she needed. But do please be quiet as mice about the whole affair. Don't mention it before the servants. Father will be home to-night. Will you girls mind excusing me for the day, and finding some way of amusing yourselves? I have promised Mrs. Wilson to go home with her." "Of course we can get along, Harriet," Grace replied. "I hope you will have a good time." Bab made no answer to Harriet's report of Mrs. Wilson's attitude toward her. But she was convinced that Mrs. Wilson knew she had discovered the stolen paper and returned it to its rightful place. The "Automobile Girls" did not see Harriet again that morning. At noon a message was sent upstairs. Mr. William Hamlin had returned and wished to see his daughter at once. When he learned that Harriet was not at home, he immediately sent for Ruth. "Ruth, I have come home sooner than I had planned," he declared, "And I wish to have a talk with you. Now, please keep your self-control. Girls and women have such a fashion of flying into a rage at the first word one says, that it is perfectly impossible to have any reasonable conversation with them. I wish to talk with you quite quietly and calmly." "Very well, Uncle," Ruth replied, meekly enough, though she was far from feeling meek. She could readily understand why Harriet had found it impossible to make a confidant of her father. "I am glad you are so sensible, Ruth," Mr. Hamlin went on. "For I have reason to believe that your friend, Barbara Thurston, has proved herself an undesirable guest, since her arrival in Washington, which I very much deplore. She is dishonorable, for she has secretly entered my study and been seen handling my papers, and she has contracted a debt; for I saw the check by means of which she returned the borrowed money to Mrs. Wilson. I cannot understand how you and your father have managed to be so deceived by the young woman." "Stop, Uncle William," Ruth interrupted hotly. "I cannot, of course, tell you that the things which you say are untrue. But at least I have the right to say that I positively know you are wrong. I shall ask Barbara to come down to your study, at once, to deny these charges. Then we shall go home immediately." "There, Ruth, I expected it," Mr. Hamlin answered testily. "Just as I said. You have gone off the handle at once. Of course your young friend may have some plausible explanation for her actions. But I will not be guilty of making any accusations against a guest in my own house under any circumstances. I have only mentioned these facts to you because I feel that it is my positive duty to warn you against this girl, whom you have chosen for your most intimate friend. It is impossible that I have been deceived in regard to her. I have positive proof of what I say, and I sadly fear she is a very headstrong and misguided girl." Ruth was already crying from anger, which made it hard for her to answer her uncle's speech. "You certainly don't object to my telling Barbara of your accusations, Uncle William?" Ruth demanded. "I think it is only fair to her." "Not while she is in my house. You are to tell her nothing," Mr. Hamlin ordered. "When Miss Thurston leaves you may tell her whatever you wish. But I will not have a scene with her while she is staying here." Mr. Hamlin was a cold, selfish and arrogant man. He well deserved the blow to his pride that he was to receive later. Ruth controlled herself in order to think deeply and quietly. Her father was wise in his trust in her. Ruth had excellent judgment and good sense. She was not particularly impressed by her uncle's command. She felt that she had a perfect right to tell her friend of what she had been accused. Yet would it be a good idea? Barbara would be heart-broken, and nothing would induce her to remain in Mr. Hamlin's house another hour after she learned his opinion of her. Ruth knew it would not be well for Bab to rush off home in sudden anger, leaving a false impression behind her. Barbara must stay in Mr. Hamlin's house until he himself apologized to her. Ruth did not dare to go back upstairs to the other girls immediately after her interview with her uncle. She knew her friends would recognize at once, from her red eyes and her excitement, that something was the matter. Yet Ruth longed for a confidant, and she meant to unburden herself to Grace as soon as she had the opportunity. To go upstairs now would reveal everything to Mollie and Barbara as well. Ruth seized her coat and hat from a closet in the hall and rushed out into the street. She began walking as rapidly as she could, to let the fresh air cool the tumult of feeling that was surging within her. Ruth must have walked a mile before she determined what to do. Before she returned to Mr. Hamlin's house, she found a telegraph office and went into it. She sent a telegram to her father in Chicago, which read: "Come to Washington as soon as possible. Bab wrongly suspected. She is still in ignorance, but we need you. "Ruth Stuart." Little did Ruth yet dream why these toils were being wound about unhappy Barbara. Mollie's one act of weakness had involved her sister in a number of actions that did look wrong to an outsider. Yet the explanation of them was so simple, if Bab had only known it were best for her to tell the whole story! But Barbara was trying to shield Mollie, and Mollie did not dream that Bab would suffer any consequences from her foolish deed. So Bab's peculiar proceedings since her arrival in Washington had indeed played well into the hands of her enemies. Mr. Hamlin's mind had been poisoned against her. She had been seen to do several underhanded things, one following directly after the other. If a big game were being attempted, the reputation of Barbara Thurston was of little account. Besides Bab had already blocked several of the players in the game. Revenge could very well enter into the present scheme of things, and a girl who had no one to defend her might prove a useful tool. As a last resort she could be made a scapegoat. In the meanwhile, Barbara was blissfully unconscious of any trouble, and went singing cheerily about her room that morning. Since the delivery of her check to Mrs. Wilson it seemed to her that the skies were blue again. During the rest of her stay in Washington Bab meant just to enjoy the beautiful sights of the wonderful city and not to trouble about the disagreeable people. She did intend to ask Harriet to take her to see the cunning little Chinese girl, Wee Tu, before she went home, but she had no other very definite desires. As for Mrs. Wilson? Barbara had just wisely decided that the woman belonged to a curious type, which she did not understand and wished to keep away from. Bab did not admire Mrs. Wilson's methods of playing jokes. On the other hand it was none of Barbara Thurston's business. So long as she had put the paper back in Mr. Hamlin's strong box no harm had been done. Barbara still had in her possession the key to that strong box. She had neglected to give it to Harriet, because Harriet had left home so soon after breakfast. And now that very terrifying person, Mr. William Hamlin, had returned home, and Barbara Thurston still had the key in her possession. Even Ruth had gone out. What should she do? She decided to keep the key until Harriet came back in the afternoon. Then Harriet could make some sort of explanation to her father. Barbara simply did not have the courage to tell Mr. Hamlin that she had discovered Mrs. Wilson tampering with his papers, and that it was she who had found the stolen paper and locked it up again. However, fate was certainly against Bab at the present time. A servant knocked at the door of the next room, where Grace and Mollie were reading. "Please," the maid said, "Mr. Hamlin wants to know if Miss Harriet left a key with you? It is a most important key, and Mr. Hamlin needs it at once." Grace and Mollie both shook their heads. No; Harriet had mentioned no such key to them. Barbara was waiting in the next room with the door open. She knew her turn would come next. "Do you know anything of the key, Miss Barbara?" Harriet's maid inquired. Of course Bab blushed. She always did at the wrong time. "Yes, I have the key, Mary," she replied. "Wait a minute, I will get it for you." "Do the young ladies know anything of my key?" Mr. William Hamlin's impatient voice was heard just outside Barbara's door. Innocently the maid opened it. "Wait a minute, Mr. Hamlin, please. Miss Thurston says she has the key. She is getting it for you now." And Barbara had to come to the door herself to present the key to this dreadful old "Bluebeard." "I presume my daughter left my key in your charge," Mr. Hamlin asked coldly. "No," she declared almost under her breath, hoping her stern host would either not hear her, or at least not heed her. "Harriet did not leave it with me." "Then kindly tell me how my key came into your possession?" Mr. Hamlin inquired, in chilling, even tones. Bab shivered. "I found it," Bab answered lamely, having it in mind to tell the whole strange story of last night's experience. But she was too frightened by Mr. Hamlin's manner and by the fear that she would be regarded as a telltale by Harriet. If Mr. Hamlin's own daughter had not considered her guest's actions unusual, it was not exactly Bab's place to report them. So she remained silent, and her host also turned away in silence. Harriet did not come home until just before dinner time. She told the "Automobile Girls" she had spent a delightful day, but her behavior was unusual. She looked frightened, though at the same time happier than she had seemed since the hour she had received the first threatening letter from her dressmaker. Peter Dillon had walked home with Harriet. Barbara, who happened to be standing at the front window, saw them stop to talk for a moment at the door before Peter said good-bye. Peter was making himself very charming to Harriet. He was talking to her in his half laughing, half earnest fashion in the very manner that had seemed so attractive to Bab, too, at first. But it was a manner she had learned later on to distrust and even to fear. When Harriet parted from Peter Dillon she nodded her head emphatically and apparently made him a promise, and Barbara saw Peter look back at her with a peculiar smile as she ascended the steps. CHAPTER XIX HARRIET IN DANGER Harriet Hamlin was restless and nervous all the next day. Even Mr. Hamlin, noticing his daughter's nervous manner at luncheon, suggested that she take her friends out to pay some calls. So Bab put forth her plea that she wished to make another visit to the home of the Chinese minister. As the girls had not yet paid their luncheon call at the embassy Harriet agreed to take them to see Wee Tu. Before she left the house Harriet called up her dressmaker and had a long confidential talk with her over the telephone. She seemed in better spirits afterwards. The Chinese minister's wife, Lady Tu, was receiving. As there were no men in the drawing-room, her daughter, Wee Tu, sat among the young girls as quiet and demure as a picture on a fan. Bab managed to persuade the little girl into a corner to have a quiet chat with her. But Miss Wee Tu was difficult to draw out. Across the room, Harriet Hamlin chanced to mention the name of Peter Dillon. At once the little Chinese girl's expression changed. The change was very slight. Hardly a shade of emotion crossed her unexpressive, Oriental face, but curious Barbara was watching for that very change. She remembered the young girl had been affected by Peter's appearance during their former visit. "Do you like Mr. Dillon?" inquired Bab. She had no excuse for her question except her own wilful curiosity. But Wee Tu was not to be caught napping. "Lige?" she answered, with a soft rising inflection that made the "k" in "like" sound as "g." "I do not know what Americans mean by the word--'Lige.' You 'lige' so many people. A Chinese girl 'liges' only a few--her parents, her relatives; sometimes she 'liges' her husband, but not always." "Don't like your husband!" exclaimed Bab in surprise. "Why, what do you mean?" The little Chinese maiden was confused both by the American word and the American idea. "The Chinese girl has respect for her husband; she does what he tells her to do, but she does not all the time 'lige' him, because her father has chosen him for her husband. I shall marry a prince, when I go back to China, but he is 'verra' old." "Oh, I see!" Bab rejoined. "You thought I meant 'love' when I said 'like.' It is quite different to love a person." Bab smiled wisely. "To love is to like a great deal." "Then I love this Mr. Peter Dillon," said the Chinese girl sweetly. Bab gasped in shocked surprise. "It is most improper that I say so, is it not?" smiled Miss Wee Tu. "But so many things that American girls do seem improper to Chinese ladies. And I do like this Mr. Peter very much. He comes always to our house. He is 'verra' intimate with my father. He talks to him a long, long time and they have Chinese secrets together. Then he talks with me so that I can understand him. Many people will not trouble with a Chinese girl, who is only fifteen, even if her father is a minister." Barbara was overwhelmed with Wee Tu's confidence, but she knew she deserved it as a punishment for her curiosity. The strangest thing was that the young Chinese girl spoke in a low, even voice, without the least change of expression in her long, almond eyes. Any one watching her would have thought she was talking of the weather. "I go back to China when my father's time in the United States is over and then I get married. It makes no difference. But while I am in your country I play I am free, like an American girl, and I do what I like inside my own head." "It's very wrong," Barbara argued hastily. "It is much better to trust to your parents." "Yes?" answered Wee Tu quietly. Bab was vexed that Peter Dillon's careless Irish manners had also charmed this little Oriental maiden. But Bab was wise enough to understand that Wee Tu's interest was only that of a child who was grateful to the young man for his kindness. Barbara rose to join her friends, who were at this moment saying good-bye to their hostess. "It is the Chinese custom," Lady Tu remarked graciously, "to make little presents to our guests. Will not Mr. Hamlin's daughter and her four friends receive these poor offerings?" A servant handed the girls five beautiful, carved tortoise shell boxes, containing exquisite sets of combs for their hair, the half dozen or more that Chinese women wear. "I felt ashamed of my wind-blown hair when Lady Tu presented us with these combs," Grace exclaimed, just before the little party reached home. They had paid a dozen more calls since their visit to the Chinese Embassy. "I suppose Chinese women are shocked at the way American girls wear their hair." "Yes, but we can't take three hours to fix ours," laughed Mollie, running up the steps of the Hamlin house. In the front hall Mollie spied an immense box of roses. They were for Harriet. Harriet picked up the box languidly and started upstairs. She had talked very little during the afternoon, and had seemed unlike herself. "Aren't you going to open your flowers, Harriet?" Mollie pleaded. "I am crazy to see them." "I'll open them if it pleases you, Mollie," Harriet returned gently. The great box was crowded with long-stemmed American beauties and violets. "Have some posies, girls?" Harriet said generously, holding out her arms filled with flowers. For a long time afterwards the "Automobile Girls" remembered how beautiful Harriet looked as she stood there, her face very pale, her black hair and hat outlined against the dark oak woodwork with the great bunch of American beauties in her arms. "Of course we don't want your posies, Lady Harriet," Mollie answered affectionately. "Here is the note to tell you who sent them to you." But Harriet went on to her room without showing enough interest in her gift to open the letter. After dinner Harriet complained of a headache, and went immediately to her room. The "Automobile Girls" were going out to a theater party, which was being given in their honor by their old friends, Mrs. Post and Hugh. Harriet sent word she would have to be excused. When Ruth put her head into Harriet's room to say good-bye, just before she started for the theater, she thought she heard her cousin crying. "Harriet, dear, do let me stay with you," Ruth pleaded. "I am afraid you are feeling worse than you will let us know." But Harriet insisted that she desired only to be left alone. Feeling strangely unhappy about her cousin, Ruth, at last joined the theater party. Mr. Hamlin did not leave the house immediately after dinner, although he had an engagement to spend the evening at the home of Mrs. Wilson. She had asked him, only that morning, to come. Mr. Hamlin was also troubled about his daughter. He had not been so unobservant that he had not seen the change in her. She was less animated, less talkative. Mr. Hamlin feared Harriet was not well. Though he was stern and unsympathetic with Harriet, he was genuinely frightened if she were in the least ill. So it was with unusual gentleness that he tapped lightly on Harriet's door. "I am all right, Mary, thank you," Harriet replied, believing her maid to be outside. "Go to bed whenever you please. I shall fall asleep after a while." Mr. Hamlin cleared his throat and Harriet started nervously. Why was her father standing outside her door? Had he learned of her bill to her dressmaker? "I do not wish to disturb you, Harriet," Mr. Hamlin began awkwardly. "I only desired to know if I could do anything for you." "No, Father," poor Harriet replied wearily. As Mr. Hamlin turned away, she sprang up and started to run after him. At her own door she stopped. She heard her father's stern voice giving an order to a servant, and her sudden resolution died within her. A few moments later the front door closed behind him and her opportunity had passed. An hour afterwards, when the house was quiet and the servants nowhere about, Harriet Hamlin slipped cautiously downstairs. She was gone only a few minutes. But when she came back to her own room, she opened a private drawer in her bureau and hid something in it. Harriet then threw herself on her bed and lay for a long time with her eyes wide open, staring straight ahead of her. Just before midnight, when she heard the gay voices of her friends returning from the theater, and when Ruth tripped softly to her bedroom, Harriet lay with closed eyes, apparently fast asleep. The next morning Harriet was really ill. Her hand trembled so while she poured the breakfast coffee that she spilled some of it on the tablecloth. When Mr. Hamlin spoke to her sharply she burst into tears and left the room, leaving her father ashamed of himself, and the "Automobile Girls" so embarrassed that they ate the rest of their breakfast in painful silence. Ruth did dart one indignant glance at her uncle, which Mr. Hamlin saw, but did not in his heart resent. Harriet was willing, that morning, to have Ruth come into her darkened bedroom and sit by her bed. For Harriet's wakeful night had left her slightly feverish. "I don't want to disturb you, Harriet," Bab apologized, coming softly to the door. "But some one has just telephoned for you. The person at the telephone has a message for you, but whoever it is refuses to give his name. What shall I do!" Harriet sat up in bed, quickly, a hunted expression on her beautiful face. "Tell Mr. Peter Dillon that I will keep my word," Harriet answered angrily. "He is not to worry about me again." "Is that your message?" Bab queried wonderingly. "It was not Mr. Dillon's voice." Harriet laughed hysterically. "Of course not!" she returned. "Oh, I know you girls are wondering why I am behaving so strangely. And I am breaking my word to tell you. But I must tell some one. I don't care what Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon say, I know I can trust you. I have decided to help Mrs. Wilson and Peter play their silly joke on Father and the State Department! Oh, you needn't look so horrified, girls. It is only a joke. The papers are about some Chinese business. I have them hid in my bureau drawer." Harriet nodded toward her dressing-table, while Ruth and Bab stood looking at each other, speechless with horror, the same idea growing in their minds. "When Father comes to look for his stupid papers he'll find them gone, and, of course, will think he has misplaced them," Harriet continued. "He will be dreadfully worried for a little while; then Mrs. Wilson will return the papers to me and I will slip them back in their old place, and Father will never know what has happened. Mrs. Wilson and Peter have vowed they will never betray me, and I have promised not to betray them. If I were to be caught, I suppose Father would never forgive me. But I'll take good care that he doesn't find out about it." "Harriet, do please give up this foolish plan!" Ruth entreated earnestly. "I know you are doing something wrong. Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Dillon both know that Uncle William's papers are too valuable to be played with. Why, they belong to the United States Government, not to him! Harriet, I implore you, do not touch your father's papers!" Harriet shook her head obstinately. She was absolutely adamant. Ruth pleaded, scolded, in vain. Bab did not say a word nor enter a protest. She was too frightened. All of a sudden a veil had been rent asunder. Now she believed she understood what Peter Dillon and Mrs. Wilson had planned from the beginning. They were spies in the service of some higher power. The papers that Harriet thought were to be used for a joke on her father were really to be sold! Was not some state secret to be betrayed? Ever since Bab's arrival in Washington it had looked as though Peter Dillon and Mrs. Wilson had been working toward this very end. Having failed with her they had turned their attention to poor Harriet. But Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon must be only hired tools! Shrewdly Barbara Thurston recalled her recent conversation with innocent Wee Tu: "Mr. Dillon and my father, they have Chinese secrets together." Could a certain distinguished and wisely silent Oriental gentleman be responsible for the thrilling drama about to be enacted? Bab was never to know positively, and she wisely kept her suspicion to herself. "I do wish, Ruth, you and Bab would go away and leave me alone," Harriet protested. "I shall be well enough to get up for luncheon, if you will let me take a nap. I don't see any harm in playing this joke on Father. At any rate, I have quite made up my mind to go through with my part in it and I won't give up my plan. You can tell Father if you choose, of course. I cannot prevent that. I know I was foolish to have confided in you. But, unless you are despicable tale bearers, the papers in my bureau drawer will go out of this house in a few hours! I don't see any harm in their disappearing for a little while. Father will have them back in a few days. Please go!" Yet with all Harriet's air of bravado, however, there was one point in her story which she did not mention. In return for her delivery of certain of her father's state papers Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon had promised to advance to Harriet the five hundred dollars necessary to pay her dressmaker. Harriet had agreed only to receive it as a loan. And she tried to comfort herself with the idea that her friends were only doing her a kindness in exchange for the favor she was to do for them. Still, the thought of the money worried Harriet. But how else was she to be saved from the weight of her stern father's displeasure? CHAPTER XX FOILED! At Harriet's request Bab and Ruth went silently out of her room, their faces white and frightened. "Ruth, is there any place where we can be alone?" Barbara whispered faintly. "I must talk with you." Ruth nodded, and the two friends found their way into the library, turning the key in the lock. Then they stood facing each other, speechless, for a moment, from the very intensity of their feelings. "Ruth, you must do something," Bab entreated. "The papers that Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Dillon are making Harriet get for them they do not intend to use for a joke. Oh, Ruth, they are no doubt important state papers! Harriet may be betraying her country and ruining her father by placing these papers in their hands." "I think, too, that Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon are spies," Ruth returned more quietly. "And, of course, we must do something to prevent their getting their hands on the papers." "But what can we do?" Barbara demanded sharply. "We cannot tell Mr. Hamlin of Harriet's deed. It would be too cruel of us. Nor can we confront Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon with the accusation. They would only laugh at us, and declare that we were mad to have imagined any such thing. Then, again, we would be betraying Harriet's confidence. We do not know just what state papers Harriet is to give to them, but they must be very, very valuable. I suppose those dreadful people will have the papers copied, sell our country's secret, and return the papers to Harriet when all the mischief has been done. Ruth, I believe, now, that Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon both meant to make me steal Mr. Hamlin's papers. Then they would have declared I had sold them to some one. And Mr. Hamlin would never have suspected his friends. Now, they think poor Harriet will be too much afraid to betray them." Bab's voice trembled slightly. She realized how nearly she had been the dupe of these two clever schemers. She felt that she and Ruth must save Harriet at all events. "Mrs. Wilson tried to steal Mr. Hamlin's papers the night she masqueraded as a ghost," Barbara continued. "I picked up the envelope she dropped on the floor in the hall." "I know it, Barbara," Ruth answered in her self-controlled fashion, which always had a calming effect on the more impetuous Bab. "I also believe Mrs. Wilson meant to fix the guilt of the theft upon you. Uncle William called me into his study the other day and asked me if I considered you trustworthy. Of course I was awfully indignant and told him just what I thought of him for being so suspicious. But I believe Mrs. Wilson had tried to poison his mind against you. You must be on your guard now, Bab, dear. If Harriet gives up these papers of Uncle's the plotters may still try to use you as their scapegoat. When Uncle finds his papers have disappeared Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Dillon will, of course, appear to know nothing of them; but they will somehow try to direct suspicion against you, trusting to Harriet's cowardice. Don't you worry though, Bab, dear. You shall not suffer for Harriet's fault while I am here." "Oh, I am not worrying about myself, Ruth," Bab answered. "It is Harriet's part in the affair that troubles me. Do, please, go to Harriet and talk to her again. Surely you can make her see the risk she is running. Do you suppose it would do any good if I were to call on Mrs. Wilson? I could just pretend I still thought she meant to play the joke on Mr. Hamlin. You know she told me she intended to do so. I could beg her to give it up without mentioning Harriet's name or letting Mrs. Wilson guess that Harriet had confided in us." Ruth shook her head. "It would not do any good for you to go to Mrs. Wilson, Bab. And, somehow, I am afraid for you. We do not know how much further they intend to involve you in their plot." "Oh, they won't do me any harm, now," Barbara rejoined. "Anyhow, I am willing to take the risk, if Harriet will not give in." "Just wait here, Bab, until I have been to see Harriet again," Ruth entreated. "I will go down on my knees to her, if I can persuade her to give up this wicked deed. Oh, why is she so determined to be so reckless and so foolish?" Fifteen minutes afterwards Ruth came back from her second interview with Harriet, looking utterly discouraged. "Harriet simply won't give up," Ruth reported to Bab. "She is absolutely determined to go her own way, and she is angry with me for interfering. Oh, Bab, what will happen? Uncle is so proud! If his daughter is known to have given Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon state papers, the report will be circulated that she stole them, and Uncle William will be disgraced. Then, what will become of Harriet? She does not intend to do wrong. But I simply can't make her see this thing as we see it. So what can we do?" Unusually self-contained, Ruth broke down, now, weeping on Bab's shoulder. The thought of the dreadful disgrace to her uncle and her cousin was more than she could face. "I am going to see Mrs. Wilson, Ruth," Bab declared. "You had better stay here and do your best with Harriet. The papers are not to be delivered until four this afternoon, when, I believe, Harriet is to meet Peter Dillon. Of course it was he who telephoned Harriet, only he was clever enough to disguise his voice. So we have until afternoon to work. Don't worry yourself sick. We simply must save Harriet in some way. I don't pretend that I see the way clearly yet, but I have faith that it will come. I cannot do any harm by going to Mrs. Wilson, and I may do some good." "I don't like you to go there alone, Bab," Ruth faltered. "But I don't dare to leave Harriet by herself. She might find a way to give up the papers while we were out, and then all would be lost!" When Bab rang the bell at the door of Mrs. Wilson's home she did not know that her approach had been watched. She meant to be very careful during her interview, for she realized that she and Ruth were endeavoring to foil two brilliant and unscrupulous enemies. Mrs. Wilson and Peter were in the library, and through the window Mrs. Wilson had watched Bab approaching the house. "Here comes that tiresome Thurston girl, whom you were going to use as your tool, Peter," teased Mrs. Wilson. "She wasn't so easy to manage as you thought, was she? Never mind; she will still be used as our scapegoat. But I shall not see her this morning. What's the use?" "Let her come in, by all means, Mrs. Wilson," Peter Dillon urged. "I shall hide so that she will not see me. What would fall in with our plans better than to have this girl come here to-day! Who knows how this visit may be made to count against her? Of course, if suspicion never points to us we had best never mention the name of Barbara Thurston. But--if Mr. Hamlin ever questions you, why not say Miss Thurston came here to-day and betrayed the fact to you that she had stolen Mr. Hamlin's papers? We have circumstantial evidence enough against her." Bab found Mrs. Wilson very much surprised to see her, and looking very languid and bored. Straightforward Barbara rushed headlong into her request. "Really, Miss Thurston, don't you think you are rather impertinent?" drawled her hostess, when Bab finished. "I don't see what business it is of yours whether or not I wish to play a joke on my friend, Mr. Hamlin. Don't try to get out of mischief by reporting to Mr. Hamlin the story of my poor little joke. You can hardly save yourself by any such method. No one will believe you. And I have an idea that you came to my house to-day for a very different purpose than to persuade me to give up my joke. What was it?" Bab was mystified. She had no idea how Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon had planned to use her visit as evidence against her, so it was impossible for her to understand Mrs. Wilson's insinuation. Barbara did not stay long. She saw Mrs. Wilson had no intention of being persuaded from her design. Even though the woman was beginning to see that Bab and Ruth were a little suspicious of her, she had no idea of being frightened from her deep-laid scheme by two insignificant schoolgirls. Barbara hurried to her car as fast as she could, anxious to get back to Ruth and to devise some other move to checkmate the traitors. She even hoped, against hope, that Harriet had been induced to change her mind and that all would yet be well. But as Bab jumped aboard her car she saw another girl, running down the street, waving something in the air and evidently trying to induce Bab's street car to wait for her. Barbara begged the conductor to hold the car for a moment, before she recognized the figure, running toward them. But the next second she beheld the ever-present newspaper girl, Marjorie Moore, tablet and pencil in hand, completely out of breath and exhausted. Marjorie Moore could not speak for some time after she had secured a seat next Bab in the car. "I have been watching Mrs. Wilson's house since eight o'clock this morning," she finally gasped. "What on earth made you go in there?" "I can't tell you," Bab returned coldly. Not for anything in the world would she have Marjorie Moore suspect what she and Ruth feared. Miss Moore gave a little, half amused, half sarcastic laugh. "You can't tell? Oh, never mind, my dear. I know you are all right. You weren't doing anything wrong. I expect you were trying to help set matters straight. You don't need to tell me anything. I think I know all that is necessary. Good-bye now. I must get off this car at the corner. Let me tell you, however, not to worry, whatever happens. I am in possession of all the facts, so there will be no trouble in proving them. But if anything disagreeable happens to you," Marjorie Moore gave Bab a reassuring smile, "telephone me, will you? My number is 1607, Union." Marjorie Moore rushed out of the street car as hurriedly as she had entered it, before Bab could take in what she had said. Barbara puzzled all the rest of the way home. Could it be possible that Marjorie Moore had discovered Mrs. Wilson's and Peter's plot? Could she also have guessed Harriet's part in it? Bab shuddered, for she remembered the newspaper girl's words to her on the night of their first meeting: "If ever I have a chance to get even with Harriet Hamlin, won't I take my revenge?" Did Marjorie Moore also suspect that an effort would be made to draw Barbara into this whirlpool of disgrace? No one ate any luncheon at the home of the Assistant Secretary of State, except Mollie and Grace. Fortunately Mr. Hamlin did not return home. Ruth and Bab had decided not to tell the other two "Automobile Girls" of their terrible uneasiness unless they actually needed the help of the younger girls to save the situation. Ruth and Bab did not wish to prejudice Mollie and Grace against Harriet if it were possible to spare her. But Ruth had told Bab that, at four o'clock, Harriet was determined to deliver the papers to Peter Dillon. At two o'clock, however, the two friends had found no way to influence Harriet to give up her mad project. Indeed, Harriet scarcely spoke to either of them, she was so bitterly angry at what she termed their interference. At three o'clock, Ruth and Barbara grew desperate. For, at three, Harriet Hamlin closed the door of her bedroom and commenced to dress for her engagement. "Try once again, Ruth," Bab pleaded. "It is worse even than you know. I believe Marjorie Moore suspects what Harriet is about to do. Suppose she publishes the story in the morning papers. Tell Harriet I have a reason for thinking she knows about the affair." Bab waited apprehensively for Ruth's return. It seemed to her that, for the first time in their adventures, the "Automobile Girls" had met with a situation that no amount of pluck or effort on their part could control. This was the most important experience of their whole lives, for their country was about to be betrayed! Once Barbara stamped her foot in her impatience. How dared Harriet Hamlin be so willful, so headstrong? Bab's face was white with anxiety and suspense. Her lips twitched nervously. Then in a flash her whole expression changed. The color came back to her cheeks, the light to her eyes. At the eleventh hour the way had been made clear. Ruth had no such look when she returned to Barbara. She flung herself despondently into a chair. "It's no use," she declared despairingly. "Harriet must go her own way. We can do nothing with her!" "Yes, we can!" Bab whispered. She leaned over and murmured something in Ruth's ear. Ruth sprang to her feet. "Barbara Thurston, you are perfectly wonderful!" she cried. "Yes, I do know where it is. Go to my desk and take that blank paper. It is just the right size. Fold it up in three parts. There, it will do, now; give it to me. Now go and command Grace and Mollie, if they love us, to call Harriet out of her room for a minute. We can explain to them afterwards." Mollie and Grace feared Barbara had gone suddenly mad when she rushed in upon them with her demand. But Mollie did manage to persuade Harriet to go into the next room. As Harriet slipped out of her bedroom, her cousin, Ruth Stuart, stole into it, hiding something she held in her hand. She was alone in Harriet's room for not more than two minutes. At a quarter to four o'clock, Harriet Hamlin left her father's house with a large envelope concealed inside her shopping bag. Opposition had merely strengthened Harriet's original resolution. She was no longer frightened. Ruth and Bab were absurd to have been so tragic over a silly joke. At a little after four o'clock, in a quiet, out-of-the-way street in Washington, Harriet turned over to Peter Dillon this envelope, which, as she supposed, contained the much-coveted papers which she had extracted from the private collection of the Assistant Secretary of State. Whatever the papers were, Peter Dillon took them carelessly with his usual charming smile. But inwardly he was chanting a song of victory. He and Mrs. Wilson would be many-thousands of dollars richer by this time to-morrow. He glanced into the envelope with his near-sighted eyes. The papers were folded up inside and all was well! Peter did not dare, before Harriet, to be too interested in what the envelope contained. It would not have made him happier to have looked closer; the song of victory would have died away on his lips. For, instead of certain secret documents sent to the office of the Secretary of State, from representatives of the United States Government in China, Harriet Hamlin had turned over to Peter Dillon an official envelope, which contained only folded sheets of blank paper! It had been Barbara's idea and Ruth had carried it out successfully. In the moment when Harriet left her room in answer to Mollie's call, Ruth had exchanged the valuable state papers for the worthless ones. Once Harriet was safely out of the way, she and Bab carried the precious documents downstairs and shut them up in Mr. Hamlin's desk. Both girls hoped that all trouble was now averted, and that Mr. Hamlin would never hear of Harriet's folly! CHAPTER XXI THE DISCOVERY The members of the Hamlin household went early to their own rooms that night. Ruth at once flung herself down on a couch without removing her clothing. In a few minutes she was fast asleep, for she believed their difficulties were over. Bab did not feel as secure. She was still thinking of the speech the newspaper girl had made to her in the car. At ten o'clock the Assistant Secretary of State, who was sitting alone in his study, heard a violent ringing of his telephone bell. He did not know that, at this same instant, his daughter Harriet had crept down to his study door intending to make a full confession of her mistakes to him. Mr. Hamlin picked up the receiver. "'The Washington News?' Yes. You have something important to say to me? Well, what is it?" Mr. Hamlin listened quietly for a little while. Then Harriet heard him cry in a hoarse, unnatural voice: "Impossible! The thing is preposterous! Where did you ever get hold of such an absurd idea?" Harriet stopped to listen no longer. She never knew how she got back upstairs to her room. She half staggered, half fell up the steps. Suddenly she realized everything! She had been used as a tool by Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon. Ruth and Barbara had been right. She had stolen her father's state papers. A newspaper had gotten hold of the story and already her father and she were disgraced. In the meantime, Mr. Hamlin continued to talk over the telephone, though his hand shook so he was hardly able to hold the receiver. "You say you think it best to warn me that the story of the theft of my papers will be published in the morning paper, that you know that private state documents entrusted to me keeping have been sold to secret spies? What evidence have you? I have missed no such papers. Wait a minute." Mr. Hamlin went to his strong box. Sure enough, certain documents were missing. Ruth and Bab had put the papers in the desk. "Have you an idea who stole my papers?" Mr. Hamlin called back over the telephone wire, his voice shaken with passion. Evidently the editor who was talking to Mr. Hamlin now lost his courage. He did not dare to tell Mr. Hamlin that his own daughter was suspected of having sold her father's papers. Mr. Hamlin repeated the editor's exact words. "You say a young woman sold my papers? You are right; this is not a matter to be discussed over the telephone. Send some one up from your office to see me at once." Mr. Hamlin reeled over to his bell-rope and gave it a pull, so that the noise of its ringing sounded like an alarm through the quiet house. A frightened servant answered the bell. "Tell Miss Thurston and my niece, Miss Stuart, to come to my study at once," Mr. Hamlin ordered. The man-servant obeyed. "Ruth, dear, wake up," Bab entreated, giving her friend a shake. "Something awful must have happened. Your uncle has sent for us. He must have missed those papers." [Illustration: "What Have You Done With My Papers?"] Ruth and Bab, both of them looking unutterably miserable and shaken, entered Mr. Hamlin's study. Their host did not speak as they first approached him. When he did he turned on them such a haggard, wretched face that they were filled with pity. But the instant Mr. Hamlin caught sight of Barbara his expression changed. He took her by the arm, and, before she could guess what was going to happen, he shook her violently. "What have you done with my state papers?" he demanded. "Tell me quickly. Don't hesitate. There may yet be time to save us both. Oh, I should never have let you stay in this house!" he groaned. "I suspected you of mischief when I learned of your first visit to my office. But I did not believe such treachery could be found in a young girl. Ruth, can't you make your friend speak! If she will tell me to whom she sold my papers, I will forgive her everything! But I must know where they are at once. I can then force the newspaper to keep silence and force my enemies to return me the documents, if there is only time!" Barbara dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. She did not utter a word of reproach to Mr. Hamlin for his cruel suspicion of her. She could not tell him that his daughter Harriet was the real thief. "Uncle," Ruth entreated, laying a quiet hand on Mr. Hamlin's arm, "listen to me for a moment. Yes, you must listen! You are not disgraced; you are not ruined. Look in your desk. Your papers are still there. Only the old envelope is gone. I put the papers in this drawer only this afternoon, because I did not know in what place you kept them. Some papers were given away, a few hours ago, to two people, whom you believed to be your friends, to Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon. But they were not your state papers, they were only blank sheets." Mr. Hamlin looked into his drawer and saw the lost documents, then he passed his hand over his forehead. "I don't understand," he muttered. "Do you mean that, instead of the actual papers, you saved me by substituting blank papers for these valuable ones? Then your friend did try to sell her country's secrets, and you saved her and me. I shall never cease to be grateful to you to the longest day I live. For your sake I will spare your friend. But she must leave my house in the morning. I do not wish ever to look upon her again." "Bab did not sell your papers, Uncle," Ruth protested passionately. "You shall not make such accusations against her. It was she who saved you. I did only what she told me to do. I did substitute the papers, but it was Barbara who thought of it." "Then who, in Heaven's name, is guilty of this dreadful act?" Mr. Hamlin cried. Neither Ruth nor Bab answered. Bab still sat with her face covered with her hands, in order to hide her hot tears. She cried partly for poor Harriet, and partly because of her sympathy for Mr. Hamlin. Ruth gazed at her uncle, white, silent and trembling. "Who, Ruth? I demand to know!" Mr. Hamlin repeated. "I shall not tell you," Ruth returned, with a little gasp. "Send for my daughter, Harriet. She may know something," Mr. Hamlin ejaculated. Then he rang for a servant. The two girls and the one man, who had grown old in the last few minutes, waited in unbroken silence. The girls had a strong desire to scream, to cry out, to warn Harriet. She must not let her father know of her foolish deed while his anger was at its height. It seemed an eternity before the butler returned to Mr. Hamlin's study. "Miss Hamlin is not in her room," he reported respectfully. "Not in her room? Then look for her through the house," Mr. Hamlin repeated more quietly. He had gained greater control of himself. But a new fear was oppressing him, weighing him down. He would not give the idea credence even in his own mind. Three--four--five minutes passed. Still Harriet did not appear. "Let me look for Harriet, Uncle," Ruth implored, unable to control herself any longer. At this moment Mollie came innocently down the stairs. "Is Mr. Hamlin looking for Harriet?" she inquired. "Harriet left the house ten minutes ago. She had on her coat and her hat, but she would not stop to say good-bye. I think her maid went with her. Mary had just a shawl thrown over her head. I am sure they will be back in a few minutes. Harriet must have gone out to post a letter. I thought she would have come back before this." Imagine poor Mollie's horror and surprise when Mr. Hamlin dropped into a chair at her news and groaned: "It was Harriet after all. It was _my own child_!" "Uncle, rouse yourself!" Ruth implored him. "Harriet thought she was only playing a harmless trick on you. She did not dream that the papers were of any importance. Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon deceived her cruelly. You must go and find out what has become of Harriet." Mr. Hamlin shook his head drearily. "You must go!" insisted gentle Ruth, bursting into tears. "Harriet does not even know that the papers she gave away were worthless. If she has found out she has been duped she will be doubly desperate." At this instant the door bell rang loudly. No one in the study appeared to hear it. Mollie had crept slowly back upstairs to Grace. Ruth, Mr. Hamlin and Bab were too wretched to stir. A sound of hasty footsteps came down the hall, followed by a knock at the study door. The door flew open of its own accord. Like a vision straight from Heaven appeared the faces of Mr. Robert Stuart and his sister, Miss Sallie! Ruth sprang into her father's arms with a cry of joy. And Bab, her eyes still streaming with tears, was caught up in the comforting arms of Miss Sallie. CHAPTER XXII OIL ON THE TROUBLED WATERS "What does all this mean, William Hamlin?" Mr. Stuart inquired without ceremony. With bowed head Mr. Hamlin told the whole story, not attempting to excuse himself, for Mr. Hamlin was a just man, though a severe one. He declared that he had been influenced to suspect Barbara ever since her arrival in his home. His enemies had also made a dupe of him, but his punishment had come upon him swiftly. He had just discovered that his own daughter had tried to deliver into the hands of paid spies, state papers of the United States Government. Mr. Stuart and Aunt Sallie looked extremely serious while Mr. Hamlin was telling his story. But when Mr. Hamlin explained how Ruth and Bab had exchanged the valuable political documents for folded sheets of blank paper, Mr. Stuart burst into a loud laugh, and his expression changed as though by a miracle. He patted his daughter's shoulder to express his approval, while Miss Sallie kissed Bab with a sigh of relief. Mr. Stuart and his sister had both been extremely uneasy since the arrival of Ruth's singular telegram, not knowing what troubled waters might be surrounding their "Automobile Girls." Indeed Miss Sallie had insisted on accompanying her brother to Washington, as she felt sure her presence would help to set things right. Mr. Stuart's laugh cleared the sorrowful atmosphere of the study as though by magic. Ruth and Barbara smiled through their tears. They were now so sure that all would soon be well! "It seems to me, William, that all this is 'much ado about nothing,'" Mr. Stuart declared. "Of course, I can see that the situation would have been pretty serious if poor Harriet had been deceived into giving up the real documents. But Bab and Ruth have saved the day! There is no harm done now. You even know the names of the spies. There is only one thing for us to consider at present, and that is--where is Harriet?" "Yes, Father," Ruth pleaded. "Do find Harriet." "The child was foolish, and she did wrong, of course," Mr. Stuart went on. "But, as Ruth tells me Harriet did not know the real papers were exchanged for false ones, she probably thinks she has disgraced you and she is too frightened to come home. You must take steps to find her at once, and to let her know you forgive her. It is a pity to lose any time." Mr. Hamlin was silent. "I cannot forgive Harriet," he replied. "But, of course, she must be brought home at once." "Nonsense!" Mr. Stuart continued. "Summon your servants and have some one telephone to Harriet's friends. She has probably gone to one of them. Tell the child that Sallie and I are here and wish to see her. But where are my other 'Automobile Girls,' Mollie and Grace?" "Upstairs, Father," Ruth answered happily. "Come and see them. I want to telephone for Harriet. I think she will come home for me." "Show your aunt and father to their rooms, Ruth," Mr. Hamlin begged. "I must wait here until a messenger arrives from the newspaper, which in some way has learned the story of our misfortune. And even they do not know that the stolen papers were valueless. I must explain matters to them." "A man of your influence can keep any mention of this affair out of the newspapers," Mr. Stuart argued heartily. "So the storm will have blown over by to-morrow. And I believe you will be able to punish the two schemers who have tried to betray your daughter and disgrace my Barbara, without having Harriet's name brought into this affair." For the first time, Mr. Hamlin lifted his head and nodded briefly. "Yes, I can attend to them," he declared in the quiet fashion that showed him to be a man of power. "It is best, for the sake of the country, that the scandal be nipped in the bud. I alone know what was in these state papers that Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon were hired to steal. So I alone know to whom they would be valuable. There would be an international difficulty if I should expose the real promoter of the theft. Peter Dillon shall be dismissed from his Embassy. Mrs. Wilson will find it wiser to leave Washington, and never to return here again. I will spare the woman as much as I can for the sake of her son, Elmer, who is a fine fellow. Ruth, dear, do telephone to Harriet's friends. Your father is right. We must find my daughter at once." Miss Sallie, Mr. Stuart and Ruth started to leave the room. Bab rose to follow them. "Miss Thurston, don't go for a minute," Mr. Hamlin said. "I wish to beg your pardon. Will you forgive a most unhappy man? Of course I see, now, that I had no right to suspect you without giving you a chance to defend yourself. I can only say that I was deceived, as well as Harriet. The whole plot is plain to me now. Harriet was to be terrified into not betraying her own part in the theft, so she would never dare reveal the names of Mrs. Wilson or Peter Dillon. I, with my mind poisoned against you, would have sought blindly to fasten the crime on you. I regard my office as Assistant Secretary of State as a sacred trust. If the papers entrusted to my keeping had been delivered into the hands of the enemies of my country, through my own daughter's folly, I should never have lifted my head again, I cannot say--I have no words to express--what I owe to you and Ruth. But how do you think a newspaper man could have unearthed this plot? It seems incredible, when you consider how stealthily Peter Dillon and Mrs. Wilson have worked. A man--" "I don't think a man did unearth it," Bab replied. Just then the bell rang again. The next moment the door opened, and the butler announced: "Miss Marjorie Moore!" The newspaper girl gave Bab a friendly smile; then she turned coldly to Mr. William Hamlin. "Miss Moore!" Mr. Hamlin exclaimed in surprise and in anger. "I wish to see a man from your newspaper. What I have to say cannot possibly concern you." "I think it does, Mr. Hamlin," Miss Moore repeated calmly. "One of the editors from my paper has come here with me. He is waiting in the hall. But it was I who discovered the theft of your state documents. I have been expecting mischief for some time. I am sorry for you, of course--very sorry, but I have all the facts of the case, and as no one else knows of it, it will be a great scoop for me in the morning." "Your newspaper will not publish the story at all, Miss Moore," Mr. Hamlin rejoined, when he had recovered from his astonishment at Miss Moore's appearance. "The stolen papers were not of the least value. Will you explain to Miss Moore exactly what occurred, Miss Thurston?" Mr. Hamlin concluded. When Bab told the story of how she and Ruth had made their lightning substitution of the papers, Marjorie Moore gave a gasp of surprise. "Good for you, Miss Thurston!" she returned. "I knew you were clever, as well as the right sort, the first time I saw you. So I had gotten hold of the whole story of the theft except, the most important point--the exchange of the papers. It spoils my story as sensational political news. But," Miss Moore laughed, "it makes a perfectly great personal story, because it has such a funny side to it: 'Foiled by the "Automobile Girls"!' 'The Assistant Secretary of State's Daughter!'" Miss Moore stopped, ashamed of her cruelty when she saw Mr. Hamlin's face. But he did not speak. It was Bab who exclaimed: "Oh, Miss Moore, you are not going to betray Harriet, are you? Poor Harriet thought it was all a joke. She did not know the papers were valuable. It would be too cruel to spread this story abroad. It might ruin Harriet's reputation." Marjorie Moore made no answer. "You heard Miss Thurston," Mr. Hamlin interposed. "Surely you will grant our request." "Mr. Hamlin," Marjorie Moore protested, "I am dreadfully sorry for you. I told you so, but I am going to have this story published in the morning. It is too good to keep and I have worked dreadfully hard on it. Indeed, I almost lost my life because of it. I knew it was Peter Dillon who struck me down on the White House lawn the night of the reception. But I said nothing because I knew that, if I made trouble, I would have been put off the scent of the story somehow. I tried to see Miss Thurston alone, that evening, to warn her that Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon were going to try to fasten their crime on her. I am obliged to be frank with you, Mr. Hamlin. I will stick to the facts as you have told them to me, but a full account of the attempted theft will be published in the morning's 'News.'" "Call the man who is with you, Miss Moore; I prefer to talk with him," Mr. Hamlin commanded. "You do not seem to realize the gravity of what you intend to do. It will be a mistake for your newspaper to make an enemy of a man in my official position." Mr. Hamlin talked for some time to one of the editors of the Washington "News." He entreated, threatened and finally made an appeal to him to save his daughter and himself by not making the story public. "I am afraid we shall have to let the story go, Miss Moore," the editor remarked regretfully. "It was a fine piece of news, but we don't wish to make things too hard for Mr. Hamlin." The man turned to go. "Mr. Hughes," Marjorie Moore announced, speaking to her editor, "if you do not intend to use this story, which I have worked on so long, in your paper, I warn you, right now, that I shall simply sell it to some other newspaper and take the consequences. All the papers will not be so careful of Mr. Hamlin's feelings." "Oh, Miss Moore, you would not be so cruel!" Bab cried. Marjorie Moore turned suddenly on Barbara; "Why shouldn't I?" she returned. "Both Harriet Hamlin and Peter Dillon have been hateful and insolent to me ever since I have been making my living in Washington. I told you I meant to get even with them some day. Well, this is my chance, and I intend to take it. Good-bye; there is no reason for me to stay here any longer." "Mr. Hamlin, if Miss Moore insists on selling her story on the outside, I cannot see how we would benefit you by failing to print the story," the editor added. "Very well," Mr. Hamlin returned coldly. But he sank back into his chair and covered his face with his hands. Harriet's reputation was ruined, for no one would believe she had not tried deliberately to sell her father's honor. But Bab resolved to appeal once more to the newspaper girl. She ran to Marjorie Moore and put her arm about the newspaper girl's waist to detain her. She talked to her in her most winning fashion, with her brown eyes glowing with feeling and her lips trembling with eagerness. The tears came to Marjorie Moore's eyes as she listened to Bab's pleading for Harriet. But she still obstinately shook her head. Some one came running down the stairs and Ruth entered the study without heeding the strangers in it. "Uncle!" she exclaimed in a terrified voice, "Harriet cannot be found! We have telephoned everywhere for her. No one has seen her or knows anything about her. What shall we do? It is midnight!" Mr. Hamlin followed Ruth quickly out of the room, forgetting every other consideration in his fear for his daughter. He looked broken and old. Was Harriet in some worse peril? As Marjorie Moore saw Mr. Hamlin go, she turned swiftly to Barbara and kissed her. "It's all right, dear," she said. "You were right. Revenge is too little and too mean. Mr. Hughes has said he will not publish the story, and I shall not sell it anywhere else. Indeed, I promise that what I know shall never be spoken of outside this room. Good night." Before Barbara could thank her she was gone. CHAPTER XXIII SUSPENSE AND THE REWARD All night long diligent search was made for Harriet Hamlin, but no word was heard of her. The "Automobile Girls" telephoned her dearest friends. Mr. Hamlin and Mr. Stuart tramped from one hotel to the other. None of the Hamlin household closed their eyes that night. "It has been my fault, Robert," Mr. Hamlin admitted, as he and his brother-in-law returned home in the gray dawn of the morning, hoping vainly to hear that Harriet had returned. "My child has gotten into debt and she has been afraid to confess her mistake to me. Her little friend, Mollie, told me the story. Mollie believes that Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon tempted Harriet by offering to lend her money. And so she agreed to aid them in what she thought was their 'joke.' I have seen, lately, that Harriet has been so worried she hardly knew what she was doing. Yet, when my poor child tried to confess her fault to me, I would not let her go on. My harshness and lack of sympathy have driven her to--I know not what. Oh, Robert, what shall I do? She is the one joy of my life!" Mr. Stuart did not try to deny Mr. Hamlin's judgment of himself. He knew Mr. Hamlin had been too severe with his daughter. If only Harriet could be found she and her father would be closer friends after this experience. Mr. Stuart realized fully what danger Harriet was in with her unusual beauty, with no mother and with a father who did not understand her. "Harriet has done very wrong," Mr. Hamlin added slowly. It was hard, indeed, for a man of his nature to forgive. "But I shall not reproach her when she comes back to me," he said quickly. The fear that Harriet might never return to him at all struck a sudden chill to his soul. "The child has done wrong, William, I admit it," returned good-natured Mr. Stuart. "She has been headstrong and foolish. But we have done worse things in our day, remember." "I will remember," Mr. Hamlin answered drearily, as he shut himself up in his room. Mr. Hamlin would not come down to breakfast. There was still no news of Harriet. While dear, comfortable Aunt Sallie and the "Automobile Girls" were seated around the table, making a pretense of eating, there came a ring at the front door bell. Ruth jumped up and ran out into the hall. Then followed several moments of awful suspense. Ruth came back slowly, not with Harriet, but with a note in her hand. She opened it with shaking fingers, for she recognized Harriet's handwriting in the address. The note read: "Dearest Ruth, I shall never come home again. I have disgraced my father and myself. I would not listen to you and Bab, and now I know the worst. Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon were villains and I was only a foolish dupe. I spent the night in a boarding house with an old friend of my mother's." Ruth stopped reading. Her voice sank so low it was almost impossible to hear her. She had not noticed that her uncle was standing just outside the door, listening, with white lips. "I don't know what else to do," Harriet's note continued, when Ruth had strength to go on. "So early this morning I telegraphed to Charlie Meyers. When you receive this note, I shall be married to him. Ask my father to forgive me, for I shall never see him again. Your heart-broken cousin, Harriet." "Absurd child!" Miss Sallie ejaculated, trying to hide her tears. But Mr. Stuart stepped to Mr. Hamlin's side as he entered the room, looking conscience-stricken and miserable. Poor Harriet was paying for her folly with a life-time of wretchedness. She was to marry a man she did not love; and her friends were powerless to save her. Mollie slipped quietly away from the table. No one tried to stop her. Every one thought Mollie was overcome, because she had been especially devoted to Harriet. "Won't you try to find Mr. Meyers, Uncle?" Ruth pleaded. "It may not be too late to prevent Harriet's marriage. Oh, do try to find her. She does not care for Charlie Meyers in the least. She is only marrying him because she is so wretched she does not know what to do." Mr. Stuart was already getting into his coat and hat. Mr. Hamlin was not far behind him. The two men were just going out the front door, when a cry from Mollie interrupted them. The three girls rushed into the hall, not knowing what Mollie's cry meant. But when they saw the little golden haired girl, who sympathized the most deeply with Harriet in her trouble, because of her own recent acquaintance with debt, the "Automobile Girls" knew at once that all was well! "Oh, Mr. Hamlin! Oh, Mr. Stuart! Do wait until I get my breath," Mollie begged. "Dear, darling Harriet is all right. She will come home if her father will come for her. I telephoned to Mr. Meyers and he declares Harriet is safe with his aunt. He says, of course, he is not such a cad as to marry Harriet when she is so miserable and frightened. He went to the boarding house for her, then took her to his aunt's home. Mr. Meyers was on his way here to see Mr. Hamlin." Two hours later, Harriet was at home again and in bed, suffering from nervous shock. But her father's forgiveness, his sympathy, his reassuring words, and above all, the thought that by the ruse of Bab, she had been mercifully saved from the deep disgrace that had shadowed her life, soon restored her to her normal spirits. There was a speedy investigation by the State Department--the result of which was that Mrs. Wilson disappeared from Washington society. Her son Elmer reported that his mother had grown tired of Washington and was living in New England. As for Peter Dillon, his connection with the Russian Embassy was severed at once. No one knew where he went. * * * * * "The President would like to see the 'Automobile Girls' at the White House to-day at half past twelve o'clock," Mr. William Hamlin announced a few mornings later, looking up from his paper to smile first at his daughter and then at the group of happy faces about his breakfast table, which included Miss Sallie Stuart and Mr. Robert Stuart. Harriet was looking very pale. She had been ill for two days after her unhappy experience. "What on earth do you mean, Mr. Hamlin?" inquired Grace Carter anxiously, turning to their host. The other girls smiled, thinking Mr. Hamlin was joking, he had been in such different spirits since Harriet's return home. "I mean what I say," Mr. Hamlin returned gravely. "The President wishes to see the 'Automobile Girls' in order to thank them for their service to their country." Mr. Hamlin allowed an earnest note to creep into his voice. "The story has not been made public. But I myself told the President of my narrow escape from disgrace, and he desires personally to thank the young girls who saved us. I told him that he might rely on your respecting his invitation." "Oh, but we can't go, Mr. Hamlin," Mollie expostulated. "Grace and I had nothing to do with saving the papers. It was only Ruth and Bab!" "It is most unusual to decline an invitation from the President, Mollie," Mr. Hamlin continued. "Only a death in the family is regarded as a reasonable excuse. Now the President most distinctly stated that he desired a visit from the 'Automobile Girls'!" "United we stand, divided we fall!" Ruth announced. "Bab and I will not stir a single step without Grace and Mollie." "There is one other person who ought to be included in this visit to the President," Harriet added, shyly. "Whom do you mean, my child?" Mr. Hamlin queried. Harriet hung her proud little head. "I mean Marjorie Moore, Father. I think she did as much as any one by keeping the story out of the papers when it would have meant so much for her to have published it." "Good for Harriet!" Ruth murmured under her breath. "I did not neglect to tell the President of Miss Moore's part in the affair, Daughter," Mr. Hamlin rejoined. "But I am glad you spoke of it. I shall certainly see that she is included in the invitation." Promptly at twelve o'clock the "Automobile Girls" set out for the White House in the care of their old and faithful friend, Mr. A. Bubble. On the way there they picked up Marjorie Moore, who had now become their staunch friend. The girls were greatly excited over their second visit to the White House. It was, of course, very unlike their first, since to-day they were to be the special guests of the President. On the evening of the Presidential reception they had been merely included among several hundred callers. Ruth sent in Mr. Hamlin's card with theirs, in order to explain whose visitors they were. The five girls were immediately shown into a small room, which the President used for seeing his friends when he desired a greater privacy than was possible in the large state reception rooms. The girls sat waiting the appearance of the President, each one a little more nervous than the other. "What shall we say, Bab?" Mollie whispered to her sister. "Goodness knows, child!" Bab just had time to answer, when a servant bowed ceremoniously. A man entered the room quickly and walked from one girl to the other, shaking hands with each one in turn. "I am very glad to meet you," he declared affably. "Mr. Hamlin tells me you were able to do him a service, and through him to your country, which it is also my privilege to serve. I thank you." The President bowed ceremoniously. "It was a pretty trick you played on our enemies. Strategy is sometimes better than war, and a woman's wits than a man's fists." Then the President turned cordially to Marjorie Moore. "Miss Moore, it gives me pleasure to say a word of appreciation to you. Your act in withholding this information from the public rather than to sell it and make a personal gain by it, was a thoroughly patriotic act, and I wish you to know that I value your service." "Thank you, Mr. President," replied Miss Moore, blushing deeply. The President's wife now entered the sitting-room with several other guests and members of her family. When luncheon was announced, the President of the United States offered his arm to Barbara Thurston. The "Automobile Girls" are not likely to forget their luncheon with the President, his family and a few intimate friends. The girls were frightened at first; but, being simple and natural, they soon ceased to think of themselves. They were too much interested in what they saw and heard around them. The President talked to Ruth, who sat on his left, about automobiles. He was interested to hear of the travels of Mr. A. Bubble, and seemed to know a great deal about motor cars. But, after a while, as the girls heard him converse with three distinguished men who sat at his table, one an engineer, the other a judge, and the third an artist, the "Automobile Girls" decided wisely that the President knew almost everything that was worth knowing. * * * * * "Children," said Mr. Stuart that night, when the girls could tell no more of their day's experience, "it seems to me that it is about time for you to be going home." Mr. Stuart and Aunt Sallie were in the Hamlin drawing-room with the "Automobile Girls." Mr. Hamlin and Harriet had gone for a short walk. It was now their custom to walk together each evening after dinner, since it gave them a little opportunity for a confidential talk. "You girls have had to-day the very happiest opportunity that falls to the lot of any visitor in Washington," Mr. Stuart continued. "You have had a private interview with the President and have been entertained by him at the Executive Mansion. I have no doubt you have also seen all the sights of Washington in the last few weeks. So homeward-bound must be our next forward move!" "Oh, Father," cried Ruth regretfully, her face clouding as she looked at her beloved automobile friends. How long before she should see them again? The same thought clouded the bright faces of Mollie, Grace and Bab. "We have hardly seen you at all, Miss Sallie," Grace lamented, taking Miss Sarah Stuart's plump, white hand in her own. "We have been the centre of so much excitement ever since you arrived in Washington." "Must we go, Father?" Ruth entreated. "I am afraid we must, Daughter," Mr. Stuart answered, with a half anxious and half cheerful twinkle in his eye. "Then it's Chicago for me!" sighed Ruth. "And Kingsbridge for the rest of us!" echoed the other three girls. "Ruth cannot very well travel home alone," Mr. Stuart remonstrated, looking first at Barbara, then at Mollie and Grace, and winking solemnly at Miss Sallie. "Don't tease the child, Robert," Miss Sallie remonstrated. "Aren't you and Aunt Sallie going home with me, Father?" Ruth queried, too much surprised for further questioning. "No, Ruth," Mr. Stuart declared. "You seem to have concluded to return to Chicago. But your Aunt Sallie and I are on our way to Kingsbridge, New Jersey, to pay a visit to Mrs. Mollie Thurston at Laurel Cottage. Mrs. Thurston wrote inviting us to visit her before we returned to the West. But, of course, if you do not wish to go with us, Daughter--." Mr. Stuart had no chance to speak again. For the four girls surrounded him, plying him with questions, with exclamations. They were all laughing and talking at once. "It's too good to be true, Father!" cried Ruth. CHAPTER XXIV HOME AT LAUREL COTTAGE Mrs. Thurston stood on the front porch of her little cottage, looking out in the gathering dusk. Back of her the lights twinkled gayly. A big wood fire crackled in the sitting-room and shone through the soft muslin curtains. A small maid was busily setting the table for supper in the dinning room, and there was a delicious smell of freshly baked rolls coming through the kitchen door. On the table stood a great dish of golden honey and a pitcher of rich milk. Mrs. Thurston had not forgotten, in two years, the favorite supper of her friend, Robert Stuart. It was a cold night, but she could not wait indoors. She had gathered up a warm woolen shawl of a delicate lavender shade, and wrapped it about her head and shoulders, looking not unlike the gracious spirit of an Autumn twilight as she lingered to welcome the travelers home. She was thinking of all that had happened since the day that Bab had stopped Ruth's runaway horses. She was recalling how much Mr. Stuart had done for her little girls in the past two years. "He could not have been kinder to Mollie and Barbara, if they had been his own daughters," thought pretty Mrs. Thurston, with a blush. But did she not hear the ever-welcome sound of a friendly voice? Was not Mr. Bubble calling to her out of the darkness? Surely enough his two great shining eyes now appeared at the well-known turn in the road. A few moments later Mrs. Thurston was being tempestuously embraced by the "Automobile Girls." "Do let me speak to Miss Stuart, children," Mrs. Thurston entreated, trying to extricate herself from four pairs of girlish arms. "Come in, Miss Stuart," she laughed. "I hope you are not tired from your journey. I cannot tell you what pleasure it gives me to see you and Mr. Stuart once more." Mr. Stuart gave Mrs. Thurston's hand a little longer pressure than was absolutely necessary. Mrs. Thurston blushed and finally drew her hand away. "Look after Mr. Stuart, dear," she said to Bab. "He is to have the guest chamber upstairs. I want to show Miss Stuart to her room. I am sorry, Ruth, our little home is too small to give you a room to yourself. You will have to be happy with Mollie and Bab. Grace you are to stay to supper with us. Your father will come for you after supper. I had to beg awfully hard, but he finally consented to let you remain with us. Our little reunion would not be complete without you." Mrs. Thurston took Miss Sallie into a charming room which she had lately renovated for her guest. It was papered in Miss Stuart's favorite lavender paper, had lavender curtains at the windows, and a bright wood fire in the grate. "I hope you will be comfortable, Miss Stuart," said little Mrs. Thurston, who stood slightly in awe of stately and elegant Miss Sallie. For answer Miss Sallie smiled and looked searchingly at Mrs. Thurston. "Is there any question you wish to ask me?" Mrs. Thurston inquired, flushing slightly at Miss Stuart's peculiar expression. "Oh, no," smiled Miss Sallie. "Oh, no, I have no question to ask you!" It was seven o 'clock when the party sat down to supper, and after nine when they finally rose. They stopped then only because Squire Carter arrived and demanded his daughter, Grace, whom he had to carry off, as he and her mother could bear to be parted from their child no longer. Miss Sallie asked to be excused, soon after supper, as she was tired from her trip. "I think the 'Automobile Girls' had better go to bed, too," she suggested. Then Miss Sallie flushed. For she was so accustomed to telling her girls what they ought to do that she forgot it was no longer her privilege to advise Bab and Mollie when they were in their mother's house. Bab insisted on running out to their little stable to see if her beloved horse, "Beauty," were safe and sound. And, of course, Ruth and Mollie went with her. But not long afterwards, the three girls retired to their room to talk until they fell asleep, too worn out for further conversation. "I am not tired, Mrs. Thurston, are you?" Mr. Stuart asked. "If you don't mind, won't you sit and talk to me for a little while before this cozy open fire? We never have a chance to say much to each other before our talkative daughters. How charming the little cottage looks to-night! It is like a second home." Mrs. Thurston smiled happily. "It makes me very happy to have you and Ruth feel so. I hope you will always feel at home here. I wish I could do something in return for all the kindness you have shown to my two little girls." Mr. Stuart did not reply at once. He seemed to be thinking so deeply that Mrs. Thurston did not like to go on talking. "Mrs. Thurston," Mr. Stuart spoke slowly, "why would you not come to my house in Chicago to make us a visit when I asked you, nearly a year ago?" Mrs. Thurston hesitated. "I told you my reasons then, Mr. Stuart. It was quite impossible. But it has been so long I have almost forgotten why I had to refuse." "It was after our trip in the private car with our friends, the fall before, you remember, Mrs. Thurston. But I know why you would not come to my home," Mr. Stuart answered, smiling. "You were willing to accept my hospitality for your daughters, but you would not accept it for yourself. Am I not right?" "Yes," Mrs. Thurston faltered. "I thought it would not be best." "I am sorry," Mr. Stuart said sadly. "Because I want to do a great deal more than ask you to come to visit me in Chicago. I wish you to come to live there as my wife." Mrs. Thurston's reply was so low it could hardly be heard. But Mr. Stuart evidently understood it and found it satisfactory. A few moments later Mrs. Thurston murmured, "I don't believe that Ruth and your sister Sallie will be pleased." "Ruth will be the happiest girl in the world!" Mr. Stuart retorted. "Poor child, she has longed for sisters all her life. Now she is going to have the two she loves best in the world. As for Sallie--." Here Mr. Stuart hesitated. He thought Miss Sallie did not dream of his affection for the little widow, and he was not at all sure how she would receive the news. "As for Sallie," he continued stoutly, "I am sure Sallie wishes my happiness more than anything else and she will be glad when she hears that I can find it only through you." Mrs. Thurston shook her head. "I can only consent to our marriage," she returned, "if my girls and yours are really happy in our choice and if your sister is willing to give us her blessing." * * * * * "Oh, Aunt Sallie, dear, please are you awake?" Ruth cried at half-past seven the next morning, tapping gently on Miss Stuart's door. Ruth had been awakened by her father at a little after six that morning and carried off to his bedroom in her dressing-gown, to sit curled up on her father's bed, while he made his confession to her. Ruth had listened silently at first with her head turned away. Once her father thought she was crying. But when she turned toward him her eyes were shining with happy tears. Ruth never thought of being jealous, or that her adored father would love her any less. She only thought, first, of his happiness and next of her own. Mr. Stuart would not let Ruth go until, with her arms about his neck and her cheek pressed to his, she begged him to let her be the messenger to Barbara, Mollie and Aunt Sallie. "You will be careful when you break the news to your aunt," Mr. Stuart entreated. "I should have given her some warning in regard to my feelings for Mrs. Thurston. I fear the news will be an entire surprise to her." Ruth wondered what she should say first. "Come in, dear," Miss Sallie answered placidly in reply to Ruth's knock. Miss Stuart was sitting up in bed with a pale lavender silk dressing sacque over her lace and muslin gown. "I suppose," Miss Sallie continued calmly, "that you have come to tell me that your father is going to marry Mrs. Thurston." "Aunt Sallie," gasped Ruth, "are you a wizard?" "No," said Miss Stuart, "I am a woman. Why, child, I have seen this thing coming ever since we first left Robert Stuart here in Kingsbridge when I took you girls off to Newport. Are you pleased, child?" Miss Sallie inquired, a little wistfully. "Gladder than anything, if you are, Aunt Sallie," Ruth replied. "But Father told me to come to ask you how you felt. He says Mrs. Thurston won't marry him unless we all consent." "Nonsense!" returned Miss Stuart in her accustomed fashion. "Of course I am glad to have Robert happy. Mrs. Thurston is a dear little woman. Only," dignified Miss Sallie choked with a tiny sob in her voice, "I can't give you up, Ruth, dear." And Miss Stuart and her beloved niece shed a few comfortable tears in each other's arms. "I never, never will care for any one as I do for you, Aunt Sallie," Ruth protested. "And aren't you Chaperon Extraordinary and Ministering Angel Plentipotentiary to the 'Automobile Girls'? The other girls care for you almost as much as I do. I wonder if Mrs. Thurston has told Bab and Mollie. Do you think they will be glad to have me for a sister?" "Fix my hair, Ruth, and don't be absurd," Miss Sallie rejoined, returning to her former severe manner, which no longer alarmed any one of the "Automobile Girls." "It is wonderful to me how I have learned to do without a maid while I have been traveling about the world with you children." The winter sunshine poured into the breakfast room of Laurel Cottage. The canary sang rapturously in his golden cage. He rejoiced at the sound of voices and the cheerful sounds in the house. Bab and Mollie were helping to set the breakfast table, when Ruth joined them. Neither girl said anything except to ask Ruth why she had slipped out of their room so early. Ruth's heart sank. After all, then, Barbara and Mollie were not pleased. They did not care for her enough to be happy in this closer bond between them. Mrs. Thurston kissed Ruth shyly, but she made no mention of anything unusual. And when Mr. Stuart came in to breakfast he looked as embarrassed and uncomfortable as a boy. There was a constraint over the little party at breakfast that had not been there the night before. Unexpectedly the door opened. Into the room came Grace Carter with a big bunch of white roses in her hand. "I just had to come early," she declared simply. "I wanted to find out." Grace thrust the flowers upon Mrs. Thurston. "Come here to me, Grace," Miss Sallie commanded. "You are a girl after my own heart. Robert, Mrs. Thurston, I congratulate you and I wish you joy with my whole heart." Barbara and Mollie gazed at each other in stupefied silence. What did it all mean? Mrs. Thurston blushed like a girl over her roses. "Miss Stuart, I never dreamed you could have heard so soon. I have not yet told Barbara and Mollie." "Told us what?" Bab demanded in her emphatic fashion. Then Ruth's heart was light again. But Bab did not wait to be answered. She suddenly guessed the truth. Now she knew why Ruth's manner had changed so quickly a short time before. She ran round the table, upsetting her chair in her rush. And before she said a word either to her mother or to Mr. Stuart, she flung her arms about Ruth and whispered: "Our wish has come true, Ruth, darling! We are sisters as well as best friends." Then Bab congratulated her mother and Mr. Stuart in a much more dignified fashion. "When is it to be, Father?" Ruth queried. Mr. Stuart looked at Mrs. Thurston. "In the spring," she faltered. "Then we will all go away together and have a happy summer, somewhere," Mr. Stuart asserted, smiling on the faces of his dear ones. "We shall do no such thing, Robert Stuart," Miss Sallie interposed firmly. "You shall have your honeymoon alone. I intend to take my 'Automobile Girls' some place where we have never been before. Will you go with me, children?" "Yes," chorused the four girls. "Aunt Sallie and the 'Automobile Girls' forever." 
20870	----	THE MOTOR GIRLS THROUGH NEW ENGLAND Or Held by the Gypsies by MARGARET PENROSE The Goldsmith Publishing Co. New York, N.Y. Copyright, 1911, by Cupples & Leon Company CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE SHADOW II STRIKE OF THE LEADING LADY III A MISHAP IV TO THE RESCUE V FRIEND OR FOE VI A THIEF IN THE NIGHT VII THE SEARCH VIII THE BEGINNING OF THE END IX THE START X AN EXPLOSION XI THE RESULT OF A BLAZE XII QUEER COBBLERS XIII A DELAY AND A SCARE XIV THE MIDNIGHT TOW XV THE GIPSY'S WARNING XVI THE DISAPPEARANCE XVII MISSING XVIII KIDNAPPED XIX THE DEN OF THE GYPSY QUEEN XX CORA AND HELKA XXI MOTHER HULL XXII SADDENED HEARTS XXIII ANOTHER STORY XXIV THE COLLAPSE XXV THE AWAKENING XXVI SURPRISES XXVII THE CALL OF THE HEART XXVIII VICTORY XXIX A REAL LOVE FEAST THE MOTOR GIRLS THROUGH NEW ENGLAND CHAPTER I THE SHADOW "Look, girls! There's a man!" "Where?" "Just creeping under the dining-room window!" "What can he want--looks suspicious!" "Oh, I'm afraid to go in!" "Hush! We won't go in just now!" "If only the boys were here!" "Well, don't cry--they will be here soon." "See! He's getting under the fence! There he goes!" "Did you get a look at him?" "Yes, a good look. I'll know him next time." Bess, Belle and Cora were holding this whispered conversation. It was Belle, the timid, who wanted to cry, and it was Cora who had really seen the man--got the good look. Bess did say she wished the boys were around, but Bess had great confidence in those boys, and this remark, when a man was actually sneaking around Clover Cottage, was perfectly pardonable. The motor girls had just returned from a delightful afternoon ride along the shore road at Lookout Beach. Bess and Belle Robinson, otherwise Elizabeth and Isabel, the twins, were in their little car--the _Flyaway_--and Cora Kimball was driving her fine, four-cylinder touring affair, both machines having just pulled up in front of Clover Cottage, the summer home of the Robinsons. "Did the boys say they would come directly from the post-office?" asked Belle, as she eyed the back fence suspiciously. "Yes, they had to drop some mail in the box. We won't attempt to go in until they come. At any rate, I have a little something to do to the _Whirlwind_," and Cora pulled off her gloves, and started to get a wrench out of the tool box. "I'll get busy, too," declared Bess. "It will look better in case our friend happens to come around the corner." "No danger," and Cora glanced up from the tool box. "I fancy that gentleman is not of the type that runs into facts." "Do you think he is a burglar?" asked Belle. "Well, I wouldn't say just that. But he certainly is not straightforward. And that is a bad sign," replied Cora. "And not a person in the house to help us," sighed Belle. "Oh, I don't see why mamma----" "Now, Belle Robinson!" interrupted her sister. "You know perfectly well that mamma had to take Nellie and Rose over to Drifton. They have to get ready for school." "Mamma fusses a lot over those two girls," continued Belle. "It seems to me a lucky thing they happened to run away--our way." This remark was lost upon Bess and Cora. Bess was intent upon something--nothing definite--about the _Flyaway_, while Cora was working assiduously trying to adjust a leaky valve. The prospect of dark coming on with no one but themselves about the cottage, and the late appearance of the strange man, kept each one busy thinking. Presently Belle exclaimed: "Oh, here come the boys!" and without waiting for the young men to turn the corner, which marked the end of the Clover Cottage grounds, she ran along with the news. Jack Kimball, Cora's brother, Walter Pennington, his chum, and Ed Foster, the friend of both, sauntered along. "I suppose Belle will say we had a bandit," remarked Cora, with a laugh, "but to tell the truth, Bess, I did not like the fellow's looks." She closed the engine bonnet and hurried to the sidewalk. "Neither did I," replied Bess, "but it never does to let Belle know how we feel. She is so nervous!" "I'm glad the boys are here," finished Cora. "Oh, I'm always glad when they are here," confessed Bess, stepping up beside Cora, as the two waited for Belle and the young men to come up the gravel walk. "Hello, there!" saluted Jack. "More haunted house?" "No, only more haunts," replied Cora. "Guess he didn't like the style of the house." "Oh, you girls are too fussy," said Ed. "Seems to me if I were a young lady, and saw a young chap hanging under my window, I'd be sort of flattered." "We prefer the hanging done in the open," exclaimed Bess. "Besides, he didn't hang--he sneaked." "He crawled," declared Belle. "No, I distinctly saw him creep," corrected Cora. "Mere baby, evidently," hazarded Walter. "Well, I suppose he was after----" "Grub," interrupted Jack. "The creeping, crawling, sneaking kind invariably want grub. It was a shame to let him go off hungry." They all took seats upon the broad piazza, after the boys, by a casual look, were satisfied that no intruder was about the grounds. Belle kept close to Ed--he was the largest of the young men--but Cora and Bess showed no signs of fear. "Let's tell you about it," began Bess. "Let's," agreed Walter. "Then listen," ordered the young lady with the very rosy cheeks. "Listen while they let's," teased Jack. "I won't say one word," declared Bess; "not if the fellow comes down the chimney----" Every one laughed. Bess had such a ridiculous way of getting angry. "No joking," went on Cora, "when we came up the road we did see a fellow sneaking around the cottage. I'm not exactly afraid, ahem! but I may as well admit that I am glad you boys appeared just now, and I hope the interloper caught a glimpse, ahem! of your manly forms." The three boys jumped up as if some one had touched a spring. Ed was taller, Walter was stouter and Jack was--well, he was quicker. Bess noticed that, and did not hesitate to say so in making her special report of the trio. "At any rate," ventured Ed, "we are much obliged, Cora. It's awfully nice of you to notice us." "Suppose we take a look through the house," suggested Cora. "Not that I think anything is wrong. You know, girls are never really afraid----" "Oh, no! they are only afraid of being afraid," interrupted Walter. "Well, come along. And, since Ed is the biggest, let him lead!" The incident merely furnished sport for the boys. A burglar hunt was no uncommon thing at Clover Cottage, and this one was no more promising that had been a dozen others. Belle did not venture in with the searching party. She had her fears, as usual. Cora by reputation was not timid, and she had that reputation to maintain just now. As a matter of fact, she knew perfectly well that the man who took the trouble to crawl around the house had some sinister motive in doing so. Bess had not really seen him do it, so when she went in, along with the boys, she had scarcely any fear of running down either a sneak thief or a tramp, both varieties of undesirable citizens being common enough at the watering place. It did not strike Cora Kimball just then that she had a particular part to play in the impending drama which was to involve herself and her friends. In the first volume of the series, entitled "The Motor Girls," Cora found it her duty to unravel the mystery of the road, when a wallet, empty, but which should have contained a small fortune in bonds, was actually found in the tool box of her own car. Then in the next volume, "The Motor Girls on a Tour," Cora again had the lines of the leading lady, for it fell to her lot to "keep the promise" that restored little Wren, the cripple, to her own, both in money and in health. In the third book of the series, "The Motor Girls at Lookout Beach," it was Cora again who had to unearth the mystery, and now---- She smiled as she followed Ed into the big pantry. "You girls and boys seem to count me a star," she said pleasantly. "Ever since we were organized you have been keeping me in----" "The spotlight," finished Ed, with an unmistakable smile. "Well, Cora, we will try to let you down easy this time. Here, Bess, you poke your nose in the cubby hole and see if you see anything." "Oh!" screamed Bess, "I'll do nothing of the sort. Let Cora." "Why?" asked Cora. "Because--you're never the least bit afraid," stammered Bess. "Thanks," said Cora, without hesitation thrusting her head into the aperture through which dishes were passed. "Ouch!" she exclaimed, hastily withdrawing with her hand on her nose. "What's the matter?" asked Ed. "Did you bump into something?" "Yes," replied Cora, looking straight into the eyes of Bess. "I just bumped into--a fact." Then she and her brother walked into another room, leaving their friends to discuss the happening and follow at their leisure. CHAPTER II STRIKE OF THE "LEADING LADY" "Exactly what did you mean, Cora?" "You know perfectly well, Jack." "No, really, I did not know what you--bumped into. Did you hurt your nose?" "Not the least bit, my dear brother. And the real bump--the fact, you know--was that I just discovered how much these two little girls depend upon me. Bess said I was never the least bit afraid----" "And are you?" "Perhaps. At any rate, I didn't like the looks of that man, Jack. I don't intend the girls shall know it, but I was just the least bit afraid to come in the house. Who do you suppose he might be?" "Why, Cora!" and Jack looked his surprise. "What's up? Are you going to strike?" "Don't you believe me, Jack, that I was afraid?" "It is not like you. But I suppose there was something----" "Well, Jack, even a leading lady may get tired. I am going to try to do a little less of the leading." "Angry with the girls?" "Why, bless you, no. Why should I be? Aren't they the dearest--babies. But you boys----" "Oh, mad at us! Cora Kimball!" and her brother threatened to injure his beauty on the matting rug. "If I had only the least idea that you didn't like us, I would have packed the whole crowd off to the bungalow." "Still you insist upon misunderstanding me. Well, I may as well give up, Jack. Let us talk about something else." "I might make another mistake. But I would like to tell you what some of the boys said about the dance last night. They were just raving about you. Did you like Porter?" "The boy with a smile? Yes, I did. I don't know when I saw a young man so real. You know, Jack, with all due respect to boys hovering around twenty, they usually display too much--hover." "Chumpy, you mean." "If the word were a little less--aspirated. Girls might say--crude." "Real nice of the girls. But Porter asked me if I'd bring him around." "Why not? Bess had a splendid time with him." "But he spoke of you, Cora. And he's a great fellow at college." "By all means cultivate the great," replied Cora. "But here come the others. Ask them." "Striking again, Cora. All right. If Porter wants to take Bess to the games----" "He's welcome. I have already promised Ed." It was an hour after the strange-man scare, and the Robinson girls had finally been convinced that there were no miscreants lurking anywhere about the place. The excitement had made Bess prettier in the deep, red flush that overspread her face, and Belle, the pale, dainty blonde, had actually taken on a tint herself. Cora had the color that comes and stays, and only her deep brown eyes seemed brighter after the hunt had been declared "off." "If mother were only home," sighed Belle. "Thank goodness, she is not," put in Bess. "Bad enough to hunt burglars without consoling mamma." "Are you girls going to stay alone to-night?" asked Ed suddenly. "Oh, no, indeed! We expect Nettie back from the city. Never was there a girl like Nettie for scaring away scares," replied Bess. "But suppose she does not come?" spoke Jack. "Don't you think it might be well----" "To hire a special officer? No, thank you," answered Cora. "We are not the least bit afraid. Besides, we have a gun." "The dearest little revolver," went on Bess. "Father got it specially for mamma, and she won't even look at it, so it's mine." "Yes, and you most scared Nettie to death with it," interrupted the twin sister. "What do you think, boys? Nettie wouldn't touch the thing, and actually took a dustpan and a brush and scooped the weapon up from under Bess's pillow. Wasn't that dangerous?" "And dumped it in the bureau drawer," added Cora, with a laugh. "Better let me take charge of that, Bess. I won't take chances with Nettie scooping it up while I'm here." "Very well, Cora. You may take charge of it. Father suggested it was not a bad thing to have along when we take lonely runs. But, of course, I should never dare to fire it even to scare a tramp." "Say, are you girls going to stay here all summer?" asked Walter. "I thought you had planned for a tour somewhere." "We have. We are going to tour in our cars through New England," answered Cora. "First, we are going to the Berkshires, then we may go to the White Mountains. Of course, we are not going to let our cars get rusty around here." "No, indeed," put in Bess. "We are only waiting to arrange about our chaperon. Isn't it dreadful to be a girl, and have to be toted around under some maternal wing?" "Well, no. I shouldn't exactly think it dreadful to be a girl," and Jack made a funny face; "that is, a real nice twin girl, with rosy eyes and blue cheeks----" "Jack!" "But I was just going to say," went on that young man, "that the toting around might be inconvenient--at times." "Couldn't a fellow or two do the toting?" asked Walter the innocent. "That's just exactly the trouble. If we were perfectly sure we would not meet a fellow or two," replied Belle, making a very pretty mouth at Walter, "there would be no need of the toting." "Then don't meet them--take them along. I'll go." "Me, too," added Ed. "Me, three," multiplied Jack. "We fully expected you all to come," drawled Cora coolly. "Oh, you did? Isn't that nice! They fully expected us all to come, and never told us a word about it. Now, that's what I call real cozy, and real----" "Jack," interrupted Cora, "have we ever had a long trip entirely without you?" "Seems to me you did have one or two--rather disastrous they were, too, if I remember aright. But we caught up. Now this time you are really going to allow us to go in the line, eh?" "Just to wind up the season," Cora reminded him. "Oh, sort of a winder. Well, it's all right, Cora. I hope we can fix it to go. When do we start, if a fellow might make bold to ask? You see, my car is in the shop. Walter has loaned his to some one up the State. But a little thing like that doesn't matter when the girls say we shall go----" "If we have to walk," finished Ed. "We did plan to leave as soon as mamma could arrange about a friend of hers to accompany us," said Bess, with a sigh. "We hoped she would know when she came back to-morrow." "Well, I'm going to take my car down to the garage," remarked Cora, getting up from the porch swing. "We can talk of the trip after tea. And we have also decided to ask you poor, starved bungalofers to tea. Have you had any since you went to housekeeping?" "Ed _said_ it was tea," replied Jack, "but I think it was stove polish thinned out. We didn't really enjoy it. Now, that's awfully nice. To stay to tea! Bess, may I take your car in for you?" "If you would, Jack. I am lazy after the sunny ride. Seems to me the sun never goes down at the beach." Ed had not asked permission to run Cora's car down the street for her, but he was now cranking up, while Walter deliberately took his place at the wheel. "Let the 'chiffonier' do the work," said Walter, with a laugh. "He loves work." Cora stepped lightly into the tonneau of her handsome machine, and Ed followed. "To the Imperial!" he shouted into Walter's ear, "and see that you get there, man!" So the tables were turned, and Walter was "doing the work." As there was nothing left to do, Walter threw in the gear lever and let in the clutch, while Cora, laughing at the trick, settled herself comfortably at the side of Ed. The _Whirlwind_ skimmed along the avenue, first down to the post office and later fetched up at the garage. Bess and Jack, with Belle, followed, and as the little party glided along through the sea-side town, many admiring glances were cast in their direction. "If Nettie does not come," remarked Ed, "are you sure, Cora, you won't be the least bit afraid alone at the cottage?" "Why, no. There is a telephone wire over to the hotel, and, besides, I'm going to cock the little ivory pistol before I go to bed. A sneak thief always runs at the very sound of a pistol." "Well, I hope you will have no occasion to fire," replied Ed, "but, if you do, fire from the south window, and we will hear you." "And run all the way up the beach?" Cora told him, laughing at the possibility. "Why, there is always an officer on the pier, and he will be only too glad to have a run--he needs it." "You have it all planned?" "No, how silly! I was only thinking that in a real emergency it is well to be ready." "I guess you won't have any trouble. Here, man," to Walter, "don't you know better than to drive the lady into the barn?" But Walter paid no heed, and before the car stopped it was properly stalled in the very end of the big stone garage. CHAPTER III A MISHAP "The tea was just right," declared Ed, "and I can't see why you will not consent to let us entertain you for the remainder of the evening. Just because the maid has not come down is surely no reason why you should lose such a fine evening's sport." "But we never leave the house entirely alone after dark," protested Belle vaguely. "Lucky house," put in Jack. "But I don't believe the cottage would mind it the least bit, would you?" and he put his ear to the wall. "No, it says to go ahead. Yes? What's that? Delighted? Of course, I knew it would be. Nice Clover," and he patted the plain, white wall. "Of course, you want the girls to go out with us in that dandy little launch. I knew it! Now, girls, get ready. It is time to start." "And no chaper--" they all protested. "Quit!" shouted Walter. "I have it on good authority that when a girl's brother is along, and when there are twins in the same party, and when there are two fellows, near twins, in aforesaid same party, that makes a cross-finger combination on the chaperon. She doesn't have to come along." Walter was looking his very best, which was always good, for the brown boy was now browner than ever, with the tan of beach sand and sun. Bess wore a most becoming linen gown, with just a rim of embroidered pink around her plump neck, and she, too, looked charming. Then Belle--Belle always wore dainty things, she was so perfectly blonde and so bisquelike. Her gown was of the simplest silvery stuff that Jack described as cloudy. Cora, after her auto trip of the afternoon, had "freshed up" in dazzling white. She loved contrast, and invariably, after driving, would don something directly opposite to that required for motoring. Her dark hair looked blacker than usual against the fleecy white, and her face was strictly handsome. Cora Kimball had grown from pretty to handsome just as naturally as a bud unfolds into a flower, with the attending dignity. "If Cora thinks it's all right," weakened Bess. "I don't see why we shouldn't go," replied Cora, "especially as the boys cannot have the launch for another evening. But I suppose that would mean a second change of dress," with a look at the flimsy costumes about her. "Why?" asked Jack. "These--in the evening on the water?" "Why not? Wear shawls or something----" "Yes," assented Belle. "It is all right to be dressed up in a launch when we don't have to motor the boat." "Oh, I'll attend to the motoring," promised Ed. "I am the fellow who borrowed the boat." "Has Nettie a key?" asked Cora. "I guess so," replied Bess. "We can leave the cellar window----" "We can do nothing of the sort, Bess Robinson," interrupted Belle, "and have that man sneak in? I guess not!" "Oh, your man!" protested Jack. "Haven't you forgotten him yet? That's what I call faithful." "Well, at any rate, I am sure Nettie has her key," finished Bess. "And there is only one more train. If she does not come----" "I'll sleep in the hammock on the porch," volunteered Jack. "It would be heaps better than melting in the bungalow to-night." "I thought that bungalow was perfection," remarked Belle. "It is--on the catalogue. But after a day's sun like to-day we just put our ham and eggs on the corrugated iron roof, and they are done to a turn in the morning, with nice little ridge patterns on them." "If we are going sailing, we'd better be at it," Walter reminded them. Whereat the girls ran off to get wraps, and shortly returned ready for the trip. Nor were the wraps lacking in beauty or usefulness. Cora had a family shawl--the kind that defies description outside of the French-English fashion papers. It was of the Paisley order, and did not seem to be cut any place; at the same time it fell in folds about her arms and neck with some invisible fastenings. Her hood was made from a piece of the same wonderfully embroidered stuff--a big red star, with the points drawn in. Bess and Belle both wore pretty cloaks of eiderdown. Bess was in pink and Belle in blue. "Take your guitar, Cora," suggested Ed. "We will have some singing." "And you can play that piece--what is it? 'Love's Hankering?'" asked Jack. "'Love's Triumph,'" corrected Bess, "and it's the prettiest piece out this summer. Cora plays it beautifully." "It is pretty," confirmed Belle. "Yes, I like it," admitted Cora. "As long as you are bent on a romantic evening, we may as well have the little love song," and she slipped the strap of her guitar case over her arm as they started off. Jack took his banjo. He, too, liked the new summer "hit;" in fact, every one was whistling it as well as they could, but it took tuned strings to give it the correct interpretation. It was delightful on the water. The smaller bay opened into another and provided safe motor boating. The tide was slowly receding, and as the party glided along, little moonlight-tipped waves seemed to caress the launch. Jack and Cora were playing, Bess and Belle were humming, while Walter was "breathing sounds" that could scarcely be classified, and Ed was content to run the motor. "Now, isn't that pretty?" asked Belle of Ed, as Cora and Jack finished the popular piece. "Very catchy," replied the young man. "But Cora has given it a twist of her own," said Jack; "the end goes this way," and he correctly played a few bars, "while Cora likes it thusly," and he played a strain or two more in different style. Was it the moonlight on the baby waves? was it the murmur of that gliding boat? or was it something indefinable that so awakened the sentiments of the party of gay motorists? For some moments no one spoke; then Jack broke the spell with a lively fandango, played in solo. "This seems too good to last," prophesied Belle, with a sigh, "Do you think it was all right to leave the cottage alone?" "Now, Tinkle," and Walter moved as if to take her hand, "haven't we assured you that the cottage expressly desired to be left alone to-night, and that we fellows wanted your company?" It was a pretty speech for Walter, and was not lost on the sensitive Belle. "How about sand bars, Ed?" asked Jack. "Might we run onto one?" "We might, but I guess I could feel one coming. The tide is getting away. We had better veer toward the shore." "Oh! is there danger?" asked Belle, immediately alarmed. "Not much," replied Ed, "but we wouldn't like to walk home from this point." He was twisting the wheel so that the launch almost turned. Then a sound like something grating startled them. "Bottom!" exclaimed Jack, jumping up and going toward the wheel. "That was ground, Ed!" "Sounded a lot like it, but we can push off. Get that oar there, Walter; get the other and----" The launch gave a jerk and then stopped! "Oh! what is it?" asked Bess and Belle in one voice. "Nothing serious," Cora assured them. "You see, the tide has gone out so quickly that it has left us on a sand bar. I guess the boys can push off. They know how to handle oars." But this time even skillful handling of oars would not move the launch. Ed ran the motor at full speed ahead and reversed, but the boat remained on the bar, which now, as the tide rapidly lowered, could be plainly seen in the moonlight. "What next?" asked Cora coolly. "Hard to say," replied Ed, in rather a mournful tone. "If we had gone down the bay, we would not have been alone, but I thought this upper end so much more attractive to-night. However, we need not despair. We can wait for the tide." "Till morning!" almost shouted Belle. "It's due at three-thirty," announced the imperturbable Walter. "Oh! what shall we do?" wailed Bess. "We might walk," suggested Cora. "It isn't very far to that shore, and it's shallow." "Mercy, no!" exclaimed Belle. "There are all sorts of holes in the mud here. I would stay forever before I would try walking." Cora laughed. She had no idea of being taken seriously. "Now, you see," said Walter, "my wisdom in curtailing the chaperon. Just imagine her now," and he rolled laughingly over toward Jack. "Easy there! No need for artificial respiration or barrel-rolling just yet," declared Jack. "In fact, if we had a bit of water, we'd be thankful. Let me work the engine, Ed. Maybe I can give luck a turn and get more push out of it." Ed left his place, and Jack took it, but the sand bar held the little launch like adamant, and it seemed useless to exert the gasoline power further. "Suppose we have the little ditty again," suggested Ed, taking a seat near Cora. "What was it? 'Love's Latitude?'" "No, 'Love's Luxury,'" asserted Walter, as he made a comical move toward Belle. But Belle was disconsolate, and she only looked at the moon. It was almost funny, but the humor was entirely lost on the frightened girl. "When in doubt play 'The Gypsy's Warning,'" suggested Cora, picking up her guitar. "There is something bewitching about that tune." "See if we can bewitch a wave or two with it," remarked Jack. "That would fetch us in a little nearer to shore." But the situation was becoming more serious each moment. There they were--high though not exactly dry upon a big sand bar! Not a craft was in sight, and none within call! "If we only could trust the bottom, we fellows might get out and push her off," suggested Walter, "but it wouldn't be nice to get right in the line with Davy Jones' locker." "Oh, please don't do that," begged Bess. "It will be better to stay safely here and wait for the tide than to take any chance of losing----" "Wallie. Sometimes he's Walter, but when it comes to the possibility of our losing him, he's Wallie," declared Jack, clasping his arms around the other boy's neck. "Starboard watch ahoy!" "Right about face, forward march!" called Walter ridiculously. "That's not the same set," corrected Jack. "This was another kind of a watch--stem winder." The jollying of the boys kept the girls from actually feeling the seriousness of their plight. But to wait until morning for the tide! CHAPTER IV TO THE RESCUE "Don't tell the girls, but I am going to swim ashore," whispered Walter to Jack. "A nice fix we would be in if Mrs. Robinson came home and found the girls missing." "Swim ashore!" repeated Jack in surprise. "Why, Walter, it's a mile!" "Can't help it. I can do it, and I see a light directly opposite here. You give Ed the tip to keep the girls busy, while you stay back here with me. I'll be overboard in no time." Jack tried to persuade his friend not to take the risk, but Walter was determined; so, unobservedly divesting himself of his heaviest garments, he dropped over the side of the launch and was soon stroking for the shore. For some time the girls did not miss him, but Belle, keen to scent danger, abruptly asked if Walter had fallen asleep. "Yes," drawled Jack, "he is the laziest fellow." Cora pinched Jack's arm, and he in return gave her two firm impressions. She instantly knew that something was going on, and did her best to divert Belle's attention from it. "But where--is--he!" exclaimed Belle, for her gaze had traveled to the end of the launch and back again without seeing Walter. "He--is gone!" Realizing that the young man was actually not aboard the boat, she sank down in abject terror, ready to cry. "Don't take on so," said Ed. "He is all right. He has gone ashore to get help." "Gone ashore!" exclaimed both Belle and Bess in a breath. "Girls, do you imagine we would sit here calmly and try to quiet you if there was anything actually wrong?" asked Cora. "Why don't you give the boys credit, once in a while, for having a little common sense?" Looking across the water, the movement of the swimming youth could be seen, where the moonlight reflected on the waves. "Oh, I am so frightened!" exclaimed Belle. "I felt that something would happen!" "Something always does happen when it is expected," Cora told her, "but let us hope it will be nothing worse than what we already are conscious of. It was splendid of Walter to go, and I am sure he will return safely." "He's a first-rate swimmer," declared Ed, looking anxiously at the little rippling motion that marked Walter's progress. "He can easily go a mile." Then quiet settled upon the party. It was, indeed, a gloomy prospect. Stranded--Walter swimming in the bay--and nothing but sky above and water beyond them, just far enough away to be out of the reach of the launch. All the thoughts of the young folks seemed to follow Walter. Belle hid her face in her hands, Bess clung to Cora, and the two young men watched the progress of the swimmer. It seemed hours when, suddenly, a movement in the water, not far from them both, was noticed by Bess. "Oh! what is that?" she called. "Can it be----" "Oh, it's Walter!" shrieked Belle, clasping her hands. "It can't be!" answered Ed, at the some moment raising a lantern above his head to see, if possible, what was making the splash in the water. "It's as big--as--a----," began Belle. "Horse!" finished Cora. "I saw a head just then." "Oh, it's a whale!" cried Bess, actually dropping into the bottom of the boat as if to hide from the monster. "And he may have eaten Walter!" wailed Belle. "Girls!" commanded Cora. "Do try not to be so foolish. There are no whales in this bay." But all the same her voice was unsteady, and she would have given worlds for a reassuring shout from Walter. Another splash! "There he goes! It's a porpoise!" cried Jack. "No danger of one of those hog-fish going near a man. They're as timid as mice. Just see him go! There ought to be a lot of others, for they generally go in schools. Maybe this one was kept in because he couldn't spell 'book,' and is just getting home." Cora breathed a sigh of relief at Jack's joking tone. She didn't care to see the big fish swim--she was only too glad that he was going, and that he was of the harmless species described by Jack. The others watched the porpoise as he made his way out to the open sea. "My, I'll bet Walter was frightened if he met that fellow," said Ed. "I wish he hadn't gone," he whispered to Jack a moment later. "He said he would fire a pistol when he got to shore. He took a little one with him, and it's waterproof. Let's listen." As if the magical words had gone by wireless, at that very moment a shot was heard! "There! He's safe! That was his signal!" cried Jack, and Cora said afterwards that he hugged Belle, although the youth declared it was his own sister whom he had embraced. "Now, we will only have to wait and not worry," Ed remarked. "Over at that light there must be human beings, and they must have boats. Boats plus humans equal rescue." The relief from anxiety put the girls in better spirits. Bess and Belle wondered if Nettie had returned, and speculated whether, on finding them gone, she might have notified the police. Cora was thinking about what sort of lifeboat Walter would return with, while Ed and Jack were content to look and listen. A good hour passed, when a light could be seen moving about the beach. "They're coming, all right," declared Ed. "Watch that glimmer." The light moved first to the north, then in the other direction, until finally it became steady and was heading straight for the party in distress. "Wave your lantern," suggested Cora. "They may not be able to see it as it stands." Ed stood on the seat and circled the light about his head. Breathlessly they stood there--waiting, wondering and watching. "I'm going to call," said Bess, at the same moment shouting, "Walter!" at the top of her voice. "C-o-m-ing!" came the reply, and this time it was an open question whether Bess hugged Ed or Jack. "Now we will be all right," breathed Belle. "Oh, I shall never want to see a motor boat again! The _Flyaway_ is good enough for me." "Yes, I fancy a motor on the earth myself," Cora agreed, "but, of course, a little experience like this adds to our general knowledge. I hope Walter is all right." "Just hear him laugh," said Jack, as a chuckle came over the water. "Likely he has struck up with some mermaid. It would be just Wallie's luck." The merry voices that could now be heard were reassuring indeed. Nearer and nearer they came, until the girls actually became interested to the extent of arranging side combs and otherwise attending to little niceties, dear to the heart of all girls. "It's a mermaid, sure," declared Jack. "I heard her giggle!" and he grabbed out Cora's side comb to arrange his own hair. "Oh, it is--a girl," whispered Bess to Cora. "I heard her voice." "I hope she's nice," answered Cora, "but as long as we get some one to pull us off we have no occasion to be particular." By this time the rowboat was almost alongside. "Hurrah!" shouted Jack. "Also hurray!" added Ed. "Walter, you're a brick!" exclaimed Cora fervently. The light of the lantern now fell upon the face of the stranger. The stranded ones looked upon the countenance of a girl, not perhaps a very young girl, nor a very pretty girl, but her face was pleasant, and she pulled a stroke as steady as did Walter. Walter stood up. He was enveloped in a bath robe! CHAPTER V FRIEND OR FOE? When their launch pulled up to the dock that night, an anxious party greeted them. Nettie had returned from the city, and upon finding the cottage deserted had waited a reasonable length of time before consulting the neighbors. Then she found that the young folks had gone sailing. That settled it, for the waters of the bay are never considered too reliable, and when the girls did not return by ten o'clock Nettie locked up the cottage and set off for the beach. Of course, she learned that such a party had gone out, but in what direction no one along the beach front seemed to know. The upper bay course was the last thing thought of, and, when Nettie did succeed in hiring a fisherman to set out and search, he went down the cove opposite to the course taken by Ed in his motor boat. In half an hour the fisherman returned, and, as luck would have it, he brought with him Walter's cap, which had fallen overboard as the youth started out from the stalled motor boat, and so drifted in the other direction. In the rapid time that bad news always flies, the report became circulated that a sailing party was lost. Hazel and Paul Hastings, two friends of the motor girls, heard the report at their cottage, and hurried down to the little wharf, where they found Nettie in the deepest distress. Just as Paul was about to set out himself, the launch chugged in, with the party laughing and singing, Cora playing that same tune, and with our friends was the little lady from the bungalow, she who had rescued Walter, and who went with him to the succor of the stranded ones on the sand bar. It was a wonderful evening, and when Cora, with Bess, Belle and Miss Robbins, the new girl, stepped ashore, they evidently did not regret the length of time spent upon the water. Miss Robbins, it developed, was a young doctor, stopping up the river in a bungalow with her mother. Her boat was towed by the launch when they came in, and, although she wanted to row back, the others would not listen to such a proposition. "It won't take half an hour to get to the garage and bring my car right down here," insisted Walter, "unless you prefer walking up to the cottage with the young ladies, and I can run over there for you. I will have you back in your bungalow in ten minutes more." Miss Robbins was one of those rare young women who always did what was proposed for her, and she now promptly agreed to go to the cottage, and there await Walter and his car. As they entered the little parlor Bess drew Cora aside and demanded: "How ever did Walter find out that she'd just love to go to the Berkshires? And he wants to know if she is _homely_ enough to be our chaperon," she added, with a laugh. "She is," replied Jack's sister promptly, and in a tone of voice remarkably decisive for Cora, considering. "But she's nice," objected Bess. "Very," confirmed Cora, "and we should conform to the rules--homely, experienced and wise." "She's a lot of those," went on Bess, who seemed taken with the idea of going to the hills with Miss Robbins as chaperon. "Besides, I like her." "That's a lot more," said Cora, with a laugh. "I like her, too. It seems to me almost providential. We are going to the Berkshires, she wants to go, we can't get a mother to take us, so a young doctor ought to be the----" "Very thing," finished Bess, and she joined the others indoors. "But here is Walter back. How quickly he got around! Looks as if Walter is very keen on time--this time," and the tooting of the auto horn outside drew them to the door. "Walter's privilege," whispered Cora, just as Miss Robbins hurried to the steps. "Isn't this splendid," said the stranger, with polite gratitude. "One would not mind getting shipwrecked often for an auto ride. And such an evening! or night, I suppose it is now." "I'll go along," said Cora, realizing that she ought to do so. "Me, too," said Jack, thinking he should go with Cora. Bess and Belle would then be alone with Ed. Of course, Nettie was about, and they might sit on the porch until the others returned. Jack jumped in with Walter, while Cora and Miss Robbins took the second seat. The car was not Walter's runabout, but a larger machine from the garage. "I'll have to come down in the morning for my boat," said Miss Robbins. "We've been living on soft clams lately, and I have to go out quite a way to dig them." "Do you dig them?" asked Cora. "Of course, why not? It is muddy and dirty, but it's lots cheaper than buying them, and then we are sure they are fresh." "I'll go up in the boat when I fetch the robe back," said Walter, who, it was plain to be seen, liked the excuse to visit the bungalow on the rocks. "What time do you clam?" "Well, I have to call at the fresh-air camp tomorrow. I'll be back about eleven, and can then get some dug in time for lunch." "We are bungalowing," spoke Jack. "Why can't we clam, Wallie?" Walter poked his free elbow into Jack's ribs. "You can, of course, what's to prevent you," and he gave him such another hard jab that Jack grabbed the elbow. "But I wouldn't start tomorrow--it's unlucky to clam on Wednesday," finished Walter. The girls were too busy talking to notice the boys' conversation, if the pokes and exclamations might be classified as such. "Don't you ever sink?" called back Jack to Miss Robbins. "Oh my, no! I can tell all the safe and unsafe places." And she laughed merrily. "It is late for us to bring you home," said Cora. "I hope your mother won't be frightened at your absence." "Oh, no, mother has absolute confidence in me," replied Miss Robbins. "You see, mother and I are chums. We built the bungalow." "Built it?" echoed Cora. "Yes, indeed. You must come around in daylight and inspect it. Poverty may not be a blessing, but it is a pace-setter." Walter felt this was the very kind of a girl he had dreamed of. She might not be pretty, but when she tossed the bath robe out to him as he was virtually washed up at her door, tossed it out while she ran to get her own wraps to join him in the rescue, he felt instantly that this girl was a "find." Then, when she spoke of going to the Berkshires, he was further convinced, and now, when she told of building a bungalow--what an acquisition such a woman would be! "Aren't you afraid in the bungalow--just you and your mother in this lonely place?" asked Cora, as they drew up to the territory that outlined a camping ground. "Well we never have been afraid," replied Miss Robbins, "as I am pretty good with a revolver, but there seems to be some tramps around here lately. One visited us this morning before breakfast, and mother remarked he was not at all a pleasant sort of customer." "We had something like a similar call," said Cora, "only the man didn't ring the bell--he crawled around the house." "Mercy! Why didn't the boys chase him?" "They did, but he was beyond chase when they arrived. That's the one thing uncertain about boys--their presence when one wants them," and Cora stepped out of the machine to allow Miss Robbins room to pass. "There's a light in the window," remarked Jack, as he, too, alighted from the machine. "And there's mother! Mother, come out a minute," called Miss Robbins. "I want to----" "Daughter!" exclaimed the woman at the little door. "I am almost frightened to death. What happened? Where's your boat?" "Why! you frightened, mother? About me?" "Well, I suppose I should not have been," and the lady smiled as she stepped within range of the auto lamps. "But that horrid tramp. He came again!" "He did! How long ago?" "Just as you left. I cannot imagine why he should sneak around here at this hour. He could not have wanted food." There was no time for introductions. The excitement of Mrs. Robbins precluded any such formality. All talked just as if they had been well acquainted. "We could tell the town officers," suggested Walter. "It is not safe for women to be alone away up here." "He wanted to hire a boat, Regina," said the mother, "just as if he could not get one handy at the pier." "Shall we hunt for you?" asked Jack. "We are professional burglar hunters--do it 'most every evening." "Oh, thank you! but there are no hiding places about our shack. Either you are in it or out of it, and in one way or the other one is bound to be in evidence," said Miss Robbins, smiling frankly. "What did your visitor look like?" inquired Cora. "He was tall and dark and very stooped," replied Mrs. Robbins. "Besides this, I noticed he wore boots with his trousers outside, as a farmer or clammer wears them." "Oh!" said Cora simply. But she did not add that this description tallied somewhat with that of the man she had seen about Clover Cottage. She particularly saw the boots, but many clammers wear them that way. "I fancy the girls will be timid to-night," Cora remarked, as they started back to the cottage. "Yes, this has been what you might call a portentous evening," agreed Walter, "and I do declare I think Miss Robbins is--well--nice, to put it mildly." "Wallie," said Jack. "I will have an awful time with you, I can see that. But you are young, boy, very young, and she is already a doctor, so maybe there is hope--she may be able to cure you." CHAPTER VI A THIEF IN THE NIGHT "Hush!" "I heard it!" "Call Nettie!" "I would have to go out in the hall--the noise was somewhere near the second stairs." "But I am so frightened--I shall die!" "No, you won't. Please be quiet! I have the little revolver!" Cora crept out of bed and left Belle trembling there. She only advanced a few steps when the sounds in the hall again startled her. The stairs certainly creaked. There was no cat, no dog. Some one was walking on those steps. Cora realized that discretion was the better part of valor. It would be foolhardy to run out in the hall, even with the cocked revolver in her hand. If she could only touch the button of the electric hall light! She stepped out cautiously. Something seemed very near, yet, at that moment, there was no sound, just that feeling of some one near. She reached her arm out of the door, touched the button, and, in an instant, had flooded the hall with light. As she did so she saw a man turn and run down the three steps near the window, part way up the stairs. The window was open! Cora was too frightened to move for a moment, then she raised her revolver, and the next instant the sound of a shot rang through the house. The man dropped out of the window. Cora ran to it, looked down, saw the figure on the ground beneath, and fired again, but not at the man. With a cry the fellow jumped up, and as he hurried away Cora saw that he limped. She must have hit him! In all this time she could not give a word to the three frightened girls who were screaming and shouting for help. Nettie had run down from the third floor, Belle was threatening to die, and Bess was doing her best to make the boys down at the bungalow hear her cries. "Did you kill him?" gasped Belle, when Cora finally returned to the bedroom. "No, indeed, but I guess I hurt him a little. He limped off rather unsteadily. I had no idea of hitting him, but just as I fired toward the window he darted into it. I could not help it. He should have surrendered." Cora was as pale as death. Her black hair fell in a cloud about her shoulders. She sank into a chair and still held the smoking weapon. "Put that down!" commanded Nettie. "Not yet--he might come back," murmured Cora. "There is no reason for you to fear, it is not cocked," and she held up the revolver to prove her words. "Oh, do put it down!" begged Belle. "Seems to me you are more afraid of the revolver than of the burglar," remarked Cora. "Do you realize that a man has just jumped out of the window?" "Of course we do," wailed Bess, "but we don't want any more things to happen, and it's always the perfectly safe, unloaded guns that shoot people." "Oh, I'll put it away, if you feel so about it," and Cora stepped over to the dresser as she spoke. "I really hope I have not hurt the man very much!" "Couldn't have, when he was able to get away," declared Nettie. "But I just wish you had! The idea of a mean man sneaking around here! Likely he's taken the silver. I didn't bring it up last night!" "Well, that was not your fault, Nettie," Bess said. "We had so much excitement last night you are not responsible. Besides, you wanted to go down for it, and I said not to bother. But I hope he didn't take grandma's spoons." "Let's go down and find out," suggested Cora. "Oh, mercy, no!" cried Belle, who all the time continued to shiver under the bed clothes. "Let the old silver go--grandma's spoons and all the rest. We may be thankful we are alive." "But the man is gone," declared Cora. "I saw him go." "Yes, but there might be another man down stairs. Who knows anything about such persons or their doings?" "Again I'll agree, if it makes you feel better," replied Cora. "But, you see, mother has been away so much, and Jack is always at college, so that I am rather educated in this sort of thing," and as she glanced at her watch on the dresser the other girls could not help admiring her prudent courage. "What time is it?" asked Nettie. "The mystic hour--when we are supposed to be farthest from earth," replied Cora. "Just two." "There is no use in trying to sleep any more," said Bess. "We might better get up and dress." "And look like valentines in the morning! No, indeed, I am going to bed," and Cora deliberately dropped herself down beside Belle. "Oh, Nettie will keep guard," said Bess, apparently disappointed that Cora should give up her part of the "guarding." "Strange, the neighbors did not hear the shots," the maid said. "But it is just as well. We might have had to entertain people more troublesome than burglars. I'm going down stairs. I must look about the spoons. Mrs. Robinson will be so angry----" "You will do nothing of the sort, Nettie!" commanded Belle, sitting bolt upright. "I tell you we must all stick together until morning. I won't consent to any one leaving the room!" Even Bess laughed, the order was so peremptory. Nettie fussed around rather displeased. Finally she asked if the young ladies wanted anything, and learning that they did not made her way upstairs. "If you are to stay in this room, Bess," said Cora, "please get some place. I want to put out the light." "Oh, we must leave the light burning," insisted Belle. "Must we? Very well," and Cora drew a light coverlet over her eyes. "Good night, or good morning, girls. Let me sleep while I may. Who knows but the officers will be after me in the morning!" Bess dropped down upon the couch in the corner. Both twins had unlimited confidence in Cora, and as the time wore on they both felt, as she did, that there was no longer need for alarm. "She's actually asleep," said Belle quietly. "Good girl," replied Bess. "Wish I was. I hate to be awake." "But some one has to watch," said the sister. "What for?" "He might come back." "With a ball in his leg, or somewhere? Not much danger. Cora was plucky, and we were lucky. There! a rhyme at this hour! Positively dissipation!" "I am glad mother was not at home," whispered Belle. "Of course, that was the man who has been sneaking around." "Likely." "Did Cora say so?" "No, not just so, but she said she saw him." "Do you suppose they will say anything about her shooting him?" (This in a hissed whisper.) "Belle?" "What, dear?" "I must--go to--sleep!" "Then I must stay awake. Some one has to watch!" CHAPTER VII THE SEARCH The spoons were gone! Nettie discovered this very early the next morning, for the truth was, the maid did not return to sleep after the escape of the burglar from the Robinson cottage. The fact that she had been intrusted with the care of the table silver, during the absence of Mrs. Robinson, gave the girl grave anxiety, and, although Bess was willing to say it was partly her fault that the silver had not been brought upstairs that night, Nettie felt none the less guilty. The boys, Ed and Jack, were around at the cottage before the tired girls had a chance to collect themselves after breakfast. "We have got to make a quiet search first," said Jack, after hearing the story. "No use putting the officers on until we get a look over the neighborhood. From Cora's version of the affair he could not have gone very far." This was considered good advice, and accordingly Jack went back to the bungalow for Walter, so that all three chums might start out together. "Did you really get a look at him?" Ed asked Cora. "Not exactly a look," replied Cora, "but I noticed when he jumped up into the window that he wore a beard--he looked almost like a wild man." "Naturally he would look to you that way, under the circumstances," said Ed, "but what stumps me is how you expected him--how you had the gun loaded and all that." "Well, didn't he prowl around the very first day we came in from leaving mother at the train? He seemed to know we would be alone," declared Belle. "I hope he is so badly hurt that he had to----" "Give up prowling," finished Cora. "Well, I hope he is not badly hurt. It is not pleasant to feel that one has really injured another, even if he be a bold, bad burglar." "Don't let that worry you," encouraged Ed. "I rather guess his legs are used to balls and bullets. But here come the fellows. So long, girls," as he started off to meet Walter and Jack. "If we don't get the spoons we will get something." "Where are they going?" asked Bess. "Oh, I am so nervous and tired out this morning!" and Belle's white face corroborated that statement. "I feel I will have to go back to bed." "It's the best thing you can do," advised Cora, for, indeed, the dainty, nervous Belle was easily overcome. "I might say, though, go out on the porch and rest in the hammock. The air will help." Nettie was already searching and beating the ground from under the hall window out into the field, and then into the street. She had found one spoon, and she had also found a spot that showed where some one had lately been lying in the tall grass. Cora joined her now, and the two came to the conclusion that the man had rested there possibly to do something for the injured foot or leg. "It is well you found even one spoon," said Cora, bending low in the bushes to make sure there were no more dropped there, "for that will help in identifying the others." "But I do feel dreadfully," sighed Nettie. "I have been with Mrs. Robinson so long, and nothing of the kind has ever before happened." "There has to be a first time," said Cora, "and I am sure Mrs. Robinson will not blame you." "Only for you what might have happened," exclaimed the girl, looking into Cora's flushed face. "I cannot see how you ever had the courage to fire!" "I had to! Think of three helpless girls--and a desperate man. Why, if I showed fright, I am sure we might have all been chloroformed or something. Why, what's this? I declare! a chloroform bottle! There! And it's from the town drug store! Well, now, wasn't it lucky I had the revolver?" She picked up a small phial. "Don't tell Miss Bess or Miss Belle," cautioned Nettie. "They are so nervous now, I think they would not stay in the house another night if they knew about the bottle." "All right," agreed Cora, "but it will be well for the boys to know about it. It shows that the man went to the Spray drug store, and that he must belong about here some place." Meanwhile, Ed, Jack and Walter had done considerable searching. They followed what they took to be a trail, down over the railroad tracks, through swamps, and they finally brought up at an abandoned gypsy camp! "They left in a hurry," declared Ed. "See, they had a meal here last night, at least." The remains of food and of a campfire showed that his surmise was correct, and Jack made bold enough to pull down an old horse blanket that hung to the ground from the low limbs of a tree. "Hello! Who are you?" exclaimed Jack, for back of the improvised curtain lay a man asleep! The other boys ran to the spot. "That's him," whispered Ed, ignoring his education. "Look at the bandaged foot!" The man turned over and growled. He was not asleep, but pretended to be, or wanted to be. "Here!" exclaimed Ed, giving him a shove, "wake up! We want those spoons you borrowed last night!" The fellow pulled himself up on his arms and made a move as if to get something in his pocket, but the boys were too many and too quick for him. Ed and Walter had his arms secure before he had a chance to sit upright. Jack whipped out a strap, and while the fellow vigorously protested and exerted a desperate effort to free himself, the young men made him their prisoner. "You stay here, and I will go for the officer," said Jack, having tied fast the man's hands and noting that the sore foot would not permit of any running away. "What do you want?" shouted the man. "If you don't let me go, I'll----" "Oh, no, you won't," interrupted Ed. "A nice chap to break in on a couple of girls! Even robbers should have some honor," and Ed pushed the man back into the grass just to relieve his feelings. "I didn't do no breaking in," said the fellow, turning in pain. "I got kicked with a horse." "A little iron broncho," remarked Walter, with a smile. "Well, that sort of kick stays a while. I guess you won't feel like running after that horse. Did he run away?" The man looked as if he would like to strangle Walter, but he was forced to lie there helpless. Jack had gone. The officer, after hearing the story, decided to ask Cora to go to the swamp to identify the man. With this intention the two stopped at the cottage, and Cora promised to hurry along after them down to the abandoned camp. "I can't go this very minute," she said, "but I know the way. I will follow directly." "No need to go into the woods," said the officer, on second thought. "Just step down to the station house. We will have him there inside of half an hour." This was agreed upon, and when Jack and the Constable had gone toward the camp, Cora, without telling Bess or Belle, who did not happen to see the man with Jack, slipped into a linen outing suit and started for the country police station. The road led cross-cut through a lot. There were trees in the very heart of this big meadow, and when Cora reached a clump of birches she was suddenly startled to see an old woman shuffling after her. Cora stopped instantly. It was broad daylight, so she had no thought of fear. "What do you want?" she demanded of the woman, whom she saw was an old gypsy. "I--want--you, young lady!" almost hissed the woman. "Do not get Salvo into trouble!" and she raised a black and withered hand in warning, "or trouble shall be upon your head!" "Salvo!" "Tony Salvo! Liza has spoken!" and the old gypsy turned away, after giving Cora a look such as the young girl was not apt soon to forget. But Cora went straight on to the police station. CHAPTER VIII THE BEGINNING OF THE END Cora was pale and frightened. Jack and Ed had already reached the office of the country squire, where that official had taken the sulky prisoner. Walter went back to the cottage to assure the young girls there that everything would ultimately be all right. From under dark, shaggy eyebrows the man stared at Cora. He seemed to know of the gypsy woman's threat, and was adding to it all the savagery that looks and scowls could impart. But Cora was not to be thus intimidated--to give in to such lawbreakers. "Do you recognize the prisoner?" asked the officer. "As well as I can tell from the opportunity I had of seeing him," replied the girl, in a steadied voice. "What about him do you remember?" "The beard, and the fact that he is lame. I must have hit him when I fired to give the alarm." The man looked up and smiled. "Humph!" he grunted, "fired--to give--the alarm!" "Pretty good firing, eh?" demanded the squire. "Now, Miss Kimball, please give us the whole story." Again the man cast that swift, fierce look at Cora, but her eyes were diverted from him. "The first time I saw him--I think it was he--was one evening when we were returning from a motor ride. I saw a man creeping around the cottage. He had that peculiar stoop of the shoulders." "He's got that, all right," agreed the squire. "The next time I saw the person, whom I take to be this man, was last night, about midnight. I was aroused from sleep, and upon making a light in the hall I saw a man under the window. The next moment he jumped out, and again I saw the figure under the window." Cora paused. Somehow she felt unreasonably nervous, but the strain of the night's excitement might account for that. "What have you got to say for yourself, Tony?" asked the squire. "Not guilty," growled the man. "I was at the camp last night, and when the old folks were packing up I got kicked with that big bay horse. Ouch!" and he rubbed the injured leg. "Looks funny, though, doesn't it, Tony?" Jack and Ed were talking to Cora. "If you have finished with us, Squire Redding, we will leave," said Ed. "My sister is not used to this sort of thing." "Certainly, certainly," agreed the squire politely. "I am much obliged for her testimony. I guess we will hold Tony for the grand jury. Gypsies in this county have to be careful, or they lose their rights to come in here. I think, myself, we would be better off without them." "Then give me a chance to leave," snapped the man. "The rest are gone. We are done with this blamed county, anyhow." "Well, you will have to settle up first," declared Squire Redding. "Those spoons were valuable." "I ain't got no spoons! I tell you I was at the camp all night, and I don't know nothin' about this thing." "Very well, very well. Can you furnish a thousand-dollar bond?" "Thousand-dollar bond!" and the gypsy shifted uneasily. "I guess not, judge." "Then here comes the man to attend to your case. Constable Cummings, take this man to the station again and lock him up. Here, Tony, you can walk all right. Don't play off that way." But Tony did not move. He sat there defiant. Officer Cummings was a big man and accustomed to handling prisoners as rough and as ugly as this one. The two steel cells back of the fire house were often occupied by rough fishermen and clammers who forgot the law at the seaside place, and it was always Tom Cummings who put them in "the pen." "Come, Tony," he said, with a flourish of his stick. "I never like to hit a gypsy; it's bad luck." The prisoner looked up at big Tom. Then he shuffled to his feet and shambled out of the room. As he passed down the stone steps he brushed past Cora. Whether intentionally or otherwise, the man shoved the girl so that she was obliged to jump down at the side of the step. Jack saw it and so did Ed, but big Tom winked at them and merely hurried the prisoner along. Cora only smiled. Why should the man not be rude when her evidence had accused him of a serious crime--that of breaking and entering? "I didn't tell you about the bottle," she said to the boys as they walked along. "I found this bottle in the fields." "Chloroform!" exclaimed Jack. "You should have told the judge, Cora." "But could I prove that the man had it? Besides, it would be awful to have that made public." "You are right, Cora," agreed Ed. "First thing we'd know, it would be in the New York papers. 'Attempt to Chloroform Three Young Girls!' That would not be pleasant news for the folks up home way." "Oh, well, I suppose you are right," said Jack. "But that bottle puts a different light on the case, and it seems to me the fellow ought to suffer for it." "And do you know that old gypsy woman, Liza, met me and tried to scare me into--or out of--identifying Tony? She made a most dramatic threat." "Did, eh? I thought all the gypsies had cleared out!" exclaimed Jack. "I'll go and get a warrant for her----" "She took the eleven o'clock train," said Cora. "I saw her going to the station as I came up the street. Oh, I wouldn't bother with the poor old woman. This man is her brother, and naturally she wants to keep him out of trouble." "At the expense of trouble for others." Jack was determined to have justice for his sister. "I'm going to make sure she and the whole tribe have left the county. The lazy loafers!" "Now, Jacky," and Ed smiled indulgently. "Didn't Liza tell your fortune once, and say that you were going to marry the proverbial butter tub? It is not nice of you to go back on a thing like that." "Did it strike you, boys, that this man answers the description of the man Mrs. Robbins was frightened by?" asked Cora. "That's so," agreed Ed. "I'll bet he had his eye on something around the bungalow--not Miss Robbins, of course." "Well, it seems better that he is now safe," said Cora, with a sigh. "I'm glad I am through with it." "I hope you are," said Ed, and something in his manner caused Cora to remember that remark. "I hope you are!" But Cora was not through with it by a great deal--as we shall soon see. CHAPTER IX THE START "Dear me! I did think something else would happen to prevent us from getting off," said Bess, as she and Belle, with Cora, actually started out to get the autos ready for the tour to the Berkshires. "And to think that Miss Robbins can go with us!" "I'm sure she will be a lot better than a nervous person like dear mamma," said Belle. "Not but what we would love to have mamma go, but she does not enjoy our kind of motoring." "It does seem fortunate that Miss Robbins wanted to go," added Cora. "I like her; she is the ideal type of business woman." "Is she?" asked Belle, in such an innocent way that the other two girls laughed outright. "Oh, I suppose I ought to know," and Belle pouted; "but we always think Cora knows so much better--and more." "Which is another fact I have bumped into," said Cora. "I just feel that we are going to have the jolliest of good times," remarked Bess, as they started down the road. "I never care what route we take. Isn't it fine that the boys attended to all that arrest and police business for us?" "Very fine," agreed Cora, "but I like to have my say now about our plans. We are going to take the main road along the New York side. We will touch Bridgeport and Waterbury. You might like to know that much." "There are the boys, and there is Miss Robbins! My, doesn't she look smart!" suddenly exclaimed Bess. "That's a smart outfit," Cora agreed, as they saw the party approaching, Miss Robbins "done up" in a tan suit, with the exact shade in a motor cap. "I'm so glad we have all the things in the cars. It is so much better to do that the night before," remarked Belle. "But you didn't do it the night before; I did!" her sister reminded her. "Did you bring the hot-water bottle?" asked Cora. "If Belle gets a headache, you will surely need it." This was not a joke, neither was it intended for sarcasm, for on previous tours Belle had suffered, and the getting of reliable remedies was one of the real discomforts of the trip. "I put in the water bag and mustard, too," said Belle. "Bess is just as likely as not to get a cold, and she has to have mustard." "I suppose Cora brought cold cream," called Bess, with a laugh. "That is usually the important drug in her medicine chest." "I did," admitted Cora. "I will surely have to use a barrel of it going through the changes in the hills. I cannot stand a stinging face." Mrs. Robinson had taken a notion that her twins were outgrowing their twinship, consequently their outfits for the mountain trip had been made exactly alike in material and effect. The result was, the boys purposely mixed the girls up, asking Belle what made her so thin, for instance, when they knew perfectly well that she was always thin, and that it was Bess who had to own to being stout. The twins' costumes were of hunter-green corduroy, with knitted green caps. Cora wore mole-color cloth, with a toque to match, and as they now stood before the garage, waiting the coming of the others, who had stopped at the post office, many admiring eyes turned in their direction. "They have a lot of mail," remarked Cora gleefully, as Jack waved letters and cards to her. "I hope it is nothing we don't want just now." "As long as the gypsy man is safe, we needn't fear anything unpleasant," said Bess, "but I did feel a lot better when I heard that they took him to the real county jail." "Oh, yes," and Cora laughed. "You seemed to think that man was our particular evil genius. Bess, all gypsies are supposed to steal." "Hello!" "Here we are!" "Everybody and everything!" "No, Wallie forgot his new handkerchief--the one with the pretty rose in the corner." "And Jacky forgot his rope. We won't be able to haul him this time." "I forgot something," began Miss Robbins, "my absorbent cotton. See to it that if you must get hurt you don't get----" "The nose-bleed," Ed finished more practically than eloquently. Miss Robbins was to travel in Cora's car, with Cora and Hazel Hastings. The boys had tried to alter this plan, they declaring one boy, at least, should go in the big car, but Cora argued that the _Whirlwind_ was distinctly a girl's auto, and only girls should travel in it. This put Jack in his own runabout and Walter and Ed in the _Comet_. The Robinson girls, of course, were not to be separated, as the _Flyaway_ seemed to know all about the twins, and the twins knew all about the _Flyaway_. The weather was uncertain, and the fog horn at the point lighthouse had blown all night, so that the girls were naturally apprehensive. Only Cora's car was canopied, so that should it rain they would be obliged to stop and wait for clear weather. Nevertheless it was a very jolly party that now waited at the garage for the machines to be run out. The boys went inside and attended to the very last of the preparations, while Cora, too, insisted upon looking over her machine before starting off. "You'll have a fine trip," remarked the man at the garage. "I think the run through the Berkshires one of the best there is. Fine roads and nice people along the way." "Well, we need both," answered Miss Robbins. "I don't know so much about roads, but people--we always need them." "All aboard," cried Ed, as finally they all did get into the cars, and, as usual, the _Whirlwind_ led. Next came the _Flyaway_, then the two runabouts with the young men. "What a fine chauffeur Miss Cora is?" remarked Miss Robbins to Hazel. "Yes, but you must call her Cora," corrected Hazel gayly. "We make it a rule to go by first names when we like people." "Then you must call me Regina," added Miss Robbins. "I hope the young men don't make me Reggie." "They're very apt to," commented Hazel. Cora had thrown in the third speed, and was now bending over her wheel in real man fashion. They were getting out on the country roads, where all expected to make good time. Bess also threw on her full speed, following Cora's lead, and the boys, of course, gave the speeding signal on their horns. "My!" exclaimed Miss Robbins admiringly, as the landscape flashed by. "Can't we go," added Hazel exultingly. "It's like eating and drinking the atmosphere," continued the young lady physician. "I do love autoing," went on Hazel. "My brother is a perfect devotee of the machine. But we do not happen to own one of our own." "That is where good friends come in," said Miss Robbins. "This trip is a perfect delight to me. And, really, it will fix me up wonderfully for what I have to undertake this fall. You see, we have just closed the bungalow, mother has gone home, and that left me free to go to the Berkshires and have a little pleasure, together with attending to some business. I have a very old patient there. I have to call on her before she leaves the hills." "And you really have patients?" Hazel looked in surprise at the young woman beside her. "Of course, I do. But this one I inherited--she is a great aunt of mine." Hazel leaned forward to ask Cora what her speedometer was registering. "Only twenty miles an hour," replied Cora. "And we could go thirty easily. But I don't fancy ripping off a shoe, or doing any other of the things that speed might do." "I shall enjoy it all the more when I am so sure of that," spoke Regina. "I cannot see why people take risks just for the sake of----" "Hey, there!" shouted Ed, as his car shot past Cora's. "We are going on ahead." "So--we--see!" answered Cora dryly. "What do you suppose they are up to?" asked Bess, as she turned the _Flyaway_ up to the side of the _Whirlwind_. "Haven't any idea," replied Cora, just as Jack, too, shot by. "See you later," called Jack. "Not deserting us, are they?" asked Regina. "Oh, no, just some lark," answered Cora. But scarcely had the boys' machines disappeared than a trail of three gypsy wagons turned into the mountain highway from some narrow crossroad. "Oh!" sighed Belle, apprehensively clutching the arm of her sister. "Don't, Belle. You almost turned me into the _Whirlwind_," cautioned the sister, as she quickly twisted around the steering wheel. "Those are the beach gypsies," Cora was able to say to Bess. Then no one spoke. Bess leaned over her wheel, while Cora looked carefully for a place to turn out that would bring her clear of the rumbling old wagons. A woman sat in the back of one of the vehicles. She poked her head out and glared at the approaching machines. Then she was seen to wave a red handkerchief so that the persons in the next wagon could distinctly see it. The motor girls also saw it. This caused some confusion, as the motorists were trying to get out in the clear road, while the wagons were blocking the way. Then, just as the _Whirlwind_ was about to pass the second wagon, the driver halted his horse and stepped down directly in her path. He waved for Cora to stop. "Don't!" called Miss Robbins, and Cora shot by, followed closely by Bess, who turned on more gas. The gypsy wagons had all stopped in the middle of the road. The automobiles were now safely out of the wanderers' reach. "That was the time a chaperon counted," said Cora, "for I had not the slightest fear of stopping. I thought he might just want to ask some ordinary question." "You are too brave," said Miss Robbins. "It is not particularly interesting to stop on a road like this to talk to gypsies when our boys are out of reach." "We must speed up and reach them," said Cora. "I might meet more gypsies." Belle was thoroughly frightened. Hazel did not know what to make of the occurrence, but to Cora and to Bess, who had so lately learned something of queer gypsy ways, the matter looked more serious, now that there was time to think of it. "There they are!" shouted Bess, as she espied the two runabouts stopped at the roadside. "They are getting lunch," said Hazel. "Look at Jack putting down the things on the grass." "They certainly are," confirmed Cora. "Now, isn't that nice of them? And we have been blaming them for deserting us!" Neither the motor girls nor the motor boys knew what the meeting of the gypsy wagons was about to lead to--serious trouble for some of the party. CHAPTER X AN EXPLOSION The rain came. It descended in perfect sheets, and only the fact that our tourists could reach a mountain house saved them from more inconvenience than a wetting. They had just partaken of a very agreeable lunch by the roadside, all arranged and prepared by the boys, with endless burned potatoes down on the menu as "fresh roasted," when the lowering clouds gave Dame Nature's warning. Next the thunder roared about what it might do, and then our friends hurried away from the scene. The run brought them some way on the direct road to the Berkshires, and in one of those spots where it would seem the ark must have tipped, and dropped a human being or two, the young people found a small country community. The special feature of this community was not a church, nor yet a meeting house, but a well-equipped hotel, with all the requisites and perquisites of a first-class hostelry. "No more traveling to-day," remarked Cora, as, after a wait of two hours, she ventured to observe the future possible weather. "It looks as if it would rain all there was above, and then start in to scoop up some from the ocean. Did you ever see such clouds?" Ed said he had not. Walter said he did not want to, while the girls didn't just know. They wanted to be off, and hoped Cora's observations were not well-founded. Miss Robbins found in the hotel a sick baby to take up her time, and she inveigled Bess into helping her, while the wornout and worried mother took some rest. The little one, a darling girl of four years, had taken cold, and had the most troublesome of troubles--an earache--so that she cried constantly, until Miss Robbins eased the pain. When the boys realized what a really good doctor the girls' chaperon was, they all wanted to get sick in bed, Jack claiming the first "whack." But Walter had some claim on medical attendance, for when the storm was seen to be coming up he had eaten more stuff from the lunch basket than just one Walter could comfortably store away, and the headache that followed was not mere pretense. So the rainy afternoon at Restover Hotel was not idle in incident. It was almost tea time when Cora had a chance to speak with her brother privately. She beckoned him to a corner of the porch where the rain could not find them; neither could any of their friends. "Jack," she began, "do you know that the people in the gypsy wagon really did try to stop us? All that prattle of Bess and Belle was not nonsense. Only for Miss Robbins I should have stopped." "Well, what's the answer?" asked her brother. "That's just what I would like to find out," replied the sister. "It seems to me they would hardly have stopped a couple of girls to ask road directions or anything like that, when so many wagons, easier to halt than automobiles, had also passed by them." "Maybe they wanted some gas--gasoline. They use that in their torches." "But why ask girls for it?" insisted Cora. "Because girls are supposed to be soft, and they might give it. Catch a fellow giving anything to a gypsy!" "Well, that might be so, but I have a queer feeling about that old witch's threat. She looked like three dead generations mummified. Her eyes were like sword points." "She must have been a beaut. I should like to have met her witchship. But, Cora dear, don't worry. We boys are not going to run away again, and if we see the gypsies we will see them first and last." "But there are bands of them all over the hills, and I have always heard that they have some weird way of notifying each band of any important news in the colony. Now, you see, Jack, the arrest of that man would be very important to them. They are as loyal to each other as the royalty." "Nevertheless it is a good thing the fellow is landed, and it was a blessing that he went for the cottage instead of to Miss Robbins' bungalow. _They_ had no means of calling help," mused Jack. "I suppose it was," answered Cora. "But I tell you, I do not want another such experience. It was all right while I had to act, but when it was all over I had to----" "React! That's the trouble. What we do with nerve we must repeat without nerve. Now, what do you think of your brother as a public lecturer?" and Jack laughed at his own attempt to explain the reaction that Cora really felt. "My, wasn't that a bright stroke of lightning?" exclaimed Cora. "Listen! Something is struck!" "That's right!" "An explosion!" A terrific report followed the flash. Then cries and shrieks all over the hotel alarmed those who were not directly at the scene of the panic. "Oh, it's the kitchen! See the smoke!" Jack and Cora rushed indoors, their first anxiety being to make sure that all the girls and boys of their party were safe. "Where is Bess?" "Where is Belle?" "Where are Walter and Ed?" "Oh! where is Miss Robbins?" Every one was looking for some one. In the excitement the guests at the hotel were rushing about shouting for friends and relatives, while smoke, black and heavy, poured up the stairs from the basement. Jack, Ed and Walter were among the first to get out and use the fire extinguishers. There were plenty of these about the hotel, but on account of the injury to the men who were working in the kitchen at the time of the explosion, and owing to the fact that all the guests in the hotel just then were girls and women, the men having gone to the city, there really were not enough persons to cope with the flames that followed the lightning. "Quick!" shouted Cora, "we can get the buckets. Bess take that one," pointing to the pail that hung on the wall, and which was filled with water. "Belle, run around and find another! Regina is with the injured men, so we cannot have her, but there is a girl! Won't you please get a bucket from the hall?" this to a very much frightened young lady. "The fire extinguishers seem to be all emptied, and the men are beating back the flames from the stairway." In a remarkably short time more than a dozen frightened girls and women had formed a bucket brigade under Cora's direction, and as fast as they could get the pails they handed them, filled and again refilled, to the boys, who were now doing all in their power to keep the fire from spreading to the dining-room floor. "What happened?" demanded one woman, when Jack turned to take a pail of water from Cora. "Lightning struck the boiler," replied the young man. "Oh, mercy!" exclaimed the same unreasonable person, who was delaying the men with her questions. "Any one hurt?" "Yes, three," and Jack, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and looking like the earnest worker he was, dashed again down a step into the dense smoke to splash the pail of water on the smouldering but now well-wetted woodwork. It seemed then as if all the guests but our own friends had run out of the building, and were huddled on the porch or standing in the rain under the trees along the path. Ed and Walter had carried the cook and the dishwasher out from the kitchen immediately after the explosion of the boiler, and the other injured ones were in the little cottage adjoining the hotel, where Miss Robbins was binding up their burns and making good use of her skill and the materials that she carried in her emergency case. "But I am afraid this man is very dangerously injured," she told Ed. "A piece of the boiler struck him directly on the back of the head." "Should he go to the hospital?" asked the young man. "Without question, if he could. But this is so far from anything like a hospital." "We could take him to Waterbury in Cora's car," suggested Ed. "That is large enough to make him somewhat easy." "The very thing! But I could not go with him. This other man is suffering so," and she poured more oil on the face that had not yet been bandaged in cotton. "Cora could run the machine, and I could hold Jim--they say his name is Jim." "Poor Jim!" sighed the young lady doctor. "He has a very slight chance. See, he is unconscious!" Ed rushed out, and in a short time had the _Whirlwind_ at the door. Jack and Walter were still busy with the fire, but they stopped when he called them, and together all three carried Jim tenderly out, and when Ed got in first they put the man in his arms. Cora also had been summoned, and without as much as waiting for her cap, but, getting into the cloak that Bess threw from the hall rack, she cranked up, and was at the wheel, following the directions for the nearest way to a hospital in Waterbury. "It is his only chance," remarked Miss Robbins, when she heard some one say the jolting of the auto would kill him outright, "and both the car and its chauffeur can be depended upon." CHAPTER XI THE RESULT OF A BLAZE "That was plucky, Cora." "What, Ed?" "You running into Waterbury with a man who might have died in your car." "Then he would have died in your arms." "But I thought girls were so queer about things of that sort. When one dies in a house, for instance, a girl never likes the room----" "But you would have had to keep your arms. Ed, I think the pluck was all on your side. But I do hope Jim has a chance. He seems an awfully frail little fellow." "Weighs about as much as you do, I should judge. But they say that kind of build is the best for fighting disease--there is not so much blood to take up the poison." They were riding back to Restover. Ed insisted upon driving the car, although Cora declared that she was not the least tired. The trip to the hospital had been made at a very high rate of speed, as the unconscious man seemed in imminent danger, and Cora's hands now trembled visibly from their work at the wheel of the _Whirlwind_. "I suppose we will have to live on love tonight," remarked Ed, "for that kitchen is certainly a thing of the past." "What saved the second floor?" "The heavy beams and metal ceiling. I guess they have had fires before in that hotel, for the ceiling was practically of iron. I just wonder what the boys are doing about now. I fancy Walter has turned nurse to assist Miss Robbins." "And Jack has taken up the role of engineer--to be made chief of the fire department. I shouldn't wonder but what they had formally organized by this time." "He certainly deserves to be chief; he did good work. When a gas tank--a small affair--started to hiss in the servants' dining room, Jack grabbed up a big palm and dumped the contents of the flower pot into the tank. It was a small thing they heated coffee on, and when, the next moment, the tank broke it was surprised to find itself buried under a bed of sand, with flowers on the grave." Cora laughed heartily at Ed's telling of the incident. Certainly strange things, if not really funny things, always seem to occur during the excitement caused by fire. "If everything in the kitchen is gone, don't you think we had better bring back some refreshments?" asked Cora. "The folks will all have appetites when they find there is nothing to eat." "Great idea. Here is a good-looking store. Let's load up." "But is there no manager at the hotel? Who was or who is boss?" "Jim. The management of that sort of place goes into the shape of bills and accounts, settled every month. Some New York company owns the place. It was a failure, and they leased it to a local man. That's why there will be no one to look after things now." "Well, we will buy the food and send our bill in to the company. I guess they will be glad enough to pay it when they hear of the emergency." "Yes, it would not do for the hotel disaster to get into the New York papers, with a starved-to-death head. Well, here's our store. What shall we buy?" Cora and Ed left the car and went into the store. They bought all sorts of canned goods, although Cora declared they would have to be eaten raw. Then they bought bacon and eggs. Ed insisted on that, no matter, he said, if they had to come to town again and take back to Restover a gas stove. He insisted that no well-regulated emergency feed ever went without bacon and eggs. Bread and butter they procured for fifty persons. Some cake for the ladies, Ed suggested. Pork and beans, canned, Cora thought might do for breakfast, even if they had to be eaten from the cans. Then the last thought, and by no means the most trifling, was wooden plates and tin cups. The bill footed up to ten dollars, and Ed insisted that the man make out the bill as paid and marked for the Restover Hotel. A half hour later the _Whirlwind_ drew up to the hostelry. The rain had ceased, and the hotel patrons were almost all out of doors, so that the motor girls and boys trooped down to meet Ed and Cora. As was anticipated, hunger prevailed, and when it was found that stores of eatables were in the tonneau of the _Whirlwind_ even the most helpless, nervous ladies at the hotel wanted to help get the refreshments into the house. "But where can they be cooked?" "What can we cook on?" "There is no gas stove!" "Not even an oil stove!" "We can't eat bacon raw!" "The bread is all right, anyway!" Such was the volley of remarks that came out from the crowd. "We will manage somehow," said Cora. "Our boys are used to emergency work in the line of eating and fixing meals." "Seems ter me," whined a wizen old lady, "thet the girls knows somethin' about it, too!" In the dining room on the second floor were two chandeliers. Under these were, of course, tables, and before the anxious ones had time to settle their fears there stood on these tables Cora, Bess and Belle, and on the other Ed, Jack and Walter. Each of our friends had in his or her hand something that answered to the pan or pot brand of utensil, and in the pan or pot, which was held over the gas, was something that began to "talk-talk" out loud of good things to eat, sizzling and crisping. It was very funny to see the young folks cooking over the handsome chandeliers, from which, of course, the glass globes had been removed. "Well, did you ever!" exclaimed more than one. "Those young folks do beat all! I used to think ma and pa brung us up right, but whoever on earth would have cooked bacon and eggs over a lamp," ejaculated an old man. "I guess driving them machines makes them smart," said another guest, as she took the pan Cora handed down and gingerly slopped the stuff over on a wooden plate. "I guess it is a good thing to know how to drive an automobile. Makes you right smart! Whew! but that was hot!" and she put the overheated fingers into her mouth. "Put another dish over it to keep it hot," Cora ordered. "And can't some one set a table? That is not such a difficult thing to do." "See here!" called out Ed, "this is no pancake party. I am not going to stay up here cooking all night. I am going down to eat. We have enough of tomatoes warmed to fill the wash bowl, and I love canned tomatoes if they are out of a washbowl. We washed the bowl, and sterilized it, and it's as good as a soup tureen." There stood the white wash basin almost filled with the steaming tomatoes. As Ed said, there could be no objection to the crockery. Jack had charge of the water for tea. This took a long time to boil, owing to the fact that the kettle was a very much bent-up affair that had been rescued from the ruined kitchen. Bess was cooking canned peas, while Belle insisted that all she could do was to turn over, with a fork, the things that cooked nicely on Cora's pan. "Done to a turn!" announced Jack, as he jumped down with his pots. "Now, if you folks need any more you will really have to go into active service." His initiative was followed by the others, and presently the less timid of the guests had put food into pans and taken up their places on the tables to do their cooking, while it seemed that all at once every one "fell to" and procured something to eat. "Let there be no unbecoming haste!" remarked Walter gently, but it was a great meal, that. CHAPTER XII QUEER COBBLERS "Isn't she disappointing?" remarked Hazel. "Very," answered Cora. "To think that she should leave us for a patient!" "I cannot understand it." "I have heard that girls not home raised are like that--they have no sentiment." "Nor honor, either!" "Well, she didn't think she was bound to go with us, and, of course, there was money besides reputation in being on the spot when the hotel owners would arrive. But I am disappointed." "I hope the boys will not feel obliged to return for her," and Cora's lip curled slightly. "She is such a good business woman she ought to be able to get to the Berkshires from here." "Walter seems enthralled," and Hazel laughed. "I wonder how Jack got him to leave her?" They were on the road again, and Miss Robbins, the physician, the business woman, the chaperon, had stayed behind to take care of those who had been injured in the explosion. There were good doctors within call, but she simply would stay, and saw no reason why the girls should not go on alone. To her the idea of being obligated to them was not to be thought of when a matter like professional business came up. Of course, this was a general disappointment, for the girls would never have entrusted themselves to her patronage if they had not felt certain that she would keep her word with them. However, the fact was that they were on the road again, and Regina Robbins was happy on the sunny porch of the big hotel, incidentally attending to a cut or two on one man's face and a bad-looking burn on the arm of another. Bess and Belle were driving along, "their faces as long as fiddles," as Cora said. The boys had taken the lead, and they were having their own trouble trying to convince Walter that Miss Robbins had "dumped" the girls, and that it was a "low-down trick." The _Whirlwind_ glided along apparently happy under the firm hand of its fair owner. The _Flyaway_ seemed, too, to be glad of a chance to get away again, and as Bess threw in the third speed, according to commands from Jack, who was leading, the little silver machine darted away like an arrow freed from the bow. The day was wonderfully clear after the rain, and even the sunshine had been polished up by the scouring of the mighty storm of late summer. "I shouldn't care so much," Belle confided to her twin sister, "but when we get to Lenox alone, without a chaperon, what will people say?" "Well, Tinkle, we have not got there yet. Maybe we may pick up a chaperon between this and that." "If we only could! Where do we stop tonight?" "Wherever we get." So they sped on. Mile after mile was lapped up in the dust of the motors. Out through Connecticut, over the line into Massachusetts, and along the splendid roads that border the Housatonic River. Houses were becoming scarcer and fewer; it was now largely a matter of woodlands and roads. "We have to make time now," called Cora to the twins. "The boys say we should get to Pittsfield by evening." "To Pittsfield! Why, that's----" "About a hundred," called Cora again. "Look out for your shoes, and don't be reckless on the turns. Stripping your differential just now would be fatal." "All right," responded Bess, "but mine is not the only car in the race." "Thanks," called back Cora, "and now we will clear off. Good-by!" The _Whirlwind_ shot ahead. Jack's car was clear of the other--Walter's, and as the run had to be made against time it was best for each machine to have "room to look around it." "Oh!" gasped Hazel, as Cora swerved around a sharp bend, "I don't fancy this sort of riding." "But we have to get to a large town before night. It's all right. The roads are so clear." On they flew. Only the shrieking of Jack's siren and the groaning of the deep horn on Walter's car gave messages to the girls. Several miles were covered in silence, and then they came to a signboard. It told that the main road was closed, and that they must take to a side road--a highway that was fairly good, but much more lonely. "I suppose we'll get back to the main road before a great while," said Cora. "I hope so," returned Bess. "This looks dreadfully lonely, doesn't it?" "Don't think about it," came from her sister. On they went, the way becoming wilder each instant. Yet the road itself was fairly smooth, so that it was not necessary to slacken the speed of the cars. "Something really smells hot," said Hazel. "Could anything ignite?" "Not exactly," replied Cora, "but we don't want to get too hot. It makes trouble." She slackened just a bit to make sure that Hazel's anxiety had no foundation in fact, for, indeed, the big machine was using its engine and gas to the utmost capacity. Just ahead the glare of the _Comet_ could be seen as it plunged into a deep turn in a deeper lined wood. Jack, in his _Get-There_, was after the first, and then the girls had difficulty even in getting a responding sound from the toots and the blasts which all were continually sounding. "They are away ahead," said Bess. "I thought they had seen enough of getting too far away from us. How do we know but that we might meet the gypsies on this lonely road?" "I wonder if it is late or early for motorists?" asked Cora of Hazel. "We haven't met a single party." "Just happened so, I suppose," said Hazel. "Surely people out here must enjoy this sort of weather." "Listen!" Cora gave three sharp blasts on her horn, but no answer came. "The boys are getting too far ahead. "I will have to accelerate----," she called. She pressed down the pedal and bent over the wheel as if urging the machine to its utmost. Then there was jolt--a roar! a bang! Cora jammed on brakes. "A shoe is gone!" she cried. "Exploded!" Without the slightest warning a big tire overheated, had ripped clear off the front wheel, the inner tube exploded, and the car had almost gone into a ditch when Cora stopped it. Bess had seen the trouble, and was able to halt her car far enough away to avoid a collision. "Isn't that dreadful!" cried Cora, her face as white as the tie at her throat. "It ripped off just from speed!" "Can't it be fixed?" asked Hazel, who now was out beside Cora. "Oh, of course! but how and when? I have another shoe, but to get it on, and the boys, as usual, out of sight!" She had pulled off her gloves and was looking at the split tire. It was marvelous that it should have come off so clean--simply peeled. "And it's five o'clock," said Belle, with her usual unfortunate way of saying something to make things worse. "But it isn't midnight," almost snapped Cora. "Let's try to call the boys," suggested Belle. "Aren't they dreadful to get so far away?" "Very rude," and Cora showed some sarcasm. "But the thing to do right now is not to wait for anybody, but to get to work. Bess, can you help me slip in a tube and put on a shoe?" "I never have, but, of course, I'll try," and she, too, pulled off her gloves. Cora quickly opened up the tool box, got out the jack, and then she unbuckled the shoe that was fast at the side of the _Whirlwind_. "I always thought folks carried them to ornament the cars," said Hazel, with an attempt at good nature, "but it seems that a cobbler is the thing we ought to carry for an ornament. We really don't need him, but we do need new shoes." "How long will it take?" asked Belle. "There's no telling," replied Cora. "It isn't exactly like putting a belt on a sewing machine." She handled the inner tube freely enough, and soon had it in the big rubber shoe, partly inflated. "Easy as putting tape in a jelly bag," remarked Hazel. "But we must get it on now and blow it up," said Cora. "Bess, get the pump." The pump was gotten, after which, with much exertion, the shoe was on the rim, and then the blowing began. This was not so easily accomplished as had been the other parts of the mechanical operation. First Bess pumped, then Belle tried it. Hazel was sure she could do it, for she often blew up Paul's bicycle, but this tire would not blow full. The girls were rapidly losing their complexions. Such strenuous efforts! "Oh, that's hard enough," declared Bess, trying to push her pretty fingers into the rubber. "Yes," answered Cora, pressing on the tire, which sank with the pressure, "it's about as hard as rice pudding!" "How many pounds?" insisted Bess. Cora looked at the gauge. "Sixty. I have got to have a full ninety for this car." "Then I don't see how we are going to get it!" Cora did not heed the discouragement. She was pumping now, and the shoe was becoming rigid. "If I get it a little harder I'll call it done!" she panted, "though we may ditch the car next time." CHAPTER XIII A DELAY AND A SCARE It was an hour later when the boys came back. They had discovered the loss of the girls when they had gone so far ahead that it took some time to return. The race was too much for them. They were obliged to admit that, in its interest, they had forgotten the girls. "If Miss Robbins had been along, I fancy Walter would not have become so engrossed in the race," said Belle maliciously. "Well, Miss Robbins was not along," replied Walter, with equal meaning. "And what's more, Miss Robbins will not be along," spoke Cora. "I have heard of all sorts of things being permissible in the business world, but this, from a young lady, seems to be----" "The utmost," admitted Jack. "But, sis, you must make allowances. We would dump Miss Robbins in the mountains, and likely crawl home by train, while the hotel reputation will continue to reputate." "Suppose we quit buzzing and get at the car," suggested Ed. "Seems, though, as if Cora had about fixed it up." "I'm not so sure," said Cora eagerly. "I am afraid that there's something wrong other than the 'busted' tire. I was just about to look when you gentlemen returned. But will you please finish pumping first?" Finally it was hard enough, and then Cora jumped into the car, while Jack cranked up. A noise that might have come from a distant sawmill rewarded the effort. "A nut or a pin loose," suggested Walter, who now did what Jack called the "collar-button crawl" under the big car. But that was only the beginning, and the end was that night came on and made faces at a very desolate party of young people, stalled miles from nowhere, with nothing but remorse of conscience to keep off the damp, night air. Jack went around literally kicking himself, demanding to know whether they hadn't done the same thing before, and dumped those poor girls in a graveyard at midnight. When would boys learn that girls can't be trusted out of sight, and so, while the boys are supposed to be the girls' brothers, these same brothers must forego sport of the racing brand? Jack really felt the situation keenly. There was no way out of it, the girls could not get to a town even in the able-bodied cars, for Cora would no more leave her _Whirlwind_ there in the darkness than she would have left Bess or Belle. Then, when it was proposed that one of the boys stay to guard the machine, and the others of the party go along to some place, the objection of "no Miss Robbins" robbed the distracted young men of their last argument. "We will stay together," announced Cora. "At any rate, that will be better than some of us going to a hotel, and all that sort of thing. We can bunk in the cars." "Oh, in the woods!" almost shrieked Belle. "Well, no, you might go up a tree," said Cora rather crossly. "There's many a nest unseen----" "Wallie, you quit. The unseen nest is not for yours. You are hereby appointed for guard duty!" and Ed snatched up a stout stick to serve as "arms" for the guard. "I have a little something," admitted Jack, flashing a brand new revolver. "I have heard of the gypsy camps around these mountains, so I came prepared." "Oh, those gypsies!" and Belle had another spasm. "I feel that something will happen tonight! Those dreadful gypsies!" "We can lock you in the tonneau of Cora's car," suggested Ed, "and when the gypsies come they can't 'gyp' you. They may take all of us, but no power on earth, not even palm reading, can move that monster." The idea that she really could be locked up in the car gave Belle some comfort, although Bess and Hazel were holding a most secret convention over under a tree, where the last rays of light lingered as day hurried along. "Why did you speak about the gypsies?" Cora asked Jack, by way of reproof rather than question. "You know the girls go off in kinks when they think of the burglar." "Well, I suppose I shouldn't. But the fact is, we might as well be prepared, for there are bands of our friends tied up around these hills. Fortune telling is a great business among summer idlers." "Well, I hope we have seen the last of them. I'm going to stay in the open, in the _Flyaway_. I'd rather do it than be cooped up with the girls in the tonneau, and there will be room for Bess, Belle and Hazel inside the _Whirlwind_. It won't be so bad--a night in the wide open." "Oh, we fellows don't mind it, but, sis, might not some cocoon drop in your hair in the night? We had better rig up some sort of hood." "My own hood will do nicely, and I am almost dead from the exertion of that tire. I grant you, I will not lie awake listening for gypsies." "Then we boys will take turns on the picket," said Ed. "You can really depend upon us this time, girls. One will be awake and watching every minute." "Oh, I'm sure it's all right out here," replied Cora. "What would any one want in these woods at night?" "Might want fishing tackle," answered Walter. "Yes, I agree with thee, Edward; it is up to us to stay up to-night." With this positive assurance, the young ladies proceeded to make themselves comfortable in their novel quarters. Cora curled up in the _Flyaway_, and the _Comet_, with Ed and Jack "sitting up in a lying-down posture," as they expressed it, was placed just where the young men could hear the girls whisper should any gypsies appear, or rather be scented. The first man to do picket duty, Walter, was in the _Get-There_, directly out in the road, so that presently it seemed a night in the wide open might be a novelty rather than a misfortune. Some time must have passed. Belle declared she was not asleep. Bess vowed she was still asleep. Hazel begged both girls to keep quiet, but the light of the gas lamps from the _Get-There_ was bobbing about, and the flash of a new revolver was reflected in the night. "What can be the matter?" sobbed Belle. "Oh, I knew we shouldn't stay in these dreadful woods." "As if we could help it," complained her sister. "Belle, if you insist upon going on motor tours, why don't you try to get some sense?" "All right, there!" called Jack, who now, with another headlight in hand, was looking under and about the _Whirlwind_. "Yes! What's the matter?" answered and asked Bess. "Nothing that we know of," replied Jack, "but Wallie thought he scented game, and we need something for breakfast." "Goodness sakes! Likely a turtle or something," growled Bess, dropping her plump self down plumper than ever on the cushions. "I don't believe it," objected Belle. "They wouldn't wake us up for a turtle--or something." "Make it a moose then," suggested Hazel. "Moose are plenty in New England, they say." "With the horns?" asked Belle. "With and without," replied Hazel. "But if you don't mind, I'm going out to join in the hunt. I have always longed for a real, live hunt." "Oh, please don't," begged Belle. "It might be a man!" "No such luck. There's Cora with her lamp. They are certainly after something," and with this she opened the tonneau door and went out with the others into the wild, dark, lonely night. "I distinctly saw him," she heard Jack say. "Now, keep your nerve. Cora, where is the little gun?" "I've got it," she replied. "I feel better with it. You boys have two." "What is it?" asked Hazel, now thoroughly alarmed. "A man!" whispered Cora. "Walter saw him crawling around, and we are bound to find him. He is alone, that's sure, and there are seven of us." "Oh!" gasped Hazel. "But isn't it dangerous?" "A little, of course. But it would be worse to let sleeping dogs lie. It may be a harmless tramp--or a poor laborer--a woodsman." At the same time she knew perfectly well that any character of either type she mentioned would not go crawling around under stalled motor cars in the Berkshire hills. CHAPTER XIV THE MIDNIGHT TOW A more frightened set of girls than were our young friends that night could scarcely be imagined. Although Cora did tramp around after Ed and his lamp, with her pistol in her hand, she was trembling, and had good reason to be alarmed. As for Bess and Belle, they were, as Hazel said, "tied up in a knot" on the bottom of Cora's car, too terrified to cry. Hazel herself felt no inclination to explore on her own account, but was actually walking on Jack's heels, as he poked the motor lamp in and out of possible hiding places, seeking the mysterious shadow that had been seen to move and had been heard to rustle in the grass. But he was not found--a big slouch hat being the only tangible clew unearthed to a real personality. And this Walter dug out of a hole near a rear wheel of the _Whirlwind_. "Don't tell the girls," he whispered to Jack, "but here's his top-piece." "Put it away--in the _Comet_. We might need it," said Jack, in the same low voice. "Well, girls, of course you are frightened," began Ed. "What do you say to all crowding into the _Whirlwind_ and talking it out the rest of the night? We could make noise enough to scare away a dozen tramps." This idea was greeted with delight, even Bess and Belle venturing to poke their heads out of the tonneau door to beg the boys "all to come in." No more thought of Miss Robbins! It was now a matter of doing the best they could to restore something of the girls' lost nerves. And Ed, Jack and Walter undertook the task with considerable more seriousness than it had occurred to the much-alarmed girls it might be necessary to give the matter. All the girls asked for was protection--all the boys thought of giving was confidence. "My poor, dear _Whirlwind_" sighed Cora, as Ed assisted her into the tonneau. "To think that you have made all this trouble!" "No such thing," interrupted Walter gallantly. "It is up to us. We deserted you just to see who would make the hill in best time, and this serves us right." Bess, Belle and Hazel found plenty of room on the broad-cushioned seat, while Jack decided that he wouldn't mind in the least sitting down on the floor beside Cora, who had the folding chair. Ed and Walter took their places outside "on the box," and when the three other cars were lined up close the dark, dreary night under the trees, with the prospect of a man crawling around with malice aforethought, brightened up some. Even the moon peeked through the trees to make things look more pleasant, and to Belle company had never been so delightful before. She actually laughed at everything Jack said, and agreed that it would be fun to live in a motor houseboat. Cora alone was silent. She pleaded fatigue, but Jack knew that his sister did not give in to fatigue so easily; he also knew that she had seen the gypsy's hat! She lay with her head pillowed on her brother's shoulder and closed her eyes, feigning sleep. It was the same little sister Jack often told stories to, and the same black head that now was so glad to rest where many other evenings it had rested, when the mother was out and the sister did not like to "go to bed all alone, please, Jackie dear!" "It's a great thing to have a brother," blurted out Bess, in her ridiculous way, until Jack declared that he had another shoulder, and she might appropriate it if she wished to be a "sister" to him. "I guess I am too nervous to motor at night," admitted Belle. "I think, after this trip, I will plan mine by daylight." "But this was so planned," said Cora. "Whoever thought we would be stalled, that we would lose Miss Robbins, and that we would have to camp out all night in the _Whirlwind_?" "Of course, whoever thought it?" agreed Jack, stroking the head on his shoulder. "Do you suppose Walter and Ed are dead?" asked Cora. "Not that, but sleeping," returned Jack. "If they die they will never forget it as long as they live. There is a sacred duty in standing picket duty." "Oh, a light!" suddenly screamed Bess. "It's coming this way!" "Steady, there," shouted Ed, in his clear, deep voice. "Pass to the left!" and he tooted the horn of the _Whirlwind_. "A machine!" announced Jack, as he jumped up and peered through the wind shield. "Oh! isn't that lovely?" gasped Belle, willing at once to abandon her company for the prospect of getting out of the woods. By this time a big motor car had slowed up at the side of the other cars. The chauffeur alighted and, with all the chivalry of the road, asked what the trouble was. Leaving out the scare and the hat part, the boys soon told of their difficulty and the young ladies' plight, whereat an old gentleman, the only occupant of the car, insisted that the young ladies get in with him, and that his man, Benson, be allowed to tow the stalled car out of the hills. They decided to do this, agreeing that they had had enough of "camping out." "What name? What name did you say, sir?" he asked Jack, at the same time kicking his many robes up into a corner to make all possible room ill his magnificent car. "Kimball," replied Jack, "of Chelton, and the other names are----" "That's enough, plenty," the gentleman declared heartily. "I knew Joseph Kimball, of Chelton, and I guess he was your father." "Yes," replied Jack, astonished at thus meeting a family friend. "Well, when he went to Chelton I located in New Hampshire; that's where I belong." "Do you? That's where we are going--to the White Mountains, after a little stay in the Berkshires," finished Jack, as he handed Cora into the handsome car, and then likewise assisted Hazel and Belle. "Well, I guess we can fix you up then," said the old gentleman, in that hearty manner that can never be mistaken for mere politeness. "I have a girl of my own. We are in the Berkshires now." "I will be delighted to know----" then Cora stopped. She had not yet heard the gentleman's name. "Betty Rand--that's my girl. She's Elizabeth, of course, but Betty's good enough for me. Get right in here, girlie," to Belle. "Got room enough?" "Oh, yes, plenty, thank you," and Belle slipped down into the cushions with an audible sigh. "Well, you can depend upon Benson. See that! He's got the car hitched already! Never saw a fellow like Benson," and Mr. Rand spread the robe over the knees of Belle and Cora, with whom he sat, while Hazel had taken the small chair. "Keep warm," he told her. "Night air out here is trickish. I always take plenty of robes along." Hazel assured him that she had every comfort, and then they heard Ed toot the horn of the _Flyaway_, as he and Bess started off in the lead. Walter was in his _Comet_, and when Jack was sure that everything was in readiness for the _Whirlwind_ to be towed after the big six-cylinder machine, he jumped into his _Get-There_, and presently the whole party was off again, going toward Lenox. It was a wonderful relief--every one felt it--to be moving away from dread and darkness. "I always come up by night from New York," said Mr. Rand. "The roads are clear, and it saves time. Besides, to-morrow is Betty's birthday, and I have to be home." "Yes," said Cora politely. "We had no idea of traveling alone like this, but our chaperon----" "Well, you've got one now," interrupted the man nicely, noticing Cora's embarrassment. "I often do it for Betty--she's only got me." There was a catch in his voice this time, and while the three girls instantly felt that "the bars were down again," and that they really did have a chaperon in the person of this delightful gentleman, still it would have seemed rude to break the effect of his last remark. "We are getting her up, all right," he said, referring to towing the _Whirlwind_. "Never saw the like of Benson." "Isn't it splendid?" exclaimed Cora, looking back into the darkness and thus discerning the lamps of her car following. "It is a dreadful thing to be stalled." "Can't be beat," agreed Mr. Rand. "We get it once in a while, though Benson is a wonder--knows when to stop without getting a blow-out." "That's what we had," said Cora, "a blow-out." "Girls speeding!" and he slapped his knees in good nature. "Now, Betty thinks she can't go unless the engine stutters, as she calls it. I declare, girls are worse than men these days! Speeding!" Cora tried to tell something of the circumstances responsible for her speed, but he would take no excuse--it was ordinary speed, just like Betty's, he declared. "And you lost your chaperon?" He said this with a delightful chuckle, evidently relishing the circumstances that threw the interesting young party into his company. "Yes," spoke Belle, "there was a fire at the hotel, and she was a doctor. Of course, we didn't count when there were men to be bandaged up." "A fire!" repeated Mr. Rand. "At a hotel! The Restover, I'm sure. Why, that is my hotel. I mean I am one of the owners, and on my way up I met the woman doctor. So she was your chaperon! Well, I declare! Now, that's what I call a coincidence. That young woman--let me see. She was nursing the head waiter. Ha, ha! a good fellow to nurse. Always keep in with the head waiter." "Oh, he was that good-looking fellow, Cora," said Hazel. "Don't you remember how he soared around?" "A bird, eh?" and Mr. Rand laughed again. "Well, say," and his voice went down into the intimate key, "I wouldn't be surprised if your chaperon gave up her business. I heard some remarks about how very devoted she was to that head waiter." "Oh, Miss Robbins would never marry a waiter!" declared Belle. "Why, she's a practicing physician!" "But sometimes the practice is hard and uncertain," Mr. Rand reminded them. "I shouldn't be surprised when I go back there to straighten up accounts to find the doctor and the waiter 'doing nicely.'" "But how is the man we--that is--who went to the hospital?" asked Cora eagerly. "He was very badly hurt." "Oh, Jim, wasn't it? Why, he is getting along! By crackie!" and he slapped his knee again, "I have it! It was you who took Jim to the hospital! Now, I see! A motor girl with black hair and a maroon machine! Now, I have, more than ever, reason to be your friend, Miss Kimball. Jim has been with me for years, and had he died as the result of an accident at Restover--well, I shouldn't have gotten over it easily." "But some one had to take him," said Cora modestly. "Oh, I know all about that. That's like your excuse for speeding, and it's like Betty again. Wait until she hears that you saved Jim." "One would never know we were towing a car," intervened Hazel. "We sail along so beautifully." "But you babies have been awake all night," said Mr. Rand suddenly. "Now, couldn't you just tuck in somehow and sleep a wink or two? You won't get a chance when you see Betty. She's a regular phonograph--friendship's her key." "I am sleepy," confessed Cora. "I'm tired," admitted Belle. "And I'm dead," declared Hazel. "Then it's settled. You are each to go to sleep instantly, and if those fellows blow that horn again, I won't let them in to Betty's party," and Mr. Rand, in his wonderful, fatherly way, seemed to tuck each girl into a perfectly comfortable bed. "Now sleep! No more----" "Gypsies!" groaned Cora, but although he said not a word in reply, he knew perfectly well just what she meant. CHAPTER XV THE GYPSY'S WARNING It was at Betty's party. And as Mr. Rand had told our friends, Betty was a wonderful girl--for being happy and making others happy. Now, here it was less than a year from the time of her dear mother's death, and on her own birthday, of course, she would not have a party, but when Daddy came in with his arms full of company and bundles, as Betty put it, of course she turned right in and had an impromptu party--just to make Daddy happy. It was an easy matter to gather in a few of the nearby cottagers, of whom there were many very pleasant samples, and so, when the evening following the midnight tow arrived, the party from Chelton found themselves rested and ready for the festivities. As usual, Walter was devoted to Betty. Jack liked her, Ed admired her, but Walter claimed her--that was his way. She was a pretty girl of rather an unusual type, accounted for, her father declared, by the fact that her mother was an Irish beauty, and gave to Betty that wonderful golden-red hair, the hazel eyes and the indescribable complexion that is said to come from generations of buttermilk. And withal she was such a little flirt! How she did cling to Walter, make eyes at Ed and defy Jack, giving to each the peculiar attention that his special case most needed. Belle and Bess found it necessary to take up with some very pleasant chaps from a nearby hotel, while Cora and Hazel made themselves agreeable with two friends of Mr. Rand's--boys from New York, who had many mutual acquaintances with Chelton folks and, therefore, could talk of other things than gears and gasoline. Mr. Rand was on the side porch, and when the drawing-room conversation waited for the next remark, his voice might be heard in a very animated discussion. Cora sat near a French window, and she heard: "But the hat! How did his particular hat get there?" The answer of his friend was not audible. "I tell you," went on the gentleman, "this thing has got to be watched. I don't like it!" "Oh, Coral" chirped Belle. "Do sing the 'Gypsy's Warning.' We haven't heard it since the night----" "Walter fished up a chaperon," added Jack, with a laugh. "The 'Gypsy's Warning'!" repeated Betty. "It's a very old song," explained Cora, "but we had to revive something, so we revived----" "The gyp," finished Ed, getting up and fetching Cora's guitar from the tete in the corner. "Do sing it, Cora. This is such a gypsy land out here." "Are there?" asked Bess, in sudden alarm. "There _are_," said Ed mockingly. "There are gypsy land out here!" "Oh, you know perfectly well what I meant," and Bess pursed her lips prettily. "Course I do; if I didn't--land help me--I would need a map and a horoscope in my pocket every single minute." "Come on, Cora, sing," pleaded Hazel. "Let them hear about our Warning." "I'm afraid it's too late," objected Cora with a sly look at Betty and Walter. "We should have sent the warning on ahead of us." She stood up to take the instrument from Ed's hands. She was near the French window again. "I tell you," she heard Mr. Rand say, "these gypsy fellows will stoop to anything. And as for revenge--they say once a gypsy always a gypsy. Which means they will stick by each other----" "Come on, Cora. We want the song. I remember my mother used to sing the 'Gypsy's Warning,' and she brought it right down to date--we never went near a camp," said Walter. The threat of the old gypsy woman rang in Cora's ears. She could see her raise that brown finger and hear her say: "If you harm Salvo, harm shall be upon your head." Cora had testified against Salvo. A hat known to belong to a member of the tribe was later found at midnight under Cora's car, miles from the town where the robbery had been committed. Were they following her? "Oh, really, I can't sing to-night," she protested rather lamely. "I have a cold." The voices on the porch had ceased. Betty was claiming her father for some game. The evening had not been a great success. "And to-morrow," faltered Walter, "we pass on. I wish we had decided to stay in the Berkshires, but of course the girls must make the White Mountains," and he fell back in his chair as if overwhelmed. "I fancy Bess is ambitious to climb Mount Washington." "I possibly could--as well as the others," and Bess flushed at the mention of anything in the flesh-reducing line. "I have always been a pretty fair climber." "Yes, that's right," called Jack. "I remember one time Bess climbed in the window at school. A lemon pie had been locked up inadvertently." "But you ought to see more of Lenox," spoke Betty. "I do wish you would stay--for a few days at least." "So do I," said Walter with flagrant honesty. "But the season wanes," remarked Cora, "and we must keep to our itinerary. Now that my machine has been overhauled I anticipate a royal run. Betty, can't you come with us? Mr. Rand says you have been here all summer----" "And too much is enough," declared the ensnared Walter. "Betty, if you would come we might mount Mount Washington." "What do you say, papa?" "Why, go, of course; it would be the very thing for you. And then, don't you see, I shouldn't have to give up my job as chaperon," and he clapped his hands on his knees and chuckled with a relish that all enjoyed. Mr. Rand decided that he would go and take his gorgeous car, and the pretty, bright little Irish Betty! Why, it would be like starting all over again! Hazel was fingering Cora's guitar. The chords of the "Gypsy's Warning" just floated through the room. Walter hummed, Jack almost whistled, Ed looked the part, but Cora! Cora, brave, beautiful and capable--Cora jumped up and seemed to find some flowers in the vases absolutely absorbing. Cora did not take any part in rendering even the subdued "Gypsy's Warning." CHAPTER XVI THE DISAPPEARANCE "But it is lonely, and I think we had best keep close together." "But I want to----" "Show Betty how beautiful it is to be lonely. Wallie Pennington, you are breaking your contract. No one was to get----" "Personal. Oh, all right--take Betty," and Walter emitted a most unmusical brawl. "Of course, you and Ed are keeping the contract. You are doing as you please. Behold Ed now, carrying Cora over a pebble----" "That's because Ed loves _me_," declared Jack, "and he is saving Cora's boots." "All the same, I simply won't carry Bess. She might melt in my arms." The young men were exploring the woods in the White Mountains. The girls were racing about in absolute delight over the ferns, while Mr. Rand, who had actually taken the "jaunt" from the hotel afoot, sat on a huge stone comparing notes with his muscles, and with the inactive years of discretion and indiscretion. "They're like a lot of young animals," he was saying to any one near enough to hear, "and I--I am like something that really ought to know better." "Just suppose," said Jack to Ed, "that a young deer should spring out just there where Belle and Hazel are sitting. What do you think would be the act?" "Hazel would try to catch the deer, and Belle would go up a tree. Give me something harder." "Well, then, suppose a tramp should come along the path and ask Betty for the thing that hangs around her neck. What would happen then?" "Walter would get mixed up with his trampship. That, too, is easy." "Cora says we have got to get back to earth in time for the Chelton fair. Now, I never thought that Cora cared about that sort of thing," Walter remarked. "But it's the home town, and Cora knows her name is on some committee," replied Ed. "I guess we will get enough of these wilds in a week. At any rate, all Cora does care for is the car--she would rather motor than eat." Betty had taken some wild berries to her father. "I say, sis," he pleaded, "can't we get back? I am stiffening, and you may all have to get together and carry me." "Are you so tired? Poor dad! I didn't think the walk was too much. But you do feel it!" and she sat down on a soft clump of grass at his feet. "Well, as soon as the girls get their ferns and things they want to take home for specimens, we will start back. If you really are tired, we could get a carriage at the foot of the hill." "And have you youngsters laugh at me! Never! I would die walking first," and Mr. Rand stretched himself to show how near death he really was. "Now, I tell you, we will all take the bus back. That would be more like it." This suggestion was rapidly spread among the woodland party, and when the girls did finally consent to desert the growing things and leave a "speck of something for the rabbits to eat," as Jack put it, the start for the hotel was made. At the foot of the hill, or the opening of the mountain path, an old woman, a gypsy, stood with the inevitable basket on her arm. "Tell your fortune, lady? Tell you the truth," she called, and actually put her hand out to stop Cora as she was passing. "Tell it for a quarter." "Take a basketful," suggested Ed, sotto voce. "I would like to know what's going to become of Wallie when we get back to Chelton." As usual, Walter was helping Betty, who, with her light laugh and equally light step, was making her way over the last stones of the wood way. "Tell your fortune----" "Oh, no," called back Mr. Rand, who had stopped to see what was delaying the party. "We don't need to be told. Here woman," and he threw back a coin, "take this and buy a--new shawl." All this time the woman was standing directly in Cora's way. The path was very narrow, and on either side was close brushwood. Cora stepped in the bushes in order to get out to the road, and as she did she stumbled and fell. In an instant Ed had caught her up, but not before the old woman had peered deep into Cora's face, had actually moved her scarf as if looking for some mark of recognition. "I'll help her up," the woman exclaimed, when she saw that Ed was angry enough to thrust her to the edge of the pathway. "I see a fine fortune in her eyes. They are black, her hair is black, and she has the appearance of the girl who runs an automobile. Oh, yes, I remember!" and she now turned away satisfied. "These girls ride much. But she--she is their leader!" "Oh, come," whispered Belle. "I am so frightened. That is one of the gypsies from the beach camp." Cora had regained her feet, and with a bruised hand was now passing along with the others. "We might have had a couple of quarts of fortune out of that basket just as well as not," insisted Jack. "I never saw anything so handy." "Oh, those gypsies are a pest," declared Mr. Rand. "But I am just superstitious enough not to want to offend any of them. I claim to be a first-class chaperon--first-class!" "Are you hurt, Cora?" asked Bess, seeing that Cora was pressing her hand to her lips. "Only scratched from the brush," and she winced. "Those berry bushes seem to have a grudge against me." "But the old Gypsy?" asked Bess, as the two girls stood close together. "Oh, I didn't mind her rant," replied Cora. "They always have something wonderful to tell one." "I wish they would not cross our path so often," went on the other girl. "Seems to me they have been the one drawback of our entire trip." "Let us hope that they will now be satisfied," said Cora with that indefinite manner which so often conveys a stronger meaning than might have been intended. Both girls sighed. Then they joined the others, while the old gypsy woman looked after them sharply. Ed was hailing the driver of the bus--"Silent Bill," they called him, because he was never known to keep still, not even at his grandmother's funeral. Silent Bill lost no time in getting his horses headed right, also in starting out to describe the wonders and beauties of the White Mountains. It was fun to take the bus ride, and no one was more pleased at the prospect than was Mr. Rand. "Nothing like sitting down square," he declared. "Why young folks always want to walk themselves into the grave is more than I pretend to understand." "My, but that old gypsy woman did frighten me," said Belle to Hazel. "I never saw such a look as she gave Cora! I honestly thought she was going to drop. Maybe she----" "Blew powder into her eyes. The same thought came to me," replied Hazel. "Well, I hope we won't see any more gypsies until we get within police precincts. We have had enough of them here." Then Silent Bill called out something about how the air in those peaks would make a dead man well. "Look at them peaks!" he insisted. "That's what fetches folks up here every summer." "They fetched me down," remarked Mr. Rand, "but then I never did care for peaks." "Now, Mr. Rand," corrected Cora, "didn't you take a peek into my auto the night it broke down? Seems to me there are peeks and peaks----" Amid laughter they rode along, enjoying the splendid scenery and bracing air, but the gypsy's face was haunting Cora. That evening there was to be a hop at the hotel. As many of the patrons were soon leaving for home, it was expected that the affair would be entered into with all the energy that could be summoned from the last of the season. There would not be another big affair until the next summer, so all must "make hay" while the lights held out. Our friends had some trouble in finding just the correct wearing things in the small auto trunks, but pretty girls can so safely depend upon youth and good manners that simple frocks were pressed literally and physically for the occasion, whereas many of the all-season guests at the Tip-Top were not so self-reliant. Motor-made complexions, and the eyes that go with that peculiar form of beauty, formed a combination beyond dispute. Cora wore her pale yellow poplin, Betty was in all white, of course; Bess looked like an apple blossom in something pinkish, and Belle was the evening star in her dainty blue. Hazel "had on" a light green affair. We say "had on," for that's the way Hazel had of wearing things--she hated the bother of fixing up. The young men were not expected to have evening "togs" in their runabout traps, but they did have some really good-looking, fresh, summer flannels that made them appear just as well dressed and much better looking than some of the "swells" in their regular dress suits. "What a wonderful time!" exclaimed Betty. "I never thought we could have such a jolly good time at a regular hotel affair." "Why?" asked Hazel, wondering. "Because there are so many kinds of people that----" "We are all chorus, and no spot light?" interrupted Walter mischievously. "But we might put you up on the window sill." "Indeed!" and the little lady flounced off. "Now you may fill in that girl's card over there--the red-headed one. She has been looking at you most all evening, and I have promised at least four dances." Walter looked as if he would fall at Betty's feet if there had been sufficient room. "Betty! Betty!" he begged. "If you do not give me the 'Yale' I shall leave the ballroom instanter." "Oh, if you really want it," agreed Betty, and off they went. Bess was soon "puffed out" with the vigorous dance. She was with Jack. "Let's sit it out," she suggested. "I seem to be all out of breath." "Certainly," agreed Jack. "But couldn't I get some for you, or send you some?" "Some what?" "Breath, wasn't that what you wanted? Here is a splendid place for a breathing spell." Bess laughed and sat down with her partner. "There are all sorts of ways to dance," she remarked as the "red-headed" girl, who had eyes for Walter, stepped on her toes in passing. "Those girls from the Breakwater seem to have spite against us," remarked Jack. "That is the second time they have stepped on our toes." "And she is no featherweight," answered Bess, frowning. "Strange thing that good clothes cannot cover bad manners," went on Jack, who was plainly annoyed. "Let us take the other bench. She can't possibly reach us in the alcove." Cora was just gliding by. "Lazy," she called lightly. "You are missing the best dance." "I'm tired," replied Bess. "Besides we want to watch you." At this Ed, who was Cora's partner, gave a wonderful swirl to show just how beautifully he and Cora could do the "Yale Rush." "Cora is _such_ a good dancer," Bess whispered to Jack, "but then Cora is good at most everything." There was no sarcasm in her tone. "Oh yes, for a little sister she is all right," agreed the young man. "She might be worse." "Oh," exclaimed Bess suddenly. "I saw such a face at that window!" "Plenty of faces around here to-night," observed Jack lightly. "But that--oh! let us go away from here. I am nervous!" "Certainly," and Jack took her arm. "Now if that were Belle," he proceeded calmly, and then paused. Bess was actually trembling when they crossed to the stairway, but she soon recovered her composure. She said nothing more about the face she had seen peering through the window and tried to forget it, as the dance went on. After the "Paul Jones," a feature of the Tip-Top affairs, had been danced, every one wanted to cool off or down, according to the temperature desired. Cora was with Ed. They had drifted out on a side porch. Without any preamble one of the waiters touched Ed on the arm and told him there was a message for him waiting in the office. "How do you know it's for me?" asked Ed, astonished. "You are with the motor girls, aren't you?" replied the man, as if that were an explanation. "I'll take you back to the others," said Ed to Cora. "I may as well see what it is." "Oh, run along. It may be something urgent," suggested Cora. "I can slip back into the dance room when I want to, or I can wait here. You won't be long." Ed followed the waiter indoors, then went into the office as he directed. He was not absent more than ten minutes, but when he returned to the porch Cora was gone! CHAPTER XVII MISSING "I left her here ten minutes ago!" gasped Ed, trembling with excitement, as he related the news. "She must have gone inside," replied Jack, equally alarmed. "We must look before we tell the others." "No, give the alarm first, and look afterward," insisted Ed. "The thing that counts is to find her; people's nerves may rest afterwards. I think we had best call the hotel manager. That message sent me was a fake. It was an envelope addressed to me, and contained nothing but a blank paper. It was a game to get me away from Cora!" "Perhaps you are right. But I do hate to alarm every one. I know that Cora would feel that way herself. What's this?" and Jack stooped to the porch floor. "Her fan!" Ed almost snatched the trinket from Jack's hand. "The chain is broken," he said, "and she had it on when I left her. I remember how she dropped the fan to her side and it hung there." Here was a new proof of something very wrong--the chain was broken in two places. "Don't let us waste a moment," begged Ed, starting for the hotel office. "I will speak with the manager first." Jack felt as if something was gripping at his heart. Cora gone! Could it be possible that anything had really happened to her? Could she have been kidnapped? No, she must be somewhere with some of the girls. He followed Ed mechanically into the office. The manager was at the desk looking over the register. "A young lady has just disappeared from the west-end porch," began Ed, rather awkwardly, "and I fear that something strange has happened to her. I was called in here by this fake message"--he produced a slip of blank paper--"and while I was in here she disappeared." "No one else gone?" asked the manager with a questioning smile. "Why, no," replied Ed indignantly. "I was with Miss Kimball almost up to the moment she disappeared." Jack stepped forward. "I know that my sister would not give us one moment's anxiety were it in her power to avoid it," he said. "She is the most thoughtful girl in the world." The manager was looking at the envelope Ed held. "Who did you say told you about this?" he asked of Ed. "A waiter." "Just come along with me, and we will see the waiters and kitchen men before we disturb the guests," said the manager. They passed through the halls, where knots of the guests were strolling about passing the time between the dances--all apparently happy and contented. But Jack and Ed! What would be the outcome of their anxiety? "This way," said the hotel proprietor. "Let me see, you are----" he paused suggestively. "My name is Foster, and this is Mr. Kimball," said Ed. In the kitchen they found everything in confusion. The chef had lined up every man in the department, and he was questioning them. "What's this?" asked Mr. Blake, the proprietor. "Some one has been in here, or some one here has made away with a lot of the silver and with money from the men's pockets," replied the chef indignantly. "We have got to find out who is the culprit. I won't stand for that sort of thing." "Certainly not," Mr. Blake assured him, "but perhaps we can help you. Mr. Foster, will you kindly pick out the man who told you about that message?" The men stood up. Ed scrutinized each carefully. "None of these," he said finally. "Are you sure every one is here, Max?" asked Mr. Blake. "Every one, sir; even the last man I hired, who has never had an apron on yet." "Could it be any one from the outside?" faltered Jack. "No one could get in here and manage to make his way through----" "Excuse me, sir," said a very blond young waiter, "but I think a stranger has been in here. My locker was broken open and my apron--one of the best--is gone." "Is that so?" spoke Mr. Blake sharply. "Then we have no time to spare. The young lady----" "Oh, don't say it," cried Jack. "Cora kidnapped!" "Jack, old boy, be brave," whispered Ed, patting him on the shoulder. "Wherever Cora is, the gods are with her!" "We must first institute a thorough search," declared Mr. Blake. "You men form an outside posse. Be quick. Search every inch of the grounds. Max, no more kitchen duty to-night. Here, Ben, you ring the hall bell. That will bring the porters together. Then, Dave"--to a handsome young Englishman--"I put you in charge. That young lady must be found tonight." Ed and Jack exchanged glances. Would she really be found? Oh, how terrible it all seemed! "I must speak with Mr. Rand," said Jack. "Ed, you tell the girls." All that had been gayety and gladness was instantly turned into consternation and confusion. A young lady lured away from the Tip-Top! And the hotel crowded with guests! Belle was obliged to call for a doctor. Nor was it any case of imagined nerves. The excitement of the big ball had been enough, the disappearance of Cora was more than her weak heart could stand. Bess tried to be brave, but to lose Cora! Then she recalled the face at the window. Hazel and Betty waited for nothing, but took up a lantern and started out to search. If she had fallen down some place! Oh, if they could only make her hear them! "Here, porter," called Mr. Rand, when he had heard all the details that could be given, "get me a donkey--a good, lively donkey. I can manage one of the little beasts better than I can a horse. I used to ride one in Egypt. I'll go over the hills if it is midnight." "Oh, don't, Mr. Rand," begged Jack. "You are not strong enough to go over the mountains that way." "I am not, eh! Well, young man, I'll show you!" and he was already waiting for the donkey to be brought up from the hotel stables. "Nothing like a good donkey for a thing that has to be done." But it was such a wild wilderness--the sort chosen just on that account for hotel purposes. And after the brilliancy of the ballroom it did seem so very dark out of doors. "This way, Hazel," said Betty courageously. "I know the loneliest spot. Maybe she has been stolen, and might be hidden away in that hollow." "But if we go there alone----" "I'm not afraid," and Betty clutched her light stick. "If I found her, they would hear me scream all the way to--Portland!" Men were searching all over the grounds. Every possible sort of outdoor lantern had been pressed into service, and the glare of searchlights flickered from place to place like big fireflies. It was terrible--everything dreadful was being imagined. Only Ed, Walter and Jack tried to see a possibility of some mistake--of some reasonable explanation. It was exciting at first, that strange, dark hunt, but it soon became dreary, dull and desolate. Hazel and Betty gave up to have a good cry. Jack and Ed insisted upon following Mr. Rand on horses, making their way over the mountain roads and continually calling Cora. Walter followed the advice of the hotel proprietor, and went to notify the drivers of a stage line, which took passengers on at the Point. But how suddenly all had been thrown into a panic of fear at the loss of Cora! Not a girl to play pranks, in spite of some whispers about the hotel, those most concerned knew that Cora Kimball was at least being held a prisoner against her will somewhere; by whom, or with whom, no one could conjecture. What really had become of daring, dashing Cora Kimball? CHAPTER XVIII KIDNAPPED "Oh! Where am I?" "Hush! You are safe! But keep very quiet." Then Cora forgot--something smelled so strong, and she felt so sleepy. "We are almost there!" "But see the lights!" "They will never turn into the gully!" "If they do----" "I'll----" "Hush!" "She is a strong girl!" "So much the better. Give her a drink." "I don't like it." "You don't have to." "Do you know what they do now with kidnappers?" "She's no kid." "But it's just the same." "Hold your tongue. You have given me more bother than she has." "Salvo deserved what he got." "You deserve something, too," and the older woman, speaking to a young girl, gave the latter a blow with a whip. The girl winced, and showed her white teeth. She would some day break away from Mother Hull. They were riding in a gypsy wagon through the mountains, and it was one hour after Cora Kimball had been taken away from the porch of the Tip-Top. The drivers of the wagon were the most desperate members of the North Woods gypsy clan, and they had not the slightest fear that the searchers, who were actually almost flashing their lights in to the very wagon that bore Cora away, could ever discover her whereabouts. It was close and ill-smelling in that van. Cora was not altogether unconscious, and she turned uneasily on the bundle of straw deep in the bottom of the big wagon. "She is waking," said the girl presently. "She can now, if she's a mind to. We are in Dusky Hollow." "I won't be around when she does awake. I don't like it." "If you say any more, I'll give you a dose. Maybe you--want--to go--to sleep." "When I want to I shall," and the black eyes flashed in the darkness. "We did not promise to----" "Shut up!" and again that whip rang like the whisper of some frightened tree. "Oh, stop!" yelled the girl, "or I shall----" "Oh, no, you--won't. You just hold--your tongue." The horses shied, and the wagon skidded. Were they held up? "Right there, Sam," ordered the driver. "Easy--steady, Ned. Pull over here." The wagons moved forward again, and the women felt that the possible danger of discovery had passed. "Keep quiet in there," called a rough voice from the seat. "These woods are thick with trailers." For some time no one within the van spoke. Then Cora turned, and the woman wearing the thick hood clapped something over Cora's nose. "Oh, don't! She has had enough. Let her at least live," begged the younger woman, actually fanning Cora's white face with her own soiled handkerchief. The night seemed blacker and darker at each turn. Shouts from the searchers occasionally reached the ears of those within the wagon, and once Mr. Rand on his donkey might have seen them but for the trickery of the driver, who pulled his horses into some shadowy bushes and waited for the searchers to pass. The young gypsy woman peered down into Cora's face. "She's pretty," she said, with some sympathy. "Well, by the time she's out perhaps she won't be so pretty," sneered the older woman. "I swore revenge for Salvo, and I'll have it." "Oh, you and Salvo! Seems to me a man ought to be able----" "You cat! Do you want to go back to the cave?" The girl was silent again. "Where--am I? Jack! Jack!" Cora moaned. "Here! Don't you dare give her another drop of that stuff, or I'll--squeal!" The old woman stopped, and in the darkness of the wagon Mother Hull felt, rather than saw, that the younger one would do as she threatened. She might shout! Then those searching the woods would hear. "We will soon be there. Then she may call for Jack until her throat is sore!" muttered the hag. Cora tossed on her bed of straw. The chloroform kept her quiet, but she knew and felt that she was being borne away somewhere into that dark and lonely night. She could remember now how Ed had gone inside the hotel, and he had not come back! He would be back presently, and yes, she would try to sleep until he returned! She moaned and tried to call, but her voice was like that strange struggle of sound that comes in nightmare. It means nothing except to the sleeper. "She's choking," said the gypsy girl. "Let her," replied Mother Hull. "We can dump her easily here." "You--hag!" almost screamed the girl. "I will shout if you don't give her air." "Here! here!" called a voice from the seat. "If you two can't keep quiet, you know what we can do!" "She's choking!" insisted the girl. "Let her!" mocked the man. "I--won't. Help! Help!" yelled the girl, and as she did the light of a powerful automobile lamp was directed into the gypsy wagon! "There they are!" could be heard plainly. "Where?" asked the anxious ones. "In the gulch! Head them off! I saw a wagon!" Quicker than any one save a mountaineer knew how to swing around, that wagon swerved, turned and was again lost in the darkness. "Thought they had us!" called the man from the seat. "Lena, you will pay for this!" CHAPTER XIX THE DEN OF THE GYPSY QUEEN Cora opened her eyes. Standing over her was a woman--or was it a dream? A woman with flowing hair, beautiful, dark eyes, a band of gold like a crown about her head, and shimmering, dazzling stuff on her gown. Was Cora really awake? "Well," said the figure, "you are not bad-looking." "Oh, I am so--sick," moaned Cora. "I'll ring for something. Would you take wine?" "No, thank you; water," murmured Cora. The moments were becoming more real to Cora, but with consciousness came that awful sickness and that dizziness. She looked at the woman in the flowing red robes. Who could she be? Surely she was beautiful, and her face was kind and her manner sweet. The woman pulled a small cord, and presently a girl appeared to answer. "What, madam?" asked the girl. "Some limewater and some milk. And for me, some new cigarettes. Those Sam brought I could not use. You will find my key in my dressing table." She turned to Cora as the girl left. "You may have anything you want," she said, "and you need not worry. No harm will come to you. I rather think we shall be great friends." She sat down on some soft cushions on the floor. Then Cora noticed that her own resting place was also on the floor--a sort of flat couch--soft, but smelling so strongly of some strange odor. Was it smoke or perfume? "Do you mind if I smoke?" asked the woman. "I am Helka, the gypsy queen. That is, they call me that, although I am really Lillian, and I never had any fancy for this queening." She smiled bitterly. The girl entered again with a tray and a small silver case. "The water is for my friend," said the queen, and the girl walked over to Cora. "Do you think you are strong enough to take milk? Perhaps you would like lime in it." "Thank you very much," murmured Cora, "but I am very sick, and I have never been ill before." "It is the chloroform. It is sickish stuff, and Sam said you had to have a big dose." "Chloroform!" "Yes, don't you know? Don't you remember anything?" "Yes, I was on the hotel porch with Ed." "With Ed? I wish they had kidnapped Ed, although you are very nice, and when I heard them putting you in the dark room, where we put the bad gypsy girls, I insisted upon them bringing you right here. I had some trouble, Sam is a rough one, but I conquered. And let me tell you something." She stooped very low and whispered, "Trust me! Don't ask any questions when the girls are around. You may have everything but freedom!" "Am I a prisoner?" "Don't you remember the gypsy's warning? Didn't Mother Hull warn you not to go against Salvo?" "The robber?" "Hush! They are listening at that door, and I want you to stay with me. Are you very tired?" She was lighting a cigarette. "I would play something for you. Do you like music?" "Sometimes," said Cora, "but I am afraid I am going to cry----" "That's the reason I want to make some noise. They won't come in here, and they won't know you are crying. We must make them think you like it here." Cora turned and buried her face in the cushions. She realized that she had been abducted, and was being held a prisoner in this strange place. But she must--she felt she must--do as the woman told her. Just a few tears from sheer nervousness, then she would be brave. "Don't you ever smoke?" asked the queen. "I should die or run the risk of the dogs except for my cigarettes." "The risk----" "Hush! Yes, they have dreadful dogs. I, too, am," she whispered, "a prisoner. I will tell you about it later." She picked up an instrument and fingered it. It seemed like the harp, but it was not much larger than a guitar. The chords were very sweet, very deep and melodious. She was a skilled musician; even in her distress Cora could not fail to notice that. "I haven't any new music," said the queen. "They promised to fetch me some, but this trouble has kept the whole band busy. Now, how do you like this?" She swept her white fingers over the strings like some fairy playing with a wind-harp. "That is my favorite composition." "Do you compose?" "Oh, yes, it gives me something to do, and I never could endure painting or sewing, so I work out pretty tunes and put them on paper. Sometimes they send them to the printers for me." "Do you never leave here? Am I in America?" asked Cora. "Bless you, yes, you are in America; but no, to the other question. I have never left this house or the grounds since I came to America." "From----" "England. You see, I am not a noble gypsy, for I live in a house and have sat on chairs, although they don't like it. This house is an old mansion in the White Mountains." "It is your home?" asked Cora timidly. "It ought to be. They bought it with my mother's money." Cora sipped the water, then, feeling weak, she took a mouthful of the milk. Every moment she was becoming stronger. Every moment the strange scene around her was exciting her interest more fully. "What time is it?" she asked wearily. "Have you no idea?" "Is it morning?" "Almost." "And you are not in bed?" "Oh, I sleep when I feel like it. You see, I have nothing else to do." Cora wondered. Nothing to do? "Besides, we were waiting up for you, and I could not go to sleep until you came." "You expected me?" "For days. We knew you were in the mountains." "How?" asked Cora. "Because one of our men followed you. He said you almost caught him." Cora vaguely remembered the man under the auto when they had been stalled in the hills. That must have been the fellow. "My friends," stammered Cora, "my brother will be ill of fright, and my mother----" "Now, my dear," said the queen, "if you will only trust me, I shall do all I can for you. I might even get word to your brother. I love brothers. Once I had one." "Is he dead?" asked Cora kindly. "I do not know. You see, I was once a very silly girl. Would you believe it? I am twenty-five years old!" "I thought you young, but that is not old." "Ages. But some day--who can tell what you and I may do?" In making this remark she mumbled and hissed so that no one, whose eyes were not upon her at the moment she spoke, could have understood her. Cora took courage. Perhaps she could help this strange creature. Perhaps, after all, the imprisonment might lead to something of benefit. "I could sleep, if you would like to," said Cora, for her eyes were strangely heavy and her head ached. "When I finish my cigarette. You see, I am quite dissipated." She was the picture of luxurious ease--not of dissipation--and as Cora looked at her she was reminded of those highly colored pictures of Cleopatra. It was, indeed, a strange imprisonment, but Cora was passing through a strange experience. Who could tell what would be the end of it all? Cora's heart was beating wildly. She could not sleep, although her eyes were so heavy, and her head ached fiercely. The reaction from that powerful drug was setting in, and with that condition came all the protests of an outraged nature. She tossed on her couch. The gypsy queen heard her. "What is it?" she asked. "Can you not sleep?" "I don't know," Cora stammered in reply. "I wonder why they took me?" "You were to appear against Salvo at his trial, I understood. It was necessary to stop you. Perhaps that is one reason," said the gypsy. "But try to sleep." For some moments there was silence, and Cora dozed off. Suddenly she awoke with a wild start. "Oh!" she screamed. "Let me go! Jack! Jack!" "Hush!" whispered the gypsy. "It would not be safe for them to hear you." She pressed her hand to the forehead of the delirious girl. "You must have had a nightmare." Cora sighed. Then it was not a dream, it was real! She was still a captive. "Oh, I cannot help it," she sobbed. "If only I could die!" Then she stopped and touched the gentle hand that was stroking her brow. "You must not mind what I say to-night. It has all been so terrible," she finished. "But I like you, and will be your friend," assured the voice as the other leaned so closely toward her. "Yet, I cannot blame you for suffering. It is only natural. Let me give you some mineral water. That may soothe your nerves." The light was turned higher, and the form in the white robe flitted over to a cabinet. Cora could see that this gypsy wore a thin, silky robe. It was as white as snow, and in it the young woman looked some living statue. "I am giving you a great deal of trouble," Cora murmured. "I hope I will be able to repay you some day." "Oh, as for that, I am glad to have something to do. I have always read of the glory of nursing. Now I may try it. I am very vain and selfish. All I do I do for my own glory. If you are better, and I have made you so, I will be quite satisfied." She poured the liquid into a glass, and handed it to the sick girl. "Thank you," whispered Cora. "Now I will sleep. I was only dreaming when I called out." "They say I have clairvoyant power. I shall put you to sleep." The gypsy sat down beside Cora. Without touching her face she was passing her hands before Cora's eyes. The latter wondered if this might not be unsafe. Suppose the gypsy should hypnotize her into sleep and that she might not be able to awaken? Yet the sensation was so soothing! Cora thought, then stopped thinking. Sleep was coming almost as it had come when the man seized her. Drowsy, delightfully drowsy! Then sleep! CHAPTER XX CORA AND HELKA "What a wonderful morning! It makes me think of the Far East," said the gypsy queen. "Have you been there?" asked Cora politely. "Yes, I have been many places," replied Helka, "and to-day I will have a chance to tell you some queer stories about myself. I have a lover." "Then you are content here? You are not lonely?" "But I dare not own him as a lover; he is not a gypsy." "This is America. You should be free." "Yes," and she sighed. "I wonder shall I ever be able to get away!" "Shall _I_?" How strange! Two such beautiful young women prisoners in the heart of the White Mountains! Cora repeated her question. "Perhaps," answered Helka. "You see, they might fear punishment if you escaped; with me it would be--my punishment." "But what shall I do?" sighed Cora. "Do you really think they intend to keep me here?" "Is this not a pleasant place?" "It is indeed--with you. And I am glad that, bad as it is, I have had a chance to know you. I feel some day that I shall have a chance to help you." "You are a cheerful girl. I was afraid you would put in all your time crying. Then they would take you away." "No use to cry," replied Cora, as brightly as she could. "Of course, it is dreadful. But, at least, I am not being abused." "Nor shall you be. The gypsies are not cruel; they are merely revengeful. I think I like them because they are my truest friends in all the whole, wide world." A tap at the door stopped the conversation. Then a girl entered. She was the one who had been in the van with Cora! She looked keenly at the captive and smiled. "Do you wish anything?" she asked of the queen. "Yes, breakfast to-day must be double. You see, Lena, I have a friend." "Yes, I see. I am glad she is better." "Thank you," said Cora, but, of course, she had no way of knowing how this girl had tried to befriend her in the gypsy wagon. "We have some splendid berries. I picked them before the sun touched them," said Lena. "And fresh milk; also toast, and what else?" "We will leave it to you, Lena. I know Sam went to market." "Yes, and will the young lady like some of your robes? I thought that dress might not suit for daylight." Cora was still wearing her handsome yellow gown that she had worn at the Tip-Top ball. It did look strange in the bright, early morning sunshine. "Would you?" asked Helka of Cora. "I have a good bathroom, and there is plenty of water." She smiled and showed that wonderful set of teeth. Cora thought she had never before seen such human pearls. "It is very kind of you," and Cora sighed. "If I must stay I suppose I may as well be practical about it." "Oh, yes," Lena ventured. "They all like you, and it will be so much better not to give any trouble." "You see, Lena knows," said the queen. "Yes, Lena, get out something pretty, and Miss----" "Cora," supplied the prisoner. "Cora? What an odd name! But it suits you. There is so much coral in your cheeks. Yes, Miss Cora must wear my English robe--the one with the silver crown." To dress in the robes of a gypsy queen! If only this were a play, and not so tragically real! But the thought was not comforting. It meant imprisonment. Cora had determined to be brave, but it was hard. Yet she must hope that something unexpected would happen to rescue her. "Lena is my maid," explained Helka. "I tell her more than any of the others. And she fetches my letters secretly. Have you not one for me today, Lena?" The girl slipped her hand in her blouse and produced a paper. The queen grasped it eagerly. "Oh, yes," she said, "I knew he would write. Good David!" and she tore open the envelope. Cora watched her face and guessed that the missive was from the lover. Lena went out to bring the breakfast things. "If only I could go out and meet him!" said the queen, finishing the letter. "I would run away and marry him. He has been so good to wait so long. Just think! He has followed me from England!" "And you never meet him?" "Not since they suspect. It was then they bought the two fierce dogs. I would never dare pass them. Sometimes they ask me to take a ride in the big wagon, but I never could ride in that. You see, I am not all a gypsy. My father was a sort of Polish nobleman and my mother was part English. She became interested in the great question of the poor, and so left society for this--the free life. My father was also a reformer, and they were married twice--to make sure. It is my father's money that keeps me like this, and, of course, the tribe does not want to lose me." "And this man David?" "I met him when I rode like a queen in an open chariot in a procession. That is, he saw me, and, like the queens in the old stories, he managed to get a note to me. Then I had him come to the park we were quartered in. And since then--but it does seem so long!" "Could not Lena take a letter for me?" asked Cora timidly. "Oh, no! They would punish her very severely if she interfered in your case. You see, Salvo must be avenged and released from jail. I always hated Salvo!" Cora was silent. Presently the girl returned and placed the linen tablecloth on the floor. Following her came the other girl, with a tray of things. It was strange to see them set the table on the floor, but Cora remembered that this was a custom of the wanderers. When the breakfast had been arranged, the queen slipped down beside her coffee like a creature devoid of bones. She was very graceful and agile--like some animal of the forest. Cora took her place, with limbs crossed, and felt like a Turk. But the repast was not uninviting. The berries were fresh, and the milk was in a clean bowl; in fact, everything showed that the queen's money had bought the service. They talked and ate. Helka was very gay, the letter must have contained cheering news, and Cora was reminded how much she would have loved to have had a single word from one of her dear ones. But she must hope and wait. "Do take some water cress," pressed the strange hostess, possibly noting that Cora ate little. "I think this cress in America is one of your real luxuries. We have never before camped at a place where it could be gathered fresh from the spring." Daintily she laid some on the green salad on a thin slice of the fresh bread, and after offering the salt and pepper, placed the really "civilized" sandwich on the small plate beside Cora. "There is just one thing I should love to go into the world for," said the queen. "I would love to have my meals at a hotel. I am savagely fond of eating." "We had such a splendid hotel," answered Cora with a sigh. "It seems a mockery that I cannot invite you there with me--that even I cannot go myself. I keep turning the matter over and over in my mind, and the more I think the more impossible it all seems." "Nothing is impossible in Gypsy land," replied the queen, helping herself to some berries. "And it may even not be impossible to do as you suggest. But we must wait," and she smiled prettily. "You have a very great habit of haste; feverish haste, the books call it. I believe it is worse for one's complexion than are cigarettes. Let me begin making a Gypsy of you by teaching you to wait. You have a great deal to wait for." Cora glanced around her to avoid the eyes of the speaker. Surely she did have a great deal to wait for. "Do you stay in doors all the time?" she asked, glad to think of some leading question. "I should think that would hurt your complexion." "We often walk in the grounds. You see, we own almost all the woods, but I am afraid they will not trust you yet. You will have to promise me that you will not try to escape if I ask that you be allowed to walk with me soon," said Helka. "I could not promise that," Cora replied sadly. "Oh, I suppose not now. I will not ask you. We will just be good friends. And I will tell you about David. It is delightful to have some one whom I can trust to tell about him." "And I will tell you about my friends! Perhaps I will not be so lonely if I talk of them." Cora was now strong enough in nerve and will to observe her surroundings. The room was very large, and was undoubtedly used formerly as a billiard parlor, for it was situated in the top of the big house, and on all sides were windows, even a colored glass skylight in the roof. The floors were of hardwood and covered partially with foreign rugs. There were low divans, but no tables nor chairs. The whole scene was akin to that described as oriental. Lena returned with the robes for Cora, and laid them on a divan. Then she adjusted a screen, thus forming a dressing room in one corner. This corner was hung with an oblong mirror, framed in wonderful ebony. Helka saw that this attracted Cora's attention. "You are wondering about my glass? It was a gift from my father to my mother, and is all I have left of her beautiful things. It has been very difficult to carry that about the world." "It is very handsome and very massive," remarked Cora. "Yes, I love black things; I like ebony. They called my mother Bonnie, for she had ebony eyes and hair." "So have you," said Cora. "I am glad you are dark; it will make it easier, and the tribe will think you are safer. I really would like to get you back to your friends, but then I should lose you. And I don't see, either, how it ever could be managed unless they want to let you go." Cora sighed heavily. Then she prepared to don the garb of the gypsy queen! CHAPTER XXI MOTHER HULL "Mother Hull wants to talk with you, Helka." "She must send her message by you," said Helka to Lena. "I never get along with Mother Hull." Cora gasped, and then sighed the sigh of relief. Would that dreadful old woman enter the room and perhaps insult her? "She is very--cross," ventured Lena. "No more so than I am. Tell her to send her message." "But if she will not?" "Then I will not hear it." "There may be trouble." "I have my laws." The girl left the room, evidently not satisfied. Presently there was a shuffling of aged feet in the big, bare outside hall. Helka turned, and her eyes flashed angrily. "Go behind the screen," she said to Cora. "If she wants to see you, she must have my permission." At that the door opened, and the old gypsy woman entered. "I told you not to come," said Helka. "But I had to. It is----" She stopped and looked over the room carefully. "Oh, she is here," said the queen, "but you are not to see her." "Why?" "Because I have said so. You know my laws." The old woman looked as if she would like to have struck down the daring young queen. But her clinched fist was hidden in her apron. "Helka, if they take this house they take you." "Who is going to take it now?" "The new tribe. They have sent word. We must give in or they govern." The new tribe! That might mean more freedom for Helka. But she must be cautious--this old woman was the backbone of all the tribes, and every word she spoke might mean good or evil to all the American gypsies. She was all-powerful, in spite of Helka's pretended power. "They cannot take my house," said Helka finally. "I have the oath of ownership." The woman shook her head. All the while her eyes were searching for Cora, and she knew very well that the stolen girl was back of that screen. She wanted to see her, to know what she looked like in daylight; also to know how she was behaving. "What did she say about Salvo?" hissed the woman. "She says nothing of him. Why should she? Salvo did wrong. He should be sent to jail." This was a daring remark, and Helka almost wished she had not made it. The eyes of the old woman fairly blazed with anger. "You--you dare--to speak that way!" Helka nodded her head with apparent unconcern. "Why not?" "There is always--revenge. I might take your girl friend farther into the mountains. That would leave you time to behave." "Have we so many houses?" almost sneered the younger woman. "There are holes, and caves and rivers," answered the woman, with the plain intention of frightening the disloyal one into submission. "We left off that sort of thing when we came to America," replied Helka undaunted. "I will take care of this prisoner. I have agreed to." The old woman shuffled up nearer to the screen. Cora felt as if she must cry out or faint, but Helka spoke quickly. "Don't you dare to step one inch nearer," she said, assuming a voice of power. "I have told you to go!" A dog was barking fiercely under the window. "They will watch," said the old woman, meaning that the dogs would stay on guard if Cora should attempt escape. "Oh, I know that," answered Helka. "But I have told you to go!" Cora was trembling. She remembered the voice, although she was too deeply under the effects of the chloroform when in the wagon to recall more of this woman. "I only came to warn you," said the woman. "You are always warning," and Helka laughed. "I am afraid, Mother Hull, that we will begin to doubt your warnings. This young girl makes an admirable gypsy, yet you warned me so much before she came." The woman stooped over and whispered into Helka's ear. "And I warn you now," she said, "that if she gets away I will not save you from Sam. _You_ will _marry_ him." "Go away instantly," commanded the queen, springing up like an infuriated animal. "I have told you that before I will marry Sam I will--I will---- He sent you to threaten me! I----" "Helka! Helka!" soothed the woman, "be careful--what you say." "You leave me! I could throw myself from this window," and she went toward the open casement. "There now, girl! Mother Hull was always good to you-----" "Go!" The hag shuffled to the door. Turning, she watched Helka and looked toward the screen. Helka never moved, but stood like a tragedy queen, her finger pointing to the door. It was exactly like a scene in a play. Cora was very frightened, for she could see plainly through the hinge spaces of her hiding place. When there was no longer a step to be heard in the hall, Helka sank down on the floor and laughed as merrily as if she had been playing some absurd game. Cora was amazed to hear that girl laugh. "Were you frightened?" Helka asked. "A little," replied Cora, "she has such a dreadful face." "Like a witch," admitted Helka. "That is why she is so powerful--she can frighten every one with her face." "And the new tribe she spoke of?" "Has, I believe, a beautiful queen, and they are always trying to make me jealous. But since I have seen you, I care less for my gypsy life." "I am glad! I hope we may both soon go out in the beautiful, free world, and then you could meet David----" "Hush! I heard a step! Lie down and pretend illness." Again Cora did as she was commanded. It did seem as if all were commands in this strange world. There was a tap at the door. "Enter!" called Helka. A very young girl stepped into the room timidly. "Sam sent this," she said, then turned and ran away. Helka opened the cigar box. "Cigarettes, I suppose," she said. Then she smiled. "Why, it's a present--a bracelet. I suppose Sam found this as he finds everything else he sends me--in other people's pockets. Well, it is pretty, and I shall keep it. I love bracelets." She clasped the trinket on her white arm. It was pretty, and Cora had no doubt that it had been stolen, but as well for Helka to keep it as to try to do anything better with it. "I should like to give it to _you_," said the queen suddenly. She took off the bracelet and examined it closely. "Oh, I really couldn't take it," objected Cora. "I know what you think, but suppose you got out some time? This might lead to----" "Oh, I see. You need not speak more plainly. Perhaps when I go I may ask you for it!" "It has a name inside. Betty----" "Betty!" exclaimed Cora. "Do you know a Betty?" "Indeed, I do! She was with us when----" "Then that was when Sam found it. The name is Betty Rand!" "Oh, do you think they have harmed Betty?" and Cora grew pale. "Bless you, no! I heard that the girls had been searching the woods for you. She may have dropped it----" "Oh, I hope so. Dear Betty!" and Cora's eyes welled up. "What would I not give to see them all!" "Well, now, dear, you must not be impatient. See, I am reforming. I have not smoked today. And that is something that has not occurred in years. If you should make a lady out of a savage, would you think your time ill spent?" Cora gathered up the robe she wore. It did seem as if she had been in gypsy land so long! She was almost familiar now with its strange ways and customs. "You are not a savage, and I love your music. If you come out into the world, I am going to take you among my friends. We all have some musical education, but you have musical talent." "Do you really think so? David loves music. Shall I sing?" "Are you not afraid of that old woman?" asked Cora. "Not in the least. Besides, if I sing she will think all is well." She took up her guitar. But after running her fingers across the strings she laid it down again. "Tell me," she spoke suddenly, "about your mother. I hope she will not worry too much. If ever I knew my sweet mother I should be willing to live in a cave all my life." Cora had always heard girls speak this way of lost mothers. Yes, it was sweet to have one--to know one. "My mother is a brave woman," said Cora. "She will never give up until all hope is gone." "I know she is brave, for you must be like her. And your brother?" "He will miss me," answered Cora brokenly, for she could not even speak of Jack without being affected. The great, dark eyes of the gypsy looked out into the forest. Cora wondered of what she could be thinking. "Jack," she repeated, "Jack what?" "Jack Kimball," replied Cora, still wondering. "That sounds like a brave name," remarked the queen. "I am getting spoiled, I'm afraid. I cannot help being interested in the outside world." "Why should you not be?" asked Cora. "Because I do not belong to it. To be content one must not be too curious. That, I believe, is philosophy, and----" "There is some one coming," interrupted Cora. "It is Lena. I am like the blind. I know every one's step." And she was not mistaken, for a moment later Lena entered the room. CHAPTER XXII SADDENED HEARTS "I am afraid she is dead." "Jack, you must not give up so easily. The detectives have faith in the steamship story." Ed was speaking. "No, Cora would not be induced, under any circumstance, to take a Portland boat, and she could not have been taken away unconscious." "Girls before this have been led away with fake tales of a sick mother, and all that," said Ed feebly, "but I must agree with you--Cora was too level-headed." "And Belle is really very ill." "Mr. Rand has sent for a nurse. Belle feels as if she must die if Cora is not found soon. She is extremely sensitive." "Yes, the girls loved Cora." His voice broke and he turned his head away. The two young men were seated on the big piazza of the Tip-Top. It was just a week since the disappearance of Cora, and, of course, Mrs. Kimball had been notified by cable. She would return to America by the first steamer, but would not reach New York for some days yet. In the meantime Mr. Rand, who had turned out to be such a good friend in need, had advised Mrs. Kimball to wait a few days more before starting. He hoped and felt sure that some news of the girl would have been discovered by that time. "Walter 'phoned from Lenox," went on Ed, after a pause. "He had no real information, and the young girl at the sanitarium is not Cora." "I was afraid it was a useless journey. Well, let us see if we can do anything for the girls," and Jack arose languidly from the bench. "Misery likes company." They went up to the suite of rooms occupied by the young ladies. Hazel met them in the hall. "Whom do you think is coming to nurse Belle? Miss Robbins!" "What?" exclaimed both in one breath. "Yes, Mr. Rand insisted that she is the proper person, and it seems there is some reasonable explanation for her conduct. At any rate, it is well we will have some one we know. Oh, dear, Belle is so hysterical!" and Hazel herself was almost in tears. "When is Miss Robbins coming?" asked Jack. "Mr. Rand 'phoned, and she said she would come up at once. Then he sent his car out from his own garage for her." "What would we have done without Mr. Rand?" "Come in and speak to Belle," said Hazel. "She feels better when she has talked with you, Jack. Of course, you come also, Ed," she hurried to add, seeing him draw back. The young men entered the room, where Belle, pale as a drooping white rose, lay on a couch under the window. She smiled and extended her hand. "I am so glad you have come! Is there any news?" "Walter is running down a sanitarium clew," said Jack evasively. "I feel certain Cora is ill somewhere." "Where has he gone?" "To Lenox. We had a description from a sanitarium there. But, Belle, you must brace up. We can't afford to lose two girls." She smiled, and did try to look brighter, but the shock to her nerves had been very severe. "Did you hear that Miss Robbins is coming?" she asked. "Yes, and I think she is the very one we need," replied Ed. "She may even be able to help us in our search." "She is wonderfully clever, and it seems she did not mean to desert us at all. There is some sort of story back of her attention to the wounded ones at Restover," said Bess, who had been sitting at a little desk, busy with some mail. A hall boy tapped at the door and announced that some one wished to see Mr. Kimball. "Come along, Ed," said Jack. "You represent us." In the hotel office they met two detectives sent by Mr. Rand. They explained that they would have to have a picture of Cora to use in the press, for the purpose of getting help from the public by any possible identification. At first Jack objected, but Ed showed him that this move was necessary. So it was, with other matters, very painful for the young man to arrange with the strangers, where his sister's private life was concerned. Jack soon disposed of his part of the interview. He declared that Cora had no gentleman friends other than his own companions; also that she had never had any romantic notions about the stage or such sensational matters. In seeking all the information they could possibly obtain, that might assist in getting at a clew, the detectives, of course, were obliged to ask these and other questions. "Has all the wood been searched?" asked Jack. "Every part, even the caves," replied the detective. "We visited several bands of gypsies, but could not hold them--they cleared themselves." "But the gypsies had threatened her," insisted Jack. "Could any have left the country by way of Boston?" "Impossible. We have had all New York and New England roads carefully watched." "And there are no old huts anywhere? It has always seemed to me that these huts one finds in every woods might make safe hiding places for criminals," said Jack. "Well, we are still at it, and will report to you every day," said the elder man. "We have put our best men on the case, and have the hearty coöperation of all the newspaper men. They know how to follow up clews." "Of course," agreed Jack. "There was nothing in the Chelton rumor. I knew that was only a bit of sensationalism." "There was something in it," contradicted the detective, "but the trouble was we could not get further than the old gypsy woman's threat. She had told your sister to beware of interfering with that jailed fellow, Salvo. I believed there was some connection between her disappearance and that case, but, after talking to every one who knew anything about the gypsy band, we had to drop that clew for a time. There are no more of the tribe anywhere in the county, as far as we can learn." "And they have not been around here since the day they moved away, when we were travelling over the mountains," went on Jack. "Of course you have, as you say, taken care of all the ends, but the arrest of that fellow seems the most reasonable motive." "Had Miss Kimball any girl enemies? Any who might like to--well, would it be possible for them to induce her to go away, on some pretext, so that she might be detained?" asked the other detective. Jack and Ed exchanged glances. There was a girl, an Ida Giles, of whom, in the other books of this series, we were obliged to record some very unpleasant things. She was an enemy of Cora's. But the detective's idea was absurd. Ida Giles would have no part in any such conspiracy. "No girl would do anything like that," declared Jack emphatically. The sleuths of the law arose to go. "Thank you for your close attention," said Ed. "We certainly have fallen among friends in our trouble. The fact that I left her alone----" "Now, Ed, please stop that," interrupted Jack. "We have told you that it didn't matter whom she was with, the thing would have happened just the same. Any one would have fallen a victim to the false message." Again for the detectives' information the strange man who called Ed into the hotel office was described. But of what avail was that? He was easier to hide than was Cora, and both were safely hidden, it seemed. Finally, having exhausted their skill in the way of obtaining clews, the officers left, while the two young men, alone once more, were struggling to pull themselves together, that the girls might still have hope that there was a possibility of some favorable news. "It looks bad," almost sobbed Jack, for the interview with the officers had all but confirmed his worst fears, that of throwing more suspicion upon the Gypsy tribe. Ed was silent. He did not like to think of Cora in the clutch of those unscrupulous persons. The thought was like a knife to him. Jack saw his chum's new alarm and tried to brighten up. The door suddenly opened. Both young men started. A young woman entered the office. "Mr. Kimball, Mr. Foster!" she exclaimed, as the boys looked at her in surprise. "I am so sorry!" It was Miss Robbins. "We are very glad to see you," said Jack. "We need all sorts of doctors. Belle is very ill, and the others are not far from it." "And Cora?" she asked anxiously. "No news," said Jack, as cheerfully as he could. "Listen. I must tell you while I have a chance--before I see the girls. The man I stayed over to nurse is my brother!" CHAPTER XXIII ANOTHER STORY "Oh, Miss Robbins!" exclaimed Belle. "My dear! I am so sorry to see you ill!" "Yes, but Cora----" "Hush, my dear. You will not get strong while you worry so. Of course, you cannot stop at once, but you must try." Hazel, Betty and Bess had withdrawn. What a relief it was already to have some one who just knew how to control Belle. It had been so difficult for the young girls to try to console her, and her nerves had worked so sadly upon their own. "I suppose you thought I was a perfectly dreadful young woman," said Dr. Robbins cheerily. "But you did not know (she sighed effectively) that every one has her own troubles, while a doctor has her own and a whole lot of others." "Had you trouble?" Belle asked sympathetically. "Indeed I had, and still have. You should know. But wait, I'll just call the girls in and make a clean breast of it. It will save me further trouble." The tactful young doctor had planned to tell her story as much for the purpose of diverting Belle's mind as for any other reason. She called to the girls, who were in an adjoining room. How the strain of that one dreadful week had told upon their fresh young faces! Bess had almost lost her peach-blow; Hazel, never highly colored, but always bright of eye, showed signs even of pallor; Betty had put on too much color, that characteristic of the excitable disposition when the skin is the thermometer of the nerves, and her eyes not only sparkled, but actually glittered. All this was instantly apparent to the trained eye of the young doctor. "Come in, girls," she said. "I have decided to make a full confession." They looked at her in astonishment. What could she mean? Might she have married the sick man? This thought flashed into the mind of more than one of the party. "You thought I deserted you?" began Miss Robbins. "It looked like it," murmured Bess. "Well, when I went out on that lawn to work over the injured, I found there a long-lost brother!" "Brother?" "Yes, really. It is a strange story, but for three years mother and I have tried every means to find Leland. He was such a beautiful young fellow, and such a joy to us, but he got interested in social problems, and got to thinking that the poor were always oppressed, and all that sort of thing. Well, he had just finished college, and we hoped for such great things, when, after some warning enthusiasm, he disappeared." "Ran away?" asked Hazel. "Well, we thought at first he was drowned, for he used to sit for hours on the beach talking to fishermen. But I never thought he had met with any such misfortune. Leland is one of the individuals born to live. He is too healthy, too splendid, a chap to up and die. Of course, mother thought he must be dead, or he would not keep her in anxiety, but that is the way these reformer minds usually work--spare your own and lose the cause." "And what did happen?" asked Betty, all interested. "I happened to find him. There he lay, with his wonderful blond hair burned in ugly spots, and his baby complexion almost----" "Oh! are all his good looks gone?" gasped Belle--she who always stood up for the beautiful in everything, even in young men. "I hope not gone forever," said the doctor, "but, indeed, poor boy, he had a narrow escape." "But whatever took him into the kitchen?" asked Bess. "He went down there among the foreigners to study actual conditions. Did you ever hear of anything so idiotic? But that is his hobby. He has been into all kinds of labor during these three long, sorrowful years." "And you were helping your own brother! And we--blamed you!" It was Belle who spoke. "I could not blame you for so doing. I had been enjoined to secrecy the very moment poor Leland laid his eyes on me. He begged me not even to send word to mother, as he said it would spoil the research of an entire year if he had to stop his work before the summer was entirely over." "But he could not work--he is ill?" said Bess. "Still, you see, he could keep among the men he had classed himself with, and that is his idea of duty. I let mother know I had found him in spite of his 'ideas,' but I did not tell her much more." "Will he not go home with you?" asked Hazel. "He has promised to give up cooking by October first. Then I am going to collect him." "What an interesting young man he must be," remarked Belle, to whom the story had already brought some brightness. "Oh, indeed he is," declared Miss Robbins. "He is younger than I, and when I went to college he promised to do all sorts of stunts to prove my problems. He even wanted to try living, or dying, on one sort of food; wanted to remain up without sleeping until he fell over; wanted to sleep in dark cellars to see what effect that would have; in fact, I thought we would have to lock him up with a bodyguard to save his life, he was so enthusiastic about my profession. And as to anti-vivisection! Why, at one time he had twenty-five cats and four dogs in our small city yard to save them from the possible fate of some of their kind. I tell you, we had our hands full with pretty Leland." "I should love him," said Belle suddenly and emphatically. Every one laughed. It was actually the first real smile that had broken the sadness of their lives in that long, dreary week. Belle returned the charge with a contemptuous glance. "I mean, of course, I should love him as a friend of humanity," she answered. "Cats and dogs!" exclaimed Betty. "A friend of dumb animals is always a friend of humans," insisted Belle. Dr. Robbins smiled. Her cure was already working, and, while her story was correct, the recital of it had done more for those girls than had any other attempted cure of their melancholy. "Well, I cannot agree with you that one fond of animals--that is excessively fond--is always very fond of mankind," she said. "Still, in Leland's case, it was a curious mixture of both." "He will become a great man," prophesied Hazel. "If he does not kill himself in the trying," said the sister. "He came too near it in the fire. But suppose he should insist on--on digging sewers?" "Oh, you could restrain him. That would be insane!" declared Bess. "I don't know about that. Sewers have to be dug," contended Leland's sister. "I wish we might meet him," ventured Bess. "I am sure he would be an inspiration." Poor Bess! Always saying things backwards. He would be an inspiration--in digging sewers! "Well, you may some day, if he ever consents to become civilized again," said Dr. Robbins. "You see, he may take to the lecture platform, but very likely the platform will be against his principles. He will want to shout from the housetops!" A step in the hall attracted them. It was Ed. "Jack and I are going to town," he said, his face flushed with excitement. "The detectives claim to have a clew." "Oh, good! I knew Dr. Robbins would bring luck," declared Belle, actually springing up from the couch. "I am going out in the air. I feel as if Cora were here already!" "Easy, Belle," cautioned the doctor. "We must insist upon discipline for your mind and body. You must not waste energy. It is well to be hopeful, but bad to get excited." "But I can't help it." "Now, girls, we will let you know at once over the 'phone if we have any news," promised Ed, making his adieux. "We really are hopeful." Hope, as contagious as fear, had sprung into the heart of each of them. Yes, there must soon be news of Cora! CHAPTER XXIV THE COLLAPSE "We are to go out to-day!" Helka's face was beaming when she gave this news to Cora. The latter had longed so for the sunshine since shut up in the big upper room. "Out where?" "In the grounds, of course. They do not let us on the highway." "And does that satisfy you? You could go--if you chose." "Well, I could, and I could not. I would be afraid if I ran away that old Mother Hull's face would kill me in my sleep. She is a dreadful woman." "But that is superstitious. No dream can kill. I wish that was all that held me here," and Cora sighed deeply. "But you have promised not to try to escape while you are in my charge," Helka reminded her. "And surely you will keep that promise!" There was alarm in her voice. Helka had not told Cora all of her fears. "Yes, I will not run away from you. I doubt if I could do so, at any rate." "Indeed, you could not, but you might be foolish enough to try. I keep hoping for you all the time." "You are very good to me, Helka, and I hope that whatever becomes of me I will not lose you entirely. But sometimes I have a fearful dread. I feel as if I will choke from actual fear." "I don't blame you. The faces of some of our tribe are enough to strangle one. But I have promised to take care of you, and you need fear no violence, at any rate." They were seated on the floor, as usual. Presently Lena appeared. "Fetch the walking dresses--the brown and the black," said Helka. "We are going out in the woods." "Sam did not go to town," ventured Lena. "Why?" asked the queen sharply. "I don't know. He asked if you were going out." "Indeed! Perhaps he expects to walk with us. Well, don't hurry with the things. We have all day." Cora was disappointed. The very thought of getting out of doors had brought her hope--hope that some one might see her, hope for something so vague she could not name it. "Can't we go out this morning?" she asked. "The day is so delightful." Helka gave her a meaning glance. "I wish Sam would bring me some fruit," she said to Lena. "Tell him I have not had any for days, and say that the last--from the farm was delicious." "All right," assented Lena, "I think he--will go." "I think he will," agreed Helka. "He never fails me when I ask for anything. Sam is ambitious." She was bright and cheery again. Yes, they would take their walk, and Cora would be out in the great, free, wide world once more. "How do you manage to get such up-to-date clothes?" she asked Helka, as she inspected the tailor-made walking dress of really good cut and material. "Why, I have a girl friend in New York who sends by express a new gown each season. You see, it would not do for me to attract attention when I am out in the grounds." "But, if you did attract attention, would not that possibly help you to get away?" "My dear, the situation is very complex. You see, I have a respectable lover, and I live every day in hopes of some time joining him. Should our band get into disrepute, which it surely would do if discovered here, I should feel disgraced. Besides"--and she looked very serious--"there are other reasons why I cannot make any desperate move for freedom." Cora thought it wise not to press her further. It was a strange situation, but surely the woman was honest and kind, and had befriended Cora in her darkest hour. What more could she ask now? Helka gave Cora a choice of the dresses, and she took the black costume. There was scarcely any perceptible difference in their sizes, and when gowned Helka declared Cora looked "_chic_." Helka herself looked quite the society lady, her tight-fitting brown costume suiting her admirably. Cora was trembling with anticipation. She wondered if they would be allowed to roam about at will, or how they would be guarded. Finally Helka was ready. "We will have Lena with us--that is, she will be supposed to be with us. Then--but you must wait and see. It is rather odd, but it is better than being indoors." Helka rang her bell and Lena appeared. "We are ready," she said simply, and again the girl was gone. It seemed ages, but really was but a short time before Lena returned. "All right," she said, "the door is opened, and the dogs are gone." It was the first time Cora had been out in the hall, and she looked around in wonderment. It was dark and dirty, so different from Helka's apartment. Lena led the way. There were three flights of stairs. "You girls do not do too much sweeping," complained the queen, as she lifted her skirts. "I should think you would have had Christine brush down these steps." "I told her to, but Mother Hull sent her for berries," explained Lena. They passed along, and finally reached the outer door. The fresh air blew upon them. "Oh!" exclaimed Cora. "Isn't it good to be in the open air?" "Hush!" whispered Helka. "It is best that you make no remarks. I will tell you why later." Mother Hull was crouched at the steps. She looked up first at Helka, then at Cora. My, what eyes! No wonder Helka said they might kill one in a dream. Down the steps and at last on the ground! Cora's feet fairly tingled. Helka tripped along lightly ahead of her. Two ordinary-looking men were working on the grounds. The place seemed just like any other country house that might be old and somewhat neglected, but there was not the slightest evidence of it being an abode of crime or of gypsies. "This way, Cora," said Helka. "There is a splendid path through the woods this way. I love to gather the tinted leaves there." As they turned the men also turned and made their work fit in exactly to the way the girls were going. "Our guard," whispered Helka. "They will not speak to us, but they never take their eyes off us. I don't mind them, but I hate the dogs. They never call them unless they fear I might speak with a stranger." "What sort of dogs are they?" asked Cora eagerly. "I don't know; not thoroughbreds, I can tell you that. I could make friends with any decent dog, but these--must be regular tramps. I hate them." Cora, too, thought she might have made friends with any "decent" dogs, but she had the same fear that Helka spoke of regarding mongrels. A roadway was not too distant to be seen. If only some one would come along, thought Cora, some one who might hear her voice! But if she should shout! They might both be attacked by those savage dogs. "Oh, see those gentian," exclaimed Helka. "I always think of David's eyes when I find gentian. They are as blue and as sweet and----" "Why, Helka! You leave me nothing to say for my fair-eyed friends. They have eyes, every one of them. Here are Betty's," and she grasped a sprig of a wonderful blue blossom. "And here are dear, darling Belle's," picking up a spray of myrtle in bloom, "and here are the brown eyes of Bess," at which remark the eyes of Cora Kimball could hardly look at the late, brown daisy, because of a mist of tears. "All girls!" exclaimed Helka wonderingly. "Oh, I know some boys," replied Cora, running along and noting that the men with the dogs were close by. "Jack is dark. I really could not tell the color of his eyes!" "And he is your brother!" "The very reason," said Cora with something like a laugh. "Now I know that Walter has eyes like his hair, and his hair is not like anything else." "But Ed's?" and at this Helka smiled prettily. "I had an idea that Ed's eyes were sort of composite. A bit of love, that would be blue," and she picked up a late violet, "a bit of faith, gray for that," and she found a spray of wild geranium, "and a bit of black for steadfast honor. There! I must find a black-eyed Susan," and at this she actually ran away from Cora, and left the frightened girl with the men and dogs too close to her heels for comfort. For a moment Cora wanted to scream. She was too nervous to remember that she had been promised security by Helka: all she knew, and all she felt, was danger, and danger to her was now a thing unbearable. "Helka! Helka!" she called wildly. The other girl, running nymph-like through the woods, turned at the call, and putting her hands in trumpet shape to her lips, answered as do school girls and boys when out of reach of the more conventional forms of conversation. "Here I am," came the reply. "What is it, Cora?" "Wait for me," screamed the frightened girl, while those dreadful dogs actually sniffed at her heels. Cora felt just then that the strain of being so near freedom, and yet so far from it, was even worse than being in the big room. "I know where there are some beautiful fall wild flowers," said Helka. "We may walk along for a good distance yet. These grounds are mine, you know." "If they were only mine!" Cora could not help expressing. "You see, my dear, I owe something to my dear, dead mother. She loved this life." "But your father. Did he?" "I can't say. I wish I might find him. He is not really dead." "Not dead!" "No. I say so at times because we call certain conditions death, but I do believe my father lives--abroad." "And he is a nobleman?" "You folks would call him that, but he is not one of us." "How strange that you should be so bound by traditions! And you know your lover--is not one of you." "Oh, yes, he is. That is what makes him love me. He is called a socialist. He is not a gypsy, but he will not be bound by conventionalities." "But suppose he knew of this crime?" "We do not admit it is a crime to hold you for the release of Salvo. They cannot convict him of the robbery if you do not appear against him. It is a sort of justice." It was very vague justice to Cora, and she knew perfectly well the argument would have little weight with her friends, should she ever meet them again. But she must meet them! She must induce this girl--for she really was nothing more than a misinformed girl--she must induce her to escape! If only she could get a letter to David! If only Lena would take one for her! My, how her heart beat! Helka was picking flowers, but Cora was looking out on that roadway. An automobile dashed by. "Oh!" exclaimed Cora, clutching Helka's arm. "I cannot stand it! I must call or go mad!" The dead leaves tried to move! Something stirred them to unnatural life. There was a shuffling of feet! A riot of fear! Chipmunks scampered off! But the girl lay there! "Cora! Cora, dear!" wailed Helka. "Try to live! I cannot lose you! Oh, Cora, I must make you live!" But the form on the dead grass was lifeless. The automobile had dashed by. A cloud of dust was all that was left to mark its path. "Cora! Cora!" almost screamed Helka. "Wake up! They are coming!" The prostrate girl seemed to moan. Then they did come. Cora was apparently dead! CHAPTER XXV THE AWAKENING "What did I do? Did I--did they--oh, tell me?" Helka was leaning over Cora as the girl regained consciousness. It was night, and the room was quite dark. "You did nothing, dear, but faint. That was not your fault. Take another sip of this milk. Do you feel better?" "Yes, but I was so afraid that I screamed, and that they--those dreadful men would punish you." "Not afraid for yourself?" "Not if I could not help it. But you had nothing to do with it. Oh, Helka, I will die if I am not soon set free! I can't stand it." She burst into hysterical tears. Cora Kimball was losing strength, and with it her courage was failing. "How could you escape?" The words came slowly. Helka was thinking deeply. "Could we get Lena to take a note to David? He would surely rescue us." "But then--they might pour out vengeance upon him. I could not take the risk of anything happening to David." "You are too timid, Helka. Such straits as we are in demand risks." "We might poison those horrible, savage dogs. Lena might do that without her own knowledge. I could fix something. Do you know anything about poisons?" "Not much," replied Cora, "but I suppose if we got anything sure to be poison it would do." Hope sprang into her heart. "How did you get me indoors?" "They carried you. The air was too strong for you after such close confinement." "No, it was that automobile on the road. The sight of it simply overpowered me. Oh, how I wanted to call to those in it!" "Poor girl! Since you came I, too, have wanted to be free, and I am not as much afraid as I used to be." "We are in America, and have no right to fear." Cora thought at the same time that probably her own fearlessness accounted for her present plight. "If we could poison the dogs, and then slide down from one of these windows in the dark, perhaps we could get away," said Helka. "But what would happen when we found ourselves out in the dark woods? If they found us----" "There must be no 'if.' They must not find us. I am afraid of nothing but of this imprisonment." "Well, we will see. To-morrow I will get Lena to go to town for me, and perhaps we may be able to arrange something." "And you will not write to your David?" "Don't you think that dangerous?" "The very safest thing, for he is a man, and how could they injure him?" "And so handsome and so strong! He is like some grand old prince--his hair is like corn-silk and his eyes are like the blue sky," and Helka, as she reclined, with her chin in her hands, upon her couch, almost forgot that Cora was with her. "Then you will write to-morrow? Tell him to come to the end of the path at the west road by ten to-morrow night, and if we are not there we will leave a note so that he will see it." "How quickly you plan! What about the dogs?" "Lena will fetch the stuff to-morrow morning, and they will be dead by night. Then we will tie a rope to the window-sill or some strong place, and we will slip down. Oh, Helka, I will go down first, and go out first, and if they do not miss me, they will not miss you. It will be safe to follow me as quickly as you see I am off!" Cora threw her arms about the gypsy queen. As she spoke it seemed as if they were already free! "And when we meet David! Oh, my dear Cora, now you have made me--mad! Now I, too, will risk life to get away! I must go out into your world--David's world!" "Then we must both sleep, and be strong. Tomorrow we will be very good to every one. I will be well, and if I cannot eat I will pretend to. Lately I have almost choked on my food." Cora sipped the milk and then fell back exhausted. "I nearly forgot your illness, I became so excited with our plans. Do you know when you fainted they were all very much frightened? They would not like to have you die!" "But they might easily bury me. I should think that would be safer." "No, it is very hard to bury one. Somehow they find the dead more difficult to hide than they do the living. I guess the good spirits take care of the dead." "And we must take care of ourselves! Well, that may be. At any rate, I am glad I did not die. Oh, Helka, if you only could know my brother Jack. He is the noblest boy! And our girls! You know, we are called the motor girls, don't you?" "And you all own automobiles! I have never been in an automobile in my life," sighed Helka. "But you are going to ride in mine--in the _Whirlwind_! Doesn't that name suit you? It sounds so like your gypsy names. Why did you say they call you Helka?" "Well, I wanted something Polish. Holka means girl, so I changed it a little. My father called me his Holka." "How do you know that?" "From my mother's old letters. She told me as much as she wanted me to know. She said I was not all a gypsy, but I might choose my life when I grew up. She left me with a very kind gypsy nurse, but when she died--they took me to that horrible Mother Hull." "What a pity your mother should have trusted them. Well, Helka, when we find David, he will find your father. What was his name?" "Some day I will show you the letter, then you will know all my strange history. My music I inherited. My father was a fine musician." The winds of the White Mountains sang a song of tired summer. The leaves brushed the windows, and the two girls fell to dreaming. Cora thought of Jack, of Ed and of Walter; then of the dear, darling girls! Oh, what would she not give for one moment with them? Helka dreamed of David--of the handsome boy who had risked his life to get a note to her; then of how he followed her to America, and how he had, ever since, sent her those letters! Yes, she must risk all for freedom! CHAPTER XXVI SURPRISES "Some one wants Dr. Robbins on the 'phone." The hall boy brought the message. Dr. Robbins jumped up from her book and hurried to the hall telephone. "Yes. Hello! That you, Leland?" "Yes, dear. So glad to get a word with you. How are you?" "Well? Now, you really can't be----" "What? Going away? Run away?" There was a long pause after this monologue. Dr. Robbins was listening to the voice--presumably that of Leland. Then--"Leland! Are you crazy?" Another pause. The young woman's face might have been interpreted, but the 'phone was silent to outsiders. "You don't mean to say that you are going on some dangerous trip in the mountains--yes, I hear, in the mountains--to help some foolish girl? I know you did not say foolish; I said that. Leland, listen to me. Do you hear? All right. Now, listen. Don't you dare to go away again and not tell me exactly where you are going. I have only just--yes, I know all about your ideas. I am sure she is charming and worthy and all that, but----" Dr. Robbins tapped her foot impatiently. Oh, the limits of the telephone! If only she could reach that brother! "If you do not--report--look for you around Hemlock Bend! Yes, we'll do that. Oh, Leland!" She dropped the receiver and stood like one shocked physically as well as mentally. For a moment she remained there, then turned back to the room at the side of the girls' suite. Mr. Rand was sitting there. "What has happened?" he demanded. "You look as if there had been a ghost in that message." "Oh, there was, Mr. Rand! What shall I do? That brother of mine is running off again!" "Where?" "He didn't even say. His words were like those of some madman. If we did not hear from him within three days, we are to look for him about Hemlock Bend." "Where in the world is Hemlock Bend?" "As if we knew! That is just like Leland. Poor, dear Leland! Never practical enough even to send a straight message. Oh, Mr. Rand, that boy will kill us yet!" "Don't you fear, little girl," and there was an unmistakable note of tenderness in Mr. Rand's voice. "One who means well usually does well, however strange may be his methods. The first thing to do is to see if we can get him again at the Restover." Without waiting for her answer, the gentleman rushed out in the hall himself, and was presently calling up that hotel. As he happened to be one of the owners of the summer house, it was not difficult for him to get direct communication and answers. But the man asked for was gone. Had just gone. Had just caught a north-bound train--the express. "Can't get him there," reported Mr. Rand to Dr. Robbins. "Now to find Hemlock Bend." Guide books and time-tables were hastily consulted, but evidently the place was too small for printed mention. Dr. Robbins was in despair. That dreadful young man! Gone to some out-of-the-world place to rescue some absurd girl! And now he had actually gotten away! Belle, Bess, Betty and Hazel had just returned from a melancholy ramble. Belle was better--really better now than some of her companions, who had been bearing up well under the strain--but all the young faces were very sad. The boys had telephoned that they had some hope for developments in the clew they had gone away to investigate, but that was very meager encouragement. The boys always had hope--over the 'phone. Dr. Robbins told them part of the story. "Oh, the idea!" exclaimed Belle. "Isn't that like a tale of the olden times--for a young man to run away to rescue a lady! Now, what in the world is she being rescued from? Exactly. That's the impossible Leland. Never says who she is, what she is, or what about her. Now, as if we could put a story like that together!" She sank back as if mentally exhausted from the effort to "put it together." "But we must find Hemlock Bend," said Betty. "I feel as if I could lay my finger on every bend in the White Mountains." "All concentrated on your particular person," said Hazel, with a smile. "Well, I feel that way myself, only you being smaller, Betty, have a more compact concentration." "I think I have it," exclaimed Mr. Rand, as he returned with his hands full of pamphlets. "It is near--near----" "Let me look, Daddy," interrupted Betty. "I can see better, perhaps." He handed her one little green booklet. She glanced over it and mumbled a lot of stuff through which she had to pass in order to get at what was wanted. Then she paused. "Oh, yes, there's a place on the Woodland Branch railroad called Hemlock Grove. Of course, that must be around the corner from Hemlock Bend." They all agreed that it must be. Then to take the trip--they would not wait for three days. Mr. Rand said that would be absurd, but when the boys should return to the hotel, which would be that afternoon, they would all start out in their cars. They would make a double hunt--for Cora and for Leland. "It is a long trip," said Mr. Rand, "but I will take the big car, and Benson--couldn't do it without Benson--and we will be able to ride or to walk almost the length and breadth of the county." From that moment until the boys did return the young ladies were all excitement getting ready for the trip. "I just feel now that something will happen," declared the optimistic Betty. "If four girls and four boys, besides the best man in New England, to wit, my daddy, cannot find them, then, indeed, they are lost." "Oh, I, too, feel so anxious," sighed Bess. "I think the run will do our nerves good, if nothing else." "And I feel exactly as if I were starting out to meet Cora," declared Belle. "Oh, what would I give----" "We all would," interrupted Hazel. "But to think that Leland should put us to trouble just now when our hands and hearts are so full," wailed Dr. Robbins. "Well, as misery likes company, perhaps our trouble will get along better in pairs," said Hazel, without knowing exactly what she meant. Jack entered the corridor. His handsome, dark face was tanned to a deep brown, and he looked different. Had he news? "Where is Mr. Rand?" he asked. "Just calling to the garage," said Belle, a note of question in her answer. "Well, girls, we have found something. We have found Cora's gloves!" "Oh, where?" It was a chorus. "On the road to Sharon. I found one--Ed the other." He took from his pocket the gloves. They were not very much soiled, and had evidently only lain in the road a short time. "They are the ones she wore the night of the ball, when she disappeared," said Belle, looking at them carefully. "Then we will take that road and search every inch of it," declared Bess, also inspecting the gloves. "The dear old things!" and she actually pressed them to her lips. "I feel as if you had brought us a message from Cora." "Those gloves have never been out of doors a week," said Jack seriously. "They have been carried there--placed there--just to throw us off the track. We will start out in the opposite direction." "To-night?" "As soon as you girls can get equipped. We must find Cora now or----" "We will find her," cried Bess. "I know we will. Oh, just let us get on the road! I think the cars will scent the trail! I feel as if I were simply going out to meet her by appointment." It was a brave effort, for the girls felt anything but certain. So many hopes had arisen and been dashed down! so many clews had been followed, only to be abandoned! so many messages had been sent in vain! But with such hope as they could muster up the party in four automobiles started out from the Tip-Top. Without exception every guest was interested in the case, and as the motorists chugged off many were the wishes of good luck that were wafted after them. To find Cora! to find Leland! or---- Another disappointment would seem too cruel. Walter declared he could pick a trail they had never yet followed. Betty said she knew a very dark and dangerous pass, where she had lost her bracelet. Belle wanted to go by the river road, so that when it was actually left to Bess to decide, as she was next in authority to Cora in the Motor Girls' Club, she spoke for the way through the woods, straight up into a rough and shaggy pass. "They would never dream of an automobile getting up there," she declared, "and if she is in hiding they have taken her far away from the good roads." Wonderful for Bess! Wonderful, indeed, is the instinct of love! Scarcely had they turned into the wooded way than they espied smoke stealing up through the trees. "There must be some one over there," declared Bess, the first to make the discovery. "See! Yes, there is a flag!" "Oh, maybe they are those dreadful Gypsies," murmured Belle. "Let us wait for Mr. Rand and the others." "I am too anxious to see," objected her sister. "The rest are all within calling distance. See, there are the boys. Let us hurry into the side road. Whoever they are, they have had wagons up here." It required careful driving to cover the pass, for the roadway was newly made, and by no means well-finished. Great stones continually rolled out from under the big, rubber wheels, and Bess was on the alert to use the emergency brake, although the road was somewhat up hill. She feared the motor would stop and that they might back down. "See!" she exclaimed, "there are children! They must be Gypsy lads and lassies." Over in a clump of evergreens could be seen some children, playing at a campfire. Yes, they might be Gypsies. "Wait! wait," called Jack and Ed, who had now observed that the place was inhabited. "We will go in first." "All right," called back Bess, a little sorry that she could not have had the glory of doing the investigating alone. By this time most of the searching party had reached the spot. "We will get out and walk over," suggested Jack, his voice trembling with anticipation. It was growing dusk, and the smoke seemed to make the woods more uncanny, and the depths blacker and more dismal. The children in the underbrush had climbed up into the low trees to get a view of the automobiles. Jack, Ed and Walter were making their way through the brush to reach the spot whence the smoke was coming. Mr. Rand and his men were hurrying over from the cross road. "Go slow!" he called, with the disregard of speech that makes a saying stronger. "All right," answered Jack. "We'll take it carefully." "It's a camp!" exclaimed Walter, "and Gypsies, I'll wager." "Oh, I am so frightened!" cried Belle. "Yet I would brave them alone for the sake of dear, darling Cora." "Of course you would," Betty assured her, as she picked herself up from a fall over some hidden root. Dr. Robbins had secured a stout stick, and she made her way with more care over the uncertain footing. "There's a family of them, at any rate," remarked Jack, as he neared the open spot, where now could be seen a hut. A rough-looking man was waiting to see what they wanted. He smoked a pipe, wore heavy shoes and clothing. Mr. Rand spoke first. "Good afternoon, stranger," he said in a pleasant voice. The man touched his hat and replied with an indistinguishable murmur. "Camping?" went on Mr. Rand, scarcely knowing how to get into conversation. "Sort of," replied the man shortly. "Might we intrude for a little water?" continued the old gentleman. "The girls had a dusty ride." "Certainly," replied the woodsman, motioning toward a pail and dipper on a bench in front of the hut. "Hard to get at," whispered Jack to Walter, "but he doesn't look so bad." "No, I rather think he is not the man we want," agreed the other young man. "Stay here all year?" asked Ed, as he handed the brimming tin dipper to Bess, and turned to the stranger. "Pretty much," spoke the man with the pipe. "But is there anything wrong? Anything I could do for you?" This caused the whole party to surmise that he must have heard that "something" was wrong. That looked suspicious. A woman emerged from the hut. She was not altogether untidy, but of course showed that she lived far from civilization. She bowed to the party, then called to the children in the woods. "Well," said Mr. Rand finally, "we are looking for somebody. You haven't happened to hear or to have seen anything of a young girl in these parts, a girl--who might have gotten lost in the woods; have you?" "I have heard that a girl was lost," replied the man. "But I'm one of the forest rangers and I keep pretty close to my post at this time of the season, watching for fires. There are so many young folks camping and reckless with matches. Is there no trace of her? The missing girl from the hotel, is the one you mean, isn't it?" Then he was not a gypsy! The forest ranger! "No, I am sorry to say we have not yet discovered her," went on Mr. Rand. "But you being here in the very depths of the woods would likely know of any gypsy camps about, I believe." "There are no camps in the woods this year," the man assured him. "We have kept them out of this particular clearing by law. There are a lot of them scattered about in the mountains, but as far as I could find there is no camp deep in the woods. You see every summer someone gets lost in these woods, and we don't like the gypsies to have the first chance of finding them. But sit down," and he cleared the bench of the water pail. "You must have had a weary search." Everyone sighed. They were still without a possible clew. "We will rest for a minute or two," said Mr. Rand, "but we must still cover a lot of road tonight. We are out to find her if she is on the White Mountains." And so after some conversation and advice from the forest ranger the searching party again pressed on. CHAPTER XXVII THE CALL OF THE HEART "I am not the least bit afraid; in fact, I think I shall just sing to show them I feel secure," and Cora snatched up the guitar. She fingered it tenderly, then let it rest for a moment in her arms. "Did Lena say it was all right?" "The dogs are drugged. I didn't have the heart to kill the brutes, ugly as they are. They will not awaken." "Good! Then everything else will be all right. Oh, Helka, can you imagine we are so near freedom?" "I never was frightened before. Whether it is the thought of meeting David, or whether it is the thought of leaving them all, I cannot say, but I am shaking from head to foot," said the queen. "That is natural. You have been with them almost all your life. But I shall show you what real life is. This is slavery." Helka looked about her uneasily. "What shall we do first?" "When it is very dark, and all are in bed, I will fasten the rope to the big nail that Lena fetched. Then I shall try it from this side, and if it holds me I will slip down. Then I shall run. When you no longer hear the leaves rustle, or if you can hear the whistle I will give you as a signal, then you must come." "And if you go, and I cannot get out! Oh, Cora, I should die here alone now!" "Faint heart! Be brave! Be strong! Say you will win!" Cora was jubilant. To her it meant freedom! She had no fear of detection. All she thought of was success. To get away and then to send word to her dear ones! Lena tapped on the door. "Helka," she said, "could I, too, go?" "You, Lena--why?" "I will not be happy without Helka and without the good lady. I, too, would go away!" Her eyes were sad, and her voice trembled. "Why, Lena, they would search the earth for you--you are a real gypsy," said Helka. "But I have no mother, no father, and what right have they to me? In the world I could learn, I would work for you, I would be your slave!" The poor girl was almost in tears. Her manner pleaded her cause more eloquently than could any words. "How would you go?" asked the queen. "When I go out to lock the barn, I would just run, and run through the woods. I would wait for you at the big oak." "Where is Sam?" asked Helka. "He went out with the wagon this afternoon. He will not be back." "And Mother Hull?" "Smoking by the fire. She will sleep. I have put some powder in her tobacco." Cora murmured a protest. "Oh, she likes it," and the queen smiled. "Tonight it will be a treat. But the men--the guards?" "One went to gamble his money that you gave him; the other is out with his fishing pole. I have fixed it all." "Good girl. You told him I wanted fish for breakfast, and you told the other he could spend his money at the inn. Lena, I wish you _could_ come with us." "I _am_ going. I will not stay here." "But in the morning, when they find three gone--what then?" "In the morning," said Cora, "it does not matter what. We shall be safe some place. Yes, Lena, we will take you. This is no life for any girl." Lena fell on her knees and kissed Cora's hands wildly. She had befriended Cora ever since she saw her lying so still and white in that awful wagon, and now she might get her reward. "You will come up with tea when everything is safe," said Helka. "That will be our signal." Lena went away with a smile on her thin lips. True, she was a real gypsy girl, but she longed for another life, and felt keenly the injustice of that to which she was enslaved. "Then I will sing," said Cora. "See, the stars are coming out. The night will help us. I have marked every turn in the path. I pretended to be moving the stones from the grass, and I was placing them where I could feel them--in the dark." "You are a wonderful girl, Cora, and your world must also be wonderful. I have no fear of its strange ways--but my money? How shall I ever be able to get that?" "Never fear about the money," replied Cora cheerily. "What is rightfully yours you will get. My friends are always the friends of justice." "And they will not fear the tribe?" "The tribe will fear them. Wait and see. Now, what shall I sing--the 'Gypsy's Warning?'" "Yes," and Helka lay back on her low divan. Again Cora fingered the guitar. Daintily her fingers awoke the chords. Then she sang, first low, then fuller and fuller until her voice rang out in the night. "Trust him not, oh, gentle lady, Though his voice be low and sweet, For he only seeks to win you, Then to crush you at his feet!" At each stanza Cora seemed to gain new power in her voice. Helka raised herself on her arm. She was enchanted. The last line had not died on Cora's lips when Helka repeated: "Yes, I am the gypsy's only child!" The remark was rather a plaint, and Cora came over very close to Helka. "You must teach me a new song," she said. "I want one to surprise my friends with." "Then you are so sure of reaching them?" "Positive. All America will seem small to me when I am free," and she patted the hand of the queen. "Free!" repeated the other. "I had never thought this captivity until you came; then I felt the power of a civilized world, and I felt the bondage of this." The girls were speaking in subdued tones. A single word might betray them if overheard. Yet they were too nervous to remain silent, and Helka seemed so impressed, so agitated, at the thought of leaving, forever, her strange life. "Do you think it is safe about Lena?" she asked. "I would not like to get that faithful child into trouble." "It would be much safer to take her than to leave her here," Cora reasoned, "for when they found us gone they would surely blame her." "Yes, that is so. Well, I have never prayed, that has always seemed a weak sort of way to struggle," said the queen, "but it seems to me now that I must seek strength from some One more powerful than those of earth. There _must_ be such a power." "Indeed there is," replied Cora. "But now let us be happy. See the stars, how they glitter," and she turned back the drapery from the window. "And see, we shall have a great, big, bright moon to show us our way." "Hush!" whispered Helka. "I heard a step. Listen!" Neither spoke for some moments. Then Cora said: "It was someone in the hall, but the person has gone down the stairs." "I wonder who it could be? Lena would come in." "Perhaps that little, frowsy Christine. She seems to stay out of nights. I heard her last night when you were sleeping. I really think she came in very late, crept upstairs, and then I am sure she tried this door." "She did! Why did you not call me?" "Well, I was positive it was she, and I did not want to make trouble. You see she has been listening again." "She belongs to another tribe and has only come here lately," said Helka. "I have always suspected she was sent to spy on me. If it were not just to-night--this very night--I would call her to an account." "If the child is under orders," intervened Cora, "you can scarcely trust her to do otherwise than spy. But what do they want to know about you that they cannot readily find out?" "You could scarcely understand it dear. We have rival tribes, and they each want me--or my money." "There is another step! There seems to be so many noises to-night." "Perhaps that is only because we are listening." "We want to listen, and we want to hear," and Cora put her ear to the keyhole. "Are they gone?" Cora did not answer at once. Then she turned to Helka. "I am sure I heard two voices. Should we call? Or ask who is there?" "No, it will be better to take our chances. It would be awful to be disappointed now," said the queen in a whisper. "Surely Lena would not have betrayed us?" "Never. She is as faithful as--my right hand." "Of course! But I cannot help being afraid of everything. Helka, we should take some refreshment. That will give us courage." "I hope Lena will soon fetch the tea," and the queen sighed. "This suspense is dreadful." "But it will pay us in the end. If we made a mistake now----" Cora stopped. A tap came at the door, at which both girls fairly jumped. "I will answer," said Helka, immediately regaining her composure. She opened the door. "I forgot my lesson book in your room to-day," said a voice that proved to be that of Christine, "and may I get it?" "Not to-night," answered Helka decisively. "You should not forget things, and it is too late for lessons." "But the man--Jensen--says I must get it. He is my teacher, and he is below." "Tell him Helka says you must go to bed: to bed, do you hear? At once! I will have Lena see how you obey me." The girl turned away. Helka locked the door. "What does that mean?" asked Cora anxiously. "They are watching us. We must be very cautious. But she is only a timid child and she will go to bed. I do wonder what is keeping Lena?" "If they should keep her down stairs all night, then could we not venture to leave?" asked Cora. "I don't know. They might suspect, and they might keep Lena. You take up the guitar and I will ring." Cora obeyed. How her hands trembled! To be found out would almost mean death to both of them. Helka pulled the cord that rang the hall bell. Then they waited, but there was no answer. She pulled it again, and after a few minutes she heard the familiar step of Lena. She opened the door before the Gypsy girl had a chance to knock. A wild gesture of the girl's hands told Helka not to speak. Then she entered the room. "They are watching," she whispered, and without waiting for a reply she darted out into the hall again and crept down the stairs. "Can't we----" "Hush!" cautioned the queen as she pressed Cora's hands to bid her keep up her courage. It seemed hours. Would the trees never stop rustling, and would the steps below never cease their shuffling? "I have said that this was to be my night of music," whispered Helka. "The night of the full moon always is. So we must have music!" A long line of automobiles had rumbled along the narrow road. Not a horn sounded, not one of the cars gave any warning. It was night in the White Mountains, and besides the party from the Tip-Top, who had been searching from late that afternoon, there were also, on Mr. Rand's orders, two officers in a runabout. "Which way?" called the boys from their car. "Sounds like water!" "Oh, mercy!" exclaimed Bess, who was quite near. "Don't let us run over a falls!" "No danger!" came back from the Rand car. "That water is half a mile away." "This is rather unsafe for the girls, though," said Jack to Ed. "I wonder if they don't want to change cars?" "I have just asked Bess and Betty," replied Ed, "and they would not hear of it. Strange that such timid girls can be so plucky on occasions." "They're game all right," observed Jack. "I almost feel, now that we are out in the woods, that Cora is along. It is tough to think anything else." "Perhaps she is. I never felt as encouraged as I do to-night," declared Ed. "Somehow we started out to win and we've got to do it!" Now, the one great difficulty of this searching tour was that of not sounding the horns, consequently they had to feel their way, as on almost any part of the mountain roads there might be stray cottagers, or campers, or rustics, in danger of being run down. The lights flashed brightly as if trying to do their part in the search for Cora Kimball. Giant trees threw formidable shadows, and smaller ones whispered the secrets of the wood. But the girls and boys, and the women and men were too seriously bent upon their work to notice any signs so unimportant. Suddenly Jack turned off his power. He wanted to listen. "Did you hear anything?" asked Ed. "Thought I did, but these evergreens make all sorts of noises." "The others are making for the hill. We had best not lose sight of them," suggested Ed. At this Jack started up again and was soon under way. But something had sounded "human." He felt that there must be some sort of life near them. In a few minutes he was alongside the other cars. "What kept you?" asked Bess, eager for anything new. "Nothing," replied Ed. "We just wanted to listen." "We will leave the cars here and walk. I thought I saw a light," said Jack. "I am sure I did," declared Bess. "Oh, If only we find a cave, there are enough of us----" "The young ladies should not venture too deep in the woods," suggested Officer Brown. "We had best leave them with one of the young men here." "Oh, no," objected Belle. "We must go with you. We are better in a crowd." "Just as you say. But look! Is not that a light?" They were almost in front of the old house. Cora and Helka were tying the rope to the open window. "Sing! Sing!" whispered Lena, at the door. "Mother Hull is listening." Quickly Cora picked up the instrument again, and, although voice and hands trembled, she sang once more the last verse of the "Gypsy's Warning," while Helka played her little harp. "Hark! Hark!" shrieked Bess. "That is Cora's voice! Listen!" Spellbound they stood. "Yes," shouted Belle. "That's Cora!" "Oh, quick," gasped Betty, "she may stop, and then----" A rustle in the bushes close by startled them. A man groped his way out. "What do you want?" he demanded. "Oh, Leland!" It was Miss Robbins who uttered the words. She made her way up to the stranger, and while the others stood dumfounded she threw herself in the stranger's arms. "You, Regina? Here?" "Yes, is this the Hemlock Bend? Oh, to think that we have found you!" "But I must go! That was her harp. That was Lillian--somewhere in that thick woods!" "And the voice was Cora's," interrupted Jack. "Where can she be--to sing, and to sing like that?" The detectives with Mr. Rand were pressing on. They soon emerged from the thicket and saw the old mansion. "That is the Bradly place," said Officer Brown. "Only an old woman and a couple of girls live there. That is no place for one to be kidnapped." "No matter who is there," declared Bess, "I heard Cora sing, and that is Cora's song, 'The Gypsy's Warning.'" "And I heard Lillian play," declared Dr. Robbins' brother. "I have promised to rescue her to-night." "And that is why you came?" asked his sister. "Yes, she is there, in a gypsy den!" CHAPTER XXVIII VICTORY "Is SHE asleep?" asked Cora, as Lena poked her head in the door again. "Yes, and she will not wake. You may go!" "One more little song," begged Helka. "I may never play my lute again." "Why, Lena could bring it," suggested Cora. "It is not much to carry; and your box, I will take that." Helka ran her fingers over the strings. "Sing," she said, and Cora sang. "His voice is calling sweet and low! 'Babbette! Pierro!' He rows across, he takes her hand, And then they sail away!" "Yes," interrupted Helka, "he will come, and he will take my hand. Let us go!" "There! There!" screamed Bess. "That was Cora's voice!" "And that was Lillian's lute! Did I not give it to her?" insisted the strange young man, Leland. "Then our lost ones are together," said Jack. "I am going!" "Wait! Wait!" begged the detectives. "The dogs in there would tear you to pieces!" "They must eat my hot lead first," said Jack grimly, drawing his revolver. "No, wait," implored Mr. Rand. "A false move now may spoil it all." Every man, young and old, in the party took out his revolver and had it in readiness. Then, in a solid line, they deliberately walked up to the old house--through the path lined with boxwood over the little flower garden. "Yes, there is a light. See it near the roof?" The girls were almost on the heels of the men. They could not be induced to remain in the lane. "What is that?" "A woman's voice," said Officer Brown. "She is calling the dogs!" But no dogs came. Instead, a girl, Lena, confronted them. "What do you want?" she demanded rather rudely. "You," said the younger officer--Graham by name--and as he spoke he seized her arm. "I am only Lena. I have done nothing. Let me go. Help! help!" shrieked the girl. This aroused the old woman. She flung open the door and stood with lantern in hand. "Lena! Lena," she shrieked. "The dogs! Where are the dogs?" But Lena did not answer. "Sam! Jack! Tipo! Where are you all? What does this mean?" The searchers stood for a moment considering what was best to do. As they did so something came dangling down--the rope from the window near the roof! "Cora!" She fell into the very arms of Bess. Another moment and a second form slid down in that same mysterious way. It was Helka! And Leland was there to grasp her. "Lillian!" he murmured. "Oh, David! Am I--are we safe!" The door had slammed shut and the old woman was gone. "Is this the girl we are after?" exclaimed the officer in astonishment. "None other," declared Mr. Rand. "And I say, boys, just pick these girls up and carry them. That will be no task for you." Cora was weeping on Jack's shoulder, Helka was folded in Leland's arms. To her he was David. "What happened?" asked Betty. "Don't leave Lena," begged Cora. "She must come with us!" "Simply get everybody down on the road," suggested Mr. Rand, "then we may be able to tell Lena from Cora and all the rest." How different it was going back over that path! How merrily the girls prattled, and how excited were the men! It was Cora! Cora! Cora! And it was Helka! My friend Helka! Then Lillian. And David! Even Lena! It was well the automobiles had a few spare seats, for there were now four new passengers to be taken back to the Tip-Top. "Belle!" said Cora, when she could get her voice, "however did you venture out here?" "Now, Cora," and Belle protested feebly, "I have been very ill, since you left; and you know I would have gone anywhere to help find you. Anywhere in the world!" Cora kissed her fondly. Nothing and no one could resist teasing Belle. "Of course you would! But who has Lena?" "She is with the Rands," replied Bess, "but we claimed you. Oh, Cora Kimball!" As only girls know how to show affection, this sort was now fairly showered upon the rescued girl. "It almost seemed worth while to have been lost," Cora managed to say. "When shall we hear all about it?" asked Belle. "Not to-night," objected the twin sister. "It is enough to know that we have Cora." The automobiles were rumbling on. Every mile post took them farther from the gypsies, and nearer the hotel. "Hey there!" called Mr. Rand. "You boys keep a tight hold!" "Aye, aye, sir!" shouted back Walter. "Seems to me Mr. Rand is getting very gay," he remarked to Betty. "He simply means," said the dutiful daughter, "that you must look carefully after the girls. They might be after us--the gypsies, I mean. "Oh," said Walter, in that way that Walter had. CHAPTER XXIX A REAL LOVE FEAST "However did it happen?" demanded Belle. "Please let the child draw her breath," insisted Mr. Rand. "Remember, she has been kidnapped--a prisoner, a slave!" "No, not that," objected Helka. "She was my guest." "I knew we would find her," declared Betty, crowding up to Cora's chair. "We didn't," contradicted Ed, "she found us. She simply----" "Flopped down on us," finished Jack. "Cora, I never knew I loved you until I lost you." "Oh, yes, you did, Jackie. You always made sugary speeches when--you wanted small change." "And the dogs?" asked the detectives. "What happened to them?" "We put them to sleep!" announced Cora, in the gravest possible tones. "Do you know, we never could have done it but for Lena." "Lena shall be rewarded," declared Walter. "Wallie!" warned Jack. "The newest girl!" whispered Belle. "At any rate, no one can steal Helka," said Cora, glancing over at Lillian and David. "But how does he come to be Leland?" The question was aimed at Dr. Robbins. "Oh, that boy! He must change everything--even his name, although it really is Leland David." "David for strength, of course," said Cora. "Oh, I just must scream! Think of it! No more dogs! No more eating off the floor----" She caught Helka's eye. "What is it, Cora?" asked the gypsy queen. Cora clasped her arms about her. "Isn't she beautiful?" whispered Belle. "Did you ever see such a face?" "Glorious," pronounced Betty. "But say, Betty, did you notice how the daddy takes up with the doc?" said Ed. "I am dreadfully afraid of stepmothers." "I'm not," said Betty, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders. "I rather like them." "Had one on trial?" teased the boy. "No, on probation," braved Betty. "Then," said the officer, aside to Mr. Rand, "we shall raid the place!" "Exactly, exactly! There may be more girls under the stoop or up the chimney. That place should not be allowed to stand." "It was a great find," admitted the officer, "but I never would have been able to do anything if the young ladies had not recognized the voice. That place has been there for years. The Bradly house would have got past any of us." "Yes, the girls helped," said Mr. Rand proudly. "I have a great regard for girls." "You say silver was stolen from the seashore cottage? Likely it is in that place." "Haven't the slightest doubt of it, and more, too, I'll wager. Now, boys"--to the officers--"you have done a good night's work. We're a happy family, and I don't want to keep you longer from yours." So, with promises to soon overhaul the old Bradly house, the men of the law departed. "But why did you sing, Cora? How could you?" asked Ed. "Oh, I knew I was soon going to be happy, and wanted to get used to it," said Cora, with a laugh. "You haven't failed," said Dr. Robbins. "Praise from you? No, thanks to my good friend, we had everything but liberty. Didn't we, Helka?" "Oh, she's too busy. Let her alone," suggested Jack, his face radiant. "And you have on my bracelet! Cora Kimball!" accused Betty. "Another link in the endless chain," explained Cora vaguely. "That is a present from Gypsy Land." "Suppose we eat," suggested the practical Mr. Rand. "I have cabled Mrs. Kimball. She had not yet sailed." "Oh, poor, darling mother!" exclaimed Cora, her eyes filling. "Poor, darling--you," added Jack, not hesitating to kiss her openly. "Next!" called Ed. "Halves on that!" demanded Walter. "Fenn!" shouted Cora, for, indeed, the boys threatened to carry out the game. "Maybe you would like--a minister," suggested Mr. Rand mischievously, glancing at the undisturbed Helka and David. "For a couple of jobs?" asked Walter, looking keenly at Mr. Rand and carrying the same look into Dr. Robbins' face. "Well, I don't mind," replied the gentleman. "Betty is getting beyond my control." But Lillian, the gypsy queen, was not in such a hurry to wed, even her princely David. She would have a correct trousseau, and have a great wedding, with all the motor girls as maids. Her fear of the clan was entirely dispelled, just as Cora said it would be when she breathed the refreshing air of American freedom. "So you are the Motor Girls?" she asked, trying to comprehend it all. "They call us that," said Bess. Then the porter announced supper, and at the table were seated fifty guests--all to welcome back Cora and to sing the praises of the real, live, up-to-date motor girls. There is little more to tell. A few days later the house where Cora had been held a prisoner was raided, but there was no one there; the place had been stripped, and of Mother Hull and the unscrupulous men not a trace remained. But Tony Slavo was not so lucky. He was still in the clutches of the law, and there he remained for a long time, for he was convicted of the robbery of the Kimball cottage. Cora arranged to have the gypsy girl, Lena, sent to a boarding school. As for Lillian, who resumed her real name, Mr. Rand engaged a lawyer for her, and most of the wealth left to her was recovered from another band of gypsies who had control of it. So there was a prospect of new happiness for her and Leland, who promised to give up his odd ways, at least for a time. Cora soon recovered from the effects of her captivity and she formed a warm friendship for the former gypsy queen, even as did the other motor girls. "Oh, but wasn't it exciting, though?" exclaimed Bess one afternoon, when, after leaving the Tip-Top Hotel they had resumed their tour through New England. "I shall never forget how I felt when I saw Cora coming down that rope from the window." "Nor I, either," added Belle. "I wonder----" "Who's kissing her now?" interrupted Jack, with a laugh. "Silly boy! I was going to say I wonder what will happen to us next vacation." "Hard to tell," declared Ed. "Let's arrange for us boys to get lost, and for the girls to find us," proposed Walter. "Don't consider yourselves of such importance," said Hazel, but she blushed prettily. "Oh, well, it's all in the game," declared Jack. "I feel in my bones that something will happen." It did, and what it was will be told in the next volume of this series, to be entitled, "The Motor Girls on Cedar Lake; Or, The Hermit of Fern Island." In that we will meet with the young ladies and their friends again, and hear further of Cora's resourcefulness in times of danger. The tour through New England came to an end one beautiful day, when, after a picnic at a popular mountain resort, our friends turned their cars homeward. And so, as they are scudding along the pleasant roads, on which the dried leaves--early harbingers of autumn--were beginning to fall--we will take leave of the motor girls. 
60017	----	[Illustration] UNCLE WIGGILY'S (TRADE MARK REGISTERED) AUTOMOBILE _by_ HOWARD R. GARIS _Author of_ "UNCLE WIGGILY BEDTIME STORIES", "UNCLE WIGGILY'S PICTURE BOOK", "UNCLE WIGGILY'S STORY BOOK", Etc. _Illustrated by_ LOUIS WISA [Illustration] A. L. BURT COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK UNCLE WIGGILY BOOKS (TRADE MARK REGISTERED) _by_ HOWARD R. GARIS * * * * * BEDTIME STORIES UNCLE WIGGILY and CHARLIE and ARABELLA CHICK UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE RINGTAILS UNCLE WIGGILY ON SUGAR ISLAND UNCLE WIGGILY AT THE SEASHORE UNCLE WIGGILY AND BABY BUNTY UNCLE WIGGILY IN THE COUNTRY UNCLE WIGGILY'S PUZZLE BOOK UNCLE WIGGILY IN THE WOODS UNCLE WIGGILY'S ADVENTURES UNCLE WIGGILY'S AUTOMOBILE UNCLE WIGGILY ON THE FARM UNCLE WIGGILY'S BUNGALOW UNCLE WIGGILY'S FORTUNE UNCLE WIGGILY'S TRAVELS UNCLE WIGGILY'S AIRSHIP * * * * * Larger Uncle Wiggily Volumes * * * * * UNCLE WIGGILY'S PICTURE BOOK _33 full colored illustrations and 32 in black and white_ UNCLE WIGGILY'S STORY BOOK _16 full colored illustrations and 29 in black and white_ _Copyright 1913 by_ R. F. FENNO & COMPANY UNCLE WIGGILY'S AUTOMOBILE * * * * * _Printed in the United States of America_ PUBLISHER'S NOTE These stories appeared originally in the Evening News, of Newark, N. J., and are reproduced in book form by the kind permission of the publishers of that paper, to whom the author extends his thanks. Uncle Wiggily's Automobile * * * * * STORY I UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE SORROWFUL CROW Once upon a time, a good many years ago, there was an old rabbit gentleman named Uncle Wiggily Longears. He was related to Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels, as well as being an Uncle to Sammie and Susie Littletail, his rabbit nephew and niece. And Uncle Wiggily lived near Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow, the puppy dogs, while, not far away was the home of the Wibblewobble family of ducks, and across the street, almost, around the corner by the old slump, were the Kat children, and Neddie and Beckie Stubtail, the nice bear children. One day Uncle Wiggily was not feeling very well, so he sent for Dr. Possum, who soon came over. Dr. Possum found Uncle Wiggily sitting in the rocking chair on the front porch of the hollow stump house where he lived. "Well, what is the trouble, Uncle Wiggily?" asked Dr. Possum, as he looked over the tops of his glasses. "I am sick," answered the rabbit gentleman. "Sick; eh?" exclaimed Dr. Possum. "Let me see. Put out your tongue!" Uncle Wiggily did so. "Ha! Hum!" exclaimed Dr. Possum. "Yes, I think you are ill, and you will have to do something for it right away." "What will I have to do?" asked Uncle Wiggily, anxious-like, and his nose twinkled like a star on a frosty night. "You will simply have to go away," said Dr. Possum. "There is no help for it." "I don't see why!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, and he bent one of his long ears forward and the other backward, until he looked as if he had the letter V on top of his head. But, of course, he hadn't, for that letter is in the reading book--or it was the last time I looked. "Yes," said Dr. Possum, "you must go away." "I don't see why," said Uncle Wiggily again. "Couldn't I get well at home here?" "No, you could not," replied Dr. Possum. "If you want me to tell you the truth----" "Oh, always tell the truth!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, quickly. "Always!" "Well, then," said Dr. Possum, as he looked in his medicine case, to see if he had any strong peppermint for Aunt Jerushia Ann, the little, nervous old lady woodchuck. "Well, then, to tell you the truth, you are getting too fat, and you must take more exercise." "Exercise!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "Why! Don't I play a game of Scotch checkers with Grandfather Goosey Gander, the old gentleman duck, nearly every day? And we always eat the sugar cookies we use for checkers." "That's just it," said Dr. Possum, as he rolled up a sweet sugar-pill for Sammie Littletail, the mill rabbit boy; "you eat too much, and you don't jump around enough." "But I used to," said Uncle Wiggily, while he twinkled his pink nose like a red star on a frosty night. "Why, don't you remember the time I went off and had a lot of adventures, and how I traveled after my fortune, and found it?" "That is just the trouble," spoke Dr. Possum. "You found your fortune, and since you became rich you do nothing. I remember the time when you used to teach Sammie and Susie Littletail how to keep out of traps, and how to dig burrows and watch out for savage dogs." "Ah, yes!" sighed Uncle Wiggily. "Those were happy days." "And healthful days, too," said Dr. Possum. "You were much better off then, and not so fat." "And so you think I had better start traveling again?" asked Uncle Wiggily, taking off his high hat and bowing politely to Uncle Lettie, the nice goat lady, who was passing by, with her two horns sticking through holes in her Sunday-go-to-meeting bonnet. "Yes, it would be the best thing for you," spoke Dr. Possum. "Medicine is all right sometimes, but fresh air, and sunshine, and being out-of-doors, and happy and contented, and helping people, as Uncle Booster, the old ground hog gentleman, used to do--all these are better than medicine." "How is Uncle Booster, by the way?" inquired the rabbit gentleman. "Fine! He helped a little girl mouse to jump over a mud puddle the other day, and after she was on the other side she jumped back, all by herself, and fell in," said Dr. Possum, with a laugh. "That's the kind of a gentleman Uncle Booster is!" "Ha! Ha!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "That's queer! But now do you think it would do me any good to start off and have some adventures in my automobile?" "It would be better to walk," said Dr. Possum. "Remember you called me in to tell you what was the matter with you, because you felt ill. And I tell you that you must go around more; take more exercise. Still, if you had rather go in your auto than walk, I have no objections." "I had much rather," said Uncle Wiggily. "I like my auto." "Then," said Dr. Possum, "I will write that as a prescription." So on a piece of white birch bark he wrote: "One auto ride every day, to be taken before meals. Dr. Possum." "I'll do it at once," said the rabbit gentleman. Uncle Wiggily Longears was a quite rich, you know, having found his fortune, of about a million yellow carrots, as I have told you in some other stories, so he could afford to have an auto. And it was the nicest auto you could imagine. It had a turnip for a steering wheel, and whenever Uncle Wiggily got hungry he could take a bite of turnip. Sometimes after a long trip the steering wheel would be all eaten up, and old Circus Dog Percival, who mended broken autos, would have to put on a new wheel. And to make a noise, so that no one would get run over by his machine, Uncle Wiggily had a cow's horn fastened on his auto; so instead of going "Honk-honk!" like a duck, it went "Moo! Moo!" like a bossy cow at supper time. "Well, if I'm going off for my health, I'd better start," said Uncle Wiggily, as he went out to his auto after Dr. Possum had gone. "I'll take a long ride." So he got in the machine, and pushed on the doodle-oodle-um, and twisted the tinkerum-tankerum, and away he went as fast as anything, if not faster. Over the fields and through the woods he went, and pretty soon he came to a place where lived a sorrowful crow gentleman. The crow is a black bird, and it pulls up corn and goes "Caw! Caw! Caw!" Nobody knows why, though. And this crow was very sorrowful. He was always thinking something unpleasant was going to happen, such as that he was going to drop his ice cream cone in the mud, or that somebody would put whitewash on him. Oh, he was very sorrowful, was this crow, and his name was Mr. Caw-caw. When Uncle Wiggily got to where the crow was sitting in a tree the black creature cried: "Oh, dear! O woe is me! O unhappiness!" "Why, what is the matter?" asked Uncle Wiggily, curious-like! "Oh, something is going to happen!" cried the crow. "I know it will rain or snow or freeze, or maybe my feathers will all blow off." "Don't be silly!" said Uncle Wiggily. "You just come for an auto ride with me, and you'll feel better. Come along, bless your black tail!" So Mr. Caw-caw got into the auto, and once more Uncle Wiggily started off. He had not gone very far before, all of a sudden, there was a bangity-bang noise, and the auto stopped so quickly that Uncle Wiggily and the crow were almost thrown out of their seats. "There!" cried the black crow. "I knew something would happen!" and he cried "Caw! Caw! Caw!" "It is nothing at all," said the rabbit gentleman as he got out to look. "Only the whizzicum-whazzicum has become twisted around the jump-over-the-clothes basket, and we can't go until it's fixed." "Can't go?" asked the crow. "Can't go--no," said Uncle Wiggily. And he didn't know what to do. But just then along came Old Dog Percival, who used to work in a circus. "I'll pull you along," he said. "You sit in the auto and steer, and I'll pull you." And he did, by a rope fast to the car. The crow said it was funny to have a circus dog pulling an auto, but Uncle Wiggily did not mind, and soon they were at a place where the auto could be fixed. So Uncle Wiggily and the crow waited there, while the machine was being mended. "And we will see what happens to us to-morrow," said Uncle Wiggily, "for I am going to travel on." And he did. And in case the jumping rope doesn't skip over the clock, and make the hands tickle the face I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the school teacher. STORY II UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE SCHOOL TEACHER Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old gentleman rabbit, was riding along in his automobile, with the turnip for a steering wheel, and he had not yet taken more than two bites out of the turnip, for it was only shortly after breakfast. With him was Mr. Caw-caw, the black crow gentleman. "Do you think your automobile will go all right now?" asked the crow, as he looked down from his seat at the big wheels which had German sausages around for tires, so in case Old Percival, the circus dog, got hungry, he could eat one for lunch. "Oh yes, it will go all right now," said the rabbit gentleman. "Specially since we have had it fixed." I think, if I am not mistaken, and in case the cat has not eat up all the bacon, that I told you in the story before this one how Uncle Wiggily had been advised by Dr. Possum to go traveling around for his health and how he had started off in the auto. Did I tell you that? He met Mr. Caw-caw and the tinkle-inkle-um on the auto broke, or else it was the widdle-waddle-um. Anyhow, it wouldn't go, and Old Dog Percival, coming along, pulled the machine to the fixing place. Then Uncle Wiggily and Mr. Caw-caw slept all night and now it was daylight again and they had started off once more. "It is a lovely morning," said Uncle Wiggily, as he drove the machine over the fields and through the woods. "A lovely spring day!" "But we may get an April shower before night," said Mr. Caw-caw, the crow gentleman, who had black feathers and who was always sad instead of being happy. "Oh, dear, I'm sure it will rain," he said. "Nonsensicalness!" cried Uncle Wiggily, swinging his ears around just like some circus balloons trying to get away from an elephant eating peanuts. "Cheer up! Be happy!" "Well, if it doesn't rain it will snow," said the sad crow. "Oh, cheer up," said Uncle Wiggily, as he took another bite out of the turnip steering wheel. "Have a nibble," he went on politely. "It may only blow." "I'm sure it will do something," spoke the gloomy crow. "Anyhow I don't care for turnip." "Have some corn then," said Uncle Wiggily. "Is it popped?" asked the crow. "No, but I can pop it," said the old gentleman rabbit. "I will pop it on my automobile engine, which gets very hot, almost like a gas stove." So the old rabbit gentleman, who was riding around in his auto to take exercise, because he was getting too fat, and Dr. Possum had said so, popped the corn on the hot engine, and very good it was, too, for the crow to eat. But even the popcorn could not seem to make the unhappy crow feel better, and he cried so much, as the auto went along, that his tears made a mud-puddle in the road where they happened to be just then. And the auto wheels, with the German bologna sausages on for tires, splashed in the mud and made it fly all over like anything. Then, just as Uncle Wiggily steered the auto right away from the road into a nice green wood, where the leaves were just coming out on the trees, the old gentleman rabbit heard some one saying: "Oh, dear! Oh, dear me! I know I'll never be at school on time! Oh, what a bad accident!" "My!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "What can that be?" "Oh, something dreadful, you may be sure," said Mr. Caw-caw, the crow gentleman. "Oh, I just knew something would happen on this trip." "Well, let it happen!" said Uncle Wiggily. "I like things to happen. This seems to be some one in trouble, and I am going to help, whoever it is." "Then please help me," said the voice. "Who are you?" asked Uncle Wiggily. "I am the lady mouse school teacher," said some one they could not see, "and on my way to school I ran a thorn in my foot, so I cannot walk. If I am not there on time to open the school, the children will not know what to do. Oh, isn't it terrible!" "Say no more!" cried Uncle Wiggily, cheerfully. "You shall ride to school in my auto. Then you will be there on time, and the animal children will not have to go home and miss their lessons. I am so glad I can help you. Isn't it horribly jolly to help people?" cried Uncle Wiggily to the crow, just as an English rabbit might have done. "Ha! It's jolly, all right, if you can help them," said the crow. "But I'm sure something will happen. Some bad elephant will eat off our sausage tires, or a cow will drink the gasoline, or we shall roll down a hill." "Nonsensicalness!" cried Uncle Wiggily, real exasperated-like, which means bothered. "Get in, Miss Mouse School Teacher," he said, "and I will soon have you at your classes." So the lady mouse school teacher got into the auto, and sat beside Mr. Caw-caw, who asked her how many six and seven grains of corn were. "Thirteen," said the nice mouse school teacher. "Thirteen in the winter," spoke the crow, "but I mean in summer." "Six and seven are thirteen in summer just as in winter," said the lady mouse. "Wrong," croaked the crow. "If you plant thirteen grains of corn in summer you'll get thirteen stalks, each with thirteen ears of corn on, and each ear has five hundred and sixty-three grains, and thirteen times thirteen times five hundred and sixty-three makes--how many does it make?" he asked of Uncle Wiggily suddenly. "Oh, please stop!" cried the lady mouse school teacher; "you make my head ache." "How much is one headache and two headaches?" asked the crow, who seemed quite curious. "Stop! Stop!" cried Uncle Wiggily, as he took a bite out of the turnip steering wheel. "You will make the auto turn a somersault." "How much," said the crow, "is one somersault and one peppersault added to a mustard plaster and divided by----" "There you go!" suddenly cried Uncle Wiggily as the auto hit a stone and stopped. "You've made the plunkity-plunk bite the wizzie-wazzie!" "Oh, dear!" cried the crow. "I knew something would happen!" "Well, it was your fault," said Uncle Wiggily. "Now I'll have to have the auto fixed again." "Can't we go on to school?" asked the lady mouse teacher anxiously. "No, I am sorry to say, we cannot," said Uncle Wiggily. "Then I shall be late, and the children will all run home after all. Oh, dear!" "I knew something--" began the crow. "Stop it!" cried Uncle Wiggily, provoked-like. The lady mouse school teacher did not know what to do, and it looked as if she would be late, for even when Uncle Wiggily had crawled under the auto, and had put pepper on the German sausage tires, he could not make the machine go. But, just as the school teacher was going to be late, along came flying Dickie Chip-Chip, the sparrow boy, with his new airship. And in the airship he gave the lady mouse school teacher a ride to school up above the tree tops, so she was not late after all. She called a good-by to Uncle Wiggily, who some time afterward had his auto fixed again, and then he and the crow gentleman went on and had more adventures. What the next one was I'll tell you on the next page, when the story will be about Uncle Wiggily and the candy--that is, if a little Montclair girl, named Cora, doesn't eat too much peanut brittle, and get her hair so sticky that the brush can't comb it. STORY III UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE CANDY Uncle Wiggily, the nice old gentleman rabbit, was riding along in his automobile, with the turnip for a steering wheel and big, fat German bologna sausages on for tires. On the seat beside Uncle Wiggily was the crow gentleman, named Mr. Caw-caw. "Well, where do you think you will go to-day?" asked the crow gentleman, as he straightened out some of his black feathers with his black bill, for the wind had ruffled them all up. "Where will I go?" repeated Uncle Wiggily, as he steered to one side so he would not run over a stone and hurt it, "well, to tell you the truth--I hardly know. Dr. Possum, when he told me to ride around for my health, because I was getting too fat, did not say where I was to go, in particular." "Then let's go straight ahead," said the crow. "I don't like going around in a circle; it makes me dizzy." "And it does me, also," spoke the rabbit gentleman. "That is why I never can ride much on a merry-go-'round, though I often take Johnnie or Billie Bushytail, my squirrel nephews, or Buddy and Brighteyes, the guinea pig children, on one for a little while. But, Mr. Crow, we will go straight ahead in my auto, and we will see what adventure happens to us next." For you know something was always happening to Uncle Wiggily as he traveled around. Sometimes it was one thing, and sometimes another. You remember, I dare say, how, the day before, he had nearly helped to keep the nice lady mouse school teacher from being late. Well, pretty soon, as Uncle Wiggily and the crow gentleman were riding in the auto, all at once they looked down the road and saw a little girl sitting on a stone. She had a box in her hands and she was trying to open it. But she was crying so hard that she could not see out of her eyes, because of her tears, and so she could not open the box. "My goodness me sakes alive, and some roast beef gravy!" cried Uncle Wiggily, as he stopped the auto. "What can be the matter with that child?" For you know Uncle Wiggily loved children. Then the old gentleman rabbit blew on the cow's horn, that was on his auto to warn people kindly to get out of danger, and the cow's horn went "Moo! Moo! Moo!" very softly, three times just like that. The little girl looked up through her tears, and when she saw Uncle Wiggily and the crow gentleman in the auto, she smiled and asked: "Where is the mooley cow?" "Only her horn is here," said Uncle Wiggily, as he made it go "Moo!" again. "Oh, dear," said the little girl. "I just love a mooley cow," and she was going to cry some more, because there was no cow to be seen, when Uncle Wiggily asked: "What is the matter? Why are you crying?" "Because I can't get this box open," said the little girl, whose name was Cora. "What is in the box?" asked the rabbit gentleman. "Candy," said little Cora. "I just love candy, and I haven't had any in ever so long. Now my papa gave me a box, but the string is tied on it so tightly that I can't get the box open, and my papa went away and forgot about it. Oh, dear. Boo! hoo! Can you open it for me, Uncle Wiggily?" The rabbit gentleman thought for a moment. Then he said, with a twinkle in his eyes that matched the twinkle in his nose: "Well, possibly I might untie the string, but you see my teeth are so big and sharp, and are so used to gnawing wood, and bark and carrots, and I can't see very well, even with my glasses, so I might accidentally, when I bite through the string I might, by mistake, also bite through the box, and eat the candy myself." "Oh, dear!" cried the little girl. Then she added quickly, as she thought of her polite manners: "I wouldn't mind, Uncle Wiggily, if you did eat some of the candy. Only open the box for me so I can get part of it," she said. "I think I have a better plan than that," said the old gentleman rabbit. "I will ask Mr. Caw-caw, our crow friend here, to untie the string for you. With his sharp bill this crow gentleman can easily loosen the knot, and that, too, without danger of breaking the box and taking any candy." "Will he do it?" asked the little girl eagerly. "To be sure, I will," said the crow gentleman, and he loosened that knot then and there with his sharp bill, which seemed just made for such things. "Oh, what lovely candy!" cried the little girl, as she took the cover off the box. "I am going to give you each some!" she added. And she gave Mr. Caw-caw some candy flavored with green corn, for he liked that best of all, and to Uncle Wiggily she gave some nice, soft, squishie-squashie candy, with a carrot inside. And the little girl ate some chocolate candy for herself, and did not cry any more. "Get in my auto," said Uncle Wiggily, "and I will give you a ride. Perhaps we may have an adventure." "Oh, I just love adventures!" said little Cora. "I love them even better than candy. But we can eat candy in the auto anyhow," she went on, with a laugh, as she climbed up in the seat. Then Uncle Wiggily turned the tinkerum-tankerum, and with a feather tickled the whizzicum-whazzicum to make the auto go, and it went. The old rabbit gentleman made the cow's horn blow "Moo! Moo!" and away they started off through the woods. They had not gone very far, and Cora had eaten only about six pieces of candy, when they heard a voice behind them shouting: "Wait for me! Wait for me! I want a ride!" "Ha!" cawed the crow, "who can that be?" "I'll look," said Uncle Wiggily, and he did. Then he exclaimed: "Oh, dear! It's the circus elephant. And he's grown so big lately, that if he gets in with us he will break my auto." "Don't let him do it then," said Mr. Caw-caw. "I don't believe I will," said Uncle Wiggily. "But would it be polite not to give him a ride?" asked the little girl, as she ate another piece of candy. "No, you are right, it would not," said Uncle Wiggily, decidedly. "I must give him a ride, but he's sure to break my auto, and then I can't ride around for my health any more, and stop getting fat. Oh, dear, what a predicament!" A predicament means trouble, you know. Then the elephant called again: "I say, hold on there! I want a ride!" and he came on as fast as anything. Uncle Wiggily was going to stop, and let the big creature get in, when the crow gentleman said: "I have it! We'll pretend we don't hear him. We'll keep right on, and not stop, and then it won't be impolite, for he will think we didn't listen to what he said." "That's it," said Uncle Wiggily. "We'll do that. Pachy is the dearest old chap in the world, you know, but he really is too big for this auto." Pachy was the elephant's name, you see. So Uncle Wiggily made the auto go faster, and still the elephant ran after it, calling: "Stop! Stop! I want a ride!" "He's catching up to us," said the crow, looking back. "Oh, dear!" cried Uncle Wiggily, "what's to be done?" "I know what to do," spoke Cora. "I'll drop some pieces of candy in the road for him, and when he stops to eat them we can get so far away he can't catch up to us." "Please do," begged Uncle Wiggily, and the little girl did. And when the elephant saw the pieces of candy, being very fond of sweet things, he stopped to pick them up in his trunk and eat them. And it took him quite a while, for the candy was well scattered about. And when the elephant had eaten the last piece Uncle Wiggily and the crow, and little girl, were far off in the auto and the elephant could not catch them to break the machine; though even if he had smashed it he would not have meant to do so. So Uncle Wiggily rode on, looking for more adventures, and he soon found one. I'll tell you about it in the next story, which will be called, "Uncle Wiggily at the Squirrel House;"--that is if the clothes wringer doesn't squeeze the rubber ball so it cries and makes water come in the eyes of the potatoes. STORY IV UNCLE WIGGILY AT THE SQUIRREL HOUSE Uncle Wiggily, the nice old gentleman rabbit, was standing one day in front of his new automobile which had run away with him upsetting, and breaking one of the wheels. But it had been fixed all right again. "I think this automobile will go fine now," said Uncle Wiggily to himself, as he got up on the front seat. "Now, I am ready to start off on some more travels, and in search of more adventures, and this time I won't have to walk. Now let me see, do I turn on the fizzle-fazzle first or the twinkum-twankum? I forget." So he looked carefully all over the automobile to see if he could remember what first to turn to make it go, but he couldn't think what it was. Because, you see, he was all excited over his accident. I didn't tell you that story because I thought it might make you cry. It was very sad. The crow gentleman flew away after it. "I guess I'll have to look in the cookbook," said Uncle Wiggily. "Perhaps that will tell me what to do." So he took out a cookbook from under the seat and leafed it over until he came to the page where it tells how to cook automobiles, and there he found what he wanted to know. "Ha! I see!" cried Uncle Wiggily; "first I must twist the dinkum-dankum, and then I must tickle the tittlecum-tattlecum, and then I'll go." Well, he did this, and just as he was about to start off on his journey out came running Sammie and Susie Littletail, the two rabbit children, with whom Uncle Wiggily sometimes lived. "Oh, Uncle Wiggily!" cried Susie, "where are you going?" "And may we come along?" asked Sammie, making his nose twinkle like two stars on a night in June. "I am going off on a long journey, for my health, and to look for more adventures," said the old gentleman rabbit. "I am tired of staying around the house taking medicine for my rheumatism. So Dr. Possum told me to travel around. I don't just know where I am going, but I am going somewhere, and if you like you may come part of the way. Hop in." Sammie and Susie hopped in the back part of the auto, where there were two little seats for them, and then Uncle Wiggily turned the whizzicum-whazzicum around backward and away they went as nicely as the baby creeps over the floor to catch the kittie by the tail; only you mustn't do that, you know; indeed not! "Oh, isn't this great?" cried Susie, in delight. "It certainly is," agreed Sammie, blinking his pink eyes because the wind blew in them. "I hope Uncle Wiggily has an adventure while we're with him." And then, all of a sudden, a doggie ran across the road in front of the auto, and the doggie's tail was hanging down behind him and sticking out quite a bit, and, as it was quite a long tail, Uncle Wiggily nearly ran over it, but, of course, he didn't mean to, even if he had done it. "Look out of the way, little doggie!" cried the old gentleman rabbit, kindly. "I am looking as fast as I can!" cried the doggie, and he ran to the sidewalk as quickly as he could, and then he turned around to see if his tail was still fastened to him. "That came near being an adventure," said Susie, waving her pocket handkerchief. "Yes, almost too near," said Uncle Wiggily. "I think I will go through the woods instead of along the streets, and then I won't be in any danger of running over any one." So he steered the auto toward the woodland road, and Sammie cried: "Oh, I know what let's do! Let's go call on Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrel boys. Then we'll have some fun." "All right, we'll do it," agreed Uncle Wiggily, for he liked fun as much as the children did, if not more. Well, as they were going along the road, all of a sudden they heard a little voice calling to them. "Oh, please don't run over me!" the voice cried. "Please be careful!" And, looking down, Sammie saw a little black cricket on the path just ahead of the auto, which Uncle Wiggily was now making go very slowly. "Why don't you get out of the way if you don't want to be run over?" asked Susie, politely, for the cricket just stood still there, looking at them, and not making a move. "Oh, I'm so stiff from the cold that I can't hop about any more," said the cricket, "or else I would hop out of the way. You know I can't stand cold weather." [Illustration] "That's too bad," said Uncle Wiggily as he stopped the auto. "I'll give you a ride, and perhaps I can find some warm place for you to spend the winter." So the old gentleman rabbit kindly picked up the cold and stiff cricket and gave it to Susie, and Susie gently put it in the warm pocket of her jacket, and there it was so nice and cozy-ozy that the cricket went fast to sleep. And then, in about forty-'leven squeak-squawk toots of the big mooley-cow automobile horn, there they were at the home of Johnnie and Billy Bushytail, the squirrel brothers. "Toot! Toot!" tooted Uncle Wiggily on his tooter-tooter mooley-cow horn. "There! I guess that will bring out the boys if they are in the house," said the old gentleman rabbit. And then, all of a sudden, something happened. Susie and Sammie were looking at the front door, expecting Johnnie and Billie to come out, when Susie saw a great big bear's face up at one window of the squirrel house. "Oh! Look! Look!" she cried. "The bear has gotten in and maybe he has bitten Johnnie." And just then Sammie looked at the other window and he saw a wolf's face peering out. "Oh, dear!" cried Sammie, "the wolf has gotten Billie." "My gracious!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "I'm going for the police right away. Hold on tightly, children, for I am going to twist the tinkerum-tankerum and make this automobile go very fast. Oh! how sorry I am for poor Johnnie and Billie." But just before Uncle Wiggily could start the auto, there was a shout of laughter. The front door of the Bushytail home swung open, and out rushed Billie and Johnnie, jumping and skipping. And Johnnie had a wolf's false face in his paws and Billie had a bear's false face in his paws. "Ho! Ho!" they shouted together. "Did we scare you, Uncle Wiggily? We didn't mean to, but we were just practising." "Was that you boys looking out of the windows with your false faces on?" asked Uncle Wiggily very much surprised-like. "That was us," said Johnnie. "And wasn't there a real bear?" asked Susie, flapping her ears. "And wasn't it a real wolf?" asked Sammie, wiggling his paws. "Not a bit," said Billie. "We're just getting ready for Hallowe'en to-morrow night, and those were our false faces, you know, and I wish you'd all stay with us and have some fun." "We will," said Uncle Wiggily. "I'll put my auto in the barn, and we'll stay." So they did, and in case the little wooden dog with the pink-blue nose doesn't bite the tail of the woolly cat, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily having Hallowe'en fun. STORY V UNCLE WIGGILY'S HALLOWE'EN FUN "Oh, dear, I wish it were night," said Susie Littletail. "So do I!" exclaimed Sammie, her brother. "Then it would be Hallowe'en." "And both of us wish the same thing," said Johnnie Bushytail, as he and his brother Billie went skipping about the room of their house. "Oh, don't wish so hard or night might come before I'm ready for it," said Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old gentleman rabbit. "I've got to decorate my auto yet and get my false face, you know." "What kind are you going to have?" asked Susie. "Oh, I think I'll dress up like an elephant," said Uncle Wiggily. "But what will you do for a trunk?" asked Mrs. Bushytail, for, you see, Uncle Wiggily and Sammie and Susie had stayed at the squirrel's house to have some fun. This was the first place the old gentleman rabbit came to after starting out in his auto for his health, and after some fresh adventures. "What will you do for an elephant's trunk?" asked Mrs. Bushytail. "I will take a long stocking and stuff it full of soft cotton so it will look just like an elephant's face," said Uncle Wiggily. "Then I'll go out with the children in my auto and we'll have a lot of fun." So all that day they got ready for the Hallowe'en fun they were to have that night. Johnnie and Billie had their false faces, you remember; Johnnie had a wolf's face and Billie a bear's, and they were too cute for anything. But, of course, Sammie and Susie Littletail and Uncle Wiggily had to have some false faces also, and it took quite a while for the rabbit children to decide what they wanted. "I think I'll dress up like a wild Indian," said Sammie at last. "And I'm going to be a pussy cat," said Susie. "And if any dogs chase you, I'll growl at them, and scare them away," said Billie, who was going to be a make-believe bear. "Yes, and I'll tickle them with my stuffed-stocking elephant's trunk," said Uncle Wiggily. "Now, I must go out and put some oil and gasoline in my auto, and see that the frizzle-frazzle works all right, so we can go Hallowe'en riding to-night." Finally the animal children were all ready, and they were waiting for it to get dark so they could go out. And, pretty soon, after supper, when the sun had gone to bed, it did get dark. Then the four animal children and Uncle Wiggily went out in the auto. Say, I just wish you could have seen them; really I do! and I'd show you a picture of them, only I'm not allowed to do that. And besides it was too dark to see pictures well, so perhaps it doesn't much matter. Oh, but they were the funny looking sights, though! Billy Bushytail acted like a real bear, growling as hard as ever he could, though, of course, he was polite about it, as it was only fun. And what a savage make-believe wolf Johnnie was! And there was Susie, as cute a little pussy cat as one would meet with in going from here to the moon and back. And as for Sammie, well, say, he was so much like a real Indian that when he looked in the glass he was frightened at himself; yes, really he was, and he had truly feathers on, too; not make-believe ones, either. Uncle Wiggily was dressed up like an elephant, and he sat in the front of the auto to steer it. Only his stuffed-stocking trunk got in the way of the steering wheel, so Uncle Wiggily had to put it behind him, over his left shoulder and have Susie hold it. I mean she held his stuffed-stocking trunk, not the steering wheel, you know. "Here we go!" suddenly cried Uncle Wiggily, and his voice sounded far away because it had to go down inside the stuffed-stocking elephant trunk and come out again around in back of him. Then he twisted the tinkerum-tankerum, and away they went in the automobile. All at once, from around a corner, came a big clown with red, white and blue all over his face. He had a rattlety-bang-banger thing and he was making a terrible racket on it. "Oh, I know who that is!" cried Susie. "You're Jimmie Wibblewobble, the boy duck." "That's right," said the clown, making more noise than ever. "Whoop-de-doodle-do! Isn't this fun!" Along went the auto and by this time there were a whole lot of animal children prancing and dancing around it. Uncle Wiggily had to make the auto go real slowly so as not to hurt any of them, for they were all over the streets. There was Buddy Pigg, dressed up like a camel, and there was Dickie Chip-Chip and his sister, and they were dressed up like sailors. Brighteyes Pigg had on a cow's false face and Billie Goat was dressed up like a Chinaman, while Nannie, his sister, was supposed to be a lady with a sealskin coat on. Oh, I couldn't tell you how all the different animal children were dressed, but I'll just say that Bully, the frog, with his tall hat, was dressed like a football player and Aunt Lettie, the nice old lady goat, made believe she was a fireman, and Munchie Trot was a pretend-policeman. And such fun as they had! Uncle Wiggily steered the auto here and there, and squeaked and squawked his tooter-teeter so no one would get hurt. There were about forty-'leven tin horns being blown, and the wooden rattlety-bang-bangs were rattling all over and some one threw a whole lot of prettily colored paper in the air until it looked as if it were raining red, pink, green, purple, blue, yellow and skilligimink colored snow. And then, all at once, out from the crowd, came a figure that looked like a bear. Oh, it was very real looking with long teeth, and shaggy fur, and that bear came right up to the auto that Uncle Wiggily was steering. "I've come to get you!" growled the bear, away down in his throat. "Oh, he's almost real!" exclaimed Susie, and she forgot that she was holding Uncle Wiggily's stuffed-stocking trunk, and let go of it, so that it hung down in front of him. "I am a real bear!" growled the shaggy creature. "Oh, you can't fool us," said Johnnie Bushytail, with a laugh. "You're Jacko or Jumpo Kinkytail dressed up like a bear, just as my brother Billie is. You can't fool us." "But I am a real bear!" growled the shaggy creature again, "and I'm hungry so I'm going to bite Uncle Wiggily." And, would you ever believe it? he was a real bear who had come in from the woods. He made a grab for Uncle Wiggily, but the old gentleman rabbit leaned far back in his auto seat, and the bear only got hold of the stuffed-stocking trunk. And then the bear pulled on that so hard that it came all apart and the cotton stuffing came out, and got up the bear's nose and made him sneeze. And then up came running Munchie Trot, the pony boy, who was dressed like a policeman, and with his club Munchie tickled the bear on his ear, and that shaggy creature was glad enough to run back to the woods, taking his little stubby tail with him, so he didn't eat anybody. "My, it's a good thing, I didn't have on a real elephant's trunk," said Uncle Wiggily, "or that bear would have bitten it off, for real trunks are fastened on tight." "Yes, indeed," said Susie. So after everybody got over being scared at the real bear they had a lot of fun and Uncle Wiggily took all the children to a store and treated them to hot chocolate, and then he and Sammie and Susie and Billie and Johnnie went home in the auto, and went to bed. And Uncle Wiggily had another adventure next day. I'll tell you about it on the page after this, when, in case it doesn't rain lightning bugs down the chimney, the story will be about Uncle Wiggily going chestnutting. STORY VI UNCLE WIGGILY GOES CHESTNUTTING "Where are you going this morning, Uncle Wiggily?" asked Johnnie Bushytail of the old gentleman rabbit the day after the Hallowe'en fun. "Oh, I am going to take a ride and see if I can find any more adventures," said Uncle Wiggily, as he went out in the barn to look and see if his auto had any holes in the rubber tires, or if the what-you-may-call-it had gotten twisted around the whose-this-cantankerum. "May I go with you?" asked Billie Bushytail, as he followed Uncle Wiggily. "We don't want you to go away from our house so soon. We'd like to have you pay us a nice, long visit." "Hum, well, I'll think about it," said Uncle Wiggily, slowly, and careful-like. "I'll stay as long as I can. But as for you squirrel boys going for a ride in my auto, why I guess you may come if your mamma will let you. Yes, it's all ready for a spin," he went on, as he saw that the tiddle-taddleum was on straight, and that the wheels had no holes in them. "Oh, goody! Come on!" cried Billie to Johnnie; so into the house they hurried to ask their mamma, and she said they might go. A little later, with the squirrel boys sitting in the back part of the auto, away they went, Uncle Wiggily steering here and there and taking care not to run over any puppy-dogs' tails or over any alligators' noses. "Are you going off in the woods?" asked Johnnie, as he saw the old gentleman rabbit steering toward the tree-forest. "I think I will," answered Uncle Wiggily. "I want to see Grandfather Goosey Gander, and if we go through the woods that is the shortest way to his house." "Then, perhaps, we can stop and gather some chestnuts," said Johnnie. "There may be a few left that the other squirrels haven't yet picked up, and I heard papa saying to mamma the other night that we need a whole lot more than we have, so we wouldn't be hungry this winter." "Oh, yes; let's get chestnuts!" cried Billie. "All right," answered Uncle Wiggily, smiling, and then he had to turn the auto to one side very quickly, for a fuzzy worm was hurrying along the path, on her way to the grocery store, and Uncle Wiggily didn't want to run over her, you know. "Thank you very much for not squashing me flat like a pancake," said the worm, as she wiggled along. "Oh, pray do not mention such a little thing," said Uncle Wiggily, politely. "I am always glad to do you a favor like that." Then he turned the handle so some more gasoline would squirt into the fizzle-fozzleum, and away the automobile went faster than ever. Pretty soon they came to the woods, and Johnnie and Billie began looking about for chestnut trees. Squirrels, you know, can tell a chestnut tree a great way off, and soon Johnnie saw one. "Stop the auto here, Uncle Wiggily," said Johnnie, "and we'll see if there are any chestnuts left." So the old gentleman rabbit did this, and, surely enough, there were quite a few of the brown nuts lying on the ground, partly covered with leaves. "Take a stick and poke around and you'll find more," said Billie to his brother, and pretty soon all three of them, including Uncle Wiggily, were picking up the nuts. Of course, the automobile couldn't pick up any; it just had to stand still there, looking on. I guess you know that, anyhow, but I just thought I'd mention it to make sure. "Oh, here is another tree over there!" cried Johnnie after a while, as he ran to a large one. "It's got heaps and heaps of chestnuts under it, too. I guess no squirrels or any chipmunks have been here. Oh, we can get lots of nuts to put away for winter!" So the two squirrel boys filled their pockets with nuts, and so did Uncle Wiggily, and they even put some in the automobile, though, of course, the auto couldn't eat them, but it could carry them away. And then, all of a sudden, Billie cried: "Oh, I know what let's do! Let's build a little fire and roast some of the chestnuts. They're fine roasted." "I guess they are," said Uncle Wiggily, "and so we'll cook some, though, as for me, I'd rather have a roast carrot or a bit of baked apple." "Maybe we can find some apples to bake while we're roasting the chestnuts," said Billie. "We'll look." They looked all around, and in a field not far from the woods they found an apple tree and there were some apples on the ground under it. They picked up quite a few and then they got some flat stones and made a place to build a fire. Uncle Wiggily lighted it, for it isn't good for children to have anything to do with matches, and soon the fire was blazing up very nicely and was quite hot. "Now put the chestnuts down to roast on the hot stones," said the rabbit gentleman, after a bit, to the two squirrel boys, "and I'll put some apples on a sharp stick and hold them near the blaze to roast. Why, boys! This is as much fun for me as a picnic!" he exclaimed joyfully. But listen! Something is going to happen. All of a sudden, as they were sitting quietly around the fire and wishing the apples and chestnuts would hurry up and roast, all of a sudden a man came along with a gun. He stood by the fence that went around the field where they had picked up the apples, and that man said, in a grillery-growlery voice: "Ah, ha! So those squirrels and that rabbit have been taking my apples, eh? I can smell 'em! Sniff! Snoof! Snuff! Well, I'll soon put a stop to that! I'm glad I brought my gun along!" He was just aiming his gun at poor Uncle Wiggily and also at Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, and the rabbit and the squirrels didn't know what in the world to do, for they were too frightened to run, when, all of a sudden there was a tremendously loud bang-bang in the fire and something flew out of it and hit that man right on the end of his nose. "Ouch-ouchy!" the man cried. "Bang!" went something again, and this time it flew over and hit the man on his left ear. Now what do you think of that? "Ouch! Ouchy!" the man yelled again. "Bang!" went the noise for the third shot, and this time the man was hit on his other ear. "Ouch! Ouchy!" he cried again. "They're shooting at me. I'd better run." And run away he did, taking his gun with him, and so Uncle Wiggily and Johnnie and Billie weren't hurt. "My, that was a narrow escape," said Johnnie. "What was it that made the bang noise, and hit the man?" "It was the roast chestnuts," said Uncle Wiggily, "I forgot to tell you to make little holes in them before you roasted them or else they would burst. And burst they did, and I'm glad of it, for they scared that man. But I guess we had better be going now, for he may come back." So they took the apples, which were nicely roasted now, and they took the chestnuts that were left and which hadn't burst, and away they went in the auto and had a fine ride, before going home to bed. And now I'll say good-night, but in case the cow who jumped over the moon doesn't kick our milk bottles off the back stoop, I'll tell you, in the story after this one, about Uncle Wiggily and the pumpkin. STORY VII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE PUMPKIN "Well," said Uncle Wiggily Longears one fine fresh morning, just after the milkman had been around to leave some cream for the coffee, "I think I will be traveling on again, Mrs. Bushytail." "Oh, don't go yet!" begged Billie, the boy squirrel. "No, you haven't made us a long visit at all," spoke his brother Johnnie. "Can't you stay a long, long time?" "Well, I promised Jimmie Wibblewobble, the boy duck, that I would come in my new automobile and pay him and his sisters a visit," said the old gentleman, as he wiggled first his left ear and then the right one to see if there were any pennies stuck in them. And he found two pennies, one for Johnnie and one for Billie. "Oh, please stay with us a few more days. You can go visit the Wibblewobble family next week," said Johnnie; "can't he, mother?" "Yes, I really think you might stay with us a little longer," said Mrs. Bushytail, as she was mending some holes in Johnnie's stocking. "Besides, I thought you might do me a favor to-day, Uncle Wiggily." "A favor!" exclaimed the old gentleman rabbit, making a low bow. "I am always anxious to do you a favor if I can. What is it, Mrs. Bushytail?" "Why, I thought you and the boys might like to go off in the automobile and see if you could find me a nice, large yellow pumpkin," said the squirrel lady. "Oh, goody!" cried Billie. "I know what for--to make a Jack-o'-lantern for us, eh, mamma?" "Sure!" cried Johnnie, jumping up and down because he was so happy, "and we'll take it out after dark, Billie, and have some fun with Bully the frog." "Oh, no, not a pumpkin for a Jack-o'-lantern," said Mrs. Bushytail. "What I need a pumpkin for is to make some pies, and I thought you might like to get one, Uncle Wiggily." "Yes, indeed, I would!" exclaimed the old gentleman rabbit. "I am very fond of hunting pumpkins for pies, and also eating them after they are baked. I like pumpkin pie almost as much as I do cherry pie. Come on, boys, let's get into the auto and we'll go look for a pumpkin." "But don't go near that man's field who was going to shoot us the other day because we took a few apples," said Billie, and Uncle Wiggily said he wouldn't. So out they went to the barn, where the auto was kept, leaving Mrs. Bushytail in the house mending stockings and getting ready to bake the pumpkin pies. "Here we go!" cried Uncle Wiggily, when he had tickled the tinkerum-tankerum with a feather to make it sneeze. Away went the auto, and as it rolled along on its big fat wheels Uncle Wiggily sang a funny little song, like this: "Pumpkin pie is my delight, I eat it morning, noon and night, It's very good to make you grow, That's why the boys all love it so. "If I could have my dearest wish, I'd have some cherries in a dish. And then a pumpkin pie, or two; Of course, I'd save a piece for you. "Perhaps, if we are good and kind, A dozen pumpkins we may find, We'll bring them home and stew them up, And then on pumpkin pie we'll sup." Well, after he had sung that song, Uncle Wiggily felt better. The auto felt better also, I guess, for it ran along very fast, and, all of a sudden, they came to a place where there was a field of pumpkins. Oh, such lovely, large, golden yellow pumpkins as they were. "Hurray!" cried Johnnie. "Whoop-de-doodle-do!" cried Billie. "Dear me hum suz dud!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "It couldn't be better. But I wonder if these pumpkins would mind if we took one?" "Not in the least! Not in the least!" suddenly cried a voice near the fence, and looking over, Uncle Wiggily and the boys saw Grandfather Goosey Gander, the old gentleman duck, standing there on one leg. "This is my field of pumpkins," said Grandfather Goosey, "and you may take as many as you like." Then he put down his other leg, which he had been holding up under his feathers. "Thank you very much," spoke Uncle Wiggily politely. "And may we each have a pumpkin to make a Jack-o'-lantern?" asked Billie. "To be sure," answered Grandfather Goosey, so Uncle Wiggily took a very large pumpkin for a pie, and the boy squirrels took smaller ones for their lanterns. Then Uncle Wiggily took a few more to be sure he would have plenty, but none was as large as the first one. "I will send you some pumpkin pies when Mrs. Bushytail bakes them," promised the old gentleman rabbit as he got ready to travel on with the boys in the auto. "I wish you would," said Grandfather Goosey, "as I am very fond of pumpkin pie with watercress salad on top." On and on went the auto, and Billie and Johnnie were talking about how they would make their Jack-o'-lanterns and have fun, when all of a sudden, out from the bushes at the side of the road, jumped the big, bad savage wolf. "Hold on there!" he cried to Uncle Wiggily. "Stop, I want to see you!" "You want to bite me, I guess," said the old gentleman rabbit. "No, sir! I'm not going to stop." "Then I'll just make you!" growled the wolf, and with that what did he do but bite a hole in one of the big rubber tires, letting out all the wind with a puff, so the auto couldn't go any more. "Now see what you've done!" cried Johnnie. "Yes, and it was a nice, new auto, too," said Billie sorrowfully. "Fiddlesticks!" cried the wolf. "Double fiddlesticks. Don't talk to me. I'm hungry. Get out of that auto, now, so I can bite you." "Oh! what shall we do?" whispered Johnnie. "Hush! Don't say a word. I'm going to play a trick on that wolf," said Uncle Wiggily. Then he spoke to the savage creature, saying: "If you are going to eat us up, I s'pose you will; but first would you mind taking one of these pumpkins down to the bottom of the hill and leaving it there for Mrs. Bushtail to make a pie of?" "Oh, anything to oblige you, since I am going to eat you, anyhow," said the wolf. "Give me the pumpkin, but mind, don't try to run away, while I'm gone for I can catch you. I'll come back and eat you up in a minute." "All right," said Uncle Wiggily, giving the wolf a little pumpkin, and pretending to cry, to show that he was afraid. But he was only making believe, you see. Well, the wolf began to run down to the foot of the hill. "Now, quick, boys!" suddenly cried Uncle Wiggily. "We'll roll the biggest pumpkin down after him, and it will hit him and make him as flat as a pancake, and then he can't eat us! Lively, now!" So, surely enough, they took the big pumpkin out of the auto and rolled it down after the wolf. He heard it coming and he tried to get out of the way, but he couldn't, because he was carrying another pumpkin, and he stumbled and fell down, and the big pumpkin rolled right over him, including his tail, and he was as flat as two pancakes, and part of another one, and he couldn't even eat a toothpick. Then, Uncle Wiggily and the boys fixed the hole in the tire, pumped it full of wind, and hurried on, and they had plenty of pumpkin left for pies, and they were soon at the squirrel's house, safe and sound, so that's the end of the story. But on the next page, if the milk bottle doesn't roll down off the stoop and tickle the doormat, I'll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the pumpkin pie. STORY VIII UNCLE WIGGILY'S JACK-O'-LANTERN "I really think I must be traveling on to-day," said Uncle Wiggily, the nice old gentleman rabbit, one bright morning when he had gone out to the Bushtail barn to see if there were any slivers sticking in the rubber tires of his automobile. "I have been here quite a while now, boys, and I want to pay a visit to some of my other friends," he added. "Oh, please don't think of going!" begged Johnnie Bushtail, the boy squirrel. "Please, can't you stay a little longer?" asked Billie, his brother. "Johnnie and I are going to make Jack-o'-lanterns to-night from the pumpkin you got us, and you may help if you like." "Oh, that will be fine," said Uncle Wiggily. "I suppose I really must stay another night. But after that I shall have to be traveling along, for I have many more friends to visit, and only to-day I had a letter from Jimmie Wibblewobble, the duck boy, asking when I was coming to see him." "Well, never mind about that. Let's get to work at making Jack-o'-lanterns now and not wait for to-night," suggested Johnnie. "We'll make three lanterns, one for Uncle Wiggily and one for each of us." So they sat down on benches out in the back yard, where the pumpkin seeds wouldn't do any harm, and they began to make the lanterns. And this is how you do it. First you cut a little round hole in the top of the pumpkin--the part where the stem is, you know. And then you scoop out the soft inside where all the seeds are, and you can save the seeds to make more pumpkins grow next year, if you like. Then, after you have the inside all scraped out clean, so that the shell is quite thin, you cut out holes for the two eyes and a nose and a mouth, and if you know how to do it you can cut make-believe teeth in the Jack-o'-lantern's mouth. If you can't do it yourselves, perhaps some of the big folks will help you. [Illustration] So that's how the squirrel boys and Uncle Wiggily made their Jack-o'-lanterns, and when they were all finished they put a lighted candle inside and say! My goodness! It looked just like a real person grinning at you, only, of course, it wasn't. "Won't we have fun to-night!" exclaimed Johnnie as he finished his lantern. "We certainly will!" said Billie, dancing a little jig. "What are you going to do with your lantern, Uncle Wiggily?" asked Johnnie. "Oh, I don't know," answered the old gentleman rabbit. "I may take it with me on my travels." Well, after the three lanterns were made, there was still plenty of time before it would be dark, so Uncle Wiggily and the boys made some more lanterns. And along came Lulu and Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble, the duck children, and as they had no Jack-o'-lanterns of their own, Johnnie gave Lulu one and Billie gave Alice one, and Uncle Wiggily gave Jimmie one, and my! you should have seen how pleased those duck children were! It was worth going across the street just to look at their smiling faces. Well, pretty soon, after a while, not so very long, it was supper time, and there was pumpkin pie and carrot sandwiches and lettuce salad, and things like that for Uncle Wiggily, and nut cake and nut candy and nut sandwiches for the squirrels. Uncle Wiggily was folding up his napkin, and he was just getting out of his chair to go in the parlor, and read the paper with Mr. Bushytail, when, all of a sudden, there came a knock on the front door. "My goodness! I wonder who that can be?" exclaimed Mrs. Bushytail. "I'll go see," spoke her husband, and when he went to the door there was kind old Mrs. Hop Toad on the mat, wiping her feet. "Oh, is Uncle Wiggily Longears here?" asked Mrs. Toad. "If he is, tell him to come back to the rabbit house at once, for Sammie Littletail is very sick, and they can't get him to sleep, and the nurse thinks if he heard one of Uncle Wiggily's stories he would shut his eyes and rest." "I'll come right away," said Uncle Wiggily, for he had gone to the front door, also, and had heard what Mrs. Hop Toad had said. "Wait until I get on my hat and coat and I'll crank up my automobile and go see Sammie," said the rabbit gentleman. "I won't wait," said Mrs. Toad. "I'll hop on ahead, and tell them you're coming. Anyhow it gives me the toodle-oodles to ride in an auto." So she hopped on ahead, and Uncle Wiggily was soon ready to start off in his car. Just as he was going, Billie Bushytail cried out: "Oh, Uncle Wiggily, take a Jack-o'-lantern with you and maybe Sammie will like that." So the old gentleman rabbit took one of the pumpkin lanterns up on the seat with him, and away he went. And then, all at once, as he was going through a dark place in the woods in his auto, the wind suddenly blew out all his lanterns--all the oil lamps on the auto I mean, and right away after that a policeman dog cried out: "Hey, there, Mr. Longears, you can't go on in your auto without a light, you know. It's against the law." "I know it is," said Uncle Wiggily. "I'll light the lamps at once." But when he tried to do it he found there was no more oil in them. "Oh, what shall I do?" he cried. "I'm in a hurry to get to Sammie Littletail, who is sick, but I can't go in the dark. Ah! I have it. The Jack-o'-lantern! I'll light the candle in that, and keep on going. Will that be all right, Mr. Policeman?" "Sure it will," said the policeman dog, swinging his club, and wishing he was home in bed. So Uncle Wiggily lighted the Jack-o'-lantern and it was real bright, and soon the old gentleman rabbit was speeding on again. And, all of a sudden out from the bushes jumped a burglar fox. "Hold on there!" he cried to Uncle Wiggily. "I want all your money." And just then he saw the big pumpkin Jack-o'-lantern, with its staring eyes and big mouth and sharp teeth, looking at him from the seat of the auto, and the fox was so scared, thinking it was a giant going to catch him, that he ran off in the woods howling, and he didn't bother Uncle Wiggily a bit more that night. Then the old gentleman rabbit drove his auto on toward Sammie's house, and he was soon there and he told Sammie a funny story and gave him the Jack-o'-lantern, and the little rabbit boy was soon asleep, and in the morning he was all better. So that's what the Jack-o'-lantern did for Uncle Wiggily and Sammie, and now if you please you must go to bed, and on the page after this, in case the basket of peaches doesn't fall down the cellar stairs and break the furnace door all to pieces, I'll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the lazy duck. STORY IX UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE LAZY DUCK The day after Uncle Wiggily had scared the bad burglar fox with the Jack-o'-lantern, the old rabbit gentleman and Lulu and Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble, the ducks, went for a little ride in the automobile. For it was Saturday, you see, and there was no school. So they went along quite a distance over the hills and through the woods and fields, for Uncle Wiggily's auto was a sort of fairy machine and could go almost anywhere. Pretty soon they came to a little house beside the road, and in the front yard was a nice pump, where you could get a drink of water. "I am very thirsty," said Uncle Wiggily to Jimmie. "I wonder if we could get a drink here?" "Oh, yes," said Lulu, as she looked to see if her hair ribbon was on straight; "a duck family lives here, and they will give you all the water you want." Right after that, before Uncle Wiggily could get out of the auto to pump some water, there came waddling out of the duckhouse a duck boy, about as big as Jimmie. "How do you do?" said Uncle Wiggily, politely to this duck boy. "May we get a drink of water here?" "Oh--um--er--oo--I--guess--so," said the duck boy slowly, and he stretched out his wings and stretched out his legs and then he sat down on a bench in the front yard and nearly went to sleep. "Why, I wonder what is the matter with him?" asked Uncle Wiggily. "Why does he act so strangely, and speak so slow?" "I can tell you!" exclaimed Lulu, and she got down out of the auto and picked up a stone. "That duck boy is lazy, that's what's the matter with him. He never even wants to play. Why, at school he hardly ever knows his lessons." "Oh, you surprise me!" said the old gentleman rabbit. "A lazy duck boy! I never heard of such a thing. Pray what is his name?" "It's Fizzy-Whizzy," said Jimmie, who also knew the boy. "Why, what a strange name!" exclaimed the rabbit gentleman. "Why do they call him that?" "Because he is so fond of fizzy-izzy soda water," said Alice. "Oh, let's go along, Uncle Wiggily." "No," said the rabbit gentleman, slowly, "if this is a lazy duck boy he should be cured. Laziness is worse than the measles or whooping cough, I think. And as I am very thirsty I want a drink. Then I will think of some plan to cure this boy duck of being lazy." So Uncle Wiggily went close up to the boy duck and called out loud, right in his ear, so as to waken him: "Will you please get me a cup so I may get a drink of water?" "Hey? What's--that--you--said?" asked the lazy boy duck, slowly, stretching out his wings. Uncle Wiggily told him over again, but that lazy chap just stretched his legs this time and said: "Oh--I--am--too--tired--to--get--you--a--cup. You--had--better--go--in--the--house--and--get--it--for--yourself," and then he was going to sleep again. But, all of a sudden, his mother, who worked very hard at washing and ironing, came to the door and said: "Oh, dear! If Fizzy-Wizzy hasn't gone to sleep again. Wake up at once, Fizzy, and get me some wood for the fire! Quick." "Oh--ma--I am--too--tired," said Fizzy-Wizzy. "I--will--do--it--to-morrow--um--ah--er--boo--soo!" and he was asleep once more. "Oh, I never saw such a lazy boy in all my life!" exclaimed the duck boy's mother, and she was very much ashamed of him. "I don't know what to do." "Do you want me to make him better?" asked Uncle Wiggily. "Indeed I do, but I am afraid you can't," she said. "Yes I can," said Uncle Wiggily. "I'll come back here this evening and I'll cure him. First let me get a drink of water and then I'll think of a way to do it." So the duck lady herself brought out a cup so Uncle Wiggily and Lulu and Alice and Jimmie could get a drink from the pump, and all the while the lazy chap slept on. "How are you going to cure him, Uncle Wiggily?" asked Jimmie when they were riding along in the auto once more. "I will show you," said the old gentleman rabbit. "And you children must help me, for to be lazy is a dreadful thing." Well, that night, after dark, Uncle Wiggily took a lantern, and some matches and some rubber balls and some beans and something else done up in a package, and he put all these things in his auto. Then he and the Wibblewobble children got in and they went to the house of the lazy boy duck. "Is he in?" asked Uncle Wiggily of the boy's mamma. "Yes," she said in a whisper. "Well, when I throw a pebble against the kitchen window tell him to come out and see who's here," went on the rabbit gentleman. Then he opened the package and in it were four false faces, one of a fox, one of a wolf, one of a bear and one was of an alligator. And Uncle Wiggily put on the alligator false face, gave the bear one to Jimmie, the fox one to Alice and the wolf one to Lulu. Then he gave Jimmie a handful of beans and he gave Alice a rubber ball filled with water to squirt and Lulu the same. They knew what to do with them. Then Uncle Wiggily built a fire and made some stones quite warm, not warm enough to burn one, but just warm enough. These stones he put in front of the lazy duck boy's house and then he threw a pebble against the window. "Go and see who is there," said the duck boy's mamma to him. "I--don't--want--to," the lazy chap was just saying, but he suddenly became very curious and thought he would just take a peep out. And no sooner had he opened the door and stepped on the warm stones than he began to run down the yard, for he was afraid if he stood still he would be burned. And then, as he ran, up popped Uncle Wiggily from behind the bushes, looking like an alligator with the false face on. "Oh! Oh!" cried the lazy boy and he ran faster than ever. Then up jumped Jimmie, looking like a bear with the false face on, and up popped Lulu looking like a wolf and Alice looking like a fox. "Oh! Oh!" cried the lazy boy, and he ran faster than ever before in his life. Then Alice and Lulu squirted water at him from their rubber balls. "Oh! It's raining! It's raining!" cried the boy duck, and he ran faster than before. Then Jimmie threw the beans at him and they rattled all over. "Oh! It's snowing and hailing!" cried the lazy boy, and he ran faster than ever. And then Uncle Wiggily threw some hickory nuts at him, and that lazy duck ran still faster than he had ever run in his life before and ran back in the house. "Oh, mother!" he cried, "I've had a terrible time," and he spoke very fast. "I'll never be lazy again." "I'm glad of it," she said. "I guess Uncle Wiggily cured you." And so the old gentleman rabbit had, for the duck boy was always ready to work after that. Then Lulu and Alice and Jimmie went home in the auto and went to bed, and that's where you must go soon. And if the pussy cat doesn't slip in the molasses, and fall down the cellar steps, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily helping Jimmie. STORY X UNCLE WIGGILY HELPS JIMMIE Old Percival, who used to be a circus dog, wasn't feeling very well. Some bad boys had tied a tin can to his tail, and had thrown stones at him and done other mean things. But Uncle Wiggily had come along and driven the boys away, and Percival had come home in the automobile of the old gentleman rabbit, and was given a nice warm place behind the kitchen stove, where he could lie down. "But I don't feel a bit good," Percival said to Uncle Wiggily. "I don't know whether it was the tin can the boys tied to my tail, or the leaves they stuck on me, or the bone they put in my mouth or the molasses they used, but I don't feel at all well." "Perhaps it is the epizootic," said Alice Wibblewobble, the duck girl, as she untied her green hair ribbon and put on a pink one. "That may be it," said Percival, and he blinked his two eyes slow and careful-like, so as not to get any dust in them. "Perhaps if I made you some dog-biscuit-soup it would make you feel better," said Mrs. Wibblewobble. "I'll cook some right away." So she did that and Percival ate it, but still that night he didn't feel much better, and the only trick he could do for the children was to stand up on his tail, and make believe he was a soldier. But he couldn't do that very long, and then he had to crawl back to his bed behind the stove. "Poor Percival is getting old," said Mr. Wibblewobble. "He isn't the lively dog he used to be when he showed Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow how to do tricks in a circus parade." "No, indeed," said Uncle Wiggily, and then the old gentleman rabbit played blind man's bluff with Lulu and Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble until it was time to go to bed. Well, the next day poor old Percival wasn't any better and when the duck children started for school their mamma told them to stop on their way home and tell Dr. Possum to come and give Percival some medicine. "We will," said Jimmie, and just then they saw Uncle Wiggily putting some gasoline in his automobile. "Oh, dear! You're not going away, are you, Uncle Wiggily?" asked Lulu Wibblewobble as she picked up a stone and threw it even better than the lazy boy duck could have done. "No," said the old gentleman rabbit, "I am just going for a little ride to see Grandfather Goosey Gander, but I will be back here when you come from school. Don't forget about telling Dr. Possum to come and see Percival." So they said they wouldn't forget, and then the three duck children hurried on to school so they wouldn't be late, and Uncle Wiggily tickled the flinkum-flankum of his auto and away he went whizzing over the fields and through the woods. Well, as it happened that day, Dr. Possum wasn't home, so all that Jimmie and his sisters could do was to leave word for him to come and see Percival as soon as the doctor got back. "I'll send him right away, just as soon as he comes in," said Dr. Possum's wife. "Oh, I am so sorry for poor Percival." Well, when Lulu and Alice and Jimmie got home from school Dr. Possum hadn't yet come to the duck house to see the sick dog, who was much worse. And Uncle Wiggily hadn't come back from his automobile ride, either. "Oh, dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Wibblewobble. "I don't know what to do! The doctor ought to come, and Uncle Wiggily ought to be here. Perhaps Uncle Wiggily has met with an accident and Dr. Possum had to attend to him first." "Oh, I hope not, mamma," said Alice. "I know what I can do," said Jimmie, the boy duck. "I can hurry back to Dr. Possum's house to see if he has come back yet. If he has I'll tell him to please hurry here." "I think that would be a good idea," spoke Mrs. Wibblewobble. "Go quickly, Jimmie, and here is a molasses cookie to eat on your way. Hurry back and bring the doctor with you if you can." So Jimmie said he would, and off he started, eating the molasses cookie that his mamma had baked. He was thinking how good it was, and wishing it was larger when, all at once, he stepped on a sharp stone and hurt his foot so that he couldn't walk. "Oh, dear!" cried Jimmie. "What shall I do? I can't go get Dr. Possum for Percival now." Well, he was in great pain, and he was just wondering how he could send word to the doctor when, all at once, he saw a pony-horse in the field near by. "The very thing!" exclaimed Jimmie. "That is Munchie Trot, the pony boy, and he'll let me ride to the doctor on his back." So Jimmie took a stick to use as a cane, and he managed to get right close up beside the pony-horse, who was eating grass. "I'll surprise him," thought Jimmie. "I'll fly up on his back before he sees me." So with his strong wings he flew up on the pony's back and he cried out: "Surprise on you, Munchie! Please gallop and trot with me to Dr. Possum's so he can make Percival well." And then a funny thing happened. All at once Jimmie noticed that he was on the back of a strange pony. It wasn't Munchie Trot at all! Jimmie had made a mistake. Think of that! And the worst of it was that when he flew so suddenly up on the pony's back Jimmie frightened him, and the next instant the pony jumped over the fence and began running down the road as fast as he could. "Oh! Stop! Stop!" cried Jimmie. "I'll fall off!" The duck boy had to take hold of the pony's mane in his yellow bill, and he had to hold on so he wouldn't fall off. Faster and faster ran the pony, trying to get away from what was on his back, for he hadn't seen Jimmie fly up, and he didn't know what it was. Maybe he thought it was a burglar fox, but I'm not sure. Anyhow the pony went faster and faster, and though Jimmie cried as hard as he could for him to stop the pony wouldn't do it. Jimmie was almost falling off, and he thought surely he would be hurt, when, all of a sudden, down the road, came Uncle Wiggily in his automobile. He saw what was the matter. "Hold on, Jimmie!" cried the old gentleman rabbit. "Hold on, and I'll be up to you in a minute. Then you can fly into my auto and be safe." Well, the pony was going fast, but the auto went faster, and it was soon up beside the little galloping horsie. "Now jump, Jimmie!" called Uncle Wiggily, and the boy duck did so, landing safely in the auto, and he wasn't hurt a bit. Then the pony galloped on until he looked back and saw it had only been a duck on his back and then he was ashamed for having run away, and he stopped and said he was sorry, so Jimmie forgave him. "Quick, we must go for Dr. Possum for Old Dog Percival," said Jimmie, and he told Uncle Wiggily how the doctor hadn't yet come. Then Uncle Wiggily told how he accidentally got a hole in one of his big rubber tires or he would have been home sooner. "But it's a good thing I happened to come along to help you," he said to Jimmie, and Jimmie thought so too. Then they went for Dr. Possum, who had just come home, and they took him to Percival in the auto, and Dr. Possum soon made Percival all well, and I'm glad of it. Then the doctor cured Jimmie's sore foot, and everybody was happy, and I hope you are. And next, if the dried leaves don't blow in my window and scare the wallpaper so that it falls off, I'll tell you about Uncle Wiggily helping Alice. STORY XI UNCLE WIGGILY HELPS ALICE. One day the postman bird flew down out of the sky and stopped in front of the Wibblewobble duck house. Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old gentleman rabbit, was out in front, cleaning some mud off his auto, for he had run it very fast into a puddle of water the day he saved Jimmie off the pony's back. "Does anybody named Alice Wibblewobble live here?" asked the postman bird as he looked in his bag of letters. "Yes, Alice lives here," said Uncle Wiggily. "And does Lulu Wibblewobble?" "Yes, of course." "And Jimmie, too?" "Certainly," said the old gentleman rabbit. "Then this is the right house," said the postman bird as he blew his whistle, like a canary, "and here is a letter for each of them." So he handed Uncle Wiggily three letters and then he flew up into the air again, as fast as he could go, to deliver the rest of the mail. "Hum! I wonder who can be writing to Lulu and Alice and Jimmie?" said Uncle Wiggily, as he looked at the letters. "Well, I'll take them in the house. They look to me like party invitations; and I wonder why I didn't get one? But I suppose the young folks don't want an old rheumatic uncle around any more. Ah, well, I'm getting old--getting old," and he went slowly into the house, feeling a bit sad. "Here are some letters for you, children," he called to Lulu and Alice and Jimmie. "The bird postman just brought them." "Oh, fine!" cried the children, and they opened them all at once with their strong yellow bills. "Goodie!" cried Lulu as she read hers. "Jennie Chipmunk is going to have a party, and I'm invited." "So am I," cried Alice. "And I," added Jimmie. "I thought they were party invitations," said Uncle Wiggily, sort of sad and thoughtful-like. "When is it?" "To-night," said Lulu. "Then we must hurry and get ready," said Alice. "I must iron out some of my hair ribbons so they will be nice and fresh." "Oh, that's just like you girls," cried Jimmie. "You have to primp and fuss. I can be ready in no time, just by washing my face." "Oh!" cried Lulu and Alice together. "Make him put on a clean collar, anyhow, mamma." "Yes, I'll do that," agreed Jimmie. Well, pretty soon they were all getting ready to go to the party, and Uncle Wiggily went back to finish cleaning his auto and he was wishing he could go. But you just wait and see what happens. Pretty soon it became night and then it was time for the party. Lulu and Jimmie were all ready, but it took Alice such a long time to get her hair fixed the way she wanted it, and to get just the kind of hair ribbon that suited her, that she wasn't ready. You see, she had so many kinds of hair ribbons and she kept them all in a box, and really she didn't know just which one to take. First she picked out a red one, and she didn't like that, and then she picked out a blue one, and she didn't like that, and then she picked up a pink one, and then a green, and then a brown, and finally a skilligimink colored one, but none suited her. "Hurry, Alice," called Lulu, "or you'll be late." "Oh, you can go on ahead and I'll catch up to you and Jimmie," said Alice, trying another hair ribbon. "All right," they answered, and they started off. Mr. and Mrs. Wibblewobble had gone across the street to pay a little visit to Mr. and Mrs. Duckling, and so Uncle Wiggily and Alice were all alone in the house. "You had better hurry, Alice," said the old gentleman rabbit as he was reading the evening paper. "Oh, I don't know what to do!" she cried. "I can't decide which hair ribbon to wear." "Wear them all," called Uncle Wiggily with a laugh, but, of course, Alice couldn't do that, and she was in despair, which means that she didn't know what to do. She laid all the ribbons back in the box, and she was just going to shut her eyes, and pick out the first one she could reach, and wear that whether she liked it or not, for she didn't want to be late to the party. And then, all of a sudden, in through the open window of her room the old skillery-scalery alligator put his long nose and he cried: "Hair ribbons! I must have hair ribbons! Give me hair ribbons!" And then what do you think he did? Why, he grabbed up the whole box full of Alice's lovely hair ribbons, and before she could say "scootum-scattum," if she had wanted to, that skillery-scalery alligator ran away with them in his mouth, taking his double-jointed tail with him. "Oh!" cried Alice. "Oh! Oh!" and she almost lost her breath, she was so surprised. "What is it?" cried Uncle Wiggily, running up to her room. "The alligator! He has taken my hair ribbons. Quick, run after him, dear Uncle Wiggily!" "I will!" exclaimed the brave old gentleman rabbit and out of the house he hurried, but the 'gator with the double-jointed tail had completely gone, and the rabbit gentleman couldn't catch him. "Oh, what ever shall I do?" cried Alice, when Uncle Wiggily came back. "I have no hair ribbon, and I can't go to the party!" Well, Uncle Wiggily thought for a moment. He didn't tell Alice that she should have hurried more and worn a pink ribbon, and then the accident wouldn't have happened. No, he didn't say anything like that; but he said: "I can help you, Alice. Down in the yard is some long grass, green, with white stripes in it. They call it ribbon grass. I will get some for a hair ribbon for you." "Oh, thank you, so much!" said Alice. So Uncle Wiggily quickly went down, pulled some of the ribbon grass and helped Alice tie it in her feathers. And she looked too cute for anything, really she did. "Now, quick, run and catch up to Jimmie and Lulu, and go to the party and have a good time," said Uncle Wiggily, and Alice did. And what do you think? A little while after that up to the duck-house drove Sammie Littletail in a pony cart. "Oh, Uncle Wiggily!" cried Sammie, "Jennie Chipmunk was so flustrated about her party that she forgot to send you an invitation. But she wants you very much, so I've come to take you to it. Come along with me!" Then Uncle Wiggily was very glad, for he liked parties as much as you do, and he jumped into the cart with Sammie and they went to the party and had a lovely time. And the next day Uncle Wiggily went out in his auto, and he made the alligator give back all of Alice's hair ribbons, and none of them was lost or soiled the least bit, I'm glad to say. Now, no more at present, if you please, but if the picture book doesn't read about the sandman and go to sleep on the front porch, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the doll doctor. STORY XII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE DOLL DOCTOR "Now, I wonder where I will go to-day?" said Uncle Wiggily, the old gentleman rabbit to himself, as he went along, in his automobile, turning around the corner by an old black stump-house, where lived a nice owl school teacher lady. "I wonder where I had better go? I have it! I'll call on Grandfather Goosey Gander and play a game of Scotch checkers!" and off he went. It was generally that way with Uncle Wiggily. He would start off pretending he had no place in particular to go, but he would generally end up at Grandpa Goosey's house. There the old rabbit gentleman and the old duck gentleman would sit and play Scotch checkers and eat molasses cookies with cabbage seeds on top, and they would talk of the days when they were young, and could play ball and go skating, and do all of those things. But this time Uncle Wiggily never got to Grandfather Goosey's house. As he was going along in the woods, all of a sudden he came to a little house that stood under a Christmas tree, and on this house was a sign reading: DR. MONKEY DOODLE. SICK DOLLS MADE WELL. "Ha! That is rather strange!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "I never knew there was a doll doctor here. He must have moved in only lately. I must look into this!" So the rabbit gentleman went up to the little house, and, as he came nearer he heard some one inside exclaiming: "Oh, I'll never get through to-day, I know I won't! Oh, the trouble I'm in! Oh, if I only had some one to help me!" "My! What is that!" cried Uncle Wiggily, stopping short. "Perhaps I am making a mistake. That may be a trap! No, it doesn't look like a trap," he went on, as he peered all about the little house and saw nothing dangerous. Then the voice cried again: "Oh, I am in such trouble! Will no one help me?" [Illustration] Now Uncle Wiggily was always on the lookout to help his animal friends, but he did not know who this one could be. "Still," said the rabbit gentleman to himself, "he is in trouble. Maybe a mosquito has bitten him. I'm going to see." So Uncle Wiggily marched bravely up to the little house under the Christmas tree, and knocked on the door. "Come in!" cried a voice. "But if you're a little animal girl, with a sick doll, or one that needs mending, you might as well go away and come back again. I'm head-over heels in work, and I'll never get through. In fact I can't work at all. Oh, such trouble as I am in!" "Well, maybe I can help you," said Uncle Wiggily. "At any rate I have no doll that needs mending." So into the little house he went, and what a queer sight he saw! There was Dr. Monkey Doodle, sitting on the floor of his shop, and scattered all about him were dolls--dolls--dolls! All sorts of dolls--but not a good, whole, well doll in the lot. Some dolls had lost their wigs, some had swallowed their eyes, others had lost a leg, or both arms, or a foot. One poor doll had lost all her sawdust, and she was as flat as a pancake. Another had dropped one of her shoe button eyes, and a new eye needed to be sewed in. One doll had stiff joints, which needed oiling, while another, who used to talk in a little phonograph voice, had caught such a cold that she could not speak or even whisper. "My, what sort of a place is this?" asked Uncle Wiggily, in surprise. "It is the doll hospital," said Dr. Monkey Doodle. "Think of it! All these dolls to fix before night, and I can't touch a one of them!" "Why must all the dolls be fixed to-night?" the rabbit gentleman wanted to know. "Because they are going to a party," explained Dr. Monkey Doodle. "Susie Littletail, the rabbit is giving a party for all the little animal girls, and every one is going to bring her doll. But all the dolls were ill, or else were broken, and the animal children brought them all to me at once, so that I am fairly overwhelmed with work, if you will kindly permit me to say so," remarked the monkey doctor. "Of course, I'll let you say so," said Uncle Wiggily. "But, if you will kindly pardon me, why don't you get up and work, instead of sitting in the middle of the floor, feeling sorry for yourself?" "True! Why do I not?" asked the monkey doctor. "Well, to be perfectly plain, I am stuck here so fast that I can't move. One of the dolls, I think it was Cora Ann Multiplicationtable, upset the pot of glue on the floor. I came in hurriedly, and, not seeing the puddle of glue, I slipped in it. I fell down, I sat right in the glue, and now I am stuck so fast that I can't get up. "So you see that's why I can't work on the broken dolls. I can't move! And oh, what a time there'll be when all those animal girls come for their dolls and find they're not done. Oh, what a time I'll have!" And the monkey doctor tried to pull himself up from the glue on the floor, but he could not--he was stuck fast. "Oh, dear!" he cried. "Now don't worry!" spoke Uncle Wiggily kindly. "I think I can help you." "Oh, can you!" cried Dr. Monkey Doodle. "And will you?" "I certainly will," said Uncle Wiggily, tying his ears in a bowknot so they would not get tangled in the glue. "But how can you help me?" asked the monkey doctor. "In the first place," went on the rabbit gentleman. "I will pour some warm water all around you on the glue. That will soften it, and by-and-by you can get up. And while we are waiting for that you shall tell me how to cure the sick dolls and how to mend the broken ones and I'll do the best I can." "Fine!" cried Dr. Monkey Doodle, feeling happier now. So Uncle Wiggily poured some warm water on the glue that held the poor monkey fast, taking care not to have the water too hot. Then Uncle Wiggily said: "Now, we'll begin on the sick dolls. Who's first?" "Take Sallie Jane Ticklefeather," said the monkey. "She needs some mucilage pills to keep her hair from sticking up so straight. She belongs to a little girl named Rosalind." So Uncle Wiggily gave Sallie Jane Ticklefeather some mucilage pills. Then he gave another doll some sawdust tea and a third one some shoe-button pudding--this was the doll who only had one eye--and soon she was all cured and had two eyes. And then such a busy time as Uncle Wiggily had! He hopped about that little hospital, sewing arms and legs and feet on the dolls that had lost theirs. He oiled up all the stiff joints with olive oil, and one doll, whose eyes had fallen back in her head, Uncle Wiggily fixed as nicely as you please. Only by mistake he got in one brown eye and one blue one, but that didn't matter much. In fact, it made the doll all the more stylish. "Oh, but there are a lot more dolls to fix!" cried the monkey doctor. "Never mind," said Uncle Wiggily. "You will soon be loose from the glue, and you can help me!" "Oh, I wish I were loose now!" cried the monkey. He gave himself a tremendous tug and a pull, Uncle Wiggily helping him, and up he came. Then how he flew about that hospital, fixing the dolls ready for the party. "Hark!" suddenly called Uncle Wiggily. "It's the girl animals coming for their dolls," said the monkey. "Oh, work fast! Work fast!" Outside the doll hospital Susie Littletail, the rabbit girl, and Alice and Lulu Wibblewobble, the duck girls, and all their friends were calling: "Are our dolls mended? Are they ready for us?" "Not yet, but soon," answered Uncle Wiggily, and then he and the monkey worked so fast! Dolls that had lost their heads had new ones put on. The doll that had spilled all her sawdust was filled up again, plump and fat. One boy soldier doll, who had lost his gun was given a new one, and a sword also. And the phonograph doll was fixed so that she could sing as well as talk. "But it is almost time for the party!" cried Susie Littletail. "Just a minute!" called Uncle Wiggily. "There is one more doll to fix." Then he quickly painted some red cheeks on a poor little pale doll, who had had the measles, and in a moment she was as bright and rosy again as a red apple. Then all the dolls were fixed, and the girl animals took them to a party and had a fine time. "Hurray for Uncle Wiggily!" cried Susie Littletail, and all the others said the same thing. "He certainly was kind to me," spoke Dr. Monkey Doodle, as he cleaned the glue up off the floor. And that's all there is to this story, but in the next one, if the goldfish doesn't bite a hole in his globe and let all the molasses run over the tablecloth, I'll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the flowers. STORY XIII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE FLOWERS One Saturday, when there was no school, Charley Chick was playing soldier in the chicken coop, and beating the drum that Uncle Wiggily had given him, for Christmas. And Arabella, who was Charley's sister, was playing with her talking doll. The little chicken girl was teaching the doll to recite that piece about "Once a trap was baited, with a piece of cheese." But the doll couldn't seem to get the verses right. She would say it something like this: "Once a trap was baited, With a twinkling star. 'Twas Christmas eve and Santa Claus Was coming from afar. "A little drop of water, Was in Jack Horner's pie When Mary lost her little lamb Old Mother Goose did cry." "Oh, you'll never get that right!" exclaimed Arabella. "Uncle Wiggily, can't you make my talking doll learn to speak pieces right? She gets them all mixed up." "I'll try," said the old gentleman rabbit, and he was just telling the doll how to recite a poem about little monkey-jack upon a stick of candy, and every time he took a bite it tasted fine and dandy. Well, the doll had learned one verse, when, all at once, there came a knock on the door, and there stood a telegraph messenger boy, with a telegram for Uncle Wiggily. "Oh, something has happened!" exclaimed Mrs. Chick. "I am so nervous whenever telegrams come." "Wait until I read it," said the old gentleman rabbit, and when he had read it he said: "It is from Aunt Lettie, the old lady goat. She has the epizootic very badly, from having eaten some bill-board pictures of a snowstorm, which made her catch cold, and she wants to know if I can't come over to see her, and tell Dr. Possum to bring her some medicine. Of course I will. I'll start off at once." So Uncle Wiggily started off, in his automobile, and on his way to see the old lady goat he stopped at the doctor's house, and Dr. Possum promised to come as soon as he could, and cure the old lady goat. "Then I'll go on ahead," spoke Uncle Wiggily, "and tell her you are coming." So he hurried on, with his long ears flapping to and fro, and he hadn't gone very far before he came to a shop where a man had flowers to sell--roses and violets and pinks and all lovely blossoms like that. "The very thing!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, as he saw the pretty posies. "Sick persons like flowers, and I'll take some to Aunt Lettie. They may cheer her up." So he bought a large and kept on toward the old lady goat's house. Well, he hadn't gone very far before, all at once, as he was going around the corner by the prickly briar bush, that had berries on it in the summer time, all at once, I say, out jumped a big black bear. At first Uncle Wiggily thought it was a good bear, and he stopped the auto to shake paws with him. But, all at once, he saw that it was a bad bear, whom he had never seen before. "Oh, my!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, surprised-like. "I--I guess I have made a mistake. I don't know you. I beg your pardon." "You don't need to do that," growled the bear. "You'll soon know me well enough. You and I are going to be very well acquainted soon. You come with me," and with that he grabbed hold of the old gentleman rabbit and marched off with him, pulling him right out of the auto. "Where are you taking me?" asked Uncle Wiggily, trying to be brave, and not shiver or shake. "To my den," answered the bear in a grillery-growlery voice. "I haven't had my Christmas or New Year's dinner yet, and here it is the middle of January. Bur-r-r-r-r-r-r! Wow!" "Oh, what a savage bear," exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "What makes you so cross?" "Just look at my feet and you'll see why," answered the bear, and Uncle Wiggily looked, and as true as I'm telling you, there were a whole lot of walnut shells fast on the bear's feet. "That's enough to make any one cross," said the bear. "I stepped in these shells that some one threw out of their window after Christmas, and they stuck on so tight that I can't get them off. Talk about corns! These are worse than any corns. I have to walk on my tiptoes all the while, and I'm so cross that I could eat a hot cross bun and never know it. Bur-r-r-r-r! Wow! Woof!" "Oh, my!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "Then I guess it's all up with me," and he felt quite sad-like. "You may well say that!" growled the bear. "Come along!" and he almost pulled Uncle Wiggily head over paws. "What have you in that paper?" asked the bear, as he saw the bag of flowers in Uncle Wiggily's paw. "Some blossoms for poor sick Aunt Lettie!" answered the rabbit gentleman. "Poor, sick Aunt Lettie----" "Bur-r-r-r-r-r! Wow! Woof! Bah! Don't talk to me about sick goats!" growled the bear. "I'm sicker than any goat of these walnut shells on my feet. Bur-r-r-r-r! Wow! Woof!" And then Uncle Wiggily thought of something. Gently opening the paper he took out one nice, big, sweet-smelling rose and handed it to the bear, saying nothing. "Bur-r-r-r-r! Wow! What's this?" growled the bear, and before he knew what he was doing he had taken the rose in his big paws. And then, before he knew, the next thing, he was smelling of it. And, as he smelled the sweet perfume, he seemed to think he was in the summer fields, all covered with flowers, and as he looked at the rose it seemed to remind him of the time when he was a little bear, and wasn't bad, and didn't say such things as "Bur-r-r-r-r!" "Wow!" And then once more he smelled of the perfume in the flower, and he seemed to forget the pain of the walnut shells on his feet. "Oh, Uncle Wiggily!" exclaimed the bear, and tears came into his blinkery-inkery eyes, and rolled down his black nose. "I'm sorry I was bad to you. This flower is so lovely that it makes me want to be good. Run along, now, before I change my mind and get bad again." "First let me help you take those walnut shells off your paws," said the rabbit gentleman, and he did so, prying them off with a stick, and then the bear felt ever so much better and he hurried to his den, still smelling the beautiful rose. So you see flowers are sometimes good, even for bears. Then Uncle Wiggily hurried on to Aunt Lettie's house with the rest of the bouquet, and when she saw it she was quite some better, and when Dr. Possum gave her some medicine she was all better, and she thought Uncle Wiggily was very brave to do as he had done to the bear. And on the next page, in case the eggbeater doesn't hit the rolling pin and make the potato masher fall down in the ice cream cone, I'll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and Susie's doll. STORY XIV UNCLE WIGGILY AND SUSIE'S DOLL "Well, I see you are going out for another ride in your auto," remarked Mrs. Bow Wow, the puppy dog lady, to Uncle Wiggily, one morning, after Peetie and Jackie had gone to school. "Where are you bound for now?" "Oh, no place in particular," he said. "I just thought I would take a ride for my health." You see the rabbit gentleman had come to pay the dog family a visit. "I should think you'd stay in when it snows," went on the doggie lady. "You seem always to be out in a snowstorm," for it was snowing quite hard just then. "I love the snow," said the old gentleman rabbit. "I like cold weather, for then my thick fur coat keeps me much warmer than in the summer time. And I like the snow--I like to see it come down, and feel it blow in my face and make my auto go through the drifts." "Well, be careful you don't get stuck in any drifts and freeze fast," said Mrs. Bow Wow, as she began washing the breakfast dishes. "I'll try not to," promised Uncle Wiggily, and then he put some oil on his auto, and gave it a drink of warm water (for autos get thirsty sometimes), and away the old gentleman rabbit rode through the snowstorm. "I guess I'll go call on Aunt Lettie, the old lady goat, to-day," he thought as he went through a big snowdrift, scattering the snow on both sides like an electric-car snow plow. "I haven't seen Aunt Lettie in some time, and she may be ill again." For this was some time after Uncle Wiggily had brought her the flowers. Well, pretty soon he was at the old lady goat's house, and, surely enough she had been ill again. She had eaten some red paper, off the outside of a tomato can, one day right after Christmas, and the paper didn't have the right kind of stickumpaste on it, so Aunt Lettie was taken ill on that account. "But I'm much better now," she said to Uncle Wiggily, "and I'm real glad you called. Come in and I'll give you a hot cup of old newspaper tea." "Um, I don't know as I care for that," said the old gentleman rabbit, making his nose twinkle like a star on a frosty night. "Oh, I'm surprised to hear you say that," spoke Aunt Lettie, sorrowful-like. "Newspaper tea is very good, especially with cream-stickum-mucilage in it. But never mind, I'll give you some carrot tea," and she did, and she and Uncle Wiggily sat and talked about old times, and the fun Nannie and Billie Goat used to have, until it was time for the old gentleman rabbit to go back home. School was out as he went along in his auto. He could tell that because he met so many of the animal children. And he gave Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow and Johnnie and Billie Bushtail a ride toward home. But before they got there, all of a sudden, as the four animal children were in the auto, and Uncle Wiggily was making it go through a snowdrift, all of a sudden, I say the old gentleman rabbit turned around a corner, and there was Susie Littletail, the little rabbit girl, standing in front of a big heap of snow. And she was crying very hard, her tears falling down, and making little holes in the snow, and she was poking into the drift with a long stick. "Why, Susie!" asked Uncle Wiggily, "whatever is the matter?" "Oh, my doll! My lovely, big, new Christmas doll!" cried Susie. "I had her to school with me, for we are learning to sew in our class, and I was making my dollie a new dress, and--and--" and then poor Susie cried so hard that she couldn't talk. "Don't tell me some one took your doll away from you!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "If they did I'll go after them and get it back for you!" cried Jackie Bow Wow. "So will I!" said Peetie and Billie and Johnnie. "No, it isn't that," spoke the little rabbit girl. "But as I was walking along, with my dollie in my arms, all of a sudden she slipped out, fell into this big snowbank, and I can't find her! She's all covered up. Boo hoo! Hoo boo!" "Oh, don't take on so," said Uncle Wiggily kindly. "We will all help you hunt for your dollie; won't we, boys?" "Sure!" cried Peetie and Jackie and Billie and Johnnie. So they all got sticks and poked in the snow bank, Uncle Wiggily poking harder than anybody, but it was of no use. They couldn't seem to find that lost doll. "She must be very deep under the snow!" said Uncle Wiggily. "Oh, I'll never see her again!" cried Susie. "My big, beautiful Christmas doll. Boo-hoo! Hoo-boo!" "You can get her when the snow melts," spoke Peetie Bow Wow, as he scratched away at the drift with his paws. "Yes, but then the wax will be all melted off her face, and she won't look like anything," murmured Susie, sad-like. "Wait; I have a plan," said Uncle Wiggily. "There is a fan, like an electric one, in the front part of my auto to keep the water cool. I'll make that fan blow the snow away and we'll get your doll." So he tried that, making the fan whizz around like a boy's top, but, though it blew some snow away, the doll couldn't be found. "Oh, I'll never see my big, beautiful doll again!" cried Susie. "Oh, whatever is the matter?" asked a voice, and, turning around, they all saw the big, black, woolly bear standing there. At first the animal children were frightened until Uncle Wiggily said: "Oh, that bear won't hurt us. I once helped him get some walnut shells off his paws, so he is a friend of mine." "Of course I am," said the bear. "What is the trouble?" Then they told him about Susie's doll being under the drift, and the bear went on: "Don't worry about that. My paws are just made for digging in the snow. I'll have that doll for you in a jiffy, which is very quick." So with his paws he began digging in the snow. My! how he did make the snow fly, and he blew it away with his strong breath. Faster and faster flew the snow, and in about a minute it was all scraped away, and there was Susie's doll safe and sound. And she was sleeping with her eyes shut. "Oh, you darling!" Susie cried, clasping the doll in her arms. "Did you mean me?" asked the bear, laughing. "Yes, I guess I did!" said Susie, also laughing, and she gave the bear a nice little kiss on the end of his black nose. Then everybody was happy and the bear went back to his den and Uncle Wiggily took the children and the doll home, and that's all I can tell you now, if you please. But, if the rocking horse doesn't run away and upset the milk pitcher down in the salt cellar and scare the furnace so that it goes out, I'll tell you in the story after this one, about Uncle Wiggily on roller skates. STORY XV UNCLE WIGGILY ON ROLLER SKATES "Well, where are you going this morning?" asked Jimmie Wibblewobble, the duck boy, as he looked out of the front door of his house, and saw Uncle Wiggily, the old gentleman rabbit, putting some gasoline in his automobile. "Oh, I am going to take a little ride out in the country," said Uncle Wiggily. "I am going to see if I can find an adventure. Nothing has happened since we found Susie's doll. I must have excitement. It keeps me from thinking about my rheumatism. So I am going to look for an adventure, Jimmie." "I wish I could come," said the little duck boy. "I wish you could too," said his uncle. "But you must go to school. Some Saturday I'll take you with me, and we may find an adventure for each of us." "And for us girls, too?" asked Lulu and Alice as they came out, all ready to go to school. Alice had just finished tying her sky-yellow-green hair ribbon into two lovely bow knots. "Yes, for you duck girls, too," said Uncle Wiggily. "But I will be back here when you come from school, and if anything happens to me I'll tell you all about it." So he kept on putting gasoline in his automobile until he had the tinkerum-tankerum full, and then he tickled the hickory-dickory-dock with a mucilage brush, and he was all ready to start off and look for an adventure. So Lulu and Alice and Jimmie went on to school, and Uncle Wiggily rode along over the fields and through the woods and up hill and down hill. Pretty soon, as he was riding along, he heard a funny little noise in the bushes. It was a sad, little, squeaking sort of noise and at first the old gentleman rabbit thought it was made by something on his automobile that needed oiling. Then he looked over the side and there, sitting under an old cabbage leaf, was a little mousie girl, and it was she who was crying. "Oh, ho!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, "is that you, Squeaky-eaky?" for he thought it might be the little cousin-mouse who lived with Jollie and Jillie Longtail, as I have told you in other stories. "No, I am not Squeaky-eaky," said the little mouse girl, "but I am cold and hungry and I don't know what to do or where to go. Oh, dear! Boo-hoo!" "Never mind," said Uncle Wiggily kindly. "I will take you in my auto, and I'll bring you to the house where the Longtail children live, and they'll take care of you." "Oh, goody!" cried the little girl mouse. "Thank you so much. Now I am happy." So Uncle Wiggily took her in the nice, warm automobile. Then he twisted the noodleum-noddleum until it sneezed, and away the auto went through the woods again. And, all of a sudden, just as Uncle Wiggily came to a big black stump, out jumped the burglar bear with roller skates on his paws. "Hold on there!" the bear cried to the old gentleman rabbit, and he poked a stick in the auto wheels, so they couldn't go around any more. "Hold on, if you please, Mr. Rabbit. I want you." "What for?" asked Uncle Wiggily. "I want you to come to supper," said the burglar bear. "Your supper or my supper?" asked Uncle Wiggily, politely. "My supper, of course," said the burglar bear. "I am going to have rabbit pot-pie to-night, and you are going to be both the rabbit and the pie. Come, now, get out of that auto. I want to ride in it before I bite you." Well, of course, Uncle Wiggily felt pretty badly, but there was no help for it. He had to get out, and then the burglar bear, taking off his roller skates, got up into the automobile. "Oh, what nice soft cushions!" exclaimed the bear as he sank down on them. Then he took hold of the turnip steering wheel in his claws and twisted it. "I shall have lots of fun riding in this auto, after I gobble you up," said the bear, looking at the rabbit with his blinky eyes. "I must learn to run it. I think I'll take a little ride before I have my supper. But don't you dare run away, for I can catch you." Then, to make sure Uncle Wiggily couldn't get away, the bear took the old rabbit gentleman's crutch away from him and Uncle Wiggily's rheumatism was so severe, which means painful, that he couldn't walk a step without his crutch. So there was no use for him to try to run away. [Illustration] Well, the bear knew how to run the auto, it seems, and he started to take a little ride in it. Uncle Wiggily felt pretty sad because he was going to be gobbled up and lose his auto at the same time. All at once, when the bear in the auto was some distance off in the woods, Uncle Wiggily heard a little voice speaking to him. "Hey, Uncle Wiggily," the voice said, "I know how you can get the best of that bear!" "How?" asked Uncle Wiggily, eagerly. "Here are his roller skates," said the voice, and it was the little mousie girl who was speaking. She had quietly jumped out of the auto. "Put on his roller skates," said the mousie, "and skate down the hill until you see a policeman dog. Then tell the policeman dog to come and arrest the bear. He'll do it, and then you'll get your auto back. You can go on roller skates even if you have rheumatism, can't you?" "I guess so," said the rabbit. "I'll try." So he put on the skates while the burglar bear was making the auto go around in a circle in the woods, and that bear was having a good time. All at once Uncle Wiggily skated away. First he went slowly, and then he went faster and faster until he was just whizzing along. And then, at the foot of the hill, he found the policeman dog. "Oh, please come and arrest the burglar bear for me?" begged Uncle Wiggily. "To be sure I will," said the policeman dog. So he put on his roller skates, and skated back with Uncle Wiggily to where the bear was still in the auto. The policeman dog hid behind a stump. The bear stopped the auto in front of Uncle Wiggily and got out. "Well," said the burglar bear, smacking his lips, "I guess it's supper time now. I'm going to eat you. Come on and be my pot-pie!" And he made a grab for the old gentleman rabbit. "Oh, you will; will you?" suddenly cried the policeman dog, drawing his club, and jumping from behind the stump. "Well, I guess you won't eat my good friend, Uncle Wiggily. I guess not!" and with that the policeman dog tickled the bear so on his nose that he sneezed, and ran off through the woods taking his stubby little tail with him, but leaving behind his roller skates. "Oh, I'm ever so much obliged to you, Policeman Dog," said the old gentleman rabbit, as he took off the bear's skates. "You saved my life. I'll take these skates home to Jimmie. They will fit him when he grows bigger." "That is a good idea," said the dog, "and if I ever catch that bear again I will put him in the beehive jail and make him crack hickory nuts with his teeth." Then Uncle Wiggily went home, and took the little mousie girl with him, and he told the duck children about his adventure with the bear, just as I have told you. So now it's bedtime, if you please, and I can't tell you any more. But if the man who cleans our yard doesn't take my overcoat for an ash can and put the dried leaves in it, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the clothes wringer. STORY XVI UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE CLOTHES WRINGER One day Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow, the little puppy dog boys, came running over to Uncle Wiggily's hollow stump-house. It was after school, from which they had just come, and they rushed up the front steps, barking like anything, and calling out: "Where's Uncle Wiggily? Where is he?" "We want to see him in a hurry!" barked Peetie. "Yes, immediately," went on Jackie. He had heard the teacher that day in school use the word, immediately, to tell a bad bumble bee to take his seat and stop trying to sting Lulu Wibblewobble. Immediately means right off quick, without waiting, you know. "Hoity-toity!" cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy, the muskrat housekeeper. "What is the trouble?" "We must see Uncle Wiggily immediately!" barked Peetie again, trying to stand on one ear. But he could not make it stiff enough, so he fell down, and bumped into Jackie, and they both tumbled down the steps, making a great racket. "There, there! You must be more quiet," cautioned Nurse Jane. "Uncle Wiggily just came back from his auto ride for his health, and is taking a nap. You must not wake him up. What do you want to see him about that is so important?" "Oh, we'll wait until he wakes up," said Jackie, as he sat down on the porch. "Ha! Who wants me?" suddenly exclaimed a voice a little later, and out came Uncle Wiggily himself. "We do!" cried Jackie. "Oh, Uncle Wiggily!" "We're going to work!" added Peetie, unable to keep still any longer. "What! You don't mean to say you're going to leave school and go to work?" asked Uncle Wiggily. "No, we're not going to leave school," exclaimed Peetie. "We are going to work after school. Jackie is going to deliver newspapers." "And I'm going to get ten cents a week for it," said Jackie proudly, but not too proud. "And I'm going to help at the clothes wringer for the circus elephant," exclaimed Peetie. "Help at the wringer for the elephant!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "What does that mean? You startle and puzzle me." "Why, you know the circus elephant has to dress up like a clown," went on Peetie. "And he plays a drum and a handorgan, and he fires off a cannon in the sawdust ring. And he does a lot of things like that. After a while his white clown suit gets all dirty and he has to wash out his clothes. Then he has to squeeze them in a wringer to get as much of the water out as he can. Then he hangs them up to dry. "Well, he can turn the wringer himself with his trunk, but his paws are so big that he can't put the clothes through between the rubber rollers. So he advertised for some little animal boy to help him after school. I answered, and I'm going to help him wash and dry his clothes." "How much are you to get?" asked Uncle Wiggily. "I get three puppy biscuits every day and a glass of pink lemonade, and on Saturday afternoons I can go to the circus for nothing." "Fine!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "I'm real glad you came to tell me. You are good and smart little animal boys." Then Peetie and Jackie ran off to do the new work they had arranged for, and Uncle Wiggily cleaned his auto ready for his ride next day. And when he had finished he thought he would take a walk down to the circus tent and see how Peetie was helping the elephant wash the clothes. As for Jackie, he had to run so fast, here and there and everywhere, to deliver his papers that Uncle Wiggily did not know where to find him, any more than Bo-peep did her sheep. Well, in a little while, the rabbit gentleman came to where the elephant was washing his clothes. Of course he had to have a very large tub and washboard and an extra large wringer for his clothes were very large. And there, up on a box in front of the tub, that was filled with suds and water, stood Peetie Bow Wow, splashing around, and reaching down in for the wet clothes. And as he fished them up, and put the ends between the rubber rollers of the wringer, the elephant would turn the handle of the squee-gee machine with his trunk. "How is that?" asked Peetie. "Fine!" cried the elephant, making his trunk go faster and faster, and squirting the water out of the wet clothes, all over the ground. "Yes, Peetie is a good little chap," said Uncle Wiggily. Just then the elephant's brother came along, and the two big animals began talking together. And, as they were both a little deaf, each one shouted to the other as loudly as he could. Oh! such a racket as they made--thunder was nothing to it! And then a funny thing happened. Peetie turned around to put some more clothes in the tub, when, all of a sudden, his tail got caught in between the wringer's rubber rollers. "Ouch!" cried the little puppy dog. "Ouch! Oh, dear me! Stop, please, Mr. Elephant. Don't turn the wringer any more!" But the two elephants were talking together, each one as loudly as he could, about how much hay they could eat, and how some little boys at a circus would give them only one peanut instead of a whole bag full, and all things like that. So the clothes-washing elephant never noticed that Peetie's tail was caught in the rollers. And he didn't hear him cry. Around and around the elephant turned the handle of the wringer with his trunk, winding Peetie's tail right between the rollers, and drawing the little puppy dog boy himself closer and closer into the tub, over the water and nearer to the rubber rollers themselves. [Illustration] "Oh, stop! Oh, stop!" cried poor Peetie trying to get away, but he could not. "If I get rolled between the rollers I'll be as flat as a pancake!" he screamed. "Oh, stop! Oh, Uncle Wiggily, save me!" "Yes, I will!" cried the rabbit gentleman. "You must stop turning that wringer!" he said to the circus elephant. "You are wringing Peetie instead of the clothes. His tail is caught!" But the elephant was so deaf, and his brother was calling to him so loudly about pink lemonade, that he could not hear either Peetie or Uncle Wiggily. Then, to make him listen, Uncle Wiggily with his crutch tickled the elephant's foot, which was as high up as he could reach, but the big creature thought it was only a mosquito, and paid no attention. "Oh, what shall I do?" cried Peetie. "I'll save you!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, and then, happening to have a bag of peanuts in his pocket he held them close to the elephant's trunk. The elephant could smell, if he could not hear well, and all at once he took the peanuts, and as he did so, of course, he removed his trunk from the wringer handle. And as he ate the peanuts he saw what a terrible thing he was doing, wringing Peetie instead of the clothes, so he very kindly made the wringer go backwards, and out came Peetie's tail again, a little flat, but not much hurt otherwise. "I am so sorry," said the elephant. "I wouldn't have had it happen for the world." "Yes, it was an accident," spoke Uncle Wiggily, "but I guess Peetie had better find some other kind of work to do after school." "All right," said the elephant. "I'll pay him off, and then I'll get a rubbery snake to help me with my clothes. A snake won't mind being squeezed." So he did that, and Peetie and Uncle Wiggily went home, and nothing more happened that day. But next, in case the automobile horn doesn't blow the little girl's rubber balloon up in the top of the tree, where the kittie cat has its nest, I'll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the trained nurse. STORY XVII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE TRAINED NURSE Uncle Wiggily Longears, the gentleman rabbit, was out riding in his automobile. He was taking exercise, so he would not be so fat, for a fat rabbit is about the fattest thing there is, except a balloon, and that doesn't count, as it has no ears. "I wonder what will happen to me to-day?" said Uncle Wiggily, as he rode along, turning the turnip steering wheel from one side to the other to keep from bumping into stones and stumps, and things like that. And, every now and then, Uncle Wiggily would take a bite out of his turnip steering wheel. That was what it was for, you see. And as for the German bologna sausages which were the tires, Uncle Wiggily used to let anybody who wanted to--such as a hungry doggie or a starving kittie--take a bite out of them whenever they wanted to. Well, pretty soon, after a while, not so very long, Uncle Wiggily came to the top of a hill. He stopped his auto there to look around at the green fields and the apple trees in blossom, and at the little brook running along over the green, mossy stones. And the brook never stubbed its toe once on the stones! What do you think of that? "Well, I guess I'll go down hill," thought the old gentleman rabbit, and down he started. But Oh unhappiness! Sadness, and, also, isn't it too bad! No sooner had Uncle Wiggily started down the hill in his auto than the snicker-snooker-um got twisted around the boodle-oodle-um, and that made the wibble-wobble-ton stand on its head, instead of standing on its ear as it really ought to have done. Then the auto ran away, and the next thing Uncle Wiggily knew his car had hit a stump, turned a somersault and part of a peppersault, and he was thrown out. "Bang!" he fell, right on the hard ground, and for a moment he stayed there, being too much out of breath to get up and see what was the matter. And when he tried to get up he couldn't. Something had happened to him. He had hit his head on a stone. Poor Uncle Wiggily! But, very luckily, Dr. Possum happened to be passing, having just come from paying a visit to Grandfather Goosey Gander, who had, by mistake, eaten a shoe button with his corn meal pudding. And Dr. Possum, having cured Grandpa Goosey, went at once to help Uncle Wiggily. "We must get you home right away, Uncle Wiggily," said the doctor gentleman. "You must be put to bed and have a trained nurse." "Well, as long as I have to have a nurse, I should much prefer," said Uncle Wiggily, faintly, "I should much prefer a trained one to a wild one. For a trained nurse who can do tricks will be quite funny." "Hum!" exclaimed Dr. Possum. "A trained nurse has no time to do tricks. Now rest yourself." So Uncle Wiggily sat back quietly in Dr. Possum's auto until he got to his hollow stump home. Then Old Dog Percival and the doctor carried the rabbit gentleman in, and they sent for a trained nurse. For Uncle Wiggily was quite badly hurt, and needed some one to feed him for a while. Pretty soon the trained nurse came, and who did she turn out to be but Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy herself, the kind old muskrat. She had been living with Uncle Wiggily, but, for a time, had gone off to study to be a trained nurse. She put on a white cap and a blue and white striped dress, and she was just as good a nurse as one could get from the hospital. Uncle Wiggily was too ill to notice, though. "I know how to look after him," said Nurse Jane, and she really did. She felt of his pulse, and made him put out his tongue to look at, to see that he had not swallowed it by mistake, and she found out how hot he was to see if he had fever, and all things like that. And she put a report of all these things down on a bit of white birch bark for paper, using a licorice stick for a pencil. Afterward Dr. Possum would read the report. Well, for some time Uncle Wiggily was quite ill, for you know it is no fun to be in an automobile accident. Then he began to get better. Nurse Jane did not have much to do, and Dr. Possum, who came in every day, said: "He will get well now. But Uncle Wiggily has had a hard time of it; very hard!" And, as soon as he began to get better, Uncle Wiggily got sort of impatient, and he wanted many things he could not have, or which were not good for him. He wanted to get out of bed, but Nurse Jane would not let him, for the doctor had told her not to. Then Uncle Wiggily said: "Well, you are a trained nurse. Now you must do some tricks for me, or I shall get out of bed whether you want me to or not," and he barked like a dog; really he did. You see he was not exactly himself, but rather out of his head on account of the fever. "Come on, do some tricks!" he cried to Nurse Jane. Poor Miss Fuzzy-Wuzzy! She had never done a trick since she was a little girl muskrat, but she knew sick rabbits must be humored, so she tried to think of a trick. She did not know whether to make believe jump rope, play puss in a corner or pretend that she was a fire engine. And she really wanted to help Uncle Wiggily! "Come on! Do something!" he cried, and he almost jumped out of bed. "Do something." And just then, as it happened, a great big bee flew in the window, and maybe it was going to sting Uncle Wiggily, for all I know. Then Nurse Jane knew what to do. She caught up a soft towel, so as not to hurt the bee any more than she had to, and she began hitting at him. "Get out of here! Get out of here!" cried Nurse Jane. "You can't sting Uncle Wiggily!" "Buzz! Buzz!" sang the bee. "Go out! Go out!" exclaimed Nurse Jane, and she made the towel sail through the air. The bee flew this way and that, up and down and sideways, but always Nurse Jane was after him with the towel, trying to drive him out of the window. She climbed up on chairs, she jumped over tables, without knocking over a single medicine bottle. She crawled under the sofa and out again, she even jumped on the couch and bounced up in the air like a balloon. And at last she drove the bad bee out doors where he could get honey from the flowers, and they didn't mind his stinging them if he wanted to, which of course he didn't. Then, after that, Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy sat down in a chair, near Uncle Wiggily, very tired out indeed. The old gentleman rabbit opened his eyes and laughed a little. "Those were funny tricks you did for me," he said, "jumping around like that. Very funny! Ha! Ha!" "I was not doing tricks," answered Nurse Jane, surprised-like. "I was trying to keep a bee from biting you." "Were you indeed?" spoke Uncle Wiggily. "I thought they were some of the tricks you had been trained to do. They were fine. I laughed so hard that I think I am much better." And, indeed, he was, and soon he was all well, so that Nurse Jane Fuzzy, without really meaning to at all, had done some funny tricks when she drove out that bee. Oh! trained nurses are very queer, I think, but they are very nice, also. So Uncle Wiggily was soon well, and needed no nurse, and when his auto was mended, he could ride around in it as nicely as before. =The Sunnybrook Series= By MRS. ELSIE M. ALEXANDER Cloth Bound, 12 mo. Illustrations in Color Jackets in Full Color Colored End Papers, Illus. * * * * * A remarkably well told, instructive series of stories of animals, their characteristics and the exciting incidents in their lives. Young people will find these tales of animal life filled with a true and intimate knowledge of nature lore. * * * * * THE HAPPY FAMILY OF BEECHNUT GROVE (PETER GRAY SQUIRREL AND FAMILY) BUSTER RABBIT, THE EXPLORER (THE BUNNY RABBIT FAMILY) ADVENTURES OF TUDIE (THE FIELD MOUSE) TABITHA DINGLE (THE FAMOUS CAT OF SUNNYBROOK MEADOW) ROODY AND HIS UNDERGROUND PALACE (MR. WOODCHUCK IN HIS HAPPY HOME) BUFF AND DUFF (CHILDREN OF MRS. WHITE-HEN) * * * * * A. L. BURT COMPANY, _Publishers_ 114-120 EAST 23rd STREET NEW YORK =The Wildwood Series= By BEN FIELD Cloth Bound, 12 mo. Illustrations in Color Jackets in Full Color Colored End Papers, Illus. * * * * * In this new children's series the adventures of many familiar animal characters are pictured in a realistic manner. Young readers will find these captivating tales of the habits, haunts and pranks of their little animal friends brimful of entertainment. * * * * * EXCITING ADVENTURES OF MR. TOM SQUIRREL EXCITING ADVENTURES OF MR. JIM CROW EXCITING ADVENTURES OF MR. GERALD FOX EXCITING ADVENTURES OF MR. MELANCTHON COON EXCITING ADVENTURES OF MR. ROBERT ROBIN EXCITING ADVENTURES OF MR. BOB WHITE * * * * * A. L. BURT COMPANY, _Publishers_ 114-120 EAST 23rd STREET NEW YORK Transcriber's Note A few obvious typographical errors have been corrected. All other text and punctuation is retained. Blank pages before illustrations have been removed. Text in _italics_ or =bold= are indicated in this way. 
43204	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 43204-h.htm or 43204-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43204/43204-h/43204-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43204/43204-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). [Illustration: THE BIG BEAST HAD A MONKEY IN ITS MOUTH.] THE MOTOR BOYS IN MEXICO Or The Secret of the Buried City by CLARENCE YOUNG Author of "The Racer Boys Series" and "The Jack Ranger Series." New York Cupples & Leon Co. * * * * * * * BOOKS BY CLARENCE YOUNG =THE MOTOR BOYS SERIES= (_Trade Mark, Reg. U. S. Pat. Of._) 12mo. Illustrated Price per volume, 60 cents, postpaid THE MOTOR BOYS Or Chums Through Thick and Thin THE MOTOR BOYS OVERLAND Or A Long Trip for Fun and Fortune THE MOTOR BOYS IN MEXICO Or The Secret of the Buried City THE MOTOR BOYS ACROSS THE PLAINS Or The Hermit of Lost Lake THE MOTOR BOYS AFLOAT Or The Stirring Cruise of the Dartaway THE MOTOR BOYS ON THE ATLANTIC Or The Mystery of the Lighthouse THE MOTOR BOYS IN STRANGE WATERS Or Lost in a Floating Forest THE MOTOR BOYS ON THE PACIFIC Or The Young Derelict Hunters THE MOTOR BOYS IN THE CLOUDS Or A Trip for Fame and Fortune =THE JACK RANGER SERIES= 12mo. Finely Illustrated Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid JACK RANGER'S SCHOOLDAYS Or The Rivals of Washington Hall JACK RANGER'S WESTERN TRIP Or From Boarding School to Ranch and Range JACK RANGER'S SCHOOL VICTORIES Or Track, Gridiron and Diamond JACK RANGER'S OCEAN CRUISE Or The Wreck of the Polly Ann JACK RANGER'S GUN CLUB Or From Schoolroom to Camp and Trail * * * * * * * Copyright, 1906, by Cupples & Leon Company THE MOTOR BOYS IN MEXICO CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE PROFESSOR IN TROUBLE 1 II. THE PROFESSOR'S STORY 9 III. NEWS OF NODDY NIXON 17 IV. OVER THE RIO GRANDE 24 V. A THIEF IN THE NIGHT 32 VI. INTO THE WILDERNESS 41 VII. A FIERCE FIGHT 50 VIII. THE OLD MEXICAN 58 IX. A VIEW OF THE ENEMY 66 X. SOME TRICKS IN MAGIC 74 XI. NODDY NIXON'S PLOT 82 XII. NODDY SCHEMES WITH MEXICANS 90 XIII. ON THE TRAIL 98 XIV. THE ANGRY MEXICANS 105 XV. CAUGHT BY AN ALLIGATOR 112 XVI. THE LAUGHING SERPENT 120 XVII. AN INTERRUPTED KIDNAPPING 127 XVIII. THE UNDERGROUND CITY 133 XIX. IN AN ANCIENT TEMPLE 141 XX. MYSTERIOUS HAPPENINGS 148 XXI. NODDY HAS A TUMBLE 156 XXII. FACE TO FACE 163 XXIII. BOB IS KIDNAPPED 171 XXIV. BOB TRIES TO FLEE 179 XXV. AN UNEXPECTED FRIEND 187 XXVI. THE ESCAPE OF MAXIMINA 195 XXVII. A STRANGE MESSAGE 204 XXVIII. TO THE RESCUE 212 XXIX. THE FIGHT 220 XXX. HOMEWARD BOUND 229 PREFACE. _Dear Boys_: At last I am able to give you the third volume of "The Motor Boys Series," a line of books relating the doings of several wide-awake lads on wheels, in and around their homes and in foreign lands. The first volume of this series, called "The Motor Boys," told how Ned, Bob and Jerry became the proud possessors of motor-cycles, and won several races of importance, including one which gave to them, something that they desired with all their hearts, a big automobile touring car. Having obtained the automobile, the lads were not content until they arranged for a long trip to the great West, as told in "The Motor Boys Overland." On the way they fell in with an old miner, who held the secret concerning the location of a lost gold mine, and it was for this mine that they headed, beating out some rivals who were also their bitter enemies. While at the mine the boys, through a learned professor, learned of a buried city in Mexico, said to contain treasures of vast importance. Their curiosity was fired, and they arranged to go to Mexico in their touring car, and the present volume tells how this trip was accomplished. Being something of an automobile enthusiast myself, it has pleased me greatly to write this story, and I hope the boys will like "The Motor Boys in Mexico" fully as well as they appeared to enjoy "The Motor Boys" and "The Motor Boys Overland." CLARENCE YOUNG. _May 28, 1906._ THE MOTOR BOYS IN MEXICO. CHAPTER I. THE PROFESSOR IN TROUBLE. "Bang! Bang! Bang!" It was the sound of a big revolver being fired rapidly. "Hi, there! Who you shootin' at?" yelled a voice. Miners ran from rude shacks and huts to see what the trouble was. Down the valley, in front of a log cabin, there was a cloud of smoke. "Who's killed? What's the matter? Is it a fight?" were questions the men asked rapidly of each other. Down by the cabin whence the shots sounded, and where the white vapor was rolling away, a Chinaman was observed dancing about on one foot, holding the other in his hands. "What is it?" asked a tall, bronzed youth, coming from his cabin near the shaft of a mine on top of a small hill. "Cowboys shooting the town up?" "I guess it's only a case of a Chinaman fooling with a gun, Jerry. Shall I run down and take a look?" asked a fat, jolly, good-natured-looking lad. "Might as well, Chunky," said the other. "Then come back and tell Ned and me. My, but it's warm!" The stout youth, whom his companion had called Chunky, in reference to his stoutness, hurried down toward the cabin, about which a number of the miners were gathering. In a little while he returned. "That was it," he said. "Dan Beard's Chinese cook got hold of a revolver and wanted to see how it worked. He found out." "Is he much hurt?" asked a third youth, who had joined the one addressed as Jerry, in the cabin door. "One bullet hit his big toe, but he's more scared than injured. He yelled as if he was killed, Ned." "Well, if that's all the excitement, I'm going in and finish the letter I was writing to the folks at home," remarked Jerry. The other lads entered the cabin with him, and soon all three were busy writing or reading notes, for one mail had come in and another was shortly to leave the mining camp. It was a bright day, early in November, though the air was as hot as if it was mid-summer, for the valley, which contained the gold diggings, was located in the southern part of Arizona, and the sun fairly burned as it blazed down. The three boys, who had gone back into their cabin when the excitement following the accidental shooting of the Chinaman had died away, were Jerry Hopkins, Bob Baker and Ned Slade. Bob was the son of Andrew Baker, a wealthy banker; Ned's father was a well-to-do merchant, and Jerry was the son of a widow, Julia Hopkins. All of the boys lived in Cresville, Mass., a town not far from Boston. The three boys had been chums through thick and thin for as many years as they could remember. A strange combination of circumstances had brought them to Arizona, where, in company with Jim Nestor, an old western miner, they had discovered a rich gold mine that had been lost for many years. "There, my letter's finished," announced Jerry, about half an hour after the incident of the shooting. "I had mine done an hour ago," said Ned. "Let's run into town in the auto and mail them. We need some supplies, anyhow," suggested Bob. "All right," assented the others. The three boys went to the shed where their touring car, a big, red machine in which they had come West, was stored. Ned cranked up, and with a rattle, rumble and bang of the exhaust, the car started off, carrying the three lads to Rockyford, a town about ten miles from the gold diggings. "I wonder if we'll ever see Noddy Nixon or Jack Pender again?" asked Bob, when the auto had covered about three miles. "And you might as well say Bill Berry and Tom Dalsett," put in Jerry. "They all got away together. I don't believe in looking on the dark side of things, but I'm afraid we'll have trouble yet with that quartette." "They certainly got away in great shape," said Bob. "I'll give Noddy credit for that, if he is a mean bully." Noddy Nixon was an old enemy of the three chums. As has been told in the story of "The Motor Boys," the first book of this series, Jerry, Ned and Bob, when at home in Massachusetts, had motor-cycles and used to go on long trips together, on several of which they met Noddy Nixon, Jack Pender and Bill Berry, a town ne'er-do-well, with no very pleasant results. The boys had been able to secure their motor-cycles through winning prizes at a bicycle race, in which Noddy was beaten. This made him more than ever an enemy of the Motor Boys. The latter, after having many adventures on their small machines, entered a motor-cycle race. In this they were again successful, defeating some crack riders, and the prize this time was a big, red touring automobile, the same they were now using. Once they had an auto they decided on a trip across the continent, and their doings on that journey are recorded in the second book of this series, entitled "The Motor Boys Overland." It was while out riding in their auto in Cresville one evening that they came across a wounded miner in a hut. He turned out to be Jim Nestor, who knew the secret of a lost mine in Arizona. While sick in the hut, Nestor was robbed of some gold he carried in a belt. Jack Pender was the thief, and got away, although the Motor Boys chased him. With Nestor as a guide, the boys set out to find the lost mine. On the way they had many adventures with wild cowboys and stampeded cattle, while once the auto caught fire. They made the acquaintance, on the prairies, of Professor Uriah Snodgrass, a collector of bugs, stones and all sorts of material for college museums, for he was a naturalist. They succeeded in rescuing the professor from a mob of cowboys, who, under the impression that the naturalist had stolen one of their horses, were about to hang him. The professor went with the boys and Nestor to the mine, and was still with them. The gold claim was not easily won. Noddy Nixon, Pender, Berry and one Pud Stoneham, a gambler, aided by Tom Dalsett, who used to work for Nestor, attacked the Motor Boys and their friends and tried to get the mine away from them. However, Jerry and his friends won out, the sheriff arrested Stoneham for several crimes committed, and the others fled in Noddy's auto, which he had stolen from his father, for Noddy had left home because it was discovered that he had robbed the Cresville iron mill of one thousand dollars, which crime Jerry and his two chums had discovered and fastened on the bully. So it was no small wonder, after all the trouble Noddy and his gang had caused, that Jerry felt he and his friends might hear more of their unpleasant acquaintances. Noddy, Jerry knew, was not one to give up an object easily. In due time town was reached, the letters were mailed, and the supplies purchased. Then the auto was headed back toward camp. About five miles from the gold diggings, Ned, who sat on the front seat with Bob, who was steering, called out: "Hark! Don't you hear some one shouting?" Bob shut off the power and, in the silence which ensued, the boys heard a faint call. "Help! Help! Help!" "It's over to the left," said Ned. "No; it's to the right, up on top of that hill," announced Jerry. They all listened intently, and it was evident that Jerry was correct. The cries could be heard a little more plainly now. "Help! Hurry up and help!" called the voice. "I'm down in a hole!" The boys jumped from the auto and ran to the top of the hill. At the summit they found an abandoned mine shaft. Leaning over this they heard groans issuing from it, and more cries for aid. "Who's there?" asked Jerry. "Professor Uriah Snodgrass, A. M., Ph.D., F. R. G. S., B. A. and A. B. H." "Our old friend, the professor!" exclaimed Ned. "How did you ever get there?" he called down the shaft. "Never mind how I got here, my dear young friend," expostulated the professor, "but please be so kind as to help me out. I came down a ladder, but the wood was rotten, and when I tried to climb out, the rungs broke. Have you a rope?" "Run back to the machine and get one," said Jerry to Bob. "We'll have to pull him up, just as we did the day he fell over the cliff." In a few minutes Bob came back with the rope. A noose was made in one end and this was lowered to the professor. "Put it around your chest, under your arms, and we will haul you up," said Jerry. "I can't!" cried the professor. "Why not?" "Can't use my hands." "Are your arms broken?" asked the boy, afraid lest his friend had met with an injury. "No, my dear young friend, my arms are not broken. I am not hurt at all." "Then, why can't you put the rope under your arms?" "Because I have a very rare specimen of a big, red lizard in one hand, and a strange kind of a bat in the other. They are both alive, and if I let them go to fix the rope they'll get away, and they're worth five hundred dollars each. I'd rather stay here all my life than lose these specimens." "How will we ever get him up?" asked Bob. CHAPTER II. THE PROFESSOR'S STORY. For a little while it did seem like a hard proposition. The professor could not, or rather would not, aid himself. Once the rope was around him it would be an easy matter for the boys to haul him out of the hole. "If we could lasso him it would be the proper thing," said Bob. "I have it!" exclaimed Ned. He began pulling up the rope from where it dangled down into the abandoned shaft. "What are you going to do?" asked Jerry. "I'll show you," replied Ned, adjusting the rope around his chest, under his arms. "Now if you two will lower me into the hole I'll fasten this cable on the professor and you can haul him up. Then you can yank me out, and it will be killing two birds with one stone." "More like hanging two people with one rope," laughed Bob. But Ned's plan was voted a good one. Jerry and Bob lowered him carefully down the shaft, until the slacking of the rope told that he was at the bottom. In a little while they heard a shout: "Haul away!" It was quite a pull for the two boys, for, though the professor was a small man, he was no lightweight. Hand over hand the cable was hauled until, at last, the shining bald head of the naturalist was observed emerging from the black hole of the abandoned mine. "Easy, easy, boys!" he cautioned, as soon as his chin was above the surface. "I've got two rare specimens with me, and I don't want them harmed." When Jerry and Bob had pulled Professor Snodgrass up as far as possible, by means of the rope, the naturalist rested his elbows on the edge of the shaft and wiggled the rest of the way out by his own efforts. In one hand was a big lizard, struggling to escape, and in the other was a large bat, flapping its uncanny wings. "Ah, I have you safe, my beauties!" exclaimed the collector. "You can't get away from me now!" He placed the reptile and bat in his green specimen-box, which was on the ground a short distance away, his face beaming with pride over his achievement, though in queer contrast to his disordered appearance, for he had fallen in the mud of the mine, his clothes were all dirt, his hat was gone and he looked as ruffled as a wet hen. "Much obliged to you, boys," he said, coming over to Bob and Jerry. "I might have stayed there forever if you hadn't come along. Seems as though I am always getting into trouble. Do you remember the day I fell over the cliff with Broswick and Nestor, and you pulled us up with the auto?" "I would say we did," replied Jerry. "But now we must pull Ned up." Once more the rope was lowered down the shaft and in a few minutes Ned was hauled up safely. "It's almost as deep as our mine shaft," he said, as he brushed the dirt from his clothes, "but I didn't see any gold there, for it's as dark as a pocket. How did you come to go down, professor?" "I suspected I might get some specimens in such a place," replied the naturalist, "so I just went down, and I had excellent luck, most excellent!" "It's a good thing you think so," put in Jerry. "Most people would call it bad to get caught at the bottom of a mine shaft." "Oh, it wasn't so bad," went on the professor, casting his eyes over the ground in search of any stray specimens of snakes or bugs. "I had my candle with me until I lost it, just after I caught the lizard and bat. I could have come up all right if the ladder hadn't broken. It was quite a hole, for a fact. It reminds me of another big hole I once heard about." "What hole is that?" asked Ned. "Oh, that's quite a story, all about mysteries, buried cities and all that." "Tell us about it," suggested Jerry. "To-night, maybe," answered the naturalist. "I want to get back to camp now and attend to my specimens." The boys and the professor, the latter carrying his box of curiosities, were soon in the auto and speeding back to the gold mine. That night, sitting around the camp-fire, which blazed cheerfully, the boys asked Professor Snodgrass to tell them the story he had hinted at when they hauled him from the mine shaft. "Let me listen, too," said Jim Nestor, filling his pipe and stretching out on the grass. Then, in the silence of the early night, broken only by the crackle of the flames and the distantly heard hoot of owls or howl of foxes, the naturalist told what he knew of a buried city of ancient Mexico. "It was some years ago," he began, "that a friend of mine, a young college professor, was traveling in Mexico. He visited all the big places and then, getting tired of seeing the things that travelers usually see, he struck out into the wilds, accompanied only by an old Mexican guide. "He traveled for nearly a week, getting farther and farther away from civilization, until one night he found himself on a big level plain, at the extreme end of which there was a curiously shaped mountain. "He proposed to his guide that they camp for the night and proceed to the mountain the next day. The guide assented, but he acted so queerly that my friend wondered what the matter was. He questioned his companion, but all he could get out of him was that the mountain was considered a sort of unlucky place, and no one went there who could avoid it. "This made my friend all the more anxious to see what might be there, and he announced his intention of making the journey in the morning. He did so, but he had to go alone, for, during the night, his guide deserted him." "And what did he find at the mountain?" asked Bob. "A gold mine?" "Not exactly," replied the professor. "Maybe it was a silver lode," suggested Nestor. "There's plenty of silver in Mexico." "It wasn't a silver mine, either," went on the professor. "All he found was a big hole in the side of the mountain. He went inside and walked for nearly a mile, his only light being a candle. Then he came to a wall of rock. He was about to turn back, when he noticed an opening in the wall. It was high up, but he built a platform of stones up and peered through the opening." "What did he see?" asked Jerry. "The remains of an ancient, buried city," replied Professor Snodgrass. "The mountain was nothing more than a big mound of earth, with an opening in the top, through which daylight entered. The shaft through the side led to the edge of the city. My friend gazed in on the remains of a place thousands of years old. The buildings were mostly in ruins, but they showed they had once been of great size and beauty. There were wide streets with what had been fountains in them. There was not a vestige of a living creature. It was as if some pestilence had fallen on the place and the people had all left." "Did he crawl through the hole in the wall and go into the deserted city?" asked Nestor, with keen interest. "He wanted to," answered the naturalist, "but he thought it would be risky, alone as he was. So he made a rough map of as much of the place as he could see, including his route in traveling to the mountain. Then he retraced his steps, intending to organize a searching party of scientists and examine the buried city." "Did he do it?" came from Bob, who was listening eagerly. "No. Unfortunately, he was taken ill with a fever as soon as he got back to civilization, and he died shortly afterward." "Too bad," murmured Jerry. "It would have been a great thing to have given to the world news of such a place in Mexico. It's all lost now." "Not all," said the professor, in a queer voice. "Why not? Didn't you say your friend died?" "Yes; but before he expired he told me the story and gave me the map." "Where is it?" asked Nestor, sitting up and dropping his pipe in his excitement. "There!" exclaimed the professor, extending a piece of paper, which he had brought forth from his possessions. Eagerly, they all bent forward to examine the map in the light of the camp-fire. The drawing was crude enough, and showed that the buried city lay to the east of the chain of Sierra Madre Mountains, and about five hundred miles to the north of the City of Mexico. "There's the place," said the professor, pointing with his finger to the buried city. "How I wish I could go there! It has always been my desire to follow the footsteps of my unfortunate friend. Perhaps I might discover the buried city. I could investigate it, make discoveries and write a book about it. That would be the height of my ambition. But I'm afraid I'll never be able to do it." For a few minutes there was silence about the camp-fire, each one thinking of the mysterious city that was not so very many miles from them. Suddenly Ned jumped to his feet and gave a yell. "Whoop!" he cried. "I have it! It will be the very thing!" CHAPTER III. NEWS OF NODDY NIXON. "What's the matter? Bit by a kissin' bug?" asked Nestor, as Ned was capering about. "Nope! I'm going to find that buried city," replied Ned. "He's loony!" exclaimed the miner. "He's been sleepin' in the moonlight. That's a bad thing to do, Ned." "I'm not crazy," spoke the boy. "I have a plan. If you don't want to listen to it, all right," and he started for the cabin. "What is it, tell us, will you?" came from the professor, who was in earnest about everything. "I just thought we might make a trip to Mexico in the automobile, and hunt for that lost city," said Ned. "We could easily make the trip. It would be fun, even if we didn't find the place, and the gold mine is now in good shape, so that we could leave, isn't it, Jim?" "Oh, I can run the mine, all right," spoke Nestor. "If you boys want to go traipsin' off to Mexico, why, go ahead, as far as I'm concerned. Better ask your folks first, though. I reckon you an' the professor could make the trip, easy enough, but I won't gamble on your finding the buried city, for I've heard such stories before, an' they don't very often come true." "Dearly as I would like to make the trip in the automobile, and sure as I feel that we could do it, I think we had better sleep on the plan," said Professor Snodgrass. "If you are of the same mind in the morning we will consider it further." "I'd like to go, first rate," came from Jerry. "Same here," put in Bob. That night each of the boys dreamed of walking about in some ancient towns, where the buildings were of gold and silver, set with diamonds, and where the tramp of soldiers' feet resounded on the paved courtyards of the palaces of the Montezumas. "Waal," began Nestor, who was up early, making the coffee, when the boys turned out of their bunks, "air ye goin' to start for Mexico to-day, or wait till to-morrow?" "Don't you think we could make the trip?" asked Jerry, seriously. "Oh, you can make it, all right, but you'll have troubles. In the first place, Mexico ain't the United States, an' there's a queer lot of people, mostly bad, down there. You'll have to be on the watch all the while, but if you're careful I guess you'll git along. But come on, now, help git breakfust." Through the meal, though the boys talked little, it was evident they were thinking of nothing but the trip to Mexico. "I'm going to write home now and find if I can go," said Ned. Jerry and Bob said they would do the same, and soon three letters were ready to be sent. After their usual round of duties at the mine, which consisted in making out reports, dealing out supplies, and checking up the loads of ore, the boys went to town in the auto to mail their letters. It was a pleasant day for the trip, and they made good time. "It will be just fine if we can go," said Bob. "Think of it, we may find the buried city and discover the stores of gold hidden by the inhabitants." "I guess all the gold the Mexicans ever had was gobbled up by the Spaniards," put in Jerry. "But we may find a store of curios, relics and other things worth more than gold," added Ned. "If we take the professor with us that's what he would care about more than money. I do hope we can go." "It's going to be harder to find than the lost gold mine was," said Jerry. "That map the professor has isn't much to go by." "Oh, it will be fun hunting for the place," went on Bob. "We may find the city before we know it." In due time the boys reached town and mailed their letters. There was some excitement in the village over a robbery that had occurred, and the sheriff was organizing a posse to go in search of a band of horse thieves. "Don't you want to go 'long?" asked the official of the boys, whom he knew from having aided them in the battle at the mine against Noddy Nixon and his friends some time before. "Come along in the choo-choo wagon. I'll swear you in as special deputies." "No, thanks, just the same," Jerry said. "We are pretty busy up at the diggings and can't spare the time." "Like to have you," went on the sheriff, genially. "You could make good time in the gasolene gig after those hoss thieves." But the boys declined. They had been through enough excitement in securing the gold mine to last them for a while. "We must stop at the store and get some bacon," said Ned. "Nestor told me as we were coming away. There's none at the camp." Bidding the sheriff good-by, and waiting until he had ridden off at the head of his forces, the boys turned their auto toward the general store, located on the main street of Rockyford. "Howdy, lads!" exclaimed the proprietor, as he came to the door to greet them. "What is it to-day, gasolene or cylinder oil?" "Bacon," replied Jerry. "Got some prime," the merchant said. "Best that ever come off a pig. How much do you want?" "Twenty pounds will do this time," answered Jerry. "We may not be here long, and we don't want to stock up too heavily." "You ain't thinkin' of goin' back East, are ye?" exclaimed the storekeeper. "More likely to go South," put in Ned. "We were thinking of Mexico." "You don't say so!" cried the vendor of bacon and other sundries. "Got another gold mine in sight down there?" "No; but----" and then Ned subsided, at a warning punch in the side from Jerry, who was not anxious to have the half-formed plans made public. "You was sayin'----" began the storekeeper, as if desirous of hearing more. "Oh, we may take a little vacation trip down into Mexico," said Jerry, in a careless tone. "We've been working pretty hard and we need a rest. But nothing has been decided yet." "Mexico must be quite a nice place," went on the merchant. "What makes you think so?" asked Bob. "I heard of another automobilin' party that went there not long ago." "Who was it?" spoke Jerry. "Some chap named Dixon or Pixon or Sixon, I forget exactly what it was." "Was it Nixon?" asked Jerry. "That's it! Noddy Nixon, I remember now. He had a chap with him named Perry or Ferry or Kerry or----" "Bill Berry, maybe," suggested Bob. "That was it! Berry. Queer what a poor memory I have for names. And there was another with him. Let's see, I have it; no, that wasn't it. Oh, yes, Hensett!" "You mean Dalsett," put in Ned. "That's it! Dalsett! And there was another named Jack Pender. There, I bet I've got that right." "You have," said Jerry. "You say they went to Mexico?" "You see, it was this way," the storekeeper went on. "It was about three weeks ago. They come up in a big automobile, like yours, an' bought a lot of stuff. I kind of hinted to find out where they was headed for, an' all the satisfaction I got was that that there Nixon feller says as how he guessed Mexico would be the best place for them, as the United States Government hadn't no control down there. Then one of the others says Mexico would suit him. So I guess they went. Now, is there anything else I can let you have?" "Thanks, this will be all," replied Jerry, paying for the bacon. The boys waited until they were some distance on the road before they spoke about the news the storekeeper had told them. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Noddy and his gang had gone to Mexico," said Ned. "That's the safest place for them, after what they did." "I wish they weren't there, if we are to take a trip in that country," put in Bob. "It's a big place, I guess they won't bother us," came from Jerry. But he was soon to find that Mexico was not big enough to keep Noddy and his crowd from making much trouble and no little danger for him and his friends. They arrived at camp early in the afternoon and told Nestor the news they had heard. He did not attach much importance to it, as he was busy over an order for new mining machinery. There was plenty for the boys to do about camp, and soon they were so occupied that they almost forgot there was such a place as Mexico. CHAPTER IV. OVER THE RIO GRANDE. A week later, during which there had been busy days at the mining camp, the boys received answers to their letters. They came in the shape of telegrams, for the lads had asked their parents to wire instead of waiting to write. Each one received permission to make the trip into the land of the Montezumas. "Hurrah!" yelled Bob, making an ineffectual attempt to turn a somersault, and coming down all in a heap. "What's the matter?" asked Nestor, coming out of the cabin. "Wasp sting ye?" "We can go to Mexico!" cried Ned, waving the telegram. "Same thing," replied the miner. "Ye'll git bit by sand fleas, tarantulas, scorpions, centipedes, horse-flies an' rattlesnakes, down there. Better stay here." "Is it as bad as that?" asked Bob. "If it is I'll get the finest collection of bugs the college ever saw," put in Professor Snodgrass. "Well, it may not be quite as bad, but it's bad enough," qualified Nestor. "But don't let me discourage you. Go ahead, this is a free country." So it was arranged. The boys decided they would start in three days, taking the professor with them. "And we'll find that buried city if it's there," put in Ned. The next few days were busy ones. At Nestor's suggestion each one of the boys had a stout money-belt made, in which they could carry their cash strapped about their waists. They were going into a wild country, the miner told them, where the rights of people were sometimes disregarded. Then the auto was given a thorough overhauling, new tires were put on the rear wheels, and a good supply of ammunition was packed up. In addition, many supplies were loaded into the machine, and Professor Snodgrass got an enlarged box made for his specimens, as well as two new butterfly nets. The boys invested in stout shoes and leggins, for they felt they might have to make some explorations in a wild country. A good camp cooking outfit was taken along, and many articles that Nestor said would be of service during the trip. "Your best way to go," said the miner, "will be to scoot along back into New Mexico for a ways, then take over into Texas, and strike the Rio Grande below where the Conchas River flows into it. This will save you a lot of mountain climbing an' give you a better place to cross the Rio Grande. At a place about ten miles below the Conchas there is a fine flat-boat ferriage. You can take the machine over on that." The boys promised to follow this route. Final preparations were made, letters were written home, the auto was gone over for the tenth time by Jerry, and having received five hundred dollars each from Nestor, as their share in the mine receipts up to the time they left, they started off with a tooting of the auto horn. "That's more money than I ever had at one time before," said Bob, patting his money-belt as he settled himself comfortably down in the rear seat of the car, beside Professor Snodgrass. "Money is no good," said the naturalist. "No good?" "No; I'd rather catch a pink and blue striped sand flea, which is the rarest kind that exists, than have all the money in the world. If I can get one of them or even a purple muskrat, and find the buried city, that will be all I want on this earth." "I certainly hope we find the buried city," spoke up Ned, who was listening to the conversation, "but I wouldn't care much for a purple muskrat." "Well, every one to his taste," said the professor. "We may find both." The journey, which was to prove a long one, full of surprises and dangers, was now fairly begun. The auto hummed along the road, making fast time. That night the adventurers spent in a little town in New Mexico. Their arrival created no little excitement, as it was the first time an auto had been in that section. Such a crowd of miners and cowboys surrounded the machine that Jerry, who was steering, had to shut off the power in a hurry to avoid running one man down. "I thought maybe ye could jump th' critter over me jest like they do circus hosses," explained the one who had nearly been hit by the car. Jerry laughingly disclaimed any such powers of the machine. Two days later found them in Texas, and, recalling Nestor's directions about crossing the Rio Grande, they kept on down the banks of that mighty river until they passed the junction where the Conchas flows in. So far the trip had been without accident. The machine ran well and there was no trouble with the mechanism or the tires. Just at dusk, one night, they came to a small settlement on the Rio Grande. They rode through the town until they came to a sort of house-boat on the edge of the stream. A sign over the entrance bore the words: FERRY HERE. "This is the place we're looking for, I guess," said Jerry. He drove the machine up to the entrance and brought it to a stop. A dark-featured man, with a big scar down one side of his face, slouched to the door. "Well?" he growled. "We'd like to be ferried over to the other side," spoke Jerry. "Come to-morrow," snarled the man. "We don't work after five o'clock." "But we'd like very much to get over to-night," went on Jerry. "And if it's any extra trouble we'd be willing to pay for it." "That's the way with you rich chaps that rides around in them horseless wagons," went on the ferrymaster. "Ye think a man has got to be at yer beck an' call all the while. I'll take ye over, but it'll cost ye ten dollars." "We'll pay it," said Jerry, for he observed a crowd of rough men gathering, whose looks he did not like, and he thought he and his friends would be better off on the other side of the stream, on Mexican territory. "Must be in a bunch of hurry," growled the man. "Ain't tryin' to git away from th' law, be ye?" "Not that we know of," laughed Jerry. "Looks mighty suspicious," snarled the man. "But, come on. Run yer shebang down on the boat, an' go careful or you'll go through the bottom. The craft ain't built to carry locomotives." Jerry steered the car down a slight incline onto a big flat boat, where it was blocked by chunks of wood so that it could not roll forward or backward. By this time the ferrymaster and his crew had come down to the craft. They were all rather unpleasant-looking men, with bold, hard faces, and it was evident that each one of the five, who made up the force that rowed the boat across the stream, was heavily armed. They wore bowie-knives and carried two revolvers apiece. But the sight of armed men was no new one to the boys since their experience in the mining camp, and they had come to know that the chap who made the biggest display of an arsenal was usually the one who was the biggest coward, seldom having use for a gun or a knife. "All ready?" growled the ferryman. "All ready," called Jerry. He and the other boys, with the professor, had alighted from the auto and stood beside it on the flat boat. Pulling on the long sweeps, the men sent the boat out into the stream, which, at this point, was about a mile wide. Once beyond the shore the force of the current made itself felt, and it was no easy matter to keep the boat headed right. Every now and then the ferryman would cast anxious looks at the sky, and several times he urged the men to row faster. "Do you think it is going to storm, my dear friend?" asked the professor, in a kindly and gentle voice. "Think it, ye little bald-headed runt! I know it is!" exploded the man. "And if it ketches us out here there's goin' to be trouble." The sky was blacking up with heavy clouds, and the wind began to blow with considerable force. The boat seemed to make little headway, though the men strained at the long oars. "Row, ye lazy dogs!" exclaimed the pilot. "Do ye want to upset with this steam engine aboard? Row, if ye want to git ashore!" The men fairly bent the stout sweeps. The wind increased in violence, and quite high waves rocked the ferryboat. The sky was getting blacker. Jagged lightning came from the clouds, and the rumble of thunder could be heard. "Row, I tell ye! Row!" yelled the pilot, but the men could do no more than they were doing. The big boat tossed and rocked, and the automobile started to slide forward. "Fasten it with a rope!" cried Jerry, and aided by his companions they lashed the car fast. "Look out! We're in for it now!" shouted the ferryman. "Here comes the storm!" With a wild burst of sky artillery, the clouds opened amid a dazzling electrical display, and the rain came down in torrents. At the same time the wind increased to hurricane force, driving the boat before it like a cork on the waves. Three of the men lost their oars, and the craft, with no steerage way, was tossed from side to side. Then, as there came a stronger blast of the gale, the boat was driven straight ahead. "We're going to hit something!" yelled Jerry, peering through the mist of rain. "Hold fast, everybody!" The next instant there was a resounding crash, and the sound of breaking and splintering wood. [Illustration: THE NEXT INSTANT THERE WAS A RESOUNDING CRASH.] CHAPTER V. A THIEF IN THE NIGHT. The shock was so hard that every one on the ferryboat was knocked down, and the auto, breaking from the restraining ropes, ran forward and brought up against the shelving prow of the scow. "Here, where you fellers goin'?" demanded a voice from amid the scene of wreckage and confusion. "What do ye mean by tryin' t' smash me all to splinters?" At the same time this remonstrance was accompanied by several revolver shots. Then came a volley of language in choice Spanish, and the noise of several men chopping away at planks and boards. The wind continued to blow and the rain to fall, while the lightning and thunder were worse than before. But the ferryboat no longer tossed and pitched on the storm-lashed river. It remained stationary. "Now we're in for it," shouted the ferryman, as soon as he had scrambled to his feet. "A nice kettle of fish I'm in for takin' this automobile over on my boat!" "What has happened?" asked Jerry, trying to look through the mist of falling rain, and seeing nothing but a black object, as large as a house, looming up before him. "Matter!" exclaimed the pilot. "We've gone and smashed plumb into Don Alvarzo's house-boat and done no end of damage. Wait until he makes you fellers pay for it." "It wasn't our fault," began Jerry. "You were in charge of the ferryboat. We are only passengers. Besides, we couldn't stop the storm from coming up." "Tell that to Don Alvarzo," sneered the ferryman. "Maybe he'll believe you. But here he comes himself, and we can see what has happened." Several Mexicans bearing lanterns now approached. At their head was a tall, swarthy man, wearing a big cloak picturesquely draped over his shoulders, velvet trousers laced with silver, and a big sombrero. By the lantern light it could be seen that the ferryboat had jammed head-on against the side of a large house-boat moored on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. So hard had the scow rammed the other craft that the two were held together by a mass of splintered wood, the front of the ferryboat breaking a hole in the side of the house-boat and sticking there. The automobile had nearly gone overboard. Don Alvarzo began to speak quickly in Spanish, pointing to the damage done. "I beg your pardon," said Jerry, taking off his cap and bowing in spite of the rain that was still coming down in torrents. "I beg your pardon, señor, but if you would be so kind as to speak in English we could understand it better." "Certainly, my dear young sir," replied Don Alvarzo, bowing in his turn, determined not to be outdone by an _Americano_. "I speak English also. But what is this? _Diablo!_ I am taking my meal on my house-boat. I smoke my cigarette, and am thankful that I am not out in the storm. Presto! There comes a crash like unto that the end of the world is nigh! I rise! I run! I fire my revolver, thinking it may be robbers! My _Americano_ manager he calls out! Now, if you please, what is it all about?" "The storm got the best of the ferryboat," said Jerry. "My friends and myself, including Professor Uriah Snodgrass, of whom you may have heard, for he is a great scientist----" "I salute the professor," interrupted Don Alvarzo, bowing to the naturalist. "Well, we are going to make a trip through Mexico," went on Jerry. "We engaged this man," pointing to the ferrymaster, "to take us over the river in his boat. Unfortunately we crashed into yours. It was not our fault." Angry cries from the Mexicans who stood in a half circle about Don Alvarzo on the deck of the house-boat showed that they understood this talk, but did not approve of it. "_Americanos_ pigs! Make pay!" called out one man. "We're not pigs, and if this accident is our fault we will pay at once," said Jerry, hotly. "There, there, señor," said the Don, motioning to his man to be quiet. "We will consider this. It appears that you are merely passengers on the ferryboat. The craft was in charge of Señor Jenkins, there, whom I very well know. He will pay me for the damage, I am sure." "You never made a bigger mistake in your life!" exclaimed Jenkins. "If there's any payin' to be done, these here automobile fellers will have to do it. I'm out of pocket now with chargin' 'em only ten dollars, for three of my oars are lost." "Very well, then, we will let the law take its course," said the Don. "Here!" he called to his men, "take the ferry captain into custody. We'll see who is to pay." "Rather than have trouble and delay we would be willing to settle for the damages," spoke up Jerry. "How much is it?" "I will have to refer you to Señor Jones, my manager," said the Mexican. "What's all the row about?" interrupted a voice, and a tall, lanky man came forward into the circle of lantern light. "People can't expect to smash boats an' not pay for 'em." "We are perfectly willing to pay," said Jerry. "Well, if there ain't my old friend Professor Snodgrass!" cried Jones, jumping down on the flat-boat and shaking hands with the naturalist. "Well, well, this is a sight for sore eyes. I ain't seen ye since I was janitor in your laboratory in Wellville College. How are ye?" The professor, surprised to meet an acquaintance under such strange circumstances, managed to say that he was in good health. "Well, well," went on Jones, "I'll soon settle this. Look here, Don Alvarzo," he went on, "these is friends of mine. If there's any damage----" "Oh, I assure you, not a penny, not a penny!" exclaimed the Mexican. "I regret that my boat was in their way. I beg a thousand pardons. Say not a word more, my dear professor and young friends, but come aboard and partake of such poor hospitality as Don Miguel Fernandez Alvarzo can offer. I am your most humble servant." The boys and the professor were glad enough of the turn events had taken. At a few quick orders from Jones and the Don, the Mexicans and the ferry captain's crew backed the scow away from the house-boat. A landing on shore was made, the automobile run off, and the ferryman having been paid his money, with something extra for the lost oars, pulled off into the rain and darkness, growling the while. "Now you must come in out of the rain," said Don Alvarzo, as soon as the auto had been covered with a tarpaulin, carried in case of bad weather. "We can dry and feed you, at all events." It was a pleasant change from the storm outside to the warm and well-lighted house-boat. The thunder and lightning had ceased, but the rain kept up and the wind howled unpleasantly. "I regret that your advent into this wonderful land of Mexico should be fraught with such inauspicious a beginning as this outburst of the elements," spoke Don Alvarzo, with a bow, as he ushered his guests into the dining-room. "Oh, well, we're used to bad weather," said Bob, cheerfully. In a little while the travelers had divested themselves of their wet garments and donned dry ones from their valises that had been brought in from the auto. Soon they sat down to a bountiful meal in which red peppers, garlic and frijoles, with eggs and chicken, formed a prominent part. Jones, the Don's manager, ate with them, and told how, in his younger days, he had worked at a college where Professor Snodgrass had been an instructor. Supper over, they all gathered about a comfortable fire and, in answer to questions from Don Alvarzo, the boys told something of their plans, not, however, revealing their real object. "I presume you are searching for silver mines," said the Don, with a laugh and a sly wink. "Believe me, all the silver and gold, too, is taken out of my unfortunate country. You had much better go to raising cattle. Now, I have several nice ranches I could sell you. What do you say? Shall we talk business?" But Jerry, assuming the rôle of spokesman, decided they had no inclination to embark in business just yet. They might consider it later, he said. The Don looked disappointed, but did not press the point. The evening was passed pleasantly enough, and about nine o'clock, as the travelers showed signs of fatigue, Jones suggested that beds might be agreeable. "I am sorry I cannot give you sleeping apartments together," remarked the Don. "I can put two of you boys in one room, give the professor another small room, and the third boy still another. It is the best arrangement I can make." "That will suit us," replied Jerry. "Ned and I will bunk together." "Very well; if you will follow my man he will escort you to your rooms," went on the Mexican. "Perhaps the professor will sit up and smoke." The naturalist said he never smoked, and, besides, he was so tired that bed was the best place for him. So he followed the boys, and soon the travelers were lighted to their several apartments. Ned and Jerry found themselves together, the professor had a room at one end of a long gangway and Bob an apartment at the other end. Good-nights were called, and the adventurers prepared to get whatever rest they might. As Ned and Jerry were getting undressed they heard a low knock on their door. "Who's there?" asked Jerry. "Hush! Not so loud!" came in cautious tones. "This is Jones. Keep your guns handy, that's all. I can't tell you any more," and then the boys heard him moving away. "Well, I must say that's calculated to induce sleep," remarked Ned. "Keep your guns handy! I wonder if we've fallen into a robber's den?" "I don't like the looks of things," commented Jerry. "The Don may be all right, and probably is, but he has a lot of ugly-looking Mexicans on his boat. I guess we'll watch out. I hope Jones will warn the others." There came a second knock on the door. "What is it?" called Jerry, in a whisper. "I've warned your friends," replied Jones. "Now watch out. I can't say any more." His footsteps died away down the gangway. Jerry and Ned looked at each other. "I guess we'll sit up the rest of the night," said Ned. They started their vigil. But they were very tired and soon, before either of them knew it, they were nodding. Several times they roused themselves, but nature at length gained the mastery and soon they were both stretched out asleep on the bed. About three o'clock in the morning there came a cautious trying of the door of the room where Ned and Jerry were sleeping. Soft footsteps sounded outside. If ever the boys needed to be awake it was now, for there was a thief in the night stealing in upon them. CHAPTER VI. INTO THE WILDERNESS. Jerry had a curious dream. He thought he was back in Cresville and was playing a game of ball. He had reached second base safely and was standing there when the player on the other side grabbed him by his belt and began to pull him away. "Here! Stop that! It's not in the game!" exclaimed Jerry, struggling to get away. So real was the effort that he awakened. He looked up, and there, standing over him in the darkness, was a dim form. "Silence!" hissed a voice. "One move and I'll kill you. Remain quiet and you shall not be harmed!" Jerry had sense enough to obey. He was wide awake now and knew that he was at the mercy of a Mexican robber. The man was struggling to undo the lad's money-belt about his waist, and it was this that had caused the boy's vivid dream. Jerry had been kicking his feet about rather freely, but now he stretched out and submitted to the mauling to which the robber was subjecting him. If only Ned would awake, Jerry thought, for Ned, he knew, had his revolver ready in his hand. With a yank the thief took off Jerry's belt containing the money. "Lie still or you die!" the fellow exclaimed. Then he moved over to where Ned reclined on the bed. Jerry could see more plainly now, for the storm had ceased, the moon had risen and a stray beam came in the side window of the house-boat. The robber stretched out his hand to Ned's waist. He was about to reach under the coat and unbuckle the money-belt, when Ned suddenly sat upright. In his hand he held his revolver, which he pointed full in the face of the marauder. "Drop that knife!" exclaimed Ned, for the Mexican held a sharp blade in his hand. "Bah!" the fellow exclaimed, but the steel fell with a clang to the floor. "Now lay the money-belt on the bed, if you don't want me to shoot!" said the boy, pushing the cold steel of the weapon against the Mexican's face. "Pardon, señor, it was all a joke! Don't shoot!" the fellow uttered, in a trembling voice, at the same time tossing the belt over to Jerry, who had drawn his own revolver from under the pillow where he had placed it. "Light the candle, Jerry," went on Ned, "while I keep him covered with the gun. We'll see what sort of a chap he is." Jerry rose to find matches. But the robber did not wait for this. With a bound he leaped to the window. One jump took him through, and a second later a splash in the river outside told how he had escaped. Ned ran to the casement and fired two shots, not with any intention of hitting the man, but to arouse his friends. In an instant there was confused shouting, lights gleamed in several rooms, and Don Alvarzo came hurrying in. "What's the matter? What is it all about? Is any one killed?" he cried. "Nothing much has happened," said Ned, as coolly as possible under the circumstances. "A burglar got in the room and got out again." "A burglar? A thief? Impossible! In my house-boat? Where did he go? Did he get anything?" "He got Jerry's money-belt," said Ned, "but----" "A money-belt! Santa Maria! Was there much in it?" and Ned thought he saw a gleam come into the Don's eyes. "Oh, he didn't get it to keep!" went on Jerry. "We both fell asleep, and the fellow robbed Jerry first. I was awakened by feeling Jerry accidentally kick me. I saw the robber take his belt, but when he came for mine I was ready for him. I made him give Jerry's back----" "Made him give it back!" exclaimed Don Alvarzo, and Ned fancied he detected disappointment in his host's face. "You are a brave lad. Where did the fiend go?" "Out of the window," answered Ned. "I fired at him to give him a scare." "I am disgraced that such a thing should happen in my house!" exclaimed the Don, and this time it was Jerry who noticed Jones, the American manager, winking one eye as he stood behind his employer. "I am disgraced," went on the Mexican. "But never mind, I shall inform the authorities and they will hang every robber they catch to please me." "I'm robbed! I'm robbed!" exclaimed Professor Snodgrass, bursting into the room. He was attired in blue pajamas, and his bald head was shining in the candle light. "What did they get from you?" asked the Don, his face once more showing interest. "The rascals took three fine specimens of sand fleas from me!" exclaimed the naturalist. "The loss is irreparable!" "_Diablo!_" exclaimed the Don, under his breath. "Three sand fleas! Ah, these crazy _Americanos_!" "I fancy you can get more, Professor," said Jones, with a laugh. "Well, there seems to be no great damage done. I reckon we can all go back to bed now." The servants, who had been aroused by the commotion, went back to their rooms. In a little while the Don, with many and profuse apologies, withdrew, and the professor and Bob returned to their apartments. Jones was the last to go. "I told you to be on the watch," he whispered, as he prepared to leave. "I overheard some of the rascals making up a game to relieve you of some of your cash. I wouldn't say the Don was in on it, but the sooner you get out of this place the better. You can go to sleep now. There is no more danger. Lucky one of you happened to wake up in time or you'd have been cleaned out. Good-night." "Good-night," said Ned and Jerry, as they locked their door, which had been opened by false keys. They went to bed and slept soundly until daybreak, in spite of the excitement. Nor were they disturbed again. Don Alvarzo talked of nothing but the attempted robbery the next morning at breakfast. He declared he had sent one of his men post-haste to inform the authorities, who, he said, would dispatch a troop of soldiers to search for the miscreant. "I am covered with confusion that my guests should be so insulted," he said. But, somehow, his voice did not ring true. The boys and the professor, however, thanked him for his consideration and hospitality. "I think we must be traveling now," announced Jerry. "Will you not pass another night under my roof?" asked the Don. "I promise you that you will not be awakened by robbers again." "No, thank you," said Jerry. Afterward, he said the Don might carry out his promise too literally, and take means to prevent them from waking if thieves did enter their rooms. So, amid protestations that he was disappointed at the shortness of their stay, and begging them to come and see him again, the Don said farewell. "I think, perhaps, we ought to pay for the damage to your boat," said Jerry, not wishing to be under any obligations to the Mexican. "Do not insult me, I beg of you!" exclaimed the Don, and he really seemed so hurt that Jerry did not press it. Then, with a toot of the horn, the auto started off on the trip through Mexico. It was a beautiful day, and the boys were enchanted with the scenery. Behind them lay the broad Rio Grande, while off to the right were the foothills that increased in height and size until they became the mighty mountains. The foliage was deep green from the recent shower, and the sun shone, making the whole country appear a most delightful place. "It looked as if our entrance into Mexico was not going to be very pleasant," said Jerry, "especially during the storm and the smash-up with the house-boat. But to-day it couldn't be better." "That was a close call you and Ned had," put in Bob. "I wonder why they didn't tackle me?" "Because you are so good-natured-looking the robbers knew you never had any money," replied Jerry, with a laugh. "I wonder what Chunky would have done if a Mexican brigand had demanded his money-belt?" "He could have had it without me making a fuss," replied the stout youth. "Money is a good thing, but I think more of myself than half a dozen money-belts." "Ah, my poor fleas!" exclaimed the professor. "I wonder if the robber killed them." "I guess they hopped away," suggested Ned. "No, they would never leave me," went on the naturalist. "Well, I'm glad I haven't such an intimate acquaintance with them as that," commented Jerry, with a laugh. "Oh, they were tame. They never bit me once," the professor said, with pride in his voice. With Ned at the steering-wheel, the auto made good time. The road was a fair one, skirting the edge of a vast plain for several miles. About noon the path led into a dense forest, where there was barely room for the machine to pass the thick trees and vines that bordered the way on either side. "I hope we don't get caught in this wilderness," said Ned, making a skilful turn to avoid a fallen tree. "Supposing we stop now and get dinner," suggested Jerry. "It's past noon, and I'm hungry." The plan was voted a good one. The portable stove that burned gasolene was set going, coffee was made and some canned chicken was warmed in a frying pan. With some seasoning and frijoles Don Alvarzo had given them the boys made an excellent meal. After a rest beneath the trees the boys started off in their auto again. The road widened when they had gone a few miles, and improved so that traveling was easier. About dusk they came to a small village, in the centre of which was a comfortable-looking inn. "How will that do to stop at overnight?" asked Ned. "First rate," answered Jerry. The auto was steered into the yard, and the proprietor of the place came out, bowing and smiling. "Your friends have just preceded you, señors," he said. "Our friends?" asked Jerry, in surprise. "_Si, señor._ Don Nixon and Don Pender. They were here not above an hour ago. I think they must be your friends, because they were in the same sort of an engine as yourselves." "Noddy Nixon here!" exclaimed Jerry. CHAPTER VII. A FIERCE FIGHT. The boys glanced at each other in blank astonishment. As for Professor Snodgrass, he was too occupied with chasing a little yellow tree-toad to pay much attention to anything but the pursuit of specimens. "We seem bound to cross the trail of Noddy sooner or later," remarked Ned. "Well, if he's ahead of us he can't be behind, that's one consolation." "Will the honorable señors be pleased to enter my poor inn?" spoke the Mexican, bowing low. "I suppose we may as well stop here," said Jerry, in a low tone to his companions. "It looks like a decent place, and it will give Noddy a chance to get a good way ahead, which is what we want. But I don't see what he means by going on when it will soon be night." The auto was run under a shed, its appearance causing some fright among the servants and a few travelers, who began to mutter their prayers in Spanish. The boys, escorted by the Mexican, then entered the hostelry. It was a small but decent-looking place, as Jerry had said. The boys were shown to rooms where, washing off some of the grime of their journey, they felt better. "Supper is ready," announced the innkeeper, who spoke fairly good English. "Where is the professor?" asked Ned, as the boys descended to the dining-room. "The last I saw of him he was climbing up the tree after that toad," answered Bob. "But here he comes now." The naturalist came hurrying into the room, clasping something in his hand. "I've got it! I've got it!" he shouted. "A perfect beauty!" The professor opened his fingers slightly to peer at his prize, when the toad, taking advantage of the opportunity, hopped on the floor and was rapidly escaping. "Oh, oh, he's got away!" the professor exclaimed. "Help me catch him, everybody! He's worth a thousand dollars!" The naturalist got down on his hands and knees and began crawling after the hopping tree-toad, while the boys could not restrain their laughter. A crowd of servants gathered in the doorway to watch the antics of the strange _Americano_. "There! I have you again, my beauty!" cried the professor, pouncing on his specimen in a corner of the room. "You shall not escape again!" and with that he popped the toad into a small specimen box which he always wore strapped on his back. "Tell me," began the innkeeper, in a low tone, sidling up to Jerry, "is your elderly friend, the bald-headed señor, is he--ah--um--is he a little, what you _Americanos_ call--er--wheels?" and he moved his finger with a circular motion in front of his forehead. "Not in the least," replied the boy. "He is only collecting specimens for his college." The Mexican shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands in an apologetic sort of way, but it was easy to see that he believed Professor Snodgrass insane, an idea that was shared by all the servants in the inn, for not one of them, during the adventurers' brief stay in the hotel, would approach him without muttering a prayer. "I wonder what we'll have to eat?" asked Ned, as with the others he prepared to sit down. The innkeeper clapped his hands, which signal served in lieu of a bell for the servants. In a little while a meal of fish, eggs, chocolate and chicken, with the ever-present frijoles and tortillas, was served. It tasted good to the hungry lads, though as Jerry remarked he would have preferred it just as much if there hadn't been so much red pepper and garlic in everything. "Water! Water! Quick!" cried Bob, after taking a generous mouthful of frijoles, which contained an extra amount of red pepper. "My mouth is on fire!" He swallowed a tumblerful of liquid before he had eased the smart caused by the fiery condiment. Thereafter he was careful to taste each dish with a little nibble before he indulged too freely. In spite of these drawbacks, the boys enjoyed their experience, and were interested in the novelty of everything they saw. "I wonder how we are to sleep?" said Jerry, after the meal was over. "I've heard that Mexican beds were none of the best." "You shall sleep the sleep of the just, señors," broke in the Mexican hotel keeper, coming up just as Jerry spoke. "My inn is full, every room is occupied, but you shall sleep _en el sereno_." "Well, as long as it's on a good bed in a room where the mosquitoes can't get in I shan't mind that," spoke Bob. "I don't know as I care much for scenery, but if it goes with the bed, why, all right." "You'll sleep in no room to-night," said Professor Snodgrass, who for the moment was not busy hunting specimens. "By '_en el sereno_' our friend means that you must sleep out of doors, under the stars. It is often done in this country. They put the beds out in the courtyard or garden and throw a mosquito net over them." "That's good enough," said Bob. "It won't be the first time we've slept in the open. Bring on the '_en el sereno_,'" and he laughed, the innkeeper joining in. The beds for the travelers were soon made up. They consisted of light cots of wood, with a few blankets on them. Placed out in the courtyard, under the trees, with the sky for a roof, the sleeping-places were indeed in the open. But the boys and Professor Snodgrass had no fault to find. They had partaken of a good meal, they were tired with their day's journey, and about nine o'clock voted to turn in. "We'll keep our revolvers handy this time," said Bob, "though I guess we won't need 'em." "Can't be too sure," was Ned's opinion, as he took off his shoes and placed his weapon under his pillow. It was not long before snores told that the travelers were sound asleep. For several hours the inn bustled with life, for the Mexicans did not seem to care much about rest. At length the place became quiet, and at midnight there was not a sound to be heard, save the noises of the forest, which was no great distance away, and the vibrations caused by the breathing of the slumberers. It was about two o'clock in the morning when Bob was suddenly awakened by feeling a hand passed lightly over his face. "Here!" he cried. "Get out of that!" "Silence!" hissed a voice in his ear. But Bob was too frightened to keep quiet. He gave a wild yell and tried to struggle to his feet. Some one thrust him back on the cot, and rough hands tried to rip off his money-belt. The boy fought fiercely, and struck out with both fists. "Wake up, Jerry and Ned!" he yelled. "We're being robbed. Shoot 'em!" The courtyard became a scene of wild commotion. It was dark, for the moon was covered with clouds, but as Jerry and Ned sat up, alarmed by Bob's voice, they could detect dim forms moving about among the trees. "The Mexicans are robbing us!" shouted Ned. He drew his revolver and fired in the air for fear of hitting one of his comrades. By the light of the weapon's flash he saw a man close to him. Bob aimed the pistol in the fellow's face and pulled the trigger. There was a report, followed by a loud yell. At the same time a thousand stars seemed to dance before Ned's eyes, and he fell back, knocked unconscious by a hard blow. Jerry had sprung to his feet, to be met by a blow in the face from a brawny fist. He quickly recovered himself, however, and grappled with his assailant. He found he was but an infant in the hands of a strong man. The boy tried to reach for his revolver, but just as his hand touched the butt of the weapon he received a stinging blow on the head and he toppled over backward, his senses leaving him. In the meanwhile Bob was still struggling with the robber who had attacked him. Fleshy as he was, Bob had considerable strength, and he wrestled with the fellow. They both fell to the ground and rolled over. In their struggles they got underneath one of the beds. "Let me go!" yelled Bob. At that instant he felt the ear of his enemy come against his mouth. The boy promptly seized the member in his teeth and bit it hard enough to make the fellow howl for mercy. Bob suddenly found himself released, and the robber, with a parting blow that made the boy's head sing, rolled away from under the bed and took to his heels. "Help! help! help!" cried Professor Snodgrass, as Bob tried to sit upright, for it was under the bed of the naturalist that the boy had rolled. In straightening up he had tipped the scientist, who, up to this point, had been sleeping soundly on the cot. "What is it? What has happened? Is it a fire? Has an earthquake occurred? Is the river rising? Has a tidal wave come in? Santa Maria! But what is all the noise about?" cried the landlord, rushing into the courtyard, bearing an ancient lantern. "What has happened, señors? Was your rest disturbed?" "Was our rest disturbed?" inquired Bob, in as sarcastic a tone as possible under the circumstances. "Well, I would say yes! A band of robbers attacked us." "A band of robbers! Santa Maria! Impossible! There are no robbers in Mexico!" and the innkeeper began to chatter volubly in Spanish. CHAPTER VIII. THE OLD MEXICAN. "Well, if they weren't robbers they were a first-class imitation," responded Bob. "There's Jerry and Ned knocked out, at any rate, and they nearly did for me. They would have, only I bit the chap's ear. I guess I'll know him again; he has my mark on him." "Bit his ear! The _Americano_ is brave! But we must see to the poor unfortunate señors! Robbers! Impossible!" By this time the whole inn was aroused and the courtyard was filled with servants and guests. Water was brought and with it Jerry and Ned were revived. "What happened?" began Jerry. "Oh, I remember now! Did they get our money?" "I guess they got yours and Ned's," said Bob, in sorrowful tones, as he noted his chums' disordered clothing and saw that the money-belts were gone. "They didn't get mine, though, so we're not in such bad luck, after all. How do you feel?" "As if a road-roller had gone over me," replied Jerry. "Same here," put in Ned, holding his head in his hands. "He must have given me a pretty good whack. Who was it robbed us?" "Are you sure you were robbed, señors?" asked the hotel keeper. "Perhaps you may have been dreaming." "Does that look as if it was only a nightmare?" asked Ned, showing a big lump on his head. "Or this?" added Jerry, showing his clothing cut with a knife where the robber had slashed it in order to take out the money-belt. "No, it was not a dream," murmured the innkeeper. "There must have been robbers here. I wonder who they were?" "They didn't leave their cards, so it's hard to say," remarked Jerry. "I don't suppose the burglars down here are in the habit of sending word in advance of their visit, or of telling the police where to find them after they commit a crime." "Never! Never!" exclaimed the Mexican host. "But speaking of the police, I must tell them about this some time to-morrow." "Any time will do," put in Ned. "We're in no hurry, you know." "I am glad of that," said the hotel keeper, in all seriousness. "Most _Americanos_ are in such a rush, and I have to go to market to-morrow. The next day will do very well. I thank you, señors. Now I bid you good-night, and pleasant dreams." "Well, he certainly does take things easy," said Jerry, when the innkeeper and his servants, with many polite bows, had withdrawn. "He don't seem to care much whether we were nearly killed or not. I guess this must be a regular occurrence down here." "I always heard the Mexican brigands were terrible fellows," said Professor Snodgrass. "Now I am sure of it. I am glad they did not get any of my specimens, however. All my treasures are safe." "But Ned and I have lost five hundred dollars each," put in Jerry. "You can get more from the gold mine," went on the professor. "Yes; but it may spoil our trip," said Ned. "I have my five hundred dollars," said Bob. "And I have nearly one thousand in bills," spoke the professor, in a whisper. "We will have enough. The robbers would never suspect me of carrying money. Listen; it is in the box with the big lizard and the bat, and no one will ever look there for it," and he chuckled in silent glee. "Then I guess we can go on," said Jerry. "But I wonder who it was robbed us?" "I suppose it was the Mexican brigands that hang about every hotel," said Ned. "I'm not so sure of that," went on Jerry. "You know Noddy Nixon and his crowd are not far off. It may have been they." "That's so; I never thought of them," said Ned. "Did you recognize any one?" "The fellow who grappled with me had a mask on," said Jerry. "But I thought I recognized that fellow Dalsett. However, I couldn't be sure." "I didn't get a chance to see my man," Ned added. "The fellow who came for me had a voice like Bill Berry's," put in Bob. "If I could see his ear I could soon tell." "It will be a good while before you see his ear," continued Jerry. "I wonder if it was Nixon's crowd, or only ordinary robbers? If we are to be attacked by Noddy and his gang all the way through Mexico the trip will not be very pleasant." "Well, there's only one thing certain, and that is, the money-belts are gone," put in Ned, gazing ruefully at his waist around which he had strapped his cash. "The next question is, who took them?" "Which same question is likely to remain unanswered for some time," interrupted Professor Snodgrass. "Now, don't worry, boys. We are still able to continue on our search for the buried city. This will teach us a lesson not to go to sleep again unless some one is on guard. The money loss is nothing compared to the possibility that one of us might have been killed, or some of my specimens stolen. Now we had better all go to bed again." "Shall we stand guard for the remainder of the night?" asked Bob. "I think it will not be necessary," spoke the professor. "The robbers are not likely to return." So, extinguishing the lantern which the innkeeper had left, the travelers once more sought their cots, on which they had a somewhat fitful rest until morning. At breakfast the innkeeper urged the travelers to spend a few days at his hotel, saying he had sent for a Government officer to come and make an investigation of the robbery. But the boys and the professor, thanking their host for his invitation, called for their bill, settled it, and were soon puffing away through the forest once more. For several hours they journeyed on beneath giant palms which lined either side of the road. The scenery was one unending vista of green, in which mingled brilliant-hued flowers. Wild parrots and other birds flitted through the trees and small animals rustled through the underbrush as the automobile dashed by. Jerry was at the steering wheel and was sending the car along at a good clip, when, as he suddenly rounded a curve he shut off the power and applied the brakes. Not a moment too soon was he, for he stopped the machine only a few feet from an aged Mexican, who was traveling along the road, aiding his faltering steps with a large, wooden staff. The Mexican glanced at the auto which, with throbbing breath, as the engine still continued to vibrate, seemed to fill him with terror. Suddenly he dropped to his knees and began to pray. "Be not afraid," Professor Snodgrass called to him, speaking in the Spanish language. "We are but poor travelers like yourself. We will not harm you." "Whence do you come in your chariot of fire?" asked the old man. "Ye are demons and no true men!" "We will not hurt you," said the naturalist, again. "See, we bring you gifts," and he held out to the Mexican a package of tobacco and a small hand-mirror. The old man's eyes brightened at the sight of them. He rose to his feet and took them, though his hands trembled. In a moment he had rolled a cigarette of the tobacco, and, puffing out great clouds of smoke, complacently gazed at his image in the looking-glass. "Truly ye are men and not demons," he said. "The tobacco is very good. But whence come ye, and whither do ye go?" "We are travelers from a far land," answered the professor. "Whither we go we scarcely know. We are searching for the unknown." The aged Mexican started. Then he gazed fixedly at the professor. "It may be that I can tell whither ye journey," he said. "For your kindness to me I am minded to look into the future for you. Shall I?" "No one can look into the future," answered the naturalist. "No one knows what is going to happen." For the professor was no believer in anything but what nature revealed to him. "Unbelievers! Unbelievers!" muttered the old man, blowing out a great cloud of smoke. "But ye shall see. I will read what is to happen for you." He sat down at the side of the road. In the dust he drew a circle. This he divided into twelve parts, and in one he placed a small quantity of powder, which he took from his sash. The powder he lighted with a match. There was a patch of fire, and a cloud of yellow smoke. For an instant the old man was hidden from view. Then his voice was heard. "Ye seek the unknown, hidden and buried city of ancient Mexico!" he said, in startling tones. "And ye shall find it. Yea, find it sooner than ye think, and in a strange manner. Look behind ye!" Involuntarily the boys and the professor turned. "Nothing there," grunted Ned, as he looked to where the old man had been seated. To his astonishment, as well as the surprise of the others, the aged Mexican had disappeared. CHAPTER IX. A VIEW OF THE ENEMY. "Where is he?" cried Bob. "He must have gone down through a hole in the earth," said Ned. "I didn't have my eyes off him three seconds. He didn't go down the road or we would have seen him, and he couldn't have run into the bushes on either side without making a great racket. He's a queer one." "Just like the East Indian jugglers I've read about," put in Jerry. "I think probably he was something on that order," agreed Professor Snodgrass. "Strange how he should have known about the buried city, and we have spoken to no one about it since we came to Mexico." "Let's look and see if we can find a trace of him," suggested Bob. The boys alighted from the car. They made a careful search around the spot where the old man had sat. There was the circle he had drawn in the dust, and the mark where the powder had burned, but not another trace of the Mexican could they find. They looked behind trees and rocks, but all they found was big toads and lizards that hopped and crawled away as they approached. The professor annexed several of the reptiles for specimens. "How do you explain it all?" asked Jerry of the naturalist, when they had taken their seats in the automobile again. "Have those men any supernatural powers?" "I do not believe they have," replied the professor. "They do some things that are hard to explain, but they are sharp enough to do their tricks under their own conditions, and they disappear before those who can see them have gotten over their momentary surprise." "The disappearing was the funny part of it," went on Jerry. "I can understand how he made the smoke. A pinch of gunpowder would produce that. But how did he dissolve himself into thin air?" "He didn't," replied the naturalist. "I'll tell you how that was done. It is a favorite trick in India. When he suddenly called to us to look behind us he took advantage of our momentary glance away to hide himself." "But where?" "Behind that big rock," and the naturalist pointed to a large one near where the Mexican had been sitting. "But we looked behind that," said Ned. "Yes, several minutes after the disappearance," went on the professor, with a laugh. "This was how he did it: He wore a long, gray cloak, which, perhaps, you didn't notice. It was exactly the color of the stone and was partly draped over it. It was there all the while he was doing his trick. I saw it, but thought nothing of it at the time. Now, when he had finished the hocus-pocus, and when our heads were turned, he just rolled himself up into a ball and got under the cloak by the stone. Of course, it looked as if he had dropped down through the earth." "But how about him getting away so completely that our search didn't reveal him?" asked Jerry. "I think he waited a while and then, when he heard us getting out of the automobile he took advantage of the confusion to crawl, still under his cloak, into the bushes, perhaps by a path he alone knew. There really is no mystery to it." "How about him telling us we were searching for the buried city?" asked Bob. "Wasn't that mind-reading?" "I think he knew that part of it," said the professor, "though it seemed strange to me at first. You must remember that the object of our trip was pretty freely talked of back in the gold camp. Some one may have come here from there before we started, and, in some manner, this old Mexican may have heard of us. He may even have been waiting for us. No; it looks queer when it happens, but reasoned out, it is natural enough. However, I am glad to know we are on the right road and will find what we are searching for, though the old man may be mistaken." "Shall we go forward again?" asked Jerry, resuming his place at the steering wheel. "Forward it is!" cried Ned. "Ho, for the buried city!" Once more the auto puffed along the forest road. It was warm with the heat of the tropics, and the boys were soon glad to take off their coats and collars. Even with the breeze created by the movement of the machine, it was oppressive. "I say, when are we going to eat?" asked Bob. "I know it's long past noon." "Wrong for once, Chunky," answered Ned, looking at his watch. "It's only eleven o'clock." "Well, here's a good place to stop and eat, anyhow," went on the stout lad, to whom eating never came amiss. "All right, we'll camp," put in Jerry, bringing the machine to a stop. It was rather pleasant in the shade of the forest in spite of the heat, and the boys enjoyed it very much. The gasolene stove was lighted and Ned made some chocolate, for, since their advent into Mexico the travelers had come to like this beverage, which almost every one down in that country drinks. With this and some frijoles and cold chicken brought from the inn, they made a good meal. "I'm going to hunt for some specimens," announced the professor. "You boys can rest here for an hour or so." With his green collecting box and his butterfly net the naturalist disappeared along a path that led through the forest. "I suppose he'll come back with a blue-nosed baboon or a flat-headed gila monster," said Ned. "He does find the queerest things." It was almost an hour later, when the boys were wondering what had become of the naturalist, that they heard faint shouts in the direction he had taken. "Hurry, boys!" the professor's voice called. "Hurry! Help! help! I'm caught!" "He's in trouble again!" exclaimed Ned. "We must go to his rescue!" "Have you got your revolver?" asked Jerry, as Ned was about to rush away. "No; it's in the auto." "Better get it. I'll take a rifle along. Bob, you bring the rope. No telling what has happened, and we may need all three." With rifle, revolver and rope the three boys rushed into the forest to the rescue of their friend. They could hear his shouts more plainly now. "Hurry or he'll kill me!" cried the professor. Running at top speed the boys emerged into a sort of clearing. There they saw a sight that filled them with terror. Professor Snodgrass was standing underneath a tree, from one of the lower branches of which a big snake had dropped its sinuous folds about him. The reptile was slowly winding its coils about the unfortunate man, tightening and tightening them. Its ugly head was within a few feet of the professor's face, and the man was striking at the snake with the butterfly net. "We're coming! We'll save you!" shouted Jerry. The boy started to run close to the naturalist, intending to get near enough to fire at the snake's head without danger of hitting the professor. "Look out!" yelled Bob, pointing to the ground in front of the tree. "There's another of the reptiles!" As he spoke a second snake reared its head from the grass, right in the path Jerry would have taken. Bob had warned him just in time. Jerry dropped to one knee. He took quick but careful aim at the snake on the ground and fired. The reptile thrashed about in a death struggle, for the bullet had crashed through its head. "Now for the other one!" cried Jerry. He ran in close to the reptile that was slowly crushing the professor to death. The unfortunate naturalist could no longer cry for help, so weak was he. Jerry placed the muzzle of the rifle close to the snake's head, and pulled the trigger. The ugly folds relaxed, the long, sinuous body straightened out and the professor would have fallen had not Jerry, dropping his gun, caught him. The other boys came to his aid, and they carried the naturalist to one side and placed him on the grass. Bringing water from a nearby spring, Bob soon restored the professor to his senses. "I'm all right," said the collector in a few minutes. "The breath was about squeezed out of me, though." "You had a narrow escape," said Ned. "Thanks to you boys, it ended fortunately," said the naturalist. "You see, I was trying to capture a new kind of tree-toad, and I didn't see the snake until it had me in its folds. I'll be more careful next time." In a little while the professor was able to walk. Jerry recovered his gun and the whole party made their way back to the auto. The camp utensils were soon packed up and the journey was resumed. "I wonder what sort of an inn we'll stop at to-night?" said Bob. "I hope they don't have any robbers." "We won't run any chances," spoke Ned. "We'll post a guard." For several hours the auto chugged along. As it came to the top of a hill the boys saw below them quite a good-sized village. "There's where we'll spend the night," remarked Jerry. "Hello! What's that?" and he pointed to some object round a turn of the road, just ahead of them. "It looks like an automobile," said the professor. "It is!" cried Ned. "And Noddy Nixon is in it!" CHAPTER X. SOME TRICKS IN MAGIC. "You don't mean it!" exclaimed the professor. "Noddy Nixon, the young man who made all the trouble for us! I thought we had seen the last of him." "I hoped we had," said Jerry. "But you can't always get what you want in this world." "No, indeed! There is a purple grasshopper I've been hunting for for nearly five years, and I never found it!" spoke the naturalist. "I wonder if Noddy saw us?" asked Ned. "It doesn't make much difference," was Bob's opinion. "He'll run across us sooner or later. If he stops in the same village we do he's sure to hear about us." "Then we may as well put up overnight in this town," said Jerry, sending the machine ahead again. Though the boys kept a close watch, they saw no more of Noddy, for his automobile disappeared around a turn of the road. When the red touring car came up to the village, such a crowd of curious Mexicans surrounded the auto that the occupants had difficulty in descending. "I guess Noddy couldn't have come here, or these people wouldn't be so curious about our car," said Bob. "Oh, you can depend on it, he's somewhere in the neighborhood," was Ned's opinion. The keeper of the tavern, running out, bowed low to the prospective guests. "Enter, señors!" he exclaimed. "You are welcome a thousand times. The whole place is yours." "Will you guarantee that there are no robbers?" asked Jerry. "Robbers, señors? Not one of the rascals within a thousand miles!" "And will my bugs, snakes and specimens be safe?" asked the professor. "Bugs and snakes! Santa Maria! What do you want of such reptiles? Of course they will be safe. The most wretched thief, of which there are none here, would not so much as lay a finger on them." "Then we will stay," said the naturalist. "Out of the way, dogs, cattle, swine, pigs and beasts!" cried the innkeeper, brushing the crowd aside. "Let the noble señors enter!" At these words, spoken in fierce tones, though mine host was smiling the while, the throng parted, and the boys, accompanied by the professor, made their way to the inn. It was not long before supper was served. There were the frijoles and tortillas, without which no Mexican meal of ordinary quality is complete, but the adventurers had not yet become used to this food. Then, too, there was delicious chocolate, such as can be had nowhere but in Mexico. While the meal was in progress the travelers noticed that there was considerable excitement about the inn. Crowds of people seemed to be going and coming, all of them talking loudly, and most of them laughing. "What is it all about?" asked Jerry. "To-day is a fête day," replied the innkeeper. "No one has worked, and to-night there is an entertainment in the village square. Every one will attend. It will be a grand sight." "What sort of entertainment?" "I know only what I heard, that a most wonderful magician will do feats. Ah, some of those performers are very imps of darkness!" and the man muttered a prayer beneath his breath. "That sounds interesting. Let's go," suggested Bob. "I haven't any objection," said Jerry. "Will you go, Professor?" "I will go anywhere where there is a chance I may add to the stock of scientific knowledge," replied the naturalist. "Lead on, I'll follow." The meal over, the boys and professor had only to follow the crowd in order to reach the public square. A centre space had been roped off, and in the middle of this a small tent was erected. On the payment of a small sum to some officials, who seemed to be acting as ushers, the travelers managed to get places in the front row. There they stood, surrounded by swarthy Mexican men, women and boys, waiting for the performance to begin. Suddenly from within the tent sounded some weird music: the shrill scraping of fiddle and the beat of tom-toms. Then a voice was heard chanting. A few seconds later a young man, dressed completely in white, stepped from the tent and sat down, cross-legged, on the ground. A score of flaring torches about him gave light, for it was now night. He spread a cloth on the ground, sprinkled a few drops of water on it, muttered some words, whisked away the covering, and there was a tiny dwarfed tree, its branches bearing fruit. "The old Indian mango trick!" exclaimed the professor. "I have seen it done better, many times." The next trick was more elaborate. The youth in white clapped his hands and a boy came running from the tent. With him he brought a basket. The youth began to scold the boy, beating him with a stick. To escape the blows, the boy leaped into the basket. In a trice the youth clapped the cover on. Then drawing a sword at his side, the youth plunged it into the wicker-work several times. From the basket horrible cries came, growing fainter and fainter at each thrust of the weapon. With a cry of satisfaction the youth finally held his sword aloft. The boys could see that it ran red, as if with blood. "Has he stabbed him?" asked Bob, in frightened tones. "Watch," said the professor, with a smile. The youth opened the basket. It was empty. The boy had disappeared. The youth gave a cry of astonishment, and gazed up into the starlit sky. Naturally, every one in the crowd gazed upward, likewise. All at once there was a cry from behind the youth, and the boy who had been in the basket, laughing and capering about as if being thrust through with a sword was the biggest joke in the world, moved among the assemblage, collecting coins in his cap. "Another old Indian trick," said the professor. "He simply curled up close to the outer rim of the basket and the sword went through the middle, where his body formed a circle." "But the blood!" exclaimed Bob. "The boy had a sponge wet with red liquid, and when the sword blade came through the basket he wiped the crimson stuff on it," explained the professor. The tricks seemed to please the crowd very much, for few of them saw how they were done. The Mexicans cried for more. The youth and boy retired to the tent. Their place was taken by an old man, wrapped in a cloak. He produced a long rope, which he proceeded to knot about his body, tying himself closely. Then he signed for two of the spectators to take hold, one at either end of the cord, which extended from under his cloak. Two men did as he desired. Then the old man began a sort of chant. He waved his hands in the air. With a quick motion he threw something at one of the torches. A cloud of smoke arose. There was a wild cry from the two men who held the rope. When the vapor cleared away the magician was nowhere to be seen, though his cloak lay on the ground and the men still held the ends of the rope that had bound him. An instant later there came a laugh from a tree off to the left. Every one turned to look, and the old man jumped down from among the branches. "He tied fake knots," said the professor. "While he was waving his hands he managed to undo them. Then he threw some powder in the torch flame, and while the smoke blinded every one he slipped out of his bonds and cloak, went through the crowd like a snake, and climbed a tree. The tricks are nothing to what I have seen in Egypt and India." "Perhaps there is nothing wonderful but in India or Egypt," spoke a voice at the professor's elbow. He turned with a start, to see the old magician standing near him. The naturalist had not spoken aloud, yet it seemed that the Mexican had heard him. "There are stranger things in this land than in Egypt," went on the trickster. "Buried cities are stranger. Buried cities, where there is much gold to be had and great riches." "What do you know about buried cities?" asked the professor. "Ask him who sat in the road, who drew the circle in the dust. Ask him whom ye vainly sought," replied the Mexican, with a laugh. The professor started. "It can't be! Yes, it is. It's the same Mexican we met before, and to whom I gave the tobacco," said the naturalist. "_Si, señor_," was the answer, as the old man bowed low. "And be assured that though you mock at my poor magic, yet I can look into the future for you. I tell you," and he leaned over and whispered, "you shall soon find what you seek, the mysterious city. You are on the right road. Keep on. When ye reach a place where the path turns to the left, at the sign where ye shall see the laughing serpent, take that path. See, the stars tell that you will meet with good fortune." With a dramatic gesture the old man pointed aloft. Involuntarily the professor and the boys looked up. Then, remembering the trick that had been played on them before, they looked for the Mexican. But he had disappeared. CHAPTER XI. NODDY NIXON'S PLOT. "His old trick again," murmured the professor. "I should have been on my guard. However, it doesn't matter. But come on, boys. If we stand out here our plans will soon be known to every one." The travelers went back to their hotel, but the crowds of people remained at the square, for there were other antics of the entertainers to follow. "I wonder if we'll have to sleep '_en el sereno_' to-night?" said Bob. "If we do, I'm going to stay awake." "Yes, indeed; if they treat Chunky the way they did Jerry and myself, we'll be stranded," put in Ned. "Have you got it all right, Chunky?" What "it" was, Ned did not say; but Bob understood, and, feeling where his money-belt encircled his waist, nodded to indicate that it was still in place. The travelers found there was plenty of room in the hotel. They were given a large apartment with four beds in it, and told they could sleep there together. They found that the room had but one door to it, and all the windows were too high up to admit of easy entrance. So, building a barricade of chairs in front of the portal, the adventurers decided it would not be necessary to stand guard. If any one came into the apartment he would have to make noise enough to awaken the soundest sleeper. Thus protected, the travelers went to bed. Nor were their slumbers disturbed by the advent of any robbers. However, if they could have seen what was taking place in a small hut on the outskirts of the town, about midnight, they might not have slept as peacefully. Within a small adobe house, well concealed in a grove of trees, five figures were grouped around a table on which burned a candle stuck in a bottle. "I'll make trouble for Jerry Hopkins and his friends yet," spoke a youth, pounding the table with his fist. "That's what you're always saying, Noddy Nixon," put in a man standing over in the shadow. "Well, I mean it this time, Tom Dalsett. We'd have put them out of business long ago if I'd had my way." "Well, what are you going to do this time?" asked a lad, about Noddy's age, whom, had the Motor Boys seen him, they would have at once known for Jack Pender, though he had become quite stout and bronzed by his travels. "I've got a plan," went on Noddy. "I didn't come over to Mexico for nothing." "What do you s'pose they come for?" asked Bill Berry, who was busy cleaning his revolver. "To locate a silver mine, of course," replied Noddy. "Ain't that so, Vasco?" and Nixon turned to a slick-looking Mexican, who was rolling a cigarette. The fellow was a halfbreed, having some American blood in his veins. "_Si, señor_," was the reply. "Trust Vasco Bilette for finding out things. I heard them talking about a mine." "Of course; I told you so," said Noddy. The truth of it was that Bilette had heard nothing of the sort, but thought it best to agree with Noddy. "I hope we have better luck getting in on this mine than we did on their gold mine," said Pender. "Well, rather!" put in Dalsett. "Leave it to me," went on Noddy. "I have a plan. And now do you fellows want to stay here all night or travel in the auto?" "Stay here," murmured Bilette. "It is warm and comfortable. One can smoke here." Then, as if that settled it, he rolled himself up in his blanket, and, with a last puff on his cigarette, he went to sleep on the floor. In a little while the others followed his example. Bilette slept better than any one, for he seemed to be used to the hordes of fleas that infested the hut. As for Noddy, he awakened several times because of the uncomfortableness of his bed. Finally he got up and went out to sit up the rest of the night on the cushioned seats of the automobile. So far, the Nixon crowd had done nothing but ride on a sort of pleasure trip through Mexico. Noddy had managed to get some cash from home, and, with what Dalsett obtained by gambling, they managed to live. Shortly after crossing the Rio Grande River, Noddy had fallen in with a slick Mexican, Vasco Bilette by name, and had added him to his party. Bilette knew the country well, and was of considerable assistance. He seemed to have no particular occupation. Some evenings, when they would be near a large town, he would disappear. He always turned up in the morning with plenty of cash. How he got it he never said. But once he returned with a knife wound in the hand, and again, limping slightly from a bullet in the leg. From which it might be inferred that Vasco used other than gentle and legitimate means of making a livelihood. But Noddy's crowd was not one that asked embarrassing questions. With no particular object in view, Noddy had driven his car hither and thither. However, accidentally hearing that Jerry and his friends had come over into Mexico, Noddy determined to remain in their vicinity, learn their plans, and, if possible, thwart them to his own advantage. Fortunately, the boys and the professor, soundly sleeping at their inn, could not look into the future and see the dangers they were to run, all because of Noddy and his gang. If they could have, they might have turned back. Bright and early the next morning Professor Snodgrass awoke. He looked out of the window, saw that the sun was shining, and rejoiced that the day was to be pleasant. Then he happened to spy a new kind of a fly buzzing around the room. "Ah, I must have you!" exclaimed the naturalist, unlimbering his insect net. "Easy now, easy!" On tiptoes he began encircling the room after the fly. The buzzer seemed in no mood to be caught, and the professor made several ineffectual attempts to ensnare it. Finally the insect lighted on Bob's nose, as the boy still slumbered. "Now I have you!" the professor cried. He forgot that Bob might have some feelings, and thinking only of the rare fly, he brought the net down smartly on Bob's countenance. "Help! Help! Robbers! Thieves!" shouted the boy. "Keep still! Don't move! I have it now!" yelled the professor, gathering up his net with the fly in it. "Ah, there you are, my little beauty!" Ned and Jerry tumbled out of their beds, Ned with his revolver ready in his hand. "Oh, I thought it was some one after my money-belt," said Bob, when his eyes were fully opened and he saw the professor. "Sorry to disturb you," said the naturalist. "But it's in the interest of science, my dear young friend, and science is no respecter of persons." "Nor of my nose, either," observed Bob, rubbing his proboscis with a rueful countenance. There came a loud pounding at the door. "Who's there?" asked Jerry. "'Tis I, the landlord," was the answer. "What is it? Have the brigands come? Is the place on fire? Why did the señor yell, as if some one had stuck a knife into him?" "It was only me," called Bob. "The professor caught a new kind of fly on my nose." "A fly! On your nose! _Diablo!_ Those _Americanos_! They are crazy!" the innkeeper muttered as he went away. "Well, we're up; I suppose we may as well stay up," said Ned, stretching and yawning. "My, but I did sleep good!" They all agreed that the night's sleep had been a restful one. They dressed, had breakfast, and, in spite of the entreaties of the landlord to stay a few days, they were soon on the road in the automobile. "I'm glad to know we are on the right path," said the professor, after several miles had been covered. "I only hope that old Mexican was not joking with us." "What was that he said about turning to the left?" asked Ned. "We are to turn when we come to the place where the laughing monkey is," said Bob. "Serpent was what he said," observed Jerry. "The laughing serpent. I wonder what that can be. I never saw a snake laugh." "It might be a figure of speech, or he may have meant there is a stone image carved in that design set up to mark a road," spoke the professor. "However, we shall see." Dinner was eaten in a little glade beside a small brook, where some fish were caught. Then, while the boys stretched out on the grass, the professor, who was never idle, took a small rifle and said he would go into the forest and see if he could not get a few specimens. "Look out for snakes!" called Ned. "I will," replied the naturalist, remembering his former experience. About an hour later, when Jerry was just beginning to think it was time to start off, the stillness of the forest was broken by a terrible and blood-curdling yell. "A tiger!" cried Bob. "There are no tigers here," said Jerry. "But it's some wild beast!" The yell was repeated. Then came a crashing of the underbrush, followed by a wild call for help. "That's the professor!" cried Jerry, seizing his rifle. CHAPTER XII. NODDY SCHEMES WITH MEXICANS. The boys crashed through the bushes and under the low branches of trees in the direction of the professor's voice. They could hear him more plainly now. "Help! Help! Come quick!" the naturalist cried. The sight that met the boys' eyes when they came out into a little clearing of the forest was at once calculated to amuse and alarm them. They saw the professor clinging to the tail of a mountain lion, the beast being suspended over a low tree-limb, with the naturalist hanging on one side of the branch and the animal on the other, the brute in the air and the professor on the ground. [Illustration: THEY SAW THE PROFESSOR CLINGING TO THE TAIL OF A MOUNTAIN LION.] The infuriated beast was struggling and wiggling to get free from the grip the professor had of its tail. It snarled and growled, now and then giving voice to a fierce roar, and endeavoring to swing far enough back to bite or claw the naturalist. As for Professor Snodgrass, he was clinging to the tail with both hands for dear life, and trying to keep as far as possible away from the dangerous teeth and claws of the lion. "Let go!" yelled Jerry. "I dare not!" shouted the professor. "If I do the brute will fall to the ground and eat me up. I can't let go, and I can't hold on much longer. Hurry up, boys, and do something!" "How did you get that way?" asked Bob. "I'll--tell--you--later!" panted the poor professor, as he was swung clear from the ground by a particularly energetic movement of the beast. "Hurry! Hurry! The tail is slipping through my fingers!" In fact, this seemed to be the case, and the beast was now nearer the ground, while the length of tail the naturalist grasped was lessened. The big cat-like creature suddenly began swinging to and fro, like a pendulum. At each swing it came closer and closer to the professor. All the while it was spitting and snarling in a rage. Suddenly the professor gave a yell louder than any he had uttered. "Ouch! He bit me that time!" he cried. "Hurry, boys!" The lads saw that the situation now had more of seriousness than humor in it. Jerry crept up close and, with cocked rifle, waited for a chance to fire at the beast without hitting the professor. At that instant the lion made a strong, backward swing, and its claws caught in the professor's trousers. The beast tried to sink its teeth in the naturalist's legs, but with a quick movement the professor himself jumped back, and, with his own momentum and that of the lion to aid him, he swung in a complete circle around the limb of the tree, the lion going with him, so their positions were exactly reversed. "Steady now! I have him!" called Jerry. The change in the positions of man and beast had given the boy the very opportunity he wanted. The animal was now nearest to him. Quickly raising the rifle, Jerry sent a bullet into the brute's head, following it up with two others. The lion, with a last wild struggle to free itself, dangled limply from the tree-limb, from which it was still suspended by the professor's hold on its tail. Seeing that his enemy was dead, and could do him no harm, the naturalist let go his grip and the big cat fell in a heap on the ground. "Once more you boys have saved my life," said the collector, as he mopped his brow, for his exertions in trying to keep free from the beast had not been easy. "Are you bit much?" asked Ned. "Nothing more than scratches," was the reply. "How in the world did you ever get in such a scrape?" asked Jerry. "I'll tell you how it was," answered the professor. "You see, I was busy collecting bugs and small reptiles, going from tree to tree. When I came to this one I saw what I thought was a small, yellow snake. I believed I had a fine prize. "I approached without making a sound, and when I was near enough I made a grab for what I imagined was the snake. Instead, it turned out to be the tail of the mountain lion, which dangled from the limb, on which the beast was crouched. All at once there was a terrible commotion." "I would say there was!" interrupted Ned. "We heard it over where we were." "Yes, of course," resumed the professor. "Well, as soon as I got the tail in my hands I found I had made a mistake. It was then too late to let go, so the only thing to do was to hold on. It was rather a peculiar position to be in." "It certainly was," said Jerry, with a laugh. "Yes, of course. Well, seeing that the only thing to do was to keep my grip, I kept it and yelled for help. I guess the lion was as badly scared as I was first, when it felt me grab its tail. After it found I wasn't going to let go it got mad, I guess." "It acted so, at any rate," put in Bob. "Yes, of course," went on the professor. "Well, anyhow, I knew if I did let go I would be clawed to pieces, so there I hung, like the man on the tail of the mad bull, not daring to let go. Then you came, and you know the rest." "Are you sure you're not hurt?" asked Ned. "Sure," was the reply. "I was too lively for the lion. I'm sorry the tail didn't turn out to be a snake, though, for if it had been I'm sure it would have been a rare specimen." Leaving the dead body of the animal where it had fallen, the travelers went back to their auto. The camp utensils were packed away, and soon, with Ned at the steering wheel, the machine was running off the miles that separated the adventurers from the hidden city they hoped to find. They traveled until nearly nightfall, and came to no village or settlement. It began to look as if they would have to camp in the open, when, just as darkness was approaching, they came to a small adobe hut in the midst of a sugar-cane plantation. "Maybe we can stop here overnight," said Jerry. An aged Mexican and his wife came to the door of the cabin to see the strange fire-wagon pass. Speaking to them in Spanish, the professor asked if he and his companions could get beds for the night. At first the man seemed to hesitate, but the rattling of a few coins in Bob's pockets soon changed his mind, and he bade the travelers enter. The woman quickly got a fairly good meal, and then, after sitting about for an hour or so and talking over the events of the day, the travelers sought their beds. They found themselves in one apartment, containing two small, cane couches, neither one hardly big enough for a single occupant. "However, it's better than sleeping out of doors, where the mosquitoes can carry you away," said Ned. Contrary to their expectations, the travelers slept good, the only trouble being the fleas, which were particularly numerous. But by this time they had become somewhat used to this Mexican pest. While the professor and the boys were taking a well-earned rest, quite a different scene was being enacted by Noddy Nixon and his companions. Following a half-formed plan he had in mind, Noddy had hung on the trail of the Motor Boys. He had followed them from the inn where they last stopped, and now he was camped out, with his followers, about five miles from the adobe hut. But Jerry and his friends did not know this. "Isn't it pretty near time you told us what you are going to do, Noddy?" asked Jack Pender, as he piled some wood on the camp-fire. "I'll tell you," spoke Noddy. "We're going to follow them until they locate their mine, and then we're going to stake a claim right near theirs. They're not going to get all the gold or silver in this country the way they did in Arizona." "Are you sure it's a mine they're after?" asked Bilette, puffing at his cigarette. "Of course," replied Noddy. "What else could it be? Didn't you hear that's what they came for?" "I don't know," went on the slick Mexican. "I only asked for information. If it's a mine they're after we'll need a bigger force than we have to run things." "Where can we get help?" asked Noddy. "I'll show you," replied Vasco. He put his fingers to his lips and whistled shrilly. An instant later half a dozen Mexicans stepped from the shadow of the trees and stood in a line, in the glare of the fire. "Well, you didn't lose any time over it," observed Noddy. "Where did they come from, and who are they?" and the bully looked a little uneasy. "They came from the greenwood," replied Vasco Bilette, "for the forest is their home. And they are friends of mine, so now both your questions are answered." "If they're friends of yours I s'pose it's all right," went on Noddy. "Well, rather!" drawled Vasco, lighting another cigarette from the stump of his last one. "Will they help us?" went on Noddy. Bilette addressed something in Spanish to his friends who had so mysteriously appeared. "_Si, señor_," they exclaimed as one man, bowing to Noddy. "Queer you happened to have 'em on hand," said Noddy, accepting the answer to his question, for he had learned a little Spanish, and knew that "si" meant yes. "I anticipated we might need them," said Bilette. "So I told them to be on hand and in waiting to-night. They are very prompt." "Then we'll join forces with them and show Jerry Hopkins and his crowd that he can't have everything his own way," growled Noddy. "Come on, we'll follow them now and see what they are doing," and Noddy seemed ready to start off. "Not to-night; it's time to turn in," objected Bilette. "We'll begin early in the morning." He spoke once more to the six men, who disappeared into the forest as quietly as they had come. Then Bilette, wrapping himself up in his cloak, went to sleep. The others followed his example, and soon the camp was quiet. Noddy now had his plans in working order, and he thought, with satisfaction, of the revenge he would have. CHAPTER XIII. ON THE TRAIL. "Come, come, boys! Are you going to sleep all day?" exclaimed Professor Snodgrass, the next morning. His cheery voice awoke the others, and they sat up on the hard cots. "Where are we? Oh, yes, I remember now!" said Bob. "I thought I was back at the gold mine." "I dreamed I was back in Cresville," added Jerry. "I wonder how all the folks are. We must write some letters home." After breakfast, which the Mexican and his wife served in an appetizing style, the travelers decided to delay their start an hour or two, and spend the time writing. Professor Snodgrass said he had no one to correspond with, so he wandered off with his net and specimen box, but the boys got out paper, pens and ink, and were soon busy scratching away. In about two hours the professor returned, having collected a number of specimens and escaped getting into any difficulties or dangers for once. "We'd better start," he called. "I'm anxious to get to that underground city. If that turns out half as well as I expect, our fortunes are made." "Will it be better than the gold mine?" asked Bob, with a grin. "The gold mine!" exclaimed the naturalist. "Why, I had rather reach this buried city than have half a dozen gold mines!" He was very enthusiastic and seemed anxious to get on with the journey. The automobile was made ready, and, bidding their hosts good-by, the travelers were again under way. As they progressed the road became rougher and more difficult of passage. In places it was so narrow that the automobile could barely be taken past the thick growth of foliage on either side. The forest fairly teemed with animal life, while the flitting of brilliantly colored birds through the trees made the woods look as if a rainbow had burst and fallen from the sky. Parrots and macaws, gay in their vari-tinted plumage, called shrilly as the puffing auto invaded their domains. It was necessary to run the car slowly. The professor fretted at the lack of speed, but nothing could be done about it, and, as Jerry said, it was better to be slow and sure. So they went on for several miles. About noon the travelers came to the edge of a broad river, which cut in two the road they had been following. "Here's a problem," said Jerry, bringing the car to a stop. "How are we going to get over that? No bridge and no ferry in sight." "Perhaps it isn't as deep as it looks," suggested the professor. "Tell you what!" exclaimed Ned. "We'll all go in for a swim and then we can tell whether it's too deep to run the auto across." His plan was voted a good one, and soon the boys and Professor Snodgrass were splashing about in the water. Their bath was a refreshing one. Incidentally, Ned found out that he could wade across, the stream in one place coming only to his knees, while the bottom was of firm sand. While the travelers were splashing about in the cool water, they might not have felt so unconcerned had they been able to look through the thick screen of foliage on the bank of the stream, and see what was taking place there. Several dark-complexioned men, in company with Vasco Bilette, had dismounted from their horses and were watching the bathers. "Well, I'm glad they decided to stop," remarked Vasco. "Our horses are tired from following their trail. They will probably camp for the night on the other bank, for they would be foolish to go farther when they can find good water and fodder." "You forget they do not have a horse to consider," spoke one of the Mexicans. "Their machine does not eat." "No more it does," said Bilette. "But they cannot go much farther. If necessary, we can cross the river and get at them." "Is that Noddy boy and his puff-puff carriage to join us?" asked one of the crowd of Mexicans. "That is the plan," replied Vasco. "He thought we could follow the trail on horses better than he could in the automobile, because that makes a noise, and those we are pursuing might hear it. So Noddy has kept about five miles behind. As for us, you know that we have been only a mile in the rear, thanks to the slowness with which they had to run their machine. "Ah, the _Americanos_ have finished their bath. Here they come back," went on Vasco, as the boys and the professor began wading toward the shore, near which they had left their auto. Suddenly the professor set up a great splashing and made a grab under the water. "I've got it! I've got it!" he yelled, holding something aloft. "Got what?" asked Jerry. "A rare specimen of the green-clawed crab," was the answer, and the naturalist held up to view a wiggling crawfish. "It bit my big toe, but I grabbed it before it got away. This was indeed a profitable bath for me. That specimen is worth one hundred dollars." "If there are crabs in there I don't see why there aren't fish," spoke Ned. "I'm going to try, anyhow." Quickly dressing, he got out a line and hook, cut a pole and, with a grasshopper for bait, threw in. In three minutes he had landed a fine big fish, and several others followed in succession. "I guess we'll have one good meal, anyhow," observed Ned. "Shall we stay on this side and eat, or cross the river?" asked the professor. "Might as well stay here," was Jerry's opinion. So the portable stove was made ready and soon the appetizing smell of frying fish filled the air. The travelers made a good meal, and Vasco Bilette and his gang, hiding among the trees, smoked their cigarettes and wished they had a portion. "But never mind, when we have the _Americanos_ at our mercy we will be the ones who eat, and they will starve," was how Vasco consoled himself. Dinner over, the travelers took their places in the auto, and, with Jerry at the wheel, the passage of the river was begun. Following the course Ned had tried, the machine was taken safely over the stream, and run up the opposite bank. No sooner had it got on solid ground, however, than, with a loud noise, one of the rear tires burst. "Here's trouble!" exclaimed Ned, as Jerry brought the car to a sudden stop. "Might have been worse," commented Bob. "It might have blown out while we were in the water, and that would have been no joke." "Right you are, Chunky," said Jerry. "Well, I suppose we may as well camp here for a spell; at least until the repairs are made." He set to work to put in a new tube, Ned and Bob assisting him, while the professor wandered off after any stray specimens that might exist. He found several insects that he said were rare ones. The fixing of the tire proved a harder job than Jerry had anticipated. It was several hours before it was repaired to suit him, and by then the sun was getting low. "What do you say that we camp here for the night?" proposed Ned. "We can't get on much farther anyhow, and this is a nice place. It's more open than in the forest." This was voted a good plan, so a fire was made and a camp staked out. From their side of the river Vasco and his companions viewed these preparations with satisfaction. "They cannot escape us now," said the leader of the Mexicans. "We can easily cross the river after dark and get close to them. I wish Noddy would hurry up." At that instant there was the sound of wheels in the road, to the left of which Vasco and his men were concealed. In a little while Noddy, with Dalsett, Berry and Pender, rode up in the machine. "Where are they?" asked Noddy, eagerly. Vasco pointed through the screen of bushes to the other side of the bank, where the professor and boys were encamped. "Good!" exclaimed Nixon. "We'll pay them a visit to-night." All unconscious of the nearness of their foes, the Cresville boys, having had a good supper, sat talking about the camp-fire. The professor was engaged in sorting over the specimens he had gathered during the day. At this same time Noddy and Dalsett, with Vasco and the six Mexicans the latter had provided, were preparing to cross the river, under cover of the darkness. They did not undress, but waded in as they were, the gleaming camp-fire on the other side serving as a beacon to guide them. "Softly!" cautioned Vasco, as the nine crawled up on the opposite bank, and began creeping toward the campers. CHAPTER XIV. THE ANGRY MEXICANS. The professor and the boys were thinking of getting out their blankets and turning in for the night. They sat in a circle about the camp-fire, talking over the events of the day. Meanwhile, creeping nearer and nearer, Noddy, Vasco and their gang were encircling the camp of Jerry and his friends. They came so close that they could hear the conversation between the professor and the boys. Now, if the Mexicans whom Vasco had engaged to assist him had not understood something of the English language, or if chance had so arranged matters that they had not come near enough to overhear the talk of Jerry and his comrades, this story might have had a different ending. As it was, fate so willed matters that Noddy and his gang got close to the camp in time to hear the professor remark: "Well, boys, it will not be many more days, I hope, before we reach the buried city we are searching for. And when we do I will be the proudest man in the world. Think of discovering a buried town of ancient Mexico! Why, half the college professors would give their heads to be in my place." "But we haven't found the city yet," said Ned. "No; but I am sure we are on the right road," went on the professor. "I am sure of it, not only because of what the old Mexican magician told us, but from the map my friend left me. See, here it is," and he drew out the paper with the rude drawing on. The boys drew close to look the map over once more. "There seem to be two roads, one branching off to the right," remarked Jerry, pointing to the map. "And it looks as if there was some sort of an image at the parting of the ways." "There is!" exclaimed the professor. "I never noticed it before, but there is the laughing serpent, as sure as you're a foot high!" "We'll reach the buried city all right," spoke Bob. "I only hope we don't come upon it too unexpectedly." "Well, the Mexican prophesied we would find it sooner than we thought," observed Ned. "But he may not have meant all he said. Anyhow, I'm sleepy and I'm going to turn in." The others followed his example of wrapping themselves up in their blankets, and soon their deep breathing told they were on the road to slumberland. Meanwhile, the Mexicans who had listened to the above conversation were much disturbed. Though they did not understand all that had been said, they caught enough to indicate to them that the boys and the professor were not on a search for gold or silver mines, the only things in which the Mexicans were interested. There were angry but low-voiced mutterings among the Mexicans. Soon they became angry, talked among themselves and grew quite excited. They talked rapidly to Vasco, in Spanish. "What does all this mean, Noddy?" asked Bilette. "Have you fooled us?" "No, no, it's all right!" exclaimed Nixon. "Their talk of a buried city is only a bluff to throw us off the track." "Hardly, when they don't know we are following them," said Vasco. "I'm afraid that's not true, Noddy. Better own up and say you guessed at the whole thing." "I didn't guess!" exclaimed Noddy. "Too much talk! Not enough do!" exclaimed one of the Mexicans, striding forward and pushing Noddy to one side. Noddy resented this, and drew back his hand as if to strike the Mexican. The latter, quick as a flash, drew an ugly-looking knife. "Put that up!" exclaimed Vasco, noting, in the darkness, his companion's act. "We don't want to begin fighting among ourselves." He stepped between Noddy and the Mexican, and pushed them away from each other. The Mexican muttered angrily, and his companions could be heard growling over the outcome of the affair. They could appreciate a gold or silver mine. A buried city was nothing to them, and they saw no use in pursuing the trail further. They were angry at Noddy for having brought them thus far on a foolish errand. "Now keep quiet," advised Bilette. "The first thing you know you'll have them all aroused and then there'll be trouble." "_Diablo!_" exclaimed one of the Mexicans, beneath his breath. "Are we fools or children? We leave the city and we travel for days through the wilderness. We are told we are to get great riches. Santa Maria! Is this money? Is this gold or silver? The crazy _Americanos_ talk of nothing but lost cities. What care I for lost cities? What care any of us for lost cities? I hate lost cities!" "And I! And I!" exclaimed his companions, in whispers. "And this fellow, Noddy Nixon, is to blame for it all!" went on the angry Mexican. "He gets us all to come out here. We follow the crazy _Americano_ who does nothing but grab bugs and toads. He is man to be afraid of! Yet we follow him, and all for what? To find he is looking for some old ruins. I will not stand it!" "Clear out of here!" commanded Bilette. "If we stand here quarreling much longer they'll wake up." Under the guidance of their leader, the Mexicans made their way back to the river bank. On the opposite shore they had left their horses and Noddy's automobile. "What made you think they were after a mine, Noddy?" asked Bilette, when the party was well beyond earshot of the campers. "You must have made a mistake." "Supposing I did," whispered Noddy, in low tones to Vasco, "what good will it do to tell every one? I may have failed on this plan, but I have another, even better." "Better not try it until you find if it will work," advised Bilette. "My men are in no mood to be fooled a second time." Disappointed and dejected, the Mexicans recrossed the river and made their camp on the opposite shore from Professor Snodgrass and the boys. The Mexicans were still in a surly mood, and Vasco had to keep close watch lest some one of them should harm Noddy. Wet and cold, for if the days were hot the nights were chilly, the Nixon gang reached their camp. One of the men lighted a fire and cooked some frijoles and tortillas. The meal, simple as it was, made every one feel better. Nixon and Pender, as soon as they had finished eating, drew off to one side, leaving the Mexicans to talk among themselves. "It looks as if we'd have trouble," said Noddy. "It's all your fault," observed Pender. "I'm not saying it isn't," put in Noddy. "But what's the use of crying over spilled milk? The question is: What are we going to do about it now?" Pender was silent a few minutes. Then a thought seemed to come to him suddenly. "I have it!" he exclaimed. "What?" asked Noddy. Jack leaned over and whispered something in his friend's ear. Noddy hesitated a moment, and then gave a start. "The very thing!" he exclaimed. "I wonder I didn't think of it before." He hurried to where Vasco was sitting, near the camp-fire, smoking a cigarette. To him he whispered what Pender had suggested. "It's a risky thing to do," said the Mexican. "If it fails, we'll have to leave the country. If it succeeds we'll be in danger of heavy punishment from the authorities. However, I'm ready to risk it if you are. Shall I tell the men?" "Of course," replied Noddy. "I want to make it up to them for being mistaken about the mine." Thereupon Vasco called his friends to him, and, motioning for silence, said: "Our friend Noddy," he explained, "has just told me something." "About a gold mine?" asked one of the men, bitterly. "It may prove to be a gold mine," said Vasco. "But it concerns one of those across the river," and he nodded toward the other campers. "Did you notice one of the boys"--Bilette went on--"the fat one; the stout youth; the one they call Bob and sometimes Chunky?" "_Si! Si!_" exclaimed the Mexicans. "Well, his father is a rich banker." "What of it?" asked one of the men. "His money is not in Mexico." "But it can be brought to Mexico!" cried Vasco. "How?" "By kidnapping the boy and holding him for a large ransom. Will you do it?" "We will!" yelled the men. "This will provide us with gold. We'll kidnap the fat boy!" CHAPTER XV. CAUGHT BY AN ALLIGATOR. "Easy! Easy!" cried Vasco Bilette. "Do you want them to hear you across the river?" Under his caution the men subsided. "We must follow them and watch our chance," spoke Noddy. "We'll demand a heavy ransom." "_Si! Si!_" agreed the Mexicans. "That's how we get square, Jack," whispered Noddy to his chum. "You bet, Noddy; and get money, too!" said Pender. "We'll all have to have a share," put in Dalsett. "I'm not here for my health." "Me either," remarked Bill Berry. "I need cash as much as any one." "We'll share the ransom money," said Vasco. "Now turn in, every one of you." Soon the camp became quiet, the only sounds heard being the movements of animals in the forest, or, now and then, the splash of a fish in the river. The sun was scarcely above the horizon the next morning ere Vasco Bilette was astir. He took a position where he could watch the other camp, and saw the professor and the boys get their breakfast and start off. "We'll give them about an hour's start," said Vasco to Noddy. "Then the men on horses will follow and you can come, about a mile behind, in the auto. At the first opportunity we'll capture this Bob Baker." Meanwhile, Jerry and his companions were going along at a moderate pace. The weather was fine though hot, and the road fairly good. For perhaps twenty miles they puffed along, and then they came to another river. "I hope this isn't any deeper than the other," said Jerry. "I'll swim across," volunteered Ned. His offer was accepted, and, stripping off his outer garments, he plunged into the water. Luckily, he found the stream was about as shallow as the first one the auto had forded. He reached the opposite bank and called over. "Come on! Fetch my clothes with you; I'm not going to swim back." Jerry started the machine down into the water. It went along all right until about half way across. Then there came a sudden swirl beneath the surface, a jar to the machine, and then the auto came to a stop. "What's the matter?" cried Jerry. "Have we struck a snag?" "Looks more like a snag had struck us," replied Bob, leaning over the rear seat and looking down into the water. "Something has hold of one of the back wheels." "Nonsense!" exclaimed Jerry. "Do you suppose a fish would try to swallow an automobile, as the whale did Jonah?" "Well, you can see for yourself," maintained Bob. "There's some kind of a fish, or beast, or bird, down under the water, making quite a fuss. It's so muddy I can't make out what it is." Jerry climbed over into the tonneau. Sure enough, there was some disturbance going on. Every now and then the water would swirl and eddy, and the automobile would tremble as if trying to move against some powerful force. Jerry had thrown out the gears as soon as he felt an obstruction. Professor Snodgrass was closely observing the water. "What do you think it is?" asked Jerry. "It might be that it is an eddy of the water about a sink-hole, or it may be, as Bob suggests, a big fish," replied the naturalist. "I never knew there were fish in these waters big enough to stop an auto, though." "It may be a whole school of fishes," said Bob. Just then there came a more violent agitation of the water, and the auto began to move backward slightly. "Whatever it is, it seems bound to get us," Jerry remarked. "Wait until I see if I can't beat the fish or whatever it is." He turned on more power and threw in the first speed gear. The auto shivered and trembled, and then moved ahead slightly. But the big fish, or whatever it was, with powerful strokes of its tail began a backward pull that neutralized the action of the automobile. "I see what it is!" cried the professor. "What?" asked Jerry. "A big alligator! It has one wheel in its mouth and is trying to drag us back. Hand me a rifle!" Jerry passed over a gun. The professor, who was a good shot, leaned down over the back of the tonneau. He could just make out the ugly head of the 'gator beneath the surface. In quick succession he sent three bullets from the magazine rifle into its brain. There was a last dying struggle of the beast, the waters swirled in a whirlpool under the lashing of the powerful tail, and then the little waves became red with blood and the alligator ceased struggling. Once more Jerry threw the gear into place, and this time the machine went forward and reached the opposite bank. "I thought you were never coming," observed Ned, who was shivering in his wet undergarments. "What did you stop for? To catch fish?" "We stopped because we had to," replied Jerry, and he told Ned about the alligator. "I thought you were shooting bullfrogs," observed the swimmer as he got out some dry clothing. "Say, if we told the folks at home that a Mexican alligator tried to chew up an automobile, I wonder what they'd say?" "The beast must have been very hungry, or else have taken us for an enemy," remarked the professor. "I wish I could have saved him for a specimen. But I suppose it would have been a bother to carry around." "I think it would," agreed Jerry. "But now we are safe, I must see if Mr. Alligator damaged the machine any." He looked at the wheels where the saurian had taken hold, but beyond the marks of the teeth of the beast on the spokes and rim, no harm had been done. "Are we ready to go on now?" asked the professor, when Ned had finished dressing. "I'd like to take a dip in the river," said Bob. "It's hot and dusty on the road, and we may not get another chance." "I think I'll go in, too," observed Jerry. "We are in no hurry. Will you come along, professor?" "No; I'll watch you," said the naturalist. He sat down on the bank while Jerry and Chunky prepared for a dip. They splashed around in the water near shore and had a good bath. Bob was swimming a little farther out than was Jerry. "Better stay near shore," cautioned the professor. "No telling when some alligators may be along." At that instant Bob gave a cry. He struggled in the water and gave a spring into the air. "Something has stung me!" he cried. Then he sank back, limp and unconscious, beneath the waves. "Hurry!" cried the professor. "Get him out, Jerry, or he'll be drowned!" But Jerry had hurried to the rescue even before the professor called. Reaching down under the water he picked up his companion's body, and, placing it over his shoulder, waded to shore with it. Bob was as limp as a rag. "Is he killed?" asked Ned. "I hope not," replied the professor. "Still, he had a narrow escape." "Did something bite him?" asked Jerry. The professor pointed to a small red mark on Bob's leg. "He received an electric shock," said the naturalist. "An electric shock?" echoed Ned. "Yes; from the electric battery fish, or stinging ray, as they are sometimes called. They can give a severe shock, causing death under some circumstances, it is said. But I guess it was a young one that stung Bob. They are a fish," the professor went on to explain, "fitted by nature with a perfect electric battery. I wish I had caught one for a specimen." "I didn't think of it at the time this one stung me or I would have caught it for you," said Bob, suddenly opening his eyes. "Oh, you're better, are you?" asked Jerry. "I'm all right," replied Bob. "It was quite a jar at first." "I agree with you," put in the professor. "However, you got over it better than I expected you would. I think we had better get out of the neighborhood of this river. It seems unlucky." In a little while Bob was sufficiently recovered to dress. Then, having delayed only to fill the water tank of the auto from the stream, the travelers resumed their journey. They chugged along until nightfall, and having reached no settlement, they camped in the open, and made an early start the next day. It was about noon when, having made a sudden turn of the road, they came to a place where there was a parting of the ways. "I wonder which we shall take?" asked Ned. "Look! Look!" cried Bob, suddenly, pointing to something ahead. CHAPTER XVI. THE LAUGHING SERPENT. "What is it?" asked Jerry, bringing the machine up with a sudden jerk. "See! There is the laughing serpent!" exclaimed Bob. "The laughing serpent?" inquired Ned. "What do you mean?" "Don't you remember what the old Mexican said?" went on Bob. "Here is the parting of the ways, and here is the image of the laughing serpent." "Sure enough!" agreed the professor. "It's an image cut out of stone, in the shape of a snake laughing. Wonderful! Wonderful!" Right at the fork of the road and about fifteen feet from the automobile was the strange design. It was rudely cut out of stone, a serpent twining about a tree-trunk. There was nothing remarkable in the image itself except for the quaint, laughing expression the sculptor had managed to carve on the mouth of the reptile. "I wonder how it came here?" asked Jerry, getting out of the car and going close for a better look. "Probably a relic of the Aztec race," replied the professor. "They were artists in their way. This must be the image the old Mexican mentioned. If it is I suppose we may as well follow his advice and take the road to the left." "The road to the buried city," put in Jerry. "We must be close to it now." "Isn't that something sticking in the mouth of the image?" asked Bob. "It looks like a paper," said Ned. "I'll climb up and see what it is." He scrambled up the stone tree-trunk, about which the image of the laughing serpent was twined. Reaching up, he took from the mouth of the reptile a folded paper. "What does it say?" called Jerry. "It's written in some queer language; Spanish, I guess," replied Ned. "I can't read it." "Bring it here," said Professor Snodgrass. "Perhaps I can make it out." The naturalist puzzled over the writing a few minutes. Then he exclaimed: "It's from our old friend, the Mexican magician. He tells us to turn to the left, which is the same advice he has given us before, and he adds that we must beware of some sudden happening." "I wonder what he means by that?" asked Jerry. "Probably nothing," answered the professor. "But if something does happen, and he meets us after it, he'll be sure to say he warned us. It's a way those pretended wonder-workers have." "How do you suppose the note was placed there?" inquired Bob. "We left the Mexican many miles behind." "They are wonderful runners," answered the naturalist. "The magician may not have placed it here himself, but he may have given it to a friend. Perhaps there was a relay of runners, such as used to exist among the ancient Mexicans to carry royal messages. The old Mexican, who, somehow or other, discovered our object in this country, probably wanted to impress us with his abilities in the mystifying line." The travelers spent a few minutes examining the queer, carved serpent. There were no other evidences of the existence of man at hand, and, except for the two roads, there was nothing to be seen but an almost unbroken forest. It was a wild part of Mexico. "Well, what are we going to do?" asked Jerry. "Go on or stay here?" "Go on, by all means," said the professor. "Why, we may be only a little way from the buried city! Just think of it! There will be wealth untold for us!" "One thing puzzles me though," observed Bob. "What is it, Chunky?" asked Ned. "How are we going to know this buried city when we come to it?" "How?" came from Jerry. "Why, I suppose there'll be a railroad station, with the name of the city on it. Or there may be trolley cars, so we can ask the conductors if we are at the underground town. Don't you worry about knowing the place when you get to it." "But if it's underground, how are we going to find it?" persisted Bob. "It isn't like a mine, for people who know the signs can tell where gold or silver is hidden under the ground. But a city is different." "I confess that question has been a puzzle to me," admitted Professor Snodgrass. "The only thing to do is to keep on along this road until we come to the place, or see some evidence that a buried city is in the vicinity." "Forward, then!" cried Jerry, cranking up the auto. They all got into the car and, proceeding at a slow speed, for the path was uncertain, started down the road leading to the left. But all this while Noddy Nixon and Vasco Bilette, at the head of their two bands, had not been idle. Noddy kept his auto going, and Vasco and his Mexicans trotted along on horseback, drawing nearer and nearer to the travelers ahead of them. It was about noon when the boys and the professor had started away from the image of the laughing serpent, and it was three hours later that Vasco and his men came up to it. "Hello!" exclaimed the Mexican, staring at the carved stone. "I never saw you before, but you're not remarkable for beauty. I wonder what you're here for?" He had never been in this part of Mexico before, and it was like a new country to him. "I wonder which way those chaps took?" asked Vasco, dismounting from his horse. "It won't do for us to take the wrong trail." "See!" exclaimed one of the Mexicans, pointing to where the tracks of the auto wheels could be seen, imprinted in the dust of the way leading to the left. "See! That way they go!" "Sure enough they did, Petro!" remarked Vasco. "You have sharp eyes. Well, we'll just wait here until Noddy comes up and sees how things are. I shouldn't wonder but what it would be time to close in on 'em to-night. I'm getting tired of waiting. I want some money." "So are we all tired!" exclaimed one of the gang, speaking in Spanish, which was the language Vasco always used save in talking to his English acquaintances. "We want gold, and if the fat boy is to be carried off and held for a ransom, the sooner the better." "Have patience," advised Vasco. "We'll have him quick enough. Wait until Noddy comes." Then he began to roll a cigarette, his example being followed by all the others. In about an hour Noddy, Pender, Dalsett and Berry came up in the auto. A consultation was held, and it was decided to have the horsemen follow the party in front more closely. "We'll do the kidnapping to-night," said Noddy. "We'll wait until they go into camp, because that's what they'll have to do, for there are no inns down here. We'll be hiding in the bushes and at the proper time we'll grab Bob Baker and run." "Good!" exclaimed Vasco. "My men were beginning to get impatient." The plotters made a fire and prepared dinner. Then the Mexicans got out their revolvers and began cleaning them. Several also sharpened their knives. "Look here," began Noddy, as he saw these preparations, "there's to be no killing, you know, Vasco." "Killing! Bless you, of course not," was the reply, but Vasco winked one eye at Dalsett. "My men are only seeing that their weapons do not get rusty. Now, captain, we're ready to start as soon as you give the word." "Then you may as well begin now," was Noddy's reply. "They have a pretty good start of us, but we'll travel after dark, if need be, to catch up with them. As soon as they camp out for the night, Vasco, surround them so they can't escape. Then I'll come up in my car, and we'll take Bob away in it." The horsemen started off, Noddy following in a little while. The trail made by the auto of the boys and the professor was easily followed. Noddy's car had barely turned around a bend in the road before something strange happened. The laughing serpent seemed to tremble and shake. It appeared alive, and about to fall to the ground. Then a portion of the base and tree-trunk slid to one side and from the interior, which was hollow, there stepped out an old Mexican--the same who had played the part of the magician and who had given prophetic warning to the travelers. "Ha! My trick worked!" he exclaimed. "It was a hard journey to travel all that distance and get here ahead of them. Only the fleetness of my horse and the fact that I knew all the roads that were short cuts, enabled me to do it. Now for the final act in the game!" He placed his fingers to his mouth and blew a shrill whistle. In an instant a milk-white horse came from the bushes, where it had been concealed. "Here, my beauty!" called the Mexican. He leaped on the animal's back and dashed off like the wind, down the road leading to the right. CHAPTER XVII. AN INTERRUPTED KIDNAPPING. As the auto containing the naturalist and the boys progressed, the road became more and more difficult to travel. Part of the way was overgrown with brush, and several times the travelers had to stop, get out and cut big vines that grew across the path. "I guess there hasn't been much going on along this highway," observed Jerry. "And I don't believe it will ever be much in favor with autoists," said Ned. "There's too much sand." There was a great deal of the fine dirt and in some places it was so soft and yielding that the wheels of the car sank down half way to the hubs, making it impossible to proceed except at a snail's pace. Then, again, would come firm stretches, where the going was easier. In this manner several miles were traversed. The forest on either side of the road became more dense and wilder. Thousands of parrots and other birds flew about among the trees, and troops of monkeys followed the progress of the automobile, chattering as if in rage at the invasion of their stamping ground. Suddenly the screams and chattering of the monkeys ceased. The birds also stopped their racket, and the silence was weird after the riot of noise. Then there came such a series of shrill shrieks from a band of monkeys that it was evident something out of the ordinary had happened. The next instant a long, lithe, yellow animal shot across the road in front of the auto. The big beast had a monkey in its mouth. "A jaguar!" exclaimed the professor. "Quick, boys! Get the rifle!" Ned handed the weapon to the professor, who fired three times, quickly, but the jaguar leaped on, unharmed. "Well, we're getting into the region of big game," remarked the naturalist, "and we'll have to be on the lookout now or some of the beasts will be trying that trick on us." "The monkeys must have seen him; that's why they kept so still that time," remarked Bob. "But it didn't do that particular one any good," said the professor. "He must have been caught napping. Well, Mr. Jaguar will have a good supper to-night." "That reminds me," spoke Bob. "When are we going to eat?" "That's right, speak of eating and you'll be sure to hear from Chunky," said Jerry. "But I suppose we'll have to camp pretty soon. It's five o'clock and there don't seem to be any hotels in the vicinity," and he glanced at the dense forest on every side and grinned. "We'll camp at the next clearing," said the professor. "Better get to a place where there's a little space on every side of you when there are wild animals about." A mile further on the travelers came to a place where the trees were less thick. There was an open space on either side of the road. The auto was placed under the shelter of a wide-spreading palm and then the adventurers busied themselves getting supper. The professor took a gun and went a little way into the woods. He shot a small deer, and in a little while some choice venison steaks were broiling over the camp stove. "This is something like eating," remarked Ned. "I was getting tired of those frijoles, eggs and tortillas," and he accepted a second helping of venison. The rubber and woolen blankets were taken from the auto, and the travelers prepared to spend the night in the forest. "I guess we'll mount guard," said the professor. "The forest is full of jaguars. I saw three while I was hunting the deer." "Let me stay up," begged Jerry. "I'm not sleepy, and I'd like to get a shot at one of the beasts." Ned also wanted to remain up, but the professor said he could take the second watch; and, content with this, Ned turned in with the others. As the night wore on the forests resounded more and more with the noises made by wild beasts. The howls of the foxes mingled with the more terrifying yells of the jaguars, and of the latter beasts the woods seemed to be full. Jerry, with the loaded magazine rifle, was on the alert. He kept up a bright fire, for he knew that unless made desperate by hunger no wild thing would approach a flame. There were queer rustlings and cracklings of the underbrush on every side of the sentinel. Now and then through the leaves he caught glimpses of reddish-green eyes reflecting back the shine of the blaze. Following the plans they had made, Vasco Bilette and his Mexicans, together with Noddy and the crowd in the automobile, had trailed the boys and the professor to the camp. With great caution, Vasco had led his men to within a short distance of the fire Jerry had kindled, and Noddy's auto was in readiness for the kidnapping. So, though Jerry did not know it, there were the eyes of dangerous men on his movements as well as the eyes of dangerous beasts. Like dark shadows, the Mexicans slowly encircled the camp. They were so close they could distinguish the sleeping forms. "Which is Bob?" whispered Vasco to Noddy. "That one right at the foot of the big palm tree," replied Noddy Nixon, pointing out the banker's son. "Is everything ready?" the leader of the Mexicans asked. "All ready!" replied Noddy. Vasco was about to steal forward, hoping to be able to grab up Bob and make off with him before the camp was aroused. In case of resistance, he had given his men orders to shoot. But at that instant a big jaguar, driven wild with hunger, and braving all danger, had crept to within a few feet of Jerry. The animal smelled the meat of the recently killed deer, the carcass of which hung in a tree. The fierce beast determined to get a meal at all hazards. It crouched on the limb of a tree, just above Jerry's head, ready for a spring at the body of the deer. Jerry happened to glance up. He saw the long, lithe body, tense for a leap, the reddish-green eyes glaring at him. Jerry was not a coward, but the sight of the brute, so dangerous and so close to him, scared him greatly for a second or two. Then, recovering his nerve, he raised the rifle, took quick aim and fired three shots in rapid succession. With a snarl and roar the jaguar toppled to the ground, tearing up the earth and leaves in a death struggle. "What's the matter?" called out the professor. "Are you hurt, Jerry?" cried Ned. Bob, too, roused up, and the whole camp was soon astir, every one grabbing a gun or revolver. Jerry fired two more shots into the jaguar, and the struggles ceased. "I got him just in time," he remarked. The others crowded around the brute. "Halt!" exclaimed Bilette, under his breath, as, ready with his men to rush on the camp, he saw that his plan was spoiled. "If it had not been for that jaguar I would have had the captive. Come, we must get out of this!" CHAPTER XVIII. THE UNDERGROUND CITY. Vasco Bilette's warning was received with ill humor by his men. They were angry because the kidnapping had not succeeded, and because the jaguar had alarmed the camp and put every one on guard. "Come, let us give them battle now and take the boy!" suggested one. "Do you want to be killed?" asked Vasco, angrily. "They are all armed now, and would shoot at the least suspicious sound. I, for one, don't care to have a bullet in me. Come, let us get out of this." The Mexicans saw the force of Vasco's arguments. They did not care about being shot at like wild beasts, and they knew that the boys and the professor were ready for anything now. "We will try to-morrow night," said Bilette, as, with Noddy and his men, he silently withdrew to where the horses and auto had been left. "Perhaps we'll have better luck then." The men growled, but had to accept the situation. As for our friends, they were too excited to sleep any more that night, and so they sat around the camp-fire and talked until morning. Breakfast over, camp was broken, and once more the auto started on the trip toward the hidden city. Professor Snodgrass got out the map made by his dead friend and studied it carefully. "I believe we are on the right road," the naturalist said. "Here is a highway marked on the drawing that seems to correspond with the one we are on. And there is a place marked where two roads diverge. Only there is nothing said about the laughing serpent, though there is something here that might be taken for it," and he pointed to the map. Every one was becoming quite anxious, and the boys, as well as the professor, kept close watch on each foot of the way to see if there were any indications that they were close to the underground town. They stopped for dinner near a little brook, in which Bob caught several fish that made a welcome addition to the bill of fare. "Now, if you boys don't object, I think I'll take a little stroll into the woods and see what I can find in the way of specimens," remarked the naturalist, as he finished the last of his fish and frijoles. "Better take a gun along," called Ned. "A jaguar may get you." "I'm not going very far," replied the professor. "All I want is my net and box," and with these only he started off. It was about an hour later when Jerry observed: "Doesn't it seem as if the monkeys were making more noise than usual?" The boys listened for a few seconds. It was evident that something had disturbed these nimble inhabitants of the forest, for they were yelling and chattering at a great rate. "Maybe another jaguar is after them," suggested Bob. "No; it doesn't sound like that," said Jerry. "They seem to be yelling more in rage than in fear." "Maybe they're having a fight," put in Ned. Just then there came a crashing, as if several trees were being crashed down by a tornado. There was a crackling of the underbrush and a rustling in the leaves. Then, above this noise and the yells of the monkeys, sounded a single cry: "Help, boys!" "The professor's in trouble again!" cried Jerry. "I wonder what it is this time?" Grabbing up a rifle, which example Bob and Ned imitated, Jerry ran in the direction of the voice. The noise made by the monkeys increased, and there were sounds as if a bombardment of the forest was under way. "Where are you?" called Jerry. "We are coming!" "Under this big rock!" called the professor, and the boys, looking in the direction his voice came from, saw the naturalist hiding under a big ledge of stone that jutted out of the side of a hill in a sort of a clearing. "Can't you come out?" called Ned. "I tried to several times, but I was nearly killed," replied the professor. "The monkeys are after me. Look at the ground." The boys looked and saw, strewn in front of the shallow cave in which the professor had ensconced himself, a number of round, dark objects. As they looked there came a shower of others through the air. Several of them hit on the rock, broke, and a shower of white scattered all about. "What in the world are they?" asked Bob. He ran toward the professor. No sooner had he emerged out of the dense forest into the clearing than a regular hail of the round objects fell all about him. One struck him on the shoulder and the boy was glad enough to retreat. "What's it all about?" asked Ned. "The monkeys are bombarding the professor with cocoanuts," said Bob, gasping for breath after his run. "Cocoanuts?" "That's what they are. Here come some more." He had scarcely spoken before the air was again dark with the brown nuts, which were much larger than those seen in market, being contained in their original husk. At the same time there was a chorus of angry cries from the monkeys. It was evident now why the professor dared not leave his rock shelter. The minute he did so he would run the risk of being struck down and probably killed by a volley of the nuts. Nor could the boys go to his rescue, for the moment they crossed the clearing they would be targets for the infuriated animals. "What's to be done?" asked Ned. "Supposing we shoot some of the monkeys," suggested Bob. "I don't think that would be a good idea," said Jerry. "In the first place if we kill any of the animals it will make the others all the angrier. And then we would have to keep shooting for several days to make much of an inroad on the beasts. There must be five thousand of them." Indeed, the forest was full of the long-tailed and nimble-fingered monkeys, all perched in cocoanut or other trees, ready to resent the slightest movement on the part of their human enemies. "I know a good trick," spoke Bob. "What is it, Chunky?" asked Jerry. "Take a big looking-glass and put it on a tree. The monkeys will be attracted by the shine of it; they will all go down to see what it is and when they see a strange monkey in the glass they will fight. That will make enough fuss so that the professor can escape." "That might be a good trick if we had the big mirror, which we haven't," spoke Jerry. "You'll have to think of something else, Chunky." But there was no need of this, for at that instant the cries of the monkeys ceased. The silence was almost oppressive in its suddenness and by contrast with the previous riot of noise. Then came unmistakable screams of fear from the simians. "Now what has happened, I wonder?" said Ned. "It's a jaguar!" cried Bob. He pointed to a tree, on a limb of which one of the animals the monkeys dreaded so much was stretched out. The beast was stalking one of the chattering animals, but his presence had been discovered by the whole tribe. So much in awe did the monkeys hold this scourge of the Mexican forests that his presence accomplished what the boys could never hope to. The apes trooped off with a rush, chattering in fright. With a howl of rage the jaguar took after them. "You can come out now, Professor," called Ned. "The monkeys are gone." In fear and trembling the naturalist came from his sheltering rock. He seemed in momentary fear lest he might be greeted with a shower of the nuts, but none fell. With rapid strides he crossed the clearing and joined the boys. "How did it all happen?" asked Jerry, as soon as the professor had recovered his breath. "It was all my fault," explained the naturalist. "I was collecting some butterfly specimens, when I happened to see some monkeys in the cocoanut trees. I had read that if any one threw something at the beasts they would retaliate by throwing down cocoanuts. I wanted to test it, so I threw a few stones at the monkeys. They returned my fire with interest, so I was forced to run under the rock for shelter. "There were only a few monkeys at first, but more came until there were thousands. They kept throwing cocoanuts until the ground was covered. It's lucky you came when I called." "It's luckier the jaguar came along when he did," said Jerry. "Let's get back to the auto before I get into any more trouble," suggested the professor. "I do seem to have the worst luck of getting into scrapes." Half an hour later the travelers were on their way. It was getting well along into afternoon and they were beginning to think of where they would spend the night. They were getting deeper and deeper into the forest, and the way became more and more difficult to travel. But they would not turn back, for they felt they were on the right path. At length they came to a place where creepers and vines were so closely grown across the path that nothing short of hatchets could make a way. The boys got out the small axes kept for such emergencies, and, after an hour's work, made a passage. They started forward once more, and were going along at a pretty good clip, the road having improved in spots. "I wonder when we'll get to that underground city?" said Ned, for perhaps the tenth time that day. He had no sooner spoken than the earth trembled under the auto. The machine seemed to stand still. Then, with a sickening motion it plunged forward and downward. A big hole had opened in the road and let the car and its occupants through the surface of the earth. The machine slid forward, revealing, near the top of a shaft, a brief glimpse of several ruined buildings. "It is the underground city!" exclaimed the professor. Then there came intense darkness. CHAPTER XIX. IN AN ANCIENT TEMPLE. The auto seemed to be bumping along downhill, for at the first evidence of danger Jerry had shut off the power and applied the brake. But the descent was too steep to have the bands hold. Down and down the adventurers went, through some underground passage, it was evident. "Are we all here?" called Jerry, his voice sounding strange and muffled in the chamber to which they had come. "I'm here and all right, but I don't exactly know what has happened," replied the professor. "The same with me," put in Ned, and Bob echoed his words. Just then the automobile came to a stop, having reached a level and run along it for a short distance. "Well, we seem to have arrived," went on Jerry. "I wonder how much good it is going to do us?" "Supposing we light the search-lamp and see what sort of a place we are in," suggested Professor Snodgrass. "It's so dark in here we might just as well be inside one of the pyramids of Egypt." The acetylene gas lamp on the front of the auto was lighted, and in its brilliant rays the travelers saw that they were in a large underground passage. It was about twenty feet high, twice as broad and seemed to be hewn out of solid rock. "This is what makes it so dark," observed the professor. "I knew it must be something like this, for it was still daylight when we tumbled into the hole and we haven't been five minutes down here. Run the auto forward, Jerry." The car puffed slowly along surely as strange a place as ever an automobile was in. The boys looked eagerly ahead. They saw nothing but the rocky sides and roof of the passage. "This doesn't look much like an underground city," objected Ned. "I think it's an abandoned railway tunnel." At that instant Jerry shut off the power and applied the brakes with a jerk. "What's the matter?" asked the professor. "There's some sort of a wall or obstruction ahead," was the answer, and Jerry pointed to where, in the glare of the lamp, could be seen a wall that closed up the passageway completely. "I guess this is the end," remarked Ned, ruefully. The naturalist got out of the car and ran forward. He seemed to be examining the obstruction carefully. He struck it two or three blows. "Hurrah!" he cried. "Come on, boys, this is only a big wooden door! We can open it!" In an instant the three lads had joined him. They found that the passage was closed by a big portal of planks, bolted together and swinging on immense hinges. There was also a huge lock or fastening. "Can we open the door?" inquired Bob. "It looks as if it was meant to stay shut." "We'll soon see," answered Jerry. He ran back to the automobile and got a kit of tools. Then, while Ned held up one of the small oil lamps that was taken off the dashboard of the car, Jerry tackled the lock. It was a massive affair, but time had so rusted it that very little trouble was found in taking it apart so that the door was free. "Everybody push, now!" called Jerry. "Those hinges are pretty rusty." They shoved with all their strength, but the door, though it gave slightly, showing that no more locks held it, would not open. It had probably not been used for centuries. "Looks as if we'd have to stay here," said the professor. "Not a bit of it," spoke Jerry. "Wait a minute." He ran back to the auto, and soon the others heard him cranking it up. "Look out! Stand to one side!" he called. The auto came forward slowly. Jerry steered the front part of it carefully against the massive door. Once he was close to the portal he turned on full power. There was a cracking and splintering of wood, and a squeaking as the rusty hinges gave. Then, with the auto pushing against it, the massive door swung to one side. The machine had accomplished what the strength of the boys and the professor could not. Slowly but surely the portal opened. Wider and wider it swung, until there burst on the astonished gaze of the travelers a flood of light. The sun was shining overhead, though fast declining in the west, but in the bright glare of the slanting beams there was revealed the underground city. There it stood in all its ancient splendor, most of it, however, but mere ruins of what had been fine buildings. There were rows and rows of houses, stone palaces and what had been beautiful temples. Nearly all of the structures showed traces of elaborate carvings. But ruin was on every side. The roofs of houses, temples and palaces had fallen in. Walls were crumbling and the streets were filled with debris. As the boys looked, some foxes scampered among the ruins, and shortly afterward a jaguar slunk along, crawling into a hole in a temple wall. "Grand! Beautiful! Solemn!" exclaimed the professor, in raptures over the discovery. "It is more than I dared to hope for. Think of it, boys! We have at last discovered the buried city of ancient Mexico. How the people back in civilization will open their eyes when they hear this news! My name and yours as well will be covered with glory. Oh, it is marvelous!" "I guess it will be some time before the people back in Cresville hear of this," observed Jerry. "There doesn't seem to be any way of sending a letter from here. I don't see any telegraph station, and there's not a messenger boy in sight." "That's funny," said Ned. "You'd think a buried city, a dead one, so to speak, would be just the place where a district messenger would like to come to rest." "It's a lonesome place here," remarked Bob. "I hope we'll find some one to talk to." "That's just the beauty of the place," said the professor. "What good would an ancient, ruined, buried city be if people were living in it? I hope there isn't a soul here but ourselves." "I guess you'll get your desire, all right," remarked Jerry. The first surprise and wonder over, the travelers advanced a little way into the city and looked about them. They saw that the place, which was several miles square, was down in a hollow, formed of high hills. For this reason the location of the city had remained so long a secret. They had come upon it through one of the underground passages leading into the town, and these, as they afterward learned, were the only means of entering the place. There were four of these passages or tunnels, one entering from each side of the city, north, south, east and west. But time and change had closed up the outer ends of the tunnels after the city had become deserted, and it remained for Professor Snodgrass and his party to tumble in on one. It was as if a city had been built inside an immense bowl and on the bottom of it. The sides of the bowl would represent the hills and mountains that girt the ancient town. Then, if four holes were made in the sides of the vessel, close to the bottom, they would be like the four entrances to the old city. "Supposing we take a ride through the town before dark," suggested Jerry. "We may meet some one." He started the machine, but after going a short distance it was found that it was impracticable to use the machine to any advantage. The streets were filled with debris and big stones from the ruined houses and fallen hills, and it needed constant twisting and turning to make the journey. "Let's get out and walk," proposed Ned. "Then there's a good place to leave the machine," said Bob, pointing to a ruined temple on the left. "We can run it right inside, through the big doors. It's a regular garage." The suggestion was voted a good one, and Jerry steered the auto into the temple. The place had been magnificent in its day. Even now the walls were covered with beautiful paintings, or the remains of them, and the whole interior and exterior of the place was a mass of fine stone carving. The roof had fallen away in several places, but there were spots where enough remained to give shelter. The machine was run into a covered corner and then the travelers went outside. The professor uttered cries of delight at every step, as he discovered some new specimen or relic. They seemed to exist on every side. "Look out where you're stepping!" called the naturalist, suddenly, as Jerry was about to set his foot down. "What's the matter--a snake?" asked the boy, jumping back. "No. But you nearly stepped on and ruined a petrified bug worth thousands of dollars!" "Great Scott! I'll be careful after this," promised Jerry, as the professor picked up the specimen of a beetle and put it in his box. CHAPTER XX. MYSTERIOUS HAPPENINGS. The travelers strolled for some time longer, the professor finding what he called rare relics at every turn. "This is like another gold mine," he said. "There are treasures untold here. I have no doubt we will find a store of diamonds and other precious stones before we are through." "I'd like to find a ham sandwich right now," observed Bob. "It wouldn't be Chunky if he wasn't hungry," laughed Ned. "But I admit I feel somewhat the same way myself." "Then we had better go back to the temple and get supper," advised Jerry. So back they went, but their progress was slow, because the professor would insist on examining every bit of ruins he came to in order to see if there were not specimens to be gathered or relics to be picked up. His green box was full to overflowing and all his pockets bulged, but he was the happiest of naturalists. It was dark when they reached the ancient place of worship where the auto had been left, and at Jerry's suggestion Bob lighted the search-lamp and the other two lights on the machine. This made a brilliant circle of illumination in one place, but threw the rest of the temple into a dense blackness. "I wouldn't want to be here all alone," remarked Bob, looking about and shuddering a bit. "Why, Chunky? Afraid of ghosts?" asked Ned. "What was that?" exclaimed Bob, suddenly, starting at a noise. "A bat," replied the naturalist. "The place is full of them. I must get some for specimens." "I don't know but what I prefer ghosts to bats," said Bob. "I hope none of them suck our blood while we're asleep." "No danger; I guess none of these are of the vampire variety," remarked the professor. "But now let's get supper." In spite of the strangeness of the surroundings, the travelers managed to make a good meal. The gasolene stove was set up and some canned chicken prepared, with tortillas and frijoles. "We'll have to replenish our larder soon," remarked Jerry, looking into the provision chest. "There's only a little stuff left." "We'll have to go hunting some day," said the professor. "We can't starve in this country. Game is too plentiful." "I wonder if the people who built this place didn't put some bedrooms in it," said Bob, as, sitting on the floor of the temple, he began to nod from sleepiness. "Perhaps they did," put in Ned. "Let's take a look." He unfastened one of the oil lamps from the auto and started off on an exploring trip. A little to the left of the corner where the auto stood he came to a door. Though it worked hard on the rusted hinges he managed to push it open. He flashed the light inside. "Hurrah! Here are some beds or couches or something of the kind!" he shouted. The others came hurrying up. The room seemed to be a sort of resting place for the priests of the ancient temple. Ranged about the side walls were wooden frames on which were stretched skins and hides of animals, in a manner somewhat as the modern cot is made. "I wonder if they are strong enough to hold us," said Jerry. "Let Chunky try, he's the heaviest," suggested Ned. Accordingly, Bob stretched out on the ancient bed. It creaked a little, but showed no signs of collapsing in spite of the many years it had been in the place. "This will be better than sleeping on a cold stone floor," remarked the professor. "Fetch in the blankets and we'll have a good night's rest." "Shall we post a guard?" asked Jerry. "I don't think it will be necessary," replied the naturalist. "I hardly believe there is any one in this old city but ourselves, and we can barricade the door to keep out any stray animals." So, in a little while, the travelers were all slumbering. But the professor was wrong in his surmise that they were the only inhabitants of the underground city. No sooner had a series of snores proclaimed that every one was sleeping than from a dark recess on the opposite side of the temple to that where the automobile stood there came a strange figure, clad in white. If Bob had seen it he surely would have said it was a ghost. "So you found my ancient city after all," whispered the figure. "You know now that the Mexican magician was telling the truth, and you realize that you found the place sooner than you expected, and in a strange manner. But there will be more strange things happen before you go from here, I promise you." "Are the _Americano_ dogs asleep?" sounded a whisper from the recess whence came the aged Mexican, who had so strangely prophesied to the professor. "Yes, San Lucia, they are asleep," replied the first figure, as another, attired as he was, joined him. "But speak softly, for they have sharp ears and wake easily." "Have they the gold with them?" asked San Lucia, who was also quite old. "That is what we want, Murado. Have they the gold?" "All _Americanos_ have gold," replied Murado. "That is why I lured them on. All my plans were made to get them here that we might take their gold." "And you succeeded wonderfully well, Murado. Tell me about it, for I have not had a chance to talk to you since you arrived in such breathless haste." "There is not much to tell," replied the other. "I heard of their arrival in a short time after they reached Mexico. Then, in a secret way, I heard what they were searching for. Chance made it possible for me to somewhat startle them by pretending to know more than I did. I met them on the road and told them of what they were in search and how to find it." "That was easy, since you knew so well yourself," interrupted San Lucia. "We have not been brigands for nothing, Murado. Well do I remember the day you and I came upon this buried city. And it has been our headquarters ever since." "As I said, it was easy to mystify them," went on Murado. "They traveled fast in their steam wagon, or whatever it is, but I knew several short cuts that enabled me to get ahead of them. I was hidden in the hollow stone image of the laughing serpent and saw, through the little eye-holes, how they came up and took the paper I had written and put between the lips of the reptile. Oh, it all worked out as I had planned, and now we have them here where we want them." "And we will kill them and get their gold!" whispered San Lucia, feeling of a knife he wore in his belt. "But tell me, how did they happen to stumble on the right underground passage?" "They didn't happen to," replied Murado. "That was one point where I failed. But it is just as well. You see, I had so managed things that I knew they would take the road to the left of the image. When I saw them depart I called my horse and galloped off to the right. I wanted to take a short cut and get here ahead of them. "I succeeded. You were away; just when I needed your help, too. But I managed. I went out in the underground passage and waited for them. "That passage, you know, goes right under the road they were traveling on. Whoever built this ancient city must have wanted it to remain hidden, for the only way to get to it is by the tunnels. If, by chance, some one approached on the roads leading to the top of the mountains the ancients had a plan to get rid of them." "How?" asked San Lucia. "At several places in the upper roadway there were false places. That is, they were traps. A portion of the road would be dug away, making a shaft down to the tunnel. Then boards would be placed over the hole and a light covering of dirt sprinkled on the planks. Watchers were stationed below, and at the sound of an enemy on the boards above the sentinels would pull a lever. This would take away the supports of the false portion of the road, and it would crash down into the tunnel, carrying the enemy with it. "So I played the part of the watcher, and when I heard the _Americanos_ riding over the trap I pulled the lever and down they crashed. "There, as I said, I made my only mistake. I expected the _Americanos_ would be killed, but their steam cart is strong, and the fall did not hurt them. Besides, only one end of the trap gave way, and the other, holding fast, made an inclined road on which they descended into the tunnel. That is how they came here, and now we must to work if we are to get their gold." "And quickly, too," observed San Lucia, "for I learned that another party is following this; they, too, have a steam wagon, and we may trap them also." "I know the crowd of whom you speak," said Murado. "They are not far behind. One is a youth called Nixy Nodnot, or some barbarous thing like it. They will be surprised not to find their friends. But come, they sleep!" Then the two Mexican brigands began creeping toward the room where the professor and the boys were sleeping. CHAPTER XXI. NODDY HAS A TUMBLE. When Vasco and Noddy, foiled in their attempt to kidnap Bob, retreated through the forest, they went into camp with their crowd in no very pleasant frame of mind. The Mexicans whom Vasco had hired to assist him were angry at being foiled, and they talked of deserting. "Go on, if you want to," said Vasco, carelessly rolling a cigarette; "so much the more gold for us when the rich man ransoms his son." This was enough to excite the greed of the men, who talked no more of going away. The next day, after a consultation, Noddy and Vasco decided to continue on the trail of the boys and the professor. They pursued the same tactics they had previous to the interrupted kidnapping, and were careful not to get too close to those they were trailing. All was not harmonious among the members of the band with which Noddy had surrounded himself. The men had frequent quarrels, especially when they were playing cards, which they seemed to do when they were not smoking cigarettes. After dinner one day the Mexicans appeared to be much amused as they played their game. They laughed and shouted and seemed to be talking of the automobile, for Noddy had brought his machine up to the camp of the horsemen. "What are they talking about?" asked Noddy of Vasco. "They are making a wager that the one who loses the game must ride, all by himself, in the automobile," replied Bilette. "But I don't want them to do that," said Noddy. "They don't know how to run the car." "That's the trouble," went on Vasco. "No one wants to lose, for they're all afraid to operate the machine. But if one of them tries to do it, you'd better let him, if you don't want to get into trouble." With a shout of laughter the men arose from where they had been playing the game. They seemed to be railing at one chap, who looked at the auto as if he feared it might blow up and kill him. "You're in for it," remarked Vasco. "Whatever you do don't make a fuss." With a somewhat sheepish air a young Mexican, one of Vasco's crowd, came near the auto. He made a sign that he wanted to take Noddy's place. The latter frowned and spoke in English, only a word or two of which the native understood. "You shan't have this machine," spoke Noddy. "It's mine, and if you try to run it you'll break it." But the Mexican paid no heed. He came close up to Noddy, grabbed him by the collar and hauled him from the car. Noddy was the only one in it at that time, Berry, Dalsett and Pender having gone off a short distance. "Let go of me!" cried Noddy, trying to draw a small revolver he carried. The Mexican only grunted and retained his grip. "If you don't let me alone I'll fire!" exclaimed the youth. He had his revolver out, and the Mexican, seeing this, allowed his temper to cool a bit. But there was an angry look in his eyes that meant trouble for Noddy. "Now you fellows quit this gambling," commanded Vasco. "We'll have hard work ahead of us in a little while, and we don't want any foolishness. Leave Noddy alone. Don't you know if any one tries to run that machine that hasn't been introduced to it, the engine will blow up!" "_Diablo!_" exclaimed the Mexican who had lost at cards and who was about to attempt to operate the auto. "I will let it alone!" Quiet was restored, but the bad feeling was only smoothed over. It was liable to break out again at any time. The main object of the crowd was not lost sight of, however, and every hour they drew nearer the trail of those of whom they were in pursuit. As it grew dusk, on the day of the quarrel over the auto, Noddy and Vasco, with their followers, came to a small clearing. They decided to stop and have supper. "If I'm not mistaken, the other auto has been here within a short time," remarked Vasco, pointing to marks in the sandy road. "And there seem to be footprints leading over there through the underbrush." He followed the trail, and came to the place where, a short time before, Professor Snodgrass had battled with the cocoanut-throwing monkeys. "Looks as if some one was going to start in the wholesale business," went on the Mexican, glancing at the pile of nuts the simians had piled up. "Do you think we are close to them?" asked Noddy, for, since the experience of the afternoon, he was anxious to get the kidnapping over, and be rid of the Mexicans. "They have been here very recently," said Vasco. "How can you tell?" asked Noddy. "See where the oil has dripped from their machine," replied Bilette, pointing to a little puddle of the lubricant in the road. "It has not yet had time to soak away, showing that it must have been there but a short time, since in this sand it would not remain long on top." "Shall we go on after them or camp for the night?" asked Noddy, following a somewhat lengthy pause. "Keep on," replied Vasco. "No telling when we may get another chance. Get the boy when we can. We'll have to do a little night traveling, but what of it?" Noddy assented. He spent some time after supper in oiling up the auto and getting the lamps filled, for darkness was coming on. Then, all being in readiness, Noddy started off, the horsemen keeping close to him. For a few miles no one in the party spoke. The auto puffed slowly along, the horsemen managing to keep up to it. "How do we know we're on the right road?" asked Noddy at length. "We may have gone astray in the darkness." Tom Dalsett took a lantern and made a careful survey of the highway. He came back presently. "We're all right," he said. "There are auto tracks just ahead of us. We may come up to them any minute now." Once more Noddy's auto, which he had stopped to let Dalsett out, started up. The pace was swift and silent. But as they penetrated farther and farther into the depths of the forest there was no sign of the boys and the professor, who, by this time, were in the underground city. "I don't believe we'll find them," spoke Jack Pender. "Let's camp now and take up the trail in the morning, when you can see better." "No; we must keep on," said Vasco, firmly. "It is to-night or never. I can't hold my men together any longer than that." Off into the darkness puffed the auto. The men on horseback followed it, the whole party keeping close together, for several jaguars were seen near the path, having been driven from their usual haunts because of the scarcity of game. Every one was on the alert, watching for any signs of the travelers they were pursuing. Every now and then some one would get out and examine the road to see if the auto marks were still to be seen. They were there, and led straight on to the hidden city. It was some time past midnight and the machine was going over a good patch of road, when Jack Pender, who was seated beside Noddy, suddenly grabbed the steersman's arm. "What's that ahead in the road?" asked Jack. "I don't see anything," replied Noddy. "It's your imagination. What does it look like?" "Like a big black shadow, bigger and blacker than any around here. Can't you see it now? There it is! Stop the machine, quick!" Noddy, peering through the gloom, saw what seemed to be a patch of shadows. He gave the levers quick yanks, jammed down the brakes and tried to bring the machine to a stop. But he was too late. With a plunge the car sank through the earth and rushed along the inclined plane down which Jerry and his friends had coasted a few hours before. There were wild cries of fear, mingled with the shrill neighing of horses, for some of the riders and their steeds also went down the trap that had been laid. The auto remained upright and shot along the floor of the tunnel to which it had fallen, undergoing the same experience as had the machine of Jerry and his friends. Then, with a crash that resounded through the confines of the ancient city, Noddy and his machine and all who were in it brought up against the massive door closing the tunnel, which portal Jerry had swung shut after he and his friends had passed through. Following the crash there came an ominous silence. CHAPTER XXII. FACE TO FACE. "Hark! What was that?" whispered San Lucia to Murado. The two old brigands paused in their stealthy march upon their sleeping victims, as the sound of the crash Noddy's auto made came faintly to their ears. "How should I know?" asked Murado, but he seemed alarmed. "It sounded in the tunnel," went on San Lucia. "Some one is coming! Quick! Let us hide! Another night will do for our work." Thereupon the two old villains, alarmed by the terror of the noise caused by they knew not what, hesitated and then fled as silently as they had advanced. For the time the lives of the boys and the professor had been saved. San Lucia and Murado went to their hiding place in the old temple, the building being so large and rambling that it would have hidden a score of men with ease. It may be added here that they did not dare to touch many things in the ancient city, thinking them bewitched. All unmindful of the danger which had menaced them, our travelers slept on, nothing disturbing them, and they did not hear the noise made by Noddy's tumble, though they were not far from the mouth of the tunnel. "I say!" called Bob, sitting up and looking at his watch in a sunbeam that came through a broken window. "I say, are you fellows going to sleep all day? It's nearly eight o'clock, and I want some breakfast." "Oh, of course it's something to eat as soon as you open your eyes!" exclaimed Jerry. "I should think you would take something to bed with you, Chunky, and put it under your pillow so you could eat in the night whenever you felt hungry." "That's all right," snapped Bob, "but I notice we don't have to call you twice to come to your meals." "Is it morning?" called the professor from his cot. "Long ago," replied Bob, who was dressing. "I wonder if the folks that lived in this temple ever washed. I'd like to strike a bathroom about now." "Hark! I hear something!" exclaimed the professor. They all listened intently. "It's running water," said the naturalist, "and close by. Perhaps there's a wash-room in this temple." "I'm going to see what's behind this door," said Bob, pointing to a portal none of them had noticed in the darkness. He pushed it open and went inside. The next instant he uttered a joyful cry: "Come here, fellows! It's a plunge bath!" Then they heard him spring in and splash about. Jerry and Ned soon followed, and the professor came a little later. It was a regular swimming-tank, stone-lined and sunk into the floor. The water came in through a sort of stone trough. "These old chaps knew something about life, after all," observed Ned, as he climbed out and proceeded to dry himself. "They were probably a bit like the Romans," remarked the professor, "and fond of bathing. But something has given me an appetite, and I wouldn't object to breakfast." The others were of the same mind, and soon Ned had the gasolene stove set up and was preparing a meal. Bob attended to the brewing of the coffee instead of chocolate, and the aroma of the beverage filled the old temple with an appetizing odor. "What are we going to do to-day?" asked Jerry, when they had finished the meal and were sitting comfortably on some low stools that had been discovered in the room where they slept. "We must explore the city in all directions," said the professor. "There are many marvelous things here, and I have not begun to find them yet. It will take weeks and weeks." "Are we going to stay here all that while?" asked Bob, somewhat dubiously. "I'd like to," answered the naturalist. "But we can get a good load of specimens and relics, run up north and come back for more. This place is a regular treasure-trove." Clearing away the remains of the breakfast, and looking over the auto to see that it had suffered no damage in the recent experience, the boys and the professor left the temple and strolled out into the deserted city. They did not know that their every movement was watched by the glittering eyes of San Lucia and Murado, who were hidden in an upper part of the temple whence they could look down on their intended victims from a small, concealed gallery. By full daylight the ancient city was even more wonderful than it had appeared in the waning light of the previous afternoon. In the days of its glory it was evident it had been a beautiful place. The travelers entered some of the better-preserved houses. They found the rooms filled with fine furniture, of a rude but simple and pleasing character, some of the articles being well preserved. One house they visited seemed to have belonged to some rich man, for it was filled with things that once had been of great beauty. "There is something that should interest me!" exclaimed the professor, as he caught sight of a small cabinet on the wall. "That must contain curios." He found his supposition right, and fairly reveled in the objects that were treasures to him, but not worth much to any one else. There were ancient coins, rings and other articles of jewelry and hundreds of bugs, beetles and minerals. "Whoever lived here was a wise and learned man," observed the naturalist. "I shall take his whole collection back with me, since it is going to ruin here, and it belongs to no one." "There will be no room for any of us in the auto if you keep on collecting things," observed Jerry. But this seemed to make no difference to the professor. He went right on collecting as if he had a freight car at his disposal. The travelers continued on their way, exploring the different buildings here and there. "I'm tired," announced Bob, suddenly. "You fellows can go on, if you want to, but I'm going to sit down and take a rest." He found a comfortable place in the shade, where a stone ledge was built against the side of a ruined house, and sat down. Jerry and Ned followed his example, for they, too, were leg-weary. "I'll just take a look through this one place, and then we'll go back and have dinner," said the professor. He entered the structure, against which the boys were sitting. It was a small, one-storied affair, and did not look as if it would contain anything of value. The naturalist had not been inside five minutes before the boys heard him calling, in excited tones: "Come quick, boys!" They ran in, to behold Professor Snodgrass with his arm stuck in a hole in the wall. He seemed to be pulling at something. "What is it?" cried Jerry. "A gila monster," replied the professor. "I saw him and I got him." "It looks as if he had you," answered Ned. "He tried to get away, but I grabbed him by the tail as he was going in his hole," went on the naturalist. "Now he's got his claws dug down in the dirt and I can't pull him out. Come out of there, my beauty!" he cried, addressing his remarks to the hidden gila monster. "Come out, my pet!" Then, with a sudden yank the professor succeeded in drawing the animal from its burrow. It was a repulsive-looking creature of the lizard variety, and as the professor held it up by the tail it wiggled and tried to escape. "Now I have you, my little darling!" the naturalist cried, popping his prize into his collecting-box. "That would never take a prize at a beauty show," observed Ned. "I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole." "Well, this has been a most profitable day," went on the collector, as, with the boys, he turned toward their residence in the old temple. "I must come back this afternoon for the cabinet of curios." Without further incident, save that nearly every step of the homeward journey the professor stopped to pick up some relic, the travelers reached the temple. "Here goes for another bath!" cried Bob, running toward the room where the plunge was. "I'm nearly melted by the heat." "I'm with you!" said Jerry. Suddenly they heard the professor's voice calling them. "I wonder what in the world is the matter now?" said Jerry. He and Bob hurried outside where they had left the naturalist and Ned. They found the pair gazing down the street toward the tunnel entrance. And as they gazed they saw the big door swing slowly open, while from the passage came Noddy Nixon, Vasco Bilette and the others of their crowd. A low cry of surprise broke from Noddy as he stood face to face with the very persons he and Vasco were seeking. CHAPTER XXIII. BOB IS KIDNAPPED. For a minute or two the unexpected encounter so astonished all concerned that no one spoke. Noddy seemed ill at ease from meeting his former acquaintances, but Vasco Bilette smiled in an evil way. Chance had thrown in his path the very person he wanted. Tom Dalsett was the first to speak. "Well, we meet again," he said, with an attempt at cheerfulness. "How do you all do?" "I don't know that we're any the better for seeing you," remarked Professor Snodgrass, who was plain-spoken at times. "Oh, but I assure you it's a sight for sore eyes to get a glimpse of you once more," went on Tom. "Besides, this is a free city, you know, even if it is an old, underground one; and we have as much right here as you have." "True enough," broke in Jerry. "But you may as well know, first as last, that we're done fooling with you and your gang, Noddy Nixon. If you annoy us again there's going to be trouble!" Noddy did not reply. He seemed anxious to get away, but Dalsett and Vasco urged him to stay, and they had secured quite an influence over the youth. "We must have come in by the same passage you did," went on Dalsett. "You left it open behind you. We were wandering around in the dark tunnel until we discovered this door a little while ago. Lucky, wasn't it?" "For you chaps, yes," commented Ned. "Some of us were nearly killed in the tumble," went on Dalsett. "We got out of it rather well, on the whole." "You'd better come inside and have nothing more to say to him," said the professor to his friends. "This spoils all our plans." "Never mind; perhaps we can give them the slip among the ruins," said Jerry. He went back into the ancient temple, and the others followed him. Noddy continued to stare as if he thought the whole thing was a dream. As for Vasco and Dalsett, they were much pleased with the turn affairs had taken. But the Mexicans were excited. Several of them had been bruised by the fall into the tunnel, and they wanted to proceed at once and kidnap Bob, so they could get the ransom money. But Vasco would not permit this. He did not believe in using force when he could use stealth. Besides, he was a coward, and afraid of getting hurt, if it came to a fight. "Let them go," he said to his men, who murmured as they saw their prospective captive and his friends retreat into the temple. "Let them go. They can't get away from here without letting us know. We are better off than before. We can capture the fat boy whenever we want to now." With that, Vasco's followers had to be content. As Dalsett had said, Noddy and his cronies, after groping about in the dark tunnel for some time, had finally discovered the door by which the boys and the professor had entered the ancient city. They had pushed it open and come face to face with our friends. "Bah!" exclaimed one of the Mexicans. "It is always to-morrow and to-morrow in this business. Let us fight them! Let us get the captive and let us share the ransom." "We'll do the trick to-night, sure," promised Vasco. "To-night, positively, we will kidnap Bob." Meanwhile, all unconscious of the fate in store for him, Bob was making a substantial meal, for the travelers had begun to get dinner after withdrawing from the front of the temple. They talked of little save the appearance of Noddy and his followers. "How do you suppose he ever got here?" asked Bob. "Simply followed us," said Jerry. "We left a plain enough trail. Besides, automobiles are scarce in Mexico, and any one seeing ours pass by would easily remember it and tell whoever came along afterward, making inquiries." "What had we better do?" asked Ned. "Stay here or go away?" "There'll be more or less trouble if we stay," was Jerry's opinion. "Supposing we go away for a while and come back. If Noddy is after us we may give him the slip and return." "How are we going to get out of this place?" asked Bob. "We can't go back through the tunnel we came in, as they are now on guard there." "There must be more than one entrance to this city," spoke the professor. "I think I'll go and hunt for another. When we find it we can take the automobile with us and escape to-night. I wish to be the first person to announce this discovery to the world." "That's the idea!" exclaimed Ned. "I'll go along to help hunt for another passage, while Bob and Jerry can stay on guard." "In the meanwhile I'm going to have my swim," said Bob. He went into the tank-room, and immediately uttered a cry. "What's the matter?" called Jerry. "The water has all run out," replied Bob, "and there's a big hole here!" The others came in on the run. They saw that the swimming-pool was empty. Only a little water remained on the bottom in small puddles. They also saw that the pool was made with an incline of stone leading from the floor level down to the bottom. In the side opposite from where the incline was a big black hole showed itself. When the water was at the normal level this hole was invisible. Once the water had lowered it was plain to see. "What made the water go out?" asked Bob. "Probably a gate at the end of the tunnel leading from the tank was opened," replied the naturalist. "Or it may be an automatic arrangement, so that when the tank gets filled up to a certain height the water shuts itself off. So we'll defer our bath until the water rises. Perhaps the tides may have some effect on it. We can only wait and see." "That tunnel is big enough to drive our auto through," observed Bob. A sudden thought came to Jerry. He whispered to the professor. "Of course it could be done," replied the scientist after consideration, "but there is the danger of the water rising suddenly while we are in the tunnel. Jerry talks of escaping by means of this new shaft," went on the professor. "We could run the auto down the incline and so out. But we must investigate the place." The naturalist walked down the incline. Straight in front of them, as they neared it, yawned the black mouth of the passage. The professor would not let the boys come in until he had made an investigation. He walked quite a distance down the shaft and returned. He seemed in deep thought. "It will be safe to use the tunnel," he said. "It appears that the water was siphoned out. There is another tank or reservoir connected with this one. They both seem to be fed by springs. When the other tank, which is below the level and to one side, gets full of water, the fluid is siphoned out. As that tank is connected with the one we used, by a pipe, as soon as the water goes out of the first tank, that in the second follows to keep the first tank filled. And so it goes on, from day to day, repeating the operation once every twenty-four hours, I would judge. So we have plenty of time. The tunnel leads to one like that by which we entered the city. I have no doubt but that we can escape through it." If the professor and the boys could at this time have seen two evil faces peering down at them from a high balcony, they might not have felt so comfortable. San Lucia and Murado were on the lookout, and every move the travelers made was watched. It was decided to make the escape that night. Accordingly, after supper, the automobile was prepared for a long trip. Things were packed in it, and the professor took along his beloved specimens. "How are we going to get the car down the incline?" asked Bob. "I can take it down, all right," replied Jerry. At length all was in readiness. Jerry and Ned took the front seat, Bob cranked up the car, which was still inside the old temple, and then joined the professor on the rear seat. "All ready?" asked Jerry. "All ready," replied Bob. "Yes, and we are ready, too!" came in a whisper from the ruined doorway of the temple, where Vasco Bilette and his men were in hiding, watching the flight of the travelers. The Mexican had guessed some sort of an attempt to escape would be made, and was on hand to frustrate it. But the preparations made for taking the auto down into the empty water pool puzzled Vasco. So he was on the alert. "Here we go!" called Jerry, softly. The auto was vibrating, but almost noiselessly, for the explosions of the motor could scarcely be heard. Down the incline Jerry took the heavy car, without a mishap. Straight for the open mouth of the tunnel he steered it. It was as dark as pitch now, but the lamps on the car gave good illumination. "Come on, we have them now!" cried Vasco to his followers. "The boy is in the back seat!" The Mexicans ran down the incline. By this time the machine was well into the mouth of the shaft. Hearing footsteps behind him, resounding on the stone pavement, Jerry shut off the power for a moment. As he did so the car was surrounded by ugly-looking brigands, who had run up at a signal from Vasco. "Quick! Grab him!" cried Dalsett. "I have him!" replied Vasco. He reached up, and, though Bob was a heavy lad, the Mexican, with the help of Dalsett, pulled him over the rear seat. Bob fought, kicked and struggled. It was of no avail. Then a sack was quickly thrown over his head, and the men ran back out of the tunnel and up the incline, bearing Chunky with them. "Bob's been kidnapped!" shouted the professor. "Turn the auto around, Jerry, and chase after them!" CHAPTER XXIV. BOB TRIES TO FLEE. In an instant Jerry tried to turn the auto around. He found the passage too narrow. There was nothing to do but to back up the incline. This was a slow process in the darkness. "Fire at them!" cried Ned. "No. You might hit Bob!" said the professor. "We must chase after the brigands. This is what they have been following us for. I wonder what they want of Bob?" No one could guess. By this time Jerry had run the machine up the inclined plane and into the temple. Then he sent it out into the street. It was as dark as a pocket and not a trace of the kidnappers could be seen, nor could they be heard. The capture of Bob came as a terrible blow. "Let's take to the tunnel where we came in!" cried Ned. "Perhaps they are hiding there." "If they are, they are well armed, and their force is three times what ours is now," said the professor. "If we are to help Bob we will have to do it by strategy rather than by force. Come, we had better go back to the temple. We can make our plans from there." "Poor Chunky!" groaned Jerry. "I wonder what they are doing to him now?" "I guess it was his money-belt they wanted more than they did him," put in Ned. "You know he carried what was left of the five hundred dollars." "That's so!" exclaimed Jerry, with a rueful face. "Never mind the money; I have plenty," put in the naturalist. "And don't worry; we'll find Bob yet." Nothing could be done that night, so the professor and the two boys tried to get what sleep their troubled minds would allow. In the morning they made a hurried breakfast and then held a consultation. It was decided to explore the tunnel by which they had entered the city, and see if it still held the brigands and Noddy's crowd. Arming themselves, the professor, Ned and Jerry advanced carefully through the big wooden gate. They proceeded cautiously, but no one opposed them. The tunnel was deserted. They came to the hole where they had tumbled down. The inclined plane of planks was there, in the same position as when the cave-in, produced by Murado, had occurred. "They have probably gone back up here and are running across country," remarked Ned. "Hello!" he exclaimed. "What's that?" He picked up a small object that lay at the foot of the incline, in the glare of the sunlight that streamed in from above. "That's Bob's knife," said Jerry. "He had it yesterday. That shows he must have been here since. There is no doubt but that they have carried him away from here." The professor agreed that this was probably the case. There was nothing left to do, so they returned to the temple. "I hardly know what to do," said the naturalist. "We might take the automobile and ride off, not knowing where, in a vain endeavor to find Bob. Or we can stay here on the chance that he may escape and come back. If we went away he would not know where to find us. "Then, too, I am hopeful we may hear something from Noddy Nixon or some of those Mexicans he had with him. Those fellows are regular brigands, and may have captured Bob, thinking we will pay a ransom for his return. On the whole, I think we had better stay here for a few days." This seemed the best thing to do. With heavy hearts, Jerry and Ned wandered about the old temple, wishing their chum was back with them. The professor began to gather more specimens and made several trips to the old buildings where he got many curios of value. Meanwhile, poor Bob was having his own troubles. At the first rough attack of the kidnappers, when he was hauled over the back of the auto, he did not know what had happened. He supposed it was some accident, such as the tunnel caving in or the water suddenly rising. But when he found himself held by two men, and the bag thrown over his head, he realized that he was a captive, though he did not know why any one would want him. Holding him between them, Vasco and Dalsett ran back into the bath and up the incline, followed by Noddy and the Mexicans. Berry and Pender had been left in charge of the auto and horses, which were in the first tunnel. Bob, who had not attempted to struggle after his first involuntary kicking when he was hauled out, decided that his captors were having too easy a time of it. He was by no means a baby, and though he was fat he had considerable muscle. So he began to beat about with his fists, and to kick with his heavy shoes, in a manner that made it very uncomfortable for Vasco and Dalsett. "Quit that, you young cub, or I'll hurt you!" exclaimed Vasco. "Yes, an' I'll do the same!" growled Dalsett, and, recognizing the voice, Bob knew for the first time into whose hands he had fallen. He did not heed the command to stop struggling, and it was all the two men could do to hold him. Suddenly they laid him down. "Look here!" exclaimed Dalsett, sitting on Bob to keep him still, "if you want us to tie you up like a steer we're willin' to do it. An' we'll gag you into the bargain. If you quit wigglin' you'll be treated decent." "Then you take this bag off my head!" demanded Bob, with some spirit. "I will if you promise to walk an' not make us carry you," promised Dalsett. "I'll walk until I get a good chance to get away," replied Bob, determined to give no parole. "Mighty little chance you have of gittin' away," remarked Dalsett, as he removed the sack. It was as dark as a pocket, and Bob wondered where he was. Soon one of the men came with a lantern, and by the gleam the captive could see he was in the tunnel. "Come on!" ordered Vasco. Walking in the midst of his captors, Bob came to the foot of the incline. There he found Noddy, Pender and Bill Berry in the auto. The Mexicans had their horses in readiness for a flight. "They're going to take me away," thought Bob. "I wonder how I can give the boys and the professor a sign so they will know that?" His fingers came in contact with his knife and that gave him an idea. He dropped the implement on the ground, where it was found by his friends later. "Is everything ready?" asked Vasco. "I guess so," replied Noddy. "Shall I run the machine up the incline?" "Go ahead," said Dalsett. "We'll walk with our young friend here. I reckon the car will have trouble gittin' up the hill if too many gits in it." "Come on, you fellows!" ordered Vasco of his Mexicans. "We have the captive now, and you'll soon be dividing the ransom money." He spoke in Spanish, which Bob could not understand. The boy was at a loss why so many should be interested in him, but laid it all to a plot of Noddy's to get square. It was quite a pull for the auto, up the steep incline, but Noddy, by using the low gear, managed it. The horses and their riders had less trouble, and soon the whole party stood in the road near the tunnel that led to the underground city. Bob was placed on a small pony, and his hands were tied behind his back. Then, with a Mexican riding before and after him, and one on each side, the cavalcade started off. For several hours the journey was kept up. No one said much, and poor Bob puzzled his brains trying to think what it all meant. One thing he determined on: that he would try to escape at the first opportunity. It came sooner than he expected. He had been working at the bonds on his hands and found, to his joy, that the rope was coming loose. In their hurry, Vasco and Dalsett had not tied it very securely. In a little while Bob had freed his wrists, but he kept his hands behind his back, to let his captors think he was still bound. He waited until he came to a level stretch of land. Then, at a time when the Mexican in the rear had ridden off to one side to borrow a cigarette of a comrade, Bob slipped from the pony's back. He struck the ground rather hard, but here his fat served him in good stead, for he was not hurt much. Then he rolled quickly out of the way of the horses' feet. Jumping up, he ran at top speed off to the left. Instantly the cavalcade was in confusion. Vasco and Dalsett came riding back to see what the trouble was. They saw Bob bounding away. "After him!" shouted Vasco, drawing his revolver and firing in the air to scare Bob. "After him! He's worth ten thousand dollars!" The Mexicans spurred their horses after the fugitive, while Noddy, turning the auto around, lighted the search-lamp and sent the light through the blackness to pick out Bob so the others could find him in the darkness. On and on ran the boy, and after him thundered the horses of his pursuers, coming nearer and nearer. CHAPTER XXV. AN UNEXPECTED FRIEND. It was too uneven a chase to last long. Bob soon found that his enemies were gaining on him, and he resolved to play a trick. He came to a big rock and dropped down behind it, hiding in the shadow. For a time the Mexicans were baffled, but they spread about in a half circle and Bob could hear them gradually surrounding him. Still he hoped to escape detection. "Can't you find him?" he heard Noddy call. "He seems to have given us the slip," replied Vasco. "But we'll get him yet." Noddy sent the searchlight of the automobile all about the rock behind which Bob was hidden, but the deep shadow cast protected the boy. At length, however, one of the Mexicans approached the place. At the same instant Bob was seized with an uncontrollable desire to sneeze. His nose tickled and, though he held his breath and did everything he had ever read about calculated to prevent sneezes, the tickling increased. Finally he gave voice to a loud "Ka-choo!" "_Diablo!_" exclaimed the nearest Mexican. "What have we here?" He was at the rock in an instant and lost no time in grabbing Bob. The boy tried to struggle and escape again, but his captor held him in a firm grip. The Mexican set up a shout at the discovery of his prize, which speedily brought Vasco and his comrades to the scene. "So, you didn't care much for our company," observed Bilette. "But never mind, we think so much of you that we run after you wherever you go. Now we have you again!" and he laughed in an unpleasant manner. "I don't see what you want of me," remarked Bob, as he was led back and placed on his pony. "Ah, perhaps you are not aware that you are worth much money to us," said Vasco. "I'll give you all I have if you'll let me go," said Bob. "That is something we overlooked," said Dalsett. "Take his money, Vasco. He may have a few dollars." In another minute Bob's money-belt, with the best part of five hundred dollars, was in the possession of the Mexicans. He wished he had kept still. "This is doing very well," observed Vasco, as he counted over the bills with glistening eyes. "This is very well indeed, and most unexpected. But we want more than this." "It is all I have," answered Bob. "But your people, your father has more," went on the Mexican. "I think if you were to write him a letter, stating that you were about to be killed unless he sent ten thousand dollars, he would be glad to give us the small amount." "I'll never write such a letter!" exclaimed Bob. "You can kill me if you want to!" "You'll think differently in the morning," remarked Vasco. "Here, you fellows, tie him up so he can't get away again!" This time the ropes were knotted so tightly about the boy's arms and legs that he knew he could not work them loose. He was thrown over the back of the pony and the cavalcade started off again. All night long the march continued, the men on their horses and Noddy and his friends in the auto. Poor Bob felt sick at heart over his failure to escape and the knowledge, conveyed to him in Vasco's remarks, that he was being held for ransom. Just as day was beginning to break, the party reached a small Mexican village and preparations were made to spend some time there. Vasco and his men seemed to know the place well, for they were greeted by many of the inhabitants of the place who had arisen early. Noddy ran the automobile under a shed and then the whole crowd, taking Bob with them, went to a large house at the end of the principal street, where they evidently intended to make their headquarters. Bob was taken to a small room on the second floor, facing the courtyard, which is a feature of all Mexican homes. His bonds were released and he was thrust roughly inside. The apartment was bare enough. There were a table, a chair and a bed in the room. The only window was guarded by heavy iron bars, and the single door was fastened with a massive lock. "I guess I'll have trouble getting out of here," said Bob to himself. "It's a regular prison. I wonder if they're going to starve me?" He began to suffer for want of water, and his stomach cried for food. He had some thought of pounding on the walls and demanding to be fed, when the door opened and a girl quickly entered, setting on the table a tray of food. She was gone before Bob had a chance to get a good look at her, but he saw that she was young and pretty, attired as she was in gay Mexican colors. Though the meal was not very appetizing, it tasted to Bob as if it was the best dinner ever served. He felt better after eating it, and more hopeful. For several days he was held a captive in the room. One evening Vasco Bilette and Tom Dalsett paid him a visit. "We have brought a paper for you to sign," said Vasco. "I will sign nothing," replied Bob. "I think you will, my boy," spoke the Mexican. "Bring in the charcoal, Tom." Dalsett went out and returned with a small, portable clay stove in which burned some charcoal. Heating in the flames was an iron used for branding cattle. "You can take your choice of signing this or of seeing how you look with a hot iron on," said Vasco. "This paper is a letter to your father, telling him you have been captured by brigands, who will not let you go excepting they are paid ten thousand dollars." "I'll never sign!" replied Bob, firmly. "Then brand him!" cried Vasco. One of the Mexicans took the iron from the fire. It glowed with a white, cruel heat. At the sight of it Bob's courage melted away. At the same time a plan came into his head. "I'll sign!" he exclaimed. "I thought you would," observed Vasco. "Put your name here." He handed Bob a letter, written to Mr. Baker, whose name and address Noddy Nixon had supplied. In brief, it demanded that ten thousand dollars be sent to the brigands and left in a lonely spot mentioned, if Mr. Baker did not want to hear of the death of his son. Any attempt to capture the writers, the missive stated, would be met with the instant killing of the boy. "Sign there," said Vasco, indicating the place. Bob did so. At the same time he placed beneath his signature a scrawl and a row of figures. To the Mexicans figures meant nothing, and it is doubtful if they observed them. But to Mr. Baker they spelled out the message: "Send no money. I can get away." They were figures in a secret cypher bank code that Mr. Baker sometimes used, and which Bob had learned. "I guess that will fool them," thought the boy, as he saw his captors take away the letter. For the next few days nothing occurred. Bob was kept a close prisoner in his room, and the only person he saw was the girl who brought him food. He tried to talk to her, but she did not seem to understand English. The captive was beginning to despair. He feared he would never see his friends again, for he did not believe his father would send the money, and without it he was sure the desperate men would kill him. His confidence in his ability to escape lessened as the days went by. He tried to pick the lock on his door, and loosen a bar at the window, but without success. It was the fifth day of his captivity and the Mexican girl came to bring him his supper. To Bob's surprise, this time she did not hurry away. She set the tray of food down and looked at him anxiously. "You want go?" she asked, in a broken accent. "You mean escape? Get away from here? Leave?" asked Bob, taking sudden hope. "Um! Go 'way. Leave bad mans! Maximina help! You go?" "Of course," replied Bob. "But how are you going to manage it?" "Wait till dark. Me come. You go, we go. Leave bad mans. Me no like it here. Bad mans whip Maximina." By which Bob understood that the girl would come when it got dark and help him to escape, accompanying him because she herself had been ill treated by the Mexicans. "Be good boy! Me come. You glad!" she said, in a whisper. Just then the sound of voices was heard outside the room, in the corridor. "Hush! No tell!" cautioned the girl as she glided from the room. Bob began to eat his supper. His heart was in a flutter of hope. "Queer why that money don't come," he heard Vasco say, outside. "We'll have to do something pretty soon." It was getting dark now, and Bob waited anxiously. CHAPTER XXVI. THE ESCAPE OF MAXIMINA. Several hours passed. Bob was beginning to think Maximina had forgotten her promise, when he heard a soft footstep outside. Then came a gentle tapping at his door. It was unlocked from the outside, opened, and the Mexican girl stepped in. "Hush!" she whispered. "We go now. All bad mans gone to feast--holiday. We go. Put on cloak." She gave Bob a long, dark serape, and produced one for herself. Little time was lost. Led by Maximina, Bob passed out into the dark corridor, down the stairs and through the courtyard, out of the house, under the silent stars that twinkled in the sky. "This way!" whispered the girl. "We ride ponies. No one here, we take horses. Where you live?" Bob was at a loss what to do. He wondered how he could make Maximina, whose language he could not speak, and who could talk but imperfectly in his, understand about the underground city. Equally hard would it be to make her comprehend where he lived and how to start for the nearest large city in order to get help or communicate with his friends. He remembered that his captors had brought him almost directly north as they sped away from the buried city. So he thought the best thing to do would be to ride to the south, when he might see some landmark that would aid him in locating himself. "We'll go this way," he said, pointing in a direction opposite to that of the north star, which he saw blazing in the sky. "All right," exclaimed the Mexican girl. She leaped to the back of one of two ponies she had brought from the stable. Bob was not so expert, but managed to get into the saddle. So far they had met no one, nor had they heard the sound of any of the Mexicans. As Maximina had said, all of the men were away to a feast, one of the numerous ones celebrated in the country. Even Noddy and his friends had gone, so there was no one left to guard Bob but the girl. Away they rode, urging their ponies to a gallop. Bob was fearful that at every turn of the road he would meet with some of Vasco's men, but the highway appeared to be deserted. "Me glad to go. Bad mans steal Maximina years ago," said the girl, after half an hour's ride. "Me want to get back to own people." "I wish I could help you," said Bob, "but I'm about as badly off as you are. The Mexicans stole me, too." "We both same, like orphans," said Maximina. "Never min'. Maybe we find our folks." By degrees she brokenly told Bob her story, how she had been kidnapped by Vasco when she was a child, and how he had kept her because her father was too poor to pay the ransom demanded. She had gradually come to be regarded as a regular inmate of the Mexican camp, which, it seemed, was an organized headquarters for kidnappers and brigands generally. She had never thought of escaping before, she said, but when she saw Bob she felt sorry for him and resolved to free not only him, but herself. "We ride faster," she said, after several miles had been covered. "Gettin' late. Men come back from feast find us gone, they ride after." She urged her pony to a gallop and Bob's animal followed its leader. "If I only had a revolver or a gun I'd shoot some of them if they tried to take us back," Bob said to himself. "I hope we can get away." In a small village, about ten miles from the camp of the Mexicans, Vasco and his friends were having a great time. There were wild music and dancing, and plenty of food well seasoned with red pepper. The Mexicans were having what they called fun. Noddy, with Jack and Bill Berry, looked on, taking no part in the revels. They had come over in the automobile, while Vasco and his gang rode their horses. It was past midnight when the leader of the Mexicans decided that it was time to start for home. "Come on," he said. "Who knows but what our prisoner has escaped." "Not much danger of that," said Dalsett. "I told Maximina that if he got away we'd hold her responsible and give her a good lashing. She'll not let him get away." But neither Dalsett nor Vasco knew what they were talking about. The Mexicans were reluctant to leave the dance, but Vasco insisted. Soon the whole party was riding back to camp, Noddy being in advance in his auto. He was the first to reach the kidnappers' headquarters. Dalsett was with him. "I wonder how our captive is?" said the latter. He went up to the room where Bob had been locked up. To his surprise and anger, the apartment was empty. "Maximina!" he called. There was no answer. "They've gone!" he exclaimed. "Here, Noddy, ride back and meet Vasco. Tell him Bob has got away!" The automobile was sent flying down the road. Vasco Bilette and his party were met and the news quickly imparted. "We'll catch 'em!" cried the Mexican. "They have only a few hours' start, and only two slow ponies to ride on. Here, I'll go in the auto with Noddy. You fellows come after me!" Vasco took Jack Pender's place in the machine and soon the chase was on. Vasco rightly concluded that Bob and Maximina would head for the south, so he, too, took the road leading in that direction. Noddy speeded up the car, under Vasco's directions. Faster and faster it raced, the searchlight throwing out a glaring beam far in advance. Meanwhile, Bob and Maximina were making all speed possible. Every now and then the girl would halt her pony and listen intently. "They no come yet," she would say. "No can hear horses comin' after us. We get 'way maybe." Bob certainly hoped so. His experience as a captive was not such as to cause him to like the rôle, and he longed to be with his friends, who, he knew, must be greatly alarmed about him. It seemed to be getting darker as the two traveled on. "Be sunrise 'bout hour," said Maximina, and Bob remembered that he had read about it being darkest just before daybreak. "We mus' hide then," the girl went on. Suddenly a sound came to them from over the dark fields that bordered the road. At the same time there was a shaft of light. "There they come!" cried Bob. "They're after us in the automobile!" "Ride! Ride fast!" called Maximina, fiercely. "If they catch us they kill!" She lashed her pony with the short whip she carried, and struck Bob's animal several smart blows. The two beasts leaped forward. But horses, especially small, Mexican ponies, are not built to race against large touring automobiles. Bob noticed that the chug-chug of Noddy's machine came nearer and nearer. "Maybe we can hide from them in the darkness," said Bob. "It's our only chance. They'll soon be up to us." "No hide! Keep on ride!" exclaimed Maximina. "We git away!" But even as she spoke the searchlight picked them up and they were revealed in its blinding glare. A faint shout from their pursuers told that they had been seen. The ponies were tiring. Already Bob's was staggering along as the pace told on it. Maximina's was a little better off. "We have them!" Bob heard Vasco shout. "They are both together. Put a little more speed on, Noddy!" The chug-chugs of the auto told that the machine was being sent ahead at a faster clip. The searchlight glared more strongly on the fugitives. "Cave somewhere near here," said Maximina. "If we could find 'um we be safe. Ride more, Bob." "This pony can't go much farther," replied the boy. "His legs are shaking now." Crack! A flash of reddish fire cut the blackness, and a bullet sang unpleasantly close over Bob's head. "They only shoot to scare!" cried Maximina. "They no want to kill you. Too valuable. Want ransom; much money; ten thousand dollars." "All the same, it's no fun to be shot at," remarked Bob, urging his pony on. The automobile was now but a few hundred feet away. Noddy had to reduce his speed because the ground was getting rougher. "We'll have them in another minute!" cried Vasco. At that instant, Bob's pony, stepping in a hole, stumbled and fell, throwing the rider over its back. Bob struck the ground heavily and was stunned. "Me stay with you!" exclaimed Maximina, reining in her pony and coming back to where Bob was. "No, no! You ride on!" the boy said, faintly. "Maybe you can find my friends and send help. They are in the underground city!" "All right. Me go! Bring help!" the girl whispered, and, leaping on her pony's back, she rode off to one side, getting away from the glare of the searchlight and so escaping observation. Two minutes later the auto came up to where Bob was stretched out on the ground. Vasco leaped out before the machine had fairly stopped and made a grab for Bob. "The boy is dead!" he exclaimed. "Dead!" faltered Noddy. He was beginning to be alarmed over the part he had played. "Bring a light here!" commanded the Mexican. Noddy turned the search-lamp on Bob's prostrate form. At that the boy opened his eyes. He had fainted from pain caused by his fall. "Shamming, eh?" sneered Vasco, striking Bob a blow with a rope he carried. "Get up, now! No nonsense; you've made trouble enough!" Poor Bob was too discouraged and felt too bad to reply. The other Mexicans rode up. In a few minutes the captive was securely bound, lifted into the auto, and, as dawn broke, the start back to camp was made. "Don't you want Maximina?" asked Dalsett. "Let her go," replied Vasco. "She was only a bother around, and never liked to work. She can't do any harm." CHAPTER XXVII. A STRANGE MESSAGE. The days were full of anxiety for the professor, Jerry and Ned, who still remained in the ancient city after Bob had been kidnapped. Every night they went to bed, hoping some word would be received by morning, or that the missing one would return. Every morning they said to each other: "Well, something will happen to-morrow." But nothing happened, and, as day after day went by, they began to lose hope. "We may as well leave here," said Ned. "Not yet," Jerry replied. "I am sure we will have some word from Bob soon now." In the meanwhile, they made trips in all directions from the ancient city. But there was no trace of the Mexicans. The country was uninhabited for twenty miles in every direction from the buried place, and farther than that the travelers did not venture. "We must be here every night," said the professor. "Somehow, I feel that Bob will come back at night, or we will hear something from him after dark. So we do not want to be away then, for if he should come, or if he should send some word, we would not be here to receive it." For that reason little was done toward hunting for the kidnapped boy. The travelers did not go so far but that they could get back by nightfall. They explored the city thoroughly and the professor found many more rare and valuable relics. His specimen boxes were full to overflowing, but still he kept searching. The boys occupied themselves by getting the meals and attending to the camp, for the naturalist bothered himself about nothing but his specimens. They still continued to reside in the old temple, which they found a comfortable place. "I wonder what we'll do when our food gives out?" asked Ned one day when it was his turn to get the dinner. "Why, haven't we got plenty for several weeks yet?" inquired Jerry. "It don't look so to me," said Ned, glancing in the box where the canned stuff was kept. "That's queer," remarked Jerry. "There aren't any tomatoes left. Did you cook any since yesterday?" "You cooked yesterday," retorted Ned. "Were there any then?" "Six cans," said Jerry. "Now there are none left. I wonder if the professor took any?" "Any what?" asked the naturalist, coming into the temple just then. "Tomatoes," replied Jerry, explaining what he and Ned had been talking about. "No; I haven't touched a can," said the professor. "Then some one has, and it isn't us," was Ned's opinion. "I wonder if there is any one in this temple but ourselves?" "Now that you speak of it, I think there is," went on the naturalist. "The other night I was restless and could not sleep well. I was looking out of the door of our bedroom, into the main apartment, when I saw something white moving. At first I thought it was one of you boys, but I looked over on your cots and saw you both were sleeping. Then I thought it might be a white monkey, for I have heard there are such kinds, though I have never seen any. But when I looked a little closer I saw that it was a man wrapped in a long, white serape. "I didn't give any alarm, for I was afraid of waking you boys. But I watched and saw the man go to our box and take out some cans of provisions. I meant to speak about it the next morning, but I forgot it." "Who do you suppose it was?" asked Jerry. "Probably some poor wandering Mexican," replied the professor. "He may have happened along, fallen into the passage leading to this old city and been half starved until he found our camp." "We'll have to look out, though," said Ned. "We have hardly enough left for ourselves." "Then we must keep watch to-night," decided the professor. "It will not do for us to starve, though we will share what we have with any one who is in distress." And so, that night, they took turns in mounting guard. None of them saw anything out of the ordinary, though had they been able to witness a scene that took place in an obscure gallery of the temple they would have been surprised. San Lucia and Murado were still hiding in the place, waiting their chance to get something of value from the travelers. The capture of Bob had upset the plans of the two aged brigands, and they were a little cautious about proceeding. But for several nights they had made raids on the improvised pantry Ned had constructed. "Are we to go again to-night?" asked San Lucia, on the evening when Ned made the discovery that led to the posting of the guard. "It remains to be seen," replied Murado. "If we have no better luck than last night it is of little use." "No; tomatoes are a poor substitute for gold," agreed San Lucia. "I wonder if they have nothing but things to eat in those cans." "Some of them must contain gold," replied Murado. "They do it to fool us, but we will get the best of them yet. We will carry off every can they have until we get those containing the treasure." For the two Mexicans believed that the travelers had packed their gold in the tin cans, of which there was a number. And each night San Lucia and Murado had stolen a few, hoping that some of them contained gold. Each time, on opening the tins, they had been disappointed. "I will go first to-night," said San Lucia. "I feel that I will be successful. Once we get the gold we can leave this place." About midnight he crept as softly as a cat upon the travelers. But, to his surprise, he found Jerry on guard and armed. San Lucia sneaked back to the balcony and told Murado. "They are becoming suspicious," said the latter. "We will have to wait a while. Perhaps they may be sleeping to-morrow night." But the two aged brigands never got another chance to attempt to rob the boys and the professor. Why this was we shall soon see. The next morning, on account of the watch that was kept, nothing was found disturbed. "We fooled somebody that time," observed Ned. After breakfast the professor announced that he was going to visit the house where he had, on a previous call, captured the gila monster. "There was a cabinet there I overlooked," he said. "Do you boys want to come along?" "There is nothing else to do," said Jerry. "How I wish we would hear something from Bob! I think we ought to go out on a search for him. It doesn't seem that he will ever come here, after all this time." "I was thinking that myself," said the professor. "If we hear nothing by to-morrow we will leave this place." The boys accompanied the naturalist to the ruined house. It seemed strange to be walking through the streets of a place that had been inhabited thousands of years ago. The city was a silent one, a veritable city of the dead, and the houses and buildings seemed like tombstones that had toppled over from age. As Ned was walking about through the lower rooms of the house the professor had marked for exploration, he noticed a ring fastened to a square stone in the courtyard. "I wonder what this is for?" he said. "Looks as if it was meant to lift the stone up by," replied Jerry. "Give us a hand," said Ned, "and we'll see what's here." The two boys pulled and tugged, but could not budge the stone. The professor happened along and saw them. "I'll show you how to do it," he said. He took a long pole and thrust it through the ring. Then, using the pole as a lever, he easily raised the stone. "Now let's see what we have unearthed," he remarked. The stone had covered a small hole. In it was a little casket of lead, the lid of which was locked. "We'll have to break it open," said Jerry. "Get a stone," put in Ned. Jerry brought a large one. One or two heavy blows and the lid of the box flew off. There was a sudden sparkle of light and several white objects fell to the ground. "Diamonds!" cried the professor. "We have made a valuable discovery!" The box seemed full of jewels. There were stones of many colors, but most of all were the white, sparkling ones. "Maybe they're only glass," suggested Ned. "No; they are diamonds, rubies, turquoise and other precious stones," replied the professor. "This was probably the jewel case of some Aztec millionaire." They returned to their camp, carrying the jewels with them. As they entered the old building, Jerry, who was in the lead, started back. "There's some one at our auto!" he exclaimed. "Nonsense!" replied the professor. "The place is deserted." But he changed his mind a moment later. As he entered the room he saw a girlish figure clinging to the side of the car. She seemed to be almost dead, and had only strength enough left to mutter: "Bob; he want you! Vasco Bilette have him! Come quick!" Then she fell over in a faint. CHAPTER XXVIII. TO THE RESCUE. "Who is she?" asked Ned. "I don't know," replied the professor, calmly. He seemed to take the appearance of a strange girl in the underground city as a happening that might occur at any time. "Where did she come from?" asked Jerry. "I can't tell you that, either," went on the naturalist. "One thing I can say, though, and that is, this poor girl needs help. She must be hungry, and she has traveled a long distance. Her clothes show that." "What did she mean by speaking about Bob, saying Vasco Bilette had him, and for us to come quick?" asked Ned. "All that in good time," replied the professor. "The thing to do now is to bring her out of her faint, and get her something to eat. Ned, you make the coffee and Jerry will heat some chicken soup. Hurry now, boys." But the lads needed no urging. In a jiffy the camp-stove was going and hot coffee was soon ready. In the meanwhile the professor, by use of some simple remedies he always carried, brought the girl out of her faint. She opened her eyes and asked for a drink. The hot coffee, followed by a little of the warm soup, brought the color back to her face, and she was able to sit up. She stared at her strange surroundings and looked at the boys and the naturalist. "Me Maximina," she said, speaking slowly. "You Ned, Jerry and Mr. Snowgrass?" "Snodgrass, Snodgrass, my dear young lady," replied the professor, bowing low. "Professor Uriah Snodgrass, A. M., Ph.D., M. D., F. R. G. S., A. Q. K., all of which is at your service." "Bob need you," said the girl, simply. "He try to come, but he git ketch." "Yes, yes! Tell us about him. Where can we find him?" asked Jerry, eagerly. "Me no spik Inglis good," the girl replied. "You spik Spanish, señor?" "_Si_," answered the professor. Thereupon Maximina let forth a torrent of words that nearly overwhelmed the naturalist. Yet he managed to understand what she said. Maximina told how she had been at the Mexicans' camp when Bob was brought there, she having been a captive for many years. She determined to help him escape, and did so when the opportunity offered. She told how she knew, in a general way, where the buried city was, as Bob had told her something about it, and she had overheard Vasco and his men talking about the locality where they had fallen down the tunnel. "But Bob's horse fell and threw him off," she explained, in her native tongue. "I wanted to stay with him, but he told me to go on. Then Vasco came and got him, but I rode away, for I wanted to find you. I had hard work, and I lost my way several times. Three days ago my pony died and I walked the rest of the distance." "Poor girl! You must be almost tired to death," said the professor. "I was tired, but it is happiness to find you, señors, for I know you will go and help Señor Bob." "Of course we will, right away," said the naturalist. "She seems to have taken a sudden liking to our friend Bob," commented Ned. "She's a mighty pretty girl, too; don't you think so, Jerry?" "Be careful," laughed Jerry. "Don't go to having any love affairs with beautiful Mexican maidens. I have read that they are a very jealous and quick-tempered nation. Besides, you are too young." "I'm a year older than Bob," maintained Ned. "Now, boys, what had we better do?" asked the professor. "Maximina can guide us to the place where Bob is held captive. Shall we go and give battle to these brigands?" "Sure!" exclaimed Ned. "We have plenty of ammunition." "And they are about ten to our one," put in Jerry. "But we've got to do something," he added, seriously. "Then we'll start as soon as we can get in shape," decided the professor. "I have a better plan than making a direct attack on the camp of the Mexicans, however. We will go to the authorities and ask their aid. Maximina says there is a detachment of soldiers stationed about thirty miles from here and on the line we must take to go to the camp, from which they are distant about ten miles." "Bully!" cried Ned. "With a few soldiers to help us we'll give those brigands and Noddy Nixon such a licking that they'll never want another." The automobile was soon made ready. In it was packed all that remained of the provisions. The professor did up his precious specimens and curios, not forgetting the lead casket of jewels. The water tank was filled. Fortunately, there was still plenty of gasolene left. Jerry and Ned pumped up the tires, Maximina was invited to a seat in the rear, with the professor, and the travelers, taking a last look at the underground city, started off. They went through the tunnel, up the incline, the fall of which had precipitated them into the shaft, and soon were on the level road, speeding to the rescue of Bob. After Vasco had secured his captive, following Bob's and Maximina's flight, the brigand took measures to insure that the prisoner would not get away again. Bob was placed in a regular dungeon, and outside the door was stationed a man with a gun. The poor lad was in low spirits. He began to give up hope, and the only thing that cheered him was the thought that perhaps Maximina might have gotten away and would notify his friends or the authorities. But Bob knew it was a remote chance, for he did not believe the frail girl could stand the long journey alone. He tried to learn something about her; whether she had been recaptured or not; but to all questions his guard, and the old woman who brought him food, returned but one answer, and that was: "No spik Inglis, señor." Bob saw it was of no use to try to get out of the dungeon. It was built partially underground, the walls were of stone and the door a massive wooden one, while the single window was heavily barred. It was hot in the small cell, and Bob suffered very much. But he tried to keep up a brave heart. One day he heard voices outside of the dungeon window. He listened intently and found that Noddy and Vasco were talking. Vasco, of necessity, had to speak English in talking with Noddy, who understood only a little Spanish. "Have you got the money yet?" asked Noddy. "No; and I think we never will get it," replied Vasco, angrily. "I don't believe the boy is the son of a rich banker at all. It's another one of your wild dreams, just like the gold mine the crazy professor was going to locate." "Bob's father is rich," maintained Noddy. "It ain't my fault that he won't send the cash." "Well, it's your fault for getting me into this muss," went on Vasco, "and it'll be your fault if we don't get some money pretty soon. The men are mad and I won't be able to manage 'em in a few days. They blame it all on you, so you'd better look out!" "Do you suppose they--they will ki-kill me?" faltered Noddy. "I shouldn't be surprised," said Vasco, coldly. At that instant Bob heard some one come galloping up on a horse. It seemed to be a messenger, for he heard the steed come to a stop, while a man jumped down and began talking rapidly in Spanish. "What is it? Has Bob's father sent the money?" asked Noddy. "Money? No!" snapped the leader of the brigands. "But the soldiers are after us! We must get out of here!" Bob's heart thrilled with hope. Perhaps, after all, Maximina had been able to send help. He almost laughed in his happiness, thinking he would soon be free. But his hopes were dashed to the ground when, a few minutes later, his guard came into his cell, quickly bound his hands and feet, wrapped a long cloak about him, and, with the aid of another Mexican, carried him out of the cell. Bob realized, from the change of air, that he was being carried into the open. He could see nothing because of the cloak about his head, but he could hear much bustle and confusion. Men were running here and there, while Vasco was giving quick orders. Then the sound of the automobile being started was heard. Bob felt himself lifted into the car and, a few seconds later, he felt the vibration that told he was being carried away again, this time in Noddy's machine. As the messenger had told Vasco, the soldiers were on their way to the camp of the kidnappers. The boys and the professor had reached the garrison, and, telling their story, had induced the commander to send a detachment to capture the Mexicans. But the troops traveled slowly, and one of Vasco's friends, who happened to be hanging about the fort, hearing of the contemplated raid, mounted a swift horse and rode off to give the alarm. So when, a few hours after Vasco had fled with his men and his captive, the troops galloped up, led by Jerry, Ned, Maximina and the professor in the automobile, they found the camp deserted. "The birds have flown!" exclaimed the captain of the troopers. "We may as well go back!" "No!" cried Jerry. "We must take after them. Bob must be rescued!" "But how can we tell where they went?" asked the captain. "That woman can tell you!" exclaimed Maximina, pointing to an aged crone who was trying to escape observation in one of the huts. CHAPTER XXIX. THE FIGHT. "Bring her here!" commanded the captain. Several of his soldiers ran toward the old woman who set up a loud screaming. "Who is she?" asked the leader of the troops of Maximina. "An old servant of Vasco's," replied the girl. "She knows all his secrets and can tell where he has gone. He has several hiding places about here." Protesting and crying that she knew nothing and could tell nothing, the aged servant was brought to the captain. "Where is Vasco Bilette?" he asked. "I know not! I have not seen him these three days!" she exclaimed. "So," commented the captain, smiling. "We will see if we cannot refresh your memory. Pedro, fetch my rawhide whip!" At this the woman howled most dismally, and threw herself on the ground, clinging to the legs of the men who held her. "I cannot allow this," interposed Professor Snodgrass, to whom the conversation, carried on in Spanish, was intelligible. "Even at the cost of seeing Vasco Bilette escape I will not stand by and see a woman whipped." "But, señor, you do not understand the case," said the captain. "That is the only way I can get the truth out of her. I must give her a few blows to loosen her tongue. That is the only persuasion these cattle understand; blows and money." "Why not try the latter?" suggested the naturalist. "Who has money to throw away on such as she?" asked the commander, with a shrug of his shoulders. "I will pay her," went on the professor. "See," he went on, taking out some bank-notes. "Tell us where Vasco went and you shall have fifty dollars." The old woman glanced at the money, looked around on the soldiers and glared at the captain, who was switching a cruel whip. Then she said, sullenly: "I will tell you, señor, but not for money. It is because you had a kind thought for old Julia. Listen, Vasco has gone to the cave by the small mountain." "I know where that is!" exclaimed the captain. "Many a time have we had fights there with the brigands. It is about ten miles off." "Then let us hurry there!" cried Jerry. The professor handed the old woman the bills. She took them, hiding them quickly in her dress. "The whip would have been cheaper," said the captain, with a regretful sigh. "It is money thrown away." "I have more to throw after it, if you and your men rescue the kidnapped boy!" exclaimed the naturalist, for he understood something of the Mexican character. "Good!" cried the captain. "Come, men, hurry! We will wipe the brigands from the face of the earth!" Indeed, new enthusiasm seemed to be infused into the soldiers at the mention of money. Those who had dismounted, sprang quickly to the saddles, the bugler blew a lively air, and the troops started off at a smart trot. Old Julia was left behind in the camp of the kidnappers. The boys and the professor, with Maximina, in the automobile, followed the troopers. "I think there will be one big fight," said the girl, in English, speaking to the boys. "Vasco has many guns in the cave." "I hope it will be his last fight," said Ned. "I don't wish any one bad luck, but I would like to see Vasco Bilette and his gang put where they can do no more harm." "The soldiers don't seem to take this very seriously," remarked Jerry. "Hear them singing and laughing." "They probably want Vasco to know they are coming, so they will not take him by surprise," spoke the professor. "It's a trait of Mexican politeness, I suppose." The captain of the troop came riding back to the automobile, which had kept in the rear of the horsemen. "My compliments, señor," said the commander, bowing with a sweep of his helmet to the professor. "My best regards to you," replied the naturalist. "We will be up to the vicinity of the cave in about an hour," went on the captain. "Is it your desire to charge in the fire-wagon with my troopers, or do you prefer to stay in the rear and watch us dispose of this brigand?" "We're not the ones to stay in the rear when there's fighting to be done," said the professor. "You will find us in the fore, Señor Captain." "Very good; but what about the girl?" "I will stay with my friends," replied Maximina. "I am not afraid of Vasco Bilette." "You may stay with us," consented the naturalist, "but I must insist on you getting down on the bottom of the car when the fighting begins." "Fighting? There will be no fighting," said the captain. "Aren't you going to tackle the brigands and get Bob?" asked Jerry, in some surprise. "_Caramba!_ The dogs will run when they see my troops," spoke the captain, puffing out his chest. "They will not stand. That is why I said there would be no fighting." "I wouldn't be too sure," remarked the professor. "You shall see, señor," went on the commander. "But now I must go back to my men. My compliments, señor." "Mine to you," responded the professor, not to be outdone in politeness. The cavalcade moved forward for several miles. It was getting hot and horses and men began to suffer. It was a relief when a small stream was reached, where every one could get a refreshing drink. After a short rest the command to move forward was given. "What is that?" cried Jerry, suddenly, pointing ahead to where, on a broad, level stretch of country, several small, dark, moving objects could be seen. "I will tell you directly," said the professor, taking a pair of field-glasses from their case. He leveled the binoculars and gazed steadily through them. "It is Vasco and his party!" he cried. "I can see Noddy in his auto, and there are a number of horsemen. They have not yet reached the cave. Quick, Jerry, run the machine ahead and tell the captain!" Jerry increased the speed of the auto. It ran up beside the trooper captain, who turned about to see what was up. "There are the brigands!" exclaimed the professor, pointing ahead. "Hurry up and you can catch them before they get to the cave, where they may barricade themselves." "My compliments, señor; I thank you for the information," replied the captain, bowing low. "Will you not smoke a cigarette with me?" "I don't smoke!" snapped the professor. "Besides, we have no time for that now. We must fight!" "Exactly, just so," answered the easy-going Mexican. "Come, men!" he exclaimed. "The enemy is in front of you! At them, and show what stuff you are made of! Bugler, sound the charge!" Instantly the troops were full of excitement. Men began unslinging their carbines. They got out their ammunition and seemed eager for the fray. The bugler blew a merry blast. "Forward, my brave men! Cut down the brigands! Kill the kidnappers of boys!" shouted the captain, waving his sword. With a shout, the Mexican soldiers dashed forward to the fight. They might be slow, and given to too much delay and politeness, but when the time came they were full of action. They yelled as they dug spurs into their horses, and the more excited threw their hats into the air. Several discharged their carbines when there was no chance of hitting any of the enemy. They were wild at the thought of battle. By this time the brigands became aware of the pursuit. Vasco Bilette had, with a powerful field-glass, detected the advance of the horsemen some time back. But an accident to the auto had detained them, and they were three miles from the cave when he saw the soldiers dashing toward him. He and his men strained every nerve, but they soon saw they could not get to their stronghold ahead of their enemies. "We'll have to fight 'em," said Vasco. "I guess we can give 'em as good as they send. Noddy and Dalsett, you keep an eye on Bob, and if you get a chance, skip off with him. Go back to camp; they won't think of looking for you there." Ten minutes later the soldiers were within shooting distance. They opened fire on the Mexicans, who, not daunted by the numbers against them, returned the volleys. At first so great was the excitement that no damage was done. But after a few rounds two of the troopers were injured, and one of the Mexicans had to withdraw, seriously wounded. "We must never surrender!" cried Vasco. "Exterminate the brigands!" shouted the soldiers. They came to closer quarters. The soldiers began to use their carbines for clubs, not taking the time to reload. Then they drew their sabres and charged the Mexicans under Vasco, who had drawn his force up in a hollow square. Several on both sides were killed in this mêlée. The boys and the professor, who, under the captain's later orders, had kept to the rear, now came dashing up in the automobile. Maximina was lying down on the floor of the tonneau, out of harm's way. Jerry was keeping an eye on Noddy and his auto, and he noticed that the machine, which, as he could see plainly now, held Bob, kept well behind the brigands. "We must get Bob, no matter what happens," said Jerry to Ned. "Look sharp now. I'm going to try something." "What is it?" asked Ned. "Just you watch!" exclaimed Jerry. "Look out!" He ducked, to avoid a bullet that sang over his head. "What's the use of doing that?" asked Ned. "The bullet is past when you hear it sing." "Can't help it," replied Jerry. The fighting was now at its height. Though the force on both sides was small, the guns kept up a continuous fusillade, and it sounded as though a good-sized detachment was going into action. "No quarter! Not a man must escape!" cried the captain. "Charge!" yelled Vasco Bilette, trying to urge his men to make a rush and overwhelm the soldiers. "Charge and the day is won!" With a shout, his men prepared to obey his command. "Now is your chance!" whispered the brigand leader to Noddy. "Away with Bob!" Noddy headed the machine, containing the bound captive, off to one side. "There he goes!" Jerry shouted, catching sight of the movement. "We must take after him, Ned. Noddy has Bob with him." CHAPTER XXX. HOMEWARD BOUND. Steering to one side, to avoid running into the mass of men, soldiers and kidnappers that seemed to be mixed up in inextricable confusion, Jerry sent his machine after Noddy's, which was speeding away. "Shall I try a shot at the tires?" asked Ned, fingering his revolver. "No; you might hit Bob," replied Jerry. "I'll catch him." The battle was now divided. On one side the soldiers and the Mexicans were fighting. On the other was the race between the two autos; a contest of machinery. At first it seemed that Noddy would escape. But Jerry, throwing in the high-speed clutch, cut down the distance between his car and Noddy's. A few minutes after the chase started it became evident that Jerry would win. Vasco, seeing how matters were likely to go, had jumped into the car as Noddy started off. All this while poor Bob was bound, and the cloak was still about his head, so he could not tell what was going on. But he guessed it was some attempt to rescue him. Nearer and nearer came Jerry's auto. The front wheels overlapped the rear ones of Noddy's machine. "Stop, or I'll fire!" cried the professor, suddenly, leveling a revolver at Noddy's crowd. They paid no heed to him. With a quick motion, Vasco leaned over the edge of the seat and fired three times in rapid succession at the tires of Jerry's machine. He missed his aim, but Jerry saw the danger that threatened him. He increased his speed. In another minute he had come up alongside of Noddy's auto. "Get ready to grab Bob!" Jerry yelled to Ned and the professor. "Then hold on tight!" "I'll pay you for this!" exclaimed Vasco, fiercely. He leaned over the edge of the car and made a vicious lunge at Jerry with a long knife. Jerry swerved his machine the least bit and avoided the blow. The next instant the autos came together with a crash. The shock threw Vasco out, for he was already leaning more than half way over the side door, in an endeavor to strike at Jerry. The wheels of the heavy machine passed over his legs, making him a cripple for life. Seeing how matters were likely to turn out, Noddy shut off the power and brought his machine to a stop. Ned and the professor took advantage of this to reach over and grab Bob. "Now we haf rescue him!" exclaimed Maximina. "I knew we would haf found Bob!" and she laughed and cried by turns. It did not take long to loosen the captive's bonds. The suffocating shawl was taken from his head. Poor Bob was faint and white. "We'll soon fix him up!" cried the professor, cheerily. "Run to one side, Jerry." Leaving the discomfited Noddy and his chum, Jack Pender, Jerry steered off under a clump of trees, where, by the administrations of the professor, Bob was soon himself again. Meanwhile, the battle between the brigands and the troops was waging furiously. Several had fallen on both sides, but the better-trained soldiers knew more about warfare, and slowly but surely they pressed their enemies back. Then, when Vasco fell and was crushed by the auto, the men lost heart. They faltered, wavered and then turned and fled. Dalsett endeavored to rally them. He caught hold of some of the brigands and urged them to stand against the charge of the soldiers. One of the kidnappers resented Dalsett's interference. With a wild cry he plunged a knife into the former miner, and Dalsett fell, seriously wounded. "They fly! They fly! Take after them!" cried the captain of the troopers. "At them, my brave men! Hew them down! Wipe them off the face of the earth!" It was noticeable that as the tide turned in favor of the soldiers their leader became more bold. He rode hither and thither, waving his sword, but taking care not to get too far to the front. At length, with a last volley, the brigands fled. The troopers took after them, killing several and wounding some. They chased them until the kidnappers came to the foothills, and, as this was a wild country, the troopers did not care to follow. So some of the brigands escaped. But the band was broken up and for many years thereafter no trouble was experienced with them. Noddy had not started up his machine after Vasco had been knocked from it. The former bully seemed to be in a sort of daze, and he and Pender sat staring at the exciting scenes going on all about them. When Bob had been made comfortable on a bed of blankets spread under the trees, Jerry thought of their former enemy. "What had we better do about Noddy?" he asked of the professor. "There he sits in his machine. Shall we turn him over to the soldiers?" "I don't know but what it would be a good idea," said the naturalist. "Just have an eye to him for a few minutes, anyhow. The captain will be here in a little while, and he'll decide what to do. I suppose the law must take its course." Seeing that Bob was doing very well under the care of Maximina and the professor, Ned and Jerry ran their machine over to where Noddy was. "Don't give me up!" pleaded Nixon. "I didn't mean to do any harm. It was all Dalsett and Vasco. See, here is your money-belt, Jerry. I never touched a cent of it." "So it was you who took it, eh?" spoke Ned. "No--no--I didn't steal it. Dalsett made me take it that night," faltered Noddy. "But I never took any money out of it. I used my own. Please let me go!" "You are a prisoner of the captain, not one of ours," replied Jerry. "He'll have to settle your case." At that instant the captain, who, with his men, had ridden to where Vasco was stretched out on the ground, called to Jerry and Ned. They turned the machine toward him. The professor, too, came running over. The captain spoke some command to one of his men, who began a search of the clothing of the kidnapper leader. "Ha! There is something!" exclaimed the captain, as his man hauled two money-belts out of Vasco's pocket. "I wonder whom they belong to?" "One's mine!" cried Ned. "And the other is Bob's," said Jerry. "I wonder if there is any money left in them?" "Look," said the captain, passing them over. The boys and the professor, who had translated the captain's remarks as he had made them, looked over the articles. They found that about half the sum in each belt had been spent. "Well, half a loaf is better than no bread," remarked Jerry. "We ought to be thankful we're alive, to say nothing of getting part of our cash back." "You all seem to have plenty of money; you are not like the poor Mexicans," said the captain, with a sigh, looking at the professor, meaningly. "That reminds me: I promised to reward you and your men if we were successful," spoke the naturalist. He distributed a good-sized sum among the soldiers, who seemed very pleased to get it. Their salaries under the government were small, and not always paid regularly, so that any addition was welcome. "What's that?" asked the captain, suddenly, as he shoved his share of the distribution in his pocket. "It's Noddy and Pender in their auto," said Jerry. "They are going to escape." "Shall we fire at them?" asked the captain, eagerly. "What's the use?" asked Jerry. "Let them go. We would only have more bother if we tried to get them punished by law for their crimes. We have Bob back, we discovered the underground city, and what more do we want?" "Nothing, excepting to get back home," put in Ned. "I'll be glad to see Cresville again." So no attempt was made to capture Noddy and his chum, and they sped off across-country in their machine, running at top speed, as if they feared pursuit. Bill Berry, slightly wounded, went with them. "Is there anything more we can do for you?" asked the captain. "If there is not we will start back to the garrison, as it is growing late." The professor said he thought they could dispense with the services of the troops. So, amid a chorus of good-byes, the horsemen rode away. "Well, here we are, all together once more," observed the professor. "And with an addition to our party," put in Ned, pointing to Maximina. "That's so; we must get her back home next," the professor said. "First, give me something to eat and drink," begged Bob. "I'm almost starved." It was so near night that the travelers decided to make a camp. Supper was soon ready, and after it had been disposed of, the boys made a small tent out of blankets for Maximina. The next morning they started northward. Maximina had told them she had relatives in the City of Mexico, and they headed for that place. They reached it, without having any accidents, a week later, and left the girl who had befriended Bob with her friends. "I wonder if we'll have any more adventures?" said Ned, as, after a few days' rest, they started from the City of Mexico toward home. "Hard to say, but probably you boys will," said the professor. "Boys are always having adventures. As for me, I am satisfied with those we had on this trip. We had the most excellent success. My name will be famous when the story of the underground city is told in four large volumes which I intend to issue." "I would think it might," commented Ned. "Four books are enough to make any one famous." "Well, it will take some long letters to tell our folks of all that has happened to us," put in Bob. Telegrams had already been sent, so that nobody at home might worry further. "I'll be glad enough to get back to the States," said Jerry. "Mexico is not the best place in the world." "I suppose we'll have more adventures before long," was Ned's comment, and he was right. What those adventures were will be told in the next volume of this series, to be called "The Motor Boys Across the Plains; or, The Hermit of Lost Lake." Here we shall meet all of our young friends again, and also some of their enemies, and learn much concerning a most peculiar mystery. The weather remained fine, and as the auto had been thoroughly repaired in the City of Mexico before leaving, rapid progress was made in the journey northward. They kept, as far as possible, to the best and most frequented roads, having no desire to meet any more brigands. "Tell you what," said Bob, one day, "automobiling is great, isn't it?" "Immense!" answered Ned. "It's the best sport going," added Jerry. "I love this touring car of ours as I would love a brother." And then he put on a burst of speed that soon took them around a bend of the road and out of sight--and also out of my story. THE END. The Motor Boys Series (_Trade Mark, Reg. U. S. Pat. Of._) By Clarence Young Cloth. 12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 60 cents postpaid. [Illustration: THE MOTOR BOYS] The Motor Boys or Chums Through Thick and Thin The Motor Boys Overland or A Long Trip for Fun and Fortune The Motor Boys in Mexico or The Secret of The Buried City The Motor Boys Across the Plains or The Hermit of Lost Lake [Illustration: THE MOTOR BOYS AFLOAT] The Motor Boys Afloat or The Stirring Cruise of the Dartaway The Motor Boys on the Atlantic or The Mystery of the Lighthouse The Motor Boys in Strange Waters or Lost in a Floating Forest The Motor Boys on the Pacific or The Young Derelict Hunters [Illustration: THE MOTOR BOYS IN THE CLOUDS] The Motor Boys in the Clouds or A Trip for Fame and Fortune The Motor Boys Over the Rockies or A Mystery of the Air The Motor Boys Over the Ocean or A Marvellous Rescue in Mid-Air The Motor Boys on the Wing or Seeking the Airship Treasure [Illustration: THE MOTOR BOYS AFTER A FORTUNE] The Motor Boys After a Fortune or The Hut on Snake Island The Motor Boys on the Border or Sixty Nuggets of Gold The Motor Boys Under the Sea or From Airship to Submarine (_new_) CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers NEW YORK The Speedwell Boys Series By Roy Rockwood Author of "The Dave Dashaway Series," "Great Marvel Series," etc. 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 40 cents, postpaid All boys who love to be on the go will welcome the Speedwell boys. They are clean cut and loyal to the core--youths well worth knowing. [Illustration] The Speedwell Boys on Motor Cycles or The Mystery of a Great Conflagration The lads were poor, but they did a rich man a great service and he presented them with their motor cycles. What a great fire led to is exceedingly well told. The Speedwell Boys and Their Racing Auto or A Run for the Golden Cup A tale of automobiling and of intense rivalry on the road. There was an endurance run and the boys entered the contest. On the run they rounded up some men who were wanted by the law. The Speedwell Boys and Their Power Launch or To the Rescue of the Castaways Here is a water story of unusual interest. There was a wreck and the lads, in their power launch, set out to the rescue. A vivid picture of a great storm adds to the interest of the tale. The Speedwell Boys in a Submarine or The Lost Treasure of Rocky Cove An old sailor knows of a treasure lost under water because of a cliff falling into the sea. The boys get a chance to go out in a submarine and they make a hunt for the treasure. Life under the water is well described. CUPPLES & LEON CO. Publishers NEW YORK Up-to-Date Baseball Stories Baseball Joe Series By Lester Chadwick Author of "The College Sports Series" Cloth 12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 60 cts. postpaid. [Illustration] Ever since the success of Mr. Chadwick's "College Sports Series" we have been urged to get him to write a series dealing exclusively with baseball, a subject in which he is unexcelled by any living American author or coach. Baseball Joe of the Silver Stars or The Rivals of Riverside In this volume, the first of the series, Joe is introduced as an everyday country boy who loves to play baseball and is particularly anxious to make his mark as a pitcher. He finds it almost impossible to get on the local nine, but, after a struggle, he succeeds. A splendid picture of the great national game in the smaller towns of our country. Baseball Joe on the School Nine or Pitching for the Blue Banner Joe's great ambition was to go to boarding school and play on the school team. He got to boarding school but found it harder making the team there than it was getting on the nine at home. He fought his way along, and at last saw his chance and took it, and made good. Baseball Joe at Yale or Pitching for the College Championship From a preparatory school Baseball Joe goes to Yale University. He makes the freshman nine and in his second year becomes a varsity pitcher and pitches in several big games. Baseball Joe in the Central League or Making Good as a Professional Pitcher In this volume the scene of action is shifted from Yale College to a baseball league of our central states. Baseball Joe's work in the box for Old Eli had been noted by one of the managers and Joe gets an offer he cannot resist. The book shows how the hero "made good" in more ways than one, helping a down-and-out player back to the right path as well as doing his share to win some great victories on the diamond. CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers NEW YORK The Motor Girls Series By Margaret Penrose Author of the highly successful "Dorothy Dale Series" Cloth. 12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 60 cts. postpaid. [Illustration] The Motor Girls or A Mystery of the Road When Cora Kimball got her touring car she did not imagine so many adventures were in store for her. A tale all wide awake girls will appreciate. The Motor Girls on a Tour or Keeping a Strange Promise A great many things happen in this volume, starting with the running over of a hamper of good things lying in the road. A precious heirloom is missing, and how it was traced up is told with absorbing interest. The Motor Girls at Lookout Beach or In Quest of the Runaways There was a great excitement when the Motor Girls decided to go to Lookout Beach for the summer. The Motor Girls Through New England or Held by the Gypsies A strong story and one which will make this series more popular than ever. The girls go on a motoring trip through New England. The Motor Girls on Cedar Lake or The Hermit of Fern Island How Cora and her chums went camping on the lake shore and how they took trips in their motor boat, are told in a way all girls will enjoy. The Motor Girls on the Coast or The Waif from the Sea The scene is shifted to the sea coast where the girls pay a visit. They have their motor boat with them and go out for many good times. The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay or The Secret of the Red Oar More jolly times, on the water and at a cute little bungalow on the beautiful shore of the bay. How Cora aided Frieda and solved the secret of Benny Shane's red oar, is told in a manner to interest all girls. CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers, NEW YORK The Dorothy Dale Series By Margaret Penrose Author of "The Motor Girls Series" Cloth. 12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 60 cts. postpaid. Dorothy Dale: A Girl of To-Day Dorothy is the daughter of an old Civil War veteran who is running a weekly newspaper in a small Eastern town. When her father falls sick, the girl shows what she can do to support the family. [Illustration] Dorothy Dale at Glenwood School More prosperous times have come to the Dale family, and Major Dale resolves to send Dorothy to a boarding school to complete her education. Dorothy Dale's Great Secret A splendid story of one girl's devotion to another. Dorothy Dale and Her Chums A story of school life, and of strange adventures among the gypsies. Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays Relates the details of a mystery that surrounded Tanglewood Park. Dorothy Dale's Camping Days Many things happen in this volume, from the time Dorothy and her chums are met coming down the hillside on a treacherous load of hay. Dorothy Dale's School Rivals Dorothy and her chum, Tavia, return to Glenwood School. A new student becomes Dorothy's rival and troubles at home add to her difficulties. Dorothy Dale in the City Dorothy is invited to New York City by her Aunt. This tale presents a clever picture of life in New York as it appears to one who has never before visited the Metropolis. Dorothy Dale's Promise Strange indeed was the promise and given under strange circumstances. Only a girl as strong of purpose as was Dorothy Dale would have undertaken the task she set for herself. An absorbing story filled with plenty of fun,--one that will make this series a greater success. CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers NEW YORK A New Line By the Author of the Ever-Popular "Motor Boys Series" The Racer Boys Series by CLARENCE YOUNG Author of "The Motor Boys Series," "Jack Ranger Series," etc. etc. Fine cloth binding. Illustrated. Price per vol. 60 cts. postpaid. [Illustration] The announcement of a new series of stories by Mr. Clarence Young is always hailed with delight by boys and girls throughout the country, and we predict an even greater success for these new books, than that now enjoyed by the "Motor Boys Series." The Racer Boys or The Mystery of the Wreck This, the first volume of the new series, tells who the Racer Boys were and how they chanced to be out on the ocean in a great storm. Adventures follow each other in rapid succession in a manner that only our author, Mr. Young, can describe. The Racer Boys At Boarding School or Striving for the Championship When the Racer Boys arrived at the school they found everything at a stand-still. The school was going down rapidly and the students lacked ambition and leadership. The Racers took hold with a will, and got their father to aid the head of the school financially, and then reorganized the football team. The Racer Boys To The Rescue or Stirring Days in a Winter Camp Here is a story filled with the spirit of good times in winter--skating, ice-boating and hunting. The Racer Boys On The Prairies or The Treasure of Golden Peak From their boarding school the Racer Boys accept an invitation to visit a ranch in the West. The Racer Boys on Guard or The Rebellion of Riverview Hall Once more the boys are back at boarding school, were they have many frolics, and enter more than one athletic contest. CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers NEW YORK _The Jack Ranger Series_ _By Clarence Young_ Author of the Motor Boys Series Cloth. 12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid [Illustration] Jack Ranger's Schooldays _Or, The Rivals of Washington Hall_ You will love Jack Ranger--you simply can't help it. He is so bright and cheery, and so real and lifelike. A typical boarding school tale, without a dull line in it. Jack Ranger's School Victories _Or, Track, Gridiron and Diamond_ In this tale Jack gets back to Washington Hall and goes in for all sorts of school games. The rivalry is bitter at times, and enemies try to put Jack "in a hole" more than once. Jack Ranger's Western Trip _Or, From Boarding School to Ranch and Range_ This volume takes the hero and several of his chums to the great West. At the ranch and on the range adventures of the strenuous sort befall him. Jack Ranger's Ocean Cruise _Or, The Wreck of the Polly Ann_ Here is a tale of the bounding sea, with many stirring adventures. How the ship was wrecked, and Jack was cast away, is told in a style all boys and girls will find exceedingly interesting. Jack Ranger's Gun Club _Or, From Schoolroom to Camp and Trail_ Jack, with his chums, goes in quest of big game. The boys fall in with a mysterious body of men, and have a terrific slide down a mountain side. Jack Ranger's Treasure Box _Or, The Outing of the School Boy Yachtsmen_ This story opens at school, but the scene is quickly shifted to the ocean. The schoolboy yachtsmen visit Porto Rico and other places, and have a long series of adventures including some on a lonely island of the West Indies. A yachting story all lovers of the sea will wish to peruse. CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers. NEW YORK The Saddle Boys Series By Captain James Carson 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 40 cents, postpaid. All lads who love life in the open air and a good steed, will want to peruse these books. Captain Carson knows his subject thoroughly, and his stories are as pleasing as they are healthful and instructive. [Illustration] The Saddle Boys of the Rockies or Lost on Thunder Mountain Telling how the lads started out to solve the mystery of a great noise in the mountains--how they got lost--and of the things they discovered. The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon or The Hermit of the Cave A weird and wonderful story of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, told in a most absorbing manner. The Saddle Boys are to the front in a manner to please all young readers. The Saddle Boys on the Plains or After a Treasure of Gold In this story the scene is shifted to the great plains of the southwest and then to the Mexican border. There is a stirring struggle for gold, told as only Captain Carson can tell it. The Saddle Boys at Circle Ranch or In at the Grand Round-up Here we have lively times at the ranch, and likewise the particulars of a grand round-up of cattle and encounters with wild animals and also cattle thieves. A story that breathes the very air of the plains. CUPPLES & LEON CO. Publishers NEW YORK The Fred Fenton Athletic Series By Allen Chapman Author of "The Tom Fairfield Series," "The Boys of Pluck Series" and "The Darewell Chums Series." 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 40 cents, postpaid. A line of tales embracing school athletics. Fred is a true type of the American schoolboy of to-day. [Illustration] Fred Fenton the Pitcher or The Rivals of Riverport School When Fred came to Riverport none of the school lads knew him. But he speedily proved his worth in the baseball box. A true to life picture of school baseball. Fred Fenton in the Line or The Football Boys of Riverport School When Fall came the thoughts of the boys turned to football. Fred went in the line, and again proved his worth, making a run that helped to win a great game. Fred Fenton on the Crew or The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School In this volume the scene is shifted to the river, and Fred and his chums show how they can handle the oars. There are many other adventures, all dear to the hearts of wide-awake readers. Fred Fenton on the Track or The Athletes of Riverport School Track athletics form a subject of vast interest to many boys, and here is a tale telling of great running races, high jumping, and the like. Fred again proves himself a hero in the best sense of that term. CUPPLES & LEON CO. Publishers NEW YORK The Tom Fairfield Series By Allen Chapman Author of the "Fred Fenton Athletic Series," "The Boys of Pluck Series," and "The Darewell Chums Series." 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 40 cents, postpaid. Tom Fairfield is a typical American lad, full of life and energy, a boy who believes in doing things. To know Tom is to love him. [Illustration] Tom Fairfield's Schooldays or The Chums of Elmwood Hall Tells of how Tom started for school, of the mystery surrounding one of the Hall seniors, and of how the hero went to the rescue. The first book in a line that is bound to become decidedly popular. Tom Fairfield at Sea or The Wreck of the Silver Star Tom's parents had gone to Australia and then been cast away somewhere in the Pacific. Tom set out to find them and was himself cast away. A thrilling picture of the perils of the deep. Tom Fairfield in Camp or The Secret of the Old Mill The boys decided to go camping, and located near an old mill. A wild man resided there and he made it decidedly lively for Tom and his chums. The secret of the old mill adds to the interest of the volume. Tom Fairfield's Luck and Pluck or Working to Clear His Name While Tom was back at school some of his enemies tried to get him into trouble. Then something unusual occurred and Tom was suspected of a crime. How he set to work to clear his name is told in a manner to interest all young readers. CUPPLES & LEON CO. Publishers NEW YORK The Dave Dashaway Series By Roy Rockwood Author of the "Speedwell Boys Series" and the "Great Marvel Series." 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 40 cents, postpaid. Never was there a more clever young aviator than Dave Dashaway, and all up-to-date lads will surely wish to make his acquaintance. [Illustration] Dave Dashaway the Young Aviator or In the Clouds for Fame and Fortune This initial volume tells how the hero ran away from his miserly guardian, fell in with a successful airman, and became a young aviator of note. Dave Dashaway and His Hydroplane or Daring Adventures Over the Great Lakes Showing how Dave continued his career as a birdman and had many adventures over the Great Lakes, and he likewise foiled the plans of some Canadian smugglers. Dave Dashaway and His Giant Airship or A Marvellous Trip Across the Atlantic How the giant airship was constructed and how the daring young aviator and his friends made the hazard journey through the clouds from the new world to the old, is told in a way to hold the reader spellbound. Dave Dashaway Around the World or A Young Yankee Aviator Among Many Nations An absorbing tale of a great air flight around the world, of hairbreadth adventures in Alaska, Siberia and elsewhere. A true to life picture of what may be accomplished in the near future. CUPPLES & LEON CO. Publishers NEW YORK The Webster Series By Frank V. Webster [Illustration] Mr. Webster's style is very much like that of the boys' favorite author, the late lamented Horatio Alger Jr., but his tales are thoroughly up-to-date. The stories are as clean as they are clever, and will prove of absorbing interest to boys everywhere. Cloth. 12mo. Over 200 pages each. Illustrated. Stamped in various colors. Price per volume, 40 cents, postpaid. Only A Farm Boy or Dan Hardy's Rise in Life Tom The Telephone Boy or The Mystery of a Message The Boy From The Ranch or Roy Bradner's City Experiences The Young Treasure Hunter or Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska Bob The Castaway or The Wreck of the Eagle The Newsboy Partners or Who Was Dick Box? Two Boy Gold Miners or Lost in the Mountains The Young Firemen of Lakeville or Herbert Dare's Pluck The Boy Pilot of the Lakes or Nat Morton's Perils The Boys of Bellwood School or Frank Jordan's Triumph Jack The Runaway or On the Road with a Circus Bob Chester's Grit or From Ranch to Riches Airship Andy or The Luck of a Brave Boy The High School Rivals or Fred Markham's Struggles Darry The Life Saver or The Heroes of the Coast Dick The Bank Boy or A Missing Fortune Ben Hardy's Flying Machine or Making a Record for Himself Harry Watson's High School Days or The Rivals of Rivertown Comrades of the Saddle or The Young Rough Riders of the Plains The Boys of the Wireless or a Stirring Rescue from the Deep CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers, NEW YORK * * * * * * * Transcriber's note: --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. --Inconsistencies in formatting and punctuation of individual advertisements were retained. 
19561	----	The Outdoor Girls In A Motor Car OR THE HAUNTED MANSION OF SHADOW VALLEY BY LAURA LEE HOPE AUTHOR OF "THE OUTDOOR GIRLS OF DEEPDALE," "THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT RAINBOW LAKE," "THE BOBBSEY TWINS," "THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE COUNTRY," ETC. _ILLUSTRATED_ NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Made in the United States of America BOOKS FOR GIRLS BY LAURA LEE HOPE * * * * * 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 50 cents, postpaid. * * * * * =THE OUTDOOR GIRLS SERIES= THE OUTDOOR GIRLS OF DEEPDALE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT RAINBOW LAKE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A MOTOR CAR THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A WINTER CAMP THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN FLORIDA =THE BOBBSEY TWINS BOOKS= For Little Men and Women THE BOBBSEY TWINS THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE COUNTRY THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE SEASHORE THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SCHOOL THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SNOW LODGE * * * * * GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY GROSSET & DUNLAP. * * * * * THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A MOTOR CAR. [Illustration: "TOPPLED FROM THE TREE, ALMOST IN FRONT OF THE CAR." _The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car_ _Frontispiece_ (_Page 13_)] CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I OUT OF A TREE 1 II A STRANGE GIRL 14 III STRANGELY MISSING 24 IV THE QUEER PEDDLER 31 V PAUL AT THE WHEEL 41 VI A TOUR PROPOSED 48 VII MR. LAGG'S OFFER 56 VIII IN THE MUD 68 IX IN SHADOW VALLEY 77 X OFF ON THE TOUR 84 XI A TRACE OF THE GIRL 93 XII A DISABLED CAR 104 XIII THE STORM 110 XIV AT THE HAUNTED HOUSE 121 XV QUEER MANIFESTATIONS 129 XVI "SO YOU HAVE COME BACK!" 138 XVII CONSTERNATION 147 XVIII THE PRISONER 153 XIX MYSTIFIED 160 XX SEEKING THE GHOST 168 XXI THE MISSING GIRL 177 XXII A SWINDLED FARMER 184 XXIII "THAT'S THE MAN!" 195 XXIV THE FAKER CAUGHT 199 XXV EXPLANATIONS 204 THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A MOTOR CAR CHAPTER I OUT OF A TREE "Come on, girls, the car is here, and this time I'm going to run it myself!" "You never are, Mollie Billette!" exclaimed Grace Ford, as, with three companions, she hurried to the window of the library of the Billette home, and looked out toward the street, up which was coming a luxurious touring car of the latest model. "Aren't you afraid?" asked Amy Stonington, as she looked admiringly at Mollie, whose cheeks were flushed with excitement. "Oh, it simply gives me the creeps to think about it!" added Grace. "I don't see why," spoke Mollie, as the car, in charge of a demonstrator, came to a stop in front of her house. "I've taken enough lessons, the garage man says; I have my license, and why shouldn't I run my car? Are you afraid to come with me?" "No--no, it isn't exactly that," said Amy, slowly as she fastened the strings of her new motoring hood--all the girls had them, and very becoming they were. "It isn't exactly that, Mollie, but you know----" "If you weren't afraid to go with Betty in her motor boat, I don't see why you should be afraid to come with me in the car," went on Mollie. "Oh, what did I do with my goggles?" she asked as she hurriedly looked about the room, lifting up a pile of books and papers on a table. "I know I had them, and----" "Look!" exclaimed Betty Nelson with a laugh. "Dodo and Paul are trying to pull them apart. I suppose they think the goggles are big enough for two," and she pointed to where the twins, Mollie's little brother and sister, were seated on the velvety lawn, both having hold of a new pair of auto goggles, and gravely trying to separate the two eye pieces. "The little rascals!" cried Mollie, though she, too had to join in the laughter of her chums. "Paul!" she called. "Dodo! Come here this instant with my goggles!" The children looked up, their dispute forgotten. "Us hasn't any doddles--us got tecticals!" exclaimed Paul. "Well, those are sister's spectacles--to wear in the auto so the dust won't get in her eyes," explained Mollie, as she approached the twins, "Give them to sister." "Oo et us wide in tar us dive um to oo," stipulated Dodo, holding the goggles behind her back. "Not to-day, pet," said Mollie, sweetly--compromisingly. Dodo arose, and backed away, limping slightly, for she was not quite recovered from a recent operation as the result of a peculiar accident. She held the goggles out of reach, and, walking with her eyes fixed on her sister, she was in danger of stumbling. "She'll fall and break them," cried Grace. "That's what I'm afraid of," said Mollie. "Come, Dodo, give the glasses to sister." "Her dive um for tandy!" cried the crafty Paul, seeing a chance to make capital out of his little sister's strategic move. "Us dive oo glasses for tandy; won't us, Dodo?" "Us will," assented Dora--or Dodo, as she was almost universally called. "Us dive for tandy--lots of tandy." "The little rascals," laughed Mollie. "I wish I dared rush at her and take them away. But she might fall----" and with the recollection of what little Dodo had suffered, Mollie gave up her plan of action. The chauffeur tooted on the auto horn, as much as to say: "Come, I'm waiting for you." "Oh, dear!" exclaimed Mollie. "Have any of you----" "Grace, will you kindly oblige?" asked Betty, with a laugh. "Surely you are not without chocolates on this momentous occasion." "I don't see why you assume that I always have candy," remarked the tall, slender girl, whose willowy figure added to the charm of her face, framed in a wealth of light hair. "Oh, we know your failing," laughed Betty. "Come, Grace, you are delaying the game, and if we are going for an auto ride with Mollie--let--let's have it--over with." "Well, I like the way you speak!" exclaimed Mollie, rather sharply--Mollie had a failing in her quick temper. "If you girls are afraid to come in my new car, just because I'm going to steer all alone, why----" "Oh, Mollie, I didn't mean it that way at all!" protested Betty. "I just didn't want Grace to feel----" "Where is tandy?" demanded Paul, as he approached his little sister, evidently with the intention of again assuming the dispute over the goggles in case no confectionery was forthcoming. "Grace, have you any?" asked Mollie, beseechingly. "We _must_ get started, and the day is so fine we don't want to miss any of it. Paul--Dodo--don't you dare break my glasses!" She shook a warning finger at them. "I just _happen_ to have some chocolates," said Grace, with an air of injured dignity. From the pocket of her sweater she produced a small box, and held it out to Dodo. The child, with a glad cry, dropped the goggles on the grass and sprang for Grace. Paul, too, joined in the race, and while Mollie picked up her recovered property the twins, with a new matter to contend about, gravely sat down on the lawn, and proceeded to divide the candy. "Now come on!" cried Mollie, "before something else happens. Be good children!" she cautioned them, "and don't go away." "No," they chorused, while Paul added: "Bring us more tandy--not bery much here." "Which speaks well for the appetite of Grace," murmured Amy. "Oh, let me alone!" protested Grace, with as near a show of temper as she ever indulged in. Mollie looked at her and remarked: "You're getting my complaint, Grace dear." "Well, I'm tired of always having candy thrown in my face--what if I do like chocolate?" "You should have thrown the candy in her mouth--not in her face," laughed Betty, and then Grace smiled instead of frowning, and the four chums--the Outdoor Girls, as they had come to be called from living so much in the open--walked across the lawn to the waiting car. "It certainly is a beauty!" declared Grace, as her eyes, and those of her friends, took in all the details of the auto. "Mollie, you are a lucky girl, and so is Betty with her motor boat. Amy, I wonder what good fortune is coming to us?" "It will have to be an airship in your case, Grace," said Mollie. "One boat and one car is enough. You had better pray for an aeroplane." "Never!" assented Grace. "The land and water are enough for me." "And as for Amy," said Betty, "she wants a balloon, perhaps." Amy shook her head, and a strange look came over her face. Her chums knew what it meant--that above everything else she would have preferred having the mystery of her identity solved. "Well, if we're going to mote--let's mote!" exclaimed Mollie, perhaps with a desire to change the subject. "I'm going to take you for a nice long spin." "Aren't you nervous--to think of being at the wheel without some one beside to help you in case of emergency?" asked Betty. "Were you, in the _Gem_?" retorted Mollie. "A little, but then, you know, a motor boat doesn't go as fast as a car--somehow you seem to have a better chance in case of collisions, or accidents." "There aren't going to be any collisions or accidents," declared Mollie, with conviction. "I'm going to be careful until I get a little more accustomed to it, and then----" "You'll scorch, like all the others, I suppose," put in Amy. "Never! Now who's going to ride with me on the front seat?" For a moment no one answered--Betty, Grace and Amy looked at one another, and then they burst into laughter. "Well, do you want to draw lots for it?" inquired Mollie, with a trace of sarcasm. "I thought you'd feel honored." "I will!" exclaimed Betty. "But you will be careful; won't you, Mollie dear?" "Of course. I'm no more anxious to get into trouble than you are. Oh, what did I do with my handkerchief?" "It's up your sleeve," said Grace, indicating a bulge in Mollie's sweater. "Well, come on!" exclaimed the owner of the new car. "She says it as though she were--going to--jail!" laughed Grace. The demonstrator had alighted from the car, and was looking it over, testing the tires with his hand. "Is it all right, Mr. Ransom?" asked Mollie, a bit anxiously. "Is anything the matter?" "Not a thing, Miss Billette," he replied. "It is in perfect order. And I'm sure you can run it alone very easily. You have had a number of lessons, and you learned very quickly." "If only I remember to let out my clutch before I change gears," Mollie murmured. "Oh, you'll remember that," returned the chauffeur, to give her the confidence he saw she needed. "I'll remind you of it," volunteered Betty. The girls got into the car, and the man, impressing a few important facts on the pretty girl driver, lifted his cap as Mollie pressed the button of the self-starter. "Here we go!" cried Grace, as the motor throbbed and hummed. Carefully Mollie threw out the clutch, and slipped in first speed. Then releasing the clutch pedal gradually she felt the car move slowly forward. A flush of pleasure came to her face; for, though she had several times performed this feat of late, the demonstrator had always sat beside her. Now she was doing it alone. "Fine!" cried Betty, as the car gathered speed. "You're all right!" Mr. Ransom called after the girls. From first to second gear, and then in another moment to high, was performed by Mollie without a hitch. Then she advanced the spark and gas levers. "Well, so far--so good!" spoke Amy, with a sigh of relief. "I knew Mollie could do it," declared Betty. "Look out for that wagon, my dear," she cried, a second later. "I see it," and Mollie gave it such a wide berth that she sent her car needlessly to the grassy part of the country highway that led out of Deepdale. "I don't want more than my half of the road," good-naturedly called the farmer who was driving the horse-drawn vehicle. "If all motorists were as generous as you there'd be no complaints," and he smiled and lifted his cap. "It's better to be sure than sorry," said Mollie. "Well, girls, how do you like it?" and she ventured to turn around for an instant to speak to Grace and Amy in the tonneau. "It's scrumptious!" declared Grace, between bites at a chocolate. "Lovely," chimed in Amy. "However did you prevail on your mother to get you the car?" asked Belly. "Well, you see, when poor papa died," explained Mollie, as she put on a little more speed, "he provided in his will that on my seventeenth birthday I should have a certain sum of money to use just as I pleased--within reason, of course. "He didn't say what it was for, but he had suggested that I take a trip to Europe. But I want to do that later, when I can better appreciate what I see, so I asked mamma if I couldn't use the money for a car, and she allowed me to. The result--you now behold," and she patted the steering wheel. "We do more than merely behold it," said Grace. "It was sweet of you to ask us for a spin." "Why wouldn't I, when Betty has been having us off on a cruise in her motor boat?" replied Mollie. Then she cried: "Oh, dear! There's a dog!" for one was in the road ahead. "He can't bite us--up here," said Betty. "Unless you are afraid of your tires." "No, it isn't that, but I'm afraid I may run over him!" However, the dog leaped away from the road, darted into an open gateway, and from behind the safe vantage of the fence barked at the passing auto. "I don't mind you there," said Mollie, with a sigh of relief. "Oh, but isn't this lovely!" and she inhaled deeply of the flower-scented air. There had been a shower the night before, and the roads were in excellent condition. Mollie had had the car about two weeks, and had taken several lessons in driving. As the chauffeur had said, she had proved an apt pupil, and now, being fully qualified, as her license stated, to run it alone, she had, on this first occasion, invited her friends for a run. For several miles the girls rode along, enjoying to the utmost the swift, silent and easy motion, and drinking in the sweet air. They admired the views, too, for though they had been out with Mollie when she was taking her lessons, they had been so much occupied with watching her attempts to steer, and listening to the man's instructions, that they had not fully appreciated the beauty of the country through which they passed. And the country about Deepdale was beautiful. "Are you going out Shadow Valley way?" asked Betty, as Mollie successfully made a turn into another highway, off the main one. "No, not this time, though we must go there some day. I thought we'd motor to Farmington, and go home by way of Skillman." "That's a nice way," said Grace. "Here, Mollie, open your mouth," and, as her chum did so, Grace inserted a chocolate, for Mollie had not yet enough confidence to take her hands from the steering wheel, except to shift gears, with the right. They were going along a well-shaded road now, the big maples on either side meeting in an arch of green overhead. Some of the branches were so low that care had to be taken in passing under them, as Mollie had the top of the car up for protection. As they approached one immense and ancient tree they saw a flutter of white amid the branches near the ground. "What's that?" cried Betty. "Look out!" exclaimed Grace. The white object--large and fluttering--toppled from the tree, almost in front of the car, and with a little scream of fear Mollie gave the steering wheel such a sudden twist that the auto swerved and nearly upset. Across the road it shot on two wheels, and crashed into the bushes and briars that lined the highway. Instinctively Mollie jammed on the brake, and threw out the clutch, the next instant shutting off the power, but so suddenly did she stop in the excess of her zeal that Grace and Amy were thrown from their seats, and Betty had to put out her hands to avoid hitting the wind shield. CHAPTER II A STRANGE GIRL Mollie was the first to recover herself. Her position at the steering wheel had given her an advantage, in that she had something to hold to, and so was not tossed about as were her chums when the auto came to such a sudden stop. "Oh, dear!" Mollie exclaimed, ruefully. "Are any of you hurt?" She gazed back at Grace and Amy, having assured herself by a look at Betty beside her that the latter bore at least no visible injuries. "I bumped my elbow--on the funny bone," said Grace. "This is far from being funny," went on Mollie, half hysterical now. "Stop it!" commanded Betty, getting control of her nerves, and then taking the situation in hand, as she so often did. "No one is hurt, and the car doesn't appear to be damaged, unless the stopping of the motor indicates that." "No, I shut it off," said Mollie. "Amy, how about you?" "Oh, I'm all right. But what in the world happened?" In concert they all looked back toward the big tree, which, to avoid hitting something that fell from it, Mollie had steered away from so suddenly, and with such unexpected results. "Why--why, it's a--girl!" gasped Betty, as she saw a huddled figure lying on the thick grass at the foot of the maple. "It's a girl, Mollie!" "Oh, my, I hope we didn't hit her!" gasped Mollie. "I'm all in a tremble. Betty--I'm--I'm going to----" "Don't you dare say faint!" commanded Betty. "Come, we must see what is the matter. Poor thing!" "Oh, if--if we struck her!" gasped Mollie. "I don't see how we could have," declared Amy. "You steered out too quickly." "Yes, she did steer out quickly, all right," asserted Grace, rubbing her tingling elbow. "Why, Amy, your forehead is all bruised!" "Yes, my head hit the robe-rail I guess," said Amy. "But that isn't anything. Oh, let's hurry to that poor girl." Leaving the auto where it was, half-way through a patch of briars and brambles, the four girls approached the quiet figure lying under the tree. They looked up and down the road in case help would be needed, but not a person or vehicle was in sight. "Oh--oh! I'm--I'm afraid to--look," spoke Mollie, shrinking back, as Betty bent over the figure of the strange girl. The latter's eyes were closed, and her loosened hair was in a mass about her head--even tossed as it was the girls could see there was a wonderful wealth of it. Betty gently pushed aside the locks from the forehead, and, as she did so she started back. Then bravely repressing her feelings she said: "It's a cut, but it doesn't seem to be very deep." "Oh, the blood--the blood!" murmured Mollie, putting her hands before her eyes. "And--I--I did it!" "Nonsense! Stop it!" cried Betty. "Perhaps you did not do it at all--it may have happened in the fall." "She is unconscious," said Grace. "Yes, and we must get her to a doctor, or bring a doctor here as soon as possible," spoke Betty. "I think we can get her to a doctor more quickly. Will your machine run, Mollie? Can you operate it?" "Oh, it will run all right. Nothing is broken, I'm sure of that. But I----" "You've just _got_ to run it," declared Betty, firmly, "even if it only crawls. Now if we can find some water to bathe her head we can tell how badly she is hurt. Girls, look for a spring. One of you bring me a lap robe." Thus Betty issued her orders, and while the girls are preparing to lend aid to the injured stranger I will take a moment of your time--my new readers--to explain briefly some facts about the characters of this story. In the first book, entitled, "The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale; Or, Camping and Tramping for Fun and Health," I told how Mollie, Betty, Amy and Grace, four girls of Deepdale, a town in the heart of New York State, organized a little club for camping and tramping. They went on a tour of about two hundred miles, stopping at night with friends or relatives, and on that tramp they solved a queer mystery having to do with a five hundred dollar bill--solved it very much to the satisfaction of a certain young man. In the second volume, called "The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake; Or, the Stirring Cruise of the Motor Boat _Gem_," I related what good times the girls had when Betty's uncle gave her a fine gasoline craft. Stirring times the girls had, too, when there was danger from a burning hay barge; and jolly times when they took part in races and went to dances. That Mollie's little sister Dodo was in distress because of a peculiar accident, which involved Grace, and caused the loss of valuable papers, detracted somewhat from the happiness of the girls for a time. But in the end a "ghost" led to the finding of the missing documents, and Dodo was cured, so that all came out right. Then had followed more delightful times cruising and camping, and now, with the advent of fall, and Mollie's touring car, more glorious times were in prospect. The girls had not been long back from Rainbow Lake when Mollie received her auto. I might mention that Betty Nelson was the daughter of a wealthy carpet manufacturer, with a large plant near Deepdale, while Mollie Billette was one of three children, her mother being a widow. Little Paul and Dodo I have already mentioned. Grace--the "Gibson girl," as she was often called, had a peculiar longing for sweets, and not being stinted as to pocket money--her father being a wealthy lawyer--she indulged her taste rather too much, so some of her friends thought. There was a mystery about poor Amy Stonington, for the details of which I must refer my readers to the first book. Sufficient to say that since a baby she had been cared for by her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. John Stonington. Amy had lived in the West, and had been rescued from a great flood when an infant. What became of her parents, or her brothers or sisters--if she had any--no one seemed able to say. In a way this mystery embittered Amy's life, but she was of too sweet and good a disposition to allow it to make a difference with her friends. The four girls had been chums since grammar school days, being now High School students. In addition to the "inseparables," as they were often called, my former readers will recall Will Ford, the brother of Grace; his chum, Frank Haley, and another friend, Allen Washburn, now a young lawyer, with whom Betty--but there, why should I give away Betty's little secret? Quite in contrast to these boys was Percy Falconer, a rather foppish lad, who greatly admired Betty--as who did not? But as for Percy--Betty did not care for him in the least. She was too fine a character to permit herself to be really angry at him, but Betty and Percy never could get along well. "Dear Deepdale," as the girls alliteratively referred to it, was a charming country town, nestling in a bend of the Argono River, which, some miles below the village, widened out into Rainbow Lake. It was on this lake that the girls had cruised, and had such fun, and Betty's boat was now docked in the new house constructed for it near Mollie's home. The girls lived within short distance of one another, and were continually visiting, or calling back and forth. Where you found one you would find the others, and their parents used to say they never knew when to expect their daughters home to meals--for they were like one family in respect to dining out. And, as usual, this beautiful summer day found the girls together in the auto, when the accident had thrown them into such consternation. "Did you find any water?" called Betty, who had made a pillow of the lap robe, and supported on it the head of the unconscious girl. "Yes," answered Mollie, her hand trembling as she extended a collapsible cup of the fluid she had dipped from a nearby spring, "I'll get more when she takes that." "I'm afraid I can't get her to take much of it," said Betty. "But I can bathe the cut and see how large it is." She tried to get a little water between the lips of the strange girl, while Amy and Grace held her head up; Mollie, with another cup provided by Betty, going off after more water. "She took a little," whispered Grace. The girl turned her head to one side as though to avoid drinking. Then she muttered a few words. "What did she say?" asked Amy. "I couldn't understand it," answered Betty. Again the stranger murmured something, and this time the girls caught: "No, no! I will not go back to him! Anything but the life I have been leading. Oh, why must I do it? Why?" There was pathetic pleading in the words. "There, my dear, you will be taken care of," spoke Betty, soothingly. "We will take you to your friends." "I--I have none! Oh, I can't go back to--him!" Her eyes did not open, and she appeared to be in a delirium. "Poor thing!" said Amy, softly. "Bathe her head, Betty." "Yes, I think that will be better than trying to force her to drink." Dipping her handkerchief in the water Betty wiped away the blood from the cut. It was seen to be a small one. "That ought not to make her unconscious," said Betty. "More likely she has some additional injury; possibly a blow on some other part of her head. Girls, did you ever see such glorious hair!" Betty caressed it. Truly there was a mass of it, and it was of beautiful silkness and softness. It was still partly bound up, but the autoists could easily tell that it must reach almost to the ground when the girl stood up. "What in the world could she have been doing up the tree?" asked Grace, as Mollie came back with more water. "It is the oddest thing," agreed Betty, bathing the stranger's face and wrists. "Are you sure we didn't hit her with the auto?" asked Mollie, tremblingly. "I am almost sure you did not," spoke Betty, positively. "As she started to fall you steered out. She just toppled to the ground. See, there is not a mark of dust on her dress, as there would be if the tires had struck her." "Yes, but perhaps the mud guard, or----" "But her dress isn't torn or much disarranged. No, Mollie, the auto never struck her, of that I'm sure. But possibly she fell on her head, and the blow and shock stunned her. Oh, we must get her to a doctor! "Come, girls," went on Betty, "we can lift her into the auto, I'm sure, and take her to the nearest house. Then we'll go for a physician." "Try to arouse her, first," suggested Mollie. "I can't bear to see her--this way." Betty used more water, and succeeded in getting some between the pale lips of the girl, but to no purpose. She was limp and half senseless, though she continued to moan and talk incoherently. Then the four girls picked her up and carried her toward the stalled automobile. CHAPTER III STRANGELY MISSING "Wait a minute," directed Betty, as she and her chums advanced, carrying the unconscious girl. "We'll have to put her down here, where the grass is soft." "Why?" asked Amy, "she isn't heavy." "No, but it will be better to get the auto out of the bushes, and into the road before we put her in it. Something might go wrong, and jolt her." "That's so," agreed Mollie. "I think I can do it. Oh, but I'm nervous!" "Shame on you!" cried Betty. "Be an outdoor girl--be your own brave self, Mollie!" "I will!" and there was determination in her voice. "I'm sure I can get the car out all right!" Mollie took her place at the wheel, pressed the starting button, and then, with a glance backward to see which way to steer, she slipped in the reverse gear, and let the clutch come into place. Slowly, amid a tearing away of vines and bushes, the car regained the highway. "Good!" cried Grace. "Now, how shall we put her in, Betty?" for the "Little Captain," as she was often called (as Mollie was called "Billy") was generally looked to for advice in emergencies like these. "You and Amy must hold her between you on the rear seat," Betty directed. "Support her all you can. Mollie will drive slowly." "But perhaps we ought to get her to a doctor right away," spoke the owner of the car. "Getting her to a doctor would not make up for any injury caused by a jolt," said practical Betty. "Besides, I do not think she can be seriously hurt. Her hair is so very thick that she could stand a very hard blow on the head. There are no other signs of injuries; but of course there may be internal hurts. She did not fall far, those branches were very close to the ground." "What she can have been doing up the tree is a mystery," remarked Grace. "Like the time when we found that five hundred dollar bill," added Mollie. "And the 'ghost' of Elm Island, and the missing papers in the saddle bags," remarked Amy to Grace. Mollie had brought her car to a stop, and alighted to help lift in the unconscious girl. Between them Amy and Grace held her in the tonneau, her head resting on Amy's shoulder, a damp handkerchief covering the cut to keep any dirt from getting in it. Mollie again took her place at the steering wheel, and when Betty had gotten in the girls started off with their strange passenger. "I couldn't imagine what it was, when I saw something white falling out of the tree," spoke Mollie, driving along on high gear, but with the motor well throttled down. "Nor could I," added Betty. "And when you steered out so suddenly, I thought surely we would crash into the stone fence, just beyond the bushes." "So did I, but I knew there was only one thing to do, and that was to put on the brakes as hard as I could." "And you did," said Grace. "I didn't know you could move so quickly, Mollie." "You can do many things when the emergency comes," replied Mollie, as she turned out to avoid a rut in the road. "This is better than a dozen lessons in the art of managing an auto," commented Betty. "Practical problems are what count--not theoretical ones. Does she seem all right, Grace?" and she looked around at the unconscious girl. "Yes, and her breathing is better. I think she will soon come to." "That's good. See, there's a house. We can take her in, and ask where the nearest doctor is," and Betty pointed ahead. Presently the auto stopped before it, and to a motherly-looking woman who came out, Betty and the girls quickly explained what had happened. "Of course! Bring the poor dear in!" the woman directed. "The men folks are over in the far meadow salting the cows, or I'd send one of them for Dr. Brown. He's most likely to be home too, now. He lives down the road a piece--about a mile." "I can go for him in the car, and bring him back," said Mollie. "That's good. Bring the poor dear in the bedroom, and we'll look after her until the doctor comes. I'll get the camphor bottle. That's good for a faint." The girl seemed to have again sunk into a stupor, as they carried her in, and placed her on a comfortable lounge. Then the woman of the house brought out a bottle of camphor, of generous size, and it was held to the nostrils of the unconscious one. The sufferer turned her head away from the pungent odor, and seemed to be struggling against some unseen force. Again she seemed to revive somewhat, and muttered: "Oh, I can't! I can't! I don't want to go back to him! Anything but that! I don't like--I can't bear that life!" Her voice trailed off into a mere whisper. "You had better hurry for the doctor," said Betty, and Mollie hastened out to her car. "I'll come with you," volunteered Grace, and Mollie was grateful. "Suppose we take her into the bedroom," suggested the woman. "It's cooler there. We can manage her. I'm real strong." With her help it was no great task to get the girl on the bed. Her garments were loosened so that she might be more comfortable, and more camphor was used, but it seemed to have no effect. "Suppose we go out and let her be by herself; we can't do anything more," suggested the woman. "Besides, she needs all the air she can get. That's always best for fainting folks. She may come to by herself, I'll open the window and shutters," and she proceeded to do so. Then coming out, and closing the door, they left the strange girl alone, Betty and Amy taking turns telling how the affair had happened. "Land's sakes! Fell out of a tree!" exclaimed the woman. "What in the world do you s'pose she was doin' up in it?" "We haven't the least idea," answered Betty. "And who is this man she says she won't go back to?" "We have even less idea--she has repeated that several times," spoke Amy. "Oh, I do hope they find the doctor!" "Dr. Brown is real good," was the woman's opinion. "He cured my rheumatism, and Hetty Blake--she lives over on the Melford road--she had jaundice something terrible--she was as yellow as saffron tea, and he brought her around when old Dr. Wakefield give her up. Yes, Dr. Brown is right smart." Thus she entertained the girls with remarks on the country life around, until Betty ventured to remark: "I wonder if we oughtn't to look in on her?" motioning to the room where they had left the girl. "No, best let her be," said the woman--Mrs. Meckelburn, she had said her name was. "Hark!" exclaimed Amy a little later. "It's an auto!" said Betty, going to the window. She saw Mollie and Grace in the car, a young man, with a professional air about him, at the steering wheel. "That's Dr. Brown!" exclaimed Mrs. Meckelburn, "but I didn't know he could drive one of them things." "I guess Mollie got too nervous," explained Betty. The doctor caught up his bag and hurried toward the house, followed by Grace and Mollie. "An accident!" he exclaimed in brisk tones, bowing to Betty and Amy, and taking in the woman in his greeting. "Where is she?" "In my bedroom, Dr. Brown," said Mrs. Meckelburn. "I do hope there's nothing much the matter with the poor dear." They clustered around as the physician pushed open the door. Then he turned to them with a queer look on his face. "Must be some mistake," he said. "There is no one here." "No one there!" cried Betty in strange tones. "Why----" She looked over his shoulder. There in the bed was the imprint of a human form, but the girl herself had vanished! CHAPTER IV THE QUEER PEDDLER For a moment after this surprising discovery had been made no one spoke. Dr. Brown looked oddly from one girl to the other, and at Mrs. Meckelburn. "There is evidently some mystery here," he said. "I supposed there was really some one here who needed my services?" and he glanced questioningly at Mollie, who had summoned him. "Oh, indeed there _was_," she said, quickly. "A girl fell out of a tree----" "Out of a tree!" exclaimed the doctor, and for a moment it seemed as though he believed a joke had been attempted on him. "Yes," went on Betty, taking up the story, "didn't Mollie tell you that? She really fell from a tree as our auto passed, and at first we thought we had struck her." Betty shot a glance of inquiry at Mollie. "No, I didn't tell that part," confessed the owner of the new car. "I was so flustrated, and I guess Grace didn't say anything either." "No," answered the willowy one. "Well, I'm here, at all events, but there is no patient," said the doctor, with a smile. "Oh, we'll pay you for your call!" exclaimed Betty, quickly taking out her silver mesh bag. "How much----" "No, no!" said Dr. Brown somewhat sharply, "you misunderstand me. I never accept a fee in a simple accident case. What I meant about there being no patient was that she has evidently gone away, possibly in a delirium, and in that case we had better search for her, for she may be badly hurt, or do herself some injury. You say she was in this room?" "Yes," answered Mrs. Meckelburn. "And you sat here in view of the door all the while?" "Yes," spoke Betty. "She never came out of that door, I'm sure." Amy said the same thing. "Then the only other possible solution is that she got out of the window," went on the physician, "for there is no other door from the room. We must look outside," and he crossed the apartment to the casement. It had been raised, and the shutters were open when the unconscious girl had been left alone. "The window is low--she could easily have dropped to the ground," said Dr. Brown. "It is not more than four feet." He leaned out to look at the ground underneath, and uttered an exclamation. "That is what she did!" he cried. "There are the marks of feet landing heavily--small shoes--and unless some of _you_ young ladies have been indulging in gymnastics." "And see!" added Betty, standing beside the physician, "here are some of her long hairs," and she picked some from the window sill. "Oh, she did have the longest, most glorious hair!" and Betty sighed in memory, for Betty loved long tresses and her own, while they became her wonderfully well, were not very luxuriant. "But I don't see how she could have gotten away, unconscious as she was, and injured," said Grace, with a puzzled air. "She may have regained consciousness," spoke Dr. Brown; "or, as I said, she may have wandered off in a delirium. In that case we must try to find her. Again, she may not have been as badly hurt as you supposed, and also she may have simulated an injury hoping she would get a chance to escape unobserved. Was there anything strange about her?" "Yes, there was," admitted Betty, slowly, and she gave the details of the accident, how, most unexpectedly the girl had toppled from the tree, the subsequent swerving of the auto, and how, several times, the girl had murmured something about not going back to a certain man. "Hum!" mused Dr. Brown, "it is rather odd, I must admit. What do you suppose she was doing in the tree?" "We haven't been able to guess," confessed Amy; "perhaps she climbed up to avoid a dog--we have met several dogs to-day." "It's possible," Dr. Brown commented. "And the tree was an easy one to climb," spoke Mollie. "I am not a very good climber, but that tree offered temptations." The doctor smiled. "Well, let us make a search," he proposed. "Is there any special place where a girl, who might wish to escape observation for some unknown reason, could hide around here, Mrs. Meckelburn?" "There's the barn." "Very good, we will search there, and we may be able to trace her footprints. Please do not any of you walk under the window, nor in a line from it until we have made some observations. We will play a little detective game," and he smiled frankly at the girls. But if he had hoped anything from the clue of the footprints he was doomed to disappointment for, though there were plain indications where the girl had landed when she jumped from the window, the marks were soon lost sight of on the harder ground a short distance from the house. A search of the barn revealed no trace of her, and one of the farm hands, coming to the house a little later, joined in the search. He reported that there had been seen no hatless, injured--or apparently injured--girl crossing the fields. "Then she must have made a circle about the house, and gone out on the road," suggested Betty. "She is probably far enough away from here by this time, poor thing!" "Perhaps we ought to search for her," spoke Mollie. "Of course it was not our fault, since we are sure the car did not hit her; but perhaps it scared her so that she fell." "I should not blame myself if I were you," said the physician, kindly. "It was evidently not your fault. You did all you could for the girl. If she did not want further treatment that is her lookout. Of course, if she wandered away in a delirium, that is another story, and perhaps it would be well to search down the road. She did not pass us, or we would have seen her, coming from my office along the main highway as we did," he said to Mollie. "A search in the opposite direction would be the only feasible thing to conduct." "Then let's do it!" cried Mollie. "And you please drive, Dr. Brown, I haven't yet gotten over my nervousness." Mrs. Meckelburn refused an invitation to go in the car, but the four girls started off, Dr. Brown at the wheel. They went as far back as the tree which was the scene of the accident and saw no trace of the girl. Nor had any of several other autoists, or drivers of horse vehicles, to whom they appealed, seen her. "She has just disappeared--that's all," said Betty. "I wonder if we had better notify the police?" "I will attend to that for you," responded Dr. Brown, kindly. "There is no need for you to be mixed up in this. Sometimes, with the best intentions in the world, one gets unpleasant notoriety in these cases. I will notify the authorities to be on the lookout for the girl, for her own sake alone. Later, if there is need of you----" He paused suggestively. "We will leave you our addresses," said Betty, quickly. "Thank you for looking after this for us." "I am only too glad to be of service. Well, as long as there is no patient to be found here, I had better return to those waiting for me at my office." "Go there in my car," proposed Mollie, quickly, "and then I will take the wheel again. I am feeling better now." "Such a fine car as this ought to make anyone feel fine! It is a beauty!" and he seemed to caress the steering wheel. "I am getting a small runabout," he went on, "and that is how I happen to know how to drive. I learned some time ago." They flashed past Mrs. Meckelburn's house, calling to her of their failure, and saying that they would be back soon. A little later, having left the physician at his home, they were again in the pleasant farm house, sipping tea which their hostess had thoughtfully made. "Isn't it queer?" observed Betty. "A strange enough happening," Amy commented. "Quite a mystery," asserted Grace. "And really she was a pretty girl," declared Mollie. "I wish I had her hair," and she sighed as Betty had done. Grace strolled into the room where the girl had been, and half idly she looked about it, as though in that way she might solve the mystery. A piece of paper in one corner caught her eye and she picked it up. "I found this in there," she said, coming out. "It has some writing on it. Perhaps this is yours, Mrs. Meckelburn," and she held out the scrap. "No, I'll guarantee there was not a piece of paper in that room when you carried that girl in," said the farmer's wife. "I had just swept," and she tossed her head in pardonable pride of her housework. "What does it say?" asked Amy. "It's evidently a piece torn from a letter," answered Grace, as she accepted the paper from the woman, "and all I can make out are the words--'not go to Shadow Valley even if'--and that's all there is to it." "How odd!" exclaimed Mollie. "Shadow Valley is not far from here." "And the queer girl evidently dropped that paper," declared Betty, examining the scrap. "Well, the mystery deepens, but I do not see that we can do anything to solve it." They talked it over for some time, but could come to no other conclusion. Grace saved the scrap of paper, and soon, having bidden good-bye to Mrs. Meckelburn, they were on their way again, with Mollie at the wheel. Gradually their nerves, upset by their adventure, resumed their poise under the influence of the fresh air and sunshine, and the gloomy atmosphere raised by the girl's accident, passed away. They had made the turn into a road that would lead them to Deepdale when they came in sight of a man standing in the road beside a small, and rather gaudily painted wagon. He seemed to be looking in the dust for something, and Mollie, seeing him, slowed up, remarking: "Perhaps he has a break-down. Let's ask if we can help him." The appearance of the man, in some ways, was enough to invite the confidence of four girls, and in others was not. He had long, and very white hair, fluffy and wavy, and was dressed in a shabby suit of black, but his face had hard, cruel lines in it, as though he were in the habit of imposing his will on others. A look at his wagon showed the character of his trade, for it was brilliantly lettered with such devices and mottoes as--"Bennington's Hair is All His Own." "Use His Restorer and Be Likewise." Another was: "Bennington's Restorer Really Restores." "Have you lost something?" asked Mollie, bringing the car to a stop. He looked up quickly, and smiled, but the smile only seemed to make his face harder, instead of softening it. "Yes, ladies," he said with a smirk and bow, taking off his broad brimmed hat, and running his fingers through his hair, making it fluff out more than ever, "I have lost a bolt out of part of my wagon, and I'm afraid to go on lest I break down. It dropped somewhere in the dust, but I can't find it." "I have a supply of spare bolts in my tool box," spoke Mollie, "I'll give you one, and that will save you looking any more." "Thank you, lady. It will be just what I want." From the tool box on the run board he soon selected a bolt that fitted his wagon. "And now let me repay your kindness," he said. "I am, as you see, a traveling peddler of hair tonic. May I present you with a bottle?" and he offered Mollie one. "No, thank you," and she laughed merrily. "It is something that I never use." "You all have fine hair," returned the peddler; "but at that it would be all the better for Bennington's Restorer--I am Bennington--I make it myself," and he bowed. "Won't you take it. I can guarantee it harmless." "No, thank you just the same," repeated Mollie. "And you are entirely welcome to the bolt. Good-bye," and she started her car. CHAPTER V PAUL AT THE WHEEL The girls looked back at the old peddler as they swept on. He was standing beside his horse, evidently mending some part of the harness. "It was rather a dilapidated outfit," remarked Betty. "I don't see how he can cover much ground in a day." "Probably he doesn't," answered Mollie. "He may sleep in his wagon, eat there--dining on bread and cheese or herring--and so reduce the high cost of living. Then he may make a big profit on his hair restorer. Ugh! The stuff! I could not bear to use it." "Nor I; and yet he had nice hair." "Perhaps he'd have that anyhow. He meant it well enough--offering us the bottle." "Yes," agreed Betty. "But it was just as well not to take it. My! what a day of adventures this has been!" "It has started in almost the way some days did when we were on our tramp," spoke Grace, from the tonneau. "Or when we were at the lake, trying not to be afraid of the 'ghost'," added Amy. "Do you intend to do any more cruising this fall, Betty?" "We may. Would you like it?" "Would we?" cried Grace, "just ask us!" "Now please wait," broke in Mollie. "I may have a little plan of my own to propose soon." "What is it?" begged Amy. "I haven't it all worked out yet. I'll tell you as soon as I have. It may offer us a chance for some fun----" "And adventures?" asked Betty, quickly. "And adventures," assented Mollie. "But one thing I do want, and that is to have each of you girls run the car. I don't want to be selfish and drive all the while." "I would like to learn," said Betty, eagerly. "It's good of you to want us to, Mollie." "No, I have rather a selfish motive back of it. Sometimes I want to sit in the tonneau and not have to worry about running over a dog----" "Look out!" suddenly cried Betty, impulsively grasping Mollie's arm. "That child!" A little toddler had run from the yard of a house near the road, and was scampering across the highway, his mother in close pursuit. Quickly Mollie put on both brakes, and threw out the clutch, but there was no need; for the child, with the perverseness of youth, had turned and was running back toward the gate, evidently frightened by the frantic tooting of the horn, the bulb of which Mollie pressed spasmodically. "Oh my! What a scare!" panted Mollie, as she slipped in low gear, and started up again, without coming to a full stop. "Well, I don't want to seem mean, but he is getting just what he deserves," said Grace, looking back, "and that is--a spanking. Toddlers must be made to learn the danger of rushing blindly across auto roads." "I suppose so," agreed Mollie. "I could just see little Paul then," she went on. "If I had hit that child----" She did not finish, but they all knew what she meant. Deepdale was reached without further incident, and the girls agreed that Mollie had piloted her car wonderfully well for a beginner. "Of course I've got lots to learn," she said to her chums, "but that will come gradually, the demonstrator said. One learns, after a while, to steer instinctively, and to do everything almost automatically--like slowing down, applying the brakes and so on. Now you girls must come over to-night, and we'll----" "Talk!" interrupted Amy. "We've got lots to talk about." "We always have," said Grace, looking in vain for a chocolate. The car had stopped in front of her house, and Mollie had said she would leave the other girls at their residences. "Oh, don't bother," Betty had protested. "You must be tired, and it's only a step." "No, we must do this in style!" decided Mollie. "What is the use of a motor car if one can't bring one's friends home in the proper mode?" And she had her way. The auto was to be kept in a public garage until Mrs. Billette could have one built on her own premises, and, leaving her machine with the man in charge, Mollie walked home. That night her three chums called, and the talk was almost entirely devoted to the strange girl and her queer disappearance. In the days that followed the four inseparables took many rides out into the beautiful country around Deepdale. True to her determination, Mollie insisted on Betty, Amy and Grace taking at least a few lessons. Betty was quick to learn, but Grace was not quite strong enough to handle the wheel properly, and Amy was too timid. Still, either of the latter could manage the car on a straight, level road, but Betty was the only one who persisted enough to be able to get a license, which she one day took out on Mollie's suggestion. "And what is the something you were going to tell us?" asked Betty of Mollie one day, as they were returning from a short run, Betty at the wheel. "Oh, it isn't quite ready yet," she said. "I'll tell you in plenty of time to prepare for it, though. Mind your wheel, Bet, there are two cars coming back of us, and I think they're going to pass us close." "Well, let them look out, I'm on the right side of the road." Two cars, scorching, did pass them, throwing up a cloud of dust that caused the girls to gasp choke. "Horrid creatures!" cried Grace. "My new cloak will be spoiled!" and she dusted off the auto garment she had recently purchased. "It is such as they who give all autoists a bad name," remarked Mollie. "One rule of our club must be never to scorch." "Our club?" asked Grace, wonderingly. "There--I've told part of my secret!" exclaimed Mollie, in some confusion. "I was going to suggest that, as we have a sort of informal Camping and Tramping Club, and as there is a kind of motor boat club feeling existing among us, we form an auto club." "Let's!" proposed Amy. "Bet has the boat, you have the car, Mollie, but poor Grace and I----" "That doesn't make a bit of difference!" broke in Mollie. "You don't have to have an auto to belong to this club. Just as when you get your airship, Grace, we'll join your aero club; though you'll be the only one with a flying machine." "No flies for me!" said Grace, determinedly. They reached Mollie's house rather early that afternoon, not having gone far. "Do come in for a cup of tea," urged Mollie. "It will refresh you all. No, no, Paul!" she called to her brother, "you must not get in sister's auto when she is not in it," for the little fellow had started to climb up in the front seat as the girls strolled toward the house. "Oo dot any tandy?" he asked, coming toward them. "Oh dear, I wonder if I will always have to bribe you, Paul?" sighed Mollie. "Grace, will you kindly oblige again? I guess I shall have to appoint you official candy distributor." "That would suit me," laughed Grace. "Here, Paul, and don't get that on your suit--the chocolate is so sticky and messy in warm weather," and Grace daintily removed, with the tip of her tongue, some brown spots from the ends of her rosy fingers that had passed the candy to the little boy. The girls were sipping tea in the library, and talking, when there came from out in front the sudden throbbing of an auto motor. Mollie leaped up and rushed to the window. Then she screamed: "Oh girls! Paul is in my car and it's running away with him! Oh, stop him, some one!" They all saw little Paul--a mite in the seat--holding bravely to the steering wheel, and the car moving down the hill in front of the Billette home. CHAPTER VI A TOUR PROPOSED Betty was the first to rush from the house. She was closely followed by Grace, who seemed to rise to the emergency in a manner not usual. "Can we stop him? Can we stop him?" cried Mollie, over and over again, as she clung to Amy and hurried on after Betty and Grace. "Oh, if mother were to see him now!" "Perhaps we can reach him in time," suggested Amy, consolingly. "Don't worry, Mollie." "Oh, whatever possessed him to do a thing like that? I have told him time and again never to get into the car alone." The four girls ran swiftly across the lawn--yes, swiftly, for no such creations as "hobble skirts" hindered them. Fortunately Mrs. Billette, whose French nature was easily excited had not seen the happening. Dodo was out with the maid. "Paul! Paul!" cried Mollie. "Put on the brake! Stop the car!" "It doesn't seem to be going very fast," panted Betty, as she kept on beside Grace. "He hasn't thrown in the gear--that's one good thing," exclaimed Grace. "He doesn't know how----" She paused, for from the car came a laugh of childish delight, and a change in the sound of the motor told that something new had occurred. "He has the gear in now!" cried Betty. She was running diagonally across the lawn, trying to intercept the car. In her mind it was plain what had happened. Paul had, with the impishness of childhood, climbed up in the auto. It was a simple matter to even blunder on pushing the button that would set the self-starter in operation. The car had been left standing on a level bit of road, but, just ahead of it, was a rather steep slope. Mollie had neglected to leave the emergency brake set, and when the motor started there was vibration enough to send the car over the little space that separated it from the slope. Then it simply rolled down. That was what had happened first. But now had entered a new complication. It seemed that Paul had a tricycle, worked by foot pedals and hand levers, and he was quite expert in its use. He had now put into practice what had been told him about his toy, and had added his observations of Mollie's operation of her car. After starting the motor Paul had somehow managed to slip in the low gear, and the marvel of it was that he knew enough to disengage the clutch while he did this. Afterward he told how he had heard the demonstrator impress many times on Mollie the need of doing so. "Oh, we'll never get him now!" cried Mollie, as she realized that the auto was moving under power now, and not merely by momentum. "Oh, Paul!" The child was actually steering--the girls could see that, for the auto swerved in and out, narrowly missing the curbstone, as he turned and twisted the wheel too much. "Paul! Paul!" cried his sister. "Stop it! Stop it!" But Paul only laughed. He was having too much fun to want to stop. It was hopeless for the girls to try to catch the auto now. They were far behind it, but still Betty ran on. Several narrow escapes had Paul on that perilous journey, and then in the nick of time he was saved from what might have been a serious accident. [Illustration: WILL KICKED HIS WHEEL FROM UNDER HIM AND WAS AT PAUL'S SIDE. _The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car_ _Page 51._] Up the road was coming a racing car, going at high speed. The man, crouched almost under the steering wheel, if he saw Mollie's car at all, probably imagined that a motorist of experience was guiding it. But Paul was on the wrong side of the road, and there was no telling at what moment he might shift the course. Then, riding like the wind, out from behind the racing car shot a bicyclist. At the sight of him Mollie screamed: "Will--Will Ford! Save Paul! He's in my car--there ahead of you!" Will Ford was riding directly toward Paul. In an instant Grace's brother had sensed the situation. Skillfully going around the racing car, which had fortunately slackened speed as the driver evidently realized that something was wrong, Will guided his wheel toward Mollie's auto. Then he turned, so as to ride in the direction in which it was advancing, with ever-increasing speed. Will gauged his progress to that of the car, rode up alongside the run-board, and, in another instant, kicked his wheel from under him and was at Paul's side. In another second he had snapped off the power and applied the brakes. "What for oo 'top me widing?" demanded Paul, rather indignantly. Will's heart was beating fast, and he panted for breath, but he managed to answer: "Too bad, Paulie, but you haven't any license to drive a car, you know, and a policeman might take you." "Yes?" "Sure. You mustn't do it again," and Will's voice was sufficiently stern. "All wight--I won't. But I tan wun a tar, all'e same; tan't I?" Paul was evidently proud of what he had done. "Yes, you can, but you mustn't--you mustn't! Do you understand?" "Yes. Dot any tandy?" Will laughed. "No," he said, "but maybe the girls have. Here they come." Half hysterical, Mollie and her chums came running up. They were all rather "limp," as they confessed later. "Oh, Paul, you naughty boy!" cried his sister. "Mamma will punish you for this." His big eyes opened wide. "I ikes to run tar," he said, and his lip quivered. "Don't be too harsh with him," murmured Grace. "I can't help it--he must know how dangerous it is," insisted Mollie. "You won't ever do it again; will you, Paul?" "Nope. Dot any tandy?" Their laughter relieved their strained feelings. "Oh, Will, I can't thank you enough!" declared Mollie. "I thought I would die when I saw that racing car coming toward him." "I just saw him in time," exclaimed Will. "I had to act quickly, for there was no telling when he'd try to cross the street." Paul was contentedly chewing a candy Grace had produced and the little crowd that had gathered, on seeing Will's act, began to disperse, understanding what had happened. Then Mollie, assuming the wheel, directed the car back to her house, taking the girls and Paul in it. Will went back to get his bicycle and the excitement was over. But it took some time for the girls to quiet down. To impress on him the danger of what he had done, Mrs. Billette sent Paul to bed. He cried and protested, but it was necessary, for he was too daring a little chap. Three days passed. The girls were at Mollie's house, having assembled in answer to her telephone message. "Well, it's all settled!" she exclaimed, as the trio came in together. "What?" asked Betty. "Our auto tour. That's what I've been working on. I wanted to plan a nice route--one that would take in a good stretch of country, enable us to see new places, and be comfortable. Now I have it all mapped out. You'll come; won't you--all of you?" and she looked appealingly at her chums. "But what's it all about?" asked Grace, wonderingly. "Why, since I have a car, we must get the best use out of it we can. So why can't we four--and a chaperone, if we think we need one--go for a tour, the same as when we walked--only this time we'll ride? We can make five hundred, or a thousand, miles, if we choose, stopping over night in different places. Won't it be fun?" "Jolly!" cried Amy. "Scrumptious!" was Betty's contribution. "Mollie, you're a dear!" declared Grace, with a hug. "When can we go?" "Soon now. I think----" A maid knocked at the door. "Yes; what is it?" asked Mollie. "If you please, Miss Billette, there's a gentleman to see you." "A gentleman?" "Yes, rather elderly, and he keeps making up verses, Miss. I'm not sure about him. Will you see him?" "Verses? Oh, it must be that dear old Mr. Lagg--the storekeeper!" exclaimed Mollie. "Of course I'll see him. But, girls, what do you imagine he wants?" CHAPTER VII MR. LAGG'S OFFER With a broad smile on her face, the maid came back, escorting Mr. Lagg, who, at the sight of the girls, bowed low, and declaimed: "I'm glad to see you, I hope we'll agree, That you are as happy Now to see me!" "Good!" cried Betty, clapping her hands until the palms were rosy. "We are indeed glad to see you." "Of course," added Mollie. "How could you leave your store long enough to run down here, Mr. Lagg?" "Well, it _is_ running a risk," he answered, as he took a chair Amy set out for him. "But I have important business down here, so I though I'd call. I worked out that little verse on the way down," he confided to the girls. "You are extending your range," remarked Grace, who was languidly eating chocolates. "That is, your poetry is getting more elaborate." "It is indeed!" exclaimed Mr. Lagg, brightening up on hearing this praise. "I am glad you noticed that. Yes, I am gradually getting it better, and on a higher plane. That is what worried me about leaving my store alone." "Did you leave it all alone?" asked Betty, for the girls knew he did quite a trade with the summer colonists of Rainbow Lake. "Practically so," was the answer. "I have a boy I hire occasionally, but he hasn't the least talent in the line of poetry, and I know my customers will miss that. However, they will have to put up with it for a few hours. I am going back as soon as I can. "Perhaps," he added, cautiously, "I should never have worked up my versifying talent; but, somehow, I just couldn't seem to help it. I started in a modest way, just as I did in my store, and it seemed to grow of itself. Now my customers have come to look for it, and I know if Johnnie--that's the boy I spoke of as being left in charge--I know he'll rhyme the wrong words--that is, if he attempts anything at all, which he is likely to do. And nothing displeases a customer more than to listen to wrong rhymes; don't you think so?" and he appealed to the chums. "Of course," assented Mollie, with a look at the others to ask their opinion as to what Mr. Lagg had in view, and what his object could be in calling. The storekeeper appeared to be nervous, and ill at ease, and it was evident that he had attired himself with care for the trip. He was obviously uncomfortable in his "Sunday-go-to-meetin'" suit, and a stiff shirt and a stiffer collar did not add to his ease. But he stood it manfully. Sitting on the edge of the chair he looked from one to the other, twirling his hat. "How--how is trade?" asked Mollie, feeling that she ought to say something, but scarcely knowing what. She seemed to recall that this was a way to engage a business man in conversation. "Not what it should be," replied Mr. Lagg, with a smile. He seemed to feel that he was making progress now. At least he was in his own element. "Not what it should be. I miss you girls. When you used to run in now and then for something in my line I did better. You were good customers, and I always shaded the prices all I could, besides reciting all my newest poetry as soon as I made it up. It isn't everyone I do that for," he added. "Why, to some customers I never speak more than a line or two in a whole year. But you girls--well, you're different. I miss seeing the _Gem_ tied at my dock. There isn't a chance that you'll go cruising again; is there?" he asked, eagerly. "Come, sail upon the bright blue lake, You, of my goods a choice may make. My prices you will find quite right, I'm open until eight at night." "You always did treat us right, Mr. Lagg," laughed Betty, "but I don't believe we'll do any more cruising--at least, not right away. We're going in for land cruising now." "Land cruising?" "Yes, Mollie has an auto, and we were just planning a tour when you came in." "So, you see, unless you could arrange to have a sort of traveling store, we couldn't patronize you very often," went on Mollie, wondering why Mr. Lagg did not come to the point. He had evidently called with some special object in view, and leaving his establishment during the height of the season would seem to indicate that the object was not a trivial one. "But we'll stop in whenever we're near you," Mollie concluded. "Thank you, Miss Billette. So you are going on an auto cruise; eh?" "A tour, yes." "Then that may fit in with what I have called about," said Mr. Lagg, quickly. "Yes, it may be just the very best idea yet. Excuse me a moment while I think," he said, and he closed his eyes. His head nodded two or three times in a satisfied sort of way, and occasionally he murmured to himself. The girls looked at one another, unable to fathom the meaning of this conduct. Then Mr. Lagg whistled and suddenly exclaimed: "I have it! You can solve this mystery, too!" "Another mystery?" queried Grace, rather languidly, as she took a more comfortable position on the divan. "We seem to be having a monopoly of them." "What is it, Mr. Lagg?" asked Mollie. "Were you much afraid of that ghost on Elm Island?" he replied, by asking another question. "Not at all!" declared Betty, quickly. "Especially as it was only--what it was," said Grace, with a laugh. "Then I've got another one for you to solve," went on the poetical grocer. "It's a haunted house!" He beamed on the girls as though he had proposed the most delightful sort of an affair. "A--a haunted house!" faltered Amy. "That's it--a regular haunted house--groans, slamming doors--queer lights, and all that sort of thing." "Where--where is it?" asked Betty. "In Shadow Valley." Instinctively the four girls started. "Why, we--we were near there the other day," said Mollie. "We didn't see any house that appeared to be haunted, though." "No, and that's just it," went on Mr. Lagg. "You see it's only recently been haunted, and that makes it all the worse." "Tell us about it," suggested Betty. "Girls, this is getting interesting. We must take this in on our tour." "Don't!" pleaded Amy, the timid one, shivering in spite of herself. "You know that old mansion, at the far end of the valley; don't you?" asked Mr. Lagg. "At least, you must have heard about it." "You mean Kenyon's Folly?" responded Mollie, who began to have a glimmering of what was meant. "Yes," answered the storekeeper. "Mr. Kenyon, who was once a millionaire, built that mansion after ideas of his own. Everyone said Shadow Valley--at least that part of it--was too gloomy and out of the way to be a good place for a mansion like that, and the folks around here said it was foolish. They called it Kenyon's Folly from the start, though he named it Kenyon's Woodland Lodge, or some such fancy name as that." "And did it turn out as the people said?" asked Amy. "Yes," answered Mr. Lagg. "From the very first his wife took a dislike to the place. She said it was too gloomy, and in spite of a lot of entertainments and parties--elaborate affairs they were, too--life there was dreary. They had lots of company, but Shadow Valley seemed to cast a gloom over the big mansion. "Then Mr. Kenyon died, and some said it was partly due to grief over the fact that his wife refused to live in the place. At any rate, he closed it up, and went abroad, I believe, not living long after he started to tour Europe. "Then there was trouble over his will, his whole estate was thrown into court, and the heirs fought and squabbled over the mansion, as well as over the rest of his possessions. No one could get title to it, and the place fell into neglect." "Yes, it certainly does look lonesome and forlorn around there," said Betty. "I was close to it about a year ago, but I never heard that it was haunted." "It wasn't until recently," said Mr. Lagg, "and that brings me to this part of the story, and that's why I called on you. I might say that I now own that haunted mansion." "You own it!" cried Grace. All the girls were interested now, whatever they had been before. "Yes. After years of litigation the courts, last spring, ordered the mansion sold. I saw a chance to get a bargain, and as I had some money put away I bought in the property. I got it cheap, but I purchased it through an agent so that no one, except a very few, know that I own it." "What are you going to do--live in it?" asked Mollie. "Ugh! Fancy living in a haunted house!" exclaimed Amy, looking over her shoulder as though she felt a ghostly hand laid on it. "No, I don't intend to live there," said Mr. Lagg. "I didn't buy it for that. But I thought it would be a good investment, and I had an idea of forming a company, and turning it into a hotel. By making some changes the surroundings could be made less gloomy, and the place would pay. "But before I could do that I got an offer from some doctors, who wanted to establish a sort of sanitarium for the treatment of nervous diseases. They saw the mansion, and decided it would be just the thing, being so quiet, and all that." "I should think it would be," murmured Grace. "But where does the 'haunt' come in?" Betty wanted to know. "I'm coming to that," spoke Mr. Lagg, being now too interested to quote a couplet. "Matters were going on well, and I expected to close the deal, and make a pretty penny, when the doctors said they couldn't take the property, as it was haunted, and of course a haunted house, with queer noises in the night, would never do as a home for nervous invalids. I could see that myself." "But how did they know it was haunted?" asked Mollie. "It seems that some of them were inspecting the place late one afternoon, a day or so ago," said the storekeeper, "when a shower came up, and they had to stay inside until it was over, which was after dark. It was then they heard the queer groans, and saw strange lights, and felt cold draughts of wind." "Bur-r-r-r-r!" shivered Amy. "This is getting on my nerves." "I guess it got on the nerves of the doctors," said Mr. Lagg, ruefully, "for they called off the deal, and said they could not take the house unless I would get rid of the haunt. Of course I laughed, and made an investigation." "And you didn't find anything?" put in Betty, quickly. "Excuse me, Miss, but I did," replied Mr. Lagg, quietly. "You did! What?" "Just what the doctors said--queer groanings--strange lights--like brimstone, and the same sort of smell--sulphur. I--I didn't stay long, I don't mind admitting that." For a moment the girls were silent, and then Mollie spoke. "Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Lagg," she asked, "that those doctors might be playing a trick on you to get you to part with the property cheap? A haunted house isn't the best sort of real estate, you know; but haunts and ghosts can easily be imitated, and those doctors might be up to some such trick as that." "I did think of that," went on the storekeeper, "and that is why I came to you." "You came to us!" chorused the girls. "Yes. You see, you solved the mystery of the ghost of Elm Island, and I don't see why you can't do the same thing for Kenyon's Folly." "But that ghost, on the island--was a natural one," said Grace. "And the boys helped us to discover what it was." "Very well," said Mr. Lagg, calmly. "I've no objection to the boys helping you in this case. In fact, it might be better. But what I want to know is, could you--and would you--dare try to solve the ghostly mystery?" The girls looked at one another. Amy was shaking her head in the negative. Betty and Mollie seemed interested, for they were born leaders, Betty especially. Grace reached for another chocolate, always a source of inspiration for her. "Of course I'm not asking you to give up your time and go to a lot of trouble for nothing," resumed Mr. Lagg, quickly. "I am willing to pay you well. So I make you this offer. If you can discover what makes those ghostly sounds and manifestations, and can show me a way to get rid of them, if they are natural, which I am sure they are, why, I'll pay you a good sum. I can afford to, for I can then sell the mansion to the sanitarium doctors. Will you try it?" "But if those doctors are interested in depreciating the value of the property, by making it appear haunted, they would have a good object in preventing us from finding out what causes the queer noises and lights," said Mollie. "Exactly," agreed Mr. Lagg, "but you girls were smart enough to solve that five hundred dollar mystery, and the mystery on Elm Island, so I have hopes that you can help me out in this. That is why I called. Will you help me?" "Shall we, girls?" asked Mollie. CHAPTER VII IN THE MUD Mr. Lagg looked hopefully from one to the other of the Outdoor Girls. Clearly he was very much in earnest over his strange offer, and he saw nothing out of the ordinary in it. But it must be admitted that it is not every day four girls are asked to take a motor tour and solve the mystery of a ghost-haunted house. Betty and her chums evidently realized that. Betty finally spoke. "Well," she said, slowly, "we would like to do you a favor, Mr. Lagg, and we wouldn't want you to pay us----" "I won't have you undertake it on any other basis," he interrupted. "If you solve that mystery for me it will be a big favor, and worth paying for. I might make up a verse about that part of it, but I won't take your time. But please consider it." "If we did it at all," spoke Mollie, "we would do it as a favor to you, for you have been very kind to us. But I don't like to promise to undertake it. I'm sure mamma would object." "I wouldn't want to stay all night in a haunted house," declared Amy, with a shudder, whereat Grace cried: "Don't do that! You'll have us all nervous before we know it." "You might not have to stay there all night," said Mr. Lagg, "though of course I know that is customary in solving mysteries of this kind. You might be able to tell what it was without staying there long. I wouldn't want you to run any risks, you know." "Why don't you undertake it yourself?" asked Betty. "I can't spare the time. I am needed at my store. That boy is sure to wrap up the wrong kind of tea or sugar, and my customers are very particular. And as for the poetry end of the business, he is no good at that at all. No, I can't spare the time." "But if you think those doctors have an object in making the mansion appear haunted," spoke Grace, "why do you not go to the authorities and complain? Surely they would do something for you." "I thought of that," said Mr. Lagg, simply, "but you know what the police are about ghosts. They would only laugh at me, and do nothing. Besides, if these doctors are doing it, they are sharp enough to cover their tracks well. I would have no chance. But they would never suspect you girls, and they might betray themselves. Come now, will you look into this for me?" He was very much in earnest, and Mollie, who had at first been inclined to laugh at the ghost theory, began to think that at least Mr. Lagg had some basis for his alarm. If after all his work in getting the property, that no one had cared for so long, it was to become useless on his hands, he was to be pitied, for he had labored hard to accumulate his savings. Still the girls did not want to be rash, to run into danger, or undertake something that would get them unpleasantly talked about, for in no place other than in a country town is there so much gossip. "You needn't answer me right away," went on the storekeeper. "Take a little time and think it over. Speak to your folks about it, and tell the boys, if you like. But if these ghosts, whatever they are, don't get out of that place soon, I'll lose all the money I put in it." "Did those doctors hint at taking it at a lower figure than you offered it for?" asked Betty. "No, they haven't yet. If that is their game they will wait a little longer, I think," spoke Mr. Lagg. "But don't be in a hurry to decide now. Think it over. I'll go now, for I must get back to my store. "I'm glad to have seen you, One and all. When up my way, Please make a call." He bowed to them all in turn, and took his leave, the girls excitedly talking about the object of his visit, as he went out. "Did you ever hear of such a thing?" asked Grace. "The haunted mansion of Shadow Valley," remarked Mollie. "It reads like a book title." "Maybe we could make a story of it," suggested Amy, whose taste ran somewhat to literature, and who had won several prizes in school essay work. "We'd better solve the mystery first," said practical Betty, "then we'll know what sort of a book to make. I wonder if we ought to take this up?" and she gazed half-doubtfully, half-suggestingly, at her chums. "Not right away, at any rate!" exclaimed Mollie. "Let's talk about our motor tour. I'm just dying to get off on that. Afterward we can consider Mr. Lagg's offer. Poor man, he seemed really worried! I'd like to help him if we could." "So would I!" declared Betty. The girls alternated their talk between the proposed tour and the haunted mansion. The latter was left in abeyance, but they tentatively decided to take a long auto trip, as soon as they could arrange for a chaperone to go with them on such occasions as they would stay over night at hotels, while other nights were to be spent at the homes of relatives or friends. In a way it would be a duplication of their camping and tramping trip, except that they would cover a wider range of country, and be more comfortable. "And I only hope we have as much fun!" exclaimed Mollie. "Now, girls, we've talked enough. Let's go for a run. I telephoned to have my car brought here, and----" "Here it is--quite marvelous!" interrupted Betty, as the large and handsome auto drew up outside, in charge of a man from the garage. Auto veils, bonnets, goggles and gowns were soon donned, Mollie's chums having come partly prepared for a trip, and soon, with Mollie at the wheel, they were riding down the pleasant main street of Deepdale. "Hey there! Take us along!" came a voice as they turned off the main thoroughfare into a smaller road that led to the farming country beyond. "It's Will and Frank," said Grace, as she observed the two boys. "And there comes Allen," added Amy. "Now, Betty, maybe you'll talk more," for the Little Captain had been rather silent. "Shall we take them?" asked Mollie, as she noted Betty's blushing cheeks. "There is plenty of room." Her car would seat seven with comfort. "Take us along!" pleaded Will. "We'll buy the chocolates, girls." "Oh, let him come," petitioned Grace, for her candy stock had again run low. "That's all she thinks of!" declared Betty. "But I have no objections." "Especially when Allen is around," taunted Mollie, as she slowed up her car near the sidewalk. "Come on, fellows!" exulted Will. "We're going to have a ride in the joy wagon." "The chocolates," Grace reminded him, coolly, as he started to get in between her and Amy. "We'll buy them when we get out a ways," he promised. "Get them at Lee's," she stipulated. "His are best." "Did you ever see such a sister!" cried Will. "She has no heart! Very well, run us around to Lee's, Mollie. I'll get the candy if it--breaks me," and he began searching through his pockets, picking up bits of change on the way. The other boys took their seats, and soon the machine was moving again, a stop being made for the chocolates. Grace insisted on going into the store with her brother. "If I didn't he'd palm off the twenty-cent kind on us, and tell us they were Lee's best," she said to her chums. "You eat so many of them that you can't tell the difference--your taste is jaded," taunted Will. "Can't I, though?" replied Grace. "Well, I'm not going to give you the chance to try me. We'll have the best!" Again they were under way, Grace passing around the box of confectionery. "Shall we tell the boys about Mr. Lagg?" asked Betty of Mollie, beside whom she rode on the front seat, the boys and other girls being in the tonneau. "Just as you like." "Then I think I will." The story was soon told. "Was he in earnest?" demanded Will. "He seemed so." "Then let's have a try at laying the ghost!" proposed Frank. "I wonder what the union rates are for ridding haunted houses of the haunt? We must have union wages." "Of course," agreed Will. "Girls, will you transfer any rights you may have as ghost-layers to us, if we pay you a commission?" "We'll think about it," murmured Betty. "I believe it's all foolishness!" declared Grace. "Maybe Mr. Lagg was only making fun of us." "No, there _is_ something in it," said Allen Washburn, quietly. "How do you know?" demanded Will, quickly. "Because I acted as Mr. Lagg's representative in some legal matters," replied the young law student, who was allowed to do some practice. "I know that he owns the old mansion, and I heard, indirectly, that he was having trouble disposing of it to the sanitarium doctors. Of course I can't say as to the ghost, but there is some hitch over carrying out the transaction. If you girls could solve the mystery, providing there is one, I know you would be doing Mr. Lagg a service." "Then let's do it!" cried impulsive Mollie. "And we'll help," added Will. Half-jokingly they talked about it as they motored over the pleasant road. There had been a heavy shower the night before and the main highways were in excellent condition, though a trifle muddy in spots. Of course some of the less-used country roads would be well-nigh impassable. It was while crossing one of these roads, on a hard macadam highway, that the girls and boys saw, stuck in the mud of the poorer path, a peddler's wagon. The bony horse was doing its best to move the vehicle, which had sunk down in a hole, one wheel being imbedded in the mud to the hub. "Why, it's that hair-tonic man!" exclaimed Mollie, as she slowed down to avoid a rut in the road. "No, his wagon is all painted with gaudy signs," said Betty. "That's a boy driving that wagon. Why--why!" she exclaimed, as she caught sight of the lad, "it's the same boy who took home the little lost girl for us--the same one who told us about the man with the five hundred dollar bill. It's Jimmie Martin!" CHAPTER IX IN SHADOW VALLEY The boy, who was endeavoring--and by gentle urging, be it said to his credit--to get the horse to pull the wagon out of the mud-hole, looked up on hearing his name spoken by Betty. At first he did not recognize the girls, and his face plainly showed this. "Don't you know us?" asked Mollie, as she brought her car to a stop. The boy shook his head. Then, as he looked from face to face, a light came over his own. "Oh, yes!" he cried. "You found the little lost child when you were on your walking tour, and turned her over to me." "Exactly," agreed Betty. "But you seem to be in trouble, Jimmie," for the bony horse had given over the attempt to move the mired wagon and was patiently resting between the shafts, awaiting developments. "I am in trouble," Jimmie admitted, frankly. "Have you given up your business, and are you working for some one else?" Grace wanted to know. "Why have you the wagon? The last time you carried your own pack." "I'm still my own boss," he replied, with a smile. "I am trying for a larger trade, that's all. I got the chance to buy this outfit cheap, and I took it. I guess I got it too cheap," he added, ruefully, "for this horse isn't strong enough to pull me out of this mud-hole. I shouldn't have come this way." He looked down at the soft, miry road. The one wheel seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into the clay, and the others showed a propensity to follow its example. "Where did you come from?" asked Will, whose sister had explained to him and the other boys under what circumstances they first met the young peddler. "Up Shadow Valley way," was the answer, and instinctively the auto party of boys and girls started, and looked at one another. "Er--was trade good up that way?" asked Frank. "Oh, not very. You see, there are not enough folks living there. So I thought I'd take a short cut over to Limeburg. I generally do pretty well there. But I guess I'd have done better to have gone the long way. I'm stuck for fair. Go 'long there, Stamp!" he called to the horse. "See if you can move the boat." "Stamp? Is that his name?" asked Betty. "I just christened him that, Miss," replied Jimmie, with a smile. "Why?" asked Grace, who was always the last one to see a joke. "Because, Miss, he's--stuck!" was the answer, and the others, who had anticipated this, laughed at poor Grace. "I don't care!" she said. "I was thinking of something else then." "Well, I guess I'll have to stay here until this mud dries up," went on Jimmie, "or I might feed up Stamp until he is strong enough to pull me out. Only that would take too long, I'm afraid. He's been kept on a diet of carpet tacks, lately, to judge by the many fine points about him," he added, whimsically. Will alighted from the auto, and, going as far as the edge of the muddy road, looked critically at the stalled wagon. Then he asked: "Have you a long rope?" "Not a very long one," said the boy peddler, "but I have one that may do. I'll get it," and he delved in the rear of his vehicle. "What's the game?" asked Frank. "I was going to see if we couldn't pull him out of the hole," replied Will. "If the rope is long enough to reach from his wagon to the auto, and the rope holds, and his wagon doesn't pull apart with the strain, we can do it." "Oh, I hope we can!" cried Mollie. "We must try." Jimmie produced the rope, and, tossing one end of it to Will, proved that it was long enough. It looked sufficiently strong, too. "Now, Mollie, if you'll turn around, and back down as near as you can, we'll see what we can do," proposed Will. While the car was being manipulated to the proper position, Will tied some knots in the rope. "Fasten this end to the middle of the whiffle-tree," he called to Jimmie, tossing the loop to him. "In that way you won't have to unhitch the horse, nor get out in the mud yourself." "Oh, I won't mind that--if I can get out of this hole." "Might as well take it as easy as you can," went on Will. "That's the ticket. Be sure your knots are firm." "Yes, don't tie granny ones the way I did the night the _Gem_ got adrift," murmured Grace. The rope was soon fast to the wagon and backed-up auto. "Go ahead slowly," cautioned Will. "We don't know what will give way first, the horse or the wagon. Take it easy, Mollie." Slowly the auto started. There came a strain on the rope. There was a creaking to the old vehicle, and then it slowly began to emerge from the mud. The old horse, who had almost gone to sleep, roused up at this strange activity, and was literally forced to stir out of his tracks. In a few seconds the wagon was on the firm road, the auto having pulled it in a diagonal direction from the mud-hole. "Thanks, ever so much!" exclaimed Jimmie. "I'm sure I can't thank you enough. If ever you get stuck----" "You'll pull us out!" finished Mollie. "Not until Stamp is better able to do it," the boy answered with a laugh. "But I'll do all I can." "And so you didn't like Shadow Valley?" asked Will, as the boy made ready to proceed on his way. "No, it's too gloomy for me. Hardly anyone lives there." "Did you see that big mansion up there?" asked Grace. "The one that rich man built, you mean? Yes, I passed near it a while ago. It's only about three miles from here. The grounds are pretty well in ruins now, but the house is good." "See anything strange about it?" asked Will. "Strange? What do you mean?" "Oh, well, I mean--er--any tramps in it--or anything like that?" "No, not a thing," and Jimmie looked curiously at his questioner. "Well, I must be going. No more muddy roads for me!" The auto party took their places again, Betty succeeding Mollie at the wheel, and Will being promised a chance later. Then they started off. "Where are you going?" asked Grace, as Betty turned up a road on which they seldom journeyed. "This doesn't take us anywhere in particular." "It goes to Shadow Valley," answered Betty. "Are--are you going there?" gasped Amy. "Just to get a glimpse of it," was the reply. "Surely you're not afraid--in broad daylight." "And with us along?" demanded Will, heroically. "Shame!" "Oh, well----" began Amy, but she did not finish. "This side road leads right into the valley," said Mollie, a little later. "Then we'll take it," decided Betty, and she swung the car about. A little later they were looking down from a height into the strange valley. One end--that nearest them--was laid out in a number of small farms, on which were substantial houses. But the other end, where "Kenyon's Folly" had been built, was in the narrower part, and was almost deserted as regards residences. This section of the valley was narrower, the hills--almost mountains--rose high on either side, hemming it in. This produced deep shadows early and late in the day, and gave the valley its name. "There's the ghost house!" said Will, in a low voice, pointing toward a mansion, perched on one of the side hills, on a natural ledge. "I can see the ghost now!" "Oh!" screamed Amy. At that moment from the dense underbrush near the auto there came a loud cry, and some one fairly tumbled down a little declivity into the road--the figure of an old man with long, white hair. CHAPTER X OFF ON THE TOUR Grace and Amy were in each other's arms. Betty admitted afterward that she wished she had some one to lean on, but she gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles went white with the strain. Mollie clutched the sides of the seat in a grip of something like despair. The boys looked wonderingly at one another, and then at the strange figure that had tumbled out of the bushes. "Oh, it's the hair-tonic peddler!" exclaimed Mollie a moment later, as she got a glimpse of the man. He had risen and was brushing the dust off his rusty black suit. "The who?" asked Will. "A man who sells hair-tonic," explained Betty in a low voice, for the stranger was looking at them now. "At your service, ladies and gentlemen!" exclaimed the proprietor of Bennington's Hair-Tonic. "I see you remember me," and he smirked at the girls--that hard, and rather cruel, look never leaving his face, even when he smiled. "Oh, yes, we remember you," replied Betty, coolly. She now had control of her nerves. "Don't talk to him too much," advised Allen, in a low voice. "You never can tell who these fellows are, nor what their game is." "Ob, he's harmless," replied Betty, in a return whisper. "We met him on the road one day, and supplied a bolt that he had lost from his wagon." "All the same," insisted Will, "he might----" He was interrupted by Mollie, who asked: "Where is your wagon?" "I left it in a secure place," replied the hair tonic man. "What were you doing up there?" asked Allen, nodding in the direction whence the man had taken his tumble. "That was an accident," replied Mr. Bennington, who continued to dust his clothes, which seemed to have accumulated considerable of the dirt of the road. "I was up on the hillside gathering the herbs I use in my tonic, when my foot slipped. I heard the auto coming, and I was afraid I might roll under it. That is why I yelled." "Oh," said Mollie, faintly. "Well, you got on our nerves, Mr. Bennington." "I am sorry I have nothing for nerves," and the fellow bowed, rather mockingly, it seemed. "I am a specialist in hair. If you would like any of my tonic--something to make your locks like mine," and he shook his own with an air of pride, "why," he resumed, "I am at your service!" Again he bowed. "I don't think we care for any," answered Allen, who seemed to have, in common with the other boys, taken a dislike to the peddler. "Suppose we go on, Betty." "Very well," replied the Little Captain at the wheel, as she advanced the gasoline lever. The motor had not ceased running. "Then I can't sell you any of my Restorer?" called Mr. Bennington, as Betty slowly let in the clutch. "No," answered Allen, and he glanced back in time to note the fellow making an elaborate bow, his white locks falling about his head in a "shower." "I don't like him," Frank announced, when they were out of the man's hearing. "Nor I," added Will. "Why not? He seems harmless enough," spoke Amy. "Poor man! he probably has a hard time making a living." "Don't you believe it!" declared Will. "To my way of thinking, he's a faker. He looked plump and well-fed enough. I warrant you he has no lack of good food. Those fellows put about ten cents worth of alcohol in a bottle, a little perfume and some water, and sell it for a dollar as hair-tonic." "Well, really some of that stuff must be awful!" exclaimed Grace. "I'm glad I never use it." "You never have to--nature was good to you," murmured Frank in her ear, whereat Grace blushed. Mollie glanced back toward Shadow Valley. The gloom over it was increasing, and at the far end could just be discerned the deserted mansion--the remnant of a rich man's folly. About that, too, the shadows seemed to gather, dark and foreboding. "Ugh! That place gives me the creeps!" Mollie muttered. And against the dusky background of the valley and the old mansion she beheld the figure of the rather mysterious peddler. His white locks stood out in strange contrast to the surrounding darkness, and his black clothes. "It certainly looks as though it might be haunted," agreed Betty. "Poor Mr. Lagg! I'm afraid he will never get the money he expects out of that place. It would never do for a sanitarium for nervous wrecks." "Oh, I don't know," answered Will. "I've been close to it several times, and, I think, by cutting down some of the trees that keep out the sunlight, a good view could be had. Then the place would not be half so depressing. But of course if it gets a reputation of being haunted that will settle it as far as people with weak nerves are concerned. Are you girls going to take up Lagg's offer?" "We haven't thought of it lately," replied Grace. "Too busy arranging for our grand tour," added Mollie. "Well, we fellows may decide to take it up, and get the reward--it would come in handy for vacation money," said Will. The car was now descending a slope, and soon Shadow Valley was out of sight, as was the strange old mansion. The girls breathed easier, and perhaps the boys did also, for, though nothing had actually occurred, the reputation of the place, and the sudden and startling appearance of the old man, had given them all a thrill. "This is the second time some one has tumbled out almost under our auto," said Mollie, as they turned on a road toward Deepdale. "The third time may not be so lucky for them--or for us." "That's so," agreed Amy. "The first was that girl who disappeared so mysteriously. I wonder what became of her?" "So do I," spoke Grace. "And if she ever went back to the mysterious 'him' of whom she talked?" added Betty. "Perhaps it was her--sweetheart--and they had a quarrel," suggested Will. "Is it silly to--have a sweetheart?" asked Allen, with a glance at Betty, whose face was then turned toward him. He saw the flush on her cheeks deepen. "Of course!" declared Mollie. "No, but it's silly to quarrel with them," said Will. "Isn't it, girls? Especially when they bring you--chocolates." "It's all some of them are good for!" declared Grace, with a toss of her head. "Children--children!" said Amy, pleadingly. "Don't be naughty." "All right--little mother!" promised Will. "But, seriously, I often think of that girl," went on Mollie. "She seemed very nice, and in such trouble." "Funny about being up a tree, though," said Will, drily. "Maybe she was one of the original tree-dwellers, and reverted to her ancient days." "You are hopeless," murmured Grace. "Don't encourage him, girls." "If they don't I'll pine away and go into a gradual decline," said Will, languishingly, trying, unsuccessfully, to put his head on Amy's shoulder. "Stop it!" she commanded. "I have it!" cried Frank. "That girl wasn't--well, not to put too fine a point upon it--she wasn't just right in her head. That's why she climbed a tree." "Poor girl!" spoke Amy. "I hope she found some friends, at any rate," and Amy thought of the mystery surrounding her own life, and how fortunate she had been to find such a good home with Mr. and Mrs. Stonington. Talking of the recent happening, laughing and joking, the young people were soon in Deepdale, and a little later had separated to their several homes. As Mollie had said, the details of the tour were now practically settled. Mollie's cousin, Mrs. Jane Mackson, had arranged to accompany the girls as chaperone, and on such times as she could not be with them they were to stop over night at the homes of friends or relatives. They did not arrange for any definite rules about their trips. It was to be a pleasure jaunt, and at times they would cover more ground than others. Nor were any fixed dates set as to when they would be at certain places. As Mollie aptly expressed it: "It's so much nicer not to know exactly what you are going to do, and then if anything comes up to make you change your plans you're not disappointed. We're going to be as care-free as we can." And so the tour was laid out. The girls would take with them suit-cases with sufficient change of raiment to do them until other things could be forwarded from their homes to various designated points. Occasionally they would take a run back to Deepdale to renew necessaries. The farthest point they would reach would be to visit an aunt of Mollie's in Midvale, about two hundred miles from Deepdale. But this would come at the end of the tour. "Well, I think we are all ready to start!" exclaimed Mollie one morning, when the three girls, and her cousin, had assembled at her house. "Have you everything you need?" "Not nearly--but all I can carry," announced Betty. "No, no, Dodo! Mustn't climb in the car!" admonished Mollie, for the little girl was endeavoring to do so. "Dot any tandy?" demanded Paul, possibly as the price of not following his sister's example. "Ess--us ikes tandy!" cried Dodo, climbing down. "Oh, Grace, will you kindly oblige again!" begged Mollie, as she took her place at the wheel. "Certainly," said Grace, sweetly. The girls were in the car. "All aboard--we're off!" cried Mollie, and she pressed the self-starter button. CHAPTER XI A TRACE OF THE GIRL "When are you coming back for us?" "Why don't you take us with you? You may need us to help put on a tire." "They'll send for us in a day or so!" Thus called Will, Frank and Allen, who had assembled at Mollie's house to watch their girl friends start on the auto tour. "If we need you we'll send for you," promised Mollie, as she let slip the clutch pedal. "But I don't believe we shall." "What--need us--or send for us?" asked Allen, with a laugh. "That is an ambiguous statement." "I'm not on the witness stand!" retorted Mollie to the young law student. "Now do be careful; won't you, girls?" pleaded Cousin Jane, a trifle nervously, as the car gathered speed. "Oh, we're always careful," said Mollie. "Don't fuss, Cousin Jane, or you won't have a good time." Mollie was too kind to add that neither would her friends have much pleasure, and perhaps Mrs. Mackson realized this, for, though she would clutch nervously at the side of the seat whenever the car jolted or lurched, she said nothing more in the way of caution. "Brin us some tandy!" called Dodo after the retreating auto. "Brin 'ots of it!" added Paul. "Your true disciples, Grace," remarked Amy. "You can't make me angry," said Grace in cool tones, as she munched a chocolate. "What's this?" asked Amy, as she felt some long, round, hard object on the floor of the tonneau, amid many others of various sizes and shapes. "It feels like a--bomb." "It's my bottle," said Grace, with an assumption of dignity. "Leave it alone, please." "Your bottle?" asked Betty, curiously, turning around. "Yes. I filled it with cold chocolate--it's a vacuum bottle, you know--and will keep its contents cold a long time. I thought we might be thirsty." "As if we wouldn't pass a drug store, or some place where we could get a drink," objected Mollie. "Oh, well, you'll want some sooner or later," predicted Grace. "Those chicken sandwiches are very salty, and the olives----" "They always make me want a drink," said Amy. "I'm real glad you brought it, Grace. You and I love each other; don't we?" "Cupboard love!" scoffed Mollie. "Never mind, Grace, we'll forgive you." The boys waved their final farewells, the twins joining in, and some of the relatives of the girls, who had gathered to see them off, shook handkerchiefs or hands. "Under way at last!" exclaimed Betty, as the car gathered speed. "What did you say our stopping place would be for to-night, Mollie?" "Freedenburg. There's a nice home-like hotel there, and we can get adjoining rooms. I wrote on and engaged them last week." "That will be nice. Oh, isn't it glorious!" They were on the main street of Deepdale now, having to pass through the town to get to the road that led to Freedenburg, which was about seventy-five miles away. They planned to make the town by night. The main street had been sprinkled to lay the dust, and there were little puddles of water here and there. It was impossible to avoid all of them, and Mollie went into a big one at a crossing. The big-tired wheel threw some muddy spray and it went far enough to land on the highly-polished shoes of a youth who had paused to let the car pass. "I beg your pardon!" called out Mollie, for she was going very slowly. "Well, of all the careless----" began the youth in angry tones. "Oh, it's Percy Falconer!" gasped Grace. "See Betty." "I don't want to see!" she answered sharply. Percy heard his name, and his manner changed as he recognized the girls. "I beg your pardon!" he cried, as though the accident had been his fault. "It doesn't matter in the least. I was going to get another shine, anyhow. I wish----" But his further words were lost as the car moved on. "That was nice of him," said Mollie. "I did spoil his polish, but when he saw Betty he was as nice as pie, though he looked as if he'd like to eat me up a moment before. Betty, you are to be congratulated." "Don't speak to me of him. I--I----" "Count ten, slowly," spoke Amy in such mirth-provoking tones that they all laughed. Percy gazed blankly after the retreating car, and then made his way to a boot-blacking stand. The girls were soon outside the town, bowling along a pleasant country road. The day was perfect, and, as Grace said, they could not have had a better one for their start had it been "made to order." They had plenty of lunch with them, and planned to stop in some convenient spot at noon and eat. "Oh, I forgot those cheese-crackers!" suddenly cried Betty, when they had gone several miles. "I had them on the hall table, and I'm sure I forgot to put them in." "Look and see," suggested Mollie. "No, they're not here," went on Betty, regretfully, after a search. "We're all so fond of them." "Mr. Lagg keeps them," suggested Grace. "It wouldn't be much out of our way to go to his store." "We will!" decided Mollie, and she made a turn at the next crossing. Mr. Lagg was glad to see them, as he always was. He bowed and smiled as he came out to the car. "Ladies, you have come, I see, To say you'll lay that ghost for me. "At least I hope so," went on the poetical grocer, with a laugh. "Say you'll undertake that job," he pleaded. "I've tried to get those doctors to take the place, ghost and all, but they won't, and I'll have it on my hands if I don't look out." "We can't promise," spoke Mollie. "Maybe the boys--Grace's brother and his chums--will undertake it, Mr. Lagg. If they don't, when we come back from our tour, we'll consider it once more." "Well, I'll hold you to that!" he declared. "This is getting serious with me." "Have the doctors made any other move?" asked Betty. "No, not yet. They asked me if I could guarantee that there would be no queer disturbances, and of course I couldn't so they said they'd have to wait. But they're dickering for another place, and may take it. I wish there was no such things as ghosts." "There aren't!" declared Mollie, decidedly. "Then how do you account for what happened in the old mansion?" asked Mr. Lagg. "Imagination," said Betty. The storekeeper shook his head. "A fellow like Pete Skillinger, or some of the fishermen around here, might imagine," he admitted, "but not those scientific doctors. They certainly saw, and heard, something they couldn't explain. They sure did!" "Did you make any inquiries to be sure they were not doing this themselves?" asked Mollie. "I've heard of such cases." "No, these doctors are all well-known men, and have good reputations," said Mr. Lagg, with another puzzled shake of his head. "They wouldn't do such a thing. I don't doubt but what this haunting business can be explained; but how? That's the question. How? I can't solve it--I haven't time--daren't leave my store. Now you girls are smart and brave. The ghost of Elm Island didn't bother you, so why should this one?" "Oh, well, we'll think about it," promised Mollie. "Now what we most need are cheese crackers--and not ghostly ones, either, Mr. Lagg." "You shall have the best in stock." Then, his mind being turned in another channel he recited this: "Cheese crackers I have, large and small Enough for one--enough for all. I've sardines and pickles too, My aim is always to please you." "And you generally hit what you aim at," laughed Grace. "I think I'll have a few more chocolates," she added, as she inspected her box. "These won't last all day, and I know yours are good, Mr. Lagg." "I'll bring them out," he said, as he hurried into the store. The girls bought a few other things they found they had overlooked in starting off, and once more they got under way. "Don't forget the ghost!" pleaded Mr. Lagg, as he waved farewell. "Get rid of it for me." "Poor old man--he really means it," said Amy. "I wonder what can be in that house?" "Bats and rats, most likely," said "Cousin Jane," as they all called her. "Bats and rats!" "Worse than spooks--when they get in your hair," spoke Mollie. "Give me a nice clean ghost, that waltzes around in a two-step. Oh, girls, I hope we can go to a dance of two on our tour." "Some are planned for us," said Mollie. They kept on, enjoying the ride to the utmost. Just before noon they got a puncture, and voted not to attend to it until after lunch, which they ate near a road-side spring, under a great oak tree. And then the Fates were kind to them. For, as they were laboriously jacking up the car to take off the tire, a lone chauffeur, in a big car, came along and kindly offered to do the work for them. The girls gladly accepted, and watched him carefully, for though they had once or twice before changed a shoe, they were not skillful at it. Mollie offered the man some change, but he declined with a laugh and reddened under his tan. "Then do have some lunch!" said Betty, understanding his embarrassment. "And chocolates," added Grace, generously. "I will," he said. "It's hard work driving a big car like mine--all alone." "Oh, is it _your_ car?" asked Mollie. "I thought----" and as the young man nodded she understood why he had refused the money. He was the owner. "Oh, girls!" exclaimed Mollie, when he had gone, "and to think that I wanted to pay him--maybe he's a millionaire." "You meant it all right," said Betty. "And really he looked like a professional chauffeur. He might have taken the money, and let us think so. I read a story once where a man did that, and fell in love with a girl, and----" "Spare us the details," begged Grace. Again the girls were off, and without further accident, save that when Betty was driving she narrowly missed running over a persistent barking dog. They reached Freedenburg, and went to the hotel, leaving the auto at a public garage near by. "Oh, for a good bath, and a hot cup of tea!" exclaimed Mollie, for the latter part of the ride had been rather hot and dusty. "Then we'll feel like new girls." The services of a maid were at their disposal in their rooms, and they were soon making themselves fresh for the dinner that was shortly to be served. As Mollie let down her long hair the maid uttered an exclamation: "Excuse me, Miss, for remarking it," she said, "but you have lovely hair." "We all think so," added Betty. "It isn't so very nice," spoke Mollie. "I am hoping it will get thicker." "It's lovely!" the maid insisted. "I haven't seen any as nice--not since a strange girl stopped here one night some time ago, and I helped her do hers up. Hers was nearly to the floor when she stood up. And it was just the color of yours. She had a scar on her forehead, I remember--a recent one, and I had to be careful of it as I combed her hair." "A cut?" asked Betty, looking at her friends curiously. "Yes, Miss. She said she had fallen out of a tree." "A tree!" The four girls uttered this together. "Why, yes," and the maid seemed surprised. "I suppose she was playing--she said she was very fond of sports--and she was just the age to enjoy them." "Yes, yes!" exclaimed Betty eagerly. "Did she have--I mean what was her name--or could you describe her to us? We have a reason for asking." "Why, I don't recall that she gave me her name," said the maid slowly, "but I can tell you how she looked." Then, to the surprise of Betty and her chums, the hotel maid gave a good description of the girl they had seen fall out of the tree some time before--the girl who had so strangely disappeared when they went after aid for her. "It's the same one!" cried Betty, and then she told the maid of the coincidence. CHAPTER XII A DISABLED CAR "Where did she go?" "Didn't she leave her name--or anything?" "Did she seem all right?" "Did she tell why she was in the tree?" With these questions the girls fairly bombarded the mystified maid when they had established, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the girl they had aided and the one at the hotel were one and the same. "I don't know where she went," the maid finally managed to say, "and I don't know her name. It may be on the register, though." "We'll look!" declared Betty. "But did you learn anything about her?" "Nothing much. She seemed all right, as far as her health was concerned, but she did not seem happy. The cut on her head was nothing. I asked her if the fall from the tree had hurt her, and she said not much." "Did she say why she climbed up it?" asked Amy. "No, Miss, she did not." "And she didn't tell you anything about herself?" It was Grace who asked this. "No, only in a general way. I thought, from what she said, Miss, that she had seen trouble, and was trying to get away from it. She was well dressed, and had some money. She let fall that she was traveling about, trying to find some friends she had lost track of. There was some mystery about her, of that I'm certain." "I am too," declared Mollie. "Poor girl!" "I'm going to look at the register," said Betty. "That may give us a clue, as the boys say." The girls dressed for dinner, and then visited the hotel office. The maid fortunately had a good memory, and could tell the date of the girl's stay. The register of that day contained several names, but the clerk recalled the incident of the girl applying for a room. This hotel made a speciality of catering to women patrons. "That's her name," said the young man, pointing to one in the book. "Carrie Norton." "And it doesn't say where she is from," remarked Amy. "I asked her about that," spoke the clerk, "and she said it did not matter. So I did not insist." "Carrie Norton," mused Mollie, as the girls went into the dining room. "Well, I hope she has found her friends. Poor girl!" They talked and speculated about her, but that was all they could do. They could arrive at no conclusion. It was plain that she had not been as badly hurt as they had feared, and, after leaving the farm house, must have gone to some other place of shelter. She must have also changed her garments, for the dress the maid described was not the one she wore at the time of the accident. She had left the hotel, after stopping there one night, the maid said, and had left no directions for any mail to be forwarded, nor had she given any clue to where she was going. "She seems to have come into our lives in a most mysterious way," said Mollie, "and then to have vanished. We get a glimpse of her, as it were, and again she vanishes. I wonder if we will ever solve the mystery?" "Perhaps she is--the ghost of the haunted mansion of Shadow Valley," suggested Betty. "What an idea!" cried Grace. "Don't be so--shivery!" "Well, she is as mysterious as ghosts are supposed to be," Betty went on. "I wonder when we will meet her again?" "When we do, we must take care that she does not escape without telling us more about herself," said Amy. "Not that we can insist, but we ought to know for our own satisfaction." "I think so, too," added Mollie. "She is getting on my nerves." "Besides, we might be able to help her," spoke Grace. "It is dreadful to think of a nice girl like that going the country, friendless and alone. She may need just the aid we could give her." All the conclusion the girls could come to was that the girl, after leaving the farm house, had somehow managed to find those who were able to look after her. Then had come an interim, which was a blank as far as the girls were concerned. Then came the hotel episode, and--another blank. "It's like one of those missing-piece puzzles," complained Grace. "We'll never get it straightened out." "We may," said Betty, more hopefully. That evening, with Cousin Jane to accompany them, they went to a pretty little play, enjoying it very much. Morning saw them on the road again, and they stopped the next night at the house of a distant relative of Betty's mother. Then, for a time, the good luck the girls had had left them. There came a spell of rain that lasted two days, and they remained in the house of Mrs. Nelson's relative--rather miserable days they were, too, for there was little to occupy them. But all things come to an end finally, and the bad weather was no exception. The sun came out, the roads dried up, and one pleasant morning saw the outdoor girls again in the car, speeding onward. Their objective point was Wendell City, and to reach this they had to make a detour that would take them through a picturesque part of the country. In fact it was so picturesque, and there were so many fine views, that Mollie stopped the car oftener than she meant to, and in consequence they were far behind their schedule when it began to grow dusk. "Something is the matter with the car," said Mollie, after a climb of a steep hill, which had to be taken on second gear. "Oh, don't say that!" begged Grace. "We've got a good way to go, yet." "Oh, it isn't anything serious, I think," said Mollie. "But one of the cylinders seems to be 'missing.' There, hear it!" she exclaimed. The girls were expert enough to detect the "miss," now. It was unmistakable. The auto faltered on top of the hill. Then it went down and on the level seemed to be all right again. The girls were more hopeful, until the next hill was reached. There the car nearly stalled. But the summit was reached, and there appeared in view a long, easy, downward slope. And then, with a sigh and a groan of protest--which manifestations had been accumulating of late, the car suddenly ceased working, and came to a stop. The power was gone. "Oh dear!" cried Mollie, for it was getting late, and the road was a lonely one. "What shall we do?" "Get out and fix it, of course," answered practical Betty. "Look--look where we are," whispered Grace, clutching the arm of Mollie. "Where? Don't be so nervous. Where are we?" "Near the rear entrance to Shadow Valley," spoke Grace, in an awe-struck voice. CHAPTER XIII THE STORM Silence followed an exclamation that came from the lips of each of the girls--an involuntary cry from each one, brought out by the words of Grace. "Shadow Valley!" murmured Mollie. "And the--the----" it was Betty who began this, it being her evident intention to make a remark about the haunted house. Then her usual good sense came to her rescue, and she refrained. There was pressure enough now on the nerves of her chums, she reasoned. "Well, what of it?" she asked in a voice meant to be cheerful, and Betty was an adept at simulation under necessity. "Don't--don't you understand?" faltered Grace, in a low voice--a tone calculated to add to the tenseness of the situation, rather than to relieve it. "I understand that our car has balked for some reason or other," said Betty in brisk, business-like tones, "and we have to fix it. If we don't we are likely to be caught in a thunder storm. So get out, girls, and let's hunt for trouble. Grace, if you have any chocolates left you might offer them as a prize for the one who first discovers the difficulty--and why the motor won't mote. Cousin Jane will be the--stake-holder is the proper term, I believe." "The idea!" cried Mollie. "That's only When there is betting. We don't do anything like that." "I meant to say prize-holder then!" admitted Betty, with a laugh. "Well, there's no use discussing it--I haven't a chocolate left," sighed Grace. "But oh, do you realize our position?" "I do indeed, and that's why I say we must make this car go," went on Betty. "Come," and she got out, followed by Mollie. "It seems hard lines to get a thunder storm after all the rain we've had, but it is threatening. Let's get busy." "I think that suggestion very practical," said Mrs. Mackson. "Girls, you had better do as Betty says and try to find out what is the matter with the car. I don't know anything about such things or I'd help. If a hairpin will be of any use I have an extra paper of them with me." "Hairpins! Oh, dear!" laughed Amy half hysterically. "A hairpin to mend a broken auto!" "I have known one to be of service on a motor boat," spoke Betty. "I bent it in the shape of a spring, and used it on a valve in the _Gem_." "I'm afraid there's more than that the matter here," spoke Mollie, as she raised the hood of her car. "That one cylinder must have affected the others, in some way." "Gracious!" exclaimed Amy, "I didn't know auto diseases were catching in that way. We must be careful, girls." "It's getting darker," observed Betty. "We must be quick Mollie, if we're to get to shelter before the storm breaks." It was growing dark and gloomy, and though it was not yet seven o'clock the lowering clouds had added to the dusk of approaching night. Occasionally, in the distance, could be heard the low rumbling of thunder. "Oh dear!" exclaimed Grace. "We are in for a drenching, that's sure." "Not necessarily!" said Mollie, a bit sharply. "I'd remind you that my car has a top, and we can put it up." "That's all right," spoke Betty, soothingly, for she noted that Mollie's temper might get the best of her under the stress of the trouble. "Let's look at the engine first. Shall I light the lamps, Mollie?" "Yes, do. I didn't think of them. Light the oil ones as well as switch on the electrics. We may need both, and I am not sure of that storage battery. The last place I had it looked at the man said it would need re-charging soon." While Betty, with the aid of Grace, set the oil and electric head lamps aglow, and saw that the tail light was also in service, Mollie was peering at the motor. "Just push the self-starter button," she directed Betty after a moment, during which she had primed the cylinders with gasoline, and changed the adjustment of the carburetor slightly. She had really made quite a study of the troubles that might beset a motor, and the garage man had added some further instructions. Mollie watched while Betty pushed the lever, and set the electric starter in motion, but when the gasoline and spark levers were set at the proper places, the motor did not respond, the fly wheel merely revolving under the impulse of the starter. "What is it?" asked Grace. "Can you tell what is the matter?" "No, I can't!" and Mollie spoke shortly. "I'll tell you as soon as I've found out," she said. "Please don't make me nervous, Grace--dear." Mollie added the last as a polite concession. "Nervous! If anyone is more nervous than I am, I'd like to know it," murmured Grace. "Oh, how I wish I had a chocolate!" and she hurriedly sought among her possessions, but in vain. "I wonder how we happened to get here--at the entrance to Shadow Valley?" queried Amy. "I thought we were far away from it." "We are far enough from the other end," replied Grace. "I guess Mollie didn't know this road took us here, or she wouldn't have come. We are nearer--nearer the--oh, you know what I mean, Amy." "Yes, you mean--that house!" "That's it. I--I hate to mention it. But we are nearer to it than ever since--since Mr. Lagg told us about the--the trouble there. I wish we were--back home. Gracious--what's that?" and she jumped nervously, clutching Amy's arm. "Only thunder--a sharper clap than usual--don't be a goose!" said Betty, sharply. "Shall I try it again, Mollie?" for Mollie was still inspecting the motor by the light of one of the oil lamps held over it by Cousin Jane, while Betty was at the steering wheel, manipulating the levers. "Yes, try it once more. I can't seem to see what is the matter. The ignition seems to be all right, but when you throw in the gas, and set the spark, the motor doesn't take it up. Try again." Again Betty tried, but the fly wheel would only revolve, and that was all. "It's no use!" sighed Mollie. "I'll have to have a garage man look at it. Probably it's some simple little thing. That's generally the way--it's the little things of life that make so much trouble. You can fight a big thing better." "But where will you find a garage man around here--and at this time of night?" asked Amy, for it was really night now, with the clouds adding to the darkness. "I don't know, I'm sure," and Mollie's voice did not have its usual pleasant note. "Maybe one will come along in an airship," she added a bit sarcastically. "Mollie," spoke Betty soothingly. "I don't care--I don't like foolish questions asked of me when I'm worried." "I didn't mean to bother you," said Amy gently. "Oh, I know it!" and Mollie's voice trembled. "It was horribly mean of me to answer you as I did. I beg your pardon, but I am _so_ bothered! Isn't it mean to have things go wrong this way, and at such an inconvenient time and place?" "Never mind," spoke Betty, laughing. "To-morrow we will only think this was fun. And now I suggest that we go down the road a bit, and look for a garage. It's true that this isn't a main highway, but nowadays even the country blacksmiths are calling themselves auto repairers. We may come upon one unexpectedly, and if his shop is closed he may live near enough so that we can get him out here. Let's try, anyhow." "Betty, dear, you're such a comfort!" exclaimed Mollie, putting her arms around her chum. "Come, we'll go on a hunting expedition." "All of us?" asked Grace. "No, there's no need for all of us to go," said Betty. "Mollie and I will take a lantern--one of the oil ones--and walk down the road. The rest of you can stay here." "And I think you'd better put the top up while we are gone," suggested Mollie. "It may rain suddenly, and with the top and the side curtains and wind-shield in front, we can at least keep dry until morning." "What! Stay here all night?" cried Amy. "Why not? Where else can we go?" "I'll not stay," declared Grace. "I'll walk anywhere--even in the rain--to get away from--this place," and she could not repress a shudder as she looked back over her shoulder at the entrance to gloomy Shadow Valley. Betty again took her position at the wheel--why, she hardly knew. Mollie had closed the bonnet over the motor, evidently giving up trying to discover the trouble. Idly Betty pushed on the button and lever of the self-starter, and then she exclaimed: "I have it!" "What! Have you found the trouble?" asked Mollie, excitedly. "No, but I have a plan. We can run the car down to the foot of the slope. It's more sheltered there--bigger trees, you know--and we'll be that much nearer where we want to go." "But how can you make the car go--when it won't?" asked Mollie. "The self-starter! It's guaranteed to run the car under electric power for nearly a mile, without the motor being operated. All we'll have to do will be to set the starter going--that turns the fly wheel, you know. Then we can put in low gear, slip in the clutch, just as if the motor was in operation, and get the car to the top of the hill. We're really at the top now, for it's level here. But we can get it to the edge of the downward slope, and let it coast. Then, on the next level, we can do the same thing again. In that way I am almost sure we can make over a mile." "Good!" cried Mollie. "You should have a car instead of me, Bet, my dear!" "Oh, I don't take any credit for that think! I just recalled an advertisement I had read about self-starters. Nearly all of them say the starters alone will propel the car for some distance. Let's try it, anyhow." They all felt better on hearing this, and Amy even laughed. She started to get into the car, when Betty said: "Perhaps it will be just as well to wait about getting in until the car is at the beginning of the slope. The less weight in the auto the easier it will move. Mollie, do you want to try the scheme?" "No, you do it--you thought of it. We'll walk along with you if you get it to go." Betty soon demonstrated that she could get the auto to move, and slowly but surely it rolled along until it had started down a long, gentle slope. Then Betty shut off the electric motor, which was run by a storage battery, and applied the brakes. "Get in now," she directed, and a little later the party was coasting down hill, the foot brake serving to prevent too great speed. "So far--so good!" cried Betty, when they had reached the level. "Now to see how far the starter will carry us." As she spoke a more vivid flash of lightning, and a rumbling crash of thunder, made all the girls, and even Cousin Jane, jump. "We're going to get it!" predicted Grace, with a shiver. Betty again repeated her operation with the starter. The car went forward slowly, and the girls were very hopeful, and then suddenly the auto came to a stop with a sort of whining groan, and the electric lights went out. "Oh, dear! What's happened now?" asked Amy. "The storage battery has given out," said Mollie. "I was afraid it would. Now, girls, we'll either have to stay here in the auto, or else walk--and be caught in the rain." "Well, let's get the top up, at all events," suggested Betty. "Then we'll be sure of some shelter." It began to rain, gently at first, even while they were struggling with the rather refractory top, in the dim light of the two oil lamps. But they managed to get it in place. Then, as they were fastening the side curtains, the storm burst in all its fury, with a suddenness that was almost terrifying. Grace and Amy, who were trying to fasten a curtain on the side of the auto whence the wind came, screamed and let go of the flap. In an instant, so powerful was the wind, it had ripped off the curtain, sending it scurrying away in the blackness of the night, that was torn and pierced by frequent flashes of lightning. "Now we have done it!" cried Grace. "Oh, Mollie, I'm so sorry!" "Never mind! Don't talk about that now. Get on your raincoats, girls, or you'll be drenched!" and, fastening the last strap of her curtain, Mollie donned her garment--the girls and Mrs. Mackson carrying them in a seat locker that Mollie had utilized for this purpose. But the rain came in at the place where there was no side curtain, sweeping over them all. The wind blew fiercely, and the auto swayed in the blast. Miserable indeed was the plight of the Outdoor Girls. They were possibly having just a little too much of out doors. CHAPTER XIV AT THE HAUNTED HOUSE "Girls, I can't stand this any longer!" complained Mollie, as the storm raged about and above them. "What are you going to do?" asked Betty. "For one thing, let's try to take one of the curtains from the side where the wind doesn't blow so hard, and fasten it on the place where that one blew away. That will help some." They tried, but it was hard work. The curtains fastened with straps above and below, being a new kind, and not very satisfactory, as Mollie declared then and there. Nor were the girls successful, for the wind whipped and blew the curtain about so that it was impossible to put it up. Thus there were two openings now--one on either side of the auto--and rain came in both. "This is dreadful!" cried Mollie. "Girls, I'm sure you'll never forgive me for getting you into this scrape." "It wasn't your fault," said Betty. "You couldn't tell that the motor was going to give out. Besides, what if we are wet? It isn't very cold, and we'll get dry some time. Oh, but that was a heavy one!" she cried, pressing her hands over her ears as a tremendous peal of thunder followed closely after a vivid flash. "We must do something!" cried Mollie. "This is unbearable." "But what are you going to do?" asked Grace. "It looks to me as though we'd just have to bear it." "We can get out and walk until we find some kind of shelter," said Mollie. "There must be some sort of house around here. This place isn't a desert. And even walking in the rain and mud is better than staying here, all cramped up, and drenched. Who will come?" "I guess we all will, if one of us goes," spoke Betty. "But, oh, Mollie, are you sure that's the best thing to do?" "Why not? What else can we do?" "Well, of course if this storm would let up it would be easier going out then. We might wait a while." "It doesn't show any signs of letting up," retorted Mollie. "It acts to me like an all-night rain, and the longer we wait the worse off we'll be, and the less chance we'll have of finding any one up if we do locate a house." "Oh, for a nice dry house, and a good hot cup of chocolate!" sighed Grace. "Heartless creature--to even dream of such things!" cried Amy. "Oh dear! What do you think? A stream of water is going down my back." "And both my shoulders are soaking wet," added Mrs. Mackson. "But it might be worse, girls!" "I don't very well see how," remarked Mollie. "Well, shall we try it?" The others hesitated a moment. As they waited and listened to the whining of the wind, the swish of the rain and the angry muttering of the thunder, and saw the vivid lightning, it was no wonder they did not want to decide hurriedly to go out in that out burst of the elements. But it was also trying on the nerves to stay in the stalled auto, exposed as it was by the lack of side curtains. "Oh, let's try it!" suggested Betty in sheer desperation. "We can't any more than get drenched, and our rain coats will be some protection. Come on, girls." They had the two oil lanterns in the car with them, and carrying them they now emerged from their shelter. "Gracious! This is awful!" gasped Mollie, as the blast and rain struck her full in the face. "Keep on!" called Betty, grimly. "Which way?" asked Amy. "How dark it is!" "Not when it lightens--that's one good thing about it," said Cousin Jane, cheerfully. "It's nice you can see some good points," laughed Mollie--yes, actually laughed, and the girls marveled at it. But Mollie had that rare quality of "keeping her nerve," if I may be pardoned that expression, so often and effectively used by my friends, the boys. "We had better go forward," suggested Betty. "We didn't pass any houses for quite a while as we were coming up here, and there may be one not far off just ahead. Or we may find a cross-road. Advance, I say!" "And I agree," spoke Mollie. "Come on." She and Betty led the way, carrying the lamps, which gave but an uncertain light, and that only in one direction--forward. However, the road, though now quite muddy, was a level one, and in fairly good condition. Forward they tramped through the rain. It is on such occasions as these--when something goes wrong, upsetting all prearranged plans, and making life seem miserable--that true courage of a sort, comradeship, good-fellowship and real grit are best shown. And, to the credit of the outdoor girls be it said that, now they had taken the "plunge" none of them showed the white feather. They were brave under any circumstances and this very bravery strengthened their tired nerves. On they splashed through muddy puddles, protecting themselves from the rain as best they could by their coats. But occasionally the wind would whip them open, letting in the moisture that already had soaked the garments well. "There doesn't seem to be any shelter," remarked Amy, hopelessly, when they had gone perhaps half a mile. "Oh, don't give up yet," suggested Mollie. They kept on, and came to a cross-road. "Now which way?" asked Betty. "Straight ahead," proposed Mollie. "To the left," offered Grace. "The right," was Amy's choice. "I think--I'm not sure, but I think I see a light off to the left," said Cousin Jane. "A light!" cried Betty. "Then we ought to head for that." "But I am not certain," went on Mrs. Mackson. "Look, girls, is that a light?" They grouped around her, and gazed in the direction she pointed. "Hold the lamps the other way, and we can see better," suggested Grace. "Hold the lens against your skirts, Mollie," said Betty. "That will make dark-lanterns for us." She and Mollie did this, and in the intense blackness, that, for the moment was not illuminated by a lightning flash, they peered about them. "It _is_ a light!" exclaimed Grace. "Thank goodness!" "I think so, too," added Mollie, as she glimpsed a point of illumination. "Come on, girls! They won't refuse to help us." Much encouraged they kept on. The rain increased, but they did not so much care now. The thunder was just as hard, and the flashes of heaven's fire was vivid, while the wind seemed more powerful. But they kept on. The light they had seen seemed to grow brighter. Then it suddenly disappeared. "Oh dear!" cried Grace, despairingly. "It is gone!" "Never mind," said Mollie. "They may have taken it to another room, or put it out to go to bed. But we can find the place, as long as we are on the right road." On they stumbled, and then Betty, who was a little in the advance gave a cry--a cry of joy. "Here is the house!" she cried. "It is all dark, but we will knock." By the lightning flashes they saw, set some distance back from the road, a large house. By the same flashes they saw leading up to it a path, much overgrown with weeds. And back of the house were big trees. The rest was not very distinct, but at least shelter was offered them. "Come on!" urged Betty, resolutely. "Suppose there are--dogs?" faltered Amy. "If there are they would have barked before now. But I don't believe even a self-respecting dog would bother us on a night like this," said Mollie. "Come on." They advanced up the old path, that was overgrown with weeds. "I don't believe any one lives there," ventured Grace, in a low voice. "If they do they don't keep the place in very good condition," spoke Cousin Jane. "It's a shame to let it get so run down." Mollie was knocking on the door. The sound of her knuckles seemed to echo through an empty house. The hearts of the girls were despairing again. Once more Mollie knocked. No answer. "No one at home," she murmured. "And yet the light!" She gave a little cry. "What is it?" asked Betty. "The door--it opened of itself!" "Nonsense! Perhaps it was not shut, and you pushed it!" Betty flashed her light forward. It shone on the old door, that was slowly swinging open, seemingly of its own accord. Then a bare and deserted hall was observed. At that moment there came a vivid lightning flash, and before the thunder could echo Grace cried: "We're at the haunted house of Shadow Valley!" CHAPTER XV QUEER MANIFESTATIONS Curiously enough it was gentle Amy who made a remark that saved the day--or should I say night? For it was after dark. As the girls literally shivered, following the exclamation of Grace--shivered as much from the chilling rain as from the terror induced--Amy said, with such a queer intonation: "Do you suppose that door opened itself to invite us in?" There was a moment of silence. Then Grace giggled, Betty caught her breath in a gasp, Mollie went into a perfect gale of laughter, and Cousin Jane--well, she said it herself afterward--she snickered. "Amy, that's the most sensible thing I've heard since this series of midnight adventures began," declared Mollie. "And since the door did open to let us in, suppose we take advantage of it," suggested Betty, "and go in." "What--into the--the haunted house!" and Grace's voice was shrill. "Now see here!" began Betty, and her voice was as severe as she could make it, for she recognized that now was the time to get the situation well in hand. "This house is no more haunted than you are, Grace Ford." "But--but----" "'But me no buts,'" quoted Betty, merrily--as merrily as possible under the circumstances. "We are going to be sensible--and--go in." Suiting the action to the word she advanced into the hall, through which the wind was now sweeping in rather mournful gusts. Mollie hesitated a moment, and then followed her chum. The action of the two leaders with the lanterns had a good effect on the others. This might have been accounted for in two ways. The presence of Betty and Mollie in the hall may have had its effect, or the kindly lights of the auto, glowing so cozily, disclosed a shelter that, whatever its disadvantages, at least afforded dryness. Then, too, the taking away of the lights from the three of the party who remained outside may have added to the effect. At any rate Grace stepped into the hall, followed by Cousin Jane, and then timid Amy, finding herself alone on the small porch, scurried in. "Well, we're here!" said Betty, with a smile--rather a pale effort to tell the truth, but a smile nevertheless. "Now what is the next thing to do?" "If we had only brought something to eat," sighed Grace. "And our chocolate outfit!" for they carried one, with a small alcohol stove, that they might make a hot drink when they stopped at noon for luncheon. "No use crying over missing chocolate," said Mollie. "We're here, under shelter, anyhow; and we can keep dry. Now if we can find anyone at home we'll beg their hospitality for the night. Maybe they can get us a meal--if we pay for it." "There's no one living in this house--I'm sure of that!" declared Amy. "Smell the musty odor--and--see----" she pushed open a door leading from the hall, and directed Betty's hand so that the lantern flashed inside. The room was bare and empty. "No one at all," she insisted. "The house is deserted." "Well, so much the better," declared Grace. "That is, if there are no--no----" she did not finish, but looked around rather apprehensively. "Ghosts--say it!" commanded Betty, sharply. "The oftener you use the word the less it will frighten you." "Look here!" exclaimed Mollie. "I don't believe we're in the--the haunted house at all." "Why not?" demanded Grace. "Because this isn't at all like the kind of a house a millionaire would build. It's--common. You can see for yourselves." It did indeed seem so. "But we were close to the end of Shadow Valley, where Kenyon's Folly was built," insisted Grace, "and we turned in nearer to it when we took that cross-road. I'm sure it's the place." "Well, it's a queer thing to be insisting that you are in a haunted house," remarked Betty, "but I am beginning to believe now that we are not. At least I agree with Mollie that this doesn't look at all like the place called Kenyon's Folly." As the storm thundered and roared about them the girls looked around the hall and room. Truly it was but a poor structure, much fallen into decay now, yet at heart it was sound. Paint and decoration would do much to restore it. "I think I can explain it," said Amy. "Do then," begged Grace. "Don't you remember, Mr. Lagg told us that there was a housekeeper's residence built to connect with the main structures?" she said. "There is a sort of covered passage, I believe, that goes to the main castle, as it were." "Then the real haunted house must be--back there," and Grace pointed toward where they had observed the thick trees. "Yes. We are only in the--annex," said Betty. "But it suits me." "If we only had something to eat and drink we would--annex that," observed Grace. "I'm starved!" "Let's have a look around, anyhow, as long as we are here," suggested Mollie. "We may as well stay here for the night----" "For the night!" cried Grace. "Yes. Where else can we go? I'm not going out in that storm again if I can help it. We're dry here, at least. Just listen to that rain!" "It's coming down in torrents!" exclaimed Betty. "We simply can't go out." "And it will give us something to do to explore a bit," added Mrs. Mackson. "Come along girls. Who knows but what we may find a table all set for us by fairy hands, as we used to read of in the story books?" They paused for a moment. Not a sound came from the rooms and passage about them. Only the storm raged outside. "Well, let's--let's----" began Mollie. "Oh, come on!" cried Betty, as her chum hesitated. "At least we have lights." "And I'm going to take off my wet coat," said Grace. "Oh, if we could have a fire!" "There's a fire place," said Betty, flashing her lamp into the room the door of which Amy had opened. "And, I do declare, some old boards and boxes! Why can't we have a fire?" The idea appealed to all of them, and presently, taking heart, they entered the room, and piling some boxes, splintered boards and papers on the old hearth, set them ablaze. As the ruddy flames leaped up the broad chimney they gathered about, much cheered, though still hungry. "If we only had something to eat," sighed Grace. "I wonder, if by chance the former inhabitants left some morsels of food? Suppose we take a look?" The others hesitated a moment, and then Mollie said: "I'm with you!" She caught up the still-glowing auto lamp, and led the way, the others following. "Up stairs; or down stairs?" she challenged. "Or in my lady's chamber?" completed Betty, with a laugh. They went through various rooms. All were deserted. Here and there they saw discarded and broken furniture. But there was no sign of recent habitation. The house was musty and damp, but they were glad of shelter from the storm. "Only my poor auto!" sighed Mollie. "I hope nothing happens to it." "It can stand the weather," said Grace. "What is beyond here, I wonder?" she said, as they came to a pause before a closed door. "Let's look," suggested Betty. Like other portals in the house this one was not locked. Betty pushed it open, and a long passage was revealed. "The way to--the haunted house!" exclaimed Mollie, rather dramatically. "Hush!" begged Grace. "Silly!" admonished Betty. "Come on." She plunged into the passage. The echoing footsteps of the others following could be heard. She came to another door, opened it, and gave a cry of delight. "Girls--supper!" she exclaimed, and, holding her light high up, she flashed it on a collection of groceries. Boxes of sardines there were, dried herring, crackers, some butter in a carton, a loaf of bread, canned tomatoes and peaches, and with all some dishes--knives and forks, spoons, and, most useful of all--a can-opener, and a corkscrew--and--a bottle of olives! "Oh joy!" exclaimed Grace. "The fairy prince has been here!" "Grace!" remonstrated Amy, as her friend caught up the bottle of olives and proceeded to open it. "We don't know whose they are." "So much the better; our consciences won't trouble us. And if anyone comes to claim them we can pay for what we eat--I have money!" and she jingled her silver purse, "And now, 'let good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both,'" she quoted. "Fall to!" The girls laughed, but they did "fall to." Cans and tins were opened, crackers and slices of bread spread, and with peach juice to drink, for they did not like to draw any water, fearing it might not be fresh--they ate--and ate--and ate again. "Oh, how good I feel!" cried Grace, as there came a pause. "But how in the world do you imagine this stuff got here?" asked Amy. "Why seek to inquire?" spoke Mollie. "That it is here is sufficient for me. Another olive, Betty, dear?" "The--our friend the ghost may have provided it," said Grace. "You are coming on bravely," commented Betty. "If you will----" She paused--they all did--mouths half opened. For from somewhere in the structure came a hollow and terrifying groan, and then followed the unmistakable sound of clinking metal, while a bluish light flashed around them. Then came another long-drawn cry--a shrill, eerie wail, and both their lights went out, leaving them in total darkness, while the storm shrieked about the old house, rocking it, and swaying it as though to tear it from its foundations. CHAPTER XVI "SO YOU HAVE COME BACK!" Screams and frightened exclamations on the part of the girls followed the queer manifestations. Even Cousin Jane gave a cry of alarm, and clung to Betty. In fact, everyone was clinging to some one else, the table having been deserted at the first alarm. There was silence for a moment--no, not altogether a silence, for the noise of the storm indicated that it was not in the least lessening, but there was comparative quiet in the room, and then again came that strange bluish, flickering glare, and the metallic clanging sound. Then there was that startling, hollow groan, that seemed to echo and re-echo through the deserted house. "Oh! Oh!" moaned Grace. "This is awful--terrible!" It was sufficiently terrible there in the darkness, illuminated only by the lightning, or by that weird blue glare that seemed to come from no place in particular, but which shone through the whole room--throwing into ghastly outlines the faces of the girls. Their lamps had gone out--or been blown out--they did not know which, and as they clung to each other, their hearts pounding, every startled nerve on the alert, Amy gasped: "What--what made the lights go out? Can anyone tell?" Even then, Betty confessed afterward, she felt a hysterical desire to propound the old question of where a certain Biblical personage was when the light went out, but instead Grace answered before her: "They were blown out by--by----" she hesitated. "By the wind!" exclaimed Mollie, quickly. "What else? There's an awful draught in here. Who has the matches?" It was the most sensible thing she could have said under the circumstances, and it somewhat relieved the tension. "I have some," answered Grace. "But--but what has happened, anyhow?" "It's the thunder and lightning," declared Cousin Jane. "It must have struck somewhere around here. It hit our barn once, and I noticed something the same as now. Maybe that put out the lights." "Well, let's put them in service again," proposed Betty. "I don't like the dark." "Neither do I--in here," spoke Mollie. "Please strike a match, Grace." The interior of the old house was quiet now, as with fingers that would tremble in spite of her efforts to still them, Grace lighted a match, and applied the flickering flame to the wick of one of the lamps which Betty opened. Then, as the cheerful yellow glow shone around them, Amy cried: "Oh, smell that sulphur!" There was the unmistakable odor in the rather close air of the room. "It's from the match," said Mollie. "No, I didn't use a sulphur match," said Grace. "It's the lightning," declared Cousin Jane. "I noticed that smell, too, when our barn was struck, and I felt as if pins and needles were sticking in me." "Gracious! I hope that doesn't happen here!" exclaimed Betty, as she helped Grace light the other lantern. Then the girls looked at one another. From the faces they glanced to the table. Nothing there had been altered, nor had the room changed in appearance. "Well, I'm glad it's over," said Betty with a sigh of relief. "I was certainly scared at first." "So was I," admitted Mollie. "I really thought it was--the ghost." Grace let out a startled cry. "Stop it!" commanded the Little Captain. "Well, I wish she wouldn't--blurt it out that way," Grace complained. "Let's finish the meal," suggested Mollie. "There is some left, and there's no telling when the owner--or owners--may come along. If we've eaten it all up they can't do any more than make us pay for it, which we are perfectly willing to do. But if there's some food still left they might stop us from eating it. So let's begin again, girls." "I've had all I want," faltered Grace. "She's sorry because there are no chocolates," laughed Betty. "No, I'm just too nervous to eat any more," said the tall, willowy one. "Oh, wasn't it awful? Those groans--the clanking of chains----" "How do you know they were chains?" challenged Betty. "Well, they sounded like them, anyhow." "That's what we thought on Elm Island, and you know how that turned out." "Oh, well, yes; but this is different," protested Grace. "These hollow groans--there they go again!" and she clutched Amy's arm so suddenly that a cracker and herring sandwich the latter was eating went to the floor. Indeed there did sound through the deserted house a queer, groaning noise, as if some one was in distress. Betty gave voice to this suggestion, saying: "Oh, girls, I wonder if any one can be--hurt?" "Well, I'm not going to look!" cried Grace. "Oh, let's get away from this terrible place. I'd rather be out in the storm than here!" "In that rain?" asked Mollie, as they listened to the down-rush of water. It even drowned the noise of the groans. "That is only the wind," declared Mrs. Mackson, though she looked over her shoulder apprehensively. "The wind, moaning down an old chimney, or in some broken window, and around a corner--I have often heard it that way." "You're a comfort, at least," murmured Betty. "But, girls, I really wonder if it could be anyone in trouble? Someone who took refuge in here from the storm, as we did, and who, wandering about, fell and got hurt. That girl, perhaps--the one from the tree----" She paused, looking about for some support of her theory. "Nonsense! How could she be here?" asked Mollie. "Well, it's not very plausible," admitted Betty. "But some one is certainly in this place." "Don't say that!" cried Grace. "Don't be silly," advised Betty. "Why, of course some one is here, or has been here. Else how would that food get here? That is not ghostly, at all events. It was very material, and satisfying, and I'm deeply grateful for it. It stands to reason that some one expected to eat it. "My theory is that some one, traveling perhaps like ourselves, only maybe not in an auto, was overtaken by the storm. More provident than we they had lunch with them, and brought it in here, intending to eat it. Then some accident happened to them, or----" "The ghost carried them off," interrupted Mollie, with a glance of defiance at Grace, who shuddered, and looked behind her. "Anyhow they're not here now," went on Betty. "And I don't know but that it is our duty to look for them." "Never!" breathed Amy. "At least we can go to the front door, and see if anyone is passing whom we can hail, and ask for help. If we could get a man, now----" "Or even a good-sized boy," broke in Mollie. "Yes, even a boy would do," conceded Betty. "We could get him to go with us into the other part of the house. There was where all the manifestations seemed to come from." "Well, let's go to the front door and look," proposed Cousin Jane. "That can do no harm, and really I don't like to think of anyone being in distress." "Especially after we've eaten his lunch," put in Grace. "How do you know but that it is a 'her' and not a 'him'?" asked Mollie. "Nobody but a man would come in here--after dark." "But we girls did." "Oh, look how many of us there are. There is safety in numbers." "Well, I wouldn't be here if there was any other place to go," declared Grace. "Come on, if we're going," and she moved toward the door, keeping close to Betty meanwhile. "There must have been some one here, or else how did we see the light which we followed, and which brought us here?" Mollie wanted to know. "That, too, may have been caused by the lightning," said Cousin Jane. "You are bound to ascribe everything to nature," objected Mollie. "It's nice of you, but perhaps not correct." "Well, you know that electricity does queer things," declared the chaperone. "It might easily cause flickering lights, though I'm not saying but that some one has been here--the food proves that." "Perhaps all the ghost is, after all, is lightning; or some tramp, who has made this his headquarters," said Betty. "Mr. Lagg would be glad to know that." "We'll tell him," suggested Mollie. "It's a pity, while we are here, that we don't solve the mystery of the haunted house. Of course, strictly speaking, we are not in the mansion proper, but we could go there----" "Don't you dare!" cried Grace. They were going along the passage by which they had entered. The rain was not coming down so hard now, and the lightning and thunder were less frequent. The door was swinging to and fro on its hinges, swayed by the wind which blew in gusts up and down the passage. Mollie was in the rear, carrying one lantern, with Betty in the lead with the other. They had almost reached the outer door, and were eagerly hoping they would see some friendly passer-by when a noise behind her caused Mollie to turn quickly. She saw a tall white object in a proverbially ghostly winding sheet. It had come from a side room. The thing stretched out two white arms, and hands clutched themselves in Mollie's long hair, which had come loose and was hanging down her back in glorious tresses. Then a snarling voice cried: "So you've come back; have you! Well, you won't get away from me again! Now you get in there!" Mollie screamed. The others, adding their startled voices to hers, beheld the white figure catch the frightened girl by the arm, and thrust her into the room. Then the door was slammed shut, a key turned in the lock, while the white figure turned and fled down the passage, as a flash of lightning threw its ghostly outlines into weird relief, and a crash of thunder followed. CHAPTER XVII CONSTERNATION The other girls and Mrs. Mackson stood spellbound for the moment, and then their senses came back to them, and they realized the need of acting at once. "Mollie! Mollie!" cried Betty. "Where are you? What happened?" She started back down the hall, but Grace caught her. "Don't--don't!" Grace pleaded. "But I must--I shall--Mollie--some one Has taken her--thrust her into that room!" "Yes--it was the ghost--I saw it!" Grace fairly screamed, "and they'll get you!" "I don't care if they do! We must go to Mollie. Come, girls, to the rescue!" cried Betty, resolutely. "But let us get some one to help us first!" insisted Amy. "We ought not to face that--that thing alone!" and she gasped, so rapidly was her heart beating. "We're not alone!" insisted Betty. "There are four of us, to one--one man." "How do you know he was a man?" demanded Grace. "Didn't I hear him speak? It was a man's voice. Some man, for purposes of his own, is masquerading as a ghost, and he probably tried to frighten Mollie and the rest of us to keep up the reputation of the mansion for being haunted. If none of you are going back, I'll go alone!" Betty started down the hallway, and her example was one of the things needed to infuse courage into the others. Not that Cousin Jane especially needed it, for she had already made up her mind, as had Betty, that something must be done, and that soon. "Of course we must rescue Mollie!" the chaperone declared, emphatically. "Anyhow, that fellow ran away, after locking her in the room. Come back there." Rather timidly, it must be confessed, they advanced until they stood before a door. There were several along the hall, opening into various rooms, apparently. "It was here," said Betty. "No, this one," declared Mrs. Mackson, indicating another opposite. Betty turned to Grace and Amy. "I was too frightened to look," admitted Grace. "And I didn't see," confessed Amy. "Well, there's one way to prove it--we'll call," spoke Betty. She raised her voice and cried: "Mollie! Mollie! Don't be frightened. We haven't deserted you! In which room are you?" They paused, waiting for what they expected would be a tear-choked answer, but none came. "Mollie! Mollie!" cried Betty again, her tones trembling now. Anxiously they waited, but there was no response. "She isn't there!" gasped Amy. "Oh, Betty!" and she began to cry. "Hush!" cautioned Mrs. Mackson. "Probably the poor child has fainted, and can't hear us. It's enough to make any one faint. But I'm sure this is the room," and she indicated the one she had pointed out. "We must break down the door and get her." Not expecting the door to open, she turned the knob, but, to her surprise, the portal swung back, creaking on rusty hinges. "The light--quick!" the chaperone called to Betty. The remaining lantern from the auto--one being with Mollie--was flashed into the apartment. It took but a glance to show that it was empty. "I thought it was this one," said Betty, trying to keep her voice from trembling, as she moved to the door she had insisted was the right one. She tried half a dozen times. The door was locked. "She's in--there!" gasped Grace. Again Betty called aloud, repeating Mollie's name over and over again, but there was no answer. "Oh--oh, what can have happened?" faltered Amy. "Poor Mollie!" "At least we know that it was perfectly natural what happened--however mean and unjust it was," declared Betty. "We have to do with natural forces, and----" Through the old house there once more sounded that mournful groan, chilling the very blood of the girls, and causing them to cling together. Several times were the groans repeated, and then there shone, as if from a distance, a bluish light, and there came the clank of metal. "Oh--oh!" cried Grace. "Quiet!" commanded Betty. "Mollie, are you in there?" The storm had, in a measure, ceased now, and the only sounds from without was the falling of the rain. "That--that couldn't have been thunder or lightning," said Betty, with a puzzled air. "It was the wind--that is still blowing," insisted Mrs. Mackson. "Don't be frightened, girls. We must get Mollie out of that room. She has certainly fainted, and when she comes to she will be horribly frightened if we are not with her. Try the door again, Betty." Betty did so, but it would not give. "We must break it down!" decided the chaperone, resolutely. "Is there anything we can use?" "There's a chair in that other room," said Amy, indicating the apartment they had looked in, only to find it untenanted. "We might use that." "The very thing!" declared Mrs. Mackson. "We'll get it!" She started for the other room, followed by the others, when Grace cried: "Hark!" They listened. "What is it?" asked Betty. "The sound of carriage wheels out in the road. And I heard a man's voice speak to his horse." "Maybe it's the--one who caught Mollie, and he's taking her away," faltered Grace, who seemed to have a faculty of suggesting unpleasant possibilities at the wrong time. "Then we must stop him!" cried Betty. She turned toward the front door, but a short distance away. The others hurried on after her and saw, out in the road, the dim outlines of a carriage. There was a driving-light on the dashboard, and by its gleam the girls could make out the dark form of a man alighting. "At least he's not--a ghost!" whispered Amy. "Help! Oh, please help us!" screamed Grace. "Hello, there! What's the trouble?" asked a pleasant voice. "I'll be with you in a minute. Whoa there, Jack, old man! Don't get uneasy. Show your light, please, so I can see where you are." Betty flashed her lantern, and in its rays a man came up the weed-grown path. The girls were almost crying for sheer relief. CHAPTER XVIII THE PRISONER Mollie tumbled in a heap on the floor of the room, into which the white-robed figure had thrust her. She gasped once or twice, for her breath had grown short, not alone from fright--though she admitted that she was terribly scared--but from the rough treatment she had received. Then, as she endeavored to get to her feet in the darkness--for her lantern had fallen from her hand and been extinguished--she fainted, and fell back. Her heavy mass of hair, uncoiled and loose, served as a cushion, and so saved her as she crashed backward. This much of Mrs. Mackson's theory was correct. Mollie could not answer the frantic calls of her chums, for she was insensible. How long she remained in this condition she could not afterward tell, but it could not have been for long, since she was strong and healthy, and it was merely a case of overwrought nerves, and a severe mental shock, which did not amount to anything serious. Poor Mollie heard the ringing of innumerable bells as if from some land beyond the clouds. Queer lights, even in the darkness, seemed to dance before her closed eyes. She felt a pressure, a sense of suffocation--this was the stagnant blood resuming its circulation. Then consciousness returned so suddenly that it was painful. Mollie raised herself by leaning on her hands and murmured: "Where am I? What happened? That figure in white--oh, and the girls--Betty--Grace--Amy!" she cried. But none answered her, for by this time the others were outside watching that very welcome man approach. Mollie waited, and then, as her thoughts arranged themselves in order in her brain, she began to plan what to do for herself. "In the first place," she reasoned, "I am not seriously hurt. That fellow, whoever he was, just thrust me into this room. And it was no ghost, either," she went on, as she felt her arm, which she was sure had been bruised by the grasp of the mysterious one. "I'd better make a light, I think. Then I can see where I am. Oh, but what can have happened to the others? I hope he didn't get them, too!" The thought was terrifying. She dismissed it. Mollie was a practical girl, as must needs be one who drives an auto. She had pockets--a woeful lack with many--and matches. It was the work of but a few seconds to set aglow the extinguished lantern, and how Mollie blessed the thought that had prompted taking both side lights with them. Otherwise she would have had to remain in the gloom. The lantern had not broken in the fall, and soon a cheerful glow made the room less gloomy, though it was a large apartment, and there were many flickering shadows, while the corners seemed in total darkness. "But there's nothing there--can't be," decided Mollie, as she rose to her feet. "I just won't let myself be frightened." Flashing the light about the room, the girl-prisoner made it out to be a large apartment, void of anything save a few broken sticks of furniture, and a litter of papers. The paper on the walls was mildewed and hanging in strips. There was a damp and musty smell in the place, but--joy of joys to Mollie--no rat holes. The floor was solid, and she could see no openings where the creatures might get in. "So far--so good," she said aloud, and the sound of her own voice, in a measure, reassured her. "I wonder had I better call again?" she thought. "Yes, it will be best." And so she sent out a ringing cry for her chums. But the room had thick walls--the door was a solid one, and, as Betty, Amy, Grace and Mrs. Mackson were having a surprising time of their own just then, they did not hear the appeal. "I'll have to depend on myself," thought Mollie. "Well, I can do it, I think!" She paused a moment to gather her thoughts together, and, being a girl of method and order, she began at the beginning. "In the first place, let me think how I got here," she mused. "Something in white grabbed me, and thrust me here. It was a very human touch--depart the ghost theory. I believe, after all, that Mr. Lagg was right--it is some one trying to make out that this place is haunted in order to get it for a lower price. The food supply proves that, I think. "Anyhow, here I am--pushed in by some man masquerading as a ghost. That much is certain. And what was it he said, as he caught hold of me--'So you have come back!' That is all I remember. This would seem to indicate that I had been here before, and that he was either expecting me, or wanting me. "A case of mistaken identity, at all events, for I never should have come back, had I been here before, and that I was never here before is positive. Come, Mollie, we are getting on in this deduction business. Some one mistook me for some one else, and that shows that it is not really me who is wanted. That's good. "Then, if that's the case, the sooner the mistake is discovered, and rectified, so much the better. I shall be released as soon as that queer man in the winding sheet discovers his error. "And he ought to do it soon, for he seemed very anxious to get me back, and doubtless he will soon come to find out why I--or the person I am supposed to be--went away." Then Mollie had another idea. She reasoned this out as she flashed the rays of the lamp about the bare apartment. "But why should I wait for that man to come back?" she asked herself. "There might be trouble when he discovers that I am not the person he thinks me. He may be angry. And, though doubtless Betty and the others will do all they can for me, I had better see if I can help myself. "Oh, isn't it all queer? The folks at home will never believe it when we tell them." Mollie went quickly over the different happenings of the night, and tried to figure out a reason for the various ghostly manifestations. That they were the work of some one endeavoring to depreciate the value of the property, she was certain. "That man may have hired some girl who looks like me to help him," she thought, "and she may have become afraid, or worried, and left. Then I have to blunder in here, and in the dark he takes her for me. I'm sure that's it." Then came a change of mood. "But what is the use of speculating and guessing about it?" Mollie mused. "I had much better see if there is a way out. Oh, joy! A window--two of them!" She approached the casements, realizing that as she was on the ground floor the sills could not be very high from earth. But though she saw that the catches on the frames were broken, and though she managed to raise one sash, it was with a jolt of disappointment that she saw the windows were heavily barred. "A regular prison!" gasped Mollie. "This must have been a most peculiar house--barred windows. No wonder people shun it. Ugh! It gives me the creeps." She flashed her lamp on the wooden sill, into which the iron rods were screwed. Then a wave of hope came into her heart. She saw rotting wood and rusting iron. She pushed on one bar. It gave slightly. "I can force them out, I'm sure!" she exclaimed aloud. "Oh, for something to use!" Her light shone around the room--on a pile of broken chairs. She ran and grasped the leg of one. It was heavy and solid. Mollie placed it between two of the bars, and pried. She was strong, and it did not take all of her muscle to force the ends of the rods from the rotting wood of the sill. A child might have done it. In a moment she had a space sufficiently wide to enable her to get out. And then she heard a sound out in the road. It was a carriage being driven rapidly. "Perhaps that man went for some vehicle in which to take me away!" thought the girl, aghast. "I had better not go out! What shall I do? My light! I must put it out, or he'll see me," and she turned the flame of the lantern down, leaving herself in darkness. CHAPTER XIX MYSTIFIED "What can I do for you? What seems to be the trouble?" inquired the man whom Betty and the others had hailed as they rushed to the door of the strange house, and peered out into the darkness. "We're in a haunted mansion, and the ghost has taken Mollie away!" cried Grace, hysterically. "Please make him give her up. Oh, please do!" But Betty paid no heed to her chum. Instead she exclaimed: "Mr. Blackford! It's Mr. Blackford--the man who lost the five hundred dollar bill!" "What!" cried Amy. "I certainly am that same Mr. Blackford," answered the young man, "and if these aren't the Outdoor Girls, I miss my guess!" "That's who we are--all but one of us," spoke Betty. "Oh, it's true. Some one has Mollie a prisoner here! We tried to open the door, but it's locked. Will you come and help us try to batter it down?" "I certainly will. But what are you doing here? Are you camping?" "Camping in a haunted house? I guess not!" exclaimed Grace. "The idea! Oh, but it's good to have--a man!" "Thank you!" laughed Mr. Blackford, who, it will be remembered, was so fortunate as to recover his lost money through the efforts of our heroines, as told in the first volume of this series. "You--you aren't afraid; are you?" asked Amy. "Afraid of what?" "The ghost!" "Ghost!" and he laughed heartily. "Well, there really have been some strange goings-on here," said Betty, standing in the doorway with her chums. She looked out at the weather. It was not raining much now, and the thunder and lightning had about ceased. "Suppose you explain," proposed Mr. Blackford. "I happened to be in this part of the country looking after some of my business interests. I was delayed longer at one place than I expected to be, and got caught in the storm. When I came past this house I thought I would see if I could not be accommodated over night, for my horse was tired and needed stabling. Instead I----" "You are appealed to to help lay a ghost and find a missing girl," broke in Betty. "But, oh, the last is most important! Please come and get Mollie out!" "Yes, I guess that is the most important. You can tell me about it later. But I surely was astonished to meet you girls again--glad of it, though. Now for the prisoner. Lead the way, Miss Nelson." Flashing her lantern, the other girls keeping at her side, and Cousin Jane bringing up in the rear, Betty advanced to the locked door. Mr. Blackford tried the knob, and then called: "Stand back, whoever is in there. I'm going to burst this door open!" Grace cried out. "Quiet!" commanded Betty. "It is the only way." Mr. Blackford placed his shoulder down near the lock. There was a cracking and splintering of wood, and the door suddenly flew open with a crash. "Mollie! Mollie!" cried Betty, as she flashed the rays of her lamp inside. But the room was empty! Mystified, the girls, their chaperone and Mr. Blackford, stared about it. No Mollie was there! "But I'm sure she was thrust into this room by that figure in white," declared Betty. "We all saw it." "Are you sure?" asked Mr. Blackford, slowly. "Positive. She was put in this room for some unknown purpose, and she can't have gotten out, for we have been in the hall all the while, and the door was locked." "There is the window," said Mr. Blackford, as he took the lantern from Betty. Walking over to the casement he uttered an exclamation, as he saw the bent bars. "This explains it!" he cried. "She has escaped!" "Or else the--the ghost--came in here and took her away," faltered Amy. "Well, we'll have a look about outside," suggested the young man. "There may be marks that will aid us, especially as the ground is soft now." They all went outside. The rain was but a mere drizzle now. The fury of the storm had passed, and the night was becoming calm. The old house, and the mansion beyond it, which could now be seen dimly back of a fringe of trees, was silent and seemingly deserted, even by the ghost. There were no more queer blue flames, no more hollow groans and clanking noises. "I didn't think to look and see if the other auto lamp was in that room where poor Mollie was," said Grace. "Did you?" "Yes," spoke Betty. "I looked. It was gone." "We had better not all go under that window at once," suggested Mr. Blackford, as they neared the casement with the bent bars. "Let me go alone, with the light, and I'll see if I can make out any footprints." Carefully he examined, and then he gave a joyful exclamation. "It's all right!" he cried. "There are the marks of but one person's shoes, and they are your friend's, I'm sure--for they are small. It plainly shows where she let herself down out of the window." "Oh, how glad I am!" cried Betty. "But where is she now? Can you tell which way she went?" "Only for a short distance," answered Mr. Blackford, as he flashed the rays of the lamp to and fro. "Then comes grass, and I am not sufficiently good on the trail to track a person over grass. However, we are sure of one thing--that she got out of the room herself, and ran off. She was not carried away." "That is everything," murmured Grace. "Oh, what a relief!" "But where can she be now?" asked Betty, in bewilderment. "Why did she not come back to us?" "Probably she thought you, too, had left the place," suggested Mr. Blackford. "We must make further search. But suppose you tell me all that happened. I am interested in this--ghost." The girls told all that had occurred--told it in gasps--by exclamations--by "fits and starts," as Betty expressed it. At first Mr. Blackford was amused--then he was more interested--finally he was impressed. "I don't like this," he said, when he had been informed of the failure of Mr. Lagg to dispose of the property because of the "ghostly" manifestations. "It looks to me as though some trick was being perpetrated here. Possibly something more than a trick. There may be crimes contemplated. The authorities should be notified. "Of course I don't believe in ghosts--neither do you--and, from what you say, it must have been a very human one who caught Miss Billette. But she is our most important consideration now. We must find her! We must search outside, for clearly she is not in the house, though it will do no harm to take another look." "Go back there!" cried Grace, aghast. "Why not?" asked Betty, coolly. "You forget we have a man with us now." "Certainly we'll go back there and look," spoke Mrs. Mackson, in business-like tones. "Though I don't believe Mollie would go back, unless it was to look for us. And how can she have gone in without us seeing her?" "There may be many entrances to an old, rambling place like this," said Mr. Blackford. "It will do no harm to look about in it again, and then we can search up and down the road." Rather gingerly the girls entered the old house again. The light was flashed in all the rooms downstairs, but the girls balked at going to the upper floors, though Mr. Blackford proposed it. "Mollie would not go up there," said Betty, positively. "Perhaps not," admitted Mr. Blackford. "I think we ought to go back to where we left the auto," said Mrs. Mackson. "That would be the most likely place for Mollie to go." "I agree with you!" exclaimed the young man, quickly. "We'll go to the stalled auto." As they were leaving the place there burst upon them a shrill, weird cry, like that of some animal, and it was followed by that deep groan that vibrated through the vacant rooms. "The ghost! The ghost!" cried Grace, clutching Mr. Blackford's arm. CHAPTER XX SEEKING THE GHOST They all stood still for a moment. The eerie noises gradually died away, and then they all became conscious of a strong smell of sulphur. "What is that?" asked Betty, in an awed whisper. She was more impressed than she had been. "Smells as if some one had lighted old-fashioned brimstone matches," answered Mr. Blackford. "And it isn't the lightning, now," spoke Amy, looking at Mrs. Mackson. "It's the--ghost." "A very material ghost, in my opinion," said the young man, who had so providentially come along. "I'm going to find out who it is." He started toward the passage that led to the mansion. "Don't you dare leave us here alone!" cried Betty, half tragically. Mr. Blackford looked at her a moment, and then added quietly: "Well, perhaps it will be better to postpone the investigation. And there is your missing friend. But I would like to know who has an object in doing this. I think Mr. Lagg would like to know, also." Once more the mysterious house was in silence, and with a last look around at the mildewed walls, the girls and Mrs. Mackson preceded Mr. Blackford out of it. "I'll get your secret yet!" exclaimed the young man, as he turned to look at the strange habitation. "Now, where did you leave the auto?" Fortunately, Betty had a good sense of direction and could lead the way, flashing her lamp at intervals. Mr. Blackford had proposed that some of the girls wait while he drove one of them to the stalled car in his carriage, it holding but two. But the girls refused to consider this, wishing to stay together. "And, too," said Betty, "we might miss poor Mollie on the way." "That is so," he had agreed. So they tramped along the muddy road, making the turn on to the main highway, and then, when Betty was about to remark that they must be near the car, Grace cried out. "Oh, what is it now?" demanded Betty, a trifle sharply, for her nerves were fast giving way under the strain, though the Little Captain had good nerves, ordinarily. "There's a light!" exclaimed Grace. "Yes; and it's at the auto!" added Amy. "Oh, girls----" "Perhaps it is Mollie," suggested Mrs. Mackson. "Call to her." "Mollie! Mollie!" Betty cried, shrilly, and the others joined in with a school call. "Oh, are you there?" came back the answering hail. "Oh, I am so glad." "That's Mollie!" said Betty, in great relief. "We are united again," and presently the girls were clasping the lost one in their arms, and, let the truth be told--weeping over her for very joy. "But of all things--to see you!" exclaimed Mollie, to Mr. Blackford, as she fastened her auto lamp on the bracket. "Yes, and I was surprised to find your friends. But how did you get here?" Mollie told how she had come to her senses, and had lighted the lamp she had with her. Then, when she was about to escape through the barred window she had heard the sound of a carriage approaching. "That was mine," said Mr. Blackford. "If I had known it I would not have been so frightened," remarked Mollie. "As it was, I put out my lamp, and then, when no one came for me, I decided to jump out. It was not far to the ground. Then I ran, and at first did not know what to do. Then I decided to try and find my auto. I must have blundered into the road, but I got here at last. I was going to hide in the car, and I wanted to leave some sort of a light on it so no one would run into it in the dark." "But didn't you hear us talking and calling?" asked Amy. "No," answered Mollie. "You see the room is some distance from the front of the house. And I was too frightened to know what I was doing. Besides, I fainted, at first, you know. And I thought you girls would run when--when you saw that white thing that grabbed me. I was disappointed when you were not at the auto here." "What was--what was it that grabbed you?" faltered Amy, in awed tones. "You needn't be so mysterious about it," laughed Mollie. She could laugh now--the strain was over. "It was a man who grabbed me, I'm certain of that. And a man I have seen before!" "Seen before!" cried Betty. "What do you mean? Who was he?" "I don't know. But what I do know is that he had a queer scar on the hand that grabbed me. And somewhere--I can't recall now, I'm in such a flutter--I've seen that man and his scar before." "Try to think," urged Mr. Blackford. "We must get at the bottom of this outrage, and if you can give us a clue it will help a lot." "I can't think now," protested Mollie, weakly. "Maybe it will come to me later. Oh, what a night! If only our auto would work we could get to--some place." "Suppose you let me have a look," suggested Mr. Blackford. "I know something of the mechanism of a car." "Oh, if you can only get this one to--mote!" sighed Mollie. Mr. Blackford proved that he did know considerable about a car, for he soon discovered that the trouble was a simple disarrangement of the ignition system. "There!" he exclaimed, when, by the light of a held-up lantern, he had made the necessary adjustment. "We will see if it won't go. Of course you can't use the self-starter, since your storage battery is out of order, but we can crank up in the old-fashioned way." "The car generates its own current when it is running," said Mollie. "But to-day I have been running on an extra battery, as something seemed to be the matter with the other one. T must have it looked to." Mr. Blackford whirled the crank, and at once there sounded the welcome throb of the powerful motor. "Oh, joy!" cried Betty. "Now we can go!" The auto was indeed in running order again. "What are your plans?" asked the young man. "We'll go on to Wendell City, the next town, and stop there for the night," said Mollie. "We are very damp and miserable, and need rest, and----" "Food!" said Grace. "That little lunch we had was not very substantial." "There were no chocolates for Grace," spoke Amy. "I think I will drive on to the next town also, since it has stopped raining," went on Mr. Blackford. "I will see you in the morning, and we'll talk over this business some more. I want to lay that ghost if we can. You'll get to the town ahead of me in your car." "And we'll see you at the Lafayette House," suggested Mollie. "We are going to stop there." Four weary and much exhausted girls, and a rather used-up chaperone, were soon enjoying the comforts of the hotel. They had 'phoned on ahead for rooms that morning, but the proprietor had about given them up. However, it was only eleven o'clock. "Wouldn't you think it was--next day?" asked Betty, as she noted the time. "A great deal happened in a short space," said Mrs. Mackson. "Oh, but it is good to be in a house again." "One that isn't haunted," added Grace. Morning, as Betty put it, "dawned clear and bright," and with it came refreshment to the Outdoor Girls. They almost forgot the terrors of the night, and when Mr. Blackford met them in the parlor, he having arrived about an hour after they did, he found a very different set of young ladies. "Well, are you ready for the ghost hunt?" he asked, with a smile. "I am!" declared Mollie. "I think that ought to be investigated. The authorities should be notified, not so much for what happened to me--to all of us--as because of what might happen to others. Then there's poor Mr. Lagg--he'll lose what money he put into that property if the value goes down because of the ghosts. I say let's try to discover the secret." "I'm with you!" exclaimed Betty, and Amy and Grace gave rather halting assents. Mrs. Mackson gamely agreed to do as the rest did. "I did hope I could go with you to-day," said Mr. Blackford, "but I have received a telegram that calls me away. I wonder if you could postpone it?" "Of course!" exclaimed Betty. "There is no great hurry, and besides, I think we will all be the better for a rest. Is your business prospering, Mr. Blackford?" "Yes, indeed, thanks to the way you girls helped me out by finding my five hundred dollar bill. But this is not business. I don't mind telling you that I am seeking for a long-lost relative--a sister--and I have engaged a firm of private detectives to look for her. They just sent me word that they are on the track of a person who may be the one I have been looking for so long. So, under the circumstances----" "Oh, of course, go by all means!" exclaimed Mollie. "We can meet you later, anywhere you say." "Then suppose we meet here, say a week from to-day, and try for the ghost secret. By that time I may have found my sister, or have suffered another disappointment--and there have been many of late," and he sighed. The week that followed was a busy one for the Outdoor Girls. Mollie had her car put in perfect order, and they toured over many miles of splendid country. They had minor happenings and adventures, but nothing of moment, if we except a few punctures and a blowout. Oh, yes, they did run over a dog, breaking the creature's leg. But it was the dog's fault, and Mollie steered out of the way so quickly that she nearly sent the auto into a tree. At the appointed time Mr. Blackford was at the hotel. "Well, are you ready to go ghost-hunting?" he asked. "We are!" cried Mollie, and once more they set off for the "haunted mansion," determined to discover its secret if at all possible. "I wonder what we'll find?" said Betty, as the car raced on. CHAPTER XXI THE MISSING GIRL "Who would ever think we could be frightened here?" asked Mollie. "Yes, it's quiet enough now," replied Betty. "Not a sign of a ghost." "Nor flashes of blue fire," added Grace. "Nor hollow groans," remarked Amy. The Outdoor Girls, with Mrs. Mackson and Mr. Blackford, had reached the so-called "haunted mansion." The day was a sunny one, perhaps that added to the lack of nervous fears they felt as they stopped the auto, and entered the place. This time they had gone to the mansion proper, having driven through what were once beautiful and extensive grounds. But they had long since fallen into a tangle of weeds and shrubbery. They had decided to explore the mansion itself first, and go from there to the annex, as it might be called--the former abode of the housekeeper and staff of servants the rich Mr. Kenyon once kept. During the week that had intervened, the keys of the place had been secured from Mr. Lagg. He was delighted that the girls had finally consented, through a chain of circumstances, to investigate the queer manifestations. "You'll do better than the boys, I'm sure," said the storekeeper. "Anyhow, they've gone camping. Now find out what that ghost is, and--get it out of there. I have received word from the doctors who want to use the place as a sanitarium, that if I cannot, within a week, deliver them the property with a guarantee that there will be no disturbances, they will take another place." "We will do all we can," promised Mollie. They entered the old mansion. Truly it had been a magnificent place in its day, and even now the hand of decay had touched it but lightly. With a few repairs, some decorating, a cutting down of the trees that were too thick about the place, it could be made into a most cheerful sanitarium. "And it's so big!" cried Grace, as she wandered about the spacious rooms. But she had hold of Amy's arm, it might be noticed, and both girls kept rather near to Mr. Blackford. He had come back unsuccessful in his search for his sister. "Yes, it must have been fine here when the place was new," agreed Mollie. "Well, let's go at this search systematically." "That is the only way," spoke Mr. Blackford. "We might start in at the top and work downward." They did this, ascending by means of the grand staircase to the second floor, and thence to the third and fourth. The latter contained but few rooms, mostly for storage, it seemed, and it was soon evident that no ghost--of the human kind at least--had been at work here. The dust and grime of years had accumulated in the apartments. The third floor offered no solution. This was rather larger in extent, and contained many guest-rooms. Some showed evidence of having been beautifully decorated, being paneled in tapestry that now hung in shabby strips--a relic of former beauty. It was not until the second floor was reached that anything like a promising clue was found. Meanwhile many queer nooks and corners had been explored. Mr. Kenyon had evidently built the house after his own eccentric ideas, for it contained strange rooms, connecting with one another by little, unexpected passages, short flights of stairs, and many winding ways. Some of the rooms might well have been secret ones, so strangely were they tucked away. But in two apartments on the second floor--two rooms that had evidently been choice guest chambers--the searchers came upon signs which indicated clearly that some one had been in them recently. There was less dust, and in one corner was a pile of bags and rags that seemed to indicate a bed. On the hearth--there were big fireplaces in each room--were ashes that had been hot not many days gone by. "Tramps!" exclaimed Mr. Blackford. "To my way of thinking tramps have been sleeping here." "Do you think the ghost was a tramp?" asked Mollie. "The one who caught me?" "He may have been." "But why was he all in white?" "Probably to keep up the illusion. We haven't gotten to the bottom of this yet. Let's keep on." But aside from the two rooms no others in the big mansion showed signs of habitation. All were gloomy and dust-encumbered. On the first floor nothing was discovered, and the cellar yielded no clues. "Well, all we have established so far," said Mr. Blackford, "is that someone has been sleeping here. Now let's keep on to the annex, and see if we can establish a connection. It may be that the secret is there." They found the passage that led from the mansion to the house in which so much had happened to them that stormy night. There was a room in the main house, whence the passage began, and this room, too, showed signs of having been used recently. And when they came to the place where the girls had dined so unexpectedly they saw unmistakable signs that other meals than the one they had helped themselves to had been eaten there. "Our friend, the ghost, has been here since," said Mr. Blackford. "Perhaps we shall have to set a trap for him." They walked on, their footsteps echoing and re-echoing through the silent old house. They were in the annex now, but a search there revealed nothing. The girls looked at one another, and then at Mr. Blackford. He shook his head. "I confess I am baffled," he said. "I did hope to find something. But we haven't come across it. If there was a systematic effort to give the impression that this mansion was haunted, there would have been some evidences of it. "I mean we would have some material evidence. There would have to be some way of producing that bluish light, that groaning sound and the clanking of metal. But, unless the apparatus is more cleverly hidden than I suspect, it isn't here." "Then the only thing to do is to give it up, and confess ourselves beaten," suggested Betty. "I don't like to do that," spoke Mollie. "Well, we can go over the place again," remarked Mr. Blackford slowly, "but I don't see----" He paused abruptly and seemed to be listening. The girls glanced at one another curiously. Then there sounded through the house a cry as of fear, and it was followed by a heavy fall that jarred the floor. Mr. Blackford sprang to the door, rushed down the hall, and a moment later cried: "Girls, come here!" "Have you--have you found the ghost?" asked Betty. "No, it's a girl, and she seems to have fainted." "A--a girl!" faltered Mollie. They all ran to where Mr. Blackford's voice sounded. It was in the very room where Mollie had been held a prisoner. And there, in the center of the apartment, supported in Mr. Blackford's arms, was a girl. At the sight of her Betty cried: "It is she! It is she! It is the girl who so strangely ran away from us. The one who fell out of the tree! Carrie Norton!" CHAPTER XXII A SWINDLED FARMER Surprise at Betty's exclamation held her companions silent for a moment, and then Mollie cried: "Are you sure, Betty? Are you sure? Can it be possible that we have found her again?" "Of course I'm sure!" declared Betty, as she advanced to assist Mr. Blackford in caring for the girl, who lay white and senseless in his arms. "You'll be sure, too, as soon as you take a good look at her. Isn't that hair evidence enough?" and she let some of the girl's luxurious tresses, that had come unbound, slip through her fingers. "And see her face--and there's the scar she got when she fell from the tree. Of course it's the same girl!" "I believe it is," murmured Grace. "But how came she here?" "Another one of the mysteries to be explained," said Amy. "But hadn't we better see first if we can revive her?" "An excellent idea," declared Mrs. Mackson. "If one of you will get some water, I'll use my smelling salts on her. And we must loosen her collar. It seems too tight." Mr. Blackford had turned over the care of the girl to the others. He hurried to a spring they had discovered in the yard of the old house, and presently handed in a tin of water. The strange girl opened her eyes, looked about in fear, and then, seeing herself surrounded by the friendly faces of our girls, on her own countenance there came a look of relief. "What--what happened?" she gasped. "Oh, I remember. I fainted. I heard someone in the house, and I thought it was--I thought he was coming for me. Oh, he isn't here; is he?" "We don't know who you mean," said Mollie, gently. "My--the man who calls himself my guardian, but who has used me very cruelly," she said. "I ran away from him, and then I learned that there might be a way to escape him forever. I came back to get certain papers--but I heard noises in the old house, and----" "I guess we made the noises," said Betty, with a smile. "We were looking for a--ghost!" "A ghost!" cried the strange girl, starting up. "There! I am sorry I said that!" exclaimed Betty, who thought, too late, of the effect it might have on the overwrought nerves of the stranger. "But really there isn't any ghost, you know." The girl smiled weakly. "Take some more water," urged Mrs. Mackson. "And smell these ammonia salts." "I'll go get some of that cold chocolate in the vacuum bottle," volunteered Grace. "No, please," said the girl. "I shall be all right presently. I can go on. I didn't find the papers I wanted. I was sure he had hidden them here." "We hope you won't go until you have told us a little something about yourself," said Betty, with an inviting smile. "We don't want to pry into your private affairs," she went on, "but we would like to help you. And please don't disappear so mysteriously again. You are the girl who fell out of the branches of a tree; aren't you?" "Yes," and she smiled faintly, "I am Carrie Norton. I knew you as soon as I saw you all again. Oh, please don't think harshly of me, but I have been so worried I did not know what I was doing. I have always regretted repaying your kindness so shabbily, but really----" "Now don't worry a bit about that!" broke in Mollie. "Just rest yourself, and when you feel able, tell us all you wish to, and we'll do all we can for you. Do you feel better?" "Oh, yes, much. I am not given to fainting. It was just fright that made me call out when I heard the noise you made, and then I went over--all got black before me. Oh, I am feeling stronger every minute." She proved it by getting up, and the girls helped her arrange her dress, dusting it for her, and aiding her in coiling up her heavy hair. "What lovely braids you have," observed Grace. "Do you think so? They have made trouble enough for me." "I suppose so much hair must be inconvenient in warm weather, but most of us would be willing to put up with it," spoke Amy. "I didn't mean it that way. I will tell you soon. But I ought to be going." "Then come with us," invited Betty. "We have plenty of room in the car, and we can take you to your friends, to a hotel, or anywhere you like to." "And we can take you to our homes," added Mollie. "We have not far to go, and, as we are only touring for pleasure, we have no schedule to upset. Come with us. We have finished our ghost hunt." "Then let us get away from here before my guardian happens to come back," suggested the girl. "I will explain all I can to you, though it is rather complicated." "Would you mind explaining first," asked Betty with a smile, "why you were up that tree? We have all puzzled over that so much." "I went up there to hide from my guardian, or the man who calls himself such," said the girl. "I suppose it seems strange, but really that was the only thing I could think of. And it was not hard to get up, for the branches were low. You see I had just run away from him, from this very house, when he brought me here, and said that it was to be our home." "This place your home!" exclaimed Mollie. "Why I thought Mr. Lagg had bought it." "I don't know Mr. Lagg," said the strange girl, with a shake of her head. "But I'll explain in sections, as it were. My name is Carrie Norton, and my guardian is Samuel Clark. At least, that is his right name. He goes by several, according to the nature of the business he is in." "He must be a queer sort of man to change his name," suggested Mr. Blackford, who had rejoined the girls. "He is queer," agreed Carrie Norton, "and not altogether honest, I fear. To be brief, when my parents died, several years ago, he assumed charge of me. He had been associated with my father in business, and he said the will provided that he was to be my guardian. I was too grief-stricken to question that, but I was shocked when, instead of having a comfortable fortune, as I supposed, there was little or nothing, and Mr. Clark said I must go about the country with him, helping him sell goods. He was a sort of commercial traveler, dealing in different things at different times." "Yes," said the girls. "Finally we came to this section, and one day he came to this house. He said he owned it, and that we were to live here. I saw that it was deserted, and I made up my mind I would not stay. The very next day, when he was making preparations to remain over night, I ran away. Oh, I was so lonely. I did not care what became of me. Then I thought I saw him coming down the road after me, and I went up in the tree. "Perhaps I was foolish, but I scarcely knew what I was doing. I guess I must have fallen asleep, for I was in a comfortable position, and I had lost much rest of late. Then I heard an auto horn--I thought all sorts of things--I awoke with a start, and fell out." "Then our auto did not strike you?" asked Mollie. "No, I was just stunned by the fall. When I woke up, and found myself in that farm house bedroom, I did not know what to think. One idea possessed me, that I must get away--that I would not go back to him--my guardian. So I slipped away, and I have been wandering about ever since. I managed to get enough office work to help support me, for I am a business college graduate and I had a little money of my own with me. Sometimes I stopped at hotels, and again at boarding houses. My one idea was to keep away from that man." "And you dropped part of a letter; did you not?" asked Grace. "The day you ran from the farm house." "Yes," Carrie admitted. "I had written one I intended leaving for--for that man. Then I decided not to and I tore it up just before I got out of the window. I suppose I must have dropped a piece. It was a letter saying I would never come back to Shadow Valley." "How did you happen to come back here?" asked Mollie. "We were certainly puzzled at your sudden departure." "A little while ago," resumed Carrie, "I read something in a paper referring to my case. It was a legal notice asking for news of my whereabouts, and saying I would hear of something to my advantage by calling on certain lawyers with papers to prove my identity. At first I feared this was a trap on the part of my guardian, but I inquired and learned that the law firm was a reputable one. There is a Mr. Allen Washburn connected with it." "In Deepdale?" cried Betty, her cheeks flaming. "Yes. But how did you know?" asked Carrie. "Oh, I am--slightly acquainted with Mr. Washburn," said Betty, hesitatingly. "Slightly--is good," murmured Grace. "So I decided I would go see those lawyers," went on Carrie. "But first I wanted the papers. My guardian had them, but I recalled that the day we came here he placed them on the mantle in this room. I came back to get them, but they were gone, and then I heard a noise--I fainted--and, well, here I am, and you are here too, I see." "It is quite a mystery," said Betty. "Now, I have this to propose. You come home, with us, and we will take you to Mr. Washburn, or have him come to see you. Perhaps he can dispense with the papers." "Oh, I hope so!" Carrie cried. "If only I could have a new guardian, I might be happy." "Well, let's start on the road to happiness," said Mr. Blackford, with a smile. "We haven't found the ghost, but perhaps it is just as well." "Did you ever see any queer manifestations while you were here?" asked Mollie of the girl. "I was here only part of one day," she said. "I am glad it was not dark--I should have been afraid. Oh, it must have been terrible for you to have been caught by--by that man!" she said to Mollie. "Who could he have been?" "I am just wondering if it could have been your guardian," said Mollie, a strange look on her face. "He said something about me having 'come back.' Girls, I'm sure that was it!" she cried. "He took me for Carrie, with my long hair----" "We are coming on!" cried Mr. Blackford. "We will soon have this mystery solved." "What sort of a looking man was the one who caught you?" asked Carrie. "I could not see--he had on long white garments." "Well, let us get under way. The lawyers will be the best ones to settle this affair," resumed Mr. Blackford, as he started for the waiting auto. They left the strange mansion behind. Whether it was "haunted" or not they had failed to establish. But they had gotten on the trail of another mystery. It was while autoing toward the town of Franklin, on their way to Deepdale, that the girls saw on the road a farmer standing beside a carriage with a broken axle. The man was ruefully contemplating the damage. "Can we help you any?" asked Mollie, as she stopped her car. Mollie was always glad to help people. "Wa'al," said the man slowly, "if you had a new axle it would be a help. But I know you haven't. What riles me most though, is that the rascal will get away from me." "Are you after some one?" asked Mr. Blackford, catching at the man's words. "Yes, I am; after as slick a swindler as has been around these parts in a long time. He done me out of a bunch of money not long ago, and only a little while ago I got word that the same man is peddling stuff in Franklin. I hitched up, as soon as I could, intending to go to Franklin and have him arrested. But this pesky axle had to break, and now I can't go on. It's the only rig I have, too. I heard that the fellow intends to go out on the noon train. Then I may never hear of him again." "Can't you telephone?" asked Mr. Blackford. "There's no 'phones around here, and if I did it would be hard work to hold him. There'd have to be a warrant, and I'd have to swear to a complaint. My mere word over the wire wouldn't be enough, I'm afraid. And it's near noon now. I don't know what to do." Ruefully he gazed at his disabled carriage. "I have it!" cried Mollie. "Come in the auto with us. We have room for one more, with a little crowding. We can get you there before noon, and perhaps you can have the man arrested." "Good!" cried the swindled farmer. "I'll do it!" CHAPTER XXIII "THAT'S THE MAN!" "What will you do with your horse and carriage?" asked Mr. Blackford, when the girls had made different seating arrangements to accommodate Mr. Bailey, the farmer. "It won't do to leave it on the road; will it?" "No, I'll have to fix that some way. We can't very well take it along with us. But here comes Jim Bates. He'll look after my nag for me. Hi, Jim!" he called as a man came driving past in a dilapidated wagon, drawn by a bony horse, "Jim, jest look after my outfit; will you? Maybe you can leave it in Pierce's barn until I come back. That isn't far. Pierce is away, but his wife will let you, I guess." "Where you goin'?" asked Jim. His horse had stopped of its own accord, it seemed. "Goin' in to Franklin." "In that there machine?" "Yep." "Gittin' sort of stylish; ain't ye?" "Mebbe. But I had an accident, and these young ladies was kind enough to offer me a lift." "In a hurry?" "I sure am. I'm after that swindler. Heard he was in Franklin." "Git out! Feller that sold you the interest in that patent soap?" "Yep. That's how I was swindled," he explained to our friends. "This faker come along with a wonderful soap. It would take the spots out of everything--even the sun, he said. It did do good work when he manipulated it. Well, I was foolish enough to give up some of my hard-earned savings for the secret of how to make the soap. I bought the stuff he told me, but the soap was a failure. He swindled me. Now I'm after him." "I hope you catch him," said Jim. "Go along in the buzz-wagon. I'll look after your rig until you git back. Good-luck!" They started off, the farmer going into details of how he had been swindled. He was very thankful for the unexpected "lift" given him, and declared that he would not have known what to do had not the auto come along. "We are only too glad to help you," said Mollie. [Illustration: "'THERE HE IS!' CRIED THE FARMER, 'THAT'S THE MAN WHO SWINDLED ME!'" _The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car._ _Page 197._] "We seem to be in the assisting business," remarked Betty, who sat beside Mollie. "We're helping two birds with one auto." "You mean Carrie?" "Yes." "Poor girl! I do hope we can help her, and get someone to look after her so she won't worry. Mr. Washburn will know what to do." "Yes, Allen is getting to be quite a lawyer," admitted Betty, with a blush. They swung into Franklin. "Where do you think would be a good place to look for your man?" asked Mr. Blackford of the farmer. "I heard he was selling tooth powder in the public square. He has a stand, or something." "Then suppose you head for there," suggested Mr. Blackford to Mollie. She nodded. They saw a crowd of people in the square in front of the court house. In their midst stood a man on a raised platform--a platform gay with flags. His strident voice could be heard extoling the merits of his wares. The auto came nearer. The vendor's face could be plainly seen. "There he is!" cried the farmer. "That's the man who swindled me!" He stood up in the machine. Those in the crowd gazed wonderingly at him. A gasp from Carrie caused Grace to look at her. The girl's face was white. "What is it?" asked Grace in alarm. "That man--he--he is my guardian!" cried Carrie. "Oh, don't let him see me!" and she cowered behind Amy and Grace. CHAPTER XXIV THE FAKER CAUGHT Several things happened at about the same time, and so quickly that the girls confessed afterward that they were fairly dizzy. Consequently they were not altogether sure of the sequence of events themselves. But as that does not so much matter as does the ultimate effect, I will set down the various happenings in such order as will best indicate to the reader the proceedings. Naturally the attention of Mr. Blackford, and the girls, was first drawn to Mr. Bailey, the farmer, who was shaking his fist at the man selling tooth powder on the platform. His announcement that this was the man he sought was sufficiently dramatic. Then came Carrie's startled cry. Betty and Mollie turned around to look at her. "Are you sure he is the man who called himself your guardian?" asked Mollie. "Don't make any mistake." "I am not making a mistake," murmured Carrie, still holding herself behind Amy and Grace. "He is that horrid man! Oh, don't let him see me!" "What, have you a case ag'in him, too?" asked Mr. Bailey. "She thinks so," explained Mr. Blackford. "We've got to act quickly here. Go up a little closer, Mollie." A lane was opened for the auto, amid the crowd. The faker stopped in the midst of the "patter" concerning his wonderful powder, which "would make the teeth like unto the milky pearls of the Orient." The man on the platform turned pale, and then a sort of sickly green color spread over his face. He had caught sight of the farmer standing in the auto. Perhaps he also had had a glimpse of Carrie Norton. At any rate he said: "And now, my dear people, I must leave you. This is the last chance you will have to purchase Tuckerman's Tooth Tester at this price. I thank you one and all for your attention, and for your patronage. I must leave at once. I have been summoned by telegraph to attend a conference of the International Dental Society, who wish to purchase the secret of my wonderful invention. I will bid you good-day," and he started to descend from his platform. "No, you don't!" cried Mr. Bailey. "No, you don't get away like that! The dental society kin wait until you pay me back the money you swindled out of me on that soap deal! Hold him, somebody, until I kin swear out a warrant. I've caught you, old fellow!" The faker kept his nerve. He came down from the platform carrying his valise. The crowd was around him. "Good people, let me pass!" he cried, authoritatively. Mr. Blackford sensed the danger. The man might get away after all. "Here!" he called to a constable in the crowd. "That man is a swindler! He should be arrested." "I haven't any warrant," answered the officer, weakly. "You will have one in five minutes!" said Mr. Blackford. "I tell you to hold that man. Mr. Bailey, get to the nearest justice of the peace as soon as you can. Swear out a warrant and have it brought here. Officer, arrest that man!" There was something more than disinterested authority in Mr. Blackford's tone. The constable worked his way through the crowd. "Good people, let me pass! Let me pass!" the faker was saying. "I have to catch a train!" "Not much you won't! If I have to hold you myself!" muttered Mr. Bailey, angrily. "You get to that justice as fast as you can," directed Mr. Blackford. "We'll hold this man, if we have to chloroform him!" The farmer jumped from the auto, and hurried off, a dozen hands pointing out the office he desired in the court house. The constable reached the tooth powder vendor. "You're under arrest!" the officer said, laying a hand on the man's arm. "Don't you touch me! Under arrest? On what charge?" He shook himself loose, and stroked his beard nervously, also his luxurious hair, but this time it was black, instead of white--dyed obviously. "On the charge--on the charge," began the constable nervously. "You're arrested on a charge that's soon to be here. Now don't make any fuss, but come along with me." "I decline to go with you unless I know what I am charged with!" shouted the faker. "You let me go, or it will be the worse for you!" Mollie arose in her place at the steering wheel. "He's arrested on the charge of assault and battery!" she called in her fresh, strong voice. "I make the charge, Girls!" she exclaimed, turning to the others, "that's the man who thrust me into that room, and locked me there. That's the ghost. I recognize him by the scar on his thumb!" The crowd was in an uproar as the constable caught hold of the man, and quickly snapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. Then as the girls in the auto stood up, the better to see, Carrie was revealed. The faker, closely held by the constable who had arrested him, and by a brother officer who had hurried up, gave the strange girl one look. Then those who were near him heard him mutter: "I guess the game is up!" CHAPTER XXV EXPLANATIONS Betty furnished the next sensation. As the man in charge of the officers passed near the auto, poor Carrie cowering away from him, though he no longer had it in his power to harm her, the Little Captain exclaimed: "Girls! Girls! He's the old hair doctor--the man we met with the gay wagon--Bennington's Restorer!" "Who is?" demanded Amy. "That man--the one they have arrested. He's the one we gave the bolt to." "Ha! That settles it!" cried Mollie. "That was where I first saw the scarred thumb! It's all working out now! I didn't remember at first. His hair is black instead of white." "Dye," murmured Grace. "It is he all right!" The farmer came hurrying through the crowd with the justice to whom he had gone to make a complaint. Above his head he waved a paper, crying: "I got it! I have the warrant. Now Mr. Faker, which ought to be your name, you'll spend the rest of the summer behind the bars, on this charge." "Yes, and with another added to it, perhaps," said Mr. Blackford, with a glance at Carrie. The faker, which it is easier to call him, as he went by many names, shrugged his shoulders philosophically. He saw that he was caught. Perhaps he had been in the toils of the law before this. He was quickly taken to the court house, where he was held on the farmer's charge under such heavy bail that it was not produced. This insured him being retained in custody. "And now to attend to your case, Miss Norton," said Mr. Blackford, when Allen Washburn had been telegraphed for, and promised to come. "So he was your guardian; eh?" "Yes, and since the girls recognize him for what he was part of the time--a seller of hair tonic--I will explain a little further. He made me pose in his cart, before the crowds, as one whose hair had been restored and made long by his worthless stuff. Oh, it was shameful! That is why I ran away from him!" "I don't blame you," said Mollie. "And did his stuff do your hair any good?" "I never used a drop of it! Neither did he. It was trash! He used to make me shake down my hair before the crowd, and then he would tell how I used to have none at all, but by using his medicine it came. I always had nice hair, before I ever met him! Oh, I can't forget it!" and she sobbed a little. "Never mind," said Betty, gently, "it is all over now." And it was, as far as any further charge the faker had over Carrie Norton. Allen Washburn came on with the papers in the case. It seems that a distant relative of the girl, learned in a round about way that Clark, or Bennington, to use but two of his names, had forged certain documents in order to make it appear that he was her legal guardian. This gave him control of Carrie, and her money, a tidy sum left by her father. The girl he compelled to accompany him on his vending trips, but when he went into the making of worthless hair restorer and obliged her to pose as having benefited by it, she finally rebelled. This distant relative, wishing to aid the girl, took the matter up with a law firm, happening to hit on the one where Allen Washburn was employed. The newspaper advertisement was inserted, and at last had its effect. The facts in the case were presented to the court after the faker's arrest, and the judge lost no time in deposing him as Carrie's guardian. He was obliged to give up the money he had wrongfully retained, and Allen Washburn was, much to Carrie's delight, appointed to look after her affairs. "You'll be all right now, my dear," said Mollie, when the court action was over. "She will be, if Betty doesn't get jealous!" said Grace, with a laugh. "Oh, I didn't mean anything!" she added quickly, as she saw her chum frown. "Have a chocolate!" Bennington, or Clark--the faker, to be brief--was thus held by the law. In view of the other charges against him, Mollie did not press hers. "It would only bring you into unpleasant notoriety," said Mr. Washburn. "He will get a severe enough penalty as it is." "He must have mistaken you for me," said Carrie, as they talked over the thrusting of Mollie into the room. "Seeing you in the house whence I had fled, and with your hair hanging down, he made a natural mistake, thinking I had come back to him." "Except that my hair is nothing like as lovely as yours, my dear." "Oh, yours is fine, I think. But the dim light might have deceived him." "But why should he dress up all in white--like a ghost?" asked Grace. "Probably to play that part," suggested Betty. "That is one point we haven't solved--how the ghostly manifestations were brought about. I wish we could have solved that for the sake of Mr. Lagg." "I fancy it is solved," said Mr. Blackford, with a smile. "It was the faker, all the while." "It was?" cried Mollie. "Did he do it on purpose?" "No, he had no intention of being a spook, but he could not have done it better had he planned it. I have been talking to him," and Mr. Blackford nodded in the direction of the court house. "He made a clean breast of everything when Allen hinted that it might have a good effect when he came to be sentenced. "It seems that he manufactured his hair-tonic in the haunted mansion. It was necessary to heat it in a sort of furnace, and this made the groaning sound you heard, it was caused by air pressure. Sometimes it groaned and again it shrieked as the hot air rushed from the ventilator." "And the clank of the metal?" asked Grace, not without a look over her shoulder, though it was broad daylight. "That was when he stirred the stuff in the brass mixing kettle." "What about the queer blue light, and the smell of sulphur?" asked Cousin Jane. "That was the burning of sulphur which he used in the preparation. Sulphur is often used in hair-tonics I believe, though I don't know that this man used it to any advantage. At any rate he burned it, making the ghostly flashes of blue fire, and the smell. The flashes were reflected from the room where he worked into the smaller house, by the big window panes." "But why did he dress like a ghost?" asked Mollie. "That was a big white garment he put on to avoid soiling his clothes when he made his hair-tonic mixture. And he really did mistake you for Carrie, Mollie. He admitted as much, and asked to be forgiven. It was his lunch you ate. He had prepared for a long stay in the house." "Well, I guess we won't bother to pay for it," said Betty. "He's made trouble enough. Then the mansion isn't haunted, after all?" "No, and never was. It was simply the making of his hair-tonic there nights that produced the effect. He says he never even knew that the doctors who were to buy the place were frightened away, and the night you girls stopped there he thought you had, as was the case, taken refuge from the storm. He did not know he had frightened you, but when he saw Mollie he made a rush for her, thinking she was his ward, come back. He locked her up, intending to come for her later, when he had taken off the furnace some of his boiling mixture." "Then Mr. Lagg can sell his property after all!" exclaimed Grace. "I'm so glad!" And so was the poetical store keeper himself, when he heard the news. He composed an eight-line verse on the subject, and insisted on rewarding the girls, saying it was due to their efforts that the "ghost was laid." He received a substantial sum for the old mansion, which was turned into a sanitarium. "And, now that all the explanations are explained," said Mollie a day or so later, "we may as well resume our tour. What do you say, girls?" "Fine!" cried Betty. "And we'll take Carrie with us. She needs a change, and traveling around will benefit her." "Though I traveled considerable after I ran away from that horrid man," said the girl, with a smile at her new friends. "There is one regret," spoke Grace, "and that is that Mr. Blackford didn't find his missing sister." "I had some hopes that you might prove to be she," he said, looking at Carrie. "However, I have not yet given up the prospect of finding her. I am going to seek farther." "Let's go for a long ride, anyhow, and then we can plan what to do for the rest of the summer," suggested Mollie, and the girls went off in the car. And what occurred further to the chums may be learned by reading the next volume of this series, to be entitled "The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp; Or, Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats." "And so there is no haunted mansion after all," remarked Betty, as they rode on. "Are you sorry?" asked Grace. "I'm not." "Well, a haunt is so--romantic," spoke Betty. "But I suppose it is just as well." Eventually the false guardian was sent to prison for a long term, on several charges. Mr. Bailey was not the only farmer he had swindled, it appeared. The fellow had unexpectedly come to the old mansion, and had boldly decided to use it for his purposes, learning that the title was in dispute. It just suited his needs, and the hair-tonic was not the only nostrum he made there after Carrie ran away. But the tonic was alone responsible for the queer sounds and manifestations. On leaving the mansion to go about peddling his wares, the man would take his apparatus with him in the wagon, so there were few signs of his occupancy. Mr. Blackford bade the girls farewell a few days after the explanations had been made, saying he was going to look up a new clue regarding his sister. Carrie Norton was made welcome at the home of Betty, though she often stayed for weeks at a time with the other chums. She had income enough to support her now that her fortune was restored to her. The girls completed their tour, having many good times which the boys and the twins shared, the latter never forgetting to ask, semi-occasionally: "Has oo dot any tandy?" And now that the Outdoor Girls have a prospect of "living happily ever after," we will take leave of them. THE END. _This Isn't All!_ Would you like to know what became of the good friends you have made in this book? Would you like to read other stories continuing their adventures and experiences, or other books quite as entertaining by the same author? On the _reverse side_ of the wrapper which comes with this book, you will find a wonderful list of stories which you can buy at the same store where you got this book. _Don't throw away the Wrapper_ _Use it as a handy catalog of the books you want some day to have. But in case you do mislay it, write to the Publishers for a complete catalog._ THE OUTDOOR GIRLS SERIES By LAURA LEE HOPE Author of the "Bobbsey Twins," "Bunny Brown" Series, Etc. * * * * * =Uniform Style of Binding. Individual Colored Wrappers. Every Volume Complete in Itself.= * * * * * These are the tales of the various adventures participated in by a group of bright, fun-loving, up-to-date girls who have a common bond in their fondness for outdoor life, camping, travel and adventure. They are clean and wholesome and free from sensationalism. THE OUTDOOR GIRLS OF DEEPDALE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT RAINBOW LAKE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A MOTOR CAR THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A WINTER CAMP THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN FLORIDA THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT OCEAN VIEW THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN ARMY SERVICE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON PINE ISLAND THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT THE HOSTESS HOUSE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT BLUFF POINT THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT WILD ROSE LODGE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN THE SADDLE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AROUND THE CAMPFIRE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON CAPE COD THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT FOAMING FALLS THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ALONG THE COAST THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT SPRING HILL FARM THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT NEW MOON RANCH THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON A HIKE * * * * * GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK THE BLYTHE GIRLS BOOKS By LAURA LEE HOPE * * * * * =Individual Colored Wrappers and Text Illustrations by= =THELMA GOOCH= =Every Volume Complete in Itself= * * * * * The Blythe girls, three in number, were left alone in New York City. Helen, who went in for art and music, kept the little flat uptown, while Margy, just out of a business school, obtained a position as a private secretary and Rose, plain-spoken and business-like, took what she called a "job" in a department store. =THE BLYTHE GIRLS: HELEN, MARGY AND ROSE= A fascinating tale of real happenings in the great metropolis. =THE BLYTHE GIRLS: MARGY'S QUEER INHERITANCE= The Girls had a peculiar old aunt and when she died she left an unusual inheritance. =THE BLYTHE GIRLS: ROSE'S GREAT PROBLEM= Rose, still at work in the big department store, is one day faced with the greatest problem of her life. =THE BLYTHE GIRLS: HELEN'S STRANGE BOARDER= Helen goes to the assistance of a strange girl, whose real identity is a puzzle. Who the girl really was comes as a tremendous surprise. =THE BLYTHE GIRLS: THREE ON A VACATION= The girls go to the country for two weeks--and fall in with all sorts of curious and exciting happenings. =THE BLYTHE GIRLS: MARGY'S SECRET MISSION= Of course we cannot divulge the big secret, but nevertheless the girls as usual have many exciting experiences. =THE BLYTHE GIRLS: ROSE'S ODD DISCOVERY= A very interesting story, telling how Rose aided an old man in the almost hopeless search for his daughter. =THE BLYTHE GIRLS: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF HELEN= Helen calls on the art dealer on business and finds the old fellow has made a wonderful discovery. =THE BLYTHE GIRLS: SNOWBOUND IN CAMP= An absorbing tale of winter happenings, full of excitement. * * * * * GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK CAROLYN WELLS BOOKS * * * * * =Attractively Bound. Illustrated. Colored Wrappers.= * * * * * THE MARJORIE BOOKS Marjorie is a happy little girl of twelve, up to mischief, but full of goodness and sincerity. In her and her friends every girl reader will see much of her own love of fun, play and adventure. MARJORIE'S VACATION MARJORIE'S BUSY DAYS MARJORIE'S NEW FRIEND MARJORIE IN COMMAND MARJORIE'S MAYTIME MARJORIE AT SEACOTE * * * * * THE TWO LITTLE WOMEN SERIES Introducing Dorinda Fayre--a pretty blonde, sweet, serious, timid and a little slow, and Dorothy Rose--a sparkling brunette, quick, elf-like, high tempered, full of mischief and always getting into scrapes. TWO LITTLE WOMEN TWO LITTLE WOMEN AND TREASURE HOUSE TWO LITTLE WOMEN ON A HOLIDAY * * * * * THE DICK AND DOLLY BOOKS Dick and Dolly are brother and sister, and their games, their pranks, their joys and sorrows, are told in a manner which makes the stories "really true" to young readers. DICK AND DOLLY DICK AND DOLLY'S ADVENTURES * * * * * GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Title page, extraneous word "in" removed. (Twins in the Country) Table of Contents, "65" changed to "68". Table of Contents, "Track" changed to "Trace". (Trace of the Girl) Table of Contents, "Fakir" changed to "Faker". (The Faker Caught) Page 11, "criuse" changed to "cruise". (on a cruise in) Page 19, "grammer" changed to "grammar". (grammar school) Page 19, "floppish" changed to "foppish". (rather foppish lad) Page 19, "Deedpale" changed to "Deepdale". (Dear Deepdale) Page 26, "unconscions" changed to "unconcious". (make her unconscious) Pages 27, 28, 30, "bed room" changed to "bedroom". Page 30, "pyhsician" changed to "physician". (the physician pushed) Page 32, "outisde" changed to "outside". (must look outside) Page 46, "follow" changed to "fellow". (little fellow had) Page 68, "VII" changed to "VIII". (CHAPTER VIII) Page 72, "others" changed to "other". (while other nights) Page 76, "spot" changed to "spots". (muddy in spots) Page 113, "carbureter" changed to "carburetor". (the carburetor slightly) Page 140, "umistakable" changed to "unmistakable". (the unmistakable sound) Page 134, "thurogh" changed to "through". (went through various) Page 135, "releaved" changed "revealed". (was revealed) Page 154, "suddently" changed to "suddenly". (so suddenly that) Page 178, "unsucessful" changed to "unsuccessful". (back unsuccessful in) Page 195, "by" changed to "my". (after my outfit) Page 197, "bush" changed to "blush". (with a blush) Page 197, "The" change to "They". (They swung into) Page 201, extraneous "The" removed. (The crowd was) Page 209, "colthes" changed to "clothes". (his clothes when) Page 210, "an" changed to "on". (composed an eight-line) 
25811	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 25811-h.htm or 25811-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/5/8/1/25811/25811-h/25811-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/5/8/1/25811/25811-h.zip) THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS IN THE BERKSHIRES Or The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail by LAURA DENT CRANE Author of The Automobile Girls at Newport, The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson, Etc., Etc. Illustrated [Illustration: The Splash Descended on Unsuspecting Bab. _Frontispiece._] Philadelphia Henry Altemus Company Copyright, 1910, by Howard E. Altemus CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Reunion 7 II. New Light on Old Papers 20 III. Happiness, and Another Scheme 28 IV. In the Heart of the Berkshires 45 V. A Day in the Woods 58 VI. "The Great White Also" 66 VII. Mollie Follows the Trail 76 VIII. End of the Search 90 IX. Spirit of the Forest 95 X. A Knock at the Door 107 XI. The Coon Hunt 120 XII. The Wounded Bird 128 XIII. The Wigwam 135 XIV. Give Way to Miss Sallie! 144 XV. Society in Lenox 152 XVI. At the Ambassador's 166 XVII. A Visit to Eunice 181 XVIII. Plans for the Society Circus 190 XIX. The Old Gray Goose 198 XX. Barbara and Beauty 206 XXI. Eunice and Mr. Winthrop Latham 215 XXII. The Automobile Wins 230 XXIII. The Recognition 240 XXIV. What to Do with Eunice 251 The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires CHAPTER I THE REUNION "Mollie Thurston, we are lost!" cried Barbara dramatically. The two sisters were in the depth of a New Jersey woods one afternoon in early September. "Well, what if we are!" laughed Mollie, leaning over to add a cluster of wild asters to her great bunch of golden rod. "We have two hours ahead of us. Surely such clever woodsmen as we are can find our way out of woods which are but a few miles from home. Suppose we should explore a real forest some day. Wouldn't it be too heavenly! Come on, lazy Barbara! We shall reach a clearing in a few moments." "You lack sympathy, Miss Mollie Thurston; that's your trouble." Barbara was laughing, yet she anxiously scanned the marshy ground as she picked her way along. "I wouldn't mind being lost in these woods a bit more than you do, if I were not so horribly afraid of snakes. Oh, my! this place looks full of 'em." "They are not poisonous, Bab, or I might be more sympathetic," said Mollie reassuringly. "The snakes in these woods are harmless. How can a girl as brave as you are be such a goose about a poor, wriggly little 'sarpint,' that couldn't harm you if it tried." "O-o-o!" shivered Bab. "One's own pet fear has nothing to do with sense or nonsense. Kindly remember your own feelings toward the timid mouse! Just the same, I should like to play 'Maid Marian' for a while and dwell in the heart of a woodland glen. If ever I have a chance to go on a camping trip, I shall get rid of my fear of snakes, somehow." "Bab," said Mollie, after a moment's pause, "hasn't it been dreadfully dull since Ruth and her father went away? Do you think they will ever come back? I can hardly believe it has been only three weeks since they left Kingsbridge, and only six weeks since we came back from Newport. Anyhow I am glad Grace Carter is home again from her visit to her brother." "Cheer up, Mollie, do!" encouraged Bab. "Ruth has promised to pay us a visit before she goes home to Chicago, and she is a girl of her word, as you and I well know. I am expecting a letter from her every day." "Well," Mollie ejaculated in heart-felt tones, "I know I am nearly dead to see her. Grace and I were talking of it only yesterday." "Mollie, I don't want to be a croaker," began Bab, after a little hesitation, "but have you noticed that mother seems worried about something? When I was talking yesterday about how crazy I was to go to Vassar some day, mother looked as though she wanted to cry. I stopped there and then. She has seemed so gay and cheerful until recently. I wonder whether she is worried about money." Mollie nodded her head and frowned. "Now you speak of it, Bab, I believe I have noticed that she seems depressed at times. I think she is tired out and needs a complete change. She had a long letter from Cousin Betty in St. Paul yesterday, asking her to make a visit. I think mother should accept. You and I are certainly big enough to look after ourselves until school commences. Let's beg her to go." "All right, Mollie, we will," said her older sister, "but if the family funds are even lower than usual, where is the money to come from for such an expensive trip? Just the same, I shall question mother, and find out what's the matter." Bab was walking on bravely, trying to forget her horror of snakes. "I am sure," she thought, "that I can feel my feet trembling inside my boots; I am so afraid of stepping on one of the wretched little pests." It had rained the day before, and the ground under the thick tangle of trees and underbrush being unusually marshy, the girls had to pick their way carefully. Mollie walked ahead while they were talking. Barbara jumping from the twisted root of one tree to another half a yard away, felt something writhe and wriggle under her foot. Without stopping to look down, she shrieked--"A snake! a snake!"--and ran blindly forward. Before Mollie had time to look around, Barbara caught her foot under a root and tumbled headlong into the wet mud. "Bab," cried Mollie, "you certainly have gone and done it this time! How wet and muddy you are!" She picked up a stick and raked in the leaves near her sister. "See, here's what you have made such a fuss about, a tiny garter snake, that couldn't hurt a thing. You've crushed the thing with your heel." Mollie turned suddenly. "Barbara, what is the matter with you?" she asked, as she caught a glimpse of her sister's face. "Why don't you get up? Can I help you?" She leaned over her sister. Poor Bab's face was white as a sheet, and she was trembling. "Yes, do help me if you can," she answered. "I can't get up by myself. I'm afraid I have turned my ankle. Here, take my hand. Sitting here in this mud I feel as if I had fallen into a nest of snakes." Mollie gave Bab both her hands. Setting her teeth, Bab tried to rise, but, with a groan, sat down again. The second time Mollie pulled with all her might. Barbara, summoning her courage, rose slowly to her feet. Without speaking she leaned against the trunk of the nearest tree. "Wait here, dear," urged Mollie, more worried than she would show. "I will try and find you a stick. Then if you lean on me and use the stick in the other hand, perhaps we can get along all right." They were several miles from home and in another hour the dusk would be upon them. So the two girls struggled bravely on through the thick woods, though it was difficult to walk abreast in the narrow path. Barbara insisted she was better with each step, but Mollie knew otherwise. With every foot of ground they covered Bab limped more and more painfully. Now and then when her injured foot pressed too heavily on the rough ground, she caught her breath and swallowed a groan. Mollie realized they would not get home before midnight at the rate they were now moving. "Rest here, Bab," she insisted, when they came to an opening in the woods where the shade was less dense. "I think I see a place over there that must lead into a road. I will run on ahead and find some one to come back to help you." Bab was glad to sit down. Her foot was swelling and growing more painful every moment; her pulses were throbbing. She was almost crying, but she would never mention surrender; she was not sorry, however, when Mollie suggested that she should rest. Mollie sped through the woods as fast as she could run. As soon as her back was turned, Bab closed her eyes. "How glad I am to rest," she thought gratefully. In the half hour that Barbara Thurston waited alone her mind wandered to many of her own hopes and fears. First, she couldn't help worrying over her mother. Then, she thought of her own ambition. More than anything in the world she longed to go to Vassar College. In two years more she would be ready to enter, but where was the money to come from? Barbara realized that her mother would never be able to pay her expenses from their small income; nevertheless, she meant to go. The Kingsbridge High School offered a scholarship at Vassar to the girl who passed the best final examinations during the four years of its course. Barbara had won the highest honors in her freshman and sophomore years, but she had two more winters of hard work ahead of her. "I wonder," she thought at last, "if I can persuade Ruth to go to college with me?" Then she must have fallen into a little doze. Readers of the preceding volume, "The Automobile Girls at Newport," will remember how the famous little club, known as "The Automobile Girls" came to be organized, and they are familiar with the exciting and humorous incidents of that journey in Ruth Stuart's motor car. There were many adventures along the way, including mysterious encounters with a gentlemanly young rascal, known to the police as "The Boy Raffles." The same "Raffles" afterwards turned up at Newport, where the girls for several weeks led a life of thrilling interest. "The Automobile Girls" it was who caught "Raffles" red-handed, and who saved Bab's snobbish cousin, Gladys Le Baron, from falling in love with him. Six weeks before, on their return from the trip to Newport, "The Automobile Girls" had disbanded. Mr. Stuart had given a dinner in their honor, and at the close of the meal, he formally presented each of the girls with a miniature model of Ruth's motor car, forming pins of red enamel about the size of a dime. "You must wear them forever," Ruth insisted, almost in tears. "Who knows what luck they may bring to us? Remember this isn't a real breaking up of 'The Automobile Girls'; it is only an '_auf wiedersehen_.'" The morning after Mr. Stuart's dinner, Grace left Kingsbridge to visit her brother. Later, Mr. Stuart and his sister, Miss Stuart, bore Ruth away to spend several weeks with some relatives in northern New York. Ruth confided to Bab her grief at leaving them. "I perfectly hate to go," she protested. "Just think, Bab, how soon I shall have to go back to Chicago, and leave you here in New Jersey. Other people are well enough in their places, but they are not my Barbara, Mollie and Grace!" It was after this confidence, that Bab made Ruth solemnly promise to pay them a visit before she returned home. Barbara opened her eyes suddenly. Had she been asleep and dreamed of Ruth? She could almost hear her voice and laugh. Some one was coming along the path. She could hear the dead leaves crunch under flying feet. "Barbara, my Barbara!" Was it Mollie's voice calling her? "Here I am," cried Bab faintly. Through the trees running straight toward her, her eyes shining, her cheeks aglow, was Ruth Stuart. Barbara tried to leap up. "Sit down, you poor dear, do," Ruth commanded. "What have you done to your silly little self? Never mind; here is your friend and always devoted slave come to your rescue." "Where did you come from?" inquired Bab, weakly. "Out of the everywhere into the here. Father and Mollie will be along in a few seconds and explain to you. I simply couldn't wait for them. Another dear friend of yours is up the road desiring to offer you assistance. You may recall 'Mr. A. Bubble.'" Ruth took out the flask of beef tea which she always carried on a motor trip, and made Barbara drink a few swallows. "Now," she declared, "I will try to tell you how I happen to be here. Three days ago I told father I simply couldn't bear to be away from Kingsbridge twenty-four hours longer. So he and I decided that as soon as manners would permit we should put the automobile in commission and fly to you as fast as we could. And here we are! Besides, just think how quickly the holiday time is passing. I have another scheme--but here come Mollie and father!" Mr. Stuart and Mollie were approaching quickly. "Let me help you, Barbara," said Mr. Stuart, putting his strong arm around the injured girl and nearly lifting her from the ground. "Can you manage to walk? Ruth, you help from the other side. It is not far to the road, and once we get you there, the auto will soon take you home to that little mother of yours." "I declare I would just like to kiss 'Mr. A. Bubble,' if I knew an appropriate place," declared Barbara, when she was at last safely stowed away in the automobile. Her lame foot was propped up on soft cushions while close beside her sat her beloved Ruth holding her hand. Mollie was sitting in front with Mr. Stuart. "Tell me," Barbara continued, "no one has properly explained it to me how you happened to be at the right place just at the right moment? And how did Mollie find you to tell you I was concealed in the woods with a sprained ankle? It's too much for me. Please explain?" "Not so fast, Miss Thurston, if you please," pleaded Mr. Stuart. "Ruth and I would like to be regarded as angels dropped from the sky, but the truth must be told! She and I were speeding along this very road, a little faster than is perfectly proper, as we were hoping to make our way before dusk to the home of a charming lady, Mrs. Thurston, who lives with her two attractive daughters, in Laurel Cottage, Kingsbridge. What did we see? A small, excited girl ahead of us, who seemed to be trying to run faster than our auto could travel. Nevertheless, we caught up with her. Who do you think she was? Miss Mollie Thurston! We were all so surprised that it must have taken us quite a minute to explain matters to each other." "You can imagine," added Mistress Mollie from the front seat, "how jolly glad I was!" For some time Mrs. Thurston had been anxiously awaiting her daughters' return. She was standing at the gate of her home, when a familiar chug, chug, chug, sounded up the road. "I must be dreaming," she thought. "I am so worried at the girls being out late that I imagine I hear Ruth's automobile bringing them home to me. How lonely it has been for us all since Ruth and her father went away!" "Chug, chug, chug," the noise sounded louder than ever. A splash of red appeared at the turn of the road, a siren whistle blew, and a well-known, crimson motor car rapidly approached her gate. Mrs. Thurston rubbed her eyes. It was the Stuart's automobile and no other. Sitting enthroned in it was that gentleman and his daughter. And, could it be possible? Barbara and Mollie, as well! Mrs. Thurston's gentle face glowed with pleasure. Switfly as a girl she threw open her gate and was waiting on the sidewalk when the car stopped in front of her with a flourish. "I am so delighted to see you," she said, extending her hand to Mr. Stuart and kissing Ruth on both cheeks. "Where did you find my daughters? But what's the matter with you, Bab?" she asked, as she noticed her child's pale cheeks. "Nothing, now, mother," said Bab, hopping up, but sitting down again just as promptly. "I have sprained my ankle a little, not very much. I would like to get into the house to take off my shoe. It pinches until I feel like the mean sister trying to squeeze her foot into Cinderella's slipper." "Come on in with me, every one of you," she pleaded. "Dear Mr. Stuart, you are not going to take Ruth up to the hotel with you for even one night. Remember, you promised she was to visit us, as soon as you returned." "Do let me stay, father," coaxed Ruth, dancing after them. "I have no trunk to worry about at present. Aunt Sallie is coming back, day after to-morrow, and she is to bring my trunk with her. Father and I traveled all the way in the automobile." Mrs. Thurston followed Mr. Stuart out as he was saying good-bye. He had agreed to leave Ruth with them. "Mr. Stuart, you can go to your hotel, if you wish to engage your room, but you must come back and have tea with us. We have hot rolls, honey, and fresh milk for supper. There is no use in your denying that is your favorite evening meal." "I don't want to deny it, Mrs. Thurston," was Mr. Stuart's answer, as he stepped into his car. "I will come back with pleasure. On my way to the hotel I shall call at the doctor's and ask him to come around and look after Bab's foot." CHAPTER II NEW LIGHT ON OLD PAPERS "Mother, you are worried about something," said Barbara to her mother early the next morning as they sat alone in their little dining room, which was bright with the September sun. Mrs. Thurston started nervously. She had been thinking so deeply that Bab's voice had startled her. Mollie and Ruth had rushed off early to find Grace and bring her back with them. Susan, the maid, was in the yard hanging up her dish towels. Mrs. Thurston had supposed Bab was deep in reading the history of David Copperfield, which lay open on her lap. "You don't answer me, mother," complained Barbara, as she saw her mother's face flush under her gaze. "You might as well ''fess up' and be done with it. I know there is something wrong." Mrs. Thurston hesitated; then she answered quietly: "You are right, Bab, dear. I am very much worried and it is about money. But I did not want you children to know of it until I was obliged to tell you. Barbara, half of our income is gone!" "Oh, mother!" cried Barbara, "what do you mean?" "Well, dear," said her mother quietly, "the money has not entirely gone yet. But I fear it soon will go. Your uncle wrote me that some stock he bought for me had been going down, down, until finally it will cease paying dividends altogether and be of no value. How shall we manage then? I have been lying awake at night trying to plan. You know it takes every cent we have to live in even the simplest way. Oh, Bab, what shall we do?" Barbara looked grave. "Did Uncle Ralph write you about this?" "Oh, yes," said Mrs. Thurston, "two or three weeks ago. I have had it on my mind ever since. Your uncle used to own some of this same stock, but he wrote me he had sold out some time ago." "It is strange he didn't tell us to sell at the same time," Barbara reflected. "What does Uncle Ralph propose that we do? He is so rich I think he might show some interest in you, poor dear. You are his only sister, especially since he has made all his money out of the business father founded." "Your Uncle Ralph suggests," Mrs. Thurston faltered, "that we find some work to do. But you and Mollie must be educated, and I am so ignorant of business." Barbara's cheeks were crimson and her brown eyes flashed. "I think, mother," she said quietly, "it will be just as well for us to learn a little more about Uncle Ralph's management of our business. I am going to consult Mr. Stuart; I am sure he will give us good advice; he is such a clear-headed business man. Don't you worry, mother, dear, for I am sure things will turn out all right." Mrs. Thurston rose to go out to market. "Before you go, mother," Barbara begged, "will you please let me see the roll of father's business papers you have stored away in the trunk in the attic. Oh, I know they are of no value, but just the same I am curious to see them." "Well, if you are so determined, all right," sighed Mrs. Thurston. Before she left the house she handed Barbara a roll of old papers tied with a crimson cord. Bab sat pondering with the papers in her lap. She was more frightened at her mother's news than she would show. They were mere girls, she and Mollie, and their little mother had no knowledge of business. She shook herself impatiently. Barbara was an optimist--things would turn out all right. Soon Bab wrinkled her forehead and tried to settle down to her work; the papers were altogether incomprehensible to her. Most of them were old business contracts. Yet, here was one that seemed a bit different. It was in Uncle Ralph Le Baron's handwriting, but so faded that it was difficult to read. Slowly Bab deciphered it: "On demand, I promise to pay to John Thurston the sum of five thousand dollars for value received." To this was appended her uncle's well-known signature, Ralph Le Baron. "Well," sighed Barbara, as she started to tie the papers together again, "I suppose Uncle Ralph settled this debt a long time ago." Suddenly a big, cheerful presence darkened the doorway. "Hello, Bab!" called Mr. Stuart. "Why are you alone?" "The girls have gone up to the Squire's for Grace," Bab explained, "and mother is at market. But do please come in and wait for them. Ruth told me to keep you; she wants to ask you about something very important." "May I inquire what you are doing, Barbara?" Mr. Stuart queried, taking a seat. "Are you preparing to be a lawyer's clerk that you spend your spare hours poring over musty business papers?" Barbara blushed. "I am almost ashamed to tell you, Mr. Stuart, but you and Ruth have been so awfully good to us, I think I shall just ask you one more favor. These are some business papers my father left when he died. No one has ever looked them over. I have always wondered if they could be of any value. Of course I know it is foolish of me to even dream of such a thing. But would you mind glancing at them, please?" Barbara handed the roll of documents to her friend with such a pretty look of pleading in her brown eyes that a much harder hearted man than Mr. Stuart could not have refused her. "Certainly; I shall be glad to have a look at them," Mr. Stuart answered. Tick, tock, tick, tock. The only sound in the room was the soft refrain of the old clock on the mantel. Barbara held her breath, but she knew she was foolish to feel so excited. Mr. Stuart examined the papers closely. One after another he read them through. This big western man who had made a fortune by his own brains and ability, was devoting the same care to Barbara's apparently worthless papers that he would give to his own important business affairs. Suddenly he looked up. He held in his hand the promissory note signed by Ralph Le Baron acknowledging his debt for five thousand dollars to his brother-in-law, John Thurston. "I presume," Mr. Stuart said quietly to Bab, "that your uncle settled this debt years ago; but if he did, why was the note never canceled?" At this moment Mr. Stuart and Barbara heard a rustle of skirts, and looking up they saw Mrs. Thurston, her arms full of bundles, and her face white. "What do you mean?" she said in a strange, hard voice. "What money should have been paid by my brother years ago? Please explain." "Why," said Mr. Stuart, so quietly you could have heard a pin drop in the stillness of the little room, "I mean, of course, this five thousand dollars, which, as I see by the date, your brother borrowed from your husband eleven years ago. Let me see, that was one year before your husband's death!" Mrs. Thurston sank into a chair. Mr. Stuart reached her just in time to save her from falling. He took the bundles from her hand and waited. For a minute Mrs. Thurston could not speak. Barbara felt her heart pounding away and her pulses throbbing; but she made no sound. "Was this money paid you by your brother when he settled your estate?" Mr. Stuart repeated his question. "No!" faltered Mrs. Thurston. "Have you any memorandum among your husband's papers which would prove that the money was returned to him before his death?" Mrs. Thurston shook her head. Barbara was staring at her mother with wide open brown eyes, her cheeks paling, then flushing. Here was a mystery! "My brother," said Mrs. Thurston finally, "settled my affairs for me at the time of my husband's sudden death. I was too crushed to realize what was taking place, and I had no idea that we would be brought to poverty. But I know I saw no such paper as you mention. Until this minute, I never heard that my brother borrowed any money from my husband. Oh, it simply can't be true----" "What can't be true, mother?" inquired Bab at last. Her mother did not answer. Mr. Stuart quietly folded up the mysterious paper and put it in his pocket. "It may be that Mr. Le Baron can explain this situation at once," he said. "He is staying at the same hotel with me. If you will permit me I will inquire into the matter for you. Now don't worry yourselves about it any more," Mr. Stuart ended, resuming his natural manner. To himself he told a different story. "This looks bad, very bad!" he thought. "If Ralph Le Baron had paid this money back he would have seen that the note was returned to him. I know him well enough for that. If he never has paid it, can he be forced to do so now?" reflected Mr. Stuart, looking at the matter from all sides. "He has never been asked for the money before, and I do not believe the law requires a debt to be paid after six years, if no claim has been previously made for it, and it is now eleven years since the note was made. I must look into the matter. A man who could rob his widowed sister and nieces of five thousand dollars would be guilty of any crime. I shall make it hot for him unless he can tell a straight story." "Why is everybody looking so serious?" called out a gay voice, and Ruth, followed by Mollie and Grace, entered the room. The little group within the room started guiltily. "There is mystery in the very air," declaimed Ruth, "you are trying to conceal something!" "You are a goose," replied her father fondly, then nodding reassuringly to Bab and her mother. "Who knows what a day may bring forth?" he said. CHAPTER III HAPPINESS, AND ANOTHER SCHEME The next morning Mr. Stuart left his hotel and went into New York with Mr. Le Baron. They left Kingsbridge at eight o'clock, and did not return until six. Half an hour later Mr. Stuart called at Laurel Cottage for Mrs. Thurston in his automobile. "We will take Miss Barbara with us to the hotel," he said to her mother, "if you feel it will not injure her ankle. She need do no walking. I should prefer that she be with you when you have an interview with your brother. He is to see you at the hotel to-night. You will dine with me first." Barbara's foot being better, she and her mother asked no questions, but with trembling fingers made ready to go. "What do you mean," demanded Ruth and Mollie, "by going off on such a mysterious errand? Why, Mr. Stuart," asked Ruth, "are Mollie and I not also invited to dinner?" Mr. Stuart was obdurate. He offered no explanations. When Ruth whispered something in his ear, he answered quietly: "That will keep," and Ruth said no more. Mr. and Mrs. Le Baron bowed coldly to Mrs. Thurston and Barbara, when entering the hotel dining room that night, they found the mother and daughter dining with Mr. Stuart. But Gladys Le Baron stopped for a moment at the able to inquire after Bab's foot. She was not the haughty girl she once had been. Since her return from Newport she had seemed strangely fond of Bab. Barbara and her mother never knew how they got through their meal. But Mr. Stuart was a tower of strength. "We will not discuss business matters," he explained, "until we go upstairs to my sitting room. Mr. Le Baron will join us there at half-past eight." When Ralph Le Baron entered Mr. Stuart's apartment to keep his appointment, he did not look into his sister's face. He merely inquired coldly: "How are you, Mollie?" and sat down near the small wood fire which was burning cosily in the open grate. Not once did he glance at Barbara, though she kept her eyes fixed steadily on him. He was a tall, thin man, with high cheek bones and a nose like an eagle's. "Mrs. Thurston," began Mr. Stuart, "your brother does not claim that he paid to you or your husband the five thousand dollars which he undoubtedly borrowed. When I first spoke to him of the matter he declared he had never been loaned any such sum. He had great difficulty in recalling the incident until I showed him his note which I still have in my pocket. He explained afterwards, however, that the matter had passed entirely out of his mind after your husband's death." Mrs. Thurston looked at her brother questioningly. "It seems very strange to me, Ralph, that you could have forgotten," she declared. "But perhaps it is all for the best! We need the money more now than we ever have before." Mr. Le Baron did not answer his sister. "I think you will find it the wisest plan, Mr. Le Baron," continued Mr. Stuart, breaking the silence, "to pay over this money to Mrs. Thurston and her daughters as soon as you conveniently can." Ralph Le Baron knit his brows. Barbara was watching him closely. There was no love lost between Bab and her uncle. She had long looked for some difficulty to arise out of his management of her mother's affairs, but nothing so serious as this. Mr. Le Baron's voice sounded cold and hard as steel. "Do not deceive yourselves," he said, with a sneer. "I mean you, Mollie, and Mr. Stuart, who seems to be taking an unusual interest in your affairs. I have not the slightest intention of ever paying back the money!" Mrs. Thurston's manner changed. She spoke firmly. "I should be exceedingly sorry, Ralph, to have any trouble with you over the matter; but the law must compel you to pay your debt." "Not so fast, sister," smiled Mr. Le Baron, sarcastically. "You are coming into a remarkable business knowledge all at once, but you do not yet know quite enough. The law does not compel me after six years to pay a debt which has not been presented to me within that time. Perhaps you have never heard of the statute of limitation. Perhaps your friend, Mr. Stuart, will make it clear to you. You should have asked me for this money five or six years ago. The New York law does not require a debt to be paid unless a request has been made for its settlement within six years after the time it was contracted. The money was loaned to me by your husband eleven years ago, as we all know by the date on the note. I have no further concern in the matter." "Great heavens, man!" cried Mr. Stuart, breaking in fiercely, "you cannot mean to play your own sister such a low-down, scoundrelly trick! You will not pay back the money to her which you confess to owing, simply because she has not asked you for it before! How could she ask for it when you alone knew of the debt and kept the matter a secret? I am not so sure how your law would stand in such a case. A pretty story it will make to tell to the men who respect your business integrity. Mrs. Thurston shall have a lawyer to inquire into the situation immediately!" A low knock sounded at the door. Before anyone could answer, Gladys Le Baron walked smilingly into the room. She looked in surprise at her father's dark, revengeful face. "Is anything the matter?" she inquired, her face sobering in an instant. "I wondered why father ran off by himself to see Aunt Mollie and Bab. I thought you would like to have me join you----" "Go back to your apartment at once, Gladys!" interrupted her father sternly. Mr. Stuart turned upon him. "Ralph Le Baron, I am going to do something, to-night, that I never expected to do in my life. I am going to expose a father to his own child. Wait here a minute, Gladys." Mr. Stuart then told Gladys the whole story. She stood listening in utter silence, her face crimson with blushes. Barbara could only look at her cousin through a mist of tears. When Mr. Stuart had ended his story, he said: "I am sorry indeed to tell you this, Gladys, but you must have learned it some day. I do not know whether your father is right in regard to the law in this matter, but Mrs. Thurston will carry the case to court." Gladys went over to her father, who had never raised his eyes to look at her, while Mr. Stuart was speaking, nor did he make any denial. "Is it true, father?" she asked him at last. "It is in a measure true, Gladys," her father answered, "but it is purely a matter of business, which you cannot be expected to understand." Gladys put her head down on the arm of the sofa, where she now sat by her father, and wept bitterly. There was no other sound in the room, except an occasional suppressed sob from Mrs. Thurston. Bab was far too excited and too angry to cry! Finally Gladys raised her head. "Father, on my sixteenth birthday, you settled five thousand dollars on me in my own name!" She spoke in a low voice. "If you do not feel that you ought to pay back to Aunt Mollie the money you borrowed from Uncle John, won't you please let me give her this money of mine? I must do it, father. I can't understand the business side of it, but it just seems to me we owe her the money and that's all there is to it! I have been horrid and haughty many times, but I can't bear that we should seem--dishonest!" Poor Gladys whispered this last dreadful word under her breath. Then she put her arms round her father and kissed him. "You are not angry with me?" she asked him. If there was one person in the world Ralph Le Baron truly loved it was his only child, Gladys. Not for ten times five thousand dollars would he have had her a witness to the scene which had just passed between him and his sister. He meant, of course, to tell her and his wife what had happened, but he meant to put his own interpretation on the affair before they heard of it from anyone else. Did his better nature move him? Perhaps it did. He looked around the room and answered testily: "The law certainly does not require that I return this money to my sister, and business is business with me. But since my daughter Gladys and my sister seem to look upon the matter as a case of sentiment, why I----" He spoke slowly. It was hard work for him to get the words out. "I will waive strictly business principles on this occasion, and return the money to my sister." "O Ralph!" cried Mrs. Thurston, as though a great load was lifted from her mind. Barbara rejoiced. But in her heart of hearts she thought it was hard to have her uncle act as though he were doing them a favor when he was only paying them their just dues. A few minutes later Gladys and her father withdrew from the room. "I am so glad," whispered Gladys to Bab, as she passed her cousin on her way out. Barbara held her hand just long enough to murmur gently: "Gladys, dear, if I once did you a kindness, I think you have repaid me a thousand-fold." It was after ten o'clock when "Mr. A. Bubble" bore the travelers home to Laurel Cottage. Mollie and Ruth were waiting in the sitting room, with a fire burning cheerily in the grate and the candles lit over the mantelpiece. In front of the fire, they had mounted twelve marshmallows, which they were toasting to a beautiful brown on twelve hatpins. "We thought you were never coming back, Mummy," said Mollie, taking off her mother's light wrap. "What has happened to you?" she asked as she viewed her mother's shining eyes. "Good news indeed, Mollie baby!" her mother answered. "We are five thousand dollars richer than we were when we left home. Now, perhaps Bab can go to Vassar, and things will be a little easier for us, even if the other money has gone. Mr. Stuart thinks we ought to have twenty-five dollars a month income from the five thousand dollars! Isn't it too wonderful?" "Have a marshmallow, everyone, do," said Ruth, extending her hatpins. They were comfortably seated around the fire and the subject of the money had been dropped. "I want all of you to be eating marshmallows except me, so I can do all the talking. I think I have been a perfect angel. Father, you know I have kept a secret to myself for three whole days. Of course, I told Mollie to-night, when you left us by ourselves, but that doesn't count." Mollie's cheeks were glowing and her eyes dancing in the soft firelight. "Oh, yes," she added naughtily, "Ruth and I can keep good news to ourselves as well as other people. At least," she continued wistfully, her eyes turning to her mother, "I hope it is good news." "Mrs. Thurston," inquired Ruth, "don't you dearly love 'The Automobile Girls'?" Mrs. Thurston smiled. "I most certainly do," she replied. "Then all is well!" Ruth made her a low curtsey. "Anyone who truly loves 'The Auto-Girls' cannot fail to rejoice at my news. Mrs. Thurston, we cannot bear to be disbanded. We must get together again before I go home to Chicago. Mollie told me she and Bab wanted you to go on a visit to a cousin in St. Paul, but they feared you would not consent to leave them alone. Here's where I come in! I want you to let me take care of your babies, while you go on your trip." Ruth gave an impudent pull at Mollie's curls, as she went on with her request. "Father and I have planned another per-fect-ly grand trip for 'The Automobile Girls!' Now please don't anybody object until I have finished. Here, eat another marshmallow! This trip is not to be in the least like the other one. What I want is to go for a month on a camping party in the Berkshire Hills!" "Hear! Hear!" called out Bab, hopping up, and forgetting all about her sprained ankle. "I have just had this letter from Aunt Sallie, father," continued Ruth. "She is game! Of course, she started out by saying she thought the trip was perfect nonsense; she knew we would have pneumonia and various other diseases if we attempted it, but she ended by declaring that, of course, she could not be left behind if we were determined on the frolic. She is a darling! So, now, Mrs. Thurston, if only you will consent, in a few days we want dear old 'Bubble,' to make a start for the Berkshires. This is the perfect time of the year and the mountains will be simply glorious! Oh, I can't talk any more, I am so out of breath! Do go on please, father." "Mrs. Thurston, our plan is not so wild as it sounds. Ruth will take the girls in her car up into the Berkshires. I have discovered that on one of the mountains some distance from the regular line of travel, is a well built log cabin. It has big fireplaces in it, and can be made thoroughly comfortable for September. Early in October, Ruth wants to go with the girls to the hotel at Lenox, for a week or two of the autumn sports there. The automobile can travel comfortably over most of the Berkshire roads." Mr. Stuart's tones were as persuasive as Ruth's. "But, when the girls come to the chosen place, they can store the car in some suitable garage, and take the trails up the sides of the mountain, either on horseback or afoot." "But Barbara's foot," insisted Mrs. Thurston weakly, in the first pause that gave her an opportunity to speak. "Oh, Bab's ankle will be all right, mother!" Mollie cried. "We have spoken to the doctor, and he says Bab will be jumping about as lively as a cricket in a few days." "Mrs. Thurston," said Mr. Stuart, speaking in his heartiest voice, "I want to be allowed the floor in this conversation. I have something to propose on my own account. A party of friends of my sister's and mine are going west on a sight seeing trip. Among them is a railroad president and his wife, and their private car is to be used for the tour. It would give me great pleasure to have you meet them and make your journey to St. Paul in their company. My sister wishes to assure you that you will find them thoroughly congenial and will no doubt enjoy the trip. To tell the truth, Miss Stuart has already written our friends to expect you, for I had determined that you should go at all events. "As for our daughters," he continued, "I am greatly interested in this camping scheme for them. I know, from my own experience, that nothing can be made more delightful than our modern fashion of 'roughing it.' I intend to make the necessary arrangements, and properly equip this camping party myself. I shall even run up to the Berkshires for a day or two, to look over the ground. I want to engage a guide for the party, and a woman to do the cooking. Then I must see if the little log cabin is all the circular says it is. It is rented out to camping parties all through the year. Come, Mrs. Thurston," questioned Mr. Stuart, "don't you think this is a good scheme for everyone?" "Right you are, Mr. Stuart!" Bab called out rapturously. By this time Mollie and Ruth were both on the floor, with their arms around Mrs. Thurston. "We do so want to lead 'the simple life,' dear Mrs. Thurston," Ruth begged. "Think how splendid for us to have a month out of doors before we go back to hard work at school." Ruth made a wry face. She was not fond of study, like Barbara. "We may spend a week or so in Lenox, to please Aunt Sallie. But most of the time we want to be right in the mountains. Let me see--there is Greylock, and Monument Mountain, and hosts of others not too far from Lenox. At least, we shall be able to see them from our mountain top. And we must escort Bab over to Rattlesnake Mountain, in honor of her well known fondness for those charming pets." "Oh, I'll look after Bab," Mollie spoke in superior tones. "Mother," said Barbara earnestly, "you must accept Mr. Stuart's charming invitation, even if you think it wiser for us not to go on the camping trip with Ruth. I know you need a change. You have had so much worry, and now your mind is at rest." "Ruth," said Mrs. Thurston, looking as bright and happy as one of the girls, "accept my best wishes for the 'Robin Hood Band' of 'Automobile Girls!' I am sure they will soon rival that celebrated set of woodsmen. Only, I beg of you, confine your adventures strictly within the limits of the law." "Then you mean that Bab and Mollie may go!" cried Ruth in tones of rapture. "But we don't intend to play at being an outlaw band. Kindly regard us as early Puritan settlers in the New England hills, compelled to seek protection from the Indians in our log hut. I wish we could run across a few Indians up there; we shall be right on their old camping grounds. There are still some Indian trails in the mountains, but the Berkshires are so highly civilized, these days, we shall never find even a trace of a red man, or a red woman either!" "When do we start, Ruth?" asked Mollie. "I should like to be off to-morrow. Remember how fast the time is going. School begins the middle of October." "What about Grace?" asked Bab thoughtfully. "It would hardly be a real 'Automobile Girls' party if one of their number should be left out." "Oh, it is all right about Grace, of course!" Ruth answered. "Goodness me! Haven't I told you? We have already talked our plan over with Squire Carter, who is delighted to have Grace go. He says a month out of doors will do wonders for her. He only wished he was not too old to join us." One week later, Miss Sallie Stuart and the quartette of "Automobile Girls" gathered at the station to speed Mrs. Thurston on her journey. Mr. Stuart was to accompany her as far as New York City, and see her safely established among his friends. "Be good children, all of you," urged Mrs. Thurston at the last minute. "And remember to keep your feet dry." "In case the camping outfit is not thoroughly satisfactory, Sallie," counseled Mr. Stuart, "telegraph to New York for whatever you like. I believe everything is O. K. Remember to keep your camp fires always burning. You are to have the most trustworthy guide in the Berkshires, as well as his wife, to look after you, and you will never be far from civilization if you wish to go, Sallie?" he ended, for Miss Sallie was looking dismal at the idea of parting. Miss Sallie nodded her head. "You know my views, Robert. If you _will_ permit Ruth to follow any wild fancy that pops into her head, at least, I shall be near to see that she gets into as little mischief as possible." Mr. Stuart's last whisper before the train started was for Bab. "Don't worry about your little mother," he said. "We will see that things are well with her. That copper stock she owns is looking up again. She is not to sell out." Mr. Stuart turned to find Ruth for his last kiss. "Remember, daughter," he declared, "I rely on you and Bab to keep cool heads and clear brains in any emergency." As the train moved off, Mr. Stuart and Mrs. Thurston watched for a few moments a circle of waving hands. A little later their car swung around a curve and Kingsbridge was lost to view. "The Automobile Girls" and Miss Sallie then repaired to the hotel. Grace, Mollie and Bab were to be Ruth's guests until they started for the Berkshires. All was in readiness. The week before, Mr. Stuart had taken the girls to New York for a few days' shopping. If ever there were young women fitted up in the proper styles for mountain climbing they were. Each girl was presented with two pairs of thick, high boots and leather leggins. Ruth insisted that her heavy wool dress be made of the Stuart plaid. She then had a tam o'shanter designed from the same Scotch tartan. But Ruth's proudest possession was a short Norfolk jacket made of the same leather as her leggins, and a knapsack to carry over her shoulders. Attired in her woodland costume, she looked not unlike "Rosalind" in Shakespeare's play, when that maid comes into the woods disguised as a boy to seek for her father. Barbara's suit was of dark brown corduroy, with jacket and cap to match. Grace would choose nothing but her favorite dark blue. But her costume was the most striking of them all, for, with her blue skirt and blouse, she was to wear a coat of hunter's pink and a smart, little hat of the same bright scarlet shade. Mr. Stuart selected the costume for Mistress Mollie. She at least, he insisted, should be arrayed in the proper shade of Lincoln green; and like a veritable "Maid Marian" she appeared. For once Miss Sallie was entirely satisfied with their selection of costumes. "For me," she argued in her most decided manner, "the most necessary garments are half a dozen pairs of overshoes, and the same number of mackintoshes and umbrellas. I shall also take an extra trunk of warm flannels. If the fall rains begin while we are camping in the mountains we shall surely be washed down into the valley before we can make our escape." CHAPTER IV IN THE HEART OF THE BERKSHIRES A crimson automobile was climbing the steep inclines of the Berkshire Hills. Now it rose to the crest of a road. Again it dipped into a valley. It looked like a scarlet autumn leaf blown down from one of the giant forest trees that guarded the slopes of the mountains. Mollie Thurston stood up in the back of the motor car, waving a long green veil. "Isn't the scenery just too perfect for words?" she called to Ruth. The day was wonderful; the September sun shone warm and golden through the shadows of dancing, many-colored leaves. "The Automobile Girls" had left summer behind them in Kingsbridge. Three days of traveling found them in the early autumn glory of the Berkshire woods. Ruth did not answer Mollie's question. "My dear child, wake up!" commanded Miss Sallie, leaning over to give her niece a gentle poke with her violet parasol. "Have you grown suddenly deaf? Can you not hear when you are spoken to?" Ruth glanced up from her steering wheel. "Did some one speak to me?" she queried. "I am so sorry I did not hear. I am afraid I am both deaf and dumb to-day. But we simply must get to our mountain by noon. Driving a car over these mountain roads isn't the easiest task in the world." Barbara laughed back over her shoulder at the occupants of the end seat in the car. "Miss Sallie Stuart," she said in solemn tones, "please, let our chauffeur alone! Suppose the dark descends upon us in the woods and you have 'nary' a place to lay your head!" "Then I should immediately find a hotel and ask for a room and a bath," protested Miss Stuart, who did not favor the idea of the log cabin in the woods. "Remember, children, you may pretend as hard as you like that we are a thousand miles from civilization; but, unless we are perfectly comfortable in the woods, I shall take you to the best hotel in Lenox. From there you may do your mountaineering in a respectable way." "All the more need for you to hurry, Ruth," whispered Bab in her friend's ear. "I feel sure we shall find the guides and wagons waiting for us at the foot of the hill. If we get an early enough start up the mountain we can get fairly settled by night time." Ruth nodded with her eyes straight in front of her. She kept her car moving swiftly ahead. "Barbara, it is quite idle to talk to Ruth," broke in Miss Sallie, who had not heard just what Bab had said. "She is her father's daughter. Once her mind is made up to accomplish a thing, she will do it or die! So we might as well resign ourselves to our fate. She will reach 'her mountain,' as she calls it, by noon, even if we have to jump a few of these embankments to succeed." Miss Sallie was growing tired. "Why did I ever allow myself to be brought on such a wild expedition after the experiences you girls led me into in Newport!" she said. "Now, Miss Sallie!" said Grace Carter gently--Grace was always the peacemaker--"you know you love these glorious woods as much as we do. Think how jolly things will be when we go down into Lenox after it grows too cold to stay in camp. Who knows but you will turn out the best sportsman in the lot? And we shall probably have our guide teach you to shoot before we are through this trip." Miss Stuart sniffed indignantly. Then she laughed at the thought of her plump fingers pulling the trigger of a gun. "What is our guide's outlandish name?" she inquired in milder tones. "Naki, and his wife is called Ceally," Grace answered. "You remember Mr. Stuart explained they were originally French Canadians, but they have been living in these mountains for a number of years. Because they used to be guides up in the Canadian forests they don't know any other trade to follow in these peaceful woods." "These woods were by no means always peaceful, my lady Grace!" asserted Bab. "You can't even be perfectly sure they are peaceful now. Why," she went on in thrilling tones, "these hillsides once ran red with the blood of our ancestors and of the friendly Indian tribes who fought with them against the French." "Oh, come! come! No more American history!" remarked Mollie. "Beg pardon, but I do object to Bab's school-teacher manner. Did you ever see anything so lovely as these hills are now? The scenery around here is like the enchanted forests of Arcady." "Oh, Miss Sallie, girls, look!" called Grace. From the high crest of a hill "The Automobile Girls" gazed down upon one of the loveliest valleys in the Berkshires. Afar off they could see the narrow Housatonic River winding its way past villages and fields, from the hillsides, which gave it the Indian name; for Housatonic means "a stream over the mountains." Nestling in the valleys lay a chain of silver lakes. Ruth paused an instant. "Over there ahead of us is 'our mountain.' I think we can reach it in an hour or so." While they were pursuing their journey, another small party was gathering on the slope of the hill opposite. A long, lean man burned to the color and texture of leather sat on the front seat of a wagon drawn by two strong mountain horses. By his side was his wife, almost as thin and brown; behind them, piled up in the wagon, were trunks, rolls of steamer rugs, kitchen utensils, making altogether as odd an assortment of goods as if the couple were peddlers. Strolling around near them was a younger man, evidently the driver of a well filled grocery wagon. His horse stood patiently cropping the fine, hillside grass. Farther up the roadside a chauffeur nibbled a spear of mint. He had no car near him, but his costume was unmistakable. Evidently something was in the air. Somebody or something was being waited for. Soon after twelve o'clock, there was a whirr along the road. The cart horses raised their ears, and without a motion from their drivers, moved farther to the right side of the path. Berkshire Hills horses, in whatever station of life, needed no further notice. An automobile was approaching! "Here they come!" cried the grocer's boy, jumping back into his wagon. The chauffeur dropped his piece of mint and gazed down the road. Now at least there was something worth seeing! "Hip! hip! hurrah!" "The Automobile Girls" landed with a flourish beside the wagons. Their laughter woke the sleeping echoes in the hills. "Are you Naki and Ceally?" cried Ruth, jumping out of the car and running forward with her hand extended. "And are these our things you have in the wagon? I am so sorry we are a few minutes late; but these mountain roads take longer to drive over than I had expected. I hope I haven't kept you waiting very long." "No'm," said the guide, sliding slowly down from his perch on the camping outfit. He emptied the pipe he had been comfortably smoking. "Time enough," he answered. Naki was a man of few words. The chauffeur had walked over to Ruth's car and was assisting Miss Sallie to descend. "You are to take this car into Lenox, I believe," Miss Stuart began. "My niece will explain matters to you more fully. I am told we cannot take the car any further up this side of the hill. Where is the carriage in which we are to drive?" "Oh, Aunt Sallie!" cried Ruth in consternation. "What are we to do? When Naki wrote there would be seats in his wagon for those of us who wished to drive up the hill, I am afraid he meant those seats in front by him and his wife." The guide looked perfectly solemn, even when he beheld Miss Sallie's face. Imagine, if you can, Miss Sallie Stuart, nervous, as she was, perched on top of a rickety wagon! Add the fact that she was to be driven up an unexplored hillside by the side of the two queer, brown people to whom they were confiding their fates! "We don't ride 'longside of you, Miss," explained Naki to Ruth. "I leads the horses up and my wife walks by their side. There's room for three of you up there on the front seat. It's more comfortable than it looks. The other two of you had better walk or you can ride in the grocery wagon. The man's coming along behind us with the provisions." Miss Sallie had not spoken again. Her expression was that of a martyr. "Do you think you can manage, Miss Sallie?" Bab pleaded. Ruth was explaining matters to the chauffeur. He was to take the car to Lenox. Every afternoon at one o'clock he was to return with it to this fork in the road and wait for half an hour. If "The Automobile Girls" decided on a trip to one of the nearby towns, they would join him at this place; for here the good road ended and the trail up the hillside began. The camp was a long way from any town, but an automobile defies distance. Miss Stuart looked truly miserable when she saw their car disappear down the foot of the hill. Then she looked around her carefully. The place was entirely deserted. "Very well," she declared, resignedly. "I suppose there is nothing for me to do but to climb up into that wretched wagon." Ruth, Barbara, Grace, Mollie, Naki and his wife all assisted her to mount over the wheel to the seat of honor. Violet cushions were piled back of her, Grace sat on one side of her, Mollie on the other. Ruth and Barbara were determined to walk. "We are dreadfully tired sitting still, Aunt Sallie," Ruth begged. "Please let us follow the wagon!" "Certainly, you can walk if you are able. In fact, you have no way to ride except in the grocery wagon, where you would probably get mixed up with the pickles and preserves," responded Miss Stuart. "Walk by all means!" The cavalcade started. "Let's pretend," proposed Bab to Ruth, "that we are starting out on what the Indians called 'the long walk.'" "Surely, Bab, it's a long walk, all right. But why introduce the Indians?" The girls were climbing up the steep path ahead of the wagon. Bab laughed. "Oh, I read somewhere," she explained, "that the Indians used to sell their land that way. Suppose you and I were early settlers, who were trying to purchase this hillside from the Indians. They would tell us we could have, for a fixed sum, as much land as we could cover in the 'long walk.' That would mean that we were to walk along quietly from sunrise to sunset, sitting down occasionally to smoke a pipe of peace, to break bread, and to drink water. That reminds me, are we ever going to break bread again? I am starving!" But Ruth was not sympathetic at the moment. "It is curious," she replied. "These mountains are so full of Indian legends, we shall think, hear and dream of nothing but Indians in the next few weeks. The names of all the places around were once Indian. I suppose we shall do almost everything except see an Indian. The last of them has vanished from here. Oh, Bab, do look at Aunt Sallie!" Miss Stuart had forgotten her fright. Fortunately, she did not realize how absurd she appeared. "Ruth!" she called from her throne on the wagon seat. "Here is a perfectly good place for our lunch. There is water near and view enough, I am sure. I must be given food before I am taken another step up these hills. I am famished!" The party found a clear space in the woods. In a short time Naki had built a fire of pine twigs, and Ceally had a giant pot of coffee boiling over it. Its delicious perfume mingled with the fresh mountain air. "I declare I haven't been so hungry since I was a girl," Miss Sallie avowed. She was seated on a log, with a sandwich in one hand and a cup of coffee on the ground by her. Her hat was on one side of her head, and her pompadour drooped dejectedly, but Miss Sallie was blissfully unconscious. The color in her cheeks shone as fresh and rosy as the tints in the cheeks of any other of "The Automobile Girls." Mollie flitted around like the spirit of the woods. Nothing could induce her to keep still. "Do let me get the water," she coaxed the guide. Like a flash she was off and back bearing a heavy bucket. "Here, Ruth," she volunteered, pouring a stream of water into the tiny silver cup that Ruth always carried. Ruth was just in time. With a jump to one side, she escaped, but the splash descended on unsuspecting Bab, who Was nibbling a doughnut. In her ardor at playing waitress in the woods Mollie had turned her bucket upside down. Instead of dispensing nectar, this little cup-bearer to "The Automobile Girls" had nearly drowned one of them. "It's a blessed thing you are my sister," cried Bab. Mollie apologized, dabbing at Bab with her small pocket handkerchief. "You can tell me exactly what you think of me. Ruth and Grace might be too polite. I am so sorry; I was trying to be useful." "Go over to the fire, Barbara, and dry your dress," advised Miss Sallie. "It is just as well you have on a thick suit. We must learn to expect occasional mishaps." Barbara winked solemnly at Ruth as she arose from the table. Miss Sallie was sure to be in a good humor when she talked in this philosophical fashion. For an hour after luncheon the camping party continued their climb. Finally Ruth and Bab, who were in front, came to a sudden stop. "Hurrah!" they shouted, turning to wave their handkerchiefs to the occupants of the wagon. Mollie nearly pitched out of the wagon in her excitement, but Grace and Miss Sallie clutched at her skirts in time. "Have we arrived?" Mollie cried. "Oh, do stop the wagon!" The little log cabin in the woods was now plainly in view. "It's the gingerbread house, I know it is," exclaimed Grace, making a flying leap over the wheel of the cart. "The logs are the soft, brown color of good gingerbread, and the little windows must be made of sugar frosting." In a clearing on top of a hillside stood the "hut," as the girls christened it in an instant. A circle of pine and cedar trees hid it from sight. All around it were thick woods. Higher hills rose at the back of it. A roaring brook tumbled down the hillside fifty feet from their cabin door. By nightfall the little house in the woods was made thoroughly livable. The girls hammered and worked, assisted by Naki and his wife. Miss Sallie sat by the big fire in the living room and gave directions. Adjoining this big room, which ran across one side of the cabin, were two bedrooms. Farther back Naki and Ceally shared a small chamber that connected with the kitchen. Just before supper time Ruth took Miss Sallie by the arm; Grace, Barbara and Mollie followed them; around and around their new home "The Automobile Girls" marched. "See your elegance!" said Ruth to her aunt, pointing to a mirror, which hung by a nail over Miss Sallie's rough pine wood dressing table. Her favorite toilet articles were already laid out upon it, her wrapper hung over the back of a chair. "Most noble lady," continued Ruth, "behold what miracles your willing slaves have performed for your comfort! Everything is here for your convenience except your perfumed bath." "Don't speak of a bath, child!" cried Miss Sallie, with a real shudder of horror. "It is the lack of a proper bathtub that makes this camping business truly awful!" "Come, Miss Sallie," called Barbara, quick to change the subject. "I want you to see the wonderful sunset." Overhead Miss Sallie beheld a golden radiance that bathed the hilltop in a wonderful light. In the west the sun was sinking behind a line of blue mountains. That evening the girls sat around an open campfire piled high with pine logs. It was a cool night, and although they were tired, no one would suggest going in to bed. Every now and then Mollie would tumble forward and awake with a start. She was half listening, half dreaming as Grace's lovely voice floated out through the still night air, singing, while she strummed idly her guitar: "Lovely moon that softly glides, Through the realms where God abides." "I wonder," said Mollie to Grace, as she finally followed her into bed, "what wonderful adventures we shall have in this forest? Perhaps we shall awaken a wood nymph and teach her to become a mortal maid. Do you suppose she would like the change?" CHAPTER V A DAY IN THE WOODS Mollie crept to the door of their hut at sunrise next morning. She thought she heard light footfalls outside their door. The other girls were fast asleep, worn out by the long trip of the day before. Yet when Mollie peeped outside no one was in sight; all was silence. Only the birds had begun to stir in their nests and call their morning greetings across from one tree top to another. As far as Mollie could see stretched the unbroken forest. A narrow path ran down the hill between the trees. A steeper incline rose back of them and this was broken with deep ravines. Mollie could neither see nor hear anyone. Yet it seemed to her that she was not alone. She had a sense of some unknown presence. She crept back into the room and put on her crimson dressing gown and slippers. She was bent on making a discovery. It could not be Naki or his wife, whose light footfalls she had heard moving swiftly around the house. They were nowhere to be seen. She was nervous about going out, as Miss Sallie had made dreadful suggestions about wolves and wild cats, yet she slipped out on the tiny porch. Far away through the trees and up the steep hillside she saw flying like a deer, a thin, brown creature. Was it human or a sprite? Mollie could not guess. She caught a glimpse of it, but it had been impossible to observe it accurately, so fast it flew. There was only a whirr of flying feet, and a flash of brown and scarlet to be seen. Could it be the famous ghost of Lost Man's Trail? At this same moment Naki came around from the back of the house. "I thought I heard some one," he grumbled, looking suspiciously at Mollie. "Yes, so did I," she answered. "And I saw some one or something fly up the steep side of that hill." Naki did not answer. Mollie thought he looked at her queerly. "You must have been mistaken, Miss," he declared. "Nothing could have gone up that ravine over yonder. There's only an Indian trail back there. Nobody travels much over that hill. It's all cliffs and dangerous." Mollie shook her pretty head. She did not argue, but she knew what she had seen. "I am going to try climbing it, some day, just the same," she thought to herself, "but of course, I must get used to finding my way about first. I must find out just what I saw this morning." "Where have you been, Mollie?" asked Grace, opening her eyes as Mollie came back to bed. "What's up?" called Ruth from the next room, where she slept with Miss Sallie. "Oh, nothing," Mollie answered, fearful of being thought superstitious. "I thought I heard a sound at the door, but I was mistaken." "Girls," Ruth demanded later, as they sat over their breakfast, "is there anything in the world so good to eat as bacon fried by Ceally over an open fire?" Ruth helped herself to all that was left on the dish. "Ruth Stuart!" called Barbara. "How dare you take all the bacon, when you have just declared it was so delicious? Miss Sallie, make her divide with me." Miss Stuart looked up from her eggs and toast: "What are you children quarreling about?" she asked placidly. "Suppose you bring us another dish of bacon, Ceally. The mountain air certainly creates an appetite. I am sure I don't see what benefit I am to get from 'roughing it!' The one thing I hoped to do by living outdoors was to reduce my figure, but, if my appetite continues at the present rate, I shall certainly not lose an ounce." "Don't you be too sure, auntie," Ruth demurred. "Wait till we get through with you to-day. Think you can climb the hill back of us?" Mollie interrupted. "Naki warns us against that particular hill. He says it is unpopular for climbing because of its cliffs and ravines. But he hints that there is an Indian trail over it, so I am dying to explore it. Aren't you, Bab?" "Well, it's not for me!" laughed Ruth hastily. "I am not any too devoted to scaling cliffs, you may remember." "What's the programme for to-day?" Grace asked. "Somebody must go down the hill with me this afternoon," Ruth answered. "The automobile is to meet us there you know, to take us to a postoffice to mail our letters to our beloved families. This morning we can just poke round the camp. I want Naki to teach us how to make a camp fire." Mollie looked down at her dainty hands. "It is rather dirty work, isn't it?" she asked. "Not a bit of it, Mollie," put in Bab. "Don't be finicky, or we shall put you out of camp. It's a good thing to know how to build a first-class fire. Suppose one of us should be lost in the woods some day!" "We will suppose no such thing," protested Miss Stuart. Early in the afternoon Miss Sallie and the four girls started down the hill. Bab, Mollie and Miss Stuart were to go only a part of the way with Ruth and Grace, the two girls continuing their walk until they met the chauffeur, who was to bring the motor car up to the point of the road where Ruth had told him to meet her. Mollie and Bab begged off from the excursion. "I don't want to know," Bab argued, "how near we still are to civilization. If I go to town with you to-day, no matter how long the drive is, it will take away a part of the romance of living in the hills." Miss Stuart was not much of a walker. Before they had gone half a mile she decided that it was high time to turn back. "Good-bye girls," she called to Ruth and Grace, who were hurrying on. "Do not stay too late. You must be back by dusk, or I shall be most uneasy. At five-thirty I shall expect you in camp. These are my orders." Miss Sallie turned to Bab and Mollie. "Seriously, children," she explained, "I think I shall establish military rules. If one of you stays out after dusk, I believe I shall shut you up in the guard house for twenty-four hours." "But where is the guard house please, Miss Sallie?" inquired Mollie meekly. Miss Sallie laughed. "In this case the guard house means only the cabin. The girl who fails to appear when the roll is called in the evening must remain within the limits of the camp all the following day." Bab and Mollie left Miss Stuart before the log fire in the living room of their hut. Miss Sallie, who had a taste for romance in the lives of other people, was deep in the reading of a new novel. A part of the camping supplies had been a collection of new books for her. "Come on, Mollie," cried Bab gayly. "Let's go over in the woods and gather some pine and cedar branches for our fire this evening." Barbara walked ahead, pulling a small wagon behind her with all the ardor of a young boy. "You see," she avowed to Mollie, "I don't have to remember I am sixteen, or a girl, while we are living in the woods. I can be just as independent as I like." The two sisters were deep in their task. The little wagon was piled high with evergreens. Suddenly Mollie started. She thought she heard a voice calling from somewhere above their heads. "Hi, there! Hello! Hello!" "Did you hear some one calling?" asked Mollie. "Why, no," responded Barbara. "What is the matter with you, Mollie? This morning you heard a 'spook' outside the door, this afternoon you believe you hear a voice calling you. Beware, child! Perhaps you are already afflicted with the wood madness, and may see that wonderful ghost." "Hi, there! Hi, there!" A voice was surely floating down from the sky. This time Bab stared. Mollie looked triumphant. As far as they could see around them, there was no other human creature. And the sound did not come from the ground. Mollie was right. The noise was from overhead. But it was so far off and faint, it could not come from the trees above them. Bab and Mollie ran out into an open space. There was a strange, rattling, swinging noise above their heads, as though a pair of mammoth wings were beating in the sky. The two girls looked up. There, about twenty yards above the tops of the highest trees was the strangest object ever seen by Mollie and Bab! "What on earth is it?" Bab breathed faintly. The voice sounded more distinctly this time. "Is there some one down there in the woods?" Bab caught the words. The sound was coming from a megaphone from the strange ship in the air. But Mollie and Bab had no megaphone at their command through which to answer back--only two frightened girl voices. "Yes, yes!" they called together as loud as they could shout. The sound was ridiculous even to their own ears, and was lost in the vast spaces of the forest. The strange vehicle over their heads was gliding a little closer to the ground. Bab and Mollie could faintly see the figure of a man--two men--when they looked again. This time the voice came through the megaphone: "Can you get me help? I have broken the rudder of my balloon. We cannot alight without assistance. If we come too close to the ground we will catch in the trees. I want some one to pull us down with ropes." "Well," Mollie spoke to herself, "it is a relief to know that that object is an airship, not some hideous hobgoblin. I would like to know, Bab, how you and I are to get the thing to the ground?" "Run, fly, Molliekins!" cried Bab, whose mind was always quick in action. "Go to the cabin for Naki and Ceally. Tell them to come here as fast as they can tear. We can manage together." Mollie was off in a flash. Barbara's voice could now be heard by the men in the balloon above her. "Drop me a line," she called to them, "before you float too far away. I will tie you to a tree." Bab had realized that with a broken rudder it was impossible for the dirigible balloon to remain poised in the air. A long coil of rope floated down from the sky. Barbara caught it and ran to a tree which was bare of branches. Then she knotted the rope with all her skill and strength. There was nothing to do, now, but wait. Bab fastened her gaze upon the strange white bird she had captured, which hung fluttering and quivering in the sky above her. CHAPTER VI "THE GREAT WHITE ALSO" Two minutes later Naki came running along the path. Even his solemn face was aglow with excitement. Ceally was close behind him. Just after them danced Mollie, who was followed by Miss Sallie. The latter had deserted her novel at the critical moment of the story. She must discover what Mollie was talking about. The child was too excited to explain. [Illustration: A Long Coil of Rope Floated Down from the Sky.] When the little party reached the clearing where Bab stood it was easy to see what had happened. An aerial navigator had come to grief and was calling for assistance. As Naki joined Bab, the aeronauts dropped more ropes from their basket, which hung beneath the great balloon. The big guide seized hold of one; his wife grabbed another; before Miss Sallie could stop her, Bab was swinging on a third. "Great heavens child, let go!" Miss Sallie called out in tones of intense alarm. "You will be rising up in the air in another moment!" "Oh, no!" laughed Bab out of breath. "There's no danger now. Don't you smell something horrible?" The delicious air of the woods was being permeated with a detestable odor. The great balloon above their heads was shrinking. It was growing smaller and smaller. The gas was being allowed slowly to escape from it. "Why, it looks like an enormous slug," cried Mollie, "now that we can see the thing closely." By this time the balloon had neared the ground. Two men sprang over the sides of the basket, both alighting on their feet. Half a moment later the older of the two was bowing politely to Miss Sallie and wiping his glasses. Landing from a balloon on top of a mountain was apparently an ordinary occurrence with him. His companion was busy with the airship, which now lay on one side on the ground. It was shuddering and exhaling deep breaths. "Madam," said the aeronaut addressing Miss Sallie, but looking at Barbara, who stood by her side. "More than I can express I thank you for your assistance. We were, I think, in rather a dangerous position and we might very easily have been killed. At best, in trying to alight without help, I should have torn my balloon in the branches of the trees. Perhaps you ladies would like to examine the balloon more thoroughly. This is my nephew, Reginald Latham." A young man arose from the ground. He wore a close fitting tan costume, a cap with a visor and short trousers. He brought his heels together with a click, and bowed low to Miss Sallie. Then he extended his hand to Mollie and Barbara. "It was immensely clever of you," he spoke, with a slightly foreign accent, "to have helped us out of our difficulty. Tying us to the tree, while we were obliged to wait, really saved the situation. I do not think the balloon is injured at all, except for the broken rudder." The young man spoke of his balloon as tenderly as though it were a cherished friend. He looked about twenty-three or four years old. He was thin and dark, with clever eyes; but an expression of restlessness and discontent spoiled an otherwise interesting face. "I am Winthrop Latham," his uncle continued. "I have a summer place down here, but my nephew and I spend most of our time, both summer and winter in Lenox. We have a house in my grounds where we are both working on models for airships." Mr. Latham paused. It was natural that he should expect some explanation. What was a handsome, middle-aged woman doing on top of a mountain? Why were her only companions two charming young girls and a rough looking man and his wife? "I suppose," Miss Stuart replied, laughing, "that you are almost as much surprised at our appearance as we are at yours! I am sure no thanks are necessary for our part in your rescue! We were delighted to assist in such a novel and up-to-date adventure." Miss Sallie looked smilingly at Mollie and Barbara. She was rather enjoying their unusual experience. Moreover, she had heard of Mr. Latham's beautiful home in Lenox. And was assured they were in the best of company. "We are camping on this hill for a few weeks," she continued. "I am Miss Stuart, of Chicago. My niece and I, and three girl friends, are the entire camping party, except for our guide and his wife. Won't you come to our hut? Can we be of any assistance to you?" "Indeed, you can!" heartily declared Mr. Latham, who was evidently an old bachelor of about fifty-five years of age, with charming manners. "I wonder if you will take care of my balloon for me until my nephew can get down the hill to send a wagon up for it. That very inferior looking object you now see collapsed on the ground is really my latest treasure. It is one of the best dirigible balloons invented up to the present time." Barbara was already down on her hands and knees beside the balloon. As her new acquaintance explained the details of its construction to her, his face burned with enthusiasm. Mollie, watching him, thought he looked almost handsome. Nevertheless she didn't like Reginald Latham. Bab, however, was delighted. She had a thirst for information and here was a young man who could intelligently talk to her about the most marvelous inventions of the century, the airship and the aeroplane. "I think," Bab volunteered, "if the balloon can be folded without harming it, we might carry it to the house in our small express wagon. We could each hold up a side of it, and it would be better than carrying it altogether." The queer procession started for the cabin. Miss Sallie and Mollie walked on in front. Mr. Latham, Reginald Latham, Naki and Ceally, each supported a corner of the balloon, while Bab solemnly dragged the express wagon. Her pile of evergreens had been rudely dumped out on the ground. "Well, for goodness sake!" Ruth and Grace stood at the door of their cabin, transfixed with surprise. "What on earth has happened this time?" "Let nothing surprise you, girls, in this world of strange adventure," called Barbara. She had forgotten the strangers when she saw the amazed faces of Ruth and Grace. "Sometimes it is the stay-at-homes who have the exciting experiences come to them." "Do come in and have tea with us, Mr. Latham!" urged Miss Stuart. "Naki will go down to a farmhouse, only a mile or so away, where he keeps his horses, and will bring up his wagon to take your balloon home for you. You really must explain matters to my niece and her friend, Miss Carter, or they will perish with curiosity! If traveling in the air makes one as hungry as living on a hilltop, the tea may be acceptable for its own sake." "Of course I want to come into your castle," laughed Mr. Latham. "I feel so certain I have run across a party of fairies that I must peep into your dwelling to see if you are real people." "You are not ahead of us, Mr. Latham," laughed Barbara, "Mollie and I thought you were angels calling down to us from the sky." "I hope, Miss Stuart," begged their visitor, as he was making his adieus, "that you will soon come down from your high retreat and bring these young ladies to see my place in Lenox. Reginald and I promise not to talk airships incessantly. But, if you refuse to descend the hill very soon, my nephew and I shall climb up to see you. Next time I promise to appear in a more conventional fashion." That night, when the girls were undressing, Mollie announced unexpectedly: "I don't like that Reginald Latham." "Why not, Mollie?" asked Bab. "He is a very interesting fellow. His mother is a German and he has been educated in Germany. His father, who was Mr. Latham's younger brother, is dead. I think Reginald is his uncle's heir. He told me he and his uncle mean to devote all their time to inventing airships. He studied about them in Germany, even before he came to live with his uncle three years ago." "Mercy!" Mollie ejaculated. "Then he is even more queer than I thought him. What a useless life for a man of his age. I don't like him even if he is ever so clever, and though his uncle is a dear. Girls, if I tell you something will you promise me not to laugh? Cross your heart and body. I won't tell you unless you do." "Oh, then we have no choice, Mollie," laughed Grace. "You may laugh a little," relented Mollie, who was giggling softly to herself. "Do you know what I suddenly thought, when Bab and I saw that great white object come sailing over our heads this afternoon? Like a flash it popped into my mind. Here comes 'The Great White Also!'" Barbara shrieked with laughter in spite of her promise. "Oh, you funny Mollie!" she exclaimed. "What is the child talking about?" inquired the puzzled Ruth. "The Great White Also! What utter nonsense!" Mollie blushed. "Do you remember," she asked, "a paragraph in the first geography you studied at school? It read: 'The brown bear, the black bear, and the great white also inhabit the northern regions of North America.' Well, when I was small child I always thought 'the great white also' was some strange kind of animal. For a long time I wondered and wondered what it could be. Finally I asked mother and Bab to explain the sentence to me. Of course they thought it a lovely joke; but, just the same, I never could get over my first impression. It flashed into my head this afternoon, when I saw that strange white thing struggling in the air--at last here comes 'The Great White Also!' Wasn't it too absurd? I have been laughing to myself ever since." "Children, what on earth is the matter?" inquired Miss Sallie, appearing at the bedroom door in her dressing gown. "You will waken the dead with your racket. Ruth, come to bed, at once, and tell me what you are laughing about." CHAPTER VII MOLLIE FOLLOWS THE TRAIL "Mollie have you seen my red sweater?" called Grace a few days later. "I can't find it anywhere; yet I am sure I left it out here on this bench last night. Naki and Ceally haven't seen it. Horrid thing! It has taken wings and flown away just when I wanted it. Do come with us. Ruth, Bab and I are going over into the forest to try to learn to shoot. Naki is to teach us." "Does Miss Sallie know?" asked Mollie, who was not in a good humor. Bab had been lecturing her for her sudden dislike of Reginald Latham. It seemed to Mistress Barbara unreasonable that Mollie had taken such an unaccountable prejudice against a young man whom they had barely met. "You talk, Mollie, as if he were a villain in a play," Bab protested. Mollie knew she had been obstinate. All she had answered was: "Well, he would probably be a villain, if he had the opportunity. I hope I shan't see him again. I don't see, Bab, why you should be so interested in him. He's lots older than you are." "I am not interested in him," Bab retorted indignantly. And the two sisters had separated. "Of course, Miss Sallie knows we are going to practise shooting?" mimicked Grace. "What is the matter with Miss Mollie Thurston this morning? Don't you know Mr. Stuart sent us a rifle. He told us learning to shoot might prove a useful part of our education. _Do_ come on with us Mollie." "No, thank you," Mollie declared. "I hate the noise of a gun. Oh, I am not afraid, Grace Carter, so you needn't tease; but I prefer more ladylike amusements. I am going for a walk." "Don't go too far by yourself, Mollie," pleaded Grace, who didn't mind Mollie's tantrums. "You don't know your way about these hills, yet, and it isn't safe to wander any distance. How I wish I could find my coat." "Here, take Aunt Sallie's," cried Ruth, appearing suddenly in the doorway. "It is not such a charming color as your scarlet one, and it may be a trifle large, but it will keep you warm. Coming, child?" she asked Mollie. Mollie shook her head. Without waiting for Bab to join them she started on her walk. The child wanted to be alone. Besides being in a bad humor she had several things to think about. She certainly would not tell Bab and the other girls, just to be laughed at; but again that morning she had heard a light noise outside their window. It didn't sound like an animal. Mollie wrinkled her pretty forehead, and a puzzled expression crept into her blue eyes. How absurd even to dream of a thief, here on their beautiful hillside far away from the rest of the world. And, she, a great girl of fourteen, knew better than to believe in ghosts. Mollie slipped down the path and crossed the gully that divided the nearer hill from the higher one back of it. Already her bad humor was disappearing. She had no idea of going far from their cabin; another day she might persuade the girls to explore this mysterious hill, with its lost Indian trail; but she should not attempt it alone. This morning she wanted only to creep away for an hour or so into the woodland quiet. Mollie Thurston had a curious passion for the woods. When she was alone in them she would stand still a long time, calling to the birds, and she delighted in having them steal near and shyly listen to the sweet sounds she made in return for theirs. No one knew of this accomplishment of Mollie's, not even Bab. Up the steep hillside Mollie clambered. Below her she could hear the pop, pop, pop, of a rifle. The girls were evidently taking their lesson in target practice from Naki. "I suppose I am fairly safe up here," Mollie chuckled, "but I wouldn't care to be too near those shooting experts. I know they will hit everything near them except their target." She sat down on the root of an old tree that jutted out from an overhanging bank, and drew a sheet of paper from her pocket. She would write to her mother of their rescue of an airship. Mollie bit the end of her pencil--she was not in a writing mood. Why had she taken such a dislike to Reginald Latham? He had been polite enough, and was rather good-looking. It was Bab's habit to feel prejudices, not hers. She wouldn't say anything to her mother about him, but certainly Bab seemed to like him unusually well. Crack! Crack! The sound came from the bushes! She looked quickly around. It must have been a gust of wind that stirred. In another minute there tumbled over her head a shower of leaves and acorns, that for an instant blinded her. But she could hear plainly this time; light feet were running along the bank above the ravine where she sat. Without pausing a moment she jumped to her feet and ran up the path that led from the bottom of the ravine to the hilltop. Nothing was in sight; but further on through a thicket of trees, she caught the distant sound of flying footsteps. She could see the underbrush move, as though shaken by something in passing. A shivering sense of mystery possessed the girl. Could it be the ghost? Without stopping to think Mollie flew in pursuit; determined to discover what had disturbed her. Once she saw a bright object flash ahead of her, brown and scarlet, through the trees. It was gone in an instant. Surely it was but a shadow from the autumn leaves. For some distance Mollie had been following what seemed to be a pathway through a tangled thicket of bushes and trees. Suddenly she stopped. So far as she could see the path ended abruptly. Yet, at this very moment, she heard a faint hallo! It was the voice of temptation to Mollie, and she let her curiosity get the better of her. Without in the least knowing where she was going she pushed on. Ducking her head through an opening in one place, turning and twisting wherever she found it possible to make her way, the child came at last into a thick forest. On every side of her stretched endless avenues of trees. Now no sound of flying feet urged her on; no voice called her. Poor Mollie was entirely alone. "What an utter goose I am!" she declared out loud. "I don't believe I ever heard anyone, or saw anything. It was just my imagination that led me on. Now, I hope," Mollie gave a rueful smile and sat down to pull the brambles out of her dress, "I hope my imagination will kindly show me the way home again!" Which way should she go? There were half a dozen different directions open to her. Which was the right one? "I wonder," thought Mollie, "if, somehow, I have struck the famous 'Lost Man's Trail?' It is a lost girl's trail all right!" She turned this way, then that. In front of her between the sumach and the holly trees was an open space, which might lead somewhere toward home. Mollie pushed her way through. There were trees, trees, trees! No path was visible between them. For half a mile Mollie walked on blindly, feeling sure that, at any minute, she would catch a glimpse of their familiar hillside. A sense of sinking warned her that luncheon time had passed. High overhead she could see by the sun that noon had passed. Several times she called aloud. But Naki had warned her. This hill was entirely deserted. No one ever walked or rode over it. "I don't wonder," the little girl thought, with a lump in her throat. "No one except myself would be such a goose as to try to find her way about up here, or be silly enough to go on a ghost hunt." She called again. "Hello! hello! I am lost! Is anyone near?" There was no answer. Once Mollie thought she heard a strange sound, half-wild, half-human, and called more loudly. This time there was no reply. After several hours of walking, Mollie found her way out of the woods. As she came again to an open hilltop she thought she could see the smoke curling out of the chimney of their little, brown cabin, but far and near, there was no familiar object. She had followed the wrong trail, and was in an entirely different part of the country. There was nothing to do but to return to the woods. Wearily she walked back. "I am sure the girls must be looking for me," she said, trying to revive her courage. "When I wasn't home in time for lunch Bab would know I was lost." On and on, Mollie wandered. Finally, toward dusk, she found herself again in the heart of the forest where she had lost her way in the morning. She was so tired, there was nothing to do but to sit down and rest, but she had not given up. Of course, she would find her way out of this labyrinth of trees somehow. However, just for the time, she must wait. Mollie sank down on a pile of leaves that had been blown in a heap under the shelter of a great cedar tree. It was growing cold, and the September day was closing. All morning and afternoon the little girl had wandered alone in the woods. How many miles she had traveled she did not know. The child shivered, as she dropped on the ground. Tired as she was, she had plenty of courage left. Not a tear had been shed in these miles of weary tramping; indeed she had often laughed at her own mistakes, though the laughter had sometimes been close to tears; but Mollie knew that she must not lose her head. "Suppose, I do have to stay in the woods all night?" she reflected. "It wouldn't kill me. I have wanted to have adventures in a forest; here is my opportunity. I wish, though, I knew how to make a fire; I'm so cold and hungry; but I haven't a sign of a match, so there is no use of thinking about it." If Mollie could but have kept awake a little longer! No sooner had she dropped on the soft leaves than fatigue overcame her, and she was fast asleep. Suddenly a figure came out of the underbrush--a strange young figure all brown and scarlet. It moved so softly that scarcely a leaf trembled. For a minute it paused and gazed down on the sleeping child. The little girl stirred in her sleep. With a bound the wood sprite vanished. It need not have hurried; Mollie was too utterly weary to awaken soon. What had happened at the log cabin, meantime? All morning Ruth, Bab and Grace had been practising under the instruction of Naki. Bab was growing into a clever shot, and Ruth was playing her a close second, when the luncheon gong sounded. The girls had given no further thought to Mollie, supposing she had grown tired of her walk, and was at home with Miss Sallie. The latter naturally was not worried, as she thought Mollie was with Naki and the others. When the girls filed into the living room for their lunch Bab asked carelessly: "Where's Mollie?" "Where's Mollie?" repeated Miss Sallie. "Hasn't she been shooting with you? Perhaps she is somewhere near. Here is Ceally; I will ask her." At this moment Ceally entered with a great bowl of vegetable soup that looked most inviting to the hungry girls. "I haven't seen Miss Mollie all morning," she explained. "Not since she started for a walk up that hill over 'yond'." Barbara, Grace and Ruth stared at each other with white, frightened faces. They remembered Mollie had gone off for a walk early that morning; but she had promised not to go far up the hill. "Call Naki, at once," said Miss Stuart hurriedly. "He will probably know where Mollie is." "No, auntie." Ruth shook her head. "Naki doesn't know. He has been teaching us to shoot all the forenoon." Bab jumped up from the table. "Please, Miss Sallie," she cried hastily, "may Naki and I go out to look for Mollie? I am afraid she is lost on the hill." "Sit down, Bab," quietly said Miss Sallie, in the voice the girls recognized as final. "You and the other girls must each eat a plate of this soup. You are not to start out to look for Mollie when you are tired and hungry. Ceally, see that Naki has some food at once, and bring the coffee to me." Barbara was almost crying. "Oh, Miss Sallie," she pleaded, "I can't eat. Don't make me wait. I must go at once." "Eat your soup, Barbara," was Miss Sallie's reply. Poor Bab obediently choked it down, while Ruth and Grace followed her example. Then they each drank a cup of coffee. It was Miss Sallie who ate nothing. She was more frightened than the girls; for the woods were more terrible to her than to the young people. Then, Mollie was the youngest of the party, and Miss Stuart felt she was less able to look after herself. Besides, Ceally had hinted strange tales of the haunted mountain back of them. At the time, Miss Sallie had refused to listen; it had seemed utter nonsense, that tale of a ghost which haunted a lost Indian trail. Now, the idea came to Miss Stuart, that perhaps the ghost on the mountain was some criminal, a fugitive from justice, who made his home on the deserted hill. It was Bab who led the way up to the top of the ravine. But there she stopped and waited for Naki and the girls to join her. Looking for lost people in the woods was an old business with the guide. He did not take the fact of disobedient Mollie's disappearance any too seriously. Once up the hill, he blew on a great horn which he carried. Once, twice, thrice! There was no response. He blew again, then waited. Evidently the young lady was out of earshot. Then Naki made a mistake. Instead of going into the woods, where Mollie had pursued her will-o'-the-wisp, he turned in the opposite direction. It did not dawn on him that she had been led astray by a forgotten Indian trail. "You must keep close to me, young ladies," Naki insisted. "None of ye know your way about up here. If we should separate, I should soon be searching for the whole lot of ye, instead of just one." All afternoon they searched and searched for the lost one, yet all in vain. If Mollie shed no tears while she was lost, Barbara shed plenty in the effort to find her. Poor Grace and Ruth tried vainly to comfort her. "If only we hadn't quarreled this morning over that horrid Reginald Latham!" Bab sobbed, running on ahead of the others. "I told Mollie she was foolish to say she hated anyone whom she did not know. Yet I do it all the time myself." "Oh, do cheer up, Bab," said Grace, choking back her own tears. "You didn't quarrel with Mollie. I never saw two sisters who fussed so little. I know we shall find her soon." "There's nothing up here can harm your sister, Miss," Naki explained to frightened Bab. "The country around here is perfectly peaceful." At dusk Naki and his searching party returned alone to the top of the ravine from whence they had started. Looking down, they could see their log cabin, where Miss Sallie and Ceally stood at the open door. There was no sign of Mollie. "It is harder work than I expected to find the young lady," Naki apologized to Ruth. "I am sorry, but you had better go back to your aunt. I must go down to the farm for help. It will take a number of people to make a thorough search of this place to-night. The underbrush is so thick that it is hard work traveling about." "Oh, I can't go home without Mollie!" sobbed Bab. "I am not a bit afraid to stay up here alone. Leave me, Ruth, you and Grace. I'll just sit at the top of this ravine and call and call! Then, if Mollie comes anywhere near me, she will hear. You and Grace go and have supper with Miss Sallie. You can bring me something to eat afterwards, if you like." Barbara smiled feebly. Ruth and Grace both turned on her indignantly. It was a relief to pretend to be offended. "Oh, yes, Bab, we are both delighted to go down and comfortably eat our supper! It is so pleasant to think of your sitting up here alone, like a stone image, and poor little Mollie lost--goodness knows where!" Ruth kissed Bab for comfort. Then she turned to Grace. "Grace," she asked, "will you be a perfect dear? I know Naki is right; he must get some one to help him search for Mollie, and one of us must go to Aunt Sallie, who is terribly worried. See! she has already seen us, and is waving her hand. But if you will go tell her what has happened, I shall stay up here with Bab, and Ceally can bring us some dinner. You can come back afterwards. By that time Naki will have returned with assistance and we can go on with our search again." "I hate to leave you," Grace protested, "but I will go." "Wait for me," Naki cautioned. Both girls nodded. They were too tired to speak. CHAPTER VIII END OF THE SEARCH When Grace and Naki had finally disappeared Bab put her head down on Ruth's shoulder and cried bitterly. "I am so frightened!" she sobbed. "If only I were lost instead of my little sister! Mother always trusts me to look after Mollie. I ought not to have let her go off alone!" Ruth wisely allowed Bab to have her cry out, before she said: "Bab, dear, remember father said he relied on us to keep cool heads and strong hearts in any case of emergency. Now let's gather ourselves together. Let's say over and over again: 'We will find Mollie! We will find Mollie!'" Bab braced up at once and repeated quietly, "Certainly we will find her, Ruth dear." Both girls were looking toward the woods. It was not yet night, but the dusk was falling quickly. Suddenly, off through the trees, the two girls distinctly saw a light that shone on a level with their eyes. Once, twice, then again, it sparkled through the underbrush. "What is it?" Bab breathed faintly. Ruth shook her head. "I don't know," she answered, under her breath. The light advanced toward them; then it drew back again, never ceasing to sparkle. It seemed to be beckoning to them. "Oh, Ruth," cried Barbara, "could it be a signal from Mollie?" "How could it, Barbara, dear?" Ruth replied. Both girls waited a little longer. The light came again. It seemed almost to call to them. Barbara started to her feet impatiently. "I must go and see what it is," she declared. "Wait a minute, Bab!" pleaded Ruth. It was second nature with Ruth to be ready for emergencies. Rapidly she tore from a pad in her leather knapsack a sheet of paper and wrote on it: "Bab and I are going into the woods at the left. Follow the trail of the paper I shall drop as we walk." Like a flash she pulled off her white petticoat, and tied it to a bush near the place where she and Bab had been sitting. The skirt fluttered and swung in the breeze. Beneath it, under a small stone, Ruth placed her note. "Come on, Bab!" she cried. "Let's be off!" Barbara bounded ahead; Ruth closely followed, leaving behind her a trail of white paper which she tore into bits as she ran. The light ahead of the two girls beckoned them deeper and deeper into the forests. They must have followed it for more than a mile. Ruth's paper was giving out. Suddenly the light dipped to the ground and was gone! At the same moment, Ruth and Barbara heard a sizzling crackling noise. A tongue of flame darted up between two distant trees, and a warm glow like that of a camp fire lit up the shadows of the forest. Ruth and Bab rushed to the spot. In the center of a small open space some one had lighted a fire. Sitting on a bank of autumn leaves, slowly rubbing her eyes was a girl. A scarlet coat caught Bab's eyes; then a tangle of yellow curls. "It's my Mollie!" she cried, springing toward her and gathering her in her arms. "Why, Bab," asked Mollie sleepily, "when did you and Ruth find me? I must have been dreaming. I did not hear you make the fire. How did you happen to light a fire before you awakened me?" The girls stared at Mollie. "Build a fire?" they queried in amazement. "Surely, Mollie, you made the fire yourself." Mollie shook her head. "How could I possibly light a fire?" she inquired. "I haven't a match." Then she smiled faintly. "I am not enough of an 'early settler' to know how to make a light by striking two flints together. But please take me home." The little girl was too tired to care about anything beyond the blessed fact that she had been found. It was Bab and Ruth who were overcome with the mystery of the dancing light that led them through the forest straight to Mollie. And who could have started the fire, that now roared and blazed, lighting the woods with its many tongues of flame. What did it all mean? The mystery of it all gave them long, creepy thrills. Barbara helped Mollie to her feet. The child was so stiff she could hardly move, but as she arose something red dropped to the ground. Ruth picked it up. "Why, it is Grace's sweater!" she exclaimed. "I am so glad you found it, Mollie, before you went for your walk. What a blessed thing you had it to keep you warm!" "Grace's sweater! What are you talking about, Ruth? I didn't have it with me. I was nearly frozen. You or Bab must have brought it with you. I found it over my shoulders when I awoke," protested Mollie. Ruth and Bab said nothing. There was nothing to be said. It was all a puzzle! Where was the clue to the mystery? The two girls were leading poor, tired Mollie through the thick tangle of shrubs, along which Ruth's bits of torn paper gleamed white and cheerful pointing their pathway home. Even Mollie smiled on seeing them. "If only I had remembered to play 'Hop-o-my-thumb,' Ruth, dear," Mollie whispered, "I needn't have created all this trouble. Do you think Miss Sallie will ever forgive me?" "Indeed she will," Ruth assured her. "She will be so happy to see you again, you poor, tired Mollie, she'll forget to scold!" By this time the girls could hear the noise of voices and the beating of bushes. "Here we are!" Ruth called out cheerfully. "Don't worry. We have found Mollie!" Naki burst through the opening. Ceally and Grace were with him and two strange men from the farm below them on the hill. Naki picked up Mollie in his arms as though she had been a baby, and the party trudged on to their little log cabin. At the top of the fateful ravine they found Miss Sallie. She could bear the suspense of waiting no longer and had climbed up alone. "Home for sure!" proclaimed Naki briefly, as he deposited Mollie, still wrapped in Grace's red sweater, on the couch before the fire in their cosy living room. CHAPTER IX SPIRIT OF THE FOREST "It is perfectly incredible!" exclaimed Miss Sallie. She and Bab were discussing Mollie's adventure the next morning at breakfast. "The more I try to reason out the whole thing, the more in the dark I am," Bab answered. "Have you talked with Mollie?" Miss Sallie inquired. Bab nodded, and replied thoughtfully: "The truth of the matter is, Mollie knows less on the subject than the rest of us. All that she can tell is that she was sitting quietly at the bottom of the ravine, when suddenly a shower of leaves fell over her head, and she heard the noise of feet running along the bank above her. Determined to discover what had startled her, Mollie climbed up the ravine and kept on with her pursuit until she was completely lost. She must have wandered around all day. Finally she was so tired she sat down to rest. When she awoke Ruth and I had found her." "But Grace's sweater! Where did it come from?" asked Miss Sallie weakly. Ceally who entered the room at this moment, with her arms full of logs for the fire, caught the end of the conversation. She looked about her cautiously. Naki, her husband, was some distance away, cutting down the underbrush which was growing too high near their cabin. "Miss," whispered Ceally cautiously, "they do say there is a ghost up on that mountain. It must have been a ghost that led Miss Mollie on that lost trail. Once you strike that trail, there ain't no way of finding your way back again, unless you follow some such clue as Miss Ruth's bits of paper." "Ghosts! Utter nonsense, Ceally!" scolded Miss Sallie. But under her breath she confessed to herself: "If anything in this world could bring me to believe in ghosts it would be this mysterious occurrence." Ruth flew in at the door. "Aunt Sallie," she cried, "here is a man on horseback, with a note from Mr. Latham. He wants us to come down and spend the afternoon with him. He says he will send for us in a carriage that can come almost all the way up the hill, so we need only walk a little way. Do let's go! Want to, Bab?" Ruth finished. Miss Sallie looked dubious. "It is a good deal of a task, child, to go down this hill, except when we mean to stay down," she protested. "Oh, no, Aunt Sallie!" Ruth begged. "You know Naki goes down the hill every day, on some errand or other. I have been to Lenox twice myself and to Pittsfield once. I won't give you and Bab these letters, unless you promise to accept. One is for Bab, from her mother; the other is for you, from father." Miss Stuart was reading Mr. Latham's note. "My sister-in-law is with me," it read. "She joins her entreaties to Reginald's and mine to beg our hillside fairies to come down to the earth and have afternoon tea with us. We are to have no other guests, except a few young people whom I am sure your girls will like to meet. Later on, when you condescend to spend a few weeks in Lenox, it may be a pleasure for you to know them. Certainly it will be a pleasure for them to know you." "The man is waiting outside for your answer," proclaimed Ruth, dancing first on one foot and then on the other. "Here are pen and paper. Do write and let me take the note out to him." Miss Stuart allowed herself to be persuaded into accepting Mr. Latham's invitation. Life on the hill was growing a bit dull for Miss Sallie. She dreaded the long trip, but Mr. Latham's place lay between their hill and the town of Lenox. Mollie came into the room as Ruth ran out to deliver the note of acceptance. "Who is out there?" she inquired languidly. The little girl was not yet rested from her experience of the day before. "We are invited to the Latham place this afternoon, Molliekins!" Bab explained. "Are you going, Miss Sallie?" Mollie asked. Miss Stuart nodded. "Yes, I think so, child," she declared. "It is a dreadfully long journey, but Ruth is determined to go, and I am as wax in her hands." "Aunt Sallie Stuart, you are no such thing!" Ruth laughed, as she returned to the little group. "I am the most obedient niece in the world. You know you liked Mr. Latham. And he has a marvelous place, with a wonderful fish pond on it. From his veranda he says you can see over into four states, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont!" "Well, girls, we will start promptly after an early lunch," Miss Stuart remarked. "Miss Sallie," interrupted Mollie gently, "remember I am in the guard house for the next twenty-four hours. I broke all camp regulations by being lost yesterday. So I can't go with the party to Mr. Latham's." "Nonsense, Mollie!" said Miss Stuart kindly. "I was only joking when I threatened to establish military discipline in my camp. Besides, if you were disobedient, you were well enough punished for it. Don't you wish to come with us?" Mollie shook her head. "If you don't mind, Miss Sallie, I would rather not," she replied. "I am a little tired and I would rather stay quietly up here. You can count on my promise this time. I won't go more than a yard from the cabin. Naki and Ceally will both be here to look after me." "I will stay with Mollie," spoke up Bab. "I prefer not to leave her alone." Mollie protested energetically. "Bab, you must not stay behind with me. If you insist on doing it, I shall go with you, no matter how tired I feel. You know you are the one original lady rescuer of an airship yet on record! I was only the legs of the rescue, as I ran after Naki and Ceally. You were the brains of the whole business. Besides, you know you are simply dying to see Reginald Latham's airship models, as well as their beautiful house and grounds. Make her go, Miss Sallie!" Mollie ended. "I see no reason, Bab, why you shouldn't accompany us." Miss Sallie declared. "Naki and Ceally will look after Mollie, and an afternoon's rest will be much better for the child than a long, fatiguing excursion." Mollie walked to the edge of the hill to see Miss Sallie and her charges start off on their excursion to Mr. Latham's. Then she thankfully crept home to the little cabin and stretched herself out on her cot, with the eider down comfort drawn up to her head. The child, who was not so vigorous as Bab, was worn out from her fright and exposure. An hour later she awakened, feeling bright and rested as though she had never been lost in a strange woods. It was a lovely, bright afternoon. Mollie could hear the leaves rustling outside, as the wind stirred them and they fluttered to the ground. The little girl had read that a swan sings a wonderful song just as he is about to die. She walked out on the porch with an odd fancy in her head. She stopped and listened again to the sound the autumn leaves made, as they swirled from the trees to the earth. "I believe," Mollie smiled to herself, "that the autumn leaves sing their swan song, too." She pointed to a beautiful, golden maple leaf, that was fluttering in the air. "See, there is a leaf! It is singing its good-bye song to the tree, which has borne it all summer! The little leaf is traveling to an unknown land down under the ground." Mollie laughed at her own idea. It was difficult for her to keep her eyes turned away from her ravine. She glanced up the hill. Surely she saw a figure moving there. It was a slight young creature, no larger than Mollie herself. Was it a boy or girl? It was impossible to tell, though the figure was drawing toward her. The little girl watched with fascinated eyes. Down the ravine crept a thin, brown body. Now it looked this way, then that. Hardly touching the earth, it flew from one high rock to the other. Then it dipped into the hollow between the two hills and was gone. This time Mollie did not stir from her veranda, but through her brain flashed the thought--the ghost at last! In another moment she saw a black head rise up on a level with her eyes. Mollie gave a gasp of surprise, then was silent. A thin, brown creature moved softly toward her on velvet feet. Mollie hardly breathed. Never in her life had she beheld so odd, so exquisite a figure. A girl about her own age stood before her. Her hair hung over her shoulders, black and straight. Her cheeks were a deep carmine. Her complexion was too dark to be olive, yet it was neither brown nor red. She was dressed in a thin, soft garment that fitted her closely from her bare neck to her ankles. Around her waist she had knotted a crimson scarf. On her head she wore a fantastic wreath of scarlet autumn leaves. The newcomer stared at Mollie. Once, like a startled fawn, she turned to flee. But Mollie was too wise to speak or to move. Reassured, the quaint visitor drew nearer. Mollie smiled at her quietly. "Are you afraid of me?" she asked gently. "Come here, I shall not hurt you." Suddenly the stranger's dark, sad little face burst into a smile. "I am not afraid," she insisted. "I am never afraid. But is it well with you?" She spoke English, but with a strange guttural note Mollie had never heard before. "Why should it not be well with me?" asked Mollie in surprise. "Because," the wood sprite answered, "you were lost yesterday in the hills." "How did you know?" Mollie demanded. "How did I know?" The girl lifted her head proudly. "I know all things that take place in the woods," she replied. "The woods are my home." Mollie looked thoughtful; then she spoke in a firm voice: "You know for other reasons, as well. You know I was lost because you led me away yesterday." The girl's brown face crimsoned, her eyes flashed. Then she lifted her head proudly. "I led you nowhere!" she declared. "You would follow me. No one can run as I do, or capture me when they hunt." "Who are you?" Mollie asked her. "I am nobody," the young girl replied. It seemed to Mollie she spoke sadly. But she dropped down on the steps of the porch and waited until Mollie joined her there. Mollie put out her own soft, white hand and took the other girl's brown fingers in her own. The hands were slender and long, with hard muscles trained to the work of the woods. "Well," said Mollie gently, "if I _would_ follow you, perhaps my getting lost was my own fault. But was it quite fair of you to come each morning to our windows, and then fly away again before anyone could see you?" Mollie was only guessing at this; but it was easy to see her guess had struck home. Her visitor turned a deeper crimson and dropped her eyes. "I am sure you meant no harm by your morning calls," continued Mollie smilingly. "But, if you didn't lead me away into the woods, there is one thing I feel very sure of; you did show my friends how to find me." "Hush, hush!" cried the wood nymph, rising to her feet and looking around in terror, her slender body poised for flight. "Promise me," she pleaded, "that you will not tell you have seen me, nor that I ever came here to you." The girl dropped on her knees at Mollie's feet. "I am an Indian girl," she explained. "I live on Lost Man's Mountain, but I know no one, and no one knows me. Only Naki your guide has seen me. But he, too, has Indian blood. He will not betray me. My name is Eunice. I have no other name." "But you cannot live alone," Mollie protested. The Indian girl shook her head without answering. "If I tell you," she implored, "will you promise me by the stars never to betray me? Promise, promise, or I shall disappear and you will see me never again." "Oh," Mollie answered thoughtlessly, "I promise." A swift change swept over the Indian girl's face. She leaned confidingly toward Mollie, who realized for the first time what her promise meant. She was already dying to tell Bab and the other girls of her afternoon's experience, but she vowed to herself to keep the child's secret. "I do not live alone," Eunice declared. "I have a grandmother, who is an old, old Indian woman. Our hut is far back in the hills. All day I have watched and waited by your cabin, until the others went away. I wanted to see that all was right with you. I trust you with my secret. Now, I must be far away." "But won't you come again, Eunice?" begged Mollie. "Why not come and see all of us? We are only other girls like you. My sister and her friends have only gone away for a visit to the Lathams'." Eunice started and shook her black hair. "Latham! You must not speak the name to me!" she cried fiercely. "My grandmother says it is an evil name, and will work harm to me." Mollie laughed at her. "The name of Latham is nothing to you, Eunice," she protested. "But won't you let me thank you for leading my sister to me? You must have been the will-o'-the-wisp with the dark lantern. You must have made the fire, and--and--you must even have put Grace's sweater over my shoulders as I lay asleep. You are my ghost!" The Indian girl drew herself up proudly, but her dark face turned curiously white. "Yes," she muttered, "I took the red cloak away. My grandmother says that I stole it, and Indians of royal blood do not steal. I am no ghost, I am a princess!" Eunice looked at Mollie with haughty grace. "I did not know I was stealing," she insisted. "I saw the soft, red thing. I did not think. I love the scarlet colors in the world." She touched the crimson leaves in her hair. "When I found that I had stolen I meant to bring the cloak back. Then I saw you asleep in the woods. You looked so cold and white that I put the cloak over your shoulders to keep you warm. Now you have your own again." "But, Eunice," Mollie inquired, more and more puzzled by the girl's appearance and conversation, "are you a pure-blooded Indian? You do not look like one. Your eyes are as big and brown as my sister Bab's, only a little darker. And your features are so fine and pretty. Then you speak such good English and your name is Eunice. Have you ever been to school?" Eunice shook her head. "A long time a woman stayed in the tent with my grandmother and me. She taught me to speak and to read books. She comes again each winter with the snows. My teacher is part Indian and part white. My grandmother says that an Indian princess must know, these days, all that the white race knows, and she must have the knowledge of her own people as well. But I go now. You will not tell you have seen me. Then, some day when you are alone, I may return." "Wait a second, Eunice?" begged Mollie and disappeared inside their cabin. She came out with a lovely red silk scarf in her hand. "Take this, Eunice, it is for you!" she explained. Eunice shook her head. "An Indian princess does not accept gifts," she demurred. "Oh," laughed Mollie, throwing her gift over Eunice's brown shoulder, "you are a proud little goose! I am sure it is a small enough gift. I want to thank you for the service you did for me in the woods." Ceally was stirring about in the kitchen. Like a flash the Indian girl was gone. Mollie sat on the veranda steps rubbing her eyes. Had her visitor been a real girl, or was Mollie bewitched by a brown elf? CHAPTER X A KNOCK AT THE DOOR The moon had come up over the tree-tops before Miss Sallie, with Ruth, Bab and Grace returned from their visit to Mr. Winthrop Latham. "Well, you certainly have missed it, this time, Miss Mollie!" cried Bab, running into the room where Mollie sat reading. "We have had the most wonderful time, and met the most charming people. I never saw anything so beautiful as the village of Lenox. We had a splendid view of it from the tower in Mr. Latham's house. Lenox is called a village of seventy hills, but I am sure we counted more than seventy." "I am truly sorry you were not with us, Mollie," declared Miss Sallie, coming into the house with the other two girls. "But you will have plenty of opportunity for seeing what we did later on. It will not be long now, before we shall go down in the town to stay. Did you have a nice, quiet time by yourself?" Mollie felt embarrassed. She had hardly been alone. But the other girls did not give her an opportunity to answer. "Mollie, we have the finest plan!" Ruth broke in. "We are going to have a coon hunt up on the hill. Mr. Latham says it is just the thing to do on these early autumn nights. All the people we met at his house this afternoon are to come up to supper with us to-morrow evening. Afterwards, we are to start out after Br'er Possum and Br'er Coon. Won't it be a jolly lark?" "I don't approve of it, Ruth," said Miss Sallie. "I am sure young girls never before took part in such an excursion. I shouldn't allow it, except that Mr. Latham and his sister both assured me it was done by the best people in Lenox. Then the English ambassador's daughters are to join you." Ruth looked solemnly at Bab and Grace. The girls were secretly amused at Miss Sallie's social ambitions. "Mollie," Ruth explained, "we did meet two such nice English girls this afternoon--Gwendolin and Dorothy Morton--and an awfully funny, little man, a secretary at the German embassy. They say that ambassadors are as common in Lenox, in the season, as millionaires!" "Did you like Reginald Latham to-day, Bab?" Mollie inquired, as the two sisters walked into their bedroom together. "Why, yes," admitted Bab. "I liked him as usual. He is a peaceable kind of man, but rather queer. He is too learned for me. His mother seems terribly vain of him. She does nothing but talk about his inventive skill. I believe she encourages the airship business just to get on the good side of his uncle. Mr. Winthrop Latham is simply crazy on the subject and does not seem to care about anything else. And he must have a tremendous lot of money. But Mrs. Latham, the German sister-in-law, as good as told Aunt Sallie she and her son were dreadfully poor. They had always been obliged to live on the income Mr. Winthrop Latham allowed them, since her husband lost his money. But I shouldn't think she and her son need worry; Reginald assured me that he was his uncle's only heir." "Bab," Grace asked, joining the two sisters, "why did you spend so much time out in that shed looking at airship models? You know you did not understand them in the least; but our host and his blessed nephew were certainly pleased at your interest. Mrs. Latham showed Aunt Sallie and Ruth and me over the house. They have an art gallery and rooms full of curios, just like a museum. The house is a perfect palace." "There was an older Mr. Latham once!" Ruth announced, sticking her head in from the door of her bedroom to join in the conversation. "But I don't think he was a credit to the family. They are silent about him. I asked one of the girls we met this afternoon if Mr. Winthrop Latham and his nephew were all of the Latham family. Just as she started to tell me, Reginald Latham came up to us, and she stopped talking in a hurry." "Miss Ruth Stuart, I believe I was talking," interrupted Grace severely. "Kindly allow me the floor! Mollie is most certainly not interested in the Latham family history. Who is? Nor does she care a fig for Mr. Reginald Latham and his toy balloons. But, Mollie, I was endeavoring to tell you about the wonderful curios they have in their house. The late lamented brother, we were informed, has left behind him one of the most famous collection of Indian relics in the world. If I am obliged to mention the stupid subject of family history, I must say that the Lathams are an old family up in this part of the country. They do not belong to the 'newly rich.' The queer elder brother devoted his life to the study of the history of the Indians in this part of the world, and has written a book about them." "Grace, have you finished making your speech?" inquired Ruth, with mock politeness. "Poor Mollie must be bored stiff with all this useless information. How did you spend the afternoon, dear? We have talked so much about coon hunts and Indian relics and the Lathams that you have had no chance to answer." "Oh, I took a nap!" responded Mollie, vaguely, and led the way into supper. Late that evening, as the girls sat by the fire, they heard a sudden knocking at their cabin door. Miss Sallie, who was in bed, bounded out again. For the first time since their arrival in the woods the camping party was alone. Naki had been obliged to go down the hill on an errand. No one had dreamed of any possible danger in his absence. The knocking continued. "Open! Open!" cried the voices of two men. "Who on earth can they be?" Grace asked of the circle of girls. No one answered. Ceally came hurriedly in from the kitchen. Miss Sallie stood at her door. The knocks were repeated in quick succession. Ceally had taken the precaution, earlier in the evening, to close and bolt all the doors and windows except one. The shutters of this were open on the outside. "Sh-sh!" whispered Bab, creeping on tiptoes to the window. Before their front door, she could dimly outline the figures of two men, who were evidently arguing and protesting about something. "Open! Open!" cried the voices again. "We are friends, and will do you no harm." "Then go away at once!" Miss Sallie commanded. There was a muffled sound outside the door. Could it be laughter? Then a voice called more roughly. "How long must we wait?" Ruth and Bab looked at each other blankly. Miss Stuart had gone back into her own room. "What on earth shall we do? Shall we open the door?" Ruth inquired. Mollie and Grace both shook their heads. "Ruth," whispered Barbara resourcefully, "your rifle is behind that door, and Naki's big shotgun is next to it. Of course, we don't know how to shoot either one of the guns very well at present, but, if you will hold your rifle pointed toward the door, I shall try to shoulder this heavy shotgun. Oh, I have a splendid idea!" "Out with it, child!" ordered Ruth. "I believe the knocking on the door will keep up all night, unless we open it." "Who's there?" inquired Grace, timidly, before Bab could answer. "Friends!" responded the men on the outside. Barbara motioned silence. "Listen to me," she said. "We have no way of knowing if those men on the outside are friends, whatever they may say. Here is my scheme! Remember the story of the women in a town near here, who once defended their fort against an attack by the Indians, when the men were all away at work in the cornfields? The women dressed up in their husbands' clothes and frightened the Indians away. Ruth, let's disguise ourselves as men and then let Ceally open the door." "Bab, you and Ruth are both crazy!" protested Mollie, half-laughing, and half-frightened. Bang! Bang! The blows on the door were tremendous. "If you don't let us in, you'll be sorry!" called one of the men. Bab had already found an old hat of Naki's conveniently near. Ceally, who was giggling nervously, produced a hunting jacket of her husband's, which had seen much service. It was not clean, but Bab slipped into it, determined to see her plan through. Nor was Barbara the only hero. While she was making her extraordinary costume, Ruth had torn down a squirrel skin, which some previous hunter had tacked on their cabin wall and twisted it around her head so that the tail hung down to one side. Then she slipped on her own leather coat, which she gave a more dilapidated appearance, by wearing it wrong side out. Both girls got behind chairs to hide their skirts. "Good gracious, Ruth!" giggled Bab, in spite of her excitement. "You look like Daniel Boone." During their preparation not a word was heard from Miss Sallie, who was closeted in her own room. "Ceally, open the door!" cried Ruth, raising her rifle and leveling it in front of her. Bab put her elbow on the back of her chair to steady her shotgun. "Girls!" cried Miss Stuart, unexpectedly. "Don't dare to open that door!" But she spoke too late. Ceally had already drawn the heavy bolt back and the door swung aside. There rushed into the room two men--or to be strictly truthful, two boys. They looked first at Mollie and Grace, then at Ruth and Bab. Without a word they dropped into two chairs. "Oh, oh, oh!" they shouted. "Did you ever see anything in the world so funny? Ralph, look at Ruth!" cried Hugh. "Ralph Ewing and Hugh Post, where did you come from?" demanded four girls' voices together. "We took you for highwaymen." Bab set down her shotgun and Ruth her rifle. Both girls began pulling off their masculine disguises. "Don't take off those terrifying garments, Bab!" cried Ralph Ewing. "You, Ruth, should have your picture taken in that hat." By this time, Miss Stuart, fully dressed, with her pompadour neatly arranged appeared at the door. Highwaymen or no highwaymen, Miss Sallie had no intention of appearing before strange men without being properly dressed. Now she was mistress of herself and of the situation. Both Huge Post and Ralph Ewing stopped laughing when they saw Miss Sallie's face. She did not appear overpleased to see her two young friends, whose doings were fully described in the preceding volume. "The Automobile Girls at Newport." "Where did you come from?" she asked politely, but without enthusiasm. "And why did you knock on our door at this time of the evening, without informing us who you were?" "Ruth," continued Miss Sallie severely, "what are you and Barbara doing in those clothes? Take them off at once." "Please, ma'am," responded Bab meekly, but with a twinkle in her eye, "we dressed up as men to frighten the highwaymen." "You are enough to frighten them, I am sure," retorted Miss Stuart scornfully. Here, Ralph Ewing spoke in his most charming manner: "Miss Sallie, we do owe you an apology and we make it with all our hearts. We had no intention of playing any pranks when we came up the hill to see you. Several days ago we were informed that 'The Automobile Girls' were camping in the Berkshires. Well, Hugh and I are on our way to Boston to join Mrs. Post, and----" "Ralph, do let me do my share of the apologizing," interrupted Hugh. "See here, Miss Sallie, this nonsense to-night is all my fault. Ralph was dead against my pounding at the door and refusing to give our names; but I thought it would be fun to stir the girls up. I knew two such valiant girls as Ruth and Barbara would not be really frightened, even if we had been a whole band of outlaws. It was a stupid practical joke and I am ashamed of it." "But how did you find us, Hugh?" put in Ruth, who was embarrassed by her aunt's lack of cordiality to their old Newport friends. "Please, Aunt Sallie, say you'll forgive us!" Hugh pleaded. "See how many miles we have traveled to see you. We would have been here in the broad daylight, only one of the tires in my machine would get a puncture. The man at the garage told us which hill to climb to find you. We met your guide coming down the hill, and he gave us further instructions. So here we are! Aren't you just a little glad to see us?" "Of course, I am," laughed Aunt Sallie, amiably. "But there is one thing certain: you can't get down our hill again to-night, and we have no place to offer you to sleep." "Is that what is preying on my hospitable aunt's mind all this time?" cried Ruth, throwing her arms about Miss Sallie. "I thought she wasn't her usual charming self. Of course the boys shan't go down the hill again to-night. I don't know where they will sleep, either; but Bab will bring her fertile brain to bear upon the situation." "Why, Miss Stuart!" Ralph spoke in relieved tones. "Is this why you are not pleased to see us? We expect to go down the hill a little later. On our way up we stopped at a farm house, and the people promised to take us in for the night. We'll come back early in the morning, since Hugh and I must be off again by afternoon. Mrs. Post is waiting for us in Boston." "Oh, must you go so soon, boys?" pleaded Ruth. "We are planning the jolliest lark. We are to have a coon hunt up on the hill with some acquaintances we have just made in Lenox. They are to have supper with us, and are to bring up a guide and some coon dogs for our hunt later on. And you simply must stay at the cabin to-night. See, there is a lounge here in the living room, and we have plenty of quilts and steamer rugs. One of you can have the couch and the other can sleep on the floor by the fire." "May we, Miss Sallie?" Hugh queried. "As you like, boys," declared Miss Stuart, now completely restored to good humor. "Then let's stay by all means!" urged Ralph. "What should we expect to sleep on except the floor or the ground? This is the most effete camping party I ever saw," he declared, looking around their cosy little cabin. "You have all the comforts of home, here!" "Do you think you and Ralph can stay for our coon hunt, Hugh?" asked Bab. "Oh, for sure, Barbara," Hugh asserted. "I will fix things up with the mater for a day; but we shall have to be off the next day without fail. Now, I have an awful confession to make." "What is it Hugh?" Ruth demanded. "Ralph and I are starving!" he answered. "We were so bent on getting up to your hut before it was too late, we didn't have time to get any dinner. Could you, would you, just give us each a hunk of bread to stay our appetites?" "You poor souls!" cried Ruth. "Come on out in the kitchen with me, Mollie. Let Bab and Grace do the entertaining. We'll fix you some eggs and bacon in no time, the best you ever tasted. Our cook has gone to bed." "Let's have a feast for everybody," proposed Bab. "May we, Miss Sallie? I am dreadfully hungry again. I haven't had anything to eat for at least two hours and a half." "Come, turn in then, everybody," Ruth called cheerily. "Here, Bab, you undertake the Welsh rarebit and get out the pickles and crackers. Mollie, get Hugh to help you open these cans of soup. Grace, you and Ralph, set the table and talk to Aunt Sallie, while I fry my precious bacon." "I never heard of such an extraordinary combination of things to eat. You will ruin your digestions," was Miss Sallie's comment. But she ate just as much as anyone else. At midnight the girls were at last in bed. Hugh and Ralph, both wrapped in blankets, were in blissful sleep before the camp fire. They had scorned to accept the offer of the couch, wishing to enjoy camp life to the fullest extent. So peace followed good cheer in the hut. CHAPTER XI THE COON HUNT "Ere in the northern gale The summer tresses of the trees are gone, The woods of autumn all around our vale Have put their glory on." chanted Ralph bowing low to Barbara, as she joined him in the clearing in front of their house before breakfast next morning. "See, mademoiselle, what a fine poem I have thought out for you! Behold in me the poet of the Berkshires!" Barbara laughed. "You are a second-hand poet, I am afraid, Ralph. I happen to know that those lines were written by William Cullen Bryant. But come into breakfast and stop your poetizing. We have a busy day ahead of us." Ralph and Barbara found Ruth with a big sheet of paper in her hand and her brow wrinkled into a serious frown. "We must decide at once what to have to eat at our supper party to-night. Naki is in a hurry to get off to the village, so as to be back in time to help with the preparations. Listen, chilluns, while I read you my menu," commanded Ruth solemnly. "I am going to have a regular, old-fashioned supper party with everything on the table at once. Naki and Ceally can't serve so many people in any other style. Besides, if we have to eat supper at eight and start off on our coon hunt at nine, there won't be time for many courses. So here goes: Roast chicken, 'ole Virginy' ham, sent by Mr. Robert Stuart for just such a special occasion, roast pig and apple sauce, chestnuts, sweet potatoes, jellies, pies, doughnuts----" "Cease, and give me breakfast ere I perish at the thought of overeating," remonstrated Hugh. While Miss Sallie protested, as she sat down to her breakfast, "My dear Ruth, are you planning to feed an army, or to entertain a few guests at supper?" "What shall we do to help with the preparations, Miss Sallie?" queried Grace. "Just keep out of the way as much as possible, child," Miss Stuart answered. But this suggestion did not agree with Ruth's ideas. "At least, Aunt Sallie," she expostulated, "we may be allowed to decorate the hut as we like." "Certainly, child. Spend the day bringing the woods into the house, and to-morrow in throwing the trash out again, if you like. Only don't interrupt Ceally and Naki." At half-past seven everything was ready for supper. As for the coon hunt, no one of "The Automobile Girls" had the faintest conception of what it would be like, and Miss Sallie was as ignorant as the rest of them. "It is only an excuse for a midnight frolic among the young people," she thought, indulgently. "I presume no mischief will come of it." A barking of dogs announced the approach of the guests. Four lean hounds, brown and yellow, baying and straining at their leashes, tore up the hill. Already the keen mountain air stirred them. Br'er Possum and Br'er Coon were even now placidly eating their suppers. The dogs longed to be at the night's business. While the young people feasted inside the cabin, the men who were to conduct the hunt prepared the pine torches to light them on their way. "You feel sure this is a proper expedition, Mr. Latham?" asked Aunt Sallie nervously. She was standing at the door, waiting to see the party start off. "Hugh," she called at the last minute, "promise me to look after Ruth and Grace. Don't get separated from them, or I shall never forgive you. Ralph, I trust you to take care of Mollie and Bab." But Reginald Latham was standing near Miss Stuart and overheard her instructions to the two boys. "Oh, I say, Miss Stuart," he quizzed in the affected fashion that so angered Mollie, "can't you trust me to look after Miss Thurston? I have a score to pay back to her for her rescue of me in my airship." Mollie put her arm in Ralph's as they walked out the door together. "Don't mind that Latham man," she whispered. "I can't see why Bab likes him. See, they are starting off together." The great horn blew; the dogs barked violently. Twenty people, each carrying a pine torch, lit up the shadows of the quiet woods. "When I count three," said Mr. Latham to the keepers, "you can let the dogs go." One! two! three! and the hounds were off, their noses pointed along the ground, their tails standing out straight behind them. "Is coon hunting a cruel sport, Ralph?" Mollie inquired. "If it is, I would rather stay home." "I don't know; this is my first experience," Ralph replied. "But hurry along, little girl!" "Hurrah! The dogs have a coon on the run!" shouted some one in front. A poor old coon had been driven from his comfortable hollow tree, and was running for his life over the hard ground, pursued by excited dogs. Close behind followed the hunters with their horns. And, tumbling over one another rushing pell-mell after them, came the crowd of heedless young people. The party separated. Two of the dogs tracked another coon. "I half hope Mr. Coon will win this race!" panted Barbara, close behind Reginald Latham. "Remember Uncle Remus says, 'Br'er Coon, he was wunner deze here natchul pacers.' Certainly he has me outclassed as a runner. Do wait for me, Mr. Latham!" Reginald Latham had run ahead of the rest of the party, and was tearing down a steep hill with no light except from his pine torch. The moon had gone behind a cloud. Barbara, farther up the hill, could see the reflection of a sheet of water. Into it the poor little hunted coon jumped, swimming for dear life to the opposite shore. The dogs hesitated a minute, then went into the water after it. But Reginald Latham was now going so rapidly he could not stop himself. With a rush he was in the water, just as Bab's warning cry rang out. "Help me! I am drowning!" he shouted. For the minute he and Barbara were alone. The rest of the party had followed the two dogs, whose baying sounded some distance across through the woods. Barbara was down the bank, and out in the stream in a second. To her disgust she found the water only up to her waist. They were at the edge of a small pond, but Reginald Latham clutched at Barbara, panic-stricken. "Why, Mr. Latham," cried Bab in disgust, "you are not drowning. This water is not three feet deep. We have only to walk out." At this instant, Ralph Ewing and Mollie came rushing down the hill. "What on earth's the matter, Bab?" asked Mollie. "Oh, nothing," said Bab loyally, "except that Mr. Coon has led us into a nice mud bath. I expect Mr. Latham and I had better return home. I don't believe I am a first-class hunter. My sympathies are too much on the side of the coon." "Can I help either of you?" asked Ralph Ewing courteously. But when Bab said "no," he and Mollie were off through the woods again. "It was good of you, Miss Thurston," Reginald Latham apologized, as he and Bab made their way up the hill again, "to take part of the responsibility for our plunge into the pond on yourself. I am an awful coward about the water. I would take my share of the blame, except that my uncle would be so angry." "But you are not afraid of your uncle, are you?" Bab inquired impetuously. "You seem grown up to me, and I don't see why you should be afraid. Mr. Latham is awfully nice anyhow." "Oh, you don't understand, Miss Thurston," declared Reginald Latham peevishly. "Everything in the world depends on my keeping on the good side of my uncle. My mother has talked of nothing else to me since I was a child. You see, uncle has all the money in the family now. He doesn't have to leave me a red cent unless he chooses." "Well, I would rather be independent than rich," protested Bab. "Oh, I beg your pardon," she said blushing. "I am sure I don't know you well enough to say a thing like that to you. But do let's hurry back to camp." On their way back they met Gwendolin Morton and the young German secretary, Franz Heller. Gwendolin had sprained her ankle in getting over a log, and had given up her part in the hunt. By midnight nearly all the coon hunters had returned to the log cabin for repairs before making their way down the hill again. Reginald Latham sat before the fire drying his wet clothes. "What is the matter with you, Reginald?" asked his uncle, sharply. "We've bagged three coons, Miss Stuart, but I am afraid we have had more disasters than good luck. Now, we must be off home again. Look here, young ladies," said Mr. Latham, turning to Ruth and Mollie, who were saying good-bye to their guests, "is there a wood nymph, who lives anywhere about in these woods? Several times to-night I thought I spied a little figure flying between the trees." "Nonsense, Mr. Latham," laughed Ruth. "Our woods are not haunted." But Mollie answered never a word. "Miss Thurston," called Reginald Latham, as Barbara, who had gone out to change her wet clothes came into the room to say good night to her guests, "may I come up and see you and your friends in the morning?" Barbara hesitated. She did not object to Reginald Latham as the other girls did; she even thought Ruth, Grace and Mollie were prejudiced against him, but she had an idea that something disagreeable might grow out of a further intimacy. "I am sorry, Mr. Latham," she exclaimed politely, "but we have planned to do some target practice in the morning? We are going to stay but a short time up here in the woods, and Mr. Stuart, Ruth's father, is anxious that we should learn to shoot." "But I am a fairly good shot myself," protested Reginald Latham. "Why can't I come up and help with the teaching? May I, Miss Stuart?" he asked, turning to Ruth, who much against her will, was obliged to consent. "Never again shall I allow you to engage in such an unladylike and cruel sport as a coon hunt!" announced Miss Sallie, when the last guest had gone. The girls agreed with her, as the baying of the hounds and the noise from the hunters' horns at last died away in the distance. CHAPTER XII THE WOUNDED BIRD "Good-bye Ralph!" said Barbara, extending her hand to her old friend. "Good-bye, Barbara," Ralph answered, politely. "It has been a great pleasure for Hugh and me to see you and the other girls in your forest retreat. I am sorry we must be off so soon." "But you will come back again, in a week or two won't you?" begged Ruth. "I heard you promise those lovely English girls, Hugh, to take part in the autumn sports at Lenox." "Oh, we shall be back if possible, Ruth." Hugh assured her. "I think we can promise to give Lenox a taste of our charming society, say near the first week in October." "Let's be off, Hugh," called Ralph. "Here is that Latham fellow coming up the hill." Bab laid her hand on Ralph's sleeve. "You are not angry with me for going off with Reginald Latham last night are you? Truth of the matter, Ralph, I don't believe I like Mr. Latham any better than the others do. But I am rather sorry for him; he seems queer and nervous. Why, the other day, even at his own house, all the young people except me ran away from him. I don't think he is very happy. That's why he is always fooling with inventions and things. He's a weak kind of fellow, Ralph, but I don't think he is horrid." Ralph laughed and his face cleared. "Good for you, Bab. Always looking after the oppressed. But I don't think you need feel sorry for a fellow who has such a lot of money coming his way as Reg Latham." "He hasn't it yet!" was Bab's wise comment. As Ralph and Hugh disappeared, Reginald Latham joined the four girls. He wore his shooting clothes, and his dark face was transformed with pleasure. He knew he was not popular with young people and the idea made him unhappy. He had been brought up in a foreign country and was shy and ill at ease. His mother had always kept him in her society. Now, he was delighted with the independence and courage of "The Automobile Girls" and longed to be friends with them. "I hope I am in time for the shooting," he declared. "My uncle sent me up to apologize for the chapter of accidents that occurred last night in our coon hunt. Gwendolin Morton is laid up with a bad ankle, Franz Heller has influenza, and everyone else is tired out with the long tramp. But you look entirely rested." He turned to Barbara and spoke under his breath. "Forgive me for last night's performance." "Come, Naki," called Ruth to their guide, "we are ready for our target practice. Mr. Latham is here." Ruth led the way over the hill. At a little distance from the house Naki set up a pasteboard target, which he nailed to the side of a big cedar tree, at the edge of a slight embankment. Below it was nothing but underbrush. No one was near. It seemed a perfectly safe place for the rifle practice. Mollie sat on the ground back of the eager sportsmen. Nothing could induce her to handle a gun. "I suppose I am safe, back here," she laughed, "so, I shall sit here and watch this famous shooting match. Only, for goodness' sake, all of you be careful!" Bab, Ruth and Grace were each to have ten shots at the target, Naki showing them how to load and fire. Reginald Latham would keep the score. The girl who hit the bull's eye the greatest number of times was to be proclaimed champion. Bab fired first. She hit the second ring from the center of the bull's eye. "Good for you!" Ruth cried, taking aim. But she missed the target altogether. The shot from her rifle went down the hill. Mollie thought she saw something stir. "Isn't this a dangerous business?" she asked Reginald Latham. "There is nothing in these woods to harm, Miss Mollie," he explained. "Most of the birds have already flown away." For an hour the girls fired at the target. Grace had grown tired and had taken her seat by Mollie, but Ruth and Barbara were both enthusiastic shots. Ruth's score stood two ahead of Bab's, who still had three more shots to fire. Suddenly Barbara raised her rifle. "No, don't show me, Naki," she protested. "I think I can take aim myself." As Bab fired Mollie rose to her feet with a cry. She had seen something brown and scarlet moving in the underbrush on the hill below them. Bab's shot had missed the target. But did they hear a low moan like the sound of a wounded dove? Barbara turned a livid white. "I have hit something!" she called to Ruth. But Ruth was after Mollie, who was scrambling down the hill. The whole party followed them, Barbara's knees trembling so that she could hardly walk. There were tears streaming from Mollie's eyes as she looked up at Bab. The child's arms were around a little figure that had fallen in the underbrush, a little figure in brown and scarlet, with a wreath of scarlet autumn leaves in her hair. "I have been afraid of this," said Naki, pushing the others aside. "It's my little Indian girl!" Mollie explained. "She couldn't bear to keep away from us, and at first I thought her the ghost of Lost Man's Trail. I have seen her around our hut nearly every day; but I promised not to tell you girls about her. Is she much hurt, Naki?" The man shook his head. "I can't tell," he said. "Better take her to the house and see." At this Eunice opened her eyes. Her lips were drawn in a fine line of pain, but she did not flinch. "I will go home to my own tent," she protested. "I will not enter the abode of my enemies." The little girl struggled out of Mollie's hold and rose to her feet. One arm hung limp and useless at her side. When Reginald Latham touched her, she shuddered. Tiny drops of blood trickled down to the ground. "Give me your handkerchief, please?" asked Bab as she went up to Eunice. "It is I who have hurt you," she said, "though I did not mean to do so. Surely you will let me help you a little if I can." She tore open Eunice's sleeve and tenderly wiped the blood. Naki brought two sticks, and, with his assistance, Bab bound up the wounded arm, so the blood no longer flowed. "Now you must go home to our cabin with us!" she pleaded. But Eunice broke away from them and started to flee. She trembled and would have fallen had not Mollie caught her. "See, you can't go home alone, Eunice dear," Mollie remonstrated. "And you must see a doctor. The bullet from the rifle may still be in your arm." Eunice was obstinate. "Indians do not need doctors," she asserted. But Naki came and took her in his arms. "We will take you to your own tent," he declared. "She will rest better there," he explained to the girls, "and I know the way over the hills. You may come with me. The Indian squaw, her grandmother, will be hard to manage." "But how shall we get a doctor up there?" asked Grace. "I will go down for him later," Naki answered briefly. "You need have no fear. An Indian knows how to treat a wound. They have small use for doctors." "Is your guide an Indian?" asked Reginald Latham of Ruth. Ruth shook her head. "He may have some Indian blood," she said. "I didn't know it. But this Indian child, where did she come from? And to think her name is Eunice!" "Eunice!" cried Reginald Latham in a strange voice. "Impossible. Why Eunice is not an Indian name!" "But it is what Mollie called her," protested Ruth. "And Mollie seems to know who she is." Reginald Latham's face had turned white. Ruth felt her dislike of him slipping away. He seemed very sympathetic. Mollie, Bab and Grace were hurrying along after Naki, over whose broad shoulder hung the little Indian girl. Her black hair swept his sleeve, her broken arm drooped like the wing of a wounded bird. Once she roused herself to say. "My grandmother will not like these people to come to our tent. We live alone like the beasts in the forest." But Barbara, Ruth, Grace and Mollie trudged on after Naki. While silently by their side walked Reginald Latham. CHAPTER XIII THE WIGWAM "How much farther must we walk, Naki?" asked Mollie, after an hour's hard tramping. "Surely Eunice and her grandmother must live somewhere near. Eunice could not have traveled such a distance to our hut every day." "An Indian girl flies like the wind," Naki answered. "But another half hour will find us at the wigwam. The Indian woman lives in her tent. She will have nothing like the white race, neither house, nor friendships. She is the last of a lost race. She and the child live alone on the hill. Sometimes other Indians visit them, those of the race who have studied and become as white men. They have taught the child what she knows. But Mother Eunice, as the grandmother is known, still smokes her pipe by an open fireside." "Is the old woman also named Eunice?" Ruth inquired curiously. "I do not understand. Eunice is not an Indian name." Reginald Latham, who was walking next Ruth, panted with the exertion of climbing the hill; his breath came quick and fast. He seemed intent on Naki's answer to Ruth's simple question. "Eunice is a family name in these parts among a certain tribe of Indians. But you are right; it is not properly speaking an Indian name. Many years ago a little girl named Eunice, the daughter of a white man, was stolen by the Indians. She grew up by their firesides and married an Indian chief. In after years, she would never return to her own people. And so her children and her children's children have from that day borne the name of Eunice. The Mohawk Indians have the white man's blood as well as the red man's in their veins." Mollie was walking near Eunice, whom Naki still carried in his arms, and then Mollie would lean over every now and then and gently touch the child. Once or twice, during their long walk, she thought the little Indian girl lost consciousness. But never once did Eunice moan or give a cry of pain. "Over there," said Naki finally, "lies the Indian wigwam." He pointed in front of him, where a solitary hill rose before them, shaded by dense woods. "But I can't see an opening there," Ruth cried; "neither smoke, nor anything to suggest that people are living on that hill." Naki smiled wisely. "The Indians have forgotten much of their father's wisdom," he declared. "But not yet have they forgotten how to hide in their own forests." "Do you think I had better go ahead, Naki?" Bab queried. "Some one ought to tell the grandmother that Eunice is hurt. Since I am responsible for the accident, it is my place to break the news to her. I will run on ahead." "Not alone, Bab!" protested loyal Ruth. "You are no more responsible for Eunice's injury than the rest of us. It just happened to be your shot that wounded her. It might just as easily have been mine. How could we have dreamed the child was hiding in the underbrush? I shall go ahead with you." "Better keep with me," enjoined Naki. "You could not find your way to the wigwam. We have followed the 'Lost Man's Trail.' When we get up to the tent, keep a little in the background. The Indian woman is very old. She cannot forgive easily. It is best that I explain to her as well as I can. I will go first, alone, with the child." Eunice stirred a little on Naki's shoulder. "The little one," she declared feebly. "She of the pale face and the hair like the sun. I wish her to go with me to the tent of my grandmother." And Eunice pointed with her uninjured arm toward Mollie. Under a canopy formed of the interlaced branches of great hemlock trees stood an Indian wigwam. It looked as much a part of the landscape as the trees themselves. The rains and the sun had bleached it to an ashen gray. Outside the tent hung a bunch of arrows. Against the side leaned a long bow. A fire near by had been hastily covered over. But nowhere about was there a sign of human life. "Your grandmother has heard the footsteps of strangers approaching," Naki said to Eunice. "Let her know that you are here." Naki set the little girl down on her feet. Mollie stood by her; but Bab, Ruth, Grace and Reginald Latham were concealed by some thick bushes a few yards away. Eunice spoke a few words in the Indian tongue. Suddenly the flap of the wigwam opened, revealing an aged Indian woman. She looked older than anyone that the girls had ever seen before. Her brown face was a network of fine wrinkles; but her black eyes blazed with youthful fire. She was tall and straight like the pine trees in her own forest. The old woman wore an ordinary woolen dress. Over her shoulders she had thrown an Indian blanket, striped in orange, black and red. She knew that strangers were near. But her grandchild called her! At the sight of Eunice the Indian woman gave a curious cry, which she quickly stifled. In a voice that only Mollie, who stood near, could hear she asked: "My little wood pigeon is wounded? I have long feared it." Mollie marveled that the old Indian squaw spoke English. Mother Eunice gathered her child in her arms and carried her within the wigwam, laying her on a bed of cedar boughs covered with a heavy blanket. Naki explained that Eunice had been accidentally shot by a rifle. The old woman grunted. Without a word she tore down a bunch of herbs that hung at the side of a wall. Placing them in an iron pot she went out of her tent and stirred her fire into a quick blaze. All this time the Indian woman had not spoken to Mollie, nor had she appeared to know that anyone else was near. Mollie had followed Eunice into the wigwam and knelt by her side. The child moved restlessly. Mollie leaned over her and unfastened her dress. Around Eunice's neck was an amulet of gold, each link in the chain carved with curious Indian characters. At the end of the amulet, on a square of beaten gold about an inch in size, was a monogram in English lettering. Mollie had only time to see that the letters, looked like E. L. or E. S. She could not tell which, for the Indian squaw was back in the room, scowling at her. As the grandmother tore the bandage from the little Indian girl's arm and washed the wound with her healing herbs, Mollie saw that under the clothing, the child's skin was several shades fairer. At last the Indian woman rose up from her knees. "Let them come," she requested of Naki. "Let those who linger in the bushes outside my wigwam draw near to it. But beware how they cross the threshold of my tent!" The squaw stood at her own door, waiting to speak to the girls and Reginald Latham, as they drew near. "You have injured my child!" she said bitterly. "Even in times of peace no Indian seems safe before the bullets of the white man." Bab colored deeply. "I am dreadfully sorry!" she declared. "It was I who hurt your grandchild. Naki has told you what happened. How could we know she was hiding near us? But, now that I have hurt her, you must at least let us do what we can for her. Naki shall go down the hill and send a doctor up here to look at Eunice's arm." "Ugh!" grunted the squaw. "An Indian has no need of the white man's doctor. I shall tend my child. Begone, all of you!" Reginald Latham moved back a few paces; but Bab, Grace and Ruth did not stir. "Naki," Ruth gave her order quietly, "go down the hill at once and see that a doctor comes up to look at this child's arm. An Indian's treatment for a bullet wound may be a good one. I do not know. But I do know I am not willing that this child should not see a doctor. Bab and I would feel responsible all our lives if anything serious resulted from this accident. Go immediately, Naki," Ruth ended. She was her father's daughter. Though she seldom asserted her authority, there were times when she insisted on obedience. "We want no doctor here," the Indian woman repeated, rocking back and forth. "No good comes to the Indian from his white neighbors. Therefore, have I tried to keep my child away from them." But Eunice's voice was heard calling inside the tent. "Let the ladies come in, grandmother. I wish to have a talk with them." Sullenly the old woman moved aside and let the girls and Reginald Latham enter the wigwam. "Little brown one," Eunice cried, smiling at Bab, "you would be almost as brown as I am, if you lived always in the woods. Do not be so sorry that you hurt my arm. It was my fault, not yours. I should not have been in hiding. I disobeyed the commands of my grandmother. See, I am better. She will not let a white doctor look at me, perhaps, because my skin is too fair for an Indian." "Mr. Latham," Bab turned to Reginald, who had not spoken. He was looking curiously at the furnishings of the wigwam, at the Indian squaw and at Eunice. He did not hear Bab. "Mr. Latham!" Bab called more distinctly, "can't you persuade----" A curious guttural noise interrupted her. The old Indian woman's eyes were blazing. She had seized a pine stick in her hand and held it over Reginald Latham's head. "Out of my wigwam! Shall your name forever sound in my ears? Am I not safe in my own house? Out with you!" Reginald Latham had not waited before the old woman's wrath. He was already several yards down the hill. The girls were thunderstruck. Why had the name of Latham fired this old squaw to such a burst of fury? "Come on, Ruth," said Grace, finally. "Let us go back home. We shall do no good by staying here. I suppose we can find our way home! The old Indian woman seems dreadfully upset, and our staying can only make matters worse. Naki will bring the doctor and attend to everything. Then he will let you know about Eunice." "I think we had better go," Mollie agreed. "I know it will be best for Eunice." She kissed the little Indian girl good-bye. "Tell your grandmother," Mollie explained, "that Mr. Latham had nothing to do with the injury to you. She may have thought he was responsible." "I told you," whispered Eunice in Mollie's ear, "the name of Latham must not be mentioned in my house. When I first learned to read I found it written in an old book that told only the story of the Indian races. My grandmother tore it from my hand and threw it into the fire, and said I must never hear that English name again." "Oh!" Mollie faltered. "I remember you did say something about this to me, the first time I saw you, but I did not think about it. I do not understand it now. But never mind. Good-bye." "The Automobile Girls" joined Reginald Latham farther down the hill. "What a crazy old thing that Indian woman is!" he muttered, laughing nervously. "She was only making a scene. She never heard the name of Latham before in her life." "I wonder if that is true?" pondered Mollie to herself all the way back to their cabin. CHAPTER XIV GIVE WAY TO MISS SALLIE! "Aunt Sallie," declared Ruth mournfully about two o'clock the next day, "we are in great trouble!" "My dear child, what is the matter now?" demanded Miss Stuart. "Well," continued Ruth, "you remember about the little Indian girl whom Bab accidentally shot yesterday? Naki has come back from a visit to her and says she is very ill. He found the doctor there, who says he won't answer for the child's life unless she is taken to a hospital in the village, where he can see her often, and where she can have the proper care. The doctor told Naki we waited too long yesterday to send for him. He had to probe Eunice's arm to get out the bullet. But she will be all right if she is only properly looked after." "Then," declared Miss Sallie, "the matter is a very simple one. Have Naki see to it. The child must be taken to a hospital in Lenox at once. Everything shall be done for her comfort." "Indeed, auntie, this is not such a simple matter to attend to as it seems. The Indian grandmother positively refuses to let Eunice be moved. She has kept the child hidden in these hills all her life, until she believes Eunice will be eaten up, or run away with, if once she allows her to go among white people." "Nonsense!" sniffed Miss Sallie. "It is all very well for you to say nonsense, Aunt Sallie, but you do not dream how obstinate this old woman is. She declares an Indian does not need treatment from a doctor. In the meantime, poor little Eunice's temperature is going up, and she is delirious from the fever. What shall we do? Poor Bab is feeling perfectly miserable." "Take me to this obstinate old woman," said Miss Stuart, firmly. "You?" cried Ruth, in astonishment. "Certainly!" answered Aunt Sallie. "I _said_, '_take me_.'" "But, auntie, you will so hate the climb up that trail," Ruth argued. "And the wigwam is dreadful after you get there. Only the little Indian girl is exquisite, like a flower growing in some horrid place. I don't believe you will ever be equal to the trip." "Ruth," insisted Miss Stuart in stately tones, "since I have thrown in my fortunes as chaperon to 'The Automobile Girls' I have had many strange adventures. Doubtless I shall have many others. Persuading an obstinate woman to do what is best for the child she loves is not an impossible task. It does not matter in the least whether the woman is white or an Indian. Tell Naki to take me to the wigwam at once." "Aunt Sallie, you are an angel!" cried Ruth, throwing her arms around her aunt. "Now, Bab, don't you worry any more," she called into the next room. "Aunt Sallie does not know what she promises!" said Barbara, joining Ruth and her aunt. "Just let's leave her alone, Bab," whispered Ruth. "We will go along with her to see Eunice. I think I am counting on my Aunt Sallie to win." Miss Stuart paused to draw one deep breath, when she finally reached the Indian woman's wigwam. Then she quietly entered the tent and walked over to Eunice's bedside. Crouched on the floor by the child was the old Indian squaw, who did not even lift her eyes to look at Miss Sallie. Eunice was lying on her cedar bed, with her cheeks the color of the scarlet leaves that once crowned her black hair. "How do you do?" asked Miss Stuart politely, bowing to the Indian woman. As Miss Sallie put her soft hand on Eunice's hot head, the child stopped her restless movements for a second. The grandmother looked up. "Your little girl is very ill!" Miss Stuart continued quietly. "I have come to see that she has proper care. She must be taken to a hospital at once. Naki will see to the arrangements. The doctor says the child must be moved to-day." The Indian woman shook her head. "The child shall not leave my wigwam!" she declared, obstinately. "Listen to me!" commanded Miss Stuart, quietly. Ruth and Barbara stood near her, trembling with excitement. "We mean no harm to your little girl. Naki will explain matters to you. But she must be properly looked after. You are too old to attend to her, and your wigwam is not a fit place. You declare your Eunice shall not go away from you even for a little time." Miss Sallie spoke slowly and impressively. "If you do not allow the child to go away, now, for a short time, so that the doctor can make her well for you, she will leave you forever!" But still the Indian woman muttered: "My child shall not leave my wigwam. Indians have no need for white men's doctors." "You are alone, aren't you?" inquired Miss Stuart, gently. "Are not you and your grandchild the last of your race? Perhaps, if you had allowed it, the doctors might have kept other members of your family for you." The Indian woman shivered. Miss Stuart had touched some chord in her memory. She raised her black eyes to Miss Sallie and spoke mournfully. "You are right!" she asserted. "My grandchild and I are the last of a great race. I am very old and I am now afraid. Let your white medicine man make my Eunice well again. But I must follow where the child goes. Down in the village they will steal her from me." "Why, who would wish to steal her from you?" inquired Miss Stuart. The old woman mumbled. "An enemy came to my door but yesterday." Then a look of cunning crossed her face. She spoke childishly. "The lady is wise!" she declared. "Who could wish to steal a poor little Indian girl? Who in all this world has a claim on her but her poor old grandmother? Enough has been said. An Indian does not like too much talk. The child and I will go down into the valley to ask the service of the white doctor. Naki is my friend. I will do as he says. An Indian can keep a secret. Naki has long known that my child and I lived on this hilltop, but he has not betrayed us. He has not even told his own wife. An Indian can keep a secret." The old woman rocked back and forth as though well pleased with herself. "Keep whatever secrets you will!" Miss Sallie replied. "It is enough that you will permit the child to have proper care." "Girls!" Miss Stuart spoke from the depth of the largest chair in the living room of their log cabin. It was nearly dusk and she was worn out from her long walk to the Indian wigwam. "Girls, I want to ask you something." "Attention, girls!" cried Bab. "What is it, Miss Sallie?" "What do you say," continued Miss Stuart, "to our going back to civilization? We have had a beautiful time on our hill. I, for one, shall long remember it. But the days are growing shorter. If we are to enjoy Lenox, and all the delights it offers, don't you think it is about time we were moving there? To tell you the truth, I have already engaged our board at the hotel." "Well then, Aunt Sallie, we have no choice in the matter, have we?" asked Ruth, ruefully. "I want to enjoy Lenox, too, but I do so hate to leave this heavenly hill." "I vote for Lenox with Aunt Sallie!" Grace exclaimed. "Sensible Grace!" Miss Stuart murmured. "See here, Ruth, dear," protested Grace, "please don't look as if you were offended with me. We have had a simply perfect time in the log cabin, but I am just longing to see the lovely places down in Lenox, and to meet the delightful people." "Ruth," Barbara spoke sadly, "I, too, want to go down into Lenox now. If Eunice is to be laid up in the hospital I want to be near her, so I can find out how she is each day. I shall never be happy again until I know she is well." Mollie put her arm round her sister. "Don't you worry so, Bab, dear," she pleaded. "I don't believe your shooting poor little Eunice in the arm is going to do her harm in the end. Poor little thing! It was simply dreadful for her to have to spend all her time with her old Indian grandmother. She never had a chance to see anybody, or to learn anything. She was simply sick for companions of her own age. That is why she was always haunting our cabin. I don't believe Eunice is more than part Indian, anyway!" Mollie ended impressively. "I've a feeling that we shall do her more good, in the end, from this accident than we have done her harm." "You are a dear!" cried Bab, already comforted by her sister's prophecy. "You are all against me!" quoth Ruth, rising. "I surrender, as usual, to my beloved aunt. I want to go to Lenox, but--I want to be here on the hill, too. So runs the world. We can't manage to have all the things we want at the same time; so hurrah for Lenox and the gay world again! Come here to the door with me, children. Let us say farewell to our sweet hillside!" The girls stood arm in arm on their front porch. The evening wind swept up the hill and rustled through the pines. The brook near their house hurried down the slope into the valley as though it were late for a night's engagement. "Ruth," Barbara declared solemnly, "whatever happens to 'The Automobile Girls,' one thing is certain, nothing can ever be lovelier than the weeks we have spent together on this beautiful hill. Let us kiss all around. Call Aunt Sallie. She must be a party to the agreement. We will never forget our little log cabin--never, no, never, in all our lives." CHAPTER XV SOCIETY IN LENOX "Miss Sallie, is Lenox the oldest summer resort in the United States?" inquired Barbara, as they sat on a private veranda which opened into their own sitting-room, in the most beautiful hotel in Lenox. "I am sure I don't know, Bab, dear," Miss Sallie answered complacently. "I think modern Lenox has been transformed by the wealth that has come into the place in the last fifty years. I am told that it once had more literary associations than any other town in the country. As Ruth tells me you are ambitious to become a writer some day, this will interest you. You girls must go about, while you are here, and see all the sights." Barbara blushed and changed the subject. She did not like to talk of her literary ambitions. "Ruth and Mollie are late in getting back, aren't they?" she asked. "You know they have gone over in the automobile to inquire for Eunice. I hope they will be back in time for tea. Did Ruth remember to tell you that the British Ambassador's daughters, Dorothy and Gwendolin Morton, are coming in to tea? And perhaps Mr. Winthrop Latham and Reginald Latham will be here also." Miss Sallie nodded. "Yes; I am expecting them," she declared. "It is most kind of them to call on us so promptly. I was afraid we would know no one in Lenox, as I have no acquaintances here. I did not expect you and little Mollie to pull friends down from the sky for us, as you seem to have done by your rescue of Mr. Latham and his nephew. What a strange thing life is!" "Do you know, Miss Sallie," Barbara continued, "it seems awfully funny for Mollie and me to to be associating with such important people as the daughters of the English Ambassador. I am even impressed with that funny little German Secretary, Franz Heller, just because he is attached to the German Embassy. It makes me feel as though I were a character in a book, to even meet such clever people. Dear me, what a lot you and Ruth have done for us!" "Barbara, dear," replied Miss Stuart, kindly, "we have not done much more for you than you girls have done for us in a different way. True, through my brother, we happened to have the money to pay for our good times; but poor Ruth and I couldn't have had those good times without the other three 'Automobile Girls.' How is Grace's headache? Will she be able to see our friends this afternoon?" "Shall I ask her?" Bab suggested, going in to the bedroom through the French window which opened onto their porch. She came out, shaking her head. "Grace is not well enough to get up yet," she explained. "She says she may be able to join us for a few minutes when our guests arrive; but you are not to worry. Her headache is better." "Shall we have tea out on our veranda, Barbara?" Miss Sallie asked. "I cannot tear myself away from this view. How exquisite the lake looks down between those mountains. And what is the name of that hill over there? Oh, yes, I know you girls have told me the name of it many times before, but as I cannot remember it, you will probably have to tell it to me repeatedly. Monument Mountain, did you say? Oh, I recall the story now. An Indian girl is supposed to have flung herself off of it on account of some love affair. Curious people the Indians," she continued. "Do you know, Bab, I am much interested in our little Indian girl? She is a very beautiful child, and her race is not usually beautiful. I don't understand the girl looking as she does. I shall go to the hospital with you to see her soon. Now, hurry along, child, and order the tea." Miss Sallie paused for an instant. "And tell the waiter to see that the service is good. English people are so particular about their tea!" Barbara was back from her errand just in time to see a pony carriage drive up in front of the hotel. She went forward to meet their guests, sighing a little to herself. "I do wish Ruth and Mollie would come. I am sure I shan't know how to talk to these English girls by myself. I hardly spoke to them the night of our famous coon hunt." Gwendolin and Dorothy Morton came half shyly forward. They were tall, willowy girls, with soft, brown hair and lovely complexions. "I know why English girls are thought to look like roses," flashed through Bab's mind. "These girls are just like roses bending from long stems." Barbara came forward, speaking in her usual frank fashion. "I am so glad to see you," she declared. "Will you come to our little private balcony? If it is not too cold for you, Miss Stuart wishes to have tea out there." Gwendolin and Dorothy Morton followed Bab in silence. As English girls do not talk so much as American girls on first acquaintance, Barbara felt compelled to keep up the conversation. "I am ever so sorry," she went on; "but my friend, Ruth Stuart, and my sister, Mollie, are not yet back from the hospital. They have gone to ask about our little Indian girl." "Your little Indian girl!" exclaimed Dorothy Morton, surprised into talking. "Why, what do you mean?" Bab glanced back over her shoulder as the three girls started into the hotel. "There come Ruth and Mollie now!" she exclaimed. "They can tell you about our little Eunice better than lean." A crimson motor car was speeding up the avenue. "How well Miss Stuart drives her car!" laughed Gwendolin Morton. "But she will have to be very careful; the road laws are very strict in Lenox. I must tell her that, if she is arrested, she will surely be taken to prison. I don't know how to drive a car. My sister and I are more fond of horses. Do you ride, Miss Thurston?" Barbara colored. She wondered what these wealthy English girls would think of the kind of riding to which she had been accustomed. An old bareback horse, a Texas pony, once even a mule had been Barbara's steeds. So she answered shyly: "Yes, I do ride a little. But, of course, I don't ride in the beautiful way I know you and your sister do." "We are very anxious to have you and your friends take part in our autumn sports at Lenox," urged Dorothy Morton. Barbara and the two English girls were waiting at the hotel door for Ruth and Mollie. In another moment Ruth jumped from her car, and, followed by Mollie, came hurrying up to her guests. "I am so sorry not to be here when you arrived," she explained. "We just flew home. I was afraid of being held up every minute. But we were kept waiting so long at the hospital that I knew we were late. Do let's join Aunt Sallie. She will grow impatient." Miss Stuart came forward from her veranda into their private sitting-room. "I am so glad to see you," she said to the two English girls. "And we are delighted to be your first guests, Miss Stuart," said Gwendolin, who was the elder of the two girls. "Mr. Heller wishes to come in and pay his respects to you later, and I believe Mr. Winthrop Latham and his nephew are on their way now. We passed them as we drove here." "Aunt Sallie," Ruth spoke softly a few moments later, when she thought no one was listening, "little Eunice is better. But Naki had to take her to the hospital at Pittsfield. He could not find a place for her here. Fortunately, Pittsfield is only a few miles from Lenox over a simply perfect road, so we shan't mind going back and forth in the car. Naki and Ceally are keeping the poor old Indian grandmother with them. Ceally says she seems subdued and frightened." Ruth turned rosy red. From the silence in the room she knew her guests were hearing what she said. "I beg your pardon," she explained, turning to Dorothy Morton, who was nearest her. "Please forgive my bad manners. We are so interested in our new protégée that I forget that you know nothing of her." "But we should like to know, awfully!" Dorothy declared. "Who is this Indian girl? I thought all the Indians had vanished from the Berkshires." But Mr. Winthrop Latham and his nephew Reginald were at the door. Behind them was a plump little German, with blond hair parted in the middle, a tiny waxed mustache and near-sighted blue eyes. He was Franz Heller, the Secretary at the German Embassy. He could usually be found somewhere in the neighborhood of Gwendolin Morton. Reginald Latham came up to Bab and sat down next her. "Please," he whispered immediately, "do not speak of the little Indian girl before my uncle." "Why not?" queried Bab, in astonishment. "I can't explain to you now!" Reginald faltered. His uncle's eyes were fastened on him. Miss Stuart announcing that tea was waiting on the balcony, the little party adjourned to the veranda and stood talking and admiring the view. It was a wonderful, clear October day, radiant with warm sunshine. Mr. Winthrop Latham stood near Miss Stuart, assisting her to serve the tea. The young people were talking in a group near them. "I say, Ruth!" exclaimed Dorothy Morton. "Forgive my calling you Ruth so early in our acquaintance, but if I call you Miss Stuart, your aunt may think I am speaking to her. Do please tell us about the mysterious little Indian girl, who is your protégée. Where did you find her?" Reginald Latham, who was near Barbara, broke into the conversation. "Tell Miss Stuart about our fall sports, Dorothy!" he urged. "Tell me of them afterwards," said Dorothy. "I must hear about this Indian child first." "Well, the story of our little Indian girl is a long and rather odd one," Ruth asserted. "As she is really Mollie's discovery, not mine, Mollie must tell you about her." Mollie was embarrassed at suddenly finding herself the center of so many eyes. Mr. Winthrop Latham had turned around, and was also watching her. He had caught Ruth's last speech. "Why," confessed Mollie, "the story of our little Indian girl is simple enough, but it is very strange." The little girl paused. Reginald Latham's eyes were fixed on her in a strange gaze; but she had started to tell her tale and must go on. Mollie looked over at Aunt Sallie, and the latter nodded her approval. Quietly Mollie told of her wood nymph first leading her astray on the mountain; of Eunice's visit to her, next day, and of Bab's accidental shooting of the child afterwards. "I don't think our discovery of the little Indian girl was so odd," said Mollie. "What I think is strange is that no one around here ever knew of her before. Just think, Eunice is thirteen or fourteen years old and she has been kept hidden in these hills by her old Indian grandmother all her life. She had never been to a town until she was taken to the hospital by our guide, Naki. Yet she is so pretty and gentle. I love her already." The little girl had a queer feeling as if she were defending Eunice--she did not know why. A voice broke into the conversation. "You say, my dear"--Mr. Latham spoke sternly--"that you and your friends have found an old Indian woman and a child called Eunice hidden in the woods back of you? The thing is impossible. The old woman and the girl are probably gypsies or tramps. They cannot be Indians. I have reason to know the history of the Indians in this part of the country very well. My eldest brother married an Indian girl. She was the last of her people in this vicinity, and she died about fifteen years ago." Mollie did not answer. A sudden silence fell upon the little group. Barbara looked at Reginald. She understood, now, why he was often afraid of his uncle. The older man would not endure contradiction. "Reginald, we must say good-bye to Miss Stuart," his uncle commanded. "Don't go just yet, Mr. Latham," pleaded Gwendolin Morton. "You promised to help me explain to Miss Stuart the plan for our day of sports. You see, Miss Stuart, every season at Lenox we have an annual entertainment for the benefit of our hospital fund. This year father is to take charge of the sports, which we try to make just as informal and jolly as possible. One of the reasons for my call was to ask you to let your girls help us out with our amusements. As soon as I told my father we had met some delightful American girls who were camping near here, he suggested that we invite them to join in our sports. We intend to have some really good riding; but the other games are only jokes. Did you ever hear of a dummy race or a thread-and-needle race?" Miss Stuart shook her head, smilingly, as she said, "Miss Morton, I don't even try to keep up with the ways young people have of entertaining themselves these days; but I am sure, whatever your Lenox sports may be, my 'Automobile Girls' will be happy to take part in them." "That's awfully jolly of you, Miss Stuart!" declared Dorothy Morton, who was the younger and more informal of the English girls. She turned to Ruth. "Won't you come in and have a game of archery with us to-morrow afternoon? Father and mother will both be at home. We can tell you all of our plans for next week." "We'll be happy to come," laughed Ruth, "but none of us know how to use the bow. That is an English game, isn't it? We shall be delighted to look on." "Oh, archery is all the rage at Lenox," little Mr. Heller explained. "Perhaps you will let me show your friends how to shoot." Ruth shook her head. "We shall have plenty to learn if we are to take part in your queer races next week. If my friend, Miss Carter, is better to-morrow you may expect us." Grace came out on the porch. "I am well, already!" she apologized. "At least I decided that, headache or no headache, I couldn't miss all the fun this afternoon. So here I am!" "Now, we must positively say good-bye, Miss Stuart," declared Mr. Latham, extending his hand. "I want to take you and your girls for a drive to Lake Queechy. Then you must see the place where the Hawthorne's 'little red house' formerly stood. The house burned down some years ago, but the site is interesting, for Hawthorne lived in the Berkshires a number of years and wrote 'The House of Seven Gables' here. We have plenty of literary associations, Miss Stuart. My people have lived here so long that I take a deep interest in the history of the place." "Lake Queechy," Miss Sallie exclaimed sentimentally, "is the lake named for Susan Warner, the author of 'Queechy' and 'The Wide, Wide World.' Dear me, I shed quantities of tears over those books in my day. But girls don't care for such weepy books nowadays, do they? They want more fire and adventure. I am sure I should be ashamed of my 'Automobile Girls' if they fell to crying in the face of an obstacle. They prefer to overcome it. We shall be delighted to drive with you. Good-bye!" "Curious, Reginald!" declared Mr. Winthrop Latham, when the two men had walked several yards from the hotel in silence. "That is a very remarkable story that your friends tell of the discovery of an unknown Indian child. Did they call her Eunice? That is strangest of all! You have been up on the hill with these girls a number of times. Have you seen this girl?" Reginald mumbled something. It was not audible. But his uncle understood he had not seen the girl. "Oh, well, the old woman is probably a gypsy tramp," Mr. Latham concluded, "but I will look up the child, some day, for my own satisfaction. Reg, boy, the rudder of our airship will be repaired in the next few days. Do you feel equal to another aerial flight?" "Most assuredly I do," the nephew replied. The two men walked on. But, for once, they were not thinking of their favorite hobby. The mind of each man dwelt upon Mollie's story of a poor little Indian girl. What connection could she have with these two men of wealth and position? Reginald Latham's suspicions were growing. The Indian girl might be an obstacle in his path. "I must tell mother all I have heard and guessed," he reflected. "Under no circumstances must uncle be allowed to see this child. Mother will know how to manage. We may have to spirit the girl away, if she is the child I fear she is. But we must make sure." Reginald Latham was not a pleasant man, but he was clever. If he had reason to fear little Eunice he would work quietly. What chance had the child and her ignorant, uncivilized grandmother against him? Mr. Winthrop Latham's thoughts were of a different kind. "The young Indian girl," he assured himself, "can have no further possible interest for me." CHAPTER XVI AT THE AMBASSADOR'S "Shall we walk down to the postoffice, Ruth?" Barbara asked. "I am awfully anxious for a letter from mother." "Let's all go!" urged Grace. "We have just time enough before dressing for our call at the Ambassador's. I am told that everyone goes for his own letters in Lenox. We shall see all the social lights. They say titled foreigners line up in front of the Lenox postoffice to look for heiresses. Ruth, you are our only heiress. Here's a chance for you!" teased Grace. Ruth looked provoked. "I won't be called horrid names, Grace Carter!" she asserted, indignantly. "Heiress or no heiress, when my turn comes for a husband I won't look at any old foreigner. A good American citizen will be a fine enough husband for me!" "Hear! hear!" laughed Mollie, putting on her hat. "Don't let us quarrel over Ruth's prospective husband just at present. It reminds me of the old maid who shed tears before the pot of boiling fat. When her neighbor inquired what troubled her, the spinster said she was thinking that if she had ever been married her child might have played in the kitchen, and might have fallen into the pot of boiling oil! Come on, 'old maid Ruth,' let's be off." The girls walked briskly through the bracing mountain air. "I expect you will have a letter from Hugh or Ralph, Ruth," Barbara suggested. "They told you they would write you if they could come to Lenox for the week of games." Ruth went into the postoffice to inquire for their mail. The other girls waited on the outside. A tall young woman swept by them, leading a beautiful English deerhound on a long silver chain. She had very blond hair and light blue eyes. Her glance rested on Barbara for the space of half a second. "Dear me!" Barbara laughed. "How very young and insignificant that intensely superior person makes me feel! Maybe she is one of the heiresses Grace told us about." "Here is a letter for you, Grace!" said Ruth, returning to her friends. "The one addressed to you, Bab, is probably for you and Mollie together. It is from your mother. Then I have two letters for myself and two for Aunt Sallie. It is all right; Hugh and Ralph will be here the first thing next week," announced Ruth, tearing open one of her notes. "What would Aunt Sallie say if she could see us opening our mail on the street?" queried Barbara, as she promptly followed Ruth's bad example. "But this is such a quiet spot, under these old elms, that I must have a peep at mother's letter. Mother is having a beautiful time in St. Paul with Cousin Betty, Molliekins," continued Bab. "And what do you think? Our queer old cousin is sending us another present. What has come over her? First she sends the beautiful silk dresses and now--but mother doesn't tell what this last gift is. She says it is to be a surprise for us when we come back from Lenox." "What fun!" cried Mollie. "Our crabbed cousin is having a slight change of heart. She has always been dreadfully bored with Bab and me," Mollie explained to Ruth and Grace, "but she is devoted to mother, and used to want her to live with her. But she never could make up her mind to endure us girls. Tell me some more news, Bab." "Well," Barbara read on, "mother has had a letter from Mr. Stuart; but Ruth's letter will give her this news. He writes that his new gold mine is a perfect wonder. I am so glad for you, Ruth, dear!" Barbara ended. "Oh!" Ruth exclaimed. "Father is so lucky! But we really don't need any more money. Just think, father only has Aunt Sallie and poor me to spend it all on. If he only had a big family it would be worth while to grow richer and richer. I wish you were really my sisters. Then you would let me share some of all this money with you, Bab dear," whispered Ruth in her best friend's ear, as the two girls dropped behind Mollie and Grace. Barbara shook her head. Yet the tears started to her eyes in spite of the fact that she was out on the street. "You generous darling!" she replied. "If you aren't sharing your money with us by giving us all these good times, what are you doing? But, of course, we couldn't take your money in any other way. Mollie and I are used to being poor. We don't mind it so very much. Let's hurry. Aunt Sallie will want us to put on our best clothes for our call at the Ambassador's. Thank goodness for Cousin Betty's present to Mollie and me of the silk suits. We have never had such fine clothes before in our lives." "Miss Sallie," inquired Barbara, an hour later, "will Mollie and I do for the call at the Ambassador's? You know this is the great event in our lives. Who knows but the Ambassador may even shake hands with humble me! Do Ambassadors shake hands, Aunt Sallie? Why, 'The Automobile Girls' may meet the President some day, we are getting so high in the world." "Who knows indeed, Barbara?" responded Miss Stuart complacently. "Far more unlikely things have often happened. You and Mollie look very well, dear. Indeed, I never saw you in more becoming frocks. They are very dainty and stylish." "Aunt Sallie," confessed Mollie, "I never had a silk dress before in all my life. Bab had one made over from an old one of mother's, but this is positively my first appearance 'in silk attire.'" Bab's costume was of apricot rajah silk, made with a plaited skirt and a long coat, which fastened across her chest with a single gilt ornament. With it she wore a delicate lace blouse over silk of the same shade as her suit. Her hat was a large black chip with one long curling feather. Mollie's dress was like Bab's, except that it was a delicate shade of robin's-egg blue, while her hat was of soft white felt, trimmed with a long blue feather. "Let us look at ourselves in the mirror, Bab, until Miss Sallie is ready," whispered Mollie. "I want to try to get used to my appearance. Maybe you think this wealthy-looking person you now behold is some relative of yours--possibly your sister! But just understand that, as I look at myself in that mirror, nothing can make me believe I am poor little Mollie Thurston, of Kingsbridge, New Jersey! Why, I am now about to call on the English Ambassador, younger brother to an earl. But I am a brave girl. I shall put on as bold a front as possible, and I shall try not to disgrace Aunt Sallie by making any breaks." "You goose you!" laughed Bab. "But to tell you the truth, sweet Mistress Mollie, I feel pretty much as you do. There is Ruth calling us. They are ready to start." "Come on, children!" cried Ruth. "The automobile is waiting. My goodness!" she exclaimed, as Mollie and Bab appeared before her. "How very elegant you look! Don't tell me fine feathers don't make fine-looking birds! Aunt Sallie, I am not magnificent enough to associate with these two persons." Ruth had on a beautiful white serge suit and Grace a long tan coat over a light silk dress; but, for the first time, Mollie and Barbara were the most elegantly dressed of the four girls. "People will be taking _you_ for the heiress, and marrying you to some horrid titled foreigner!" teased Ruth, pinching Mollie's pretty cheek. Miss Stuart and her girls found the English Ambassador and his wife in the stately drawing room of their summer place in Lenox. The room was sixty feet in length and hung with beautiful paintings. The walls and furniture were upholstered in rose-colored brocade. Flowers were arranged in every possible place. The newcomers had a confused feeling that there were twenty or thirty guests in the drawing room; but as the butler announced their names their hostess moved forward from a group of friends to speak to them. In another moment Dorothy Morton spied them, and came up with her arm through that of a tall, middle-aged man, very slender, with closely cut blond hair and a long drooping mustache. He looked very intellectual and impressive. "Miss Stuart, this is my father," said Dorothy simply. The Ambassador bowed low over Miss Stuart's hand. He was then introduced to each of "The Automobile Girls" in turn. The Ambassador's eyes twinkled. He saw his young guests were a little awed at meeting so great a diplomatic personage. "You are the girls, aren't you, who have been camping on one of our Berkshire hills?" the Ambassador inquired. "My daughters have told me about your delightful hut. Curious, I never heard of the little cabin's existence. I want you to show me the place. Some day I may follow your example and run away to the woods for a few weeks. Dorothy tells me you will help us with our games next week." Miss Stuart excused herself. Mrs. Latham wished to talk with her in another part of the drawing room. "May we count on you for the Gymkana races, Ruth?" asked Dorothy Morton. "Gymkana races!" questioned Ruth, shaking her head. "What in the world can you mean?" "Remember," laughed her hostess, "I told you our sports were to be a huge joke. You must have a sense of humor, or you won't want to take part. You know we have horse show grounds here in Lenox. Well, the Gymkana race this year will take place over their meadow. Indeed, all the sports are to be held there. Father, you explain what the games are like," Dorothy requested. The Ambassador looked very grave. "Miss Stuart," he asked, "will you or your friends drive a turkey, a duck, a hen, or a gander in our Gymkana race? My daughter, Dorothy, has, I believe, reserved an old gray goose as her especial steed; but you can make any other choice of racer that you may desire. The only point of the game is to get the nose of your steed first under the blue ribbon. It may take a good deal of racing and chasing on your own part to accomplish it." Dorothy inquired, turning first to Ruth, then to Bab, Mollie and Grace, "May I put down your names for this race?" Ruth laughed. "Certainly I shall enter," she declared. "I have as good a nerve as anyone else. You must give me time to decide on what animal I shall drive." "I'll join, too!" Grace agreed. "Is this game for women only?" "Yes," Dorothy replied. "Other distinguished sports are reserved for the men. What do you think of my serious-minded father? He is down for the 'egg and spoon' race. So are Franz Heller and Mr. Winthrop Latham. I mean to ask your two men friends, Mr. Post and Mr. Ewing, to enter, too. It's great sport. The men have to run across the track carrying a raw egg in a desert spoon. The man who first gets to the winning post without a mishap is the winner. But there will be other games as well. I am just mentioning a few of them." Gwendolin Morton approached with Franz Heller and the tall blond girl whom "The Automobile Girls" had seen for a moment at the postoffice. "We have to come to believe in the American fashion of introducing our friends," declared Miss Morton. "You know, in England it is not the custom to introduce people to one another at a tea party. May I present my friend, Maud Warren, to you, Miss Stuart, Miss Carter, and the Misses Thurston." The four girls bowed. Maud Warren inclined her head slightly, giving each girl in turn a supercilious stare. "I suppose father and Dorothy have been persuading you to take part in the nonsensical side of our entertainment next week," inquired Gwendolin. "I am trying to look after the riding. Do any of you ride horseback well enough to go in for the hurdle jumping? I warn you, you will find it difficult to win. Miss Warren is one of the best riders in New York. She has taken prizes at hurdle jumping before, at her riding school." Ruth declined. "I am afraid no one of us rides well enough to go in for this contest. I ride, of course, but I am not equal to the jumping." Ruth spied Barbara looking at her with longing eyes. "I beg your pardon, Bab!" Ruth laughed. "I had no right to decline the hurdle jumping for all of us. Would you like to try?" "Of course, I should like to try!" Barbara exclaimed. "But I know it is out of the question. I have no horse, and I haven't a riding habit here." Barbara turned shyly to the Ambassador. "I have never done any real hurdle jumping," she explained. "But I have jumped over all kinds of fences riding through the country." The Ambassador smiled. "You need no better training for hurdle races," he replied. "If a horse is what you need," cried Dorothy Morton, "why not use one from our stables. We have a number of riding horses. Do let me lend you one and enter the hurdle jumping contest. It is a dangerous amusement, however. I won't try it." "Oh, I am not in the least afraid," Bab declared. "Only, if I am left at the post, and can't take a single hurdle, you must forgive me." "Well, you understand," finished the Ambassador, "our amusements are only for our own friends." "Come here, Mollie," called Miss Stuart, from her corner of the room, where she was seated near Mrs. Latham. "Mollie," explained Miss Sallie, as the child approached, "Mrs. Latham is much interested in our little Indian girl. Her son, Reginald, has told her of the accident to Eunice. Mrs. Latham is anxious to know to what hospital in Pittsfield Naki has taken the child. I did not ask Ruth. Can you tell us the name?" Mollie looked at Mrs. Latham steadily. The older woman dropped her eyes. "Eunice is not yet allowed to see visitors," she answered. "Oh, I have no wish to call on the child," Mrs. Latham protested, "but if the Indian girl and her old grandmother are in want I shall send a man to look after them. My brother is most generous to the poor, Miss Stuart." But Mollie went on. "Thank you, Mrs. Latham, but Eunice and her grandmother are not poor. Ruth is looking after them now. The grandmother wishes to take Eunice back to their wigwam on the hill, when the little girl is well enough to be moved." Mrs. Latham frowned. She had her own reasons for wishing to discover the address of the Indian woman and her child. Yet she did not want to appear to be much interested. Barbara came up to join Mollie. "Your sister seems determined that no one shall take interest in your little Indian protégée except her own friends," declared Mrs. Latham, smiling at Bab. "Perhaps you would not object to telling me where the child is located." "Why certainly not!" Barbara exclaimed frankly, looking in surprise at Mollie. But Mollie interrupted her. The little girl's cheeks were burning hot. She was conscious of her own bad manners, and of Miss Stuart's look of disappointment. Yet she spoke before Bab could continue. "I am sorry for Mrs. Latham to think I am rude in not telling her where Eunice is staying; but it seems to me that, if her old Indian grandmother has kept Eunice hidden all these years, she must have had some good reason. It does not seem fair to me for us to talk about her just because, through an accident, we had to send her to town. I think, if the grandmother wishes to keep Eunice hidden, we ought at least to ask the old woman's permission before we tell anyone where she is staying. I am awfully sorry," Mollie ended, apologetically, "but I do feel that I am right." Mrs. Latham was very angry. "I am sure I beg your pardon, Miss Thurston," she rejoined icily, before she moved away. "I meant nothing by my harmless inquiry. I can assure you I am not unduly interested in your protégée. If you wish to keep the gypsy girl's hiding place a secret, do so, by all means." "Mollie, I am exceedingly angry with you!" said Miss Sallie. "How could you be so horrid, Mollie?" whispered Bab. Mollie's blue eyes were swimming in tears, but she would not let them fall on her flushed cheeks. She knew she must say good-bye to her new acquaintances, so she dared not answer Miss Sallie then. But on the way back to their hotel, seated next Miss Stuart in the automobile, Mollie tried to offer an explanation for her rude behavior. "Miss Sallie," she pleaded softly, "I know you are dreadfully angry with me; and I am afraid you won't forgive me; but I just couldn't make up my mind to let Mrs. Latham know where to find Eunice and her old grandmother. I know you will think I am foolish. Perhaps I am. But I have a feeling that Reginald Latham and his mother mean no good to Eunice. I can't help remembering how the old squaw acted when she first heard the name of Latham. I cannot believe she was just acting for effect as Reginald Latham said she was. There is some mystery about little Eunice. Do you think, Miss Sallie, we girls have a right to betray the old Indian woman's secrets?" "My sympathies are all with Mollie, Aunt Sallie!" Ruth declared. "I shall have to come in for a share of her scolding." But Barbara shook her head. "I never knew anyone so prejudiced as Mollie is against Reginald Latham. What on earth do you suppose he and his mother could have against a poor old squaw and her little girl? Would you have helped pulled Reginald down out of his airship, if you had known how you would dislike him, Mollie?" Bab asked. But Mollie was looking wistfully at Miss Sallie, and did not heed Barbara's question. "I don't care what a young girl may think on any subject," Miss Stuart declared firmly, "she has no right to be rude to an older woman. And Mollie was undeniably rude to Mrs. Latham in refusing to answer her simple question. It could have done no harm to have told her the name of the hospital where Eunice is being treated." "No, it wouldn't have done Eunice any harm to tell that much, Mollie," Ruth agreed, "because, if that very determined Mrs. Latham wishes to discover where little Eunice is, she will certainly accomplish it. Why, she rules her grown-up son with a rod of iron!" "Mark my words!" said Grace, joining quietly in the conversation--Grace was not often given to expressing an opinion, so even Miss Sallie listened to her with respect. "I would like to bet a great big box of candy that Mrs. Latham sees Eunice and her Indian grandmother before they are many weeks older. The Lathams have some connection with little Eunice, though goodness knows I can't guess what it is." Mollie had nothing more to say. She was in the motor car now. Her tears could flow freely. Miss Sallie pretended, for a few moments, not to see that Mollie was crying. A breach in social etiquette was a sore offense to Miss Stuart. But after a little while she put her arm around the little girl and gave her a gentle squeeze. "I will forgive you, this time, dear," she murmured, "but I never want you, Mollie, to be rude to a grown person again. And I don't think, my dear, it is a good idea to have a suspicious nature." "I didn't mean to be rude," Mollie sighed, putting her head against Miss Stuart's arm. "I was only trying not to tell Mrs. Latham what she wanted to know." Because it was now dark, and Mollie could not see her face, Miss Sallie smiled. CHAPTER XVII A VISIT TO EUNICE "O girls, I have had the most splendiferous time!" cried Bab, bounding into the hotel sitting room. She wore Ruth's tan colored riding habit and a little brown derby. Her curls were drawn up in a knot at the back of her head. Her brown eyes were sparkling. She pranced into the room, as though she were still on horseback. "Miss Sallie, I never knew what horseback riding could mean until to-day. Dorothy Morton has lent me a perfect dream of a horse. Its name is Beauty. It is black and slim and has a white star on its nose. My, don't I wish it were mine! Well, Beauty and I took our hurdles to-day, at the Ambassador's farm, as though we had been jumping together all our lives. See, here!" Barbara vaulted lightly over a low stool, and stood in the center of the room, brandishing her riding crop. "Barbara Thurston!" Mollie exclaimed. "Good gracious!" protested Bab. "I didn't dream we had a visitor. I am so sorry! I have been practising for the hurdle jumping next week," Bab ended tamely. A stout man, with iron gray hair and a kindly expression, smiled at Barbara. "Oh, don't mind my presence," he said. "I have a daughter of my own who is fond of horseback riding." "Barbara," explained Miss Stuart, "this is Doctor Lewis. He has been good enough to come over from the hospital to tell us about Eunice." Barbara noticed that Ruth, Grace and Mollie had been listening to the doctor with absorbed attention. "The Indian girl has asked for her friends several times in the last few days," the doctor continued, "but she has not been well enough to be permitted to talk. The nurses tell me the child had been most patient. They are much attracted toward her. Now, I think it may do the little girl good to see you. Naki, your guide has explained to me the circumstances of your finding of the child. It is most remarkable. But I wonder if you are really interested in the girl, or whether you are being kind to her, now, only because of her accident?" "Why do you ask me, doctor?" Miss Stuart inquired quietly. "Because," the doctor answered honestly, "I am much interested in the child myself. I would like to know that she has friends. The grandmother, stupid and ignorant though she is, seems devoted to the child. As for Eunice herself, she is an enigma. She is not in the least like the grandmother. The old Indian woman is probably of mixed white and Indian blood, but the child has less Indian blood. Eunice must have had a white mother or father. I have asked the child about her parents, but she knows absolutely nothing about them, and the Indian woman will not tell. She told me, very decidedly, that it was not my business to inquire; that I was to make Eunice well after which she and her grandchild would go back to their wigwam and live in peace. But that beautiful little girl ought not to grow up in entire ignorance. She should be educated, and given an opportunity to develop." "I agree with you, doctor," Miss Sallie rejoined, "but the case will present difficulties. The old grandmother is the child's natural guardian. She will never be persuaded to give her up." "Doctor," declared Ruth shyly, "if it were possible I should love to educate little Eunice. I could send her to school and do whatever is best for her. But I am afraid we have no right to do it for her." "Well, I cannot recommend kidnapping the child, Miss Ruth," the doctor replied, "but, perhaps, you girls can persuade the old Indian to be less obstinate. Come and see my little charge when you can. She is quite well enough to see you. I shall not have to keep her at the hospital a great while longer. Her arm is still bandaged. She will soon be able to walk about." "Aunt Sallie," Ruth asked, as soon as the doctor left, "may I have Eunice up at the hotel with us, as soon as she is well enough to leave the hospital?" Miss Sallie demurred. "I must see the child again first, Ruth, dear. She can come here for the day, but not longer. She will be best with Naki and Ceally for a time. Now, Ruth, don't be so impetuous. You must not plan impossible schemes. Remember, this Indian child is entirely uneducated. She does not know the first principles of good manners. But I am perfectly willing that you should do what seems best for her." "When shall we go to see Eunice?" Ruth asked, turning to the other three girls. "Oh, let us go this afternoon, please, Ruth," pleaded Mollie. "But Mr. Latham has asked us to go driving with him," Barbara objected. "Mr. Latham has only asked Aunt Sallie and one of us, Bab," Ruth rejoined. "Suppose you go with Aunt Sallie. Reginald Latham would rather have you along. And, to tell you the truth, Grace and Mollie and I would much rather go to see Eunice." Mollie and Grace both nodded. "But I don't want to be left out of the visit to Eunice, either," Bab protested. "Never mind," she went on, lowering her voice; "if Reginald Latham has any connection with Eunice, see if I don't find it out this afternoon." "Never, Bab!" cried Grace. "Well, just you wait and see!" ended Mistress Barbara. "Mollie, you go into the room to see Eunice first," said Ruth as they reached the hospital. "Grace and I will wait outside the door. You can call us when you think we may come in. Eunice may be frightened." But Ruth need not have feared. As Mollie went into her room, Eunice was sitting up in bed. Her straight black hair was neatly combed and hung over her shoulders in two heavy braids. The child had on a fresh white night gown. Already she looked fairer from the short time spent indoors. Eunice stretched out her slim brown hands to Mollie. "My little fair one!" she cried rapturously. "I feared never to see you again. My grandmother told me I must return to the wigwam as soon as I am well; but I do not want to leave this pretty bed. See how white and soft it is." Mollie kissed Eunice. The child looked at her curiously. "Why do you do such a strange thing to me?" asked Eunice. Mollie was amazed. "Don't you know what a kiss is, Eunice? I kissed you because I am fond of you." Eunice laughed gleefully. "Indians do not kiss," she declared. "But I like it." "Shall I ask the other girls to come in?" Mollie inquired. "My two friends, Ruth and Grace, are waiting in the hall. They wish to see you." Eunice nodded. "I like to see you while grandmother is away," she confided. "Grandmother says it is not wise for me to talk so much. But it is hard to be all the time so silent as the Indians are. Some days I have talked to the wild things in the woods." Ruth dropped a bunch of red roses on Eunice's bed. The child clutched them eagerly. "It is the red color that I love!" she cried in delight. "Eunice," Ruth asked, "do you remember your father and mother?" Eunice shook her head. "I remember no one," she replied. "Long ago, there was an old Indian man. He made canoes for me out of birch bark. He was my grandmother's man--husband, I think you call him in your language." The three "Automobile Girls" were disappointed. Eunice could remember no associations but Indian ones. There was nothing to prove that Eunice was not an Indian except the child's appearance. Mollie decided to make another venture. "Eunice," she asked, "do you still wear the gold chain around your neck? I saw it the day you were hurt. It is so pretty I should like you to show it to my friends." The Indian girl looked frightened. "You will not tell my grandmother?" she pleaded. "She would be very angry if she knew I wore it. I found the pretty chain, one day, among some other gold things in an old box in the wigwam." Why! Eunice pointed in sudden excitement to the watch Ruth wore fastened on the outside of her blouse--"there was a round shiny thing like that in the box. The other golden ornaments are at the wigwam. Only this chain is Indian. So there seemed no wrong in my wearing it." Eunice slipped her chain from under her gown. Ruth and Grace examined it closely. "Eunice," Grace exclaimed, "there are two English letters engraved on the pendant of your chain. They are E. L., I am pretty sure." "The same letters are on all the gold things," Eunice declared. "Well, E. stands for Eunice plainly enough," volunteered Ruth, "but I can't guess what the L. means." Mollie said nothing. "You know, Ruth," protested Grace, "the initials may not be Eunice's. The child only found the chain at the wigwam. There is no telling where the jewelry she speaks of came from." "Oh!" Ruth cried, in a disappointed tone, "I never thought of that!" "Eunice, we must go now," announced Ruth, "but I want you to promise me not to go back to the wigwam with your grandmother until you have first seen me. Tell your grandmother I wish to talk with her. I want you to come to see where I live." Eunice shook her head. "I should be afraid," she replied simply. "But you are not afraid with me, Eunice," Mollie said. "If you will promise to come to see us, when you are better, you shall stay right by me all the time. Will you promise?" "I promise," agreed the child. "Naki is to let me hear as soon as you are well enough to leave the hospital," said Ruth. "O Ruth," whispered Mollie. "Eunice will have no clothes to wear up at the hotel, even to spend the day. Shall I send her a dress of mine?" "Eunice," Ruth asked, "do you know what a present is?" "No," was the reply. "Well, a present is something that comes in a box, and is soft and warm this time," Ruth explained. "Eunice must wear the present when she is ready to leave the hospital. When you are well enough to come to see us, I am coming to the hospital for you. I am going to take you flying to the hotel where we are staying, on the back of a big red bird." "You make fun," said the Indian solemnly. "You just wait until you see my motor car, Eunice!" cried Ruth. "It is the biggest bird, and it flies as fast as any you have ever seen. So do please hurry up and get well." "I will, now. I did not wish to get well before," Eunice replied. "It is cold and lonely up on the hill in the snow time." CHAPTER XVIII PLANS FOR THE SOCIETY CIRCUS "Ralph and Hugh! I am so delighted to see you!" cried Mollie Thurston, a few days later. She was alone in their sitting room writing a letter, when the two friends arrived. "We girls have been dreadfully afraid you would not arrive in time for our Society Circus. You know the games take place to-morrow." "Oh, it is a 'Society Circus' we have come to! So that is the name Lenox has given to its latest form of social entertainment?" laughed Hugh. "Sorry we couldn't get here sooner, Mollie; but you knew you could depend on our turning up at the appointed time. Where are the other girls and Aunt Sallie?" "They are over at the Fair Grounds, watching Bab ride," Mollie explained. "Ralph, I am awfully worried about Bab. One of the amusements of the circus is to be a riding contest. Of course, Bab rides very well, but I don't think mother would approve of her undertaking such dangerous riding as jumping over hurdles. Ambassador Morton has told Aunt Sallie that there will be no danger. He is used to English girls riding across the country; and I know, at the riding schools in New York, they give these same contests; but we have never had any riding lessons. I can't help being nervous." "I wouldn't worry, Mollie," Ralph replied kindly. "I am sure Bab is equal to any kind of horseback exercise. Remember the first time we saw her, Hugh? She was riding down the road in the rain, astride an old bareback horse. We nicknamed her 'Miss Paul Revere' then and there. There isn't any use trying to keep Bab off a horse, Mollie, when she has the faintest chance to get on one." "Come on, then," laughed Mollie, smiling at the picture Ralph's remark had brought to her mind. "We will walk over to the Fair Grounds. You will find nearly everybody we know in Lenox over there. You remember that you boys gave Ruth and Bab liberty to put your names down for any of the games; come and find out what trouble they have gotten you into. You never dreamed of such absurd amusements as we are to have." "Oh, we are game for anything," Hugh declared. "Lenox sports are the jolliest I have yet run across. Don't think any other place can produce anything just like them. Certainly the amusements are a bit unconventional, but they are all the more fun. 'Society Circus' is a good name for the entertainment. Anything goes in a 'Society Circus.'" "What curious amusements people _do_ have for the benefit of charities!" reflected Mollie. "But I expect the Lenox Hospital will receive a great deal of money from the sports this year. You see, they are in charge of the English Ambassador. That alone would make the entertainment popular." "Is Mollie growing worldly wise, Hugh?" asked Ralph, with mock horror. "Looks like it, Ralph," was the reply. The boys and Mollie found Barbara in the midst of a gay circle of young people. Grace and Ruth were nowhere to be seen. Aunt Sallie sat with Mrs. Morton in the grandstand. The Ambassador and Mr. Winthrop Latham wandered about near them. Many preparations were necessary for the next day's frolic. In front of the grandstand stretched a wide, green field, enclosed with a low fence. A little distance off stood the club house. Bab came forward with both hands extended to greet her friends. She gave one hand to Ralph, the other to Hugh. "I am so glad to see you!" she declared. "I can't wait to shake your hands in the right way. We girls were so afraid you had turned 'quitters'! Come, this minute, and see Aunt Sallie. You must be introduced, too, to Ambassador and Mrs. Morton." "But where are Ruth and Grace?" inquired Ralph. "Over yonder," laughed Bab, pointing to the green inclosure in front of them. The boys spied Ruth and Grace some distance off. The two girls were deep in conversation with a farm boy. Strutting around near them were a fat turkey gobbler and a Plymouth Rock rooster. Just at this moment Ruth was giving her instructions. "Be sure you bring the turkey and the rooster over to the Fair Grounds by ten o'clock to-morrow morning." The boy grinned. "I'll have 'em here sure, Miss." "Ruth," asked Grace, as the two girls started back across the meadow to join their friends, "do you suppose it will be unkind for us to try to drive these poor barnyard fowls across a field before so many people? I presume the poor old birds will be frightened stiff. Whoever heard of anything so utterly absurd as a Gymkana race." "Oh, no, you tender-hearted Grace," Ruth assured her. "I don't think the kind of pets we are to drive to-morrow will be much affected by our efforts. Indeed they are likely to lead us more of a chase than we shall lead them. And I don't believe the annoyance of being run across this field by us for a few yards equals the nervous shock of being scared by an automobile or a carriage. That alarm may overtake poor Brother Turkey and Mr. Rooster any day. I think our race is going to be the greatest fun ever! Why! I think I see Ralph Ewing and Hugh over there with the girls. Isn't that great?" "Miss Morton!" Hugh was protesting gayly, as Grace and Ruth joined the crowd of their friends. "You don't mean to say that Barbara and Ruth have put Ralph's name and mine down for three of your performances? How shall we ever live through such a tremendous strain! Kindly explain to me what is expected of us." Dorothy Morton got out her blankbook, where she had written each item of the next day's programme. "Well, Mr. Post, you and Mr. Ewing are down for three of our best events, 'The Egg and Spoon Race,' 'The Dummy Race' and 'The Thread and Needle Race.'" "All right," declared Ralph, meekly accepting his fate, "but will you kindly tell me what a Thread and Needle Race is?" "It is a very easy task, Ralph, compared with what Grace and I have undertaken," Ruth assured him. "All you do, in the 'Thread and Needle Race,' is to ride across this field on horseback carrying a needle. Of course, the real burden is on the woman. It always is. Some fair one is waiting for you at the end of your ride; she must sew a button on your coat. The sooner she can accomplish this, the better; for back you must ride, again, to the starting place, with the button firmly attached to your coat." "Will you sew the button on for me, Mollie?" Ralph begged. He saw that Mollie was taking less part in the amusements than the other girls. "Certainly!" agreed Mollie. "I accept your proffered honor. To tell you the truth, you stand a better chance of winning with my assistance. I am a much better seamstress than Bab." "Oh, Bab, will be busy winning the riding prize," declared Ralph under his breath, smiling at his two friends, Mollie and Barbara. Maud Warren, the New York girl famous for her skillful riding, was standing near them, talking with Reginald Latham. As she overheard Ralph's remark, a sarcastic smile flitted across her pale face. She had ignored Bab since their introduction at the Ambassador's; but the thought of this poor country girl's really knowing how to ride horseback was too much for her. Barbara caught Maud Warren's look of amusement and blushed furiously. Then she turned to Ralph and said aloud, "Oh, I am not a rider when compared with Miss Warren." "I don't believe in comparisons, Miss Thurston," declared the Ambassador, who had walked up to them. "But I think you are an excellent horsewoman. And I much prefer your riding in the old-fashioned way with a side saddle. I have observed that it is now fashionable, in Lenox, for the young women to ride astride." "Girls," Miss Stuart declared, "it is luncheon time. We must return to the hotel." "Now, does everybody understand about to-morrow?" asked Gwendolin Morton, when the last farewells had been said. "Remember, the Gymkana race is first. We started with this spectacle for fear the girls who have promised to take part might back out. Then, immediately after lunch, we shall have our horseback riding and jumping." "I don't believe I have been wise in permitting you to engage in this horseback riding, Barbara," Miss Stuart declared on their way home. "I am afraid this jumping over fences is a dangerous sport. And I am not sure it is ladylike." "But English girls do it all the time, Aunt Sallie. Jumping hurdles is taught in the best riding schools." "You have had no lessons, Bab. Are you perfectly sure you do not feel afraid?" queried Miss Stuart. "Oh, perfectly, dear Aunt Sallie," Bab assured her. CHAPTER XIX THE OLD GRAY GOOSE The day for the Lenox sports dawned clear and beautiful. By breakfast time the mists had rolled away from the hilltops. The trees, which were now beginning to show bare places among their leafy branches, beheld their own reflections in the lakes that nestled at the feet of the Lenox hills. From their veranda Miss Stuart and her girls could see every style of handsome vehicle gliding along the perfect roads that led toward the Fair Grounds from the beautiful homes surrounding the old township. The Society Circus could be enjoyed only by invitation. The tickets had been sent out only to the chosen. An invitation meant the payment of five dollars to the Hospital Fund. Barbara was the first of the girls to be ready to start to the Fair Grounds. She wore the tan riding-habit that Ruth had loaned her. She was not to ride until later in the day, but it would not be feasible to return to the hotel to change her costume. Miss Stuart and her party had been asked to be the guests at luncheon of Ambassador and Mrs. Morton. Ruth and Grace were dressed in short skirts, loose blouses, and coats. They, also, looked ready for business. So only Miss Stuart and Mollie were able to wear the handsome toilets suited to the occasion. Mollie appeared in her blue silk costume. Miss Sallie was resplendent in a pearl gray broadcloth and a hat of violet orchids. At half-past nine, Hugh Post and Ralph Ewing knocked at Miss Stuart's sitting-room door. Barbara had already seen Ruth's and Hugh's automobiles waiting for them on the hotel driveway. The boys were impatient to be off. "Kindly explain to me, Ruth," asked Hugh, as the party finally started, "why you are carrying those two large bolts of ribbon? Are you going into the millinery business to-day?" Ruth laughed. "Remember, if you please, that Grace and I are going in for a much more serious undertaking. These ribbons are the reins that we intend to use for our extraordinary race to-day. I shall endeavor to drive my turkey with blue strings. Grace considers red ribbon more adapted to the disposition and appearance of a rooster." "Well, you girls certainly have nerve to take part in such a wild goose chase!" laughed the boy. At the Fair Grounds Miss Stuart had reserved seats for her party near the green inclosure. Just in front of them was a little platform, decorated in red, white and blue bunting. On this were seated the Ambassador, Franz Heller, Mr. Winthrop Latham, Reginald and several other prominent Lenox residents. Grace and Ruth were not allowed to remain with their friends; they were immediately hurried off to the clubhouse, where they found eight other girls waiting for them. The entrance of the ten girls, driving their extraordinary steeds, was to be the great opening event of the Society Circus. At ten-thirty Mr. Winthrop Latham announced the first feature of their entertainment. A peal of laughter burst from hundreds of throats. Marching from the clubhouse were ten pretty girls, "shooing" in front of them ten varieties of barnyard fowls! Dorothy Morton walked along in a stately fashion, led by an old gray goose. Neither Miss Morton nor the goose seemed in the least degree disturbed by the applause and laughter. Ruth's turkey was not so amiable. It stopped several times in its promenade from the clubhouse, to crane its long neck back at the driver. The turkey's small eyes surveyed the scene about it with a look of mingled suspicion and indignation. The old rooster, which regarded the occasion as given in its honor, traveled in front of Grace at a lively pace. Within the inclosed field, just in front of the little stand, where the Ambassador and his friends sat, two poles had been placed ten yards apart. Across the meadow, about an eighth of a mile, were two other poles of the same kind. The girls were to try to persuade their curious steeds to run across the field from the first posts to those opposite. There the drivers were expected to turn their steeds and come safely back to the starting place. Of the ten entrances Grace and her rooster made the best start. Ruth's turkey refused to stir; he had found a fat worm on the ground in front of him. His attention was riveted to that. Ruth flapped her blue silk reins in vain. But a peacock bore the turkey company. Seeing himself and his barnyard acquaintances the center of so many eyes, Mr. Peacock was properly vain. He spread his beautiful fan-shaped tail, and would not be driven from the starting-place. Dorothy Morton and her old gray goose continued their stately walk across the meadow. Only once did the goose's dignity forsake it. Grace's excitable rooster crossed its path! The rooster had made a short scurry to the side, his driver trying to persuade him back to the straight path. As the rooster hurried past the old gray goose, the latter stopped short, gave an indignant flap of its wings, rose a few inches from the ground, and pecked at Mr. Rooster. A moment later the goose continued its dignified march. This incident was too much for Grace's irascible rooster. With a terrified crow he darted first this way, then that, until Grace was wound up in her own red silk reins. It seemed a hopeless task to try to reach the goal. It was another instance of the old story of the hare and the tortoise. While Grace struggled with her rooster, a fat duck waddled past her. The duck's mistress had enticed her nearly the whole length of the journey by throwing grains of corn a yard or so ahead of her steed. Of course, any well disposed duck would move forward for refreshments. Dorothy Morton arrived safely at the first goal with her old gray goose. But now her troubles really began. Her steed had no disposition to return to the crowd of noisy spectators that it had so cheerfully left behind. Dorothy tugged at one of her heavy white reins. The goose continued placidly on its way across the broad field. A goose is not a pleasant bird in attack, and Dorothy did not like to resort to forcible methods. Assistance came from an unexpected quarter. Grace's rooster had at last been persuaded to rush violently between the required posts. In one of its excited turns, it brushed close behind the old goose. Here was a chance for revenge! The rooster gave a flying peck at the goose's tail feathers and flew on. With a loud squawk the goose turned completely around. It flew up in the air, then down to the ground again, and made a rush for its opponent. But the rooster was unworthy game. It tacked too often to the right and left. The old gray goose gave up its pursuit in disgust. Since it was headed toward the starting-place it took up its walk again, Dorothy Morton meekly following it. Only three of the girls remained in the race. Ruth had given up in despair. Her turkey had wandered off to parts unknown. Another girl sat on an upturned stump feeding crumbs to a motherly hen that had found walking disagreeable and had taken to scratching around the roots of a tree. Dorothy passed her rival with the duck midway on her journey back home. The duck took no further interest in corn. It had eaten all that a well-bred fowl could desire. Now it squatted in the grass to enjoy a well-earned repose. Shrieks of laughter rose when Dorothy Morton at last drove her gray goose back to the judge's stand. "Hurrah for the old gray goose!" shouted the spectators in merry applause. Franz Heller rushed down from the platform, carrying two wreaths in his hands. One was made of smilax and pink roses; the other a small wreath of evergreens with a silver bell fastened to it. Franz dropped the rose garland over Dorothy Morton's head. The small wreath with the bell he placed on the neck of the old gray goose. Exhausted, Dorothy dropped into the nearest seat. The old gray goose wandered off toward home, led by a proud farmer's boy. Scarcely had the laughter from the first event ceased, when the Thread and Needle Race was called for. Ralph Ewing was an easy winner, thanks to Mollie's skill as a seamstress. Ralph declared the button she sewed on him should ornament his coat for evermore. But the Egg and Spoon Race was a closely contested event. The race appeared to be a tie between Ambassador Morton and Mr. Winthrop Latham. Near-sighted Franz Heller made a brave start, but his eyes betrayed him. Carefully carrying his egg in a spoon which he bore at arm's length, Franz forgot to look down at his feet. He stumped his toe against a small stone. Crash, the egg rolled from his spoon! A yellow stream marked the place where it fell. Mr. Latham and the Ambassador were painstaking men. They ran along, side by side, at a gentle pace. The man who arrived first at the appointed goal with an unbroken egg was, of course, the victor. Unfortunately for Mr. Latham, an old habit overcame him. In the midst of the contest he paused to adjust his glasses. The movement of his arm was fatal. His spoon tipped and his egg rolled gently to the earth. Still the Ambassador continued unmoved on his stately journey. With a smile he solemnly handed an unbroken white egg to Reginald Latham. "Here, cook this for your breakfast!" he advised Reginald, who was acting as judge of this famous event. Cutting a lemon with a saber, and the Dummy Race, ended the morning's sports. The afternoon was to be devoted to riding. CHAPTER XX BARBARA AND BEAUTY "Barbara, you are eating very little luncheon," Ralph Ewing whispered in Bab's ear. Ambassador and Mrs. Morton were entertaining a large number of friends in the dining-room of the clubhouse. Maud Warren smiled patronizingly across the table at Barbara. "Are you nervous about our riding this afternoon?" Maud asked. "Mr. Heller, do please pass Miss Thurston those sandwiches. She must want something to keep up her courage." Kind-hearted Franz Heller hurriedly presented Bab with all the good things he could reach. "Thank you, Mr. Heller," said Barbara, gratefully. Her cheeks were crimson; her brown eyes flashed, but she made no reply. Mollie, who knew Bab's quick temper, wondered how her sister controlled herself. A horn blew to announce that the luncheon hour was ended. "Run along, child," Miss Stuart called nervously to Bab. "Now, do, pray be careful! I shall certainly be glad when this riding contest is over." While the guests of the Society Circus were at luncheon the field had been arranged for the hurdle-jumping. Inside the green meadow four short length fences had been set up, a quarter of a mile apart. The girls were to ride around the field on their horses and jump the four hurdles. Besides Bab and Maud Warren, four other Lenox girls had entered for this race. The riders were all skilled horsewomen. Ambassador Morton waved his hand to Bab as she cantered by him on his little horse, Beauty. Her friends called out their good wishes. Bab smiled and nodded. She never looked so well or so happy as when she was on the back of a horse. Ambassador Morton cautioned the girls before they started for their ride. "Remember, this is just a friendly contest," he urged. "We merely want to see you young people ride. No one may allow her horse to cross too close in front of another horse. Two of you must not try to jump the hurdle at the same time." The six girls cantered bravely down the field. Maud Warren and Bab rode side by side. Barbara was the youngest and smallest of the girls, but she rode her little horse as though she were a part of it. "Don't sit too closely in your saddle," Maud Warren leaned over and spoke patronizingly to Barbara. "Thank you!" Bab replied. The girls were now riding swiftly across the meadow. Ralph, Hugh, Ruth, Mollie and Grace left their places and hurried down to the fence that inclosed the riding ring. At the first fence two of the horses refused to jump. The other four sprang easily over the bars. By the rules of the contest, the girls were not allowed to urge their horses, so the two riders went quietly back. At the second hurdle, another horse faltered. This left the riding contest to Bab, Maud Warren, and a Lenox girl, Bertha Brokaw. Barbara was as gay and happy as possible. She had no thought of fear in riding. Beauty was a splendid little horse accustomed to being ridden across country. The beautiful little animal jumped over the low bars as easily as if she were running along the ground. Bertha Brokaw was the first of the three girls to go over the third hurdle. Bab was close behind her. Barbara had just risen in her saddle. "Go it, Beauty!" she whispered, gently. At this instant, Maud Warren gave a smart cut to her horse and crossed immediately in front of Bab. Beauty reared on her hind feet. Barbara and the horse swayed an instant in the air. Miss Stuart rose from the chair where she sat. Mrs. Morton gave a gasp. A sudden terror shook all the spectators. Poor Mollie turned sick and faint. She imagined her beloved Bab crushed beneath a falling horse. But Barbara was not conscious of anything but Beauty. As her little horse rose trembling on its hind feet Bab remembered to keep her reins slack. With one pull on the horse's tender mouth, she and Beauty would have gone over backwards. "Steady, Beauty! Steady!" she cried. The horse ceased to tremble, and a moment later stood on all four feet again. In the meantime Maud Warren had cleared the third fence and was riding across the field. Not a sound of applause followed her. But as Beauty, with Barbara still cool and collected, sprang easily over the hurdle, loud applause rang out. "Bully for Bab!" cried Ralph, shaking Ruth's hand in his excitement. "What a trick! I didn't think Maud Warren capable of it," protested Dorothy to her father. Bertha Brokaw's horse was tired. She did not finish the mile course. Now again Barbara rode side by side with Miss Warren. Just before the last jump Bab reined in a little. She remembered the Ambassador's instructions. This was only a riding match, not a racing contest. No two girls were allowed to jump a hurdle at the same time. So Barbara gave Maud Warren the first opportunity to make the jump. But Maud was nervous; she realized she had taken an unfair advantage of Bab. Her horse refused to jump. Bab waited only an instant. Then, urging Beauty on, they rose over their last hurdle like swallows. Barbara came cantering back to her friends, her cheeks rosy, her eyes shining with delight. Franz Heller rushed forward with a big bunch of American Beauty roses. Flowers were the only prizes given during the day. Barbara slid down off her horse. The Ambassador moved forward to shake hands with her; Bab's friends were waving their handkerchiefs; but Bab had eyes for Beauty only. A stable boy had come to lead the horse away. [Illustration: Barbara and Beauty Swayed an Instant in the Air.] "Good-bye, you little Beauty!" Bab whispered, with her brown head close to the horse's face. "You are the dearest little horse in the world. Don't I wish you were my very own!" Ambassador Morton overheard Bab's speech. "Let me give the horse to you, Miss Thurston," he urged. "It will give me the greatest pleasure, if you will allow it. He ought to belong to you for the pretty piece of riding you did out in the field. Let me congratulate you. Beauty's compliments and mine to the young girl who has been her own riding teacher." A warm wave of color swept over Barbara's face. "I did not mean you to overhear me, Mr. Morton," she declared. "Forgive me. Of course I couldn't accept your horse. But I do appreciate your kindness. Thank you for lending me Beauty to ride." Bab took her roses from Mr. Heller and made her way to Miss Stuart. "Child!" protested Miss Sallie, "sit down! I shall ask your mother never to let you ride a horse again unless you promise never to try to jump over another fence rail. Oh, what I went through, when I thought you were about to fall off that horse!" Miss Stuart raised both hands in horror. "There ought to be a law against riding masters being allowed to teach women to jump over hurdles." "But the law wouldn't act against Bab, auntie," declared Ruth, who was feeling very vain over Bab's success. "Because, you know, Barbara never took a riding lesson in her life." In a short time Miss Stuart took her party home. Ralph and Hugh were to return to New Haven on the night train. "Miss Sallie," begged Mollie, as they made their way through the crowd, "there is Mr. Winthrop Latham. _Do_ ask him to come to tea with you to-morrow." "But why, my child?" Miss Sallie naturally inquired. "Please, ask just him, not his nephew, Reginald. Do, Aunt Sallie, dear. I can't tell you why, now, but I shall explain as soon as we get home." "Very well, you funny little girl." And Miss Stuart complied with Mollie's request. Mr. Winthrop Latham promised to call on Miss Stuart and her girls at their hotel the next afternoon at four o'clock. CHAPTER XXI EUNICE AND MR. WINTHROP LATHAM "Ruth, may I go with you to get Eunice?" Mollie Thurston asked next day. "Certainly, Mollie. Are not the four of us going? We want to bring little Eunice back to the hotel in style. We have had a hard enough time getting hold of her. Her old Indian grandmother would not have let us have the child if it had not been for Naki. The Indian woman seems really to be attached to Ceally and Naki." "I am going to ask you a weeny little favor, Ruth. I won't tell you why I ask you now; but I will tell you as soon as we are in the automobile. Don't ask Bab to come with us for Eunice," Mollie entreated. "Don't ask Bab? Why, Mollie!" protested Ruth, in surprise. "Bab's feelings would be dreadfully hurt if I did not ask her." "No, they won't, Ruth. I have already talked to Aunt Sallie. She told Bab she wanted her to stay in the house this morning. Aunt Sallie thinks Barbara is tired from her ride yesterday." "Oh, very well, Mollie, I won't urge Bab to come with us, then; though I can't understand why you don't want her along. I shall be glad when you explain the mystery to me," Ruth concluded. "That is why I wish to drive over with you. Sh! Aunt Sallie is coming. Don't say anything before her." "Ruth," explained Mollie, as the three girls were hurrying toward Pittsfield in their motor car, "I want to tell you why I did not wish Bab to come along with us to the hospital for Eunice. I don't know what you and Grace may think of me; but I intend to try an experiment." "An experiment, Mollie!" Grace exclaimed. "What experiment do you intend to try?" "Well girls," Mollie continued, "do you recall that Bab went driving, a few days ago, with Reginald Latham, Mr. Winthrop Latham and Aunt Sallie?" Ruth and Grace both nodded. "And you remember Bab said she was going to discover, on that drive, what connection Eunice had with the Latham family?" "Yes," Grace assented. "Do hurry on to the point of your story." "No; you must hear it all over again," Mollie protested. "I want you and Ruth to remember just exactly the story Bab told us. Reginald Latham did not wish the subject of Eunice mentioned before his uncle, because Mr. Winthrop Latham's oldest brother had married an Indian girl. It seems the brother met the Indian girl while he was studying the history of the Indians in this neighborhood; so he just married her without mentioning the fact to his family. Of course the Lathams, who were very rich and very distinguished, were heart-broken over the marriage. And I guessed they were not any too good to the poor little Indian woman, when Mr. William Latham brought her back to his home to live. As soon as her husband died, she ran away to her own people. When Mr. Winthrop Latham tried to find her some time afterwards, to give her her husband's property, it seems that the Indian wife was dead. At any rate Reginald declares this to be the case. From that day to this, the Latham family never speak of anything that even relates to Indians." Mollie ended her speech in a slightly scornful tone. "Why, Mollie, don't you think that is a good enough explanation of Reginald Latham's attitude toward Eunice?" Ruth asked. "I most certainly do not!" Miss Mollie replied. "And how do you explain the Indian squaw's feeling against the name of Latham?" "Oh, Bab told us, Reginald explained all that to her, too. It seems that the Indians in this vicinity believed poor little Mrs. Latham had been persecuted by her husband's family. So, if this old squaw ever heard the story, Latham would be an evil name to her," Grace put in. Mistress Mollie shrugged her shoulders. "I think that story is very unlikely. But, maybe, you believe it, just as Bab did. All I ask of you is--just be on the look-out to-day! I have been doing a little detective work myself. I do not agree with Bab's explanation. I told you I was going to try an experiment, and I want you to help me. Then maybe, I can convince you, Bab, and Aunt Sallie of something that I believe! I am sure our little Indian Eunice has a closer connection with the Latham family than any of you dream!" "Dear me, but you are interesting, Mollie!" interrupted Ruth. "I have a suspicion of what you mean. But go ahead, little Miss Sherlock Holmes! We are with you to the end. We shall be delighted to render any humble assistance necessary to your detective work." "I only want you to watch developments this afternoon, girls!" Mollie asserted mysteriously. "Later on, there may be some real work for us to do. So far, I have planned everything myself." "Well, Mollie, you are a nice one!" laughed Grace. "Kindly 'put us on,' as the saying goes. What have you planned?" "Nothing but a meeting between Eunice and Mr. Winthrop Latham," Mollie responded. "We are to take Eunice to the hotel to spend the day with us. She will be looking her best in the lovely clothes Ruth sent to her. And she has grown almost fair from her weeks in the hospital. Mr. Winthrop Latham is to have tea with us this afternoon. I asked Aunt Sallie to invite nobody but him. I shall bring Eunice quietly in, introduce her to Mr. Latham: then we shall see what happens! I did not wish to tell Bab my plan," Mollie continued, "because she might make me give it up. But I believe Aunt Sallie agrees with me, though she did give me a scolding for having a suspicious nature! She declared, this morning, that it would be very well to have Mr. Winthrop Latham see Eunice. So just let's wait, and watch with all our eyes this afternoon." "Bully for your experiment, Mollie!" nodded Grace. Ruth bowed her head to show how fully she agreed with both of the girls. A pretty hospital nurse brought Eunice out to Ruth's motor car. The child had on a soft ecru dress, cut low at the throat and simply made. She wore a brown coat, lined with scarlet, and a big brown felt hat with a scarf knotted loosely around it. And Eunice looked very lovely! Her hair was braided in two plaits, tied with soft scarlet ribbons. Her eyes were big and black with the excitement of entering a strange world. Her complexion was now only a little darker than olive. Her cheeks were like two scarlet flames. Eunice hugged Mollie close, once she was seated in the automobile. When the big car started, she laughed gleefully, clapping her hands as she cried. "It is truly a red bird, that carries us on its wings!" She remembered what Ruth had told her. "Always Eunice has longed for wings like the birds!" Eunice whispered softly to Mollie. "Now, behold! We are almost flying!" "Look overhead, Mollie, Eunice, Ruth!" called Grace suddenly. The four girls looked up. A great white object sailed above them. Eunice clutched Mollie. "Is it the great white spirit, my grandmother has told me about?" she inquired. "Oh, that is Reginald Latham in his airship," Mollie explained to Grace. "He said the rudder of Mr. Latham's balloon had been mended. He meant to try some short flights to see if it was all right." "But I do not understand!" Eunice protested. "Is a man riding on that great, great big bird?" "Yes, Eunice," Mollie assented. "But that object above our heads is an airship, not a bird." "Then I wish to ride in an airship," Eunice murmured. "It flies up in the air like a real bird. This car runs only along the earth." The child was no longer impressed with the automobile. Reginald Latham's airship was the most marvelous thing she had ever beheld. After arriving at their hotel "The Automobile Girls" showed Eunice everything they could find to amuse her. They rode up and down with her in the elevator. They gave her a peep into the hotel's splendid reception rooms. Poor little Eunice was in a daze! She wandered about like a child in a dream. Every now and then she would ask Mollie some question in regard to Reginald Latham's airship. She had not forgotten it. Miss Stuart wisely had luncheon served in the private sitting-room. She did not think it best for Eunice to be seen by so many people; besides, she did not know how Eunice would behave at the table. To Miss Sallie's unspeakable relief the child had learned at the hospital to eat with a knife and fork. Her manners were those of a frightened child. She was neither noisy nor vulgar. "The child is certainly an enigma!" Miss Stuart said to herself, half a dozen times during the morning. "What the doctor says is true! The child is almost refined. It is marvelous! In spite of her ignorance, she does nothing to offend one!" After luncheon, Miss Stuart noticed that Eunice looked white and exhausted. The scarlet color had faded from her cheeks and lips. The little girl was not strong enough for so much excitement after her recent illness. "Mollie," Miss Sallie suggested, about half-past two o'clock, "take Eunice to your room. Give her a dressing gown, and see that she rests for an hour or so. You may stay with the child, Mollie, for fear she may be frightened, but you other girls keep away. The child is worn out. Mollie, you may bring her back to us at tea-time." Mollie agreed. She guessed that Miss Sallie was furthering her idea about the experiment. "Remember, Bab, you have promised me to be here at tea-time," Mollie reminded her sister. "Certainly, I shall be here, Mollie. Did you think I was going away?" Mollie then took Eunice away to lie down. The child was so tired she soon fell asleep on Mollie's bed. Mollie sat thinking quietly by the darkened window. She had taken a deep fancy to little Eunice, who had seemed to cling to her since their first strange meeting. Barbara and Mollie Thurston were both unusually thoughtful girls. Their mother's devoted companions for years, their poverty had made them understand more of life. Mollie realized it would not do for Eunice to grow up ignorant and wild, with only her old grandmother for a companion. The little Indian was already thirsting for a different life. And, some day, the grandmother would die. What would then become of Eunice? A little before four o'clock Eunice awakened, having slept nearly two hours. She was refreshed and happy again. Mollie made Eunice bathe her face. She herself fixed the child's hair, now smooth and glossy from the care that the nurses at the hospital had given to it. "We will go back to see our friends now, Eunice," explained Mollie. Eunice nodded. "It is wonderful here where you live!" she declared. "Sometimes I think I have dreamed of people like you and your friends. I think I have seen things like what you have here in this house. But how could I dream of what I knew nothing?" Mollie shook her head thoughtfully. "Eunice, dear, you will have to ask a wiser person than I am about your dreams. Who knows what may be stored away in that little head of yours? Come, dear, let us put your gold chain on the outside of your dress. There can be no harm in that. I think Miss Sallie, the lady with the white hair, would like to look at it." Eunice, who had a girl's fancy for pretty ornaments, was glad to have Mollie pull the chain out from under her dress. The curious, beautiful ornament shone glittering and lovely against the light background formed by the child's dress. "Wait for me here, Eunice," requested Mollie. "I want to go into the other room for a minute." Mollie peeped inside the sitting-room door. Mr. Winthrop Latham was cosily drinking his tea in the best of humor. He had a decided liking for Miss Stuart and her "Automobile Girls." Bab was joking with Mr. Latham as she plied him with sandwiches and cakes. For half a minute Mollie's heart misgave her. She was afraid to try her experiment. [Illustration: The Cup in Mr. Latham's Hand Trembled.] "Good gracious!" she thought, finally, "what possible harm can it do Mr. Winthrop Latham to look at poor, pretty little Eunice? If the child means nothing to him, he will not even notice her. If she turns out to be the child I believe she is, why, then--then--it is only right that her uncle, Mr. Winthrop Latham, should know of her existence." "Come, now, Eunice!" cried Mollie. "Come into the sitting-room with me. The girls have some pretty cakes and sweet things they are saving for you." Mollie took Eunice's hand. The two girls were nearly of the same size and age. They quietly walked into the sitting-room. "Where is 'Automobile Girl' number four?" Mollie heard Mr. Latham ask, just as the two girls entered the room. "Here I am!" Mollie replied. Mr. Latham glanced up. His ruddy face turned white as chalk. Mollie never took her eyes from Mr. Latham's face. Miss Stuart, Bab, Grace and Ruth stared at him. But Mr. Latham did not notice any one of them. His jaw dropped. The cup in his hand trembled. Still he did not speak. Barbara broke the silence. "Mr. Latham, are you ill?" she asked. "May I take your teacup from you?" Mr. Latham shook his head. He continued to gaze steadily at Eunice. Little Eunice was frightened by the strange man's stare. She trembled. Her rosebud lips quivered. Tears rolled down her cheeks. "Come to me, Eunice," Ruth called comfortingly. "See the candies I have been saving for you! Mr. Latham, this is the little Indian girl who was hurt. You remember that we have spoken of her before?" "Will some one take the child away?" Mr. Latham asked, brokenly. Mollie led Eunice back to her bedroom. Then she hurried in again to rejoin the others. "Miss Stuart, I owe you and your girls an explanation for my strange conduct," Mr. Latham declared. "I feel, this afternoon, that I have seen a ghost! I do not understand this Indian child's likeness to my dead sister-in-law. I must seek an explanation somewhere. This little Eunice is the living image of my brother's Indian wife--the poor girl whom our cruelty drove from our home back to the tents of her own people to die. I was told that her little child died with her. There is a mystery here that must be solved. If this little girl is the daughter of my brother and his Indian wife, one-half of my fortune belongs to her." "Mr. Latham," Miss Stuart quietly interrupted him, "this Indian child has an old grandmother who will be able to tell you whether this child has any connection with you. I have always thought there must be some explanation. The squaw has kept the child hidden for a purpose." "You are right, Miss Stuart," Mr. Latham interrupted. "You tell me this child's name is Eunice? Eunice was the name of my brother's wife. It is also the Christian name for the female Indians of a certain tribe, but there is little doubt, in my mind, of this girl's identity. The gold chain about her throat was my brother's gift to his wife. That chain has the story of my brother's love and courtship engraved on it in Indian characters. But I am too much upset to discuss the matter any further to-day. When can I see the Indian grandmother?" "To-morrow," Miss Stuart replied quietly. "I would not advise you to delay." "Will you go with me to see her at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, Miss Stuart?" queried Mr. Latham. "Certainly," Miss Sallie agreed. "I beg of you then not to mention what has taken place in this room this afternoon," Mr. Latham urged. "When we know the truth in regard to this child it will be time to tell the strange story. Good-bye until to-morrow morning." "Mollie," Bab cried as soon as the door closed on Mr. Latham, "I surrender. And I humbly beg your pardon. You are a better detective than I am. What is the discovery of the Boy Raffles compared with your bringing to light the family history of poor little Eunice! Just think, instead of being a poor, despised Indian girl, Eunice is heiress to a large fortune." "Then you believe in me now, Bab!" Mollie rejoined. "I have always thought Eunice was in some way connected with the Latham family." "Girls," Miss Stuart cautioned quietly, "when you take Eunice to her grandmother, at Naki's house, say nothing. Remember, you are to speak to no one of what happened this afternoon." CHAPTER XXII THE AUTOMOBILE WINS Immediately after breakfast, next morning, "The Automobile Girls" started in Ruth's car for Naki's house in Pittsfield. Miss Stuart had decided that it would be best to have Eunice out of the way when she and Mr. Latham made their call on the grandmother. So the girls hurried off after Eunice. They were in splendid spirits as they approached Naki's house. No one of them doubted, for an instant, that Mr. Winthrop Latham would find little Eunice was his niece. "You run in and ask the grandmother whether Eunice may take a ride with us, Mollie," Ruth suggested as she stopped her car. "If Naki is at home, ask him to step out here a minute. I want to prepare him for the call of Aunt Sallie and Mr. Latham." In three minutes Mollie flew out of the house again. She was alone. There was no sign of Eunice! "O girls!" Mollie cried, "Eunice and her grandmother are gone!" "Gone where?" Bab queried. "Back to their own wigwam!" Mollie continued. "Last night Ceally says a woman, heavily veiled, came here, accompanied by a young man. They talked to the Indian woman and Eunice a long time. They told the squaw a man was in pursuit of her. He would come this morning to take her away. She was so frightened that Naki and Ceally could do nothing to influence her. She started with Eunice, last night, for their wigwam in the hills. Who do you think her visitors were?" "Mrs. Latham and Reginald!" cried the other three girls at once. "It is all so plain," argued Ruth. "Mr. Latham probably told his sister, last night, that he had seen Eunice, and meant to come here, this morning, and find out who the child really was. Mrs. Latham and Reginald then rushed here to get the squaw and the child out of the way until they could have time to plan." "But what shall we do now?" asked Mollie, her eyes full of tears. "I do not believe Mrs. Latham and Reginald will be content with sending Eunice and her grandmother back to their own hill. Mr. Latham could follow them up there. I know they will try to spirit Eunice away altogether. They will not wait. Oh, what, what can we do?" "I know," Ruth answered quietly. "Have you any money, girls?" she inquired. "I have twenty-five dollars with me." "I have twenty with me," Grace replied. "I have ten," declared Bab. "And I have only five," Mollie answered. "Then we are all right for money," said Ruth. "Naki," she continued, turning to their guide, who had now come out to them, "I want you to give this note to Aunt Sallie and Mr. Latham when they come here. It will explain all. Tell them not to worry. I shall send a telegram before night." Taking a piece of paper from her pocket, Ruth hurriedly wrote a letter of some length. "Now, let's be off!" Ruth insisted. "What are you going to do now, Ruth Stuart?" Mollie demanded. "Why, what can we do," Ruth replied, "except go straight up to the wigwam for Eunice and run away with her before anyone else can." "Run away with her!" faltered Grace. "What else can we do?" queried Ruth. "If we delay in getting Eunice out of Mrs. Latham's and Reginald's clutches, they will place the child where no one can ever find her. Mrs. Latham will then persuade her brother to give up his search. We must save Eunice." "But what will Aunt Sallie say?" cried Barbara. "I have written Aunt Sallie," Ruth explained, "that we would take Eunice to a nearby town. We can telegraph Aunt Sallie from there." "But, suppose, Ruth," Grace suggested, "the Indian grandmother will not let Eunice go with us." "Never mind, Grace," Bab retorted, "'The Automobile Girls' must overcome obstacles. I believe the old grandmother will let Eunice come with us, if we tell her the whole story. We must explain that Mr. Winthrop Latham wants to see Eunice in order to be kind to her and not to harm her, and ask the squaw if Eunice is Mr. William Latham's child. We must make her understand that Mrs. Latham and Reginald are her enemies, we are her friends----" "Is that all, Bab?" laughed Grace. "It sounds simple." "Never mind," Mollie now broke in to the conversation, "I believe I can somehow explain matters to Mother Eunice." By noon "The Automobile Girls" were halfway up the hill that led to the wigwam. Mollie, who was walking ahead, heard a low sound like a sob. Crouched under a tree, several yards away, was little Eunice. At the sight of Mollie she ran forward. A few feet from her she stopped. A look of distrust crossed her face. "Why did you come here?" she asked in her old wild fashion. "Why, Eunice," Mollie asked quietly, "are you not glad to see your friends?" At first, Eunice shook her head. Then she flung her arms around Mollie's neck. "I want to give you that strange thing you called a kiss," she said. "I am so glad to see you that my heart sings. But grandmother told me you meant to sell me to the strange man, who looked at me so curiously yesterday. So I came back up the hill with her. You would not sell me, would you? You are my friends?" "Look into my eyes, Eunice," Mollie whispered. "Do I look as though I meant to harm you? You told me once that if you could see straight into the eyes of the creatures in the woods you would know whether their hearts were good. Is my heart good?" "Yes, yes!" Eunice cried. "Forgive me." "But we want you to have a great deal of faith in us, Eunice," Mollie persisted. "We want you to go away with us this very afternoon. Take us to your grandmother. We must ask her consent." Eunice shook her head. "I cannot go," she declared, finally. "But, Eunice, if you will only go with us, you can buy more pretty gold chains. You can buy beads and Indian blankets for your grandmother," coaxed Grace. "Who knows? Some day you may even own a big, red bird like Ruth's, and fly like 'The Automobile Girls.'" Still Eunice shook her head. "But you will come with us, if your grandmother says you may?" Ruth urged. "No," Eunice declared. "I cannot." "Why, Eunice?" Mollie queried gently. "Because," said Eunice, "to-day I fly up in the sky!" The child pointed over her head. "Why, the child is mad from her illness and the fatigue of her long walk up here," Grace ejaculated in distress. But Eunice laughed happily. "To-day I fly like the birds, high overhead. Long have I wished to go up into the big blue heaven away over the trees and the hilltops. To-day I shall fly away, truly!" The girls stared at Eunice in puzzled wonder. They could understand nothing of the strange tale she told them. Was the child dreaming? A light dawned upon Mollie. "Girls!" Mollie cried, "Reginald Latham is going to take Eunice off in his airship!" "Can it be possible?" Bab exclaimed. "Eunice," asked Mollie, "are you going for a ride in the big balloon I showed you yesterday as we rode away from the hospital?" "Yes," Eunice declared. "Last night the young man who came to Naki's house talked with me. He whispered to me, that if I were good and did not tell my grandmother, he would take me to ride with him in his great ship of the winds. But he will bring me home to my own wigwam to-night. I will go with you in your carriage to-morrow. Now, I wait for the man to find me. He told me to meet him here, away from my grandmother's far-seeing eyes." "Eunice," Mollie commanded firmly, "come with me to your wigwam." "But you will tell my grandmother! Then she will not let me fly away!" Eunice cried. "You cannot fly with Reginald Latham, Eunice," Mollie asserted. "He will not bring you back again to the wigwam. He will leave you in some strange town, away from your own people. You will never see your grandmother. You will never see us again!" Eunice, trembling, followed the other girls to the wigwam. "I believe," Bab said thoughtfully as they walked on, "that Reginald Latham planned to get Eunice away from this place forever. He did not mean to injure her. He would probably have put her in some school far away. But Mr. Winthrop Latham would never have seen her. Eunice would not then take half of the Latham fortune from Reginald. Just think! Who could ever trace a child carried away in an airship? She might be searched for if she went in trains or carriages, but no one but the birds could know of her flight through the air." The old grandmother heard "The Automobile Girls" approaching. She was standing in front of a blazing fire. With a grunt of rage, the old woman seized a flaming pine torch and ran straight at Mollie. "Put that down!" commanded Barbara, hotly. "You are a stupid old woman. We have come to save Eunice for you. Unless you listen to us she will be stolen from you this very afternoon. You will never see her again. There is no use in your trying to hide Eunice any longer. We know and her uncle knows, that she is the child of your daughter and of Mr. William Latham. You told Mr. Winthrop Latham that Eunice died when her mother did." Barbara had depended on her imagination for the latter part of her speech, but she knew, now, that she had guessed the truth. Under her brown leather-like skin the old squaw turned pale. Then Mollie explained gently to the old woman that Mrs. Latham and Reginald were Eunice's enemies; that they wished to be rid of Eunice so that they might inherit her father's money. She told of Reginald Latham's plan to carry Eunice away that afternoon. "Now, Mother Eunice," Mollie ended, "won't you let little Eunice go away with us this afternoon, instead? We will take good care of her, and will bring her home to you in a few days. But Eunice must see her uncle, Mr. Winthrop Latham. You will not stand in the way of little Eunice's happiness, I know!" Mollie laid her hand on the old squaw's arm. But the squaw had bowed her head. She did not notice Mollie. "It is the end!" The old woman spoke to herself. "I give up my child. The white blood is stronger than the Indian. She will return to the race of her father. Her mother's people shall know her no more." "May Eunice go away with us now?" Ruth urged. "And won't you go down to the village, and stay with Naki and Ceally until Eunice comes back?" "Take the child, when you will," assented the Indian woman. "She is mine no longer." "Then come, hurry, Eunice. We must be off," Bab cried. Eunice got her new coat and hat. Then she flung her arms around her grandmother, and kissed her in the way Mollie had taught her. The old Indian woman hugged the child to her for one brief instant; then she relaxed her hold and went back into her wigwam. "The Automobile Girls" and Eunice ran down the hill. In half an hour they found "Mr. A. Bubble." He was patiently awaiting their return. "Jump into the car in a hurry," Ruth cried. "Put Eunice in the middle. We have a long distance to travel before night falls." The girls leaped into the automobile. It sped away through the autumnal woods. "Look, do look up above us!" Mollie exclaimed. Away above their heads something white sailed and circled in the air. "It is Reginald Latham in his airship," cried Grace. "Well, Mr. Reginald Latham," laughed Mollie, "an airship may do the business of the future; but for present purposes I'll bet on the automobile." For hours "The Automobile Girls" drove steadily on. The roads were well marked with signposts. Ruth wished to make a nearby town away from the main line of travel. At dusk they arrived in North Adams. Ruth drove at once to a telegraph office, where she telegraphed to Miss Sallie: "Safe in North Adams with Eunice. Had a fine trip. Expect you and Mr. Latham in the morning. All is well. Do not worry. Ruth." Ruth and her friends put up at the Wilson House in North Adams. They explained to the hotel proprietor that they were staying in Lenox. Their aunt would join them the next day. Five weary girls slept the sleep of the just. CHAPTER XXIII THE RECOGNITION Miss Stuart and Mr. Winthrop Latham did not arrive in North Adams the next morning. A little before noon, Miss Sallie telegraphed to Ruth: "Must see Indian woman before we join you. Proof of child's identity required. Wait." Ruth showed her telegram to the girls. Barbara shook her head. "More of the work of Mrs. Latham and Reginald," she suggested. Soon after the receipt of Ruth's telegram, the afternoon before, Miss Stuart telephoned Mr. Winthrop Latham, "Will you please come to the hotel to see me immediately?" Now, Miss Sallie realized her difficult position. How was she to protect the interests of Eunice without accusing Mr. Latham's relatives of evil designs against the child? She called up Naki in Pittsfield and told him to come to her hotel that evening. "Naki can tell Mr. Latham what I cannot," Miss Sallie reflected. "He can report the visit of Mrs. Latham and Reginald to the Indian squaw, and can make Mr. Latham see his sister's intentions." Mr. Latham arrived first for the interview with Miss Stuart. He looked worn and tired. "My 'Automobile Girls' have run off with Eunice!" Miss Stuart at once informed him. "Why should there be any running away with the child?" Mr. Latham asked impatiently. "I could very easily have gone up to the wigwam in the morning. I think, in many respects, it will be wisest to see the Indian woman and child on their own ground. To tell you the truth, Miss Stuart, I shall require positive proofs that this Indian girl is the child that my brother's Indian wife carried away from our home years ago." "Certainly, Mr. Latham," Miss Stuart replied quietly. "I entirely agree with you; but I think it may be possible to secure such proofs." "I have been talking to my sister and nephew of this child," Mr. Latham continued. "They regard the idea that this little Eunice is the daughter of my brother's wife as absurd. They recalled the fact that we were positively assured of the child's death. They do not believe it possible that the Indian relatives would not have claimed the child's fortune for her. There were a number of educated Indians living in the town of Stockbridge at the time. My brother's wife took refuge with them after leaving us." "Then, Mr. Latham," Aunt Sallie rejoined, "if the Indian grandmother cannot give you satisfactory proofs of the child's parentage, possibly you can find the additional proofs in Stockbridge." Mr. Latham was silent. He had not been sorry to be persuaded by Mrs. Latham and Reginald that Eunice was an impostor. Naki knocked at the door. "I would rather not see visitors, Miss Stuart," Mr. Latham declared. "I am entirely upset by this present situation." "It is only our Indian guide, Naki," Miss Sallie explained. "I sent for him." "Naki," Miss Sallie began, as soon as the man entered the room. "My niece has taken Eunice away for a few days. She told me to ask you to go up to the wigwam and bring the Indian woman down to your house again." Naki shut his lips together. "The Indian woman will not return to my house," he said. "Why not?" Miss Stuart asked, angrily. "It is much better for her to be with you. She will die up there." "She wishes to die up there," Naki avowed. "Nonsense!" retorted Miss Stuart. "We cannot let her suffer so because of the child." "She is afraid to come down the hill again," Naki continued. "She is afraid of the law." "Why should she be afraid of the law?" inquired Mr. Latham. "I cannot tell," Naki replied; "but the woman who came to my house with her son told the old squaw she must hide. If her secret was discovered she would be sent to prison." "What woman and her son came to your house to see this squaw?" asked Mr. Latham. Miss Sallie sat with her hands tightly clasped, scarcely daring to breathe. She had not dared to hope that her plan would work out so well. "I do not know the lady," said Naki sullenly. "But the young man was Reginald Latham. He was on the hill the day Eunice was hurt. He went with us to the Indian woman's wigwam. She was angry at his coming." Naki paused. Mr. Winthrop Latham was frowning and looking down at the pattern of the carpet. Miss Stuart knew he realized that his sister and nephew were playing a double game which, for the time being, he preferred to ignore. "Good-night, Miss Stuart," said Mr. Latham, a few minutes later. "I shall join you in the morning. If the Indian woman is at Naki's house, I will see her there; if not, I shall go to her wigwam. Notwithstanding all that has happened, she must have satisfactory proofs." Miss Stuart knew Mr. Latham now suspected that both his sister-in-law and nephew were convinced of Eunice's identity. "Naki," Miss Sallie asked, "at daylight, to-morrow, will you go to the old squaw's wigwam? Tell her that she shall not be punished," continued Miss Stuart. "I am very sorry for her." Naki was looking at Miss Stuart. His solemn face expressed surprise. "Do you mean you have found out about Eunice?" he asked. "Certainly, Naki," Miss Stuart rejoined. "If you have known Eunice's story, and have not told it before, you have behaved very badly. Tell the Indian woman to bring what proofs she has to convince Mr. Latham that little Eunice is the child of her daughter." "I will," Naki promised. "But I knowed of Eunice in another way. There is a man in Stockbridge as knows who the child is. He was a preacher once. He is part Indian, part white. He was with Eunice's mother when she died. She told him about the child, but begged him to keep it a secret. The Indian mother did not want the child to go back to the Lathams. She was afraid they would be unkind to her baby. The man told me the story several years ago." Miss Sallie was deeply interested. "Naki, when you bring the squaw to your house in the morning, go to Stockbridge. Then find the man who knows the story of Eunice, and bring him, too." "You can count on me," were Naki's last words. The next morning Miss Stuart and Mr. Latham drove to Naki's home. Neither Naki nor the Indian woman was there! Naki had left for the wigwam before five o'clock that morning. It was now ten. There was nothing to do but wait. At eleven o'clock Miss Sallie sent her telegram to Ruth. At noon she and Mr. Latham still waited. There was no sign of Naki or the squaw. "Don't you think we had better go up to the wigwam?" Mr. Latham asked impatiently. "We cannot find our way there without Naki or one of my girls," Miss Sallie answered. "What do you think has happened?" Miss Stuart asked Ceally. Ceally shook her head. "Something is the matter," she declared, "or Naki would have been here with the old woman hours ago." What had become of Naki? At daylight he reached the hilltop, but no sound of life came from the silent tent. Naki called to the Indian squaw. There was no answer. "I come to bring you news of Eunice!" he shouted. Still no answer. He stalked inside the wigwam. The tent was deserted. The Indian woman had disappeared. Naki was puzzled. He searched the woods near the tent. Half way down the hill Naki came across a small wooden box, half covered with leaves. Naki opened it. In it he found half a dozen pieces of old jewelry, and an old fashioned daguerreotype of an Indian girl holding a baby in her arms. Naki had been born and brought up in the woods. He kept his eyes turned to the ground, thinking to trace the footprints of Mother Eunice down the hill. On her departure she had, as she thought, buried her box of treasures. Then she had gone--where? Naki discovered, midway on the hill, two pairs of footprints, which seemed to indicate that two persons had lately started up the hill. But they must have given up and gone down again. Naki made up his mind to go at once to Stockbridge. Even though he could not trace the squaw, the testimony of the man who had seen Eunice's mother die, the box of jewelry Naki had found--these proofs of Eunice's identity would convince even Mr. Winthrop Latham. Miss Stuart and Mr. Latham were at luncheon when Ceally entered the room. Miss Sallie knew, at once, something had happened. "What is it, Ceally?" she asked. "They have come!" said Ceally. "Who?" Mr. Latham demanded. "Naki, the Indian woman, and another man," was Ceally's reply. There was a short pause, and then the two entered. Naki spoke first. He explained that he had found the Indian woman at Stockbridge when he had given her up for lost. Then she told in her own way that she had made up her mind to return to Stockbridge and ask help from the man who, alone, knew the story of her grandchild's parentage. The old squaw had completely broken down. She said that she knew that it was best for Eunice to be allowed to come into her inheritance. She said she remembered that Barbara had told her of Mrs. Latham and Reginald's wish to keep Eunice concealed. She finished by telling that midway on the hill, in the early dawn, she had met Reginald Latham and his mother climbing up to her tent. The old squaw, who was wise, had told Mrs. Latham that there was one man in Stockbridge who could prove who Eunice was and that she would go and implore him to keep the child's parentage a secret. Mrs. Latham and Reginald were delighted, and urged the old woman to go. Mr. Latham listened quietly to Mother Eunice's story and to that of the man from Stockbridge, who bore the old woman witness. It was a simple story. The Indian grandmother thought her daughter had been unhappy because of her marriage into the Latham family, believing the girl had been persecuted because of her Indian blood. So she wished to spare her grandchild the same fate. Mr. Latham was entirely convinced. Eunice was his niece. "Come," he said, finally, to Miss Stuart. "Let us be off to our girls!" "Mother Eunice," he said solemnly, shaking the old squaw's hand, "I promise to be good to your child. You shall not be separated from her. But she must be educated as other girls are. Stay here with Ceally and Naki." The Indian woman bowed her head. She had given in forever when she surrendered Eunice to "The Automobile Girls" the afternoon before. But what about Eunice and her protectors? They had not dared to leave the hotel for fear that Aunt Sallie and Mr. Latham might arrive in their absence. So the girls were waiting with the best patience possible, curled up in the chairs and on the sofa. Barbara was reading aloud. Little Eunice had fallen fast asleep on the bed. Suddenly Miss Sallie and Mr. Latham walked in unannounced. "Well, this is a cosy party!" declared Mr. Latham, smiling. Bab dropped her magazine, Ruth sat up straight in her chair, while Mollie and Grace nearly rolled off their sofa. Their noise wakened Eunice, who sat up in bed with her cheeks flushed. Her black hair was massed about her face. She wore a red dressing gown that Ruth had bought for her the night before. She was so pretty that Mr. Latham was moved by her appearance. But Eunice was frightened when she saw Mr. Latham--he was the man who had stared at her so strangely--he was the man who meant to steal her, so, at least, Reginald Latham had told Eunice. The little girl began to cry softly. Mollie started up to go to Eunice, but she stopped at a frown from Miss Sallie. Mr. Latham was approaching Eunice. "I am not going to hurt you, Eunice," he declared. "Do I look like the bogie man, who lives in the woods and comes to steal away naughty children?" Eunice shook her head. "There are no bogie men in the woods. Wood fairies are all good." "Well, I am no kind of fairy, Eunice. I am an uncle. Do you know what an uncle is?" Mr. Latham inquired. Eunice shook her head again. "O Eunice, an uncle can be the nicest person in the world!" Mollie exclaimed. "And that is what Mr. Latham is going to be to you. Kiss him, and tell him you mean to be good." Mr. Winthrop Latham and little Indian Eunice kissed each other shyly and solemnly. But in that kiss their affection was sealed. What Reginald Latham and his mother thought of the discovery of the relationship between Eunice and Mr. Winthrop Latham may be easily imagined. Eunice as his niece would undoubtedly inherit a large portion of his fortune. And how was Reginald to be provided for? Bent on the effort to conceal the relationship, Reginald and his mother had started long before dawn to walk up to the grandmother's hut, and, as the old squaw had explained, had met her on the side of the hill. They had tried to induce her to give them the name of the man in Stockbridge who knew of Eunice's parentage, but the old woman was obdurate. Failing in this, mother and son had returned to their home. CHAPTER XXIV WHAT TO DO WITH EUNICE "Bab, will you come out on the hotel driveway a minute?" Ruth asked of Barbara. Miss Sallie and the girls were back in Lenox. Little Eunice was, for the present, staying at their hotel with them. "I am not dressed, Ruth, dear. I shall join you in a minute," Bab called back to her. "What's the matter?" "Wait and see, lady mine," sang Ruth. "But do, do hurry. Mollie, Grace and I are waiting for you, and there is another friend with us whom you will be de-lighted to see!" "Ralph, or Hugh?" Bab guessed. "Neither one this time!" Ruth declared. "But now I must fly back. If you wish to know what is going on, hurry along." On the hotel driveway Bab first discovered Mr. Winthrop Latham with Aunt Sallie and Eunice. Eunice had her hand in her uncle's. They had grown to be great friends. A little farther on Barbara spied Ruth, Mollie and Grace. Near them stood a stable boy. He was leading a beautiful little horse about by the bridle. It was Beauty. Barbara looked around for Dorothy or Gwendolin Morton. However, neither of the girls could be seen. "Here comes Bab," called Mollie. But Barbara had already run up to Beauty. "O girls, I believe she knows me!" Bab exclaimed in delight. The little horse neighed as Bab stroked its glossy neck. It put its pretty nose down near her hand and sniffed. Beauty plainly expected a lump of sugar as a reward for her morning call. "How did you happen to bring the horse over?" Bab asked of the stable boy. "The master said I was to put the horse in the hotel stables until it could be shipped," the boy explained. "Oh, some one has bought Beauty!" Bab cried, in distress. "I am so sorry! How could Dorothy Morton ever have been willing to sell her?" Barbara noticed that Grace, Ruth and Mollie were smiling broadly. Mr. Winthrop Latham, Aunt Sallie and Eunice had drawn near. "Why shouldn't Dorothy Morton sell Beauty to a girl who cares more for the horse than Dorothy does?" Ruth inquired. Bab shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, very well!" she pouted. "If Dorothy thinks there is any other horse in the world to compare with Beauty, she deserves to lose her. My sweet little Beauty, good-bye!" Barbara cried. The stable boy grinned. Everyone was smiling. "What's the joke?" Bab asked. "Beauty is yours, Bab!" cried Mollie. Bab looked at Mollie indignantly. "It isn't fair to tease me, Mollie," she declared. "You know how much I really care." "But Mollie is not teasing you, Bab," Ruth interrupted. "Read that tag!" Surely enough, on a card fastened by a blue ribbon to Beauty's bridle, Bab read her own name and her sister's. "But we cannot accept such a gift from the Ambassador!" Bab protested, feelingly. "The Ambassador did not give us Beauty, Bab!" exclaimed Mollie. But Barbara had thrown her arms around Ruth's neck. "You are just the dearest, sweetest friend in the world, Ruth Stuart!" she cried. "And I'd love you more than ever if I could. But Mollie and I cannot accept Beauty from you. You have done too much for us." "Well, Bab," laughed Ruth, "you are the most difficult person in the world to bestow a present upon; but I am not guilty." "Then who has given Beauty to us?" demanded Bab. "No other person than Cousin Betty in St. Paul!" answered Mistress Mollie. "Do you remember, Bab? Mother wrote that Cousin Betty meant to give us a beautiful present when she came home. The present was to be a horse, and Cousin Betty is going to give us the money to take care of it. Mother was to buy the horse when she returned to Kingsbridge. When you wrote of your ride on Beauty, mother wrote to Ruth to inquire if the horse were for sale. The Ambassador and Dorothy were both willing to sell her to us, but to no one else." "I do not know what we have ever done to deserve such good fortune." Barbara spoke so solemnly that her friends all laughed. "But I have more news, and better news for you, Bab!" cried Mollie, triumphantly, "mother is willing for us to bring Eunice home with us for the winter!" "Dear little Eunice!" Bab said, kissing the Indian girl. "I shall never cease to be grateful to you and to your mother for this kindness," declared Mr. Winthrop Latham, taking Barbara's hand. "You know the difficult situation in which I am placed in regard to Eunice. I dare not take the child home, at present, to live with my sister-in-law and my nephew. It seemed even more cruel to send Eunice to boarding school while the child knows nothing of the world. But, if your kind mother will keep her with you, let her go to school, and teach her just a little of what you know, I shall be deeply in your debt." "No such thing, Mr. Latham!" laughed Mollie. "We are going to be in your debt for lending us Eunice. Mother will just love her." "But I am coming back next summer to see you and my grandmother?" Eunice begged. "You said, if I were very good, you would take me to ride in your balloon some day." Mr. Latham laughed. "Eunice will never be happy until she learns to fly," he declared. "I hate good-byes, don't you, Aunt Sallie?" Barbara asked Miss Stuart that night. Ruth, Grace and Mollie were standing on a trunk trying to fasten it. "The Automobile Girls" were to leave Lenox early the next morning. "Barbara, remember Ruth's motto for 'The Automobile Girls.' We are never to say good-bye!" "What then, Aunt Sallie?" asked Bab, Grace, Mollie and Ruth in chorus. "'The Automobile Girls' are always to say," declared Miss Sallie, gently, "not good-bye, but _Auf Wiedersehen_." POSTSCRIPT Nor need the reader break this rule against saying "good-bye," for our same splendid "Automobile Girls" are soon to be met with again, under astonishing and startling circumstances, and on historic ground. The next volume in this series will be published under the title: "THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS ALONG THE HUDSON; Or, Fighting Fire in Sleepy Hollow." In this spirited narrative, the girls will be shown doing the work of true heroines, yet amid many scenes of fun and humor. Every reader will agree that the coming book is "the best yet." The End. * * * * * * HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY'S CATALOGUE OF The Best and Least Expensive Books for Real Boys and Girls Really good and new stories for boys and girls are not plentiful. Many stories, too, are so highly improbable as to bring a grin of derision to the young reader's face before he has gone far. The name of ALTEMUS is a distinctive brand on the cover of a book, always ensuring the buyer of having a book that is up-to-date and fine throughout. No buyer of an ALTEMUS book is ever disappointed. Many are the claims made as to the inexpensiveness of books. Go into any bookstore and ask for an Altemus book. Compare the price charged you for Altemus books with the price demanded for other juvenile books. You will at once discover that a given outlay of money will buy more of the ALTEMUS books than of those published by other houses. Every dealer in books carries the ALTEMUS books. Sold by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price Henry Altemus Company 507-513 Cherry Street, Philadelphia * * * * * * The Motor Boat Club Series By H. IRVING HANCOCK The keynote of these books is manliness. The stories are wonderfully entertaining, and they are at the same time sound and wholesome. No boy will willingly lay down an unfinished book in this series. 1 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB OF THE KENNEBEC; Or, The Secret of Smugglers' Island. 2 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB AT NANTUCKET; Or, The Mystery of the Dunstan Heir. 3 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB OFF LONG ISLAND; Or, A Daring Marine Game at Racing Speed. 4 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB AND THE WIRELESS; Or, The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise. 5 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB IN FLORIDA; Or, Laying the Ghost of Alligator Swamp. 6 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB AT THE GOLDEN GATE; Or, A Thrilling Capture in the Great Fog. 7 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB ON THE GREAT LAKES; Or, The Flying Dutchman of the Big Fresh Water. 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33320	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [Illustration: Lincoln Highway near Soda Springs, Cal.] ACROSS THE CONTINENT BY THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY [Illustration] _By_ EFFIE PRICE GLADDING _ILLUSTRATED BY PHOTOGRAPHS_ NEW YORK BRENTANO'S 1915 _Copyright_, 1915, BY EFFIE PRICE GLADDING Manufactured by Rowland & Ives 225 Fifth Avenue New York _Dedicated to Lovers of the open road and the flying wheel._ "My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing." CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 7 CHAPTER I 11 CHAPTER II 22 CHAPTER III 37 CHAPTER IV 57 CHAPTER V 76 CHAPTER VI 92 CHAPTER VII 111 CHAPTER VIII 142 CHAPTER IX 169 CHAPTER X 191 CHAPTER XI 210 CHAPTER XII 227 CHAPTER XIII 257 INTRODUCTION A FOREWORD THAT IS A RETROSPECT From the Pacific to the Atlantic by the Lincoln Highway, with California and the Virginias and Maryland thrown in for good measure! What a tour it has been! As we think back over its miles we recall the noble pines and the towering Sequoias of the high Sierras of California; the flashing water-falls of the Yosemite, so green as to be called Vernal, so white as to be called Bridal Veil; the orchards of the prune, the cherry, the walnut, the olive, the almond, the fig, the orange, and the lemon, tilled like a garden, watered by the hoarded and guarded streams from the everlasting hills; and the rich valleys of grain, running up to the hillsides and dotted by live oak trees. We recall miles of vineyard under perfect cultivation. We see again the blue of the Pacific and the green of the forest cedars and cypresses. High Lake Tahoe spreads before us, with its southern fringe of emerald meadows and forest pines, and its encircling guardians, lofty and snow-capped. The high, grey-green deserts of Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming stretch before us once more, and we can smell the clean, pungent sage brush. We are not lonely, for life is all about us. The California quail and blue-jay, the eagle, the ground squirrel, the gopher, the coyote, the antelope, the rattlesnake, the big ring snake, the wild horse of the plains, the jack rabbit, the meadow lark, the killdeer, the red-winged blackbird, the sparrow hawk, the thrush, the redheaded wood-pecker, the grey dove, all have been our friends and companions as we have gone along. We have seen them in their native plains and forests and from the safe vantage point of the front seat of our motor car. The lofty peaks of the Rockies have towered before us in a long, unbroken chain as we have looked at them from the alfalfa fields of Colorado. We have seen the bread and the cornbread of a nation growing on the rolling prairies of Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. We have crossed the green, pastoral stretches of Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania. The red roads of Virginia, winding among her laden orchards of apples and peaches and pears and her lush forests of oak and pine; the yellow roads of Maryland, passing through her fertile fields and winding in and out among the thousand water ways of her coast line, all come before us. These are precious possessions of experience and memory, the choice, intimate knowledge to which the motorist alone can attain. The Friends of the Open Road are ours; the homesteader in his white canopied prairie schooner, the cattleman on his pony, the passing fellow motorist, the ranchman at his farmhouse door, the country inn-keeper hospitably speeding us on our way. We have a new conception of our great country; her vastness, her varied scenery, her prosperity, her happiness, her boundless resources, her immense possibilities, her kindness and hopefulness. We are bound to her by a thousand new ties of acquaintance, of association, and of pride. The Lincoln Highway is already what it is intended to be, a golden road of pleasure and usefulness, fitly dedicated, and destined to inspire a great patriotism and to honour a great patriot. OCTOBER, 1914. ACROSS THE CONTINENT BY THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY CHAPTER I With what a strange thrill I look out from my stateroom window, early one April morning, and catch a glimpse of the flashing light on one of the green promontories of the Golden Gate! I dress hurriedly and run out to find that a light is flaming on the other promontory, and that we are entering the great Bay of San Francisco. It has taken a long preparation to give me the feeling of pride and joy and wonder with which I come through the Golden Gate to be in my own country once more. A year of touring in Europe, nearly a year of travel in the Orient, six months in Australia and New Zealand, and after that three months in Honolulu; all this has given me the background for the unique sensation with which I see the two lights on the long green promontories of the Golden Gate stretching out into the Pacific. Our ship moves steadily on, past Alcatraz Island with its long building on its rocky height, making it look like a big Atlantic liner built high amidships. There are the green heights of the Presidio and the suburbs of the city of San Francisco. On the left in the distance is Yerba Buena Island. Far ahead of us, across the width of the Bay, are the distant outlines of Oakland and Berkeley. Later I am to stand on the hilly campus of the University of California and look straight across the Bay through the Golden Gate which we have just entered. The tall buildings of San Francisco begin to arise and we are landed in the streets of the new city. What a marvel it is! In the ten days that we were there I must say that still the wonder grew that a city could have risen in nine short years from shock, and flood, and fire, to be the solid, imposing structure of stone and brick, with wide bright streets and impressive plazas, that San Francisco now is. In the placing of its statues at dramatic points on the streets and cross streets, it reminds one of a French city. The new city has fine open spaces, with streets stretching in all directions from these plazas. There are many striking groups of statuary; among them one whose inscriptions reads: DEDICATED TO MECHANICS BY JAMES MERVYN DONAHUE IN MEMORY OF HIS FATHER, PETER DONAHUE The most striking figure in this group, one of five workmen cutting a hole through a sheet of steel, is the figure of the old man who superintends the driving of the bolt through the sheet, while four stalwart young men throw their weight upon the lever. Here is not only stalwart youth and brawn, but also the judgment and steadiness of mature age. The older man has a good head, and adds a moral balance to the whole group. It is a fine memorial, not only to the man whose memory it honours, but also to a host of mechanics and working men who do their plain duty every day. The most attractive thing about the San Francisco residences is the fine view of the Bay that many of them have. It is the business portion of the city that makes the striking impression upon the stranger. The new Masonic Building, with its massive cornice, reminding one of the Town Hall in the old fighting town of Perugia, Italy; the towering buttresses of the Hotel St. Francis; the noble masses of the business blocks; the green rectangle of the civic center where the city's functions are held in the open air;--all are impressive. In all of the California cities, one finds no better dressed people and no more cosmopolitan people in appearance than are to be seen on the San Francisco streets. It is more nearly a great city in its spirit and atmosphere than any other metropolis of the State. The drive through the Golden Gate Park is interesting because of the blooming shrubs, and the lovely foliage. I have never before seen my favorite golden broom blooming in any part of the United States. Here it grows luxuriantly. The Presidio, the site of the military post, is a very beautiful park, and is well worth seeing. A memorable excursion is one across the Bay to Berkeley, the seat of the State University. In the past fifteen or twenty years the University has grown from a somewhat motley collection of old brick buildings into a noble assemblage of harmonious stone buildings with long lines of much architectural impressiveness. No one can see the University of California without feeling that here is a great institution against the background of a great State. Two buildings which I particularly like are the School of Mines, built by Mrs. Phoebe Hearst as a memorial to her husband, and the beautiful library. While the two buildings are very different in type, each is noble and appropriate for its particular uses. There are still a few of the original buildings standing, old-fashioned and lonely. Doubtless they will be removed in time and more fitting structures will take their place. The situation of the campus is superb. It lies on a group of green foothills, the buildings rising from various knolls. You literally go up to the halls of learning. The whole campus and the little university city at its feet are dominated by an enormous white C outlined on the green hills far above. It is a stiff climb to that C, but it is a favorite walk for ambitious students. They tell me that occasionally students come up from Leland Stanford University and in teasing rivalry paint over the C at the dead hour of night. The University is rich in beautiful situations on the campus for out-of-door functions. Nothing could be lovelier than Strawberry Canyon, a green valley with immemorial live oaks scattered here and there; and with clumps of shrubbery behind whose greenness musicians can conceal themselves. We saw the annual masque given by four hundred University women in honour of Mrs. Phoebe Hearst. I carry in memory a lovely vision of dancing wood nymphs, of living flowers, of soft twilight colors, streaming across the greensward; and of a particular wood nymph, the very spirit of the Spring, who played about in irresponsible happiness, all in soft wood browns and pinks and greens. The Greek Theatre is a noble monument to Mr. Randolph Hearst, its donor. A great audience there is a fine sight; so symmetrical is the amphitheatre that it is hard to realize how many thousands of people are sitting in the circle of its stone tiers. Behind the topmost tier runs a wall covered with blooming roses, while back of this wall hang the drooping tassels of tall eucalyptus trees. Nothing could be more fitting as a theatre for music and for all the noblest and most dignified functions of a great institution. We did not start on our long journey, which was to mount up to 8,600 miles in distance, until the 21st of April. Before that we had a delightful northern trip of one hundred and twenty miles in a friend's motor car; crossing the ferry and driving through Petaluma, Sonoma Valley, and Santa Rosa, on to Ukiah. Coming through Petaluma our host told us that we were in "Henville." I had supposed that chickens would do well anywhere in sunny California, but not so. There are districts where the fog gets into the throats of the fowls and kills them. Sonoma County is particularly adapted for chicken raising and there are hundreds of successful chicken growers in this region. As we came through Santa Rosa, we saw the modest home and the office and gardens of Luther Burbank. Beyond Santa Rosa we entered what our host called the Switzerland of California. The roads are only ordinary country roads and very hilly at that, but the rolling green fields and glimpses of distant hills, with heavy forests here and there, are very beautiful. I saw for the first time in all its spring glory the glowing California poppy. Great masses of bright orange yellow were painted against the lush green of the thick hillside grass; masses that fairly radiated light. Alongside these patches of flaming yellow were other patches of the deep blue lupine. Some great painter should immortalize the spring fields of California. The wonderful greenness of the grass, the glowing masses of yellow, and the deep gentian blue of the lupine would rank with the coloring of McWhirter's "Tyrol in Springtime." California in the spring is an ideal State in which to motor. We were sorry that we could not accept our host's invitation to motor still farther north into Lake County, a county of rough roads but fine scenery. Northern California has not yet been developed or exploited for tourists as has the southern part of the State, but there is beautiful scenery in all the counties north of San Francisco. As we drove through Sonoma (Half Moon) Valley, we saw the green slopes of Jack London's ranch, not many miles away. Jack London's recent book, "The Valley of the Half Moon," describes the scenery of this region. Back of Vallejo, reached by ferry from San Francisco, lies the lovely Napa Valley, filled with fruit ranches. Its southern end is narrow, but as one drives farther north it widens out into a broad green expanse of orderly fruit farms and pleasant homes, dominated by green hills on either side. Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley were the first of many enchanting valleys which we saw in California. As I look back on our long drive, it seems to me now that in California you are always either climbing a mountain slope or descending into a green valley flanked by ranges of hills. Calistoga, at the northern end of Napa Valley, has interesting literary associations. It was on the slope of Calistoga Mountain that Robert Louis Stevenson spent his honeymoon and had the experience of which we read to-day in "The Silverado Squatters." San Francisco is a pleasure-loving town. When its people are not eating in public places to the sound of music, they are likely to be amusing themselves in public places. The moving picture, the theatre, the vaudeville, all flourish in this big, gay, rushing city. The merchants of San Francisco have shown great courage and daring in the erection of their big buildings almost immediately on the stones and ashes of the old ones. They have done all this on borrowed money and loaded themselves with heavy mortgages, trusting to the future and to fat years to pay off their indebtedness. They have done an heroic work in a solid, impressive way, and deserve all the business that can possibly come to them. In San Francisco I saw for the first time that great California institution, the cafeteria. They pronounce this word in California with the accent on the "i." To a traveler it seems as if all San Francisco must take its meals in these well equipped and perfectly ordered restaurants. You enter at one side of the room, taking up napkin, tray, knife, fork, and spoons from carefully arranged piles as you pass along a narrow aisle outlined by a railing. Next comes a counter steaming with trays of hot food, and a second counter follows with rows of salads and fruits on ice. After one's choice is made, the tray is inspected and the pay-check estimated and placed on the tray by a cashier. You are then free to choose your table in the big room and to turn over your tray to one of the few waiters in attendance. You leave on the opposite side of the room, passing a second cashier and paying the amount of your check. It is a great game, this of choosing one's food by looking it over as it stands piping hot or ice cold, in its appointed place. The attendants are evidently accustomed to the weakness of human nature, bewildered by so overwhelming an array of viands. They keep calling out the merits of various dishes as the slow procession passes. "Have some broiled ham? It's very nice this morning." "Try the bacon. It's specially good to-day." California people are much given to light housekeeping and to taking their meals in cafeterias and other restaurants. Doubtless this fashion may have been inaugurated by the fact that an ever increasing tourist population, living in hotels and lodgings, must be taken care of. But many of the Californians themselves are accustomed to reduce the cares of housekeeping to the minimum, and to take almost all their meals away from their own homes. The servant question is a serious one in California; and this type of co-operative housekeeping seems to commend itself to hosts of people. We enjoyed it as pilgrims and travelers, but one would scarcely wish to have so large a part of the family life habitually lived in public places. CHAPTER II In the heart of San Francisco stands a tall, slender iron pillar, with a bell hanging from its down-turned top, like a lily drooping on its stalk. This bell is a northern guide post of the famous El Camino Real, the old highway of the Spanish monks and monasteries on which still stand the ruins of the ancient Mission churches and cloisters. We purpose to drive south the entire length of the six hundred miles of El Camino Real; and then turning northward to cross the mountain backbone of the State of California, and to come up through the vast and fertile stretches of its western valleys, meeting the Lincoln Highway at the town of Stockton. It is the morning of the 21st of April when we swing around the graceful bell, run along Market Street to the Masonic Temple, turn left into Mission Road, and from Mission Road come again into El Camino Real. We first pass through the usual fringe of cheap houses, road saloons, and small groceries that surrounds a great city. Then comes a group of the city's cemeteries, "Cypress Grove," "Home of Peace," and others. We have a bumpy road in leaving the city, followed by a fine stretch of smooth, beautiful cement highway. On through rolling green country we drive, and into the suburb of Burlingame with its vine covered and rose embowered bungalows, and its houses of brown shingle and of stucco. The finer places sit far back from the road in aristocratic privacy, with big, grassy parks shaded by noble trees in front, and with the green foothills as a background. At San Mateo, a town with the usual shaven and parked immaculateness of highclass suburbs, we have luncheon in a simple little pastry shop. The woman who gaily serves us with excellent ham sandwiches, cake, and coffee, tells us that she is from Alsace-Lorraine. She and her husband have found their way to California. From San Mateo we drive to Palo Alto, where we spend some time in visiting Leland Stanford University. The University buildings of yellow sandstone with their warm red tiled roofs look extremely well in the southern sun. Here are no hills and inequalities. All the buildings stand on perfectly level ground, the situation well suited to the long colonnades and the level lines of the buildings themselves. It is worth the traveler's while to walk through the long cloisters and to visit the rich and beautiful church, whose restoration from the ravages of the earthquake is about completed. With its tiling and mosaic work, its striking mottoes upon the walls, and its fine windows, it is very like an Italian church. The town of Palo Alto is a pretty little settlement, depending upon the University for its life. From Palo Alto we drive on into the Santa Clara Valley. We are too late to see the fruit trees in bloom, a unique sight; but the valley stretches before us in all its exquisite greenness and freshness after the spring rains. Miles of fruit trees, as carefully pruned and weeded and as orderly in every detail as a garden, are on every side of us. Prune trees, cherry trees, and apricot trees; there are thousands of them, in a most beautiful state of cultivation and fruitfulness. No Easterner who has seen only the somewhat untidy and carelessly cultivated orchards of the East can imagine the exquisite order and detailed cultivation of the California fruit orchards. We saw miles of such orchards always in the same perfect condition. Not a leaf, not a branch, not a weed is left in these orchards. They are plowed and harrowed, sprayed and pruned, down to the last corner of every orchard, and the last branch of every tree. Through the clean aisles, between the green rows, run the channels for the precious water that has traveled from the mountains to the plains to turn tens of thousands of acres into a fair and fruitful garden. The Santa Clara Valley is one of the loveliest valleys of all California, and indeed of all the world. Set amid its orchards are tasteful houses and bungalows, commodious and architecturally pleasing; very different from the box-like farmhouses of the Middle West and the East. On either side rise high green hills. It is a picture of beauty wherever one looks. At Santa Clara, on our way to San José, we stop to see the Santa Clara Mission, just at the edge of the town. All that remains of the first Mission is enclosed within a wall, the new church and the flourishing new school standing next to the enclosure. In the middle of the valley is the city of San José, an active, bustling town, full of life and business. We spent a pleasant day at the Hotel Vendome, an old-fashioned and delightful hostel, surrounded by a park of fine trees and flowering shrubs. The Vendome is a good place in which to rest and bask in the sunshine. When we next motor through the Santa Clara Valley, we shall visit the New Almaden quicksilver mine, twelve miles from San José, and commanding from its slopes a wondrous view of the valley and the Garden City, as San José is called. And there is the interesting trip from San José to Mt. Hamilton and the Lick Observatory. One can motor by a good road to the summit of the mountain, 4,209 feet above sea level, and spend the night at the hotel below on the mountain slope. Leaving San José, we were more and more charmed with the valley as we drove along through orderly orchards and past tasteful bungalows. This was the California of laden orchards, of roses and climbing geraniums, of green hills rising beyond the valleys, of which we had read. As we approached the foot hills of the Santa Cruz Mountains we looked back and saw the green valley with its ranks of trees unrolled below us. Passing through the little town of Los Gatos (The Cats), we began to climb. As we turned a curve on the winding mountain road, the green expanses of the Happy Valley were lost to view. We were coming now into the region of immense pine trees and of the coast redwoods, the Sequoia sempervirens. The road was fair but very winding, requiring close attention. We crossed singing brooks and passed wayside farms high in the hills, with their little patches of orchard and grain. We saw a big signboard indicating the two-mile road to the Montezuma Ranch School for boys, and shortly after were at the top of the grade. Then came the descent, the road still winding in and out among the forests. At the Hotel de Redwood, a simple hostel for summer sojourners from the valleys, we saw a magnificent clump of redwoods, around which had been built a rustic seat. At the foot of the hill we turned left instead of right, thus omitting from our itinerary the town of Santa Cruz and the redwoods of the Big Basin. We hope to see this noble group of trees sometime in the future. We took luncheon in a little café at Watsonville. When I asked the young German waiter for steamed clams he said, "Oh! you mean dem big fellers!" From Watsonville, a bright little town, we drove on toward Salinas, making a detour which took us around the town instead of directly through it. We were crossing the green plains of the Salinas Valley, and before us rose the dark wooded heights of the famous Monterey Peninsula. On through the town of Monterey to Pacific Grove, a mile beyond, and we were soon resting in an ideal bungalow watched over by two tall pines. What a memorable week we spent at "Woodwardia"! A quarter of a mile to our right was the sea, whose sound came up to us plainly on still nights. Less than a quarter of a mile to our left were the forest and the beginning of the Seventeen Mile Drive. We took the drive once and again, paying the seventy-five cent entrance fee at the gate of the Pacific Improvement Company's domain, thus becoming free to wander about in the great wooded territory of the Peninsula. We took luncheon at the picturesque Pebble Lodge, where we had soup served in shining abalone shells, and where the electric lights were shaded by these shells. We halted in leisurely fashion along the Drive to climb over the rocks and to scramble up the high dunes, with their riot of flowering beach peas. They were ideal places to sit and dream with the blue sea before one and the dark forest behind. We photographed the wind-swept cypress trees, beaten and twisted into witchlike shapes by the free Pacific breezes. We watched the seals, lazily basking in the sun on the rocks off shore. We visited the picturesque village of Carmel, where artists and writers consort. We selected, under the spell of all this beauty, numerous sites for bungalows on exquisite Carmel Bay, where one might enjoy forever and a day the fascination of the sea and the spell of the pine forests. We visited the Carmel Mission, now standing lonely and silent in the midst of green fields. A few of the old pear trees planted by the Mission fathers still maintain a gnarled and aged existence in an orchard across the road from the church. The church is a simple structure with an outside flight of adobe steps, such as one sees in Italian houses, running up against the wall to the bell tower. At the left of the altar are the graves of three priests, one being that of Father Junípero Serra, the founder of many of the Missions, the devoted Spanish priest and statesman who more than once walked the entire length of six hundred miles along which his Missions were planted. A wall pulpit stands out from the right wall of the church. The most touching thing in the empty, dusty, neglected little place is a partly obliterated Spanish inscription on the wall of the small room to the left of the main body of the church. It is said to have been painted there by Father Serra himself, and reads, being translated: "Oh, Heart of Jesus, always shining and burning, illumine mine with Thy warmth and light." A memorable excursion was to Point Lobos beyond Carmel village, a rocky promontory running out like a wedge-shaped plateau into the sea. One approaches the sea across exquisite green, turfy spaces, shaded by pine trees, to find the point of the wedge far above the water, cut by rocky and awesome gashes into which the waves run with a long rush and against whose walls they boom continually. The quiet woods of Point Lobos do not prepare one for the magnificence of its outlook and the wonderful sight of its great rocks rising ruggedly and precipitously far above the water. I have seen the entire three hundred miles of the French and Italian Riviera, having motored all along that enchanting coast; and I am free to say that Point Lobos is as fine a bit of scenery as one will find, not only on the Pacific Coast but along the Mediterranean shore. Point Lobos was purchased a number of years ago by a Pacific Grove gentleman who had an eye for its rare beauty and grandeur, and who has built for himself a modest home on a green meadow at the entrance to the promontory. A small admission fee is charged for the Point, largely to exclude those who in former days, when the Point was free to excursionists, abused this privilege. The owner has established on a little cove a short distance from his house an abalone canning factory. Here the Japanese and other divers bring their boat loads of this delicious shellfish. Monterey Bay is the home of the abalone and it has been so ruthlessly fished for that new laws have had to be made to protect it. The big, soft creature, as large as a tea plate, fastens itself to rocks and other surfaces, its one shell protecting it from above. The diver slips under it his iron spatula, and by a quick and skillful twist detaches it from its firm anchorage. Abalone soup has a delicate flavor, really superior to clam soup. Both the exterior and the lining of the abalone shell have most exquisite coloring and are capable of a high polish. In the lining of the shell there is often found the beautiful blister or abalone pearl, formed by the same process as the oyster pearl, the animal throwing out a secretion at the point where it is irritated. The result is a blister on the smooth lining of the shell which when cut out and polished shows beautiful coloring, ranging from satiny yellow to changing greens. We spent an hour in wandering about the canning factory, looking over heaps of cast-off shells, admiring their beautiful lining, and choosing some to carry with us across country to a far distant home. That many of the shells had had marketable blisters was shown by little squares cut in the lining. Another drive was that across Salinas Valley, through the bright and prosperous town of Salinas, up the steep San Juan grade, where one may eat luncheon on a green slope commanding a lovely view, and down into the little old town of San Juan, where stands the mission of San Juan Baptista, with its long cloisters still intact. Next to the Mission is an open square which is said to have been the scene of bull fights in the old Spanish days. [Illustration: 1. Spanish Governor's House at San Juan. 2. San Juan Batista Mission.] A day was spent in driving over the Salinas road and the Rancho del Monte road, on through a lovely valley, up over the mountain along a shelf-like road, and down into Carmel Valley; then along another mountain road by a stream, and up again to the lush meadows of a private ranch twelve hundred feet above the sea. We left the car at the foot of the hill and drove in a farm wagon to the ranch house. We visited the vineyard on a sunny slope back of the house, so sheltered that grapes grow by the ton. We climbed into heavy Mexican saddles, ornately stamped, with high pommel and back, and rode astride sturdy horses over steep rounding hills through thick grass to view points where we could look down on Carmel Valley and off to the silvery sea. As we retraced our journey in the afternoon sunlight, a bobcat came out from the forest and trotted calmly ahead of us. A beautiful deer ran along the stream, his ears moving with alarm, his eyes watching us with fear and wonder. A great snake lay curled in the middle of the road and we ran over him before we really saw him. He made a feeble attempt to coil, but the heavy machine finished him. He was only a harmless ring snake, whose good office it is to kill the gophers that destroy the fruit trees, so we were sorry we had ended his useful career. He was the first of many snakes that we killed in California. Sometimes they lay straight across our road; sometimes they were stretched out in the ruts of the road and our wheels went over them before we could possibly see them; sometimes they made frantic efforts, often successful, to escape our machine; we always gave them a fighting chance. It seemed that we would never tear ourselves away from the Monterey Peninsula. We wandered through the beautiful grounds of the Hotel del Monte with their ancient live oaks. We walked and mused along the streets of Monterey, where Robert Louis Stevenson once walked and mused. We rejoiced in the sight of a lovely old Spanish house at the head of Polk Street, carefully kept up by its present owner. We saw the Sherman Rose cottage, the old home of Sherman's Spanish love, and the Sherman-Halleck quarters, and the old Hall of Records. We stopped to gaze at old adobe dwelling houses, some with thick walls roofed with tile around their yards; some with second floor galleries, supported by plain, slender wooden posts, roses clambering over them. We visited the San Carlos Mission on the edge of the town. Unlike the deserted little church at Carmel, San Carlos is in excellent repair, perfectly kept and in constant use. There they show you some of the old vestments said to be Father Serra's own. There you may see his silver mass cards, with their Latin inscriptions engraved upon the upright silver plate, reading: "In the beginning was the Word," etc. The same beaten silver water bucket which Father Serra used for holy water is to-day used by the incumbent priest. On the walls are the adoring angels which Father Serra taught the Indians to paint. One of the special treasures of the Mission is Father Serra's beautiful beaten gold chalice, a consecrated vessel touched only by the priests. Back of the church is kept as a precious possession the stump of the old oak tree under which Father Serra celebrated his first mass and took possession of California in the name of Spain. The spot where the oak tree stood, on the highway between Monterey and Pacific Grove, is marked by a modest stone just below Presidio Hill. We browsed about the curio and gift shops of Monterey, and the "Lame Duck's Exchange" of Pacific Grove. We saw Asilomar (Retreat-by-the-Sea), the fine conference grounds of the Young Women's Christian Associations of the Pacific Coast, whose commodious assembly and living halls are the gift of Mrs. Phoebe Hearst. We learned the delicious flavor, on many picnics, of the California ripe olive. One might be dubious about the satisfying quality of Omar Khayam's bottle of wine and loaf of bread "underneath the bough." But with the loaf of bread and plenty of California olives one could be perfectly content. I could have a feast of Lucullus any day in California on abalone soup, with its delicate sea flavor, bread, and olives. CHAPTER III Ah well! one cannot stay forever on the Monterey Peninsula to hear the sighing of the wind in the pines and the lapping of the waves on the shore. One cannot take the Seventeen Mile Drive day after day to see the wind-twisted cypresses, to come upon the lovely curve of Carmel Bay, and to look down from "the high drive" upon the Bay and town of Monterey far below, for all the world like a Riviera scene. Once more we turn our faces southward and drive through the broad streets of Pacific Grove along the mile of coast road to Monterey, and from Monterey into the country where masses of lupine paint the hills blue on the right, and live oaks dot the green valley stretches on the left. Coming into Salinas Valley we drive through hundreds of acres of level beet fields, south of the town of Salinas. We meet a redheaded, shock-bearded man with his sun-hat tied on, walking alongside a rickety moving-wagon drawn by two poor horses. He responds most cheerfully to our question concerning directions. As we pass his wagon a big family of little children crane their young necks to see us. The mother in their midst, a thin, shabby looking woman, holds up her tiny baby for me to see as I look back, and I wave congratulations in response. Later, near Santa Maria, we pass another moving party eating supper. They are prosperous looking people, very different from the forlorn, toiling little party outside of Salinas. They are comfortably encamped in a grassy spot, and the woman waves to me with a big loaf of bread in one hand and her bread knife in the other. I wave with equal heartiness to her. This is part of the charm of the open road, these salutations and this jolly passing exchange of sympathy, not between two ships that pass in the night, but between two parties who enjoy the air and the open, and who are one in gypsy spirit. It all belongs in the happy day. Salinas Valley is very different from the lovely valleys which we have thus far seen. Sonoma Valley is a rolling, irregular valley, part grain fields, part rough, hilly pasturage. Napa Valley, narrow at the south, wide toward the north, with orchards and pleasant homes, breathes of order and shut-in prosperity. Santa Clara Valley is a Napa Valley on a grander scale. Its surrounding hills are higher, its spaces are wider. Salinas Valley is a grain-growing valley, its fields of grain stretching away up into the foothills. As we proceed south we observe that the fields encroach more and more upon the hills, their rich greenness running quite far up on the hill slopes. The line of demarcation between the growing grain and the rough pasture slopes is as clean as if drawn by a pencil. It is here in Salinas Valley that we first notice the park-like appearance of many green stretches of field with live oaks growing here and there. It would almost seem that the oaks had been planted with a view to park effects, instead of being part of the original forest which had been cut down to make way for the grain fields. We pass through the little town of Soledad (Solitude) near which are the poor ruins of the Mission of our Lady of Soledad. We judge that Soledad must have a cosmopolitan population when we read such names as Sneible, Tavernetti, and Espinosa on the town's signs. Here and there we see where the Salinas River has eaten great pieces out of its banks, during the spring freshets. We had seen the same thing in Carmel Valley, where a man lost a large piece of his orchard by its falling bodily into the raging Carmel river. The streams of California are not like the streams of New England, clear and deep with winey brown depths. They are shallow streams with earth banks, but in the time of the spring rains they become wild torrents. Late in the afternoon we pass King City on the opposite bank of the river, glorified by the afternoon sunshine. It looks like a picture town, its buildings taking on castle-like proportions from a distance. We then come over the Jolon Grade, and descend through a little wooded valley that has a particular charm. I do not know its name, but it cast a certain spell that lingers with me. It is a narrow valley with stretches of thick green grass under forest trees, and has a quality of seclusion that I have not felt in the wide acres of grain in the great Salinas Valley. It is as if the forest had been only partly cut away and the advance of the grazier and the grain grower were but partly accomplished. We come into Jolon, a country crossroads hamlet, past "Dutton's," a most comfortable and homelike country hotel, if one may judge by appearances. I am sorry not to stop for the night. I am always attracted to these country inns when they have hospitable porches and a general look of homely comfort. I should be glad, too, to take the six mile detour from the main road in order to see the ruins of the San Antonio Mission. But we have been told that the Mission is in such a ruined state, one of the thick walls having fallen in, that it is as well not to see it. Our next valley, even lovelier than the others, is Lockwood's Valley, a beautiful stretch of grain fields. By a bend in the road we are driving east with the western sun setting behind us. High hills form a background for the green fields of oats and barley. The whole valley with its few ranch houses and its great fields breathes a country peace. Looking back, I still regret that we could not have had time to go half a mile off the main road and try the merits of the Lockwood Inn. But we drive on through the valley over a slight pass and come to an adobe ranch house on the left, sitting modestly back on a slight knoll against a background of bare hills. At the ranch gate is a sign to the effect that this is Aloha Ranch Inn, and that meals can be had at all hours. It is the word Aloha that catches us. Surely someone must live here who knows the lovely Hawaiian Islands with their curving cocoanut palms, and their emerald shores. So we turn into the drive and find a kindly farmer, master of his six hundred acres in this lone valley, who with his wife gives us warm welcome. He does indeed know Hawaii, having lived and worked on the famous Ewa sugar plantation for nearly twenty years. We have a homely but appetizing supper, and a dreamless night's sleep in one of the farmhouse bedrooms. The next morning is gloriously beautiful, and we drive on our way. In order to avoid fording the Salinas river, which is very high, we make our journey by way of Indian Valley, through hilly, rather lonely country. All along the river there are signs of the devastation made by the unusual spring rains. The river banks are gouged out and the railroad bridges are down, the rails being twisted into fantastic shapes. In passing San Miguel we stop to see the Mission, which is in a fair state of repair and in constant use. One of the beautiful toned old bells of the Mission is hung in a framework outside the church, where the visitor may sound it. The new bell is unfortunately suspended from the top of an immense iron, derrick-like structure which stands outside the church, and is unsightly. The interior of the church is very fine. It is a lofty structure, fifty feet high and one hundred and fifty feet long, its walls covered with frescoes in rich blues and reds, the work of the Indians. There are niches for holy water in the thick old walls and a large niche which was used for the confessional. Above the altar is painted the "All-Seeing Eye." The heavy rafters of the roof extend through the walls and long wooden pins are fitted through the ends to bind the walls together. Not a nail was used in the entire structure. We take luncheon at Paso Robles (Pass of the Oaks), famed for its healing waters. The hotel is pleasant and the new bath house with its handsome marble and tiling is very fine. Many sojourn here for the medicinal uses of the waters. Between Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo we come through a stretch of very beautiful country, part open forest land, part richly pastoral, the property of the Atascadero Company. The Atascadero settlement is one of those Utopian plans for happiness and prosperity which bids fair to be realized. The climate is almost ideal, the scenery is charming, the country is richly fertile. They tell us that people are pouring in from the East and that the colony is growing constantly. At the north end of the Atascadero territory we pass a handsome sign swinging over the road, which reads: "Atascadero Colony. North End. Ten Miles Long and Seven Miles wide. Welcome." As we approach the south end of the ten mile stretch we come upon another sign whose legend is: "Come again." Turning back as we pass under the sign we see that its reverse legend is the same as that of the north end sign, save that it is for the south end. So whoever passes along the main road through Atascadero property is bound to have the uplifting welcome and to receive, as he passes on, the kindly farewell. We congratulate the Atascadero colonists on the lovely rolling country in whose midst they are to dwell and on the magnificent live oaks that dot their park-like fields. San Luis Obispo is quite a large town, but the Mission of San Luis Obispo has been spoiled by being incorporated into the new church and school plant. One catches only a glimpse of broken cloisters within the school enclosure. I stepped into the church as we drove by in the late afternoon, and saw the children coming in for prayer and for confession. Little stubby-toed boys tip-toed in, kneeling awkwardly but reverently, and crossing themselves with holy water; while from the confessional came the low murmur of some urchin making his confession. Not long after leaving San Luis Obispo, near Nipomo-by-the-Sea, I had the misfortune to lose my leather letter case. We were horror struck when we found it gone and turned about just before reaching Santa Maria to retrace our steps across the long bridge and then across a wide stretch of dry, sandy river bed. The ravages of the floods had torn a much wider path for the river than it now used, so that for nearly a mile we drove over sandy river bottom, the river being a shrunken stream. To our great joy we met another motor car, and found that the three gentlemen in it had picked up my bag and were bringing it along to Santa Maria in the hope of finding the owner. What had promised to be a long and tiring search, involving the questioning of every passer-by and inquiry at every wayside house for miles, turned out to be only a short drive. We turned toward Santa Maria and went on our way rejoicing. Santa Maria is a large, prosperous, attractive town. On toward Los Olivos the country is like some parts of New England, attractive but lonely. We are glad to reach in the twilight the hospitable lights of Mattei's Tavern at Los Olivos. Mr. Mattei is Swiss by birth, but has spent many years in California. He has a ranch whose acres supply his unusually good table with vegetables, poultry, and flowers. His house is kept with the neatness and comfort of an excellent Swiss inn, and is a delightful place for a sojourn. We are sorry to come away on the morning of the first of May. We pass dozens of wagons and buggies, the people all in holiday attire, coming into town for the May-day celebrations. Los Olivos was once an olive growing valley, but grain growing has been found more profitable. We wish to see the Santa Ynez mission and therefore take the route to the right, avoiding the road to Santa Barbara by way of Santa Ynez and the San Marcos Pass. The Santa Ynez Mission has a situation of unusual beauty. It stands on a tableland with a circle of mountains behind it, and at its left a low green valley stretching away into the distance. A Danish settlement of neat new houses of modern type faces the old Mission. The church has been restored, and ten years of loving care have been bestowed upon it by the present priest and his niece. The choice old vestments have been mended with extreme care. The ladies of the Spanish Court are said to have furnished the rich brocades for these vestments, which were sent on from Spain and made up at the Mission. It is an ancient custom for the Indians to wash the handwoven linen vestments, a custom they still observe. The walls of Santa Ynez are about seven feet thick, and the Mission was some thirteen years in building. Roses climb over the cloisters, and the whole Mission is very attractive. From the Mission we drive over the Gaviota (Seagull) Pass, the mountain road being rough, narrow, and very picturesque. Fine old live oaks and white oaks grow on the rough hillsides. As one approaches the little seaside station of Gaviota the rocks are very grand. Suddenly we come upon the sea, and the blue waters that are part of the charm of Santa Barbara stretch before us. The scenery from Gaviota to Santa Barbara is one of the finest stretches along the entire coast. Three misty islands are to be seen off the coast, set in an azure sea. They belong to the Santa Barbara group; Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel. As one approaches Santa Barbara one sees farmhouses in the midst of lovely farming country on points jutting into the sea and commanding exquisite views of the water. The last ten miles before reaching Santa Barbara we drive through an unbroken stretch of English walnut orchards, the trees carefully pruned and in admirable condition. We have come through the rolling pastures and grain fields of Sonoma Valley, through the fruit orchards of Napa Valley and Santa Clara Valley, through the unbroken grain fields of Salinas Valley and Lockwood's Valley, and through the diversified cultivation of the valley around Los Olivos; and now we are driving into famous Santa Barbara through ten miles of walnut groves, garden-like in their cultivation. Reaching Santa Barbara, we have tea at the Studio Tea Room, which utilizes for its purpose a famous old Spanish residence. We then establish ourselves at The Upham, and a very pleasant hotel we find it. For those who wish a larger and more fashionable inn there are the beautiful Arlington Hotel, with its fascinating, tiny models of the historic caravels _San Salvador_ and _Vittoria_ upon the gate posts at its entrance; and the Potter, by the sea. Santa Barbara lies in a pocket valley with the red brown Santa Ynez mountains rising behind it and the sea in front of it. Some of the most beautiful residences are at the north of the town in the foothills. Italian sunshine, Italian softness of climate, the enchanting colors of the hills, the blue of the sea, charming drives and walks, all these are to be had at Santa Barbara; and there is the Mission with its old church and the dignified priests of its brotherhood. Fine trees stand in the beautiful enclosed garden of the Mission, where five thousand Indians are buried. Four miles south of Santa Barbara are Montecito Valley and the delightful Miramar Hotel on the sea. A very pleasant suburban colony is grouped around the hotel. The hotel itself has within its grounds its own rose-embowered cottages. One may live in a bungalow and have one's own fireside, one's own sitting room and bed chamber, one's own rose-covered porch, one's own home life, and go into the hotel only for meals and for sociability's sake. It is an ideal winter life for those who wish all the orderly, luxurious comfort of a well managed inn, together with the privacy of home life in a rose cottage. We drove through lovely little Montecito Valley, catching glimpses of fine houses rising against a picturesque mountain background, some in the Mission style of architecture, some in Italian and some in Spanish style. The lawns of one estate were surrounded by long hedges of pink roses. We turned south through Toro Valley where I recall a most beautiful hillside olive orchard, the trees being planted on the slope sheltered from the sea and facing the mountains. They were as beautiful in their fresh grey-greenness as any olive orchard that we saw in all California. Leaving Miramar we drove on along the coast to Ventura, the road running by the sea and in some places on long platforms built out over the water. At Ventura we turned west and came to Nordhoff, the bridge being down on the Casitas Pass. We had a somewhat lonely evening drive through a green fruited valley from Ventura to Nordhoff, and reached our hostel, the Pierpont Cottages, a few miles from Nordhoff, late in the evening. We were more than ready for supper and for rest in a lovely private cottage, through whose open casement long sprays of pink roses climbed in. The morning revealed to us the rare beauties of the secluded Ojai Valley, in whose foothills stand the Pierpont Inn and cottages, 1000 feet above sea level. It would be hard to exaggerate the charm and beauty of the Ojai Valley for those who like its type of scenery. A magnificent wall of stone mountain, whose colors run into greys, pinks, lavenders, and yellows, forms the eastern boundary of the valley. On its level floor are luxuriant orchards. Here in warm protection grow the fig, the olive, the orange, and the lemon. The beautiful Matilija poppies grow in great luxuriance here, their tall grey-green stalks and white crape petals with golden hearts being very effective. I had seen the Matilija poppies for the first time growing in the gardens of Santa Barbara. I now saw them growing wild on the slopes of the Ojai Valley foothills. Above the Pierpont Cottages are the buildings of a famous boys' school high in the foothills. For those who love warmth and glowing color, long tramps and long horseback rides into the mountain defiles above the valley, the Ojai is an ideal place to spend a charméd winter. We came away in the morning light, driving across the valley to the main road and ascending a steep hill to the Upper Ojai road. A glorious view of the whole valley unrolled before us, level as a floor, with its rich masses of fig trees and its shining orange and lemon trees, their green broken here and there by trim houses. Higher up were the cottages of the Pierpont Inn, and higher still the big building of the school, all over-topped by the great masses of the mountains behind. I felt that I should like to build a bungalow on the spot and live and die there. We come on by a very rough, narrow, bumpy, and precipitous mountain road, past the summer cottages of Sulphur Springs into the Santa Paula Valley. We pass people planting young orchards of lemons and oranges, and we come through defiles, the bare, rugged hills rising above us on both sides. Sometimes these hills are clay-colored. Sometimes they are painted a delicate lavender by whole hillsides of blooming sage; sometimes sage not yet in bloom covers the hills with a delicate grey-green mantle. Other hillsides are a bright yellow from a yellow, string-like plant that nets itself in great masses over the entire slope. On the whole the country until we reach Santa Paula is rather bare. At Santa Paula there is a very pleasant inn. It was at Santa Paula that I saw a schoolhouse enclosure surrounded by a hedge-like row of trees, every tree a blooming mass of glorious yellow. At Sespe we passed a very prosperous lemon and orange orchard of immense size where they were planting fresh orchards of slender young trees. Before we reached Saugus we had to ford the Santa Clara River, the bridge being down. We stuck in the soft sand in mid-river and T. was obliged to wade through the shallow water to the shore behind us, which happened to be nearest, to go in search of a countryman and horses. In the meantime I took off my boots and stockings and waded across to the far side of the stream. There I was just lacing my boots when a young gentleman appeared driving a small car. He debated as to the risk of driving across stream, but decided to try it. Driving slowly he succeeded in getting through and turned to wave his hat in triumph. I waved back and he pushed on his way. Soon T. appeared with a countryman driving two stout horses. They quickly pulled the car across and their master received a dollar for his services. After an indifferent lunch at the Saugus railway station we went on over the fine Newhall grade, through Fernando and the great San Fernando Valley, through the brand new town of Van Nuys, and the settlement of Lankershim and the handsome suburb of Hollywood into Los Angeles. The San Fernando Valley, a wide plain with mountains in the far distance, has been turned by the magic of water from a vast, scrubby desert into a fruitful region, rapidly becoming populous. The San Fernando Mission Company has placed in front of the old San Fernando Mission on the broad highway which now runs past the Mission a charming flower garden. The bright flowers blaze out in the afternoon sun against a background of fragments of grey adobe wall. The Mission itself has but little to show. A caretaker lives in the fragment of the old monastery and shows one through the few deserted and dingy rooms. The finest thing in San Fernando Valley is the new boulevard which sweeps through the valley to Los Angeles and is known as the $500,000 boulevard. It is largely due to the generalship of Mr. Whitely, who is a Napoleon of real estate. Through the middle of the boulevard runs the electric car line. On each side of the car line is a border of rose bushes of different varieties. Outside of this border are two fine roads, one on either side; and again outside of these roads is a wonderful border planted in the following order: first, a line of rose bushes, and second, a line of Indian deodars, first cousins to the Lebanon cedars, these deodars alternating in their planting with a flowering shrub; third, comes a line of Austrian and other varieties of pines; fourth, is planted a row of palm trees. At present this planting is in its early stages, but when roses, shrubs, and evergreens are larger, as they will soon be under the bright California sun, the effect will be very rich and beautiful. Van Nuys has a fine new schoolhouse, and shining new dwellings of white glazed brick, built in the Italian and the Spanish style. [Illustration: 1. Harbor of Avalon, Catalina Island. 2. and 3. San Fernando Mission.] California specializes in schoolhouses and street lamps. In the newest and in some instances in the most isolated settlements, you will find beautiful schoolhouses, an earnest of the children and the education that are to be; and all over California in country villages one finds the main streets lined with ornate lamp standards surmounted by handsome globes. They give an air even to sordid little streets lined by saloons, country groceries, and dry-goods emporiums. California is not afraid to spend money for education. Her school buildings, many of them in the Mission style, would make Eastern towns of the same size gasp with amazement. Hollywood with its lovely villas is a popular and beautiful suburb of Los Angeles, and seems almost like a second Los Angeles save that it is among the hills instead of on the plain. CHAPTER IV. Los Angeles is unique. Where will you find another city like it, so open, so bright, with such handsome apartment houses, designed for light housekeeping, such multitudes of cafeterias? Where will you find such a green square of civic center with people sitting quietly about, enjoying the sunshine, the splashing of the fountain, the tameness of the starlings? These are the happy, not the unhappy, unemployed. They have come from far and near to live simply in light housekeeping apartments, to bask in the sunshine, many of them to enjoy a sunny old age on a modest but comfortable income. The last census, they tell us, shows that 80 per cent of the Los Angeles people are from the State of Iowa. But from all the Middle West they have fled from the cold winters to the warmth of this big city which really seems to be not a city at all, but an immense collection of open parks, bright houses, and handsome streets. Thousands of people are pouring into Los Angeles every year. Great fields around the city have been included within the city limits, fine streets with ornate lamps and copings have been cut through them, handsome stucco and shingle villas have been erected. These are homes of well-to-do people who mean to spend at least part of each year, if not the rest of their lives, in Los Angeles. It is all a puzzle, this phenomenal growth of the city. It is not wholly due to business, for the most prosperous business man in Los Angeles is probably the real estate dealer, who has plotted the fields, added new streets, and sold at ever-increasing prices the villa and home sites. The merchant and the provision dealer do well, but after all, their territory is the city itself. There is no great hinterland with which to deal. It is not due to manufacturing interests, for as yet these have been but little developed. It must be, as a lady said to me, "the sale of the climate," an unfailing stock of sunshine that has made Los Angeles the happy, growing, extremely prosperous city that it is. One may choose from many hotels one's hostel, or one may live in a beautiful apartment, cook one's own breakfast of bacon and eggs, and sally forth to any one of a dozen cafeterias for luncheon and dinner. We found the Hotel Leighton on West Lake Park eminently satisfactory; a spacious, quiet, well managed establishment with the spaces of the park before it and the cars within three minutes' walk. From Los Angeles we drove through the San Gabriel Valley, dominated by snow covered Mount San Antonio, to Long Beach. The valley is a panorama of new suburban towns, market gardens, and walnut groves. Long Beach is a mixture of Coney Island, Atlantic City, and a solid, substantial inland town. Its public buildings are very fine, its churches being particularly handsome. Its big Hotel Virginia reminds one of the handsome hotels along the boardwalk at Atlantic City, and its long arcade of amusement halls, cheap jewelry shops, and other booths for seaside trinkets is like Coney Island. This stretch of amusement halls and shops lies along the seashore at a lower level than the city proper, and does not impart its character to the rest of the town. It was at Long Beach that I first heard a night-singing bird, somewhat like the nightingale. The little creature sang gaily all night long in the park opposite our hotel. Long Beach and San Pedro are both sailing points for Santa Catalina Island, twenty-five miles away, whose purple-grey heights can be dimly seen across the water. The trip to Catalina is in rather small boats, and is likely to be somewhat trying; but the trials of the two or three hours of voyage are amply awarded by the Island itself. [Illustration: 1. Harbor, Catalina Island. 2. Seals on Rocks at Catalina Island. 3. Catalina Island. 4. Home of Owner of Catalina Island.] Santa Catalina has a curving, sickle-shaped harbor around which cluster the hotels and boarding houses which make the home of the summer guests. This little white village against a background of hilly country, taking on lovely lavender and grey tints at sunset, is not unlike some of the towns on the picturesque coast of Cornwall. Santa Catalina is a paradise for deep-sea fishermen, a lotus eaters' island where one may walk over the hills into the quiet interior or take a boat and dream along the rocks, gazing down for hours at the beauties of the gardens of the sea. I would advise all tourists to take time to visit these swaying groves of kelp and other sea plants in a row boat. One sees them in this way far more intimately and satisfactorily than by a more hurried inspection. In the late afternoon everyone at Catalina gathers at the pier to see the fishermen come in with their spoils. Boat after boat is seen approaching. They round the pier and the big fish are lifted up for all to admire. Then come the weighing and the cleaning of the fish. The seagulls hover near, ready for their share of the spoils, as the entrails of the fish are thrown into the sea. A tame seal swims around from his home on the rocks several miles away in order to have his portion of the feast. At the time of our visit he was in a fit of sulks, as a fisherman had struck him on the head with an oar because he had tried to clamber into a boat in his zeal for his supper. A unique experience at Catalina is an evening ride in a swift motor boat equipped with a powerful searchlight. Faster and faster goes the boat in the darkness, the searchlight swinging from side to side over the wide waters. The flying fish, startled by the sweep of the light upon the water, leap wildly into the air. The air is full of them, and of the sound of their rushing wings. Plump! Here comes one into the boat! and here's another, and another! We shield our faces with our hands, shouting with laughter as the fish fall with a thump into the boat, sometimes on the laps of the passengers. More than one passenger has been struck by a flying fish, and our landlady tells us of a tourist who went out for an evening ride in the motor boat to return with a black eye from the blow of a frightened flying fish. Flying fish is delicious eating, and our catch is divided up among the passengers. We were attracted to this excursion when we first landed at Catalina by a startling advertisement describing the experience as "Thousands of flying fish tangoing through the air." Catalina Island is a quiet spot, outside its little rim of houses along its curving harbor. The pedestrian may go inland for a number of miles, taking his luncheon with him, and have only the hills and the birds for his company. We had such a walk, and saw a hawk alight and settle himself calmly upon a fencepost, holding in his talons a newly captured snake. The creature was still alive, its body ringed in a rigid hoop in its effort to escape. But the cruel claws held it fast, and its captor was preparing to finish it with his sharp beak. We were told that the dust from Santa Ana Valley, twenty-five miles away, could be seen approaching in a grey cloud across the water on windy days from shoreward. Our landlady deplored such days, when her immaculate house was covered with the dust of the distant mainland. Santa Catalina, a grey green agate in the sunlight, a purple amethyst at twilight, ringed by lovely seas, is well worth a visit. Returning to Long Beach, we drove on toward San Diego, through the Santa Ana Valley to San Juan Capistrano. As we came through the great valley in which lie Santa Ana, Fullerton, and Anaheim, we passed fruitful groves of lemons and vast fields of beets. We observed an odd optical illusion as we came near Tustin. All the fields before us seemed to be covered with water, and we at first thought that the irrigating streams had been turned on and were flowing through them. But as we reached the fields we found them perfectly dry. Field after field stretched before us apparently swimming in water, and field after field as we came near we found dry and brown under the sun. This occurred more than once in southern California as we were driving along in the sunlight. At San Juan Capistrano we stopped to see one of the most beautiful Missions in all California. The cloisters of San Juan, the ruins of the very fine old church, the bells in their places above the walls, all are extremely picturesque and beautiful. At San Juan with its quaint little street we found two hotels, both of which had attractions. The Mission Hotel offered us Spanish cooking, attractive to one fond of red pepper and high seasoning. Las Rosas looked like a pleasant country home turned by some enterprising woman into an inn. We chose Las Rosas and had an excellent home dinner there. From San Juan Capistrano we drove on south to Delmar, where we spent the night at the Stratford Inn. This hotel, which sits flower-encircled on its sandy hillside overlooking the blue seas, has every modern appointment and luxury. The settlement does not yet seem to have attracted a large cottage population, but there are some homes of very charming architecture and with beautiful gardens. We walked up the picturesque hills back of the hotel, and came at their summit to the precipitous edge of a great bowl from which we looked down upon a green valley stretching away many miles in extent. [Illustration: 1., 2. and 3. San Juan Capistrano Mission.] From Delmar the next morning we again drove south with the sea on our right and the hills on our left. The road winds over very hilly country through a growth of rare pines known as the Torrey pines, found only here. From the heights of these hills one sees at a distance a point of land stretching into the sea, with a little town shining on its slopes like a jewel in the sun. It looks, as one approaches it from the north, like a Riviera town. This is the enchanted spot on the southern coast known as La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya), a little town frequented by people who love the Spanish warmth of the Southern sun and the blue of the Southern sea. Here is a beautiful Episcopal school for girls, its stucco buildings planned in Spanish fashion. Here is a charming little church of the same architecture. Here, perched on the rocks, looking out to sea along the coast fringe of the town, are flat-roofed stucco houses with a matchless view of the water. Farther back on the hills overlooking the town, are lovely winter homes, also built in the architecture of Southern countries. La Jolla is one of the loveliest spots on the whole Pacific Coast. Its rocks, its caves, its Southern sea, its sunshine, all combine to make it a delightful place in which to spend a winter. La Jolla is only fourteen miles from San Diego, and it was an easy drive from there into the bright, clean, shining city of the South. San Diego is at present in a state of transition, the transition from a little city to a big city. She has a matchless harbor, plenty of room in which to grow, and what is becoming a rich surrounding country. She has a perfect situation, with the harbor before her and the hills rising behind her. When the rails connect her with the "back country" she will undoubtedly become a powerful city. What could be more beautiful than the drive from San Diego out along the point which curves like a great claw into the sea and is known as Point Loma? The road first sweeps along close to the water, passing rows of pretty suburban homes. Then it rises, swings up over the hills on to the high ridge of Point Loma proper, the open sea to the right, the harbor to the left, passing the beautifully kept grounds of the fine property belonging to the School of Theosophy. Beyond, the road still climbs until it comes to the end of the Point, on which stands a little old Spanish lighthouse, now abandoned. High above the sea one looks off to the far away islands. Turning about, one sees the city, white in the sun, the mountains rising in the distance behind it. Running out from the city is a long, narrow strip of land which widens into Coronado Beach, with the red roofs of the hotel and the green stretches of the beautiful little town of Coronado. Just below is the blue water of the great harbor. It is a grand view, and ranks in my opinion with the noble views of Sydney Harbor in Australia and of Auckland harbor in New Zealand. San Diego, like her sister cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, is a town frequented by tourists. Many are the hotels and apartment houses, devoted to winter sojourns and light housekeeping, offset by excellent cafeterias. There are plenty of excursions from San Diego, a short one being to the Spanish house in the village of old San Diego, known as the home of Ramona. The old house with its walled garden and its wide porches has been put in order and is now used as a depot for curios and Indian goods. Another delightful trip, somewhat longer, is to Grossmont. Grossmont is, in spite of its name, a little mountain, some fifteen miles back of San Diego. It is an irregular heap of rocks, rising from rather barren surrounding country. Mr. Fletcher of San Diego first saw the possibilities of Grossmont and marked out the road which now runs around the mountain to its summit. Here are the modest houses of an artist and literary colony, among them the cottage of Madame Schumann-Heinck. From the porches of these cottages, perched high upon the bare rocks, one looks down upon the exquisite little El Cajon (The Box) Valley, where grow lemons, oranges, and other fruits in beautiful green luxuriance. El Cajon could once have been bought for a song, but now its fertile acres, under the spell of irrigation, are worth many thousands. Beyond El Cajon rise the superb mountains of the South in all their rocky grandeur. They take on most wonderful colors; warm clay yellows, rich browns, lavenders, tints of ashes of rose. They are constantly changing as the day advances, and are a world of color. No wonder that singers, poets, and artists love to look upon the glowing greens below and the glowing lavenders afar. The view from Grossmont is extremely poetic and beautiful. We should have considered our visit to California very incomplete without having seen San Diego, its Southern seas and its fascinating "back country." It is wholly different from Los Angeles, and the charm of the South is over it all. Were I a young business man, seeking to cast in my lot with a growing California city, I should cast it in San Diego. From San Diego we proceeded through El Cajon Valley to the little town of Julian, nearly 4000 feet high. That was a memorable ride, taking us through green valleys and then up, up through broken hill country and past heavy oak and pine forests and rich mountain pastures. In going over Mussey's Grade I saw, for the first time, growing on the rocky hillsides groups of tall yuccas. I could not be content until I had climbed out of the motor and cut one of the towering stalks, springing from a mass of thick, sword-shaped leaves. Its white scented bells covered the stalk from top to bottom. It was a tree of creamy bloom and perfume. I laid it on top of our luggage, enjoying its perfume from time to time; but the beautiful bells began to droop, and by the time the day's long journey was over the flowers had withered. Afterward, I saw many of these yuccas growing in lonely, rocky places, blooming luxuriantly. They were like tall white candelabra. On our way to Julian, a few miles from the little town, by mistake we turned left instead of right, and had a long wandering through a great mountain country. The roads were narrow, twilight was coming on, and we found ourselves in a seemingly endless forest. Sometimes from high points we had wonderful sunset glimpses of distant mountains looming above green valleys. Then again we came upon lush meadow patches, wide and lonely in the midst of the hills. Still the road wound on, down through ravines, up over steep hillsides. Not a house was to be seen, only the lonely forest and the deepening darkness. It looked as if we must spend the night in the woods. At last we came out through a rough gate into the main road and reading a sign by the light of a match found that we were a mile from Julian. It was good to reach the tiny village and to find the Robinson House, a very clean and respectable village inn, kept by an old colored soldier and his wife. They gave us an excellent supper and we found a very comfortable bed awaiting us. We had taken a road through the mountain district back of a beautiful summer inn, known as the Pine Hills Inn, and had wandered over the drives planned for the pleasure of summer guests. We saw the Pine Hills Inn perched upon the hillside, the next morning. It was only a short distance from where we had struck the main road for Julian. We had fully intended to spend a night at this famous little inn, but must leave that for the next time. Julian is famed for its apples, growing nearly 4000 feet high. We saw a charming picture of blossoming apple trees, grown against a dark background of tall mountain pines which flanked the orchard slope. There is a famous view near Julian. Looking down from a break in the hills one sees far, far beyond and below the grey stretches of the desert and the Salton sea. From Julian we drove on to Warner's Hot Springs, where many people resort for the healing power of the Springs, and where a pleasant little hotel, surrounded by cottages, makes a delightful stopping place for those who wish to enjoy the sunshine and to pierce the defiles of the mountains back of the valley of the Springs. The Springs are on a great ranch which covers thousands of acres and supports hundreds of cattle. To reach them one drives over long stretches of plain, partly rich grass, where cattle feed, partly somewhat barren country. Leaving the Hot Springs, we drove again across the vast sandy stretches and the rich green plains of the Warner Ranch, coming from there through picturesque and somewhat broken country to the little Pala Mission. Before reaching the Mission one comes along a mountain road cut like a shelf into the hill and very high above the valley. The little town which is the seat of the Mission is reached by a long descent. The most interesting thing about the Mission now is its bells, which are set so that the wall in whose open niches they are hung makes a picturesque framework for them. Leaving the town we came on through a deep and rocky canyon, whose scenery was wild and mountainous. From this we emerged into a broad valley which grew more beautiful as we traveled northward. Wide grain ranches stretched away to the right, walled in by the massive ramparts of Nellie Palomar Mountain. Other ranches stretched to the left, ending in the foothills in rich groves of olive trees. We were traveling through Temecula on our way to Elsinore, a town of hot springs. There we spent a comfortable night at a hotel situated on a little lake. The lake in the evening light with the olive orchards stretching down to its waters from the foothills opposite was very charming. From Elsinore we drove on in the morning through an open canyon, where Matilija poppies grew plentifully, to Corona. Corona is a lovely little town belted by an encircling boulevard, broad and shaded. It lies in a fertile valley whose plains and hill-slopes are covered by thousands of lemon trees, tended with a mother's care. Above the valley rise the mountains on the distant horizon. One can see lemons being gathered, flowers blooming, and new groves being planted in the valley, and then look up to snow-capped peaks beyond. Here lemon orchards are valued at $2,000 and more an acre. When the trees have reached the bearing stage and are in good condition, lemon orchard land is a gold mine. We heard of people who rented their orchards on the basis of $2,000 value per acre, receiving interest on that valuation. We heard also of successful lemon growers who had purchased large acreages of lemon-bearing land at $1,000 per acre and who had within two years after purchase marketed a crop of lemons whose selling price covered the entire amount paid for the orchard two years before. [Illustration: 1. Pala Mission. 2. Hillside Orchard in California.] We visited a big packing house and saw dark eyed Sicilians, alert and prosperous, sorting, cleaning, and packing the lemons. Everything proceeded with swiftness and yet with orderliness. Down the long troughs rolled the lemons, each gravitating through a hole according to its size. Into a bubbling cauldron they were gently railroaded, where brushes from above and from below washed them and pushed them on. With much deftness packers caught a square of tissue paper with the left hand, a lemon with the right hand and wrapped the fruit. The filled box was pushed along a polished runway to the inspector. He deftly and quickly looked the box over, decided whether the packing was close and firm, nailed on a top, and bound the box with supporting iron bands. It was then ready to go into the freight car on the track a few feet away, where experienced men were loading the car with the yellow fruit. We were told that notwithstanding competition with the Sicilian and Italian fruit, California lemons had all the market their owners could wish for. Certainly when one sees the care with which the fruit is grown, the mellow sun under which it matures, and the skillful gathering, cleaning, and packing of the packing houses, one wishes every right of way for California lemons. One lemon grower told us that in the course of the past twenty years he had advanced hundreds of dollars to his Sicilian laborers who had asked his help to bring over their fathers, their brothers, and other relatives. He said that kinsman after kinsman had been brought over and had added himself and his work to the Corona colony, and that their benefactor had never lost a dollar. All the loans had been conscientiously returned in the course of time. Californians look forward to a great flood of immigration within the next few years, and hope that Europe will send them the men to till their lands and cultivate their rich valleys and hill-slopes. There is plenty of room for them in this splendid empire of a State. CHAPTER V It was an easy drive from Corona to Riverside, which we reached in the late afternoon in time for a sunset drive up and around the corkscrew road leading to the top of Mt. Rubidoux. No one should miss the view from the top of Rubidoux Mountain. While its summit is not at a great height, yet the mountain is so isolated and the whole surrounding country is so level a valley that the view is very extensive. One looks down upon the town of Riverside, with its pleasant homes and church steeples; and upon miles of lemon and orange orchards groomed to the last degree of fertility and perfection. It is an immense garden. Orchards, towns, grassy spaces with a silver river winding through them, all give one that sense, ever present in California, of happiness, of genial climate, of unfailing beauty of surrounding. At Riverside one stays of course, even if but for a night, at the famous Mission Inn, known as the Glenwood. Here is the creation of a man who has brought together in unique and pleasing combination the features of an inn, of a great curio shop, of a cathedral, of a happy lounging place. You may study for hours antique pieces of furniture; old tapestries, old bells, old bits of stained glass. You may spend an evening in the great music hall with its cathedral seats and listen to the organ played by a finished and yet popular artist. You may lounge in an easy chair on a cloistered porch. All these and many other things you may do at the wonderful Mission Inn. But the open road called us and we had time for only one night in Riverside. We drove from Riverside to Redlands, a particularly charming town. It has a better situation than Riverside, being on a slope instead of upon a level plain. It has beautiful streets and hosts of lovely winter homes of most attractive architecture. The drive up to Smiley Heights, where one runs through exquisite gardens along a narrow ridge, looking down upon a green cultivated valley on the one side, and a polished winter city on the other side, is a delightful experience. From Redlands we drove on to San Bernardino and thence to Pomona and Claremont. The San Bernardino Valley has miles of grapes, the vineyards being on an immense scale. In California the grapes are not trained upon arbors. The stalks are kept low, and in looking over a vineyard one sees long rows of low growing, stocky vines, and masses of green foliage. In San Bernardino they have a fashion of planting windbreaks of evergreens around their gardens and smaller vineyards; but there are also immense stretches of open country planted with vines. One vineyard of three thousand acres has a sign announcing that it is the largest vineyard in the world. Pomona and Claremont are pleasant towns, Pomona being the seat of a college. From Claremont we drove on to Pasadena. There are lovely drives about Pasadena, and one should not neglect to go up along the foothills and from that point of vantage look down upon the town spread out on the slopes below. There is now a motor drive up Mt. Wilson, from which one has extremely grand views, but the Mt. Wilson drive is to be recommended only to people with small, light machines which have a short turning base. The mountain road is by no means the equal of the roads one finds in the Alps. It is too narrow and too hazardous for any but small machines. For most tourists the nine miles of the Mt. Wilson road would better be traversed on donkey-back. For those who love to climb, the winding road is a delightful walk with views of changing grandeur. The hotel at the top is a very pleasant place to stay, and one may have there the glories of the sunset and the sunrise. The most lovely avenue in Pasadena, up and down which one should drive several times, is Orange Grove Avenue. Along the street the feathery pepper tree and the palm alternate. The strikingly handsome electric lamp standards are of bronze. Open lawns are characteristic settings for the beautiful houses which line the avenue. There are many houses of white or yellow stucco, some of them set off by delicate iron balconies. Leaving the finished beauty of Orange Avenue we drove over a great canyon across which is flung a very ornamental bridge. The canyon has been turned into a park, and fine houses stand on its banks, commanding from their heights wonderful views. We came on through Burbank and once more into the San Fernando Valley, just being opened up. Here and there were tiny houses and sometimes tents, the first shelters of settlers who were cultivating their newly acquired patches of land. We saw people cleaning and plowing their land. Off to the right were beautiful mountains with houses and ranches nestled in the foothills. We drove through the new town of San Fernando and over the fine highway of the Newhall grade, passing through a tunnel and going on to Saugus by a splendid road running all the way from Pasadena. Just after leaving San Fernando we came through Sylmar, where a big sign told us that we were passing "the largest olive orchard in the world." This is the property of the Los Angeles Olive Growers' Association. We drove for more than a mile past the ranks of grey-green trees which stretched away back to the foothills. From Saugus we turned toward Mint Canyon. We were now about to cross the great backbone of California, running north and south and dividing the valleys of the coast from the valleys of the interior. We could have crossed by the Tehachapi Pass, but preferred for this time to drive through Mint Canyon and over the Tejon Pass. All along the Canyon we saw little homesteads planted in pocket valleys. Here and there were green spots; orchards newly set out, patches of grain beginning to grow. Little wooden shacks showed where the homesteaders had first sheltered their household goods. The settlers themselves were working in their fields and orchards. There were long stretches, too, of rough country where tall yuccas, sometimes ten feet high, were blooming. At Palmdale we came out into a great plain, the mountains in the distance. A high wind was blowing, filling our eyes with dust. Somewhere on the plain the searching wind whipped my lightweight motor coat out of the tonneau where I had stowed it and I saw it no more. It was literally blown out of sight and knowledge. We had seen all along advertisements of "Palmdale Acres," and we now came to the little town itself, a tiny settlement with flamboyant signs advertising its high hopes. We read, "Keep your eye on Palmdale, 10,000 people in 1925." Close to the sign was the irrigation ditch with a thick stream of water rushing through. We realized that all the hopes of Palmdale and all the possibilities of future population were centered in that stream, which was to carry life and fertility to the great dusty plains before us. We had taken luncheon at Acton, a sordid little place with an extremely unattractive wooden hotel, poor and bare. The luncheon, cooked and served by a hard working landlady, had been better than appearances promised. We had had hot beefsteak, a good boiled potato, some crisp lettuce, and fair tea. Western people are addicted to green tea, a great affliction to one accustomed to black tea. Western hotel keepers would do well to use black tea for their tourists, as the use of green tea is, so far as I know, almost unknown in the East. Our road was rising now and we were approaching Neenach. We were driving along the foothills on the high side of another great valley. As we came near Neenach we passed an orchard to our right, the trees loaded with beautiful, velvety green almonds. To the left was another orchard, filled with neglected, dying almond trees. We had not known whether we would find at Neenach a little town or a corner grocery store. It turned out to be simply a post office in the home of a young settler who with his wife was just making his start at ranching. He was a delightful young fellow with shining white teeth, clear eyes, and an enthusiasm that was pleasant to see. A big St. Bernard dog protected his wife, who looked very picturesque in her riding costume. Although the ranchman had been brought up in a city, he had come out to these foothills, bought one hundred and sixty acres at $17.50 an acre, driven his well forty feet, got his water, and planted his cottonwood trees for his first shade. He was soon to plant his orchard and start his garden. He told us that he would have plenty of water, as the mountains on whose foot-slopes the farm lay were nine miles deep and fifteen miles long. I asked him about the orchards which we had just passed, so fruitful on the right, so sad and neglected on the left. He said that the almond orchards on the left had been planted years ago by a little colony of people who had three bad years following their planting. They became discouraged and moved away, abandoning their orchards and houses. The orchards which we had seen full of fruit were of a later planting. We asked why it was that the great spaces of Antelope Valley which stretched below the hills and off to the mountains beyond had not been taken by settlers. Our young ranchman explained that the valley which looked to be about eight miles across was really thirty miles wide, and that it was too far from water for people to settle there. I looked over the immense stretches of the valley and at the masses of tall, spiky tree-yuccas, and wished that some way might be found to irrigate those thousands of acres. If some modern Moses could strike water from a rock, which would flow through Antelope Valley, our young settler would someday look down upon hundreds of houses and white tents instead of upon lonely forests of yucca. We drove on from Neenach to the top of the grade, some 4230 feet. Huge round-shouldered hills, bare and lonely, rose on each side of us. Coming to the Lebec ranch house, we asked shelter for the night. These ranch houses are very hospitable and are willing to take the place of a hotel so far as they are able. We found the head of the house in some confusion and anxiety. His cook had left that morning and the settlement school ma'am had offered to help with the cooking in the emergency. One of the ranchmen volunteered to make the bed in our sleeping room, although he confessed that he had never made a bed in all his life before. We ate our supper with the ranchmen, sitting at an oil-cloth-covered table. We had hunks of cold meat, noodle soup with very thick, hearty noodles, stewed dried peaches, sliced onions, stewed tomatoes, and good bread and coffee. After a talk before a blazing open fire with two young electric engineers who, like ourselves, had sought shelter for the night, we had a dreamless night's slumber. In the morning we had a most interesting breakfast with a long table full of hungry ranchmen. Next us sat a big fellow who was in a rather pessimistic mood. He spoke sadly of California and its resources and very warmly of Virginia. "That's the place to live!" he said. "You can drive for a hundred miles here and not see a ranch house or a schoolhouse or a church worth looking at. In Virginia it's just like, as a fellow says, 'every drink you take, things look different.' You drive up on a knoll, and you see before you a lovely farm with a nice farmhouse, and a well-built barn and outhouses. Then you drive over another knoll, and you see another nice farmhouse. Virginia and the East for me! In this country you can walk through foxtail grass until you're ruined, and you see no buildings worth looking at." This started animated discussion as to the merits of California compared with the merits of Eastern farming country, the young school ma'am vibrating between the little kitchen and the dining room and taking her part in the conversation. She was from Indiana, and told me that while she liked California she did not approve of California's neglect of history in the public schools. She felt that the children were given no knowledge of ancient or of modern history in the teaching scheme. She assured me that her own pupils were taught history very faithfully. We were sorry to leave the ranch with its low houses and its pretty lake in the foreground. We drove on down the Pass, coming over rather precipitous roads to a last steep slope from whose height we looked off to an immense level valley which seemed to stretch away forever. Violet morning lights hung over it and it looked like an enchanted country. This was our first view of the San Joaquin Valley, through which we were to drive for many miles. [Illustration: 1., 2. and 3. Cowboy Games at Bakersfield.] As we began to cross the valley, coming first through rather dull, scrubby stretches, I saw acres of a delicate pink and white bell-shaped flower, somewhat like a morning glory, growing close to the ground, blooming luxuriantly in the midst of a whorl of green leaves. I later asked a country woman the name of the flower, but she could only tell me that they called the lovely delicate things sand flowers. As we approached Bakersfield the land grew richer and the grass was thicker and greener. Meadow larks were flying about in great numbers, singing their sweet, clear song. At Bakersfield we stopped at the New Southern Hotel, which is, like most Western hotels, European in plan. We found a delightful cafeteria known as the Clock Tower Cafeteria, kept by two women, and with most appetizing home cooking. Bakersfield is one of the most Western of California towns. Something in the swing of its citizens as they walk along, something in the wide sombreros and high boots which the visiting cowboys wear imparts a general breeziness and Western atmosphere. It is a little town with the clothes of a big town. It has very wide streets and is laid out on a generous scale. Its fine Courthouse, its beautiful new schoolhouse, its pretty homes, its residence streets with their rows of blooming oleanders, pink and white, make it an attractive town. But it must be confessed that it is very hot in Bakersfield, as it is in most towns of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys. The most interesting thing to me in Bakersfield was a leather shop, where I saw handsome Mexican saddles, very intricately and ornately stamped. These are made to order and have any amount of beautiful work upon them. At the same shop I saw handsome stamped belts and leather coin cases, long leather cuffs which cowboys affect, and tall riding boots with ornate stitching. When we left Bakersfield we saw just outside the town a perfect forest of oil derricks towering into the air, some of the wells being new ones, others having been abandoned. Bakersfield is the center of a rich oil territory, from which much wealth has flowed. In leaving the town we turned by mistake to the right instead of to the left, and found ourselves traveling toward a Grand Canyon on a miniature scale. We were driving over lonely country where the water had worn the hills into fantastic shapes and where the whole country was a series of terraces. Sometimes small tablelands stood up boldly before us, sometimes cone-shaped pieces of plateau, like small volcanoes, appeared in long rows beyond us. Beautiful purple mists and shadows hung over these carvings of nature as the sun began to decline. The country grew lonelier and wilder, and we decided that we must retrace our journey and find out where we were. As we came near to Bakersfield again we saw the camp of an engineer who was making some borings for oil. He told us that we had taken the wrong turn and directed us on our way, past the tall derricks and northeast to Tulare. So we turned our backs on the browns, yellows, and slate colors, the pinks and the lavenders of the lonely tableland country and struck north along a very fair road. We drove for twenty miles through rather level, brown, desert country, coming then into a grain country. All along there were pump houses on the ranches, connected with the electric current by heavy wires which ran from the main lines along the road to the little houses in the fields. I liked to think that the magic current streamed down those side wires from the main river of electricity, worked the pumps and brought up the water that made the whole country the fertile, grain-growing region it evidently was. We ate supper at the McFarland Hotel some twenty-five miles from Bakersfield. Our Wisconsin hostess who talked with us while her Japanese cook prepared our supper told us that three years ago there were only a few people living in tents in this region. Now the wells are down and there is a prosperous little town, the water being found only thirty feet below the surface. We came on through more fields of ripe wheat and green alfalfa. We saw one settler's tent pitched in the midst of a beautiful almond orchard, with great stacks of alfalfa near by. His wellhouse was near, and some day in the golden future he will undoubtedly build his dwelling. Eleven miles from Tulare a tall country boy came out from the shadows as we passed through a little village and asked if he might ride to Tulare with us. We tucked away his bulky newspaper bundle in the machine and gave him permission to sit on the tool box, which was fastened on the running-board. He thanked us warmly when we reached the quiet streets of Tulare and offered to pay us, but of course we assured him that we were glad to have given him a lift. We did not often do this as we were always afraid some one would be hurt in riding on the running-board. We had a comfortable room at the Hotel St. Maxon, and drove on the next day through the fertile valley to Fresno. Now we were in the region of rich vineyards and luxuriant fig trees. For the first time, as we approached Fresno, I saw whole orchards of fig trees. Fresno is a pretty town with the wide, bright streets and look of prosperity of so many California towns. It is the home of several thousand Armenian and Greek workers. Only that morning the Young Women's Christian Association had welcomed to Fresno a little woman who had come all the way from Constantinople to meet her husband. The town pays the price for being the seat of the raisin industry by being very hot in summer. [Illustration: 1. Old Grizzly, Mariposa Big Trees. 2. Old Sunset, Mariposa Big Trees.] From Fresno we drove across somewhat uninteresting country, rolling and solitary, diversified only by grain fields and stacks of alfalfa, to Madera. At Madera we turned our faces toward the high Sierras, going on to Raymond with a view to driving over the mountain road to Wawona, one of the gates of the Yosemite and very near to the famous Mariposa Grove of Big Trees. CHAPTER VI When we reached Raymond we had left the valleys behind us and were in the rough country preceding the long climb up through the high Sierras to Wawona. It was late afternoon, and as we drove along we enjoyed the wooded hills and the far views over deep gulleys to the mountains beyond, in the afternoon sunshine. We met but few people on the steep, rocky mountain road. At one point we passed a roadside group of campers for the night. They had unharnessed their weary horses, had built a fire, and were preparing their supper. The water-trough used by travelers was close by, and they had pure spring water for their needs. There were two families, with a host of children, going up into the pine woods to one of the sawmills where the men were to work. The young mother of one family had with her a little three-weeks-old baby, fat and rosy-looking as his proud father held him before the fire. The poor mother was very weary and disheartened. "I am not used to this," she said, as she folded up some bits of clothing that she had been washing for the children. The wagons looked as if furniture and clothing had been piled in "higgledy pigglety." The children and their parents slept as best they could on top of this lumpy mass. One little girl of twelve or so had a tear-stained face and a look of real suffering in her blue eyes. She had hurt her ankle in running up and down the mountain roads with the other children. I felt sorry for the poor child, as it was evident that her sprained ankle would have little care in this itinerant household. We were glad that the tired company had the mild evening air in which to lie down and rest. As we went on, the scenery grew wilder and the road grew rougher. Something ailed our machine, too. It transpired that we had a bad spark plug and there was nothing for it but to return to Raymond and have things put right in the little garage there. We did so and then we made the foolish mistake of deciding to go on, although the shadows were deepening, toward Wawona. So once more we climbed the narrow, rutted mountain road. It was astonishing how fast the twilight fell. We had thought that we still had a good hour before darkness came on, but it grew dark alarmingly fast, and we were soon driving along in forest blackness over the uneven road. We kept the horn going for fear of meeting something around the sharp corners which were so numerous, but the road was utterly lonely. Tall pines stood close to the roadside, the lamps of the motor throwing a light here and there upon their massive trunks. Clusters of manzanita branches brushed against our machine, the light flashing upon them, showing their lovely green leaves arranged like shining rosettes around their wine-colored stems. Everything was wet with recent rain and wonderfully beautiful as the light of the lamps flashed here and there. At last we passed a little cottage by the roadside. There was a dim light in the house. The door opened and the figure of a man appeared dark against the background of the lighted room. We called out to him and asked how much farther Miami Lodge was. "Just a few miles," he said, and very kindly offered to telephone to the Lodge that we were coming, so they would have some supper for us. It seemed a long distance to us as we crept cautiously around the shoulder of the mountain, down steep pitches and up long slopes. But at last we saw the welcome lights of the Lodge. How pleasant it was to see an open fire in the sitting room, to eat a hot supper in the delightful dining room, and to find a dainty sleeping room furnished with a woman's taste. Miami Lodge is a half-way house between Raymond and Wawona. It is an ideal resting spot for people who love the pine woods and the quiet and solitude of the forest. [Illustration: 1. Summit of Pass between Raymond and Wawona, entering Yosemite Valley. 2. Miami Lodge, on way to Yosemite.] In the morning we were on our way to the Big Trees. We decided to leave our car at a humble but very pleasant little forest inn called Fish Camp Hotel, presided over by some Maine people who long ago left the pines of Maine for the pines of California. They have a mountain ranch which they leave in the summer to come up into the higher forests and to keep a little hostel and grocery store. It is a long walk from Fish Camp Hotel to the boundary fence of the National Park where the famous Big Trees are. If one prefers to drive one's car over a somewhat rocky but perfectly passable mountain road and to leave it just outside the fence, one can do so. In this way, one's walking powers are kept fresh for the memorable expedition among the Big Trees. One needs a long day in which to see the Trees. We felt sorry for the tourists who were being driven about and who had only an allotted time in which to see the Trees. We had our luncheon with us and were independent. We walked miles along the Park drives. We stood under the Trees, of which there are some five hundred, gazing up at their distant tops. We amused ourselves by measuring their enormous girths with our arms. Most of the time we simply gazed at them from one vantage point and another, lost in wonder at their height, so much greater than we had dreamed, and at their bulk, so enormous as to be difficult to take in. The Big Trees were far bigger, far grander, far more beautiful in their coloring than we had been prepared for. When the afternoon sunlight struck their trunks and they glowed with the wonderful soft, deep red which is their color, we were enchanted. We felt awed, too, not only by their great size, but by their great age. We were in the presence of hoary old men, a detached little company of Ancients who were living long, long before our generation ever came upon the scene, and who had passed through much of the world's history. It was with a glowing sense of satisfaction and happiness and wonder that we came away from our leisurely day among the Trees. Some day we hope to go back and to repeat that experience. [Illustration: 1. Camp Ahwahnee, Yosemite Valley. 2. Grizzly Giant, Mariposa Big Trees. 3. Yosemite Falls. 4. Cabin in Mariposa Grove.] We met later a gentleman who said that he had spent such a day, had had a supper with the forest keeper who sells photographs and souvenirs in his little cottage, and then had lain down to sleep on the pine needles under the great Trees themselves. "I saw the stars pinnacled in their branches," said he. We had a comfortable night at Fish Camp Hotel, our fellow guests at the next table being a party of Scotch stone-cutters who had come up for a holiday from the granite quarry at Raymond where they were quarrying and shaping stones for some Sacramento public buildings. Bagpipes came out in the evening and the air was full of Scotch music and Scotch jokes. The next morning we drove on to Wawona, passing over the height of the grade and descending a little to come into the lovely Wawona meadows, in whose midst stands the old white wooden hotel which has dispensed delightful hospitality under the same landlords for forty years past. Mr. Washburn is the only one left of the brothers who built up the Wawona Hotel, and his son now bears the burden of the hotel administration. People are always coming and going at Wawona. They are either on their way to the Yosemite; or having seen the Yosemite they are on their way out with a look at the Big Trees, eight miles away, as they pass by. We left our machine at the Wawona garage and took the 12 o'clock stage drawn by four splendid horses, to drive through the meadow and along the mountain for thirty miles to the Yosemite Valley. Later, the Wawona road was to be opened to motor travel. But the leisurely way of approach by the stage was very agreeable. The drive ran through the forest. We saw a pheasant in the bracken by the roadside with her brood of little ones. She walked with her head high, affecting a careless dignity to hide her anxiety, while her babies crouched close to the ground and looked like little brown dots as they skimmed along. In the late afternoon, we saw a coyote out for his supper. Our stage driver cracked his whip at him and shouted his contempt. We saw the beautiful deer cross and recross the road, coming down to their drinking places. They are protected by the State and come and go with only the mountain lion to frighten them. And at last after twenty miles of drive through tall pines we came to the famous Inspiration Point where the first view of the Valley burst upon us. We had been driving over a high plateau, and now we were to descend more than a thousand feet into the deep cut which forms the Yosemite. Our stage driver evidently took a genuine pleasure, the pleasure of the showman, in reining up his horses at the psychological moment and allowing us to drink in the view that burst dramatically upon us. There was the green level floor of the Valley far below us; there was El Capitan rising in massive grandeur, a sheer wall of rock, in evening greys and lavenders, above the Valley; there was the Bridal Veil--a silver thread of water falling six hundred feet. And beyond were the Valley walls rising in the distance. In my opinion everyone who wishes to have the most striking entrance to the Yosemite should come in by the Wawona road, and have the great view at Inspiration Point fire the imagination first. A little lower down, we came again on the winding road to the same view, only from a lower vantage point and therefore more intimate. This point is known as Artists' Point; and after this we were hurrying down the mountain slope, the eager horses well aware that they were approaching food and rest. Soon we were on the Valley floor, walls rising to the left and right of us, and ahead of us. Behind us was the way out of the Valley and above us was the mountain road by which we had just come down. Tourists were dropped at various camps, and we drove on to Camp Curry, the last stopping point of the stage. The Yosemite Valley is somewhat like a blind alley. It has but one entrance on the level of the Valley floor. As you drive to the farther end of the Valley, you become aware that you are approaching nearer and nearer to mountain walls, and ere long you are literally against a barrier, all the way from a thousand to three or four thousand feet in height. Anyone who would leave the Yosemite by other than the entrance on the Valley level at its one end must climb. Camp Curry has the great advantage of being located in the closed end of the valley and thus very near to many of the mountain trails. Its proprietor and landlord has built up Camp Curry to be the big, cosmopolitan, happy, democratic settlement that it now is. The food in the dining pavilion is plain but well cooked, and abundantly served in family fashion. The little tents with their two single beds are very comfortable. The camp fire at night, around which almost the entire camp assembles in that intimacy and yet detachment, which belongs to those who dream before a camp fire, is the heart of the camp life, where Mr. Curry gives nightly a family talk on trees, rocks, flowers, and trails. Hot water is a plentiful luxury at Camp Curry, and the host often says, "Camp Curry is on the water wagon, but it is a hot water wagon." [Illustration: 1. Driving Home the Cows. 2. Meeting in the Great American Desert. 3. Bridal Veil from Artist's Point, Yosemite Valley.] "A year ago," says Mr. Curry, "we put up 10,000 lunches--that meant 20,000 wooden plates, and some 50,000 pieces of white tissue paper. You can see how necessary it is to burn or bury your luncheon papers when you have eaten your lunch on the trails, or in the forests." Never in any other place in the United States have I heard so much talk of tramps and trails as at Camp Curry in the Yosemite Valley. Most Americans seem to be too indolent or too unused to walking to have the enthusiasm of the trampers and the mountain climbers whom one meets in Europe. But I felt that I was back in the atmosphere of the Tyrol and of Switzerland when I reached Camp Curry and saw the people starting off in the morning for long days of walking and climbing. "I arrived at Camp Curry late in the afternoon just as the people were coming from their day's walks," said a young lady to me. "I thought I had never seen such disreputable looking people. Their boots were muddy, their hair was dishevelled, their faces were flushed and sunburnt. But in a day or two I was coming in from long walks in just the same condition myself." But who that can walk and climb would forego the thrilling pleasure of the long climb to Glacier Point, and the long climb past Nevada and Vernal Falls, and down again into the Valley? Who would miss the long climb up to the Yosemite Falls, where one from a perilous and yet protected vantage point just above the Falls sees that great volume of water launch itself for the awful plunge into the air, and so down into the Valley? Fortunately, there are sturdy mules and horses, sure-footed and plodding, for those who prefer riding to climbing. No one need miss the truly grand experience of the view from Glacier Point, where by staying over night at the hotel one may have both sunset and sunrise. What a world of mountains one looks out upon! There is Half Dome, looking as if a gigantic hand had thrust it up through the earth and into the air, leaving its other half far, far below. There stretches before one a vast, upper country of irregular table lands and peaks, many still white with snow. One is really looking far out over the remote regions of the snowy, pine-covered, high Sierras. [Illustration: 1. Royal Arches, Yosemite Valley. 2. View into Yosemite Valley. 3. Dome and Half Dome, Yosemite Valley.] We took a day for a long excursion to Cloud's Rest. This meant twenty-two miles of mule riding, but it also meant an even more comprehensive and exalted view from the mountain's top, of frozen lakes below, deep canyons, lofty mountain peaks where storms were raging far away, and solitary table lands. Only people of endurance can take such a jaunt, as one's joints grow very weary and aching from the slow riding hour after hour. When we were at Camp Curry, a party of some forty Germans, men and women, were there for the pleasure of "doing" the entire Valley. No climb was too hard for them. They were known as the "German climbing bunch." Every morning one might see them with their paper bags of luncheon and their climbing-sticks, walking gaily along to the beginning of some one of the mountains trails. They entertained us at the evening camp fire with their German songs, and were altogether an energetic and genial company. The open air life and the grandeur of the trails were very hard to leave, but we came away one noon and once more drove back to Wawona. There we were detained for a week by a break in the car. We started out one morning when the rain was pouring to take the Mariposa road. We found that with no chains and with the machine slipping and sliding on the steep clay road, progress would be impossible. I tried to help the matter by putting freshly cut branches of odorous balsam fir under the wheels to help them grip. I walked behind the machine with a log, throwing it under the wheels as they advanced foot by foot, T. fighting at the steering wheel like the pilot of a drifting ship. But it was impossible to make headway. We met some teamsters who had evidently been taking something hot to counteract the discomfort of their wet exteriors. One said solemnly of the sun when we expressed a wish that it would appear, "Yes, the sun is our father, and our step-father." Then he added, "I'd worship the sun if I were a heathen. I kinder do, now." He went on irrelevantly, "I do think Roosevelt's one of the best men we've got. I do think so. I do so." We were close to a deserted logging camp, which looked doubly melancholy in the falling rain. There was the deserted runway, there were the empty cottages, with broken windows and doors swinging open. Back of the cottages were piles of tin cans. One cottage still bore its old name, "Idle Burg." All about were blooming columbines and the odorous balsam. There was nothing for it but to go back to Wawona, which we did. When we reached there, we found that we had a broken spring. We spent several days waiting for a new spring to come up from Raymond. In the meantime we discovered the loveliness of the Wawona meadows and explored the walks about the hotel. We went down to the blacksmith shop to see the big stage horses shod and the smith handle them as if they were his children. "California is God's country," said he. "I came here forty years ago, but I aint done much for myself until the last two or three years." At last the motor car was ready, and we had once more a drive through the forest, stopping for a delightful dinner and evening at Miami Lodge. The next day we were dropping down from the high Sierras by the Mariposa road. Turning to the right, before reaching Raymond, the foothills of the Sierras made very rough, broken country for travel, and our road was indifferent. We passed poor little ranches dropped in among the rocks and gulleys. We saw lonely looking women sitting on the porches of unpainted wooden ranch houses, and finally we came to Mariposa, which reminded me of Bret Harte more than any other place I had seen in California. [Illustration: 1. In the Lower Sierras, California. 2. Eastern Slope of Sierras.] Mariposa is a mining town from which the miners have departed. In mining days it was a busy center, with miners eating and drinking, and walking up and down its little street. But some of the mines have been closed, the miners have gone to other districts, and the town is left high and dry. A few men were hanging idly about in front of the dreary looking little stores. The two places that seemed to be alive were a general department store kept by an Italian, and a little restaurant kept by a Chinaman. We bought our gasoline from Mr. Trabucco and went in to have some tea at John Chinaman's place. He was a shrewd looking, middle-aged Chinaman in a very pessimistic mood. "You see dis town? You see more'n I do," he said sadly. We assured him that we saw very little town. Indeed, Mariposa is just the sad little shell of a town from which most of the life has moved away, leaving the dingy little wooden buildings along the dusty street. Our Chinaman charged us fifteen cents apiece for a single cup of tea, flanked by some very stale store cookies, which he took from the show window. He evidently felt that he should make hay while the sun was shining. From Mariposa, we had a long afternoon drive over lonely, rolling country to Snelling. When we reached its one little hotel, we found that we were too late for supper. California has an eight hour law, and domestic servants cannot be kept over time. In large hotels they have different shifts; but in country places the landlord must let his cook go at the appointed time. However, our host was disposed to be accommodating. "The missus and I are always here," he said, and went over to buy a bit of steak for our supper. We were very tired after the extremely rough driving in the foothills, and slept heavily. Snelling lies in a valley where there is evidently plenty of warmth and water. The fig trees are wonderfully luxuriant. We passed some beautiful grain ranches the next morning and so came to Stockton, where at the Hotel Stockton we saw the red, white, and blue sign that was to guide us across the continent. We were at last on the Lincoln Highway, the old road with the new name which runs from ocean to ocean and which is destined to be one of the famous highways of the world. The Stockton Inn is a beautiful modern hostel, European in plan, with every convenience, not to say luxury. One should go up on its roof garden for an afternoon cup of tea just for the pleasure of looking down on the San Joaquin River, whose headwaters run up into the town. Boats lie all along the piers, and it looks very like a bit of Holland. I could have easily believed that I was looking down on an Amsterdam canal from the roof garden of the Stockton Hotel. All through California, but more particularly between Monterey and Los Angeles and along the coast, we had seen workmen tramping from place to place, sometimes alone, usually in bands of six or seven. They carried their blankets rolled on their backs, and many of them were clear-eyed, respectable looking men. We saw one such man in Stockton on his way to take the river boat. He had his blanket on his back, and he wore a somewhat battered straw hat. His trousers were ragged, and he looked as if he had tramped many a weary mile. He was tall and bony, with a sandy beard. I took him to be a Scot. I was so anxious to help the poor fellow out that I urged T. to speak to him and offer him a suit of clothes. To our surprise the man refused them in a very free and easy, genial way. "O, nay, thank you," he said, "I'm doin' all right." [Illustration: 1. Roof Garden, Stockton Hotel. 2. Head of San Joaquin River, Stockton.] Stockton is a city with wide streets, an open plaza, and a Courthouse surrounded by a border of green lawn and palm trees. I saw a turbaned Hindoo lying asleep under a palm tree in the afternoon sun on the Courthouse lawn. White men lay asleep near him. It was at Stockton that we saw our first rodeo or round-up. The rodeo is a part professional and part amateur Wild-West show. The cowboys wear their gayest shirts, of red and pink and variegated silks. They wear their handsomest "chaps" or riding trousers, cut very wide, and made of buckskin or of sheepskin with the wool side out. They have on their widest-brimmed, highest crowned sombreros and their most ornately stitched boots. The cowgirls are in brown or grey velveteen, or perhaps in khaki. They, too, wear broad-brimmed hats and riding boots with spurs. Some of them wear red silk handkerchiefs knotted about their necks. We saw such an exhibition of cattle lassoing and of roping and throwing steers, of rope spinning and of trick riding as we had never before seen. Doubtless it is an old story for Californians, but it was all new and interesting to us. The most interesting feat was the roping and throwing of a steer. Two men ride down the steer, and as one of them approaches the beast he slips off his horse and catches the steer with a lightning stroke around his neck. He endeavors by casting his weight on the beast's neck and by dexterously twisting it to throw the animal. Usually he succeeds; but sometimes a stubborn beast refuses to be taken by surprise, plants his feet firmly, and lowers his dangerous horns. Then follows a locked struggle, and it is a serious matter for the cattleman if his hold slips. [Illustration: 1. and 2. Cowboy Rodeo, Stockton, Cal. 3. Hereford Bull, Wyoming. 4. Cowboy Rodeo, Laramie, Wyoming.] CHAPTER VII When we left Stockton we felt that the great adventure had really begun. We were now to traverse the Lincoln Highway and were to be guided by the red, white, and blue marks; sometimes painted on telephone poles, sometimes put up by way of advertisement over garage doors or swinging on hotel signboards; sometimes painted on little stakes, like croquet goals, scattered along over the great spaces of the desert. We learned to love the red, white, and blue, and the familiar big L which told us that we were on the right road. Had we taken the Lincoln Highway literally from ocean to ocean, we should have driven direct from San Francisco to Stockton. As it was we saw California first, and came in at Stockton. It was a bright, sunny day, the thirteenth of June, when we left Stockton for Sacramento. We drove along an excellent asphalt road, through grain fields and orchards, the almond orchards being loaded with their green, velvety fruit. It was late afternoon when we reached our hostel, the Sacramento Hotel. Sacramento is even to-day more or less a frontier town. Judging by appearances, there are more saloons in proportion to the other shops of Sacramento than in any other town in California, unless it be San Francisco. The town is well shaded. One sees many wooden buildings of old-fashioned architecture, the old mansard roof being much in evidence. A most pleasant spot in Sacramento is the beautifully kept park around the fine State House. Its walks are shaded by a fine row of palms, another of magnolias which were in full bloom, and yet another of beautiful old cedars. I liked the "Sacramento Bee" building which has two interesting bas reliefs of printers of the Middle Ages working a hand press. Sacramento is very hot in summer, its stone pavements and asphalt streets radiating heat like an open oven. [Illustration: 1. Philips Hotel on Lincoln Highway near Lake Tahoe. 2. View on Lake Tahoe. 3. Looking up Yosemite Valley. 4. Upper Yosemite Falls.] Leaving Sacramento, we drove across rolling plains, mostly grain fields, to Folsom. From Folsom to the busy little town of Placerville we had more broken country and a decidedly bumpy road. We found the drive from Folsom to Placerville uninteresting, the forest being scrubby, the road dry and dusty. As soon as we left Placerville we came into beautiful country. We had stretches of distant mountain views and magnificent wooded hills all about us. A mountain stream, the American River, green and foaming, roared alongside the road. The road was in excellent condition and ran on through the forest for miles, flanked by sugar pines, cedars, firs, balsams, and yellow pines. Squirrels darted back and forth in front of us. The wild white lilac was blooming at the roadside. Ascending hour by hour, we passed several pleasant-looking mountain inns and came at last to Phillips', a simple place where they gave us, outside the main house, a tiny cottage all to ourselves. It had one room and from its door we looked straight away into the forest. They gave us some beefsteak, some fried potatoes, some canned corn, carrots, cake, custard, and tea for our supper. We left our door open at night, that the fresh mountain air might come in freely. I awoke early in the morning and saw the first lights on the hills. Away off in the forest I heard a hermit thrush calling. After breakfast we drove along through pine forest, the snow on the hills not very far away, and soon came to the summit of the Pass, 7395 feet. A party in a Reo car had been over the Pass three weeks earlier, toiling through the snow, and had posted several signs, painted in flamboyant red: "First car up May 25, 1914." Below us was the marshy valley surrounding the southern end of Lake Tahoe. We saw the exquisite green of these watery meadows and the lovely clumps of pines growing here and there in the valley. Beyond stretched the great lake surrounded by lofty mountains--a glorious view. We drove carefully down the steep hill on to the plain and past Meyers. The road was very sandy, and as we drove among the pine trees it was in some places so narrow that the hubs of our machine just cleared the tree trunks. We went first to Tallac, where there is a very pleasant hotel on the lake. But it was full and we turned back to Al Tahoe, a hotel in a great open space at the southern end of the lake, with pine trees scattered here and there, and a little colony of cottages outside the main building. We established ourselves in one of these cottages, a one-room house with three wooden sides and a long curtain across its open side. The fourth side of the building had been literally lifted up and was supported by wooden props. In this way it became a roof for the little platform of boards which stretched in front of the cottage, and a sheltered porch was thus improvised. At night we drew our calico curtain across the open front of our cottage, and so slept practically in the open air. [Illustration: 1. Mountain Stream in California. 2. Fallen Leaf Lake, near Lake Tahoe. 3. Mountains around Lake Tahoe.] From Al Tahoe one can make many excursions on foot or by boat. As there was still snow on the road we did not undertake the motor drive from Al Tahoe to Tahoe Tavern and Donner Lake. We did drive the nine or ten miles of mountain road to Fallen Leaf Lake, which is a most exquisite mountain lake right under the shadow of Mt. Tallac. The trails from the hotel at Fallen Leaf Lake are very numerous and attract many enthusiastic mountain climbers. The first rain that we had experienced in all our long journey we had at Al Tahoe. When we left our hotel early in the morning to drive to Carson City the rain was still falling, but it cleared within an hour after our start, and we had no more rain until we reached Ohio. Lake Tahoe on our left was wonderfully beautiful in the morning light. The rich manzanita and other bushes were shining with moisture, the tall pines were reflected in the clear depths of the lake, the shores were wild and lonely. The road rose high above the lake, and in one or two places ran along the edge of a precipitous cliff. After leaving the lake we came into a rather desolate mountain region where the whole character of the country changed. The road was a narrow shelf along a barren, rocky mountain side. There were but few trees. The color of the rock and of patches of brilliant yellow flowers, growing along the roadside, gave variety to the landscape. Otherwise it was somewhat dreary and forbidding after the rich forest foliage that we had just left along the lake. As we rounded mountain shoulder after shoulder we began to look off into green cultivated farming valleys. Next we were coming down a steep hill and into Nevada's little capital town of Carson City. The Capitol building stands at the foot of this long hill road, and as one approaches from the top of the hill it looks as if one must drive straight through the Capitol. But the road turns sharply to the left as one reaches the Capitol street. This one long street with its hotel, its pleasant shops, and its Capitol is about all there is of the town. We drove through the town straight on to Reno. [Illustration: Lincoln Highway near Donner Lake. Donner Lake in distance.] Reno is a pleasant town, nobly situated on a high plateau with lofty mountains towering near. The Truckee River flows straight down from the heart of the snows through the center of the town and is spanned by a handsome bridge. The substantial Riverside Hotel stands on the bank of the river near the bridge. Somehow my impressions of Reno all seem to cluster around the swift river and the bridge. The library, the hotel, the Y. M. C. A., and other public buildings are close to the river. If you walk up the river you come to a little island in the center of the rushing stream which is a tiny Coney Island for the Reno residents during the summer. Bridges are flung from bank to island on both sides of the river. High above the river rise the houses of the well-to-do people of the town, some of them handsome structures. At the little hairdresser's where I had a shampoo in the delicious soft snow water of the river they pointed out to me the home of "our millionaire." So I crossed the river and went over and up to the higher side of the town, where was a very beautiful stucco mansion surrounded by wide lawns, with a view over the river on one side and off to the mountains on the other. It was a charming situation, and its charm was enhanced for me by the fact that just a short distance away, outside the town, began the grey-green desert with its sage brush whose pungent, aromatic odor was to be in my nostrils for so many days to come. I asked my hairdresser whether Reno had many people in residence waiting for their divorces. She said that the new law, by virtue of which they must have a year's residence in Nevada, instead of the old period of six months, had cut down, so to speak, the business of divorces. She assured me that the Reno people deplored this as formerly the town was full of boarders and lodgers "doing time." I confess I was somewhat shocked by such a sordid point of view. I found myself looking quietly around the Riverside dining room to see whether I could pick out in the well filled room any candidates for divorce, and then I reflected that they were probably looking at me with the same query in their minds. [Illustration: 1. Crossing Mississippi at Clinton, Iowa. 2. Bridge near Reno.] At Reno we followed our rule of visiting university buildings. We had seen the famous State University and the equally famous Stanford University in California, and wished to continue our study of college buildings and of the general atmosphere of Western institutions. Unfortunately it was holiday time, but we were shown about most courteously by a young instructor. The Nevada State University buildings are modest and comparatively few in number, but in good taste. They have a fine situation on a high plateau, wind-swept and mountain-surrounded, at the edge of the town. Westerners call these lofty terraces, which drop down one below another in step fashion at the foot of the great mountains, benches. We had seen the very noble School of Mines at the University of California, erected by Mrs. Hearst to her husband's memory. We were equally interested in the smaller but very pretty building erected by Mr. Clarence Mackay for the University of Nevada School of Mines. A striking statue of Mr. Mackay in his miner's dress and with his miner's pick, stands in front of the building and looks down the green lengths of the open campus. Our guide told us that the attendance at the School of Mines varies annually with the fluctuations of mining fortunes. In good years when the mines are doing well, the University has between fifty and sixty students of mining engineering. In poor mining years the attendance drops off. He told us some interesting tales of the "good old days" when miners wore two shirts sewed together at the bottom, thus making a sort of bag, and helped themselves liberally to gold while in the diggings. He said that a miner had been known to pay a mine foreman a thousand dollars for the privilege of working in a rich corner of the mine, with the result that he would be able to make up the price of his privilege within two or three days. He explained that there was a general rule to the effect that a miner should not be stripped for examination except to his shirt; with possible exceptions if he were under very strong suspicion. I was sorry to come away from Reno. I liked the little town, with the sound of the rushing river coming in at my hotel window, and the feeling of space and freedom that the high situation gave. Reno is 4500 feet above sea level. From Reno we drove on to Fallon, a little town where we spent the night. I took my last look at the high Sierras as we drove across the grassy plains in leaving Reno. There they were, still snowy, towering above the town. We came along by the river, but left it later for a more or less hilly road across rather barren country. We stopped at a little roadside place where there was a small grocery next to a tiny dwelling, to ask for some luncheon. The groceryman was very dubious and non-committal and referred us to his wife. I had noticed that at our approach she fled to some improvised chicken coops back of the little dwelling. So I tracked her to her lair and found the poor little thing really standing at bay. She was a small woman, overshadowed by an immense Mexican straw hat. She said to me somewhat defiantly and almost tearfully that she couldn't possibly do another drop of work. She explained that she had the railroad men to care for when they came in from the road, and that she had two hundred chickens to look after. "I carry all the water for them myself," she said tearfully. I looked around at the hot, dusty little settlement, with no spear of grass, and felt sorry for her. I told her that we wouldn't for the world inconvenience her, whereat she softened and told me that if we would drive on to the next settlement we could get some luncheon. Which we did, and a very indifferent luncheon it was. However, it was spiced by an ardent conversation between T. and a railroad man on the foreign policy of the present Administration. A woman looks on at these encounters, into which men plunge without a moment's introduction or hesitation, and into which they throw themselves so earnestly, with admiration tinged with awe. [Illustration: 1. Smelter near Ely, Nevada. 2. Lahontan Dam, Nevada.] As we drove along the dusty road a short, rather thick snake, its back marked by shining black diamonds, wriggled hurriedly across the road in front of us, escaping to the sage brush. I asked later what this snake was, for I felt certain that it was poisonous. Sure enough, it was a diamond-backed rattle snake. We came soon to another little town where there was a good hotel. Hanging on the wall of the hotel was a painting of the proposed Lahontan Dam and the country which its life-giving streams would touch. We decided, instead of going direct to Fallon, to drive across country to the Dam, making a slight detour. We were very glad that we did so, for we found the young superintendent of the Dam construction, a Brown University man, very courteous indeed. We went to look at the enormous pile of sand and clay which has been banked up day after day and week after week until the Lahontan Dam is the largest earth dam in the world. We saw cement spillways, one on each side of the earth dam proper, their tall steps planned to break the fall of the water at any time of great flood and pressure. We saw the lake itself with its measuring tower and gate already sixty feet under the rising water. Mr. Tillinghast told us that the lake stretches back into the hills and the canyon for twenty miles. We heard of the millions of fertile acres which this water, already beginning to be released in a rushing stream, was to make possible. Some miles back we had seen irrigated country, green and fertile, cut, so to speak, right out of the desert. Alfalfa was growing luxuriantly and was being cured in high green stacks under the sun. Settlers' little cottages were a visible promise of the future, just as they had been in California. We congratulated Mr. Tillinghast on his work, and told him that in days to come he should bring his grandchildren to see the Lahontan Dam, a splendid monument to his work and the work of the men with him. We saw where he and his assistant engineer lived with their families. They had small but comfortable quarters made of houses built of tar paper. Some chicken yards were near, and an improvised tennis court was in front of the little row of houses. Near by was a little schoolhouse for the children of the settlement. Here New England women, city born and bred, were living happily with their children while their husbands built the great Dam. One lady told us that her relatives in Providence commiserated her lot. "But," said she, "the boys are so well and live such a free and happy life in this glorious air that we really dread being moved to another piece of work when the Dam is finished." From Lahontan we picked our way across the desert with its sage brush and its spaces, to Fallon. When we left Fallon we had before us a very trying drive. The country east of Fallon, past Salt Wells Ranch and as far as Sand Springs, was in bad condition because of recent heavy rains. We met heavy wagons drawn by ten, twelve, fourteen, and sometimes sixteen horses and mules, struggling madly and almost hopelessly through the sticky mud. The drivers were cracking their whips, yelling and swearing, and the poor animals' flanks and bellies were thick with mud. The heavy wagons were piled high with bales and boxes. In some instances the horses of one team were being unharnessed to be added to another team where the wagon stuck hopelessly in the mud. A country woman told me later that she had seen the horses of these trucking teams come in at night, their flanks covered with the dried blood which had streamed down from the wounds made by a pitchfork in the hands of a desperate and angry teamster determined to get his team started out of a mud hole. We had an advantage because of the broad tires of our machine, and got on very well by picking our way across the plain and keeping well to the left of a long stretch filled with salt water holes and with a fairly large salt lake. A new road had been made by travelers, far away from the regular road, which ran close to this small inland sea and which was a hopeless quagmire. The land about us was dreary and desolate and yet had its own charm. Off to the left were immense sand hills blown up by the wind, and barren, rocky hills, the Wind Mountains. We came at last to the little station known as Sand Springs, which is simply a lodging place for the teamsters and their horses for the night. We could look down from the plateau on which the little house and the barns stood, upon the white and clay-colored, desolate spaces of the salty valley below. The landlady welcomed us cordially and gave us a plain but hearty lunch. She was a Californian and told me that she and her husband missed the green hills and fields of their own State. She said that they had wonderful salt for curing and packing their winter meats from the lake down in the valley. She said that the salt could be raked up in great heaps, white and coarse but with great strength and savor. She was mourning the loss of her cows, which had disappeared. They had been gone a month and she feared that in wandering away on the mountain ranges they had been driven off by "cattle rustlers." From Sand Springs we drove on through a more hilly country, the road winding along through an open canyon. We passed Frenchman's Flat, where there was a little restaurant and where a Frenchman came out to pass the time of day. He greeted us very pleasantly and would doubtless have given us a good meal if we had not already had one. We then crossed another great level and passed three ranches known as West Gate, Little Gate, and East Gate. We were coming into a much more fertile country, a high valley with mountains rising on either side. Ahead of us, marked by its tall cottonwood trees, was Alpine Ranch, a part of the big Williams estate and our destination for the night. It was very cheering to drive through the paddock, cross a bubbling little stream, and come up alongside the long, low, pleasant ranch house. [Illustration: 1. On the Lincoln Highway. 2. Ranch House at East Gate, Nov. 3. Road Scene near Rawlins, Wyoming.] We had had as traveling companion from Fallon, across the Salt Flats and through the hills, a young commercial man from San Francisco driving his Ford car through to Utah. We were both glad to make the journey across the desert in company, hoping to be of mutual assistance in case of any accident to our cars. Mr. N. now proposed to take supper at Alpine Ranch and to travel by night in order to gain time. We warned him that he might get into trouble, but he assured us that he often traveled at night and enjoyed the stillness and the freedom to speed along. We found Mr. and Mrs. Dudley of the ranch hospitable and willing to give us bed and board. It is very pleasant for those who are willing to forego luxuries to stop at farm houses and ranch houses, to take the fare and sleep upon the beds given them, and to enjoy the talk of the people and the contact with real ranch life. We had a delightful evening with the Dudleys. We ate our supper at a long table filled with ranchmen, and took part in an animated conversation on the merits of the present Administration. We ate from a red tablecloth, but that did not trouble us. After supper, in the soft evening air, we had a talk with the family as to the advantages of the government ownership of railways. A woman from a nearby town took an earnest share in the conversation and showed herself well acquainted with the arguments for and against such ownership. The master of the ranch told us something of his difficulty in keeping men steadily at work on the ranch. He said that they came and went constantly in spite of good pay, steady work, and kindly treatment. He said that it was very difficult to get a man to stay more than two years. He would bring his roll of bedding, as is Western custom, take his place in the bunk house and at the table and in the fields for a time, but he could not be persuaded to stay long. The wandering habit had too strong a grip upon him. We went out into the ample paddock to see the mules and horses roving comfortably about. Two of the wild horses of the plains had recently been captured and brought in. Both were going through a course of discipline which the ranchman assured us would have to be made more severe later on. One was a beautiful young mare with her colt following her closely. She had a heavy yoke bar hanging by a sort of collar from her neck, and so arranged as to clog and trip her if she attempted to run. She was peacefully wandering about, but snorted with fear as we came near her. Her master assured us that she could easily be tamed, and that she was not to be driven or saddled, but was to be used as a bell mare. That is, she was to be the leader of the herd let out on the plains. The ranchman explained that a company of horses will not leave a mare with a young colt, consequently she is used to keep them from straying away long distances. The other horse was a fine animal but much less docile of spirit. "I feel sorry for him," said his master; "he has got a lot to go through with, but he must learn; there is no other way for him." The animal had both his fore legs and hind legs "hand" cuffed, only a short chain being used on the shackles. He was in this way so hobbled that he had to move by little leaps forward, first his fore feet, then his hind feet. By this clumsy hopping he managed to get about. "He must first learn to accept this and then we will go on with his education," said his master. He looked very wild and untamed of spirit, poor fellow, and made frantic efforts to rush away as we came near him. But he had already found out that his cruel chains were inexorable. We walked out into the lovely valley and toward the purple hills that rose above it. One can never tire of the evenings and the mornings of the great Western plains and table lands. Nowhere else have I seen such wonderful sunsets; glorious in crimsons, purples, violets, rose lavenders, ashes of roses, and finally soft greys. Nowhere have I seen lovelier dawns, the air so crystal clear, the morning light so full of rose and lavender mysteries, the whole day so full of wide and happy promise. Mr. N. had insisted on going on after supper at the ranch. We had seen him disappear down the valley, his machine finally hidden in acres of grey-green sage brush. The next morning we drove on, passing at the end of the valley through a short but rough canyon, with rocky walls to the left and right. There we saw a board sign marking "Water 100 feet down." Doubtless this was a boon to travelers in the old days. Once through the canyon, we came out into another wide valley, lonely and spacious. As we drove along, we saw ahead of us what seemed to be a small motor car by the roadside. "I believe that's N's car!" said T. As we came up to it we saw that the two left wheels were hopelessly down in a deep rut. Mr. N. had stuck his card in the windshield of the car, and had written on it, "Gone for some boards; wait until I come back." Soon we saw him coming across the desert with some loose boards in his arms. We found that the poor fellow had been there from ten o'clock the night before until ten o'clock in the morning, the hour of our passing. He had been bowling along comfortably and somewhat sleepily the previous night, when suddenly his car bumped into a muddy rut from which he found it impossible to extricate the machine. He told us that he had worked frantically and futilely until about midnight. Then he put out his lights, wrapped himself up as best he could, and slept until seven. He said that utter stillness and darkness were about him. "Not even a jack rabbit passed." At seven he again began to struggle with his car. He had the sure hope that we would come along sooner or later. He had calculated that we would arrive about eleven. When we found him he had just gone to a deserted, falling ranch house to find a few boards to be used as levers. He and T., taking our machine, now drove to the ranch house and brought back a goodly supply of boards and some heavier pieces of timber which they had torn from the dropping fences. The boards they put in the rut in front of the wheels in order that they might get a grip when once they started. The heavier timbers they used as levers. And so by dint of hard work and by the help of two young men who passed in their motor half an hour after our arrival, the front wheel was pried out of the sticky mud, and the car was once more gotten on firm ground. It was past one o'clock when we climbed up the bare road to the high town of Austin and went to the International Hotel for our luncheon. What with lack of sleep and his long fast Mr. N. was quite worn out. A good luncheon prepared by a Japanese cook and served by a natty and very debonair Japanese waiter put us all in better trim. [Illustration: 1. Cattle on Nevada Desert. 2. Deserted Mining Town in Nevada. 3. Mining town Cemetery in Nevada. 4. In the Nevada Desert.] Two miles beyond Austin we were 9000 feet above sea level. As we reached this height we could, looking back, see Austin below us. We also had a fine view of the desert mountains. Here I began to understand the conformation of the Nevada country. We were passing from one great valley into another, hour after hour. When I looked on the map of Nevada, I found a series of short mountain ranges. I could see what we were doing in our travel. We were descending into a valley, crossing its immense width, coming up on to a more or less lofty pass, usually bare, and descending into another valley. It was very fascinating, this rising and falling with always the new vista of a new valley just opening before us. But now came tribulations. Mr. N. had evidently wrenched his machine in his struggle to free it the night before. He began to have trouble, and traveled more and more haltingly a little way behind us. T. felt a personal responsibility for him and we were continually stopping to wait for him. Finally we halted at the head of a pass before plunging down what turned out to be a long descent. We had just climbed up from a wide valley and could see nothing of our fellow traveler on the slope behind us. T. left the car and went back; and while I waited, looking off at the mountains, two women reached my hilltop, the older one driving the Ford car in which they were traveling. They looked like women of the plains, perfectly able to take care of themselves and to meet emergencies. They had food supplies with them, and two dogs as fellow passengers. The one, a fox terrier, was tied in a box in the tonneau and looked very unhappy. The other, a spaniel, was running back and forth on the rear seat and whining with anxiety to get out. His mistress told me that he was one of the greatest hunters in Nevada, and that he was anxious to go off in the sage brush on a grand chase. Just here the two men came up the hill with Mr. N.'s Ford car, weary and exhausted from going over its machinery and struggling to get it moving. The women warned us that in the valley at the foot of the hill was a very bad mud hole which we must inevitably negotiate. They said that a stream from the mountains had in a recent freshet overflowed the plain and reduced both the road and the adjoining country to the state of a swamp. They assured us that we simply must go through the mud hole and that we were bound to get stuck in it. They cheered us, however, by telling us that a nearby settler had a sturdy draught horse and that he would in all probability pull us out for the sum of $2.00 a motor car. We thanked them for their warning and drove down the long hill into the next valley. I had been interested while waiting for Mr. N.'s machine to come up, to see the beautiful cactus blossoms growing close to the ground on both sides of the road. They were of a rich yellow and a rich magenta color, single petaled and really beautiful. I saw them growing all along through the desert. In some places they made broad patches of color. Coming on to another wide valley stretching away for eighty miles and more, we saw the mud hole before us and carefully examined the sides of the road to see if we could not make a detour. The spongy, muddy soil assured us that it was hopeless, and that what the women had told us was only too true. In the meantime the settler, working with his wife and baby near at hand in his newly cleared field, kept an eye on us. But he did not come to our rescue until we called him. The Ford, being the machine of lighter weight, started first through the mud hole. Its wheels sank immediately and no turning on of power could push it forward. We then shouted to the settler. He came across the field with his big horse, and as he drew near we saw that he was a tall, good looking man with an open and kindly face. I was secretly glad that the poor fellow who had so recently cast his lot in this lonely and immense valley had a chance to earn some ready money. After a little pleasant dickering he agreed to pull the machines out for $1.00 apiece. The splendid big horse was harnessed to the machine and at the word he threw his weight against his traces and philosophically pulled away, while Mr. N. at the same instant turned on his power. The machine easily came out of the mud and was soon on dry ground. T. drove our machine forward, was instantly imbedded in the mud and was pulled out in the same way. It was interesting to see how the big horse threw his weight into the pulling at just the proper moment and relaxed as he felt the machine settle on the firm ground. His master told us that the animal had come with their little caravan from Colorado, seven hundred and twenty miles, without turning a hair, while the other horse sickened and died. This man had only his few supplies and the little tent in which they were living, together with a bit of the rich land already cleared and planted to a crop. He said that he had never seen richer land than this from which the sage brush had been pulled up and burned off. A thin muddy stream trickled across the road from the hills and was used both for irrigation and for drinking purposes. "But when you come back next year, I shall have a well down," said the brave homesteader. "And, by George, if the County Commissioners won't put in a bridge across this mud hole, I'll put one across myself! Just come back and see a year from now!" We waved him goodbye and went on our way across the lone valley and up another divide. The valley was Monitor Valley, he told us. I can see him standing there in the lovely light of the late afternoon sun, he and his wife and their baby boy waving us farewell. I should like to pass that way again and to see whether he has replaced his tent by a little house and whether his virgin fields are green with a crop. Some day, I suppose, those wide, far-stretching acres will be dotted with houses and barns and stacks of alfalfa. It is difficult to convey the impression that these vast valleys with the hills in the distance, and with the rich coloring of the sunrise and the sunset, make upon one. They are lonely and yet they are not lonely. They are full of life. We saw hundreds of prairie dogs. Day after day they scuttled across our pathway, often narrowly escaping. Sometimes they sat on their hind legs by their burrows, waiting as long as they dared until the noise of the machine frightened them into their holes. Sometimes a whole village of them would watch us until we drew near, and then frantically disappear. Sometimes we saw a coyote, usually in the early morning or the late afternoon. We once saw one whose curiosity was so great that he halted perhaps fifty yards away, and looked at us from this safe distance as we passed. Once we saw a rabbit breathing his last near the roadside, his soft eyes filled with a look of far away consciousness and pain. And once we saw a beautiful antelope leaping and bounding over the sage brush so lightly that he looked in the distance like a phantom animal made of thistle down. I can completely understand how the desert casts its spell over cattlemen and sheepmen so that they love it and its freedom and are continually drawn back to it. The mystery and glory of the desert plains have their devotees just as really as the mystery and glory of the great city have their worshippers who never wish to be far from its lights. The many stops of the day had made us very late and it was in darkness that we came through the canyon which makes a long gateway to the town of Eureka. There was something fearsome about those dark rocks, whose mysteries we had never seen by daylight, rising on each side of us, and about the deep chasm that lay in shadow down at the left of the road. We were glad indeed when the lights of our lamps flashed on the stakes with their familiar red, white, and blue markings, the friendly signs of our beloved Lincoln Highway. It was nearly nine o'clock when we came into Eureka, and drew up at the dim lights of Brown's Hotel. Brown's Hotel seemed to be mostly a bar room and lounging place; at least that was the impression made upon me by the glimpse I caught of the lighted room downstairs as I stood on the wooden porch. But we were shown upstairs to a very comfortable, old fashioned, high ceilinged room with heavy walnut furniture of the style of forty years ago. An aged ingrain carpet was on the floor, and a wreath of wax flowers such as our grandmothers rejoiced in, hung, set in a deep frame, on the wall. I thought to myself that these were relics of departed glories and of a day when there was money to furnish the old hostel in the taste then in vogue. A dim oil lamp assisted our toilet and we went downstairs and out into the town to a restaurant kept by an Italian and his wife. It was the only place where we could get food at that time of night. Eureka is a most forlorn little town, perched high and dry, just as if the waves of traffic and of commercial life had ebbed away and left it far up on the beach forever. They told us that it was once a big and prosperous town. But like Mariposa in California, the mining interests have been transferred to other localities and the town is left lonely. As we walked along its silent and dimly lighted main street, we saw the quaint wooden porches in front of the shops and houses, some high, some low, making an uneven sidewalk. Practically all of the shops were closed, only the saloons being open. The Italian had named his restaurant The Venezia in honor of his native city. It was a bright, comfortable little room, the kitchen at the back of it lightly screened from the dining room. It adjoined his hotel, quite a large building, where he proudly told us he had twenty-two beds. His wife, a stout, bright-eyed woman, cheerfully took our order. "I am poor," she said smilingly, "so I cook when other people ask me. If I rich I cook when I feel like it." A savory smell arose from her frying pan, and we were soon eating excellent and generous slices of ham, drinking very respectable tea, and enjoying some good bread and butter. It was a most refreshing supper after a long and somewhat trying day. We expressed our appreciation to our Italian friends and paid the very modest reckoning. CHAPTER VIII The next morning we had breakfast at Brown's Hotel. The landlord called my attention to a robin who was building her nest in a tree in front of the hotel; the only tree that I recall seeing on the bare, bald, yellow village street. In our long ride of the day before, we had come through Edwards Creek Valley, the Smith Creek Valley, the Reese River Valley, the Antelope Valley, the Monitor Valley, and other great valleys of whose names I was not sure. We had seen the Clan Alpine Mountains from Alpine ranch, the Toyabee National Range, and other ranges whose names were too many and too local for me to be sure of them. And I had read of 275,000 acres that had been placed on the market in Elko County alone. I had read in the Elko paper that "For years, there was a popular prejudice in the East that Nevada was one grand glorious desert, the land worthless, and that nothing could be grown out here. But in later years the public back East has been shown that such is not the case, but on the contrary, we have the richest land in Elko County to be found anywhere in the United States, and that the crops here are the best and almost anything can be grown in Elko County." Having seen the rich land of our brave homesteader in Monitor Valley, I was ready to believe this outburst of local pride. It was the 23rd of June when the landlord of Brown's Hotel waved his farewell to us and we drove on. All day we were among the hills, not seeing them on far distant horizons, but continually climbing and descending among them. Twenty-three miles from Eureka we saw a wooded mountain, quite different from the bald grey hills we had seen the day before. Short, scrubby green trees, somewhat like our New Jersey junipers, grew on the mountain sides and gave this appearance of foliage and greenness. We saw many of them in our day's ride. When we reached Six Mile House, having passed Fourteen Mile House, we asked the ranchman's wife to give us some luncheon. She said that she could not accommodate us, having but few supplies on hand. She advised us to go on to Hamilton and said that she would telephone to the Hamilton House that we were coming. In accordance with her directions we took a turn to the right shortly after leaving Six Mile House and climbed up through a narrow, rocky canyon road. Finally, within a mile or so of Hamilton, when we had one more hill to climb, we came upon a morass made by the bursting of a water pipe. We could not go around it and we dared not attempt to go through it, no friendly settler with a powerful horse being in sight. So we turned carefully about, went down the rocky road to the fork where we had turned off, and took the other branch of the fork. Then we climbed up another mountain road until we reached the summit of the pass, 8115 feet. From here we had a grand view of the mountains and we also met the high ridge road from Hamilton. We pressed on down the hill past a deserted ranch house to Moorman's Ranch, a hospitable looking house by the roadside. At Moorman's Ranch we found an unforgettable hospitality. Our host and hostess were Missourians, and to our question as to whether they could give us any luncheon at 2 o'clock, they gave us a most satisfactory answer. Mrs. Moorman soon had a laden table ready for us, and we sat down to fried bacon and eggs, potatoes, lettuce, radishes, preserved cherries, stewed prunes, milk, tea, and pie. How refreshing it all was! And how pleasant was the soft Southern accent of our hostess which she had not lost in the years on the plains. Moorman's Ranch is a large ranch with grazing rights in the hills near by. The adjoining ranch with its recently deserted ranch house is now a part of Moorman's Ranch, and there is a large acreage for the cattle. We learned that the wretched coyotes come down from the hills and steal the young calves at every opportunity. Only a few days before, a cow had gone to drink leaving her new born calf for a few minutes. When she came back, the little animal had been struck down by a waiting coyote. We learned too that the mountain lions come down from the hills and sometimes attack the young colts and kill them. It was with sincere regret that we bade goodbye to Captain and Mrs. Moorman. May their ranch flourish from year to year! Shortly after leaving the ranch and in crossing another wide valley, we saw a herd of several hundred wild horses feeding on the great plain--a beautiful sight. They were grazing in a rich part of the plain where the grass looked thick and lush. I must own to having an impression that the trail across Nevada could be marked by whiskey bottles if by no other signs. All along our road across the great State we saw the bottles where they had been thrown in the sand and dust by passers-by. Many times I thought of the "Forty-niners," as we saw the sign, "Overland Trail." In coming along the Lincoln Highway, we are simply traversing the old overland road along which the prairie schooners of the pioneers passed. How much heart-ache, heart-break, and hope deferred this old trail has seen! I think of it as we bowl along so comfortably over the somewhat rough but yet very passable road. I can appreciate now the touching story in a San Francisco paper of an old lady who came to the rear platform of a fine overland train after passing a certain village station, and threw out some flowers upon the plain. Near here, she told her friends, her little baby had been buried in the desert forty years before, as she and her husband toiled with their little caravan along the trail. The years had passed and they were prosperous and old in California. And now as she went East on the swift and beautiful train she threw out her tribute to the little grave somewhere in the great desert. As we drew near Ely, the famous copper city, we passed the huge mountain of earth which forms the wealth of the Ely mines. The Lincoln Highway signs take one to the right on a short detour in order that one may see this mountain of ore, which is being cut away by immense steam shovels, tier above tier. Returning to the main road, we drove on through a canyon and so came into the bright little town of Ely which has many evidences of prosperity. We found the Northern Hotel, European in plan, most comfortable. Next door was an excellent café where we had a supper of which a New York restaurant need not have been ashamed. Leaving Ely on the morning of June 24th, we drove through Steptoe Valley for some forty miles. Where we turned off from the valley it still stretched on for another forty miles. It looked as if it might go on to the world's end. Just out of Ely we passed through McGill and visited the immense smelting works. There we saw the "concentrators," interesting machines to shake down the heavy grains of copper from the lighter grains of sand and earth. These big, slanting boards keep up a continual shake, shake, shake while a thin stream of water pours over them. They are a little less slanting than the board of a woman's washtub would be, and yet they lie somewhat like a washboard. The shaking of the board and the action of the water combine to roll down the heavy grains of copper. It seems a simple process, and yet the regulation of the board's motion and the angle of its slant are calculated to a nicety. There were hundreds of these "concentrators" at work separating the copper from its native earth. We saw also the great smelting furnaces and realized how it must have been possible for the men who prepared the furnace for the burning of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be burned to death themselves. What a fearful heat rolled out as one of the furnace doors was opened and a molten stream of white-hot slag was raked into the gutter below! And how the copper glowed as we saw it in its enormous melting caldron! For the first time I saw a traveling crane at work. A characteristic sign was near it in both English and Greek. It read, "Keep away from crane. Keep clear and stand from under." [Illustration: 1. Ely, Nevada. 2. Homesteader's Ranch near Lahontan Dam. 3. Copper Mine at Ely. 4. Ely, Nev.] As we left Steptoe Valley and came down a long slope into Spring Valley, we crossed Shellbourne Pass under the shadow of the Shellbourne range. We passed some young people from Detroit, the gentleman driving his car. We also passed some men with their laden burros taking supplies to the sheepmen in the mountain ranges. These sheepmen live their lives apart from the world for months at a time, seeing only the man who brings their supplies at intervals. [Illustration: 1. American Baptist Home Mission Touring Wagon. 2. Fish Springs Ranch, Utah.] We had luncheon at Anderson's ranch, where they treated us very hospitably. I judged that this was a Mormon's household, as Mormon marriage certificates hung upon the wall and as the Deseret Weekly was evidently its newspaper connection with the outside world. Here our friend Mr. N. took on board a young man from the ranch who wished to get back to Salt Lake City. This young fellow was delighted to have such a ride and Mr. N. was glad to have a traveling companion. Later in the day we passed Tippett's ranch and learned that its owner travels thirty-six miles for his mail and supplies. Toward evening we crossed the Utah border and immediately came upon bad roads. We had a rough stretch until we reached our station for the night, Ibapah. Ibapah consists of a very pleasant ranch house and of a general supply grocery, both house and grocery owned by Mr. Sheridan. We had a comfortable night at the ranch house and purchased some beautiful baskets made by the Indians and brought by them to Mr. Sheridan for sale. The air was so fine and the evening so delightful that we reluctantly retired. Never can I forget the crystal silences of those still nights on the high plains of the West. The next day, June 25th, we had a drive of one hundred and twenty miles across rough and lonely country. From Ibapah we went on through the valley in which the ranch lay, coming to an extremely rough canyon road, practically nothing but the bed of a stream. Then came Kearney's Ranch, where they warned us of some mud holes in the road ahead. We drove around a rocky point, picking our way carefully, some hot springs and a sulphur lake smoking off in the distance on our left. The mountains rose to the right above our route, bare and bald. We came to Fish Springs Ranch in the midst of this lonely country and stopped for luncheon. Our host was a tall and powerfully built elderly ranchman in a blue jumper. A younger man lived with him and the two did their cooking and eating in a little log and stone house, near the main ranch house. He explained to us that he kept the little house because it was once a station on the Wells Fargo stage route. "Horace Greeley ate at this table when he came on his historic Western trip, and so I keep the place standing," he said. His young helper cooked our meal in the back room and our host served it in the front one. We had fried eggs, potatoes, pickles, cheese, bread, butter, and tea, and an appetizing cup cake cut in square pieces. I noticed a White House Cook Book lying on a little table near by. Our host was very hospitable. "Have some of them sweet pickles, folks." "Do we raise cattle here? You bet we do. I have had this ranch over thirty years." As we left him he warned us that we were now entering the "Great American Desert" and that we would have sixty miles of dry plain with very little undergrowth and with no water. He told us that if we got into trouble we should start a fire and "make a smoke." "I'll see you with my glasses" he said, "and drive to your rescue with gasoline and water." I had seen near the ranch house a clear, bubbling spring which doubtless gave its name to the ranch. We assured him that we were well stocked with gasoline and that we had on our running board a standard oil can filled with water. When we were twenty miles away I could still see the ranch house, a tiny speck upon the horizon. At last we came to a well by the roadside which was marked "County well." The road, though somewhat bumpy, was in many places smooth and excellent, a sort of clay highway. Midway across the desert we met another car and exchanged greetings. Late in the afternoon as we were climbing up a slight pass, a dust storm overtook us. The sky was overcast, the mountains and plain were blotted out, and we could only drive along slowly and endure the choking clouds of dust until the storm had swept by. It was blessed to come again into clear sunshine and to see the outlines of the mountains appearing once more. Once over the pass, we came into a great ranch valley and saw that we had left the bare plains behind us. We reached the Kanaka Ranch in time for supper and were assured that we could have lodging for the night. The Kanaka Ranch of eight thousand acres is the property of the Mormon church. It is under the charge of a young manager who looks after the Hawaiians (Kanaka meaning a South Sea Islander) who have been converted to the Mormon faith, and who have been brought to the ranch to work upon its acres and to make their homes there under the friendly shadow of the church's authority. The manager was a dignified young man with a pleasant wife and four dear little children. They gave us a most appetizing supper and breakfast. "The difference between your belief and ours," said our host to T., "is that you believe in a completed revelation. We believe in a continuous revelation." I heard him talking very fluently in the Hawaiian tongue to some of his disciples who had come in for farm directions. The next morning was wonderfully fresh and clear, a rain having fallen during the night. We had just a taste of what a rainy trip would be across country, as we slipped about on the greasy mud of the highway. One reason why our long journey was so ideal was because of the dry season. Day after day we came on over perfectly dry roads and under perfectly clear skies. Another advantage of our journey was that we were traveling East. Every afternoon the sun was behind us, to our great comfort; and the beautiful light fell on the plains and mountains ahead of us. No wonder that we loved to travel late in the afternoon and that we had to make a stern rule for ourselves to follow, to the effect that no matter how tempted we were, we would not travel after sunset. By dint of creeping slowly along we passed the slippery stretches of road and enjoyed the fine open country with the mountains to the right and the farms to the left. After passing Grantsville we came by some large concentrators and smelters in the shadow of the mountain. Turning left we came around the shoulder of the mountain, and there to our left was Great Salt Lake, sparkling and blue-green in the morning light, a mountainous island in the middle of it. We could see the Casino at the end of the long pier at Saltair, a favorite resort for Salt Lake City people. We passed the miners' homes at Magna and Garfield, someone having written facetiously the sign "Mosquito Park" over the entrance to a swampy district with its little settlement of cottages. Now we came into a beautiful upland country with fine farms and every appearance of prosperity. Cottonwoods and tall poplars were seen everywhere on the landscape. They are very characteristic of this part of the country. They grow rapidly and the cottonwood sends its roots long distances in search of water. As we approached Salt Lake City, it appeared to us to be a green, wooded city extending down a long slope on the mountain side. The new State House towered high at the upper end of the slope against the background of lofty mountains, still snowy, which guard the city. I was charmed with Salt Lake City. It has a beautiful situation, high and picturesque. Its streets are very wide and this gives a certain stateliness and air of hospitality to the town. It is laid out on a generous scale. Many of the residence streets have green stretches of flower-adorned park running through the center. The open lawns of the homelike homes, the broad streets, the residences of stone and brick, the masses of pink rambler roses climbing over them, all make a charming impression upon one. Then there are delightful excursions into the canyons of the great mountains near the city. We took such an excursion by electric car line, fourteen miles up into Immigration Canyon. This is the old trail along which the Mormons came in 1847. At the end of the line is a delightful hotel, the Pinecrest Inn. Had there been time we could have taken many more canyon trips. "The Utah" is a beautiful hotel with every modern equipment. A great bee hive, the Mormon emblem, glows with light at night on top of the building. Of course we saw the Mormon tabernacle and walked about its splendid grounds. I was particularly interested in the "sea gull monument," designed by Brigham Young's grandson, and erected in memory of the sea gulls that saved the crops the first year of Mormon settlement by coming in flocks and eating the locusts that threatened to destroy everything green. We enjoyed the fine view from the State University buildings on the "bench" high above the town. In Salt Lake City I purchased some "canyon shoes" of a famous manufacture, and later I found them admirable for heavy walking trips. We left Salt Lake City by driving through Parley's Canyon, a deep gash in the mountains parallel to Immigration Canyon. It is a favorite local drive to go out through Parley's Canyon and return to Salt Lake City through Immigration Canyon. The roadway is very narrow, as it shares the canyon floor with a railroad track and with a rushing stream, so one must drive carefully and keep a sharp lookout for trains. We met an itinerant Baptist missionary driving in his big caravan wagon into the country for a preaching trip. After leaving Parley's Canyon we came into open rolling country, and passed the substantial stone buildings of Stevens Ranch and Kimball Ranch. Then came Silver Creek Canyon, more open than Parley's Canyon and with a fair road. We had luncheon at the Coalville Hotel. I was attracted to the little town of Coalville because there were so many yards where old fashioned yellow rosebushes were laden with bloom. We drove on through Echo Canyon, whose red sandstone rocks, chiseled in many forms by wind and weather, have very fine coloring. At Castle Rock the whole formation is like that of a massive fortification. Six miles before we reached the town of Evanston, we crossed the State line and were in Wyoming. It is a pity that these State boundaries are indicated in many places by such shabby, indifferent wooden signs, looking as if they had been put up over night. Doubtless as the Lincoln Highway is improved there will be dignified boundary stones erected to mark the State lines. Evanston is a pleasant little town 6300 feet high. Near Evanston is the Chapman Ranch, where many thousands of sheep are handled. We stopped in Evanston only a few minutes and then drove on through delightful desert country, open and rolling, grey-green and blue in its coloring. The Wyoming desert has a sharper and more vivid coloring than that of Nevada. The tableland is more rolling and the mountains are farther away. It is a wonderful sheep country, but the flocks are at present in the mountain ranges. Later, as the autumn comes on and cold falls upon their mountain pastures, the herders will bring them down to these plains over which we are passing. Mr. Dudley of Alpine Ranch told us that should we visit the ranch in autumn we would find the whole valley covered with sheep. We heard much "sheep talk" in Nevada and Wyoming. We learned about the "shad scale" which the sheep eat, and about certain kinds of sage brush that are very nutritious. Mr. Dudley had pointed out to us a low-growing white plant, somewhat like the "dusty miller" of our childhood, that is extremely nutritious for cattle. [Illustration: 1. Prairie Schooners, Westward Bound. 2. Lincoln Highway Sign in the Desert. 3. Sheep in the Wyoming Desert.] Here and there on the desert we see fine bunches of beef cattle, feeding in little oases; green, damp stretches of country in the midst of an ocean of sage brush. Now and then we pass a cattleman or a sheepman riding with that easy give of the body which is so graceful and so characteristic of Western horsemen. I know nothing like it, save the easy posture of those immortal youths who ride forever in the procession of the Elgin marbles in the British Museum. They have the same graceful easing of the body to the motion of the horse, and give the same impression of the harmony of horse and rider. Often we pass white, closely plastered log houses, just such as we saw in Nevada. We see white canopied wagons in the barnyards of almost every ranch house, just as in eastern Nevada. These people think nothing of traveling long distances in their prairie schooners with their supplies for roadside camping at night. They travel in their wagons to pay visits, to transact business and to buy supplies, and make long journeys in the summer months. The smell of the sage brush, pungent and aromatic, is in my nostrils from day to day. I love it in its cleanness and spiciness, and shall be sorry when we have left the desert behind us. We have to be watchful for chuck holes made by the indefatigable gophers or prairie dogs. They often burrow in the ruts of the road. Our local guide leaflets, furnished us by garages along the route, are full of warnings about "chucks." Once we come upon a badger, beautifully marked, who has thrown up a large mound of dirt in burrowing his tunnel just in the middle of the road. He sees us coming and scuttles into his hole. We stop the car as we get near the hole and sit motionless. We wait patiently until finally his beautifully marked brown and white head is thrust cautiously out of his shelter. He is very curious to see what this huge black thing is, standing silent near his dwelling. Twice his head appears and his bright eyes peer out curiously. Then the click of the camera frightens him and he disappears to be seen no more. Occasionally we pass motionless bodies of gophers and rabbits that have been struck by the flying wheel of some passing motor as they madly scrambled for safety. Late in the day we passed Fort Bridger with its few old stone houses, probably barracks in the old days. Shortly before coming into Fort Bridger we came upon two draught horses feeding peacefully by the roadside. As they saw us, they immediately came into the road and began to trot just ahead of our machine. First we drove gently, hoping that after their first fright they would turn aside into the great plain which stretched for miles, unbroken by fences, on each side of the road. But no, they trotted steadily on. Then we drove faster, hoping to wear them down and by the rush of our approach to force them off the road. Once they were at the side of the road we could quickly pass them and their fright would be over. To our disappointment they broke into a wild gallop and showed no sign of leaving the road. They were heavy horses, and we were sorry to have them thundering so distressfully ahead of us. Then we dropped into a slow walk and so did they. But as soon as we traveled faster, they broke into a gallop. For ten miles they kept this up. We were quite in despair of ever dropping them, when suddenly we came to a fork in the road. To our joy they ran along the left fork. Our route was along the right fork and we went on to Fort Bridger glad to be rid of the poor frightened beasts. A breeze sprang up toward sunset and we came in the twilight to the little town of Lyman where the only hostel was The Marshal, half home and half hotel, kept by Mrs. Marshall. As we came into the town the high, snowy Wahsatch range was on our right. We had first seen its distant peaks about twenty-four miles out of Evanston. Mrs. Marshall gave us an abundant supper and we slept dreamlessly in a little upper room with one window. Upon what a glory of sunrise did that little upper window look out that morning of the first of July! The vast landscape was bathed in lavender light, the Wahsatch range and the mountains of our Eastern pathway catching the first glory of the coming sun, while the plains were in deeper lavender. The village street looked like a pathway of lavender. The little wooden, painted houses, the barns, some red, some grey and unpainted, all glowed with transforming light and color. Robins and meadow larks were singing. Far, far to the northeast was a purple horizon line. The air was like wine. I stayed at the window until I was half frozen in the cool morning air, entranced by it all. [Illustration: 1. Wyoming Cattle. 2. The Marshall Hotel, Lyman, Wyoming. 3. Before Shearing, Medicine Bow, Wyoming. 4. After Shearing, Medicine Bow, Wyoming.] It was at Lyman that we heard talk of the ever smouldering feud between cattlemen and sheepmen. Not far from Lyman is the "dead line" over which sheepmen are not allowed to take their sheep. On the other side of this stern boundary are the cattlemen, and they have issued a warning to the sheepmen which they have more than once carried out. A few years ago a sheepman either purposely or carelessly got over the dead line with his sheep. He was mysteriously shot and two hundred of his sheep were killed in one night. No one knows who the murderer was. Back in the shadows looms the threat of the cattlemen, grim and real. We had been told in Wyoming of the buying of a big ranch by adjacent ranch people in order that no sheepman might come in to share the water and the ranges with the cattleman. Cattle will not feed, they tell us, where sheep have fed, as the sheep tear up the earth and also graze very closely. It is impossible for sheep and cattle to graze comfortably on the same ranges. We left Lyman in high spirits after a good breakfast, driving along with the Wahsatch mountains on our right and with detached mountains continually appearing on the horizon as we moved eastward. We were now in the region of what they call in the West "buttes," a "butte" being, so far as I know, a detached, isolated mass of mountain. The Wyoming buttes are wonderfully carved by wind and sand and weather and many of them present a mysterious and imposing appearance. Often they are table lands, rising square and massive against the horizon like immense fortresses. On the way to Granger these massive table lands with their square outlines loom up against the grander background of the snowy Wahsatch range. The first thirty miles out of Evanston we had an excellent road. There was a charming desert flower growing in the dusty road and alongside, white and somewhat like a single petaled water-lily. Its buds were pink, and it sprang from a whorl of leaves like those of a dandelion. Its fragrance was most delicate. There was also the lovely blue larkspur, and there were clusters of a brick-red flower which grew rather tall. Then there were clumps of something very like a dark scarlet clover. The fine mountain scenery, the fantastically carved buttes, sometimes like miniature canyons, the glorious air, all put us in delightful humour with ourselves and the world. At the little town of Granger on the railroad line we met two young pedestrians who were walking on a wager from Kearney, Nebraska, to Seattle. They were to have $500. apiece if they reached Seattle by the first of August. Their yellow outing shirts bore the inscription, "Walking from Kearney, Nebraska, to Seattle." They told us they were able to make forty miles a day. When they reached Salt Lake City they were to have substantial new walking boots from the merchants at Kearney, the bargain being that at that point they were to return their worn boots to be exhibited in the shop windows of Kearney. They had been halted at Granger because of lack of money, having miscalculated their needs. They had just had a telegram from home, sending them money and assuring them of more help if they needed it. They looked strong and fit and were perfectly confident that they would win the wager. We also met two young motor-cyclists from Akron, Ohio, en route for the coast. There were several eating places at Granger, but it was too early for luncheon, so we pressed on to Green River, a Union Pacific Railway town. From Granger to Green River the road was poorer and more bumpy. Fine masses of rock and carved tableland rose on the horizon as we drove along. As we approached Green River a splendid red, yellow, and clay-colored mountain loomed on the horizon, which as we neared the town resolved itself into long lines of buttes back of the town. Teakettle Rock, an immense, isolated butte, rose to the left, and Castle Rock was just back of the town. The butte scenery both approaching and leaving Green River was very fine. The coloring was extremely rich; soft reds, yellows, browns, and clay colors. There were long lines of round buttresses and great concavities of rock, more like the famous Causses of southern France than anything I have ever seen. We had luncheon at Green River in the spacious dining room of the Union Pacific Station, and felt ourselves quite in touch with the East to be eating in the same dining room with passengers of the long overland train. Our drive from Green River to Rock Springs and from Rock Springs to Point of Rocks was through lonely, desert country. It was nearly six o'clock when we reached Point of Rocks, but the sun was still high. Point of Rocks is simply a watering station for the trains and is marked only by a station house, a grocery, and a few little cottages. The young groceryman has fitted up the rooms over his grocery for passing travelers. We established ourselves in the front one, lighted by one little window. It was very clean, though very simply furnished. The floor was bare and our furniture consisted of a bed, a chair without a back, a tin wash basin resting upon the chair, a lamp, a pail of fresh water with a dipper, and a pail for waste water. We had two fresh towels and felt ourselves rich in comfort. Next door to the grocery was a little cottage where a woman cooked for the few railway operatives and for travelers. Our bacon was somewhat salty and our coffee a little weak, but our supper and breakfast tasted good for we had the sauce of hunger. We met there a young railway operative who had come from the East to this high, dry situation for the climate. He told us that when he first came, the change to the stillness and space of the plain from the busy city and from his life as a journalist was so great that he could not keep still. He said that he walked fifteen miles a day, driven by some inner restlessness; but that he gradually became used to the quiet and now he loved it. We had an evening talk in the grocery with a young commercial man, who said laughingly that these accommodations were somewhat different from the gorgeous Hotel St. Francis of San Francisco. We assured him that we did not mind simplicity and were deeply interested in seeing our country under all sorts of conditions. He was spending some hours of his time before the solitary train came through in persuading the groceryman to commit himself for a large bill of goods. The commercial man said sadly that never before in his ten years of travel had he seen business so uncertain. The water at Point of Rocks comes from a thousand feet below the surface and has a slight sulphur taste. CHAPTER IX We drove from Point of Rocks to Wamsutter, where we had luncheon. The road from Point of Rocks to Wamsutter is very rough and we were tormented by the plague of these roads of the plains; namely, gutters made across the roadway by running water in time of freshets. One has to be continually on guard for these runnels. Sometimes they are very deep. They give the machine a frightful jar and if one comes upon them suddenly they are likely to break an axle. One must possess one's self in patience and drive at a pace that will enable him to slow down quickly in coming on them. Chuck holes and these gutters across the road are the two chief difficulties of travel across the plains. However, many a backcountry road of the Eastern States is just as uncomfortable for motor travelers. On our way to Wamsutter we passed a fellow traveler, a gentleman from New York with his family. His son drove their car, a Pope Hartford, and they were seventeen days out from New York. They had ten days more in which to reach San Francisco if they were to help their friends win the wagers which had been made on the time of their trip across country. We assured them that they would be able to reach San Francisco in ten days, barring serious accidents, if only they would rise early and drive late, making ten hours a day. Just outside of Point of Rocks we had come upon another and a humbler caravan. A man and his wife were encamped in a canvas-covered moving-wagon by the roadside, having found a patch of grass that promised forage for the horses. We stopped to talk with them and learned that they lived near Pueblo, Colorado. Having planted their crop they had come away on a prospecting tour into northern Wyoming to look up better farming country. They were now returning, traveling by day and camping by the roadside at night. They had had what is called mountain fever, due they thought to the bites of mosquitoes. They liked the Wyoming country they had seen, but deplored the heavy drinking. They told us of one man who had said that he did not mean to go into town on the Fourth of July. Everybody got drunk, said he, and he did not want to put himself in the way of temptation. They spoke of a lovely farming country in the midst of which was a little town where saloons were open all night and all day Sunday. They told us of one saloon keeper who had been hauling barrels of whiskey for days in preparation for his business of July 4th. He openly boasted that he meant to take in $3,000. on that day. As we drive along, we constantly see the remains of former camps by the roadside. Old tin teakettles, pieces of worn-out campstools, piles of tin cans; these are mute and inglorious monuments to the bivouacs of other days. These immense Plateau States are very dependent upon canned foods, and all along tin cans mark the trail. We have many evidences, too, that we are in a sheep and cattle country. We pass the dried up carcasses of sheep and the bones of cattle and of horses as they lie upon the desert near the road. Often the fleece of the sheep, dried and shrunken by wind and weather, sticks to the bones of the animal. It lies where it fell, only one of a vast herd, sick and dying, perhaps freezing in a blizzard. We asked one countryman what the sheep did in case of the fierce storms that sometimes sweep over the winter plains. "They just hump up and die," he replied. We saw many a shriveled carcass of some poor animal that had succumbed and fallen never to rise again. But so high are these plains and so dry is the atmosphere, that nature quickly shrivels these carcasses and they are not offensive as they would be in damp climates. Out on the desert we waited for a long freight train to pass as it stood blocking the roadway. The train conductor came along and he and T. exchanged greetings. "It's good to see you," said the conductor; "you motor people are about the only signs of life we fellows see out here on the desert." Coming into Wamsutter, and later coming toward Rawlins, we flushed numbers of grey-brown prairie chickens, almost as large as hens. They would fly up from the sage brush as the noise of our machine came near. There were some large flocks of young birds. Between Rawlins and Laramie we met late in the afternoon a large caravan of movers. They looked foreign and were evidently in search of new farms and homes. They were drinking, and watering their tired horses at a small station on the railway. There were plenty of little children in the caravan. One woman dandled a tiny baby. A little farther on we came to a second and smaller camp. These people were traveling from Kansas to Washington. "There is good land there still that can be taken up by homesteaders, fine fruit lands," said they. One man had seen the land and was acting as guide for the others. Their wagons were drawn by horses and burros. The children were sweet, cheerful little people, but the whole party looked somewhat underfed. I would have liked to give them all the luxury of a hot bath in a big tub to be followed by a substantial supper. They had their water with them, having hauled it from the last point where water was to be had. They deplored the fact that they had camped before knowing of the Union Pacific Station a little farther on. Water is a precious thing in the desert. We have passed two places where signs read that water could be had at the rate of five cents per beast and twenty-five cents a barrel. At the watering stations on the Union Pacific Railroad, the wells are the property of the Road. Before we came into Medicine Bow, we passed through a little mining town, high and bare on the summit of a ridge. Just outside the town was a bare little cemetery, the brown graves decorated with paper crosses and wreaths. An iron fence protected the cemetery, and outside its boundaries was an untidy litter of old wreaths and crosses which had been discarded and had been blown by the wind in tight heaps against the fence. [Illustration: 1. Road in Wyoming costing $50,000 per mile. 2. Characteristic Sign on Lincoln Highway.] Ten miles beyond Medicine Bow the character of the country suddenly changed. We came from the grey and brown desert into fine rolling uplands dotted with the new homes of homesteaders and green with the precious water of irrigation. This was a country newly settled and bearing every mark of prosperity. At one point on the road we had great difficulty in getting through. A careless settler had allowed the water of his irrigating ditch to run out upon the road. It was with the greatest difficulty that we succeeded in getting through the mud. Only the help of some fellow motorists from San Francisco, who stopped to push the car while T. turned on its power, enabled us to get through. A few miles on we met the road commissioner who proudly called our attention to the work that was being done on the roads of his county. He told us that he was on his way to arrest and fine the careless homesteader who had flooded the road. After this fine stretch of fertile country we plunged once more into a long stretch of desert. It was here that I saw and welcomed the beautiful yucca that I had seen growing in California. I saw too in Wyoming quantities of cactus blooming in broad patches of color, usually buff. All day we mounted one ridge after another, buttes to the left and to the right of us; driving through a vast country with practically no ranch houses and only isolated stations on the railroad for watering purposes. As we approached Wamsutter a wonderful great tableland lay to the right of us, very high and with an immense level top. It was like a fortress with its buttresses and ramparts carved by nature. To the left was a butte that was like a side view of the Sphinx, an immense pyramid rising beside it. As we came into Wamsutter, we drove along a ridge where the road had been laid to avoid a low marshy tract of land. Red Desert Station, just before reaching Wamsutter, is well named, the buttes having wonderful color. The day was hot, and it was a relief when the afternoon sun began to decline. We felt that we were dropping with it. But we were dropping toward the East while it was falling toward the West. In the afternoon, out on the great plain, we had crossed the Continental Divide. It had not been marked by any visible elevation of land above the surrounding country. All was open country, rolling and vast, and yet we had ascended the Western slope and were now going down to the Mississippi Valley. We must soon begin to say farewell to the Plateau States. The long upward climb is practically over. We look forward with the streams to the Atlantic, leaving behind the water courses to the Pacific. Shortly after crossing the Divide we came to a low head stone and a wooden cross at the left of the road, marking the grave of a man of thirty-five who died in 1900. It is a lone grave on this rolling ridge, yet it is destined to be passed by many travelers in future years. Some day the Divide will be marked upon the Lincoln Highway by a monument, and the traveler will have a satisfactory outward expression of the thoughts that fill his heart. Rawlins was our halting place for the night. It is a pleasant town with wide streets and plenty of sunshine. The post office is a beautiful little building. We fraternized in Rawlins with fellow travelers, a lady and her son who were going on from Colorado Springs to Pasadena in a beautiful Stutz roadster. In Rawlins as in most Western towns, we stayed at a hotel managed on the European plan and ate our meals in a nearby restaurant. It is always a surprise to me to see the number of people in the restaurants and cafeterias of the West. Even in small towns these places are crowded. As we came into Rawlins we saw Elk Mountain rising nobly on the horizon beyond us. When we left Rawlins and traveled toward it, it grew more imposing. Instead of going on to Arlington, directly under the shadow of Elk Mountain, we elected to turn off to Medicine Bow, made famous by Owen Wister's book, "The Virginian." Elk Mountain rises 12000 feet, and Medicine Bow is 6500 feet, above sea level. It is only a railroad station, a tiny cluster of saloons, a still smaller cluster of shops, a big shearing shed, and a substantial stone hotel called The Virginian. The landlady of The Virginian told us that their hotel is always full of guests. It is a busy place. Here the woolmen come to trade and to export their wool, here the sheepmen bring their sheep for the annual shearing. Nearly sixty thousand sheep are shorn annually in the shearing shed, a few minutes' walk from the hotel. Here the plainsmen come from time to time to throw away in a few hours of drinking and gambling the money earned in months spent in the open. We had an excellent substantial lunch at the hotel and then went over to see the shearing. How hot and uncomfortable the poor sheep looked in the waiting pen, with their heavy fleeces weighing them down! They stood panting in the sun, their broad backs making a thick rug, so tightly were they wedged in together. And how half ashamed they looked when they came out from the shearing, thin and bare! In this establishment the shearing is all done by machinery. It takes a skillful man to run these rapidly clicking shears over the animal's body and make no serious wound. The overseer told us that in the case of an inexperienced man the sheep would "fight him all over the pen." The shearer reaches out his right hand and grasps one of the three or four sheep that have been pushed into a little compartment from the main pens. The beasts stand stupidly huddled together. The shearer takes one by its left hind leg, and by a skillful twist he throws it on its back and pulls it toward him. Then he yanks it into a sitting position with its back against his knees. Bending over it he takes off first the thick coat of wool on its under-body from throat to tail. It looks very easy, but only skill can guide the shears through that thick mass of wool, taking it off so cleanly and thoroughly, and yet leaving the pink skin unbroken. Next come the fore legs, then the hind legs, then the wool is trimmed from around the eyes and from the top of the head. The workman moves very carefully here. Then the sheep is righted and the wool is cut from its back and sides. It is interesting to see how quietly the animal submits to it all. Quickly it is all over and an attendant pushes the sheep through another aperture back into an outer pen. The men work very rapidly and a good shearer can easily handle one hundred sheep a day. Some expert shearers can handle nearly two hundred. These men are paid nine cents a head for their work. It was a picturesque sight in the long, airy shed. Six men were handling their sheep, the clicking shears moving rapidly over the big animals. A boy gathered up the wool as fast as it dropped from the sheep. Later it would be sorted into its different grades. An important, happy sheep dog ran wildly about, eyes shining, tail wagging, his sharp nose lifted to his master's face. He seemed to be saying, "This is fine, master, but isn't there something that I could do at this moment?" The overseer stood at the end of the shed looking down the row of busy workers. From Medicine Bow we came to Laramie, reaching there on the eve of the Fourth of July. Laramie boasts a good hotel which was crowded with people. Ranchmen had brought their families for the festivities of the Fourth. Tall cowboys lounged about, wearing their most ornamental tall boots, their best silk shirts, and brightest neckties. The streets in the evening were full of people, some on horseback, some walking. Confetti, those noise-makers known as "cluckers," and the miniature feather dusters called "ticklers," were all in evidence. Everybody was in good humour and in a mood of expectation. [Illustration: 1. Lincoln Highway Sign. 2. Lincoln Highway Sign in Western Village. 3. Cowboys and Cowgirls in Laramie. 4. Sage Brush in the Desert. 5. Last View of the Rockies leaving Colorado. 6. Movers' Camp in Colorado.] The morning of the Fourth we drove out to the edge of the town to see the State University, a modest cluster of good buildings. Then we drove about the town to see the cowboys on their handsome horses, and the young women who accompanied them, riding easily astride. There was to be a morning exhibition of lassoing, racing, and other feats of skill and strength. We met many people riding and driving into town, all in holiday dress. But we pressed on Eastward. We passed Red Buttes, having a grand view of the wonderfully colored Buttes off to the left. Masses of blue larkspur grew in the fields and alongside the Highway. We had left our beloved desert behind us and were in rolling grass and grain country. Near the Colorado line we turned toward the south to go to Denver, thereby missing the Ames Monument on the direct route to Cheyenne. The mountains of Colorado now rose in the near distance; rocky peaks, pine clad and snowy. At this point we met some parties of travelers; a motor party from Lincoln, Nebraska, and another from Lexington, Kentucky. Both motor cars were going into Laramie for the celebration of the Fourth. The gentleman from Lexington, who was driving his wife and himself, had a beautiful Locomobile roadster, newly purchased in Chicago. His car had every modern equipment and convenience, and he was mightily proud of it. We all halted to enjoy the grand view of the country toward which they were moving and which we were leaving behind us. Miles of rolling, grassy country, clean and wind-swept, lay to the west. It was an inspiring prospect, and filled us all with a sense of exaltation. Said the Kentucky lady to me, "I felt as if everything bad in me was swept clear out of me when I first looked at this wonderful view." A third party of travelers came along from Cheyenne as we stood gazing. They had a unique outfit, a prairie schooner drawn by four burros abreast. The father and mother, several children, and a friend lived cheerfully in this moving house, making, they told us, about fifteen miles a day. When they were short of funds, they encamped in some town and the men worked to replenish the treasury. They had their household food supplies neatly packed on shelves running along the sides of their canvas canopy. "This is our home," said the husband and father. The children were gentle little creatures, but looked thin and underfed. All were bound for some unknown haven on the Pacific coast or in the Northwest. They felt sure that they would find rich farming country there still open to homesteaders. What a contrast between the elegant Locomobile car and the humble prairie wagon, drawn by four shaggy burros, chosen because they could endure hardships! Our friends of the wagon allowed us to take their picture, and we parted with mutual good wishes. We passed the Colorado State boundary marked by a very simple board sign, and came into a new country of rocks and hills. We came through a canyon where we found some movers encamped in a pleasant hollow by a mountain stream. Southward we moved, passing some fine rugged buttes to our left. We took luncheon at a pleasant farm house hotel, known as the Little Forks Hotel. Our farmer host and hostess were very agreeable and gave us a refreshing meal. We left them to drive on through Fort Collins, a very pleasant town in the midst of alfalfa fields. Just south of Fort Collins we turned to the right, drove across the plains and entered the mouth of the Big Thompson Canyon. We were en route for the famous tract of mountain meadow, of forest and canyon, known as Estes Park. A long procession of motor cars was entering the park and another line of cars kept passing us. Many people were driving up the Canyon and many were leaving after a day spent in picnicking. For the most part the Canyon road ran very low and close to the bed of the brawling river. It was a most lovely road, winding and picturesque. Finally we came to the end of the Canyon and entered the green meadows which are at the beginning of the Park itself. We were told that the hotels and camps were crowded, it being holiday time, and that we would do well to stop at the simple but comfortable ranch house located near by. We found ourselves comfortable indeed and were content to make the ranch house a base for our driving expeditions. We were on the beautiful Lord Dunraven Ranch, with its rich meadows admirably adapted for cattle grazing. Our host was the manager of the ranch, now largely owned by Mr. Stanley, the manufacturer of the Stanley Steamer. Farther up the valley was the beautiful Stanley Hotel. I had thought that Estes Park was a smooth and shaven park region, not realizing that it was a vast mountain territory, with high mountain meadows overlooked by lofty peaks and diversified by tracts of mountain forest. There are scores of miles of driving and horseback riding in the Park, plenty of hotels and camps in wonderfully beautiful situations, and glorious fishing and mountain climbing. One may gaze at the mountains from great open meadows and camping sites from 8000 to 9000 feet above sea level. We lamented the fact that we had only a day in which to see Estes Park. We could have spent a week there in driving and walking about. Colorado is rich in mountain scenery and in beautiful camping places for the lover of hills and streams, the pedestrian and the fisherman. We came down from the high plateau of the Park by the canyon of the Little Thompson; a still more precipitous road than that of the Big Thompson Canyon. Reaching Lyons, we turned toward Boulder, driving along with alfalfa meadows to the left and the foot hills of the Rockies to the right. Our undulating road was an excellent one. We enjoyed the wide sky, the rich grassy plains stretching away to our left, with ranch houses marked here and there by clumps of cottonwood trees. We knew that this was irrigated country, reclaimed from what was once a wide desert. After a time we passed a wagon, canvas covered, drawn by two plodding horses. I thought the driver must be foreign, as he turned out to the left when we came up behind him, but he quickly recovered himself and turned right. We soon left him far behind us. But suddenly there was a grinding sound. The machine halted and refused to move. We were stalled on the road and no amount of effort availed to move us. Something had gone seriously wrong. There was nothing for it but to push the machine to the side of the road, and wait patiently for the travelers in the covered wagon. We were six miles from Boulder, and evidently had a serious break in the machine. Later it transpired that our gears were broken. After a time the wagon came toiling along and its occupants most hospitably invited me to drive into Boulder with them. Two men, one elderly, the other young, were on the driver's seat. In the wagon were their two wives and a troop of little children, the family of the younger pair, and the grandchildren of the older pair. A happy collie dog climbed wildly about over the children. "He's the biggest kid in the wagon," said his master. The party had been camping in a mountain canyon for their holiday and were now on their way home. The men and women were English, the older couple having been thirty-three years in this country. "I've dug coal for forty-five years," said the older man. "Tell them you rode with one of the striking miners, one of the sixteen who was put in jail. Put that in your book," he said with a grim twinkle. (How did he know I was writing a book?) "We're poor but we're gentlemen still. We wouldn't be slaves to Rockyfeller," said the younger man. A little later he asked for the jug of spring water, and for "the bottle." The women looked at me dubiously, and tried to quiet him. "Come now," he said laughing, "there's no use delayin' matters. Where's the bottle?" So with some embarrassment on the part of the women and much laughing on the part of the men a full whiskey bottle was produced. Each man had a nip of whiskey and a nip of cold water. The children were merry little creatures, climbing over one another and playing with the dog. The youngest little girl slept peacefully, being tenderly watched by her mother and grandmother. When we came into the wide streets of the university town of Boulder, I offered as delicately as possible to pay for my six mile lift. But they would have none of it. "No, no," said the younger man cordially, "we're glad to help anybody in trouble." So I hastened over to the candy shop and bought a box of the best chocolate candy for the children. My last sight of them as they drove out of town was of the little faces crowding happily around the box. In Boulder we found The Boulderado a delightful place in which to lodge, and the Quality Cafeteria a place for admirably cooked food. We had several days to wait for our machine to be repaired, so we were free to enjoy Boulder and to take the interurban electric car for Denver. Boulder has a most picturesque situation, and is a town of delightful homes and of fine State University buildings. I saw at Boulder the same soft sunset colors, the same delicate blues, pinks, and greys that one sees in an Australian sunset. Later we drove to Denver in our own car and were free to enjoy the drives about the city. "The Shirley" is a very well kept European hotel, and if one wishes to take one's food elsewhere there is "Sell's" with its delicious rolls and excellent coffee, tea, and chocolate; and there is the Hoff-Stauffer Cafeteria, presided over by a woman and offering excellently cooked food to hosts of people. Every traveler should view the sunset from Cheesman Park in Denver. One can drive there easily over the fine streets of the city. Beside the pavilion, modeled on classic lines, one may sit in one's car and look off at one hundred and fifty miles of mountains, stretching from Pike's Peak on the south to Long's Peak on the north. It is a grand view and should be seen more than once to be fully appreciated. One may sit on the steps of the fine Capitol building just a mile above sea level, and enjoy the same view. Or one may take a famous mountain drive, winding up and up a stiff mountain road until one has reached the summit and can look down on miles of plains and on the city of Denver in the distance. CHAPTER X Leaving Denver in the afternoon, we drove to Boulder; from Boulder to Plattville and from Plattville due north to Greeley. All along to the left, between Plattville and Greeley, we had fine views of the whole line of mountains, and particularly of Long's Peak. Again we were impressed by the fertility of the Colorado alfalfa fields and by the rich green of its meadows. Greeley is a very attractive town with wide streets and with pretty homes set in green lawns. It is well shaded, stands high, and looks off to the noble line of mountains to the south. Early on July 15th we left Greeley, taking a last look at the glorious mountains to the south. We passed through fields upon fields of alfalfa and of grain. Great stacks of alfalfa everywhere dotted the country. The greenness of the land was refreshing. Then we came into more rolling country, less cultivated. We were plainly in a new part of the country, in this northwest corner of the State. The houses were new, and often small. In some places new houses stood alongside the old ones, the earlier ones being made of tar paper and looking like little cigar boxes. Some houses had tents erected near them for use as barns. Some houses were made of sod. There were very few trees, most ranch houses looking bare and bald. We passed quantities of a beautiful blue flower, growing sometimes in great patches. Its bell-shaped flowers, sometimes rose, sometimes lavender, grew on tall green stalks. We also saw a beautiful starry white flower growing along the roadside. At Sterling we had a particularly good luncheon at the Southern Hotel on the main street. We exhorted our host and hostess to put out a Lincoln Highway sign, so that none should miss their excellent table. We saw our old friends, the Matilija poppies, growing along the roadside as we went along in the hot afternoon. This was one of the hottest days of driving that we had in all our tour, and in it we made our longest run, two hundred and eight miles. We took early supper at the Commercial Hotel at Julesburg. Not long after leaving Julesburg we came upon a flamboyant sign which announced that we were nineteen miles from Ogallala, Nebraska. The sign also informed us with particular emphasis that Ogallala was "a wet town." We had crossed the State line and had left behind us Colorado with its mountains, its green meadows, its wild yuccas, its Matilija poppies, and its dark masses of pine trees. As we drove along in the dusky twilight, little owls kept flying low in front of our car, attracted by its lights. Sometimes a rabbit sat in the middle of the road, blinking and bewildered. We always gave him time to recover himself and leap into the shadows of the roadside. We had had another exquisite sunset with the same soft pastel shades that I had seen at Boulder. During the day we had seen many meadow larks, red-winged blackbirds, and doves. We had seen, too, many sparrow hawks, sitting silent on the fence posts, waiting for the approach of evening. In one place we saw a poor young meadow lark, hanging dead from a barbed wire fence. He had evidently in flying struck his throat full against one of the barbs and had hung there, impaled to death. At Ogallala we found a very comfortable lodging house, The Hollingsworth, built over a garage. We had a good room there, although it was impossible to find a cool spot on that broiling night. The next morning, as we took breakfast at a nearby restaurant, we learned that Ogallala had had a grand contest and had "gone dry" two weeks before. An enthusiastic gentleman who had taken part in the conflict told us that already the town was wonderfully changed. We congratulated him and urged him to see to it that the sign nineteen miles to the west heralded Ogallala as a dry town rather than a wet one. The next day was cooler. The mountains had disappeared, and only wide rolling fields, sometimes as level as a floor, lay before us. We were crossing Nebraska. We came by a rather poor road, really a grassy trail, to North Platte, where we had luncheon at the Vienna Café. As we were driving along between Ogallala and North Platte, the grass growing high in the road tracks, we came suddenly upon a bevy of fat quail walking in the road. As they flew somewhat heavily, I felt sure that our wheel had struck some of them. So I went back to see. Three of them lay dead in the road, having been unable to fly in time to avoid the wheels. The noise of our machine had been muffled by the fact that that we were driving over a grassy road and they had not heard us until we were on them. We were sorry indeed to have killed the beautiful little brown creatures. All through California and Colorado we had seen them, as they were constantly flying up in front of the machine and running off to cover. All along, the killdeer were darting about, calling loudly and piercingly. Beyond North Platte we came upon a country house which had been pre-empted by a jolly house party of girls from town. They had put out some facetious signs: "Fried Chicken Wanted" and "Votes for Women." We stopped to call upon them and told them of our trip across the country, while they insisted upon serving us with cake and lemonade. Late in the day we passed some groups of movers, their horses and cattle with them. We saw glorious fields of corn and of alfalfa, and we saw fields dotted with little mounds or cocks of wheat and of millet. Four miles before coming into Kearney, we passed the famous sign which marks the distance half-way between San Francisco and Boston. We had seen a print of this sign, pointing 1,733 miles West to Frisco and East 1,733 miles to Boston, on the cover of our Lincoln Highway guide, issued by the Packard Motor Car Company. We stopped now to take a photograph of it. A woman living in a farmhouse across the road was much interested in our halt. She said that almost every motor party passing stopped to photograph the sign. We heard from her of two young women who were walking from coast to coast, enjoying the country and its adventures. Somehow we missed them in making the detour from Laramie to Denver. We had seen their photographs on postcards which they were selling to help meet their expenses. They were sisters, and looked very striking and romantic in their walking dress. They wore broad-brimmed hats, loose blouses with rolling collars, and wide trousers, tucked into high laced boots such as engineers wear. Each carried a small revolver at her belt. We were sorry to have missed seeing them against the picturesque background of the Wyoming plains. At Kearney we had supper at "Jack's Place," and went on in the twilight to Minden, where we proposed stopping at "The Humphrey." We passed through long fields of corn and over lonely rolling prairies. The cornfields with their rows of tasseled stalks were like the dark, silent ranks of a waiting army, caped and hooded, standing motionless until marching orders came. The air was clear and fine, and the electric lights of Minden shone from afar with the brilliance of stars. From Minden, we came by way of Campbell to Red Cloud, where we had luncheon at the Royal Hotel. We had made this detour to Minden and Red Cloud in order to call upon a friend who is enthusiastic over his fine ranch near Red Cloud. Galloway cattle are his specialty, and he finds the rolling plains of southern Nebraska a fine place to breed them. From Red Cloud we came on in the afternoon through Blue Hill to Hastings, and through Hastings to Fremont. We were en route for Lincoln, where we hoped to spend the night. Between Minden and Red Cloud the country is very rolling, and sweeps away from the eye in great undulations. High on some of these ridges were fine silhouettes outlined against the sky: loaded wagons bringing in the sheaves of grain; men standing high, feeding these sheaves to the insatiable maw of the threshing machine; a boy standing in the grain wagon as the thick yellow stream poured into it, leveling the grain with a spade; all these and many other pictures of the Idyl of Harvest. For two hundred miles of our run the smoke of the threshing machines rose in the clear sky. Sometimes the fields were covered with stacks of wheat looking like great yellow bee-hives. Sometimes the wheat was in rounded mounds or cocks. Surely we were seeing the bread of a nation on these vast Nebraska plains. Along the roadsides were quantities of "snow on the mountain," its delicate grey-green leaves edged with a pure white border. Across the fields the killdeer were flying, and calling in their shrill, clear notes, which always seem to breathe of the sea. They were not out of place, flying above these long billows of brown earth. The farmhouses were marked by clumps of cottonwood trees, and as we moved Eastward a few low evergreens began to appear. Around Blue Hill the country is very fine, being a great plateau stretching off into illimitable distances. As we climbed the hill to the little town we met a farmer in his wagon who had just despatched a bull snake, a thick, ugly-looking creature. We stopped to pass the time of day, and he told us that he came to Nebraska from Illinois in '79 in a covered wagon. He was enthusiastic over Nebraska. We made another stop to watch at close range the operations of a threshing machine. It was a fine sight. Two yellow streams came from the spouts of the machine; a great stream of chaff which rapidly piled up in a yellow mountain, and another stream of the heavy grain, pouring thick and fast into a wagon. One of the men told us that they had threshed fourteen hundred bushels the day before, working fourteen hours in fine, clear weather. Everywhere the lovely grey doves were flying. There were hundreds of young meadow larks, too, and great numbers of red-winged blackbirds. It was on the 17th of July that I saw brown thrushes for the first time. It is interesting to watch the movements of the birds as the machine approaches. The doves in the road fly promptly. They do not take chances on being struck by the car. The sparrows wait until the last moment and then neatly save themselves. I often wondered how they could escape with so narrow a margin. We thought that the redheaded woodpeckers must be rather clumsy, as we saw a number of them that had been struck by other cars, and thrown just off the road. It was impossible to reach Lincoln that night, so we stopped at a country inn some miles away. Rising early, we drove into Lincoln for breakfast. After a run about the city and a look at the buildings of the State University, we drove on toward Omaha. Unfortunately we attempted to take a cross-cut and found ourselves in an odd situation. We were driving down an unfrequented hill road, in an attempt to cut across to the main road, marked by white bands on the telephone poles. We suddenly found ourselves hanging high and dry above the ruts of the road. The rain had worn them so deep and the middle of the road had remained so hard and dry, that on the hillside we were literally astride the ridge in the middle of the road. This meant a long journey on foot to a farmhouse to borrow a spade and a pick. It also meant much hacking and digging away at the hard earth under the body of the machine to release the axles and drop the wheels to the road. Finally it was accomplished. We picked up the farmer's children who had come out to see the rescue and drove down the long hill to the farmhouse. There we left our implements and our hearty thanks. How hopeless it seems when one is hung up on the road! And how blissful it is to bowl along freely once more! Still the doves flew about us by the hundred and the brown thrushes increased in number. We had more level country now, and it was only as we approached Omaha that it became hilly. We left Omaha, after looking about the city, late in the afternoon and drove one hundred and eight miles to Carroll in Iowa. The first twenty miles out of Omaha the road was extremely poor and very dusty. The trees were much more numerous, black walnut, maple, ash, and catalpa being among them. Just as we felt that one could find his way across Nevada by a trail of whiskey bottles so we began to feel that one could cross Iowa on a trail marked by dead fowls. I had never before seen so many chickens killed by motor cars. Perhaps the explanation lay in the fact that all along our one hundred and eight miles from Omaha to Carroll we passed numbers of farmers driving Ford cars. As we approached Carroll, we came to a hill top from which we looked down on a valley of tasseled corn fields. It was exactly like looking down on an immense, shining green rug, with yellow tufts thrown up over its green surface. We saw but few orchards. This was a corn country. Carroll is a pleasant little town, with fine street lamps, and with a green park around its Courthouse. We were surprised to find so good a hotel as Burke's Hotel in a small town. Its landlady and proprietor has recently made extensive improvements in it, and it is a place of vantage on the Highway. The country around Carroll is very fine, being rolling and beautifully cultivated. We reached Carroll very late in the day and were obliged to take our supper at a restaurant near the hotel. We were interested in a party of four young people who were evidently out for a good time. The two young gentlemen, by a liberal use of twenty-five cent pieces, kept the mechanical piano pounding out music all through their meal. They were both guiltless of coats and waist-coats. We had seen all through the West men in all sorts of public assemblies, more or less formal, wearing only their shirts and trousers. So we had become somewhat accustomed to what we called the shirt-waist habit. Many customs of the West strike the eye of the Easterner with astonishment. This custom which permits men to be at ease in public places and in the presence of ladies without coat or waist-coat in hot weather; the custom which permits ladies to sit in church without their hats; these and others which belong to the free West, the Easterner has to become accustomed to and to take kindly. Several times in California, and in Nevada, when we asked a question we received the cheerful, if unconventional response, "You bet!" "Will you please bring me a glass of water?" "You bet!" "We're on the Lincoln Highway, are we not?" "You bet!" These somewhat startling responses simply indicated a most cheerful spirit and a hearty readiness to do you any favor possible. Leaving Carroll, we come on through Ames, Jefferson, Marshalltown, and Belle Plain, into Cedar Rapids. Out from Carroll we have rather bumpy roads for some time. Then the road improves and is excellent from Ames on until we near Cedar Rapids. But all along work is being done on the roads and their improvement is a matter of great local interest. We pass a point in Marshall County where they are working with a new machine for cutting down the road. I call it a dirt-eating machine. The commissioner is extremely proud of it, and calls our attention to the immense amount of work it can do, and to the huge mouthfuls of earth which it bites out from the bank, through which the wider road is to run. We are charmed with the lovely country around Marshalltown, and with the very beautiful country between Belle Plain and Cedar Rapids. We drive through the campus and past the buildings of the State Agricultural College at Ames as we come into the town. We are passing beautiful farms. Here we see a group of splendid dappled grey Percheron draught horses, the pride of a stock-farm. There we pass reddish-yellow shocks of oats. The country is more wooded now. We see maples, oaks, ash, willows, and black walnuts. Here and there are yellow wild flowers, somewhat like black-eyed Susans. One thing we remark in all these Middle Western farms. There seem to be almost no flowers around the farm houses. An English farmhouse or a French farmhouse would have a riot of flowers growing all about and making a mass of color. We miss this in our Western farms and wonder why it is that we see so little color. We see practically no orchards, and very few grape-vines. This is the country of wheat and oats. We have left the orchards and the vineyards far behind us in lovely California. Cedar Rapids is a busy city with several hotels. Leaving the city on the morning of July 21st, we drive first through quite heavily wooded country. Then the view opens out and we are once more driving over beautiful, undulating country with rich crops of oats and corn. The perfume of the corn, standing tall and green, is delicious. When we pass through Mt. Vernon, we take a look at the buildings of Wesleyan College, which stands on a high ridge commanding a fine view. All the way to Clinton the country is attractive. After luncheon at the pleasant town of Clinton, we cross the broad Mississippi, looking up and down its green shores with delight. We are in Illinois now, and find Sterling and Dixon attractive towns on the Rock River, a stream dotted with green islands. The country is very open, with long stretches of prairie, green with standing corn or red-yellow with shocks of oats. We spend the night in De Kalb at a funny old hotel, built, they tell us, by Mr. Glidden, the "barbed-wire king." The hotel is called "The Glidden." Its ceilings are twenty feet high and we feel ourselves to be in "a banquet hall deserted." From De Kalb we make a short detour into Chicago, returning to the Highway at Joliet. Joliet is a smoky city, full of factories and busy with the world's work. It is late afternoon when we reach Joliet, and we drive on to Elkhart, where we put up at a beautiful hotel with every modern convenience. The Indiana roads are in excellent condition and take us through a lovely rolling country of oaks and beech forests, and of fields of grain breathing pastoral peace and prosperity. All along through the Middle West we have been pleased to see the immense interest taken in the Lincoln Highway. Everywhere one sees the Lincoln Highway signs used in abundance on the streets through which the Highway passes. The telephone poles, the garages, and sometimes the shops, all are marked with the familiar red, white, and blue. They tell us of a Western town whose citizens were so anxious to have their town on the Highway that they of their own responsibility painted red, white, and blue signs on the telephone poles leading into and through the town. Later they were reluctantly obliged to paint out these signs, as the Highway was not taken through their town. The names of the farms in the Middle West are many of them very interesting; as "Rolling Prairie Farm," "Round Prairie Farm," "Burr Oak Valley Farm," "Hickory Grove Farm," and "Hill Brook Farm." At the entrance to a farm in Illinois a farmer has nailed a shelf to a telephone pole near his gate, and on this shelf he has placed a small bust of Lincoln. I fancy this is a prophecy of many monuments that we shall see along the Lincoln Highway in days to come. We come into Ohio through the pleasant town of Van Wert, and drive on through fields of corn and wheat to Lima; and here we leave the Lincoln Highway for the present. We are to make a detour into Logan County, and from there we plan to travel southeast into the Old Dominion. We spend a number of days in Logan County, driving about over the hills and through the valleys. This, too, is rolling country. I know it well, for here I spent my childhood. I know these forests of oak and hickory, and these rich fields of corn and wheat. I know the delicious scent of clover fields in the warm summer twilights. I recall the names that my girlhood friend and I used to give to the farmhouses as we drove about; "The Potato House," "The Dinner Bell House," "The Little Red House," and others. They are all there, and but little changed, although the people who live in them have probably changed. We are told by a friend, who is a motor enthusiast, that she recently killed a turkey on the road. In all my motoring experience I have never seen a turkey, a guinea fowl or a duck, killed by a motor. But my friend tells me that they found it impossible to escape this particular turkey, as he refused to get out of the way. We passed three little girls one day, all astride the same horse, driving the cows home from pasture. We asked them to stand while we took their picture. They were greatly distressed. "We have on our dirty clothes," said they. "Never mind," we said. "But our hair isn't combed!" they exclaimed. "Never mind," we said again. "You will look all right in the picture." And so they do. The devices and pennants with which motorists advertise themselves and express their enjoyment are very interesting. Some carry pennants with the names of the towns or the States from which they come. Others carry pennants with the names of all the principal towns which they have visited. Whole clusters of pennants are fastened about the car, and float gaily in the wind. Some carry a pennant across the rear of the tonneau, which reads, "Excuse my dust." Others carry a pennant in the same place which reads, "Thank you." We infer that this must be by way of courtesy to those cars which turn out for them to pass and fly on ahead. We meet many tourists in the Middle West who have been for more or less extended tours in the States near their own. CHAPTER XI We were sorry to leave the wooded hills and the green valleys of Logan County and press on to the southeast. Driving through Delaware, Ohio, we stopped to see the campus and fine buildings of Ohio Wesleyan University, and then came on by way of Columbus to Granville. Leaving Columbus we found the road very wet and heavy from the recent rains, which had fallen after a drought of many weeks. We lost our way in coming into Granville, and had to inquire directions at the house of a farmer. He was so kindly that we were moved to express to him a hope that he might some day have a motor. "Well, I don't begrudge 'em to nobody even if I can't have one myself," said he cheerfully. We came into the broad main street of Granville, the lights shining, the leaves of the maple trees glistening with the rain which had fallen earlier in the day. If ever there was a New England town in a Western State, Granville is that town. It was founded more than a hundred years ago by Connecticut people, and it bears the impress of its founders to-day. Its wide street, its old churches, its white houses with green shutters, its look of comfort and cleanliness, all are typically New England. We had a most comfortable night at the old fashioned Hotel Buxton, and drove up on the hill in the beautiful clear morning to see the buildings of Denison University. The University is very finely situated on a high ridge overlooking the wooded town, and commanding a fine view of the green valley beyond. There is a brick terrace on the hillside, with an ornamental sundial, where one may enjoy the rich champaign below. Back of the college buildings, which look out over the valley, the hill plunges down into a fine forest of beeches. The student at Granville has beautiful surroundings for his years of study. Emerson said that the mountains around an institution should be put in the college curriculum. Granville students certainly should include in their curriculum the beauty of beech forests and the richness of the Ohio farming country. From Granville on to Zanesville the country increases in charm. It is rich and fertile, gently rolling, diversified by fine beeches and elms. Here and there are plenteous corn fields. But Ohio farmhouses do not seem to cultivate more flowers than do the farmhouses of Iowa and Illinois. Reaching Zanesville we are greeted by a great sign suspended across the road above our heads. It reads, "Hello! Glad you came. Just drive carefully. Zanesville Motorcycle Club." In leaving we pass under a similar sign and find that it reads on its reverse side, "Thank you! Come again. Zanesville Motorcycle Club." We are on the old National Road now, and find it rather poor. It is uneven, and is rendered bumpy by the constant road bars. The country grows more hilly, and the towns are beginning to change character. Newark is an attractive little city, standing rather high. "Old Washington" has very old red brick houses, and St. Clairsville is an attractive old town. The towns remind one of the old Pennsylvania towns. The houses are built flush with the sidewalk just as one sees them in Pennsylvania. Many of the farmhouses are built of substantial red brick, with white porches. About nine miles from Wheeling, West Virginia, we come along a fine road to a most beautiful hilltop view. Prosperous farms and farmhouses are all about, the farmhouses standing high on the green, rounded tops of the hills. The National Road being under repair, we take a detour in order to reach Wheeling. A hospitable sign at the entrance to our roundabout road to the right reads, "This road open. Bellaire bids you welcome." We learn later that there are in this region what are called Ridge Roads and Valley Roads. We are entering Bellaire by a Ridge Road, and have fine views of hilltop farmhouses and barns, and of hilltop cornfields, all the way. We drop down a steep hill into Bellaire, turn north to Bridgeport, and from there turn east across the Ohio River into the city of Wheeling. From Wheeling we drive on into Pennsylvania, through Washington, a hill city, to Uniontown. The whole country is hilly and we are constantly enjoying fine views. Around Uniontown many noble trees are dying. They tell us that this is the locust year, and that these trees are victims of the voracious insects. Beyond Uniontown we sweep up a long hill, over a splendid road, to the Summit House. The hotel is closed, so we go on over the hills to a simpler hotel which is open all the year. This is the Chalk Hill House, and here we have true country comfort. For supper we have fried chicken, fried ham, fried hasty pudding, huckleberries, strawberry preserves, real maple syrup, water melon rind pickles, cookies, cake, apple sauce, flannel cakes, and coffee. This is Pennsylvania hospitality. Chalk Hill is 2100 feet above sea level, and we have fine mountain air. We learn that Braddock's troops in their famous march to the West passed only 500 yards back of where the Chalk Hill House now stands. We ask our fellow travelers at the inn about a very tall monument which we passed, between Washington and Uniontown, on a hilltop. It is eighty-five feet high, and bears the name of McCutcheon. We are told that Mr. McCutcheon's will directed that all his money should be spent in the erection of this monument to his memory. So there it stands. Our route lies through Cumberland to Hagerstown, and from Hagerstown through Martinsburg to Winchester, Virginia. We are crossing the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, and coming into Maryland on the northwest corner; passing through a small triangle of West Virginia, and entering Virginia by the northwest. Not long after leaving Chalk Hill House we pass on the left the comparatively new monument which marks Braddock's grave. A beautiful bronze tablet on one side of the granite shaft reads: "This bronze tablet was erected and dedicated to the memory of Major-General Edward Braddock by the officers of his old regiment, the Coldstream Guards of England, October 15th, 1913." Another bronze tablet has been placed by the Braddock Memorial Park Association of Fayette County, Pennsylvania. There is also in bas relief a bust of Braddock in military dress. The great seals of the United States and of Great Britain adorn the shaft. The main inscription on the shaft reads: Here lieth the remains of Major-General Edward Braddock who, in command of the 44th and 48th regiments of English regulars was mortally wounded in an engagement with the French and Indians under the command of Captain M. de Beaujeu at the battle of the Monongahela, within ten miles of Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburg, July 9, 1755. He was borne back with the retreating army to the old orchard camp, about one-fourth of a mile west of this park, where he died July 13, 1755. Lieutenant Colonel George Washington read the burial service at the grave. We are on historic ground all along here. A little farther down the road we pass a tablet on a roadside boulder, erected in 1913 by the Great Crossing Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, to mark the old "Nemacolin's trail," so named from the Delaware Indian guide for the Ohio Company. The tablet records that Washington passed this way in 1753, 1754, and 1755. On the right of the road we pass a very old farmhouse of red brick, back of which in a swampy meadow is the site of the camp of Braddock's forces. We go down the cow lane to see the old camp, whose outlines are marked. [Illustration: 1. Braddock's Monument near Uniontown, Pa. 2. Old Farmhouse near Braddock's Camp. 3. Historic Inn at Hancock, Md.] We are in a region of fine old stone bridges, and of beautiful orchard country, alternating with rolling hills covered with heavy forest. At Grantsville we pass the old Dorsey House, now called the Hotel Castleman. This used to be a hostel much frequented by the farmers. A small boy who is playing in the street and who is sojourning here for the summer gives us this information, and adds that at the Hotel Castleman you have "lots to eat, and plenty of it." We are sorry that it is not luncheon time so that we could put his statement to the test. Passing through Grantsville we cross the old Castleman Bridge, an immense single span of stone. Another fine old bridge with very solid buttresses spans Conococheague Creek. After luncheon in Cumberland, we press east to Hagerstown. We are advised that we will find the road far better if we drive east to Hagerstown and then southwest to Winchester, instead of taking the direct southeast route to Winchester from Cumberland. We have an excellent road from Cumberland to Hagerstown, and find the rich orchard country very beautiful. Ten miles from Cumberland, we come upon a point of vantage from which we have a most lovely view. As we near the town of Hancock with its famous old inn the country is still more interesting. We look down on the gleaming Potomac, winding through green fields and beautifully cultivated orchards. This is famous apple and peach country. Every year more of the virgin forest on the mountainside is cleared and planted to young apple and peach trees. The soil and the climate are most admirably adapted to the growing of fruit, and there are immense investments in these beautiful orchards. What a fair, fair country! After we pass Hancock we look down on the canal near which our road runs. A canal boat passes, the mules walking leisurely along the towpath. A boy stands at the helm looking out on the beautiful landscape of forest, orchard, and field. Clothes flap from the clothes-line on the boat. It is a fine life, we think, this gliding along so securely between green fields and orchards and clumps of forest. Hagerstown is a pleasant town in which to spend the night. We enjoy walking about the streets and seeing some of the old houses. Even the main street of Hagerstown still has one fine old stone house, low and solid, painted yellow. It is the only residence left on the business street, its owner not yet having been tempted by its increased value to sell it. [Illustration: 1. "Moore House" at Yorktown, Va., where terms were drawn up after the Surrender of Cornwallis. 2. Castleman Bridge, Md. 3. Old Church Tower on Jamestown Island.] From Hagerstown there are fine shale roads in our drive south to Winchester. After passing through old Williamsport we cross the Potomac on a long bridge. All along these roads the motorist is annoyed by many toll gates at which he is halted to pay toll. These are the landmarks of other times and of old customs. These roads were originally built and maintained by private companies. They are fast being bought up by the State, and in a few years the toll gates will disappear. As we approach Winchester the country becomes more prosperous in appearance than it is around Martinsburg, West Virginia. Five miles from Winchester we pass two fine old red brick farm houses with white porches. We are at last in the Old Dominion, and look forward with high spirits to a tour among the Virginia towns and cities. Winchester is a very old town, with a fascination that grows upon one. It is a simple little place, with a certain placidity and quiet that are very soothing. Here is the Winchester Inn with its wide porches and high ceilings. And here is Mrs. Nancy Cobles's private boarding-house, whose very appearance breathes of homelike comfort and Southern hospitality. The Winchester Inn announces that it is "refurnished, refitted, reland-lorded." In Winchester is the little old building used as a surveyor's office by young Washington when he was working for Lord Fairfax. Here is fine old Christ Church, endowed by Thomas, Lord Fairfax, whose ashes rest underneath the church. In Winchester I begin to see very interesting and perfectly clear traces of old Colonial days. There are quaint old names on the grave stones; "Judith," "Mary Ann," "Parthenia." Here is the old English name of Fauntleroy. And here are old houses with fan-lights over the doors. It is in Winchester, too, that I begin to sense the tragedy and awfulness of the Civil War, as traced by many a sad inscription on many a gravestone. Hundreds of Southern dead are sleeping in the Winchester cemeteries. There are monuments to many unknown dead. "Unknown dead from Winchester battlefield," "Unknown dead from Cedar Creek battlefield," and so on. There are monuments to "the brothers Ashby," and to "the Patton brothers." How young are the ages given on many of these stones! Nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine. Our most interesting call in Winchester is upon a lady who is the owner and manager of a farm of 8000 apple trees, 7000 of which she has set out herself within the past five years, "every tree in a dynamited hole, every tree pruned by a government expert." She tells us that all she knows of apple culture she has learned by a careful study of government pamphlets. Her orchard is about five miles from town, and she drives out daily from her pleasant home. She tells us that her apples are sent to Jersey City and there kept in cold storage. Late in the season she sells them, getting sometimes as high as $7.50 a barrel toward the end of the winter. As we talk with her we wonder why it is that more women do not go in for apple culture. Surely it is a delightful vocation, clean, healthful, invigorating, and profitable. Our friend tells us laughingly that so far as her experience goes, negro servants are "still proving to their former owners that they are free." She relates an experience with a young negro maid, who after eight months of happy service with her, during which time she had the best of training, suddenly left her. She took a new position just across the street and for exactly the same wages as her old situation had given her. When her former mistress asked her why it was that she was leaving, she giggled and said demurely, "I mus' do de bes' I kin fo' myse'f." From Winchester we drive to Staunton over a fine road. From the fine country about Winchester, dotted with beautiful orchards, down through Harrisonburg in the midst of great grain and hay farms, we are passing through the famous Shenandoah Valley. We see it at a disadvantage, for the months of dry weather have burned the fields brown and dry and increased the dust of the roads. But it is beautiful still, a fair and prosperous farming country. We pass through Harrisonburg on court day, and the town is filled with farmers who make of this day a general market day. As we approach Staunton we come again into orchard country. We have been passing through many miles of farms devoted to grain. On the left, as one enters Staunton, is Chilton Hall, standing high above the town. Chilton Hall, kept by a woman, is a fine new private house, transformed into a tourist hostel. It looks most attractive. We go on into Staunton as we wish to be in the heart of the town. We establish ourselves very comfortably for a few days at "The Shenandoah," also kept by a woman. Here we have for a very moderate price a room with a private bath. We enjoy fresh milk and cream, home-made butter, jams, and jellies, and all the good things of a hospitable Virginia table. We visit the famous Mary Baldwin Seminary, an exquisitely kept institution. We also see the Episcopal Church school in its fine old building, Stuart Hall, and we walk past the Presbyterian manse where President Wilson was born. We visit the fine cemetery and read the sad inscriptions on the head stones. One, erected to a young officer of thirty years, reads, "Here lies a gallant soldier," and adds that he fell fighting "in the great battle of Manassas." In this cemetery there are 870 Southern dead whose names are given. There are also about 700 soldiers lying here, "not recorded by name." The inscription speaks of them as "unknown yet well known." There are quaint names of women on the old stones here, as in Winchester; "Johanah," and "Edmonia." And there are old English names; as Barclay, Warwick, Peyton, Prettyman, Eskridge, and Darrow. During our stay in Staunton we take a day for a drive to the Natural Bridge. It is charming country through which we drive, growing more broken and wooded as we go farther south. We find the road bumpy and dusty, but not at all impracticable. We have our luncheon with us, and after paying a somewhat exorbitant fee of one dollar apiece for entrance to the natural park which includes the Bridge scenery, we walk along the ravine beside the little river, to the mighty arch of the Bridge itself. It is a noble span of rock, of an enormous thickness, on so grand a scale that it is difficult to realize its height and width. We have our luncheon beside the stream in the forest, and drive back to Staunton. The wooded Virginia hills and the fields are beautiful in the afternoon sunlight. In returning to Staunton we stop in Lexington to see the old cemetery where Stonewall Jackson lies buried, and where his statue looks out from a terrace over the open country. We also visit the very beautiful campus of the Washington and Lee University, and the hilltop situation of the famous Virginia Military Institute, where another statue of Jackson stands in commanding position. Were there time, one could linger for hours on the University campus and in the old Lexington cemetery. I find a very interesting inscription on a simple stone, which reads thus: Samuel Hays. In loving remembrance for faithful service; this stone is erected by the desire of his master. He was loved, honoured, and trusted, by three generations. The buildings of Washington and Lee University are of classic type, and the whole campus with its fine trees and its many white porticoes gleaming through them, makes an impression that is best expressed by the old phrase, "classic shades." Some of our more modern universities impress one by their very architecture and atmosphere as being magnificently equipped institutions of business. Washington and Lee University has the old atmosphere of study and of the quiet, ordered life of the scholar. The Virginia Military Institute is particularly interesting to the traveler, because of the vault in its chapel crypt where rest the ashes of the Lee family. Here are buried Lighthorse Harry Lee, and his distinguished son General Robert E. Lee. And here there is a beautiful recumbent statue of General Lee by Valentine; so realistic that the dead man seems to lie before one wrapped in marble sleep. CHAPTER XII We are sorry to leave the hospitable "Shenandoah" when the time comes to go on to Charlottesville. We drive from Staunton out past the National Cemetery which stands on a hill overlooking the valley. We are soon to cross the ridge between the Shenandoah Valley and the other great valley known as Piedmont, the crossing point being at Rock Fish Gap. This is the historic point where the early settlers first saw and laid claim to the Shenandoah Valley in the name of the King of England. The view from the top of the Gap, which is reached by a very easy climb, is strikingly beautiful. On one side is the Shenandoah Valley from which we have just come up, stretching far into the distance. On the other are the fertile rolling hills, and the miles of green orchards, of the Piedmont section. Here is a view which shows us the smiling, fruitful Virginia of which we have dreamed. We descend from the Gap by a very fine new road, and shortly after we cross a bridge which is in the last stages, so far as traffic is concerned, of tottering decay. At each end of the old wooden structure there is a card posted by the county commissioners to the effect that they will not be responsible for the safety of travelers crossing the bridge. It strikes one as rather incongruous that they should warn people against using the bridge, save on their own responsibility, and yet offer no alternative. Just beyond Yancey Mills we pass an old, old farmhouse at whose gate there hangs an attractive sign, "THE SIGN OF THE GREEN TEA-POT." We decide to go in for a cup of tea. It is a charming little place, kept by a woman of taste and arranged for parties to sup in passing by, or for a few people to make a short stay. We admire the simple, dainty furniture, the homelike little parlor, and the attractive dining-room. Everything is beautifully clean and we sigh that we cannot make a longer stay. They give us one of the best cups of tea that we have had in all our long journey. The views about the place are charmingly pastoral, and we feel that with books and walks we could spend an idyllic fortnight here. Coming into Charlottesville we pass the fine campus of the University of Virginia. Now comes a delightful week in old Charlottesville. To begin with, we insure our comfort by staying at a private boarding house on Jefferson street, where we have the delicious cooking that makes the tables of the old State famous. We find the boarding houses in Virginia to be very pleasant places indeed. We enjoy our Virginia table neighbors and we enjoy the homely comfort of these establishments. When we do not know the address of a boarding house we are accustomed, upon entering a town, to make inquiry at the best looking drug store. We have found this plan admirable, and are indebted for some very kindly and practical advice. While in Charlottesville we drive about the country over the red clay roads which are so beautiful in the midst of the green meadows and orchards. This is the scenery that is so charmingly described by Mary Johnston in "Lewis Rand." Charlottesville is in the midst of a famous apple country, where are grown most delicious wine saps. All along in our Virginia travels we have seen evidences of a bumper crop of apples. Never have I seen so many apple trees bowed to the ground with their rosy crop. Each tree is a bouquet in itself; and a whole orchard of these trees with their drooping sprays of apple-laden branches, many of them propped from the ground, is a charming sight. I wish for the brush of a painter to transfer all this color and form to an immortal canvas. On a hill near Charlottesville we have a never-to-be-forgotten view. Across a little valley on another hilltop is Thomas Jefferson's "Monticello," or Little Mountain. Just in front lies the town of Charlottesville upon its many knolls. And on beyond, rank on rank, stretch 150 miles of the Blue Mountains. The hill on which we stand has a bald top and just below this is a fringe of beautiful young apple and peach orchards. The trees do well on these hills. Lower down is the Pantopps orchard, which once belonged to the Jefferson estate. [Illustration: 1. Conococheague Creek Bridge, Md. 2. "Edgehill," near Charlottesville, Va. Old Home of Martha Jefferson Randolph. 3. "At the Sign of the Green Teapot," near Yancey Mills, Va.] One day we drive, by virtue of an introduction, to "Edgehill," a fine old estate where lived Martha Jefferson Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's daughter. We are only a short distance here from "Castle Hill," the old home of the Rives family and the present residence of the Princess Troubetskoy. Another day we drive, by a stiff hill road winding through the estate, to "Monticello." The trees on the lawn of "Monticello" are our special delight, as are the views from the hilltop plateau on which the house stands. From here Jefferson could see in the distant trees the tops of the buildings of the beloved University which he had founded. No wonder that it is on record that Thomas Jefferson spent 796 days in all at "Monticello" during his two terms as President! In a family cemetery on the hillside, not so very far from the hilltop lawn, rest the mortal remains of Thomas Jefferson. He sleeps with the members of his family about him, and on the plain shaft of Virginia granite are these words, which were written by Jefferson himself and were found among his papers: "Here was Buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, Of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, And Father of the University of Virginia." We spend some time at the University of Virginia, wandering about the campus, and admiring the old buildings of classic architecture. Every visitor should stand upon the terrace of the library, which commands a beautiful view of the quadrangle, flanked by long lines of professors' houses with classic white porticoes and enclosed at its further end by a hall of assembly. On the lawn of the quadrangle stands a statue of Homer. The bard is represented as sitting with his lyre in his hands while at his feet is a youth in the position of a rapt listener and learner. As we wish to see as much of Virginia as possible we drive from Charlottesville to Culpeper, returning from Culpeper to Richmond. In leaving Charlottesville we drive past Keswick, a little settlement around which the country has been taken by many beautiful estates. Our route runs by Gordonsville and Orange through Madison Mills to Culpeper. Not far from Keswick we pass a sign at an attractive farm gate, which reads, "Cloverfields. Meals for tourists. Golf." We are sorry to be unable to test the hospitality of Cloverfields. Although our road is more or less indifferent, we are passing through beautiful country. Around Keswick the fields are beautifully kept, and the entrances to estates are marked by ivy-covered posts of yellow stone, rough hewn. Some of the houses are red brick with white pillars, others are of stucco. There are plenty of turkeys and chickens, and hounds, as everywhere else in Virginia. We begin to see clumps of pine trees from time to time. The oak trees of the forest are very large, many of them of noble height. The juniper trees are in blossom, their blue-green berries making them look as if they wore an exquisite blue-green veil. In Virginia, one is everywhere impressed by the richness and luxuriance of the foliage. All along the roadside banks are clumps of hazel bushes, heavy with clusters of nuts in their furry green coats. The chestnut trees are full of fruit. About a mile north of Gordonsville we pass a plain shaft of light pinkish-grey granite on the roadside bank at the left. The name Waddel is on the shaft and the following inscription: Near this spot while yet primeval forest stood the church of the blind preacher James Waddel. A devout man of God and a faithful minister of the Presbyterian Church. Born 1739--died 1805. Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ like a God. From his sermon as narrated by William Wirt. This country has just the charm that I should expect it to have from my reading about Virginia. Here are late-blooming honeysuckles in the hedges. Here are men drawing wagon loads of produce along the rather heavy clay highways to market. Sometimes they drive two horses tandem. The rear horse is saddled, and the driver rides him and so guides the team. Sometimes a heavy wagon is drawn by four horses, the driver astride the near horse in the rear. Sometimes we see farmers ploughing with three horses or mules, flocks of turkeys or chickens following in the wake of the plough and picking up the luscious morsels thrown up by the ploughshare. Sometimes we see fine Hereford cattle grazing in the fields. Then come the reddest of red pigs feeding contentedly in big fields of alfalfa. Once we pass a farmhouse with late-blooming yellow roses climbing over the stone posts at the farm entrance. Once we see a man ploughing in the fields with a mare, her mule baby running by her side as she plods along. Near Madison Mills we cross the Rapidan river, a rushing, yellow stream. As we near Culpeper the wooded country opens out into a beautiful grazing region, the land rising and falling in long undulations. Here and there in the great fields are clumps of trees giving a park-like effect to the country. All this is very beautiful, and one's joy would be undimmed were it not for the traces of the great conflict of fifty years ago. We are coming now to the region of Cedar Mountain which is locally known as Slaughter Mountain. Here is the site of a bloody battle. The Confederates were intrenched in a position of vantage on Cedar Mountain and the Unionists were advancing across the fields and through the forest into a sort of basin below the mountain. It is quite easy to understand the heavy slaughter of the Union troops; for on both sides of the road, here and there in the fields, are stones marking the spots where certain officers and certain groups of men fell. Here is a stone near the road marking the spot where Colonel Winder of the 72nd Pennsylvania fell as he was advancing. As we see these stones the present peace and prosperity of these rolling grass lands is emphasized by the bloody background of the past. We stay in Culpeper at the old railway hotel, "The Waverly." In the morning we drive about the rich country and are decided in our own minds that if we wished to come to Virginia for a great grazing establishment, this is the part of the country to which we should turn. We hear tales of one farm where the owner has made seven cuttings of alfalfa in the course of one year. We make a hurried trip to the National Cemetery at Culpeper. 12,000 Union soldiers sleep in this cemetery; and Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania all have monuments to their dead. The granite pillar of Pennsylvania, with its bronze tablets, keystone shaped, is particularly fine. The noble inscription begins: "Pennsylvania remembers with solemn pride her heroic dead who here repose in known and unknown graves." In leaving Culpeper we retrace our path as far as Gordonsville, and there turn toward Mechanicsville, on our way to Richmond. Again we come through alternations of open, rolling, exquisitely pastoral country and lush forest. Between Culpeper and Madison Mills we notice particularly a little old red brick church set in the forest trees by the roadside. A tablet on the building tells us that this is "Crooked Run Baptist Church. Organized 1777, rebuilt 1910." Crooked Run, a swift, clay-red creek, hurries along through the forest near the church. One thing that interests us in Virginia is the frequency of family cemeteries, quiet plots near the old farmhouses and mansions. Sometimes they are surrounded by low brick walls, over which the honeysuckle climbs. Sometimes they are open plots on a knoll in some field near the house. After we pass Gordonsville the fine road changes to a comparatively poor one and the open country with its park-like appearance gives way to long stretches of rich forest. There are many fine oaks and clumps of green pines. After passing Louisa we are more than ever in what seems to be back country, lonely and apparently sparsely settled. We drive over long stretches of old corduroy road, the planks now much rotted. Here and there is a comfortable looking negro cabin, and here and there a negro is clearing land. The soil looks very rich and fertile after it has been opened to the sun. At a somewhat lonely point we come upon three little negro boys and tell them that we wish to take their pictures. I stand them in a row while T. gets his camera, assuring them that each boy is to have two pennies for standing quietly. They are somewhat awed by the occasion; and when T. produces a tripod and begins to pull out its long legs preparatory to getting a high stand for the camera, they are terrified. The face of the oldest one melts into tears, but we reassure him and the picture promises to be a success. We tell the proud mother of the oldest boy that we will surely send her a picture and we are glad to keep our promise later. [Illustration: 1. Three Young Virginians. 2. An Old Homestead on Tidewater, Va.] Farther on we pass some forlorn looking negroes in a field, clearing the land. By the roadside sits the baby, a round little pickaninny in a rustic baby carriage made of a soap box on wooden wheels. We stop the car and ask if we may take the baby's picture. The older man looks very troubled and says, "I'm afraid not. You see I ain't got any money. I just got this heah land." We assure him that we don't want any money and will be only too happy to send some pictures of the baby if our photograph turns out well. But he is still dubious and troubled, and the baby's brother says, "The baby's mother ain't heah; we dursent do it when she ain't heah." Evidently they think that we mean to involve them in some financial obligation or to cast some sort of spell over little black baby, contentedly sucking her thumb. I don't like to be beaten, but we cannot stay to convince them that they are mistaken, so we say "Good-bye," and drive away. From time to time we pass patches of tobacco, very green and thrifty looking; but there is much uncleared land and there are long stretches of lonely country. We reach Richmond at six o'clock and are so fortunate as to have the address of a charming boarding house on Franklin Street. Richmond has some excellent hotels; and she also has some very attractive pensions. "Where do you come from?" asks our hospitable hostess, as she shows us to our big, comfortable room. "From California," I respond, and create quite a sensation. Richmond is worthy of a longer stay than we can possibly make this time. But we drive for a morning and enjoy all that we can of the old city. We go up to Monument Hill and have the fine view from there, looking down on the winding James and on the green fields of Chesterfield County and Manchester beyond. We drive out to the National Cemetery where 6573 Union soldiers sleep, 5678 of them unknown. We go to Church Hill and see old St. John's Church, where Patrick Henry's pew in which he made his famous speech is marked with a brass plate and an inscription. We drive to the other end of the city and see the new part of Richmond with its wide streets and fine equestrian statues of General Lee and General Stuart. The old houses of the town, built of red brick and adorned with white porches, with pink crape myrtle blooming luxuriantly in their door yards, are particularly attractive to us. But we must leave the old city and drive on fifty miles to Williamsburg. The road is sandy and somewhat muddy in shady spots, under the heavy forest foliage. Nine miles out from Richmond we pass through the village of Seven Pines, the region of the bloody battle of Seven Pines. All about are extensive forests of pine; and on the left, after we pass through the village, is a National Cemetery surrounded by a brick wall, just as are those of Richmond and Culpeper. This is a smaller cemetery, but there are rows and rows of little white headstones, marking the graves of the fallen. We drive for miles through the forest, the fine trees growing close to the road. There is a special fascination in driving through open forest. Here are willow oaks, live oaks, and green, green pines. Here is a heavy undergrowth of young dogwoods. And here by the roadside are persimmon trees, loaded with fruit. Wherever the land is cleared it is rich and fertile. As we come nearer to the sea the forest growth is heavier. Here and there are negroes working in neat little clearings or sitting on the whitewashed wooden porches of their tiny cabins. We are in water-melon country and great wagon-loads of the fruit are being taken to the nearest station for export. All along the road we see the pink and green fragments of discarded fruit. People eat water-melons at this season as we eat oranges in the North. We can see the remains of many an open air banquet, by the roadside. We stop by one wagon-load and I ask a boy who is driving what a water-melon will cost. "Oh! fifteen cents." "We don't want such a big one," say I. "Can't you sell us a smaller one for ten cents?" "I reckon so." And he picks out a huge water-melon, and passes it over. As we drive along we cut out cubic pieces of the pink delicacy. Never have we tasted such a water-melon. It has not been wilted by a long, hot train journey, but has just come from the field, and is fresh and delicious. At Williamsburg we stay at the Colonial Inn, a most pleasant hostel, on old Duke of Glouchester Street. Williamsburg, known then as Middle Plantation, was the settlement to which the Jamestown settlers moved when they found Jamestown Island too damp and malarial for permanent occupancy. It is one of the most interesting Colonial towns in the United States. In Williamsburg I realize that many of our Virginia forefathers were Englishmen of the aristocratic class. The coats-of-arms on the old stones in the cemetery; the quiet elegance of the old parish church with its handsomely draped governor's pew--all the marks of early days' ceremonial are here. A service in Bruton Parish Church is an experience, and it is also an experience to see the communion plate of solid silver and the old prayer-book used in Colonial days. One can see for one's self the pages in the prayer-book where "King of kings" has been scored out and "Ruler of the universe" has been written in on the margin. In this prayer-book the prayer for the king has been pasted over, a prayer for the president having been written on the paper covering the printed prayer. The parish register of the church has many interesting and amusing entries. In one entry twin slaves have been registered by their master as "Adam" and "Eve." Miss Estelle Smith, a lady who lives in a most interesting old house on Palace Green, knows the history of Williamsburg thoroughly, and is a very charming guide. Miss Smith's house, where a few paying guests find gracious hospitality, is known as "Audrey House." It was this house that Mary Johnston used as the setting for her heroine, Audrey. On one window-pane of the "Audrey House" an unknown hand traced with a diamond long, long ago these words: "Nov. 23rd, 1796. O fatal day." On another pane there is a name and the date 1734. Miss Smith says that no member of her family knows what the fatal day was, away back in 1796. No tradition or record of that unhappiness has descended. In Bruton church yard, I am interested to read on a family gravestone a special inscription to "Mammy Sarah, devoted servant of the family who died aged sixty years." The gallery of the old church is known as "Lord Dunsmore's Gallery." Lord Dunsmore retired here from the seats of the Burgesses on the floor below, shortly before the Revolution, not being in sympathy with their revolutionary attitude. Later the gallery was assigned to the students of William and Mary College, and its old railing is covered with their initials, cut deep into the wood. One can read fine old names, and very great names, on the brass tablets which adorn many of the pews and many wall spaces in Bruton church. George Washington, Peyton Randolph, Patrick Henry, and many others. As we read them we feel that we are in a distinguished and patriotic company, silent and yet present. It is pleasant to wander about the old streets of the village, shaded by gnarled mulberry trees and fine elms. Masses of pink crape myrtle embower some of the old houses, and waxen leaved magnolia trees shade the door yards. At one end of the village there is an interesting stone to mark the site of the old Capitol. We read that "Here Patrick Henry first kindled the flames of revolution by his resolutions and speech against the Stamp Act, May 29-30, 1765." "Here June 12, 1776, was adopted by the convention the immortal work of George Mason, the Declaration of Rights and on June 29, 1776 the first written Constitution of a free and independent State ever framed." We drive out past the shaded campus of William and Mary College and over eight miles of sandy road through the forest, to Jamestown Island. We cross a rickety rustic bridge over the saltwater stream which separates the island from the mainland. Driving across grassy fields we come to the present church, incorporating the old tower and surrounding with its brick walls the precious foundations of the early church. The present church is really a protection for these low, broken foundations which are railed off from the possible vandalism of tourists; and the repository of certain old tombs and of an ever increasing number of memorial tablets upon its brick walls. One tablet which pleases me much, reads: In honour of Chanco The Christian Indian boy whose warnings saved The Colony of Virginia from destruction In the Massacre of 22 March, 1622. Erected by the Society of Colonial Dames of America in the State of Virginia. Another interesting tablet reads: To the glory of God An in grateful remembrance of The adventurers in England and Ancient Planters of Virginia Who through evil report and loss of fortune Through suffering and death Maintained stout hearts And laid the foundations of our country. A fine statue of Captain John Smith stands on the greensward, near the church, looking out over the broad waters of the James. The Captain is represented in the dress of his day, his wide trousers tied with ribbons at the knee, his broad boot tops falling over in picturesque fashion. On the monument is a simple inscription, "Captain John Smith, governor of Virginia, 1608." A graceful statue of Pocahontas is to stand near that of Captain Smith, facing the water. Not far from the church and in an open position stands the tall, fine granite shaft which commemorates the first settlement. Its main inscription reads: Jamestown The first permanent colony of the English people The birthplace of Virginia And of the United States May 13, 1607. Jamestown Island contains 1600 acres, and is some three miles long. It is owned by Mrs. Barney, who lives upon it and who conducts a farm on part of its acres. She and her husband generously gave the portion of the island containing the church yard to the Society for the Preservation of the Antiquities of Virginia. It is less than fifteen years since the restoration and care of the old Jamestown settlement site has been undertaken. Before that the graveyard was neglected and overgrown, the foundations of the old church were falling to pieces, and the whole place was utterly forlorn and forsaken. From Williamsburg we drive on to Yorktown, now a small village. One short street, a few old houses, a shop and a little inn or two are all that remain of Yorktown. No railroad reaches it, and it is therefore rather inaccessible to tourists. The village is most nobly situated on a high bluff overlooking the broad waters of the York River, which stretch away like a great bay. The Yorktown monument, quite as fine and imposing a shaft as the Jamestown one, stands high on the river bank in a striking and dramatic situation. We hear a pretty story of how the President of the United States came down with a party of gentlemen some months ago and walked about the village. No one recognized him save a young girl of fourteen who volunteered her services as a guide, took the party about and explained to them the points of interest. They remained with her nearly two hours. At the end of this time when they were bidding her farewell, she said, nodding to the President, "You _are_ President Wilson, are you not?" We drive out from the village to an old farmhouse known as the "Moore House," where terms of capitulation were drawn up after the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. We go into the room where the terms were made, and feel that we are really in the birthplace of our great nation. From Yorktown we cross by ferry to Gloucester County, for we purpose to see something of the famous section known as Tidewater Virginia. As Tidewater on Chesapeake Bay is a region where creeks and inlets make a thousand indentations in the coast, the ideal way to see it all would be by motor boat. But our purpose is to drive along the sandy roads and through the forests of Gloucester County for some thirty miles, until we reach the region of Mobjack Bay. As we drive along we pass many negroes, respectable looking people in comfortable buggies and light open wagons. Some are driving mules, and others have very good horses. We find that we must drive slowly, as many of the animals are afraid of our car. We pass old Abingdon Parish Church, and stop to read the names on the tombs with the coats-of-arms in the church yard. A little farther on we turn down a long lane and drive for a mile and a half through fields and trees. Then we come through a gate on to the green lawn of "Newstead," an old estate where they are good enough to take a few paying guests. Sheep and turkeys walk calmly about on the grass under the shade of noble oak trees. Before us are the blue waters of the Bay. We are on that particular arm of Mobjack Bay known as the North River. Here is the enchanting region of which Thomas Dixon Jr., wrote some twelve years ago when he described his own home in a book called "The Life Worth Living." A long motor boat ride convinces us that Mr. Dixon's descriptions are not exaggerated. All along the river (which is really an arm of Chesapeake Bay) stand pleasant homes surrounded by green lawns and shaded by fine trees. It is so sheltered here that one has the advantages of the real country, as well as of the real sea. The chestnut oak, the magnolia, the willow oak, the crape myrtle, the fig and the grape all flourish luxuriantly. The grass is thick and green; and yet sail boats and motor boats ride at anchor at private piers and your man can dredge your own oysters from your own oyster-bed just in front of your grass and flowers. The estate of which Mr. Dixon wrote so delightfully is only ten minutes by motor boat from "Newstead." A mild climate, rich vegetation, fertile soil, birds and flowers and fruits, the best eating in the world, what more does Virginia need to make her a paradise on land and by sea? _Only good roads_, and then the motorist will enjoy her rare charms as they have never yet been enjoyed. We retrace our journey through the thick woods, past fine oaks and beeches to the Yorktown ferry. Crossing again to Yorktown we drive on to Old Point Comfort, taking a little time to visit the extensive buildings of the famous Hampton Institute. At Old Point Comfort we take the boat for Cape Charles City. It is our plan to drive straight up the Maryland Peninsula, having first spent the night in a comfortable little hotel at Cape Charles City. It is a lovely September morning, clear and bright, as we drive north along bumpy roads, through beautiful forests of pine and oak. We are in Accomac County, Virginia, on the southern end of what is called the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia Peninsula. This seems to be a lonely country through which we are driving, somewhat sparsely settled. And yet between Cape Charles City and Pocomoke City there are twenty-seven prosperous banks, they tell us. And here in Accomac County is harvested five per cent. of the entire sweet potato crop of the United States. The climatic conditions for fruits and vegetables are almost perfect on this peninsula, and the soil is extremely fertile. All this country is destined to be an immense peninsula garden. As we drive along we see great heaps of yellow sweet potatoes waiting to be packed away in barrels. We see long rows of baskets filled with scarlet tomatoes, stretching down the fields, alongside the denuded tomato plants. What glorious color it is! I should like to come here and paint a tomato field just after the fruit has been picked, the whole field marked by lines of color. First a row of green tomato plants, somewhat grey and dusty in the bright sun; then a row of baskets of scarlet fruit glowing in the sunshine; then a stretch of brown earth. Then another row of the grey-green plants and another row of baskets piled high with scarlet fruit; and so on across many acres of browns and greens and scarlets. We pass immense wagon-loads of tomatoes being hauled to the canneries and to the station. The fruit is placed in the wagon in double decker fashion; the first platform of baskets being surmounted by a second platform upon which the second rows of baskets rest. The wagons are drawn by sturdy mules, sometimes four strong. At Pocomoke City we have an excellent luncheon at the little hotel. We have crossed the Maryland boundary, and our route is to lead us through Princess Ann and Salisbury off to the northeast to Easton. The country is less heavily wooded now, but the soil is of the same fertile quality, and the cultivated fields are beautiful to see. We are driving along the famous Eastern Shore, where many people have their country seats. The towns through which we are passing, from Cape Charles City clear along the peninsula, show their age. They belong to the days of early settlement. At Easton we take a day or two to drive about the open country and see the charming country estates, the houses standing on the shores of creeks and inlets, and having the double charm of the country and the sea, just as they do in Tidewater Virginia. We drive out to "The Wilderness," the home of a Pittsburg gentleman. One approaches the old brick house through a long avenue of trees. The house faces on a green lawn which slopes to the waters of a broad stream, with glimpses in the distances of a wide bay. About the house there are broad fields with rich, fertile soil capable of high cultivation. Fine roads run all through the countryside and there are charming places on the creeks and inlets, each commanding a beautiful water view. You may take your launch in the late afternoon if you are weary, and run about in sheltered water ways commanding fine views of pretty homes set in lovely lawns and trees. Or you may take a sail, venturing out from a small inlet to a wider bay, and so on into the great open water of the Chesapeake. I know a green lawn on a certain inlet, shaded by luxuriant oak trees, where the sound of bells comes across the water from the village spires of an historic old village. The family boat is just behind the house, rocking gently on the waters of a little stream, which runs up from the larger stream into the mainland. The situation is ideal. We drive about Talbot County and on into Princess Ann County. Everywhere we find the same fertile, level fields, the same water ways with their lovely glimpses of broader water beyond. Where could one wish for a better luncheon than the one served us at an unpretentious little inn called Queen Cottage, in the old village of Queenstown? Delicious oyster soup, the oysters just out of the water, an omelet that would have done justice to a French chef, candied sweet potatoes cooked as only a Southern cook knows how, fresh peas, hot biscuits, excellent coffee, and the pink heart of a cool, unwilted water-melon; and all for a most reasonable sum. Queen Cottage would be a sweet spot in which to spend a little time of retreat, bountifully fed and free to wander about quiet streets and fertile open country. We pass, in driving about, the largest oak tree in the county, standing in the door yard of a country place, and carefully preserved and watched over. Perhaps I should say watched under, as it is an immense green tent of huge spreading branches, each one a tree in itself in its girth and diameter. From Easton we drive north and northwest to Wilmington over fine roads. The State of Maryland is improving her roads and will in a few years have highways that will be among the finest in the country, while her scenery is that of a smiling country becoming more and more cultivated. On from Wilmington to Philadelphia and from Philadelphia out to Byrn Mawr; and from the parked and shaded beauty of Byrn Mawr over the rolling farming country of Pennsylvania with its beautiful cultivation and its substantial stone farmhouses, up through Trenton and Newark and across the ferry to New York. We are once more on the Lincoln Highway as we travel northeast from Philadelphia. It is a joy to travel again by the familiar red, white, and blue signs. We know the pleasant open country of New Jersey through which the noble Highway runs for these last miles, and are at last At Home. CHAPTER XIII The Lincoln Highway is destined to be a much-traveled road. Already the motorists of the West are turning the hoods of their motor cars to face the East and the motorists of the East are starting Westward. Happy is the man who has his hotel or inn situated on the road marked by the red, white, and blue. The traveler is bound to come his way, and the traveler is bound to alight at his door if only he has something to offer that is worthy of the name of hospitality. But he can no longer afford to be careless. There is an unwritten rule of the open road which reads that the traveler shall tell his fellow traveler of places at which to halt and of places to avoid. It is inevitable that in the course of a short time the slovenly and careless inn-keeper must be supplanted by a better man. The tourist does not enjoy looking out of his hotel window on piles of old tin cans and heaps of barrel staves and discarded packing boxes. Nor does he enjoy looking at mounds of ashes, and quantities of vegetable parings. He will not long endure a soiled table cloth, horrible green tea, and indifferently cooked food. Nor will he endure a lack of hot water and utterly careless sanitary arrangements. He may say little about them to the landlord who entertains his party, but he will very soon see to it that better inns take the place of the old ones of careless and indifferent management. The hotel keeper congratulates himself that his open door looks out on the Lincoln Highway, and that his own sign proudly bears the three distinguishing bars of red, white, and blue. He must have more than this to make his inn a success. It is surprising how fast the news of a clean, well kept inn, with excellently cooked food, travels from mouth to mouth. In France there is a roll of honour for inn-keepers under the direction, if I mistake not, of the Touring Club of France. Only those inn-keepers whose houses and whose tables attain a certain standard, not of style but of simple cleanliness and of wholesome excellence of food, are admitted to this company. I have seen the certificate of the roll of honour hanging on the walls of more than one country inn in France. It is to the credit of the many places in which we halted for the night that in only one did we find conditions impossible. We slept in a rather indifferent bed-chamber, having reached the inn late. But when we saw the dining-room the following morning, we paid our bill and fled; driving on twenty miles farther for a late breakfast. Surely the average commercial man of the United States who travels in country districts year in and year out must have a charméd digestion and an iron-clad constitution. He may well rejoice that the days of motoring have come, for with the motorist is coming not only the broad Highway, but the clean and comfortable inn. Not necessarily the fashionable hotel, with its expensive and extravagant accessories; but the clean, immaculately kept country inn, with its excellent cooking of the abundant food in which our country is so rich. Perhaps we shall need to import some Swiss inn-keeper to tell us how to do it. Whether we do or do not, the man who knows how and the man who is willing to live up to his knowledge will inevitably displace the inn-keeper who is careless and indifferent. The biggest bid for a motor tourist is a clean bed-chamber, a comfortable bed, and a well cooked though simple dinner. If I were crossing the Lincoln Highway again I should take with me a spirit lamp, a little sauce pan, some boxes of biscuits, some excellent tea, some cocoa and other supplies. Not that this is a necessity. But it would be very pleasant to have a luncheon or a cup of afternoon tea al fresco, now and then. For our own comfort and convenience we laid down for ourselves certain rules of the road. First: We did not wear our good clothes. The long, dusty journeys are very hard upon clothing, and for a lady a comfortable light weight tweed suit with plenty of washable blouses with rolling collars, covered by an ample motor coat, gives the greatest comfort and satisfaction. The dust of the plains is ground into one's clothing and one should be ready for this. The requirements of the hotels along the road are very simple, and a fresh blouse will usually be all that is needed. We took care to use only such dust robes to cover our luggage as could not be injured by the wear and tear of the journey. We did not take with us our best rugs and robes. Second: We did not travel by night. We found it very delightful to travel in the late afternoon, when the lights were particularly fine, but we avoided as much as possible traveling late into the evening. In this way one does not miss the scenery of the country, and one is not over fatigued. We found that when we were obliged to arrive late at our inn, it was wiser to eat supper at the proper supper hour wherever that might find us. Third: We did not as a rule travel on Sunday. Partly because we wished to attend church in whatever town we might be, partly because we found ourselves fresher for enjoyment and sight-seeing after the rest and quiet of a day. Fourth: We resolved at the outset to take the days and the roads as they came; not looking for luxury and well satisfied with simplicity. It is surprising how one is fortified for the vicissitudes of the road by such a deliberate attitude of mind. The Lincoln Highway is not as yet a road for those motorists who wish only luxurious hotels, frequent stops, and all the cushioned comfort of the much-traveled main roads of the favorite tourist parts of Europe. It is, however, perfectly practicable in its entire length of 3200 miles, and rich in interest and charm for those who care for what it has to give. We drove a Studebaker car as far as Denver and a Franklin car from Denver to New York. In all the distance traversed we were not conscious of braving any dangers or of taking any particular risks. THE END. 
17095	----	[Illustration: HE WENT PAST WITH A FEW INCHES TO SPARE. _Frontispiece. (Page 47.)_ _Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour._] BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON AN AUTO TOUR BY LAURA LEE HOPE AUTHOR OF THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES, THE BOBBSEY TWINS SERIES, THE OUTDOOR GIRLS SERIES, ETC. Illustrated by Florence England Nosworthy NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Made in the United States of America BOOKS By LAURA LEE HOPE * * * * * _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated._ * * * * * =THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES= BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON GRANDPA'S FARM BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE PLAYING CIRCUS BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT AUNT LU'S CITY HOME BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CAMP REST-A-WHILE BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE IN THE BIG WOODS BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON AN AUTO TOUR * * * * * =THE BOBBSEY TWINS SERIES= THE BOBBSEY TWINS THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE COUNTRY THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE SEASHORE THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SCHOOL THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SNOW LODGE THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON A HOUSEBOAT THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT MEADOW BROOK THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT HOME * * * * * =THE OUTDOOR GIRLS SERIES= THE OUTDOOR GIRLS OF DEEPDALE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT RAINBOW LAKE THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A MOTOR CAR THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A WINTER CAMP THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN FLORIDA THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT OCEAN VIEW THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON PINE ISLAND GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Copyright, 1917, by GROSSET & DUNLAP _Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour._ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE BOY NEXT DOOR 1 II. AN OFFER OF HELP 11 III. READY FOR THE TRIP 21 IV. BUNNY AT THE WHEEL 33 V. WHERE IS SPLASH? 44 VI. TWO DOGS 54 VII. DIX IN TROUBLE 64 VIII. DIX AND THE COW 72 IX. TWO DISAPPEARANCES 87 X. DIX COMES BACK 98 XI. IN THE FLOOD 108 XII. AT THE FIRE 115 XIII. DIX AND THE CAT 129 XIV. THE MEDICINE SHOW 138 XV. WAS IT FRED? 149 XVI. IN THE DITCH 157 XVII. ON TO PORTLAND 166 XVIII. CAMPING OUT 177 XIX. AT THE LAKE 185 XX. DIX TO THE RESCUE 194 XXI. THE CIRCUS 205 XXII. A LION IS LOOSE 212 XXIII. THE SCRATCHED BOY 221 XXIV. THE BARKING DOG 230 XXV. FOUND AT LAST 238 BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON AN AUTO TOUR CHAPTER I THE BOY NEXT DOOR "Oh, mother!" cried Bunny Brown, running up the front steps as he reached home from school. "Oh, something's happened next door!" "What do you mean, Bunny? A fire?" "No, it isn't a fire," said Sue, who was as much out of breath as was her brother. "It's sumfin different from that!" "But, children, what do you mean? Is some one hurt?" asked Mrs. Brown. "It sounds so," answered Bunny, putting his books on the table. "I heard Mrs. Ward crying." "Oh, the poor woman!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "She must be in trouble. They have only just moved here. I'd better go over and see if I can help her"; and Mrs. Brown laid down her sewing. "I guess it must be about their boy Fred," suggested Bunny. "What happened to him?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Was he hurt at school? He goes to school, doesn't he?" "Yes, but he wasn't there to-day," went on Bunny. "And it's Fred who's in trouble I guess, for I heard his mother speak his name, and then Mr. Ward said something else." "Oh, dear, I hope nothing has happened," said Mrs. Brown, looking up at the clock to see if it were not time for her husband to come home from his boat and fishing pier. "We must do what we can to help, Bunny. Now tell me all about it. Not that I want to interfere with my neighbors' affairs, but I always like to help." "And I think Mrs. Ward needs some help," said Sue, "'cause she was crying real hard." "Then I'll go right over and see what is the matter," said kind Mrs. Brown. "Oh, and may we go too?" asked Bunny. "Please let us," begged Sue. Their mother thought for a minute. Sometimes, she knew, it was not good for children to go where older persons were crying, and had trouble. But Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue were two wise little children, wiser than many of their age, and their mother knew she could depend on them. So, after a few seconds, she said: "Yes, you may come with me. We shall see what the matter is with Mrs. Ward." "And we'll help her too, if we can," added. Bunny, bravely. Mrs. Brown, followed by Bunny and Sue, started for the home of Mrs. Ward. A wide lawn was between the two houses, and on this lawn Bunny and Sue, with their dog Splash, had much fun. The Wards were a family who had lately moved to the street where the Browns had lived for years. As yet Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Ward had gotten only as far as a "nodding acquaintance." That is, Mrs. Brown, coming out into her yard, would see Mrs. Ward, and would say: "Good morning. It's a fine day; isn't it?" "Yes, indeed it is," Mrs. Ward would answer. Sometimes it would be Mrs. Ward who would first speak about the fine weather and Mrs. Brown would answer. Both women would soon become better acquainted. Mr. Brown had seen Mr. Ward several mornings on his way to work, and, knowing him to be the man next door, had nodded, and said: "Good morning!" And Mr. Ward had said the same thing. They, too, would soon be better acquainted. "I know the Wards are nice people," said Sue, as she trotted along beside her mother. "What makes you think so?" asked Mrs. Brown, as she walked slowly across her lawn toward the house next door. "'Cause they have a nice dog named Dix, and he and Splash are good friends. First they sort of growled at each other, and then they smelled noses and now they always wag their tails when they meet." "Well, that's a good sign," laughed Sue's mother. "But I wonder what can be the matter with the boy next door," said Sue to her brother. "Are you sure you heard Mr. and Mrs. Ward talking about Fred?" "Yes, I'm sure," answered Bunny. "Well, I didn't hear that part," said Sue. "But we'll soon find out what the matter is." As the Browns walked across the lawn, a dog came running out of the house where lived "the boy next door," as Bunny and Sue called Fred Ward, even though they knew his name. They had spoken several times to him. "Is that dog savage?" asked Mrs. Brown. "No, Momsie," replied Sue. "He's just as nice as he can be. He and Splash are good friends. Here Dix!" she called. With a joyful bark the dog bounded toward Sue. He evidently knew the children, and soon made friends with Mrs. Brown. "He's a strong dog," she said to the children. "And he's good, too!" exclaimed Bunny. "I was talking to Fred one day and he told me that his dog Dix saved him from drowning when they lived in another city, near a river." "That was fine!" cried Mrs. Brown. "I think I shall like Dix." By this time they were under the dining-room windows of the Ward house, and Mrs. Brown and the children heard the sound of a woman sobbing, and a man trying to comfort her. "Now don't worry, Martha," said the man. "Everything will come out right, I'm sure, and we'll find Fred." "Oh, I hope so!" moaned the woman. And she kept on crying. "Excuse me," said Mrs. Brown, calling in through the open window. "But I fear you have trouble, and I have come over to see if I may not help you." Mr. Ward looked out of the window. "It's Mrs. Brown," he said, evidently speaking to his wife in the room behind him. "I have been intending to come over to see you," went on Mrs. Brown. "But you know how it is I suppose, Mrs. Ward," for now the other lady had come to the window. "We keep putting such things off. And really I have been so busy since we came back from our camp in the big woods that I haven't had time to set my house to rights." "I know how it is, Mrs. Brown," replied Mrs. Ward, wiping the tears from her eyes, "and I am glad to see you now. Won't you come in?" "I really don't know whether I ought to or not. My children, on coming home from school, said they heard sounds of distress in here, and knowing you were strangers I thought perhaps you might not know where to apply for help in case you needed it. My husband is one of the town officials, and if we can do anything----" "It is very kind of you," said Mrs. Ward. "Thank you so much for coming over. We _are_ in trouble, and perhaps you can give us some advice. Please come in." She went to the front door and let in Bunny, Sue and their mother, the two children wondering what could have happened to the boy next door, for they did not see him, and it seemed the trouble was about him. "It won't take long to tell you what has happened," said Mrs. Ward, placing chairs for Mrs. Brown and the two children. "Our boy Fred has run away from home!" "Run away from home!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "Yes, that's what he's done," said Mr. Ward. "I never thought he'd do such a thing as that, even though he is quick tempered. Yes, Fred has run away," and he turned over and over in his hand a slip of paper he had been reading. "Perhaps he only went off in a sort of joke," said Mrs. Brown sympathetically. "I know once Bunny----" "Yep. I ran away, I did!" exclaimed Bunny. "I got away down to the end of the street. I saw a man and a hand organ and he had a monkey. I mean the man did. And I wanted to be a hand-organ man so I ran away and was going off with him, only Bunker Blue chased after me, so I didn't run far, though I might have." "Bunker Blue is a boy who works on Mr. Brown's fishing pier," explained Mrs. Brown. "Yes, Bunny did run away once, but he was glad to run back again." "And I was lost!" cried Sue. "I was out walking with my daddy, and I went down a wrong street, and I couldn't see him and I didn't know what to do so I--I cried." "Yes, Sue was lost a whole morning before a policeman found her and telephoned to us," put in Mrs. Brown. "She was glad to get back. Undoubtedly your boy will be the same." "No," said Mr. Ward slowly, "I don't believe Fred will come home soon. He has gone off very angry." "Are you sure he didn't go to the home of some neighbor or of a relative?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Children often do that, never thinking how worried their fathers and mothers are." "No, Fred is too old to do that," said Mrs. Ward, wiping the tears out of her eyes. "He has gone, intending to stay a long while." "What makes you think so?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Because of this note he left," answered the father of the boy next door. "You see, Mrs. Brown, I had to correct Fred for doing something wrong. He spent some money to buy a banjo that he had promised--I had told him I would get him a fine banjo next year, but---- "Well, he disobeyed me, and I felt I had to punish him. So I sent him up to his room to stay all day. He went to his room, and that is the last we have seen of him. He left this note, saying he was never coming back." "Read Mrs. Brown the note," suggested Mrs. Ward. "Maybe she can think of some plan to get Fred back." Mr. Ward was about to read the note when Mr. Brown's voice was heard under the dining-room windows saying: "Hello, Mother, and Bunny and Sue! Mary told me you had come over here, so I thought I'd come to pay a visit too. I've news for you." "Oh, it's daddy!" cried Sue, and she ran to let her father in through the front door. "I wonder what news it is," said Bunny to himself. "I wonder if he has found Fred." CHAPTER II AN OFFER OF HELP As Mr. Brown walked into the home of the Ward family he saw at once, by a look at his wife, and by the expressions on the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Ward, that something had happened. "Oh, I beg your pardon," Mr. Brown said. "Perhaps I shouldn't have come in. I'll call another time. But----" "What about the good news you have, Daddy?" asked Bunny. "I didn't say it was good news, Son." "Yes, it is. I can tell by your eyes!" exclaimed Sue. "Whatever it is, it will keep a little while," said Mrs. Brown, with a look at her husband, which he understood. "Our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Ward," she continued, "are in great distress. Their only son, Fred, has run away from home." "Oh, that's too bad!" exclaimed Mr. Brown. "I shouldn't have come in. I'll----" "No, stay, we'll want your advice," said Mrs. Brown. "Mr. Ward was just going to read a letter his son left. I want you to listen to it and tell us what is best to do. You know you are on the police board." "Of course I'll do all I can," said Mr. Brown. "First let me hear the letter. You can sometimes tell a good deal of what's in a person's mind by the way he writes." And while Mr. Brown is listening to the letter left by the runaway boy, I'll tell my new readers something more about Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue, and the things that happened to them in the books before this. The first volume is named "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue," and it tells of what happened to the two children in their home town of Bellemere, on Sandport Bay, near the ocean. There the little boy and girl had fine times, and they took a trolley ride to a far city, getting lost. The second book told of "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm," and you can imagine the fun they had there, getting lost in the woods and going to picnics. After that the two children played Circus in the book of that name, and they had real animals in their show, though you could not exactly call them wild. "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home," is the name of the fourth book, and in the big city Bunny and Sue had stranger adventures than ever. After that Mr. Brown took the whole family to "Camp Rest-a-While." It was a lovely place in the woods and they lived in tents. Uncle Tad went with them, and ever so many things happened to the children there. Their dog Splash had good times too. Camp Rest-a-While was near the edge of the big woods, and in the book called "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods," which is just before this one, you may read of the adventures with Bunny's train of electric cars, and of the fun Sue had with her electrical Teddy bear, which could flash its eyes when a button was pressed in his back--or rather, _her_ back, for Sue had named her Teddy bear Sallie Malinda, insisting that it was a girl bear. And now the Brown family was home again from the big woods, ready for other happenings. And that they were going to have adventures might be guessed from what Mr. Brown started to say about some news. But just now he was reading the letter Fred Ward had written to his parents. "Hum! That is a strange note for a boy to leave," said Mr. Brown slowly. "He evidently doesn't intend to come home very soon." "Oh dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward, and commenced to weep once more. "I tell her he may come home soon, for he has no money--or at least very little to live on," said the missing boy's father. "You see Fred has a high spirit, and he did not like it when I had to punish him. But I did it for his good. He must learn the value of money, and he must not spend when I tell him not to." "No, that is not right," said Mr. Brown thoughtfully. He handed the note to his wife. She read this: "Father and Mother: I am not coming back for a long while. I do not think you treated me right. I am more than fifteen years old and I have a right to have a banjo if I want it. I want to be a player and play in the theater. That is what I am going to do. I am not going to be treated like a baby by my father. I am too old." "I did not mean to treat him like a baby," said Mr. Ward. "But our children must be made to obey in things that are right." "That is true," agreed Mrs. Brown. "We mind sometimes," said Bunny. "Don't we, Momsie?" "Yes, once in a while. But please run away and play now, until we call you. There comes Splash over to have a game with Dix. You children can go out with the dogs." Bunny and Sue were eager enough to do this. They thought they had heard enough about the missing boy. They were to hear more in a short time. "And so Fred has run away," said Mr. Ward, speaking to Mr. and Mrs. Brown. "How can I get him back? It is not good that he should be away. I will talk about the banjo to him, and if I find he really thinks it is the best instrument for him to play I may let him have it. But where can I find him?" "Perhaps I can help," said Mr. Brown. "I am a member of the town police committee. That is, I and other men look after the policemen. We can tell them to be on the lookout for Fred." "Oh, that is kind of you!" cried Mrs. Ward. "And I can also send word to the police of other cities and towns," went on Mr. Brown. "We work together on cases like this." "I shall be greatly obliged to you," said Mr. Ward. "I want Fred to come back." "When did you find out he was gone?" asked Mr. Brown. "Just a little while ago," answered Mr. Ward. "I sent him up to his room this morning. He did not come down to dinner, for I said he should not eat until he said he was sorry for what he did. Perhaps I was wrong, but I meant to do right." "You did it for the best," said his wife. "When I went up to Fred's room this afternoon, he was gone, and there was this note. It was then I cried," she went on, turning to the parents of Bunny and Sue. "I am so sorry," said Mrs. Brown. "But I think it will all come right. My husband will help find your boy." "I'll get the police to help, too," said Mr. Brown. "They will search for him." "And we'll help!" exclaimed Bunny and Sue, coming in just then from having a romp on the lawn with the two dogs. "We'll try to find Fred for you." "Bless their hearts!" cried Mrs. Brown, as the children ran out again. "They get into all sorts of mischief, but they manage to get out somehow. Bunny is ready for anything, and Sue is generally ready for whatever follows." "But they are learning a good deal," said Mr. Brown. "Their life in the woods and on the farm was good for them--as good as the time they spend in school." "Yes," said Mr. Ward. "Sometimes I think I may have kept Fred too much at his books. I wish I had him back." "Oh, we'll find him," said Mr. Brown. "I hope so," sighed Mrs. Ward. "It is very kind of you to offer to help us." "Why shouldn't we?" asked Mrs. Brown. "That is what neighbors are for--to help one another. We'll go, now. But Mr. Brown will come back and get you to tell him what Fred looks like, and how he was dressed, so the police will know him if they see him. They will send you word where he is if they find him." "I will give you his photograph," said Mr. Ward. As Mr. and Mrs. Brown walked across the lawn, they saw Bunny and Sue playing with the two dogs. Bunny was on Splash's back as though the dog were a horse, and Sue was doing the same thing with Dix. "Gid-dap! Gid-dap!" cried the two little ones, holding to the dogs' long ears so they would not fall off--I mean so the children would not fall off, not the dogs' ears. "Aren't they having a good time?" asked Mrs. Brown smiling. "They certainly are," agreed her husband. "I'm glad it is neither of our children who is away." "I can't bear even to think of that!" said Mrs. Brown, with a shudder. "Look out! They'll run us down!" she went on, for the children, on their dog-horses, were rushing right at them. "Clear the track! Clear the track!" cried Bunny, wildly. "Yes! All aboard for the north pole!" yelled Sue. "Bow-wow!" barked the two dogs, as happy as the children. "Oh, Daddy! Do you know how to find Fred?" asked the little girl as she fell off her dog into the soft grass. "Well, we are going to try," answered her father. "And we'll help," cried Bunny. Then, as he happened to think of something, he exclaimed: "Oh, Daddy! What about the good news you were going to tell us?" "We want to hear it now," added Sue. "You did say something about a surprise," added Mrs. Brown. "So much has happened to-day that I had forgotten." "Maybe you won't think it such news after all," observed Mr. Brown. "But it occurs to me that there is going to be some warm weather yet, as the Fall is not yet over. So I was thinking we could take the big automobile--the one we used when we went to Grandpa's farm--and have a tour in it. I have to go to a distant city on business, but there is no hurry in getting there. We might all go in the big car. Shall we go?" "Shall we go? Of course!" cried Bunny, dancing about. "That's what I say!" added Sue, also capering wildly. "Oh, Bunny!" she cried, "haven't we got just the bestest daddy in the whole world?" "We have! We have!" "Then let's both kiss him at once!" proposed Sue, and they made a rush for Mr. Brown, who pretended to be much afraid. CHAPTER III READY FOR THE TRIP "Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Go and love your mother for a change!" laughed Mr. Brown as he squirmed away from Bunny and Sue, who had hugged him and kissed him half a dozen times. "You've mussed my hair all up! Isn't my hair sticking up seven ways, Mother?" he asked his wife. "Indeed it is. If you children muss mine that way I shall have to comb it again before supper, and I'll hardly have time if father is to explain about the auto tour. This is as much news to me, Bunny and Sue, as it is to you." "Oh, Mother made a rhyme! Now we'll have a good time!" cried Bunny. "Come on, Sue, we'll kiss her easy-like, and then we'll hear about the trip. When are you going, Daddy?" "And where?" asked Sue. "One is about as important as the other," laughed Mr. Brown. "But I think you will have to wait a while. I want to telephone to the chief of police, and have him start the search for Fred Ward. We have to work quickly in the cases of runaway boys, or they get so far away that it makes them harder to find." "What makes boys run away?" asked Bunny. "Well, it's hard to tell," said Mr. Brown. "Sometimes it's because they feel ashamed at being punished, just as Fred was, and as you might be, Bunny, if I scolded you for being bad. Not that you are often naughty, but you might be, some time." "But I wouldn't run away," Bunny said, shaking his head very earnestly. "I like it here too much. I read a story once, about a boy who ran away, and he had to sleep in a haymow and eat raw eggs for breakfast." "Oh! I'd never do _that_!" cried Sue. "I wouldn't mind playing with the little chickens that came out of the eggs, but I wouldn't run away," she said earnestly. "I wouldn't want to sleep in a haystack lessen Bunny was with me." "Well, when you two make up your minds to run away," said Mrs. Brown with a laugh, "tell us, and we'll come for you when night falls and bring you home. Then you can sleep in your own beds and run away the next day. "That will be great!" cried Bunny. "We'll do it that way, Sue." "That's what we will!" said she. They were at the Browns' house now, and Dix, the dog that belonged to the runaway boy, turned to go back home. Splash barked at him as much as to say: "Oh, come on, old fellow, stay and have a good time. Maybe I can find a choice bone or two." But Dix wagged his tail and barked, and if one had understood dog language, of which I suppose there must be one, he would, perhaps, have heard Dix say: "No, old chap. I'm sorry I can't come to play with you now. Some other time, perhaps. There's trouble at home you know, and I'd better stay around there." Then Splash and Dix looked at each other for a little while, saying never a word, as one might call it, only looking at each other. They seemed to understand, however, for, with a final wagging of their tails, away they ran, Dix back to the Ward home where the mother and the father were grieving for their lost boy, and Splash on to the happy home of the Browns. "Now, Daddy, you can tell us about that auto trip we are going to take, while mother is seeing to the supper," called Bunny as he pulled his father toward a big armchair, while Sue clung to her father on the other side. "Not until after the meal," insisted Mr. Brown. "I want to tell it to mother and you all at the same time. That will save me from talking so much. Besides, I haven't yet told the police about missing Fred Ward." Mr. Brown soon called the chief on the telephone wire. Being the president of the police board, Mr. Brown often had to give orders. In this case he told the chief about Fred running away, how long the boy had been gone, and about the note saying he was going to join a theater company. "We'd better get some circulars printed, with the boy's picture on them," said Mr. Brown to the chief. "These we can send to other cities. And we'll notify the police by telephone. I'll be down to see you this evening." "All right," answered the chief. "I'll get right after this boy." "And tell whoever catches him to be good and kind to him," said Mr. Brown. "Fred is not a bad boy. He feels that he has not been treated well, and he'll do his best to hide away. But a boy with a banjo, who is crazy to play in a show, ought not be very hard to find." "No, I think we'll soon pick him up," the chief said. "Well, pick him up as soon as you can," said Mr. Brown. "Pick him _up_!" repeated Bunny, who had been listening to his father's side of the conversation. "Did Fred fall down?" "No. 'Pick him up' is a police expression," explained Mr. Brown. "It means find him, or learn where he is." "Oh, I see," murmured Bunny. "Well, I hope they'll soon find Fred." The talk at supper time drifted from the running away of the boy next door, and what might happen to him, to the trip the Browns were to take in the big car. "Well, now are you ready to tell us?" asked Bunny, as he saw his father finish his cup of tea. "Yes, I'll tell you a little now, and more when the time comes, as I have soon to go down to the police station with Fred's picture. But I'll tell you enough so you can sleep easy," said Mr. Brown with a laugh. Then he sat thinking for a while as to the best way to tell his news. "In the first place----" began Mr. Brown, only to have Bunny interrupt him with: "Oh, it starts off just like a story!" "No," cried Sue. "A story begins: 'Once upon a time.'" "Well, never mind about that now," said Mr. Brown with a laugh. "Let me get on with what I have to tell you. The first part is that I have to go to a city called Portland, about three hundred miles down the coast. I have to go there on business, but there is no particular hurry. That is, I can take my time on the road. Just what the business is about needn't worry your heads, except that I'm going to look at a big motor boat which I may buy." "And may I have a ride in it?" cried Bunny. "I want to ride myself," cried Sue, "and I want to learn how to steer." "Well, we'll talk that over later," said her father. "Just now I am going to tell you about our auto tour. We are going, as I said, to the city of Portland. It is three hundred miles there, but the roundabout roads we will take may make it longer." "Can we stop over a day or so here and there?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Yes, several days, if we like," said her husband. "We are going in the big enclosed auto, in which we went to grandpa's farm." "That will be lovely!" cried Sue. "Just dandy!" exclaimed Bunny Brown. "And I'm going to sit on the seat and steer, just as I did when Bunker Blue took us to grandpa's." "I don't know that Bunker is going this time," said Mr. Brown, speaking of the boy who worked for him and ran some of the motor boats when parties of men and women wanted to go out in the bay fishing. "Oh! Bunker not going?" cried Bunny, somewhat disappointed. "But we'll take your dog Splash and Uncle Tad," said Mr. Brown. "That will be all right," agreed Bunny. "Go on, Daddy. Tell us some more." "Well, I don't know that there is any more to tell. We are going in the big automobile, have a nice trip, and come back when we get ready. It will be Indian Summer most of the time, the nicest part of the year, I think, so we ought to have good weather. Now the rest is in your hands and your mother's--getting ready for the trip." Those who have read the book telling about the time spent on grandpa's farm will remember the big automobile in which the Browns traveled to the farm. It had been a furniture moving van, and you know how big and strong they are. Inside they are just like a big room in a house, only they move about by a motor in the front, just as does a small automobile. But this moving van was very different from the kind usually seen. The inside had been made over into several rooms. There were little bunks, or beds in which to sleep, a combined kitchen and dining room, and a little sitting room where, in the evenings after the day's travel, the children could sit and read, for the traveling automobile was lighted by electric lights, from a storage battery carried in it. On bright, sunshiny days the little table was moved out of the van to the ground beside it and there the meals were served. Sometimes cooking was done out-of-doors, also, on a gasolene stove. A tent was carried, and if any company came they could sleep in that if there was not room in the auto-van. When the Browns wanted to travel through the rain they could do so without getting wet, for there was a stout roof on the automobile. Windows had been cut in the sides of the van so the children could sit beside them in stormy weather and look out, just as if they were in a railroad car. And in the big car was a place for some of the children's toys. There was room for plenty of food to be carried, and even a small ice-box that could be filled with ice whenever they stopped in a city. "Well," said Mr. Brown, after he had told Bunny, Sue and their mother about his plan, "do you think you'll like it?" "I'll just love it!" cried Sue. "So will I," said Bunny. "Let's hug and kiss daddy and momsie!" "No, I'll have to beg off!" cried Mr. Brown. "Just one kiss each, and don't muss my hair for I've got to go to the police station to take Fred's picture. I'm sure his father would feel bad about doing a thing like that so I'll do it for him. I'll be back soon." "And we'll talk about the trip while you're gone," said Mrs. Brown. Bunny and Sue were in bed when their father returned. The next morning their mother told them, after Mr. Brown had gone to work, that he had asked the police to do all they could to find Fred Ward. "And now we must get ready for our trip," went on Mrs. Brown. "I must get both of you some new clothes, for you wore out many suits while we were at Camp Rest-a-While and in the Big Woods." "But don't get too many. It will take too long to get 'em," remarked Bunny. "We want to get started on our auto tour." Not long after this Mrs. Brown announced that she was ready for the trip--that she had bought the new clothes, and had arranged for the food they were to take with them. "Then I'll bring the big auto around here to the house to-morrow morning and let you look at it," said Mr. Brown. "I have made a few changes in it. I hope you will like it." "Oh, we'll be sure to," said Mrs. Brown. That night, when Bunny and Sue were ready for bed, Bunny looked out of the window toward the Ward house. There was a bright moon. "I see Dix and Splash playing together on the lawn," he said. "And I see something else," added Sue. "What?" asked Bunny. "I see Fred Ward coming home. There he is, going up the back steps now." Sue pointed, and Bunny saw a tall lad, who did look very much like the runaway boy, at the back door of the Ward home. "Oh, let's tell daddy and momsie!" cried Bunny, as he and his sister, in their bare feet, pattered their way downstairs. CHAPTER IV BUNNY AT THE WHEEL Bunny and Sue raced downstairs and burst into the sitting room where their mother and father were sitting. "Oh, Daddy!" cried Bunny. "Oh, Momsie!" exclaimed Sue. They were both out of breath. "Well, what's the matter now?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Why aren't you in bed?" "We saw something--anyhow Sue did," explained Bunny. "But first Bunny saw Splash and Dix playing on the lawn in the moonlight," said Sue, breathing fast. "And then Sue saw Fred coming home--in by the back way," added Bunny, his eyes big with wonder. "What's that?" cried Mr. Brown, almost as excited as the two children. "You say you saw Fred Ward?" asked Mother Brown. "Well, it _looked_ like him," replied Bunny, not quite so sure now that questions were being asked of him and his sister. "And he was going very carefully and quietly around the back way," added Sue. "Who could it be but Fred? He's getting tired of sleeping in haystacks and eating raw eggs, and he's come home, I guess." "Look here, Sue and Bunny," said Mr. Brown, a bit firmly but still kindly. "Did you both see this? Or did you make it up or dream it?" "We didn't dream," said Sue, "'cause we hadn't gone to sleep yet." "And we didn't make it up, for we weren't playing make-believe," added Bunny. "Then you must have seen something," said their father; for when Bunny and his sister spoke in this serious way their parents could tell they were in earnest. "What could it be?" asked Mrs. Brown, with a wondering look at her husband. "I'll run over and see," he replied. "You children hop back into bed. You'll catch cold." "Oh, Daddy! It's Summer yet, and we're even going to sleep out in the tent when we're on the auto tour," said Bunny. "Let us wait up and see if Fred really has come home. I hope he has!" "I hope so, too," said Mother Brown. "Let them lie awake in bed, Daddy, until you come back from the Ward home." "All right, I will," Mr. Brown agreed, and as he started across the moonlighted lawn Bunny and Sue, with many whisperings, noddings and giggles went back upstairs to their room. But they did not go to bed. This was one of the times when they did not do as they were told. But it was only once in a while they did anything like that. Bunny and Sue were, as a rule, very good. Well, instead of going to bed they stood by the window where they could watch the lawn on which Splash and Dix were still playing. "We mustn't catch cold," said Sue. "We'd better wrap a blanket around us, Bunny, if we stand by the window, though it isn't cold at all." "Yep," grunted Bunny, who was so interested in watching his father cross the grass plot that he did not feel like talking much. Sue brought a light blanket from her bed and one from Bunny's, and in these the children wrapped themselves, and stood by the window. "There he is!" cried Bunny, as he saw the tall figure of his father, accompanied by a bigger shadow in the moonlight, appear on the lawn. "Hush!" cautioned Sue. "Don't talk so loud or mother will come up and make us go to bed." Bunny "hushed," and then the two children watched. They saw their father go up the side steps of the Ward house and very soon come out again. "It didn't take him long to find out," said Bunny in a low voice. "I hope Fred has come back," whispered Sue. But it was not, as they learned a little later when their mother came upstairs to tell them. The children had quickly scampered back to their beds when they heard their mother coming up, and she found two anxious faces peering at her over the blankets. "Was it Fred?" they asked excitedly. "No, I am sorry to say it was not," answered Mrs. Brown. "It was one of the boys Fred used to play with, and he went around the back way because he did not want any one to see him going in the front door." "Does he know where Fred is?" asked Bunny. "No. But he went to tell Mr. Ward about him. He had seen some of the police circulars, or printed papers which were scattered about, showing Fred's picture and telling how he looked and how much his father wanted him to come home again." "And is he coming?" asked Sue. "We don't know, dear. Mr. Ward told us this boy, whose name is George Simpson, knew that Fred was going to run away, for Fred had told him." "Why didn't George come and tell Fred's father so he could stop him?" asked Bunny. "Because Fred made George promise not to tell. But after George had seen the police circulars he made up his mind he must say something, so he came to-night. He said Fred had told him he was going to run away to Portland and try to get work in a theater playing a banjo." "Portland!" cried Bunny. "Why that's where we're going!" "And maybe we'll see Fred!" added Sue. "It may be," said their mother. "But now you two must go to sleep. The big auto will be here in the morning, and you will wish to see the new things daddy has put in." "May I ask just one more question?" begged Bunny. "Yes, and only one." "How did Fred come to go to Portland? Did he know we were going there?" "No, dear. But he knew a man in a theater there who had promised to give him a trial at banjo playing if ever he wanted it. So, when Fred ran away, he decided to go there. At least so he told George." "Oh, Mother, when we get to Portland may we----" began Sue, but Mrs. Brown laughed and cried: "No more questions until morning!" Bunny and Sue talked in whispers for a little while, and then fell asleep. They were awakened by the honking of an automobile horn, and Bunny, hopping out of bed and running to the window, cried to his sister: "Oh, Sue, it's the big car we're going touring in, and Bunker Blue has brought it up the hill. Come on down to see it." "Oh what fun!" cried Sue. She and Bunny dressed quickly, and without waiting for breakfast they ran out to look at the automobile. Bunker Blue, the boy who worked at the dock for Mr. Brown and who had gone on the first trip in the Brown's big car, smiled at Bunny and Sue. "Well, you've got a fine car now!" he cried. "Is it different?" asked Sue. "A lot different. Come inside." "Breakfast, children!" called their mother. "Oh, Mother, just a second--until we see how the auto is fixed different?" begged Bunny. Mrs. Brown nodded, and Bunker Blue helped the little boy and his sister inside. There were many things changed. The electric lights were bigger and brighter, so they could see to read or play games better at night; a new cookstove had been put in; an extra bunk had been made, so five persons could sleep in the auto-van; a new tent had been bought; and in one corner of the tiny kitchen was a little sink, with running water which came from a tank on the roof. This tank was filled by a hose and pump worked by the motor. Whenever the water ran low the automobile could be stopped near a brook or lake, one end of the hose dipped in the water and the other stuck in the tank. Then the pump could fill the tank, and the tank, in turn, could let the water down into the sink whenever needed. "Your mother'll like that," said Bunker Blue. "Indeed she will!" cried Sue. "Is there anything else new?" asked Bunny. "Indeed there is!" cried Bunker Blue. "The auto-van's got a self-starter on. That's the best of all, I think. You don't have to get out to crank up now. It's great. See, I'll show you." While the children stood on the ground near the automobile, Bunker Blue climbed to the seat near the steering wheel and pulled a lever. All at once there was a grinding noise and the van started slowly off. "That's the self-starter," explained Bunker. "I didn't throw in the gears. The self-starter is strong enough to run the auto a little while all by itself, if it isn't too heavily loaded. That's a big improvement." "That's what!" cried Bunny. His sister did not know much about electric starters and such things, but Bunny, through having asked Bunker Blue many questions, had come to learn considerable about the machinery. "Hurry, children! You must come to breakfast!" called Mrs. Brown. "You may look at the auto another time. After breakfast we'll have to pack it and get ready for the trip." "We're coming!" cried Bunny and Sue, and with last looks at the big car, which was to be their home for some time to come, the children ran in to breakfast. "Now, Bunny and Sue," said Mr. Brown, as he made ready to go to his office, "one thing I want you to do is to pick out what toys you want to take with you. They can not be very many, so pick out those you like best." "Oh, Bunny!" cried Sue. "You take your 'lectricity train that you got back from the hermit, and I'll take my Teddy bear, Sallie Malinda with her 'lectric-light eyes." "No," said Bunny, shaking his head. "My electric train takes up too much room. I'm going to take my popgun that shoots corks, and maybe I can scare away any cows that get in front of our auto." "All right. But I'm going to take Sallie Malinda," declared Sue. While she was getting it out from among her playthings, Bunny went out to look at the big automobile again. He climbed up to the seat. Bunker Blue, after bringing it up to the Brown house so Mrs. Brown could pack in it the things she wanted, had gone back to the dock. "I wish I could steer this machine," murmured Bunny as he took his seat at the wheel. "I could, too, if they'd only let me. I wish they would." He twisted the steering wheel to and fro, playing that he was guiding the big car. Suddenly he heard a grinding sound, as when Bunker Blue had been on the seat, and, to Bunny's astonishment, the big van, the wheel of which he held, began to move slowly around the drive which circled the Brown home. CHAPTER V WHERE IS SPLASH? "Oh! Oh! Oh!" cried Bunny Brown, as he felt himself being carried along in the automobile. "What has happened?" The automobile kept on moving, and Bunny held his hands on the steering wheel. He knew this must be done whenever any machine, like an automobile, was moving. "I've either got to stop it, or--or steer it along the curved path so it won't run into anything," whispered Bunny Brown to himself. "I don't know what makes me go but I'm going, and I'm keeping going, so I've got to steer." And steer Bunny did. Fortunately though the car was large, it was easily steered, for Mr. Brown had it made that way so his wife could take the wheel when she cared to. Mrs. Brown could drive an ordinary automobile and she could steer well. So while Mr. Brown was having the big auto-van made over he had the steering part changed so that the steering wheel turned from side to side very easily. And as Bunny was a sturdy chap he had no trouble about this part. The auto-van kept on moving and Bunny noticed that it was going up a little hill in the driveway that went all the way around the house. "I don't see what makes it go uphill all by itself," said Bunny to himself, giving the steering wheel a little turn, as there was a curve in the pathway just ahead of him. "If I were running _down_hill I'd know what made it go--the same thing that makes my sled slide downhill in Winter. But if this auto stood on the level I don't see what started it, nor why it keeps on going _up_hill. Bunker Blue must have left the brakes off." Bunny looked at the handle brake and at the one worked by the foot pedal. Both were off, for Bunker had released them when he left the car, since it stood on a level bit of the driveway. "But what makes it go?" asked Bunny again. Then, as he heard the low grinding noise, he remembered the self-starter, which Bunker had spoken of. "I must have kicked the handle or touched it," thought Bunny, "and that started the machine. I don't know how to stop it. I guess I'd better--Oh, whee! There's a tree I'm going to smash into!" cried Bunny Brown. The thought of getting out of the way of the tree drove from Bunny's mind, for the time being, every other thought. He must not hit the tree which grew a little over the side of the driveway. "I've got to steer out of the way, that's what I've got to do!" thought Bunny in a flash. "I've got to steer out of the way!" Once he had made up his mind to that, he did not think so much about the motion of the automobile. That could be taken care of later. "Let's see, which way do I turn the wheel to get out of the way of the tree," thought Bunny. He had often been in boats with his father and Bunker Blue, and sometimes, when the way was clear, he had been allowed to steer. Once or twice, while out with his mother in her car, she had let him steer along a quiet road. He was closer to the tree now. The automobile was not moving very fast, and perhaps if it had hit the tree it would not have done much damage. But Bunny did not know that, and then, too, he might be hurt in case the big car hit the tree. So he was going to do his best to avoid it. Like a flash it came to Bunny. "I must turn the steering wheel the way I want the auto to go!" No sooner said than done. Bunny gave the wheel a twist. Then he saw the auto slowly move that way, and away from the tree. It went past with a few inches to spare, but Bunny had not acted any too soon. Now he was on the straight part of the driveway again, at the back of the house, and all he had to do was to hold the steering wheel steady, and the automobile would move itself along. "But there's another curve by the kitchen door," thought Bunny. "I wonder if I'll get around that all right." On went the automobile. As it rolled slowly past the kitchen, Mary, the cook, looked out and saw the small boy at the steering wheel, which seemed almost as large as he was. "Oh, Bunny! Bunny! Sure an' what in the world are ye doin'?" she cried. "Please don't make me look at you," begged Bunny. "I've got to steer straight until I get to the curve and then I've got to twist around, an' that's very, very hard to do, Mary. So please don't interrupt me." But Mary had seen enough to cause alarm. She rushed to the sitting room where Mrs. Brown was looking at a pile of toys Sue had brought down to take on the trip. "Oh, Mrs. Brown! Mrs. Brown! Sure, an' the likes of a little boy like him runnin' the big car! Sure, it's kilt he'll be intirely!" "What do you mean, Mary?" "What do I mean? Sure, an' I mean that Bunny, the darlin' boy, has gone off in the big movin' van auto!" "Bunny in that auto? Impossible!" "Look for yourself!" exclaimed Mary, pointing to the window. At that moment the auto went rolling past, with Bunny at the wheel, as brave as life. "Bunny Brown!" exclaimed his mother, dashing for the door. "I--I got around the curve all right, Momsie!" he shouted in glee, and he raised one hand from the wheel to wave it to her. But at that instant the auto gave a wobble, and Bunny had to bring his waving hand back on the wheel to keep the car straight. "Bunny! Bunny!" cried his mother, running down the drive after the machine. "Where are you going?" "I--I don't know," he called back to her. "The auto got started and I can't stop it!" "Oh, what shall I do?" cried Mrs. Brown. For the seat of the car was very high, and though Bunny had managed to reach it, for he was a good tree-climber, it would hardly have been possible for Mrs. Brown to try to get up with her skirts on and when the auto was moving. It had been still when Bunny climbed to the seat. "Oh, Bunny!" wailed his mother. "Mary! Telephone for Mr. Brown to come home--quick!" "I won't be hurt!" called Bunny. "All I've got to do is to keep going on around and around and around the driveway until the storage battery gives out. That's what's running the car now." "Oh, but you _must_ be stopped," cried Mrs. Brown, who managed to keep alongside the slowly moving auto. "You might hit something!" "I steered out of the way of a tree, all the same," said Bunny proudly. "I was 'most going to run into it, but I didn't. I 'membered which way to steer." "Oh, I'm so frightened," moaned Mrs. Brown. Then seeing Bunker Blue coming up the path with a message on which he had been sent by Mr. Brown, Bunny's mother called to him: "Oh, Bunker, stop the auto! Bunny started it somehow. He's ridden nearly all around the drive, but he can't stop!" "It's running on the battery," said Bunker, after listening a moment to the electric hum. Then he swung himself up on the seat of the moving car beside Bunny, shut off the electric starter and put on the brakes. "There you are, Bunny!" cried Bunker. "Right as can be!" "I steered her nearly all the way around the house," said the small boy with pride. "But you must never do it again," commanded his mother. "Never! Oh, how you frightened me, Bunny!" "I'm sorry! I won't do it again," said the little fellow; and he really meant it. "How did you come to do it?" asked Bunker. "It just did itself," said the small boy. "I climbed up on the seat, and made believe I was steering, just like you or daddy, when, all of a sudden, off she went. I 'most busted down a tree, but I didn't really. And I went all around the house. I guess now daddy will let me steer the car out on the road." "Not for a few days yet," said Bunker Blue with a laugh. "Mr. Brown told me to tell you," he went on to Mrs. Brown, "that he would go a day earlier than he counted on, if you could get ready." "It won't take me long to pack," said Mrs. Brown. "But why didn't he telephone?" "Our machine is out of order. The men are fixing it, and anyhow I had to come up this way." "Well, I'm glad you came in time," said Mrs. Brown, as she led Bunny back to the house. "You are very good, Bunker." "Yes, and I want you to show me how to stop that electric starter when it starts to start," said Bunny. "Some day--maybe," promised Bunker, smiling. "Well, if we're going sooner, I'll have to hurry up and get my things packed," said Bunny. "Have you got yours, Sue?" "Most of 'em. You ought to see how bright my Teddy bear's eyes shine since daddy put new batteries inside Sallie Malinda," rattled on Sue. "I can 'most see to read my Mother Goose by them in the dark." "Well, I'm going to get my things ready," said Bunny. The next few days were busy ones in the Brown home. The big automobile was packed with bed clothes and with things for the children, their father and mother and Uncle Tad to wear, and also with things to eat. At last, one morning, all was ready for the start. "Good-bye," waved Mary, the cook, who was to have a vacation, while the Browns were away. "Good-bye!" called Bunny and Sue, and then Mr. Brown, who was at the steering wheel, while Uncle Tad, Bunny, Sue and their mother rode inside, started the car, and Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue were off on an auto tour. Merrily they rode along, Bunny and Sue talking happily, when, all at once Bunny cried: "Wait! Hold on! Where is Splash?" CHAPTER VI TWO DOGS Mr. Brown as soon as he heard Bunny's cry of "Wait!" at once shut off the power from the big automobile, and brought it to a stop. He turned to look through the little window at the back of the front seat against which he leaned, and asked: "What's the matter?" "Oh, Daddy, we've forgotten Splash!" wailed Bunny. "We've left him behind," chattered Sue. "I saw him and Dix--that's Fred Ward's dog--playing together, and I thought of course Splash would come with us. I forgot, and left one of the funny clown dresses for Sallie Malinda up in my room, so I went to get it, and then Splash and Dix were away down at the end of the yard and I didn't think any more about our dog." "I didn't either," said Bunny. "But he always has come with us and I thought he would this time." "Are you sure he isn't somewhere in the auto, under one of the cots asleep?" asked Mr. Brown. "I'll look," said Uncle Tad, and he did, but without finding Splash. "I forgot all about him," admitted Mrs. Brown, and her husband said the same thing. "Well, what are we going to do?" asked Mr. Brown, as soon as every one was satisfied that the dog was not in the big auto-van. "Do? Why, we've got to go back after him, of course!" cried Bunny. "We couldn't go without Splash," announced Sue. "He'd be so lonesome for us that he'd cry, and then he'd start out to find us and maybe get lost and we'd never find him again. Go back after him, Daddy! It isn't very far." "All right," said good-natured Mr. Brown. "I'm glad we're not in a hurry. Still I'd like to keep going, now that we've started. But please, all of you, make sure nothing else is forgotten. For we don't want to go back another time. All ready to turn around and march backward," and he backed the big automobile at a wide place in the road, for it needed plenty of room in which to turn. Slowly the big car made its way back to the Brown home. Mary, the cook, was the first to see it, and, running to the door, she cried: "Oh, whatever you do, come in and sit down if only for a minute, some of you! Oh, do come in and sit down!" "What for, Mary?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Has anything happened?" "No, but 'tis easy to see you've forgotten somethin'; and when that happens if you don't sit down, or turn your dress wrong side out, bad luck is sure to foller you when you start off again. So come in and sit down, as that's easier than turning a dress." "Oh, let me turn my knickerbockers outside in!" cried Bunny. "That will be as good as you or Sue, Momsie, turning your dresses. It's easy for me. Then I can make-believe I'm a tramp, and I'll run on ahead and beg for some bread and butter for my starving family," and he imitated, in such a funny way, the whine of some of the tramps who called at the Brown kitchen door, that his mother laughed and Sue said: "Oh, Momsie, let me turn my dress wrong-side out, too, and I can play tramp with Bunny. That will be fun!" "No, you mustn't do that," said Mrs. Brown. "While we're hunting for Splash--who isn't in sight. Where can he be?--we'll go in and sit down a moment to please Mary." "Would we have bad luck if we didn't?" asked Bunny. "Not at all. But some persons, like Mary, believe in them; and Mary is very fond of us. Even if we do not believe in some of the things those we like believe in, as long as it does no harm to our beliefs, we can do them to please a friend." Even Mr. Brown, because he liked Mary, went in and sat down for a minute with the others. "Now you've done away with the bad luck," said the cook with a smile. "What was it you came back for?" "Splash," answered Bunny. "He didn't come with us," added Sue. "Well, it's no wonder, the funny way he's cuttin' up with that dog next door," said Mary. "What did he do?" asked Bunny. "Was it funny? Please tell us, Mary." "Well, it might have been funny for him, but it wasn't for me," said the cook, though she could not help smiling. "The two dogs was playin' tag on the lawn. I had some napkins spread out on the grass to bleach, and what did that dog Dix do but run down in the brook, and then come back with his feet all mud and run over my napkins. Sure, I had to wash 'em all again. That's what them two dogs did. The bad luck was just startin' in when you come back, an' it's good you did, to sit down a bit an' take it off." "But we must get on again," said Mr. Brown. "So hurry, Bunny and Sue. Find Splash. If he's muddy make him swim through the brook and clean himself off. A run along the sunny road will soon dry him." "But don't let him splash your clean clothes, children," called their mother after them, as the two ran off together to find the missing dog. "I hear them barking!" called Bunny, as he and his sister hurried toward the end of the yard. "So do I." Then, a moment later, the little girl added: "There they are!" and she pointed to the two dogs playing on the green lawn not far from a little brook that ran through Mr. Brown's grounds. "Here, Splash! Splash!" called Bunny. The dogs stopped their playing, and looked toward the children. As soon as Splash saw his little master and mistress he came rushing toward them as fast as he could. "Don't let him jump on me and get my dress muddy!" cried Sue. "He's been in the mud just awful!" "So he has," said Bunny Brown. "Down, Splash! Down!" he called, as the dog neared Sue. Splash made all the signs he knew to show how glad he was to see Bunny and Sue, but he did not get up on his hind legs and put his paws on Sue's shoulders, as he sometimes did. "Oh, Splash, you're awful dirty!" cried Sue. "You must run in the brook, where the water is clean, and where there are white pebbly stones instead of mud on the bottom, to wash yourself. You've got to go in too, Dix." Dix barked "bow-wow," to show he did not mind, I suppose. "Go on in, Splash!" cried Bunny, snapping his fingers and pointing at the brook. "Go in and wash!" But though the Browns' dog was usually ready for a frolic in the water he did not seem to be so just now. He ran back and forth, down to the edge of the stream and back again, getting his paws wet, but nothing else. "Oh, you must go in and have your bath if you are to come with us!" cried Sue. "Go on in, Splash!" But not even for Sue would Splash go in, until finally Bunny cried: "Oh, I know a way to make him!" "How?" asked Sue. "Just throw a stick into the water, and he'll go after it and bring it back. We'll throw it far out." "Oh, that's right!" cried Sue. "We'll do that." No sooner had the children picked up sticks than the two dogs, who had started to play "tag" themselves, knew what was up. They both loved to go into the water after sticks. "Throw 'em far out now!" cried Bunny. He tossed his to the middle of the brook, and Sue flung hers nearly as far, for she was a good thrower--almost as good as Bunny. Dix swam after Sue's stick, and Splash went for Bunny's. In a minute they had brought them ashore and dropped them at the children's feet, looking up into their faces as much as to say: "Do it again! We love to chase sticks!" And then, just as dogs always do when they come from the water, they gave themselves big shakes. "Look out, Sue!" called Bunny. But he was too late. A shower of drops from Splash went all over Sue's dress, and some of the drops were not clean water, either. "Oh dear!" she cried. "Now I'll have to change my dress!" "Never mind," said Bunny. "You run up to the house and get that done, and I'll throw the two sticks into the water. Then Splash and Dix will go in again, and when they come out they'll be cleaner. I won't come back to the house with them until they are good and clean." Once more Bunny tossed the sticks, as Sue went up to change her dress. When her mother saw her she cried: "Oh dear, Sue! How did that happen?" Sue told her. "Well, I hope Bunny gets the dogs clean this time," said Mrs. Brown as she took Sue upstairs to put another dress on her. This did not take long, and a little while afterward Bunny came running up from the brook with the two dogs, dripping wet from their baths. "Quick, Momsie and Sue!" he called to his mother and sister. "Get in the auto before the dogs shower you again with water. I've got 'em good and clean now. I made 'em go in four times after the sticks." "Did they shake any water on you?" asked Mr. Brown. "Not much," said Bunny. "Besides, my clothes are dark and the mud on them won't show. Now don't go away again, Splash, 'cause we're going on a long auto tour, and you want to come with us." All were soon in the auto again, and as they started off, with more "good-byes" and "good lucks," Bunny and Sue made sure that this time Splash followed. "Now he's started he won't turn back," said Mr. Brown. "He just missed us before, thinking, I suppose, if he saw us go, that we would come back." The big automobile traveled on for about an hour, and they were several miles from the Brown home when Bunny, looking out of the rear door of the auto-van cried: "Why there's Dix, Fred Ward's dog, following us along with Splash! Look!" "So he is," said Mrs. Brown. "Oh, dear! These dogs! What are we going to do?" CHAPTER VII DIX IN TROUBLE "Is Dix really following us?" asked Mr. Brown, as, once more, he stopped the big automobile. "He seems to be," answered Mrs. Brown. "He and Splash are trotting along together as happy as two clams." "Clams can't trot," said Bunny quickly. "No, but they can be happy," said his mother. "And Splash and Dix seem to be happy, now, trotting along together after us." "They're altogether too happy," said Mr. Brown. "I wonder how we're going to get Dix back home? Mr. and Mrs. Ward think as much of him as we do of Splash, and they'll be sorry to have him run away." "We must try to send him home some way," said Mrs. Brown. "Bunny, you have a pretty good way with dogs, suppose you get out and try to drive Dix back home. Tell him we love him, think he's a nice dog and all that, but we believe it isn't best for him to come with us now." "All right, I will," said Bunny, and he hopped down from the automobile, which had a little set of steps at the back to make getting in and out easy. Though Bunny, it is true, generally jumped out, not using the steps at all. While the big automobile had been traveling on, Splash, knowing he was a member of this party, had gone along as a matter of course. And, perhaps, in some kind of dog language (which I am sure there must be) he had said to his friend Dix something like this: "Come along, old chap. The folks are going for a little excursion into the country. I know they are, for once before we traveled like this, and it was jolly fun. There'll be good things to eat, and no end of cats to chase, too, if you like that." "Well, I used to like it," Dix said--perhaps. "Then come along," urged Splash. "I'm sure the folks will be glad to have you." "All right, I will," Dix may have answered. And so it was he had run along, playing beside the road with Splash. And it was not until the automobile had gone several miles that the family noticed that another dog besides their own was following them. "Drive him back home as your mother told you, Bunny," said the little boy's father. Bunny ran back to where Dix and Splash were rolling over and over on the grass. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. "Go on home! Go on home!" cried Bunny. At once Splash and Dix stopped playing and ran to the little boy. As his mother had said, Bunny knew how to talk to dogs in a way they could understand. "Go on home!" said the little boy again, very earnestly. Splash looked up in surprise. He was not used to being sent home. "Oh, I don't mean you," said Bunny. "I mean you, Dix! Mother says we like you very much, and would like to have you with us, but your folks want you home with them. So go on back. Go home, I say!" Bunny stamped his foot, spoke as sternly as he could without being too cross, and pointed back toward Bellemere. Dix looked into Bunny's face a minute, and then slowly the dog's tail drooped between his legs and he slunk off, with what was really a sad face looking at Bunny and Splash. It was as if he said: "Say, look here, Splash! I thought you invited me on this excursion, and now that boy of yours goes and drives me home." "Well, I can't help it," Splash seemed to say. "There is something wrong somewhere." Bunny felt sad at having to drive Dix back home. "I'm sorry, old fellow," he said, and his voice was so kind that Dix turned and came running back. "No! No! You mustn't do that!" cried Bunny, seeing what his kind words had done. "Go on back home, Dix!" Once again Dix's tail drooped between his legs, and he turned back. He went on for some distance, never turning to look back. "There, I guess he'll not follow us any more," said Bunny. "Come on, Splash. You get up in the automobile and ride with us. Then Dix won't see you, and want to come along." Bunny led his own dog back to the big car, Splash going willingly enough, though once or twice he looked back at Dix, who was walking slowly the homeward road. Again the auto started off. "This is two delays we've had," said Mr. Brown. "If we have another I'll begin to think there is something in Mary's idea of bad luck, after all." It was Sue who discovered Dix the next time. As the automobile was about to go around a curve the little girl gazed out of the back window and saw the Ward dog trotting happily along toward the moving automobile. "Oh, Daddy, look there!" cried Sue. "Dix is coming after us again! What are we going to do?" "Is that dog following us once more?" asked Mr. Brown, as he stopped the automobile. "Yes, he is; and he seems happy." "Oh dear!" said Mrs. Brown. "What trouble these dogs are giving us to-day!" "Well, this is the third trouble, and let us hope it will be the last," said Mr. Brown. "Are you going to send Dix back again?" asked Bunny. "No, I don't think it would do any good. Besides, we are now about ten miles from home. He might not find his way." "That would be too bad," said Mrs. Brown. "The Wards would not want to lose their dog." "I presume the only thing for us to do is to turn around and carry him back again," said Mr. Brown slowly. Just then Splash, who had been lying inside under one of the sleeping cots, awoke, and, looking out of the rear door of the auto, saw his friend Dix trotting merrily along. "Bow-wow!" barked Splash. "Wow-wuff-wow!" answered Dix. That meant in dog language I suppose: "Well, I'm glad to see you again, old fellow." "And I'm glad to see you," said Dix. "I hope they don't drive me back again. But I went only to the first turn in the road. There I waited awhile and then came on. I could easily tell which way you came by the big wheel-marks." "Well, I guess there's no hope for it," said Mr. Brown, as the two dogs stopped barking. "It's turn around again and take Dix back with us to his home. It's a good thing we're not in a hurry." He was about to turn the big car, and Dix had come to a stop a short distance away from it when Bunny suddenly cried: "Oh, I've thought of a way to do it!" "A way to do what?" his father asked. "Take care of Dix." "Do you mean to ask somebody going past in another automobile to take Dix to Bellemere?" asked Mrs. Brown. "No. But in that house," and Bunny pointed to one not far away, "is a telephone. I can see the wires, and they're just like our telephone wires. Why can't we call up Mr. Ward and ask him if we can take his dog along with us?" "Take Dix with us!" cried Mrs. Brown. "What would we do with two dogs?" "Well, they'll be company for each other," said Sue, who had taken a great liking to Dix. "And Dix wants to come," added Bunny. "You see how hard it is to drive him back." "But we don't need him, and two dogs are harder to look after than one," said Mr. Brown. "Dix has made trouble enough to-day, though part of it was Splash's fault." It was then Bunny had his fine idea. "Oh, I know the best reason in the world for taking Dix with us!" he cried. "Wait and I'll 'splain it all to you. Just let Dix and Splash play together until I get through talking." "Well, let's hear your idea, Bunny," said Mr. Brown with a smile, as he leaned back in his seat and rested his back. Splash, seeing his dog friend, leaped from the car and the two were soon playing together in the road as merrily as ever. CHAPTER VIII DIX AND THE COW "Now," said Bunny, as he sat down on a little stool in the auto to talk to his father and mother--and Sue, of course, and Uncle Tad, who were all listening. "Now it wouldn't hurt an awful lot to take Dix with us, would it?" "What do you mean?" asked his mother. "I mean Dix wouldn't eat much more than Splash, would he?" "Oh, I guess if it comes to feeding dogs, two come about as cheaply as one," said Mr. Brown with a laugh. "But what's the idea, Bunny?" "Well, I'd like to have Dix come along with us then. It will save time now in taking him back." "Yes, it will do _that_," said Mr. Brown. "And it's quite a way back home this time." "And Splash will have company to play with all the while," went on Bunny. "Two dogs are happier than one, aren't they?" he asked. "If two dogs eat more than one then two must be happier than one." "It's a new way of looking at it, but I guess it may be true," laughed Mrs. Brown. "But are you doing all this talking, Bunny, just to have company for Splash?" "No indeedy I'm not!" exclaimed Bunny. "I haven't 'splained it all." "What else is there?" asked Mr. Brown, laughing. "Well, if Mr. Ward will let us take Dix along--and you can find out about that over the telephone--then maybe we can find Fred." For a moment no one spoke after Bunny had announced his plan. His father and mother looked sharply at him, and so did Sue and Uncle Tad. "How can Dix find Fred?" asked Sue. "'Cause didn't the bloodhounds find the runaway slaves in Uncle Tom's Cabin?" demanded Bunny. "Yes," answered Sue. "I 'member that." "Well then, won't Dix find Fred the same way?" went on Bunny. "He can smell his tracks along the road and we'll find that runaway boy a lot quicker than if we didn't have his dog along. Fred and Dix were always together, and I guess Fred couldn't have run away if Dix had seen him. So if we take Dix along, and have to look for Fred in big crowds, Dix'll come in 'specially handy." "Oh, won't that be fun!" cried Sue, clapping her hands. "Do let's take Dix along!" "I believe Bunny's plan is a good one," said Mr. Brown, after thinking about it a while. "We don't know Fred very well, and he may look different, now that he has gone away from home, from what he did before. His dog would know him, however, no matter how Fred dressed." "He'd know him even if he had on a Hallowe'en false face, wouldn't he?" asked Sue. "I guess so," answered Daddy Brown. "Well, I'll go and telephone to Mr. Ward and see what he says." The people in the house into which the telephone wires ran were very willing Mr. Brown should use the instrument, and he was soon talking to Mr. Ward back in Bellemere. "Surely you may take Dix with you," said Mr. Ward over the telephone wire. "I only hope he will not be a trouble to you. I know he will make a fuss just as soon as he comes anywhere near Fred. So, in that way, you may be able to trace my boy. I hope you will. His mother hopes so too. She is beside me here as I am talking, and she sends you her thanks. Take Dix with you if you wish." "Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Sue, when she heard the news. "Aren't you, Bunny? Now we have two dogs!" "Yes, one will be yours and one mine, until we get back home with Dix. Then we'll each own half of Splash, as we've always done." This suited Sue, and, now that the dog question was settled, the automobile started on again. For a little while everything was peaceful and quiet in the big automobile. Bunny went outside on the front seat with his father, and looked down the road along which they were running. It was a pleasant road, with trees arching across overhead from one side to the other. Inside the big car Mrs. Brown and Uncle Tad "got things to rights," as the children's mother called it, while Sue took out some of her toys, including the big Teddy bear with the electric eyes, whose adventures have been told in the book just before this one. Bunny and his father talked together on the seat in front. Bunny was interested in whether or not they would find Fred. "Well, we may and we may not," said Mr. Brown. "It is true Fred said he was going to run away to Portland, the city where we are going. But we will not be there for some time, and before then Fred may think he does not like it there and go somewhere else." "Well, I think Dix will help find him, don't you?" asked Bunny. "Yes, I hope so, Son." Just then came a call from inside the automobile. "Who's ready for dinner?" [Illustration: THE TWO DOGS CAME WITH A RUSH. _Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour._ _Page_ 79.] "I am!" cried Bunny, the first one. "So am I," added Sue. "Then come on! Rations are served," said Uncle Tad who had been in the army. He and Mrs. Brown had cooked their first meal on the gasolene stove in the little kitchen and dining room combined, and it was now ready to serve. Bunny clambered in by way of the front seat and took his place at the little table. "I think we had better stop beside the road while we eat," said Mr. Brown. "This automobile is all right for traveling, but the roads are so rough here that I may spill my tea. So we'll anchor and eat." "Daddy thinks we're in a boat I guess, when he talks about anchoring," said Sue, who, more than once, had been out in the big fishing boat with her father. Then the meal began. There was some cooked meat, for they could carry meat in the ice box, baked potatoes, and, best of all, some pie. It was while he was eating his pie and drinking his milk that Bunny suddenly cried: "The dogs!" "What about them?" asked Mrs. Brown quickly. "Are they fighting? Where are they, Bunny?" "Just over in that field playing. But we didn't call Splash and Dix to dinner." "Oh, is that all? I think they can wait a bit," said Mrs. Brown with a laugh. "By the way you spoke I thought something had happened." "Well, this pie tasted good, that's part of what happened," said Bunny, with a laugh. "And then I got to wishing Dix and Splash could have some." "I'll feed them when the rest of you have finished," promised Mrs. Brown. When the meal was over Mrs. Brown gathered up a big plateful of scraps from the table, and gave it to Bunny to feed Dix and Splash. "Here Dix!" called Bunny, inviting the "company" dog first, which was proper, I suppose. "Here, Dix and Splash!" The two dogs heard and must have known that they were being called to dinner, for they came with a rush, each one trying to see which would be the first to reach Bunny with the plateful of good food. "You'd better put the dish on the ground and get away," said Mr. Brown with a laugh. "Otherwise they'll be so glad to see you, Bunny, that they'll knock you down and roll over you." "I guess they will," said the little boy. So he put the plate of meat, bread and potato scraps on the ground near the big automobile and then stepped back out of the way. Dix and Splash did not take long to finish the food on the plate, and then they looked up at Bunny and wagged their tails, as if asking for more. "No more!" called Mrs. Brown to them, for she understood the feeding of dogs. "That will do you until supper." Seeing they were going to get no more, Dix and Splash ran off together again to have more fun rolling about in the grass. "Where do you think we shall stop for the night?" asked Mrs. Brown of her husband as they set off once more. "Just outside the town of Freeburg," he answered. "We'll sleep in the auto, of course, for if we are making a tour this way it's the proper thing to do. But we'll be near enough a town for supplies or anything we may need." "Goodness! We don't need anything this soon, nor have we a place to put another thing away," protested Mrs. Brown. Her husband laughed. "However, it's well to be near a town overnight," he said. So the big automobile chugged on. Mrs. Brown and Uncle Tad washed the dishes and put them away, and then they sat looking out at the side windows and enjoying the trip. Now and then Mr. Brown would talk in through the open window against which the steering wheel seat was built. Bunny and his sister sometimes rode inside, and again outside with Daddy Brown. "This is lots of fun, I think," said Bunny, as he sat beside his father, and the auto went rather fast down a hill. "It's just great! My Sallie Malinda Teddy bear likes it, too," put in Sue, who was also on the front seat. Both of them together took up no more room than one grown person, and the front seat was built large enough for two. Dix and Splash raced on together, sometimes playing a game like wrestling, trying to see which could throw the other, and again rushing along as fast as they could go, sometimes behind, and sometimes in front of the automobile. At the foot of the hill, down which the automobile had gone rather fast, a man stepped out from a fence beside the road and held up his hand. "What does that mean?" asked Sue. "It means to stop," said her father, as he slowed up the machine. "What for?" Bunny inquired. "Well, he may be a constable--that is a kind of a policeman," said Mr. Brown. "He wants us to stop, thinking, maybe, that we were running too fast. But I know we weren't." "Will he 'rest us?" asked Sue. "If he does I'm going to hide Sallie Malinda. I'm not going to have her locked up!" "Nothing will happen," said Mr. Brown with a laugh. "I have run an automobile long enough to know what to do." Mr. Brown brought the big machine to a stop near the spot where the man was standing with upraised hand. "What's the matter?" asked Mr. Brown good-naturedly. "Were we going too fast?" "Oh, nopey!" exclaimed the man with a laugh. "I jest stopped you to see what kind of a show you was givin'." "What kind of show we are giving?" repeated Mr. Brown in surprise. "Yep! I thought maybe you was one o' them patent medicine shows that goes 'round in big wagons and stops here and there, and a feller sings, or plays, or somethin', then the head man or woman sells medicine what'll cure everything you ever had in the way of pain or ever expect to have. I thought I'd see what kind of a show you've got." "We haven't any," laughed Mr. Brown. "You may look in the auto if you like, and see how we live in it. We are traveling for pleasure." "I see you be, now," said the man after a look. "Wa'al, I'm right sorry I stopped you." "That's all right," said Mr. Brown pleasantly. "This is a heavy machine, and I don't like to get it to going too fast downhill. It's too hard to stop. So it's just as well we slowed up." "You see I'm the inspector of all them travelin' shows," went on the man. "Ribbans is my name, Hank Ribbans. Every medicine show or other show that comes to town has to git a permit from me, else they can't show. But you're all right, pass on." An idea came into Mrs. Brown's head. "Do you have many shows passing through here, with musicians who play to draw a crowd?" she asked. "Oh, sartin, surely. 'Bout one once a week as a rule. There was one that showed here two or three nights ago--no, come to think of it now, it was last night. There was a young feller--nothin' but a boy--dressed up in the reddest and bluest suit you ever see. And say, how he could play that old banjo!" "Oh, a banjo! Maybe it was Fred!" cried Bunny. The same thought came to his father and mother. "Tell us about this boy," requested Mr. Brown. "We are looking for one who plays the banjo," and he described Fred Ward. "Well, this can't be the one you're lookin' for," said Mr. Ribbans. "'Cause this feller was a negro." "Maybe he was blacked up like a minstrel," said Bunny. "I couldn't say as to that," returned the inspector. "Anyhow they paid for their license all right, and they sold a powerful lot o' Dr. Slack's Pain Killer. Then they went on out of town. That's all I know. Well, you don't need a license from me; so go ahead, folks!" He waved good-bye to them as they went off again. Bunny and Sue were eager to ask questions about the colored boy who played the banjo for the medical show. "Do you think he could have been Fred?" asked Bunny. "It is possible," answered his father. "Maybe we can find him," added Sue. "We'll make inquiries about this show in the next town we come to," said Mr. Brown. But as the next town was the one outside of which they were to spend the night, they decided to put off until the next day asking questions about the colored banjo player. Uncle Tad and Mr. Brown helped Mrs. Brown get the supper. When it was over there was a large platter full of good things left for the two dogs. They were hungry, for they had run far that day, and they ate up every scrap. Then they stretched out for a while near a campfire Mr. Brown made under some trees, for it was a little cool in the evenings. As the children had been up early that morning, Mrs. Brown told them they must be early in bed, and after watching the fire until their eyes began to shut of themselves, Bunny and Sue started for their little bunks. Just as they were getting undressed, though it was scarcely dark, the barking of dogs was heard down the road. "That's Dix and Splash!" exclaimed Bunny. "And something must have happened. Splash wouldn't bark that way if there was nothing the matter." "Here comes Dix now," said Sue, looking out of the automobile window. "And oh, Bunny! Look what he's brought home with him!" "What is it?" asked Bunny, whose bunk was on the other side of the big car. "It's a cow. Dix is leading home a cow on the end of a rope!" exclaimed Sue. CHAPTER IX TWO DISAPPEARANCES For a moment the two children looked out of the automobile windows at the strange sight. Then, unable longer to think of going to bed when there was likely to be some excitement, they both came out from behind the curtains that screened off their cots, and cried together: "Dix has got a cow!" "Dix has got a _what_?" asked Mrs. Brown, thinking she had not understood. "Dix has got a _cow_!" went on Bunny. "He's leading her by a rope. I guess he thinks it's our cow." "Well, what will those dogs do next?" asked Mr. Brown, who was reading a newspaper he had purchased from a passing boy, who rode his route on a bicycle. "It's true enough--about the cow," said Uncle Tad, who was outside the automobile putting out the last embers of the campfire, that there might be no danger during the night. "One of the dogs is leading home a 'cow critter,' as some farmers call them. "It's Dix," he went on a moment later as the two dogs, both barking excitedly, came close to the big moving van, Dix having hold of the rope that was tied fast to the cow's neck. He was leading her along, and the cow did not appear to mind. "Dix must have found the cow wandering along the road," went on Uncle Tad, "and, thinking we might need one, he just brought her home." "Very thoughtful of Dix, I'm sure," said Mr. Brown, who had come outside as had his wife, while Bunny and Sue remained in their pajamas in the doorway. "He probably meant it kindly, but what will the man think whose cow she is? Well, what's the matter with you, Splash?" asked Mr. Brown, for that dog, too, was barking very loudly. "Did you see the cow first, and wouldn't Dix let you have a share in bringing her here? I guess that was it. Never mind, you shall lead the cow home, if we can find out where she belongs." He patted Splash's head as he spoke, and talked to the dog almost as he would have talked to a small boy. And I think Splash understood, for he wagged his tail, and seemed pleased. Dix led the cow up to Mr. Brown, and there, dropping the end of the rope, wagged his tail, barked once or twice and looked up as though he were saying: "Well, didn't I do pretty well for the first day? I found a cow for you. That will more than pay my board. I'll try and find something else to-morrow." Then, as if satisfied that he had done his duty, Dix went off to hunt for a bone he had buried after his supper, and Splash went with him. "Well, what in the world are we going to do with it?" asked Mrs. Brown. "We can't keep this cow; that's sure!" "We might tie her to one of the auto wheels," said Mr. Brown. "No, thank you!" exclaimed his wife. "She'd moo all night, and keep us awake." "But we can't turn her loose," said Mr. Brown. "She might wander off and be stolen, and then the owner would blame us, though it might not be our fault. Since Dix has brought the cow to us, no matter whether we wanted her or not, we've got to look after her somehow." "Couldn't Dix take her back?" asked Bunny, from where he stood in the doorway with Sue. "That's perhaps a good idea," replied Mr. Brown. "Though I don't know that Dix could exactly take her back. I think I'd better do it myself. It's early yet, and probably the farmer who owns the cow is out looking for her. I'll let Splash lead the cow back along the road, and I'll go with him. We may meet the farmer." "Well, don't be gone too long," begged Mrs. Brown. "The first day is always hard and we want to get to bed early." "I'll do my best," promised Mr. Brown. "Come on, Splash! It's your turn now to lead the cow!" Splash barked joyfully, and seemed glad that he was to have something to do with the big horned animal, who was contentedly chewing her cud, lying down beside the automobile. She appeared quite contented wherever she was. "Oh, let us come!" begged Bunny and Sue, as they saw their father go off down the road with Splash leading the cow by the rope. "No, indeed! You youngsters get to bed!" said Mrs. Brown. "You ought to be glad of the chance. You must be tired." "We're not--a single bit!" declared Bunny, but though he and Sue begged hard, and teased to go to see the cow taken home, their mother would not let them. It was quite dark when Mr. Brown came back. The children were asleep, but Mrs. Brown and Uncle Tad were sitting up reading. "Well?" asked Mrs. Brown, as she noticed how tired her husband looked. "Did you have far to go?" "About two miles, and mostly uphill. But I found the cow's owner." "Did you? That's good! How did you manage?" asked Uncle Tad. "Well, I was going along, Splash leading the cow as proud as a peacock, when, all of a sudden, I saw a man hurrying toward me. He seemed very much excited, and asked me if that was _my_ cow the dog was leading. "I told him it was not; that one of the dogs that was with us on our auto trip had brought her in; and that I was bringing her back, looking for the owner." "'I'm him,' he said. 'And I can soon prove the critter's mine.'" "I told him I hoped she was, for I was tired of walking with her. So he stopped at two or three farmers' houses, and they all said the cow belonged to Mr. Adrian Richmond, who was the man that met me. So I left the cow with him and came on home, for this _does_ look like home," he added, as he gazed around the small but cozy room in the auto-van. "Did the farmer tell you how Dix came to lead off his cow?" asked Uncle Tad. "No, he only guessed that the animal must have pulled loose from her stake and wandered off down the road. She was used to being led home every night by the farmer's dog, so she didn't make any objections." "Then Dix must be a sort of a cow dog," remarked Mrs. Brown, and later it was learned that Dix had once been on a western ranch and had helped the cowboys with their work. So with the cow disposed of, and the two dogs asleep on some old blankets under the automobile, the little party of travelers settled down for the night. They all slept soundly, and in the morning the first thing Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue wanted to know about was the cow. Their father told them all that had happened. "That Dix is a great dog!" cried Bunny. "I'm glad we brought him with us." "So'm I!" echoed Sue. "And maybe to-day he'll find Fred." "How can he?" asked Bunny. "Because you know the funny old man who stopped us, to see if we were a traveling show, said that boy banjo player was to come to this town. And even if the one he saw _was_ colored it might be Fred blacked up." "That's so," agreed Bunny. "We'll get daddy to ask." A breakfast was cooked in the auto and eaten out-of-doors, because it was such a lovely morning. More than once as they ate in the shadow of the big car other autoists, passing, waved a merry greeting to the happy little party, and as horse-drawn carts and wagons passed along the road on their way into town, many curious glances were cast at the travelers. It was rather a strange way of making a journey, but it suited the Browns, and they preferred their big automobile to any railroad train they could have had. After breakfast they set off again, passing through the city. Mr. Brown asked several persons there about the traveling medicine show with the colored banjo player. Many had seen it, but some were sure the banjo-playing boy was a real negro, while others said he was only blackened up. At any rate the show had traveled on, and no one knew where it would be next met with. "Well, it may have been Fred, and it may not," said Mr. Brown. "I must write and ask Mr. Ward if his son could imitate a negro, singing and playing the banjo, and whether he ever dressed up and did that sort of thing." The progress of the big automobile through the town attracted many persons, not a few of whom believed it to be a traveling show, and they were disappointed when some sort of performance was not given. The Browns were soon out in the sunny country again, traveling along a shady level road. Bunny and Sue played with their toys, and at noon, when they stopped for lunch, they had a romping game of tag in the woods and fields near-by. After the noon rest they went on again, the two dogs running along, sometimes ahead of the automobile and sometimes behind it. "I'm going to put darling Sallie Malinda to sleep," said Sue after a while. "And I'm going to let her sleep near the back door of the car." "Why?" asked Bunny, who was very fond of asking questions. "She isn't feeling very well, and the air will do her good," answered Sue, who made her "make-believe" very real to herself. So, having made a nice bed of rags for her Teddy bear, Sue put Sallie Malinda to sleep near the rear door of the auto and got out one of her books to look at the pictures. Bunny was building some sort of house with some new blocks his father had bought for him, but he was not having very good luck, for the motion of the auto made the house topple over almost as soon as Bunny had it built. After a while Sue thought her Teddy bear had had enough sleep near the auto door, so she went to take her in. But when she reached the rag bed Sallie Malinda was not there. "Oh, my Teddy bear is gone!" cried Sue. "Oh, Bunny, do you think she falled out? Daddy! Daddy! Stop the auto! My Teddy bear is lost!" Mr. Brown stopped the car at once, though he did not understand all of what Sue said. The little girl told him what had happened. "Sallie Malinda gone!" cried Mother Brown. "That's too bad! She must have been jostled off when the auto went over a bump. I think we'll have to go back and look for her," she said to her husband. Then Bunny gave some more news. "Dix is gone too!" he cried. "I've been watching a long while and I haven't seen him. And Splash is acting awful funny--just as if Dix had run away." "Hum! This _is_ rather strange!" exclaimed Mr. Brown. "Two disappearances at once." "What's disappearcesses?" asked Sue. "It means going away--the word your father used does," explained Mrs. Brown with a smile. "But it certainly is strange that Dix and the Teddy bear should go away together." CHAPTER X DIX COMES BACK For a moment Sue stood looking at her mother, seeming to be thinking very hard about something. Then she asked: "Momsie, do you think Dix took Sallie Malinda away?" "Well, it seems so," said Mrs. Brown. "That is, if Dix has really gone away. We had better make sure of that, first. There is no question about your Teddy bear's being gone, for I saw her in the rag bed by the back door of the auto not half an hour ago." "Well, I suppose she either fell out, or Dix, thinking to have a game of tag with her, took her out, though the Teddy bear, with the batteries inside to make her eyes light up, isn't easy for even Dix to carry very far," said Mr. Brown. "But how are we going to get my darling Sallie Malinda back?" asked Sue, and there were tears in her eyes. "Daddy will find some way. Won't you, Daddy?" asked Bunny, for he did not like to see his little sister sad. "Well, the only thing I can see to do is to turn the automobile around and go back to look for Sue's Teddy bear," said Mr. Brown. "He may be lying beside the road where he fell from the auto." "My Teddy bear isn't a _he_, Daddy!" cried Sue. "She's a _she_! Aren't there _lady_ Teddy bears as well as _gentlemen_?" "Yes, I suppose so," laughed Mr. Brown. "I forgot for the moment that your Teddy's name was Sallie. But whether it's a he or a she I suppose you'd like to have me go back for it, wouldn't you?" "Indeed I would, Daddy! I don't know what I'd do without Sallie Malinda." "All right, then we'll turn the auto around." "We've done about as much going backward as we have going forward on this trip," laughed Uncle Tad. "But still we must get Sue's pet. It wouldn't do to go off and leave _her_." "I can't understand about Dix, though," said Mrs. Brown. "Surely he wouldn't run away and leave us after he had come this far with us." "Maybe he is just playing hide-and-go-seek with Splash," said Bunny. "Maybe it's Dix's turn to hide." "Suppose you call him," suggested Mrs. Brown. Bunny called and whistled, in a way he had been doing to get Dix to come to him ever since the Ward dog had joined the traveling automobile party. But there came no answering bark, and even Splash seemed surprised when he could not find his playfellow. "Hi, Splash!" called Bunny. "Where is Dix? Go find him!" Splash ran around and barked, which was his only way of talking, but he came back frequently to the children, who, with their parents and Uncle Tad, were standing beside the auto, and he did not bring Dix back with him. It was as though Splash said: "I know you want to find Dix, but I don't know where he is. There is no use in my running my legs off to find him, for he is a long way from here." "Dix possibly has been missing a longer while than we know," said Mr. Brown. "I noticed once, as we were going over a bridge, that Splash went in and had a little swim. But I did not see Dix with him, though I didn't think anything about it at the time. We had that trouble with the engine farther back than that. When I got that fixed Dix was about. But from then on I haven't seen him, and that was some miles back." "Maybe that's the time my dear Sallie Malinda fell out," said Sue. "Or else Dix took her." "I don't believe he'd do that," said her father. "He was too well trained. He isn't a puppy any longer, to hide boots, shoes and toys. I don't believe Dix took your Teddy." "Well, anyhow let's go to find him," said Bunny. "I mean _her_," he added quickly, as he noticed Sue looking sharply at him. "Maybe we'll find Dix and the Teddy bear at the same time." "If Dix hasn't gone off to find a cow or an elephant or a camel or something like that to make us a present of," said Mrs. Brown with a laugh. "Oh, Momsie! Do you think Dix would really bring back an elephant?" asked Bunny eagerly. "No, my dear, I was only fooling. But let's start back, Daddy, for I know Sue will be very anxious to-night about her Teddy bear." Back they started in the automobile over the road they had just traveled. Now and then they stopped and called Dix, but the dog did not come to them. Splash added his barks and whines to the general calling but no Dix answered. "He must be mighty far away," said Bunny. "Yes, I'm afraid we'll never find him, or my dearest Sallie Malinda either," said Sue, and once more tears came into her eyes. As the auto went along, in addition to calling for Dix, every one in the party, including the children, had looked along the road for a sight of the Teddy bear that might have fallen from the automobile. But Sallie Malinda was not to be seen, and Sue did not know what to do. "Well, we'll go back to where I last noticed that Dix was with us," said Mr. Brown. "Then if we don't find your Teddy, Sue, I'll have to get you another." "But I'd rather have Sallie Malinda!" "I know, dear, but you can name the new one that." "Sue's Teddy's had lots of adventures," said Bunny. "The hermit took her, and now she's lost." "Well, I'm not going to give up yet," said his sister, as she looked carefully along the road. "But what can have become of Dix?" asked Mrs. Brown. "I can't understand him." "Oh, he may have gone off chasing a rabbit or a squirrel," said Mr. Brown. "Anyhow we're almost at the bridge, and the spot where we had the engine trouble is not far beyond." Silently those in the auto looked along the road for a sight of Sue's Teddy. Then suddenly Bunny said, "No, he didn't!" "Who didn't what?" asked his father, for Bunny would often make these sudden exclamations. "Dix didn't go off chasing a rabbit or a squirrel," said Bunny. "There he comes now--with an elephant, I guess," and the little boy pointed down the road. There was Dix coming back, and he was half dragging and half carrying something that looked like an animal. On and on came the dog. He seemed very tired. When he saw the automobile he stopped, dropped what he had in his mouth, and lay down beside it. Then he began to bark joyfully. "Oh, it's my Sallie Malinda! It's my Teddy bear!" cried Sue. "You dear old Dix! You found Sallie Malinda for me!" And that is just what had happened, they decided after they had talked it over among themselves. Dix must have been running along behind the auto when he saw Sue's pet jostled out. Knowing how the little girl loved her Teddy bear he picked it up and began to half drag and half carry it, for, as Mr. Brown had said, the electrical batteries that made the Teddy's eyes shine, were heavy. Poor Dix had all he could do to drag the Teddy bear, but he would not let go, and the noise made by the auto made it impossible for those in the car to hear his barks, which he must have given. And so they rode on, paying no attention, but leaving Dix far behind, until Sue discovered the loss of her Teddy bear. "Oh, you are a dear good dog, and I love you!" cried Sue, hugging the Teddy bear with one arm and Dix with the other. And the dog was plainly overjoyed at being with his friends again. I suppose the Teddy bear was glad too, but of course she could not even wag her little stub of a tail to show it. However, Sue could make the pet's eyes gleam, which she did again and again. Nor was the Teddy bear much damaged by being dragged in the dirt, for the roads were not muddy, and Dix had held her up out of the dust as much as he could. "Oh, but I'm glad to get my darling Sallie Malinda back!" cried Sue. "Dix is a good dog," put in Bunny. "He can ride in the auto now, can't he, Daddy? He must be tired." "Yes, get him and Splash both in," said Mr. Brown. "I think it is going to rain, and I want to get to the next town where we will stay overnight." "In a hotel?" asked Bunny. "No; in our auto, of course." The dogs were called in, and Dix seemed glad to rest. Then Daddy Brown turned the big car around and once more they were on their way. It began to rain before they reached the town of Welldon, on the edge of which they were to stop for the night. But the rain did not matter to those in the big moving van, which was like a little house. They had their supper inside, sat reading or playing games by the electric light, and listened to the rain on the roof, for it came down more and more heavily. "Isn't it a nice place?" said Bunny to Sue, as they went to bed. "The bestest ever!" she cried. It was about the middle of the night that Bunny was awakened by feeling a queer bumping, sliding motion. "Why," he cried, sitting up in his bunk, "we must be traveling on in the dark! Daddy! Momsie!" he cried. "What are we moving for, when it's dark?" "What's that?" cried Mr. Brown suddenly awakening. "The automobile is running away!" cried Bunny, and outside they could hear a strange roaring sound amid the patter of the rain. CHAPTER XI IN THE FLOOD For a moment all was confusion inside the big automobile. Mr. and Mrs. Brown got up and dressed hastily. Bunny and Sue thought little of doing that until Sue, feeling cold around her bare legs, called to her brother: "Wrap yourself up in a blanket, Bunny, like an Indian." "What's going on?" yelled Uncle Tad, from his bunk. "That's what we're trying to find out," said Mr. Brown. "Seems to me we're afloat," added Uncle Tad. "We certainly are at sea." "It does feel so," agreed Daddy Brown, for the automobile was bumping along the roadway, and the motor was not running, either. Something was either pushing or pulling it. Just then came the howls and whines of the two dogs, Dix and Splash. They had been left out on the front seat of the car, with big curtains hung in front of them so no rain could splatter on them. "Oh, something's the matter with them!" cried Bunny Brown, and in a few minutes he had opened the window back of the seat and let the frantic dogs leap into the auto. They barked joyfully now, and frisked about Bunny and Sue. With the opening of the window, however, came in a gust of wind and rain that made Mrs. Brown call: "Children you'll catch dreadful colds! Get right to bed this instant." "Oh, Mother, we want to stay up and see what's going to happen," said Bunny. "Maybe the automobile might tip over." "And if we were in bed we'd be all upside down and tangled in the clothes," added Sue. "Please let us stay up! We'll wrap in blankets like Indians." "Better let them get dressed," said Mr. Brown in a low voice to his wife. "There's no telling what has happened." "What do you think?" and her voice was anxious. "Well, it feels as if we were in a stream of some sort, partly afloat. Let the children get dressed," answered her husband. Bunny Brown and his sister heard and hastened to their curtained-off bunks. Meanwhile Uncle Tad had closed the window near the front seat and that kept out the wind and rain. And it was raining and blowing hard. Those in the cosy car could hear the drops dash against the panes, while the wind howled around the corners of the machine. The automobile itself was bumping along as if, indeed, it was floating down some stream, or had gone to sea like one of Mr. Brown's boats. The dogs had ceased their whining now. "I guess they were scared, out there all alone," said Bunny, when he was nearly dressed. "I'm glad they're in here with us now." "So am I," said Sue, as she came out into the sitting room, where Mother Brown had turned on the electric lights. It was a bit cool in the auto, for the storm had taken all the heat from the air, but there was danger in lighting one of the stoves. Though he did not let the children know, Mr. Brown thought there might be a risk of fire if the gasolene stove were lighted, because the big car might overturn. "Now to see what it's all about," said Mr. Brown, when he and Uncle Tad were fully dressed. "We'll find out if we are adrift on the Atlantic or Pacific ocean, and how to get to shore." He was putting on his rubber boots and raincoat, and Uncle Tad was doing the same thing. Then Mr. Brown got a lantern and lighted it, for he was going to open the back door of the car to look outside, to see where the flood was taking them. For he was sure now, by the motion of the automobile, that the heavy rain had turned a small stream, near which they had stopped for the night, into a small-sized river, and that had risen high enough, or had come down with force enough, to sweep the big auto-van ahead with it. But no sooner had Mr. Brown and Uncle Tad opened the back door of the automobile, that a gust of wind blew out the lantern, for there was a hole in the glass enclosing the flame and the wind puffed right through the lantern. "Well, I can't very well see in the dark," said Mr. Brown, as he came in to light the lantern once more. "It's a very strong wind." Again he opened the door, but in a second the lantern was blown out once more. Only the electric lights, kept aglow in the car by the storage battery, remained gleaming. "I ought to have one of those pocket flash lights," said Mr. Brown. "I meant to get a strong one, but I forgot it." "I have one, Daddy," said Bunny. "Where? Give it to me!" called his father quickly. "We must do something at once." "I don't know where it is," Bunny had to confess. "I was playing with it the other day, but I must have left it somewhere----" "Never mind, I'll try the lantern again," said Mr. Brown. "It's sure to blow out," said Uncle Tad. "Perhaps we can paste something over the hole," suggested Mrs. Brown. "Oh, Daddy," cried Sue, "take my Teddy bear! Her eyes will give you almost as much light as Bunny's flashlight. Maybe more, 'cause she has _two_ eyes. She won't mind the rain, for I can put on her water-proof cloak." "Hum! That isn't such a bad idea," said Mr. Brown. "We'll try it. Bring out your Sallie Malinda Teddy bear, Sue. Her eyes will certainly need to shine brightly to-night, for it's very dark. It's a good thing you have her along." "I'll find my flashlight to-morrow," promised Bunny. "I'll get one myself then," said his father. "No telling when we might need it." All this while the big automobile was slowly bumping and moving along. Uncle Tad and Mr. Brown took Sue's Teddy bear. By pressing on a button in the toy's back the eyes shone brightly, two electric lights being behind them. "Does Sallie Malinda give a good light, Daddy?" asked Sue, as her father got ready to open the door again. "Yes, little girl. It will be all right, and the wind can't blow out Sallie's eyes, no matter how hard it puffs." With the Teddy bear as a lantern Mr. Brown again went out. This time the wind did not matter, though it seemed to be blowing harder than ever. Uncle Tad followed Mr. Brown out on the rear steps of the car. They shut the door behind them to keep out the rain. "Why, it's a regular flood!" cried Uncle Tad, as the Teddy bear's eyes flashed on swirling and muddy water. "That's what it is," said Daddy Brown. "Say, we've got to do something!" he cried to his uncle. "And we've got to do it soon. We'll have to anchor--tie the auto to a tree or something. This flood may carry us down to the big river just below!" CHAPTER XII AT THE FIRE Holding the Teddy bear so the light from its eyes shone all about, the two men stood on the back steps of the automobile and looked around them. All about was swiftly running water. The evening before, in coming to a stop for the night, Mr. Brown had noticed, not far away from their camping place, a small stream. Behind it were some high hills or small mountains, but, though the storm was a hard one, no one thought the little brook would turn into such a river. "But that's what it's done," said Uncle Tad. "It's risen so high that it's covered the side of the road near where we were, and it's floated us off." "Yes. I fear we'll soon be flooded inside." Bunny, listening at the outer door of the big car, heard above the noise of the flood and the rain, his father say this. For a moment he was frightened, then he happened to think: "Well, I've got rubber boots, and if the water comes in here I can wade around and get things. But I guess I won't tell Sue and Momsie about it. They might be scared." Bunny Brown was a brave little chap when it came to something like this. In fact he had shown his bravery more than once, as those of you who have read the other books about him and his sister well know. Out on the steps of the automobile, with the glaring eyes of Sue's Teddy bear to let them see what was going on, Mr. Brown and Uncle Tad again looked about. They could see the rain coming down hard, and on both sides of them was what seemed to be a big river of water. Many little brooks in the mountains, joining together, had made such a big stream that it had shoved along the heavy auto. "It can't shove us very far, I think," said Mr. Brown. "We are too heavy for that. But it might tip us over, this water might, or send us into a ditch out of which we would have a hard time to climb. I'd like to anchor fast, if I could." "Why don't you tie fast to a tree?" asked Uncle Tad. "We have the heavy towing rope with us." "I guess that's a good idea," said Mr. Brown. "We are being swept along the road and there are plenty of trees on either side." Bunny Brown was not listening at the door any longer. His mother had called him and Sue to the dining-room table and given them some bread and milk to eat. She thought this would take their attention off the trouble they were in. For that there was trouble Mrs. Brown was sure. Otherwise her husband and Uncle Tad would not have stayed so long outside looking about in the wind and the rain. "Yes," said Mr. Brown, after once more looking about with the aid of the lights from the eyes of Sue's Teddy bear. "We had best try to fasten the auto to some tree. Then we'll be held fast, for I do not believe the flood will reach much higher. I have heard of high water in this part of the country, but it never gets much higher than this, if I remember rightly." "I'll go in for the rope," said Uncle Tad, "and we'll try to make fast to some tree. We'll be lucky if we can do it before we run into something," and he opened the door. "Oh, what is the matter?" "What has happened?" "Tell us all about it!" This is what Mrs. Brown, Bunny and Sue said as Uncle Tad, dripping wet, came back into the auto. Dix and Splash thumped their tails on the floor, as though also asking what the matter was. "Oh, it isn't much," said Uncle Tad. "The brook rose into a river in the night, and tried to carry us away. But we are going to anchor to a tree until morning." Bunny and Sue could easily understand what this meant, and they were not frightened, even though the automobile swayed about from side to side and bumped as a boat does when it goes over the bottom in shallow water. Uncle Tad got the towrope out from a box, or locker, as Mr. Brown called it. The rope was a strong one, as it was intended to be used in case the big automobile went into a ditch, in which event it could be pulled out. With the rope Uncle Tad went out on the back steps again. "We're still moving," said Mr. Brown. "Are we any nearer the trees, so it will be easier to catch hold of one of them with a loop of the rope?" asked Uncle Tad. "No, we're farther off from the trees," said Bunny's father and, if the little boy had been listening, he would have felt worried about this. But Mr. Brown was a good sailor, and if he knew how to anchor, or make fast, a boat in a big ocean, he might be supposed to know how to anchor, or stop, an automobile in a flood on the road. Mr. Brown took the rope, while Uncle Tad held the Teddy bear and flashed her eyes about on the flood that was moving the car along. Bunny's father was trying to catch sight of a tree around a limb of which he could cast the rope and so bring the drifting automobile to a stop. It was not moving quite so fast now, as the stream was not quite so swift. In fact if the flooded stream had not been so swift it never could have carried the heavy auto along at all. "I suppose," said Mr. Brown, "I could start the motor and make the car go itself. But I would not know where to steer her." "No, it is better to make her fast, I think," said Uncle Tad. Just then they passed under a tree. Mr. Brown tried to catch the rope to it, but the auto rolled past too quickly. "Better luck next time," he said. Presently they were swept under another tree, and this time, as Mr. Brown cast the rope, it whirled about a big limb and was held fast. The other end had been tied to the automobile near the back door and now the big car came to a slow stop. "If she only holds we'll be all right," said Mr. Brown, his hand still on the rope. The automobile moved a little bit farther, as the rope stretched, and then it stopped altogether, and Mr. Brown tied tighter the end of the rope that was about the tree. "Anchored at last!" cried Uncle Tad, as he got ready to go inside the car. "Now let it rain and flood as much as it likes." "Are we all right?" asked Bunny as his father and his Uncle Tad came in. "We won't go out to sea, will we?" Sue questioned. "No indeed, to your question, Sue," answered her father. "And as to yours, Bunny, we are anchored safe and sound I hope. Now we can go back to bed and sleep." But first Bunny and Sue had to ask many questions, and Sue had to take off her Teddy bear's water-proof cloak, in spite of which the toy was wet. "But it won't hurt her batteries inside or her eyes," said the little girl. "And as for her fur, that will soon dry," added Mother Brown. "She gave us good light," said Father Brown. "Now, off to bed with you." No one slept very much the rest of the night except the children and the dogs. Dix and Splash did not think of worrying, and as for Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue, they thought that whatever Daddy Brown and Uncle Tad did was just right anyhow. So they had no fear. Mrs. Brown, her husband, and Uncle Tad did not sleep very soundly, however. The rain still came down in torrents and the wind blew hard. The rush of the flood beneath the auto could still be heard. But it came no higher. The rope held to the tree, the big car did not drag, and when morning came the travelers found themselves some distance from the place where they had been the evening before. They were about a mile down the road, and all about them, over the road and the adjacent fields, was a lake of water. But it was not raining so hard now. The storm seemed to be about over. The water was going down, Mr. Brown said, and when Bunny, at the breakfast table, asked how his father knew, Mr. Brown pointed to a fence not far from the tree to which they were tied. "Do you see the muddy marks and the bits of leaves and grass caught on the fence?" asked Mr. Brown. "I see," said Bunny. "Well, that shows how high the water got," explained his father. "You see the top of the water is below that now, which shows that the flood is going down. And I am glad enough of it." "So am I," said Mrs. Brown. "We've had water enough for once." The storm had been such a heavy one that it could not last long, and by noon the sun was out. But it would take some time for the flood to go down and the roads to dry up. "We'll probably stay here three days," said Mr. Brown. "It looks like a nice place, and we have plenty to eat. We'll stay and let things dry out. Traveling on a muddy, slippery road, with a heavy automobile like this, is not safe. We'll wait a while." Anything suited Bunny and Sue as long as they were seeing or having something new. And when the rain stopped their mother let them put on their rubber boots and wade where the water was not too deep. After wading about awhile, Bunny thought of something to do. "Let's make a raft!" he said to Sue. "Oh, that will be fun!" she cried. Sue knew what a raft was from living near the seashore. Many times she and her brother had made them, and they had often heard stories of sailors coming ashore from wrecks on rafts. Rafts are flat boards, or planks, nailed or tied together, and they will float on top of the water and carry a number of people, though they are so low that the water washes over them and wets one's feet. This last part Bunny and Sue did not mind, for they had on rubber boots. They quickly made a raft by collecting some boards and logs that had come down with the flood, and had caught in the fence corner near which their auto was anchored. Uncle Tad helped them nail the boards together, and then Bunny and Sue floated the raft over into a little rain-water lake in the middle of a field and began shoving it about with long poles. They had ridden up and down one side of the little lake, stopping at places on the "shore," to which they gave the names of sea-coast towns near their home. "Now we'll go across to the other side," said Sue. But when she and Bunny had the raft about in the middle of the "lake," it stuck fast, because the water was not deep enough just there. "Push!" cried Bunny. "Push hard, Sue!" Sue pushed so hard that, all of a sudden, her pole broke, and she fell off the raft into the water. "Oh dear!" she cried. "Oh dear!" For a moment Bunny did not know what to do. Then he saw that the water was not more than up to Sue's knees and he knew she would not drown. But, as she had fallen in backwards, she was wet from top to toe. Sue began to cry as she got up, choking and gasping, for she had swallowed a little water. "Don't cry!" begged Bunny. "Let's pretend you're a swimmer on the beach and went out too far." "Wha-what good would that do, me pre-pre-tendin' that?" half-sobbed Sue. "Well, then I'll pretend I'm a life-guard, and I'll swim out and pull you to shore," said Bunny. By this time Sue had managed to stand up firmly on her feet, though she was very wet. "There's no use in you're pretending you're a life-guard and getting all wet like me, when I can just as well get on the raft myself," said Sue practically. "Oh, I want to be a life-guard," said Bunny. "Here I come!" and with that he jumped off the raft feet first, landing near Sue with a splash. "Oh, now you've got _yourself_ all wet, for it went over your boots," said the little girl. "Mother will scold." "Well, now I can take half the scolding, for I'm half as wet as you," said Bunny. "Anyhow she won't scold much. For you couldn't help falling in, Sue, and she'll be glad I pretended to be a life-guard to help you out." With that he put Sue on the raft again. By this time the raft had floated free of the little hill of mud in the meadow lake where it had gone aground, and Bunny and Sue poled it toward the road. When their mother saw how wet they were she did not scold them. That is, not much. For, after all, part of it could not be helped. Dix and Splash enjoyed the flood, for they both liked to be in the water. They swam about, playing their sort of "tag" and racing after sticks which Bunny and Sue threw for them. A few days after this, when the flood had all gone down, and having waited for the roads to dry, Mr. Brown once more set off with his family in the big machine. For two or three days they traveled along. Once, when they stopped for their noon-day lunch under a big oak tree, Uncle Tad built a small fire of twigs and Bunny and his sister roasted marshmallows at the blaze. At a number of places Mr. Brown asked about Fred Ward, the missing boy, but no trace of him could be found, nor was anything more heard of the traveling medicine show with the colored banjo player. It was one evening at dusk, when the automobile had come to a stop for the night, and the family were all sitting out under the tree near the road, that Uncle Tad, looking down the highway, said: "Isn't that a fire over there?" He pointed toward a neighboring farmhouse. "Do you mean a campfire or a bonfire?" asked Bunny. "Neither one. I mean a real fire," said Uncle Tad. "It is a fire!" suddenly cried Mr. Brown. "A shed near that barn is blazing. See the men running to put it out!" "We'd better go to help," said Uncle Tad. "Let us come, too!" begged Bunny and Sue. CHAPTER XIII DIX AND THE CAT Uncle Tad and Mr. Brown did not stop to answer the children's plea to be allowed to go to the fire. On the men rushed, and Bunny and Sue turned to their mother. "Please mayn't we go?" they begged. "It isn't far, and it's early yet. Besides, we know enough to keep away from fires." "Well----" said Mrs. Brown slowly. Then she stopped as she saw Uncle Tad running back, while Mr. Brown kept on toward the blaze in a shed near some farmer's barn. "What's the matter, Uncle Tad?" asked Bunny. "Aren't you going?" "Yes. But I came back to get the fire extinguishers that we carry on the auto. This blaze hasn't much of a start yet, and we may be able to put it out with our extinguishers." Uncle Tad darted into the automobile. Sue and Bunny remembered about the extinguishers now. They were red things, like fire crackers, and hung near the seat behind the steering wheel. Once, to show Bunny and Sue how easily the extinguishers put out a fire, Mr. Brown had started one in the back yard. Then, from the red thing, he had squirted a liquid and the fire sizzled and went out. "Oh, we want to see daddy put out the fire!" cried Bunny. "The children are teasing to go," said Mrs. Brown, as Uncle Tad came out again with an extinguisher under each arm. "Do you suppose it would do them any harm?" "Not at all!" cried Uncle Tad. "But you come with them. I don't believe the fire will be a very big one, but a lot of the country people are running to it. Bring the children along. Daddy Brown won't care." "Whoop!" cried Bunny. "That's great!" "I wouldn't whoop," observed Sue, shaking her finger at her brother. "Why not?" he asked. "Because this isn't a bonfire. Somebody's shed is burning up; and though it looks nice it isn't any fun for them. We ought to be sorry." "Well I am," said Bunny. "I'm sorry for them, but I'm glad for myself that I'm going to see the fire. Is that all right, Momsie?" "I guess so," answered Mrs. Brown, and then she hurried on to the fire with the children, while Uncle Tad raced ahead with the red fire-cracker extinguishers. Over the fields, from other farmhouses, people came running. Men and women, and boys and girls. They, also, wanted to see the fire. As Bunny and Sue, with their mother, hurried on they saw that the blaze was in a low shed, and from this shed came wild squeals. "They sound like pigs!" said Bunny. "I guess it is the pig-pen on fire," replied Mother Brown. Bunny and his sister, with their mother, were at the fire almost as soon as Daddy Brown and Uncle Tad. Then they saw for sure that what was blazing was a big pig-pen built on the side of a barn. The barn had not yet caught fire. "Make a bucket brigade!" called one of the farmers who had run to the fire. "We must dip water from the brook, pass it along in pails, and throw it on the fire." "Wait a minute!" cried Mr. Brown. "I have a better way than that, and surer, I think. First some of you rip out a side of the pen, so the pigs can get loose, and then we'll put out the fire for you." "That's the idea! He's got fire extinguishers!" cried the farmer whose pen was ablaze. "Rip off some of the boards and let those pigs out. Otherwise they'll be roasted before their time." "Set to work!" yelled a neighbor. With rakes, hoes and axes the men soon tore down a side of the pen farthest away from the fire. Out ran the pigs squealing as loudly as they could. Dix, Splash and some other dogs ran among them, thinking it was all a game, I suppose. Mr. Brown, with one extinguisher, and Uncle Tad, with another, squirted on the blaze the white streams, made of something that puts fire out better even than water. Over the blaze Uncle Tad and Mr. Brown squirted the stuff until finally the fire was out. "Well, I'm certainly obliged to you, neighbor," said the farmer who owned the pigs. "My name's Blakeson. I don't believe I know you, though. Live around here?" "No, we are making a tour in a big automobile," and Mr. Brown pointed to it. "We saw your blaze and came to it." "Well, I'm certainly thankful to you, and for those contraptions there," and he pointed to the fire extinguishers. "That's better than dipping water from the brook." "Yes, I carry them in case the gasolene on my auto should get on fire," said Mr. Brown. "But they'll put out any small blaze." The pig-pen had only partly burned, and the barn, to the side of which it was built, was only scorched. Some one must have dropped a match in the straw of the pig-pen to start the blaze, it was said. "Well, we'll nail a few boards back on the pen, and it will do to keep the pigs in until morning," said Mr. Blakeson, the farmer. "That is if we can get 'em collected again." "My dogs will help," said Mr. Brown. "Here, Dix! Splash!" he called. "Drive the pigs up here!" The two dogs, both of which were used to driving cows, soon collected the pigs, even in the dark, and once more they were in their pen, sniffing about for something to eat, now that the fire was out. The farmer whose barn had been saved by the children's father was much interested in the big auto, and, a little later in the evening, went down to look at it, as did some of his neighbors. "Well, that's a fine way of traveling about," said Mr. Blakeson, and his friends agreed with him. The next morning, while Bunny, Sue and the others were at breakfast, talking about the fire of the night before, a number of children came down the road to see the big machine. All the dirt from the flood had been washed off, and as it had been newly painted before this tour started, the "Ark," as the Browns sometimes called their big car, looked very nice indeed. The country children had seldom, if ever, seen so big an automobile as this, nor one in which a family could live as they traveled. There were many "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" as they walked about it. "Let's ask 'em in and show 'em our bunks," proposed Bunny, and his mother said he might. The children were even more surprised at the inside of the "Ark" than at the outside. "Oh, wouldn't I love to live in this!" sighed a little girl with red hair. "It's just like Mother Goose or a fairy story." "I love fairy stories," said Sue. Just before the Browns were ready to set off once more in their automobile, a hired hand from the Blakeson farm came down with a basket of fresh eggs, some apples and other fruit which the farmer gave Daddy Brown and Uncle Tad for helping to put out the fire. "Oh, he needn't have done that," said Mrs. Brown. "But I do love fresh eggs, so I'll keep them. Please thank Mr. Blakeson for me." The man said he would, and then, as he went back to the farm, the big auto started off on the tour again. There were yet many miles to go, and many more adventures were in store for Bunny Brown and his sister Sue. "We've got to find that missing Fred Ward," said Bunny. "It's funny where he went, isn't it?" "Well, this country is a big place, especially if a person wants to hide," said Mr. Brown. "Still we may find some trace of Fred in Portland when we get there. But that will not be for some weeks, as we are traveling slowly." The Browns and Uncle Tad found the auto tour so pleasant that it was decided to make the trip even longer than at first planned, which would put off the time when they would reach Portland. For two more days they traveled on, stopping each night near some village or small city. Nothing happened except that once they nearly ran into a hay wagon that did not get out of the way in time. "But it wouldn't hurt any more to hit a hay wagon than it would be to fall into a feather bed," said Bunny. It was just about supper time. Bunny and Sue were playing out in front of the automobile, while Mrs. Brown was getting supper. Sue suddenly called: "Oh, look at Dix! He's chasing a cat!" Something big and gray flashed over the ground. Dix ran for it, and his teeth seemed to close on one of the hind legs of the animal. Then the gray animal ran up a tree, and Dix raced about at the foot, barking and whining, while Splash left the place where he was rolling on the grass, to come to see what the matter was. CHAPTER XIV THE MEDICINE SHOW Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue ran toward the tree up which Dix had chased the gray creature. The dog was greatly excited, and at once Splash joined in, too. Though it is very likely Splash did not in the least know what he was barking at. Dogs are like that, you know. When one hears another bark it will join in, and then will come a third and maybe a fourth until every dog in the block is barking, and only the first one may know why, and perhaps even he does not. "Oh, I hope he didn't hurt that pussy," said Sue. "Maybe it wasn't a pussy," suggested Bunny. "What makes you say that?" demanded Sue. "Didn't you see something gray run across the grass, and didn't Dix run after it?" "Yes. And the gray thing ran up a tree. But maybe it wasn't a kittie," said Bunny, shaking his head to show he did not agree with his sister. "Let's go and see what it is," said she, and together the two hurried faster than ever toward the tree at the bottom of which Dix and Splash were having a great barking time. "Where are you going?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Just over to this tree," answered Bunny, pointing to it. "Well, don't go any farther than that," warned his mother. "No, we're just going to see what it was Dix chased up into it," went on Sue. "I said it was a cat but Bunny says----" "I don't say what it is yet!" interrupted her brother. "I want to see it first." They reached the tree, and the two dogs were so interested in looking up and barking at something in it that they paid little attention to the children. Dix actually stepped on Sue's feet and nearly made her fall down, while Splash tried to jump over Bunny's head. But the dog did not quite do it, and fell on Bunny instead, knocking him down. "Oh, Bunny, are you hurt?" cried Sue. "No, I guess not--much," answered Bunny slowly. "But I'm all--mussed up!" and he looked at Splash, who was again rushing toward the boy, not so much with the idea of playing with him as of getting nearer to the tree so he could bark at the gray animal. "Down, Splash! Down!" cried Bunny sharply, and the dogs at once stopped barking. They had learned to mind the little boy. Both dogs looked up into the tree and whined. It was just the way dogs do who are in the habit of chasing cats, and who make this noise, perhaps to show how sorry they are that they cannot get at the poor pussies to roll them over in the grass. But Dix and Splash were not what one could call cat-chasing dogs. True, they had done it when they were small dogs, just over being puppies, but, of late years, Splash had given up that fun, and what little the children had seen of Dix they had not noticed him chasing cats. "That's what makes me think it isn't a cat they've got up that tree now," said Bunny, speaking of cat-chasing to his sister. "But it _looked_ like a cat," said she. The dogs were quieter now, though they both kept on peering up into the tree and whining softly, though they did not jump about so hard and try to leap over Bunny and Sue. "Oh, I see it!" suddenly exclaimed Sue. "See what?" asked Bunny. "The cat--the gray thing--whatever it was ran up the tree," and Sue pointed her finger to the crotch where one of the lowest big branches joined the trunk. "There it is!" went on the little girl. "See it, Bunny? And it is gray. But it doesn't really _look_ like a cat." Bunny came and stood beside Sue. He could see the gray animal now, and as it moved just then, the dogs set up another wild barking. "Be still!" ordered Bunny. Then, as the dog's cries were less noisy he said: "Why, Sue, I know what that is. It's a----" And just then the gray animal fell out of the tree, landing on a pile of leaves at the very feet of the children. With barks and howls the two dogs made a dive for it. I do not really believe they meant to bite it--they just wanted to see what it was. But Bunny was too quick for them. With a sudden motion he caught up the gray animal and held it close to him. At the same time he shouted: "Down, Splash! Down, Dix! Don't dare try to get this poor little squirrel. One of you has hurt its leg anyhow--that's why it fell out of the tree." "Oh, Bunny! Is it really and truly a squirrel?" asked Sue, excitedly. "That's what it is," said her brother. "It's a big gray squirrel. It does look something like a cat, but its tail is bigger than a cat's except when a cat is being chased by a dog." "I saw the big tail," explained Sue, "and that's why I thought maybe it was a cat. A cat's tail always swells up like a long balloon whenever it sees a dog. But is the squirrel hurt, Bunny?" "I guess Dix must have bit it a little on one leg," said the boy, as he looked at the gray animal which did not try to get away or bite. "That's why it couldn't go up any higher in the tree or hold fast any longer. Its leg is hurt. I'm going to take it to Uncle Tad. He knows how to fix hurt animals." Bunny could feel the heart of the frightened squirrel beating very hard, and the little animal seemed to shrink closer to the boy, as though it knew it would be taken care of. Dix and Splash bounded about, now and then leaping up against Bunny as though they wanted to get the squirrel away from him. But Bunny stood firm, and cried "Down, sir!" in such sharp tones that the dogs knew they must mind. They gave up the hope of getting the squirrel (that is, if they knew it was such an animal) and ran off to have a game of "tag" together. "Dix knew it wasn't a cat as soon as he saw it," explained Bunny to Sue as they walked back toward the big auto, Bunny carrying the injured squirrel, one of whose legs seemed broken. "Dix knew it was a wild animal," went on the little boy, "and that's why he chased it." "I'm glad he didn't get it," murmured Sue, softly. "So am I," replied her brother. "We'll get Uncle Tad to fix the sore leg, and then we'll make a cage and keep the squirrel. Some day we may get up another circus, and we could have it do tricks." "Don't you think the squirrel would rather be in the woods?" asked Sue, as she looked at the gray creature. "Well, maybe yes," agreed Bunny. "After we have it in the circus a while we'll let it go. 'Member how we played circus, Sue?" "I guess I do! We had lots of fun, didn't we?" "We did!" From across the fields came a call: "Come to supper, children!" "We're coming, Momsie!" shouted Bunny. "And we're bringing a squirrel to supper too!" added Sue, who always liked to be counted in on everything. "A squirrel!" exclaimed Uncle Tad when he saw the gray creature that had fallen out of the tree. "Where did you get it?" The children told what had happened, and Uncle Tad looked at the squirrel's leg. "Can you fix it, or make him a new wooden leg?" asked Sue. Uncle Tad looked the squirrel over carefully. The woodland animal did not seem to mind being handled. It seemed to know it was in the hands of friends, and safe from the barking dogs. And though wild squirrels quickly bite one who manages to catch them alive in the woods, this one did not offer to nip the hands of the children or of Uncle Tad. "Yes," said Uncle Tad after a bit, "I think I can mend this squirrel's leg. It doesn't seem to be broken, only strained and bruised. I guess Dix didn't bite it very hard. I'll make some splints, or little sticks, to put on, so the squirrel can't move his leg, and I'll bandage it. Then it will get well quicker." A little box, filled with straw and soft rags, was made as a home for the squirrel after Uncle Tad had bound up its leg. Then Bunny and Sue finally went to supper, after having been called several times. And even then they could not leave the little squirrel, but ran back every now and then to look at it, as it curled up on the soft bed. Over the box was put a wire cover so the squirrel could not get out and so Dix or Splash could not get at it. "What are we going to give the squirrel to eat?" asked Bunny, when he had finished his supper. "He's got to have something to eat." "And he's got to have a name," added Sue. "We can't call him just 'squirrel' for we may get another." "Call him Fluffy," suggested Mother Brown. "His tail is so soft and fluffs out so beautifully." "Fluffy is a good name," decided Bunny, and Sue said the same thing. "But what about giving him something to eat?" asked Bunny. "Bread soaked in milk will do for to-night," said Uncle Tad. "Afterward we'll try to find him some nuts, though it's a little early. Still he'll eat seeds and grain." Bunny and Sue took a last look at Fluffy, the squirrel, before they went to their bunks that night. Dix and Splash were called in and shown the squirrel in his little nest. Then Mr. Brown told both dogs sharply and solemnly that they must not bother the gray, woodland creature. Dix and Splash understood, I think, for they were smart dogs. Both children were up early the next morning to see their new pet, and they fed Fluffy some dried crackers. At first the squirrel was a bit timid, but it soon poked its sharp nose and mouth out of a little opening on the side of the wire netting over the box and ate from the hands of Bunny and Sue. "Don't let him bite you," said Mother Brown, as she started to get breakfast. "Oh, Fluffy won't bite," said Bunny. "He's as tame as our cat used to be." Once more the automobile traveled on. It rained part of the day but the shower was not a hard one, though Bunny and Sue had to stay in the big car when noon came, and dinner could not be served out-of-doors. But the skies cleared before night, and when the auto was stopped the children could run about with their rubbers on. They were near a small town, and Mrs. Brown promised to take the children in after the meal to see if they could buy some grain or seeds for Fluffy. The supper was an early one, and, leaving Uncle Tad at the "Ark" with the two dogs and the squirrel, Mr. and Mrs. Brown, with the two children walked into town. As they reached the middle of the village, near a public square, they heard the sound of music and saw a crowd of people around a wagon lighted by a gasolene torch, such as is used in a circus at night. "Oh, it's a medicine show!" cried Mrs. Brown, as she saw a big, long-haired man on the back platform of a wagon, holding up a bottle about which he was talking to the people. "Yes, and there's a banjo player with him," said Bunny. "Look, Mother! It's a colored boy playing a banjo! Maybe it's Fred Ward!" CHAPTER XV WAS IT FRED? "What's this? What's this you're talking about?" suddenly asked Mr. Brown, as he heard what Bunny said. Or rather, Bunny's father did not hear exactly, for he had been thinking about something else. But he had caught the name Fred Ward. "Bunny thinks that colored banjo player with that medicine show may be Fred Ward," said Mrs. Brown. "Do you think it would be of any use to inquire, Daddy?" "Why, that _is_ a medicine show, isn't it!" exclaimed Mr. Brown, as though he saw it for the first time. "And it's just like the one we heard about that had a boy banjo player with it." "There's a boy banjo player now," said Bunny. "He's going to play, Daddy, too! Do you think it could be Fred?" The man who was selling the bottles of medicine, after telling the people how much good it would do them, had stopped to let the boy traveling with him play the banjo. There are, or there used to be, many such traveling medicine shows. Sometimes there would be a whole troop of Indians, some real and some make-believe, that would be engaged by the seller of the medicine. He would have the Indians do some of their queer dances and then, when a crowd had collected, he would sell some medicine--maybe some he said the Indians made themselves. Another medicine seller would go about with a gaily painted wagon, carrying a cornet player, a singer or a banjoist to attract a crowd. And when the men and women were gathered about the end of the wagon, which had a broad platform on the end and a flaring gasolene torch at night, the man would tell about his medicine and sell all he could. This traveling medicine show which Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue saw was like those. And, just as the Browns reached the place in the village square where the torch on the wagon was burning, the man had finished selling a large number of bottles of medicine. It was about time he amused the crowd again, he thought. So he called in a loud voice: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, while I am getting out of my storeroom some more bottles of my wonderful medicine that will cure all your pains and aches, I will have my friend here, Professor Rombodno Prosondo entertain you on his magical banjo. Professor Rombodno Prosondo, I might say, is the most wonderful player on the banjo you have ever heard. He has traveled all over the world and played in every country. Professor, you will now oblige!" Of course what the medicine man said about the banjo player was only a joke, and the people knew that. He was not a professor at all. But he was a good banjo player and a singer, and Bunny and Sue were delighted with the music. The songs, too, were funny. "He sings like a real colored boy," said Sue. "Maybe he is," her father observed. "Yes, and maybe he's only blacked up, like most of them," suggested Mrs. Brown. "Can you tell if he looks anything like Fred Ward, Daddy?" "No, I can't be sure that he does," said Mr. Brown. "I never saw much of the missing boy, you know; and I certainly would not know him if he were blackened like a negro. This one, if he is not really colored, is well made-up. He would fool almost any one." "Is there any way we could find out?" asked Mrs. Brown. "We ought to do all we can to find Fred for his parents." "I'll see what I can do after the exhibition is over," promised Mr. Brown. "I'll ask the proprietor of the medicine wagon if I can get a chance. But I'll have to do it when the banjo player can't hear, for in case he should be Fred--which I hardly think can be true--but if it should be he, and he heard me asking, he'd run away again." "Yes, I suppose he would," said Mrs. Brown with a sigh. "Oh, how foolish boys are sometimes. They don't know what is good for them," and she looked at Bunny, as if wondering if the time would ever come when he would not be a "mother's boy." She hoped not. "Let's get up as close as we can," said Bunny. "Maybe if it's Fred we can tell, no matter if he is blacked up like a minstrel." "He doesn't look at all like Fred to me," said Sue. "He looks so funny with his big red lips and his white collar." "That's the way they all dress," said Bunny. "Come on, here's a place we can squeeze through and see better." Bunny wiggled his way up among the people. His sister followed him, and Mr. and Mrs. Brown, watching the children, knew where to find them when they wanted to go away. "Now take a good look," whispered Sue to Bunny, as they got very near the platform on which the boy sat. She had made her whisper rather loud, and it came at just the time when the banjoist stopped playing, so that he and several persons heard the little girl. "What's the matter?" asked one man, smiling down at Sue. "Didn't you ever see a minstrel before?" "Yes, I did," said Sue. "But maybe not this one." "Oh, they're all alike," said the man, but Sue paid no more attention to him, for she was nudging Bunny and trying to get him to look at the colored boy. Bunny himself was greatly interested. He wanted to make sure whether or not the player were Fred. So he stared with all his might at the banjoist, who just then began another song. By this time the medicine man had come out on the platform of his wagon with more filled bottles to sell. He would begin as soon as the song was finished, for more people had gathered, attracted by the music. And then Bunny and Sue both noticed that the colored boy was looking straight at them. But he did not seem to know them. And surely, if it had been Fred Ward he would have known the Brown children, even though he had lived next door to them only a short time. People did not easily forget Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue, once they had met them. But this banjo player evidently did not know them; or, if he did, he was not going to let it be known. He finished his song with a twang of the banjo strings and then hurried inside the wagon, the sides of which were of wood, like a small moving van. Then the man began selling his medicine again, talking a great deal about it while he did so. Mrs. Brown turned to her husband and said: "I'm sure that was a white boy blacked up to look like a negro, and he does it very well, too. Even his voice is like a colored person's. But as he turned to go back into the wagon his sleeve slipped up and I saw that his arm was white." "Very likely he was made up as a colored boy then," said Mr. Brown. "His lips were too red for a real colored boy's." "Well, since we are sure of that let's ask the medicine man about him," went on Mrs. Brown. "All right, I'm willing," said Mr. Brown good-naturedly. "We'll wait until the show is over though." The medicine man kept on selling bottles. It was getting later now, and the crowd began to thin out. Seeing this the medicine man announced there would be no more music or sales that night, but that he would stop in this town on his next trip. The flaring lamp was put out, and the medicine man began to close up his wagon for the night. Mr. Brown stepped up to him. The real or pretended colored boy was not in sight. "I'd like to ask you a question," said Mr. Brown to the traveling medicine seller. "About my wonderful pain destroyer?" asked "Dr. Perry," as he called himself. "No. About that young banjo player you have with you." "Oh, you mean Professor Rombodno Prosondo?" "Yes," and Mr. Brown smiled. "I want to know if he is Fred Ward, who has run away from his home next door to us?" [Illustration: "NOW TAKE A GOOD LOOK," WHISPERED SUE TO BUNNY. _Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour._ _Page_ 153.] CHAPTER XVI IN THE DITCH For a few seconds the medicine man looked sharply at Mr. Brown. He did not appear to understand what the children's father had asked. Then, finally, Dr. Perry asked: "Is it a joke you are making?" "No, indeed. I'm serious," said Mr. Brown. "We are looking for a lost boy, or rather, a runaway boy, named Fred Ward. The Wards live next door to us, and when we started on this trip, which is not yet finished, the boy's parents said they would be glad if we would try to find him and send him----" "Tell us, please," broke in Bunny, unable to wait any longer for the question he wanted answered. "Tell us if your banjo player is really colored?" "Oh yes, he's really _colored_ all right," said the medicine man, "but not by Mother Nature." "What's that mean?" asked Sue. "That means, little girl," said Dr. Perry as he put away the unsold bottles of his medicine, "that my banjo player blackens his face and hands himself, and reddens his lips, to make him look like a negro." "Can you tell us who he really is?" "No, I am sorry to say I can not," said Dr. Perry, and he bowed respectfully to Mrs. Brown, who had asked the question. "But I'll let you ask him yourself. He usually goes in back there," and he nodded toward his wagon, "to wash the black off after the show each night. No doubt he is in there now scrubbing himself, for I must say he is a very clean person, is John Lane." "John Lane! Is that what he calls himself?" asked Mr. Brown. "He has since he has been with me, which, however, is only the last few days. I called him professor just for fun, as it sounds better with the public. But I'll let you ask him yourself. He must be through washing by now. It may be he is a runaway boy. It wouldn't be the first time I've had 'em join me. Sometimes they get sorry and run back home again, and sometimes they drift away and I don't see 'em again. But we'll soon find out if this is the boy you want." He opened a door leading off the back platform. It seemed to give admittance to the middle of the medicine van. "Here you, John! John Lane!" called Dr. Perry. "There are some folks out here who want to see you. They want to see how you look when you have the black off. You ought to be washed now, for it's almost time to go to the hotel for the night. Come on out." There was no answer to the medicine man's call. He stepped inside the wagon, called again, and then, lighting a lamp, which stood in a bracket, looked around inside the van. "John seems to have gone," the medicine man said. "I guess he finished washing off the black, and then slipped out the front way to go to the hotel. He did that once before, without waiting for me to count up my money and come along. You see I travel only by day, putting up the horse, that draws my van, at a hotel stable each night. "Then John, or whomever I have with me to make the music to draw a crowd, and I, go to the hotel to stay all night. In the morning, after breakfast, we start out again. Sometimes, in a big city I stay a week, selling in different places. "But that boy, whoever he is, has gone. I can see where he's been washing the black off, and, not wanting to wait when he saw I was talking to you folks, I guess he just slipped away. John is a bashful boy." "Do you know anything about him?" asked Mr. Brown. "Where did he come from, and where is he going? Did he give any account of himself?" "Not much, except that he came to me the other day just after my violin player left me. I had to have somebody musical to draw the crowd, and he surely can play the banjo. "So I hired him. He said his name was Lane and that he had to make his own way in the world. Said he wanted to be a player in a theater. "I told him my place was a sort of open-air theater and ought to suit him," said Dr. Perry with a smile, "and he said he thought he would like it. So I engaged him and he did very well. You are the first persons that have inquired about him." "We are not sure he _is_ the runaway Fred we are looking for," said Mr. Brown. "It is hard to tell with all that black he had on. But I should like to meet him." "Go to the hotel any time between now and morning," suggested the medicine man. "I guess the boy will be glad to talk to you." "I'll see him in the morning," said Bunny's father. "I'd like to get this boy to go home, if he is really Fred Ward. His mother and father miss him very much." "I'll do all I can for you," promised the medicine man. "Come to the hotel in the morning and I'll let you talk to him. I won't say anything in the meanwhile, because if he is really Fred, and has run off as you say, he won't want to meet you or go back with you. It's best to take him unawares." Mr. Brown agreed to this, and then, with his wife and Bunny and Sue, started for the "Ark." On the way they discussed what had happened. They saw the medicine man, as they turned down the curve in the road, driving his horse and van toward the hotel. "I'm sure it's Fred," said Sue. "So am I," added Bunny. "Won't it be _great_ if we find him so soon?" "It may not be the missing boy," said Mr. Brown. "But we'll know in the morning." Those in the "Ark" passed a quiet night, though they went to bed later than usual because of the excitement of the evening. Uncle Tad was interested in hearing the news about the blackened-up banjo player who might prove to be Fred Ward. "And how's Fluffy, our squirrel?" asked Sue. "Fast asleep, just as Dix and Splash are," answered Uncle Tad. Bunny and Sue were awake early the next morning, but Daddy Brown was ahead of them, and their mother said he had gone on to the hotel to see about the banjo boy. "May we go there after we have eaten?" asked Bunny. "We want to see Fred." "It might not be he," said Mrs. Brown. "You had better wait until your father comes back." At first Bunny and Sue fretted a bit, but finally they became interested in playing games under the big tree where the "Ark" had rested for the night, and before they knew it their father came back. "But he hasn't brought Fred!" cried Bunny. "Maybe the minstrel boy wasn't the one after all," suggested Mrs. Brown. "Well, I'm inclined to think he was," said her husband. "Did you see him?" eagerly asked Bunny. "No, he had run away. That's why I think it was Fred." Then Mr. Brown explained: "When I got to the hotel," he told Bunny, Sue and the others, "I saw Dr. Perry walking around rather nervously. I asked him about the boy, and he said that when he and his medicine van reached the hotel after closing the show last night, he found that his banjo player had packed his valise, taken his banjo, and gone off." "Where?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Nobody knows. He left no word. That's what makes me think it was Fred. He must have seen us in the crowd. And, as soon as he could wash the black off his face, he hurried to the hotel ahead of Dr. Perry, got his bag and ran away. Very likely he did not want to see us and hear us give him the message from his parents. His heart must still be hard against them. It is too bad, if that was Fred, for I had begun to think I had found him. Still it may have been some other young fellow. Dr. Perry said they often came and went without giving any reasons. But we'll still be on the lookout for the missing boy." Once more the "Ark" started off, and for several days there was just ordinary travel. The children played and had fun, the dogs raced along the road, barking and enjoying themselves, and the weather was fine. Then came another day of hard rain, and the "Ark" was kept under a big oak tree. The day after the rain, when the wayside brooks were still high, but the roads fairly good, Mr. Brown went on again. They were coming to a small town, and had to cross a ditch over which was a small bridge. Usually there was but little water in the ditch, but now, because of the rain, the banks were full. "I hope this bridge is strong enough for our car to go over," said Mr. Brown. Slowly he steered the big machine on it. Hardly had it reached the middle when there was a cracking of wood, and the bridge bent down. The automobile sank with it. "Oh!" cried Bunny, who sat in the back door. "We're going into the ditch, Daddy!" "We're there _now_!" said Sue as the "Ark" stopped with a jerk and a bounce. CHAPTER XVII ON TO PORTLAND There was no doubt about it, the big automobile was in the ditch. Or rather, the rear wheels, having gone through the small bridge, were now in the water of a little brook. The rains had made the usually dry ditch into a brook that flowed swiftly along. "Oh dear!" cried Mrs. Brown. "This is too bad!" "Anybody hurt back there?" asked Mr. Brown, who, at the first feeling that something was wrong, had put on the brakes. The automobile would have stopped anyhow, as the wheels were held fast in the mud and the broken pieces of the bridge. "No, we're all right," answered Uncle Tad, looking at Bunny and Sue, who, at the first sound of something wrong had crept closer to their mother. "My nose feels as if I had bumped it," said Bunny, rubbing his "smeller" as he sometimes called it. "Though I don't remember doing it," he went on. "I guess you did it when you jumped out of your seat," said his mother. "We all jumped, it came so suddenly." "And I dropped my Teddy bear and Uncle Tad stepped on her," murmured Sue with sorrow in her tones. "Look, Uncle Tad, you've turned on her eyes!" And, surely enough, the electric eyes of Sallie Malinda were glowing brightly. Uncle Tad must have stepped on the switch button in the toy's back and turned it on. "But I guess she's all right," went on Sue, as she turned off the switch and then turned it on again to see that it was working as it should. "You didn't hurt her, Uncle Tad," she said. "I'm glad of that, Sue," said the old soldier. "Now I guess I'd better get around to see if I can help your father get the automobile out of the ditch." Dix and Splash, who had been racing up and down the road, came back, panting and with their long red tongues hanging out of their mouths, to see what the trouble was. They looked at the ditched automobile with their heads on one side, and then sort of barked at one another. It was as if Dix said: "Well, what do you think about it, Splash? Do you think we had better stay here and help them?" "Oh, I don't see anything _we_ can do," answered Splash. At least it _seemed_ as if he spoke that way. "Let's keep on playing tag." And so the two dogs raced away. "We do seem to be in a fix," remarked Mr. Brown as he came as near as he could to the back of the automobile without getting into the ditch. "What _can_ we do?" asked Mrs. Brown, and her voice was anxious. "We'll soon see," answered her husband. "In the first place you had all better get out of the car. I don't know how long it may stand upright. It may topple over if the water washes away more mud from under one wheel than from under another, and you'll be better out than in." "But how are we going to _get_ out?" asked Bunny. "The back steps are all under water!" And so they were. When the bridge broke with the automobile the front wheels were off the wooden planks and on the road beyond, and the rear wheels went down when the bridge broke in the middle. So the "Ark" was standing as though it had come to a sudden stop going up a steep hill, at the bottom of which was a brook. The rear wheels, and all but the top one of the back steps were under water. "You can crawl out over the front seat," said Mr. Brown. "From there you can easily get down to the ground if Uncle Tad and I help you. Then, Mother, you might try your hand at getting a lunch, for it will soon be noon, while Uncle Tad and I see what we can do about getting the automobile out of the ditch." "It will be some fun after all," said Bunny as he crawled out over the front seat. "We can picnic alongside the road, Sue, and watch Daddy and Uncle Tad get the car out." "Yes," said Bunny's sister. "And maybe I'll make a pie for you and Sallie Malinda." "No, I guess I wouldn't try a pie to-day," said Mrs. Brown with a smile. "We won't be able to use any stove except the small oil one, out on the ground, and that will cook only a few things. We'll wait for the pie until the auto is safe on the road again." "I hope we can get it out of the ditch without breaking anything," said Mr. Brown, as he helped his wife and children down the high front steps of the big car, and then lifted out the oil stove, and other things that would be needed for the lunch. "Do you think there is any danger?" asked Mrs. Brown. "A little," answered her husband. "But at least none of us can be hurt, and the worst that can happen will be a little damage to our car." "Oh, the dear old 'Ark!'" cried Mrs. Brown. "I hope it won't be damaged much." "So do I," said her husband. "If I had known that bridge was so weak as to let us fall through I would have gone a different road. But I suppose the rain and high water weakened the supports. However, don't worry. We'll see what can be done." After a look at the way in which the rear wheels of the big car were lodged in the ditch, Uncle Tad and Mr. Brown went to the nearest town on foot to get help. Mrs. Brown, Bunny and Sue made a little camp beside the road, the children helping a little, and then running about to play. The two dogs joined them in their fun. "I guess I'll make a little cornstarch pudding," said Mrs. Brown, as she got the other things ready for lunch; and when the pudding was finished she covered it up, so no ants or bugs would get in it, and set it in a hollow stump to keep until it would be needed for the dessert after the lunch. It was not long before Mr. Brown and Uncle Tad came back riding in a big automobile truck which they had hired at the nearest garage to pull the "Ark" out of the ditch. "Will you have lunch first?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Yes, I guess we will," said her husband. "We'll eat while the garage men are getting ropes and chains around our car to pull it out of the ditch." And so they ate their dinner under the shade of a big tree beside the road. Two men had come in the auto truck to work for Mr. Brown, and they went about it quickly, putting strong ropes and chains on the "Ark." "And now I have a little surprise for you," said Mrs. Brown as she poured tea for herself, Mr. Brown and Uncle Tad, and set milk before the children. "Oh, goodie!" cried Sue. "Fine!" exclaimed Bunny. Mrs. Brown went to the hollow stump. She looked in and then she cried: "Oh, dear! No I haven't any either." "Any what, either?" asked Mr. Brown. "Surprise for you. I made a nice cocoanut cornstarch pudding, and put it in this hollow stump, covering it up. But something has come along and eaten it." For a moment there was a silence, and then Bunny cried: "Maybe it was a hungry bear!" "Or maybe it was our squirrel Fluffy," said Sue. "He can hop around a little now, 'cause his leg is almost well." "Hum, the pudding's gone, is it?" said Mr. Brown. "That's too bad. Come here, sir!" he suddenly called to Splash. The dog, who was lying beside Dix near the brook, arose slowly and came to Mr. Brown, tail between his legs and head drooping. "And you too, Dix! Come here!" ordered Mr. Brown. Dix walked up exactly as Splash had done, with drooping head and tail. Mr. Brown took hold of the head of first one dog and then the other. He looked closely at their mouths. "Here we have the pudding thieves!" he cried. "Splash and Dix found the dessert in the hollow stump and ate it. Didn't you, you rascals?" The dogs whined and said not a "word." It was very plain that they had taken the pudding. "Oh, please don't whip them, Daddy!" begged Bunny. "No; I won't," said Mr. Brown. "I shouldn't have left the pudding where they could get it," said Mrs. Brown. "It was all my fault. I'll make another for supper." However, there were some cakes in a tin can in the "Ark," and as Uncle Tad climbed in and got them out for the children before the garage men started to pull the stalled automobile out with their machine, Bunny and Sue had a little dessert after all. "We're all ready to try to get your car out of the ditch now, Mr. Brown," said one of the garage men. "Oh, let's watch, Sue!" cried Bunny. "But keep out of the way," ordered their father. There was a puffing of the other auto truck, a grinding of the wheels, and then the "Ark" was pulled slowly out of the ditch, and on to the road again, the hind wheels running on long planks which the men put under them. Thus out on to the safe and solid road rolled the "Ark." "Hurrah!" cried Bunny Brown. "Now we're all right," said his Sister Sue. And indeed they were, for it was found that nothing was broken on the big machine in which the Brown family were making their tour. Mr. Brown paid the garage men, who went back to their shop, and the "Ark" was soon on its way again. "And the next time I come to a small bridge I'm going to find out how much weight it will carry before I cross it," said the children's father. For a week or more the "Ark" traveled on. Every time he got a chance Mr. Brown asked about Fred, in the different towns through which they passed, but could get no trace of the missing boy. They saw other medicine showmen who had with them players or singers, but none of them were at all like the runaway Fred. "It must have been he who was with Dr. Perry," said Mrs. Brown. "Yes, and I presume he feared we knew him and so he ran on farther," her husband added. "He may be in Portland now." "How soon shall we be there?" asked Bunny. "In a few more days now." Two days later, as they camped outside a little village for the night, they saw beside the road a signboard which read: TWENTY MILES TO PORTLAND "Oh, we'll be there to-morrow!" cried Bunny. "Then we can find Fred, and can send him to his mamma and papa!" CHAPTER XVIII CAMPING OUT Mr. Brown was awakened in the morning feeling little hands tugging at him as he lay in his bunk, and childish voices crying: "Come on, Daddy! Get up! Get up!" "Eh? What's this? Get up!" he exclaimed. "Why, what's the matter, Bunny and Sue?" he went on, as he saw the two standing inside the curtains that hung in front of his bed. "It's time to get up," said Sue. "Why, it isn't six o'clock yet," answered her father, looking at his watch, which was under his pillow. "Why are you out of your bunks so early? Go back to sleep." "But we want to get on to Portland to find Fred Ward," said Bunny. "It's only twenty miles and we can soon be there if we start early." "There isn't much you children forget, is there?" asked Mr. Brown with a laugh, as he stretched and rubbed his eyes. Then as he opened wide his arms Bunny and Sue piled into the bunk with him, having a good, hearty tussle, until their shouts of laughter awakened Mrs. Brown and Uncle Tad, while Dix and Splash, asleep under the big car, added their barks to the din. "What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Has anything more happened?" "Oh, these children want to leave before breakfast for Portland, to find that runaway boy," said Mr. Brown. "Well, as long as they're awake I suppose we might as well get up and start early. It's about time I attended to my business affairs." Breakfast was soon ready, and when it had been eaten the "Ark" was once more chugging along the road. The travelers passed through several small villages and then they came to the edge of a big city which, the children's father told them, was Portland. "Are we going to stay in the auto while we're here?" asked Bunny, for Mr. Brown had said they would probably remain in Portland for nearly a week, as he had several matters to look after. "No, I'll give you a chance to stretch your legs," said his father. "We'll store the automobile in a garage and you can live at a hotel while I'm getting my business in shape." "But what about Dix and Splash?" asked Bunny. "Where can they stay?" "Oh, we'll find a hotel with a garage attached to it, and leave the dogs there in charge of the 'Ark,'" said Mr. Brown. "And what about finding Fred?" Sue queried. She, as well as Bunny, was greatly interested in the missing boy. "Oh, I'll do all I can to find him," promised Mr. Brown. A hotel, with a garage attached to it, was easily found in Portland, and as the "Ark" went through the streets many persons turned to look at it. But Bunny and Sue did not mind this in the least. "They'll think we're a new kind of gypsy," said Bunny. "And they'll all wish they was us, riding around this way," said Sue, as she laughed with Bunny. "'They was us.' Oh, Sue!" groaned her mother. Dix and Splash did not like very much being left alone in the garage, and they whined and barked as they were chained near the auto. But the garage keeper promised to be kind to them, to let them run about after a while and to feed and water them. "And we'll come to see you every once in a while," said Bunny and Sue, as they patted and hugged their two pets. Fluffy, the squirrel, now well again, had been set free, before entering the city, in the woods that he loved. So, for a while the Browns gave up their "Ark," and settled down to hotel life. Mr. Brown had much business to look after in connection with his fish and dock affairs at home, for he was part owner of a steamship line that ran from Portland to Bellemere. After a day or two he found a chance to ask about the missing boy. Mr. Brown first appealed to the police. But they had no record of him, and though inquiries were made of a number of theater owners, Fred Ward was not found. The man whose name he had mentioned as being the one he intended to see in Portland had moved away. "Well, Fred may have come here," said Mr. Brown, "and, after he found his friend was gone, he may have drifted on to some other town. I'm afraid we can't find him." "Oh, dear!" exclaimed Bunny. "That's too bad!" "Let us go to look for him," proposed Sue. "We found Nellie Jones, that girl who lives at the end of our street, when she was lost away over on the next block." "Yes, but that was different from this," said Mrs. Brown. "Portland is a big city, and if you go wandering about in it you'll be worse lost than you were in the big woods. You children stay with me, and your father will do all he can to find Fred." So Bunny and Sue had to be content to stay at the hotel, to go sightseeing with their mother, to go to the moving pictures, while Mr. Brown looked after his business. Several times each day Bunny and Sue went to the garage to see the dogs. And how glad Dix and Splash were to see the children! Finally the day came when Mr. Brown had finished his business. He made several more attempts to find Fred, but could not do so and at last wrote to Mr. Ward, as he had promised, that, as far as could be learned, the missing boy was not in Portland. "We will keep watch for him on our way back to Bellemere," Mr. Brown said in his letter. "We are returning by a different route from that by which we came. Every chance we get we will look for your boy." Then the "Ark" was taken from the garage, to the delight of the dogs no less than that of the children, and once more the Browns were on their tour. As Mr. Brown had said, they were going back a different way from the one they had taken on coming to Portland. This was to give his family a chance to see new towns and villages. And, as the weather still promised to be fine, all looked forward to a jolly auto tour. Every time he came to a good-sized city, and whenever he met a traveling show, Mr. Brown inquired for Fred, but it seemed that the missing boy was well hidden. Undoubtedly he did not want to be found. Bunny and Sue had great fun on the homeward trip, which lasted even longer than the outgoing one. The party had ridden on for several days, each one marked by sunshine, when one evening they came to a little clump of trees beside the road. It was not far from a good-sized village. "We'll stay here over night," said Mr. Brown, "and in the morning we'll take a little side trip to a waterfall not far away." "Oh, that will be fun!" cried Bunny. "Maybe I can make a wooden water wheel, and have it splash in the falls and go around." "No indeed you can't!" cried his father. "The falls are too big for that. They are seventy feet high." But, as it happened, when morning came and Mr. Brown was about to start the automobile after breakfast, there was a sudden crash, and the big car settled down on one side, like a lame duck. "Oh, my!" cried Mrs. Brown. "What has happened now?" "It sounded as if one of the big springs had broken," said her husband, getting down off the seat to look. "Yes," he added, "that's it. This means we'll have to stay here three or four days until I can get a new spring put in." For a moment Bunny and Sue looked a trifle sad. Then Bunny cried: "Oh, that will be fun. We can camp out in a tent in the woods." "Yes, you and Sue can play at camping, if you like," said their father. "But I think you'll want to sleep in the auto at night." "Oh, no! We won't!" laughed Sue. "Now for some fun camping out!" she added. CHAPTER XIX AT THE LAKE While Mr. Brown and Uncle Tad looked again at the spring of the auto, to see just how badly it was broken, Bunny and Sue, with Mrs. Brown, went over to the clump of trees, which was not far from the road. "Oh, this will be a grand place!" cried Sue. "Yes," agreed her brother. "We can put up the tent here," and he pointed to a little knoll amid a circle of trees, "and then if it rains the water will not come in." Bunny's father had told him the first thing to do, in pitching a tent, was to see that it would be dry in case of rain. "Oh, I think you children will come into the 'Ark' when it begins to shower," said Mrs. Brown. "Oh, no! Why, it's lots of fun in a tent in the rain!" cried Bunny. "Let's get it up right away." "Better wait until daddy or Uncle Tad can help you," said Mother Brown. "Now we'll sit down and rest in the woods." "Well, as long as the 'Ark' had to break down, this was the best place for it to happen, I guess," said Mr. Brown, as, with Uncle Tad, he came over to the wood where Mrs. Brown and the children were seated on a fallen tree. "Is the break a bad one?" asked his wife. "Yes, I think we'll need an entirely new spring, and it will take nearly a week to get that. However, as the children will have as much fun camping out here, as they would traveling in the car, it will be all right. We are not far from a town, and we can get what we want to eat from there." "I think our cupboard is pretty well filled now," said Mrs. Brown. "You might look to see if there is anything you need," suggested her husband. "I am going into town to find a garage man and have him arrange to get a new spring for me. Uncle Tad can be putting up the tent while I'm away." "I'm going to help," said Sue. "And so am I!" cried Bunny. As has been said, there was a tent carried on top of the Ark, and this was now taken down by the old soldier and carried to the wood, there to be set up for Bunny and Sue. The tent was large enough for the children to sleep in if they wanted to. In fact, they had done so once or twice. But their mother was not sure they would do so on this trip. However, the tent was put up and the little folding cots made ready, while Bunny brought his popgun and cannon with which to play soldier, and Sue, her Teddy bear and set of dishes with which to play keeping-house. By the time this was done Mr. Brown had come back from the village, bringing some chocolate candy for the children. He said he had seen an automobile dealer and it would take fully a week to get a new spring for the "Ark." They had their dinner out-of-doors, and after that Bunny and Sue played games in the tent. They said they were surely going to sleep in it at night, so they made up the cots and took their little pajamas with them into the canvas house. "I'll have my flashlight, too," said Bunny; "and in case we want to get up in the night to get a drink, Sue, we can do it easy." "That'll be nice," said his sister. In the evening, while the Browns were at supper, an old man, who seemed to be a farmer, came strolling down the road, stopping at the big automobile, and looking from it over to the children's tent in the woods. "You folks camping here?" he asked. "Well, we're traveling in our car, and we've had to stop on account of a broken spring," explained Mr. Brown. "The children thought it would be fun to have a tent up in the woods. No objection I hope, if you own those trees." "Bless your heart! No objection at all! I do own that patch of wood, and I'm glad to see the children's tent there. It sort of reminds me of war time, when I was in the army. You're welcome to stay as long as you like, and if you want anything I've got you can have it!" "So you were in the war, too," remarked Uncle Tad, walking up to the farmer. "I'm a veteran myself. Where did you fight?" The two elderly men began talking and soon found that they had been in the same Southern States together, though they had never met. Then, as evening came on, the two soldiers talked of the old days of the war, while Mr. Brown built a little campfire to make it seem pleasant. Bunny and Sue listened to the tales of battles until finally Mrs. Brown, noticing that their eyes were drooping, said: "It's time for you tots to go to bed. Hadn't you better sleep in the automobile?" "No, we're going to our tent," said Bunny, seriously. "Yes, we want to camp out," added Sue, sleepy as she was. Knowing that it was perfectly safe, for the children had often camped out before, Mr. and Mrs. Brown undressed the sleepy tots, and carried them to their cots in the tent. Dix and Splash were given beds of hay on the ground near the tent and told to stay on guard, which they would be sure to do. "Do you think they'll sleep out all night?" asked Mr. Brown of his wife, as they made ready for bed in the automobile. "I hardly think so," she said. "I'll leave the electric light, the one outside the 'Ark' near the back steps, burning, so if they want to crawl in here during the night they can." "Good idea," said Mr. Brown. Soon all was quiet around the big automobile and in the little white tent over amid the trees. Bunny and Sue had fallen asleep almost as soon as their heads touched the pillows. But they did not sleep very long. Or so, at least, it seemed to them. Sue awakened with a start. At first she could not remember where she was, though there was a bright moon shining outside and it made the tent light inside. Then she called: "Bunny!" "What's the matter?" he asked, for he was just about to awaken. "Did you hear that?" asked Sue. "What?" Bunny questioned. "That sound." Both listened. Outside the tent was a sound that could be plainly heard by the children. "I--I guess it's Dix snoring," said Bunny after a while. "Or maybe Splash talkin' in his sleep," added Sue. "We aren't afraid, are we, Bunny?" "Not a bit, Sue! It's nice here!" Bunny's tone was very confident. Bunny closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep. So did Sue. But neither of them could do so, though they closed their eyes very tight. Finally Sue asked: "Bunny, are you asleep?" "No. Are you?" "No. And I don't believe I'm going to sleep. That funny noise is soundin' again. Say, Bunny, does Dix snore like: 'Who? Who? Who-ooo?'" "No, I--I never heard him." "Then it isn't Dix! It's something else," said the little girl firmly. Bunny listened. Outside the tent he heard a mournful: "Whoo! Who? Too-who!" "Oh, I know what that is now!" cried Bunny. "It's an owl." "Does an owl bite?" asked Sue: "Sure they do!" In the dim moonlight that shone into the tent Bunny could see his sister get out of her cot, put on her slippers and dressing robe, and then take up her Teddy bear, turning on the eyelights. "Where are you going?" asked Bunny. "I'm goin' home to my regular bed!" said Sue. "This tent is all right, but a owl might bite through it. You'd better come with me, Bunny Brown." "I--I guess I will," said the little boy. "I wouldn't want you to go alone," he added brightly. He, too, put on his robe and slippers, and then Sue, with her lighted Teddy bear, and Bunny, with his little flashlight, started toward the "Ark." The two dogs followed. Up the steps, in the glare of the little outside electric light went the two tots. As they entered the automobile Mrs. Brown heard them and called: "Who is there?" "It's us," said Bunny. "An old owl kept askin' us questions about who was it," added Sue, "an' we couldn't sleep. So we came in here." "Crawl into your bunks," said Mother Brown. And that ended the children's sleeping in the tent, for a while at least. The next morning Mr. Jason, the soldier-farmer who owned the wood where the tent was erected, came down to the "Ark." "I'm going to drive over to Blue Lake to-day," he said. "Don't you folks want to go along? You might take your lunch and picnic there. It's got a waterfall." "I did promise the children to take them to see it while we were here," said Mr. Brown. "Thank you, we should like to go with you." And a little later the Browns were at Blue Lake. CHAPTER XX DIX TO THE RESCUE "Where is the waterfall?" "Can't we go in swimming?" "I want to row a boat!" "I want to fish!" As soon as they jumped out of Farmer Jason's wagon at Blue Lake, Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue were saying these things and asking these questions. The children saw before them a large body of water, that seemed a deep blue under the shining sun, and round about it were small hills "like strawberries on top of a shortcake," as Sue said. "Oh, what a beautiful place!" ejaculated Mrs. Brown. "Yes, folks around here thinks as how it _is_ right pretty," said Farmer Jason. "But you haven't seen the prettiest part yet--that's the waterfall." "Oh, that's where I want to go!" cried Bunny. "And I want to go out in a boat," added Sue, renewing her first request. "So do I! And fish!" chimed in Bunny. "Now, one thing at a time," said Mr. Brown with a laugh. "You are hardly here yet and you want to do half a dozen things. Be patient. We are going to stay all day, for we brought our lunch, and I think we shall have time for everything you want to do." "Yes, pitch right in and enjoy yourselves," said Farmer Jason with a laugh. "That's what the lake's here for. A few of us farmers own it, and the churches in this neighborhood generally has picnics here. I've got to drive over a few miles to see a man about some horses I want to buy, but I'll stop back in plenty of time to take you home." The Browns and their lunch being safely unloaded from the wagon, including, of course, Sue's Teddy bear, Farmer Jason drove off, while Dix and Splash scampered about in the woods on the shore of the lake and went swimming, something which Bunny and Sue wanted to do at once. "I think it is a little cool," said Mother Brown. "Besides, I didn't bring your bathing suits. I guess you can get along without a swim to-day." Indeed there was enough else to do at Blue Lake, as the children very soon found out. Of course it was not the first time they had been at a lake in the woods, but there seemed to be something new about this place. Perhaps the trees were greener. Certainly the lake seemed of a deeper blue than any the children had seen before. They ran up and down the pebbly shore, threw stones into the water to watch them sink, after sending out a lot of rings that made little waves on the beach. They tossed sticks into the water, which the dogs were eager to swim out for and bring back. Then Bunny had an idea. "Sue, let's go in wading!" he cried. "Oh, yes, let's!" she agreed instantly; and without saying anything to their father or mother about it the two took off their shoes and stockings and were walking about in the shallow water near the shore. Mr. and Mrs. Brown, with Uncle Tad, were sitting in the shade, looking out over the beautiful lake. They were glad they had come on the little excursion, and the trouble of the broken spring of the automobile seemed turned into something good now. "For," said Mrs. Brown, "it has given us a chance to camp out and to see this lake, and I would not have missed this sight for a great deal." "Nor I, either," said her husband. "But suppose we go to take a look at the waterfall before lunch. I know I'll want to take a nap after I eat, and then it will soon be time for Mr. Jason to come back for us, so if we don't go now we may miss it." "That's what I say," agreed Uncle Tad, and the three arose from the fallen tree on which they had been sitting. Just then Mother Brown caught sight of Bunny and Sue. "Look at those children!" she cried. "What's the matter?" asked Mr. Brown quickly. "They haven't fallen in, I hope!" "Well, they're _in_ all the same!" chuckled Uncle Tad. "Bunny has his knickerbockers rolled up as high as they'll go, and if Sue's clothes aren't wet I'm mistaken!" For by this time, liking the fun so much, Bunny and Sue had waded out where the water was deeper, and their clothes had become splashed by the little waves they made as they moved along. "Oh, dear! Such tykes!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "Well, it isn't too cool for wading, though it is for swimming. But I must get them dry if we are to go to the waterfall." Mrs. Brown had brought some old towels along, for she knew what might happen when the children were going to play near a lake, and while Bunny and Sue were being told that they should have first asked whether or not they could go in wading, they were drying their pink toes on towels and getting ready to put on their shoes and stockings again. "But we didn't think _wading_ was as bad as _swimming_," said Bunny as he rubbed some sand off his fat legs. "It isn't _exactly_," his mother answered. "But this time it was _nearly_ as bad. But never mind. Come on and we'll see the waterfall." Farmer Jason had told Mr. Brown how to walk to the place where the waters of a small river toppled over the rocks into the lake, and having hidden the bundle of lunch up in a tree, where wandering dogs could not get at it, the family set off, Dix and Splash running on ahead, to see the waterfall. The way was through a pleasant wood, with little paths running here and there, and if Bunny and Sue had been wandering alone they probably would have gotten lost. But the road to the waterfall was a well-marked one and Mr. Brown kept to it until pretty soon Mrs. Brown said: "Hark, I hear something." There was a distant roaring in the woods. "It's a trolley car," said Bunny. His father, mother and Uncle Tad laughed. "What a boy!" cried Mother Brown. "To think the roar of a beautiful waterfall is but the noise of a trolley car! He will never be a poet, will he Daddy?" "I don't want to be," said Bunny quickly. "I'm going to be a policeman when I grow up, and have a gun." "All right," chuckled Daddy Brown. "But a policeman's life is not an easy one." The roaring noise became plainer, and then, as the path turned, the party came in sight of an open glade through which they could see the cataract. It was not unlike a small Niagara in its way. For a distance back of the edge the waters of the little river bubbled and foamed over rough rocks. Then came a smooth stretch and, suddenly, the waters plunged over the broken ledge, falling about seventy feet to the lake below where they made a pool of foam. "Isn't it wonderful?" murmured Mother Brown. "It certainly is a beautiful picture," came from Mr. Brown. "It's the prettiest little fall I've ever seen," added Uncle Tad. Sue said nothing for a minute. Both she and Bunny were looking at the waterfall closely. Then Sue began to wrap a shawl, which she had brought along, over her Teddy bear. "What's the matter?" asked Mother Brown. "It's like rain all over Sallie Malinda," answered the little girl. "I don't want her to catch cold, for she might not shine her 'lectric eyes any more." "That's all Sue seems to care about the fall," laughed Mother Brown in a whisper to her husband. As for Bunny, he seemed to think them quite wonderful--for a time. He stood as near the edge as his father would let him, looking up the rapids down which the waters rushed, to fall over the rocky edge, dropping in a smother of foam to the blue lake below. Silently he watched the smooth waters glide down like some ribbon, and then, turning to his father, he asked: "Is this all they do?" "All what does?" inquired Mr. Brown, not quite understanding. "All the waterfall does. Does it just keep falling?" "All day and all night, day after day and night after night, forever and forever," said Mr. Brown, for really the waterfall was a marvelous sight. "Then I've seen enough," said Bunny, turning away. "If they've been doing this a long while, and will do it all next week, I can look at 'em then. Now I want to go out in a boat. I saw one as we came through the picnic grounds. I've had enough of waterfalls." Mr. and Mrs. Brown and Uncle Tad looked at one another. But they said nothing. Bunny started down the hill again, toward the lake, Sue following with her Teddy bear. "Bunny surely will never make a poet," chuckled his mother. "Oh, well, perhaps there are enough poets in the world now," said Mr. Brown with a laugh. Bunny and Sue were first at the place where the boat was kept. There were several of them, and Mr. Jason had said that picnic parties used them. The lake was not deep, he had added, and was very safe, for any one who knew anything about boats. Bunny and Sue finally prevailed on Uncle Tad to take them out for a row after lunch, and when the two children were in their seats Dix insisted on following. Mr. Brown, who decided to remain on shore with his wife, tried to call back the dog, but he would not come. Nor would he come when Splash barked and whined at him, asking, in dog language, I suppose, if Dix did not want to come and have a game of "water tag." But Dix evidently wished to stay in the boat, and finally they let him remain, as he was a quiet dog, not given to jumping about. He curled up in front behind Sue and went to sleep. Uncle Tad rowed about the lake. Bunny wished he had brought his fishing pole and line along, as they saw fish jumping in several places. "Never mind, we're going to be here nearly a week yet," said Uncle Tad. "We can come again." Just how it happened Sue herself could not explain. But, somehow or other, her Teddy bear slipped from her lap and was about to fall out of the boat. That would never do, the little girl decided, and of course she made a quick motion to catch her toy. And, just then, Bunny leaned on the same side of the boat to pick up a floating stick so that the boat tipped. "Look out!" cried Uncle Tad. "Sit still, children!" But he spoke too late, for, in an instant, Sue fell out of the boat and into the lake. Uncle Tad was so surprised for a moment that he sat still. But not so Dix. He had awakened in a second, and with a loud bark sprang overboard to the rescue of the little girl. CHAPTER XXI THE CIRCUS "Oh my!" cried Bunny Brown, as he saw his sister topple out of the boat into the lake. "Oh, dear!" By this time Uncle Tad, the old soldier, was ready for action. He took off his coat, without standing up in the boat, for well he knew how dangerous that was, and he was just ready to slip overboard into the water, the bottom of which he could see, when Dix, who had thrust his head under the surface, came up with Sue held in his strong jaws, his teeth fastened in her dress near the neck. "Oh, Dix! Dix!" cried Bunny, in delight. "I'm so glad you saved my sister. Oh, Dix! I'll love you all my life!" Dix, holding Sue with her head well above the water, was swimming toward the boat. Bunny, eager to do what he could to help his sister, was leaning over the side, ready to reach her as soon as the dog came near enough. Then Uncle Tad cried: "Sit still, Bunny! I'll take Sue in. But I must do it at the stern of the boat, and not over the side, as that might tip us over. You sit still in the middle of the boat." Bunny, who had lived near the seashore all his life knew that "stern" meant the back of the boat. And he remembered that his father had often told him if ever he fell out of a boat and wanted to get in again without tipping the boat over, to do so from the stern, or from the bow, which is the front. A row-boat will not tip backwards or forwards as easily as it will to either side. As soon as Bunny heard what Uncle Tad said, he obeyed. He sat down in the bottom of the boat between the seats. Then the old soldier, going to the stern, called to Dix: "Around this way, old dog! Bring her here and I'll take her in. Come on, Dix!" Whether the dog knew that it was safer to bring a person in over the stern of a boat or over the bow instead of over the side, I do not know. At any rate he did what Uncle Tad told him to do, and in another moment was close to the boat with Sue in his jaws. Uncle Tad lifted her into the boat and at once turned her on her face and raised her legs in the air. This was to let any water that she might have swallowed run out. Sue began to kick her legs. She gasped and wiggled. "Keep still!" cried Bunny. "Uncle Tad is giving you first aid." Bunny had often seen the lifeguards at the beach do this to swimmers who went too far out. "I--I won't keep still, Bunny Brown!" gasped Sue. "And I--I don't need any first aid! I just helded my breath under water, I did, and I didn't swallow much anyhow. I was holding my breath when Uncle Tad began to raise up my legs, that's why I wiggled and couldn't speak. I'm all right now and I'm much obliged to you and Dix, Uncle Tad, and I hope my Sallie Malinda isn't in the lake." Sue said this all at one time and then she had to stop for breath. But what she said was true. Her father had given her swimming lessons, and Sue was really a good little diver, and perfectly at home where the water was not too rough or deep. And, as she had said, as soon as she felt herself in the water she had taken a long breath and held it before her nose and mouth went under. So while Sue was holding her breath, Dix had reached down and caught her, before she had really sunk to the bottom. For Sue had on a light and fluffy dress, and that really was a sort of life preserver. As it was, the dog had brought Sue to the boat before she had swallowed more than a few spoonfuls of water, which did her no harm. Of course she was all wet. "You've gone in swimming, anyhow," said Bunny, as soon as he saw that his sister was all right. "Yes, and we must get her to shore as soon as we can," said Uncle Tad. "Climb in, Dix, and don't scatter any more water on us than you can help, though we'll forgive you almost anything for the way you saved Sue." The dog climbed in, over the stern where Uncle Tad told him to, and then gave himself a big shake. All dogs do that when they come from the water, and Dix only acted naturally. He gave Bunny and Uncle Tad a shower bath but they did not mind. Sue could not be made any wetter than she already was. "Now for a fast row to shore," said Uncle Tad. "I saw a farmhouse not far from where we got out of Mr. Jason's wagon, and I guess you can dry your clothes there, Sue." As Uncle Tad started to row Sue cried: "But where's Sallie Malinda? Where's my Teddy bear? I won't go without her!" She spoke as if she meant it. Bunny and Uncle Tad looked on both sides of the boat, and there, on the white sandy bottom of the lake, in about four feet of water, lay the Teddy bear. It's eyes were lighted which made it the more easily seen, for Sue must have pressed the switch as she herself fell overboard. And, as it happened, the batteries and electric lighted eyes were not harmed by water. "I'll get her for you," said Uncle Tad, and he reached for the Teddy bear with a boat hook, soon bringing up the toy. "Oh, I hope she isn't spoiled!" cried Sue. "She can dry out with you when you get to the farmhouse," said Bunny, and then Uncle Tad began to row toward shore. Mr. and Mrs. Brown were surprised, and not a little worried, when they heard what had happened to Sue. But the little girl herself was quite calm about it. "I just held my breath," she said. "I knew Bunny or somebody would get me out." "I was going to," declared Bunny. "Yes, I guess he'd have dived over in another second," remarked Uncle Tad. "But Dix was ahead of both of us." "Well, I'm glad you're all right," said Mother Brown. "I do hope you won't take cold. We must get your wet clothes off." Just then Mr. Jason came back with his horses and wagon, and he quickly drove the whole party to a near-by farmhouse where Sue, and all the others, were made welcome. Before the warm kitchen fire Sue was dressed in some dry clothes of a little girl who lived on the farm, while her own were put near the kitchen stove. In a few hours the party was ready to go back to the "Ark," meanwhile having spent a good time at the farmhouse. Sue seemed all right, and really she had not been in much danger, for the water was not deep, and Uncle Tad was a good swimmer. Bunny and Sue slept rather late the next morning, but when they did awaken they heard a queer rumbling on the road beside which their automobile was drawn up. "Is that thunder?" asked Bunny. "It sounds like it," answered Sue, who showed no signs of having caught cold from her bath in the lake. The children peered from the little windows near their bunks. They saw going along the road a number of gaily painted wagons--great big wagons, drawn by eight or ten horses each, and with broad-tired wheels. Together Bunny and Sue cried: "It's a circus! It's a circus! Hurrah!" CHAPTER XXII A LION IS LOOSE Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue lost no time in getting dressed that morning, and hurrying out to the tiny dining room where their mother was getting breakfast. "Did you see it?" gasped Sue. "Have the elephants gone past yet?" Bunny inquired, his eyes big with excitement. "Oh, you mean the circus," said Mrs. Brown. "No, I haven't seen any elephants yet. The big wagons just started to go past." "Then let's hurry up our breakfast and watch for the elephants and the tigers," cried Bunny, greatly worried lest he miss any of the animals. "You have plenty of time," said Uncle Tad, who was out near the back steps of the automobile, sorting his fish lines and hooks. "The circus has just started to go past. Those wagons have in them the tent poles, the canvas for the tents, the things for the men to eat and the big stoves. These are always unloaded first--in fact, they are sent on ahead of the rest of the show. "Not until later in the morning will the animals and the other wagons come along. The circus must have unloaded over at Kirkwell," and he pointed to a railroad station about a mile away. "The tents are going up on the other side of this town, I heard some of the circus drivers say." "Oh, won't we have fun watching them go past?" cried Sue. "I wonder if they'll have a parade? If they do, and it goes past our house--I mean our automobile--we can see it better than anybody, can't we?" "Yes. But the parade won't come this far out into the country," said Uncle Tad. "It will go through the streets of the town." "Where are you going?" asked Bunny, suddenly looking at the old soldier. "I thought I'd go fishing over to Blue Lake. Looked yesterday as if there were plenty of fish there. Want to go with me, Bunny Brown?" "Huh? An' the circus comin' to town?" asked Bunny, clipping the end off his words. "Say, Mother, aren't we going to the circus?" he asked quickly. "Well, I didn't hear anything about it," said Mrs. Brown slowly. "Can't you take us, Uncle Tad?" pleaded Sue, for she, as much as did her brother, wanted to see the big show. "Well, I suppose I _could_ put off my fishing till another day," said Uncle Tad slowly. "Are you _sure_ you two want to go?" "Are we!" cried Bunny. "Oh, I want to go--so much!" and Sue showed just how much by putting her arms around Uncle Tad's neck and hugging him as hard as she could. That was her way of showing "how much." "Well, if it's as much as that I guess I'll have to take you," laughed Uncle Tad. "Mind you, I don't want to go myself," and he looked at Mrs. Brown in a queer way. "I don't care anything about a circus--never did in fact. But if an old man has to give up his fishing trip, just to take two children to one of the wild animal shows, why I guess it will have to be done, that's all. But really I don't want to go," and he shook his head very seriously. "Oh, Uncle Tad!" cried Sue. "Don't you want to see the elephants?" "Nope," and the old soldier kept on shaking his head "crossways," as Bunny said. "And don't you want to see the lions?" "Nope." "Nor the tigers?" "Nope." "Not even the camels and the monkeys and the men jumping over horses' backs, nor the giraffes with their long necks--don't you want to see _any_ of them?" Sue was talking faster and faster all the while. Uncle Tad did not say anything, but a funny look came into his eyes, and Bunny was almost sure the old soldier was laughing on one side of his face at Mother Brown. Then Bunny cried: "Oh, Sue! He's just fooling! He wants to go as much as we do!" "Oh, Uncle Tad, I'm so glad!" cried Sue. "I love you--so--much!" and again she hugged him as hard as she could, and kissed him too. "Now I'll surely have to go," he chuckled. Breakfast was soon over, and by that time Bunny and Sue were so excited that they did not know what to do. Somehow they managed to get properly dressed, and by that time other circus wagons came along. These wagons were gilded and painted more gaily than the first that had gone past. And from some of them came low growls or roars. "Oh, they've got lions inside," said Sue, opening her eyes wide. "And tigers, too," added Bunny in a wondering voice. "But I want to see the elephants," he added. Pretty soon the big elephants came along, and behind them came camels and troops of horses. There were also a number of small boys and some girls who were following the circus to the lot where the big tents were already being put up. "Say, I just like to see them!" cried Bunny as the elephants swung past the "Ark," which some of the country boys took to be one of the circus wagons broken down. "Elephants are great! I guess I'm going to be an elephant rider when I grow up, instead of a policeman," he said, as he saw men sitting on the heads of the big elephants while they lumbered heavily along. "It would be fun to ride on one of them," said Sue. "But come on, Uncle Tad. Take us to the circus. We want to see the parade." "We want to see _everything_," added Bunny. "The side shows and _everything_, and, please, Mother, may we have some peanuts and popcorn?" "Oh, I don't want you eating a lot of things that will make you ill," said Mrs. Brown. "I mean to feed to the elephants," said Bunny. "Elephants love popcorn and peanuts a lot. Of course Sue and I could eat a little," he added. "Well, a _very_ little," agreed his mother. "Elephants are not made ill so easily as little boys. But get ready, if you are going." It did not take the children and Uncle Tad long to get ready. As it was quite a distance from where the "Ark" was stationed beside the road to the circus ground, Uncle Tad hired Mr. Jason to drive him and the children over in the wagon. "Oh, I see the tents!" cried Bunny, as they neared the ground. "And I hear the music!" added Sue. "But we mustn't miss the parade." The children were just in time for this, and when they had seen the procession wind its way about the streets they went back to the big white tents. Then the circus began. What Bunny and Sue saw you can well imagine, for I think most of you have been to a circus, once at least. There were the wild animals--the lions and the tigers in their cages, the funny monkeys, the long-necked giraffes--and then came the performance. The clowns did funny tricks, the acrobats leaped high in the air, or fell into the springy nets. All this the children saw, and they ate some popcorn and peanuts, but fed more than they ate to the elephants. Uncle Tad seemed to enjoy himself, too, though, every once in a while he would lean over and say to Bunny and Sue: "Aren't you tired? Let's go home!" And the performance was not half through! Bunny and Sue just looked at him and smiled. They knew he was joking. But the circus came to an end at last, and though they were sorry they had to leave, Bunny and Sue were, late in the afternoon, well on their way to their automobile camp again. They talked of nothing but what they had seen, and every time they spoke of the show they liked it more and more. "I wish we could go again to-night," said Bunny. "It isn't good for little children to go to a circus at night," said Uncle Tad. "You've seen enough." Of course Daddy Brown and Mother Brown had to hear all about it over the supper table, and they were glad the children had had such a good time. At night when they sat around a little campfire on the ground near the automobile, they could hear, in the distance, the music of the circus. In the middle of the night Mr. and Mrs. Brown were awakened by hearing the noise of many persons rushing past on the road alongside of which their automobile was drawn up. Also the chugging of automobiles and the patter of horses' feet could be heard. "I wonder what it can be," said Mrs. Brown. "Is it the circus coming back again?" "No, they would be going the other way. I'll see if I can find out what it is." Slipping on a bath robe, Mr. Brown went to the back door of the automobile. He saw a crowd of people rushing along. "What's the matter?" he called. "One of the circus lions is loose," was the answer, "and we're chasing it!" [Illustration: BUNNY AND SUE FED THE ELEPHANTS. _Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour._ _Page_ 218.] CHAPTER XXIII THE SCRATCHED BOY "What's that? What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Brown. In the darkness she had slipped to her husband's side. She, too, looked out on the crowd of men and boys rushing past in the moonlight. "What has happened?" she asked again, as Mr. Brown did not appear to have heard what she said. "As nearly as I could understand," he said slowly, speaking in a low voice, "one of the men who ran past said a lion had broken loose from the circus." "Oh, how dreadful!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "What shall we do? Did Uncle Tad bring his gun with him?" "Hush! Don't wake the children," said Mr. Brown. "They might be frightened if they heard that a lion was loose." "Frightened? I should think any one would be frightened!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "A savage lion raging around at night, trying to get something to eat----" "Now please don't get excited," begged Mr. Brown. "There is no danger--at least I believe there isn't." "No danger? And with a lion loose--a hungry lion!" "That's where I think you're wrong," said her husband. "The circus people usually keep their lions and other wild animals well fed. They know the danger a hungry beast might be if he should get loose. And I dare say they often do get loose, for all sorts of things may happen when the cages are taken to so many different places. "But though this lion has broken loose, I don't believe it would bite even a rooster if it crowed at him. I mean he won't be hungry, because he'll have been well fed before the circus started away." "Then you don't believe there is any danger?" "Well, not enough to worry about. Another thing is that usually circus lions are so tame, having been caged so long, that they are fairly gentle." "I read of one that bit his keeper," said Mrs. Brown. "Oh, of course there are _some_ dangerous lions in circuses. But we won't believe this one that got away is that kind until we are sure. There's a man who seems tired of running. I think he's going to stop and I'll ask him how it happened." One of the crowd of men and boys, racing past the "Ark," had slowed his pace, being tired it seemed. Mr. Brown leaned out of the back door and called to him: "What is the matter? Did a lion really get loose from the circus?" "That's what really did happen, sir. Are you one of the circus folks?" "No, we are just travelers. We are stopping here because one of the springs of our automobile is broken." "Oh, excuse me. I thought this was one of the circus wagons. Yes, as they were loading the lion's cage on the train a few hours ago, it slipped, fell on its side and broke. The biggest lion in the circus got away before they could catch him, and they say he headed down this way. The circus men started after him with nets and ropes, and they offered a reward of twenty-five dollars to whoever caught him. So a lot of us started out, but I guess I'll go back. I'm tired out. I didn't have an automobile like some." "Then the lion didn't get loose while the circus performance was going on?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Oh, no. And it's a good thing it didn't, or there'd have been a terrible scare and maybe lots of folks hurt in the rush. The show was over, and most of the animal tent stuff was loaded on the flat cars when the lion's cage broke." "Aren't you afraid to try to catch him?" asked Mrs. Brown. "Well, I didn't stop to think of that. I don't know though that I am. I just started off with a rush--the same as lots of others did who were watching the circus load--when the lion got loose. I thought maybe I could earn that twenty-five dollars. You see that's given to whoever finds where the lion is hiding. The circus men just want to know that and then they'll do the catching. There really isn't much danger." "Well, I shouldn't like to try it," murmured Mrs. Brown. "I guess I'll give up, too," said the man. He called a "good-night!" to Mr. and Mrs. Brown and went back along the road. There were no more people to be seen, those who had gone lion-hunting being now out of sight. "Well, I'm glad the children didn't wake up," said Mrs. Brown, for, strange as it may seem, Bunny and Sue had slept all through the noise. But then they were tired because of having gone to the circus. "Shall you tell them about the lion being loose?" "Oh, yes, to-morrow, of course. While I think there is little danger I would not want them to stray too far away, for the poor old lion may be hiding in the woods or among the rocks, and he might spring out on whoever passed his hiding place." "Why do you call him a 'poor old lion'? I think he must be a _very_ savage fellow." "Oh, I think he'll turn out to be a gentle one," said her husband with a laugh. Then Mr. and Mrs. Brown went to bed, after Uncle Tad had heard the story, and the rest of the night passed quietly. At the breakfast table Bunny and Sue were told of what had happened. Bunny wanted to go right out with Uncle Tad, who was to take his gun. "We'll hunt him and get the twenty-five dollars," said the little fellow. "No. You'd better play around here for a while," ordered his father. "It will be safer." "I wouldn't let him out of my sight for a million dollars!" cried Mrs. Brown. "But we could take the two dogs, Dix and Splash, with us, and they could bite the lion if he chased us," said Bunny. His mother shook her head, and Bunny knew there was no use teasing any more. "I wouldn't go after any lion!" declared Sue. "And I want to find a good place to hide Sallie Malinda." "What for?" asked Bunny. "So the lion can't find her," said the little girl. "Lions don't like bears and this one might bite Sallie Malinda. Then maybe she couldn't flash her eyes any more." The Teddy bear had dried out after the fall into the lake, and was as good as ever. So Bunny and Sue had to stay and play around the automobile, not going far away. Though at first they missed the long tramps in the fields and through the woods, they were good children and did as they were bid. Besides, deep down in his heart, Bunny was just a _little bit_ afraid of the lion, even though he had said he wanted to go hunting for him with Uncle Tad. Two days passed, and the lion had not been found. The circus had gone on, leaving two men in the town near which the automobile was stranded. These men, with a spare cage which had been left with them, were ready to go out with nets and ropes and capture the lion as soon as any one should bring in word as to where it was hiding. The countrymen and the boys, who had no other work to do, still kept up the lion hunt, some with dogs, but the big circus animal was well hidden. "If he was playing hide-and-go-seek," said Bunny, "I'd holler 'Givie-up! Givie-up! Come on in free!' For I never could find him, he has hidden himself so good." "Well, I wish he would go and hide himself far, far away," almost snapped Sue. "Then we could go around like we used to, and go on the lake." "I wish so too," agreed Bunny. It was getting rather tiresome for the children to stay so close to "home," as they called the automobile, but Mr. Brown said the new spring would arrive in a few days, and then they would travel on again, far from where the lion was hiding. "And we can keep on looking for Fred Ward," said Bunny. In the excitement over the circus the runaway boy had been almost forgotten. It was three days after the lion had broken loose, and evening was approaching, when Mrs. Jason, wife of the farmer who had been so kind to the Browns, came hurrying down to the automobile beside the road. She was out of breath and seemed much excited. "Oh, Mr. Brown!" she exclaimed. "Do you know anything about doctoring?" "About doctoring! Why? Is Mr. Jason ill?" "No, but I've got a badly hurt boy up at my house. He's all scratched up." "Has he been picking berries?" asked Bunny. "No. They're worse scratches than that. Big, deep ones on his face, hands and shoulders. I've bandaged him as best I could, and sent Mr. Jason for the doctor; but I was wondering if you could do anything until Dr. Fandon came." "A scratched boy?" repeated Mr. Brown slowly. "What scratched him?" "A great big lion, he says!" exclaimed Mrs. Jason. "I declare I'm so excited I don't know what to do!" and she sat down on a stool Mrs. Brown placed for her near the back steps of the automobile. CHAPTER XXIV THE BARKING DOG Mr. and Mrs. Brown, not to say Bunny, Sue and Uncle Tad, were very, very much surprised when Mrs. Jason said the boy had been scratched by a lion. "Are you sure about it?" asked the children's father. "That's what he says," replied the farmer's wife. "He is certainly badly scratched, as I could see for myself. Whether it was by a lion or something else I can't say, never having seen a lion's scratches. The boy might be making up some story, but he certainly _is_ scratched." "The circus lion!" cried Mrs. Brown. "Oh, that must be the one that did it! The lion must be roaming around here! We must lock the automobile and stay inside!" "Now please don't get excited," begged Mr. Brown. "In the first place this boy may not be telling the truth. He is scratched, for Mrs. Jason has seen the marks and bandaged them up, she says. But it may be the boy fell down in the bushes, or among the rocks and got scratched that way. Or it may have been some other wild animal in the woods that attacked him. There are some animals around here, aren't there?" he asked the farmer's wife. "Well, skunks, groundhogs and the like of that, with maybe a fox or two. Of course foxes or groundhogs will bite if any one tries to catch them, but I don't know that they'd scratch, though they might if they were put to it. I never saw such scratches as these. And, as you say, Mrs. Brown, it _may_ have been the circus lion which is hiding around here." "You don't seem very frightened over it," said Mrs. Brown. "Well, what's the use of being frightened until I see it?" asked Mrs. Jason. "I'm more worried about that poor boy. I wish I could do something for him to ease his pain until Dr. Fandon comes. He may be a long while." "I'll come up with you and see what I can do," promised Mr. Brown. "Uncle Tad knows something about soldiers' wounds, and perhaps he could----" "Oh, don't take Uncle Tad with you!" pleaded Mrs. Brown. "We need _one_ man around here if there's a lion loose in the woods. Come back as soon as you can," she begged her husband as he walked toward the farmhouse with Mrs. Jason. "How did you happen to see the boy?" asked Mr. Brown. "I was out gathering the eggs near the henhouse," said Mrs. Jason, "and I heard a sort of groaning noise. Then I saw somebody coming toward me. "At first I thought it was a tramp, and I was just going to call my husband or one of the men, when I heard crying, and then I saw it was only a boy, and that he was bleeding." "How long ago was it that you found the scratched boy?" asked Mr. Brown. "Nearly an hour now. As soon as I saw what the matter was I hurried him into the house and got him on a couch. Mr. Jason and I did what bandaging we could, and then I made him go for the doctor." "Did you know the boy, and did he say where the lion attacked him?" asked Mr. Brown. "I never saw him before, that I know of. But he just managed to say the beast jumped out of the bushes at him when he was coming through our rocky glen, then all of a sudden he fainted." "Where is this rocky glen of yours where you say the lion jumped out at the boy?" "About two miles from here, back in the hills. Waste land, mostly. You aren't thinking of going there, are you?" "Not now, though I think I'd better send word to the circus people that their lion is around here." "Yes, it would be a good thing." By this time Mr. Brown and Mrs. Jason were at the house. "I'll take a look at him," said Mr. Brown. He saw, lying on a couch, a tall lad, whose face and hands were covered with bandages. The youth was tossing to and fro and murmuring, but what he said could not well be understood, except that now and then he spoke of a lion. "I didn't dare take his coat off to get at the scratches on his shoulders," said Mrs. Jason. "I thought I'd let the doctor do that." "Yes, I guess it will be best. But if you have any sweet spirits of nitre in the house I'll give him that to quiet him and keep down the fever." "Oh, we always keep nitre on hand," and Mrs. Jason helped Mr. Brown give some to the lad. In a little while he grew quieter, and then Dr. Fandon came in with Mr. Jason. The two men helped the physician get the youth undressed and into a spare bed, and then the doctor, with Mrs. Jason's help, dressed the wounds on the boy's face and shoulders, while the men waited outside. Then, having done what he could for the boy, and promising to call in the morning, when he could tell more about the boy's condition, the doctor went home, while Mr. Brown and Mr. Jason planned to get word of the lion to the two circus men who were still at the hotel in the village. "I'll drive over with you," said the farmer. This they did, though it was late to drive to town, being after nine o'clock, stopping at the "Ark" on the way to tell what had taken place at the farmhouse. "Poor fellow!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "We must try to help him." "I'll let him play with my Teddy bear when he gets well," said Sue, and all the others laughed. "The circus men will get after the lion in the morning," said the farmer when he and Mr. Brown were back at the "Ark" on their return from town. Though they were excited, and not a little afraid, Bunny and Sue were at last in bed, but only after Uncle Tad had promised to sit up all night, as he used to do when a sentry in the war, and, with his gun, watch for any sign of the lion. "And if you have to shoot him, which I hope you don't," said Bunny, "call me first so I can look at him. But I don't want to see him shot. Just make him go back to the circus." "I will," promised Uncle Tad. Bunny and Sue were up early the next morning, and even before breakfast they wanted their father to go up to the farmhouse to find out about the scratched boy, and also whether or not the lion had been caught. "We'll see about the boy first," said Mr. Brown. "I guess it won't do any harm for me to take the children up," he said to his wife. "You will be careful, won't you?" she begged. "Indeed I will," he promised. So Bunny, with his sister and his father, walked up to Mr. Jason's home. Dix and Splash went along, of course, and stood expectant at the door as Mr. Brown rang. "Oh, good morning!" cried Mrs. Jason as she answered the bell. "Our scratched boy is much better this morning. He is not as badly hurt as we feared. Come in." Mr. Brown and the children entered, and of course the dogs followed. "Go back, Dix and Splash," ordered Mr. Brown. Splash turned and went out on the stoop, but Dix kept on. The dog was acting in a strange manner. The door to a downstairs bedroom, where the wounded boy was lying, was open. Dix ran in and the next moment he began to bark wildly, getting on the bed with his forefeet. "Down, Dix! Down!" cried Mr. Brown. "What do you mean, sir?" But Dix kept on barking and whining. He tried to lick the hands of the scratched boy. "Oh, drive him away!" cried Mrs. Jason. "He'll hurt the boy." But the boy, who seemed much better indeed, rose up in bed and cried: "Don't send him away! That's Dix, my dog! Oh, Dix, you found me, didn't you?" CHAPTER XXV FOUND AT LAST What with the barking of Dix, in which Splash, out on the porch, joined, the manner in which the scratched boy hugged the half-wild animal on his bed, the astonishment of Bunny Brown, his sister, his father and Mrs. Jason--well, there was enough excitement for a few minutes to satisfy even the children. Sue did not know what to make of the strange actions of Dix on the bed where the injured boy had been sleeping, and she whispered to Bunny: "Maybe Dix wants to bite him!" But Bunny shook his head. He understood what had happened. "Don't you see, Sue!" he said. "He's been found." "O-o-oh!" gasped the little girl. "Yes, sir, Fred Ward, the boy who ran away from next door to us, has been found. That's his dog, Dix. And Dix knows him, just as we thought he would, even though his face is pretty well bandaged up. That's Fred Ward!" "Is that your name?" asked Mr. Brown, who also understood what had happened. "Well, I guess it is," was the slow answer. "But it isn't the name I've been going by lately. I called myself Professor Rombodno Prosondo, but now----" "Then, it _was_ you all blacked up like a minstrel!" cried Bunny. "Yes, I was playing on the banjo for Dr. Perry's medicine show, but when I saw you in the crowd I managed to get away. Then I joined the circus and now----" "Don't talk and excite yourself," said Mrs. Jason. "The doctor will be here in a little while and perhaps he can take the bandages off your face, so your friends will know you." "Dix knows him all right," said Mr. Brown, and indeed the dog was half wild with joy at having found his master. Dr. Fandon came in a few minutes later and said Fred was much better. When the face bandages were taken off, so new ones could be put on, Bunny and Sue at once recognized Fred, though his face was badly scratched. Dix tried to lick his master's face, but had to be stopped for fear he might do Fred harm. So the dog had to show his joy by thumping his tail and whining softly. Then Fred told his story. As has been said, he ran away from home because he felt his father should not have punished him. "But I've had a good deal worse punishment since," the lad said, "and I'm sorry I ever ran away. I'd have gone home long ago only I was ashamed." "Well, you needn't be," said Mr. Brown. "Your father and your mother both want you back. We have been looking for you as well as we could on our auto tour. But it was Dix who knew you first." "I wish he had seen me before the lion did," said Fred, smiling a little. "I wonder where he went to after clawing me?" At that moment there was a noise out in the yard back of the farmhouse. The crowing of roosters and the squawking of hens could be heard, mingled with a woman's voice. "That's my wife!" cried Mr. Jason, jumping up, but at that moment his wife came into the room. "I've caught it," she said coolly, though her face was flushed. "Caught what?" they all cried. "The circus lion," she answered. "I went out to the henhouse, and there he was crouching down in a corner, and looking as if he intended to have his choice of my fat pullets." "What did you do?" asked Mr. Brown and Mr. Jason together. "Well, I happened to have a broom stick in my hand so I hit him a smart blow over the nose to teach him to let my hens alone, and then I drove the chickens outside and locked the lion in the henhouse. He's there now. You'd better send for the circus folks to take him away. I don't want him around the place scaring the fowls." "Didn't he scare you?" asked Mr. Brown. "I never stopped to think whether he did or not," was the cool answer. "I just whacked him over the nose and he whined and cuddled up in a corner like a whipped dog." "Oh, let's go out and look at the lion in the chicken coop!" cried Bunny. "No, indeed," said his father. "Wait until the circus men come and put him in the cage." A neighboring farmer had a telephone, and word was sent to one of the circus men who had stayed at the village hotel, while his companion had gone to the rocky glen with a crowd of men and boys to try to find the lion there, after the alarm given by Mr. Jason. The circus man, who had remained in the hotel, came with a light cage, drawn by horses, and the lion was easily driven from the henhouse into the cage and was soon safe behind locks and bars. "Mrs. Jason caught the lion!" cried the crowd that gathered to watch what happened. "Did he bite you?" she was asked. "Never a bite," she answered smiling. "What! Poor old Tobyhanna bite?" cried one of the circus men. "Why, he hasn't but two teeth in his head and we have to feed him on boiled meat. He's no more dangerous than a tame dog, and when you hit him over the nose with your broom, lady, you must have hurt his feelin's dreadful." "Well, I didn't mean to be _rough_," said Mrs. Jason with a smile, "but it's the first time I ever caught a lion." "Yes, and you get the reward, too," added the circus man, as he paid the farmer's wife. Then he started away with the lion in the cage to ship him back to the circus. And poor, old, almost toothless Tobyhanna, curled up in the corner of his cage and ate some bread and milk the farmer's wife gave him. He was happy he had been caught. Fred Ward's story was soon told. After running away from home he joined the medicine show, because it gave him a chance to play the banjo he liked so well. He left Dr. Perry because he saw the Browns and feared they might have him sent home. Then he joined the circus, the very one from which the lion had escaped. In that show Fred had been one of a group who blacked up and played on mandolins and guitars and banjos, and though he had played in front of Bunny, Sue and Uncle Tad, none of them knew him, nor did Fred see them. The night the show left the town, and just before the lion escaped, Fred had a quarrel with one of the managers and left. He was not paid his money and, quite miserable, he wandered away, not knowing what to do. He became lost in the woods, and finally he reached the rocky gulch where the lion attacked him. "It was just an accident. Tobyhanna didn't mean to hurt me," said Fred. "I'd often fed him and scratched his nose for him in the circus. But I walked right over him as he was asleep in between some rocks, and when he jumped out, as much scared as I was he happened to scratch me. Then I managed to get to this house and I guess I must have gone out of my head or fainted or something." "You did," said Dr. Fandon, "but you are all right now." "We must send word to your father that you are safe," said Mr. Brown, and this was done. Fred was not quite well enough to be moved, but his father came for him the next day, and he made a great fuss over his boy. They understood each other better after that. Mr. Ward thanked everybody who had done anything to help his son, and a few days later took Fred and Dix home, for the dog would not leave his master, much as he liked Splash, Bunny and Sue. In due time Tobyhanna, the lion, was taken back to the circus, and he never got out of his cage again, as far as I ever heard. "Well, I think we can keep on with our tour now," said Mr. Brown, a few days after the new spring had arrived. "It seems almost like leaving home to go away from here," said Mother Brown, as they prepared to leave. "We've had such fun camping here," added Sue. "And lots of things have happened, too!" added Bunny. "I never was near where a lion was locked up in a chicken coop before." "And I don't want to be again," said his mother. "All aboard!" cried Uncle Tad. And once more the "Ark," was traveling along the country road back toward Bellemere. The auto trip had been a great success, and Bunny and Sue talked of it many times, and of how Fred Ward had been found, and of the escaped lion that had scratched him. But now it is time to say good-bye, though you must not think this is the last of the adventures of Bunny and Sue, even though there are no more in this book. There were more ahead of them, but, for the present, we will leave them. THE END THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES By LAURA LEE HOPE Author of the Popular "Bobbsey Twins" Books * * * * * Wrapper and text illustrations drawn by FLORENCE ENGLAND NOSWORTHY * * * * * =12mo. DURABLY BOUND. ILLUSTRATED. UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING= * * * * * These stories by the author of the "Bobbsey Twins" Books are eagerly welcomed by the little folks from about five to ten years of age. Their eyes fairly dance with delight at the lively doings of inquisitive little Bunny Brown and his cunning, trustful sister Sue. Bunny was a lively little boy, very inquisitive. When he did anything, Sue followed his leadership. They had many adventures, some comical in the extreme. BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON GRANDPA'S FARM BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE PLAYING CIRCUS BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CAMP REST-A-WHILE BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT AUNT LU'S CITY HOME BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE IN THE BIG WOODS BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON AN AUTO TOUR BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AND THEIR SHETLAND PONY BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE GIVING A SHOW BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CHRISTMAS TREE COVE * * * * * =GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK= THE BOBBSEY TWINS BOOKS For Little Men and Women By LAURA LEE HOPE Author of "The Bunny Brown" Series, Etc. * * * * * =12mo. DURABLY BOUND. ILLUSTRATED. UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING= * * * * * Copyright publications which cannot be obtained else-where. Books that charm the hearts of the little ones, and of which they never tire. THE BOBBSEY TWINS THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE COUNTRY THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE SEASHORE THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SCHOOL THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SNOW LODGE THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON A HOUSEBOAT THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT MEADOW BROOK THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT HOME THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN A GREAT CITY THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON BLUEBERRY ISLAND THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON THE DEEP BLUE SEA THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE GREAT WEST * * * * * =GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK= THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS SERIES By LAURA LEE HOPE Author of "The Bobbsey Twins Series." * * * * * =12mo. BOUND IN CLOTH. ILLUSTRATED. UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING= * * * * * The adventures of Ruth and Alice DeVere. Their father, a widower, is an actor who has taken up work for the "movies." Both girls wish to aid him in his work and visit various localities to act in all sorts of pictures. THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS Or First Appearance in Photo Dramas. Having lost his voice, the father of the girls goes into the movies and the girls follow. Tells how many "parlor dramas" are filmed. THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS AT OAK FARM Or Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays. Full of fun in the country, the haps and mishaps of taking film plays, and giving an account of two unusual discoveries. THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS SNOWBOUND Or The Proof on the Film. A tale of winter adventures in the wilderness, showing how the photo-play actors sometimes suffer. THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS UNDER THE PALMS Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida. How they went to the land of palms, played many parts in dramas before the camera; were lost, and aided others who were also lost. THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS AT ROCKY RANCH Or Great Days Among the Cowboys. All who have ever seen moving pictures of the great West will want to know just how they are made. This volume gives every detail and is full of clean fun and excitement. THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS AT SEA Or a Pictured Shipwreck that Became Real. A thrilling account of the girls' experiences on the water. THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS IN WAR PLAYS Or The Sham Battles at Oak Farm. The girls play important parts in big battle scenes and have plenty of hard work along with considerable fun. * * * * * =GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK= THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH SERIES By GERTRUDE W. MORRISON * * * * * =12mo. BOUND IN CLOTH. ILLUSTRATED. UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING= * * * * * Here is a series full of the spirit of high school life of to-day. The girls are real flesh-and-blood characters, and we follow them with interest in school and out. There are many contested matches on track and field, and on the water, as well as doings in the classroom and on the school stage. There is plenty of fun and excitement, all clean, pure and wholesome. THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH Or Rivals for all Honors. A Stirring tale of high school life, full of fun, with a touch of mystery and a strange initiation. THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH ON LAKE LUNA Or The Crew That Won. Telling of water sports and fun galore, and of fine times in camp. THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH AT BASKETBALL Or The Great Gymnasium Mystery. Here we have a number of thrilling contests at basketball and in addition, the solving of a mystery which had bothered the high school authorities for a long while. THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH ON THE STAGE Or The Play That Took the Prize. How the girls went in for theatricals and how one of them wrote a play which afterward was made over for the professional stage and brought in some much-needed money. THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH ON TRACK AND FIELD Or The Girl Champions of the School League This story takes in high school athletics in their most approved and up-to-date fashion. Full of fun and excitement. THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH IN CAMP Or The Old Professor's Secret. The girls went camping on Acorn Island and had a delightful time at boating, swimming and picnic parties. * * * * * =GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK= THE OUTDOOR CHUMS SERIES By CAPTAIN QUINCY ALLEN The outdoor chums are four wide-awake lads, sons of wealthy men of a small city located on a lake. The boys love outdoor life, and are greatly interested in hunting, fishing, and picture taking. They have motor cycles, motor boats, canoes, etc., and during their vacations go everywhere and have all sorts of thrilling adventures. The stories give full directions for camping out, how to fish, how to hunt wild animals and prepare the skins for stuffing, how to manage a canoe, how to swim, etc. Full of the spirit of outdoor life. THE OUTDOOR CHUMS Or The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club. THE OUTDOOR CHUMS ON THE LAKE Or Lively Adventures on Wildcat Island. THE OUTDOOR CHUMS IN THE FOREST Or Laying the Ghost of Oak Ridge. THE OUTDOOR CHUMS ON THE GULF Or Rescuing the Lost Balloonists. THE OUTDOOR CHUMS AFTER BIG GAME Or Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness. THE OUTDOOR CHUMS ON A HOUSEBOAT Or The Rivals of the Mississippi. THE OUTDOOR CHUMS IN THE BIG WOODS Or The Rival Hunters at Lumber Run. THE OUTDOOR CHUMS AT CABIN POINT Or The Golden Cup Mystery. =12mo. Averaging 240 pages. Illustrated. Handsomely bound in Cloth.= * * * * * =GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK= THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS SERIES By VICTOR APPLETON * * * * * =12mo. BOUND IN CLOTH. ILLUSTRATED. UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING.= * * * * * Moving pictures and photo plays are famous the world over, and in this line of books the reader is given a full description of how the films are made--the scenes of little dramas, indoors and out, trick pictures to satisfy the curious, soul-stirring pictures of city affairs, life in the Wild West, among the cowboys and Indians, thrilling rescues along the seacoast, the daring of picture hunters in the jungle among savage beasts, and the great risks run in picturing conditions in a land of earthquakes. The volumes teem with adventures and will be found interesting from first chapter to last. THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS Or Perils of a Great City Depicted. THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS IN THE WEST Or Taking Scenes Among the Cowboys and Indians. THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS ON THE COAST Or Showing the Perils of the Deep. THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS IN THE JUNGLE Or Stirring Times Among the Wild Animals. THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS IN EARTHQUAKE LAND Or Working Amid Many Perils. THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS AND THE FLOOD Or Perilous Days on the Mississippi. THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS AT PANAMA Or Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal. THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS UNDER THE SEA Or The Treasure of the Lost Ship. * * * * * =GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK= * * * * * Transcriber's note: Punctuation normalized. Page 13, the word "the" was inserted into "and of the fun". Page 108, "That's what we we're trying to find out." Changed to "That's what we're trying to find out." 
16101	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original lovely illustrations. See 16101-h.htm or 16101-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/6/1/0/16101/16101-h/16101-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/6/1/0/16101/16101-h.zip) DIANE OF THE GREEN VAN by LEONA DALRYMPLE Illustrations by Reginald Birch Chicago The Reilly & Britton Co. Third printing 1914 "_In Arcadie, the Land of Hearte's Desire, Lette us linger whiles with Luveres fond; A sparklynge Comedie they playe--with Fire-- Unwyttynge Fate stands waytynge with hir Wande._" Diane of the Green Van was awarded the $10,000.00 prize in a novel contest in which over five hundred manuscripts were submitted. [Frontispiece: "Excellency, as a gentleman who is not a coward, it behooves you to explain!"] CONTENTS CHAPTER I Of a Great White Bird Upon a Lake II An Indoor Tempest III A Whim IV The Voice of the Open Country V The Phantom that Rose from the Bottle VI Baron Tregar VII Themar VIII After Sunset IX In a Storm-Haunted Wood X On the Ridge Road XI In the Camp of the Gypsy Lady XII A Bullet in Arcadia XIII A Woodland Guest XIV By the Backwater Pool XV Jokai of Vienna XVI The Young Man of the Sea XVII In Which the Baron Pays XVIII Nomads XIX A Nomadic Minstrel XX The Romance of Minstrelsy XXI At the Gray of Dawn XXII Sylvan Suitors XXIII Letters XXIV The Lonely Camper XXV A December Snowstorm XXVI An Accounting XXVII The Song of the Pine-Wood Sparrow XXVIII The Nomad of the Fire-Wheel XXIX The Black Palmer XXX The Unmasking XXXI The Reckoning XXXII Forest Friends XXXIII By the Winding Creek XXXIV The Moon Above the Marsh XXXV The Wind of the Okeechobee XXXVI Under the Live Oaks XXXVII In the Glades XXXVIII In Philip's Wigwam XXXIX Under the Wild March Moon XL The Victory XLI In Mic-co's Lodge XLII The Rain Upon the Wigwam XLIII The Rival Campers XLIV The Tale of a Candlestick XLV The Gypsy Blood XLVI In the Forest XLVII "The Marshes of Glynn" XLVIII On the Lake Shore XLIX Mr. Dorrigan L The Other Candlestick LI In the Adirondacks LII Extracts from the Letters of Norman Westfall LIII By Mic-co's Pool LIV On the Westfall Lake ILLUSTRATIONS "Excellency, as a gentleman who is not a coward it behooves you to explain." . . . _Frontispiece_ Diane swung lightly up the forest path White girl and Indian maid then clasped hands "No, I may not take your hand." CHAPTER I OF A GREAT WHITE BIRD UPON A LAKE Spring was stealing lightly over the Connecticut hills, a shy, tender thing of delicate green winging its way with witch-rod over the wooded ridges and the sylvan paths of Diane Westfall's farm. And with the spring had come a great hammering by the sheepfold and the stables where a smiling horde of metropolitan workmen, sheltered by night in the rambling old farmhouse, built an ingenious house upon wheels and flirted with the house-maids. Radiantly the spring swept from delicate shyness into a bolder glow of leaf and flower. Dogwood snowed along the ridges, Solomon's seal flowered thickly in the bogs, and following the path to the lake one morning with Rex, a favorite St. Bernard, at her heels, Diane felt with a thrill that the summer itself had come in the night with a wind-flutter of wild flower and the fluting of nesting birds. The woodland was deliciously green and cool and alive with the piping of robins. Over the lake which glimmered faintly through the trees ahead came the whir and hum of a giant bird which skimmed the lake with snowy wing and came to rest like a truant gull. Of the habits of this extraordinary bird Rex, barking, frankly disapproved, but finding his mistress's attention held unduly by a chirping, bright-winged caucus of birds of inferior size and interest, he barked and galloped off ahead. When presently Diane emerged from the lake path and halted on the shore, he was greatly excited. There was an aeroplane upon the water and in the aeroplane a tall young man with considerable length of sinewy limb, lazily rolling a cigarette. Diane unconsciously approved the clear bronze of his lean, burned face and his eyes, blue, steady, calm as the waters of the lake he rode. The aviator met her astonished glance with one of laughing deference even as she marveled at his genial air of staunch philosophy. "I beg your pardon," stammered Diane, "but--but are you by any chance waiting--to be rescued?" "Why--I--I believe I am!" exclaimed the young man readily, apparently greatly pleased at her common sense. "At your convenience, of course!" "Are you--er--sinking or merely there?" "Merely here!" nodded the young man with a charming smile of reassurance. "This contraption is a--er--I--I think Dick calls it an hydro-aeroplane. It has pontoons and things growing all over it for duck stunts and if the water wasn't so infernally still, I'd be floating and smoking and likely in time I'd make shore. That's a delightful pastime for you now," he added with a lazy smile of the utmost good humor, "to float and smoke on a summer day and grab at the shore." "I was under the impression," commented Diane critically, "that in an hydro-aeroplane one could rise from the water like a bird. I've read so recently." "One can," smiled the shipwrecked philosopher readily, "provided his motor isn't deaf and dumb and insanely indifferent to suggestion. When it grows shy and silent, one swims eventually and drips home, unless a dog barks and a rescuer emerges from the trees equipped with sympathy and common sense. I've a mechanician back there," he added sociably. "He--he's in a tree, I think. I--er--mislaid him in a very dangerous air current." "Are you aware," inquired the girl, biting her lip, "that you're trespassing?" "Lord, no!" exclaimed the aviator. "You don't mean it. Have you by any chance a reputable rope anywhere about you?" "No," said Diane maliciously, "I haven't. As a rule, I do go about equipped with ropes and hooks and things to--rescue trespassing hydroaviators, but--" she regarded him thoughtfully. "Do you like to float about and smoke?" The sun-browned skin of the young aviator reddened a trifle, but his eyes laughed. "I'm an incurable optimist," he lightly countered, "or I wouldn't have tried to fly over a private lake in a borrowed aeroplane." "I believe," said Diane disapprovingly, "that you were cutting giddy circles over the water and dipping and skimming, weren't you?" "I did cut a monkeyshine or two," admitted the young man. "I was having a devil of a time until you--until the--er--catastrophe occurred." "And Miss Westfall, the owner," murmured Diane with sympathy, "is addicted to firearms. Hadn't you heard? She _hunts_! The Westfalls are all very erratic and quick-tempered. Didn't you know she was at the farm?" The young man looked exceedingly uncomfortable. "Great guns, no!" he exclaimed. "I presumed she was safe in New York. . . . And this is her lake and her water and her waves, when there are any, and no matter how I engineer it, I've got to poach some of her property. Some of it," he added conversationally, "is in my shoe. Lord, I am in a pickle! Are you a guest of hers?" "Yes," said Diane calmly. "I'm staying over yonder on the hill there with Dick Sherrill," offered the young man cordially. "They are opening their place with a party of men, some crack amateur aviators--and myself. Do you know the Sherrills?" "Perhaps I do," said Diane discouragingly. "Why didn't you float about and smoke on Mr. Sherrill's lake?" she added curiously. "It's ever so much bigger than this." "Circumstances," began the young man with dignity, and lighted another cigarette. "My mechanician," he added volubly, after an uncomfortable interval of silence, "is an exceedingly bold young man. He'll fly over anything, even a cow. Isn't really mine either; he's borrowed, too. Dick keeps a few extra mechanicians on hand, like extra cigars. It's Dick's fault I'm out alone. He lent my mechanician to another chap and nobody else would come with me." "I thought," flashed Diane pointedly, "I thought your mechanician was somewhere in a tree." The aviator coughed and reddened uncomfortably. "Doubtless he is," he said lamely. "He--he most always is. Do you know, he spends a large part of his spare time in trees--and swamps--and once, I believe, he was discovered in a chimney. I--I'd like to tell you more about him," he went on affably. "Once--" "Thank you," said Diane politely, "but you've really entertained me more now than one could expect from a gentleman in your distressing plight. Come, Rex." She turned back again at the hemlocks which flanked the forest path. "I'll ask Miss Westfall to send some men," she added and halted. For Diane had surprised a look of such keen regret in the young aviator's face that they both colored hotly. "Beastly luck!" stammered the young man lamely. "I _am_ disappointed. I--I don't seem to have another match." "Your cigarette is burning splendidly," hinted Diane coolly, "and you've a match in your hand." For a tense, magnetic instant the keen blue eyes flashed a curious message of pleading and apology, then the aviator fell to whistling softly, struck the match and finding no immediate function for it, dropped it in the water. "I don't in the least mind floating about," he stammered, his eyes sparkling with silent laughter, "and possibly I'll make shore directly; but Lord love us! don't send the sharp-shooteress--please! Better abandon me to my fate." Slim and straight as the silver birches by the water, Diane hurried away up the lake-path. "The young man," she flashed with a stamp of her foot, "is a very great fool." "Johnny," she said a little later to a little, bewhiskered man with cheeks like hard red winter apples, "there's a sociable, happy-go-lucky young man perched on an aeroplane in the middle of our lake. Better take a rope and rescue him. I don't think he knows enough about aeroplanes to be flying so promiscuously about the country." Johnny Jutes collected a band of enthusiasts and departed. "Nobody there, Miss Diane," reported young Allan Carmody upon returning; "leastwise nobody that couldn't take care of himself. Only a chap buzzin' almighty swift over the trees. Swooped down like a hawk when he saw us an' waved his hand, laughin' fit to kill himself, an' dropped Johnny a fiver an' gee! Miss Diane, but he could drive some! Swift and cool-headed as a bird. He's whizzin' off like mad toward the Sherrill place, with his motor a-hummin' an' a-purrin' like a cat. Leanish, sunburnt chap with eyes that 'pear to be laughin' a lot." Diane's eyes flashed resentfully and as she walked away to the house her expression was distinctly thoughtful. CHAPTER II AN INDOOR TEMPEST "If you're broke," said Starrett, leering, "why don't you marry your cousin?" Carl Granberry stared insolently across the table. "Pass the buck," he reminded coolly. "And pour yourself some more whiskey. You're only a gentleman when you're drunk, Starrett. You're sober now." Payson and Wherry laughed. Starrett, not yet in the wine-flush of his heavy courtesy, passed the buck with a frown of annoyance. A log blazed in the library fireplace, staining with warm, rich shadows the square-paneled ceiling of oak and the huge war-beaten slab of table-wood about which the men were gathered, both feudal relics brought to the New York home of Carl Granberry's uncle from a ruined castle in Spain. "If you've gone through all your money," resumed Starrett offensively, "I'd marry Diane." "_Miss_ Westfall!" purred Carl correctively. "You've forgotten, Starrett, my cousin's name is Westfall, _Miss_ Westfall." "Diane!" persisted Starrett. With one of his incomprehensible whims, Carl swept the cards into a disorderly heap and shrugged. "I'm through," he said curtly. "Wherry, take the pot. You need it." "Damned irregular!" snapped Starrett sourly. "So?" said Carl, and stared the recalcitrant into sullen silence. Rising, he crossed to the fire, his dark, impudent eyes lingering reflectively upon Starrett's moody face. "Starrett," he mused, "I wonder what I ever saw in you anyway. You're infernally shallow and alcoholic and your notions of poker are as distorted as your morals. I'm not sure but I think you'd cheat." He shrugged wearily. "Get out," he said collectively. "I'm tired." Starrett rose, sneering. There had been a subtle change to-night in his customary attitude of parasitic good-fellowship. "I'm tired, too!" he exclaimed viciously. "Tired of your infernal whims and insults. You're as full of inconsistencies as a lunatic. When you ought to be insulted, you laugh, and when a fellow least expects it, you blaze and rave and stare him out of countenance. And I'm tired of drifting in here nights at your beck and call, to be sent home like a kid when your mood changes. Mighty amusing for us! If you're not vivisecting our lives and characters for us in that impudent, philosophical way you have, you're preaching a sermon that you couldn't--and wouldn't--follow yourself. And then you end by messing everybody's cards in a heap and sending us home with the last pot in Dick Wherry's pocket whether it belongs there or not. I tell you, I'm tired of it." Carl laughed, a singularly musical laugh with a note of mockery in it. "Who," he demanded elaborately, "who ever heard of a treasonous barnacle before? A barnacle, Starrett, adheres and adheres, parasite to the end as long as there's liquid, even as you adhered while the ship was keeled in gold. Nevertheless, you're right. I'm all of what you say and more that you haven't brains enough to fathom. And some that you can't fathom is to my credit--and some of it isn't. As, for instance, my inexplicable poker _penchant_ for you." To Starrett, hot of temper and impulse, his graceful mockery was maddening. Cursing under his breath, he seized a glass and flung it furiously at his host, who laughed and moved aside with the litheness of a panther. The glass crashed into fragments upon the wall of the marble fireplace. Payson and Wherry hurriedly pushed back their chairs. Then, suddenly conscious of a rustle in the doorway, they all turned. Wide dark eyes flashing with contempt, Diane Westfall stood motionless upon the threshold. The aesthete in Carl thrilled irresistibly to her vivid beauty, intensified to-night by the angry flame in her cheeks and the curling scarlet of her lips. There were no semi-tones in Diane's dark beauty, Carl reflected. It was a thing of sable and scarlet, and the gold-brown satin of her gypsy skin was warm with the tints of an autumn forest. Carelessly at his ease, Carl noted how the bold eyes of the painted Spanish grandee above the mantel, the mild eyes of the saint in the Tintoretto panel across the room and the flashing eyes of Diane seemed oddly to converge to a common center which was Starrett, white and ill at ease. And of these the eyes of Diane were loveliest. With the swift grace which to Carl's eyes always bore in it something of the primitive, Diane swept away, and the staring tableau dissolved into a trio of discomfited men of whom Carl seemed But an indifferent onlooker. "Well," fumed Starrett irritably, "why in thunder don't you say something?" "Permit me," drawled Carl impudently, with a lazy flicker of his lashes, "to apologize for my cousin's untimely intrusion. I really fancied she was safe at the farm. Unfortunately, the house belongs to her. Besides, your crystal gymnastics, Starrett, were as unscheduled as her arrival. As it is, you've nobly demonstrated an unalterable scientific fact. The collision of marble and glass is unvaryingly eventful." Bellowing indignantly, Starrett charged into the hallway, followed by Payson. Presently the outer door slammed violently behind them. Wherry lingered. Carl glanced curiously at his flushed and boyish face. "Well?" he queried lightly. Wherry colored. "Carl," he stammered, "you've been talking a lot about parasites to-night and I'd like you to know that--money hasn't made a jot of difference to me." He met Carl's laughing glance with dogged directness and for a second something flamed boyishly in his face from which Carl, frowning, turned away. "Why don't you break away from this sort of thing, Dick?" he demanded irritably. "Starrett and myself and all the rest of it. You're sapping the splendid fires of your youth and inherent decency in unholy furnaces. Yes, I know Starrett drags you about with him and you daren't offend him because he's your chief, but you're clever and you can get another job. In ten years, as you're going now, you'll be an alcoholic ash-heap of jaded passions. What's more, you have infernal luck at cards and you haven't money enough to keep on losing so heavily. Half of the poker sermons Starrett's been growling about were preached for you." Now there were mad, irreverent moments when Carl Granberry delivered his poker sermons with the eloquent mannerisms of the pulpit, save, as Payson held, they were infinitely more logical and eloquent, but to-night, husking his logic of these externals, he fell flatly to preaching an unadorned philosophy of continence acutely at variance with his own habits. Wherry stared wonderingly at the tall, lithe figure by the fire. "Carl," he said at last, "tell me, are you honestly in earnest when you rag the fellows so about work and decency and all that sort of thing?" Carl yawned and lighted a cigar. "I believe," said he, "in the eternal efficacy of good. I believe in the telepathic potency of moral force. I believe in physical conservation for the eugenic good of the race and mental dominance over matter. But I'm infernally lazy myself, and it's easy to preach. It's even easier to create a counter-philosophy of condonance and individualism, and I'm alternately an ethical egoist, a Fabian socialist and a cynic. Moreover, I'm a creature of whims and inconsistencies and there are black nights in my temperament when John Barleycorn lightens the gloom; and there are other nights when he treacherously deepens it--but I'm peculiarly balanced and subject to irresistible fits of moral atrophy. All of which has nothing at all to do with the soundness of my impersonal philosophy. Wherefore," with a flash of his easy impudence, "when I preach, I mean it--for the other fellow." Wherry glanced at the handsome face of his erratic friend with frank allegiance in his eyes. Carl flung his cigar into the fire, poured himself some whiskey and pushed the decanter across the table. "Have a drink," he said whimsically. Dick obeyed. It was an inconsistent supplement to the sermon but characteristic. "Carl," he said, flushing under the ironical battery of the other's eyes, "I don't think I understand you--" Carl laughed. "Nobody does," he said. "I don't myself." CHAPTER III A WHIM The fire in the marble fireplace died down, leaping in fitful shadow over the iron-bound doors riveted in nail-heads. They too were relics from the Spanish castle which Norman Westfall had stripped of its ancient appurtenances to fashion an appropriate setting for the beautiful young Spanish wife whose death at the birth of Diane had goaded him to suicide. That Norman Westfall had regarded the vital spark within him as an indifferent thing to be snuffed out at the will of the clay it dominated, was consistent with the Westfall intolerance of custom and convention. By the fire Carl smoked and stared at the dying embers. For all his insolent habit of dominance and mockery he was keenly sensitive and to-night the significant defection of Starrett and Payson after months of sycophantic friendship, had made him quiver inwardly like a hurt child. Only Wherry had stayed with him when his career of reckless expenditure had arrived at its inevitable goal of ruin. There remained, financially, what? Barely four thousand a year in securities so iron-bound by his mother's will that he could not touch them. Black resentment flamed hotly up in his heart at the memory of the Westfall custom of willing the bulk of the great estate to the oldest son. It had left his mother with a patrimony which Carl, inheriting, had chosen contemptuously to regard as a dwarfish thing of gold sufficient only for the heedless purchase of one flaming, brilliant hour of life. That husbanded it might purchase a lifetime of gray hours tinged intermittently with rose or crimson, Carl had dismissed with a cynical laugh, quoting Omar Khayyam. Starrett had sneeringly suggested that, to remedy his fallen fortunes--he might marry Diane! Carl laughed softly but recalling suddenly how Diane had looked as she stood in the doorway, the flame of her honest anger setting off her primitive grace, he frowned thoughtfully at the fire, swayed by one of the mad, reckless whims which frequently rocketed through his brain to heedless consummation. Wherefore he presently dispatched a servant to Diane with a note scribbled carelessly upon the face of the ace of diamonds. "May I see you?" it ran. "I am still in the library. If you like, I'll come up." She came to the library, frankly surprised. Carl rarely saw fit to apologize or seek advice. With his ready gallantry, habitually colored by a subtle sex-mockery, Carl rose, drew a chair for her and leaned against the mantel, smiling. "I'm sorry," said he civilly, "I'm sorry Starrett so far forgot himself." "So am I," said Diane. "Bacchanalian tableaus are not at all to my liking." "Nor mine," admitted Carl. "As an aesthete I must own that Starrett is too fat for a really graceful villain. I fancied you were indefinitely domiciled at the farm. Aunt Agatha has been fussing--" "I was," nodded Diane. "A whim of mine brought me home." Carl dropped easily into a chair and glanced at his cousin's profile. The delicate oval of her face was firelit; her night-black hair one with the deeper shadows of the room. There was mystery in the lovely dusk of Diane's eyes--and discontent--and something mute and wistful crying for expression. "I've a proposition to make," said Carl lightly. "It's partly commercial, partly belated justice, partly eugenic and partly personal." "Your money is quite gone, is it not?" asked Diane, raising finely arched expressive eyebrows. "It is," admitted Carl ruefully. "My career as a bibulous meteor is over. Last night, after an exquisite shower of golden fire, I came tumbling to earth in the fashion of meteors, a disillusioned stone. In other words--stone broke. May I smoke?" "Assuredly." Carl lighted a cigarette. "And the proposition which is at the same time commercial, eugenic and--er--personal?" reminded Diane curiously. Carl ignored the delicate note of sarcasm. "It is merely," he said with a flash of impudence, "that you will marry me." Diane's eyes widened. "How frankly commercial!" she murmured. "Isn't it?" said Carl. "And an excellent opportunity for belated justice as well. My mother, save for our infernal Salic law of inheritance, was entitled to half the Westfall estate." Diane stared curiously at the fire-rimmed hem of her satin skirt. There was something of Carl's lazy impudence in the arch of her eyebrows. "There yet remains the eugenic inducement and, I believe, a personal one!" she hinted. "Thank heaven," exclaimed Carl devoutly, "that we're both logicians. The eugenic consideration is that by birth and brains and breeding I am your logical mate." Diane's eyes flashed with swift contempt. "Birth!" she repeated. The black demon of ungovernable temper leaped brutally from Carl's eyes. Leaning forward he caught the girl's hands in a vicious grip that hurt her cruelly though for all her swift color she did not flinch. "Listen, Diane," he said, his face very white; "if there is one thing in this rotten world of custom and convention and immoral morality which I honestly respect, it is the memory of my mother. Therefore you will please abstain from contemptuous reference to her by look or word." Diane met the clear, compelling rebuke of his fine eyes with unwavering directness. "My mother," said Carl steadily, "was a fine, big, splendid woman, unconventional like all the Westfalls, and a century ahead of her time. Moreover, she had a code of morality quite her own. If Aunt Agatha's shocked sensibilities had not eliminated her from your life so early, contact with her broad understanding of things would have tempered your sex insularity." He glanced pityingly at Diane. "You've fire and vision, Diane," he said bluntly, "but you're intolerant. It's a Westfall trait." He laughed softly. "How scornfully you used to laugh and jeer at boys, because you were swifter of foot and keener of vision than any of them, because you could leap and run and swim like a wild thing! Intolerance again, Diane, even as a youngster!" He rose restlessly, smiling down at her with a lazy expression of deference in his eyes. "Wonderful, beautiful lady of fire and ebony!" he said gently, with a bewildering change of mood which brought the vivid color to Diane's dark cheek. "There's the wild, sweet wine of the forest in your very blood! And it's always calling!" "Yes," nodded Diane wistfully, "it's always calling. How did you know?" "By the wizardry of eye and intuition!" he laughed lightly. "And the personal consideration," he added pleasantly; "we've come at last to that." A tide of color swept brightly over Diane's face. "Surely, Carl," she exclaimed with a swift, level glance, "you don't mean that you care?" "No," said Carl honestly, "I don't. I mean just this. Will you permit me to care? To-night as you stood there in the doorway I knew for the first time that, if I chose, I could love you very greatly." "Love isn't like that," flashed Diane. "It comes unbidden." "To different natures come different dawnings of the immortal white fire!" shrugged Carl. "My love will be largely a matter of will. I'm armored heavily." "For a golden key!" scoffed Diane, rising. "Ah, well," said Carl impudently, "it was well worth a try! I'm sure I could love with all the fiery appurtenances of the Devil himself if I shed the armor." CHAPTER IV THE VOICE OF THE OPEN COUNTRY "Aunt Agatha!" Diane rapped lightly at her aunt's bedroom door. "Are you asleep?" "No, no indeed!" puffed Aunt Agatha forlornly. "Certainly not. When in the world did you come back from the farm, child? I've worried so! And like you, too, to come back as unexpectedly as you went." She opened the door wider for her niece to enter. "But as for sleep, Diane, I hope I'm not as callous as that. I shan't sleep a wink to-night, I'm sure of it." Aunt Agatha dabbed ineffectually at her round, aggrieved eyes. "Carl's a terrible responsibility for me, Diane," she went on, "though to be sure there have been wild nights when I've put cotton in my ears and locked the door and if I'd only remembered to do that I wouldn't have heard the glass crash--one of the Florentine set, too, I haven't the ghost of a doubt. I feel those things, Diane. Mamma, too, had a gift of feeling things she didn't know for sure--mamma did!--and the servants talk--of course they do!--who wouldn't? I must say, though, Carl's always kind to me; I will say that for him but--" The excellent lady whose mental convolutions permitted her to speculate wildly in words with the least possible investment of ideas, rambled by serpentine paths of complaint to a conversational _cul-de-sac_ and trailed off in a tragic sniff. Diane resolutely smothered her impatience. "I--I only ran down overnight. Aunt Agatha," she said, "to--to tell you something--" "You can't mean it!" puffed Aunt Agatha helplessly. "What in the world are you going back to the farm for? Dear me, Diane, you're growing notional--and farms are very damp in spring." Diane walked away to the window and stood staring thoughtfully out at the metropolitan glitter of lights beyond. "Oh, Aunt Agatha!" she exclaimed restlessly, "you can't imagine how very tired I grow of it all--of lights and cities and restaurants and everything artificial! Surely these city days and nights of silly frivolity are only the froth of life! Have you ever longed to sleep in the woods," she added abruptly, "with stars twinkling overhead and the moonlight showering softly through the trees?" "I'm very sure I never have!" said Aunt Agatha with considerable decision. "And it's not at all likely I ever shall. There are bugs and things," she added vaguely, "and snakes that wriggle about." "I've always wanted to lie and dream by a camp fire," mused Diane, unconscious of a certain startled flutter of Aunt Agatha's dressing gown, "to hear the wind rising in the forest and the lap of the lake against the shore." She wheeled abruptly, her eyes bright with excitement. "And I'm going to try it." "To sleep by a lake in springtime!" gasped Aunt Agatha in great distress. "Diane, I beg of you, _don't_ do it! I once knew a man who slept out somewhere--such a nice man, too!--and something bit him--a heron, I think, or a herring. No! It couldn't have been either. Isn't it funny how I do forget! Strangest thing! But to sleep by a lake in springtime, think of that!" "Oh, no, no, no, Aunt Agatha!" laughed Diane. "I didn't mean quite that. I'm merely going back to the Glade farm to-morrow to--" she glanced with furtive uncertainty at her aunt and halted. "Aunt Agatha, I've been planning a gypsy cart! There! It's out at last and I dreaded the telling! When the summer comes, I'm going to travel about in my wonderful house on wheels and live in the free, wild, open country!" "I can't believe it!" said Aunt Agatha, staring. "I can't--I won't believe it!" "Don't be a goose!" begged the girl happily. "All winter the voice of the open country has been calling--calling! There's quicksilver in my veins. See, Aunt Agatha, see the spring moon--the 'Planting Moon' an Indian girl I used to know in college called it! How gloriously it must be shining over silent woods and lakes, flashing silver on the pines and the ripples by the shore. And the sea, the great, wide, beautiful, mysterious sea droning under a million stars!" "Think of that!" breathed Aunt Agatha incredulously. "A million stars! I can't believe it. But dear me, Diane, there are seas and stars and moons and things right here in New York." With a swift flash of tenderness Diane slipped her arm about Aunt Agatha's perturbed shoulders. "You're not going to mind at all!" she wheedled gently. "I'm sure of it. I'd have to go anyway. It's in my blood like the hint of summer in the air to-night." Aunt Agatha merely stared. The Westfalls were congenital enigmas. "A gypsy cart!" she gurgled presently, rising phoenix-like at last from a dumb-struck supineness. "A gypsy cart! Well! A wheelbarrow wouldn't have surprised me more, Diane, a wheelbarrow with a motor!" "Don't you remember Mrs. Jarley's wagon?" reminded Diane. "It had windows and curtains--" "Surely," broke in Aunt Agatha with strained dignity, "you're not going in for waxworks like Mrs. Jarley!" "Dear, no!" laughed Diane, with a sparkle of amusement in her eyes. "There are so many wild flowers and birds and legends to study I shouldn't have time!" "Great heavens," murmured Aunt Agatha faintly, "my ears have gone queer like mother's." "And maybe I'll not be back for a year," offered Diane calmly. "I can work south through the winter--" Aunt Agatha fell tragically back in her chair and gasped. "Didn't we take a whole year to motor over Europe?" demanded Diane impetuously. "And that was nothing like so fascinating as my gypsy house on wheels." "If I could only have looked ahead!" breathed Aunt Agatha, shuddering. "If only I could have foreseen what notions you and Carl were fated to take in your heads, I'd have refused your grandfather's legacy. I would indeed. Here I no more than get Carl safely home from hunting Esquimaux or whatever it was up there by the North Pole--walravens, wasn't it, Diane?--well, walrus then!--than you decide to become a gypsy and sleep by a lake in springtime under a planting moon and stay outdoors all winter, collecting birds, when I fancied you were safely launched in society until you were married." "But Aunt Agatha," flashed the girl, "I'm not at all anxious to marry." Aunt Agatha burst into a calamitous shower of tears. "Aunt Agatha," said Diane kindly, "why not remember that you're no longer burdened with the terrible responsibility of bringing Carl and me up? We're both mature, responsible beings." Aunt Agatha dabbed defiantly at her eyes. "Well," she said flatly, "I shan't worry, I just shan't. I'm past that. There was a time, but at my time of life I just can't afford it. You can do as you please. You can go shoot alligators if you want to, Diane, I shan't interpose another objection. But the trials that I've endured in my life through the Westfalls, nobody knows. I was a cheerful, happy person until I knew the Westfalls. And your father was notional too. I was a Gregg, Diane, until I married your uncle--he wasn't really your uncle, but a sort of cousin--and the Greggs, thank heavens! are mild and quiet and never wander about. Dear me, if a Gregg should take to sleeping by a lake in spring-time under a planting moon, I would be surprised, I would indeed! There was only one in our whole family who ever galloped about to any extent--Uncle Peter Gregg--and you really couldn't blame him. Bulls were perpetually running into him, and once he fell overboard and a whale chased him to shore. Isn't it funny? Strangest thing! But there, Diane, I wonder your poor dear grandfather doesn't turn straight over in his grave--I do indeed. Many and many a time your poor father tried him sorely--and Carl's mother too." Aunt Agatha sniffed meekly. "Will you go alone?" she ventured, wiping her eyes. "Bless your heart, Aunt Agatha, no!" laughed Diane radiantly. "I'm going to take old Johnny Jutes with me!" Diane kissed her aunt lightly on the forehead. "Well," said Aunt Agatha in melancholy resignation, "if you must turn gypsy, my dear, and wander about the country, Johnny Jutes is the best one to go along. He's old and faithful and used to your whims and surely after thirty years of service, he won't break into tantrums." Silver-sweet through the quiet house came the careless ripple of a flute, showering light and sensuous music. There was a dare-devil lilt and sway to the flippant strains and Aunt Agatha covered her face with her hands. "Oh, Diane," she whispered, shuddering, "when he plays like that he drinks and drinks and drinks until morning." "Poor Aunt Agatha!" said the girl pityingly. "What troublesome folk we Westfalls are! And I no less than Carl." "No, no, my dear!" murmured Aunt Agatha. "It's only when Carl plays like that--that I grow afraid." Aunt Agatha went to bed to listen tremblingly while the dare-devil dance of the flute tripped ghostlike through the corridors. And falling asleep with the laughing demon of wind and melody cascading wildly through the mad scene from Lucia, she dreamt that Carl had captured an Esquimau with his flute and weaving a suit of basket armor for him, had dispatched him by aeroplane to lead Diane's gypsy cart into the Everglades of Florida, the home-state of Norman Westfall until his ill-fated marriage. CHAPTER V THE PHANTOM THAT ROSE FROM THE BOTTLE The demon of the flute laughed and fell silent. The house grew very quiet. A fresh log built its ragged shell of color within the library and Carl drank again and again, watching the play of firelight upon the amber liquor in his glass. It pleased him idly to build up a philosophy of whiskey, an impudent, fearless reverie of fact and fancy. "So," he finished carelessly, "every bottle is a crystal temple to the great god Bacchus and who may know what phantom lurks within, ready to rise and grow from the fumes of its fragrant incense into a nebulous wraith of gigantic proportions. Many a bottle such as this has made history and destroyed it. A sparkling essence of tears and jest, of romance and passion and war and grotesquerie, of treachery and irony and blood and death, whose temper no man may know until he tests it through the alchemy of his brain and soul!" To Starrett it gave a heavy courtesy; to Payson a mad buffoonery; to Wherry pathos; to Carl himself--ah!--there was the rub! To Carl its message was as capricious as the wind--a moon-mad chameleon changing its color with the fickle light. And in the bottle to-night lay a fierce, unreasoning resentment against Diane. "Fool!" said Carl. "One mad, eloquent lie of love and she would have softened. Women are all like that. Tell me," Carl stared whimsically into his glass as if it were a magic crystal of revelation, "why is it that when I am scrupulously honest no one understands? . . . Why that mad stir of love-hunger to-night as Diane stood in the doorway? Why the swift black flash of hatred now? Are love and hatred then akin?" The clock struck three. Carl's brain, flaming, keen, master of the bottle save for its subtle inspiration of wounded pride and resentment, brooded morosely over Diane, over the defection of his parasitic companions, over the final leap into the abyss of parsimony and Diane's flash of contempt at the mention of his mother. Half of Diane's money was rightly his--his mother's portion. And he could love vehemently, cleanly, if he willed, with the delicate white fire which few men were fine enough to know. . . . In the soft hollow of Diane's hand had lain the destiny of a man who had the will to go unerringly the way he chose. . . . Love and hunger--they were the great trenchant appetites of the human race: one for its creation, the other for its perpetuation. . . . To every man came first the call of passion; then the love-hunger for a perfect mate. The latter had come to him to-night as Diane stood in the doorway, a slender, vibrant flame of life keyed exquisitely for the finer, subtler things and hating everything else. Still he drank, but the fires of hell were rising now in his eyes. There was treachery in the bottle. . . . Diane, he chose to fancy, had refused him justice, salvation, respect to the memory of his mother! . . . So be it! . . . His to wrench from the mocking, gold-hungry world whatever he could and however he would. . . . Only his mother had understood. . . . And Diane had mocked her memory. Still there had been thrilling moments of tenderness for him in Diane's life. . . . But Diane was like that--a flash of fire and then bewildering sweetness. There was the spot Starrett's glass had struck; there the ancient carven chair in which Diane had mocked his mother; there was red--blood-red in the dying log--and gold. Blood and gold--they were indissolubly linked one with the other and the demon of the bottle had danced wild dances with each of them. A mad trio! After all, there was only one beside his mother who had ever understood him--Philip Poynter, his roommate at Yale. And Philip's lazy voice somehow floated from the fire to-night. "Carl," he had said, "you've bigger individual problems to solve than any man I know. You could head a blood revolution in South America that would outrage the world; or devise a hellish philosophy of hedonism that by its very ingenuity would seduce a continent into barking after false gods. You've an inexplicable chemistry of ungovernable passions and wild whims and you may go through hell first but when the final test comes--you'll ring true. Mark that, old man, you'll ring true. I tell you I _know_! There's sanity and will and grit to balance the rest." Well, Philip Poynter was a staunch optimist with oppressive ideals, a splendid, free-handed fellow with brains and will and infernal persistence. Four o'clock and the log dying! The city outside was a dark, clinking world of milkmen and doubtful stragglers, Carl finished the whiskey in his glass and rose. His brain was very drunk--that he knew--for every life current in his body swept dizzily to his forehead, focusing there into whirling inferno, but his legs he could always trust. He stepped to the table and lurched heavily. Mocking, treacherous demon of the bottle! His legs had failed him. Fiercely he flung out his arm to regain his balance. It struck a candelabrum, a giant relic of ancient wood as tall as himself. It toppled and fell with its candled branches in the fire. Where the log broke a flame shot forth, lapping the dark wood with avid tongue. With a crackle the age-old wood began to burn. Carl watched it with a slight smile. It pleased him to watch it burn. That would hurt Diane, for everything in this beautiful old Spanish room linked her subtly to her mother. Yes, it would hurt her cruelly. Beyond, at the other end of the table, stood a mate to the burning candlestick, doubtless a silent sentry at many a drinking bout of old when roistering knights gathered about the scarred slab of table-wood beneath his fingers. A pity though! Artistically the carven thing was splendid. Cursing himself for a notional fool, Carl jerked the candlestick from the fire and beat out the flames. The heavy top snapped off in his hands. The falling wood disclosed a hollow receptacle below the branches . . . a charred paper. Well, there was always some insane whim of Norman Westfall's coming to light somewhere and this doubtless was one of them. The paper was very old and yellow, the handwriting unmistakably foreign. French, was it not? The firelight was too fitful to tell. Carl switched on the light in the cluster of old iron lanterns above the table and frowned heavily at the paper. No, it was the precise, formal English of a foreigner, with here and there a ludicrous error among the stilted phrases. And as Carl read, a gust of wild, incredulous laughter echoed suddenly through the quiet room. Again he read, cursing the dizzy fever of his head. Houdania! Houdania! Where was Houdania? Surely the name was familiar. With a superhuman effort of will he clenched his hands and jaws and sat motionless, seeking the difficult boon of concentration. Out of the maelstrom of his mind haltingly it came, and with it memory in panoramic flashes. Once more he heard the clatter of cavalry galloping up a winding mountain road to a gabled city whose roofs and turrets glinted ruddily in the westering sun. There had been royalty abroad with a brilliant escort, handsome, dark-skinned men with a lingering trace of Arab about the eyes, who galloped rapidly by him up the winding road to the little kingdom in the mountains. Houdania!--yes that was it--of course. Houdania! A Lilliputian monarchy of ardent patriots. There had been a flaming sunset behind the turrets of a castle and he had climbed up--up--up to the gabled kingdom, seeking, away from the track of the tourist, relief from the exotic gayety of his rocketing over Europe. And high above the elfin kingdom on a wooded ravine where a silver rivulet leaped and sang along the mountain, a gray and lonely monastery had offered him a cell of retreat. Houdania! Yes, he had found Houdania. Philip Poynter had told him of the monastery months before. Philip liked to seek and find the picturesque. Thus had he come into Andorra in the Pyrenees and Wisby in the Baltic. And he--Carl--had found Houdania. But what of it? Ah, yes, the burning candlestick--the paper--the paper! And again a gust of laughter drowned the fitful crackle of the fire. There was gold at his hand--great, tempting quantities of it! "When the test comes, you'll ring true," came the crackle of Philip's voice from the fire. "Mark that, old man, you'll ring true. I tell you, I know." Well, Philip Poynter was his only friend. But Philip was off somewhere, gone out of his life this many a day in a characteristic burst of quixotism. Carl laughed and shuddered, for a mad instant he held the tempting yellow paper above the fire--and drew it back, stared at the charred candlestick and laughed again--but there was nothing of laughter in his eyes. They were darkly ironic and triumphant. There was blood in the fire--and gold--and Diane had mocked his mother. With a groan Carl flung his arms out passionately upon the table, torn by a conflict of the strangely warring forces within him. And with his head drooping heavily forward upon his hands he lay there until the melancholy dawn grayed the room into shadowy distinctness, his angle of vision twisted and maimed by the demon of the bottle. The candlestick loomed strangely forth from the still grayness; the bottle took form; the yellowed paper glimmered on the table. Carl stirred and a spasm of mirthless laughter shook him. "So," he said, "Philip Poynter loses--and I--I write to Houdania!" So from the bottle rose a phantom of glittering gold and temptation to grow in time to a wraith of gigantic proportions. In the bottle to-night had lain tears and jest and love unending, romance and passion, treachery and irony--blood and the shadow of Death. CHAPTER VI BARON TREGAR Lilac and wistaria flowered royally. Carpenter, wheelwright and painter departed. The trim green wagon, picked out gayly in white, windowed and curtained and splendidly equipped for the fortunes of the road, creaked briskly away upon its pilgrimage, behind a pair of big-boned piebald horses from the Westfall stables, with Johnny at the reins. On the seat beside him Diane radiantly waved adieu to her aunt, who promptly collapsed in a chair on the porch and dabbed violently at her eyes. "I shall never get over it," sniffed Aunt Agatha tragically. "Carl may say what he will, I never shall. But now that I've come up here to see her off, I've done my duty, I have indeed. And I do hope Carl hasn't any wild ideas for the summer--I couldn't stand it. Allan, as long as Miss Diane is camping within reasonable distance of the farm, you'd better take the run-about each night and find her and see if she's all right--and brush the snakes and bugs and things out of camp. If everything wild in the forest collected around the camp fire, like as not she wouldn't see them until they bit her." The boy shifted a slim, bare leg and sniggered. "Miss Westfall," he said, "Miss Diane she says she's a-goin' to a spot by the river and camp a week an'--an' if she finds anybody a-follerin' or spyin' on her from the farm, she'll skin him alive an'--an' them black eyes o' her'n snapped fire when she said it. An' Johnny, he's got weepons 'nough with him to fight pirutes." Aunt Agatha groaned and rocking dolorously back and forth upon the porch reviewed the calamitous possibilities of the journey. But the restless young nomad on the road ahead, sniffing the rare, sweet air of early summer, had already relegated the memory of her long-suffering aunt to the forgotten things of civilization. For the summer world, sweet with the scent of wild flowers, was very young, with young leaves, young grass and flowering, sun-warm hedges, and beyond the Sherrill place on the wooded hill, the sun flamed yellow through the hemlocks. "Oh, Johnny Jutes! Oh, Johnny Jutes!" sang the girl happily, with the color of the wild rose in her sun-brown cheeks. "It's good--it's good to be alive!" With a chuckle of enthusiasm Johnny cracked his whip and opined that it was. Now even as the great green van rolled forth upon the country roads, bound for an idyllic spot by the river where Diane had planned to camp a week, two men appeared upon the wide, white-pillared Sherrill porch, smoking and idly admiring the bluish hills and the rolling meadowlands below bright with morning sunlight. To the east lay the silver glimmer of a tree-fringed lake; beyond, a church spire among the trees and a winding country road traveled by the solitary van of green and white. "A singular conveyance, is it not, Poynter?" inquired the older man, his careful articulation blurred by a pronounced foreign accent. Staring intently at the sunlit road, he added: "Is it a common mode of travel--here in America?" The younger man, a lean, sinewy chap with singularly fine eyes of blue above lean, tanned cheeks, frowned thoughtfully. "By no means," said he pleasantly. "Indeed it's quite new to me. Seems to have blowy white things at the sides like window curtains, doesn't it?" "A nomadic young woman, I am told," shrugged the older man carelessly. He stood watching the dusty trail of the nomad with narrowed, thoughtful eyes, unaware that his companion's eyes had wandered somewhat expectantly to the Westfall lake. "Baron Tregar!" whispered Ann Sherrill in a remote corner of the veranda to a girl she had brought up to the farm with her late the night before. "Has a _real_ air of distinction, hasn't he, Susanne? And such deep, dark, _compelling_ eyes. Rather Arabic, I think, but mother says Magyar. Dick says he's immensely interested in the war possibilities of aeroplanes and fearfully patriotic. Touring the States, I believe. Dad picked him up in Washington. Philip's teaching him to fly. Philip was up once before, you know, in the spring and Dad urged him to come up again and bring the Baron along to learn aeroplaning. Philip _Poynter_, of course, the Baron's secretary!" in scandalized italics. "Didn't you know, _really_? . . . _The_ Philip Poynter. . . . And I say it's absolutely _sinful_ for a man to be so good-looking as long as the world's monogamous." "Quarreled with his father or something, didn't he?" asked Susanne vaguely. "Quarreled!" exclaimed Ann righteously. "Well, I should say he did. My dear, the young man's temper simply splintered into a million pieces and he hasn't found them yet. Flatly refused to take a _cent_ of his father's money because he'd discovered it was made dishonestly. _Think_ of it! And Dad says it's true. Old Poynter is a pirate, an unscrupulous, money-mad, villainous old pirate and he did something or other most unpleasant to Dad in Wall Street. And would you _believe_ it, Susanne, Philip went fuming off huffily to some ridiculous little mountain kingdom in Europe that he was awfully keen about--Houdania--and rented himself out as a secretary to Baron Tregar. Just _imagine_! Dick says he organized an aviation department there and won some kind of a prize for an improved model and in the midst of it all, Susanne, Philip's grandfather up and died, after quarreling for years and _years_ with the whole family, and left Philip _all_ his money! _I_ think Philip's quarrel with his father pleased him. But the very queerest part is that Philip actually _likes_ to work and dabble in foreign politics and he flatly refused to give up his job! Isn't it romantic? Philip was _always_ keen for adventure. Dick says you never could put your finger on a spot on the map and say comfortably, 'Philip Poynter's here!' for most likely Philip Poynter was bolting furiously somewhere else!" Unaware of Susanne's furtive interest in his career, Philip scanned the calm, unruffled waters of the Westfall lake and sighing turned back to his chief. There was a tempting drone of motors back among the hangars. "We fly this morning?" he inquired smiling. "Unfortunately not," regretted the Baron, and led the way indoors to a room which Mrs. Sherrill had hospitably insisted upon regarding as a private den of work and consultation for the Baron and his secretary. "There is a mission of exceeding delicacy," began Baron Tregar slowly, "which I feel I must inflict upon you." His deep, penetrating eyes lingered intently upon Philip's face. "It concerns the singular conveyance of green and white and the lady within it." Philip looked frankly astonished. "I take it then," he suggested, "that you know the nomadic lady, Baron Tregar?" "No," said the Baron. Philip stared. "Your Excellency is pleased to jest," he said politely. "On the contrary," said the Baron, "I am at a loss for suitable words in which to express my singular request. I am assured of your interest, Poynter?" "Of my interest, assuredly!" admitted Philip. "My compliance," he added fairly, "depends, of course, upon the nature of the mission." "It is absurdly simple," said the Houdanian suavely. "Merely to discover whether or not the nomadic lady feels any exceptional interest--in Houdania. For the information to be acquired in a careless, disinterested manner without arousing undue interest, requires, I think, an American of brains and breeding, a compatriot of the nomad. It has occurred to me that you are equipped by a habit of courtesy and tact to--arrive accidentally in the path of the caravan--" "I thank you!" said Philip dryly. "I prefer," he added stiffly, "to confine my diplomatic activities to more conventional channels." "When I assure you," purred the Baron with his maddening precision of speech, "that this information is of peculiar value to me and without immediate significance to the lady herself, I am sure that you will not feel bound to withhold your--hum--your coöperation in so slight a personal inconvenience, singular as it may all seem to you, I am right?" Philip reddened uncomfortably. "I am to understand that I would undertake this peculiar mission equipped with no further information than you have offered?" "Exactly so," said the Baron. "I must beg of you to undertake it without question." "Pray believe," flashed Philip, "that I am not inclined to question. That fact," he added coldly, "is in itself a handicap." "The lady's name," explained the Baron quietly, "is Westfall--Diane Westfall." "Impossible!" exclaimed Philip and savagely bit his lip. "Ah, then you know the lady!" said the Baron softly. "I regret," said Philip formally, "that I have not had the honor of meeting Miss Westfall." But he saw vividly again a girl straight and slender as a silver birch, with firm, wind-bright skin and dark, mocking eyes. There were hemlocks and a dog--and Dick Sherrill had been talkative over billiards the night before. "Miss Westfall," added Philip guilelessly, "is the owner of the Glade Farm below here in the valley." "Ah, yes," nodded Tregar. "It is so I have heard." His glance lingered still upon Philip's face in subtle inquiry. Bending its Circean head, Temptation laughed lightly in Philip Poynter's eyes. The girl in the caravan was winding away by dusty roads--out of his life perhaps. And singular as the mission was, its aim was harmless. "Our lady," said the Baron smoothly, "camps by night. From an aeroplane one may see much--a camp--a curl of smoke--a caravan. Later one may walk and, walking, one may lose his way--to find it again with perfect ease by means of a forest camp fire." Somehow on the Baron's tongue the escapade became insidious duplicity. Philip flushed, acutely conscious of a significant stirring of his conscience. "I may fly with Sherrill this afternoon," he said with marked reluctance. "And at sunset?" "I may walk," said Philip, shrugging. "Permit me," said the Baron gratefully as he rose, "to thank you. The service is--ah--invaluable." Uncomfortably Philip accepted his release and went lightly up the stairs. "I am a fool," said Philip. "But surely Walt Whitman must have understood for he said it all in verse. 'I am to wait, I do not doubt, I am to meet you again,'" quoted Philip under his breath; "'I am to see to it that I do not lose you!'" CHAPTER VII THEMAR The door which led into the Baron's bedroom from his own was slightly ajar. Philip, about to close it, fancied he heard the stealthy rustle of paper beyond and swung it noiselessly back, halting in silent interest upon the threshold. Themar, the Baron's Houdanian valet, was intently transcribing upon his shirt-cuff, the contents of a paper which lay uppermost in the drawer of a small portable desk. Catlike, Philip stole across the room. The man's hand was laboriously reproducing upon the linen an intricate message in cipher. "Difficult, too, isn't it?" sympathized Philip smoothly at his elbow. With a sharp cry, Themar wheeled, his small, shifting eyes black with hate. They wavered and fell beneath the level, icy stare of the American. Philip's fingers slipped viselike along the other's wrists and Philip's voice grew more acidly polite. "My dear Themar," he regretted, falling unconsciously into the language of his chief, "I must spoil the symmetry of your wardrobe. The hieroglyphical cuff, if you please." Themar's snarl was unintelligible. Smiling, Philip unbuttoned the stiff band of linen and drew it slowly off. "A pity!" said he with gentle, sarcastic apology in his eyes. "Such perfect work! And after all that infernal bother of stealing the key!" Philip lightly dropped the cuff into the pocket of his coat. "And the key, Themar," he reminded gently, "the key to the Baron's desk? . . . Ah, so it's still here. Excellent! And now that the drawer is locked again--" The hall door creaked. Simultaneously Themar and Philip wheeled. The Baron stood in the doorway. Philip smiled and bowed. "Excellency," said he, "Themar in an over-zealous desire to rearrange your private papers has acquired your private key and I have taken the liberty of confiscating it, knowing that you prize its possession. Permit me to return it now." "Thank you, Poynter!" said the Baron and glanced keenly at Themar. "It is but now that I had missed it." "Excellency," burst forth Themar desperately, "I found it this morning on the rug." "But," purred the Baron, "why seek a keyhole?" Themar's dark face was ashen. Philip, with a wholesome distaste for scenes, slipped away. "Excellency," burst forth Themar passionately as the door closed, "it is unfair--" The Baron raised his hand in a gesture of warning. "Permit me, Themar," he said coldly as the sound of Philip's footsteps died away, "permit me to remind you that my secretary is quite unaware of our peculiar relations. He is laboring at present under the necessary delusion that your arrival here was entirely the result of my fastidious distaste for the personal services of anyone but a fellow countryman. Presumably I had cabled home for you. I prefer," he added, "that he continue to think so." Themar's eyes flashed resentfully. "Excellency," he said sullenly, "it is unfair that I am denied the knowledge of detail that I need. That is why I sought to read the cipher." "And yet, Themar," said the Baron softly, "I fancy Ronador has told you--something--enough!" He shrugged, his impenetrable eyes narrowing slowly. "But that I need you," he said evenly, "but that your knowledge of English makes you an invaluable ally--and one not easily replaced--I would send you back to Houdania--disgraced! As it is, we are hedged about with peculiar difficulties and I must use--and watch you." He glanced significantly at the desk drawer and thence to Themar's dark, unscrupulous face, resentful and defiant. "Now as for the cryptogram which tempted you so sorely," went on the Baron smoothly. "Its chief mission, as I have repeatedly assured you, was to convert my journey of pleasure in America into one of immediate--hum--service. I have spoken to you of a certain paper--" "There was more," said Themar sullenly. "Merely," smiled the Baron with engaging candor, "that you are fully equipped with definite instructions which I am to see are fulfilled." "There is a girl," said Themar bluntly. The Baron stared. "What?" he rumbled sharply. "I--I learned of her and of the cipher in Houdania!" stammered Themar. "You know something more of detail than you need to know," said the Baron dryly. "Moreover," he added icily, "you will confine your professional attentions to the other sex. You are sure about the paper?" "Yes." "Your trip to New York last night was--hum--uneventful?" "Yes." "You will go again to-night?" "It is unnecessary. Granberry is at the Westfall farm." "Ah!" "But, Excellency," reminded Themar glibly, "there is still the girl--" Deep, compelling, Tregar's eyes burned steadily into menace. "Must I repeat--" "Excellency," stammered Themar blanching. "You may go!" said the Baron curtly. There had been no word of the scribbled cuff, Themar remembered. And surely one may steal away one's own. CHAPTER VIII AFTER SUNSET The sun had set. Back from his flight over the hills with Sherrill, Philip had bathed and shaved, whistling thoughtfully to himself. Now as he descended the steep Sherrill lane to the valley, ravine and hollow were already dark with twilight. From the rustling trees arching the lane overhead came the occasional sleepy chirp and flutter of a bird. Off somewhere in the gathering dusk a lonely owl hooted eerily. Still there was storm in the warm, sweet air to-night and back yonder over the hills to the north, the sky brightened fitfully with lightning. Slipping his hand carelessly into his coat pocket for a pipe, Philip laughed. "My Lord!" said he lightly. "The hieroglyphical cuff! I should have given that to the Baron. . . . Themar," added Philip, packing his pipe, "is an infernal bounder!" Diane's camp lay barely two miles to the west. Homing at sunset Philip had veered and circled over it. Now as he turned westward toward the river, the nature of his errand chafed him sorely. "Nor can I see," mused Philip, puffing uncomfortably at his pipe, "why in the devil he wants to know!" A soft, warm nose suddenly insinuated itself into his hand with a frank bid for attention and Philip turned. A shaggy, soft-footed shadow was waggling along at his heels, Dick's favorite setter. "Hello, old top!" exclaimed Philip cheerfully. "When did you hit the trail?" Old Top barked joyously but didn't appear to remember. "Well," said Philip, lazily patting the dog's head, "you're welcome anyway. I'm a diplomat to-night," he added humorously, "bound upon a 'mission of exceeding delicacy' and only a companion of your extraordinary reticence and discretion would be welcome." Man and dog turned aside into a crossroad. It was very dark now, the only spot of cheer save for the lightning behind the hills, the coal of Philip's pipe. "Tell me, old man," begged Philip whimsically, "what would you do? May we not wander casually into camp and look at my beautiful gypsy lady without fussing unduly about this infernal mission? More and more do we dislike it. And in the morning we may respectfully rebel. Ah, an excellent point, Nero. To be sure our chief will be very smooth and insistent but we ourselves, you recall, have possibilities of extreme firmness. And the lady is Diane, though we only call her that, old top, among ourselves. "Splendid decision!" exclaimed Philip presently with intense satisfaction. "Nero, you've been an umpire. We'll rebel. Nevertheless, we must assure ourselves that the camp of our lady is ready for storm." It was. Following a forest path, Philip presently caught the flicker of a camp fire ahead. There was a huge tarpaulin over the wagon and a canopy above the horses. Storm-proof tents loomed dimly among the trees. A brisk little man whose apple cheeks and grizzled whiskers Philip instantly approved, trotted importantly about among the horses, humming a jerky melody. Johnny was fifty and looked a hundred, but those unwary ones who had felt the steely grip of his sinewy fingers were apt evermore to respect him. Diane was piling wood upon the fire with the careless grace of a splendid young savage. The light of the camp fire danced ruddily upon her slim, brown arms and throat bared to the rising wind. A beautiful, restless gypsy of fire and wind, she looked, at one with the storm-haunted wood about her. There came a patter of rain upon the forest leaves. The tents were flapping and the fire began to flare. There were curious wind crackles all about him, and Nero had begun to sniff and whine. Somewhere--off there among the trees--Philip fancied he caught the stealthy pad of a footfall and the crackle of underbrush. Every instinct of his body focusing wildly upon the thought of harm to Diane, he whirled swiftly about, colliding as he did so with something--vague, formless, heavy--that leaped, crouching, from the shadows and bore him to the ground. The lightning flared savagely upon steel. Philip felt a blinding thud upon his head, a sharp, stinging agony along his shoulder. Somewhere in the forest--a great way off he thought--a dog was barking furiously. CHAPTER IX IN A STORM-HAUNTED WOOD "The storm is coming!" exclaimed Diane with shining eyes. "Button the flaps by the horses, Johnny. We're in for it to-night. Hear the wind!" Overhead the gale tore ragged gaps among the fire-shadowed trees, unshrouding a storm-black sky. Fearlessly--the old wild love of storm and wind singing powerfully in her heart--the girl rose from the fire and faced the tempest. Rex pressed fearfully beside her, whining. Off there somewhere in the wind and darkness a dog had barked. It came now again, high above the noise of the wind, a furious, frightened barking. "Johnny!" exclaimed Diane suddenly. "There must be something wrong over there. Better go see. No, not that way. More to the east." And Johnny, whose soul for thirty years had thirsted for adventure, briskly seized an ancient pistol and charged off through the forest. But Aunt Agatha had talked long and tearfully to Johnny. Wherefore, reluctant to leave his charge alone in the rain and dark, he turned back. "Go!" said Diane with a flash of impatience. Johnny went. Looking back over his shoulder he saw the girl outlined vividly against the fire, skirts and hair flying stormily about her in the wind. So might the primal woman stand ere the march of civilization had over-sexed her. The wind was growing fiercer now, driving the rain about in angry gusts. Thunder cannonaded noisily overhead. Veering suddenly in a new direction--for in the roar of the storm the bark of the dog seemed curiously to shift--Johnny collided violently with a dark figure running wildly through the forest. Both men fell. Finding his invisible assailant disposed viciously to contest detention, Johnny fell in with his mood and buried his long, lean fingers cruelly in the other's throat. The fortunes of war turned speedily. Johnny's victim squirmed desperately to his feet and bounded away through the forest. Now as they ran, stumbling and finding their way as best they might in the glitter of lightning, there came from the region of the camp the unmistakable crack of a pistol. Two shots in rapid succession followed--an interval of five seconds or so--and then another. The final trio was the shot signal of the old buffalo hunters which Diane had taught to Johnny. "Where are you?" barked the signal. Drawing his ancient pistol as he ran, Johnny, in vain, essayed the answer. The veteran missed fire. After all, reflected Johnny uncomfortably, one signal was merely to locate him. If another came-- The lightning, flaming in a vivid sheet, revealed a lonely road ahead and on the road by the farther hedge, a man desperately cranking a long, dark car. The lamps of the car were unlighted. With a yell of startled anger, the man who bore the bleeding marks of Johnny's fingers redoubled his speed and darted crazily for the roadway. Before he had reached it the man by the car had leaped swiftly to the wheel and rolled away. From the forest came again the signal: "Where are you?" Johnny groaned. Frantically he tried the rebel again. It readily spat its answer this time, an instantaneous duplicate of shots. "I'm here. What do you want?" In the lightning glare the man ahead made off wildly across the fields. Running, Johnny cocked his ears for the familiar assurance of one shot. "All right," it would mean; "I only wanted to know where you are," but it did not come. Instead--two shots again in rapid succession--an interval--and then another. "I am in serious trouble," barked the signal in the forest. "Come as fast as you can." With a groan Johnny abandoned the chase and retraced his steps. Thus a perverse Fate ever snipped the thread of an embryo adventure. A light flickered dully among the trees to the east. Johnny cupped his hands and yodeled. The light moved. A little later as he crashed hurriedly through the underbrush, Diane called to him. She was holding a lantern high above something on the ground, her face quite colorless. "I'm glad you're here!" she said. "It's the aviator, Johnny. He's hurt--" The aviator stirred. "He's comin' 'round," said Johnny peering down into the white face in the aureole of lantern-light. "The rain in his face likely. . . . Well, young fellow, what do you think of yourself, eh?" "Not much," said Philip blankly and stared about him. "Can you follow us to the camp fire yonder?" asked Diane compassionately. Philip, though evidently very dizzy, thought likely he could, and he did. That his shoulder was wet and very painful, he was well aware, though somehow he had forgotten why. Moreover, his head throbbed queerly. There came a tent and a bed and a blur of incidents. Mr. Poynter dazedly resigned himself to a general atmosphere of unreality. CHAPTER X ON THE RIDGE ROAD At the Westfall farm as the electric vanguard of the storm flashed brightly over the valley, the telephone had tinkled. In considerable distress of mind Aunt Agatha answered it. "I--I'm sure I don't know when he will be home," she said helplessly after a while. . . . "He went barely a minute ago and very foolish too, I said, with the storm coming. . . . At dinner he spoke some of going to the camp--Miss Westfall's camp. . . . I--I really don't know. . . . I wish I did but I don't." The lightning blazed at the window and left it black. Beyond in the lane, a car with glaring headlights was rolling rapidly toward the gateway. Aunt Agatha hung up with an aggrieved sniff. Catching the reflection of the headlights she hurried to the window. "Carl! Carl!" she called through the noise of wind and thunder. The car came to a halt with a grinding shudder of brakes. "Yes?" said Carl patiently. "What is it, Aunt Agatha?" "Dick Sherrill phoned," said his aunt plaintively. "I thought you'd gone. He wanted you to come up and play bridge. Oh, Carl, I--I do wish you wouldn't motor about in a thunder shower. I once knew a man--such a nice, quiet fellow too--and very domestic in his habits--but he would ramble about and the lightning tore his collar off and printed a picture of a tree on his spine. Think of that!" Carl laughed. He was raincoated and hatless. "An arboreal spine!" said he, rolling on. "Lord, Aunt Agatha, that was tough! Moral--don't be domestic!" "Carl!" quavered his aunt tearfully. Again, throbbing like a giant heart in the darkness, the car halted. Carl tossed his hair back from his forehead with a smothered groan, but said nothing. He was always kinder and less impatient to Aunt Agatha in a careless way than Diane. "Will you take Diane an extra raincoat and rubbers?" appealed Aunt Agatha pathetically. "Like as not the pockets of the other are full of bugs and things." "Aunt Agatha," grumbled Carl kindly, "why fuss so? Diane's equipped with nerve and grit and independence enough to look out for herself." Aunt Agatha sniffed and closed the window. "I shan't worry!" she said flatly. "I shan't do it. If Carl comes home with a tree on his spine, it's his own concern. Why _I_ should have to endure all this, however, I can't for the life of me see. I've one consolation anyway. A good part of my life's over. Death will be a welcome relief after what _I've_ gone through!" Shrugging as the window closed Carl drove on rapidly down the driveway. It pleased him to ride madly with the wind and storm. The gale, laden with dust and grit, bit and stung and tore rudely at his coat and hair. The great lamps of the car flashed brilliantly ahead, revealing the wind-beaten grasses by the wayside. Somewhere back in his mind there was a troublesome stir of conscience. It had bothered him for days. It had driven him irresistibly to-night at dinner to speak of visiting his cousin's camp, though he bit his lip immediately afterward in a flash of indecision. The turbulent night had seemed of a sort to think things over. Moonlit fields and roads were enervating. Storm whipping a man's blood into fire and energy--biting his brain into relentless activity!--there was a thing for you. Whiskey did not help. Last night it had treacherously magnified the voice of conscience into a gibing roar. Money! Money! The ray of the lamps ahead, the fork of the lightning, the flickering gaslight there at the crossroads, they were all the color of gold and like gold--of a flame that burned. Yes, he must have money. No matter what the voice, he must have money. At the crossroads he halted suddenly. To the south now lay his cousin's camp, to the north the storm. Perversely Carl wheeled about and drove to the north. A conscience was a luxury for a rich man. Let the thing he had done, sired by the demon of the bottle and mothered by the hell-pit of his flaming passions, breed its own results. It was a fitful nerve-straining task, waiting, and he had waited now for weeks. Waiting had bred the Voice in his conscience, waiting had bored insidious holes in his armor of flippant philosophy through which had crept remorse and bitter self-contempt; once it had brought a flaming resolve brutally to lay it all before his cousin and taunt her with a crouching ghost buried for years in a candlestick. Then there were nights like to-night when the ghastly hell-pit was covered, and when to tell her squarely what the future held, without taunt or apology, stirred him on to ardent resolution. But alas! the last was but an intermittent witch-fire leading him through the marsh after the elusive ghosts of finer things, to flicker forlornly out at the end and abandon him in a pit of blackness and mockery. Very well, then; he would tell Diane of the yellowed paper; he would tell her to-night. However he played the game there was gold at the end. He laughed suddenly and shrugged and swept erratically into a lighter mood of impudence and daring. There was rain beating furiously in his face and his hair was wet. Well, the car pounding along beneath him had known many such nights of storm and wild adventure. It had pleased him frequently to mock and gibe at death, with the wheel in his hand and a song on his lips, and now wind and storm were tempting him to ride with the devil. So, dashing wildly through the whirl of dirt and wind, heavy with the odor of burnt oil, he bent to the wheel, every nerve alert and leaping. As the great car jumped to its limit of speed, he fell to singing an elaborate sketch of opera in an insolent, dare-devil voice of splendid timbre, the exhaust, unmuffled, pounding forth an obligato. The lightning flared. It glittered wickedly upon the unlighted lamps of a car rolling rapidly toward him. With a squirt of mud and a scatter of flying pebbles, Carl swung far to the side of the road and slammed on his brakes, skidding dangerously. The other car, heading wildly to the left, went crashing headlong into a ditch from which a man crawled, cursing viciously in a foreign tongue. "You damned fool!" thundered Carl in a flash of temper. "Where are your lights?" The man did not reply. Carl, whose normal instincts were friendly, sprang solicitously from the car. "I beg your pardon," said he carelessly. "Are you hurt?" "No," said the other curtly. "French," decided Carl, marking the European intonation. "Badly shaken up, poor devil!--and not sure of his English. That accounts for his peculiar silence. Monsieur," said he civilly in French. "I am not prepared to deliver a homily upon wild driving, but it's well to drive with lights when roads are dark and storm abroad." "I have driven so few times," said the other coldly in excellent English, "and the storm and erratic manner of your approach were disquieting." "_Touché_!" admitted Carl indifferently. "You have me there. Your choice of a practice night, however," he added dryly, "was unique, to say the least." He crossed the road, frowned curiously down at the wrecked machine and struck a match. "_Voila_!" he exclaimed, staring aghast at the bent and splintered mass, "_c'est magnifique, Monsieur_!'" A sheet of flame shot suddenly from the match downward and wrapped the wreck in fire. Conscious now of the fumes of leaking gasoline, Carl leaped back. "Monsieur," said he ruefully, and turned. The reflection of the burning oil revealed Monsieur some feet away, running rapidly. Angered by the man's unaccountable indifference, Carl leaped after him. He was much the better runner of the two and presently swung his prisoner about in a brutal grip and marched him savagely back to the blazing car. Again there was an indefinable peculiarity about the manner of the man's surrender. "It is conventional, Monsieur," said Carl evenly, "to betray interest and concern in the wreck of one's property. _Voila_! I have effectively completed what you had begun. If I am not indifferent, surely one may with reason look for a glimmer of concern from you." Shrugging, the man stared sullenly at the car, a hopeless torch now suffusing the lonely road with light. There was a certain suggestion of racial subtlety in the careful immobility of his face, but his dark, inscrutable eyes were blazing dangerously. Carl's careless air of interest altered indefinably. Inspecting his chafing prisoner now with narrowed, speculative eyes which glinted keenly, he fell presently to whistling softly, laughed and with tantalizing abruptness fell silent again. Immobile and subtle now as his silent companion, he stared curiously at the other's fastidiously pointed beard, at the dark eyes and tightly compressed lips, and impudently proffered his cigarettes. They were impatiently declined. "Monsieur is pleased," said Carl easily, "to reveal many marked peculiarities of manner, owing to the unbalancing fact, I take it, that his mind is relentlessly pursuing one channel. Monsieur," went on Carl, lazily lighting his own cigarette and staring into his companion's face with a look of level-eyed interest, "Monsieur has been praying ardently for--opportunities, is it not so? 'I will humor this mad fool who motors about in the rain like an operatic comet!' says Monsieur inwardly, 'for I am, of course, a stranger to him. Then, without arousing undue interest, I may presently escape into the storm whence I came--er--driving atrociously.'" The man stared. "Monsieur," purred Carl audaciously, "is doubtless more interested in--let us say--camp fires for instance, than such a vulgar blaze as yonder car." "One is powerless," returned the other haughtily, "to answer riddles." Carl bowed with curiously graceful insolence. "As if one could even hope to break such splendid nerve as that!" he murmured appreciatively. "It is an impassiveness that comes only with training. Monsieur," he added imperturbably, "I have had the pleasure--of seeing you before." "It is possible!" shrugged the other politely. "Under strikingly different conditions!" pursued Carl reminiscently. There was a disappointing lack of interest in the other's face. "Even that is possible," assented the foreigner stiffly, "Environment is a shifting circumstance of many colors. The honor of your acquaintance, however, I fear is not mine." Carl's eyes, dark and cold as agate, compelled attention. "My name," said he deliberately, "is Granberry, Carl Westfall Granberry." The brief interval of silence was electric. "It is a pity," said the other formally, "that the name is unfamiliar. Monsieur Granberi, the storm increases. My ill-fated car, I take it, requires no further attention." He stopped short, staring with peculiar intentness at the road beyond. In the faint sputtering glow of the embers by the wayside his face looked white and strained. A slight smile dangerously edged the American's lips. With a careless feint of glancing over his shoulder, he tightened every muscle and leaped ahead. The violent impact of his body bore his victim, cursing, to the ground. "Ah!" said Carl wresting a revolver from the other's hand, "I thought so! My friend, when you try a trick like that again, guard your hands before you fall to staring. A fool might have turned--and been shot in the back for his pains, eh? Monsieur," he murmured softly, pinioning the other with his weight and smiling insolently, "we've a long ride ahead of us. Privacy, I think, is essential to the perfect adjustment of our future relations. There are one or two inexplicable features--" The eyes of the other met his with a level glance of desperate hostility. With an undisciplined flash of temper, Carl brutally clubbed his assailant into insensibility with the revolver butt and dragged him heavily to the tonneau of his car, throbbing unheeded in the darkness. Having assured himself of his guest's continued docility by the sinister adjustment of a handkerchief, an indifferent rag or so from the repair kit and a dirty rope, he covered the motionless figure carelessly with a robe and sprang to the wheel, whistling softly. With a throb, the great car leaped, humming, to the road. At midnight the lights of Harlem lay ahead. The ride from the hills, three hours of storm and squirting gravel, had been made with the persistent whir and drone of a speeding engine. But once had it rested black and silent in a lonely road of dripping trees, while the driver hurried into a roadside tavern and telephoned. Now, with a purring sigh as a bridge loomed ahead, the car slackened and stopped. Carl slowly lighted a cigarette. At the end of the bridge a straggler struck a match and flung it lightly in the river, the disc of his cigar a fire-point in the shadows. The car rolled on again and halted. A stocky young man behind the fire-point emerged from the darkness and climbed briskly into the tonneau. "Hello, Hunch," said Carl. "'Lo!" said Hunch and stared intently at the robe. "Take a look at him," invited Carl carelessly. "It's not often you have an opportunity of riding with one of his brand. He's in the _Almanach de Gotha_." "T'ell yuh say!" said Hunch largely, though the term had conveyed no impression whatever to his democratic mind. Cautiously raising the robe Hunch Dorrigan stared with interest at the prisoner he was inconspicuously to assist into the empty town house of the Westfalls. CHAPTER XI IN THE CAMP OF THE GYPSY LADY From a garish dream of startling unpleasantness, Philip Poynter stirred and opened his eyes. "Well, now," he mused uncomfortably, "this is more like it! This is the sort of dream to have! I wonder I never had sufficient wit to carve out one like this before. Birds and trees and wind fussing pleasantly around a fellow's bed--and by George! those birds are making coffee!" There was a cheerful sound of flapping canvas and vanishing glimpses of a woodland shot with sun-gold, of a camp fire and a pair of dogs romping boisterously. Moreover, though his bed was barely an inch from the ground to which it was staked over a couple of poles, it was exceedingly springy and comfortable. Not yet thoroughly awake, Philip put out an exploring hand. "Flexible willow shoots!" said he drowsily, "and a rush mat! Oberon had nothing on me. Hello!" A dog romped joyfully through the flapping canvas and barked. Philip's dream boat docked with a painful thud of memory. Wincing painfully he sat up. "Easy, old top!" he advised ruefully, as the dog bounded against him. "It would seem that we're an invalid with an infernal bump on the back of our head and a bandaged shoulder." He peered curiously through the tent flap and whistled softly. "By George, Nero," he added under his breath, "we're in the camp of my beautiful gypsy lady!" There was a bucket of water by the tent flap. Philip painfully made a meager toilet, glanced doubtfully at the coarse cotton garment which by one of the mystifying events of the previous night had replaced the silk shirt he had worn from Sherrill's, and emerged from the tent. It was early morning. A fresh fire was crackling merrily about a pot of coffee. Beyond through the trees a river of swollen amber laughed in the morning sunlight under a cloudless sky. The ridge of a distant woodland was deeply golden, the rolling meadow lands of clover beyond the river bright with iridescent dew. But the storm had left its trail of broken rush and grasses and the heavy boughs of the woodland dripped forgotten rain. A girl presently emerged from the trees by the river and swung lightly up the forest path, her scarlet sweater a vivid patch in the lesser life and color all about her. [Illustration: Diane swung lightly up the forest path.] "Surely," she exclaimed, meeting Philip's glance with one of frank and very pleasant concern, "surely you must be very weak! Why not stay in bed and let Johnny bring your breakfast to you?" "Lord, no!" protested Philip, reddening. "I feel ever so much better than I look." "I'm glad of that," said Diane, smiling. "You lost a lot of blood and bumped your head dreadfully on a jagged rock. Would you mind," her wonderful black eyes met his in a glance of frank inquiry, "would you mind--explaining? There was so much excitement and storm last night that we haven't the slightest notion what happened." "Neither have I!" exclaimed Philip ruefully. The girl's eyes widened. "How very singular!" she said. "It is indeed!" admitted Philip. "You must be an exceedingly hapless young man!" she commented with serious disapproval. "I imagine your life must be a monotonous round of disaster and excitement!" "Fortuitously," owned Philip, "it's improving!" Piqued by his irresistible good humor in adversity, Diane eyed him severely. "Are you so in the habit of being mysteriously stabbed in the shoulder whenever it storms," she demanded with mild sarcasm, "that you can retain an altogether pernicious good humor?" Philip's eyes glinted oddly. "I'm a mere novice," he admitted lightly. "If my shoulder didn't throb so infernally," he added thoughtfully, "I'd lose all faith in the escapade--it's so weird and mysterious. A crackle--a lunge--a knife in the dark--and behold! I am here, exceedingly grateful and hungry despite the melodrama." To which Diane, raising beautifully arched and wondering eyebrows, did not reply. Philip, furtively marking the firm brown throat above the scarlet sweater, and the vivid gypsy color beneath the laughing dusk of Diane's eyes, devoutly thanked his lucky star that Fate had seen fit to curb the air of delicate hostility with which she had left him on the Westfall lake. Well, Emerson was right, decided Philip. There is an inevitable law of compensation. Even a knife in the dark has compensations. "Johnny," said Diane presently, briskly disinterring some baked potatoes and a baked fish from a cairn of hot stones covered with grass, "is off examining last night's trail of melodrama. He's greatly excited. Let me pour you some coffee. I sincerely hope you're not too fastidious for tin cups?" "A tin cup," said Philip with engaging candor, "has always been a secret ambition of mine. I once acquired one at somebody's spring hut--er--circumstances compelled me to relinquish it. It was really a very nice cup too and very new and shiny. Since then, until now, my life, alas! has been tin-cupless." Diane carved the smoking fish in ominous silence. "Do you know," she said at length, "I've felt once or twice that your anecdotes are too apt and--er--sparkling to be overburdened with truth. Your mechanician, for instance--" Philip laughed and reddened. The mechanician, as a desperate means of prolonging conversation, had served his purpose somewhat disastrously. "Hum!" said he lamely. "I shan't forget that mechanician!" said Diane decidedly. "This now," vowed Philip uncomfortably, "is a _real_ fish!" Diane laughed, a soft clear laugh that to Philip's prejudiced ears had more of music in it than the murmur of the river or the clear, sweet piping of the woodland birds. "It is," she agreed readily. "Johnny caught him in the river and I cooked him." "Great Scott!" exclaimed Philip, inspecting the morsel on his wooden plate with altered interest, "you don't--you can't mean it!" "Why not?" inquired Diane with lifted eyebrows. Philip didn't know and said so, but he glanced furtively at the girl by the fire and marveled. "Well," he said a little later with a sigh of utter content, "this is Arcadia, isn't it!" "It's a beautiful spot!" nodded Diane happily, glancing at the scarlet tendrils of a wild grapevine flaming vividly in the sunlight among the trees. There was yellow star grass along the forest path, she said absently, and yonder by the stump of a dead tree a patch of star moss woven of myriad emerald shoots; the delicate splashes of purple here and there in the forest carpet were wild geranium. "There are alders by the river," mused Diane with shining eyes, "and marsh marigolds; over there by a swampy hollow are a million violets, white and purple; and the ridge is thick with mountain laurel. More coffee?" "Yes," said Philip. "It's delicious. I wonder," he added humbly, "if you'd peel this potato for me. A one cylinder activity is not a conspicuous success." "I should have remembered your arm," said Diane quickly. "Does it pain much?" "A little," admitted Philip. "Do you know," he added guilelessly, "this is a spot for singularly vivid dreams. Last night, for instance, exceedingly gentle and skillful hands slit my shirt sleeve with a pair of scissors and bathed my shoulder with something that stung abominably, and somehow I fancied I was laid up in a hospital and didn't have to fuss in the least, for my earthly affairs were in the hands of a nurse who was very deft and businesslike and beautiful. I could seem to hear her giving orders in a cool, matter-of-fact way, and once I thought there was some slight objection to leaving her alone--and she stamped her foot. Odd, wasn't it?" "Must have been the doctor," said Diane, rising and adding wood to the fire. "Johnny went into the village for him." "Hum!" said Philip doubtfully. "He had very nice hands," went on Diane calmly. "They were very skillful and gentle, as you say. Moreover, he was young and exceedingly good-looking." "Hum!" said Philip caustically. "With all those beauty points, he must be a dub medically. What stung so?" "Strong salt brine, piping hot," said the girl discouragingly. "It's a wildwood remedy for washing wounds." "Didn't the dub carry any conventional antiseptics?" "You are talking too much!" flashed Diane with sudden color. "The wound is slight, but you bled a lot; and the doctor made particular reference to rest and quiet." "Good Lord!" said Philip in deep disgust. "There's your pretty physician for you! 'Rest and quiet' for a knife scratch. Like as not he'll want me to take a year off to convalesce!" "He left you another powder to take to-night," remarked Diane severely. "Moreover, he said you must be very quiet to-day and he'd be in, in the morning, to see you." Something jubilant laughed and sang in Philip's veins. A day in Arcadia lay temptingly at his feet. "Great Scott," he protested feebly. "I can't. I really can't, you know--" "You'll have to," said Diane with unsmiling composure. "The doctor said so." "After all," mused Philip approvingly, "it's the young medical fellows who have the finest perceptions. I _do_ need rest." Off in the checkered shadows of the forest a crow cawed derisively. "Did you like your shirt?" asked Diane with a distracting hint of raillery under her long, black lashes. "It's substantial," admitted Philip gratefully, "and democratic." "You've still another," she said smiling. "Johnny bought them in the village." "Johnny," said Philip gratefully, "is a trump." Diane filled a kettle from a pail of water by the tree and smiled. "There's a hammock over there by the tent," she said pleasantly. "Johnny strung it up this morning. The trees are drying nicely and presently I'm going to wander about the forest with a field glass and a notebook and you can take a nap." Philip demurred. Finding his assistance inexorably refused, however, he repaired to the hammock and watched the camp of his lady grow neat and trim again. On the bright embers of the camp fire, the kettle hummed. "There now," said Philip suddenly, mindful of the hot, stinging wound-wash, "that is the noise I heard last night just after you stamped your foot and _before_ the doctor came." "Nonsense!" said Diane briskly. "Your head's full of fanciful notions. A bump like that on the back of your head is bound to tamper some with your common sense." And humming lightly she scalded the coffeepot and tin cups and set them in the sun to dry. Philip's glance followed her, a winsome gypsy, brown and happy, to the green and white van, whence she presently appeared with a field glass and a notebook. "Of course," she began, halting suddenly with heightened color, "it doesn't matter in the least--but it does facilitate conversation at times to know the name of one's guest--no matter how accidental and mysterious he may be." "Philip!" he responded gravely but with laughing eyes. "It's really very easy to remember." Diane stamped her foot. "I _do_ think," she flashed indignantly, "that you are the most trying young man I've ever met." "I'm trying of course--" explained Philip, "trying to tell you my name. I greatly regret," he went on deferentially, "that there are a number of exceptional circumstances which have resulted in the brief and simple--Philip. For one thing, a bump which muddles a man's common sense is very likely to muddle his memory. And so, for the life of me, I can't seem to conjure up a desirable form of address from you to me except Philip. And Philip," he added humbly, "isn't really such a bad sort of name after all." There was the whir and flash of a bird's wing in the forest the color of Diane's cheek. An instant later the single vivid spot of crimson in Philip's line of vision was the back of his lady's sweater. CHAPTER XII A BULLET IN ARCADIA "It's time you were in bed," said Diane. "Johnny's out staring at the moon and that's the final chore of the evening. Besides, it's nine o'clock." "I shan't go to bed," Philip protested. "Johnny spread this tarpaulin by the fire expressly for me to recline here and think and smoke and b'jinks! I'm going to! After buying me two shirts yesterday and tobacco to-day--to say nothing of bringing home an unknown chicken for invalid stew, I can't with decency offend him." "I can't see why he's taken such a tremendous shine to you!" complained Diane mockingly. "Nor I!" agreed Philip, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "You've been filling his pockets with money!" accused Diane indignantly. "It's the only explanation of the demented way he trots around after you." "Disposition, beauty, singular grace and common sense all pale in the face of the ulterior motive," Philip modestly told his pipe. "What a moon!" he added softly. "Great guns, what a moon!" Beyond, through the dark of the trees, softly silvered by the moon above the ridge, glimmered the river, winding along by peaceful forest and meadows edged with grass and mint. There was moon-bright dew upon the clover and high upon the ridge a tree showed dark and full against the moon in lonely silhouette. It was an enchanted wood of moonlit depth and noisy quiet, of shrilling crickets, the plaintive cries of tree frogs, the drowsy crackle of the camp fire, or the lap of water by the shore, with sometimes the lonely hoot of an owl. "A while back," mused Diane innocently, "there was a shooting star above the ridge--" "Yes?" said Philip puffing comfortably at his pipe. "I meant to call your attention to it but 'Hey!' and 'Look!' were dreadfully abrupt." "There is always--'Philip!'" insinuated that young man. Diane bit her lip and relapsed into silence. "You didn't tell me," said Philip presently, "whether or not you found any more flowers this morning." "Only heaps of wild blackberry," Diane replied briefly. "But the trees were quite as devoid of new birds as Johnny's detective trip of clues." "Too bad!" sympathized Philip. "I'll go with you in the morning." "The bump on your head," suggested Diane pointedly, "is growing malignant!" "By no means!" said Philip lazily. "With the exception of certain memory erasures, it's steadily improving." "Why," demanded Diane with an unexpected and somewhat resentful flash of reminiscence, "why did you tell me your motor was deaf and dumb and insane when it wasn't?" "I didn't," said Philip honestly. "If you'll recall our conversation, you'll find I worded that very adroitly." Thoroughly vexed Diane frowned at the fire. "Was it necessary to affect callow inexperience and such a happy-go-lucky, imbecile philosophy?" she demanded cuttingly. "Hum!" admitted Philip humbly. "I'm a salamander." "And you said you were waiting to be rescued!" she accused indignantly. Philip sighed. "Well, in a sense I was. I saw you coming through the trees--and there are times when one must talk." He met her level glance of reproach with one of frank apology. "If I see a man whose face I like, I speak to him. Surely Nature does not flash that subtle sense of magnetism for nothing. If I am to live fully, then must I infuse into my insular existence the electric spark of sympathetic friendship. Why impoverish my existence by a lost opportunity? If I had not alighted that day upon the lake and waited for you to come through the trees--" he fell suddenly quiet, knocking the ashes from his pipe upon the ground beside him. "The moon is climbing," said Diane irrelevantly, "and Johnny is waiting to bandage your shoulder." "Let him wait," returned Philip imperturbably. "And no matter what I do the moon will go on climbing." He lazily pointed the stem of his pipe at a firelit tree. "What glints so oddly there," he wondered, "when the fire leaps?" "It's the bullet," replied Diane absently and bit her lip with a quick flush of annoyance. "What bullet?" said Philip with instant interest. "It's odd I hadn't noticed it before." "Some one shot in the forest last night while Johnny was off chasing your assailant. Likely the second man he saw cranking the car. It struck the tree. Johnny and I made a compact not to speak of it and I forgot. My aunt is fussy." "Where were you?" demanded Philip abruptly. "By the tree. It--it grazed my hair--" Philip's face grew suddenly as changeless as the white moonlight in the forest. "Accidental knives and bullets in Arcadia!" said he at length. "It jars a bit." "I do hope," said Diane with definite disapproval, "that you're not going to fuss. I didn't. I was frightened of course, for at first I thought it had been aimed straight at me--and I was quite alone--but startling things do happen now and then, and if you can't explain them, you might as well forget them. I hope I may count on your silence. If my aunt gets wind of it, she'll conjure up a trail of accidental shots to follow me from here to Florida and every time it storms, she'll like as not hear ghost-bullets. She's like that." "Florida!" ejaculated Philip--and stared. "To be sure!" said Diane. "Why not? Must I alter my plans for somebody's stray bullet?" Philip frowned uneasily. The instinctive protest germinating irresistibly in his mind was too vague and formless for utterance. "I beg your pardon," he stammered. "But I fancied you were merely camping around among the hills for the summer." The girl rose and moved off toward the van looming ghostlike through the trees. "Good night--_Philip_!" she called lightly, her voice instinct with delicate irony. Philip stirred. His voice was very gentle. "Thank you!" he said simply. Diane hastily climbed the steps at the rear of the van and disappeared. "I hate men," thought Diane with burning cheeks as she seated herself upon the cot by the window and loosened the shining mass of her straight black hair, "who ramble flippantly through a conversation and turn suddenly serious when one least expects it." By the fire, burning lower as the moon climbed higher, Philip lay very quiet. Somehow the moonlit stillness of the forest had altered indefinably. Its depth and shadows jarred. Fair as it was, it had harbored things sinister and evil. And who might say--there was peace of course in the moon-silver rug of pine among the trees, in the gossamer cobweb there among the bushes jeweled lightly in dew, in the faint, sweet chirp of a drowsy bird above his head--but the moon-ray which lingered in the heart of the wild geranium would presently cascade through the trees to light the horrible thing of lead which had menaced the life of his lady. Well, one more pipe and he would go to bed. Johnny must be tired of waiting. Philip slipped his hand into his pocket and whistled. "So," said he softly, "the hieroglyphic cuff is gone! It's the first I'd missed it." "Like as not it dropped out of my pocket when I fell last night," he reflected a little later. "I'd better go to bed. I'm beginning to fuss." CHAPTER XIII A WOODLAND GUEST There was gray beyond the flap of Philip's tent, a velvet stillness rife with the melody of twittering birds. Already the camp fire was crackling. Philip rose and dressed. Beyond, through the ghostly trees where the river glimmered in the gray dawn with a pearly iridescence, a girl was fishing. There were deeper shadows in the hollows but the sky behind the wooded ridge to the east was softly opaline. As the river grew pink, mists rose and curled upward and presently the glaring searchlight of the sun streamed brilliantly across the river and the forest, flinging a banner of shadow tracery over the wakening world. The girl by the river caught a fish, deftly strung it on a willow shoot beside some others and bathed her hands in the river. Turning she smiled and waved. Philip went to meet her. "Let me take your fish," he offered. "Your arm--" began Diane, "Pshaw!" insisted Philip. "It's ever so much better. I can even use my hand." To prove it, Philip presently armed himself with a fork and developed considerable helpful interest in a pan of fish. Whereupon a general atmosphere of industry settled over the camp. Rex and Nero acrobatically locked forepaws and rolled over and over in a clownish excess of congeniality. Johnny trotted busily about feeding the horses. Diane made the coffee, arousing the frank and guileless interest of Mr. Poynter. The fish began to sizzle violently. Considerably aggrieved by a variety of unexpected developments in the pan, Philip harpooned the smoking segments with indignant vim, burned his fingers, made reckless use of the wounded arm and regretfully resigned the task to Johnny who furtively bestowed certain hot sable portions of the rescued fish upon the dogs, thereby arousing a snarling commotion of intense surprise. "That's a wonderful bed of mine," commented Philip at breakfast. "Tell me where in the world did you get your camp equipment?" "I made the bed myself," said Diane happily, "of red willow shoots from the swamp, and I carved these forks and spoons out of wood Johnny gathered." "I do wish I were clever!" grumbled Philip in acute discontent. "After breakfast I'm going to whittle out a wildwood pipe and make a birch canoe, and likely I'll weave a rush mat and a willow bed and carve some spoons and forks and a sundial." "Will you be through by noon?" asked Diane politely. Philip laughed. "As a matter of fact," he said easily, "I'm going with you to lamp birds. I want to duck that fool doctor." "You'll do nothing of the sort," said Diane with decision, "for I'm going to stay in camp and bake bread." The bread was baking odorously and a variety of shavings flying ambitiously from an embryo pipe by ten o'clock. At noon the doctor had not yet arrived. Philip dexterously served a savory fish chowder from a pot hanging within a tripod of saplings and refused to dwell upon the thought of his eventual departure. A man appeared among the trees to the east, switching absently at the underbrush with a cane. Philip sniffed. "I thought so," he nodded. "That medical dub carries a cane on his professional rounds! Like as not he wears a flowing tie, a monocle and pink socks." The man approached and raised his hat, smiling urbanely. It was Baron Tregar. Philip leaped to his feet, reddening. "Excellency!" he stammered. "Pray be seated!" exclaimed the Baron with sympathy. "Such a disturbing experience as you have had affords one privileges." "Permit me," said Philip uncomfortably to Diane, "to present my chief, Baron Tregar. Excellency, Miss Westfall, to whom I am eternally indebted." And Philip's eyes sparkled with laughter as he uttered her name. There was an old world courtliness in the Baron's bow and murmured salutation. "Ah," said he with gallant regret, "Fate, Miss Westfall, has never seen fit to temper misfortune so pleasantly for me. Poynter, you have been exceedingly fortunate." Diane laughed softly. It was hers to triumph now. "_Mr. Poynter_," she said with relish, flashing a sidelong glance at that discomfited young man, "Mr. Poynter has been good enough to make the chowder. It would gratify me exceedingly, Baron Tregar, to have you test it." Heartily anathematizing his chief, who was gratefully expressing his interest in chowder, Mr. Poynter stared perversely at his cuff. "I wonder," he reflected uneasily, "just what he wants and how in thunder he knew!" The Baron, gracefully adapting himself to woodland exigencies, supplied the answer. "Dr. Wingate," he boomed, "is at the Sherrill farm. Themar officiously fancied he could fly and had a most distressing fall yesterday from the smaller biplane." His deep, compelling eyes lingered upon Philip's face. "Dr. Wingate spoke some of an unlucky young man marooned in a forest with a knife wound in his shoulder--described him--and behold!--my missing secretary is found after considerable bewilderment and uneasiness on my part. Wingate will stop here later." Philip civilly expressed regret that he had not thought to dispatch Johnny to the Sherrill farm with a message. "It is nothing!" shrugged Tregar smoothly. "One forgets under less mitigating causes." And, having begged the details of Philip's adventure, he listened with careful attention. "It is exceedingly mysterious," he rumbled, after a frowning interval of thought. "But surely one must feel much gratitude to you, Miss Westfall. A night in the storm without attention and we have complications." Over his coffee, which he sipped clear with the appreciation of an epicure, the Baron, in his suave, inscrutable way, grew reminiscent. He talked well, selecting, discarding, weighing his words with the fastidious precision of a jeweler setting precious stones. Subtly the talk drifted to Houdania. There was a mad king--Rodobald--upon the throne. Doubtless the Baron's hostess had heard? No? Ah! So must the baffling twist of a man's brain complicate the destiny of a kingdom. And Rodobald was hale at sixty-five and mad as the hare of March. There had been much talk of it. Singular, was it not? Followed a sparkling anecdote or so of court life and shrugging reference to the jealous principality of Galituria that lay beyond in the valley. To Galiturians the madness of King Rodobald was an exquisite jest. Philip grew restless. "Confound him!" he mused resentfully. "One would think I had deliberately contrived to linger here merely to give him a graceful opportunity to accomplish his infernal errand himself. Thank Heaven this lets me out!" He glanced furtively at Diane. The girl's interest was wholesomely without constraint. "Great guns!" decided Philip fretfully. "I doubt if she's ever heard of his toy kingdom before and yet he's probing her interest with every atom of skill he can command." Puzzled and annoyed he fell quiet. "It is somewhat inaccessible--my country," Tregar was saying smoothly. "One climbs the shaggy mountain by a winding road. You have climbed it perhaps--touring?" "Excellency, no!" regretted Diane. "I fear it is quite unknown to me." "Ah!" exclaimed the patriotic Baron, "that is indeed unfortunate. For it is well worth a visit." He turned to Philip. "You are pale and quiet, Poynter," he added kindly. "A day or so more perhaps here where it is quiet--" Philip flushed hotly, "Excellency!" he protested feebly. The Baron bowed courteously to Diane. "If I may crave still further hospitality and indulgence," he begged regretfully. "There is already much excitement at the Sherrill place owing to the officious act of my man, Themar, and his accident. Another invalid--my secretary--one flounders in a dragnet of unfortunate circumstances. And I am sensitive in the disturbance of my host's guests--" Diane's eyes as they rested upon Philip were very kind. "Excellency," she said warmly, "Mr. Poynter's tent lies there among the trees. I trust he will not hesitate to use it until he is strong again. Fortunately we are equipped for emergency." The Baron bowed gratefully. "You are a young woman of exceeding common sense!" he said with deep respect. Philip was very grateful that the Baron had not misunderstood; a breath might shatter the idyllic crystal into atoms. Later, when the Baron had departed, Philip flushed suddenly at the ugly suspicion rising wraithlike in his mind. He was accustomed to the Baron's subtleties. "Mr. Poynter!" called Diane. Mr. Poynter perversely went on whittling out the hollow of his wildwood pipe. "Mr. Poynter!" The bowl, already sufficient for a Titan's smoke, grew a trifle larger and somewhat irregular. Carving had conceivably injured Mr. Poynter's hearing, for he kept on whistling. "Philip!" said Diane and stamped her foot. "Yes?" replied Philip respectfully, and instantly discarded the Titan's pipe to listen. "Why are you so quiet?" flashed Diane. "Well, for one thing," explained Philip cheerfully, "I'm mighty busy and for another, I'm thinking." "Do you withdraw into a sound-proof shell when you think?" "Mr. Poynter does!" regretted Philip. "_I_ do not." "I do hope," said the girl demurely, "that you'll be able to hear when the doctor gets here. He's coming through the trees." CHAPTER XIV BY THE BACKWATER POOL The sun had set with a primrose glory of reflection upon the river and the ridge. Over there in the west now there was a pale after-glow of marigold. It streamed across the dark, still waters of the backwater pool by the river and faintly edged the drowsy petals of white and yellow lilies. Already distant outline and perspective were hazy, there was purple in the forest, and birds were winging swiftly to the woods. By the pool with a great mass of dripping lilies at his side to carry back to camp, Philip stared frowningly at the tangled float of foliage at his feet. Somehow that ugly flash of suspicion had persisted. Why had the Baron wished him to stay in the camp of Diane? . . . What was the portent of his peculiar interest anyway? Philip sighed. "Do you know, Nero," he confided suddenly, patting the dog's shaggy head, "my life is developing certain elements of intrigue and mystery exceedingly offensive to my spread-eagle tastes. There's a knife and a bullet now, Johnny's two men and the auto, and a cuff and a most mysterious link between our lady and the Baron. I'll be hanged if I like any of it. And why in thunder did Themar crib an aeroplane and bump his fool head?" He fell suddenly thoughtful. "As for you, old top," he added presently, "you ought to go home. Dick will be fussing." Nero waggled ambiguously. Philip nodded. "Right, old man," he admitted with sudden gravity. "I can always depend upon you to set me right. It's nothing like so essential for you to go as it is for me. You did right to mention it. I ought to dig out--all the more because the Baron wants me to stay--but I've been thinking a bit this afternoon and unusual problems demand unusual solutions. You'll grant that?" Nero politely routed an excursive bug from his path and lay down to listen. "Mr. Poynter!" called a voice from the darkling trees behind him. Mr. Poynter smiled and fell deliberately to filling the bowl of his wildwood pipe. Gnarled and twisted and marvelously eccentric was this wildwood pipe and therefore an object of undoubted interest. The bowl had somehow eluded Philip's desperate effort to keep it of reasonable dimensions and required a Gargantuan supply of tobacco. "Mr. Poynter!" "My Lord!" murmured Philip, staring ruefully into the pipe-bowl, "the infernal thing is bottomless! Exit another can of tobacco. I'll have to ask Johnny to buy me a barrel." And Philip flung the empty can into the pool whence a frog leaped with a frightened croak. "Philip!" "Mademoiselle!" said Philip pleasantly. Darkly lovely, Diane's eyes met his with a glance of indignant reproach. Somehow her lips were like a scarlet wound in the gypsy brown skin and her cheeks were hot with color. "A wildwood elf of scarlet and brown!" thought Philip and hospitably flicked away a twig or so with his handkerchief that she might sit down. "There's water plantain over there in the bog," he said lazily, "and swamp honeysuckle. And see," he turned out his pockets, "swamp apples. Queer, aren't they? Johnny says they're good to eat. The honeysuckle was full of them." Diane bit daintily into the peculiar juicy pulp. "A man of your pernicious good humor," she said greatly provoked, "is a menace to civilization. You sap all the wholesome fire of one's most cherished resentment." "I know," admitted Philip humbly. "I'll be hanged yet." "I can't see what in the world you find so absorbing over here," she commented with marked disapproval. "All the while I was getting supper I watched you. And you merely smoked and flipped pebbles in the pool and kept supper waiting." "You're wrong there," said Philip. "I've been thinking, too." "I'd like to know just why you've been thinking so deeply!" "Honest Injun?" "Honest Injun!" "Well," said Philip slowly, "I've been reviewing the possible mishaps incident to a caravan trip to Florida." "Mishaps!" Diane studied him in frank displeasure. "Are you a fussy pessimist?" "By no means. Merely--prudent." Philip's eyes narrowed thoughtfully and he fell silent. The iris shadows beyond the river deepened. A firefly or so flickered brightly above the fields of clover. In the soft clear twilight, fragrant with the smell of clover and water lily and rimmed now by the rising moon, Philip found his resolution of the afternoon difficult to utter. The pool at his feet was a motionless mirror of summer stars. Surely there could be nothing but peace in this tranquil world of tree and grass and murmuring river. And yet-- "Do take that ridiculous pipe out of your mouth and say something!" exclaimed Diane restlessly. "You look as if you were smoking a pumpkin! Besides, the supper's all packed up in hot stones and grass to keep it hot. Why moon so and shoot pebbles at the frogs?" "Well," said Philip abruptly, "do you mind if I say that your trip seems a most imprudent venture?" "By no means!" replied Diane with maddening composure. "But it's only fair to warn you that my aunt's already said all there is to say on the subject. The horses may drop dead," she reviewed swiftly on her slim brown fingers, "Johnny may fall heir to an apoplectic fit and fall on a horse thereby inducing him to run away into a swamp and sink in quicksand. I may be kidnapped and held for ransom in the wilds of Connecticut and the van may burn up some night when I'm asleep in it. Then I may eat poison berries in a fit of absent-mindedness, I may fall into a river while I'm fishing, forget how to swim, and drown, Johnny may gather amanitas and kill us both, and something or other may bite me. There are one or two other little things like forest fires, floods and brigands--" "Help!" murmured Philip. "Can you add anything to that?" demanded Diane politely. Philip laughed. Diane, delicately sarcastic, was irresistible. "There is the bullet--" he reminded gravely. "_Please_!" begged Diane faintly. Philip flushed with a sense of guilt. "Well," he owned, "I have bothered you a lot about it, that's a fact! But it sticks so in my mind. There's something else--" "Yes?" said Diane discouragingly. "Didn't you tell me yesterday that you'd had a feeling some one had been spying on your camp?" "Yes," said Diane in serious disapproval. "I did. I get seizures of confidential lunacy once in a while. Are you going to fuss about that?" "No," said Philip gently. "But the knife and the bullet and that have made me wonder--a lot. After all," he regretted sincerely, "my notions are very vague and formless, but I feel so strongly about them that--urging my friendship for Carl as my sole excuse for unasked advice to his cousin--" "Yes?" Philip laid aside his pipe with a sigh. The crisp music of his lady's voice was not encouraging. "I do hope you'll forgive me," he said quietly, "but I'm going to urge you to abandon your trip to Florida!" "Mr. Poynter!" flashed Diane indignantly. "The bump on your head has had a relapse. Better let Johnny go for the doctor again." "I know I'm infernally presumptuous," acknowledged Philip flushing, "but I'm terribly in earnest." Diane's eyes, wide, black, rebuking, scanned his troubled face askance. "I ought to be exceedingly angry," she said slowly, "and if it wasn't for the bump, like as not I would be--but I'm not." "I'm truly grateful," said Philip with a sigh of relief. And added to himself, "Philip, old top, you're in for it." "Why," exclaimed Diane, "I've never been so happy in my life as I have been here by this beautiful river!" "Nor I!" said Philip truthfully. Diane did not hear. "Every wild thing calls," she went on, impetuously. "It always has. Fish--bird--wild flower--the smell of clover--the hum of bees--I can't pretend to tell you what they all mean to me. Even as a youngster I frightened my aunt half to death by running away to sleep in the forest. I'm sorry I'll ever have to go back to civilization!" "And yet," insisted Philip inexorably, "to me it seems that you should go back--to-morrow!" "I do seem to feel a stir of temper!" said Diane reflectively. "Maybe I'd better go back and look at supper. You can come after you're through pelting that frog." "There's still another reason," said Philip humbly, "which I can't tell you. Indeed, I ought not mention it. I can only beg you to take it on trust and believe that it's another forcible argument against your trip. Somehow, everything in my mind weaves into a gigantic warning. So disturbing is the notion," added Philip unquietly, "that--" "Yes?" queried Diane politely. "That after much thought, I have decided to stay here in camp until you abandon your nomadic scheme and break camp for home. There'll come a time, I'm sure, when you'll think as I do to get rid of me." Diane rose with suspicious mildness. "I'm hungry," she said, "and Johnny's yodeling." "Well," said Philip provokingly, "I don't believe I want any supper after all. The atmosphere's too chilly." CHAPTER XV JOKAI OF VIENNA It was insolent music, a taunt in every note. Carl laid aside his flute and inspected his prisoner with impudent interest. "You _are_ the most difficult person to entertain!" he accused softly. "Here Hunch has strained a sinuous spine performing our beautiful native dances, the tango and the hesitation, and I've fluted up all the wind in the room and still you glower." "Monsieur," broke forth the prisoner, goaded beyond endurance by the stifling heat and the stench of Hunch's pipe, "is it not enough to imprison me here without reason, that you must taunt and gibe--" he choked indignantly and stared desperately at the boarded windows. "Let your voice out, do!" encouraged Carl. "We dispensed with the caretaker days ago, fearing you'd feel restricted." The other's face was livid. "Monsieur!" he cried imperiously, his eyes flashing. "Take care!" "I know," said Carl soothingly, "that you have deep, dark, sinister possibilities within you--dear, yes! You tried something of the sort on the Ridge Road. That's why your august head's so badly bruised. But why aggravate your blood pressure now when it's so infernally hot and you've work ahead. Hunch," he added carelessly to the admiring henchman who had once dealt away successive slices of his inheritance, "go get a pitcher of ice water and rustle up another siphon of seltzer and some whiskey. Likely His Nibs and I will play chess again to-night." Hunch rose from a chair by the window where he had flattened his single good eye against a knot hole, and slouched heavily to the door. The face of the prisoner slowly whitened. Every muscle of his body quivered suddenly in horrible revulsion. Nights of enforced drunkenness had left his nerves strained to the breaking point. "Monsieur," he panted, greatly agitated, "the whiskey--the thought of it again to-night--is maddening." Carl merely raised ironical eyebrows. "You are not a man," choked the other, shaking. "You are a nameless demon! Such hellish originality in the conception of evil, such singular indignities as you have seen fit to inflict, they are the freaks of a madman!" "Thank you," said Carl politely. "One likes to have one's little ingenuities appreciated." "I--I am ill--and the room is stifling." "If I do not mind it," said Carl in aggrieved surprise, "why should you?" "You are a thing of steel and infernal fire. I am but human." "There is a way to stop it all," reminded Carl, lazily relighting his cigar. "Why not give me a logical reason for your presence in America?" "I have done so. Have I not said again and again that I am Sigimund Jokai, of Vienna, touring in America?" "You have said so," agreed Carl imperturbably, "but you lie. There was an empty chamber in your revolver, you were perilously close to my cousin's camp. Why? Is it not better to tell me than foolishly to waste such splendid nerve and grit as you possess?" The prisoner moistened his bloodless lips and shrugged. "Monsieur," he accused coldly, "you tinge commonplace incidents with melodrama." "Days ago--er--Jokai of Vienna," went on Carl thoughtfully, "I dispatched a formal communication to your country. Why has it been ignored? Why did my first inkling of its effect come in the sight of your face in suspicious territory? And why, Monsieur," purred Carl softly, "did you seek to kill me by a trick?" "Monsieur, you delayed me. I am hot of temper--" "And kill whoever angers you? My dear Jokai, that's absurd. As for your singular indifference to the burning car--that's easy. You'd stolen it. But why?" He smiled slightly and picked up his flute. With infinite softness a waltz danced lightly through the quiet room. To such a fanciful, eerie piping might the ghost of a child have danced. Then without pause or warning it swung dramatically into a stirring melody of power and dignity. The wretched man by the table buried his face in his hands and groaned. "Ah!" said Carl softly. "So Monsieur has heard that tune before? That in itself is illuminating." With a leer Hunch entered and deposited a tray upon the table. Carl poured himself some whiskey and pushed the decanter toward his guest with a significant glance. Jokai of Vienna poured and drank with a shudder of nausea. "We've a new chessboard," said Carl. "It's most ingenious. Hunch spent a large part of his valuable morning shopping for it. The board and chessmen are metal and I myself have added one or two unique improvements. Help yourself to some more whiskey--do." "Monsieur," faltered Jokai desperately, "I--I can not." "Hunch," said Carl softly. "His Nibs won't drink." Instantly from the wired metal points of Jokai's chair a stinging electric current swept fiendishly through his body. Last night it had goaded him unspeakably. To-night, with every tortured nerve leaping, it was unbearable. Shaking, he poured again and drank--great drops of sweat starting out upon his forehead. Where the rope bound his ankles the flesh was aching dully. "Mercy!" he choked. "I--I can not bear it." "There is a way to stop it!" reminded Carl curtly. "The ivory chessmen for me, Hunch. And whenever he refuses to drink--start the current." With the metal chessboard before him, Carl idly arranged his ivory men. Jokai touched a metal pawn and shuddered violently. The metal board was wired. Thenceforth every move in the game he must play with the metal men would complete the circuit and send the biting needles through his frame. It was delicately gauged, a nerve-racking discomfort without definite pain, a thing to snap the dreadful tension of a man's endurance at the end. "Ah! Monsieur!" cried Jokai wildly. "It is inconceivable--" "Play!" said Carl briefly. White and grim his guest obeyed. In terrible silence they played the game through to the end. "Let me pour you some more whiskey," insisted Carl with infernal courtesy. "Let us understand each other. Whenever I drink, I expect you to do the same. As for you, Hunch, you'll kindly stay sober!" Jokai gulped the nauseating torture to the end. He was faint and sick. By the end of the third game, every move had become convulsive. The insidious bite of the current was getting horribly on his nerves. Still with desperate will he played on. Drunk and dizzy--his veins hot and pounding, he stared in fascinated horror at the face of his merciless opponent. Through the film of smoke it loomed vividly dark, impudent, ironic, the mobile mouth edged satirically with a slight smile. "Are you man or devil?" he whispered. Carl laughed. His hand, for all his drinking, was calm and steady, his handsome eyes clear and cold and resolute. "Hunch," he said curtly, "if you touch that bottle again, I'll break it over your head. You're drunk now." To Jokai his voice trailed off into curious nothingness. Somewhere he knew in a room stifling hot and hazy with the fumes of vile tobacco there was a voice, musical, detached and very far away. "Monsieur," it was saying, "there are still the questions." With shaking hand Jokai touched a metal king and screamed. The heat and the hell-board hard upon his days and nights of enforced drinking were too much. With a strangled sob, Jokai of Vienna pitched forward upon the board unconscious. Carl swept the metal men away with a shrug. "Poor devil!" he said pityingly. "All this hell sooner than answer a question or two. By to-morrow night, with another dose of the same medicine, he'll feel differently. Likely I'll run up to Connecticut to-night, Hunch, to see my aunt. I'll be back by noon to-morrow. Tear off the window boards and give him some more air. You can move him to another room in the morning." Hunch obeyed, and presently as the street door slammed behind his chief, Hunch's single eye roved expectantly to the forgotten whiskey on the table. Jokai lay in a motionless stupor by the window. It would be morning before the hapless drinker would be quite himself again. With brutal, powerful arms, Hunch bore his charge to an adjoining room and consigned him disrespectfully to a bed. Then with a fresh bottle of whiskey in his hand, he returned to the open window, leered pleasantly at the dizzy glare of city lights beyond and henceforth devoted himself to getting very drunk. Having gratified this bibulous ambition to the uttermost, he fell asleep. The morning sunlight flaming at last on his coarse, bloated face awoke him to resentful consciousness. Glowering at the bright, warm light with his single eye, Hunch rolled away into the shadow and went to sleep again. Below on the porch, with an outraged caretaker's letter in her hand bag, Aunt Agatha turned her latchkey resolutely in the lock. "I just will not have it!" reflected Aunt Agatha defiantly. "I certainly will not. And I'd have been here yesterday if Mary hadn't insisted upon my spending the night with her. Well do I remember how Carl installed himself here last year with a Japanese servant and invited that good-looking Wherry boy to come and scratch the furniture. I don't suppose Carl invited him for that purpose," added Aunt Agatha fairly, "but he did it, anyway. I can't for the life of me see why it is that young Mr. Wherry is perpetually making scratches where his feet rest. And I'm sure he left his footprint on the piano and thundered through every roll on the player, for they're all out of place, and the Williston caretaker heard him, though like as not it was Carl for that matter. He's a Westfall, and he'd do it if he felt like it, dear knows! Though I must say Carl detests bangy music." Still rambling, Aunt Agatha, having fussed considerably over the extraction of the key, halted in the hallway, appalled by the utter loneliness of the darkened rooms. Beyond in the library a clock boomed loudly through the quiet. Somewhere upstairs a dull, choking rasp broke the soundless gloom. Aunt Agatha began to flutter nervously up the stairway. "It's Carl of course!" she murmured in a panic. "I just know it is. I've never known him to even gurgle--much less snore in his sleep. Like as not his windows are still boarded up and he's suffocating. Only a Westfall would think of such a thing." Puffing, Aunt Agatha halted at her nephew's door. That and the one adjoining were locked. There was a den beyond. Making her way to a door of which Hunch was ignorant. Aunt Agatha opened it and gasped. Fully clothed, a man whose feet and hands were securely bound, lay muttering upon the bed, his jargon incomprehensibly foreign. "God deliver us from all Westfalls!" wept Aunt Agatha. "Carl's kidnapped an immigrant!" With unwavering determination in her round, aggrieved eyes, she swept majestically to the bed and shook the sleeper severely. "My good man," she demanded, "what do you mean by lying here on a lace spread with your feet tied and your head scarred?" Jokai of Vienna stirred and moaned. Aunt Agatha fumbled for her smelling salts and administered a most heroic draft. Sputtering, Jokai awoke from his restless stupor and stared. From the room adjoining came again the dull, choking rasp of Hunch's heavy slumber. Fluttering hurriedly to the doorway, Aunt Agatha stared in horror at the littered room and Hunch, the latter no reassuring sight at his best, and thence with fascinated gaze at Jokai of Vienna. With wild imploring eyes Jokai glanced at his hands and feet. Miraculously Aunt Agatha understood. After an interval of petrified indecision, during which she trembled violently and made inarticulate noises in her throat, she fluttered excitedly from the room and returned with a pair of scissors. Urged to noiseless activity by Jokai's fear of the sleeper in the farther room, she cut the ropes which bound him and led him stealthily to the hall below. "You poor thing!" whispered Aunt Agatha in hysterical sympathy. "You're as pale as a ghost. I don't wonder--" But Jokai of Vienna was already bolting wildly through the street door and down the steps. Aunt Agatha burst into aggrieved tears. "I don't in the least know what it's all about," she sniffed, greatly frightened, "but what with the immigrant bolting out of the house in his shirt sleeves without so much as a word of thanks--such a nice distinguished fellow as he was, too, for all he smelt of liquor!--and Carl nowhere in sight--and a fat young man, with a hairy chest exposed, sleeping on a whiskey bottle and snoring like a prisoner file, it does seem most mysterious--that's a fact! And my knees have folded up and I can't budge. Mother's knees used to fold up this way, too. God bless my soul!" wept the unfortunate lady. "I do wish I were dead." With a desperate effort Aunt Agatha unfolded her knees sufficiently to bear her weight and turning, screamed wildly. Hunch Dorrigan was stealing catlike down the stairs, his bloated vicious face leering threateningly at her over the railing. "You old she-wolf!" roared that elegant young man. "Where's His Nibs?" Aunt Agatha moistened her dry lips and, gurgling fearfully, fainted. When at length she became conscious again. Hunch, glowering fiercely, was returning from a futile chase. With a resentful flash of brutality he towered suddenly above her and began to curse. Aunt Agatha, bristling, sat up. "Don't you dare speak to me like that after breathing vulgar liquor fumes all over my niece's house and tying up that nice foreign gentleman," she quavered weakly. "Don't you dare! I live in this house, young man, and Carl will see to it that I'm protected. He always has. He's very good to me." Hunch glowered sullenly at her, fearful, in the face of her relationship to Carl, of committing still another unforgivable offense. "I once knew a stout young man with a glass eye," she gulped with increasing courage, "and he was hanged by the neck until he was dead--quite dead--and then they cut his body down and his relatives took it away in a cart and on the way home it came to life--" Aunt Agatha halted abruptly, vaguely conscious that this somewhat felicitous ending to the tragedy, as an object lesson to Hunch, left much to be desired. "Leave the house!" she commanded with shrill magnificence, for all her hair and dress were awry, and her round face flushed. "Leave the house." Hunch shrugged and obeyed. It was nearly noon and there was no single east-side acquaintance--no, not even Link Murphy, the terrible--whom he feared as he feared Carl Granberry. Weeping, Aunt Agatha watched him go. CHAPTER XVI THE YOUNG MAN OF THE SEA Diane was to learn that the infernal persistence of the Old Man of the Sea of Arabian origin could find its match in youth. A week slipped by. Philip wove an unsatisfactory mat of sedge upon a loom of cord and stakes, whittled himself a knife and fork and spoon which he initialed gorgeously with the dye of a boiled alder, invented a camp rake of forked branches, made a broom of twigs, and sunk a candle in the floor of his tent which he covered with a bottomless milk bottle. All in all, he told Nero, he was evoluting rapidly into an excellent woodsman, despite the peculiar appearance of the sedge mat. When Diane was honestly indignant, Philip was quiet and industrious, and accomplished a great deal with his knife and bits of wood. When, finding his cheerful good humor irresistible, she was forced to fly the flag of truce, he was profoundly grateful. "When do you think you'll go?" demanded Diane pointedly one morning as she deftly swung her line into the river. "Unless you contrive to get stabbed again," she added doubtfully, "I really don't see what's keeping you." "When I may help you break camp and escort you back to your aunt," replied Philip pleasantly, "I'll pack up my two shirts and my wildwood pipe and depart, exceedingly grateful for my stay in Arcadia." Diane bit her lip and frowned. "Suppose," she flashed, with angry scarlet in her cheeks, "suppose I break camp and leave you behind!" "I'll go with you," shrugged Philip. "Don't you remember? I told you so before. And I'll sit on the rear steps of the van all the way to Florida and play a tin whistle." Appalled by the thought of the spectacular vagaries which this Young Man of the Sea might develop if she took to the road, Diane said nothing. "No matter how I view you," she indignantly exclaimed a little later, "you're a problem." "Settle the problem," advised Philip. "It's simple enough." "He'll go presently," she told herself resentfully. "He'll have to." "How it amuses these fish to watch me murder worms!" exclaimed Philip in deep disgust. "Look at the audience over there! I attract 'em and you get 'em! Miss Westfall, are you a slave driver?" "What do you mean?" asked Diane cautiously. Philip's most innocent beginnings frequently led into argumentative morasses for his opponent. "Does Johnny have complete freedom in your camp?" "Certainly!" exclaimed Diane warmly. "Johnny is old and faithful. He may do as he pleases." Philip changed an angemic worm of considerable transparency for one of more interest to his river audience and smiled. "Johnny," said he cheerfully, "has been good enough to invite me to stay in camp with him indefinitely. I'm his guest, in fact, until you go home. I imagine that as Johnny's guest I ought to enjoy immunity from sarcastic shafts, but I may be mistaken. I've washed and drained most of these worms. Will you lend me an inch or so of that stout invertebrate climbing out of the can by you?" Thoroughly out of patience, Diane reeled in her line and returned to camp, whence she presently heard Philip blithely whistling a fisherman's hornpipe and urging Nero to retrieve certain sticks he had thrown into the river. A little later he caught a sunfish and swung into camp with such a smile of irresistible pride and good humor on his sun-browned face, that Diane laughed in spite of herself. "How ridiculous it is!" she mused uncomfortably. "Here I may not depart for fear a happy-go-lucky young man will play a tin whistle on the steps of the van, and I will not go home. What in the world am I to do with him? Are you an orphan?" she asked with guileful curiosity. "No," said Philip. "I'm sorry," said Diane maliciously. "For then I could take out papers of adoption--" "I'll stay without them," promised Philip. And Diane added wood to the fire with cheeks like the scarlet sunset. "I'm going to send for my aunt," she announced a few days later. "Yes?" said Philip. "Unconventionality of any sort shocks her dreadfully. Like as not she'll faint dead away at the sight of you domiciled in my camp as if you own it. She'll see that you go." "Better not," advised Philip. "Why?" "I'll produce credentials proving I'm a reputable victim of circumstances. I'll suggest that in complete concurrence with her I deem it unsafe for a young and attractive girl to tour about the country--and that I do not feel that I can conscientiously depart. Between the two of us you'll likely have a most uncomfortable hour or so." Aunt Agatha was impressionable. It needed but a spark of concurrence to arouse her dreadfully. Diane dismissed the project. "I think," she said hopefully, "that you'll most likely go to-night." "In any circumstances," said Philip easily, "I fear that would be impossible. Johnny's behind with the laundry and I haven't a collarable shirt." Whereupon he whistled for Nero and set off amiably through the woods to gather an inaccessible flower he knew his lady would prize. By nine that night Diane was asleep in the van. Philip, with whom she had indignantly crossed swords a little earlier, lay thoughtfully by the fire watching the snowy curtains of the van windows billowing lazily in the warm night wind. He felt restless and perturbed and presently sought his tent, where he lit the bottled candle to look for the predecessor of his insatiable wildwood pipe, but halted suddenly with a peculiar whistle. The silk shirt he had worn from Sherrill's lay conspicuously upon the bed, washed and ironed and beautifully mended up the slashed sleeve and along the shoulder. As a laundress of parts, Johnny was a jewel, but he could not mend! Now oddly enough as Mr. Poynter stared at the shirt upon the bed, his appearance was that of a young man decidedly out of sorts. Presently with an ominous glint of temper in his fine eyes, he noiselessly rearranged his tent, viciously donned the offending shirt, whistled for Nero and leaving the camp of his lady as unexpectedly as he had entered it, set out for Sherrill's. Even the most equable of tempers, it would seem, may now and then prove crotchety. And who may say? Mr. Poynter was a young man of infinite resource. And there were other ways. CHAPTER XVII IN WHICH THE BARON PAYS "Excellency," said Philip politely, "I have returned." "Ah!" said the Baron cordially, marveling somewhat at the forbidding glint in the young man's eyes. He was to learn presently its portent. Within doors, a few men chatted in the billiard room. A girl was singing. The Baron, however, was the only occupant of the comfortable porch-room with the green-shaded lamp, to which Philip had come, passing Themar, who had left a tray of ice and _crème de menthe_ upon the table. With his customary deliberation the Baron selected a glass, filled it with shaved ice, which he as carefully covered with green _crème de menthe_, and pushed the delectable result across the table to his secretary. Philip accepted with a formal expression of thanks. "I am delighted," rumbled the Baron, sipping his iced mint with keen appreciation, "to see that you are fully recovered." "And Themar?" inquired Philip coldly. "He was not injured so badly as I feared," admitted Tregar slowly. "His accident," commented Philip quietly, "was to say the least coincidental--and convenient." "Just what do you mean?" "Just why," begged Philip icily, "did you wish me to intrude further upon the hospitality of Miss Westfall?" "There was an errand," reminded the Baron blandly. "Having discharged it myself, Poynter, I might--er--trust to you to report its consequences. There are possibilities of confidences over a camp fire--" "You expected me to--spy upon Miss Westfall?" "Even so. "Pray believe," said Philip stiffly, "that any confidence of Miss Westfall's would have been to me--as your own." "I am to understand then," commented His Excellency suavely, "that you made absolutely no effort--" "You are to understand just that," said Philip quietly. "Moreover," he manfully met his chief's level glance with one of inexorable decision, "I sincerely regret that hereafter I shall be unable to discharge my duties as your secretary." The Baron stirred. "I may be honored by your reasons, Poynter?" he inquired quietly. "The duties of a spy," flashed Philip, "are peculiarly offensive to me. So is Themar." "Themar!" "Excellency," said Philip curtly, "to-night as I entered, the lamplight fell full upon the face and throat of your valet." "Yes?" "Themar's throat, Excellency, bears peculiar scars." "My dear Poynter! Themar's fall injured him severely about the face and hands." "I have not forgotten," insisted Philip grimly, "that Miss Westfall's servant sunk his terrible fingers into the throat of the man whose knife scar I bear. Whether or not his knife was meant for me, I can not say. Nor have I sufficient proof openly to accuse him, but of this much I am convinced. Themar's presence near the camp of Miss Westfall is, in the face of your peculiar and secretive errand, ominously significant." The Baron sighed. There was frank hostility in Philip's eyes. "Miss Westfall," added Philip hotly, "is the unsuspecting victim of a peculiar network of mystery of which I feel you hold the key. Her camp is constantly spied upon. Upon the night of the storm there were two men lurking mysteriously in the forest near her camp fire. The knife of one I was unfortunate enough to receive. The other," Philip's eyes glinted oddly, "the other, Excellency," he finished slowly, "tried, I firmly believe--to kill Miss Westfall." "Impossible!" exclaimed the Baron, greatly shocked. "If I might know the nature of your peculiar interest in Miss Westfall," urged Philip bluntly, "I would have greater faith in your apparent surprise." The Baron reddened. "That is quite impossible," he regretted formally. "Pray believe that you have magnified its importance into exceedingly ludicrous proportions. I fear I am obliged to dispense with your faith in my integrity on the conditions you mention. Your resolution to leave me--that is final?" "Entirely so." "I am sorry," said the Baron simply. And, meeting his chief's eyes, Philip felt somewhat ashamed of one or two of his highly colored suspicions and reddened uncomfortably. "It is at least--comforting," observed the Baron quietly, "to feel that whatever I may have said in confidence to you will be honorably forgotten." "Excellency," said Philip with spirit, "though I may not speak to Miss Westfall of your interest or my suspicions, for reasons which need no naming among gentlemen, it is but fair to warn you that henceforth I shall regard myself as personally responsible for her safety." "Gallantly spoken!" declared the older man, and watched his secretary, as he bowed and withdrew, with more regret than he had seen fit to express. Then, lying back in his chair he listened with unsmiling attention as Philip entered the billiard room with a laughing shot of abuse for Dick Sherrill which aroused an immediate uproar of welcome. Watching the Baron's narrowed eyes, one might have wondered greatly. For Baron Tregar looked very tired and grim. At length, having smoked his cigar quite to the end, he went up to his room and summoned Themar. "Ah, Themar!" said he softly, and laughed with peculiar relish. Themar shifted restlessly. "Excellency," he began, uncomfortably aware of unpleasant mockery in his chief's keen eyes. The Baron matched the tips of his powerful fingers and studied them intently. "Themar," said he acidly, "within a fortnight I have lost a car whose burned remains were found several miles from here, and a secretary whose friendship and invaluable service I prize more highly than your life. I feel that you can to some extent explain both of these disasters." "Excellency knows," reminded Themar glibly, "that the car was stolen from the Sherrill garage." "I have merely supposed so," corrected the Baron coldly. And rising he inspected the curious scars upon his valet's throat with interest. "Odd!" he purred, "that an aeroplane may simulate the marks of tearing fingers." Swept by a sudden gust of terrible anger, he gripped Themar's shoulders and shook him until the valet's face was dark with fear. "Why," hissed the Baron, "did you lie? Why did you go to the Westfall camp and attack Poynter? Why did you swear these scars came from a disastrous flight in a stolen aeroplane? Why have you been spying upon Miss Westfall when I expressly forbade it?" "Excellency," choked Themar, horrified by the Baron's unprecedented display of passion, "there was a blunder--I dared not tell." "Who blundered?" thundered his chief. "I. Granberry, I thought, was to go to his cousin's camp," panted Themar quaking. "I heard Sherrill telephone--later he told some men--" "You took the car--" prompted the Baron icily. "I--I did not know it was Poynter until he fell," urged Themar trembling. "Granberry and he are similar in build." "Who attempted to kill Miss Westfall?" blazed the Baron, shaking his valet into chattering subjection. "Excellency, I know not!" protested Themar swallowing painfully. "There was still another man--he dashed ahead and stole the car." After all, reflected the Baron wryly, in this damnable muddle he must still use Themar. To antagonize him now would be foolhardy. Wherefore, with a civil expression of regret at his loss of temper and certain curt instructions, he dismissed Themar, sullen and chastened, and betook himself to an open window, where he sat smoking thoughtfully until the house grew quiet and one by one the lights in the valley faded out. In the web which had engulfed one by one, himself, Themar, Granberry, Miss Westfall and Poynter, a murderous stranger was floundering. Who and what he was, it behooved His Excellency to discover. "It would seem," reflected the Baron with grim humor as he thought of his car and his secretary, "that I am paying heavily for my part in a task not greatly to my liking." In the adjoining room behind locked doors, Themar worked feverishly upon a cipher inscribed upon a soiled linen cuff. CHAPTER XVIII NOMADS "Johnny!" said Diane in crisp, distinct tones, "Mr. Poynter has slept long enough. You'd better call him." Now it is a regrettable fact that ordinarily this attack would have provoked a reply of mild impudence from Mr. Poynter's tent, but this morning a surprising silence lay behind the flapping canvas. Diane began to hum. When presently investigation proved that Mr. Poynter's tent was in exemplary order--that Mr. Poynter and his mended shirt were missing--she went on humming--but to Johnny's amazement, burned her fingers on the coffeepot; sharply reproved Johnny for staring, and then curtly suggested that he prepare to break camp that morning, as it was high time they were on the road. "As for Mr. Philip Poynter," reflected Diane with delicate disdain, as she bent over the fire and rolled some baked potatoes away with a stick, "what can one expect? Men are exceedingly peculiar and inconsistent and impudent. I haven't the ghost of a doubt that he found that ridiculous shirt and went off in a huff. And I'm very glad he did--very glad indeed. I meant he should, though I didn't suppose with his unconscionable nerve it would bother him in the least. If a man's sufficiently erratic to blow a tin whistle all the way to Florida--as Philip certainly is--and maroon himself on somebody else's lake for fear he'd miss an acquaintance, he'd very likely fly into a rage when one least expected it and go tramping off in the night. I do dislike people who fall into huffs about nothing." Diane burned her fingers again, felt that the fire was unnecessarily hot upon her face, and indignantly resigning the preparation of breakfast to Johnny, went fishing. "He should have gone long ago," mused Diane, flinging her line with considerable force into the river. "It's a great mercy as it is that Aunt Agatha didn't appear and weep all over the camp about him. I'm sorry I mended the shirt. Not but that I was fortunate to find something that would make him go, but a shirt's such a childish thing to fuss about. And, anyway, I preferred him to leave in a friendly, conventional sort of way!" There are times, alas, when even fish are perverse! Thoroughly out of patience, Diane presently unjointed her rod, emptied the can of worms upon the bank, and returned to camp, where she found Johnny industriously piling up a heap of litter. "What are you going to do with these?" demanded Diane, indicating an eccentric woodland broom and a rake of forked twigs and twine. "Throw them out?" Johnny nodded. "Well, I guess you're not!" sniffed Diane indignantly. "They're mighty convenient. That rake is really clever." Johnny's round eyes showed his astonishment. He had heard his perverse young mistress malign these inventions of Philip's most cruelly. Then what a woodland commotion arose after breakfast! What a cautious stamping out of fire and razing of tents! What a startled flutter of birds above and bugs below! What an excited barking on the part of Rex, who after loafing industriously for a week or so, felt called upon to sprint about and assist his mistress with a dirt-brown nose! What a trampling of horses and a creaking of wheels as the great green wagon wound slowly through the shadowy forest road and took to the open highway with Rex at His mistress's feet haughtily inspecting the wayside. And what a wayside, to be sure! Past fields of young rye from which a lazy silver smoke seemed to rise and follow the wind-billowing grain; past fields of dark red clover rife with the whir and clatter of mowing machines as the farmers felled the velvety stalks for clover hay; past snug white farmhouses where perfumed peonies drooped sleepily over brick walks; on over a rustic bridge, skirting now a tiny village whose church spire loomed above the trees; now following a road which lay rough and deeply rutted, among golden fields of buttercups fringed with bunch grass. Farmers waved and called; housewives looked and disapproved; children stared and jealous canines pettishly barked at the haughty Rex; but Johnny only chuckled and cracked his whip. Day by day the green and white caravan rumbled serenely on, camping by night in field and forest. A country world of peace and sunshine--of droning bees and the nameless fragrance of summer fields it was! And the struggling nomads of the dusty road! Diane felt a kindred thrill of interest in each one of them. Now a Syrian peddler woman, squat and swarthy, bending heavily beneath her pack amid a flurry of dust from the sun-baked roads her feet had wearily padded for days; now a sleepy negro on a load of hay, an organ grinder with a chattering monkey or a clumsy bear, another sleepy negro with another load of hay, and a picturesque minstrel with an elaborate musical contrivance drawn by a horse. Now a capering Italian with a bagpipe, who danced grotesquely to his own piping, and piped the pennies out of rural pockets as if they had been so many copper rats from Hamelin! Peddlers and tramps and agents, country drummers and country circuses, medicine men who shouted the versatile merits of corn salve by the light of flaring torches, eccentric orators of eccentric theology, tent-shows of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," with real bloodhounds and unreal painted ice, gypsies who were always expected to steal some one's children and never did, peddlers with creaking, clinking wagons, hucksters and motorcyclists, motorists and dusty hikers--one by one in the days to come Diane was to meet them all and learn that the nomads of the summer road were a happy-go-lucky guild of peculiar and coöperative good humor. But the girl herself was a truer nomad than many to whom with warm friendliness she nodded and spoke. Late one afternoon Diane espied a woodland brook. Shot with gold and shadow, it laughed along, under a waving canopy of green, freckled with cool, clean pebbles and hiding roguishly now and then beneath a trailing branch. A brook was a luxury. It was mirror and spring and lullaby in one. By six the tents of the nomad were pitched by the forest brook and the nomad herself was smoothing back her ruffled hair over a crystalline mirror. A drowsy negro on a load of hay drove by on the road beyond. Diane studied him with critical interest. "Johnny," she said, "just why are there so many drowsy negroes about driving loads of hay? Or is that the same one? And if it is, where under Heaven has he been driving that hay for the last three days?" Johnny didn't know. Wherefore he pursed his lips and shook his head. The hay wagon turned on into the forest on the farther side of the road and halted. The drowsy negro leisurely alighted and shuffled through the trees until he stood before Diane with a square of birch bark in his hand. Greatly astonished--for this negro was apparently too lazy to talk when he deemed it unnecessary--Diane took the birch bark and inspected it in mystification. A most amazing message was duly inscribed thereon. "Erastus has acquired a sinewy chicken from somebody's barn yard," it read. "Why not bring your own plate, knife, fork, spoon and a good saw over to my hay-camp and dine with me? "Philip." Diane stared with rising color at the load of hay. From its ragged, fragrant bed, a tall, lean young man with a burned skin, was rising and lazily urging a nondescript yellow dog to do the same. The dog conceivably demurred, for Philip removed him, yelping, by the simple process of seizing him by the loose skin at the back of his neck and dropping him overboard. Having brushed his clothes, the young man came, with smiling composure, through the forest, the yellow dog waggling at his heels. "I've read so much about breaking the news gently," apologized Philip, smiling, "that I thought I'd better try a bit of it myself. Hence the sylvan note. Ras, if you go to sleep by that tree, I'll like as not let you sleep there until you die. Go back to camp and build a fire and hollow out the feathered biped." Ras slouched obediently off toward the hay-camp. "You've hay in your ears!" exclaimed Diane, biting her lips. "I'm a nomad!" announced Philip calmly. "So's Erastus--so's Dick Whittington here. I'm likely to have hay in my ears for months to come. Dick Whittington," explained Philip, patting the dog, "is a mustard-colored orphan I picked up a couple of days ago. He'd made a vow to gyrate steadily in a whirlwind of dust after a hermit flea who lived on the end of his tail, until somebody adopted him and--er--cut off the grasping hermit. I fell for him, but, like Ras, a sleep bug seems to have bitten him." "Most likely he unwinds in his sleep," suggested Diane politely. And added, acidly, "Where are you going?' "Florida!" said Philip amiably. The girl stared at him with dark, accusing eyes. "The trip is really no safer now," reminded Philip steadily, "than it was when I left camp." "In a huff!" flashed Diane disparagingly. "In a huff," admitted Philip and dismissed the dangerous topic with a philosophic shrug. "I won't have you trailing after me on a hay-wagon!" exclaimed Diane in honest indignation. "Hum! Just how," begged Philip, "does one go about effecting a national ordinance to keep hay-carts off the highway?" As Philip betokened an immediate desire to name over certain rights with which he was vested as a citizen of the United States, Diane was more than willing to change the subject. Persistence was the keynote of Mr. Poynter's existence. "Johnny," begged Philip, "get Miss Diane some chicken implements, will you, old man? And lend me some salt. You see," he added easily to Diane, "Ras and I are personally responsible for an individual and very concentrated grub equipment. It saves a deal of fussing. I carry mine in my pocket and Ras carries his in his hat, but he wears a roomier tile than I do and never climbs out of it even when he sleeps. Thank you, Johnny. I'll send Ras over with your supper. But if it seems to be getting late, look him up. He may fall asleep." After repeated indignant refusals which Mr. Poynter characteristically splintered, Diane, intensely curious, went with Mr. Poynter to the hay-camp for supper. Now although the somnolent Ras had been shuffling drowsily about a fresh fire with no apparent aim, he presently contrived to produce a roasted chicken, fresh cucumbers, some caviare and rolls, coffee and cheese and a small freezer of ice cream, all of which he appeared to take at intervals from under the seat of the hay-cart. "Ice cream and caviare!" exclaimed the girl aghast. "That's treason." "I've my own notions of camping," admitted Philip, "and really our way is exceedingly simple and comfortable. Ras loads up the seat pantry at the nearest village and then we cast off all unnecessary ballast every morning. Of course we couldn't very well camp twice in the same place--we decorate so heavily--but that's a negligible factor. Oh, yes," added Philip smiling, "we've blazed our trail with buns and cheese for miles back. Ras thinks whole processions of birds and dogs and tramps and chickens are already following us. If it's true, we'll most likely eat some of 'em." "Where," demanded Diane hopelessly, "did you get this ridiculous outfit?" "Well," explained Philip comfortably, "Ras was drowsing by Sherrill's on a load of hay and I bought the cart and the hay and the horses and Ras at a bargain and set out. Ras is a free lance without an encumbrance on earth and I can't imagine a more comfortable manner of getting about than stretched out full length on a load of hay. You can always sleep when you feel like it. And every morning we peel the bed--that is, we dispense with a layer of mattress and _presto_! I have a fresh bed until the hay's gone. We bought a new load this morning." Swept by an irresistible spasm of laughter, Diane stared wildly about the hay-camp. "And Ras?" she begged faintly. "Well," said Philip slowly, "Ras is peculiarly gifted. He can sleep anywhere. Sometimes he sleeps stretched out on the padded seat of the wagon, and sometimes he sleeps under it--the wagon I mean; not in the pantry. And then of course he sleeps all day while he's driving and once or twice I've found him in a tree. I don't like him to do that," he added with gravity, "for he's so full of hay I'm afraid the birds will begin to make nests in his ears and pockets." "Mistah Poynteh," reflected Ras, scratching his head through his hat, "is a lunatict. He gits notions. I cain't nohow understan' him but s'long as he don' get ructious I'se gwine drive dat hay-cart to de Norf Pole if he say de word. I hain't never had a real chanst to make my fortune afore." "And what," begged Diane presently, "do you do when it rains?" Mr. Poynter agreed that that had been a problem. "But with our accustomed ingenuity," he added modestly, "we have solved it. Back there in a village we induced a blacksmith with brains and brawn to fit a tall iron frame around the wagon and if the sun's too hot, or it showers, we shed some more hay and drape a tarpaulin or so over the frame. It's an excellent arrangement. We can have side curtains or not just as we choose. In certain wet circumstances, of course, we'll most likely take to barns and inns and wood-houses and corncribs and pick up the trail in the morning. You can't imagine," he added, "how ready pedestrians are to tell us which way the green moving van went." Whereupon the nomad of the hay-camp and his ruffled guest crossed swords again over a pot of coffee, with inglorious defeat for Diane, who departed for her own camp in a blaze of indignation. "I'll ignore him!" she decided in the morning as the green van took to the road again. "It's the only way. And after a while he'll most likely get tired and disgruntled and go home. He's subject to huffs anyway. It's utterly useless to talk to him. He thrives on opposition." Looking furtively back, she watched Mr. Poynter break camp. It was very simple. Ras, yawning prodigiously, heaved a variety of unnecessary provisions overboard from the seat pantry, abandoned the ice-cream freezer to a desolate fate by the ashes of the camp fire and peeled the hay-bed. Philip slipped a small tin plate, a collapsible tin cup, a wooden knife, fork and spoon into his pocket. Ras put his in his hat, which immediately took on a somewhat bloated appearance. Having climbed languidly to the reins, the ridiculous negro appeared to fall asleep immediately. Mr. Poynter, looking decidedly trim and smiling, summoned Dick Whittington, climbed aboard and, whistling, disappeared from view with uncommon grace and good humor. The hay-wagon rumbled off. Diane bit her lips convulsively and looked at Johnny. Simultaneously they broke into an immoderate fit of laughter. "Very well," decided the girl indignantly a little later, "if I can't do anything else, I can lose him!" But even this was easier of utterance than accomplishment. Diane was soon to learn that if the distance between them grew too great, Mr. Poynter promptly unloaded all but a scant layer of hay, took the reins himself, and thundered with expedition up the trail in quest of her, with Dick Whittington barking furiously. It was much too spectacular a performance for a daily diet. Diane presently ordered her going and coming as if the persistent hay-gypsy on the road behind her did not exist, but every night she caught the cheerful glimmer of his camp fire through the trees, and frowned. CHAPTER XIX A NOMADIC MINSTREL Striking west into New York State, Diane had come into Orange County, whence she wound slowly down into northern Jersey, through the Poconos. For days now the dusty wanderers had followed the silver flash of the Delaware, coming at length from a rugged, cooler country of mountain and lake into a sunny valley cleft by the singing river. It was a goodly land of peaceful villages tucked away mid age-old trees, of garrulous, kindly folks and covered bridges, of long, lazy canals with grassy banks banding each shore of the rippling river, of tow-paths padded by the feet of bargemen and bell-hung mules and lock-tenders. At sunset one night Diane paid her toll at a Lilliputian house built like an architectural barnacle on to the end of a covered bridge, and with a rumble of boards wound slowly through the dusty, twilight tunnel into Pennsylvania. A little later a drowsy negro passed through with a load of hay, a barking dog and a mysterious voice, with a lazy drawl, which directed the payment of the toll from among the hay. Still later a musical nomad driving an angular horse from the seat of a ramshackle cart, accoutered, among other orchestral devices, with clashing cymbals, a drum and a handle which upon being turned a trifle by the curious tollgate keeper aroused a fearful musical commotion in the cart. From her camp on a wooded spot by the river, Diane presently watched the hay-camp anchor with maddening ease for the night. Ras built a fire, unhitched the horses, produced a variety of things from the seat of the pantry and took his table equipment from his hat. Philip smoked, removed an occasional wisp of hay from his hair and shied friendly pebbles at Richard Whittington. Diane was busy making coffee when the third nomad appeared with his music machine, and, halting near her, alighted and fell stiffly to turning the eventful crank. Instantly two terrible drumsticks descended and with globular extremities thumped, by no visible agency, upon the drum. The cymbals clashed--and a long music record began to unfold in segments like a papier-mache snake. "Well," exclaimed Diane fervently, "I do wish he'd stop! For all we've seen him so often he's never bothered us like this before." The unfortunate and frequently flagellated "Glowworm," however, continued to glow fearfully, impelled to eruptive scintillation by the crank, and the vocal lady "walked with Billy," and presently the minstrel came through the trees with his hat in his hand, his dark eyes very humble and deferential. Now as Diane nodded pleasantly and smiled and held forth a coin, the wandering minstrel suddenly swayed, clapped his hand to his forehead with a choking groan and pitched forward senseless upon the ground at her feet. Diane jumped. "Johnny!" she exclaimed in keen alarm, "we've another invalid. Turn him over!" But it was not Johnny who performed this service for the unfortunate minstrel. It was Mr. Poynter. "Hum!" said Philip dryly. "That's most likely retribution. A man can't unwind all that hullabaloo without feeling the strain. Water, Johnny, and if you have some smelling salts handy, bring 'em along." After one or two vigorous attentions on the part of Mr. Poynter, the nomad of the music machine opened his eyes and stared blankly about him. That he was not yet quite himself, however, was readily apparent, for meeting Mr. Poynter's unsmiling glance, he grew very white and faint and begged for water. Philip supplied it without a word. After an interval of unsympathetic silence, during which the minstrel's eyes roved uncertainly about the camp and returned each time to Philip's face in a fascinated stare, he feebly strove to rise but fell back groaning. "If--if I might stay here for but the night," he begged pathetically, his accent slightly foreign. "That's impossible!" said Philip curtly. "I'll help you to your rumpus machine and back there in the village you will find an inn. My man will go with you." "Philip!" exclaimed Diane with spirit. "The man is ill." "I'm not denying it," averred Philip stubbornly. "Nor is there any denying the existence of the inn." "How can you be so heartless!" "One may also be prudent." "He'll stay here of course if he wishes. The inn is a mile back." "Diane!" "Is he the first?" flashed Diane impetuously. Philip reddened but his eyes were sombre. The knife and the bullet had engendered a certain cynicism. "As you will!" said he. And consigning to Johnny the care of the invalid, who watched him depart with furtive relief, Philip strode off through the woods. Hospitality, reflected Philip unquietly, was all right in its place, but Diane was an extremist. After supper, however--for Philip was inherently kind hearted and sympathetic--he dispatched Ras to unhitch the minstrel's snorting steed and remove the eccentric music machine from the highway. Johnny had already accomplished both. Smoking, Philip stared at the firelit hollow where his lady's fire-tinted tents glimmered spectrally through the trees. He was relieved to see that the camp's unbidden guest lay comfortably upon his own blankets by the fire. Somehow the minstrel's face, clean-shaven, strikingly brown of skin and unmistakably foreign beneath the thatch of dark hair sparsely veined in grey, lingered hauntingly in his memory. "Where in thunder have I seen him before?" wondered Philip restlessly. "There's something about his eyes and forehead--on the road probably, for of course I've passed him a number of times. Still--Lord!" added Philip with a burst of impatience, "what a salamander I am, to be sure! Whittington, old top, ever since I've known our gypsy lady, I've done nothing but fuss." But, nevertheless, when Diane's camp finally settled into quiet for the night, there was a watchful sentry in the forest who did not retire to his bed of hay until Johnny was astir at daybreak. And Philip was to find his bearings in a staggering flash of memory and know no peace for many a day to come. CHAPTER XX THE ROMANCE OF MINSTRELSY "I am glad to see that you are better," said Diane pleasantly. The minstrel, who had bathed his hands and face in the river until they were darkly ruddy, bowed with singular grace and ease. That he was grave and courtly of manner and strikingly handsome to boot, Diane had already noticed with a flash of wonder. "I owe you much," said he simply. "My life perhaps--" "I am sure," protested Diane, "that you greatly overrate my small service." "Day by day," exclaimed the minstrel sombrely, "I travel the summer roads in quest of health." Not a little interested, Diane raised frankly sympathetic eyes to his in diffident question. "The music?" said the minstrel with his slow, grave smile. "Is there not more romance and adventure in the life of a wandering minstrel than in that of an idle seeker after health? In the open one finds happiness, health, color and life!" Diane felt a sudden tie of sympathy link her subtly to this mysterious nomad of the summer road. Simply and naturally she spoke of her own love of the wild things that filled the sylvan world with life and color. "You look much then at the wild flowers!" he exclaimed delightedly. "There was a leaf back there on a mountain, the edge of white, a white blossom in the heart like a patch of snow--" "Snow-on-the-mountain!" exclaimed Diane. "I've looked for it for days." "It shall be my ambition to bring you some," said the minstrel gallantly. "I shall not forget." Diane glanced furtively at the picturesque attire which her nomadic guest wore with a certain dashing grace, and marveled afresh. It was of ragged corduroy with a brightly colored handkerchief about the throat which foiled his vivid skin artistically. Indeed there was more of sophistication in the careful blending of colors than even the normal seeker after health might deem expedient for his purpose. "It is to few--to none indeed save you that I have confided the secret of my minstrelsy," he said deferentially a little later. "Illness, love of adventure, a longing to brush elbows with the world, a hunger for the woodland--in the eyes of unromantic men these things are weaknesses. You and I know differently, but nevertheless it is best that I seem but a poor vagrant grinding forth a hapless tune for the coppers by the wayside." The minstrel gazed idly at the hay-camp. "One does not quite understand," he suggested raising handsome eyebrows in subtle disapproval; "the negro, the hay--the curious camp?" Diane recalled Philip's unfeeling attitude of the night before. "A happy-go-lucky young man with a taste for hay," she said. "I know little of him." "One treasures one's confidence from the unsympathetic," ventured the minstrel. "Now the young man of the hay, I take it, is intensely practical and let us say--unromantic. Lest he laugh and scoff--" he shrugged and glanced furtively at the girl's face. It was brightly flushed and very lovely. The velvet dusk of Diane's eyes was sparkling with the zest of woodland adventure. To repose a confidence in one so spirited and beautiful was fascinating sport--and safe. Now the minstrel found as the morning waned that he was not so strong as he had fancied. Wherefore he lay humbly by the fire and talked of his fortunes by the roadside. Bits of philosophy, of sparkling jest, of vivid description, to these Diane listened with parted lips and eyes alive with wholesome interest as her guest contrived to veil himself in a silken web of romance and mystery. It was sunset before the girl felt uncomfortably that he ought to go. A little later, on her way to the van, she found a volume of Herodotus in the original Greek which with a becoming air of guilt the minstrel owned that he had dropped. "Ah, Herodotus!" he murmured, smiling. "After all, was he not the wandering, romantic father of all of us who are nomads!" "I wonder," said a lazy voice among the trees, "I wonder now if old Herodotus ever heard of a hay-camp." Removing a wisp of hay from his shoe with a certain matter-of-fact grace characteristic of him, Mr. Poynter, who had been invisible all day, arrived in the camp of the enemy. Diane saw with a fretful flash of wonder that he was immaculate as usual. She saw too that the minstrel was annoyed and that he dropped the volume of Herodotus into his pocket with a flush and a frown. "I trust," said Philip politely, "that you are better?" Save for a slight dizziness, the minstrel said, he was. "And yet," urged Philip feelingly, "I'm sure you'll not take to the road to-night, feeling wobbly. The inn back there in the village is immensely attractive. And a bed is the place for a sick man." "He will remain where he is," flashed Diane perversely, "until he feels quite able to go on." "Will you?" asked Philip pointedly. The minstrel rose weakly and glanced at Diane with profound gratitude. "After all," he said hurriedly, "he is doubtless right. Ill or not I must go on." "An excellent notion!" approved Philip cordially. "I'll go with you." Now whether or not the hurry and excitement of rising in these somewhat frictional circumstances brought on a recurrence of the nomad's singular disease, Diane did not know, but certainly he staggered and fell back, faint and moaning by the fire, thereby arousing an immediate commotion. Philip grimly took his pulse and met Diane's sympathetic glance with one of honest indignation. "Diane," he said in a low voice, "he is tricking you into sympathy merely for the comfort of your camp. Twice now his fainting has been attended by an absolutely normal pulse. Let Ras and Johnny carry him back to his rumpus machine and I'll drive him to the inn." "You'll do nothing of the sort!" exclaimed the girl with flaming color. "Why are you so suspicious?" Philip sighed. CHAPTER XXI AT THE GRAY OF DAWN It was very quiet in the wood by the river. A late moon swung its golden censer above the water by invisible chains, marking checkered aisles of light in the silent wood, burnishing elfin rosaries of dew, touching with cool, white fingers of benediction the leaf-cowled heads of stately trees. Like lines of solemn monks they stood listening raptly to the deep, full chant of the moving river. The sylvan mass of the night was a thing of infinite peace and mystery, of silence and solemnity. Into the hush of the moonlit night came presently a jarring note, the infernal racket of a motorcycle. Philip, a lone sentry by the camp of his lady, stirred and frowned. The clatter ceased. Once again the lap of the restless river and the rustle of trees were the only sounds in the silent wood. Philip glanced at the muffled figure of the minstrel asleep on the ground by the dead embers of the camp fire, and leaning carelessly upon his elbow, fell again into the train of thought disturbed by the clatter. "Herodotus!" said Philip. "Hum!" And roused to instant alertness by the crackle of a twig in the forest, he glanced sharply roadwards where the trees thinned. There was something moving stealthily along in the shadows. With narrowed eyes the sentry noiselessly flattened himself upon the ground and fell to watching. A stealthy crackle--and silence. A moving shadow--a halt! A patch of moonlight lay ahead. For an interval which to Philip seemed unending, there was no sound or movement, then a figure glided swiftly through the patch of moonlight and approached the camp. It was a man in the garb of a motorcyclist. Noiselessly Philip shifted his position. The cyclist crept to the shelter of a tree and halted. The moon now hung above the wood. Its light, showering softly through the trees as the night wind swayed the branches, fell presently upon the camp and the face of the cyclist. It was Themar. Now as Philip watched, Themar crouched suddenly and fell to staring at the muffled figure by the camp fire. For an interval he crouched motionless; then with infinite caution he moved to the right. A branch swept his cap back from his forehead and Philip saw now that his face was white and staring. And in that instant as he glanced at the horrified face of the Houdanian, Philip knew. The stained skin, the smooth-shaven chin and lip of the minstrel--if Themar had found them puzzling, the revealment had come to him, as it had come to Philip, in a flash of bewilderment. With a bound, the startled American was on his feet, stealing rapidly toward the man by the tree. To the spying, the mystery, the infernal trickery and masquerading which dogged his lady's trail, Themar held the key, wherefore-- Cursing, Philip forged ahead. The carpet of dry twigs beneath him had betrayed his approach and Themar was running wildly through the forest. On and on they went, stumbling and flying through the moonlit wood to the towpath. But Philip was much the better runner and soon caught the fleeing cyclist by the collar with a grip of steel. "Poynter!" panted Themar, staring. "At your service!" Mr. Poynter assured him and politely begged instant and accurate knowledge of a number of things, of a knife and a bullet, of Themar's spying, of a cuff, of the man by the fire who read Herodotus, of a motorcyclist seeking for days to overtake a nomad. "I--I dare not tell," faltered Themar, moistening his lips. "I--I am bound by an oath--" "To spy and steal and murder!" Themar stared sullenly at the river, gray now with the coming dawn. His dark face was drawn and haggard. And again Mr. Poynter shot a volley of questions and awaited the answers with dangerous quiet. Shaking, Themar refused again to answer. With even more quietness and courtesy Philip obligingly gave him a final opportunity and finding Themar white and inexorable, smiled. "Very well, then," said Mr. Poynter warmly, "I'll take it out of your hide." Which he proceeded to do with that consummate thoroughness which characterized his every action, husbanding the strength of his long, lean arms until a knife appeared in Themar's hand. Then in deadly silence Mr. Poynter reduced his treacherous assailant to a battered hulk upon the towpath. A mule bell tinkled in the quiet. Upstream on the path between canal and river two mules appeared with a man slouching heavily behind them. The towline led to a grimy scow which loomed out of the misty stillness like a heavier drift of the dawn itself. "Hello!" Philip hailed the mule driver. "What's wantin'?" asked the man and halted. Philip indicated Themar with his foot. "Here is a gentleman," he explained, "whom I discovered lurking about my camp a while ago. He showed me his knife and I've mussed him up a bit." The mule-driver bent over Themar and sharply scanned the dark, foreign face. "One o' them damned black-and-tans, eh?" he growled. "They're too ready with their knives. What ye goin' to do with him?" "I'm wondering," shrugged Philip, smoothing his rumpled hair back from his forehead with the palm of his hand, "if you'll permit me to pay his passage to a hospital, the farther away, the better." The mule-driver glanced searchingly at Mr. Poynter's face. Apparently satisfied, he cupped his mouth with his hands and called "Ho, Jem!" "Jem" jerked sharply at the tiller and presently the scow scraped the shore. The mule-driver consigned the care of his mules to Philip and scrambled down the grassy bank to the edge of the water. "Where ye want him took?" demanded Jem, scratching a bristling shock of hair which glimmered through the dawn like a thicket of spikes. "Well," said Mr. Poynter indifferently, "where are you going?" Jem named a town many miles away. The mule-driver looked hard again at Philip. "Gawd, young feller," he admired, "you're a cool un all right!" "Take him there," said Philip with the utmost composure. "Deliver him somewhere a reasonable distance off for repairs and I'll pay you fifty dollars." "See here," broke in Jem, somewhat staggered by the careless manner in which Mr. Poynter handled fortunes, "hain't no foul play about this here, eh? Asher says he's mussed up considerable." "Asher's right," admitted Mr. Poynter modestly. "I did the best I could, of course. Come up and look him over. He's decorated mournfully with fist marks, but nothing worse. There's his knife." After a somewhat cautious inspection, Themar was hoisted aboard the scow and harnessed discreetly with ropes. Jem shared his companion's distrust of black-and-tans. With a tinkle of mule-bells the cortege faded away into the gray of dawn. Later, Mr. Poynter discovered an abandoned motorcycle by the roadside, which with some little malice he had crated at the nearest town and dispatched to Baron Tregar. Thereafter, after a warning talk with Johnny, Philip slept by day and watched by night. CHAPTER XXII SYLVAN SUITORS Southward wound the green and white van; southward the hay-camp with infrequent scurries to inn and barn for shelter; southward, his health still improving, went the musical nomad, unwinding his musical hullabaloo for the torture of musical crowds. Now the world was a-riot with the life and color of midsummer. Sleepy cows browsed about in fields dotted with orange daisies, horses switched their tails against the cloudless sky on distant hillsides, sheep freckled the sunny pastures, and here and there beneath an apple tree heavy with fruit, lumbered a mother-sow with her litter of pigs. Sun-bleached dust clouded the highway and the swaying fields of corn were slim and tall. The shuttle of Fate clicked and clicked as she wove and crossed and tangled the threads of these wandering, sun-brown nomads. How frequently the path of the music machine crossed the path of the van, no one knew so well perhaps as Philip, but Philip at times was tantalizing and mysterious and only evidenced his knowledge in peculiar and singularly aggravating ways. For the friendship between Diane and the handsome minstrel was steadily growing. By what subtle hints, by what ingenuous bursts of confidence, by what bewildering flashes of inherent magnetism he contrived to cement it, who may say? But surely his romantic resources like his irresistible charm of speech and manner, were varied. A rare flower, an original and highly commendable bit of woodland verse, some luxury of fruit or camping device, in a hundred delicate ways he contrived to make the girl his debtor, talking much in his grave and courtly way of the gratitude he owed her. Adroitly then this romantic minstrel spun his shining, varicolored web, linking them together as sympathetic nomads of the summer road; adroitly too he banned Philip, who by reason of a growing and mysterious habit of sleeping by day had gained for himself a blighting reputation of callous indifference to the charm of the beautiful rolling country all around them. "I'm exceedingly sorry," read a scroll of birch bark which Ras drowsily delivered to Diane one sunset, "but I'll have to ask you to invite me to supper. Ras bought an unhappy can of something or other behind in the village and it exploded. "Philip." "If I refuse," Diane wrote on the back, "you'll come anyway. You always do. Why write? Will you contribute enough hay for a cushion? Johnny's making a new one for Rex." It was one of the vexing problems of Diane's nomadic life, just how to treat Mr. Philip Poynter. It was increasingly difficult to ignore or quarrel with him--for his memory was too alarmingly porous to cherish a grudge or resentment. When a man has had a bump upon his only head, held Mr. Poynter, things are apt to slip away from him. Wherefore one may pardon him if after repeated commands to go home, and certain frost-bitten truths about officious young men, he somehow forgot and reappeared in the camp of the enemy in radiant good humor. Philip presently arrived with a generous layer of hay under his arm and a flour bag of tomatoes. "Hello," he called warmly. "Isn't the sunset bully! It even woke old Ras up and he's blinking and grumbling like fury." Mr. Poynter fell to chatting pleasantly, meanwhile removing from his clothing certain wisps of hay. "You're always getting into hay or getting out of it!" accused Diane. Philip admitted with regret that this might be so and Diane stared hopelessly at his immaculate linen. Heaven alone knew by what ingenuity Mr. Poynter, handicapped by the peculiar limitations of a hay-camp, contrived to manage his wardrobe. What mysterious toilet paraphernalia lay beneath the hay, what occasional laundry chores Ras did by brook and river, what purchases Mr. Poynter made in every village, and finally what an endless trail of shirts and cuffs and collars lay behind him, doomed, like the cheese and buns, as he feelingly put it, to one-night stands, only Ras and Philip knew; but certainly the hay-nomad combined the minimum of effort with the maximum of efficiency to the marvel of all who beheld him. Ras's problem was infinitely simpler. He never changed. There was much of the original load of hay, Philip said, dispersed about his ears and pockets and fringing the back of his neck. "Where did you get tomatoes?" inquired Diane at supper. "Well," said Philip, "I hate to tell you. I strongly suspect Ras of spearing 'em with a harpoon he made. Made it in his sleep, too. It's pretty long and he can spear whatever he wants from the wagon seat. Lord help the rabbits!" He lazily sprinkled salt upon a large tomato and bit into it with relish. "But why should I worry?" he commented smiling. "They're mighty good. Johnny, old top, see if you can rustle up a loaf of bread to lend me for breakfast, will you? I'm willing to trade three cucumbers for it. And tell Ras when you take his supper over that there's a herring under the seat for Dick Whittington's supper. Tell me," he added humorously to Diane, "just how do you contrive to remember bread and salt?" "I don't," said Diane, smiling. "Johnny does. Did the storm get you last night, Philip?" "It did indeed. It's the third load of hay we've had this week. We're perpetually furling up the tarpaulin or unfurling it or skinning the mattress or watching the clouds. I'm a wreck." "Where have you been all day?" "Haying!" said Philip promptly. "Sleeping!" corrected Diane with a critical sniff. Mr. Poynter fancied they were synonyms. "Do you know," he added pointedly, "I imagine I'd find ever so much more romance and adventure about it if I only had some interesting ailment and a music-mill. I did think I had a bully cough, but it was only a wisp of hay in my throat." Philip's powers of intuition were most fearful. Diane colored. "Just what do you mean?" she inquired cautiously. "Nothing at all," replied Philip with a charming smile. "I never do. Why mean anything when words come so easy without? It has occurred to me," he added innocently, "that it takes an uncommonly thick-skinned and unromantic dub to tour about covered with hay. Fancy sleeping through this wild and beautiful country when I might be grinding up lost chords to annoy the populace." Diane had heard something of this sort before from quite another source. Acutely uncomfortable, she changed the subject. There was something uncanny in Philip's perfect comprehension of the minstrel's tactics. A little later Mr. Poynter produced a green bug mounted eccentrically upon a bit of birch bark. "I found a bug," he said guilelessly. "He was a very nice little bug. I thought you'd like him." Diane frowned. For every flower the minstrel brought, Philip contrived a ridiculous parallel. "How many times," she begged hopelessly, "must I tell you that I am not collecting ridiculous bugs?" Philip raised expressive eyebrows. "Dear me!" said he in hurt surprise. "You do surprise me. Why, he's the greenest bug I ever saw and he matches the van. He's a nomad with the wild romance of the woodland bounding through him. I did think I'd score heavily with him." Diane discreetly ignored the inference. Whistling happily, Mr. Poynter poured the coffee and leaned back against a tree trunk. Watching him one might have read in his fine eyes a keener appreciation of nomadic life--and nomads--than he ever expressed. There was idyllic peace and quiet in this grove of ancient oaks shot with the ruddy color of the sunset. Off in the heavier aisles of golden gloom already there were slightly bluish shadows of the coming twilight. Hungry robins piped excitedly, woodpeckers bored for worms and flaming orioles flashed by on golden wings. Black against the sky the crows were sailing swiftly toward the woodland. With the twilight and a young moon Philip produced his wildwood pipe and fell to smoking with a sigh of comfort. "Philip!" said Diane suddenly. "Mademoiselle!" said Philip, suspiciously grave and courtly of manner. The girl glanced at him sharply. "It annoys me exceedingly," she went on finally, finding his laughing glance much too bland and friendly to harbor guile, "to have you trailing after me in a hay-wagon." "I'll buy me a rumpus machine," said Philip. "It would bother me to have you trailing after me so persistently in any guise!" flashed the girl indignantly. "It must perforce continue to bother you!" regretted Philip. "Besides," he added absently, "I'm really the Duke of Connecticut in disguise, touring about for my health, and the therapeutic value of hay is enormous." Now why Diane's cheeks should blaze so hotly at this aristocratic claim of Mr. Poynter's, who may say? But certainly she glanced with swift suspicion at her tranquil guest, who met her eyes with supreme good humor, laughed and fell to whistling softly to himself. Despite a certain significant silence in the camp of his lady, Mr. Poynter smoked most comfortably, puffing forth ingenious smoke-rings which he lazily sought to string upon his pipestem and busily engaging himself in a variety of other conspicuously peaceful occupations. All in all, there was something so tranquil and soothing in the very sight of him that Diane unbent in spite of herself. "If you'd only join a peace tribunal as delegate-at-large," she said, "you'd eliminate war. I meant to freeze you into going home. I do wish I could stay indignant!" "Don't," begged Philip humbly. "I'm so much happier when you're not. "There _is_ another way of managing me," he said hopefully a little later. "I meant to mention it before--" "What is it?" implored Diane. "Marry me!" "Philip!" exclaimed the girl with delicate disdain, "the moon is on your head--" "Yes," admitted Philip, "it is. It does get me. No denying it. Doesn't it ever get you?" "No," said Diane. "Besides, I never bumped my brain--" "That could be remedied," hinted Philip, "if you think it would alter matters--" Diane was quite sure it would not and later Philip departed for the hay-camp in the best of spirits. In the morning Diane found a conspicuous placard hung upon a tree. The placard bore a bombastic ode, most clever in its trenchant satire, entitled--"To a Wild Mosquito--by One who Knows!" Since an ill-fated occasion when Mr. Poynter had found a neatly indited ode to a wild geranium written in a flowing foreign hand, his literary output had been prodigious. Dirges, odes, sonnets and elegies frequently appeared in spectacular places about the camp and as Mr. Poynter's highly sympathetic nature led him to eulogize the lowlier and less poetic life of the woodland, the result was frequently of striking originality. Convinced that Mr. Poynter's eyes were upon her from the hay-camp, Diane read the ode with absolute gravity and consigned it to the fire. The minstrel's attitude toward the hay-nomad might be one of subtle undermining and shrugging ridicule, but surely with his imperturbable gift of satire, Mr. Poynter held the cards! Still another morning Diane found a book at the edge of her camp. "I am dropping this accidentally as I leave," read the fly leaf in Philip's scrawl. "I don't want you to suspect my classic tastes, but what can I do if you find the book!" It was a volume of Herodotus in the original Greek! CHAPTER XXIII LETTERS Buckwheat was cut, harvest brooded hazily over the land and the fields were bright with goldenrod when Diane turned sharply across Virginia to Kentucky. "It is already autumn," she wrote to Ann Sherrill. "The summer has flown by like a bright-winged bird. For days now the forests have been splashed with red and gold. The orchards are heavy with harvest apples, the tassels of the corn are dark and rusty, and the dooryards of the country houses riot gorgeously in scarlet sage and marigold, asters and gladiolas. The twilight falls more swiftly now and the nights are cooler but before the frost sweeps across the land I shall be in Georgia. "For all it is autumn elsewhere, here in this wonderful blue grass land, it is spring again, a second spring. The autumn sunlight over the woods and pastures is deeply, richly yellow. There are meadow larks and off somewhere the tinkle of a cow bell. Oh, Ann, how good it is to be alive! "Ages ago, in that remote and barbarous past when I lived with a roof above my head, there were times when every pulse of my body cried and begged for life--for gypsy life and gypsy wind and the song of the roaring river! Now, somehow, I feel that I have lived indeed--so fully that a wonderful flood tide of peace and happiness flows strongly in my veins. I am brown and happy. Each day I cook and tramp and fish and swim and sleep--how I sleep with the leaves rustling a lullaby of infinite peace above me! Would you believe that I lived for two days and nights in a mountain cave? I did indeed, but Johnny was greatly troubled. Aunt Agatha stuffed his head with commands. "The South thrills and calls. After all, though I was born in the Adirondacks, I am Southern, every inch of me. The Westfalls have been Florida folk since the beginning of time. "There is an interesting nomad in a picturesque suit of corduroy who crosses my path from time to time with an eccentric music-machine. Sometimes I see him gravely organ-grinding for a crowd of youngsters, sometimes--with an innate courtliness characteristic of him--for a white-haired couple by a garden gate. He is wandering about in search of health. Oddly, his way lies, too, through Kentucky and Tennessee, to Florida. He--and Ann, dear, this confidence of his I must beg you to respect, as I know you will--is a Hungarian nobleman, picturesquely disguised because of some political quarrel with his country. He writes excellent verse in French and Latin, is a clever linguist, and has a marvelous fund of knowledge about birds and flowers. Altogether he is a cultured, courtly, handsome man whom I have found vastly entertaining. Romantic, isn't it? "A letter to Eadsville, Kentucky, will reach me if you write as soon as this reaches you. "Ever yours, "Diane." Let him who is more versed in the science of a nomad's mind than I, say why there was no mention of the hay-camp! Ann's answer came in course of time to Eadsville. As Ann talked in sprightly italics, so was her letter made striking and emphatic by numberless underlinings. "How _very_ romantic!" ran a part of it. "I am _mad_ about your nobleman! Isn't it _wonderful_ to have such unique and thrilling adventures? I suppose you hung things up on the walls of the cave and built a delightfully smoky fire and that the Hungarian--_bless_ his heart!--trimmed his corduroy suit with an ancestral stiletto, and paid his courtly respects to the beautiful gypsy hermit and fell _desperately_ in love with her, as well he might. I would _myself_! "Diane, I simply _must_ see him! I'm dying for a new sensation. Ever since Baron Tregar's car was stolen from the farm garage and his handsome secretary _mysteriously_ disappeared (by the way, it's Philip Poynter--Carl knows him--do you?) and then reappeared with a most unsatisfactory explanation which didn't in the least explain where he had been--only to up and disappear again as strangely as before, and the _very_ next morning--life has been terribly monotonous. And mother had a rustic seizure and made us stay at the farm _all_ summer. Imagine! Dick's aeroplaned the tops off _all_ the trees! "_Do_ beg your Hungarian to join us at Palm Beach in January. It would be _most interesting_ and novel and I'll _swear_ on the ancestral stiletto to preserve his incognito! You remember you solemnly promised to come to me in January, no matter _where_ you were! My enthusiasm grows as I write--it always does. I'm planning a _fête de nuit_--masked of course. Do please induce the romantic musician to attend. I _must_ have him. I'm sure he'll enjoy a few days of conventional respectability and so will you. I'll lend you as many gowns as you need, you dear, delightful gypsy!" To which Diane's answer was eminently satisfactory. "Last night as Johnny was getting supper," she wrote, "our minstrel appeared with a great bunch of silver-rod and I begged him to stay to supper. He was greatly gratified and when later I confessed my indiscreet revelation to you--and your invitation--he accepted it instantly. He will be honored to be your guest, he said, provided of course he may depend upon us to preserve his incognito. That is very important. Do you know it is astonishing how I find myself keyed up to the most amazing pitch of interest in him--he's so mysterious and romantic and magnetic. "Your constant craving for new and original sensations brings back a lot of memories. Will you never get over it? "I shall probably leave the van with Johnny at Jacksonville and go down by rail. There are certain spectacular complications incident to an arrival at Palm Beach in the van which would be very distasteful, to say the least. Besides, I'd be later than we planned." For most likely, reflected Diane, nibbling intently at the end of her pen, most likely Palm Beach had never seen a hay-camp and much Mr. Poynter would care! CHAPTER XXIV THE LONELY CAMPER The west was yellow. High on the mountain where a mad little waterfall sprayed the bushes of laurel and rhododendron with quicksilver, the afterglow of the sunset on the tumbling water made a streak of saffron. The wings of a homing eagle were golden-black against the sky. Over there above the cornfields to the west there was a cliff and a black and bushy ravine over which soared a buzzard or two. Presently when the moon rose its splendid alchemy would turn the black to glowing silver. A Kentucky brook chuckled boisterously by the hay-camp, tumbling headlong over mossy logs and stones and a tangled lacery of drenched ferns. Philip laid aside a bow and arrow upon which he had been busily working since supper and summoned Dick Whittington. Beyond, through oak and poplar, glowed the camp fire of his lady. "Likely we'll tramp about a bit, Richard, if you're willing," said he. "Somehow, we're infernally restless to-night and just why our lady has seen fit to pile that abominable silver-rod in such a place of honor by her tent, we can't for the life of us see. It's nothing like so pretty as the goldenrod. By and by, Whittington," Philip felt for his pipe and filled it, "we'll have our wildwood bow and arrows done and we fancy somehow that our gypsy's wonderful black eyes are going to shine a hit over that. Why? Lord, Dick, you do ask foolish questions! Our beautiful lady's an archer and a capital one too, says Johnny--even if she does like beastly silver-rod." Somewhat out of sorts the Duke of Connecticut set off abruptly through the trees with the dog at his heels. Having climbed over log and boulder to a road which cleft the mountain, he kept on to the north, descending again presently to the level of the camp, smoking abstractedly and whistling now and then for Richard Whittington, who was prone to ramble. Philip was debating whether or not he had better turn back, for the moon was already edging the black ravine with fire, when a camp fire and the silhouette of a lonely camper loomed to the west among the trees. Philip puffed forth a prodigious cloud of smoke and seated himself on a tree stump. "My! My!" said he easily. "Must be our invalid and his rumpus machine. Whittington, we're just in the mood to-night, you and I, to wander over there and tell him that he's not getting half so much over on us as he thinks he is. I've a mind to send you forward with my card." Philip's eyes narrowed and he laughed softly. Tearing a sheet of paper from a notebook he took from his pocket, he scribbled upon it the following astonishing message: "The Duke of Connecticut desires an audience. Do not kick the courier!" Accustomed by now to carry birch-bark messages to Diane, Richard Whittington waggled in perfect understanding and trotted off obediently toward the fire with Philip close at his heels. Conceivably astonished, the camper presently picked up the paper which Mr. Whittington dropped at his feet, and read it. As Philip stepped lazily from the trees he turned. It was Baron Tregar. Both men stared. "The Duke of Connecticut!" at length rumbled the Baron with perfect gravity. "I am overwhelmed." Philip, much the more astonished of the two, laughed and bowed. "Excellency," said he formally, "I am indeed astonished." "Pray be seated!" invited the Baron, his eyes more friendly than those of his guest. "I, too, have taken to the highway, Poynter, on yonder motorcycle and I have lost my way." He sniffed in disgust. "I am dining," he added dryly, "if one may dignify the damnable proceeding by that name, on potatoes which I do not in the least know how to bake without reducing them to cinders. I bought them a while back at a desolate, God-forsaken farmhouse. Heaven deliver me from camping!" With which pious ejaculation the Baron inspected his smudged and blistered fingers and read again the entertaining message from the Duke of Connecticut. "Why take to the highway," begged Philip guilelessly, "when the task is so unpleasant?" "Ah!" rumbled the Baron, more sombre now, "there is a man with a music-machine--" "There is!" said Philip fervently. The Baron looked hard at His Highness, the Duke of Connecticut. The latter produced his cigarette case and opening it politely for the service of his chief, smiled with good humor. "There is," said he coolly, "a man with a music-machine, a mysterious malady, a stained skin and a volume of Herodotus! Excellency knows the--er--romantic ensemble?" Excellency not only knew him, but for days now, taking up the trail at a certain canal, he had traveled hard over roads strangely littered with hay and food and linen collars--to find that romantic ensemble. He added with grim humor that he fancied the Duke of Connecticut knew him too. The Duke dryly admitted that this might be so. His memory, though conveniently porous at times, was for the most part excellent. "What is he doing?" asked the Baron with an ominous glint of his fine eyes. "Excellency," said Philip, staring hard at the end of his cigarette, "by every subtle device at his command, he is making graceful love to Miss Westfall, who is sufficiently wholesome and happy and absorbed in her gypsy life not to know it--yet!" The Barents explosive "Ah!" was a compound of wrath and outraged astonishment. Philip felt his attitude toward his chief undergoing a subtle revolution. "His discretion," added Philip warmly, "has departed to that forgotten limbo which has claimed his beard." The Baron was staring very hard at the camp fire. "So," said he at last,--"it is for this that I have been--" he searched for an expressive Americanism, and shrugging, invented one, "thunder-cracking along the highway in search of the man Themar saw by the fire of Miss Westfall. 'It is incredible--it can not be!' said I, as I blistered about, searching here, searching there, losing my way and thunder-cracking about in dead of night--all to pick up the trail of a green and white van and a music-machine! 'It is unbelievable--it is a monstrous mistake on the part of Themar!' But, Poynter, this love making, in the circumstances, passes all belief!" The Baron added that twice within the week he had passed the hay-camp but that by some unlucky fatality he had always contrived to miss the music-machine. "Days back," rumbled the Baron thoughtfully, "I assigned to Themar the task of discovering the identity of the man who--er--acquired a certain roadster of mine and who, I felt fairly certain, would not lose track of Miss Westfall but Themar, Poynter, came to grief--" "Yes?" said Philip coolly. "You interest me exceedingly." "He made his way back to me after many weeks of illness," said the Baron slowly, "with a curious tale of a terrible thrashing, of a barge and mules, of rough men who kicked him about and consigned him to a city jail under the malicious charge of a mule-driver who swore that he loved not black-and-tans--" "Lord!" said Philip politely; "that was tough, wasn't it?" "Just what, Poynter," begged the Baron, "is a black-and-tan?" Mr. Poynter fancied he had heard the term before. It might have reference to the color of a man's skin and hair. An uncomfortable silence fell over the Baron's camp. The Baron himself was the first to break it. "Poynter," said he bluntly, "the circumstances of our separation at Sherrill's have engendered, with reason, a slight constraint. There was a night when you grievously misjudged me--" "I am willing," admitted Philip politely, "to hear why I should alter my views." "_Mon Dieu_, Poynter!" boomed the Baron in exasperation, "you are maddening. When you are politest, I fume and strike fire--here within!" "Mental arson!" shrugged the Duke of Connecticut, relighting his cigarette with a blazing twig. "For that singular crime. Excellency, my deepest apologies." The Baron stared, frowned, and laughed. One may know very little of one's secretary, after all. "You are a curious young man!" said he. The Duke of Connecticut admitted that this might be so. Hay, therapeutically, had effected an astonishing revolution in a nature disposed congenitally to peace and trustfulness. Local applications of hay had made him exceedingly suspicious and hostile. So much so indeed that for days now he had slept by day, to the total wreck of his aesthetic reputation, and watched by night, convinced that Miss Westfall's camp was prone to strange and dangerous visitors. Excellency no doubt remembered the knife and the bullet. The Baron sighed. "Poynter," he said simply, "to a man of my nature and diplomatic position, a habit of candor is difficult. I wonder, however, if you would accept my word of honor as a gentleman that I know as little of this treacherous bullet as you; that for all I am bound to secrecy, my sincerest desire is to protect Miss Westfall from the peculiar consequences of this damnable muddle, to clear up the mystery of the bullet, and for more selfish reasons to protect her from the romantic folly of the man with the music-machine!" Philip, his frank, fine face alive with honest relief, held out his hand. "Excellency," said he warmly, "one may learn more of his chief over a camp fire, it seems, than in months of service. Our paths lie parallel." There was a subtle compact in the handshake. "What," questioned the Baron presently, "think you, are my fine gentleman's plans, Poynter?" Philip reddened. "Excellency," he admitted, "I have definite information of his plans which I did not seek." "And the source?" "Miss Westfall's servant." "Ah!" "There are certain atmospheric conditions," regretted Philip, "intensely bad for hay-camps, wherefore I found myself obliged to seek an occasional understudy who would not only blaze the trail for me but do faithful sentry duty in my absence. And Johnny, Excellency, whom I pledged to this secret service, uncomfortably insists upon reporting to me much unnecessary detail. He has developed a most unreasoning dislike for music-machines and musical gypsies." "There appears to be a general prejudice against them," admitted the Baron grimly. "A while back, then," resumed Philip, "Johnny chanced upon the information that in January Miss Westfall will be a guest of Ann Sherrill's at Palm Beach. So will our minstrel--still incognito--" "Excellent!" rumbled the Baron with relish. "Excellent. If all this be true," he added, muddling an Americanism, "we have then, of the horse another color!" "Later," said Philip, "when Miss Westfall returns to her house on wheels, I imagine he too will take to the road again--and resume his charming erotics." "That," said the Baron with decision, "is most undesirable." "I agree with you!" said Philip feelingly. "I too have promised to be a guest at Miss Sherrill's _fête de nuit_!" purred the Baron suavely. "And you, Poynter?" "Unfortunately Miss Sherrill knows absolutely nothing of my whereabouts." "Sherrill days ago entrusted me with a cordial invitation for you. He was unaware of our disagreement and expected you to accompany me. As my official secretary, Poynter, for, let us say the month of January, it is possible for me to command your attendance at Palm Beach." "Excellency," said Philip slowly, "singular as it may seem in my present free lance state, I am greatly desirous of hearing such a command." "Poynter," boomed the Baron formally, "in January I shall be overweighted with diplomatic duties at Palm Beach. I regret exceedingly that I am forced to command your attendance. This frivoling about must cease." He shook suddenly with silent laughter. "Doubtless," said he, meeting Philip's amused glance with level significance, "doubtless, Poynter, we can--" "Yes," said Philip with much satisfaction, "I think we can." They fell to chatting in lower voices as the fire died down. "Meanwhile," shrugged the disgusted Baron a little later, "I shall abandon that accursed music-machine to its fate, and rest. God knows I am but an indifferent nomad and need it sorely. Night and day have I thunder-cracked the highways, losing my way and my temper until I loathe camps and motor machines and dust and wind and baked potatoes. I sincerely hope, Poynter, that you can find me the road to an inn and a bed, a bath and some iced mint--to-night." Philip could and did. Presently standing by his abominated motorcycle on a lonely moonlit road, the Baron adjusted his leather cap and stroked his beard. "Do you know, Poynter," said he slowly, "this is a most mysterious motorcycle. It was crated to me from an unknown village in Pennsylvania by the hand of God knows whom!" "Excellency," said Philip politely as he cordially shook hands with his chief, "The world, I find, is full of mystery." Rumbling the Baron mounted and rode away. With a slight smile, Philip watched him thunder-cracking disgustedly along the dusty road back to civilization. CHAPTER XXV A DECEMBER SNOW STORM As the dusty wanderers wound slowly down into southern Georgia on a mild bright day, a December snow storm broke with flake and flurry over the Westfall farm. Whirling, crooning, pirouetting, the mad white ghost swept down from the hills and hurled itself with a rattle of shutters and stiffened boughs against the frozen valley. By nightfall the wind was wailing eerily through the chimneys; but the checkerboard panes of light one glimpsed through the trees of the Westfall lane were bright and cheery. In the comfortable sitting room of the farmhouse, Carl rose and drew the shades, added a log to the great, open fireplace and glanced humorously at his companion who was industriously playing Canfield. "Well, Dick," said he, "on with your overcoat. Now that supper's done, we've a tramp ahead of us." Wherry rebelled. "Oh, Lord, Carl!" he exclaimed. "Hear the wind!" He rose and drew aside the shade. "The lane's thick with snow. Heavens, man, it's no night for a tramp. Allan's coming in with the mail and he looks like a snow man." "You promised," reminded Carl inexorably. "How long since you've had a drink, Dick?" "Nine weeks!" said Wherry, his boyish face kindling suddenly with pride. "And your eyes and skin are clear and you're lean and hard as a race horse. But what a fight! What a fight!" Carl slipped his arm suddenly about the other's broad shoulders. "Come on, Dick," he urged gently. "It's discipline and endurance to-night. I want you to fight this icy wind and grit your teeth against it. Every battle won makes a force furrow in your will." He met Wherry's eyes and smiled with a flash of the irresistible magnetism which somehow awoke unconscious response in those who beheld it. It flamed now in Wherry's clear young eyes, a look of dumb fidelity such as one sees now and then in the eyes of a faithful animal. Such a look had flashed at times in the bloated face of Hunch Dorrigan, in the eyes of young Allan Carmody here at the farm, and--in early manhood when Carl had lazily set a college by the ears--in the eyes of Philip Poynter. It was the nameless force which the faculty had dreaded, for it sent men flocking at the heels of one whose daring whims were as incomprehensible as they were unexpected and original. Young Allan brought the mail in and Carl smilingly tossed a letter to Wherry, who colored and slipped it in his pocket with an air of studied indifference. Carl slit the two directed to himself and rapidly scanned their contents. One was from Ann Sherrill jogging his memory about a promise to come to Palm Beach in January, the other from Aunt Agatha, whose trip to her cousin's in Indiana Carl had encouraged with a great flood of relief, for it had made possible this nine weeks with Wherry at the Glade Farm. Two steps at a time, Wherry bounded up to his room. When he returned he was in better spirits than he had been for months. "Come on, Carl," he exclaimed boyishly. "I'll walk down any gale to-night. And Allan says we're in for a blizzard." Breasting the biting gale, the two men swung out through the snowy lane to the roadway. Carl watched his companion in silence. It was a test--this wind--to see how much of a man had been made from the flabby, drunken wreck he had dragged to the Glade Farm weeks ago with a masterful command. It had been a bitter fight, with days of heavy sullenness on Wherry's part and swift apology when the mood was gone, days of hard riding and walking, of icy plunges after a racking grind of exercise for which Carl himself with his splendid strength inexorably set the pace, days of fierce rebellion when he had calmly thrashed his suffering young guest into submission and locked him in his room, days of horrible choking remorse and pleading when Carl had grimly turned away from the pitiful wreck Starrett had made of his clever young secretary. Once Starrett had motored up officiously to bully Wherry into coming back to him. Carl smiled. Starrett had stumbled back to his waiting motor with a broken rib and a bruised and swollen face. Starrett was a coward--he would not come again. Carl glanced again at Wherry. It was a man who walked beside him to-night. The battle was over. Chin up, shoulders squared against the bitter wind, he walked with the free, full stride of health and new endurance, tossing the snow from his dark, heavy hair with a laugh. There was clear red in his face and his eyes were shining. Five miles in the teeth of a sleety blizzard and every muscle ached with the fight. "Dick," said Carl suddenly, "I'm proud of you." Wherry swung sturdily on his heel. "But you won for me, Carl," he said quietly. "I'll not forget that." In silence they tramped back through the heavy drifts to the farmhouse and left their snowy coats in the great warm kitchen where the Carmodys--old Allan and young Allan, young, shy, pretty Mary and old Mary, the sole winter servants of the Glade--were mulling cider over a red-hot stove. By the fire in the sitting room Dick faced his host with hot color in his face. "Carl," he said with an effort, "my letter to-night--it's from a girl up home in Vermont. I--I've never spoken of her before--I wasn't fit--" "Yes?" said Carl. "She's a little bit of a girl with wonderful eyes," said Wherry, his eyes gentle. "We used to play a lot by the brook, Carl, until I went away to college and forgot. I--I wrote her the whole wretched mess," he choked. "She says come back." "Yes," said Carl sombrely, "there are fine, big splendid women like that. I'm glad you know one. God knows what the world of men would do without them. You'll go back to her?" Wherry gulped courageously. "If--if you think I'm fit," he said, his face white. "If you feel you can trust me, I'll go in the morning." "I know I can trust you," said Carl with his swift, ready smile. "I know, old man, that you'll not forget." "No," said Dick, "I can't forget." "Tell me," Carl bent and turned the log. "What will you do now, Dick? I know your head was turned a bit by the salary Starrett gave you, but you'll not go back to that sort of work for a while anyway, will you?" "No," said Dick. "If I knew something of scientific farming," he added after a while, "I think I'd stay home. Dad's a doctor, a kindly, old-fashioned chap. I--I'd like to have you know him, Carl--he's a bully sort. He's living up there in Vermont on a farm that's never been developed to its full possibilities. It's the best farm in the valley, but, you see, he hasn't the time and he's growing old--" "Why not take a course at an agricultural college?" Wherry colored. "I haven't the money, Carl," he acknowledged honestly. "Most of Dad's savings went to see me through college. I've a little--" "Would a thousand a year see you through, with what you've got?" asked Carl quietly. But Wherry did not answer. He had walked away to the window, shaking. Presently he turned back to the table, but his face was white and his eyes dark with agony. Dropping into a chair he buried his face in his hands, unnerved at the end of his fight by Carl's offer. Wisely the man by the fire let him fight it out by himself and for an interval there was no sound in the quiet room save the crackle of the log and the great choking breaths of the boy by the table, whose head had fallen forward on his outstretched arms. Carl threw his cigar into the fire and rose. "Brace up, Dick!" he said at length. "We've been touching the high spots up here and you were strung to a tension that had to break." He crossed to Wherry and laid his hand heavily on the boy's heaving shoulder. "Now, Dick, I want you to listen to me. I'm going to see you through an agricultural college and you're not going to tell me I can't afford it. I know it already. But I've four thousand a year and that's so far off from what I need to live in my way--that a thousand or so one way or the other wouldn't make any more difference than a snowflake in hell. I owe you something anyway--God knows!--for supplying the model that sent you to perdition. If you hadn't paid me the ingenuous compliment of unremitting imitation, you'd have been a sight better off. . . . And you're going to marry the white little girl with the beautiful eyes and the wonderful, sweet forgiving decency of heart, and bring up a crowd of God-fearing youngsters, make over the old doctor's farm for him--and likely his life--and begin afresh. That's all I ask. Now to bed with you." Wherry wrung Carl's hand, and after a passionate, incoherent storm of gratitude stumbled blindly from the room. The old house grew very quiet. Presently to the crackle of the fire and the wild noise of the wind outside was added the soft and melancholy lilt of a flute. There was no mockery or impudence in the strain to-night. It was curiously of a piece with the creaking loneliness of the ancient farmhouse and so soft at times that the clash of the frozen branches against the house engulfed it utterly. Sombre, swayed by a surge of deep depression, the flutist lay back in his chair by the fire, piping moodily upon the friend he always carried in his pocket. To-morrow Dick would be off to the girl in Vermont-- The clock struck twelve. The rural world was wrapped in slumber. Above-stairs Dick was sleeping the sound, dreamless sleep of healthy weariness, and most likely dreaming of the girl by the brook. A cleansed body and a cleansed mind, thank God! So had he slept for nights while the inexorable master of his days, with no companion but his flute, drank and drank until dawn, climbing up to bed at cockcrow--sometimes drunk and morose, sometimes a grim and conscious master of the bottle. Carl had been drinking wildly, heavily for months. That in flagellating Wherry's body day by day he spared not himself, was characteristic of the man and of his will. That he preached and dragged a man from the depths of hell by day and deliberately descended into infernal abysses by night, was but another revelation of the wild, inconsistent humors which tore his soul, Youth and indomitable physique gave him as yet clear eyes and muscles of iron, for all he abused them, but the humors of his soul from day to day grew blacker. Kronberg, a new servant Carl had brought with him to the Glade for personal attendance, presently brought in his nightly tray of whiskey. Carl glanced at the bottle and frowned. "Take it away!" he said curtly. Kronberg obeyed. A little later, white and very tired, Carl went up to bed. Dick went in the morning. At the door, after chatting nervously to cover the surge of emotion in his heart, he held out his hand. Neither spoke. "Carl," choked Wherry at last, meeting the other's eyes with a glance of wild imploring, "so help me God, I'll run straight. You know that?" "Yes," said Carl truthfully, "I know it." An interval of desperate silence, then: "I--I can't thank you, old man, I--I'd like to but--" "No," said Carl. "I wish you wouldn't." And Wherry, wildly wringing his hand for the last time, was off to the sleigh waiting in the lane, a lean, quivering lad with blazing eyes of gratitude and a great choke in his throat as he waved at Carl, who smiled back at him with lazy reassurance through the smoke of a cigarette. Carl's day was restless and very lonely. By midnight he was drinking heavily, having accepted the tray this time and dismissed Kronberg for the night. Though the snow had abated some the night before, and ceased in the morning, it was again whirling outside in the lane with the wild abandon of a Bacchante. The wind too was rising and filling the house with ghostly creaks. It was one of those curious nights when John Barleycorn chose to be kind--when mind and body stayed alert and keen. Carl lazily poured some whiskey in the fire and watched the flame burn blue. He could not rid his mind of the doctor's farm and the girl in Vermont. Again the wind shook the farmhouse and danced and howled to its crazy castanetting. There was a creak in the hallway beyond. Last night, too, when he had been talking to Wherry, there had been such a creak and for the moment, he recalled vividly, there had been no wind. Then, disturbed by Dick's utter collapse, he had carelessly dismissed it. Now with his brain dangerously edged by the whiskey and his mind brooding intently over a series of mysterious and sinister adventures which had enlivened his summer, he rose and stealing catlike to the door, flung it suddenly back. Kronberg, his dark, thin-lipped face ashen, fell headlong into the room with a revolver in his hand. With the tigerish agility which had served him many a time before Carl leaped for the revolver and smiling with satanic interest leveled it at the man at his feet. "So," said he softly, "you, too, are a link in the chain. Get up!" Sullenly Kronberg obeyed. "If you are a good shot," commented Carl coolly, "the bullet you sent from this doorway would have gone through my head. That was your intention?" Kronberg made no pretense of reply. "You've been here nine weeks," sympathized Carl, "and were cautious enough to wait until Wherry departed. What a pity you were so delayed! Caution, my dear Kronberg, if I may fall into epigram, is frequently and paradoxically the mother of disaster. As for instance your own case. I imagine you're a blunderer anyway," he added impudently; "your fingers are too thick. If you hadn't been so anxious to learn when Wherry was likely to go," guessed Carl suddenly, "you wouldn't have listened and creaked at the keyhole last night. And more than likely you'd have gotten that creak over on me to-night." Kronberg's shifting glance roved desperately to the doorway. "Try it," invited Carl pleasantly. "Do. And I'll help you over the threshold with a little lead. Do you know the way to the attic door in the west wing?" Kronberg, gulping with fear, said he did not. He was shaking violently. "Get the little lamp on the mantel there," commanded Carl curtly, "and light it. Bring it here. Now you will kindly precede me to the door I spoke of. I'll direct you. If you bolt or cry out, I'll send a bullet through your head. So that you may not be tempted to waste your blood and brains, if you have any, and my patience, pray recall that the Carmodys are snugly asleep by now in the east wing and the house is large. They couldn't hear you." It was the older portion of the house and one which by reason of its draughts was rarely used in winter, to which Carl drove his shaking prisoner. In summer it was cool and pleasant. In winter, however, it was cut off from heat and habitation by lock and key. At Carl's curt direction Kronberg turned the key in the door and passed through the icy file of rooms beyond to the second floor, thence to a dusty attic where the sweep of the wind and snow seemed very close, and on to an ancient cluster of storerooms. Years back when the old farmhouse had been an inn, shivering servants had made these chill and dusty rooms more habitable. Now with the deserted wing below and the wind-feet of the Bacchante on the roof above, they were inexpressibly lonely and dreary. Kronberg bit his lip and shuddered. His fear of the grim young guard behind him had been subtly aggravated by the desolation of his destined jail. Halting in the doorway of an inner room, Carl held the light high and nodded with approval. Its dim rays fell upon dust and cobwebs, trunks and the nondescript relics of years of hoarding. There were no windows; only a skylight above clouded by the whirl of the storm. Carl seated himself upon a trunk, placed the lamp beside him and directed his guest to a point opposite. Kronberg, with dark, fascinated eyes glued upon the glittering steel in his jailer's hand, obeyed. "Kronberg," said Carl coldly, "there's a lot I want to know. Moreover, I'm going to know it. Nor shall I trust to drunken jailers as I did a while back with a certain compatriot of yours. Late last spring when you sought employment at my cousin's town-house, you were already, I presume, a link in the chain. If my memory serves me correctly, you were dismissed after ten days of service, through no fault of your own. The house was closed for the summer. You came to me again this fall with a letter of recommendation from Mrs. Westfall. Knowing my aunt," reflected Carl dryly, "that is really very humorous. What were you doing in the meantime?" Carl shifted the lamp that its pale fan of light might fall full upon the other's face. "Let me tell you--do!" said he. "For I'm sure I know. During the summer, my dear Kronberg, I was the victim of a series of peculiar and persistent attacks. To a growing habit of unremitting vigilance and suspicion, I may thank my life. As for the peaceful monotony of the last nine weeks, doubtless I may attribute that to the constant companionship of Wherry, the fact that you were much too unpopular with the Carmodys as a foreigner to find an opportunity of poisoning my food, and that I've fallen into the discreet and careful habit of always drinking from a fresh bottle, properly sealed. There was a chance even there, but you were not clever enough to take it. You're overcautious and a coward. But how busy you must have been before that," he purred solicitously, "bolting about in various disguises after me. How very patient! Dear, dear, if Nature had only given you brains enough to match your lack of scruples--" The insolent purr of his musical voice whipped color into Kronberg's cheeks. Abruptly he shifted his position and glared stonily. "Venice," murmured Carl impudently, "Venice called them _bravi_; here in America we brutally call them gun-men, but honestly, Kronberg, in all respect and confidence, you really haven't brains and originality enough for a clever professional murderer. Amateurish killing is a sickly sort of sport. And the danger of it! Take for instance that night when you fancied you were a motor bandit and waylaid me on the way to the farm. I was very drunk and driving madly and I nearly got you. A pretty to-do that would have been! To be killed by an amateur and you a paid professional! My! My! Kronberg, I blush for you. I really do!" He rose smiling, though his eyes were dangerously brilliant. "Just when," said he lazily, "did you steal the paper I found in the candlestick? It's gone--" He had struck fire from the stone man at last. A hopeless, hunted look flamed up in Kronberg's eyes and died away. "Ah!" guessed Carl keenly, "so you're in some muddle there, too, eh?" Kronberg stared sullenly at the dusty floor. "A silence strike?" inquired Carl. "Well we'll see how you feel about that in the morning. As for the skylight, Kronberg, if you feel like skating down an icy roof to hell, try it." Whistling softly, Carl backed to the door and disappeared. An instant later came the click of a key in the lock. He had taken the lamp with him. Groping desperately about, Kronberg searched for some covering to protect him from the icy cold. His search was unsuccessful. When the skylight grayed at dawn, he was pacing the floor, white and shaking with the chill. CHAPTER XXVI AN ACCOUNTING The key clicked in the lock. Kronberg, huddled in a corner, stirred and cunningly hid the flimsy coverings of chintz he had unearthed from an ancient trunk. For three days he had not spoken, three days of bitter, biting cold, three days of creaking, lonely quiet, of mournful wind and shifting lights above the glass overhead, of infernal visitations from one he had grown to fear more than death itself. With heavy chills racking his numb body, with flashes of fever and clamping pains in his head, his endurance was now nearing an end. Bearing a tray of food, Carl entered and closed the door. "I'm still waiting, Kronberg," he reminded coolly, "for the answers to those questions." For answer Kronberg merely pushed aside the tray of food with a shudder. There was a dreadful nausea to-day in the pit of his stomach. "So?" said Carl. "Well," he regretted, "there are always the finger stretchers. They're crude, Kronberg, and homemade, but in time they'll do the work." Kronberg's face grew colorless as death itself as his mind leaped to the torture of the day before. A clamp for every finger tip, a metal bar between--the hell-conceived device invented by his jailer forced the fingers wide apart and held them there as in vise until a stiffness bound the aching cords, then a pain which crept snakelike to the elbow--and the shoulder. Then when the tortured nerves fell wildly to telegraphing spasmodic jerkings of distress from head to toe, the shrugging devil with the flute would talk vividly of roaring wood fires and the comforts awaiting the penitent below. Yesterday Kronberg had fainted. To-day-- Carl presently took the singular metal contrivance from his pocket, deftly clamped the fingers of his victim and sat down to wait, rummaging for his flute. The tension snapped. Choking, Kronberg fell forward at his jailer's feet, his eyes imploring. "Mercy," he whispered. "I--I can not bear it." "Then you will answer what I ask?" "Yes." Carl unsnapped the infernal finger-stretcher and dropped it in his pocket. "Come," said he not unkindly and led his weak and staggering prisoner to a room in the west wing where a log fire was blazing brightly in the fireplace. With a moan Kronberg broke desperately away from his grasp and flung himself violently upon his knees by the fire, stretching his arms out pitifully to the blaze and chattering and moaning like a thing demented. Carl walked away to the window. Presently the man by the fire crept humbly to a chair, a broken creature in the clutch of fever, eyes and skin unnaturally bright. "Here," said Carl, pouring him some brandy from a decanter on the table. "Sit quietly for a while and close your eyes. Are you better now?" he asked a little later. "Yes," said Kronberg faintly. "What is your real name?" "Themar." "When you took service with my aunt in the spring, you were looking for a certain paper?" "Yes." "Did you find it during your ten days in the town-house?" "No." "How did you discover its whereabouts?" "One night I watched you replace it in a secret drawer in your room. Before I could obtain it, the house was closed for the summer and I was dismissed. I had succeeded, however, in getting an impression of the desk lock." "You went back later?" "Yes. It was a summer day--very hot. The front door was ajar. I opened it wider. Your aunt sat upon the floor of the hall crying--" "Yes?" "I spoke of passing and seeing the door ajar. She recognized me as one of the servants and begged me to call a taxi. I assisted her to the taxi and went back, having only pretended to lock the door." "And having disposed of her," supplied Carl, "you flew up the stairs, applied the key made from the impression--and stole the paper?" "Yes." "Beautiful!" said Carl softly. "How cleverly you tricked me!" Themar shrugged. "It was very simple." Carl smiled. "Where is the paper now?" he inquired. Themar's face darkened. "When later I looked in the pocket of my coat," he admitted, "the paper had disappeared utterly. Nor have I found it since. It is a very great mystery--" "Ah!" said Carl. "So," he mused, "as long as the paper was in my possession, my life was safe, for you must watch me to find it. Therefore I was not poisoned or stabbed or shot at during your original ten days of service. Later, even though you could not lay your own hands upon the paper, things began to happen. Knowing what I did, I had lived too long as it was." "Yes." "Suppose you begin at the beginning--and tell me just what you know." It was a halting, nervous tale poorly told. Carl, with his fastidious respect for a careful array of facts, found it trying. By a word here or a sentence there, he twisted the mass of imperfect information into conformity and pieced it out with knowledge of his own. "So," said he coldly, "you thought to stab me the night of the storm and stabbed Poynter. Fool! Why," he added curtly, "did you later spy upon my cousin's camp when Tregar had expressly forbidden it?" It was an unexpected question. Themar flushed uncomfortably. Carl had a way of reading between the lines that was exceedingly disconcerting. His information, he said at length after an interval of marked hesitancy, had been too meager. He had listened at the door once when the Baron had spoken of Miss Westfall to his secretary. A housemaid had frightened him away and he had bolted upstairs--to attend to something else while they were both safely occupied. Rather than work blindly as he needs must if he knew no more, he had sought to add to his information by spying on her camp. It was unconvincing. "So," said Carl keenly, "Baron Tregar does not trust you!" Themar's lip curled. "The Baron knew of your ten days in my cousin's house?" Again the marked hesitancy--the flush. "Yes," said Themar. "You're lying," said Carl curtly. "If you wish to go back--" Themar moistened his dry lips and shuddered. "No," he whispered, "he did not know." "Why?" Themar fell to trembling. This at least he must keep locked from the grim, ironic man by the window. "You're playing double with Tregar and with me," said Carl hotly. "I thought so. Very well!" Smiling infernally, he drew from his pocket the finger-stretchers. "Excellency!" panted Themar. "Why did you serve in my cousin's house without the knowledge of the Baron?" "If--if the secret was harmful to Houdania," blurted Themar desperately, spurred to confession by the clank of the metal in Carl's hand, "I--I could sell the paper to Galituria!" The nature of the admission was totally unexpected. Carl whistled softly. "Ah!" said he, raising expressive eyebrows. "My mother," said Themar sullenly, "was of Galituria. There is hatred there for Houdania--a century's feud--" "And you in the employ of the rival province hunting this to earth! What a mess--what a mess!" Followed a battery of merciless questions punctuated by the diabolic clank of metal. Themar had been deputed solely to report to Baron Tregar-- "And murder me!" supplemented Carl curtly. "Yes," said Themar. "Under oath I was to obey Ronador's commands without question. But he did not even trust me with the cipher message of instruction. That was mailed to the Baron's Washington address written in an ink that only turned dark with the heat of a fire. I too was sent to Washington. Ronador knew nothing of the Baron's trip to Connecticut." By spying before he had sailed, Themar added, at a question from Carl, he had learned of the cipher. "You read the paper of course when you stole it from my desk?" "There was a noise," said Themar dully, his face bitter; "I ran for the street. Later the paper was gone." "What were Tregar's intentions about the paper?" Themar chewed nervously at his lips. "His Excellency spoke to me of a paper. He said that I must discover its whereabouts, if possible, but that none but he must steal it. Anything written which you would seem to have hidden would be of interest to him. He bound me by a terrible oath not to touch or read it." "And you?" "After a time I swore that I had seen you burn it--" "Clumsy! Still if he believed it, it left me, in the event of Miss Westfall's complete ignorance of all this hubbub, the sole remaining obstacle." But Themar had not heard. He was shaking again in the clutch of a heavy chill. Presently, his sentences having trailed off once or twice into peculiar incoherency, he fell to talking wildly of a hut in the Sherrill woods in which he had lived for days in the early autumn, of a cuff in a box buried in the ground beneath the planking. For weeks, he said, he had vainly tried to solve its cipher, stealing away from the farm by night to pore over it by the light of a candle. It was fearfully intricate-- "But you--you that know all," he gasped painfully, "you will get it and read and tell me--" Moaning he fell back in his chair. Carl rang for Mrs. Carmody. It was young Mary, however, who answered, her round blue eyes lingering in mystification upon the fire Carl had built in the deserted wing. "Mary," said Carl carelessly, "you'd better phone for a doctor and a nurse. Kronberg has returned and I fear he's in for a spell of pneumonia." Later in the Sherrill hut, Carl ripped a board from the floor and found in the dirt beneath, a box containing a soiled cuff covered with an intricate cipher. "Odd!" said he with a curious smile as he dropped the cuff into his pocket; "it's very odd about that paper." CHAPTER XXVII THE SONG OF THE PINE-WOOD SPARROW With the dawn a laggard breeze came winging drowsily in from the southern sea, the first thing astir in the spectral world of palm and villa. Warm and deliciously fragrant, it swept the stiff wet Bermuda grass upon the lawn of the Sherrill villa at Palm Beach, rustled the crimson hedge of hibiscus, caught the subtle perfume of jasmine and oleander and swept on to a purple-flowered vine on the white walls of the villa, a fuller, richer thing for the ghost-scent of countless flowers. Into this gray-white world of glimmering coquina and dew-wet palm rode presently the slim, brisk figure of a girl astride a fretful horse. A royal palm dripped cool gray rain upon her as she galloped past to the shell-road looming out of the velvet stillness ahead like a dim, white ghost-trail. The gray ocean murmured, the still gray lagoon was asleep! Here and there a haunting, elusive splash of delicate rose upon the silver promised the later color of a wakening world. It was a finer, quieter world, thought Diane, than the later day world of white hot sunlight. With pulses atune to the morning's freshness, the girl galloped rapidly along the shell-road, the clattering thud of her horse's hoofs startling in the quiet. As yet only a sleepy bird or two had begun to twitter. There was a growing noise of wind in the grass and palms. A century back it seemed to this girl in whom the restless gypsy tide was subtly fretting, she had left Johnny and the van at Jacksonville to come into this sensuous, tropical world of color, fashionable life and lazy days. Coloring delicately, the metallic gray bosom of the lake presently foretold the sunrise with a primrose glow. When at length the glaring white light of the sun struck sparks from the dew upon the pine and palmetto, Diane was riding rapidly south in quest of the Florida flat-woods. There was a veritable paradise of birds in the pine barren, Dick Sherrill had said, robins and bluebirds, flickers and woodpeckers with blazing cockades, shrikes and chewinks. It was an endless monotony of pine trees, vividly green and far apart, into which Diane presently rode. A buzzard floated with uptilted wings above the sparse woodland to the west. A gorgeous butterfly, silver-spangled, winged its way over the saw palmetto and sedge between the trees to an inviting glade beyond, cleft by a shallow stream. Swamp, jungle, pine and palmetto were vocal with the melody of many birds. Diane reined in her horse with a thrill. This was Florida, at last, not the unreal, exotic brilliance of Palm Beach. Here was her father's beloved Flowerland which she had loved as a child. Here were pines and tall grass, sun-silvered, bending in the warm wind, and the song of a pine-wood sparrow! From the scrub ahead came his quiet song, infinitely sweet, infinitely plaintive like the faint, soft echo of a fairy's dream. A long note and a shower of silver-sweet echoes, so it ran, the invisible singer seeming to sing for himself alone. So might elfin bells have pealed from a thicket, inexpressibly low and tender. Diane sat motionless, the free, wild grace of her seeming a part of the primeval quiet. For somehow, by some twist of singer's magic, this Florida bird was singing of Connecticut wind and river, of dogwood on a ridge, of water lilies in the purple of a summer twilight, of a spot named forever in her mind--Arcadia. Now as the girl listened, a beautiful brown sprite of the rustling pine wood about her, a great flood of color crept suddenly from the brown full throat to the line of her hair, and the scarlet that lingered in her cheeks was wilder than the red of winter holly. Surely--surely there was no reason under Heaven why the little bird should sing about a hay-camp! But sing of it he did with a swelling throat and a melodic quiver of nerve and sinew, and a curious dialogue followed. "A hay-camp is a very foolish thing, to be sure!" sang the bird with a dulcet shower of plaintive notes. "To be sure," said the voice of the girl's conscience, "to be sure it is. But how very like him!" "But--but there was the bullet--" "I have often thought of it," owned the Voice. "A gallant gentleman must see that his lady comes to no harm. 'Tis the way of gallant gentlemen--" "Hum!" "And he never once spoke of his discomfort on the long hot road, though a hay-camp is subject to most singular mishaps." "I--I have often marveled." "He is brave and sturdy and of charming humor--" "A superlative grain of humor perhaps, and he's very lazy--" "And fine and frank and honorable. One may not forget Arcadia and the rake of twigs." "One may not forget, that is very true. But he seeks to make himself out such a very great fool---" "He cloaks each generous instinct with a laughing drollery. Why did you hum when you cooked his supper and called to him through the trees?" "I--I do not know." "'Twas the world-old instinct of primitive woman!" "No! No! No! It was only because I was living the life I love the best. I was very happy." "Why were you happier after the storm?" "I--I do not know." "You have scolded with flashing eyes about the hay-camp--" "But--I--I did not mind. I tried to mind and could not--" "That is a very singular thing." "Yes." "Why have you not told him of the tall sentinel you have furtively watched of moonlit nights among the trees, a sentinel who slept by day upon a ridiculous bed of hay that he might smoke and watch over the camp of his lady until peep o' day?" "I--do not know." "You are sighing even now for the van and a camp fire--for the hay-camp through the trees--" "No!" with a very definite flash of perversity. "Where is this persistent young nomad of the hay-camp anyway?" "I--I have wondered myself." But with a quiver of impatience the horse had pawed the ground and the tiny bird flew off to a distant clump of palmetto. Diane rode hurriedly off into the flat-woods. CHAPTER XXVIII THE NOMAD OF THE FIRE-WHEEL It had been an unforgettable day, this day in the pine woods. Diane had forded shallow streams and followed bright-winged birds, lunched by a silver lake set coolly in the darkling shade of cypress and found a curious nest in the stump of a tree. Now with a mass of creeping blackberry and violets strapped to her saddle she was riding slowly back through the pine woods. Though the sun, which awhile back had filled the hollow of palmetto fronds with a ruddy pool of light, had long since dropped behind the horizon, the girl somehow picked the homeward trail with the unerring instinct of a wild thing. That one may be hopelessly lost in the deceptive flatwoods she dismissed with a laugh. The wood is kind to wild things. It was quite dark when through the trees ahead she caught the curious glimmer of a cart wheel of flame upon the ground, hub and spokes glowing vividly in the center of a clearing. Curiously the girl rode toward it, unaware that the picturesque fire-wheel ahead was the typical camp fire of the southern Indian, or that the strange wild figure squatting gravely by the fire in lonely silhouette against the white of a canvas-covered wagon beyond in the trees, was a vagrant Seminole from the proud old turbaned tribe who still dwell in the inaccessible morasses of the Everglades. The realization came in a disturbed flash of interest and curiosity. Though the Florida Indian harmed no one, he still considered himself proudly hostile to the white man. Wherefore Diane wisely wheeled her horse about to retreat. It was too late. Already the young Seminole was upon his feet, keen of vision and hearing for all he seemed but a tense, still statue in the wildwood. Accepting the situation with good grace, Diane rode fearlessly toward his fire and reined in her horse. But the ready word of greeting froze upon her lips. For the nomad of the fire-wheel was a girl, tall and slender, barbarically arrayed in the holiday garb of a Seminole chief. The firelight danced upon the beaten band of silver about her brilliant turban and the beads upon her sash, upon red-beaded deerskin leggings delicately thonged from the supple waist to the small and moccasined foot, upon a tunic elaborately banded in red and a belt of buckskin from which hung a hunting knife, a revolver and an ammunition pouch. But Diane's fascinated gaze lingered longest upon the Indian girl's face. Her smooth, vivid skin was nearer the hue of the sun-dark Caucasian than of the red man, and lovelier than either, with grave, vigilant eyes of dusk, a straight, small nose and firm, proud mouth vividly scarlet like the wild flame in her cheeks. Aloof, impassive, the Indian girl stared back. "I wish well to the beautiful daughter of white men!" she said at length with native dignity. The contralto of her voice was full and rich and very musical, her English, deliberate and clear-cut. Immensely relieved--for the keen glance of those dark Indian eyes had suddenly softened--Diane leaped impetuously from her horse; across the fire white girl and Indian maid clasped hands. [Illustration: White girl and Indian maid then clasped hands.] "Do forgive me!" she exclaimed warmly. "But I saw your fire and turned this way before I really knew what I was doing." Just as Diane won the confidence of every wild thing in the forest, so now with her winsome grace and unaffected warmth, she won the Indian girl. Some subtle, nameless sympathy of the forest leaped like a spark from eye to eye--then with a slow, grave smile in which there was much less reserve, the Seminole motioned her guest to a seat by the fire. Nothing loath, Diane promptly tethered her horse and squatted Indian fashion by the cartwheel fire, immensely thrilled and diverted by her picturesque adventure. "My name," she offered presently with her ready smile, "is Diane." "Di-ane," said the Indian girl majestically. And added naïvely, "She was the Roman goddess of light--and of hunting, is it not so?" Diane looked very blank. "Where in the world--" she stammered, staring, and colored. The Indian girl smiled. "From _so_ high," she said shyly, "I have been taught by Mic-co. Like the white student of books, I know many curious things that he has taught me." "And your name?" asked Diane, heroically mastering her mystified confusion. "May I--may I not know that too?" "Shock-kil-law," came the ready reply. "That readily becomes Keela!" exclaimed Diane smiling. The girl nodded. "So Mic-co has said. And so indeed he calls me." "Tell me, Keela, what does it mean?" "Red-winged blackbird," said Keela. It was eminently fitting, thought Diane, and glanced at Keela's hair and cheeks. There was a wild duck roasting in the hub of coals--from the burning spokes came the smell of cedar. The Indian girl majestically broke a segment of koonti bread and proffered it to her companion. With faultless courtesy Diane accepted and presently partook with healthy relish of a supper of duck and sweet potatoes. The silence of the Indian girl was utterly without constraint. "I wonder," begged Diane impetuously, "if you'll tell me who Mic-co is? I'm greatly interested. He taught you about Rome?" Nodding, the Indian girl said in her quaint, deliberate English that Mic-co was her white foster father. The Seminoles called him Es-ta-chat-tee-mic-co--chief of the White Race. Most of them called him simply Mic-co. He was a great and good medicine man of much wisdom who dwelt upon a fertile chain of swamp islands in the Everglades. The Indians loved him. Still puzzled, Diane diffidently ventured a question or two, marveling afresh at the girl's beauty and singular costume. "I am of no race," said Keela sombrely. "My father was a white man; my mother not all Indian; my grandfather--a Minorcan. Six moons I live with my white foster father. And I live then as I wish--like the daughter of white men. Six moons I dwell with the clan of my mother. Such is my life since the old chief made the compact with Mic-co. Come!" she added and led the way to the Indian wagon. "When the night-winds call," she said wistfully, "I grow restless--for I am happiest in the lodge of Mic-co. Then the old chief bids me travel to the world of white men and sell." There was gentle pathos in her mellow voice. Pieces of ancient pottery, quaint bleached bits of skeleton, beads and shells and trinkets of gold unearthed from the Florida sand mounds, moccasins and baskets, koonti starch and plumes, such were the picturesque wares which Keela peddled when the stir of her mingled blood drove her forth from the camp of her forbears. Diane bought generously, harnessed her saddle with clanking relics and regretfully mounted her horse. "Let me come again to-morrow!" she begged. "Uncah!" granted the girl in Seminole and her great black eyes were very friendly. Looking back as she rode through the flat-woods, Diane marveled afresh. It was a far cry indeed from the camp of a Seminole to the legends of Rome. But the primeval flavor of the night presently dissolved in the glare of acetylenes from a long gray car standing motionless by the roadside ahead. The climbing moon shone full upon the face of a bareheaded motorist idly smoking a cigarette and waiting. Diane reined in her horse with a jerk and a clank of relics. "Philip Poynter!" she exclaimed. The driver laughed. "I wonder," said he, "if you know what a shock you've thrown into your aunt by staying out in the flat-woods until dark. She once knew a man who lost himself. Incidentally they are mighty deceptive to wander about in. The trees are so far apart that one never seems to get into them. And then, having meanwhile effectively got in without knowing it, one never seems to get out." "Where," demanded Diane indignantly, "did you come from anyway?" "If you hadn't been so ambitious," Philip assured her with mild resentment, "you'd have seen me at breakfast. I arrived at Sherrill's last night. As it is, I've been sitting here an hour or so watching you swap wildwood yarns with the aborigine yonder. And Ann Sherrill sent me after you in Dick's speediest car. Ho, uncle!" An aged negro appeared from certain shadows to which Philip had lazily consigned him. "Uncle," said Philip easily, "will ride your horse back to Sherrill's for you. I picked him up on the road. You'll motor back with me?" Diane certainly would not. "Then," regretted Philip, "I'm reduced to the painful and spectacular expedient of just grazing the heels of your fiery steed with Dick's racer all the way back to Sherrill's and matching up his hoof-beats on the shell-road with a devil's tattoo on the horn." Greatly vexed, Diane resigned her horse to the waiting negro, who rode off into the moonlight with a noisy clank. Mr. Poynter's face was radiant. "And after running the chance of a night in the pine barrens," he mused admiringly, "you amble out of the danger zone in the most matter-of-fact manner with your saddle clanking like a bone-yard. I don't wonder your aunt fusses. What made the racket?" "Bones and shells and things." "Well, for such absolute irresponsibility as you've developed since you've been out of the chastening jurisdiction of the hay-camp, I'd respectfully suggest that you marry the very first bare-headed motorist, smoking a cigarette, whom you happened to see as you rode out of the pine-woods." "Philip," said Diane disdainfully, "the moon--" "Is on my head again," admitted Philip. "I know. It always gets me. We'd better motor around a bit and clear my brain out. I'd hate awfully to have the Sherrills think I'm in love." Almost anything one could say, reflected Diane uncomfortably, inspired Philip's brain to fresh fertility. The camp of Keela, domiciled indefinitely in the flat-woods to sell to winter tourists, proved a welcome outlet for the fretting gypsy tide in Diane's veins. She found the Indian girl's magnetism irresistible. Proud, unerringly truthful, fastidious in speech and personal habit, truly majestic and generous, such was the shy woodland companion with whom Diane chose willfully to spend her idle hours, finding the girl's unconstrained intervals of silence, her flashes of Indian keenness, her inborn reticence and naïve parade of the wealth of knowledge Mic-co had taught her, a most bewildering book in which there was daily something new to read. There was a keen, quick brain behind the dark and lovely eyes, a faultless knowledge of the courtesies of finer folk. Mic-co had wrought generously and well. Only the girl's inordinate shyness and the stern traditions of her tribe, Diane fancied, kept her chained to her life in the Glades. Keela, strangely apart from Indian and white man, and granted unconventional license by her tribe, hungered most for the ways of the white father of whom she frequently spoke. Diane learned smoke signals and the blazing and blinding of a trail, an inexhaustible and tragic fund of tribal history which had been handed down from mouth to mouth for generations, legends and songs, wailing dirges and native dances and snatches of the chaste and oathless speech of the Florida Indian. "Diane, _dear_!" exclaimed Ann Sherrill one lazy morning, "what in the _world_ is that exceedingly mournful tune you're humming?" "That," said Diane, "is the 'Song of the Great Horned Owl,' my clever little Indian friend taught me. Isn't it plaintive?" "It is!" said Ann with deep conviction. "_Entirely_ too much so. I feel creepy. And Nathalie says you did some picturesque dance for her and your aunt--" "The 'Dance of the Wild Turkey,'" explained Diane, much amused at the recollection. "Aunt Agatha insisted that it was some iniquitous and cunningly disguised Seminole species of turkey trot. She was horribly shocked and grew white as a ghost at my daring--" "Fiddlesticks!" said Ann Sherrill. "She ought to have _all_ the shock out of her by now after bringing up you and Carl! _I'm_ going to ride out to the flat-woods with you, for I'm simply _dying_ for a new sensation. Dick's as stupid as an owl. He does nothing but hang around the Beach Club. And Philip Poynter's tennis mad. He looks hurt if you ask him to do anything else except perhaps to trail fatuously after you. It's the flat-woods for mine." Ann returned from her visit to the Indian camp scintillant with italics and enthusiasm. "My dear," she said, "I'm _wild_ about her--_quite_ wild! . . . I'm going again and _again_! . . . If I knew _half_ as much and were _half_ as lovely-- Why, do you know, Diane, she set me right about some ridiculous quotation, and I never try to get them straight, for _half_ the time I find my own way so _much_ more expressive. . . . There's Philip Poynter with a tennis racquet again! Diane, I'm losing patience with him." From her madcap craving for new sensation, Ann was destined to evolve an inspiration which with customary energy and Diane's interested connivance she swept through to fruition, unaware that Fate marched, leering, at her heels. CHAPTER XXIX THE BLACK PALMER Curious things may happen when masked men hold revel under a moonlit sky. Thus in a tropical garden of palm and fountain, of dark, shifting shadows and a thousand softly luminous Chinese lanterns swaying in a breeze of spice, a Bedouin talked to an ancient Greek. "He is here?" asked the Bedouin with an accent slightly foreign. "Yes," said the Greek. "He is here and immensely relieved, I take it, to be rid of the jurisdiction of the hay-camp." "I fancied he would not dare--" "A man in love," commented the Greek dryly, "dares much for the sake of his lady. One may conceivably lack discretion without forfeiting his claim to courage." "The disguise of his stained and shaven face," hinted the Bedouin grimly, "has made him over-confident. Having tested it with apparent success upon you--" "Even so. But he has forgotten that few men have such striking eyes." "If he has taken the pains to assure himself of my whereabouts," rumbled the Bedouin, "as he surely has, I am of course still blistering in extreme southern Florida, hunting tarpon. I have a permanent Washington address which I have taken pains to notify of my interest in tarpon and to which he writes. These incognito days," added the Bedouin with a slight smile, "my cipher communications cross an ocean and return immediately by trusted hands to America, though I, of course, know nothing of it. Those from my charming minstrel to me--make similar tours." "And I?" "You--my secretary--having spent a few days with the Sherrills on your way to join me after months of frivoling with a hay-camp, have been forced by telegram to depart before the _fête de nuit_ to which Miss Sherrill begged our attendance. Rest assured he knows that too. Therefore, to unmask unobtrusively and slip away to his room, and in the absence of other guests to linger for a week of incognito quiet--_voila_! he is quite safe though imprudent!" Greek and Bedouin fell silent, watching the laughing pageant in the garden. Venetian lamps glowed like yellow witch-lights in the branches; fountains tossed moon-bright sprays of quicksilver aloft and tinkled with the splash; the waters of a sunken pool, jeweled in stars, glimmered darkly green through files of cypress. All in all, an entrancing moon-mad world of mystery and dusk-moths, heavy with the scent of jasmine and orange. And the moon played brightly on curious folk, on spangles and jewels and masked and laughing eyes. A gray mendicant monk with sombre, thin-lipped face beneath a grayish mask slipped furtively by with a curious air of listening intently to the careless chatter about him; a fat and plaintive Queen Elizabeth followed, talking to a stout courtier who was over-trusting the seams of his satin breeches. "I doubt if you'll believe me," puffed Queen Elizabeth dolorously, "but every day since that time she deliberately went out and lost herself all day in the flat-woods and stopped to look at that ridiculous cart with the wheel of flame when I was sure a buzzard had bitten her--No! No! I don't know, Jethro; I'm sure I don't. How should I know why it was burning? But it was. She said plainly that it was a cart wheel of fire and if it was a wheel it must certainly have been on something and what on earth would a wheel be on but a cart? Certainly one wouldn't buy a bale of cart wheels to make fires in the flat-woods. Well, it's the strangest thing, Jethro, but nearly every day since, she's visited the flat-woods and wandered about with that terrible Indian girl who isn't an Indian girl. Seems that she's a most extraordinary girl with a foster-father and she sells sand mounds--no, that's not it--the things they find in them besides the sand--and she has a queer, wild sort of culture and her father was white. Like as not Diane will come home some night scalped and she has such magnificent hair, Jethro. To her knees it is and so black! And what must she and Ann do to-night but--there, I promised Diane faithfully to keep it a secret, for they've been working for days and days and she is distractingly lovely. With the Sherrill topazes too. And now that she's sold all the sand mounds, or whatever it is, do you know, Jethro, she's going to drive Diane north to Jacksonville in the Indian wagon. They start to-morrow morning. I think it's because they're both so mad about trees and things--I can't for the life of me make it out. Jethro, Diane will drive me mad--she will indeed. Well, all I can say, Jethro, is that if you don't know what I'm talking about you must be very stupid to-night. No! No! do I ever know, Jethro? He may be here and he may not. He may be off in Egypt shooting scarabs by now. He was at the farm when he wrote to me in Indiana. Well, _collecting_ scarabs, then, Jethro. Why do you fuss so about little things? Isn't it funny--strangest thing!" Queen Elizabeth passed on with her aged dandy. A dark figure by the cypress pool laughed and shrugged. He was a singular figure, this man by the pool, with a hint of the Orient in his garb. His robe was of black, with startling and unexpected flashes of scarlet lining when he walked. Black chains clanked drearily about his waist and wrists. There was a cunningly concealed light in his filmy turban which gave it the singular appearance of a dark cloud lighted by an inner fire. As he wandered about with clanking chains, he played strange music upon a polished thing of hollow bones. Sometimes the music laughed and wooed when eyes were kind; sometimes when eyes were over-daring it was subtly impudent and eloquent. Sometimes it was so unspeakably weird and melancholy that along with the clanking chains and the strangely luminous turban, many a careless stroller turned and stared. So did a slender, turbaned Seminole chief with a minstrel at his heels. It was upon this picturesque young Seminole that the eyes of the Greek by the hibiscus lingered longest, but the eyes of the Bedouin scanned every line of the minstrel's ragged corduroy with grim amusement. "A romantic garb, by Allah!" said the Bedouin dryly. "It has served its purpose," reminded the Greek sombrely. And laughed with relish. For the Seminole chief had fled perversely through the lantern-lit trees, her soft, mocking laughter proclaiming her sex and her mood. "And still he follows!" boomed the Bedouin. "With or without the music-machine, he is consistently fatuous." The man with the luminous turban spoke suddenly to a girl in trailing satin with a muff of flowers in her hand. Shoulders and throat gleamed superbly above the line of golden satin; there were flashing topazes in her hair and about her throat; and the slender, arched foot in the satin slipper was small and finely moulded. "Tell me," he begged insistently, "who you are! You've grace and poise enough for a dozen women. And who taught you how to walk? Few women know how." The girl, with a delicate air of hauteur, flung back her head imperiously and turned away. "And you've wonderful eyes--black and wistful and tragic and beautiful!" persisted the man impudently. "Wonderful, sparkling lady of gold and black, tell me who you are!" "Who," said the girl gravely in a clear, rich contralto, "who are you?" The man laughed but his eyes lingered on the firm, proud scarlet lips and the small even teeth. "Call me the 'Black Palmer,'" said he. "There's a tremendous significance in my rig to be sure, but it's only for one man." "What," asked the girl seriously, "is a palmer?" Mystified the Black Palmer stared. "You honestly mean that you don't know?" "I speak ever the truth," said the proud scarlet lips below the golden mask. "When I ask, I mean that I do not know." "And this in a world of sophistication!" murmured the man blankly, but the girl was moving off with graceful majesty through the trees, the jewels in her hair alive in the lantern-lit dusk. The Black Palmer sprang after her. "Tell me, I beg of you," he exclaimed earnestly, "you who are so grave and beautiful and apart from this world of mine, like a fresh keen wind in a scorching desert, in Heaven's name tell me who you are!" But the girl's dark, fine eyes flashed quick rebuke. Nothing daunted the Black Palmer impudently stripped the golden mask from her face. The soft yellow light of the Venetian lamp in the tree above her fell full upon the lovely oval of a face so peculiar in its striking beauty of line and vivid coloring that he fell back staring. "Lord, what a face!" exclaimed the Greek, too taken aback to resent the Palmer's insolence. And the Bedouin rumbled: "Exquisite! But she is not of your land. Italian, Spanish, or some bizarre mingling of strange races, but none of your colder lands!" Now as the Black Palmer stared at the dark, accusing eyes of the girl, a singular thing occurred. His cloak of impudence fell suddenly from his shoulders and returning the golden mask, he bowed and begged her pardon with unmistakable deference. "Let a humbled Palmer," he said quietly, "pay his sincerest homage to the most beautiful woman he has even seen." And as the girl moved proudly away, the strain of fantastic music which followed her was subtly deferential. CHAPTER XXX THE UNMASKING At midnight a mellow chime rang somewhere by the cypress pool. Laughing and jesting, calling to one another, the masked crowd moved off to the vine-hung villa ahead, gleaming moon-white through the shrubbery. Somewhat reluctantly the minstrel followed. It had been his intention to unmask in some secluded corner whence, presently, he might slip away to his room, but finding himself jostled and pushed on by a Greek and a Bedouin who, to do them justice, seemed quite unaware of their importunities, he surrendered to the press about him and presently found himself in an unpleasantly conspicuous spot in the great room which the Sherrills occasionally used as a ballroom. All about him girls and men were unmasking amid a shower of laughing raillery. That the Seminole chief with her tunic and beaded sash and her brilliant turban was very near him, was a pleasant and altogether accidental mitigation of his mishap. That a Greek and a Bedouin were just behind him--a fact not in the least accidental--and that a gray monk was slipping about among the guests whispering to receptive ears, did not interest him in the least. A string orchestra played softly in an alcove. The leader's eyes, oddly enough, were upon the ancient Greek. Now suddenly a curious hush swept over the room. Uncomfortably aware that he was a spectacular object of interest by reason of his mask and that every unmasked eye was full upon him, the minstrel, following the lines of least resistance, removed the bit of cambric from his eyes. After all, in the sea of faces before him, there were none familiar. As the mask dropped--the ancient Greek thoughtfully adjusted his tunic. Instantly without pause or warning the soft strain of the orchestra swept dramatically into a powerful melody of measured cadences. It was the tune Carl had played upon his flute to Jokai of Vienna months before. The minstrel, mask in hand, stared at the orchestra, blanched and bit his lip. "God bless my soul!" exclaimed Queen Elizabeth to Jethro, "it's the immigrant, Jethro, and there he was on the lace spread with his feet tied and gurgling. I'll never forget his eyes." "Jokai of Vienna!" said the Black Palmer, whistling. "By Jove, they've trapped him nicely." For an uncomfortable instant, the silence continued, then came the saving stir of laughter and chatting. The Bedouin with an unrelenting air of dignity and command, removed his mask and bowed low; to Diane in whose startled eyes below the Seminole turban flashed sympathy and acute regret. "Miss Westfall," said he gravely, "permit me to present to you, Prince Ronador of Houdania." White and stern, his fine eyes flashing imperially, Ronador bowed. "Rest assured, Miss Westfall," he said, "that I know you have not betrayed my confidence. Baron Tregar is an ardent patriot who by virtue of his office must needs object to democratic masquerading." The Baron stroked his beard. "For inspiring the musical ceremony due your rank, Prince," he said dryly, "I crave indulgence." Smiling, the ancient Greek at the Baron's elbow unmasked, to show the cheerful face of Mr. Poynter. "Prince," said Mr. Poynter, "I sincerely trust I have made no error in transcribing the Regent's Hymn for our excellent musicians. Having heard it so many times in your presence in Houdania, I could not well forget. At your service," with a glance at his Grecian attire, "Herodotus, father of nomads!" But Ann Sherrill in the gorgeous raiment of a Semiramis was already at hand, sparkling italics upon her royal guest, and Philip moved aside. "I am _overwhelmed_!" whispered Ann a little later. "I am _indeed_! I was not in the _least_ aware that our mysterious incognito was a prince, were you, Diane?" "Yes," said Diane. Her color was very high and she deliberately avoided the imploring eyes of Mr. Poynter. "What in the _world_ is it all about?" begged Ann helplessly. "And _who_ was the grayish monk who flitted about so mysteriously telling us that the minstrel was a _prince_! It spread like wildfire. As for you, Philip Poynter, it's exactly like you! To depart night before last and suddenly reappear is _quite_ of a piece with your mysterious habit of fading periodically out of civilization. Baron Tregar, how _exceedingly_ delightful of you to come this way and surprise me when I fancied you were so keen about those horrid tarpon that you wouldn't leave them for all I _wrote_ and _wrote_." There was a sprightly nervousness in Ann's manner. She was uncomfortably aware of a subtle undercurrent. "And I've another unexpected guest," she added to Diane. "Carl's here. Wandering in from Heaven knows where, as he always does. He's making his peace with your aunt--" Herodotus, who had been trying for some time to get into friendly communication with his lady, suddenly murmured "Frost in Florida!" with audible regret and moved off good-humoredly to look for Carl. He found that young man listening attentively to his aunt's reproaches. "And that costume, Carl," fluttered Queen Elizabeth in aggrieved disapproval. "Why, dear me, it's enough to make a body shudder, it's so sort of sinister--it is indeed! And I do hope you don't set your hair on fire with that extraordinary light in your turban. Is it a candle or an electric bulb?" "A forty horse power glowworm!" Carl assured her gravely, and the portly Jethro sniggered to the danger of his seams. Philip's hand came down heavily upon the Palmer's broad shoulder and Carl wheeled. In that instant as he grasped Philip's hand in a silence more eloquent than words, every finer instinct of his queerly balanced nature flashed in his face. The two hands tightened and fell apart. "Come, smoke!" invited Carl, smiling. "I'm glad you're here. I haven't been ragged and abused for so long there's a lonely furrow in my soul." But Dick Sherrill, looking very warm and disgruntled in a costume he informed them bitterly was meant for Claude Duval, came up as they were turning away and insisted upon presenting Carl to the guest of the evening. "Ann sent me," he added. "And you've got to come. And I want to say right now that Ann makes me tired. She's as notional as a lunatic. _She_ planned this rig and now she doesn't like it. And if I don't look like a highwayman you can wager your last sou I feel like one, and that's sufficient. The whole trouble is that Ann's been so busy with hair-dressers and manicurists and _corsetières_ and dressmakers and the Lord knows what not over that stunning Indian girl, who'll likely run off with the family topazes, that she's had no time for her brother, and rubs it in now by laughing at the shape of my legs. What's the matter with my legs, Carl?" "Too ornamental," said Carl. "Curvilinear grace is all very well but--" "Shut up!" said Sherrill viciously. "Have you ever met this king-pin I'm exploiting?" "I've seen him," said Car. "Once when he was riding up the mountain road to Houdania with a brilliant escort and one--er--other time. Think I told you I'd spent a month or so in a Houdanian monastery several years ago, didn't I, Dick?" "Yes," said Dick. "That's why I asked. Poynter, who in blue blazes are you looking for?" Philip flushed. "Dry up!" he advised. "You're grouchy." Sherrill was still heatedly denying the charge when they halted near the Baron. "You wear a singular costume," suggested Ronador stiffly, when the formalities of presentation were at an end. He glanced at the luminous turban and thence to the chains. Carl, though he had primarily intended the singular rig for the eyes of Tregar, had subtly invited the remark. His eyes were darkly ironic. "Prince," he said guilelessly, "it is a silent parable." "Yes?" "I am 'The Ghost of a Man's Past!'" explained the Palmer lightly--and clanked his chains. The level glances of the two met with the keenness of invisible swords. "The heavy, sinister black," suggested the Palmer, "the flashes of forbidden scarlet--the hours of a man's past are scarlet, are they not?--the cloud above the head, with a treacherous heart of fire, the clanking chains of bondage--they are all here. And the skeleton in the closet--Sire--behold!" He laughed and flung back his mantle, revealing a perfect skeleton cunningly etched in glaring white upon a close-fitting garment of black. Did the Baron's eyes flash suddenly with a queer dry humor? Philip could not be sure. With a clank of symbolic chains Carl bowed and withdrew, and coming suddenly upon his cousin, halted and stared. Long afterward Diane was to remember that she had caught a similar look in the eyes of Ronador. "Well?" she begged, slightly uncomfortable. Carl smiled. Once more his fine eyes were impassive. With ready grace he admired the delicately-thonged tunic and the beaded sash, the bright turban with the beaten band of silver and the darkly lovely face beneath it. "It's a duplicate of the rig my little Indian friend wears," she explained, smiling. "Hasn't Ann told you? She's quite wild about it." "Ann's very busy soothing Dick," laughed Carl and to the malicious satisfaction of that worthy Greek who had been trailing along in his wake, presented Herodotus. Diane nodded, smiled politely--and sought delicately to ignore the ancient Greek. It was a hopeless task. Mr. Poynter insisted upon considering himself included in every word she uttered. "Isn't mother a _dear_!" exclaimed Ann Sherrill joining them. "After ragging me _desperately_ for days about Keela, until I threatened to kill myself, and giving me an _exceedingly_ horrid little book on the advisability of curbing one's most _interesting_ impulses, she's taken her under her wing to-night and they're excellent friends. Philip, dear, go unruffle Dick. He's _horribly_ fussed up about something or other. Carl, I want you to meet Keela. It's the most _interesting_ thing I've dared in ages and Dad's been very decent about it. Dad always _did_ understand me. He has a sense of humor." Diane and Carl followed, laughing, at her heels. Ann presently found her mother and Keela and unaware of the astonished interest in Carl's eyes, presented him. "The Black Palmer!" said Keela naïvely. "Lady of Gold and Black!" said Carl and bowed profoundly. CHAPTER XXXI THE RECKONING The reckoning of Ronador and the Baron came by the cypress pool. "It is useless to rave and storm," said Tregar quietly. "I hold the cards." "Was it necessary to humiliate me in the presence of Miss Westfall?" demanded Ronador bitterly. With all his sullenness there was in his tone a marked respect for the older man. "It was necessary to end this romantic masquerade!" insisted Tregar. "Why are you here?" "I--I came in a flash of panic. It seemed to me that after all I--I could not trust to other hands when the dead thing stirred." Ronador's face was white and haggard. In that instant his forty-four years lay heavily upon his shoulders. "Have I ever misplaced your trust?" reminded Tregar sombrely. "Have I not even kept your secret from your father?" "Yes." "Then tell me," asked the Baron bluntly, "why you must come to America and hysterically complicate this damnable mess by--a bullet!" Greatly agitated, Ronador fell to pacing to and fro. Heavy cypress shadows upon the water moved like pointing fingers. "Is there nothing I may keep from you?" broke from him a little bitterly. "Why," insisted the older man, "have you seen fit to conduct yourself with the irrationality of a madman by trundling a music-machine about the country and making love to a girl you tried in a moment of fright and frenzy--to kill?" "I--I lost my head," said the Prince with an effort. "It--it seemed at first that she must die. The other, I thought to myself, I will leave to Themar and the Baron. This I must do for myself. They will spare her and years hence the thing may stir again. I--I can not bear to think of it even now, Tregar. I have paid heavily for my moment of madness. For nights after, I did not sleep. Even now the memory is unspeakable torture!" And Ronador admitted with stiff, white lips that some nameless God of Malice had made capital of his bullet, stirring his heart into admiration for the fearless girl who had stood so gallantly by the fire in a storm-haunted wood. In the heart of the forest a happier solution had come to him and eliminated the sinister thought of murder. The Baron coldly heard the passionate avowal through to the end. "And the Princess Phaedra?" he begged formally. "What of her? What of the marriage that is to dissolve the bitter feud of a century between Houdania and Galituria, this marriage to which already you are informally bound?" "It is nothing to me. I shall marry Miss Westfall." "So!" The Baron matched his heavy fingertips. "So! And this is another infernal complication of the freedom of marital choice we grant our princes!" "Ten years ago," flamed Ronador passionately, "you and my father picked a wife for me! Is not that enough? Now that she is dead, I shall marry whom I choose. Has it not occurred to you that after all it is the sanest way out of this horrible muddle?" "It is one way out," admitted Tregar, "and by that way lies war with Galituria." He fell silent, plucking at his beard. "I fancy," he said at last, "that you will not go back to the music-machine." "It was--and is--my only means of following her." "Do so again," said the Baron dryly, "and the American yellow papers shall blazon your identity to the world. 'Son of a prince regent--nephew of a king--trundles a music-machine about to win a beautiful gypsy!' And Galituria and the Princess Phaedra will read with interest." Then he blazed suddenly with one of his infrequent outbursts of passion, "Is it not enough to have Galituria laughing at a mad king whose claim to the throne by our laws may not be invalidated by his madness? A king so mad that the affairs of a nation must be administered by a prince regent--your father? Must you add to all this the disgrace of breaking faith with Galituria and plunging your country into war? Your father is an old man. With but his life and the life of an aging madman between you and the throne, it behooves you to walk with a full recognition of your future responsibilities. Your father knows you are here in America?" "No. There was an Arctic expedition. He thinks I have gone hunting with that. At first I thought I could come to America and return with no one the wiser." "Having murdered Miss Westfall!" completed the Baron quietly. Ronador's face was ashen. "Excellency," he choked suddenly, "my little son--" "Yes," said Tregar with sudden kindness, "I know. Your great love and ambition for the boy drove you to madness." He paused. "You are fully decided to break faith with Phaedra, knowing what may come of it?" "Yes. Even if my great love for Miss Westfall did not drive me on--" "To indiscretion!" supplied the Baron dryly. "As you will. Even then, to me it is now the one way out. With Granberry dead, with the treacherous paper in my possession--" "It has been burned." Ronador did not hear. "With Miss Westfall my wife," he finished, "even if the dead thing stirs again, it can make no difference." "Then," said the Baron formally, "I am through with it all, quite through. The task was never of my choosing, as you know. When the dead hand reached forth from the grave to taunt you, Ronador, I was willing at first to stoop to unutterable things to save you--and Houdania--from dishonor, but more and more there has been distaste in my heart for the blackness of the thing. Days back I warned you by letter that I would not see Miss Westfall coldly sacrificed for a muddle of which she knew absolutely nothing. There are things a man may not do even for his country--one is murdering women. Now, though I pledged myself through loyalty to my country, my king, my regent and yourself to spying and murder and petty thievery, with a consequent chain of discomfort and misunderstandings for myself, I am through and mightily glad of it!" "And what have you accomplished?" flamed Ronador passionately. "Granberry, for all your ciphered pledges, lives and mocks me as he did tonight, as he did months back. I could kill him for the indignities he has heaped upon me, if for nothing else. And he knows more than you think. What did he mean to-night?" "Circumstances," said Tregar coldly, "have made you unduly sensitive and suspicious. Granberry's costume was planned maliciously as an impersonal affront to me. He knew of my plans through a telegram of mine to Themar and made his own accordingly. It was not your past to which he referred. Surely it is not difficult to catch his meaning?" "Blunders and blunders and quixotic scruples," raved Ronador, "and now this crowning indignity to-night! What has Themar been doing? . . . What have you done? . . . Why is Granberry still alive? Hereafter, Tregar, Themar will report to me. I personally will see that the thing is cleared up and silenced forever. I may trust at least to your silence?" "My word as a gentleman is sufficient?" "It is." "Consider me pledged to silence as I have been for a quarter of a century." "Where is Themar?" "He is here at my command to-night after an illness of weeks. He has been Granberry's prisoner. His illness alone won his release for him through some inconsistent whim of sympathy on the part of Granberry. He wears the garb of a gray monk." "Send him here." The Baron bowed and withdrew. At the path he turned. "Ronador," he said quietly, "for the sake of the lifetime friendship I have borne your father, for the sake of the position of honor and trust I hold in your father's court, for the sake of my great love for Houdania, let me say that when you find you are sinking deeper and deeper into a pitfall of errors and unhappiness and treachery, I shall be ready and willing to aid and advise you as best I may. I think I know you better than you know yourself. You have an inheritance of wild passion, a nature that swayed by irresistible and fiery impulse, will for the moment dare anything and regret it with terrible suffering ever after. One such lesson you have had in early manhood. I hope you may not rush on blindly to another. Until you come to me, however," he added with dignity, "I shall not meddle again." "I shall not come!" said Ronador imperiously. But the Baron was gone. Later, by the cypress pool, the gray monk and the minstrel talked long and earnestly of one who knew overmuch of the affairs of both. "There is but one thing more," faltered Themar at the end. "I may speak with freedom?" "Yes," said Ronador impatiently, "what is it?" "Miss Westfall--I spied upon her camp in Connecticut--" "Yes?" "It is well to know all. For days she lived with Poynter in the forest--" Ronador's eyes blazed. "Go, go!" he cried, his face quite colorless, "for the love of God go before I kill you! I--I can not bear any more to-night." Who had scored! For Ronador, at least, in the guileful hands of a traitor who by reason of a strong maternal sympathy desired the alliance of Ronador and Princess Phaedra, there was doubt and bitter suffering. And he might not return to the music-machine. Themar's thin lips smiled but he wisely retreated. CHAPTER XXXII FOREST FRIENDS Northward to Jacksonville had journeyed the camp of the Indian girl, bearing away Diane, to Aunt Agatha's unspeakable agitation. Now, joining forces, these two forest friends, linked in an idle moment by the nameless freemasonry of the woodland, were winding happily south along the seacoast. Nights their camps lay side by side. Keela, with shy and delightful gravity, slipped wide-eyed into the niceties of civilization, coiled her heavy hair in the fashion of Diane and copied her dress naïvely. Diane felt a thrill of satisfaction at this singular finding of a friend whose veins knew the restless stir of nomadic blood, a friend who was fleeter of foot, keener of vision and hearing and better versed in the ways of the woodland than Diane herself. And Diane had known no peer in the world of white men. There were gray dawns when a pair of silent riders went galloping through the stillness upon the Westfall horses, riding easily without saddles; there were twilights when they swam in sheltered pools like wild brown nymphs; there were quiet hours by the camp fire when the inborn reticence of the Indian girl vanished in the frank sincerity of Diane's friendship. Of Mr. Poynter and the hay-camp there was no sign. "Doubtless," considered Diane disdainfully, "he has come at last to his senses. And I'm very glad he has, very glad indeed. It's time he did. I think I made my displeasure sufficiently clear at the exceedingly tricky way he and the Baron conducted themselves at Palm Beach. And the Baron was no better than Philip. Indeed, I think he was very much worse. If Philip hadn't wandered about in the garb of Herodotus and murmured that impertinence about 'frost in Florida' it wouldn't have been so bad. It's a very unfortunate thing, however, that he never seems to remember one's displeasure or the cause of it." But for one who rejoiced in Mr. Poynter's belated inheritance of common sense, Diane's comment a few days later was very singular. "I wonder," she reflected uncomfortably, "if Philip understands smoke signals. He may be lost." But Philip was not lost. He was merely discreet. A lonely beach fringed in sand hills lay before the camp. Beyond rolled the ocean, itself a melancholy solitude droning under an azure sky. There were beach birds running in flocks down the sand as the white-ridged foam receded; overhead an Indian file of pelicans winged briskly out to sea. On the broad, hard beach to the north presently appeared a music-machine. Piebald horse, broad, eccentric wagon, cymbals and drum--there was no mistaking the outfit, nor the minstrel himself with his broad-brimmed sombrero tipped protectively over his nose. Now despite the fact that the Baron had hinted that Ronador's masquerade was at an end, the music-machine steadily approached and halted. The minstrel alighted and fell stiffly to turning the crank, whereupon with a fearful roll of the drum and a clash of cymbals, the papier-mache snake began to unfold and "An Old Girl of Mine" emerged from the cataclysm of sound and frightened the fish hawks over the shallow water. A great blue heron, knee-deep in water, croaked with annoyance, flapped his wings and departed. When the dreadful commotion in the wagon at last subsided, the minstrel came through the trees and sweeping off his sombrero, bowed and smiled. "Merciful Heavens!" exclaimed the girl, staring. It was Mr. Poynter. "I'm sorry," regretted Mr. Poynter. "I'm really sorry I feel so well--but I've got a music-machine." And seating himself most comfortably by the fire, with a frankly admiring glance at his corduroy trousers, silken shirt and broad sombrero, he anxiously inquired what Diane thought of his costume. Indeed, he admitted, that thought had been uppermost in his mind for days, for he'd copied it very faithfully. "It's ridiculous!" said Diane, "and you know it." There, said Mr. Poynter, he must disagree. He didn't know it. "Well," said Diane flatly, "to my thinking, this is considerably worse than blowing a tin whistle on the steps of the van!" Mr. Poynter could not be sure. He said in his delightfully naïve way, however, that a music-machine was a thing to arouse romance and sympathy with conspicuous success, that more and more the moon was getting him, and that he did hope Diane would remember that he was the disguised Duke of Connecticut. Moreover, his most tantalizing shortcoming up-to-date had seemed to be a total inability to arouse said romance and sympathy, especially sympathy, for, whether or not Diane would believe it, even here in this land of flowers he had encountered frost! Wherefore, having personal knowledge of the success incidental to unwinding a hullabaloo in proper costume, he had purchased one from a--er--distinguished gentleman who for singular and very private reasons had no further use for it. And though the negotiations, for reasons unnamable, had had to be conducted with infinite discretion through an unknown third person, he had eventually found himself the possessor of the hullabaloo, to his great delight. He had hullabalooed his way along the coast in the wake of a nomadic friend, but deeming it wise to await the dispersal of frost strangely engendered by a Regent's Hymn, had discreetly kept his distance and proved his benevolence, in the manner of his distinguished predecessor, by playing to all the nice old ladies in the dooryards. . . . And one of them had given him a piece of pie and a bottle of excellent coffee and fretted a bit about the way he was wasting his life. Mr. Poynter added that in the fashion of certain young darkies who infest the Southern roads, he would willingly stand on his head for a baked potato in lieu of a nickel, being very hungry. "You probably mean by that, that you're going to stay to supper!" said Diane. Mr. Poynter meant just that. "Where," demanded Diane, "is the hay-camp?" "Well," said Philip, "Ras is a hay-bride-groom. He dreamt he was married and it made such a profound impression upon him that he went and married somebody. He slept through his wooing and he slept through his wedding and I gave him the hay and the cart and Dick Whittington. I don't think he entirely appreciated Dick either, for he blinked some. All of which primarily engendered the music-machine inspiration. It's really a very comfortable way of traveling about and the wagon was fastidiously fitted up by my distinguished predecessor. The seat's padded and plenty broad enough to sleep on." Mr. Poynter presently departed to the music-machine for a peace offering in the shape of a bow and some arrows upon which, he said, he'd been working for days. When he returned, laden with luxurious contributions to the evening meal, the camp had still another guest. Keela was sitting by the fire. Philip eyed with furtive approval the modish shirtwaist, turned back at the full brown throat, and the heavily coiled hair. "The Seminole rig," explained Diane, "was an excellent drawing card for Palm Beach tourists but it was a bit conspicuous for the road. Greet him in Seminole, Keela." "Som-mus-ka-lar-nee-sha-maw-lin!" said Keela with gravity. Philip looked appalled. "She says 'Good wishes to the white man!'" explained Diane, smiling. "My Lord," said Philip, "I wouldn't have believed it. Keela, I thought you were joint by joint unwinding a yard or so of displeasure at my appearance. No-chit-pay-lon-es-chay!" he added irresponsibly, naming a word he had picked up in Palm Beach from an Indian guide. The effect was electric. Keela stared. Diane look horrified. "Philip!" she said. "It means 'Lie down and go to sleep!'" "To the Happy Hunting Ground with that bonehead Indian!" said Philip with fervor. "Lord, what a civil retort!" and he stammered forth an instant apology. Immeasurably delighted, Keela laughed. "You are very funny," she said in English. "I shall like you." "That's really very comfortable!" said Philip gratefully. "I don't deserve it." He held forth the bow and arrows. "See if you can shoot fast and far enough to have six arrows in the air at once," he said, smiling, "and I'll believe I'm forgiven." With lightning-like grace Keela shot the arrows into the air and smiled. "Great Scott!" exclaimed Philip admiringly. "Seven!" With deft fingers she strung the bow again and shot, her cheeks as vivid as a wild flower, her poise and skill faultless. "Eight!" said Philip incredulously. "Help!" "Keela is easily the best shot I ever knew," exclaimed Diane warmly. "Try it, Philip." "Not much!" said Philip feelingly. "I can shoot like a normal being with one pair of arms, but I can't string space with arrows like that. You forest nymphs," he added with mild resentment, "with woodland eyes and ears and skill put me to shame. You and I, Diane, quarreled once, I think, about the number of Pleiades--" "They're an excellent test of eyesight," nodded Diane. "And you said there were only six!" "There is no seventh Pleiad!" said Philip with stubborn decision. "Eight!" said Keela shyly. And they both stared. Shooting a final arrow, she sent it so far that Philip indignantly refused to look for it. CHAPTER XXXIII BY THE WINDING CREEK At dawn one morning a long black car shot out from Jacksonville and took to the open road. It glided swiftly past arid stretches of pine barrens streaked with stagnant water, past bogs aglow with iris, through quaint little cities smiling under the shelter of primeval oaks and on, stopping only long enough for the driver to ask a question of a negro on a load of wood--or a mammy singing plaintively in the flower-bright dooryard of a house. Sometimes losing, sometimes finding, the trail of a green and white van, the long black car shot on, through roads of pleasant windings flanked by forest and river, beyond which lay the line of green-fringed sand hills which parallel the rolling Atlantic. Past placid lakes skimmed by purple martins, past orange groves heavy with fruit, past fences overrun with Cherokee roses, and on, but the driver, abroad with the sunrise glow, seemed somehow to see little or none of it. Sometimes he stared sombrely at a ghostly palmetto, tall and dark against the sky. Once with a grinding shudder of brakes he halted on the border of a cypress swamp and stared frowningly at the dark, dank trees knee-deep in stagnant water above which the buzzards flew, as if the loathsome spot matched his mood. As indeed it did. For the words of Themar had done cruel work. Torn by black suspicion, Ronador saw no peace in this tranquil Florida world of sun and flower, of warm south wind and bright-winged bird. He saw only the buzzards, birds of evil omen. Swayed by fiery gusts of passion, of remorse, of sullenness and jealousy, he rode on, a prey to sinister resolution. To confront Diane with his knowledge of those days by the river, this resolution alternated as frequently with another--to put his fate to the test and passionately avow his utter trust in one immeasurably above the rank and file of women. He had racked Themar with insistent questions, he had quarreled again and again with the Baron since that night by the pool, until now he had at his finger-ends, the ways and days of Philip Poynter since the day the Baron had dispatched his young secretary upon the ill-fated errand to Diane. And as there were finer moments when his faith in the girl was unmarred by suspicion, so there were wild, unscrupulous hours of jealousy when he could have killed Philip and taunted her with insults. Driving steadily, he came in course of time to a narrow, grass-banked creek. The nomads on the winding road beside it were many and beautiful. Here were yellow butterflies, sandpipers and kingfishers, and now and then an eagle cleaved the dazzling blue overhead with magnificent wing-strokes. Sand hills reflected the white sunlight. Beyond glistened a stretch of open sea with a flock of beautiful gannets of black and white whipping its surface. But Ronador did not thrill to the peaceful picture. He glanced instead at the buzzard which seemed curiously to hang above the long black car. Now presently as he eyed the road ahead for a glimpse of the van, Ronador saw the familiar lines of a music-machine and drove by it with a glance of interest. Instantly the blood rushed violently to his face. For, as the horse and music-machine had been familiar, so was the driver, who swept a broad sombrero from his head and revealed the face of Philip Poynter. With a curse Ronador abruptly brought the car to a standstill. The very irony of this masquerade fired him with terrible anger. "You!" he choked. "You!" Philip nodded. "I guess you're right," he said. The blazing dark eyes and the calm, unruffled blue ones met in a glance of implacable antagonism. Not in the least impressed Philip replaced his sombrero and spoke to his horse. Fish crows flew overhead with croaks of harsh derision. Another buzzard! With a terrible jerk, Ronador drove on, his face scarlet. So Poynter still dared to follow! By a trick he had bought the music-machine, by a trick he had given the Regent's Hymn to the curious ears at Sherrill's. Very well, there were tricks and tricks! And if one man may trick, so, surely, may another. Passion had always hushed the voice of the imperial conscience, though indeed it awoke and cried in a terrible voice when passion was dead. So now with stiff white lips fixed in unalterable resolution, Ronador drove viciously on, turning over and over in his fevered brain the ways and days of Philip Poynter. . . . So at last he came to the camp he sought. It was pitched upon the upland bank of the winding creek and as the car shot rapidly toward it, a great blue heron flapped indignantly and soared away to the marsh beyond the trees. Ronador jumped queerly and colored with a sense of guilt. There was yellow oxalis here carpeting the ground among the low, dark cedars, yellow butterflies flitted about among the trees where Johnny was washing the van, and the inevitable buzzard floated with upturned wings above the camp. Ronador had grown to hate the ubiquitous bird of the South. Superstition flamed hotly up in his heart now at the sight of it. Diane was sewing. He had caught the flutter of her gown beneath a cedar as he stopped the car. There was no one visible in the camp of the Indian girl. Ronador sprang from his car and waved to the girl, smiling, she came to meet him. Now as Ronador smiled down into the clear, unfaltering eyes of the girl before him, he knew suddenly that he trusted her utterly, that the mad suspicion, sired by the words of Themar and mothered by jealousy, was but a dank mist that melted away in the sunlight of her presence. Only jealousy remained and a smouldering, unscrupulous hate for the persistent young organ-grinder behind him. Chatting pleasantly they returned to camp. Imperceptibly their talk of the fortunes of the road took on a more intimate tinge of reminiscence and presently, with searching eyes fixed upon the vivid, lovely face of the wind-brown gypsy beneath the cedar, Ronador asked the girl to marry him. Very gently Diane released her hands from his grasp, her cheeks scarlet. "Indeed, indeed," she faltered, "I could not with fairness answer you now, for I do not in the least know what I think. You will not misunderstand me, I am sure, if I tell you that not once in the long, pleasant days we journeyed the same roads, did I ever dream of the nature of your pleasant friendship." Her frank, dark eyes, alive with a beautiful sincerity, met his honestly. "There was always tradition--" she reminded. Ronador's reply was sincere and gallant. Diane was lovelier than any princess, he said, and in Houdania, tradition had been replaced years back by a law which granted freedom. "Though to be sure," he added bitterly, "each generation seeks to break it. Tregar tried, urging me persistently for diplomatic reasons to take a wife of his choosing. And when I--I fled to America to escape his infernal scheming and spying--he followed. Even here in America I have been haunted by spies--" His glance wavered. "And then," he went on earnestly, "I saw you and I knew that Princess Phaedra was forever impossible. There was a night of terrible wind and storm when I planned to beg shelter in your camp and make your acquaintance. . . . You are annoyed?" "No," said Diane honestly. "Why fuss now?" "Tregar must have suspected. I met his--his spy in the forest and we quarreled wildly. He tried to kill me but the bullet went wild." Again his glance wavered but the lying words came smoothly. "My servant, Themar, leaped and stabbed him in the shoulder--" "No! No!" cried Diane. "Not that--not that!" Her eyes, dark with horror in the colorless oval of her face, met Ronador's with mute appeal. "It--it can not be," she added quietly. "The man was Philip Poynter." Ronador caught her hands again with fierce resolve. His eyes were blazing with excitement and anger at the utter faith in her voice. "Why do you think I adopted the stained face--the disguise of a wandering minstrel?" he demanded impetuously. "It was to free myself from his infernal spying--to afford myself the opportunity of gaining your friendship without his knowledge! Why did he follow--always follow? Because at the command of his chief, he must needs obstruct my plan of winning you. There was always Princess Phaedra! Why did he watch by night in the forest. To spy! Can you not see it?" "Surely, surely," said Diane, "you must be wrong!" But Ronador could not be wrong. Themar, his servant, whom he had dispatched to seek employment with the Baron when the fortunes of the road had made further attendance upon himself inconvenient, had learned of the hay-camp and of Poynter's pledge to make his victim's advances ridiculous in the eyes of Diane. "And when Themar followed--to warn me--Poynter beat him brutally," he went on fiercely, "beat him and sent him in a dirty barge to a distant city. All the while when I fancied my disguise impenetrable, he was laughing in his sleeve, for he is as clever as he is unscrupulous. He was even meeting his chief in a Kentucky woods to report. Tregar admitted it. Why did he make me ridiculous at the Sherrill fête? Purely because your eyes, Miss Westfall, were among those who watched the indignity! Why is he driving about now in the music-machine to mock me? Because having forced me from the road, he must needs see to it that I do not return. When I do, he must be near at hand to report to the Baron." It was an artful network. Somehow, by virtue of the sinister skeleton of facts underlying the velvet of his logic, it rang true. Diane, as colorless as a flower, sat utterly silent, slender brown fingers tightened against the palms of her hands. Philip false! Philip a spy! Philip--almost a murderer! It could not be! Yet how insistently he had striven to force her to return to civilization. Away from Ronador? It might be. How insistently the Baron had urged him to linger in her camp! _To spy_? A great wave of faintness swept over her. And there was Arcadia and the hay-camp and the mildly impudent indignities--they all slipped accurately into place. "I--I do not know!" she faltered at last in answer to his impetuous pleading. "If you will not see me again until I may think it all out--" But there was danger in waiting. A hot appeal flashed in Ronador's eyes and eloquently again he fell to pleading. But Diane had caught the clatter of the music-machine up the road where Philip was good-humoredly unwinding the hullabaloo for a crowd of gleeful young darkies, and suddenly she turned very white and stern. "No! No!" she said. "It must be as I said." And presently, with faith in his poisoned arrows Ronador went, pledged to await her summons. Diane sat very still beneath the cedars, with the noise of the music-machine wild torture to her ears. CHAPTER XXXIV THE MOON ABOVE THE MARSH The moon silvered the marsh and the creek. Off to the east rippled a silent, moon-white stretch of sea, infinitely lonely, murmuring in the star-cool night. Restless and wakeful Diane watched the stream glide endlessly on, each reed and pebble silvered. Rex lay on the bank beside her, whither he had followed faithfully a very long while ago, snapping at the insects which rose from the grass. So colorless and fixed was the face of his mistress that it seemed a beautiful graven thing devoid of life. Now presently as Diane stared at the moon-lit pebbles glinting at her feet, a shadow among the cedars, having advanced and retreated uncertainly a score of times before, suddenly detached itself from the wavering stencil of tree and bush upon the moonlit ground and resolved itself into the figure of a tall, determined sentinel who approached and seated himself beside her. "What's wrong?" begged Philip gently. "I've been watching you for hours, Diane, and you've scarcely moved an inch." "Nothing," said Diane. But her voice was so lifeless, her lack of interest in Philip's sudden appearance so pointed, that he glanced keenly at her colorless face and frowned. "There is something, I'm sure," he insisted kindly. "You look it." Finding that she did not trouble to reply, he produced his wildwood pipe and fell to smoking. "Likely I'll stay here," said Philip quietly, "until you tell me. Surely you know, Diane, that in anything in God's world that concerns you, I stand ready to help you if you need me." It was manfully spoken but Diane's lips faintly curled. Philip's fine frank face colored hotly and he looked away. In silence they sat there, Philip smoking restlessly and wondering, Diane staring at the creek, with Ronador's impassioned voice ringing wildly in her ears. In the east the sky turned faintly primrose, the creek glowed faintly pink. The great moon glided lower by the marsh with the branch of a dead tree black against its brilliant shield. Marsh and oak were faintly gray. The metallic ocean had already caught the deepening glow of life. Where the stream stole swampwards, a mist curled slowly up from the water like beckoning ghosts draped in nebulous rags. Suddenly in the silence Diane fell to trembling. "Philip!" she cried desperately. "Yes?" said Philip gently. "Why are you following me with the music-machine?" "I could tell you," said Philip honestly, "and I'd like to, but you'd tell me again that the moon is on my head." The girl smiled faintly. "Tell me," she begged impetuously, "what was that other reason why I must not journey to Florida in the van? You spoke of it by the lily pool in Connecticut. You remember?" "Yes," said Philip uncomfortably. "Yes, I do remember." "What was it?" insisted Diane, her eyes imploring. "Surely, Philip, you can tell me now! I--I did not ask you then--" "No," said Philip wistfully. "I--I think you trusted me then, for all our friendship was a thing of weeks." "What was it?" asked Diane, grown very white. "I am sorry," said Philip simply. "I may not tell you that, Diane. I am pledged." "To whom?" "It is better," said Philip, "if I do not tell." Diane sharply caught her breath and stared at the sinister wraiths rising in floating files from the swamp stream. "Philip--was it--was it Themar's knife?" "Yes," said Philip. "And the man to whom you are pledged is--Baron Tregar!" "Yes," said Philip again. "Why were you in the forest that night of storm and wind?" Philip glanced keenly at the girl by the creek. Her profile was stern and very beautiful, but the finely moulded lips had quivered. "What is it, Diane?" he begged gently. "Why is it that you must ask me all these things that I may not honorably answer?" "I--I do not see why you may not answer." "An honorable man respects his promise scrupulously!" said Philip with a sigh. "You would not have me break mine?" "Why," cried Diane, "did you fight with Themar in the forest? Why have you night after night watched my camp? Oh, Philip, surely, surely, you can tell me!" Philip sighed. With his infernal habit of mystery and pledges, the Baron had made this very hard for him. "None of these things," he said quietly, "I may tell you or anyone." Diane leaned forward and laid her hand upon his arm. "Philip," she whispered with dark, tragic eyes fixed upon his face, "who--who shot the bullet that night? Do you know?" "Yes," said Philip, "I--I am very sorry. I think I know--" "You will not tell me?" "No." Diane drew back with a shudder. "I know the answers to all my questions!" she said in a low voice, and there was a great horror in her eyes. "Oh, Philip, Philip, go! If--if you could have told me something different--" "Is it useless to ask you to trust me, Diane?" "Go!" said Diane, trembling. By the swamp the gray ghosts fell to dancing with locked, transparent hands. Blood-red the sun glimmered through the pines and struck fire from a gray, cold world. Philip bent and caught her hands, quietly masterful. "What you may think, Diane," he said unsteadily, "I do not know. But part of the answer to every question is my love for you. No--you must listen! We have crossed swords and held a merry war, but through it all ran the strong thread of friendship. We must not break it now. Do you know what I thought that day on the lake when I saw you coming through the trees? I said, I have found her! God willing, here is the perfect mate with whom I must go through life, hand in hand, if I am to live fully and die at the last having drained the cup of life to the bottom. If, knowing this, you can not trust me and will tell me so--" But Ronador's eloquent voice rang again in the girl's ears. Her glance met Philip's inexorably. And there was something in her eyes that hurt him cruelly. For an instant his face flamed scarlet, then it grew white and hard and very grim. "Go!" said Diane and buried her face in her hands. With no final word of extenuation Philip went. Diane stumbled hurriedly through the trees to Keela's camp and touched the Indian girl frantically upon the shoulder. "Keela," she cried desperately, "wake! wake! It's sunrise. Let us go somewhere--anywhere--and leave this treacherous world of civilization behind us. I--I am tired of it all." Keela stared. "Very well," she said sedately a little later. "You and I, Diane, we will journey to my home in the Glades. There--as it was a century back--so it is now." CHAPTER XXXV THE WIND OF THE OKEECHOBEE Southward along the beautiful Kissimmee river, where the fabled young grandee of Spain kissed the plaintive Seminole maid, rumbled the great green van and the camp of Keela. Southward, unremittingly protective, followed the silent music-machine. For though the dear folly and humor were things of the past, like Arcadia, a true knight may surely see that his willful lady comes to no harm though he must worship from afar. And at length they came to the final fringe of civilization edging the Everglades where, despite repeated protests, Johnny must stay behind with the cumbrous van. And now the Southern woods were gloriously a-riot with blossoms; with dogwood and magnolia, with wild tropical blossoms of orange and scarlet; and the moon hung wild and beautiful above the Everglades. "Little Spring Moon!" said Keela softly in Seminole. Diane thought suddenly of a late moon above a marsh. "He--he can not follow me into those terrible wilds ahead," she thought with sudden bitterness. "I shall be free at last from his dreadful spying." At sunrise one morning they bade Johnny adieu and struck off boldly with the Indian wagon into the melancholy world of the Everglades. "It is better," said Keela gravely, "if you wear the Seminole clothes you wore at Sherrill's. They are in the wagon. My people love not the white man." "But--" stammered Diane. "They will think," explained Keela shyly, "that you are a beautiful daughter of the sun from the wilderness of O-kee-fee-ne-kee. You are brown and beautiful. Such, they tell, was my grandmother. It is a legend of my mother's people, but I do not think," added Keela majestically, "that the wild and beautiful tribe of mystery who were sons and daughters of the Sun, are half so beautiful as you!" To the dull baying of the alligators in the saw grass, and the melancholy croak of the great blue herons, Keela's wagon penetrated the weird and terrible wilds of the Everglades, winding by the gloomy border of swamps where the deadly moccasin dwelt beneath the darkling shadow of cypress, on by ponds thick with lilies and tall ghostly grasses, over tangled underbrush, past water-dark jungles of dead trees where the savage cascade of brush and vine and fallen branches had woven a weird, wild lacery among the trees, through mud and saw grass, past fertile islands and lagoons of rush and flag--a trackless water-prairie of uninhabitable wilds which to Keela's keen and beautiful eyes held the mysteriously blazed home-trail of the Seminole. As Keela knew the trail, so surely from the rank, tropical vegetation of the great Southern marshland she knew the art of wresting food. Bitter wild oranges, pawpaws, oily palmetto cabbage, wild cassava, starred gorgeously now with orange colored blossoms, and guavas; these, with the wild turkeys and mallard ducks, turtles and squirrels and the dark little Florida quail with which the wild abounded, gave them varied choice. Cheerfully fording miles of mud and water, his discomforts not a few, came Philip, greatly disturbed by the incomprehensible whims of his lady. By day he followed close upon the trail of the canvas wagon, patterning his conquest of the aquatic wilderness about him after that of Keela, hunting the wild duck and the turkey and discarding the bitter orange with aggrieved disgust. And if Keela occasionally found a brace of ducks by the camp fire or a bass in a nest of green palmetto, she wisely said nothing, sensing the barrier between these two and wondering greatly. By night when the great morass lay in white and sinister tangle under the wild spring moon, when the dark and dreadful swamps were rife with horrible croaks and snaps, the whirring of the wings of waterfowl or the noise of a disturbed puff adder, Philip stretched himself upon the seat of the music-machine and slept through the twilight and the early evening. When the camp ahead, glimmering brightly through the live oaks, was silent, Philip awoke and watched and smoked, a solitary sentinel in the terrible melancholy of the moonlit waste of ooze and dead leaf and sinister crawling life. So they came in time to the plains of Okeechobee and thence to the wild, dark waters of the great inland sea--a wild, bleak sea, mirroring cloud and the night-lamp of the Everglades. The wind wafting across on night-tipped wings rippled the great water shield and brought its message to the silent figure on the shore. "So," sighed the wind of the Okeechobee, "he still follows!" "Yes," said Diane, shuddering at the howl of a cat owl, "he has dared even that!" "Brave and resolute to plunge into the wilds with a music-machine! Would he, think you, dare all this for the sake of--spying?" "I--I do not know. I have wondered greatly. Still he has dared much for it before." "He asked you to remember--his love--" "I--I dare not think of it. For every admission he made that night by the marsh tallied with the terrible tale of Ronador. I had thought he followed and watched by night for another reason." "What reason?" "I--do not know. A finer, holier reason--" The wind fluttered and fell, and rose again with a plaintive sigh. "You know, but you will not tell!" "It--it may be so. He is false--he is false!" cried the voice of the girl's sore heart; "a false sentry and a false protector. I can not bear it. Philip! Philip! It was Themar's knife--and the bullet was his--and all that seemed fine and noble was black and false!" "You will not trust him as he begged!" "I can not. For he will not tell me the reason for all these things!" "You will wed Prince Ronador?" "Yes. It is the one way out." "Why?" "He is a gallant lover and the victim of much that is vile and unfair." "Yes--he has said so." "He has suffered much through me." "Yes." "And he is honorable and devoted." "It may be." "He told me all, though he found it difficult." "He was not bound by a pledge." "No." "Well, there is wisdom, the wisdom of the world, in your choice. Flashing jewels, robes of state, maids of honor--" "These things," spurned Diane with beautiful insolence, "I may buy with gold." "Ah!" crooned the wind, "but the vassalage of this elfin nation that plays at empire, the romance and adventure of an imperial court! And when the mad King dies and the Prince Regent, then Ronador will be king--" "I have thought of it all. I can not go back to the old shallow life with Aunt Agatha. No! No! And I am very lonely. If in the days to come wind and moon and the call of the wilderness stir my gypsy blood to rebellion--if I am ever to forget--" "What must you forget?" "It was foolish to speak so. I do not know. Then when the call of the wildwood comes I must have crowded days and fevered gayety to hush it. And surely this will come to me in the court of Ronador." The wild moon drifted behind a cloud, the sea darkened, something huge and shadowy lumbered down to the water and splashed heavily away, the cat owl hooted. A mist drooped trailing fingers over the water as the wind died away. A profoundly dreary setting for a dream of empire! CHAPTER XXXVI UNDER THE LIVE OAKS "See!" said Keela shyly. "It is the camp of my people." It lay ahead, a fire-blot in the darkling swamp, a primitive mirage of primitive folk, of palmetto wigwams and log-wheel fires among the live oaks of a lonely island. Keela's wagon presently forded a shallow creek and crossed an island plain. Thence it came by a winding road to the village, where, with the halting of the wagon, the travelers became the hub of a vast and friendly wheel of excitement. Hospitable hands were already leading Keela's horses away when Mr. Poynter rode sedately into camp and, descending to terra firma in the light of the nearest camp fire, guilefully proceeded to assure himself of a welcome and immediate attention by spectacular means; he simply unwound the hullabaloo. Cymbals clashed, the drum cannonaded fearfully and to the sprightly measures of "The Glowworm," the Indians who had collected about Keela's wagon to stare at Diane, decamped in a body to the side of Mr. Poynter, who smiled and proceeded in pantomime to make friends with all about him. This, by virtue of the entertaining music-machine, was not difficult. Having exhausted the repertoire of the hullabaloo, he initiated the turbaned warriors into the mystery of unwinding tunes, thereby cementing the friendship forever. The general din and excitement grew fearful. Presently the Thunder-Man was warmly assigned a wigwam, made of palmetto and the skins of wild animals above a split-log floor, to which he retired at the heels of Sho-caw, a copper-colored young warrior who had learned a little English from the traders. Already rumor was rife among the staring tribe that Diane had strayed from the legendary clan of beautiful Indians in the O-kee-fee-ne-kee wilderness. The assignment of her wigwam, therefore, had been made with marked respect. Here, as the Indian camp settled into quiet and the fires died lower, as the wild night sounds of the Glades awoke in the marsh outside, Diane lay still and wakeful and a little frightened. Wilderness and Seminole were still primeval. The world seemed very far away. The thought of the music-machine brought with it somehow a feeling of security. With the broad white daylight, courage returned. From her wigwam Diane watched the silent village, wrapped in fog, wake to the busy life of the Glades. Somber-eyed little Indian lads carried water and gathered wood, fires brightened, there was a pleasant smell of pine in the morning air. Later, by Keela's fire, she furtively watched Philip ride forth with a band of hunters. So at last in the heart of the wildwood, among primitive folk whose customs had not varied for a century, Diane drank deep of the wild, free, open life her gypsy heart had craved. There were times when a great peace dwarfed the memory of the moon above the marsh; there were times when the thought of Ronador and Philip sent her riding wildly across the plains with Keela; there were still other times when a nameless disquiet welled up within her, some furtive distrust of the gypsy wildness of her blood. But in the main the days were quiet and peaceful. "It is a wild world of varied color and activity," she wrote to Ann. "The trailing air plants in the trees beside my wigwam weave a dense, tropical jungle of shadow shot with sunlight. Keela's wigwam lies but a stone's throw beyond. It is lined with beaded trinkets, curious carven things of cypress, pots of dye made of berries and barks, and pottery which she has patterned after the relics in the sand mounds. There is an old chief with all the terrible pathos of a vanishing race in his eyes. I find in his wistful dignity an element of tragedy. He is very kind to Keela and talks much of her in his quaint broken English. "Moons back, he declares, when E-shock-e-tom-isee, the great Creator, made the world of men by scattering seeds in a river valley, of those who grew from the sand, some went to the river and washed too pale and weak--the white man; some, enough--the strong red man; some washed not at all--the shiftless black man. But Keela came from none of these. "Ann, the squaws are _hideous_! Their clothes, an indescribable _potpourri_ of savage superstition and stray inklings (such as a disfiguring bang of hair across the forehead, a Psyche knot and a full skirt) from the white man's world of fashion--years back. The pounds and pounds of bead necklaces they wear give the savage touch. I don't wonder Keela's delicate soul rebelled and drove her to the barbaric costume of a chief. It is infinitely more picturesque and beautiful. "There are thrilling camp fire tales of Osceola, the brilliant, handsome young Seminole chief who blazoned his name over the pages of Florida history, but here among Osceola's kinsmen, pages are unnecessary. The sagas of the tribe are handed down from mouth to mouth to stir the youth to deeds of daring. Keela, like Osceola, had a white father and a Seminole mother. Ann, I sometimes wonder what opportunity might have done for Osceola. As great as Napoleon, some one said. What might opportunity do for this strange, exotic flower of Osceola's people? She has brains and beauty and instinctive grace enough to startle a continent. I am greatly tempted. Ann, I beg of you, don't breathe any of this to Aunt Agatha. Some day I may carry Keela away to the cities of the North for an experiment quite my own. Her delicate beauty--her gravity--her shy, sweet dignity, hold me powerfully. It would make life well worth the living--the regeneration of a life like hers. "No, I am not mad. If I am, it is a delicious madness indeed, this craving to do something for some one else. I need the discipline of thinking for another. "I don't know when you will get this. Once in a while an Indian rides forth to civilization, and this letter will perforce await such a messenger. I wrote to Aunt Agatha from the little hamlet where Johnny is waiting with the van. I know she is fussing. "You wrote me something in one of your letters, that Dick and Carl were planning to camp and hunt wild turkeys in the Glades. Let me know what luck they had and all the news. "Ever yours, "Diane." Now, if Diane proved readily adaptable to the wild life about her, no less did Philip. At night he smoked comfortably by his camp fire, unwound the hullabaloo upon request or lent it to Sho-caw. He rode hard and fearlessly with the warriors, hunted bear and alligator, acquired uncommon facility in the making of sof-ka, the tribal stew, and helped in the tanning of pelts and the building of cypress canoes. Presently the unmistakable whir of a sewing machine which Sho-caw had bought from a trader, floated one morning from Philip's wigwam. Keela reported literally that Mr. Poynter had said he was building himself a much-needed tunic, though he had experienced considerable difficulty in the excavation of the sleeves. CHAPTER XXXVII IN THE GLADES "What the devil is the matter with you, Carl?" demanded Dick Sherrill irritably. "If I'd known you were going to moon under a tree and whistle through that infernal flute half the time, I'd never have suggested camping. Are you coming along to-night or not?" "No. I've murdered enough wild turkeys now." Sherrill plunged off swampwards with the guides. Left to himself Carl laid aside his flute and sat very quiet, staring at the cloud-haunted moon which hung above the Glades. He had been drinking and gaming heavily for weeks. Now floundering deeper and deeper into the mire of debt and dissipation, forced to a fevered alertness by distrust of all about him, he found the weird gloom of the Everglades of a piece with the blackness of his mood. For days he had taken wild chances that horrified Sherrill inexpressibly; drinking clear whiskey in the burning white tropical sunlight, tramping off into trackless wilds without a guide, conducting himself, as Sherrill aggrievedly put it, with the general irrationality of a drunken madman. "The climate or a moccasin will get you yet!" exclaimed Sherrill heatedly. "And it will serve you right. Or you'll get lost. And to lose your way in this infernal swamp is sure death. They used to enter runaway niggers who came here, on the undertaker's list. I swear I won't tell your aunt if you do disappear. That's a job for a deaf mute. And only yesterday I saw you corner a moccasin and tantalize him until the chances were a hundred to one that he'd get you, and then you blazed your gun down his throat and walked away laughing. Faugh!" With the perversity of reckless madmen, however, Carl went his foolhardy way unharmed. But his nights were fevered and sleepless and haunted by a face which never left him, and the locked hieroglyphics on Themar's cuff danced dizzily before his eyes. Carl presently lighted a lantern, seated himself at the camp table and fell moodily to poring over the tormenting hieroglyphics which had haunted him for days. The night was cloudy. Only at infrequent intervals the moon soared turbulently out from the somber cloud-hills and glinted brightly through the live oaks overhead. Carl had been drinking heavily since the morning, with vicious recourse to the flute when his mood was darkest. Now he felt strung to a curious electric tension, with pulse and head throbbing powerfully like a racing engine. Still there was satanic keenness in his mind to-night, a capacity for concentration that surprised him. Somewhere in his head, taut like an overstrung ligament or the string of a great violin, something sinister droned and hummed and subtly threatened. For the hundredth time he made a systematic list of recurrent symbols, noting again the puzzling similarity of the twisted signs, but no sign appeared frequently enough to do vowel work. To-night somehow the cipher mocked and gibed and goaded him to frenzy. The mad angles pointing up and down and right and left--it was impossible to sort them. They danced and blurred and crept irresistibly into the wrong list. And in error came solution. Carl glanced intently at the jumbled list and fell feverishly to working from a different viewpoint. From the cryptic snarl came presently the single English word in the cipher--his name. The keen suspicion of his hot brain had, at last, been right. For every letter in the alphabet, four symbols had been used interchangeably but whether they pointed up or down or right or left, their significance was the same. There were no word divisions. When at last Ronador's frantic message to the Baron lay before him, Carl was grateful for the quiet monastery days in Houdania with Father Joda. They had given him an inkling of the language. Some of the message, to be sure, was missing--for Themar had been interrupted--and some of it unintelligible. But clear and cold before his fevered eyes lay the words which marked him irrevocably for the knife of a hired assassin. There was no suggestion of sealing his lips with gold, as in a drunken moment he had suggested in his letter. The seal of death was safer than the seal of gold. Seeing the sinister command there before him, even though the knowledge was not new, Carl felt a nameless fury rise in his reeling brain. He must live--live--live! he told himself fiercely. With the vivid, lovely face of Keela tormenting him to sensual conquest, he must live no matter what the price! How safeguard his life from the men who were hunting him? What if Diane were to--_die_? Carl shuddered. Then the sirocco of fear and hate centering about her, would blow itself out forever and his own life would be safe, for the secret would be worthless. These men--Tregar, Ronador, Themar--scrupled for vastly different reasons to take the life of a woman. Money! Money! He must have money! And if Diane were to _die_, the great estate of Norman Westfall would revert to him of course; there was no other heir. Why had he not thought of that before? In that instant he knew that barely a year ago the treacherous thought would have been for him impossible, that slowly, insistently he had been sliding deeper and deeper into the dark abyss of degradation where all things are possible. There had been intrigue and dishonor of a sort in the letter to Houdania, but not this--Oh, God! not this horrible, beckoning Circe with infamous eyes and scarlet robes luring him to the uttermost pit of the black Inferno. But Diane had flashed and mocked him as a child when he was sensitive and lonely. She had always mocked the memory of his mother. Brown and lovely his cousin's face rose before him in a willful moment of tenderness--and then from the shadows came again the flash of topaz and Venetian lamps and the lovely face of Keela. Something in Carl's haunted brain snapped. With a groan of horror and suffering, he pitched forward upon the ground, breathing Philip Poynter's name like an invocation against the things of evil crowding horribly about him. It was Dick Sherrill who at last found him. "Nick!" he called in horror to one of the guides. "For God's sake bring some brandy! No! he's had too much of that already. Water! Water--can't somebody hurry!" "Leave him to me, Mr. Sherrill!" said Nick with quiet authority. And bending over the motionless figure under the oak, he gently loosened the flannel shirt from the throat, laid a wet cloth upon the forehead and fell to rubbing the rigid limbs. Presently, with a long, shuddering sigh, Carl opened his eyes, stared at the scared circle of faces about him and instantly tried to rise. "Don't, don't, Carl," exploded Dick Sherrill solicitously. "Lie still, man! I was afraid something would get you." Carl fell back indifferently. Presently with a slight smile he sat up again. "I'm all right now, Dick," he insisted. "It's nothing at all. I've had something like it once before. Don't mention it to my aunt. She'd likely fuss." Dick readily promised. "Nevertheless," he insisted, "we're going to break camp in the morning. This infernal bog's got on my nerves. There are more creepy, oozy things in that cypress swamp over there than a man can afford to meet in the dark. To the devil with your wild turkeys, Nick! Quail and duck are good enough for me." The camp wagons drove back to Palm Beach in the morning. Carl was very quiet and evaded Sherrill's anxious eyes. He seemed to be brooding morosely over some inner problem which frequently furrowed his forehead and made him very restless. "Cheer up!" exclaimed Dick reassuringly. "You'll feel better when you get a shower and some other clothes. As for me, I'm going to hunt field mice and ground doves from now on. Lord, Carl, I'll never forget that beastly swamp. Did I tell you that last night, after all our discomfort, I got nothing but a smelly buzzard? Ugh!" Dick's hunting interest was steadily on the wane. He finally came down to birds and humble bees, though when they started he had talked magnificently of alligators and bears. Carl laughed and relapsed into brooding silence. A little later on the Sherrill porch he found himself listening with tired patience to Aunt Agatha's opinion of camping in the Everglades. "What with your Esquimaux," she puffed tearfully, "and the immigrant who wasn't an immigrant--and I must say this once, Carl, for all I promised to ask no further questions, that you never attempted to explain that performance to my satisfaction--the young man with the eye, you know, and the immigrant with his feet on the lace spread--to say nothing at all of Diane's losing herself in the flat-woods over a cart wheel of flame, I wonder I'm not crazy, I do indeed! And riding off to Jacksonville with the Indian girl, for all I've lain awake night after night seeing her scalp lying by the roadside! It was bad enough to have you in those horrible Glades, but Diane--" "Aunt Agatha," said Carl patiently, "what in thunder are you driving at anyway?" "Why," said Aunt Agatha in aggrieved distress, "Diane's gone and left Johnny at some funny little hamlet and she's gone into the Everglades to a Seminole village with the Indian girl. There's a letter in my room. You can read for yourself." Aunt Agatha burst into tears. Carl patiently essayed a comforting word of advice and followed Dick indoors to seek relief in less calamitous showers. Before he did so, however, he read his cousin's letter. For that night and the night following Carl did not sleep. On the morning of the third day, after a careless inquiry he went to West Palm Beach and interviewed some traders who were reported to be on the eve of an expedition into the Everglades with a wagonload of scarlet calico and beads to trade for Indian products. The fourth day he was missing. CHAPTER XXXVIII IN PHILIP'S WIGWAM For hours now, Carl had lain hidden in the waist-high grass, staring at the Seminole camp. The sun had set in a wild red glory in the west, staining dank pool and swamp with the color of blood. The twilight came and with it the eerie hoot of the great owls whirring by in the darkness. Unseen things crept silently by. Once a great winged wraith of ghostly white flapped by with a croak, a snowy heron, winging like a shape of Wrath Incarnate, above the crouching man in the grass. The wheel fires of the Seminoles flared among the live oaks, silhouetting dusky figures and palmetto wigwams. By the swamp the night darkened. Carl had thrown himself upon the grass now, his white, haggard face buried upon his arm. Back there scarcely a mile to the east lay the camp of the traders. In the morning they would ride into the Indian camp saddled with bright beads and colored calicoes. In the morning--Carl shuddered and lay very quiet, fighting again the ghastly torment that had racked and driven him into the melancholy solitude of the Everglades. Now the firelit palmetto roof of the wigwam he knew to be Diane's seemed somehow, to his distorted fancy, redder than the others--the color of blood. There, too, was the wigwam of Keela, bringing taunting desire. A crowd of Seminoles rode into camp and, dismounting, led their horses away. Carl watched them gather about the steaming sof-ka kettles on the fires, handing the spoon from mouth to mouth. One, a tall, broad young warrior in tunic and trousers and a broad sombrero--disappeared in a wigwam on the fringe of camp. A great wave of dizziness and burning nausea swept over Carl. Again he was conscious of the taut, over-strung ligament droning, droning in his head. The camp ahead became a meaningless blur of sinister scarlet fire, of bloodred wigwams and dusky figures that seemed to dance and lure and mock. The wild wind that bent the grasses, the horrible persistent hoot of the owl in the cypress tree, the night noises of the black swamp to the west, all mocked and urged and whispered of things unspeakable. The camp fell quiet. A black moonless sky brooded above the dying camp fires. Not until this wild world of swamp and Indian seemed asleep did the man in the grass stir. Silently then he crept forward upon hands and knees until he had passed the first of the Indian wigwams. Here he dropped for a silent interval of caution into shadow and lay there scarcely breathing. On toward the door of Diane's shelter he crept and once more lay inert and quiet. Thunder rumbled disquietingly off to the east, The wind was rising over the Glades with a violent rustle of grass and leaves. Now that his arm was nerved at last to its terrible task, it behooved him to hurry, ere the rain and thunder stirred the camp. Noiselessly he crawled forward again. As he did so a ragged dart of lightning glinted evilly in his eyes. With a leap something bounded from the shadows behind him and bore him to the ground. In the thick pall of darkness, he fought with infernal desperation. The rain came fiercely in great gusts of tearing wind. There was the strength of a madman to-night in Carl's powerful arms. Relentlessly he bore his assailant to the ground and raised his knife. The lightning flared brilliantly again. With a great, choking cry of unutterable horror, Carl fell back and flung his knife away. "Oh, God!" he cried, shaking. "Philip!" He flung himself face downward on the ground in an agony of abasement. With a roar of wind and rain the hurricane beat gustily upon the wigwams. Neither man seemed aware of it. Philip, his face white, had risen. Now he stood, tall, rigid, towering above the man upon the ground, who lay motionless save for the shuddering gusts of self-revulsion which swept his tortured body. It was Philip at last who spoke. Bending he touched the other's shoulder. "Come," he said. "Diane must not know." "No," said Carl dully. "No--she must not know. I--I am not myself, Philip, as God is my witness--" He choked, unable to voice the horror in his heart. A man may not raise the knife of death to his one friend and speak of it with comfort. Rising, Carl stumbled blindly in the wake of the tall figure striding on ahead. They halted at last at a wigwam on the fringe of the camp. Philip lighted a lantern, his white face fixed and expressionless as stone. "You were going to kill her!" he said abruptly. "Yes," said Carl. He shuddered. In the silence the storm battered fiercely at the wigwam. Philip wheeled furiously. "What is it?" he demanded. "In God's name what threatens her, that even here in these God-forsaken wilds she is not safe?" He towered grim above the crouching man on the floor of the wigwam. "For months I have guarded her day and night," he went on fiercely, "from some damnable mystery and treachery that has almost muddled my life beyond repair. What is it? Why were you creeping to her wigwam to-night with a knife in your hand?" Carl flinched beneath the blazing anger and contempt in his eyes. The droning in his head grew suddenly to a roar. The nausea flamed again over his body. For a dizzy interval he confused the noise of the storm with the drone in his head. Philip seized the lantern and bending, stared closely into his white face and haunted eyes. "You're ill!" he said gently. "Yes," said Carl. "I--I think so." He met Philip's glance of sympathy with one of wild imploring. It was the man's desperate effort to keep this one friend from sweeping hostilely out of his life on the wings of the dark, impious tempest he had roused himself. To his disordered brain nothing else mattered. Philip had trusted him always--and his knife had menaced Philip. In Philip's hand lay then, though he could not know it, the future of the man at his feet. In the silence Carl fell pitifully to shaking. "Steady, Carl!" exclaimed Philip kindly and setting the lantern down, slipped a strong, reassuring arm about the other's shoulders. In that second Philip proved his caliber. With big inherent generosity he saw beyond the bloated mask of brutal passion and resolve. Miraculously he understood and said so. This white, haggard face, marked cruelly with dissipation and suffering, was the face of a man at the end of the way. In his darkest hour he needed--not an inexorable censor--but a friend. With heroic effort Philip put aside the evil memory of the past hour, though his sore heart rebelled. "Carl," he said gently, "you've got to pull up. You've come to the wall at last. You know what lies on the other side?" Carl shuddered. "Yes," he whispered. "Madness--or--or suicide. One of the two must come in time." "Madness or suicide!" repeated Philip slowly and there was a great pity in his eyes. Carl caught the look and his face grew whiter beneath its tan. Chin and jaw muscles went suddenly taut. "Philip," he choked, unnerved by the other's gentleness, "you don't--you can't mean--you believe in me--_yet_?" "Yes," said Philip steadily. "God help me, I do." Carl flung himself upon the floor, torn by great dry sobs of agony. Shaking, Philip turned away. Presently Carl grew quieter and fell to pouring forth an incoherent recital about a candlestick. From the meaningless raving of the white, drawn lips came at last a single sentence of lucid revelation. Philip leaped and shook him roughly by the shoulder. "Carl, think! think!" he cried fiercely. "For God's sake, think! You--don't know what you are saying!" But Carl repeated the statement again and again, and Philip's eyes grew sombre. With quick, keen questions he reduced the chaotic yarn to order. The wild tale at an end, Carl fell back, limp and very tired. "In God's name," thundered practical Philip, "why didn't you look in the other candlestick?" Carl stared. Then suddenly without a word of warning, he pitched forward senseless upon the floor. Philip loosened his clothing, rubbed his icy hands and limbs and bathed his forehead, but the interval was long and trying before the stark figure on the floor shuddered slightly and struggled weakly to a sitting posture. "I'm all right now," said Carl dully. "And I've got to go on. I--I can't meet Diane." He drew something from his pocket and jabbed it in his arm. Philip looked on with disapproval. "No," said Carl, meeting his glance. "No, not so very often, Philip. Just lately, since Sherrill and I camped in the Glades. There's something--something very tight here in my head whenever I grow excited. When it snaps I'm done for a while, but this helps." Philip's fine, frank mouth was very grim. "Carl," he said quietly, "off there to the south is the eccentric swamp home of a singular man, a philosopher and a doctor. He's Keela's foster father. I've met and smoked with him. I want you to go to him and rest. The Indians do that. He's what you need. And tell him you're down and out. You'll go--for me?" "Anywhere," said Carl. "Tell him about the dope and every other hell-conceived abuse with which you've tormented your body. Tell him about the infernal tightness in your head." "Yes," said Carl. "But this thing of the candlestick," added Philip bitterly, "tell to no man. You're strong enough to start now?" "Yes." Philip left the wigwam. When at length he returned, there was a dark, slight figure at his heels, turbaned and tunicked, a guide whom he trusted utterly. A burning wave swept suddenly over Carl's body and left him very cold. Philip could not know, of course. "Keela will guide you," said Philip. "She could follow the trail with her eyes closed. The horses are saddled at the edge of camp. You'll be there by daylight." He smiled and held out his hand and his eyes were encouraging. The hands of the two men tightened. Carl stumbled blindly away at the heels of the Indian girl. Philip watched them go--watched Keela lead the way with the lithe, soft tread of a wild animal, and mount--watched Carl swing heavily into the saddle and follow. Silhouetted darkly against the watery moon, the silent riders filed off into the swamp-world to the south. For an instant Philip experienced a sudden flash of misgiving but Philip was just and honorable in all things and having disciplined himself to faith in his friend, maintained it. Then his eyes wandered slowly to the wigwam of Diane. Thinking of the story of the candle-stick, with his mouth twisted into a queer, wry smile, Philip fumbled for his pipe. "_Requiescat in pace_," said Philip, "the hopes of Philip Poynter!" CHAPTER XXXIX UNDER THE WILD MARCH MOON Southward under the watery moon and the wild, dark clouds rode the Indian girl, following a trail blazed only for Indian eyes. The aquatic world about them had grown steadily wilder, more remote from the haunts of men. Fording miry creeks, silver-streaked with moon-light, trampling through dense, dark, tangled brakes and on, under the wild March moon, followed Carl, a prey to the memory of the Indian girl as he had seen her that night at Sherrill's. Keela's face, vividly dark and lovely, had mocked his restless slumbers this many a day. Keela's eyes, black like a starless night or the cloud-black waters of Okeechobee had lured and lured to sensual conquest. But a great shame was adding its torment to the terrible pain in his head and the fevered singing of his pulses. In the torture of his self-abasement, the over-strung ligament in his head fell ominously to droning again. Everything seemed remote and unreal. He hated the awful silence about him--the crash of his horse's feet through the matted brush and the twist of palmetto, resolved itself into dancing ciphers. Ahead Keela stopped. Motionless, like a beautiful sculptured thing, she sat listening as Carl rode up beside her. "What is it?" he asked. "I fancied some one followed," said Keela soberly. "It may not be." She rode forward, glancing keenly at the trail behind her. Thus they rode onward until the east grew pale and gray. A bleak dawn was breaking in melancholy mists over the Everglades. The lonely expanse of swamp and metallic water, of grass-flats and tangled wilds, loomed indistinctly out of the half light in sinister skeleton. Keela glanced with furtive compassion at the haggard face of the rider behind her. Since midnight he had ridden in utter silence, growing whiter it seemed as the night waned. "Another hour!" said Keela in her soft, clear voice. "Be of courage. When the sun rises there behind the cypress, we shall be at our journey's end." "I--I am all right," stammered Carl courageously, but he bit his lips until they bled, and swayed so violently in the saddle that Keela slid to the ground in alarm. "Put your arms about my shoulders--so!" she commanded imperiously. "You will fall! Philip surely could not know how ill you are. Can you get down?" With an effort Carl dismounted and fell forward on his knees. "You must sleep for a while," said Keela. "I will build a fire. We can breakfast here and rest as long as you like." She took a blanket from his saddle and spread it on the ground. Carl crept on hands and knees to the Indian blanket and lay very still. A drowsiness numbed his senses. When he awoke after a brief interval of restless slumber, it was not yet daylight, though the sky in the east was softly streaked with color. The moon hung low. A fire crackled in the center of a clearing. The horses were tethered to a tree. Keela was off somewhere with bow and arrow to hunt their breakfast. Now suddenly as he lay there, tired and apathetic, Carl was conscious of a face leering from among the trees close at hand, a dark, thin-lipped foreign face with eyes black with hate and malicious triumph. There was a horse hitched to a tree in the thicket beyond. In that instant Carl knew that the Houdanian had furtively followed the camp of the traders into the wilds of the Everglades, spurred on by the fierce command of Ronador. But he did not move. A terrible apathy made him indifferent to the knife of the assassin. He had had his day of masterful torment back there in the attic of the farm, he told himself. Now he must pay. The knife would quiet this unbearable agony in his head. Themar met his eyes, smiled evilly and raised his knife. But the weapon fell suddenly from his hand. With an ominous hum an arrow whizzed fiercely through the trees and anchored in the flesh above his heart. Themar stumbled and fell forward on his face. Like the stricken moose who seeks to press his wound against the earth, he drove the arrow home to his heart. He sobbed, and choked and lay very still, a scarlet wound dying his flannel shirt. Carl's horrified eyes turned slowly to the west. Keela was coming through the trees, proud eyes fierce with terrible anger; halting beside the dead man, she spurned him with moccasined foot. The tense, droning string in Carl's head whirred again--and snapped. He lay in a heavy stupor, dozing fitfully until the moon climbed high again above the Glades. CHAPTER XL THE VICTORY When consciousness and a restful sense of returning strength came at last Keela was bending anxiously over him. "You have been quiet so long," she said gravely, "that I grew afraid. Drink." She held forth a cup of woven leaves, and the glance of her great black eyes was very soft and gentle. Carl flushed and taking the cup with shaking hand, drank. There was a flash of gratitude in his eyes. "Themar?" he whispered. "Where is he?" He looked toward the trees beyond. "In the swamp!" said Keela, her face stern and beautiful. "It is better so." "You--you dragged him there?" "I am very strong," said Keela simply. "The vultures will get him. It is the Indian way with one who murders." Their eyes met, a great wave of crimson suddenly dyed Keela's throat and face and swept in lovely tide to the brilliant turban. A constrained silence fell between them, broken only by the whir of a great heron flapping by on snowy wings. And there was something in Keela's eyes that sent the blood coursing furiously through Carl's fevered veins. The Indian girl busied herself with the wild duck roasting in the hub of coals. Carl ate a little and lay down again. He saw now that Themar's horse was tethered beside Keela's--that the dead man's saddlebags lay by the fire. Furtive recourse to the drug in his pocket presently flushed his veins with artificial calm. He fell asleep to find his dreams haunted again by the lovely face of Keela, kinder and gentler now than that proud, imperious face above the line of flashing topaz. He awoke with a start. The Indian girl lay asleep on a blanket by the fire. The world of moon-haunted jungle and water was very quiet. Firelight faintly haloed Keela's face and brought mad memories of the soft light of the Venetian lamp at the Sherrill fete. He noted the pure, delicate regularity of feature, the delicate, vivid skin--it was paler than Diane's--and flaming through his brain went the dangerous reflection that conquest lay now perhaps in the very hollow of his hand. Desire had driven him on to things unspeakable. It had clouded his brain, fired his blood to ugly resolve, blinded every finer instinct with its turbulent call, until the siren who beckons men onward through the marshland of passion had flung the gift at his feet in the haunted wilds. Staring at the tranquil, delicate face of the sleeper by the camp fire, a great horror of the scarlet hours behind him awoke suddenly in Carl's heart. There had been a girl who cried. And he had laughed and shrugged and voiced an ironical philosophy of sex for her consolation. There was no philosophy of sex, only a hideous injustice which Man, the Hunter, willfully ignored. There were faces in the fire--faces like that of Keela, that had lured to sensual conquest and faded. Trembling violently, Carl stared long and steadily at the Indian girl. There had been a time, before he sank to the bottom of the pit, when her face had awakened in him an eager deference. The moon darkened. A white wall of mist settled thickly over the Glades. Then came other thoughts. Philip trusted him. He must not forget. And the immortal spark of control lay somewhere within him. Unbridled passion of mind and body had made him very ill. Very well, then, it behooved him to exorcise the demon while this tormenting clarity of vision whirled the dread kaleidoscope of his careless life before him in honest colors. Unleashed by drug and drink and ceaseless brooding, nerve centers had rebelled, an infernal blood pressure born of mental agony had inspired the droning, his will had slipped its moorings. That his body was not ill, he now knew for the first time. Fever, nausea, pain and droning, they had all leaped at the infernal manipulation of his disordered mind with sickening intensity. Now with a terrible effort he summoned each tattered remnant of the splendid mental strength he had indifferently abused, disciplined his fleeing faculty of concentration and sat very quiet. Philip trusted him. He must not forget! Keela's face had made its delicate appeal to his finer side until that appeal had been hushed by the call of his blood. And there were times when Diane had been kind. He must not forget. Like the stirring of a faint shadow, he felt the first dawning sense of self-mastery he had known for days. The horrible Circe with infamous eyes and scarlet robes no longer lured . . . the terrible sirocco of unbridled passion which had dominated his body almost to destruction was burning itself out . . . the droning in his head was very faint. He must not forget Philip, truest and best of friends. Carl lay down again beside the fire with a great sigh. He was very tired--very sleepy. He slept soundly until morning. When he awoke it was broad daylight. There was a curious sense of utter rest in his veins and meeting Keela's solicitous glance, he said, a little diffidently, that he was better and that he thought they might go on. After a breakfast of quail and wild cassava they rode on, Keela on Themar's horse. Her own obediently followed. An hour later they came to an aquatic jungle haunted by noisome reptiles. Here fallen trees and a matted underbrush of poisonous vines lay submerged in dank black water. Cypress gloomed in forbidding shadow above the stagnant water; the swamp itself was rife with horrible quacks and croaks and off somewhere the distant bellow of an alligator. So dense and dark this terrible haunt of snake and bird and brilliant lizard that Carl shuddered, but Keela, dismounting, tethered her horses to the nearest tree and struck off boldly across a narrow trail of dry land above the level of the water. Carl followed. Presently the matted jungle thinned and they came to a rude foot-bridge made of twisted roots. It led to the first of a series of fertile islands which threaded the terrible swamp with a riot of color. Here royal poinciana flared gorgeously beside the orange-colored blossoms of wild cassava, and hordes of birds flamed by on brilliant wings. Through rude avenues of palm and pine and cypress, through groves of wild orange and banana fringed with mulberry and persimmon trees, over rustic bridges which led from island to island, they came at last to a larger hummock and the wild, vine-covered log lodge of Mic-co, the Indians' white friend. It was thatched like the Seminole wigwams in palmetto and set in a cluster of giant trees. Trailing moss and ferns and vines hung from the boughs, weaving a dense, cool shade about the dwelling. The exuberant air plants brought memories of Lanier's immortal poem: "Glooms of the live oaks, beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,--" There were brilliant vistas of bloom beyond the shadow. The odor of orange hung heavily in the still, warm air. A pair of snowy herons flapped tamely about among the pines. Utter peace and quiet, alive with the chirp of many birds, brilliant sunshine and deep, dark shadow! But Carl stared most at the figure that came to greet them, a tall, broad man of dark complexion and wonderful, kindly eyes of piercing darkness. His hair and beard were snow-white and reached nearly to his waist, his attire buckskin, laced at the seams. But his slender, sensitive hands caught and held attention. "Mic-co," said Keela gravely, "he is very tired in his head. Philip would have him rest." Mic-co held out his hand with a quiet smile. Whatever his searching eyes had found in the haggard face of his young guest was reflected in his greeting. "You are very welcome," he said simply. "No," said Carl steadily, "I may not take your hand, sir, until you know me for what I am. There are none worse. I have been through the mire of hell itself. I have dishonorably betrayed a kinsman in the hope of gold. I had thought to kill. Only a freak of fate has stayed my hand. And there is more that I may not tell--" [Illustration: "No, I may not take your hand."] "So?" said Mic-co quietly. Flushing, Carl took the outstretched hand. "I--I thank you," he said, and looked away. CHAPTER XLI IN MIC-CO'S LODGE The rooms of Mic-co's lodge opened, in the fashion of the old Pompeian villas, upon a central court roofed only by the Southern sky. This court, floored with split logs, covered with bearskin rugs and furnished in handmade chairs of twisted palmetto and a rude table, years back Mic-co and his Indian aides had built above a clear, lazy stream. Now the stream crept beneath the logs to a quiet open pool in the center where lilies and grasses grew, and thence by its own channel under the logs again and out. Storm coverings of buckskin were rolled above the outer windows and above the doorways which opened into the court. Here, when the moon rose over the lonely lodge and glinted peacefully in the tilled pool, Mic-co listened to the tale of his young guest. It was a record of bodily abuse, of passion and temptation, which few men may live to tell, but Mic-co neither condoned nor condemned. He smoked and listened. "Let us make a compact," he said with his quiet smile. "I may question without reserve. You may withhold what you will. That is fair?" "Yes." "Have you ever endured hardship of any kind?" "I have hunted in the Arctics," said Carl. "There was a time when food failed. We lived for weeks on reindeer moss and rock tripe. I have been in wild territory with naturalists and hunters. Probably I have known more adventurous hardship than most men." Mic-co nodded. "I fancied so," he said. "What is your favorite painting?" he asked unexpectedly. The answer came without an instant's hesitation. "Paul Potter's 'Bull.'" "A thing of inherent virility and vigor, intensely masculine!" said Mic-co with a smile, adding after an interval of thought, "but there is a danger in over-sexing--" "I have sometimes thought so. The over-masculine man is too brutal." "And the over-feminine woman?" "Kindly, sentimental, helpless and weak. I have lived with such an aunt since I was fifteen. No, I beg of you, do not misunderstand me! I blame nothing upon her. Like many good women whose minds are blocked off in conventional squares, she is very loyal and sympathetic--and very trying. The essence of her temperament is ineffectuality. My cousin and I were a wild, unmanageable pair who rode roughshod over protest. That Aunt Agatha was not in fault may be proved by my cousin. She is a fine, true, splendid woman." An ineffectual aunt in the critical years of adolescence! Mic-co did not suggest that his cousin's sex had been her salvation. So nights by the pool Mic-co plumbed the depths of his young guest with the fine, tired eyes. "Tell me," he said gently another night; "this inordinate sensitiveness of which you speak. To what do you attribute it?" Carl colored. "My mother," he said, "was courageous and unconventional. She recognized the fact that marriage and monogamy are not the ethical answers of the future--that though ideal unions sometimes result, it is not because of marriage, but in spite of it--that motherhood is the inalienable right of every woman with the divine spark in her heart, no matter what the disappointing lack of desirable marriage chances in her life may be. Therefore, when the years failed to produce her perfect and desirable human complement, she sought a eugenic mate and bore me, refusing to saddle herself to a meaningless, man-made partnership with infinite possibilities of domestic hell in it, merely as a sop to the world-Cerberus of convention. Marriage could have added nothing to her lofty conceptions of motherhood--but I--I have been keenly resentful and sensitive--for her. I think it has been the feeling that no one understood. Then, after she died, there was no one--only Philip. I saw him rarely." "And your cousin?" "She had been taught--to misunderstand. There was always that barrier. And she is very high spirited. Though we were much together as youngsters she could not forget." A singular maternal history, a beautiful, high-spirited, intolerant cousin who had been taught to despise his mother's morality! What warring forces indeed had gone to the making of this man before him. "You have been lonely?" "Yes," said Carl. "My mother died when I needed her most. Later when I was very lonely--or hurt--I drank." "And brooded!" finished Mic-co quietly. "Yes," said Carl. "Always." He spoke a little bitterly of the wild inheritance of passions and arrogant intolerance with which Nature had saddled him. "All of which," reminded Mic-co soberly, "you inflamed by intemperate drinking. Is it an inherited appetite?" "It is not an appetite at all," said Carl. "You like it?" "If you mean that to abandon it is to suffer--no. I enjoyed it---yes." The wind that blew through the open windows and doors of the lodge stirred the moonlit water lilies in the pool. To Carl they were pale and unreal like the wraith of the days behind him. Like a reflected censer in the heart of the bloom shone the evening star. The peace of it all lay in Mic-co's fine, dark, tranquil face as he talked, subtly moulding another's mind in the pattern of his own. He did not preach. Mic-co smoked and talked philosophy. Carl had known but little respect for the opinions of others. He was to learn it now. He was to find his headstrong will matched by one stronger for all it was gentler; his impudent philosophy punctured by a wisdom as great as it was compassionate; his own magnetic power to influence as he willed, a negligible factor in the presence of a man whose magnetism was greater. Mic-co had said quietly by the pool one night that he had been a doctor--that he loved the peace and quiet of his island home--that years back the Seminoles had saved his life. He had since devoted his own life to their service. They were a pitiful, hunted remnant of a great race who were kindred to the Aztec. He seemed to think his explanation quite enough. Wherefore Carl as quietly accepted what he offered. There was much that he himself was pledged to withhold. Thus their friendship grew into something fine and deep that was stronger medicine for Carl than any preaching. "My mother and I were _friends_!" said Carl one night. "When I was a lad of ten or so, as a concession to convention she married the man whose name I bear, a kindly chap who understood. He died. After that we were very close, my mother and I. We rode much together and talked. I think she feared for me. There was peace in my life then--like this. That is why I speak of it. I needed a friend, some one like her with brains and grit and balance that I could respect--some one who would understand. There are but few--" "She spoke of your own father?" "No. I do not even know his name. We were pledged not to speak of it. I fancied as I grew older that she was sorry--" The subject was obviously painful. "And you've never been honestly contented since?" put in Mic-co quickly. "Once." Carl spoke of Wherry. "They were weeks of genuine hardship, those weeks at the farm, but it's singular how frequently my mind goes back to them." "Ah!" said Mic-co with glowing eyes, "there is no salvation like work for the happiness of another. That I know." So the quiet days filed by until Mic-co turned at last from the healing of the mind to the healing of the body. "Let us test your endurance in the Seminole way," he said one morning by the island camp fire where his Indian servants cooked the food for the lodge. Beyond lay the palmetto wigwams of the Indian servants who worked in the island fields of corn and rice and sugar cane, made wild cassava into flour, hunted with Mic-co and rode betimes with the island exports into civilization by the roundabout road to the south which skirted the swamp. Off to the west, in the curious chain of islands, lay the palmetto shelter of the horses. Mic-co placed a live coal upon the wrist of his young guest and quietly watched. There was no flinching. The coal burned itself out upon the motionless wrist of a Spartan. Thereafter they rode hard and hunted, day by day. Carl worked in the fields with Mic-co and the Indians, tramped at sunset over miles of island path fringed with groves of bitter orange, disciplining his body to a new endurance. A heavy sweat at the end in a closed tent of buckskin which opened upon the shore of a sheltered inland lake, hardened his aching muscles to iron. Upon the great stone heating in the fire within the sweat-lodge an Indian lad poured water. It rose in sweltering clouds of steam about the naked body of Mic-co's guest, who at length plunged from the tent into the chill waters of the lake and swam vigorously across to towels and shelter. Carl learned to pole a cypress canoe dexterously through miles of swamp tangled with grass and lilies, through shallows and deep pools darkened by hanging branches. He learned to tan hides and to carry a deer upon his shoulders. Nightly he plunged from the sweat-lodge into the lake and later slept the sleep of utter weariness under a deerskin cover. So Mic-co disciplined the splendid body and brain of his guest to the strength and endurance of an Indian; but the quiet hours by the pool brought with them the subtler healing. Carl grew browner and sturdier day by day. His eyes were quieter. There was less of arrogance too in the sensitive mouth and less of careless assertiveness in his manner. So matters stood when Philip rode in by the southern trail with Sho-caw. Now Philip had wisely waited for the inevitable readjustment, trusting entirely to Mic-co, but with the memory of Carl's haggard face and haunted eyes, he was unprepared for the lean, tanned, wholly vigorous young man who sprang to meet him. "Well!" said Philip. "Well!" He was shaken a little and cleared his throat, at a loss for words. "You--you infernal dub!" said Carl. It was all he could trust himself to say. It was a singular greeting, Mic-co thought, and very eloquent. CHAPTER XLII THE RAIN UPON THE WIGWAM To the heart of the gypsy there is a kindred voice in the cheerful crackle of a camp fire--in the wind that rustles tree and grass--in the song of a bird or the hum of bees--in the lap of a lake or the brilliant trail of a shooting star. A winter forest of tracking snow is rife with messages of furry folk who prowl by night. Moon-checkered trees fling wavering banners of gypsy hieroglyphics upon the ground. Sun and moon and cloud and the fiery color-pot of the firmament write their symbols upon the horizon for gypsy eyes to read. What wonder then that the milky clouds which piled fantastically above the Indian camp fashioned hazily at times into curious boats sailing away to another land? What wonder if the dawn was streaked with imperial purple? What wonder if Diane built faces and fancies in the ember-glow of the Seminole fire-wheel? What wonder if like the pine-wood sparrow and the wind of Okeechobee the voice of the woodland always questioned? Conscience, soul-argument--what you will--there were voices in the wild which stirred the girl's heart to introspection. So it was with the rain which, at the dark of the moon, pattered gently on the palmetto roof of her wigwam. "And now," said the rain with a soft gust of flying drops, "now there is Sho-caw!" "Yes," said Diane with a sigh, "there is Sho-caw. I am very sorry." "But," warned the rain, "one must not forget. At Keela's teaching you have fallen into the soft, musical tongue of these Indian folk with marvelous ease. And you wear the Seminole dress of a chief--" "Yes. After all, that was imprudent--" "You can ride and shoot an arrow swift and far. Your eyes are keen and your tread lithe and soft like a fawn--" "It is all the wild lore of the woodland I learned as a child." "But Sho-caw does not know! To him the gypsy heart of you, the sun-brown skin and scarlet cheeks, the night-black hair beneath the turban, are but the lure and charm of an errant daughter of the O-kee-fee-ne-kee wilderness. What wonder that he can not see you as you are, a dark-eyed child of the race of white men!" "I do not wonder." "He has been grave and very deferential, gathered wood for you and carried water. Yesterday there was a freshly killed deer at the door of the wigwam. It is the first shy overture of the wooing Seminole." "I know. Keela has told me. It has all frightened me a little. I--I think I had better go away again." "There was a time, in the days of Arcadia, when Philip would have laughed, and a second deer would have lain at the door of your wig-wam--" "Philip is changed." "He is quieter--" "Yes." "A little sterner--" "Yes." "Like one perhaps who has abandoned a dream!" "I--do--not--know." "Why does he ride away for days with Sho-caw?" "I have wondered." The wind, wafting from the rain which splashed in the pool of Mic-co's court, might have told, but the wind, with the business of rain upon its mind, was reticent. "And Ronador?" "I have not forgotten." "He is waiting." "Yes. Day by day I have put off the thought of the inevitable reckoning. It is another reason why presently I must hurry away." "A singular trio of suitors!" sighed the rain. "A prince--an Indian warrior--and a spy!" "Not that!" cried the girl's heart. "No, no--not that!" "You breathed it but a minute ago!" "I know--" "And of the three, Sho-caw, bright copper though he is, is perhaps braver--" "No!" "Taller--" "He is not so tall as Philip." "To be sure Philip is brown and handsome and sturdy and very strong, but Ronador--ah!--there imperial distinction and poise are blended with as true a native grace as Sho-caw's--" "Humor and resource are better things." "Sho-caw's grace is not so heavy as Ronador's--and not so sprightly as Philip's--" "It may be." "One may tell much by the color and expression of a man's eye. Sho-caw's eyes are keen, alert and grave; Ronador's dark, compelling and very eloquent. What though there is a constant sense of suppression and smouldering fire and not quite so much directness as one might wish--" "Philip's eyes are calm and steady and very frank," said the girl, "and he is false." "Yes," said the rain with a noise like a shower of tears, "yes, he is very false." The wind sighed. The steady drip of the rain, filtering through the vines twisted heavily about the oak trunks, was indescribably mournful. Suddenly the nameless terror that had crept into the girl's veins that first night in the Seminole camp came again. "When the Mulberry Moon is at its full," she said shuddering, "I will go back to the van with Keela. I do not know what it is here that frightens me so. And I will marry Ronador. Every wild thing in the forest loves and mates. And I--I am very lonely." But by the time the Mulberry Moon of the Seminoles blanketed the great marsh in misty silver Diane was restlessly on her way back to the world of white men. Philip followed. Leaner, browner, a little too stern, perhaps, about the mouth and eyes, a gypsy of greater energy and resource than when he had struck recklessly into the Glades with the music-machine he had since exchanged for an Indian wagon, Philip camped and smoked and hunted with the skill and gravity of an Indian. So the wagons filed back again into the little hamlet where Johnny waited, daily astonishing the natives by a series of lies profoundly adventurous and thrilling. Rex's furious bark of welcome at the sight of his young mistress was no whit less hysterical than Johnny's instant groan of relief, or the incoherent manner in which he detailed an unforgettable interview with Aunt Agatha, who had appeared one night from heaven knows where and pledged him with tears and sniffs innumerable to telegraph her when from the melancholy fastnesses of the Everglades, Diane or her scalp emerged. "She wouldn't go North," finished Johnny graphically, his apple cheeks very red and his eyes very bright, "she certainly would not--she'd like to see herself--she would indeed!--and this no place for me to wait. Them very words, Miss Diane. And she went and opened your grandfather's old house in St. Augustine--the old Westfall homestead--and she's there now waitin'. Likely, Miss Diane, I'd better telegraph now--this very minute--afore she takes it in her head to come again!" Johnny's dread of another Aunt Agathean visitation was wholly candid and sincere. He departed on a trot to telegraph, hailing Philip warmly by the way. Here upon the following morning Diane and Keela parted--for the Indian girl was pledged to return to the lodge of Mic-co. "Six moons, now," she explained with shining eyes, "I stay at the lodge of Mic-co, my foster father. When the Falling Leaf Moon of November comes, I shall still be there, living the ways of white men." She held out her hand. "Aw-lip-ka-shaw!" she said shyly, her black eyes very soft and sorrowful. "It is a prettier parting than the white man's. By and by, Diane, you will write to the lodge of Mic-co? The Indian lads ride in each moon to the village for Mic-co's books and papers." Her great eyes searched Diane's face a little wistfully. "Sometime," she added shyly, "when you wish, I will come again. You will not ride away soon to the far cities of the North?" "No!" said Diane. "No indeed! Not for ever so long. I'm tired. Likely I'll hunt a quiet spot where there's a lake and trees and lilies, and camp and rest. You won't forget me, Keela?" Keela had a wordless gift of eloquence. Her eyes promised. Diane smiled and tightened her hold of the slim, brown Indian hand. "Aw-lip-ka-shaw, Keela!" she said. "Some day I'm coming back and take you home with me." The Indian girl drove reluctantly away; presently her canvas wagon was but a dim gray silhouette upon the horizon. CHAPTER XLIII THE RIVAL CAMPERS Northward by lazy canal and shadowy hummock, northward by a river freckled with sand bars, Diane came in time to a quiet lake where purple martins winged ceaselessly over a tangled float of lilies--where now and then an otter swam and dipped with a noiseless ripple of water--where ground doves fluttered fearlessly about the camp as Johnny pitched the tents at noonday. But for all the whir and flash of brilliant birdlife above the placid water--for all the screams of the fish hawks and the noise of crows and grackle in the cypress--for all the presence of another camper among the trees to the west, the days were quiet and undisturbed. And at night when the birds were winging to the woods now black against the yellow west, and the lonely lake began to purple, the fires of the rival camps were the single spots of color in the heavy darkness along the shore. Diane wrote of it, with disastrous results, to Aunt Agatha. At sunset, one day, a carriage produced an aggrieved rustle of silk, a voice and a hand bag. Each fluttered a little as the driver accepted his fare and rolled away. The hand bag, in accordance with a sensational and ill-conditioned habit which had roused more than one unpopular commotion in crowded department stores and thoroughfares, leaped unexpectedly from a gloved and fluttering hand. Aunt Agatha possessed herself of the bag with a sniff and rustled heedlessly into the nearest camp. It was, of course, Mr. Poynter's. Utterly confounded by the unexpected sight of a tall young man who was cooking a fish over the fire, Aunt Agatha gurgled fearfully and backed precipitately into the nearest tree, whence the ill-natured hand bag forcibly opened a grinning mouth, leaped into space and disgorged a flying shower of nickels and dimes, smelling salts and hairpins and a variety of fussy contrivances of sentimental value. "God bless my soul!" bleated Aunt Agatha with round, affrighted eyes, "there's a dime in the fish! And I do beg your pardon, young man, but will you be so good as to poke the smelling salts out of the fire before they explode." There was little likelihood of the final catastrophe, but Mr. Poynter obeyed. Laughing a little as he collected the scattered cargo, he good-humoredly suggested that he was not nearly so dangerous as Aunt Agatha's petrified gaze suggested, and that possibly she might remember him--his name was Poynter--and that Miss Westfall's camp lay a little farther to the east. Aunt Agatha departed, greatly impressed by his gallantry and common sense. Arriving in the camp of her niece, she roused an alarming commotion by halting unobserved among the trees, staring hard at her niece's back-hair, dropping her hand bag, and bursting into tears that brought the startled campers to her side in a twinkling. "Great Scott, Johnny!" exclaimed Diane, aghast. "It's Aunt Agatha!" Aunt Agatha dangerously motioned them away with the hand bag Johnny had returned. "I'll be all right in a minute!" she sniffed tearfully. "Mamma was that way, too--mamma was. Tears would burst right out of her, especially when she grew so stout. I can't help it! When I think of all I've gone through with you off in the Green-glades or the Never-glades or whatever they are--and worrying all the time about your scalp and alligators--and you sitting there so peaceful, Diane, with your hair still on--I've got to cry--I just have and I will. And Carl's mysteriously disappeared--Heaven knows where! I've not seen him for weeks. Nor did he condescend to write me--as I must say you did--and very good of you too!" Whether Aunt Agatha was crying because her mother was stout and eruptively lachrymose, or because Diane's hair was still where it belonged, or because Carl was missing, Diane could not be sure. Aunt Agatha puffed presently to a seat by the fire, with hair and hat awry, and dropped her hand bag. "Johnny," she said severely, "don't stare so. I'm sorry of course that I made you drop the kettle when I came, I am indeed, but I'm here and there's the kettle--and that's all there is to it." "Of course it is!" exclaimed Diane, kissing her heartily. "And I'm mighty glad to see you, Aunt Agatha, tears and all!" There was some little difficulty in persuading Aunt Agatha of the truth of this, but she presently removed her hat, narrowly escaped dropping it into the fire, and consigned it, along with the athletic hand bag, to Johnny. Now Diane with a furtive glance at Philip's camp, had been hostilely considering the discouraging effect of Aunt Agatha's presence upon the rival camper. That Aunt Agatha would presently discern degenerative traces of criminality in his face by reason of his reprehensible proximity to her niece's camp, Diane did not doubt. That the aggrieved lady would call upon him within a day or so and air her rigid notions of propriety and convention, was well within the range of probability. Wherefore-- Aunt Agatha broke plaintively in upon her thoughts. "If you would only listen, Diane!" she complained. "I've spoken three times of your grandfather's old estate and dear knows you ought to remember it--" "I beg your pardon, Aunt!" stammered the girl sincerely. "Certainly," said Aunt Agatha with dignity, "I deserve some attention. What with the dark, gloomy rooms of the house and the cobwebs and cranky spiders--and the people of St. Augustine believing it to be haunted--so that I could scarcely keep a servant--and green mould in the cellar--and a croquet set--and waiting down South when I distinctly promised to go back with the Sherrills in March--I take it very hard of you, Diane, to be so absent-minded. Ugh! How dark the lake has grown and the wind and the noise of the water. There's hardly a star. Diane, I do wonder how you stand it. The shore looks like bands of mourning crepe. And in the midst of it all, Diane, there in St. Augustine, the Baron aeroplaned the top off the Carroll's orchard--" "Aunt Agatha!" begged the girl helplessly. "What in the world is it all about?" Aunt Agatha flushed guiltily. "Why is it," she demanded, "that no one ever seems to understand what I'm saying? Dear knows I haven't a harelip or even a lisp. Why, Baron Tregar, my dear. He's been staying in St. Augustine, too. It almost seemed as if he had deliberately followed me there--though of course that couldn't be. And the Prince too. And the Baron bought an aeroplane to amuse himself and annoy the Carrolls--" Aunt Agatha flushed again, cleared her throat and looked away. Why Ronador was in St. Augustine she knew well enough. He had waited near her, successfully, for news of Diane. And though the Baron had been very quiet, he had kept his eye upon the Prince. Aunt Agatha had for once been the startled hub of intrigue. "And what with the driver mumbling to himself this afternoon because I lost my umbrella and made him go back, and the horse having ribs," she complained, shying from a topic which contained dangerous possibilities of revealing a certain indiscretion, "I do wonder I'm here at all. And the young man was very decent about the dime in his fish--though I'm sure he burned his fingers digging for the smelling salts--for they'd already begun to sizzle--but dear me! Diane, you can't imagine how I jarred my spine and my switch--I did think for a minute it would tumble off--and he was so quick and pleasant to collect the nickels and hairpins. Such a pleasant, comfortable sort of chap. I remember now he was at the Sherrill's and very good-looking, too, I must say, and very lonely too, I'll wager, camping about for his health. He didn't say anything about his health, but one can see by his eyes that he's troubled about it." "Aunt Agatha!" begged Diane helplessly in a flash of foreboding, "what in creation are you trying to say?" "Why, Mr. Poynter, of course!" exclaimed Aunt Agatha. "The hand bag shot into his camp and spilled nickels, and I bumped into a tree and jarred my switch. And a very fine fellow he is, to be sure!" Diane stared. It was like Aunt Agatha to blunder into the wrong camp. And surely it was like Philip to win her favor by chance. CHAPTER XLIV THE TALE OF A CANDLESTICK The friendship of Aunt Agatha and Mr. Poynter miraculously grew. Aunt Agatha, upon the following morning, took to wandering vaguely about the wooded shore and into Philip's camp, impelled by gracious concern for his health, which she insisted upon regarding as impaired, and by effusive gratitude for such trifling civilities as he had readily proffered the day before. From there she wandered vaguely back to her niece's camp fire in a chronic state of worry about Carl. Discontented, unfailing in her melancholy reminiscences of cannibalistic snakes and herons. Aunt Agatha plainly had no immediate intentions of any sort. She had no intention of lingering in camp, she said, accoutered solely with a hand bag! And she had no intention--no indeed!--of departing until Diane went back with her to the deserted Westfall house in St. Augustine, with the green mould and the cobwebs and cranky spiders and the croquet set in the cellar. Arcadia, if Diane had not crushed the memory out of her heart, had had a parallel. Greatly disturbed by her aunt's melancholy state of uncertainty, Diane one morning watched her set forth to gather lilies in the region of Philip's camp. The woodland about was very quiet. Diane lay back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes, listening to the welcome gypsy voices of wind and water, to the noisy clapper rails in the island grass at the end of the lake and to the drone of a motor on the road to the north. Dimly conscious that Johnny was briskly scrubbing the rude table among the trees, she fell asleep. When she awoke, with a nervous start, Johnny was down at the edge of the lake scouring pans with sand and whistling blithely. Off there to the west, with Aunt Agatha fussing at his heels, Philip was good-naturedly gathering the lilies at the water's edge. And some one was approaching camp from the northern road. Diane glanced carelessly to the north and sprang to her feet with wild scarlet in her cheeks. Ronador was coming through the forest. His color was a little high, his eyes, beneath the peak of his motoring cap profoundly apologetic, but he was easier in manner than Diane. "I'm offending, I know," he said steadily, "and I crave forgiveness, but muster an indifferent gift of patience as best I may, I can not wait. It is weeks, you recall--" Diane flushed brightly. "Yes," she said. "I know. I have been in the Everglades." "Your aunt told me." Ronador searched her face suddenly with peculiar intentness. He might have added, with perfect truth, that to Aunt Agatha, who had indiscreetly afforded him a glimpse of her niece's letter, might be attributed the halting of the long, black car on the road to the north. "You have no single word of welcome, then!" he reproached abruptly and impatiently brushed his hair back from his forehead with a hand that shook a little. From the north came the clatter of a motorcycle. Diane held out her hand. "Let us make a mutual compact!" she exclaimed frankly. "I have overstrained your patience--you have startled me. Let us both forgive. In a sense we have neither of us kept strictly to the letter of our agreement." Ronador bent with deference over the girl's outstretched hand and brushed it lightly with his lips, unconscious that her face had grown very white and troubled. Nor in his impetuous relief was he aware that other eyes had witnessed the eloquent tableau and that Aunt Agatha had arrived in camp with an escort who quietly deposited an armful of dripping lilies upon the camp table and oddly enough made no effort to retire. When at length, conscious of the electric constraint of the atmosphere, Ronador wheeled uncomfortably and met Philip's level glance, he stared and reddened, hot insolent anger in the flash of his eyes and the curl of his lips. "Dear me!" faltered Aunt Agatha, guiltily conscious of the letter, "I am surprised, I am indeed! Who ever would have thought of seeing you here, Prince, among the trees and--and the ground doves and--and all the lilies!" The unfortunate lady, convinced by now that Ronador's apparent resentment concerned, in some inexplicable way, her escort, herself and the lilies, glanced beseechingly about her. "And what with the lilies," she burst forth desperately in apology for the inopportune arrival of herself and her escort, "what with the lilies, Prince, and the water so wet--though, dear me! it was not to be wondered at, of course--growing wild in the water that way--and only one gown and the hand bag--though to be sure I can't wear the hand bag, and wouldn't if I could---Mr. Poynter, with his usual courtesy was good enough to carry the lilies into camp when I asked him." "Mr. Poynter was undoubtedly very good, Aunt Agatha," said Diane quietly, "but the lilies scarcely require any further attention." Still Mr. Poynter did not stir. "I regret exceedingly," he said formally to Diane, "that I am unable to avail myself of your cordial permission to retire. Unfortunately, I have urgent business with Prince Ronador. Indeed, I have waited for just such an opportunity as this." He was by far the calmest of the four. Ronador's violent temper was rapidly routing his studied composure. Diane's lovely face was flushed and indignant. Aunt Agatha, making a desperate pretense of sorting the lilies, was plainly in a flutter and willing to be tearfully repentent over their intrusion. Not so Philip. There was satisfaction in his steady glance. "There is scarcely any business which I may have with--er--Tregar's secretary," said Ronador with deliberate insolence, "which may not be more suitably discharged by Tregar himself." There was a biting suggestion of rank in his answer at which Philip smiled. "My spread-eagle tastes," he admitted, "have always protected my eyes from the bedazzlement frequently incident to the sight of royalty. Nor do I wish to flaunt unduly my excellent fortune in being born an American and a democrat, but for once. Prince, we must overlook your trifling disadvantage of caste and meet on a common footing. Permit me to offer my humble secretarial apology that the business is wholly mine--and one other's--and not my chief's." Here Aunt Agatha created a singular diversion by dropping the lilies and gurgling with amazement. "God bless my soul!" she screamed hysterically, conscious that her indiscretion was rapidly weaving a web around her which might not find favor in her niece's eyes, "it's Baron Tregar! I know his beard." Now as it was manifestly impossible for the Baron and his beard to be secreted among the lilies which Aunt Agatha was wildly gathering up, Philip looked off in the wood to the north. There was a motorcyclist approaching who had conceivably felt sufficient interest in the long black car to follow it. The Baron arrived, gallantly swept off his cap and bowed, and suddenly conscious of an indefinable hostility in the attitudes of the silent quartet, stared from one to the other with some pardonable astonishment. "Tregar!" shouted the Prince hotly, "you will account to me for this officious espionage." The Baron stroked his beard. "One may pay his respects to Miss Westfall?" he begged with gentle sarcasm. "It is a sufficiently popular epidemic, I should say, to claim even me. Besides," he added dryly, "in reality I have come in answer to a letter of Poynter's. It has interested me exceedingly to find you on the road ahead of me." "Baron Tregar," said Diane warmly, "you are very welcome, I assure you. Mr. Poynter has been pleased to inject certain elements of melodrama into his chance intrusion. Otherwise you would not find us staring at each other in this exceedingly ridiculous manner!" "Hum!" said the Baron blandly and glanced with interest at the undisturbed countenance of Mr. Poynter. "A mere matter of justice and belated frankness to Miss Westfall!" said Philip quietly. "I must respectfully beg Prince Ronador to disclose to her the original motive of his singular and highly romantic courtship. I bear an urgent message of similar import from one who has had the distinction of playing--imperial chess!" They were curious words but not so curious in substance as in effect. With a cry of startled anger, Ronador leaped back, his eyes flashing terrible menace at Philip. There was only one pair of eyes, however, quick and keen enough, for all their loveliness, to follow his swift movement or the glitter of steel in his hand. With a cry of fear and horror, Diane leaped like a wild thing and struck his hand aside. A revolver fell at her feet. Aunt Agatha screamed and covered her eyes with her hands. In the tense quiet came the tranquil lap of the lake, the call of a distant bird, the lazy murmur of many leaves in a morning wind. Philip stood very quietly by the table. He looked at Diane; he seemed to have forgotten the others, Tregar thought. With terrible anger in her flashing eyes, Diane flung the revolver into the placid lake, and facing Ronador, her sweet, stern mouth contemptuous, she met his imploring gaze with one of scathing rebuke. "Excellency," she said to Ronador, "whatever else Mr. Poynter may have in mind, there is surely now an explanation which it behooves you to make as a gentleman who is not a coward!" Ronador moistened his white lips and looked away. Trembling violently she turned to Philip. "Philip!" she cried. "What is it?" As her eyes met his, her hand went to her heart and the color swept in brilliant tide from the slim brown throat to the questioning eyes. "Oh, Philip! Philip!" She choked and fell again to trembling. It was a cry of remorse and heart-broken apology for the memory of a moon above the marsh. For somehow in that instant, by a freak of instinct, the rain and the wind of Okeechobee and the bird in the pines came into their own. Their subtle messages dovetailed with the hurt look in Philip's eyes--with the conviction of the girl's sore heart, unconquerable for all she had desperately fought it--with the revelation of treachery which lay now at the bottom of the lake. Philip was very white. "But," he said gently, "you could not know." "I could have waited and trusted," cried the girl. "I could have remembered Arcadia!" Was Ronador forgotten? Tregar thought so. These two mutely avowing with blazing eyes their utter trust and loyalty had for the moment forgotten everything but each other. Ronador stalked viciously away to the lake, restlessly turned on his heel with a curse and came slowly back. There was despair in his eyes. Tregar thought of the black moments of impulse and the tearing conscience and pitied him profoundly. "Excellency," reminded Diane, "there is an explanation--" But Ronador's pallid lips were set in lines of fierce denial. "Philip!" appealed the girl. "Well," said Philip looking away, "it's a tale of a candlestick." "A candlestick!" "And a hidden paper." "Yes?" Ronador seemed about to speak, thought better of it and closed his lips in a tense white line of sullenness. Philip glanced keenly at him, and his own mouth grew a little sterner. "Excellency," he said to Ronador, "that you may not feel impelled again to violence in the suppression of this curious fragment of family history, let me warn you that the story has been entrusted in full to Father Joda, who knew and loved your cousin. Any spectacular irrationality that you may hereafter develop in connection with Miss Westfall, will lead to its disclosure. He is pledged to that in writing." The color died out of Ronador's face. The fire, roused by the specter he had fought this many a day, burned itself quite to ashes and left him cold and sullen. He had played and lost. And he was an older and quieter man for the losing. Whatever else lay at the bottom of his contradictory maze of dark moods and passions, he had courage and the curse of conscience. There were black memories struggling now within him. Tregar moved quietly to Ronador's side, an act of ready loyalty not without dignity in the eyes of Philip. "Your letter hinted something of all this," he said. "Let us be quite fair, Poynter. Ronador feared only for his little son." "Why must we talk in riddles?" cried Diane with a flash of impatience. "Why does Ronador fear for his son? Where is the candlestick? And the paper? Who found it?" "Carl found it," said Philip. "It was written nearly a quarter of a century ago, by one--Theodomir of Houdania." Diane glanced in utter mystification at Ronador's ashen face--there was a great fear in his eyes--and thence to Baron Tregar. "Excellency," she appealed, "it is all very hard to understand. Who is Theodomir? And why must his life touch mine after all these years?" The Baron cleared his throat. "Let me try to make it simpler," he said gravely. "Theodomir, Miss Westfall, was a lovable, willful, over-democratic young crown prince of Houdania who, many years ago, refused the responsibilities of a royal position whose pomp and pretensions he despised--quoting Buddha--and fled to America where in the course of time he married, divorced his wife and later died--incognito. He was Ronador's cousin, and his flight shifted the regency of the kingdom to Ronador's father." "Yes," said the girl steadily, "that is very clear." "Theodomir married--and divorced--your mother," said Philip gently. Diane grew very white. "And even yet," she said bravely, "I--can not see why we must all be so worked up. There is more?" "Yes. Later, after her divorce from Theodomir, your mother married Norman Westfall--" "My father," corrected Diane swiftly. Philip looked away. "Her second marriage," he said at last, "was childless." "Philip!" Diane's face flamed. "And I?" "You," said Baron Tregar, "are the child of Theodomir." In the strained silence a bird sent a sweet, clear call ringing lightly over the water. "That--that can not be!" faltered Diane. "It--it is too preposterous." "I wish to Heaven it were!" said Philip quietly. "Whether or not it was Theodomir's wish that his daughter be reared, in the eyes of the world, as the daughter of Norman Westfall, to protect her from any consequences incident to his possible discovery and enforced return to Houdania, it is impossible to say. Hating royalty as he did, he may have sought thus to shield his daughter from its taint. Why he weakened and consigned the secret to paper--how or when he hid it in an ancient candlestick in the home of Norman Westfall, remains shrouded in utter mystery. It is but one of the many points that need light." Again the Baron cleared his throat. "And," said he, "since unwisely, Miss Westfall, for eugenic reasons, we grant a certain freedom of marital choice to our princes--since wisely or not as you will, the Salic Law does not, by an ancient precedent, obtain with us, and a woman may come in the line of succession, the danger to Ronador's little son, is, I think, apparent." "Surely, surely!" exclaimed Diane hopelessly, "there is some mistake. There is so much that is utterly without light or coherence. So much--" For the first time Ronador spoke. "What," said he sullenly to Philip, "would you have us do?" "I would have you eliminate the secrecy, the infernal intrigue, the scheming to smother a fire that burned wilder for your efforts," said Philip civilly. "I would have you face this thing squarely and investigate it link by link. I would have you abandon the damnable man-hunt that has sent one man to his death in a Florida swamp and goaded another to a reckless frenzy in which all things were possible. Themar is dead. That Granberry is alive is attributable solely to the fact that he was cleverer and keener than any of those who hounded him. But he has paid heavily for the secret he tried in a drunken moment to sell to Houdania." "I do not understand Carl's part in it," said Diane. "Nor can I see--" But whatever it was that Diane could not see was not destined for immediate revealment. At the mention of Carl's name by her niece, Aunt Agatha came unexpectedly into the limelight with a gurgle and fainted dead away. Her white affrighted face had been turned upon Ronador in fearful fascination since Diane had struck his arm. Whether or not she had comprehended any of the talk that followed is a matter of doubt. When at last, after an interval of flurry and excitement in the camp, Aunt Agatha gasped, sat up again and stared wildly at the sympathetic line of faces about her, Ronador was gone. When or where he had gone, no one knew. Only Diane caught the whir of his motor on the road to the north. "It is better so," said Tregar compassionately. "Though his love began in treachery, Miss Westfall, and drove him through the mire, it was, I think, genuine. A man may not see his hopes take wing with comfort. And Ronador's life has not been of the happiest." "Excellency," said Philip who had been wandering restlessly about among the trees, "I know that you are but an indifferent gypsy, and strongly averse to baked potatoes, but such as it is, let me extend to you the hospitality of my camp. Doubtless Miss Westfall will dispatch Johnny for your motorcycle." The Baron accepted. "There is one thing more, Miss Westfall," he added as they were leaving. "Frankness is such a refreshing experience for me, that I must drink of the fount again. Days back, a headstrong young secretary of mine of considerable nerve and independence and--er--intermittent disrespect for his chief---having come to grief through a knife of Themar's intended for another--refused, with a habit of infernal politeness he has which I find most maddening, refused, mademoiselle, to execute a certain little commission of mine because he quixotically fancied it savored of spying!" "Tregar!" said Philip with an indignant flush. And added with an uncomfortable conviction of disrespect, "Er--Excellency!" "I said--intermittent disrespect," reminded Tregar. "Moreover," he continued, stroking his beard and selecting his words with the precision of the careful linguist that he was, "this secretary of mine, after an interview of most disconcerting candor, took to the road and a hay-cart in a dudgeon, constituting himself, in a characteristic outburst of suspicion, quixotism, chivalry and protection, a sentinel to whom lack of sleep, the discomforts of a hay-camp--and--er--spying black-and-tans were nothing. I have reason for suspecting that he may have been misrepresented and misjudged--" "Excellency," said Philip shortly, "my camp lies yonder. And Mrs. Westfall will doubtless rejoice when her niece's camp is quiet." Diane met the Baron's glance with a bright flush. "Excellency," she said, "I thank you." The two men disappeared among the trees. CHAPTER XLV THE GYPSY BLOOD It was a curious puzzle which, through the quiet of the afternoon that followed, Diane sought desperately to assemble from the chaos of highly-colored segments which the morning had supplied. There were intervals when she rejected the result, with its maddening gaps and imperfections, with a laugh of utter derision--it was so preposterous! There were quieter intervals when she pieced the impossible segments all together again and stared aghast at the result. No matter how incredulous her attitude, however, when the scattered angles slipped into unity, riveted together by a painful concentration, the result, with its consequent light upon the wooing of Ronador, though more and more startling, was in the main convincing. Days back in Arcadia Diane remembered the Baron had suavely spoken of his kingdom, and Philip had told her much. There was a mad king without issue upon the throne. There were two brothers of the mad king, each of whom had a son. Theodomir, then, had been the son of the elder, Ronador of the younger. Theodomir had fled at the death of his father, unwilling to take up the regency under a mad king. So Ronador's father had come to the regency of the kingdom and Ronador himself and his little son had stood in the direct line of succession until the ghost arose from the candlestick and mocked them all. And she--Diane--was the child of Theodomir. Diane was still dazedly sorting the pieces of the puzzle when the sun set in a red glory beyond the lake, matching the flame of Philip's fire by which he and the Baron sat in earnest discussion. The west was faintly yellow, the forest dark, when from the tent to which she had retired at noon, quite distraught and incoherent. Aunt Agatha begged plaintively for a cup of tea. "Diane," she said, when the girl herself appeared with it, "I--I can't forget his face. I--I never shall. Twice now I've tried to get up, but I thought of his eyes and the revolver, and my knees folded up. It--it was just so this morning. What with the ringing in my ears--and the dizziness--and his face so dark with anger--and digging my heels in the ground to keep my knees from folding up under me--I--I thought I should go quite mad, quite mad, my dear. He--he meant to kill Mr. Poynter?" "Yes," said Diane with a shudder. "Yes. I--think so." "I'm sorry I told him where you were," fluttered Aunt Agatha, taking a conscience-stricken and somewhat tearful gulp of very hot tea. "I--I am indeed, but I couldn't in the least know that he went about killing people, could I, Diane?" "No," said Diane patiently. "No, of course not. Don't bother about it. Aunt Agatha. Why not wait until your tea is a little cooler?" "I'll have to," said Aunt Agatha with an aggrieved sniff. "For I do believe I'm filled with steam now. Why are you so white and quiet, Diane? Is it the revolver?" "Aunt Agatha," exclaimed the girl impetuously, "why have you always been so reticent about my mother?" The effect of the girl's words was sufficient proof that the frightened lady had absorbed but little of Philip's revelation. Tired and nervous, hazily aware that the scene of the morning had been portentous, and now confounding it in a panic with something that by a deathbed pledge had lain inexorably buried in her heart for years, Aunt Agatha screamed and dropped her teacup. It rolled away in a trail of steam to the flap of the tent. Covering her face with her hands, Aunt Agatha burst hysterically into a shower of tears. Diane started. "Aunt Agatha," she exclaimed, "what is it? For heaven's sake, don't sob and tremble so." "I--I might have known it!" sobbed Aunt Agatha, wringing her plump hands in genuine distress. "I might have guessed they would tell you that, though how in the world they found it out is beyond me. If I'd only listened instead of worrying about my knees and the revolver, and staring so. And you in the Everglades--where your father went to hunt alligators. Oh, Diane, Diane, not a single night could I sleep--and it's not to be wondered at that I was scared. And the dance you did for Nathalie Fowler and me--and the costume that night at Sherrill's. I was fairly sick! I knew it would come out--though how could I foresee that the Baron and Mr. Poynter and the Prince would know? I--I told your grandfather so years ago, but he pledged me on his deathbed--and your father was wild and clever like Carl and singular in his notions. I'll never forget your grandfather's face when you ran away into the forest to sleep as a child. He was white and sick and muttered something about atavism. It--it was the Indian blood--" Diane caught her aunt's trembling arm in a grip that hurt cruelly. "Aunt Agatha," she said, catching her breath sharply, "you must not talk so wildly. Say it plainer!" But Aunt Agatha tranquil was incoherent. Aunt Agatha frightened and hysterical was utterly beyond control. "And very beautiful too," she sobbed. "And Norman, poor fellow, was quite mad about her--for all she was an Indian girl--though her father was white and a Spaniard, I will say that for her. Not even so dark as you are, Diane, and shy and lovely enough to turn any man's head--much less your father's--though your grandfather stormed and threatened to kill them both and only for Grant he would have. And when an Indian from the Everglades told Norman that--that she really hadn't been married before but just a--mother like Carl's mother, my dear--" But Diane was gone, stumbling headlong from the tent. Aunt Agatha was to remember her white agonized face for many a day. CHAPTER XLVI IN THE FOREST With the darkening of the night a wind sprang up over the bleak, black expanse of lake and swept with a sigh through the forest on the shore. It was a wind from the east which drove a film of cloud across the stars and bore a hint of rain in its freshness. The rain itself pattering presently through the forest fell upon the huddled figure of a girl who lay face downward upon the ground among the trees. She lay inert, her head pillowed upon her arm, face to face with the unspeakable shadow that had haunted Carl. Not married. Aunt Agatha had said, but just a mother! Now the pitiful fragments of a hallowed shrine lay mockingly at her feet. How scornfully she had flashed at Carl! Diane quivered and lay very still, torn by the bitter irony of it. And the Indian mother! Carl had known and Ronador. She had caught a startled look in the eyes of each at the Sherrill _fête_. Every wild instinct, if she had but heeded the warning, had pointed the way; the childhood escapade in the forest, the tomboy pranks of riding and running and swimming that had horrified Aunt Agatha to the point of tears, and later the persistent call of the open country. What wonder if the soft, musical tongue of the Seminole had come lightly to her lips? What wonder if Indian instincts had driven her forth to the wild? What wonder if the nameless stir of atavism beneath a Seminole wigwam had frightened her into flight. Indian instincts, Indian grace, Indian stoicism and courage, Indian keenness and hearing--all of these had come to her from the Indian mother with the blood of white men in her veins. But the stain of illegitimacy-- That brought the girl's proud head down again with a strangled sob of grief. Shaking pitifully, she fell forward unconscious upon the ground. Some one was calling. There was rain and a lantern. Diane stirred. "Diane! Diane!" called the voice of Philip. At the memory of Philip and Arcadia, Diane choked and lay very still. "Diane!" The lantern shone now in her face and Philip was kneeling beside her, his face whiter than her own. "Great God!" said Philip and stared into her haunted eyes with infinite compassion. But Philip, as he frequently said, was preeminently a "practician," wherefore he gently covered the girl with his coat, busied himself with the lantern and, for various reasons, sought to create a general atmosphere of commonplace reality. "Your aunt sent me," he said at length. "She's awfully upset." "She told you?" "Yes." "Of--of the Indian mother?" "I knew," said Philip. "Carl told me. I withheld it this morning purposely. Why fuss about it, Diane? Lord Almighty!" added this exceedingly practical and democratic young man, "I shouldn't worry myself if my grandfather was a salamander! . . . And, besides, your true Indian is an awfully good sport. He's proud and fearless and inherently truthful--" "I know," said Diane. "It isn't that I mind--so much. It--it's the other." "Of course!" said Philip gently, "but, somehow, I can't believe it's true, Diane. There's logic against it. Why, Great Scott!" he added cheerfully, for all there was a lump in his throat at the wistful tragedy in the girl's eyes, "there's Theodomir's own statement in the candlestick--have you forgotten?" "It spoke of--of marriage?" "It said that Theodomir had gone into the Glades hunting and had come upon the Indian village. There he met and married your mother and later divorced her." "If I could only be sure!" faltered Diane. "You can," said Philip, "for I am going back to the Glades to-morrow to hunt this thing to earth. The old chief will know." "But the trail, Philip?" "There are ways of finding it," said Philip reassuringly. He was so cool and matter-of-fact, so entirely cheerful and resourceful, that Diane found his comfortable air of confidence contagious. Only for a time, however. A little later she glanced mutely into his face, met his eyes, flushed scarlet and fell to shaking again. "Philip!" she whispered. "Yes?" There was a wonderful gentleness in Philip's voice. "I--I can't go back to camp yet, for all it's raining." "Well," said Philip comfortably, "rain be hanged. We'll wait a bit." Diane gave a sigh of relief and lay very quiet. Philip wisely said nothing. He shifted the lantern so his own face might be in the shadow and for some reason of his own, fell to speaking of Carl. He told of Mic-co, of the quiet hours of healing by the pool, of another night of storm and stress when Carl had gone forth into the wilds with the Indian girl. For the first time now he felt that he had pierced the girl's shell of tragic introspection and caught her interest. Though the rain came faster and the lantern flickered, Philip went on with his quiet story. He spoke of the forces that had fired Carl to drunken resentment, the defection of his comrades, his conviction of injustice in the apportionment of the Westfall estate, the climax of his sensitive rebellion against Diane's attitude toward his mother, the morose and morbid loneliness which had driven him relentlessly to ruin. "What did he hope to gain by writing to Houdania?" asked the girl a little bitterly. "Money!" said Philip firmly. "He fancied he could frighten them and put a heavy price upon his silence. Later when his letter to Houdania was ignored he altered his plans. If he could prove that you were the daughter of Theodomir and not of Norman Westfall--then the great estate of his uncle would revert to him. Before he could act further, things began to happen. And then," added Philip thoughtfully, "comes another dark patch in the mystery. Carl's story must have crossed wires with something else--something that frightened them and made his death imperative. The hysterical desperation of these men was out of all proportion to the cause. Baron Tregar, baffling as he is at times, is not the man to lend himself to deliberate assassination merely to keep the succession of Ronador's son free from incumbrances. Later still, Carl planned to sell the secret to the rival province of Galituria, but the net closed in so rapidly and he fell to drinking so heavily, that brain and body revolted and the first shadow of insanity whispered another way--" "To murder me!" flashed the girl. For the first time there was warmth and color in her face. Philip was glad. He had struck fire from her stony calm at last. "Yes," he said, and catching her chilled hands, compelled the glance of her wistful eyes. "Diane," he said deliberately, "let us withhold our censure. Carl has a curious and tragic psychology and he has paid in full. Thanks to a habit of wonderful alertness and ingenuity, he has made his enemies respect and fear him. But the tangle aroused the blackest instincts of his soul." But the girl was very bitter. The old impatience and intolerance flashed suddenly in her face. Philip fell silent for an instant. Then he shot his final barb with deliberate intention--not so much to reproach--though there was utter honesty and loyalty to Carl in what he said--but more to touch the girl's tragedy with something sharp enough to pierce her morbidness. "Carl blames no one but himself," he said gently. "But--but if you had been a little kinder, Diane--" "Philip!" He had hurt and knew it. "Yes, I know!" said Philip quickly, "but you're not going to misunderstand, I'm sure. Let me say it with all gentleness and without reproach. If you could have forgotten his mother's history and made him feel that he was not quite alone--that there was some one to whom his careless whims made a difference! But you were a little scornful and indifferent. I wonder if you'll believe that he can tell you each separate moment in his life when you were kind to him." "I too was alone and lonely!" defended the girl. "And the call of the forest had made me most unhappy." "Yes. But Carl was not mocking any sensitive spot in your life--" "No--I was cruel--cruel!" "I remember in college," said Philip, "he talked so much of his beautiful cousin, and the rest of us were wild to see her. We used to rag him a lot, but you held aloof and we told him we didn't believe he had a cousin. We discovered after a while that he was sensitive because you didn't come when he asked you, and we quit ragging him about it. You didn't even come when he took his degree." "No. I--Oh, Philip! I am sorry." "Your aunt," went on Philip, "was not mentally adapted to inspire his respect. He merely laughed and petted her into tearful subjection. You were the only one, Diane, who was his equal in body and brain, and you failed him at a period when your influence would have been tremendous. I can't forget," added Philip soberly, "that much of this I knew in college and carelessly enough I ignored it all later. I let him drift when I might have done much to help him." Philip's instinct was right and kindly. He had provided a counter wound to dwarf, at saving intervals, the sting of Aunt Agatha's frightened revelation. Thereafter, the memory of Philip's loyal rebuke was to trouble her sorely, temper a little the old intolerance and arouse her keen remorse. The consciousness that Philip disapproved was quite enough. With a sudden gesture of solicitude, Diane touched the sleeve of his shirt. It was very wet. "Philip!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet. "We must go back." "Lord," said Philip lazily, "that's nothing at all. I'm a hydro-aviator." She glanced wistfully up into his face. "You're right about Carl," she said. "I'm very sorry." Philip felt suddenly that it behooved him to remember a certain resolution. Later, as he hurried through the rainy wood to his own camp, where the Baron sat huddled in the Indian wagon in a state of deep disgust about the rain, he halted where the trees were thick and lighted his pipe. "There's the Baron's aeroplane at St. Augustine," he said. "We can go there in the morning. And the old chief will know. His memory's good for half a century." Philip flung away his match. "But I can't for the life of me see which is the lesser of the two evils. If her mother wasn't married, it was bad enough, of course. But with Theodomir a crown prince--it's worse if she was!" And a little later with a sigh-- "A princess! God bless my soul, with my spread-eagle tastes I shouldn't know in the least what to do with her!" Huddled in the Indian wagon, the Baron and his secretary talked until daybreak. CHAPTER XLVII "THE MARSHES OF GLYNN" For the rides over the sun-hot plains, the poling of cypress canoes, the days of hunting and the tanning of hides, there was now a third of fearless strength and endurance. Keela had come with the Mulberry Moon to the home of her foster father, a presence of delicate gravity and shyness which pervaded the lodge like the breath of some vivid wild flower. "Red-winged Blackbird," said Carl, one morning, laying aside the flute which had been showering tranquil melody through the quiet beneath the moss-hung oaks, "why are you so quiet?" "I am ever quiet," said Red-winged Blackbird with dignity. "Mic-co says it is better so." "Why?" "Mic-co only understands, and even to him I may not always talk." She went sedately on with the modeling of clay, her slender hands swift, graceful, unfaltering. Mic-co's lodge abounded in evidences of their deftness. "You have more grace," said Carl suddenly, "than any woman I have ever known." "Diane!" said Keela with charming and impartial acquiescence. "Yes, Diane has it, too," assented Carl, and fell thoughtful, watching Mic-co's snowy herons flap tamely about the lodge. "Play!" said Keela shyly. Carl drew the flute from his pocket again and obeyed. "Like a brook of silver!" said the Indian girl with an abashed revealment of the wild sylvan poetry with which her thoughts were rife. "The one friend," said Carl, "to whom I have told all things. The one friend, Red-winged Blackbird, who always understood!" "I," said Keela with majesty, "I too am your friend and I understand." Carl reddened a little. "What do you understand, little Indian lady?" he asked quietly. He was totally unprepared for the keenness of her unsmiling analysis. "That you have been very tired in the head," she nodded, her delicate, vivid face quite grave. "So tired that you might not see as you should, so tired that the medicine of white men could not reach it, but only the words of Mic-co, who knows all things. So tired that a moon was not a moon of lovely brightness. It was a thing of evil fire to scorch. Uncah? Mic-co would say warped vision. I must talk in simpler ways for all I study." They fell quiet. "Read me again that live oak poem of Lanier's," said Carl. "After a while Mic-co will be back to spirit you away to his Room of Books." She read, as she frequently read to Carl and Mic-co in the long quiet afternoons, with an accent musical and soft, of the immortal marshes of Glynn. "Glooms of the live oaks, beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,--" What vivid memories it awoke of the morning the swamp had revealed to him the island home of Mic-co! "Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnameable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain." Lanier, dying of heartbreak! How well he had understood! "Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of Fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn." And Keela too had guessed. "In the rose-and-silver evening glow, Farewell--" Keela broke off and laid aside the book. "I may not read more," she said, bending to the pottery with wild color in her face. "I--I am very tired, Carl. You go in the morning?" "Yes." "You are strong--and sure?" "Yes. Quite. I've promised Mic-co not to lose my grip again." "And sometime you will come here again?" "Often!" A little later she went quietly away to the Room of Books with Mic-co. When the evening star flashed silver in the lilied pool, Carl sat alone. Mic-co had been summoned away by an Indian servant. A soft light gleamed in the corner of the court in a shower of vines. Its light was a little like the soft rays of the Venetian lamp that had shone in the Sherrill garden, but Carl ruthlessly put the memory aside. It had grown once into a devouring flame of evil portent. It must not do so again. His thoughts were so far away that a soft footfall behind him and the rustle of satin seemed part of that other night until turning restlessly, he caught the sheen of satin, brightly gold in the lantern-glow. The dark, vivid skin, the hair and eyes that were somehow more Spanish than Indian--the golden mask--Carl's face went wildly scarlet. "Keela!" he cried, springing toward her, "Keela!" There was much of his old intolerance, much of his impudent immunity to the world's opinion in the curious flash of adjustment which leveled barriers of caste and convention and bridged, for him, in the fashion of a willful uncle, the gulf of race and breeding. The golden mask dropped. "Is it not a pretty farewell?" she faltered, with a wistful glance at the shimmering gown. "Diane gave it all. As you saw me first, so--now!" Some lines of Lanier's poem of the morning were ringing wildly in Carl's ears. "The blades of the marsh grass stir; Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whir; Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one." "Why do you look at me so?" asked Keela. "I have been a fool," said Carl steadily, "a very great fool--and blind." Keela's lovely, sensitive mouth quivered. "Is it--" she raised glistening, glorified eyes to his troubled face, "is it," she whispered naïvely, "that you care like the lovers in Mic-co's books?" "Yes. And you, Keela?" "I--I have always cared," she said shyly, "since that night at Sherrill's. I--I feared you knew." Trembling violently the girl dropped to her knees with a soft crash of satin and buried her face in her hands. She was crying wildly. Carl gently raised her to her feet again and squarely met her eyes. "Red-winged Blackbird," he said quietly, "there is much that I must tell you before I may honorably face this love of yours and mine--" Keela's black eyes blazed in sudden loyalty. "There is nothing I do not know," she flung back proudly. "Philip told me. And for every wild error you made, he gave a reason. He loves and trusts you utterly. May I not do that too?" "He told you!" "Some that night in the storm when he and I were saddling the horses to ride to Mic-co's. Some later. He pledged me to kindness and understanding." For every break in the thread there had always been Philip's strong and kindly hand to mend it. A little shaken by the memory of the night in Philip's wigwam, Carl walked restlessly about the court. "But there is more," he said, coloring. "There was passion and dishonor in my heart, Keela, until, one night, I fought and won--" "Is it not enough for me that you won?" asked Keela gently and broke off, wild color staining her cheeks and forehead. Mic-co stood in the doorway. "Mic-co," she said bravely, "I--I would have you tell him that he is strong and brave and clean enough to love. He--he does not know it." She fled with a sob. "Have you forgotten?" asked Mic-co slowly. "I care nothing for race!" cried Carl with a flash of his fine eyes. "Must I pattern my life by the set tenets of race bigotry. I have known too many women with white faces and scarlet souls." "If I know you at all," said Mic-co with a quiet smile, "there will be no pattern, save of your own making." "I come of a family who rebel at patterns," said Carl. "My mother--my uncle--my cousin. Let me tell you all," and he told of the night in the Sherrill garden; of the brutal desire that had later come with the brooding and the wild disorders of his brain, to drive him deeper and deeper into the black abyss until he fought and won by the camp fire; of his consequent panic-stricken rebound of horror and remorse when he had put it all aside, fighting the call with reason, seeking desperately to crush it out of his life, until the sight of Keela in the satin gown had sent him back with a shock to that finer, cleaner, quieter call that had come in the Sherrill garden. Then the disordered interval between had fled to the limbo of forgotten things. Mic-co heard his story to the end without comment. He was silent so long that Carl grew uncomfortable. "Since Keela was a little, wistful, black-eyed child," said Mic-co at last, "I have been her teacher. We have worked very hard together. Peace came to me through her." He broke off frowning and spoke of the alarming mine of inherited instincts from the white father which his teaching had awakened. Keela had been restless and unhappy, fastidiously aloof with the Seminoles, shy and reticent with white men. He must not make another mistake, he said, for Keela was very dear to him. "The white father?" asked Carl curiously. "An artist." "She has a marvelous gift in modeling," said Carl. "I know a famous young sculptor whose work is nothing like so virile. Might not something utterly new and barbaric come of it with proper direction? If she could interpret this wild life of the Glades from an Indian viewpoint--" "I have frequently thought of it," agreed Mic-co. "You would help her, Carl?" "Yes." "It would give a definite and unselfish direction to your own life, would it not, like those weeks at the farm with Wherry?" "Yes. You trust me, Mic-co?" "Utterly." Carl held out his hand. "One by one," said Mic-co, "fate is slipping into the groove of your life people who are destined to care greatly--" "You mean--" "It shall be Keela's to decide." "Mic-co, I--cannot thank you. You and Philip--" But he could not go on. A little later he went to bed and lay restless until morning. He was up again at sunrise, tramping over the island paths with Mic-co. The quiet of the early morning was rife with the chirp of countless birds, with the crackle of the camp fire where the turbaned Indians in Mic-co's service were preparing the morning meal. There was young corn on the fertile island to the east. Over the chain of islands lay the promise of early summer. There was a curious drone overhead as they neared the lake. "Look!" exclaimed Carl. "A singular sight, Mic-co, for these island wilds of yours." An aeroplane was whirring noisily above the quiet lake, startling the bluebills floating about on the surface. "A singular sight!" nodded Mic-co, "and a prophetic one. Symbolic of the spirit of progress which hangs now above the Glades, is it not? The world is destined to reap much one day from the exuberant fertility of this marshland of the South." The aeroplane glided gracefully to the bosom of the lake, alighted like a great bird and came to shore with its own power. The aviator swept off his cap and smiled. It was Philip. CHAPTER XLVIII ON THE LAKE SHORE With the departure of Philip and the Baron for St. Augustine, a fever of energy had settled over Diane. Riding, rowing, swimming, tramping miles of Florida road, taking upon herself much of Johnny's camp labor, she ruthlessly tired herself out by day that she might soundly sleep by night. Youth and health and Spartan courage were a wholesome trio. Aunt Agatha watched, sniffed and frequently groaned. How much the kindly ruse of Philip had helped, Diane herself could not suspect, but her remorseful thoughts were frequently busy with memories of the old childhood days with Carl. He had been an excellent horseman, a sturdy swimmer, an unerring shot, compelling respect in those old, wild vacation days on the Florida plantation. If the cruelty had crept into her manner at an age when she could not know, it had been a reflex of the attitude of the stern old planter whose son and daughter had been so conspicuously erratic. Gently enough, too, the girl sought to make Aunt Agatha comprehend the curious facts that had come to light that morning beneath the trees. Quite in vain. That good lady refused flatly to absorb it, grew ludicrously plaintive and aggrieved and flew off at tearful tangents into complicated segments of family history from which it was possible to extricate only the most ridiculous of facts, chief among them the reiterated assurance that her own father had been, in the bosom of his family, of a delightfully sportive nature, but nothing like the Westfalls--dear no!--that he had a genteel figure, my dear, for all he had developed a somewhat corpulent tendency in later years; that the corn-beef which mother procured was highly superior to those portions of salted quadruped which Johnny obtained in the village--and facts of similar irrelevancy. Diane had heard of the corn-beef and father's corpulency before, but she was now somewhat gentler and less impatient and checked the old careless flashes of annoyance. And, having supplemented the hand bag by a shopping trip to the nearest village, Aunt Agatha, to the girl's dismay, announced one day: "It's my duty to stay, Diane, and stay I will. Mother would have stayed, I'm sure, and mother's judgment was usually correct, though she would wear smoked glasses." Rowing in one morning with a string of fish, Diane was a little fluttered at the sight of a tall, broad-shouldered young man upon the shore, who waved his hat and quietly waited for her boat to come in. His dark skin was clear and ruddy and very brown, his mouth resolute, the careless grace and impudence of his old manner replaced by something steadier, quieter and possibly a shade less assured. The meeting was by no means easy for either, and with remorseful memories leaping wildly in the heart of each, they smiled and called cheerfully to one another until the girl's boat glided in under the ready assistance of a masculine hand that shook a little. "Let me moor it for you!" said Carl and busied himself with the rope for longer than the careless task would seem to warrant. When at length he straightened up again and briskly brushed the sand from his coat sleeve to cover his emotion, he forced himself to meet his cousin's troubled glance directly. Instantly the careless byplay ceased. The desperate imploring in the eyes of each keyed the situation to electric tensity. Curiously enough, both were thinking of Philip. Curiously enough, in this hour of reckoning Philip was an invisible arbiter urging them to generous understanding. Diane was the first to speak. And, in the fashion of Diane since childhood, she bravely plunged into the heart of the thing with glistening eyes. "Carl," she said, "I am very sorry." It was heartfelt apology for the old offense. Carl's face went wildly scarlet. The girl's gentleness, prepared as he was for the inevitable flash of fire, had caught him unawares. Springing forward, he caught her hands roughly in his own. "Don't!" he said roughly. "For God's sake, Diane, don't! It's awfully decent of you--but--but I can't stand it! Have you forgotten--" he choked. "Surely," he said, "Philip told you all. He promised--" "Yes," said Diane, "and--and that's why--" She was very close to tears now, but with the old imperiousness, with the Spartan pride of the Westfall training behind her, she flung back her head with a quick dry sob, her eyes imploring. "Let's both forget," she said. "Oh, Carl, I was cruel, cruel! I--I can not see now what made me so. Philip is right. He is always just and honorable. He blames himself and me. You'll forgive me?" "_I forgive_!" faltered Carl. "There were forces driving you," said Diane steadily, "but I--was deliberate. Let's pledge to a new beginning. Let me be your friend as Philip is." Their hands tightened in a clasp whose warmth was prophetic. Mic-co's words rang again in Carl's ears. "Fate is slipping into the groove of your life people who are destined to care greatly!" Diane was another! Deeply moved, Carl glanced away over the sunlit water, rippling and sparkling with myriad shafts of light. "Let's sit here on the bank a minute," he said. "There's something I must tell you. It's all right," he added with a smile, interpreting her glance aright, "I made my peace with Aunt Agatha before you came in. She burst into tears at the sight of me and retired to her tent. I can't make out just why, but I think she said it was either because I'm so tanned and a little thinner, or because none of her family were ever addicted to disappearing, or because she has an uncle who's a bishop. I came from Philip." "Philip!" "Yes. He came to Mic-co's the morning I was leaving. Later we met again at a village on the outskirts of the Glades. He waited for me. There was a telegram there from the Baron. Philip said he knew you'd forgive him if he sent his message on by me--his father is very ill." "Poor Philip!" exclaimed the girl. In the fullness of her swift compassion she forgot why Philip had gone back to the Indian village. It flooded back directly and her wistful eyes implored. "It was a jealous lie," said Carl gently. "The old chief knew. The Indian who told it hated your father." Diane sat so white and still that Carl touched her diffidently upon the arm. "Don't look so!" he pleaded. "There was some difficulty at first, for Philip's Seminole is nearly as fragmentary as the old chief's English, but they called in Sho-caw and after a host of blunders and misunderstandings, Philip ran the thing to earth at last. Theodomir married and divorced your mother in the Indian village just as the paper in the candlestick said." Still the girl did not speak or move and Carl saw with compassion that the veins of her throat were throbbing wildly. He fell quietly to talking of Keela, caught her interest and watched with a sense of relief the rich color flood back to his cousin's lips and cheeks. It was plain the tale of the golden mask had startled her a little, for she laid her hand impetuously upon his arm, and her eyes searched his face with troubled intentness. "It will all be very singular and daring," she faltered after a while. "I had thought of something like it myself--to help her, I mean. You are so--_different_, Carl! I know of no man who might dare so much and win." Then with unconscious tribute to one whose opinion she valued above all others, she added: "Philip trusts you utterly. He has said so. And Philip knows!" Carl glanced furtively at her face and cleared his throat. "Diane," he asked gravely, "I wonder how much that incredible tale of the old candlestick pleased you?" "I don't know," said Diane honestly. "I wish I did. I've wondered and wondered. No matter how hard I think, it doesn't somehow come right. It's like shattering a cherished crystal into fragments to think that every tie of blood and country I valued is meaningless--that every memory is a mockery--that grandfather and you and Aunt Agatha--" she paused and sighed. "When I try to realize," she finished, "I feel very lonely and afraid." "And Philip?" hinted Carl. "I don't think he is pleased." "You're right," said Carl with decision. "It upset him a lot. But that night by the old chief's camp fire, Philip discovered--" "Yes?" "That some imperfection in the stilted wording of the hidden paper had led us all astray. Philip said he could not be sure--there was so much fuss and trouble and misunderstanding--but the old chief had nursed Theodomir through some dreadful illness and knew it all. They were staunch friends. Norman Westfall came into the Glades hunting with a friend. He persuaded your mother to go away with him, but they went--_alone_!" "You mean--" "That they did not take a child away from the Indian village as the paper in the candlestick declares--" "And the daughter of Theodomir?" "Is Keela. They left her by the old chief's wigwam." Diane stared. CHAPTER XLIX MR. DORRIGAN Carl, traveling north after a day of earnest discussion in his cousin's camp, thought much of the second candlestick. Since that night in Philip's wigwam, it had haunted him persistently. Now with Diane's permission to probe its secret--if, indeed, it had one like its charred companion--he was fretting again, as he had intermittently fretted in the lodge of Mic-co, at the train of circumstances that had interposed delay. Train and taxi were perniciously slow. Carl found his patience taxed to the utmost. The grandfather's clock was booming eight when at length, after a gauntlet of garrulous servants, he pushed back the great, iron-bound doors of the old Spanish room in his cousin's house and entered. The war-beaten slab of table-wood, the old lanterns, the Spanish grandee above the mantel, the mended candlestick and its unmarred mate, all brought memories of another night when Starrett's glass had struck the marble fireplace. Vividly, too, he recalled how the firelight had stained the square-paneled ceiling of oak overhead, and how Diane had stood in the doorway. The room was the same. It was a little hard, however, to reconcile the sullen, resentful, impudent young scapegrace of that other night with the man of to-night. He put out his hand to touch the second candlestick--the telephone bell rang. Carl frowned impatiently and answered it. "Hello," said he. "Yes, this is Carl Granberry speaking . . . Who? . . . Oh! Hello, Hunch, is that you?" It plainly was. Moreover, Mr. Dorrigan was very nervous and ill at ease. Carl laughed with relish. "What's the trouble?" he demanded. "You're stuttering like a kid . . . Shut up and begin over again. . . . Hello. . . . Yes. . . . Well, I've been out of town since January. . . . Hum! . . . Well," he hinted dryly, "there was sufficient time for an explanation before I went. . . . I guess you're right. . . . I went up to the farm in October with Wherry." Mr. Dorrigan desperately admitted that some of the time between the escape of His Nibs and Carl's departure for the farm had been spent in panic-stricken remorse and dread--some in the hospital due to an altercation with Link Murphy, who for reasons not immediately apparent wished jealously to obliterate his other eye. He begged Carl to give him an immediate opportunity of squaring himself, for he had telephoned the house so frequently of late that the butler had grown insulting. Mr. Dorrigan added that he hoped Mr. Granberry's wholly justified wrath had somewhat abated, but that for purposes of initial communication the telephone had seemed more prudent. He was plainly relieved at the answer. Carl glanced at the tormenting candlestick and sighed. Another delay! "All right," he said finally to Hunch, "come along. I'll give you twenty minutes. If you're not through then, like as not I'll stir up the grudge again--" The telephone at the other end clicked instantly. Conceivably Hunch was already on his way up town. Carl impatiently busied himself with some mail upon the table. It had followed him from the farm to Palm Beach and from Palm Beach to New York. There were half a dozen wild letters of gratitude from Wherry and a letter from the old doctor, Wherry's father, that brought a flush of genuine pleasure to Carl's face. "Wherry, too!" said he softly. "Of course. He stuck that other night. I've been too blind to see." Drawing his flute from his pocket, he glanced with a curious smile and glow at a row of notches in the wood. The first notch he had cut in the flute after the rainy night in Philip's wigwam, the second by Mic-co's pool, the third was subtly linked with the marshes of Glynn, and a fourth had been furtively added in the camp of his cousin. Now with a glance at Wherry's letters, he was quietly carving a fifth. Who may say what they portended--this record of notches carved upon the one friend who had always understood! Carl was to carve another, of which he little dreamed, before the summer waned; and the spur to its making was close at hand. The doorbell rang as he finished, and dropping the flute back into his pocket, he rang for some whiskey and cigars for the entertainment of Mr. Dorrigan, who presently appeared, at the heels of a servant, twirling his hat with a nonchalant ease much too elaborate and at variance with the look in his good eye to be genuine. "'Lo!" said Hunch uncomfortably. "Hello!" said Carl pleasantly, pushing the decanter across the table. Hunch stared at his host, fidgeted, poured himself a generous drink and waited suggestively. Carl merely laughed good-humoredly and lighted a cigar. "Sorry, Hunch," he regretted, "but I've joined the Lithia League!" "My Gawd!" burst forth Hunch despairingly, adding in heartfelt memory of his host's enviable steadiness of head, "My Gawd, Carl, what a waste o' talents!" Carl laughed. "Sit down," he invited, "and get it off your mind." But Hunch's single eye was wandering in fascinated appraisal over Carl's dark, pleasant face. Even he, coarse and brutal in perception as he was, was conscious of a difference not wholly attributable to the Lithia League and felt himself impelled to some verbal recognition of his host's conspicuous well-being. "Ye're on the level all right," he swore obscurely. "Ye're white! Ye're lookin' good, ye're lookin' fine-- By the Lord Harry, Carl, I don't know as I blame yuh!" Unable to fathom the nature of the censure thus withheld, Carl remained silent and Hunch fell again to staring, his immovable eye ridiculously expressive in stony conjunction with the other. Whatever he found in Carl's face this time plainly afforded him intense relief, for he seated himself with a long breath and drew a yellowish paper from his pocket. "I says to meself," he explained, "'Hunch, old sport, ye're in for it. He'll like as not drop yuh out of the window with an electric wire, feed yuh to an electric wolf or make yuh play hell-for-a-minute chess or some other o' them woozy stunts 'at pop up in his bean like mushrooms, but yuh gotta square yerself with that paper. Yuh gotta get up yer nerve an' hike up there to the brownstone with it.' I ask yuh," he finished dramatically, and evidently laboring under the momentary conviction that Carl, too, was optically afflicted, "I ask yuh, Carl, to cast yer good lamp over that there paper." Carl opened the paper and stared. "Hunch," he exclaimed with an involuntary glance at the mended candlestick, "where in the devil did you get this?" "I ask yuh to remember," went on Hunch in some excitement, "that I was drunk an' the old she-wol--Gr-r-r-r-r!" Hunch cleared his heavy throat in a panic, with a rasp like the stripping of gears, and corrected himself. "The Old One," he spoke somewhat as if this singular title was a degree, "the Old One put one over on me." "My aunt, I imagine," said Carl, "has given me a fairly accurate version of His Nibs' escape. I'll admit a pardonable anxiety to interview you for a while. As a matter of fact there was a night--when I was not in the Lithia League--that I drove down to look you up. Tell me," he added, "where you found this." "It was not, stric'ly speakin', found," said Hunch with a modest cough. Once more, overwhelmed afresh by Carl's appearance, he let his good eye go roving. "Tell it," said Carl with what patience he could muster, "in your own way." "I ask yuh to remember," urged Hunch with a firm belief in the dignity of this phrase, "that I was still drunk an' batty in me thinker when the old she-wol--Gr-r-r-r-r-r--the Old One told me to dig out. So I halts on the corner to collect me wits an' by'm'by I sees a guy wid a darkish face an' lips like Link. He comes along, looks up an' down suspicious, sees the door ain't tight shut an' heel-taps it up the steps. He opens the door an' by'm'by he helps the Old One to a taxi an' makes out to walk off--see--whiles she's a watchin'. Later, when the taxi turns the corner, back he goes, heel-taps it up the steps ag'in, an' goes in at the door he ain't locked, though he'd made out he had. An' right there," said Hunch impressively, "right there is where yer Uncle Hunch feels a real glimmer in his bean an' goes back. Thin-lips ain't in sight. Yer Uncle Hunch softly heel-taps it upstairs an' finds the darkish guy adoptin' a paper with a fatherly pat, which he slips in his coat pocket. Whereupon--whiles he's lockin' the desk drawer ag'in, aforesaid uncle slips downstairs an' out. By'm'by, Thin-lips trots out with an ugly grin on his mug--an' Uncle Hunch, gettin' soberer an' soberer by the minute, trots after him with his good lamp workin' overtime." Carl glanced at the paper. "Yes?" he encouraged. "Well," said Hunch with a sheepish grin that was rendered somewhat sinister by the fixed eye, "I jostled him real rude in a crowd an' picked his pocket. An' there yuh are!" There was some slight rustle of greenish paper in the handshake. "I'm mighty grateful," said Carl. "That paper cost me a couple of hours of laborious preparation. It's a duplicate, Hunch, for the purpose of decoy. The original's in safe deposit." CHAPTER L THE OTHER CANDLESTICK The closing of the outer door betokened the departure of Mr. Dorrigan. Carl swiftly marked the second candlestick where the shallow receptacle in the other had begun and applied the thin, fine edge of a craftsman's saw. When at length the candled branches lay upon the table, the light of the lanterns overhead revealed, as he had hoped, a second paper. He was to read the faded sheets, with staring, incredulous eyes, and learn that its contents were utterly unrelated to the contents of the other. I am impelled by one of the damnable whims which sway me at times to my own undoing, to trust to some chance discovery that which under oath I may never deliberately reveal with my lips. It is the history of certain events which have heavily shadowed my life and brought me up with a tight rein from a life of reckless whim and adventure to one of terrible suffering. I write this with a wild hope that may never be gratified. The first foreshadowing of this singular cloud came one night in the Adirondack hunting lodge of Norman Westfall, a young Southerner whose inheritance of a childless uncle's millions had made him a conspicuous figure months before. He was living there with his sister and both, as usual, were at odds with the grim old father down South who resented the wild, unconventional strain that had come into his family through the blood of his wife. They were a wild, handsome, reckless pair--Ann and Norman Westfall--inseparable companions in wild adventure for which another woman would have neither the endurance nor the inclination. Ann was a strong, beautiful, impetuous woman with rich coloring; deliciously feminine in her quieter moments, incredibly daring in others; keen-brained, cultured, and utterly unconventional; generous, sympathetic and a splendid musician. Norman worshiped her. She was older than he and without the occasional strain of flippancy which so maddened his father. Norman and Ann and I had traversed the whole length of the Mississippi to New Orleans on a raft and had traveled thence to this recently inherited Adirondack tract of Norman's to rest. "Grant," he said one night after Ann had gone to bed, "you've more brains and brawn and breeding than any man I know, and you've splendid health." Naturally enough, I flushed. Norman narrowed his handsome, impudent eyes and regarded me intently. "And you're sufficiently clear-cut and good-looking," he said thoughtfully, "for the purpose. Not so handsome as Ann to be sure, but Ann's an exceptionally beautiful woman." I was utterly at a loss to understand his reference to a purpose and said so. He laughed and shrugged and enlightened me. "My dear fellow," he said in answer to my stammered suggestion that marriage was simpler and less fraught with perilous possibilities, "Ann and I are not in the least hoodwinked by marriage. It has enervated the whole race of womankind and led to their complete economic dependence upon a polygamous sex who abuse the trust. Now Ann believes firmly in the holiness of maternity, but she flatly refuses to take upon herself the responsibility of an unwelcome tie. In this, as in everything, I cordially endorse her views. Ann is past the callow age. She has refused a number of men who were conspicuously her inferiors, though Dad has stormed a bit. Now you are the one man whom I consider her physical and mental equal, the one man to whom I may talk in this manner without fear of bigoted misunderstanding, but--while Ann's friendship for you is warm and wholly sincere--she doesn't love you. If she did," said my impudent young friend, "she'd likely shrug away her aversion to marital custom and marry you before you were well aware of it. As it is, she declines to sacrifice the maternal inheritance of her sex and she refuses to marry. And there you are!" Looking back now after five years of readjustment and metamorphosis, I marvel at the cool philosophy with which two adventurous young scapegraces settled the question of a little lad's unconventional birth. I pass over now the heartbroken reproaches of Ann's father when my son was born. We told him the truth and he could not understand. He looked through the eyes of the world and it widened the gulf forever. Thereafter Norman and Ann lived in the lodge. Ann was a wonderful mother and the boy as sturdy and handsome a little lad as the mother-heart of any woman ever worshiped. But I! How easy it had been to promise to make no particular advance of affection to my son--to suggest in no way my claim upon him--to take up the thread of my life again as if he had never been born--to regard myself merely as the physical instrument necessary to his creation! I was to learn with bitter suffering the truth that my act bound me irrevocably in soul and heart to my boy and his mother. I shall not forget the night when I faced the truth. It was in the great room of the lodge, the blazing wood fire staining the bearskin rugs. Outside, in the early twilight, there was wind, and trees hung with snow, and the dull, frozen lap of a winter lake. I had come up to the lodge at Norman's invitation. As far as he and Ann were concerned, my claim upon Ann's boy was quite forgotten. He had grown into a dark, ruddy, handsome little lad, this son of mine, with a brain and body far beyond his years, thanks to Ann's marvelous gift of motherhood, her care and her teaching. Ann sat by the old, square piano singing some marvelous mother's lullaby of the Norseland, her full contralto ringing with splendid tenderness. Mother and son were alone when I entered. Carl was busily at play on a rug by the fire. In that instant, with the plaint of the Norse mother in my ears, I knew. The tie was too strong to fight. I loved my little son--I loved his mother. I do not remember how I stumbled across the room and told her. I only know that she was greatly shocked and troubled and very kind, that she told me as gently as she could that I must try to conquer it all--that there must be no one in Carl's life but herself--that man's part in the scheme of creation was but the act of a moment; a woman's part, her whole life. I think now that her great love for the little chap had crowded everything else out of her mind; that living up there in those snowy acres of trees away from the world, she was so calmly contented and happy that she feared an intrusive breath of any sort. And she did not love me. Suddenly in a moment of impulsive tenderness, she bent over and caught Carl up in her arms. "My little laddie!" she cried, her face glorified, and he nestled his head in her full, beautiful throat and laughed. An instant later he looked up and smiled and held out his hand with a curious instinct of kindliness he had, even as a very little fellow. "Don't feel so awful bad, Uncle Grant!" he said shyly. "I love you too. Don't I, mother?" I don't know, but I think Ann cried. I choked and stumbled from the room. So, for me, ended the singular episode of my life that has condemned me again to the fate of a wanderer, drifting about like thistledown in the wind of fancy. There is but one chance in many hundred that this paper, which bears upon the back the address of solicitors who will always know my whereabouts--sealed and buried after a whim of mine as it will be--will ever come to the eyes of him for whom it is intended, but maddened by the thought that I must go through life alone--and lonely--without hinting to my son the truth, I have desperately begged from Ann the boon of the single chance, forlorn as it is, that I may have some flickering hope to feed upon. And she, out of the compassionate recognition that for the single moment of creation I am entitled to this at least, has granted it. If this paper ever comes to the eyes of my son--and I am irrevocably pledged to drop no hint of its whereabouts--then--and not until then--are all my pledges void. Who knows? In the years to come, some wild freak of destiny may guide the feet of my son to the secret of the candlestick. I shall live and pray and likely die a childless, unhappy old man, whose Fate lies buried profoundly in the sealed, invulnerable heart of a Spanish candlestick--a stranger to his son. Grant Satterlee. It was the name of a wealthy bachelor whose lonely austerity of life upon a yacht which rarely lingered in any port, whose quiet acts of philanthropy as he roved hermitlike about the world, had been the talk of continents. Reading to the end, Carl dropped the scattering sheets and buried his face in his hands, unnerved and shaking. CHAPTER LI IN THE ADIRONDACKS To the wild, out-of-the-world hunting lodge in the Adirondack wilderness of tree and lake and trout-haunted mountain stream which had been part of Norman Westfall's heritage, came, one twilight of cloud and wind, Diane, tanned with the wind and sun of a year's wandering--and very tired. Wild relief at Carl's tale of the jealous Indian, thoughts of Philip, of Carl, of Keela, of Ronador, all these, persistently haunting the girl's harassed mind, had wearied her greatly. Moreover, Aunt Agatha was not restful; nor would she depart. Wherefore, with the old habit when the voice of the forest called--when school and city and travel had palled and tortured--Diane had traveled feverishly north with Aunt Agatha, and thence to the Adirondack lodge which had been her hermitage since early childhood and to which, by an earlier compact, Aunt Agatha might not follow. She had telegraphed old Roger to meet her with the buckboard. Now, as they drove up at twilight, Annie, his wife, stood in the cottage doorway. Beyond among the rustling trees stood the log lodge of Norman Westfall, far enough away for solitude and near enough, as Aunt Agatha frequently recalled with comfort, to the cottage of the two old servants for safety. The lake stretched away to a dusk-dimmed shore set in a whispering line of ghostly birches. "There's wood in the fireplace, dearie!" said old Annie, patting the girl's shoulder. "It's a wee bit chill yet, for all the summer ought well be here. And you've not run away to the old lodge to cook and keep house and play gypsy this many a day!" "No," said Diane, "I haven't." She spoke of the van and Johnny. "Dear! Dear!" quavered Annie, raising wrinkled, wondering hands. "Think of that now! And like you, too! And you grown so like your father, child, that I can't well keep my eyes off your face. And brown as a berry from the sun. I've set a bit of a lunch in the great room yonder, dearie. You'll likely be too tired to-night to be a gypsy." Old Roger, who had consigned the buckboard and horses to a tall awkward country lad who had slouched forward from the shadows, hurried off to light the fire in the lodge. When Diane entered, the fire was crackling cheerfully in the great fireplace and dancing in bright waves over the china and glass upon a table by the fire. The old room, extending the entire width of the lodge and half its generous depth, was much as it had been in the days of Norman Westfall. By the western wall stood the old piano. Uncovered rafters and an inner wall-lining of logs hinted nothing of the substantial plaster behind it. It was a great room of homely comfort, subtly akin to the forest beyond its walls. It was the old fashioned desk in the corner, however, upon which Diane's thoughtful gaze rested as she ate her supper. The thought of it had primarily inspired her coming. Surely the old desk, locked this many a year, might hold some breath of the tragedy that had ghostlike trailed her footsteps. Ann Westfall had kept the key until her death. She had bravely put her brother's house in order at his tragic death and transferred all the papers of value. The key hung now in a sliding panel beneath the ledge of the desk. The spirit which had kept the old room unchanged, even to the faded books of Orientalism and the old pictures strangely mellowed, had led to the hiding of the key away from vandal fingers. Once Diane herself had unlocked the desk and peered timidly within. She remembered now the faultless order of the few dry, uninteresting papers, an ink well made of the skull of a tiny monkey, a bamboo pen, a half-finished manuscript of wild adventure in some out-of-the-world spot in the South Pacific. There had been nothing more. But the desk was one of intricate drawers and panels. With a sudden distaste for the food before her, Diane pushed the little table back, lighted a small lamp and crossed to her father's desk. She unlocked it with nervous fingers. The monkey skull, the bamboo pen, the few irrelevant papers were all as she remembered them. Diane glanced hurriedly over the scribbled manuscript of adventure with a wild, choking sensation in her throat. There was no mention of the Indian wife. Hurriedly she opened each tiny drawer and panel. They were for the most part empty. Only in one, a small drawer within a drawer, lay a faded packet of letters directed to Ann Westfall in the hand that had penned the manuscript--Norman Westfall's. CHAPTER LII EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF NORMAN WESTFALL Reluctantly, Diane opened the letters of long ago and read them: Grant and I have had wild sport killing alligators with the Seminoles. A wild, dark, unexplored country, Ann, these Florida Everglades! How I wish you were with us! Tyson had an Indian guide, evoked somewhere from the wild by smoke signals, waiting for us. We traversed miles and miles of savage, uninhabitable marsh before at last we came to the isolated Indian camp. Small wonder the Seminole is still unconquered. It is a world here for wild men. I'll write as I feel inclined and bunch the letters when there is an Indian going out to the fringe of civilization. We hunt the 'gators by night in cypress canoes. Grant sat in the bow of our boat to-night with a bull's-eye lantern in his cap. The fan of it over the silent, black water, the eyes of the 'gators blazing in the dark, these cool, bronze, turbaned devils with axes to sever the spinal cord and rifles to shatter the skull--it's a wild and thrilling scene. I'm sorry Carl was not so well. Now that Dad is kinder to the little chap, we could have left him at St. Augustine if he'd been well enough to make the trip. It bothers me that you're not along. It's my first time without you, and you're a better shot than Grant and more dependable in mood. I can't make out what's come over him of late. He's so moody and reckless that the Indians think he's a devil. He's more prone to wild whims than ever. We've shot wild turkey and bear but I like the 'gator sport the best. There's a curious white man here who's lived a good part of his life with the tribe. He's a Spaniard, a dark-skinned, bitter, morose sort of chap--really a Minorcan--whose Indian wife is dead. He has a daughter, a girl of twenty or so whom the Seminoles call Nan-ces-o-wee. He calls her simply Nanca. She speaks Spanish fluently. The morose old Spaniard has taught her a fund of curious things. Her heavy hair, black as a storm-cloud, falls to her knees. Grant says her wonderful eyes remind him somehow of midnight water. Her eyebrows have the expressive arch of the Seminole. Her color is dark and very rich, but it's more the coloring of the Spanish father than the Seminole mother. Altogether, she's more Spanish than Indian, I take it, though she's a tantalizing combination of each in instinct. Her grace is wild and Indian--and she walks lightly and softly like a doe. Ann, her face haunts me. Young as she is, this Nanca of whom I have written so much to you, has, they tell me, had a most romantic history. With her beauty it was of course, inevitable. Men are fools. At eighteen, urged into proud revolt against her Seminole suitors by her father, who for all his singular way of life can not forget his white heritage, she married a young foreigner who came into the Glades hunting. He seems to have been utterly without ties and decided to live with the Indians in the manner of the Spaniard. A year or so later, a young artist imitator of Catlin's made his way to the Seminole village with a guide. He had been traveling about among the Indians of the reservations painting Indian types, and had heard of this old turbaned tribe buried in the Everglades. Nanca's beauty must have driven him quite mad, I think. At any rate he wooed and won. Nanca begged the young foreigner to divorce her, which he did. The Seminole divorce custom is lenient when the marriage is childless. The artist, I fancy, was merely a wild, reckless, inconstant sort of chap who did not regard the simple Seminole marriage tie as binding. After the birth of his daughter, a tiny little elf whom Nanca has named "Red-winged Blackbird," he tried to run away, and the Indians killed him. Red-winged Blackbird! Keela then was the child of the artist! The old Spaniard in his gruff and haughty way has been kind to Grant and me. He's not well--some obscure cardiac trouble from which he suffers at times most horribly. He has confided to me a singular secret. The young foreigner who divorced Nanca is the crown prince of some obscure little mountain kingdom called Houdania. His name is Theodomir. He had wild revolutionary notions, hated royalty and fled at the death of his father. But America and its boasted liberty had cankers and inequalities too, and heartsick, Theodomir roamed about until at length on a hunting trip he came into the village of the Seminoles. Here was the communistic organization of which this aristocratic young socialist had dreamed--tribal ownership of lands, coöperative equality of men and women--no jails, no poor-houses, no bolts or bars or locks--honorable old age and perfect moral order without law. What wonder that he lingered? Now that he is divorced from Nanca he wanders about from tribe to tribe. I'd like to see him. * * * * * * Ann, I must write the truth. The face of this Spanish girl haunts me day and night. There is a madness in my blood. I wish you were here! I am tormented by terrible doubts and misgivings. If Dad were not so intolerant! * * * * * * Nanca has fled from the Indian village with Grant and me. Oh, Ann, it had to come! I lost my head. The old Spaniard died three days ago. That was the cause of it. Nanca's grief was wild and terrible. Her wailing dirge was all Indian, yet immediately she cried out that the Indian way of life for her was impossible without her father. She begged me to take her away. And yet--Oh, Ann, Ann! How could I take that other man's child? We left her outside the old chief's wigwam. Much as I have scoffed at marriage, I have married Nanca. Grant insisted. He was a little bitter. I do not know what makes him so. I have seen Dad. We quarreled bitterly. Agatha was there with him. I can hardly write what followed. By some God-forsaken twist of Fate, a jealous, sullen-eyed young Indian who had loved Nanca and had been spurned by her father, followed us relentlessly from the Glades to St. Augustine. He told Dad that Nanca had not been married to the artist--that she was a mother and not a wife--and Dad believed it. I told him patiently enough that there is no ceremony among the Seminoles--that the man goes forth to the home of the girl at the setting of the sun, and that he is then as legally her husband as if all the courts in Christendom had tied the knot. Dad can not see it. I shall be in New York in two weeks. Nanca and I are going to Spain. I can not forget Dad's white, horror-struck face nor what he said. He is bigoted and unjust. God help me, I hope that I may never set eyes upon him again! * * * * * * We have been very happy here in Spain. I have run across a wonderful old room in a Spanish castle. Ceiling, doors, fireplace, paintings, table, chairs and lanterns, I am transplanting. What a setting for Nanca! We are sailing for home. Nanca is not so well as I could hope. She grieves, I think, for the little girl in Florida. There are times when I am bitterly jealous of those two other men. There was a lapse of weeks in the letters. Then came a long one from New York. Grant came that night just after you had gone. He has been with me a week. His notions are more erratic than ever. For instance, last night, while we were smoking, I told him the story of Prince Theodomir. He was greatly interested. "What a chance!" said he softly. "What a chance, Norman, for wild commotion in your ridiculous little court. I've been there. It's a kingdom of crazy patriots who grant freedom of marital choice to their princes to freshen and strengthen the royal blood; and they boast an ancient line of queens wiser than Catherine of Russia. A hidden paper purporting to be a deathbed statement of Prince Theodomir's--this little daughter of Nanca and the artist--and, Lord! what complications we could have immediately. How easily she might have been the child of Theodomir and a princess!" And sitting there by the table, Ann, he drew up an ingenious document couched in the stilted English of a foreigner. Like most of Grant's notions, it was infernally clever. It suggested that my marriage to Nanca had been childless and that we had brought a child--the daughter of Theodomir and Nanca--away from the Indian village and had reared her with my name. Then he showed me with a laugh where three conflicting meanings might be read from the stilted phrasing and eccentric punctuation. "Drop that, old man," said he, "into your chauvinistic little Punch and Judy court along with the name of the missing Theodomir and watch the blaze!" After all, I do not think we will stay here in New York. Nanca is not at all well. She longs for trees and the open country. We are coming up to the lodge. * * * * * * I'm glad Dad sent for you. I think he is growing fonder of Carl, though of course his prejudices will probably always flash out now and then. . . . He's fond of us both, Ann, for all he raves so. No word of Grant since that night of which you told me. . . . I am sorry. * * * * * * You tell me Grant has written to you. Tell him when you write--to write to me. I miss him. * * * * * * Grant has sent me a giant pair of candlesticks from Spain. They are six feet tall, of age-old wood and Spanish carving. He begs that they may stand in the Spanish room and makes some incoherent reference to you in connection with them, out of which I can't for the life of me extract a grain of sense. If you could have cared for him a little, Ann! * * * * * * I will not take this thing that fate has whipped into my face with a scornful jeer. Nanca is dead! Her life went out with the life she gave my daughter. Oh, Ann, Ann, why are you not with me now when I need you most. After all what is this mortal tegument but a shell which a man sloughs off in eternal evolution. Outside, the moon is very bright upon the lake. The "Mulberry Moon," Nanca called it, and loved its light. It shines in at her window now, but she can not see it. Ann, because the moon is so bright to-night--because the name of the moon goddess bears within it your name--let the name of my poor, motherless little girl be Diane. Nanca called her "Little Red-winged Blackbird!" I believe at the end she was thinking of the little girl we left in the Indian village. They are very much alike. Poor Nanca! The writing broke off with a wild scrawl. With agonized eyes Diane pushed the letters away and stared at the quiet firelit room, building again within its log walls the tragedy of her father's death. He had lain there by the fire, his life snuffed out like a candle by his own hand. The broken-hearted old man down South had carried the child of his son away, fiercely denied the Indian blood, and pledged Aunt Agatha to the keeping of the secret. And this was the net that had driven Carl to the verge of insanity and sent Themar to his death in a Florida swamp! There was no princess--no child of the exiled Theodomir. The paper stuffed in the candle-stick in a reckless moment had been but the ingenious figment of a man's brain for the entertainment of an hour. The old chief and Sho-caw with their broken tale to Philip had but tangled the net the more. As the blood of the Indian mother had driven Diane forth to the forest, so had the blood of the artist father driven Keela forth from the Indian village, a wanderer apart from her people, and Fate had relentlessly knotted the threads of their lives in a Southern pine wood. CHAPTER LIII BY MIC-CO'S POOL To the dark, old-fashioned house in St. Augustine in which Baron Tregar was a "paying guest" came one twilight, a man for whom compassionately he had waited. His visitor was sadly white and tired, with heavy lines about his sullen mouth and the dust of the highway upon his motoring rig. There was no fire in his eyes; rather a stupid apathy which in a man with less strength about the mouth and chin might easily have become commonness. "Tregar," he said with an effort, "you told me to come when I needed you. I am here. I can not see my way--" Tregar held out his hand in silence. Only he knew the sacrifice of insolent pride that had brought his guest so low. Ronador took his hand and reddened. "My father rightly counts upon your loyalty," he choked and walked away to the window. Suddenly he wheeled with blazing eyes of agony. "Why must that old horrible remorse grind and tear!" he cried, "now when I can not bear it! It is keener and crueler now than it was that day when you found me in the forest. Every new twist of this damnable mess has been a barb tearing the old wound open afresh. And now--I--I can not even find Miss Westfall. I have motored over the roads in vain. The van is gone from the lake shore. It seemed that I must make one final desperate effort to make her understand--" With the memory of the eyes of Diane and Philip flashing messages of utter trust that day beneath the trees, the Baron sighed. "Ronador," he said kindly, "it would have been in vain." "And now," Ronador moistened his pallid lips, "there is a rumble of war from Galituria." "Yes," said Tregar sadly, "Themar was a traitor." "I told him much," said Ronador, great drops of moisture standing forth upon his forehead. "It seemed that I must, to make him understand the urgent need of silencing Granberry forever. He cabled the news to Galituria and sold it. I am ill and discouraged. There is fever in my blood, Tregar, from this climate of eternal summer--a fever in my head--" Tregar stroked his beard. "There is a doctor," he said quietly, "of whom Poynter has told me much--a doctor who healed Granberry's mind as well as his body. I had thought to go to him myself--to rest. I, too, am tired, Ronador. One goes to a little hamlet and an old man guides by a road to the south into the Everglades. Let us go there together." "No!" said Ronador sullenly. "Let us rather go home. I am sick of this land of insolent men like Granberry and Poynter, who bend the knee to no man." "You would go back then, ill, sullen, resentful, with the news that we must lay before your father? By Heaven, no!" thundered the Baron with one of his infrequent outbursts. "Let us go back smiling, for all we have lost, and seek to tell of this child of Theodomir with what grace we can muster. Poynter is at the bedside of his father. Granberry has gone to learn the tale of the other candlestick. These men, Ronador, we must see again before we sail. In the meantime, there is Poynter's physician." "Very well," said Ronador, goaded to a sudden consent by a fevered wave of nausea and shaking, "let us go to him." So came Prince Ronador and the Baron to the island lodge of Mic-co. Though Ronador in the first disorder of rebellious mind and body, had fancied himself sicker than he really was, he was suffering more now than even Tregar guessed. The last stage of the journey to a man of less indomitable grit and courage would have been impossible. It was no sickness of the mind alone. His body was wildly ravaged by a fever. Through a dizzy blur which distorted every object and which frowningly he sought to drive away with clenched hands, he stared at the lodge, stared at Keela, stared at the grave and quiet face of Mic-co. He was still staring vaguely about him when night curtained the lilied pool and the stars flashed brightly overhead. "I am not ill, Tregar!" he insisted curtly. "Let me rest by the pool. There is peace here and I am tired. We traveled rapidly--" Nevertheless, for all his feverish denial, his desperate attempts to keep to the thread of desultory talk were pitiful. He frowned heavily, began his sentences slowly and trailed off incoherently to a halt and silence. The Baron turned compassionately away from him to Mic-co with a question. "Names," said Mic-co, "are nothing to me, Baron Tregar. They are merely a part of that great world from which I live apart. I am a Heidelberg man, since you feel sufficiently interested to inquire. Though my choice of a profession was merely a careless desire to know some one thing well, I have never regretted it." "I--I beg your pardon," stammered the Baron and glanced keenly at Mic-co. "It is a habit of mine," hinted Mic-co, "to take what confidence a man may offer and let him withhold what he will." "There is nothing to withhold!" flashed Ronador with sudden fierceness. "Why do you speak of it?" Mic-co thought of a white-faced young fellow who had stubbornly refused to accept his hospitality, one morning beneath the live oaks, until he might name aloud his offenses in the sight of God and Man. This man before him, sweeping rapidly into the black gulf of delirium, was of a different caliber. By the pool Ronador leaped suddenly, his face quite colorless save where the flame of fever burned in his cheeks. "That Voice!" he said, standing in curious attitude of listening. "You hear it, Tregar? Always--always it comes so in the quietest hours. Tell him! Tell him! Why should I tell him? What is he to me? I may not purchase relief at the price of any man's respect. Only Tregar knows. Hush!--In God's name, hush! Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not kill!" He seemed, without conscious effort, to be repeating the words of this Voice with which he held this terrible communion, and waved Tregar back with an imperious gesture of defiance. Facing Mic-co he flung out his arm. "I am a murderer in the sight of God and Man!" he choked. "I murdered my cousin Theodomir for a dream of empire. I can not forget--Oh, God! I can not forget. The Voice bids me tell!" He dropped wildly to his knees, his eyes imploring. "Oh, God!" he prayed with pallid lips, "hear this, my prayer. I have paid in black hours of bitter suffering. I have played and lost and the fire of life is but ashes in my hand. Give me peace--peace!" He stayed so long upon his knees that Tregar touched him gently on the shoulder. "Ronador," he said gently. "Come. You are very ill and know not what you say." Ronador staggered blindly to his feet. Once more he waved the Baron aside and took up his terrible dialogue with the inner Voice. "The Voice! The Voice!" he whispered. "Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not kill! You lie!" he cried in a sudden outburst of terrible fierceness. "He was not a fool. He loved men more than the mockery and cant of courts. He loved--he trusted me--and I betrayed him. Who knew when he fled wildly away from the pomp and inequalities he hated? I! Who watched for his secret letters? I! Who came to America when his letter of homesick pleading came? I! I! I! Who killed him when conscience and duty would have sent him back to the court of his father? I, his cousin whom he loved above all men. You lie. I did love him. I was drunk with the royal glitter ahead. I craved it even as he hated it. Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not kill! Mercy! Mercy! I can not bear it." He fell groveling upon the floor and crawled to Mic-co's feet. "The Voice bids me tell!" he whispered, clutching fearfully at Mic-co's hand. "Twice, since, I would have killed to keep this thing of the candlestick from creeping back and back until that thing of long ago lay uncovered and I disgraced! . . . Theodomir hid in the Seminole village. No--no, you must listen--the Voice bids me tell or lose my reason. I came there at his bidding--his marriage to the Indian girl had been unhappy. He was homesick and this fair land of liberty had a rotten core. I struck him down and fled. You will heal and fight the Voice--" Mic-co bent and raised the groveling figure. "Peace!" he said, his face very white. "We will heal and quiet the Voice forever. Come!" Gently he led the sick man away. "He will sleep now, I think," he said a little later. "A drug is best when a Voice is mocking?--" The Baron leaned forward and caught Mic-co's arm in a grasp of iron. "Who are you," he whispered, "that you suffer with him now? You are white and shaking. Who are you that you know the tongue of my country?" Mic-co sighed. "I," said he sadly, "am that man he thought to kill!" White-faced, the Baron stared at the snowy beard and hair and the fine, dark eyes. "Theodomir!" he whispered brokenly. "Theodomir! It--it can not be." He fell to pacing the floor in violent agitation. "The eyes are quieter," he said at length with an effort, "but the hair and heard so white! I would not have guessed--I would not have guessed!" Again he stared. "Are you man or saint," he cried at last, "that you can forgive as I have seen your eyes forgive to-night?" "May a man look upon such remorse as that," asked Mic-co, "and not forgive? I loved him greatly. Had I loved him less--had I loved her less--that Indian wife who had no love in her heart for me, this hair of mine would not have turned snow-white when the Indians were fanning the flickering spark of life into a blaze again." "There is peace in your face," said Tregar a little bitterly, "and none of the old fretful discontent. Have you no single thought of regret for that fair land of ours you left?" "For that fatherland of rugged mountain and silver waterfall--yes!" cried Theodomir with sudden fire. "For the festering core of imperialism that darkens its beauty with sable wing--no! No single thought of regret. How pitiful and absurd our Lilliputian game of empire! What man is better than another? Tolstoi and Buddha, they are the men who knew. Was not my wildest error," he demanded reverting afresh to the other's reproach, "that homesick letter that brought him to my side? Peace came to me, Tregar, in building this lodge, in working in the field and hunting, in doctoring these primitive people who saved my life, in teaching the child of my Indian wife--" "The child of your wife! You mean your daughter?" "I have no child," said Theodomir. "The girl you saw to-night is my foster daughter, the child of my wife and the man for whose whim she begged me to divorce her." "No child!" exclaimed the Baron with a sickening flash of realization. "My poor Ronador!" "My kindness to her," said Mic-co, "was at first a discipline. Her mother deserted her and the old chief granted me half her life. I could not bear the touch of her hands or the look in her eyes for many months, but through her, Tregar, at last I learned peace and forgiveness and forbearance, as men should. I built the lodge for her and me. I taught her the ways of her white father. I made myself proficient in the English tongue that those traders and hunters and naturalists who stray here might guess nothing of my origin. I shall never again leave the peace and quiet of this island home. And you and I, Tregar, must quiet that Voice forever!" "Is that possible?" choked Tregar. "I think so," said Mic-co. "I think we may some day send him home with the Voice quieted forever and the remorse and suffering healed. Had I thought he was strong enough to bear it, I would have told him to-night." "Let me tell you," said Tregar with strong emotion, "how I found him in the forest, when years back I came to know this secret I have tried so hard to keep for him. I had been hunting with the King and lost my way in the forests of Grimwald. I found him there in the thickest part--naked, slashing his body wildly with a knife in an agony of remorse and penance and the most terrible grief I have ever witnessed. Before he well knew what he was about he had blurted forth the whole pitiful story--that he had killed his cousin in a moment of passion--that he must scourge and torture his body to discipline his soul. I--I shall not forget his face." "Poor fellow!" said Mic-co. "My poor cousin!" They wheeled suddenly at a choking sound in the doorway. Some wild memory of the Grimwald had surged through the fevered brain of the sick man. His clothes were gone, his body slashed cruelly in a dozen places. He had torn down the buckskin curtain at his window and bound it about his body in the fashion of earlier ages. How long he had stood there in the doorway they did not know. Now as they turned, he rushed forward and flung himself with a great heart-broken sob at the feet of his cousin. "Theodomir! Theodomir!" he cried. Tregar turned away from the sound of his terrible sobbing. CHAPTER LIV ON THE WESTFALL LAKE Hurrying clouds curtained the silver shield of a full moon and found themselves fringed gloriously with ragged light. It was a lake of white, whispering ghosts locking spectral branches in the wind, of slumbering lilies rustled by the drift of a boat; a lake of checkered lights and shadows fitfully mirroring stars at the mercy of the moon-flecked clouds. On the western shore of the wide, wind-ruffled sheet of water, on a wooded knoll, glimmered the lights of the village. To Diane, stretched comfortably upon the cushions of the boat, which had drifted idly about since early twilight, the night's sounds were indescribably peaceful. The lap and purl of water, the rustle of birch, the call of an owl in the forest, the noise of frog and tree toad and innumerable crickets, they were all, paradoxically enough, the wildwood sounds of silence. With a sigh the girl presently paddled in to shore. As she moored her boat, the moon swept majestically from the clouds and shone full upon a second boatman paddling briskly by the lily beds. The boat came on with a musical swirl of water; the bareheaded boatman waved his hand lazily to the girl standing motionless upon the moonlit wharf, and as lazily floated in. "Hello!" he called cheerfully. The moon, doomed to erotic service, was again upon the head of Mr. Poynter. "It's the milkman's boat!" explained Philip smiling. "He's a mighty decent chap." Diane's face was as pale as a lily. "How did you know?" she asked, but her eyes, for Philip, were welcome enough. "I saw Carl," said he, dexterously rounding to a point at her feet. "He told me." He lazily rocked the boat, met her troubled glance with frank serenity and said with his eyes what for the moment his laughing lips withheld. "Come, row about a bit," he said gently. "There's a lot to tell--" "The other candlestick?" "That," said Philip as he helped her in, "and more." The boat shot forth into the moonlit water. "And your father, Philip?" "Better," said Philip and feathered his oars conspicuously in a moment of constraint. Then flushing slightly, he met her glance with his usual frank directness. "Dad and I had quarreled, Diane," he said quietly, "and he was fretting. And now, though the fundamental cause of grievance still remains, we're better friends. Ames, the doctor, said that helped a lot." He was silent. "A dash of Spanish," he began thoughtfully, "a dash of Indian, and the blood of the old southern cavaliers--it's a ripping combination for loveliness, Diane!" Not quite so pale, Diane glanced demurely at the moon. "Yes, I know," nodded Philip with slightly impudent assurance; "but the moon is kind to lovers." "Tell me," begged Diane with a bright flush, "about the second candlestick." Somewhat reluctantly, with the moon urging him to madness, Philip obeyed. To Diane his words supplied the final link in the chain of mystery. "And Satterlee's yacht," finished Philip, leaning on his oars, "was laid up in Hoboken for repairs. Carl phoned his attorneys." "You spoke of seeing Carl?" "Yes. He was with his father then. Telegraphed me Monday. I have yet to see such glow and warmth in the faces of men. They're going back to Mic-co's lodge together for a while. Odd!" he added thoughtfully. "I've known Satterlee for years, a quiet chap of wonderful kindliness and generosity. But I've heard Dad tell mad tales of his reckless whims when he was younger." "And the first paper?" "Satterlee had almost forgotten it. It's so long ago. If he thought at all of its discovery it was to doubt any other fate for it than a waste-paper basket or a fire. Anything else was too preposterous. But he brooded a lot over the other. The most terrible results of his foolhardy whim Carl pledged me not to tell him. Says the blame is all his and he'll shoulder it. What little we did reveal, horrified Satterlee inexpressibly. You see he'd found the candlesticks in a ruined castle. They were sadly battered and he consigned them to a queer old wood-carver to patch up. In the patching, the shallow wells came to light, packed with faded, musty love letters from some young Spanish gallant to somebody's inconstant wife, and the carver spoke of them. Satterlee impetuously bade him halt his work and wrote a wild letter to Ann Westfall begging her to let him hide the truth in the well of the candlestick with the forlorn hope that one day Carl might know. This she granted. Later he had the candlesticks brought to his apartments to be sealed in his presence. As he took from his pocket the written account intended for Carl, another paper fluttered to the floor. It was the deathbed statement of Theodomir which in a whimsical moment he had drawn up for the entertainment of your father. He promptly consigned it to the other well with a shrug. He was greatly agitated and thought no more about it." "A careless act," said Diane, "to be fraught with such terrible results." Then she told the history of her father's letters. "A persistent moon!" said Philip, glancing up at its mild radiance. "And my head is queer again. Likely that very moon is shining on the minister in the village yonder." "Likely," said Diane cautiously. The boat swept boldly toward the western shore. Diane raised questioning eyes to his. "Where are you going?" she asked. "I'm sorry," said Philip. "I did mean to tell you before. It's abduction." "Abduction!" "I'm to be married in the village to-night. And I'm awfully afraid the benevolent old gentleman in the parsonage is waiting. He promised. Diane, I can't pretend to swing this function without you!" "Philip!" faltered Diane and meeting his level, imploring gaze, laughed and colored deliciously. "A matrimonial pirate!" said Philip. "That's what I am. I've got to be." "Aunt Agatha!" whispered Diane despairingly. "I'll patch it up with Aunt Agatha," promised Philip. "You forget I'm in strong with her now. Didn't I rescue a dime from the fish?" "And the Seminole girl makes her lover a shirt--it's always customary--" "You've forgotten," said that young practician with his most charming smile, "I've a shirt mended nicely along the sleeve and shoulder by my lady's fingers. Indeed, dear, I have it on! And to-morrow--it's Arcadia for you and me--" Somehow, with the words came a flood of memory pictures. There was Philip by the camp fire in Arcadia whittling his ridiculous wildwood pipe; Philip aboard the hay-camp and Philip in the garb of a nomadic Greek; Philip unwinding the music-machine for the staring Indians and building himself a tunic with Sho-caw's sewing machine; Philip and a moon above the marsh-- Utter loyalty and unchanging protection! Shaking, the girl covered her face with her hands. The boat's bow touched the shore; whistling softly, Philip leaped ashore and moored it. "Diane!" he said gently. The girl raised glistening, glorified eyes to his face and smiled, a radiant smile for all her eyes were bright with unshed tears. Philip held out his arms. The silvered sheet of water rippled placidly at their feet. There was wind among the birches. They watched the great moon sail behind a cloud and emerge, flooding the sylvan world with light. "Sweetheart," said Philip suddenly, "I thought that Arcadia was back there in Connecticut by the river, but it's here too! Dear little gypsy, it is everywhere that you are!" "It will be Arcadia--always!" said Diane, "for Arcadia is Together-land, isn't it, Philip?" The moon and Philip answered. 
12380	----	TWO THOUSAND MILES ON AN AUTOMOBILE BEING A DESULTORY NARRATIVE OF A TRIP THROUGH NEW ENGLAND, NEW YORK, CANADA, AND THE WEST BY "CHAUFFEUR" 1902 WITH EIGHTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANK VERBECK __________ To L. O. E. Who for more than sixteen hundred miles of the journey faced dangers and discomforts with an equanimity worthy a better cause, and whose company lightened the burdens and enhanced the pleasure of the "Chauffeur" ----------- CONTENTS CHAPTER I.-----Some Preliminary Observations II.----The Machine Used III.---The Start IV.----Into Ohio V.-----On to Buffalo VI.----Buffalo VII.---Buffalo to Canandaigua VIII.--The Morgan Mystery IX.----Through Western New York X.-----The Mohawk Valley XI.----The Valley of Lebanon XII.---An Incident of Travel XIII.--Through Massachusetts XIV.---Lexington and Concord XV.----Rhode Island and Connecticut XVI.---Anarchism XVII.--New York to Buffalo XVIII.-Through Canada Home ---------- FOREWORD ------------------------------------------------------------------ To disarm criticism at the outset, the writer acknowledges a thousand imperfections in this discursive story. In all truth, it is a most garrulous and incoherent narrative. Like the automobile, part of the time the narrative moves, part of the time it does not; now it is in the road pursuing a straight course; then again it is in the ditch, or far afield, quite beyond control and out of reason. It is impossible to write coolly, calmly, logically, and coherently about the automobile; it is not a cool, calm, logical, or coherent beast, the exact reverse being true. The critic who has never driven a machine is not qualified to speak concerning the things contained herein, while the critic who has will speak with the charity and chastened humility which spring from adversity. The charm of automobiling lies less in the sport itself than in the unusual contact with people and things, hence any description of a tour would be incomplete without reflections by the way; the imagination once in will not out; it even seeks to usurp the humbler function of observation. However, the arrangement of chapters and headings--like finger-posts or danger signs--is such that the wary reader may avoid the bad places and go through from cover to cover, choosing his own route. To facilitate the finding of what few morsels of practical value the book may contain, an index has been prepared which will enable the casual reader to select his pages with discrimination. These confessions and warnings are printed in this conspicuous manner so that the uncertain seeker after "something to read" may see at a glance the poor sort of entertainment offered herein, and replace the book upon the shelf without buying. CHAPTER ONE SOME PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS THE MADDING CROWD Any woman can drive an electric automobile, any man can drive a steam, but neither man nor woman can drive a gasoline; it follows its own odorous will, and goes or goes not as it feels disposed. For this very wilfulness the gasoline motor is the most fascinating machine of all. It possesses the subtle attraction of caprice; it constantly offers something to overcome; as in golf, you start out each time to beat your own record. The machine is your tricky and resourceful opponent. When you think it conquered and well-broken to harness, submissive and resigned to your will, behold it is as obstinate as a mule,--balks, kicks, snorts, puffs, blows, or, what is worse, refuses to kick, snort, puff, and blow, but stands in stubborn silence, an obdurate beast which no amount of coaxing, cajoling, cranking will start. One of the beauties of the beast is its strict impartiality. It shows no more deference to maker than to owner; it moves no more quickly for expert mechanic than for amateur driver. When it balks, it balks,--inventor, manufacturer, mechanic, stand puzzled; suddenly it starts,--they are equally puzzled. Who has not seen inventors of these capricious motors standing by the roadside scratching their heads in despair, utterly at a loss to know why the stubborn thing does not go? Who has not seen skilled mechanics in blue jeans and unskilled amateurs in jeans of leather, so to speak, flat on their backs under the vehicle, peering upward into the intricacies of the mechanism, trying to find the cause,--the obscure, the hidden source of all their trouble? And then the probing with wires, the tugs with wrenches, the wrestling with screw-drivers, the many trials,--for the most part futile,--the subdued language of the bunkers, and at length, when least expected, a start, and the machine goes off as if nothing at all had been the matter. It is then the skilled driver looks wise and does not betray his surprise to the gaping crowd, just looks as if the start were the anticipated result of his well-directed efforts instead of a chance hit amidst blind gropings. One cannot but sympathize with the vanity of the French chauffeur who stops his machine in the midst of a crowd when it is working perfectly, makes a few idle passes with wrenches and oil-cans, pulls a lever and is off, all for the pleasure of hearing the populace remark, "He understands his machine. He is a good one." While the poor fellow, who really is in trouble, sweats and groans and all but swears as he works in vain to find what is the matter, to the delight of the onlookers who laugh at what seems to them ignorance and lack of skill. And why should not these things be? Is not the crowd multitude always with us--or against us? There is no spot so dreary, no country so waste, no highway so far removed from the habitations and haunts of man that a crowd of gaping people will not spring up when an automobile stops for repairs. Choose a plain, the broad expanse of which is unbroken by a sign of man; a wood, the depths of which baffle the eye and tangle the foot; let your automobile stop for so long as sixty seconds, and the populace begin to gather, with the small boy in the van; like birds of prey they perch upon all parts of the machine, choosing by quick intuition those parts most susceptible to injury from weight and contact, until you scarcely can move and do the things you have to do. The curiosity of the small boy is the forerunner of knowledge, and must be satisfied. It is quite idle to tell him to "Keep away!" it is worse than useless to lose your temper and order him to "Clear out!" it is a physical impossibility for him to do either; the law of his being requires him to remain where he is and to indefatigably get in the way. If he did not pry into everything and ask a thousand questions, the thoughtful observer would be fearful lest he were an idiot. The American small boy is not idiotic; tested by his curiosity concerning automobiles, he is the fruition of the centuries, the genius the world is awaiting, the coming ruler of men and empires, or--who knows?--the coming master of the automobile. Happily, curiosity is not confined to the small boy; it is but partially suppressed in his elders,--and that is lucky, for his elders, and their horses, can often help. The young chauffeur is panicky if he comes to a stop on a lonely road, where no human habitation is visible; he fears he may never get away, that no help will come; that he must abandon his machine and walk miles for assistance. The old chauffeur knows better. It matters not to him how lonely the road, how remote the spot, one or two plaintive blasts of the horn and, like mushrooms, human beings begin to spring up; whence they come is a mystery to you; why they come equally a mystery to them, but come they will, and to help they are willing, to the harnessing of horses and the dragging of the heavy machine to such place as you desire. This willingness, not to say eagerness, on the part of the farmer, the truckman, the liveryman, in short, the owner of horses, to help out a machine he despises, which frightens his horses and causes him no end of trouble, is an interesting trait of human nature; a veritable heaping of coals of fire. So long as the machine is careering along in the full tide of glory, clearing and monopolizing the highway, the horse owner wishes it in Hades; but let the machine get into trouble, and the same horse owner will pull up out of the ditch into which he has been driven, hitch his horses to the cause of his scare, haul it to his stable, and make room by turning his Sunday carryall into the lane, and four farmers, three truckmen, and two liverymen out of five will refuse all offers of payment for their trouble. But how galling to the pride of the automobilist to see a pair of horses patiently pulling his machine along the highway, and how he fights against such an unnatural ending of a day's run. The real chauffeur, the man who knows his machine, who can run it, who is something more than a puller of levers and a twister of wheels, will not seek or permit the aid of horse or any other power, except where the trouble is such that no human ingenuity can repair on the road. It is seldom the difficulty is such that repairs cannot be made on the spot. The novice looks on in despair, the experienced driver considers a moment, makes use of the tools and few things he has with him, and goes on. It is astonishing how much can be done with few tools and practically no supplies. A packing blows out; if you have no asbestos, brown paper, or even newspaper saturated with oil, will do for the time being; if a wheel has to be taken off, a fence-rail makes an excellent jack; if a chain is to be riveted, an axe or even a stone makes a good dolly-bar and your wrench an excellent riveting hammer; if screws, or nuts, or bolts drop off, --and they do,--and you have no extra, a glance at the machine is sure to disclose duplicates that can be removed temporarily to the more essential places. Then, too, no one has ever exhausted the limitless resources of a farmer's wagon-shed. In it you find the accumulations of generations, bits of every conceivable thing,--all rusty, of course, and seemingly worthless, but sure to serve your purpose on a pinch, and so accessible, never locked; just go in and help yourself. Nowadays farmers use and abuse so much complicated machinery, that it is more than likely one could construct entire an automobile from the odds and ends of a half-dozen farm-yards. All boys and most girls--under twelve--say, "Gimme a ride;" some boys and a few girls--over twelve--say, "You look lonesome, mister." What the hoodlums of the cities say will hardly bear repetition. In spite of its swiftness the automobile offers opportunities for studying human nature appreciated only by the driver. The city hoodlum is a most aggressive individual; he is not invariably in tattered clothes, and is by no means confined to the alleys and side streets. The hoodlum element is a constituent part of human nature, present in every one; the classification of the individual depending simply upon the depth at which the turbulent element is buried, upon the number and thickness of the overlying strata of civilization and refinement. In the recognized hoodlum the obnoxious element is quite at the surface; in the best of us it is only too apt to break forth,--no man can be considered an absolutely extinct volcano. One can readily understand why owners and drivers of horses should feel and even exhibit a marked aversion towards the automobile, since, from their stand-point, it is an unmitigated nuisance; but why the hoodlums who stand about the street corners should be animated by a seemingly irresistible desire to hurl stones and brickbats--as well as epithets--at passing automobiles is a mystery worth solving; it presents an interesting problem in psychology. What is the mental process occasioned by the sudden appearance of an automobile, and which results in the hurling of the first missile which comes to hand? It must be a reversion to savage instincts, the instinct of the chase; something strange comes quickly into view; it makes a strange noise, emits, perhaps, a strange odor, is passing quickly and about to escape; it must be killed, hence the brickbat. Uncontrollable impulse! poor hoodlum, he cannot help it; if he could restrain the hand and stay the brickbat he would not be a hoodlum, but a man. Time and custom have tamed him so that he lets horses, bicycles, and carriages pass; he can't quite help slinging a stone at an advertising van or any strange vehicle, while the automobile is altogether too much. That it is the machine which rouses his savage instincts is clear from the fact that rarely is anything thrown at the occupants. Complete satisfaction is found in hitting the thing itself; no doubt regret would be felt if any one were injured, but if the stone resounds upon the iron frame of the moving devil, the satisfaction is felt that the best of us might experience from hitting the scaly sides of a slumbering sea-monster, for hit him we would, though at immediate risk of perdition. The American hoodlum has, withal, his good points. If you are not in trouble, he will revile and stone you; if in trouble, he will commiserate and assist. He is quick to put his shoulder to the wheel and push, pull or lift; often with mechanical insight superior to the unfortunate driver he will discern the difficulty and suggest the remedy; dirt has no terrors for him, oil is his delight, grease the goal of his desires; mind you, all this concerns the American hoodlum or the hoodlum of indefinite or of Irish extraction; it applies not to the Teutonic or other hoodlum. He will pass you by with phlegmatic indifference, he will not throw things at you, neither will he help you unless strongly appealed to, and then not over-zealously or over-intelligently; his application is short-lived and he hurries on; but the other hoodlum will stay with you all night if necessary, finding, no doubt, the automobile a pleasant diversion from a bed on the grass. But the dissension a quarter will cause! A battle royal was once produced by a dollar. They had all assisted, but, like the workers in the vineyard, some had come early and some late. The automobile, in trying to turn on a narrow road, had dropped off the side into low wet ground; the early comers could not quite get it back, but with the aid of the later it was done; the division of a dollar left behind raised the old, old problem. Unhappily, it fell into the hands of a late comer for distribution, and it was his contention that the final lift did the work, that all previous effort was so much wasted energy; the early comers contended that the reward should be in proportion to expenditure of time and muscle and not measured by actual achievement,--a discussion not without force on both sides, but cut short by a scrimmage involving far more force than the discussion. All of which goes to show the disturbing influence of money, for in all truth those who had assisted did not expect any reward; they first laughed to see the machine in the ditch, and then turned to like tigers to get it out. This whole question of paying for services in connection with automobiling is as interesting as it is new. The people are not adjusted to the strange vehicle. A man with a white elephant could probably travel from New York to San Francisco without disbursing a penny for the keeping of his animal. Farmers and even liverymen would keep and feed it on the way without charge. It is a good deal so with an automobile; it is still sufficiently a curiosity to command respect and attention. The farmer is glad to have it stop in front of his door or put up in his shed; he will supply it with oil and water. The blacksmith would rather have it stop at his shop for repair than at his rival's,--it gives him a little notoriety, something to talk about. So it is with the liveryman at night; he is, as a rule, only too glad to have the novelty under his roof, and takes pride in showing it to the visiting townsfolk. They do not know what to charge, and therefore charge nothing. It is often with difficulty anything can be forced upon them; they are quite averse to accepting gratuities; meanwhile, the farmer, whose horse and cart have taken up far less room and caused far less trouble, pays the fixed charge. These conditions prevail only in localities where automobiles are seen infrequently. Along the highways where they travel frequently all is quite changed; many a stable will not house them at any price, and those that will, charge goodly sums for the service. It is one thing to own an automobile, another thing to operate it. It is one thing to sit imposingly at the steering-wheel until something goes wrong, and quite another thing to repair and go on. There are chauffeurs and chauffeurs,--the latter wear the paraphernalia and are photographed, while the former are working under the machines. You can tell the difference by the goggles. The sham chauffeur sits in front and turns the wheel, the real sits behind and takes things as they come; the former wears the goggles, the latter finds sufficient protection in the smut on the end of his nose. There is every excuse for relying helplessly on an expert mechanic if you have no mechanical ingenuity, or are averse to getting dirty and grimy; but that is not automobiling; it is being run about in a huge perambulator. The real chauffeur knows every moment by the sound and "feel" of his machine exactly what it is doing, the amount of gasoline it is taking, whether the lubrication is perfect, the character and heat of the spark, the condition of almost every screw, nut, and bolt, and he runs his machine accordingly; at the first indication of anything wrong he stops and takes the stitch in time that saves ninety and nine later. The sham chauffeur sits at the wheel, and in the security of ignorance runs gayly along until his machine is a wreck; he may have hours, days, or even weeks of blind enjoyment, but the end is inevitable, and the repairs costly; then he blames every one but himself,--blames the maker for not making a machine that may be operated by inexperience forever, blames the men in his stable for what reason he knows not, blames the roads, the country, everything and everybody--but himself. It is amusing to hear the sham chauffeur talk. When things go well, he does it; when they go wrong, it is the fault of some one else; if he makes a successful run, the mechanic with him is a nonentity; if he breaks down, the mechanic is his only resource. It is more interesting to hear the mechanic--the real chauffeur --talk when he is flat on his back making good the mistakes of his master, but his conversation could not be printed _verbatim et literatim_,--it is explosive and without a muffler. The man who cannot run his machine a thousand miles without expert assistance should make no pretense to being a chauffeur, for he is not one. The chauffeur may use mechanics whenever he can find them; but if he can't find them, he gets along just as well; and when he does use them it is not for information and advice, but to do just the things he wants done and no more. The skilled enthusiast would not think of letting even an expert from the factory do anything to his machine, unless he stood over him and watched every movement; as soon would a lover of horses permit his hostlers to dope his favorite mount. CHAPTER TWO THE MACHINE USED MAKING READY TO START The machine was just an ordinary twelve hundred dollar single-cylinder American machine, with neither improvements nor attachments to especially strengthen it for a long tour; and it had seen constant service since January without any return to the shop for repairs. It was rated eight and one-half horse-power; but, as every one knows, American machines are overrated as a rule, while foreign machines are greatly underrated. A twelve horse-power American machine may mean not more than eight or ten; a twelve horse-power French machine, with its four cylinders, means not less than sixteen. The foreign manufacturer appreciates the advantage of having it said that his eight horse-power machine will run faster and climb better than the eight horsepower machine of a rival maker; hence the tendency to increase the power without changing the nominal rating. The American manufacturer caters to the demand of his customers for machines of high power by advancing the nominal rating quite beyond the power actually developed. But already things are changing here, and makers show a disposition to rate their machines low, for the sake of astonishing in performance. A man dislikes to admit his machine is rated at forty horse-power and to acknowledge defeat by a machine rated at twenty, when the truth is that each machine is probably about thirty. The tendency at the present moment is decidedly towards the French type,--two or four cylinders placed in front. In the construction of racing-cars and high-speed machines for such roads as they have on the other side, we have much to learn from the French,--and we have been slow in learning it. The conceit of the American mechanic amounts often to blind stubbornness, but the ease with which the foreign machines have passed the American in all races on smooth roads has opened the eyes of our builders; the danger just now is that they will go to the other extreme and copy too blindly. In the hands of experts, the foreign racing-cars are the most perfect road locomotives yet devised; for touring over American roads in the hands of the amateur they are worse than useless; and even experts have great difficulty in running week in and week out without serious breaks and delays. To use a slang phrase, "They will not stand the racket." However "stunning" they look on asphalt and macadam with their low, rakish bodies, resplendent in red and polished brass, on country roads they are very frequently failures. A thirty horse-power foreign machine costing ten or twelve thousand dollars, accompanied by one or more expert mechanics, may make a brilliant showing for a week or so; but when the time is up, the ordinary, cheap, country-looking, American automobile will be found a close second at the finish; not that it is a finer piece of machinery, for it is not; but it has been developed under the adverse conditions prevailing in this country and is built to surmount them. The maker in this country who runs his machine one hundred miles from his factory, would find fewer difficulties between Paris and Berlin. The temptation is great to purchase a foreign machine on sight; resist the temptation until you have ridden in it over a hundred miles of sandy, clayey, and hilly American roads; you may then defer the purchase indefinitely, unless you expect to carry along a man. Machine for machine, regardless of price, the comparison is debatable; but price for price, there is no comparison whatsoever; in fact, there is no inexpensive imported machine which compares for a moment with the American product. A single-cylinder motor possesses a few great advantages to compensate for many disadvantages; it has fewer parts to get out of order, and troubles can be much more quickly located and overcome. Two, three, and four cylinders run with less vibration and are better in every way, except that with every cylinder added the chances of troubles are multiplied, and the difficulty of locating them increased. Each cylinder must have its own lubrication, its ignition, intake, and exhaust mechanisms,--the quartette that is responsible for nine-tenths of the stops. Beyond eight or ten horse-power the single cylinder is hardly practicable. The kick from the explosion is too violent, the vibration and strain too great, and power is lost in transmission. But up to eight or ten horse-power the single-cylinder motor with a heavy fly-wheel is practicable, runs very smoothly at high speeds, mounts hills and ploughs mud quite successfully. The American ten horse-power single-cylinder motor will go faster and farther on our roads than most foreign double-cylinder machines of the same horse-power. It will last longer and require less repairs. The amateur who is not a pretty good mechanic and who wishes to tour without the assistance of an expert will do well to use the single-cylinder motor; he will have trouble enough with that without seeking further complications by the adoption of multiple cylinders. It is quite practicable to attain speeds of from twenty to thirty miles per hour with a single-cylinder motor, but for bad roads and hilly countries a low gear with a maximum of twenty to twenty-five miles per hour is better. The average for the day will be higher because better speed is maintained through heavy roads and on up grades. So far as resiliency is concerned, there is no comparison between the French double-tube tire and the heavy American single tube, --the former is far ahead, and is, of course, easily repaired on the road, but it does not seem to stand the severe wear of American roads, and it is very easily punctured. Our highways both in and out of cities are filled with things that cut, and bristle with wire-nails. The heavy American single-tube tire holds out quite well; it gets many deep cuts and takes nails like a pin-cushion, but comparatively few go through. The weight of the tire makes it rather hard riding, very hard, indeed, as compared with a fine Michelin. There are many devices for carrying luggage, but for getting a good deal into a small compass there is nothing equal to a big Scotch hold-all. It is waterproof to begin with, and holds more than a small steamer-trunk. It can be strapped in or under the machine anywhere. Trunks and hat-boxes may remain with the express companies, always within a few hours' call. What to wear is something of a problem. In late autumn and winter fur is absolutely essential to comfort. Even at fifteen or twenty miles an hour the wind is penetrating and goes through everything but the closest of fur. For women, fur or leather-lined coats are comfortable even when the weather seems still quite warm. Leather coats are a great protection against both cold and dust. Unhappily, most people who have no machines of their own, when invited to ride, have nothing fit to wear; they dress too thinly, wear hats that blow off, and they altogether are, and look, quite unhappy--to the great discomfort of those with them. It is not a bad plan to have available one or two good warm coats for the benefit of guests, and always carry water-proof coats and lap-covers. In emergency, thin black oil-cloth, purchasable at any country store, makes a good water-proof covering. Whoever is running a machine must be prepared for emergencies, for at any moment it may be necessary to get underneath. The man who is going to master his own machine must expect to get dirty; dust, oil, and grime plentifully distributed,--but dirt is picturesque, even if objectionable. Character is expressed in dirt; the bright and shining school-boy face is devoid of interest, an artificial product, quite unnatural; the smutty street urchin is an actor on life's stage, every daub, spot, and line an essential part of his make-up. The spic and span may go well with a coach and four, but not with the automobile. Imagine an engineer driving his locomotive in blue coat, yellow waistcoat, and ruffles,--quite as appropriate as a fastidious dress on the automobile. People are not yet quite accustomed to the grime of automobiling; they tolerate the dust of the golf links, the dirt of base-ball and cricket, the mud of foot-ball, and would ridicule the man who failed to dress appropriately for those games, but the mechanic's blouse or leather coat of automobiling, the gloves saturated with oil--these are comparatively unfamiliar sights; hence men are seen starting off for a hard run in ducks and serges, sacks, cutaways, even frocks, and hats of all styles; give a farmer a silk hat and patent leather boots to wear while threshing, and he would match them. Every sport has its own appropriate costume, and the costume is not the result of arbitrary choice, but of natural selection; if we hunt, fish, or play any outdoor game, sooner or later we find ourselves dressing like our associates. The tenderfoot may put on his cowboy's suit a little too soon and look and be very uncomfortable, but the costume is essential to success in the long run. The Russian cap so commonly seen is an affectation,--it catches the wind and is far from comfortable. The best head covering is a closely fitting Scotch cap. CHAPTER THREE THE START "IS THIS ROAD TO--" The trip was not premeditated--it was not of malice aforethought; it was the outcome of an idle suggestion made one hot summer afternoon, and decided upon in the moment. Within the same half-hour a telegram was sent the Professor inviting him for a ride to Buffalo. Beyond that point there was no thought,--merely a nebulous notion that might take form if everything went well. Hampered by no announcements, with no record to make or break, the trip was for pleasure,--a mid-summer jaunt. We did intend to make the run to Buffalo as fast as roads would permit,--but for exhilaration only, and not with any thought of making a record that would stand against record-making machines, driven by record-breaking men. It is much better to start for nowhere and get there than to start for somewhere and fall by the wayside. Just keep going, and the machine will carry you beyond your expectations. The Professor knew nothing about machinery and less about an automobile, but where ignorance is bliss it is double-distilled folly to know anything about the eccentricities of an automobile. To enjoy automobiling, one must know either all or nothing about the machine,--a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; on the part of the guest it leads to all sorts of apprehensions, on the part of the chauffeur to all sorts of experiments. About five hundred miles is the limit of a man's ignorance; he then knows enough to make trouble; at the end of another five hundred he is of assistance, at the end of the third he will run the machine himself--your greatest pleasure is in the first five hundred. With some precocious individuals these figures may be reduced somewhat. The Professor adjusted his spectacles and looked at the machine: "A very wonderful contrivance, and one that requires some skill to operate. From lack of experience, I cannot hope to be of much practical assistance at first, but possibly a theoretical knowledge of the laws and principles governing things mechanical may be of service in an emergency. Since receiving your telegram, I have brushed up a little my knowledge of both kinematics and dynamics, though it is quite apparent that the operation of these machines, accompanied, as it is said, by many restraints and perturbations, falls under the latter branch. In view of the possibility--remote, I trust--of the machine refusing to go, I have devoted a little time to statics, and therefore feel that I shall be something more than a supercargo." "Well, you _are_ equipped, Professor; no doubt your knowledge will prove useful." "Knowledge is always useful if people in this busy age would only pause to make use of it. Mechanics has been defined as the application of pure mathematics to produce or modify motion in inferior bodies; what could be more apt? Is it not our intention to produce or modify motion in this inferior body before us?" Days after the Professor found the crank a more useful implement for the inducing of motion. It was Thursday morning, August 1, at exactly seven o'clock, that we passed south on Michigan Avenue towards South Chicago and Hammond. A glorious morning, neither hot nor cold, but just deliciously cool, with some promise--afterwards more than fulfilled--of a warm day. The hour was early, policemen few, streets clear, hence fast speed could be made. As we passed Zion Temple, near Twelfth Street, the home of the Dowieites, the Professor said: "A very remarkable man, that Dowie." "A fraud and an impostor," I retorted, reflecting current opinion. "Possibly; but we all impose more or less upon one another; he has simply made a business of his imposition. Did you ever meet him?" "No; it's hardly worth while." "It is worth while to meet any man who influences or controls a considerable body of his fellow-men. The difference between Mohammed and Joseph Smith is of degree rather than kind. Dowie is down towards the small end of the scale, but he is none the less there, and differs in kind from your average citizen in his power to influence and control others. I crossed the lake with him one night and spent the evening in conversation." "What are your impressions of the man?" "A shrewd, hard-headed, dogmatic Scotchman,--who neither smokes nor drinks." "Who calls himself Elijah come to earth again." "I had the temerity to ask him concerning his pretensions in that direction, and he said, substantially, 'I make no claims or assertions, but the Bible says Elijah will return to earth; it does not say in what form or how he will manifest himself; he might choose your personality; he might choose mine; he has not chosen yours, there are some evidences that he has chosen mine." "Proof most conclusive." "It satisfies his followers. After all, perhaps it does not matter so much what we believe as how we believe." A few moments later we were passing the new Christian Science Temple on Drexel Boulevard,--a building quite simple and delightful, barring some garish lamps in front. "There is another latter-day sect," said the Professor; "one of the phenomena of the nineteenth century." "You would not class them with the Dowieites?" "By no means, but an interesting part of a large whole which embraces at one extreme the Dowieites. The connecting link is faith. But the very architecture of the temple we have just passed illustrates the vast interval that separates the two." "Then you judge a sect by its buildings?" "Every faith has its own architecture. The temple at Karnak and the tabernacle at Salt Lake City are petrifactions of faith. In time the places of worship are the only tangible remains--witness Stonehenge." Chicago boasts the things she has not and slights the things she has; she talks of everything but the lake and her broad and almost endless boulevards, yet these are her chief glories. For miles and miles and miles one can travel boulevards upon which no traffic teams are allowed. From Fort Sheridan, twenty-five miles north, to far below Jackson Park to the south there is an unbroken stretch. Some day Sheridan Road will extend to Milwaukee, ninety miles from Chicago. One may reach Jackson Park, the old World's Fair site, by three fine boulevards,--Michigan, broad and straight; Drexel, with its double driveways and banks of flowers, trees, and shrubbery between; Grand, with its three driveways, and so wide one cannot recognize an acquaintance on the far side, cannot even see the policeman frantically motioning to slow down. It does not matter which route is taken to the Park, the good roads end there. We missed our way, and went eighteen miles to Hammond, over miles of poor pavement and unfinished roads. That was a pull which tried nerves and temper,--to find at the end there was another route which involved but a short distance of poor going. It is all being improved, and soon there will be a good road to Hammond. Through Indiana from Hammond to Hobart the road is macadamized and in perfect condition; we reached Hobart at half-past nine; no stop was made. At Crocker two pails of water were added to the cooling tank. At Porter the road was lost for a second time,--exasperating. At Chesterton four gallons of gasoline were taken and a quick run made to Burdick. The roads are now not so good,--not bad, but just good country roads, some stretches of gravel, but generally clay, with some sand here and there. The country is rolling, but no steep hills. Up to this time the machine had required no attention, but just beyond Otis, while stopping to inquire the way, we discovered a rusty round nail embedded to the head in the right rear tire. The tire showed no signs of deflation, but on drawing the nail the air followed, showing a puncture. As the nail was scarcely three-quarters of an inch long,--not long enough to go clear through and injure the inner coating on the opposite side,--it was entirely practical to reinsert and run until it worked out. A very fair temporary repair might have been made by first dipping the nail in a tire cement, but the nail was rusty and stuck very well. An hour later, at La Porte, the nail was still doing good service and no leak could be detected. We wired back to Chicago to have an extra tire sent on ahead. From Chicago to La Porte, by way of Hobart, the roads are excellent, excepting always the few miles near South Chicago. Keep to the south--even as far south as Valparaiso--rather than to the north, near the lake. The roads are hilly and sandy near the lake. Beware the so-called road map; it is a snare and a delusion. A road which seems most seductive on the bicycler's road map may be a sea of sand or a veritable quagmire, but with a fine bicycle path at the side. As you get farther east these cinder paths are protected by law, with heavy fines for driving thereon; it requires no little restraint to plough miles and miles through bottomless mud on a narrow road in the Mohawk valley with a superb three-foot cinder path against your very wheels. The machine of its own accord will climb up now and then; it requires all the vigilance of a law-abiding driver to keep it in the mud, where it is so unwilling to travel. So far as finding and keeping the road is concerned,--and it is a matter of great concern in this vast country, where roads, cross-roads, forks, and all sorts of snares and delusions abound without sign-boards to point the way,--the following directions may be given once for all: If the proposed route is covered by any automobile hand-book or any automobile publication, get it, carry it with you and be guided by it; all advice of ancient inhabitants to the contrary notwithstanding. If there is no publication covering the route, take pains to get from local automobile sources information about the several possible routes to the principal towns which you wish to make. If you can get no information at all from automobile sources, you can make use--with great caution--of bicycle road maps, of the maps rather than the redlined routes. About the safest course is to spread out the map and run a straight line between the principal points on the proposed route, note the larger villages, towns, and cities near the line so drawn, make a list of them in the order they come from the starting-point, and simply inquire at each of these points for the best road to the next. If the list includes places of fair size,--say, from one to ten or twenty thousand inhabitants, it is reasonably certain that the roads connecting such places will be about as good as there are in the vicinity; now and then a better road may be missed, but, in the long run, that does not matter much, and the advantage of keeping quite close to the straight line tells in the way of mileage. It is usually worse than useless to inquire in any place about the roads beyond a radius of fifteen or twenty miles; plenty of answers to all questions will be forthcoming, but they simply mislead. In these days of railroads, farmers no longer make long overland drives. It is much easier to get information in small villages than in cities. In a city about all one can learn is how to get out by the shortest cut. Once out, the first farmer will give information about the roads beyond. In wet weather the last question will be, "Is the road clayey or bottomless anywhere?" In dry weather, "Is there any deep, soft sand, and are there any sand hills?" The judgment of a man who is looking at the machine while he is giving information is biased by the impressions as to what the machine can do; make allowances for this and get, if possible, an accurate description of the condition of any road which is pronounced impassable, for you alone know what the machine can do, and many a road others think you cannot cover is made with ease. To the farmer the automobile is a traction engine, and he advises the route accordingly; he will even speculate whether a given bridge will support the extraordinary load. Once we were directed to go miles out of our way over a series of hills to avoid a stretch of road freshly covered with broken stone, because our solicitous friends were sure the stones would cut the rubber tires. On the other hand, in Michigan, a well meaning old lady sent us straight against the very worst of sand hills, not a weed, stone, or hard spot on it, so like quicksand that the wheels sank as they revolved; it was the only hill from which we retreated, to find that farmers avoided that particular road on account of that notorious hill, to find also a good, well-travelled road one mile farther around. These instances are mentioned here to show how hazardous it is to accept blindly directions given. "Is this the road to--?" is the chauffeur's ever recurring shout to people as he whizzes by. Four times out of five he gets a blank stare or an idiotic smile. Now and then he receives a quick "Yes" or "No." If time permits to stop and discuss the matter at length, do so with a man; if passing quickly, ask a woman. A woman will reply before a man comprehends what is asked; the feminine mind is so much more alert than the masculine; then, too, a woman would rather know what a man is saying than watch a machine, while a man would rather see the machine than listen;--in many ways the automobile differentiates the sexes. Of a group of school children, the girls will answer more quickly and accurately than the boys. What they know, they seem to know positively. A boy's wits go wool gathering; he is watching the wheels go round. At Carlyle, on the way to South Bend, the tire was leaking slightly, the nail had worked out. The road is a fine wide macadam, somewhat rolling as South Bend is approached. By the road taken South Bend is about one hundred miles from Chicago,--the distance actually covered was some six or eight miles farther, on account of wanderings from the straight and narrow path. The hour was exactly two fifty-three, nearly eight hours out, an average of about twelve and one-half miles an hour, including all stops, and stops count in automobiling; they pull the average down by jumps. The extra tire was to be at Elkhart, farther on, and the problem was to make the old one hold until that point would be reached. Just as we were about to insert a plug to take the place of the nail, a bicycle repairer suggested rubber bands. A dozen small bands were passed through the little fork made by the broken eye of a large darning-needle, stretched tight over a wooden handle into which the needle had been inserted; some tire cement was injected into the puncture, and the needle carrying the stretched bands deftly thrust clear through; on withdrawing the needle the bands remained, plugging the hole so effectually that it showed no leak until some weeks later, when near Boston, the air began to work slowly through the fabric. Heavy and clumsy as are the large single-tube tires, it is quite practicable to carry an extra one, though we did not. One is pretty sure to have punctures,--though two in twenty-six hundred miles are not many. Nearly an hour was spent at South Bend; the river road, following the trolley line, was taken to Elkhart. Near Osceola a bridge was down for repairs; the stream was quite wide and swift but not very deep. From the broken bridge the bottom seemed to be sand and gravel, and the approaches on each side were not too steep. There was nothing to do but go through or lose many miles in going round. Putting on all power we went through with no difficulty whatsoever, the water at the deepest being about eighteen to twenty inches, somewhat over the hubs. If the bottom of the little stream had been soft and sticky, or filled with boulders, fording would have been out of the question. Before attempting a stream, one must make sure of the bottom; the depth is of less importance. We did not run into Elkhart, but passed about two miles south in sight of the town, arriving at Goshen at four fifteen. The roads all through here seem to be excellent. From Goshen our route was through Benton and Ligonier, arriving at Kendallville at exactly eight o'clock. The Professor with painstaking accuracy kept a log of the run, noting every stop and the time lost. In this first day's run of thirteen hours, the distance covered by route taken was one hundred and seventy miles; deducting all stops, the actual running time was nine hours and twenty minutes, an average of eighteen miles per hour while the machine was in motion. For an ordinary road machine this is a high average over so long a stretch, but the weather was perfect and the machine working like a clock. The roads were very good on the whole, and, while the country was rolling, the grades were not so steep as to compel the use of the slow gear to any great extent. The machine was geared rather high for any but favorable conditions, and could make thirty-five miles an hour on level macadam, and race down grade at an even higher rate. Before reaching Buffalo we found the gearing too high for some grades and for deep sand. On the whole, the roads of Northern Indiana are good, better than the roads of any adjoining State, and we were told the roads of the entire State are very good. The system of improvement under State laws seems to be quite advanced. It is a little galling to the people of Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio to find the humble Hoosier is far ahead in the matter of road building. If all the roads between Chicago and New York averaged as good as those of Indiana, the trip would present fewer difficulties and many more delights. The Professor notes that up to this point nine and three-quarters gallons of gasoline have been consumed,--seventeen miles to the gallon. When a motor is working perfectly, the consumption of gasoline is always a pretty fair indication of the character of the roads. Our machine was supposed to make twenty miles to the gallon, and so it would on level roads, with the spark well advanced and the intake valve operating to a nicety; but under adverse conditions more gasoline is used, and with the hill-climbing gear four times the gasoline is used per mile. The long run of this first day was most encouraging; but the test is not the first day, nor the second, nor even the first week, nor the second, but the steady pull of week in and week out. With every mile there is a theoretical decrease in the life and total efficiency of the machine; after a run of five hundred or a thousand miles this decrease is very perceptible. The trouble is that while the distance covered increases in arithmetical progression, the deterioration of the machine is in geometrical. During the first few days a good machine requires comparatively little attention each day; during the last weeks of a long tour it requires double the attention and ten times the work. No one who has not tried it can appreciate the great strain and the wear and tear incidental to long rides on American roads. Going at twenty or twenty-five miles an hour in a machine with thirty-two-inch wheels and short wheel-base gives about the same exercise one gets on a horse; one is lifted from the seat and thrown from side to side, until you learn to ride the machine as you would a trotter and take the bumps, accordingly. It is trying to the nerves and the temper, it exercises every muscle in the body, and at night one is ready for a good rest. Lovers of the horse frequently say that automobiling is to coaching as steam yachting is to sailing,--all of which argues the densest ignorance concerning automobiling, since there is no sport which affords anything like the same measure of exhilaration and danger, and requires anything like the same amount of nerve, dash, and daring. Since the days of Roman chariot racing the records of man describe nothing that parallels automobile racing, and, so far as we have any knowledge, chariot racing, save for the plaudits of vast throngs of spectators, was tame and uneventful compared with the frightful pace of sixty and eighty miles an hour in a throbbing, bounding, careering road locomotive, over roads practically unknown, passing persons, teams, vehicles, cattle, obstacles, and obstructions of all kinds, with a thousand hair-breadth escapes from wreck and destruction. The sport may not be pretty and graceful; it lacks the sanction of convention, the halo of tradition. It does not admit of smart gowns and gay trappings; it is the last product of a mechanical age, the triumph of mechanical ingenuity, the harnessing of mechanical forces for pleasure instead of profit,--the automobile is the mechanical horse, and, while not as graceful, is infinitely more powerful, capricious, and dangerous than the ancient beast. CHAPTER THREE THE START THE RAILROAD SPIKE A five o'clock call, though quite in accordance with orders, was received with some resentment and responded to reluctantly, the Professor remarking that it seemed but fair to give the slow-going sun a reasonable start as against the automobile. About fifty minutes were given to a thorough examination of the machine. Beyond the tightening of perhaps six or eight nuts there was nothing to do, everything was in good shape. But there is hardly a screw or nut on a new automobile that will not require tightening after a little hard usage; this is quite in the nature of things, and not a fault. It is only under work that every part of the machine settles into place. It is of vital importance during the first few days of a long tour to go over every screw, nut, and bolt, however firm and tight they may appear. In time many of the screws and nuts will rust and corrode in place so as to require no more attention, but all that are subjected to great vibration will work loose, soon or late. The addition of one or two extra nuts, if there is room, helps somewhat; but where it is practical, rivet or upset the bolt with a few blows of the hammer; or with a punch, cold chisel, or even screw-driver jam the threads near the nut,--these destructive measures to be adopted only at points where it is rarely necessary to remove the bolts, and where possibilities of trouble from loosening are greater than any trouble that may be caused by destroying the threads. We left Kendallville at ten minutes past seven; a light rain was falling which laid the dust for the first two miles. With top, side curtains, and boot we were perfectly dry, but the air was uncomfortably cool. At Butler, an hour and a half later, the rain was coming down hard, and the roads were beginning to be slippery, with about two inches of mud and water. We caught up with an old top buggy, curtains all on and down, a crate of ducks behind, the horse slowly jogging along at about three miles per hour. We wished to pass, but at each squawk of the horn the old lady inside simply put her hand through under the rear curtain and felt to see what was the matter with her ducks. We were obliged to shout to attract her attention. In the country the horn is not so good for attracting attention as a loud gong. The horn is mistaken for dinner-horns and distant sounds of farmyard life. One may travel for some distance behind a wagon-load of people, trying to attract their attention with blasts on the horn, and see them casually look from side to side to see whence the sound proceeds, apparently without suspecting it could come from the highway. The gong, however, is a well-known means of warning, used by police and fire departments and by trolley lines, and it works well in the country. For some miles the Professor had been drawing things about him, and as he buttoned a newspaper under his coat remarked, "The modern newspaper is admirably designed to keep people warm--both inside and out. Under circumstances such as these one can understand why it is sometimes referred to as a 'blanket sheet.' The morning is almost cold enough for a 'yellow journal,'" and the Professor wandered on into an abstract dissertation upon journalism generally, winding up with the remark that, "It was the support of the yellow press which defeated Bryan;" but then the Professor is neither a politician nor the son of a politician --being a Scotchman, and therefore a philosopher and dogmatist. The pessimistic vein in his remarks was checked by the purchase of a reversible waterproof shooting-jacket at Butler, several sizes too large, but warm; and the Professor remarked, as he gathered its folds about him, "I was never much of a shot, but with this I think I'll make a hit." "Strange how the thickness of a garment alters our views of things in general," I remarked. "My dear fellow, philosophy is primarily a matter of food; secondarily, a matter of clothes: it does not concern the head at all." At Butler we tightened the clutches, as the roads were becoming heavier. At Edgerton the skies were clearing, the roads were so much better that the last three miles into Ridgeville were made in ten minutes. At Napoleon some one advised the road through Bowling Green instead of what is known as the River road; in a moment of aberration we took the advice. For some miles the road was being repaired and almost impassable; farther on it seemed to be a succession of low, yellow sand-hills, which could only be surmounted by getting out, giving the machine all its power, and adding our own in the worst places. Sand--deep, bottomless sand--is the one obstacle an automobile cannot overcome. It is possible to traverse roads so rough that the machine is well-nigh wrenched apart; to ride over timbers, stones, and boulders; plough through mud; but sand--deep, yielding sand--brings one to a stand-still. A reserve force of twenty or thirty horse-power will get through most places, but in dry weather every chauffeur dreads hearing the word sand, and anxiously inquires concerning the character of the sandy places. Happily, when the people say the road is "sandy," they usually mean two or three inches of light soil, or gravelly sand over a firm foundation of some kind--that is all right; if there is a firm bottom, it does not matter much how deep the dust on top; the machine will go at nearly full speed over two or three inches of soft stuff; but if on cross-examination it is found that by sand they mean sand, and that ahead is a succession of sand ridges that are sand from base to summit, with no path, grass, or weeds upon which a wheel can find footing, then inquire for some way around and take it; it might be possible to plough through, but that is demoralizing on a hot day. Happily, along most sandy roads and up most hills of sand there are firm spots along one side or the other, patches of weeds or grass which afford wheel-hold. Usually the surface of the sand is slightly firmer and the large automobile tires ride on it fairly well. As a rule, the softest, deepest, and most treacherous places in sand are the tracks where wagons travel--these are like quicksand. The sun was hot, the sand was deep, and we had pushed and tugged until the silence was ominous; at length the lowering clouds of wrath broke, and the Professor said things that cannot be repeated. By way of apology, he said, afterwards, while shaking the sand out of his shoes, "It is difficult to preserve the serenity of the class-room under conditions so very dissimilar. I understand now why the golf-playing parson swears in a bunker. It is not right, but it is very human. It is the recrudescence of the old Adam, the response of humanity to emergency. Education and religion prepare us for the common-place; nature takes care of the extraordinary. The Quaker hits back before he thinks. It is so much easier to repent than prevent. On the score of scarcity alone, an ounce of prevention is worth several tons of repentance; and--" It was so apparent that the Professor was losing himself in abstractions, that I quietly let the clutches slip until the machine came to a stop, when the Professor looked anxiously down and said,-- "Is the blamed thing stuck again?" We turned off the Bowling Green road to the River road, which is not only better, but more direct from Napoleon to Perrysburg. It was the road we originally intended to take; it was down on our itinerary, and in automobiling it is better to stick to first intentions. The road follows the bank of the river up hill and down, through ravines and over creeks; it is hard, hilly, and picturesque; high speed was quite out of the question. Not far from Three Rivers we came to a horse tethered among the trees by the road-side; of course, on hearing and seeing the automobile and while we were yet some distance away, it broke its tether and was off on a run up the road, which meant that unless some one intervened it would fly on ahead for miles. Happily, in this instance some men caught the animal after it had gone a mile or two, we, meanwhile, creeping on slowly so as not to frighten it more. Loose horses in the road make trouble. There is no one to look after them, and nine times out of ten they will go running ahead of the machine, like frightened deer, for miles. If the machine stops, they stop; if it starts, they start; it is impossible to get by. All one can do is to go on until they turn into a farmyard or down a cross-road. The road led into Toledo, but we were told that by turning east at Perrysburg, some miles southwest of Toledo, we would have fifty miles or more of the finest road in the world,--the famous Perry's Pike. All day long we lived in anticipation of the treat to come; at each steep hill and when struggling in the sand we mentioned Perry's Pike as the promised land. When we viewed it, we felt with Moses that the sight was sufficient. In its day it must have been one of the wonders of the West, it is so wide and straight. In the centre is a broad, perfectly flat, raised strip of half-broken limestone. The reckless sumptuousness of such a highway in early days must have been overpowering, but with time and weather this strip of stone has worn into an infinite number of little ruts and hollows, with stones the size of cocoanuts sticking up everywhere. A trolley-line along one side of this central stretch has not improved matters. Perry's Pike is so bad people will not use it; a road alongside the fence has been made by travel, and in dry weather this road is good, barring the pipes which cross it from oil-wells, and the many stone culverts, at each of which it is necessary to swing up on to the pike. The turns from the side road on to the pike at these culverts are pretty sharp, and in swinging up one, while going at about twenty-five miles an hour, we narrowly escaped going over the low stone wall into the ditch below. On that and one other occasion the Professor took a firmer hold of the side of the machine, but, be it said to the credit of learning, at no time did he utter an exclamation, or show the slightest sign of losing his head and jumping--as he afterwards remarked, "What's the use?" To any one by the roadside the danger of a smash-up seems to come and pass in an instant,--not so to the person driving the machine; to him the danger is perceptible a very appreciable length of time before the critical point is reached. The secret of good driving lies in this early and complete appreciation of difficulties and dangers encountered. "Blind recklessness" is a most expressive phrase; it means all the words indicate, and is contra-distinguished from open-eyed or wise recklessness. The timid man is never reckless, the wise man frequently is, the fool always; the recklessness of the last is blind; if he gets through all right he is lucky. It is reckless to race sixty miles an hour over a highway; but the man who does it with his eyes wide open, with a perfect appreciation of all the dangers, is, in reality, less reckless than the man who blindly runs his machine, hit or miss, along the road at thirty miles an hour,--the latter leaves havoc in his train. One must have a cool, quick, and accurate appreciation of the margin of safety under all circumstances; it is the utilization of this entire margin--to the very verge--that yields the largest results in the way of rapid progress. Every situation presents its own problem,--a problem largely mechanical,--a matter of power, speed, and obstructions; the chauffeur will win out whose perception of the conditions affecting these several factors is quickest and clearest. One man will go down a hill, or make a safe turn at a high rate of speed, where another will land in the ditch, simply because the former overlooks nothing, while the latter does. It is not so much a matter of experience as of natural bent and adaptability. Some men can drive machines with very little experience and no instructions; others cannot, however long they try and however much they are told. Accidents on the road are due to Defects in the road, Defects in the machine, or Defects in the driver. American roads are bad, but not so bad that they can, with justice, be held responsible for many of the troubles attributed to them. The roads are as they are, a practically constant,--and, for some time to come,--an unchangeable quantity. The roads are like the hills and the mountains, obstacles which must be overcome, and machines must be constructed to overcome them. Complaints against American roads by American manufacturers of automobiles are as irrelevant to the issue as would be complaints on the part of traction-engine builders or wagon makers. Any man who makes vehicles for a given country must make them to go under the conditions--good, bad, or indifferent--which prevail in that country. In building automobiles for America or Australia, the only pertinent question is, "What are the roads of America or Australia?" not what ought they to be. The manufacturer who finds fault with the roads should go out of the business. Roads will be improved, but in a country so vast and sparsely settled as North America, it is not conceivable that within the next century a net-work of fine roads will cover the land; for generations to come there will be soft roads, sandy roads, rocky roads, hilly roads, muddy roads,--and the American automobile must be so constructed as to cover them as they are. The manufacturer who waits for good roads everywhere should move his factory to the village of Falling Waters, and sleep in the Kaatskills. Machines which give out on bad roads, simply because the roads are bad, are faultily constructed. Defects in roads, to which mishaps may be fairly attributed, are only those unlooked for conditions which make trouble for all other vehicles, such as wash-outs, pit-holes, weak culverts, broken bridges,--in short, conditions which require repairs to restore the road to normal condition. The normal condition may be very bad; but whatever it is, the automobile must be constructed so as to travel thereon, else it is not adapted to that section of the country. It may be discouraging to the driver for pleasure to find in rainy weather almost bottomless muck and mud on portions of the main travelled highway between New York and Buffalo, but that, for the present, is normal. The manufacturer may regret the condition and wish for better, but he cannot be heard to complain, and if the machine, with reasonably careful driving, gives out, it is the fault of the maker and not the roads. It follows, therefore, that few troubles can be rightfully attributed to defects in the road, since what are commonly called defects are conditions quite normal to the country. It was nearly six o'clock when we arrived at Fremont. The streets were filled with people in gala attire, the militia were out, --bands playing, fire-crackers going,--a belated Fourth of July. When we stopped for water, we casually asked a small patriot,-- "What are you celebrating?" "The second of August," was the prompt reply. I left it to the Professor to find out what had happened on the second of August, for the art of teaching is the concealment of ignorance. With a fine assumption of his very best lecture-room manner, the Professor leaned carelessly upon the delicate indicator on the gasoline tank and began: "That was a great day, my boy." "Yes, sir, it was." "And it comes once a year." "Why, sure." "Ahem--" in some confusion, "I mean you celebrate once a year." "Sure, we celebrate every second of August, and it comes every year." "Quite right, quite right; always recall with appropriate exercises the great events in your country's history." The Professor peered benignly over his glasses at the boy and continued kindly but firmly: "Now, my boy, do you go to school?" "Yes, sir." "Very good. Now can you tell me why the people of Fremont celebrate the second of August?" "Sure, it is on account of--" then a curious on-looker nudged the Professor in the ribs and began, as so many had done before,-- "Say, mister, it's none of my business--" "Exactly," groaned the Professor; "it weighs a ton--two tons sometimes--more in the sand; it cost twelve hundred dollars, and will cost more before we are done with it. Yes, I know what you are about to say, you could buy a 'purty slick' team for that price,--in fact, a dozen nags such as that one leaning against you,--but we don't care for horses. My friend here who is spilling the water all over the machine and the small boy, once owned a horse, it kicked over the dash-board, missed his mother-in-law and hit him; horse's intention good, but aim bad,--since then he has been prejudiced against horses; it goes by gasoline--sometimes; that is not a boiler, it is the cooler--on hot days we take turns sitting on it;--explosions,--electric spark,--yes, it is queer; --man at last stop made same bright remark; no danger from explosions if you are not too near,--about a block away is safer; start by turning a crank; yes, that is queer, queerer than the other queer things; cylinder does get hot, but so do we all at times; we ought to have water jackets--that is a joke that goes with the machine; yes, it is very fast, from fifty to seventy miles per--; 'per what?' you say; well, that depends upon the roads,--not at all, I assure you, no trouble to anticipate your inquiries by these answers--it is so seldom one meets any one who is really interested--you can order a machine by telegraph; any more information you would like?--No!--then my friend, in return, will you tell me why you celebrate the second of August?" "Danged if I know." And we never found out. At Bellevue we lighted our lamps and ran to Norwalk over a very fair road, arriving a few minutes after eight. Norwalk liveries did not like automobiles, so we put the machine under a shed. This second day's run was about one hundred and fifty miles in twelve hours and fifty-four minutes gross time; deducting stops, left nine hours and fifty-four minutes running time--an average of about fourteen and one-half miles per hour. Ohio roads are by no means so good as Indiana. Not until we left Painesville did we find any gravel to speak of. There was not much deep sand, but roads were dry, dusty, and rough; in many localities hard clay with deep ruts and holes. A six o'clock call and a seven o'clock breakfast gave time enough to inspect the machine. The water-tank was leaking through a crack in the side, but not so badly that we could not go on to Cleveland, where repairs could be made more quickly. A slight pounding which had developed was finally located in the pinion of a small gear-wheel that operated the exhaust-valve. It is sometimes by no means easy to locate a pounding in a gasoline motor, and yet it must be found and stopped. An expert from the factory once worked four days trying to locate a very loud and annoying pounding. He, of course, looked immediately at the crank- and wrist-pins, taking up what little wear was perceptible, but the pounding remained; then eccentric strap, pump, and every bearing about the motor were gone over one by one, without success; the main shaft was lifted out, fly-wheel drawn off, a new key made; the wheel drawn on again tight, all with no effect upon the hard knock which came at each explosion. At last the guess was made that possibly the piston was a trifle small for the cylinder; a new and slightly larger piston was put in and the noise ceased. It so happened that the expert had heard of one other such case, therefore he made the experiment of trying a fractionally larger piston as a last resort; imagine the predicament of the amateur, or the mechanic who had never heard of such a trouble. There is, of course, a dull thud at each explosion; this is the natural "kick" of the engine, and is very perceptible on large single-cylinder motors; but this dull thud is very different from the hammer-like knock resulting from lost motion between the parts, and the practised ear will detect the difference at once. The best way to find the pounding is to throw a stream of heavy lubricating oil on the bearings, one by one, until the noise is silenced for the moment. Even the piston can be reached with a flood of oil and tested. It is not easy to tell by feeling whether a bearing on a gasoline motor is too free. The heat developed is so great that bearings are left with considerable play. A leak in the water-tank or coils is annoying; but if facilities for permanent repair are lacking, a pint of bran or middlings from any farmer's barn, put in the water, will close the leak nine times out of ten. From Norwalk through Wakeman and Kipton to Oberlin the road is rather poor, with but two or three redeeming stretches near Kipton. It is mostly clay, and in dry weather is hard and dusty and rough from much traffic. Leading into Oberlin the road is covered with great broad flag-stones, which once upon a time must have presented a smooth hard surface, but now make a succession of disagreeable bumps. Out of Elyria we made the mistake of leaving the trolley line, and for miles had to go through sand, which greatly lessened our speed, but towards Stony River the road was perfect, and we made the best time of the day. It required some time in Cleveland to remove and repair the water-tank, cut a link out of the chain, take up the lost motion in the steering-wheel, and tighten up things generally. It was four o'clock before we were off for Painesville. Euclid Avenue is well paved in the city, but just outside there is a bit of old plank road that is disgracefully bad. Through Wickliff, Willoughby, and Mentor the road is a smooth, hard gravel. Arriving at Painesville a few minutes after seven, we took in gasoline, had supper, and prepared to start for Ashtabula. It was dark, so we could not see the tires; but just before starting I gave each a sharp blow with a wrench to see if it was hard,--a sharp blow, or even a kick, tells the story much better than feeling of the tires. One rear tire was entirely deflated. A railroad spike four and three-quarters inches long, and otherwise well proportioned, had penetrated full length. It had been picked up along the trolley line, was probably struck by the front wheel, lifted up on end so that the rear tire struck the sharp end exactly the right angle to drive the spike in lengthwise of the tread. It was a big ragged puncture which could not be repaired on the road; there was nothing to do but stop over night and have a tire sent out from Cleveland next day. While waiting the next morning, we jacked up the wheel and removed the damaged tire. It is not easy to remove quickly and put on heavy single-tube tires, and a few suggestions may not be amiss. The best tools are half-leaves of carriage springs. At any carriage shop one can get halves of broken springs. They should be sixteen or eighteen inches long, and are ready for use without forging filing or other preparation. With three such halves one man can take off a tire in fifteen or twenty minutes; two men will work a little faster; help on the road is never wanting. Let the wheel rest on the tire with valve down; loosen all the lugs; insert thin edge of spring-leaf between rim and tire, breaking the cement and partially freeing tire; insert spring-leaf farther at a point just about opposite valve and pry tire free from rim, holding and working it free by pushing in other irons or screw-drivers, or whatever you have handy; when lugs and tire are out of the hollow of the rim for a distance of eighteen or twenty inches, it will be easy to pass the iron underneath the tire, prying up the tire until it slips over the rim, when with the hands it can be pulled off entirely; the wheel is then raised and the valve-stem carefully drawn out. All this can be done with the wheel jacked up, but if resting on the tire as suggested, the valve-stem is protected during the efforts to loosen tire. To put on a single-tube tire properly, the rim should be thoroughly cleaned with gasoline, and the new tire put on with shellac or cement, or with simply the lugs to hold. Shellac can be obtained at any drug store, is quickly brushed over both the tire and the rim, and the tire put in place--that holds very well. Cement well applied is stronger. If the rim is well covered with old cement, gasoline applied to the surface of the old cement will soften it; or with a plumber's torch the rim may be heated without injuring enamel and the cement melted, or take a cake of cement, soften it in gasoline or melt it, or even light it like a stick of sealing-wax and apply it to the rim. If hot cement is used it will be necessary to heat the rim after the tire is on to make a good job. After the rim is prepared, insert valve-stem and the lugs near it; let the wheel down so as to rest on that part of the tire, then with the iron work the tire into the rim, beginning at each side of valve. The tire goes into place easily until the top is reached where the two irons are used to lift tire and lugs over the rim; once in rim it is often necessary to pound the tire with the flat of the iron to work the lugs into their places; by striking the tire in the direction it should go the lugs one by one will slip into their holes; put on the nuts and the work is done. In selecting a half-leaf of a spring, choose one the width of the springs to the machine, and carry along three or four small spring clips, for it is quite likely a spring may be broken in the course of a long run, and, if so, the half-leaf can be clipped over the break, making the broken spring as serviceable and strong for the time being as if sound. CHAPTER FIVE ON TO BUFFALO "GEE WHIZ!!" From Painesville three roads led east,--the North Ridge, Middle Ridge, and South Ridge. We followed the middle road, which is said to be by far the best; it certainly is as good a gravel road as one could ask. Some miles out a turn is made to the South Ridge for Ashtabula. There is said to be a good road out of Ashtabula; possibly there is, but we missed it at one of the numerous cross roads, and soon found ourselves wallowing through corn-fields, climbing hills, and threading valleys in the vain effort to find Girard,--a point quite out of our way, as we afterwards learned. The Professor's bump of locality is a depression. As a passenger without serious occupation, it fell to his lot to inquire the way. This he would do very minutely, with great suavity and becoming gravity, and then with no sign of hesitation indicate invariably the wrong road. Once, after crossing a field where there were no fences to mark the highway, descending a hill we could not have mounted, and finding a stream that seemed impassable, the Professor quietly remarked,-- "That old man must have been mistaken regarding the road; yet he had lived on that corner forty years. Strange how little some people know about their surroundings!" "But are you sure he said the first turn to the left?" "He said the first turn, but whether to the left or right I cannot now say. It must have been to the right." "But, my dear Professor, you said to the left." "Well, we were going pretty fast when we came to the four corners, and something had to be said, and said quickly. I notice that on an automobile decision is more important than accuracy. After being hauled over the country for three days, I have made up my mind that automobiles are driven upon the hypothesis that it is better to lose the road, lose life, lose anything than lose time, therefore, when you ask me which way to turn, you will get an immediate, if not an accurate, response; besides, there is a bridge ahead, a little village across the stream, so the road leads somewhere." Now and then the Professor would jump out to assist some female in distress with her horse; at first it was a matter of gallantry, then a duty, then a burden. Towards the last it used to delight him to see people frantically turning into lanes, fields, anywhere to get out of the way. The horse is a factor to be considered--and placated. He is in possession and cannot be forcibly ejected,--a sort of terre-tenant; such title as he has must be respected. After wrestling with an unusually notional beast, to the great disorder of clothing and temper, the Professor said,-- "The brain of the horse is small; it is an animal of little sense and great timidity, but it knows more than most people who attempt to drive." In reality horses are seldom driven; they generally go as they please, with now and then a hint as to which corner to turn. Nine times out of ten it is the driven horse that makes trouble for owners of automobiles. The drunken driver never has any trouble; his horses do not stop, turn about, or shy into the ditch; the man asleep on the box is perfectly safe; his horse ambles on, minding its own business, giving a full half of the road to the approaching machine. It is the man, who, on catching sight of the automobile, nervously gathers up his reins, grabs his whip, and pulls and jerks, who makes his own troubles; he is searching for trouble, expects it, and is disappointed if he gets by without it. Nine times out of ten it is the driver who really frightens the horse. A country plug, jogging quietly along, quite unterrified, may be roused to unwonted capers by the person behind. Some take the antics of their horses quite philosophically. One old farmer, whose wheezy nag tried to climb the fence, called out,-- "Gee whiz! I wish you fellers would come this way every day; the old hoss hasn't showed so much ginger for ten year." Another, carrying just a little more of the wine of the country than his legs could bear, stood up unsteadily in his wagon and shouted,-- "If you (hic) come around these pa-arts again with that thres-in' ma-a-chine, I'll have the law on you,--d'ye hear?" The personal equation is everything on the road, as elsewhere. It is quite idle to expect skill, courage, or common sense from the great majority of drivers. They get along very well so long as nothing happens, but in emergencies they are helpless, because they have never had experience in emergencies. The man who has driven horses all his life is frequently as helpless under unusual conditions as the novice. Few drivers know when and how to use the whip to prevent a runaway or a smash-up. With the exception of professional and a few amateur whips, no one is ever taught how to drive. Most persons who ride--even country boys--are given many useful hints, lessons, and demonstrations; but it seems to be assumed that driving is a natural acquirement. As a matter of fact, it is much more important to be taught how to drive than how to ride. A horse in front of a vehicle can do all the mean things a horse under a saddle can do, and more; and it is far more difficult to handle an animal in shafts by means of long reins and a whip. If people knew half as much about horses as they think they do, there would be no mishaps; if horses were half as nervous as they are supposed to be, the accidents would be innumerable. The truth is, the horse does very well if managed with a little common sense, skill, and coolness. As a matter of law, the automobile is a vehicle, and has precisely the same rights on the highway that a bicycle or a carriage has. The horse has no monopoly of the highway, it enjoys no especial privileges, but must share the road with all other vehicles. Furthermore, the law makes it the business of the horse to get accustomed to strange sights and behave itself This duty has been onerous the last few years; the bicycle, the traction engine, and the trolley have come along in quick succession; the automobile is about the last straw. Until the horse is accustomed to the machine, it is the duty--by law and common sense--of the automobile driver to take great care in passing; the care being measured by the possibility and probability of at accident. The sympathy of every chauffeur must be entirely with the driver of the horse. Automobiles are not so numerous in this country that they may be looked for at every turn, and one cannot but feel for the man or woman who, while driving, sees one coming down the road. The best of drivers feel panicky, while women and children are terror-stricken. It is no uncommon sight to see people jump out of their carriages or drive into fields or lanes, anywhere, to get out of the way. In localities where machines have been driven recklessly, men and women, though dressed in their best, frequently jump out in the mud as soon as an automobile comes in sight, and long before the chauffeur has an opportunity to show that he will exercise caution in approaching. All this is wrong and creates an amount of ill-feeling hard to overcome. If one is driving along a fine road at twenty or thirty miles an hour, it is, of course, a relief to see coming vehicles turn in somewhere; but it ought not to be necessary for them to do so. Often people like to turn to one side for the sake of seeing the machine go by at full speed; but if they do not wish to, the automobile should be so driven as to pass with safety. On country roads there is but one way to pass horses without risk, and that is let the horses pass the machine. In cities horses give very little trouble; in the country they give no end of trouble; they are a very great drawback to the pleasure of automobiling. Horses that behave well in the city are often the very worst in the country, so susceptible is the animal to environment. On narrow country roads three out of five will behave badly, and unless the outward signs are unmistakable, it is never safe to assume one is meeting an old plug,--even the plug sometimes jumps the ditch. The safe, the prudent, the courteous thing to do is to stop and let the driver drive or lead his horse by; if a child or woman is driving, get out and lead the horse. By stopping the machine most horses can be gotten by without much trouble. Even though the driver motions to come on, it is seldom safe to do so; for of all horses the one that is brought to a stand-still in front of a machine is surest to shy, turn, or bolt when the machine starts up to pass. If one is going to pass a horse without stopping, it is safer to do so quickly,--the more quickly the better; but that is taking great chances. Whenever a horse, whether driven or hitched, shows fright, a loud, sharp "Whoa!" from the chauffeur will steady the animal. The voice from the machine, if sharp and peremptory, is much more effective than any amount of talking from the carriage. Much of the prejudice against automobiles is due to the fact that machines are driven with entire disregard for the feelings and rights of horse owners; in short, the highway is monopolized to the exclusion of the public. The prejudice thus created is manifested in many ways that are disagreeable to the chauffeur and his friends. The trouble is not in excessive speed, and speed ordinances will not remedy the trouble. A machine may be driven as recklessly at ten or twelve miles an hour as at thirty. In a given distance more horses can be frightened by a slow machine than a fast. It is all in the manner of driving. Speed is a matter of temperament. In England, the people and local boards cannot adopt measures stringent enough to prevent speeding; in Ireland, the people and local authorities line the highways, urging the chauffeur to let his machine out; in America, we are suspended between English prudence and repression on the one side and Irish impulsiveness and recklessness on the other. The Englishman will not budge; the Irishman cries, "Let her go." Speaking of the future of the automobile, the Professor said,-- "Cupid will never use the automobile, the little god is too conservative; fancy the dainty sprite with oil-can and waste instead of bow and arrow. I can see him with smut on the end of his mischievous nose and grease on the seat of the place where his trousers ought to be. What a picture he would make in overalls and jumper, leather jacket and cap; he could not use dart or arrow, at best he could only run the machine hither and thither bunting people into love--knocking them senseless, which is perhaps the same thing. No, no, Cupid will never use the automobile. Imagine Aphrodite in goggles, clothed in dust, her fair skin red from sunburn and glistening with cold cream; horrible nightmare of a mechanical age, avaunt! "The chariots of High Olympus were never greased, they used no gasoline, the clouds we see about them are condensed zephyrs and not dust. Omniscient Jove never used a monkey-wrench, never sought the elusive spark, never blew up a four-inch tire with a half-inch pump. Even if the automobile could surmount the grades, it would never be popular on Olympian heights. Mercury might use it to visit Vulcan, but he would never go far from the shop. "As for conditions here on earth, why should a young woman go riding with a man whose hands, arms, and attention are entirely taken up with wheels, levers, and oil-cups? He can't even press her foot without running the risk of stopping the machine by releasing some clutch; if he moves his knees a hair's-breadth in her direction it does something to the mechanism; if he looks her way they are into the ditch; if she attempts to kiss him his goggles prevent; his sighs are lost in the muffler and hers in the exhaust; nothing but dire disaster will bring an automobile courtship to a happy termination; as long as the machine goes love-making is quite out of the question. "Dobbin, dear old secretive Dobbin, what difference does it make to you whether you feel the guiding hand or not? You know when the courtship begins, the brisk drives about town to all points of interest, to the pond, the poorhouse, and the cemetery; you know how the courtship progresses, the long drives in the country, the idling along untravelled roads and woodland ways, the moonlight nights and misty meadows; you know when your stops to nibble by the wayside will not be noticed, and you alone know when it is time to get the young couple home; you know, alas! when the courtship--blissful period of loitering for you--is ended and when the marriage is made, by the tighter rein, the sharper word, and the occasional swish of the whip. Ah, Dobbin, you and I--" The Professor was becoming indiscreet. "What do you know about love-making, Professor?" "My dear fellow, it is the province of learning to know everything and practise nothing." "But Dobbin--" "We all have had our Dobbins." For some miles the road out of Erie was soft, dusty, narrow, and poor--by no means fit for the proposed Erie-Buffalo race. About fifteen miles out there is a sharp turn to the left and down a steep incline with a ravine and stream below on the right,--a dangerous turn at twenty miles an hour, to say nothing of forty or fifty. There is nothing to indicate that the road drops so suddenly after making the turn, and we were bowling along at top speed; a wagon coming around the corner threw us well to the outside, so that the margin of safety was reduced to a minimum, even if the turn were an easy one. As we swung around the corner well over to the edge of the ravine, we saw the grade we had to make. Nothing but a succession of small rain gullies in the road saved us from going down the bank. By so steering as to drop the skidding wheels on the outside into each gully, the sliding of the machine received a series of violent checks and we missed the brink of the ravine by a few inches. A layman in the Professor's place would have jumped; but he, good man, looked upon his escape as one of the incidents of automobile travel. "When I accepted your invitation, my dear fellow, I expected something beyond the ordinary. I have not been disappointed." It was a wonder the driving-wheels were not dished by the violent side strains, but they were not even sprung. These wheels were of wire tangential spokes; they do not look so well as the smart, heavy, substantial wooden wheels one sees on nearly all imported machines and on some American. The sense of proportion between parts is sadly outraged by spindle-wire wheels supporting the massive frame-work and body of an automobile; however strong they may be in reality, architecturally they are quite unfit, and no doubt the wooden wheel will come more and more into general use. A wooden wheel with the best of hickory spokes possesses an elasticity entirely foreign to the rigid wire wheel, but good hickory wheels are rare; paint hides a multitude of sins when spread over wood; and inferior wooden wheels are not at all to be relied upon. Soon we begin to catch glimpses of Lake Erie through the trees and between the hills, just a blue expanse of water shining in the morning sun, a sapphire set in the dull brown gold of woods and fields. Farther on we come out upon the bluffs overlooking the lake and see the smoke and grime of Buffalo far across. What a blot on a view so beautiful! "Civilization," said the Professor, "is the subjection of nature. In the civilization of Athens nature was subdued to the ends of beauty; in the civilization of America nature is subdued to the ends of usefulness; in every civilization nature is of secondary importance, it is but a means to an end. Nature and the savage, like little children, go hand in hand, the one the complement of the other; but the savage grows and grows, while nature remains ever a child, to sink subservient at last to its early playmate. Just now we in this country are treating nature with great harshness, making of her a drudge and a slave; her pretty hands are soiled, her clean face covered with soot, her clothing tattered and torn. Some day, we as a nation will tire of playing the taskmaster and will treat the playmate of man's infancy and youth with more consideration; we will adorn and not disfigure her, love and not ignore her, place her on a throne beside us, make her queen to our kingship." "Professor, the automobile hardly falls in with your notions." "On the contrary, the automobile is the one absolutely fit conveyance for America. It is a noisy, dirty, mechanical contrivance, capable of great speed; it is the only vehicle in which one could approach that distant smudge on the landscape with any sense of the eternal fitness of things. A coach and four would be as far behind the times on this highway as a birch-bark canoe on yonder lake. In America an automobile is beautiful because it is in perfect harmony with the spirit of the age and country; it is twin brother to the trolley; train, trolley, and automobile may travel side by side as members of one family, late offsprings of man's ingenuity." "But you would not call them things of beauty?" "Yes and no; beauty is so largely relative that one cannot pronounce hideous anything that is a logical and legitimate development. Considered in the light of things the world pronounces beautiful, there are no more hideous monstrosities on the face of the earth than train, trolley, and automobile; but each generation has its own standard of beauty, though it seldom confesses it. We say and actually persuade ourselves that we admire the Parthenon; in reality we admire the mammoth factory and the thirty-story office building. Strive as we may to deceive ourselves by loud protestations, our standards are not the standards of old. We like best the things we have; we may call things ugly, but we think them beautiful, for they are part of us,--and the automobile fits into our surroundings like a pocket in a coat. We may turn up our noses at it or away from it, as the case may be, but none the less it is the perambulator of the twentieth century." It was exactly one o'clock when we pulled up near the City Hall. Total time from Erie five hours and fifty minutes, actual running time five hours, distance by road about ninety-four miles. CHAPTER SIX BUFFALO THE MIDWAY Housing the machine in a convenient and well-appointed stable for automobiles, we were reminded of the fact that we had arrived in Buffalo at no ordinary time, by a charge of three dollars per night for storage, with everything else extra. But was it not the Exposition we had come to see? and are not Expositions proverbially expensive--to promoters and stockholders as well as visitors? Then, too, the hotels of Buffalo had expected so much and were so woefully disappointed. Vast arrays of figures had been compiled showing that within a radius of four hundred miles of Buffalo lived all the people in the United States who were worth knowing. The statistics were not without their foundation in fact, but therein lay the weakness of the entire scheme so far as hotels were concerned; people lived so near they could leave home in the morning with a boiled egg and a sandwich, see the Exposition and get back at night. Travellers passing through would stop over during the day and evening, then go their way on a midnight train,--it was cheaper to ride in a Pullman than stay in Buffalo. We might have taken rooms at Rochester, running back and forth each day in the machine,--though Rochester was by no means beyond the zone of exorbitant charges. Notions of value become very much congested within a radius of two or three hundred miles of any great Exposition. The Exposition was well worth seeing in parts by day and as a whole by night. The electrical display at night was a triumph of engineering skill and architectural arrangement. It was the falls of Niagara turned into stars, the mist of the mighty cascade crystallized into jewels, a brilliant crown to man's triumph over the forces of nature. It was a wonderful and never-to-be-forgotten sight to sit by the waters at night, as the shadows were folding the buildings in their soft embrace, and see the first faint twinklings of the thousands upon thousands of lights as the great current of electricity was turned slowly on; and then to see the lights grow in strength until the entire grounds were bathed in suffused radiance,--that was as wonderful a sight as the world of electricity has yet witnessed, and it was well worth crossing an ocean to see; it was the one conspicuous success, the one memorable feature of the Exposition, and compared with it all exhibits and scenes by day were tame and insipid. From time immemorial it has been the special province of the preacher to take the children to the circus and the side show; for the children must go, and who so fit to take them as the preacher? After all, is not the sawdust ring with its strange people, its giants, fairies, hobgoblins, and clowns, a fairy land, not really real, and therefore no more wicked than fairy land? Do they not fly by night? are they not children of space? the enormous tents spring up like mushrooms, to last a day; for a few short hours there is a medley of strange sounds,--a blare of trumpets, the roar of strange beasts, the ring of strange voices, the crackling of whips; there are prancing steeds and figures in costumes curious,--then, flapping of canvas, creaking of poles, and all is silent. Of course it is not real, and every one may go. The circus has no annals, knows no gossip, presents no problems; it is without morals and therefore not immoral. It is the one joyous amusement that is not above, but quite outside the pale of criticism and discussion. Therefore, why should not the preacher go and take the children? But the Midway. Ah! the Midway, that is quite a different matter; but still the preacher goes,--leaving the children at home. Learning is ever curious. The Professor, after walking patiently through several of the buildings and admiring impartially sections of trees from Cuba and plates of apples from Wyoming, modestly expressed a desire for some relaxation. "The Midway is something more than a feature, it is an element. It is the laugh that follows the tears; the joke that relieves the tension; the Greeks invariably produced a comedy with their tragedies; human nature demands relaxation; to appreciate the serious, the humorous is absolutely essential. If the Midway were not on the grounds the people would find it outside. Capacity for serious contemplation differs with different peoples and in different ages,--under Cromwell it was at a maximum, under Charles II. it was at a minimum; the Puritans suppressed the laughter of a nation; it broke out in ridicule that discriminated not between sacred and profane. The tension of our age is such that diversions must recur quickly. The next great Exposition may require two Midways, or three or four for the convenience of the people. You can't get a Midway any too near the anthropological and ethnological sections; a cinematograph might be operated as an adjunct to the Fine Arts building; a hula-hula dancer would relieve the monotony of a succession of big pumpkins and prize squashes." At that moment the Professor became interested in the strange procession entering the streets of Cairo, and we followed. Before he got out it cost him fifty cents to learn his name, a quarter for his fortune, ten cents for his horoscope, and sundry amounts for gems, jewels, and souvenirs of the Orient. Through his best hexameter spectacles he surveyed the dark-eyed daughter of the Nile who was telling his fortune with a strong Irish accent; all went smoothly until the prophetess happened to see the Professor's sunburnt nose, fiery red from the four days' run in wind and rain, and said warningly,-- "You are too fond of good eating and drinking; you drink too much, and unless you are more temperate you will die in twenty years." That was too much for the Professor, whose occasional glass of beer--a habit left over from his student days--would not discolor the nose of a humming-bird. There were no end of illusions, mysteries, and deceptions. The greatest mystery of all was the eager desire of the people to be deceived, and their bitter and outspoken disappointment when they were not. As the Professor remarked,-- "There never has been but one real American, and that was Phineas T. Barnum. He was the genuine product of his country and his times,--native ore without foreign dross. He knew the American people as no man before or since has known them; he knew what the American people wanted, and gave it to them in large unadulterated doses,--humbug." Tuesday morning was spent in giving the machine a thorough inspection, some lost motion in the eccentric was taken up, every nut and screw tightened, and the cylinder and intake mechanism washed out with gasoline. It is a good plan to clean out the cylinder with gasoline once each week or ten days; it is not necessary, but the piston moves with much greater freedom and the compression is better. However good the cylinder oil used, after six or eight days' hard and continuous running there is more or less residuum; in the very nature of things there must be from the consumption of about a pint of oil to every hundred miles. Many use kerosene to clean cylinders, but gasoline has its advantages; kerosene is excellent for all other bearings, especially where there may be rust, as on the chain; but kerosene is in itself a low grade oil, and the object in cleaning the cylinder is to cut out all the oil and leave it bright and dry ready for a supply of fresh oil. After putting in the gasoline, the cylinder and every bearing which the gasoline has touched should be thoroughly lubricated before starting. Lubrication is of vital importance, and the oil used makes all the difference in the world. Many makers of machines have adopted the bad practice of putting up oil in cans under their own brands, and charging, of course, two prices per gallon. The price is of comparatively little consequence, though an item; for it does not matter so much whether one pays fifty cents or a dollar a gallon, so long as the best oil is obtained; the pernicious feature of the practice lies in wrapping the oil in mystery, like a patent medicine,--"Smith's Cylinder Oil" and "Jones's Patent Pain-Killer" being in one and the same category. Then they warn--patent medicine methods again --purchasers of machines that their particular brand of oil must be used to insure best results. The one sure result is that the average user who knows nothing about lubricating oils is kept in a state of frantic anxiety lest his can of oil runs low at a time and place where he cannot get more of the patent brand. Every manufacturer should embody in the directions for caring for the machine information concerning all the standard oils that can be found in most cities, and recommend the use of as many different brands as possible. Machine oil can be found in almost any country village, or at any mill, factory, or power-house along the road; it is the cylinder oil that requires fore-thought and attention. Beware of steam-cylinder oil and all heavy and gummy oils. Rub a little of any oil that is offered between the fingers until it disappears,--the better the oil the longer you can rub it. If it leaves a gummy or sticky feeling, do not use; but if it rubs away thin and oily, it is probably good. Of course the oiliest of oils are animal fats, good lard, and genuine sperm; but they work down very thin and run away, and genuine sperm oil is almost an unknown quantity. Lard can be obtained at every farmhouse, and may be used, if necessary, on bearings. In an emergency, olive oil and probably cotton-seed oil may be used in the cylinder. Olive oil is a fine lubricant, and is used largely in the Italian and Spanish navies. Many special brands are probably good oils and safe to use, but there is no need of staking one's trip upon any particular brand. All good steam-cylinder oils contain animal oil to make them adhere to the side of the cylinder; a pure mineral oil would be washed away by the steam and water. To illustrate the action of oils and water, take a clean bottle, put in a little pure mineral oil, add some water, and shake hard; the oil will rise to the top of the water in little globules without adhering at all to the sides of the bottle; in short, the bottle is not lubricated. Instead of a pure mineral oil put in any steam-cylinder oil which is a compound of mineral and animal; and as the bottle is shaken the oil adheres to the glass, covering the entire inner surface with a film that the water will not rinse off. As there is supposed--erroneously--to be no moisture in the cylinder of a gas-engine, the use of any animal oil is said to be unnecessary; as there is moisture in the cylinder of a steam-engine, some animal oil is absolutely essential in the cylinder oil. For the lubrication of chains and all parts exposed to the weather, compounds of oil or grease which contain a liberal amount of animal fat are better. Rain and the splash of mud and water will wash off mineral oil as fast as it can be applied; in fact, under adverse weather conditions it does not lubricate at all; the addition of animal fat makes the compound stick. Graphite and mica are both good chain lubricants, but if mixed with a pure mineral base, such as vaseline, they will wash off in mud and water. Before putting on a chain, it is a good thing to dip it in melted tallow and then grease it thoroughly from time to time with a graphite compound of vaseline and animal fat. One does not expect perfection in a machine, but there is not an automobile made, according to the reports of users, which does not develop many crudities and imperfections in construction which could be avoided by care and conscientious work in the factory, --crudities and imperfections which customers and users have complained of time and time again, but without avail. At best the automobile is a complicated and difficult machine in the hands of the amateur, and so far it has been made almost impossible by its poor construction. With good construction there will be troubles enough in operation, but at the present time ninety per cent. of the stops and difficulties are due to defective construction. As the machine comes it looks so well, it inspires unbounded confidence, but the first time it is seen in undress, with the carriage part off, the machinery laid bare, the heart sinks, and one's confidence oozes out. Parts are twisted, bent, and hammered to get them into place, bearings are filed to make them fit, bolts and screws are weak and loose, nuts gone for the want of cotter-pins; it is as if apprentice blacksmiths had spent their idle moments in constructing a machine. The carriage work is hopelessly bad. The building of carriages is a long-established industry, employing hundreds of thousands of hands and millions of capital, and yet in the entire United States there are scarcely a dozen builders of really fine, substantial, and durable vehicles. Yet every cross-road maker of automobiles thinks that if he can only get his motor to go, the carpenter next door can do his woodwork. The result is cheap stock springs, clips, irons, bodies, cushions, tops, etc., are bought and put over the motor. The use of aluminum bodies and more metal work generally is helping things somewhat; not that aluminum and metal work are necessarily better than wood, but it prevents the unnatural union of the light wood bodies, designed for cheap horse-vehicles, with a motor. The best French makers do not build their bodies, but leave that part to skilled carriage builders. CHAPTER SEVEN BUFFALO TO CANANDAIGUA BEWARE OF THE COUNTRY MECHANIC The five hundred and sixty-odd miles to Buffalo had been covered with no trouble that delayed us for more than an hour, but our troubles were about to begin. The Professor had still a few days to waste frivolously, so he said he would ride a little farther, possibly as far as Albany. However, it was not our intention to hurry, but rather take it easily, stopping by the way, as the mood--or our friends--seized us. It rained all the afternoon of Tuesday, about all night, and was raining steadily when we turned off Main Street into Genesee with Batavia thirty-eight miles straight away. We fully expected to reach there in time for luncheon; in fact, word had been sent ahead that we would "come in," like a circus, about twelve, and friends were on the lookout,--it was four o'clock when we reached town. The road is good, gravel nearly every rod, but the steady rain had softened the surface to the depth of about two inches, and the water, sand, and gravel were splashed in showers and sheets by the wheels into and through every exposed part of the mechanism. Soon the explosions became irregular, and we found the cams operating the sparker literally plastered over with mud, so that the parts that should slide and work with great smoothness and rapidity would not operate at all. This happened about every four or five miles. This mechanism on this particular machine was so constructed and situated as to catch and hold mud, and the fine grit worked in, causing irregularities in the action. This trouble we could count upon as long as the road was wet; after noon, when the sun came out and the road began to dry, we had less trouble. When about half-way to Batavia the spark began to show blue; the reserve set of dry batteries was put in use, but it gave no better results. Apparently there was either a short circuit, or the batteries were used up; the bad showing of the reserve set puzzled us; every connection was examined and tightened. The wiring of the carriage was so exposed to the weather that it was found completely saturated in places with oil and covered with mud. The rubber insulation had been badly disintegrated wherever oil had dropped on it. The wires were cleaned as thoroughly as possible and separated wherever the insulation seemed poor. The loss of current was probably at the sparking coil; the mud had so covered the end where the binding parts project as to practically join them by a wet connection. Cleaning this off and protecting the binding parts with insulating tape we managed to get on, the spark being by no means strong, and the reserve battery for some reason weak. If we had had a small buzzer, such as is sold for a song at every electrical store, to say nothing of a pocket voltmeter, we would have discovered in a moment that the reserve battery contained one dead cell, the resistance of which made the other cells useless. At Batavia we tested them out with an ordinary electric bell, discovering at once the dead cell. After both batteries are so exhausted that the spark is weak, the current from both sets can be turned on at the same time in two ways; by linking the cells in multiples,--that is, side by side, or in series,--tandem. The current from cells in multiples is increased in volume but not in force, and gives a fat spark; the current from cells in series is doubled in force and gives a long blue hot spark. Both sparks, if the cells are fresh, will burn the points, though giving much better explosions. As the batteries weaken, first connect them in multiples, then, as they weaken still more, in series. Always carry a roll of insulating tape, or on a pinch bicycle tire-tape will do very well. Wrap carefully every joint, and the binding-posts of the cells for the tape will hold as against vibration when the little binding-screws will not. In short, use the tape freely to insulate, protect, and support the wires and all connections. If the machine is wired with light and poorly insulated wire, it is but a question of time when the wiring must be done over again. When we pulled up in Batavia at an electrician's for repairs, the Professor was a sight--and also tired. The good man had floundered about in the mud until he was picturesquely covered. At the outset he was disposed to take all difficulties philosophically. "I should regret exceedingly," he remarked at our first involuntary stop, "to return from this altogether extraordinary trip without seeing the automobile under adverse conditions. Our experiences in the sand were no fault of the machine; the responsibility rested with us for placing it in a predicament from which it could not extricate itself, and if, in the heat of the moment and the sand, I said anything derogatory to the faithful machine, I express my regrets. Now, it seems, I shall have the pleasure of observing some of the eccentricities of the horseless carriage. What seems to be the matter?" and the Professor peered vaguely underneath. "Something wrong with the spark." "Bless me! Can you fix it?" "I think so. Now, if you will be good enough to turn that crank." "With pleasure. What an extraordinary piece of mechanism.--" "A little faster." "The momentum--" "A little faster." "Very heavy fly-wheel--" "Just a little faster." "Friction--mechanics--overcome--" "Now as hard as you can, Professor." "Exercise, muscle, but hard work. The spark,--is it there? Whew!" and the Professor stopped, exhausted. It was the repetition of those experiences that sobered the Professor and led him to speak of his work at home, which he feared he was neglecting. At the last stop he stood in a pool of water and turned the crank without saying anything that would bear repetition. While touring, look out for glass, nails, and the country mechanic,--of the three, the mechanic can do the largest amount of damage in a given time. His well-meant efforts may wreck you; his mistakes are sure to. The average mechanic along the route is a veritable bull in a china shop,--once inside your machine, and you are done for. He knows it all, and more too. He once lived next to a man who owned a naphtha launch; hence his expert knowledge; or he knew some one who was blown up by gasoline, therefore he is qualified. Look out for him; his look of intelligence is deception itself. His readiness with hammer and file means destruction; if he once gets at the machine, give it to him as a reward and a revenge for his misdirected energy, and save time by walking. Even the men from the factory make sad mistakes; they may locate troubles, but in repairing they will forget, and leave off more things than the floor will hold. At Batavia we put in new batteries, repacked the pump, covered the coil with patent leather, so that neither oil nor water could affect it, and put on a new chain. Without saying a word, the bright and too willing mechanic who was assisting, mainly by looking on, took the new chain into his shop and cut off a link. A wanton act done because he "thought the chain a little too long," and not discovered until the machine had been cramped together, every strut and reach shortened to get the chain in place; meanwhile the factory was being vigorously blamed for sending out chains too short. During it all the mechanic was discreetly silent, but the new link on the vise in the shop betrayed him after the harm was done. The run from Batavia to Canandaigua was made over roads that are well-nigh perfect most of the way, but the machine was not working well, the chain being too short. Going up stiff grades it was very apparent something was wrong, for while the motor worked freely the carriage dragged. On the level and down grade everything went smoothly, but at every up grade the friction and waste of power were apparent. Inspection time and again showed everything clear, and it was not until late in the afternoon the cause of the trouble was discovered. A tell-tale mark on the surface of the fly-wheel showed friction against something, and we found that while the wheel ran freely if we were out of the machine, with the load in, and especially on up grades with the chain drawing the framework closer to the running gear, the rim of the wheel just grazed a bolt-head in a small brace underneath, thereby producing the peculiar grating noise we had heard and materially checking the motor. The shortening of the struts and reaches to admit the short chain had done all this. As the chain had stretched a little, we were able to lengthen slightly the struts so as to give a little more clearance; it was also possible to shift the brace about a quarter of an inch, and the machine once more ran freely under all conditions. Within twenty miles of Canandaigua the country is quite rolling and many of the hills steep. Twice we were obliged to get out and let the machine mount the grades, which it did; but it was apparent that for the hills and mountains of New York the gearing was too high. On hard roads in a level country high gearing is all well enough, and a high average speed can be maintained, but where the roads are soft or the country rolling, a high gear may mean a very material disadvantage in the long run. It is of little use to be able to run thirty or forty miles on the level if at every grade or soft spot it is necessary to throw in the hill-climbing gear, thereby reducing the speed to from four to six miles per hour; the resulting average is low. A carriage that will take the hills and levels of New York at the uniform speed of fifteen miles an hour will finish far ahead of one that is compelled to use low gears at every grade, even though the latter easily makes thirty or forty miles on the level. The machine we were using had but two sets of gears,--a slow and a fast. All intermediate speeds were obtained by throttling the engine. The engine was easily governed, and on the level any speed from the lowest to the maximum could be obtained without juggling with the clutches; but on bad roads and in hilly localities intermediate gears are required if one is to get the best results out of a motor. As the gasoline motor develops its highest efficiency when it is running at full speed, there should be enough intermediate gears so the maximum speed may be maintained under varying conditions. As the road gets heavy or the grades steep, the drop is made from one gear down to another; but at all times and under all conditions--if there are enough intermediate gears--the machine is being driven with the motor running fast. With only two gears where roads or grades are such that the high gear cannot be used, there is nothing to do but drop to the low, --from thirty miles an hour to five or six,--and the engine runs as if it had no load at all. American roads especially demand intermediate gears if best results are to be attained, the conditions change so from mile to mile. Foreign machines are equipped with from three to five speed-changing gears in addition to the spark control, and many also have throttles for governing the speed of the engine. Going at full speed down a long hill about two miles out of Canandaigua, we discovered that neither power nor brakes had any control over the machine. The large set-screws holding the two halves of the rear-axle in the differential gears had worked loose and the right half was steadily working out. As both brakes operated through the differential, both were useless, and the machine was beyond control. An obstacle or a bad turn at the bottom meant disaster; happily the hill terminated in a level stretch of softer road, which checked the speed and the machine came slowly to a stop. The sensation of rushing down hill with power and brakes absolutely detached is peculiar and exhilarating. It is quite like coasting or tobogganing; the excitement is in proportion to the risk; the chance of safety lies in a clear road; for the time being the machine is a huge projectile, a flying mass, a ton of metal rushing through space; there is no sensation of fear, not a tremor of the nerves, but one becomes for the moment exceedingly alert, with instantaneous comprehension of the character of the road; every rut, stone, and curve are seen and appreciated; the possibility of collision is understood, and every danger is present in the mind, and with it all the thrill of excitement which ever accompanies risk. During the entire descent the Professor was in blissful ignorance of the loss of control. To him the hill was like many another that we had taken at top speed; but when he saw the rear wheel far out from the carriage with only about twelve inches of axle holding in the sleeve, and understood the loss of control through both chain and brakes, his imagination began to work, and he thought of everything that could have happened and many things that could not, but he remarked philosophically,-- "Fear is entirely a creature of the imagination. We are not afraid of what will happen, but of what may. We are all cowards until confronted with danger; most men are heroes in emergencies." Detaching a lamp from the front of the carriage, repairs were made. A block of wood and a fence rail made a good jack; the gear case was opened up, the axle driven home, and the set-screws turned down tight; but it was only too apparent that the screws would work loose again. The next morning we pulled out both halves of the axle and found the key-ways worn so there was a very perceptible play. As the keys were supposed to hold the gears tight and the set-screws were only for the purpose of keeping the axle from working out, it was idle to expect the screws to hold fast so long as the keys were loose in the ways; the slight play of the gears upon the axles would soon loosen screws, in fact, both were found loose, although tightened up only the evening before. As it had become apparent that the machine was geared too high for the hills of New York, it seemed better to send it into the shop for such changes as were necessary, rather than spend the time necessary to make them in the one small machine shop at Canandaigua. Furthermore the Professor's vacation was drawing to a close; he had given himself not to exceed ten days, eight had elapsed. "I feel that I have exhausted the possibilities and eccentricities of automobiling; there is nothing more to learn; if there is anything more, I do not care to know it. I am inclined to accept the experience of last night as a warning; as the fellow who was blown up with dynamite said when he came down, 'to repeat the experiment would be no novelty.'" And so the machine was loaded on the cars, side-tracked on the way, and it was many a day before another start could be made from Buffalo. It cannot be too often repeated that it is a mistake to ever lose sight of one's machine during a tour; it is a mistake to leave it in a machine shop for repairs; it is a mistake to even return it to the place of its creation; for you may be quite sure that things will be left undone that should be done, and things done that should not be done. It requires days and weeks to become acquainted with all the peculiarities and weaknesses of an automobile, to know its strong points and rely upon them, to appreciate its failings and be tender towards them. After you have become acquainted, do not risk the friendship by letting the capricious thing out of your sight. It is so fickle that it forms wanton attachments for every one it meets,--for urchins, idlers, loafers, mechanics, permits them all sorts of familiarities, so that when, like a truant, it comes wandering back, it is no longer the same, but a new creature, which you must learn again to know. It is monotonously lonesome running an automobile across country alone; the record-breaker may enjoy it, but the civilized man does not; man is a gregarious animal, especially in his sports; one must have an audience, if an audience of only one. The return of the Professor made it necessary to find some one else. There was but one who could go, but she had most emphatically refused; did not care for the dust and dirt, did not care for the curious crowds, did not care to go fast, did not care to go at all. To overcome these apparently insurmountable objections, a semi-binding pledge was made to not run more than ten or twelve miles per hour, and not more than thirty or forty miles per day,--promises so obviously impossible of fulfillment on the part of any chauffeur that they were not binding in law. We started out well within bounds, making but little over forty miles the first day; we wound up with a glorious run of one hundred and forty miles the last day, covering the Old Sarnia gravel out of London, Ontario, at top speed for nearly seventy miles. For five weeks to a day we wandered over the eastern country at our own sweet will, not a care, not a responsibility,--days without seeing newspapers, finding mail and telegrams at infrequent intervals, but much of the time lost to the world of friends and acquaintances. Touring on an automobile differs from coaching, posting, railroading, from every known means of locomotion, in that you are really lost to the world. In coaching or posting, one knows with reasonable certainty the places that can be made; the itinerary is laid out in advance, and if departed from, friends can be notified by wire, so that letters and telegrams may be forwarded. With an automobile all is different. The vagaries of the machine upset every itinerary. You do not know where you will stop, because you cannot tell when you may stop. If one has in mind a certain place, the machine may never reach it, or, arriving, the road and the day may be so fine you are irresistibly impelled to keep on. The very thought that letters are to be at a certain place at a certain date is a bore, it limits your progress, fetters your will, and curbs your inclinations. One hears of places of interest off the chosen route; the temptation to see them is strong exactly in proportion to the assurances given that you will go elsewhere. The automobile is lawless; it chafes under restraint; will follow neither advice nor directions. Tell it to go this way, it is sure to go that; to turn the second corner to the right, it will take the first to the left; to go to one city, it prefers another; to avoid a certain road, it selects that above all others. It is a grievous error to tell friends you are coming; it puts them to no end of inconvenience; for days they expect you and you do not come; their feeling of relief that you did not come is destroyed by your appearance. The day we were expected at a friend's summer home at the sea-side we spent with the Shakers in the valley of Lebanon, waiting for a new steering-head. Telegrams of inquiry, concern, and consolation reached us in our retreat, but those who expected us were none the less inconvenienced. Then, too, what business have the dusty, grimy, veiled, goggled, and leathered party from the machine among the muslin gowns, smart wraps, and immaculate coverings of the conventional house party; if we but approach, they scatter in self-protection. From these reflections it is only too plain that the automobile --like that other inartistic instrument of torture, the grand piano --is not adapted to the drawing-room. It is not quite at home in the stable; it demands a house of its own. If the friend who invites you to visit him has a machine, then accept, for he is a brother crank; but if he has none, do not fill his generous soul with dismay by running up his drive-way, sprinkling its spotless white with oil, leaving an ineradicable stain under the porte-cochere, and frightening his favorite horses into fits as you run into the stable. But it is delightful to go through cities and out-of-the-way places, just leaving cards in a most casual manner upon people one knows. We passed through many places twice, some places three times, in careering about. Each time we called on friends; sometimes they were in, sometimes out; it was all so casual,--a cup of tea, a little chat, sometimes without shutting down the motor,--the briefest of calls, all the more charming because brief,--really, it was strange. We see a town ahead; calling to a man by the roadside,-- "What place is that?" "L--" is the long drawn shout as we go flying by. "Why, the S___s live there. I have not seen her since we were at school. I would like to stop." "Well, just for a moment." In a trice the machine is at the door; Mrs. S___ is out--will return in a moment; so sorry, cannot wait, leave cards; call again some other day; and we turn ten or fifteen or twenty miles to one side to see another old school-friend for five or ten minutes --just long enough for the chauffeur to oil-up while the school-mates chat. The automobile annihilates time; it dispenses with watch and clock; it vaguely notes the coming up and the going down of the sun; but it goes right on by sunlight, by moonlight, by lamplight, by no light at all, until it is brought to a stand-still or capriciously stops of its own accord. CHAPTER EIGHT THE MORGAN MYSTERY THE OLD STONE BLACKSMITH SHOP AT STAFFORD It was Wednesday, August 22, that we left Buffalo. In some stray notes made by my companion, I find this enthusiastic description of the start. "Toof! toof! on it comes like a gigantic bird, its red breast throbbing, its black wings quivering; it swerves to the right, to the left, and with a quick sweep circles about and stands panting at the curb impatient to be off. "I hastily mount and make ready for the long flight. The chauffeur grasps the iron reins, something is pulled, and something is pressed,--'Chic--chic--whirr--whirr--r--r,' we are off. Through the rich foliage of noble trees we catch last glimpses of beautiful homes gay with flags, with masses of flowers and broad, green lawns. "In a moment we are in the crowded streets where cars, omnibuses, cabs, carriages, trucks, and wagons of every description are hurrying pell-mell in every direction. The automobile glides like a thing of life in and out, snorting with vexation if blocked for an instant. "Soon we are out of the hurly-burly; the homes melt away into the country; the road lengthens; we pass the old toll-gate and are fairly on our way; farewell city of jewelled towers and gay festivities. "The day is bright, the air is sweet, and myriads of yellow butterflies flutter about us, so thickly covering the ground in places as to look like beds of yellow flowers. "Corn-fields and pastures stretch along the roadsides; big red barns and cosey white houses seem to go skurrying by, calling, 'I spy,' then vanishing in a sort of cinematographic fashion as the automobile rushes on." As we sped onward I pointed out the places--only too well remembered--where the Professor had worked so hard exactly two weeks before to the day. After luncheon, while riding about some of the less frequented streets of Batavia, we came quite unexpectedly to an old cemetery. In the corner close to the tracks of the New York Central, so placed as to be in plain view of all persons passing on trains, is a tall, gray, weather-beaten monument, with the life-size figure of a man on the top of the square shaft. It is the monument to the memory of William Morgan who was kidnapped near that spot in the month of September, 1826, and whose fate is one of the mysteries of the last century. To read the inscriptions I climbed the rickety fence; the grass was high, the weeds thick; the entire place showed signs of neglect and decay. The south side of the shaft, facing the railroad, was inscribed as follows: Sacred To The Memory Of WILLIAM MORGAN, A NATIVE OF VIRGINIA, A CAPT. IN THE WAR OF 1812, A RESPECTABLE CITIZEN OF BATAVIA, AND A MARTYR TO THE FREEDOM OF WRITING, PRINTING, AND SPEAKING THE TRUTH. HE WAS ABDUCTED FROM NEAR THIS SPOT IN THE YEAR 1826 BY FREEMASONS, AND MURDERED FOR REVEALING THE SECRETS OF THE ORDER. The disappearance of Morgan is still a mystery,--a myth to most people nowadays; a very stirring reality in central and western New York seventy-five years ago; even now in the localities concerned the old embers of bitter feeling show signs of life if fanned by so much as a breath. Six miles beyond Batavia, on the road to Le Roy, is the little village of Stafford; some twenty or thirty houses bordering the highway; a church, a schoolhouse, the old stage tavern, and several buildings that are to-day very much as they were nearly one hundred years ago. This is the one place which remains very much as it was seventy-five years ago when Morgan was kidnapped and taken through to Canandaigua. As one approaches the little village, on the left hand side of the highway set far back in an open field is an old stone church long since abandoned and disused, but so substantially built that it has defied time and weather. It is a monument to the liberality of the people of that locality in those early days, for it was erected for the accommodation of worshippers regardless of sect; it was at the disposal of any denomination that might wish to hold services therein. Apparently the foundation of the weather-beaten structure was too liberal, for it has been many years since it has been used for any purpose whatsoever. As one approaches the bridge crossing the little stream which cuts the village in two, there is at the left on the bank of the stream a large three-story stone dwelling. Eighty years ago the first story of this dwelling was occupied as a store; the third story was the Masonic lodge-room, and no doubt the events leading up to the disappearance of Morgan were warmly discussed within the four walls of this old building. Across from the three-story stone building is a brick house set well back from the highway, surrounded by shrubbery, and approached by a gravel walk bordered by old-fashioned boxwood hedges. This house was built in 1812, and is still well preserved. For many years it was a quite famous private school for young ladies, kept by a Mr. Radcliffe. Across the little bridge on the right is a low stone building now used as a blacksmith shop, but which eighty years ago was a dwelling. A little farther on the opposite side of the street is the old stage tavern, still kept as a tavern, and to-day in substantially the same condition inside and out as it was seventy-five years ago. It is now only a roadside inn, but before railroads were, through stages from Buffalo, Albany, and New York stopped here. A charming old lady living just opposite, said,-- "I have sat on this porch many a day and watched the stages and private coaches come rattling up with horn and whip and carrying the most famous people in the country,--all stopped there just across the road at that old red tavern; those were gay days; I shall never see the like again; but perhaps you may, for now coaches like yours stop at the old tavern almost every day." The ballroom of the tavern remains exactly as it was,--a fireplace at one end filled with ashes of burnt-out revelries, a little railing at one side where the fiddlers sat, the old benches along the side,--all remind one of the gayeties of long ago. In connection with the Morgan mystery the village of Stafford is interesting, because the old tavern and the three-story stone building are probably the only buildings still standing which were identified with the events leading up to the disappearance of Morgan. The other towns, like Batavia and Canandaigua, have grown and changed, so that the old buildings have long since made way for modern. One of the last to go was the old jail at Canandaigua where Morgan was confined and from which he was taken. When that old jail was torn down some years ago, people carried away pieces of his cell as souvenirs of a mystery still fascinating because still a mystery. As we came out of the old tavern there were a number of men gathered about the machine, looking at it. I asked them some questions about the village, and happened to say,-- "I once knew a man who, seventy-five years ago, lived in that little stone building by the bridge." "That was in Morgan's time," said an old man, and every one in the crowd turned instantly from the automobile to look at me. "Yes, he lived here as a young man." "They stopped at this very tavern with Morgan on their way through," said some one in the crowd. "And that stone building just the other side of the bridge is where the Masons met in those days," said another. "That's where they took Miller," interrupted the old man. "Who was Miller?" I asked. "He was the printer in Batavia who was getting out Morgan's book; they brought him here to Stafford, and took him up into the lodge-room in that building and tried to frighten him, but he wasn't to be frightened, so they took him on to Le Roy and let him go." "Did they ever find out what became of Morgan?" I asked. There was silence for a moment, and then the old man, looking first at the others, said,-- "No-o-o, not for sartain, but the people in this locality hed their opinion, and hev it yet." "You bet they have," came from some one in the crowd. Thursday we started for Rochester by way of Stafford and Le Roy instead of Newkirk, Byron, and Bergen, which is the more direct route and also a good road. The morning was bright and very warm, scarcely a cloud in the sky, but there was a feeling of storm in the air,--the earth was restless. As we neared Stafford dark clouds were gathering in the far distant skies, but not yet near enough to cause apprehension. Driving slowly into the village, we again visited the three-story stone house. Here, no doubt, as elsewhere, Morgan's forthcoming exposures were discussed and denounced, here the plot to seize him--if plot there was--may have been formed; but then there was probably no plot, conspiracy, or action on the part of any lodge or body of Masons. Morgan was in their eyes a most despicable traitor,--a man who proposed to sell--not simply disclose, but sell--the secrets of the order he joined. There is no reason to believe that he had the good of any one at heart; that he had anything in view but his own material prosperity. He made a bargain with a printer in Batavia to expose Masonry, and lost his life in attempting to carry out that bargain. Lost his life!--who knows? The story is a strange one, as strange as anything in the Arabian Nights; there are men still living who faintly recollect the excitement, the fends and controversies which lasted for years. From Batavia to Canandaigua the name of Morgan calls forth a flood of reminiscences. A man whose father or grandfather had anything to do with the affair is a character in the community; now and then a man is found who knew a man who caught a glimpse of Morgan during that mysterious midnight ride from the Canandaigua jail over the Rochester road, and on to the end in the magazine of the old fort at Lewiston. One cannot spend twenty-four hours in this country without being drawn into the vortex of this absorbing mystery; it hangs over the entire section, lingers along the road-sides, finds outward sign and habitation in old buildings, monuments, and ruins; it echoes from the past in musty books, papers, and pamphlets; it once was politics, now is history; the years have not solved it; time is helpless. At Le Roy we sought shelter under the friendly roof of an old, old house. How it did storm; the Rochester papers next day said that no such storm had ever been known in that part of the State. The rain fell in torrents; the main street was a stream of water emptying into the river; the flashes of lightning were followed so quickly by crashes of thunder that we knew trees and buildings were struck near by, as in fact they were. It seemed as if the heavens were laying siege to the little village and bringing to bear all nature's great guns. The house was filled with old books and mementoes of the past; every nook and corner was interesting. In an old secretary in an upper room was found a complete history of Morgan's disappearance, together with the affidavits taken at the time and records of such court proceedings as were had. These papers had been gathered together in 1829. One by one I turned the yellow leaves and read the story from beginning to end; it is in brief as follows: In the summer of 1826 it was rumored throughout Western New York that one William Morgan, then living in the village of Batavia, was writing an exposure of the secrets of Free Masonry, under contract with David Miller, a printer of the same place, who was to publish the pamphlet. Morgan was a man entirely without means; he was said to have served in the War of 1812, and was known to have been a brewer, but had not made a success in business; he was rooming with a family in Batavia with his wife and two small children, one a child of two years, the other a babe of two months. He was quite irresponsible, and apparently not overscrupulous in either contracting debts or the use of the property of others. There is not the slightest reason to believe that his so-called exposure of Masonry was prompted by any motives other than the profits he might realize from the sale of the pamphlet. Nor is there any evidence that he enjoyed the confidence of the community where he lived. His monument--as in many another case--awards him virtues he did not possess. The figure of noble bearing on the top of the shaft is the idealization of subsequent events, and probably but illy corresponds with the actual appearance of the impecunious reality. The man's fate made him a hero. On August 9 the following notice appeared in a newspaper published in Canandaigua: "Notice and Caution.--If a man calling himself William Morgan should intrude himself on the community, they should be on their guard, particularly the Masonic Fraternity. Morgan was in the village in May last, and his conduct while here and elsewhere calls forth this notice. Any information in relation to Morgan can be obtained by calling at the Masonic Hall in this village. Brethren and Companions are particularly requested to observe, mark, and govern themselves accordingly. "Morgan is considered a swindler and a dangerous man. "There are people in the village who would be happy to see this Captain Morgan. "Canandaigua, August 9, 1826." This notice was copied in two newspapers published in Batavia. About the middle of August a stranger by the name of Daniel Johns appeared in Batavia and took up his lodgings in one of the public houses of the village. He made the acquaintance of Miller, offered to go in business with him, and to furnish whatever money might be necessary for the publication of the Morgan book. Miller accepted his proposition and took the man into his confidence. As it afterwards turned out, Johns's object in seeking the partnership was to secure possession of the Morgan manuscript, so that Miller could not publish the work; the man's subsequent connection with this strange narrative appears from the affidavit of Mrs. Morgan, referred to farther on. During the month of August, Morgan with his family boarded at a house in the heart of the village; but to avoid interruption in his work he had an upper room in the house of John David, on the other side of the creek from the town. August 19 three well-known residents of the village accompanied by a constable from Pembroke went to David's house, inquired for David and Towsley, who both lived there with their families, and on being told they were not at home, rushed up-stairs to the room where Morgan was writing, seized him and the papers which he was even then arranging for the printer. He was taken to the county jail and kept from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning, when he was bailed out. On the same Saturday evening the same men went to the house where Morgan boarded, and saying they had an execution, inquired of Mrs. Morgan whether her husband had any property. They were told he had none, but nevertheless two of the men went into Morgan's room and made a search for papers. On leaving the house one of them said to Mrs. Morgan, "We have just conducted your husband to jail, and shall keep him there until we find his papers." September 8, James Ganson, who kept the tavern at Stafford, was notified from Batavia that between forty and fifty men would be there for supper. The men came and late at night departed for Batavia, where they found a number of men gathered from other points. From an affidavit taken afterwards it seems the object of the party was to destroy Miller's office, but they found Miller and Morgan had been warned. At any rate, the party dispersed without doing anything. Part of them reassembled at Ganson's, and charges of cowardice were freely exchanged; certain of the leaders were afterwards indicted for their part in this affair, but no trial was had. To this day the business portion of Batavia stretches along both sides of a broad main street; instead of cross-streets at regular intervals there are numerous alleys leading off the main street, with here and there a wider side street. In those days nearly all the buildings were of wood and but one or two stories in height. Miller's printing-offices occupied the second stories of two wooden buildings; a side alley separating the two buildings, dividing also, of course, the two parts of the printing establishment. On Sunday night, September 10, fire was discovered under the stairways leading to the printing-offices; on extinguishing the blaze, straw and cotton balls saturated with turpentine were found under the stairways, and some distance from the buildings a dark lantern was found. On this same Sunday morning, September 10, a man--the coroner of the county--in the village of Canandaigua, fifty miles east of Batavia, obtained from a justice of the peace a warrant for the arrest of Morgan on the charge of stealing a shirt and a cravat in the month of May from an innkeeper named Kingsley. Having obtained the warrant, which was directed to him as coroner, the complainant called a constable, and together with four well-known residents of Canandaigua they hired a special stage and started for Batavia. At Avon, Caledonia, and Le Roy they were joined by others who seemed to understand that Morgan was to be arrested. At Stafford they stopped for supper at Ganson's tavern. After supper they proceeded towards Batavia, but stopped about a mile and a half east of the village, certain of the party returning with the stage. Early the next morning Morgan was arrested, and an extra stage engaged to take the party back. The driver, becoming uneasy as to the regularity of the proceedings, at first refused to start, but was persuaded to go as far as Stafford, where Ganson--whom the driver knew--said everything was all right and that he would assume all responsibility. About sunset of the same day--Monday, September 11--they arrived at Canandaigua, and Morgan was at once examined by the justice; the evidence was held insufficient and the prisoner discharged. The same complainant immediately produced a claim for two dollars which had been assigned to him. Morgan admitted the debt, confessed judgment, and pulled off his coat, offering it as security. The constable refused to take the coat and took Morgan to jail. Tuesday noon, September 12, a crowd of strangers appeared in Batavia, assembling at Donald's tavern. A constable went to Miller's office, arrested him, and took him to the tavern, where he was detained in a room for about two hours. He was then put in an open wagon with some men, all strangers to him. The constable mounted his horse and the party proceeded to Stafford. Arriving there Miller was conducted to the third story of the stone building beside the creek, and was there confined, guarded by five men. About dusk the constable and the crowd took Miller to Le Roy, where he was taken before the justice who had issued the warrant, when all his prosecutors, together with constable and warrant, disappeared. As no one appeared against the prisoner, the justice told him he was at liberty to go. From the docket of the justice it appeared that the warrant had been issued at the request of Daniel Johns, Miller's partner. The leaders were indicted for riot, assault, and false imprisonment, tried, three found guilty and imprisoned. At the trial there was evidence to show that on the morning of the 12th a meeting was held in the third story of the stone building at Stafford, a leader selected, and plans arranged. On the evening of Tuesday 12th a neighbor of Morgan's called at the Canandaigua jail and asked to see Morgan. The jailer was absent. His wife permitted the man to speak to Morgan, and the man said that he had come to pay the debt for which Morgan was committed and to take him home. Morgan was asked if he were willing to go; he answered that he was willing, but that it did not matter particularly that night, for he could just as well wait until morning; but the man said "No," that he would rather take him out that night, for he had run around all day for him and was very tired and wished to get home. The man offered to deposit with the jailer's wife five dollars as security for the payment of the debt and all costs, but she would not let Morgan out, saying that she did not know the man and that he was not the owner of the judgment. The man went out and was gone a few minutes, and brought back a well-known resident of the village of Canandaigua and the owner of the judgment; these two men said that it was all right for the jailer's wife to accept two dollars, the amount of the judgment, and release Morgan. Taking the money, the woman opened the inside door of the prison, and Morgan was requested to get ready quickly and come out. He was soon ready, and walked out of the front door between the man who had called for him and another. The jailer's wife while fastening the inside prison-door heard a cry of murder near the outer door of the jail, and running to the door she saw Morgan struggling with the two men who had come for him. He continued to scream and cry in the most distressing manner, at the same time struggling with all his strength; his voice was suppressed by something that was put over his mouth, and a man following behind rapped loudly upon the well-curb with a stick; a carriage came up, Morgan was put in it by the two men with him, and the carriage drove off. It was a moonlight night, and the jailer's wife clearly saw all that transpired, and even remembered that the horses were gray. Neither the man who made the complaint nor the resident of Canandaigua who came to the jail and advised the jailer's wife that she could safely let Morgan go went with the carriage. They picked up Morgan's hat, which was lost in the struggle, and watched the carriage drive away. The account given by the wife of the jailer was corroborated by a number of entirely reliable and reputable witnesses. A man living near the jail went to the door of his house and saw the men struggling in the street, one of them apparently down and making noises of distress; the man went towards the struggling man, and asked a man who was a little behind the others what was the matter, to which he answered, "Nothing; only a man has been let out of jail, and been taken on a warrant, and is going to be tried, or have his trial." In January following, when the feeling was growing against the abductors of Morgan, the three men in Canandaigua most prominently connected with all that transpired at the jail on the night in question made statements in court under oath, which admitted the facts to be substantially as above outlined, except they insisted that they did not know why Morgan struggled before getting into the carriage. These men expressed regret that they did not go to the assistance of Morgan, and insisted that was the only fault they committed on the night in question. They admitted that they understood that Morgan was compiling a book on the subject of Masonry at the instigation of Miller the publisher at Batavia, and alleged that he was getting up the book solely for pecuniary profit, and they believed it was desirable to remove Morgan to some place beyond the influence of Miller, where his friends and acquaintances might convince him of the impropriety of his conduct and persuade him to abandon the publication of the book. In passing sentence, the court said: "The legislature have not seen fit, perhaps, from the supposed improbability that the crime would be attempted, to make your offence a felony. Its grade and punishment have been left to the provisions of the common law, which treats it as a misdemeanor, and punishes it with fine and imprisonment in the common jail. The court are of opinion that your liberty ought to be made to answer for the liberty of Morgan: his person was restrained by force; and the court, in the exercise of its lawful powers, ought not to be more tender of your liberty than you, in the plenitude of lawless force, were of his." It is quite clear that up to this time none of the to do parties connected directly or indirectly with the abduction of Morgan had any intention whatsoever of doing him bodily harm. If such had been their purpose, the course they followed was foolish in the extreme. The simple fact was the Masons were greatly excited over the threatened exposure of the secrets of their order by one of their own members, and they desired to get hold of the manuscript and proofs and prevent the publication, and the misguided hot-heads who were active in the matter thought that by getting Morgan away from Miller they could persuade him to abandon his project. This theory is borne out by the fact that on the day Morgan was taken to Canandaigua several prominent men of Batavia called upon Mrs. Morgan and told her that if she would give up to the Masons the papers she had in her possession Morgan would be brought back. She gave up all the papers she could find; they were submitted to Johns, the former partner of Miller, who said that part of the manuscript was not there. However, the men took Mrs. Morgan to Canandaigua, stopping at Avon over night. These men expected to find Morgan still in Canandaigua, but were surprised to learn that he had been taken away the night before, whereupon Mrs. Morgan, having left her two small children at home, returned as quickly as possible. So far as Morgan's manuscript is concerned, it seems that a portion of it was already in the hands of Miller, and another portion secreted inside of a bed at the time he was arrested, so that not long after his disappearance what purports to be his book was published. Nearly two years later, in August, 1828, three men were tried for conspiracy to kidnap and carry away Morgan. At that time it was believed by many that Morgan was either simply detained abroad or in hiding, although it was strenuously insisted by others that he had been killed. All that was ever known of his movements after he left the jail at Canandaigua on the night of September 11 was developed in the testimony taken at this trial. One witness who saw the carriage drive past the jail testified that a man was put in by four others, who got in after him and the carriage drove away; the witness was near the men when they got into the carriage, and as it turned west he heard one of them cry to the driver, "Why don't you drive faster? why don't you drive faster?" The driver testified that some time prior to the date in question a man came to him and arranged for him to take a party to Rochester on or about the 12th. On the night in question he took his yellow carriage and gray horses about nine o'clock and drove just beyond the Canandaigua jail on the Palmyra road. A party of five got into the carriage, but he heard no noise and saw no resistance, nor did he know any of the men. He was told to go on beyond Rochester, and he took the Lewiston road. On arriving at Hanford's one of the party got out; he then drove about one hundred yards beyond the house, stopping near a piece of woods, where the others who were in the carriage got out, and he turned around and drove back. Another man who lived at Lewiston and worked as a stage-driver said that he was called between ten and twelve o'clock at night and told to drive a certain carriage into a back street alongside of another carriage which he found standing there without any horse attached to it; some men were standing near it. He drove alongside the carriage, and one or two men got out of it and got into his hack. He saw no violence, but on stopping at a point about six miles farther on some of the men got out, and while they were conversing, some one in the carriage asked for water in a whining voice, to which one of the men replied, "You shall have some in a moment." No water was handed to the person in the carriage, but the men got in, and he drove them on to a point about half a mile from Fort Niagara, where they told him to stop; there were no houses there; the party, four in number, got out and proceeded side by side towards the fort; he drove back with his carriage. A man living in Lewiston swore that he went to his door and saw a carriage coming, which went a little distance farther on, stopping beside another carriage which was in the street without horses; he recognized the driver of the carriage and one other man; he thought something strange was going on and went into his garden, where he had a good view of what took place in the road; he saw a man go from the box of the carriage which had driven by to the one standing in the street and open the door; some one got out backward with the assistance of two men in the carriage. The person who was taken out had no hat, but a handkerchief on his head, and appeared to be intoxicated and helpless. They took him to the other carriage and all got in. One of the men went back and took something from the carriage they had left, which seemed to be a jug, and then they drove off. At the trial in question the testimony of a man by the name of Giddins, who had the custody of old Fort Niagara, was not received because it appeared he had no religious beliefs whatsoever, but his brother-in-law testified that on a certain night in September, shortly after the events narrated, he was staying at Giddins's house, which was twenty or thirty rods from the magazine of the old fort; that before going to the installation of the lodge at Lewiston he went with Giddins to the magazine. Previously to starting out Giddins had a pistol, which he requested the witness to carry, but witness declined. Giddins had something else with him, which the witness did not recognize. When they came within about two rods of the magazine, Giddins went up to the door and something was said inside the door. A man's voice came from inside the magazine; witness was alarmed, and thought he had better get out of the way, and he at once retreated, followed soon after by Giddins. From the old records it seemed that the evidence tracing Morgan to the magazine of old Fort Niagara was satisfactory to court and jury; but what became of him no man knows. In January, 1827, the fort and magazine were visited by certain committees appointed to make investigations, who reported in detail the condition of the magazine, which seemed to indicate that some one had been confined therein not long before, and that the prisoner had made violent and reiterated efforts to force his way out. A good many hearsay statements were taken to the effect that Morgan was as a matter of fact put in the magazine and kept there some days. Governor De Witt Clinton issued three proclamations, two soon after September, 1826, and the last dated March 19, 1827, offering rewards for "Authentic information of the place where the said William Morgan has been conveyed," and "for the discovery of the said William Morgan, if alive; and, if murdered, a reward of two thousand dollars for the discovery of the offender or offenders, etc." In the autumn of 1827 a body was cast up on the shore of Lake Ontario near the mouth of Oak Orchard Creek. Mrs. Morgan and a Dr. Strong identified the body as that of William Morgan by a scar on the foot and by the teeth. The identification was disputed; the disappearance of Morgan was then a matter of politics, and the anti-masons, headed by Thurlow Weed, originated the saying, "It's a good enough Morgan for us until you produce the live one," which afterwards become current political slang in the form, "It's a good enough Morgan until after election." CHAPTER NINE THROUGH WESTERN NEW YORK IN THE MUD The afternoon was drawing to a close, the rain had partially subsided, but the trees were heavy with water, and the streets ran rivulets. Prudence would seem to dictate remaining in Le Roy over-night, but, so far as roads are concerned, it is always better to start out in, or immediately after, a rain than to wait until the water has soaked in and made the mud deep. A heavy rain washes the surface off the roads; it is better not to give it time to penetrate; we therefore determined to start at once. There was not a soul on the streets as we pulled out a few moments after five o'clock, and in the entire ride of some thirty miles we met scarcely more than three or four teams. We took the road by Bergen rather than through Caledonia; both roads are good, but in very wet weather the road from Bergen to Rochester is apt to be better than that from Caledonia, as it is more sandy. To Bergen, eight miles, we found hard gravel, with one steep hill to descend; from Bergen in, it was sandy, and after the rain, was six inches deep in places with soft mud. It was slow progress and eight o'clock when we pulled into Rochester. We were given rooms where all the noises of street and trolley could be heard to best advantage; sleep was a struggle, rest an impossibility. Hotel construction has quite kept pace with the times, but hotel location is a tradition of the dark ages, when to catch patrons it was necessary to get in their way. At Syracuse the New York Central passes through the principal hotels,--the main tracks bisecting the dining-rooms, with side tracks down each corridor and a switch in each bed-room; but this is an extreme instance. It was well enough in olden times to open taverns on the highways; an occasional coach would furnish the novelty and break the monotony, but people could sleep. The erection of hotels in close proximity to railroad tracks, or upon the main thoroughfares of cities where stone or asphalt pavements resound to every hoof-fall, and where street cars go whirring and clanging by all night long, is something more than an anachronism; it is a fiendish disregard of human comfort. Paradoxical as it may seem,--a pious but garrulous old gentleman was one time invited to lead in prayer; consenting, he approached the throne of grace with becoming humility, saying, "Paradoxical as it may seem, O Lord, it is nevertheless true," etc., the phrase is a good one, it lingers in the ear,--therefore, once more, --paradoxical as it may seem, it is nevertheless true that those who go about all day in machines do not like to be disturbed by machines at night. We soon learned to keep away from the cities at night. It is so much more delightful to stop in smaller towns and villages; your host is glad to see you; you are quite the guest of honor, perhaps the only guest; there is a place in the adjoining stable for the machine; the men are interested, and only too glad to care for it and help in the morning; the best the house affords is offered; as a rule the rooms are quite good, the beds clean, and nowadays many of these small hotels have rooms with baths; the table is plain; but while automobiling one soon comes to prefer plain country living. In the larger cities it costs a fortune in tips before the machine and oneself are well housed; to enter Albany, Boston, or New York at night, find your hotel, find the automobile station, find your luggage, and find yourself, is a bore. No one who has ever ridden day after day in the country cares anything about riding in cities; it is as artificial and monotonous as riding a hunter over pavements. If one could just approach a city at night, steal into it, enjoy its lights and shadows, its confusion and strange sounds, all in passing, and slip through without stopping long enough to feel the thrust of the reality, it would be delightful. But the charm disappears, the dream is brought to earth, the vision becomes tinsel when you draw up in front of a big caravansary and a platoon of uniformed porters, bell-boys, and pages swoop down upon everything you have, including your pocket-book; then the Olympian clerk looks at you doubtfully, puzzled for the first time in his life, does not know whether you are a mill-hand from Pittsburgh who should be assigned a hall bed-room in the annex, or a millionaire from Newport who should be tendered the entire establishment on a silver platter. The direct road from Rochester to Syracuse is by way of Pittsford, Palmyra, Newark, Lyons, Clyde, Port Byron, and Camillus, but it is neither so good nor so interesting as the old roads through Geneva and Auburn. In going from Buffalo to Albany _via_ Syracuse, Rochester is to the north and some miles out of the way; unless one especially desires to visit the city, it is better to leave it to one side. Genesee Street out of Buffalo is Genesee Street into Syracuse and Utica; it is the old highway between Buffalo and Albany, and may be followed to-day from end to end. Instead of turning to the northeast at Batavia and going through Newkirk, Byron, Bergen, North Chili, and Gates to Rochester, keep more directly east through Le Roy, Caledonia, Avon, and Canandaigua to Geneva; the towns are old, the hotels, most of them, good, the roads are generally gravel and the country interesting; it is old New York. No one driving through the State for pleasure would think of taking the direct road from Rochester to Syracuse; the beautiful portions of this western end of the State are to the south, in the Genesee and Wyoming Valleys, and through the lake region. We left Rochester at ten o'clock, Saturday, the 24th, intending to go east by Egypt, Macedon, Palmyra,--the Oriental route, as my companion called it; but after leaving Pittsford we missed the road and lost ourselves among the hills, finding several grades so steep and soft that we both were obliged to dismount. An old resident was decidedly of the opinion that the roads to the southeast were better than those to the northeast, and we turned from the Nile route towards Canandaigua. Though the roads were decidedly better, in many places being well gravelled, the heavy rains of the previous two days made the going slow, and it was one-thirty before we pulled up at the old hotel in Canandaigua for dinner. As the machine had been there before, we were greeted as friends. The old negro porter is a character,--quite the irresponsible head of the entire establishment. "Law's sakes! you heah agen? glad to see you; whar you come from dis time? Rochester! No, foh sure?--dis mawning?--you doan say so; that jes' beats me; to think I live to see a thing like that; it's a reg'lar steam-engine, aint it?" "Sambo," called out a bystander, making fun of the old darkey, "do you know what you are looking at?" "Well, if I doan, den I can't find out frum dis yere crowd." "What do they call it, Sambo?" some one else asked. "Sh-sh'h--that's a secret; an' if I shud tell you, you cudn't keep it." "Is it yours?" "I dun sole mine to Mistah Vand'bilt las' week; he name it de White Ghos'--after me." "You mean the Black Devil." "No, I doan; he didn't want to hu't youah feelings; Mistah Vand'bilt a very consid'rate man." Sambo carried our things in, talking all the time. "Now you jes' go right into dinnah; I'll take keer of the auto'bile; I'll see that nun of those ign'rant folk stannin' roun' lay their han's on it; they think Sambo doan know an auto'bile; didn't I see you heah befoh? an' didn't I hole de hose when you put de watah in? Me an' you are de only two pussons in dis whole town who knows about de auto'bile,--jes' me an' you." After dinner we rode down the broad main street and around the lake to the left in going to Geneva. Barring the fact that the roads were soft in places, the afternoon's ride was delightful, the roads being generally very good. It was about five o'clock when we came to the top of the hills overlooking Geneva and the silvery lake beyond. It was a sight not to be forgotten by the American traveller, for this country has few towns so happily situated as the village of Geneva,--a cluster of houses against a wooded slope with the lake like a mirror below. The little hotel was almost new and very good; the rooms were large and comfortable. There was but one objection, and that the location at the very corner of the busiest and noisiest streets. But Geneva goes to bed early,--even on Saturday nights,--and by ten or eleven o'clock the streets were quiet, while on Sunday mornings there is nothing to disturb one before the bells ring for church. We were quite content to rest this first Sunday out. It was so delightfully quiet all the morning that we lounged about and read until dinner-time. In the afternoon a walk, and in the evening friends came to supper with us. In a moment of ambitious emulation of metropolitan customs the small hotel had established a roof garden, with music two or three evenings a week, but the innovation had not proven profitable; the roof remained with some iron framework that once supported awnings, several disconsolate tables, and some lonesome iron chairs; we visited this scene of departed glory and obtained a view of the lake at evening. The irregular outlines of the long shadows of the hills stretched far out over the still water; beyond these broken lines the slanting rays of the setting sun fell upon the surface of the lake, making it to shine like a mass of burnished silver. Some white sails glimmered in the light far across; near by we caught the sound of church-bells; the twilight deepened, the shadows lengthened, the luminous stretch of water grew narrower and narrower until it disappeared entirely and all was dark upon the lake, save here and there the twinkle of lights from moving boats,--shifting stars in the void of night. The morning was bright as we left Geneva, but the roads, until we struck the State road, were rough and still muddy from the recent rains. It was but a short run to Auburn, and from there into Syracuse the road is a fine gravel. The machine had developed a slight pounding and the rear-axle showed signs of again parting at the differential. After luncheon the machine was run into a machine shop, and three hours were spent in taking up the lost motion in the eccentric strap, at the crank-pin, and in a loose bushing. On opening up the differential gear case both set-screws holding the axles were found loose. The factory had been most emphatically requested to put in larger keys so as to fit the key-ways snugly and to lock these set-screws in some way--neither of these things had been done; and both halves of the rear-axle were on the verge of working out. Small holes were bored through the set-screws, wires passed through and around the shoulders of the gears, and we had no further trouble from this source. It was half-past five before we left Syracuse for Oneida. The road is good, and the run of twenty-seven miles was made in little over two hours, arriving at the small, old-fashioned tavern in Oneida at exactly seven forty-five. A number of old-timers dropped into the hotel office that evening to see what was going on and hear about the strange machine. Great stories were exchanged on all sides; the glories of Oneida quite eclipsed the lesser claims of the automobile to fame and notoriety, for it seemed that some of the best known men of New York and Chicago were born in the village or the immediate vicinity; the land-marks remain, traditions are intact, the men departed to seek their fortunes elsewhere, but their successes are the town's fame. The genial proprietor of the hotel carried his seventy-odd years and two hundred and sixty pounds quite handily in his shirt-sleeves, moving with commendable celerity from office to bar-room, supplying us in the front room with information and those in the back with refreshment. "So you never heard that those big men were born in this locality. That's strange; tho't ev'rybody knew that. Why 'Neida has produced more famous men than any town same size in 'Merika,--Russell Sage, General New,--comin'" (to those in the bar-room); "say, you fellers, can't you wait?" As he disappeared in the rear we heard his rotund voice, "What'll you take? Was jest tellin' that chap with the threshin'-machine a thing or two about this country. Rye? no, thet's Bourbon--the reel corn juice--ten years in wood--" "Mixed across the street at the drug store--ha! ha! ha!" interrupted some one. "Don't be faceshus, Sam; this ain't no sody-fountin." "Where'd that feller cum frum with his steam pianer,--Syr'cuse?" "Naw! Chicago." "Great cranberries! you don't say so,--all the way from Chicago! When did he start?" "Day 'fore yesterday," replied the old man, and we could hear him putting back the bottles; a chorus of voices,-- "What!" "Holy Mo--" "Day afore yester--say, look here, you're jokin'." "Mebbe I am, but if you don't believe it, ask him." "Why Chicago is further'n Buf'lo--an' that's faster'n a train." "Yes," drawled the old man; "he passed the Empire Express th' other side Syr'cuse." "Get out." "What do you take us fer?" "Wall, when you cum in, I took you fer fellers who knowed the diff'rence betwixt whiskey and benzine, but I see my mistake. You fellers shud buy your alc'hol across the way at the drug store; it don't cost s' much, and burns better." "Thet's one on us. Your whiskey is all right, grandpa, the reel corn juice--ten year in wood--too long in bottl'spile if left over night, so pull the stopper once more." CHAPTER TEN THE MOHAWK VALLEY IN THE VALLEY On looking over the machine the next morning, Tuesday, the 27th, the large cap-screws holding the bearings of the main-shaft were found slightly loose. The wrench with the machine was altogether too light to turn these screws up as tight as they should be; it was therefore necessary to have a wrench made from tool steel; that required about half an hour, but it was time well spent. The road from Oneida to Utica is very good; rolling but no steep grades; some sand, but not deep; some clay, but not rough; for the most part gravel. The run of twenty miles was quickly made. We stopped only for a moment to inquire for letters and then on to Herkimer by the road on the north side of the valley. Returning some weeks later we came by the south road, through Frankford, between the canal and the railroad tracks, through Mohawk and Ilion. This is the better known and the main travelled road; but it is far inferior to the road on the north; there are more hills on the latter, some of the grades being fairly steep, but in dry weather the north road is more picturesque and more delightful in every way, while in wet weather there is less deep mud. At Herkimer, eighteen and one-half miles from Utica and thirty-eight from Oneida, we had luncheon, then inquired for gasoline. Most astonishing! in the entire village no gasoline to be had. A town of most respectable size, hotel quite up to date, large brick blocks of stores, enterprise apparent--but no gasoline. Only one man handled it regularly, an old man who drove about the country with his tank-wagon distributing kerosene and gasoline; he had no place of business but his house, and he happened to be entirely out of gasoline. In two weeks the endurance run of the Automobile Club of America would be through there; at Herkimer those in the contest were to stop for the night,--and no gasoline. In the entire pilgrimage of over two thousand miles through nine States and the province of Ontario, we did not find a town or village of any size where gasoline could not be obtained, and frequently we found it at cross-road stores,--but not at Herkimer. Happily there was sufficient gasoline in the tank to carry us on; besides, we always had a gallon in reserve. At the next village we found all we needed. When we returned through Herkimer some weeks later nearly every store had gasoline. If hotels, stables, and drug stores, wherever automobiles are apt to come, would keep a five-gallon can of gasoline on hand, time and trouble would be saved, and drivers of automobiles would be only too glad to pay an extra price for the convenience. The grades of gasoline sold in this country vary from the common so-called "stove gasoline," or sixty-eight, to seventy-four. The country dealers are becoming wise in their generation, and all now insist they keep only seventy-four. As a matter of fact nearly all that is sold in both cities and country is the "stove gasoline," because it is kept on hand principally for stoves and torches, and they do not require higher than sixty-eight. In fact, one is fortunate if the gasoline tests so high as that. American machines, as a rule, get along very well with the low grades, but many of the foreign machines require the better grades. If a machine will not use commercial stove gasoline, the only safe thing is to carry a supply of higher grade along, and that is a nuisance. It is difficult to find a genuine seventy-four even in the cities, since it is commonly sold only in barrels. If the exhaust of a gasoline stationary engine is heard anywhere along the road-side, stop, for there will generally be found a barrel or two of the high-grade, and a supply may be laid in. The best plan, however, is to have a carburetor and motor that will use the ordinary "stove-grade;" as a matter of fact, it contains more carbon and more explosive energy if thoroughly ignited, but it does not make gas so readily in cold weather and requires a good hot spark. All day we rode on through the valley, now far up on the hill-sides, now down by the meadows; past Palatine Church, Palatine Bridge; through Fonda and Amsterdam to Schenectady. It was a glorious ride. The road winds along the side of the valley, following the graceful curves and swellings of the hills. The little towns are so lost in the recesses that one comes upon them quite unexpectedly, and, whirling through their one long main street, catches glimpses of quaint churches and buildings which fairly overhang the highway, and narrow vistas of lawns, trees, shrubbery, and flowers; then all is hidden by the next bend in the road. During the long summer afternoon we sped onward through this beautiful valley. Far down on the tracks below trains would go scurrying by; now and then a slow freight would challenge our competition; trainmen would look up curiously; occasionally an engineer would sound a note of defiance or a blast of victory with his whistle. The distant river followed lazily along, winding hither and thither through the lowland, now skirting the base of the hills, now bending far to the other side as if resentful of such rude obstructions to its once impetuous will. Far across on the distant slopes we could see the cattle grazing, and farther still tiny specks that were human beings like ourselves moving upon the landscape. Nature's slightest effort dwarfs man's mightiest achievements. That great railroad with its many tracks and rushing trains seemed a child's plaything,--a noisy, whirring, mechanical toy beside the lazy river; for did not that placid, murmuring, meandering stream in days gone by hollow out this valley? did not nature in moments of play rear those hills and carve out those distant mountains? Compared with these traces of giant handiwork, what are the works of man? just little putterings for our own convenience, just little utilizations of waste energies for our own purposes. One should view nature with the setting sun. It may gratify a bustling curiosity to see nature at her toilet, but that is the part of a "Peeping Tom." The hour of sunrise is the hour for work, it is the hour when every living thing feels the impulse to do something. The birds do not fly to the tree-tops to view the morning sun, the animals do not rush forth from their lairs to watch the landscape lighten with the morning's glow; no, all nature is refreshed and eager to be doing, not seeing; acting, not thinking. Man is no exception to this all-embracing rule; his innate being protests against idleness; the most secret cells of his organization are charged to overflowing with energy and demand relief in work. Morning is not the hour for contemplation; but when evening comes, as the sun sinks towards the west, and lengthening shadows make it seem as if all nature were stretching herself in repose, then do we love to rest and contemplate the rich loveliness of the earth and the infinite tenderness of the heavens. Every harsh line, every glare of light, every crude tone has disappeared. We stroke nature and she purrs. We sink at our ease in a bed of moss and nature nestles at our side; we linger beside the silvery brook and it sings to us; we listen attentively to the murmuring trees and they whisper to us; we gaze upon the frowning hills and they smile upon us. And by and by as the shadows deepen all outlines are lost, and we see vaguely the great masses of tone and color; nature becomes heroic; the petty is dissolved; the insignificant is lost; hills and trees and streams are blended in one mighty composition, in the presence of which all but the impalpable soul of man is as nothing. We left Schenectady at nine o'clock, taking the Troy road as far as Latham's Corners, then to the right into Albany. We reached the city at half-past ten. Albany is not a convenient place for automobiles. There are no special stations for the storing of machines, and the stables are most inaccessible on account of the hills and steep approaches. CHAPTER ELEVEN THE VALLEY OF LEBANON THE SICK TURKEY It was four o'clock, next day, when we left Albany, going down Green Street and crossing the long bridge, taking the straight road over the ridges for Pittsfield. Immediately on leaving the eastern end of the bridge the ascent of a long steep grade is begun. This is the first ridge, and from this on for fifteen miles is a succession of ridges, steep rocky hills, and precipitous declines. These continue until Brainerd is reached, where the valley of Lebanon begins. These ridges can be partially avoided by turning down the Hudson to the right after crossing the bridge and making a detour to Brainerd; the road is about five miles longer, but is very commonly taken by farmers going to the city with heavy loads, and may well be taken by all who wish to avoid a series of stiff grades. Many farmers were amazed to hear we had come over the hills instead of going around, and wondered how the machine managed to do it. Popular notions concerning the capabilities of a machine are interesting; people estimate its strength and resources by those of a horse. In speaking of roads, farmers seem to assume the machine--like the horse--will not mind one or two hills, no matter how steep, but that it will mind a series of grades, even though none are very stiff. Steam and electric automobiles do tire,--that is, long pulls through heavy roads or up grades tell on them,--the former has trouble in keeping up steam, the latter rapidly consumes its store of electricity. The gasoline machine does not tire. Within its limitations it can keep going indefinitely, and it is immaterial whether it is up or down grade--save in the time made; it will go all day through deep mud, or up steep hills, quite as smoothly, though by no means so fast, as on the level; but let it come to one hole, spot, or hill that is just beyond the limit of its power, and it is stuck; it has no reserve force to draw upon. The steam machine can stop a moment, accumulate two or three hundred pounds of steam, open the throttle and, for a few moments, exert twice its normal energy to get out of the difficulty. It is not a series of hills that deters the gasoline operator, but the one hill, the one grade, the one bad place, which is just beyond the power he has available. The road the farmer calls good may have that one bad place or hill in it, and must therefore be avoided. The road that is pronounced bad may be, every foot of it, well within the power of the machine, and is therefore the road to take. In actual road work the term "horse-power" is very misleading. When steam-engines in early days began to take the place of horses, they were rated as so many horse-power according to the number of horses they displaced. It then became important to find out what was the power of the horse. Observing the strong dray horses used by the London breweries, Watt found that a horse could go two and one-half miles per hour and at the same time raise a weight of one hundred and fifty pounds suspended by a rope over a pulley; this is equivalent to thirty-three thousand pounds raised one foot in one minute, which is said to be one horse-power. No horse, of course, could raise thirty-three thousand pounds a foot or any portion of a foot in a minute or an hour, but the horse can travel at the rate of two and one-half miles an hour raising a weight of one hundred and fifty pounds, and the horse can do more; while it cannot move so heavy a weight as thirty-three thousand pounds, it can in an emergency and by sudden strain move much more than one hundred and fifty pounds; with good foothold it can pull more than its own weight along a road, out of a hole, or up a hill. It could not lift or pull so great a weight very far; in fact, no farther than the equivalent of approximately thirty-three thousand pounds raised one foot in one minute; but for the few seconds necessary a very great amount of energy is at the command of the driver of the horse. Hence eight horses, or even four, or two can do things on the road that an eight horse-power gasoline machine cannot do; for the gasoline machine cannot concentrate all its power into the exertion of a few moments. If it is capable of lifting a given load up a given grade at a certain speed on its lowest gear, it cannot lift twice the load up the same grade, or the same load up a steeper grade in double the time, for its resources are exhausted when the limit of the power developed through the lowest gear is reached. The grade may be only a mud hole, out of which the rear wheels have to rise only two feet to be free, but it is as fatal to progress as a hill a mile long. Of course it is always possible to race the engine, throw in the clutch, and gain some power from the momentum of the fly-wheel, and many a bad place may be surmounted step by step in this way; but this process has its limitations also, and the fact remains that with a gasoline machine it is possible to carry a given load only so fast, but if the machine moves it all, it will continue to move on until the load is increased, or the road changes for the worse. When the farmer hears of an eight horse-power machine he thinks of the wonderful things eight good horses can do on the road, and is surprised when the machine fails to go up hills that teams travel every day; he does not understand it, and wonders where the power comes in. He is not enough of a mechanic to reflect that the eight horse-power is demonstrated in the carrying of a ton over average roads one hundred and fifty miles in ten hours, something eight horses could not possibly do. Just as we were entering the valley of Lebanon, beyond the village of Brainerd, while going down a slight descent, my Companion exclaimed,-- "The wheel is coming off." I threw out the clutch, applied the brake, looked, and saw the left front wheel roll gracefully and quite deliberately out from under the big metal mud guard; the carriage settled down at that corner, and the end of the axle ploughed a furrow in the road for a few feet, when we came to a stop. The steering-head had broken short off at the inside of the hub. We were not going very fast at the time, and the heavy metal mud guard which caught the wheel, acting as a huge brake, saved us from a bad smash. On examination, the shank of the steering-head was found to contain two large flaws, which reduced its strength more than one-half, and the surprising thing was that it had not parted long before, when subjected to much severer strains. This was a break that no man could repair on the road. Under pressure of circumstances the steering-head could have been taken to the nearest blacksmith shop and a weld made, but that would require time, and the results would be more than doubtful. By far the easier thing to do was to wire the factory for a new head and patiently wait its coming. Happily, we landed in the hands of a retired farmer, whose generous hospitality embraced our tired selves as well as the machine. Before supper a telegram was sent from Brainerd to the factory for a new steering-head. While waiting inside for the operator to finish selling tickets for the one evening train about to arrive, a curious crowd gathered outside about my host, and the questions asked were plainly audible; the names are fictitious. "What'r ye down t' the stashun fur this hur o' day, Joe?" "Broke my new aut'mobile," carelessly replied my host, flicking a fly off the nigh side of his horse. "Shu!" "What'r given us?" "Git out--" "You ain't got no aut'mobile," chorused the crowd. "Mebbe I haven't; but if you fellows know an aut'mobile from a hay rake, you might take a look in my big barn an' let me know what you see." "Say, Joe, you're jokin',--hev you really got one?" "You can look for yourselves." "I saw one go through here 'bout six o'clock," interrupted a new-comer. "Great Jehosephat, but 't went like a streak of greased lightnin'." "War that your'n, Joe?" "Well--" "Naw," said the new-comer, scornfully. "Joe ain't got no aut'mobile; there's the feller in there now who runs it," and the crowd turned my way with such interest that I turned to the little table and wrote the despatch, quite losing the connection of the subdued murmurs outside; but it was quite evident from the broken exclamations that my host was filling the populace up with information interesting inversely to its accuracy. "Mile a minute--faster'n a train--Holy Moses! what's that, Joe? broke axle--telegraphed--how many--four more--you don't say so?-- what's his name? I'll bet it's Vanderbilt. Don't you believe it-- it costs money to run one of those machines. I'll bet he's a dandy from 'way back--stopping at your house--bridal chamber--that's right--you want to kill the fatted calf for them fellers--say--" But further comments were cut short as I came out, jumped in, and we drove back to a good supper by candle-light. The stars were shining over head, the air was clear and crisp, down in the valley of Lebanon the mist was falling, and it was cool that night. Lulled by the monotonous song of the tree-toad and the deep bass croaking of frogs by the distant stream, we fell asleep. There was nothing to do next day. The new steering-head could not possibly arrive until the morning following. As the farm was worked by a tenant, our host had little to do, and proposed that we drive to the Shaker village a few miles beyond. The visit is well worth making, and we should have missed it entirely if the automobile had not broken down, for the new State road over the mountain does not go through the village, but back of it. From the new road one can look down upon the cluster of large buildings on the side of the mountain, but the old roads are so very steep, with such interesting names as "Devil's Elbow," and the like, that they would not tempt an automobile. Many with horses get out and walk at the worst places. One wide street leads through the settlement; on each side are the huge community buildings, seven in all, each occupied by a "family," so called, or community, and each quite independent in its management and enterprises from the others; the common ties being the meeting-house near the centre and the school-house a little farther on. We stopped at the North Family simply because it was the first at hand, and we were hungry. Ushered into a little reception-room in one of the outer buildings, we were obliged to wait for dinner until the party preceding us had finished, for the little dining-room devoted to strangers had only one table, seating but six or eight, and it seemed to be the commendable policy of the institution to serve each party separately. A printed notice warned us that dinner served after one o'clock cost ten cents per cover extra, making the extravagant charge of sixty cents. We arrived just in time to be entitled to the regular rate, but the dilatory tactics of the party in possession kept us beyond the hour and involved us in the extra expense, with no compensation in the shape of extra dishes. Morally and--having tendered ourselves within the limit--legally we were entitled to dine at the regular rate, or the party ahead should have paid the additional tariff, but the good sister could not see the matter in that light, plead ignorance of law, and relied entirely upon custom. The man who picks up a Shaker maiden for a fool will let her drop. Having waited until nearly famished, the sister blandly told us, as if it were a matter of local interest, but otherwise of small consequence, that the North Family were strict vegetarians, serving no meat whatsoever; the only meat family was at the other end of the village. We were ready for meat, for chickens, ducks, green goose, anything that walked on legs; we were not ready for pumpkin, squash, boiled potatoes, canned peas, and cabbage; but a theory as well as a condition confronted us; it was give in or move on. We gave in, but for fifteen cents more per plate bargained for preserves, maple syrup, and honey,--for something cloying to deceive the outraged palate. But that dinner was a revelation of what a good cook can do with vegetables in season; it was the quintessence of delicacy, the refinement of finesse, the veritable apotheosis of the kitchen garden; meat would have been brutal, the intrusion of a chop inexcusable, the assertion of a steak barbarous, even a terrapin would have felt quite out of place amidst things so fragrant and impalpable as the marvellous preparations of vegetables from that wonderful Shaker kitchen. Everything was good, but the various concoctions of sweet corn were better; and such sweet corn! it is still a savory recollection. Then the variety of preserves, jellies, and syrups; fifteen cents extra were never bestowed to better advantage. We cast our coppers upon the water and they returned Spanish galleons laden with good things to eat. After dining, we were walked through the various buildings, up stairs and down, through kitchens, pantries, and cellars,--a wise exercise after so bountiful a repast. In the cellar we drank something from a bottle labelled "Pure grape juice," one of those non-alcoholic beverages with which the teetotaler whips the devil around the stump; another glass would have made Shakers of us all, for the juice of the grape in this instance was about twenty-five per cent. proof. If the good sisters supply their worthy brothers in faith with this stimulating cordial, it is not unlikely that life in the village is less monotonous than is commonly supposed. It certainly was calculated to add emphasis to the eccentricities of even a "Shaking Quaker." Although the oldest and the wealthiest of all the socialistic communities, there are only about six thousand Shakers in the United States, less than one-fourth of what there were in former times. At Mt. Lebanon, the first founded of the several societies in this country, there are seven families, or separate communities, each with its own home and buildings. The present membership is about one hundred and twenty, nearly all women,--scarcely enough men to provide the requisite deacons for each family. Large and well-managed schools are provided to attract children from the outside world, and so recruit the diminishing ranks of the faithful; but while many girls remain, the boys steal away to the heathen world, where marriage is an institution. Celibacy is the cardinal principle and the curse of Shakerism; it is slowly but surely bringing the sect to an end. It takes a lot of fanaticism to remain single, and fanaticism is in the sere and yellow leaf. In Massachusetts, where so many women are compelled to remain single, there ought to be many Shakers; there are a few, and Mt. Lebanon is just over the line. Celibacy does not appeal strongly to men. A man is quite willing to live alone if it is not compulsory, but celibates cannot stand restraint; the bachelor is bound to have his own way--until he is married. Tell a man he may not marry, and he will; that he must marry, and he won't. The sect which tries to get along with either too little or too much marriage is bound to peter out. There were John Noyes and Brigham Young. John founded the Oneida Community upon the proposition that everything should be in common, including husbands, wives, and children; from the broadest possible communism his community has regenerated into the closet of stock companies "limited," with a capital stock of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a surplus of one hundred and fifty thousand, and only two hundred and nineteen stockholders. In the palmy days of Mormonism the men could have as many wives as they could afford,--a scheme not without its practical advantages in the monotonous life of pioneer settlements, since it gave the women something to quarrel about and the men something to think about, thereby keeping both out of mischief,--but with the advent of civilization with its diverse interests, the men of Salt Lake, urged also by the law, are getting tired of more than one wife at a time, and the community will soon be absorbed and lost in the commonplace. The ancient theory of wives in multiples is giving place to the modern practice of wives in series. The story is told that a dear Shaker brother once fell from grace and disappeared in the maelstrom of the carnal world; in a few years he came back as penitent as he was penniless, with strange accounts of how men had fleeced him of all he possessed save the clothes--none too desirable--on his back. Men were so scarce that the credulous sisters and charitable deacons voted to accept his tales as true and receive him once more into the fold. It was in 1770, while in prison in England, that Ann Lee claimed to have had a great revelation concerning original sin, wherein it was revealed that a celibate life is a condition precedent to spiritual regeneration. Her revelation may have been biased by the fact that she herself was married, but not comfortably. In 1773, on her release from prison, another revelation told her to go to America. Her husband did not sympathize with the celibacy proposition, left "Mother Ann," as she was then known, and went off with another woman who was unhampered by revelations. This was the beginning of desertions which have continued ever since, until the men are reduced to a corporal's guard. The principles of the Shakers, barring celibacy, are sound and practical, and, so far as known, they live up to them quite faithfully. Like the original Oneida community, they believe in free criticism of one another in open meetings. They admit no one to the society unless he or she promises to make a full confession before others of every evil that can be recalled,--women confess to women, men to men; these requirements make it difficult to recruit their ranks. They are opposed to war and violence, do not vote, and do not permit corporal punishment. They pay their full share of public taxes and assessments and give largely in charity. Their buildings are well built and well kept, their farms and lands worked to the best advantage; in short, they are industrious and thrifty. Communism is one of those dreams that come so often to the best of mankind and, lingering on through the waking hours, influence conduct. The sharp distinctions and inequalities of life seem so harsh and unjust; the wide intervals which separate those who have from those who have not seem so unfair, that in all ages and in all countries men have tried to devise schemes for social equality,--equality of power, opportunity, and achievement. Communism of some sort is one solution urged,--communism in property, communism in effort, communism in results, everything in common. In 1840 Emerson wrote to Carlyle, "We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to live cleanly. George Ripley is talking up a colony of agriculturists and scholars, with whom he threatens to take the field and book. One man renounces the use of animal food; another of coin; and another of domestic hired service; and another of the State; and on the whole we have a commendable share of reason and of hope." Ripley did found his Brook Farm, and a lot of good people went and lived there--not Emerson; he was just a trifle too sane to be won over completely, but even he used to go into his own garden and dig in a socialistic way until his little boy warned him not to dig his foot. That is the trouble with communism, those who dig are apt to dig their feet. It is easier to call a spade a spade than to use one. Men may be born free and equal, but if they are, they do not show it. From his first breath man is oppressed by the conditions of his existence, and life is a struggle with environment. Freedom and liberty are terms of relative not absolute value. The absolutism of the commune is oppression refined, each man must dig even if he digs his own foot. The plea of the anarchist for liberty is more consistent than the plea of the communist,--the one does demand a wild, lawless freedom for individual initiative; the other demands the very refinement of interference with liberty of mind and body. The evolutionist looks on with philosophic indifference, knowing that what is to be will be, that the stream of tendency is not to be checked or swerved by vaporings, but moves irresistibly onward, though every thought, every utterance, every experiment, however wild, however visionary, has its effect. We of the practical world sojourning in the Shaker village may commiserate the disciples of theory, but they are happy in their own way,--possibly happier in their seclusion and routine than we are in our hurly-burly and endless strife for social, commercial, and political advantages. Life is as settled and certain for them as it is unsettled and uncertain for us. No problems confront them; the everlasting query, "What shall we do to-morrow?" is never asked; plans for the coming summer do not disturb them; the seashore is far off; Paris and Monte Carlo are but places, vague and indistinct, the fairy tales of travellers; their city is the four walls of their home; their world the one long, silent, street of the village; their end the little graveyard beyond; it is all planned out, foreseen, and arranged. Such a life is not without its charms, and it is small wonder that in all ages men of intellect have sought in some form of communistic association relief from the pressure of strenuous individualism. We may smile with condescension upon the busy sisters in their caps and gingham gowns, but, who knows, theirs may be the better lot. Life with us is a good deal of an automobile race,--a lot of dust, dirt, and noise; explosions, accidents, and delays; something wrong most of the time; now a burst of headlong speed, then a jolt and sudden stop; or a creeping pace with disordered mechanism; no time to think of much except the machine; less time to see anything except the road immediately ahead; strife to pass others; reckless indifference to life and limb; one long, mad contest for success and notoriety, ending for the most part in some sort of disaster,--possibly a sea of flame. If we possessed any sense of grim, sardonic humor, we would appreciate how ridiculous is the life we lead, how utterly absurd is our waste of time, our dissipation of the few days and hours vouchsafed us. We are just so many cicadas drumming out the hours and disappearing. We have abundance of wit, and a good deal of humor of a superficial kind, but the penetrating vision of a Socrates, a Voltaire, a Carlyle is denied the most of us, and we take ourselves and our accustomed pursuits most seriously. On our way back from the village we stopped at the birthplace of Samuel Tilden,--an old-fashioned white frame house, situated in the very fork of the roads, and surrounded by tall trees. Not far away is the cemetery, where a stone sarcophagus contains the remains of a man who was very able if not very great. Probably not fifty people in the United States, aside from those living in the neighborhood, know where Tilden was born. We did not until we came abruptly upon the house and were told; probably not a dozen could tell exactly where he is buried. Such is fame. And yet this man, in the belief of most of his countrymen, was chosen president, though never seated; he was governor of New York and a vital force in the politics and public life of his times,--now forgotten. What a disappointment it must have been to come so near and yet miss the presidency. Before 1880 came around, his own party had so far forgotten him that he was scarcely mentioned for renomination,--though Tilden decrepit was incomparably stronger than Hancock "the superb." It was hard work enthusing over "Hancock and Hooray" after "Tilden and Reform;" the latter cry had substance, the former was just fustian. The Democratic party is as iconoclastic as the Republican is reverential. The former loves to pick flaws in its idols and dash them to pieces; the latter, with stolid conservatism, clings loyally to its mediocrities. The latter could have elected Bryan, the former could not; the Democratic stomach is freaky and very squeamish; it swallows many things but digests few; the ostrich-like Republican organ has never been known to reject anything. Republicans swear stanchly** by every president they have ever elected. Democrats abandoned Tilden and spurned Cleveland, the only two men they have come within a thousand miles of electing in ten campaigns. The lesson of well-nigh half a century makes no impression, the blind are leading the blind. It is a far cry from former leaders such as Tilden, Hewitt, Bayard, and Cleveland to those of to-day; a party which seeks its candidate among the populists of Nebraska courts defeat. The two nominations of Bryan mark low level in the political tide; it is not conceivable that a great political party could sink lower; for less of a statesman and more of a demagogue does not exist. The one great opportunity the little man had to show some ability as a leader was when the treaty of Paris was being fiercely debated at Washington; the sentiment of his party and the best men of the country were against the purchase of the Philippines; but this cross-roads politician, who could not see beyond the tip of his nose, hastened to Washington, played into the hands of the jingoes by persuading the wiser men of his own party--men who should not have listened to him--to withdraw their opposition. Bryan had two opportunities to exhibit qualities of statesmanship in the beginning of the war with Spain, and in the discussion of the treaty of Paris; he missed both. So far as the war was concerned, he never had an idea beyond a little cheap renown as a paper colonel of volunteers; so far as the treaty was concerned, he made the unpardonable blunder of playing into the hands of his opponents, and leaving the sound and conservative sentiment of the country without adequate leadership in Washington. While we were curiously looking at the Tilden homestead, an old man came walking slowly down the road, a rake over his shoulder, one leg of his patched trousers stuck in a boot-top, a suspender missing, his old straw hat minus a goodly portion of its crown. He stopped, leaned upon his rake, and looked at us inquisitively, then remarked in drawling tone,-- "I know'd Sam Tilden." "Indeed!" "Yes, I know'd him; he was a great man." "You are a Democrat?" "I wuz, but ain't now," pensively. "Why ar'n't you?" "Well, you see, I wuz allus a rock-ribbed Jacksonian fr'm a boy; seed the ole gen'ral onc't, an' I voted for Douglas an' Seymore. I skipped Greeley, fur he warn't no Dem'crat; an' I voted fur Tilden an' Hancock an' Cleveland; but when it come to votin' fur a cyclone fr'm N'braska,--jest wind an' nothin' more,--I kicked over the traces." "Then you don't believe in the divine ratio of sixteen to one?" "Young man, silver an' gold come out'r the ground, jes' lik' corn an' wheat. When you kin make two bush'ls corn wu'th a bush'l wheat by law an' keep 'em there, you can fix the rasho 'twixt silver an' gold, an' not before," and the old man shouldered his rake and wandered on up the road. Before leaving the birthplace of Tilden, it is worth noting that for forty years every candidate favored by Tammany has been ignominiously defeated; the two candidates bitterly opposed by the New York machine were successful. It is to the credit of the party that no Democrat can be elected president unless he is the avowed and unrelenting foe of corruption within and without the ranks. The farmer with whom we were staying had earlier in the summer a flock of sixty young and promising turkeys; of the lot but twenty were left, and one of them was moping about as his forty brothers and sisters had moped before, ready to die. "Ah, he'll go with the others," said the farmer. "Raising turkeys is a ticklish job; to-day they're scratching gravel for all they're worth; to-morrow they mope around an' die; no telling what's the matter." "Suppose we give that turkey some whiskey and water; it may help him." "Can't do him any harm, fur he'll die anyway; but it's a waste of good medicine." Soaking some bread in good, strong Scotch, diluted with very little water, we gave the turkey what was equivalent to a teaspoonful. The bird did not take unkindly to the mixture. It had been standing about all day first on one leg, then on another, with eyes half closed and head turned feebly to one side. In a few moments the effect of the whiskey became apparent; the half-grown bird could no longer stand on one leg, but used both, placing them well apart for support. It began to show signs of animation, peering about with first one eye and then the other; with great gravity and deliberation it made its way to the centre of the road and looked about for gravel; fixing its eye upon an attractive little pebble it aimed for it, missed it by about two inches and rolled in the dust; by this time the other turkeys were staring in amazement; slowly pulling itself together he shook the dust from his feathers, cast a scornful eye upon the crowd about him and looked again for the pebble; there it was within easy shot; taking good aim with one eye closed he made another lunge, ploughed his head into the dust, making a complete somersault. By this time the two old turkeys were attracted by the unusual excitement; making their way through the throng of youngsters, they gazed for a moment upon the downfall of one of their progeny, and then giving vent to their indignation in loud cries pounced upon their tipsy offspring and pecked him until he struggled upright and staggered away. The last we saw of the young scapegrace he was smoothing his ruffled plumage before a shining milk-pail and apparently admonishing his unsteady double. It is worth recording that the turkey was better the next day, and lived, as we were afterwards told, to a ripe old Thanksgiving age. The new steering-head came early the next morning; in thirty minutes it was in place. Our host and valley hostess were then given their first automobile ride; she, womanlike, took the speed, sudden turns, and strange sensations more coolly than he. As a rule, women and children are more fearless than men in an automobile; this is not because they have more courage, but men realize more vividly the things that might happen, whereas women and children simply feel the exhilaration of the speed without thinking of possible disasters. We went down the road at a thirty-mile clip, made a quick turn at the four corners, and were back almost before the dust we raised had settled. "That's something like," said our host; "but the old horse is a good enough automobile for me." The hold-all was soon strapped in place, and at half-past nine we were off for Pittsfield. Passing the Tilden homestead, we soon began the ascent of the mountain, following the superb new State road. The old road was through the Shaker village and contained grades which rendered it impossible for teams to draw any but the lightest loads. It was only when market conditions were very abnormal that the farmers in the valley would draw their hay, grain, and produce to Pittsfield. The new State road winds around and over the mountain at a grade nowhere exceeding five per cent. and averaging a little over four. It is a broad macadam, perfectly constructed. In going up this easy and perfectly smooth ascent for some six or seven miles, the disadvantage of having no intermediate-speed gears was forcibly illustrated, for the grade was just too stiff for the high-speed gear, and yet so easy that the engine tended to race on the low, but we had to make the entire ascent on the hill-climbing gear at a rate of about four or five miles an hour; an intermediate-gear would have carried us up at twelve or fifteen miles per hour. CHAPTER TWELVE AN INCIDENT OF TRAVEL "THE COURT CONSIDERS THE MATTER" In Pittsfield the machine frightened a lawyer,--not a woman, or a child, or a horse, or a donkey,--but just a lawyer; to be sure, there was nothing to indicate he was a lawyer, and still less that he was unusually timid of his kind, therefore no blame could attach for failing to distinguish him from men less nervous. That he was frightened, no one who saw him run could deny; that he was needlessly frightened, seemed equally plain; that he was chagrined when bystanders laughed at his exhibition, was highly probable. Now law is the business of a lawyer; it is his refuge in trouble and at the same time his source of revenue; and it is a poor lawyer who cannot make his refuge pay a little something every time it affords him consolation for real or fancied injury. In this case the lawyer collected exactly sixty cents' worth of consolation,--two quarters and a dime, the price of two lunches and a cup of coffee, or a dozen "Pittsfield Stogies," if there be so fragrant a brand;--the lay mind cannot grasp the possibilities of two quarters and a ten-cent piece in the strong and resourceful grasp of a Pittsfield lawyer. In these thrifty New England towns one always gets a great many pennies in change; small money is the current coin; great stress is set upon a well-worn quarter, and a dime is precious in the sight of the native. It so happened that just about the time of our arrival, the machinery of justice in and about Pittsfield was running a little wild anyway. In an adjoining township, on the same day, ex-President Cleveland, who was whiling away time in the philosophic pursuit of fishing, was charged with catching and retaining longer than the law allowed a bass which was a quarter of an inch under the legal limit of eight inches. Now in the excitement of the moment that bass no doubt felt like a whale to the great man, and as it neared the surface, after the manner of its kind, it of course looked as long as a pickerel; then, too; the measly fish was probably a silver bass, and once in the boat shrunk a quarter of an inch, just to get the eminent gold Democrat in trouble. At all events, the friend who was along gallantly claimed the bass as his, appeared in the Great Barrington district court, and paid a fine of two dollars. Now these things are characteristic of the place, daubs of local coloring; the summer resident upon whom the provincials thrive is not disturbed; but the stranger who is within the gates, who is just passing through, from whom no money in the way of small purchases and custom is to be expected, he is legitimate plunder, even though he be so distinguished a stranger as an ex-President of the United States. A local paper related the fishing episode as follows: "Ex-President Grover Cleveland, who is spending the summer in Tyringham, narrowly escaped being arrested at Lake Garfield, in Monterey, Thursday afternoon. As it was, he received a verbal summons to appear in the Great Barrington district court this morning and answer the charge of illegal fishing. But when the complainants learned who the distinguished person was with whom they were dealing, they let drop the matter of swearing out a warrant, and in Mr. Cleveland's place appeared Cassius C. Scranton, of Monterey. "He pleaded guilty to catching a bass less than eight inches in length, which is the minimum allowed by law, and was fined two dollars by Judge Sanford, but as Mr. Cleveland said that he caught the fish, there is still a good deal of doubt among the residents of southern Berkshire as to which one was actually guilty. However, if the hero of the Hawaiian enterprise was the unlucky angler who caught the bass, he was relieved of the unpleasant notoriety of being summoned into court on a warrant by the very charitable act of Mr. Scranton, of Monterey, who will forever go down in the history of that town as the stalwart defender of the ex-president." It is not conceivable that such a ridiculous display of impecunious justice would be made elsewhere in the country. In the South the judge would dismiss the complainant or pay the fine himself; in the West he would be mobbed if he did not. New York would find a tactful and courteous way of avoiding the semblance of an arrest or the imposition of a fine; but in thrifty Massachusetts, and in thrice thrifty Great Barrington, and in twice thrice thrifty Pittsfield, pennies count, are counted, and most conscientiously received and receipted for by those who set the wheels of justice in motion. North Street is broad and West Street is broad, and there is abundance of room for man and beast. At the hour in question there were no women, children, or horses in the street; the crossings were clear save for a young man with a straw hat, whose general appearance betrayed no sign of undue timidity. He was on the far crossing, sixty or seventy feet distant. When the horn was sounded for the turn down into West Street, he turned, gave one look at the machine, jumped, and ran. In a few moments the young man with the straw hat came to the place where the machine had stopped. He was followed by a short, stubby little friend with a sandy beard, who, while apparently acting as second, threatened each moment to take the matter into his own hands and usurp the place of principal. Straw Hat was placable and quite disposed to accept an expression of regret that fright had been occasioned. Sandy Beard would not have it so, and urged Straw Hat to make a complaint. Straw Hat spurred on his flagging indignation and asked for a card. Sandy Beard told Straw Hat not to be deterred by soft words and civility, and promised to stand by him, or rather back of him; whereupon something like the following might have occurred. Sandy Beard.--Then you know what is to be done? Straw Hat.--Not I, upon my soul! Sandy Beard.--We wear no clubs here, but you understand me. Straw Hat.--What! arrest him. Sandy Beard.--Why to be sure; what can I mean else? Straw Hat.--But he has given me no provocation. Sandy Beard.--Now, I think he has given you the greatest provocation in the world. Can a man commit a more heinous offence against another than to frighten him? Ah! by my soul, it is a most unpardonable breach of something. Straw Hat.--Breach of something! Ay, ay; but is't a breach of the peace? I have no acquaintance with this man. I never saw him before in my life. Sandy Beard.--That's no argument at all; he has the less right to take such a liberty. Straw Hat.--Gad, that's true. I grow full of anger, Sir Sandy! fire ahead! Odds, writs and warrants! I find a man may have a good deal of valor in him, and not know it! But couldn't I contrive to have a little right on my side? Sandy Beard.--What the devil signifies right when your courage is concerned. Do you think Verges, or my little Dogberry ever inquired where the right lay? No, by my soul; they drew their writs, and left the lazy justice of the peace to settle the right of it. Straw Hat.--Your words are a grenadier's march to my heart! I believe courage must be catching! I certainly do feel a kind of valor rising as it were,--a kind of courage, as I may say. Odds, writs and warrants! I'll complain directly. (With apologies to Sheridan.) And the pair went off to make their complaint. Suppose each had been given then and there the sixty cents he afterwards received and duly receipted for, would it have saved time and trouble? Who knows? but the diversion of the afternoon would have been lost. In a few moments an officer quite courteously--refreshing contrast--notified me that complaint was in process of making. I found the chief of police with a copy of the city ordinance trying to draw some sort of a complaint that would fit the extraordinary case, for the charge was not the usual one, that the machine was going at an unlawful speed, but that a lawyer had been frightened; to find the punishment that would fit that crime was no easy task. The ordinance is liberal,--ten miles an hour; and the young man and his mentor had not said the speed of the automobile was greater than the law allowed, hence the dilemma of the chief; but we discussed a clause which provided that vehicles should not be driven through the streets in a manner so as to endanger public travel, and he thought the complaint would rest on that provision. However lacking the bar of Pittsfield may be in the amenities of life, the bench is courtesy itself. There was no court until next day; but calling at the judge's very delightful home, which happens to be on one of the interesting old streets of the town, he said he would come down and hear the matter at two o'clock, so I could get away that afternoon. The first and wisest impulse of the automobilist is to pay whatever fine is imposed and go on, but frightening a lawyer is not an every-day occurrence. I once frightened a pair of army mules; but a lawyer,--the experience was too novel to let pass lightly. The game promised to be worth the candle. The scene shifts to a dingy little room in the basement of the court-house; present, Straw Hat and Sandy Beard, with populace. To corroborate--wise precaution on the part of a lawyer in his own court--their story, they bring along a volunteer witness in over-alls,--the three making a trio hard to beat. Straw Hat takes the stand and testifies he is an unusually timid man, and was most frightened to death. Sandy Beard's testimony is both graphic and corroborative. The witness in over-alls, with some embellishments of his own, supports Sandy Beard. The row of bricks is complete. The court removes a prop by remarking that the ordinance speed has not been exceeded. The bricks totter. Whereupon, Sandy Beard now takes the matter into his own hands, and, ignoring the professional acquirements of his principal, addresses the court and urges the imposition of a fine,--a fine being the only satisfaction, and source of immediate revenue, conceivable to Sandy Beard. Meanwhile Straw Hat is silent; the witness in over-alls is perturbed. The court considers the matter, and says "the embarrassing feature of the case is that it has yet to be shown that the defendant was going at a rate exceeding ten miles an hour, and upon this point the witnesses did not agree. There was evidence tending to prove the machine was going ten miles an hour, but that would not lead to conviction under the first clause of the ordinance; but there is another clause which says that a machine must not be run in such a manner as to endanger or inconvenience public travel. What is detrimental to public travel? Does it mean to run it so as not to frighten a man of nerve like the chief of police, or some timid person? It is urged that not one man in a thousand would have been frightened like Mr.-- ; but a man is bound to run his machine in the streets so as to frighten no one, therefore the defendant is fined five dollars and costs." The fine is duly paid, and Messrs. Straw Hat, Sandy Beard, and Over-alls, come forward, receive and receipt for sixty cents each. Their wrath was appeased, their wounded feelings soothed, their valor satisfied,--one dollar and eighty cents for the bunch. CHAPTER THIRTEEN THROUGH MASSACHUSETTS IN LENOX There are several roads out of Pittsfield to Springfield, and if one asks a half-dozen citizens, who pretend to know, which is the best, a half-dozen violently conflicting opinions will be forthcoming. The truth seems to be that all the roads are pretty good,--that is, they are all very hilly and rather soft. One expects the hills, and must put up with the sand. It is impossible to get to Springfield, which is far on the other side of the mountains, without making some stiff grades,--few grades so bad as Nelson's Hill out of Peekskill, or worse than Pride's Hill near Fonda; in fact, the grades through the Berkshires are no worse than many short stiff grades that are to be found in any rolling country, but there are more of them, and occasionally the road is rough or soft, making it hard going. The road commonly recommended as the more direct is by way of Dalton and Hinsdale, following as closely as possible the line of the Boston and Albany; this winds about in the valleys and is said to be very good. We preferred a more picturesque though less travelled route. We wished to go through Lenox, some six or seven miles to the south, and if anything a little to the west, and therefore out of our direct course. The road from Pittsfield to Lenox is a famous drive, one of the wonders of that little world. It is not bad, neither is it good. Compared with the superb State road over the mountain, it is a trail over a prairie. As a matter of fact, it is just a broad, graded, and somewhat improved highway, too rough for fast speed and comfort, and on the Saturday morning in question dust was inches deep. The day was fine, the country beautiful; hills everywhere, hills so high they were almost mountains. The dust of summer was on the foliage, a few late blossoms lingered by the roadside, but for the most part flowers had turned to seeds, and seeds were ready to fall. The fields were in stubble, hay in the mow and straw in the stack. The green of the hills was deeper in hue, the valleys were ripe for autumn. People were flocking to the Berkshires from seashore and mountains; the "season" was about to begin in earnest; hotels were filled or rapidly filling, and Lenox--dear, peaceful little village in one of nature's fairest hollows--was most enticing as we passed slowly through, stopping once or twice to make sure of our very uncertain way. The slowest automobile is too fast for so delightful a spot as Lenox. One should amble through on a palfrey, or walk, or, better still, pass not through at all, but tarry and dream the days away until the last leaves are off the trees. But the habit of the automobile is infectious, one goes on and on in spite of all attractions, the appeals of nature, the protests of friends. Ulysses should have whizzed by the Sirens in an auto. The Wandering Jew, if still on his rounds, should buy a machine; it will fit his case to a nicety; his punishment will become a habit; he will join an automobile club, go on an endurance contest, and, in the brief moments allowed him for rest and oiling up, will swap stories with the boys. With a sigh of relief, one finishes a long day's run, thinking it will suffice for many a day to come; the evening is scarce over before elfin suggestions of possible rides for the morrow are floating about in the air, and when morning comes the automobile is taken out,--very much as the toper who has sworn off the night before takes his morning dram,--it just can't be helped. Our way lay over October Mountain by a road not much frequented. In the morning's ride we did not meet a trap of any kind or a rider,--something quite unusual in that country of riders and drivers. The road seemed to cling to the highest hills, and we climbed up and up for hours. Only once was the grade so steep that we were obliged to dismount. We passed through no village until we reached the other side, but every now and then we would come to a little clearing with two or three houses, possibly a forlorn store and a silent blacksmith shop; these spots seemed even more lonely and deserted than the woods themselves. Man is so essentially a gregarious animal that to come upon a lone house in a wilderness is more depressing than the forests. Nature is never alone; it knows no solitude; it is a mighty whole, each part of which is in constant communication with every other part. Nature needs no telephone; from time immemorial it has used wireless telegraphy in a condition of perfection unknown to man. Every morning Mount Blanc sends a message to Pike's Peak, and it sends it on over the waters to Fujisan. The bosom of the earth thrills with nervous energy; the air is charged with electric force; the blue ether of the universe throbs with motion. Nature knows no environment; but man is fettered, a spirit in a cage, a mournful soul that seeks companionship in misery. Solitude is a word unknown to nature's vocabulary. The deepest recesses of the forest teem with life and joyousness until man appears, then they are filled with solitude. The wind-swept desert is one of nature's play-grounds until man appears, then it is barren with solitude. The darkest mountain cavern echoes with nature's laughter until man appears, then it is hollow with solitude. The shadow of man is solitude. Instead of coming out at Becket as we expected, we found ourselves way down near Otis and West Otis, and passed through North Blandford and Blandford to Fairfield, where we struck the main road. We stopped for dinner at a small village a few miles from Westfield. There was but one store, but it kept a barrel of stove gasoline in an apple orchard. The gasoline was good, but the gallon measure into which it was drawn had been used for oil, varnish, turpentine, and every liquid a country store is supposed to keep--not excepting molasses. It was crusted with sediment and had a most evil smell. Needless to say the measure was rejected; but that availed little, since the young clerk poured the gasoline back into the barrel to draw it out again into a cleaner receptacle. The gasoline for sale at country stores is usually all right, but it is handled in all sorts of receptacles; the only safe way is to ask for a bright and new dipper and let the store-keeper guess at the measure. At Westfield the spark began to give trouble; the machine was very slow in starting, as if the batteries were weak; but that could not be, for one set was fresh and the other by no means exhausted. A careful examination of every connection failed to disclose any breaks in the circuit, and yet the spark was of intermittent strength,--now good, now weak. When there is anything wrong with an automobile, there is but one thing to do, and that is find the source of the trouble and remedy it. The temptation is to go on if the machine starts up unexpectedly. We yielded to the temptation, and went on as soon as the motor started; the day was so fine and we were so anxious to get to Worcester that we started with the motor,--knowing all the time that whatever made the motor slow to start would, in all likelihood, bring us to a stand-still before very long; the evil moment, possibly the evil hour, may be postponed, but seldom the evil day. At two o'clock we passed through Springfield, stopping only a moment at the hotel to inquire for mail. Leaving Springfield we followed the main road towards Worcester, some fifty miles away. The road is winding and over a rolling country, but for the most part very good. The grades are not steep, there are some sandy spots, but none so soft as to materially interfere with good speed. There are many stretches of good gravel, and here and there a piece--a sample--of State road, perfectly laid macadam, with signs all along requesting persons not to drive in the centre of the highway,--this is to save the road from the hollows and ruts that horses and narrow-tired wagons invariably make, and in which the water stands, ultimately wearing the macadam through. We could not see that the slightest attention was paid to the notices. Everybody kept the middle of the road, such is the improvidence of men; the country people grumble at the great expense of good roads, and then take the surest way to ruin them. While it is true that the people in the first instance grumble at the prospective cost of these well-made State roads, no sooner are they laid than their very great value is appreciated, and good roads sentiment becomes rampant. The farmer who has worn out horses, harness, wagons, and temper in getting light loads to market over heavy roads is quick to appreciate the very material advantage and economy of having highways over which one horse can pull as much as two under the old sandy, rough, and muddy conditions. A good road may be the making of a town, and it increases the value of all abutting property. Already the question is commonly asked when a farm is offered for sale or rent, "Is it on a State road?" Lots will not sell in cities unless all improvements are in; soon farmers will not be able to sell unless the highways are improved. One good thing about the automobile, it does not cut up the surface of a macadam or gravel road as do steel tires and horseshoes. At the outskirts of the little village of West Brookfield we came to a stand-still; the spark disappeared,--or rather from a large, round, fat spark it dropped to an insignificant little blue sparklet that would not explode a squib. The way the spark acted with either or both batteries on indicated pretty strongly that the trouble was in the coil; but it is so seldom a coil goes wrong that everything was looked over, but no spark of any size was to be had, therefore there was nothing to do but cast about for a place to spend the night, for it was then dark. As good luck would have it, we were almost in front of a large, comfortable, old-fashioned house where they took summer boarders; as the season was drawing to a close, there was plenty of room and they were glad to take us in. The machine was pushed into a shed, everybody assisting with the readiness ever characteristic of sympathetic on-lookers. The big, clean, white rooms were most inviting; the homely New England supper of cold meats and hot rolls seemed under the circumstances a feast for a king, and as we sat in front of the house in the evening, and looked across the highway to a little lake just beyond and heard the croaking of the frogs, the chirping of crickets, and the many indistinguishable sounds of night, we were not sorry the machine had played us false exactly when and where it did. The automobile plays into the hands of Morpheus, the drowsy god follows in its wake, sure of his victims. No sleep is dreamless. It is pretty difficult to exhaust the three billions of cells of the central nervous system so that all require rest, but ten hours on an automobile in the open air, speeding along like the wind most of the time, will come nearer putting all those cells to sleep than any exercise heretofore discovered. The fatigue is normal, pervasive, and persuasive, and it is pretty hard to recall any dream on waking. It was Sunday morning, September 1, and raining, a soft, drizzly downpour, that had evidently begun early in the night and kept up --or rather down--steadily. It was a good morning to remain indoors and read; but there was that tantalizing machine challenging combat; then, too, Worcester was but eighteen or twenty miles away, and at Worcester we expected to find letters and telegrams. A young and clever electrician across the way came over, bringing an electric bell, with which we tested the dry cells, finding them in good condition. We then examined the connections and ran the trouble back to the coil. There was plenty of current and plenty of voltage, but only a little blue spark, which could be obtained equally well with the coil in or out of the circuit, and yet the coil did not show a short circuit, but before we finished our tests the spark suddenly appeared. Again, it would have been better to remain and find the trouble; but as there was no extra coil to be had in the village, it seemed fairly prudent to start on and get as far as possible. Possibly the coil would hold out to Worcester; anyway, the road is a series of villages, some larger than Brookfield, and a coil might be found at one of them. When within two miles of Spencer the spark gave out again; this time no amount of coaxing would bring it back, so there was nothing to do but appeal to a farmer for a pair of horses to pull the machine into his yard. The assistance was most kindly given, though the day was Sunday, and for him, his men and his animals, emphatically a day of rest. Only twice on the entire trip were horses attached to the machine; but a sparking coil is absolutely essential, and when one gives out it is pretty hard to make repairs on the road. In case of necessity a coil may be unwound, the trouble discovered and remedied, but that is a tedious process. It was much easier to leave the machine for the night, run into Worcester on the trolley which passed along the same road, and bring out a new coil in the morning. Monday happened to be Labor Day, and it was only after much trouble that a place was found open where electrical supplies could be purchased. In addition to a coil, the electrician took out some thoroughly insulated double cable wire; the wiring of the machine had been so carelessly done and with such light, cheap wire that it seemed a good opportunity to rewire throughout. The electrician--a very competent and quick workman he proved to be--was so sure the trouble could not be in the coil that he did not wish to carry out a new one. When ready to start, we found the trolley line blocked by a Labor Day parade that was just beginning to move. The procession was unusually long on account of striking trades unionists, who turned out in force. As each section of strikers passed, the electrician explained the cause of their strike, the number of men out, and the length of time they had been out. It seemed too bad that big, brawny, intelligent men could find no better way of adjusting differences with employers than by striking. A strike is an expensive luxury. Three parties are losers,--the community in general by being deprived for the time being of productive forces; the employers by loss on capital invested; the employees by loss of wages. The loss to the community, while very real, is little felt. Employers, as a rule, are prepared to stand their losses with equanimity; in fact, when trade is dull, or when an employer desires to make changes in his business, a strike is no inconvenience at all; but the men are the real losers, and especially those with families and with small homes unpaid for; no one can measure their losses, for it may mean the savings of a lifetime. It frequently does mean a change in character from an industrious, frugal, contented workman with everything to live for, to a shiftless and discontented man with nothing to live for but agitation and strife. It is easy to acquire the strike habit, and impossible to throw it off. A first strike is more dangerous than a first drink; it makes a profound and ineradicable impression. To quit work for the first time at the command of some central organization is an experience so novel that no man can do it without being affected; he will never again be the same steady and indefatigable workman; the spirit of unrest creeps in, the spirit of discontent closely follows; his life is changed; though he never goes through another strike, he can never forget his first. In the long run it does not matter much which side wins, the effect is very much the same,--strikes are bound to follow strikes. Warfare is so natural to men that it is difficult to declare a lasting peace. But some day the men themselves will see that strikes are far more disastrous to them than to any other class, and they will devise other ways and means; they will use the strength of their organizations to better advantage; above all, they will relegate to impotency the professional organizers and agitators who retain their positions by fomenting strife. It is singular that workmen do not take a lesson from their shrewder employers, who, if they have organizations of their own, never confer upon any officer or committee of idlers the power to control the trade. An organization of employers is always controlled by those most actively engaged in the business, and not by coteries of paid idlers; no central committee of men, with nothing to do but make trouble, can involve a whole trade in costly controversies. The strength of the employer lies in the fact that each man consults first his own interest, and if the action of the body bids fair to injure his individual interests he not only protests, but threatens to withdraw; the employer cannot be cowed by any association of which he is a member; but the employee is cowed by his union,--that is the essential difference between the two. An association of employers is a union of independent and aggressive units, and the action of the association must meet the approval of each of these units or disruption will follow. Workingmen do not seem to appreciate the value of the unit; they are attracted by masses. They seem to think strength lies only in members; but that is the keynote of militantism, the death-knell of individualism. The real, the only strength of a union lies in the silent, unconsulted units; now and then they rise up and act and the union accomplishes something; for the most part they do not act, but are blindly led, and the union accomplishes nothing. It was interesting to hear the comments of the intelligent young mechanic as the different trades passed by. "Those fellows are out on a sympathetic strike; no grievance at all, plenty of work and good wages, but just out because they are told to come out; big fools, I say, to be pulled about by the nose. "There are the plumbers; their union makes more trouble than any other in the building trades; they are always looking for trouble, and manage to find it when no one else can. "Unions are all right for bachelors who can afford to loaf, but they are pretty hard on the married man with a family. "What's gained in a strike is lost in the fight. "What's the use of staying out three months to get a ten per cent. raise for nine? It doesn't pay. "Wages have been going up for two hundred years. I can't see that the strike has advanced the rate of increase any. "These fellows have tried to monopolize Labor Day; they don't want any non-union man in the parade; the people will not stand for that very long; labor is labor whether union or non-union, and the great majority of workingmen in this country are not members of any union." The parade, like all things good, came to an end, and we took the trolley for the place where the automobile had been left. On arriving we took out the dry cells, tested each one, and then rewired the carriage complete and in a manner to defy rain, sand, and oil. The difficulty, however, was in the coil. Apparently the motion of the vehicle had worn the insulation through at some point inside. The new coil, a common twelve-inch coil, worked well, giving a good, hot spark. The farmer who had so kindly pulled the machine in the day before would accept nothing for his trouble, and was, as most farmers are, exceedingly kind. It is embarrassing to call upon strangers for assistance which means work and inconvenience for them, and then have them positively decline all compensation. The ride into Worcester was a fast one over good gravel and macadam. Immediately after luncheon we started for Boston. Every foot of the road in from Worcester is good hard gravel and the ride is most delightful. As it was a holiday and the highway was comparatively free of traffic, we travelled along faster than usual. It was our intention to follow the main road through Shrewsbury, Southborough, Framingham, and Wellesley, but though man proposes, in the suburbs of Boston Providence disposes. About Southborough we lost our road, and were soon angling to the northeast through the Sudburys. So far as the road itself was concerned the change was for the better, for, while there would be stretches which were not gravelled, the country was more interesting than along the main highway. The old "Worcester Turnpike" is Boyleston Street in Boston and through Brookline to the Newtons, where it becomes plain Worcester Street and bears that name westward through Wellesley and Natick. The trolley line out of Worcester is through Shrewsbury and Northborough to Marlborough, then a turn almost due south to Southborough, then east to Framingham, southeast to South Framingham, east through Natick to Wellesley, northeast through Wellesley Hills to Newton, then direct through Brookline into Boston. The road, it will be noted, is far from straight, and it is at the numerous forks and turns one is apt to go astray unless constant inquiries are made. At Marlborough we kept on to the east towards Waltham instead of turning to the south for Southborough. It is but a few miles out of the way from Marlborough to Concord and into Boston by way of Lexington; or, if the road through Wellesley and Newton is followed, it is worth while to turn from Wellesley Hills to Norembega Park for the sake of stopping a few moments on the spot where Norembega Tower confidently proclaims the discovery of America and the founding of a fortified place by the Norsemen nearly five hundred years before Columbus sailed out of the harbor of Palos. Having wandered from the old turnpike, we thought we would go by Concord and Lexington, but did not. The truth is the automobile is altogether too fast a conveyance for the suburbs of Boston, which were laid out by cows for the use of pedestrians. There are an infinite number of forks, angles, and turnings, and by a native on foot short cuts can be made to any objective point, but the automobile passes a byway before it is seen. Directions are given but not followed, because turns and obscure cross-roads are passed at high speed and unobserved. Every one is most obliging in giving directions, but the directions run about like this: "To Concord?--yes,--let me see;--do you know the Old Sudbury road?--No!--strangers?--ah! that's too bad, for if you don't know the roads it will be hard telling you--but let me see;--if you follow this road about a mile, you will come to a brick store and a watering trough,--take the turn to the left there;--I think that is the best road, or you can take a turn this side, but if I were you I would take the road at the watering trough;--from there it is about eight miles, and I think you make three turns,--but you better inquire, for if you don't know the roads it is pretty hard to direct you." "We follow this road straight ahead to the brick store and trough, that's easy." "Well, the road is not exactly straight, but if you bear to the right, then take the second left hand fork, you'll be all right." All of which things we most faithfully performed, and yet we got no nearer that day than "about eight miles farther to Concord." In circling about we came quite unexpectedly upon the old "Red Horse" tavern, now the "Wayside Inn." We brought the machine to a stop and gazed long and lovingly at the ancient hostelry which had given shelter to famous men for nearly two hundred years, and where congenial spirits gathered in Longfellow's days and the imaginary "Tales of a Wayside Inn" were exchanged. The mellow light of the setting sun warmed the time-worn structure with a friendly glow. The sign of the red horse rampant creaked mournfully as it swung slowly to and fro in the gentle breeze; with palsied arms and in cracked tones the old inn seemed to bid us stay and rest beneath its sheltering eaves. Washington and Hamilton and Lafayette, Emerson and Hawthorne and Longfellow had entered that door, eaten and drunk within those humble walls,--the great in war, statecraft, and literature had been its guests; like an old man it lives with its memories, recalls the associations of its youth and prime, but slumbers oblivious to the present. The old inn was so fascinating that we determined to come back in a few days and spend at least a night beneath its roof. The shadows were so rapidly lengthening that we had to hurry on. Crossing the Charles River near Auburndale a sight of such bewitching beauty met our astonished gaze that we stopped to make inquiries. Above and below the bridge the river was covered with gayly decorated canoes which were being paddled about by laughing and singing young people. The brilliant colors of the decorations, the pretty costumes, the background of dark water, the shores lined with people and equipages, the bridge so crowded we could hardly get through, made a never-to-be-forgotten picture. It was just a holiday canoe-meet, and hundreds of the small, frail craft were darting about upon the surface of the water like so many pretty dragon-flies. The automobile seemed such an intrusion, a drone of prose in a burst of poetry, the discord of machinery in a sylvan symphony. We stopped a few moments at Lasell Seminary in Auburndale, where old associations were revived by my Companion over a cup of tea. A girl's school is a mysterious place; there is an atmosphere of suppressed mischief, of things threatened but never quite committed, of latent possibilities, and still more latent impossibilities. In a boy's school mischief is evident and rampant; desks, benches, and walls are whittled and defaced with all the wanton destructiveness of youth; buildings and fences show marks of contact with budding manhood; but boys are so openly and notoriously mischievous that no apprehension is felt, for the worst is ever realized; but those in command of a school of demure and saintly girls must feel like men handling dynamite, uncertain what will happen next; the stolen pie, the hidden sweets, the furtive note are indications of the infinite subtlety of the female mind. From Auburndale the boulevard leads into Commonwealth Avenue and the run is fine. It was about seven o'clock when we reached the Hotel Touraine, and a little later when the machine was safely housed in an automobile station,--a part of an old railway depot. A few days in Boston and on the North Shore afforded a welcome change. Through Beverly and Manchester the signs "Automobiles not allowed" at private roadways are numerous; they are the rule rather than the exception. One young man had a machine up there, but found himself so ostracized he shipped it away. No machines are allowed on the grounds of the Essex Country Club. No man with the slightest consideration for the comfort and pleasure of others would care to keep and use a machine in places where so many women and children are riding and driving. The charm of the North Shore and the Berkshires lies largely in the opportunities afforded for children to be out with their ponies, girls with their carts, and women with horses too spirited to stand unusual sights and sounds. One automobile may terrorize the entire little community; in fact, one machine will spread terror where many would not. It is quite difficult enough to drive a machine carefully through such resorts, without driving about day after day to the discomfort of every resident. In a year or two all will be changed; the people owning summer homes will themselves own and use automobiles; the horses will see so many that little notice will be taken, but the pioneers of the sport will have an unenviable time. A good half-day's work was required on the machine before starting again. The tire that had been plugged with rubber bands weeks before in Indiana was now leaking, the air creeping through the fabric and oozing out at several places. The leak was not bad, just about enough to require pumping every day. The extra tire that had been following along was taken out of the express office and put on. It was a tire that had been punctured and repaired at the factory. It looked all right, but as it turned out the repair was poorly made, and it would have been better to leave on the old tire, inflating it each day. A small needle-valve was worn so that it leaked; that was replaced. A stiffer spring was inserted in the intake-valve so it would not open quite so easily. A number of minor things were done, and every nut and bolt tried and tightened. CHAPTER FOURTEEN LEXINGTON AND CONCORD "THE WAYSIDE INN" Saturday morning, September 7, at eleven o'clock, we left the Touraine for Auburndale, where we lunched, then to Waltham, and from there due north by what is known as Waltham Street to Lexington, striking Massachusetts Avenue just opposite the town hall. Along this historic highway rode Paul Revere; at his heels followed the regulars of King George. Tablets, stones, and monuments mark every known point of interest from East Lexington to Concord. In Boston, at the head of Hull Street, Christ Church, the oldest church in the city, still stands, and bears a tablet claiming for its steeple the credit of the signals for Paul Revere; but the Old North Church in North Square, near which Revere lived and where he attended service, and from the belfry of which the lanterns were really hung, disappeared in the conflict it initiated. In the winter of the siege of Boston the old meeting-house was pulled down by the British soldiers and used for firewood. Fit ending of the ancient edifice which had stood for almost exactly one hundred years, and in which the three Mathers, Increase, Cotton, and Samuel,--father, son, and grandson,--had preached the unctuous doctrine of hell-fire and damnation; teaching so incendiary was bound sooner or later to consume its own habitation. Revere was not the only messenger of warning. For days the patriots had been anxious concerning the stores of arms and ammunition at Concord, and three days before the night of the 18th Revere himself had warned Hancock and Adams at the Clarke home in Lexington that plans were on foot in the enemies' camp to destroy the stores, whereupon a portion was removed to Sudbury and Groton. Before Revere started on his ride, other messengers had been despatched to alarm the country, but at ten o'clock on the memorable night of the 18th he was sent for and bidden to get ready. He got his riding-boots and surtout from his house in North Square, was ferried across the river, landing on the Charlestown side about eleven o'clock, where he was told the signal-lights had already been displayed in the belfry. The moon was rising as he put spurs to his horse and started for Lexington. The troops were ahead of him by an hour. He rode up what is now Main Street as far as the "Neck," then took the old Cambridge road for Somerville. To escape two British officers who barred his way, he dashed across lots to the main road again and took what is now Broadway. On he went over the hill to Medford, where he aroused the Medford minute-men. Then through West Medford and over the Mystic Bridge to Menotomy,--now Arlington,--where he struck the highway,--now Massachusetts Avenue,--to Lexington. Galloping up to the old Clarke house where Hancock and Adams were sleeping, the patriot on guard cautioned him not to make so much noise. "Noise! you'll have enough of it here before long. The Regulars are coming." Awakened by the voice, Hancock put his head out of the window and said,-- "Come in, Revere; we're not afraid of you." Soon the old house was alight. Revere entered the "living room" by the side door and delivered his message to the startled occupants. Soon they were joined by Dawes, another messenger by another road. After refreshing themselves, Revere and Dawes set off for Concord. On the road Samuel Prescott joined them. When about half-way, four British officers, mounted and fully armed, stopped them. Prescott jumped over the low stone wall, made his escape and alarmed Concord. Dawes was chased by two of the officers until, with rare shrewdness, he dashed up in front of a deserted farm-house and shouted, "Hello, boys! I've got two of them," frightening off his pursuers. Revere was captured. Without fear or humiliation he told his name and his mission. Frightened by the sound of firing at Lexington, the officers released their prisoner, and he made his way back to Hancock and Adams and accompanied them to what is now the town of Burlington. Hastening back to Lexington for a trunk containing valuable papers, he was present at the battle,--the fulfillment of his warning, the red afterglow of the lights from the belfry of Old North Church. He lived for forty-odd years to tell the story of his midnight ride, and now he sleeps with Hancock and Adams, the parents of Franklin, Peter Faneuil, and a host of worthy men in the "Granary." The good people of Massachusetts have done what they could to commemorate the events and obliterate the localities of those great days; they have erected monuments and put up tablets in great numbers; but while marking the spots where events occurred, they have changed the old names of roads and places until contemporary accounts require a glossary for interpretation. Who would recognize classic Menotomy in the tinsel ring of Arlington? The good old Indian name, the very speaking of which is a pleasure, has given place to the first-class apartments, --steam-heated, electric-lights, hot and cold water, all improvements --in appellations of Arlington and Arlington Heights. A tablet marks the spot where on April 19 "the old men of Menotomy" captured a convoy of British soldiers. Poor old men, once the boast and glory of the place that knew you; but now the passing traveller curiously reads the inscription and wonders "Why were they called the old men 'of Menotomy'?" for there is now no such place. Massachusetts Avenue--Massachusetts Avenue! there's a name, a great, big, luscious name, a name that savors of brown stone fronts and plush rockers: a name which goes well with the commercial prosperity of Boston. Massachusetts Avenue extends from Dorchester in Boston to Lexington Green; it has absorbed the old Cambridge and the old Lexington roads; the old Long Bridge lives in history, but, rechristened Brighton Bridge, the reader fails to identify it. Concord remains and Lexington remains, simply because no real estate boom has yet reached them but Bunker Hill, there is a feeling that apartments would rent better if the musty associations of the spot were obliterated by some such name as "Buckingham Heights," or "Commonwealth Crest;" "The Acropolis" has been prayerfully considered by the freemen of the modern Athens;-- whatever the decision may be, certain it is the name Bunker Hill is a heavy load for choice corners in the vicinity. There are a few old names still left in Massachusetts,-- Jingleberry Hill and Chillyshally** Brook sound as if they once meant something; Spot Pond, named by Governor Winthrop, has not lost its birthright; Powder-Horn Hill records its purchase from the Indians for a hornful of powder--probably damp; Drinkwater River is a good name,--Strong Water Brook by many is considered better. It is well to record these names before they are effaced by the commercialism rampant in the suburbs of Boston. At the Town Hall in Lexington we turned to the right for East Lexington, and made straight for Follen Church, and the home of Dr. Follen close by, where Emerson preached in 1836 and 1837. The church was not built until 1839. In January, 1840, the congregation had assembled in their new edifice for the dedication services. They waited for their pastor, who was expected home from a visit to New York, but the Long Island Sound steamer--Lexington, by strange coincidence it was called--had burned and Dr. Follen was among the lost. His home is now the East Lexington Branch of the Public Library. We climbed the stairs that led to the small upper room where Emerson filled his last regular charge. Small as was the room, it probably more than sufficed for the few people who were sufficiently advanced for his notions of a preacher's mission. He did not believe in the rites the church clung to as indispensable; he did not believe in the use of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper; he did not believe in prayers from the pulpit unless the preacher felt impelled to pray; he did not believe in ritualism or formalism of any kind,--in short, he did not believe in a church, for a church, however broad and liberal, is, after all, an institution, and no one man, however great, can support an institution. A very great soul--and Emerson was a great soul--may carry a following through life and long after death, but that following is not a church, not an institution, not a living organized body, until forms, conventions, and traditions make it so; its vitalizing element may be the soul of its founder, but the framework of the structure, the skeleton, is made up of the more or less rigid conventions which are the results of natural and logical selection. The ritual of Rome, the service of England, the dry formalism of Calvinism, the slender structure of Unitarianism were all equally repugnant to Emerson; he could not stretch himself in their fetters; he was not at ease in any priestly garment. Born a prophet, he could not become a priest. By nature a teacher and preacher, he never could submit to those restrictions which go so far to make preaching effective. He taught the lesson of the ages, but he mistook it for his own. He belonged to humanity, but he detached himself. He was a leader, but would acknowledge no discipline. Men cried out to him, but he wandered apart. He was an intellectual anarchist of rare and lovely type; few sweeter souls ever lived, but he defied order. Not that Emerson would have been any better if he had submitted to the discipline of some church; he did what he felt impelled to do, and left the world a precious legacy of ideas, of brilliant, beautiful thoughts; but thoughts which are brilliant and beautiful as the stars are, scattered jewels against the background of night with no visible connection. Is it not possible that the gracious discipline of an environment more conventional might have reduced these thoughts to some sort of order, brought the stars into constellations, and left suggestions for the ordering of life that would be of greater force and more permanent value? His wife relates that one day he was reading an old sermon in the little room in the Follen mansion, when he stopped, and said, "The passage which I have just read I do not believe, but it was wrongly placed." The circumstance illustrates the openness and frankness of his mind, but it is also a commentary on the want of system in his intellectual processes. His habit through life was to jot down thoughts as they came to him; he kept note-books and journals all his life; he dreamed in the pine woods by day and walked beneath the stars by night; he sat by the still waters and wandered in the green fields; and the dreams and the visions and the fancies of the moment he faithfully recorded. These disjointed musings and disconnected thoughts formed the raw material of all he ever said and wrote. From the accumulated stores of years he would draw whatever was necessary to meet the needs of the hour; and it did not matter to him if thought did not dovetail into thought with all the precision of good intellectual carpentry. His edifices were filled with chinks and unfinished apartments. He saw things in a big way, but did not always see them as through crystal, clearly; nor did he always take his staff in hand and courageously go about to see all sides of things. He never thought to a finish. His philosophy never acquired form and substance. His thoughts are not linked in chain, but are just so many precious pearls lightly strung on a silken thread. In 1852 he wrote in his journal, "I waked last night and bemoaned myself because I had not thrown myself into this deplorable question of slavery, which seems to want nothing so much as a few assured voices. But then in hours of sanity I recover myself, and say, 'God must govern his own world, and knows his way out of this pit without my desertion of my post, which has none to guard it but me. I have quite other slaves to free than those negroes, to wit, imprisoned spirits, imprisoned thoughts, far back in the brain of man, far retired in the heaven of invention, and which, important to the republic of man, have no watchman or lover or defender but me,'" thereby naively leaving to God the lesser task. But he wrongs himself in his own journal, for he did bestir himself and he did speak, and he did not leave the black men to God while he looked after the white; he helped God all he could in his own peculiar, irresolute way. At the same time no passage from the journals throws more light on the pure soul of the great dreamer. He was opposed to slavery and he felt for the negroes, but their physical degradation did not appeal to him so much as the intellectual degradation of those about him. To him it was a loftier mission to release the minds of men than free their bodies. With the naive and at the same time superb egoism which is characteristic of great souls, he consoles himself with the thought that God can probably take care of the slavery question without troubling him; he will stick to his post and look after more important matters. What a treat it must have been to those assembled in the Follen house to hear week after week the very noblest considerations and suggestions concerning life poured forth in tones so musical, so penetrating, that to-day they ring in the ears of those who had the great good fortune to hear. There was probably very little said about death. Emerson never pretended to a vision beyond the grave. In his essay on "Immortality" he says, "Sixty years ago, the books read, the services and prayers heard, the habits of thought of religious persons, were all directed on death. All were under the shadow of Calvinism and of the Roman Catholic purgatory, and death was dreadful. The emphasis of all the good books given to young people was on death. We were all taught that we were born to die; and over that, all the terrors that theology could gather from savage nations were added to increase the gloom, A great change has occurred. Death is seen as a natural event, and is met with firmness. A wise man in our time caused to be written on his tomb, 'Think on Living.' That inscription describes a progress in opinion. Cease from this antedating of your experience. Sufficient to to-day are the duties of to-day. Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of the hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it." Such was the burden of Emerson's message: make the very best of life; let not the present be palsied by fears for the future. A healthy, sane message, a loud clear voice in the wilderness of doubt and fears, the very loudest and clearest voice in matters spiritual and intellectual which America has yet produced. It was during the days of his service in East Lexington that he went to Providence to deliver a course of lectures; while there he was invited to conduct the services in the Second (Unitarian) Church. The pastor afterwards said, "He selected from Greenwood's collection hymns of a purely meditative character, without any distinctively Christian expression. For the Scripture lesson he read a fine passage from Ecclesiasticus**, from which he also took his text. The sermon was precisely like one of his lectures in style; the prayers, or what took their place, were wholly without supplication, confession, or praise, but only sweet meditations on nature, beauty, order, goodness, love. After returning home I found Emerson with his head bowed on his hands, which were resting on his knees. He looked up to me and said, 'Now, tell me honestly, plainly, just what you think of that service.' I replied that before he was half through I had made up my mind that it was the last time he should have that pulpit. 'You are right,' he rejoined, 'and I thank you. On my part, before I was half through, I felt out of place. The doubt is solved.'" He dwelt with time and eternity on a footing of familiar equality. He did not shrink or cringe. His prayers were sweet meditations and his sermon a lecture. He was the apostle of beauty, goodness, and truth. Lexington Road from East Lexington to the Centre is a succession of historic spots marked by stones and tablets. The old home of Harrington, the last survivor of the battle of Lexington, still stands close to the roadside, shaded by a row of fine big trees. Harrington died in 1854 at the great age of ninety-eight; he was a fifer-boy in Captain Parker's company. In the early morning on the day of the fight his mother rapped on his bedroom door, calling, "Jonathan, Jonathan, get up; the British are coming, and something must be done." He got up and did his part with the others. Men still living recall the old man; they heard the story of that memorable day from the lips of one who participated therein. At the corner of Maple Street there is an elm planted in 1740. On a little knoll at the left is the Monroe Tavern. The square, two-storied frame structure which remains is the older portion of the inn as it was in those days. It was the head-quarters of Lord Percy; and it is said that an inoffensive old man who served the soldiers with liquor in the small bar-room was killed when he tried to get away by a rear door. When the soldiers left they sacked the house, piled up the furniture and set fire to it. Washington dined in the dining-room in the second story, November 5, 1789. The house was built in 1695, and is still owned by a direct descendant of the first William Monroe. Not far from the tavern and on the same side of the street is a house where a wounded soldier was cared for by a Mrs. Sanderson, who lived to be one hundred and four years old. Near the intersection of Woburn Street is a crude stone cannon which marks the place where Lord Percy planted a field pine pointing in the direction of the Green to check the advancing patriots and cover the retreat of the Regulars. On the triangular "Common," in the very heart of the village, a flat-faced boulder marks the line where the minute-men under Captain Parker were formed to receive the Regulars. "Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon; but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here" was Parker's command to his men and it was there the war did begin. The small band of patriots were not yet in line when the red-coats appeared at the east end of the meeting-house, coming on the double-quick. Riding ahead, a British officer called out, "Disperse, you rebels! Villains, disperse!" but the little band of rebels stood their ground until a fatal volley killed eight and wounded ten. Only two of the British were wounded. The victors remained in possession of the Green, fired a volley, and gave three loud cheers to celebrate a victory that in the end was to cost King George his fairest colonies. The soldiers' monument that stands on the Green was erected in 1799. In 1835, in the presence of Daniel Webster, Joseph Story, Josiah Quincy, and a vast audience, Edward Everett delivered an oration, and the bodies of those who fell in the battle were removed from the old cemetery to a vault in the rear of the shaft, where they now rest. The weather-beaten stone is over-grown with a protecting mantle of ivy, which threatens to drop like a veil over the long inscription. Here, for more than a century, the village has received distinguished visitors,--Lafayette in 1824, Kossuth in 1851, and famous men of later days. The Buckman Tavern, where the patriots assembled, built in 1690, still stands with its marks of bullets and flood of old associations. These ancient hostelries--Monroe's, Buckman's, Wright's in Concord, and the Wayside Inn--are by no means the least interesting features of this historic section. An old tavern is as pathetic as an old hat: it is redolent of former owners and guests, each room reeks with confused personalities, every latch is electric from many hands, every wall echoes a thousand voices; at dusk of day the clink of glasses and the resounding toast may still be heard in the deserted banquet-hall; at night a ghostly light illumines the vacant ballroom, and the rustle of silks and satins, the sound of merry laughter, and the faint far-off strains of music fall upon the ear. We did not visit the Clarke house where Paul Revere roused Adams and Hancock; we saw it from the road. Originally, and until 1896, the house stood on the opposite side of the street; the owner was about to demolish it to subdivide the land, when the Historical Society intervened and purchased it. Neither did we enter the old burying-ground on Elm Street. The automobile is no respecter of persons or places; it pants with impatience if brought to a stand for so much as a moment before a house or monument of interest, and somehow the throbbing, puffing, impatient machine gets the upper hand of those who are supposed to control it; we are hastened onward in spite of our better inclinations. The trolley line from Lexington to Concord is by way of Bedford, but the direct road over the hill is the one the British followed. It is nine miles by Bedford and the Old Bedford Road, and but six miles direct. A short distance out of Lexington a tablet marks an old well; the inscription reads, "At this well, April 19, 1775, James Hayward, of Acton, met a British soldier, who, raising his gun, said, 'You are a dead man.' 'And so are you,' replied Hayward. Both fired. The soldier was instantly killed and Hayward mortally wounded." Grim meeting of two thirsty souls; they sought water and found blood; they wooed life and won death. War is epitomized in the exclamations, "You are a dead man," "And so are you." Further debate would end the strife; the one query, "Why?" would bring each musket to a rest. Poor unknown Britisher, exiled from home, what did he know about the merits of the controversy? What did he care? It was his business to shoot, and be shot. He fulfilled most completely in the same moment the double mission of the soldier, to kill and be killed. Those who do the fighting never do know very much about what they are fighting for,--if they did, most of them would not fight at all. In these days of common schools and newspapers it becomes ever more and more difficult to recruit armies with men who neither know nor think; the common soldier is beginning to have opinions; by and by he will not fight unless convinced he is right,--then there will be fewer wars. Over the road we were following the British marched in order and retreated in disorder. The undisciplined minute-men were not very good at standing up in an open square and awaiting the onslaught of a company of regulars,--it takes regulars to meet regulars out in the open; but behind trees and fences, from breast-works and scattered points of advantage, each minute-man was a whole army in himself, and the regulars had a hard time of it on their retreat, --the trees and stones which a few hours before had been just trees and stones, became miniature fortresses. The old vineyard, where in 1855 Ephraim Bull produced the now well known Concord grape by using the native wild grape in a cross with a cultivated variety, is at the outskirts of Concord. A little farther on is "The Wayside," so named by Hawthorne, who purchased the place from Alcott in 1852, lived there until his appointment as Consul at Liverpool in 1853, and again on his return from England in 1860, until he died in 1864. But "The Wayside" was not Hawthorne's first Concord home. He came there with his bride in 1842 and lived four years in the Old Manse. There has never been written but one adequate description of this venerable dwelling, and that by Hawthorne himself in "Mosses from an Old Manse." To most readers the description seems part and parcel of the fanciful tales that follow; no more real than the "House of the Seven Gables." We of the outside world who know our Concord only by hearsay cannot realize that "The Wayside" and the "Old Manse" and "Sleepy Hollow" are verities,--verities which the plodding language of prose tails to compass, unless the pen is wielded by a master hand. Cut in a window-pane of one of the rooms were left these inscriptions: "Nat'l Hawthorne. This is his study, 1843." "Inscribed by my husband at sunset, April 3d, 1843, in the gold light, S. A. H. Man's accidents are God's purposes. Sophia A. Hawthorne, 1843." Dear, devoted bride, after more than fifty years your bright, loving letters have come to light, and through your clear vision we catch unobstructed glimpses of men and things of those days. After years of devotion to your husband and his memory it was your lot to die and be buried in a foreign land, while he lies lonely in "Sleepy Hollow." When the honeymoon was still a silver crescent in the sky she wrote a friend, "I hoped I should see you again before I came home to our paradise. I intended to give you a concise history of my elysian life. Soon after we returned my dear lord began to write in earnest, and then commenced my leisure, because, till we meet at dinner, I do not see him. We were interrupted by no one, except a short call now and then from Elizabeth Hoar, who can hardly be called an earthly inhabitant; and Mr. Emerson, whose face pictured the promised land (which we were then enjoying), and intruded no more than a sunset or a rich warble from a bird. "One evening, two days after our arrival at the Old Manse, George Hilliard and Henry Cleveland appeared for fifteen minutes on their way to Niagara Falls, and were thrown into raptures by the embowering flowers and the dear old house they adorned, and the pictures of Holy Mothers mild on the walls, and Mr. Hawthorne's study, and the noble avenue. We forgive them for their appearance here, because they were gone as soon as they had come, and we felt very hospitable. We wandered down to our sweet, sleepy river, and it was so silent all around us and so solitary, that we seemed the only persons living. We sat beneath our stately trees, and felt as if we were the rightful inheritors of the old abbey, which had descended to us from a long line. The tree-tops waved a majestic welcome, and rustled their thousand leaves like brooks over our heads. But the bloom and fragrance of nature had become secondary to us, though we were lovers of it. In my husband's face and eyes I saw a fairer world, of which the other was a faint copy." Nearly two weeks later she continues in the same letter, "Sweet, dear Mary, nearly a fortnight has passed since I wrote the above. I really believe I will finish my letter to-day, though I do not promise. That magician upstairs is very potent! In the afternoon and evening I sit in the study with him. It is the pleasantest niche in our temple. We watch the sun, together, descending in purple and gold, in every variety of magnificence, over the river. Lately, we go on the river, which is now frozen; my lord to skate, and I to run and slide, during the dolphin death of day. I consider my husband a rare sight, gliding over the icy stream. For, wrapped in his cloak, he looks very graceful; impetuously darting from me in long, sweeping curves, and returning again-- again to shoot away. Our meadow at the bottom of the orchard is like a small frozen sea now; and that is the present scene of our heroic games. Sometimes, in the splendor of the dying light, we seem sporting upon transparent gold, so prismatic becomes the ice; and the snow takes opaline hues from the gems that float above as clouds. It is eminently the hour to see objects, just after the sun has disappeared. Oh, such oxygen as we inhale! After other skaters appear,--young men and boys,--who principally interest me as foils to my husband, who, in the presence of nature, loses all shyness and moves regally like a king. One afternoon Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau went with him down the river. Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice,--very remarkable, but very ugly methought. Next him followed Mr. Hawthorne, who, wrapped in his cloak, moved like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave. Mr. Emerson closed the line, evidently too weary to hold himself erect, pitching headforemost, half lying on the air. He came in to rest himself, and said to me that Hawthorne was a tiger, a bear, a lion,--in short, a satyr, and there was no tiring him out; and he might be the death of a man like himself. And then, turning upon me that kindling smile for which he is so memorable, he added, 'Mr. Hawthorne is such an Ajax, who can cope with him!'" Of all the pages, ay, of all the books, that have been printed concerning Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, there is not one which more vividly and accurately set the men before us and describe their essential characteristics than the casual lines of this old letter:--Thoreau, the devotee of nature, "figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice," joyous in the presence of his god; the mystic Hawthorne, wrapped in his sombre cloak, "moved like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave,"--with magic force these words throw upon the screen of the imagination the figure of the creator of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale; while Emerson is drawn with the inspiration of a poet, "evidently too weary to hold himself erect, pitching headforemost, half lying on the air;" "half lying on the air,"--the phrase rings in the ear, lingers in the memory, attaches itself to Emerson, and fits like a garment of soft and yielding texture. The letter concludes as follows: "After the first snow-storm, before it was so deep, we walked in the woods, very beautiful in winter, and found slides in Sleepy Hollow, where we became children, and enjoyed ourselves as of old,--only more, a great deal. Sometimes it is before breakfast that Mr. Hawthorne goes to skate upon the meadow. Yesterday, before he went out, he said it was very cloudy and gloomy, and he thought it would storm. In half an hour, oh, wonder! what a scene! Instead of a black sky, the rising sun, not yet above the hill, had changed the firmament into a vast rose! On every side, east, west, north, and south, every point blushed roses. I ran to the study and the meadow sea also was a rose, the reflection of that above. And there was my husband, careering about, glorified by the light. Such is Paradise. "In the evening we are gathered together beneath our luminous star in the study, for we have a large hanging astral lamp, which beautifully illumines the room, with its walls of pale yellow paper, its Holy Mother over the fireplace, and pleasant books, and its pretty bronze vase on one of the secretaries, filled with ferns. Except once, Mr. Emerson, no one hunts us out in the evening. Then Mr. Hawthorne reads to me. At present we can only get along with the old English writers, and we find that they are the hive from which all modern honey is stolen. They are thick-set with thought, instead of one thought serving for a whole book. Shakespeare is pre-eminent; Spencer is music. We dare to dislike Milton when he goes to heaven. We do not recognize God in his picture of Him. There is something so penetrating and clear in Mr. Hawthorne's intellect, that now I am acquainted with it, merely thinking of him as I read winnows the chaff from the wheat at once. And when he reads to me, it is the acutest criticism. Such a voice, too,--such sweet thunder! Whatever is not worth much shows sadly, coming through such a medium, fit only for noblest ideas. From reading his books you can have some idea of what it is to dwell with Mr. Hawthorne. But only a shadow of him is found in his books. The half is not told there." Just a letter, the outpouring of a loving young heart, written with no thought of print and strange eye, slumbering for more than fifty years to come to light at last;--just one of many, all of them well worth reading. The three great men of Concord were happy in their wives. Mrs. Hawthorne and Mrs. Alcott were not only great wives and mothers, but they could express their prayers, meditations, fancies, and emotions in clear and exquisite English. It was after the prosperous days of the Liverpool Consulate that Hawthorne returned to Concord to spend the remainder of his all too short life. He made many changes in "The Wayside" and surrounding grounds. He enlarged the house and added the striking but quite unpicturesque tower which rises from the centre of the main part; here he had his study and point of observation; he could see the unwelcome visitor while yet a far way off, or contemplate the lazy travel of a summer's day. Just beyond is "Orchard House," into which the Alcotts moved in October, 1858. A philosopher may not be a good neighbor, and Alcott lived just a little too near Hawthorne. "It was never so well understood at 'The Wayside' that its owner had retiring habits as when Alcott was reported to be approaching along Larch Path, which stretched in feathery bowers between our house and his. Yet I was not aware that the seer failed at any hour to gain admittance,--one cause, perhaps, of the awe in which his visits were held. I remember that my observation was attracted to him curiously from the fact that my mother's eyes changed to a darker gray at his advents, as they did only when she was silently sacrificing herself. I clearly understood that Mr. Alcott was admirable, but he sometimes brought manuscript poetry with him, the dear child of his own Muse. There was one particularly long poem which he had read aloud to my mother and father; a seemingly harmless thing, from which they never recovered." The appreciation the great men of Concord had of one another is interesting to the outside world. Great souls are seldom congenial,--popular impression to the contrary notwithstanding. Minds of a feather flock together; but minds of gold are apt to remain apart, each sufficient unto itself. It is in sports, pastimes, business, politics, that men congregate with facility; in literary and intellectual pursuits the leaders are anti-pathetic in proportion to their true greatness. Now and then two, and more rarely three, are united by bonds of quick understanding and sympathy, but men of profound convictions attract followers and repel companions. Emerson's was the most catholic spirit; he understood his neighbors better than they understood one another; his vision was very clear. For a man who mingled so little with the world, who spent so much of his life in contemplation--in communing with his inner self--Emerson was very sane indeed; his idiosyncrasies did not prevent his judging men and things quite correctly. Hawthorne and Emerson saw comparatively little of each other; these two great souls respected the independence of each other too much to intrude. "Mr. Hawthorne once broke through his hermit usage, and honored Miss Ellen Emerson, the friend of his daughter Una, with a formal call on a Sunday evening. It was the only time, I think, that he ever came to the house except when persuaded to come in for a few moments on the rare occasions when he walked with my father. On this occasion he did not ask for either Mr. or Mrs. Emerson, but announced that his call was upon Miss Ellen. Unfortunately, she had gone to bed, but he remained for a time talking with my sister Edith and me, the school-mates of his children. To cover his shyness he took up a stereoscope on the centre-table and began to look at the pictures. After looking at them for a time he asked where those views were taken. We told him they were pictures of the Concord Court and Town Houses, the Common and the Mill-dam; on hearing which he expressed some surprise and interest, but evidently was as unfamiliar with the centre of the village where he had lived for years as a deer or a wood-thrush would be. He walked through it often on his way to the cars, but was too shy or too rapt to know what was there." Emerson liked Hawthorne better than his books,--the latter were too weird, uncanny, and inconclusive. In 1838 he noted in his journal, "Elizabeth Peabody brought me yesterday Hawthorne's 'Footprints on the Seashore' to read. I complained there was no inside to it. Alcott and he together would make a man." Later, when Hawthorne came to live in Concord, Emerson did his best to get better acquainted; but it was of little use; they had too little in common. Both men were great walkers, and yet they seldom walked together. They went to Harvard to see the Shakers, and Emerson recorded it as a "satisfactory tramp; we had good talk on the way." After Hawthorne's death, Emerson made the following entry in his journal: "I thought him a greater man than any of his works betray; there was still a great deal of work in him, and he might one day show a purer power. It would have been a happiness, doubtless, to both of us, to come into habits of unreserved intercourse. It was easy to talk with him; there were no barriers; only he said so little that I talked too much, and stopped only because, as he gave no indication, I feared to exceed. He showed no egotism or self-assertion; rather a humility, and at one time a fear that he had written himself out. I do not think any of his books worthy his genius. I admired the man, who was simple, amiable, truth-loving, and frank in conversation, but I never read his books with pleasure; they are too young." Emerson was greedy for ideas, and the pure, limpid literature of Hawthorne did not satisfy him. Hawthorne's estimate of Emerson was far more just and penetrating; he described him very correctly as "a great original thinker" whose "mind acted upon other minds of a certain constitution with wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with him face to face. Young visionaries--to whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them--came to seek the clew that should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists--whose systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned them in an iron framework--travelled painfully to his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own thraldom. People that had lighted on a new thought, or a thought that they fancied new, came to Emerson, as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain, troubled, earnest wanderers through the midnight of the moral world beheld his intellectual face as a beacon burning on a hill-top, and, climbing the difficult ascent, looked forth into the surrounding obscurity more hopefully than hitherto. For myself, there had been epochs in my life when I, too, might have asked of this prophet the master word that should solve me the riddle of the universe, but, now, being happy, I feel as if there were no question to be put, and therefore admired Emerson as a poet of deep and austere beauty, but sought nothing from him as a philosopher. It was good nevertheless to meet him in the wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure, intellectual gleam diffused about his presence like the garment of a shining one; and he, so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alive as if expecting to receive more than he could impart." It was fortunate for Hawthorne, doubly fortunate for us who read him, that he could withstand the influence of Emerson, and go on writing in his own way; his dreams and fancies were undisturbed by the clear vision which sought so earnestly to distract him from his realm of the imagination. On first impressions Emerson rated Alcott very high. "He has more of the godlike than any man I have ever seen, and his presence rebukes, and threatens, and raises. He is a teacher." "Yesterday Alcott left us after a three days' visit. The most extraordinary man, and the highest genius of his time." This was in 1835. Seven years later Emerson records this impression. "He looks at everything in larger angles than any other, and, by good right, should be the greatest man. But here comes in another trait; it is found, though his angles are of so generous contents, the lines do not meet; the apex is not quite defined. We must allow for the refraction of the lens, but it is the best instrument I have ever met with." Alcott visited Concord first in October, 1835, and found that he and Emerson had many things in common, but he entered in his diary, "Mr. Emerson's fine literary taste is sometimes in the way of a clear and hearty acceptance of the spiritual." Again, he naively congratulates himself that he has found a man who could appreciate his theories. "Emerson sees me, knows me, and, more than all others, helps me,--not by noisy praise, not by low appeals to interest and passion, but by turning the eye of others to my stand in reason and the nature of things. Only men of like vision can apprehend and counsel each other." With the exception of Hawthorne, there was among the men of Concord a tendency to over-estimate one another. For the most part, they took themselves and each other very seriously; even Emerson's subtle sense of humor did not save him from yielding to this tendency, which is illustrated in the following page from Hawthorne's journal: "About nine o'clock (Sunday) Hilliard and I set out on a walk to Walden Pond, calling by the way at Mr. Emerson's to obtain his guidance or directions. He, from a scruple of his eternal conscience, detained us until after the people had got into church, and then he accompanied us in his own illustrious person. We turned aside a little from our way to visit Mr. Hosmer, a yeoman, of whose homely and self-acquired wisdom Mr. Emerson has a very high opinion." "He had a fine flow of talk, and not much diffidence about his own opinions. I was not impressed with any remarkable originality in his views, but they were sensible and characteristic. Methought, however, the good yeoman was not quite so natural as he may have been at an earlier period. The simplicity of his character has probably suffered by his detecting the impression he makes on those around him. There is a circle, I suppose, who look up to him as an oracle, and so he inevitably assumes the oracular manner, and speaks as if truth and wisdom were attiring themselves by his voice. Mr. Emerson has risked the doing him much mischief by putting him in print,--a trial few persons can sustain without losing their unconsciousness. But, after all, a man gifted with thought and expression, whatever his rank in life and his mode of uttering himself, whether by pen or tongue, cannot be expected to go through the world without finding himself out; and, as all such discoveries are partial and imperfect, they do more harm than good to the character. Mr. Hosmer is more natural than ninety-nine men out of a hundred, and is certainly a man of intellectual and moral substance. It would be amusing to draw a parallel between him and his admirer,--Mr. Emerson, the mystic, stretching his hand out of cloudland in vain search for something real; and the man of sturdy sense, all whose ideas seem to be dug out of his mind, hard and substantial, as he digs his potatoes, carrots, beets, and turnips out of the earth. Mr. Emerson is a great searcher for facts, but they seem to melt away and become unsubstantial in his grasp." They took that extraordinary creature, Margaret Fuller, seriously, and they took a vast deal of poor poetry seriously. Because a few could write, nearly every one in the village seemed to think he or she could write, and write they did to the extent of a small library most religiously shelved and worshipped in its own compartment in the town library. Genius is egotism; the superb confidence of these men, each in the sanctity of his own mission, in the plenitude of his own powers, in the inspiration of his own message, made them what they were. The last word was Alcott's because he outlived them all, and his last word was that, great as were those who had taken their departure, the greatest of them all had fallen just short of appreciating him, the survivor. A man penetrates every one's disguise but his own; we deceive no one but ourselves. The insane are often singularly quick to penetrate the delusions of others; the man who calls himself George Washington ridicules the claim of another that he is Julius Caesar. Between Hawthorne and Thoreau there was little in common. In 1860, the latter speaks of meeting Hawthorne shortly after his return from Europe, and says, "He is as simple and childlike as ever." Of Thoreau, Mrs. Hawthorne wrote in a letter, "This evening Mr. Thoreau is going to lecture, and will stay with us. His lecture before was so enchanting; such a revelation of nature in all its exquisite details of wood-thrushes, squirrels, sunshine, mists and shadows, fresh vernal odors, pine-tree ocean melodies, that my ear rang with music, and I seemed to have been wandering through copse and dingle! Mr. Thoreau has risen above all his arrogance of manner, and is as gentle, simple, ruddy, and meek as all geniuses should be; and now his great blue eyes fairly outshine and put into shade a nose which I thought must make him uncomely forever." In his own journal Hawthorne said, "Mr. Thoreau dined with us. He is a singular character,--a young man with much of wild, original nature still remaining in him; and so far as he is sophisticated, it is in a way and method of his own. He is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat rustic, though courteous, manners, corresponding very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty." Alcott helped build the hut at Walden, and he and Emerson spent many an evening there in conversation that must have delighted the gods--in so far as they understood it. Of Alcott and their winter evenings, Thoreau has said, "One of the last of the philosophers. Connecticut gave him to the world,--he peddled first his wares, afterwards, as he declares, his brains; these he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut in the kernel. His words and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve. A true friend of man, almost the only friend of human progress. He is perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance to know,--the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. Ah, such discourse as we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of,--we three; it expanded and racked my little home;"--to say nothing of the universe, which doubtless felt the strain. Referring to the same evening, Alcott said,--probably after a chastening discussion,--"If I were to proffer my earnest prayer to the gods for the greatest of all human privileges, it should be for the gift of a severely candid friend. Intercourse of this kind I have found possible with my friends Emerson and Thoreau; and the evenings passed in their society during these winter months have realized my conception of what friendship, when great and genuine, owes to and takes from its objects." Nearly twenty years after Thoreau's death, Alcott, while walking towards the close of day, said, "I always think of Thoreau when I look at a sunset." Emerson was fourteen years older than Thoreau, but between the two men there existed through life profound sympathy and affection. Emerson watched him develop as a young man, and delivered the address at his funeral; for two years they lived in the same house, and concerning him Emerson wrote in 1863, a year after his death, "In reading Henry Thoreau's journal, I am very sensible of the vigor of his constitution. That oaken strength which I noted whenever he walked or worked, or surveyed wood-lots, the same unhesitating hand with which a field laborer accosts a piece of work which I should shun as a waste of strength, Henry shows in his literary task. He has muscle, and ventures in and performs feats which I am forced to decline. In reading him I find the same thoughts, the same spirit that is in me, but he takes a step beyond and illustrates by excellent images that which I should have conveyed in a sleepy generalization. 'Tis as if I went into a gymnasium and saw youths leap and climb and swing with a force unapproachable, tho these feats are only continuations of my initial grapplings and jumps." One is reminded of Mrs. Hawthorne's vivid characterization of the two men as she saw them on the ice of the Musketaquid twenty years before. In our reverence for a place where a great man for a time has had his home, we must not forget that, while death may mark a given spot, life is quite another matter. A man may be born or may die in a country, a city, a village, a house, a room, or,--narrower still,--a bed; for birth and death are physical events, but life is something quite different. Birth is the welding of the soul to a given body; death is the dissolution of that connection; life is the relation of the imprisoned soul to its environment, and the content of that environment depends largely upon the individual; it may be as narrow as the village in which he lives, or it may stretch beyond the uttermost stars. A man may live on a farm, or he may visit the cities of the earth,--it does not matter much; his life is the sum total of his experiences, his sympathies, his loves, of his hopes and ambitions, his dreams and aspirations, his beliefs and convictions. To live is to love, and to think, and to dream, and to believe, and to act as one loves and thinks and dreams and believes, that is life; and, therefore, no man's life is bounded by physical confines, no man lives in this place or that, in this house or that; but every man lives in the world he has conquered for himself, and no one knows the limits of the domains of another. The farmer's boy who sows the seed and watches the tender blades part with volcanic force the surface of the earth, making it to heave and tremble, who sees the buds and flowers of the spring ripen into the fruit and foliage of autumn, who follows with sympathetic vision all the mysterious processes of nature, lives a broader and nobler life than the merchant who sees naught beyond the four walls of his counting-room, or the traveller whose superficial eye marks only the strange and the curious. In the eyes of those about them Hawthorne "lived" a scant mile from Emerson; in reality they did not live in the same spheres; the boundaries of their worlds did not overlap, but, like two far-separate stars, each felt the distant attraction and admired the glow of the other, and that was all. The real worlds of Thoreau and Alcott and Emerson did at times so far overlap that they trod on common ground, but these periods were so brief and the spaces in common so small that soon they wandered apart, each circling by himself in an orbit of his own. Words at best are poor instruments of thought; the more we use them the more ambiguous do they become; no man knows exactly what another means from what he says; every word is qualified by its context, but the context of every word is eternity. How long shall we listen to find out what a speaker meant by his opening sentence?--an hour, a day, a week, a month?--these periods are all too short, for with every added thought the meaning of the first is changed for him as well as for us. "Life" in common speech may mean either mere organic existence or a metaphysical assumption; we speak of the life of a tree, and the life of a man, and the life of a soul, of the life mortal and the life immortal. Who can tell what we have in mind when we talk of life? No one, for we cannot tell ourselves. We speak of life one moment with a certain matter in mind, possibly the state of our garden; in the infinitesimal fraction of a second additional cells of our brain come into activity, additional areas are excited, and our ideas scale the walls of the garden and scatter over the face of the earth. If we attempt to explain, the very process implies the generation of new ideas and the modification of old, so that long before the explanation of what we meant by the use of a given word is finished, the meaning has undergone a change, and we perceive that what we thought we meant by no means included all that lurked in the mind. In every-day speech we are obliged to distinguish by elaborate circumlocution between a man's place of residence and that larger and truer life,--his sphere of sympathies. Emerson lived in Concord, Carlyle in Chelsea; to the casual reader these phrases convey the impression that the life of Emerson was in some way identified with and bounded by Concord; that the life of Carlyle was in some way identified with and bounded by Chelsea; that in some subtle manner the census of those two small communities affected the philosophy of the two men; whereas we know that for a long time the worlds in which they really did move and have their being so far overlapped that they were near neighbors in thought, much nearer than they would have been if they had "lived" in the same village and met daily on the same streets. The directory gives a man's abode, but tells us nothing, absolutely nothing, about his life; the number of his house does not indicate where he lives. It is possible to live in London, in Paris, in Rome without ever having visited any one of those places; in truth, millions of people really live in Rome in a truer sense than many who have their abodes there; of the inhabitants of Paris comparatively few really live there, comparatively few have any knowledge of the city, its history, its traditions, its charms, its treasures, but outside Paris there are thousands of men and women who spend many hours and days and weeks of their time in reading, learning, and thinking about Paris and all it contains,--in very truth living there. Many a worthy preacher lives so exclusively in Jerusalem that he knows not his own country, and his usefulness is impaired; many an artist lives so exclusively in Paris that his work suffers; many an architect lives so long among the buildings of other days that he can do nothing of his own. In fact, most men who are devoted to intellectual, literary, and artistic pursuits live anywhere and everywhere except at home. The one great merit of Walt Whitman is that he lived in America and in the nineteenth century; he did not live in the past; he did not live in Europe; he lived in the present and in the world about him, his home was America, his era was his own. If we have no national literature, it is because those who write spend the better part of their lives abroad; they may not leave their own firesides, but all their sympathies are elsewhere, all their inspiration is drawn from other lands and other times. We have very little art, very little architecture, very little music of our own for the same reasons. We have any number of painters, sculptors, composers, but few of them live at home; their sympathies are elsewhere; they seem to have little or nothing in common with their surroundings. Now and then a clear, fresh voice is heard from out of the woods and fields, or over the city's din, speaking with the convincing eloquence of immediate knowledge and first-hand observation; but there are so few of these voices that they do not amount to a chorus, and a national literature means a chorus. All this will gradually change until some day the preacher will return from Jerusalem, the painter from Paris, the poet from England, the architect from Rome, and the overwhelming problems presented by the unparalleled development and opportunities of America will absorb their attention to the exclusion of all else. The danger of travel, the danger of learning, the danger of reading, of profound research and extensive observation, lies in the fact that some age, city, or country, some man or coterie of men, may gain too firm a hold, may so absorb the attention and restrict the imagination that the sense of proportion is lost. It requires a level head to withstand the allurements of the past, the fascination of the foreign. Nothing disturbed Shakespeare's equanimity. Neither Stratford nor London bounded his life. On the wings of his imagination he visited the known earth and penetrated beyond the blue skies, he made the universe his home; and yet he was essentially and to the last an Englishman. When we stopped before "Orchard House" it was desolate and forsaken, and the entrance to the "Hillside Chapel," where the "Concord School of Philosophy and Literature" had its home for nine years, was boarded up. Parts of the house had been built more than a century and a half when Mrs. Alcott bought it in 1857. In her journal for July, 1858, the author of "Little Women" records, "Went into the new house and began to settle. Father is happy; mother glad to be at rest; Anna is in bliss with her gentle John; and May busy over her pictures. I have plans simmering, but must sweep and dust and wash my dishpans a while longer till I see my way." Meanwhile the little women paper and decorate the walls, May in her enthusiasm filling panels and every vacant place with birds and flowers and mottoes in old English. "August. Much company to see the new house. All seem to be glad that the wandering family is anchored at last. We won't move again for twenty years" (prophetic soul to name the period so exactly) "if I can help it. The old people need an abiding place, and now that death and love have taken two of us away, I can, I hope, soon manage to take care of the remaining four." It is one of the ironies of fate that the fame of Bronson Alcott should hang upon that of his gifted daughter. It was not until she made her great success with "Little Women" in 1868 that the outside world began to take a vivid interest in the father. From that time his lectures and conversations began to pay; he was seized anew with the desire to publish, and from 1868 until the beginning of his illness in 1882 he printed or reprinted nearly his entire works,--some eight or ten volumes; it is no disparagement to the kindly old philosopher that his books were bought mainly on the success of his daughter's. The Summer School of Philosophy was the last ambitious attempt of a spirit that had been struggling for half a century to teach mankind. The small chapel of plain, unpainted boards, nestling among the trees on the hillside, has not been opened since 1888. It stands a pathetic memento to a vision. Twenty years ago the "school" was an overshadowing reality,--to-day it is a memory, a minor incident in the progress of thought, a passing phase in intellectual development. Many eminent men lectured there, and the scope of the work is by no means indicated by the humble building which remains; but, while strong in conversation and in the expression of his own views, Alcott was not cut out for a leader. All reports indicate that he had a wonderful facility in the off-hand expression of abstruse thought, but he had no faculty whatsoever for so ordering and systematizing his thoughts as to furnish explosive material for belligerent followers; the intellectual ammunition he put up was not in the convenient form of cartridges, nor even in kegs or barrels, but just poured out on the ground, where it disintegrated before it could be used. Leaning on the gate that bright, warm, summer afternoon, it was not difficult to picture the venerable, white-haired philosopher seated by the doorstep arguing eloquently with some congenial visitor, or chatting with his daughter. One could almost see a small throng of serious men and women wending their way up the still plainly marked path to the chapel, and catch the measured tones of the lecturer as he expounded theories too recondite for this practical age and generation. Philosophy is the sarcophagus of truth; and most systems of philosophy are like the pyramids,--impressive piles of useless intellectual masonry, erected at prodigious cost of time and labor to secrete from mankind the truth. A little farther on we came to the fork in the road where Lincoln Street branches off to the southeast. Emerson's house fronts on Lincoln and is a few rods from the intersection with Lexington Street. Here Emerson lived from 1835 until his death in 1882. It is singular the fascination exercised by localities and things identified with great men. It is not enough to simply see, but in so far as possible we wish to place ourselves in their places, to walk where they walked, sit where they sat, sleep where they slept, to merge our petty and obscure individualities for the time being in theirs, to lose our insignificant selves in the atmosphere they created and left behind. Is it possible that subtile** distillations of personality penetrate and saturate inanimate things, so that aromas imperceptible to the sense are given off for ages and affect all who come in receptive mood within their influence? It is quite likely that what we feel when we stand within the shadow of a great soul is all subjective, that our emotions are but the workings of our imaginations stirred by suggestive surroundings; but who knows, who knows? When this house was nearly destroyed by fire in July, 1872, friends persuaded Emerson to go abroad with his daughter, and while they were away, the house was completely restored. His son describes his return: "When the train reached Concord, the bells were rung and a great company of his neighbors and friends accompanied him, under a triumphal arch, to his restored house. He was greatly moved, but with characteristic modesty insisted that this was a welcome to his daughter, and could not be meant for him. Although he had felt quite unable to make any speech, yet, seeing his friendly townspeople, old and young, in groups watching him enter his own door once more, he turned suddenly back and going to the gate said, 'My friends! I know this is not a tribute to an old man and his daughter returned to their home, but to the common blood of us all--one family--in Concord.'" The exposure incidental to the fire seriously undermined Emerson's already failing health; shortly after he wrote a friend in Philadelphia, "It is too ridiculous that a fire should make an old scholar sick; but the exposures of that morning and the necessities of the following days which kept me a large part of the time in the blaze of the sun have in every way demoralized me for the present,--incapable of any sane or just action. These signal proofs of my debility an decay ought to persuade you at your first northern excursion to come and reanimate and renew the failing powers of your still affectionate old friend." The story of his last days is told by his son, who was also his physician: "His last few years were quiet and happy. Nature gently drew the veil over his eyes; he went to his study and tried to work, accomplished less and less, but did not notice it. However, he made out to look over and index most of his journals. He enjoyed reading, but found so much difficulty in conversation in associating the right word with his idea, that he avoided going into company, and on that account gradually ceased to attend the meetings of the Social Circle. As his critical sense became dulled, his standard of intellectual performance was less exacting, and this was most fortunate, for he gladly went to any public occasion where he could hear, and nothing would be expected of him. He attended the Lyceum and all occasions of speaking or reading in the Town Hall with unfailing pleasure. "He read a lecture before his townpeople** each winter as late as 1880, but needed to have one of his family near by to help him out with a word and assist in keeping the place in his manuscript. In these last years he liked to go to church. The instinct had always been there, but he had felt that he could use his time to better purpose." "In April, 1882, a raw and backward spring, he caught cold, and increased it by walking out in the rain and, through forgetfulness, omitting to put on his over-coat. He had a hoarse cold for a few days, and on the morning of April 19 I found him a little feverish, so went to see him next day. He was asleep on his study sofa, and when he awoke he proved to be more feverish and a little bewildered, with unusual difficulty in finding the right word. He was entirely comfortable and enjoyed talking, and, as he liked to have me read to him, I read Paul Revere's Ride, finding that he could only follow simple narrative. He expressed great pleasure, was delighted that the story was part of Concord's story, but was sure he had never heard it before, and could hardly be made to understand who Longfellow was, though he had attended his funeral only the week before." It was at Longfellow's funeral that Emerson got up from his chair, went to the side of the coffin and gazed long and earnestly upon the familiar face of the dead poet; twice he did this, then said to a friend near him, "That gentleman was a sweet, beautiful soul, but I have entirely forgotten his name." Continuing the narrative, the son says: "Though dulled to other impressions, to one he was fresh as long as he could understand anything, and while even the familiar objects of his study began to look strange, he smiled and pointed to Carlyle's head and said, 'That is my man, my good man!' I mention this because it has been said that this friendship cooled, and that my father had for long years neglected to write to his early friend. He was loyal while life lasted, but had been unable to write a letter for years before he died. Their friendship did not need letters. "The next day pneumonia developed itself in a portion of one lung and he seemed much sicker; evidently believed he was to die, and with difficulty made out to give a word or two of instructions to his children. He did not know how to be sick, and desired to be dressed and sit up in his study, and as we had found that any attempt to regulate his actions lately was very annoying to him, and he could not be made to understand the reasons for our doing so in his condition, I determined that it would not be worth while to trouble and restrain him as it would a younger person who had more to live for. He had lived free; his life was essentially spent, and in what must almost surely be his last illness we would not embitter the occasion by any restraint that was not absolutely unavoidable. "He suffered very little, took his nourishment well, but had great annoyance from his inability to find the words which he wished for. He knew his friends and family, but thought he was in a strange house. He sat up in a chair by the fire much of the time, and only on the last day stayed entirely in bed. "During the sickness he always showed pleasure when his wife sat by his side, and on one of the last days he managed to express, in spite of his difficulty with words, how long and happy they had lived together. The sight of his grandchildren always brought the brightest smile to his face. On the last day he saw several of his friends and took leave of them. "Only at the last came pain, and this was at once relieved by ether, and in the quiet sleep this produced he gradually faded away in the evening of Thursday, April 27, 1882. "Thirty-five years earlier he wrote one morning in his journal: 'I said, when I awoke, after some more sleepings and wakings I shall lie on this mattress sick; then dead; and through my gay entry they will carry these bones. Where shall I be then? I lifted my head and beheld the spotless orange light of the morning streaming up from the dark hills into the wide universe.'" After a few more sleepings and a few more wakings we shall all lie dead, every living soul on this broad earth,--all who, at this mathematical point in time called the present, breathe the breath of life will pass away; but even now the new generation is springing into life; within the next hour five thousand bodies will be born into the world to perpetuate mankind; the whole lives by the constant renewal of its parts; but the individual, what becomes of the individual? The five thousand bodies that are born within the hour take the place of the something less than five thousand bodies that die within the hour; the succession is preserved; the life of the aggregate is assured; but the individual, what becomes of the individual? Is he immortal, and if immortal whence came he and whither does he go? if immortal, whence come these new souls which are being delivered on the face of the globe at the rate of nearly a hundred a minute? Are they from other worlds, exiled for a time to this, or are they souls revisiting their former habitation? Hardly the latter, for more are coming than going. One midsummer night, while leaning over the rail of an ocean steamer and watching the white foam thrown up by the prow, the expanse of dark, heaving water, the vast dome of sky studded with the brilliant jewels of space, an old man stopped by my side and we talked of the grandeur of nature and the mysteries of life and death, and he said, "My wife and I once had three boys, whom we loved better than life; one by one they were taken from us,--they all died, and my wife and I were left alone in the world; but after a time a boy was born to us and we gave him the name of the oldest who died, and then another came and we gave him the name of my second boy, and then a third was born and we gave him the name of our youngest;--and so in some mysterious way our three boys have come back to us; we feel that they went away for a little while and returned. I have sometimes looked in their eyes and asked them if anything they saw or heard seemed familiar, whether there was any faint fleeting memories of other days; they say 'no;' but I am sure that their souls are the souls of the boys we lost." And why not? Is it not more than likely that there is but one soul which dwells in all things animate and inanimate, or rather, are not all things animate and inanimate but manifestations of the one soul, so that the death of an individual is, after all, but the suppression of a particular manifestation and in no sense a release of a separate soul; so that the birth of a child is but a new manifestation in physical form of the one soul, and in no sense the apparition of an additional soul? It is difficult to think otherwise. The birth and death of souls are inconceivable; the immortality of a vast and varying number of individual souls is equally inconceivable. Immortality implies unity, not number. The mind can grasp the possibility of one soul, the manifestation of which is the universe and all it contains. The hypothesis of individual souls first confined in and then released from individual bodies to preserve their individuality for all time is inconceivable, since it assumes--to coin a word-- an intersoulular space, which must necessarily be filled with a medium that is either material or spiritual in its character; if material, then we have the inconceivable condition of spiritual entities surrounded by a material medium; if the intersoulular space be occupied by a spiritual medium, then we have simply souls surrounded by soul,--or, in the final analysis, one soul, of which the so-called individual souls are but so many manifestations. To the assumption of an all-pervading ether which is the physical basis of the universe, may we not add the suprasumption** of an all-pervading soul which is the spiritual basis of not only the ether but of life itself? The seeming duality of mind and matter, of the soul and body, must terminate somewhere, must merge in identity. Whether that identity be the Creator of theology or the soul of speculation does not much matter, since the final result is the same, namely, the immortality of that suprasumption, the soul. But the individual, what becomes of the individual in this assumption of an all-pervading, immortal soul, of which all things animate and inanimate are but so many activities? The body, which for a time being is a part of the local manifestation of the pervading soul, dies and is resolved into its constituent elements; it is inconceivable that those elements should ever gather themselves together again and appear in visible, tangible form. No one could possibly desire they ever should; those who die maimed, or from sickness and disease, or in the decrepitude and senility of age, could not possibly wish that their disordered bodies should appear again; nor could any person name the exact period of his life when he was so satisfied with his physical condition that he would choose to have his body as it then was. No; the body, like the trunk of a fallen tree, decays and disappears; like ripe fruit, it drops to the earth and enriches the soil, but nevermore resumes its form and semblance. The pervading soul, of which the body was but the physical manifestation, remains; it does not return to heaven or any hypothetical point in either space or speculation. The dissolution of the body is but the dissolution of a particular manifestation of the all-pervading soul, and the immortality of the so-called individual soul is but the persistence of that, so to speak, local disturbance in the one soul after the body has disappeared. It is quite conceivable, or rather the reverse is inconceivable, that the activity of the pervading soul, which manifests itself for a time in the body, persists indefinitely after the physical manifestation has ceased; that, with the cessation of the physical manifestation, the particular activity which we recognize here as an individuality will so persist that hereafter we may recognize it as a spiritual personality. In other words, assuming the existence of a soul of which the universe and all it contains are but so many manifestations, it is dimly conceivable that with the cessation, or rather the transformation, of any particular manifestation, the effects may so persist as to be forever known and recognizable,--not by parts of the one soul, which has no parts, but by the soul itself. Therefore all things are immortal. Nothing is so lost to the infinite soul as to be wholly and totally obliterated. The withering of a flower is as much the act of the all-pervading soul as the death of a child; but the life and death of a human being involve activities of the soul so incomparably greater than the blossoming of a plant, that the immortality of the one, while not differing in kind, may be infinitely more important in degree. The manifestation of the soul in the life of the humming-bird is slight in comparison with the manifestation in the life of a man, and the traces which persist forever in the case of the former are probably insignificant compared with the traces which persist in the case of the latter; but traces must persist, else there is no immortality of the individual; at the same time there is not the slightest reason for urging that, whereas traces of the soul's activity in the form of man will persist, traces of the soul's activity in lower forms of life and in things inanimate will not persist. There is no reason why, when the physical barriers which exist between us and the soul that is within and without us are destroyed, we should not desire to know forever all that the universe contains. Why should not the sun and the moon and the stars be immortal,--as immortal in their way as we in ours, both immortal in the one all-pervading soul? "The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers and the magazine of the soul. In its experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not solve," said Emerson in the lecture he called "Over-Soul." What a pity to use the phrase "Over-Soul," which removes the soul even farther aloof than it is in popular conception, or which fosters the belief of an inner and outer, or an inferior and a superior soul; whereas Emerson meant, as the context shows, the all-pervading soul. But, then, who knows what any one else thinks or means? At the most we only know what others say, what words they use, but in what sense they use them and the content of thought back of them we do not know. So far as the problems of life go we are all groping in the dark, and words are like fireflies leading us hither and thither with glimpses of light only to go out, leaving us in darkness and despair. It is the sounding phrase that catches the ear. "For fools admire and like all things the more which they perceive to be concealed under involved language, and determine things to be true which can prettily tickle the ears and are varnished over with finely sounding phrase," says Lucretius. We imagine we understand when we do not; we do not really, truly, and wholly understand Emerson or any other man; we do not understand ourselves. We speak of the conceivable and of the inconceivable as if the words had any clear and tangible meaning in our minds; whereas they have not; at the best they are of but relative value. What is conceivable to one man is inconceivable to another; what is beyond the perception of one generation is matter of fact to the next. The conceivable is and ever must be bounded by the inconceivable; the domain of the former is finite, that of the latter is infinite. It matters not how far we press our speculations, how extravagant our hypotheses, how distant our vision, we reach at length the confines of our thought and admit the inconceivable. The inconceivable is a postulate as essential to reason as is the conceivable. That the inconceivable exists is as certain as the existence of the conceivable; it is in a sense more certain, since we constantly find ourselves in error in our conclusions concerning the existence of the things we know, while we can never be in error concerning the existence of things we can never know, being sure that beyond the confines of the finite there must necessarily be the infinite. We may indulge in assumptions concerning the infinite based upon our knowledge of the finite, or, rather, based upon the inflexible laws of our mental processes. We may say that there must be one all-pervading soul, not because we can form any conception whatsoever of the true nature of such a soul, but because the alternative hypothesis of many individual souls is utterly obnoxious to our reason. To those who urge that it is idle to reason about what we cannot conceive, it is sufficient answer to say that man cannot help it. The scientist and the materialist in the ardent pursuit of knowledge soon experience the necessity of indulging in assumptions concerning force and matter, the hypothetical ether and molecules, atoms and vortices, which are as purely metaphysical as any assumptions concerning the soul. The distinction between the realist and the idealist is a matter of temperament. All that separated Huxley from Gladstone was a word; each argued from the unknowable, but disputed over the name and attributes of the inconceivable. Huxley said he did not know, which was equivalent to the dogmatic assertion that he did; Gladstone said he did know, which was a confession of ignorance denser than that of agnosticism. Those men who try not to think or reason concerning the infinite simply imprison themselves within the four walls of the cell they construct. It is better to think and be wrong than not to think at all. Any assumption is better than no assumption, any belief better than none. Hypotheses enlarge the boundaries of knowledge. With assumptions the intellectual prospector stakes out the infinite. In life we may not verify our premises, but death is the proof of all things. We stopped at Wright's tavern, where patriots used to meet before the days of the revolution, and where Major Pitcairn is said-- wrongfully in all probability--to have made his boast on the morning of the 19th, as he stirred his toddy, that they would stir the rebels' blood before night. One realizes that "there is but one Concord" as the carriages of pilgrims are counted in the Square, and the swarm of young guides, with pamphlets and maps, importune the chance visitor. We chose the most persistent little urchin, not that we could not find our way about so small a village, but because he wanted to ride, and it is always interesting to draw out a child; his story of the town and its famous places was, of course, the one he had learned from the others, but his comments were his own, and the incongruity of going over the sacred ground in an automobile had its effect. It was a short run down Monument Street to the turn just beyond the "Old Manse." Here the British turned to cross the North Bridge on their way to Colonel Barrett's house, where the ammunition was stored. Just across the narrow bridge the "embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world." A monument marks the spot where the British received the fire of the farmers, and a stone at the side recites "Graves of two British soldiers,"-- unknown wanderers from home they surrendered their lives in a quarrel, the merits of which they did not know. "Soon was their warfare ended; a weary night march from Boston, a rattling volley of musketry across the river, and then these many years of rest. In the long procession of slain invaders who passed into eternity from the battle-field of the revolution, these two nameless soldiers led the way." While standing by the grave, Hawthorne was told a story, a tradition of how a youth, hurrying to the battle-field axe in hand, came upon these two soldiers, one not yet dead raised himself up painfully on his hands and knees, and how the youth on the impulse of the moment cleft the wounded man's head with the axe. The tradition is probably false, but it made its impression on Hawthorne, who continues, "I could wish that the grave might be opened; for I would fain know whether either of the skeleton soldiers has the mark of an axe in his skull. The story comes home to me like truth. Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral exercise, I have sought to follow that poor youth through his subsequent career and observe how his soul was tortured by the blood-stain, contracted as it had been before the long custom of war had robbed human life of its sanctity, and while it still seemed murderous to slay a brother man. This one circumstance has borne more fruit for me than all that history tells us of the fight." There are souls so callous that the taking of a human life is no more than the killing of a beast; there are souls so sensitive that they will not kill a living thing. The man who can relate without regret so profound it is close akin to remorse the killing of another--no matter what the provocation, no matter what the circumstances--is next kin to the common hangman. From the windows of the "Old Manse," the Rev. William Emerson, grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson, looked out upon the battle, and he would have taken part in the fight had not his neighbors held him back; as it was, he sacrificed his life the following year in attempting to join the army at Ticonderoga, contracting a fever which proved fatal. Sleepy Hollow Cemetery lies on Bedford Street not far from the Town Hall. We followed the winding road to the hill where Hawthorne, Thoreau, the Alcotts, and Emerson lie buried within a half-dozen paces of one another. Thoreau came first in May, 1862. Emerson delivered the funeral address. Mrs. Hawthorne writes in her diary, "Mr. Thoreau died this morning. The funeral services were in the church. Mr. Emerson spoke. Mr. Alcott read from Mr. Thoreau's writings. The body was in the vestibule covered with wild flowers. We went to the grave." Hawthorne came next, just two years later. "On the 24th of May, 1864 we carried Hawthorne through the blossoming orchards of Concord," says James T. Fields, "and laid him down under a group of pines, on a hillside, overlooking historic fields. All the way from the village church to the grave the birds kept up a perpetual melody. The sun shone brightly, and the air was sweet and pleasant, as if death had never entered the world. Longfellow and Emerson, Channing and Hoar, Agassiz and Lowell, Greene and Whipple, Alcott and Clarke, Holmes and Hillard, and other friends whom he loved, walked slowly by his side that beautiful spring morning. The companion of his youth and his manhood, for whom he would willingly, at any time, have given up his own life, Franklin Pierce, was there among the rest, and scattered flowers into the grave. The unfinished 'Romance,' which had cost him so much anxiety, the last literary work on which he had ever been engaged, was laid in his coffin." Eighteen years later, on April 30, 1882, Emerson was laid at rest a little beyond Hawthorne and Thoreau in a spot chosen by himself. A special train came from Boston, but many could not get inside the church. The town was draped; "even the homes of the very poor bore outward marks of grief." At the house, Dr. Furness, of Philadelphia, conducted the services. "The body lay in the front northeast room, in which were gathered the family and close friends." The only flowers were lilies of the valley, roses, and arbutus. At the church, Judge Hoar, standing by the coffin, spoke briefly; Dr. Furness read selections from the Scriptures; James Freeman Clarke delivered the funeral address, and Alcott read a sonnet. "Over an hour was occupied by the passing files of neighbors, friends, and visitors looking for the last time upon the face of the dead poet. The body was robed completely in white, and the face bore a natural and peaceful expression. From the church the procession took its way to the cemetery. The grave was made beneath a tall pine-tree upon the hill-top of Sleepy Hollow, where lie the bodies of his friends Thoreau and Hawthorne, the upturned sod being concealed by strewings of pine boughs. A border of hemlock spray surrounded the grave and completely lined its sides. The services were very brief, and the casket was soon lowered to its final resting-place. The grandchildren passed the open grave and threw flowers into it." In her "Journal," Louisa Alcott wrote, "Thursday, 27th. Mr. Emerson died at nine P.M. suddenly. Our best and greatest American gone. The nearest and dearest friend father ever had, and the man who has helped me most by his life, his books, his society. I can never tell all he has been to me,--from the time I sang Mignon's song under his window (a little girl) and wrote letters _ la_ Bettine to him, my Goethe, at fifteen, up through my hard years, when his essays on Self-Reliance, Character, Compensation, Love, and Friendship helped me to understand myself and life, and God and Nature. Illustrious and beloved friend, good-by! "Sunday, 30th.--Emerson's funeral. I made a yellow lyre of jonquils for the church, and helped trim it up. Private service at the house, and a great crowd at the church. Father read his sonnet, and Judge Hoar and others spoke. Now he lies in Sleepy Hollow among his brothers under the pines he loved." On March 4, 1888, Bronson Alcott died, and two days later Louisa Alcott followed her father. They lie near together on the ridge a little beyond Hawthorne. Initials only mark the graves of her sisters, but it has been found necessary to place a small stone bearing the name "Louisa" on the grave of the author of "Little Women." She had made every arrangement for her death, and by her own wish her funeral was in her father's rooms in Boston, and attended by only a few of her family and nearest friends. "They read her exquisite poem to her mother, her father's noble tribute to her, and spoke of the earnestness and truth of her life. She was remembered as she would have wished to be. Her body was carried to Concord and placed in the beautiful cemetery of Sleepy Hollow, where her dearest ones were already laid to rest. 'Her boys' went beside her as 'a guard of honor,' and stood around as she was placed across the feet of father, mother, and sister, that she might 'take care of them as she had done all her life.'" Louisa Alcott's last written words were the acknowledgment of the receipt of a flower. "It stands beside me on Marmee's (her mother) work-table, and reminds me tenderly of her favorite flowers; and among those used at her funeral was a spray of this, which lasted for two weeks afterwards, opening bud by bud in the glass on her table, where lay the dear old 'Jos. May' hymn-book, and her diary with the pen shut in as she left it when she last wrote there, three days before the end, 'The twilight is closing about me, and I am going to rest in the arms of my children.' So, you see, I love the delicate flower and enjoy it very much." Reverently, with bowed heads, we stood on that pine-covered ridge which contained the mortal remains of so many who are great and illustrious in the annals of American literature. A scant patch of earth hides their dust, but their fancies, their imaginings, their philosophy spanned human conduct, emotions, beliefs, and aspirations from the cradle to the grave. The warm September day was drawing to a close; the red sun was sinking towards the west; the hilltop was aflame with a golden glow from the slanting rays of the declining sun. Slowly we wended our way through the shadowy hollow below; looking back, the mound seemed crowned with glory. Leaving Concord by Main Street we passed some famous homes, among them Thoreau's earlier home, where he made lead-pencils with the deftness which characterized all his handiwork; turning to the left on Thoreau Street we crossed the tracks and took the Sudbury road through all the Sudburys,--four in number; the roads were good and the country all the more interesting because not yet invaded by the penetrating trolley. It would be sacrilegious for electric cars to go whizzing by the ancient tombs and monuments that fringe the road down through Sudbury; the automobile felt out of place and instinctively slowed down to stately and measured pace. In all truth, one should walk, not ride, through this beautiful country, where every highway has its historic associations, every burying-ground its honored dead, every hamlet its weather-beaten monument. But if one is to ride, the automobile--incongruous as it may seem--has this advantage,--it will stand indefinitely anywhere; it may be left by the roadside for hours; no one can start it; hardly any person would maliciously harm it, providing it is far enough to one side so as not to frighten passing horses; excursions on foot may be made to any place of interest, then, when the day draws to a close, a half-hour suffices to reach the chosen resting-place. It was getting dark as we passed beneath the stately trees bordering the old post-road which leads to the door of the "Wayside Inn." Here the stages from Boston to Worcester used to stop for dinner. Here Washington, Lafayette, Burgoyne, and other great men of Revolutionary days had been entertained, for along this highway the troops marched and countermarched. The old inn is rich in historic associations. The road which leads to the very door of the inn is the old post-road; the finely macadamized State road which passes a little farther away is of recent dedication, and is located so as to leave the ancient hostelry a little retired from ordinary travel. A weather-beaten sign with a red horse rampant swings at one corner of the main building. "Half effaced by rain and shine, The Red Horse prances on the sign." For nearly two hundred years, from 1683 to 1860, the inn was owned and kept by one family, the Howes, and was called by many "Howe's Tavern," by others "The Red Horse Inn." Since the publication of Longfellow's "Tales of a Wayside Inn," the place has been known by no other name than the one it now bears. "As ancient is this hostelry As any in the land may be, Built in the old Colonial day, When men lived in a grander way, With ampler hospitality; A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, Now somewhat fallen to decay, With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall." A portrait of Lyman Howe, the last landlord of the family, hangs in the little bar-room, "A man of ancient pedigree, A Justice of the Peace was he, Known in all Sudbury as 'The Squire.' Proud was he of his name and race, Of old Sir William and Sir Hugh." And now as of yore "In the parlor, full in view, His coat-of-arms, well framed and glazed, Upon the wall in colors blazed." The small window-panes which the poet describes as bearing "The jovial rhymes, that still remain, Writ near a century ago, By the great Major Molineaux, Whom Hawthorne has immortal made," are preserved in frames near the mantel in the parlor, one deeply scratched by diamond ring with name of Major Molineaux and the date, "June 24th, 1774," the other bears this inscription,-- "What do you think? Here is good drink, Perhaps you may not know it; If not in haste, Do stop and taste, You merry folk will show it." A worthy, though not so gifted, successor of the jolly major rendered the following "true accomp.," which, yellow and faded, hangs on the bar-room wall: "Thursday, August 7, 1777" L s. d. Super & Loging . . . . . . . 0 1 4 8th. Brakfast, Dinar and 0 1 9 Super and half mug of tody 0 2 6 9th. Lodging, one glass rum half 0 2 6 & Dinar, one mes oats 0 1 4 Super half mug flyp 0 3 0 10th Brakf.--one dram 0 1 8 Dinner, Lodging, horse-keeping 0 2 0 one mug flyp, horse bating 0 3 0 11th. horse keeping 1 13th. glass rum & Diner 1 8 14th. Horse bating 0 0 6 Horse Jorney 28 miles 0 5 10 A true accomp.--total 1 14 6 William Bradford, Dilivered to Capt. Crosby 2 2 6 Alas! the major's inscription and the foregoing "accomp." are hollow mockeries to the thirsty traveller, for there is neither rum nor "flyp" to be had; the bar is dry as an old cork; the door of the cupboard into which the jovial Howes were wont to stick the awl with which they opened bottles still hangs, worn completely through by the countless jabs, a melancholy reminder of the convivial hours of other days. The restrictions of more abstemious times have relegated the ancient bar to dust, the idle awl to slow-consuming rust. It is amazing how thirsty one gets in the presence of musty associations of a convivial character. The ghost of a spree is a most alluring fellow; it is the dust on the bottle that flavors the wine; a musty bin is the soul's delight; we drink the vintage and not the wine. Drinking is a lost art, eating a forgotten ceremony. The pendulum has swung from Trimalchio back to Trimalchio. Quality is lost in quantity. The tables groan, the cooks groan, the guests groan,-- feasting is a nightmare. Wine is a subject, not a beverage; it is discussed, not drunk; it is sipped, tasted, and swallowed reluctantly; it lingers on the palate in fragrant and delicious memory; it comes a bouquet and departs an aroma; it is the fruition of years, the distillation of ages; a liquid jewel, it reflects the subtle colors of the rainbow, running the gamut from a dull red glow to the violet rays that border the invisible. But, alas! the appreciation of wine is lost. Everybody serves wine, no one understands it; everybody drinks it, no one loves it. From a fragrant essence wine has become a coarse reality,--a convention. Chablis with the oysters, sherry with the soup, sauterne with the fish, claret with the roast, Burgundy with the game,--champagne somewhere, anywhere, everywhere; port, grand, old ruddy port--that has disappeared; no one understands it and no one knows when to serve it; while Madeira, that bloom of the vinous century plant, that rare exotic which ripens with passing generations, is all too subtle for our untutored discrimination. And if, perchance, a good wine, like a strange guest, finds its way to the table, we are at loss how to receive it, how to address it, how to entertain it. We offend it in the decanting and distress it in the serving. We buy our wines in the morning and serve them in the evening to drink the sediment which the more fastidious wine during long years has been slowly rejecting; we mix the bright transparent liquid with its dregs and our rough palates detect no difference. But the lover of wine, the more he has the less he drinks, until, in the refinement and exaltation of his taste, it is sufficient to look upon the dust-mantled bottle and recall the delicious aroma and flavor, the recollection of which is far too precious to risk by trying anew; he knows that if a bottle be so much as turned in its couch it must sleep again for years before it is really fit to drink; he knows how difficult it is to get the wine out of the bottle clear as ruby or yellow diamond; he knows that if so much as a speck of sediment gets into the decanter, to precisely the extent of the speck is the wine injured. In serving wines, we of the Western world may learn something from the tea ceremonies of the Japanese,--ceremonies so elaborate that to our impatient notions they are infinitely tedious, and yet they get from the tea all the exquisite delight it contains, and at the same time invest its serving with a halo of form, tradition, and association. Surely, if wine is to be taken at all, it is as precious as a cup of tea; and if taken ceremoniously, it will be taken moderately. What is the use of serving good wine? No one recognizes it, appreciates it, or cares for it. It is served by the butler and removed by the footman without introduction, greeting, or comment. The Hon. Sam Jones, from Podunk, is announced in stentorian tones as he makes his advent, but the gem of the dinner, the treat of the evening, the flower of the feast, an Haut Brion of '75, or an Yquem of '64, or a Johannisberger of '61, comes in like a tramp without a word. Possibly some one of the guests, whose palate has not been blunted by coarse living or seared by strong drink, may feel that he is drinking something out of the ordinary, and he may linger over his glass, loath to sip the last drop; but all the others gulp their wine, or leave it--with the indifference of ignorance. Good wine is loquacious; it is a great traveller and smacks of many lands; it is a bon vivant and has dined with the select of the earth; it recalls a thousand anecdotes; it reeks with reminiscences; it harbors a kiss and reflects a glance, but it is a silent companion to those who know it not, and it is quarrelsome with those who abuse it. It seemed a pity that somewhere about the inn, deep in some long disused cellar, there were not a few--just a few--bottles of old wine, a half-dozen port of 1815, one or two squat bottles of Madeira brought over by men who knew Washington, an Yquem of '48, a Margaux of '58, a Johannisberger Cabinet--not forgetting the "Auslese"--of '61, with a few bottles of Romani Conti and Clos de Vougeot of '69 or '70,--not to exceed two or three dozen all told; not a plebeian among them, each the chosen of its race, and all so well understood that the very serving would carry one back to colonial days, when to offer a guest a glass of Madeira was a subtle tribute to his capacity and appreciation. It is a far cry from an imaginary banquet with Lucullus to the New England Saturday night supper of pork and beans which was spread before us that evening. The dish is a survival of the rigid Puritanism which was the affliction and at the same time the making of New England; it is a fast, an aggravated fast, a scourge to indulgence, a reproach to gluttony; it comes Saturday night, and is followed Sunday morning by the dry, spongy, antiseptic, absorbent fish-ball as a castigation of nature and as a preparation for the austere observance of the Sabbath; it is the harsh, but no doubt deserved, punishment of the stomach for its worldliness during the week; inured to suffering, the native accepts the dose as a matter of course; to the stranger it seems unduly severe. To be sent to bed supperless is one of the terrors of childhood; to be sent to bed on pork and beans with the certainty of fishballs in the morning is a refinement of torture that could have been devised only by Puritan ingenuity. At the very crisis of the trouble in China, when the whole world was anxiously awaiting news from Pekin, the papers said that Boston was perturbed by the reported discovery in Africa of a new and edible bean. To New England the bean is an obsession; it is rapidly becoming a superstition. To the stranger it is an infliction; but, bad as the bean is to the uninitiated, it is a luscious morsel compared with the flavorless cod-fish ball which lodges in the throat and stays there--a second Adam's apple--for lack of something to wash it down. If pork and beans is the device of the Puritans, the cod-fish ball is the invention of the devil. It is as if Satan looked on enviously while his foes prepared their powder of beans, and then, retiring to his bottomless pit, went them one better by casting his ball of cod-fish. "But from the parlor of the inn A pleasant murmur smote the ear, Like water rushing through a weir; Oft interrupted by the din Of laughter and of loud applause "The firelight, shedding over all The splendor of its ruddy glow, Filled the whole parlor large and low." The room remains, but of all that jolly company which gathered in Longfellow's days and constituted the imaginary weavers of tales and romances, but one is alive to-day,--the "Young Sicilian." "A young Sicilian, too, was there; In sight of Etna born and bred, Some breath of its volcanic air Was glowing in his heart and brain, And, being rebellious to his liege, After Palermo's fatal siege, Across the western seas he fled, In good king Bomba's happy reign. His face was like a summer night, All flooded with a dusky light; His hands were small; his teeth shone white As sea-shells, when he smiled or spoke." To the present proprietor of the inn the "Young Sicilian" wrote the following letter: Rome, July 4, 1898. Dear Sir,--In answer to your letter of June 8, I am delighted to learn that you have purchased the dear old house and carefully restored and put it back in its old-time condition. I sincerely hope that it may remain thus for a long, long time as a memento of the days and customs gone by. It is very sad for me to think that I am the only living member of that happy company that used to spend their summer vacations there in the fifties; yet I still hope that I may visit the old Inn once more before I rejoin those choice spirits whom Mr. Longfellow has immortalized in his great poem. I am glad that some of the old residents still remember me when I was a visitor there with Dr. Parsons (the Poet), and his sisters, one of whom, my wife, is also the only living member of those who used to assemble there. Both my wife and I remember well Mr. Calvin Howe, Mr. Parmenter, and the others you mention; for we spent many summers there with Professor Treadwell (the Theologian) and his wife, Mr. Henry W. Wales (the Student), and other visitors not mentioned in the poem, till the death of Mr. Lyman Howe (the Landlord), which broke up the party. The "Musician" and the "Spanish Jew," though not imaginary characters, were never guests at the "Wayside Inn." I remain, Sincerely yours, Luigi Monti (the "Young Sicilian"). But there was a "Musician," for Ole Bull was once a guest at the Wayside, "Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe, His figure tall and straight and lithe, And every feature of his face Revealing his Norwegian race." The "Spanish Jew from Alicant" in real life was Israel Edrehi. The Landlord told his tale of Paul Revere; the "Student" followed with his story of love: "Only a tale of love is mine, Blending the human and divine, A tale of the Decameron, told In Palmieri's garden old." And one by one the tales were told until the last was said. "The hour was late; the fire burned low, The Landlord's eyes were closed in sleep, And near the story's end a deep Sonorous sound at times was heard, As when the distant bagpipes blow, At this all laughed; the Landlord stirred, As one awaking from a swound, And, gazing anxiously around, Protested that he had not slept, But only shut his eyes, and kept His ears attentive to each word. Then all arose, and said 'Good-Night.' Alone remained the drowsy Squire To rake the embers of the fire, And quench the waning parlor light; While from the windows, here and there, The scattered lamps a moment gleamed, And the illumined hostel seemed The constellation of the Bear, Downward, athwart the misty air, Sinking and setting toward the sun. Far off the village clock struck one." Before leaving the next morning, we visited the ancient ballroom which extends over the dining-room. It seemed crude and cruel to enter this hall of bygone revelry by the garish light of day. The two fireplaces were cold and inhospitable; the pen at one end where the fiddlers sat was deserted; the wooden benches which fringed the sides were hard and forbidding; but long before any of us were born this room was the scene of many revelries; the vacant hearths were bright with flame; the fiddlers bowed and scraped; the seats were filled with belles and beaux, and the stately minuet was danced upon the polished floor. The large dining-room and ballroom were added to the house something more than a hundred years ago; the little old dining-room and old kitchen in the rear of the bar still remain, but--like the bar--are no longer used. The brass name plates on the bedroom doors--Washington, Lafayette, Howe, and so on--have no significance, but were put on by the present proprietor simply as reminders that those great men were once beneath the roof; but in what rooms they slept or were entertained, history does not record. The automobile will bring new life to these deserted hostelries. For more than half a century steam has diverted their custom, carrying former patrons from town to town without the need of half-way stops and rests. Coaching is a fad, not a fashion; it is not to be relied upon for steady custom; but automobiling bids fair to carry the people once more into the country, and there must be inns to receive them. Already the proprietor was struggling with the problem what to do with automobiles and what to do for them who drove them. He was vainly endeavoring to reconcile the machines with horses and house them under one roof; the experiment had already borne fruit in some disaster and no little discomfort. The automobile is quite willing to be left out-doors over night; but if taken inside it is quite apt to assert itself rather noisily and monopolize things to the discomfort of the horse. Stables--to rob the horse of the name of his home--must be provided, and these should be equipped for emergencies. Every country inn should have on hand gasoline--this is easily stored outside in a tank buried in the ground--and lubricating oils for steam and gasoline machines; these can be kept and sold in gallon cans. In addition to supplies there should be some tools, beginning with a good jack strong enough to lift the heaviest machine, a small bench and vise, files, chisels, punches, and one or two large wrenches, including a pipe-wrench. All these things can be purchased for little more than a song, and when needed they are needed badly. But gasoline and lubricating oils are absolutely essential to the permanent prosperity of any well-conducted wayside inn. CHAPTER FIFTEEN RHODE ISLAND AND CONNECTICUT CALLING THE FERRY Next morning, Sunday the 8th, we left the inn at eleven o'clock for Providence. It was a perfect morning, neither hot nor cold, sun bright, and the air stirring. We took the narrow road almost opposite the entrance to the inn, climbed the hill, threaded the woods, and were soon travelling almost due south through Framingham, Holliston, Medway, Franklin, and West Wrentham towards Pawtucket. That route is direct, the roads are good, the country rolling and interesting. The villages come in close succession; there are many quaint places and beautiful homes. In this section of Massachusetts it does not matter much what roads are selected, they are all good. Some are macadamized, more are gravelled, and where there is neither macadam nor gravel, the roads have been so carefully thrown up that they are good; we found no bad places at all, no deep sand, and no rough, hard blue clay. When we stopped for luncheon at a little village not far from Pawtucket, the tire which had been put on in Boston was leaking badly. It was the tire that had been punctured and sent to the factory for repairs, and the repair proved defective. We managed to get to Pawtucket, and there tried to stop the leak with liquid preparations, but by the time we reached Providence the tire was again flat and--as it proved afterwards--ruined. Had it not been for the tire, Narragansett Pier would have been made that afternoon with ease; but there was nothing to do but wire for a new tire and await its arrival. It was not until half-past three o'clock Monday that the new one came from New York, and it was five when we left for the Pier. The road from Providence to Narragansett Pier is something more than fair, considerably less than fine; it is hilly and in places quite sandy. For some distance out of Providence it was dusty and worn rough by heavy travel. It was seven o'clock, dark and quite cold, when we drew up in front of Green's Inn. The season was over, the Pier quite deserted. A summer resort after the guests have gone is a mournful, or a delightful, place-- as one views it. To the gregarious individual who seeks and misses his kind, the place is loneliness itself after the flight of the gay birds who for a time strutted about in gorgeous plumage twittering the time away; to the man who loves to be in close and undisturbed contact with nature, who enjoys communing with the sea, who would be alone on the beach and silent by the waves, the flight of the throng is a relief. There is a selfish satisfaction in passing the great summer caravansaries and seeing them closed and silent; in knowing that the splendor of the night will not be marred by garish lights and still more garish sounds. Were it not for the crowd, Narragansett Pier would be an ideal spot for rest and recreation. The beach is perfect,--hard, firm sand, sloping so gradually into deep water, and with so little undertow and so few dangers, that children can play in the water without attendants. The village itself is inoffensive, the country about is attractive; but the crowd--the crowd that comes in summer--comes with a rush almost to the hour in July, and takes flight with a greater rush almost to the minute in August,--the crowd overwhelms, submerges, ignores the natural charms of the place, and for the time being nature hides its honest head before the onrush of sham and illusion. Why do the people come in a week and go in a day? What is there about Narragansett that keeps every one away until a certain time each year, attracts them for a few weeks, and then bids them off within twenty-four hours? Just nothing at all. All attractions the place has--the ocean, the beach, the drives, the country--remain the same; but no one dares come before the appointed time, no one dares stay after the flight begins; no one? That is hardly true, for in every beautiful spot, by the ocean and in the mountains, there are a few appreciative souls who know enough to make their homes in nature's caressing embrace while she works for their pure enjoyment her wondrous panorama of changing seasons. There are people who linger at the sea-shore until from the steel-gray waters are heard the first mutterings of approaching winter; there are those who linger in the woods and mountains until the green of summer yields to the rich browns and golden russets of autumn, until the honk of the wild goose foretells the coming cold; these and their kind are nature's truest and dearest friends; to them does she unfold a thousand hidden beauties; to them does she whisper her most precious secrets. But the crowd--the crowd--the painted throng that steps to the tune of a fiddle, that hangs on the moods of a caterer, whose inspiration is a good dinner, whose aspiration is a new dance,-- that crowd is never missed by any one who really delights in the manifold attractions of nature. Not that the crowd at Narragansett is essentially other than the crowd at Newport--the two do not mix; but the difference is one of degree rather than kind. The crowd at Newport is architecturally perfect, while the crowd at Narragansett is in the adobe stage,-- that is the conspicuous difference; the one is pretentious and lives in structures more or less permanent; the other lives in trunks, and is even more pretentious. Neither, as a crowd, has more than a superficial regard for the natural charms of its surroundings. The people at both places are entirely preoccupied with themselves--and their neighbors. At Newport a reputation is like an umbrella--lost, borrowed, lent, stolen, but never returned. Some one has cleverly said that the American girl, unlike girls of European extraction, if she loses her reputation, promptly goes and gets another,--to be strictly accurate, she promptly goes and gets another's. What a world of bother could be saved if a woman could check her reputation with her wraps on entering the Casino; for, no matter how small the reputation, it is so annoying to have the care of it during social festivities where it is not wanted, or where, like dogs, it is forbidden the premises. Then, too, if the reputation happens to be somewhat soiled, stained, or tattered,--like an old opera cloak,--what woman wants it about. It is difficult to sit on it, as on a wrap in a theatre; it is conspicuous to hold in the lap where every one may see its imperfections; perhaps the safest thing is to do as many a woman does, ask her escort to look out for it, thereby shifting the responsibility to him. It may pass through strange vicissitudes in his careless hands,--he may drop it, damage it, lose it, even destroy it, but she is reasonably sure that when the time comes he will return her either the old in a tolerable state of preservation, or a new one of some kind in its place. Narragansett possesses this decided advantage over Newport, the people do not know each other until it is too late. For six weeks the gay little world moves on in blissful ignorance of antecedents and reputations; no questions are asked, no information volunteered save that disclosed by the hotel register,-- information frequently of apocryphal value. The gay beau of the night may be the industrious clerk of the morrow; the baron of the summer may be the barber of the winter; but what difference does it make? If the beau beaus and the baron barons, is not the feminine cup of happiness filled to overflowing? the only requisite being that beau and baron shall preserve their incognito to the end; hence the season must be short in order that no one's identity may be discovered. At Newport every one labors under the disadvantage of being known,--for the most part too well known. How painful it must be to spend summer after summer in a world of reality, where the truth is so much more thrilling than any possible fiction that people are deprived of the pleasure of invention and the imagination falls into desuetude. At Narragansett every one is veneered for the occasion,--every seam, scar, and furrow is hidden by paint, powder, and rouge; the duchess may be a cook, but the count who is a butler gains nothing by exposing her. The very conditions of existence at Newport demand the exposure of every frailty and every folly; the skeleton must sit at the feast. There is no room for gossip where the facts are known. Nothing is whispered; the megaphone carries the tale. What a ghastly society, where no amount of finery hides the bald, the literal truth; where each night the same ones meet and, despite the vain attempt to deceive by outward appearances, relentlessly look each other through and through. Of what avail is a necklace of pearls or a gown of gold against such X-ray vision, such intimate knowledge of one's past, of all one's physical, mental, and moral shortcomings? The smile fades from the lips, the hollow compliment dies on the tongue, for how is it possible to pretend in the presence of those who know? At Narragansett friends are strangers, in Newport they are enemies; in both places the quality of friendship is strained. The two problems of existence are, Whom shall I recognize? and, Who will recognize me? A man's standing depends upon the women he knows; a woman's upon the women she cuts. At a summer resort recognition is a fine art which is not affected by any prior condition of servitude or acquaintance. No woman can afford to sacrifice her position upon the altar of friendship; in these small worlds recognition has no relation whatsoever to friendship, it is rather a convention. If your hostess of the winter passes you with a cold stare, it is a matter of prudence rather than indifference; the outside world does not understand these things, but is soon made to. Women are the arbiters of social fate, and as such must be placated, but not too servilely. In society a blow goes farther than a kiss; it is a warfare wherein it does not pay to be on the defensive; those are revered who are most feared; those who nail to their mast the black flag and show no quarter are the recognized leaders,--Society is piracy. Green's Inn was cheery, comfortable, and hospitable; but then the season had passed and things had returned to their normal routine. The summer hotel passes through three stages each season,--that of expectation, of realization, and of regret; it is unpleasant during the first stage, intolerable during the second, frequently delightful during the third. During the first there is a period when the host and guest meet on a footing of equality; during the second the guest is something less than a nonentity, an humble suitor at the monarch's throne; during the third the conditions are reversed, and the guest is lord of all he is willing to survey. It is conducive to comfort to approach these resorts during the last stage,--unless, of course, they happen to be those ephemeral caravansaries which close in confusion on the flight of the crowd; they are never comfortable. The best road from Boston to New York is said to be by way of Worcester, Springfield, and through central Connecticut via Hartford and New Haven; but we did not care to retrace our wheels to Worcester and Springfield, and we did want to follow the shore; but we were warned by many that after leaving the Pier we would find the roads very bad. As a matter of fact, the shore road from the Pier to New Haven is not good; it is hilly, sandy, and rough; but it is entirely practicable, and makes up in beauty and interest what it lacks in quality. We did not leave Green's Inn until half-past nine the morning after our arrival, and we reached New Haven that evening at exactly eight,--a delightful run of eighty or ninety miles by the road taken. The road is a little back from the shore and it is anything but straight, winding in and out in the effort to keep near the coast. Nearly all day long we were in sight of the ocean; now and then some wooded promontory obscured our view; now and then we were threading woods and valleys farther inland; now and then the road almost lost itself in thickets of shrubbery and undergrowth, but each time we would emerge in sight of the broad expanse of blue water which lay like a vast mirror on that bright and still September day. We ferried across the river to New London. At Lyme there is a very steep descent to the Connecticut River, which is a broad estuary at that point. The ferry is a primitive side-wheeler, which might carry two automobiles, but hardly more. It happened to be on the far shore. A small boy pointed out a long tin horn hanging on a post, the hoarse blast of which summons the sleepy boat. There was no landing, and it seemed impossible for our vehicle to get aboard; but the boat had a long shovel-like nose projecting from the bow which ran upon the shore, making a perfect gang-plank. Carefully balancing the automobile in the centre so as not to list the primitive craft, we made our way deliberately to the other side, the entire crew of two men--engineer and captain--coming out to talk with us. The ferries at Lyme and New London would prove great obstacles to anything like a club from New York to Newport along this road; the day would be spent in getting machines across the two rivers. It was dark when we ran into the city. This particular visit to New Haven is chiefly memorable for the exceeding good manners of a boy of ten, who watched the machine next morning as it was prepared for the day's ride, offered to act as guide to the place where gasoline was kept, and, with the grace of a Chesterfield, made good my delinquent purse by paying the bill. It was all charmingly and not precociously done. This little man was well brought up,--so well brought up that he did not know it. The automobile is a pretty fair touchstone to manners for both young and old. A man is himself in the presence of the unexpected. The automobile is so strange that it carries people off their equilibrium, and they say and do things impulsively, and therefore naturally. The odd-looking stranger is ever treated with scant courtesy and unbecoming curiosity; the strange machine fares no better. The man or the boy who is not unduly curious, not unduly aggressive, not unduly loquacious, not unduly insistent, who preserves his poise in the presence of an automobile, is quite out of the ordinary,-- my little New Haven friend was of that sort. It is a beautiful ride from New Haven to New York, and to it we devoted the entire day, from half-past eight until half-past seven. At Norwalk the people were celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the town; the hotel where we dined may have antedated the town a century or two. Later in the afternoon, while wheeling along at twenty miles an hour, we caught a glimpse of a signpost pointing to the left and reading, "To Sound Beach." The name reminded us of friends who were spending a few weeks there; we turned back and made them a flying call. Again a little farther on we stopped for gasoline in a dilapidated little village, and found it was Mianus, which we recalled as the home of an artist whose paintings, full of charm and tender sentiment, have spread the fame of the locality and river. It was only a short run of two or three miles to the orchard and hill where he has his summer home, and we renewed an acquaintance made several years before. It is interesting to follow an artist's career and note the changes in manner and methods; for changes are inevitable; they come to high and low alike. The artist may not be conscious that he no longer sees things and paints things as he did, but time tells and the truth is patent to others. But changes of manner and changes of method are fundamentally unlike. Furthermore, changes of either manner or method may be unconscious and natural, or conscious and forced. For the most part, an artist's manner changes naturally and unconsciously with his environment and advancing years; but in the majority of instances changes in method are conscious and forced, made deliberately with the intention--frequently missed--of doing better. One painter is impressed with the success of another and strives to imitate, adopts his methods, his palette, his key, his color scheme, his brush work, and so on;--these conscious efforts of imitation usually result in failures which, if not immediately conspicuous, soon make their shortcomings felt; the note being forced and unnatural, it does not ring true. A man may visit Madrid without imitating Velasquez; he may live in Harlem without consciously yielding to Franz Hals; he may spend days with Monet without surrendering his independence; but these strong contacts will work their subtle effects upon all impressionable natures; the effects, however, may be wrought unconsciously and frequently against the sturdy opposition of an original nature. No painter could live for a season in Madrid without being affected by the work of Velasquez; he might strive against the influence, fight to preserve his own eccentric originality and independence, but the very fact that for the time being he is confronted with a force, an influence, is sufficient to affect his own work, whether he accepts the influence reverentially or rejects it scoffingly. There is infinitely more hope for the man who goes to Madrid, or any other shrine, in a spirit of opposition,--supremely egotistical, supremely confident of his own methods, disposed to belittle the teaching and example of others,--than there is for the man who goes to servilely copy and imitate. The disposition to learn is a good thing, but in all walks of life, as well as in art, it may be carried too far. No man should surrender his individuality, should yield that within him which is peculiarly and essentially his own. An urchin may dispute with a Plato, if the urchin sticks to the things he knows. Between the lawless who defy all authority and the servile who submit to all influences, there are the chosen few who assert themselves, and at the same time clearly appreciate the strength of those who differ from them. The urchin painter may assert himself in the presence of Velasquez, providing he keeps within the limits of his own originality. It is for those who buy pictures to look out for the man who arbitrarily and suddenly changes his manner or method; he is as a cork tossed about on the surface of the waters, drifting with every breeze, submerged by every ripple, fickle and unstable; if his work possess any merit, it will be only the cheap merit of cleverness; its brilliancy will be simply the gloss of dash. It requires time to absorb an impression. Distance diminishes the force of attraction. The best of painters will not regain immediately his equilibrium after a winter in Florence or in Rome. The enthusiasm of the hour may bring forth some good pictures, but the effect of the impression will be too pronounced, the copy will be too evident. Time and distance will modify an impression and lessen the attraction; the effect will remain, but no longer dominate. It was so dark we could scarcely see the road as we approached New York. How gracious the mantle of night; like a veil it hides all blemishes and permits only fair outlines to be observed. Details are lost in vast shadows; huge buildings loom up vaguely towards the heavens, impressive masses of masonry; the bridges, outlined by rows of electric lights, are strings of pearls about the throat of the dusky river. The red, white, and green lights of invisible boats below are so many colored glow-worms crawling about, while the countless lights of the vast city itself are as if a constellation from above had settled for the time being on the earth beneath. It is by night that the earth communes with the universe. During the blinding brightness of the day our vision penetrates no farther than our own great sun; but at night, when our sun has run its course across the heavens, and we are no longer dazzled by its overpowering brilliancy, the suns of other worlds come forth one by one until, as the darkness deepens, the vault above is dotted with these twinkling lights. Dim, distant, beacons of suns and planets like our own, what manner of life do they contain? what are we to them? what are they to us? Is there aught between us beyond the mechanical laws of repulsion and attraction? Is there any medium of communication beyond the impalpable ether which brings their light? Are we destined to know each other better by and by, or does our knowledge forever end with what we see on a cloudless night? It was Wednesday evening, September 11, when we arrived in New York. The Endurance Contest organized by the Automobile Club of America had started for Buffalo on Monday morning, and the papers each day contained long accounts of the heartbreaking times the eighty-odd contestants were having,--hills, sand, mud, worked havoc in the ranks of the faithful, and by midweek the automobile stations in New York were crowded with sick and wounded veterans returning from the fray. The stories told by those who participated in that now famous run possessed the charm of novelty, the absorbing fascination of fiction. Once upon a time, two fishermen, who were modestly relating exploits, paused to listen to three chauffeurs who began exchanging experiences. After listening a short time, the fishermen, hats in hand, went over to the chauffeurs and said, "On behalf of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Fishermen, which from time immemorial has held the palm for large, generous, and unrestricted stories of exploits, we confess the inadequacy of our qualifications, the bald literalness of our narratives, the sober and unadorned realism of our tales, and abdicate in favor of the new and most promising Order of Chauffeurs; may the blessing of Ananias rest upon you." It is not that those who go down the pike in automobiles intend to prevaricate, or even exaggerate, but the experience is so extraordinary that the truth is inadequate for expression and explanation. It seems quite impossible to so adjust our perceptions as to receive strictly accurate impressions; therefore, when one man says he went forty miles an hour, and another says he went sixty, the latter assertion is based not upon the exact speed,--for that neither knows,--but upon the belief of the second man that he went much faster than the other. The exact speeds were probably about ten and fifteen miles an hour respectively; but the ratio is preserved in forty and sixty, and the listening layman is deeply impressed, while no one who knows anything about automobiling is for a moment deceived. At the same time, in fairness to guests and strangers within the gates, each club ought to post conspicuously the rate of discount on narratives, for not only do clubs vary in their departures from literal truth, but the narratives are greatly affected by seasons and events; for instance, after the Endurance Contest the discount rate in the Automobile Club of America was exceedingly high. Every man who started finished ahead of the others,--except those who never intended to finish at all. Each man went exactly as far as he intended to go, and then took the train, road, or ditch home. Some intended to go as far as Albany, others to Frankfort, while quite a large number entered the contest for the express purpose of getting off in the mud and walking to the nearest village; a few, a very few, intended to go as far as Buffalo. At one time or another each made a mile a minute, and a much higher rate of speed would have been maintained throughout had it not been necessary to identify certain towns in passing. Nothing happened to any machine, but one or two required a little oiling, and several were abandoned by the roadside because their occupants had stubbornly determined to go no farther. One man who confessed that a set-screw in his goggles worked loose was expelled from the club as too matter-of-fact to be eligible for membership, and the maker of the machine he used sent four-page communications to each trade paper explaining that the loosening of the set-screw was due to no defect in the machine, but was entirely the fault of the driver, who jarred the screw loose by winking his eye. Each machine surmounted Nelson Hill like a bird,--or would have, if it had not been for the machine in front. There were those who would have made the hill in forty-two seconds if they had not wasted valuable time in pushing. The pitiful feat of the man who crawled up at the rate of seventeen miles an hour was quite discounted by the stories of those who would have made it in half that time if their power had not oozed out in the first hundred yards. Then there was mud along the route, deep mud. According to accounts, which were eloquently verified by the silence of all who listened, the mud was hub deep everywhere, and in places the machines were quite out of sight, burrowing like moles. Some took to the tow-path along the canal, others to trolley lines and telegraph wires. Each man ran his own machine without the slightest expert assistance; the men in over-alls with kits of tools lurking along the roadside were modern brigands seeking opportunities for hold-ups; now and then they would spring out upon an unoffending machine, knock it into a state of insensibility, and abuse it most unmercifully. A number of machines were shadowed throughout the run by these rascals, and several did not escape their clutches, but perished miserably. In one instance a babe in arms drove one machine sixty-two miles an hour with one hand, the other being occupied with a nursing-bottle. There were one hundred and fifty-six dress-suit cases on the run, but only one was used, and that to sit on during high tide in Herkimer County, where the mud was deepest. It would be quite superfluous to relate additional experience tales, but enough has been told to illustrate the necessity of a narrative discount notice in all places where the clans gather. All men are liars, but some intend to lie,--to their credit, be it said, chauffeurs are not among the latter. CHAPTER SIXTEEN ANARCHISM "BULLETINS FROM THE CHAMBER OF DEATH" During these days the President was dying in Buffalo, though the country did not know it until Friday. Wednesday and Thursday the reports were so assuring that all danger seemed past; but, as it turned out afterwards, there was not a moment from the hour of the shooting when the fatal processes of dissolution were not going on. Not only did the resources of surgery and medicine fail most miserably, but their gifted prophets were unable to foretell the end. Bulletins of the most reassuring character turned out absolutely false. After it was all over, there was a great deal of explanation how it occurred and that it was inevitable from the beginning; but the public did not, and does not, understand how the learned doctors could have been so mistaken Wednesday and so wise Friday; and yet the explanation is simple,--medicine is an art and surgery far from an exact science. No one so well as the doctors knows how impossible it is to predict anything with any degree of assurance; how uncertain the outcome of simple troubles and wounds to say nothing of serious; how much nature will do if left to herself, how obstinate she often proves when all the skill of man is brought to her assistance. On Friday evening, and far into the night, Herald Square was filled with a surging throng watching the bulletins from the chamber of death. It was a dignified end. There must have been a good deal of innate nobility in William McKinley. With all his vacillation and infirmity of political purpose, he must have been a man whose mind was saturated with fine thoughts, for to the very last, in those hours of weakness when the will no longer sways and each word is the half-unconscious muttering of the true self, he shone forth with unexpected grandeur and died a hero. Late in the evening a bulletin announced that when the message of death came the bells would toll. In the midst of the night the city was roused by the solemn pealing of great bells, and from the streets below there came the sounds of flying horses, of moving feet, of cries and voices. It seemed as if the city had been held in check and was now released to express itself in its own characteristic way. The wave of sound radiated from each newspaper office and penetrated the most deserted street, the most secret alley, telling the people of the death of their President. Anarchy achieved its greatest crime in the murder of President McKinley while he held the hand of his assassin in friendly grasp. Little wonder this country was roused as never before, and at this moment the civilized world is discussing measures for the suppression, the obliteration, of anarchists, but we must take heed lest we overshoot the mark. Three Presidents--Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley--have been assassinated, but only the last as the result of anarchistic teachings. The crime of Booth had nothing to do with anarchy; the crime of half-witted Guiteau had nothing to do with anarchy; but the deliberate crime of the cool and self-possessed Czolgoscz was the direct outcome of the "propaganda of action." Because, therefore, three Presidents have been assassinated, we must not link the crimes together and unduly magnify the dangers of anarchy. At most the two early crimes could only serve to demonstrate how easy it is to reach and kill a President of the United States, and therefore the necessity for greater safeguards about his person is trebly demonstrated. The habit of handshaking, at best, has little to recommend it; with public men it is a custom without excuse. The notion that men in public life must receive and mingle with great masses of people, or run the risk of being called undemocratic, is a relic of the political dark ages. The President of the United States is an executive official, not a spectacle; he ought to be a very busy man, just a plain, hard-working servant of the people,--that is the real democratic idea. There is not the slightest need for him to expose himself to assault. In the proper performance of his duties he ought to keep somewhat aloof. The people have the right to expect that in their interest he will take good care of himself. As for anarchism, that is a political theory that possesses the minds of a certain number of men, some of them entirely inoffensive dreamers, and anarchism as a theory can no more be suppressed by law than can any other political or religious theory. The law is efficacious against acts, but powerless against notions. But anarchism in the abstract is one thing and anarchism in the concrete is another. It is one thing to preach anarchy as the final outcome of progress, it is quite another thing to preach anarchy as a present rule of conduct. The distinction must be observed, for while the law is helpless against theories, it is potent against the practical application of theories. In a little book called "Politics for Young Americans," written with most pious and orthodox intent by the late Charles Nordhoff, the discussion of government begins with the epigram,--by no means original with Nordhoff,--"Governments are necessary evils." Therein lurks the germ of anarchism,--for if evil, why should governments be necessary? The anarchist is quick to admit the evil, but denies the necessity; and, in sooth, if government is an evil, then the sooner it is dispensed with the better. When Huxley defines anarchy as that "state of society in which the rule of each individual by himself is the only government the legitimacy of which is recognized," and then goes on to say, "in this sense, strict anarchy may be the highest conceivable grade of perfection of social existence; for, if all men spontaneously did justice and loved mercy, it is plain that the swords might advantageously be turned into ploughshares, and that the occupation of judges and police would be gone," he lends support to the theoretical anarchist. For if progress means the gradual elimination of government and the final supremacy of the individual, then the anarchist is simply the prophet who keeps in view and preaches the end. If anarchy is an ideal condition, there always will be idealists who will advocate it. But government is necessary, and just because it is necessary therefore it cannot be an evil. Hospitals are necessary, and just because they are necessary therefore they cannot be evils. Places for restraining the insane and criminal are necessary, and therefore not evil. The weaknesses of humanity may occasion these necessities; but the evil, if any, is inherent in the constitution of man and not in the social organization. It is the individual and not society that has need of government, of hospitals, of asylums, of prisons. Anarchy does not involve, as Huxley suggests, "the highest conceivable grade of perfection of social existence." Not at all. What it does involve is the highest conceivable grade of individual existence; in fact, of a grade so high that it is quite beyond conception,--in short, it involves human perfectibility. Anarchy proper involves the complete emancipation of every individual from all restraints and compulsions; it involves a social condition wherein absolutely no authority is imposed upon any individual, where no requirement of any kind is made against the will of any member--man, woman, or child; where everything is left to individual initiation. So far from such a "state of society" being "the highest conceivable grade of perfection of social existence," it is not conceivable at all, and the farther the mind goes in attempting to grasp it, the more hopelessly dreary does the scheme become. When men spontaneously do justice and love mercy, as Huxley suggests, and when each individual is mentally, physically, and morally sound, as he must be to support and govern himself, then, and not till then, will it be possible to dispense with government; but even then it is more conceivable than otherwise that these perfect individuals would--as a mere division of labor, as a mere matter of economy--adopt and enforce some rules and regulations for the benefit of all; it would be necessary to do so unless the individuals were not only perfect, but also absolutely of one mind on all subjects relating to their welfare. Can the imagination picture existence more inane? But regardless of what the mentally, physically, and morally perfect individuals might do after attaining their perfection, anarchy assumes the millennium,--and the millennium is yet a long way off. If the future of anarchy depends upon the physical, mental, and moral perfection of its advocates, the outlook is gloomy indeed, for a theory never had a following more imperfect in all these respects. The patent fact that most governments, both national and local, are corruptly, extravagantly, and badly administered tends to obscure our judgment, so that we assent, without thinking, to the proposition that government is an evil, and then argue that it is a necessary evil. But government is not evil because there are evils incidental to its administration. Every human institution partakes of the frailties of the individual; it could not be otherwise; all social institutions are human, not superhuman. With progress it is to be hoped that there will be fewer wars, fewer crimes, fewer wrongs, so that government will have less and less to do and drop many of its functions,--that is the sort of anarchy every one hopes for; that is the sort of anarchy the late Phillips Brooks had in mind when he said, "He is the benefactor of his race who makes it possible to have one law less. He is the enemy of his kind who would lay upon the shoulders of arbitrary government one burden which might be carried by the educated conscience and character of the community." But assume that war is no more and armies are disbanded; that crimes are no more and police are dismissed; that wrongs are no more and courts are dissolved,--what then? My neighbor becomes slightly insane, is very noisy and threatening; my wife and children, who are terrorized, wish him restrained; but his friends do not admit that he is insane, or, admitting his peculiarities, insist my family and I ought to put up with them; the man himself is quite sane enough to appreciate the discussion and object to any restraint. Now, who shall decide? Suppose the entire community--save the man and one or two sympathizing cranks--is clearly of the opinion the man is insane and should be restrained, who is to decide the matter? and when it is decided, who is to enforce the decision by imposing the authority of the community upon the individual? If the community asserts its authority in any manner or form, that is government. If every institution, including government, were abolished to-morrow, the percentage of births that would turn out blind, crippled, and feeble both mentally and physically, wayward, eccentric, and insane would continue practically the same, and the community would be obliged to provide institutions for these unfortunates, the community would be obliged to patrol the streets for them, the community would be obliged to pass upon their condition and support or restrain them; in short, the abolished institutions--including tribunals of some kind, police, prisons, asylums--would be promptly restored. The anarchist would argue that all this may be done by voluntary association and without compulsion; but the man arrested, or confined in the insane asylum against his will, would be of a contrary opinion. The debate might involve his friends and sympathizers until in every close case--as now--the community would be divided in hostile camps, one side urging release of the accused, the other urging his detention. Who is to hold the scale and decide? The fundamental error of anarchists, and of most theorists who discuss "government" and "the state," lies in the tacit assumption that "government" and "the state" are entities to be dealt with quite apart from the individual; that both may be modified or abolished by laws or resolutions to that effect. If anything is clearly demonstrated as true, it is that both "government" and "the state" have been evolved out of our own necessities; neither was imposed from without, but both have been evolved from within; both are forms of co-operation. For the time being the "state" and "government," as well as the "church" and all human institutions, may be modified or seemingly abolished, but they come back to serve essentially the same purpose. The French Revolution was an organized attempt to overturn the foundations of society and hasten progress by moving the hands of the clock forward a few centuries,--the net result was a despotism the like of which the world has not known since the days of Rome. Anarchy as a system is a bubble, the iridescent hues of which attract, but which vanish into thin air on the slightest contact with reality; it is the perpetual motion of sociology; the fourth dimension of economies; the squaring of the political circle. The apostles of anarchy are a queer lot,--Godwin in England, Proudhon, Grave, and Saurin in France, Schmidt ("Stirner"), Faucher, Hess, and Marr in Germany, Bakunin and Krapotkin in Russia, Reclus in Belgium, with Most and Tucker in America, sum up the principal lights,--with the exception of the geographer Reclus, not a sound and sane man among them; in fact, scarcely any two agree upon a single proposition save the broad generalization that government is an evil which must be eliminated. Until they do agree upon some one measure or proposition of practical importance, the world has little to fear from their discussions and there is no reason why any attempt should be made to suppress the debate. If government is an evil, as so many men who are not anarchists keep repeating, then the sooner we know it and find the remedy the better; but if government is simply one of many human institutions developed logically and inevitably to meet conditions created by individual shortcomings, then government will tend to diminish as we correct our own failings, but that it will entirely disappear is hardly likely, since it is inconceivable that men on this earth should ever attain such a condition of perfection that possibility of disagreement is absolutely and forever removed. Anarchism as a doctrine, as a theory, involves no act of violence any more than communism or socialism. Between the assassination of a ruler and the doctrine of anarchy there is no necessary connection. The philosophic anarchist simply believes anarchy is to be the final result of progress and evolution, just as the communist believes that communism will be the outcome; neither theorist would see the slightest advantage in trying to hasten the slow but sure progress of events by deeds of violence; in fact, both theorists would regret such deeds as certain to prove reactionary and retard the march of events. The world has nothing to fear from anarchism as a theory, and up to thirty or forty years ago it was nothing but a theory. The "propaganda of action" came out of Russia about forty years ago, and is the offspring of Russian nihilism. The "propaganda of action" is the protest of impatience against evolution; it is the effort to hasten progress by deeds of violence. From the few who, like Bakunin, Brousse, and Krapotkin, have written about the "propaganda of action" with sufficient coherence to make themselves understood, it appears that it is not their hope to destroy government by removing all executive heads,--even their tortured brains recognize the impossibility of that task; nor do they hope to so far terrify rulers as to bring about their abdication. Not at all; but they do hope by deeds of violence to so attract attention to the theory of anarchy as to win followers;--in other words, murders such as those of Humbert, Carnot, and President McKinley were mere advertisements of anarchism. In the words of Brousse, "Deeds are talked of on all sides; the indifferent masses inquire about their origin, and thus pay attention to the new doctrine and discuss it. Let men once get as far as this, and it is not hard to win over many of them." Hence, the greater the crime the greater the advertisement; from that point of view, the shooting of President McKinley, under circumstances so atrocious, is so far the greatest achievement of the "propaganda of action." It is worth noting that the "reign of terror" which the Nihilists sought to and did create in Russia was for a far more practical and immediate purpose. They sought to terrify the government into granting reforms; so far from seeking to annihilate the government, they sought to spur it into activity for the benefit of the masses. The methods of the Nihilists, without the excuse of their object, were borrowed by the more fanatical anarchists, and applied to the advertising of their belief. Since the adoption of the "propaganda of action" by the extremists, anarchism has undergone a great change. It has passed from a visionary and harmless theory, as advocated by Godwin, Proudhon, and Reclus, to a very concrete agency of crime and destruction under the teachings of such as Bakunin, Krapotkin, and Most; not forgetting certain women like Louise Michel in France and Emma Goldman in this country who out- Herod Herod;--when a woman goes to the devil she frightens him; his Satanic majesty welcomes a man, but dreads a woman; to a woman the downward path is a toboggan slide, to a man it is a gentle but seductive descent. It is against the "propaganda of action" that legislation must be directed, not because it is any part of anarchism, but because it is the propaganda of crime. Laws directed towards the suppression of anarchism might result in more harm than good, but crime is quite another matter. It is one thing to advocate less and less of government, to preach the final disappearance of government and the evolution of anarchy; it is a fundamentally different thing to advocate the destruction of life or property as a means to hasten the end. The criminal action and the criminal advice must be dissociated entirely from any political or social theory. It does not matter what a man's ultimate purpose may be; he may be a communist or a socialist, a Republican or a Democrat, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian; when he advises, commits, or condones a murder, his conduct is not measured by his convictions,--unless, of course, he is insane; his advice is measured by its probable and actual consequences; his deeds speak for themselves. A man is not to be punished or silenced for saying he believes in anarchy, his convictions on that point are a matter of indifference to those who believe otherwise. But a man is to be punished for saying or doing things which result in injuring others; and the advice, whether given in person to the individual who commits the deed, or given generally in lecture or print, if it moves the individual to action, is equally criminal. On August 20, 1886, eight men were found guilty of murder in Chicago, seven were condemned to death and one to the penitentiary; four were afterwards hanged, one killed himself in jail, and three were imprisoned. These men were convicted of a crime with which, so far as the evidence showed, they had no direct connection; but their speeches, writings, and conduct prior to the actual commission of the crime had been such that they were held guilty of having incited the murder. During the spring of 1886 there were many strikes and a great deal of excitement growing out of the "eight-hour movement in Chicago." There was much disorder. On the evening of May 4 a meeting was held in what was known as Haymarket Square, at this meeting three of the condemned made speeches. About ten o'clock a platoon of police marched to the Square, halted a short distance from the wagon where the speakers were, and an officer commanded the meeting to immediately and peaceably disperse. Thereupon a bomb was thrown from near the wagon into the ranks of the policemen, where it exploded, killing and wounding a number. The man who threw the bomb was never positively identified, but it was probably one Rudolph Schnaubelt, who disappeared. At all events, the condemned were not connected with the actual throwing; they were convicted upon the theory that they were co-conspirators with him by reason of their speeches, writings, and conduct which influenced his conduct. An even broader doctrine of liability is announced in the following paragraph from the opinion of the Supreme Court of Illinois: "If the defendants, as a means of bringing about the social revolution and as a part of the larger conspiracy to effect such revolution, also conspired to excite classes of workingmen in Chicago into sedition, tumult, and riot, and to the use of deadly weapons and the taking of human life, and for the purpose of producing such tumult, riot, use of weapons and taking of life, advised and encouraged such classes by newspaper articles and speeches to murder the authorities of the city, and a murder of a policeman resulted from such advice and encouragement, then defendants are responsible therefor." It is the logical application of this proposition that will defeat the "propaganda of action." If it be enacted that any man who advocates the commission of any criminal act, or who afterwards condones the crime, shall be deemed guilty of an offence equal to that advocated or condoned and punished accordingly, the "propaganda of action" in all branches of criminal endeavor will be effectually stifled without the doubtful expedient of directing legislation against any particular social or economic theory. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN NEW YORK TO BUFFALO UP THE HILL It was Saturday, the 14th, at nine o'clock, when we left New York for Albany, following the route of the Endurance Contest. The morning was bright and warm. The roads were perfect for miles. We passed Kings Bridge, Yonkers, Hastings, and Dobbs Ferry flying. At Tarrytown we dropped the chain. A link had parted. Pushing the machine under the shade of a tree, a half-hour was spent in replacing the chain and riveting in a new link. All the pins showed more or less wear, and a new chain should have been put on in New York, but none that would fit was to be had. We dined at Peekskill, and had a machinist go over the chain, riveting the heads of the pins so none would come out again. Nelson Hill, a mile and a half beyond Peekskill, proved all it was said to be,--and more. In the course of the trip we had mounted hills that were worse, and hills that were steeper, but only in spots or for short distances; for a steady steep climb Nelson Hill surpassed anything we found in the entire trip. The hill seems one-half to three-quarters of a mile long, a sharp ascent,--somewhat steeper about half-way up than at the beginning or finish. Accurate measurements were made for the Endurance Contest and the results published. The grade was just a little too much for the machine, with our luggage and ourselves. It was tiresome walking so far beside the machine, and in attempting to bring it to a stop for a moment's rest the machine got started backward, and was well on its way down the hill, gaining speed every fraction of a second. It was a short, sharp chase to catch the lever operating the emergency brake,--which luckily operated by being pushed forward from the seat,--a pull on the lever and the machine was brought to a stop with the rear wheels hanging over the edge of a gulley** at the side. After that experience the machine was allowed to go to the top without any more attempts to rest. At Fishkill Village we saved a few miles and some bad road by continuing on to Poughkeepsie by the inland road instead of going down to the Landing. We inquired the way from an old man, who said, "If you want to go to P'keepsie, follow the road just this side the post-office; you will save a good many miles, and have a good road; if you want to follow the other fellers, then keep straight on down to the Landing; but why they went down there, beats me." It was six-thirty when we arrived at Poughkeepsie. As the next day would be Sunday, we made sure of a supply of gasoline that night. Up to this point the roads, barring Nelson Hill, and the weather had been perfect, but conditions were about to change for the worse. Sunday morning was gray and drizzly. We left at eight-thirty. The roads were soft and in places very slippery; becoming much worse as we approached Albany, where we arrived at half-past three. There we should have stopped. We had come seventy-five miles in seven hours, including all stops, over bad roads, and that should have sufficed; but it was such an effort to house the machine in Albany and get settled in rooms, that we decided to go on at least as far as Schenectady. To the park it was all plain sailing on asphalt and macadam, but from the park to the gate of the cemetery and to the turn beyond the mud was so deep and sticky it seemed as if the machine could not possibly get through. If we had attempted to turn about, we would surely have been stuck; there was nothing to do but follow the best ruts and go straight on, hoping for better things. The dread of coming to a standstill and being obliged to get out in that eight or ten inches of uninviting mud was a very appreciable factor in our discomfort. Fortunately, the clutch held well and the motor was not stalled. When we passed the corner beyond the cemetery the road was much better, though still so soft the high speed could be used only occasionally. The tank showed a leak, which for some reason increased so rapidly that a pail of water had to be added about every half-mile. At last a pint of bran poured into the tank closed the leak in five minutes. On reaching Latham it was apparent that Schenectady could not be made before dark, if at all, so we turned to the right into Troy. We had made the two long sides of a triangle over the worst of roads; whereas, had we run from Albany direct to Troy, we could have followed a good road all the way. The next morning was the 16th of September, the sun was shining brightly and the wind was fresh; the roads were drying every moment, so we did not hurry our departure. The express office in Albany was telephoned for a new chain that had been ordered, and in about an hour it was delivered. The machine was driven into a side street in front of a metal roofing factory, the tank taken out and so thoroughly repaired it gave no further trouble. It was noon before the work was finished, for the new chain and a new belt to the pump had to be put on, and many little things done which consumed time. At two o'clock we left Troy. The road to Schenectady in good weather is quite good, but after the rain it was heavy with half-dried mud and deep with ruts. From Schenectady to Fonda, where we arrived at six-thirty, the roads were very bad; however, forty-five miles in four hours and a half was fairly good travelling under the adverse conditions. If the machine had been equipped with an intermediate gear, an average of twelve or fifteen miles could have been easily made. The going was just a little too heavy for the fast speed and altogether too easy for the low, and yet we were obliged to travel for hours on the low gear. From New York to Buffalo there is a succession of cities and villages which are, for the most part, very attractive, but good hotels are scarce, and as for wayside inns there are none. With the exception of Albany and one or two other cities the hotels are old, dingy, and dirty. Here and there, as in Geneva, a new hotel is found, but to most of the cities the hotels are a disgrace. The automobile, however, accustoms one to discomforts, and one gets so tired and hungry at night that the shortcomings of the village hotel are overlooked, or not fully realized until seen the next morning by the frank light of day. Fonda is the occasion of these remarks upon New York hotels. It was cloudy and threatening when we left Fonda at half-past seven the next morning, and by ten the rain began to fall so heavily and steadily that the roads, none too dry before, were soon afloat. It was slow going. At St. Johnsville we stopped to buy heavier rubber coats. It did not seem possible we would get through the day without coming to a stop, but, strange to relate, the machine kept on doggedly all day, on the slow gear nearly every mile, without a break of any kind. It was bad enough from St. Johnsville to Herkimer, but the worst was then to come. When we came east from Utica to Herkimer, we followed the road on the north side of the valley, and recalled it as hilly but very dry and good. The Endurance Contest was out of Herkimer, through Frankfort and along the canal on the south side of the valley. It was a question whether to follow the road we knew was pretty good or follow the contest route, which presumably was selected as the better. A liveryman at Herkimer said, "Take my advice and keep on the north side of the valley; the road is hilly, but sandy and drier; if you go through Frankfort, you will find some pretty fierce going; the road is level but cut up and deep with mud,--keep on the north side." We should have followed that advice, the more so since it coincided with our own impressions; but at the store where we stopped for gasoline, a man who said he drove an automobile advised the road through Frankfort as the better. It was in Frankfort that several of the contestants in the endurance run came to grief,--right on the main street of the village. There was no sign of pavement, macadam, or gravel, just deep, dark, rich muck; how deep no one could tell; a road so bad it spoke volumes for the shiftlessness and lack of enterprise prevailing in the village. A little beyond Frankfort there is about a mile of State road, laid evidently to furnish inhabitants an object lesson,--and laid in vain. A little farther on the black muck road leads between the canal and towpath high up on the left, and a high board fence protecting the railroad tracks on the right; in other words, the highway was the low ground between two elevations. The rains of the week before and the rains of the last two days had converted the road into a vast ditch. We made our way slowly into it, and then seizing an opening ran up on to the towpath, which was of sticky clay and bad enough, but not quite so discouraging as the road. We felt our way along carefully, for the machine threatened every moment to slide either into the canal on the left or down the bank into the road on the right. Soon we were obliged to turn back to the road and take our chances on a long steady pull on the slow gear. Again and again it seemed as if the motor would stop; several times it was necessary to throw out the clutch, let the motor race, and then throw in the clutch to get the benefit of both the motor and the momentum of the two-hundred pound fly-wheel; it was a strain on the chain and gears, but they held, and the machine would be carried forward ten or twelve feet by the impetus; in that way the worst spots were passed. Towards Utica the roads were better, though we nearly came to grief in a low place just outside the city. It required all Wednesday morning to clean and overhaul the machine. Every crevice was filled with mud, and grit had worked into the chain and every exposed part. There was also some lost motion to be taken up to stop a disagreeable pounding. The strain on the new chain had stretched it so a link had to be taken out. It was two o'clock before we left Utica. A little beyond the outskirts of the city the road forks, the right is the road to Syracuse, and it is gravelled most of the way. Unfortunately, we took the left fork, and for seven miles ploughed through red clay, so sticky that several times we just escaped being stalled. It was not until we reached Clinton that we discovered our mistake and turned cross country to the right road. The cross-road led through a low boggy meadow that was covered with water, and there we nearly foundered. When the hard gravel of the turnpike was reached, it was with a feeling of irritation that we looked back upon the time wasted in the horrible roads we need not have taken. The day was bright, and every hour of sun and wind improved the roads, so that by the time we were passing Oneida Castle the going was good. It was dark when we passed through Fayetteville; a little beyond our reserve gallon of gasoline was put in the tank and the run was made over the toll-road to Syracuse on "short rations." A well-kept toll-road is a boon in bad weather, but to the driver of an automobile the stations are a great nuisance; one is scarcely passed before another is in sight; it is stop, stop, stop. There are so many old toll-roads upon which toll is no longer collected that one is apt to get in the habit of whizzing through the gates so fast that the keepers, if there be any, have no time to come out, much less to collect the rates. It was cold the next morning when we started from Syracuse, and it waxed colder and colder all day long. The Endurance Contest followed the direct road to Rochester, going by way of Port Byron, Lyons, Palmyra, and Pittsford. That road is neither interesting nor good. Even if one is going to Rochester, the roads are better to the south; but as we had no intention of visiting the city again, we took Genesee Street and intended to follow it into Buffalo. The old turnpike leads to the north of Auburn and Seneca Falls, but we turned into the Falls for dinner. In trying to find and follow the turnpike we missed it, and ran so far to the north that we were within seven or eight miles of Rochester, so near, in fact, that at the village of Victor the inhabitants debated whether it would not be better to run into Rochester and thence to Batavia by Bergen rather than southwest through Avon and Caledonia. Having started out with the intention of passing Rochester, we were just obstinate enough to keep to the south. The result was that for nearly the entire day the machine was laboring over the indifferent roads that usually lie just between two main travelled highways. It was not until dusk that the gravelled turnpike leading into Avon was found, and it was after seven when we drew up in front of the small St. George Hotel. The glory of Avon has departed. Once it was a great resort, with hotels in size almost equal to those now at Saratoga. The Springs were famous and people came from all parts of the country. The hotels are gone, some burned, some destroyed, but old registers are preserved, and they bear the signatures of Webster, Clay, and many noted men of that generation. The Springs are a mile or two away; the water is supposed to possess rare medicinal virtues, and invalids still come to test its potency, but there is no life, no gayety; the Springs and the village are quite forlorn. At the St. George we found good rooms and a most excellent supper. In the office after supper, with chairs tipped back and legs crossed, the older residents told many a tale of the palmy days of Avon when carriages filled the Square and the streets were gay with people in search of pleasure rather than health. It was a quick run the next morning through Caledonia to Le Roy over roads hard and smooth as a floor. Just out of Le Roy we met a woman, with a basket of eggs, driving a horse that seemed sobriety itself. We drew off to one side and stopped the machine to let her pass. The horse stopped, and unfortunately she gave a "yank" on one of the reins, turning the horse to one side; then a pull on the other rein, turning the horse sharply to the other side. This was too much for the animal, and he kept on around, overturning the light buck-board and upsetting the woman, eggs, and all into the road. The horse then kicked himself free and trotted off home. The woman, fortunately, was not injured, but the eggs were, and she mournfully remarked they were not hers, and that she was taking them to market for a neighbor. The wagon was slightly damaged. Relieved to find the woman unhurt, the damage to wagon and eggs was more than made good; then we took the woman home in the automobile,--her first ride. It does not matter how little to blame one may be for a runaway; the fact remains that were it not for the presence of the automobile on the road the particular accident would not have occurred. The fault may be altogether on the side of the inexperienced or careless driver, but none the less the driver of the automobile feels in a certain sense that he has been the immediate cause, and it is impossible to describe the feeling of relief one experiences when it turns out that no one is injured. A machine could seldom meet a worse combination than a fairly spirited horse, a nervous woman, and a large basket of eggs. With housewifely instincts, the woman was sure to think first of the eggs. We stopped at Batavia for dinner, and made the run into Buffalo in exactly two hours, arriving at four o'clock. We ran the machine to the same station, and found unoccupied the same rooms we had left four weeks and two days before. It seemed an age since that Wednesday, August 24, when we started out, so much had transpired, every hour had been so eventful. Measured by the new things we had seen and the strange things that had happened, the interval was months not weeks. A man need not go beyond his doorstep to find a new world; his own country, however small, is a universe that can never be fully explored. And yet such is the perversity of human nature that we know all countries better than our own; we travel everywhere except at home. The denizens of the earth in their wanderings cross each other en route like letters; all Europe longs to see Niagara, all America to see Mont Blanc, and yet whoever sees the one sees the other, for the grandeur of both is the same. It does not matter whether a vast volume of water is pouring over the sharp edge of a cliff, or a huge pile of scarred and serrated rock rises to the heavens, the grandeur is the same; it is not the outward form we stand breathless before, but the forces of nature which produce every visible and invisible effect. The child of nature worships the god within the mountains and the spirit behind the waters; whereas we in our great haste observe only the outward form, see only the falling waters and the towering peaks. It is good for every man to come at least once in his life in contact with some overpowering work of nature; it is better for most men to never see but one; let the memory linger, let not the impression be too soon effaced, rather let it sink deep into the heart until it becomes a part of life. Steam has impaired the imagination. Such is the facility of modern transportation that we ride on the ocean to-day and sit at the feet of the mountains to-morrow. Nowadays we see just so much of nature as the camera sees and no more; our vision is but surface deep, our eyes are but two clear, bright lenses with nothing behind, not even a dry plate to record the impressions. It is a physiological fact that the cells of the brain which first receive impressions from the outward organs of sense may be reduced to a condition of comparative inactivity by too rapid succession of sights, sounds, and other sensations. We see so much that we see nothing. To really see is to fully comprehend, therefore our capacity for seeing is limited. No man has really seen Niagara, no man has ever really seen Mont Blanc; for that matter, no man has even fully comprehended so much as a grain of sand; therefore the universe is at one's doorstep. Nature is a unit; it is not a whole made up of many diverse parts, but is a whole which is inherent in every part. No two persons see the same things in a blossoming flower; to the botanist it is one thing, to the poet another, to the painter another, to the child a bit of bright color, to the maiden an emblem of love, to the heart-broken woman a cluster of memories; to no two is it precisely the same. The longer we look at anything, however simple, the deeper it penetrates into our being until it becomes a part of us. In time we learn to know the tree that shades our porch, but years elapse before we are on friendly terms, and a lifetime is spent before the gnarled giant admits us to intimate companionship. Trees are filled with reserve; when denuded of their neighbors, they stand in melancholy solitude until the leaves fall for the last time, until their branches wither, and their trunks ring hollow with decay. And if we never really see or know or understand the nature which is about us, how is it possible that we should ever comprehend the people we meet? What is the use of trying to know an Englishman or a Frenchman when we do not know an American? What is the use of struggling with the obstacle of a foreign tongue, when our own will not suffice for the communication of thoughts? The only light that we have is at home; travellers are men groping in the dark; they fancy they see much, but for the most part they see nothing. No great teacher has ever been a great traveller. Buddha, Confucius, and Mahomet never left the confines of their respective countries. Plato lived in Athens; Shakespeare travelled between London and Stratford; these great souls found it quite sufficient to know themselves and the vast universe as reflected from the eyes of those about them. But then they are the exceptions. For most men--including geniuses--travel and deliberate observation are good, since most men will not observe at home. Such is the singularity of our nature that we ignore the interesting at home to study the commonplace abroad. We never notice a narrow and crooked street in Boston or lower New York, whereas a narrow and crooked street in London fills us with an ecstasy of delight. We never visit the Metropolitan Art Museum, but we cross Europe to visit galleries of lesser interest. We choose a night boat down the majestic Hudson, and we suffer untold discomforts by day on crowded little boats paddling down the comparatively insignificant Rhine. Every country possesses its own peculiar advantages and beauties. There is no desert so barren, no mountains so bleak, no woods so wild that to those who dwell therein their home is not beautiful. The Esquimau would not exchange his blinding waste of snow and dark fields of water for the luxuriance of tropic vegetation. Why should we exchange the glories of the land we live in for the footworn and sight-worn, the thumbed and fingered beauties of other lands? If we desire novelty and adventure, seek it in the unexplored regions of the great Northwest; if we crave grandeur, visit the Yellowstone and the fastnesses of the Rockies; if we wish the sublime, gaze in the mighty chasm of the Cañon of the Colorado, where strong men weep as they look down; if we seek desolation, traverse the alkali plains of Arizona where the trails are marked by bones of men and beasts; but if the heart yearns for beauty more serene, go forth among the habitations of men where fields are green and sheltering woods offer refuge from the noonday sun, where rivers ripple with laughter, and the great lakes smile in soft content. Unhappy the man who does not believe his country the best on earth and his people the chosen of men. The promise of automobiling is knowledge of one's own land. The confines of a city are stifling to the sport; the machine snorts with impatience on dusty pavements filled with traffic, and seeks the freedom of country roads. Within a short time every hill and valley within a radius of a hundred miles is a familiar spot; the very houses become known, and farmers shout friendly greetings as the machine flies by, or lend helping hands when it is in distress. Within a season or two it will be an every-day sight to see people journeying leisurely from city to city; abandoned taverns will be reopened, new ones built, and the highways, long since deserted by pleasure, will once more be gay with life. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THROUGH CANADA HOME HOME We left Buffalo, Saturday the 20th, at four o'clock for St. Catharines. At the Bridge we were delayed a short time by customs formalities. In going out of the States it is necessary to enter the machine for export and return, otherwise on coming in again the officials on our side will collect duty on its full value. On crossing to the Canadian side, it is necessary to enter the machine and pay the duty of thirty per cent. on its valuation. The machine is entered for temporary use in Canada, under a law providing for the use of bicycles, hunting and fishing outfits, and sporting implements generally, and the port at which you intend to go out is named; a receipt for the duty deposited is given and the money is either refunded at the port of exit or the machine is simply identified by the officials, and remittance made upon returning the receipt to the port of entry. It is something of a bother to deposit thirty per cent. upon the valuation of an automobile, but the Canadian officials are obliging; and where it is clearly apparent that there is no intention of selling the machine in the province, they are not exacting as to the valuation; a two-thousand-dollar machine may be valued pretty low as second-hand. If, however, anything should occur which would make it desirable to leave or sell the machine in Canada, a re-entry at full market valuation should be made immediately, otherwise the machine is--very properly--subject to confiscation. Parties running across the river from Buffalo for a day's run are not bothered at all. The officials on both sides let the machines pass, but any one crossing Canada would better comply with all regulations and save trouble. It was six o'clock when we arrived at St. Catharines. The Wendell Hotel happens to be a mineral water resort with baths for invalids, and therefore much better as a hotel than most Canadian houses; in fact, it may be said once for all, that Canadian hotels, with the exception of two or three, are very poor; they are as indifferent in the cities as in the smaller towns, being for the most part dingy and dirty. But what Canada lacks in hotels she more than makes up in roads. Miles upon miles of well-made and well-kept gravel roads cross the province of Ontario in every direction. The people seem to appreciate the economy of good hard highways over which teams can draw big loads without undue fatigue. We left St. Catharines at nine o'clock Sunday morning, taking the old Dundas road; this was a mistake, the direct road to Hamilton being the better. Off the main travelled roads we found a good deal of sand; but that was our fault, for it was needless to take these little travelled by-ways. Again, out of Hamilton to London we did not follow the direct and better road; this was due to error in directions given us at the drug store where we stopped for gasoline. Gasoline is not so easily obtained in Canada as in the States; it is not to be had at all in many of the small villages, and in the cities it is not generally kept in any quantity. One drug store in Hamilton had half-a-dozen six-ounce bottles neatly put up and labelled "Gasoline: Handle with Care;" another had two gallons, which we purchased. The price was high, but the price of gasoline is the very least of the concerns of automobiling. On the way to London a forward spring collapsed entirely. Binding the broken leaves together with wire we managed to get in all right, but the next morning we were delayed an hour while a wheelwright made a more permanent repair. Monday, the 22d, was one of the record days. Leaving London at half-past nine we took the Old Sarnia Gravel for Sarnia, some seventy miles away. With scarcely a pause, we flew over the superb road, hard gravel every inch of it, and into Sarnia at one o'clock for luncheon. Over an hour was spent in lunching, ferrying across the river, and getting through the two custom-houses. Canada is an anachronism. Within the lifetime of men now living, the Dominion will become a part of the United States; this is fate not politics, evolution not revolution, destiny not design. How it will come about no man can tell; that it will come about is as certain as fate. With an area almost exactly that of the United States, Canada has a population of but five millions, or about one-fifteenth the population of this country. Between 1891 and 1901 the population of the Dominion increased only five hundred thousand, or about ten per cent., as against an increase of fourteen millions, or twenty-one per cent., in this country. For a new country in a new world Canada stagnates. In the decade referred to Chicago alone gained more in population than the entire Dominion. The fertile province of Ontario gained but fifty-four thousand in the ten years, while the States of Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, which are near by, gained each nearly ten times as much; and the gain of New York, lying just across the St. Lawrence, was over twelve hundred thousand. The total area of these four States is about four-fifths that of Ontario, and yet their increase of population in ten years more than equals the entire population of the province. In population, wealth, industries, and resources Ontario is the Dominion's gem; yet in a decade she could attract and hold but fifty-odd thousand persons,--not quite all the children born within her borders. All political divisions aside, there is no reason in the world why population should be dense on the west bank of the Detroit River and sparse on the east; why people should teem to suffocation to the south of the St. Lawrence and not to the north. These conditions are not normal, and sooner or later must change. It is not in the nature of things that this North American continent should be arbitrarily divided in its most fertile midst by political lines, and by and by it will be impossible to keep the multiplying millions south of the imaginary line from surging across into the rich vacant territory to the north. The outcome is inevitable; neither diplomacy nor statecraft can prevent it. When the population of this country is a hundred or a hundred and fifty millions the line will have disappeared. There may be a struggle of some kind over some real or fancied grievance, but, struggle or no struggle, it is not for man to oppose for long inevitable tendencies. In the long run, population, like water, seeks its level; in adjacent territories, the natural advantages and attractions of which are alike, the population tends strongly to become equally dense; political conditions and differences in race and language may for a time hold this tendency in check, but where race and language are the same, political barriers must soon give way. All that has preserved Canada from absorption up to this time is the existence of those mighty natural barriers, the St. Lawrence and the great lakes. As population increases in the Northwest, where the dividing line is known only to surveyors, the situation will become critical. Already the rush to the Klondike has produced trouble in Alaska. The aggressive miners from this side, who constitute almost the entire population, submit with ill-grace to Canadian authority. They do not like it, and Dawson or some near point may yet become a second Johannesburg. In all controversies so far, Canada has been as belligerent as England has been conciliatory. With rare tact and diplomacy England has avoided all serious differences with this country over Canadian matters without at the same time offending the pride of the Dominion; just how long this can be kept up no man can tell; but not for more than a generation to come, if so long. So far as the people of Canada are concerned, practically all would be opposed to any form of annexation. The great majority of the people are Englishmen at heart and very English in thought, habit, speech, and accent; they are much more closely allied to the mother country than to this; and they are exceedingly patriotic. They do not like us because they rather fear us,--not physically, not as man against man,--but overwhelming size and increasing importance, fear for the future, fear what down deep in their hearts many of them know must come. Their own increasing independence has taught them the sentimental and unsubstantial character of the ties binding them to England, and yet they know full well that with those ties severed their independence would soon disappear. Michigan roads are all bad, but some are worse than others. About Port Huron is sand. Out of the city there is a rough stone road made of coarse limestone; it did not lead in the direction we wished to go, but by taking it we were able to get away from the river and the lake and into a country somewhat less sandy. Towards evening, while trying to follow the most direct road into Lapeer, and which an old lady said was good "excepting one hill, which isn't very steep," we came to a hill which was not steep, but sand, deep, bottomless, yellow sand. Again and again the machine tried to scale that hill; it was impossible. There was nothing to do but turn about and find a better road. An old farmer, who had been leaning on the fence watching our efforts, sagely remarked: "I was afeard your nag would balk on that thar hill; it is little but the worst rise anywhere's about here, and most of us know better'n to attempt it; but I guess you're a stranger." We dined at Lapeer, and by dark made the run of eighteen miles into Flint, where we arrived at eight-thirty. We had covered one hundred and forty miles in twelve hours, including all stops, delays, and difficulties. It was the Old Sarnia Gravel which helped us on our journey that day. At Flint another new chain was put on, and also a rear sprocket with new differential gears. The old sprocket was badly worn and the teeth of the gears showed traces of hard usage. A new spring was substituted for the broken, and the machine was ready for the last lap of the long run. Leaving Flint on Friday morning, the 26th, a round-about run was made to Albion for the night. The intention was to follow the line of the Grand Trunk through Lansing, Battle Creek, and Owosso, but, over-persuaded by some wiseacres, a turn was made to Jackson, striking there the old State road. The roads through Lansing and Battle Creek can be no worse than the sandy and hilly turnpike. Now and then a piece of gravel is found, but only for a short distance, ending usually in sand. On Saturday the run was made from Albion to South Bend. As far as Kalamazoo and for some distance beyond the roads were hilly and for the most part sandy,--a disgrace to so rich and prosperous a State. Through Paw Paw and Dowagiac some good stretches of gravel were found and good time was made. It was dark when we reached the Oliver House in South Bend, a remarkably fine hotel for a place of the size. The run into Chicago next day was marked by no incident worthy of note. As already stated, the roads of Indiana are generally good, and fifteen miles an hour can be averaged with ease. It was four o'clock, Sunday, September 28, when the machine pulled into the stable whence it departed nearly two months before. The electricity was turned off, with a few expiring gasps the motor stopped. Taking into consideration the portions of the route covered twice, the side trips, and making some allowance for lost roads, the distance covered was over twenty-six hundred miles; a journey, the hardships and annoyances of which were more, far more, than counterbalanced by the delights. No one who has not travelled through America on foot, horseback, or awheel knows anything about the variety and charm of this great country. We traversed but a small section, and yet it seemed as if we had spent weeks and months in a strange land. The sensations from day to day are indescribable. It is not alone the novel sport, but the country and the people along the way seemed so strange, possibly because automobiling has its own point of view, and certainly people have their own and widely varying views of automobiling. In the presence of the machine people everywhere become for the time-being childlike and naive, curious and enthusiastic; they lose the veneer of sophistication, and are as approachable and companionable as children. Automobiling is therefore doubly delightful in these early days of the sport. By and by, when the people become accustomed to the machine, they will resume their habit of indifference, and we shall see as little of them as if we were riding or driving. With some exceptions every one we met treated the machine with a consideration it did not deserve. Even those who were put to no little inconvenience with their horses seldom showed the resentment which might have been expected under the circumstances. On the contrary, they seemed to recognize the right of the strange car to the joint use of the highway, and to blame their horses for not behaving better. Verily, forbearance is an American virtue. The machine itself stood the journey well, all things considered. It lacked power and was too light for such a severe and prolonged test; but, when taken apart to be restored to perfect condition, it was astonishing how few parts showed wear. The bearings had to be adjusted and one or two new ones put in. A number of little things were done, but the mechanic spent only forty hours' time all told in making the machine quite as good as new. A coat of paint and varnish removed all outward signs of rough usage. However, one must not infer that automobiling is an inexpensive way of touring, but measured by the pleasure derived, the expense is as nothing; at the same time look out for the man who says "My machine has not cost me a cent for repairs in six months." It is singular how reticent owners of automobiles are concerning the shortcomings and eccentricities of their machines; they seem leagued together to deceive one another and the public. The literal truth can be found only in letters of complaint written to the manufacturers. The man who one moment says his machine is a paragon of perfection, sits down the next and writes the factory a letter which would be debarred the mails if left unsealed. Open confession is good for the soul, and owners of automobiles must cultivate frankness of speech, for deep in our innermost hearts we all know that a machine would have so tried the patience of Job that even Bildad the Shuhite would have been silenced. In the year 1735 a worthy Puritan divine, pastor over a little flock in the town of Malden, made the following entries in his diary: "January 31.--Bought a shay for L27 10s. The Lord grant it may be a comfort and a blessing to my family. "March, 1735.--Had a safe and comfortable journey to York. "April 24.--Shay overturned, with my wife and I in it; yet neither of us much hurt. Blessed be our generous Preserver! Part of the shay, as it lay upon one side, went over my wife, and yet she was scarcely anything hurt. How wonderful the preservation. "May 5.--Went to the Beach with three of the children. The beast being frighted, when we were all out of the shay, overturned and broke it. I desire it (I hope I desire it) that the Lord would teach me suitably to repent this Providence, and make suitable remarks on it, and to be suitably affected with it. Have I done well to get me a shay? Have I not been proud or too fond of this convenience? Do I exercise the faith in the divine care and protection which I ought to do? Should I not be more in my study and less fond of diversion? Do I not withhold more than is meet from pious and charitable uses? "May 15.--Shay brought home; mending cost thirty shillings. Favored in this beyond expectation. "May 16.--My wife and I rode to Rumney Marsh. The beast frighted several times. "June 4.--Disposed of my shay to Rev. Mr. White." Moral.--Under conditions of like adversity, let every chauffeur cultivate the same spirit of humility,--and look for a Deacon White. END 
42748	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 42748-h.htm or 42748-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42748/42748-h/42748-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42748/42748-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). [Illustration: FOR NEARLY TEN MILES THE AUTOS WERE CLOSE TOGETHER.] THE MOTOR BOYS OVERLAND Or A Long Trip for Fun and Fortune by CLARENCE YOUNG Author of "The Motor Boys," "The Motor Boys in Mexico," etc. New York Cupples & Leon Co. * * * * * * BOOKS BY CLARENCE YOUNG =MOTOR BOYS SERIES= 12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 60 cents, postpaid THE MOTOR BOYS Or Chums Through Thick and Thin THE MOTOR BOYS OVERLAND Or A Long Trip for Fun and Fortune THE MOTOR BOYS IN MEXICO Or the Secret of the Buried City THE MOTOR BOYS ACROSS THE PLAINS Or The Hermit of Lost Lake THE MOTOR BOYS AFLOAT Or The Stirring Cruise of the Dartaway THE MOTOR BOYS ON THE ATLANTIC Or The Mystery of the Lighthouse =THE JACK RANGER SERIES= 12mo. Finely Illustrated. Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid JACK RANGER'S SCHOOLDAYS Or The Rivals of Washington Hall JACK RANGER'S WESTERN TRIP Or From Boarding School to Ranch and Range JACK RANGER'S SCHOOL VICTORIES Or Track, Gridiron and Diamond (Other volumes in preparation) * * * * * * Copyright, 1906, by Cupples & Leon Company THE MOTOR BOYS OVERLAND CONTENTS. CHAPTER. PAGE I. AN AUTOMOBILE RACE 1 II. HO FOR THE WEST! 10 III. THE OLD MILL ON FIRE 18 IV. A CHASE AFTER A RASCAL 26 V. THE MYSTERY OF THE MINER 34 VI. A HOLD-UP 42 VII. A FRUITLESS PURSUIT 49 VIII. IN THE WINDY CITY 56 IX. A SHOT IN THE DARK 64 X. ENCIRCLED BY COWBOYS 72 XI. CAPTURING A HORSE THIEF 79 XII. THE AUTO ON FIRE 87 XIII. AT DEAD MAN'S GULCH 95 XIV. NODDY STEALS A MARCH 103 XV. IN THE NICK OF TIME 111 XVI. A RUSH OF GOLD SEEKERS 119 XVII. OVER THE MOUNTAINS 126 XVIII. A TRICK OF THE ENEMY 133 XIX. THE AUTO STOLEN 140 XX. ATTACKED BY INDIANS 147 XXI. OVER A CLIFF 154 XXII. THE CHASE 161 XXIII. WRECKED 169 XXIV. FORWARD ONCE MORE 176 XXV. A RACE TO THE MINE 183 XXVI. GOLD! 191 XXVII. BESIEGED AT THE MINE 198 XXVIII. WINNING THE CLAIM 205 XXIX. THE FIGHT AT THE MINE 212 XXX. AN ESCAPE--CONCLUSION 220 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FOR NEARLY TEN MILES THE AUTOS WERE CLOSE TOGETHER. “TAKE THAT!” NED CRIED. THEY RUSHED TO ONE SIDE, THUNDERING PAST THE AUTO. THE SAVAGES BEGAN CIRCLING ABOUT THE MACHINE. PREFACE. _Dear Boys_: Here we have the second volume of "The Motor Boys Series," a line of books relating to the doings of some bright and up-to-date youths, on wheels, at home and abroad. In the first volume of the series, called "The Motor Boys," the writer told how Bob, Ned and Jerry won several important races, including that which brought to them a much-wished-for prize, a grand touring car. The car won, there was nothing to do but to take a long trip, and in this present book, "The Motor Boys Overland," are given the particulars of a journey in the automobile to the great West. On the way the boys fall in with an old miner, who has the secret of a lost gold mine of great value. The lads decide to take the miner to the lost mine in their touring car, and the long and perilous journey among the mountains is begun. Enemies also hear of the wonderful lost mine, and then begins a wild race, to see who shall get there first and claim the riches. This "Motor Boys Series" will be continued by a third volume, to be called "The Motor Boys in Mexico." I earnestly hope the boys will find the stories to their liking. I can assure all it has been a pleasure to pen them, for the writer is something of an automobile enthusiast himself, and some of the experiences on the road have been taken from life. CLARENCE YOUNG. _March 22, 1906._ THE MOTOR BOYS OVERLAND. CHAPTER I. AN AUTOMOBILE RACE. There was a whizz of rubber-tired wheels, a cloud of dust and the frightened yelping of a dog as a big, red touring automobile shot down the road. "You nearly ran over him, Chunky!" exclaimed Jerry Hopkins, to the stout youth at his side. "That's what you did, Bob Baker!" chimed in Ned Slade, leaning over from the rear seat of the auto. "I thought you said you were an expert." "I didn't come within five feet of the pup," answered Bob Baker, giving the steering wheel a twist to avoid a chicken that scooted across the country road. "Never mind--miss as good as a mile--we certainly are skating along--never say die--hit a dog, biff! bang! up in the air--down again--bust a tire--break your leg--kill the animal--off again--whoop!" "Say, Andy Rush, if you're going to talk as fast as that the first time Chunky speeds the machine, I'm going to get out!" cried Jerry, with a laugh. "There's excitement enough without you making any more." "All right, fellows, I'll keep quiet," agreed Andy, who was a small, nervous chap, never still for a moment, and so full of energy that he talked, as Jerry sometimes said, "like a house afire." Bob leaned forward and pulled one of the levers. The auto slowed down, as the low-speed gear came into play, and bowled along under a stretch of shady trees. "Fifteen miles in thirty minutes," remarked the stout lad, pulling out his watch. "Not so bad for a starter, eh, Ned?" "The machine certainly can go!" observed Jerry. "I didn't have the full-speed lever on, either," remarked Bob, who was called "Chunky" by his companions, because of his fleshiness. He turned off the gasolene as the auto came under a large chestnut tree, and the four boys stretched out comfortably on the leather-upholstered seats. There was Bob Baker, a lad of fifteen years, son of Andrew Baker, a rich banker; Ned Slade, sixteen years old, the only son of Aaron Slade, a department store proprietor, and Jerry Hopkins, the son of a widow, Mrs. Julia Hopkins. These three were faithful chums, seldom apart. With them was a mutual friend, Andy Rush. All the boys lived in the village of Cresville, not far from Boston. The three first named had, the week before the story opens, come into possession of a fine touring car, which they had won as the first prize of a motor-cycle meet, given by the Cresville Athletic Club, as related in the first volume of this series, entitled "The Motor Boys." In that was told how they had incurred the enmity of Noddy Nixon, a town bully, who had robbed the mill of Amos Judson of one thousand dollars, which crime the Motor Boys were instrumental in fastening on Noddy. In consequence of the pending disclosure of his guilt, Noddy had fled from town, a short time before the races, in his father's automobile. Bill Berry, a town ne'er-do-well, accompanied him. Not long after Noddy had fled in the terror of his guilt being found out, he sent back a letter threatening vengeance on the three boys, whom he accused as being responsible for the fact that he had to leave home. But the Motor Boys, as they now called themselves, cared little for this in view of the pleasures they anticipated when they got the automobile. It had come in due time; a fine affair, with all the latest improvements and attachments, and was a car capable of making a trip almost anywhere. The company from whom the auto was purchased sent an expert out to Cresville with it, to instruct the boys in the running of the machine. They learned readily, and were soon able to make short trips on the country roads surrounding the village. This was the first time they had made an extended trip, and the drawing of lots had given Bob the chance to drive the auto, with the result that he nearly came to grief when the dog unexpectedly ran across the road. For about half an hour the three chums and Andy rested in the shade. It was a pleasant fall afternoon, and though the sun was warm there was a cool breeze. "Whose turn to crank her up?" asked Bob, for, of course, it could not be expected of him, in charge of the steering wheel, to start the engine. "I guess it's mine," came from Ned, with a sort of groan. His arm still ached from the previous turning of the flywheel. "I'll do it--lots of fun--first time I ever had a chance--let me--good for my muscle--whoop!" exclaimed Andy, bustling from the car. "Oh, it's good for your muscle, all right enough," observed Ned. "Go on, I'll not stop you." It was harder work than Andy had anticipated, but he managed to give the crank a few turns and spin the heavy flywheel around. Bob switched on the spark, turned the gasolene into the cylinders, and soon there was a throbbing that told the engine had started. Andy jumped to one side and nearly toppled over. "Did you think I'd run you down?" asked Bob. "I don't know anything about autos," answered Andy. "She can't go until I connect the speed-gears," explained Bob, with something of a superior air. "Hop in, Andy!" Andy climbed back to his rear seat, Bob threw the lever forward to first speed, and the car, moving slowly at first, but with increasing swiftness, started down the road. "Look out for dogs!" advised Ned. "We don't want roast chicken for supper, so you needn't bother to kill any," came from Jerry. "I can steer as good as either of you," exclaimed the stout lad. "You nearly hit a man the other day, Jerry, and I guess you've forgotten, Ned, how you broke down one of Mr. Smith's shade trees. I'm not as bad as that." Honk! honk! sounded down the road in the rear of the boys. "Here comes another auto," said Jerry. "Keep over to one side, Bob." Honk! honk! This time it was Bob who blew his horn to let the oncomers know some one was ahead of them. The noise of the approaching car sounded nearer. "Better keep well over, Chunky," advised Ned. "I'm not going to give 'em more than half the road," answered Bob, firmly. "If they want a race they can have it, too." He threw the third-speed clutch into place, and the boys' car shot ahead so suddenly that Andy was nearly toppled out of his seat. The red auto dashed down the road. Behind it, at a swift pace, there came a big, green affair, almost twice the size of the Cresville machine. It was going at a great pace, a lone man occupying the steering seat, and no one being in back. As the green car shot past the red one, the solitary rider gave three toots to his horn. Bob answered, and then, before the other boys could stop him he advanced his spark, turned on more gasolene, and was away after the green dragon like a streak of red fire. "What are you going to do?" yelled Ned. "See if I can beat him!" exclaimed Bob. "You're crazy! That's a ninety horse-power car and ours is only forty!" "I'm going to try," repeated Bob, between his clenched teeth. It looked like a hopeless undertaking. The green car was a quarter of a mile ahead before Bob could get his machine speeded up. When he did, however, the new auto ran along swiftly and easily. Bob shut off his power temporarily and then, with a quick yank, pulled the lever to full speed ahead. Then he turned on the spark and gasolene. The red auto seemed to double its already swift motion. The car swayed from side to side, and the boys, except Bob, who had a firm grip of the wheel, were bounced up into the air, again and again. Bob had on big goggles, and, with head bent low, was watching the road like a hawk ready to pounce on a chicken. "We're gaining on him!" he muttered, and he tooted the horn. Back a faint, answering blast came. Indeed, it was evident that the red auto, though a smaller and less powerful machine, was creeping up on its rival. The lone chauffeur glanced back, saw the pursuing car, and turned on full power. For a few moments he increased his lead. But Bob advanced his spark further, and turned on a trifle more of gasolene. The red auto once more leaped forward. "We've got him!" cried Bob. "He can't get another inch out of his, and I haven't used the accelerator pedal yet. We'll beat him!" "If we don't all break our necks!" exclaimed Jerry, holding to his seat. "Terrible fast--takes your breath--shakes the liver-pin out of you--loosens all your teeth--great sport--smash the machine--never say die--don't give up the ship--whoop!" yelled Andy, as he slid down to the bottom of the car, unable any longer to remain upright. Slowly the red car crept up on the green one. The dust arose in clouds about both machines. The autos swayed from the terrific speed, but Bob held the wheel firm and was ready to shut off power and apply the emergency brake in a second. The man in front again glanced back, and did not seem to relish being passed by mere boys in a smaller car than his. He was making desperate efforts to draw away. The distance between the machines lessened. Bob was watching his opportunity. "Now we've got him!" he cried. "Here we go!" He pushed down the accelerator pedal, used only to give a momentary burst of speed. The red car shot forward and the front wheels almost lapped the rear ones of the machine in the lead. There was a slight turn to the road, just where Bob had decided to pass his rival. A clump of trees hid the view, excepting for a short distance ahead. Just as the boys' auto was on the point of making the turn and passing the green one, Ned glanced up and gave a shout of terror. Right in front was a load of hay, overturned in the road, and both cars, at full speed, were dashing straight for it! CHAPTER II. HO FOR THE WEST! "Put on the brake!" yelled Ned. "Shut off the power!" shouted Jerry. A frightened cry came from the farmer whose load of fodder had overturned in the road. He was unhitching his horses, and jumped to one side as he saw two big autos bearing down on him. "You're in for a spill, lads!" called the man in the green car. At that instant he applied his emergency brake and shut off the power. His car came to such a sudden stop that he was thrown from his seat, high into the air. Bob seemed unable, from the very terror of fright, to make a move to stop the auto he was steering, and clung to the wheel like grim death. "Put on the brake!" yelled Ned again. "We'll be killed!" The load of hay was not ten feet in advance. Bob gave the wheel a sudden twist. The red car shot to one side, out into a ditch along the road. It skidded on two wheels, the boys were nearly thrown out, and bounced high in the air. With another quick twist, Bob sent the car straight ahead. Then another turn of the wheel and he was back in the road again! He had passed the obstruction, going between it and the green auto, and had reached the highway in safety after as daring a bit of steering as ever a boy undertook. Then he shut off the power and applied the brakes hard, the car coming to a stop with a groan and screech as the emergency band gripped the axle. "Whew! That was a close shave!" came from Jerry, as he drew a long breath. "A little too near for comfort!" was Ned's opinion. "Bet your life!" was all Andy could say, his rapid fire of words failing to discharge this time. "I thought it was the only thing to do," remarked the stout steersman. "I was afraid to stop too suddenly, and I figured we just had room enough to get through. But I wouldn't do it again." "Speaking of sudden stops, I wonder what has become of the man in the green car?" spoke Jerry. "We must go back and find out." The four lads leaped from their machine and ran back past the load of hay. The farmer was rapidly walking about in a circle, wringing his hands and crying: "He's killed! He's killed! I know he is!" With rather anxious hearts the boys hurried around to the other side of the big pile of dried grass. As they reached the place they saw a man attired in an automobile suit, with big goggles on, wiggle out from the mass of hay. He pulled several wisps from his hair and then saw the boys. "Did you shoot right through the pile and come out on the other side?" he asked. "We ran around it," explained Bob. "We beat you," he added, not without pride. "So I see. It came pretty near being the end of all of us. You're a plucky lad. I don't mind being beaten by you. I thought I had a good car, but yours is better." "Ours is much lighter; I guess that's why we went ahead," returned Jerry, willing to concede something to a vanquished rival. "But are you hurt?" The man carefully felt of different parts of his body. Then he took off his goggles and looked over as much as he could see of himself. "I don't seem to be," he said, finally, with a laugh. "It was like falling into a feather bed to land in that hay-pile the way I did. That's all that saved me. I wonder how my machine stood the emergency brake." He examined his car carefully, and was apparently satisfied that no injury had been done by the sudden stopping of it. "Where is he?" asked the farmer, suddenly appearing from behind the hay. "Is he dead?" And then he seemed to realize his error and joined in the laugh that followed. "No, I'm not dead yet," replied the owner of the green car. "Well," he went on, "I must be going. Are you boys coming along? If you are, no more races." "We'll have to go back to Cresville," answered Bob. "We promised to return for supper." The man bade the boys good-by and soon the big, green dragon was throbbing down the road in a cloud of dust. The boys, finding they could not help the farmer in his trouble, got in their machine and, promising to send help from the first farmhouse they passed, they left the owner of the hay and were soon speeding toward Cresville. "Isn't this glorious!" exclaimed Jerry, as the auto sped along. "I wish we could take a long trip." "Why can't we?" asked Ned. "We talked of a tour when we found we had a chance to get a car," put in Chunky. "I for one would like to go out West." "Ho for the West!" piped up Andy. "Over the plains--herds of cattle--cowboys in chase--rattlesnakes and horned toads--sandy deserts--Indians--bang! Shoot 'em up! Lots of excitement--take me along--whoop!" "Easy!" pleaded Jerry. "One thing at a time, Andy. Haven't we had excitement enough for one day?" "We ought to make a strike to go on a western trip, though," spoke Ned, in serious tones. "Here we have a car that we could cross the continent in. Let's speak about it at home. It can't do any harm. Maybe the folks will let us go." "It's worth trying for," said Jerry. "What do you say, Chunky?" "I'm with you," replied Bob. "It will be the best sport ever. But wouldn't we have to wait until next spring? It's fall, and if we go West it may be very cold, with lots of snow soon." "We can bear off to the south," said Jerry. "Sure enough," agreed Chunky. That night, when the automobile had been safely put away in the barn at Bob's house, three anxious boys broached the subject to their respective parents. So insistent were they that it was not long before a general council was arranged. Mrs. Hopkins and Mr. Slade were induced to call at Mr. Baker's house, where, with the three boys, the whole subject was gone over. "I'm afraid it's too much of an undertaking," said Mr. Baker. "That's my idea," agreed Mr. Slade, and Mrs. Hopkins nodded to indicate that that was her view. The boys set up a chorus of pleadings. The parents had many objections. The distance was too great, the boys did not know enough about automobiles, they would lose their way and break down far from help. In fact, so many negative reasons were given that it looked as if the plan would not go through. "Will you please wait ten minutes before you make a final decision?" asked Jerry, appealing to the trio of parents. They agreed, wondering what he was about to do. Jerry got his hat and hurried from Mr. Baker's house. In a little while he returned, all out of breath. "He'll be here in five minutes," said the boy. "Who?" asked Mr. Slade. "Mr. Wakefield." Jerry referred to Horace Wakefield, an instructor at the Athletic Club, who was quite a friend of the boys, and who himself had recently purchased an automobile. He lived near Mr. Baker. "What's all this I hear about a trip to the West these boys are going to take?" asked Mr. Wakefield, a few minutes later, coming into the parlor where the conference was going on. "You mean the trip they think they are going to take," corrected Mr. Slade, with a laugh. "I suppose Jerry told you it was all settled." "To be honest, he wanted me to come over and settle it for him and his chums," replied the instructor. "He said there was some doubt about the feasibility of making the trip." Mr. Baker explained how matters stood. He and the other parents were willing the boys should have a good time, he said, but did not want them to run into danger. "Do you think they could make a trip away out West in their car?" asked Mr. Baker. "From what I know of the boys, and from the build of their car, I have no doubt it could be done with perfect safety, as far as ordinary conditions are concerned," said Mr. Wakefield. "Of course, there will be some few troubles, but none that cannot be overcome with a little work. I think the trip is perfectly possible. In fact, you know, autos have gone clear across the continent." "Then you think we ought to let the boys go?" asked Mr. Slade. "I--think--you--ought to," replied the instructor, with purposed deliberateness, smiling at the anxious lads. "Hurrah!" yelled Bob, forgetting that he was in the house. "Lucky I thought to go and get him," spoke Jerry to Ned. "I might add," went on Mr. Wakefield, "that I am going to make a trip as far as Chicago. If you decide to let the boys go, they could accompany me that far, at least. It would be a good experience for them." "Oh, dad! Please let us go!" pleaded Bob. "Yes, yes!" chimed in Jerry and Ned. There was a moment of silence, while the parents were gravely considering the matter. During it the boys could almost hear the beating of their own hearts. "Well," began Mr. Baker, "I'm willing, if the rest of you are." "I suppose I may as well say yes," spoke Mr. Slade. "Then the only thing left for me to do is to agree with the majority," said Mrs. Hopkins, with a laugh. "Westward ho!" fairly shouted Bob, and he began to do an impromptu jig until his father stopped him. "We'll take Andy Rush along," said Ned, "and we'll start the first of the week!" "Hark! What was that?" asked Mr. Baker, suddenly. Out on the night air sounded an alarm. "Fire! Fire! Fire!" CHAPTER III. THE OLD MILL ON FIRE. They all rushed to windows and looked out into the night. Off to the north a dull red glare lighted the sky. "What is it?" asked Mr. Baker. "I can't see from here," replied Jerry. "Come on, fellows! Let's go!" exclaimed Ned. He started for the door. "Take the auto," suggested Bob. "No telling how far off it is." The next instant the three boys were in the automobile shed, getting the machine ready for a start. The red glow in the sky increased. People began running past on their way to the fire. There was a clatter and bang, a ringing of bells, and the one engine the town possessed, in all the glory of its brass and nickel plate, rushed past, as fast as the horses could drag it. The hose-cart followed. "Hurry up or we'll miss the fun!" cried Ned to Bob, who was cranking the auto. Somehow, Chunky could not get the engine started. At last he succeeded and the boys climbed to their seats. "It's my turn to steer!" cried Jerry, and no one disputed him. He ran the car out of the side path, past the Baker home. On the stoop stood Mr. Slade, Mrs. Hopkins and Mr. Baker, watching the fire. "Want to come along?" asked Ned. "Let's go," exclaimed Mr. Slade, and he and Mr. Baker got their hats and were soon in the rear seat with Ned. Mrs. Hopkins, with a laugh, declined the trip. Jerry speeded the car ahead and soon was chugging on toward the fire, which was some distance outside of town. On the road the automobilists passed scores of men and boys who were running at top speed. In their excitement many were yelling at the top of their voices. "Where is it?" asked Bob of a group of boys. "The old windmill!" was the answer. "The place where we found the box Noddy Nixon stole from Mr. Judson!" cried Jerry, turning to his companions. "Queer, isn't it?" "Maybe he got his toady, Jack Pender, to set the place afire so nothing would ever come out about it," suggested Bob. "Hardly," ventured Jerry. "But what's the trouble up ahead?" In advance could be seen quite a crowd of people in a group about some object. Just then came a long-drawn-out whistle of a steam engine. "The fire apparatus is stuck!" cried Ned. "The horses can't pull it!" "I always thought that machine was too heavy for two horses," said Mr. Slade. The auto soon came up to the scene of the trouble. The fire-engine had sunk deep down in a rut of the road and, pull as they did, the horses could not budge it. "Lay hold of the wheels, boys!" called the driver of the apparatus. "Everybody give a hand!" Willingly enough the crowd tried to aid. But the roads were soft and the engine was heavy. It seemed bound to stick fast. "Hold on!" cried Jerry. "Let us through, will you? I have an idea!" The crowd parted, the attention of the men and boys being attracted from the stranded engine. "What are you going to do?" asked Mr. Baker. "Give 'em a lift," replied Jerry. "I say, have you a rope?" the boy called to the driver of the steamer. "Yes!" was the reply. "But we need more than a rope to get out of here." "No, you don't! I'll show you!" shouted Jerry. He had brought the machine to a halt by throwing out the gear, but did not stop the gasolene engine. He quickly fastened the rope to the rear axle of the auto. "Now tie the other end to the engine and we'll pull you to the fire," the boy said. The driver saw the feasibility of the scheme at once. He unhitched the straining horses, attached the cable to the pole and gave the word. Jerry threw on the clutch, there was a tightening of the rope and slowly but surely the engine was dragged from the mud hole. Then, once on solid ground, Jerry put on more speed, and, amid the cheers of the crowd, he started off at a swift pace, dragging the engine to the fire. The hose-cart had gone on ahead and was waiting for the steamer. Power was soon up in the apparatus, and soon two streams were directed toward the mill, which was now a mass of flames. There was no chance of saving it, such a start had the fire gained, and, in fact, the loss would be small if it burned down, but the fire company could not let slip a chance of going to the blaze. So the crew continued to squirt water, though most of it did little good. However, there was plenty of excitement, which suited the boys. Those in the auto watched the old mill gradually being consumed. To the boys it brought a recollection of the time they had there made the final discovery of Noddy Nixon's villainy, and had practically forced him to admit his guilt. At last the roof fell in, with a big shower of sparks, and the fire was practically out, though the steamer continued to pump water. "Let's go home," suggested Mr. Baker. "We've seen enough." "Oh, stay a while longer!" pleaded his son. "It's a fine moonlight night and it will be fun going home later." "You boys can stay if you like," said the banker, "but home's the place for me, eh, Mr. Slade?" The merchant agreed. So Jerry turned the auto toward Cresville and made a quick run, leaving Mr. Baker and Mr. Slade at their respective homes, and then he and the boys came back in the machine to the fire. They found most of the crowd gone, and the engine about to return to quarters. "Do you want us to trail along and pull you again if you get stuck?" asked Bob of the engineer. "Well, you might come in handy," was the answer. "We're much obliged to you, boys." "Glad we were on deck," said Jerry. "However, I guess you will not need us again," and he sent the auto ahead at a good speed. "We'll take a little ride before we go home," he added to his chums. It was a bright moonlight night, rather warm for the close of September, and the road was a fairly good one, so the boys skimmed along, their thoughts on the western trip they were soon to make. For several miles they kept on. Suddenly Jerry yanked the levers and put on the brakes. "What's the matter?" asked Bob, as the auto came to a stop. "There," replied Jerry, pointing ahead. The boys looked and saw, a little in advance, a tumble-down hut, from the window of which a light gleamed. "That's queer," observed Jerry. "What is, to see a light in a hut?" asked Bob. "No; but in that particular one," replied Jerry. "I came past there day before yesterday and I noticed that the place is almost ready to fall apart. No one can be living in it, and any one who is there at night with a light is there for no good purpose." "Let's take a look," suggested Bob. Jerry shut off the power, took out the spark plug and the boys advanced cautiously, leaving the machine on one side of the road. "Maybe there are tramps in there who won't like being spied on," said Ned. "Don't make any noise," was Jerry's answer. "Be ready to run when I give the word." On tiptoes the boys drew near the hut. Suddenly Bob grabbed Jerry by the arm. "What is it?" asked Jerry. "Smell that?" "Acetylene gas! Some one has been here with a gas lamp, and within a few minutes," agreed Jerry, sniffing the peculiar odor. "Isn't that a motor cycle leaning against the building?" asked Ned. "Sure enough!" said Jerry. "Go slow, boys." Walking like cats, they reached the window from which the light streamed. As they glanced inside they saw a sight that startled them. Lying on a pile of rags in one corner of the bare room, in the glare of a candle, was an old man, with matted and unkempt hair and beard. His face showed pain and suffering. His clothes were old and ragged. But what attracted the attention of the boys was the fact that he wore about his waist a wide leather belt, with several compartments or pockets in it. The pockets were open and in them, as well as scattered on the floor in front of the man, were little piles of yellow, gleaming gold. "He's a miner!" whispered Bob, hoarsely. As the boys watched they heard the old man moan: "Don't rob me! Don't take what little I have left! If I wasn't sick and suffering no one would dare play this trick on Jim Nestor!" The next instant the boys heard a sound from the farther corner of the room. Out of the semi-darkness came a figure. It stooped over the old miner. There was the sound of a blow, a deep groan--and then came darkness as the candle was extinguished. Some one ran rapidly from the hut. "Help! help!" called the miner, feebly. "Help! He's robbed me!" CHAPTER IV. A CHASE AFTER A RASCAL. "After him!" cried Jerry. "Catch the miserable thief!" "You and Bob chase him, whoever he is!" called Ned. "I'll stay with the old miner here in the hut. He may be badly hurt." "Hurry back to the auto!" shouted Jerry. "We can catch the thief in that." As he spoke he looked ahead. A dark figure crossed the patch of moonlight in the rear of the hut. Then came a sound of a motor-cycle being started, and soon the chug-chug of the machine on the road told that the thief was escaping that way. Jerry and Bob ran to the auto. In a trice Jerry had the engine cranked up. Bob jumped in, followed by his companion, and they put off down the road after the fleeing motor-cyclist, whom the moonlight plainly revealed. "He can't get away from us!" exclaimed Jerry. "We will overhaul him in a jiffy!" But Jerry reckoned without knowing who he was after. He did not dare put on full speed, while the cyclist rashly had his machine going as fast as the explosions could follow one after the other. Besides, the thief had a good start with his light apparatus. But Jerry determined to make the capture. He threw in the second speed gear and in a little while had lessened the distance between the auto and the motor-cycle. "I wonder who it is?" asked Bob. "Maybe we can tell," answered his chum. Jerry switched on the searchlight in the front of the auto. A dazzling pencil of illumination shot down the road. In the white glare the figure of the motorist stood out sharply, and the red motor he rode could be plainly seen. At the sight both boys gave a start. "Jack Pender!" exclaimed Bob. "As sure as guns!" cried Jerry. "We must catch him!" He was about to take chances and put on the third gear, when Pender, on his cycle, suddenly turned from the main road, and took a path leading through the fields. "That ends it!" exclaimed Jerry. "No use trying to follow him. Our auto isn't built for 'cross-country riding." He slowed up, turned around, and, with a last glance in the direction Noddy Nixon's former toady and friend had taken, sent the car back toward the lonely hut. Meanwhile, Ned, after his companions had started on the chase, had struck a match and lighted the candle in the cabin. He found the old miner, for such the boys correctly guessed him to be, lying unconscious in a corner. The belt, with the gold-dust was gone, though a few grains of the precious metal were scattered over the floor. Ned found a pail of water in the place. He bathed the old man's head and poured some of the fluid down his throat. "Where am I? What happened?" asked the old man, opening his eyes. Then he passed his hand over his head. His fingers were stained with blood. "You're all right," spoke Ned. "I'll take care of you. What's your name and where did you come from?" "Don't let him rob me!" pleaded the old miner. "I have only a little gold, but I need it. I know where there is more, much more. I'll tell you, only don't hit me again. I'm sick, please don't strike poor Jim Nestor!" "No one is going to hurt you," said Ned, in soothing tones, but the old man did not seem to comprehend. Ned felt of the miner's head, and found he had a bad cut on the back. He washed it off with some water and bound his handkerchief around it. This seemed to ease the old man, and he sank into a doze. "Well, of all the queer adventures, this is about the limit," spoke Ned, to himself. The boy glanced about the hut. There was nothing to throw any light on the strange happenings. The candle flickered in the draught from the open door, and cast weird shadows. The man breathed like a person in distress. Ned was about to bathe the wounded man's head again, when the sound of the automobile returning was heard. "What luck?" asked Ned, running to the door. "Did you get him?" Whereupon Jerry told of the fruitless chase after Jack Pender. The three boys entered the hut, and Ned told his chums what he had done to relieve the miner. "He's got a bad wound on the head," he went on. "I guess Pender must have hit him. Jack probably came this way, saw the old man in here sick, and unable to help himself, and watched his chance to rob him. There must have been considerable gold-dust in that belt." Jerry stooped down and gathered a little from the floor. "There is some mystery here," he said. "I think we had better get a doctor for the old miner. After he gets better he may talk. I'd like to get my hands on Pender for a little while." "So would I," chorused Ned and Bob. "The question is, shall we take the old man back in the auto with us, or run back to town and bring out a doctor?" went on Jerry. "I think we'd better go get a doctor and fetch him here," was Ned's opinion. "It might injure the old man to move him." This was voted the best plan. They made the unconscious miner as comfortable as possible on the bed of rags, placed the pail of water where he could reach it, and prepared to run back to town. Ned volunteered to stay with the miner until they returned, but Jerry advised against it, as the hut was on a lonely road. It did not take long to reach Cresville. Dr. Morrison was routed out of bed by the boys, and agreed to return with them in the auto, when the case had been explained to him. "Just wait until I get dressed," he said, "and pack up some instruments and I'll be with you." While waiting, Jerry examined the auto to see that there was plenty of water and gasolene in the tanks. He found everything all right. While Dr. Morrison was making ready to relieve the sufferings of the miner in the hut, Jack Pender, on his motor-cycle, was still speeding on, to get as far away as possible from those in pursuit of him. When he turned from the road and cut across lots he thought very likely that the auto would not follow. But he was taking no chances, and, when he emerged into the highway again, about a mile farther on, he still ran his machine at full speed. "That was a close call!" he exclaimed. "Who would ever have thought that those boys, the same ones who made all the trouble for Noddy, would be after me! I escaped just in time. I hope I didn't kill the old man, though it was a hard blow I struck him!" Pender slowed down his machine and listened. No sound of pursuit came to him on the quiet night air. He stopped alongside of the road, under a big oak tree. "Guess I'll light up and see how I made out," he said to himself. He lighted his acetylene lamp and, standing in the glare of it, drew from his pocket the belt he had stolen from the old miner. "Feels heavy," he muttered. "Ought to be plenty of gold in it. Well, I need the money if I am to join Noddy. I must read his letter again." He pulled out a sheet of paper and began glancing over it. "Dated New York," he said. "He says he's having lots of fun and no end of larks with Bill Berry. I don't care much for Bill, myself. He never was any good around town, and he's a desperate man. Hum! let's see!" He turned to the letter again. "'Come and join me, Jack. We'll go West and have a good time. Bring some money.' Well, I've got the money, all right. Now to start West. I'll ride the motor as far as the depot and take a train." Replacing the letter and the belt of gold in his pockets, Pender remounted his machine and started off down the road, dark shadows from the trees soon hiding him. It was just about this time that Dr. Morrison had completed his preparations to visit the injured miner. The physician took a seat in the auto beside Bob, Ned and Jerry being in front, the latter steering. "Now, don't go too fast," cautioned the doctor to Jerry. "You know I'm an old-fashioned man, and not used to making professional visits any faster than my horse, old Dobbins, can take me. I don't want an upset." Jerry promised to be cautious. The moon had begun to go down, and it was no easy task steering along the shadowy road, but the boy managed it, and soon the deserted hut was reached. "Now to see what sort of a case I have," spoke the doctor. "I'll bring one of the oil lamps," said Jerry, unfastening a lantern from the dashboard, after stopping the automobile engine. "You can see to work by it." The boys and Dr. Morrison entered the hut. Jerry held the lamp up high to illuminate the place. "Now I'm ready," announced the physician. "Where is the patient?" and he opened his medical case. In wonderment the boys gazed around the hut. To their astonishment, there was not the slightest sign of the wounded miner. He had disappeared! CHAPTER V. THE MYSTERY OF THE MINER. "He's gone!" exclaimed Ned. "Are you sure he was here?" inquired the physician. Of that the boys had not the slightest doubt, and they speedily convinced the medical man. The lantern was flashed in every corner of the hut, but there was not a sign of the miner. "It's rather queer," commented Dr. Morrison, when he had listened to the details the boys gave him. "Do you suppose some one came and carried him off?" asked Bob. "More likely he was not as badly hurt as you supposed," replied Dr. Morrison. "He may have been only stunned by a blow on the head. When he regained his senses he probably feared another attack, and so he hurried from the hut. Let me take the lamp." The physician flashed the lantern outside the door of the cabin, holding it close to the ground. "I thought so," he said. "See, there are a few grains of the gold-dust showing on the door sill, and here are more, farther along the path. The man has gone away, and has left a little golden trail." The physician attempted to follow it, but the yellow specks soon disappeared and there was no other clew. "Depend on it, he has run away in fear," said the doctor. "Rather disappointing, too. I believe he could tell a queer story. Who robbed him, I wonder?" "It was----" began Bob, but a nudge from Jerry stopped him. "We saw some one run from the hut," explained Jerry. "We gave chase in the automobile, but the fellow cut across lots and we couldn't follow." "I suppose I may as well go back," announced the doctor. "There is no use staying here. I don't believe the miner will return and solve the mystery for us." The auto was turned toward Cresville and a quick trip was made, the boys speculating among themselves on what might be revealed if the wounded man could be found. The physician was left at his home, and then the boys began thinking of their beds, as it was growing late. "Queer that both Noddy and Jack should turn thieves, isn't it?" remarked Jerry. "And that we should happen to be mixed up in both cases," put in Ned. "I wonder if we will meet either of them again." If the boys could have looked into the future they would have seen that they were destined to soon encounter Noddy and Jack, and under the strangest of circumstances. The auto was put away and three tired boys were soon snoring in their beds. They were up bright and early the next morning and in consultation about the proposed trip to Chicago. They called on Mr. Wakefield to learn his plans. He said he expected to start for the Windy City by way of New York, on Thursday. It was then Tuesday, and the boys realized that they had little time to spare in which to make their preparations. The three parents, who had somewhat reluctantly given their consent to the project, were soon almost as enthusiastic as the boys. Stocks of clothing were looked over, money matters were arranged, and the boys packed their dress-suit cases with what they thought would do them on the trip. They were each given a fairly liberal allowance of funds. Then the automobile was got ready. It was given a thorough overhauling, and an extra supply of tools, together with a full new set of tires, was provided. Andy Rush was told to prepare to go, it having been decided to take him as far as New York or Chicago, he having relatives in both cities. At last the time came to start. It was a fine, crisp September morning, and the boys were up early enough to see the sun rise. The suit-cases had been strapped to the machine, tires were pumped up, there was plenty of water and gasolene in the tanks, the batteries were renewed, and every bit of machinery had been gone over carefully. Andy Rush, the night previous, had sent his things over to Bob's house, from whence the trip was to be begun. Andy himself arrived right after breakfast. "Hurrah!" he shouted. "Here we go--all aboard--blow the horn--get out of the way--turn on the gasolene--off brakes--break the records--mile a minute--whoop!" "You'll have all the excitement you want for once, I hope, Andy," said Jerry. "Betcherlife!" exclaimed Andy, in one breath. The boys piled into the auto; good-byes were called, over and over again. Then came a toot of a horn as Mr. Wakefield came up the road in his machine, a friend, who intended making the trip, accompanying him. "All ready, boys?" he called. "All ready!" replied Jerry, who was going to steer for the first stage. With a blaring of the automobile trumpets, a waving of hands from those who had gathered to see the start, and a chorus of cries, wishing every one good luck, the little party rode away. Mr. Wakefield, who knew the road better than did the boys, took the lead. His car was of the same pattern as theirs and both machines were of equal speed. For several miles the two autos puffed along over the pleasant country roads. No attempt to make time was tried, and at noon the travelers found themselves in Providence, Rhode Island, that being the first stopping place Mr. Wakefield had decided on. The machines were run up in front of a quiet but good hotel, and every one was hungry enough to do full justice to the meal. "How do you boys like it?" asked Mr. Wakefield at the table. "Do you think you can stand it as far as Chicago?" They were all sure they could run the machine to San Francisco, if necessary, and Mr. Wakefield and his friend laughed at their enthusiasm. "We have come about seventy miles without a mishap," said Mr. Wakefield, "but there are many miles ahead of us yet." After a short rest the journey was again taken up, and throughout the afternoon the autos were speeded along. The way was through a pleasant country, and the boys enjoyed the scenery and fresh air. Several times they stopped at farmhouses to get drinks of cold milk, and once a motherly-looking woman filled the boys' pockets with newly baked doughnuts that were delicious. "We'll spend the night in Norwich, Conn.," said Mr. Wakefield, when the two autos were ready to start, after a momentary stop at a farmhouse. "Norwich--Norwich! I know Norwich!" exclaimed Andy. "I saw it in a book once--years ago--I was a little fellow--man in the moon came down too soon to inquire the way to Norwich--went by the south--burnt his mouth--eating cold bean porridge!" "You remember your nursery rhymes well," said Mr. Wakefield, with a laugh, in which all joined. On and on chugged the autos. The afternoon waned to dusk and frequent signboards told that the distance from Norwich was constantly lessening. Mr. Wakefield was about half a mile in advance, on a straight, level road. Suddenly came a sound as of a pistol shot. "Tire busted!" exclaimed Jerry, shutting off the power. Mr. Wakefield heard the noise and turned back. "Accident?" he inquired. Jerry explained that one of their inner tubes had blown out. "Want any help?" asked the athletic instructor. "We may as well begin now as any other time to mend our own breaks," spoke Jerry. "You go ahead. We'll catch up to you soon." "All right," said Mr. Wakefield. He felt that it would be a good thing to accustom the boys to depend on themselves. So, telling them that the road to Norwich was now a straight one, and that the town was about ten miles off, he left them to their own devices. The boys started in on the not very easy task of taking off the heavy outer shoe and inserting a new inner tube, of which they carried a supply. It finally became so dark that they had to light the lamps to see to work. At length they were finished and the tools were put away. The new tire was pumped up and the engine started. The boys took their seats, and, at Bob's request, he was allowed to steer. "Go slow at first," advised Jerry, "until we see how the new tube holds." Bob started off at first speed. It was now quite dark, but the oil and acetylene lamps gave a good light. All at once Bob, who was peering ahead, shut off the power with a jerk and put the brakes on hard. "What's the matter?" asked Jerry. "Something in the road," replied the steersman, pointing to a dark object. The next instant three figures loomed up in the glare of the auto lamps. "Climb out of that gasolene gig!" exclaimed a rough voice. "We're hard up an' we need help!" CHAPTER VI. A HOLD-UP. "Who are you?" asked Jerry, boldly. "Never mind who we are!" exclaimed the same voice. "Just git out of that choo-choo wagon an' hand over what spare change you have." "Is this a hold-up?" demanded Ned. "If it isn't it's a good imitation of one," was the answer, accompanied by a laugh. "Come, now! Look lively!" One of the men came around to the side of the auto and grabbed Bob by the arm. At the same time another of the tramp trio attempted to seize Jerry. Ned was in the rear seat. "Let go of me!" exclaimed Jerry, striking at the man who had climbed up on the step of the machine. The boy's blow fell on the man's arm. "Oh, that's your game, is it?" cried the ruffian. He drew back his fist as though to fell Jerry. "Help! help!" yelled Bob. He was being pulled from the car by the tramp who had grabbed him. It looked bad for the Motor Boys. Ned sprang up from the rear. He had been fumbling in a valise on the floor of the tonneau. He leaned forward over the front seat. In each hand he held some object, bright and shining, and he aimed them full in the faces of the two tramps on either side of the auto. "Take that!" Ned cried. [Illustration: "TAKE THAT!" NED CRIED.] There was a sharp, hissing sound, a click, and the air was filled with a pungent odor. "I'm killed! He's blinded me!" yelled the tramp, who had grabbed Bob. "Oh! oh! My head is blown off!" yelled the other ruffian. Both of them toppled from the steps of the auto and rolled over and over in the road, screaming with pain and fright. "And there's one for you!" shouted Ned, taking aim at the tramp in front of the machine, and once more the hissing sound was heard. "Wow!" cried the fellow, and, whirling around, he dashed off, full speed, down the road. "Bully for you! Hit 'em again--knock 'em out--smash--bang--never say die--hear 'em yell--do it again--siss--boom--ah! Whoop!" cried Andy, standing on the seat and waving his cap. The two tramps who had fallen to the road got up, and, still yelling in pain, followed their companion. "Start off!" exclaimed Ned to Bob. "I guess they won't bother us again very soon." "What in the world did you do to them?" asked Jerry. "Used an ammonia squirt-gun on each one," said Ned. He showed the boys two affairs that looked like small revolvers, only the ammunition was liquid spirits of ammonia, quite strong, contained in a rubber bulb in the handle. By pressing the bulb a fine stream of ammonia could be shot for quite a distance. "I saw 'em advertised in a magazine," said Ned. "They were just the things for vicious dogs and men, it said, for they blind a person temporarily and make his face smart like sixty, but no permanent injury is done. I had 'em in my valise and I just happened to think of them when those chaps held us up." "Lucky you did," commented Jerry. "I thought we were surely going to be robbed." "I guess they thought they were killed when they felt that ammonia," said Bob. "Ned, you're all right, that's what you are!" he finished, heartily. "I guess we'd better move along, or Mr. Wakefield may be worried about us," suggested Jerry. So Bob threw the gear into place and the machine moved away. No further sign of the tramps was seen, and the boys reached Norwich without further incident. They found the hotel Mr. Wakefield had arranged to meet them at, and soon were eating a good supper. The adventure with the tramps was related, and Mr. Wakefield congratulated the boys on their pluck. An early start was had next morning and good progress was made, so that by noon the travelers were in Waterbury, Conn., where dinner was eaten. Mr. Wakefield said that by swift traveling New York could be reached late that night, but he did not advise it. Instead, the night was spent in Danbury. By noon the next day more than half the distance between their last stopping place and New York had been covered, and late that afternoon found the two autos speeding down Riverside Drive, leading to the metropolis. Not an accident had occurred since the hold-up by the tramps and the blowing out of the tire on the boys' auto, and each one was congratulating himself that the trip was being made under the best of luck. The travelers were about opposite Grant's tomb, and were moving along slowly, when suddenly, with a noise like a shot, one of Mr. Wakefield's tires burst. A young woman, driving a spirited horse, was passing his auto at the time, and the animal, taking fright, took the bit in his teeth and bolted. The young woman screamed in fright, lost her hold on the reins and clung desperately to the seat. There were no vehicles on the drive in that vicinity just then, excepting the two autos and the runaway. "Quick!" cried Mr. Wakefield to the boys, as he brought his machine to a stop. "Take after her! There may be an accident! I can't go on until I mend this break!" Ned was steering, and made a turn. Like a flash he threw on the third gear and the auto sprang forward like an unleashed hound. Bob, Andy and Jerry clung to the seats, while Ned steered the machine after the runaway horse. The animal was now galloping at top speed, but the auto was creeping up on him. It made scarcely a sound, only a purring as the cylinders exploded, one after another. "What are you going to do?" asked Jerry. "Go close enough so one of us can jump in the carriage?" "Watch!" was all Ned replied. Faster and faster went the auto. At length it passed the galloping steed, and the boys could see the young woman clinging in desperation to the seat. Then, as Ned steered the machine ahead of the horse, the boys saw what his plan was. The animal was now directly behind the auto, coming on like the wind. Ned gave one glance back. Then he quickly threw the gears to first speed. So quickly was it done that the horse nearly rammed his nose into the rear of the tonneau. The animal did not think of dashing to one side and so passing the car. Instead he kept his place behind it. Then Ned shut off the power and allowed the machine to drift along. The horse, seeing the obstruction continually in front of him, gradually reduced his speed, and finally, when the auto came to a stop, the animal did likewise. Jerry jumped from his seat and, running back, grasped the bridle. He spoke soothingly to the animal, and soon had him quieted. The young woman, pale and trembling, regained her composure. "I'm so much obliged to you," she said. "Really, I don't know what possessed Dexter. He never was frightened at autos before. I'm a little ashamed of myself, too. I ought to have kept hold of the reins and I could have managed him." "Are you sure you will be all right now?" asked Jerry. "If not, one of us will go with you." "Oh, I can take care of him now," replied the lady. "Dexter will be all right. I thank you boys very much," she added, sweetly, and a moment later drove off. The boys turned the auto around and speeded back to where they had left Mr. Wakefield. He had repaired the break in the tire in the meanwhile and was ready to proceed. In a short time the travelers steered for the hotel, uptown, where Mr. Wakefield had engaged rooms for all. The machines were sent to a garage, and the boys prepared to wash up for supper. It was getting quite dark, and the electric lights in the streets were gleaming. Jerry was looking from the window of the sitting-room of the suite which the boys had on the third floor. Suddenly he gave a start and cried: "There he goes!" "Who?" asked Ned. "Noddy Nixon!" replied Jerry, dashing from the room. CHAPTER VII. A FRUITLESS PURSUIT. For a few seconds the other boys did not know whether Jerry was joking or in earnest. But when he did not return in a little while they knew he must have meant what he said. "I don't see anything of Noddy," spoke Ned, looking out of the window whence Jerry had spied their enemy. "It's getting too dark to see anything," said Bob. "Well, I guess if Jerry said he saw Noddy he meant it," put in Andy. "I hope he catches him and gives him a good thrashing!" "Well, boys," exclaimed Mr. Wakefield at that instant, entering their room, "are you all ready for supper?" "We are," answered Ned. "Where is Jerry?" asked the athletic instructor, looking around. "He went out for a little while," replied Ned, quickly, not wishing to state Jerry's real errand. "I guess he'll be back in a short time." "He doesn't know his way around New York; I hope he will not get lost," spoke Mr. Wakefield. "Trust Jerry to find his way back," said Ned. Then the party went down to supper without waiting for the missing member. Meanwhile, Jerry was in hot pursuit of Noddy. "I wonder what he is doing in New York?" thought Jerry, as he jumped into an elevator that was just going down, and got out on the ground floor. The boy ran out into the street and glanced in the direction he had seen Noddy taking. The thoroughfare was not crowded, and, though it was getting quite dark, Jerry caught a glimpse of Noddy's back. "I'll catch him and ask him what he meant about that note he wrote, threatening to get even with us," he thought, as he hurried on. Noddy had quite a start, and Jerry had some difficulty in getting close to him. He lost a little time at a street crossing, where there were a number of vehicles, and Noddy got farther ahead. Jerry broke into a run when he saw a passage, and hurried on. Noddy happened to glance back just as Jerry passed beneath an electric light, and seeing he was pursued, started forward at a rapid rate. The pursuit was getting hot. They had passed from a busy part of the city and were on a street containing only old buildings. There were less people, too, and Jerry had a good view of Noddy. Suddenly Noddy turned, shook his fist, and disappeared into a dilapidated tenement house, which he was in front of at the time. With a cry, Jerry bounded forward. As he entered the hallway he bumped into a roughly dressed man, as he could see by the dim light of a lamp suspended at the rear end of the passage. "Now, then, wot's all this rush about?" demanded the man. "I beg your pardon," said Jerry, halting. "Be you the doctor?" asked the man. "The doctor? No. Why?" "'Cause he's took bad, an' we've sent fer the doctor. I t'ought you was him." "Who's sick?" inquired the boy, forgetting for the moment what had brought him to the place. "He's an old miner. I don't know him, but he come to me, sick an' dead broke, an' I let him sleep in my room. He's off his trolley, I guess, but he says his name is Jim Nestor." "Jim Nestor!" exclaimed Jerry. He remembered that was the name of the miner in the hut, whom Pender had robbed. "That's the name he gave." "Off his trolley?" went on the youth, wondering what form of disease that was. "Yep. Nutty, you know; bug-house, wheels, crazy, if that suits you better." "Oh!" replied Jerry, understanding. "If you ain't the doc. no use of me wastin' my time on you," the man went on. "I'll have to chase out after one." "I saw the sign of a doctor's office a little way back on this street as I came along," volunteered the boy. "I'll go and stay with the man while you run there." "Bully for you!" said the man. "Some of the people in this house is afraid of him 'cause he talks in his sleep. You'll find him on the second floor front." Jerry went up. In a dimly lighted room he saw an old man lying on a bed, covered with ragged quilts. One glance showed Jerry that the man was the miner who had mysteriously disappeared from the hut when they sought to aid him. Suddenly the sick man opened his eyes. He looked sharply at Jerry and exclaimed: "Oh, you've come back, have you? Where is the boy who took my gold?" "He got away," explained Jerry, realizing that the sick man was in his right senses, for a time at least. "I remember you," went on the miner. "You and some other boys helped me after I was struck. You left me alone in the cabin. I was afraid the one who took my gold would come back, so I crawled out. The air made me feel better. I walked to the railroad, got on a freight train, and came here. Then I got sick again. "Gold! gold! gold!" exclaimed the miner, suddenly. "I see it all around. Millions and millions of it! There is gold for all of us! Do not rob me!" Jerry knew the man was wandering again. Just then the doctor came in and Jerry, after promising to come back, hurried around to the hotel, where he found his friends worried over his absence. He explained about his chase and the finding of the mysterious miner. "Did you catch Noddy?" asked Andy. "I forgot all about him when I saw Nestor," replied Jerry. "I guess Noddy got away, all right, probably out of a back door." "What are you going to do about the miner?" asked Mr. Wakefield, after supper. "I'd like to befriend him if we could," said Jerry. "He seems like an honest man." "I'll go around and see him," remarked the athletic instructor. "Perhaps we can arrange to do something for him." It was quite late that night when Mr. Wakefield returned from his visit to Jim Nestor. He found the boys up waiting for him. "It's a queer story," said Mr. Wakefield. "Part of it I want you to hear for yourselves from him, part I will tell you. It seems that James Nestor, which is his name, found quite a rich claim out in Arizona. He staked it out and, with some of the gold in his possession, came East to see if he could find a former partner he wanted to share in his good luck. "He reached Cresville and there he was taken sick. He went to the old hut, where you found him, and there, while he was helpless, some one, whom you boys know to be Jack Pender, came along and robbed him. "Nestor made his way to New York, after his mysterious disappearance from the hut, and he found poor but faithful friends in the tenement house." "What part of the story do you want him to tell us himself?" asked Ned. "About his claim--his gold mine," said Mr. Wakefield. "I would rather you get that from him direct." "Is he very sick?" asked Jerry. "The doctor thinks he will be around in a few days." "And what do you propose?" asked Bob, who could see that Mr. Wakefield had something on his mind. "I think if you boys are going to make a western trip you cannot do better than take this miner along with you," answered the gentleman. "I talked to him about it, after the doctor had given him some quieting medicine, and he said he would be glad of a chance to get out West." "Shall we wait here until he gets well?" asked Jerry. "My plan would be for you boys to make up his fare to Chicago," said Mr. Wakefield, "and let him join you there, say in a week. You can go by auto and he can go by train." This plan met with the approval of the three chums. They made up a purse for Jim Nestor and arranged for Mr. Wakefield to take it to the miner. The latter did so, and planned for the miner to come on to Chicago when he was well and strong. "The boys will put up at the Grand Hotel," said Mr. Wakefield, passing over the money, which was to be Nestor's fare to Chicago. "And I'll meet 'em there an' put 'em up against the greatest proposition they ever heard of," promised the miner. CHAPTER VIII. IN THE WINDY CITY. Five days later the automobile travelers were in Chicago. No serious accidents had occurred on the road, and they finished the first part of their trip in good shape. All the boys thought of was whether they would be allowed to proceed farther West. Andy Rush was obliged to leave them, for he had promised to visit a relative of his mother. He did not relish being separated from his chums. "Tough!" he exclaimed. "Wish I could go along--bully fun--shoot Indians--lasso the cowboys--kill the buffalos--ride a wild bull--break a bucking mustang--chase over the prairies--lots of sport--whoop!" "We'd like to have you come," said Jerry, "but your folks said you could go no farther, and we have agreed to leave you here and take Mr. Nestor. So we have to keep our word." Andy agreed that this was right, but the galvanic youth certainly did hate to part from his friends. The three chums put up at the Grand Hotel, and Mr. Wakefield, after some parting words of advice, left them, as he had some business to transact. He said he did not expect to see them again before he returned to Cresville, and wished them all sorts of good luck. "What's the first thing to do?" asked Bob, when the boys found themselves alone in their hotel rooms. "Wire home that we are safe and ask if we can go farther West," suggested Jerry. "But don't say anything about the miner. He may not show up, and they'll laugh at us if they find that we have been fooled." The wires were soon busy with messages from each of the three boys. A day of anxious waiting ensued. Then, on the second afternoon the bellboy brought three yellow envelopes to their rooms. With trembling fingers the boys tore the missives open. "Hurrah! I can go!" cried Jerry. "So can I!" exclaimed Ned. "Me, too!" put in Bob. The boys executed an impromptu war-dance in their delight. "Ho for the West and the gold mines!" cried Ned, trying to hug Jerry and Chunky at the same time and finding it was too much of a contract. There came a knock on the door. "I guess that's some one to tell us to stop our noise," remarked Jerry. "I thought you chaps were cutting up too rough." "As if he didn't make as much of the row as any of us!" exclaimed Ned. Bob opened the door. A well-dressed man, with iron-gray moustache and hair, entered. "Here I be!" he announced, "an' I see you boys are right on deck!" "I guess you've made a mistake," said Jerry, gently. "Ain't this the Grand Hotel, where I was to meet the boys that befriended old Jim Nestor?" the man asked. Then the boys saw it was their friend, the miner. But he had so changed in appearance, with a new suit of clothes, and with his hair and whiskers trimmed, that they did not recognize him. They greeted him heartily. "I got well quicker than I expected," went on Nestor, "an' I couldn't stand New York any longer. Mr. Wakefield left me a tidy sum. He grub-staked me, so to speak, an' I come West. Got a quick train an' made Chicago 'most as soon as you boys did in your auto wagon." "We're glad to see you," remarked Jerry. "No more than I am to see you," put in the miner. "Now let's git right down to business. That's my way. No beatin' around the bush for Jim Nestor. "I told your friend, Mr. Wakefield, that I'd put you boys up against a good big proposition. Now I'm goin' to do it. Can you go as far as Arizona in that wagon of yours?" "Farther if need be," replied Ned. "Good! Now will your folks let you go?" For answer the boys held out their telegrams. "Good, again I see it's all right. Now I want you boys to know I ain't so poor as I looked to be when you found me. I'm rich, that's what I am, only I can't git at my money. "The long and short of it is that I discovered down in the southern part of Arizona a rich gold mine. It assays high. In fact, if you saw the gold I had in the hut, you saw some of the yellow stuff that came from my mine. It's a lost mine." "A lost mine?" exclaimed Bob, blankly. "Then what good is it?" "It was lost, but I found it again," explained Nestor. "There's millions in it. It's up in the mountains, about a hundred miles from Tucson. The gold is there, but it's hard to reach. "Now what I want to know is, can you boys go there, or near there, in your choo-choo cart? If you can, and we are successful, there's a chance for us all to make our fortunes, for I'll give you boys a share apiece for what you did for me when I was in trouble." "I guess we can go," said Jerry. "It'll be a hard trip, full of trouble an' some danger," warned the miner. "We'll risk it," said Ned. "When can you start?" asked Nestor. "Let's go right now!" exclaimed Bob, with such earnestness that the other laughed. "To-morrow or next day will do," said Nestor. "I have a few things to attend to. I'll meet you here, say day after to-morrow." At the agreed time Nestor was on hand. In the meantime the auto had been thoroughly overhauled, put in shape for a long, hard trip, and extra supplies purchased. It was a bright, sunny day when the start from Chicago was made. "Let her go!" exclaimed Nestor, as he climbed into the rear seat with Bob. Jerry, who was steering, threw in the gear clutches and the machine moved off on its long and what was destined to be eventful trip. "Hold on!" cried Nestor, suddenly. "What's the matter?" asked Jerry, stopping the car. "Have you boys got guns?" "Guns?" repeated Jerry, somewhat in bewilderment. "Well, revolvers, then," went on the miner. In answer, Ned rather sheepishly took from his valise three new double-action revolvers of excellent make. "I thought we might need 'em," he said, "but I was afraid you'd laugh at me and say it was foolish." "It's all right!" exclaimed Nestor. "I was going to tell you to git some. You see, you don't always need a gun in Arizona, but when you do, as the man in the story said about Texas, you need it mighty bad an' mighty sudden. So it's a prime thing you have 'em. I've got mine," and he showed two big .45 calibre ones. Well armed, as well as otherwise provided for, the little expedition started off again, the automobile wending in and out through the busy Chicago streets. "We'll make as straight a course as we can for Tucson," said Nestor. "I know the roads pretty well, 'cause I traveled 'em in a stage years ago, when Chicago was only a village." The machine was puffing along at a fair rate of speed and had almost reached the outskirts of the city when a policeman, mounted on a motor-cycle, dashed up. "I'll have to take you in," he announced. "What for?" asked Ned. "Riding too fast in the city limits." "But we were going slow," objected Jerry. "If you know anything about automobiles you can see the lever is only on the first-speed notch, and that only goes ten miles an hour at best." "Can't help it," replied the officer. "I timed you and you went too fast." "Dog-gone his hide, let me git my gun out an' I'll show him who he's a-holdin' up!" exclaimed Nestor, in a whisper. "No, no!" expostulated Ned, who overheard the miner's threat. "This isn't out West. Don't pull any guns!" "Well," put in Jerry, speaking to the officer, "if you think we were violating the law I suppose we'll have to go back with you. Shall I turn around and accompany you?" he asked, politely. "That's what you better do. I don't want no fuss, but if you want trouble I'll make it for you." The other boys wondered at Jerry's easy compliance with what they knew was an unreasonable and unjust command. The steersman started the machine slowly ahead, and, as the road was wide, began to turn in a circle, to head back to Chicago. But when the auto was half way around, and pointed in the direction of the Windy City, Jerry did not continue on the way the officer expected. Instead, the boy widened his circle, made a complete revolution and then, throwing in the second speed, dashed away down the road, leaving the discomfited motor-policeman to rage over the trick that had been played on him. "I wasn't going to submit to arrest when I knew we were not guilty," said Jerry. In a little while Chicago was left behind, and the auto dashed along a pleasant country road and was making good time toward the West. Suddenly there came a puffing from behind that told of another machine coming. It passed the boys, who had slowed down a bit, and as it went by the occupants of the Cresville machine had a good view of those in the other car. "Did you see them?" cried Jerry, in amazement. "Who?" asked Bob, who had not given much heed to the other auto. "Noddy Nixon was in that machine, and with him were Jack Pender and Bill Berry!" CHAPTER IX. A SHOT IN THE DARK. As Jerry spoke, the other boys looked and saw Noddy turn to stare at them. The bully rose in his seat and shook his fist at the Motor Boys, while the wind bore back some indistinguishable words he shouted. "Let's take after him!" cried Ned. "What would be the use?" asked Jerry. "We don't want trouble if we can avoid it. The farther off those fellows are the better we'll be." The boys explained to Nestor something about the character of Noddy, Berry, and Pender, the miner listening, gravely. "Well, on the whole," he remarked, "it's better to have an enemy in front of you than at your back. I guess we can make out to beat 'em at whatever game they play. But I'd like to catch the chap as took my gold." Jerry started his machine up again, but made no effort to catch up with Noddy, who was now far in advance. The Cresville auto bowled along, and at noon a stop was made in a small village, where dinner was eaten. They traveled along all the afternoon. Toward dusk they struck a lonely stretch of country, and inquiry at a log cabin brought out that the nearest town was ten miles ahead. "We must push for it," said Nestor; "that is, if we intend to sleep in beds to-night." Ned was steering, the boys having agreed to take turn and turn about. It became quite dark, and the auto was shooting along at reduced speed, for, even with the gas and oil lamps, the road was dim. Suddenly a shot rang out in the darkness. It was followed by a louder report as one of the auto tires burst, punctured by a bullet. The car careened to one side and bumped along on the flattened rubber. "They're shooting at us!" cried Nestor. "Two can play at that game!" He whipped out his revolver and fired three shots straight ahead, the flashes cutting the darkness. "They're behind, not ahead!" yelled Jerry, who was in the rear seat with the miner. "It was one of the back tires that burst!" Ned had shut off power and the auto came to a halt. The boys got out, and Jerry took off one of the oil lamps to see what damage had been done. A new inner tube would be needed, and it would be hard work inserting it in the dark. "That's some of Noddy's or Pender's work," observed Ned. "They must be following us, and yet they started off ahead." "There are so many roads around here that they could go off to one side, wait, and then come up behind us," said Nestor. "But what's to be done?" "We can't go ahead until we fix the tire," said Jerry. "Don't try to do it in the dark," advised the miner. "Tell you what to do. I'll camp here with the machine, for I'm used to sleeping outdoors nights. It's only about two miles into town now, and you boys can walk it. In the morning you can come back and fix things up." "What will you do for supper?" asked Jerry. "Don't you worry about that," replied the miner. "I've got a couple of sandwiches in my pocket. I got 'em at the place we had dinner, 'cause I always like to travel with a little grub about me. They'll do until morning." So it was arranged. The lights on the auto were put out and Nestor curled up in the tonneau, with some lap-robes over him. The boys started afoot for the town, promising to come back as soon as it was light enough to see to put the new tube in the tire. "I wonder what Noddy's game is?" asked Ned of his companions. "And how did he and Pender come together?" "There's no telling what those two may do," said Jerry. "I'm afraid we're in for trouble." They were to meet it sooner than they expected. About this time, a mile from where the crippled auto was stalled, two figures were sneaking along the road. "Are you sure you hit the tire, Bill?" asked a voice, which, if the Motor Boys had heard, they would have recognized at once as Noddy Nixon's. "Course I winged 'em," replied Bill Berry. "It was easy. All I had to do was to jump out from behind the bushes where we were hid and pop at 'em. I could hear the tire bust." "I wonder if it made 'em lay up for repairs?" "It sure did. I heard 'em shut off the power. Now we'll hustle back to our car and continue the trip." "I'll teach those Cresville cubs to come meddling after me," spoke Noddy. "I'll follow 'em close and make all the trouble I can. As you say, we may as well start off again. I hope Pender isn't tired waiting alone for us in the car. How far ahead is it now?" "Half a mile, I guess." As the Motor Boys knew, Noddy had made for New York after running away from home with Bill Berry. He wrote to the boys and to Pender from there, and later Pender joined the rascally pair. Noddy was preparing for a trip with his companions, and was just about to start when Jerry spied him from the hotel window. He escaped through the tenement house and at once got ready to leave New York in a hurry. It was by the merest chance that he passed the Cresville auto on leaving Chicago, and at once had formed the plan of annoying the three chums. As Nestor had said, Noddy and his companions had taken a side road, allowed the Cresville auto to get ahead and then, at Berry's suggestion, had ambushed themselves to try and do some damage as the Motor Boys passed. The chief conspirators were now on their way to where they had left their auto. They reached it, found Pender half asleep, curled up on a seat, and started slowly off in the darkness. By keeping to the diverging road they were on, they passed around the disabled machine, and came out into the main highway again, ahead of the three boys who were tramping toward the town. Noddy was steering, and with a reckless disregard of the dangers of the road was going very fast. Suddenly there was a crash and the auto stopped. "You've gone an' done it now!" exclaimed Bill. "What if I have?" snapped Noddy. "It's my machine, ain't it?" "An' it's my neck you're tryin' to break," replied Bill. "What's the trouble, anyhow?" Noddy got out to look. Something had gone wrong with the sliding gear and he had to crawl under the machine to fix it, while Pender held a light. Bill obstinately refused to lend a hand, as he said it was all Noddy's fault. "I'm goin' to walk on to the next town," declared Berry. "You can stop an' pick me up on your way through. I'll be at the hotel." He went off in the darkness, while Noddy and Jack continued to work at the auto. It took more than half an hour to fix the break, but at last the machine was ready to start. Noddy was about to crank it up when he heard the sound of some persons coming along the road, voices mingling with the footsteps. He looked up, and was much surprised to see, in the glare of the lamps, Jerry, Bob and Ned. "Oh!" said Noddy, faintly, for he did not know what else to say. On their part the Motor Boys were as much startled as was Noddy at the unexpected meeting. "So you're here, are you?" asked Jerry. "Can't you see without having to be told?" inquired Noddy, with a surly growl. "Now you've seen us, you'd better go on and mind your own business." "I guess this is a free country, and we have as much right on this road as you have," spoke Ned. "You haven't any right to follow me all the while!" burst out the former bully of Cresville. "We wouldn't be following you if you hadn't fired at us and punctured the tire!" cried Bob. "Who says I fired a shot?" demanded Noddy. "I do!" exclaimed Ned. "You don't know what you're talking about!" exclaimed the bully. "If you say another word I'll lick you!" He was mad clear through, and made a rush at Ned. Jerry sprang forward and met Noddy with a blow straight from the shoulder. The bully went down. He got up quickly, and the two boys went at each other, "hammer and tongs." Jerry kept his head and landed twice, heavily, on Noddy. The latter gave Jerry a bad blow on the right eye, but the latter retaliated by making Noddy's nose bleed. As Noddy felt the warm blood trickling down his face he became frightened. "Help! help!" he cried. "Why don't you help me, Jack?" Pender had discreetly remained in the car. At this he jumped out. Ned was ready, however, and stepped in front of him. Jack aimed a blow at Ned. The latter dodged it and sent a straight left for Pender's head. It caught him on the jaw and he went down heavily. By this time Noddy had broken away from Jerry and ran toward the auto. Jerry was satisfied with the punishment he had inflicted and did not follow. Noddy quickly cranked up his machine and leaped to the steering seat. "Come on, Jack!" he cried. Pender wiggled from the grip in which Ned held him, jumped into the car beside the bully and the next instant the two enemies of the Motor Boys were chugging off down the road. CHAPTER X. ENCIRCLED BY COWBOYS. For a few moments the three chums stood staring at the vanishing auto. Then Jerry, with a grunt, felt of his damaged eye. "I guess I don't owe Noddy anything," he remarked, drily. "I paid off some old scores to Pender," said Ned, with a grin. "Wish I'd got a chance at one of them!" observed Bob. "You're just as well off, Chunky," spoke Jerry. "We may as well keep on to town, now the excitement is over. It's getting late, and I'm hungry." In about half an hour they were in the village, where they found a good hotel. They caught no sight of Noddy and his companions. The next morning the boys made a hasty breakfast and hired a man to drive them out to their stranded auto. They found Nestor just awakening from what he declared had been a refreshing sleep. The punctured tire was soon repaired, and, dismissing the driver of the wagon, the boys and the miner sped to town in the machine. They put up at the hotel, where Nestor made a good breakfast. As a few supplies were needed for the auto, it was decided to lay over for a day in the town. Jerry attended to the purchases, while Nestor and the other boys took things easy in the room they had hired at the hotel. "I'm sure glad I met you, boys," said the old miner, stretching out in a comfortable chair. "I'm jest countin' the days 'till we git out to the gold mine." "Will it take long now?" asked Ned. "We ought to reach Tucson in about two weeks now. Of course it's going to be a little hard gittin' over the New Mexico mountain range, but I guess the choo-choo wagon will do it. We may have a little trouble findin' the mine, too." "I thought you said you had it all staked out," observed Chunky. "So I have," answered Nestor. "But you see it's in a part of the mountains not very well traveled. I've lost my way more than once there. But I reckon I can find the mine. Once I strike the trail leadin' out of Dead Horse Gulch I'm all right. The mine isn't far from there." If the miner could have looked into the next room he would not have talked so freely concerning the mine. For, in the adjoining apartment was Bill Berry. He listened intently to what Nestor said, and soon was able to tell, from the conversation, who the occupants in the room next to him were. "A gold mine, eh?" said Bill, softly. "I reckon Noddy and I will get in on that deal. We must profit by this. I wish Noddy would hurry up. We must follow those young cubs." Bill, in a measure, was stranded at the hotel. He had reached it after leaving Noddy the night previous, and expected his companion to follow, after repairing the auto, and pick him up. But the encounter between Noddy and the Motor Boys made the former change his plans, and he ran the machine through the village without stopping for Berry. Later, however, Noddy came back and got his companion. For some time Nestor and the boys conversed about the gold mine, the man telling the lads many stories of western life. Jerry had completed his purchases by dusk, the auto tanks were refilled with gasolene and water, and the start was made early the next morning. A few hours of travel brought the adventurers to the Mississippi River, and crossing it, they found themselves in Missouri. For several days the auto journeyed on, and Kansas was more than half traversed. One hot afternoon, passing over a road that led across the rolling prairie, Bob, who was steering, looked ahead and noticed quite a cloud of dust. "Looks like a whirlwind coming," he remarked. Nestor stood up and peered forward. "So it is, but not the kind you're used to," he said. "What kind is it?" "Cowboys, an' they're headed right for us. I expect there'll be some fun presently," and the miner began loading his big revolver. "Will they--will they kill us?" asked Bob. "Well, no; not exactly kill you," spoke the miner, slowly, "but they'll try to scare you to death, and that's about as bad." The wind now bore to the ears of the boys a thundering sound. It was the rapid hoof-beats of the cowboys' ponies as they raced along. As yet nothing of the riders could be seen because of the dust. Suddenly there came from the center of the cloud a series of terrific yells, punctuated by a score of revolver shots. At the same time forty cowboys were disclosed to the astonished gaze of the Cresville lads. Bob stopped the machine, for it was fairly surrounded by a circle of the rough riders. "Throw up your hands!" yelled one who seemed to be the leader of the herders. He was astride a black pony, and as he spoke he leveled two big revolvers at the party in the auto. Tremblingly, the boys obeyed. "I mean you, too, you old greaser on the back of this new-fangled stage coach!" exclaimed the leader, waving his gun at Nestor. "Put up your hands, an' do it mighty suddint!" Nestor's reply was a shot from his revolver, and the hat of the leader went spinning in the air. "Here!" cried the cowboy, angrily, but not returning the fire, "don't you know better than to shoot a gentleman's hat off?" "Gentlemen?" inquired Nestor, standing up and surveying the bunch of cattlemen, with a smile. "I don't see any." There was a laugh among the herdsmen at the discomfiture of their leader, and seeing the joke was against him, the man on the black pony joined in the merriment. "We didn't intend no harm nohow," he said. "We're jest out for a lark, an' we seen your Old Nick wagon comin' along. No offense I hope. We was only jokin'!" "Don't mention it," said Nestor, who seemed to know how to take the cowboys. "I suppose my friends may now lower their hands," for Jerry, Ned and Bob still held their arms aloft. "Sure!" cried the leader, quickly. "Come on, boys, three cheers for the tenderfeet!" he exclaimed, turning to his companions. The cheers were given with a will, some of the more exuberant of the cow-punchers firing their guns in the air. "Some of us boys would like mighty well to take a little spin in that shebang," spoke the leader to Nestor. "S'pose we could take a few turns?" "I reckon so," answered the miner, and he spoke a few quick words to Jerry, advising that the wish of the cowboys be complied with, as they might, in their recklessness, make trouble if they were denied. Jerry took Bob's place at the wheel, the others got out and the leader of the cowboys and two of his companions got into the auto. They were delighted with the way Jerry spun the machine along. By turns nearly all of the cattle rustlers were given a short journey in the car. Then three, who seemed full of the spirit of mischief, took their seats. No sooner had Jerry started off with them than the cowboy in the seat with him tried to grab the steering wheel. "Hold on there!" exclaimed the boy. "That's all right, sonny," said the cowboy. "I reckon I can run this as well as you. Let me have a turn at it. I'll show you what's what!" Jerry was firm in his refusal to let the man run the machine. He knew the cattle-puncher would speedily come to grief. Nestor observed the little difficulty and appealed to the leader to use his persuasion on the refractory fellow. But the latter's two companions now joined in his demand, and Jerry was being roughly handled as the men sought to put him from his seat. Suddenly the boy brought the car to a stop. He had a plan in mind. "Did you ever see an automobile turn a somersault?" he asked the man who had first wanted to steer. "No, I didn't, sonny," was the answer. "Would you like to see it?" "Bet your boots." "I can't do it with you in, it takes experts to work that trick," went on Jerry. "If you will kindly get out and allow my friends to get back in, I think I can surprise you." "Whoop!" yelled the cowboys in the auto, as they descended. "Whoop! Now for some fun!" Jerry drove the car to where Nestor, Bob and Ned were standing. He motioned them to get in, and they obeyed, wondering what he was going to do. The cowboys, gathered in a wide circle about the machine, looked on in anticipation of seeing the auto do a flip-flop. "Hold fast!" cautioned Jerry to his companions in the car. They did so. The next instant the boy put on full power and dashed straight at the encircling ring of cattlemen. CHAPTER XI. CAPTURING A HORSE THIEF. "Whoop! Watch it turn over!" yelled some of the cowboys. But Jerry kept straight on. Nearer and nearer he came to the ring. At length, ten feet away, when he feared he would have to put on the emergency brake to avoid a collision, the nervous mustangs in front of the car broke into a frightened run and dashed over the prairie, while Jerry guided the car away from the herdsmen, who were soon left far behind. "I told them I'd give 'em a surprise, and I did," said Jerry. "I didn't promise to make the auto turn a flip-flop, I only asked them if they ever saw it done. Well, I never did, either. I guess things are about evened up." The astonished cries of the cattlemen left no doubt but that Jerry's trick to escape from them had been very much of a surprise. "They didn't intend any harm," said Nestor. "I know the character of cowboys. They're full of fun an' thoughtless. It's jest as well we got away, though. No tellin' what damage they'd have done to the machine." The auto rolled along for several miles and the occupants were beginning to think of supper, which they planned to eat in a small town about three miles further on. "What's that?" asked Ned, pointing off to the left of the road. The others looked, and saw strolling over the prairie a peculiar figure. It was that of a little man, wearing a big, flapping brimmed hat. The old fellow held a big butterfly net in his right hand, and a large, green box in the other. On his back was slung a bag. Every now and then the stranger would raise the net high in the air and bring it down with a swoop. "That's funny," remarked Jerry. "Looks to me like he was looney," suggested Nestor. Jerry brought the machine to a stop. The queer little man came nearer. His eyes were staring in front of him at something he seemed to desire to capture in the net. Whatever it was it continually escaped him. At length the odd figure was close to the automobile. Yet the little man did not notice the car. Suddenly his eyes glanced at one of the big front tires. The boys looked and saw perched on the rubber a small, brown butterfly. "Softly--softly!" exclaimed the little man, speaking to himself. "Easy now. I have you, my beauty. Long have you escaped me, but I am on your trail. Ah! Don't move now. Softly! There!" He banged the net down on the tire, sprang forward and caught the meshes between his fingers. Through his bespectacled eyes he peered eagerly at what he thought he had captured. A disappointed look came on his face. "Got away again!" he muttered. Then he looked up and saw the party in the auto watching him. He did not seem in the least surprised. At once his eyes fastened on Jerry. "Don't move! Don't move! I beg of you!" he cried to the boy. "Don't stir as you value your life. I'll lose one thousand dollars if you move the hundredth part of an inch! Easy now. Ah! There you are, my little brown beauty. Don't move, my boy, and I'll catch it in a second!" Somewhat puzzled at the little man's words, Jerry sat still. His companions saw on his back the little brown butterfly that had escaped from the tire. Quickly the little man brought his net down on Jerry's shoulders. Once more the meshes were eagerly grasped, and this time it seemed with success, for the little man set up a yell of delight and capered about like a boy who has found a hornets' nest. "I've got it! I've got it!" he cried. "One of the rarest butterflies that exist. I've been chasing after this one all day. I knew I'd get it. But pardon me, gentlemen. No doubt you are surprised. Allow me to introduce myself. Professor Uriah Snodgrass, A. M., Ph.D., M. D., F. R. G. S., etc." "Is that all, pardner?" asked Nestor, with a grin. "I contemplate taking the degree of B. A. this winter, when I have completed my study of the fauna and flora of the prairies," replied the little man. Jerry introduced himself and his companions, and said they were making a tour across country. "Just what I am doing myself," said Professor Snodgrass. "I am collecting specimens of rare plants, stones, bugs, butterflies, in fact, anything that can add to knowledge and science. I have been out all day----" He stopped talking and made a sudden grab at the sleeve of Nestor's coat. "What's the matter?" exclaimed the miner. "Rattlesnake?" "Pardon me!" replied the professor. "There was a very scarce specimen of what is commonly called the potato bug on you, and I wanted it." "I'd rather you'd have it than me," observed Nestor. "Thank you," replied Professor Snodgrass, as he placed the bug, together with the butterfly, in his green box. "What was I saying?" "That you had been out all day," repeated Jerry. "Oh, yes! I left town early this morning, and my labors have been richly repaid. See, I have my box and bag nearly full." He showed the box. Through the glass top the boys could see that it was full of toads, grasshoppers, small snakes, lizards, bugs, butterflies and bees. The bag was loaded with stones, grass, pieces of wood, plants and flowers. "It has been a grand day," went on the professor, enthusiastically, "and I haven't had a bit of dinner." "None of that for mine," put in Nestor. "I wouldn't go without my meals for all the bugs and stones in the world." "Ah, but you are not a naturalist," observed the professor, wiping his bald head. "Did you walk all the way?" asked Ned. "No; I had a horse. And, bless my soul, I've forgotten what I did with the beast. I got off him early this morning to chase after that brown butterfly and I left the horse standing somewhere on the prairie." "He evidently was too fond of your company to leave you, however," said Jerry. "Why so, young man?" and the professor gazed up through his spectacles. "Because that is evidently him coming along back there," and Jerry pointed to a horse slowly approaching. "Ah, yes! There he is. I'm glad I didn't lose him, for I suppose the man from whom I hired him would have been angry." "I guess yes," spoke Nestor, in a whisper. "If you are going into town we'll ride along with you," said Ned. "That is, if your horse isn't afraid of automobiles." "I don't think he is afraid of anything," replied the professor. "I captured a fine specimen of grasshopper on his left ear this morning, and he never shied when I put the net over his head." The little man, seeing that his bag and box were safely strapped to his back, and folding up his net, mounted the horse that had approached where he was standing and started off alongside of the auto, which Jerry ran slowly. The boys learned that the professor was stopping in the same town where they planned to spend the night. "We'll be there very soon now," observed the little man, "and I'll be glad of it, for I'm hungry." Suddenly, from behind, there came a wild chorus of yells and shouts, revolver shots mingling with the noise. "It's the cowboys coming back!" cried Ned. "Nonsense; they are miles behind us," observed Nestor. "Well, they're some kind of cowboys, anyhow," cried Jerry. "And they're after us." Bang! bang! went the guns. "Whoop!" yelled the cattlemen who were riding like mad. "Stop the horse thief!" they shouted. Nearer and nearer came the cattlemen, a bunch similar to those who had wanted to run the auto. "They seem to be after us," observed Bob. "We haven't stolen any horses," said Ned. "What's all the noise about?" asked Professor Snodgrass, suddenly becoming aware that there was some commotion. He was riding close to the auto. There came a hissing, whistling sound in the air. A long, thin line shot forward. A loop settled around the professor's neck. The next instant he was jerked, none too gently, from the back of his horse and fell to the ground. He had been lassoed from behind by one of the cowboys. Jerry shut off the power and the auto stopped. In a few seconds it was surrounded by a crowd of angry men. Several of them drew their revolvers, while two or three busied themselves in securely binding the poor professor. "What's all this for?" asked Nestor, getting ready to draw his gun. "I don't know as it's any of your business, unless you're in on the game," spoke a dark-complexioned cowboy, who seemed to be the leader. "What game?" asked the miner. "Stealing horses," was the reply. "Who's stolen any nags around here?" demanded Nestor. "That bald-headed galoot!" exclaimed the cowboy. "We want him for taking that pony he was riding. It belongs to One-Eyed Pete." "He never stole that!" exclaimed Jerry. "He didn't, eh? Well, he can tell that to Judge Lynch. There's only one thing happens to horse thieves in this country." "Swing him up!" yelled the cowboys, yanking Professor Snodgrass to his feet. CHAPTER XII. THE AUTO ON FIRE. "Can't we save him?" cried Jerry to Nestor. "He never took that horse. It's all a mistake." "It's no use to reason with those brutes," said the miner. "They evidently believe they're right. It's too bad, but we'd only git into trouble if we interfered." "Bring him along, boys!" cried the leader. "There's a tree that will do to swing him from, and I've got the rope!" The boys were almost horror-stricken at the scene they were about to witness. It was bad enough to see any one hanged, but to witness the death of the little bug-hunting man they all believed innocent was too much. The cowboys, with the poor professor in their midst, rode across the prairie to where a single tree grew. They had quieted down, now that their man-hunt was over. Jerry started the auto and steered it across the rolling land toward the scene of the prospective lynching. "What are you going to do?" asked Nestor. "I can't desert him," replied Jerry. "Maybe we can get the cowboys to let him go." Nestor shook his head pityingly. He knew the rough western men too well. They never let even a suspected horse thief escape. Little time was lost in preparation. Once beneath the tree the men formed in a circle. The rope was thrown over a limb and a noose made. The professor was placed beneath it, and the other end of the rope was grasped by a dozen hands. "Have you anything to say before we string you up?" asked the leader. Aside from a little paleness, which hardly showed in the waning afternoon, Professor Snodgrass gave no sign of what must be a terrible ordeal for him. He did not seem to appreciate what was taking place. Suddenly, as he stood beneath the fatal noose, he leaned forward. One hand sought the green box which was still strapped to his back. The other went out with a cautious gesture to the arm of the leader of the cowboys. "Don't stir! Don't move for the world!" exclaimed the professor, in a strained whisper. "Just a second and I'll have him!" His hand closed on something on the leader's coat-sleeve and he uttered a cry that was more of delight than fear. "I've got it! I've got it!" he cried. "Got what?" asked the cowboy. "One of the rarest specimens of a prairie lizard that exists!" replied the professor, as, all unconscious of the dangling noose, he thrust the specimen into his green box. "This is certainly a lucky day for me." "I'd say it was particularly unlucky," observed the leader, with a grim smile, adjusting the noose about the neck of the naturalist. "Why, what's all the fuss about?" asked the professor, noticing for the first time that he was in a crowd. "Has anything happened?" "Well, I'll be jiggered!" exclaimed Nestor, who overheard the conversation. "The poor professor is so absent-minded that he don't know he's been lassoed and is all ready to be strung up!" "Hold fast!" exclaimed Jerry, suddenly. "I'm going to rescue him!" "How?" asked Nestor. "I'm going to run the auto in close to him. When I do, you reach out and grab him up." "Sure, I'm on!" said Nestor. Jerry gave a loud blast on the horn. The cowboys, who did not know exactly what to do about hanging a man who didn't seem to mind being lynched, turned to see what was going on, having forgotten all about the auto. There was a living lane between the men right up to where the bug collector stood. Jerry sent the machine ahead with a rush. Straight at the professor he steered it. Then, when very close to the bug hunter he gave the wheel a twist. Nestor, who was in the rear seat, on the side nearest Mr. Snodgrass, leaned over. As he swept past the professor the miner grabbed him up, box, basket, net and all, and lifted him into the auto. "Full speed ahead!" yelled Nestor, and Jerry threw on all the power he had. The little, bald-headed man was yanked from under the tree, and, as the noose was about his neck the rope came along with him, pulled from the surprised and unresisting hands of the cowboys. They gave a great shout of astonishment, and several leaped on their horses to give pursuit. Others drew their revolvers and fired at the fast-vanishing auto, but the machine was soon out of reach of the bullets. "That's what I call pullin' off a pretty neat trick," observed Nestor. "They'd have hung you in another minute, professor." "I'm sure I'm much obliged to you," observed the little man, calmly. "I hope my specimens are not injured, for I have some very valuable ones." "Well, he is the limit!" said Nestor, half to himself. "He gits pulled out of the very jaws of death an' all he cares about is his bugs an' butterflies!" Soon they were nearly at the town where they were to stop overnight. The professor, who seemed a little dazed from what he had gone through, was gazing at the rope that had been taken from his neck and tossed to the floor of the tonneau. All at once he stood up and shot a glance at a horse that was grazing beside the road. "Hold on!" he cried. "What's the matter--want to take another nag?" asked Nestor. "No; but that is the horse I hired. I recognize him by the extra butterfly net I fastened to the saddle. I was afraid I might lose one. The other horse wasn't mine." "Wasn't yours?" fairly shouted the miner. "Then whose was it?" "It must have belonged to the cowboys," was the answer. "You see, I forgot all about my horse until I met you. Then I took the first animal I saw. I supposed, of course, it was mine." "Then you really were a horse thief after all," said Ned, laughing, "though you didn't know it." "And the cowboys were right, as far as they knew," observed Jerry. "They saw you on one of their horses and naturally thought you stole it. However, it all came out right, and I guess I did the best thing when I rescued you, for they might have hanged you before the mistake was found out." The auto created no little surprise as it puffed through the western town, though a sign, "Gasolene for Sale," exhibited in front of the drug store, indicated that machines sometimes paid a visit. The hotel where Professor Snodgrass was stopping was soon reached, and every one washed up and had supper. The next morning, after a few minor repairs had been made to the auto, and the gasolene tank replenished, the travelers prepared to start away again. The professor was up to see them off. "I wish I was going with you," he said, with a pleasant smile, after they had told him something of the trip they had in view. "Why can't you?" inquired Jerry. "We are going into somewhat new territory, and you may be able to collect some fine specimens. We can easily make room for you." "I might go along with you on a horse," ventured the little man. "That's too risky," observed Nestor. "Take the boys' offer and come along without a horse." "I believe I will; I have nothing to keep me here," said the bug collector, and so it was arranged. A good stock of provisions was laid in, the auto being piled with all it could hold and still leave room for the five passengers. Nestor said they would probably have to camp out a few nights, as on leaving Kansas and skirting down into New Mexico, settlements were few and far between. So some rubber and woolen blankets were added to the outfit. So far the weather had been fine, but this morning there was a haze in the sky that denoted a storm. It did not worry any one, however, and made the professor smile. "There'll be so many more grasshoppers and bugs for me after the shower," he observed. An hour passed, and the auto was bowling along at a good pace on a level stretch of road. Soon Nestor, who was sitting in front with Bob, who was steering, jumped up. "What's the matter?" inquired Jerry. "One of the professor's grasshoppers bite you?" "The seat seems to be gittin' too hot for comfort," said the miner. From beneath the auto there came a muffled explosion, followed by a big cloud of smoke. Then flames shot out, and the whole under side of the car was enveloped. "We're on fire!" yelled Bob, preparing to jump. "Sit still!" exclaimed Jerry. "Don't let go the wheel whatever you do!" "Turn off the gasolene!" cried Ned. "The tank is leaking and the gasolene is burning!" There was great excitement. The only person who kept his head was Professor Snodgrass. He did not seem to know the auto was on fire, but was calmly examining a small bug crawling on the cushion near him. "What shall we do?" wailed Bob. "The auto will be destroyed!" "We're in a bad fix!" muttered the miner. Bob reached over to shut off the power, and was making ready to jump. "Sit still!" exclaimed Jerry. "And be killed?" objected Bob. The smoke became more dense and the flames spouted up higher around the car. "Quick! There's a small creek! Steer for it!" yelled Jerry, pointing ahead. Bob saw the water and realized Jerry's plan. He quickly turned the auto toward the water. There was a sort of ford turning off from the main road, which latter led over a small bridge. Into the creek dashed the burning machine. There was a hiss as the water reached the flames, and clouds of steam arose. Then, amid a swish of spray, the machine shot out on the opposite bank, only the machinery, as far up as the under side of the floor of the car, having been submerged. The fire was put out as good as if a whole city department had been called to battle with the flames. CHAPTER XIII. AT DEAD MAN'S GULCH. Bob brought the auto to a stop under a big sycamore tree. The engine was still smoking, and there was considerable heat. Jerry jumped out and examined the car. "Not much damage done," he said, after a long inspection. "I guess we can fix it up." "Can we go on?" asked Ned, anxiously. "It will take a good hour to mend things," replied Jerry. "That will give me a chance to gather some bugs," observed the professor. "Pardon me," he exclaimed to Nestor. "There is a beautiful specimen of a katydid on your leg," and, with a deft gesture, the bug collector captured the insect and transferred it to his box. "I hope you didn't want it yourself," said the naturalist, looking rather anxiously at the miner, who seemed surprised. "Oh, land, no!" was the reply. "Help yourself whenever you see any of the crawlin' things on me. It's a favor, more than anything else. I hate bugs an' things." While the professor wandered about with his net, Jerry proceeded to repair the leak to the gasolene tank. Bob and Ned decided they were hungry, and got out some lunch, of which, a little later, all were glad to partake. "There," announced Jerry, "I guess we can go on again." "There's a good place to camp about twenty miles farther on," said Nestor. "What place is it?" asked Ned. "Dead Man's Gulch," was the grim reply. "Doesn't sound very pleasant," observed Bob. "It's a better locality than it sounds, Chunky," went on Nestor. "There's a little town there, if you want to sleep in beds." The boys decided to push for the Gulch, not that sleeping in beds was an inducement, for they rather liked the idea of resting in the open. But the gathering clouds indicated rain, and that would make camping out rather damp. Without further mishap the machine was sent along. Ned was at the wheel and he turned on plenty of gasolene so that the car fairly skimmed over the roads. As they passed a stone post on the highway, Nestor called out: "Good-by, Kansas!" "What's that for?" asked Ned. "Because that's the boundary mark between Kansas and Indian Territory," replied the miner. "We are now on the old Indian ground, pretty soon we'll be in Texas, and then we'll land in New Mexico." "We're getting to be travelers for fair!" remarked Bob. The gathering clouds became blacker and a strong wind sprang up. There was every prospect of a severe storm, and Ned sent the machine ahead still faster. As it came to the top of a little hill, Nestor exclaimed: "There's Dead Man's Gulch!" Looking down into the valley, the boys saw a small settlement. "Hold the machine back," cautioned the miner. "It may get away from you on the grade." Ned shut off the power and coasted down. In half an hour they reached the level and started up the road, which led into the main street, and, in fact, the only thoroughfare in the town. Just as they reached the solitary hotel in the settlement the rain came down in torrents. The auto was run under a shed and the occupants entered the hostelry, to the no small surprise of the inmates of the place, who had not heard the car come up. "Howdy, strangers?" called the clerk, a big man, with an immense black moustache. "Howdy?" responded Nestor, who seemed much at his ease, though the boys were rather startled to find themselves in what was evidently rough company. "Where ye from?" asked the clerk. "East," replied Nestor. "Where ye goin'?" "West." "Ain't much on the talk, be ye, stranger?" sneered the clerk. "I am when it suits me." "Aw! he's one of them stuck-up automobilists!" put in a tall, thin, dark-complexioned man, who was sitting in one chair, with his feet in another. "An' who might you be?" asked Nestor, turning to him. "Pud Stoneham, at your service," and the dark man bowed with elaborate grace, a sneering smile spreading over his face. "Well, you'd better be mindin' your own business!" snapped Nestor, turning away. "What's that!" exclaimed Stoneham, who was a gambler, hanging around the hotel on the lookout for victims. "I don't allow any man to insult me!" and he reached his hand to his hip-pocket, with a quick gesture. Before he could draw his gun, which was his intention, Nestor had him covered with a weapon. "No shootin', gentlemen!" called the clerk. "Against the rules. Put up your gun, stranger." "Not unless he agrees to put up his," stipulated Nestor. "I'll make him," said the clerk. And, with a scowl, Stoneham promised to be peaceable. In a little while he sneaked out. Nestor and the boys registered and were assigned to rooms for the night. The hotel was not a very stylish one, but they were glad even for the rough accommodations when they heard the torrent of rain outside. While they were washing up for supper, Ned suddenly called out: "Hark!" "What is it? The place on fire?" asked Jerry. "I thought I heard an automobile horn," replied Ned. "Maybe some boys are monkeying with our machine," came from Bob. "No, it isn't that, Chunky," went on Ned, looking from a window. "What then?" "It's another automobile coming up the road. My, how the mud and water splashes! And, say! Good land! Who do you suppose is in the car?" "The President?" answered Jerry, sozzling his face in the water. "It's Noddy Nixon, Jack Pender and Bill Berry!" "No!" "Yes, it is!" The others crowded to the windows to look. Sure enough, there were the three enemies of the Motor Boys. They ran their machine up under the shed where stood the red auto, and then Ned lost sight of them. "Well, it's a free country," observed Nestor. "It looks as if they were following you, but there's no law to prevent it. I guess they won't stay here long, though, after that chap that robbed me knows I'm stopping at this hotel. Wait until I get my hands on him." "Perhaps it would be better not to let him know who you are," suggested Jerry. "They may be up to some trick, and we can work to better advantage against them by keeping quiet." "Right you are," admitted the miner, after thinking the matter over. "He wouldn't know me if he saw me, since I got shaved. We'll just lay low an' watch." The Motor Boys, with Nestor and Professor Snodgrass, were the first ones down to the dining-room to supper. In a little while Noddy, Jack and Bill entered. The three latter started in surprise at beholding the Cresville boys, and for a moment seemed undecided what to do. Then, at a whispered word from Berry, they filed to the other side of the room and took their seats at a table. "I wonder if they really followed us," Jerry said. "Must have," was Nestor's opinion. "But I reckon they didn't expect to find you here." "But what can their object be?" "I don't think they exactly know themselves," replied the miner. "I guess they hope to annoy you, or they may expect to get a line on what our plans are. But we'll try to fool 'em." Before the meal was over, Pud Stoneham came in and took a seat at Noddy's table. In a little while the gambler seemed to be on good terms with Bill Berry and his companions. It was still raining hard when the three boys, with the professor and Nestor, went up to bed. The naturalist and the boys had two rooms, while Nestor was by himself. Noddy and his chums disappeared after the meal, Pud Stoneham accompanying them. It must have been about midnight when Nestor was awakened by hearing voices in the room next to his. At first he paid no attention to them, for he was sleepy. But he sat up suddenly when he heard some one say: "They're on the trail of a rich gold mine. I know, for I heard the old man talking about it." "Are you sure, Bill?" asked a second voice, which Nestor recognized as Noddy's. "Sure as I am that my name is Berry," was the reply. "Then, count me in on the game," said a third man, whom the miner had no difficulty in knowing was Pud Stoneham. "I've got money. We'll go in this together and win out. I owe that miner something for insulting me, an' I'll pay him back, too!" CHAPTER XIV. NODDY STEALS A MARCH. Nestor sat up in bed, listening with all his might. But though he could hear a murmur of voices in the next room, and though he was certain Noddy and his companions were plotting against him and his friends, the miner could hear nothing more definite. "Forewarned is forearmed," he said, softly. "We'll see who'll win out, Pud Stoneham!" Nestor was up early the next morning. The weather had cleared and it was a beautiful day. The boys came down to breakfast with heavy eyes, for they had slept soundly. Professor Snodgrass, too, had arisen early, and was already searching for rare bugs. "I want to get a red tree-toad," he explained, as he strolled up at the sound of the breakfast gong, "but I am afraid they are not to be had." Suddenly he grabbed Ned's arm as the boy was walking toward the automobile shed. "One moment, I beg of you!" exclaimed the professor. "Steady now! Ah! I have the beauty. He was right on the back of your neck!" And he reached over and took from Ned's coat a small insect. "It's an extremely choice specimen of a sand flea," said the professor, proudly, popping the little animal into a glass case. "I hope I did not discommode you in removing it from you." "Not at all," laughed Ned, and the others smiled at the simple earnestness of the bug collector. "I want to have a talk with you boys after breakfast," spoke Nestor. His grave manner somewhat alarmed them, and they started to ask questions, but he would say nothing until after the meal. Then he told about what he had heard. "What worries me," said the miner, "is that I saw about the hotel a fellow that tried to follow me an' my pardner one day, and locate the lost mine. This chap's name is Tom Dalsett, and I saw him talking to Stoneham, the gambler, just before we came in to breakfast. Some mischief is in the wind when two such fellows whisper together." "Do you suppose they will try to get to the mine ahead of us?" asked Jerry. "I haven't a doubt of it," replied the miner. "We've got to look sharp from now on." "Had we better start right away?" inquired Ned. "It will do no harm to wait until the roads dry up a bit," was Nestor's opinion. "In the meanwhile, see to the machine. Look over every part. They may have damaged it during the night. See to your guns, too. We're going to have trouble from now on, or my name isn't Jim Nestor." His words rather alarmed the boys, but they were not going to back out now, and rather relished, than otherwise, a conflict with their old enemy, Noddy Nixon. Jerry went to the shed where the automobile had been left for the night. As he opened the door he uttered a cry of surprise. "What's the matter, have they taken our machine?" asked Ned. "No, they haven't done that, but they've skipped in their own," said Jerry. "I wonder if they have done any mischief to ours?" "That gang has stolen a march on us, all right," spoke Nestor. "They've gone on ahead. Well, they may get to the mine first, but we'll give them the hardest kind of a fight for the possession of it. I'm not going to lose a fortune if I can help it." Jerry soon ascertained that the red machine was not damaged. Nestor made inquiries and learned that the other party had left before daybreak, Pud Stoneham accompanying them. "What became of that chap with one eye and a scar on his left cheek?" asked Nestor of the hotel clerk, the description fitting Dalsett. "Oh, he went off with the others in the gasolene gig this morning," was the reply. It was plain now that Noddy and his gang were going to make a bold strike to discover the lost mine ahead of Nestor and his friends. How the Cresville bully had trailed the Motor Boys as far as he had was somewhat of a mystery, though it was afterward learned that he had been closer behind them after they left Chicago than they supposed. The meeting at the hotel was an accident, though. A stiff breeze sprang up, and soon dried the muddy roads. An early dinner was eaten and once more the party started forward, this time in pursuit of Noddy. "It's too bad to have to leave without getting that red tree-toad," said Professor Snodgrass. "We'll take you to a place where you can get horned toads," said Nestor. "Oh, that will be fine!" exclaimed the naturalist, with a boy's enthusiasm. The roads were none of the best, and the auto could not be speeded with safety. Nestor explained that the best plan would be to steer straight south for a while, after reaching New Mexico, and skirt around the edge of the mountain range, rather than attempt to make their way across the Rockies. "It will take a little longer," he said, "but sometimes the longest way 'round is the shortest way home. We'll aim for Messilla, which is not far from El Paso, and it's somewhat civilized there, so we can get supplies if we need 'em." The boys voted this plan a good one. By noon the auto had crossed the narrow stretch of land which is part of Indian Territory, lying between Texas and Colorado. Then they were in the big State of Texas, and, when night came on, they found themselves on a vast plain. "It's a case of camp out to-night," said the miner. "Now we'll see what sort of stuff you boys are made of." But if Nestor expected to find the Motor Boys tenderfeet, he was mistaken. They had camped out too many times before not to know what to do. The auto was run under the brow of a little hill, and Jerry took charge of things. Bob gathered wood for a fire and Ned went on a hunt for water. He found a little stream that answered admirably. Jerry got out the coffee-pot and frying-pan, and soon had supper cooking. There was fried canned chicken, with crisp slices of bacon, some thick biscuits, a jar of pickles and steaming hot coffee ready in a few minutes. Bob got out the tin dishes, and, seating themselves on the ground, the adventurers made a hearty meal. "Well, I must give you boys credit for knowin' a wrinkle or two," spoke Nestor. "I couldn't have done any better myself." "It's a good thing I bought some of those canned goods," said Jerry. "I thought that would be better than depending on what we could hunt." Supper over, and the things put away, the boys got out their blankets in readiness for the night. Nestor lighted his pipe and was puffing away, while in the fast-gathering dusk Professor Snodgrass went searching for rare specimens. He was successful in capturing two odd grass snakes, and seemed quite delighted. Then, as night settled down, each one rolled himself up in his blanket and fell asleep. Ned awoke first the next morning, and soon had the fire going and coffee made. The aromatic smell of the beverage greeted the others as they roused themselves, and soon a simple but satisfying breakfast was served. Then the journey was continued. It was a fine day, and the adventurers breathed in great whiffs of the pure air as their car dashed along. They passed through one or two small settlements, but inquiries failed to develop any traces of Noddy and his companions. "They may be going straight over the mountains," said Nestor. "Well, even if they do I think we'll beat them in the race for the mine. Mountain climbing is mighty onsartin' in one of these machines." But, had they only known it, Noddy and his gang were not aiming for the mountains, and were but a little way in advance of our friends. However, the Motor Boys soon learned, to their cost, where their enemy was. It was well along in the afternoon, and dinner had been eaten at a rude shack of a hotel in a small village, that the auto was skimming along, due south. Off to the right were the foothills of the mighty Rocky Mountains, while to the left was a vast rolling plain. Jerry was steering, with Bob on the seat beside him, while in the rear were the others, Professor Snodgrass busily engaged in sorting over some of his specimens. All at once a low, rumbling sound was heard. "Is that thunder?" asked Ned. "Can't be," replied Nestor. "There's not a cloud in the sky." Then he stood up and glanced behind him. "Great Scott!" he yelled. "Put on all the speed you've got!" "What's the matter?" asked Jerry. "Matter?" shouted the miner. "There's a herd of stampeded cattle coming straight for us. If they're not turned aside they'll go over us like a locomotive over a fly! Quick! Turn over toward the hills! Maybe we can escape them!" In terror, the boys looked behind them. Coming on with a mad rush, with a thunder of thousands of hoofs, and deep-mouthed bellows, were the steers, galloping like the wind! CHAPTER XV. IN THE NICK OF TIME. Jerry headed the machine toward the foothills. Once among them the adventurers might escape. The auto was going almost at full speed, swaying from side to side on the rough road. Nestor, who was keeping watch of the herd, cried out: "I'm afraid it's no use. They have turned and are right after us!" The steers had changed their course to follow the red auto, which they probably took for an enemy. The thunder of their hoofs came nearer. Fast as the auto was going, its speed was not enough to take it out of reach of the infuriated animals, for the rough prairie was retarding it, but it was just the kind of country the cattle loved. Even Nestor, familiar as he was with danger, seemed much alarmed at the plight. The boys' hearts were well-nigh terror-stricken, but as for Professor Snodgrass, he did not appear at all frightened. He still kept on sorting his specimens. The auto topped a little hill, having to slow up a bit at the grade. Down it went on the other side, but still the steers came on. A long level stretch of country appeared. "We ought to be able to get away from them here!" cried Jerry, turning on more gasolene and increasing the current from the batteries. The auto seemed to jump forward. "Look out! Stop!" yelled Nestor, seizing Jerry by the arm. "We can't! We'll be killed if we do!" shouted the boy, thinking the miner had lost his head through fear. "And we'll be dashed to death if we keep on! We're running straight for a precipice three hundred feet high! Shut down the machine or we'll go over the cliff!" With a yank at the levers, Jerry turned off the power and put on the brakes. And it was only just in time, for, not one hundred feet ahead, the prairie came to an abrupt end, terminating in a sheer bluff, over which the auto and those in it would have been dashed had not the miner's practiced eye told him what to expect. He recognized the conformation of the land and knew what was coming. The adventurers were now between two dangers. They could not go on because of the precipice, and their escape to the rear was cut off by the maddened steers that now were but a quarter of a mile away, thundering on fiercely. To turn to the left or right was impossible, as the line of cattle was a curving one, like a pair of horns, and to go to either side meant to run straight into the midst of the beasts. "Let's get out of the machine and shoot as many as we can!" cried Ned, drawing his revolver. "Maybe we can scare them away!" "Don't think of it!" exclaimed Nestor. "Cattle are used to seeing men only on horseback or in wagons. Once on the ground we'd be trampled under foot in an instant. Our only hope is to stay in the machine. It will protect us somewhat when they rush over us." "Shall we shoot?" asked Jerry. "Our only chance is to turn them to one side, and shooting at them may do it," replied the miner. "Get ready and we'll all fire at once." Each one drew his revolver, even Professor Snodgrass taking an extra one Nestor had. The cattle were now about eight hundred feet away. "Fire!" cried Nestor. The five revolvers spurted slivers of flame, smoke and bullets. In rapid succession every chamber was emptied, but the rush of the steers was not checked. In fact, none of the cattle seemed to have been killed, or, if any were, they fell down and were trampled under the hoofs of the others. "I guess we're done for!" groaned Nestor. "Crouch down on the bottom of the car!" The galloping animals were almost at the auto. Suddenly there sounded a fusillade of shots, mingled with wild yells. Jerry peered up over the edge of his seat. He saw a man on a horse, riding straight across in front of the line of cattle. In one hand the stranger held a big revolver, which he fired right into the faces of the steers. In the other he held his coat, which he was waving like a flag. At the same time he was yelling like a man gone mad. The reins of his horse lay loose on the animal's neck, but the beast knew what was expected of him. It seemed that the stranger would be knocked down and trampled under thousands of sharp hoofs. But he did not seem afraid, riding closer and closer to the line of steers. He emptied one revolver and drew another, never ceasing to yell or wave his coat. Suddenly, with wild bellows, the leaders of the cattle turned. They were frightened at the strange figure before them. For a few seconds there was great confusion amid the mass of steers. Those behind the line of leaders tried to go straight ahead, but the latter, once having made up their minds that they would turn to the left did so. Then, like sheep following the bell-wether of the flock, the beasts took after their leaders. They rushed to one side, thundering past within twenty feet of the auto, while the stranger, pulling up his horse, still continued to wave his coat and shout. [Illustration: THEY RUSHED TO ONE SIDE, THUNDERING PAST THE AUTO.] "He's saved our lives!" exclaimed Nestor. "He's stampeded the cattle away from us in the nick of time!" On and on galloped the steers until the last one disappeared over the rolling hills of the prairie. Then the man on the horse rode over to the auto. "Howdy!" he called. "Howdy!" replied Nestor. "Got ye in kind of a tight place, didn't they?" went on the horseman. "We would have been killed only for you," spoke Jerry and his voice told how thankful he was. "Oh, shoo! That wa'n't nothin'," replied the stranger. "I seen ye comin' up in that there shebang of yours an' then I seen the cows chasin' ye. I was a leetle afraid ye'd go over the cliff, but ye stopped in time. Then I see it was up to me to stop them critters, an' I done it." "Lucky for us you did," put in Nestor. "I happened to be out huntin'," went on the horseman, "or I wouldn't have seen ye. I know cattle an' their ways an' I knowed there was only one way to head 'em off, an' that was to skeer 'em." "I'm Jim Nestor," said the miner, and he told the names of his companions. "Glad to meet ye," said the horseman, dismounting and shaking hands with each one. "I'm Hank Broswick." Nestor told the hunter something of the trip they were making, and Broswick in turn related how he was a free-lance hunter, roving over the prairies and among the mountains as suited his whims. "Had yer suppers?" Broswick asked. "No; an' I don't see any place around here to git 'em," spoke Nestor. "We've got some grub, though, an' we'd be pleased to have your company." "Thanks. I can add my share to the meal," replied Broswick. "I'd jest shot some prairie chickens afore ye come up, an' we'll roast 'em." While he went over to where he had left the fowls, Jerry backed the auto, turned it around, and sent it down the hill to the level plain. "It's a case of camp out again to-night," observed Nestor. "That suits me," spoke Ned, and the other boys agreed with him. A fire was soon made, the prairie chickens were prepared for roasting, coffee was set on to boil, and with some tinned biscuits the adventurers made a hearty meal. Sitting around the camp-fire as night came on, the hunter told several of his adventures while on the trail. Once he had a terrible fight with a grizzly bear, the scars of the combat being visible on his face and arms. "Are there any bears around here?" asked Bob. "Not getting afraid, are you, Chunky?" queried Ned. "No; I only just wanted to know," replied the stout youth, looking over his shoulder in as careless a manner as he could assume. "Waal, there's a few now an' agin'," answered the hunter, "but they don't bother me much, not while I have this along," and he patted a rifle which he had left with his game before he rode out to stampede the cattle. "Are you bound for any particular place?" asked Nestor of Hank. "Nope; I'm my own boss." "Then, why not come along with us?" proposed the miner. "We may need your help, for there's a bad gang ahead of us." He told something of the plans of himself and the boys, in regard to the gold mine, and related how there were enemies in front, and added that he might pay the hunter for his time. "I'll go 'long!" exclaimed the hunter, after a moment's thought. "I used to be a prospector myself." More fuel was heaped on the fire, the adventurers wrapped themselves in their blankets and prepared to spend the night in the open. It was past midnight when Bob was suddenly awakened by feeling some one trying to turn him over. "Go 'way," he said, sleepily. "Let me alone." Something cold and clammy was thrust against his face, and he heard the breathing and noted the peculiar smell of some wild animal. With a shout of terror he sat upright. In the glow from the fire he saw, rearing up on his haunches before him, a big, black bear! CHAPTER XVI. A RUSH OF GOLD SEEKERS. "Help! help!" screamed Bob. The bear made a dive for him and the boy cast himself forward on his face. "What's the matter? What is it?" cried Hank Broswick, springing to his feet. "Indians! Indians!" exclaimed Professor Snodgrass, rolling himself tightly up in his blanket. "It isn't Indians! It's a bear killing Bob!" cried Jerry. The animal, with savage growls, had pounced on the unfortunate boy and was trying to get hold of him with the powerful claws. Bob, after his first wild screams, became quiet, digging his fingers into the earth to hold himself down. "Wait a minute! I'll kill the brute!" cried the hunter. He had seized his ever-ready rifle and rushed over toward the bear. But the fierce beast was so close to Bob that Broswick could not fire without danger of hitting the lad. "Here, boy, take the gun!" yelled the hunter to Jerry. "If you see me getting the worst of it, fire!" "What are you going to do?" exclaimed Jerry. "I'm going to kill that brute with my knife!" cried Broswick. Drawing a keen blade from the sheath at his belt, he jumped straight on the bear's back. The beast, with a fierce growl of rage, turned and tried to bite the legs of the strange enemy that was plunging something terrible and sharp into his shoulders. Ned threw some wood on the fire. It blazed up brightly and, by the light of it, the boys and Nestor saw the bear rear on his haunches, with Broswick still clinging to his back. The hunter had one hand clasped in the shaggy fur of the brute, and the other was sending the knife, again and again, into the thick skin, trying to reach a vital spot. Bob had rolled to one side, out of harm's way, and suffered no more than a rough mauling by the brute. But Broswick was not to escape so easily. With a sudden movement the bear turned, shook the hunter loose, and then, before the brave fellow could defend himself, the savage animal had clasped him in the terrible and powerful claws. "Help! He's squeezing me to death!" Broswick cried. His arms were pinned to his sides and he could not get a chance to use his knife, which he still held. Jerry saw his chance. Approaching close to the bear from behind, the boy placed the muzzle of the gun against the brute's head. There was a loud report, a last fierce growl, and the animal, with a convulsive hug of the hunter, dropped over, dead. Jerry had shot just in time. Broswick, too, fell to the earth and at first the boys thought he was killed. But in a little while he arose and felt of his arms and legs. "I'm all here," he said. "Guess there ain't much harm done, but it was a pretty tight squeeze!" "I thought you were a goner," spoke Jerry. "That ain't nothin'," answered the hunter. "You ought to hev seen me fight a grizzly once!" In the light of the fire, which was now blazing brightly, it was seen that the bear was a big specimen. As he lay stretched out on the ground he measured eight feet from his nose to his short tail. "You know I tole ye there was a few bears now an' agin'," remarked the hunter, as he gave his former foe a kick. "Waal, I reckon some of 'em must 'a' heard me an' wanted to show I was tellin' the truth," he added, with a drawl. No one felt much like sleep after this excitement, so they sat around the camp-fire until it began to get light. Then coffee was made, and the hunter proceeded to skin his prize. He cut off some choice steaks, which were broiled over the coals. The boys thought they had never tasted anything so good. After breakfast the tires were pumped up, the baggage was packed into the auto and preparations made for the start. "Where's Professor Snodgrass?" asked Ned, noticing the absence of the naturalist. Then they all remembered that they had not seen him since the morning meal. "He's probably off gathering some bugs or stones," said Jerry. "Let's give a yell to call him in." In a chorus they gave a loud hallo, and in reply received a faint call from a small ravine. "He's over there," said Broswick, pointing in the direction the voice had come from. "But hark! Sounds like he was in trouble!" Faintly the wind bore to the adventurers the sound of the professor's voice pleading with some one. "Now, please don't!" he was saying, or rather calling aloud. "You know you shouldn't do that! Let me alone, I say! Get out of my way or I'll throw a stone at you!" "The Indians are after him!" exclaimed Bob. "There are no Indians around here, Chunky," spoke Jerry. "You must have redskins on the brain." Broswick and Nestor hurried over to the ravine. As they reached it they could be heard laughing long and heartily. Soon a small, wild goat was seen to run from the cut, leaping away over the plain. Out of the defile came the professor, Nestor and Broswick. "The wild goat had him treed," spoke Nestor. "Truly that was a savage brute," said the professor. "I was gathering some specimens, and had my arms full, when along comes this beast, with lowered horns, and nearly knocked me over. I had barely time to run for my life and climb a tree before he was after me again. His sharp horns scraped my shoe as I climbed. There I was, treed. I didn't dare come down, for fear he would eat me, or horn me to death. I don't know what I should have done if you gentlemen hadn't come along." "Oh, we only scared him away!" said Broswick. "Pardon me, just a moment," interrupted the professor, making a quick motion toward Nestor and picking something from his shoulder. "There, I have it. I am very much obliged to you." "What sort of game did ye git this trip?" asked the hunter, somewhat amused at the naturalist. "A rare specimen of the fly that lives in the wool of wild goats," replied the professor. "The insect is very valuable. It must have jumped from the goat to you." After a little consultation the party started off, the auto making a pace slow enough so the hunter's horse could easily keep up. For several days the journey was continued, with no accidents to mar the way. The adventurers had reached well down into New Mexico by this time and had about one hundred miles farther to go before they could make the spur of the mountain and avoid going over the range. One afternoon, following a good day's run, Ned brought the machine to a stop below a little hill, where it was decided to spend the night, as the place was sheltered. Jerry happened to glance to the rear, over the back trail, as he was getting out the supper utensils, and uttered a cry. "What's that?" he asked, pointing to a long line of men that were filing along a road that joined the main one about where the camp was to be made. "Looks like a procession," observed Broswick. "They're miners, that's what they are!" cried Nestor, after a long look. "Every one has his pack on his back, his washing-pan and his pick and shovel." "What are they coming this way for?" asked Ned. "They are on the rush, seeking gold," explained the miner. "Word has come to the camp where they were that rich pay-dirt has been struck in some locality. They all want to get at it, so they pack up and leave for the new field. Many's the time I've done it." In a little while the foremost of the miners reached the auto camp. They seemed surprised to see the machine, but did not stop. "What's your hurry, mate?" asked Nestor, of one big, brawny chap who was walking fast. "Want to make as many miles as I can before sundown," was the reply. "There's rich diggin's ahead, an' I want to stake a good claim." "Where might they be located?" asked Nestor. "Why, ain't you heard? I thought every one had," answered the other. "They're in the lower part of Arizona, in what they call the Hop Toad District." Nestor gave a start. The miner passed on, fearful lest even his brief stop would cost him his place in the cavalcade. "The Hop Toad District!" muttered Nestor. "That's the district where my lost mine is located! I hope that hasn't been discovered. If it has it means all our work has gone for nothin'!" CHAPTER XVII. OVER THE MOUNTAINS. On and on the stream of miners hurried. Several paused to stare at the automobile in wonder. Others passed by with never a glance. One man was mounted on a lame mule that made but little better speed than some of the pedestrians. Three men, who seemed to form a party by themselves, came to a halt in front of the machine. They whispered together a few moments and then one stepped forward and addressed Nestor. "Will you sell that machine for three thousand dollars?" he asked. "I'm not the boss. You'll have to speak to one of these boys," replied the miner. "How about it?" asked the man of Jerry. "I hardly believe we want to sell," answered the latter. "That's right," whispered Nestor. "There's some game afoot. Don't sell. There must have been a big gold strike lately to cause this rush!" The three miners saw that the boys would not part with their machine, which the prospectors wanted in order to make a quick trip to the new mining region. So they turned away and continued afoot on the trail. For nearly an hour the stream of miners continued to march by. Then, as the last stragglers were lost to view, Nestor said: "Boys, we're in a tight place. We'll have to hustle. Somehow or other news of the rich mining region near where my mine is located has leaked out. There's a rush, and we'll have to travel fast. We can't stick to our original plan. We've got to go over the mountains." "Must we start right away?" asked Ned. "The sooner the better," answered Nestor. "We'll have supper and travel night and day from now on. We'll have to race against not only Noddy Nixon and his gang, but these miners who have gone on ahead of us." From what was intended to be a peaceful camp, that of the Motor Boys and their friends was turned into a mere resting place. Every one was filled with excitement, and Professor Snodgrass forgot to start on a collecting tour. He did not open his green box, and, with the others, ate a hasty meal. As soon as Jerry had finished his supper he gave the auto a thorough overhauling. Plenty of oil was put on the bearings, the water tank was refilled from a convenient spring and the tires pumped up. Then the holder for the carbide, from which the acetylene gas for the lamps was generated, was packed with the chemical. "I'm ready when you are," announced Jerry. By this time each one had finished his meal. The dishes were placed in the basket, Professor Snodgrass stowed his specimens carefully away and Hank Broswick tightened the saddle girths on his horse. "Forward!" cried Nestor. With a series of chug-chugs the machine darted ahead. The hunter urged his horse on and the adventurers were once more moving toward the hidden mine. It was going to be a bright, moonlight night, as could be told by the silver disk that was already rising above the trees. "We'll hardly need the gas lamps," observed Ned. "But it's better to have them," remarked Jerry, who had been selected to do the steering. Leaving the broad and level road that led south over the plains, the adventurers headed due west. In a little while it was evident that the machine was going uphill, for the motor began puffing laboriously, and Jerry shifted the gear to first speed. "We've struck the foothills," observed Nestor. "In a short time we'll be going up the mountain. Then, look out!" Broswick rode along just behind the machine on his horse. The animal was a steady trotter and managed to keep up to the auto, which was obliged to move slowly, as it had quite a heavy load on a steep grade. For several hours the machine kept going. All the while the ascent became more and more steep until, at length, the adventurers found themselves well above the foothills and among the mountains. "We'll keep on until about ten o'clock," said Nestor. "Then we'll camp for the night. We must get some sleep or we'll be all tired out." Up, up, up went the auto. After quite a climb a small plateau or level stretch was reached, and there the going was easier. Jerry took advantage of it to run on the second gear. It was quiet, save for the mournful hooting of an owl now and then, as the machine made little noise, and no one felt like talking. All at once there came from the rear seat a strange sound. "What's that?" asked Jerry. "Chunky has fallen asleep and is snoring," answered Broswick, who was riding beside the machine. "I reckon it's time we camped for the night," put in Nestor. "Here's a good stopping place. We'll make an early start in the morning." The machine was halted, blankets were gotten out and a small camp-fire started. Tired and weary, the adventurers prepared for bed. Broswick, who carried his blankets on his horse, said he would stand the first watch, and Nestor agreed to take the second, so the boys could get a full night's rest. "I'll do my share," said Professor Snodgrass, anxious to be of service. But Nestor said there was no need for the naturalist to sit up. To tell the truth, the miner was afraid that if the professor was left on guard he would forget what he was doing and wander off in search of specimens. Silence soon settled over the little camp in the mountains. The three boys were slumbering peacefully, as was the professor. Broswick sat by the fire, keeping watch, and Nestor was rolled up in his blanket. Suddenly, from down the slope up which the auto had come, sounded the blast of a trumpet. "What's that?" cried Nestor, springing to his feet, for he was a light sleeper. He came over to where the hunter sat. "Sounded like Gabriel's trumpet," replied the hunter, quietly. "No; it was an auto horn," spoke Nestor. "A machine is coming up the trail. We must watch out. It may be Noddy Nixon and his gang." Once more silence settled down, but to the trained ears of the miner and hunter there came the faint throbbing that told an automobile was approaching. Nestor loosened the revolver in his belt and Broswick reached over for his rifle, which he always kept near him. Nearer and nearer came the machine. It reached the level stretch on which the adventurers were encamped and then the speed of the engine could be heard to increase. Nestor threw some light wood on the fire. It blazed up brightly, and the miner quickly drew Broswick back into the shadows of a big oak tree. "We'll watch as they go past," he said. A minute later an auto dashed by. "There they are!" exclaimed Nestor. "There's that gambler, Pud Stoneham, and with him is Tom Dalsett, the man who knows where my mine is. I wonder how they got behind us. I thought they were ahead." "I reckon we can keep 'em behind if we want to," whispered Broswick. He raised his gun. "Hold on! we don't want to murder any one!" exclaimed Nestor, in a whisper, knocking the weapon up. He was too late, as the hunter had fired. "I wasn't goin' to do any damage," spoke the old man. "I only aimed to bust a tire. However, you spoiled my mark. The bullet went over their heads." "I thought you were goin' to shoot one of them," said Nestor. Noddy, who, from the brief glimpse Nestor had, could be seen at the steering wheel, increased his speed at the sound of the report, as could be told by the faster explosions of the motor. The noise of the rifle going off awoke Jerry. "What's the matter?" he cried, sitting up. "Your friend Noddy just passed by," replied Nestor, "and the hunter gave him a salute." "I thought he was far away," said Jerry. There was nothing that could be done, and the camp again settled down to quietness and slumber. There were no more disturbances, and at midnight Nestor relieved Broswick. Almost before the boys knew it morning had come. Then, after breakfast, they were off once more. There were no signs of Noddy's machine save the marks of the broad tires in the dust of the road. Leaving the plateau the adventurers were soon mounting toward the clouds again. All the morning they hurried forward as fast as the auto could be urged. Broswick's horse kept well to the trail, for it was used to mountain climbing. At noon a stop was made beside a swiftly running brook and dinner was eaten. Then, after a rest beneath the trees, the journey was resumed. About five o'clock another halt was made for supper, thirty miles having been reeled off during the afternoon. "We'll do a bit of traveling as we did last night," said Nestor. CHAPTER XVIII. A TRICK OF THE ENEMY. The gas and oil lamps were lighted, and, as the sun sank to rest behind the hills, the auto began the night trip. The way was still upward, for the summit of the mountains had not yet been reached. Ned was steering and Jerry was on the seat beside him. The machine topped a long rise and came to the brow of a small incline, the descent of which, on the other side, was quite steep. It was now dark, for the moon had gone behind a cloud. The road was not of the best, and Ned had the machine pretty well under control. Down it went on the slope. Suddenly Jerry gave a cry and reached over to shut off the power. "Jam on the brakes!" he cried to Ned. The steersman obeyed, and, with a grinding sound, the auto came to a halt, with a sort of jar. "What's the matter?" asked Nestor. "Some obstruction on the road; looks like a log," answered Jerry. "I just happened to see it in time." He got out and ran ahead. "It's a tree cut down right across the path," he called back. "A big one, too. If we'd hit it, running as we were, we'd have gone to smash." They all got out of the car and gathered about the obstruction. Broswick alighted from his horse and made a close inspection. "This was done on purpose," he declared. "It has been freshly cut and was chopped on the side next to the road so's to fall right across an' block our way." "I wonder who did it?" asked Bob. "There's only one gang who could have an object in such a trick as this," said Ned. "Who?" inquired Bob. "Noddy Nixon's crowd. They want to delay us as much as possible so they can reach the mine first." "I believe Jerry is right," put in Nestor. "This is one of the enemy's tricks, all right." For a little while the adventurers stood and looked at the tree that obstructed their further progress. "Well, what's to be done?" asked Ned. "It's too big for us to lift out of the way," said Bob. "We'll have to wait until morning and then go get some axes and chop it in two." "Don't do that," exclaimed Professor Snodgrass, so earnestly that the boys thought he might have some other plan to propose. "Why not?" asked Jerry. "Because there may be some valuable specimens of insects on that tree, little green or brown toads, katydids or other things. Let it stay there until morning so I may gather them." "The tree is likely to stay there until morning, all right enough," observed Nestor, "so you'll have all the time you want, Professor." "There's no need of delay," spoke Jerry, suddenly. "How you goin' to git rid of the tree?" asked Nestor. "I'll show you," replied the boy. He ran to the back of the auto, took out a long, stout rope and fastened this to the tree, near the branch end. The other end of the cable Jerry brought back to the machine. This he now tied to the rear axle of the automobile, and then, getting into the front seat, he turned the machine around. Gradually increasing the speed, he sent the auto ahead. The rope tightened, there was a straining, cracking sound and the tree was pulled to one side of the road by the power of the auto. The thoroughfare was left free for passage. "I guess they didn't think of that," remarked Jerry, as he replaced the rope and turned the machine around. "Now we can go ahead." "Good for you!" cried Nestor. "We'll beat 'em yet, an' at their own game!" They piled into the auto, and with Jerry at the wheel, went forward again, Broswick's horse keeping up. They traveled for about an hour longer and then Nestor suggested that as they had reached a good spot it might be wise to camp there for the rest of the night. It was not long before every one was snoring in slumber. Ned was the first one to awake, and he did so as the result of a vivid dream he had that he was sliding downhill on top of a barrel, when it collapsed and threw him into a snow-bank. He opened his eyes to find the ground all white about him, and about three inches of snow covering his rubber blanket. "Where are we?" he called out, his voice awakening the others. "A snow squall!" cried Broswick. "I thought we were gittin' high enough to have 'em. Waal, it won't amount to much." "Are snow storms common here the end of September?" asked Jerry. "They are when you git high enough in the mountains," replied the hunter. "Many's the night I've gone to bed thinkin' it was summer, to wake up an' find it winter, an' me sleepin' under a foot of snow. The storms come up so easy you don't know anythin' about 'em." "Will it last long?" asked Ned. "No; it'll melt when the sun strikes it," was the answer. "But snow or no snow, we must have breakfast." Broswick scraped away a place amid the white blanket and found some wood. A blaze was soon kindled, and the appetizing smell of coffee filled the crisp air. A hasty but substantial meal was made, and then the travelers, urged on by the call of gold in the mine they were striving to reach, took up their journey again. As Broswick had said, as soon as the sun rose the snow began to melt and soon the landscape showed no signs of the winter costume it had masqueraded in. The adventurers were now close to the top of the mountain, and would shortly begin descending on the other slope. They had dinner beside a swift, cold brook, from which Broswick caught several large trout that made an excellent and very welcome addition to the meal, broiled as they were over the coals. It was late that afternoon when the hunter, who was riding somewhat in the rear, came galloping up on his horse. "I'm afraid we're in for it," he said. "In for what?" asked Nestor. "A rippin' old thunder storm," was the answer. "The clouds back there are as black as ink an' the wind's drivin' 'em right this way. If I know anythin' of signs, an' I ought to, considerin' I've hunted in these mountains for nigh onto twenty years, we're goin' to have a regular rip-snorter." "Snow one day and a thunder storm the next," observed Jerry. "This is a queer country." Events soon proved the old hunter was right. The wind began to blow a regular gale and the clouds made the sky almost as dark as night. The auto was going downhill; Jerry was taking it along as easily as he could. Suddenly the storm burst with a terrific peal of thunder that accompanied a blinding flash of lightning. It seemed to shake the very earth. Then came a regular deluge of rain. "Run the machine under a tree," advised Nestor. "We'll be washed away if we stay in the road." "There's a good place, just ahead!" shouted Broswick. "Under the oak. Leave the auto there and run for the cave!" "What cave?" cried Jerry. "There's one on the left side of the road, a little above the tree," said Broswick. "I've stayed in it often when I was caught in a storm. It'll hold all of us an' the horse." The machine was halted beneath the oak. Then, after rubber blankets had been spread to keep dry the baggage in the auto, the adventurers raced for the cave, led by Broswick. They found the cavern to be a dry, roomy one, a natural hole scooped out of the side of the mountain. Once inside, the war of the elements could not harm them. They drew back from the mouth of the cave and listened to the heavy rumble of thunder and watched the brilliant lightning. It seemed as if the very flood-gates were opened. The wind blew a regular hurricane, and the lightning was incessant. Suddenly there came a dull rumbling and the cave was jarred by a shock. Then it grew as black as night. "That struck somewhere!" cried Jerry. "And near here!" exclaimed Broswick. "I'm afraid it was too close for comfort." "Are we in any danger?" asked Professor Snodgrass, calmly. Broswick had groped his way forward. He seemed to be fumbling in the darkness at the mouth of the cave. "What's happened?" shouted Nestor. "A rock has fallen and closed the mouth of the cavern!" cried the hunter. CHAPTER XIX. THE AUTO STOLEN. For a few moments the silence of despair was on every one. The knowledge that they were imprisoned in the cave came as a terrible shock. "Is there no way out?" asked Nestor. "Now don't you folks go to worryin'," spoke Broswick, in a more cheerful voice than seemed warranted under the circumstances. "I've been in tighter places than this, an' come out on top!" "But we're buried!" cried Professor Snodgrass, who, for once, seemed to have forgotten all about his beloved specimens. "That's nothin'," spoke Broswick. "You thought you was all goners when them cattle was comin' after you, but I got you out, an' I'm goin' to do the same now!" "You can't burrow out like a rabbit," said Ned. "I've got a little instrument here that will help me," said the hunter. "I never travel without a spade on my saddle. I've lost too many rabbits an' woodchucks through not havin' the means to dig 'em out, so I always carry a shovel along. I reckon it will come in handy. If I only had a light now----" "No need to worry about that," put in Nestor. "It would be a pretty poor miner that traveled without a bit of candle and some matches with him. I always go prepared for emergencies." He struck a match, a yellow glow filled the cave, and soon a candle gave good illumination. The boys could see that the cavern was of large size. "I've often stayed in here to keep out the rain," said Broswick, as he got his spade, "but I never was ketched like this before." Guided by the candle, the hunter went to the mouth of the cave and began digging away the mass of earth and rocks that had slid down and obstructed the opening. "Goin' to be quite a job," remarked the miner, as he looked over the mass. "It'll take a good while." "There's plenty of us to do the work," replied Broswick. He attacked the pile and made the dirt fly. After he had labored fifteen minutes Nestor relieved him. The miner, from his experience in digging into the earth, made more progress than had the hunter. Nestor kept at it for more than half an hour, refusing to yield the spade to any one. "There," he said, when he stopped to rest, "I've made quite a hole." The boys and Professor Snodgrass took turns, and then Nestor went at it again. "I wish I had a drink," remarked the miner. "This is dry work." "Nothin' easier," said Broswick. He took a second candle, which the miner had, and walked to the rear of the cave. In a little while he returned with a big gourd full of cold water. "What sort of a magician are you?" asked Jerry. "There's a spring back there," explained Broswick. "Many's the time I've taken a drink at it and the last time I was here I brought this gourd for a dipper. Now it comes in handy." Each one took a draught of the cool water and felt the better for it. Then Nestor insisted that he was going to continue the digging. The others wanted to relieve him, but he would not let them. He plied the spade vigorously and the dirt was scattered to one side. "Light! Light!" the miner cried, suddenly. "I can see light! We're nearly out!" A few more strokes of the shovel made the opening larger and then, with a shout and hurrah, the imprisoned adventurers rushed forward. "Why! Why! It's night!" exclaimed Bob, as he emerged from the cavern and saw the stars shining. "Of course it is," answered Nestor. "It was late afternoon when we took shelter in the cave, and we were there more than three hours." "Well, we're out now," said Jerry. "I wonder if the auto was damaged." The storm had ceased and the night was a fine, clear one. The moon was shining from a cloudless sky and thousands of stars were out. Jerry ran on ahead to the tree under which the auto had been left, for the machine was his chief concern. He paused as he reached the spot. Then he rubbed his eyes and wondered if he was seeing straight. He even pinched himself to see if he was awake. "What's the matter?" asked Ned, who was following close behind his chum. "The auto is gone!" cried Jerry. "Gone?" "Yes. Stolen!" "What's that?" exclaimed Nestor, running up. Jerry pointed under the tree. There was not any sign of an automobile. "That's funny," observed Broswick. "It couldn't fly away, that's sure." He led his horse from the cave up to the road and stooped down to examine the path closely. "Let's have one of those candles," the hunter called to Nestor. Lighting the wick the old man examined the road with care, moving about in a circle and then going backward and forward for quite a distance. "Well?" inquired Nestor, when the hunter straightened up. "Some one came along in another auto while we were in the cave," said the hunter, "pulled up here alongside of yours, hitched on to it and pulled it away, or else rode off in it." "What makes you think so?" asked Jerry. "I haven't hunted an' trapped twenty years for nothin', young man," was the answer. "I can see the tracks your machine made as it stopped under a tree. Then along comes another machine, with tires a leetle mite smaller'n yours. Auto No. 2 stops. Some one gits out from it an' looks over your auto, for I kin see marks of hob-nailed shoes, an' none of us wear 'em." "Hob-nails, did you say, eh?" here interrupted Nestor. "That's what I said." "Then Tom Dalsett has been here." "How do you know?" "Look an' see if the soles of the hob-nailed shoes didn't have a cross in each one." "They did," replied the hunter, inspecting the tracks. "Then it's Tom Dalsett for sure. He always wore shoes like that, an' I seen 'em on him when he was at Dead Man's Gulch." "Then Noddy and his gang have stolen our auto!" cried Jerry. "That's about it," assented Nestor. "However, we mustn't give up yet. We'll take after 'em." "Not much chance of getting them, though," put in Ned. "You're welcome to my horse," said Broswick. "He ain't very fast, but he's better than nothin'." "There's no use doin' anythin' to-night," was the miner's opinion. "We'd only get lost on the road, and I don't know but what we're lost already. We'll have to camp until mornin'." After some consideration this was voted the best thing to do. It was a sorrowful band of adventurers that gathered about the fire which Broswick made, for the hearts of the boys were dispirited over the theft of their machine, and the men sympathized with them. Fortunately, the hunter had some bacon left, and a meal, such as it was, the travelers made on this. Then, selecting the driest places they could find, they prepared to spend the night in the open, without coverings. It was cold, but by keeping a good fire going some comfort was had. When the sun rose the adventurers got up, stretched themselves and wondered what they were going to do for breakfast. "Leave it to me," said Broswick. "I'm used to providing meals." He was gone some little time, and when he came back he had several plump birds. These were cleaned and were soon roasting over the fire on sticks. It was a good deal better meal than might have been expected under the circumstances. Then, with the hunter riding his horse, and the others following, the journey in search of the stolen auto was begun. The marks made by the broad tires of the two machines could be plainly seen. "I wouldn't care if I had my valuable specimens," wailed Professor Snodgrass. "We'll git 'em, an' the auto, too," said Broswick. "Don't you worry." They had covered several miles and were descending a long hill, when Jerry called out: "What's that ahead, there?" They all stopped and peered down the road. "There are two autos!" cried Nestor. "One looks like ours. I'm going to see about it." And he started off on a run. CHAPTER XX. ATTACKED BY INDIANS. "Here, come back!" yelled Broswick. "What for?" shouted Nestor. "Take my horse," said the hunter. "That's better than going afoot." Nestor returned, mounted the animal and set off at a gallop toward the two autos, which were down in the valley. "He'll never catch them," said Bob, in a despairing tone. "You let him alone," came from Broswick. "He'll git 'em, all right. There's some trouble down there. One machine can't go." "How can you tell?" asked Jerry. "I've got sharp eyes, boy," was the answer. "I use 'em in my business." In fact, as the boys observed closely, they could see that the two machines were not moving. They could also note men walking about the cars. "Something's out of kilter," said Ned. "I guess they found plenty of trouble running two machines. I'll bet one of 'em is ours." They watched Nestor descend the slope and approach the cars. As he came closer to them it was observed that there was some commotion among the persons grouped around the machines. They saw the miner raise his hand in the air, and little clouds of smoke arose. "He's firing over their heads!" cried Broswick. Then, all at once, the persons down in the valley, who, as the boys afterward learned, were Noddy Nixon and his gang, made a rush for the head auto, jumped into it and made off at top speed. Nestor rode up to the remaining machine and waved his hat back to his friends. Taking this as a signal that all was right, they hurried forward. "It was them, all right!" cried Nestor, when Jerry and the others had joined him. "I scared them off by firing in the air. There seemed to be something the matter with our auto, for they were trying to fix it." The boys were worried lest some harm had befallen their machine. Jerry made an examination, however, and found things in good shape. There was some damage, and a battery wire had become disconnected, which had brought the machine to a stop, thus foiling the plans of Noddy. "That was a lucky break for us," said Bob. "You bet it was, Chunky," agreed Ned. "If we hadn't recovered the auto we would have had to walk back home, and home is a good ways from here." Repairs to the machine were quickly made, and then, with light hearts, the adventurers took their places and started forward once again. Nothing in the car had been disturbed, and even the collection of insects made by Professor Snodgrass had not been harmed. The steady chug-chug and puff-puff of the motor was heard as the adventurers moved on up the mountain. They stopped for dinner on top of a little hill in the midst of a grove of trees. A fire was kindled, coffee made, and some canned provisions set out. "This is something like," observed Bob, smacking his lips over some preserved tongue. "I'd have given five dollars for a cup of coffee last night," spoke Nestor. "Me, too," said the hunter. "I am so thankful my specimens are safe I could go without eating for a week," put in Professor Snodgrass, at which they all laughed. Taking a comfortable rest under the trees until the afternoon sun went down a little, the adventurers were thoroughly enjoying the pleasant day. Suddenly Broswick started up. "What is it?" asked Nestor, viewing with alarm the look of fear on the hunter's face. "Indians!" was the answer. "You don't mean real Indians?" "That's what I do. There's a reservation of some kind about fifty miles from here, and they break loose every now and again." "What makes you think some are loose now?" "Hear 'em yellin' an' screechin'!" said the hunter, raising his hand to caution silence. Straining their ears the adventurers noted the faint sound of some weird chant borne to them on the east wind. Then, as they watched, they saw, coming over the slope of the hill, a band of redskins, mounted on ponies. "Hurry to the auto!" cried Ned. He ran for the machine, followed by Jerry and Bob. Broswick picked up his gun and looked to the loading of it, as Nestor did to his revolvers, but neither of the men offered to retreat. Professor Snodgrass was intent on capturing some kind of grasshoppers, and did not seem to care whether there were Indians about or not. More and more of the savages came into view. "Hadn't we better skip?" asked Nestor of the hunter. "There are a few more than I reckoned on," was the reply. "I guess we may as well skedaddle if we don't want trouble. I don't know how my nag will run, compared to the Indian ponies, but----" "Better get in the auto," suggested Nestor. "It will hold six on a pinch." By this time Ned was frantically cranking up the machine. But, though he turned the flywheel with all his strength, while Bob attended to the spark and gasolene levers, the machine would not start. "What's the matter?" cried Jerry, who had delayed, to pick up some of the baggage that was unloaded for dinner. "She's stuck!" yelled Bob. Jerry sprang to the cranking handle. His success was no better than Ned's. There were a few faint compressions, but that was all. "Better start if you're goin' to," said Broswick, coming up. "They're almost here now." "We can't start!" exclaimed Jerry. "Then we'll have to fight!" observed Broswick, coolly. Suddenly the air was filled with fierce howls and yells. "You boys git in the back part of the machine," cautioned the hunter. "We men will attend to the redskins. Maybe they are only off on a holiday junket, account of bein' paid off by the Government. In that case they may let us alone. But they might be ugly, an'----" Just then a bullet, with an angry zip, passed over Broswick's head. "They're out fer business an' not fun!" he exclaimed. At the same instant he threw up his rifle and fired. A howl of pain came in answer, and one Indian fell from his horse. "I only took him in the leg," said the hunter, grimly. "No use killin' any if we can avoid it." Jerry, Bob and Ned sank down in the tonneau. Nestor and the hunter lined up in front of the auto and stood with ready weapons. Professor Snodgrass, with a revolver, which Nestor had given him, seemed more afraid of the weapon than of the Indians. Then, with savage yells, the band of redskins, who, as it afterward developed, had gone on a rampage from their reservation because they were dissatisfied with the Government rations, closed around the auto. They fired their guns off as fast as they could load them. But, either because they were poor shots, or because they didn't want to hit the adventurers, the Indians did no damage. Several bullets came uncomfortably close, and one or two grazed the auto, but no one was hurt. Then the savages, with whoops and yells, began circling about the machine. Around and around they went, riding their ponies at top speed. Suddenly, as if in response to some signal, they withdrew quite a distance, but still hemmed the travelers in a circle. [Illustration: THE SAVAGES BEGAN CIRCLING ABOUT THE MACHINE.] "They're up to some mischief," said Nestor. "Shall we wing one or two just to show we have bullets?" "Not for the world," replied Broswick. "Our only hope is not to get them too riled. They may draw off an' leave us alone." But this was not the Indians' intention. Once more they began making a wide circle about the auto. "I see what the trouble was!" cried Jerry, looking over from the tonneau to the front of the dashboard. "The sparking plug was out. No wonder we couldn't start the machine." He reached over and put the small brass pin in the proper socket. "Now I'm going to have another try!" he called to Broswick and Nestor. "Get ready to jump in the machine!" Before Nestor could stop him, Jerry had leaped to the ground. He ran around to the front of the auto, seized the cranking handle and gave several vigorous turns. As he did so a chorus of savage yells arose from the Indian ranks, and several more shots were fired. CHAPTER XXI. OVER A CLIFF. The bullets struck all around Jerry, but none of them struck him. Some of the leaden missiles hit the ground and made little clouds of dust, and others zipped on all sides of the auto. All at once the explosions of the auto motor mingled with the banging of the Indians' guns. Jerry had started the engine. "Get in!" he cried, leaping to the steering seat. Broswick, Nestor and Professor Snodgrass obeyed the command. "What about my horse?" cried the hunter. "Let him go! It's you or the nag!" yelled the miner. In another instant the whole party was in the auto and Jerry yanked the levers to full speed ahead. Off the car shot, Jerry steering for an opening in the circle of Indians. With wild yells the redmen watched the auto glide away. They fired shots at it, and one Indian hit Broswick, but the wound was only a slight one. "Here comes your horse!" shouted Bob, glancing behind, and, sure enough, Broswick's steed was galloping after the swiftly moving auto as though he was on the race track. In a little while the adventurers left the Indians behind and were at a safe distance from any bullets. The hunter's horse, too, kept running, and got away. "Well, we didn't bargain for this when we left home," remarked Jerry, as he slowed up the machine after an hour's run. "I should say not," put in Bob. "Being attacked by Indians was the last thing I ever thought of." "You're out in the wild an' woolly West," observed Nestor. "You'll see stranger things before you get through." "I'd like to see something to eat right now," came from Bob. "There goes Chunky," said Ned. "He's always as hungry as he was at home." In spite of poking fun at the stout youth, every one felt the need of food. So a stop was made, a fire built, and soon coffee was boiling. Broswick went off in the woods with his rifle and came back with a brace of birds and a jack rabbit. What the boys voted was the finest meal they ever ate was quickly prepared. "We must be careful not to lose the auto again," said Jerry. "We have had trouble enough with Noddy. The next time he may beat us altogether." When camp was made that night a system of watches was arranged so that some one would be on guard all through the dark hours. Nothing disturbed the adventurers, however, and in the morning they started again on their trip across the mountains, which, it seemed, would never come to an end. Several days, including Sunday, passed without incident. No very fast time was made, and the machine had to be sent along carefully, as the roads were bad and the trail was uncertain to them. One morning Broswick announced that he was going off on a hunt. Nestor and Professor Snodgrass said they would go with him. Accordingly, the hunter's horse was tied near the auto and the three men set off, while the three boys remained behind to make some repairs to the machine and do a little necessary overhauling. "We'll be back by dinner-time," announced Broswick; "that is, if something doesn't happen to us." The boys were so busy that they scarcely noted the passage of time. It was not until Jerry looked at his watch and announced that it was two o'clock that the lads wondered what had happened to their friends. "It's long past meal time," said Ned. "Maybe they're not hungry," suggested Bob. "More likely they're in trouble," spoke Jerry, an anxious look on his face. "I think we had better hunt them up." This the boys decided to do, after getting themselves a light lunch. They ran the auto along the track the three men had taken, but after riding half an hour found no sign of their friends. "Maybe we're on the wrong track," said Bob. "Or else they didn't come this way," put in Ned. They turned the machine around and rode back slowly, looking for marks along the road. "There's something!" exclaimed Jerry. He pointed to a small match-box lying on the ground. "Nestor always carried that," he said. "It must have dropped from his pocket. The men have been here." "Hark! What's that?" cried Bob. All listened. To their ears came a faint but unmistakable cry. "Help!" "There they are!" called Jerry. "Over to the left! We must hurry to them!" He sent the machine ahead at a swift pace. The road led along the top of a plateau and ran close to the edge of a cliff. As the machine neared this spot the cries became louder. Near the edge of the precipice Jerry brought the machine to a stop. "They are down there," he announced, after listening carefully. The boys dismounted from the car and approached the ledge. It went down straight for about fifty feet and then bulged out into a shelf before making a sheer descent to the valley, three hundred feet below. Near the edge of the precipice the earth and rocks were freshly torn away, showing that something had gone over. Jerry got down on his hands and knees and crept to the edge. What he saw as he looked down made him spring to his feet and shout in mingled fear and astonishment. There, on a jutting spur of the mountain, hardly large enough to hold them, were the three missing men. "Are you hurt?" Jerry called down. "Bruised and scratched, but no bones broken," shouted Nestor. "You'll have to haul us up some way, for we can't get down nor crawl up." "Git a rope!" shouted Broswick, "an' lower it down." "A rope! I don't believe there's one long enough within ten miles of here!" exclaimed Ned. "Yes, there is," said Jerry, quickly. "We have the one they tried to hang Professor Snodgrass with--the same we used on the tree. It's in the auto. You get it, Bob." In a few minutes a long rope was dangling over the edge of the cliff, and when the end reached the men imprisoned on the ledge they set up a joyful shout. The boys retained their end and at a signal from Nestor, who had tied the cable about the professor, under his arms, Bob, Ned and Jerry began to haul away. They strained and pulled, but the man at the other end did not budge. "It's caught!" exclaimed Ned. Jerry ran forward, telling Ned and Bob to retain their hold of the rope. He found that the cord rasped against an edge of rock as it passed up from the depths below, and this produced so much friction that great force would have to be used in pulling the men up. Then, too, there was the danger of the rope fraying and being cut in two. Jerry thought over the problem a few seconds. "What's the matter up there?" asked Nestor. "Never mind!" shouted back Jerry. "We'll have you up in a jiffy now." He hurried over to a little clump of trees and came back with a short section of a round limb. "This will be a roller for the rope to pass over, just like a pulley," he announced. Then he proceeded to put his plan in operation. Lying down on his face, he held the log in position, the rope passing over it. Then he told Bob and Ned to pull. But even with this advantage there was trouble. The two boys managed to get the professor up a short distance, but they were not strong enough to hoist him all the way. "Help! help!" the naturalist cried, as he felt himself dangling. "This will not do!" exclaimed Jerry. "Let him down easy, boys; I'll have to think of another plan." It began to look as though the rescue of the men on the ledge was to be a harder task than at first supposed. At Jerry's direction, the end of the rope the boys had was fastened to a stake driven into the ground. "Now I wonder what we'd better do?" mused Jerry. "We'll have to use the limb of the tree as a roller, and some one has to hold it in place. Yet it will take all three of us to pull one man up. If only one of the men was up here to give a hand we could manage. As it is----" "I have it!" cried Ned, suddenly, and he ran back to where the auto stood. CHAPTER XXII. THE CHASE. Ned reached the machine, cranked it up, and a few minutes later steered it close to where Bob and Jerry stood. "The auto can do what we can't," he said. "What do you mean?" came from Jerry. "I mean it can pull the men up over the cliff!" "Hurrah! So it can!" exclaimed Jerry. "I see your plan." The car was turned around so the rear of it was close to the edge of the precipice. Then the rope was fastened to the axle. "Get ready, down below!" called Jerry. "We're ready!" came back the answer. Jerry and Bob stretched out on the ground, each one holding an end of the improvised roller. Ned started the auto slowly. The rope strained and tightened. Then, as the car gathered speed, the cable was pulled up, and Professor Snodgrass, tied to the other end, was hauled from his perilous position. As his head came into view over the edge of the precipice, Jerry shouted to Ned to stop the car. The next instant the naturalist was helped to solid ground by the two boys. The plan had worked. In quick succession Nestor and the hunter were pulled up in the same fashion. "Well, I must say you boys are smart chaps," spoke the miner. "Automobiles are useful critters in more ways than to ride in." "How did you ever get down there?" asked Jerry. "It was all my fault," said Professor Snodgrass. "We were walking along, and I saw a particularly rare specimen of a little garter-snake. It was moving through the grass and I raced after it. It went over the edge of the cliff, and I reached down and tried to get it. It was so far over that I had to lie down flat on my face and stretch my arms. Then----" "Yes, an' when he found he couldn't reach the critter even then," interrupted Broswick, "he asked Nestor an' me to hold his heels while he stretched down. Blamed if I ever do such a thing ag'in." "Why not?" asked Bob. "'Cause jest as soon as me an' Nestor got hold of his heels an' was easin' him over the cliff, I'll be jiggered if the whole top didn't give way an' there we was, slidin' down the mountain at about forty miles a minute. I thought we was gone coons sure, but we struck on the ledge an' that saved us." "We'd been there yet if you boys hadn't come along," said Nestor. "But say, I'm mighty hungry." "There isn't much to eat," spoke Jerry. "Yes, there is," came from the hunter. "I shot some partridge jest afore we had that bloomin' old snake hunt." He walked over to where he had left his game and came back with a double brace of fine birds. It was not long before the partridges were roasting over a fire and every one with a good appetite prepared to eat. "Where's my specimen box?" suddenly exclaimed the professor, after an inspection of the auto. "It's gone!" "No; I just laid it to one side when I wanted to use the machine to haul you up with," explained Ned. "It is safe. But what do you want of it now?" "To put my snake in, of course," and the scientist showed a tiny serpent grasped in his hand. "So you got it after all, eh?" asked Broswick. "I thought you missed it when them rocks an' dirt slid an' let us all down kersmash over the cliff." "I wouldn't have lost that snake for ten thousand dollars," said the professor, as he put it safely away with his other curiosities. After dinner the journey toward the lost gold mine was again taken up. In a short time the auto and its occupants, as well as Broswick on his horse, were making good speed. Presently it was noticed that the road was sloping downward. Jerry remarked on the fact. "We've crossed the divide," announced Nestor. "From now on, until we get to the mine, we'll be going downhill. There's another rise of the mountains after we pass the mine, though." It was now about five o'clock, and as the adventurers had eaten dinner rather late they decided not to stop for supper, but to keep on until it was time to camp for the night and have another meal then. When it got too dark to go any further on the road, even though the gas and oil lamps gave a glaring light, a halt was made. Supper was eaten and soon all but Broswick, who mounted first guard, was slumbering. Next morning the travelers came to a long, level stretch, on top of a vast plateau, and here good speed could be made. Jerry was steering the car, his turn having come around, and Broswick's horse was keeping up well, for the boys would not leave the hunter behind, and regulated their pace to that of his steed. As they went around a curve and came to a straight stretch, Jerry cried out and pointed ahead. They all looked, to behold another automobile speeding away from them. "That's Noddy's car, I'm sure of it!" Jerry shouted. "I'd know it anywhere by this time." "I'd like to catch those rascals!" exclaimed Nestor. "They've made trouble enough for us, an' they'll make more if they can. Besides, I have my score to settle with that chap Pender. I'd have overlooked it if they'd let us alone, but now I want to git even!" "There's no reason why you shouldn't," said Broswick. "Your machine is as good as theirs. Give 'em a chase. If you catch 'em, put their auto out of business until you have enough of a start to get to the mine first. Besides, we could have the law on 'em for stealin' this machine." "But what about leaving you behind?" questioned Jerry, to whom the thought of a chase after his old enemies was not unwelcome. "Leave me behind; I'll catch up to you later," spoke the hunter. Jerry looked at Nestor. The miner nodded his head in approval. The next instant the auto fairly sprang forward, as Jerry threw on the high-speed gear and opened wide the flow of gasolene. The chase was on. Jerry sent out a challenging "honk" on the horn, and it was answered by the auto ahead. That machine, too, as soon as the occupants became aware of the pursuit, went forward at top speed. Fortunately for all, the road was much better than the average. It was wide and level, and as soon as the machines had warmed up they fairly flew along. "Aren't--we go-going a--a--trifle fast?" asked Professor Snodgrass, in a frightened tone, as he held fast to the car-side to avoid being bounced out. "That's the intention," said Nestor. "The other fellows are doin' it an' we have to do likewise. Hold tight!" As he spoke, the auto went over a rock and every one was tossed from his seat, to fall back with a jarring bump. The pace was now very fast. With straining eyes Jerry watched his rivals in front. Slowly but surely he could see that the distance between them was lessening. Once or twice some one in the forward car looked back to note the progress of the chase. "We'll catch them!" yelled Ned. Faster and faster went the auto. The trees and rocks seemed to shoot past. The distance between the two machines was constantly lessening until now it was but a quarter of a mile. "They may use guns," ventured Bob. "I reckon they will, son," replied Nestor, "but if they try that game they'll find we can shoot a bit ourselves." He got out his brace of revolvers and saw to it that they were loaded. "Not that I'm anxious to hurt any one," the miner went on, "but we must protect our lives and our machine." Soon but an eighth of a mile separated the pursued and pursuing forces. The occupants of the other car could be plainly seen, and Ned, who was riding beside Jerry, noticed Jack Pender stand up in the rear seat and shake his fist. "He wouldn't do that if we were a little closer," observed Ned. Jerry now saw victory before him. He prepared to run to one side ahead of Noddy's machine and so block its further progress. He was about to press the accelerating lever to give his car a momentary burst of speed when there suddenly sounded a great roaring. It seemed to come from the side of a small mountain along the base of which the plateau road now ran. Then the air seemed to fill with dust. The very earth trembled and all at once a section of the mountain slipped down right on top of the pursuing auto, fairly overwhelming it. It was a big landslide, and it had come just in time to catch Jerry and his friends and let the other machine escape, for the auto Noddy and his gang were in got out of the way of the rush of rocks and earth. There was a resounding crash. Then all seemed to become black to Jerry. CHAPTER XXIII. WRECKED. When Jerry recovered consciousness he found himself sitting on the ground, while Ned and Nestor were bathing his head with water that Professor Snodgrass was bringing up in his hat. "Where am I? What happened?" asked Jerry. "You're still on the map," said the miner, "and as for what happened, it was what often happens out here. Part of the mountain parted company from the main hill, that's all." "Is the auto smashed?" asked Jerry. "It appears to be damaged some," replied the miner, and Jerry felt his heart sink. "But never mind that. It's lucky we're not all killed. You were struck on the head by a stone and knocked unconscious. The rest of us were just spilled out when the machine turned over. But how do you feel?" "I'm all right, only a little weak," replied the boy. He stood up, and, aside from a little dizziness, he found himself in good shape. His head ached from the blow and was cut slightly, but he was too anxious about the machine to mind his hurts. With legs that trembled somewhat, he made his way to where the auto had overturned from the force of the landslide. The machine presented a sorry sight. The baggage was spilled out and things were scattered all about. There was a break in the water tank and the fluid had run out. The steering-post was also bent, and one chain was broken. What other damage was done could not be seen until some of the dirt was removed. "I wish Broswick would come along with his spade," said Nestor. "We need him." "There he comes now," spoke up Ned, pointing back on the road they had come. At the top of a gentle slope a figure on horseback could be made out. The man waved his hand. It was the hunter, and in a short time he came up to the wreck. "Waal," he remarked, "looks like ye had trouble." "We did," replied Nestor, and he told of the landslide. "But," he went on, "I reckon these boys know how to git us out of it. I'll stake my last dollar on these boys," and he smiled in a way that made the down-hearted lads feel better. Broswick's spade did good service, and soon the machine was cleared of the dirt sufficiently to allow of its being righted. Then Jerry made a more careful examination. As he went around on the right side of it he uttered a despairing cry. "What's the matter?" asked Ned. "The battery box is gone!" exclaimed Jerry. "It was carried away in the landslide, and we haven't another cell. We're stranded, sure enough." He pointed to where, on the right step, a small, square box had rested. In this box were the dry batteries that supplied the spark. Without the vital spark the auto could not advance a foot, and, as Jerry had said, the last of the spare batteries had been used and no new ones procured. The adventurers were certainly in dire straits. "Maybe we can find the batteries somewhere in the dirt," suggested Nestor. Acting on this idea, the boys and men made a careful search among the rocks and gravel that covered the road. They found the battery box, but it was splintered to pieces and not a single cell could be located. They went over every inch of the debris with no better result. "Well, I reckon we're booked for a stay at this summer resort," said Nestor, with forced cheerfulness. "It will be a good chance for me to get some specimens," said the naturalist, as if nothing mattered so long as he got some bugs or snakes. "I reckon you'll have all the time you want," put in the hunter. "But speakin' of specimens reminds me that I'm hungry. I think I'll take my gun an' see if I can't pot somethin' for dinner." "We've got to eat if we can't travel," observed Nestor. "Supposin', Bob, you an' Ned make a fire, while Jerry tinkers over the auto. Perhaps he can make it go, after all. We've had good luck so far, all but this." Jerry shook his head. He knew that without the batteries the machine could not be operated. It was like trying to run an engine without a fire under the boiler. However, he set to work to repair what damage he could. With a small soldering outfit he mended the hole in the water tank, stopping the leak. Then, with an extra link, of which several were carried, the broken chain was mended. By this time Broswick came back with some partridges and rabbits and a meal, though it lacked many extras, was soon in preparation. After eating, Jerry went back to the machine. He took out the steering-post, and, with the help of Nestor, straightened it. Then some other small repairs were made, and, though the auto looked rather battered and battle-scarred, the paint being scratched in many places, it was still serviceable. All that was lacking was the battery box. Jerry even filled the water tank from a nearby spring, and then, not being able to do anything more, sat down on a stone and contemplated the useless auto, with sad eyes. "No use cryin' over spilt milk," said Nestor, with rude philosophy. "What can't be cured must be endured. It's a long lane that has no turns, an' the longest way 'round is the shortest way home." "Git a hoss! Git a hoss!" exclaimed Broswick, suddenly. "What's the matter with you?" asked Nestor. "Gone crazy or are you gittin' your second childhood?" "Git a hoss!" repeated the hunter, capering about like a schoolboy. "What ails you?" demanded Nestor. "Ain't that what the kids cry when they see a busted auto?" asked the hunter. "Seems to me I've read that in the funny papers. Am I right?" "You be," said Nestor. "But what's the use of rubbin' our misfortune in?" he grumbled. "I wasn't." "Then what made you yell 'Git a horse'?" "'Cause that jest's what you're goin' to do!" "Say, did you sleep in the moonlight last night, 'cause you must have, an' gone looney!" exclaimed Nestor. "You----" and then he stopped suddenly, as he caught the hunter's idea. "Well, I'll be ding-busted!" he finished, weakly. "That's jest what you're goin' to do," went on the miner. "My Kate is as strong a hoss as you'd want. We're goin' downhill most of the way, anyhow, an' it'll be easy for Kate to pull the machine an' us in it. There's a town about fifty miles ahead, an' maybe you can git some of them batter-cakes there." "Batter-cakes?" repeated Ned. "Yes. Ain't them what you want?" "Batteries--dry electric batteries," said Jerry, with a smile. "Waal, that's what I meant, only I spelled it wrong. They keep minin' supplies in this town, and they'll be sure to have batteries. Kate can pull us that far if we go slow." Broswick's suggestion was voted a good one. The spirits of all were raised, and soon the hunter and Nestor busied themselves making a rude sort of rope harness for the horse. The animal did not seem to mind pulling the auto, and, after everything had been collected, and some of the game the hunter had shot was packed to be taken along for supper at the next stopping place, the start was made. It was slow traveling, compared to the former speed, but it was sure. The slight down-grade helped the animal dragging the heavy machine, which otherwise would have proved too much for one horse. The adventurers rode in the car, and Ned steered. It was decided there would be no night traveling now, for they wanted to spare the horse as much as possible, and there was too much danger with the uncertain method of locomotion. So, when it grew dusk, camp was made and a fire built. Supper over, the travelers discussed the events of the day until, one by one, they fell asleep, after posting Ned as guard. The boy took up his position in the shadow of a big tree where he could watch the auto and observe any one approaching within the circle of firelight. He was sleepy, but he fought off the drowsiness. Again and again his head would nod and he would just catch himself falling off into a doze. "Come, this will never do," he said, shaking himself wide awake. "I must get a drink of water. Maybe that will make me feel more lively." He walked over to where a pail of the liquid had been placed and took a long draught. As he was walking back to his place he started as he saw a bright shaft of light glaring through the trees about half a mile off to the left. "That looked like a searchlight," whispered the boy. The next instant the unmistakable chug-chug of an automobile could be heard. CHAPTER XXIV. FORWARD ONCE MORE. "If that's an auto, maybe we can get some batteries," thought Ned. He hurried back to the camp-fire and awoke Jerry. "There's an auto coming!" exclaimed Ned. "Where is it?" asked Jerry, at once alive to the situation, and thinking of the batteries, just as Ned had. The two boys listened. The chugging of the motor had ceased, but the searchlight was still playing over the trees. "Maybe they're wrecked, too," spoke Ned. "Let's go over and see what it is." "Better tell Nestor," suggested Jerry. They woke up the miner and told him what they had seen and heard. "Go slow," he cautioned. "Here, I'll tell you what to do. Jerry and I will take a look. No use runnin' into danger. It may be Noddy Nixon an' his gang, an' if it is, we've got to be careful." Neither of the boys had thought of this. However, they realized the force of it. Bidding Ned to be on guard, Nestor set out, accompanied by Jerry. The miner had his revolvers ready and Jerry carried the hunter's gun. They did not intend to shoot to kill or injure any one, but thought the weapons would be useful in an emergency to scare off the enemy, if they should happen to meet one. With great caution they moved in the direction from which the sounds had come. The white, glaring light was now stationary, and, like a giant finger, was pointing up toward the sky. It served as a guiding star for Jerry and Nestor. "Let me go ahead," suggested the miner, when they had come quite close to where the light had its source. Taking the advance, Nestor made his way through the underbrush and trees with great quietness. Jerry followed as best he could. Suddenly the miner stopped. "I see them!" he whispered. "Who are they?" asked Jerry. "We've got to play a trick," said Nestor, without answering the boy. "Here, you go over there to the right, about five hundred feet, and fire your gun. Leave the rest to me, and as soon as you've pulled the trigger hurry back to our camp." Jerry did not question the advice. He turned to the right, and, when he had gone what he thought was the required distance, he discharged his revolver. A loud report crashed out on the silence of the night. Jerry heard a crackling of underbrush and several shouts. Then, as Nestor had told him, he made the best of his way back to camp. As for the miner, he had remained where he was when Jerry left him. He was watching the other automobile, and something seemed to strike him as funny, for he chuckled silently. "I reckon there's goin' to be some surprises here pretty soon," he remarked. At the report of Jerry's gun, those about the automobile rushed off in the direction of the shot. At the same time Nestor, who was waiting for just this very move, ran in. He fumbled about the machine for a few minutes and then, clasping something tightly in his arms, hurried back through the woods to the camp, reaching there shortly after Jerry. Those who had been left sleeping were aroused by the gun, and they were anxious to know what the matter was. Ned told his part and then Jerry related what had befallen him and Nestor. "But what have you there?" asked Broswick of the miner, observing that Nestor carried something. "A box of batteries," was the reply. "I took them off the other automobile. Now we can go ahead under our own power." "But what--why--how?" began Jerry, with a puzzled look. "I'll explain it all," said Nestor; "but, first, hadn't you better fix these batteries on our machine? We may want to start soon." It did not take long for Jerry to make the necessary connections. Then, with the Cresville auto again in shape for flight, Nestor told his story. "Who do you think the crowd in charge of the other auto was?" he asked. "Give it up," exclaimed Bob, the quicker to find out. "Noddy Nixon and his gang! As soon as I saw through the trees I made up my mind it was better to use cunning than force. I happened to see on their auto the same kind of a box that was taken off ours by the landslide. I figured that they had made so much trouble for us, the least thing they could do would be to lend us their batteries. So I jest reckoned I'd borrow 'em. "I sent Jerry off to one side to fire a gun and draw their attention there. I knew they'd run when they heard the noise. They did, and I sailed in and yanked off the batteries. There they be." Nestor seemed quite proud of his work. The boys were very glad to have their auto in shape again, and it was felt that Noddy and his crowd got no more than they deserved. "They may trace us and make trouble," suggested Jerry. "I reckon they'll have hard enough work in the dark," said Nestor. "But perhaps we'd better move on, an' git a good start of 'em. They may have extra batteries an' set out to chase us." So, breaking camp, though it was still dark, the adventurers went forward once more, Broswick riding on his horse, that, no doubt, was glad to be relieved of the task of pulling the auto. The machine worked well, the batteries transferred from Noddy's auto doing good service. It was daybreak before the travelers halted, and by this time they were well beyond where Noddy and his companions had camped. "Here's a good place to stop," said Nestor, indicating a little clearing near a mountain stream. "We ought to get breakfast now." For several days after this the trip went on without incident. The weather continued fairly good, with only an occasional rainstorm. The adventurers heard of the big rush of gold seekers to the district where Nestor's mine was located; but so far, they were ahead of the big crowd they had seen some time before. "We'll git there fust, after all," said Broswick, as he sat astride his horse, that was now getting rather bony and thin from the long journey. "No tellin'," rejoined Nestor. "There's a lot of miners in this region, an' if they git to that mine ahead of us there's goin' to be trouble." One afternoon, following a good day's run, the auto came to the end of the long mountain slope down which the adventurers had been riding for so long. They were now on a vast plain, or rather level valley, lying between two of the big mountain ranges. It was a pleasant country to travel in, and every one felt in good spirits. "We're gittin' near to the place," said Nestor, on reaching the level stretch. "We'll keep on due west for a little while. I've sort of lost my bearin's, but I'll git 'em back in a little while." He seemed somewhat worried, and was continually peering first to one side, then the other. For several miles the auto journeyed on. No sign of human life was seen, though there were plenty of small animals and insects that Professor Snodgrass wanted to gather. But Nestor would hear of no delay. "Hold on!" cried the miner, suddenly, as the auto passed a sort of trail leading up the valley. "This looks as if I'd seen it before." Jerry brought the machine to a stop, and Nestor got out. He looked at the trees on either side of the trail and then came running back to the machine. "It's all right!" he cried. "What is?" asked Ned. "We've found the lost trail to the mine," replied Nestor. "I didn't think I'd strike it this way, but we have. Forward! Now for the richest gold mine in the Rockies!" "Hurrah!" shouted the boys, and Professor Snodgrass and the hunter joined in the cheers. "Leave your horse here, Broswick," advised Nestor. "He'll be safe and the trail ahead is a hard one on animals. Get in the auto with us." The hunter agreed to the plan, and his faithful steed was turned loose where there was plenty of food and water. Then, with the six in the auto, though they were rather crowded, the machine was started off toward the long-sought mine. Suddenly, from down the valley, sounded the noise of another machine approaching. Ned turned around. "Here comes Noddy Nixon!" he shouted. CHAPTER XXV. A RACE TO THE MINE. Before long Noddy Nixon and his crowd in their auto shot up alongside the Motor Boys and their friends. Noddy looked over and grinned, while Pud Stoneham raised his hat in mocking politeness. "Hurry up!" said Nestor to Jerry, in a low voice. "They are going to give us a race to the mine. We must get there first!" "What difference does it make?" asked the boy, as he speeded up his machine. "All the difference in the world," replied the miner. "I've staked my claim, but I haven't filed the papers in the Government office, as the law requires. The first man who comes along could jump my claim now. I was relyin' on the mine bein' hard to find, but I see it has been discovered. We must beat them!" "We'll do it if possible," said Jerry, with determination in his voice. "I wonder how they got in shape so quickly after we took their batteries?" "Probably had another set," was Nestor's opinion. The two machines were now moving almost side by side, up the defile which led to the mine. The autos were about two hundred feet apart and going at about the same rate of speed, which was not very fast, as the road was not of the best. "How are you?" called out Jack Pender. "None the better for seeing you," replied Ned. "Thought you was smart to take our batteries, didn't you?" went on Pender. "Well, we'll show you a trick or two. We'll get to that mine before you!" "You've got another guess comin', young man!" cried Nestor. "When I git through with you there won't be enough left to fill a hollow tooth. I've got a score to settle with you." At this, Jack sank back in his seat. Bill Berry, who had been eyeing the Motor Boys, shouted out: "If you cubs are lookin' fer trouble there'll be plenty of it. We're not in Cresville now, where all your friends are." "I'm a born trouble-hunter!" exclaimed Hank Broswick, rising in his seat and carelessly leveling his rifle at the wheels of Noddy's auto. "I kin hit trouble a mile off!" "Don't shoot!" yelled Noddy, trying to duck behind the dash-board and steer at the same time, with the result that he nearly overturned the auto. "I wasn't goin' to," replied the hunter, with a grim chuckle. "I only wanted to let you know I was on hand in case I might be wanted." After this the taunts from Noddy's gang ceased. In stern determination the race now settled down into a contest to see who should be first at the mine, for on that depended everything. For nearly ten miles the two autos were close together, neither gaining any advantage. It began to get dusk, and the boys considered whether they should stop for the night or keep on. "I think we had better camp until morning," advised Broswick. "We might git ahead of 'em, an', again, we might not. The chances are we'd bust a tire or sumthin', an' then we'd be worse off than before. Slow an' sure is better than quick an' never." So, somewhat to Nestor's disappointment, the auto came to a stop when the road was no longer visible because of darkness. "They're goin' on; I don't see why we can't," grumbled the miner. "Too risky," replied Broswick. "We'll make better time in the end." "Then we've got to start bright an' early in the mornin'," stipulated Nestor. To this they all agreed. Supper was prepared and the guard set. The other auto, with a last mocking toot of the horn, had disappeared. When the first indication of light in the east told that dawn was at hand, Broswick, who had the last watch, awoke his companions. A hasty breakfast was made and, even before the sun was up, the journey was renewed. "I'd feel easier if I could git a sight of them other fellers," said Nestor. "Do you s'pose they kept on goin' all night?" asked Broswick. "Let's see if we can't pick up their trail," suggested Professor Snodgrass. "We can easily tell if an auto has preceded us." Jerry stopped the machine and Broswick got out. He made a careful examination of the road and soon gave a yell that told he had discovered something. "They're ahead," he announced, "but they made a stop here. The ground is all trampled up. I wouldn't wonder if they had a breakdown, an' had to halt for fixin' their shebang up. They can't be very far in advance." With lighter hearts the adventurers started off once more, keeping a sharp lookout for the other auto. The sun rose high in the heavens, and it was hot in the valley. Mile after mile was reeled off, but Noddy's machine was not in view. It was almost noon when Professor Snodgrass, who was peering intently ahead, suddenly uttered a cry. "What is it?" asked Jerry. "I thought I saw a specimen of the almost extinct herds of buffalo," answered the naturalist. "Buffalo!" cried Nestor, standing up to get a good view. "That's the other automobile you see!" "So it is!" admitted the professor, taking a second glance. "Put on all the steam you've got!" cried the miner. "We must catch them before night or the mine is lost! We're close to it now!" Jerry opened the throttle wide and shortened the intervals of sparking. The automobile fairly jumped ahead, but so rough was the road that the travelers were bounced about like peas in a pod. "We're gaining on them!" Ned shouted. "We'll soon be up to them!" In a little while not more than an eighth of a mile separated the two machines, and this distance was gradually being lessened. Stoneham and Dalsett, who were in the rear seat, looked back and shook their fists. "Not very pleasant chaps," commented Nestor. "Well, we don't mind how they look." Five minutes later the autos were even, racing along the valley toward the coveted riches. The excitement of the race was too keen to admit of the wasting of breath in useless taunts. A tense silence was preserved, broken only by the throbbing of the rival motors. "Have we any water aboard?" asked Bob, about ten minutes after the two machines got on even terms. "I guess there's plenty in the tanks," answered Ned. "I mean to drink," went on Chunky. "I'm as dry as a fish." "Now that you speak of it, I would like a cool cupful myself," admitted Ned. "Have we any, Jerry?" "Not a drop." The subject was not mentioned again for some time. But once the idea had been broached it seemed impossible for Bob or Ned to get rid of it. Their thirst grew amazingly under the hot sun, and soon all the others were thinking how delicious some cold water would be. "I've simply got to have a drink," said poor Bob at length. "I'll die if I don't get one." He certainly looked as if he needed it. The others, too, were suffering the torments of thirst, for they had drunk nothing since early morning. "Can't we stop and get some water?" asked Ned. "If we do we'll lose several minutes," said Nestor, "and seconds will count now. Try and stand it a little longer. Make believe you are shipwrecked and can't get a drink. Sometimes sailors go for days without a drink." "But they couldn't get it if they wanted to," spoke Bob, "and as for us, there's a spring right alongside of the road," and he pointed to one ahead. Jerry was about to turn up to it and stop, but Nestor urged him to keep the auto going. "We don't want to lose everything, when we're jest about succeedin', all fer a little water," he said. "Three hours more will see us at the mine. If we stop now they'll beat us." "I'll give my share in the mine for a good drink," wailed Bob. "So will I!" chimed in Ned. In truth, the boys were suffering severely. So were the men, but they were used to hardships, and the thought of the gold ahead made them indifferent to the wants of the body. "See, we're coming to a river," went on Ned, pointing to where a bridge could be seen spanning a stream. "We can get water there." "And lose the gold mine!" exclaimed Nestor, fiercely. "No, sir! We don't stop until we're on the ground. Then you can get all the water you want." He seemed so excited that the boys were somewhat afraid of him, though they knew it was all due to the strain of the moment. To add to their discomfiture, they could see the other gold seekers in their auto taking copious drinks from bottles of water. "My throat is all parched up!" cried Bob. "I must have water!" "So you shall!" shouted Jerry. CHAPTER XXVI. GOLD! "Do you mean to stop the car and let them git ahead of us?" demanded Nestor. "I'm going to stop the car," replied Jerry, "but they're not going to get ahead of us." "How you goin' to prevent it?" "I'll show you. Wait until we get to the bridge." The two machines were close together and the bridge was now about an eighth of a mile ahead. Suddenly Jerry shifted the lever to throw the third gear into place, at the same time opening the throttle. The red auto fairly sprang forward, leaving the other behind. At first, Noddy, who was steering his machine, was too surprised at Jerry's move to know what to do. When he did attempt to speed up, the other car was several hundred feet in advance. Two minutes later Jerry had reached the bridge and brought his auto to a stop. "There!" he exclaimed. "I guess we can hold them here as long as we like. The other car can't beat us, can it?" "I should say not," answered Nestor. "You're a slick one, Jerry!" For the bridge was so narrow that there was but room on it for one auto at a time. With Noddy's car in the rear, it could not go ahead until Jerry was ready. "We'll all have a drink!" exclaimed Broswick. "I'm as dry as a powder-horn myself." There was a general rush to the stream, which proved to be a clear, cold, mountain brook, and never did liquid taste better than that to the thirsty adventurers. They had not half enough when Noddy's machine came puffing up, but was forced to stop. "Pull your machine out of there or I'll ram you!" he exclaimed. "Oh, I guess not!" said Nestor, slowly. "This is a public road." "I'll show you whether it is or not," went on the bully, in a blustering tone, reaching for the lever to send his car ahead. His intention was to push the other auto off the bridge. "Not so fast," spoke Nestor, slowly, carelessly drawing his revolver from the holster. "Those are very pretty tires of yours, but it's no fun ridin' on 'em when the wind is out. So go easy, Mr. Noddy Nixon!" "We'll fix you for this!" cried Dalsett. "Oh, it's you, is it?" asked Nestor, in seeming surprise. "Well, I wouldn't crow too soon if I was you. It might not be altogether healthy, you know." The other remained silent. The boys finished drinking, and, at Broswick's suggestion, filled several cans with water, and placed them in the auto. "Come, are you going to stay there all day?" growled Noddy. "As long as we please," answered Nestor. "We know what you're up to, but we'll beat you yet." "The mine belongs to whoever stakes it first," put in Dalsett. "I see you know the law right enough," spoke Nestor. "But I wouldn't advise you to get too well acquainted with it. There are some little matters in New Mexico the law might want you to explain," and he smiled at his former helper, whereat Dalsett turned pale and muttered beneath his breath. But, having satisfied their thirst, the adventurers had no longer any motive for blockading the bridge. They started off, Jerry getting the motor up to a good speed before throwing in the gear, so that the car moved off swiftly at the start. Like a flash, Noddy was after them. Once more the race was on. The sun reached the zenith and began to decline in the west. Nestor was greatly excited. He was on familiar ground now, and saw landmarks on every side. As the auto passed a dead sycamore tree he shouted: "Only two miles farther now! Then, hurrah for the gold!" The other machine clung doggedly to the Cresville auto. Jerry was going as fast as he dared, and Noddy was close behind. A few minutes more would tell the tale. "One mile farther!" shouted Nestor. The next instant there came a report like a revolver shot. Every one started, thinking they had been fired at. "They've busted a tire!" shouted Broswick. "I reckon that puts them out of the race!" Noddy was obliged to bring his machine to a sudden stop. There was a scene of confusion as the crippled machine was forced to give up the pursuit. Berry and Dalsett seemed to be urging Noddy to continue in spite of the accident, but, rash as the bully was, he knew better than to go on with a collapsed tire. Jerry never slackened the speed of his auto, and rushed on, intent on the goal that was now so near. Ten minutes later the road came to an abrupt end against a slope of the mountain. "Well?" asked Jerry, throwing out the gear and leaving the auto with the motor still running, panting like one who has run a long race. "What next? We can't go any farther." "We don't need to," replied Nestor. "Why not?" "We're at the mine. It's on top of that hill," and Nestor indicated a little knob that rose about two hundred feet away. "Come on, we'll take a look at it." Jerry shut off the power and, leaving Professor Snodgrass in charge of the machine, the others climbed up to the mouth of the shaft of the long-lost mine that Nestor had so luckily discovered. A rude ladder led down into the depths below. Lighting some candles he had with him, Nestor descended, telling the others to come, but to use caution, as the ladders were old and rotten. With hearts that beat high in hope, the boys went down into the mine. The first level was about fifty feet under the surface. Coming to a halt, Nestor lit several more tallow ends. "Look!" he exclaimed. The boys stared in wonder. Gold, gold, gold seemed to be on every side of them. It cropped out in the dirt and rocks; big yellow veins that glowed with a dull gleam in the flickering lights. The sides of the mine were traversed with the streaks of precious metal. Most of it was very pure, and it could be dug out with a knife. "It's the richest mine I ever saw or heard of," said Nestor. "There's enough gold in sight to make us all rich, even if no more develops as we dig farther down. It's a great strike!" "It certainly is," agreed Jerry. "But can we establish a claim to it?" "The mine will stand in our joint names before another day," replied Nestor. "I'll start for the Government office the first thing in the morning, after I've staked a claim for each of us." "Providin' Noddy Nixon an' his crowd don't make more trouble," spoke Broswick. "They're broke down," answered Nestor. "Nothin' to prevent 'em from walkin' here," went on the hunter. "Howsomever, if they come we'll be ready for 'em. Now let's git supper." Taking a last look for the day at the riches around them, the adventurers climbed to the surface. They went to where they had left the automobile, made a fire and were soon preparing a simple meal. Broswick's ready gun provided enough for supper and also insured a feast of rabbit and partridge for the next day. The adventurers were so filled with thoughts of their success at reaching the mine first that they sat around the camp-fire until almost midnight, going over the happenings that had befallen them on their journey. Then, the first watch having been assigned to Nestor, all the others sought their blankets, and stretched out on the ground to sleep. The hours of the night passed without incident. There were no sounds save, now and then, mournful hootings of the owls and the bark of foxes. Jerry had the last watch, from three until six o'clock. He was sleepy when Broswick aroused him to take his place, but soon was wide awake enough. "Anything happened?" he asked the hunter. "No; but keep your eyes open. We have to deal with a hard crowd, especially Dalsett. If you hear any one approaching, fire in the air first and then challenge." Jerry took up his vigil. To keep himself awake he walked back and forth out of range of the light from the camp-fire. Once or twice he thought he heard sounds as of some one approaching, and he nerved himself for a struggle. But each time it proved to be only timid foxes that, with startled eyes, came to see who had invaded their woods and glens. Just as dawn was about to herald itself by a pale light in the east, Jerry heard a sound as of some heavy body coming through the underbrush. He was on the alert in a moment. Peering forward, he saw the dim outlines of a man approaching between the trees. The next instant Jerry fired in the air, and called out: "Who goes there?" The reply was a volley of shots. CHAPTER XXVII. BESIEGED AT THE MINE. In an instant every one at the gold camp was on his feet. Broswick reached for his ever-ready rifle and Nestor had his revolvers out in a jiffy. "What is it?" called the miner to Jerry. "I heard some one coming, and I fired," replied the boy. "Did you see any one?" "I thought I saw a man, but I'm not sure." "You're right! It was a man, and that man is on deck now!" replied a mocking voice, but no one was in sight. "That's Dalsett!" cried Nestor. "I know his voice. Come out where I can see you, Dalsett!" went on the miner. "But I s'pose you're afraid to show your sneakin' face!" "It's healthier where I am," said Dalsett, "but, just to show you that we have the advantage--how's that?" A shot followed his voice, and a twig was clipped from the tree above Nestor's head. Instinctively, the miner ducked. "We've got you surrounded," went on Dalsett. "You may have the mine, but we have you, and a heap of good the claim will do you when you can't file your papers!" In a rage, Nestor fired in the direction of the voice, aiming high, as he did not wish to seriously wound even an enemy when there seemed to be no need. A mocking laugh followed. At the same time there were several shots from different points surrounding the camp, showing that it was indeed encircled. "It looks as if they had us, don't it?" asked Broswick. "Not by a long shot!" replied Nestor, heartily. "I've only just begun to play this here game. Before I'm through I'll make Noddy Nixon and Tom Dalsett wish they'd never bothered me." "What shall we do?" inquired Jerry. "Get breakfast," answered Nestor, promptly. "We'll need food for what's ahead of us." A stealthy movement in the bushes attracted his attention. "So that's their plan, eh?" he murmured. "Hank, take your gun and go up to the mouth of the mine shaft. If any of that gang tries to approach, shoot to wound but not to kill. They were trying to sneak up to the mine and gain possession," explained Nestor, in reference to his directions to the hunter. Broswick hurried up the slope. Jerry and the other boys proceeded to get the morning meal. As for Professor Snodgrass, he was walking around, gathering specimens, as though danger was a thousand miles away. Nestor, with weapons ready, kept sharp watch. They ate breakfast by turns, keeping a lookout lest the enemy might attempt to rush the position. But this did not seem to be the plan of the besiegers. They were content to keep close watch so that those in possession of the mine could not leave. As an experiment, Nestor tried it. He walked a little way down the valley. He had not proceeded far before there was a spurt of dust at his feet and a voice cried: "Better go back, Jim. You'll be all right as long as you stay in bounds, but if you go out there'll be trouble; so I advise you to keep quiet." "Wait till I git hold of you, Tom Dalsett!" cried the miner, shaking his fist in the direction of his invisible foe. "Oh, I expect to be here some time, so I'll wait," was the reply, and Nestor could only turn back. Just before noon the miner called a council of war. He explained that it was very necessary for him, or some one, to get to a Government office and file a claim on the mine. "It's a case of first come, first served in this minin' business," explained Nestor. "Those chaps may be on the way now to register their papers, an' if they are we'll lose the claim. I'll bet that's their plan, an' that's why they're keepin' us cooped up here!" "How far is it to the Government office?" asked Jerry. "A matter of thirty miles," replied Nestor. "It's about five miles beyond where we turned up into this valley. But what's the use talkin'? We can't git away while they're on guard with guns." "We all can't, but one of us might," suggested Jerry. "What do you mean?" "I mean that I will go and file the papers." "How will you manage it?" Jerry explained his plan. Nestor nodded in approval, and hurriedly told him how to comply with the necessary legal forms. The miner hastily filled out a paper, gave it to the boy, and remarked: "Now we'll try that trick of yours, Jerry." In accordance with the plan Jerry had proposed, every one but himself started toward the top of the hill where the mine shaft was located. Jerry stayed near the automobile. The others took no pains to move quietly, but laughed and talked. Reaching the top of the slope, at a word from Nestor, they made a rush down the other side, at the same time firing their revolvers wildly in the air. As Jerry had expected, the ruse worked. The force of besiegers, thinking an escape was being attempted, ran around the other side of the hill to intercept it. Led by Dalsett, Noddy and his crowd drew up in the underbrush at the opposite foot of the slope to trap the supposed fugitives. At that instant Jerry sprang to the auto. Like a flash he had the motor going, and a second later he had leaped into the seat and was off down the valley. A ringing cheer by his comrades, together with the chugging of the motor, told the enemy what had happened. They realized that they had been fooled, and had been drawn away on a false alarm. "Quick! After him, Noddy!" cried Dalsett. "Jump in your auto! You must overtake him before he reaches the Government office, for he's going there to file the claim. That's what we'd ought to have done instead of monkeying here." Noddy needed no second bidding. His auto stood ready a short distance down the valley. He ran to it, started the motor, and was after Jerry in a few minutes. It was another race for the possession of the gold mine. Returning to their camp, much pleased at the success of their stratagem, Nestor, the boys and Professor Snodgrass got dinner. Broswick was still on guard at the shaft, but Nestor relieved the hunter a little later, allowing him to eat and take some rest. As for the besiegers, they seemed to have settled down to dogged waiting, for they gave no sign, though an occasional movement in the underbrush showed they were still on guard. Meanwhile, Jerry and Noddy were racing on. Jerry had a good start and sent his car along at a fine speed. The road was rough, and several times he struck large stones that caused the auto to bounce unpleasantly. Now and then Jerry would glance back to see if his enemy was in sight. After a run of about two miles he caught a glimpse of Noddy's machine coming after him. "Now we'll see who has the best car, and who is the best driver," reasoned Jerry, and his spirits rose at the prospect of the race. For several miles Jerry held his lead. Then he noticed that Noddy was gaining slightly. Jerry could feel that his motor was not running as smoothly as it should, and no wonder, for it had been through strenuous times. He used all his skill in operating the various valves, gears, levers, but, do the best he could, he saw Noddy slowly though surely creeping up on him. "He must not win!" exclaimed Jerry, fiercely, to himself. Then, though it was a dangerous thing to do, for the road was very rough, he opened the gasolene throttle still wider, and the car bounded forward at greater speed. This temporary advantage was soon lost, however, and Noddy came on relentlessly. For an hour the race continued. The autoists left the small valley leading to the mine and turned into the broad defile. "Five miles more!" thought Jerry, recalling Nestor's directions. The next instant, with a rush and rattle, Noddy's car came up alongside that of Jerry's. They were now on even terms. "I s'pose you thought you'd beat me!" sneered the bully. "The race isn't over yet," answered Jerry. But in truth it looked as if it was, as far as Jerry was concerned. Noddy gained inch by inch, until his car was a good length ahead. The bully looked back with a mocking smile. One mile was reeled off, and but four remained of the distance to the little town where the Government office was located. Another mile; then another. Noddy's car was now five hundred feet ahead, and Jerry was running his machine as fast as he dared, though not to the limit. There remained but another mile as the cars shot into a long, straight stretch. In the distance Jerry could see a small town. Noddy was an eighth of a mile in advance. "I'm going to lose!" exclaimed Jerry, and he felt his heart sink. CHAPTER XXVIII. WINNING THE CLAIM. There was but half a mile more. The two autos were now on the outskirts of the settlement, and men gathered in the single main street to watch the race. Suddenly Noddy's car skidded and he was forced to shut off the power. This allowed Jerry to gain a little. He quickly saw his chance. Resolving to risk everything, he turned on full speed and pressed down the accelerator pedal. His car lurched forward with such suddenness that the youth was almost pitched from his seat. But he caught up to Noddy. The latter saw the advantage that had been gained and tried a desperate measure. Turning his steering wheel he swerved his auto over toward Jerry's, intending to strike him a glancing blow and upset him. But Jerry was too quick for him. He got out of the way, though only just in time. Then he glanced up and saw, about one hundred feet in advance, a white building, with a sign reading: GOVERNMENT ASSAY OFFICE. He brought up his machine with a jerk by applying the emergency brake. Almost before it stopped he leaped out, but his coat caught on the steering wheel and he fell in the dusty road. At that instant Noddy dashed up in his machine. He was quick to see what had befallen Jerry, and like a flash was out of his car, and, with a proof of claim in his hand, he rushed for the door of the assay office. "No, you don't!" yelled Jerry, springing to his feet. He took after Noddy and caught him just as the bully was about to enter the office. But one thought flashed through Jerry's mind. He must beat Noddy. He drew back his fist and, with a powerful blow that caught the bully right on the chin, sent him sprawling away from the doorway and into the dusty street. "I want to file this claim," panted Jerry, an instant later, handing the astonished Government clerk the proof Nestor had made out. The boy had done the only thing possible under the circumstances to enable him to get into the office. He had knocked Noddy aside and gone in ahead of him, winning by the margin of a second. The commotion caused by the two automobiles racing into town, the conduct of the two boys, and Jerry's action had attracted quite a crowd about the assay office. People fairly filled the rough shack in which the agents of Uncle Sam did business, and the claim clerk was so startled by the suddenness of the whole transaction that he stood motionless. "Aren't you going to file and record that claim?" asked Jerry, looking out of the window and seeing Noddy limp to his feet. "I--I don't know--of course I am--that is----" "He isn't goin' to do anythin' until I have somethin' to say," interrupted a rough voice. "I'm sheriff of this county, an' I'd have you automobilists know that you can't come here lickity split an' not pay the damage. I'll arrest you both for exceedin' the speed limits." "What is the legal limit?" asked Jerry, anxious only about getting his paper filed. "Seventy miles an hour." "My machine can't make over fifty if I was to run it at full speed on a beach track," replied Jerry, hotly. "Well--er--maybe I'm a leetle off on figgers," admitted the sheriff. "It may be seven miles, but you're both arrested--er--um--fer disturbin' the peace. There, I guess you can't git around that. I may be a leetle mite hazy on law, but I ain't on fact. Do you deny that you disturbed the peace?" and he turned to Jerry. "I admit I knocked him down," said the boy, nodding toward the bully, who was entering the room. "I'm willing to pay a fine for that if I may file this paper. How much do I owe you?" "We can't do business in that loose way," spoke the sheriff, with a great sense of his own importance. "This must go through a regular form. You'll both have to go before the judge. I'll arrest you both." "But can't I file this paper?" insisted Jerry. "You can arrest me just the same." "One thing at a time," went on the sheriff. "You come with me; let the judge hear the case, an' if he finds you not guilty you can come back here an' file fifty papers if you want to. But you can't now, an' I forbid this clerk to take any papers from anybody until I come back." Jerry fretted at the delay. It was easy to see that in this rough, western town the authority of the sheriff was paramount. At first Jerry thought it might be a trick put up to benefit Noddy, but when he saw the bully was not allowed to file his papers either, he became convinced that the sheriff thought he was acting within his legal rights. Followed by a big crowd, the officer led his two prisoners toward the rude shanty where the judge held court as often as it was necessary. Noddy was plainly in a great rage, but Jerry took it all as good-naturedly as he could. "You wait till Pud Stoneham and Tom Dalsett hear of this!" blustered Noddy to the sheriff. "They'll make trouble, for they told me to be sure and file that paper as soon as I could." "What names did you say?" asked the sheriff. Noddy repeated them. "I'd give a good bit to see Pud Stoneham just now," remarked the officer, in a peculiar voice. "But I guess he don't want to see me." "I'll tell you where you can find him," spoke Jerry, quickly, surmising how the land lay. "Where? Tell me, quick, boy! Are you tryin' to fool me?" In a few words Jerry told about the mine, and how he had left his friends besieged there by the gambler and his companions. "It's our mine, and I tried to file the claim before Noddy Nixon did," finished Jerry. "And you'll do it yet," said the sheriff, heartily. "Here," he called to the crowd, which came to a halt, "this case is adjourned indefinitely." "Ain't there goin' to be a trial?" asked several, disappointed in what they thought would furnish excitement. "Not now," replied the officer. "This boy, Jerry Hopkins, is paroled in my custody. Noddy Nixon is paroled in the custody of Bill Lamson, an' I'll appoint you a special deputy for the occasion, Bill. You take charge of Noddy until sundown, when you kin let him go. An', mind, if he escapes I'll court-martial you, Bill." "He won't git away," said the new deputy, confidently. The crowd had already begun to disperse, finding there was to be nothing to interest them. Lamson went away with Noddy, who vainly protested against being detained. "Now take me to Pud Stoneham," said the sheriff to Jerry. "I've been lookin' for him for 'most a month. He's wanted for a dozen crimes. Well, well, this is luck!" "What about filing the claim?" asked Jerry, not losing sight of his important mission. "You kin attend to that right off," was the answer. "Then take me to the mine an' I'll attend to Pud Stoneham." Jerry lost no time in filing a formal proof of claim to the mine, and saw the record made in the Government books. Then, with a lighter heart than he had known for many a day, feeling that at least part of the hard work was over, he went to the auto, where the sheriff was waiting. "I'll take you out in the car," said Jerry. "I'd a heap sight rather have a mule," commented the officer, eyeing the machine with a suspicious glance, "but I s'pose this is quicker. Don't upset, now." "I won't," promised Jerry. "But, Mr. Sheriff, hadn't you better take some help along? Pud and Dalsett are well armed." "That's so. I'll swear in a couple of deputies," said the officer. "Here, you," he called to two men passing by, "come with me, I may need you. Hold up your right hands. You swear to do whatever I tell you to, all right. I owe you fifty cents apiece, but you'll have to git change. Never mind now, jump in the shebang. We're after a man." Then the sheriff paused to take a much-needed breath. The two men, who didn't seem surprised at being so suddenly called on to act, took their places in the machine and Jerry started off. He exulted in his success, for he knew that, no matter what happened now, the mine stood in the names of Nestor and the adventurers, including himself. All that now remained was to get the gold out. Jerry sent the machine along at a good clip. Mile after mile was covered and at last the auto turned up the little valley leading to the mine. As the machine neared the hill in which the shaft was sunk a sound of firing was heard. "They're fighting!" cried the boy, as he increased the speed. CHAPTER XXIX. THE FIGHT AT THE MINE. As the auto came near, the shots became more distinct. It seemed as if a small-sized battle was in progress. Jerry stopped the car about a thousand feet away from where the camp had been. "Take it easy until we see where we're at," advised the sheriff. "There's too many bullets flyin' around for comfort." He got out of the machine and began creeping along on the ground on hands and knees. His deputies followed his example, and Jerry thought it well to do likewise. It was soon evident that an attack was being made on the hill, where the forces of Nestor seemed to have entrenched themselves. Stoneham, Dalsett, Berry and Pender were drawing nearer under cover of the underbrush and were firing as they advanced. Nestor and his crowd were replying with shot after shot, though most of the bullets were high in the air. "If I could only get a line on where they are," muttered the sheriff, "I'd be all right, but I can't see a thing in these bushes." All at once the firing from the top of the hill ceased. "I guess they're out of ammunition," said Jerry. "They didn't have very much when I came away." "Then it's time we did somethin'," remarked the sheriff. "There, I see 'em now. Come on, boys!" The two deputies followed him on the run, and Jerry kept as close as he could. Suddenly the sheriff came to a halt. He motioned with his hand for the others to keep quiet. Then the officer began creeping at a slow pace. He halted once more and waved to the others to approach. They did so with all the caution possible. "We've got 'em!" exclaimed the sheriff. "Pud Stoneham and the rest of 'em are down in a little hollow just below us. They are gettin' ready to make a rush, I think." Peering over the edge of a little bluff on which the sheriff's party stood, Jerry looked down and saw the gambler, Bill Berry and Jack Pender, each with a revolver, crouching down and peering forward. They were within a few hundred feet of the shaft, and Jerry could dimly observe Nestor and his friends grouped about the mine. They seemed to be making a last stand. The truth of the matter was that, as Jerry had surmised, they were out of ammunition and could no longer reply to the fusillade that Stoneham and his crowd kept up. For a time there was a lull in the firing. Then the shots began again, coming from Stoneham, Berry and Pender. But they did not seem to be aiming to kill or even wound those guarding the mine. Desperate as the gambler was, and great as was his wish to get the gold claim, he would not resort to extreme measures. So he and the others were firing over the heads of those they were attacking. They hoped to scare them away. If they could do this, and rush in, securing possession of the claim, they would, under the mining laws, provided that Noddy had filed the claim, be masters of the situation. But something was about to happen. The sheriff was watching Stoneham like a cat. The gambler and his friends were unaware how close they were to danger, and continued to fire above the heads of the party at the shaft. From their point of vantage the sheriff, his deputies and Jerry watched what was going on below them. They saw Nestor, Broswick and the others waver, for the firing was hot, and they did not know it was a harmless one. "Come on!" yelled Stoneham, suddenly. "We've got 'em! Come on, an' take the mine!" The gambler leaped to his feet, flourishing his revolver. Pender, Berry and Dalsett prepared to follow him. "No, you don't!" cried the sheriff. The officer leaped forward, over the bluff, and shot downward. Full and true he fell, right on the back of Stoneham, bearing him to the earth. "I say! What's this? Oh, let me up!" yelled the gambler. "Not until I've fixed you so's you can't do any damage!" exclaimed the officer, drawing out a pair of handcuffs and fastening them on Stoneham. The gambler struggled hard for a few seconds. Then, finding it was of no avail, he lay quietly at the sheriff's feet. "Where'd you come from?" he asked the officer. "Oh, I took a little run up here in one of them new-fangled gasolene gigs," replied the sheriff, with a grin. "I heard you were up here an' I felt I couldn't get along without havin' a little conversation with you." "Um!" grunted Stoneham. Dalsett disappeared into the bushes at the instant the sheriff had jumped on the gambler's back, and was soon lost to sight. "Never mind him," said the officer, when he saw that capture was not possible. "I didn't want him, anyhow. It was Pud I was after, an' I got him." "What'll we do with this lad?" asked one of the deputies who had grabbed Pender. "Pl-pl-please don't ki-kill me!" cried the boy, a coward, now that his side had lost. "Kill you!" exclaimed the sheriff. "The worst that'll happen to you will be a good spankin'. That's what we do to babies out here!" Pender showed no inclination to escape, nor did Bill Berry, who stood sullenly to one side. "Get up!" the sheriff commanded Stoneham, and the gambler struggled to his feet. His air of bravado was gone and he hung his head. "I'll take you back to town in a little while," the officer announced. There was a crackling in the bushes and, cautiously parting them, Nestor stepped into view. "What's happened?" he asked Jerry. "It's all right," replied the boy. "I filed the claim, I beat Noddy, and this is the sheriff, who has arrested Mr. Stoneham." "Good for you!" cried the miner. "We've been havin' a pretty lively time since you went away, an' you got back just in time. So the papers are filed, eh? Well, that gives us the mine now, an' we're all rich!" "I'd rather have Mr. Stoneham here than a gold mine," remarked the sheriff. "Is he so valuable?" asked Nestor. "He is to me," was the answer. "There's a reward of five thousand dollars for his capture for counterfeitin' money, an' besides that he's wanted on half a dozen charges. When I heard he was here, I jest hustled, I tell you." It was getting dusk now, and, after a little thought, the sheriff decided not to take his prisoner back to town that night. "If you don't mind, I'll camp out here with you," the officer said to Nestor, and the miner extended a hearty invitation. Soon supper was prepared and partaken of sitting around the camp-fire. Stoneham's hands were unshackled long enough to enable him to eat, but the sheriff guarded him closely. He was not going to have his captive escape if he could help it. Pender and Berry ate in dogged silence. After supper, when the men had lighted their pipes, Nestor told the sheriff the story of the trip to the gold mine. The official was much interested. "It's a good thing you have the claim to your mine filed," he said. "I understand there's a great rush of diggers this way. They were at Eagleville yesterday, a town about twenty miles from here, and I expect they'll be stragglin' in here to-morrow. Whenever there's news of a gold strike the miners are on the trail like a hound after a fox." The moon rose over the trees and made the glow of the camp-fire seem like a tallow candle beside an electric light. The forest was flooded with the radiance and it was almost as bright as day. "I could almost go out and gather some specimens," remarked Professor Snodgrass, who had said little since the exciting events of the afternoon. "What do you want most?" asked the sheriff. "I'd like to get--look out, there! Don't move for the life of you! Wait until I get my net!" cried the professor, suddenly, staring at something close to the officer. "What is it, a rattlesnake?" asked the sheriff, somewhat alarmed at the professor's excitement. "Don't move! Don't move!" was all the naturalist replied. "Well, if it's a snake you can bet your boots I won't stir until you've got it," answered the sheriff. "I seen a man bit by one once and he didn't last half an hour. But say, my friend, don't be any longer than you can help. It's sort of a strain on my nerves, you know." "Softly! Easy!" spoke the professor. He had his net now and was tiptoeing up to where the officer sat, close beside Stoneham. "There!" cried the professor, slapping the meshes down on the ground. "I've got him!" "Have you got the rattlesnake?" asked Jerry. "Rattlesnake?" inquired the naturalist, gathering something carefully in the folds of the net. "Who said anything about a snake? I've just captured a white lizard, one of the rarest that exists. It's worth one thousand dollars." "Well," exclaimed the sheriff, "it nearly scared me to that amount, the way you acted. I thought sure I was goin' to be hit by a snake." After the excitement, unintentionally caused by the professor, had quieted down, and he had put his lizard away with his other specimens, it was voted time to turn in. Blankets were brought from the automobile to serve as coverings, and the fire was replenished. In order to be sure his prisoner would not escape, the sheriff tied Stoneham to a big tree. As an additional precaution the officer passed one end of the rawhide thong about his own arm, so that the slightest movement on the gambler's part would be noted. Then Nestor, who agreed to take the first watch, began pacing up and down in front of the camp, while the others fell asleep. CHAPTER XXX. AN ESCAPE--CONCLUSION. At midnight Nestor awoke Broswick, who was to take the next watch. "All quiet?" asked the hunter. "As a churchyard," replied the miner. "How about Berry and Pender?" "They haven't moved." "All right; turn in." Nestor was soon snoring, and Broswick began his vigil. The moon began to move over toward the west, and the only sounds heard were the hoots of owls or the barking of foxes. Suddenly the hunter paused in his walk about the camp. His trained ear told him somebody or something was approaching. He could hear the breaking of twigs and the rattle of stones as they were stepped on. "That's a human being," decided the hunter. "No animal would be as clumsy as that in making an approach." He waited, with his rifle ready. "If it's some one coming to rescue Stoneham they'll get a warm reception," he whispered to himself. The noise came nearer. Then the bushes off to the left parted cautiously, and Broswick heard a soft whisper: "Hey, Bill! Hey, Jack! Where are you?" "It's that Noddy Nixon chap," Broswick muttered. "He must have come back in his automobile after the deputy sheriff released him at sundown. Now I wonder what I'd better do?" "Hey, Bill!" Noddy called, in a little louder whisper, "can you sneak away? I have the machine ready." This time a movement near where Bill Berry and Pender were lying told that they had heard the summons. Broswick silently drew back into the shadows and waited to see what would happen. He did not think it necessary to arouse the others yet. Berry rose to his feet and peered about him. Jack followed. They were trying to locate Noddy's whereabouts. "Here I am!" whispered Noddy. "Right by the oak tree." As quietly as they could, Pender and Berry began sneaking off to one side, avoiding the light cast by the camp-fire. "Shall I let 'em go or stop 'em?" debated Broswick with himself. "Guess I'll let 'em go. We don't want 'em, for they're more trouble than they're worth. But I'll give 'em a good scare." He raised his gun and fired two shots in the air, over the heads of the escaping man and boy. Their frightened yells told how startled they were. In an instant the camp was in confusion. Every one awoke, Nestor standing ready with a revolver in either hand. "What's the matter?" he cried. "Only Noddy coming back for his two friends," replied Broswick. "Have they escaped?" The hunter raised his hand to indicate silence. A crashing of the underbrush told in which way the fugitives were heading. "There they go," said Broswick. The sheriff had quickly assured himself that Stoneham was still securely bound. "Shall we take after Noddy and Pender?" asked Broswick. "What's the use?" asked Nestor. "If we had them arrested it would only make trouble for us. Let 'em go. I got some of my gold back from Pender." "Yes, let 'em go," assented Jerry. "Hark!" exclaimed Ned. All listened. The faint chugging of an automobile was heard, gradually dying away in the distance. "I guess that's the end of 'em," remarked Nestor. Once more quiet settled down on the camp, and there were no other disturbances that night. The shining of the sun through the trees awoke the campers, and soon coffee was made and a simple breakfast ready. "Now if one of you will run down to town in the automobile, with me and my friend Stoneham here," said the sheriff, "I'll be obliged to you." Jerry agreed to make the trip, and Nestor said he would go along, as he wanted to do some business at the Government Assay Office. The mine was left in charge of Broswick, Professor Snodgrass, Ned and Bob. "Don't let anybody jump the claim," cautioned the miner with a laugh, as he rode off, Jerry steering the automobile down the valley. "There'll be trouble if they try it," said the hunter, looking at his gun. No accidents occurred during the automobile trip. Town was safely reached, and the sheriff lodged his prisoner in jail. Nestor transacted his business with the Government agent, and then Jerry headed the machine back for the camp. There they found everything in good shape. "Now that our troubles are about over, an' we're in possession of our mine, it won't be a bad idea to dig out a few nuggets for luck," said Nestor. "Can we have one?" asked Bob. "Why, sure, Chunky," replied the miner. "The claim's part yours, jest as it is mine. We're goin' to share an' share alike in this deal. I'd never have got to this mine if it hadn't been for you boys. Have a nugget? Well, I guess yes." They went to the top of the hill, and Nestor and Jerry descended the shaft. This second trip more than confirmed the first view of the richness of the mine. The rocky sides of the shaft were fairly studded with small nuggets. Nestor dug out some with his knife, and Jerry did likewise. "There's about one hundred dollars," remarked the miner after half an hour's work, showing a handful of dull, golden pebbles. Jerry had about the same amount. "Now we've got to git ready to work this claim," said Nestor. "I'll attend to all that, seein' as how I'm familiar with the business. But, first, we'll go up an' show the others what we have." As they neared the top of the shaft they heard quite a commotion on the surface. The voices of men in dispute could be heard. "I wonder what's the trouble now?" Nestor said. Coming out of the shaft he found the summit of the hill surrounded by fifty or more roughly dressed men, all bearing mining tools on their backs. They stood in a circle while Broswick, with cocked rifle, was holding them at bay. "What's the matter?" asked Nestor. "They allowed they was goin' to jump this claim," said the hunter. "Excuse me, pardner," spoke one of the crowd, who seemed to be a sort of leader, addressing his remarks to Nestor. "I take it you're in charge here?" "That's what," replied the miner. "Waal, we ain't goin' to jump nobody's claim. We're a bunch of miners, an' we've come all the way from Spread Eagle Valley to this region, hearin' as how there was good claims here. Are we right?" "You be," replied Nestor, "an' you're welcome. There's the stakes of our claim," and he indicated them. "All filed reg'lar an' 'cordin' to law, I s'pose?" went on the spokesman. "Right," answered Nestor. "You can locate anywhere you like outside of my claim." "That's all we wanted to know," went on the other. "Come on, boys!" he called to his companions. "It's all right!" The whole valley was soon a scene of great activity, with miners staking claims on every side. They were eager with the desire for gold. Within a week the whole region fairly swarmed with the gold seekers, for the section was rich with the precious metal. But no claim was as valuable as that of the lost mine which Nestor and the boys had found. Arrangements were made for working the claim, machinery was ordered, and soon pay-dirt was being taken out in large quantities. A more comfortable log cabin was erected in place of the rude shack that served as a temporary shelter, and the boys began to enjoy life in the new diggings. One of the first things they had done when they were sure of the possession of the mine was to write back home and tell their parents of the good luck. Jerry suggested that in the missives each one should ask permission to remain at the gold mine for some time longer, and perhaps make a further trip before returning to Cresville. "I wonder if we'll get any letters by this mail?" asked Ned one evening, when, after the day's work was done, they all sat about the camp-fire. "We'll soon know," said Jerry. "Here comes Nestor back from town, and it looks as if he had something in his hand." The miner approached, riding Broswick's horse. "Here's the postman!" he cried, waving some papers in the air. "Letters for each of ye!" Three anxious boys opened three envelopes and soon were busy reading the missives. Then came three simultaneous whoops of delight. "I can stay!" yelled Bob. "Me, too!" exclaimed Jerry. "And me!" came from Ned. "I don't blame your folks for lettin' ye stay," put in Nestor. "You're makin' money here every day out of this mine." The parents of the boys had wisely concluded that it would be a good experience for their sons to develop the mine further, since they seemed to be in good hands under Nestor's guidance, and able to take care of themselves. "We'll have no end of good times," said Bob, trying to turn a handspring on the grass, but tumbling down in the effort. "I'd feel better if I was sure we had seen the last of Noddy and Pender, as well as Bill Berry and that Dalsett chap," spoke Jerry. "Oh, they'll never bother us again," came from Ned. "They're running like scared rabbits. We'll never see them again." But Ned was wrong. They did meet Noddy and his three companions once more, and under strange circumstances, as will be related in the next volume of this series, to be entitled "The Motor Boys in Mexico; or, The Secret of the Buried City." "Let's go to bed," suggested Jerry, as the camp-fire died out. And they went to their bunks in the log cabin as the moon rose over the trees and cast a silver gleam over the machinery at the shaft of the gold mine. The Motor Boys' trip overland had panned out very well, indeed. THE END. _The Motor Boys Series_ _By Clarence Young_ =Handsomely illustrated. Bound in cloth, stamped in colors. Price per volume, 60 cents.= THE MOTOR BOYS _Or, Chums Through Thick and Thin_ In this volume is related how the three boys got together and planned to obtain a touring car and make a trip lasting through the summer. THE MOTOR BOYS OVERLAND _Or, A Long Trip for Fun and Fortune_ With the money won at the great motorcycle race the three boys purchase their touring car and commence their travels. THE MOTOR BOYS IN MEXICO _Or, The Secret of the Buried City_ From our own country the scene is shifted to Mexico, where the motor boys journey in quest of a city said to have been buried centuries ago by an earthquake. THE MOTOR BOYS ACROSS THE PLAINS _Or, The Hermit of Lost Lake_ Unraveling the mystery surrounding an old hermit and a poor boy. THE MOTOR BOYS AFLOAT _Or, The Stirring Cruise of the Dartaway_ In this volume the boys take to a motorboat, and have many adventures. THE MOTOR BOYS ON THE ATLANTIC _Or, The Mystery of the Lighthouse_ How the lads foiled the bad men who wanted to wreck a steamer by means of false lights is dramatically related. THE MOTOR BOYS IN STRANGE WATERS _Or, Lost in a Floating Forest_ Telling of many adventures in the mysterious Everglades of Florida. THE MOTOR BOYS ON THE PACIFIC _Or, The Young Derelict Hunters_ The derelict was of great value, and the hunt for it proved full of perils. _CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers, NEW YORK_ _The Jack Ranger Series_ _By Clarence Young_ _Author of the Motor Boys Series_ =Cloth. Illustrated, $1.00 per volume= JACK RANGER'S SCHOOLDAYS _Or, The Rivals of Washington Hall_ =Cloth, beautifully decorated. Illustrated, $1.00= [Illustration] You will love Jack Ranger--you simply can't help it. He is so bright and cheery, and so real and lifelike. A typical boarding-school tale, without a dull line in it. JACK RANGER'S SCHOOL VICTORIES _Or, Track, Gridiron and Diamond_ In this tale Jack gets back to Washington Hall and goes in for all sorts of school games. There are numerous contests on the athletic field, and also a great baseball game and a football game, all dear to a boy's heart. The rivalry is bitter at times, and enemies try to put Jack "in a hole" more than once. JACK RANGER'S WESTERN TRIP _Or, From Boarding School to Ranch and Range_ This volume takes the hero and several of his chums to the great West. Jack is anxious to clear up the mystery surrounding his father's disappearance. At the ranch and on the range adventures of the strenuous sort befall him. JACK RANGER'S OCEAN CRUISE _Or, The Wreck of the Polly Ann_ Here is a tale of the bounding sea, with many stirring adventures. How the ship was wrecked, and Jack was cast away, is told in a style all boys and girls will find exceedingly interesting. There is plenty of fun as well as excitement. _CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers, NEW YORK_ _The Boy Hunters Series_ _By Captain Ralph Bonehill_ =Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 60 cents= [Illustration] FOUR BOY HUNTERS _Or, The Outing of the Gun Club_ A fine, breezy story of the woods and waters, of adventures in search of game, and of great times around the campfire, told in Captain Bonehill's best style. In the book are given full directions for camping out. GUNS AND SNOWSHOES _Or, The Winter Outing of the Young Hunters_ In this volume the young hunters leave home for a winter outing on the shores of a small lake. They hunt and trap to their hearts' content, and have adventures in plenty, all calculated to make boys "sit up and take notice." A good healthy book; one with the odor of the pine forests and the glare of the welcome campfire in every chapter. YOUNG HUNTERS OF THE LAKE _Or, Out with Rod and Gun_ Another tale of woods and waters, with some strong hunting scenes and a good deal of mystery. The three volumes make a splendid outdoor series. _CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers, NEW YORK_ _Boys of Business Series_ _By Allen Chapman_ =Illustrated, 12mo. Cloth, 60 cents per volume= [Illustration] THE YOUNG EXPRESS AGENT _Or, Bart Stirling's Road to Success_ Bart's father was the express agent in a country town. When an explosion of fireworks rendered him unfit for work, the boy took it upon himself to run the express office. The tale gives a good idea of the express business in general. TWO BOY PUBLISHERS _Or, From Typecase to Editor's Chair_ This tale will appeal strongly to all lads who wish to know how a newspaper is printed and published. The two boy publishers work their way up, step by step, from a tiny printing office to the ownership of a town paper. MAIL ORDER FRANK _Or, A Smart Boy and His Chances_ Here we have a story covering an absolutely new field--that of the mail-order business. How Frank started in a small way and gradually worked his way up to a business figure of considerable importance is told in a fascinating manner. A BUSINESS BOY _Or, Winning Success_ This relates the ups and downs of a young storekeeper. He has some keen rivals, but "wins out" in more ways than one. All youths who wish to go into business will want this volume. _CUPPLES & LEON CO., Publishers, NEW YORK_ * * * * * * Transcriber's note: --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. --Archaic and variable spellings have been preserved. --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. 
32437	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 32437-h.htm or 32437-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32437/32437-h/32437-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32437/32437-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text in bold face is enclosed by equal signs (=bold=). Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT CHICAGO Or Winning Out Against Heavy Odds by LAURA DENT CRANE Author of The Automobile Girls at Newport, The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires, The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson, etc. Illustrated [Illustration: "He's Here!" Cried Barbara. _Frontispiece._] Philadelphia Henry Altemus Company Copyright, 1912, by Howard E. Altemus Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE MAN IN SECTION THIRTEEN 7 II. THE MISSING PASSENGER 19 III. A DIZZY ROUND OF PLEASURE 32 IV. BATTLE OF THE BULLS AND BEARS 45 V. AN EMBARRASSING MOMENT 56 VI. THE WRECK OF MR. A. BUBBLE 68 VII. THE MYSTERY OF THE IRON GATES 75 VIII. EXPLORING THE SECRET PASSAGE 84 IX. IN AN INDIAN GRAVEYARD 96 X. MEETING A TREASURE HUNTER 106 XI. GIVING AN ATTIC PARTY 116 XII. A CURIOUS OLD JOURNAL 127 XIII. THE MYSTERY OF THE ATTIC 136 XIV. TOMMY TAKES A WILD RIDE 143 XV. AN AMAZING OCCURRENCE 154 XVI. BOB SOLVES ANOTHER MYSTERY 164 XVII. A LONG-REMEMBERED CHRISTMAS 178 XVIII. BAB'S EXCITING DISCOVERY 187 XIX. A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT 195 XX. CONCLUSION 204 The Automobile Girls at Chicago CHAPTER I THE MAN IN SECTION THIRTEEN BARBARA THURSTON awakened with a violent start. "Wha--a-at is it?" she muttered, then opened her eyes wide. In the darkness of the Pullman berth she could see nothing at all save a faint perpendicular line of light at the edges of the curtains that enclosed the section. "I--I wonder what made me wake up so suddenly?" Barbara put out a groping hand. The hand came in contact with Mollie Thurston's face. Mollie brushed it away, muttering irritably in her sleep. Then all at once Barbara discovered what had awakened her. Close at hand she heard the voices of two men. They were conversing in low, cautious tones. "I tell you I'll crush him! I'll crush them both. I'll make beggars of them!" declared one of the men in a slightly heightened tone. The train had stopped, as Barbara realized at that moment. Otherwise she might not have been able to hear the words so plainly. The girl shuddered at the tone of the speaker's voice more than at the words themselves. She drew the curtains aside a little and peered out. It was then that she discovered by the light reflected from the adjoining section that the berths next to her had not been made up. Two men were sitting in the double seat within a few inches of where her head had lain. She was unable to see the men, nor did Barbara recognize either of the voices. Their conversation could be of no possible interest to her, she told herself. Still for some reason that she did not stop to analyze, the girl lay back with half-closed eyes, listening. She listened not because she wanted to hear, but for the reason that she could not well help overhearing the conversation in the adjoining section. At Barbara's side Mollie Thurston lay sleeping peacefully. As for Barbara, she was now wholly awake, all thought of sleep having left her. "You mean you will crush them financially?" suggested the second speaker. "Body and soul!" "Do you mean to say that you would crush a human being--perhaps drive him to do desperate things--merely to gratify your love of money and power? Is that what you mean, Nat?" "That is partly my meaning. Yes, I want power. Already they call me the 'Young Napoleon of Finance,' but that is not enough. Those men must be driven to the wall, for in crushing them I shall be increasing my own power as well as taking theirs from them. I'd crush them just the same if I knew it to be my last conscious act on earth." Barbara Thurston gazed into the darkness wide-eyed. She knew she was listening to the resolve of a desperate man, though she had not the slightest idea what might be his plans for accomplishing his purpose. "Why do you hate them so?" questioned the second voice. "What have they ever done to you?" The first speaker paused a few seconds before replying, then in a voice tense with suppressed emotion he answered slowly: "Hate them? That isn't exactly the word, but it will answer. I hate ---- ---- because he turned me out when I was making my start. Turned me out into the street, Jim. Do you understand? Turned me out without a dollar in my pocket when I was trying to make something of myself. I hate the other man because he is working with him. They are pulling together and they must go down together. Let them down me if they can. I'll make beggars of both of them!" "Oh!" exclaimed Barbara Thurston in a tone that plainly must have reached the two men. The terrible threat had struck her almost with the effect of a blow. A name had been mentioned that stirred her to instant alertness, a name almost as familiar to the girl as her own. "What was that?" demanded the voice that had uttered the terrible threats. "Someone dreaming." "Let them dream. As for me, I never sleep these days. I leave that to others. Jim, you watch me. I'll be a king of finance yet. I'll be the Napoleon in reality before I have done. And what is more, those men will never know where their opposition comes from until after the blow has fallen. I'll see to it that they know then, however. Watch me, but keep silent. Not a word, not a breath of what I have told you. I've said too much, but I had to talk to some one I could trust. Now I'm all right again." "Never fear, Nat." "And I'll give you a tip, boy. Buy wheat." Bab could not catch all of the sentence. She caught the word "wheat," but a word ahead of that she missed. "Thank you, I never gamble," replied the second man. "I'm sure to lose if I do, so I have always steered clear of speculation. But I'm sorry for the Old Man if you are after him. I'm sorry for anyone that you visit your displeasure upon. I should hate to have you get after my scalp." "What's--who's talking in this berth?" demanded Mollie, sitting up suddenly. "Sh-h-h!" warned Barbara, laying a restraining hand on her sister's lips. "It isn't in this berth. It's in the next one. Go to sleep." "Is--is Grace asleep?" "Yes. Be quiet." Grace Carter, the girls' companion, occupied the berth above them. As no sound had been heard from that quarter it was reasonable to suppose that Grace had not been awakened by the conversation of the two men. Barbara was trembling violently. She was profoundly affected by what she had overheard. Yet while she had heard a name mentioned and a threat made against the owner of that name, she was in the dark as to the meaning of the threat--she did not understand what it was that this man proposed to do. Her ears were now strained to catch every word uttered on the other side of the partition. "I shall watch the market with interest, Nat," the second speaker was saying. "I don't say that I approve of your way of getting revenge, but that is your own affair. Remember, however, that people who play with fire are sooner or later sure to be singed." The other man laughed. "My feathers were singed a long time ago, Jim," he said. "Well, here's where I get off. Good luck, old man, and good night." The train had moved forward slowly, halting at a station a short distance from the last stop. The man who had made the threats accompanied his friend to the door of the car, then instead of returning to the seat he had occupied with his friend, he seated himself opposite the section occupied by the girls. Bab, determined to know who the man was, peered cautiously between the curtains. "It's the man in section thirteen!" she exclaimed. Then she realized that she had expressed her thought aloud. The man wheeled sharply, his face hardening, his eyes narrowed to mere slits as he gazed questioningly about him. He saw no one, for Barbara had quickly withdrawn her head, holding the curtains firmly so that he should observe no movement of them. The girl had learned that which she was so curious to know. She now knew the man who had uttered the threats. He had occupied the section opposite to her all during the previous afternoon, though she did not recall having heard him speak nor did she know his name. The man across the aisle reached for his bag, from which he selected a package of papers. These he regarded thoughtfully for a full minute, after which he opened the package, taking several documents, returning the rest to the bag. Then after drawing his cigar case from the bag, he rose and strode rapidly toward the rear of the car, where the smoking compartment was located. "So that's the man. I'm glad I know what I do, even though I do not know what it is all about. I must ask Mr. Stuart about that man," mused Barbara. Consulting her watch, she found that it was nearly one o'clock in the morning. The girl shivered, snuggled into her blankets and fell asleep. It was December and the air was chill. Barbara had not been asleep long when she was awakened by a violent jolt, then a bumping that shook her until her teeth chattered. The sleeping car swayed giddily from side to side as it moved slowly forward with a grinding, crunching sound. Then the car gave a lurch that hurled Bab violently against her sister. Mollie uttered a little cry of alarm. Bab threw her arms about her, hugging Mollie in a tight embrace to save her sister from being thrown against the side of the car. As yet Bab had not had time to think of what was occurring outside. But now she began vaguely to realize that the Pullman car had left the rails. An accident had occurred. Shouts and cries of alarm from various parts of the car testified to the terror of other passengers who were being buffeted about by the rocking sleeper. All at once the forward end of the car appeared to plunge down head first, as it were. The two girls were tumbled into one end of their berth where for a few agonizing seconds both were nearly standing on their heads. Mollie screamed again. "Don't!" commanded Barbara sharply in a half-smothered voice, holding her sister even more tightly than before. "We're going over!" cried Mollie. Barbara had managed to straighten out and was now bracing herself with all her might. She had thus far made no effort to get out into the aisle. She was a girl quick to think and act in an emergency. She had reasoned that they would be safer in their berth than out of it, for they could not be buffeted about so much in the narrow berth as they might be in the aisle where they could hear the thud of bags and other articles falling from the various berths or being hurled from one side to the other of the car. The lights suddenly went out. Fortunately the train had not been moving very fast when the accident occurred. Now it gave a sudden, sickening lurch and lay over on its side to the accompaniment of crashing glass as the windows were burst in and renewed cries of fear came from the passengers. The broad windows of the Thurston girls' berth burst in, sending a shower of glass over them. Both received bruises as well as slight cuts from the broken glass that had showered over them, though Barbara had borne the brunt of the shock, managing to keep her own body between Mollie and danger. "Are we killed? Are we killed?" moaned Mollie. "No. We are all right," soothed Bab with a confidence that she did not feel. "Quick! Get on your clothes if you can find them. Here, put this on. Don't try to dress completely, but just throw about you whatever you can find." While urging her sister to action, Bab was hunting feverishly for their belongings. She thrust the first clothing she could find into the hands of the trembling Mollie, then wrapped the younger girl in a blanket. "I want my shoes," cried Mollie. Barbara thrust two shoes into the girl's hands. One was Mollie's shoe, the other Barbara's, but she could not be particular under the circumstances. Now a new danger threatened. Bab was certain that she could smell smoke. She fairly dragged Mollie from the berth into the aisle that was now tilted at an angle. "Hurry! Get to the upper end of the car as fast as you can. The other passengers are out I do believe." "Oh, I can't! Help me, Bab." "Help yourself. I must look after Grace." "Grace!" groaned Mollie, a sudden and new fit of trembling seizing upon her until her legs threatened to collapse under her. Barbara gave her a violent push. "Climb up the aisle. Support yourself by the seats. You will be able to get through all right. I'll follow you just as soon as I can find Grace. She may have gotten out, but I don't believe she has." "Is--is--do you think she is dead?" gasped Mollie. "Hurry!" urged Barbara, as the smell of smoke smote her nostrils more strongly than before. "Grace!" she called, as soon as she saw that Mollie had begun climbing. There was no answer. Barbara was hurrying into such of her clothing as she was able to find. The intense darkness of the car made any systematic effort to dress impossible. "Grace! Oh, Grace!" Still no answer. Bab observed by the light that now filtered through the broken windows of section number thirteen on the opposite side of the aisle, that that section was empty. The car itself appeared to be empty. At least the cries had died out, though outside the car there was a great uproar. Barbara climbed into the upper berth occupied by Grace Carter, who lay silent, unheeding Barbara's voice. "Oh, Grace! Grace!" begged Barbara, throwing her arms about her friend. "Answer me." There was no response. A bar of moonlight shone through the broken window of section number thirteen, falling directly on the pallid face of the unconscious girl. Barbara shook her, calling upon her friend to answer, but Grace neither spoke nor stirred. "Is there any one left in here?" called a voice from the other end of the car. "Yes, yes; come here quickly and help me," cried Barbara. Instead of coming to her assistance, the owner of the voice appeared to turn back and go out again. Barbara was now chafing the hands and face of the motionless girl in the upper berth. "Oh, she's dead, she's dead. What shall I do?" gasped Bab. With a suddenly formed resolution, she clasped her arms about Grace and with considerable difficulty--for Grace was now a dead weight--dragged the unconscious girl from her berth into the aisle. Bab did not pause for an instant. Handling her friend as tenderly as possible, she began working her way up the steep aisle, making but slow progress, one arm about Grace Carter, the other pulling herself and her heavy burden along by grasping the backs of the seats and the partitions between such of the berths as were made up. CHAPTER II THE MISSING PASSENGER AN endless corridor it seemed to Barbara Thurston as little by little she dragged her drooping burden to the end of the aisle. Reaching the narrow passage that led past the staterooms, she was obliged to creep on hands and knees along the slippery lower side of the car. Suddenly she heard a groan. Bab glanced apprehensively at the curtains that hung over the door of the smoking room. The curtains now stood out at a sharp angle. A thin cloud of smoke filtered out from the smoking compartment. "Oh, there's some one in there," exclaimed the girl. But she had other work to do just then. The young woman struggled on, at last reaching the platform that now stood in the air some feet above the track. "Jump! We'll catch you," called a voice. "I--I can't. Help me. My companion is hurt." "She's got someone with her. Get up there," commanded a sharp voice. Two trainmen clambered to the platform. "Is the girl dead?" demanded one. "I don't know. Oh, please hurry," begged Barbara in an agonized tone. The men quickly lifted down Grace Carter's limp form. Then they turned to assist Barbara, but she already had swung down without assistance. Mollie was kneeling beside Grace, other passengers crowding about the unconscious girl who lay stretched out on the ground beside the track. Someone pushed through the crowd to Grace and thrust a bottle of smelling salts under her nose. This served to restore her to consciousness, and she feebly brushed the bottle aside. "She's alive," screamed Mollie, almost beside herself. "Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Barbara in an ecstacy of joy. Grace Carter sat up dazedly. "Are you hurt, dear?" urged Bab. "I--I don't know. I think not. Oh, it was awful. I--I thought the world surely was coming to an end. Was anyone--anyone killed?" "No," answered a voice from the crowd. "Some of us got a fine shaking up, but the train was running so slowly that the shock of the accident was not very severe." "What was the matter?" asked Grace as Barbara assisted the trembling girl to her feet. "The trainmen say it was a loose rail. They've been putting in new rails at this point and the train was running slowly on that account, the work not yet being entirely finished." At this juncture the conductor came bustling up, ordering the passengers to go to the cars ahead, which had not left the track. The train was to move on in a few minutes. A flagman had been stationed some distance to the rear to stop any following trains and the conductor was anxious to reach the next station ahead to telegraph for a wrecking train and report the wreck of the sleepers. A pleasant-faced woman whom Barbara had seen on the train the day before, stepped up and offered to assist them, which she did by placing an arm about Grace, helping to support the latter in the walk to the cars. "I am Miss Thompson, from Chicago," said the woman. "My father is with me. I saw you yesterday and wanted to speak to you. Are you going to Chicago?" "Yes. You are very kind," answered Barbara. "I wonder if all the passengers were gotten out of the sleeper?" asked Miss Thompson when they had finally reached the cars up ahead and Grace had been comfortably disposed of in another sleeper. Barbara started. "Oh, I forgot. Conductor! There was a man in the smoking compartment of our car." The porter who had followed them with the other passengers and such luggage as he could find, shook his head. "I know there was. I had forgotten all about it," declared Bab. "I heard someone groan in there as I passed the compartment with my friend. Where is the man who occupied the lower berth of section thirteen?" No one had seen him. All the other passengers had been accounted for, but no one had seen the tall, slim, sandy-haired man from section number thirteen. "Then he is in that smoking compartment. I saw him when he went there. The compartment was on fire when I passed it," cried Barbara Thurston, springing up, her face flushed, her eyes large and troubled. "If there's anyone there the men will find him. There was no fire in that car," said the conductor, with which statement the porter agreed. "There was smoke," declared Bab. "I don't know about fire. I do know that I'm going back to find out about that man," she announced. "Come back," called the conductor. "We're going to start." Unheeding, Barbara ran for the door, and, leaping from the platform, started on a run back to the wrecked sleeper. The conductor was determined to move his train, but the passengers objected so strenuously that he reluctantly decided to wait and make a further hurried search of the wrecked sleeper. With a porter and half a dozen passengers the conductor followed Barbara. She could smell the smoke before she reached the car. Hastily climbing to the platform, she crawled in. By the time she had gotten into the corridor a porter had also climbed up. The smoke was so thick and suffocating that the girl choked and coughed. "He's here," she cried, as a faint groan reached her ears. "Hurry! Oh, do hurry!" Then Bab's words were lost in the fit of coughing that had seized her. Three men pushed their way into the smoking compartment. They saw that the carpet was smouldering. It had probably been set on fire by a burning cigar or a lighted match. There was no blaze, just a dull smoulder and a lot of smoke. It did not seem possible that one could live in that atmosphere for very long. Suddenly the porter stumbled over the form of a man. It was the former occupant of section number thirteen. "Young woman, get out of here at once," commanded the conductor. "We will take care of this man." Bab staggered out to the platform, where she waited. A minute later the men came out bearing the unconscious form of the stranger. Barbara asked if he were dead. The men said no, but that he was half suffocated from the smoke he had inhaled. They carried the man on ahead to the train and up to the dining car, after which a doctor was hurriedly summoned from one of the other cars. In the meantime Barbara had returned to her companions, who were anxiously awaiting her reappearance. She told them of finding the man, and was warmly commended by the passengers for her bravery. "I do wish we could get word to Ruth Stuart that we are all right," said Barbara, after she had related the story of the finding of the man from section thirteen. "Ruth Stuart?" questioned Miss Thompson. "I wonder if by any chance she could be related to Robert Stuart, a Chicago broker?" "Why, she is his daughter. Do you know the Stuarts?" cried Barbara, a smile lighting up her face still pale and somewhat drawn. "No, but my father wishes to know Mr. Stuart. Only yesterday he was speaking of him. I should not be surprised if he were to call on Mr. Stuart soon to discuss a business matter with him." "The world is small, after all, isn't it?" smiled Bab. "We are on our way to Chicago to visit the Stuarts. We are friends of Ruth Stuart. We four are known to our friends as the 'Automobile Girls.'" The readers of this series must undoubtedly feel well acquainted with that quartette of sweet, dainty, lovable girls, Ruth Stuart, Barbara and Mollie Thurston and Grace Carter, who were met with in the first volume of this series, "THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT NEWPORT." Their acquaintance really dated from the time Barbara Thurston so pluckily stopped a team of runaway horses driven by Ruth Stuart, a wealthy western girl, then summering at Kingsbridge, the home of the Thurstons. A warm friendship sprang up almost at once between the two girls, culminating in a long trip in Ruth's automobile, during which journey Ruth, Bab and Mollie Thurston, their friend Grace Carter, and their chaperon, Aunt Sallie Stuart, met with many exciting adventures. It was on this eventful trip, as will be recalled, that Barbara distinguished herself by causing the arrest of a society jewel thief, at the same time heaping coals of fire on the head of a girl cousin who had treated Barbara and Mollie with scornful contempt. The girls were next heard from in "THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS IN THE BERKSHIRES," to which region, chaperoned, as always, by Ruth's Aunt Sallie, they had driven in Ruth's car for a month's stay in a lonely cabin in the Berkshire Hills. Their experiences with the "Ghost of Lost Man's Trail" was not the least of their exciting adventures there; in fact, their stay in the mountains was filled with a succession of strange happenings that thrilled the girls as nothing in their lives ever had done before. By this time they considered themselves veteran automobilists and seasoned travelers. As related in "THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS ALONG THE HUDSON," the now famous quartette showed themselves fully equal to the more than ordinary emergencies they met with from time to time on a most eventful journey. From balking highwaymen to fighting a forest fire that for a time threatened the ancestral home of Major Ten Eyck, whose guests they were at the time, the "Automobile Girls" fully lived up to the reputation they had earned for themselves. After their trip through the Sleepy Hollow country, Ruth had returned to her home in Chicago, while Mollie, Barbara and Grace had settled down to their studies in the Kingsbridge High School. But with the approach of the holidays had come Ruth's cordial invitation to spend Christmas with her in her own home, not forgetting to mention "Mr. A. Bubble," who, she promised, would do his part toward making their visit a lively one. The three girls had set out on their journey to the Windy City on the Chicago Express, that journey having been interrupted in a most unexpected manner, as already related. * * * * * The conductor sent off a message for them to Ruth Stuart at the next stop. It was a characteristic message from Barbara, reading: "Train wrecked. 'Automobile Girls' safe. Arrive some time. "GRACE, MOLLIE, BAB." This telegram for a time created no little excitement in the Stuart home. Daylight was upon them by the time the train started from the scene of the wreck. Grace said she felt as though she had contracted a severe cold, for she was aching in every muscle of her body. Mollie declared that she was all right, but Bab averred that she knew she hadn't been in bed in a hundred years. The dining car was opened early, for all the passengers felt the need of something more sustaining than fright. When the girls came back from the dining car they felt much better. Grace had suffered no serious injuries, but Bab's face was scratched from the particles of broken glass that had showered over her when the windows burst in. A young man was occupying Barbara's seat when she entered the car they had occupied since the accident. He was leaning back against the high chair. His eyes were closed and a bandage was bound about his head. "That's the man from number thirteen," whispered Barbara over her shoulder to Mollie. He glanced up, met Barbara's eyes and smiled. "I am very glad to see that you weren't seriously hurt," said Bab. The young man rose, supporting himself by the back of the chair. "Are these your seats?" he asked. "Yes, but please do not disturb yourself," urged Bab, taking a seat across the aisle. The young man leaned toward her. "You are Miss Thurston, are you not?" he asked. Barbara nodded, flushing a little. "I have been told that I practically owe my life to you. The fire was nothing but a smoulder of the carpet, but I was slowly being asphyxiated. Thirty minutes more and it would have been all up with me. Even had I been rescued too late to get this train it would have been serious for me. My presence in Chicago to-day is imperative. I might say that it involves my whole future. You see, my dear young lady, you have done more for me than you perhaps realize. You are going to Chicago?" "Yes; we are going on a visit to our friends, Mr. Robert Stuart and his daughter." "Robert Stuart!" exclaimed the young man. Then his face grew hard. Suddenly the conversation that she had overheard the previous night flashed into the mind of Barbara Thurston. The color left her face. The young man's keen eyes observed her change of expression. He shot a sharp glance of inquiry at her. "I have a slight acquaintance with Mr. Stuart and his daughter," he said coldly. "I also know intimate friends of theirs, Mr. and Mrs. Presby and their daughter. Therefore I may have the pleasure of meeting you again. I think perhaps I had better lie down and rest for the remainder of the journey. By the way," he continued, after a slight hesitation, "did you perchance discover a bundle of papers when you found me in the compartment on the other car?" "Oh, I beg your pardon!" exclaimed Bab. "I did find some papers. They are in my bag. I picked them up from the floor of the car thinking they might be of value to you." Slightly confused, Barbara opened her bag, and after turning over its contents drew forth a bundle of papers held together with rubber bands. She handed the bundle to the young man. The smile that lit up his face as he thanked her changed his expression completely. It was almost a gentle smile, and seemed strangely out of place on that cold, calculating face. "Here is my card. I am rated as a cold, heartless man. But, my dear Miss Thurston, I have at least one virtue--gratitude. If ever you are in need of assistance in any way do not hesitate to call upon me," he said, extending a hand to Barbara as he rose rather unsteadily to his feet. Bab mechanically dropped the card into her bag without looking at it, closing and dropping the bag on the floor beside her before accepting the hand. The touch of the cold fingers of the man's hand sent a feeling of dislike through her. It recalled to her mind more vividly than ever the conversation she had overheard in the sleeper. "I hope I never shall see him again," muttered Barbara, just as Miss Thompson came smiling up to them. But Barbara Thurston was destined to see the man whom she had rescued, though under circumstances that she little dreamed of at the present moment. CHAPTER III A DIZZY ROUND OF PLEASURE THE train stopped at Englewood for a moment and then pulled out again for the Union Station. The girls already knew that they were in Chicago, and were feverishly gathering up their wraps. Bab was drawing on her overshoes when two warm hands were suddenly pressed over her eyes. "Guess who it is?" cried Grace, after she and Mollie had uttered little smothered exclamations of delight. "It's my Ruth! Oh, Ruth, Ruth!" cried Barbara, springing up and flinging both arms about the neck of Ruth, fairly smothering her friend with kisses. Ruth and her father had gotten on at Englewood to welcome their young friends. "You dear, dear 'Automobile Girls,'" cried Ruth, now clasping the three girls one after another in a tight embrace. "Am I to be left out of this entirely?" questioned Ruth's father in an aggrieved tone. The girls disengaged themselves from Ruth's arms and fairly pounced upon Mr. Robert Stuart. "Oh, how is dear Aunt Sallie and Mr. A. Bubble?" laughed Barbara, her eyes shining with joy. "Aunt Sallie is waiting to greet you at our home. Mr. A. Bubble is outside growling over your delay in getting to Chicago," smiled Mr. Stuart. "We received your telegram," said Mr. Stuart, as they left the Union Station. "For a time we were considerably upset. Later we saw an account of the wreck in the morning paper. We did not learn that anyone was injured." "What caused it? Wasn't it awful?" questioned Ruth, gazing at her friends admiringly. "And to think I wasn't there to share the honor of being mixed up with a railroad wreck. Too bad," she pouted. "It wasn't a wreck, it was a shake-up," answered Grace. "I am glad you were not with us. Who knows what might have occurred," answered Bab soberly. "Oh, there is Mr. Bubble," she cried, her serious expression changing to a happy smile as she ran forward to the puffing red automobile and patted it affectionately. A thin curl of blue smoke was rising from the exhaust of the motor car. "Hear him purr his delight," cried Mollie. "He's just like a contented kitten for all the world," she laughed. "He isn't grumbling at all." "He was grumbling loudly enough when we left him," answered Mr. Stuart. "That's because he was cold. But we will warm Mr. A. Bubble up on our way home," declared Ruth. This she did, keeping a wary eye out for traffic policemen who might claim that she was exceeding the speed limit. But Ruth knew fairly well where to look out for a traffic man and where not to look for him. Up Dearborn Street to Madison Street the car whirled, the sharp air putting color in the faces of the girls and making their eyes sparkle. Bab kept stealing perplexed glances at Mr. Stuart. Something was on the young woman's mind, but she did not give expression to the thought. In the meantime the girls were chattering at a rapid rate. Through Madison Street they traveled and into Michigan Avenue, where a gust of biting wind fresh from Lake Michigan smote them in the face. "Oh, look at the river!" cried Mollie. "That's Lake Michigan, you goose," answered Ruth, laughing merrily. "How insulting to call our lake a river. But here we are." The car swung into a driveway, coming to a halt before an imposing residence, four stories high, overlooking the lake. "What is this great building?" questioned Mollie. "This is where we live, dear," answered Ruth. "This is my home." "Oh, dear me, I thought it was the Chicago public library," retorted Mollie. "Molliekins, what _are_ we going to do with you?" chided Ruth, laughing. The other girls were already running up the broad stone steps. The doors swung open and the next second Barbara, Mollie and Grace threw themselves into the arms of Miss Sallie Stuart. There was a volley of little screams of delight and any number of resounding smacks. Mr. Stuart had followed them in. He stood with his back to the door, smiling contentedly on the joyous scene. He had come to love the three girls with a love that was not far behind his affection for his own daughter Ruth. The girls having released Miss Sallie from their embrace, Ruth dragged her friends upstairs. They were first shown to their own rooms, and wonderful rooms they were. None of the three girls from Kingsbridge ever had seen anything to compare with the beauty of these handsome apartments. A few minutes later they were in Ruth's private sitting room, the walls of which were done in pale blue silk. The furniture was of old mahogany and on a dainty writing desk the girls found paper and envelopes bearing the monogram "A. G." Ruth had had these prepared for the girls' use. "Now, girls," she said, "are you too fatigued after your exciting experiences to go out this evening?" "No, indeed," cried the three girls in chorus. "Then listen! Father has taken a box at the opera for this evening. We are to hear Romeo and Juliet----" "Oh, how perfectly lovely," bubbled Mollie. "That reminds me, Molliekins, that I received a note from your 'lovely lady,' Mrs. Cartwright, yesterday. She asked me to tell you to look for a diamond butterfly at the opera to-night. She thought that might help you to locate an old friend." Mollie smiled happily. At this juncture there came a light tap at the door and a well-known gentle voice asked, "may I come in?" Miss Sallie was assisted into the room somewhat faster than she considered dignified, but there was no resisting her "Automobile Girls." After getting her breath she sank into an easy chair, the girls surrounding her. "I want to consult with you about our plans," she said. "We wish to make this reunion one that you will remember all the rest of your lives. Our cousins, the Presbys, wish you to spend some time with them. Olive Presby, their daughter, is especially desirous of having you there. You will find her a charming girl and I am sure you will all fall in love with her at sight. What do you say?" "About the falling in love?" questioned Mollie innocently. "No, no, Molliekins," rebuked Ruth. "About the invitation, of course." "I am sure we shall be well pleased with whatever arrangements have been made for us," said Grace. "Yes, indeed," added Barbara. "I am between fire and water," declared Ruth laughingly, as she dropped into a chair before the fireplace. "I want you to stay and I want you to go to the Presbys. I have decided, with your approval, that we shall divide your time between our home and the Presbys' place. First, we will do Chicago, after which we will go to Cousin Jane and Cousin Richard Presby. They have a grand old home and hundreds of acres of grounds surrounding it." "Are they so very rich?" questioned Mollie. "On the contrary, they are extremely poor," answered Aunt Sallie, whereat Mollie puckered her brow in perplexity. "Their property is heavily mortgaged. They are in a fair way to lose it unless----" "Unless what, Aunt Sallie?" asked Bab gently. "Unless perhaps they may in the meantime find the buried treasure." The effect of this announcement on Mollie, Barbara and Grace made Miss Sallie smile. "Buried treasure? Buried treasure! Oh, oh, oh!" they cried in chorus. "Don't get excited, dears. There is no chance for the 'Automobile Girls,'" interjected Ruth. "I've stirred myself up so many times over that old treasure that I have lost ever and ever so many nights' sleep. Take my advice and forget all about it," she admonished. "Oh, please tell us about it," urged Mollie. "A buried treasure? How perfectly delightful!" sparkled Barbara. "I haven't time to tell you now. It is a long story. This treasure was buried many years ago by one of the Presbys' ancestors. They will tell you all about it when you go out there, and I am sure Cousin Richard can make the story much more interesting than I could." This had to suffice for the present, though the girls were burning to hear the story. Anything that savored of adventure appealed to these healthy, outdoor girls, and what could be more adventurous than hunting for a treasure that had been buried for years and years? The girls' trunks had been brought up, and while they were dressing for the evening, Bab took advantage of the occasion to consult with Ruth about her gown. Ruth ran forward, flinging her arms about Barbara's neck the instant Bab came into her room. "Dear, dear old Bab," she breathed, running tender fingers over the shining brown hair of her companion. "You can't know how I have wanted you. It seems years since last I saw you. Answer me truly, dear. How do you think father is looking?" Barbara's face sobered instantly. Ruth noted the quick change of expression. "You needn't tell me. I see by your expression what you think," added Ruth quickly, brushing a stray wisp of hair from her face. "That was what I wished to ask you about, dear," said Barbara. "He looks so worn. What is the trouble? Has your father been ill?" "No. Not in the sense you mean. Nevertheless, we are greatly worried about him. He has been speculating. We think he has lost a lot of money. He does not speak of his business affairs as he used to do, and that makes us all the more certain that things are not going as they should with him. However, I mustn't speak of these matters now, as I wish you to have the happiest time of your life while you are with us. Why, Barbara Thurston, what a lovely frock!" exclaimed Ruth impulsively. Barbara flushed with pleasure at the compliment. Her gown was of dark red crepe-de-chine, trimmed in soft folds of liberty velvet. Bab had tucked a single red rose in her hair. Ruth never had seen Bab look more charming. "It is mother's Christmas present to me," explained Bab, referring to the frock. "I think it very pretty." "I wish I could look half so well in anything," answered Ruth, but without a trace of envy in her tone. "But I must hurry. If I run on like this we'll never get to the opera." "I was just about to ask if you mind my running down to chat with your father a few moments before we go?" "Do, dear. It will do him good. You always act like a tonic on father," smiled Ruth. "He's in the library." Bab tripped away, holding up her skirts, followed by the admiring eyes of her friend. "She's such a dear," mused Ruth, beginning the finishing touches of her dressing. Bab was especially anxious to see Mr. Stuart alone. She wanted to see if she could fathom the cause of his distress. He looked even more tired and careworn than when she had first seen him. She entered the library rather diffidently pausing before Mr. Stuart, who stood near the fireplace. "Am I intruding?" asked Bab. "Intruding, my dear? You could not do that. But how beautiful you are to-night." "Don't. Please don't," protested Bab with well-feigned displeasure. "You will make me a vain little creature. Ruth has just said the same thing to me. At this rate I fear I shall begin to believe something of the sort myself very soon." "No," answered Mr. Stuart, gazing at her approvingly. "You are far too sensible a young woman to have your head turned so easily as that. Tell me about your good mother. How is she?" "Quite well, thank you," replied Bab simply. "I am sorry that she could not come with you. We had hoped to have her with us." "Yes, we wanted mother to come. She asked me to thank you very kindly for your invitation, but said it would not be possible for her to go so far away from home just now. Perhaps later she may visit you." "Bab, a good mother like yours is a most priceless treasure. Never forget to value your treasure at its real worth," said Mr. Stuart impressively. "I do and I trust I always shall, sir," answered Barbara, and Robert Stuart smiled, for he knew that she meant what she said. Ruth and the other two girls came in at this juncture and the conversation turned on their gowns and the pleasures that were before them that evening. Barbara had not mentioned that she thought Mr. Stuart was looking ill. She would not have ventured to do so, although she was more convinced than before that something very, very serious had come into the life of her friend's father. She wondered if she might not be able to do something to relieve the distress under which he was so plainly laboring. "There, now, what did I tell you, Bab?" demanded Ruth, entering the library. "Didn't I say you were always a tonic to father?" Barbara blushed. "She is indeed, daughter. So are you all. But we must be going. Is your Aunt Sallie ready?" "She is waiting for us in the reception room," answered Ruth. "Then we will be off. Be sure that you girls are well wrapped up. You are not used to going out in this climate with such thin gowns. Ruth, where is your cloak?" "Below, father. I will pick it up on my way down." Then they started downstairs, Mr. Stuart leading the way. They were joined by Miss Sallie in the hallway and a few minutes later were being borne away by Mr. A. Bubble, who, for this evening at least, was on his best behavior. Reaching the opera house, they were conducted to the box reserved for them. Ruth insisted on her guests occupying the front chairs. How the heads of the three little Kingsbridge girls did swim! Beautiful gowns, beautiful women and dazzling jewels were to be seen wherever the eye rested. It was a brilliant and animated scene, such as none of the three girls ever before had gazed upon, for this was their first visit to the opera. "Isn't it all wonderful?" said Bab to Ruth. "Yes, indeed," responded Ruth warmly. "There is nothing quite like an opera night, and I have been particularly interested in grand opera since we discovered Zerlina." "Oh, to be sure," exclaimed Bab. "Where is Zerlina now?" "She is in Paris, studying under the best teachers that can be procured for her," replied Ruth. "She writes me regularly. Her teachers give her great encouragement, and she expects to be ready to sing important rôles within the next two years. She adores José, and he is delighted with having so talented a sister." "She is one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen," said Barbara. "What a wonderful 'Carmen' she will make." "Yes; won't she, though," responded Ruth eagerly, "and that is the part that she particularly looks forward to singing." The subject of Ruth's and Barbara's conversation was a beautiful gypsy girl that they had met during their trip along the Hudson. She had become a protegé of Ruth, who had cherished high hopes of sending Zerlina to a conservatory, but had been forestalled by the appearance on the scene of Zerlina's handsome half-brother, José Martinez. On account of family differences, José and Zerlina had been separated for many years, but in the end Zerlina was persuaded by him to place herself under his protection. All of this has been fully narrated in "THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS ALONG THE HUDSON." "What do you think of it, Molliekins?" whispered Ruth over Mollie's shoulder. "Think of it?" breathed the golden-haired Mollie. "I'm so happy that I could scream right out so everybody in the theatre would hear me," answered Mollie. "I don't know what I shall do when the music begins." A wave of laughter rippled over the box at Mollie's quaint way of expressing her delight. CHAPTER IV BATTLE OF THE BULLS AND BEARS THAT evening at the opera was like a dream to the little Kingsbridge girls. Mrs. Cartwright visited them between the acts, then they were introduced to Olive Presby, who came to their box, accompanied by a young man named Jack Howard, an artist who had just returned from Paris. These two had been chums since childhood. Bab thought Olive the most beautiful girl she had ever seen. She could not keep her eyes off of her, and Olive appeared to be equally attracted to Barbara, though there was little opportunity for conversation between them. Olive was fully five years older than Barbara with fair skin, black hair, and eyes of deep gray, veiled with long, black lashes, making an unusual and most attractive combination. Olive Presby was a striking looking girl. All through the second act Bab kept gazing across at Olive, and it was with a deep sigh of regret that Barbara finally turned her eyes away under the teasing of Ruth and Grace. The glorious evening came to a close all too soon for them. Reaching home, the girls lost little time in getting to their rooms, for the three travelers had had little sleep in the past two nights. They fell asleep almost the instant their heads touched their pillows, but in spite of their late hours the four girls descended to the dining room the following morning bright-eyed and ready for whatever the day might bring forth. Miss Sallie rustled in, dressed in her silk morning gown a few moments after the others had reached the dining room. The girls greeted her enthusiastically, each girl giving her a hearty hug and kiss, after which they seated themselves at the breakfast table, and a lively chattering ensued. "What do you think of Cousin Olive?" asked Ruth. "Oh, I just love her," cried Bab enthusiastically. A cloud passed swiftly over the face of Ruth Stewart. "I could love her almost to death. Is she engaged to Mr. Howard?" "No indeed," said Miss Sallie with emphasis. "Olive is devoted to her parents, especially now that they are in such deep trouble. She is their comfort in their distress and she knows it." "Young ladies," interrupted Mr. Stuart, "do you feel equal to beginning your sight-seeing to-day?" "We do," chorused the girls. "I have so planned my affairs as to have this day free for you. Mr. A. Bubble also is at your disposal. He has had a thorough going over at the hands of his man this morning, and I think you will find him in fine condition." "Olive Presby is coming to see you this morning, you know," reminded Miss Sallie. Ruth's face clouded again. Bab's eyes glowed, for she wished to see Olive even more than to explore Chicago. "We might call her up on the telephone and have her come over so she may go with us," suggested Mr. Stuart. The girls seconded this proposal enthusiastically, and this was done without delay, Olive promising to come over as soon after breakfast as possible. "I propose," announced Mr. Stuart, "to take you over to the Board of Trade on La Salle Street to show you the famous Pit." "Is it a very big hole?" questioned Mollie innocently, whereat a merry laugh rippled all the way around the table. "The Pit," explained Mr. Stuart, smilingly, "is the place where men buy and sell grain-stuffs. It's the same as stock speculation." Mollie thought stock speculation was trading in cattle. "You ridiculous child," exclaimed Ruth. "I'll explain it to you so you will understand it. Now if you want to speculate you order your brokers, for instance, to 'buy a thousand shares of B. Sell five thousand shares of G and ten thousand shares of C.' That's all. Next morning you wake up to find yourself ten or fifteen thousand dollars richer----" "Or poorer," added Mr. Stuart. "I must say, Ruth, that your explanation is very lucid. Take the girls down to my office, leaving here at half past ten o'clock. I shall have my morning mail disposed of by that time and my day's orders issued, then my time will be at your disposal. Sallie, are you going with the girls?" "No, thank you. Not this morning. I have seen quite all of Chicago, I think. Besides, I have no love for your horrid Board of Trade. The automobile will be pretty well filled as it is." "Oh, please come with us," urged Mollie. Aunt Sallie shook her head smilingly, so it was arranged that the girls should go downtown by themselves, there to be met by Mr. Stuart. Olive bustled in shortly before ten o'clock. She was dressed in a brown tailor-made suit of broadcloth, with furs and hat of mink. She came running up the stairs to Ruth's sitting room, bright and eager, her eyes sparkling with anticipation. "Here I am," she cried gayly. "I'm going to introduce myself all over again. I'm Olive, girls. I'm a sort of adopted cousin of the 'Automobile Girls.' So this is Bab," she sparkled, giving Barbara's hand a friendly squeeze. "This little yellow-haired girl is Mollie, and the bigger, brown-haired one is Grace. Now I think we are properly introduced. Now what can I do to add to the pleasure of the 'Automobile Girls' this fine morning?" "I would suggest that you first sit down and compose yourself," replied Ruth with some severity. "How you do run on, Olive." "Now, I call that downright mean," pouted Miss Presby. "Don't you, Bab?" Olive suddenly bent over Barbara, giving the little Kingsbridge girl an impulsive hug. Ruth frowned. Bab looked embarrassed. She felt that Ruth resented Olive's affectionate demonstration. It caused the three Kingsbridge girls, however, to lose their awe of Miss Presby, whom they had before looked upon as a superior grown-up person. "What are the plans for the day, dear?" questioned Olive, turning to Ruth. "We are first to go to the office to pick up father. He is to take us to the Pit. I don't know where we shall go from there." About this time a maid came up to tell them that the car was at the door. The girls hurried down, laughing and chatting, Ruth's irritation apparently having been banished from her mind. It was a bright, sparkling day. The lake glistened and the wind from it again blew the color into the faces of the "Automobile Girls." Mr. Stuart's office was in one of the tall office buildings on La Salle Street, not far from the Board of Trade. The girls were shot up to the seventeenth floor on the elevator with a speed that fairly took their breaths away. Mollie uttered a chorus of subdued "ohs" all the way up. Even in the staid business office the girls found much to interest them. Mollie's attention was first attracted to an energetic little machine at one side of the room. This odd looking machine ticked like a clock, but resembled one in no other way, and from it at intervals spun a narrow, ribbon-like strip of paper which curled and coiled into an elongated waste-paper basket. Mollie stood over the basket regarding the perplexing letters and figures printed on the paper ribbon. "Do--do you make ribbons on this?" she questioned, laying a finger on the glass globe that covered the mechanism. "Not exactly, my dear," answered Mr. Stuart. "But that little machine sometimes helps us to buy ribbons for our families. That is a ticker. It gives the market quotations. I hardly think you will be interested in it." Mollie decided that she wasn't. "If you are ready, girls, we will go over to the Board of Trade, where you will see the bulls and bears engaged in a pitched battle. It is to be a lively day on the floor of the Pit." Mollie was frowning perplexedly. "Are we really going to see a bull fight?" she whispered to Ruth. "Do the bulls and the bears really fight? I--I don't think I want to see them if they do." "No, no, silly. Nothing of the sort. Oh, girls!" laughed Ruth merrily. "Don't you dare tell them," admonished Mollie, "I'll never forgive you if you do." "Never mind," called Ruth to the others, "I'll explain, dear. Of course you know nothing about these things. I wish I didn't. I wish father did not, either," she added with a touch of bitterness. "Bulls and bears are mere men. The bulls are those who try to force up the prices of wheat and other things, while the bears are the ones who seek to keep the prices down. I--I never have been able to make up my mind which of them is the most undesirable." "I am sure Mr. Stuart isn't a bear," muttered Mollie. "Indeed he is not," laughed Ruth, once more restored to good nature. Instead of taking Mr. A. Bubble, the girls walked down from Mr. Stuart's office to the big, gloomy building that housed the Board of Trade. They were conducted to the gallery, where Mr. Stuart left them to go down to the brokers' rooms to consult with some of his friends. It was a mad, wild scene that the little country girls gazed upon. It was like nothing they ever had seen before. "Goodness me, they _are_ fighting!" cried Barbara in alarm. Men were dashing about here and there. Hats were smashed, paper was being torn by nervous hands and hurled into the air, to fall like miniature snow flurries over the heads of the traders. Shouts and yells, hoarse calls were heard from all parts of the floor. One man threw up a hand with the fingers spread wide apart. Instantly a dozen men hurled themselves upon him. He staggered and fell. Willing hands jerked him to his feet. It was then that the "Automobile Girls" saw that the unfortunate man's coat had been torn from him. His collar flapped under his ears and a tiny red mark was observable on one cheek. "Oh!" gasped the Kingsbridge girls. "Wha-a-at are they fighting about?" gasped Mollie, her face pale with excitement, perhaps mingled with a little fear. "They aren't fighting." Ruth had to place her lips close to the ears of her companion to make herself heard. "They are buying and selling. That is the way business is done on the floor of the Pit. See! There is father!" The girls gazed wide-eyed. Mr. Stuart had projected himself into the maelstrom of excited traders. He, like the rest, was waving his arms and shouting. A group of excited men instantly surrounded him. He was for the moment the centre of attention, for Robert Stuart was one of the largest and most successful traders on the Chicago Board of Trade. The battle waged furiously about him, while the "Automobile Girls" gazed in fascinated awe upon the strange, exciting scene. All at once a gong sounded. The tension seemed to snap. Men who had been fighting and shouting suddenly ceased their activities. The bodies of some grew limp, as it were. Some staggered. Others walked from the floor laughing and chatting. Out of the crowds strode a man--a young man. What first attracted the attention of the girls to him was a bandage about his head. He was walking straight toward them, though on the floor below. All at once he glanced up. Only Bab was looking down at him now. His gaze swept over the gallery. His eyes rested for a moment on the face of Barbara Thurston. "The man from section thirteen!" exclaimed Bab under her breath. Then as she caught his eyes, she gazed in trembling fascination. The man's features were contorted. Barbara thought it was the most frightful face she ever had gazed upon. Anger, deadly passion and desperate purpose were written there so plainly that anyone could read. Looking her fairly in the face, the man sneered. Whether he recognized her or not, the girl did not know. "Oh!" cried Bab, with a shudder. "What is it, dear?" questioned Ruth anxiously. "Oh, take me away from here. Please take me away," almost sobbed Barbara. "I--I can't stand it. It was awful." "Come, girls," urged Ruth. "Bab is upset. I will confess that I have had enough of this place of nightmares." Rising, she led her friends down the stairs to the lower floor. Barbara was still trembling when they saw Mr. Stuart coming toward them. His face was set and stern. But the instant he caught sight of the "Automobile Girls" the sternness drifted slowly from his features, giving place to a pleased smile. "Why, Barbara, how pale you are!" he exclaimed. "What _is_ the matter?" "She is upset," answered Ruth briefly. Mr. Stuart eyed her keenly. "Was the excitement too much for you, my dear?" he asked. "I--I think so," replied Bab. Then as the thought of that face and its dreadful expression recurred to her mind, she trembled more violently than before. Mr. Stuart linked his arm in hers and led her away, followed by the others of the party. "It really is no place for young girls," said Mr. Stuart. "I should not have brought you here. Girls, we will take the car and go home at once. Barbara had better lie down for a while before luncheon. She is completely unnerved." This Barbara knew to be true, but by great effort she conquered her fit of trembling, and before the Stuart's residence was reached she had in a great measure regained her self-control. CHAPTER V AN EMBARRASSING MOMENT "OH, it is good to be back," declared Bab, as they entered the broad, cheerful hall of the Stuart mansion. "I don't feel as though I ever wanted to leave the house again." "I like it here just as well as you do," answered Mollie. "But I shouldn't like to feel that I had to stay inside the house always." Ruth had made good time on the return, now and then "shaving the paint from the sides of a street car," as Bab expressed it. Still, Ruth Stuart was not nearly as careless a driver as she appeared to be. She did take chances frequently, but the guiding hand at the wheel was sure and steady. She seldom used bad judgment. Her father had such confidence in her driving that he never interfered while riding with her. As for the three Kingsbridge girls, they were by this time so used to Ruth's driving that they declined to get nervous even when she had narrow escapes from collision. "Girls, I am glad you have returned," greeted Miss Sallie, meeting them in the hallway as they entered. "You have callers." "Pshaw!" muttered Ruth disgustedly. "Bab wants to lie down and rest. She is all upset. Can't we make our escape?" "I am all right now," protested Barbara. "However, the company probably came to see Ruth instead of the rest of us." "You are wrong," smiled Aunt Sallie. "Who is it?" questioned Ruth. "Cousin Richard, Cousin Jane and Tom Presby. You don't mind them." "Oh, no indeed," laughed Ruth. "Come on, girls, let's go upstairs and get rid of our wraps, and remove some of this Chicago smoke from our faces. If I look as dirty as I feel I must be a sight." "Father and mother here? You don't mean it?" exclaimed Olive in surprise. "I wonder why they have come in. Girls, you needn't worry about your appearance. Neither father nor mother will notice it. They are well used to the ways of healthy girls. As for Tom, well he doesn't figure at all. He wouldn't know whether our faces were clean or grimy. Come right in. Are they in the library, Aunt Sallie?" "Yes, dear." "Not one step will I go until I have made myself more beautiful," declared Ruth. "I don't think that would be possible," said Bab in a tone calculated for Ruth's ears alone. "Don't," begged Ruth. "I shall think you insincere if you don't stop talking that way. And my face is so besmudged that I am not fit to see anyone. You must come upstairs with me," she added, linking an arm in Barbara's. "Please tell them we shall be right down, Auntie." Olive went directly to the library to see her parents. The other girls soon followed her. The library was darkened, lighted only by the snapping fire in the fireplace. Mr. Presby explained that he had come into town to see Mr. Stuart, who was at that moment welcoming him. Mr. Stuart excused himself, promising that he would return to his guests as soon as he had telephoned certain necessary orders to his office. Mr. Stuart had barely left the room when Bab and Ruth entered. Olive came forward quickly. She took Barbara's arm in hers, steering Bab toward Mrs. Presby. "I want you to meet my mother. I know you will love her, for she's a dear. Mama, this is Barbara Thurston, of whom you have heard so much. I can assure you that she has not been overrated." Bab moved blushingly forward. The floor was one of those slippery, hard-wood traps for the unwary. Barbara was not used to polished floors. She took a long step to keep up with Olive, who was moving rapidly. Bab's foot came in contact with a small rug, and together the rug and foot slid over the slippery floor. Barbara Thurston's other foot followed the first. Realizing that a fall was inevitable, Barbara quickly released her arm from Miss Presby's. "Oh!" exclaimed Bab, and sat down on the floor with such force that it jarred her from head to foot. There was a distinct vibration from several articles in the room as though they were moving out of sheer sympathy for the unfortunate girl. Barbara struggled to her feet. Again she stumbled over the rug that had caused her to fall, and brought up heavily against a dark object near by. The object uttered a deep groan, as out of the shadows limped an elderly, dignified man. Pain and anger were struggling for the mastery of his facial expression. Barbara had landed fairly on Mr. Richard Presby's gouty foot. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," pleaded the girl. "I am so awkward and I did not see you at all. Please forgive me, if you can," she begged. Mr. Presby, however, merely grunted out some unintelligible words. That he was not appeased by her contrition was plain to be seen. He had been in the act of rising to his feet to bow to the girls when Bab collided with him. Grace, Mollie and Ruth, who had followed Barbara into the room, suppressed their giggles with no little effort. Barbara rushed toward the shadowy, far corner of the room, where she sought to hide her confusion. She flung herself into a great, easy chair. Something under her moved and wriggled. "Oh, I say," exclaimed a voice from under her. "Get up. Don't put me out of business, too." Bab sprang to her feet, her face burning with humiliation. She whirled about and peered into the depths of the chair. There sat a boy of twelve, grinning from ear to ear. "I'm Tom," he informed her. "Lucky for me it wasn't I who stepped on the governor's game foot." "Oh!" cried Barbara. "I forgive you for sitting on me, but gracious, you're heavy." Just at this moment Olive Presby, had hurried across the room. There was deep sympathy in her face as she extended a hand to the embarrassed Barbara. "Don't mind it at all, dear. It is a thing that occurs to all of us frequently. Polished floors are such a nuisance," said Olive. The other girls had been introduced to Mrs. Presby in the meantime. It was now Bab's turn, but instead of being first, as Olive had intended, she was last. Her face was still flushed and her eyelids drooped as she was presented. Mrs. Presby pulled the girl's head down between two warm hands and gazed into her eyes, then kissed Barbara full on the lips. "Never mind, my dear," she said. "You couldn't help it." "If I could have a good cry, I know I should feel better," was Bab's plaintive rejoinder. "Richard, come here, please, and shake hands with Miss Thurston," commanded Aunt Jane in a slightly peremptory tone. Mr. Presby did so, but with apparent reluctance. He had had one experience with the brown-haired girl from Kingsbridge. "My dears, we want you to come to Treasureholme with us. We cannot spare Olive, so you will have to come to us," smiled Mrs. Presby. "We want you to come out for Christmas," interjected Mr. Presby rather grudgingly, and as if he were reciting a line from memory. "Before Christmas," nodded Mrs. Presby. "You must come out this week. Sallie, you will come with them. We shall expect Robert also, though I suppose he will be running away to the city all the time." "I don't know whether Robert will wish to spare the girls or not. He likes to have them with him as much as possible," said Miss Sallie. "Treasureholme? What a beautiful name!" breathed Barbara. "And such a romantic name too," added Mollie soulfully. "I could love the place just on account of its name." "We call the place 'Treasureholme' because it is or has been supposed to hold a lost treasure. But we have given up that idea. We gave it up a long, long time ago. You will come, won't you, girls? This, in all probability, will be our last Christmas in the old home. We wish to make it a bright and joyous occasion," said Mrs. Presby, with a wan smile. "We have planned to have a Christmas tree. Cousin Robert, you and Sallie can have the gifts delivered at our place just as well as at your home here." "I shall have to leave it all to Robert," answered Miss Sallie. "Robert's business, as you know, is giving him no little concern these days. He may not care to leave it, and I am certain he would not consent to the girls going away at this time unless it were possible for him to spend at least part of the time with them." "Then I shall talk with Robert myself," announced Mrs. Presby firmly. She did so then and there. Rather, she went directly to Mr. Stuart's own particular sanctum, where Robert and Mr. Presby were then in consultation over business matters. Mr. Stuart did object to the girls going to Treasureholme to spend Christmas. But Mrs. Presby pleaded with him to let them come. She told him that before another Christmas came Treasureholme would be in other hands. She pleaded with Robert Stuart to let nothing stand in the way of helping them all to have a joyous holiday in the old home. Mr. Stuart finally gave a reluctant consent. Mrs. Presby hurried back to the library to acquaint the girls with his decision. A merry chatter followed. Everyone talked at once, each making suggestions as to what should be worn and how the Christmas holiday should be spent in the country. As for the "Automobile Girls" from Kingsbridge, the idea of going to the country appealed to them strongly. It would seem almost like being home again. It must be confessed that Bab and Mollie now and then suffered the pangs of homesickness, even though they found so little time for their own thoughts. It was finally decided that they were to leave for Treasureholme, a distance of more than thirty miles from the city, on the following Monday, three days hence. Mrs. Presby consented to Olive remaining with them until that time, and accompanying the girls to the country in Ruth's motor car. That arrangement stood. The guests declined an invitation to remain to dinner and as soon as the two men had finished their business talk, Mr. and Mrs. Presby took their leave. Two of the following three days were given up to a round of sight-seeing, paying and receiving calls on friends of the Stuarts, during which time the cylinders of Ruth's automobile scarcely had time to grow cold. Mr. A. Bubble was doing his full duty during these happy days. Sunday was a day of rest. All were ready for the rest, too. The Kingsbridge girls looked a little more pale than usual, but their eyes were bright and sparkling when Monday morning arrived. It was a clear, frosty morning, with a suggestion of snow in the air. Miss Sallie had risen early, in order to have plenty of time to make all arrangements for their trip. She saw to it also that the girls' wardrobes were properly selected for their stay in the country, and suggested that they have the chauffeur drive them out. "No, indeed," objected Ruth. "I am not wholly a fair-weather driver. I shall have my heavy gloves. Therefore, my hands will be warm and my feet will be so well occupied with working the brake and control that they won't have time to get cold. Girls, you won't have anything to do, so wrap yourselves up. Auntie, I'm going to get out some of father's heavy coats. He won't need them." "A jolly good idea," agreed Mollie. "Always provided that the master of the house doesn't object," she added, smiling at Mr. Stuart. "My dear, if you had lived in this house as long as I have, you would understand that it would make little difference if the master of the house did object," interjected Mr. Stuart. "Oh, dad," chided Ruth. "How can you say such a thing? You know I am your dutiful daughter." "You suit me," answered Mr. Stuart, giving the protesting Ruth a quick embrace and a kiss on the forehead. "Yes, take anything you can find in the house. But leave the house. I may need it before I get out of the woods." A shadow flitted across the face of Ruth Stuart. Then she smiled and kissed her father affectionately. A search for coats was made and a thousand and one details attended to. It was well into the afternoon before they were ready to start, Bab wrapped in Mr. Stuart's long fur coat, the other girls in cloth coats, with the exception of Ruth, who wore her own sealskin coat that reached down to her ankles. A fur cap, silk lined and a pair of fur gloves that looked, Barbara said, like the feet of a bear, completed the outfit. Mr. A. Bubble was grumbling when the girls emerged from the house. Their bags had been strapped on behind. Inside the automobile there were four foot warmers. Bab and Ruth spurned theirs. With many urgings on the part of Mr. Stuart and Aunt Sallie to be careful, Ruth threw in the clutch, advanced the spark and Mr. A. Bubble wheeled himself slowly away from the house, out into the avenue, then launched into a burst of speed that set at defiance all the regulations of the Windy City. This was to be an eventful visit. It was to be one full of excitement and adventure, a visit that none of the girls ever would be likely to forget. They rapidly rolled through the city and in a little while were out in the country, where the land flattened down into a rolling prairie, broken here and there by groups of slender trees and farm buildings. The snow began to sweep past them in flurries shortly after they cleared the city limits. Ruth stopped the automobile and called upon the girls to assist her in putting on the storm curtains. When they had finished the car was entirely enclosed, a heavy curtain taking the place of the wind shield which the driver had turned down at its middle. "Isn't this comfy?" chirped Mollie. It did not prove so "comfy" after all, the way Ruth accelerated the speed, sending the car careening ahead at a high rate. "Olive," said Bab, mustering courage to introduce a subject that was near to her heart. "Yes, dear." "Would you--would you think me too personal if I asked you to tell us the story of the buried treasure of Treasureholme?" she asked hesitatingly. "Not at all." "Oh, do tell us," urged Mollie and Grace in one voice. "I've been just dying to hear about it ever since I first learned there was such a place as Treasureholme. Are there real ghosts there?" questioned Mollie. "No; no ghosts. But there are memories. Listen, girls, and I will tell you all I know about it," said Olive, settling herself to relate the tale that was to prove of such fascinating interest to the "Automobile Girls." CHAPTER VI THE WRECK OF MR. A. BUBBLE "BURIED treasures are such ravishing mysteries," observed Mollie, while Olive was mentally arranging her facts. "I never thought I should actually be face to face with one." "I am sure it must be a grand old place," volunteered Barbara. "In reality, it is very big and bare," smiled Olive. "But I love every foot of the old place where I have lived all my life except when I have been away to school and where my ancestors have lived for oh, ever so many years." Olive's eyes filled with tears. Barbara stole a groping hand under the robe and clasped one of Olive's. The latter pulled herself sharply together. She gave Bab a grateful look. The sympathy in that gentle hand clasp had meant more than words to her. Perhaps in that one brief moment the two girls came to understand each other better than in all the days that had passed since their first meeting at the opera. "You know we fully expect to be obliged to give up the place at an early day. Father's business affairs have been going from bad to worse, until now there seems to be no hope of our keeping Treasureholme." "Perhaps it may not be so bad as you imagine," suggested Bab softly. "'Never give up until you have to.' That is my motto." "You wouldn't be the Barbara I have heard so much about if it weren't. But to come to the story. Treasureholme has been in our family, as I have already said, for many generations. My ancestor who founded the old place was one of the pioneers here. He was rich when he came here, but he foresaw a great future for what is now Chicago, so he brought his family and all his worldly goods here. He said confidently that a great city was certain to spring up here some day. You see how true was his prophecy. It was almost uncanny as I look at it now." The girls nodded, but said nothing. "Gracious! Did you see that?" called Ruth, with a trace of excitement in her tone. "No, no. What is it?" cried the girls. "Oh, nothing, only I ran down a cow," answered the fair driver, trying to speak carelessly. "Ran down a cow!" exclaimed Bab, peering through the curtain windows. "You needn't look for her. She is a mile or more back now. I didn't run over her. She appeared so suddenly out of the snow cloud that I didn't see her until the car was almost on top of her. I must have hit her only a glancing blow, for I barely felt the jar. I hope I didn't hurt the poor thing." "So long as we keep on four wheels, please don't interrupt us," begged Miss Presby severely, whereat there was a series of giggles from the girls. "Where was I, girls?" "Still at Chicago," replied Mollie. "You were speaking of your ancestor's prophecy." "Oh, yes. At the time they were living in the garrison, at the first fort ever built on the Chicago River. You know the Indians were pretty thick hereabouts at that period." "Indians!" murmured Grace apprehensively. "Yes. After a time our ancestors built Treasureholme. That is why it is so old-fashioned now, though many changes necessarily have been made in the house since then, but the main part is practically as it was built by my pioneer ancestor. The boards that were used were laboriously sawed out and the timbers hewn by hand. It must have taken years to build the place. Outwardly it now has a more modern appearance, each succeeding ancestor adding and improving. But for a long time after it was built there were Indians and bad men hereabouts. This perhaps accounts for the secret passages and numerous hiding places in the old house." "Glorious," said Mollie, her eyes dancing. "One day a message came that the Indians were no longer friendly. My ancestor was warned to hide his valuables and hasten to the fort with his family for the safety afforded there. It is believed that the treasure was buried at that time." "Money?" asked Barbara. "Gold and plate and jewels that had been brought from the old country when the family first came to the new world from England. But, alas, the garrison was wiped out by the Indians, leaving not a living person who knew the location of the treasure. Later on other members of the family came here from the east and took possession. The Presbys have been living on the estate ever since." "Has no attempt been made to find the treasure?" questioned Barbara. "So many attempts that I couldn't count them. Someone always is nosing about the place for clues. Father has spent a great deal of money in looking for it himself, but I think he has about given up hope of ever finding it. It is my idea that some of the other early members of the family found the hidden treasure, but said nothing about it." Silence reigned in the automobile for some moments. "Do you know," said Barbara, breaking the silence, "I think this is an excellent opportunity for the 'Automobile Girls' to distinguish themselves further?" Olive shook her head smilingly. "It would be effort wasted. Besides, we shall manage to keep your time so fully occupied that you will have no opportunity to search for buried treasure." "What about those secret passages that you spoke of?" asked Grace. "You shall see them and explore them to your hearts' content. Tom will show them to you. What Tom doesn't know about the old place, no one else does. And he knows a lot more about it than any of the rest of the family. I suspect that he has been making investigations on his own hook. He, like the boy he is, still has hopes of discovering the buried treasure." "Is the gate open?" called Ruth over her shoulder. "Yes. It hasn't been closed this fall." "Then I'll drive in in style and make one of my flying stops," answered Ruth. "We'll make them think a train has left the C., B. & Q. track and is going to smash the house down. I think they will be surprised. I'll open up the exhaust just as we get to the house, make a flying stop and the noise will wake up Olive's scalped ancestors." "Be careful that you don't hit the house in reality," laughed Olive. "Remember it is old. It might tumble down. I don't care so much about the house, but I shouldn't like to see it tumble down on father and mother." "Oh, it will not be quite as bad as that. We shall simply be making a big noise." "I was only joking," replied Olive. "You don't think I thought for a minute you would run into the house, do you?" "That is exactly what I am going to do." "Ruth Stuart!" exclaimed Bab sternly. "After I have stopped the car," finished Ruth, with a merry laugh. "But look here, young ladies, if you keep on talking to me and making me laugh, I am likely to pile you all in the ditch right here." "Can you see the road?" "Yes. Between snow flurries. I can't miss the road. The turn into the grounds is enclosed in stone fences, isn't it?" "Yes." "I'll pick it up all right. You girls look out when I give the word. I am going to make the turn wide and at full speed. Hold fast!" she cried, giving the steering wheel a sharp turn. For one giddy moment Mr. A. Bubble appeared to be uncertain whether to turn turtle or go on the way he was headed. He decided upon the latter course, and settling down on all four wheels shot straight ahead. The light was uncertain, but Ruth's eyes were on the road, all her attention centred on her work. Suddenly she uttered a sharp little cry. The emergency brake went on with a shock. Then came a mighty crash. To the girls in the car in their brief instant of consciousness, it seemed as if the universe were going to pieces. CHAPTER VII THE MYSTERY OF THE IRON GATES INSTEAD of running into the Presby home, as she had laughingly threatened to do, Ruth Stuart had dashed at almost full speed into the closed heavy iron gates at the entrance to the Treasureholme grounds. These gates were supposed to be open. As Olive had said, they had not been closed in some months. Why should they be closed now when the "Automobile Girls" car was looked for to arrive at any moment? None of the girls was thinking of this at the moment. None was in condition to think at all. Ruth had discovered the obstruction in time to throw on the emergency brake, but not quickly enough to stop the headway of the automobile. The car crashed against the gates with great force. The heavy iron bars of the gates buckled under the impact, then with a great creaking and rattling the hinges gave way, the old brick columns to which the hinges had been attached crumbled and fell in a cloud of dust and mortar. Accompanying the crash was the sound of breaking glass. But not a cry had been raised from the interior of the car, save Ruth's warning. That cry of warning had set Barbara instantly on the defensive. She threw both arms about Mollie and Olive. Grace was on the front seat with Ruth. Bab braced her feet with a mighty effort. Then the crash came. It seemed to Barbara Thurston as though her arms were being torn from their sockets. Then the three girls on the rear seat were jerked to their feet. They toppled over the back of the seat ahead of them, plunging head first into the forward part of the car, where the operating mechanism was located. Ruth and Grace had been hurled against the storm curtain, securely fastened down between themselves and the glass wind shield. Fortunately for them, the curtain held for a few seconds until the shower of glass from the shield had fallen into the roadway, then the curtain gave way and the two girls tumbled out in the wake of the glass. The automobile, after the first impact, had recoiled several feet. It essayed to plunge forward again, but the emergency brake held it motionless while the motors began to race, making a noise that was heard in the house, which stood at some distance from the fallen gates. The "Automobile Girls" lay where they had fallen, Ruth and Grace in the roadway, Bab, Mollie and Olive in the forward end of the car. "There they come," cried Mrs. Presby. "Why, what a frightful noise," she exclaimed, starting for the door, followed by Mr. Presby, with a painful limp. Tommy's face turned white when he heard the crash. With a bound he passed his father and mother, tore down the steps and off down the drive. "Something has happened, Richard," cried Mrs. Presby. "Something will happen to my gout, too, if I have to remain out in this chill atmosphere," declared Mr. Presby irritably. "Hurry, hurry!" wailed the distant voice of Tommy. "Oh, what is it?" cried Mrs. Presby, picking up her skirts and running down the drive. "They're killed! They're killed!" howled Tommy. "They've smashed into the gates. Everything's done. Finished!" "Run, Richard! Quick! Get help! An accident has occurred," begged Olive's mother. The woman was almost beside herself with terror. Tommy's face was ghastly. "Here's Ruth," he said, almost brusquely, lifting the girl by main strength and staggering toward the house. He bore the burden only a few feet, however, then hastily deposited it on the ground. Ruth was senseless. A neighbor had witnessed the accident and with rare forethought telephoned for a doctor. By this time a general alarm had been sounded. The old fire bell on Treasureholme had been rung by Mr. Presby as the quickest method of summoning assistance. Neighbors came on the run. They were appalled when they first looked upon the wreck of the old gates. The wreck at first sight appeared to be much worse than it really was. The automobile motors were still racing, the exhaust emitting frequent explosions that sounded like the discharge of a Gatling gun. It was almost as though Mr. A. Bubble were summoning assistance on his own responsibility. No time was lost, however, in attending to the five girls. Ruth and Grace being nearest at hand, were quickly lifted by strong arms and borne to the house. The three girls still in the automobile were tenderly lifted out and also carried in. Each girl was placed in the room that had been set aside for her. The doctor was on hand almost by the time the girls had been placed on their beds. He made a hasty diagnosis of each case, announced that no bones had been broken and, assisted by Mrs. Presby, administered restoratives to the victims of the accident, who soon recovered consciousness. No one had thought to send word to Mr. Stuart. The household was too much upset to think of anything save the accident that had occurred. Grace and Ruth really had the front storm curtain to thank for saving their lives. Had they been hurled through the heavy glass wind shield they undoubtedly would have been killed instantly. Mollie and Olive no doubt were saved by Barbara Thurston's presence of mind. But Barbara by devoting her whole effort to saving her companions had been badly bruised and shaken. Someone in the meantime had shut off the motors and pushed the car out of the way. The wreckage of the gates was also cleared away at the direction of Mr. Presby, so that no one else should collide with it. The doctor remained at Treasureholme until nine o'clock in the evening. Before taking his departure, however, he gave strict orders that none of his patients were to be allowed to leave their beds until he called the next morning, and pronounced them able to rise and dress. Mrs. Presby broke down and cried after she learned that the girls were not seriously injured. Tom went out in the woodshed and wailed so loudly that he was heard in the rooms upstairs. Mr. Presby hobbled about irritably. He did not care to have those in the house know how much affected he really was. Early the next morning he sent for one of his men. The old gentleman was now in a fine temper. Owing to the excitement caused by the accident, and a particularly painful attack of the gout, he had passed a sleepless night and was therefore in a most unamiable frame of mind. "Who closed those gates?" roared Mr. Presby the instant the man appeared in the doorway of the dining room, where the master was hobbling back and forth. "I--I don't know, sir." "You closed them!" thundered Richard Presby. "I did not. They were open when I last saw them." "When was that?" "About an hour before the accident occurred, I think, sir." "If you didn't close them, who did? Answer me that." Of course the man could not answer that question. He made no answer at all, thinking thereby not to further irritate his employer. "I suppose the gates were closed by some of those rascally treasure hunters that are continually tearing over my premises, digging holes for the unwary to fall into and making general nuisances of themselves in every other way. Drive them off. Pepper them with shot if you can't get rid of them in any other way. I may not be here for long, but while I am here, I'm the master of Treasureholme. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir," answered the man humbly, his face reflecting no expression at all. Mr. Presby thumped back and forth with his cane for nearly an hour after that, despite the fact that every step he took sent excruciating pains through his gouty foot. Finally retiring to the library, he went to sleep in his Morris chair, with the troublesome foot propped up on a stool. Early in the forenoon Mrs. Presby communicated with Miss Sallie and Mr. Stuart, telling them as much of the details of the accident as was known. Ten minutes later Robert Stuart and Miss Sallie were on their way to Treasureholme as fast as an automobile could carry them. The girls were asleep when they arrived. The doctor, who had arrived in the meantime, would not permit his patients to be disturbed. He assured Mr. Stuart, however, that the girls had providentially escaped with a few slight scratches and bruises and that they would all be up before the end of the day. But the mystery of the closed gates was disturbing the entire household. It was inexplicable. Mr. Presby declared that it was the work either of his enemies or of some treasure-seeker who thought he was doing the owner a service by closing his gates for him. Late that afternoon the five girls appeared in the dining room little the worse for their shaking up, although Barbara was far more lame and sore than she would admit. A general season of rejoicing ensued, and several neighbors dropped in to congratulate the girls on their miraculous escape from serious injury. On seeing her father, Ruth's first question was, "What happened to A. Bubble?" Mr. Stuart did not know. He promised to find out, which he did an hour or so later. Mr. A. Bubble, he told her, would be sent to a shop for repairs the next day, as he intended going back to Chicago that night and would attend to it. The radiator had been badly bent, the forward axle had buckled, guards were smashed, the hood was damaged, in short, Mr. Bubble presented a most disreputable appearance. Mr. Stuart told Ruth she was in a certain degree responsible for the accident, still she had no thought that the gates would be closed. "I'll know enough after this to keep my car under control. I won't try to knock over any more houses and things," Ruth retorted. By the afternoon of their second day at Treasureholme the "Automobile Girls" had practically gotten over the effects of their accident and were cosily established in Olive's room consuming hot chocolate and cakes while Olive, at their urgent request, again recounted the story of the buried treasure. Now that they were face to face with the great mystery, they were alive with curiosity. They were burning to see with their own eyes the place that held so much of mystery and perhaps a fortune that was probably being trodden over by human feet every hour of the day. CHAPTER VIII EXPLORING THE SECRET PASSAGE "I CERTAINLY do adore this room!" exclaimed Mollie Thurston, with glowing eyes. The "Automobile Girls" and Olive were sitting in the dining room of old Treasureholme. It was a massive, but cheerful room, the ceiling studded with great beams. A fireplace constructed of boulders of varying shapes and sizes, large enough to take a six-foot log, occupied the greater part of one side of the room. Olive Presby had been telling her guests various anecdotes relating to Treasureholme and as usual the conversation had turned to the tale of the long-lost treasure. An old-fashioned bookcase, extending all the way across one end of the room, was filled with leather-bound books. Bab regarded them longingly. She made up her mind to browse among these old volumes at the first opportunity. "Help yourself any time you wish," smiled Olive, who had observed Bab's eager glances at the bookcase. Barbara blushed that her thoughts should have been read so easily. "Oh, I should love to!" she answered simply. Mollie cast an apprehensive glance about her. "Are you sure there are no ghosts in this old place?" she asked. "Of course not. What made you think of that?" laughed Ruth. "In all the stories I ever read about buried treasure there was sure to be a ghost to guard it," replied Mollie. "Perhaps Treasureholme has a ghost, too. At any rate, I feel spooky." "So do I," agreed Grace. "Did you hear that noise?" "It sounds to me like rats or mice," ventured Barbara. "Of course it is. I know the sound. I hope they don't come out while I am here." A hush fell over the little party of "Automobile Girls." A gentle scratching that seemed to come from the left side of the fireplace was audible to each of them. As they listened the sound seemed to magnify. A draft through the open door that led into the hallway smote Mollie in the back of the neck. She sprang up, uttering a little cry. "It's a ghost. I felt it blow on my neck," she cried. "Nonsense! I'll soon show you the ghost," offered Ruth, starting to her feet. "I know this old place pretty well. May I, Olive?" Olive nodded smilingly. Ruth stepped to the left side of the fireplace and, grasping a knob that had escaped the observation of the Kingsbridge girls, deliberately pulled out a panel that was in reality a door. The girls uttered exclamations of amazement. Then they saw something move in the dark recess the door had revealed. It was Tom, sitting in the hole in the wall, with his feet curled up under him. He was grinning sardonically. "Here's your ghost," announced Ruth, taking firm hold of the irrepressible Tom's collar and assisting him out into the room. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Thomas Presby, frightening young women in that fashion." "Yes, Tom, I am ashamed of you," rebuked Olive. But Tom was perfectly cheerful and unabashed. "A secret passage?" gasped Mollie. "It's a sort of underground passage, built to look like an old-fashioned Dutch oven," explained Olive. "Per--perhaps the treasure is buried there," suggested Bab scarcely above a whisper. Tom laughed derisively. Olive smiled tolerantly. "If it ever was hidden there, it was taken out long, long ago. That passage has been known for some generations, I believe," said Olive. "How ever did you get in there?" demanded Ruth, a sudden thought occurring to her. "Find out," grinned Tom. "There must be another entrance to it, isn't there, Olive?" "Not that I know of. Is there, Tom?" "Maybe and maybe not." "Oh, please tell us. Can't you see we are burning with curiosity?" begged Bab. "I'll show the place to any girl who's got the sand to go in there with me," answered Tom Presby. All the girls, except Barbara, drew back. She was regarding the boy questioningly. "Will you show me?" she asked. "You bet I will if you've got the nerve." "Don't trust him," warned the girls. "I am not afraid of one small boy, especially Tom," answered Bab, with a twinkle in her eyes. "But, Master Tom, if you try to play any tricks on me it will be a sorry day for you. You can't play tricks on the 'Automobile Girls' without getting into trouble, remember. Olive, may I go?" "Of course, if you wish," smiled Miss Presby. "I have been in there ever so many times, and"--with a blush--"I have dug and dug in there." The girls laughed merrily, all save Bab, who was thoughtful. The impression was strong with her that somehow this passage was connected directly or indirectly with the secret of the lost treasure. "Take a light with you. I won't go in in the dark," declared Barbara. Tom produced a candle and lighted it. Barbara crawled into the dark hole after him. The others crowded about, peering in wonderingly. "Close the door," commanded Tom. Barbara pretended to do so, but left a crack through which the light from the dining room filtered faintly. "Don't you girls dare to fasten the door," she called. "I should die of fright if I thought I was locked in this hole." "We'll come in by way of the front door," called back Tom, as he began burrowing into the hole. The place was inky black save for the faint light shed by the candle. "Don't be afraid. After we get out from under the house you will be able to stand up." "Oh! Is the passage so long as that?" gasped Bab. "I--I guess I don't want to go any further. I'll explore with you to-morrow." "It won't be any lighter in the daytime," reminded the boy. "It's always dark down here." He was getting further and further away from her. "Thomas Presby, you come right back here," commanded Barbara. "I won't go another step." "'Fraid cat!" jeered Thomas. "I'm not!" retorted Bab, starting forward. She knew she could easily find her way back again. She bumped her head against the roof of the passage several times. The place smelled stuffy and mouldy, though the girl realized that a faint current of air was passing through the tunnel. All at once she discovered that the passage had grown larger. She was able to stand up without difficulty. She then made a further discovery. Tom and his light had disappeared. "Tom! Oh, Tom!" cried Barbara. There was no answer. The silence was so deep that it made her ears ring. At first the girl was panic stricken, then she reasoned out her situation more calmly. She had only to retrace her steps to return to the dining room. Tom no doubt had eluded her and left the passage through an exit known only to himself. She would show him that she was as good as any boy. "I'll go straight back," declared Barbara. But somehow the "going back" was not accomplished with the ease that she had hoped for. The way seemed much longer than had been the case when she was on her way in. Bab was peering ahead of her, expecting every moment to catch sight of the light from the dining room. She would have called out to her companions, only she did not want them to know that she was in trouble or that she was afraid. Barbara had been in the low-ceilinged passage for some time when she came in contact with a solid wall. She gave a glad little exclamation, believing that she had reached the panel that led into the dining room. She had now but to rap and her companions would open the panel. The wind must have blown the panel shut. Barbara put out her hands and began groping for the panel. To her horror, there was no panel there. Her hands found nothing but earth. Some moments had elapsed when Barbara Thurston realized that she was in a predicament. "I am lost!" she groaned. "Oh, what shall I do?" The girl decided to call for assistance. There seemed to be no other way. She raised her voice and shouted, but, to her amazement, the shout was merely a feeble call that could not have been heard many feet away. The low walls deadened the sound of her voice. A little investigation convinced her that she had strayed into a short blind passage. Having made this discovery, she began creeping back, hugging the right-hand wall of the passage, believing that the main passage must begin on the right-hand side. In this she was correct. Barbara had proceeded but a short distance before she found the junction of the two passages. She had not observed this shorter passage when following Tom, and no doubt he had known that she would be almost sure to lose her way, just as she had done. But there was no Tom present on whom to vent her displeasure. Neither was Barbara yet out of the tunnel. For all she knew she might be in a wholly new passage. Before going ahead she sat down to think over her situation carefully. "No, I can't be mistaken. I must be right. But I ought to see the light from the dining room from this point. However, I will go on and trust to luck." Barbara started on at once, though she took no chance of losing herself. Every foot of the walls on either side was carefully groped over by her hands as she made her way. The earth felt cold and damp. To touch it made her shiver. But Barbara was plucky. She continued bravely on. "Oh, there's the light," she cried. "I'll call to let them know I am coming. No, I won't. I'll give them a scare. Lucky for me that I kept my head. I might have been lost in that short passage and never found again. How terrible. But an 'Automobile Girl' never gives up. I hear voices. The girls must be wondering what has become of me. I think I hear Tom in the dining room. I wonder what I had better do to punish him for the trick he played on me? I shall have to think it over. I---- "Gracious! What would I do if the girls should happen to have company in the old dining room? I shouldn't dare to come out, for I know I must look a fright." Bab soon reached the panel, which was still as she had left it upon entering the passage. Then as she craned her neck forward and peered into the dining room she uttered a smothered exclamation. Mr. and Mrs. Presby were sitting facing the fire, talking. The girl in the passage drew back as she saw Mr. Presby's eye fixed upon the panel. He appeared to be looking straight at her. A moment more and she was convinced that he was not. Bab was in a quandary. She dared not show herself. What would they think of her, their daughter's guest, were she to be seen crawling from a hole in the wall? Her first meeting with Mr. Presby had been unfortunate enough. He surely would not forgive her for this exploit. Then the humor of the situation dawned upon her. Bab stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth so that they might not hear her giggles. All at once she ceased laughing and sat up very straight. "Nathan Bonner called on me at my office to-day. It was of that that I wished to speak with you, and that is why I asked the girls to leave the room." Mr. Presby was speaking. "Did he wish to help you?" "He intimated something of the sort. What he did want was permission to call on Olive." "Oh!" The exclamation escaped Mrs. Presby unwittingly. "And you told him----?" "No. Not with my permission. Bonner is a very rich man, Jane--and an unscrupulous one I am informed. I know little more about him, except that he has come to be an important figure on the Board of Trade. His rise has been phenomenal. I don't care for the man, however. I do not consider him the sort of man that Olive would like." "You wish me to speak with her upon the subject?" asked Aunt Jane. "No!" The word came out with explosive force. "The incident is closed. I am not so base as to consider for a moment the idea of my daughter making a rich alliance some day for the sake of retrieving our financial affairs. I am simply confiding the facts to you, that you may be governed accordingly." Jane Presby rose, and, going over to her husband, kissed him tenderly on the forehead. "You are a noble man, Richard." "Has it taken you all these years to find that out?" retorted Mr. Presby testily. "I have always known it," answered Mrs. Presby simply. "What do you know about this Jack Howard's attentions to Olive?" he demanded sharply. "They are childhood friends. Olive is still our baby, Richard. She has no thought of leaving us, I am sure. At least not in a long, long time." Barbara, realizing that she was listening to a family conference, had suddenly shrunk back further into the corridor. She still could hear their voices. She retired further into the passage. Now their voices reached her ears in a confused murmur. The girl crouched down, waiting. The words of Mr. Presby had not made a very great impression on her, except that he had objected to one Nathan Bonner calling on his daughter. Who Nathan Bonner was Bab did not know. Words, clear and distinct, spoken by Richard Presby, now reached Barbara plainly. He was speaking of another matter, one that was near to the heart of the "Automobile Girl" crouching there in the secret passage of the old mansion. Barbara's face blanched as she heard and understood what Mr. Presby was saying. She was powerless to shut her ears to the words. Mr. Presby's further remarks were brief. He rose and stamped from the room, followed a few seconds later by his wife. Barbara crept forward to the panel, peered out cautiously to make sure that there was no one there, then, throwing wide the panel, stepped into the dining room, and, gathering her skirts about her, fled to her room on the next floor. She could hear the girls laughing and talking in Olive Presby's room. Reaching her bedroom, Barbara Thurston threw herself on the bed, and sobbed as though her heart would break. CHAPTER IX IN AN INDIAN GRAVEYARD IT was Olive who found Bab there. She halted in the doorway, gazing in in amazement. "Why, Barbara Thurston! What can be the matter with you?" cried Olive. "We thought you were exploring the secret passages under the old house, and here you are crying all by your lonely little self. Where is Tom?" demanded Miss Presby, with growing suspicion in her eyes. "I--I don't know," confessed Barbara weakly. "See here, Bab, did Tom play any tricks on you?" "Nothing of any account. He went out by some other exit. I returned the way I came. I am going back there to-morrow, if you do not object. I must solve the mystery of that secret passage." "You are a dear!" exclaimed Olive, kissing Bab affectionately. At this juncture Ruth Stuart came in, having heard Bab's voice as she was passing through the hall. "Bab! When did you get back?" exclaimed Ruth. "Oh, I beg your pardon," she added, laughingly, as she discovered Olive and Bab engaged in serious conversation. "I see I am intruding." "Come in, Ruth," answered Olive. "I found Bab crying here. I think Tom must have played pranks on her. Wait until I get my hands on the young man. You say you haven't seen him since you left the passage, Barbara?" Bab shook her head. "I shall find him at once," announced Olive, rising and starting for the door. "Please, please don't scold him," begged Bab. "Really, it isn't that that is the matter with me." But Olive insisted and went on her way in search of the irrepressible Tommy. Ruth stepped over and sat on the edge of the bed, gazing down at Barbara. "Now, tell me all about it," urged Ruth gently. "There--there isn't anything to tell," murmured Bab. "I know what the trouble is. You are homesick," declared Ruth Stuart. "To-morrow we have planned to give you an interesting day. We are going to explore the old place and I am going to take you to the Indian Cemetery. Quite likely some of the same gentlemen who scalped Olive's ancestors are buried out there. Bab, do you love me just the same as you used to?" asked the girl, bending a questioning gaze on Barbara's tear-stained face. "You ought not to ask me that question, dear," answered Bab. "You know I do. It seems to me that I have known you for ever and ever so many years. Perhaps our friendship began in some other life. Sometimes I think it must have. But you haven't acted quite the same of late. It has seemed to me that you didn't love me as dearly as you used to and the thought has hurt me, oh, so much, Ruth." "Why, Bab Thurston, how can you say so?" exclaimed Ruth. "I love you better than any other girl I've ever known. You ought to know that. The truth of the matter is that I am worried, dear. I have not been quite myself of late. I'm worried about father. Was--was it that that made you cry, dear?" "Not exactly. I was crying because--because I felt sorry for you and--and for----" "For whom?" Barbara shook her head and closed her lips firmly. "I shan't say another word. Please don't ask me. I want to think. If you don't mind, I am going to bed. Must I go downstairs first?" "No, child. You tumble right in. I will tell the folks you are not feeling quite well. I want to speak to Olive before I go to bed, anyway." "Tell them that I am going to bed, please." "Yes." "Please also say good night to Mr. and Mrs. Presby for me, won't you?" Ruth said she would do so, and hurried from the room. She stopped in Olive's room to tell the other "Automobile Girls" not to disturb Bab, who had gone to bed feeling a little indisposed. On the following morning matters appeared to have adjusted themselves to the satisfaction of all, for the girls were in their brightest mood. Bab now and then grew sober and thoughtful, but strove to throw off the feeling of depression that persisted in taking possession of her. "I have a note from father," announced Ruth. "He says Mr. A. Bubble has entirely recovered. There were some broken bones, but these have been mended. Bubble is to be returned to us to-day, and then we will have a jolly ride." "I sincerely trust there will be no gates in the way this time," observed Mrs. Presby, smilingly. "Never fear. I have had my lesson," answered Ruth, flushing a little. "I never thought it would be possible for me to get into so much trouble with a motor car. Shall we show the girls the Indian burying ground this morning?" "You take them, Ruth, if you will, please," answered Olive. "I must help mother with some family matters. You know more about the old cemetery than I do." They started out shortly after breakfast, full of keen anticipation. Just outside the house Tom joined them. He had with him Olive's big setter dog, "General." Bab pinched Tommy's ear playfully. "You were a naughty boy last night," she said. "But you didn't find out where I got out, just the same," jeered Tom. "No, but I am going to." "I'll bet you don't." "I shall. See if I don't. By the way, Tom, have they found out yet who closed those gates the night we ran into them?" asked Barbara carelessly. She and Tom had fallen behind the others. "No-o-o-o," answered the boy, giving her a quick glance. Bab's face told him nothing. "I suppose you haven't the slightest idea who could have done that?" "How should I know anything about it?" "I thought perhaps you might have done it; you are such a very smart young man," observed Barbara soberly. "Couldn't you even guess?" "No. Could you?" "I don't have to guess." Tommy regarded her shrewdly. "What do you mean?" "I don't have to guess because I _know_. You closed those gates, Tom Presby. You thought it would be a good joke to fool Olive and Ruth and the rest of us. I'm not sure but that you thought you would be taking a proper revenge on poor me for sitting down on you that night at Stuarts' house. You came near causing the death of five girls with what you thought only a prank, young man," added Bab, in her most severe tone. "I should think you would be ashamed of yourself." Tommy's face grew very pale. Beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead. "Don't tell father. Don't, please don't. He'd skin me alive if he knew I did that. How'd you find out?" "You told me," answered Bab, now with a merry twinkle in her eyes. "I guessed it first, then you admitted it just now." "That was a mean trick. Nobody but a girl would take such a mean advantage of a fellow." "Nobody but a mischievous boy would intentionally cause an automobile smash-up and endanger the lives of five girls, including his sister," rebuked Barbara. "What do you think I ought to do with you?" "You aren't going to tell the governor? Oh, don't say you are. I'll do anything for you! Say, I like you better than all the rest, Bab. Honest and true I do. I'll show you how I got out of the hole last night if you won't give it away. I'll show you everything I know about the old place. You aren't going to squeal on a fellow, are you?" "No, Tom, I'm not," answered Bab, laughing heartily. "Nor am I going to ask you to show me the exit from the secret passage. If I can't find it out for myself, I don't want to know." Tommy regarded her admiringly. "Say, you're a good sport, aren't you? I'll show you anyhow, for that." About this time the setter dog, General, attracted the attention of the girls by diving into a hole in the base of a great tree that stood some little distance from the house. Nothing but his tail was visible. Tom soon had a firm grip on this and was hauling the angry General out to the accompaniment of merry shouts from the girls. Ruth explained that this tree was an old landmark. It had been there ever since the oldest inhabitant could remember. It was known as "Old Sentinel," having stood sentinel over Treasureholme for at least a hundred years. "What is in that hole?" demanded Bab. "General's buried treasure," answered Tom carelessly. "He hides his beef bones there." Now they moved on together, making an attractive picture as they walked. Grace and Ruth were the only ones of the party who wore furs. Mollie wore her heavy dark-blue traveling coat, with a gentian-blue scarf tied about her throat. Bab, with a scarlet wing perched at a jaunty angle in her brown cloth hat, reminded one of a robin redbreast. "You don't think you will catch cold?" asked Ruth solicitiously. Bab assured her that they would not, to which Ruth made no reply, though she hugged a dark Christmas secret closer to her heart and chuckled inwardly. "There is the old burying ground," she announced finally, pointing to a succession of hillocks a short distance ahead of them. These were of a mushroom shape, with the tops sloping gently to the ground. The girls thought them the most curious-looking graves they ever had seen. They observed a very large mound in the centre. Ruth explained that this was supposed to be the grave of an Indian chief. "If that is true, his weapons and his faithful dog are buried beside him," continued Ruth. "These graves, I believe, are very old. No one appears to know just how old they are. Do you wish to see the rest of them?" The girls did. Mollie suggested that perhaps if they remained there long enough they might possibly meet the ghost of the old chief. "What would you do if we should?" questioned Ruth whimsically. "I'd run," answered Mollie promptly. "I rather think the rest of us would not be slow in following you," agreed Ruth. "I should think the Presbys would feel spooky all the time with so many queer things about them," observed Grace. "There's mystery all over the old house, and there are goodness knows how many dead Indians and things on the outside." "Only girls are afraid," spoke up Tommy. "Only girls?" questioned Bab, with a significant glance at the boy. Tommy subsided instantly. Then all of a sudden General stiffened his tail, uttered a low, menacing growl and stood pointing his nose in the direction of a mound that reached higher than any of the others. "What is it, General?" asked Ruth, gazing in the direction of the point. "He smells somebody," volunteered Tommy. "Don't be afraid. I'm here," he added, swelling out his chest. "It's a man!" cried Mollie. "He's there hiding behind that mound. I saw him peer over the top just now. Oh, let's run. Hurry, girls!" Tommy cast a withering look at Mollie and, whistling to the dog to follow him, trudged toward the mound in question. Bab promptly followed him, with Ruth not far behind her. CHAPTER X MEETING A TREASURE HUNTER GENERAL made a leap over the high mound. There came a growl, then a sharp bark. "Down, General!" commanded a manly voice. A young man wearing rough clothes and a broad-brimmed soft hat, from under which looked out a pleasant face, appeared, facing the girls. "I beg your pardon," he said. "I thought perhaps you might not see me. You are from the house yonder. I know Miss Stuart by sight and the General and myself are old friends." The young man stuffed some papers into his pockets. As yet none of the party had spoken. "Hello, Bob. Is that you?" greeted Tommy. "Yes. You caught me this time." "You bet I did!" "Won't you introduce me to your friends, so I may apologize to them for my peculiar actions?" "Oh, they're only girls," answered Tom airily. "What are you doing here?" "I am Robert Stevens, young ladies. I live near by. The Presbys are friends of mine." The girls were beginning to feel more at ease. He was not a desperate character, after all. Their adventure had ended in nothing more than meeting a friendly neighbor. Ruth stepped forward at this juncture. "I am on a treasure hunt," said Stevens, smiling sheepishly. The girls were on the alert on the instant. "Treasure hunting!" exclaimed Barbara. "Where are your pick and shovel?" "Oh, I haven't gotten that far yet," laughed Bob. The girls decided that they liked Mr. Bob Stevens, and what was more, they were keenly interested in his statement that he was hunting for the lost treasure. "I may as well be frank with you," he said, flushing. "Ever since I was Tommy's age I have hoped to find some day the fabled pot of gold, or whatever the treasure may be. My grandfather before he died gave me maps and diagrams that he had made. He was as mad on the subject of the buried treasure as the rest of us," explained Stevens. "It was his idea that it would be found not far from the lake. He thought the Presbys had naturally planned to return by water for the treasure in case they had to flee from the fort. I have worked the ground near the lake thoroughly. Now I am trying this strip of woods, working out from these Indian mounds." "Is the trail hot or cold?" questioned Bab. "Very cold. Almost colder than the atmosphere to-day. Still, I have hopes." "If you were to find the treasure what would you do with it?" demanded Ruth severely. "Do with it? Why, I should turn it over to its rightful owner," answered Stevens. "It's the sport of the search that interests me. You did not think I would keep what doesn't belong to me, did you?" The girls murmured their apologies. "Please tell Mr. Presby that you found me here. Perhaps I had better go back with you. May I?" "Come along, Bob. Father will be glad to see you," said Tom, answering for them. The girls offered no objections, so the young man accompanied them, walking beside Tommy and General. "You young ladies might be interested in looking over those old maps and diagrams," suggested their new acquaintance. "Indeed we would," agreed Barbara enthusiastically. "Another thing I'd like to say, if you will permit me. Were I in your place, I wouldn't go into the woods back there alone. There are people hanging about this estate who are little better than tramps." "What do you mean?" asked Grace. "The news has been circulated that the Presbys are going to lose the old place. There are a choice lot of gentlemen nosing about here hoping to get a clue to the treasure before another owner takes charge. I heard yesterday that some fellow from the city is planning to put men to work here systematically. I don't know how true it is." "They wouldn't dare to dig for treasure on another man's property," retorted Ruth indignantly. "They wouldn't have to dig until they had located the treasure. Then they might dig it up in the night and be off before anyone else was the wiser." "I don't believe there is any danger in our going where we please about these grounds. I have been here a good many times, Mr. Stevens, and you are the first stranger I have ever met on the grounds," declared Ruth. "There are two men back there in the woods now," answered Bob carelessly. The girls stopped short and stood gazing at the forest that lay beyond the Indian burying ground. "Are you sure of that?" Stevens nodded. "I saw them," he replied, "watching you all the time you were coming toward the mounds. I was watching them, though they didn't know that." "Why don't you speak to Mr. Presby and have him put them off the premises?" demanded Barbara. "It wouldn't do any good. The fellows would take good care to keep off the place while a search was being made for them. There's Miss Olive waiting for you." "Oh, how do you do, Mr. Stevens? I am glad you are with the girls," said Olive. "Father was disturbed when he found they had gone over to the Indian mounds alone. He said it wasn't safe to do that. Have you met my friends, Mr. Stevens?" "In a somewhat unceremonious fashion," laughed Stevens. "Father wants to see you. I'll venture that I can guess how you chanced to meet the girls," smiled Olive. "Now confess that you were treasure hunting." "I confess. Where may I find your father?" "In the library. Go right in." Bob Stevens promised the girls that he would show them his diagrams after he had finished his conference with Mr. Presby. Then, raising his hat to them, he set off toward the house. Mr. and Mrs. Presby were fond of Robert Stevens. He was of good family, and well educated for a country boy. His people were comfortably situated and Robert's ambition was to help his friends, the Presbys, find the treasure that he never had doubted was hidden somewhere on the estate. But the girls did not see him again that day. Ruth's motor car had arrived by the time they reached the house. The girls ate a hurried luncheon and set off for a long ride before the two men had finished their conference. It was almost dinner time when they returned with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes, greatly invigorated after their drive. A. Bubble had behaved himself splendidly. Ruth said he worked much better than before the accident. Bab suggested that it might be an excellent idea to have him collide with a pair of stout iron gates at regular intervals. Bob Stevens had left his maps and diagrams for the girls to look over, which they did after dinner. They were unable to make anything out of the lines and figures of the treasure hunter. Mollie declared that the man who made them must surely have been insane. For an hour after dinner the Presbys and their guests chatted in what was called the drawing room, a long, low, barn-like apartment, almost rustic in its fittings and furnishings. The dining room being cleared, Olive called the girls there. They found the room in darkness save for the light shed by the fire in the fireplace and five candles arranged on the sideboard. "One for each girl present," explained Olive. "To light us to bed?" questioned Mollie. "No, indeed," smiled Olive. "Bedtime is still a long way off. We are going to have a feast by candle light." "I couldn't eat another mouthful after the dinner we had to-night. It would be a physical impossibility," declared Bab. "Don't make any rash assertions until you see what I have provided for you in the way of a feast," replied Olive, as she took a large, flat tin box from the lower compartment of the old-fashioned sideboard. "Ruth," she continued, "if you will draw the rugs up close to the fireplace we will lose no time in beginning the festivities." Ruth Stuart did so, arranging the rugs in a semi-circle. But the interest of the girls was centred on the tin box, not on the rugs, just at that time. Then Olive brought out five long, slender white sticks, which she distributed among the girls. "Aren't you going to open the box?" begged Grace anxiously. "Can't you see we are dying with curiosity to know what is inside?" "Bab, you may open the box." The cover was off almost before the words had left Olive's lips. "Marshmallows!" cried the girls in chorus. "Oh, isn't that simply glorious?" "And such a lot of them, too," added Grace Carter. "Five pounds," Olive informed them. "We are about to sit down to a marshmallow toast. Eat all you wish, but for goodness sake do not make yourselves sick." "She means you, Mollie," teased Ruth. "The coat doesn't fit me, however," retorted Mollie. "But I do love marshmallows. Do we toast them over the flames of the candles?" "No," replied Olive, as she placed the five-pound box of sweets on the rug between them and the fire. The girls sat down on the rug, with their feet curled under them. Each speared a marshmallow and thrust it close to the fire. Little blue flames rose from the white cubes and a tantalizing odor filled the air. "Oh, dear me. Mine's gone into the fire," cried Mollie in distress. "It just melted away." "So did mine," answered Barbara, "but it melted in my mouth." "How nice of you to think of this, Olive. Thank you ever so much," glowed Grace Carter. "This isn't my treat. My part is to carry out the little surprise. Mr. Stuart sent out the marshmallows to me, asking me to give you girls a toast. It is a real treat, isn't it?" "Glorious!" breathed the girls. "Did you children ever do fire-gazing?" asked Olive after a moment of silence as the girls helped themselves to the sweets. The "Automobile Girls" confessed their ignorance of the game. Olive explained that each girl was to gaze into the fire then describe what forms or figures appeared to grow out of the flames or coals. "I see a red automobile," cried Mollie, almost as soon as she had fixed her gaze on the fire. "And, oh, look at the man driving it! He is all in red, wears a pointed beard and has a cloven foot. Isn't he a frightful looking creature?" "Your imagination needs no encouragement," declared Olive. "Let us hope that the gentleman with the cloven foot may drive his car up the chimney flue and fly away. What do you see, Ruth?" "I see a fiery pit with a lot of imps dancing about, hurling balls of fire at each other." "Your turn, Barbara." Bab was gazing at the fire in wrapt attention. "I see a black chest, but I can't see what it holds, for the cover is down. There goes the cover! Oh, look, girls! See the gold and the sparkling jewels! See the golden coins glitter in the light of the fire! Oh, oh, oh!" "Money? Money? Where?" cried Mollie. "I want some of that money." The spell was broken in a merry laugh. Mollie laughed, too, then turned her gaze toward the window, for her eyes were smarting from the heat. Suddenly her face took on a frightened expression, the color fading from it. "Look! Oh, look!" she gasped, scarcely above a whisper. What they saw made the "Automobile Girls'" faces turn white with fear. CHAPTER XI GIVING AN ATTIC PARTY PEERING in at them was a hideous yellow face with a nose that in the light from the room seemed to be fiery red. The face was pressed against the window pane. Now a long-drawn, dismal groan sounded from the other side of the window. "It's a ghost!" cried Grace. Barbara, however, had seen more than the other girls, and, mustering up all her courage, ran to the door. "Come back!" called the girls anxiously. Bab kept on, unheeding their cries. As she jerked the outside door open, they heard a crash and the frightful face suddenly disappeared from the window. Ruth and Olive rushed to the door. Both girls remembered that an old rain barrel had stood under that window for a long time. "I've got the spook!" shouted Bab triumphantly. "I picked it out of the rain barrel." She came in, dragging by an ear the irrepressible Tom. "Thomas Warrington Presby, what does this mean?" demanded Olive sternly. "The--the rain barrel went to pieces," complained Tom. "Oh! Was it you who scared us out of our wits?" questioned Mollie. "I knew it was a false face almost the instant I saw it," said Barbara. "Thomas, I fear I shall have to turn you over to your father. You have evidently forgotten some things." Tom wriggled, his face worked anxiously. "Please don't. Maul me, do anything you want to punish me. I won't squeal, but don't peach to father." "Girls, what shall we do with him?" asked Bab. "I move we make him sit down on the rug and eat marshmallows," suggested Ruth. "The very idea," agreed Mollie. "But we want them ourselves," objected Grace. "I have another box," admitted Olive. "Your father sent two boxes, though I did not intend to tell you about the second one just yet." It was agreed that Tom's punishment should be a sweet one. Tom grinned broadly. "Those things are for girls. I can swallow a boxful without winking an eyelid," he declared. "Gimme the box." "No, Thomas, you aren't going to eat them that way. We are going to wait on you and help you to every mouthful," answered Barbara sweetly. "It isn't every boy who has five nice girls to wait on him when he eats. Is it, Tommy?" "No," answered the boy in a doubtful tone. He did not exactly like the look of things now. Barbara placed a firm hand on his arm and set him down on a rug in front of the fireplace. Tommy was closer to the fire than was comfortable, but there seemed to be no escape for him. The five girls speared as many marshmallows, toasted them and thrust them flaming at the boy. Tommy gulped down the first one with evident enjoyment. Four others went down easily. Tommy decided that marshmallows were pretty good stuff. He called for more, and got them. There was always a stick with a flaming cube on the end of it ready to be thrust into his mouth. Tommy rolled his eyes with satisfaction. "I could take punishment like this for a week at a stretch. More!" Still the girls fed him. Even Olive was gentle and considerate. Tommy did not recall ever having seen her more so. All the girls were very kind to him, but there was a mischievous twinkle in their eyes that Tommy was not astute enough to read. [Illustration: "I've Got the Spook," Shouted Bab Triumphantly.] After a time the marshmallows began to take on a bitter taste. He did not appear to be eating them with the same relish as before. "That stuff's no good for men," he jeered. "Have another, Tommy," answered Bab, thrusting a blue flame into the boy's face. "You needn't burn a fellow up," he rebuked, then swallowed the marshmallow with a gulp. "Here, Tommy, is a nice, large one," added Mollie. Tom's eyes were rolling. His face that had appeared very red when he first sat down before the fire, had grown several shades paler. The girls continued to feed him with marshmallows, forcing one after another upon him. "I won't take another----" Tom did not finish what he had started to say. Olive thrust a hot marshmallow into the boy's open mouth. Tommy closed his mouth instantly, but not soon enough. The hot sweet clung to the roof of his mouth, bringing from Tommy a yell of pain. "I'll be even with you girls for this," he howled, the tears starting from his eyes as he bounded for the kitchen for a drink of water. A shout of merry laughter followed him. Tommy felt very sick and staggered off to bed, where, half an hour later, his mother found him groaning. In response to Mrs. Presby's anxious inquiries, Tommy explained that he had an "awful stomachache." "He deserved it," declared Olive. "He will learn to let us girls alone, I hope. Nevertheless, we got even with him this time." "Yes, revenge is sweet," observed Bab, whereat the girls groaned dismally. * * * * * It had been decided that the "Automobile Girls" and Olive were to drive into Chicago on the following morning to bring Miss Sallie and Mr. Stuart also to Treasureholme, if he could be induced to return with them. Ruth felt too that Mr. A. Bubble had not been getting enough exercise of late. Her companions agreed with her. But the next morning dawned most disappointingly. A great gale was blowing in from Lake Michigan, accompanied by blinding flurries of snow. It was not a cheerful outlook. The day was dark and the wind bitter cold. Ruth was for starting out just the same, but a telephone call from Miss Sallie while the girls were at breakfast was to the effect that Mr. Stuart had absolutely forbidden their starting out in such a storm. "I am sorry, girls, but when dad puts it that way he means what he says. I speak from long experience," declared Ruth. "We shall have to wait until to-morrow." "This storm is likely to last for some days," announced Mr. Presby. Ruth made a wry face. "We will explore for the treasure if we have to stay in the house all the time," said Bab. "A day like this makes one feel mysterious." "And creepy," added Mollie. "Why, good morning, Tommy. How are you to-day?" she smiled, as Master Thomas Presby took his place at the breakfast table. Tommy grunted out some unintelligible reply. For some reason he was not in the best of humor that morning. In the meantime Olive was trying to think up some entertainment that would amuse the girls on a stormy day. "I have it," she cried. "How would you girls like an attic party?" They did not quite understand, never having heard of an attic party. "What do we do at an attic party?" asked Mollie. "Do we have luncheon in the attic?" "No. It is an entirely new idea with me. My idea is that we go to the attic and rummage. There are old chests and trunks up there, together with all sorts of odds and ends, as is usual with a family garret." The girls beamed on her. "That will be perfectly splendid," cried Mollie. "Remember, Bab, how we used to rummage in our garret on rainy days?" "It will be a great fun," answered Bab. "As we fear we may have to leave the old place," continued Olive, "we wish to overhaul everything up there, burning such stuff as we have no use for, saving anything that may be of use in the future. You girls can help me clear out the place." "Am I in on this game?" interrupted Tom. "Yes, if you will behave yourself," replied Olive, giving him a severe look. "I can carry out the stuff that you want burned," he suggested. Such willingness on the part of Tommy was unusual. Olive gave him a smile of approval. "You shall have some more marshmallows for that," declared Ruth. A pained look appeared on the boy's face. "I don't want any marshmallows," he growled. "No more girls' food for me." The "Automobile Girls" giggled. Mr. and Mrs. Presby paid no attention to this conversation. They were not in possession of the secret. The girls were eager for the attic party. There is always an element of mystery in an old family garret. This was especially so at Treasureholme. Everything about the old place savored of mystery. Then there was the buried treasure, which, even though it might be a myth, lent an atmosphere of greater mystery than all the rest. Little time was lost in getting to the garret, the girls first, however, putting on the oldest skirts they possessed. Olive explained that the place was full of dust and cobwebs. Tom hurried upstairs ahead of them. They followed a winding, narrow stairway to the upper floor. To their surprise, the ceiling was high, the side walls were heavily wainscoted, an unusual condition for a garret. A broad chimney passing up through the centre of the big room took the edge off the chill atmosphere of the morning, although they could hear the wind whistle and wail about the gables. There were shadowy corners holding old-fashioned trunks. Here and there were old family pictures in faded, chipped frames, old clothes, curtains, books, broken and old-fashioned furniture, in short, a varied and ancient collection of odds and ends that almost filled the place. "Oh, girls, isn't this jolly!" exclaimed Bab, halting at the head of the stairs, taking in the scene eagerly. "I know we shall have a perfectly splendid time up here, and who knows but that we may unearth some of your ancestors' family skeletons, Olive?" "Tom will dispose of them promptly if you find any," answered Olive. "I'll make their old bones rattle. You just watch me," announced Tom. "Now, girls, go ahead and browse to your heart's content. We are going to empty every trunk and chest and box in the place. We may find something exciting before we get through up here." Olive's prophecy was a true one. They were going to meet with exciting experiences in the old garret, even more exciting than any of them had dreamed possible. They began eagerly to turn out the contents of trunks and boxes upon the garret floor, first dragging the receptacles up where the light from one or another of the windows would shine down on their work. CHAPTER XII A CURIOUS OLD JOURNAL "OH, here's a bundle of letters, ever and ever so old!" called Grace. Hers was the first find of interest, "Wouldn't it be splendid if I had unearthed an old romance?" "Give them to Olive," suggested Bab. "We have no right to read them." Grace promptly handed the packet to Olive, who turned them over reflectively. "The writers of these have been dead for many, many years. There can be no harm in our reading the letters. However, let's defer that pleasure until another time. Here, Tom, you might carry out those old clothes. They are so moth-eaten that they are likely to fall apart before you can get them outside." Tom reluctantly gathered up an armful and went stamping down the garret stairs. Old clothes, trinkets, some of them of value, recipes for cooking, written on the fly leaves of books and on scraps of paper, a varied assortment of everything, including early photographs of forgotten persons, were discovered. Everything was assorted and placed in piles for future disposal. The girls' faces and hands were covered with dust long before they had gone through the contents of the first few trunks. Nothing of unusual interest had been discovered after something more than an hour's rummaging. Tom had made so many trips to the back yard with rubbish that he was tired. Finally he rebelled, declaring that he wouldn't tramp up and down those stairs again for the whole of Treasureholme. Ruth found a chest of books in very old bindings. She called Bab over. "Here, dear. You are simply crazy over old books. Here are some that will keep you busy for the rest of the morning." Bab ran over, and with a little chuckle of delight dropped down on her knees in front of the open chest. She lifted out the ancient bindings almost reverently, ran the pages through her fingers, pausing here and there to read a line or a page, or a faded notation in pencil, then carefully piled the books by the side of the chest. She was so wholly absorbed in the contents of the chest that she failed to hear the lively chatter going on about her. About half way down in the chest she found a thin, leather-covered volume, showing indications of long usage and much thumbing. On the front page she read, "Journal of T. W. P." "Olive, who was 'T. W. P.'?" "'T. W. P.'? Why that's Tom's initials. Wait! Did you find that in one of those old books?" Bab nodded. "Then it must refer to Thomas Warrington Presby. He is the gentleman who is supposed to have been scalped by the Indians, the man who buried the treasure that we have had all the fuss and excitement about. What is the book?" "It is his journal. His diary, I think we would call it. May I read it?" "Of course. I hope you may find something interesting in it." The reading of the diary was not easy. The ink was faded and the writing was so peculiar that Bab deciphered it with some difficulty. Bab curled up on a pile of old clothes under a window and buried her nose in the old diary. She found it fascinating to read the diary of the man who actually buried the treasure that had made the name of Treasureholme well known in all that part of the country. The entries in the diary dealt with the routine affairs of the life of the owner. Then there were other and more absorbing passages. One that made the girl's pulses quicken was the following: "Rumors of Indian troubles are afloat. Jake was wounded by an arrow to-day, shot from somewhere in the forest back of the house. But no Indians were seen. We shall soon have to seek safety in the fort, I fear. What to do with my worldly goods when we go is the question that is troubling me now." "Oh!" breathed Barbara. "Does it blow hot or cold?" questioned Olive. "It seems to be getting warm," replied Bab. "He is talking about the treasure." "What?" The girls were on their feet in an instant. Barbara read the entry to them. "Oh, fiddle!" sniffed Mollie. "That doesn't amount to anything. Don't arouse my curiosity again unless you have something worth while." Barbara considered that she had found something worth while, but she made no comment on Mollie's remark. Instead, the girl returned to her perusal of the old diary, reading each page carefully, not knowing when a word or a sentence might give a clue to the mystery all were seeking to solve. The girls went on with their rummaging and their lively chatter. Tom had gone to sleep on a heap of bed spreads that were yellow with age. The ghosts of the past did not trouble this healthy young country boy. Mollie crouched down beside him, gently tickling his ear with a feather that she had found in a trunk. Mollie nearly exploded with merriment to see Tommy fight an imaginary fly in his sleep. The other girls were soon attracted to the game, though Barbara was entirely oblivious of what was going on. The girls gathered noiselessly about Mollie and Tom, shaking with silent laughter, taking care not to awaken the sleeping boy. Tom's face twitched nervously. After a little one eye opened ever so little then closed warily. The girls did not observe the movement of the eyelid. Then all of a sudden things began to happen. Tom, with incredible quickness, leaped to his feet, and began laying about him with a folded bed spread. Mollie was the first to go down under the attack. The others tried to get away from that sturdily wielded spread, but were not quick enough, however. Tom did considerable execution with his unwieldly weapon before the girls finally threw themselves upon him. Then Tom went down and out. The girls dragged him to the stairway and started him sliding down the stairs, feet first. With faces flushed, eyes sparkling, brushing truant wisps of hair from their foreheads, the girls returned to their exploration of the old chests. First Olive closed and locked the door that opened onto the staircase. "There! I think we shall have peace now," she announced. Suddenly Barbara uttered a sharp little cry. "Girls! Girls! Come here! Oh, come here!" The girls with one accord rushed pell-mell across the garret. Excitement reigned for a few seconds. "I've found it! I've found it!" shouted Barbara. "Found the treasure?" cried a chorus of voices. "It's here, here!" she exclaimed, waving the little leather-bound journal above her head. "What have you found?" demanded Olive, showing less excitement than her companions. "This entry. It means something. I don't know just what, but I know it means something." "Read it, read it!" demanded the girls. "The item is a month later than the one I found in the journal in which they were afraid the Indians were going to make trouble. Listen to this. If you don't think I have found something you are not half so smart as I had thought." Barbara hitched a little closer to the window and with her back to the light read from the journal the following entry: "'To My Heirs: I am fleeing with my family, to the fort. The future looks dark. Should I not return, others of my family one day will come here and take possession, provided the savages do not destroy the old place, which is not probable, as the spirit of a long dead Indian chief is said to make his home here.'" "I knew all the time there were ghosts here," interrupted Mollie. "Wearing false faces," added Grace under her breath. "There are further directions. 'Search and you shall find. I cannot be more explicit save to say that what is here is well worth years of endeavor,'" Barbara read on. "'I have a feeling that I shall see the old place no more. Remember, that to every people its own dead are sacred and be governed accordingly.'" Barbara glanced slowly up at the solemn faces above her. "Is that all?" asked Olive. "Yes. That is the last entry in the journal, showing that the former Mr. Presby did not return, as you already have told us that he did not." "What do you make of it, dear?" questioned Olive thoughtfully. "It is a clue and a direction to the buried treasure. There can be no doubt of that." "Yes, but we don't understand it," spoke up Ruth. "I doubt if we ever shall." "It's my opinion that Mr. T. W. P. wasn't in his right mind when he wrote that," declared Mollie with emphasis. "I think the Indians must have gone to his head." "This is no joking matter, Mollie," rebuked Barbara. "Can't you be serious for once in your life? We must study this." "What do you say if I send for Mr. Stevens, girls?" cried Olive. "He has studied this mystery more thoroughly than anyone else and he will no doubt understand the veiled allusion to the treasure. Suppose we copy it so we can read it more easily. Wait! I'll get a pencil." Olive ran downstairs to her room, now not a little excited. "I've sent Tom after Bob Stevens," she called, as she burst into the attic on her return. "Now read it to me and I will put it down." "Perhaps I had better do that," answered Bab, reaching for the pencil. "I know the writing better than you do and I want to make the copy exactly like the original. There," she added, after having carefully copied the extract from the journal. Olive regarded it perplexedly, Grace, Mollie and Ruth bending over her shoulder as she read and reread the extract from the old Presby diary. "I must show this to father and mother," exclaimed Olive suddenly, as she whisked out of the room with Ruth, Mollie and Grace racing after her. Barbara, once more absorbed in the journal over which she was bending with wrinkled forehead, did not seem to realize that she had been left alone. "Oh, if it should be true! If it should lead us to the treasure! If we could save Treasureholme for the Presbys it would be glorious." Barbara got up and began pacing back and forth. She saw nothing of the dingy garret room. Her imagination was traveling at express-train speed. Bab stood leaning back against the heavy wainscoting, with her eyes fixed on the ceiling, thinking. "Oh, Barbara!" called Ruth's voice from the foot of the stairway. "Yes?" "Come down. Mercy! What was that?" A mighty crash shook the old house to its foundations. The shock seemed to come from above. Ruth sped up the stairs on winged feet. Those below stairs heard her utter a frightened scream. "Come! Oh, come quickly!" cried Ruth Stuart in a voice of terror. CHAPTER XIII THE MYSTERY OF THE ATTIC THE sound of running feet was heard on the floor below following Ruth's cry for help. Olive, Mollie and Grace had heard it from the foot of the stairs on the ground floor. Mr. and Mrs. Presby, sitting in the dining room, had also heard the cry and started for the stairs. Tom, who was down in the cellar, heard the girls running, and started up the stairs three steps at a time, instinctively realizing that something was wrong. His first thought was that the girls in the garret had set the house on fire. The three girls fairly tore up the stairs to the attic in response to Ruth's cry, getting in each other's way on the narrow stairs as they ran. Tom was close at their heels, while his father and mother followed more slowly. At first they could distinguish nothing but Ruth's figure dimly outlined in a haze of dust that filled the air. "Fire!" cried Grace. "No!" roared Tom. "It's dust. Somebody's been kicking up a fine smudge here. What's the matter? Have you folks gone crazy?" "Ruth! Ruth! What is it?" cried Olive. "It's Bab," moaned Ruth. "Bab?" cried the girls. For the first time since reaching the attic their thoughts turned to Barbara Thurston. But where was she? Nowhere in sight. Mr. Presby came limping into the room, followed by his wife very much out of breath. "Wha--wha--what is the cause of all this uproar?" demanded Mr. Presby testily. "It's Bab! It's Bab, I tell you," almost screamed Ruth. "Oh, what has happened?" "That's what we would like to know," retorted Mr. Presby. "Where is Bab?" demanded Tom, who had been nosing around the room like a terrier. "She--she's gone," moaned Ruth. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with fright. Tom rushed to the windows, which were tightly closed. "What fell?" he questioned sharply, halting in front of Ruth. "I--I don't know. I--I wasn't here. I was at the foot of the garret stairs when I heard that terrible crash." The dust, slowly settling, gave them a clearer view of the attic. Barbara Thurston was not in sight. "What has become of Bab? Why don't you look behind the chests?" demanded Mollie, gathering up her skirts, darting here and there, kicking aside the heaps of old clothing that had been turned out on the floor. Mollie paused with a dazed look in her eyes. "She's gone," whispered the girl. "Yes, she's gone, all right," answered Tom. "I know what she has done. She's played a trick on all of you. I know her. She is a sharp one. She'd catch you napping when you were looking right at her. She must have gone downstairs after you did, and----" "No, no," protested Ruth excitedly. "She never left this attic by the stairway." "Calm yourself, my dear," begged Mr. Presby in a somewhat more gentle voice, at the same time laying a hand on Ruth Stuart's shoulder. "Now let us understand this affair. You say Barbara was up here--she did not go downstairs with you?" "No, no!" exclaimed Mollie. "She was reading that old journal when we went down. We left her sitting right there. Don't you remember, you asked us to call Barbara downstairs? You wanted to see the diary of old Mr. Presby, and Ruth went upstairs to call her." "Yes, yes. Ruth, how do you know that Barbara was here when you called to her?" "Because she answered me," replied Ruth. "What next? Did her voice sound as if she were here in the attic?" "Yes. I know she was here." "Was that when you cried out?" "No. That awful crash came a few seconds after she had answered me. I ran up here as fast as my feet would carry me. At first the dust was so thick I was unable to make out anything clearly. I called to Bab but she did not answer me. I then ran about the room in search of her, thinking that she had fallen and hurt herself. But she wasn't here," wailed Ruth. "Oh, what shall I do?" "Calm yourself. That is the first thing to be done. There is something mysterious about this. I wish Bob Stevens were here." "I sent Tom for him. Did you see Mr. Stevens, Tom?" "No. I sent word by one of the hired hands," admitted Tom sheepishly. "I--I wanted to do some work in the cellar." "Then go at once," commanded Mr. Presby sternly. "Wait!" exclaimed Ruth. "I'll drive the car, storm or no storm. The cold air will help me to brace up. How far is it to Mr. Stevens' house?" "Mile and a half," answered Tom. "Come with me, Tommy. We will be there and back in twenty minutes. Do you know the way?" "Yes, he knows the way. He knows too much about everything in these parts," answered Mr. Presby testily. "I will telephone to Mr. Stuart." "Oh, don't, please. At least--not un--until I get back. Per--perhaps Mr. Stevens may find her." "He will, if anyone can," declared Olive. Everyone in the room was overwhelmed with the mystery of it all. That a person could disappear so completely from a room that had only one entrance and with that entrance guarded at the moment passed all comprehension. Once more Mollie set herself to examining every nook and corner of the room. She even raised the lids of the closed trunks and chests, thinking that possibly Barbara might have hidden in one of them. There was no trace whatever of the missing girl. "Has anyone found the diary?" questioned Olive. "Could it be that she fell through a trap in the floor?" queried Grace. "There are no traps in the floor," answered Mr. Presby sharply. "If there were, and Bab had fallen in, she would have dropped into one of our rooms," explained Olive. "I believe I will go all over the house," she decided as an afterthought. "We will go with you," declared Grace. "Oh, Bab, Bab; where are you?" Grace broke into a paroxysm of heart-breaking sobs. This was too much for Mollie, who began sobbing also. "Come, come, girls; this won't do," chided Olive. "We must keep our heads clear. Something has happened to Bab, but I'll venture to say that she is all right, no matter where she is." "But--but if she _is_ all right, why doesn't she call to us?" questioned Mollie, gazing at Olive through her tears. Olive was unable to answer that question. The same thought had occurred to her. Now Mr. Presby began thumping the sides of the room with his cane. They understood his purpose and waited in breathless silence until he had gone all the way around the room. "All sounds alike," he announced. "I didn't know but there might be another of those secret passages up here. I see, however, that it is not possible. Come, there is nothing to be gained by remaining here. Come, Mollie. Do not take it too much to heart," soothed Mr. Presby. Mollie was now leaning against the wall with head buried in her arms, crying softly. The others had started for the stairway. A servant came up the stairs and announced that Ruth had telephoned from the Stevens place saying that Bob Stevens had gone to Brightwaters, and that she was going there to find him. "Good gracious! What was that?" screamed Mrs. Presby, gripping her husband's arm with both hands as a mighty crash shook the building. A violent current of air smote them, another cloud of suffocating dust filled the air. "Mollie's gone, too!" screamed Grace Carter. CHAPTER XIV TOMMY TAKES A WILD RIDE FOR a moment the little group stood regarding one another in horror-stricken silence, then by common consent they all made for the stairway. Mr. Presby was half carrying, half dragging his wife, who was in a state of collapse. All had lost their heads completely. They did not know at what moment that terrible mysterious force might whisk them all out of existence. Instead of remaining calmly to solve the reason for Mollie's disappearance before their very eyes, all hands were fleeing from the scene of the double disaster. Mollie had not even cried out. She had simply gone, followed by that mighty crash. That was all they knew about it. They did not halt until they had reached the ground floor, where Mr. Presby called a servant to summon the neighbors and summon them quickly. Fifteen minutes later the neighbors began to arrive. With them were two or three strangers, whose offers to join in the search through the house Mr. Presby politely declined, as he was suspicious of all strangers. Those of the neighbors who were friends of long standing were given free rein to search the house and grounds as thoroughly as they wished. They took full advantage of the opportunity, delving into every nook and corner. In the meantime Ruth Stuart with the shivering Tommy by her side was driving her automobile across the country. There was no storm curtain in place now. Even the wind shield had been turned down because the snow clouded it so Ruth could not get a clear sight ahead. As it was, she could see no more than a rod or two in advance. She took the storm full on the right side of her face. The girl's eyes and nerves were steady now. Her touch on the steering wheel was light, for at that speed a heavy hand might have ditched the outfit. Country people on the road were startled by a rush of wind and a shadowy monster shooting past them with a snort, occasionally sending their horses off the highway in frightened leaps. But Ruth Stuart's eyes never wavered from the straight path ahead. Evidently she had forgotten her promise to herself to drive with her car under more perfect control. Every ounce of speed that Mr. A. Bubble possessed was being used on the present run. Tommy's eyes were full of snow, his lips were blue, his hands were gripping the cushions until he had no feeling left in them. "Tell me when we get near to the place," commanded Ruth in a sharp, incisive tone. "Ju-s-s-st around the nu-nu-next turn," chattered Thomas. "He's at Martin's ranch." Ruth turned the air into her siren. A wild, weird wail rose from the horn. Tommy shivered more than ever. That sound always did make the hair rise right up on the crown of his head. Ruth kept the siren going. Rounding the bend at top speed, her siren wailing, she made enough noise to be plainly heard above the storm. Taking careful note of her position, she ran up the drive into the yard, slowing down just as she saw two men come from the house bare-headed. "Jump in, quick!" she cried to Bob Stevens. "Trouble!" Bob was quick-witted. He understood that something was wrong. He caught one of the canopy braces and swung himself in over the closed door. The car was still in motion. Without a word of further explanation, Ruth advanced her spark. When they rounded into the road the snow from the skidding rear wheels flew up into the air higher than the peak of Jud Martin's hip-roofed barn. Stevens instinctively gripped the automobile body. "Put a blanket over your head," called back Ruth. "I can stand it bare-headed here, if you can keep your seat in this cold wind up ahead," answered Stevens calmly. "What is it?" "I'll tell you when you get there. I haven't time now." Bob asked no further questions. They were racing back to Treasureholme at a rate of speed that would have left the Pacific Coast Limited some distance to the rear in a very short time. Boom! A report like that of a cannon startled Tommy. Boom! Another similar report and Tom was on the verge of leaping from the car. "Tire's gone. Rear tire's down," called Stevens. Ruth nodded, but he could not see that she reduced the speed of the car in the slightest degree. Bob Stevens never had had such a ride as that, even on a railroad train, but he declined to give in to his inclination to warn her to slow down. If a young woman had the nerve to drive a car at that speed he surely should have sufficient pluck to ride behind her. Tommy had tightened his grip on the cushion. His body was swaying from side to side, now and then humping up into the air as the wheels passed over a hummock. "I shall go on as long as the rims hold," flung back Ruth in acknowledgment of his warning about the tires. The young man knew very well that the rims were likely to be crunched in like egg shells at any second. That would mean the complete wreck of the car and no doubt the instant death of the passengers at the speed they were now traveling. The soft, springy snow that covered the ground protected the rims from the hard road somewhat. He observed, however, that in rounding sharp turns in the road, Ruth steadied the car with her foot brake. She was driving with great skill, even though the pace was a reckless one. Bob gazed at the back of her head, a great admiration for her pluck welling up within him. But he felt sorry for Tommy. It was plainly to be seen that Thomas Warrington Presby was not having the happiest ride imaginable. "Almost there," encouraged Ruth. "If anything happens, never mind me, but run for the house as fast as you can go." He did not answer, but he was thinking deeply. Something of a very serious nature must have occurred at Treasureholme to make necessary all this haste. He did not know that they had sent for him because of the great confidence the Presbys reposed in him. It would have made little difference to the resourceful Bob Stevens if he had known. The car lurched into the drive, past the scene of Ruth's previous disaster, where the broken posts and twisted gates still lay at one side of the drive. None of the occupants of the car heeded these evidences of a former smash-up. Ruth's eyes were on the drive. Bob's eyes were on the house, while Tommy's eyes were so full of snow that they weren't fixed on anything in particular. The car came to a jolting stop in front of the Presby home. At that instant the rear of the car settled with a crunching sound. "There go the rims," said Ruth calmly. "But I don't care now. Please hurry." Bob lifted Tommy to the ground, the boy being on the side that Stevens had leaped from just as the rims were going down. He then assisted Ruth out. Tommy rubbed the snow from his eyes, blinked rapidly and gazed at Ruth. "Never no more for mine," he declared, with ungrammatical force. Ruth tried to run up the steps. She halted suddenly. Her body swayed unsteadily. Stevens thought she was going to collapse. He took firm hold of her arm. "Let me assist you," he said politely. "I--I am all right," muttered Ruth. "Just a little dizzy from watching the road so closely," then she crumpled up on the steps of Treasureholme. Bob Stevens picked her up and carried the girl into the house, followed by Tom, still blinking. Tom was choking a little, too. Everything had been moving so rapidly that, active as was his mind, he hadn't been able to follow matters very clearly. The door swung open. Bob handed his burden over to Mrs. Presby. "She's played out. Better put her to bed. What's wrong?" "No, no, no!" protested Ruth. "Give me a drink of something hot. I--I'm chilled through." She staggered to one side of the hall, waved assistance aside and leaned against the wall with closed eyes for a few seconds. Then Ruth straightened up suddenly. "Bab! Have they found her?" she cried. Mrs. Presby shook her head. Grace came running down the hall. She threw herself into Ruth's arms. "Oh, Ruth! Mollie's gone, too!" she sobbed. "What's this?" demanded Stevens. "Tell me quickly what has occurred." Mrs. Presby told him very briefly all that she knew about the series of disasters that had befallen them. The hall was fairly well filled with neighbors, all more or less helpless. With bulging eyes and open mouths, they were listening and gaping without doing anything on their own account. Bob dashed toward the stairs without asking another question. Neighbors, the Presbys and the three girls followed him. Mr. Presby was the last in line. He thumped up the stairs with the aid of his stick. Bob had halted near the door of the attic, where he stood surveying the room with critical eyes. "Get lights! It's dark here," he directed sharply. "Now tell me just what occurred as far as you know, please. Who discovered the loss of Miss Thurston and her sister?" Ruth told him what she knew of Bab's disappearance. Olive related the story of how Mollie had suddenly vanished. "They certainly didn't vanish into thin air. They are still in this house and I am going to find them, even if I have to tear the house down, with Mr. Presby's permission, of course." "Get the girls. Go as far as you like. Tear down the old house if you must. I shall not have use for it very much longer." Bob groped about on the floor. His hands found a broken stove poker. With this he began sounding the walls about waist high, thumping and listening, listening and thumping. He paused suddenly. "Where was Miss Mollie standing when you last saw her?" he demanded, turning to the group. "There on the south side," answered Olive. "Something has been there against the wall for some time, hasn't there? I see a mark on the wall." "I don't recall whether or not there was anything there," answered Mr. Presby. "Yes, there was an old dresser there. I moved it aside to-day to get some things that had fallen behind it. We were cleaning out the garret. That's the dresser over yonder," Olive informed him. The young man did not look at the piece of furniture indicated by Miss Presby. Instead, he strode over to the point where the dresser had stood for no one knew how long. It was a dresser belonging to some of the Presby ancestors. It never had been disturbed during the present owner's occupancy. Stevens began thumping over every inch of the wall at that point. He varied his investigations finally by trying the wainscoting on either side. The latter to his keen ears gave out a different sound. He turned sharply. "Bring me a maul, if you have one." Mr. Presby directed one of the farm hands to bring one from the woodshed. In the meantime the others in the attic watched in breathless silence as Stevens pursued his investigations. "You haven't heard them call or cry out?" "No," answered Olive. Ruth had said scarcely a word. She had appeared to be crushed upon hearing of Mollie's disappearance. She had answered questions briefly and with apparent great effort. But now her eyes were following every movement of Bob Stevens. A commotion on the stairs caused Bob to stride over to the door. It was the man with the maul, a heavy tool used for driving fence posts and other similar work. Bob took it from him and started for the place where the dresser had formerly stood. He halted just before reaching his objective point. The others in the chamber were crowding about him. "I would suggest that you people stand back," he said. "We don't know what might happen. I might loose my grip on the maul. I don't want to injure anyone." The "people" shrank back out of the way. "I'm going to do some damage, Mr. Presby. At least I think I am." Richard Presby nodded. Bob stepped close to the wall, moved back three or four feet, then slowly swung the maul in a circle and let drive with all the force at his command against the side of the wall. The maul landed with a tremendous report. A most remarkable thing followed, sending the occupants of the room rushing for the staircase, the women uttering cries of alarm. Bob staggered backwards and sat down heavily on the floor. His experiment had been attended with greater success than he had even dreamed were possible. It had been followed by a terrific crash. A cloud of dust filled the room, the structure vibrated as if from a slight earthquake shock, then quiet once more settled over the gloomy attic of Treasureholme. CHAPTER XV AN AMAZING OCCURRENCE BOB was on his feet again ere the dust had settled in the room. "Don't be alarmed," he cried. "There is no danger so long as you keep away from that partition. That is where the trouble lies." "Where--where is the hammer?" cried Grace. Stevens stepped forward and looked for the maul on the floor near the baseboard, but finally glanced up with a perplexed expression in his eyes. "The maul has disappeared, too," he said. There was a gasp following this announcement. But the young man was not disturbed. "I understand a little of what all this means," he said. "The maul has gone. If someone will get me an axe I will chop down this partition near where I struck it with the maul." "Is there some secret there?" whispered Mr. Presby over Bob's shoulder. The young man nodded. "Yes. I have an idea what it is. However, we shall see." When the axe was brought he chose his location with some care, then began chopping away, swinging the axe in a manner that showed him to be no novice at that sort of work. The axe went through the partition soon after that. Using the back of the tool, he began smashing in the boards, here and there employing the blade to cut through a scantling or a brace. Soon after he had laid open a dark recess behind the partition. Tom pushed forward and was about to crawl in when the young man stopped him. "Better be careful, young man! That may be a pitfall, and I suspect that it is." The others were too amazed to speak. Still another secret in the old house had been revealed. But the sudden disappearance of the maul was still unexplained, though Stevens had his own idea about this. He began cutting further. A tremendous crash followed a moment of chopping. He sprang back to await developments. There were none. "There, I think I have drawn the monster's teeth," he said, reaching for a lantern. "One of you will please hold another lantern at the entrance here. I may need help." Ruth Stuart snatched a lantern from one of the countrymen and stepped promptly up beside the young man. He nodded. "Do not try to follow me in here unless I tell you to. I must first find out what is in here." "Do you think they are there?" she asked in a half whisper. "Yes. Probably below somewhere," he answered, thrusting the lantern ahead of him and crawling into the opening he had made. Bob found himself in a narrow chamber formed by a gable that had been shut off and enclosed by the partition. He did not trouble himself at that moment to investigate the strangeness of the disappearance of his maul. Instead, he began going over the little room cautiously. The light from his lantern soon revealed a hole in the floor about a yard square. "Don't lean against that partition on your life," he called. Those near the entrance to the gable apartment drew back a little. They gazed at the apparently solid wall to the left of the hole, in respectful silence. Bob lowered his lantern into the hole and peered in. It appeared to extend down a long distance. A trap door that evidently was intended to cover the opening, lay to one side of the opening. As he peered in he saw that the opening revealed a bricked-in shaft. "A chimney, as I live!" he exclaimed. Then he raised his voice in a long-drawn shout. "Hello-o-o down there!" There was no response. Stevens called again. A faint wail drifted up through the shaft. Ruth, at the panel, hearing it, uttered a scream of joy. "They're there! They're there!" she cried. For the first time since his arrival at the house, Bob Stevens showed traces of excitement in his face, but his voice was calm when he spoke. "Get a rope, quickly. A long one," he commanded. Ruth, Olive and Tommy crowded into the narrow opening, unable to restrain their impatience longer. "Be careful," warned Bob. "This floor doesn't seem to be very strong." The three held their ground, however. "Hello-o-o down there! Are you hurt?" They were unable to distinguish the words of the reply, but it evidently was made by Barbara. "There's a ladder," exclaimed Tommy, starting to go down it. Stevens hauled him back. "Keep out. It looks shaky. I am going down there myself. That's why I sent for a rope. I don't want to fall in, too. Men, I want you to stand by to lend a hand on the rope. Keep it fairly taut, but don't hold me back." When all the arrangements had been made, Bob started down the ladder. He had gone not more than four or five feet when he found that the ladder extended no further. It appeared to have been broken off. He called to the men to lower away. Finally his feet reached something soft. At first the horrified thought came to him that it was the body of one of the girls for whom he was in search. Instead, what he had found proved to be a piece of an old mattress with a bundle of old clothes heaped on it. This was something like seven feet from the opening through which he had descended. He heard a moan from beneath the heap of old garments. He tore them feverishly aside. Mollie lay before him, pale and with eyes closed. Stevens uttered a shout. "I've got Miss Mollie. She is injured. Stand by to pull her up when I give you the word," he directed in a tone of excitement. Quickly securing the rope under her arms, he bade them haul away, he lifting the girl as high as his arms would reach, then grasping her feet, lending such assistance as possible in this way. She was quickly in the arms of her friends, who bore her downstairs to her own room and set to work to revive her. Now came the next stage of Bob Stevens' work. He could not imagine where Barbara could be. Just at this point he discovered a bend in the supposed chimney. This he decided was in order to avoid some obstruction on the second floor of the house. He found an opening in the platform scarcely large enough to admit his own broad shoulders. There, unmistakably was a ladder, made of thin strips of iron, bolted to the chimney itself. "I'm going further down," he shouted to those above. "Don't pull unless I call upon you to do so. Are you down there, Miss Barbara?" "Yes," came the answer. It sounded very far away. Bob knew that the young woman must be a great distance below him, or else there was another bend in the chimney that shut off the sound of her voice. Perhaps, too, there was another landing. One might expect to meet with anything in this house of mysteries. "The other one is all right," yelled the young man to those above. "Keep up your courage, Miss Barbara. I will be with you as soon as I can get down. Can you climb up?" "No." He did not catch what followed. Bob was climbing down the narrow ladder, prudently keeping the rope about his waist in case the ladder should give way. He carried the lantern with him on his descent, which he made with considerable caution. He feared that were he to dislodge a brick or a section of the ladder, it might fall on the girl below and seriously injure her. Why she should be so far below the narrow platform where he had found Mollie Thurston he did not pause to ask himself. The urgent work of the moment was to get Barbara out as quickly as possible. "Is there no end to this?" muttered the young man. He figured that he must be somewhere in the vicinity of the cellar. Barbara's voice, now strong and clear, halted him suddenly. "Be careful," she warned. "The ladder doesn't reach all the way down. You will fall if you don't step carefully." "Where are you?" he cried. "Goodness, I'm glad to hear your voice! I feared you had been killed." "I don't know how this happened. I am down here. That is all I can tell you about it." Stevens had reached the end of the ladder by this time. He lowered his lantern, directing her to take it from the rope, then observing that he was not more than half a dozen feet from the bottom, he dropped lightly down beside her. "Did you fall down here?" he asked. "The last several feet I did," she answered. Bab was pale, but her eyes were bright. "Then how did you get down this far? Didn't the landing stop you?" questioned the young man while looping the rope under Barbara's arms. "Yes, the landing stopped me. I thought I surely had been killed, but after a little I pulled myself together and screamed for help. I guess no one heard me." "They were excited. The house is in an uproar. Your sister is in the hands of her friends. I think she will be all right." "My sister?" questioned Bab, opening her eyes wide. "Yes. Didn't you know she fell in, too?" "Tell me--was she--how did it happen?" demanded Bab, all in one voice. "Oh, it was awful! Mollie fell in, you say?" "Yes. I got her out with the help of the others. You haven't answered my question. Why did you come on down here?" "I thought there might be an opening at the bottom. This chimney was intended to be used for climbing. Hurry. I want to see Mollie." Barbara was in a fever of excitement. She could not see why she shouldn't climb the rope. Stevens advised her to calm herself, saying that when she reached the ladder she might climb, but not to cast off the rope. "When you reach the top tell them to lower the rope again, so I can get out." Barbara suddenly collected herself. "Oh, forgive me for my thoughtlessness. You go on up. I can come later." Bob Stevens merely smiled, then raised his voice in a shout to the men to pull up. He lifted Bab up with apparent ease, for he was a muscular young man. The rope began to move up slowly. He helped Barbara until she had reached the ladder, then after seeing her safely on her way, and when she was no longer visible, the young man picked up his lantern and began to look about him. The chimney reached clear to the bottom of the pit in which he was standing. A short passage underground led off from the pit. He followed it for about thirty yards, when it ended abruptly against a solid mound of earth. Investigation showed that this earth had caved in, thus blocking what had once been a long passage. Little particles of dirt showered down on his head as he stepped carefully about, indicating that the rest of the roof might cave in at any moment. "The silence of the tomb," muttered Bob. "What a place in which to be buried alive! I can imagine what that poor little girl must have suffered in here without a light, not knowing whether she ever would be found again. There's pluck for you. I know I should have been scared stiff. What a house of mystery this is! If it were mine I would pull it to pieces to satisfy my curiosity if for no other reason. But the treasure? Can it be possible that we have stumbled upon the hiding place of the real treasure? I'm going to investigate this place later on. Mr. Presby's ancestors must have been regular woodchucks. At least they were great burrowers. Hold on; there must have been some sort of stream through here by the looks of the ground. The tunnel was already made. All it needed was covering and filling. I begin to see. The families used it for getting away when the Indians got too busy. But I hear the rope. I want to examine that attic." Bob held up his lantern to look for the rope when a ray from the lantern glinted on something bright in a niche in the chimney near the base, from where a brick had been pried out. He held the lantern closer, his eyes grew large, then the young man gave a whoop that was heard far above him in the attic. CHAPTER XVI BOB SOLVES ANOTHER MYSTERY "I'VE got it!" he cried. "I've found the--but it can't be a very big treasure done up in so small a package," he added in a disappointed tone. That which had attracted his attention was a metal box about six inches in length which had been set into the chimney so skilfully that a person passing would be unlikely to observe it. The box fitted the niche so nicely that Stevens was obliged to use his knife to pry it out. The box was locked. He found no key and was about to attempt to pry open the cover with his knife when he paused. "No. I won't do it. That wouldn't be fair. Miss Thurston is the real discoverer. She shall open the box, or I will open it in her presence unless Mr. Presby wishes to do so himself." Saying which, Bob Stevens pocketed his curiosity as well as the little metal box. The rope now being at hand, he slipped the loop about his waist, reached up and grasped the lower rung of the ladder, drawing himself up easily until the lower rung was beneath his feet. From that point on he climbed rapidly to the platform. From there he was obliged to use the rope in place of the missing section of the ladder. A few seconds later he was standing in the garret. "How is Miss Mollie?" were his first words. "Just coming to," answered one of the hands. "Miss Ruth was just up here to see if you had gotten up yet. She wishes to see you." "Hold up the lantern. I want to look at this wall a moment." Bob had found the maul lying on the floor in the gable. He returned it to the garret. He now recalled the crash that had followed his final chopping. Since then the young man had reasoned out what he thought was the mechanism that had caused all the trouble. Stevens pushed gently on the panel against which he had originally struck so hard a blow. To the amazement of the onlookers, the panel fell into the gable with a mighty crash. "I thought so," he nodded. The others had leaped to the far side of the room. Mr. Presby came hobbling up, fearing that still another disaster had fallen upon the house. "Please look here, Mr. Presby," called Bob. "Here is the secret. See that narrow panel? It is a little wider than a man's body. It is hinged at the bottom. Attached to it were ropes running over pulleys in wooden tunnels. At the ends of these ropes are heavy weights. So nicely balanced were the weights that the pressure of a few pounds from this side would throw the panel inward. Any person leaning against it on this side would be dumped into the other room so quickly that unless he understood the mechanism, he would not know what had occurred." "Wonderful," breathed the owner. "It was evidently intended to afford a quick get-away in case the occupants of the house found it necessary to leave hurriedly. You will find the remnants of an old mattress in the gable there. I presume that was originally so placed that the person going through would slide from the smooth panel to the mattress without the least danger of injury. The instant his body left the panel the weights would pull the panel into place with a great bang. When the weights struck their foundation--the floor--another crash would be heard. Were I an Indian, I think I would run if I heard all that crashing and smashing. However, I have cut the ropes. You will have no recurrence of to-day's accident. The trap was open and both the young women fell into it while groping about in the dark in there. Is Miss Mollie seriously hurt?" "One wrist is sprained and she is somewhat bruised. I do not believe it will prove to be anything serious," answered Mr. Presby. "Bob, I thank you," he added, giving the young man's hand a hearty grip. "May I go down there now?" piped Tommy. "You may not, sir," returned his father sternly. "You will keep away from that place entirely. I shall have the opening nailed up to-morrow. By the way, Robert, what did you find at the bottom?" questioned the master eagerly. "A caved-in passage. I also found this. I intended to give it to you in the presence of Miss Thurston. However, it belongs to you." Mr. Presby turned the metal box over in his hand reflectively. "Open it, Robert. I decline to become excited." "May I call Miss Barbara?" "Certainly." Tommy fairly flew downstairs for Bab, who returned with him on the run. Stevens showed her the box. Her eyes glowed. "How is Miss Mollie?" asked the young man. "I don't think there is very much the matter with her except the shock and the fright. She must have been unconscious down there for quite a time. Please open the box. I am dying of curiosity." He broke open the box with the stove poker with which he had sounded the walls. All necks were craned to see what was in the box. To their wonderment, not unmixed with disappointment, Bob Stevens drew out a tarnished gold watch, on the back of which had been cut the letters "T. W. P." It was of English make and very old. Mr. Presby regarded it solemnly. "That is my ancestor's watch. It can mean but one thing, finding it as we have. He left such of his worldly possessions as he could--this watch. And to think we have dug up half of the estate for a treasure that did not exist! It was his silent message to us that this was all he had to leave in case he did not return." Mr. Presby's voice held a note of keen disappointment. Even up to now he had not fully lost hope that by some fortunate circumstance the treasure might yet be found. "He may have returned and taken the rest of it," reflected Bob. "But if that were so, why should he have gone to all the pains of leading us to believe there was more?" "How so?" "This find means more than appears on the surface, sir." "May I look at it?" asked Barbara. [Illustration: A Slip Of Paper Fluttered To the Floor.] Mr. Presby handed the watch to her. She opened the case and gazed long at the face of the timepiece. She closed the case with a snap, then turned to the back, first studying the initials, next trying to open the back case. Bob Stevens assisted her with his pocket knife. The case came open suddenly. A slip of paper fluttered to the floor at Bab's feet. "Oh!" she cried, snatching it up. She started to unfold the paper, then flushing, handed it to Mr. Presby. He shook his head. "Look at it, my dear. There need be no secrets here." Barbara did so, her hands trembling with excitement. A little furrow of perplexity appeared between the eyebrows. What she saw on the paper was a crude drawing of a toadstool with a slight point rising from the centre of the toadstool. In the background was what appeared to be a forest, but so awkwardly drawn that it was not possible to say positively that a forest was what the artist had intended. Below the picture of the toadstool was some writing. Stevens held the lantern closer, at her suggestion. "'The span of a minute is sixty seconds,'" read Barbara Thurston. "Now, what in the world does that mean?" "I think it was your little golden-haired sister who expressed the opinion that my ancestor was not in his right mind," said Mr. Presby. "I am inclined to that belief myself. I wash my hands of the whole affair! Come, let us go below. This air here suffocates me." Bob Stevens took the paper and, holding the lantern in the crook of his left arm, studied the bit of paper on his way downstairs, but made nothing out of it. "I am not certain that it means anything at all, Miss Thurston," he said. "Perhaps the girls may discover some meaning. As for myself, I give it up." "Thank you," answered Barbara. "I will show it to them. I know it must mean something, unless--unless the original Mr. Presby were crazy in fact." "I am beginning to think we are all crazy," laughed Stevens. After having again inquired for Mollie, and shaken hands with Barbara and Ruth, Bob went home. Barbara had stuffed the slip of paper into the pocket of her blouse on her way to Mollie's room. Mollie now lay wide awake. Her face was pale. There was a livid mark on her forehead, where she had come violently in contact with the chimney side on her tumble into the hole in the gable floor. "Oh, Mollie, dear," soothed Bab, throwing her arms about her sister. "It had to be you who got the worst of the bump. Were you leaning against the wall, too?" Mollie nodded weakly. "What happened?" she asked. Barbara explained as well as she could from the brief description of the panel mechanism that Mr. Stevens had given to her, to which Mollie listened wide-eyed. "You dear 'Automobile Girls,'" cried Ruth. "Will you never stop picking up horseshoe nails with all four tires?" "But we manage to wriggle our way through the broken glass, don't we, Molliekins?" Mollie nodded and smiled. The wind was still howling without. In the pause of conversation the girls listened. Suddenly Ruth sprang up. "I have forgotten two things," she exclaimed. "I must go out and put the storm curtains on Mr. A. Bubble and telephone father that Bubble must go to the shop." "You didn't have another accident?" inquired Barbara anxiously. "No. I blew up the two rear tires and came in on the rims. Oh, girls, I wish you might have been along. No, I don't, either. I'm afraid the car wouldn't have stood up under that additional weight. It was great!" "Did--did you go some?" questioned Mollie. "Did we? Ask Tom! I'll wager that young man's head is whirling still. I never thought we should make it, but I was bound not to set back the spark a single notch until I either turned turtle in the ditch or got Mr. Stevens here to help find you, Bab. We made it, didn't we, Tommy boy?" Tom had just entered the room to see what was going on. "You bet we did," answered Tom. "Would you like to ride so fast as that another time?" questioned Ruth merrily. "Well, maybe in a railroad train," answered Tommy. "I'll take you out again when the car is repaired," said Ruth. "Not when I'm awake you won't." "You say you came home on the rims?" wondered Barbara. "I should have thought it would have crushed them. Yours is a heavy car, Ruth." "It would have crushed them, only the rims didn't touch the ground till we got in the drive here," observed Thomas wisely, whereat the girls laughed merrily. Ruth started to go down and put on her storm curtains. Bab ran after her to assist. "Oh!" cried Barbara, as an icy blast smote her in the face the moment she stepped out into the open. "You had better run back and put something over your head," advised Ruth. For answer, Barbara pulled out her handkerchief, binding this over her head. The two girls, after no little effort, succeeded in putting the curtains up, though the wind made their task doubly difficult. Finishing, they ran into the house with benumbed fingers and cheeks aflame. They rushed to the nearest fireplace, to which they pressed closely until the odor of scorching cloth warned them to beware. Olive and Grace had come downstairs, for dinner was on the table. A tray had been taken up to Mollie, but she did not care to eat, and had soon after fallen into a restful doze. "You haven't told us what you found in that great, deep hole," urged Olive, after they had been seated for some little time. "Oh, I forgot," answered Barbara. "Everything has been moving so rapidly that I haven't had time even to think. I found--I mean Mr. Stevens found something. But I am afraid it doesn't help us much." "Bob found something?" cried Olive. "Oh, tell us about it." "Yes, he found a metal box in the chimney. In it there was a watch that belonged to your scalped ancestor--I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that. Your father has the watch. Well, inside the back case was a tiny slip of paper with the funniest picture you ever saw. There was some writing beneath the picture. I'll show it to you. I believe it means something, but I can't understand it at all." "All rubbish," observed Mr. Presby. The master of the house already had shown the watch to Mrs. Presby, and had explained the manner of its finding by young Stevens. Bab was searching through her pocket for the slip of paper. She had her handkerchief in her hand, together with some other articles that the pocket had held. Going clear to the bottom, she groped with eager fingers. Her face grew a shade paler. "You haven't lost it?" begged Ruth. "Oh, I am afraid I have!" gasped Barbara, turning her pocket wrong side out. "I--I must have dropped it in the garret. May I be excused while I go up to look for it?" Receiving permission, the girl ran hurriedly up the garret stairs, first having snatched up one of the lanterns. She searched the garret floor, paying especial attention to the spot where they had been standing when discussing the find. She found no trace of the missing slip. Next Barbara examined every inch of the stairs, then entered Mollie's room on tip-toe, but with no better success. Every nook and corner where she could remember to have been on both floors was searched in vain. "I think I can tell you where you lost it," volunteered Ruth Stuart "You took out your handkerchief to put over your head when we were outside covering the car. You must have pulled the paper out with the handkerchief." "Then I must go outside and look for it," wailed Bab. "I simply mustn't lose that paper. It may mean everything to you all. Oh, I must find it." "Silly! You won't find the paper if it has been dropped out of doors. On a night like this it has probably blown far away," interposed Olive. "Don't worry. It isn't worth it. Hunting for the Treasureholme treasure brings nothing but tears. Forget it all and be your own bright little self." Barbara Thurston struggled with her emotions for a few heart-breaking seconds, then burst into tears. CHAPTER XVII A LONG-REMEMBERED CHRISTMAS THERE had been an air of new mystery about Treasureholme for the last three or four days. Packages large and small, all addressed to Mrs. Presby had been delivered from the city. Mysterious conferences were being held between Mrs. Presby and this and that girl. Each of the "Automobile Girls" appeared to be bursting with the burden of the secret she was carrying about with her. The explanation of all this mystery was that it then lacked but two days to Christmas. Bab had in a measure recovered from her disappointment and chagrin at losing the slip of paper found in the chimney, and strange to say she had wholly forgotten the words that were written on the little slip. All the information that Robert Stevens could give her was that it was something about a "minute." The excitement under which all hands were laboring at the time of the find, perhaps might be blamed for their short memories. However, there was no help for the disaster now. The coming holiday served to take their minds from the subject of the buried treasure, though now and again Tom brought in reports of having seen strange men in the grounds out near the woods. One evening the girls had been frightened almost to the verge of hysterics by discovering a man peering through the window of Olive's sitting room upstairs, while the girls were chatting after the others below stairs had gone to bed. A ladder found on the outside explained how the man had gotten to the window. That his spying had something to do with the mad hunt for the treasure, they had no doubt. In this instance their screams, aided perhaps by the bottle of smelling salts that Olive had instantly hurled through the window upon catching sight of him, had driven him away. Christmas eve at last was at hand. The air without was crisp and clear, within all was cheer from the blazing fireplaces, with decorations of holly festooned with ribbons in all the downstairs rooms. The dining room had been cleared as soon as possible after dinner, for it was there that a Christmas tree was to be set up, there that the presents were to be distributed to the "Automobile Girls" and various members of the family. Excitement ran high. Bob Stevens had been invited to join in the festivities, which included a molasses candy pull and games appropriate to the occasion. Seven o'clock had just boomed out on the grandfather's clock in the hall when there came a ring at the door. The girls, with ears alert, heard a familiar voice greeting Mr. and Mrs. Presby. Down the stairs rushed the girls, with Ruth in the lead, crying at the top of her voice: "It's my daddy! Oh, it's my dear daddy!" Ruth flung herself into her father's arms. She had not seem him in more than two weeks. The rest of the girls rushed up to Mr. Stuart, each giving him an affectionate hug, for to them he seemed almost as much a father as he did to Ruth. Barbara's heart sank as she stepped back to take a good look at Mr. Stuart. His face was positively haggard. Ruth had observed this in the first glance and two great tears dropped from her eyes to Mr. Stuart's shoulder as she clung there. "Dear daddy. Don't take it so hard. You have me," whispered Ruth. This brought a momentary relaxation to the tense muscles of the speculator's face. Barbara was shocked at his appearance. He seemed to have added years to his age since last she saw him. Mr. Stuart observed her inquiring gaze fixed upon his face. He smiled reassuringly, well understanding that she had noted the change in him. Then, to divert Bab's thoughts, he pinched Mollie's dimpled chin. "How is my little Molliekins since her adventure in the lower regions of Treasureholme?" he questioned. "My stock went down that day. It hasn't come up yet," answered Mollie brightly. "I am afraid you are not alone in that experience," laughed Mr. Stuart. "Am I right, Richard?" addressing Mr. Presby. Mr. Presby nodded solemnly. "By the way, Ruth, the chauffeur will drive your car out in the morning. I heard all about that last drive of yours from the people of Brightwaters. I expect my little girl will break her neck and at the same time her dad's heart one of these days." "I am not afraid for the first, but I shouldn't like to be responsible for the latter," answered Ruth soberly. "To-night we won't think of serious subjects. We are to make it a real holiday, eh, Richard?" "That is our plan. We want the 'Automobile Girls' to enjoy themselves. It makes us happy to see them so happy. I've never seen Olive more happy than she is to-night." Olive was radiant. She, like her girl guests, was dressed in white, with a sprig of holly pinned to her waist. Faces were flushed, eyes sparkling. They were a happy, joyous lot of young women. Olive stole into the drawing room that at her direction the servants already had cleared of rugs, moving the furniture to the sides of the room. The only light there was from the blazing fireplace. Olive sat down at the piano. "Come on, everybody!" she called, striking up a lively two-step. The "Automobile Girls" ran for the drawing room. With them went the older members of the party. Ruth grabbed her father and led him a giddy dance. Bob Stevens claimed a dance with Bab. Mr. Presby's gouty foot would not permit his joining in the frolic, so Bob very thoughtfully cut short his dance with Barbara, dancing a few minutes with each of the other girls. Thomas Warrington Presby was turning handsprings in a corner of the room, and, being in the shadow, he was not disturbed in his antics. Soon after this Mrs. Presby appeared at the door. "Children," she called. "You are invited to come to the dining room. I do not think a second invitation will be necessary." It was not. There was a grand rush for the dining room, followed by a chorus of "ahs" and "ohs" as they caught sight of a real, old-fashioned Christmas tree, all alight with candles, glittering with spangles, many-hued balls and yards and yards of sparkling frosted fringe. At its top and hovering over it, floated a cherub, supported by an invisible wire suspended from the ceiling. At the base of the tree were the presents. There seemed to be a whole truck load of them. Some very large packages excited the curiosity of the girls, but what caused the most merriment was a huge red automobile, made of wire and red paper. The automobile was filled with red roses, both being the gift to the "Automobile Girls" from their friend, Mrs. Cartwright. It fell to the lot of Mr. Stuart to distribute the presents. There was a rifle for Tom, small gifts for all the girls from Mrs. Thurston, Mrs. Presby and Miss Sallie, who had come over earlier in the day, having spent most of her time thus far in getting the gifts ready for the presentation. Bab and Mollie gave each of their friends drawn-work handkerchiefs and some small pieces of embroidery, all their own work, to Miss Sallie and Mrs. Presby. As yet the large packages that held so much of mystery had not been opened. Ruth finally slipped over and whispered to her father. He nodded. At that she hurried to the tree, dragging the largest of the packages out into the light. Mr. Stuart cut the strings, Ruth being too impatient to untie them. A great heap of tissue paper, that piled high on the floor, gave promise of something good. Ruth drew out a long, black object which she ran over and placed in Barbara's arms. "There, you dear! That should keep you warm," she said. "This is from father and myself." Barbara stared at the object that lay across her arms. It was a three-quarter length Persian lamb coat. Barbara was too astonished to catch the meaning of it all. Aunt Sallie took the coat from Barbara's arms, turned the girl about and slipped the coat on. "Oh-h-h!" gasped Bab, catching sight of herself in a mirror. "No, no, I can't accept it. It is--isn't right, Ruth--Mr. Stuart. Oh, you shouldn't have done this! I didn't look for anything but some simple little gift. But this lovely coat. Oh, Mollie, Mollie." Bab's eyes were swimming. "Never mind, Molliekins," twinkled Mr. Stuart. "There is something in the other package that I think will please you equally well. Ruth, aren't you going to give my little golden-haired girl her present?" Ruth flew to the second large package, the strings of which had been cut by Mr. Stuart. From this package Ruth drew forth a coat exactly like Barbara's, for Mollie. Two caps of the same material were placed on the heads of the Thurston girls. Mollie needed no urging to put her coat on. She slipped into it, then began dancing about the floor, regardless of whose toes she stepped on. Fortunately for her, she missed Mr. Presby's gouty foot. "Now what do you think of yourselves, you dears?" questioned Ruth. "Splendid!" cried Mollie. Barbara shook her head, though her flushed face reflected the happiness she felt. She glanced questioningly at Grace. The latter was smiling with no trace of envy in her pleasant face. Then came Grace's turn. She, too, received a coat and cap, these being of gray squirrel. Olive's surprise was a set of silver fox furs, with a stole that reached almost to her feet. Ruth was last. Mr. Stuart opened a velvet case, then slipped a slender gold chain about the neck of his daughter. From the chain was suspended an exquisite pearl pendant. For Bob Stevens there was a handsome scarf pin from the Presbys. The girls' gifts to the young man were gloves and ties, a silver-handled pocket knife and other odds and ends that caused Tommy to sniff disdainfully. "That's just like girls," he jeered. "Why didn't you get him a rifle or an automobile or something that he could do something with? I'd rather have a pair of rubber boots than all of that truck." But Bob Stevens was well pleased. He was greatly surprised, for he had not looked for presents. The candy pull had been forgotten. The girls were too happy in their new possessions, though Barbara Thurston was a little troubled over the magnificence of the gifts for herself and Mollie. She did not think Mr. Stuart should have given them such expensive gifts. In spite of the happiness of the day and evening a shadow overhung the entire party at Treasureholme. Perhaps Barbara Thurston felt it more deeply than any of the other girls. And instead of lightening the shadow was to grow deeper before the night was ended. CHAPTER XVIII BAB'S EXCITING DISCOVERY A CHORUS of "Merry Christmas" was heard as the clock in the hall struck the hour of midnight. Olive was seated at the piano. As the strokes of the old clock ceased, she touched the keys softly, then began to sing. The girls knew the song. They joined with her, raising their sweet, young voices in the Christmas anthem: "Hark the herald angels sing Glory to the new-born King! Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!" Ere the song ended, Ruth's father had slipped away. He had been profoundly stirred. Ruth saw him go. She stole away after him. It was half an hour later that Barbara, on her way to her own room, where Mollie already had gone, saw Ruth's door slightly ajar. Bab tapped lightly. Ruth's voice bade her enter. But Bab shrank back when she saw Mr. Stuart sitting there. His face was drawn and sad. There were tears in Ruth's eyes. Barbara could scarcely keep back her own tears, so keenly did she feel for these two whom she loved so well. The girl stammered an apology and drew back. "Bab, dear, come in," called Mr. Stuart. "Yes, do. We need you. Perhaps you may be able to make daddy smile. I can't, because I have no smiles left in me." "I--I am afraid I haven't, either," answered Barbara, with trembling lips. "Hadn't I better go to my own room? Perhaps you wish to talk undisturbed." "We want you here," answered Mr. Stuart. "Please close the door and sit down." Bab walked to the centre of the room, where she stood leaning against a table gazing down on them questioningly. Ruth nestled on her father's knee with an arm thrown affectionately about his neck. "My dear," he said, addressing Barbara, "I have just been telling Ruth that this may be the last Christmas that she will be able to have all her heart craves. I mean in the way of luxuries. My business affairs are in a very bad way. You already know that Mr. Presby has no hopes of being able to pull through. When he goes, I go. We shall go down together. We have been speculating in wheat. We have loaded up so heavily that I see no possibility of getting out." He paused reflectively while the lines of his face grew haggard. "You mean you are going to lose all you have?" almost whispered Barbara. "Yes. Instead of the price of wheat going up, as it should have done at this season of the year, wheat has been forced down and down by a strong bear market. Behind it all there is a powerful but mysterious force, a master brain that is forcing the price down and seeking to ruin us." "Have you no idea who is doing this--who your enemy is?" asked Barbara. "Nothing more than a vague suspicion. You see, the trading is done largely through others. There is no one man, so far as we have been able to discover, who is crowding us, forcing us to load up and to hold at a frightful cost to ourselves. We know, however, that there is an individual force back of this movement. Richard has mortgaged his property to the last cent. After the first of the year, unless there be a turn for better in his affairs, Treasureholme will be taken away from him. After the first of the year I shall be a ruined man financially." "Mr. Stuart," said Barbara in a steady voice, "I felt that you should not have spent all that money on those beautiful gifts for us. I feel even more strongly about it now. Won't--won't you please take them back? Oh, you understand what I mean," cried Barbara, flushing hotly as she saw his gaze fixed inquiringly upon her. "Yes, my dear, I do. And I thank you. You are a noble girl. But even such a sacrifice on your part would do no good. A few hundred dollars would make no difference. I wanted Ruth and her friends to have a happy Christmas; I wanted you all to be remembered as you deserve. As it is, I have not done all that I had wished to do." "Oh, you have done too much!" exclaimed Barbara. "I wanted you as well as Ruth to understand just how matters stand. I feel better for having unburdened my mind." "Would it help you in the least if you were to know who this man is who is driving you and Mr. Presby to failure?" asked Bab. "It might help somewhat, thought it may be too late. Had I known a month ago I might have succeeded in turning the tide against him." "Oh, daddy, give it up! It's a dreadful business," begged Ruth. "I am afraid I shall have to, whether or not I wish to do so. I agree with you that it is a dreadful business, and if I get out of the woods this time, I am through with speculation. Now, children run along. I wish to talk with Mr. Presby. He awaits me downstairs." Mr. Stuart kissed both girls, but clung to their hands a moment as he gazed into their eyes. Then he released the hands and moved toward the door. Ruth and Barbara stood watching him until Mr. Stuart had passed from their sight and they heard him descending the stairs. "Good night, dear. I can't talk any more to-night," said Ruth, controlling her voice with an effort. "I--I am afraid I can't either," answered Bab, with averted eyes. She left the room rather hurriedly, closing the door behind her. For a long time after Barbara had left Ruth Stuart's room, she lay in her own bedroom on a lounge staring straight up at the ceiling. Mollie was asleep, her golden head barely visible above the tops of the covers. "If I could only do something for these good friends," murmured Bab. "But what can a girl do? I wonder how much money it would take to save them? It would take a lot, I know." After a time Barbara got up to get her handkerchief. She had dropped hers in Ruth's room. On the dresser lay Barbara's hand bag, the one she had carried with her on her way from Kingsbridge. She had not used it since, Ruth having bought her a very handsome bag in Chicago during one of their shopping expeditions. Bab remembered that there was a handkerchief in the bag. Opening the bag, she drew out the handkerchief which lay under some other articles. As she did so something white fluttered to the floor a few feet from where she was standing. Barbara wiped her eyes, then stood regarding herself in the mirror. She saw that her own face was troubled and that her eyes were red, as though she had been weeping. Then she stepped over, picking up the handsome coat that Mr. Stuart and Ruth had given her for Christmas. With a sigh Bab laid the coat down, smoothed it out and began preparing for bed. She had given no further thought to the little piece of white cardboard that had slipped from her handkerchief a few moments before. Bab was in bed, snuggling down by Mollie, very shortly afterwards, with the lights turned off. The girl lay staring into the darkness until her weary eyelids closed and she dropped off to sleep. When Barbara awoke the following morning Mollie was still sleeping soundly. Bab, however, rose at once, still rubbing her eyes and trying to recall something that had been troubling her when she went to sleep. Suddenly it all came back to Bab in a flood of disagreeable recollection. Barbara took her time at making her toilet, thinking deeply as she brushed her thick, fine hair before the mirror. The girl had half turned to call Mollie when all at once she caught sight of the bit of pasteboard lying on the floor. "I wonder what that is? I remember seeing something fall from the bag last night." She picked up the card, glanced at it carelessly and was about to toss it on the dresser top when suddenly Bab uttered a little gasp. Her hand trembled. She gazed with staring eyes at the name on the card. "Mr. Nathan Bonner," she read. For the moment Bab continued to stare. "The man in section thirteen," she murmured. Bab tried to recall what had been said about Nathan Bonner, but she could not remember. She knew only that what she had heard had left an unpleasant impression on her mind. It was Nathan Bonner whom she had seen in the Pit at the Board of Trade. She shuddered as she recalled the almost demoniac expression on that hard, cruel face. Then all at once the conversation that she had overheard while lying in her berth in the sleeping car on that eventful night came before her. "Oh, oh, oh!" cried Barbara under her breath. "What ever is the matter with you, Bab?" demanded a voice from the bed. "Oh, Molliekins, I've made such an exciting discovery. But I can't say a word about it. I must find Mr. Stuart this very minute. I must hurry. I haven't a moment to lose. Oh, I do hope I am not too late!" CHAPTER XIX A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT BARBARA had slipped on a kimono and was starting for the door. "Aren't you going to kiss me good morning?" pouted Mollie. Bab ran back, throwing her arms about Mollie, giving her sister a quick embrace and kiss; then she hurried from the room, going straight to Ruth's bedroom. To her surprise, she found Ruth Stuart fully dressed. The girl was sitting before a window staring out at the whitened fields. "Oh, Ruth, I'm so glad I found you awake. Do you know whether your father is up yet?" "Yes. Why, dear?" "I must see him at once. I have important information for him. You will excuse me, won't you, if I run down to see him? Is he downstairs?" Ruth shook her head sorrowfully. There was no laughter in her eyes this morning. She seemed very different from the bright, carefree Ruth of old. "Father is not here, Bab." "No-ot here?" gasped Bab. "No; he left on the seven o'clock train for Chicago this morning. After an all-night conference between him and Mr. Presby, it was decided that daddy must go into the city early this morning to see that Mr. Thompson whom you girls met at the wreck of the car on your journey to Chicago. I don't know what it is all about, but I suspect it is money," concluded Ruth with a trace of bitterness in her tone. "When I think how happy you girls are in your little home without wealth, I sometimes wish I had never known luxury. But what did you want to see father about?" demanded Ruth suddenly. "I--I wanted to tell him something. Oh, please don't ask me now, Ruth, dear. Is--is he at home or at the office?" "At home, I think. The office will not be open to-day, this being a holiday." "Then I am going to Chicago to see him," declared Barbara firmly. Ruth gazed at her incredulously. "You can't mean that?" "But I do." "Alone?" "Unless Aunt Sallie will accompany me. I would rather she did not to-day." "Bab, I don't know what you have in that little head of yours, but I do know that is it important. You are not flighty, like myself. You need not tell me what is it that is troubling you, but if you wish, I will go to town with you." "Oh, will you really go with me, Ruth?" cried Bab, her face expressing her relief at Ruth's declaration. "Then let's get ready at once." "You forget that we have Aunt Sallie to reckon with first, Bab," reminded Ruth. Miss Sallie for a time gave promise of wholly defeating Barbara's plan to go into the city to see Mr. Stuart. However, after Bab had taken Miss Sallie into her confidence, the latter gave a reluctant consent. Ruth knew her way about so well that there would be no possibility of getting lost, and then they were going to her home, which made the journey seem less undesirable than it might have under other circumstances. The result was that Ruth and Barbara took the nine o'clock train for Chicago that morning amid loud protests from Olive, Mollie and Grace. Ruth regretted that the man had not come out with Mr. A. Bubble that morning. She hoped, however, that they might find the car at home. Perhaps her father intended to drive out in the car that night. However, Barbara's mission being so urgent, the best thing to do was to take a train for Chicago at once. From the station in Chicago the girls proceeded quickly to the Stuart home. Mr. Stuart was not at home. He had not been there, but had called up on the telephone to say that he would try to be home for luncheon. Ruth went to the telephone and called up her father's office. Mr. Stuart's secretary, who had been called there to do some important work that day, said his employer would be in in half an hour. Bab announced her intention of going to the office, urging Ruth not to trouble to accompany her, as her friend had several matters to attend to at home. "Very well," answered Ruth, after a moment's reflection, "I will call a taxicab. I'll tell the driver exactly where to leave you. You must make him wait for you, then you can come straight back here. I know you want to see daddy alone, but I'm not a bit jealous," she added, giving Bab's pink cheek a loving pinch. "Daddy will be surprised to see you. You probably will be in time to take luncheon with him down town. I don't believe he will be home for luncheon now, it's getting so late. It's too bad that our Christmas dinner at Treasureholme had to be spoiled first with father's going away, then you making up your mind to rush down to Chicago. Tell me, dear, have you an idea in that little head of yours that you can help father in his present difficulty?" questioned Ruth earnestly. "Yes, I have," admitted Barbara, "But I would rather not tell you anything about it. You might make fun of me and convince me that I was foolish. I might be afraid to go to Mr. Stuart in that event, fearing he might make fun of me, too, but----" "Not father! There is the taxicab. I'll go out and tell the driver what I wish him to do." Ruth hurried out with her friend, giving the driver such directions as she had decided upon. The drive to the building in which Mr. Stuart's office was located occupied not more than fifteen minutes, for, this being a holiday, the streets were reasonably clear of the heavier vehicles that usually interfere with the traffic. Barbara knew the building, having been there before. She therefore found no difficulty in making her way to the office. The driver, acting upon Ruth's orders, waited below. But Bab again was fated to be disappointed. Mr. Stuart had not yet returned, his secretary informed her. Barbara decided to wait awhile. She inquired as to where she might find Mr. Stuart, but the secretary could not say. He informed her that there were important business conferences on for that day, though Mr. Stuart might be looked for at any moment. Bab went down and dismissed the taxicab, then returned to the office to wait. An hour went by, and still Mr. Stuart had not returned. So she entered into conversation with the not unwilling secretary by asking him if he knew Mr. Bonner, a Chicago broker. "Yes, I know him. Is he an acquaintance of yours?" he asked curiously. "I've met him. Where is his office?" The secretary told her, then added: "You're not going to see _him_, are you?" "I must see Mr. Stuart," replied Barbara evasively. "I'd better go, for he may go home without returning to the office." "That may be," said the secretary. "If he comes in, whom shall I tell him called?" "Miss Barbara Thurston," she answered, as she hurried away. Bab had some difficulty in getting past the clerks in the outer room, but was finally ushered into Mr. Bonner's private office. Bonner looked pleased when he saw his visitor, but he evidently failed to recognize her. "I'm Miss Thurston, the girl who saved your life perhaps in the wreck some time ago," she announced boldly and according to her plan. "Of course! How stupid of me! I owe a great deal to you, Miss Thurston." "You can do a great deal, Mr. Bonner," put in the girl quickly. "I've come to ask that you keep your promise to me." "Let me see, was it a box of bon-bons?" questioned Bonner lightly. Barbara ignored this and asked bluntly: "Why do you insist on ruining Mr. Stuart and Mr. Presby?" "Please explain yourself," said Bonner harshly, taken off his guard and flushing hotly. Barbara did so, in girlish fashion. "Young woman, did Robert Stuart send you to intercede for him?" "Oh, no! He would be displeased if he knew that I had come here to-day." "Miss Thurston, I admire your pluck. I, not being responsible for Mr. Stuart's or for Mr. Presby's speculations, can of course do nothing for you in this. If I could, I think my gratitude to you for saving my life would take a personal form. This is business, and in that each man fights for himself. By the way, how did you get the notion that I am in any way responsible for Mr. Stuart's misjudgment on market conditions?" "I chanced to overhear your conversation with your friend 'Jim' on the sleeper." "So you played eavesdropper! I would not have thought it of you, Miss Thurston." "It was impossible not to hear; but when you mentioned Mr. Stuart's name, I listened, call it what you please." "I presume you told Robert Stuart what you heard," he responded, again flushing. "No, Mr. Bonner--not yet." With the words, Barbara rose and ran out of the office, slamming the door behind her. Her face was aflame and she was trembling. When she reached the street she decided to walk for part of the distance, so that she would have time to quiet her agitation before she should reach the Stuarts' home. It was growing dark before she realized that she would have to take a taxi or the Stuarts would be very much worried about her. "Oh, Bab, where have you been? We've been frightfully worried," cried Ruth. "Dad's home, and he said his secretary told him you'd left the office about three o'clock." "I started to walk, and forgot how late it was, Ruth." Mr. Stuart, who had come into the hall in time to hear the conversation and noting how tired Bab looked, said: "Come to dinner now, and Barbara can tell us things later." When dinner was over and they were seated around the library fire, Barbara turned to Mr. Stuart and said: "I can tell you the name of the man who's fighting you and Mr. Presby, Mr. Stuart. Will the knowledge do you any good?" "You, Barbara! How can you know this? It would have helped a month ago, my girl; I fear it is too late now." Bab's heart sank. Was what she had done--and it had been hard for a girl to do--in vain? "Why does Mr. Nathan Bonner hate you?" "Nathan Bonner started, a green boy, as a clerk in my office. I thought him worthy and helped him, but finally found it necessary to dismiss him." "Yes, he's crooked," said Barbara. Mr. Stuart started and looked at the girl in amazement; so she settled back and told him the story of the trip to Chicago in detail. "He mentioned your name, Mr. Stuart. He also said that because I had saved his life, he would assist me if I ever needed aid. To-day he refused." "To-day! Where did you see Bonner?" "Oh!" Only then did Barbara tell her host how she had spent the afternoon. "My dear, you're a very imprudent girl. Nevertheless, you have done me a service for which I can never give you adequate thanks," said Mr. Stuart, his voice husky with emotion. CHAPTER XX CONCLUSION THE next morning after breakfast, the girls, bundled in furs, left the house for their ride to Treasureholme. Mr. Stuart had done what he could by telephone, but had not yet gone downtown, for there was nothing further to be accomplished until the opening of the market. Just before he helped the girls into the car he thrust a finger into his vest pocket and said: "I almost forgot. The men at the garage found this in the bottom of the car. I think it's your lost memorandum, Barbara." "Oh, thank you! I'm so glad!" cried Bab. "Ruth," said Barbara, after the girls had reached the outskirts of the city, "do you think there really is a hidden treasure and if we could find it your father----" "I haven't much faith in the treasure, and if one should come to light, it would be Mr. Presby's and not father's." "Mr. Presby would use it to help himself, and that would draw your father out, too." "Bab, you ought to be on the Exchange; you'd make a good trader," laughed Ruth. Then she went on: "No, Bab, I'm afraid we'll lose all we have. I don't care for myself. I can be poor, just as daddy and my mother were once. But I grieve for father." "Ruth, darling," whispered Bab. On their arrival at Treasureholme the girls found that Mr. Stuart had telephoned to Miss Sallie about what Bab had tried to do for her two hosts. The girls tried to make a heroine of her, but she steadfastly refused to think she had done anything extraordinary. When Barbara was finally alone in her room she drew out of her pocket the slip of yellow paper, spread it on her lap and regarded it intently. "'The span of a minute is sixty seconds,'" she read. "What can that mean?" She got up and paced the floor thinking deeply, trying to solve the meaning. She at last went to a window and spread the paper on the pane for the purpose of getting a better light on it. Her gaze, at first careless, suddenly became keen. All at once she whirled about and dashed from the room. "Girls, I have it!" she screamed, bursting in on the others, who were in Ruth's room. "I've solved the mystery! I've found the key! We must get Mr. Stevens! We mustn't lose a minute! Everything's at stake!" "What is it, Bab? Are you certain?" demanded Grace, springing to her feet. "Oh, I can't tell you now! Let's get Mr. Stevens, can't we?" "Mr. A. Bubble!" cried Ruth, and flew from the room. The girls rushed pell-mell for the car, dragging Miss Stuart with them, none knowing what Bab had in mind, but all eager and excited. Ruth drove at top speed, and the girls burst in on Bob Stevens whom they found in his shop. "See this!" cried Bab, holding the bit of paper out to the young man. "Put it against the window." He did so wonderingly, then turned and looked at the girls. "What did you see?" demanded Bab impatiently. Bob had seen a line drawn from the top of a toadstool extending to the right. At the end of the line was the sign "60". "What do those little marks after the sixty mean?" demanded Bab. "On building plans they would mean inches. Expressing time, they would indicate seconds." "You have it! If we face the woods and start to measure from the top of the 'toadstool,' that undoubtedly represents the mound under which lies the big chief, and measure off 'sixty seconds' which means sixty inches, or five feet, we'll find the treasure." No one stopped to question the probability of Barbara's deductions. Bob summoned a man who worked for him, sent a boy to get two more from Treasureholme, and, taking picks, shovels, and a coil of rope, drove off with the girls in Mr. A. Bubble as fast as they could go to the Indian burying ground. It was nearly dark when they reached there and sprang from the car, neither Bab nor Bob waiting for it to come to a full stop. "William, bring me something I can drive in here for a marker," Bob called to his man who was hurrying toward them from the direction of the woods. "There's a fellow over there in the woods," announced William. "He was kind of hiding." "Never mind that. Let's get to work here." The two hands from Treasureholme arrived, and, the measurements having been taken, the men set to digging. Lanterns had been brought and when dark fell these were lighted and held by the girls. In an hour's time the men had opened a hole six feet deep, as broad at the top, narrowing toward the bottom. "It begins to look dubious," said Bob. "Say, Barbara, we'll try another way!" Following Bob's directions, Bab placed one end of the steel tape in the middle of the big mound and again the exact distance was measured. Bob took the stake that William had brought up to measure with and drove it with the back of his shovel little by little down in the exact center of the hole he had dug. He had forced the stake down about three feet when he uttered an exclamation. "What is it?" cried the girls in chorus. "Maybe a stone. I hardly think it is," and he began to dig frantically. In a few moments came the shout: "I've struck metal! There is something here!" The girls danced with impatience, but a half hour went by before the men unearthed an iron box with bands of the same material about it and the cover soldered to the box to make it air tight. Bab put her arms about Ruth and whispered: "It will be all right now, Ruth. Oh, I'm so glad!" while the other girls laughed and shouted in their excitement. It was the work of another half hour before the four men got a rope around the heavy box and, by the aid of the automobile, drew it out of the deep hole, after which, with great labor, it was got into the car. Once at the house, it was left to Mrs. Presby, as the representative of the family, to say what should be done with the chest. "Open it," was the command. This was not easily done, but when the work was finally accomplished, what a sight met their eyes! There was at least a bushel of gold coins. There was valuable family plate. In a sealed receptacle they found a quantity of jewels and a bundle of papers. The papers Mrs. Presby put away until her husband should have an opportunity to go over them. "There's a fortune here. I think Treasureholme need not be lost now," said Stevens. "It comes too late," said Mrs. Presby bitterly. "Mr. Presby telephoned me after the close of the market that to-morrow would end all, as he and Robert could not meet their obligations when it opened in the morning." "To-morrow morning!" exclaimed Bab. "Then we must get this treasure to them to-night! We must do it some way!" "Impossible," said Olive. "No, it's not!" declared Ruth. "I'll take the chest to Chicago in the car." "But it's nearly midnight, Ruth. You can't do it," protested Mrs. Presby. There was little time for discussion and objection, and in the end the chest was again loaded into the car and the four "Automobile Girls" and Bob Stevens set off for Chicago, Miss Sallie promising to telephone to Mr. Stuart that the girls were on their way. It was a wild midnight ride into Chicago. The girls became convinced that they were being followed, but by turning off her lights and driving into a private lane until the following car had flashed by and then taking a longer but little-used road into the city, Ruth evaded the pursuers, if such they were. Nor did they see the car again until they drew up in front of the Stuart house in the brilliantly light street and with a policeman in plain sight. Mr. Stuart and Mr. Presby spent the night in making an inventory and the morning before the opening of the market in calling up their bankers and lawyers. They were tired and worn when the opening hour came, but the day was saved, and while neither made the fortune he had anticipated, each had added materially to his wealth. For this they gave credit to Barbara Thurston, but she steadfastly refused the reward they offered her. The money reward she refused, but she could not refuse the admiration and love they gave her. They learned later that Nathan Bonner had had a private detective on the grounds of Treasureholme, and it was he who had followed Mr. A. Bubble into the city. Bonner lost heavily in the crash, but still retained enough of his fortune to be a financial power. A week of pleasure followed the finding of the treasure. On the evening before the departure of Bab and Mollie and Grace for Kingsbridge, Ruth gave a large reception in honor of her guests. On the evening of the affair the four girls, when they repaired to their rooms in the Stuart home to dress for the reception, found four exquisite frocks, the gifts of Mr. Stuart and Mr. Presby, who would not be denied this method of showing their appreciation. The gowns were white filmy chiffon over soft white silk. White shoes, white silk chiffon hose, everything needed to complete their toilet that night lay ready at hand. None of the three girls from Kingsbridge had dreamed that they would ever possess such beautiful and exquisitely designed dresses. But this was not their only surprise. A great box of roses was delivered to the house while the girls were dressing. It was addressed to Miss Barbara Thurston. With it there was a note reading: "I always did love a fighter. What a trader you would make! It was a fair fight, and you won. NATHAN BONNER." "No, it wasn't a fair fight. It was distinctly an unfair one," declared Barbara. "I think I shall send these flowers back." "I don't believe I would do that," advised Miss Sallie. "The flowers are plainly intended as a tribute to you as a fighter, Bab, and the acceptance of flowers is unlike the acceptance of any other gift." So Barbara kept the roses. The next day the "Automobile Girls'" party was broken up. The time for Grace, Bab, and Mollie to return to Kingsbridge had arrived, to the keen regret of both the young people and their elders. Mr. Stuart, with a twinkle in his eyes, kept talking vaguely about "Easter," but what his plans were, he would not say. The wonderful Easter vacation that these plans developed into may be read about in a following volume entitled, "THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT PALM BEACH; or, Proving Their Mettle Under Southern Skies," a vacation never to be forgotten by the "Automobile Girls." THE END _And There Are Others!_ You will find other books listed on the three following pages that will prove just as interesting reading as this book. They can all be procured at the same store where you got this book. THE ANNAPOLIS SERIES By H. IRVING HANCOCK PRICE, $1.00 EACH [Illustration] Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell proved their mettle at the U. S. Naval Academy and gave promise of what might be expected of them in the great war that was even at that moment hovering over the world. =1. DAVE DARRIN'S FIRST YEAR AT ANNAPOLIS; or, Two Plebe Midshipmen at the U. S. Naval Academy.= =2. DAVE DARRIN'S SECOND YEAR AT ANNAPOLIS; or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters."= =3. DAVE DARRIN'S THIRD YEAR AT ANNAPOLIS; or, Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen.= =4. DAVE DARRIN'S FOURTH YEAR AT ANNAPOLIS; or, Headed for Graduation and the Big Cruise.= THE WEST POINT SERIES By H. IRVING HANCOCK PRICE, $1.00 EACH Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes are not human wonders, but a pair of average bright American boys who had a hard enough time working their way through West Point. Their experiences will inspire all other American boys. =1. DICK PRESCOTT'S FIRST YEAR AT WEST POINT; or, Two Chums in the Cadet Gray.= =2. DICK PRESCOTT'S SECOND YEAR AT WEST POINT; or, Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life.= =3. DICK PRESCOTT'S THIRD YEAR AT WEST POINT; or, Standing Firm for Flag and Honor.= =4. DICK PRESCOTT'S FOURTH YEAR AT WEST POINT; or, Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps.= THE PONY RIDER BOYS SERIES By FRANK GEE PATCHIN PRICE, $1.00 EACH [Illustration] This unusual and popular series tells vividly the story of four adventure-loving lads, who, with their guardian, spent their summer vacations in the saddle in search of recreation and healthful adventure. Long journeys over mountain, through the fastness of primitive forest and across burning desert, lead them into the wild places of their native land as well as into many strange and exciting experiences. There is not a dull moment in the series. =1. THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN THE ROCKIES; or, The Secret of the Lost Claim.= =2. THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN TEXAS; or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains.= =3. THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN MONTANA; or, The Mystery of the Old Custer Trail.= =4. THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN THE OZARKS; or, The Secret of Ruby Mountain.= =5. THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN THE ALKALI; or, Finding a Key to the Desert Maze.= =6. THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN NEW MEXICO; or, The End of the Silver Trail.= =7. THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN THE GRAND CANYON; or, The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch.= =8. THE PONY RIDER BOYS WITH THE TEXAS RANGERS; or, On the Trail of the Border Bandits.= =9. THE PONY RIDER BOYS ON THE BLUE RIDGE; or, A Lucky Find in the Carolina Mountains.= =10. THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN NEW ENGLAND; or, An Exciting Quest in the Maine Wilderness.= =11. THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN LOUISIANA; or, Following the Game Trails in the Canebrake.= =12. THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN ALASKA; or, The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass.= THE HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS SERIES By JESSIE GRAHAM FLOWER, A. M. PRICE, $1.00 EACH [Illustration] The scenes, episodes, and adventures through which Grace Harlowe and her intimate chums pass in the course of these stories are pictured with a vivacity that at once takes the young feminine captive. =1. GRACE HARLOWE'S PLEBE YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL; or, The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls.= =2. GRACE HARLOWE'S SOPHOMORE YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL; or, The Record of the Girl Chums in Work and Athletics.= =3. GRACE HARLOWE'S JUNIOR YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL; or, Fast Friends in the Sororities.= =4. GRACE HARLOWE'S SENIOR YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL; or, The Parting of the Ways.= THE COLLEGE GIRLS SERIES By JESSIE GRAHAM FLOWER, A. M. PRICE, $1.00 EACH Every school and college girl will recognize that the account of Grace Harlowe's experiences at Overton College is true to life. =1. GRACE HARLOWE'S FIRST YEAR AT OVERTON COLLEGE.= =2. GRACE HARLOWE'S SECOND YEAR AT OVERTON COLLEGE.= =3. GRACE HARLOWE'S THIRD YEAR AT OVERTON COLLEGE.= =4. GRACE HARLOWE'S FOURTH YEAR AT OVERTON COLLEGE.= =5. GRACE HARLOWE'S RETURN TO OVERTON CAMPUS.= =6. GRACE HARLOWE'S PROBLEM.= =7. GRACE HARLOWE'S GOLDEN SUMMER.= * * * * * Transcriber's note: Obvious punctuation errors were corrected. Page 145, "wierd" changed to "weird" (weird wail rose from) Page 187, "rasing" changed to "raising" (raising their sweet) 
37911	----	THE MOTOR GIRLS AT LOOKOUT BEACH OR IN QUEST OF THE RUNAWAYS Margaret Penrose 1911 CONTENTS: CHAPTER I--SUMMER PLANS CHAPTER II--AT THE STRAWBERRY PATCH CHAPTER III--THE STRIKE CHAPTER IV--ARBITRATION CHAPTER V--TOO CONFIDENT CHAPTER VI--CORA'S QUEER PLIGHT CHAPTER VII--THE CLUE AT THE SPRING HOUSE CHAPTER VIII--A STARTLING DISCOVERY CHAPTER IX--COMPLICATIONS CHAPTER X--ALMOST--BUT NOT QUITE CHAPTER XI--ANDY'S WARNING CHAPTER XII--THE "UNPLANNED" PLANS CHAPTER XIII--GOING AND COMING CHAPTER XIV--LOST ON THE ROAD CHAPTER XV--BOYS TO THE RESCUE CHAPTER XVI--THE SHADOW IN THE HEDGE CHAPTER XVII--AT WAYSIDE INN CHAPTER XVIII--LOOKOUT BEACH CHAPTER XIX--THE MOVING PICTURE "MOVED" CHAPTER XX--THE GAIETY OF GOING CHAPTER XXI--BOYS AND GIRLS CHAPTER XXII--A STRUGGLE WITH THE WAVES CHAPTER XXIII--THE EXCURSION CHAPTER XXIV--THE TWO ORPHANS CHAPTER XXV--THE TRUTH! THE WHOLE TRUTH! CHAPTER I SUMMER PLANS Bess Robinson was so filled with enthusiasm that her sister Belle declared there was serious danger of "blowing-up," unless there was some repression. Belle herself might be equally enthusiastic, but she had a way of restraining herself, while Bess just delighted in the "utmost" of everything. The two sisters were talking on the side porch of their handsome home in Chelton, a New England town, located on the Chelton river. It was a beautiful day, late in spring. "Well, have you sufficiently quieted down, Bess?" asked Belle, after a pause, which succeeded the more quiet girl's attempt to curb her sister's enthusiasm--a pause that was filled with just the hint of pique. "Quieted down? I should think any one would quiet down after such a call-down as you gave me, if you will allow the use of such slang in your presence, Miss Prim," retorted Bess, with a little tilt to her stubby nose. "Oh, come now, Bess----" "Well, don't be so fussy, then. We have always wanted to go to a real watering place, and now, when we are really to go, Belle Robinson, you take it as solemnly as if it were a message from boarding-school, summoning us back to class. Why don't you warm up a bit? I--I feel as if I could--yell! There, that's out, and I don't care! I wish I was a boy, and then--then I could do something when I felt happy, besides sitting down, and looking pleased. Boys have a way of showing their feelings. I know what I'm going to do. I'm just going to get out the car, and run over to Cora Kimball's. She'll know how to rejoice with me about going to Lookout Beach. Oh, Belle, isn't it just perfectly--too lovely for anything! There, I was going to say scrumbunctious, but I won't in your presence--Miss Prim!" "Why, Bess--you silly," retorted her sister. "Of course I'm glad, too. But I don't have to go into kinks to show it. We will have a glorious time, I'm sure, for they say Lookout Beach is a perfectly ideal place." "'Ideal'! Oh, there you go!" and Bess made a grimace of her pretty face. "'Ideal'! Belle, why don't you take a private room somewhere, just off the earth, so you can be just as perfectly proper as you wish. 'Ideal!' Whoop! Why not sweet? Oh, I say--Burr-r-r-r! It's going to be immense! Now there, and you can get mad if you want to," and with this parting shot Bess hurried off to the little garage in the rear of the house. "Is the car ready to take out, Patrick?" she asked the man of all work about the Robinson place. "Yes, miss. I poured the gasolene in the little hole under the seat where you showed me, and I filled up the oil tank, and I give it a drink. I put in ice-water, Miss." "Ice-water? Why, Patrick?" for Patrick was a new acquisition, and what he didn't know about automobiles would have made two large books of instructions to beginners. "Why ice water, Patrick?" and Bess raised her pretty eyebrows. "Well, sure, an' Miss Belle said the other day, as how the water b'iled on her, miss--that is, not exactly b'iled _on_ her, but b'iled in the tea kettle--I mean that thing punched full of holes--in the front of the car." "The radiator," suggested Bess, trying not to laugh. "Yes, that's it, miss, though why they calls it a radiator, when they want it to kape cool, is beyond me. Howsomever----" "About the ice water, Patrick." "Yes, miss, I'm comin' to that. You see when Miss Belle said as how it b'iled over the other day, I thinks to myself that sure ice-water will never boil, so I filled the radiator with some as cold as I could bear me fist in it. Arrah, an' it's no b'ilin' water ye'll have th' day, when ye takes this car out, Miss Bess." "Oh, Patrick, how kind of you!" exclaimed the girl. "And what a novel idea. I'm sure it will be all right," and she placed her hand on the radiator. It was as cold as a pump handle on a frosty morning. "I blew up the tires, too, miss," went on the man, "an' here's a four leaf clover I found. Take it along." "What for?" asked Bess, as she accepted the emblem. "Sure, fer good luck. Maybe ye'll not git a puncture now. Clovers is good luck." "Oh, thank you," said Bess earnestly, as she cranked up, for Patrick had not yet advanced this far in his auto-education. Then the girl, most becomingly attired in auto hood and coat, backed the pretty little silver-colored runabout, _Flyaway_, owned by herself and her sister, "the Robinson twins," out of the garage, and turned it on the broad drive. "Would ye mind that now!" exclaimed Patrick, admiringly. "It's as--as slick as a pig's whistle, miss, savin' yer presence." Bess laughed merrily. "I'm glad to see that some one besides myself uses a bit of--I mean an expression that means something--once in a while, Patrick," she said, as she threw in the clutch, after adjusting the lever to low speed. "Yis, miss," answered the man, as he looked with admiration at the trim and pretty figure in the little car. "Now I wonder what did she mane?" he asked himself, when Bess was out on the road. "Sure them is two great gurls--Miss Isabel and Miss Elizabeth--great gurls!" and Patrick went to curry the horses kept by Mr. Robinson, this being work that the genial and faithful Irishman understood perfectly well. Isabel, meanwhile, continued to sun her splendid hair over the railing of the side porch, in spite of the almost constant danger that it might become entangled in the honeysuckle vine, or be mistaken by a wandering bee or humming bird for some nest or hive in which to nestle. Isabel was always the "dreamer." She had "nerves," and she loved everything aesthetic. Bess, on the contrary, was always "on the spot," as her boy friends declared, and, while she might be a trifle over-enthusiastic at times, there was this consolation, that she was never glum, as her personal supply of good-nature never seemed to be lacking. Not that Isabel was moody, save at such times when she was alone, and thought of many things--for, in company, she entered into the fun with a zest equal to almost anyone's save her more volatile sister. So the Robinson twins were an interesting study--so different in disposition--so unlike in taste--but so well matched on two points--their love for motoring and a good time during vacation, and their love for their chum and companion, Cora Kimball. While her sister was lazily dreaming away amid the honeysuckle vines, letting the gentle breeze riffle through, and dry her hair, Bess was skimming along the fine Chelton roads, her mind intent on the good times in prospect when she, with her mother and sister, were to go to a cottage at Lookout Beach. "Oh, I just know it will be perfectly bang-up!" exclaimed Bess, half aloud, and smiling at the chance to use words that meant something, without shocking Belle. "We will have no end of good times. My! It makes me want to go fast to think about it," and, suiting the action to the word, she pressed her foot on the accelerator pedal, and the car shot forward, while the hand on the dial of the speedometer trembled around the twenty-five miles an hour mark. "I don't care!" thought Bess, as she kept her foot on the pedal. "I'm going to speed for once. Belle never will let me." As she suddenly swung around a turn in the road she was made aware of how fast the pace was, for the car skidded a bit dangerously, and, a moment later, without a warning blast of the horn, another auto, moving in the opposite direction, shot into view. By a quick twist of the steering wheel, nearly sending the car into the ditch at the roadside, Bess avoided a collision. "Why didn't you blow your horn?" she shot indignantly at the occupant of the car--a young man, who had also turned out quickly. "Why didn't you blow your own?" he wanted to know, and then he smiled, for he, too, had slowed down. "I guess it's horse and horse," he added, good-naturedly, if slangily. "I was thinking of something else." "So was I," admitted Bess with a half smile, and then, having slowed down too much to allow going ahead on high speed, she had to throw out the clutch just as she was about to proceed, and change back to low gear. Quickly she threw into second, as a preliminary to third, but she was not quick enough. The motor stalled, and the car came to a stop, amid a grinding of the gears. "Can I help you?" asked the young man, jamming on his emergency brake. "No, thank you," answered Bess coolly and quickly. "I can manage," and, before he could reach her car, for he had alighted from his own, she had gotten out, cranked up, and was in her seat again. Then she hurried off down the road, leaving a rather crestfallen young chap standing in the dusty highway. "Remarkably pretty girl--that," he said, aloud. "I wish I could have helped her. But she was cool, all of a sudden. Maybe she didn't like my slang--I wish I could break myself of using it--hang the luck--there I go again," and, with a shake of his head he went back to his car. "Adventure number one," mused Bess, as she swung along, not so fast this time. "I wonder what will come next? I guess I am getting a little too high-spirited. I must calm down. But I can't, when I think of Lookout Beach." She had not gone a hundred rods farther when a flock of chickens crossed the road, just ahead of the machine. "Shoo!" cried Bess. "Shoo! Scat! Get out!" and she blew the horn vigorously. "I wonder why someone doesn't invent a horn or something to scare dogs and chickens?" she went on, as the fowls showed little disposition to do more than run, fluttering and squawking, right ahead of the car. Then they darted to one side--all but one unfortunate, and the big rubber tires passed over one leg, crippling it. "Hi, you! Stop!" commanded a woman's harsh voice, and Bess, who was running slowly now, saw an unlovely personage rushing from the yard of a dilapidated house, toward the machine. "I've got your license number," went on the woman, "and I'll make a complaint if you don't pay for my chicken. You automobile folks is allers running over 'em, and cripplin' 'em so they ain't fit fer nothing." "This is the first time I ever ran over anything," retorted Bess indignantly. "I guess I know how to drive a car!" "Well, it won't be the last time you run over somethin' if you scoot along like I seen you just now," went on the owner of the limping fowl. "I want pay for my chicken, or I'll have th' law on ye," and she planted herself determinedly in front of the now stationary car. "Very well," answered Bess, not wishing to argue with such a character. "Here is fifty cents. The chicken is a small one, and that's all it's worth. Besides it is hardly hurt at all." "It's wuth seventy-five cents, ef it ain't a dollar!" stormed the woman, as she accepted the coin that the girl handed her. "I've a good notion to----" But her further words were lost, for Bess turned on the power, threw in the clutch, shifted the gear lever, and was off down the road. "Adventure number two," she remarked grimly. "I hope it isn't three times and out. Patrick's clover works by opposite, I guess," but she drove along, her high spirits not a whit repressed by what had happened. For Bess was not a girl easily daunted, as those of you who have read the previous volumes of this series know. She was almost the equal of her chum, Cora Kimball, was Bess Robinson. In my first book, entitled "The Motor Girls," Cora Kimball, the tall, handsome, dark-haired daughter of Mrs. Grace Kimball, and, likewise, the well-beloved sister of Jack Kimball, had first secured her auto. It was a four cylinder, touring machine, capable of good speed, and the color was Cora's special choosing--a handsome maroon. The story dealt with a mystery of the road, and told how Cora successfully solved it, in spite of the efforts of Ida Giles and Sid Wilcox to make trouble. As her guests Cora had, on many runs of her car, the Robinson twins, Walter Pennington, Jack's college chum, and Ed Foster. The latter was one of the chief figures in the road mystery, for one day he suddenly missed his wallet, containing money and negotiable securities to the amount of twenty thousand dollars. A little later the pocketbook, with the money missing, was found in the tool box of Cora's car. Then there followed a "whirlwind" of excitement, which did not end until those responsible for the taking of the money had been discovered and the cash and papers returned. Among other troubles Cora and her friends had to contend with the meanness of Sid Wilcox and the jealousy of Ida Giles. In the second volume of the series, called "The Motor Girls on a Tour; or, Keeping a Strange Promise," there was related how Cora and her friends were instrumental, after making a strange promise, in restoring to a little cripple a long-lost table, containing a will. How the hunt for the strange piece of furniture, with a secret drawer, was made, while the girls were on a tour, how the Robinson twins managed their car, which they had secured in the meanwhile, and how Jack Kimball also succeeded in getting a runabout--all this is set down in the book. Paul Hastings, a young chauffeur, and his pretty sister Hazel, also had their parts to play, and well they did. Now it was coming on summer again, and, after much planning and discussing, the Robinson twins and their mother had decided on a seashore cottage. They hoped that Cora Kimball could be induced to go with them, and, if Cora did go, why, of course, it meant that Jack would come down, occasionally, or, perhaps, oftener. And Ed and Walter might also happen to drop in--which would be very pleasant. "Oh, it's just glorious," thought Bess, as she continued to skim along. "I hope the season will be miles long and years old. We will have a gay time." Bess turned the _Flyaway_ into the gravel road that wound up to the handsome and stately Kimball homestead. A toot of the horn brought Cora out of doors quickly, while Bess jammed on the brake and threw out the clutch, and then, as the car came to a squeaking standstill, she shoved over the spark and gasolene levers, with a ripping sound along the ratchets, and turned off the sparking device. "Come on in and cool off," invited Cora. "It's very warm. Summer has almost arrived. I'm delighted to see you, Bess." "And I you. Indeed I am coming in. Such news--you'll never guess in your whole life, Cora." "You're going to get a new machine!" "No, not yet, though I think we will next season. Papa is sort of softening toward a six cylinder. No, but it's almost as good as that." "What is it, dear?" and Cora placed her arm around the waist of Bess, as they mounted the broad steps. "Cora Kimball, we're going to take a cottage at Lookout Beach! Such a delightful place--and Cora dear," she panted on, "can you come? _Will_ you come?" "Shall I come? Should I come," went on Cora, teasingly. "Why, my dear," she went on, "do sit down, and catch your breath before it escapes further. The boys are around here somewhere, and they are always on the still hunt for----" "Cora Kimball! I'm not one bit out of breath," panted Bess, "but I am just dying to tell you----" "Oh, that is it! Well, let me make you comfortable so that the death----" She stopped, and swung back a porch chair for Bess. The latter threw aside her motor bonnet and "ripped off" her gloves. "No, but seriously, Cora," Bess said. "Will you go with us? We have taken a cottage, and we are, of course, going to take our car, and we do so want to take you!" "You dear!" exclaimed Cora. "I haven't planned for summer yet, but I do think mother is going abroad, and I honestly feared I would have to tag along. I just hate to think of Europe, so maybe I could induce mother to let me go with you. She has such confidence in Mrs. Perry Robinson." "Mother would take all sorts of care of you. I can assure you and your mother of that," declared Bess. "And we have almost decided, without ever asking you, that you shall come along. What fun would we have motoring without you?" "Without me, or without Jack?" teased Cora. "Well, never mind, Bess, perhaps we can take turns. I am sure I would rather go to Lookout Beach and camp than to go to Europe and tramp--there I have made a rhyme, and will see my beau before nine. Pray, Bess, come indoors with me while I complexion. I have been motoring all morning, in this stiff breeze, and I feel as if my face will crack if I don't hurry to cream it. And then, that I am to see my beau----" The splendid color in Cora's cheeks belied her words. Nevertheless the girls went indoors, and, while Cora removed a surprising amount of grit on each piece of cotton she daubed her cheeks with, Bess had a better chance to talk over the plans for the summer at the seaside. Following her cream-wash Cora turned on her face the tiny spray of tepid water from her own little silver faucet in the corner, and then "feeling clean," as she expressed it, she just touched her cheeks and nose with another piece of cotton "to pat off the shine." "You know I have to go out again this afternoon, and I do find that it pays to keep in order. I suppose Belle would think this sort of fixing up not half thorough enough?" "Oh, she takes a regular Turkish when she has been out in a dusty wind," declared Bess. "But, for my part, I prefer a thick veil, in front of a cream setting. Then I catch all the dirt in the cream and only have to wash it off instead of----" "Washing it on. A good idea, Bess. But I can't breathe back of cream. It makes my lungs sticky," and Cora put a last touch to her heavy dark hair, just as her brother's voice was heard in the lower hallway. "There's Jack!" exclaimed both girls at once. "Let's tell him," suggested Bess, who was not always able to conceal her interest in Cora's handsome brother. "Oh, no, don't," whispered Cora, as Jack was almost at the door of the sitting room. "It will be a joke to plan it all out, and surprise the boys!" But Jack was actually tumbling into the room before he saw Bess. He, too, was evidently "too full of good news to keep!" "Oh, sis!" he yelled, still unconscious of the presence of Bess, "take my hand and squeeze it, or I shall 'bust.' It's too good to be true, and too good not to be true. We are going----" Then his eye fell upon Cora's visitor. Instantly and in a boy's inimitable way he "pulled himself together" and finished: "We are going down to the post-office this evening!" "Oh, is that all you were going to say?" asked Bess, in some disappointment, for it was evident that Jack had some news. "Well, not quite all," he replied with an air of mystery, "only I happened to hear certain peculiar whispers and admonitions as I was coming in, and I guess girls aren't the only ones who can keep a secret. I'll tell if you'll tell," he added. "We've nothing to tell; have we, Cora?" and Bess looked as innocent as possible. "How could you ever imagine such a thing, Jack?" inquired his sister. "Well, that's neither here nor there, then," was the young man's cool answer. "But if you're going after the stuff to make jam tarts with this winter, Cora, you'd better start," and at this somewhat enigmatical remark, Jack began whistling a tantalizing air, while Bess winked at her chum. CHAPTER II AT THE STRAWBERRY PATCH "Yes, I promised mother I would go for a crate of strawberries," Cora said, by way of explanation. "Would you like to come along, Bess? It is a lovely ride to the berry patch." "Then, I think I will run back for Belle, and we, too, may fetch home a crate. Mother will be delighted to get them fresh from the pickers." "Suppose we meet in an hour at Smith's Crossing?" suggested Cora. "I have some little things to attend to, and that will just about give you time to get Belle, and her belongings." This was agreed upon, and the girls parted for the short time. Jack insisted upon keeping his wonderful good news secret, for, try as he did, he could not coax Cora to divulge the news which he knew Bess must have brought. "I could see it in her cheeks," Jack insisted, "and I can almost read that signal code you two have arranged." "Well, when it is all settled I may--tell you," replied his sister. "But you boys imagine that girls cannot keep anything to themselves----" "Wrong there, sis," he answered, picking up his cap. "We all know perfectly well that you all can keep to yourselves exactly what we want to know," and in leaving the room he tossed a sofa cushion at Cora's head, hitting her squarely, and knocking her hair awry. She retaliated, however, with a floor cushion over the banister, which Jack failed to dodge. At the appointed time, three o'clock, on a lovely June afternoon, Cora and Bess met as arranged with their autos at the cross-roads, Belle dainty as ever in her flimsy veils and airy silk coat, Bess, with her hand on the wheel, her eyes on the road ahead, and her jolly self done up simply in pongee, while Cora, correct as ever, and equally distinctive in her true green auto hood, and cloak that matched, made up a very attractive trio of auto maids. "It's only six miles out," called Cora, "and this road runs straight into Squaton. They have quite a big strawberry farm out there." "Yes," called back Bess, turning on more gasolene and throwing in third speed, "mother was just delighted when I told her we were going there for berries." Over the smooth, shaded road the cars sped, the _Whirlwind_, Cora's machine, exactly attuned to the hum of the _Flyaway_, the car occupied by the twins. Just as two clocks, placed side by side, will soon tick in harmony, so two good engines may match each other in the hum of speed. "I can smell the berries," exclaimed Belle, as they neared a group of tall elms. "We are almost there," remarked Cora, "and I think I, too, smell something good." Under the trees by the roadside they espied some boys eating from a pail of berries. "There," said Bess, "that was what you scented. Those youngsters have been picking, I suppose, and that is their own personal allowance." "Berries! Five cents a quart!" called out one of the urchins, who at the same time stepped out into the road close to the slackened autos. "Not to-day," replied Cora, as she passed on, followed by the _Flyaway_. "Wouldn't you think they would want to take those home," said Bess. "I should think they would be satisfied with their earnings at the patch." "Maybe they have not been picking--except for their own use," responded Cora. "But here we are. Get out now, and we will walk over to the shanty where they crate the fruit." "What an ocean of green!" exclaimed Belle, the aesthetic one, looking over the strawberry patch. "An ocean of dust, I think," said Bess, as from the afternoon sun and breeze the grind of the picker's feet in the dusty rows between the countless lines of green vines just reached her eyes. "There are plenty of them," remarked Cora, wending her way along the narrow path, toward the shanty. "And so many people picking," added Belle. "Just look at those boys! They are as brown as--their clothes. And see that poor old woman!" "Yes, her back must ache," replied Cora. "What a shame for her to be out in this sun." "She looks as if she could never bend again if she should straighten up," said Bess. "See how she stares at us from under her own arms." This peculiar remark caused the other girls to smile, but Bess meant exactly what she said--that the old woman was looking up from an angle lower than her elbows. Just then the autoists faced two of the pickers--two girls. Both stopped their work and looked up almost insolently. Then they spoke under their breath to each other and "tittered" audibly. "They're rude," said Belle to Bess, picking her skirts as she stepped by. "Oh, that's just their way," exclaimed Cora. "I am going to speak to them." So saying she turned in between the rows. "Is it hard work?" she asked pleasantly. "No cinch," replied the older-looking of the girls, with a toss of a very good head of auburn hair. "Have you been out long?" persisted Cora. "Oh, we're always out," said the younger girl with a sneer. Her voice said plainly that she had "no use" for talking with the motor girls. "Do you work all day?" asked Bess, a little timidly. Bess was always ready to admit that she could talk to boys, but that she was afraid of strange girls. "All day, and all night," replied the younger girl. She had hair just a tint lighter than the other, and it was evident that the pair were sisters. "But you cannot see to work at night," Belle deigned to say. "We have lamps--indoors," said the girl, "and Aunt Delia keeps boarders." "Oh, you help with the housework too?" said Cora. "I should think----" then she checked herself. Why should she say what she thought--just then? Perhaps it was the unmistakable kindness shown so plainly in the manner of the motor girls, that convinced the two little berry-pickers that the visitors would be friends--if they might. At any rate, both girls dropped the vines they were overhauling, and stood straight up, with evident stiffness of their young muscles. "But we are not going to do this all our lives," declared the older girl. "Aunt Delia has made enough out of us." "Have you no parents?" ventured Cora. "No, we're orphans," replied the girl, and, as she spoke the word "orphans," the ring of sadness touched the hearts of the older girls. Cora instantly decided to know more about the girls. Their youthful faces were already serious with cares, and they each assumed that aggressive manner peculiar to those who have been oppressed. They seemed, as they looked up, and squarely faced Cora, like girls capable of better work than that in which they were engaged, and they gave the impression of belonging to the distinctive middle class--those "who have not had a chance." "Can't you come over in the shade and rest awhile?" asked Cora. "You must have picked almost enough for to-day." "Oh, to-day won't count, anyway," said the younger girl, with hidden meaning. "Nellie!" called her sister, in angry tones. "What are you talking about!" "Well, I'm not afraid to tell," she replied. "You had better be," snapped the other. "Oh, Rose, you're a coward," and Nellie laughed, as she kicked aside the vines. "I'm not going to work another minute, and you can go and tell Aunt Delia Ramsy if you've a mind to." At that moment a figure emerged from the shed at the end of the long line of green rows. "There she is now, Nellie," said Rose. "You can tell her yourself if you like." Without another word the girls both again began the task so lately left off, and berry after berry fell into the little baskets. Rose had almost filled her tray, and Nellie had hers about half full of the quart boxes. "Rose!" called the woman's shrill voice, from under the big blue sunbonnet. "Come up here and count these tally sticks. Some of those kids are snibbying." With a sigh Rose picked up her tray, and made her way through the narrow paths. Cora saw that the woman had noticed her talking to Bess and Belle, and while wishing for a chance to talk to Nellie alone, she beckoned to her companions to go along up to the shed. "Maybe I'll see you soon again," almost whispered Nellie, in the way which so plainly betrays the hope of youth. "I am sure you will," replied Cora, smiling reassuringly. "What strange girls," remarked Belle. "Aren't they?" added Bess, turning back to get another look at little Nellie in her big-brimmed hat. "They are surely going to do something desperate," declared Cora, "and I think now that we have found them, as the boys would say, 'it is up to us' to keep track of them." CHAPTER III THE STRIKE "Oh, mercy!" exclaimed Bess, as they neared the shed, "did you ever see such a hateful old woman!" "Hush!" whispered Belle. "Do you want us to go back to Chelton without our berries?" "If she ever looks at them they will sour--they couldn't keep," went on Bess, recklessly, but in lowered tones. "We would like two crates of berries," Cora was saying to the woman, who stood, hands on her hips, framed in the narrow doorway of the sorting shed. "Yes," answered the woman. "Step inside and pick 'em out. They are all fresh picked to-day. Rose, don't you know enough to make room for the young lady?" and the woman glared at the girl who had hurried in from the patch. "Oh, I have plenty of room," Cora said with a smile to Rose. "What are those little sticks for?" "Them's the tally-sticks," answered the woman. "They get one for every quart they pick, and then they cash 'em in. Here!" and she snapped a bunch from the trembling hands of the girl who was counting and tying up in bunches the wooden counters, "let me show 'em to the young lady." "Oh, I can see them," declared Cora, without trying to hide her distaste for the woman's rudeness to Rose. "How many tally-sticks did you get to-day?" she asked the girl. "Oh, she don't get any," spoke the woman. Rose never raised her eyes. "Them two girls have me robbed with their eatin' and drinkin' and airs. I have to take care of them--they're me own sister's children," and she raised the hem of her dirty apron to her eyes. "But they help you," insisted Cora. "They pick berries all day, do they not?" "Help me?" came with a sneer. "I would like to see how! There's shoes to be bought, clothes and all sich. Then, butter is high, and them girls must have butter on their bread." "When we don't get anything else," spoke up Rose, boldly. "What!" called the aunt, her eyes flashing angrily. "That's the way I'm thanked! Go up to the house, and wash them dishes, and don't you leave the house till--I've talked with you," she commanded. "It's a hard job to bring up somebody else's children," and she tried to sigh, "but I am bound to do my best by 'em." Bess and Belle seemed actually frightened. They did not venture under the roof of the shack, but stood at the door with eyes staring. Rose passed out, and, as she did so, she winked at Belle. Belle gave a friendly little tug at the brown apron as it passed, and then Bess went inside, at Cora's request, to select her crate. Four very small boys slouched up the path to the shed. Their crates were full and they seemed ready to drop down from exhaustion. One, with fiery red hair, pushed his way ahead of the others and presented his tray to the woman. She surveyed it critically, then said: "Andy, did you swipe a bunch of tallies this morning?" "I did not!" replied the little fellow indignantly. "How many you got?" she demanded. He dug his dirty, brown hands down deep into his trousers pockets. Then he brought up three bunches of the tally-sticks. "Humph! I thought so," said the woman. "Do you mean to tell me a monkey like you can pick ten an hour?" "He's the best picker on the patch," spoke up another lad, "and I was with him when he brought each tray in!" The girls stood back, deeply interested. The woman took the tray from Andy and turned away without offering the ten little sticks which represented the gathering of ten quarts of berries. "Where's my tallies?" he demanded. "You--jest--w-a-i-t," drawled the woman. The other boys stepped back. Evidently they were going to "stick by Andy." "I'll give you your crates, and let you go, young ladies," said the woman to Cora. "These little rowdies ain't no fit company for customers in automobiles." "Oh, indeed we are enjoying looking around," declared Cora. "Do give the boys their checks, and let them go back to the patch. They are wasting time." Thus cornered, the woman was obliged to go on settling with the pickers. "Well," she said, "I'll give you credit, Andy, until I get a chance to look it up. Here, Narrow (to a very tall boy), gi'me yourn." "Nope!" replied the tall boy. "We waits fer Andy." "Well, I'm blowed!" exclaimed the woman. "If you kids ain't got a cheek! I've a good mind to chase every one of yer." Andy stepped back to where she had deposited the box. "Here!" she called, entirely forgetting the presence of the motor girls. "Git out of here!" and at that she struck the little fellow a blow on the head that caused him to reel, and then fall backward into an open crate of fresh berries! "Now you've done it!" yelled the woman. "You have mashed every one of them! There!" and she dragged him to his little, bruised feet. "Do you think I can sell stuff like that! Mush! Every red berry of 'em!" "Oh, make her stop!" pleaded Bess to Cora. "She may strike him again." "What will you do with that crate of berries?" asked Cora, pushing her way between the angry woman and the frightened boy. "Make him pay fer 'em, of course," shouted the tyrant. "And serves him right, too, for his imperdence!" Big heavy tears plowed their way through the dirty little spots on the boy's cheeks. To pay for the crate would take all his week's earnings. "You did it yourself!" declared a boy who boldly faced the woman, "and Andy's not goin' to stand fer it, or we all strike; don't we, fellers?" "Sure, we do!" came a chorus, not only from those who had been waiting, but from a second group that had come up in the meantime. "Strike, eh?" cried the woman. "Well, you kin all clear out! Do you hear! Every dirty one of ye! Git off the place or--I'll let the dogs loose!" "Oh, goodness me!" exclaimed Bess, clutching Cora's sleeve. "Do come away! There will be--bloodshed!" "We must wait," replied Cora calmly. "I guess she is not so anxious to have her berries rot on the vines, and most of the good pickers seem to be with Andy." Belle was nervously walking down the path toward the autos. The boys stood defiantly, waiting for the woman to produce Andy's tallies. "Give him his sticks," called one of them, "or we'll smash every berry in the patch!" "You will, eh!" yelled the woman. "I'll show you!" "Oh, Cora!" cried Bess, but Cora was too much interested in the boys to heed. The woman left the shed and ran toward the house. "She's after the dogs!" shouted one boy. "Come ahead, fellers!" called another, and at that a dozen or more lads ran wildly through the patch; crushing the ripe luscious fruit as they went. Nellie, who was still picking berries, jumped up from her work. She saw the savage dogs tear away from their kennels, their chains rattling as the woman snapped them from the collars. Bess and Belle ran to Cora within the shed. "Here, Nero! Nero!" suddenly called Nellie. "Here Tige! Here Tige!" Wonder of animal instinct! Those two dogs forgot the commands of the woman to "Sic 'em!" and eagerly they ran to Nellie. To Nellie to be patted, and caressed. To Nellie who fed them! What did they care about the woman who would strike them? Nellie was their friend and now they were hers! The woman, having let loose the dogs, ran on toward the house, some distance from the berry shed. CHAPTER IV ARBITRATION Like a heroine in a drama Nellie stood there, one sunburned hand thrust through the collar of each panting dog. The boys saw their advantage and ran like Indians through the patch of berries, tramping the ripe fruit under foot in their unreasoning anger. "Hey! Stop that!" shouted Nellie, "or I'll let them go!" Instantly every boy stood still. "Come on," called Cora to the other two girls, "we must help Nellie." As quickly as they could trudge along the rough pathway, Cora, Bess and Belle hurried to where Nellie stood with the dogs. "Call the boys back to the shed," shouted the girl, "then I can take the dogs to their kennels." "Come here, boys!" called Cora. "Come back to the shed, and we will see fair play!" The words "fair play" had a magical effect on the strikers. They now jumped between the rows, and it would be safe to say that not one of them, in the return, stepped on a single berry. "All right, miss," answered the lad called Narrow. "We goes back to the field, if Andy gets his tally-sticks." "Does this woman own the patch?" asked Cora. "Never!" replied one of the boys. "She's only the manager. The boss comes up every night to pay us our coin." "Then we should see him, I suppose," said Cora, as Nellie walked past with the dogs close beside her, each animal wagging his appreciation for the girl that led them on. "Aunt Delia scares easy," whispered Nellie, almost in Cora's ear. "Just chuck a big bluff and she wilts." Cora smiled. She was happily versed in the ways and manners of those who "had not had a chance." "I am so afraid she will--hurt Rose," sighed Belle. "Oh dear me! What a place!" "But I think it rather fortunate we were here," replied Cora. "These youngsters can scarcely take their own part--prudently." Andy hung back near the shed. He was still trying to choke down the tears. How could he ever pay three dollars and seventy-five cents for that crate of crushed berries? And it had not been his fault. The strikers stood around Cora, each little fellow displaying his preference for "a good honest strike" to that of hard work, in the sun, on a berry patch. "Narrow speaks fer us," announced a sturdy little German lad. "Eh, Narrow?" "We all goes back, if Andy gets his sticks," spoke Narrow, who was evidently the strike leader. "Well, come along," ordered Cora, feeling very much like a strike breaker, "and we will see what Mrs. Ramsy says." Led by the motor girls the procession wended its way back to the shed. "Never mind, Andy," said a boy called Skip, who really did seem to skip rather than walk, "we will see you 'faired.'" Andy rubbed his eyes more vigorously than before. Cora was in the shed, and Nellie hurried away with the dogs, promising to send Mrs. Ramsy down from the house. Meanwhile Cora had ample opportunity to get acquainted with her little band of strikers. They were very eager to talk, in fact all seemed anxious to talk at once. And their grievance against the woman "who ran the patch" seemed to have begun long before her present difficulty with Andy. "She's as mean as dirt to them two girls," said one urchin, "and anybody kin see that them girls is all right." "They pick out here from the break of day until the moon is lit," said another, "and after that they has to work in the house. There's a couple of boarders there and the girls keeps the rooms slick." "Boarders?" asked Bess. "Yep, and one old dame is a peach," continued the boy, not coarsely but with eager enthusiasm. "The one with the sparklers," added another. "Hasn't she got 'em though?" and he smacked his lips as if to relish the fact. "There comes Ramsy," whispered a third. "Whew! But she looks all het up!" The woman did look that way. Her face was as red as the berries in the trays and her eyes were almost dancing out of their sockets. Cora spoke before anyone else had a chance to do so. "The boys are willing to arbitrate," she said. Then she felt foolish for using that word. "They have come for terms," she said, more plainly. "Terms!" repeated the woman scornfully. "My terms is the same now as they was first. Andy Murry pays for that crate!" "If the crate is paid for will it belong to him?" asked Cora. The woman stopped, as if afraid of falling into some trap. "I don't care who owns 'em, when he pays for 'em. But he sneaked out one bunch of tallies----" "He did not!" shouted a chorus. "He earned every one he's got and the ten that you've got!" "And it was you who spoiled the berries by pushing him into them," shouted some others, "and we are here to see him faired." Cora was perplexed. She wanted to save more trouble, yet she did not feel it "fair" to give in to the woman. "Your berries are spoiling in the fields now," she suggested. "Why don't you give in, and let the boys go back to work?" "Me give in to a pack of kids!" shouted the enraged woman. "She is always sour on Andy because his mother won't do her dirty washing," explained the German boy. "My mother is sick--and she can't wash," sobbed the unfortunate Andy. "Yep, and that money of his'n was for her, too," put in Skip. At this point another figure sauntered down from the house. "There comes Mrs. Blazes!" put in Narrow. "She couldn't miss the show." The woman who came down the path sent on before her the rather overpowering odor of badly mixed perfumes. "Look at her sparklers," whispered a boy to Cora, "that's why we call her 'Blazes.'" A black lace scarf was over the woman's head and now the "sparklers," or diamonds that she wore, in evident flashy taste, could be seen at her throat, and on her fingers. Bess smiled to Belle, and Cora turned to the boys. "We must finish up this business," she said. "It is getting late, and we have to go to Chelton." "Go ahead!" called the urchins. "Fork out Andy's sticks," shouted some others. "What is the crate worth?" asked Cora. "It was worth three dollars and seventy-five cents," said the woman, "before that scamp deliberately set in it." Cora did not intend to argue. "Then if the berries are bought you will give the boy his tallies?" she pressed. "Of course," drawled the woman, beginning to see Cora's intentions. "He's not goin' to pay fer them!" interrupted Narrow. "What does she take us for?" "Hush!" commanded Cora. "Just give the boy his sticks, Mrs. Ramsy, and I'll attend to the rest." "What'll I give him the tallies for when he owes me more than they're worth?" "To satisfy the boys," demanded Cora. "I will take that crate of berries. They will suit me as well as any others." Seeing herself beaten, the farm woman handed the tally-sticks to Cora, who put out her hand to take them. "Now, you boys carry that crate down to the big machine in the roadway," she said, "and I will pay Mrs. Ramsy!" A wild shout went up from the boys! The woman had been beaten! She had not sold but the one crate of berries! And that was the one she demanded Andy should pay for! Cora winked at Bess and Belle and the girls understood perfectly what she meant. "Don't the other young ladies want any?" asked the woman. "You said two crates!" "But we haven't time now to stop longer," said Cora. "We can come again, when the sun will not be so hot. Then we may have a better choice." It was Andy who helped Narrow carry the crate to the _Whirlwind_. "Thank you, miss," he said, "I was almost sick. And mother expected the money to-night." "Yes and she gets it," declared his companion, handing up the crate to Cora, who stood in the car. "Whew! Ain't this a good one though!" and he looked at the splendid maroon auto. "Must have cost a lot." "Quite a good deal," said Cora. "Some day, when I come again, perhaps I will give you a nice ride in it!" "There's Nellie," called Bess. "She wants to speak with us, I guess." The girl, who had put the dogs back on their chains, was hurrying down the path. "Good-bye," she said, "I don't think we will be here when you come to-morrow." "Where are you going?" asked Cora. "Don't speak so loud," cautioned Nellie. "That old Lady Blazes is just as bad on us as Aunt Delia. And worse, for she puts her up to everything." "Nellie! Nellie!" shrieked the one termed "Blazes." "Your aunt wants you right away up at the house!" Nellie turned with a nod to Bess and Belle. "Ain't that a shame!" said Skip. "We will strike fer them girls next." CHAPTER V TOO CONFIDENT "Mother will be so disappointed not to get her berries," remarked Bess, as she and Belle, in their little _Flyaway_, got out on the road, following Cora. "But Cora did wonderfully well, I think," replied the sister, "to get the better of that horrid woman. She was going to sell two crates, and she only actually sold the crate which she insisted Andy should pay for. It takes Cora--she is a born leader." "It certainly was diplomatic," agreed Bess, "and I suppose we can come out to-morrow for the others. Mother was not particular about having them done up at once. But weren't those girls queer? And how stage-like little Nellie looked with those fierce dogs at her side, and the boys standing around her? I declare I think that would make a play." "Better try your hand at it," suggested Belle. "I always thought you had some hidden talent. It may now be discovered." "And do you think the girls are going to do something desperate?" asked Bess, throwing in more speed, and brushing along at a lively rate over the broad country road. "I am sure they are going to do something very unusual, but whether it may be desperate, or simply foolish, would be impossible to surmise with any degree of certainty," replied the judicious Belle. "I fancy they intend to--leave the strawberry patch, at least." Cora turned, and called to Bess to look out for the "Thank-you-ma'ams" that were so plentifully scattered over the hill they had just come upon. Some were deep and long, she said, and with the ever-increasing grade might stall an overworked engine. Following the advice, Bess changed to low gear, and crawled up and down the hills, after the pace set by Cora. One very steep hill confronted them. The engines of both cars were fairly "gasping for breath," and Cora, knowing that the hot radiators could cook anything from cabbage to pork and beans, realized that it was not wise to start up the hill until the engines had been cooled off. Consequently the cars stopped near a spring house at the roadside, and the girls alighted to get a refreshing drink. The door was unlocked, and a clear, clean glass stood on a small shelf, just inside the low building. "Did you ever see anything so delightful?" exclaimed Belle, while Cora dipped the glass in the square, cement-lined pool, and brought it up filled with the coolest, and most sparkling water imaginable. "And was it just built for--roadsters?" asked Bess, taking the proffered drink. "Oh, no indeed," said Cora with a laugh. "These spring houses are the farm refrigerators. In this, every evening, I suppose many, many quarts of milk are put to cool for the creamery. I have often seen a spring house just filled with the big milk cans." "Oh," answered Bess, intelligently. "That's a good idea. Just think how much money we could save on ice if we had a spring house." "Maybe if we had one, you would be able to cool off sometimes," remarked her sister teasingly. "You look as if you needed a dip this very minute." The red cheeks of Bess certainly did look overheated, and the way she plied her handkerchief betrayed her discomfort. "An internal dip will do nicely, thank you," answered the girl. "I don't see that I am any warmer than the rest of you." "Here comes a girl from the house," said Cora, as down the path a girl, in generous sunbonnet, and overgenerous apron, was seen to approach. "Do they wear their sunbonnets to bed?" asked Belle. "I am sure there is no sun now." "Father will be down in a minute with the team," called out the girl, much to the surprise of the motor girls. "Mercy!" exclaimed Belle, "are we going to be arrested?" "I think not," replied Cora; "however, we are trespassing, though I did think farmer folks very--liberal, especially with their spring water." "The girl is smiling like a 'basket of chips,'" said Bess, almost in a whisper. "It is not likely that she is angry with us at all." "Did you get a nice drink?" asked the strange girl, with unmistakable friendliness. "Oh, yes, thank you very much," spoke up Cora, "but I am afraid we are trespassing." "Not at all," said the girl. "My name is Hope--Hope Stevens," she said, in the most delightfully simple manner. "I always like to introduce myself--'specially to young girls." "We are very glad to know you, Hope," said Cora. "This is Miss Bess Robinson, this Miss Belle Robinson, and I am Cora Kimball." "Oh, I know who you are now," declared Hope. "They call you the Motor Girls." "I am afraid they do," agreed Bess. "But then we are just plain girls as well--our motors do not make us--we try to make them--go!" "That is what father said when he saw you come over yonder hill, when he left the field to get the team. Do you know he makes more money hauling folks with automobiles up this hill, than he does on the farm? He always stops his work and gets the team ready when he sees an auto stuck out here." "Oh, that is what he intended to do," said Cora. "Well, it was very good of him to be so prompt, but we are always able to make our own hills--I don't really think we will need him." "Lots of folks think that way," said Hope. "But, of course, you ought to know--best. Do you think you can get up the hill?" "Yes. You see these are practically new machines," explained Cora, "and we have been taught to run them carefully." "Pa says that girls are more careful than men," added Hope, and Belle kept her eyes on the pretty face beneath the bonnet. She thought she had never seen such dimples, and such splendidly marked brows. "There comes pa now," went on the girl. "He will be----" "Disappointed, of course. It was too bad for him to leave the fields," said Cora. "Well, the rest won't hurt his poor back," ventured Hope. "Pa works harder than any of the hired men, and these are very bad hills to farm." "Are you ready, young ladies?" called the man from the road, as he backed the sturdy team of horses up close to the _Whirlwind_. "I guess this little machine can hitch behind t'other." "Really, we do not think we will need any help," said Cora, rather confused. "We always take hills without trouble." "Never been up this one though," declared the farmer, with a shake of his broad-brimmed hat. "I reckon you'll not be able to fly over the top." "It's awfully good of you," put in Bess. "But suppose we try? You see we do not want to break our records." "Plucky, all right," the man commented. "Well, go ahead, and I'll stop to chat with Hope. If you get stuck just give me five quick toots, and I'll be there." The girls thanked him profusely, and after cranking up both the _Flyaway_ and the _Whirlwind_, said good-bye to Hope and her father, and started off, both machines on low gear. "It is steep," remarked Belle to Bess. "Perhaps it would have been well to have taken his offer." "All right?" asked Cora from ahead, as she looked back. "Thus far," replied Bess, clutching the wheel with nervous energy, and slightly retarding the spark. Suddenly the _Whirlwind_ stopped--but only for an instant, for directly the big four-cylinder car began to back down the steep grade, while Bess and Belle shouted in terror for Cora to turn into the gutter! Not knowing how deep and dangerous this gutter was, Cora directed the runaway machine well into the side, vainly trying to make the brakes hold. The next moment there was a crash! The _Whirlwind_, with Cora in the car, was ditched--turned over on its side! Bess tooted the horn of the _Flyaway_ frantically! Then she was able to bring her car to a standstill, and run to Cora's assistance. CHAPTER VI CORA'S QUEER PLIGHT Springing to the back of one of the big field horses, Farmer Stevens responded to the frantic summons of the auto horn, and started with the pair up the hill to the assistance of Cora, and the righting of her car, that almost swung between the narrow ledge of land, and the great gulf of mountainous space that lay just beneath the banked up highway. "Oh, I am so afraid that Cora is hurt," wailed Belle. "We can't see her, and she must have been tossed over into the tonneau of the car." "She was on the right hand forward seat," gasped Bess, as both girls ran along to the spot where the _Whirlwind_ was ditched, "but she may have sprung out to avoid being thrown down the gully." Although Bess was but a short distance behind Cora when the latter's car met with the mishap, it now seemed a long space of roadway that lay between them. Of course Bess had to bring her car to a safe place, at the side of the thoroughfare, and Belle had to help some, so that it had taken a minute or two to do this, before they could run to Cora. In the meantime Mr. Stevens came along with his horses, and Hope, signalled by the tooting of the horn of the _Flyaway_, had called two of his hired men from the fields, so that the ditched auto and the danger to its driver met with ready assistance. "Oh, if Cora should be----" Then Belle checked herself. She had an unfortunate habit of predicting trouble. Mr. Stevens left his horses by the rail fence through which the _Whirlwind_ had passed without hesitation, and Bess was beside him just as he reached the big car. "Oh, where is she!" wailed the girl, unable longer to restrain her fears. There was the car, partly overturned but seemingly not damaged. Neither within nor without was there a sign of Cora! "She must have been thrown down the embankment," said the man anxiously. "She surely is not with the machine." Bess now joined Belle and ran to the edge of the cliff. Almost afraid to look, they peered over the brink. "Where can she be?" breathed Belle, her hands clasped nervously. "Cora! Cora, dear!" called Bess. "Where are you?" "Here!" came what seemed to be a very faint reply. "Where?" shouted the girls, now making their way down, step by step, over the perilous cliffs. Farmer Stevens knew every inch of that hill. He often had to rescue from its uncertainties either a sheep or a young cow. He also knew that precisely where the machine was ditched, the hill shelved to a perfectly straight bank, so that instead of an incline the wall of earth actually seemed to run under the surface. "If she went over there," he told himself, "she never stopped until--she landed." "Oh, Cora!" called the girls again, "can't you tell us where you are?" "Look out there, young ladies," cautioned Mr. Stevens, "or you may go down--double quick!" Hope was scaling the rocks like a wild creature. The two hired men were almost jumping from cliff to cliff making straight for the clump of hemlock trees at the very edge of the stream, that, in its quiet way, defied the great hill above it. "Here she is!" called Hope. "Here in the--bed of hemlock!" To Bess and Belle, not acquainted with the peculiarities of the flat-branched evergreen, finding Cora in "a bed of hemlock" was rather a startling discovery, but to Hope--what nest could have been safer! Cora had fallen over the cliff into the soft branches of a tree that jutted out from the shelving earth. "Are you hurt?" asked the girl from the farm, looking up into the branch of the big green tree. "I don't know--I don't think so, but I feel queer. I must get down," Cora managed to say. By this time the others had reached the spot. Bess and Belle were almost hysterical lest Cora should lose her hold and again fall to a more dangerous landing. But the hired men stationed themselves under the tree, and, with their strong arms netted beneath the giant evergreen, they waited for Mr. Stevens to give an order. "All ready?" asked Mr. Stevens. "Yes, sir," replied the men. "Young lady, can you get free of the branches?" he called to Cora. "I am directly over a great hole," she answered timidly, "and I am afraid I cannot hold on another minute." "Then drop," said the farmer. "We will catch you. Don't be afraid. You can't escape the arms of Sam and Frank!" "Oh, if she should go to the bottom," wailed Belle, covering her face with her trembling hands and uttering sighs and sobs. Bess was more courageous, but equally frightened. Sam and Frank stood like human statues. Clasped hand to wrist, their sunburned arms looked strong and secure. Presently there was a fluttering in the leaves--a slide through the branches and Cora dropped--down on the human net of arms, safe, and seemingly sound, but too weak to recover herself at once from the strange position. Gently as could a woman, these farm hands lowered their burden to the soft bed of moss at their feet. Belle and Bess leaned over the quiet form, while Hope hurried to the stream below for some water, which she quickly brought in the strong cup improvised from her stiffened sunbonnet. "This is spring water," she said. "Swallow a few mouthsfull." Cora opened her lips and sipped from the strange cup. Then she turned and tried to rise, growing stronger each instant, and determined to "pull herself together." "Wasn't it silly?" she asked, finally. "Wasn't it awful! Are you much hurt?" inquired Belle, fanning Cora with her motor hood. "Not a bit--that I can tell," she answered. "That natural--hammock--was a miracle." She attempted to rise, but fell back rather suddenly. "I've got a twist somewhere," she said. "I think my shoulder is sprained." Without waiting to be asked to do so Frank, the younger of the farm hands, put his arm about Cora's waist, and brought her to her feet. "Oh, thank you," she stammered rather shyly. "I am sure you have helped me wonderfully. I don't know how to thank you--all." "You can stand, eh?" asked Mr. Stevens, satisfaction showing in his voice, and ruddy face. "I suppose you feel--that I should have taken your offer for the horses?" she remarked with confusion. "Well, there is always a first time," he replied, "but since you are no worse off you must not complain. Guess the boys had better lift you to the road. Then we will see if you can run your car." Again, in that straightforward way, peculiar to those who know when they're right and then go ahead, the "boys" simply picked Cora up, she putting her arms over their shoulders, and while the three other girls wended their way over the cliff, Cora was carried safely back to the spot where still lay the helpless _Whirlwind_. CHAPTER VII THE CLUE AT THE SPRING HOUSE Just how Cora did manage to run her car into Chelton, with a stiffened wrist and a twisted shoulder, she was not able to explain afterward to the anxious ones at home. Belle rode with her, and was sufficiently familiar with the machine to take a hand at the wheel now and then, but it was Cora who drove the _Whirlwind_, in spite of that. It was now two days since the eventful afternoon at the strawberry patch, and the girls were ready again to make the trip to Squaton, in quest of the crate of berries promised to Mrs. Robinson. Jack argued that his sister was not strong enough to run her car with ease, so he insisted on going along. Then, when his friends, Ed Foster and Walter Pennington, heard of this they declared it was a trick of Jack's to "do them out of a run with the motor girls," and they promptly arranged to go along also. Ed rode with Walter, in the latter's runabout, and the twins were, of course, together in the _Flyaway_, while Cora was beside Jack in the _Whirlwind_, for, although the girls were speedily turning into the years that would make them young ladies, they still maintained the decorum of riding "girls with girls" and "boys with boys," except on very rare occasions. As they rode along, an old stone house, set far back from the highway, attracted Jack's attention. "Let's stop here," he suggested, "and look over the place. I'll bet it has an open fire place with a crane and fixings, for cooking." Word was passed to those in the other cars, and all were glad to stop, for the afternoon was delightful, and the ride to Squaton rather short. As no path marked the grass that led to the old house it was evident that no one had lately occupied it. The boys ran on ahead to make sure that no ghosts or other "demons" might be lurking within the moldy place, while Cora, Bess and Belle stopped to pick some particularly pretty forget-me-nots, from near the spring that trickled along through the neglected place. Just back of the house, over the spring, the boys discovered the inevitable house for cooling milk, and here they delayed to drink from their pocket cups. "What's in the other side?" asked Walter, peering through the broken boards into a second room or shed, for the shack was divided into two parts. "More spring, I suppose," replied Jack, taking his third drink from the small cup. Walter and Ed had finished drinking just as the girls came up, and Jack attended to their various degrees of thirst for pure spring water. "What a quaint old place," remarked Belle. "What's in the other little house?" "We are just about to find out," said Jack. "The other fellows couldn't wait, and are in there now." Hurrying out, they all entered, through the battered door, into the "other side." "Well, I declare!" exclaimed Ed. "What does this mean?" "I also declare, 'what does this mean?'" added Jack, picking up from a queer sort of wooden platform in the place, the unmistakable blue bonnet of a child or young girl. "And this!" exclaimed Cora, picking up a hat. "This is--Nellie's hat! Nellie from the strawberry patch!" "They have run away!" gasped Bess, without further investigation, "and here are the remains of their lunch!" The fragments of a very meager meal--some crusts of dry bread--and an empty strawberry box, told the story. "Surely this had been the lunch of the runaways." "They must have slept here," went on Cora. "Poor little dears! What a shame! How frightened they must have been to sleep in such a place." "When you young ladies get through with the allegory, I hope you will give us the libretto," interrupted Jack. "Who may be the fair maids who have slept in this shack, and eaten the bread of freedom?" "Why, the girls from the strawberry patch, of course," said Bess, as if that explained everything. "Why 'of course,'" said Jack mockingly. "Certainly, of course," put in Ed, in the same tone of voice. "And, to be sure, of course," went on Walter, provokingly. "Why, we didn't tell you, did we?" spoke Cora finally. Then she did tell as much as she thought it wise to divulge about Nellie and Rose. This information "caused a stir," (as Jack put it) among the boys. Instantly they began up-turning stones, pulling down boards, and doing all sorts of foolish things searching for the runaways. But no other evidences were unearthed of the stay of the two girls in the spring house. "I hope they hear us," called Jack, finally, raising his voice almost to a shout. "I must find Rose," he called. "Rose is all the world to me! My own little garden flower without a thorn----" Walter interrupted with: "I must see Nellie home! Nellie! Nellie! Pretty little Nellie!" "Do be quiet," begged Cora, "you will arouse the ghosts in the old house." "Let's," suggested Walter. "Haven't seen a ghost in an age, and a ghost would be just pie for us in this place." "Please don't," almost sobbed Belle. "I am really awfully creepy in here." Seeing that she was actually nervous, the girls went outside, but the boys were not yet satisfied with their investigations. "What on earth is this rig-a-my-gig for?" asked Walter, indicating the big sloping circular platform which occupied nearly all the space in the shack. It was on a pivot and could be turned around. "Why, that's--let me see, that's----" but Jack couldn't just say what it was. "I know," exclaimed Ed, suddenly. "That's a treadmill." "A thread mill?" asked Walter. "No, a treadmill--a mill that was treaded. They used to make butter in olden times by having a sheep or a dog travel around on that sort of wheel, which was geared to a churn." "See page one hundred and eight Encyclopedia Fosteria," put in Jack, with a good natured slap on Ed's broad shoulders. "When you don't see what you want--ask Ed," he finished. Feeling that they had actually solved the mystery of the circular platform, the boys spent some time in examining the strange machine. Meanwhile the girls were peering in the broken windows of the old house, for Bess insisted that Nellie and Rose might have fallen ill after their long tramp from the strawberry patch, and that they might actually be lying within the tottering mass of mortar, beams and stones. But, of course, the fears of Bess were soon proved unfounded, and, at the urgent order of Cora, the party started again on the road to Squaton to get that "much delayed" crate of berries for Mrs. Perry Robinson. "Keep a lookout along the road for the girls," Cora directed, as they started off. "We might spy them resting under a tree." "You will never spy them," insisted Jack. "I am going to find Rose--my Rose, and Walter has his heart set on Nellie--_the_ Nellie. So you girls may go to sleep, if you wish, for all the good your looking will do." Only a joke--but many a jest begets a truth! So the motor girls thought, in their long search for the unfortunate runaways. CHAPTER VIII A STARTLING DISCOVERY All was confusion at the strawberry patch. The two orphan girls, Rose and Nellie Catron, had disappeared the night before, it was said, and not until shortly before the arrival of our friends in the automobiles, was another loss discovered--that of a pair of very valuable diamond earrings, the property of Miss Hanna Schenk, otherwise known among the pickers as "Mrs. Blazes." So it was that the Chelton young folks, as Jack said, "struck a hornet's nest," for Mrs. Ramsy, somehow, seemed to be of the opinion that Cora could tell, if she would, something about the runaways. "What could give you that idea, Mrs. Ramsy?" demanded Cora indignantly. "I only saw your nieces while I was here the other day, and I am sure I would have advised them to stay where they were, had they ever mentioned to me their intentions of leaving." "That's all very well, young lady," growled the woman, "but I noticed how them girls edged up to you, and your friends, and I warn you, if I find that you have helped them off I'll have the law on _you_." At this the young men came up to the shed where the unpleasant conversation was in progress. Jack, of course, was indignant, and, not only did he oblige Cora to leave the place at once, but, while doing so, he expressed his opinion directly to Mrs. Ramsy as to his personal measure of her character. The whole affair was rather awkward, and the Robinson girls were obliged to leave the patch once more without their crate of berries. Just outside the wire fence, and when the girls were about to step into the cars, they were hailed by Andy--the small boy whom Cora had so favored by buying the damaged crate of berries. "Wait a minute, miss," he called. "I've got something fer you," and, so saying, he stepped up to the _Whirlwind_ and, very cautiously, handed Cora a slip of paper. She took it and read these scrawled lines: "Miss: We are going away, but we think we will see you again some day. You will find your crate of berries under the tree where Andy will show you. They belonged to us and we paid for them. Rose Catron and Nellie Catron." Cora looked down at Andy for a further explanation. "They had to go away, miss," he said; "they couldn't stand it another minute. I will show you where the berries are." "But how did the girls get the berries? They had no money," argued Cora. "No, but their Aunt Delia took from them a ring that belonged to their own mother, and they took the crate to get even," declared Andy, his voice and manner showing his high regard for the "getting even" part. Cora told the girls and boys about the matter, and they decided to go after the berries. Consequently Cora insisted that Andy ride in her car to the old willow tree, somewhat down the road, and as each tenth of a mile was marked in red on the speedometer dial the little fellow's face threatened more and more to catch fire from the auburn curls that fell in joyous affright about his temples. Jack thought he had never known what it was to really enjoy a ride before, and he whispered to Cora that he very much wished he might take Andy home "for a paper weight, or a watch charm." "Right over there," directed Andy, after about a mile's ride, "under the big willow." Turning the car in that direction, Jack drove across a shallow ditch, and was soon under the tree, while the other machines waited on the safer roadway. Andy scrambled out, and Jack, leaving the wheel, went after him, followed by Cora. "Here," said the boy, pulling aside a thick clump of berry vines. "Here's the crate." Sure enough, there was the new crate, filled with berries, safe and untouched. "Well, I declare!" exclaimed Cora. "I really did not expect to find them." "Very thoughtful of my Rose-bud," declared Jack, lifting the lid of the box. "What's this?" he went on, picking up a small object. "Something else for Cora, I wonder?" At that moment, fortunately, Andy was occupied with a particularly attractive branch of red raspberries, and he did not see Jack lift out the article. Cora, so quick to apprehend any possible danger for others, was beside Jack instantly. "Hush!" she whispered. "Don't tell the rest! It is an empty jewel box--earrings have been in it!" "You don't mean to say that the--girls have gone off with the old lady's earrings!" exclaimed Jack. "And left the empty box in this crate to get you into trouble!" "Indeed I do not mean to say anything of the kind," hastily answered Cora. "I have always found that the most suspicious circumstance may turn out to be the most innocent matter, and, in this case, I have not the slightest doubt that we will find my rule to work true. In the meantime," she continued, slipping the little case within her blouse, "I will take care of the--evidence." It was not without a rather nervous fluttering of her usually reliable nerves, that Cora finally did secrete the jewel box, and in spite of her firm declaration to Jack, she could not just convince herself that it was altogether right for whoever had put the empty earring case in the crate, to have done so without making some sort of explanation. For a moment she thought of asking little Andy if he could tell her anything of the strange affair, then she quickly concluded to await developments. "Jack," she said, "we will take the crate of berries in our car. We have more room than the others, and perhaps Andy would like a ride in town with us. He can take a trolley car back." This pleased the youngster immensely, and so, when the famous crate of berries was at last loaded on the _Whirlwind_, and the word had been given to the others, the party started off on a merry run towards Chelton. On the way Cora had a chance to find out from the boy that the girls, Rose and Nellie, had walked away from their aunt's place after nightfall. Also that he, and some other boys, had helped them carry their things, which, as far as the willow tree, included the crate of berries. Cora also learned that the girls had started out "to see the world," and this last piece of information did not add to her peace of mind concerning the two orphans, who knew so little of this world, and its consequent dangers. Jack was greatly taken with Andy, and promised to pick him up for a ride every time the _Whirlwind_ came out Squaton way. "Maybe you could get me a job," said the little fellow, glancing up with unstinted admiration at Cora's handsome brother. "Believe I could," replied Jack. "Let me see, what is your specialty--what can you do?" "I am a caddy," replied Andy proudly. "They say I'm just as quick as any of them to trace a ball." "Well now, that's fine!" declared Jack. "We play golf out Chelton way. Suppose you just take a trolley ride in next Saturday, and we will see what we can do. Here is your car-fare. Be sure not to lose it, for trolley fellows are no respecters of persons." Meanwhile Bess and Belle were racing with Walter and Ed, and the afternoon was to them a time of that sort of enjoyment that comes unbidden, unplanned, and therefor proof against disappointment. Of course Cora was not by any means miserable, for no companion was to her more her chum than was Jack; then little Andy lent his novel personality to her surroundings, but still the thought that two young girls, Rose and Nellie, had deliberately run away, that they were practically accused of having taken a pair of diamond earrings valued at two hundred and fifty dollars, and that the case in which these stones seemed to have formerly reposed was actually found by Cora in the berry crate--was it any wonder that she did not laugh as lightly as did Bess Robinson? Or that she refused Ed Foster's pressing invitation to go into Snow's for an ice cream drink? At the drug store Jack stopped the _Whirlwind_ to allow little Andy to board a trolley car back to Squaton, but, as he left, Cora warned him to be very careful what he said about the runaways. "Oh, don't you never fear, miss," he answered, crowding his negatives to make one good big "no." "Rose and Nellie are my friends, and I know how to stick by 'em." CHAPTER IX COMPLICATIONS "Isn't it strange, Jack," almost whispered Cora to her brother, as, later that evening, the two sat on the veranda of their home, and talked over the day's proceedings, "I cannot believe--they--took them. But it does look very----" "Well, sis," began the young man, "we have had other experiences with things that _looked_ strange, and you will remember that strange looks are not to be depended upon for absolute facts." "Oh, I don't mean to say that those two poor, strange girls could be so dishonest," she hurried to say, "but the trouble is, that Mrs. Ramsy is angry with them for leaving her, and of course she will do all she can to make trouble for them. Then she even threatened me." "She did, eh?" exclaimed Jack. "Well, she had better go slow. I don't call a person ignorant just because they happen to be illiterate, for I always find they know more than I do on some subject, but this woman--she is the--limit." "You see," faltered Cora, hardly knowing just how to tell her brother, "the girls, it seems, had their mother's wedding ring, and she took it from them. To make up for that they took the crate of berries, then finding the earring-box in it----" "I know exactly what you are afraid to surmise, sis," said Jack, "but, as I said before, it may all be wrong. I, of course, have never seen the girls, and cannot confess to so lively an interest in them as you have worked up, but I must say, I would like to see the old lady get what's coming to her." The brother and sister sat in silence for a few moments, then a step on the path attracted their attention. "Here comes Belle," exclaimed Cora. "Whatever brought her out alone, so near to nightfall? She is usually so timid." Belle was actually trembling, as she took a chair on the porch. "Oh dear!" she began, "I am all out of breath. I was just scared to death coming over." "Why didn't you 'phone?" asked Jack, "and I would have gone over after you." "Cora," went on Belle, ignoring Jack's remark, "I am afraid--there is a strange detective in--Chelton!" "Well, what of that?" asked Cora, with a laugh. "Detectives are not really dangerous; are they?" "Now don't joke," begged the girl. "I came over to warn you!" "To warn me!" "Yes, I heard that they are looking for----" "Detectives looking for Cora!" almost yelled Jack, leaping up from his chair, as if some hidden spring had thrown him to his feet. "This is some of that woman's work! Tell me quickly, Belle, all you have heard--all you know." "Bess and I were at the post-office when two strange men alighted from a runabout," went on Belle. "They came inside--and at the stamp window asked where Cora Kimball lived. Then Bess became alarmed, declared that they were detectives, and she wanted to come straight over and tell you, but father drove up at that very moment, and Bess had to go in town with him. Then I was on my way over when Tillie, our maid, met me and told me that mother had company from the West, and I was to hurry back home. Oh dear me, I did think I would never get here! Such complications!" "Now, dear," said Cora soothingly, "don't you be the least bit alarmed. Of course, it is quite natural that Mrs. Ramsy should try to find her nieces, and quite right, too, so there is no harm whatever in her directing any one to me, to make inquiries. She evidently thinks I know more about the girls than I do." "But there is a note in the evening paper telling all about the whole thing," declared Belle, "and it mentions that one hundred dollars reward will be paid for the return of the diamond earrings." "Which looks," said Jack, "as if they are more anxious about the stones than they are about the girls. Well, we will have to await developments. I was going down to bowl to-night, but I guess I had better hang around now." "Why, don't be foolish, Jack. You may just as well go out as not. Even if a strange man does come up, I am sure I will be able to talk to him. I have--ahem!--met strange men before," declared Cora. "All the same, I guess I'll stay. I want to take Belle home, at any rate, and I am not particularly interested in the bowling game to-night, though Ed wanted me to be on hand." A shout from the road, however, reminded Jack that it was time to start. The voice was at once recognized as that of Ed Foster, and Cora begged her brother to run along, and have no fears on her account. "And father and Bess will stop for me later," declared Belle. "They have been taking the Western folks out for a run. Bess has the car and papa the carriage, so there is no danger but that I shall fit in somewhere." It was, nevertheless, much against the better judgment of Jack Kimball that he left his sister and Belle, and joined his companions bound for the bowling alleys. He did not mention to either Ed or Walter his fears for the comfort of Cora, should she be visited by the detective, but they both noticed that he was not quite his jolly self, and that he seemed to take little interest in their conversation or the sport at the alleys. It was now almost nine o'clock, and, as Belle and Cora sat on the porch, enjoying the moonlight, in spite of their disturbed state of mind, they began to feel that the detective scare had been unfounded. "I can't see why they would ask where you lived," said Belle, "if they did not intend to call on you." At that moment a runabout turned into the driveway. Startled, the girls sprang from their seats and hurried forward to see who might be coming. Belle clutched Cora's arm. "Oh, it is the detectives," she gasped. "I know their machine! Oh, why did we let Jack go away?" "Don't be nervous," commanded Cora. "If they really are detectives they will have reason to suspect us, if they find us frightened." Then, at a sudden thought, she added: "Belle, I believe you had better run indoors. You are nervous, and you might say something that would be better unsaid. I am sorry that the maids are both out, and that mother is not at home--it does seem as if we should have kept Jack." There was no time for further comment, for as Cora opened the French window to allow Belle to enter the house without being noticed, the two men were seen coming up the path. Cora had been in unpleasant predicaments before, each time the circumstance being a matter of protecting some friend, and this time she felt "keyed up" to almost any emergency. Also her past experience had taught her valuable lessons, so that she had no idea now of saying one word that might in any way compromise the two helpless Catron girls. But even so wise a girl as Cora Kimball may be careless in some matter, that, in itself, may seem unimportant, but upon which may hang the very thread of fate. "Is this Miss Kimball?" asked the shorter of the two gentlemen who approached her. "Yes," she replied with unconcern. She stepped directly under the electric light that illumined the porch. "We are sorry to disturb you, especially as it is rather late," said the other man with unmistakable politeness, "but being in town we thought to cover this end of our business without making a second trip to Chelton. Is your brother, or mother at home?" "No," replied Cora, "but, if it is necessary, I can call for my brother, over the telephone." "Well, our business is a little unpleasant," went on the man, "and we would prefer to speak with you--before your brother. Yet, as he is not at home, I believe we had best call again. We really only need to make sure that you are not going out of town at once. We have heard that you intend going to the seashore, and as we are detectives, looking for the two Catron girls, we felt you might be able to give us some clue as to their whereabouts. However," and he turned to go down the steps, "we will come again to-morrow--if we may now make an appointment for an interview with you." Cora was much impressed with the man's manners. She moved to the edge of the steps. "Certainly, I shall be at home to-morrow," she said, "and I will have my brother here with me. I will answer any questions, but really I know absolutely nothing of the whereabouts of the girls." The men were on the steps. The light from the porch lamp cast a shadow, and Cora raised her hand to turn the switch that would light the lower steps. As she did so, something dropped from her blouse. The detective stooped to hand it to her. It was the empty jewel case! CHAPTER X ALMOST--BUT NOT QUITE "Certainly take it," said Cora, "if it is of any use to you. I found it--out near the strawberry patch." She was speaking to the surprised detective. He was examining the empty jewel case, and she had no idea of denying how she had come by it. From the description furnished to them the men were, of course, easily able to identify the tell-tale box. But in spite of their consideration, and good manners, the detectives felt that they had stumbled on a very important piece of evidence. Certainly, this was the box that Miss Schenk had described as that in which her earrings usually were placed. True, she could not specify just when she had last put them in this box, but that this was _the_ box was an important discovery. "I cannot believe that the girls took the gems," said Cora, as the men at last turned to go, "for they seemed really such innocent young girls. The only thing unusual about them, that I noticed, was that they had been overworked, and were consequently rather----" "Revengeful," finished one of the men. "That is the suspicious point--even good young girls may be driven to desperation. However, Miss Kimball, with your permission, we will call to-morrow at four," and they raised their hats, and went down the walk. Cora was stunned--that she should have placed into the very hands of the detectives so important a clue! "And I meant to hide that box safely in my room," she reflected. "That was why I kept it in my blouse,--so as not to forget it." The long window opened and Belle almost fell into Cora's arms. "Oh, have they gone at last?" she gasped. "What dreadful thing happened?" "Why, nothing happened," replied Cora, making up her mind instantly that the fewer persons who knew about the jewel box the better. "I thought them very polite officers." "But when I saw you step to turn on the light I thought something happened--I saw you start." "Belle, my dear, you are too romantic," said Cora, evasively. "I am afraid I shall have to disappoint you this time, however, for my callers scarcely said a single word that was new. They are just looking for our runaways. And I do wonder where the poor, dear, lost, little things may be to-night!" "Isn't it dreadful to think about it! I have read of such things, but to think that we really--know the girls." There was a catch in Belle's voice when she said "know the girls." Plainly she had her doubts about the desirability of their acquaintance. A whistle on the path told of Jack's return. "Dear me," exclaimed Cora, "whoever would think it is almost ten o'clock!" "And what can have become of papa and the others!" pondered Belle. "They were to call for me----" The familiar toot of the _Flyaway's_ horn interrupted her. "There they are now," declared Cora. "My! what a full evening we have had. I feel almost too flustrated to meet your Western friends," and she smoothed out various discrepancies in her toilette. "Come on, Belle," called Bess from the machine. "We can't come up. It's too late, Cora!" she continued to call, "come here a moment. I want to tell you something." At this Cora and Belle went down to the roadway. Bess was in the _Flyaway_ with her mother and a strange lady, while down near the turn, at the corner, the lights of Mr. Robinson's carriage could be seen flickering in the summer night's shadows. He had not gone on the long road taken by the auto and in consequence, the two vehicles had arrived at the same time. "Cora," began Bess, without introducing the stranger, "we have had the strangest experience! Away out on the river road we thought we heard the cry of a young girl! Yes, and we saw something white run across the road, in such a lonely place!" "Mercy!" interrupted Belle. "I am glad I was not along." "Well, papa happened to meet us there and stopped, and the coachman got out, and we looked all over the place with our lamps in hand, and see what we found!" In the uncertain light Cora could not at once make out just what was the object Bess held up for her inspection. "Don't you recognize it?" asked Bess. "Why, it's Nellie's gingham dress; the very one she wore the other day." "Oh," gasped Belle, "do you suppose they have drowned themselves!" "Come, daughter," interrupted Mrs. Robinson, "we have already heard too much of these two very--indiscreet young persons. Come, Belle, my dear, we must get home. Cora, I would not advise you to waste too much sympathy on the girls from that farm. Evidently they are quite capable of looking after themselves." This was said with that authoritative manner used by older, and more prudent persons, when trying to curb the enthusiasm of the inexperienced. Mrs. Robinson was not unkind, but she did not think it wise to let the girls' sympathy "run away with them," as her husband put it. "All right, mamma dear," replied Belle meekly, really glad to climb into the small seat at the back of the _Flyaway_ and start for home. The detectives had furnished enough excitement, but now came this strange news---- "Oh, I just want to tell Cora one thing more," said good-natured Bess. "Cora, when we finally did give up the search, and had gone along a little way, a trolley car passed, and it stopped just at that turn in the road where there was an electric light." "And couldn't you see who boarded it?" asked Cora. "No, it was a park resort car, and just packed full of people, so we didn't even have a chance to get a glimpse of those who either got on or got off. Well, good night, dear," and Bess switched on the spark and started the engine without cranking. "I will see you to-morrow. We have got to finish up our plans--for--you know." It was the approach of Jack that stopped Bess in her remark. The young man joked about it, and declared that he would soon discover the secret, warning the girls that Cora could never keep good news away from him, and that he felt it in his bones she would tell him about it that very night. The girls retaliated with the assurance that this time, at least, Jack was not to know their secret, then, when the _Flyaway_ had whirred itself off, Cora and Jack, arm in arm, started back to the porch. Cora hardly knew how to tell her brother about the jewel box, but she finally managed to explain the peculiar happening. "Well," said Jack, when she paused for his opinion, "there's no use crying over spilled milk. The thing to do, I suppose, is to keep one's hands off milk. Now, I reckon you will be subjected to a lot of questions, when those fellows come to-morrow." "They were really very polite," Cora assured him, "and I haven't the slightest dread about their questions. It seems to me, now, that we all ought to do what we can to trace the girls. From what Bess just told me I am afraid they are running about at night in lonely and dangerous places. And bad as their lot might have been, with their aunt, that was safer than these night escapades." "True--very true, little sister," said Jack with his usual good spirits, "at the same time if they have committed--we will call it an indiscretion, in trying earrings in their ears, it might be just as well to give them a chance. No use running them into the very teeth of the law." That was exactly how Cora felt about it. "Well," she said, as she picked up her fan and other little belongings, preparatory to going indoors, "we will see what comes of my official investigation. Perhaps, when the detectives have finished questioning me, they will be able to go to a telephone and call the girls home. I have always heard that detectives do such wonderful things." "Well, this time, sis, I will be at home when they call, unless something very unforeseen happens." Jack pushed the bolt on the heavy door, and Cora went over the first floor of the house, attending to the duties, with which her mother, upon her departure for the city, had entrusted her. Then, handing the silver to Jack, she put out the lights, and bade him an affectionate good-night. CHAPTER XI ANDY'S WARNING The parlor maid tapped at Cora's door. Gentle as was the touch, it awakened the girl, who answered quickly. "Miss," said the maid, "there is a little boy downstairs who says he must see you at once. He simply won't take no for an answer." "A little boy?" repeated Cora, sleepily. "Why, it's only six o'clock!" "Yes, I know that, miss," went on the girl, "but Mary says he was outside on the step when she came down at five. He's a poor-looking little boy, but he doesn't want anything to eat. He says he must speak to you." Without the slightest idea who her caller might be, Cora hurried into a robe and went down. "He's on the side porch, Miss Cora," said the maid. Cora went out through the opened French window. "Why, Andy!" she exclaimed, for her early visitor was none other than the boy from the strawberry patch. "Whatever brought you into Chelton so early?" "It's about the girls," he said under his breath, looking around suspiciously. "And it's about that old Mrs. Blazes!" "No one will hear you," Cora assured him, taking a seat by his side. "What about the girls, and Miss Schenk?" "Yes, and I was afraid I would not get here in time. She's comin' in here--to scare you. I heard her tell Mrs. Ramsy so." "And you hurried in to warn me!" cried Cora, much amused at the lad's simplicity. "I am sure I am very, very much obliged. But tell me, what did she say?" Andy shifted about uneasily. Evidently the information he had was not of the nature pleasant to impart. "It was awful late last night when I heard it," began the boy. "Mrs. Ramsy owed mother for some washing, and she said if I went after the money late, when she had time to--bother with me, she would give it to me. Well, I waited until I saw she had slicked up the work the girls used to do, and I was going to knock at the side door, when I saw two strange men get out of an automobile, and make for Ramsy's front door." Andy paused, evidently expecting some show of surprise at this information. "Well, go on, Andy," urged Cora. "What did the strange men have to do with it all?" "They asked for Miss Schenk, and I just guessed right. They were detectives!" Andy's eyes opened and closed in nervous excitement. To talk of detectives! To have seen them and to have heard _them_ talk! "Well," spoke Cora, almost smiling, "it was certainly right for Miss Schenk to have detectives look for her valuables." "That's all right," assented the boy, "but wait till you hear! They told her--them two big fellows, that you--had the empty earring box, and that they got it from you!" For a moment Cora was quite as indignant as she rightly supposed Andy to be. "Did they say they got it from me?" she questioned. "They said they were on the right track and would have the diamonds back to Miss Schenk in one day. Then, when I heard them say your name, and that they had got the box out here, I just rubbered fer fair, I did." "Now, are you sure, Andy, that you understood just what they said?" asked Cora, to whom the actual report of the detectives to Miss Schenk meant so much. "Try to tell me word for word." "Oh, I heard them all right," replied the lad, "fer I crawled straight under the window, and I was as close as if I was in the old rocking chair under Mrs. Ramsy's arm. The thin fellow said he had found the box. Mrs. Ramsy asked where, and I thought she would swallow her new teeth the way she--gulped. Then the fellow said he had got them from a young lady out in Chelton. This was like a firecracker to the women, and they both went off at such a rate, that the fellows had to stop until they cooled off. Then, when they had said about all they could think of about girls in automobiles, and girls that came out makin' believe to buy berries, and just to steal--then, the other fellow--he has young whiskers--he said, that he couldn't say any more just then, but he did have to say that he got the box from Miss Cora Kimball." This was a very long, and trying explanation for a boy like Andy, and he showed how the effort affected him. He jabbed his hands into his pockets, crossed and recrossed his sunburned legs, then at last, with one final attempt at self-possession, he got up and deliberately chased the cat off the porch. "Was that your cat?" he asked sheepishly, realizing that he had no right to interfere even with a cat on another person's stoop. "Why, yes," replied Cora, "but it is too early for his breakfast, and he knows he is not fed--here. So it's all right." Then Andy sat down again, a little shy from his error, for he suddenly remembered a story his mother used to tell him of a rich young lady and her pet cat. "But you were saying," Cora reminded him, her voice kinder if possible than before, "that these detectives claimed I gave them the box. Or did you say they claimed to have taken it from me?" Andy scratched his head, right at the left ear which always served as a cue to the forgotten thing. "They didn't say neither one," he replied finally. "They--said--they got the box in Chelton--off a young lady!" Cora never before realized what an error in speech might involve, but she knew it was useless to question the boy further. "Well, don't worry about it," she said, "and I think now you ought to be ready for breakfast. Come, I guess Mary has something ready." The boy stood up beside Cora, then, following an impulse that he plainly could not resist, he stepped between her and the door to the dining room. "I ain't hungry, miss," he said, "but I want to warn you. You better git out of the state!" So sudden and so unexpected was this bit of advice that Cora almost laughed, but looking into the earnest face before her she was constrained to repress even a smile. "Why, Andy," she cried, "I am not afraid of any one. I don't have to run away." "Well, you better be," he declared, his cheeks reddening to the very tint of his hair. "You better be afraid of Ramsy and Schenk. They're a hot team." "But what have I done?" continued Cora, for the boy's manner demanded attention. "My uncle didn't do anything either when he got out of the state. And if it hadn't been for that he would have been sent up. Fer nothin', too." That there was more wisdom than eloquence in this was plain to Cora, but, even at that, she failed to grasp the whole meaning of Andy's warning. "Will you go to-day?" he almost begged. "Why, Andy?" "Yes, please do go. I would hate to see you git into that--mix-up." "Now, little boy, you must not worry about me. See what a big strong girl I am, and you know what a strong man Jack is." "'Taint a matter of fists," Andy declared, clenching up his brown hands, "but it's them womens' tongues. You don't know what sneaks they are, and if you don't say you will go away to-day, before they git at you, I think I had better tell your brother all about it." "Haven't you told _me_ all about it?" "Not quite," said Andy. "I don't suppose a girl ought--to know everything about--scraps!" CHAPTER XII THE "UNPLANNED" PLANS Cora was always a pretty girl, but in her corn-colored, empire gown, that morning at the breakfast table, even her own brother was forced to express openly his admiration for her. "Whew, Cora!" he exclaimed, "but you do look like a--tea-rose in that wrapper." "Jack, dear, this is not a wrapper, but the very best design in empire," and she smoothed out the fullness that lay about her. "Well, it's all right, anyway," declared Jack. "Makes me think of rose leaves, the way it clings about you." "What a pretty speech, brother. Now, if that had only been saved up for Bess, or Belle or Hazel! By the way, we haven't seen Hazel this summer. I suppose she is studying as hard as ever. What a pity a bright girl like Hazel is not bright enough to save her health by taking the regulation vacation." "Well, with Paul away I suppose Hazel thinks there is nothing left to do but study. I never saw brother and sister more attached," remarked Jack, taking his fruit from the dainty leaves in which, when Cora "kept house," she always insisted that fruit be served. Paul and Hazel Hastings were indeed devoted brother and sister. Paul was also a devotee of the motor, and more than the amateur chauffeur, yet not quite the professional. He had an interesting part to play in the story "The Motor Girls On a Tour." But Cora had just remarked, Hazel had not been with them during the summer in which this story took place, and, as Jack further explained, this was due to the fact that Paul Hastings, after a severe illness, had taken a position to operate a car abroad, Mr. Robinson having arranged the "business end," in recognition of Paul's heroic work for Mr. Robinson in a mysterious robbery. "But Belle had a letter from Hazel," said Jack, after some thought, the trick of which was not lost on Cora. "Yes, she said Hazel might go away with them. And now, sis, where are they going, anyway? Come, haven't I waited long enough for that secret?" "It really isn't any secret, Jack, but the girls have a baby way of wanting to keep things to themselves until all the preparations are made. I find it convenient to--keep my affairs to myself, so you see, dear, I have a selfish motive in humoring the others." Cora's cheeks lighted under the cascade of shadows that fell from her splendid black hair. Jack saw, too, that his "little sister" was growing up, and even in her summer plans there were things other than flounces and frills to be considered. The lighter vein of their conversation had been taken up after Cora had told her brother all that she felt it was prudent to tell about Andy's early morning call. And now---- "Well, I suppose you are determined to see the detective fellows," said Jack, moving Cora's chair out so that she might more easily leave the table. "What else can I do?" she asked, and answered at once, with her decisive tone of voice. "I think with Andy--you ought to 'git away,'" and Jack smiled in imitating the earnest youngster. "And make matters look as if I were more deeply involved than I really am? Now, Jack, dear, that is not like you." "No matter what you make matters look like, so long as you don't make them look like themselves," replied the boy. "That's my brand of logic in a case like this. Don't you see, sis, you may throw them off the track, and by getting a chance to talk with you, they are bound to find out something, or lose their badges." Cora's face was bent in the roses that stood on the serving table. "But what could I do?" she asked, this time with less decision. "Anything. Just take a run to--the beach--or anywhere. Leave me to see the officers." The rapid tooting of horn of the _Flyaway_ interrupted them. "My!" exclaimed Cora, "more early morning callers? There's Bess!" And, true enough, there was Bess, guiding her car up the drive, her veil flying in the breeze, and her cheeks like the very roses that outlined the path. "Why the where-for-ness?" demanded Jack. "I am startled--collapsed--I might say, by the suddenness of this--pleasure----" "Now, Jack," and Bess had alighted from her car, "you are not to make jokes, we haven't time. I am almost dead from hurrying. Mother decided, about midnight last night, that we should go to----" Then she stopped. How silly it would be to blurt out in one mouthful all the story of their secret planning! "Oh, go ahead," said Jack with a light laugh. "I am deaf and dumb, also blind and halt. I have no idea where you are going. A trip over the Rockies----" "Come in, Bess dear," said Cora, "and leave the boy to himself. You are certainly out of breath, and----" Cora drew the arm of her friend within her own, and with all sorts of glances at Jack, who was actually seated in the _Flyaway_ to make sure that the girls would not get away without his knowledge, Bess and Cora passed into the house. "We are going to-day," went on Bess. "Mother wants our Western friends to have an outing at the beach--they have never been to salt water--and, as they must start back in a few days, we have to go to-day. Can you come?" "How could I--go, this very day?" "Why, we won't start until afternoon. And you have everything ready," urged Bess. "It will be fun. We'll stop over night at a hotel and reach the shore next day." It seemed to Cora that all the powers were conspiring to get her out of Chelton that day, and it also seemed as if it might be rash to oppose such a force. True, she did have everything ready, and her household matters were always in such shape she could leave the servants on an hour's warning. Bess saw that Cora was uncertain, and she hurried to take advantage of the possible favorable opportunity. "Oh, Cora, do come! What a perfectly stupid time we would have on that long run with just mama and the others. We wanted to go in the _Flyaway_ and let them go by train, but, of course, mama would not hear to that. So now papa has hired a big machine and a chauffeur from the garage and Belle and I will go in our '_Bird_,' while the others travel near us in the hired car. Don't you see, if you go along with the _Whirlwind_ what a splendid time we shall have?" "Let's tell Jack--or ask him," said Cora finally. "He knows we are getting ready for some trip, and I guess we can trust him not to tell the other boys." "Don't you want the other boys to know?" asked Bess, a tone of disappointment in her voice. "Do you?" asked Cora, mischievously. "Oh, I suppose they will find it out. And besides, Cora, honestly, don't you think we would be--lonely without--the boys?" Cora burst into a merry laugh. "There, Bess, my dear, you have broken the watchword--you are to be responsible for the boys. We pledged ourselves, as we always do, to 'keep them out' this time." When Jack heard the news he hugged Cora in the very presence of Bess. The sister knew what he meant (it was getting away from the detectives), although Bess was somewhat embarrassed at the extravagant show of affection. Then Jack did what a boy does "when in doubt," he started a series of somersaults and sofa pillow turns, until Cora declared he quite forgot that he was in the company of ladies. With profuse apologies he assumed an unwonted show of dignity, and without another word went upstairs and called up first Ed and then Walter on the telephone, telling each all he knew, and all he could guess about the trip to Lookout Beach, and fairly begged the boys to go along! "I am afraid the girls will have to spoil their trip if we don't go," he said to Ed, who had made a half excuse, "for they really couldn't travel along that road without us!" And this in the very face of the fact that the elders were going along, and that the girls had declared that no boys _could_ go! "Won't there be high jinks!" Jack asked, and he told himself, with a jolly chuckle, as he hung up the receiver and went down to the girls, that if any "jinks" were lacking, it would not be his fault. "Too bad we fellows can't take you out a little way," he said, innocently, as he came downstairs, "but the fact is, we have made plans--our plans are still secret!" and Jack ran down the walk like the big boy that he was in spite of his few years of good record at college. Turning as he reached the street, he shouted: "Oh you--secrets!" then Cora and Bess were left alone. "Well, I suppose I can go," said Cora, finally, "although it does seem strange to leave town in such haste. But after all, if I remain longer, I shall only find more things to be attended to, and I will be just as well off to--escape from them." Bess was delighted, of course. She knew Cora so well, and she had grave fears that the methodical young girl would not run away at such short notice, but, now that she had gained her chum's consent, Bess had need to hurry back and finish up her own preparations. Jack was on his way to the post-office, when he saw the now familiar figure of little Andy. He hailed him pleasantly, and the boy lost no time in hurrying up to the tall young man who waited for him. "Now, Andy," began Jack, "suppose you tell me about those women--those who are after my sister. When did they say they were coming to Chelton?" "I heard them tell the--the men that they would come in on the two o'clock trolley," said Andy, "and that was the reason I thought it would be better fer your sister to be--out of town. Is she goin'?" "I guess she is," replied Jack, much amused at the boy's earnestness. "But she has no reason, you know, to want to avoid any one." Andy hung his head. Then he thrust his hands into his pockets. This latter gesture Jack knew was equivalent to preparing for a sudden shot of information. "It looks bad," said the boy, timidly. "What looks bad?" demanded Jack. "Well," said Andy, "maybe you won't believe me, but it was just this way. I was under the window listening, when all of a sudden old Ramsy took out of her pocketbook a slip of paper. She handed it to the man, and said that she had found it in the girls' room, and that she was sure that your sister gave it to Rose, for she saw her slip something into her hand as Rose went out from the shed. The man read what was on the paper and then put it on the window sill. A nice little breeze came along----" "And blew it right out to you," finished Jack, not attempting to hide his surprise at the boy's astuteness. "Yep, and I've got it right here," Andy declared, jabbing his hand into his torn blouse, and then from the depths of what might have been a handkerchief, had it not been beyond identification, he produced a card. "That's my sister's card," said Jack, still showing surprise. Then he turned to the reverse side. He read the words, written in pencil: Clover Cottage--Lookout Beach. "That's nothing," he added, "that's the cottage where my sister is going to spend the summer. She wrote it on the card for a memorandum, I suppose, and forgot about it." "But Nellie and Rose had it in their room," persisted Andy. "Perhaps my sister asked them to write to her," went on Jack, wondering why he bothered so much with the idle chat of an ignorant urchin. "Well, Mrs. Ramsy said if she could get hold of the girl that gave that card to her girls, she would not wait for judge or justice but she would--well, she said she would do lots of things." Jack laughed outright. "Now, see here," he went on, finally, "you had better take this car back to Squaton, Andy. You have been away from home for a long time, and the first thing you know they will have detectives looking for you. Or, maybe, they will say--you ran after the girls!" It was not like Jack to joke in that strain, but the lad looked so comical, and he said such serious things in contrast to his appearance, that for the life of him, Jack could not resist the temptation to tease him. "Nope. I'm not goin' home," declared Andy. "Mom knows where I am, and I am goin' to stay in town till the two o'clock trolley comes in." "To meet the Ram and the Schenk?" asked Jack, laughing. "Then at least take this change, and look the town over. Buy some ice cream and--a brick bat or two to have ready when----" "There's a fellow I know," interrupted Andy, and taking the proffered coin, he was soon lost to Jack, and to the business of detecting the detectives. CHAPTER XIII GOING AND COMING The weather was uncertain--it might rain, but there were cobwebs on the grass, which meant "clear." But the sun did not come out, and it was past noon. These unfavorable conditions were unusual on a day when the motor girls were to make a run, but Bess, Belle and Cora were almost too busy with their preparations to pay much heed to the possibility of rain while en route. The start was to be made at two o'clock, and the chimes on the dining room mantel of the Kimball home had just warned Cora that half the hour between one and two had gone by. "We take no note of time but from its flight," quoted Cora to herself, hurrying through the room to crowd a last few things into her motor trunk. "I wonder where Jack is?" At that very moment Jack's inevitable whistle was heard, and the next, the boy was in the room, looking as deliciously lazy as ever, in that way so peculiar to boys who have a great deal to do at the time; the science of which studied indifference is absolutely impossible for a girl to fathom. "Why this fluttering fluster, sis?" he asked, crumbling deeper in the leather-cushioned chair. "You will positively get overheated and ruin--your--complex--ion!" This last was drawled out with the most aggravating yawn. "Why, Jack, I have to be in my car at ten minutes to two, and do you see the time?" "No, but I hear it. I wonder who on earth put a clock to ticking. Bad enough to hear the hours knock, but this constant tick----" "Jack, whatever you have to say to me please say it," interrupted the sister. "I know perfectly well that this preamble is portentous." "No, it's merely pretentious," answered Jack, drawing from his pocket the card that Andy had turned over to him. "Do you happen to remember where you dropped this?" It was a simple guess, but Jack tried it. "Dropped that?" repeated Cora, taking the card from his hand. "Why, I declare! I have looked everywhere for that. I wanted it last night. I had actually forgotten the name of the cottage, and I wanted to give it to you for your note book. Where did you find it?" "Didn't find it, it found me. Andy gave it to me." "Andy!" and Cora's eyes showed her surprise. "Yes. He said the old lady, Ramsy, found it in your strawberry girls' room." "Whatever are you talking about, Jack?" demanded Cora with some impatience. "Don't you know I have to hurry, and you are teasing me this way?" Jack went over to his sister, and put his bare brown arm around her neck. She looked up from the folding of her trinkets, and smiled into his face. "Now, see here, sis," he said, "I am telling you the exact truth, and when I say exact, I mean exact. Andy told me he caught this card on a fly as it flew out the Ramsy window, when they were letting fly their opinions about the motor girls. Andy caught the card on the first bounce, stuck it in his pocket--no, let me see! He carried it against his heart, between his second and third ribs----" "Oh, I know!" interrupted Cora. "I dropped that in the shed when I opened my purse to pay for the berries. I thought I felt something slip from my hand." "There," and Jack made a comical effort to pat himself on the back. "Jack, my boy, you are a wonder! If you don't know what you want just guess it." "And they said I gave that card to the girls? To give them a place to run away to, I suppose." "That was it," replied her brother. "You see, old lady Ramsy has an idea you want to abduct those girls. But it was a lucky breeze that blew the card to Andy. Otherwise you might expect an early call at Clover Cottage from the honorable Mrs. R of the Strawberry Patch." "As if there was anything strange about me dropping my own personal card," mused Cora aloud. "And what difference did it make who might pick it up?" The clock gave the alarm that the hour was about to strike. Cora jumped up and slipped into her coat and bonnet. "It seemed foolish for the Robinsons to hire a car to take their friends down when I am riding alone," she said, "but the girls made me promise not to offer my car, but to carry the bags in the tonneau--Bess and Belle expect to get as far as possible from the--chaperone conveyance. Well, Jack dear, I am rather a naughty sister to run away, and leave you thus, when mother specially intrusted you to my safekeeping. But you have compelled me to go, haven't you?" "Forced you to," admitted Jack, picking up the bag and following her to the door. The maids were in the hall waiting to assist Cora, and to bid her good-bye. A word of kind instruction to each, and Cora jumped into the car. Jack, having cranked up, took his place beside her. "I will go as far as the trolley line," he said. "I want to see if Andy takes that two o'clock car when it turns back." There were many little things to be spoken of between brother and sister, and, as they drove along, Cora referred more than once to the visit of the detectives. Jack assured her that he would attend to them and then, reaching the turnpike, where the trolley line ended, he bade her good-bye, jumped out, and, for a moment, watched the pretty car, and its prettier driver, fly down the avenue. The next moment a trolley car stopped at the switch. From the rear platform two elderly ladies alighted rather awkwardly. They were queerly dressed, and the larger, she in the gingham gown, with the brown shirred bonnet, almost yanked the other from the steps to the ground, in attempting to assist her. "The Ramsy and the Schenk!" Jack told himself. "Cora did not get away any too soon!" The women turned to the other side of the road. As they did, Jack felt a tug at his coat. "That's them," said Andy, almost in a whisper, "and there come the two detectives! If you like you can stay away from your house, and I will lay around, and find out what happens!" "Why, they will want to see me!" declared Jack, in some surprise at the suggestion. "Suppose they do? Let them want," answered the urchin. "If I was you I'd just lay low. My mother always says 'the least said is the easiest mended,' and she knows." The advice, after all, was not unwise, Jack thought. He had other things to attend to besides talking to a pair of foolish women, and answering the questions of a pair of well-paid detectives. "Maybe you're right, Andy," he said. "I believe I am busy this afternoon. But take care that you don't get in the scrap. They will be bound to have revenge on some one." Andy sprang back of the car to avoid being observed by the women, as they turned to see which way they should go. Jack was not afraid of being noticed by the women, and he was a stranger to the detectives. The latter directed the women to walk over to the avenue, and then they followed at a "respectful distance." Andy slunk out from his corner, darted off in the opposite direction, and Jack knew he would be at the Kimball homestead considerable in advance of the others. "The Imp of the Strawberry Patch," thought Jack, in his usual way of making a story from a title. "He's a queer little chap, but not so slow, after all. How very much more reasonable it is for me to turn in and talk with Ed and Walter, than to go back home and jab answers at that quartette." Then the thought of Cora's word (that she would see the detectives) crossed his mind. For a moment he almost changed his resolution. Then he decided: "All's fair in love and war, and if this isn't war, it's a first-class sham battle." Andy was out of sight. The last "rays" of the two country skirts could just be made out, as their owners trudged along the avenue, and Jack Kimball took up his tune, where he had left it off, thrust his hands into his pockets, and sauntered off in the direction of the town garage. As he anticipated, both Ed and Walter were there, putting Walter's machine in ship-shape for the run after the girls. "Are you sure, Jack Kimball," demanded Ed, "that the young ladies will be in no way put out by our rudeness? I have a particular desire to please the ladies." "Oh, you'll please them, all right," replied Jack, taking a seat on the step of a handsome car, just in front of the one his friends were busy at. "There is nothing on earth pleases a girl so much as to run after her, when she distinctly says you shall not go." "Hear ye! The expert!" called out Walter, as he rubbed the chamois over the brass lamps at the front of his runabout. "Jack happens to know all about the game. Don't you remember the success of our hay-mobile run last year, when we went after the girls on their tour? Well, take it from me, the event this year will be equally disastrous--only more so," and Walter gave a last flourish to the lamp-polisher, then did a few fancy steps, in front of the car, to see that the reflection was correct. "What time do we start?" asked Ed. "Soon as we are ready," replied Jack. "The girls have already gone on, and I promised Mr. Robinson that we would keep just near enough to be within call, should they need us, but far enough away to be out of danger of their--Walter, what do you call it when a girl declares she can't bear a thing, and she just loves it?" "Oh, that's--that's good taste," replied Walter, running his hands through his hair with the doubtful purpose of removing from them some of their lately acquired gasoline and polishing paste. "Then, according to Walt, we must keep at a respectful distance from their good taste," finished Jack. "You are sure--the ghost works all right?" asked Walter. "There is nothing more disgusting than a ghost that refuses to work." "Oh, my ghost is a regular union man--eight hours and all that," replied Ed. "I've tried it on the chickens, and they almost turned into pot-pie from actual fright." "And what time are we counting on getting to a putting-up place?" Walter asked further. "If we leave here about three, will we get anywhere in time to--have breakfast, for instance?" "Well, my machine is in fine shape," declared Jack, "and I just count on the _Get There_ beating your little _Comet_ if yours is a newer machine. With this calculation we should get to the Wayside by eight o'clock. The motor girls are going to put up there for the night, and we may be able to put _down_ there, if it appears out of good style for us to put _up_ there." "Why didn't they go right on--start in time to reach the beach to-night?" inquired Ed. "Oh, just a whim. Girls want all that's coming to them, and a night at a Wayside they count among their required experiences, don't you know. And the old folks being along made it particularly all right," declared Jack. "But they'll beat us by an hour now," almost sighed Walter, who was becoming famous among his chums for his keen interest in the girls and their doings. "Not much," answered Jack. "They are going the long way 'round. Do you suppose they would go over the new road? Why, the dust would blind Cora if she made a single mile of that grind and grit." "Well, after my beauty bath, I'll be about ready," observed Walter. "Ed, don't put too much witch-hazel on your locks. Makes me think of the day after fourth of July, when I went to grandmama's." "Not half as bad as your new gloves. They give me a regular spell of the pig skin fever. I'll bet they're made out of junk, and you got stuck. Three dollars for a pair of gloves to save your lily-white hands--your lily-white hands!" and he ended in the strain of the familiar college song. "Well, I'll be going," said Jack. "See to it that neither of you fellows do so much primping that we miss our--guess," and with that the three young men parted, each going his own way to make ready for the run after the motor girls. CHAPTER XIV LOST ON THE ROAD "Look out there, Walter. Do you want the _Comet_ to run into the _Whirlwind_?" "We are getting pretty close," answered Walter, shutting off the power and coasting with the emergency brake partly on, for he found he was covering a hill too quickly. "I guess we can run alongside here. It's a good enough road." Jack brought the _Get There_ in line with the other runabout. "My, but that shower is coming up quickly. I'll bet the girls are about scared to death," he said. "Cora isn't particularly afraid of thunder showers, but I know Belle is." "Then, they will have to put up somewhere before they get to Wayside," remarked Ed. "That thunder is not far away." As he said this a blinding flash of lightning confirmed the statement. "I wonder if that chauffeur Mr. Robinson hired, knows any place to put up at?" asked Jack, his voice showing some anxiety. "Well, there doesn't happen to be any place on this road," replied Ed. "I came along here last week, and the only thing like a hotel I could find, was an old roadhouse over on a back lane." "My, but that's sharp lightning!" exclaimed Walter. "Guess I had better get ahead, Jack. It's safer now." For a mile or so the runabouts went along, "between the flashes," as Ed put it. Then the rain came, pelting and with a tempestuous wind. "Where's the turn, Ed?" asked Jack. "We'd better hurry on and overtake the girls now. I don't feel like risking it in this downpour. That fellow from the garage may not know more than he has to, and I promised Mr. Robinson I'd sort of look after the girls." "Listen!" exclaimed Walter. "I don't hear the cars, do you?" Both runabouts slowed up, and their occupants did not speak for some seconds. "But where could they have gone to?" questioned Jack, as their strained ears failed to catch the familiar sound of a machine that had been running on ahead. All the joy of the stolen ride instantly vanished. Jack Kimball, Ed Foster, and Walter Pennington were no longer the jolly, laughing youths, chasing the motor girls. They were three very much frightened young men, for the girls, and the car in which the other members of the Robinson family had been riding, could neither be seen nor heard! Through the pouring rain the boys dashed on. The rays of light from the search-lamps revealed nothing but a stretch of mud that, every moment, became deeper and more treacherous! Then came a fork in the road, and beside the turn, a lane offered a possible clue to the sudden departure of the girls from the main highway. "We've got to get out and look for their tracks," said Jack. "I suppose they put on all kinds of speed to get away from the rain." But although the other cars must have passed over that place somewhere, and not more than half an hour before, not a mark of the heavy wheels could be discerned in the deep, dark mud, though Jack took off one of the oil lamps and flashed it across the road. "Golly!" exclaimed Ed, in earnest despair. "Which way?" asked Walter, deferring now to the much-alarmed brother of Cora Kimball. "I wish I knew," replied he, with a sigh. "Suppose we make straight for the Wayside?" suggested Ed. "They may have known of the roadhouse." "How far to Wayside?" asked Jack. "Five miles from this turn. See, there it is on the signpost," and he flashed his lamp on the board that marked the fork in the road. "Then we had better put on speed and make that," declared Jack, "and if we do not find them there, we will have to turn back, that's all." "Didn't Cora have any idea you were going to follow?" asked Walter, as he got back in his car and then shot ahead close to the already moving _Get There_. "Not the least," replied Jack. "That comes of our foolish way of doing school-boy tricks. It seems to me the joke is turned on us this time." "Hope it is," declared Walter warmly. "I, for one, am now quite willing to go in the kindergarten, if that's all we have to do to make amends." "I can't see where we missed them," almost shouted Jack, for the noise of the thunder and rain added to the distance of sound between the cars. "Right at the spot where you told me to slow up," answered Walter. "I heard them then, but not after that." Each driver now put on all possible speed. It was a perilous ride. The mud splashed up in the very faces of the young men, the lights that flashed on the road were misleading, because of the almost continuous flashes of lightning, and the danger of "skidding" increased with every mile of the race. "Who were in the hired car?" called Walter. "Mrs. Robinson and her guest from the West, and the driver. I wish now I had gone over and fixed it, so that they had the right man at the wheel," yelled Jack. "I don't know a thing about this fellow." "What's his name?" asked Ed. "Bindle or something like that," was Jack's answer. Ed gave Walter a tug at the sleeve. "Don't say anything to Jack," he said, quietly, "but that's the very fellow who drove the Wakleys when they went over into the ditch." The shrill whistle of a train startled them. "Any other danger likely to crop up?" asked Jack. "This will surely give the girls all the experience they want, I'm afraid!" But a few more miles and they must reach the inn. If only they would find the party there safe and sound! None of the boys was what might be called nervous, but when it came to possible danger for the motor girls--Jack's sister, his friends and his chum's friends--somehow a fear seized each of the three young men; a fear to which they had thought themselves almost immune. "There's the lights from the Wayside," announced Jack, a little later, and then they turned their cars into the broad, private roadway. Jack was first to reach the hotel office, but Ed and Walter were almost at his heels. "Has a party of automobile folks come in here since eight o'clock?" he asked of the man at the desk. "Yes," replied the clerk, turning over one page of the big book. The boys' hearts gave a sort of jerk--it must be their girls, of course. "Have they registered?" went on Jack. "Were there three cars, and a number of girls?" The man looked down the list of names. "Here they are," he said, indicating some fresh writing on the page. Jack scanned it eagerly. Then he looked at Ed and Walter. "Not them!" he almost gasped. "We have got to turn back!" "Make sure they have not come in, and are on some porch," said Ed. "They may not have had a chance to get into the office." But all inquiries failed to give any clue to the lost party, and, without waiting for any refreshments, the almost exhausted young men cranked up their muddy cars, and started off again over the very road they had just succeeded in safely covering. "We've got to have more spunk if we intend to find them," said Ed, for Jack seemed too overcome to speak. "Why, they may be snug by some farm-house fire, actually enjoying the situation." "I hope so," faltered Jack. "But next time I'll _go along_--not after them," and he threw in high gear, advanced the spark and then they fairly flew over the turnpike, back to the fork that must have hidden the secret of the turn in the road. CHAPTER XV BOYS TO THE RESCUE Never had a ride seemed so treacherous. Sharp turns threatened to overturn the cars and the brakes, on slippery hills, were of little use. Fortunately the engines of both machines were in perfect running order and in spite of the bad conditions of the roads the _Comet_ and the _Get There_ pegged along, through mud and slush, sometimes sinking deep in the former, and ploughing madly through the latter. "I thought I saw a light," said Ed to Walter, after a period of hard driving. "Where?" asked the pilot of the _Comet_. "To the left--what place can that be?" Jack's attention was called to a distant but faint gleam, and, presently, the runabouts had left the main road, and were chugging through the heaviest track they had yet encountered. They turned in between what seemed to be tall gate-posts. "Why--this is--a graveyard!" exclaimed Jack, as the headlight fell on a shaft across a tall monument. "Well that's--something, over there," declared Ed. "And I--see it--move!" He slackened the speed of the car. "Now for real ghosts!" Walter could not refrain from remarking, although the situation was far from reassuring. "This is a cemetery, all right," went on Jack. "What's the use of us ploughing over--graves? Let's get out. We took the wrong turn, I guess." "Let's give a call," suggested Walter, at the same moment squeezing two or three loud "honk-honks" on his horn. "Hark!" "Honk! Honk! Honk--honk--honk!" "That's Cora's signal," shouted Jack. "Hurry on ahead, Walter. They are some place in this cemetery." But it was not so easy to hurry over the gruesome driveway, for it was narrow and uncertain, and the heavy rains had washed out so many holes, that the boys felt an uncanny fear that a sudden turn might precipitate them into some strange grave. "Where are you!" yelled Jack at the top of his voice. "Turn on your lights!" pleaded Walter, without waiting for a possible answer. "We can't tell where you are!" As quickly as it could have been possible to do so, the strong searchlight of a car (surely it was Cora's) gleamed over the shafts of stone, and marble, that now seemed like so many pyramids, erected to confuse the way of the alarmed young men. "We can't cut over the headstones," almost growled Ed. "What on earth do folks want those things sticking up for?" The absurdity of the remark was lost on the others. "If the girls are around they must have been blown in here," declared Jack, making a sudden turn, and jamming the foot-brake to keep the machine on its wheels, while he released the clutch. "Here! Here!" came the unmistakable voice of Cora. "Which way?" Jack called back. "Look out for the lake! Turn in from the vault!" came the voice again, and none too soon, for without the drivers having any idea of being near a body of water, both runabouts a moment later, were actually on the very brink of a dangerous-looking lake. "Gosh!" exclaimed Walter. "We nearly got ours that time. I'm going to get out and walk." "Great idea," agreed Ed, and at the same time Jack also left his car. More shouting and more answers soon put the searchers on the right track, and, although they were obliged to run over graves, and otherwise forget the sacredness of their surroundings, the trio soon brought up back of the vault, where the lamps of the _Whirlwind_ and of the _Flyaway_ told the first part of the strange story. "Oh, boys!" gasped Belle and Bess in one breath. "Jack!" exclaimed Cora. "Thank fortune!" came the fervent words from Mrs. Robinson. Jack had Cora in his arms before he could say a word, Walter and Ed divided themselves among the frightened group as best they could. Belle really fell into some one's arms, and Bess had difficulty in clinging to her trembling, little mother. "Another moment in this dreadful place, and I should have died!" wailed Mrs. Robinson. "And to think that it was all my fault, that you came out just to let me--see the--ocean," cried the visitor, Miss Steel of Chicago. "I shouldn't have consented----" "Nonsense!" interrupted Bess. "You had nothing to do with the accident. It was all the fault of that--disgraceful--man. He is no more a chauffeur--than----" "I knew he would do something dreadful!" put in Belle, who was sobbing hysterically, while Walter tried to comfort her. For some moments the scene was one of confusion, punctuated with such remarks as would spring from the frightened lips unbidden by brain or effort. Then the storm seemed to suddenly clear away, and with the passing of the rain went the black blankets that had hidden the lights from the sky. It seemed almost uncanny that the stars and moon should flash so suddenly over the heads of the party in the cemetery, and reveal to them the marble shafts, and granite headstones glaring in ghostly whiteness. "Let's get out of here," spoke Jack, giving his terrified sister a reassuring hug. "Cora, you are drenched through!" he exclaimed. "Well, I tried to be on the lookout," she stammered, "and so I could not keep under shelter." "What on earth happened?" asked Ed, following Jack's example, and assisting Mrs. Robinson and Miss Steel over the rough mounds into the pathway. "Suppose we delay investigations," suggested Walter. "The ladies have certainly had a most unpleasant experience." "Unpleasant!" repeated Bess. "It was simply dreadful!" "How long have you been here?" asked Jack. "A life time!" ejaculated Belle. "And we were just approaching the re-incarnate state," added Cora, with a desperate attempt at frivolity. "Did you see any ghosts?" asked Ed, almost lifting the little Miss Steel over a rough spot. "Did we!" mocked Belle. "Oh, I mean the kind that--shine," explained Ed. "Not the mental species." "Belle had a regular series of apparitions," declared Bess, now running from the terror state into one of extreme hilarity, the natural reaction from her awful experience. "But we have to wait for that--chauffeur," wailed Mrs. Robinson. "Why should we wait for him?" asked Jack. "He has gone for something,--Cora knows," concluded the woman helplessly. "Why, when I found my starting system was out of commission he said it was best for him to go and get new batteries. So he hurried off in his car, to go to the shop we passed out on the turnpike. It was then we discovered we were in the graveyard. He had turned in here by the merest accident. It was so dreadfully dark." "He mistook this road for the one to Wayside," interrupted Belle. "And ran off and left you in a cemetery," said Ed with a sneer. "But we couldn't go on without the _Whirlwind_," argued Cora. "Had it been one of the smaller cars that failed we might have managed." "And he didn't try to fix your batteries?" inquired Walter. "Why, he said he--couldn't," answered Cora in a tone of voice that betrayed her own suspicions. "We really cannot go on without him," declared Mrs. Robinson, feeling that it was due to her matronly reputation to stand firm for the chauffeur. "We really _must_ go on without him," declared Jack. "Are we to catch our deaths of cold here, waiting for the return of a man, who should never have gone away? I have an idea that the fellow was simply scared, and so left his post----" "Oh, indeed!" interrupted Belle, "he did everything he could to fix the _Whirlwind_, but Cora declared it would not spark, and so he said he had to go for batteries. You see we could not possibly go on without the big car." "Well, we will start off. If we should meet him on the road we might--speak to him," said Jack with a sort of growl, "but personally I don't think the fellow worth that much consideration." "There will be plenty of room in all the good cars now," added Ed, "and we can come out to-morrow and get the _Whirlwind_." "But I cannot go, and leave my car behind," objected Cora. "I have never left it--on the road yet!" "Let's look it over," suggested Jack, who knew very well that it would be next to impossible to induce Cora to go on without her machine. Feeling secure now, the entire party set to the task of looking over the _Whirlwind_, even the ladies taking part by holding the lights, and otherwise assisting the young men, who went to work to put the ignition system back into commission. It did not take the boys long to discover what was the trouble, and in a short time there was enough spark to start the _Whirlwind_. The car was cranked up, Jack was at the wheel, while Ed had put the _Get There_ in a position to go ahead, and assumed control of the runabout. It was not, however, so simple a matter to get the cars out of the cemetery, so the boys directed the girls and ladies to walk to the road, while the youths managed, by much twisting and turning, to run the machines to an open space. This finally accomplished, Mrs. Robinson got in the _Whirlwind_, while Miss Steel took her place with Ed in the _Get There_. What a beautifully clear night had emerged from the folds of that storm! And what a delightful thing it was to ride in safety after the dreadful experience of being "shipwrecked" in a graveyard! "I wish we had invited you to come," said Belle to Walter and Jack, as the _Flyaway_ glided on near the other cars. "I wish we had come without being invited," amended Jack. "Next time we will not try to keep secrets," declared Bess. "Next time we will not let you have any to keep," insisted Jack, "especially if there is a road ride in the combination." "What time is it?" asked Cora. "I haven't dared look at my watch." "The magical hour," replied Ed. "It was a pity to leave the graveyard just then. It is exactly midnight." "And there is a light by the road over there," went on Cora. "What ever could have induced that man to leave the road and drive down into the cemetery? He _must_ have known." "He's--well, wait until I get back to Chelton," threatened Jack. "I guess we will have some fun with that fellow's license." "Had we better stop at that house, and get some refreshment for you?" asked Walter. "Or would you rather go right on to the Wayside, where you can remove your wet clothing?" This last suggestion was considered the more practical, and very soon the _Whirlwind_, the _Comet_, the _Flyaway_ and the _Get There_ were gliding as smoothly over the wet and muddy roads, as if the machines had never put their occupants into the panic of fear and terror that had furnished the motor girls such a very thrilling experience. "There are the Wayside lights!" announced Jack. "Thank goodness!" said Mrs. Robinson, fervently. "I, for one, have had enough of night auto rides!" CHAPTER XVI THE SHADOW IN THE HEDGE One hour later the motor party had put up safely at the Wayside, a comfortable, home-like place. Of course the girls were disappointed that they could not enjoy any of the inn attractions that night, for a hop was in progress, but Mrs. Robinson insisted, and the young men reluctantly agreed with her, that it was not only wisest, but actually imperative that each one of the girls go directly to her room, take a warm bath and then a hot drink, and "get right into bed." Cora and Jack, however, had a short talk over their tea cups, Cora insisting upon knowing just what was the matter with the ignition system of her car, for she declared, since it was so simple a matter for the young men to fix, it surely could not have been difficult for her to have understood and set it right. As the trouble was really nothing more than the short circuiting of a wire, along with weak batteries, it was easy enough for Jack to explain it to her and how to remedy it. On her part Cora had to tell her brother of the accident to the _Whirlwind_, and the sudden precipitation into the "City of the Dead," then the "escape" of the chauffeur, and the fright of all the party when "just girls and women" found themselves helpless and deserted in that lonely place. Jack could not find words to express his indignation for the behavior of the man who was hired to take the party to the Wayside Inn. The ride from Chelton was one that might have been made safely under almost any road conditions, and from the Wayside to Lookout Beach the two ladies were to go by rail on the following morning. "But suppose," ventured Cora, when, after a turn about the big porch, she was about to say good night to her brother, "that man goes back to that graveyard, and spends the night searching for us? We should have left a note, and a light at the door of the big vault." "It would do that fellow all sorts of good to spend a night in a graveyard," returned Jack, "and, for my part, I would like to have the chance to slide a vault door shut on him, and give him an hour or so of silent meditation." "You haven't told me about the detectives," said Cora, who was standing at the door, reluctant to leave her brother. "What did they actually say, Jack?" "The detectives!" he repeated vaguely. Then he recalled all about his positive engagement with the two officers--his engagement made to take Cora's place in the interview. And he had broken his word with Cora! "Can't you tell me something they said?" she urged. "I know it is awfully late, and you can give me the details to-morrow, but I am so anxious to hear--just a word or two." "Why, I didn't see them," he blurted out, finally. "Didn't they come?" "Not while I was--home." "Then they must have been delayed--the trolleys from Squaton are so unreliable," said Cora. "I suppose they got to the house after you had started out? But I am not sorry you didn't wait for them," she added with a sigh, "else we might still be in the graveyard." "Oh, yes," Jack put in quickly. "It was a mighty good thing we found you, but the mean part of it was that we lost you. I had no idea of letting you get out of my sight, after we started." He laughed strangely. But it was the thought of the detectives with the two odd women from the strawberry patch that occasioned the mirth. "You must not laugh at us, Jack. It really was not a bit funny." Jack put his arm about his sister. For one brief moment they stood there in the clear moonlight. "Well, I must retire," said Cora, "although I feel more like sitting the night out. Good-night, Jack dear. We must be up with----" She stopped. "What was that?" asked the young man, as a slight figure seemed to glide over the path at the very edge of the steps they stood facing. "It--looked like a boy,--no, a girl," replied Cora, instinctively clutching her brother's arm. "There it goes," Jack indicated, as the figure almost disappeared in the thick hedge. "I thought at first the boys might be up to some prank, but that 'ghost' walks too firmly to be a spirit." "Queer for a girl to be out at this hour," reflected Cora. "I wonder who it can be, and what does she want, prowling about after midnight?" "Want me to investigate?" "What; run after it?" "Or--whistle," he said jestingly. Cora walked down the stone steps. She hesitated and listened. There was not a sound amid the leaves, through which the figure had just disappeared. "I declare!" she said, "I feel creepy. I guess I had better go to bed. I have had enough of ghosts for one night." Jack went with her up the stairs and left her at the door of the room she was to occupy. But he did not go farther down the hall, to the big room in the alcove, where he and his chums were to sleep, although he noticed that blades of light were escaping under the door which meant, of course, that Ed and Walter were waiting up for him. "I'll just take another look for that specter," he told himself, going down the stairs noiselessly. "I rather think he, she, or it, had something to say either to me or Cora." It was a curious thought, and Jack could not account for it, but he actually did make directly for the hedge where the streaks of moonlight fell, like silvery showers on the dark green foliage. A narrow path was outlined by a low hedge. He walked down this dark aisle, peering into the banks of green at either side. "Who's that?" he asked, as he distinctly heard a rustle, and at the same time saw the branches move. No answer. "Is there any one there?" he demanded, this time more emphatically. Still no answer came. Following the direction whence the movement and rustle came, Jack slipped under the hedge. As he did so a figure glided out, darted across the path, and ran toward the roadway. As quickly as he could disengage himself from the tangled brush, Jack, too, ran down the path after the fast-disappearing shadow. Again the figure made for the hedge. Jack hesitated. If he followed in, the unknown one could slip out on the other side, and get away without the possibility of being overtaken. Jack waited. There was not a sound, or a movement. Evidently the substance of the shadow was waiting for him to cross the hedge. At this juncture he wished he had called the boys to aid him in the search. But it was too late to regret that omission now. It seemed fully five minutes before either he, outside the hedge, or the figure within the green, moved. It was a silent challenge. Jack was determined now not to take the initiative. "I can stand here until morning," he told himself. "But I will not get out of range of that person by any false move." A full minute passed. "Guess it has gone to sleep," he thought, at the same moment trying to suppress a distinct yawn. Then he thought he saw something move. He stepped cautiously up to the trembling leaves. Like a shiver that swept through the silent darkness, the branches barely swayed. "It's creeping along," he surmised. "Now, I have to move along with it." With his steps quite as noiseless as those within the hedge, Jack did move toward the roadway. There the hedge would end, and something had to happen. "Queer race," he was thinking, when all of a sudden, without any warning, the shadow sprang out of the branches, darted across the path not five feet from where Jack stood spellbound, and dashed on back to the hotel. "Good-bye," called Jack lightly, realizing now that the apparition was nothing more or less than a girl. "Think you might have let me take you, though." He knew now that further watching would be useless, as the broad piazzas of the hotel, with endless basement steps, afforded such seclusion that he would find it impossible to penetrate, so he, too, turned back, and crossed the other side of the hedge, as he had done in coming down. Something in the bushes caught his eye, even in the shadows. It was a bundle of some sort. He stooped and touched it. Then he rolled it over. It was very light, and a small package. "Guess it won't bite," he thought. "I may as well take it along," and with this he very cautiously picked up the package, and walked back to the hotel. CHAPTER XVII AT WAYSIDE INN The light still gleamed under the door of the alcove room. Jack was not sorry that he would have company in his bundle investigation. "But Walter and Ed will blame me for not giving them the tip," he told himself. "We surely could have bagged that wild bird, if there only had been some one on the other side of the hedge." Ed opened the door before Jack had time to knock. "Where in the world have you been?" demanded the young man, who stood within the room, clothed in the splendor of a real athlete. "We had just about given you up. Who is she?" "Search me?" replied Jack, laughing at the fitness of the slang and at the same time apologizing for its vulgarity. "If I only knew who she was I'd feel better." "If he only knew who she was," repeated Walter, between a howl and a grunt. "Oh, if he only knew," added Ed, dragging Jack into the room, and closing the door after him. Then they saw the package. Walter grabbed it from Jack's hands. "Did she send it to us?" he asked, placing it comically on the washstand and making queer "passes" in front of it. "It's for me," insisted Ed. "She promised to send me just that very bundle," and he yanked it from the stand and placed it on the mantel. "Oh, for goodness sake, open it," interrupted Jack, glad of a good chance to get some one other than himself to attempt that uncertain proceeding. "It's light," commented Ed, giving the ends of the package an undoing twist. Walter and Jack leaned over very close. Ed stretched out his arms to keep them off. Then the paper spread open and the contents were in full sight. A mass of light-brown hair! "Oh, you--murderer!" exclaimed Ed, as loudly as the hour would politely admit. "To scalp her!" But Jack was more surprised than were his friends. "A girl's hair!" he exclaimed. "_Her_ hair!" corrected Ed. "Oh, if he only knew who _she_ was!" and his voice mocked the words Jack had uttered when he entered the room. "Jack Kimball!" ejaculated Walter. "This is the 'unkindest cut of all.'" "We denounce you!" added Ed. "This is outrageous!" Jack looked closely at the severed locks. "A pretty color," he mused. "Sort of burnished gold!" This attempt at the poetical brought the unrestrained wrath of his companions on his head, for both Walter and Ed simply "fell to," and pounded Jack "good and proper." He begged for mercy. Then they did let him go. "Now, honest Injun," started Walter, "tell us about it." But the strange race through the hedge was really too unusual to be comprehended or believed at once. Still Jack insisted upon every detail of the affair, and his friends finally did believe a part of it, at least. "And whose locks do you suppose they are?" asked Ed when the opportunity for that question arrived. "If I--only--knew!" reiterated Jack. "Let me see!" murmured the prudent Walter. "What was the shade of hair worn by the runaways of the strawberry patch? If I mistake not----" "You win!" interrupted Jack. "They were strawberry blondes!" "And it's as clear as the nose on your face that they had to cut the locks off--that they are here in the hotel at this very moment----" He was actually jumping into his outer clothes. "Where are you going?" demanded Jack. "To find Rose," insisted Ed. "My Rose--or was she your Rose--and is she my Nellie?" "For goodness sake, man!" wailed Jack, "don't make any further fuss around here to-night. The ladies and the girls will be scared to death if you start chasing my--shadow. We have got to-morrow to investigate. If the runaways are here to-night they will be here to-morrow." "That sounds like good advice," assented Walter. "And if I don't get a little rest there will be great ugly dark rings under my eyes, and my complexion will simply be ruined." "And his hair won't stay up," added Ed, taking up the girlish tone Walter had assumed. "Well, if you beauties must sleep suppose you go at it. I could snore looking at the floor," and Ed suited his actions to the words, for very shortly, neither Walter nor Jack could compel him to answer a single question with so much as an intelligent grunt. It seemed scarcely possible that daylight had come, when a tapping at the door awoke Jack. "Jack," called Cora, "I must speak with you. Come out as soon as you can." "Now what's up?" asked Ed with a yawn. "We've got to get up," replied Walter, "and since you managed to get to sleep first, we will give you first whack at the wash basin." "Thanks, but help yourself, Wallie," said Ed, turning over on his single bed, three of which sort were stretched out across the long old-fashioned room. "This is a fine day for sleeping." But in spite of the young man's determination to "prolong," he was compelled, by his companions, to join them in a quick washing and dressing act, and then take breakfast with the motor party on the broad side-porch. Mrs. Robinson was ill--that was the important piece of information that Cora wished to disclose to Jack. "We must stay here to-day," insisted Belle, "for mamma could never bear to travel with one of her bad headaches. Of course she could not avoid one after the awful experience of last night." "Well, this place isn't half bad," declared Jack, showing his positive regard for the breakfast before him. "We might all do worse than spend a day at the Wayside." He was thinking of the advantage that the stay would give him in making a search for the girl who had lost her package of newly-cut hair. He had not as yet had an opportunity to consult with Cora; in fact, there seemed plenty to do at the Wayside, and it would all require time. Mrs. Robinson insisted that the young folks enjoy themselves, and go wherever they wished, as she declared, she would be better and quieter with her friend Miss Steel. Miss Steel herself felt none too good after the experience and wetting of the past night, so the two ladies were not annoyed by unnecessary fussing, and unneeded attention. "Isn't this a wonderful old place, though?" commented Walter, as he, with the others had finished the meal, and all were about to go out exploring. "Did you see the fireplace in the dining room?" Thereupon all hands repaired again to the great big old-fashioned dining room, where a few rather delicate-looking persons were still lingering over their coffee. A waitress, in cap and apron, flitted about the apartment. A second girl brought some extra fruit to a little man, who sat against the wall in the corner, and as the two girls met at the buffet Jack heard the remark: "Wasn't it mean for them to leave without notice? It will give _us_ a good day's work." "Yes," replied the second girl, "and napkin day, too. Weren't they in a hurry to get away, though? You'd think some one was after them!" A titter from the older girl was interpreted to mean that no one could possibly be after those spoken of. Then both girls picked up some odds and ends from different tables, and left the room. Jack's heart sank--if a boy's heart ever does anything like that. At least, his hope of finding the runaway girls was, for the time, shattered. He was instantly convinced that the persons to whom the waitresses referred, could be none other than those who were so ardently sought by the motor girls. He was also just as thoroughly convinced that the runaways had already started on a new trail, and were beyond his reach. Cora, Bess and Belle were in ecstacies over the antique settings of the big room, while Ed and Walter were doing what they could to emphasize the glories of a "side walk," as they termed the broad stones, in front of the fireplace. "Fine for fire crackers on a wet Fourth," said Walter foolishly. "Splendid for walnuts on a cold night," put in Ed with something like common sense. Jack slipped out unnoticed. He went directly to the inn office. "If only the girls had not yet left the place," he was hoping. "And to think that I should have let them slip through my fingers like that! Cora will begin to lose faith in me," he reflected. "When she finds out that I have not seen the detectives, and when she really identifies the hair as that of----" At the office he was informed that all the servants of Wayside Inn were in charge of the housekeeper, whose office he would find at the rear, near the pergola. Thither Jack betook himself. He found the office without any difficulty, but the housekeeper was very busy, and could not see him at once. The wait was vexatious, but Jack amused himself with noting the peculiar furnishings of the room, that served for an office. It looked more like a big clothes closet for white aprons and gingham aprons, while all sorts of towels were hung around in abundance. Maids came in and took white aprons, but the presence of a young man evidently prevented them from arranging the swiss ties and sashes there, so those who seemed in a hurry went out with freshly laundered articles on their arms. Several remarks that Jack overheard seemed to relate to the girls who had left recently, and although he was on the alert to gather any possible definite information, none was forthcoming. Finally the little window back of a shelf was raised, and the head of an elderly woman was framed therein. Jack stepped up to the "ticket office." "Are there two girls named Catron employed here?" he asked. "I have never had any help of that name," the woman replied, promptly, but politely. "Perhaps they have used some other name," ventured the young man, feeling decidedly ill at ease. "Why?" asked the housekeeper who, Jack learned, was Miss Turner. "Well, the girls I am searching for--ran away from their home," he blurted out. "Oh my!" exclaimed the woman. "I hope no such young ladies would present themselves at the Wayside Inn." "They might," ventured Jack. "You see, the girls were not altogether to blame. They were orphans, and did not have a good home." The woman looked puzzled. "I wonder if they could have been the two girls who were here yesterday?" she said. "They left early this morning, and I so much wanted them to stay to-day. Could you describe them?" "Well, I am afraid not," said Jack, "but my sister is a guest here, and it is she who is interested in these poor girls." Jack felt infinitely better now that he had, in a measure, cleared himself of a personal interest in the runaways. "If you will wait until I give a few dinner orders," said Miss Turner, "I will go with you and talk with your sister. I am always willing, and anxious, to assist needy young girls." This offer was accepted with thanks, and presently Jack conducted the matron to the private parlor, where he knew he would be able to arrange a quiet talk between her and Cora. CHAPTER XVIII LOOKOUT BEACH "Isn't it perfectly dreadful!" "Simply awful!" "It surely isn't true!" "But it's there--every word of it!" These exclamations burst from the lips of Belle and Bess Robinson, as the two sisters smoothed a newspaper out before their startled eyes. "And this paper was found at the Wayside," went on Bess. "No wonder the poor girls ran away again!" "When we get to the cottage I am going to ask Cora all about it," declared Belle. "It does not seem right that a newspaper should hint at anything that is not plainly stated! That about the young ladies from Chelton who rode in autos--every one will know means us." The girls were in the _Flyaway_, going along a sea cliff road, only a few miles outside of the pretty summer resort of Lookout Beach. The roaring of the ocean could be plainly heard now, the salt of the spray was in the air, and the sun glinted on the white roads. Bess and Belle, in their car, had gone on ahead, the others followed at a distance. "Isn't the air glorious!" cried Bess. "I am sure we are going to have a delightful time down here." "And wasn't it lovely of mamma to invite the boys?" added Belle. "Of course she felt perfectly helpless with just us girls; and Jack is so resourceful!" "Yes, I fancy it might have been rather lonely evenings without the boys. Of course we will have to stay around the cottage evenings, and with them we will have some opportunity for fun." "Ed says they are going to take a bungalow almost on the beach," remarked Belle. "It will be fun to see how they keep house." The _Flyaway_ dropped back nearer the little procession of other autos that now wended their way along the seaside boulevard to the peninsula that looked out over the bay, across the great noisy ocean, and out--out--it seemed almost to Eternity. It was here, on this point of land, that the cottages were grouped, and it was this exceptional view that gave the pretty spot its name--Lookout Beach. "Quite a pretty village," Cora remarked to Jack, as they drove through the center of the place. "Plenty of fishing around here," said Ed to Walter, as the boys' car slacked along the board sidewalk, and its occupants observed numbers of men and boys slouching along, with baskets, evidently well filled with the night's catch. The _Whirlwind_ stopped at the post-office, and Cora stepped out to ask the exact direction to Clover Cottage. She glanced in the box, the number of which Bess and Belle had given her as the one that "went with" their cottage. Two pieces of mail had already arrived and these were handed to Cora by the old man who made it his particular business to welcome every "box holder" to Lookout Beach. "The first road to the left," the postmaster told her as she emerged from the office, and the _Whirlwind_ again led the way to the cottage. The hanging sign "Clover" left no doubt as to which was the particular cottage and here the four cars and their merry passengers pulled up, and stopped. "Welcome to Clover!" exclaimed Bess and Belle in chorus. "Three cheers for the welcome!" replied Jack, in as loud a voice as the proximity to other cottages would allow. "But the house is not open!" declared Bess, who was first to reach the porch. "Nettie was to have come down yesterday." "Why, yes," added Belle. "Mother will be dreadfully put out if she gets here and we have no maid----" "Oh, don't worry about that," Ed interrupted. "Since we have been invited, we will attend nicely to any little thing like opening up house, and setting up housekeeping," and without further ceremony he undertook to explore each window on the broad veranda, and soon he had one pair of shutters unfastened, and was opening a sash without the slightest difficulty. "Was that window unlocked?" asked Belle. "Why, our things might have been stolen!" "Just wait until I open the door," ordered Ed, "then you there--Walter and Jack--you may take the job of portering." "I'd rather 'buttle,'" objected Walter. "There's more in it. First shot at buttling!" It seemed jolly already. The door was thrown open, and Ed made all sorts of bows and bends in inviting the ladies to enter. In the sitting room a paper dangled from the lamp that hung in the center of the apartment. "Directions!" announced Jack. "Don't blow out the gas! Don't waste the water! Don't break any dishes!" He had taken the paper down. The room was rather dark, and he stepped to the door to read the penciled words. "It's for--Cora," he announced. "Now who on earth knew that Cora Kimball was coming down to Clover!" They all stood spellbound! That a letter for Cora should hang there in a cottage closed up--certainly the doors had not been opened! Cora took the folded paper from Jack's hand. "More--ghosts!" sighed Belle. "Somehow this whole trip has been----" "Ghost-bound!" interrupted Walter. "Well, what does this particular ghost want, Cora?" "It's a note--from Rose and Nellie," she announced. "They have been here--and--wait, let me read it." "Dear Miss Kimball," she read aloud. "We came to your cottage last night. I hope you will forgive us. We did not sleep in any bed, but slept on the floor. We washed all the dishes this morning, and cleaned down the pantry shelves to pay for our night's lodging. We are dreadfully discouraged, and when you see Aunt Delia will you just tell her we have drowned ourselves on account of that piece she put in the paper about us. We did not take Miss Schenk's earrings. Your true friends, Rose and Nellie Catron." "Oh!" gasped Belle. "Isn't that perfectly dreadful!" "Do you really think--they have drowned themselves?" asked Bess. Jack was reading the letter over, and the other boys were helping him decipher it. Cora waited their opinion. "Isn't it strange," she said, as Jack laid the paper on the table, "every place we go they leave some clue, and yet they are just clever enough to escape us." "But are they dead, do you think?" asked Belle, sobbing. "Not much," declared Ed firmly. "They only threw that in to put Ramsy off their track. You know that account in the Chelton paper claimed that Mrs. Ramsy said she would put the girls in the Reform School when she found them. Now what girl is going to walk into that sort of trap?" "Wasn't it good of the poor things to wash all the dishes," remarked Bess, who was now looking at the clean porcelain on the closet shelves. "If they had only waited we might have hired them, since, for some unknown reason, Nettie has not arrived." "And we could have helped them keep out of sight, too," added Belle, to whom any thought other than that of suicide was a welcome change. "I do wish we could find them! Don't you think we ought to search, before they get away--to the ocean?" "Now, my dear young ladies," began Ed, assuming a comical air, "since I am to be head waiter, steward and all but butler here, I insist that the thought of foreign affairs, tinged with suicide and desperation, be tabooed from--our midst," and he actually opened the piano. "Please get your partners for----" But the melody he struck up was not intended for a dance. It was the old, familiar: "No Place Like Home!" In something between a wail and a howl, the three boys took up the refrain, and kept at it until the girls begged them to stop. Then Ed fell in a heap on Walter's neck, and the two foolish young men pretended to cry, and moaned aloud without pretense. Jack found a big dishpan and he struck up a tattoo on that with a carving knife and fork. Cora was not going to let the boys make all the noise so she procured the dinner bell and rang it violently. When the din subsided, the boys suggested that the windows be opened, and the place aired before the arrival of the train that was to bring to Lookout Beach Mrs. Robinson and Miss Steel. What fun it was to be in actual possession of a house! True it was a very small house, compared with that occupied by the Robinsons in Chelton, but then there were no maids, and there was no formality. Just a perfect little cottage with everything in it for real housekeeping! "A regular playhouse!" commented Cora. "I wish we could keep it all to ourselves without Nettie, or any other maid." "You must come and see our house when we get set up," said Ed. "We are going to do it all alone. Take turns at cooking, and, I suppose, take turns at eating." Bess and Belle were busy making a room ready and comfortable for the arrival of their mother, and her guest. "I am sure mamma will like this room best," said Bess, "for it looks out over the bay and has such a lovely tree just on the east end, where the sun might have been troublesome at daybreak." "Yes, what a perfectly delightful room," exclaimed Cora, assisting in arranging the bed with the white coverlets, that had been placed within reach, all ready for the first comers. "We never before had a furnished house," went on Belle, "and just see! A cake of soap and box of matches in each room! Now that is what I call _real_ furniture." And so they went on from room to room, the girls selecting and arranging according to what seemed most practical, and most pleasing. The fright of the "suicide note" was almost forgotten in the joys of exploring and experimenting. Then the boys discovered that it was almost lunch time, and this was the signal for "a raid" on the town stores. Ed and Jack jumped into the _Get There_, and were off before Bess or Belle had a chance to tell them what might be "nice for lunch." "Oh, we may as well try our hand all alone this time," commented Jack, "and if we fail in buying the right things, it will add to our general knowledge in managing 'our bungalow.'" So they drove off, while Walter assisted in spreading rugs on the porch, and putting up hammocks. "Wouldn't have missed this for anything," Walter declared, when Cora asked him to help put the leaves in the dining-room table. "Isn't this just playing house, though!" "And to think that we do not have to wash any old, dusty dishes," remarked Cora. "Dear me! I wish we could get some tangible clue to the actual whereabouts of those two lone, miserable, runaway girls!" CHAPTER XIX THE MOVING PICTURE "MOVED" "Where shall we go first?" asked Bess, in a very fever of delight. "There are so many places down here. I had no idea it was such a lively place." "I vote for moving pictures," said Cora. "I have not seen a really good motion picture show since last summer." "But we have to get down to our bungalow," objected Jack. "When fellows rent a place they are expected to see that it doesn't burn down or--blow away." "Oh, can't you put up some place else to-night?" asked Belle. "Mother will not let us go out alone, and we are just dying to see some of the seaside sights." "Well, seein' as it's you," he replied, "we might arrange to sit on the beach all night. But otherwise we have got to get down to the bungalow, and see if there is sleeping room in it, for we will not--absolutely will not--go to a hotel." They were seated on the porch of Clover Cottage, having just had a supper which the young ladies prepared, and which every one, including Mrs. Robinson, declared was as good and tasty a supper as one could desire. True, there was some difficulty about its preparation, as there was no gas in the cottage, and the boys had considerable trouble in procuring the sort of oil that is used in the sort of stove to be found in the furnished house at the seashore. But all this, and much more, was finally accomplished, and the meal that evolved from the process did credit to the girls from Chelton. "I'm with Cora for the motion pictures," Ed declared, as he swung himself out of the hammock, and onto his feet. "And I'm also in for a quiet little spin thereto." "We can all pile in the _Whirlwind_," said Jack, "and with Walter at the wheel we will all have a jolly good time and nothing to do but admire the--curve of Wallie's ears." "Well, I guess not," objected Walter. "I went for the kerosene. It's up to somebody else to do the chores this time." It was then decided that Ed should drive the car, and presently the girls reappeared on the porch, each dressed in her regulation summer garb: Bess in her dainty muslin princess, Belle in her faultless linen outing suit, and Cora in her pretty blue sailor gown. The change from motor attire was welcome, and the boys did not fail to pass their compliments, and other remarks upon it. This last included the criticism that Bess might do well to add another bow behind her other ear, that Belle break off at least two yards of her single pond lily stem, and that Cora might shift her tie two or three degrees farther north; otherwise, the boys declared, the girls looked "very sweet." "We must put the steerage chairs in the tonneau," said Cora. "Belle, we vote that you and Walter occupy these state chairs, as you will take up the least room." "Go slow," said Jack, with better intent than grammar. "We want to see--the pretty girls." "And we want to see--everything," added Bess. "Isn't this perfectly delightful? I am sure we will have wonderful complexions after our summer here. Why, the spray fairly washes one's face." "Nice of the spray," declared Walter, "and I fancy it will be very useful to the bungaloafers, for we have to carry the house water from the ocean. I can see myself washing in the atmosphere." Along the broad, ocean driveway the lights were already blinking and sputtering in their regular nightly glow. Music could be heard from many and various attractions, and altogether the scene was as merry as the motor maids might have desired. "Let's stop here and walk on the boardwalk," suggested Jack. "We can put the machine up at that garage." This hint was promptly acted upon, and as soon as Ed had delivered the _Whirlwind_ to the man, who would charge outrageously for housing the machine for a few hours, he joined his friends, who were all expectant for the first night's pleasure at the seaside. Scarcely had they decided which way to go when a shout, in a familiar voice, attracted their attention. "Hello there, Chelton!" came the call. "Where are you bound for?" "There are Paul and Hazel!" exclaimed Cora. "Isn't that fine! Now we _will_ have a party!" And sure enough, along came Paul Hastings and his sister Hazel. Paul, handsomer than ever, with the ocean tan just acquired in his return trip from Europe, and Hazel as bright and fetching as possible, her eyes always ready to "gleam," and her lips always ready to smile, for Hazel had the reputation of being the sort of girl who is brilliant, and knows how to "do all things well." "This _is_ luck," declared Jack. He was very fond of Hazel. "Isn't it though!" reiterated Cora. She never tried to hide her admiration for Paul Hastings, who knew how to make his brains work for his hands. "Where are you stopping?" asked Belle. "We intend to stop at the Spray," said Hazel, "but the fact is, we only came down this afternoon and haven't stopped at all yet." "And how's Old Briney?" asked Ed. "Salty as ever?" "Just seasoned to taste," replied Paul. "I'm very fond of salt--taken externally." "You look it," declared Walter. "I would mistake you any place for a regular tar." With additional compliments from the girls, for indeed the sea tan was very becoming to Paul, the party started off to the theatre where the "barker" at the entrance announced the motion picture performance. They found the place crowded, so that the party were not able to obtain seats together. Bess and Hazel went with Jack and Walter, while Paul and Ed looked after Cora and Belle. The performance had begun. It was funny to hear a boy sing a comical song that was intended to be pathetic, and to see the illustrative pictures flashed on the big muslin. The song was all about a little girl who wanted a mamma, and who said so to a lady who knew the child's widowed father, and who finally took pity on the child and married the parent, thus affording a ready-made mamma for the little girl on the canvas. And then they were all so happy! The intensely amateurish effect put the number beyond criticism, and the Chelton young folks applauded it vigorously. The small boy who sang was very much surprised at the applause--and so were many others in the playhouse. But the motor boys and girls kept it up, until the little fellow was compelled to come out front and bow. Then they let him go. A wonderful story of rustic love and its "terrible" consequences was told in the regulation motion pictures, the motion of which seemed to have a very bad spell of ague. Bess was compelled to clap her hand over her eyes occasionally, but the others stood the strain wonderfully, although Cora declared she hadn't a wink left for the rest of her natural life. Another picture story was attempted when, suddenly, there was a loud hissing sound that was followed by a roar! Instantly the place was in confusion! Women shouted and children cried! The lights went out, and with them seemed to go whatever amount of common sense the audience might have been expected to have held in reserve. "Keep your seats! Keep your seats!" shouted the manager. "There is nothing at all the matter!" The frightened and panic-stricken assemblage would not listen to the assurance, but, instead, fought their way toward the doors, until the real danger, that of being crushed to death, was evident to those who had not taken fright with the others. "Don't move!" Jack commanded his party, in the most emphatic tone. "Keep your seats, and don't stir!" But Belle was almost fainting with fear, and she begged to be allowed to get out. "What for?" asked Ed. "There is absolutely nothing the matter. The lights have gone out and the motion picture machine went up, but what harm is that? Stay where you are, Belle," and he grasped her firmly by the arm. "I wouldn't risk my--new shoes in that mob." This quieted the girl, and she sank back against Cora, who was almost laughing at the situation. Presently, the manager, realizing that he could not stop the crowd with his voice, called for music and ordered the other part of the performance to go on. "Work slow!" he commanded, and then the old rusty piano "took up" something--just what it was would be hard to say. To the alleged tune a song was started. It was perfectly dark in the place, no substitute lights having been provided, and when the voice of a young girl trembled above the din and racket of the people fighting for the open air, it seemed almost ridiculous. "For our special benefit," announced Walter. "I don't believe there is another person seated in the place." But the girl sang on, each bar of her song of the times bringing her voice out clearer, and fuller. "I would like to see her face," said Cora to Ed. "There is something familiar about that voice." "Well, perhaps we can make a light," he replied. "I have as many as two matches, and the other fellows may have a couple." Bess leaned over to Cora. "Doesn't that sound like Nellie?" she asked. "I am sure she had just that queer lisp." "I was just saying the same thing," returned Cora. "Oh, if we only could find them--here, and have no further worry about them and their--foolish suicide note," for although Cora placed no credence in the drowning threat, she did not like it, and would very much preferred to have it put out of all possibility of occurring. Still the child sang on--all about the roses and the birds that seemed to get in a most dangerous tangle, until the listeners found it difficult to tell which was sweeter--the song of the birds, or the color of the roses! The Chelton party was not far from the place where the footlights ought to have been. "Suppose I go over there and strike a match," suggested Ed. "I can hold it up near her face, and then you will be able to get a glimpse." Acting on this plan he felt his way through the dark and deserted place, and did almost reach the stage. Then he struck a match! It went out. He lighted another--better luck this time, for it burned away while he jumped to the stage and almost thrust the little wooden taper into the face of the singer. The girl screamed, and seemed too frightened to move! The match went out, and, as the place was again black in darkness, the figure on the platform passed behind the curtain and was gone! CHAPTER XX THE GAIETY OF GOING "Oh, Glorious gaiety!" "Oh, delightful dissipation!" "Oh, luscious loafing!" "Oh, wayside wanderings!" These remarks emanated from the exuberant spirits of Jack Kimball, Paul Hastings, Ed Foster and Walter Pennington. It was a few evenings after the moving picture performance had ended so abruptly, and the young men insisted that this time they would "take in" some other attractions. The young ladies were almost equally enthusiastic, and therefore it was decided that the beautiful June evening be spent in the perfectly innocent sport of further sight-seeing at the select summer colony centre. On the other evening when Ed thrust the light under the eyes of the little singer, who was following the manager's instructions to "sing for all she was worth, to catch the crowd," and the girl had darted away, frightened at the rather daring act of attempt at recognition, Cora insisted that the singer was none other than Rose Catron. But the darkness and confusion of the place made it impossible for even the Chelton boys to make their way back of the stage and investigate further. Jack did try it, but the tangle of boxes and heaps of stage fixings so blocked his way that he was forced to give up before he reached what ought to be the stage entrance. Ed and Walter searched for the manager with equally unsatisfactory results, and so, for the time being, the quest had to be abandoned; although Cora was keenly disappointed in having to leave the place with no clue as to the real identity of the little singer. That the girls had not drowned themselves was all the assurance that Belle needed to restore her peace of mind on that subject, while Bess insisted she would take the _Flyaway_ and run down to the place so early next morning that if the performer should prove to be Rose, she would scarcely have had time to pick up her things in daylight, and again escape. Hazel was also interested when told of the girls' strange story, and in her gentle yet decisive way, she offered to do what she could while at the beach to discover the possible whereabouts of Rose and Nellie. But the search was unavailing, as no one in authority at the moving picture theatre would answer questions satisfactorily. "To-night," said Walter, as they started out again, "let the girls choose the attraction." They sauntered along the brilliantly-lighted boardwalk. All the style available at the colony seemed to be on parade, and, as far as our girl friends were concerned, they would really have preferred to remain in the procession, but for the knowledge that the boys wanted to see what was going on in the big building at the end of the pier. "The Human Washing Machine!" shouted Jack, after a glance at the sign. "Now there is a practical attraction and I am willing to pay the bill for 'doing up' every one in the crowd." To this novelty the party betook themselves. Outside the entrance were people deliberating upon going in, but hesitating because the billboards announced that "each person would be put through the most novel and most complete process of washing to be obtained anywhere, at the low cost of ten cents the person." But the Chelton folks were not afraid--they might have halted at the ironing possibility, but nothing in the way of washing had any terrors for the motor girls and their friends. "Oh, my!" exclaimed Belle. "I could never go in that!" "Why?" demanded Walter. "It looks perfectly tempting. Smell that soap suds!" A whiff came out of the building to them. "And look at the blueing," cried Cora, pointing to a mass of blue water flowing from a pipe outside the structure. "If we never had the 'blues' we will have them now--all ready-made." "If never you've been blue, prepare to be blue now," quoted Ed, with semi-tragic effect. "Come along! Come right along!" shouted the "barker," or man who was booming the attraction. "This way for the greatest sensation outside of flying! Step this way--everybody! You pays your money and you gets a good wash! Satisfaction guaranteed. The servant problem solved. Here you are, young ladies and gentlemen--right this way!" and he looked at our friends in a humorous manner. "Hear that?" called Jack. "He has us spotted, all right. He knows we need it, maybe. I'm going in first." "That's the way to talk," commented the barker. "You'll never regret it, my friend. Step this way to the ticket office. Remember, ladies and gentlemen," he went on, in louder tones, "this is the only human washing machine on the beach. There are washing machines run by human beings but this is absolutely and without doubt the only self-regulated, double acting, six cylinder, four speeds forward and reverse machine, that washes human beings in the short space of ten minutes--one sixth of an hour--six hundred seconds, and I say that without fear of successful contradiction. This way--everybody!" "Here goes," went on Jack, as he purchased a number of tickets from a roll unwound by a woman in a little cage of an office. "I'll try it first, and if I survive the bleaching process the rest of you can come in." "Oh!" cried Bess. "I'll never, never do it!" "Me, either," added Belle. "Wait until we see what it is," suggested Cora. "It may be great fun, and, as long as it's not vulgar I'm going in, if Jack says it's all right." "Come one, come all!" the barker could be heard droning. The party of boys and girls went into the place, and found themselves in the midst of an excited and jolly crowd. Some had been washed, others needed washing, some wanted washing, and others desired it, but feared to undertake the ordeal. "Good-bye!" called Jack, gaily, as he walked along a narrow passage, protected by a railing on either side, for an attendant directed there all who wanted to indulge in the new sensation. "Hold on!" cried Ed and Walter. "We're coming, too!" "Get a hustle on," ordered Jack. "The water is just right now." The girls stood where they could watch the process. Suddenly Jack and his chums could be seen bobbing up and down, as if they were in a boat on a choppy sea, and then the girls noticed that the lads were on a sort of endless, moving sidewalk, that did all sorts of queer "stunts" while, underneath, water rushed and bubbled along, seemingly all about the boys, but never touching them. "You are now in the tub of soapy water," announced a man who was evidently there for that purpose. "You are getting the first layer of contamination off." Faster and faster went the moving, endless sidewalk. It surged up and down, and from side to side. The boys were laughing and joking, and they had to cling to the railing to maintain their footing. "This is great!" cried Jack. "All to the la-la!" added Ed. "It most----" began Walter, but, at that minute all three came to the end of the first scrubbing process, and were precipitated upon a highly polished slide--somewhat like the bamboo ones that are so popular at summer resorts. It was like glass, and, as there were only a few lights at this point, whereas the "tub" was brilliantly illuminated, the boys went down in a heap, and slid along. "Part of the game," commented Jack, grimly. "You are now on the washing board," came from the announcer. "Keep perfectly still--there is no danger." In front of, and behind, the boys came other persons--slipping, sliding, shouting, yelling, laughing, gasping and struggling. "Wow!" yelled Ed. "Here comes another tub to go through!" They had reached the end of the "washboard" and once more the three boys were tossed up and down, and from side to side, while rushing water under them seemed to give the effect of being put through a boiler of suds. "Look out! Here's something new!" yelled Ed, a moment later, and, sure enough, they emerged, after a trip up and down, and around corners, upon a scrubbing board, made of glass, under which water was rushing with such effect that it seemed as if they were going to be soaked. "This is great!" cried Jack, as he reached it. "I thought I was in for it that time, but it's all to the soap and starch; that's what!" His companions, and many others, followed, and, a moment later, they were facing what looked like two rolls, such as collars and cuffs are run through. "Do we go through them?" gasped Jack, halting a moment as he got on his feet after the slide down the scrubbing board. "Sure--go ahead," said Walter. "Oh, mercy! He won't really go through those rolls, will he?" gasped Belle. The rolls did look formidable, and they were whirling around at a rapid rate. "Be a sport," called Ed. "When you've been rolled out you'll be all right, Jack." "All right--you go ahead," retorted Jack, stepping back. "You can have my place." "It's all right, fellows--go ahead," one of the attendants assured them. Jack faced the revolving rolls. The attendant gave him a gentle push, and, before Jack knew it he was swallowed up in the whirling cylinders. "Oh!" screamed Bess. "He'll be killed!" But neither she nor the others could see what happened, for Jack vanished, and, after him went Walter and Ed. Once through the rolls, they were tossed with considerable force into a wringer ten times the size of the one through which they had just passed. Like the first the rolls were upright, and not horizontal. They seemed to be made of rubber, and were more real than the first. Jack tried to hold back, but it was of no use. He had been tossed fairly into the big wringer, and, a moment later, he found himself being drawn through. To his surprise the rolls were of straw, covered with cotton-batting, and they compressed sufficiently to allow him to go through easily. "Come on, fellows!" Jack tried to call to his chums, but his mouth was stopped for an instant by the soft rolls. Besides, there was no need for his invitation, since Ed and Walter, whether they wanted to or not, found themselves being drawn in with irresistible force. By this time the girls had run up, not without some little alarm, and they saw the boys come through the rolls. "Oh--they--they're all--all right," gasped Belle, her hand on her heart. "Of course," cried Jack, with a laugh. "We're most done, ladies. Then it will be your turn." "Never!" declared Cora. "Oh, you'll like it, ladies," the attendant assured them. "Next comes the blueing water," and Jack and his friends, together with a number of other persons who were undertaking the ordeal, were once more on a moving sidewalk, sliding up and down, from side to side, and over a mass of blue, rushing water, which, seen through the sections of the walk, looked as if, every minute, it would surge up all about their feet. But they were as dry as the proverbial bone. "Now if you will kindly step this way you will be hung out to dry," called the attendant, and a door opened, and the boys with several others were fairly shot out into a yard, where they saw what they supposed were persons hanging over clothes lines. Jack recoiled at this. "Go ahead. Be a sport," urged Ed. Then Walter burst into a laugh. "Why, they're dummies!" he gasped. "Straw figures!" And so they proved. "All over!" announced a man. "Have another wash. It will do you good." "Not for mine," declared Jack. "I'm clean enough to last a month." "I'm going to have some more," announced Walter. "So am I," declared Ed. "I'll go through with the girls this time." "And there's Paul yet to be initiated," added Walter. They hurried back to where they had left their friends. "The greatest ever!" declared Jack. "I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Go ahead, girls. It's the greatest fun!" "But those wringers?" faltered Bess. "Aren't you pressed flat?" "Try it--and see," replied Jack, all unconscious of the joke he was perpetrating at the expense of the plump girl. "Were they rubber?" asked Belle. "Go through and see," was all Jack would answer. "I'll try it," volunteered Paul. "So will I," added Cora bravely. "Oh, don't!" begged Belle. "Of course I will. I'm not afraid, after Ed, Walter and Jack have been through it. Besides, look at all the other girls and ladies who venture in." "That's the way to talk," said the attendant admiringly. "In you go, young lady," and he assisted Cora upon the narrow footpath of the first "tub." Cora went through it all, with Paul close behind her. It was all perfectly proper, and not too rough, and the girl thoroughly enjoyed it, even to the two rolling machines. She came back with her cheeks flushed from the exercise and excitement. "Go ahead, girls!" urged Cora to her chums. "It is a most novel experience." "I would, only for the wringers," agreed Bess. "And I would--only--only for the slide," declared Belle, and no amount of urging could induce her or her sister to venture the novelty. But they had lots of fun watching others get "washed," and even Hazel took a trip, with Jack to keep her company, for he reconsidered his determination not to take another "dip." Jack, his chums, the boys, and Cora and Hazel were such a merry party, and attracted so much attention that the man in charge of the machine, after they had each enjoyed two trips through it, came up, and said: "Say, go through again--for nothing." "Why?" inquired Jack. "Oh, because you're such a jolly bunch that you are drawing a big crowd in here," was the explanation. "The man outside is turning 'em away. That's good business for us. Have another dip or two for nothing. Only keep up the laughing and shouting." "No, thank you," responded Cora, with a smile. "We are not human advertisements, if we have gone through a human washing machine," and, to the man's evident disappointment, they walked out of the place. Bess laughed so uproariously at the sight of a stout woman essaying a trip through the machine, that the motor girl had to sit down on a box to get her breath. "Oh, I never laughed so much in all my life," she said. "Laugh and grow fat," commented the attendant, meaning no harm. Bess stopped her mirth suddenly, and gave the man such a look, that, as Jack said, if glances could kill, the poor chap would have been "crippled for life." "I wish he was!" snapped Bess, who was very sensitive about her weight. "I never heard of such a thing--just because I laughed a little." "You should have gone through the rolls," ventured Cora. "Though they looked hard, they were as soft as a feather pillow. Come on; there's time yet." But even the inducement of "feather pillows," would not tempt Bess or Belle to try the machine. "Well, what next?" asked Jack, as they stood out on the big pier, and listened to the mournful swish of the incoming tide underneath. "What do you say to another moving picture show, or the band concert, or some salt-water taffy or even a lobster supper? I'm game." "I vote for lobsters," called Ed. "Because they're such friends of yours," retorted Walter. "Mighty good friends, at the prices they charge down here," commented Paul. "I haven't dared look one in the face." "Silly--a lobster hasn't a face," said his sister. "Well, their eyes, then," amended Paul. "I think my sister and I must really go," came from Paul. "It is getting late--for us." "Yes, it is too late for anything more to-night," was Cora's retort. "If we don't get in on good time, you know, boys, our liberty on other occasions may be restricted." "Well, have your way about it," answered Jack, good-naturedly. "There are other nights coming." "Yes, let's go home," added Belle, and Bess tried to hide a sleepy yawn, for they had traveled about considerable that day, and she was tired. So Paul and Hazel said good-night, and the others, entering the autos, turned into the ocean boulevard and started toward Clover Cottage. "We'll drive up, and put the machines away later," suggested Jack, when they were near their home quarters. "We really have been quite a long time away." They found Mrs. Robinson and Miss Steel waiting on the porch. "Why, mamma has not retired yet," exclaimed Bess. "I wonder at her sitting out of doors in the damp." But the reason of this was soon made plain. Mrs. Robinson was too frightened to go indoors! "Oh, we have had such a dreadful time," she sobbed. "I cannot see how you could have gone and left us in this lonely place all this while." Bess instantly had her arms around the trembling little woman. Mrs. Robinson had always been "babied" by the girls, and that she was very nervous her whole family knew too well. "Mother dear," began Bess, "we did not think it too late. You said we might stay until--after nine----" "But, daughter! How did I know we were to be frightened to death by--burglars!" "Burglars!" chorused the boys. "Yes," put in Miss Steel, "we distinctly heard them in the dining room, and when I had the courage to attempt to go in they--blew out the lamp!" "Mercy!" exclaimed Belle, recoiling from the window she had been leaning against. "It might have been--a draft of wind," suggested Walter. "But a draft could not knock over a chair," Miss Steel told him, somewhat indignantly. "We would have gone over to the hotel if we could have left any word for you, but, you see, we could not go inside, even to write a note." A thought flashed through Cora's mind. The mention of "note" had inspired it. She drew Bess and Belle aside. "I wouldn't wonder if these runaway girls came back," she whispered. "We must go inside and see if they--left a note." "Go inside!" repeated Belle. "I guess not." "Come on, boys! Let's investigate," said Walter to the others, opening the hall door and striking a match as he did so. He lighted the hanging lamp in the little hall, while the women, with Bess and Belle, actually left the porch and went out on the sidewalk to be at a safe distance. Cora followed the boys. "Who's here?" asked Jack as he entered the dining room. "Light up!" commanded Ed. "We might step on somebody's fingers." The dining-room light was soon burning. Yes, a chair had been overturned, and another! "The flower vase is broken!" exclaimed Cora, seeing the wreck in the centre of the table. "And I gathered those posies!" said Ed. "Just my luck!" "Come right along, gentlemen," invited Walter to the invisible intruders. "Come along! This way to the refrigerator!" "Be careful, Walter," cautioned Cora, for although she had undertaken to follow the boys she had not counted on seeing things thus upset. "There are candles in the pantry," suggested Ed. "I know, because I put them there, after I found the oil can in the cellar." Jack and Walter each lighted a candle. They then undertook a systematic search. Closets, cupboards, corners and stairways were ransacked, every door was opened and closed, to make sure no one swung on the hinges. Then the searching party went upstairs. The same thoroughness was observed on the second floor, but no hint of whom the intruders might be was brought to light. It took some time to go over all the smaller rooms, and, when every nook had been finally explored, Cora sat down for a moment on the hall seat. "Listen!" she whispered. A sound from the dining room had caught her attention. "It's the girls," said Walter, as he, too, heard something downstairs. "They would never come in until we assured them everything was all right," objected Cora. "Let's go down," said Ed, at the same moment, almost falling over the bannister in his haste to get down quickly. "There they go!" called Walter, who was just back of Jack, and, as he said this, a figure darted out the rear door, and made away, before the boys could get out of the house to follow. "This way!" shouted Jack to Ed, as they finally did reach the open yard. "I saw them go over that fence." A light from the street at the rear of the cottage was now to be seen. "An auto!" yelled Ed. "They are ready to start! Quick, Walter! Head them off at the corner!" But the first buzz of the strange machine was of that determined quality that usually indicates great power, capable of spurting some rods away with one great, grand whizz! The car was out of sight, and out of sound, while Walter was struggling with the stickers of a barbed wire fence. A dark stretch of road, that at once united and separated two summer resorts, made the flight of the intruders' car too simple to speculate upon. "If our garage was not so far away," complained Walter, returning from the fence with bleeding fingers, "we'd have a race." "Hanged funny, isn't it?" commented Ed. "As if that--person--we saw get away was a robber! Why, that was a girl--she crawled under the fence!" declared Walter. "She may have left me a bunch of violets," remarked Jack with a sigh, as they all three went back to the cottage, where, at the steps, Cora was waiting. "Say, sis," her brother went on, "let's go in and look over things now. I have an idea that our visitor came to wash up more dishes!" "And I also have an idea that the visitor--had been here before," replied Cora. "They--he--she, or it--knew how to open that funny catch on the screen door!" Re-entering the house the boys made all sorts of fun of each other, for each and all of them allowing the "burglar" to escape. "But, joking aside," said Cora, "I know I heard the noise in the dining room, and I'm going to look there first." "For my violets," whimpered Jack, with a sniffle. "June violets!" mocked Cora. "Well--daisies then. I saw daisies as we came out, and I'd just as soon have daisies." Ed and Jack held their candles high above their heads as they tiptoed into the dining room. A bit of paper fluttered from the hanging lamp! "More directions on 'How to Use This Cottage!'" roared Jack. "There, didn't I tell you! This is the second note left this way. Must have come by a homing-pigeon. Well, I'd just as soon have a dove as a bouquet of violets." CHAPTER XXI BOYS AND GIRLS A half hour later the entire party at Clover Cottage sat in the cozy dining room, engaged in earnest consultation. The frightened Mrs. Robinson, and the timid Miss Steel, had finally consented to come indoors, after the situation had been described, punctuated and emphasized to them, although they really did want to put up at the hotel in the Circle. The subject under discussion was the note that was found dangling from the hanging lamp. It was from Nellie Catron, and was not addressed to any one in particular. Cora had read it, and was now re-reading it. "If you don't stop hounding us," she read, "we will surely drown ourselves. We could get along if you would leave us alone, but we think that balky-horse-trick played on us the other night is about the limit." Cora stopped. "Now," she said, "it is perfectly plain that a girl never wrote that note. In the first place, it is not a girl's writing, and in the next, no girl would speak that way about putting a match under her nose!" In spite of the seriousness of the matter every one was forced to laugh at the remark. Certainly it did seem like the old-fashioned trick used to start a balky horse--light a match under his nose. "Then who do you suppose did write it, if not one of the girls?" asked Bess. "Why, perhaps the driver of the automobile," replied Cora. "I would not bother myself about those two foolish girls, longer," said Mrs. Robinson. She was quite exhausted from the evening's experience, and anxious to have her cottage put in its normal condition. "Mother, dear," interceded Belle, "you are nervous and worried. Just let me take you upstairs, and the others can settle it all to suit themselves." This offer was promptly accepted, and presently the young folks were left to decide whether or not they would further endeavor to find the runaways. "It seems to me," said Cora, "that they need our help now, more than ever. They may have gotten in with some unscrupulous persons--and who can tell what may happen?" "Certainly working girls do not drive autos," put in Ed, "and I just suspicion that the manager of that show wants to keep the girls for the song business. They can sing a little, and talent is scarce just now. That is, if they really were in the show." "Right!" exclaimed Walter. "He would have to look around considerable to get girls to sing now, for all the schools are not closed, and the season of fun has not really begun yet. Later, I suppose there will be a regular drift this way." "That is why father thought we ought to come down early," put in Bess. "He thinks it is so much pleasanter at the seaside late and early, rather than in the regular season." "Of course," said Cora, "the girls are afraid of that robbery business; otherwise they would not try to keep away from us, for I am quite sure they know we would not turn them over to that aunt." "I wonder how they are making out on that robbery?" asked Walter. "Wasn't there something doing the day we left Chelton?" "Something, and then some more," replied Jack, with a sly wink. "I expect a report from 'headquarters' on it very soon." "And poor little Andy! I do wonder what became of him?" added Cora. "Ice cream became of him the last I saw him," retorted Jack, "and I must say the brown part of the cone was really very becoming to him, for it matched his complexion." "Then," went on Ed, "we will start on a regular search to-morrow. No use letting them slip away, when you girls feel that it is really up to you to find them. We will put up at the hotel to-night, and early to-morrow start in bunga-loafing. Then, when we get things to rights--we will be pleased--ahem--to--ahem--meet you at the pergola, ladies!" "No, at the pavilion," replied Bess. "I am just dying to see all the sights there. And then we will be directly in the centre of everything to start out from there." This obtuse remark gave the boys no end of fun. It was so like Bess--a regular "Bessie," they declared, and, to discover its meaning Jack, Ed and Walter put their heads together literally, although Jack accused Ed of doing all the knocking, and he had to withdraw from the conference because of a rather too vigorous bump. Bess was so vexed that she ran upstairs, and left Cora alone to lock the door after the young fellows. "You really must go, boys," Cora insisted. "Mrs. Robinson is going to keep model hours, and I am only a guest here." This was taken as the ultimatum, and reluctantly the trio left with the promise of a "big day" on the morrow. Cora and Bess chatted a while before retiring. They had many things to talk of, but the lateness of the hour prevented a lengthy discourse. "Mother is so worried because our maid Nettie does not come," Bess whispered. "She is always so reliable, and so prompt, we cannot imagine what can have detained her." "She may be ill," suggested Cora. "Father would send a message in that case," replied Bess. "Perhaps you will get a message on the morning mail," continued Cora. "At any rate, I would not worry about matters at home." With this hopeful assurance the girls said good-night, and soon closed their eyes on that day's experience at Lookout Beach. The "morning dawned auspiciously," as Belle would say, but according to the boys it was a "peach of a day." Either way the morning was delightful, clear ocean air seeming to provide both eating and drinking to those who breathed deep of its salt tanginess and ozone. And this was the day that our boy friends were to go housekeeping! Before any of the other patrons of the hotel were stirring Ed, Jack, and Walter were roaming about the verandas, waiting for an early breakfast. Nor did they depend upon waiting, alone, for they spoke pleasantly to the dining-room maids, who were arranging linen and flowers, and in response to entreaties the boys did get an early meal, and of the very best there was in the hotel. The melons were exactly cold enough, the omelette was done to a turn, and had the turn, the coffee was fragrant and strong, and the hot buns "talked," Walter declared. Of course, in recognition of this special favor, the boys left some tokens, in coin, at their plates, but their politeness and pleasantries were even more appreciated by the young women, who must take frowns and smiles day after day, and who must ever reply to these variable conditions, with smiles and good nature. "And now for the bungalow!" called out Ed, as the three strolled off toward the irresistible beach. "Gosh! but it was a lucky thing that we trailed after the girls. Here we are, taking a vacation that can't be beat, and yet we just flopped right, plumb into it." "You may have flopped," remarked Walter, "but it strikes me that some of us have worked for this. I hired the bungalow." "And we paid the rent!" from Jack. "And us--us are going housekeeping!" added Walter. Each of the young men contributed his share to these expletive exclamations. They were running along in the sand, stopping occasionally to write their names, or leave an address for some mermaid. "Wah-hoo! Wah-hoo!" The call came from the rocks at the end of the water tongue. Presently three sprites appeared. They might have been humans, but to the boys they looked like nothing more or less than water sprites. All three happened to be gowned in white, Bess, Cora and Belle, and as they gamboled over the rocks, making their way to the water's edge, the boys were compelled to draw in long breaths of admiration. "'Low there!" greeted Ed. "Wait till I become Ulysses. Hey there! Circe! Not so fast else thy feet will have to follow thy heads!" "Ulysses!" mocked Walter. "More like Jupiter! Just watch him make the water roll off of his head. He is going to dive!" Scarcely had Walter uttered the words than Ed plunged over the end of the water tongue, and could not stop until he had actually splashed into the shallow water. The tongue ran to a fine point, and the point was not discernible from the viewpoint available to Ed. "Whew!" he spluttered. "Circe had me that time! Now, what do you think of that for a new pair of shoes!" By this time the girls had reached the water's edge. "Better stick to plain Chelton and the motor girls," said Cora with a hearty laugh, in which the other girls joined. "You will find that the myths are dangerous brands of canned goods--won't keep a minute after they are opened up for review!" Ed was running the water out of his shoes. They were thoroughly soaked, and the salt effect was too well known to be speculated upon. Jack stood on his head in the deep sand--he was exulting over Ed's "downfall." "Wait! Wait!" prophesied the unfortunate one. "You are not back home yet." "Oh, there's the bungalow!" suddenly called out Bess, who was some paces in advance. "How I wish we girls could camp!" "Aren't you?" asked Walter. "What do you call that place where the notes grow on the gas jets?" "Why, that's a regular up-to-date cottage, including----" "Mother and chaperone," added Belle. "I cannot see why the most needful adjunct does not arrive in the person of Nettie, our star maid. I had to dry dishes this morning," and she looked gloomily at her white hands. "That's what is called camping," advised Jack. "I am going to do the supper dishes, Ed will do the dinner dishes, his hands are nice and soft for grease, and Walter will 'tend to the tea--things. Don't forget, Wallie, the tea things for yours!" "It usually rains at night," Walter remarked. "I don't mind putting the things in a dishpan outside." "And have them dried in the sunny dew! Oh, back to nature! You wonderful back-to-nature faker!" cried Ed. "Nature must have an awful 'back-ache,'" finished Jack. "I would hate to have her job these days." "Here we are!" announced Ed, as they reached the cabin on the beach. "Isn't this the real thing?" "Oh, what a fine bungalow!" exclaimed Cora. "Isn't it splendid!" added Belle. "My, but it is----" "Sweet and low!" Jack interrupted Bess. "I like that tune for a bungalow!" They were following Jack, who had the big, old-fashioned key, for the lock had been constructed to add to the novelty of the hut. It took some time to open the low door, but it did finally yield to the pressure of the three strong young men. "Enter!" called Jack, bowing low to the girls, "Pray enter, pretty maidens. Are there any more at home like you?" "There are a few, and pretty, too," responded Cora, taking up the strain of the familiar song. Then such antics! And such discoveries! What is more resourceful than a strange house filled with strange things, strange corners and strange--spider webs! "Don't open the trunk!" shrieked Belle. "There may be a----" "Note in it!" finished Walter. "Now, nixy on notes. I want the goods or nothing, in our house." Boxes were being pulled from their salty corners, hammocks were dragged out, lanterns were being "swung," and altogether it seemed merely a question of who could upset the place most thoroughly. "Halt! Avaunt! Ship ahoy!" yelled Jack. "If you breaks the stuff you pays fer it. This stock is inventoried." But the girls ran from one thing to another, regardless of dust or dampness. "Oh, just look at the funny kettle!" exclaimed Belle. "I'm sure that is for an outdoor fire." "Certainly it is," replied Ed, just as if he knew what he was talking about. "That also has to rest on Nature's back." Something rumbled close to the cottage, then a shriek from outside startled them. "What's that!" cried Cora. Ed pushed open the door. "An auto in the ocean!" he yelled, dashing out of the bungalow, while the others followed as quickly as they could make after him. Ed threw off his coat as he ran. A few paces down the beach, in the very face of the rollers, was a small runabout, the terrified occupants of which were vainly struggling to get out, into a dangerous depth of water. "Quick, boys!" shouted Ed. "The engine is still running! Maybe we can back it up!" CHAPTER XXII A STRUGGLE WITH THE WAVES When Ed, Jack and Walter ran down the sandy beach, directly into the water, and then attempted to rescue from the waves a lady and her daughter, who were in the ocean-going auto, the girls were not afraid to follow them--to the extent of walking into the water knee deep. The helpless woman was a cripple, and when she, with an exhausting effort, managed to turn to one side and fall over the rim of the runabout seat into the water, she dropped like a stone into the surf. The daughter jumped, but in her frantic efforts to reach her mother, she crawled under the car, and was in very great danger of being lost herself. Suddenly the helpless form of the crippled woman rose to the surface. Jack threw his arms about the invalid, and, after shouting for Walter to help him, as the force of the rollers threatened to take him off his feet, the two young men managed to make their way safely to the sand with the unconscious form. Meanwhile the anxious motor girls hastened to offer what assistance they might be able to give. "Lay her down here," said Cora, as her brother escaped from the fury of one great, dashing mountain of water, that broke into foam as it spread out over the sand. "I think we will have to take her into the bungalow," he replied. "But where is Ed? Look for Ed! He has not found the girl yet!" And indeed neither Ed nor the girl could be seen! Cora and Bess left Belle with Jack and Walter to attend to the woman, while they again stepped forward as far into the water as it seemed safe to go. "There is Ed!" shouted Cora, and without doing more than unclasping the leather belt that confined her waist, she struck out boldly toward a point considerably farther out than the spot where the stalled car stood in the water. "Oh, you can't swim--that way, Cora!" called Bess. "Cora! Cora! come back!" But with arms over her head Cora plowed her way through the waves, stroke after stroke, until she was beside Ed, who was struggling to beat back the rollers that fought for the very life of the girl he had just brought up from under the heavy blanket of smothering water. "Mother! Mother!" wailed the girl. "Let me get--mother. She is--down--down there!" "No--she is--safe!" gasped Cora. "Come! Let us help you--out!" "Oh is--she safe! I--I am all right! I--can swim!" "But you are too weak!" called Ed. "Let us help you!" A shriek--and the girl again disappeared. Ed went down after her, and while Cora kept in motion to sustain herself, Ed came up with the girl again in his arms. "Take hold!" he gasped to Cora. "She is hurt and cannot swim." Cora, with one well trained arm, conquered the waves, while with the other she helped support the form of the almost fainting girl, as Ed, swimming in the same way, and almost carrying the girl with his free arm, made for the shore. Forgetting everything but the danger to her friends, Bess, too, ran into the waves to meet the swimmers. "Go back!" shouted Ed. "If you lose your footing we can't help you." Scarcely had he uttered the words than Bess stumbled and fell, head foremost, into the roller that was rushing up on the shore! Fortunately the incoming water brought Bess in--fairly tumbling her out on the sand. The same power assisted Ed and Cora to land with the strange young girl. Meanwhile Jack and Walter had made their way to the bungalow, assisting the crippled woman. "Oh!" shrieked Bess, scrambling to her feet. "Oh, I--am smothered!" "So are we!" Cora managed to say. "Come, Bess. Help us revive the young lady." "Oh I--am--all--right now----" murmured the girl. "Only let me--get to mother!" A sorry looking sight indeed were the motor girls--all four of them, for the strange girl should be classed with Bess, Belle and Cora, as she, too, owned a car and drove it. True she did allow it to get beyond control, and, by a sudden wrong turn of the wheel, sent it in the ocean. Still she was a motor girl for all her inexperience. "Where are you hurt?" asked Ed, as they all stood for a moment on the beach. The strange girl was working her shoulder with evident painful effort. "I must have injured my neck or shoulder blade when I dove under the machine," she replied. "Something--is very stiff." "Let us get up to the bungalow," suggested Cora, for the strange girl seemed like one dazed. "Your mother is there, and I hope by this time she has revived." Even in their discomfiture our friends could not help noticing what a pretty and pleasant mannered girl the stranger was. Every little nicety of good breeding was perfectly evident in her gentle gratitude to her rescuers, and in her earnest solicitation for her mother. Ed led the way to the camp, while the girls followed. Belle met them at the door. "How is she?" asked Cora, knowing how anxious was the girl about her invalid mother. "She is quite revived," replied Belle, "but she wants her daughter. I am so glad you have come," hurried on Belle, without waiting for any formality. "She seems greatly worried about--Beatrice." "Oh, let me see her," exclaimed the girl. "Dear, little, darling mamma," and before the others could show the way Beatrice (for such was her name) had the crippled form clasped lovingly in her arms. What a strange sight in the musty little bungalow! Belle was the only person who was not dripping wet--and the girls were so far from Clover Cottage, and from an auto to take them there, that there was a prospect they might dry out before fresh garments could be secured. Beatrice looked up from the face of the trembling woman. "I wonder if we can--use the car?" she ventured. "I must get mother back to the hotel." "If we can get the machine out and the magneto is not short circuited from the water," said Jack, "I don't see why you couldn't run it." "There are the life guards," exclaimed Cora, who stood by the open door. "And they have a coil of rope." "Good!" declared Jack. "We will have something to pull with, and some one to help us now. Come along, boys. Girls, you will find a basket of provisions some place. There may be, in it, something of use," and with this he ran out to the beach where like two bronzed figures the life guards stood regarding the auto in the ocean. It did not take the boys long to explain the situation, and to show what needed to be done to haul out the ocean-going car. Fastening the heavy ropes about the machine the three boys and the two men pulled--pulled--and pulled! At first the car would not budge. Then the soft sand, in which the tires were buried, slid away some, under the urgent pressure, and finally, when the car once moved, all hands at the ropes gave a concerted pull, and the machine rolled slowly, but more and more surely, toward the edge of the shelving beach. "Good!" exclaimed Ed. "Don't stop! Keep it up!" It was heavy work, but at last the auto was clear of the water. "There!" gasped Jack, almost breathless. "That's all to the gasolene! Now to look her over." Half an hour of steady work and then Ed grasped the handle and started to crank up. It was stiff at first but presently the familiar whir-r-r-r--of the motor sounded, and Walter from the seat threw in the clutch with the lever set at low speed. The magneto was all right. The little car swung out as gracefully as if it had "never tasted salt water," as Jack put it. The girls were eagerly watching every move. How thankful they were, for the woman in the bungalow had need of immediate medical attention. In less time than it would seem possible to accomplish so much, Jack and Ed lifted the light form of the sick woman into the car, and, while Beatrice supported her mother on the right, Jack took his place at the wheel, and started off toward the hotel. "We will send the auto back for you young ladies," called Beatrice. "It won't take any time to get to the hotel." The car once out of sight, Walter and Ed rushed into the bungalow, smashed a couple of dry boxes, and thrust them into the little stone fireplace, put a match to a bundle of paper, and then all four, who had assisted in the rescue, stood before the blaze, while steam sizzled up from the water that fell in puddles on the floor from the soaked garments. "We _did_ get it," remarked Ed. "I never swam before--this way." "Is there anything wetter than wet clothes?" asked Cora. "Oh, yes," replied Bess. "I think the wettest thing I have ever found is the--bottom of the sea! Mercy, but I did think I was gone!" "You were," replied Walter, swishing a few drops of the too plentiful water in her eyes. "You were gone, but not forgotten, and you came back like--the famous penny!" "Oh, you can joke!" retorted Bess. "But I tell you I was almost washed out." "Worse than the laundry," teased Ed. "Well, Bess, you look a lot better. I do believe you've gotten thin!" CHAPTER XXIII THE EXCURSION When Jack returned to the bungalow, with the rescued runabout, he was all excitement over the discovery of pretty Beatrice Blakley. He even went so far as to declare that she had confided in him the fact that she was just about to get an electric runabout, that her father was a very wealthy man, and that she was going to be at Lookout Beach all summer! This information was detailed in such a way as to excite the possibility of jealousy in the other motor girls, particularly in Bess, who really looked upon Jack Kimball as quite a friend--one whom she could depend upon to look out for her particular pleasure, and give her all the little attentions that go to make up the sum total of a good time for the summer girl. So the arrival upon the scene of Miss Beatrice was rather a surprise--to say the least. "Come on, Cora," called Jack, after he had given a particularly enthusiastic description of Beatrice's wonderful management of her sick mother, "I promised you would go to the hotel this afternoon to see how Mrs. Blakley is, and to find out if they need anything before Mr. Blakley gets down from town." "Of course I'll go," replied Cora, with a sly smile. "Belle and I, or Bess and I will call, certainly." "Well, get in the machine, you three, and we boys will get ourselves dried out. You may keep the runabout at the Clover until you are ready to go over in the afternoon. Then I'll drive you." This assertion caused every one to laugh at Jack. The idea of his driving two motor girls! As if they couldn't manage a little car like that! "Well, we will see," said Cora, as she, Bess, and Belle climbed into the car, which held three comfortably. "Perhaps if you are very good we may take you along. Or you may----" "I say, fellows!" interrupted Ed. "I thought we were going to see that excursion come in from Chelton this afternoon. Some of our boys are coming down." "Of course," added Walter. "Jack, you don't call on B---- this afternoon. Make it some other time. We are going down to the pier to see the folks from home, and in the meantime, we've got a lot to do to get this camp pitched. And you are cook for the first week. Don't forget that." "Oh, all right," assented Jack. "Of course, if you all insist. Perhaps I can live!" and he sighed dramatically. Two hours later the motor girls and the boys, all refreshed in correct summer garb, without any evidence of their morning's experience, waited on the pier, while the big excursion boat Columbia sailed in, her colors flying gaily, and the hands and hats of seemingly every youth in Chelton, waving over the deck rails, as the annual summer outing of Lincoln County put in to port at Lookout Beach. Hazel and Paul were with the Kimballs and Robinsons, so that all our friends from Chelton united in welcoming the excursionists. "There's Fred!" called Jack, the first to discover a familiar face in the big crowd. "And there's Ben," added Ed. "As if Fred Bennet could travel without Ben Fredericks." "Clear the way there, please," ordered the boatman. "We must have room for the gangplank--that's a big crowd." The girls left the inside aisle, and slipped under the rail to the outer walk of the pier, but the boys held to their place. They insisted upon seeing the people land, and it was no little fun to be real sojourners at the popular watering place, when so many other boys and girls have to be content to visit the beach for a single day. "Oh, there's little Nannette," called Cora. "Jack! Jack!" she shouted, "bring Nannette over here. See! she is walking with that old man!" Jack ducked in and out of the crowd until he reached the girl called Nannette. She was a very small creature, a cripple, and when seen by Cora, the latter immediately essayed to look after the delicate child, so that she might not suffer unnecessarily in the rush and crush of the crowd. And Nannette was indeed glad to see Jack Kimball. The young man almost carried her to Cora, for Nannette was a general favorite in the village--one of those human buds that never blossom, but always stay in the childhood of promise--unconscious of time and unmindful of method. "Oh, we are so glad you came down," exclaimed Cora, embracing the child. "You will have a lovely day. Are you tired? Did you enjoy the sail?" But before she could answer the other girls plied similar questions, until the little one was fairly besieged with kind attention. "Hello there!" shouted some one. "Where are the boys?" "Brownson McLarin!" exclaimed Bess, with a slight blush. "I wonder----" "If Teddy is with him," finished Belle, with a meaning nod to Cora. "Now, if Teddy is here, we may all depend upon Bess for a good time. Teddy would rather spend money on Bess than eat a shore dinner." "Land o' Goshen!" shouted Jack. "Look--at--Andy!" The girls turned to see what he indicated. And sure enough, there was little Andy from Squaton, but so dressed up and displaying such a physical "shine," that his friends from Chelton would scarcely have recognized him had not Jack pointed him out. "Fetch him over here," begged Cora. "Say, Cora," replied Jack, "would you like me to pull in the whole crowd, and let you take your pick? Seems to me you want every one you see," but at the same time he "reached" little Andy, and led him over to the rail, behind which the motor girls were sequestered. Andy was delighted to see Cora. He was brimming over with news--but it did not take him long to whisper that he had something "special" to tell her, as soon as she could give him a few minutes all alone. "What's it about?" asked Cora eagerly. "About the 'sparklers,'" replied the lad. "We got them, and me mother got the hundred!" "The diamond earrings have been found!" exclaimed Cora, startled at such a surprising piece of news. "Yep, they're found, all right," replied Andy. "What do you think of me suit? And I've got more home. We got the reward." "Who got it," demanded Cora. "Me--I--we," stammered Andy, somewhat confused in his grammar. "Where did you find them?" persisted Cora. "Hey, there, Andy!" yelled a boy in a very shabby outfit. "Where's all that 'dough' you was telling us about? Come on. It's up to you," and, before Cora could get an answer from the little redheaded boy, he was gone. As he sauntered off, with his companions, Cora saw that he was counting money--considerable money, too, it seemed to her. Bess and Belle were busy talking to Nannette. They had not noticed Andy. The excursionists were now almost all landed. The news so suddenly divulged by Andy confused Cora. What did he mean by getting the reward? Of course the diamond earrings must have been found--he said that distinctly enough, but had they been hidden by the orphan girls, as was the case which contained the gems? "Cora," called Belle, "Nannette is hungry. Come up to the candy kitchen, and we will show her how they make salt water taffy." "All right," replied Cora. "Of course you must be hungry, Nannette, you had to leave home so early." It was difficult to make their way through the steady stream of people that poured up the long pier. Cora walked ahead, while Bell and Bess, on either side, protected the deformed child. "Oh, I can smell the taffy!" exclaimed the girl, as they neared the candy kitchen. "Yes, so can I," agreed Cora. "It would almost make one hungry." They were now in front of the store with the big glass windows. Through this glass could be seen the workers in the exhibition kitchen. There were a few girls in white aprons, and high white caps, doing up pieces of "taffy" in papers, and working beside them were two men, also clad in white linen. The men were popping corn over a gas stove. "Look," said Belle. "That is how they make it. Stand here a moment and watch." The girls drew up in front of the window. As they stopped two men from the excursion boat also paused to observe the candy makers. Cora turned and looked at the men. A remark one made about "runaways" had attracted her attention. "Oh!" she suddenly gasped. Then she clutched Belle's arm. "Come on," she whispered. "I don't care to stand here." "What's the matter?" asked Bess, noting the change in Cora's face. "Those are--the detectives," she whispered. "I don't want to get in conversation with them. Come on." But both men were looking directly at Cora. She felt it was too late for her to try to escape their scrutiny. "Look! Look!" exclaimed Bess. "There are----" But at that instant two girls behind the glass window in the candy kitchen came forward with their trays of freshly-made candy. Both girls looked through the window--directly at Cora and at the others with her. "Nellie and Rose!" exclaimed Belle. "Oh!" gasped Cora, "if I only could tell them the diamonds are found!" For a single instant the two girls in the caps and aprons stood like statues. Then they evidently saw the two men who stood directly back of Cora. With a scream that penetrated the distance and the glass windows, the two unfortunate girls dropped their trays on the counter, and dashed out of the store into the kitchen, showing fright and terror as they ran. "They saw the detectives," declared Cora. "Oh, I must reach them! But in this crowd!" Some one tapped Cora on the shoulder. It was one of the Squaton detectives. CHAPTER XXIV THE TWO ORPHANS "Oh, Rose! I can't go another step! Let them catch us if they want to. I think I--a--am going to--die!" "Nellie dear, try to keep up. We will be at the station soon. And you know those were detectives from home! Oh, try to keep on!" "I--can't! I've got to stop!" The girl sank in the sand like the poor, tired, frightened little thing that she was. Rose put her arms round her sister, and her tears fell on the sunburned cheek that lay so helpless there, supported only by an arm equally sunburned, and equally exhausted. "Oh, we will surely be caught," moaned Rose. "Don't you think, when you rest awhile, you can go on, Nellie, dear? You were always so brave, and so strong." "We have got to stop some time, Rose. Why should we go on like this? I am almost dead for sleep, and I feel as if I could go to sleep right here." Rose kissed the sad little face, and brushed back the rudely cropped hair, that lay in ringlets on Nellie's head. "It has been awfully hard, little sister," she said; "perhaps we had better give up and go back!" The words seemed to startle the child, who lay on the sand. Instantly she sat bolt upright. "Go back!" she repeated. "To that place! We might better die here!" "Then why should we not see the detectives, and tell them all about it? Surely Aunt Delia will not be allowed----" "But she has been allowed," insisted Nellie. "Hasn't she treated us badly for years? And who was there to stop her? Who is there to stop her now?" "Perhaps those young ladies could help us," sobbed Rose. "We may have done wrong to run away from them." "I did like that dark girl," assented Nellie, rubbing her aching eyes, "and she did say she would see us again." The two sisters were on an isolated patch of the beach and had been trying to make their way to the railroad station. In taking this sandy walk they had avoided the regular traffic path, but the heavy traveling had been too much for the younger one, who was plainly beginning to feel, and show, the signs of her perilous adventure since the day when she ran away from the strawberry patch of Squaton. It was late in the afternoon, almost dusk, but the happy shouts of the excursionists could be heard for a mile along the beach. Here and there groups of boys who had left the crowds were to be seen digging holes in the sand, and capering about with all their energy, to have their very best fun in that one last hour allowed before the big boat would sail away, and carry them off home again. "There come some boys," said Rose. "Try to stand up, they will be sure to stop and gawk at us." Nellie sat up, but made no effort to stand. Presently the three boys came romping along. As Rose had guessed, they did stop and look at the girls; stared at them not rudely but in wonderment, for Nellie and Rose were too far away from merrymakers to be mistaken for members of the excursion party. "Oh!" exclaimed Nellie, catching sight of one of the boys. "Well, I never!" gasped the boy at the same moment. "If there ain't Nellie and Rose!" "Oh, Andy!" cried Nellie, "do come and talk to us. We are not afraid to trust you. Don't say who we are--don't mention our names!" The little fellow did not need to be cautioned. Neither did he wait for the invitation to talk to the lonely girls. "Wherever have you been?" he asked. "Have you heard the news?" "We haven't heard any _good_ news," replied Rose sadly. "Then I've got some fer you," said the lad, shaking his manly little head. "The diamonds is found and I got the boodle!" "Oh!" gasped Nellie. "Found! Then we--won't have to hide any more. Where did you find them?" The whistle of the excursion boat checked the boy's eager talk. "Come on!" shouted the other lads to Andy. "If you don't hustle, you'll get left!" "Well, then I _will_ get left," declared Andy. "I'm going to stay right here with these girls--they're friends of mine." "Oh, no, Andy, don't," begged Rose. "Run along and catch the boat. We wouldn't know what to do with you, if you got left. Besides your mother would be scared to death. She would think you were drowned." Andy hesitated. "Do go," put in Nellie, jumping up and throwing her arms about the boy. "I could just hug you to death, you have made us so happy. And you--look--just fine!" "Run!" shouted the boys, as the whistle blew. "That's the last call!" "Run!" called Rose. "Yes, do run!" pleaded Nellie. Turning to give the girls a look so full of meaning that even Andy's bright eyes seemed overtaxed with the responsibility, the boy did run as fast as his legs could carry him. "I'm afraid they will miss it," murmured Rose, as the two sisters, now so changed in expression, watched the boys make their way through the sand. "Oh, Rose! Aren't you happy!" exclaimed Nellie. "Now we can do as we please." "But Aunt Delia might send us to the reform school for running away," mused the older girl. "Oh, I can't think she would do that!" "But think of all she has done! I am afraid to trust her." The tooting of the excursion boat could be heard as the vessel steamed out. Wistfully the girls looked over the broad expanse of water, out to the track made by the smoke from the _Columbia_. "We might have gone back home," sighed Nellie. "I would rather stay here--I feel we have some friends. Those girls----" "But why did they chase us about so?" "They wanted to find us--perhaps. That was nothing against them." "Do you think the man in the candy kitchen would take us back? The detectives must have gone back on the boat, and we needn't be afraid now." "Why, Nellie dear, perhaps the detectives are up at that store watching for us. We can't go there unless we want to----" "Where can we go?" cried the child. "Oh, dear me! What a dreadful thing it is--to be orphans!" and she began to cry. "There's no use crying," said Rose, although her own eyes were brimful. "We have got to go somewhere for the night." "Let's go to the cottage--to the automobile girls' cottage." "I am able to work, and I want to work," insisted Rose stoutly. "They need girls at every hotel, that young lady in the kitchen told me." "But I am so tired--so hungry--and so--sleepy! Rose, let us sleep right here. We are not afraid of anything now." "Who are those people coming?" asked Rose as a number of figures could be seen, outlined against the strip of sky that hung over the point of land. "There's quite a crowd," said Nellie. "I guess we will have to walk along." But running ahead of the others came a boy. He was waving his cap and shouting something! "It's Andy!" murmured Rose. "Oh, he got left!" "And--look there!" cried Nellie. "Those are the detectives after us! We must run! Maybe they don't know the diamonds are found and will arrest us. I should die of shame then. We must run!" "We can't," replied Rose miserably. "Oh, yes, Nellie. They have us this time," and sinking down in the sand she clasped her hands and looked up. "Let us ask--mother in heaven--to take care of us!" she said reverently. Then they waited until the detectives came along. CHAPTER XXV THE TRUTH! THE WHOLE TRUTH! "Rose! Nellie!" shouted Andy. "Get up! What's the matter?" The girls raised their eyes and saw before them not only the detectives but Jack and Cora Kimball, also Ed Foster. "Come, girls," began the taller of the two officers from Squaton. "You seem to be having a pretty hard time of it. What are you crying for?" "Oh, we didn't take the earrings!" sobbed Nellie. "And we don't want--to go--to the reform school!" "Who said you did take them?" inquired the officer, as Cora put her arm about Nellie, and assisted her to rise. "And who said you were to go to the reform school?" "That piece in the paper," replied Rose. "It said we would be sent there until----" "Oh, that was some of the old lady's work. Don't you worry about that. Just come along with us. Don't you be afraid that any one is going to hurt you," for he saw distrust in Rose's face. "You are among friends--all friends!" "You bet!" cried Andy. "I got left from the boat just in time to tell them where you were." "Come along," said Jack kindly. "You both look ready to--collapse." "I was just going to," declared Nellie, rubbing her hand over her inflamed eyes. "I was going to jump into the water before Rose could stop me, but when she called our mother to help us I--couldn't--then." "Nellie!" exclaimed Rose in surprise. "Now do come along," begged Cora. "You must need food and rest. I am almost dead myself from running around----" "After us?" asked Nellie innocently. The officer and young men smiled. "Well, you see," began Jack, "we just caught Andy 'getting left,' as he put it, and he told us where you were----" "But Andy's mother will be scared to death," insisted Nellie, brightening up. "Oh, we have attended to that," said Jack. "We sent her a message. Andy is going to visit us 'bungaloafers' for a few days. We just need a boy like Andy to help us get in shape," and Jack patted the smiling boy kindly. "Our cars are out on the road," said Cora, "and we are all to go to the cottage. So, come on, girls. We are just dying to tell your odd story to several people. Your friends in the candy kitchen have been dreadfully worried since you left them so suddenly." "They thought you jumped in the ocean," blurted out Andy, who had no regard for propriety in making such remarks. The orphans acted almost frightened--it seemed too strange to be true, that they were going to get in an automobile, and be allowed to go to a house without being hunted and chased--without hiding or sneaking! "Here we are," announced Ed, who cranked up one car into which Andy "piled" without any ceremony whatever. Jack started up the _Whirlwind_, and into the big car Nellie and Rose were assisted. Cora sat beside Jack, and the detective insisted upon walking as he had "to meet a man" on the road and had scarcely time to keep this appointment. Nellie was completely dazed. She sat bolt upright, as if afraid to lean against the soft cushions of the car. Rose was more composed, but she also appeared ill at ease in the luxurious surroundings. It was only a short ride to Clover Cottage. Bess and Belle were outside as they drove up. They clapped their hands almost like children when they saw who were in the cars. "Oh, you have found them!" exclaimed Belle. "Come right in. We have tea all ready, and you are not to speak one word until you are refreshed," and she grasped Nellie's hand, and gave Rose a most welcome greeting. Andy was loath to leave the car. He wanted to start it, to stop it, and to do all sorts of things with the interesting machine. Finally, when Rose and Nellie had been refreshed, Bess and Belle provided seats for all on the broad porch, just as the detective and a strange man turned around the corner and they, too, joined the happy group. "This is a reporter for the daily paper," said the detective. "I thought it best to have him come right down now, and get this thing all straight. It will be best to tell the story from the start, and so clear up the false impressions about the girls." The newspaper man took out a pad of paper and a pencil in the most businesslike way, without presuming on any personal privilege, such as an introduction, or a word of acknowledgment, for the detective's rather flattering account of the scribe's ability. "Perhaps I had better ask you a few questions," the reporter began simply, turning to Rose. "Why did you run away from Mrs. Ramsy's house?" "Because she was unjust to us," replied Rose. "She had never treated us decently, but when she took the very last thing we owned of our dead mother's--her wedding ring--we just took the little case it had been in, put it in a crate of berries we left under the tree for this young lady, and then--we went away." "Where did you get that jewel case?" asked the tall detective, who seemed to be doing the most of the talking. "We found it in Miss Schenk's scrap basket. She told us to throw out everything in the basket, and so, when we found the little leather case we decided it would be nice to keep mamma's ring in." "And that was how you got the case!" Cora could not help exclaiming. "Yes. Why?" asked Nellie in surprise. "Oh, nothing. Go on," said the detective. "Then I found the card with the address of this house," continued Rose. "We intended to come down this way to work for the summer, and we knew that this house was vacant. That is how we came to sleep here one night." "That's the card I picked up under the window," interrupted Andy, to whom the whole proceedings seemed as "thrilling as could be any professional theatrical performance." "Then," Nellie helped out, "we slept one dreadful night in an old stone house. And it was haunted." "That was the house by the spring," volunteered Jack, "where we found the hat, and other things." "Yes," said Nellie, "we did leave some things there." "And I found your dress away out on the road one night, very late," Bess put in, while the newspaper man smiled at the queer story with so many "personal contributions." "Oh, yes! We were waiting for a trolley car, and we heard an automobile coming. Then I had to throw away a bundle--I didn't want to take it along with me. I thought Aunt Delia might describe our clothes." "You got along pretty well for amateurs," remarked the detective with a laugh. "Some experts might have done worse." "Then you came straight to Lookout Beach?" asked the reporter. "Oh, no," answered Nellie. "We had to work our way down. First we went to work at the Wayside Inn." "Now, I want to speak," announced Jack with a comical gesture. "I would like to know whose shadow it was I was chasing one night around the Wayside? I never had such an illusionary race before in all my life. I came near concluding that my mind was haunted." Nellie laughed outright. "Oh, wasn't that funny!" she exclaimed. "I was trying to hide something, and you were trying to see who I was. I thought I would never get away from you, but I did fool you, after all." "That's right," admitted Jack. "But you left me a lock of your hair." Nellie blushed to her ear tips. Rose frowned, and shook her head to call her sister's attention to the man who was taking notes. "Where does my story come in?" demanded Andy. "I had a part in this show." "Oh, we are coming to you," replied the reporter. "Seems to me this will make a serial. It's a first-rate story, all right." "Don't say anything about the graveyard," whispered Belle to Ed. "I should hate to have that to get into print." "Oh, that's another story," replied the scribe. "We've got one end of that. The chauffeur declares he went after you, and spent all night in a cemetery--looking for the party he had left stalled there." Jack and Ed took a hand at story telling at this juncture, and it was the orphans' turn to listen in surprise at the disclosures. Finally the boys got back to the runaways' part in the happenings. "Then you came to Clover Cottage?" suggested Cora, smiling at the two girls. "Yes, we came here the first night. After that we got work in the motion picture show." "And was it your nose I almost burned off?" asked Ed. "I beg--your--pardon," and he made a courtly bow to Nellie. "Yes. That was a great trick," said Rose. "We almost killed ourselves trying to hide that night. We managed to walk right past you, though, without your knowing us." "And were you the 'carrier pigeon?'" asked Belle. "It was you, of course, who came up in the automobile, played ghost, and hung the note on the lamp?" "Oh, yes. The manager of the show wanted us to stay on, and we felt so dreadful that Nellie told him something about our trouble. Then he said he would drive us out to the cottage if we wanted to leave a message. He wrote the note for us, and Nellie crept in and hung it where she said you would be sure to see it." "We saw it, all right," commented Jack, smiling broadly. "And so they thought we took the old earrings," spoke up Rose indignantly. "Well, it did look bad," said the detective, "since you had thrown the case away." "As if we would steal!" snapped Nellie, her pretty eyes flashing. "When we saw that story in the newspaper we had to run away again," sighed Rose. "Oh, it was dreadful!" "But I was determined from the first that I would find you," said Jack mischievously, "and you see--I did." "No, I did!" burst out Andy. "Hush there, boy! Didn't I find you?" asked Jack. "Well, we are found, anyhow," commented Nellie, "and I don't want to be lost again. But who got the earrings?" "Me for the jig!" shouted Andy. "Now I come in. You see," and he straightened up, and thrust his hands in his pockets as he always did when he had anything important to divulge, "I gave the young lady the card. I gave her the tip about the cops. I piped off old lady Schenk and Ramsy, and say! You ought to see them tear around Chelton when they found everybody in the game had cleared out!" Andy stopped to laugh. The others laughed without stopping. "And then--golly! If me mother didn't do the old lady's wash again just because there was a strike at the patch. And--then----She finds the sparklers tied up tight in an old rag of a handkerchief!" "Your mother found them!" all the girls present asked in accord. "Sure thing!" replied Andy. "And Andy knew enough to fetch them to me," said the detective. "That is how he came to get the hundred dollars reward!" "Hundred dollars reward!" repeated Rose and Nellie. "Don't I look it?" demanded Andy, swinging around to show off to advantage his new clothes. "You look a couple of hundred," replied Ed. "Say, I'd like to get one like that." The reporter said something about not having a camera, but Andy did not hear the remark. "And now," resumed the detective, "what are we to do with these young ladies? We have sufficient evidence to keep them away from Mrs. Ramsy. She is not a person capable of looking after children. She has all she can do to look after the mighty dollar." "Oh, if you will only let us work," pleaded Rose. "I know a lot about housework." "Why, we want some one right away," said Bess. "Our maid has nervous prostration from the fright that those two dreadful Squaton women gave her the day they visited our house after going to Cora's. Couldn't you let Rose and Nellie stay right here, officer? We could give them both something to do." "They certainly can wash dishes nicely," put in Cora, smilingly. "Why, I don't see what's the objection," said the detective. "Of course we will have to have a guardian appointed. Until then they could be placed in charge of your mother!" Nellie opened her eyes wider than ever. Rose bit her lip to hide her confusion. "Wouldn't that be jolly?" said Cora. "I was sure we would be able to manage it all right. Why, you girls will have a good time, after all, at Lookout Beach!" "You bet they will," declared Andy. "I'm going to stay down here for a few days, and I've got some money to spend!" The reporter arose to go. The detective followed his example. "We are greatly obliged," said the newspaper man. "I am sure this will make a fine story." Down the steps of the cottage went the tall detective and the reporter. "Don't poke fun at the poor girls," begged Cora of the newspaper man, in a whisper. "They have suffered enough." "Indeed, and I intend to show up the woman responsible for them running away, rather than to make a spread about the poor things," the reporter assured her. "Never fear, leave it to me," and with a pleasant smile he departed. Bess ran upstairs, where her mother was resting. So far, Mrs. Robinson had heard nothing of the ending of the quest after the runaways. Bess quickly told her the whole story, and broached her plan of having Nellie and Rose do the housework at the cottage. "Indeed, my dear, they shall do nothing of the sort," instantly decided Mrs. Robinson. "They shall learn some useful trade. I will see to it myself." She felt rather flattered, than otherwise, that the fate of the orphan girls rested, somewhat, with her; and she resolved to make the most of her opportunity. The housework at Clover, she said, could be done by any or all of the motor girls. Rose and Nellie gladly acquiesced in the plan, and thus their shadows were turned to sunshine. Arrangements were made for their board at a cottage where the crippled woman and her daughter, who had been rescued from the surf, had spent a few days. The invalid, after paying a formal call on Mrs. Robinson, to thank the young people for what they had done, went back to her home. "Well, all's well that ends the way it ought to," spoke Jack Kimball that night, as they were all gathered on the Clover porch. "But those runaways certainly gave us a chase." "And to think how strangely it began, and how it unfolded bit by bit," remarked Cora. "It's all to the----" began Bess. "Bess!" exclaimed Belle, and Bess subsided, but muttered something under her breath that made Ed and Walter laugh. "Well, we certainly have had exciting times at Lookout Beach," spoke Ed, after a pause. "May there be more of them." "Not quite so exciting, please," pleaded Cora. But the Motor Girls were destined to have further adventures, as will be told of in the next book of this series, to be called "The Motor Girls Through New England, Or, Held by the Gypsies." In that volume we shall learn all about a delightful tour and of a happening to Cora Kimball that was far out of the ordinary. "Oh, I almost forgot!" suddenly exclaimed Jack, leaping to his feet, and striking an attitude. "Forgot what?" demanded Bess. "The dance we are going to give at our bungalow night after to-morrow. It will be great! Mrs. Robinson, will you come and bring the girls?" "Of course," assented the twins' mother. "Then hurrah for the first dance of the bungaloafers!" cried Ed and Walter. "Long may it last, we will live in the future, and forget all the past." "Oh, Jack--a dance!" cried Bess. "Tell me all about it," which Jack, nothing loath, did with much wealth of detail. And there, on the porch of Clover Cottage, while the silver moon shone over the sea, we will say good-bye, for a time, to the Motor Girls and their friends. THE END 
43917	----	[Illustration: Straight and true it sped to its mark. The lion had already crouched for a spring when Nat's missile was discharged. --Page 18.] THE MOTOR RANGERS THROUGH THE SIERRAS BY MARVIN WEST AUTHOR OF "THE MOTOR RANGERS' LOST MINE," ETC. NEW YORK HURST & COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1911, BY HURST & COMPANY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTO THE SIERRAS 5 II. BETWEEN TWO FIRES 17 III. IN A RUNAWAY AUTO 31 IV. MOTOR RANGERS TO THE RESCUE 43 V. AN APPOINTMENT ON THE TRAIL 55 VI. SOME RASCALS GET A SCARE 66 VII. A PHOTOGRAPHER IN TROUBLE 77 VIII. LOST IN A PETRIFIED FOREST 87 IX. THE MIDNIGHT ALARM 99 X. ALONG THE TRAIL 110 XI. TREED! TWO HUNDRED FEET UP 125 XII. NAT'S LUCKY ESCAPE 135 XIII. THE VOLLEY IN THE CANYON 147 XIV. A "LOONITACKER" HORSE 159 XV. THE MOTOR RANGERS' PERIL 170 XVI. THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA 181 XVII. IN COLONEL MORELLO'S FORTRESS 191 XVIII. A RIDE FOR LIFE 201 XIX. OUTWITTING HIS ENEMIES 211 XX. HERR MULLER GETS A CHILLY BATH 220 XXI. THE FIRE IN THE FOREST 232 XXII. A DASH THROUGH THE FLAMES 242 XXIII. THE HUT IN THE MOUNTAINS 258 XXIV. FACING THEIR FOES 272 XXV. THROUGH THE FLUME 285 The Motor Rangers Through the Sierras CHAPTER I. INTO THE SIERRAS. "Say Nat, I thought that this was to be a pleasure trip?" Joe Hartley, the perspiration beading his round, good-natured countenance, pushed back his sombrero and looked up whimsically from the punctured tire over which he was laboring. "Well, isn't half the pleasure of running an auto finding out how many things you don't know about it?" laughingly rejoined Nat Trevor, the eldest and most experienced of the young Motor Rangers, as they had come to be called. "V-v-v-variety is the s-s-spice----" sputtered our old friend William, otherwise Ding-dong Bell. "Oh, whistle it, Ding-dong," interjected Joe impatiently. "_Phwit!_" musically chirruped the stuttering lad. "Variety is the spice of life," he concluded, his hesitating manner of speech leaving him, as usual, following the puckering of his lips and the resultant music. "That's no reason why we should be peppered with troubles," grumbled Joe, giving the "jack" a vicious twist and raising the rear axle still higher. "Here it is, only three days since we left Santa Barbara and I'm certain that I've fixed at least four punctures already." "Well, you'll be a model of punctuality when----" grinned Nat aggravatingly, but Joe had sprung from his crouching posture and made for him threateningly. "Nat Trevor, if you dare to pun, I'll--I'll--bust your spark plug." "Meaning my head, I suppose," taunted Nat from a safe distance, namely, a rock at the side of the dusty road. "'Lay on, Macduff.'" "Oh, I've more important things to go," concluded Joe, with as much dignity as he could muster, turning once more to his tools. While he is struggling with the puncture let us look about a little and see where the Motor Rangers, whom we left in Lower California, are now located. As readers of "The Motor Rangers' Lost Mine" know, the three bright lads with a companion, oddly named Sandrock Smith, had visited the sun-smitten peninsula to investigate some mysterious thefts of lumber from a dye-wood property belonging to Mr. Pomery, "The Lumber King," Nat's employer. While in that country, which they only reached after a series of exciting and sometimes dangerous incidents, they stumbled across a gold mine in which Nat's father had, years before, been heavily interested. Readers of that volume will also recall that Hale Bradford, the Eastern millionaire, and his unscrupulous associates had made a lot of trouble for Nat and his companions after the discovery. The exciting escape of Nat in a motor boat across the waters of the Gulf of California will also be called to mind, as well as the story of how matters were finally adjusted and Nat became, if not a millionaire, at least a very well-to-do young man. The gift of the auto in which they were now touring was likewise explained. The splendid vehicle, with its numerous contrivances for comfortable touring, had been the present of Mr. Pomery to the lads, as a token of his esteem and gratitude for the conclusion to which they had brought the dishonest dealings of Diego Velasco, a Mexican employed by Mr. Pomery. On their return to California proper, the lads had spent a brief time with their parents, and Nat had seen his mother ensconced in a pretty house on the outskirts of Santa Barbara. It had been a great delight to the lady to leave the tiny cottage in which straitened circumstances following the death of Nat's father, had compelled them to live. Joe Hartley, we know, was the son of a department store keeper of Santa Barbara, and Ding-dong Bell was the only child of a well-to-do widow. So much for our introductions. Inactivity had soon palled on the active minds of the Motor Rangers, and they had, with the consent of their parents, planned another trip. This time, however, it was to be for pleasure. As Nat had said, "We had enough adventures in Lower California to last us a lifetime." But of what lay ahead of them not one of the boys dreamed, when, three days before, they had started from Santa Barbara for a tour of the Sierras. Nat was desirous of showing that it was feasible to hunt and fish and tour the mountains in an automobile just as well as on horseback. The car, therefore, carried rifles and shot guns as well as fishing rods and paraphernalia for camping. We shall not give an inventory of it now. Suffice it to say that it was completely outfitted, and as the details of the car itself have been told in the previous volume we shall content ourselves with introducing each as occasion arises. The particular puncture which Joe was repairing when this volume opens, occurred just as the lads were bowling over a rather rough road into Antelope Valley, a narrow, wind-swept canyon between two steep ranges of mountains. The valley is in the heart of the Sierras, and though too insignificant to be noted on any but the largest maps, forms a portion of the range well known to mountaineers. It is a few miles from the Tehachapi Pass, at which, geographers are agreed, the true Sierra Nevadas begin. "Say, fellows," exclaimed Nat suddenly, looking about him at the sky which from being slightly overcast had now become black and threatening, "we're going to have a storm of some sort. If you're ready there, Joe, we'll be jogging along. We ought to be under shelter when it hits." "Yes," agreed Joe, wiping his brow with the back of his hand, "it will go whooping through this narrow valley like the mischief." As he spoke he lowered the "jack," and put the finishing touches on his repair. The auto carried plenty of extra tires, but naturally the boys wished to be sparing of their new ones while the others offered an opportunity for a patch. As the first heavy rain drops fell, sending up little spurts of dust from the dry road and the dusty chaparral bordering it, Nat started the motor, and the car was soon whizzing forward at a good speed. Thanks to its finely-tempered springs and the shock absorbers with which it was equipped, the roughness of the road had little effect on the comfort of the riders. "This is going to be a hummer," shouted Joe suddenly, "we'd better get up the shelter hood." Nat agreed, and soon the contrivance referred to, which was like a low "top" of waterproof khaki, was stretched on its collapsible frames. It fitted all round the auto, enclosing it like a snug waterproof tent. In front was a window of mica through which the driver could see the road. The erection of the shelter took but a few seconds and presently the car was once more chugging forward. But as the storm increased in violence, the wind rose, till it fairly screamed through the narrow funnel of the rocky-walled valley. Through his window Nat could see trees being bent as if they were buggy whips. "If this gets much worse we'll have to find cover," he thought, "or else lose our shelter hood." He glanced apprehensively at the steel supports of the shelter, which were bending and bowing under the stress put upon them. As Nat had remarked to himself, they would not stand much more pressure. "Say, the rain is coming in here," began Joe suddenly, as a tiny trickle began to pour into the tonneau. It came through a crack in the khaki top which had been wrenched apart by the violence of the wind. "It's g-g-g-gone d-d-d-own the bab-b-b-back of my n-n-n-neck," sputtered Ding-dong Bell protestingly. "Never mind, Ding-dong," comforted Joe, "maybe it will wash your parts of speech out straight." "I'm going to head for that cave yonder," exclaimed Nat, after running a few more minutes. He had spied a dark opening in the rocks to his right, while the others had been talking, and had guessed that it was the mouth of a cave of some sort. And so it proved. The auto was turned off the road, or rather track, and after bumping over rocks and brush rolled into the shelter of the cavern. It seemed quite an abrupt change from the warring of the elements outside to the darkness and quiet of the chamber in the rocks, and the Motor Rangers lost no time in lowering the hood and looking about to find out in what sort of a place they had landed. So far as they could see, after they had all climbed out of the car, the cave was a large one. It ran back and its limits were lost in darkness. The mouth, however, was quite a big opening, being more than twenty feet across at the base. It narrowed into a sharp-topped arch at the summit, from which greenery hung down. "Let's see where we are," remarked Nat, taking off his heavy driving gloves and throwing them upon the driver's seat. "You'd have to be a cat to do that," laughed Joe Hartley, gazing back into the dense blackness of the cavern. "That's soon fixed," added Nat, and removing one of the lights of the car from its socket he pressed a little button. A sharp click resulted, and a flood of brilliant white radiance poured from the lamp. It was an improved carbide contrivance, the illuminant which made the gas being carried in its socket. The boy turned its rays backward into the cave, flooding the rough, rocky walls, stained here and there with patches of dampness and moss, with a blaze of light. "Say," cried Joe suddenly, as the rays fell far back into the cave but still did not seem to reach its terminus, "what is that back there?" As he spoke he seized Nat's sleeve in a nervous, alarmed way. "What?" demanded Nat, holding the light high above his head in his effort to pierce the uttermost shadows. "Why that--don't you see it?" cried Joe. "I do now," exclaimed Nat in a startled voice, "it's----" "T-t-t-two g-g-glaring eyes!" fizzed Ding-dong Bell. As he spoke, from behind the boys, came a low, menacing growl. They faced about abruptly to see what this new source of alarm might be. As they all turned in the direction from which the growl had proceeded--namely the mouth of the cave--a cry of dismay was forced from the lips of the three lads. Stealthily approaching them, with cat-like caution, was a low, long-bodied animal of a tawny color. Its black-tipped tail was lashing the ground angrily, and its two immense eyes were glaring with a green light, in the gloom of the cave. "A mountain lion!" cried Nat, recognizing their treacherous foe in an instant. "And its mate's back there in the cave," called Joe, still more alarmedly. "G-g-g-g-get the g-g-g-guns!" sputtered Ding-dong. This was far more easy to recommend than to accomplish, however. The lads, never dreaming that they would want their weapons, had left them in the automobile. The car, as will be recalled, had been left near the mouth of the cave. The mountain lion advancing toward them had already passed the auto and was now between them and the place in which their weapons were reposing. The mountain lion, or cougar, ordinarily not dangerous unless it gets its foe at an absolute disadvantage, becomes, during the mating season, a vindictive, savage brute, if separated from its mate. That this was now the case was evident. There was no room to doubt that the two green eyes glaring from the remote blackness of the cave were the optics of another "lion." The young Motor Rangers were fairly trapped. Without weapons or any means of protecting themselves but their bare hands, they were in imminent peril of a nasty conclusion to their sudden encounter. CHAPTER II. BETWEEN TWO FIRES. Snarling in very much the manner of an angry cat, the lion, which had appeared at the mouth of the cave, began to come forward more rapidly. At the same instant, as if by mutual consent, his mate started to advance from the rear of the cave. It was evident that if they did not wish to be seriously injured, perhaps killed, the Motor Rangers would have to act, and act quickly. But what were they to do? Nat it was who solved the question. The floor of the cave was littered with boulders of various sizes, ranging from stones of a pound or so in weight, up to huge rocks beyond a boy's power to lift. Stooping down swiftly Nat selected a stone a little larger than a baseball, and then throwing himself into a pitching posture, awaited the oncoming cougar, approaching from the cave mouth. The boy had been the best pitcher the Santa Barbara Academy had ever produced, and his companions saw in a flash that he meant to exercise his skill now in a way of which he had little dreamed when on the diamond. His hand described an evolution in the air, far too quick to be followed by the eye. The next instant the stone left his grasp, and swished through the atmosphere. Straight and true it sped to its mark. And it struck home none too quick. The lion had already crouched for a spring on the defenseless lads, who stood between himself and his mate, when Nat's missile was discharged. Crack! The sharp noise of the stone's impact with the skull of the crouching feline sounded like a rifle shot. "Bull's-eye!" yelled Joe excitedly. And bull's-eye it was. The rock had a sharp edge which Nat, in his haste, had not noticed. As it struck the lion's head it did so with the keen surface foremost. Like a knife it drove its way into the skull and the lion, with a howl of pain and fury, turned, stumbled forward a few paces, and then rolled over. Before the others could stop him, Ding-dong Bell, entirely forgetting the other lion, dashed forward to examine the fallen monster. The result of his action was that his career came very near being terminated then and there. The cougar had only been stunned, and as the stuttering boy gave one of its ears a tug, it leaped erect once more and struck a blow at him with its chisel-like claws that would have torn him badly had they struck. But Ding-dong, though deliberate in his speech, was quick in action. He leaped backward like an acrobat, as he saw the mighty muscles tauten for action, and so escaped being felled by the blow. He could feel it "swish" past his nose, however, and entirely too close to be pleasant. In the meantime, Nat, realizing that his best move would be to get to their arms, had made a flying leap for the auto and seized an automatic rifle of heavy calibre. As Ding-dong leaped back he aimed and fired, but in the darkness he missed, and with a mighty bound the wounded cougar leaped out of the cave and dashed off through the storm into the brush on the hillside above. "One!" exclaimed Nat, like Monte Cristo in the play. The others gave a low laugh. They could afford not to worry so much now. True, there was one of the cougars still back in the cave, but with their rifles in their hands the lads had little to fear. "I felt for a minute, though, like I did that time the Mexican devil sprang on me near the gulf village," said Nat, recalling one of his most perilous moments in Lower California. But there was little time for conversation. Nat had hardly uttered his last remark before the cougar at the rear of the cave began to give signs that it too was meditating an attack. There are few animals that will not fight desperately when cornered, even a rat making a formidable foe sometimes under such conditions, and cornered the cougar unquestionably was. "She's coming," warned Joe in a low voice, as a rumbling growl resounded above the roar of the storm outside. "L-l-let her c-c-come," sputtered Ding-dong defiantly. "Better climb into the car, boys," said Nat in a whispered tone, "we can get better aim from an elevation." Accordingly they clambered into the tonneau of the motor vehicle, and kneeling on the seat awaited the onslaught which they knew must come in a few seconds. "I've half a mind to let her go, if we can without putting ourselves in danger," said Nat, "it doesn't seem fair somehow to shoot down a poor brute in cold blood." "But that poor brute would attack you without hesitation if you lay injured on a trail," Joe reminded him; "these cougars, too, kill hundreds of sheep and young calves, just for the sheer love of killing, for half of what they kill they never touch." "That's right," agreed Nat, "still fair play is a jewel, and----" Further words were taken out of his mouth by something that occurred just at that instant, and settled the fate of the cougar then and there. Ding-dong Bell, whose unlucky day it seemed to be, had, in his excitement, been leaning far over the back of the tonneau, peering into the darkness at the rear of the cave. He was trying to detect the shadowy outlines of the cougar. A few seconds before Joe Hartley had said:-- "Look out, Ding-dong, or you'll go overboard." The stuttering youth's reply had been a scornful snicker. But now, however, he craned his neck just a bit too far. His upper quarters over-balanced his stumpy legs and body, and with a howl that rivalled the cougar's, he toppled clean over the edge of the tonneau. The floor of the cave sloped steeply toward the rear, and when Ding-dong struck it he did not stop. Instead, the momentum lent him by his fall appeared to propel him forward down the sloping floor. He yelled for help as he felt himself rapidly and involuntarily being borne toward the hidden cougar. By some mysterious combination of misfortune, too, the carbide in the lamp, which had not been renewed since they left Santa Barbara, gave out with a flicker and a fizz at this moment. The cave was plunged into almost total darkness. Nat's heart came into his throat as he realized that if the cougar was not killed within the next few seconds, Ding-dong's life might pay the forfeit. "Good gracious!" shouted Joe above poor Ding-dong's cries, "how are we going to see to shoot?" "Aim at the eyes," grated out Nat earnestly, "it's our only chance." As he spoke there came an angry snarl and a hissing snort. It mingled with a shout of alarm from Ding-dong, who had now stopped rolling, but was not yet on his feet. The she-cougar had seen his peril and had taken the opportunity to bring down at least one of her enemies. Straight up, as if impelled by a powerful steel spring, she shot. But even as she was in mid-spring two rifles cracked, and with a convulsive struggle the great tawny body fell with a thud to the floor of the cave, clawing and scratching and uttering piercing roars and cries. "Put her out of her misery," said Nat, as Ding-dong, having regained his feet, darted at the top of his speed for the mouth of the cave. Once more the rifles blazed away at the two green points of fire which marked the wounded cougar's eyes. This time dead silence followed the reports, which reverberated deafeningly in the confines of the cave. There was no doubt but that the animal was dead. But where was Ding-dong? His companion Motor Rangers looked anxiously about them, but could see nothing of him. In the excitement they had not noticed him dart by. Presently, however, a slight noise near the cave month attracted their attention. There was Ding-dong out in the rain, and drenched to the skin, peering into the cave. "C-a-can I c-c-c-come in?" he asked hesitatingly. "Yes, and hurry up, too," ordered Nat in as stern a voice as he could command. "Your first duty," he went on, "will be to dig down in the clothes chest and put on dry things. Then you will refill the lamps with carbide, which you ought to have done two days ago, and after that you may patch up the tear the wind made in our shelter hood." "And--phwit--after that?" inquired Ding-dong with so serious an aspect that they had to laugh. "I'll think up something to keep you out of mischief," said Nat finally. While Ding-dong set about his tasks after investing himself in dry clothes, the others skinned the cougar and kindled a fire with some driftwood that lay about the cave. Hot coffee was then brewed, and some of the stores opened. After imbibing several cups of the steaming mixture, and eating numerous slices of bread and butter, the Motor Rangers felt better. By this time, too, the storm had almost passed over, only a slight drizzle remaining to tell of the visit of the mountain tempest. An investigation of the cave failed to show any trace of a regular den in it, and the boys came to the conclusion, which was probably correct, that the cougars had merely taken to it for shelter from the storm. However that was, all three of them felt that they had had a mighty narrow escape. Ding-dong inwardly resolved that from that time on he would take care to have the lamps packed with carbide, for Nat's relation of how nearly the sudden cessation of the light had cost him his life gave the stuttering youth many qualms. "I guess the storm is about over," said Joe, looking out of the cave while holding a tin cup of coffee in his hand. "I see enough blue sky to m-m-m-make a pair of pants for every s-s-s-s-sailor in the navy," remarked Ding-dong, who had joined him. "That's a sure sign of clearer weather," said Nat, "come on, boys, pack up the cups and get the car ready and we'll go ahead." "Where are we going to stop to-night?" asked Joe. "I guess we can't be many miles from Lariat, can we?" "I'll see," rejoined Nat, diving into his breast pocket and pulling out a map stoutly mounted on tough linen to prevent tearing. He pored over it for a moment. "The map puts Lariat about fifteen miles from here," he said. "What sort of a p-p-p-lace is it?" Ding-dong wished to know. "A small post-office station," rejoined Nat. "I don't imagine that there is even a hotel there." Ding-dong, who didn't object to the luxuries of life, sighed. Somehow, he had been looking forward to stopping at a hotel that night. He said nothing, however, well knowing how his complaints would be received. The auto was soon moving out of the cave in which they had had so exciting an encounter. Nat was at the wheel and his two companions in the tonneau. The faces of all were as beaming as the weather had now turned out. These boys dearly loved the sensation of taking to the road and proceeding on into the unknown and adventurous. The rough strip separating the road, as we must in courtesy call it, from the steep rock-face in which the cave lay, was speedily traversed and the auto's nose headed north. For some time they bowled along at a slow speed, the track growing rapidly rougher and rougher, till it seemed that nothing on wheels could get over it. "What's the m-m-m-matter?" asked Ding-dong suddenly of Joe Hartley, who for a bumpy mile or two had sat with his head cocked on one side as if listening intently for something. "I'm listening for a puncture," grinned Joe, resuming his posture of attention. As the road grew rougher the walls of the valley began to close in. They grew more lofty as the pass grew narrower, till only a thin strip of blue sky showed at the summit. The rugged slopes were clothed with a sparse growth of pine timber and chaparral. Immense faces of rock cropped out among these. The whole scene had a wild and savage aspect. Suddenly they reached a spot where the road took an abrupt dip downward. From the summit the descent looked as steep as the wall of a house. Fortunately, they carried an emergency brake, so that the steepness of the declivity did not alarm them. Without hesitating Nat allowed the car to roll over the summit and begin the drop. The exhilaration of the rapid motion made him delay applying his emergency just as soon as he should have, and the car had been running at considerable speed when there came a sudden shout from Joe:-- "Look, Nat! Look!" The boy, who had been adjusting his spark lever, looked up suddenly. They were just rounding a curve, beyond which the road pitched down more steeply than ever. At the bottom of the long hill stood an obstacle. Nat at a glance made it out as a stage coach of the old-fashioned "thorough-brace type." It was stationary, however, and its passengers stood about it in scattered groups, while, so far as Nat could see, no horses were attached to it. "Better go slow. There seems to be something the matter down there at the bottom of the grade," the boy remarked. At the same instant his hand sought the emergency brake lever and he pushed it forward. There was a loud crack as he did so, and an alarmed look flashed across his face as the lever suddenly felt "loose" in his hand. The car seemed to give an abrupt leap forward and plunge on more swiftly than ever. Below him Nat could see the scattered figures pointing upward excitedly. He waved and yelled to warn them that he had no control over the car which was tearing forward with the speed of the wind. The ordinary brake had no effect on it under the speed it had now gathered. Lurching and plunging like a ship at sea, it rushed onward. Directly in its path, immovable as a rock, was the stage coach. All three of the Motor Rangers' bronzed, sunburned faces blanched as they rushed onward to what seemed inevitable disaster. CHAPTER III. IN A RUNAWAY AUTO. "Can't you stop her?" gasped Joe, clutching the forward portion of the tonneau and gripping it so tight that his knuckles went white. Nat shook his head. He felt that he had done what he could to slow down the car. There was nothing left now but to face the end as resolutely as possible. As long as they lived the Motor Rangers never forgot that wild ride down the mountainside in a runaway car. The speed can be described by no other word than terrific. The handkerchiefs all three of the boys wore about their necks to keep off sunstroke and dust streaked out behind as stiff as if cut out of tin. Their hair was blown back flat on their heads by the speed, and every now and then the car would strike a rock, which at the speed it was going would throw it high into the air. At such moments the auto would come back to the trail with a crash that threatened to dislocate every spring in its composition. But Nat, his eyes glued to the path in front of him, clung to the wheel, gripping it till the varnish stuck to his palms. He knew that the slightest mistake on his part might precipitate the seemingly certain disaster. Suddenly, however, his heart gave a glad bound. He saw before him one loophole of escape from a catastrophe. The stage was halted against the rocky wall on the right-hand side of the trail. So far over toward the rocky wall was it, in fact, that its hubs almost scraped it. This left a narrow space between its left-hand wheels and the other wall of the pass. True, it looked so narrow that it hardly seemed possible that the auto could dash through, but it was the only chance that presented itself, and Nat was quick to take advantage of it. As they saw what the boy intended to do the onlookers about the stage broke into a cheer, which was quickly checked as they held their breath in anticipation. It was one chance in a thousand that Nat was taking. Would he win out? Closer thundered the auto while the alarmed stage passengers crowded to the far side of the pass. Nat, his eyes glued on the narrow space between the stage and the wall of rock, bent low over the wheel. His heart underwent a terrible sinking sensation as it grew closer and he saw how narrow the space was. But he didn't give up on that account. On the contrary, the extremely narrow margin of hope acted as a tonic on his nerves. As a naval gunner aims his big projectiles so Nat aimed the thundering runaway automobile for the narrow opening between the stage and the cliff. Almost before he realized it he was there. There was a quick flash of a brightly painted vehicle and white, anxious human faces as he shot by the stage and its dismounted passengers. An ominous scraping sound was audible for an instant as the hubs of the stage and the auto's tonneau came in contact. To the left, Nat felt the scrub growing in the cracks of the rock brush his face, and then, amidst a shout of joy from behind, the auto emerged beyond the stage, unharmed save for a few scratches. As Nat brought it to a standstill on the level, the travellers came running up at top speed. All were anxious to shake the hand of the daring boy who had turned seeming disaster into safety by his grit and cool-headedness. "Pod'ner, you jammed that thar gas brigantine through that lilly hole like you wos makin' a poket at bill-yards," admiringly cried a tall man in a long linen duster and sombrero, about whose throat was a red handkerchief. He grasped Nat's hand and wrung it as if he would have shaken it off. "My name's Cal Gifford. I'm the driver of the Lariat-to-Hombre stage," he announced, "and any of you kids kin ride free with me any time you've a mind to." "Thank you," said Nat, still a bit trembly from his nervous strain, "I really believe that if you only had horses we'd accept your invitation and tow the auto behind." As he spoke he started to scramble out of the car, the others following his example. The Motor Rangers were anxious to see what had gone wrong with their ordinarily trustworthy vehicle. "Oh, he's quite young," simpered an elderly lady in a big veil, who was accompanied by her daughter, a girl of about twenty. An old man with fierce white whiskers stood beside them. They were evidently tourists. So, too, was a short, stout, blonde little man as rotund as a cider keg, who stepped up to the boys as they prepared to examine their car. "Holt, plez!" he said in an authoritative voice. "I vish to take zee phitograft." Nat looked somewhat astonished at so curt an order, but the other two Motor Rangers merely grinned. "Better let him, pod'ner," suggested Cal Gifford. "He took them road agents a while back. Caught 'em in the act of sneaking the express box." "Chess!" sputtered the little German. "I gedt find pigdures of all of dem. Dey vossn't looking andt I--click!" As he spoke he rapidly produced a camera, and before the boys knew what was happening he had pressed a little lever, and behold they were "taken." But, in fact, their minds had been busy with something else. This something was what the stage driver had referred to. "Road agents?" asked Nat. "You've been held up, then?" "Yep, pod'ner, that's what it amounts to," drawled Cal nonchalantly, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. "The varmints stepped out frum behind that thar rock and we didn't hev time ter say 'Knife' afore we found ourselves lookin' inter the muzzles of as complete a collection of rifles as you ever saw." "Un dey tooked avay der horses by der oudtside," put in the German tourist. "Oh, I schall have me fine tales to tell ven I get me pack by der Faderland." "The Dutchman's right," said Cal. "The onnery skunks unhitched our plugs and scampered 'em off up the trail. I reckon they're in their barn at Lariat by this time." "Oh, dear, and we'll have to walk," cried the young lady, bursting into tears. "And I haf vot you call it, a oatmeal?--py my pig toe," protested the German. "I guess you mean a corn, Dutchy," laughed Cal. "Vell, I knowed it vos some kindt of cereal," was the reply. "Seems a shame to see that purty critter cry, don't it?" said Cal, nodding his head sidewise toward the weeping young lady. "This is an outrage! An outrage, I say!" her white-whiskered father began shouting. "Why were those highwaymen not shot down? Why didn't somebody act?" "Well, pod'ner, you acted up fer sure," grinned Cal. "Am I mistaken or did I hear you say you'd give 'em five thousand dollars for your life?" "Bah!" shouted the white-whiskered man. "It was your duty sure to protect us. You should have fired at them." "I'd hev bin a hull lot uv use to yer then, except fer funeral poposes, wouldn't I?" inquired Cal calmly. "Bah! sir, bah!" sputtered the angry old gentleman. "Good thing ther h'aint no mounting lions 'round," drawled Cal. "They might think we wuz an outfit of sheepmen by all the bah-bahing we be doin'." "But how is my daughter to get to Lariat, sir?" begged the elderly lady. "She hurt her foot in getting off the stage." "Well, ma'am," said Cal, "supposing yer man yonder takes a try at carryin' her instead of wasting wind a-bahing?" "Voss iss diss bah? Maybe I get a picture of him?" asked the German, bustling up excitedly with his camera all ready for business. "Oh, sir, my husband was excited. He didn't know what he was saying," exclaimed the elderly lady clasping her hands. "There, ma'am, don't take on. I was only a-having my bit of fun," said Cal. "Maybe when these boys get their gasoline catamarang fixed up they'll give us a ride." "But they cannot take all of us, sir," cried the lady, beginning to weep afresh. "There, there, ma'am, never mind ther irrigation--I mean 'Weep not them tears,'" comforted Cal. "Anyhow, you and your daughter can get a ride." "But my husband--my poor husband, sir." Cal turned with a grin at a sudden noise behind them. The white-whiskered man had now turned his wrath on the unfortunate German. "Out of my sight, you impudent Teuton," he was shouting. "Don't aggravate me, sir, or I'll have your blood. I'm a peaceable tourist, sir, but I have fought and bled in my time." "Must hev bin bit by a mosquito and chased it," commented Cal to himself as the lady hastened to console her raging better half, and the little Dutchman skipped nimbly out of harm's way. "What yo' bin a-doing to ther ole bell-wether, Dutchy?" inquired Cal. "I ask him if he blease tell me vere I can get a picture of dot Bah, und he get madt right avay quvick," explained the Teuton. While all this had been going on among the tourists and Cal, the other passengers, mainly mountaineers, had stood in a group aside talking among themselves. In the meanwhile, the Motor Rangers had been examining the damage to their car. They found that the connecting rod working the band of the emergency brake had snapped, and that a blacksmith would be needed to weld it. Cal, who had strolled up in time to hear this decision, informed them that there was a blacksmith at Lariat. "And a good 'un, too," he volunteered. The stage driver then made a request for a ride on behalf of the young lady and her parents. "Me and the Dutchman and the rest kin hoof it," he remarked. "It ain't above five mile, and down grade, too." "A steep grade?" asked Nat, with some appearance of interest as Joe finished unbolting the loose ends of the broken rod. "No, jest gentle. It runs on 'bout this way all down into Lariat." "Well, then," said Nat, with a smile, "I'll save you all the trouble of walking." "How's that, pod'ner? We kain't all pile in the hold of that benzine buggy." "No; but I can give you a tow." "What, hitch my stage on ahind your oleomargerinerous gas cart?" "That's it." "By the big peak of Mount Whitney, that's an idee!" exclaimed the delighted stage driver, capering about and snapping his fingers like a big child. "Wait a jiffy, I'll explain it all to Bah-bah and the rest." This was soon done, and the Motor Rangers in the interval attached a rope to the rear axle of the car and in turn made it fast to the front of the stage. The pole of the latter vehicle was then led over the tonneau of the auto and Joe and Ding-dong deputed to steer. From the driver's box of the stage Cal worked the brake. An experimental run of a few yards was made, and on the gentle grade the plan was found to work perfectly, the auto towing the heavy stage without difficulty. "Now, then, all aboard the stagemotebubble!" shouted Cal, and a few minutes later all the passengers, delighted with the novelty of the experience, had piled on board. All delighted, that is, except the white-whiskered man. "All aboard that's a-goin' ter get thar!" bellowed Cal, fixing him with a baleful eye. "Bah! Bah!" sputtered the white-whiskered one indignantly, nevertheless skipping nimbly on beside his wife and daughter. But there came a fresh delay. "Holt on, blease! Vait! I vish a photegrift to take him!" "Ef yer don't hurry up Dutchy," shouted Cal, "you'll hev a picter of yerself a-walking inter Lariat." But the photo was taken without delay, and amid a cheer from her overjoyed passengers, the stage, which moved by such novel means, rumbled onward on its way to Lariat. CHAPTER IV. MOTOR RANGERS TO THE RESCUE. "That came pretty near being like the time we collided with the hay wagon in Lower California," commented Joe, as the auto got under way, with her cumbersome tow rattling along behind. "Yes, only this time we didn't hit," laughed Nat, who had quite recovered from the strain of those terrible moments when it seemed that they must go crashing into the stage. "A m-m-m-miss is as g-g-g-good as a m-m-m-mile any day," said Ding-dong, as his contribution to the conversation. As Cal Gifford had said, the road was a gentle gradient between steep mountain ranges. Consequently, the towing of the coach was an easy matter. The two boys in the tonneau steered it by giving the pole a push or a tug as occasion required--much as they would have handled the tiller of a boat. When the stage showed signs of coming ahead too fast Cal shoved the foot brake forward, at once checking the impetus. Quite a small crowd turned out to witness the strange scene as the two vehicles rolled into Lariat. The place was a typical western mountain station. There was a small post-office, two or three rough houses and a hotel. In the heydey of gold mining, Lariat had been quite a flourishing place, but the hand of decay was upon it at the present time. The hotel, however, was, as Ding-dong noticed, apparently open for business. At least several loungers arose from their chairs on the porch, and came forward with exclamations of surprise, as the two conveyances lumbered into town. Nat shut off power in front of the post-office and at the same time Cal applied and locked the brakes, bringing the stage likewise to a standstill. The postmaster, a long, lanky Westerner, with a much-patched pair of trousers tucked into boot tops, was already out in front of his little domain. "Ther horses be back in ther barn," he volunteered, as Cal looked at him questioningly. "They come galloping in here like a blue streak an hour ago." "Yep, bin held up again," Cal volunteered as the crowd gathered about the stage, "and ef it hadn't been for these bubble boys here we wouldn't hev got inter town yit." "Take everything, Cal?" asked the postmaster. "Yep; stock, lock and barrel, as the feller says. Left us our vallibles, though. I reckon they would have taken them if it hadn't bin for the noise this here gasolene giglet made as it come over ther hill. Thet scared 'em, and they galloped off, takin' ther plugs with 'em." "Consarn 'em! I reckon they're some of Col. Merced Morello's gang. They've bin active hereabouts lately. Jes heard afore you come in thet they'd raided a ranch up north an' tuk two hundred head of stock." "Outrageous! Outrageous!" exclaimed the white-whiskered man, who had been listening with an angry, red countenance, "why does not some one capture them?" "Well, sir," rejoined the postmaster, "if you kin tell us whar ter find 'em we'll furnish ther men to smoke 'em out. But up to date no one ain't bin able ter git a glimpse of 'em. They jes' swoop down and then vanish ag'in." "They've got some hidin' place off in the mountins," opined Cal; "but you can bet that the old colonel's foxy enough ter keep it close, wherever it is." "Betcher life," said one or two in the crowd who had heard. While this had been going on the Motor Rangers had been hard at work unhitching their car from the stage. In this operation they had been considerably bothered by the crowd which, never having seen an auto before, elbowed right up and indulged in comment and investigation. Ding-dong caught one bewhiskered old fellow in the very act of abstracting a spark plug. The boy promptly switched on the current and the investigator, with a wild yell, hopped backward into the crowd, wringing his hand. "The critter bit me," he explained to the crowd. Such was his explanation of the sharp electric shock he had received. The proprietor of the hotel now hastened up, and began urging the passengers on the stage to stay the night in his hotel. Another stage went on from Lariat, and after a run of sixty miles struck the railroad in the valley. This stage was to start in half an hour. After a hasty meal the white-whiskered man and his family, and several of the other passengers, decided to continue their journey. The boys, however, after a consultation, came to the determination to spend the night at Lariat. Their first care had been to hunt up the blacksmith Cal had referred to, and to give into his hands the connecting rod. He promised to have it welded as good as new by morning. This arranged, the boys sauntered back to the hotel just in time to watch the other stage pull out. On a rear seat sat the white-whiskered man. He was still boiling, despite the fact that the robbers had not harmed him or his family in any way. In fact, he occasionally simmered over. The last the boys saw of him he had gotten hold of a fat, good-natured little man, who looked like a drummer, and they could hear frequent exclamations of "Bah!" coming back toward them, like the explosions of a rapid-fire gun. A moment later the stage vanished behind a rocky turn in the road. Soon after the boys were called in to supper. Among the company at the meal was a tall man with a black mustache drooping down each side of his mouth in typical Western fashion. "He looks like the pictures of Alkali Ike," remarked Joe in an undertone as they concluded the meal and arose, leaving the black-mustached man and the others still eating. Outside they found it was a beautiful night. The storm of the afternoon had laid the dust, and the moon was rising brilliantly in the clear and sharp atmosphere peculiar to the high regions of the Sierras. In the silvery radiance every rock and bush was outlined sharply. The road lay between black curtains of mountainside, like a stretch of white ribbon. "Let's go for a stroll," suggested Nat, as they stood about on the veranda wondering what they could do with themselves till bedtime. The other two were nothing loath, and so, without bothering to say a word to any one, the lads sauntered off down the road. The balmy scent of pines and the mountain laurel hung heavily in the air. Nat inhaled it delightedly. "I tell you, fellows, this is living," he exclaimed. "You bet," agreed Joe heartily. "T-t-t-that p-p-pie was f-f-fine," said the unpoetical Ding-dong, smacking his lips at the recollection of the dessert. "There you go," said Nat in mock disgust, "always harping on eating." "T-th-that's b-b-better-phwit--than eating on harpoons, isn't it?" asked Ding-dong, with a look of injured innocence. "I said harping on eating. Not harpoons on eating," retorted Nat. "Oh," said Ding-dong. "Well, don't wail about it." "Say, if you make any more puns I'll chuck you down into that canyon," threatened Joe, pointing downward into a black abyss which, at the portion of the road they had now reached, yawned to one side of the thoroughfare. "You make me chuckle," grunted the incorrigible Ding-dong, avoiding the threatened fate, however, by clambering and hiding behind a madrone tree. "Tell you what I'll do," cried Nat suddenly. "Well, what?" demanded Joe, as Nat stopped short. "I'll run you fellows a race to the bottom of the hill." "You're on," cried Ding-dong from his retreat, and emerging immediately thereafter, "don't bust your emergency brake though, or we'll have more trouble." He peered ahead down the moonlit canyon, and noted that the road was quite steep for a distance of about a quarter of a mile. The boys were all good runners and experts, in fact, at all branches of athletics. Their blood fairly tingled as Nat lined them up and they stood awaiting the word "go." At last it came. Like arrows from so many bows the three boys shot forward, Ding-dong in the lead. How his stubby legs did move! Like pistons in their speed and activity. There was no question about it, Ding-dong could run. Five feet or so behind him came Joe and at his rear was Nat, who, knowing that he was ordinarily a faster runner than either, had handicapped himself a bit. He speedily overhauled the others, however, although Ding-dong gave him a stiff tussle. Reaching the finishing line, Nat looked back up the moonlit road. Ding-dong and Joe were speeding toward him neck and neck. "Go it, Ding-dong!" yelled Nat, "come on, Joe." In a cloud of dust and small rocks the two contestants rushed on. Suddenly one of Ding-dong's feet caught in a rock, and at the impetus he had attained, the sudden shock caused him to soar upward into the air, as if he were about to essay a flight through space. Extending his arms spread-eagle fashion, the fleshy, stuttering youth floundered above the ground for a brief second, and then, as Joe dashed across the line he came down with a resounding crash. Flat on his face he fell in the middle of the dusty road. "Pick him up," exclaimed Nat as he saw the catastrophe. Joe, who had by this time checked his speed, headed about after Nat, and started for the recumbent Ding-dong. As they neared his side, however, the lad jumped up with a grin on his rotund features. "Fooled you, didn't I?" he chuckled. "Goo--d gracious. I thought you had fractured every bone in your body," exclaimed Nat. "Can't hurt me; I'm made of cast-iron," snickered Ding-dong. "I always knew that applied to your head," said Joe, determined to tease the boy a bit in revenge for the fright he had given them, "but I never realized before that the complaint had spread all over you." "I'd have won the race anyhow if I hadn't taken that tumble," retorted Ding-dong, and as this seemed to be no more than the truth the others had nothing to say in rejoinder. "I guess we had better be getting back to the hotel," said Nat, "we want to get an early start to-morrow, so a good night's sleep will be in order." But the words were hardly out of his mouth before he stopped short. The boy had heard voices, apparently coming from the air above them. He soon realized, however, that in reality the speakers were on the mountain-side above them. In fact, he now saw that a trail cut into the road above the point at which they stood. In their dash down the hill they had not noticed it. The other lads, who had also heard the voices, needed no comment to remain quiet. While they stood listening a figure appeared on the trail, walking rapidly down it. As the newcomer drew closer the boys recognized the features and tall, ungainly outline of the man with the black mustache--"Alkali Ike." He came forward as if with a definite purpose in mind. Evidently, he was not, like the boys, out for a moonlight stroll. As he approached he stopped and listened intently. Then he gave a low, peculiar whistle. It was like the call of a night bird. Instantly, from the hill-side above them they heard the signal--for such it seemed--replied to. At the same instant whoever was on the hillside above began to advance downward. The boys, crouching back in a patch of shadow behind a chaparral clump, could hear the slipping and sliding of their horses' hoofs as they came down the rocky pathway. CHAPTER V. AN APPOINTMENT ON THE TRAIL. "Something's up," whispered Joe, as if this fact was not perfectly obvious. "Hush," warned Nat, "that fellow who just came down the trail is the chap we noticed at supper." "Alkali Ike?" "Yes. That's what you called him." "He must have a date here." "Looks that way. If I don't miss my guess he's here to meet whoever is coming on horseback down that trail." "Are you going to stay right here?" "We might as well. I've got an idea somehow that these chaps are up to some mischief. It doesn't look just right for them to be meeting way off here." "That's right," agreed Joe, "but supposing they are desperate characters. They may make trouble for us." "I guess not," rejoined Nat, "we're well hidden in the shadow here. There's not a chance of their seeing us." "Well I hope not." But the arrival of the horsemen on the trail put a stop to further conversation right then. There were two of them, both, so far as the boys could see, big, heavy men, mounted on active little ponies. Their long tapaderos, or leather stirrup coverings, almost touched the ground as they rode. "Hello, Al," exclaimed one of them, as the black mustached man came forward to meet them. "Hello, boys," was the rejoinder in an easy tone as if the speaker had no fear of being overheard, "well, you pulled it off I see." "Yes, and we'd have got more than the express box too if it hadn't been for the allfiredest noise you ever heard at the top of the trail all of a sudden. It came just as we was about ter go through ther pockets of the passengers. Sounded like a boiler factory or suthin'. I tell you we lit out in a hurry." The speaker was one of the pony riders. As he spoke Nat gave Joe a nudge and the other replied with a look of understanding. The men who stood talking not a score of paces from them had taken part in the stage-robbery. The man on foot seemed immensely amused at the mention of the "terrible noise" his companions said they had been alarmed by. "Why, that was an automobubble," he laughed. "A bubble!" exclaimed one of the others, "what in the name of the snow-covered e-tarnal hills is one of them coal oil buckboards doin' in this neck of ther woods?" "Why, three kids are running it on a pleasure trip. The Motor Rangers, or some such fool name, they call theirselves. They hitched the bubble on ter ther stage and towed her inter town as nice as you please." "Did you say they called theirselves the Motor Rangers?" asked the other mounted man who up to this time had not spoken. "That's right, why?" "One of 'em a fat, foolish lookin' kid what can't talk straight?" asked the other instead of replying. Nat nudged Ding-dong and chuckled, in imminent danger of exposing their hiding place. It tickled him immensely to hear that youth described in such an unflattering manner. "Why yep. There is a sort of chumpish kid with 'em. For the matter of that all three of 'em are stuck up, psalm singin' sort of kids. Don't drink nor smoke nor nuthin'." "True for you. We're not so foolish," breathed Nat to Joe. "Why are you so anxious about 'em, Dayton?" asked the other rider who had remained silent while his comrade was making the recorded inquiries. "Cos I know 'em and I've got some old scores to even up with them," was the rejoinder. "Do you remember what I told you about some kids fooling us all down in Lower California?" "Yep. What of it?" "Well, this is the same bunch. I'm sure of it." "The dickens you say. Do they travel with much money about them?" It was the black-mustached man who was interested now. "I don't know about that. But their bubble is worth about $5,000 and one of them has a gold mine in Lower Cal. Then, too, they always carry a fine stock of rifles and other truck." "They'd be worth plucking then?" "I guess so. At any rate I'd like to get even with them even if we didn't get a thing out of it. Ed. Dayton doesn't forgive or forget in a hurry." Small wonder that the boys leaned forward with their ears fairly aching to catch every word. Nat knew now why the outline of one of the riders had seemed familiar to him. The man was evidently none other than Ed. Dayton, the rascal who had acted as the millionaire Hale Bradford's lieutenant in Lower California. Nat, it will be recalled, was captured on the peninsula and an attempt made to force him to give up papers showing his right to the mine, which the gang Hale Bradford had gathered about him was working. I can tell you, Nat was mighty glad that he and his companions happened to be there in the shadow; for, thought he to himself:-- "Forewarned is forearmed, Mr. Ed. Dayton." But the men were resuming their talk. "Tell you what you fellows do," said the black-mustached man. "Just lie off here in the brush for an hour or so and I'll go back to the hotel and look around. Then I'll come back and tell you if the coast's clear. They've got their auto out in some sort of a shed and if we could run it we could swipe the whole thing. Can you run an auto, Ed.? Seems to me I've heard you talk about them." "Can a dog bark?" inquired the other, who if the memory of my readers goes back that far, they will recall had at one time been a chauffeur for Mr. Pomery. "Very well then, that's settled. At all events it might be a good thing to smash up the car if we can't do anything else with it." "That's right Al.," agreed Ed. Dayton's companion, "we don't want any nosy kids around in the mountains. They might discover too much." "That's so, too. Well, you leave it to me, Al. Jeffries, and I'll bet you that after to-night they'll all be glad to go home to their mammies." But right here something happened which might, but for good fortune, have caused a different ending to this story. Ding-dong Bell, among other peculiarities, possessed a pair of very delicate nostrils, and the slightest irritation thereof caused him to sneeze violently. Now at the time of the year of which we are writing the California mountains are covered with a growth, called in some localities tar weed. This plant gives off an irritating dust when it is shaken or otherwise disturbed, and the hoofs of the two riders' ponies had kicked up a lot of this pungent powder. Just as the rascals concluded their plans a vagrant puff of wind carried some of it in Ding-dong's direction. Realizing what serious consequences it might have, the lad struggled with all his might against his immediate inclination to sneeze, but try as he would he could not keep the ultimate explosion back. "A-ch-oo-oo-oo-oo!" It sounded as loud as the report of a cannon, in the silent canyon, and quite as startling. "What in thunder was that?" exclaimed Ed. Dayton wheeling his pony round. He, of course, saw nothing, and regarded his companions in a puzzled way. Al. Jeffries was tugging his black mustache and looking about him likewise for some explanation. But he could not find it. In the meantime, the boys, in an agony of apprehension, scarcely dared to breathe. They crouched like rabbits behind their shelter awaiting what seemed inevitable discovery. "Must have been a bird," grunted Ed. Dayton's companion. "Funny sort of bird," was the rejoinder. "That's right. I am a funny sort of bird," thought Ding-dong with an inward chuckle. "Sounded to me more like somebody sneezin'," commented Ed. Dayton who was still suspicious. "It'll be a bad day for them if there was," supplemented Al. Jeffries grimly. "Tell you what we do, boys," came a sudden suggestion from Ed.'s companion, which sent a chill to the hearts of the boys; "let's scatter about here and look around a bit." "That's a good idea," was the alarming rejoinder. Nat was just revolving in his mind whether it would be the better expedient to run, and trust to hiding in the rocks and chaparral, or to leap up and try to scare the others' ponies, and then escape. But just then Al. Jeffries spoke: "No use wastin' time on that now, boys," he said, "it's gettin' late. You do as I say, and then in a while we'll all take a little spin in that grown up taxi cab of the Motor Rangers." To the intense relief of the boys the others agreed. Soon after this the trio of rascals separated. Ed. Dayton and his companions rode back up the trail while Al. Jeffries started off for the hotel. As soon as their footsteps grew faint Nat galvanized into action. "We've got a lot to do in a very short time," he announced excitedly. "Come on, Joe! Shake a foot! We've got to beat Mr. Al. back to the hotel." "How?" inquired Joe amazedly, but not doubting in his own mind that Nat had already thought the matter out thoroughly. "We'll skirt along the mountain-side above him. If we are careful he won't hear us." "That is, if Ding-dong can muffle that nasal gatling gun of his," grunted Joe. "Say, young fellow, the next time you want to sneeze when we're in such a tight place, just oblige us by rolling over the edge of the canyon, will you?" "I c-c-c-o-o-ouldn't help it," sputtered Ding-dong sorrowfully. "Couldn't," exclaimed the indignant Joe, "you didn't even try." "I did too. But I couldn't remember whether the book said that you could stop sneezing by pulling the lobe of your ear or rubbing the bridge of your nose." "So you did both?" "Y-y-y-yes; why?" "Well, they were both wrong. You should have wiggled your right big toe while you balanced a blade of grass on your chin." CHAPTER VI. SOME RASCALS GET A SCARE. Everybody in the hotel at Lariat had long retired to bed, when three youthful forms stole toward the stable which had been turned into a temporary garage for the Motor Rangers' big car. From their bed-room window, the boys had, a few moments before, watched Al. Jeffries stride off down the trail to meet his cronies for the second time and inform them that the time was ripe to put up their attempted trick on the lads. The doughty Al., on his return to the hotel after the conference at which the lads were eavesdroppers, had found nothing to excite his suspicion. The boys were all seated on the porch and apparently had not moved since he had last seen them. Al. had even sat around with them a while, trying to pump them, but of course, after what they knew of him, they did not give him much information. Nat had formed an idea that the man was a sort of agent for the gang of the famous Morello. That is, he hung about towns and picked up any information he could about shipments of specie from the mines, or of wealthy travellers who might be going through. In this surmise we may say that Nat was correct. But to return to the three lads whom we left at the beginning of the chapter stealthily slipping across the moonlit space between the hotel and the stable. All three had changed their boots for soft moccasins, in which they made next to no noise at all as they moved. Each lad, moreover, carried under his arm a small bundle. Their clothing consisted of trousers and shirts. Their broad-brimmed sombreros had been doffed with their coats. The Motor Rangers were, so to speak, stripped for action. And it was to be action of a lively kind as the event was to show. On their arrival at the stable the boys slipped into an empty stall alongside their car, and undoing their bundles, hastily donned what was in them. Then Nat uncorked a bottle, while a strong odor filled the air. It was a pungent sort of reek, and from the bottle could be seen a faint greenish light glowing. Their preparations completed, the Motor Rangers crouched behind the wooden wall of the stall, awaiting the next move on the program. "And for heaven's sake sit on that sneeze!" Joe admonished Ding-dong. Before very long the boys could hear cautious footsteps approaching the barn, and the sound of low whispering. "The auto's right in here," they caught, in Jeffries' voice. "Say, what a laugh we'll have on those kids in the morning." "They laugh best who laugh last," thought Nat to himself, clutching more tightly a small gleaming thing he had in his hand. "This is pie to me," they could hear Dayton whispering, in a cautious undertone, "I told those kids I'd get even on them for driving me out of Lower California, and here's where I do it." Nat gritted his teeth as he listened. "You're going to get something that you don't expect," he muttered softly to himself. The next instant the barn door framed three figures. Behind them were two ponies. The feet of the little animals were swathed in sacks so that they made no noise at all. "Pretty foxy," whispered Joe, "they've padded the ponies' hoofs." "Hush!" ordered Nat, "don't say a word or make a move till I give the signal." "There's the car," whispered Jeffries, as they drew closer and the shadow of the place enclosed them, blotting out their outlines. "Seems a shame to run it over a cliff, don't it?" put in Dayton's fellow pony rider. "That's the only thing to do with it," said Dayton abruptly, "I want to give those kids a lesson they won't forget." "So, you rascals," thought Nat, "you were going to run the car over a cliff were you? Oh, how I'd like to get my hands on you for just five minutes." "Go on, Dayton. Climb into the thing and start her up," said Jeffries. "Hope them kids don't wake up," put in Dayton's companion. "They're off as sound as tops," Al. assured him, "I listened at their door after I came out, and they were snoring away like so many buck saws." With the ease born of familiarity with motor vehicles, Dayton climbed into the driver's seat and bent over the steering wheel. Presently there came a sharp click! "Now!" whispered Nat. As he gave the word, from behind the wooden partition upreared three terrifying objects. Their faces glared greenly and their white forms seemed to be shrouded in graveyard clothes. In unison they uttered a dismal cry. "Be-ware! Oh be-ware of the car of the Motor Ranger boys!" "Wow!" yelled Dayton's companion. As he gave the alarmed cry he fairly reeled back against the opposite stall and fell with a crash. At the same instant, an old claybank mule tethered in there awoke, and resenting the man's sudden intrusion, let fly with his hind hoofs. This shot the ruffian's form full tilt into that of Al. Jeffries, who was making at top speed for the door, and the two fell, in a rolling, cursing, struggling, clawing heap on the stable floor. "Lemme up!" yelled Al. Jeffries, in mortal terror of the grim sheeted forms behind him. "Lemme go!" shouted Dayton's companion, roaring half in fear and half in pain at the reminiscences of the mule's hoofs he carried. But the startling apparitions, while at their first appearance they had made Dayton recoil, only fooled him for an instant. Springing erect from his first shock of amazement and alarm he gave an angry shout. "Get up there you fools." "Oh the ghosts! The ghosts with the green faces," bawled Al. Jeffries. "Ghosts!" roared Dayton angrily, "they're no ghosts. Get up and knock their heads off." Suiting the action to the word he leaped from the car and charged furiously at Nat. The boy's fist shot out and landed with a crash on the point of his jaw, but although Dayton reeled under the force of the blow he recovered instantly and charged furiously again on the sheeted form. In the meantime, Al. Jeffries and the other man had rolled apart and perceived the state of affairs. The noise of the impact of Nat's fist showed conclusively that it was no ghostly hand that had struck the blow, and the fact rallied their fleeting courage. As furiously as had Dayton, they charged upon the boys. The rip and tear of sheets, and the sound of blows given and received, mingled with the angry exclamations of the men and the quick, panting breath of the boys. Suddenly, Nat levelled the little bright glinting thing he had clutched in his hand as they crouched behind the wooden partition. He pressed a trigger on its underside and a hissing sound followed. "Sfiz-z-z-z-z-z!" At the same instant the air became surcharged with a pungent odor. It seemed to fill the atmosphere and made nostrils and eyes smart. "Ammonia!" shouted Al. Jeffries, staggering backward and dabbing desperately at his face where the full force of Nat's charge had expended itself. As upon the other occasion, when the ammonia pistols had been used, the rout of the enemy was complete. With muffled imprecations and exclamations of pain, the three reeled, half blinded, out of the barn. At the same instant the boys heard windows thrown up and the sharp report of a revolver. "Fire! Thieves! Murder!" came from one window, in the landlord's voice, following the discharge of the pistol. "Get to the ponies," roared Dayton, "we'll have the whole hornets' nest about our ears in a minute." The others needed no urging. Grabbing Al. Jeffries by the arm, Dayton's companion, who was only partially blinded, made for his little steed. But Dayton, who had hardly received any of the aromatic discharge, suddenly whipped about and snatched a revolver from his side. Before the boys could dodge the man fired at them. Nat felt the bullets fan the air by his ear, but fortunately, the man fired so quickly and the excitement and confusion was such, that in the moonlight he missed his aim. "I'll make you smart for this some day!" he yelled, as fearful of lingering any longer he swung himself into his saddle. He drove home the spurs and with a squeal and a bound the little animal carried him out of the region of the hotel. As for Dayton's companion he was already a good distance off with Al. Jeffries clinging behind him on his saddle. Joe had made for the auto and seized a rifle from the rack in the tonneau as Dayton galloped off, but Nat sharply told him to put it down. "We have scared the rascals off, and that's enough," he said. In a few minutes the Motor Rangers were surrounded by everybody in the hotel, including Cal and the postmaster. They were warmly congratulated on their success by all hands, and much laughter greeted their account of the amusing panic into which the rascals had been thrown by the sudden appearance of the glowing-faced ghosts, followed by the discharge of the "mule battery." "How did yer git the green glowing paint?" asked Cal interestedly. "Why, we took the liberty of soaking two or three bundles of California matches in the tooth glass," explained Nat, "and then we had a fine article of phosphorus paint." "Wall if you ain't the beatingest," was the landlord's admiring contribution. In the midst of the explanations, congratulations and angry denunciation of Al. Jeffries and his companions, a sudden piping voice was heard. "Yust von moment blease. Vait! Nod a mofe!--Ah goot, I haf you!" It was the little German, whom, the boys had discovered, was named Hans Von Schiller Muller. He had sprung out of bed in the midst of the excitement and instantly decided it would make a good subject for his camera. He presented a queer figure as he stood there, in pajamas several sizes too small for him and striped with vivid pink and green. The shrinkage had been the work of a Chinese laundryman in the San Joaquin Valley. "Say," exclaimed Joe, "you don't expect to get a picture out of that do you?" "Chess. Sure. Vy nodt?" "Well, because in the first place you had no light," said Joe. "Ach! Donnerblitzen, miserable vot I am. I shouldn't have got id a flash-light, aind't it. Hold on! Vait a minute. I get him." "Better defer it till to-morrow," said Nat, who like the rest, was beginning to shiver in the keen air of the mountains, "it's too cold to wait for all your preparations." And so, when Herr Muller returned to the fatherland there was one picture he did not have, and that was a portrait of the Motor Rangers as they appeared immediately after routing three notorious members of Col. Morello's band of outlaws. CHAPTER VII. A PHOTOGRAPHER IN TROUBLE. The boys were not up as early the next morning as they had anticipated. In the first place, it was somewhat dull and overcast, and in the second they were naturally tired after their exciting adventures of the preceding day and night. The first person to hail them as they left the dining room where they had partaken of a hearty breakfast was Cal Gifford. The stage driver drew them aside and informed them in an irate voice that on account of the stage having been held up the day before, he had been notified by telegraph early that morning that his services would be no longer required by the Lariat Stage Company. "What are you going to do?" asked Nat, after he had extended his sympathies to the indignant Cal. "Wall, I've got a little mine up north of here that I think I'll go and take a look at," said Cal. "How far north?" asked Nat interestedly. "Oh, 'bout two hundred miles. I'm all packed ready ter go, but I cain't git a horse." He indicated a battered roll of blankets and a canteen lying on the porch. Surmounting this pile of his possessions was an old rifle--that is, in pattern and design, but its woodwork gleamed, its barrel was scrupulously polished, and its mechanism well oiled. Like most good woodsmen and mountaineers, Cal kept good care of his weapons, knowing that sometimes a man's life may depend on his rifle or revolver. "Can't get a horse?" echoed Nat. "Why, I should think there would be no trouble about that." "Wall, thar wouldn't hev bin, but thet little Dutchman bought a nag this mornin' and started off ter take picters on his lonesome." "I guess you mean he hired one, don't you?" asked Joe. "No siree. That Teutonic sport paid hard cash fer ther plug. He tole the landlord that he means ter make a trip all through the Sierras hereabout, making a fine collection of pictures." "He must be crazy, starting off alone in an unknown country," exclaimed Nat. "Thet's jes' what they all tole him, but there ain't no use arguin' with er mule or a Dutchman when their mind's set. He started off about an hour ago with a roll of blankets, a frying pan and his picture box." "He stands a chance of getting captured by Col. Morello's band," exclaimed Joe. "It's likely," agreed Cal, "but what I was a goin' ter tell yer wuz that ther plug he bought was ther last one they had here. An' so now I'm stuck I guess, till they git some more up from ther valley." "Tell you what you do," said Nat after a brief consultation with his chums, "why not take a ride with us as far as your way lies, and then proceed any way you like?" "What, ride with you kids in thet gasolene tug boat?" "Yes, we'd be glad to have you. You know the roads and the people up through here, and could help us a whole lot." "Say, that's mighty white of yer," said Cal, a broad smile spreading over his face, "if I wouldn't be in ther way now----" "We'll be very glad to have you," Nat assured him, while Joe and Ding-dong nodded their heads in affirmation, "are you ready to start?" Cal nodded sidewise at his pile of baggage. "Thar's my outfit," he said. "All right. Then I'll pay our bill and we'll start right away." And so it was arranged. Ten minutes later the Motor Rangers in their big touring car rolled majestically out of the town of Lariat, while Cal in the tonneau waved his sombrero to admiring friends. "This is ther first time I ever rode a benzine broncho," he declared as the car gathered way and was soon lost to the view of the citizens of Lariat in a cloud of dust. The road lay through the same canyon in which they had so fortunately overheard the conversation of Al. Jeffries and his cronies the night before. It was a sparkling morning, with every object standing out clear and intense in the brilliant light of the high Sierras. A crisp chill lay in the air which made the blood tingle and the eyes shine. As they rolled on with the engine singing its cheering song Cal, too, burst into music: "Riding along on my gasolene bronc; Instead of a whinny it goes 'Honk! Honk!' If we don't bust up we'll be in luck, You'd be blowed sky-high by a benzine buck!" About noon they emerged from the narrow canyon into a wide valley, the broad, level floor of which was covered with green bunch grass. Through its centre flowed a clear stream, fed by the snow summits they could see in the distance. Cattle could be seen feeding at the far end of it and it was evidently used as a pasture by some mountain rancher. As they drew closer to a clump of large redwood trees at one end of the valley Nat gave a sudden exclamation of surprise, and stood up in the tonneau. Joe, who was at the wheel, sighted the scene which had attracted the others' attention at the same instant. A group of cattlemen could be seen under one of the larger trees, with a figure in their midst. They were clustered about the central object, and appeared to be handling him pretty roughly. Nat snatched up the glasses from their pocket in the tonneau and levelled them on the scene. He put them down again with an exclamation of excitement. "They're going to lynch that fellow," he announced. "What!" roared Cal, "lend me them peep glass things, young chap." Joe stopped the car, while Cal took a long look. He confirmed Nat's opinion. "They've got the rope over a limb of that tree already," he said. "How are we to help him?" cried Nat, whose first and natural thought had been to go to the unfortunate's assistance. "What do you want ter help him fer," grunted Cal, "like as not he's some sort of a horse thief or suthin'. You bet those fellers wouldn't be going ter string him up onless he had bin doin' suthin' he hadn't orter." Nat was not so sure about this. From what he knew of the West its impulsive citizens occasionally executed a man first and inquired into the justice of it afterward. "Steer for those trees, Joe," he ordered sharply. Joe, without a word, obeyed, while Cal shrugged his shoulders. "May be runnin' inter trouble," he grunted. "If you're scared you can get out," said Nat more sharply than was his wont. Cal looked angry for a moment, but then his expression changed. "Yer all right, boy," he said heartily, "and if ther's trouble I'm with you every time." "Thanks," rejoined Nat simply, "that's the opinion I'd formed of you, Cal." The car had now left the road and was rolling over the pasture which was by no means as smooth as it had appeared from the mountain road. However, they made good progress and as their shouts and cries had attracted the attention of the group of punchers under the trees, they at least had achieved the delay of the execution. They could now see every detail of the scene, without the aid of the field glasses. But the visage of the intended victim was hidden from them by the circle of wild-looking figures about him. As the Motor Rangers drew closer a big, raw-boned cattle puncher, with a pair of hairy "chaps" on his legs and an immense revolver in his hand, rode toward them. As his figure separated itself from the group Cal gave a low growl. "Here comes trouble," he grumbled, closing his hand over the well-worn butt of his pistol. "Howdy, strangers," drawled the newcomer, as he drew within earshot. "Howdy," nodded the boys, not however, checking the auto. "Hold on thar," cried the cowpuncher raising a big, gauntleted hand, "don't come no further, strangers. Thar's ther road back yonder." He backed up his hint by exhibiting his revolver rather ostentatiously. But Nat's eyelids never quivered as he looked the other full in the face and asked in a tone that sounded like one of mild, tenderfoot inquiry:-- "What are you doing there, mister--branding calves?" "No we ain't, young feller," rejoined the cowpuncher, "Now if you're wise you'll take that fer an answer and get out of here pronto--quick--savee!" "I don't see any reason why we can't drive through here," said Nat, cunningly stringing out the talk so that the car could creep quite close to the group of would-be lynchers. "You don't see no reason?" "No." "Wall, stranger--thar's six reasons here and they all come out at once." As he spoke the cowpuncher tapped the shiny barrel of his revolver with a meaning gesture. Nat saw that he could not go much further with safety. "Now you git!" snarled the cowboy. "You've had fair warning. Vamoose!" As he spoke the group about the tree parted for a minute as the cowpunchers composing it gazed curiously at the auto, which was nearing them. As they separated, the figure of the victim became visible. The boys greeted the sight with a shout of amazement which was echoed by Cal. "Boys, it's Herr Muller!" shouted Nat. "Wall ther blamed Dutchman!" gasped Cal, "has he bin stealin' horses?" "Yep," rejoined the puncher briefly, "he hev. An' we're goin' ter string him up. Now you git out." "All right," spoke Nat suddenly, with a flashing light of excitement blazing in his eyes. "We'll get, but it will be--THIS WAY!" As he spoke he leaped into the driver's seat, pushing Joe to one side. The next instant the car was leaping forward with a roar and a bound, headed full at the band of amazed and thunderstruck cowpunchers. CHAPTER VIII. LOST IN A PETRIFIED FOREST. Before the lynching party regained its senses Nat had rushed the car up alongside Herr Muller. Before that blonde pompadoured son of the fatherland knew what had occurred, Joe's strong arms, aided by Cal's biceps, jerked him off his feet and into the tonneau. But the long lariat which was already about his neck trailed behind, and the first of the punchers that realized what was happening darted forward and seized it as the car sped forward. "P-ouf-o-o-o-f!" choked the unfortunate German, as the noose tightened. The cowpuncher who had hold of the other end of the rope dug his heels into the ground and braced himself. Herr Muller would have been jerked clean out of the tonneau by his unlucky neck had it not been for Ding-dong Bell, who, with a swift sweep downward of his knife blade severed the rope. As the strain was abruptly relieved the cowpuncher who had hold of the other end went toppling backward in a heap. But at the same instant the rest came to their senses, and headed by the man who had threatened Nat, they clambered on their ponies and swept forward, uttering wild yells. If this had been all, the occupants of the auto could have afforded to disregard them, but, apparently realizing the hopelessness of attempting to overtake the fleeing car they unlimbered their revolvers and began a fusillade. Bullets whistled all about the Motor Rangers and their companions, but luckily nobody was hit. Nat's chief fear though, and his apprehension was shared by the rest, was that one of the bullets might puncture a tire. "If it ever does--good night!" thought Nat as the angry, vengeful yells of the cheated punchers came to his ears. But to his joy they now sounded more faintly. The pursuit was dropping behind. Right ahead was the feeding herd. In a few minutes the car would be safe from further attack,--when suddenly there came an ominous sound. "Pop!" At the same moment the car gave a lurch. "Just what I thought," commented Nat, in a despairing voice, "they've winged a tire." "Shall we have to stop?" asked Cal rather apprehensively, although a grim look about the corners of his mouth betokened the fact that he was ready to fight. "Den maype I gedt idt a pigdure, aind idt?" asked Herr Muller, with what was almost the first free breath he had drawn since Master Bell slashed the rope. "Good Lord!" groaned Cal in comical despair, "my little man, if those fellows ever get us you'll be able to take a picture of your own funeral." "How would dot be bossible?" inquired Herr Muller innocently, "if I voss a deader I couldn't take my own pigdure, aind't idt?" But before any of them could make a reply, indignant or otherwise, a sudden occurrence ahead of them caused their attention to be diverted into a fresh channel. The cattle, terrified at the oncoming auto, had stopped grazing and were regarding it curiously. Suddenly, one of them gave an alarmed bellow. It appeared to be a signal for flight, for like one animal, the herd turned, and with terrified bellowings, rushed madly off into the pine forests on the eastern side of the valley. This was a fortunate happening for the boys, for the cowpunchers were now compelled finally to give up their chase of the automobile and head off after the stampeded cattle. "I reckon we'd better not come this way again; it wouldn't be healthy-like," grinned Cal, hearing their shouts and yells grow faint in the distance as they charged off among the trees. "There's one thing," said Nat as he brought the crippled auto to a halt a short distance off, "they won't worry us for some time." "No. Among them pine stumps it'll take 'em a week to round up their stock." And now all hands turned to Herr Muller and eagerly demanded his story. It was soon told. He had arrived in the valley a short time before they had, and, charmed by its picturesque wildness, had begun enthusiastically taking pictures. In doing so, he had dismounted, and wandered some distance from his horse. When he turned his attention to it again, it had disappeared. However, although at first he thought he had lost the animal he soon found it grazing off among a clump of willows by the creek. He had mounted it and was riding off when suddenly the cowpunchers appeared, and as soon as their eyes fell on the horse accused the German of stealing it. "I dell dem dot dey is mistakes making, but der use voss iss?" he went on. "Dey say dot dey pinch me anyhow." "Lynch you, you mean, don't you?" inquired Nat. "Vell dey pinch me too, dond dey?" asked Herr Muller indignantly. "Howefer, I egsplain by dem dot dey make misdage and den a leedle bull boy----" "Cowboy," corrected Cal with a grin. "Ach, how I can tell idt you my story if you are interrupt all der time," protested the German. "Well as I voss saying, der bull-boy tells me, 'loafer vot you iss you dake idt my bony vile I voss go hunting John rabbits. Yust for dot vee hang you py der neck.'" "What did you say?" asked Nat, who began to think that the absent-minded German might actually have taken a wrong horse by accident. "I say, 'Dot is my horse. I know him lige I know it mein brudder.' But dey say dot I iss horse bustler----" "Rustler," muttered Cal. "And dot I most be strunged oop. So I dake idt der picdures und gif dem my address in Chermany und den I prepare for der endt." "Weren't you scared?" demanded Cal incredulously, for the German had related this startling narrative without turning a hair; in fact, he spoke about it as he might have talked about a tea party he had attended. "Ach himmel, ches I voss scaredt all right. Pudt der voss no use in saying noddings, voss dere?" "No I guess if you put it that way there wasn't," laughed Nat, "but you saved your camera I see." He looked at the black box hanging round the German's neck by a strap. "Yah," grinned Herr Muller, "I say I von't pee hanged if dey don'dt led itdt be mit der camera my neck py." "No wonder they say, 'Heaven help the Irish, the Dutch can look after themselves,'" muttered Cal to himself as the entire party got out of the machine and a new tire was unbuckled from the spare tire rack. The operation of replacing it was a troublesome one, and occupied some time. So long did it take, in fact, that it was almost sundown by the time the shoe had been finally bolted above the inner tube, and they were ready to start once more. Just as they were about to be off Cal gave an exclamation and pointed ahead. Looking up in the direction he indicated the others saw coming toward them a saddled horse. But no rider bestrode it, and the reins were entangled in its forefeet. It whinnied as it saw them and came up close to the auto. "Great Scott!" exclaimed Cal, as he saw it, "those cowpunchers had you right after all, Mr. Dutchman; this here is the plug you bought." "Yah! yah! I know him now!" exclaimed Herr Muller enthusiastically. "See dere is my plankets diedt on py der saddle." "So they are," exclaimed Nat, "at least I suppose they're yours. Then you actually were a horse thief and didn't know it. I suppose that when your horse wandered off that cowpuncher came along on his pony and left it while he went hunting jack rabbits. Then you, all absorbed in your picture taking, mistook his horse for yours." "I guess dots der vay idt voss, chust a mistage," agreed Herr Muller with great equanimity. "Say, pod'ner," said Cal, who had just led up the beast and restored it to its rightful owner, "you're glad you're livin', ain't you?" The German's blue eyes opened widely as he stared at his questioner. "Sure I iss gladt I'm lifing. Vot for--vy you ask me?" "Wall, don't make any more mistakes like that," admonished Cal with grave emphasis, "folks out here is touchy about them." As Herr Muller was going in the same direction as themselves he accepted a seat in the tonneau and his angular steed was hitched on behind as over the rough ground the car could not go any faster than a horse could trot. For some time they bumped along the floor of the valley and at last emerged at its upper end into a rocky-walled canyon, not unlike the one through which they had gained the depression in the hills. But to their uneasiness they could discover no road, or even a trail. However, the bottom of the canyon was fairly smooth and so Nat decided, after a consultation with Cal, to keep going north. A glance at the compass had shown them that the canyon ultimately cut through the range in that direction. "We'll strike a trail or a hut or suthin' afore long," Cal assured them. "I hope we strike some place to make camp," grumbled Joe, "I'm hungry." This speech made them remember that in their excitement they had neglected to eat any lunch. "Never mind, Joe," said Nat, "we'll soon come across a spring or a place that isn't all strewn with rocks, and we'll camp there even if there isn't a road." "No, there's no use going ahead in the dark," agreed Cal, looking about him. It was now quite dark, and the depth of the canyon they were traversing made the blackness appear doubly dense. But Nat, by gazing upward at the sky, managed to keep the auto on a fairly straight course, although every now and then a terrific bump announced that they had struck a big boulder. "Wish that moon would hurry up and rise; then we could see something," remarked Cal, as they crept along. The others agreed with him, but they would not have the welcome illumination till some time later. They were still in the canyon, however, when a dim, silvery lustre began to creep over the eastern sky. Gradually the light fell upon the western wall of the gorge and soon the surroundings were flooded with radiance. But it was a weird and startling scene that the light fell upon. Each occupant of the car uttered an involuntary cry of amazement as he gazed about him. On every side were towering trunks of what, at first glance, seemed trees, but which, presently, were seen to be as barren of vegetation as marble columns. Stumps of these naked, leafless forms littered the ground in every direction. In the darkness seemingly, they had penetrated quite a distance into this labyrinth, for all about them now were the bare, black trunks. Some of them reached to an immense height, and others were short and stumpy. All shared the peculiarity of possessing no branches or leaves, however. "Where on earth are we?" asked Joe, gazing about him at the desolate scene. "I can't make out," rejoined Nat in a troubled tone, "it's sort of uncanny isn't it?" The others agreed. "Ugh; it remindts me of a grafeyardt," shivered the German, as he looked about him at the bare stumps rising black and ghostlike in the pale moonlight. Suddenly Cal, who had been gazing about him, shouted an explanation of the mystery. "Boys, we're in a petrified forest!" he exclaimed. CHAPTER IX. THE MIDNIGHT ALARM. The boys would have been glad to explore the petrified forest that night had it been practicable. They had read of the mysterious stone relics of ancient woods, which exist in the remote Sierras, but they had never dreamed they would stumble upon one so opportunely. However, even had they been less tired, it would have been out of the question to examine the strange place more thoroughly that night. As there did not seem to be any limit to the place so far as they could see, the boys decided to camp where they were for the night. The auto was stopped and the horse unhitched and turned loose at the end of a lariat to graze, his rope being made fast round one of the more slender stone trunks. "Feels like hitching him to the pillar of the City Hall at home," laughed Joe, as he formed a double half hitch and left the horse to his own devices, first, however, having watered the animal at a small spring which flowed from the foot of a large rock at one side of the mysterious stone valley. In the meantime, Cal had built a fire of sage brush roots, for there was no wood about, every bit of it having turned to stone long ages before. The pile, on being ignited, blazed up cheerfully, illuminating the sterile, lonely spot with a merry red blaze. The spider was taken out of the utensil locker, and soon bacon was hissing in it and canned tomatoes and corn bubbling in adjacent saucepans. A big pot of coffee also sent up a savory aroma. Altogether, with canned fruit for dessert, the Motor Rangers and their friends made a meal which quite atoned for the loss of their lunch. Even Ding-dong admitted that he was satisfied by the time Cal drew out a short and exceedingly black pipe. The former stage driver rammed this full of tobacco and then leisurely proceeded to light it. After a few puffs he looked up at the group around him. They were lolling about on waterproof blankets spread out on the rock-strewn ground, a portion of which they had cleared. In the background stood the dark outlines of the auto, and beyond, the mysterious shadows of the petrified forest, the bequest to the present of the long departed stone age. "I've bin a thinkin'," began Cal, as if he were delivering his mind of something he had been inwardly cogitating for some time, "I've bin a thinkin' that while we are in this part of the country we ought to keep a good look out at night." "You think that Morello's band may give us more trouble?" asked Nat. "I don't jes' think so," rejoined Cal earnestly, "I'm purty jes' nat'ly sure of it. They ain't the sort of fellers ter fergit or furgive." "I guess you're right," agreed Nat, "that man Dayton alone is capable of making lots of trouble for us. We'll do as you say and set a watch to-night." "I vind und set my votch every night," declared Herr Muller, proudly drawing out of his pocket an immense timepiece resembling a bulbous silver vegetable. "This is a different kind of watch that we're talking about," laughed Nat. It was ultimately arranged, after some more discussion, that Joe and Nat should watch for the first part of the night and Ding-dong and Cal Gifford should come on duty at one o'clock in the morning. It seemed to young Bell that he hadn't been asleep more than five minutes when he was roughly shaken by Nat and told to tumble out of the tonneau as it was time to go on watch. Already Cal, who like an old mountaineer preferred to sleep by the fire, was up and stirring. It took a long time, though, to rout Ding-dong out of his snug bed. The air at that altitude is keen and sharp, and being turned out of his warm nest was anything but pleasant to the lad. "L-l-l-let the D-d-d-d-dutchman do it," he begged, snuggling down in his blankets. "No," said Nat firmly, "it's your turn on duty. Come on now, roll out or we'll pull you out." Finally, with grumbling protestations, the stuttering youth was hauled forth, and, while Nat and Joe turned in, he and Cal went on duty, or "sentry go," as they say in the army. "Now then," said Cal crisply, as the shivering Ding-dong lingered by the fire with his rifle in his chilled hands, "you go off there to the right and patrol a hundred feet or more. I'll do the same to the left. We'll meet at the fire every few minutes and get warm." "A-a-all r-r-r-right," agreed Ding-dong, who stood in some awe of the stage driver. Consequently, without further demur, he strode off on his post. Having reached the end of it he marched back to the fire and warmed himself a second. Then he paced off again. This kept up for about an hour when suddenly Cal, who was at the turning point of his beat, heard a startling sound off to the right among the tomb-like forms of the stone trees. Bang! It was followed by two other shots. Bang! Bang! The reports rang sharply, amid the silence of the desolate place, and sent an alarmed chill even to Cal's stout heart. He bounded back toward the fire just in time to meet Ding-dong, who came rushing in with a scared white face, from the opposite direction. At the same time Nat and Joe awakened, and hastily slipping on some clothes, seized their rifles and prepared for trouble. "What's the matter?" demanded Cal, in sharp, crisp tones, of the frightened sentinel. "Indians!" was the gasped-out reply, "the p-p-p-place is f-f-f-full of them." "Indians!" exclaimed Cal, hastily kicking out the bright fire and leaving it a dull heap of scattered embers, "are you sure?" "S-s-s-sure. I s-s-s-saw their f-f-f-fif-feathers." "That's queer," exclaimed Cal, "I never heard of any Indians being in this section before. But come on, boys, it's clear the lad here has seen something and we'd better get ready for trouble." An improvised fort was instantly formed, by the boys crouching in various points of vantage in the automobile with their rifles menacingly pointed outward. Herr Muller snored on serenely, and they allowed him to slumber. They must have remained in tense poses without moving a muscle for half an hour or more before any one dared to speak. Then Nat whispered, "Queer we don't see or hear anything." "They may be creeping up stealthily," rejoined Cal, "don't take your eye off your surroundings a minute." For some time more the lads watched with increasing vigilance. At length even Cal grew impatient. "There's something funny about this," he declared, and then turning on Ding-dong he demanded: "Are you sure you saw something?" "D-d-d-didn't I s-s-s-s-shoot at it?" indignantly responded the boy. "I know, but you actually saw something move?" persisted Nat. "Of c-c-c-course I did. You didn't think I was go-go-going to s-s-s-shoot at a put-put-petrified tree, did you?" "We'll wait a while longer and then if nothing shows up I'm going to investigate," declared Cal. "I'm with you," agreed Nat. As nothing occurred for a long time the Motor Rangers finally climbed out of the car, and with their rifles held ready for instant action, crept off in the direction from which Ding-dong's fusillade had proceeded. Every now and then they paused to listen, hardly breathing for fear of interrupting the silence. But not a sound could they hear. However, Ding-dong stuck stoutly to his story that he had seen something move and had fired at it, whereupon it had vanished. "Maybe it was Morello's gang trying to give us a scare," suggested Nat. "Ef they'd ever got as close to us as this they'd hev given us worse than a scare," confidently declared Cal. By this time they had proceeded quite some distance, and Cal stopped Ding-dong with a question. "Whereabouts were you when you fired?" "I-I do-do-do-do-don't know," stuttered the lad. "You don't know?" indignantly echoed Nat, "you're a fine woodsman." "Y-y-y-y-yes I do t-t-t-too," Ding-dong hastened to amend, "I was here--right here." He ascended a small knoll covered with grass, at the foot of one of the stone trees. "Which direction did you fire in?" was Nat's next question. "Off t-t-t-that w-w-w-w-w-way," spoke Ding-dong. "Wow, there he is now!" The boy gave a yell and started to run, and the others were considerably startled. From the little eminence on which they stood they could see, projecting from behind one of the pillars, something that certainly did look like two feathers sticking in an Indian's head dress. As they gazed the feathers moved. "Shoot quick!" cried Joe, jerking his rifle up to his shoulder, but Cal yanked it down with a quick pull. "Hold on, youngster. Not so fast," he exclaimed, "let's look into this thing first." Holding his rifle all ready to fire at the least alarm, the former stage driver crept cautiously forward. Close at his elbow came Nat, with his weapon held in similar readiness. "There is something there--see!" exclaimed Nat in an awed tone. "Yes," almost shouted the guide, "and it's that Dutchman's old plug!" The next instant his words were verified. The midnight marauder at whom Ding-dong had fired was nothing more dangerous than the horse of Herr Muller. It had broken loose in the night and was browsing about when the amateur sentry had come upon it. In the moonlight, and when seen projecting from behind a pillar, its ears, which were unusually long, did look something like the head dress of an Indian. "Wow!" yelled Nat, "this is one on you, Ding-dong!" "Yes, here's your Indian!" shouted Joe, doubling up with laughter. "Whoa, Indian," soothed Cal, walking up to the peaceful animal, "let's see if he hit you." But the merriment of the lads was increased when an examination of the horse failed to show a scratch or mark upon it. "That's another on you, Ding-dong," laughed Nat, "you're a fine sentinel. Why, you can't even hit a horse." "Well, let the Dutchman try and see if he can do any better," rejoined Ding-dong with wounded dignity. CHAPTER X. ALONG THE TRAIL. "Voss iss dot aboudt mein horse?" The group examining that noble animal turned abruptly, to find the quadruped's owner in their midst. Herr Muller still wore his famous abbreviated pajama suit, over which he had thrown a big khaki overcoat of military cut belonging to Nat. Below this his bare legs stuck out like the drum sticks of a newly plucked chicken. His yellow hair was rumpled and stood up as if it had been electrified. Not one of the boys could help laughing at the odd apparition. "Well, pod'ner," rejoined Cal, taking up the horse's broken hitching rope and leading it back to its original resting place, "you're purty lucky ter hev a horse left at all. This yar Ding-dong Bell almost 'put him in the well' fer fair. He drilled about ten bullets more or less around the critter's noble carcass." "But couldn't hit him with one of them," laughed Nat, to Ding-dong's intense disgust. The stuttering lad strode majestically off to the auto, and turned in, nor could they induce him to go on watch again that night. The morning dawned as fair and bright and crisp as mornings in the Sierras generally do. The sky was cloudless and appeared to be borne aloft like a blue canopy, by the steep walls of the canyon enclosing the petrified forest. The boys, on awakening, found Cal already up and about, and the fragrance of his sage brush fire scenting the clear air. "'Mornin' boys," sang out the ex-stage driver as the tousled heads projected from the auto and gazed sleepily about, "I tell yer this is ther kind of er day that makes life worth livin'." "You bet," agreed Nat, heading a procession to the little spring at the foot of one of the giant petrified trees. "It's c-c-c-c-cold," protested Ding-dong, but before he could utter further expostulations his legs were suddenly tripped from under him and he sprawled head first into the chilly, clear water. Joe Hartley was feeling good, and of course poor Ding-dong had to suffer. By the time the latter had recovered his feet and wiped some of the water out of his eyes, the others had washed and were off for the camp fire. With an inward resolve to avenge himself at some future time, Ding-dong soon joined them. If the petrified forest had been a queer-looking place by night, viewed by daylight it was nothing short of astonishing. "It's a vegetable cemetery," said Cal, looking about him. "Each of these stone trees is a monument, to my way of thinking." "Ach, you are a fullosopher," applauded Herr Muller, who had just risen and was gingerly climbing out of the tonneau. "And you're full o' prunes," grunted Cal to himself, vigorously slicing bacon, while Nat fixed the oatmeal, and Joe Hartley got some canned fruit ready. Presently breakfast was announced, and a merry, laughing party gathered about the camp fire to despatch it. "I'll bet we're the first boys that ever ate breakfast in a petrified forest," commented Joe. "I reckin' you're right," agreed Cal, "it makes me feel like an ossified man." "Dot's a feller whose headt is turned to bone?" asked Herr Muller. "Must be Ding-dong," grinned Joe, which promptly brought on a renewal of hostilities. "I've read that the petrification is caused by particles of iron pyrites, or lime, taking the place of the water in the wood," put in Nat. "Maybe so," agreed Cal, "but I've seen a feller petrified by too much forty rod liquor." "I wonder what shook so many of the stony stumps down," inquired Joe, gazing about him with interest. "Airthquakes, I guess," suggested Cal, "they get 'em through here once in a while and when they come they're terrors." "We have them in Santa Barbara, too," said Nat, "they're nasty things all right." "Come f-f-f-f-from the e-e-e-earth getting a t-t-t-t-tummy ache," sagely announced Ding-dong Bell. While the boys got the car ready and filled the circulating water tank with fresh water from the spring, Herr Muller and Cal washed the tin dishes, and presently all was ready for a start. Herr Muller decided that he would ride his horse this morning and so the move was made, with that noble steed loping along behind the auto at the best pace his bony frame was capable of producing. Luckily for him, the going was very hard among the fallen stumps of the petrified trees, and the tall, column-like, standing trunks, and the car could not do much more than crawl. All were in jubilant spirits. The bracing air and the joyous sensation of taking the road in the early dawn invigorated them. "I tell you," said Cal, "there's nothing like an early start in the open air. I've done it a thousand times or more I guess, but it always makes me feel good." "Dot iss righd," put in Herr Muller, "vunce at Heidelberg I gets me oop by sunrise to fighd idt a doodle. I felt goot but bresently I gedt poked it py der nose mit mein friendt's sword. Den I nodt feel so goodt." While the others were still laughing at the whimsical German's experience he suddenly broke into yodling: "Hi lee! Hi lo! Hi lee! Hi lay! Riding along by der fine summer's day; Hi lee! Hi lo! Hi lee! Hi lay! Riding along on my----" "Ear!" burst out Joe, as the German's horse caught its foot in a gopher hole, and stumbled so violently that it almost pitched the caroler over its head. "That's ther first song I ever heard about a Chink," commented Cal, when Herr Muller had recovered his equilibrium. "Voss is dot Chink?" asked Herr Muller, showing his usual keen interest in any new word. "Gee whiz, but you Germans are benighted folks. Why, a Chink's a Chinaman, of course." "Budt," protested the German spurring his horse alongside the auto and speaking in a puzzled tone, "budt I voss not singing aboudt a Chinaman." "Wall, I'll leave it to anyone if Hi Lee and Hi Lo ain't Chink names," exclaimed Cal. Whatever reply Herr Muller might have found to this indisputable assertion is lost forever to the world. For at that moment Nat, who was at the wheel, looked up to see a strange figure coming toward them, making its way rapidly in and out among the column-like, petrified trunks. His exclamation called the attention of the others to it and they regarded the oncoming figure with as much astonishment as did he. It was the form of a very tall and lanky man on a very short and fat donkey, that was approaching them. The rider's legs projected till they touched the ground on each side like long piston rods and moved almost as rapidly as he advanced. What with the burro's galloping and the man's rapid footwork, they raised quite a cloud of dust. "Say, is that fellow moving the burro, or is the burro moving him?" inquired Joe, with perfectly natural curiosity. Faster and faster moved the man's legs over the ground, as he came nearer to the auto. "I should think he'd walk and let the burro ride," laughed Nat. As he spoke the boy checked the auto and it came to a standstill. The tall rider could now be seen to be an aged man with a long, white beard, and a brown, sunburned face, framed oddly by his snowy whiskers. He glanced at the boys with a pair of keen eyes as he drew alongside, and stopped his long-eared steed with a loud: "Whoa!" "Howdy," said Cal. "Howdy," rejoined the stranger, "whar you from?" "South," said Cal. "Whar yer goin'?" "North," was the rejoinder. "Say, stranger, you ain't much on the conversation, be yer?" "Never am when I don't know who I be talking to," retorted Cal. The boys expected to see the other get angry, but instead he broke into a laugh. "You're a Westerner all right," he said. "I thought everybody knew me. I'm Jeb Scantling, the sheep herder from Alamos. I'm looking fer some grass country." "Bin havin' trouble with the cattlemen?" inquired Cal. "Some," was the non-committal rejoinder. "Wall, then you'd better not go through that way," enjoined Cal, "there's a bunch of cattle right through the forest thar." "Thar is?" was the somewhat alarmed rejoinder, "then I reckon it's no place fer me." "No, you'd better try back in the mountains some place," advised Cal. "I will. So long." The old man abruptly wheeled his burro, and working his legs in the same eccentric manner as before soon vanished the way he had come. "That's a queer character," commented Nat, as the old man disappeared and the party, which had watched his curious actions in spellbound astonishment, started on once more. "Yes," agreed Cal, "and he's had enough to make him queer, too. A sheepman has a tough time of it. The cattlemen don't want 'em around the hills 'cos they say the sheep eat off the feed so close thar ain't none left fer the cattle. And sometimes the sheepmen start fires to burn off the brush, and mebbe burn out a whole county. Then every once in a while a bunch of cattlemen will raid a sheep outfit and clean it out." "Kill the sheep?" asked Joe. "Yep, and the sheepmen, too, if they so much as open their mouths to holler. I tell you a sheepman has his troubles." "Was this fellow just a herder, or did he own a flock?" inquired Nat. "I've heard that he owns his bunch," rejoined Cal. "He's had lots of trouble with cattlemen. No wonder he scuttled off when I tole him thar was a bunch of punchers behind." "I'm sorry he went so quickly," said Nat, "I wanted to ask him some questions about the petrified forest." "Well, we're about out of it now," said Cal, looking around. Only a few solitary specimens of the strange, gaunt stone trees now remained dotting the floor of the canyon like lonely monuments. Presently they left the last even of these behind them, and before long emerged on a rough road which climbed the mountain side at a steep elevation. "No chance of your brake bustin' agin, is ther?" inquired Cal, rather apprehensively. "No, it's as strong as it well can be now," Nat assured him. "Glad of that. If it gave out on this grade we'd go backward to our funerals." "Guess that's right," agreed Joe, gazing back out of the tonneau at the steep pitch behind them. Despite the steepness of the grade and the rough character of the road, or rather trail, the powerful auto climbed steadily upward, the rattle of her exhausts sounding like a gatling gun in action. Before long they reached the summit and the boys burst into a shout of admiration at the scene spread out below them. From the elevation they had attained they could see, rising and falling beneath them, like billows at sea, the slopes and summits of miles of Sierra country. Here and there were forests of dense greenery, alternated with bare, scarred mountain sides dotted with bare trunks, among which disastrous forest fires had swept. It was a grand scene, impressive in its magnitude and sense of solitary isolation. Far beyond the peaks below them could be seen snow-capped summits, marking the loftiest points of the range. Here and there deep dark wooded canyons cut among the hills reaching down to unknown depths. "Looks like a good country for grizzlies or deer," commented Cal. "Grizzlies!" exclaimed Joe, "are there many of them back here?" "Looks like there might be," rejoined Cal, "this is the land of big bears, big deer, little matches, and big trees, and by the same token there's a clump of the last right ahead of us." Sure enough not a hundred yards from where they had halted, there stood a little group of the biggest trees the lads had ever set eyes on. The loftiest towered fully two hundred feet above the ground, while a roadway could have been cut through its trunk--as is actually the case with another famous specimen of the Sequoia Gigantea. The foliage was dark green and had a tufted appearance, while the trunks were a rich, reddish brown. The group of vegetable mammoths was as impressive a sight as the lads had ever gazed upon. "Them is about the oldest livin' things in ther world," said Cal gazing upward, "when Noah was building his ark them trees was 'most as big as they are now." "I tole you vot I do," suddenly announced Herr Muller, "I take it a photogrift from der top of one of dem trees aindt it?" "How can you climb them?" asked Nat. "Dot iss easiness," rejoined the German, "here, hold Bismark--dot iss vot I call der horse--und I gedt out mein climbing irons." Diving into his blanket-roll he produced a pair of iron contrivances, shaped somewhat like the climbing appliances which linemen on telegraph systems use to scale the smooth poles. These were heavier, and with longer and sharper steel points on them, however. Rapidly Herr Muller, by means of stout straps, buckled them on, explaining that he had used them to take pictures from treetops within the Black Forest. A few seconds later he selected the tallest of the trees and began rapidly to ascend it. The climbing irons and the facility they lent him in ascending the bare trunk delighted the boys, who determined to have some made for themselves at the first opportunity. "He kin climb like a Dutch squirrel," exclaimed Cal admiringly, as with a wave of his hand the figure of the little German grew smaller, and finally vanished in the mass of dark, sombre green which clothed the summit of the great red-wood. "He ought to get a dandy picture from way up there," said Joe. "Yes," agreed Nat, "he----" The boy stopped suddenly short. From the summit of the lofty tree there had come a sharp, piercing cry of terror. "Help! help! Quvick or I fall down!" CHAPTER XI. TREED!--TWO HUNDRED FEET UP. Mingling with the alarming yells of the German came a strange spitting, snarling sound. Filled with apprehensions, the boys and Cal rushed for the foot of the immense tree and gazed upward into the lofty gloom of its leafy summit. They uttered a cry of alarm as they did so. In fact the spectacle their eyes encountered was calculated to cause the heart of the most hardened woodsman to beat faster. Astride of a branch, with his shoe soles dangling two hundred feet above the ground, was Herr Muller, while between him and the trunk of the tree was crouched a snarling, spitting wild cat of unusual size. It seemed about to spring at the human enemy who had unwittingly surprised it in its aerial retreat. The boys were stricken speechless with alarm as they gazed, but Cal shouted encouragingly upward. "Hold on there, Dutchy. We'll help you out." "I know. Dot iss all right," came back the reply in a tremulous tone, "but I dink me dis branch is rodden und ef der tom cat drives me much furder out I down come." "Don't dare think of such a thing," called up Cal, "just you grip tight and don't move." "All right, I try," quavered the photographer, about whose neck still dangled the tool of his craft. Cal's long legs covered the space between the tree and the auto in about two leaps, or so it seemed to the boys. In a flash he was back with his well worn rifle and was aiming it upward into the tree. But as he brought the weapon to his shoulder and his finger pressed the trigger the formidable creature crouching along the limb, sprang full at the luckless Herr Muller. With a yell that stopped the breath of every one of the alarmed party below, the German was seen to lose his hold and drop, crashing through the foliage like a rock. As he fell a shower of small branches and twigs were snapped off and floated downward into space. But Herr Muller was not doomed, as the boys feared was inevitable, to be dashed to pieces on the ground. Instead, just as it appeared impossible that he could save himself from a terrible death, the German succeeded in seizing a projecting limb and hanging on. The branch bent ominously, but it held, and there he hung suspended helplessly with nothing under him but barren space. Truly his position now did not appear to be materially bettered from its critical condition of a few minutes before. But the boys did not know, nor Cal either, that the Germans are great fellows for athletics and gymnastics, and almost every German student has at one time or another belonged to a Turn Verein. This was the case with Herr Muller and his training stood him in good stead now. With a desperate summoning of his strength, he slowly drew himself up upon the bending limb, and began tortuously to make his way in toward the trunk. As he did so, the wild cat perceiving that it was once more at close quarters with its enemy, advanced down the trunk, but it was not destined this time to reach the German. Cal took careful aim and fired. Before the echo of the sharp report had died away a tawny body came clawing and yowling downward, out of the tree, tumbling over and over as it shot downward. The boys could not repress a shudder as they thought how close Herr Muller had come to sharing the same fate. The creature was, of course, instantly killed as it struck the ground, and was found to be an unusually large specimen of its kind. Its fur was a fine piece of peltry and Cal's skillful knife soon had it off the brute's carcass. A preparation of arsenic which the boys carried for such purposes, was then rubbed on it to preserve it till it could be properly cured and mounted. This done, it was placed away with the mountain lion skin in a big tin case in the tonneau. While all this was going on, Herr Muller recovered the possession of his faculties, which had almost deserted him in the terrible moment when he hung between life and death. Presently he began to descend the tree. Near the bottom of the trunk, however, his irons slipped and he came down with a run and a rush that scraped all the skin off the palms of his hands, and coated his clothes with the red stain of the bark. He was much too glad to be back on earth, however, to mind any such little inconveniences as that. "Boys, I tole you ven I hung dere I dink by myselfs if ever I drop, I drop like Lucifer----" "L-l-lucy who?" inquired Ding-dong curiously. "Lucifer--der devil you know, nefer to rise no more yet already." "I see you have studied Milton," laughed Nat, "but I can tell you, all joking aside, you gave us a terrible scare. I want you to promise to do all your photographing from safe places hereafter." "I vould suffer more dan dot for mein art," declared Herr Muller proudly, "Ach, vot a terrible fright dot Robert cat give me." "Yep, those bob cats,--as we call them for short,--are ugly customers at close quarters," put in Cal, with a grin. "Say," said Nat, suddenly pointing below them, "that little stream down there looks as if it ought to have some trout in it. What do you say if we try and get some for dinner?" "All right," agreed Cal, "you fellers go fishin' and the perfusser here and I will stand by the camp." "Chess. I dinks me I dondt feel much like valking aroundt," remarked Herr Muller, whose face was still pale from the alarming ordeal he had undergone. So the boys selected each a rod and set out at a rapid pace for the little brook Nat had indicated. The watercourse boiled brownly along over a rough bed of rocks, forming here and there little waterfalls and cascades, and then racing on again under flowering shrubs and beneath high, rocky ramparts. It was ideal trout water, and the boys, who were enthusiastic fishermen, welcomed the prospect of "wetting a line" in it. The brook was about a quarter of a mile from the camp under the big trees, and the approach to it was across a park-like grassy slope. Beyond it, however, another range shot up forbiddingly, rearing its rough, rugged face to the sky like an impassable rampart. Gaunt pines clothed its rocky slope, intermingled with clumps of chaparral and the glossy-leaved madrone bushes. They grew almost down to the edge of the stream in which the boys intended to fish. The sport, as Nat had anticipated, was excellent. So absorbed in it did he become in fact, that he wandered down the streamlet's course farther than he had intended. Killing trout, however, is fascinating sport, and the time passed without the boy really noticing at all how far he had become separated from his companions. At last, with a dozen fine speckled beauties, not one of which would weigh less than three-quarters of a pound, the boy found time to look about him. There was not a sign of Joe or Ding-dong Bell and he concluded that they must be farther up the stream. With the intention of locating them he started to retrace his footsteps. "Odd how far a fellow can come without knowing it, when he's fishing," mused Nat. I wonder how many other boys have thought the same thing! As he went along he looked about him. On his right hand towered the rocky slopes of the range, with the dark shadows lying under the gaunt pine trees. On his other hand, separated from him, however, by some clumps of madrone and manzinita, was the grove of big trees under which the auto was parked, and where Cal and Herr Muller were doubtlessly impatiently awaiting his arrival and that of his companions. "Got to hurry," thought Nat, mending his pace once more, but to his dismay, as he stepped forward, his foot slipped on a sharp-edged rock, and with a wrench of sharp pain he realized that he had twisted his ankle. The sprain, judging by the pain it gave him, seemed to be a severe one, too. "Wow!" thought Nat, sinking back upon another rock and nursing his foot, "that was a twister and no mistake. Wonder if I can get back on foot. Guess I'll rest a minute and see if it gets any better." The boy had sat thus for perhaps five minutes when there came a sudden rustling in the brush before him. At first he did not pay much attention to it, thinking that a rabbit, or even a deer might be going through. Suddenly the noise ceased abruptly. Then it came again. This time it was louder and it sounded as if some heavy body was approaching. "Great Scott!" was the sudden thought that flashed across the boy's mind, "what if it's a bear!" He had good cause for alarm in such a case, for he had nothing more formidable with which to face it but his fishing rod. But the next moment the boy was destined to receive even a greater shock than the sudden appearance of a grizzly would have given him. The shrubs before him suddenly parted and the figure of a man in sombrero, rough shirt and trousers, with big boots reaching to his knees, stepped out. "Ed. Dayton!" gasped Nat looking up at the apparition. "Yep, Ed. Dayton," was the reply, "and this time, Master Nat, I've got you where I want you. Boys!" He raised his voice as he uttered the last word. In response, from the brush-wood there stepped two others whom Nat had no difficulty in recognizing as the redoubtable Al. Jeffries and the man with whom he had struggled on the stable floor the memorable night of the attempted raid on the auto. CHAPTER XII. NAT'S LUCKY ESCAPE. If a round black bomb had come rolling down the mountain side and exploded at Nat's feet he could not have been more thunderstruck than he was at the sudden appearance of his old enemy. True, he should have had such a possibility in mind, but so intent had he been on his trout fishing, and the pain of his injury on the top of that, that he had not given a thought to the possibility of any of their foes being about. "Don't make a racket," warned Al. Jeffries ominously, as he flourished a revolver about, "I'm dreadful nervous, and if you make a noise I might pull the trigger by accident." Nat saw at once that this was one way of saying that he would be shot if he made any outcry, and he decided that there was nothing for him to do but to refrain from giving any shout of alarm. Had his ankle not been wrenched and giving him so much pain the boy would have tried to run for it. But as it was, he was powerless to do anything but wait. "Ain't quite so gabby now as you was in Lower California," snarled Dayton vindictively, as the boy sat staring at his captors. "If you mean by that that I am not doing any talking, you're right," rejoined Nat. "That's a purty nice watch you've got there," remarked Al., gazing at Nat's gold timepiece which had been jerked out of his breast pocket when he fell over the rock. "Yes," agreed Nat, determined not to show them that he was alarmed by his predicament, "my dead father gave me that." "Well, just hand it over." "What?" Nat's face flushed angrily. His temper began to rise too. "Come on, hand it over and don't be all night about it," ordered Al. Nat jumped to his feet. His fists were clenched ready for action. It seemed clear that if they were going to take the watch from him while he had strength to protect himself that they had a tough job in front of them. But an unexpected interruption occurred. It came from Ed. Dayton. "See here, Al.," he growled, "don't get too previous. I reckon the colonel can dispose of the watch as he sees fit. All such goes to him first you know, so as to avoid disputes." "Don't see where you come in to run this thing," muttered Al., but nevertheless he subsided into silence. All this time Nat's mind had been working feverishly. But cast about as he would he could not hit on a plan of escape. "I guess the only thing to do is to let them make the first move, and then lie low and watch for a chance to get away," he thought to himself. "Wonder what they mean to do with me anyhow?" He was not left long in doubt. "Get the horses," Dayton ordered, turning to Al. Jeffries. The other, still grumbling, turned obediently away however. There seemed to be no doubt that Ed. Dayton was a man of some power in the band. Nat saw this with a sinking heart. He knew the vengeful character of the man too well for it not to cause him the gravest apprehension of what his fate might be. Not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash, however, did he let the ruffians see that he was alarmed. He would not for worlds have given them the satisfaction of seeing him weaken. Pretty soon Al. returned with three ponies. The animals must have been hidden in the brush on the opposite, or mountain side of the stream, for this was the direction in which Al. had gone to get them. They were a trio of wiry little steeds. On the back of each was a high-horned and cantled Mexican saddle, with a rifle holster and a canteen slung from it. The bridle of Dayton's pony was decorated with silver ornaments in the Western fashion. "Come on. Get up kid," said Dayton gruffly, seizing Nat by the shoulder, "we've got a long way to go with you." A long way to go! The words sounded ominous, and Nat, hurt as he was, decided on taking a desperate chance. Springing suddenly to his feet he lowered his head and ran full tilt at Dayton, driving his head into the pit of the ruffian's stomach with the force of a battering ram. "Wo-o-o-f!" With the above exclamation the rascal doubled up and pitched over. Before the others could recover their presence of mind Nat, despite the pain in his ankle, had managed to dash in among the brush where it was impossible to aim at him with any hope of bringing him down. Nevertheless, Dayton's companions started firing into the close-growing vegetation. "Fire away," thought Nat, painfully struggling through the thick growth, "the more bullets you waste the fewer you'll have for your rascally work." But Dayton had, by this time, scrambled to his feet, and the boy could hear him shouting angry commands. At the same instant came shouts from another direction. With a quick flash of joy, Nat recognized the new voices. The shouts were in the welcome and familiar tones of Cal Gifford and the Motor Rangers. "Mount, boys, and get out of here quick!" The warning shout came from behind the fleeing boy, and was in the voice of Dayton. The rascal evidently had heard, and interpreted aright, the exclamations and shouts from the meadow side of the brook. The next instant a clattering of hoofs announced the fact that the members of Col. Morello's band of outlaws were putting all the distance between themselves and the Motor Rangers' camp that they could. "Good riddance," muttered Nat, thinking how nearly he had come to being borne off with them. But the tension of the excitement over, the pain in his ankle almost overcame him. He sank limply down on a rock and sent out a cry for aid. "Cal! Cal! this way!" "Yip yee!" he heard the welcome answering shout, and before many seconds had passed Herr Muller's horse, with the Westerner astride of its bony back, came plunging into the brush. Behind came Joe and Ding-dong, wide-eyed with excitement. They had missed their comrade and had been searching for him when the sound of the shots came. Cal, who had also become anxious, and had ridden down from the camp to the stream side, was with them at the moment. Together the rescue party had hastened forward, too late however, to find Dayton and his companions. They naturally heard Nat's story with deep interest and attention. "Good thing them varmints didn't know that you two weren't armed," said Cal, turning to Joe and Ding-dong, "or they might hev stayed. In which case the whole bunch of us might have been cleaned out." "I think it will be a pretty good rule never to leave camp in future without a revolver or a rifle," said Nat, painfully rising to his feet and steadying himself by gripping Bismark's mane. "Right you are, my boy. We ought to have done thet in the first place. Howsomever, the thing to do now is to get you back ter camp. Come on, I'll give you a leg up." As he spoke, Cal slid off Bismark's back, and presently Nat was in his place. Escorted by Joe and Ding-dong, the cavalcade lost no time in getting back to where the auto had been left in charge of Herr Muller. "Get any pictures while we was gone?" asked Cal as they came within hailing distance. "Nein," rejoined the German sorrowfully. "Nine," exclaimed Cal looking about him, "where in thunder did you get nine subjects about here?" "He means no," said Nat, who had to laugh despite his pain, at this confusion of tongues. "Wall, why can't he say so?" grunted Cal, plainly despising the ignorance of the foreigner. Nat's ankle was found to be quite badly twisted, but Cal's knowledge of woodcraft stood them in good stead. After examining it and making sure that nothing was broken, the former stage driver searched about the grassy meadow for a while and finally plucked several broad leaves from a low-growing bush. These had a silvery tint underneath and were dark on the upper surface. "Silver weed," said Cal briefly, as he came back to the camp. Selecting a small pot, he rapidly heated some water on the fire which Herr Muller had kindled in his absence. This done, he placed the leaves to steep in it and after a while poured off the water and made a poultice with the leaves. This he bound upon Nat's ankle and in a wonderfully short time the pain was much reduced, and the boy could use his foot. In the meantime, a spiderful of beans and bacon had been cooked to go with the fried trout, and the inevitable coffee prepared. For dessert they had canned peaches, topping off the spread with crackers and cheese. "Tell you," remarked Cal, as he drew out his black pipe and prepared to enjoy his after dinner smoke, "this thing of travelling round in an auto is real, solid comfort. We couldn't hev had a spread like that if we'd bin on the trail with a packing outfit." Dinner over and Nat feeling his ankle almost as well as ever, it was decided to start on at once. For one thing, the outlaws might have marked the camping place and it was not a good enough strategic position to withstand an attack if one should be made. "We want to be in a snugger place than this if that outfit starts in on us," said Cal decisively. "Do you think they'll make us more trouble then?" inquired Joe. "I think that what they did to-day shows that they are keeping pretty close watch on us, my boy. It's up to us to keep our eyes open by day and sleep with one optic unclosed at night." Herr Muller and Ding-dong Bell, who had undertaken the dishwashing, soon concluded the task and the Motor Rangers once more set out. They felt some regret at leaving the beautiful camping spot behind them, but still, as Cal had pointed out, it was a bad location from which to repulse an enemy, supposing they should be attacked. "Vell, I'm gladt I didndt drop from dot tree," remarked Herr Muller, gazing back at the lofty summit of the imposing Big Tree, in which he had had such a narrow escape. "You take your pictures on terra firma after this," advised Joe. "Or if you do any more such stunts leave the camera with us," suggested Cal, who was leading the Teuton's steed. "Then we could get a g-g-g-g-good pup-p-p-picture of what England d-d-dreads," stuttered Ding-dong. "What's that?" inquired Nat. "The G-g-g-g-g-german p-p-p-peril," chuckled the stuttering youth. Soon after leaving the pleasant plateau of the big trees the scenery became rough and wild in the extreme. The Sierras are noted for their deep, narrow valleys, and after about an hour's progress over very rough trails the Motor Rangers found themselves entering one of these gloomy defiles. After the bright sunlight of the open country its dim grandeur struck a feeling of apprehension into their minds. It seemed chilly and oppressive somehow. "Say, perfusser," suggested Cal presently, "just sing us that Chinese song to cheer us up, will you?" "Hi lee! Hi lo! Hi lee! Hi lay!----" The "perfusser," as Cal insisted on calling him, had obligingly begun when from ahead of them and high up, as it seemed, came a peculiar sound. It was a crackling of brush and small bushes apparently. Instinctively Nat stopped the car and it was well that he did so, for the next instant a giant boulder came crashing down the steep mountainside above them. [Illustration: Instinctively Nat stopped the car, and it was well that he did so, for the next instant a giant boulder came crashing down.] CHAPTER XIII. THE VOLLEY IN THE CANYON. Nat had stopped in the nick of time. As the auto came to an abrupt halt, almost jolting those in the tonneau out of their seats, there was a roar like the voice of an avalanche. From far up the hillside a cloud of dust grew closer, and thundered past like an express train. In the midst of the cloud was the huge, dislodged rock, weighing perhaps half a ton or more. So close did it whiz by, in fact, just ahead of the car, that Nat could almost have sworn that it grazed the engine bonnet. The ground shook and trembled as if an earthquake was in progress, during the passage of the huge rock. "Whew! Well, what do you think of that!" gasped Joe. "I thought the whole mountainside was coming away," exclaimed Ding-dong, startled into plain speech by his alarm. Of course the first thing to be done was to clamber out of the car and examine the monster rock, which had come to rest some distance up the side of the opposite cliff to that from which it had fallen, such had been its velocity. Nat could not help shuddering as he realized that if the great stone had ever struck the auto it would have been, in the language of Cal, "Good-night" for the occupants of that vehicle. "Ach, vee vould haf been more flat as a pretzel alretty yet," exclaimed Herr Muller, unslinging his ever ready camera, and preparing to take a photo of the peril which had so narrowly missed them. "This must be our lucky day," put in Joe, "three narrow escapes, one after the other. I wonder if there'll be a fourth." "Better not talk about it, Joe," urged Cal, "the next time we might not be so fortunate." "Guess that's right," said Nat, who was examining the boulder with some care. Apparently it had been one of those monster rocks which glacial action in the bygone ages has left stranded, delicately balanced on a mountainside. Some rocks of this character it takes but a light shove to dislodge. So perfectly are other great masses poised that it takes powerful leverage to overcome their inertia--to use a term in physics. But the scientific aspect of the rock was not what interested Nat. What he wanted to find out was just how such a big stone could have become unseated from the mountainside and at a time when its downfall would, but for their alertness, have meant disaster and perhaps death, to the Motor Rangers. Nat had an idea, but he did not wish to announce it till he was sure. Suddenly he straightened up with a flushed face. His countenance bore an angry look. "Come here, fellows," he said, "and tell me what you make of this mark at the side of the rock." He indicated a queer abrasion on one side of the stone. The living stone showed whitely where the lichen and moss had been scraped aside. "Looks like some cuss had put a lever under it," pronounced Cal, after a careful inspection. "That's what. Fellows, this rock was deliberately tilted so that it would come down on us and crush us. Now there's only one bunch of men that we know of mean enough to do such a thing and that's----" _Phut-t-t!_ Something whistled past Nat's ear with a noise somewhat like the humming of a drowsy bee, only the sound lasted but for a fraction of a second. Nat knew it instantly for what it was. A bullet! It struck the rock behind him, and not half an inch from a direct line with his head, with a dull spatter. The boy could not help turning a trifle pale as he realized what an exceedingly narrow escape he had had. Cal's countenance blazed with fury. "The--the dern--skunks!" he burst out, unlimbering his well polished old revolver. "Reckon two kin play at that game." But Nat pulled the other's arm down. "No good, Cal," he said, "the best thing we can do is to get out of here as quickly as possible. One man up there behind those rocks could wipe out an army down in here." Cal nodded grimly, as he recognized the truth of the lad's words. Truly they were in no position to do anything but, as Nat had suggested, get out as quickly as possible. As they reached this determination another bullet whizzed by and struck a rock behind them, doubly convincing them of the wisdom of this course. Fortunately, as has been said, the boulder had rolled clear across the floor of the narrow canyon, such had been its velocity. This was lucky for the lads, for if it had obstructed the way they would have been in a nasty trap. With no room to turn round and no chance of going ahead their invisible enemies would have had them at their mercy. But if they could not see the shooters on the hillside, those marksmen appeared to have their range pretty accurately. Bullets came pattering about them now in pretty lively fashion. Suddenly Herr Muller gave an exclamation and a cry of mingled pain and alarm. A red streak appeared at the same instant on the back of his hand where the bullet had nicked him. But this was not the cause of his outcry. The missile had ended its career in the case in which he carried his photographic plates. Nat heard the exclamation and turned about as the car began to move forward. "Where are you hurt?" he asked anxiously, fearing some severe injury might have been inflicted on their Teutonic comrade. "In der plate box," was the astonishing reply. "Good heavens, you are shot in the stomach?" cried Joe. "No, but seferal of my plates have been smashed, Ach Himmel voss misfordune." "I suppose you thought that plate box meant about the same thing as bread basket," grinned Nat, turning to Joe, as they sped forward. A ragged fire followed them, but no further damage to car or occupants resulted. Herr Muller's horse, in the emergency, behaved like a veteran. It trotted obediently behind the car without flinching. "Bismark, I am proudt off you," smiled his owner, after the damage to the plate box had been investigated and found to be not so serious as its owner had feared. "We must have drawn out of range," said Cal, as after a few more desultory reports the firing ceased altogether. "I hope so, I'm sure," responded Nat, "I tell you it's a pretty mean feeling, this thing of being shot at by a chap you can't see at all." "Yep, he jes' naturally has a drop on you," agreed Cal. "Wonder how them fellers trailed us?" "Simple enough," rejoined Nat, "at least, it is so to my way of thinking. They didn't _trail_ us at all. They just got ahead of us." "How do you mean?" asked Cal, even his keen wits rather puzzled. "Why they figured out, I guess, that we weren't going to be such cowards as to let their attempts to scare us turn us back. That being the case, the only way for us to proceed forward from the Big Trees was to drive through this canyon. I reckon therefore that they just vamoosed ahead a bit and were ready with that big rock when we came along." "The blamed varmints," ground out the ex-stage driver, "I wonder if they meant to crush us?" "Quite likely," rejoined Nat, "and if this car hadn't been able to stop in double-quick jig-time, they'd have done it, too. Of course they may have only intended to block the road so that they could go through us at their leisure. But in that case I should think that they would have had the rock already there before we came along." "Just my idea, lad," agreed the Westerner heartily, "them pestiferous coyotes wouldn't stop at a little thing like wiping us out, if it was in their minds ter do it. But I've got an idea that we must be getting near their den. I've heard it is back this way somewhere." "If that is so," commented Nat, "it would account for their anxiety to turn us back. But," and here the boy set his lips grimly, "that's one reason why I'm determined to go on." "And you can bet that I'm with you every step of the way," was Cal's hearty assurance. He laid a brown paw on Nat's hands as they gripped the steering wheel. I can tell you, that in the midst of the perils into which Nat could not help feeling they were now approaching, it felt good to have a stalwart, resourceful chap like Cal along. "Thanks, Cal. I know you'll stick," rejoined Nat simply, and that was all. The canyon--or more properly, pass--which they had been traversing soon came to an end, the spurs of the mountains which formed it sloping down, and "melting" off into adjoining ranges. This formed a pleasant little valley between their slopes. The depression, which was perhaps four miles in circumference, was carpeted with vivid green bunch grass. Clumps of flowering shrubs stood in the centre where a small lake, crystal clear, was formed by the conjunction of two little streams. The water was the clear, cold liquid of the mountains, sharp with the chill of the high altitudes. After the boys had selected a camping place on a little knoll commanding all parts of the valley, their first task was to bring up buckets of water and clean off the auto which, by this time, as you may imagine, was pretty grimy and dusty. Several marks on the tonneau, too, showed where bullets had struck during the brush in the canyon. Altogether, the car looked "like business," that is to say, as if it had gone through other ups and downs than those of the mountains themselves. An inspection of the big gasolene tank showed that the emergency container was almost exhausted, and before they proceeded to anything else, Nat ordered the tanks filled from the stock they carried in the big "store-room," suspended under the floor of the car. "We might have to get out of here in a hurry, when there would be no time to fill up the tanks," he said. "It's best to have everything ready in case of accidents." "That's right," agreed Cal, "nothing like havin' things ready. I recollect one time when I was back home in Iowy that they----" But whatever had occurred--and it was doubtless interesting--back at Cal's home in Iowa, the boys were destined never to know; for at that moment their attention was attracted to the horse of Herr Muller, which had been tethered near a clump of madrone shrubs not far from the lake. "He's gone crazy!" shouted Joe. "M-m-m-mad as a h-h-h-atter in Mum-m-march," sputtered Ding-dong. No wonder the boys came to such a conclusion. For a respectable equine, such as Herr Muller's steed had always shown himself to be, Bismark certainly was acting in an extraordinary manner. At one moment he flung his heels high into the air, and almost at the same instant up would come his forelegs. Then, casting himself on the ground, he would roll over and over, sending up little showers of turf and stones with his furiously beating hoofs. All the time he kept up a shrill whinnying and neighing that greatly added to the oddity of his performance. "Ach Himmel! Bismark is a loonitacker!" yelled Herr Muller, rushing toward his quadruped, of which he had become very fond. But alas! for the confidence of the Teuton. As he neared Bismark, the "loonitacker" horse up with his hind legs and smiting Herr Muller in the chest, propelled him with speed and violence backward toward the lake. In vain Herr Muller tried to stop his backward impetus by clutching at the brush. It gave way in his hands like so much flax. Another second and he was soused head over heels in the icy mountain water. "What in the name of Ben Butler has got inter the critter?" gasped Cal amazedly. The others opened their eyes wide in wonder. All of them had had something to do with horses at different stages of their careers, but never in their united experiences had a horse been seen to act like Bismark, the "loonitacker." CHAPTER XIV. A "LOONITACKER" HORSE. "I have it!" cried Nat suddenly. "What, the same thing as Bismark?" shouted Joe, "here somebody, hold him down." "No, I know what's the matter with him--loco weed!" He stooped down and picked up a small, bright green trefoil leaf. Cal slapped his leg with an exclamation as he looked at it. "That's right, boy. That's loco weed, sure. It's growing all around here, and we was too busy to notice it. That old plug has filled his ornery carcass up on it." By this time the German had crawled out of the water, and was poking a dripping face, with a comical expression of dismay on it, through the bushes about the lake. Not seeing Bismark near, he ventured out a few paces, but the horse suddenly spying him made a mad dash for him. Herr Muller beat a hasty retreat. Even Bismark could not penetrate into the thick brush after him. "Vos is los mit Bismark?" yelled the German from his retreat at the boys and Cal, who were almost convulsed with laughter at the creature's comical antics. "I guess his brains is loose," hailed back Cal, whose knowledge of the German language was limited. "He's mad!" shouted Joe by way of imparting some useful information. "Mad? Voss iss he madt about?" "Oh, what's the use?" sighed Joe. Then placing his hands funnelwise to his mouth he bawled out:-- "He's locoed!" "Low toed?" exclaimed the amazed German. "Then I take him mit der blacksmith." "Say, you simian-faced subject of Hoch the Kaiser, can't you understand English?" howled Cal, in a voice that might have dislodged a mountain. "Bismark is crazy, locoed, mad, off his trolley, got rats in his garret, bats in his belfry, bug-house, screw-loose, daft, looney--now do you understand?" "Yah!" came the response, "now I know. Bismark is aufergerspeil." "All right, call it that if you want to," muttered Cal. Then, as Bismark, with a final flourish of his heels and a loud shrill whinny, galloped off, the Westerner turned to the boys. "Well, we've seen the last of him for a while." "Aren't you going to try to catch him?" asked Nat, as he watched the horse dash across the meadow-like hollow, and then vanish in the belt of dark wood on the hillside beyond. "No good," said Cal decisively, "wouldn't be able to do a thing with him for days. That loco weed is bad stuff. If I'd ever noticed it growing around here you can bet that Bismuth, or whatever that Dutchman calls him, wouldn't have left the camp." Herr Muller, rubbing a grievous bump he had received when the ungrateful equine turned upon the hand that fed him, now came up and joined the party. He made such a grievous moan over the loss of his horse that Nat's heart was melted. He promised finally that they would stay in the vicinity the next day, and if Bismark had not appeared that they would make a short search in the mountains for him. This was strongly against Cal's advice, but he, too, finally gave in. The Westerner knew better even than the boys with what a desperate gang they were at odds, and he did not favor anything that delayed their getting out of that part of the country as quick as possible. "My mine is only a day or so's run from here," he said to Nat, "and if once we reached there we could stand these fellows off till help might be summoned from some place below, and we could have Morello's gang all arrested." "That would be a great idea," agreed Nat, "do you think it could be done?" "Don't see why not," rejoined Cal, "but you'll see better when you get a look at the place. It's a regular natural fortress, that's what it is. My plan would be to hold 'em there while one of us rides off to Laredo or Big Oak Flat for the sheriff and his men." "We'll talk some more about that," agreed Nat, to whom the idea appealed immensely. In fact, he felt that there was little chance of their really enjoying their trip till they were sure that Col. Morello's gang was disposed of. Somehow Nat had a feeling that they were not through with the rascals yet. In which surmise, as we shall see, he was right. Supper that night was a merry meal, and after it had been disposed of, the waterproof tent which the boys had brought along was set up for the first time. With its sod cloth and spotless greenish-gray coloring, it made an inviting looking little habitation, more especially when the folding cots were erected within. But Herr Muller was in a despondent mood. He ate his supper in silence and sat melancholy and moody afterward about the roaring camp fire. "Ach dot poor horse. Maypee der wolves get der poor crazy loonitacker," he moaned. "Wall," commented Cal judicially, "ef he kin handle wolves as well as he kin Dutchmen he's no more reason to be scared of 'em than he is of jack-rabbits." Of course watches were posted that night, and extra careful vigilance exercised. The events of the day had not added to the boys' confidence in their safety, by any means. There was every danger, in fact, of a night attack being attempted by their enemies. But the night passed without any alarming interruption. And the morning dawned as bright and clear as the day that had preceded it. Breakfast was quickly disposed of, and then plans were laid for the pursuit of the errant Bismark. Cal was of the opinion, that if the effect of the loco weed had worn off, that the horse might be found not far from the camp. There was a chance, of course, that he might have trotted back home. But Cal's experience had shown him that in the lonely hills, horses generally prefer the company of human kind to the solitudes and that if the influence of the crazy-weed was not still upon him the quadruped would be found not very far off. This was cheering news to the photographing Teuton, who could hardly eat any breakfast so impatient was he to be off. Cal was to stay and guard the camp with Ding-dong for a companion. The searching party was to consist of Nat, in command, with Joe and Herr Muller as assistants. All, of course, carried weapons, and it was agreed that the signal in case of accident or attack, would be two shots in quick succession, followed by a third. Two shots alone would announce that the horse was found; while one would signify failure and an order to turn homeward. These details being arranged, and Herr Muller thoroughly drilled in them, the searchers set forth. The little meadow was soon traversed, and at the edge of the woods, which clothed the slope at this side of the valley, they separated. Nat took the centre, striking straight ahead on Bismark's trail, while the other two converged at different radii. The hill-side was not steep, and walking under the piñons and madrones not difficult. Occasionally a clump of dense chaparral intervened, so thick that it had to be walked around. It would have been waste of time to attempt to penetrate it. All three of the searchers, as may be imagined, kept a sharp look-out, not only for trace of Bismark but also for any sign of danger. But they tramped on, while the sun rose higher, without anything alarming making itself manifest. But of Bismark not a trace was to be found. He had, apparently, vanished completely. The ground was dry and rocky, too, which was bad, so far as trailing was concerned. Nat, although he now and then tumbled on a hoof mark or found a spot where Bismark had stopped to graze, saw nothing further of the horse. At last he looked at his watch. He gave an exclamation of astonishment as he did so. It was almost noon. "Got to be starting back," he thought, and drawing his revolver, he fired one shot, the signal agreed upon for the return. This done, he set off walking at a brisk pace toward what he believed was the valley. But Nat, like many a more experienced mountaineer, had become hopelessly turned around during his wanderings. While it seemed to him he was striking in an easterly direction, he was, as a matter of fact, proceeding almost the opposite way. After tramping for an hour or more the boy began to look about him. "That's odd," he thought as he took in the surroundings, "I don't remember seeing anything like this around the valley." It was, in fact, a very different scene from that surrounding the camp that now lay about him. Instead of a soft, grass-covered valley, all that could be seen from the bare eminence on which he had now climbed, was a rift in some bare, rocky hills. The surroundings were inexpressibly wild and desolate looking. Tall rocks, like the minarets of Eastern castles, shot upward, and the cliffs were split and riven as if by some immense convulsion of nature. High above the wild scene there circled a big eagle. From time to time it gave a harsh scream, adding a dismal note to the dreary environment. For a flash Nat felt like giving way to the wild, unreasoning panic that sometimes overwhelms those who suddenly discover they are hopelessly lost. His impulse was to dash into the wood and set off running in what he thought must be the right direction. But he checked himself by an effort of will, and forced his mind to accept the situation as calmly as possible. "How foolish I was not to mark the trees as I came along!" he thought. If only he had done that it would have been a simple matter to find his way back. A sudden idea flashed into his mind, and drawing out his watch the boy pointed the hour hand at the sun, which was, luckily, in full sight. He knew that a point between the hour hand thus directed, and noon, would indicate the north and south line. As Nat had begun to think, this test showed him that he had been almost completely turned about, and had probably come miles in the wrong direction. The east lay off to his right. Nat faced about, and was starting pluckily off in that direction when a sudden commotion in a clump of chaparral below attracted his attention. A flock of blue jays flew up, screaming and scolding hoarsely in their harsh notes. Nat was woodsman enough to know that the blue jay is the watch-dog of the forests. Their harsh cries betoken the coming of anything for half a mile or more. Sometimes, however, they do not scream out their warning till whatever alarms them is quite close. As the birds, uttering their grating notes, flew upward from the clump in the chaparral, Nat paused. So still did he keep that he could distinctly hear the pounding of his heart in the silence. But presently another sound became audible. The trampling of horses coming in his direction! CHAPTER XV. THE MOTOR RANGER'S PERIL. "Reckon Nat must have forgotten to fire the signal," thought Joe, sinking down on a rock, some little time before the former had halted to listen intently to the approaching noise. Suddenly, however, the distant report came, borne clearly to his ears. "There it goes," thought Joe. "One shot. I guess that means good-bye to the Dutchman's horse." Knowing that it would be no use looking about for Nat, for evidently from the faint noise of the shot it had been fired at some distance, Joe faced about and started back for the camp. When he reached it, he found to his surprise, that Herr Muller had returned some time before. As a matter of fact, Joe formed a shrewd suspicion from the rapid time he must have made on his return, that Herr Muller had sought a snug spot and dozed away the interval before Nat's shot was heard. As it so happened he was not very far from the truth. The German, having tramped quite a distance into the woods, had argued to himself that he stood about as good a chance of recovering his horse by remaining still as by proceeding. So he had seated himself with a big china-bowled pipe, to await the recall signal. He had started on the hunt with much enthusiasm, but tramping over rough, stony ground, under a hot sun, is one of the greatest solvents of enthusiasm known. And so it had proved in the German's case. He had, however, a fine tale to tell of his tramp, and to listen to him one would have thought that he was the most industrious of the searchers. "Guess we'd better start dinner without Nat," said Cal, after they had hung around, doing nothing but watching the pots simmer over the camp fire, for an hour or two. "That's a gug-g-g-good idea," agreed Ding-dong. Joe demurred a bit at the idea of not waiting for their young leader, but finally he, too, agreed to proceed with the meal. As will be seen by this, not much anxiety was yet felt in the camp over Nat's absence. He was stronger and much more wiry than the other two searchers, and it was altogether probable that he had proceeded much farther than had they. But, as the afternoon wore on and no Nat put in an appearance, conversation seemed to languish. Anxious eyes now sought the rim of the woods on the opposite side of the clearing. Nobody dared to voice the fears that lay at their hearts, however. Cal, perhaps, alone among them, realized the extent of the peril in which Nat stood, if he were lost in the mountains. It was for this reason that he did not speak until it became impossible to hold out hope any longer. This was when the shadows began to lengthen and the western sky burned dull-red, as the sun sank behind the pine-fringed mountain tops. Then, and not till then, Cal spoke what was on his mind. His comrades received the news of Cal's conviction that Nat was lost without the dismay and outward excitement that might have been expected. As a matter of fact, the dread that something had happened to the lad had been in the minds of all of them for some hours, although each tried to appear chipper and cheerful. There was no evading the facts as they stood, any longer, however. Very soon night would fall, with its customary suddenness in these regions. Unless Nat returned before that time--which was so improbable as to hardly be worth considering--there remained only one conclusion to be drawn. "Whatever can we do?" demanded Joe, in a rather shaky voice, as he thought of his comrade out on the desolate mountain side, hungry and perhaps thirsty, looking in vain for a trace of a trail back to camp. "Not much of anything," was Cal's disquieting reply, "except to stay put." "You mean stay right where we are?" "That's right, boy. There's a chance that Nat may be back before long. Only a chance, mind you, but in that case we want ter be right here." "Suppose he is h-h-h-h-hurt?" quavered out Ding-dong, voicing a fear they had all felt, but had not, so far, dared to speak of. Cal waved his hand in an inclusive way at the range opposite. "That will mean a search for him," he said, "and he may be any place in those hills within a ten-mile radius. Talk about lookin' fer a needle in a haystack. It 'ud be child's play, to finding him in time to do anything." They could not but feel the truth of his words. "Besides," went on Cal, "there's another thing. We know that that ornery bunch of skunks and coyotes of Morello's is sky-hootin' round here some place. If we leave the camp they might swoop down on it and clean it out, and then we'd be in a worse fix than ever." "That's right," admitted Joe, "but it seems dreadfully tough to have to sit here with folded hands and doing nothing; while Nat----" His voice broke, and he looked off toward the mountains, now dim and dun-colored in the fast gathering night. "No use giving way," said Cal briskly, "and as fer sitting with folded hands, it's the worst thing you could do. Here you," to Herr Muller, "hustle around and git all ther wood you can. A big pile of it. We'll keep up a monstrous fire all night in case the lad might happen to see it." "It will give us something to think about anyhow," said Joe, catching the infection of Cal's brisk manner; "come on, Herr Muller, I'll help you." They started off to collect wood, while Ding-dong Bell and Cal busied themselves with the supper dishes and then cleaned up a variety of small jobs around the camp. "Jes' stick this bit of advice in your craw, son," advised Cal as he went briskly about his tasks, "work's the thing that trouble's most scart of, so if ever you want to shake your woes pitch in an' tackle something." While Nat's comrades are thus employed, let us see for ourselves what has become of the lad. We left him listening intently to some approaching horsemen. He remained in this attentive attitude only long enough to assure himself that they were indeed coming toward him, and then, like a flash, his mind was made up. It was clear to the boy that travellers in such a remote part of the Sierras were not common. It also came into his mind that Col. Morello's band was reputed to have their hiding place somewhere in the vicinity. The brief glance about him that Nat had obtained had shown him that it was just the sort of place that men anxious to hide themselves from the law would select. In the first place, it was so rugged and wild as to be inaccessible to any but men on foot or horseback, and even then it would have been a rough trip. The valley, or rather "cut," in the hills, up which the sound of hoofs was coming, was, as has been said, narrow and deep in the extreme. From the summits of its cliffs a defence of the trail that lay beneath would be easy. Stationed on those pinnacled, natural turrets, two might, if well supplied with ammunition, have withstood an army. All these thoughts had occurred to Nat before he made his resolution--and turning, started to run. But as he sped along a fresh difficulty presented itself. The hillside at this point seemed to be alive with blue-jays. They flew screaming up, as he made his way along, and Nat knew that if they had acted as a warning to him of approaching danger the vociferous birds would be equally probable to arouse the suspicions of whoever was coming his way. He paused to listen for a second, and was glad he had done so. The horsemen, to judge from their voices, had already reached the spot upon which he had been standing when he first heard them. What wind there was blew toward him and he could hear their words distinctly. "Those jays are acting strangely, Manuello. I wonder if there is anybody here." "I do not know, colonel," was the reply from the other unseen speaker, "if there is it will be to our advantage to find him. We don't want spies near the Wolf's Mouth." "Wolf's Mouth," thought Nat, "If that's the name of that abyss it's well called." "You are right, Manuello," went on the first speaker, "after what Dayton told us about those boys I don't feel easy in my mind as long as they are in our neighborhood. If Dayton and the others had not miscalculated yesterday we shouldn't have been bothered with them any longer." "No," was the rejoinder, "it's a pity that boulder didn't hit them and pound them into oblivion. Just because they happen to be boys doesn't make them any the less dangerous to us." At this unlucky moment, while Nat was straining his ears to catch every word of the conversation a stone against which he had braced one of his feet gave way. Ordinarily he would have hardly noticed the sound it made as it went bounding and rolling down the hillside, but situated as he was, the noise seemed to be as startling and loud as the discharge of a big gun. "What was that?" asked the man who had been addressed as "colonel." "A dislodged stone," was the reply, "someone is in there; the blue-jays didn't fly up for nothing." "So it would seem. We had better investigate before going farther." "Still, it is important that we find where those boys are camped." "That is true, but it is more important that we find out who is in that brush." Without any more delay, the two horses were turned into the hillside growth. Nat could hear their feet slipping and sliding among the loose rocks on the mountain as they came toward him. He did not dare to run for fear of revealing his whereabouts. Close at hand was a piñon tree, which spread out low-growing branches all about. Nat, as he spied it, decided that if he could get within its leafy screen unobserved he would, if luck favored him, escape the observation of the two men--one of whom he was certain now, must be the famous, or infamous, Col. Morello himself. Without any repetition of the unlucky accident of the minute before, he crept to the trunk of the tree and hoisted himself noiselessly up. As he had surmised, the upper branches made a comfortable resting place impervious to the view from below. Hardly had he made himself secure, before the horses of the two outlaws approached the tree and, rather to Nat's consternation, halted almost immediately beneath it. Could the keen-eyed leader of the outlaw band have discovered his hiding place? It was the most anxious moment of the boy's life. CHAPTER XVI. THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA. Few men, and still fewer boys, have ever been called upon to face the agonizing suspense which Nat underwent in the next few seconds. So close were the men to his hiding place that his nostrils could scent the sharp, acrid odor of their cigarettes. He was still enough as he crouched breathless upon the limb to have been carved out of wood, like the branch upon which he rested. He did not even dare to wink his eyes for fear of alarming the already aroused suspicions of the two men below him. "Guess those jays got scared at a lion or something," presently decided the man who had been addressed as "colonel." Nat, peering through his leafy screen, could see him as he sat upright on his heavy saddle of carved leather and looked about him with a pair of hawk-like eyes. Colonel Morello, for Nat had guessed correctly when he concluded that the man was the famous leader, was a man of about fifty years, with a weather-beaten face, seamed and lined by years of exposure and hard living. But his eye, as has been said, was as keen and restless as an eagle's. A big scar made a livid mark across his cheek indicating the course of a bullet, fired years before when Morello had been at the head of a band of Mexican revolutionists. In that capacity, indeed, he had earned his brevet rank of "colonel." A broad-brim gray sombrero, with a silver embossed band of leather about it, crowned the outlaw chief's head of glossy black hair, worn rather long and streaked with gray. Across his saddle horn rested a long-barrelled automatic rifle, of latest make and pattern. For the rest his clothes were those of an everyday mountaineer with the exception of a wide red sash. His horse was a fine buckskin animal, and was almost as famous in Sierran legend as its redoubtable master. His companion was a squat, evil-visaged Mexican, with none of the latent nobility visible under the cruelty and rapaciousness which marred what might have once been the prepossessing countenance of Morello. His black hair hung in dank, streaky locks down to the greasy shoulders of his well-worn buckskin coat, and framed a wrinkled face as dark as a bit of smoked mahogany, in which glittered, like two live coals, a pair of shifty black eyes. He was evidently an inferior to the other in every way--except possibly in viciousness. Such were the two men who had paused below the tree in which was concealed, none too securely, the leader of the young Motor Rangers. As to what his fate might be if he fell into their hands Nat could hazard a guess. All at once the lad noticed that the branch of the tree upon which he was lying was in motion. His first thought was that one of the men might be shaking it in some way. But no--neither of them had moved. They were seemingly following the remark of the colonel regarding the blue-jays, and taking a last look about before leaving. In another moment Nat would have been safe, but as he moved his eyes to try and see what had shaken the bough he suddenly became aware of an alarming thing. From the branch of another tree which intertwined with the one in which he was hidden, there was creeping toward him a large animal. The boy gave a horrified gasp as he saw its greenish eyes fixed steadily on him with a purposeful glare. Step by step, and not making as much noise as a stalking cat, the creature drew closer. To Nat's terrified imagination it almost seemed as if it had already given a death spring, and that he was in its clutches. Truly his predicament was a terrible one. If he remained as he was the brute was almost certain to spring upon him. On the other hand to make a move to escape would be to draw the attention of the outlaws to his hiding place. "Phew," thought Nat, "talk about being between two fires!" Instinctively he drew his revolver. He felt that at least he stood more of a chance with his human foes than he did with this tawny-coated monster of the Sierran slopes. If the worst came to the worst he would fire at the creature and trust to luck to escaping from the opposite horn of his dilemma. But in this Nat had reckoned without his host--or rather, his four-footed enemy--for without the slightest warning the big creature launched its lithe body through the air. With a cry of alarm Nat dropped, and it landed right on the spot where a second before he had been. At the same instant the colonel and his companion wheeled their horses with a startled exclamation. The horses themselves, no less alarmed, were pawing the ground and leaping about excitedly. The boy's fall, and the howl of rage from the disappointed animal, combined to make a sufficiently jarring interruption to the calm and quiet of the mountain side. "Caramba! what was that?" the colonel's voice rang out sharply. "It's a boy!" cried his companion, pointing to Nat's recumbent form. To the lad's dismay, in his fall his revolver had flown out of its holster and rolled some distance down the hillside. He lay there powerless, and too stunned and bruised by the shock of his fall to move. But the great cat above him was not inactive. Foiled in its first spring it gathered itself for a second pounce but the colonel's sharp eye spied the tawny outline among the green boughs. Raising his rifle he fired twice. At the first shot there came a howl of pain and rage. At the second a crashing and clawing as the monster rolled out of the tree and fell in a still, motionless heap not far from Nat. "Even the mountain lions seem to work for us," exclaimed the colonel triumphantly, as he dismounted and walked to Nat's side. "Yes, señor, and if I make no mistake this lad here is one of the very boys we are in search of." "You are right. These Americans are devils. I make no doubt but this one was on his way to spy into our manner of living at our fort. Eh boy, isn't that true?" "No," replied Nat, whose face was pale but resolute. He scrambled painfully to his feet. Covered with dust, scratched in a dozen places by his fall through the branches, and streaming with perspiration, he was not an imposing looking youth right then; but whatever his appearance might have been, his spirit was dauntless. "No," he repeated, "I came up here to look for a horse that one of us had lost." "That's a very likely story," was the colonel's brief comment, in a dry, harsh tone. His eyes grew hard as he spoke. Evidently he had made up his mind that Nat was a spy. "It is true," declared Nat, "I had no idea of spying into your affairs." "Oh no," sneered the colonel vindictively, "I suppose you will tell us next that you did not know where our fort is; that you were not aware that it is up that gorge there?" "This is the first I've heard of it," declared Nat truthfully. "I hold a different opinion," was the rejoinder, "if you had not been up here on some mischievous errand you would not have concealed yourself in that tree. Eh, what have you to say to that?" "Simply that from all I had heard of you and your band. I was afraid to encounter you on uneven terms, and when I heard you coming, I hid," replied Nat. "That is it, is it? Well, I have the honor to inform you that I don't believe a word of your story. Do you know what we did with spies when I was fighting on the border?" Nat shook his head. The colonel's eyelids narrowed into two little slits through which his dark orbs glinted flintily. "We shot them," he whipped out. For a moment Nat thought he was about to share the same fate. The colonel raised his rifle menacingly and glanced along the sights. But he lowered it the next minute and spoke again. "Since you are so anxious to see our fort I shall gratify your wishes," he said. "Manuello, just take a turn or two about that boy and we'll take him home with us; he'll be better game than that lion yonder." Manuello nimbly tumbled off his horse, and in a trice had Nat bound with his rawhide lariat. The boy was so securely bundled in it that only his legs could move. "Good!" approvingly said the colonel as he gazed at the tightly tied captive, "it would be folly to take chances with these slippery Americanos." Manuello now remounted, and taking a half-hitch with the loose end of his lariat about the saddle horn, he dug his spurs into his pony. The little animal leaped forward, almost jerking Nat from his feet. He only remained upright with an effort. "Be careful, Manuello," warned the colonel, "he is too valuable a prize to damage." Every step was painful to Nat, bruised as he was, and weak from hunger and thirst as well, but he pluckily gave no sign. He had deduced from the fresh condition of his captors' ponies that they could not have been ridden far. This argued that it would not be long before they reached the outlaws' fortress. In this surmise he was correct. The trail, after winding among chaparral and madrone, plunged abruptly down and entered the gloomy defile he had noticed when he first made up his mind that he was lost. Viewed closely the place was even more sinister than it had seemed at a distance. Hardly a tree grew on its rugged sides, which were of a reddish brown rock. It seemed as if they had been, at some remote period, seared with tremendous fires. The trail itself presently evolved into a sort of gallery, hewn out of the sheer cliff face. The precipice overhung it above, while below was a dark rift that yawned upon unknown depths. So narrow was the pass that a step even an inch or two out of the way would have plunged the one making it over into the profundities of the chasm. A sort of twilight reigned in the narrow gorge, making the surroundings appear even more wild and gloomy. A chill came over Nat as he gazed about him. Do what he would to keep up his spirits they sank to the lowest ebb as he realized that he was being conducted into a place from which escape seemed impossible. Without wings, no living creature could have escaped from that gorge against the will of its lawless inhabitants. Suddenly, the trail took an abrupt turn, and Nat saw before him the outlaws' fort itself. CHAPTER XVII. IN COLONEL MORELLO'S FORTRESS. Directly ahead of them the gorge terminated abruptly in a blank wall of rock, in precisely the same manner that a blind alley in a city comes to a full stop. But "blank" in this case is a misnomer. The rocky rampart, which towered fully a hundred feet above the trail, was pierced with several small openings, which appeared to be windows. A larger opening was approached by a flight of steps, hewn out of the rock. Although Nat did not know it, the spot had once been a habitation of the mysterious aborigines of the Sierras. The colonel, stumbling upon it some years before, had at once recognized its possibilities as a fortress and a gathering place for his band, and had hastened to "move in." Stabling for the horses was found in a rocky chamber opening directly off the trail. But Nat's wonderment was excited by another circumstance besides the sudden appearance of the rock fort. This was the strange manner in which the abyss terminated at the pierced cliff. As they came along, the boy had heard the sound of roaring waters at the bottom of the rift, and coupling this with the fact that the gorge emerged into the cliff at this point, he concluded that a subterranean river must wind its way beneath the colonel's unique dwelling place. Small time, however, did he have for looking about him. About a hundred yards along the trail from the pierced cliff there was a strange contrivance extending outward from the face of the precipice along which the trail was cut. This was a sort of platform of pine trunks of great weight and thickness, on the top of which were piled several large boulders to add to the weight. This affair was suspended by chains and was an additional safeguard to the outlaws' hiding place. In the event of a sudden attack the chains were so arranged that they could be instantly cast loose. This allowed the platform to crash down, crushing whatever happened to be beneath it, as well as blocking the trail. The colonel paused before they reached this, and whistled three times. "Who is it?" came a voice, apparently issuing from a hole pierced in the rock at their left hand. "Two Eagles of the Pass," came the reply from the colonel as he gave utterance to what was evidently a password. "Go ahead, two Eagles of the Pass," came from the invisible rock aperture, and the party proceeded. A few paces brought them from under the shadow of the weighted platform and to the foot of the flight of stone steps. A shaggy-headed man emerged from the stable door as they rode up, and took the horses of the new arrivals. He gazed curiously at Nat, but said nothing. Evidently, thought the lad, the colonel is a strict disciplinarian. This was indeed the case. Col. Morello exacted implicit obedience from his band, which at this time numbered some twenty men of various nationalities. On more than one occasion prompt death had been the result of even a suspicion of a mutinous spirit. With Manuello still leading him along, as if he were a calf or a sheep, Nat was conducted up the stone staircase and into the rock dwelling itself. The contrast inside the place with the heated air outside was extraordinary. It was like entering a cool cellar on a hot summer's day. The passage which opened from the door in the cliff was in much the same condition as it had been when the vanished race occupied the place. In the floor were numerous holes where spears had been sharpened or corn ground. Rude carvings of men on horseback, or warring with strange beasts covered the walls. Light filtered in from a hole in the rock ceiling, fully twenty feet above the floor of the place. Several small doors opened off the main passage, and into one of these the colonel, who was in the lead, presently turned, followed by Manuello leading the captive lad. Nat found himself in a chamber which, if it had not been for the rough walls of the same flame-tinted rock as the abyss, might have been the living room of any well-to-do rancher. Skins and heads of various wild beasts ornamented the walls. On the floor bright rugs of sharply contrasting hues were laid. In a polished oak gun-case in one corner were several firearms of the very latest pattern and design. A rough bookshelf held some volumes which showed evidences of having been well thumbed. From the ceiling hung a shaded silver lamp, of course unlighted, as plenty of light streamed into the place from the window in the cliff face. The three chairs and the massive table which occupied the centre of the place were of rough-hewn wood, showing the marks of the axe, but of skilled and substantial workmanship, nevertheless. The upholstery was of deerskin, carefully affixed with brass-headed nails. The colonel threw himself into one of the chairs and rolled a fresh cigarette, before he spoke a word. When he did, Nat was astonished, but not so much as to be startled out of his composure. "I've heard about you from Hale Bradford," said the outlaw, "and I have always been curious to see you." "Hale Bradford! Could it be possible," thought Nat, "that the rascally millionaire who had appropriated his father's mine was also associated with Col. Morello, the Mexican outlaw?" Nat suddenly recalled, however, that it was entirely likely that Bradford, in his early days on the peninsula, had met Morello, who, at that time, was a border marauder in that part of the country. Perhaps they had met since Bradford's abrupt departure from Lower California. Or perhaps, as was more probable, it was Dayton who had told the colonel all about the Motor Rangers, and this reference to Bradford was simply a bluff. "Yes, I knew Hale Bradford," was all that Nat felt called upon to say. "Hum," observed the colonel, carefully regarding his yellow paper roll, "and he had good reason to know you, too." "I hope so," replied Nat, "if you mean by that, that we drove the unprincipled rascal out of Lower California." "That does not interest me," retorted Morello, "what directly concerns you is this: one of my men, an old acquaintance of mine, who has recently joined me, was done a great injury by you down there. He wants revenge." "And this is the way he takes it," said Nat bitterly, gazing about him. "I don't know how he means to take it," was the quiet reply. "That must be left to him. Where is Dayton?" he asked, turning to Manuello. "Off hunting. The camp is out of meat," was the reply. "Well, I expect Mr. Trevor will stay here till he returns," remarked the colonel with grim irony, "take him to the west cell, Manuello. See that he has food and water, and when Dayton gets back we will see what shall be done with him." He turned away and picked up a book, with a gesture signifying that he had finished. Nat's lips moved. He was about to speak, but in the extremity of his peril his tongue fairly clove to the roof of his mouth. To be left to the tender mercies of Dayton! That was indeed a fate that might have made a more experienced adventurer than Nat tremble. The boy quickly overcame his passing alarm, however, and the next moment Manuello was conducting him down the passage toward what Nat supposed must be the west cell. Before a stout oaken door, studded with iron bolts, the evil-visaged Mexican paused, and diving into his pocket produced a key. Inserting this in a well-oiled lock, he swung back the portal and disclosed a rock-walled room about twelve feet square. This, then, was the west cell. Any hope that Nat might have cherished of escaping, vanished as he saw the place. It was, apparently, cut out of solid rock. It would have taken a gang of men armed with dynamite and tools many years to have worked their way out. The door, too, now that it was open, was seen to be a massive affair, formed of several layers of oak bolted together till it was a foot thick. Great steel hinges, driven firmly into the wall, held it in place and on the outside, as an additional security to the lock, was a heavy sliding bolt of steel. Manuello gave Nat a shove and the boy half stumbled forward into the place. The next minute the door closed with a harsh clamor, and he was alone. So utterly stunned was he by his fate that for some minutes Nat simply stood still in the centre of the place, not moving an inch. But presently he collected his faculties, and his first care was to cast himself loose from the rawhide rope the Mexican had enveloped him in. This done, he felt easier, and was about to begin an inspection of the place when a small wicket, not more than six inches square, in the upper part of the door opened, and a hand holding a tin jug of water was poked through. Nat seized the receptacle eagerly, and while he was draining it the same hand once more appeared, this time with a loaf of bread and a hunk of dried deer meat. Nat's hunger was as keen as his thirst, and wisely deciding that better thinking can be done on a full stomach than on an empty one, he speedily demolished the provender. So utterly hopeless did the outlook seem that many a boy in Nat's position would have thrown himself on the cell floor and awaited the coming of his fate. Not so with Nat. He had taken for his motto, "While there is life there is hope," although it must be confessed that even he felt a sinking of the heart as he thought over his position. Guided by the light that came into the cell through the small wicket, the boy began groping about him and beating on the wall. For an hour or more he kept this up, till his hands were raw and bleeding from his exertions. It appeared to him that he had pounded every foot of rock in the place, in the hope of finding some hollow spot, but to no avail. The place was as solid as a safety vault. Giving way to real despair at last, even the gritty boy owned himself beaten. Sinking his face in his hands he collapsed upon the cell floor. As he did so voices sounded in the corridor. One of them Nat recognized with a thrill of apprehension, as Dayton's. CHAPTER XVIII. A RIDE FOR LIFE. The next moment the door was flung open, but not before Nat had jumped to his feet. He did not want his enemies, least of all Dayton, to find him crouching in a despondent attitude. To have brought despair to Nat's heart was the one thing above all others, the lad realized, which would delight Ed. Dayton highly. Dayton was accompanied by Manuello and Al. Jeffries. The latter seemed highly amused at the turn things had taken. "Well! well! well! What have we here!" he cried ironically, tugging his long black mustaches as the light from the passage streamed in upon Nat, "a young automobiling rooster who's about to get a lesson in manners and minding his own business. Oh say, Ed., this is luck. Here is where you get even for the other day." "Oh, dry up," admonished Dayton sullenly, "I know my own business best." He advanced toward Nat with a sinister smile on his pale face. Dayton had, as Manuello had informed Colonel Morello, been off hunting. His clothes were dust covered, from the tip of his riding boots--high heeled and jingle spurred in the Mexican fashion--to the rim of his broad sombrero. He had evidently lost no time in proceeding to the cell as soon as he learned that Nat was a captive. "Looks as if we had you bottled up at last, my elusive young friend," he grated out, "this is the time that you stay where we want you." "What are you going to do, Dayton?" asked Nat, his face pale but resolute, though his heart was beating wildly. Knowing the man before him as he did, he had no reason to expect any compassion, nor did he get any. "You'll see directly," rejoined Dayton, "come with me. I'm going to let the colonel boss this thing." Nat didn't say a word. In fact, there was not anything to be said. Dayton, as well as Manuello and Al. Jeffries, was armed, and all had their weapons ready for instant action. It would have been worse than madness to attempt any resistance right then. With Dayton ahead of him and Manuello and Jeffries behind, Nat stepped out of the cell and into the dimly lit passage. Never had daylight looked sweeter or more desirable to him than it did now, showing in a bright, oblong patch at the end of the passage. But Nat, much as he longed to make a dash for it then and there, saw no opportunity to do so and in silence the little procession passed along the passageway and entered the colonel's room. Colonel Morello looked up as they entered, but did not seem much surprised. Doubtless he had had a chat with Dayton on the latter's return from hunting and was aware that Nat would be ushered before him. "Here he is, colonel," began Dayton advancing to the table, while Manuello, ever on the outlook for a cigarette, also stepped a pace to the front, to help himself from a package of tobacco and some rice papers that lay upon the table. This left only Al. Jeffries standing in the door-way. Swift as the snap of an instantaneous camera shutter Nat's mind was made up. Crouching low, as he was used to do in football tactics, he made a rush at Al. Jeffries, striking him between the legs like a miniature thunderbolt. As he made his dash he uttered an ear-splitting screech:-- "Yee-ow!" He shrewdly calculated that the sudden cry would further demoralize the astonished outlaws. Jeffries was literally carried off his feet by the unexpected rush. He was forcibly lifted as Nat dashed beneath him and then he fell in a heap, his head striking a rock as he did so, knocking him senseless. Like an arrow from a bow Nat sped straight for the end of the passage through which he had spied, a minute before, two horses standing still saddled and bridled. They were the steeds upon which Dayton and Jeffries had just ridden in. Such had been Dayton's haste to taunt Nat, however, that he and his companion deferred putting up their ponies till later. Nat, on his journey down the passage, had spied the animals and his alert mind had instantly worked out a plan of escape; as desperate a one, as we shall see, as could well be imagined. As Al. toppled over in a heap, another outlaw, who was just entering the passage, opposed himself to Nat. He shared the black-mustached one's fate, only he came down a little harder. Neither he nor Al. moved for some time in fact. In the meantime, Morello, Dayton and Manuello, dashing pellmell after the fleeing lad, stumbled unawares over the prostrate Al., and all came down in a swearing, fighting heap. This gave Nat the few seconds he needed. In two flying leaps he was down the steps and had flung himself into the saddle of one of the horses, before the stableman knew what was happening. When the latter finally woke up and heard the bandits' yells and shouts coming from the passage-way, it was too late. With a rattle of hoofs, and in a cloud of dust, Nat was off. Off along the trail to freedom! "Yee-ow!" The boy yelled as he banged his heels into the pony's sides and the spirited little animal leaped forward. Bang! Nat's sombrero was lifted from his head and he could feel the bullets fairly fan his hair as he rode on. "Stop him! Stop him!" came cries from behind. And then a sudden order:-- "Let go the man-trap!" If Nat had realized what this meant he would have been tempted to give up his dash for freedom then and there. But he had hardly given a thought to the big suspended platform of pine trunks and rocks while on his way to the outlaws' fort, nor even if he had noticed it more minutely, would he have guessed its purpose. But as the order to release the crushing weight and send it crashing down upon the trail was roared out by the colonel, a clatter of hoofs came close behind. It was Dayton, who had hastily thrown himself upon the other horse and was now close upon Nat. Drawing a revolver he fired, but the bullet whistled harmlessly by Nat's head. At the terrific pace they were making an accurate shot was, fortunately for our hero, impossible. And now Nat was in the very shadow of the great platform. At that instant he heard a sudden creaking overhead, and looked up just in time to realize that the ponderous mass was sagging. In one flash of insight he realized the meaning of this. The great mass had been released and was about to descend. Crack! "Ye-oo-ow!" The heavy quirt, which Nat had found fastened to the saddle horn, was laid over the startled pony's flanks. It gave an enraged squeal and flung itself forward like a jack-rabbit. At the same instant came a shout from behind. "Stop, Dayton. Stop!--The man-trap!" [Illustration: Nat, as the pony leaped forward, instinctively bent low in the saddle.] Nat, as the pony leaped forward, instinctively bent low in the saddle. As they flashed forward a mighty roar sounded in his ears. Behind him, with a sound like the sudden release of an avalanche, the man-trap had fallen. It had been sprung by the colonel's own hand. So close to Nat did the immense weight crash down that it grazed his pony's flanks, but--Nat was safe. Behind him, he heard a shrill scream of pain and realized that Dayton had not been so fortunate. "Has he been killed?" thought Nat as his pony, terrified beyond all control by the uproar behind it, tore up the trail in a series of long bounds. "Safe!" thought the lad as he dashed onward. But in this he was wrong. Nat was far from being safe yet. Even as he murmured the word to himself there came a chorus of shouts from behind. Turning in his saddle, the boy could see pursuing him six or seven men, mounted on wiry ponies, racing toward the wreckage of the ponderous man-trap. With quirt and spur they urged their frightened animals over the obstruction. From the midst of the débris Nat could see Dayton crawling. The man was evidently hurt, but the others paid no attention to him. "A thousand dollars to the one who brings that boy down!" The cry came in the voice of Col. Morello. Nat laid his quirt on furiously. But the pony he bestrode had been used for hunting over the rugged mountains most of that day and soon it began to flag. "They're gaining on me," gasped Nat, glancing behind. At the same instant half a dozen bullets rattled on the rocks about him, or went singing by his ears. As the fusillade pelted around him, Nat saw, not more than a hundred yards ahead, the end of the trail. The point, that is, where it lost itself in the wilderness of chaparral and piñon trees, among which he had met the adventure which ended in his capture. If he could only gain that shelter, he would be safe. But on his tired, fagged pony, already almost collapsing beneath him, could he do it? CHAPTER XIX. OUTWITTING HIS ENEMIES. There was a feeling of pity in Nat's heart for the unfortunate pony he bestrode. The lad was fond of all animals, and it galled him to be compelled to drive the exhausted beast so unmercifully, but it had to be done if his life were to be saved. Crack! crack! came the cruel quirt once more, and the cayuse gamely struggled onward. Its nostrils were distended and its eyes starting out of its head with exhaustion. Its sunken flanks heaved convulsively. Nat recognized the symptoms. A few paces more and the pony would be done for. "Come on, old bronco!" he urged, "just a little way farther." With a heart-breaking gasp the little animal responded, and in a couple of jumps it was within the friendly shelter of the leafy cover. A yell of rage and baffled fury came from his pursuers as Nat vanished. The boy chuckled to himself. "I guess I take the first trick," he thought, but his self-gratulation was a little premature. As he plunged on amid the friendly shelter he could still hear behind him the shouts of pursuit. The men were scattering and moving forward through the wood. There seemed but little chance in view of these maneuvers, that Nat, with only his exhausted pony under him, could get clear away. As the shouts resounded closer his former fear rushed back with redoubled force. Suddenly his heart almost stopped beating. In the wood in front of him he could hear the hoof-tramplings of another horse. They were coming in his direction. Who could it be? Nat realized that it was not likely to prove anybody who was friendly to him. He was desperately casting about for some way out of this new and utterly unexpected situation, when, with a snort, the approaching animal plunged through the brush separating it from Nat. As it came into view the boy gave a sharp exclamation of surprise. The new arrival was Herr Muller's locoed horse, now, seemingly, quite recovered from its "late indisposition." It whinnied in a low tone as it spied Nat's pony, and coming alongside, nuzzled up against it. To Nat's joy, Bismark showed no signs of being scared of him, and allowed the boy to handle him. But in the few, brief seconds that had elapsed while this was taking place, Col. Morello's gang had drawn perilously near. The trampling and crashing as they rode through the woods was quite distinct now. "After him, boys," Nat could hear the colonel saying, "that boy knows our hiding place. We've got to get him or get out of the country." "We'll get him all right, colonel," Nat heard Manuello answer confidently. "Yep. He won't go far on that foundered pony," came another voice. In those few, tense moments of breathing space Nat rapidly thought out a plan of escape. Deftly he slipped the saddle and bridle off the outlaw's pony, and transferred them to Bismark's back. Then, as the chase drew closer, he gave the trembling pony a final whack on the rump with the quirt. The little animal sprang forward, its hoofs making a tremendous noise among the loose rocks on the hillside. Half frantic with fear, its alarm overcame its spent vitality, and it clattered off. "Wow! There he goes!" "Yip-ee-ee! After him, boys!" "Now we've got him!" These and a score of other triumphant cries came from the outlaws' throats as they heard the pony making off as fast as it could among the trees, and naturally assumed that Nat was on its back. With yells and shrieks of satisfaction they gave chase, firing volleys of bullets after it. The fusillade and the shouts, of course, only added to the pony's fear, and made it proceed with more expedition. As the cries of the chase grew faint in the distance, Nat listened intently, and then, satisfied that the outlaws had swept far from his vicinity, urged Bismark cautiously forward. This time he travelled in the right direction, profiting by his experiment with his watch. But urge Bismark on as he would, darkness fell before he was out of the wilderness. But still he pressed on. In his position he knew that it was important that he reach the camp as soon as possible. Not only on his own account, but in order that he might give warning of the attack that Col. Morello would almost certainly make as soon as he realized that his prisoner had got clear away. If they had been interested in the Motor Rangers' capture before, the outlaws must by now be doubly anxious to secure them, Nat argued. The reason for this had been voiced by Col. Morello himself while he was conducting the chase in the wood: "That boy knows our hiding place." "You bet I do," thought Nat to himself, "and if I don't see to it that the whole bunch is smoked out of there before long it won't be my fault." Tethering Bismark to a tree the boy clambered up the trunk. His object in so doing was to get some idea of his whereabouts. But it was dark, I hear some reader remark. True, but even in the darkness there is one unfailing guide to the woodsman, providing the skies be clear, as they were on this night. The north star was what Nat was after. By it he would gauge his direction. Getting a line on it from the outer star of "the dipper" bowl, Nat soon made certain that he had not, as he had for a time feared, wandered from his course. Descending the tree once more, he looked at his watch. It was almost midnight, yet in the excitement of his flight he felt no exhaustion or even hunger. He was terribly thirsty though, and would have given a lot for a drink of water. However, the young Motor Ranger had faced hardships enough not to waste time wishing for the unattainable. So, remounting Bismark, he pressed on toward the east, knowing that if he rode long enough he must strike the valley which would bring him to his friends. All at once, a short distance ahead, he heard a tiny tinkle coming through the darkness. It was like the murmuring of a little bell. Nat knew, though, that it was the voice of a little stream, and a more welcome sound, except the voices of his comrades, he could not have heard at that moment. "Here's where we get a drink, Bismark, you old prodigal son," he said in a low tone. A few paces more brought them into a little dip in the hillside down which the tiny watercourse ran. Tumbling off his horse Nat stretched himself out flat and fairly wallowed in the water. When he had refreshed his thirst, Bismark drinking just below him, the boy laved his face and neck, and this done felt immensely better. He was just rising from this al-fresco bath when, from almost in front of his face as it seemed, came a sound somewhat like the dry rattle of peas in a bladder. It was harsh and unmusical, and to Nat, most startling, for it meant that he had poked his countenance almost into the evil wedge-shaped head of a big mountain rattler. "Wow!" yelled the boy tumbling backward like an acrobat. At the same instant a dark, lithe thing that glittered dully in the starlight, was launched by his cheek. So close did it come that it almost touched him. But Nat was not destined to be bitten that night at least. As the long body encountered the ground after striking, and Bismark jumped back snorting alarmedly, Nat picked up a big rock and terminated Mr. Rattler's existence on the spot. Sure of his direction now, the boy remounted, and crossing the stream, arrived in due course near to the camp. The first thing he almost stumbled across was the prostrate form of Herr Muller, sound asleep just outside the flickering circle of light cast by the fire. "Now for some fun," thought Nat, and slipping off his horse he crouched behind the sleeping Teuton, and with a long blade of grass, began tickling his ear. At first Herr Muller simply stirred uneasily, and kicked about a bit. Then finally he sat up erect and wide awake. The first thing he saw was a tall, dark form bent over him. With a wild succession of whoops and frantic yells he set off for the camp in an astonishing series of leaps and bounds, causing Nat to exclaim as he watched the performance:-- "That Dutchman could certainly carry off a medal for broad jumping." A few of the leaps brought Herr Muller fairly into the camp-fire, scattering the embers right and left and thoroughly alarming the awakened adventurers. As they started up and seized their arms, Nat caused an abrupt cessation of the threatened hostilities by a loud hail:-- "Hullo, fellows!" "It's Nat--whoop hurroo!" came in a joyous chorus, and as description is lamentably inadequate to set forth some scenes, I will leave each of my readers to imagine for himself how many times Nat's hand was wrung pump-handle fashion, and how many times he was asked:-- "How did it happen?" CHAPTER XX. HERR MULLER GETS A CHILLY BATH. "Shake a le-e-eg!" Rather later than usual the following morning the lengthy form of Cal reared itself upright in its blankets and uttered the waking cry. From the boys there came only a sleepy response in rejoinder. They were all pretty well tired out with the adventures and strains of the day before and had no inclination to arise from their slumbers. Even Nat, usually the first to "tumble up," didn't seem in any hurry to crawl out of his warm nest. Winking to himself, Cal picked up two buckets and started for the little lake. He soon filled them with the clear, cold snow-water, and started back with long strides across the little meadow. "Here's where it rains for forty days and forty nights," he grinned, as poising a bucket for a moment he let fly its contents. S-l-o-u-s-h! What a torrent of icy fluid dashed over the recumbent form of Herr Von Schiller Muller! The Teuton leaped up as if a tarantula had been concealed in his bed clothes, but before he could utter the yell that his fat face was framing Cal was on him in one flying leap and had clapped a big brown hand over his mouth. "Shut up," he warned, "if you want to have some fun with the others." He pointed to the pail which was still half full. Herr Muller instantly comprehended. Dashing the water out of his eyes he prepared to watch the others get their dose, on the principle, I suppose, that misery loves company. S-l-o-u-s-h! This time Ding-dong and Joe got the icy shower bath, and sputtering and protesting hugely, they leaped erect. But the water in their eyes blinded them and although they struck out savagely, their blows only punctured the surrounding atmosphere. "Here, hold this bucket!" ordered Cal, handing the empty pail to the convulsed Dutchman. "Oh-ho-ho-ho dees iss too much!" gasped Herr Muller, doubling himself up with merriment, "I must mage me a picdgure of him." In the meantime Cal had dashed the contents of the other bucket over Nat, who also sprang up full of wrath at the unexpected immersion. "Take this, too," ordered Cal, handing the other empty bucket to Herr Muller. Tears were rolling down the German's fat cheeks. He was bent double with vociferous mirth as he shook. "Dees iss der best choke I haf seen since I hadt der measles!" he chuckled. Shouts of anger rang from the boys' throats as they rushed about, shaking off water like so many dogs after a swim. Suddenly their eyes fell on Herr Muller doubled with laughter and holding the two buckets. From time to time, in the excess of his merriment he flourished them about. "Oh-ho-ho-ho, I dink me I die ef I dodn't laughing stop it." "Hey, fellows!" hailed Nat, taking in the scene, "there's the chap that did it." "That Dutchman?--Wow!" With a whoop the three descended on the laughter-stricken Teuton, and before he could utter a word of expostulation, they had seized him up and were off to the little lake at lightning speed, bearing his struggling form. "Help! Murder! Poys, I don't do idt. It voss dot Cal vot vatered you!" The cries came from the German's lips in an agonizing stream of entreaty and expostulation. But the boys, wet and irritated, were in no mood for mercy. To use an expressive term, though a slangy one, they had caught Herr Muller "with the goods on." Through the alders they dashed, and then---- Splash! Head over heels Herr Muller floundered in the icy water, choking and sputtering, as he came to the surface, like a grampus--or, at least in the manner, we are led to believe, grampuses or grampi conduct themselves. As his pudgy form struck out for the shore the boys' anger gave way to yells of merriment at the comical sight he presented, his scanty pajamas clinging tightly about his rotund form. "Say, fellows, here comes Venus from the bath!" shouted Nat. "First time I heard of a Dutch Venus!" chortled Joe. "Poys, you haf made it a misdake," expostulated Herr Muller, standing, with what dignity he could command, on the brink of the little lake. His teeth were chattering as if they were executing a clog dance. "D-dod-d-dot C-c-c-c-al he do-done idt. If you don'd pelieve me,--Loog!" He pointed back to the camp and there was Cal rolling about on the grass and indulging in other antics of amusement. "Wow!" yelled Nat, "we'll duck him, too." At full speed they set off for the camp once more, Cal rising to his feet as they grew near. He looked unusually large and muscular somehow. "W-w-w-w-w-where w-w-w-w-will we t-t-t-t-tackle him?" inquired Ding-dong, who seemed quite willing to yield his foremost place in the parade of punishment. "I guess," said Nat slowly and judiciously, "I guess we'll--leave Cal's punishment to some other time." Breakfast that morning was a merry meal, and old Bismark, who had naturally been tethered in a post perfectly free from loco weed, came in for several lumps of sugar as reward for his signal service of the day before. All were agreed that if the old horse had not wandered along so opportunely that Nat might have been in a bad fix. "I wonder if they'd have dared to kill me?" said Nat, drawing Cal aside while the others were busy striking camp and washing dishes. "Wall," drawled Cal, "I may be wrong, but I don't think somehow that you'd hev had much appetite fer breakfast this mornin'." "I'm inclined to agree with you," said Nat, repressing a shudder as he recalled the tones of the colonel's voice. "And that reminds me," said Cal, "that our best plan is to get on ter my mine as quick as we can. It ain't much of a place. You know there's mighty little mining down here nowadays but what is done by the big companies with stamp mills and hundreds of thousands invested. But I reckon we kin be safe there while we think up some plan to get these fellows in a prison where they belong." "That's my idea exactly," said Nat, "I'm pretty sure that now they are aware that we know the location of their fort that they'll try to get after us in every way they can." "Right you are, boy. Their very existence in these mountains depends on their checkmating us some way. I think the sooner we get out of here the better." "How soon can we get to the mine?" asked Nat. "Got your map?" "Yes." "Let's see it." Nat dipped down into his pocket and drew out his folder map of the Sierra region. It was necessarily imperfect, but Cal, after much cogitation, darted down his thumb on a point some distance to the northwest of where they were camped. "It's about thar," he declared, "right in that thar canyon." "How soon can we get there?" "With luck, in two days, I should say. We can camp there while one of us rides off and gets the sheriff and a posse. I tell you it'll be a big feather in our caps to land those fellows where they belong. The scallywags have made themselves the terror of this region for a long time." "Well, don't let's holler till we're out of the wood," advised Nat. By this time the auto was ready and the others awaited their coming with some impatience. "Are we all right?" asked Nat looking back at the tonneau and then casting a comprehensive eye about. Bismark, hitched behind as usual, was snorting impatiently and pawing the ground in quite a fiery manner. "Let 'er go," cried Cal. Chug-chu-g-chug! Nat threw on the power and off moved the auto, soon leaving behind the camp on the knoll which had been the scene of so many anxieties and amusing incidents. As they rode along Nat explained to the others the plan of campaign. It was hailed with much joy and Joe and Ding-dong immediately began asking questions. Cal explained that his mine was located in a canyon which had once been the scene of much mining activity, but like many camps in the Sierras, those who once worked it--the argonauts--had long since departed. Only a little graveyard with wooden head-boards on the hill above the camp remained to tell of them. Cal had taken up a claim there in the heyday of the gold workings and from time to time used to visit it and work about the claim a little. He had never gotten much gold out of it, but it yielded him a living, he said. "Anybody else up there?" asked Nat. "Only a few Chinks," rejoined Cal. "I don't like 'em," said Joe briefly, "yellow-skinned, mysterious cusses." "M-m-m-my mother had a C-c-c-c-chinese c-c-c-c-cook--phwit!--once," put in Ding-dong, "but we had to fire him." "Why?" inquired Cal with some show of interest. "We could never tell whether he was sus-s-s-singing over his work or moaning in agony," rejoined Ding-dong. "Say, is that meant for a joke?" asked Nat amid a deadly silence. "N-n-no, it's a f-f-fact," solemnly rejoined Ding-dong. "That feller must hev bin a cousin to the short-haired Chinaman who couldn't be an actor," grinned Cal. "What is this, a catch?" asked Joe suspiciously. "No," Cal assured him. "Oh, all right, I'll bite," said Nat with a laugh, "why couldn't the short-haired Chinaman be an actor?" "Pecoss he voss a voshman, I subbose," suggested Herr Muller. "Oh, no," said Cal, "because he'd always miss his queue." "Reminds me of the fellow who thought he was of royal blood every time he watered his wife's rubber plant which grew in a porcelain pot," grinned Nat. "I'll bite this time," volunteered Joe, "How was that, Mister Bones?" "Well, he said that when he irrigated it, he rained over china," grinned Nat, speeding the car up a little grade. "If this rare and refined vein of humor is about exhausted," said Joe with some dignity after the laugh this caused had subsided, "I would like to draw the attention of the company to that smoke right ahead of us." "Is that smoke? I thought it was dust," said Nat, squinting along the track ahead of them. The column of bluish, brownish vapor to which Joe had drawn attention could now be seen quite distinctly, pouring steadily upward above the crest of a ridge of mountains beyond them. Although they were travelling at a considerable height they could not make out what was causing it, but Cal's face grew grave. He said nothing, however, but if the others had noticed him they would have seen that his keen eyes never left the column which, as they neared it, appeared to grow larger in size until it towered above its surroundings like a vaporous giant or the funnel of a whirlwind. CHAPTER XXI. THE FIRE IN THE FOREST. "Why, that smoke's coming up from those trees!" declared Nat as they topped the rise, and saw below them the familiar panorama of undulating mountain tops, spreading to the sky line in seeming unending billows. Sure enough, as he said, the smoke was coming from some great timber-clad slopes directly in front of them. "May be some more campers," suggested Joe. "Not likely," said Cal gravely, "no campers would light a fire big enough to make all that smoke." Nat did not reply, being too busy applying the brakes as the road took a sudden steep pitch downward. At the bottom of the dip was a bridge, made after the fashion of most mountain bridges in those remote regions. That is to say, two long logs had been felled to span the abyss the bridge crossed. Then across these string pieces, had been laid other logs close together. The contrivance seemed hardly wide enough to allow the auto to cross. Grinding down his brakes Nat brought the machine to a halt. "I guess we'd better have a look at that bridge before we try to cross it," he said, turning to Cal. "Right you are, boy," assented the ex-stage driver, getting out, "this gasolene gig is a sight heavier than anything that bridge was ever built for. Come on, Joe, we'll take a look at it." Accompanied by the young Motor Ranger the Westerner set off at his swinging stride down the few paces between the auto and the bridge. Lying on his stomach at the edge of the brink, he gazed over and carefully examined the supports of the bridge and the manner in which they were embedded in the earth on either side. Then he and Joe jumped up and down on the contrivance and gave it every test they could. "I guess it will be all right," said Cal, as he rejoined the party. "You guess?" said Nat, "say, Cal, if your guess is wrong we're in for a nasty tumble." "Wall, then I'm sure," amended the former stage driver, "I've driv' stage enough to know what a bridge 'ull hold I guess, and that span yonder will carry this car over in good shape. How about it, Joe?" "It'll be all right, Nat," Joe assured his chum, "in any case we are justified in taking a chance, for after what you told us about the colonel's gang it would be dangerous to go back again." "That's so," agreed Nat, "now then, all hold tight, for I'm going to go ahead at a good clip. Hang on to Bismark, Herr Muller." "I holdt on py him like he voss my long lost brudder," the German assured him. Forward plunged the auto, Bismark almost jerking Herr Muller out of the tonneau as his head rope tightened. The next instant the car was thundering upon the doubtful bridge. A thrill went through every one of the party as the instant the entire weight of the heavy vehicle was placed upon it the flimsy structure gave a distinct sag. "Let her have it, Nat!" yelled Cal, "or we're gone coons!" There was a rending, cracking sound, as Nat responded, and the car leaped forward like a live thing. But as the auto bounded forward to safety Bismark hung back, shaking his head stubbornly. Herr Muller, caught by surprise, was jerked half out of the tonneau and was in imminent peril of being carried over and toppling into the chasm. But Joe grasped his legs firmly while Cal struck the rope--to which the Teuton obstinately held--out of his hands. "Bismark! Come back!" wailed the German as the released horse turned swiftly on the rickety bridge and galloped madly back in the direction from which they had come. But the horse, which was without saddle or bridle, both having been placed in the car when they started out, paid no attention to his owner's impassioned cry. Flinging up his heels he soon vanished in a cloud of dust over the hilltop. "Turn round der auto. Vee go pack after him," yelled the German. "Not much we won't," retorted Cal indignantly, "that plug of yours is headed for his old home. You wouldn't get him across that bridge if you built a fire under him." "And I certainly wouldn't try to recross it with this car," said Nat. "I should say not," put in Joe, "why we could feel the thing give way as our weight came on it." "Goodt pye, Bismark, mein faithful lager--charger I mean," wailed Herr Muller, "I nefer see you again." "Oh yes, you will," comforted Cal, seeing the German's real distress, "he'll go right home to the hotel stable that he come frum. You'll see. The man that owns it is honest as daylight and ef you don't come back fer the horse he'll send you yer money." "Put poor Bismark will starfe!" wailed the Teuton. "Not he," chuckled Cal, "between here and Lariat is all fine grazing country, and there's lots of water. He'll get back fatter than he came out." "Dot is more than I'll do," wailed Herr Muller resignedly as Nat set the auto in motion once more and they left behind them the weakened bridge. "No auto 'ull ever go over that agin," commented Cal, looking back. "Not unless it has an aeroplane attachment," added Joe. But their attention now was all centred on the smoke that rose in front of them. The bridge had lain in a small depression so that they had not been able to see far beyond it, but as they rolled over the brow of the hill beyond, the cause of the uprising of the vapor soon became alarmingly apparent. A pungent smell was in the air. "Smells like the punks on Fourth of July," said Joe, as he sniffed. But joking was far from Cal's mind as he gazed through narrowed eyes. The smoke which had at first not been much more than a pillar, was now a vast volume of dark vapor rolling up crowdedly from the forests ahead of them. Worse still, the wind was sweeping the fire down toward the track they had to traverse. "The woods are on fire!" cried Nat as he gazed, and voicing the fear that now held them all. As he spoke, from out of the midst of the dark, rolling clouds of smoke, there shot up a bright, wavering flame. It instantly died down again, but presently another fiery sword flashed up, in a different direction, and hung above the dark woods. They could now hear quite distinctly, too, the sound of heavy, booming falls as big trees succumbed to the fire and fell with a mighty crash. "Great Scott, what are we going to do?" gasped Joe. "T-t-t-t-turn b-b-b-back!" said Ding-dong as if that settled the matter. "Py all means," chimed in Herr Muller, gazing ahead at the awe-inspiring spectacle. "How are you going to do that when that bridge won't hold us?" asked Nat. "Do you think we can beat the fire to the trail, Cal?" "We've gotter," was the brief, but comprehensive rejoinder. "But if we don't?" wailed Ding-dong. "Ef you can't find nothing ter say but that, jus' shut yer mouth," warned Cal in a sharp tone. His face was drawn and anxious. He was too old a mountaineer not to realize to a far greater extent than the boys the nature of the peril that environed them. His acute mind had already weighed the situation in all its bearings. In no quarter could he find a trace of hope, except in going right onward and trusting to their speed to beat the flames. True, they might have turned back and waited by the bridge, but the woods grew right up to the trail, and it would be only a matter of time in all probability before the flames reached there. In that case the Motor Rangers would have been in almost as grave a peril as they would by going on. The fire was nearly two miles from where they were, but Cal knew full well the almost incredible rapidity with which these conflagrations leap from tree to tree, bridging trails, roads, and even broad rivers. It has been said that the man or boy who starts a forest fire is an enemy to his race, and truly to any one that has witnessed the awful speed with which these fires devour timber and threaten big ranges of country, the observation must ever seem a just one. "Can't we turn off and outflank the flames?" asked Joe, as they sped on at as fast a pace as Nat dared to urge the car over the rough trail. Cal's answer was a wave of his hand to the thickset trees on either side. Even had it not been for the danger of fire reaching them before they could outflank it, the trunks were too close together to permit of any vehicle threading its way amidst them. There was but little conversation in the car as it roared on, leaping and careering over rocks and obstructions like a small boat in a heavy sea. The Motor Rangers were engaged in the most desperate race of their lives. As they sped along the eyes of all were glued on the trail ahead, with its towering walls of mighty pines and about whose bases chaparral and inflammable brush grew closely. The air was perceptibly warmer now, and once or twice a spark was blown into the car. Not the least awe-inspiring feature of a forest fire in the mountains is the mighty booming of the great trunks as they fall. It is as impressive as a funeral march. "Ouch, somebody burned my hand!" exclaimed Joe suddenly. But gazing down he saw that a big ember had lit on the back of it. He glanced up and noticed that the air above them was now full of the driving fire-brands. Overhead the dun-colored smoke was racing by like a succession of tempest-driven storm clouds. A sinister gloom was in the air. Suddenly, Cal, who had been half standing, gazing intently ahead, gave a loud shout and pointed in front of them. The others as they gazed echoed his cry of alarm. CHAPTER XXII. A DASH THROUGH THE FLAMES. The object thus indicated by Cal was in fact about as alarming a thing as they could have encountered. It was nothing more or less than the smoking summit of a big tree a few hundred feet ahead of them. As they gazed it broke into flame, the resinous leaves igniting with a succession of sharp cracks like pistol shots. In a second the tree was transformed into the semblance of an immense torch. Driven by the wind the flames went leaping and rioting among its neighbors till all above the Motor Rangers was a fiery curtain stretched between them and the sky. To make matters worse, the smoke, as acrid and pungent as chemical vapor, was driven in Nat's eyes, and he could hardly see to drive. His throat, too, felt hot and parched, and his gloves were singed and smoking in half a dozen places. "Get out that big bucket and fill it from the tank," he ordered as he drove blindly onward. "Guess it's about time," muttered Cal as he, guessing the rest of Nat's order, dashed the water right and left over the party, "we'd have bin on fire ourselves in a few seconds." Nat drove as fast as he dared, but the fire seemed to travel faster. The roar now resembled the voice of a mighty waterfall, and occasionally the sharp cracks of bursting trunks or falling branches filled the air. "The whole forest is going," bawled Cal, "put on more steam Nat." The boy did as he was directed and the beleaguered auto forged forward a little more swiftly. Suddenly, however, a happening that bade fair to put a dead stop to their progress occurred. Directly in front of them the chaparral had blazed about a tree, till it had eaten into the trunk. Weakened, the monster trembled for a moment and then plunged downward. "Lo-ok ou-t!" Cal bellowed the warning, and just in time. Nat, half blinded as he was, had not seen the imminent danger. With a crash like the subsidence of a big building, the tree toppled over and fell across the track, blazing fiercely, and with a shower of sparks and embers flying upward from it. [Illustration: As if it had been a leaping, hunting horse, the big car bounced and jolted over the log.] A new peril now threatened the already danger-surrounded lads, and their Western companion. The tree lay across their path, an apparently insurmountable object. A glance behind showed that the flames had already closed in, the fire, by some freak of the wind, having been driven back from their temporary resting place. But they knew that the respite was only momentary. Suddenly, the car surged forward, and before one of the party even realized that Nat had made up his mind they were rushing full tilt for the blazing log. "Wow!" yelled Cal carried away by excitement, as he sensed Nat's daring purpose, "he's going ter jump it--by thunder!" Even as he spoke the auto was upon the log and its front wheels struck the glowing, blazing barrier with a terrific thud. Had they not been prepared for the shock the Motor Rangers would have scattered out of the car like so many loose attachments. As if it had been a leaping, hunting horse, the big car bounced and jolted over the log, which was fully six feet in diameter. It came down again beyond it with a jounce that almost shook the teeth out of their heads, but the lads broke into a cheer in which Herr Muller's and Cal's voices joined, as they realized that Nat's daring had saved the day for them. Behind them lay the fiercely blazing forest, but in front the road was clear, although the resinous smell of the blaze and the smoke pall lay heavily above them still. A short distance further a fresh surprise greeted them. A number of deer, going like the wind, crossed the road, fleeing in what their instinct told them was a safe direction. They were followed by numerous wolves, foxes and other smaller animals. As they went onward they came upon a big burned-out patch in which an ember must have fallen, carried by some freak of the capricious wind. In the midst of it, squirming in slimy, scaly knots, were a hundred or more snakes of half a dozen kinds, all scorched and writhing in their death agonies. The boys were glad to leave the repulsive sight behind them. At last, after ascending a steep bit of grade they were able to gaze back. It was a soul-stirring sight, and one of unpassable grandeur. Below them the fire was leaping and raging on its way eastward. Behind it lay a smoking, desolate waste, with here and there a charred trunk standing upright in its midst. Already the blaze had swept across the trail, stripping it bare on either side. The lads shuddered as they thought that but for good fortune and Nat's plucky management of the car, they might have been among the ashes and débris. "Wall, boys," said Cal, turning to them, "you've seen a forest fire. What do you think of it?" "I think," said Nat, "that it is the most terrible agent of destruction I have ever seen." "I t-t-t-think we need a w-w-w-ash," stuttered Ding-dong. They burst into a laugh as they looked at one another and recognized the truth of their whimsical comrade's words. With faces blackened and blistered by their fiery ordeal and with their clothes scorched and singed in a hundred places, they were indeed a vagabond looking crew. "I'll bet if old Colonel Morello could see us now we'd scare him away," laughed Joe, although it pained his blistered lips to indulge in merriment. "Wall, there's a stream a little way down in that hollow," said Cal, pointing, "we'll have a good wash when we reach it." "And maybe I won't be glad, too," laughed Nat, setting the brakes for the hill ahead of them. Suddenly Ding-dong piped up. "S-s-s-s-say, m-m-m-may I m-m-m-make a remark?" "Certainly, boy, half a dozen of them," said Cal. "It's a go-g-g-g-good thing we lost Bismark," grinned Ding-dong, in which sage observation they all perforce acquiesced. "I've got something to say myself," observed Joe suddenly, "maybe you other fellows have noticed it? This seat is getting awfully hot." "By ginger, so it is," cried Cal suddenly, springing up from the easy posture he had assumed. "L-l-l-ook, there is s-s-s-smoke c-c-c-coming out from back of the car!" cried Ding-dong alarmedly. As he spoke a volume of smoke rolled out from behind them. "Good gracious, the car's on fire!" yelled Nat, "throw some water on it quick!" "Can't," exclaimed Cal, "we used it all up coming through the flames yonder." "We'll burn up!" yelled Joe despairingly. Indeed it seemed like it. Smoke was now rolling out in prodigious quantities from beneath the tonneau and to make the possibilities more alarming still, the reserve tank full of gasolene was located there. The tonneau had now grown so hot that they could not sit down. "Get out, everybody," yelled Joe, as badly scared as he had ever been in his life. "Yep, let us out, Nat," begged Cal. The Westerner was no coward, but he did not fancy the idea of being blown sky high on top of an explosion of gasolene any more than the rest. "Good thing I haven't got on my Sunday pants," the irrepressible Westerner remarked. "Hey, Nat," he yelled the next minute, as no diminution of speed was perceptible, "ain't you going ter stop?" "Not on your life," hurled back Nat, without so much as turning his head. He evidently had some plan, but what it was they could not for the life of them tell. Their hearts beat quickly and fast with a lively sensation of danger as the burning auto plunged on down the rough slope. All at once Joe gave a shout of astonishment. "I see what he's going to do now!" he exclaimed. So fast was the auto travelling that hardly had the words left his lips before they were fairly upon the little rivulet or creek Cal's acute eyes had spied from the summit of the hill. The next instant they were in it, the water coming up to the hubs. Clouds of white steam arose about the car and a great sound of hissing filled the air as the burning portion encountered the chill of the water. "Wall, that beats a fire department," exclaimed Cal, as, after remaining immersed for a short time, Nat drove the car up the opposite bank which, luckily, had a gentle slope. As Cal had remarked, it did indeed beat a fire department, for the water had put out the flames effectually. An investigation showed that beyond having charred and blistered the woodwork and paint that the fire had fortunately done no damage. It would take some little time to set things to rights, though, after the ordeal they had all gone through, and so it was decided that they would camp for a time at the edge of the river. "Hullo, what's all that going on over there?" wondered Joe, as he pointed to a cloud of dust in the distance. Cal rapidly shinned up a tree, and shading his eyes with his hand, gazed for some moments in the direction of the cloud. "Sheep!" he announced as he slid down again, "consarn thet Jeb Scantling, now I know who set thet fire." The boys looked puzzled till Cal went on to explain. "You know I told you fellows that cattlemen was dead sore at sheepmen," he said, "and that's the reason." He jerked one brown thumb backward to indicate that "that" was the fire. "Do you mean to say that Jeb Scantling started it?" gasped Nat. The idea was a new one to him. "Wall, I'd hate to accuse any one of doing sich a thing," rejoined Cal non-committally, "but," he added with a meaning emphasis, "I've heard of sheepmen setting tracts on fire afore this." "But whatever for?" inquired Joe in a puzzled tone. "So's to burn the brush away and hev nice green grass in the spring," responded Cal. "Well, that's a nice idea," exclaimed Nat, "so they burn up a whole section of country to get feed for a few old sheep." "Yep," nodded Cal, "and that's what is at the bottom of most of the sheep and cattlemen's wars you read about." At first the boys felt inclined to chase up Jeb, but they concluded that it would be impracticable, so, allowing the sheepman to take his distant way off into the lonelier fastnesses of the Sierras, they hastened to the stream and began splashing about, enjoying the sensation hugely. Suddenly a voice on the bank above hailed them. Somewhat startled they all turned quickly and burst into a roar of laughter as they saw Herr Muller, who had slipped quietly from among them "holding them up" with a camera. "Lookd idt breddy, blease," he grinned, "a picdgure I take idt." Click! And there the whole crew were transferred to a picture for future development. "I guess we won't be very proud of that picture," laughed Nat, turning to his ablutions once more. "No, we must answer in the negative," punned Joe. But the next minute he paid the penalty as Cal leaped upon him and bore him struggling to the earth. Over and over they rolled, Cal attempting to stuff a handful of soapsuds in the punning youth's mouth. "Help! Nat!" yelled Joe. "Not me," grinned Nat, enjoying the rough sport, "you deserve your fate." Soon after order was restored and they sat down to a meal to which they were fully prepared to do ample justice. "Say," remarked Cal suddenly, with his mouth full of canned plum pudding, "this stream and those sheep back yonder put me in mind of a story I once heard." "What was it?" came the chorus. "Wall, children, sit right quiet an' I'll tell yer. Oncet upon a time thar was a sheepman in these hills----" "Sing ho, the sheepman in the hills!" hummed Joe. "Thar was a sheepman in these hills," went on Cal, disdaining the interruption, "who got in trouble with some cattlemen, the same way as this one will if they git him. Wall, this sheepman had a pal and the two of them decided one day that ef they didn't want ter act as reliable imitations of porous plasters they'd better be gitting. So they gabbled and got. Wall, the cattlemen behind 'em pressed em pretty dern close, an' one night they come ter a creek purty much like this one. "Wall, they was in a hurry ter git across as you may suppose, but the problem was ter git ther sheep over. You see they didn't want ter leave 'em as they was about all the worldly goods they had. But the sheep was inclined to mutiny." "Muttony, you mean, don't you?" grinned Joe, dodging to safe distance. When quiet was restored, Cal resumed. "As I said, the sheep was inclined ter argify"--this with a baleful glance at Joe--"and so they decided that they'd pick up each sheep in ther arms and carry them over till they got the hull three thousand sheep across ther crick. You see it wuz ther only thing ter do." The boys nodded interestedly. "Wall, one of ther fellows he picks up a sheep and takes it across and comes back fer another, and then ther other feller he does the same and in the meantime ther first feller had got his other across and come back fer more and ther second was on his way over and----" "Say, Cal," suggested Nat quietly, "let's suppose the whole bunch is across. You see----" "Say, who's tellin' this?" inquired Cal indignantly. "You are, but----" "Wall, let me go ahead in my own way," protested the Westerner. "Let's see where I was; I--oh yes, wall, and then ther other feller he dumped down his sheep and come back fer another and----Say, how many does that make, got across?" "Search me," said Joe. Nat shook his head. "I d-d-d-d-on't know," stuttered Ding-dong Bell. "Diss iss foolishness-ness," protested Herr Muller indignantly. "Wall, that ends it," said Cal tragically, "I can't go on." "Why not?" came an indignant chorus. "Wall, you fellers lost count of ther sheep and there ain't no way of going on till we get 'em all over. You see there's three thousand and----" This time they caught a merry twinkle in Cal's eye, and with wild yells they arose and fell upon him. It was a ruffled Cal who got up and resumed a sandy bit of canned plum pudding. "You fellers don't appreciate realism one bit," grumbled Cal. "Not three thousand sheep-power realism," retorted Nat with a laugh. CHAPTER XXIII. THE HUT IN THE MOUNTAINS. The next morning they were off once more. As may be imagined each one of the party was anxious to reach the canyon in which Cal's mine was located. There they would be in touch with civilization and in a position to retaliate upon the band of Col. Morello if they dared to attack them. On the evening of the second day they found themselves not far from the place, according to Cal's calculations. But they were in a rugged country through which it would be impossible to proceed by night, so it was determined to make camp as soon as a suitable spot could be found. As it so happened, one was not far distant. A gentle slope comparatively free from rocks and stones, and affording a good view in either direction, was in the immediate vicinity. The auto, therefore, was run up there and brought to a halt, and the Motor Rangers at once set about looking for a spring. They had plenty of water in the tank, but preferred, if they could get it, to drink the fresh product. Water that has been carried a day or two in a tank is not nearly as nice as the fresh, sparkling article right out of the ground. "Look," cried Joe, as they scattered in search of a suitable spot, "there's a little hut up there." "M-m-m-maybe a h-h-h-hermit l-l-lives there," suggested Ding-dong in rather a quavering voice. "Nonsense," put in Nat, "that hut has been deserted for many years. See the ridge pole is broken, and the roof is all sagging in. Let's go and explore it." With a whoop they set out across the slope for the ruined hut, which stood back in a small clearing cut out of the forest. Blackened stumps stood about it but it was long since the ground had been cultivated. A few mouldering corn stalks, however, remained to show that the place had once been inhabited. As for the hut itself, it was a primitive shelter of rough logs, the roof of which had been formed out of "slabs" split from the logs direct. A stone chimney was crumbling away at one end, but it was many a year since any cheerful wreaths of smoke had wound upward from it. The boys were alone, Cal and Herr Muller having remained to attend to the auto and build a fire. Somehow, in the fading evening light, this ruined human habitation on the edge of the dark Sierran forest had an uncanny effect on the boys. The stillness was profound. And half consciously the lads sank their voices to whispers as they drew closer. "S-s-s-s-say hadn't we b-b-b-better go back and g-g-g-get a g-gun?" suggested Ding-dong in an awe-struck tone. "What for," rejoined Joe, whose voice was also sunk to a low pitch, "not scared, are you?" "N-n-n-no, but it seems kind of creepy somehow." "Nonsense," said Nat crisply, "come on, let's see what's inside." By this time they were pretty close to the place, and a few strides brought Nat to the rotting door. It was locked apparently, for, as he gave it a vigorous shake, it did not respond but remained closed. "Come on, fellows. Bring your shoulders to bear," cried Nat, "now then all together!" Three strong young bodies battered the door with their shoulders with all their might, and at the first assault the clumsy portal went crashing off its hinges, falling inward with a startling "bang." "Look out!" yelled Nat as it subsided, and it was well he gave the warning. Before his sharp cry had died out a dark form about the size of a small rabbit came leaping out with a squeak like the sound made by a slate pencil. Before the boy could recover from his involuntary recoil the creature was followed by a perfect swarm of his companions. Squeaking and showing their teeth the creatures came pouring forth, their thousands of little eyes glowing like tiny coals. "Timber rats!" shouted Nat, taking to his heels, but not before some of the little animals had made a show of attacking him. Nat was too prudent a lad to try conclusions with the ferocious rodents, which can be savage as wild cats, when cornered. Deeming discretion the better part of valor he sped down the hillside after Ding-dong and Joe, who had started back for the camp at the first appearance of the torrent of timber rats. From a safe distance the lads watched the exodus. For ten minutes or more the creatures came rushing forth in a solid stream. But at last the stampede began to dwindle, and presently the last old gray fellow joined his comrades in the woods. "Great Scott!" exclaimed Joe, "did you ever see such a sight?" "Well, I've heard of places in which the rats gathered in immense numbers, but I never knew before that such a thing as we have seen was possible," replied Nat; "there must have been thousands." "Mum-m-m-m-millions," stuttered Ding-dong, his eyes still round with astonishment. "I suppose some supplies were left in there," suggested Nat, "and that the rats gathered there and made a regular nesting place of it after the owner departed." "Well, now that they have all cleared out, let's go and have a look," said Joe. "Might as well," agreed Nat, "it's a good thing those creatures didn't take it into their heads to attack us, as I have read they have done to miners. They might have picked our bones clean." They entered the hut with feelings of intense curiosity. It was well that they trod gingerly as they crossed the threshold, for the floor was so honeycombed with the holes of the timber rats that walking was difficult and even dangerous. The creatures had evidently gnawed through the sill beams supporting the floor, for the hearthstone in front of the open fireplace had subsided and sagged through into the foundations, leaving a big open space. The boys determined to explore this later but in the meantime other things in the hut attracted their attention. There was a rough board table with a cracker box to serve as chair drawn up close to it. But both the table and the box had been almost gnawed to pieces by the ravenous rats. Some tin utensils stood upon the table but all trace of what they might have contained had, of course, vanished. Even pictures from illustrated magazines which had once been pasted on the walls had been devoured, leaving only traces to show what they had been. Nat, while the others had been investigating at large, had made his way to the corner of the hut where a rude bunk had been built. As he gazed into its dark recesses he shrank back with a startled cry. "Fellows! Oh, fellows! Come here!" The other two hastened to his side and were scarcely less shocked than he at what they saw. Within the bunk, the bed clothing of which had been devoured wholesale, lay a heap of whitened bones. A skull at the head of the rude bed-place told all too clearly that the owner had either been killed or had died in the lonely place and had been devoured by the rats. The grisly evidences were only too plain. The boys were almost unnerved by this discovery, and it was some time before any one of them spoke. Then Nat said in a low tone, almost a whisper:-- "I wonder who he was?" "There's a tin box," said Joe, pointing to a receptacle beneath the bunk, "maybe there's something in that to tell." "Perhaps," said Nat, picking the article up. It was a much battered case of the type known as "despatch box." The marks of the rats' teeth showed upon it, but it had not been opened. A rusty hammer with the handle half gnawed off lay a short distance away. With one sharp blow of this tool Nat knocked the lock off the despatch box. He gave a cry of triumph as he opened it. Within, yellow and faded, were several papers. "Let's get into the open air and examine these," suggested Nat, who was finding the ratty odor of the place almost overpowering. The others gladly followed him. Squatting down outside the hut in the fading light, they opened the first paper. It seemed to be a will of some sort and was signed Elias Goodale. Putting it aside for further perusal, Nat, in turn, opened and glanced at a packet of faded letters in a woman's handwriting, a folded paper containing a lock of hair, seemingly that of an infant, and at last a paper that seemed fresher than the others. This ink, instead of being a faded brown, was black and clear. The paper seemed to have been torn from a blank book. "Read it out," begged Joe. "All right," said Nat, "there doesn't seem to be much of it, so I will." Holding the paper close to his eyes in the waning day, the boy read as follows:-- "I am writing this with what I fear is my last conscious effort. It will go with the other papers in the box, and some day perhaps may reach my friends. I hope and pray so. It has been snowing for weeks and weeks. In my solitude it is dreadful, but no more of that. I was took down ill three days ago and have been steadily getting worse. It is hard to die like this on the eve of my triumph, but if it is to be it must be. The sapphires--for I found them at last--are hid under the hearthstone. I pray whoever finds this to see that they are restored to my folks whom I wronged much in my life before I came out here. "As I write this I feel myself growing weaker. The timber rats--those terrible creatures--have grown quite bold now. They openly invade the hut and steal my stores. Even if I recover I shall hardly have enough to live out the winter. The Lord have mercy on me and bring this paper to the hands of honest men. They will find details in the other papers of my identity." "Is that all?" asked Joe as Nat came to a stop. "That's all," rejoined Nat in a sober voice. "What do you think of it?" "That we'd better tell Cal and see what he advises." "That's my idea, too. Come on, let's tell him about it." The Motor Rangers lost no time in hastening back to the camp and Cal's face of amazement as he heard their story was a sight to behold. As for Herr Muller he tore his hair in despair at not having secured a photograph of the rats as they poured out of the ruined hut. "I've heard of this Elias Goodale," said Cal as he looked over the papers. "He was an odd sort of recluse that used to come to Lariat twice a year for his grub. The fellows all thought he was crazy. He was always talking about finding sapphires and making the folks at home rich. I gathered that some time he had done 'em a great wrong of some kind and wanted to repair it the best way he could. Anyhow, he had a claim hereabouts that he used to work on all the time. The boys all told him that the Injuns had taken all the sapphires there ever was in this part of the hills out of 'em, but he kep' right on. I last heard of him about a year ago--poor chap." "Was he old?" asked Nat. "Wall, maybe not in years, but in appearance he was the oldest, saddest chap you ever set eyes on. The boys all thought he was loony, but to me it always appeared that he had some sort of a secret sorrow." "Poor fellow," exclaimed Nat, "whatever wrong he may have done his death atoned for it." They were silent for a minute or so, thinking of the last scenes in that lonely hut with the snow drifting silently about it and the dying man within cringing from the timber rats. "Say!" exclaimed Joe suddenly, starting them out of this sad reverie, "what's the matter with finding out if he told the truth about those sapphires or if it was only a crazy dream?" "You're on, boy," exclaimed Cal, "I think myself that he must hev found a lot of junk and figgered out in his crazy mind they wuz sapphires and hid 'em away." "It's worth investigating, anyhow," said Nat, starting up followed by the others. It took them but a few seconds to reach the hut. Having entered they all crowded eagerly about the hearthstone. Cal dropped into the hole with his revolver ready for any stray rats that might remain, but not a trace of one was to be seen. Suddenly he gave a shout and seized a rough wooden box with both hands. "Ketch hold, boys," he cried, "it's so heavy I can't hardly heft it." Willing hands soon drew the box up upon the crazy floor, and Nat produced the rusty hammer. "Now to see if it was all a dream or reality," he cried, as he brought the tool down on the half rotten covering. The wood split with a rending sound and displayed within a number of dull-looking, half translucent rocks. "Junk!" cried Cal, who had hoisted himself out of the hole by this time, "a lot of blame worthless old pyrites." "Not py a chug ful," came an excited voice as Herr Muller pressed forward, "dem is der purest sapphires I haf effer seen." "How do you know?" demanded Nat quickly. "Pecos vunce py Amstertam I vork py a cheweller's. I know stones in der rough and dese is an almost priceless gollecdion." "Hoorooh!" yelled Cal, "we'll all be rich." He stepped quickly forward and prepared to scoop up a handful of the rough-looking stones, but Nat held him back. "They're not ours, Cal," he said, "they belong to the folks named in that will." "You're right, boy," said Cal abashed, "I let my enthoosiasm git away with me. But what are we going to do about it? Them folks don't live around here." "We'll have to find them and----Hark!" The boy gave an alarmed exclamation and looked behind him. He could have sworn that a dark shadow passed the window as they bent above the dully-gleaming stones. But although he darted to the door like a flash, nothing was to be seen outside. "What's the matter?" asked Cal, curiously. "Nothing," was the quiet rejoinder, "I thought I saw another timber rat, but I guess I was mistaken." CHAPTER XXIV. FACING THEIR FOES. "Nat, wake up!" "_Nat!_" "NAT!" Joe's third exclamation awoke the slumbering boy and he raised himself on the rough couch on one arm. "What is it, Joe?" he asked, gazing in a startled way at his chum. Joe was sitting bolt upright on the rough, wooden-framed bed, and gazing through a dilapidated window outside upon the moon-flooded canyon. "Hark!" whispered Joe, "don't you hear something?" "Nothing but the water running down that old flume behind the hut." "That's queer, I don't hear it any more either," said Joe; "guess it was a false alarm." "Guess so," assented Nat, settling down once more in the blankets. From various parts of the rough hut came the steady, regular breathing of Ding-dong Bell, Cal and Herr Muller. The latter must have been having a nightmare for he kept muttering:---- "Lookd oudt py der sapphires. Lookd oudt!" "No need for him to worry, they are safe enough in the hiding place where Cal used to keep his dust when he had any," grunted Joe, still sitting erect and on the alert, however. Somehow he could not get it out of his head that outside the hut he had heard stealthy footsteps a few moments before. The Motor Rangers and their friends had arrived at Cal's hut in the canyon that afternoon. Their first care had been to dispose safely of the box of precious stones in the hiding place mentioned by Joe. The evening before their last act at the camp by the ruined hut had been to consign the remains of the dead miner to a grave under the great pines. Nat with his pocketknife had carved a memorial upon a slab of timber. "Sacred to the memory of Elias Goodale. Died----." * * * * * And so, with a last look backward at the scene of the lonely tragedy of the hills, they had proceeded. Nat had not mentioned to his companions that he was sure that he had seen some one at the window, as they bent over the sapphires. After all it might have been an hallucination. The boy's first and natural assumption had been that whoever had peeped through the window was a member of Col. Morello's band, sent forward to track them. But then he recollected the burned forest that lay behind. It seemed hardly credible that any member of the band could have passed that barrier and arrived at the hut at almost the same time as the Motor Rangers. Had Nat known what accurate and minute knowledge the colonel possessed of the secret trails and short cuts of that part of the Sierras he might not, however, have been so incredulous of his first theory. The same afternoon they had reached a summit from which Cal, pointing downward, had shown them a scanty collection of huts amid a dark sea of pines. "That's the place," he said. Half an hour's ride had brought them to the canyon which they found had been deserted even by the patient Chinamen, since Cal's last visit. His hut, however, was undisturbed and had not been raided by timber rats, thanks to an arrangement of tin pans set upside down which Cal had contrived on the corner posts. The afternoon had been spent in concealing the sapphire chest in a recess behind some rocks some distance from the hut. A short tour of exploration followed. As Cal had said on a previous occasion, the camp had once been the scene of great mining activity. Traces of it were everywhere. The hillside was honeycombed with deserted workings and mildewed embankments of slag. Scrub and brush had sprung up everywhere, and weeds flourished among rotting, rusty mining machinery. It was a melancholy spot, and the boys had been anxious to leave it and push on to Big Oak Flat, ten miles beyond. But by the time they reached this decision it was almost dark and the road before them was too rough to traverse by night. It had been decided therefore to camp in Cal's hut that night. "Pity we can't float like a lot of logs," said Joe, as he stood looking at the water roaring through the flume which was a short distance behind the hut. "Yep," rejoined Cal, "if we could, we'd reach Big Oak Flat in jig time. This here flume comes out thereabouts." "Who built it?" inquired Nat, gazing at the moss-grown contrivance through which the water was rushing at a rapid rate. There had been a cloudburst on a distant mountain and the stream was yellow and turbid. At other times, so Cal informed them, the flume was almost dry. "Why," said Cal, in reply to Nat's question, "it was put up by some fellows who thought they saw money in lumbering here. That was after the mines petered out. But it was too far to a market and after working it a while they left. We've always let the flume stand, as it is useful to carry off the overflow from the river above." Somehow sleep wouldn't come to Joe. Try as he would he could not doze off. He counted sheep jumping over a fence, kept tab of bees issuing from a hive and tried a dozen other infallible recipes for inducing slumber. But they wouldn't work. Nat, after his awakening, had, however, dozed off as peacefully as before. Suddenly, Joe sat up once more. He had been electrified by the sound of a low voice outside the hut. This time there was no mistake. Some human being was prowling about that lonely place. Who could it be? He was not kept long in doubt. It was the voice of Dayton. Low as it was there was no mistaking it. Joe's heart almost stopped beating as he listened:-- "They're off as sound as so many tops, colonel. All we've got to do is to go in and land the sapphires, and the kid, too." "You are sure they have them?" "Of course. Didn't I see them in old Goodale's hut? You always said the old fellow was crazy. I guess you know better now. These cubs blundered into the biggest sapphire find I ever heard of." Joe was up now, and cautiously creeping about the room. One after another he awoke his sleeping companions. Before arousing Herr Muller, however, he clapped a hand over the German's mouth to check any outcry that the emotional Teuton might feel called upon to utter. Presently the voices died out and cautiously approaching the window Nat could see in the moonlight half a dozen dark forms further down the canyon. Suddenly a moonbeam glinted brightly on a rifle barrel. "They mean business this time and no mistake," thought Nat. Tiptoeing back he told the others what he had seen. "Maybe we can ketch them napping," said Cal, "oh, if only we had a telephone, the sheriff could nab the whole pack." "Yes, but we haven't," said the practical Nat. Cal tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack. If there had been any doubt that they were closely watched it was dispelled then. Zip! _Phut!_ Two bullets sang by Cal's ears as he jumped hastily back, and buried themselves in the door jamb. "Purty close shooting for moonlight," he remarked coolly. "What are we going to do?" demanded Joe. "Well, thanks to our foresight in bringing in all the rifles and ammunition, we can make things interesting for them coyotes fer a long time," rejoined Cal. "But in this lonely place they could besiege us for a month if need be," said Nat. Cal looked grave. "That's so, lad," he agreed, "we'd be starved and thirsted out before long. If only we could communicate with Big Oak Flat." Nat dropped off into one of his deep studies. The boy's active mind was revolving the situation. It resolved itself into a very simple proposition. The colonel's band was well armed. They had ample opportunities for getting food and water. Situated as the Motor Rangers were, the others could keep them bottled up as long as they could stand it. Then nothing would be left but surrender. Nat knew now from what Joe had told him, that it was no fancy he had had at the hut. Dayton had been on their track and had unluckily arrived in time for his cupidity to be tempted by the sight of the sapphires. His injury when the man-trap fell must have been only a slight one. Nat knew the character of the outlaws too well to imagine that they would leave the canyon till they had the sapphire box and could wreak their revenge on the Motor Rangers. True, as long as their ammunition held out the occupants of the hut could have stood off an army. But as has been said, without food or water they were hopeless captives. Unless--unless---- Nat leaped up from the bedstead with a low, suppressed:-- "_Whoop!_" "You've found a way out of it?" exclaimed Joe, throwing an arm around his chum's shoulder. "I think so, old fellow--listen." They gathered around while in low tones Nat rehearsed his plan. "I ain't er goin' ter let you do it," protested Cal. "But you must, Cal, it's our only chance. You are needed here to help stand off those rascals. It is evident that they are in no hurry to attack us. They know that they can starve us out if they just squat down and wait." "Thet's so," assented Cal, scratching his head, "I guess there ain't no other way out of it but--Nat, I think a whole lot of you, and don't you take no chances you don't have to." "Not likely to," was the rejoinder, "and now the sooner I start the better, so good-bye, boys." Nat choked as he uttered the words, and the others crowded about him. "Donner blitzen," blurted out Herr Muller, "I dink you are der pravest poy I effer heardt of, und----" Nat cut him short. There was a brief hand pressure between himself and Joe, the same with Ding-dong and the others, and then the lad, with a quick, athletic movement, caught hold of a roof beam and hoisted himself upward toward a hole in the roof through which a stone chimney had once projected. Almost noiselessly he drew himself through it and the next moment vanished from their view. "Now then to cover his retreat," said Joe, seizing his rifle. The others, arming themselves in the same way rushed toward the window. Through its broken panes a volley was discharged down the canyon. A chorus of derisive yells greeted it from Morello's band. "Yell away," snarled Cal, "maybe you'll sing a different tune before daybreak." In the meantime Nat had emerged on the roof of the cabin. It was a difficult task he had set himself and this was but the first step. But as the volley rang out he knew that the attention of the outlaws had been distracted momentarily and he wriggled his way down toward the eaves at the rear of the hut. Luckily, the roof sloped backward in that direction, so that he was screened from the view of any one in front. Reaching the eaves he hung on for a second, and then dropped the ten feet or so to the ground. Then crouching like an Indian he darted through the brush till he reached the side of the old flume. He noted with satisfaction that the water was still running in a good stream down the mouldering trench. With a quick, backward look, Nat cast off his coat and boots, and flinging them aside picked up a board about six feet long that lay near by. The water at the head of the flume traversed a little level of ground, and here it ran more slowly than it did when it reached the grade below. Extending himself full length on the board, just as a boy does on a sleigh on a snowy hill, Nat held on for a moment. He gave one look about him at the moonlit hills, the dark pines and the rocky cliffs. Then, with a murmured prayer, he let go. The next instant he was shooting down through the flume at a rate that took his breath away. All about him roared the voices of the water while the crosspieces over his head whizzed by in one long blur. CHAPTER XXV. THROUGH THE FLUME. Faster than he had ever travelled before in his life Nat was hurtled along down the flume. Water dashed upward into his face, half choking him and occasionally his board would hit the wooden side with a bump that almost threw him off. His knuckles were bruised and bleeding and his head dizzy from the motion. It was the wildest ride that the lad, or any other lad for that matter, had ever undertaken. Suddenly, ahead of him--above the noise of the rushing water--came another sound, a deep-throated, sullen thunder. As he shot along with the speed of a projectile, Nat realized what the strange sound betokened. The end of the flume. Cal had told them that the raised water-course discharged its contents into a big pool at that point. With a sudden sinking of the heart Nat realized that he had forgotten to inquire how high the drop was. If it was very high--or if there was but little water in the pool below the flume--he would be dashed to pieces, or injured so that he could not swim, and thus drown. But even as the alarming thought was in his mind, Nat felt himself shot outward into space. Instinctively his hands came together and he dived downward, entering the water about twenty feet below him, with a clean dive. For a space the waters closed above the lad's head and he was lost to view in the moonlit pool. When he came to the surface, out of breath and bruised, but otherwise uninjured, he saw that he was in what had formerly been used as a "collection-pool" for the logs from the forest above. He struck out for the shore at once and presently emerged upon the bank. But as he clambered out, the figure of a Chinaman who had been seated fishing on the brink galvanized into sudden life. The Mongolian was poaching in private waters under cover of the darkness and was naturally startled out of a year's growth at the sudden apparition. With an ear-splitting screech the Mongolian leaped about three feet into the air as if propelled by a spring, and then, with his stumpy legs going under him like twin piston rods, he made tracks for the town. "Bad spill-it! Bad spill-it! He come catchee me!" he howled at the top of his voice, tearing along. As he dashed into the town a tall man dressed in Western style, and with a determined, clean-cut face under his broad-brimmed sombrero, stepped out of the lighted interior of the post-office, where the mail for the early stage was being sorted. "Here, Sing Lee," he demanded, catching the astonished Chinaman by the shoulder and swinging him around, "what's the matter with you?" "Wasee malla me, Missa Sheliff? Me tellee you number one chop quickee timee. Me fish down by old lumbel yard and me see spill-it come flum watel!" "What?" roared Jack Tebbetts, the sheriff, "a ghost? More likely one of Morello's band; I heard they were around here somewhere. But hullo, what's this?" He broke off as a strange figure came flying down the street, almost as fast as the fear-crazed Chinaman. "Wow!" yelled the sheriff, drawing an enormous gun as this weird figure came in view, "Halt whar you be, stranger? You're a suspicious character." Nat, out of breath, wet through, bruised, bleeding and with his clothing almost ripped off him, could not but admit the truth of this remark. But as he opened his mouth to speak a sudden dizziness seemed to overcome him. His knees developed strange hinges and he felt that in another moment he would topple over. The sheriff stepped quickly forward and caught him. "Here, hold up, lad," he said crisply, "what's ther trouble?" * * * * * "One o'clock. We ought to be hearing from Nat soon." Cal put his old silver watch back in his pocket and resumed his anxious pacing of the floor. The others, in various attitudes of alertness, were scattered about the place. Since Nat's departure they had been, as you may imagine, at a pretty tight tension. Somehow, waiting there for an attack or for rescue, was much more trying than action would have been. "Do you guess he got through all right?" asked Joe. "I hope so," rejoined Cal, "but it was about as risky a bit of business as a lad could undertake. I blame myself for ever letting him do it." "If Nat had his mind made up you couldn't have stopped him," put in Joe earnestly. "H-h-h-hark!" exclaimed Ding-dong. Far down the canyon they could hear a sound. It grew closer. For an instant a wild hope that it was the rescue party flashed through their minds. But the next instant a voice hailed them. Evidently Col. Morello had made up his mind that a siege was too lengthy a proceeding. "I will give you fellows in the hut one chance," he said in a loud voice, "give up that boy Nat Trevor and the sapphires and I will withdraw my men." Cal's answer was to take careful aim, and if Joe had not hastily pulled his arm down that moment would have been Morello's last. But as Cal's white face was framed in the dark window a bullet sang by viciously and showered them with splinters. "That's for a lesson," snarled Morello, "there are lots more where that came from." But as he spoke there came a sudden yell of alarm from his rear. "We're attacked!" came a voice. At the same instant the sound of a distant volley resounded. "Hooray! Nat made good!" yelled Cal, leaping about and cracking his fingers. The next instant a rapid thunder of hoofs, as the outlaws wheeled and made off, was heard. As their dark forms raced by, the posse headed by Sheriff Tebbetts and Nat, fired volley after volley at them, but only two fell, slightly wounded. The rest got clear away. A subsequent visit to their fortress showed that on escaping from the posse they had revisited it and cleaned all the loot out of it that they could. The express box stolen from Cal's stage was, however, recovered. As the posse galloped up, cheering till the distant canyons echoed and re-echoed, the besieged party rushed out. They made for Nat and pulled him from his horse. Then, with the young Motor Ranger on their shoulders, they paraded around the hut with him, yelling like maniacs, "'For he's a jolly good fellow'!" "And that don't begin to express it," said the sheriff to himself. "He's the grit kid," put in one of the hastily-gathered posse admiringly. And the "Grit Kid" Nat was to them henceforth. The remainder of the night was spent in the hut, Nat telling and retelling his wild experience in the flume. The next morning the posse set out at once at top speed for the fortress of Morello, the sapphire chest being carried in the auto which accompanied the authorities. Of course they found no trace of the outlaws; but the place was destroyed and can never again be used by any nefarious band. Nat and his friends were anxious for the sheriff to take charge of the sapphire find, but this he refused to do. It remained, therefore, for the Motor Rangers themselves to unravel the mystery surrounding it. How they accomplished this, and the devious paths and adventures into which the quest led them, will be told in the next volume of this series. Here also will be found a further account of Col. Morello and his band who, driven from their haunts by the Motor Rangers, sought revenge on the lads. Having remained in the vicinity of Big Oak Flat till every point connected with Morello and his band had been cleared up, the boys decided to go on to the famous Yosemite Valley. There they spent some happy weeks amid its awe-inspiring natural wonders. With them was Herr Muller and Cal. Bismark, as Cal had foretold, returned to the hotel at Lariat and Herr Muller got his money. But all the time the duty which devolved upon the Motor Rangers of finding Elias Goodale's heirs and bestowing their rich inheritance on them was not forgotten. Nat and his companions considered it in the nature of a sacred trust--this mission which a strange chance had placed in their hands. How they carried out their task, and what difficulties and dangers they faced in doing it, will be related in "THE MOTOR RANGERS ON BLUE WATER; OR, THE SECRET OF THE DERELICT." THE END. Reasons why you should obtain a Catalogue of our Publications _A postal to us will place it in your hands_ 1. You will possess a comprehensive and classified list of all the best standard books published, at prices less than offered by others. 2. You will find listed in our catalogue books on every topic: Poetry, Fiction, Romance, Travel, Adventure, Humor, Science, History, Religion, Biography, Drama, etc., besides Dictionaries and Manuals, Bibles, Recitation and Hand Books, Sets, Octavos, Presentation Books and Juvenile and Nursery Literature in immense variety. 3. You will be able to purchase books at prices within your reach; as low as 10 cents for paper covered books, to $5.00 for books bound in cloth or leather, adaptable for gift and presentation purposes, to suit the tastes of the most critical. 4. You will save considerable money by taking advantage of our SPECIAL DISCOUNTS, which we offer to those whose purchases are large enough to warrant us in making a reduction. HURST & CO., _Publishers_, 395, 397, 399 Broadway, New York. Motor Rangers Series By MARVIN WEST OUTDOOR LIFE STORIES FOR MODERN BOYS Cloth Bound Price 50¢ per volume. The Motor Rangers' Lost Mine. A new series dealing with an idea altogether original in juvenile fiction,--the adventures of a party of bright, enterprising youngsters in a splendid motor car. Their first trip takes them to the dim and mysterious land of Lower California. Naturally, as one would judge from the title, the lost mine, which proves to be Nat Trevor's rightful inheritance,--occupies much of the interest of the book. But the mine was in the possession of enemies so powerful and wealthy that it taxed the boys' resources to the uttermost to overcome them. How they did so makes absorbing reading. In this book also, the young motor rangers solve the mystery of the haunted Mexican cabin, and exterminate for all time a strange terror of the mountains which has almost devastated a part of the peninsula. The Motor Rangers too, have an exciting encounter with Mexican cowboys, which beginning comically, comes very near having a serious termination for all hands. Emphatically "third speed" books. Sold by Booksellers Everywhere. Hurst & Co., Publishers New York BORDER BOY SERIES BY FREMONT B. DEERING Frontier Stories for Modern Boys Cloth Bound Price, 50¢ per volume. The Border Boys on the Trail. There is little left of the romantic western life of which our forefathers delighted to read and in which they not infrequently took a part. The author of this series has, however, taken to himself modern conditions in this interesting section of the country in a vital way. The pages of this book throb with the strenuous outdoor life and pastimes of the ranch and range. The volume is as vivid as a western sunset and as lively as a bucking broncho. What boy will not want to read of the adventures of the ranchers and the boys in Grizzly Pass and the strange strategy of Black Ramon--the Border cattle-rustler which came nearly costing them all their lives? But the adventures do not terminate at the annihilation of the bridge by the rustler's gang. They elude pursuit for a time by this means but only for a time. The beginning of the end of their depredations comes when Jack and his cowpuncher chum escape from the bell-tower of the old mission. From then on to the conclusion of the book events come as fast as the discharge of an automatic rifle, or the rattling execution of the long roll on a snare-drum. No boy should fail to read how the Mexicans almost succeeded in releasing the pent-up waters of the irrigation dam and ruining a vast track of country. Thoroughly healthy in tone and appealing to manly standards the Border Boys are ideal chums for the wholesome lads of to-day. Sold by Booksellers Everywhere. HURST & CO., Publishers NEW YORK. BOY SCOUT SERIES BY LIEUT. HOWARD PAYSON MODERN BOY SCOUT STORIES FOR BOYS Cloth Bound Price, 50¢ per volume. The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol. A fascinating narrative of the doings of some bright boys who become part of the great Boy Scout movement. The first of a series dealing with this organization, which has caught on like wild fire among healthy boys of all ages and in all parts of the country. While in no sense text-book, the volume deals, amid its exciting adventures, with the practical side of Scouting. To Rob Blake and his companions in the Eagle Patrol, surprising, and sometimes perilous things happen constantly. But the lads, who are, after all, typical of most young Americans of their type, are resourceful enough to overcome every one of their dangers and difficulties. How they discover the whereabouts of little Joe, the "kid" of the patrol, by means of smoke telegraphy and track his abductors to their disgrace; how they assist the passengers of a stranded steamer and foil a plot to harm and perhaps kill an aged sea-captain, one must read the book to learn. A swift-moving narrative of convincing interest and breathless incident. Sold by Booksellers Everywhere. Hurst & Co. Publishers New York * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Varied hyphenation was retained. Page 54, "attampt" changed to "attempt" (and an attempt made) Page 160, "penertate" changed to "penetrate" (could not penetrate into) 
38123	----	[Illustration: The Girls Sat On the Broad Piazza.] THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT PALM BEACH OR PROVING THEIR METTLE UNDER SOUTHERN SKIES By LAURA DENT CRANE Author of The Automobile Girls at Newport, The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires, The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson, The Automobile Girls at Chicago, etc. Illustrated PHILADELPHIA HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY Copyright, 1913, by Howard E. Altemius PRINTED IN U. S. A. CONTENTS I. The Land of Dreams 7 II. A West Indian Squall 21 III. The Fair Unknown 32 IV. The Compact 43 V. The Daughter of Mrs. De Lancey Smythe 51 VI. The Countess Sophia 64 VII. Tea in the Cocoanut Grove 75 VIII. The Warning 87 IX. A Case of Mistaken Identity 95 X. The Secret Signals 105 XI. Wheels Within Wheels 113 XII. Maud Refuses to Be Rescued 123 XIII. A Surprise Party 132 XIV. The Plot Thickens 147 XV. Caught Napping 154 XVI. Welcome and Unwelcome Guests 166 XVII. The Midnight Intruder 179 XVIII. The Water Fête 189 XIX. Red Dominos 200 XX. Conclusion 204 The Automobile Girls at Palm Beach CHAPTER I THE LAND OF DREAMS "I don't believe anything could be more lovely than this," exclaimed Mollie Thurston, leaning back in a wicker chair on the piazza of one of the largest hotels at Palm Beach. "Right you are!" replied her friend, Ruth Stuart, as she gazed across the still blue waters of Lake Worth dotted with pleasure boats. "I can't decide whether I should like to ride in the automobile, or sail, or just sit in the cocoanut grove and listen to the music. Life seems so easy under a blue sky like this, and there are so many things to do that it is hard to make a choice." "What do people usually do at this hour?" Grace Carter asked. "A woman I talked with on the train told me there was a programme of amusements for every hour at Palm Beach." "Well, my dear, you have only to gaze about you and see for yourself. It is now high noon," answered Ruth, consulting her watch. Grace glanced quickly about her. All along the broad piazza, and under awnings on the lawn, a gay company of men, women and young people were sipping delicious iced fruit drinks in tall, thin glasses. "It is undoubtedly the witching hour for pineapple lemonades," said Ruth. "And we must be in the fashion immediately. Papa," she called to her father, who was immersed in the pages of a New York newspaper several days old, "you are not doing your duty by us. We are getting awfully thirsty." Mr. Stuart, clad in white, and looking the picture of comfort, smiled lazily over his paper at his daughter. "Order what you like, my dear. Am I not always at the command of the 'Automobile Girls'? What do you wish, little lady?" he asked, turning to Barbara Thurston, who had been lost in a day-dream and had heard nothing of the conversation. "I haven't any wish," responded Barbara. "I am too happy to be troubled with wishes." "Then suppose I wish for you, Bab?" suggested Ruth. "Go back to your own sweet dreams. I'll wake you when the wish comes true." Presently the four girls were sipping their fruit lemonades like the rest of the world at Palm Beach. On the breeze the sound of music was wafted to them from a morning concert in the distance. "Where is Aunt Sallie?" Ruth suddenly asked, again interrupting her father's reading. "This place has bewitched me so that I have forgotten even my beloved aunt. This is the land of dreams, I do believe. We are all spirits from some happy world." "Here comes your spirit aunt," returned Mr. Stuart, smiling. "She has evidently been spirited away by some other friendly spirits." The girls laughed as they saw the substantial figure of Miss Sallie Stuart strolling down the piazza. She was walking between two other persons, one a tall, middle-aged man with dark hair slightly tinged with gray, the other a young woman. They were all three talking animatedly. "Girls, look!" exclaimed Ruth, in suppressed excitement. "Aunt Sallie is with that Maud Warren. You remember we met her at Lenox, Bab, and she tried to ride you down in the famous race. Delightful creature--to keep away from." Ruth gave a contemptuous sniff, then added. "That nice looking man must be her father." "She looks as haughty as ever, and then some more," said Mollie aggressively. The girls giggled softly, then straightened their faces for the trio was almost upon them, and it was not safe to indulge in further conversation. After seeing that his charges were supplied with lemonade, Mr. Stuart had returned to his paper. "Robert," broke in Miss Sallie's dignified voice, "this is Mr. Warren and his daughter Miss Warren. They----" But at the first word Mr. Stuart had risen and the two men were enthusiastically shaking hands. "Why, Warren," exclaimed Mr. Stuart, "I had no idea that you were in this part of the world. The last time I saw you, you were ranching out in Idaho." "Quite true," replied Mr. Warren, smiling, "but that was ten years ago. A great many things have happened since then." He sighed and looked out over the blue lake. "Mrs. Warren died the next year," he said slowly. "Maud and I are alone." "I am deeply sorry to hear of your great loss," sympathized Mr. Stuart and his fine face saddened. He too had known that loss. Turning to Maud who had been exchanging rather distant greetings with the four girls, he said pleasantly. "So this is Maud. She was a little girl in short dresses when last I saw her. How these children do grow up." Maud smiled frigidly and for the fraction of a second allowed her hand to touch that of Mr. Stuart. "One must grow up some time, you know," she murmured. "I should like to stay eighteen forever," exclaimed Ruth, with enthusiasm. "Would you indeed?" remarked Maud Warren, raising her eyebrows. "How odd!" There was a brief silence. The four girls stared straight ahead and tried to control their desire to laugh. During their stay at Lenox the year before the circumstances of which having been fully told in the "Automobile Girls in the Berkshires," they had not been impressed with Maud Warren, on account of her disagreeable and overbearing manner. But the blasé air that she now affected, was in their candid eyes extremely ridiculous, and her remark to Ruth had filled them all with unseemly mirth. Maud Warren, however, serenely unconscious of what was passing through their minds, sank into a wicker chair, and deliberately turning her back upon the "Automobile Girls," began a conversation with Miss Sallie. The "Automobile Girls" dated their organization back to almost two years before, when Barbara Thurston had bravely stopped a runaway team of horses driven by Ruth Stuart, a rich western girl, summering in Kingsbridge, the home town of the Thurstons. A warm friendship had sprung up between Ruth Stuart, Barbara and Mollie Thurston, that resulted in a journey to Newport in Ruth's red motor car, familiarly known as Mr. A. Bubble. Grace Carter, a Kingsbridge girl, had been asked to complete the quartette of adventurous damsels, while Miss Sallie Stuart, Ruth's aunt had gone along as chaperon. After a series of remarkable events their trip ended with the capture of a society "cracksman," known to the police as the "Boy Raffles." The "Automobile Girls" then returned to Kingsbridge, where several weeks later, Mr. A. Bubble once more bore them away to the heart of the Berkshires. There they spent a delightful month, in a little log cabin, roughing it. In "The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires," the story of the little Indian "ghost" that haunted "Lost Man's Trail," and who afterwards turned out to be an Indian princess is charmingly related. After a winter of hard study, the "Automobile Girls" were again reunited, and in "The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson," their journey through the beautiful Sleepy Hollow Country is narrated. The eventful weeks spent in the ancestral home of Major Ten Eyck, an old friend of Miss Sallie Stuart's, ending with their brave fight to save the beautiful old house from destruction by forest fires, made the "Automobile Girls" stand out as true heroines. The best work since their initial adventure, however, had been done in Chicago, and the record of it, set down in "The Automobile Girls at Chicago," was not yet three months old. While on a holiday visit to Ruth, at her Chicago home, they had been the guests of the Presbys, relatives of the Stuarts, at their country place "Treasureholme." Owing to imprudent speculation in wheat, both Mr. Stuart and Mr. Presby had become heavily involved and were facing financial ruin. Through the efforts of Barbara Thurston, aided by the other "Automobile Girls" the rich treasure, buried by one of the ancestors, was discovered in time to save the Presby estate. Before leaving Chicago, Mr. Stuart had promised his daughter and her friends a sojourn at Palm Beach during the month of March. Now the "Automobile Girls" had actually arrived in the "Land of Flowers" eager for any pleasure that sunny Florida might yield them. The four young girls were unusually quiet as they sat idly looking out over the water. Maud Warren's arrival had cast a chill over them. It had been an enchanted land, Barbara reflected rather resentfully, now the enchantment was broken. Ruth sat covertly taking stock of Miss Warren's elaborate white lace gown and wondering why young girls ever insisted on aping so called "society" fashions. While Mollie and Grace speculated as to how long a call the Warrens were going to make. Maud, totally oblivious that she had been weighed in the balance by four stern young judges, and found wanting, languidly conversed with Miss Stuart, in her most grown-up manner. "Have you met the De Lancey Smythes, Miss Stuart?" she drawled. "They are too utterly charming. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe belongs to an old, old Southern family. She is a widow, with one daughter, Marian, a most delightful young woman. It was only through them that I was persuaded to come here." "Indeed," replied Miss Sallie. "We arrived yesterday. Therefore we have met no one, as yet." "Of course not," agreed Maud. "You really must meet them!" "I should be pleased to meet any friends of yours, Miss Warren," replied Miss Stuart courteously. "By the way, Stuart," said Mr. Warren, "what do you say to a sail in my launch, this afternoon? I should like to entertain some one besides the De Lancey Smythes. They are too fine for me. I am just a plain blunt man, and can't stand too many extra frills. Maud, see to it that you don't invite them. I absolutely refuse to be bothered with them, to-day." Maud flushed hotly at her father's contemptuous allusion to the De Lancey Smythes. But restraining her feelings she turned to Miss Stuart with a forced attempt at graciousness. "Won't you come for a sail? It will be awfully good of you." "We should be delighted, I am sure," replied Mr. Stuart, looking gravely at Maud. He then turned a compassionate gaze toward his friend, Mr. Warren. "That is, I mean we shall go with you, provided my sister has made no other plans." "Are you sure your launch won't pitch, Mr. Warren?" inquired Miss Stuart. "I am perfectly certain, Miss Stuart," replied the millionaire. "The lake is like a mill pond to-day. There is not a ripple on it." While they had been making their plans for the afternoon, a man had been leaning idly against the railing of the piazza. He now strolled quietly away, without having appeared to notice any one of them, or to have overheard any of their conversation. But Barbara had observed him. She had an unquenchable curiosity concerning faces. And this man appeared indefinably interesting. Was it the foreign cut of his dark suit, conspicuous among the crowds of white ones worn by most of the men at Palm Beach? Or was it his strong, clean-shaven face with its rather heavy bull-dog jaw, its square chin, and keen gray eyes, a little too narrow for Bab's taste? Bab did not know, then. But she took in the man's whole expression, and the adverse opinion she silently formed, at that time, she never had occasion to change. As the party was about to separate for luncheon two women appeared in a nearby doorway and stood looking up and down the piazza. "Oh, there are dear Marian and her mother!" cried Maud, hurrying over to greet her friends. "Dear Mrs. De Lancey Smythe," exclaimed Maud, with a defiant look toward her father, "I do so want you to go out with us in our launch this afternoon. Won't you let me introduce some new friends to you, who are going to sail with us?" Mr. Warren turned red. A look of disappointment, verging on anger crept into his good-natured brown eyes as his daughter deliberately defied him. The De Lancey Smythes glanced toward the Stuart party, with bored indifference. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe made some low-voiced remark to Maud who nodded her head slightly. Whereupon mother and daughter moved toward Miss Stuart with an air of haughty condescension. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe might have been anywhere from thirty-five to forty-five. She was tall, well-proportioned and a decided brunette. At a glance one would have decided her to be very handsome, but close observers would have noted a hard expression about the eyes and mouth that completely destroyed the effect of beauty. As for her daughter, Marian, she was a small, slender insignificant young woman who seemed entirely overshadowed by her mother's personality. Both mother and daughter were dressed perhaps a shade too elaborately for good taste, and there was something about them that immediately aroused a sense of vague disapproval in the minds of the Stuart party. "Maud is always so thoughtful of her friends," murmured Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, turning to Miss Sallie with well simulated appreciation. "She knows how fond we are of sailing." Miss Sallie looked sharply at the speaker. The De Lancey Smythes were evidently unaware of Mr. Warren's animosity toward them. She was about to frame some polite excuse for not going on the launch, hoping to thus nip in the bud the proposed sail, when suddenly meeting Mr. Warren's eyes, she saw an expression of entreaty in them that made her hesitate. "I hope you and your 'Automobile Girls' will not disappoint me," he said pleadingly. "Thank you," responded Miss Stuart. "We shall be pleased to go." With a formal bow to Mrs. De Lancey Smythe and her daughter, Miss Sallie marshaled her little force and left the piazza. "Very charming people," remarked Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, to Maud Warren, after they had disappeared. But there was an unpleasant light in her eyes, and a certain tightening of her lips that showed resentment at the manner of her reception by the Stuart party. "We shall be obliged to play our cards very carefully," she warned Marian, when in the privacy of their own apartment. "That Miss Stuart seems already inclined to be hostile. As for those girls----" "I think they're the nicest looking girls I've seen for a long time. Ever so much nicer than Maud Warren," exclaimed Marian. "Hold your tongue," commanded her mother angrily. "Don't let me hear any more remarks of that kind, or you'll have cause to regret them." Marian relapsed into sulky silence. She knew her mother only too well. Nevertheless she made up her mind to try honestly to make a good impression upon the first girls with whom she had ever wished to be friends. Mr. Stuart and Mr. Warren did not at once follow their respective charges in to luncheon, but sat down on a wide settee in one corner of the piazza for a long talk. One topic of conversation followed another, until at last Mr. Warren lowered his voice and said: "Stuart, I am going to ask a favor of you because I need your help more than I can say. You see," he went on, his face flushing painfully with embarrassment, "I have tried to give my daughter the proper sort of care. I have certainly spared no money in the effort. But what can money, alone, do for a motherless girl?" His voice choked a little. "Perhaps I should have married again, if only on Maud's account. But I tell you, Bob, I couldn't. My wife's memory is still too dear to me. No other woman has ever interested me." He paused a moment, then looked away, while Mr. Stuart patted his shoulder sympathetically. "And now," went on poor Mr. Warren, shaking his head sadly, "my girl has fallen in with a lot of society people who are doing her more harm than good--for instance, these people you have just seen are among the number. You wonder, perhaps, why I don't like the De Lancey Smythes. No one can deny that they make a good appearance but there's something about the mother that I distrust. She's not genuine, and although she tries to conceal it she's not well-bred. Maud won't believe it, and can't be made to see it. But I can. Now I believe, if she goes about with your four nice, wholesome girls and a fine woman like Miss Stuart, she'll open her eyes a trifle. And I want to ask you, old man, to stand by me and help me out. Ask your girls to help me save my girl from her own foolishness and the influence of just such people as these De Lancey Smythes. Will you help me Stuart, for 'auld lang syne'?" "Why of course I will, Tom," replied good-natured Mr. Stuart warmly, grasping Mr. Warren's hand. "I'll tell my sister, Sallie, too. She'll know just what to do with Maud." "But you understand, Bob, we shall be obliged to go at this business tactfully," protested poor Mr. Warren. "I am afraid my daughter is a difficult proposition at times, poor child. But she'll come through all right. She is only nineteen. There's a lot of time yet." "Oh, Sallie will manage. Trust Maud to her, my friend. And now, let's go in to luncheon," returned Mr. Stuart. At luncheon, Mr. Stuart repeated his conversation with Mr. Warren to Miss Sallie and the "Automobile Girls." "I am afraid Maud will be exceedingly difficult to manage," Miss Sallie demurred. "She is a law unto herself. As for those De Lancey Smythes, I shall endeavor to find out something about their social position." Miss Sallie looked about her with the air of a duchess. "But, since you have given your promise to your friend, we will do what we can for Maud." The girls also promised their aid. And so, for the time being, the matter was settled. CHAPTER II A WEST INDIAN SQUALL By half past two that afternoon Mr. Warren's launch with its party of pleasure seekers was well under way. The "Automobile Girls" had gathered in one end, and were enthusiastically commenting on the beauty of the scenery. Miss Sallie had been conscientiously trying to cultivate Maud Warren, and rather than antagonize her in the beginning had exerted herself to be agreeable to the De Lancey Smythes. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, however, had other views afoot than the cultivation of Miss Sallie, and had immediately engaged in conversation with Mr. Stuart. Hardly had the launch put out from shore, before she beckoned him to one side of the little deck, and complacently kept him there until Ruth, far from pleased with this turn of affairs, called to her father to join them. But Mrs. De Lancey Smythe proved equal to the occasion, for rising gracefully, she calmly strolled by Mr. Stuart's side to the end of the launch where the four girls were seated. Here they were joined by Miss Sallie, who had been watching the manoeuvres of the other woman with well-veiled contempt, and the conversation became general. "Do you know many people here, Mrs. Smythe?" asked Miss Sallie, turning to the other woman. "Only a few," replied Mrs. De Lancey Smythe indifferently. "Most of the people I know have been abroad all winter. Many of my dearest friends are among the peerage. Two people I know well, arrived to-day, however. The young Count de Sonde and his friend, Monsieur Duval." She pronounced the two names with a faultless accent that was not lost upon the practised ears of Ruth, who had spoken French fluently since she was a child and had had a French nursery governess for years. Whatever were her shortcomings, Mrs. De Lancey Smythe could at least speak French. "A real count!" exclaimed Mollie. "How interesting!" "Oh, we know lots of titled people," Marian interposed. "There were two countesses and a marquis at our hotel in Newport last summer." "Isn't all this lovely?" cried Barbara. She was not interested in counts and titles. She was keenly alive to the beauty of the scenery about them. "I can't decide which out-blues the other, the lake or the sky." "But aren't there a great many clouds in the sky?" questioned Ruth. "See how they have piled up over there? Do you suppose, by any chance, that we shall have rain? We were told that it never rained down here. It simply isn't tolerated." The launch was now running far out from the shore, which was lined with pretty villas, set here and there in the midst of cocoanut palms and oleander trees. Following the boat's path of rippling waves came another launch much smaller than Mr. Warren's. It was manned by two men who had apparently not observed them. The men were deep in earnest conversation. "Oh, Marian, there is the Count de Sonde with his friend!" exclaimed her mother. "How fortunate that we should run across them, just now." "Which one is the count?" asked Maud Warren. She had taken very little interest in anything before. "I hope he is not the older man." "No; he is the slender, dark-haired one," returned Mrs. Smythe. "He is dressed in white." In the meantime Mr. Stuart had changed his seat. He had come to Palm Beach to enjoy his four "Automobile Girls." No fascinating widow should swerve him from his original plans. Like most hard-working successful men he loved a holiday like a schoolboy and resented deeply any interference with his pleasure. "Are my girls having a good time?" he queried, smiling into four charming faces. "Yes, indeed!" exclaimed four voices in chorus. "We thought the scenery beautiful in the Berkshires and along the Hudson river, Mr. Stuart. But this is the most beautiful of all!" cried Mollie, clasping her small hands ecstatically. "Do you suppose people ever really work here?" inquired Grace. "It is like fairy land. Everything happens by magic." "You are right, Grace. This is a land of pleasure," returned Mr. Stuart. "The only people who work are the employés in the hotels and the servants in the cottages." "Palm Beach is dedicated to pleasure," explained Ruth, "because it was by accident that it came to be here at all. So it can just as well be spared for an earthly paradise." "Why is Palm Beach an accident?" queried Mollie. "Years ago this was just a wild, desolate coast," Ruth went on. "Even now the wilderness is only a mile away. There was a wreck out there, somewhere, on the other side of the peninsula," she pointed toward the ocean. "A ship was loaded with cocoanuts, which were washed ashore. By and by the cocoanuts sprouted and grew into tall palm trees. So this barren shore was transformed into one of the most beautiful palm groves in the world." Mr. Stuart pinched his daughter's cheek. "You've been stealing a march on us, Mistress Ruth," he said. "You have been reading a guide book." Just then a shadow clouded the brilliant sunshine. The engineer of the launch glanced up uneasily. "You don't think it is going to rain, do you?" asked Mr. Warren. "It would be a very unusual thing if it did, sir," replied the man, without committing himself. A fresh wind had come up, bearing with it the fragrance of many flowers. It seemed to have blown over miles of lily beds and orange groves. Barbara closed her eyes as she breathed in the warm, scented air. "How easy to forget all responsibilities, in an enchanted place like this!" she thought. "How easy just to drift along." "Papa, do tell the man to turn back," said Maud in a voice that broke unpleasantly into Bab's reflections. "It's getting a little chilly. And besides, we must have tea this afternoon in the cocoanut grove." "Very well, my dear," replied her father, turning to give his order to the engineer. The launch swung around. Immediately the whole party spied another boat bobbing helplessly on the water. One of the men in it was leaning over examining the machinery of the frail craft. The other one, in white, stood at the side of the boat, scanning the water. No other launches were in sight. The many pleasure boats which had dotted the lake with flecks of white, only a few minutes before, had now put in to shore. A black cloud had spread itself over the whole sky, casting a dark and ominous shadow over the lake. As all the world knows--at least the part of the world which lives on pleasure waters--a strict etiquette prevails among these small boats. One boat always helps another in distress. The engineer of Mr. Warren's launch did not wait for orders. He turned at once toward the drifting craft. "Is your engine broken?" he asked, as the boats touched sides. The young man in white was the Count de Sonde himself. He looked decidedly relieved at the appearance of the rescuers. He removed his Panama hat with a flourish and bowed low to the women. The other man answered the boatman. "We are quite helpless, you see," the count ejaculated, shrugging his shoulders and raising his eyebrows at the same time. "My friend can do nothing." In the meantime the friend had arisen from the engine. He was examining the boatload of people with guarded interest. "How do you do, Count? How are you, Monsieur Duval?" called Mrs. De Lancey Smythe. It was not a time for conventional introductions. The boatman made a line fast from the small craft to the larger one. He meant to tow the smaller launch toward home. But Mrs. De Lancey Smythe persisted. Mr. Warren and his friends must meet the Count de Sonde and Monsieur Duval. Suddenly the heavens were shaken by a terrific clap of thunder. Mrs. Smythe gave a little scream. "I am always frightened during a storm," she averred. "Mr. Stuart, would it be too much to ask you to assist me into the cabin?" Miss Sallie glanced rather contemptuously at the other woman, and wondered if her fright were real. Mr. Stuart rose and courteously assisted Mrs. De Lancey Smythe into the tiny cabin, just as a driving sheet of rain bore down upon them. The "Automobile Girls" crouched in the centre of the boat. Maud and Marian followed Mrs. Smythe. "Make for the nearest boathouse!" called Mr. Warren to his engineer. "We can't get back to the hotel in such a storm as this." The storm now burst in all its West Indian fury. The waters were churned into foam. The wind whistled and roared. The two small boats tossed about on the water like chips. "We are just in time!" exclaimed Mr. Warren, as they at last reached the boathouse. "In another five minutes I believe we should have been swamped." He helped the women from the boat to the pier. "What an escape!" gasped Mrs. Smythe. "Marian, my darling, are you all right?" "Perfectly, Mama," replied her daughter rather scornfully. It was plain to the four "Automobile Girls" that Marian did not entirely approve of her mother's display of fear, and the tone in which she had answered told its own story. The little company sought the shelter of the boathouse. The two foreigners went with them. In one of the men, Bab recognized the stranger she had noticed that morning on the hotel piazza. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe introduced him as Monsieur Duval. "We were very lucky to have met you, sir," Mr. Duval said to Mr. Stuart. Bab noticed that he spoke very good English, with only a slight foreign accent. "I am afraid our boat would have sunk if you had not come to our rescue." Mr. Stuart bowed politely, but coldly. He was wondering if his girls and Miss Sallie would have bad colds from their wetting. They were standing apart from the others, laughing at their plight. The young Count de Sonde had joined Marian and her mother, as soon as he entered the boathouse, but Maud was with them. It was upon Maud that the count immediately bestowed his attention. He smiled upon her, until Maud's foolish head began to flutter. Just think of capturing the attentions of a real count so quickly! Mr. Warren saw his daughter's delight and frowned slightly. Maud must not get any foolish ideas about foreigners in her head. He would put an end to that nonsense. He was about to stride over and take charge of affairs when a man servant in plain livery appeared on the path near the boathouse door. He had come from the pretty villa, which was only a hundred yards back from the boathouse, set in a thick grove of palms. The man carried a large bundle of wraps and umbrellas. He paused respectfully when he reached the steps leading to the pavilion. "My lady would be glad if you would seek shelter from the storm in her house," he said in broken English to Mr. Warren. It was great fun to scamper through the pouring rain to the pretty villa. The foreign coats and capes kept everyone dry. Now that they were on land Mr. Warren's boat party had begun to regard their adventure somewhat lightly. Once on the porch of the villa they were ushered into a large, low-ceilinged room at one end of which a fire of pine knots was burning brightly. The room was empty. The newcomers clustered about the blaze to dry their soaked shoes. The room held very little furniture. Yet it appeared to Bab as one of the most beautiful rooms she had ever seen. A grand piano stood at one end, and a few graceful wicker chairs were scattered about the apartment. The room had an indescribable look of elegance. Was it the bare highly polished floor, with only the Persian rug to break its shining surface? Or was it the enormous bunch of daffodils in a cut glass bowl on the table that lent the place its charm? Bab did not know. On the mantelpiece between two tall brass candle-sticks stood a beautiful marble bust. Barbara afterwards learned that it was known as "The Head of an Unknown Lady." A handsome leather writing-case lay open on the table. It displayed on the inner side a large crest picked out in dull gold. The firelight shone on the gold outlines and threw them into dull relief. Bab saw the Frenchman, Monsieur Duval, walk over to this table. He examined the crest intently for a moment, then turned away. At this instant two women came in through the open door. The one, who was quite old, supported herself with a gold-headed mahogany cane. The other was young and very beautiful. The older woman was rather terrifying in aspect. She had a hooked nose and her bright, beady little eyes regarded the company with a look of amused tolerance. The younger woman came forward to meet her unknown guests without the slightest embarrassment or affectation. The "Automobile Girls" held their breath. Surely she was the most exquisite creature they had ever beheld. CHAPTER III THE FAIR UNKNOWN "I am afraid you must be very cold and wet," the young woman said, in a clear sweet voice, with an accent that the girls had never heard before. She was graceful with an elegance of manner that to imaginative Bab seemed almost regal. Mr. Stuart went forward. "It is most kind and hospitable of you to take us in like this," he declared. "We would certainly have been very uncomfortable if we had stayed in the boathouse for such a length of time. We are deeply grateful to you." "Do sit down," the young woman answered. "And won't you have some tea? It may warm you." She pressed an electric bell in the wall. A man servant appeared, and she gave him her orders in German. The "Automobile Girls" clustered together in the window seat. Their unknown hostess sank into a low chair near them. Miss Sallie and Mrs. De Lancey Smythe were left to the mercy of the old lady with the beaked nose. Maud and the count withdrew to one corner of the room, where they chatted softly, the latter bent on displaying all his powers of fascination. "Are these your four daughters?" asked the young mistress of the villa, turning to Mr. Stuart, after a friendly glance at the "Automobile Girls." "No," Mr. Stuart replied, laughing and shaking his head. "I am sorry to say I can boast of only one daughter. The three other girls are her friends. But they are all my girls. At least I call them my 'Automobile Girls'!" "Ah," replied the young woman apparently puzzled. "How is it that you call them the 'Automobile Girls'? Do young girls run motor cars in your country? Their independence is quite wonderful, I think." "Ruth is our chauffeur," explained Bab, who was looking closely at the beautiful face of her hostess. The latter's dark brown hair was arranged in a braid and wound about her head like a coronet but it broke into little soft curls around her face. She had a small straight nose and the curve of her red lips was perfect. The coutour of her face was oval and her large dark eyes were touched with an undefinable sadness. She was tall and slender, and she wore a plain, white woolen frock that emphasized the lines of her graceful figure. The simplicity of her costume was not marred by a single ornament. Even her long, slender fingers were bare of rings. She turned to pretty Mollie, taking one of her small hands in her own cool fingers. "Do these little hands also run a motor car?" the hostess asked. Mollie looked long into the beautiful face. Somehow its hidden sadness touched her. Mollie's blue eyes filled with tears. She felt strangely timid. "Why, you must not be afraid of me, dear one," said the young woman. She gazed into Mollie's blue eyes appealingly, and softly pressed her hand. "I'm a girl like yourself, only I am much older. But I love younger girls very dearly. You must let me be your friend." To the amazement of the other girls this exquisite stranger bent over and kissed Mollie on the lips. "I should be very happy to have you for my friend," returned Mollie, a smile quivering through her tears. "And I wasn't the least bit frightened. I think perhaps it was the storm that made me so silly. Bab sometimes calls me a cry baby." "Which one of you is Bab? And what a pretty name that is!" exclaimed the young hostess. Barbara stepped forward with a friendly smile. Mr. Stuart then presented Grace and Ruth. But still their new friend did not reveal her identity. She was a foreigner. There was no doubt of that. She had spoken in German to her servant. Perhaps she was German? She confessed that this was her first visit to America. The climate of New York had driven her south. Yet she did not mention her name or her country. Presently the man servant returned to the room carrying a tea service. He was followed by a comely German maid, who carried a tray laden with buttered toast and a large dish of German cookies. The man lit the candles and a lamp covered with a yellow shade. A soft, mellow glow pervaded the beautiful room. There was a pleasant silence and all eyes were turned to their lovely young hostess, whose slender white hands busied themselves with the tea things. "A friendly cup of tea on a day like this, makes the whole world kin," she said, smiling brightly at her guests. "It banishes sad thoughts and one grows cheerful, even though the weather behaves itself so badly." "We have a proverb," laughed Ruth, "that says 'it's an ill wind that blows no one good.' We should really thank the weather for misbehaving." "Ah, that is broad flattery," cried their hostess with a silvery laugh. "But oh so charming." "Do you not find it dull staying at an out-of-the-way place like this?" broke in Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, looking about her with a patronizing air. "I am quite sure I have never seen you at the Beach." The "Automobile Girls" exchanged lightning glances. Mrs. Smythe's abrupt remark jarred upon them, and simultaneously it occurred to them that she was distinctly underbred. Marian's face flushed, and she bit her lip. "I think this quiet place must be enchanting," she said almost defiantly. "I hate hotels." "Really, Marian," said her mother coldly. "Your opinion has not been solicited." "They're going to quarrel," thought Barbara. "How disagreeable that woman is. She is so snippy, and calculating and deceitful. I rather like Marian, though." But their hostess averted any domestic altercation by saying sweetly. "I am indeed a stranger, here, but I came for rest and quiet, therefore I have little desire to frequent the Beach or its hotels." "Quite true," responded Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, and hastily turning her attention to the imposing looking old woman with the gold headed cane she said, "You are German, I presume." "Why German?" replied the old lady, observing her questioner with a dangerous glitter in her small black eyes. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe showed signs of confusion. "I thought you were Germans because you spoke German to your servant," she said, trying to look haughty and thus carry off what promised to be an unpleasant situation. "Ah, yes," returned her antagonist. "But does it follow that one is of the same country as one's servants? We have also employed both French and English maids." Mrs. De Lancey Smythe did not deem it wise to continue the conversation. She therefore turned her attention to Mr. Duval who had been listening to the conversation with a curious smile on his clever face. Miss Sallie was delighted with the strange old woman. Her abruptness was amusing. Miss Stuart began discussing a number of current topics with her in an impersonal, well-bred manner, neither woman showing the slightest curiosity about the other's personal affairs. "Count de Sonde!" called Mrs. De Lancey Smythe suddenly. There was an immediate lull in the conversation. The young mistress of the villa stared at the "Automobile Girls." Her face turned pale. She leaned back in her chair. "Count de Sonde!" she whispered to herself. Mollie was at her new friend's side in an instant. "I am afraid you are ill," she suggested. "Can I do anything for you?" "No, no, dear child," replied the other. "It was only a momentary faintness. But did I not hear some one call the Count de Sonde? Is he here?" "Oh, yes," returned Mollie politely. "He is that young man in white, who is now talking with Mrs. De Lancey Smythe." Her hostess turned quickly. She looked a long time at the young count. "Who is the other man near him?" she next asked. Mollie was again her informant. "He is a Mr. Duval," she explained. "He and the Count de Sonde are at the same hotel together." At this moment, Maud Warren, who had noted her father's displeased look, decided to join the "Automobile Girls," who were grouped around their hostess. "Do you know," she said with an air of triumph, "the Count de Sonde has invited Papa and me and the De Lancey Smythes to visit him at his chateau in France next summer?" The tea-cup of their hostess crashed to the floor. It broke into small pieces. "Don't trouble to pick up the pieces," she protested to Mr. Stuart. "Johann will do it. I am very careless. So you expect to visit France next summer?" she continued, turning her attention to Maud. "Yes, Papa and I shall go," Maud replied. "It would be quite novel to visit a chateau." "Delightful. But where is the chateau of the De Sonde family?" inquired the other young woman. Maud hesitated. "I am not sure that I know," she replied. "I believe the count said it was in Brittany. The count's family is one of the oldest in France." "I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting the count," suggested Maud's hostess. "Perhaps you will present him to me." In a few moments the young count was leaning gracefully against the mantelpiece. He was talking with the beautiful stranger, whose name was still withheld from her visitors. A little later Monsieur Duval joined them. "Oh, yes, I hasten to assure you, it is quite, quite old," the count explained. He was talking of his family in Brittany. "How far back does your family go?" went on his unknown questioner. The count cleared his throat and choked over his fresh cup of tea. "My friend's family goes back to the eleventh century," answered Duval quietly. The count was still coughing violently. "And you are the last of your line?" continued his hostess. She was addressing the count. "It is a pity for such an illustrious race to die out. I suppose you will marry?" She looked at the young man with such grave sweetness that he smiled uneasily and shifted his gaze. "I hope to marry some day, Mademoiselle," he mumbled. "You have some very old families in Germany also, have you not?" inquired Monsieur Duval, looking searchingly at the young woman. Did she pause a moment before she answered? Bab and Ruth both thought so. "In what European country are there not old families, Monsieur?" she replied courteously. "In Italy the old families trace their lineage to the gods of mythology. But I am interested in a young country like this America." "Then you should go to Chicago, if you wish to see a really American city," cried Ruth. "Of course, Aunt Sallie and Father and I think our Chicago is greater than New York, because it is our home." "De Lancey Hall, in Virginia, is my family home," drawled Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, with a little insolent air of pride. "The De Lanceys were a titled French family before they came to this country." "How very interesting!" exclaimed the youthful hostess, in an enigmatic tone. "Do people drop their titles in this great free country of yours? It is much better, I think. Titles mean but little anywhere." She ended her words with a little, serious frown. "The best heritage that I can lay claim to is that of being an American," exclaimed Ruth, with enthusiasm. "America for the Americans! Three cheers for the red, white and blue!" "You are a true patriot. Is it not so?" laughed the hostess, patting Ruth's shoulder. "Your great free country is so wonderful. Its liberty is boundless." She sighed, and for a moment seemed wrapped in thought. Then turning to Mr. Stuart and Mr. Warren asked if they would have more tea. "No thank you," replied Mr. Stuart. "In fact I believe we had better begin to think about getting back to our hotel. The rain has stopped, and we need trespass upon your hospitality no further." "It has been a pleasure to meet you and your 'Automobile Girls,'" the young woman replied. Then she added very softly so that Mr. Stuart and Mollie who stood with her hand clasped in that of the stranger, alone, heard: "Won't you bring them to see me in the near future?" "Oh how lovely!" breathed Mollie. "We shall be very happy, indeed to come," Mr. Stuart replied. "I thank you for your charming hospitality, Mademoiselle," broke in the suave tones of Mr. Duval, who with the count at his heels had stepped unnoticed to the young woman's side. "Am I presumptuous in venturing to ask if it is your pleasure that we should know to whom we are indebted?" "Ah to be sure. I have been what you call, very stupid," laughed the unknown. "Pray pardon me." Gliding over to the side of the stern old woman, she took her hand. "Permit me to present my very dear friend, Madame de Villiers. I am the Countess Sophia von Stolberg." CHAPTER IV THE COMPACT "Girls!" exclaimed Ruth, who lay curled up on the foot of her bed in a pale blue silk kimono. "I feel like offering a libation to the Storm King to-night for sending us that squall." "Why?" inquired Grace, who was not gifted with an Oriental imagination. "Because, if there had been no storm, there would have been no Countess Sophia," replied her friend. "She is hard to understand, but she is so beautiful, so gentle and so noble," observed Barbara. "And she kissed me!" cried Mollie. "As, yes, Mollie darling, she had a fearful crush on you," laughed Ruth. "We are already green with jealousy. It's those golden baby curls of yours that do the business, I suppose. First, it was the lovely Mrs. Cartwright you won from us at Newport. Now your cerulean eyes have hypnotized the Countess Sophia. What shall we do to her, girls?" "Destroy her beauty!" cried Barbara. "Cut off her curls and give her two black eyes." The three girls pounced on Mollie. There was a real tom-boy romp which ended in a burst of joyous laughter. For Miss Sallie's familiar rap-tap was heard on the door. Her voice was raised in mild protest: "Children, remember that this is a hotel." The girls subsided. "Do you suppose it would be good form to call on the countess to-morrow, when we met her only this afternoon?" asked Ruth, as soon as she had regained her breath. "It would be rather rushing things," answered Barbara. "If you will be good, and promise not to lay violent hands on me again, I will tell you something," Mollie volunteered. "We promise," cried three voices in unison. "The countess is going to ask us to luncheon to-morrow. She whispered it to me just before we left her villa this afternoon." "Oh, joy!" exclaimed Ruth. "Do you mean that she intends to invite the entire party--the De Lancey Smythes and all that aggregation?" "No," Mollie declared, answering Ruth's previous question. "The countess intends to invite only Miss Sallie, Mr. Stuart and the 'Automobile Girls.'" "But what are we to do about Maud Warren?" queried Ruth. "Father has promised Mr. Warren we would help him out with Maud. Here we are already trying to shake her off. If we are going to see a great deal of the countess, how shall we manage? I am sure the stern old dowager would never endure Maud's grown up manner for a moment. And Maud won't give up those De Lancey Smythes." "I think it would be a good idea to take the Countess Sophia into our confidence, if we have an opportunity," suggested Barbara. "It would not be a betrayal of trust. Because what we wish to accomplish is to persuade Maud Warren to see the difference between really well-bred people like the countess and those who pretend to be. I think the Smythes are pretenders, the mother at least. She seems to be continually on the alert. I watched her yesterday, and that high and mighty air that she assumes is a cloak to hide her real character. It seems to me that she and that Duval man have some sort of secret understanding. I think----" Barbara paused. "Well, Sherlock, what do you think?" queried Ruth impertinently. "And when you unearth her family skeleton may I go along and play Doctor Watson?" "How ridiculous you are, Ruth," returned Barbara, laughing. "I suppose I deserve to be teased. I'm always suspecting people's motives. But really I do believe that that Mrs. Smythe has a hurtful influence over Maud. Mr. Warren doesn't like to have Maud with her, either. You heard the way he spoke this morning." "Yes," exclaimed Ruth. "We also heard Miss Maud defy him. She is dreadfully spoiled, and we shall be obliged to handle her very carefully. If she even suspects we are trying to reform her, she will shun our beneficial society as she would the plague." "I believe I could bear that misfortune," sighed Mollie. But Barbara was serious. "I am truly sorry for Maud Warren," she declared. "I think she is just like a blind person. She can't see anything that is good and true. She thinks of nothing but money, titles and sham society. I don't see how we can do her any good." "Well, her father thinks we can," Grace added. "He told me on our way back from the launch party, that he hoped we would be friends with Maud, for she needed the companionship of sensible girls. He said that he hoped she would take more interest in outdoor sports, and drop some of the newfangled society ideas she has adopted." "I'll tell you a secret," said Barbara slowly. "I think that Maud was impressed with the Count de Sonde, or rather his title." "And the count seemed to be equally impressed with Maud," interposed Ruth. "I believe he is one of those foreigners with no money, and plenty of title that one reads about in the Sunday papers." "Some of them don't have even the title," said Mollie with a worldly air that contrasted oddly with her baby face. "They are just waiters who pretend that they are real counts." "Hear, hear," cried Ruth, "Mollie the worldly wise is holding forth!" "Well, you needn't make fun of me, Ruth," said Mollie stoutly. "It's all true. I read about one last week who married a rich American girl. She fell in love with his title. After she had married him she found out that his name was Jean, something or other, that he had been a waiter, and was wanted by the police for forgery. Just think girls how dreadfully she must have felt!" "I should say so," averred Grace, who always championed Mollie's cause. "What's your opinion of the Count de Sonde, Barbara?" asked Ruth. "He didn't impress me favorably," replied Bab. "He's too artificial, and too conceited. He reminds me of a comic opera Frenchman. He looks as though he were ready to run about on his toes and shrug his shoulders at the slightest pretext." "That exactly describes him," Ruth agreed. "I imagine him trilling a silly French song: "'Bonjour, mesdames! bonjour, messieurs! Je suis le Comte de Sonde!'" Ruth bowed low, first to Mollie and then to Grace. She shrugged her dainty shoulders in a perfect imitation of the count. "But what about Monsieur Duval?" queried Mollie. "He's the backbone of the little count," said Barbara. "He's the brains and strength of the company. If there is any little game to be played at Palm Beach--look out for Mr. Duval!" "But do you suppose they really have a game to play?" persisted Ruth. Bab shook her head. "I don't know. I suppose I am only joking," she answered. "But did you notice how often Mr. Duval came to the count's rescue? He helped him out of a number of tight places. Of course it is ridiculous to suppose those men have any scheme afoot. They are certainly not thieves, like Harry Townsend at Newport. I wonder what they are after?" "Oh, nothing, Bab. You are too mysterious," protested Mollie. "I thought we were talking about Maud Warren and how we could best make friends with her." "Girls, let's enter into a solemn compact," Ruth suggested, lowering her voice to a whisper in order to persuade the other girls to listen. "What kind of compact, child?" Bab demanded. "A compact to do our best for Maud Warren," said conscientious Ruth. "I tell you, girls, it won't be easy, for Maud isn't our kind. And you know how we like to keep together and don't care much for any outside girl. I know we shall have to make a good many sacrifices. But Maud must not run around with the Smythes and that little French count all the time. Let's make a compact to do our best for Maud. Come, join hands." The four girls clasped hands. They could not foresee into what difficulties this compact would lead them. Tap! tap! Miss Sallie knocked again at the door. "Go to bed at once; it is very late," she ordered. Ruth dreamed that night that the four girls were sitting in a circle with the Countess Sophia von Stolberg. They had hold of one another's hands. They were repeating their vow about Maud. Suddenly they were interrupted. Monsieur Duval appeared in their midst. The Countess Sophia saw the Frenchman. She gave a cry of terror and fainted. Ruth awakened with a start. The night was still. The moon shone brightly through the open windows and the air was filled with the perfume of magnolia blossoms. "I wonder what the Countess Sophia's history is?" thought Ruth sleepily, as she dropped into slumber once more. At her villa, looking across the moonlit lake, the beautiful young countess was at that moment writing a letter. It was a long letter, penned in close fine handwriting. When she had finished she slipped the letter into an envelope, which she addressed carefully to "M. Le Comte Frederic de Sonde." CHAPTER V THE DAUGHTER OF MRS. DE LANCEY SMYTHE Breakfast was hardly over next morning before a note on thin foreign paper was handed to Miss Sallie Stuart. She read it aloud: it asked for the pleasure of their company at luncheon. It was signed "Sophia von Stolberg." The messenger would wait for the answer. Mr. Stuart was included in the invitation. "There's only one answer to that note," laughed Mr. Stuart, scanning the four eager faces of the "Automobile Girls." "Shall I translate your expressions into a single word? It is 'yes,' my hearties." "Did you think they would fail to accept?" teased Miss Sallie. "Look at the foolish young things! They have all fallen in love with the countess at first sight, and can hardly wait for one o'clock to arrive. But I will send our acceptance at once, so as not to keep the man waiting." Miss Stuart hurried off to the writing room of the hotel. So the girls were alone when they were joined on the piazza by Mrs. De Lancey Smythe and Marian. "Good morning, my dears," said Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, with an attempt at affability. "Isn't it delightful after the storm?" "Very," answered Ruth, rather shortly. "Have you seen dear Maud and her father this morning?" pursued Mrs. Smythe, ignoring Ruth's lack of cordiality. "No," replied Ruth. "Have you?" "I saw them a few minutes ago, and they were engaged in a family discussion," replied the older woman. "Such discussions are most disagreeable to me. Marian and I never have them. For some stupid reason, Mr. Warren is opposed to his daughter's receiving attentions from the Count de Sonde. I have assured him that I know the count well. He belongs to an old and illustrious family. But tell me, what is your opinion of the Countess Sophia von Stolberg? Do you think she is an impostor?" "An impostor!" exclaimed Ruth indignantly. "I think she is simply perfect. I never met any one in my life who impressed me so much." "Beware, my dear, that your feelings do not run away with you," warned Mrs. De Lancey Smythe with asperity. "I have heard rumors, since I saw you last night. There are suspicious circumstances connected with this countess. She may very possibly be an impostor." "Who told you such a dreadful falsehood?" demanded Ruth. She was almost choking with anger. But Barbara had joined her. Bab's firm fingers on Ruth's arm warned her to be careful. "The man who told me is in a position to know the truth. He is a clever man of the world, a foreigner himself," replied Mrs. Smythe triumphantly. "I am afraid I cannot credit his story," replied Ruth, with more composure. "I cannot forget that we accepted the countess's hospitality yesterday and we are to have the pleasure of accepting more of it to-day. My father and Aunt Sallie, and we four girls, are to have luncheon with the Countess von Stolberg and Madame de Villiers." Ruth drew Barbara's arm through hers. They moved away from Mrs. De Lancey Smythe. But Mrs. De Lancey Smythe had said her say and left a sting, and she smiled maliciously as the two girls walked away. "I can't endure that woman, Barbara," exclaimed Ruth. "I'll lose my head completely if she attacks our beautiful countess again." "She is too disagreeable to notice," answered Bab vehemently. "Here comes Maud Warren. Shall we ask her to take a walk with us along the Beach?" "I suppose so," assented Ruth, whose enthusiasm had somewhat cooled over night. "I don't want her. But we ought to be polite." The two girls greeted Maud Warren cordially. There was a discontented line across that young woman's brow, and an angry look in her pale blue eyes. "I am looking for the count," she declared defiantly. The girls instinctively knew that Maud was disobeying her father. Mr. Warren had just finished lecturing Maud and had commanded that she cut the count's acquaintance. "I saw the count a few minutes ago. He was starting off with his friend for a walk," explained Bab gently. "Won't you take a stroll on the beach with us, Maud? It is such a perfect morning." "Oh, do come, Maud," begged Ruth, with a charming, cordial smile. Ruth's sweet nature was again asserting itself. "Yes, do," cried Mollie and Grace, who had just joined the little group of girls. Maud's face softened. "You are awfully nice," she said. Maud was a little taken aback by so much friendliness. She had been spoiled all her life, and had never had real friends among young girls. People had thought her disagreeable and overbearing, and she had held herself aloof, displaying a degree of hauteur that admitted of no friendship. "Let's get our hats and go immediately. It will soon be time to go in bathing," suggested Bab. Barbara never missed a swim if she could help it. "All right, old water dog," Ruth agreed. "Meet us on the piazza looking toward the ocean, Maud. We will be back in ten minutes." The girls were back on the piazza at the appointed time. Maud was there. But with her were Marian De Lancey Smythe, and the Count de Sonde. "What a nuisance!" exclaimed Ruth under her breath. But there was nothing to be done; therefore the girls decided to accept this undesired addition to their number with the best possible grace. The entire party started down the avenue of palms toward the ocean. The "Automobile Girls" were thrilled with the beauty of the great stretch of blue water. Marian De Lancey Smythe, too, had a soul stirring within her. It had been choked by the false principles and ostentations that her mother had taught her. But Marian was not a stupid girl. Her wits had been sharpened by years of managing and deceit. She had the sense to see the difference between herself and the four sweet, unaffected "Automobile Girls," and she knew the difference was in their favor. Under her fashionable exterior a really simple heart beat in Marian's bosom, and she was filled with a wild desire to shake off her mother's despotic rule, and for once let her real self come to the surface. As she strolled moodily along beside Barbara she reflected bitterly that while others had been given all, she had received nothing. She contrasted the hand to mouth existence that she and her mother led with the full, cheerful life of the "Automobile Girls," and a wave of shame swept over her at the deceptions and subterfuges that were second nature to her mother, which she felt reasonably certain that no really honest person would practise. Her life was a sham and a mockery, and behind it was the ever present fear that her mother would some day overstep all bounds, and do something to bring the crushing weight of the law down upon them. There were so many things that Marian did not understand. Her mother never said more about her affairs than was absolutely necessary. She only knew that they were always poor, always struggling to appear to be that which they were not. She had been commanded to dissemble, to lie, to do without a murmur, whatever her mother asked of her, and her better self sometimes rose in a revolt against her mother, that was almost hatred. As she walked gloomily along wrapped in her own bitter reflections, she sighed deeply. Bab who was walking with her glanced quickly at Marian, then with one of her swift impulses, she put out her hand and clasped that of the other girl. "Are you unhappy, Marian?" she asked. "No," replied Marian. But her emotions got the better of her and she choked back her sobs with an angry gulp. Then feeling the pressure of Bab's sympathetic hand she said brokenly, "I mean, yes. At least, I don't know exactly what is the matter with me. I think I am homesick--homesick for the things I have never had, and never expect to have." "I'm sorry," said Bab, still holding Marian's hand, yet looking away, so she should not see Marian's rebellious tears. "But why do you think you won't have the things you want? If you keep on wishing for a thing the wish is sure to come true some day." Marian's set face softened at these words. "Do you really think that?" she asked. "Do you suppose that things will ever be any different for me? Oh, if you only knew how I hate all this miserable pretense." "Why, Marian!" exclaimed Bab. "What is the matter? I had no idea you were so unhappy." "Of course you hadn't," replied Marian. "Because I never dare let any one know my real feelings. I never have hated my life as I do since I have known you girls. You are just girls. That's the beauty of it, and you have folks who love you and want you to stay girls and not ape grown up people all the time. I'd like to wear my hair in one braid, and run and romp and have a good time generally. Look at me. I look as though I were twenty-two at least, and I'm only seventeen. I have to wear my hair on top of my head and pretend to be something remarkable when I want to be just a plain every day girl. It's intolerable. I won't stand it any longer. I don't see why I was ever born." "Poor Marian," soothed Bab. "Don't feel so badly. It will all come right some day. Let me be your friend. I believe I understand just how you feel. Perhaps your mother may----" "Don't speak of my mother!" ejaculated the girl passionately. "Sometimes I hate her. Do you know, Barbara, I often wonder if she is really my mother. Away back in my mind there is the memory of another face. I don't know whether I have only dreamed it, or where it came from, but I like to think of that sweet face as belonging to my mother." Bab looked at Marian in a rather startled way. What a strange girl she was, to be sure. Suppose Mrs. De Lancey Smythe were not her mother. Suppose that Marian had been stolen when a baby. Bab's active brain immediately began to spin a web of circumstances about Marian Smythe. "Marian," she began. But she never finished for just then a piercing cry rang out. Nursemaids with children began running along the sands. Another nurse had run out into the water. She was wildly waving her arms and pointing to a small object well out on the waves. Barbara saw it for just an instant. Then it disappeared. She and Marian both recognized what it was. A child's curly head had risen to the surface of the water, and then had sunk out of sight. Quick as a flash Barbara kicked off her white canvas pumps and threw hat and linen coat on the ground. Extending her hands before her, she ran out into the water. Marian ran blindly after her. The Count de Sonde was the only man near that part of the beach. He was behaving in a most remarkable manner. Entirely forgetful of the blood of scores of noble ancestors that ran in his veins, he had taken to his heels and his small figure was seen flying up the beach away from the water. However, Bab was not thinking of aid. She made straight for the little head, which rose for the second time above the waves. When Barbara reached the spot where she had last seen the child's head she dived beneath the surface of the water. Marian thought that Barbara, too, had lost her life. She began wringing her hands and calling for help. In her excitement she had waded to her neck in the water and was clinging to the life rope. She did not know how to swim, but she had a wild idea that she ought to follow in Barbara's lead, and now she clung to the rope and anxiously watched Barbara's movements. Bab in the meantime, had dived into deep water and was groping blindly for the little figure. At last she seized the child by the arm and with lungs bursting rose to the top of the water, when suddenly she was struck a fearful and unlooked for blow. She had not reckoned with the life line and with the little fellow in her arms had come in violent contact with it. She reeled and would have gone under but a hand grasped her firmly by the arm and pulled her from under the treacherous rope. She had just sense enough to hand the child over to Marian Smythe and seize the rope herself. Then she filled her exhausted lungs with the fresh air. On the shore Grace and Mollie were running up and down the sands imploring some one to save Bab. Ruth wished to rush out into the water. But she knew she could not reach the two exhausted girls. As for the Count de Sonde, he was nowhere to be seen, while Maud Warren stood on the shore helplessly wringing her hands. In a short time the beach was crowded with people. Marian and Bab had brought the little boy in to his nurse. The hotel physician soon took the nurse and the baby both away, and the crowd followed them. Bab flung herself down in the warm sand. Mollie, Ruth and Grace hung over her anxiously. "I'll just rest here a moment," Bab said faintly. "I want to get my breath. But do see to Marian. She is a brave girl. She saved my life. I struck against the life rope, and would have gone under with the little boy had she not caught my arm and held me up." "You dear, dear girl," said Mollie with a half sob. "How splendid of you!" Then the three girls surrounded Marian and hugged her until they were almost as wet as she was. "I didn't do anything remarkable," she averred, almost shyly. "I went into the water after Barbara before I realized what I was doing. I just had to catch hold of her arm, because I saw that she was going under. You girls are perfectly sweet to me and I am happier to-day than I've ever been before." "Marian," called the cold tones of her mother. "Go up to the hotel at once and change your clothing. Your appearance is disgraceful." Mrs. De Lancey Smythe stalked majestically over to the little group, frowning her displeasure. "Whatever possessed you and Miss Thurston to rush madly into the water after a child you never saw before?" she said to Marian, whose happy face had darkened at her mother's first word. "Really, Marian, dear, you are at times past understanding." "Mrs. Smythe," said Barbara coldly. "We could never have been so heartless as to stand on the shore and wait for some one else to rescue that little child. I felt it my duty to make some effort and I am sure that Marian did." "Really, Miss Thurston," retorted Mrs. Smythe, "I addressed my remark to Marian." "Yes," said Bab, her eyes flashing, "but you included me in it, therefore I felt justified in answering it." For a moment there was a tense silence. Bab stood looking composedly into the angry eyes of Mrs. De Lancey Smythe. Then Ruth said, with superb indifference. "Oh, come on, girls, don't waste your whole morning, here. Bab, you'll catch cold. Hurry right up to the hotel with Marian. Good-bye, Marian, we'll see you later." Utterly ignoring Mrs. Smythe, Ruth turned on her heel and accompanied by Grace and Mollie continued the stroll along the beach. "My I'd hate to meet Mrs. De Lancey Smythe alone on a dark night," remarked Mollie, with a giggle. "Didn't she look ready to scratch Bab's eyes out, though." "She found her match in Mistress Barbara," observed Grace. "She can't intimidate our Bab." Bab hurried along the beach toward the hotel full of sympathy for the luckless Marian, and vowing within herself to be a true friend to the girl who had been cheated of her girlhood. CHAPTER VI THE COUNTESS SOPHIA To be at luncheon with a real countess? What bliss! Not one of the "Automobile Girls" doubted, for an instant, the genuineness of the Countess Sophia von Stolberg. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe's calumnies carried no weight with the "Automobile Girls." To-day the countess was more gentle, more beautiful than she had seemed at first. And there was less formality in her manner. Mollie, who sat at her left at the luncheon table, quite lost the feeling of awe that had taken possession of her the afternoon before. Opposite the countess, at the other end of the table, sat the formidable Madame de Villiers, the old lady with the hooked nose and the bird-like eyes. She, too, seemed to feel more amiable, for she watched her young guests with an amused smile. "Do you know what I believe Madame de Villiers was thinking all the time we were at luncheon?" Ruth asked her friends, when they were discussing their visit the following day. "The amused look on her face seemed to say: 'This is just another of the countess's pranks, asking these strangers to luncheon. But if they amuse her--why not!'" Madame de Villiers, however, found Miss Sallie Stuart much to her liking. Perhaps this was because Miss Sallie was not in the least afraid of her, nor inclined to shrink from her, as so many people did. The story of the morning's adventure had been told. The countess leaned admiringly over the great bunch of yellow daffodils in the centre of the table and smiled at Bab. Barbara's brown curls were still damp from their recent wetting. "Were there no men on that part of the beach when the baby was drowning? Why did you have to risk your life in that way?" the countess asked. "There were no men near," Ruth replied. "You see, it was very early in the morning. Only the nurse girls and children were abroad." "There was one man present!" exclaimed Mollie, with a spark of anger in her usually gentle blue eyes. "But he was a coward and ran away." "The Count de Sonde! Oh, yes," continued Ruth, "I had forgotten him." The countess look startled. "The Count de Sonde!" she repeated in a puzzled fashion. "He refused to help? He ran away?" An expression of incredulity crossed her face. "He most certainly did run," Mollie declared firmly. "I almost fell on my knees to beg him to save Bab. But he did not even take time to refuse me. He simply ran away, so as to live to fight another day, I suppose." "The Count de Sonde!" the young countess returned. "Ah, yes, he is the young Frenchman who was here yesterday. Then he is not a friend of yours?" "Certainly not, Countess Sophia," explained Mr. Stuart. "The young man is only a chance acquaintance, whom my friend Mr. Warren rescued from a difficulty yesterday." "I, also, am but a chance acquaintance," smiled the young countess. "Only you were the rescuer, and he was the rescued!" exclaimed Mollie quickly, looking fondly at her pretty hostess, who pressed her hand under the table. "We are not in the least interested in the count," Ruth remarked bluntly. "We are civil to him because we are trying to help some one." The countess looked puzzled. Mr. Stuart laughed. "My dear Countess," he explained, "the 'Automobile Girls' are not exactly Knights of the Round Table, but they have a kind of league of their own. I think they have formed a sort of Helping Hand Society. They have a pretty good theory that there is no reason why boys should enjoy all the adventures and thrilling experiences. If there is anything to be done, why, do it! Isn't that the motto, girls? I think the countess would be amazed if she knew what you have been through in the way of adventure. Now, they have undertaken to look after a misguided maiden. And I think they are rather piling on the horrors in her case." "Now, Father, you've no right to tease," protested Ruth. "You are the very person who made us promise to stand by Maud Warren through thick and thin." "So I did," agreed Mr. Stuart. "But I had no romantic notions that Maud was to be protected from the Count de Sonde. I only consented to have you persuade Maud from certain undesirable associates by showing her how much more desirable you are. Now, I plainly see the object of your protective association has changed." "Now, Father, you are teasing," exclaimed his daughter. "How can you accuse me of any such thing?" replied Mr. Stuart, his eyes twinkling. "He always teases," Ruth explained to the countess and Madame de Villiers. "It's second nature to him. He can't help it. But putting aside all jesting, I am going to speak very plainly about several things. I am sorry to be obliged to backbite, but really and truly we don't like Mrs. De Lancey Smythe. She is the most disagreeable person we know, and we are going to try gradually to wean Maud Warren from her. Maud thinks that she is wonderful and a great society leader, but I think if one made careful inquiry into the matter, one would find her name among those missing from the social world." "Ruth, my dear," expostulated Miss Stuart. "You are entirely too impetuous!" "Do allow her to go on, Miss Stuart," begged Madame de Villiers. "She is one after my own heart. It is refreshing to find some one who is not afraid to speak plainly." "Well," continued Ruth, highly elated at receiving the approbation of the stern old woman. "We are going to checkmate Mrs. D. L. S. at her own game. She is trying to throw Maud in line with her own schemes. Enter the 'Automobile Girls.' Exit the enemy. The first battle was fought on the beach this morning, and the situation was strongly defended to the last word by General Barbara Thurston." "What do you mean, Ruth?" interrupted her father gravely. Then Ruth launched forth with the account of Mrs. De Lancey Smythe's rudeness to Bab and Bab's reply. "Marian is all right," concluded Ruth, "but her mother is an entirely different proposition." "So it would seem," murmured the countess thoughtfully. "But suppose the count is really an eligible person, and has fallen in love, in earnest with Miss Warren, and suppose that Miss Warren truly loves him, what then? Would Mr. Warren still be opposed to the marriage?" "I don't know," replied Ruth doubtfully. "But you see Maud is a girl, and Mr. Warren feels that she is too young to know her own mind. He is afraid that the count's title has dazzled her, and he does not like foreigners. He thinks we may be able to disabuse Maud of some of her sentimental ideas. Last night we four girls organized a secret society for the suppression of fortune hunters, and we thought perhaps you might help us----" "Ruth, my dear child!" protested Miss Sallie greatly shocked. But old Madame de Villiers' eyes gleamed with amusement. "Indeed, I shall be most happy to become a member of your secret society," rejoined the countess. "How exciting! It must be a real secret society, if we are to be serious. Let me see? We should arrange signals and plan a campaign. If I am right, Miss Maud Warren needs to be treated very delicately and carefully, or she is likely to rebel. Is this not so?" "That is just what we agreed last night," Ruth confessed. "But how are we going to prove that Count de Sonde is a fortune-hunter?" argued Mollie. "For all we know, he may be immensely rich as well as illustrious." "Oh, we shall have to prove that the count is not really in love with Mademoiselle Warren," answered the countess, pinching Mollie's cheek. She was entering into their little game with a curious zest. "Or you might prove that he is not a count," interposed Madame de Villiers, with an inscrutable expression on her grim old face. "Do you believe that he is an impostor, Madame de Villiers?" inquired Miss Sallie. For a brief instant the countess's eyes met those of Madame de Villiers. The old lady shrugged her shoulders and lifted her eyebrows in answer to Miss Sallie's question: "The world is so full of impostors, and Europe so full of counts," she said. The countess blushed hotly. There was an awkward silence. Miss Sallie was sorry she had spoken. But why should such an idle question cause annoyance? The young count was surely a stranger to her two hostesses. There was nothing to indicate that the young man was in earnest about Maud Warren. He had simply paid her casual attentions for the past few days. "Shall you and I become members of this secret society, Madame de Villiers?" inquired Miss Stuart, to divert the conversation. "I suppose we had better be content with the posts of confidential agents. Because I assure you there is no limit to what this society may do." "And I should prefer to be scout, guardsman, or messenger," agreed Mr. Stuart. "I, too, shrink from being an active member of such a vigorous organization." "Then let us leave these faithless people behind, girls," proposed the young countess. "Let us run away to the old boathouse and plan our campaign. We are not sure that we may safely confide to you our secret signals, our hand clasps and our code," she protested to the older people. Madame de Villiers now led the way into the drawing room. But the young countess ran lightly out of the house, followed by her four girl guests. "We'll arrange our secrets while our elders take their coffee on the balcony," she suggested. When the countess and the "Automobile Girls" had disappeared, Madame de Villiers smiled a little apologetically at Miss Stuart and her brother. "The countess is only a girl herself," she explained. "Of course, she is several years older than your girls. Yet, in many ways, she is still simply a child." "She is very beautiful and charming," replied Miss Sallie cordially. "You see how she has fascinated our girls." "So she does everyone," replied Madame de Villiers, shaking her head somewhat sadly. In the meantime the five conspirators were absorbed in devising their signals. They were only joking, of course. Yet, somehow, the young countess entered so seriously into their make-believe that the girls almost forgot they were not in earnest. One thing they conscientiously agreed upon--Maud Warren was to be constantly invited to share their pleasures with, or without, her objectionable friends. "Must the Count de Sonde be permitted always to come along with us and Maud?" Grace queried. She had been taking little part in the conversation, for she had been industriously writing down a list of signals for their new organization. "We must have him, if Maud won't come without him," replied Ruth. "Maud must be won over to our side by flattering attentions. Suppose we start out being friends with her, by having another luncheon at our hotel. Will you come, Countess?" The countess shook her head gently. "I am sorry," she replied a little soberly. "I--" she hesitated a moment. "I fear you will think me rude. But I have made it a rule never to appear at the hotels. I will do anything else. Suppose we give a picnic? Is not that what you call it in English?" "A picnic would be delightful," agreed Ruth politely. But she could not help wondering why the countess was not willing "to appear," as she expressed it, at the hotels. "The signals are ready!" cried Grace. "There are two handshakes. The one which denotes danger is like this: Press the forefinger of one hand into the palm of the other person's hand when you shake hands." "That is very clever!" exclaimed the countess. She clasped Mollie's little hand. "Now, Mademoiselle Mollie, when you feel my finger press your palm like this, you will know that I am greatly in need of your help." "A white ribbon bow worn on the left shoulder, means that a secret meeting must be called at once!" Grace declaimed. "And a blue ribbon bow, worn instead of a white one, proclaims: 'I have important information to communicate,'" added the Countess Sophia. "But I should have a special signal by which to summon you. Let me see. I must be able to signal you from a distance. If I fasten a red flag to one of these posts in the day time you must know that I want to see you very much." "But what about a night signal?" asked Grace, who was taking the signals very seriously. The countess laughed. "If ever you should happen to see a bright light shining in the tower of my villa, come to me at once. I shall be in great danger. Now, is not that exciting?" she cried, clasping her hands and smiling at the little company. At this moment there came a sound of oars dipping in the water. A boat glided from under the pavilion, which was built out over the water. The boat must have been hugging the shore until it reached the boathouse. Then it made for the open water. In the boat was one man. And immediately the countess and the four "Automobile Girls" recognized him. He was the Frenchman, Monsier Duval! "I wonder if he has been eavesdropping?" asked Ruth indignantly. "Oh well, he has heard nothing but make-believe," the countess replied lightly, as she led her guests back to the villa. CHAPTER VII TEA IN THE COCOANUT GROVE Their beloved red automobile, companion in so many adventures and faithful friend in time of need, did not accompany the "Automobile Girls" to Palm Beach. But Mr. Stuart engaged another larger motor car with a chauffeur to run it, as soon as he arrived at the famous southern resort. He preferred Ruth to have a chauffeur at her command in case she needed him. There was room in the new automobile for ten persons, and Mr. Stuart, Miss Sallie, the four "Automobile Girls," the Countess Sophia and Madame de Villiers seated themselves in its cavernous depths. Then the car spun out along the famous Shell Road, lined on each side with the tall, delicate yucca plants. A fragrant southern breeze fanned the faces of the happy party. The sunlight was dazzling, the sky a deep blue. All about were masses of tropical vegetation that glittered in the sunshine. "This place is truly heavenly," exclaimed the Countess Sophia von Stolberg. She leaned back in the automobile and closed her eyes. "How could one help being happy, surrounded by all this beauty? I am indeed very happy to-day. Are you not happy, Cousine?" she murmured, taking Madame de Villiers's hand and looking at her with a tender, loving expression. The older woman's stern face softened. "Very happy, my dear," she declared. "This is not a place to remember one's troubles." The countess's face clouded at the word "troubles." She began to say something in German, but checked herself. She was far too well-bred to speak any language but English before her new friends. "Yes; this is a small sized heaven," agreed Bab. "A kind of oasis in a desert, for over there are the Everglades." "And what are the Everglades?" inquired the countess. "The guide-book says they are trackless jungle," explained Bab. "They are full of wild animals; wild cats, and panthers, and deer. They have poisonous snakes in them, too. Very few white men ever venture in the Everglades, but the Indians have trails through them. They often kill deer in the jungle and sell them at the hotel." "It would not be pleasant to be lost in such a place," suggested Mollie. She was thinking of her own experience when she was lost in the forest in the Berkshire Hills. "And it would not be easy to find you in the Everglades either, little sister," rejoined Bab. "So please beware! Never go into the Everglades alone." "Oh, don't worry," laughed Mollie. "Being lost once was enough for me." "If you ever do disappear, Mademoiselle Mollie, the secret society will never rest until it finds you. We must be very faithful to each other, dear fellow members?" laughed the countess. "I am sure we agree to that," declared Ruth. Walking along the road ahead of them, Barbara espied two figures. "Do you know," she demanded, "I believe those two people just in front of us are Maud Warren and her count." It really was Maud loitering along the road accompanied by the count. "Stop our car, Robert," ordered Miss Sallie. Maud explained that her motor car had broken down some distance up the road. She and the count had decided to walk on. They hoped to be picked up by friends. "Do you mean you were out motoring alone with the Count de Sonde?" inquired Miss Stuart severely. "Why not?" answered Maud, looking insolently at Miss Sallie. "Ah it is in this free America that one needs no chaperons," said Madame de Villiers innocently, but with a gleam of mischief in her eyes. Maud made no reply. Two angry spots glowed in her cheeks. The countess now made up her mind to intercede. She did not wish Maud to fly into a rage. "I have had a visit from your friends, the 'Automobile Girls', Miss Warren," she said graciously. "Perhaps you will join them when they come to see me again." Maud favored the countess with a chilly stare. Could it be that Mrs. De Lancey Smythe had been whispering tales about the countess in Maud's ears? And had this stupid girl believed what she had heard? Ruth felt her heart thump with the embarrassment of the situation. What was Maud going to say? Strangely enough Madame de Villiers' face held the same look of fear that Ruth's did. Why should Madame de Villiers look frightened instead of angry? But Maud never uttered the insult her lips were trying to frame. Spoiled and undisciplined child that she was, when she turned her sneering face toward the countess the words suddenly failed her. For the first time Maud felt that money, after all, counted for little. There was something about this plainly dressed woman that suddenly made her feel mean and ashamed. Maud looked deep into the countess's beautiful eyes, then answered with unaccustomed meekness. "Thank you so much. I should like to come to see you." In the meantime naughty Mollie was taking a slight revenge upon the count. "You are quite athletic, are you not?" she asked him innocently, her baby blue eyes fastened on his. "I, athletic?" exclaimed the little count in surprise. "Not very, Mademoiselle. Why do you ask?" "Because you run so well," Mollie answered, with a far-away look. "You refer to this morning, I perceive, Mademoiselle," expostulated the count. "I do not swim; therefore I ran for help. But there was no danger. Your sister was never in deep water. Yet it was a most effective scene. Doubtless the young lady will enjoy being a heroine." Mollie flushed. "Barbara would have been in danger if Marian had not helped to pull her and the child out of the water. And, by the way, Marian does not swim either." "Ah, Mademoiselle Marian? I saw her later," laughed the count. "How droll was her appearance and that of your sister also." Mollie heartily disgusted with the little count turned her back on him. "Get into the motor car, both of you," ordered Miss Sallie firmly. A few minutes later their automobile reached the entrance to the cocoanut grove. "Papa, let us stop here and have tea?" asked Ruth. "A good idea, Ruth," agreed Mr. Stuart, giving the chauffeur the order. "I am very sorry," interrupted the countess. "But I fear I cannot stop this afternoon." "Oh, please do, Countess!" urged Ruth and her friends. Even Maud's voice was heard to join in the general chorus. The countess hesitated. She looked at Madame de Villiers with questioning eyes. It was evident that the young countess also yearned for the pleasure of drinking tea under the cocoanut trees. Madame de Villiers shrugged her shoulders. She said something softly, so that no one else could hear. The countess dropped her white chiffon veil down over her face. "After all, I cannot resist your invitation, Mr. Stuart," the young woman agreed. "But may I ask you not to stay long?" Presently Mr. Stuart's party was seated around a large, rustic table in the beautiful cocoanut grove. Hundreds of other people, clad in white and light clothes, were seated at other tables. In the distance a band played. During the intermissions the listeners could hear the twittering and singing of multitudes of birds, which also sojourn for the winter at Palm Beach. The countess was the object of many glances from the people near her, although she had not lifted the heavy chiffon veil from her face. She was a woman of rarely beautiful presence. There was something regal in the set of her small head on her graceful shoulders. Her gown and hat were extremely plain and she wore no jewels; but an atmosphere surrounded the lovely countess like an aura of sunlight, Ruth thought. She was very gentle and sweet, though there was something about her that suggested she could be equally stern if the situation required it. Ruth hoped never to incur her displeasure. When tea was served the countess was obliged to throw back her veil. Madame de Villiers looked at her disapprovingly. Then the old woman cast hurried glances about her, but was apparently satisfied. As for the young countess, she took in a deep breath of the warm, soft air laden with the scent of the orange blossoms. She let her eyes wander over the grove and smiled as a burst of music floated across to her. "I am fascinated, enchanted!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Stuart, I thank you for the pleasure of this afternoon." There was always a slight formality in the young countess's manner which kept people at a distance. "Do not thank me, Countess," protested Mr. Stuart. "You and Madame de Villiers are conferring an honor upon us." "Madame de Villiers and I are two lonely women," continued the countess. "We have not seen the beauties of this place, except from our piazza. How exquisite this grove is! Truly, it is like paradise." Again the young woman's gaze swept the tea garden. Suddenly her face turned white. She bit her lips, and sat as if turned to stone. Her eyes were fastened on a group of three men at a nearby table. Madame de Villiers had not noticed them. The men had not yet noticed the Stuart's guests. The countess dropped her veil quickly. Ruth and Mollie, sitting on each side of the countess, were the only members of the party who felt that something had happened, and they were wise enough to be absolutely silent. Only the girls' eyes followed the direction of the countess's. They, too, saw the three men, one of whom they recognized as Mr. Duval. The other two were strangers, foreign-looking men with waxed mustaches and light hair. All at once Mollie felt her hand seized convulsively under cover of the table. But the little girl was not prepared for the special mark of confidence that the countess was now to bestow on her. As Mollie held the countess's hand in her own, she felt a tap, tap in the centre of her palm. Like a flash Mollie remembered. The countess had given her the danger signal they had agreed upon the day before. Mollie looked quickly over at Maud Warren. She presumed the signal indicated that there was something the matter with Maud. But Maud was sitting quietly between Barbara and Grace Carter. Then what could the countess mean? Could she be jesting? Mollie did not think so. Through the meshes of her white veil the face of the countess looked out very white and grave. Mollie's heart was beating fast. What could she say? What must she do? Of one thing she now felt sure. The beautiful Countess Sophia von Stolberg was threatened with trouble. She should have all the aid that the "Automobile Girls" could give. "I understand," Mollie now whispered back to her in a low voice. "What shall I do?" "I must leave the tea garden at once," replied the countess quietly. "But I do not wish to be observed. Madame de Villiers must go with me, but I do not wish the party to break up. That would make us conspicuous." "Ruth and I will go with you. Don't be worried; we will go quietly. Wait, I must speak to her." "Ruth," Mollie spoke softly to her friend. "The countess wishes to go home without disturbing any one else. Shall we slip out with her, and see her home?" "Why, of course," answered Ruth politely, although she was somewhat mystified. They were about to arise quietly from the table when they were interrupted. A waiter handed a note to Mr. Stuart. Mr. Stuart read it. His face turned very red. Now, if there was one thing in particular that Robert Stuart loathed it was an anonymous letter. The message he had just received was not signed, and it read: "Beware of the countess. She is an impostor." Mr. Stuart crushed the paper in his hand. "Mr. Stuart," said the low voice of the countess, just at this moment, "forgive my leaving so soon. But I must go at once. Mollie and Ruth are coming with me." As the countess rose from her chair she glanced hastily at the three men at the table near them. These men had also risen. But they were not looking at the countess. The young woman started hurriedly toward the gate. Madame de Villiers quickly followed her. So did Ruth, Mollie and Mr. Stuart. "Please wait here until we come back for you," Ruth said to her aunt. Monsieur Duval had now crossed the space intervening between the two tables. He had seated himself next to Miss Sallie. The other two foreigners were moving toward the gate. Ruth hurried on. She gave her order to the chauffeur. The man was soon cranking up the machine. The four women had taken their seats in the motor car. At this moment one of the strangers approached Mr. Stuart. The other took off his hat and bowed low to the countess. He spoke to her in German, but her reply was given in English. It was very plain. "I do not know you," she said. The man spoke again. This time his manner was insolent. Madame de Villiers's face grew dark with rage. "Hurry!" called Ruth to her chauffeur. Mr. Stuart sprang into the automobile. The machine sped on leaving the two strangers standing alone in the road. "Do not worry, Cousine," the countess murmured in the course of their ride. "The man who spoke to me made a mistake. You will frighten our friends if you are so angry." Madame de Villiers said nothing. But there was fire in her small shining black eyes. Her beaked nose looked as though it might peck at the next offender. Mr. Stuart and the two girls left the countess and her companion at their villa. The two women were now composed. Indeed, the countess made Ruth and Mollie promise that the "Automobile Girls" would come to see her again the next day. Mollie and Ruth could not help puzzling over the countess as they rode back to the cocoanut grove. Mr. Stuart kept his own counsel. "I am certain there is some mystery about the countess," Ruth avowed. "But, whatever the mystery is, the 'Automobile Girls' are on her side!" CHAPTER VIII THE WARNING In the meantime Mr. Duval was making himself exceedingly entertaining to Miss Sallie, Grace and Barbara in the tea garden. Maud and the Count de Sonde had withdrawn to a seat near the music, and were engrossed in a tête-à-tête. Mr. Duval had traveled widely. He told his little audience about Chinese and Japanese tea gardens. He told tales of many lands and gave accounts of numerous adventures in which he had participated. Barbara and Grace listened fascinated. They hardly knew how the time passed. At last Mr. Stuart came back with Ruth and Mollie. Mr. Warren and Mrs. De Lancey Smythe had joined them, without Marian. Mr. Warren was looking for Maud. But Bab wondered how poor Marian had weathered the storm that must have broken when Mrs. De Lancey Smythe returned to the hotel that morning. "Where is Marian?" Ruth asked the widow abruptly, looking her straight in the eyes. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe's eyes dropped before Ruth's clear gaze. She twirled her parasol, looked annoyed then said frigidly: "Marian has a headache this afternoon." "I trust the wetting she got this morning had nothing to do with it." "Marian is an impulsive and reckless girl," snapped her mother. "She is entirely too fond of disregarding all conventions." "Has any one seen my daughter?" Mr. Warren's deep voice was now heard above the hum of conversation. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe joined him and together they strolled over toward Maud and the count. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe seized this opportunity to say a few words in favor of the Count de Sonde, for it was evident that Mr. Warren had taken a violent dislike to the young man. Had some one persuaded the widow to make this appeal, or was she genuinely attracted by the young French nobleman? Mr. Stuart found himself agreeably surprised by Monsieur Duval. When the sun began to sink, and the tea drinkers prepared to return to their hotel, Mr. Duval occupied a seat in the Stuart automobile. Moreover, when he said good-bye on the hotel veranda, he carried with him two invitations. One was to dine with the Stuart party that very evening, the other, to go with them the next day on a picnic. No sooner was Bab out of the automobile than she determined to run up to Marian's room. She knew the widow had not yet returned. Bab found the number of Marian's room from the hotel clerk. Then she got in the elevator and went up to the top floor of the hotel. She knocked at a door in the middle of a long narrow passage, and a faint voice said: "Come in." Bab entered a small bed room situated under the eaves of the hotel roof. There were three trunks in the tiny chamber which overlooked a court yard. The room was very close and hot. Marian was on the bed. She had cried herself to sleep. At Bab's knock she opened her heavy eyes. "Why, Barbara!" she exclaimed. "It is awfully good of you to come up to see me, but Mama would have three fits if she knew you had seen this room. I am glad you have come, because I have something special to tell you. I----" Poor Marian hesitated and stopped. Barbara looked at her with questioning eyes. "I am afraid it is dreadfully disloyal of me to say another word." Marian pressed her hands to her temples. "And I haven't anything really definite to tell you. But, oh Barbara, I have a suspicion that something may happen soon! Will you remember that I had nothing to do with it, and that I mean to prevent it if I can?" Barbara, completely mystified, hardly knew what to reply. "Do you mean to warn me, Marian?" she asked her new friend. "Do you mean that something is going to happen that may concern us?" "No; not exactly," Marian answered. Then she made an impetuous movement. "Please don't question me," she begged. "There is a reason why I dare not answer your questions. Forget what I have said, if you can. But for goodness' sake, don't mention to Mama that I have talked with you. I sometimes wonder what will become of us. Things can't go on much longer. There is sure to be a grand crash. But please go, now, Barbara, Mama might come in and she would be very angry to find you here. I will see you to-night." Barbara did not meet Mrs. De Lancey Smythe as she left Marian's room, but she did run across her in the evening. The widow was hurrying through a side corridor in the hotel. She was wrapped in a long dark cloak, and appeared to be trying to leave the hotel by stealth. Bab drew back into one end of the corridor until the widow had disappeared, then she walked slowly out on the piazza. Marian's warning was ringing in her ears. What was it that Marian had feared might happen, and why did her mother leave the hotel in that stealthy mysterious manner? On the piazza Bab found her own friends enjoying the beauty of the night. Maud and the Count de Sonde were talking just outside the group. "Do you know what I heard to-day?" remarked Mr. Stuart. "I understand that there is a swindler abroad at Palm Beach. A woman at that." "You don't mean it," exclaimed Miss Sallie. "How dreadful!" "It seems," continued Mr. Stuart, "that the detectives have been on the watch for her for some time, but so far she has been too clever for them. However, they have traced her to the Beach, but among the hundreds of tourists they have lost their clue. They do not despair of finding her yet, and a strict watch is being kept. She may be apprehended at any moment." "Well, let's hope she doesn't attempt to swindle us," commented Ruth. "By the way where is Monsieur Duval? He disappeared mysteriously the moment dinner was over." "He had an engagement, and begged to be excused," replied Mr. Stuart. "He said he would return in a little while." "Speaking of angels," remarked Mollie, "here he comes now." "Yes, and he's towing along our pet aversion Mrs. D. L. Smythe," said Grace. Bab looked toward the approaching pair. Monsier Duval and Mrs. De Lancey Smythe not yet aware that they were under the observation of the Stuart party, were deeply engaged in conversation. Barbara, watching closely, saw the Frenchman glance up, then he quickly dropped his eyes, and an expression of cautious cunning flitted over his face. His lips moved, the widow gave a half frightened look, then her expression of absorption changed to one of languid indifference. As the two neared the steps, from their demeanor, one would have concluded them to be mere acquaintances. What was the meaning of it all? Barbara wondered. And what secret understanding was there between those two people? Bab's observant eye noted that Monsieur Duval carried over one arm the heavy cloak in which she had seen the widow wrapped a short time before. Had Mrs. De Lancey Smythe gone to meet the Frenchman, and, if so why did she not do so openly? Suppose Mrs. De Lancey Smythe were an impostor, with a game to play. Suppose Mr. Duval were--Barbara sighed impatiently. She was letting her imagination run riot. She resolved to dismiss the whole tiresome business from her mind, and enjoy herself. At that moment Maud Warren came languidly forward, the little count at her heels. "Miss Stuart," she announced, "I have persuaded Papa to let me give a masked ball before we go back to New York. There are a number of smart people here at Palm Beach, and I want the count to see one of our American balls. We shall wear our masks until midnight, and then have a cotillon afterwards." "That will be delightful, Maud!" replied Ruth. "And that reminds me. Father and I have never arranged about our picnic to-morrow. Don't you think it would be fun to motor over to the big ostrich farm and have our luncheon there under the trees?" "Very delightful," agreed Maud. "Don't you think so, Count?" "I shall be charmed," replied the little count, with an exaggerated bow. "But we shan't," whispered Mollie, naughtily to Barbara, under cover of general conversation. "In order to cure, we must endure," returned Bab in an undertone. Whereupon the sisters both chuckled softly. At this juncture Marian appeared at the end of the piazza, and came slowly toward the group. Her eyes still showed traces of tears, and she looked ill and wretched. Mr. Stuart greeted Marian kindly, and immediately invited her to Ruth's picnic. And the invitation, of course, had to include Marian's mother. "I am sorry you have been ill," he said courteously, interrupting his conversation with Mr. Duval. Monsieur Duval's eyes rested curiously on Marian. His look searched her face. "Perhaps the climate of Palm Beach does not agree with your health," he suggested. "You do not like it here?" "It is not a question of what I like or dislike, Mr. Duval," said Marian curtly. "But what do you prefer?" persisted the Frenchman with a shade of interest in his manner. "To mind my own affairs," returned Marian coldly, turning her back on Monsieur Duval. CHAPTER IX A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY Early the next afternoon the picnickers sallied forth in two automobiles, going first to the villa for the Countess Sophia and Madame de Villiers, then the two cars sped along the country road in the direction of the ostrich farm. Marian, Mollie, Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, Miss Stuart, Barbara, Maud and the Count de Sonde were in the foremost car, while the remainder of the party occupied the car first rented by Mr. Stuart, with Ruth as chauffeur. "Why don't you start a song?" called Ruth over her shoulder. "Grace, sing something. Sing 'My Old Kentucky Home.'" Grace sang the plaintive old melody in her sweet, high soprano voice. The Countess Sophia was enchanted. "What a charming song!" she declared. "What an exquisite melody. I have not heard it before. Is it not one of your old southern songs?" "Won't you sing, Countess?" begged Mr. Stuart. The countess shook her head and smiled. "I do not care to sing alone," she avowed. "But I am sure Monsieur Duval has the throat of a singer. Will you not sing a song of your country, Monsieur?" "If you will sing a song of your land in return," answered the Frenchman quickly. Could it be that he, too, was curious to discover to a certainty the Countess Sophia von Stolberg's nationality? The countess dropped her eyes under Mr. Duval's steady gaze. "I do not sing without an accompaniment, Monsieur," she said briefly. Madame de Villiers looked annoyed. Grace and Ruth wondered why the countess should be so secretive. She spoke French, German and English almost equally well. On her library table Ruth had discovered a number of Italian books. Monsieur Duval did not press his request. The Frenchman had very polished manners. Instead in a full baritone voice he sang the "Marseillaise." His audience was profoundly stirred. "You are a patriot, Mr. Duval," Mr. Stuart remarked. Monsieur Duval's expression changed. But he said nothing. It was impossible to translate his peculiar look. "Do sing for us, Countess," begged Grace later. "I know you have a wonderful voice." "Remember, you are to give us a song of your country," Mr. Duval persisted. The countess made no reply to him. But in a voice clear as a bell she sang: "Thou art like unto a flower." "But that is an English song," expostulated Mr. Duval when the countess had finished. "Yes, but it was written first by a German poet: Du bist wie eine blume," sang the countess, this time in German. "Shall I try it in French and Italian for you? The little song has been translated into every tongue." It was evident to her listeners that the Countess Sophia von Stolberg was proficient in half a dozen languages. Grace thought she caught a glimpse of concealed amusement on Madame de Villiers's face. But the stately old woman said nothing. The motor party had now arrived at the ostrich farm. Mollie, the countess and Bab ran on ahead. Ruth slipped her arm through Maud Warren's. The count joined them, but Ruth did not withdraw her arm. Maud did not seem to mind Ruth's "playing gooseberry." Maud was really becoming fond of the "Automobile Girls." It was plain, however, that the Count de Sonde had eyes only for Maud. The Count de Sonde, who wore high heeled shoes to make him look taller, walked with the two girls. He talked constantly, using his hands and shoulders to emphasize his remarks. "You see, Mademoiselle Maud," he explained. "My parents died when I was a mere infant. Most of my life I have spent in Paris. I do not often go to the Chateau de Sonde. But I love dearly the home of my ancestors." "How much land have you around your castle, Count?" asked Ruth. The count looked annoyed at the question. "It is a very large estate," he answered vaguely. But Ruth was determined to secure definite information. "Is your chateau on a hill or in a valley?" she next inquired. The count shrugged his shoulders. "It is on the side of a mountain, overlooking a valley," he declared. The picnic party had now arrived in front of the cages containing the ostriches. The great birds were strolling about in fine disdain. But Ruth's mind dwelt on the Chateau de Sonde. She was frankly curious about it. "Have you ever visited the Count de Sonde at his chateau, Mr. Duval?" inquired Ruth, who happened to be standing next the Frenchman. [Illustration: The Count Walked With the Two Girls.] "A number of times, Miss Stuart," answered Monsieur Duval. "The count and I are old friends." "Is it built on a mountain or in a valley?" queried Ruth. She did not know herself exactly why she repeated her question. "The Chateau de Sonde nestles in the heart of a valley," was Monsieur Duval's prompt answer. He caught Ruth's eyes fixed on him with an expression of wonder. But it was Ruth, not Monsieur Duval, who blushed furiously. The man's eyes were gray and inscrutable. "Why do you ask, Mademoiselle?" he inquired. "I don't know," Ruth answered lamely. The man frightened her. He seemed so brilliant, so traveled, so strong, so dangerous. And yet, he had just told Ruth a lie. Why should he pretend he had visited at the Chateau de Sonde? "Come, everybody; it is time for luncheon," called Mr. Stuart an hour later, when his guests had finished their survey of the ostrich cages. The "Automobile Girls" opened their immense lunch basket, which the chauffeur had set under the trees. The Countess Sophia insisted on helping the girls. She was all radiant smiles and gayety. She hummed a song to herself full of delicious, bird-like trills, in a voice that had been wonderfully trained. In every way the countess showed what pleasure she felt in the picnic. So much so that she was easily the central figure of the party. Finally the entire company seated themselves in a circle on the ground, Maud Warren and her father with flushed faces. They had evidently been having a private altercation about the Count de Sonde. The count however looked serenely unconscious of the fact. A sense of tranquility and cheerfulness soon stole over every one. The day was enchanting. The chicken and nut sandwiches and other eatables tasted unusually good, and the party did full justice to the tempting luncheon the Stuarts had provided. All the guests laughed and talked at the same time. Suddenly the countess began to sing again in a low voice: "Knowest thou the land?" from "Mignon." The others listened with delight. Down the avenue a vehicle was heard approaching. There was a cloud of dust enveloping it. It was impossible for the picnic party to distinguish the occupants of the carriage. The countess's back was turned toward the equipage. She did not look around. Mollie and Ruth were glad that she did not turn, for they recognized the two foreigners who had frightened the young Countess Sophia in the tea garden the afternoon before. The men drove up to a palm tree near the spot where Mr. Stuart's guests were eating. They hitched their horse. Then they walked deliberately over to the picnickers. Without a word one of the men reached down. He touched the Countess Sophia von Stolberg on the arm. Undoubtedly he was German. His face looked threatening and his manner was insulting. His companion waited near him. The Countess Sophia shuddered as the stranger touched her. She trembled and turned pale like a frightened child. "Madame," said the German, "you are wanted by the police. We have been sent to arrest you." Mrs. De Lancey Smythe gave a hysterical laugh of triumph. But the young countess quickly recovered her self-control. "You have made a mistake," she returned quietly, to the man, whose hand still rested on her arm. "What have I done to be arrested? You have no right to annoy me." "You are the notorious swindler wanted by the police of two continents," accused the German. "I am here to take you back to France where you are wanted." Madame de Villiers now arose. She lifted her great mahogany cane, her face dark with anger. "You will regret this day's work," she announced. "Be gone!" But she had hardly finished her speech, before Mr. Stuart was on his feet. He seized the intruder by the collar, and before the man could more than raise his hand from the Countess Sophia's arm, he was hurled several feet away, landing in a heap on the ground. "You foreign idiot," cried Mr. Stuart, forgetting his women guests in his anger. "How dare you come here and create a disturbance among my friends. You are without a warrant or a policeman. The Countess Sophia von Stolberg is our friend. You shall pay dearly for your insolence. Leave this place without a second's delay or I shall lay violent hands on you." The two strangers did not dare defy Mr. Stuart. Mr. Warren had also risen and hurried to his friend's aid and the two Americans looked thoroughly capable of enforcing their commands. The foreigners went back to their carriage. After a slight delay they drove off, still muttering veiled threats. When they had disappeared down the avenue, Countess Sophia gave Mr. Stuart her hand. "I thank you, Monsieur," she said. "Madame de Villiers and I are alone. It is good to have a protector. I do not know why those men attempted to arrest me without a warrant. I assure you they had not just cause. I believe they were sent by an enemy." "Perhaps, Countess," replied Mr. Stuart, "those two men think you are some one else. I know there is a notorious swindler at large at Palm Beach. It is probably a case of mistaken identity." The Countess Sophia made no answer. Barbara, who was watching her closely, saw a look of unmistakable fear leap into her dark eyes at the mention of the word "swindler." Bab glanced quickly about her and encountered the eyes of Monsieur Duval. In them was an expression of cruel triumph that made Bab feel certain that he was in some way responsible for the late unpleasant scene. CHAPTER X THE SECRET SIGNALS Ruth was stretched out on a steamer rug on the warm sands, lazily looking out over the blue waters. Barbara was disporting herself in the waves like a water sprite who had dared to show herself among mortals. Many of the bathers stopped to watch with admiration the figure of the young girl plunging gracefully through the waves. But Ruth was not watching Barbara. She was thinking deeply. Why had the Countess Sophia von Stolberg refused to prosecute the two foreigners who had deliberately insulted her? Immediately after their return from the picnic Mr. Stuart had written the young countess a note. He suggested that he have the two strangers put out of their hotel, even driven away from Palm Beach. But the countess's reply had been polite, but firm. No; she did not wish to prosecute her annoyers. The men had simply made a mistake. There would be less notoriety if she let the matter drop. Mr. Stuart was not satisfied. He assured the countess that he and Mr. Warren had sufficient influence to have the two men sent away without the least publicity attending their dismissal. Still the decision of the countess remained unchanged. She graciously thanked Mr. Stuart for his kindness, but she really preferred to let the whole matter drop. There was nothing more to be said. Ruth now observed these same two men. They were seated not far from her, watching Barbara with stolid admiration. So far as Ruth knew they had not repeated their attempt to arrest the countess. But they had not confessed their error, nor offered to apologize either to Mr. Stuart or to the countess. The story that there was a notorious woman swindler at large at Palm Beach was now common gossip. "It is absurd to suspect the countess," Ruth thought as she reviewed the recent disagreeable incident. "If the scandal goes any further I shall side with her, no matter what may be the consequences." Ruth ended her reverie by making this last statement aloud. But she was sorry a second later. A voice spoke at her elbow. "Do you think, Mademoiselle Ruth," it inquired, "that suspicion of a certain person will reach a point where you will be required to take sides?" Ruth started. She had been in a brown study, and was embarrassed and annoyed at having been caught speaking aloud. The voice belonged to Monsieur Duval. He had come dripping from his swim in the ocean, and had laid himself in the sand directly behind Ruth without her noticing him. "To what suspicion do you refer, Mr. Duval?" Ruth asked haughtily. She knew this clever Frenchman could read her mind like an open book. But she did not intend to confess that her remark had referred to the young countess. Monsieur Duval smiled. "I am afraid I listened at the door of your thoughts," he said. "I think I can guess with whom you intend to take sides. But I promise not to betray your secret. I am sorry I overheard your last remark. Yet I do not see why you think the Countess Sophia may be accused of being this notorious woman criminal. It is true she allows herself to be persecuted without reason. She will not appear at this, or any other hotel, and keeps herself as much in seclusion as possible. Also she will not tell us the country of her birth, nor does she refer to any friends, but----" Monsieur Duval stopped. Ruth was indignant at the array of evidence that this Monsieur Duval was able to present against the young countess. She flushed guiltily, but wisely refrained from answering the Frenchman. Mr. Duval was obliged to continue the conversation. "Do you wish to help your friend?" he asked Ruth quietly. "Of course," Ruth replied warmly. The Frenchman leaned over. "Then watch everything, but say nothing. And, above all things, do not have a too accurate memory." Ruth was about to make an angry retort, when Mr. Duval skilfully changed the subject of their conversation. He praised Bab's wonderful diving. It reminded him of Neapolitan boys he had seen diving for pennies. Mr. Duval next told Ruth of a walking trip he had once made through southern Italy. She listened very much against her will to the entertaining Frenchman and it was with distinct relief that she saw Miss Sallie approaching them, dressed in an imported lavender linen and carrying a parasol and a book. Maud and her count appeared from the opposite direction. They also came forward to join Ruth and Monsieur Duval. Bab ran up the beach, shaking the drops of water from her blue bathing suit, her wet curls sparkling in the sun. Mr. Duval did not wish to remain with so large a party. His words had been for Ruth's ears alone. As Miss Stuart approached he bowed ironically to Ruth and strolled away. "How glad I am that we are not in the cold, sleet and blizzards of Chicago, child," Miss Stuart remarked, bringing Ruth back to earth again. "The Countess Sophia was right in saying our American climate in the north is unbearable in the winter time. I never felt so well in my life as I do in this delightful place." "Aunt Sallie," asked Ruth thoughtfully, ignoring the weather, and going back to the idea that was uppermost in her mind. "Do you think the Countess Sophia could be in need of money?" "How can I tell, child?" replied Miss Sallie. "The countess dresses plainly, but her gowns are in excellent taste. They are made by a modiste in Vienna, who, I happen to know, is one of the most expensive in Europe. On the other hand Madame de Villiers and the countess live very quietly. They keep only two servants. But the countess has the air of a woman of wealth and culture." "Are we going to dine with the countess to-morrow night?" asked Ruth impetuously. "Certainly, child," Miss Sallie replied, her serenity undisturbed. "It is true your father may not have returned from his fishing trip, but there is no reason why we should not go without him." Ruth closed her eyes. Could it be possible that they might be invited to eat food paid for by money gained dishonestly? Surely Monsieur Duval could not have spoken the truth! "Here comes that Mrs. De Lancey Smythe," remarked Miss Sallie with sudden energy. "I do wish that woman would keep away from us." "Aunt Sallie," said Ruth, "what do you dislike most about Mrs. De Lancey Smythe?" "Don't ask me, my dear," returned Miss Stuart rather impatiently. "Everything I should say. I must confess that the very sight of her irritates me." "There is something peculiar about her, at any rate," said Ruth, "I have seen her face grow hard as rock and look positively wicked when she thought no one was noticing her. Marian is afraid of her, too." "Nonsense, Ruth," replied Miss Sallie severely. "You and Barbara let your imaginations have too free rein. I don't approve of the woman and dislike her intensely, but I am not going to make her out an ogre." "She is, though," persisted Ruth. "That's why you don't like her, only you don't know it yourself. Some day you'll see I am right. Oh, here come Mollie and Grace. What's new, chilluns?" and springing to her feet Ruth called to Bab then hurried toward the approaching girls. Mollie and Grace had been out in a boat all morning with some new friends they had made at the hotel. As Ruth walked toward them she noticed that Mollie's cheeks were very red, and that she wore a look of suppressed excitement. Grace seemed almost equally agitated. Before she could reach them, however, she was hailed by a crowd of young people who were strolling on the beach, and she and Bab were obliged to stop and hold conversation. Mollie felt that it was imperative to summon Bab and Ruth. How could she manage without being observed? A sudden thought came to her. Putting her hand back to her curls she hastily untied the ribbon that bound them. The ribbon was blue. In an instant Mollie twisted it into a bow knot and pinned it on her left shoulder. Would Barbara and Ruth remember what the secret signal meant? Mollie need not have wondered. Hastily separating themselves from the crowd of talkers Bab and Ruth sped up the beach to join Mollie and Grace. "What is it, Mollie?" cried Bab out of breath. "I remember the blue ribbon. It was to signify: 'I have important news to communicate!' What has happened?" "As we passed the countess's villa on the launch, this morning," Mollie whispered mysteriously, "we saw a red flag tied to one of the posts of her pavilion. The countess wishes to see us on important business!" CHAPTER XI WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS "Shall we go to the countess at once, Ruth?" asked Barbara. Ruth hesitated. "The chauffeur has gone away for the day," she replied. "And we have no one to take us by boat to the villa." Mollie's blue eyes filled with tears. She had feared that Ruth suspected their lovely countess. Now she was sure of it. How absurd for Ruth to suggest they could not use the automobile because her chauffeur was away. The "Automobile Girls" had traveled for days at a time, with Ruth as her own chauffeur, while the trip to the countess's villa represented only a few miles. "How can you be so cruel, Ruth?" Mollie cried. "You just don't want to go to the countess's aid because you have listened to tales about her from that horrid Mrs. Smythe." "I haven't listened to Mrs. Smythe, Mollie," Ruth answered soothingly. "But I have been thinking. You can't deny that there is a good deal of mystery surrounding the Countess Sophia. There are many things that it seems to me she might explain. I don't wish to be hateful, and of course I can drive our car over to the countess's, though I have never taken out such a big car alone before. Come; let's get ready." Barbara hesitated. "Mollie," she protested, "I don't think it is right for us to make Ruth take us to see the countess, if she would rather not go." Mollie bit her lips. "Ruth Stuart," she said, "you talk about the countess explaining things. What have you ever asked her to explain? If there is anything you want to know about her, ask her to tell you. It is not fair to keep silent, and still not to trust her." Ruth had a sudden conviction that she would as soon approach the Queen of England to inquire into her private affairs as to ask questions of the Countess Sophia von Stolberg. "Well, Mollie, I will say this much," Ruth conceded. "I never doubt our countess when I am with her. She is so beautiful and sweet that I forget to be suspicious. But, when I am away from her, I have just wondered a little, that's all! Now, don't be cross, Barbara, but come with me. I am going to get out the automobile. Grace, will you and Mollie explain to Aunt Sallie where we are going?" "I'll tell you what, Ruth," Bab suggested. "Let us make up our minds not to suspect the countess because of any gossip we hear. There seems to be a great deal of talking going on, but nobody makes any definite charges. The countess has been delightful to us. I am afraid I am on her side as much as Mollie. The countess, right or wrong, but still the countess!" "Loyal Bab!" cried Ruth, patting Barbara's hand. "See, I cast all my suspicions away!" Ruth waved her other hand. "The cause of the countess is my cause also. I shall fight for her, through thick and thin." Ruth looked as though she meant what she said. The "Automobile Girls" were soon on their way to the countess's pretty villa. Mollie still held herself apart from the other three girls. She felt that no one of them had risen to the defence of her adored countess with the ardor she expected. Ruth was running the car slowly. It was only a few miles to the villa. Ruth was a cautious chauffeur, and was not in the habit of managing so large an automobile. As her car moved quietly and steadily toward its destination, another small automobile dashed past it. Ruth glanced about quickly. The man who drove the small car was exceeding the speed limit. He was alone. He wore a long dust coat with the collar turned up to his ears; he had a cap pulled low over his face, and he wore an immense pair of green goggles. But Ruth's quick eyes recognized him. Her three companions paid little attention to the man. "Bab," said Ruth, at almost the same instant that the small car swept by them, "it is Monsieur Duval who is driving that car!" "Well," replied Bab, "what of it? I did not know Mr. Duval was a motorist. But I am not surprised, for he seems to know almost everything." "Bab, I think he is on his way to see the Countess Sophia von Stolberg," Ruth announced with conviction. "He does not know the countess, does he?" Grace inquired. "I think he was introduced to her only through us." "I don't know what Monsieur Duval knows and what he doesn't know," explained Ruth. "But I should like to find out. Anyhow, I am going to beat him to the countess's house. If she has something important to tell us, Monsieur Duval shall not keep us from hearing it." Ruth put on full speed and started her car in pursuit of the flying automobile in front of her. In a few seconds she drew near the automobile. The little car was on the right side of the road and making its best speed. Ruth sounded her horn. She swerved her great car to the left in order to pass the smaller one. Bab uttered a cry of terror. Mollie and Grace both screamed. Ruth's face turned white, but she had no time to scream. The small motor car just in front of her immense automobile turned like a flash. It swept across the road immediately in the path of Ruth's on-coming car, and not more than a few paces ahead of her. It was either a mad piece of foolishness on the part of the chauffeur, or a magnificent dare. At the moment Ruth did not stop to wonder whether the man ahead of her had deliberately risked his life and theirs in order to accomplish some purpose. All her ability as a driver was needed to meet the situation. Ruth's hands never left the steering wheel of her car. In less than a half second, she put on the full stop brake. With a terrific wrench her great automobile settled back. It stopped just one foot this side of the car that had crossed their path. Ruth was white with anger. She saw, a moment later, that the driver ahead of her had accomplished his design. For no sooner had Ruth's car stopped, than the other motorist forged ahead. Ruth resumed the chase, but she was obliged to be careful. She dared not risk the lives of her friends by driving too close to the other car. The man ahead might repeat his trick. Ruth could not be sure that she could always stop her motor in so brief a space of time and distance. So the smaller of the two automobiles arrived first at the countess's villa. The Countess Sophia von Stolberg evidently expecting a visit from the "Automobile Girls," sat at her piano in her drawing-room, playing one of Chopin's nocturnes. At the sound of the automobile outside on the avenue the countess left her music and ran out on her veranda to meet her young visitors. But instead of the four girls a heavy, well-built man in a long dust coat and goggles approached the countess. The countess did not recognize him at once. A suave voice soon enlightened her. "Madame," it said. "I have come to see you on an important matter of business. I must see you alone." "What business can you have with me, Monsieur Duval?" asked the young countess coldly. But her voice trembled slightly. "I bring you news of a friend," declared Mr. Duval quietly. "I have no friends whom you could know, Monsieur," answered the Countess Sophia. "No?" her visitor replied, shrugging his shoulders and speaking in a light bantering tone. "Shall I inform you, then, and your young friends, whom I now see approaching?" Ruth's motor car was now in plain sight. The four girls rushed forward to join the countess. At the same moment the tap-tap of a stick was heard inside the house. Madame de Villiers appeared, followed by Johann with a tray of lemonade. The countess spoke quickly. "No, no, you must say nothing to me, now. I cannot listen to you. Please go away." Bab noticed that the countess was trembling when she took her hand. Monsieur Duval bowed courteously to Ruth. "Mademoiselle," he declared, "I owe you an apology. I fear I am but a poor chauffeur. My car swerved in front of yours on the road. It was unpardonable. I offer you many thanks for your skill. You saved us from a bad smash-up." Ruth colored. Hot words rose to her lips. But she feared to say too much. She looked at Mr. Duval gravely. "I think, Mr. Duval," she remarked, as suavely as the Frenchman could have spoken, "it will be wise for you not to run a motor car unless you learn how to handle it better. You are right. We were exposed to great danger from your carelessness." Madame de Villiers now gazed sternly at Monsieur Duval. "Have I the pleasure of your acquaintance?" she inquired coldly, turning her lorgnette on the Frenchman. Monsieur Duval lost some of his self-assurance in the presence of this beak-nosed old lady. "I met you at Mr. Stuart's picnic, Madame," he explained. "Good-bye, ladies." Monsieur Duval bowed low. Then he turned to the countess. "I will deliver my news to you, Countess Sophia, whenever you are pleased to hear it." A moment later the Frenchman disappeared. But on his way back to his hotel he smiled. "If life were not a lottery it would be too stupid to endure. Yet this is the first time in my career that a group of young girls have tried to beat me at my own game." When the Frenchman had finally gone the countess turned to Mollie, and kissed her. Then she looked affectionately at Bab, Grace and Ruth. "You saw my signal, didn't you?" she asked, smiling. "What an energetic society to come to me in such a hurry! I really have something to tell you. It is something serious. Yet I must ask you to trust me, if I tell you only part of a story. I cannot tell you all. As it is much too beautiful to stay indoors, suppose we go to my pavilion down by the water." On the way to the boathouse, Ruth stopped to embrace Mollie. "Mollie, darling, forgive me!" she whispered. "I promise you never to doubt our lovely countess again. She is perfect." When the Countess Sophia and the four "Automobile Girls" were safely in the boathouse, the young hostess sighed. "I am sorry to talk about disagreeable things to-day," she murmured. "You cannot understand what a pleasure it is to me to know four such charming young girls. I have had so few companions in my life. Indeed I have been lonely, always." The "Automobile Girls" were silent. They hardly knew what to reply. "I must try to tell you why I sent for you," the countess went on. "I want to warn you----" "About the Count de Sonde?" cried Mollie, who had never gotten over her first prejudice. "Yes," replied the countess slowly. "I think I promised to help you save your girl friend Maud Warren. I am afraid she and the count are more interested in each other than you girls imagine." The countess faltered and looked fearfully about her. "You must not let Miss Warren marry the Count de Sonde," she murmured. "You must stop such a wedding at all hazards. The Count de Sonde is----" "Is what?" asked Barbara. The countess shook her head. Again she blushed painfully. "I cannot tell you now," explained the countess. "But I know this. If Miss Warren marries the Count de Sonde she will regret it all her life." "But how can we prevent Maud's marrying the count if she wishes to do so?" queried practical Bab. "Unless you can tell us something definite against the count, we cannot go to Mr. Warren or Maud. Mr. Warren has already forbidden Maud to have anything to do with the Count de Sonde, but Maud continually disobeys her father." "I am sorry," said the young countess hesitatingly. "I wish I dared tell you more. But I can explain nothing. Only I warn you to be careful." "Need we to fear the Frenchman, Monsieur Duval?" Ruth asked thoughtfully. The countess was silent for a moment. Then she said slowly, "You must fear him most of all!" CHAPTER XII MAUD REFUSES TO BE RESCUED When the "Automobile Girls" chaperoned by Miss Sallie, descended to the hotel ball room that evening, where a hop was in progress, the orchestra was playing the "Blue Danube" and Maud and the Count de Sonde were waltzing together. The spectators seated along the wall smiled in spite of themselves for the count's style of dancing was far from graceful. His idea of waltzing consisted in whirling his partner round and round, and as Maud was at least four inches taller than the count and very thin, the effect was indescribably ridiculous. "How absurd the count looks!" Bab exclaimed to Ruth. "Just look at those high heels and that strutting walk! Do you suppose Maud Warren can really care for him?" "No; I don't think she cares for him at all," Ruth returned. "It is the lure of his title that has fascinated Maud. The title, 'Count de Sonde' is like music in her ears." "Do you think Mr. Warren would disinherit Maud, if she married the count?" asked Bab. Ruth shook her head. "Mr. Warren gave Maud half a million dollars in her own name a year ago," Ruth explained. "So, you see, she is an heiress already. Besides, Mr. Warren would never forsake Maud. He simply adores her. I think he went off on that fishing trip with father just to keep from seeing Maud carry on. He thinks Aunt Sallie may be able to influence her while he is gone. But do look at Miss Sarah Stuart, Bab!" Miss Sallie swept down the ball-room floor in a handsome black satin and jet evening gown, with Mrs. De Lancey Smythe in her wake. There was the fire of battle in Miss Stuart's eye. On the widow's cheeks burned two flaming signals of wrath. "Maud Warren was left in my care by her father, Mrs. Smythe," declared Miss Sallie. "In Mr. Warren's absence I forbid Maud's going about unchaperoned with the Count de Sonde." "Miss Warren is not a child, Miss Stuart," replied Mrs. De Lancey Smythe angrily. "If she chooses to go about with the count I hardly see how you can prevent it. The Count de Sonde is a noble, trustworthy young man." "Miss Warren shall not go with him against my wishes," replied Miss Stuart quietly, "and I fail to see how the matter can possibly interest you." Mrs. De Lancey Smythe's voice trembled with rage. "You appear to be excessively strict with Miss Warren, Miss Stuart," she returned, "yet you allow your niece and her friends to associate, every day, with a woman who is entirely unknown to you, a woman about whom this entire hotel is talking." "Whom do you mean?" Miss Sallie demanded. She was exceedingly angry. "Mean?" Mrs. De Lancey Smythe laughed mockingly. "I mean this so called Countess Sophia von Stolberg. She is no more a countess than I am. She is a fugitive and a swindler. She will be arrested as soon as there is sufficient evidence against her." The "Automobile Girls" had moved up close to Miss Sallie. They waited to hear what she would say in regard to the countess. "I do not believe the countess to be an impostor. She is our friend," replied Miss Stuart. "I think we need have no further conversation. Miss Warren will do as I request." Without answering the other woman moved away with flashing eyes and set lips, leaving Miss Sallie in triumphant possession of the situation. In a few moments Maud Warren came over to where Miss Sallie and the "Automobile Girls" were still standing. "Maud, won't you come up to our room to-night after the dance?" Ruth urged. "We thought it would be jolly to make some fudge in a chafing dish." "Can you cook?" laughed Maud. "How funny! It is awfully good of you to ask me to join you, but I have another engagement for this evening." "Maud," said Miss Sallie firmly, "your father left you in my charge. I cannot permit you to keep an engagement with the Count de Sonde." Maud was speechless with astonishment. No one had ever forbidden her to do anything in her life. Her father had always tried persuasion and argument. Ruth's eyes twinkled as she saw the effect Miss Sallie's firmness had upon Maud. Greatly to her surprise Maud Warren answered quite meekly: "Very well, Miss Stuart. I will not see him if you do not wish it." The "Automobile Girls" breathed a sigh of relief. They had feared another battle between Miss Sallie and Maud. "This is jolly!" exclaimed Maud Warren, an hour later. The five girls were in Ruth's sitting-room. They were eating delicious squares of warm chocolate fudge. "I am glad you are enjoying yourself," replied Ruth. "We would be glad to see you often, but you always seem to be busy." Maud tried to look unconscious. "It's the count's fault. The poor fellow has a dreadful crush on me," she sighed. "Do you care for him?" asked Barbara bluntly. Maud simpered. "I really don't know," she replied. "I think the Count de Sonde has a beautiful soul. He tells me I have a remarkable mind--such sympathy, such understanding!" Ruth choked over a piece of fudge. The other girls seemed to regard her accident as a tremendous joke. Maud was entirely unconscious that she had anything to do with their merriment. "Then you really like the count very much!" exclaimed Mollie, opening her pretty blue eyes so wide that Maud was amused. "You dear little innocent thing!" returned Miss Warren. "Of course I think the count a very interesting man. I don't deny he has taken my fancy. But as for being in love with him--well, that is another thing." "Do you really know anything about the count, Maud?" asked Ruth. "Your father doesn't approve of him, and don't you think he knows best?" "Oh, father never approves of any of my friends," complained Maud Warren impatiently. "But Mrs. De Lancey Smythe is on my side. She likes the count." "But do you know much about Mrs. De Lancey Smythe?" Ruth went on. Maud was nettled. "Mrs. De Lancey Smythe is a Virginian, and belongs to an old southern family," she returned. The "Automobile Girls" looked uncomfortable. It was Ruth who finally spoke. "I hope you won't be angry, Maud. It is only because we like you that I am going to tell you something you ought to know. Some one told me to warn you to be careful." "Careful about what?" cried Maud, though her flushed face betrayed the answer she expected. "The Count de Sonde," replied Ruth. "But what have you heard against him?" demanded Maud indignantly. It was Ruth's turn to flush. What had she heard? If only the countess had been a little less vague in her accusations against the count. "I am afraid I don't know anything very definite to tell you," Ruth confessed, in an embarrassed tone. "Yet we have heard rumors about the count. Foreign noblemen are often fortune-hunters, you know." "My dear Ruth, the Count de Sonde is not in need of money," protested Maud. "He is very wealthy. Only the other day he showed me a letter from his lawyer. It spoke of two hundred thousand francs. It is true the letter was written in French. But the count translated it for me. And then, of course, I know a little French myself." "Oh, well," sighed Ruth, "perhaps we have no right to suspect him. But, Maud, I beg of you to go slowly. You may be mistaken in the count. Think how you would regret it if you were to marry him and find afterwards that he had deceived you." "Marry the count!" Maud's tones expressed great astonishment, then she gave a satisfied laugh. "Don't worry about my affairs. The count is a real nobleman," she declared. A knock sounded at the door, and a bellboy handed Ruth a note. It was addressed to Miss Warren. Ruth gave it to her. Maud opened it. A gratified smile overspread her face, then turning to the "Automobile Girls" she said: "Will you please excuse me, girls, I want to go up to my room for a little while. I will be back in a few minutes." The girls ate their fudge in silence for a time. Maud did not return. "I wonder if Maud is coming back?" remarked Barbara, after a little. "Somehow, I am sorry for Maud. It must be dangerous to be so rich and so silly at the same time." "I am afraid Maud is hopeless," Ruth contended. "I don't believe it is going to do the slightest good for us to warn her against the count. I wonder if we could manage to save her in any other way?" Miss Sallie came into the room. "Where is Maud Warren?" she demanded immediately. The "Automobile Girls" could only explain Maud had gone to her room. Miss Sallie rang the bell, and sent a maid to inquire for Maud. The answer came back a few moments later. "Miss Warren had left the hotel for the evening with several friends." Miss Stuart said nothing. But the "Automobile Girls" knew Miss Sallie would never forgive Maud Warren for her disobedience. The four girls were almost ready to say good night, when another light tap sounded at their door. The girls lowered their voices. Perhaps Maud had lost heart, and had returned to them after all. Barbara went to the door. It was Marian De Lancey Smythe who had knocked. She wished to speak with Bab for a moment. Five minutes later Barbara returned to her friends, looking considerably mystified. "Now, Barbara Thurston, what did Marian Smythe have to say to you?" demanded Mollie. "It is not fair, your having secrets with her from the rest of us." "Oh, Marian asked me if we were going to the countess's to dinner to-morrow night," Bab replied. "What a strange question!" exclaimed Grace Carter. "I don't see why she should care where we go to dinner." "Perhaps she had some plan or other on hand herself that she wanted us to take part in," suggested Mollie. Bab was silent. "By the way," exclaimed Ruth, "did you know I received a letter to-day from darling Olive Prescott? She and Jack have arrived in Paris, and have set up housekeeping in the dearest little flat in the Rue de Varennes. They live on the top floor, and Jack has the front room for his studio. Of course Olive declares Jack is the best husband in the world. He is painting Olive's portrait for the Paris Salon, and working desperately hard so as to have it finished by April. Come, let's go to bed." Just as Barbara was dropping off to sleep Ruth gave her a little shake. "Tell me Barbara Thurston, what Marian De Lancey Smythe said to you in the hall!" "I told you, child," murmured Bab hesitatingly. "Honor bright, did you tell us everything, Bab Thurston?" "No-o-o, not everything," admitted Bab. "This is exactly what Marian said: 'Barbara are you going to dine with the countess to-morrow night?' 'Yes,' I replied. Then she said: 'You had better not go. But if you do go, come home early, and don't ask me the reason, why." "We'll go, sure as fate!" exclaimed Ruth. "No matter what Marian says." CHAPTER XIII A SURPRISE PARTY It had been a long day of uninterrupted pleasure for the "Automobile Girls"--one of those sparkling, brilliant days that seem to belong peculiarly to Florida in the early spring. All morning the girls had cruised around the lake in a launch. Later in the day they had bathed in the salt water of the Atlantic. After luncheon they had played several sets of tennis; and, later Miss Sallie had taken them to the cocoanut grove to drink lemonade and listen to the music. Miss Sallie had not spoken either to Maud Warren or to Mrs. De Lancey Smythe since the evening before. The two women had carefully avoided Miss Stuart. Once inside the cocoanut grove Bab's sharp eyes soon discovered Maud, Mrs. Smythe and Marian seated at a table concealed by an enormous cluster of palms. They were deep in conversation. Mrs. Smythe was pouring wholesale flattery into Maud's ears to which the foolish girl was listening eagerly. Marian espied Barbara and came over to greet Miss Sallie and the "Automobile Girls." She knew nothing of her mother's difficulty with Miss Sallie. "Marian," whispered Bab, as her new friend sat down next to her, "why did you wish to know whether we were going to the countess's to dinner to-night?" "Why do you ask?" said Marian, looking a little frightened. "Why it sounded to me as though you must have a reason for what you said," argued Bab. "Were you trying to warn me about anything? Or, is it simply that you do not like the countess?" "I think the countess is very fascinating," was Marian's only reply. "Won't you even tell me why you told us to come home early if we did go?" persisted Barbara. Marian gave a forced laugh. "Oh, I was only giving you a little good advice about sitting up late. But just the same, I'm a very wise person and you had better take my advice." "What are you two girls whispering about?" asked Ruth gayly. "Never have secrets from your little friends. It hurts their feelings, dreadfully." "We aren't having secrets," responded Barbara. "That is not exactly. I'm only trying to persuade Marian to tell me something. But she's a regular Sphinx." "Which would you rather be, a Sphinx or a chatterbox?" inquired Marian. "And if you would, why would you, and if thus, why, therefore and whereupon?" "Fine!" exclaimed Ruth. "I never dreamed you could reel off nonsense like that, Marian." Marian laughed then rising said, "I suppose I shall have to go back to Mama. I only came over for a minute." Her eyes again met Barbara's, and she shook her head slightly, then nodding good-bye to the girls she crossed over to where her mother was still conversing with Maud. "Why did she shake her head at you, Bab?" "She says again that we must come home early from the villa, to-night, but she won't tell me why," replied Bab. "She evidently knows something that we don't. She was even more mysterious to-day than she was last night. Do you think we had better go?" "Go! Of course we will," cried Ruth. "I don't believe Marian has anything very serious on her mind." "Really, children," interposed Miss Sallie in an annoyed tone, "if you begin to conjure up mystery over so simple a matter as a dinner invitation I shall feel obliged to keep you all at home. One would think I was chaperoning a party of young sleuths, instead of four normal girls out for a holiday." This remark was received with discreet silence, on the part of the four girls, and whatever their thoughts on Marian's warning were they sternly repressed uttering them aloud during the remainder of the time spent in the grove. * * * * * At eight o'clock that night Miss Sallie and the "Automobile Girls" were seated about the countess's table with only their hostess and her chaperon. There were no other guests at dinner. "How delightful not to be bored by stupid men!" exclaimed the countess, smiling at her circle of guests. "And what a charming picture the young girls make, Madame de Villiers, do they not? There is not a black coat in our midst to mar the effect of our pretty light frocks. Let me see, Miss Stuart wears violet, dear Madame, gray. And the 'Automobile Girls' might represent the four seasons. Ruth, you may be Spring, in your pale green silk frock; little Mollie will have to play Summer in her corn colored gown; Bab's scarlet frock makes me think of October; and Grace is our Snow Maiden in her white frock." The countess wore a beautiful gown of white messaline. Her exquisite face was radiant with child-like pleasure. During the dinner the room rang with her gay laughter. She had never seemed so young, so gracious, and so innocent as she appeared to the "Automobile Girls" that night. At each plate the countess herself had placed a small bunch of freesias, whose delicate perfume filled the room. "They are my favorite flowers," the hostess explained gently, "because they remind me of my beloved Italy." At the close of dinner a bowl of bon-bons was passed around the table. There was a good deal of noise and confusion. The girls popped the crackers, drew out the mottoes and read them, and decorated themselves with the fancy paper caps. They were too absorbed in their own pleasure to think, or hear, or see, anything that might have been taking place outside the dining-room. Madame de Villiers, a military cap on her gray hair, looked as fierce and terrifying as a seasoned warrior. Dinner over, the countess led the way into her drawing-room, where the laughter and gayety continued. Madame de Villiers played brilliantly on the piano. The young people danced until they were exhausted. Suddenly the young countess caught her train up over her arm, and ran out into the centre of the floor. At a nod from her, Madame de Villiers began to play the wild, passionate music of the Russian Mazurka. Then the countess danced. Again and again she went through the intricate and dramatic figures. Her audience was spellbound. No one noted the flight of time. Finally Bab whispered to Ruth: "Don't you think we had better go upstairs for our wraps? It is growing late." The two girls slipped quietly away without a word. Ascending the stairs to the countess's sleeping room they gathered their arms full of evening coats and scarfs. On a little balcony just outside the window of the sleeping room crouched the figure of a man. His keen eyes watched Bab and Ruth intently as they made ready to leave the room and join their friends downstairs, entirely unconscious of the figure hiding so near to them. On the first landing of the stairs, Bab stopped. Ruth was ahead. "Go on, Ruth," Barbara called down to her. "I have left my handkerchief on the dressing table. I will be with you in a minute." Bab ran quickly back to the room she had just left. Her soft satin slippers made no sound on the floor. It was almost impossible to hear her approach. Bab paused at the half-open door of the bedchamber in horrified surprise. Inside the room that she and Ruth had just left a man bent over the countess's desk. Her Russian leather writing-case was wide open. The man was running through her papers with a practised hand. Bab could have turned and run downstairs again. The intruder would never have heard her. But, although Barbara shook with fear for a moment, she placed her wraps softly on the floor and stepped noiselessly back into the room. The man was still unaware of her presence. Bab's eyes roved about the room in search of a weapon. Her hand resting for an instant on the dressing table, came in touch with something metallic and cold. It was a silver shoe horn, but Barbara gripped it eagerly, then she fastened her gaze upon the intruder. He was an old man with a shock of gray hair and a thick beard, that partially concealed the outline of his face. His lips were drawn back until his teeth showed and in his bent attitude he reminded Bab of a gigantic ape. Under the concentration of her gaze the strange apparition looked up and saw her as she stood unflinching, watching with alert eyes his slightest movement. Without uttering a sound the man began to move slowly toward her, his fierce eyes never for a moment leaving her face. "What are you doing here?" Bab demanded bravely. "You are a thief!" Instead of running away from him the girl started toward the man. As she did so she raised the shoe horn and pointed it at him. Had the light in the room not been turned low he must have discovered the trick. As it was the faint light, glinting on the polished metal gave it the appearance of a revolver. The ape-like figure began backing slowly toward the balcony. At the window he paused, as if debating whether he dared take the chance of leaping upon her. Bab settled the question for him by making a threatening move with the supposed weapon. The thief whirled, sprang out on the balcony and dropped to the ground. Barbara ran to the window. She saw that he had disappeared, then the room began to whirl about her. She thought she was going to faint, for she felt her strength rapidly leaving her. With a great effort she threw off the weakness that was overcoming her and looked out across the lawn. During the early part of the evening a large motor boat cruiser, after having put her owner ashore at Palm Beach had dropped down and come to anchor for the night hard by the boathouse belonging to the villa occupied by Countess Sophia. Lights were twinkling from the port holes of the boat and her anchor light swayed listlessly at the stern. There were no other signs of life aboard the boat on the bow of which one at close range might have made out the word "Restless" in raised gold letters. Barbara wondered if their terrible visitor had come from the boat lying there quietly on the moonlit waters. Just then the buzz of excited voices was borne to her ears. She heard the Countess Sophia's clear tones, then an excited little scream, mingled with the deep voice of Madame de Villiers raised in angry expostulation. Still gripping her shoe horn Bab raced down the stairs, and parted the portières that hung between the drawing room and hall. What she saw was like the tableau from a melodrama. Crowded close to the piano stood the Countess Sophia, while directly in front of her stood Madame de Villiers, thoroughly enraged and brandishing her gold-headed cane at two men who seemed about to seize the young countess. Clustered in a frightened group at one side of the room stood Miss Stuart, Mollie and Grace. Ruth was nowhere to be seen. One of the men made a sudden stealthy move toward the countess. "Stand back," commanded Madame de Villiers. Just then Ruth's clear tones were heard outside the villa. "They're in that room! Oh, hurry please!" There was a sound of running feet and into the room darted two young men clad in white yachting clothes, and wearing officers' caps. "We're just in time," called one of the newcomers. "This is something in our line of sport. Stand aside, girls. We'll soon have these fellows on the run." With this he grasped one of the men by the collar and dragging him to the open hall door, picked him up and threw him off the veranda onto the drive where he landed with a thud. A moment later his companion had disposed of the other offender in like manner. "Watch them, Joe," ordered the taller of the two yachtsmen. "If they try to enter the house again, call me. I guess we can give them all they're looking for. I'm going inside to see if there are any more rascals who need attention." "Oh you brave boys!" exclaimed Madame de Villiers as the young man entered the drawing-room where the women were huddled together talking excitedly. "I think the credit belongs to the young woman who had the presence of mind to go for help," smiled the youth, bowing to Ruth. "I had to do something!" exclaimed Ruth. "I saw your boat early in the evening, and when those two men came in here and began threatening the countess I felt that the only thing to do was to see if some one on the yacht would help us." "Did you see the other man?" asked Barbara anxiously. "He was old and white-haired and looked exactly like an ape. He was upstairs on the balcony, while I was in the countess's room getting our wraps. Then I forgot my handkerchief. When I went back for it he was in the room. I frightened him away with a shoe horn. He thought it was a revolver. He dropped to the ground from the balcony and ran towards the yacht. I thought perhaps he belonged on the boat." "Not with us," declared the yachtsman. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Tom Halstead and my friend out there on the veranda, is Joseph Dawson, engineer of the motor yacht 'Restless' which lies at anchor just off the shore. We belong to the 'Motor Boat Club' boys, but I doubt if you have ever heard of us before." Although Tom Halstead and Joe Dawson were strangers to the "Automobile Girls" they are well known to the majority of our readers. Born and brought up on the Maine coast the ocean was their play ground from early boyhood and their fondness for the sea led them to later perfect themselves in the handling of motor boats. These two youths with a number of other sturdy young men comprised the famous club of young yacht skippers and engineers, organized by a Boston broker and headed by Halstead as fleet captain, with Dawson as fleet engineer. The reason for the appearance of the yacht "Restless" at this particular place and time is set forth in "The Motor Boat Club in Florida," the fifth volume of the "Motor Boat Club Series." That the two young men had responded instantly to Ruth's call for help was in itself the best proof of the manliness and courage of the "Motor Boat" boys. The countess who in the meantime had recovered from the first shock of the recent disturbance now presented Miss Stuart, Madame de Villiers and the "Automobile Girls" to Tom Halstead. A moment later Joe Dawson entered the room, and more introductions followed. "Well, they've gone," declared Dawson. "They picked themselves up very slowly and painfully and fairly slunk down the drive. I don't imagine they will trouble you again to-night. However we'd better appoint ourselves as special watchmen about the grounds until morning. I do not wish to seem inquisitive but was the motive of these rascals common robbery?" "The men did not wish money," replied the countess slowly. "They wished to steal a certain paper I have in my possession in order to destroy it. That is why the old man was searching my writing case. But he did not find the paper, for I carry it about my person. Forgive me for being so mysterious, and believe that my reason for secrecy is one of grave importance." "There is nothing to forgive, Madam," replied Captain Halstead courteously. "We are only too glad to have been of service to you and beg that you will continue to accept our services at least until to-morrow. Then I would advise you to procure a special officer to remain at the villa in case you should be annoyed further by these villains." "Thank you," exclaimed the countess, with evident agitation. "I hardly think we shall be troubled again. I do not wish an officer to come here." "We must return to the hotel, Countess," said Miss Stuart. "It is growing late and my brother will become uneasy about us." This time the women were assisted with their cloaks by the "Motor Boat" boys and no startling interruption occurred. Ruth ran down the drive a little ahead of the party to where her automobile stood. Then she uttered a sudden cry of dismay. All four tires had been cut. "Oh the rascals!" she exclaimed. "How dared they do such a contemptible thing? We'll have to go back to the villa and telephone for another car. Father will be so worried!" An indignant babble of feminine voices ensued broken by the deeper tones of the two young men as the party turned to go back to the villa. Just then a familiar sound was borne to their ears. It was the chug! chug! of a rapidly approaching automobile. A moment later the car rolled up the drive. "It's Father!" Ruth exclaimed. "Oh, I'm so glad." "What seems to be the trouble, Sallie?" queried Mr. Stuart, springing from the car. "It's after midnight. I grew worried when you didn't return to the hotel at eleven, so decided I had better come out after you. I rather think we exceeded the speed limit too," he laughed, turning to the chauffeur. Then Ruth burst forth with an excited account of the night's adventure. Mr. Stuart looked grave. "I shall send you an officer in the morning, Countess," he said. "These are the two young men who came so gallantly to our rescue, Mr. Stuart," said the countess, turning to the "Motor Boat" boys who stood modestly in the background. Mr. Stuart shook hands with both young men, thanking them for their prompt response to the call for help. "We should be pleased to have you dine with us to-morrow evening," he said. "Thank you," responded the young captain, "but we shall weigh anchor in the morning." After bidding farewell to the two young men and good night to Madame de Villiers and the Countess Sophia, the "Automobile Girls" and Miss Sallie stepped into the car in which Mr. Stuart had driven to the villa. "I'll send a man out to put that other car in shape to-morrow," he said to Ruth as they sped down the drive. "But, hereafter when this valiant band, known as the 'Automobile Girls' pays a visit to the Countess Sophia I shall insist upon accompanying them whether or not I am invited." CHAPTER XIV THE PLOT THICKENS Maud Warren apologized to Miss Sallie. Mr. Warren had been greatly displeased when he heard of his daughter's disobedience, and had reprimanded her in such severe terms, that she anxiously endeavored to conciliate Miss Stuart at the earliest opportunity. Miss Sallie, however received her effusive apology very coldly, and it was some time before Maud felt in the least comfortable in her society. One evening soon after the eventful dinner with the countess, the "Automobile Girls" started out for a moonlight stroll accompanied by Miss Stuart, Mr. Stuart, Mr. Warren and Maud. Just as they were leaving the hotel Marian Smythe appeared on the veranda and was asked to join them. "Where have you been keeping yourself, Marian?" asked Ruth. Marian flushed. "I've been very busy," she said hastily. Then as if anxious to change the subject: "Have you been to the countess's villa lately?" "No," replied Ruth quickly. "Not since the dinner there. Have you heard anything about her?" "No," answered Marian shortly, and relapsed into moody silence. As they strolled leisurely along Barbara who had been walking ahead with Miss Stuart, dropped behind with Marian. "I want to ask you something, Marian," she began. "Little girls should never ask questions," said Marian lightly, but Barbara felt that her apparent unconcern was forced. "Have you heard about what happened at the villa the night we dined there?" persisted Bab. "I have heard something about it," admitted Marian, in a low voice. "It was an attempt to rob the countess, was it not?" "You could hardly call it robbery," replied Barbara. "The men took nothing. But they acted in a very mysterious manner, and there was one perfectly hideous old man who was a real burglar for I caught him going through the things in the countess's sleeping room, when I went up stairs after our wraps. I drove him from the room." "How did you ever do it, Bab?" asked Marian. There was an expression of absolute terror in her eyes. "You'll laugh when I tell you," replied Bab. "I drove him away with a shoe horn." "A shoe horn?" repeated Marian questioningly. "I don't understand." "He thought from the way I held it that I had a revolver in my hand," explained Barbara. "You see it was silver and as the light in the room was turned low it looked like polished steel. At any rate it answered the purpose." "You are very brave, Bab," said Marian admiringly. "Considering the man with whom you had to deal you showed wonderful courage." "What do you mean, Marian, by 'the man with whom I had to deal'? Who is that frightful old man?" asked Barbara, looking searchingly at the other girl. "Why did you warn us not to dine with the countess? Did you know what was to happen? You must tell me, Marian, for I must know. If the countess or any of us is in danger it is your duty to tell me. Can't you trust me with your secret, Marian?" Marian shook her head. Her lip quivered, and her eyes filled with tears. Barbara waited patiently for her to regain her self-control. "Bab," she said in a choked voice. "I can't answer your questions. I dare not. I am a miserable victim of circumstances, and all I can say is that your danger is in being friendly with the countess. She has an enemy who will stop at nothing to gain his own end, and he will crush you, too, if you stand in his way." "Tell me, Marian," said Bab eagerly. "Do you know anything about the countess?" "Very little," was the reply, "and that little I may not tell. But this I promise you, that no matter what may be the consequences to myself, I will warn you in time should any special danger threaten you girls or her. That is, if I have the slightest opportunity to do so." Marian stretched out her hand and Bab clasped it. "Thank you, dear Marian," she said. "I know you will keep your word." After an hour's stroll the party repaired to the hotel veranda, where ices and cakes were served to them. Every one, with the exception of Maud Warren, was in high good humor. Even Marian emerged from the gloom that had enveloped her earlier in the evening, laughing and talking merrily with the "Automobile Girls." Maud, however was in a distinctly rebellious state of mind. During their walk they had encountered the Count de Sonde and Monsieur Duval, and although Mr. Stuart and Mr. Warren had exchanged polite civilities with the two Frenchmen, they had not invited them to join the party. While Maud, still smarting inwardly from her father's recent sharp censure, had not dared to brave Mr. Warren's certain anger by doing so. Her only means of retaliation lay in sulking, and this she did in the most approved fashion, refusing to take part in the conversation, and answering in monosyllables when addressed. Ruth and Barbara vainly tried to charm away her sulks by paying her special attention, but she merely curled her lip scornfully, and left the veranda soon after on plea of headache. Mr. Warren sighed heavily as he looked after her retreating figure, but made no comment. Yet his friends knew instinctively what was passing in his mind, and the "Automobile Girls" solemnly vowed each in her own heart to watch over Maud and save her if possible from the schemes of fortune-hunting nobility. "Is there anything more perfect than this Florida moonlight!" asked Ruth, during a lull in the conversation, as she leaned back in her chair and gazed with half closed eyes at the silvery tropical world before her. "Positively, I could sit out here all night!" "It looks as though we were in a fair way to do so," replied her father, glancing at his watch. "Half-past eleven. Time all children were in bed." "Really, Robert, I had no idea it was so late," said Miss Sallie, stifling a yawn. "I believe I am sleepy. Come, girls, it is time for us to retire." "Oh, Aunt Sallie!" exclaimed Ruth. "How can you be so cruel?" "'I must be cruel to be kind,'" quoted Miss Stuart. "If I allow you to moon out here until unseasonable hours, you will never get started on your picnic to-morrow, at seasonable ones." "She speaks the truth," said Ruth dramatically, "I will arise and hie me to the hay, for come what may, I swear that I will picnic with the rosy morn." "I thought you were going to picnic with us," said Grace flippantly. "So I am," replied Ruth calmly. "That statement was mere poetical license." "First find your poet," said Bab slyly. Whereupon there was a chorus of giggles at Ruth's expense, in which she good-naturedly joined. "I'm really more tired than I thought I was," she yawned, a few moments later as she sat curled up in a big chair in the room adjoining Miss Stuart's which she and Barbara occupied. "I'm tired and sleepy, too," responded Barbara. "It's almost midnight. We'll never get up early to-morrow morning. Oh, dear!" she exclaimed a second later, "I've left my pink scarf down on the veranda. It's hanging over the back of the chair I sat in. I'll go down this minute and get it, before any one has had time to see it or take it away." Suiting the action to the word Bab hurried out of the room, and along the corridor. She did not stop for an elevator but ran lightly down the two flights of stairs and out to the veranda. It was but the work of a moment to secure her scarf, which hung over the back of the chair, just as she had left it. The veranda was deserted except for a group of three people who stood at the far end in the shadow. Their backs were toward Bab and they were talking earnestly in low voices. Barbara stood petrified with astonishment, scarcely able to believe the evidence of her own eyes, for the group consisted of Monsieur Duval, Mrs. De Lancey Smythe and--enveloped in the pale blue broadcloth cloak Bab had often seen her wear was the Countess Sophia. CHAPTER XV CAUGHT NAPPING The following morning Barbara awoke with the feeling of one who has experienced a disagreeable dream. Was it a trick of her imagination, or had she really seen their beautiful young countess deep in conversation with Monsieur Duval and Mrs. De Lancey Smythe? True Bab had not seen her face, but her height, and carriage--the blue cloak--were unmistakable. On her return to their room Bab had not mentioned her unpleasant discovery to Ruth. She could not bear to voice any actual charge against the Countess Sophia. "Perhaps it will all be explained yet," she told herself, and with a wisdom far beyond her years, she resolved to be silent, at least for the present, about what she had seen. When the launch which Mr. Stuart had chartered, with its freight of picnickers, had put out from shore and headed for the villa, where they were to pick up the countess and Madame de Villiers, Barbara had loyally decided to let not even the evidence of her own eyes sway her into condemning the countess unheard. On their arrival at the villa they found the countess and Madame de Villiers ready and waiting for them, and the sailing party was soon comfortably seated in the roomy launch. Madame de Villiers occupied a wicker chair opposite Miss Sallie, while the young countess and the "Automobile Girls" had stretched a steamer rug over the roof of the small cabin, and lay upon it in picturesque attitudes under their sunshades. There was a churning of the propeller, a shrill toot from the whistle, and the launch glided out over the water as smoothly as a canoe rides down stream. "We're off!" cried Mr. Stuart joyously. "I believe you are just a great boy still, Robert," smiled Miss Sallie indulgently. The day's excursion had been arranged by Mr. Stuart. He was an enthusiastic fisherman, and on his return from the fishing expedition with Mr. Warren he at once began to plan a similar excursion for the "Automobile Girls," extending his invitation to the countess and Madame de Villiers. It was an ideal day for a picnic. The sun shone brilliantly down on Palm Beach, making it look like an enchanted land. The bathers were out in full force. A little farther up the beach countless flower-trimmed hats and many-hued parasols made gorgeous blots of color along the white sands. Overhead the sky was an intense blue, and the water reflected the blueness in its depths. "You can never understand how happy this makes me," declared the countess, bestowing an enchanting smile upon the little company. "Mr. Stuart, we thank you for the many pleasures you have given Cousine and me. Someday I hope I may be able to do something for you." "Wait until the picnic is over before you thank me, Countess," replied her host. "The fishing may bore you, especially if the fish don't bite." "Ah, well," laughed the countess, "I could fish patiently all day, under a sky like this without complaining, if I were to catch nothing but a minnow." Mr. Stuart's fishing party had made an early start. They were to land some miles up the coast, where those who were not of a mind to fish could make themselves comfortable on shore. The journey was not a short one. It was well past eleven o'clock when they landed on a hard shell beach, broken here and there by patches of marsh grass. "You are especially privileged to be allowed to set foot on these shores," Mr. Stuart assured his guests, as he handed them out of the launch. "The location of this place has been kept a secret; otherwise it would be overrun with tourists and excursionists." "Is it so beautiful?" Ruth inquired. "Wait until you see it!" was Mr. Stuart's reply. The beach sloped upward so as to form a wall that completely hid the land behind it from view. Ruth and Barbara ran on ahead. "Oh, Father," cried Ruth excitedly. "This is a surprise!" The two girls were looking down into a beautiful little dell. It was like a tiny oasis, with a sand wall on one side of it, and a mass of palmettoes, oak trees and cocoanut palms encircling it on the other three sides. The ground was carpeted thickly with violets. Yellow jasmine and elder flowers gleamed through the foliage. The branches of the oak trees were draped with gray Spanish moss, which made quite a sombre background for the gay tropical scene. "This is to be your drawing-room and dining-room, Madame," declared Mr. Stuart, as he helped Madame de Villiers over the sandy hillock. "You may do whatever you like here. You may pull the violets, or walk on them. There are no park rules." "Was there ever such a place in the world!" exclaimed Countess Sophia. "I shall not leave it until we sail for home. The most wonderful of sea trout could not lure me from this enchanting spot." "We shall stay here, too," agreed Mollie and Grace. "I would rather gather violets than catch gold fish," Mollie assured Mr. Stuart. The wicker chairs were brought from the launch, so that Madame de Villiers and Aunt Sallie could be comfortable in their sylvan retreat. Ruth and Barbara went off with Mr. Stuart on the quest for fish, while the young countess, Mollie and Grace gathered wild flowers and made wreaths of the sweet-smelling yellow jasmine. Grace ran with her crown of wild jasmine and placed it on Miss Sallie's soft white hair. The countess placed her wreath on Madame de Villiers's head. "Oh, happy day, Oh, day so dear!" sang Countess Sophia as she stuck one of the beautiful yellow flowers into her dark hair and danced with Mollie over the sands. It was a happy day indeed--one that the little party would never forget! Mysteries and unanswered questions were banished. Even Bab forgot for the time being all disquieting thoughts. The lovely young countess, with her eyes full of an appealing tenderness, had driven away all ugly suspicion. Several hours later the fishing party returned. "See what we've got!" Ruth exclaimed proudly, as she ran up the sand hill flourishing a string of speckled sea trout. "Miss am sho a lucky fisherman," agreed the old colored man in whose boat Mr. Stuart and the two girls had been fishing. "But where are your fish, Barbara?" Grace inquired. Mr. Stuart laughed. "Bab is the unluckiest fisherman that ever threw out a line," he explained. "Shall I tell them, Bab?" Barbara flushed. "Oh, go ahead," she consented. "Well," Mr. Stuart continued, "Miss Barbara Thurston caught a tarpon a yard long this morning." "Where is it?" cried the waiting audience. "Back in the sea, whence it came, and it nearly took Mistress Bab along with it," Mr. Stuart answered. "When Barbara caught her tarpon, she began reeling in her line as fast as she could. But the tarpon was too heavy for it, and the line broke. Then Bab prepared to dive into the ocean after her fish." "I was so excited I forgot I did not have on my bathing suit," Bab explained. "I thought, if I could just dive down into the water, I could catch my tarpon, and then Mr. Stuart could pull us both back into the boat." "Reckless, Barbara!" cried Miss Stuart. "What will you do next!" "Don't scold, Aunt Sallie," Ruth begged. "It was too funny, and Father and I caught hold of Bab's skirts before she jumped. Then old Jim, the colored man, got the fish. So we had a good look at him without Bab's drowning herself. But when we found that the catch was a tarpon, and not good to eat, Father flung it back in the water." While Mr. Stuart and the girls were talking, Jim and the engineer from the launch built a fire. They were soon at work frying the fish for luncheon. Nobody noticed that a small naphtha launch had been creeping cautiously along the coast. It was sheltered from view by the bank of sand. And it managed to hide itself in a little inlet about a quarter of a mile away from Mr. Stuart's larger boat. After a hearty luncheon no one had much to say. The "Automobile Girls" were unusually silent. Finally they confessed to being dreadfully sleepy. There is something in the soft air of Florida that compels drowsiness. Miss Sallie and Madame de Villiers nodded in their chairs. Mr. Stuart, the countess and the four girls stretched themselves on the warm sand. Jim slept under the lea of his small fishing boat, and the engineer of the launch went to sleep on the sand not far from the water's edge. For nearly an hour the entire party slumbered. All at once Mr. Stuart awoke with a feeling that something had happened. He rubbed his eyes, then counted the girls and his guests. Miss Sallie was safe under the shadow of her parasol, which had been fixed over her head. Madame de Villiers sat nodding in her chair. The afternoon shadows had begun to lengthen; a fresh breeze was stirring the leaves of the palm trees. But, except for the occasional call of a mocking bird, not a sound could be heard. Mr. Stuart waited. Did he not hear a faint noise coming from the direction of his launch. "The engineer has probably gone aboard!" Mr. Stuart thought. "It is high time we were leaving for home," said he to himself. But as he stepped to the edge of the embankment he saw his engineer still lying on the ground sleeping soundly. A small boat like a black speck disappeared around a curve in the shore. "What on earth does that mean?" cried Mr. Stuart. Leaping over the sandy wall he ran toward his engineer. Mr. Stuart shook him gently. The man opened his eyes drowsily, yawned then raising himself to a sitting position, looked stupidly about. "A strange boat has just put out from here," said Mr. Stuart quietly. "We had better go out to the launch and see if all is well." The engineer rose to his feet, and still stupid from his heavy sleep, followed Mr. Stuart to the dinghy. The sound of voices aroused old Jim who clambered to his feet blinking rapidly. Mr. Stuart and the engineer pushed off toward the launch, each feeling that he was about to come upon something irregular. Their premonitions proved wholly correct. The engine room of the pretty craft was a total wreck. The machinery had been taken apart so deftly, it seemed as though an engineer alone could have accomplished it, while the most important parts of the engine were missing. "Whose work is this?" ejaculated Mr. Stuart, clenching his fists in impotent rage. Suddenly it dawned upon him what the wrecking of his launch meant. He was on an uninhabited shore with seven women, his engineer, and colored servant, with no prospect of getting away that night. He felt in his pockets. A pen-knife was his only tool or weapon. Mr. Stuart rowed back to shore to break the disagreeable news to the members of his party. But the sleepers were awake on his return. They had seen Mr. Stuart row hurriedly out to the launch with the engineer, and surmised instantly that something had happened. "Oh, dear, oh, dear!" wailed the countess, when Mr. Stuart had explained their plight. "Must I always bring ill-luck to you?" "Nonsense!" expostulated Mr. Stuart. "How could the wrecking of our engine have any connection with you, Countess?" Old Jim who still stood blinking and stretching now began to vaguely grasp the situation. "'Scuse me ladies," he mumbled. "I spects I'se jest been nappin' a little. I ain't been 'zactly asleep." The "Automobile Girls" laughed, in spite of the difficulties which confronted them. "Oh no, you haven't been asleep," Mr. Stuart assured him, "but that nap of yours was a close imitation of the real thing." Jim grinned sheepishly and hung his woolly head. "I 'low nothin' bad ain't happened, suh." "Something bad certainly has happened. In fact about as bad as it well could be, Jim," declared Mr. Stuart. "Some wretch has tampered with the engine of our launch and left us high and dry on this lonely shore. We must do something and that something quickly. It's getting late, and we don't want to spend the night here, lovely as the place is. Where's the nearest house or village?" "Lor', suh," exclaimed old Jim. "This am a lonesome spot. There ain't no village no wheres round heah!" "But where is the nearest house, then?" demanded Mr. Stuart. The darkey scratched his head reflectively. "Ole Miss Thorne might take you in, Massa. Her place am about two miles from here. She's my old missis. I live thar. I jest comes down here and helps fishin' parties to land and takes them out in my boat in the daytime. Nights I sleeps at my old missis's place. She comes of a fine family she do. But she's a little teched in the head, suh." "All right, Jim; show us the way to the house. But how are we to find a horse and wagon? My sister and Madame de Villiers will not care to walk that distance." "I got an old horse and wagon hitched near here, Massa," Jim returned. "I come over in it this morning." Mr. Stuart finally installed Miss Sallie, Madame de Villiers, and the young countess in the bottom of Jim's old wagon. He also stored their lunch baskets away under the seats. Food might be precious before they found their way back to their hotel. Then Jim started his patient old horse, while Mr. Stuart and the "Automobile Girls" followed the wagon which led the way along a narrow road through the heart of the jungle. But before leaving the deserted shore, Mr. Stuart went back to the launch. He tacked a note on the outside of the cabin. The note explained the accident to their engine. It also stated that Mr. Stuart and his party had gone to seek refuge at the home of a Miss Thorne, two miles back from the shore. Mr. Stuart did not believe the wrecker would return to the boat. He had accomplished his evil purpose. But Mr. Stuart did hope that another launch might visit the coast either that evening or in the early morning. Therefore he requested that any one who discovered his letter would come to Miss Thorne's home for his party. CHAPTER XVI WELCOME AND UNWELCOME GUESTS The sun was just sinking when Mr. Stuart's weary cavalcade stopped in front of a great iron gate. The gate was covered with rust and hung loose on its hinges. It opened into a splendid avenue of cypress trees. As far as the eye could see on each side of the road, ran overgrown hedges of the Rose of Sharon. The bushes were in full bloom and the masses of white blossoms gleamed in the gathering shadows like lines of new fallen snow. "How beautiful!" exclaimed the four "Automobile Girls" in chorus. Mr. Stuart looked anxiously up the lonely avenue as his party stumbled along the rough road and peered cautiously into the hedge first on one side then on the other. It would have been easy for an army to hide itself in the cover of the thicket, which hemmed them in on all sides in an impenetrable wall of green. "I feel extremely uneasy, Robert," declared Miss Sallie, her face pale under the stress of the day's experiences. Old Madame de Villiers smiled and shrugged her shoulders. "I have no fear for myself," she said. "My husband is a soldier. I have followed him through two great wars. What comes must come. It is all in the day's business. But the countess, she is different. She is in my charge; nothing must happen to her. I assure you, Mr. Stuart, it is of the utmost importance that the Countess Sophia be protected." Miss Sallie held her head very high. Madame de Villiers was their guest, so Miss Stuart would say nothing. But why should Madame de Villiers think the safety of the Countess Sophia of more importance than that of the four "Automobile Girls?" Miss Sarah Stuart had other ideas. She was equally determined that no harm should overtake any one of her charges. The narrow avenue finally broadened into a lawn overgrown with flowers and vines. Back of it stood an old house that had once been a fine colonial mansion. The house seemed to frown on the intruders, who had come to destroy its sacred quiet. "I should think anybody might be 'teched' in the head, who lived alone in a queer place like this," whispered Ruth to Bab, as the two girls stood with their arms about each other, staring ahead of them. "Will you see Miss Thorne first, Jim, and explain our plight to her?" Mr. Stuart asked the old colored man. "Or do you think it would be better to have me make matters clear?" "I'll do the 'splainin', Massa," returned old Jim. "My missis will allus listen to me. I done tole you she wasn't jes' like other folks." "Is your mistress insane, Jim?" inquired Miss Sallie anxiously. "No-o, ma'am," returned the old man. "Miss Thorne she ain't crazy. She's puffectly quiet, suh, and she's all right on every subject 'cept one. I hates to tell you what that thing is." "Out with it, Jim. What is the lady's peculiarity?" "She imagines, suh, that her fambly is still with her, her own ma and pa, and young massa, and her sister Missy Lucy. Missy Rose ain't never been married." "Where is her family, Jim?" Ruth asked. "They lies yonder in the buryin' ground, Missy," replied the old darkey, pointing toward a clearing some distance from the house, where a few white stones gleamed in the twilight. Miss Sallie shuddered. Grace and Mollie huddled close to her, while Ruth and Bab gave each other's hands re-assuring pressures. "Do you look after this Miss Thorne?" Mr. Stuart inquired further. "Yes, suh; me and my wife Chloe looks after her. Chloe cooks and I works about the place when I'se not down to the beach with my boat. But my missus ain't so poor. She's got enough to git along with. I jest likes to earn a little extra." By this time Jim had climbed down from his shaky old wagon. He now opened the front door. "Walk right in," he said hospitably, making a low bow. "I'll go find Miss Rose." Mr. Stuart's party entered a wide hall that seemed shrouded in impenetrable gloom. On the walls hung rows of family portraits. The place was inexpressibly dismal. The "Automobile Girls" kept close to Mr. Stuart. In silence they waited for the appearance of the mistress of the house. Two candles flickered in the dark hallway. Out of the gloom emerged an old lady, followed by her two servants, who were bearing the lights. She was small and very fragile. She wore a gray silk gown of an old fashioned cut. Her dress was ornamented with a bertha and cuffs of Duchess lace. The old lady advanced and held out her small hand. "I am pleased to offer you shelter," she declared to Mr. Stuart. "Jim has explained your predicament to me. We shall be only too happy to have you stay with us for the night." At the word "we," the "Automobile Girls" exchanged frightened glances. Their hostess was alone. But that one word "we" explained the situation. Did she mean that all the ghosts of her past still waited in the house to welcome unexpected visitors? "It has been many years since we have had guests in our home," continued Miss Thorne. "But I think we have rooms enough to accommodate you." Chloe conducted Miss Sallie, Madame de Villiers, the Countess Sophia and the four "Automobile Girls" into a great parlor. The room was furnished with old fashioned elegance. Candles burned on the high mantel shelves. But the dim lights could not dispel the shadow of desolation that pervaded the great room. A few minutes later Miss Thorne entered the room. "You must tell me your names," she inquired sociably. "I wish to run upstairs and tell Mama about you. Poor Mama is an invalid or she would come down to see you." Then calling Chloe to her, she said in a loud whisper: "Notify Miss Lucy and Master Tom at once. Papa can wait. He is busy in the library." An uncanny silence followed Miss Thorne's speech. Every one of the seven women looked unhappy and Mr. Stuart tried vainly to conceal a sense of uneasiness. But Chloe quietly beckoned the party from the room. "I'll jes' show the ladies upstairs," she explained gently and her mistress made no objection. Miss Sallie would on no account sleep alone in such a dismal house. She shared a large chamber with Ruth and Bab. The countess asked to spend the night with Mollie and Grace, and Madame de Villiers, who was afraid of nothing, had a room to herself. Mr. Stuart went up to the third floor. "Let us talk and laugh and try to be cheerful, girls," proposed the countess. "This poor old soul is quite harmless, I believe, and she seems very sad. Perhaps we may be able to cheer her a little." "All right, my lovely countess," replied Mollie. "Ghosts or no ghosts, we will do our best. But don't count on me for much merriment. I'm a dreadful coward." Mollie looked over her shoulder with a shudder. The countess and Grace laughed, but quickly their laugh died. The sound of weird music floated up through the dark hall. Their hostess, Miss Thorne, was playing the tall harp that stood in the parlor. "Goodness!" cried Miss Sallie, "what will that poor soul do next? I should not be in the least surprised if the entire departed family were given places at supper to-night." Which was exactly what happened. Four empty chairs were left at the table. "Miss Thorne," said Mr. Stuart, when they were all seated, "could you not be persuaded to visit the outer world? It would give my sister and me much pleasure if you would spend a few days with us at Palm Beach." A spark of pleasure lit up the hostess's faded eyes for an instant. Then she shook her head sadly. "You are most kind, sir, but I am much needed at home. Lucy, my sister, is quite delicate, you see. And Mama is an invalid." Miss Sallie touched her brother's foot under the table, as a signal to keep away from dangerous topics. But what topic was not dangerous? "How charmingly you play the harp, Miss Thorne," ventured the countess, when they had somewhat recovered themselves. "Ah," exclaimed the poor woman, smiling archly, "you must praise the right person, my dear. It was my sister Lucy who was playing." Miss Sallie dropped her fork with a loud clatter, while Mollie slipped her hand into the countess's and the other three girls linked their feet under the table, girl fashion. Jim, who, in an old black coat, was waiting on the table, smiled grimly and mumbled to himself. "But, young ladies," cried Miss Thorne, "you are not eating." As a matter of fact the supper was delicious; biscuits as light as snow flakes, broiled sea trout, potatoes roasted in their jackets and preserves in delicate cut glass bowls. But who could enjoy a banquet under such conditions? The two candles seemed to accentuate the blackness of the shadows which gathered at the edges of the room. The guests tried to laugh and talk, but gradually gloomy silence settled upon them. Miss Thorne appeared to have forgotten where she was and Mr. Stuart observing the uneasiness of the whole party remarked that as they had had a long day it would be well to retire early. As they were about to rise from the table a sudden exclamation from the countess who sat at the lower end of the table caused all eyes to turn toward her in startled inquiry. She was staring at the open window in fascinated terror, unable for the moment to do anything save point to the opening which was swathed in shadows. "A horrible old man!" she at last managed to articulate. "I saw him looking in at us!" "What old man?" demanded Mr. Stuart. "He was white haired and looked like a great ape," she gasped. "Why that's the man whom I drove out of your room the other night, Countess," exclaimed Bab. "What can his object be in following you?" "Come, my man," commanded Mr. Stuart, turning to the engineer who sat beside him, "and you too, Jim, we'll search the grounds. I believe that this formidable old man can tell us something about the wrecking of the engine. Let's get after him at once!" Old Jim lost no time in procuring lanterns, and a thorough search of the grounds was made. The women meantime remained in the dining room, but now that the first effects of their fright had worn off, they prepared to give their fearsome intruder a warm reception should he again show himself. Madame de Villiers moved her chair to one side of the open window, her heavy cane in both hands, ready for instant use. While Barbara took up her station at the other side grasping firmly the heavy silver teapot that had been in the Thorne family for generations. Ruth guarded the door at one end, brandishing ferociously a heavy carving knife she had appropriated from a set on the old fashioned side-board, while Mollie, bravely, held the fort, at the other door with the fork. The countess half laughing, half shuddering, clung to a heavy cut glass water bottle, while Miss Sallie had prepared to meet the enemy with a huge bottle of cayenne pepper, which she had taken from the old-fashioned silver castor. [Illustration: The Countess Pointed Toward the Open Window.] "There is nothing like being prepared," said Ruth with a hysterical laugh, after ten minutes had passed, and the enemy had not shown himself. "I'm going to get a chair and be comfortable." Mollie followed suit, and the watchers sat valiantly alert, as the minutes dragged by. Miss Thorne chattered voluably to and about her family, paying very little attention to her strangely-behaved guests, while Chloe, the old servant, huddled in one corner, her eyes rolling with fright at every sound she heard. At last the welcome sound of men's voices was heard and Mr. Stuart, followed by the engineer and old Jim, entered at Mollie's door. "What kind of desperado organization is this?" he exclaimed, laughing in spite of himself at the ludicrous appearance this feminine vigilant committee made. "It's war to the knife," cried Ruth. "And the fork, too, I should say," laughed her father, "also the teapot, and--what on earth are you cherishing so fondly, Sallie?" "Cayenne pepper," responded Miss Sallie, "and I consider myself well armed, at that." "I should rather think so," agreed her brother. "However you are all safe in laying down your arms, for we have searched diligently, and can find no trace of the intruder. He evidently heard the countess and made a quick get away. You must pardon us, Madam, for stirring up your quiet home in this manner," he said, bowing to Miss Thorne. "I trust we shall meet with no further disagreeable adventures." "You have not disturbed either Lucy or me in the least," declared the demented old woman graciously. "As for Papa and Mama they dearly love to have visitors." She smiled sweetly and at once began a one-sided conversation with her departed parents. "Do take us away from her," whispered Ruth to her father. "She has been addressing the shades of her family ever since you left us, and it's getting on our nerves." "With your kind permission, Miss Thorne, we shall retire," said Mr. Stuart, and the seven tired women gladly followed him through the shadowy hall and up the wide stairs, to their respective sleeping rooms. CHAPTER XVII THE MIDNIGHT INTRUDER Once in their rooms the drooping spirits of the picnickers revived, somewhat. It was a fine night, the air warm and fragrant. The windows of the sleeping rooms were wide open and the moonlight streamed across the floor, filling the whole place with its soft radiance. "Oh look!" cried Grace, going over to the open window. "What a darling balcony! I believe the other rooms all open out on it too. Good-bye," she called to Mollie and the countess, as she stepped nimbly over the sill. "I'm going to make a call." Grace had hardly disappeared, before the countess went quickly to the door, closed it, then came back to Mollie, her finger on her lip. Drawing Mollie over to one corner of the room, where they could not be observed from the outside, the countess whispered. "Mademoiselle Mollie, I believe you love me and trust me, even more than do your friends, and because of this I am going to ask you to do me a very great favor." Mollie's blue eyes looked lovingly up into the dark eyes of the countess. So fervent was her feeling of adoration for this fascinating stranger that she was prepared to grant any favor that lay within her power. "I should dearly love to help you in any way I can," she said earnestly. "You make me very, very happy." The countess kissed her. "Dear child," she continued, "the thing I am going to ask seems simple enough, but some day you will understand how much it means to me. Wait a moment," she added almost under her breath. "There is some one whom I hold in such dread that, even in this desolate and far-away place, he or his confederate might be listening." She looked about her cautiously, then went to the window and anxiously scanned the balcony. It was quite empty. Her eyes searched the long avenue leading to the grove that looked like a huge black spot in the moonlight. Then she returned to Mollie and said softly, "I am not afraid of ghosts, and neither are you, Mollie, I am sure, because there are no such things; but this place fills me with foreboding. It is so lonesome, so utterly dismal. What was that? I thought I heard a noise below. Did you hear anything?" "Perhaps it was Jim closing up for the night," replied Mollie, pressing close to the countess for comfort. "But what was the favor? I will do anything for you." "This is it," answered the countess, her voice again dropping to a whisper. "Will you, for a few days, carry a paper for me? It is a very dangerous paper, dangerous, that is, because some one else wishes it, but it is a very valuable one to me because I may need it, and if you will keep it safely hidden until I do need it, you will not only be doing me a service but Mademoiselle Warren also." Mollie looked puzzled. The countess's words were shrouded in mystery. "Does it concern the Count de Sonde, too?" she asked breathlessly. "Yes," replied the countess; "it concerns him very intimately. Will you do this for me, little Mollie? I know now that the paper is not safe either in my house or on me. It would be quite safe with you, however. Even my enemy would never think of that, and, if anything should happen to me, you may produce the paper at once. Give it to Mr. Stuart. He will know what should be done." The countess took from her dress a square, flat chamois bag which fastened with a clasp and evidently contained a document of some sort. "Fasten it into your dress with this pin," she said, "and keep the pin as a memento of our friendship." And the pin, as Mollie saw later, was no ordinary affair, but a broad gold band on which was a beautifully enameled coat of arms. "Is this another secret session?" cried Ruth's voice gayly from the window. The two conspirators started nervously. "Come into our room," Ruth continued. "Papa has sent up the luncheon hamper. There are still some sandwiches and fruit left; likewise a box of candy. We were too frightened to have appetites at supper, but I think a little food, now, will cheer us mightily." "This looks quite like a boarding-school spread," exclaimed Miss Sallie as they gathered around the feast. "But it is really a good idea. I feel that this little midnight luncheon might help me keep up my courage until I get to sleep." "What a jolly little feast," cried the Countess Sophia. "I am quite beginning to take heart again after that fearful ordeal below. I had a feeling all the time that the chairs were not really empty." "Goodness me!" cried Grace, "do change the subject, or we shall be afraid to go to bed at all." "And I move that we take to our couches at once," said Ruth, "while we have the courage to do so. Madame de Villiers, are you not afraid to sleep alone?" "Not in the least, my dear. I am not afraid of the most courageous ghost that ever walked. I believe I will retire at once. I am very tired." Taking one of the candles which stood in a row on the mantel, making a cheerful illumination, the stately old woman bade them good night, and the tapping of her stick resounded through the empty hall. Soon after Grace, Mollie and the countess stepped through the window, and down the balcony to their room. "You'd better close your shutters," called Grace over her shoulder. "We're going to." "And lose all this glorious moonlight?" asked Ruth. "Never. This balcony is too high from the ground for any one to climb up, easily, and besides, old Jim is going to be on guard to-night. Aunt Sallie thinks we had better try to make ourselves comfortable without doing much undressing. Even if we don't sleep very well to-night, we can make up for it when we get back to the hotel." With these words Ruth blew out the candles and five minutes later, their shoes and outer clothing removed, she and Barbara and Miss Sallie were fast asleep. Grace and Mollie, however, struggled vainly with the heavy wooden shutters, but try as they might they could not succeed in closing them tightly. After some subdued laughter and many exclamations they abandoned their task in disgust, and blowing out their candles prepared themselves for sleep. At midnight Ruth awoke with a start. She had a distinct sensation that some one had been looking into her face. But the room was still flooded with moonlight, and she could see plainly that, except for her sleeping companions, no one was there. She turned over and closed her eyes again, but the sudden waking had driven sleep away. Was that a noise? Ruth held her breath and listened. There was not a sound except the regular breathing of Miss Sallie. Ruth lay with every nerve strained to catch the lightest footfall. In a moment it came again, very faint but still distinct. Something--some one--moved somewhere. She sat up in bed and touched Barbara lightly on the cheek. Barbara opened her eyes slowly then sat up. Ruth pointed to the next room. The two girls listened intently. Again there was the sound, a soft, a very soft footfall on a creaking board. Cautiously the two girls climbed from the bed and crept over to the door between the two rooms. On a small bed at the far side of the room lay the countess, sleeping soundly. Grace and Mollie also were fast asleep in the other bed. Suddenly Ruth gripped Bab's arm. The eyes of both girls were riveted on the old fashioned dressing table in one corner of the room. Before it stood the same terrible old man that Bab had seen at the villa. He was examining minutely every thing on the dresser. Next he turned his attention to the girls' walking suits which hung over the backs of the chairs. He searched the pockets of the coats, the linings, and even the hems of the skirts. "He is certainly looking for a paper," Barbara thought, as she watched him make his systematic search, "and he certainly has something to do with the countess's affairs." Barbara's mind reverted to the group she had seen on the hotel veranda, the night before. What was the explanation of it all? Was the countess really an impostor and why, when she evidently feared Monsieur Duval and ignored Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, did she hold interviews late at night with them? She had distinctly refused the "Automobile Girls'" invitations to the hotel, yet she had not refused to meet others there. And what part could this ferocious looking old man possibly have in the drama? All this passed rapidly through Bab's mind as with her hand clasped tightly in Ruth's the two girls watched the intruder with bated breath. To Bab there was something strangely familiar about him, his movements suggested some one she had seen before, yet she could find no place in her memory for him. Failing to find what he desired, the old man again turned toward the countess a look of indescribable menace on his face. He took a step toward her then--a sudden burst of weird music floated up from the gloomy drawing room. With a smothered exclamation the intruder whirled and making for the window swung himself over the ledge. Ruth clutched Barbara for support. She was trembling with fear. "Don't be frightened, dear," soothed Bab bravely. "That isn't ghost music. It's only Miss Thorne playing the harp. It's an unearthly hour for music, but she couldn't have begun to play at a more opportune moment, either. I believe that frightful old man thought it was ghost music. Just listen to it. It's enough to give any one the creeps." The demented old woman played on in a wailing minor key, and presently footsteps were heard coming down the hall. By this time Mollie, Grace and the countess were wide awake and seeing Bab and Ruth in their room demanded to know what had happened. A moment later Madame de Villiers and Miss Sallie, both fully dressed, entered the room. "No more sleep for me to-night," announced Miss Stuart firmly. "I feel that the sooner morning comes and we get out of this house the better pleased I shall be." At that instant a melancholy strain like the wail of a lost soul rose from down stairs. Then all was silent. "I begin to believe it is the departed spirit of her sister Lucy that executed that last passage," shuddered the countess. "Come, my dears let us finish dressing. It will soon be morning and then surely some way will be provided for us to go back to Palm Beach." "Shall we tell her?" whispered Ruth to Bab. "We'd better," nodded Bab. "Then she will be constantly on her guard." "Listen, everyone," commanded Ruth. "We are going to tell you something but you mustn't feel frightened. We think the countess should know it at once. You tell them about it, Bab." Bab obediently began a recital of what had transpired after she and Ruth had been so suddenly wakened. The others listened in consternation to her story. The countess who turned very pale while Bab was speaking, looked appealingly at Madame de Villiers. The stern old woman was apparently much agitated. "He shall not harm the Countess Sophia," she muttered, forgetful of those about her. "I will protect her even from him." "Aunt Sallie, shall I call Father?" asked Ruth a few moments later. The seven women were seated about the room in silent dejection. "No, Ruth," responded her aunt. "We will not waken him. A man that can sleep through a concert such as we were favored with deserves to be left in peace. It is after four o'clock now. I think we'll let him sleep until six, at least. Then after breakfast, perhaps, he will be able to devise some means by which we may return to the hotel." It was a very tired and sleepy band of picnickers that gathered around the Thorne breakfast table that morning, and breakfast was not over when the honk of an automobile horn was heard and a large touring car rolled up the avenue. "Hurrah!" shouted Ruth. "It's Mr. Warren. Oh, but I'm glad to see him." It was indeed Mr. Warren, who, when the party did not return that night, had taken the fastest launch he could find and made for the picnic ground. He had discovered the note, as Mr. Stuart had hoped, had returned to the hotel where the history of Thorne house and its mistress was not unknown and had come for them himself after a few hours sleep. "I should be happy and honored if you would all come again," said Miss Thorne as she waved adieu to her guests from the front piazza, while Jim and Chloe bobbed and bowed and chuckled over the generous present they had each received from Mr. Stuart. As the automobile rolled down the avenue they caught a last glimpse of the mistress of Thorne House still waving her handkerchief, and in every heart was a feeling of tender sympathy for the little old woman whose present was so irrevocably linked to the past. CHAPTER XVIII THE WATER FÊTE "Roll along, roll along, O'er the waters so blue, We're afloat, we're afloat In our birch bark canoe," sang Grace's high sweet voice as their boat bobbed gayly up and down with the little rippling waves of the lake. "That is a pretty song, my dear child," exclaimed Miss Sallie Stuart, from a cushioned seat in the stern of the boat, "but you should substitute 'naphtha launch' for canoe. Nothing would induce me to ride in one." "The Count de Sonde is going to be at the fête in a canoe," observed Maud Warren in the tone of one imparting a piece of valuable information. "He asked me to go with him, but Papa was unreasonable, as usual." "In a canoe with that little foreigner!" cried Miss Sallie in amazement. "Does he know how to paddle?" "The count is an expert boatman," replied Maud stiffly. She had mixed sensations of fear and dislike for Miss Sallie, although fear was the stronger sentiment of the two. "I imagine his swimming and his canoeing are about alike," said Ruth aside to Barbara; "just paddling in shallow water." The "Automobile Girls" were busily engaged in decorating their launch for the Venetian Fête, which was to take place that evening. The lake dotted with numbers of boats looked like an immense flower bed. Hundreds of craft of every land were anchored near the shore, each filled with gay parties of young people who were stringing up rows of Japanese lanterns, bunting and flags. "There's not a boat on the lake that can compare with ours," cried Mollie proudly, as she tacked the end of a festoon of small banners to the awning-pole, while Barbara gave a finishing touch by crossing the silk flags of the "Automobile Girls" on the bow. "If only the lanterns don't catch fire this evening," said Miss Sallie. "What a pessimist you are, Auntie, dearest!" exclaimed Ruth. "We can easily pitch them in the water if they do, and still be very handsome with our banners and things." "Here comes the count," cried Maud, who had ignored the conversation of the others and was busily scanning the multitudes of boats in search of her admirer. Her friends politely controlled a desire to laugh when they saw the count presently emerge from the boats along the shore in a small canoe that was decorated with one lantern hung from a bamboo stick in the bow, while the French flag waved triumphantly from the stern. The count, in white flannels, was working laboriously with the paddle. His little mustache twitched in an agony of exertion and occasionally he paused to wipe the perspiration from his brow. "The count is quite an athlete, isn't he, Maud?" asked Mollie wickedly. "I should think he might lead the parade to-night." But Maud was not listening. Her whole attention was concentrated on the canoe, which was making straight for the launch. "Here I am, Count," she cried, waving her handkerchief to the young Frenchman, who, as soon as he espied the boat full of girls, had begun to paddle with a grand flourish, at the same time casting melting glances in the direction of Maud. But he had not calculated on the distance between the canoe and the launch, and a final, fancy stroke with the paddle, sent the frail little boat scurrying over the water. It collided with the larger boat, and in an instant turned turtle, dragging the flag of the French ignominiously into the depths while the discomfited son of France, clung to the side of his boat, and wildly called for help. At first the girls were speechless with laughter and the last of the De Sondes received neither sympathy nor aid. Even Maud joined in the merriment, while the enraged nobleman sputtered angrily in French and denounced America and everything in it as fit only for pigs. Presently Barbara wiped the tears from her eyes and threw out a life preserver to the unfortunate man. "There, Count," she called, "you can't sink as long as you hold on to that. We'll see if we can't right your boat, and you can paddle back to shore." "I'm sorry we can't offer you the hospitality of our boat," said Miss Sallie, "but we are anchored, you see, and the engineer is ashore. Besides, I am afraid your wet clothing would spoil our decorations." The count, however, was too enraged to remember any English. He shook his fist at the upturned canoe and poured forth a perfect torrent of maledictions against it. Just then a passing launch paused and gave the needed assistance, taking the count on board and towing the canoe to shore. As the little boat was righted an envelope that had evidently fallen from the count's pocket, floated past them in the current. "You dropped something," called Barbara, but the launch had already started for shore and the count did not hear her. Using the crook of her parasol Ruth tried to fish it out. As she drew it to the side of the boat it sank out of sight but not before she had read the inscription on it, written in an angular foreign-looking handwriting: "To Madame La Comtesse Sophia von Stolberg." Barbara, too, saw it, and so did Mollie, whose face flushed crimson with the memory of what her beloved countess had said to her that night on the balcony of Thorne House. At that very moment, pinned inside of Mollie's white silk blouse, was the dangerous paper which "concerned the count very intimately." Was it about that mysterious document that he was now writing to the countess? For the first time Mollie felt the shadow of a doubt cross her mind. It was only a tiny speck of a doubt, but it left its impression, try as she would to shake it off. Ruth and Barbara exchanged glances, but said nothing. They had seen enough to know that some sort of correspondence was being secretly carried on between the Countess von Stolberg and the Count de Sonde. If Maud were to marry the count she would deeply regret it, the Countess Sophia had said. Strangely enough, this speech came back to each of the three girls at the same moment. Ruth felt that perhaps they had rushed too quickly into an intimacy with the countess. For the first time Mollie was inclined to be a little suspicious. While Barbara who had even more evidence against the Countess Sophia tried vainly to fit together the pieces of this most mysterious puzzle. * * * * * "Well, fair and beautiful ladies, are you quite ready for a sail on the Grand Canal? Have you your wraps and bonnets? Is Grace's guitar on hand?" called Mr. Stuart that evening, after dinner, rapping on three doors one after the other. "In a minute!" called a chorus of voices from the three rooms, while Mr. Stuart put on a look of resigned patience and waited for the girls to appear. At length, tired of waiting, he strolled toward the elevator when Marian De Lancey Smythe hurried along the corridor. She averted her face when she saw Mr. Stuart, for Marian had sedulously kept out of sight for a number of days, and they had wondered not a little at it. "Why, Miss Marian," called the kind-hearted man, who had always felt an interest in the strange young girl, "aren't you going to see the water fête to-night?" "I'm afraid not, Mr. Stuart," she replied, her lips trembling a little, partly from loneliness and partly because people were not often kind to her. "Mama is going with Mr. Duval and some friends, but I didn't care to go with them." "Very well, Miss Marian; you must go with us, then. Get your wraps and meet us on the piazza." And ten minutes later, her eyes alight with pleasure, Marian made one of the party of girls who presently found themselves floating in the long procession of illuminated boats on the lake. All the hotels had emptied themselves upon the lake front, and hundreds of boats had already filled and were forming in line for the water. The moon would not be up until very late, but the place was aglow with Japanese lanterns, which decorated the launches and rowboats and hung in festoons along the boat landings. The girls had hardly got their lanterns lit when there was a burst of music, and the procession began to wind its sinuous way about the lake. "The fireworks will begin in a moment, girls," said Mr. Warren, "and then you will be a part of a wonderful spectacle to those on shore." Certainly the Stuart boat was one of the most picturesque of all the craft that floated in the parade. The glow of the lanterns made a soft illumination about the four young girls, each of whom wore a long broadcloth cape, a final gift from Mr. Stuart before leaving Chicago. Barbara's was her favorite dark red, Ruth's was pink, Mollie's her own particular blue and Grace's a delicate lavender. "Daughter," continued Mr. Warren, turning to Maud who in an elaborate white silk evening wrap, was leaning languidly back in her seat, "aren't you feeling well to-night?" "Oh, perfectly well, Papa," replied Maud, resting her chin on her hand and looking out across the fleet of boats moving slowly along the shore. "But spectacles of this sort are so childish and tiresome, I think. They do bore me--oh, there's the count," she cried, interrupting herself. Her father looked so grieved and annoyed that Mr. Stuart's heart was filled with compassion for his old friend. "See what a good time the other girls are having," went on Mr. Warren, in a pleading tone. "Look how jolly they are in their bright capes. I wish you would get one, daughter. These grown-up things make you look so much older than you really are." He pressed the girl's hand but she drew away with a petulant expression. "Please don't, Papa. You know how I detest public demonstrations." "Oh-h-h!" cried the others. A sky rocket had exploded and thousands of stars hung for an instant suspended in mid-air. Then an entire artillery of Roman candles seemed to be let loose at once. There was a blare of trumpets, a grand burst of music and the gorgeous water pageant was outlined against the sky like an illuminated picture. Other boats began dropping out of line after the music had stopped, and Mr. Stuart ordered the engineer to run farther out into the lake where the illumination could be seen to better advantage. Grace struck a chord on her guitar and began to sing: "'Tis night on Venice waters," when Marian, to the surprise of the others, suddenly joined in with a sweet contralto voice. "Why, Marian, I never dreamed you could sing like that," exclaimed Ruth, when the song was done. Marian blushed, but said nothing. She had hardly spoken during the whole evening. The air was full of music that night and the sound of laughter and singing floated across the lake from scores of other boats. The strains of the "Marseillaise" came to them from a launch that Maud had been watching for some time. "I know whose voice that is," said Barbara. "It's Monsieur Duval's." "It is, I think," replied Ruth, "although the boat is too far away for us to see him plainly." Marian drew a scarf over her head and crouched down in her seat. "Could she be afraid of her own mother?" wondered Barbara, for Mrs. De Lancey Smythe was easily recognized as one of the occupants of the boat. The count, who was playing on a tinkling little mandolin, sat beside her. As the boat drew nearer they noticed another figure wrapped in a long blue broadcloth cape. It was that of a woman, sitting with her back to them. A scarf concealed her head and face. "Barbara," whispered Ruth, "are we dreaming or is it the Countess Sophia?" Barbara strained her eyes to distinguish the figure. Mollie and Grace also had seen the familiar wrap and poor little Mollie's face burned with something very like mortification. The boat skimmed lightly over the water and in a moment only the lantern at its bow could be seen swinging in the blackness. "It looks like the countess," whispered Barbara briefly in reply. "Marian," she said, turning to the other girl who had closed her eyes as though she wished to shut out the sight of the other boat, "we just saw your mother go past with Monsieur Duval and the count, and we thought--we were almost certain we recognized the other person in the boat. Did you notice who it was?" Marian opened her eyes and looked straight into Barbara's. "I am sorry, Barbara," she said sadly, "but I can't answer that question to-night." CHAPTER XIX RED DOMINOS The water fête a thing of the past, the Warrens' domino ball became the excitement of the hour. The "Automobile Girls" were talking over their costumes when there came a rap on their door. Grace responded, to find the corridor empty; but at her feet lay a sealed envelope addressed to Barbara, who hastily tore it open and read aloud the enclosed note. "Maud and the Count have planned to elope during the domino ball. At midnight Maud and her chaperon will steal out of the side entrance of the hotel. The chaperon will wear a black domino, but will remain in her room until ten minutes before midnight, when she will go to the veranda, meet Maud, and the two will go to the east entrance of the hotel grounds, where they will be met by the count with an automobile. They will go to the village and be married there. Arrangements have been made and the license secured. Maud will wear a red silk domino and a black mask. Just over her heart will be a small black silk heart the size of the one enclosed. I promised to warn you should anything serious arise, and have done so at great personal risk. Stop the elopement if you can without outside aid. Some day I will explain why. "M. S." "'M. S.' Marian Smythe. She is a good scout, girls," said Ruth. "But I didn't think that Maud would go so far as this." "This pattern for the heart--I imagine that Marian is suggesting that we all wear dominos exactly like Maud's. But why?" put in Barbara. "We'll take that step in the dark, for Father is waiting now to telegraph for the silk to make our dominos, and discuss details later." "I did want a pink domino," sighed Mollie. "But you're right, Ruth; and the count will be a dizzy man before we're through with him!" "Won't the count be suspicious on seeing five Mauds and change his plans?" asked Grace. "He'll not see five Mauds. There will be a big crowd at the ball, and four of the Mauds will carefully keep out of one another's way," explained Ruth. It was after the girls had gone to bed that night that the full answer came to Ruth, so she aroused Barbara to tell her of the plan. "I have it, Bab! We'll switch couples on the count! I'm sorry, but you'll have to take the risk, for you're the only one tall enough to represent Maud. I'm sure that Mrs. De Lancey Smythe is to be the chaperon on the occasion, and if we can persuade Aunt Sallie--and I think we can--to take her place, our Count de Sonde will find himself with the wrong pair on his hands--and, oh, Bab, shan't we have fun seeing the count rage!" It was a brief statement of the plan, but Barbara understood. "Maud will not be easy to fool, and what if the count gets the right pair?" "Just before the hour set, one of us will get a note to Mrs. Smythe changing the place of meeting. There--at the new place--Maud and her chaperon will wait in vain for her count, who will be eloping with the wrong couple." "It leaves many loopholes for failure, but I can think of no better way; so I'm for it if your Aunt Sallie consents." "Monsieur Duval is the unknown X of the problem," stated Ruth slowly, "but that's one of the many chances we'll have to take." At last it was the night of the ball. "How lovely!" One of the five red dominos paused on the threshold of the ball room, almost breathless with admiration. Glowing lights, exotic decorations, swaying, brilliantly clad figures moving to perfect dance music, made indeed an entrancing scene. "Yes, lovely, but lovelier outside. Shall we go into the garden?" whispered a voice in the ear of the little red domino. "Not yet," she responded, and sped away among the dancers. "Mademoiselle," whispered a voice that made the blood of a second red domino tingle, "is it all arranged?" "Yes," she answered under her breath. "You won't fail us?" whispered the other. "No," she replied quietly, but there was a threat in his tone that boded evil. Then this red domino slipped away in the crowd. Meanwhile, a third red domino was peering from behind a screen of palms when she felt her arm seized and, turning, encountered the angry little mask that had been pursuing red dominos until his brain reeled. "Mademoiselle," he hissed, "you are cruel! Why do you avoid me so?" "Ah, Count, can't you wait so short a time?" and the third red domino was lost in the crowd. The fourth red domino had been amusing herself like a wilful butterfly on a summer's day. But it was getting late, and she paused at length to look about her. As she passed a grotto in the garden, formed by palms and orange trees, she heard the low chatter of voices speaking French. A vine-covered trellis screened her from view. One of the voices she recognized as Monsieur Duval's. She heard him say: "In three quarters of an hour we shall start. The maid tells me the officer is asleep. She saw to that. The young one is on the veranda with the older one, and they never retire until after midnight. We must have that paper to-night, even though we use violence." The fourth red domino did not wait for more. "I must find Father," she told herself. "How shall I ever get him in time? They're talking of the countess, and Monsieur Duval intends to go to the villa!" But what of the fifth red domino, the hostess of the great ball? Time had hung rather heavily on her hands. No one recognized her, and, not being a graceful dancer, she was somewhat neglected. CHAPTER XX CONCLUSION At about half-past eleven Barbara concluded that she had better deliver the letter to Mrs. De Lancey Smythe. Summoning a bellboy, she went to the woman's room. On the way she showed the boy a dollar bill. "This will be yours," she said, "if you do exactly as I tell you. If, when you deliver this note, the recipient should ask who gave it to you, say 'some one in a domino,' then come away quickly. Do you understand?" "Yes, ma'am," replied the boy, his eyes on the dollar bill. In a few minutes the room was reached. Mrs. De Lancey Smythe, in a black silk domino and mask, responded to the knock on the door. "Now," whispered Barbara, who kept out of sight, and the boy delivered the note which read: "Meet me at the Casino gate. Same time. Have found it necessary to change meeting place." "Who gave you this, boy?" "Some one in a domino," he replied, turning away. "Wait! What did the person say?" "Just 'take this note to room 601 and give it to the lady there.'" "It's from the count," and, satisfied, she reentered the room. Meanwhile, Ruth, forgetting Maud Warren, searched frantically for her father. In and out of corridors, smoking and supper rooms, ball room, verandas, and garden she hurried. The recollection of Maud returned, however, when over the hum of talk and laughter the strains of the "Marseillaise" floated out. "In honor of De Sonde," thought Ruth contemptuously. Some one began to sing, and the place soon rang with the notes of the stirring French song. People began throwing confetti, and the air was flecked with the bright-colored stuff. It was midnight. No one noticed two red dominos, each accompanied by one in black, steal from different doors of the hotel and disappear in the dark. Ruth finally found her father standing in a doorway, talking to a little red domino. "Father! I overheard Mr. Duval and some accomplices planning to rob the countess of a valuable paper to-night! Do send help at once!" "Paper! Oh, Mr. Stuart, it must be the one the countess entrusted to me," and Mollie pulled from her bosom a chamois bag. Mr. Stuart took a paper from the bag and glanced through it. Only a few minutes later he and four officers were speeding toward the villa of the countess. Meanwhile, Miss Stuart and Barbara had been assisted into an automobile waiting at the east entrance. As they neared the station Barbara became nervous. Was the chauffeur a confederate of the plotters or had he been hired to make the run knowing nothing of the details? Before the car had come to a full stop the count leaped out and turned to help his companions alight. Barbara leaned forward and said sharply to the chauffeur: "Return at once to the hotel without the gentleman. Ask no questions. You will be answerable to Mr. Stuart for any treachery." The car disappeared in the darkness, leaving the count dancing and gesticulating in anger. When Mr. Stuart and the officers entered the drawing room of the countess's villa they saw the old man who had before menaced the two women standing threateningly in front of them. Behind him was another man, evidently ready to respond to any command of the old man. "The paper you seek is not here, Monsieur," said the countess proudly. "I say it is here! Give it to me at once!" "Officers, this is your man! Take him!" shouted Mr. Stuart. Two of the officers seized and handcuffed the second man, but the old man with surprising agility leaped from the room, and the officers could find not the slightest trace of him. "Ah, Mr. Stuart," said the countess, "I do not know what chance brought you to my rescue, but help was greatly needed and I am grateful." "Ruth overheard a talk this evening and sent us here to see if we could serve you. The plot was instigated by Monsieur Duval." "That old man was Monsieur Duval himself. He is a very dangerous enemy to have." "That I already know, Countess. After we learned of your danger, Mollie gave me the paper you had put in her care. It was hardly prudent to give such a document to a young girl. I think we are entitled to an explanation." "Ah, please not to-night, Monsieur! But may I ask you to bring Miss Stuart and the girls here to-morrow afternoon? Then I shall be glad to tell you my story." "Very well," replied Mr. Stuart stiffly, displeased at the countess' lack of frankness. On Mr. Stuart's return to the hotel the girls overwhelmed him with questions and called eagerly for a glimpse of the mysterious paper. Mr. Stuart unfolded the document. It was signed by the Prefect of Police of Paris and stamped with the official seal. Two photographs were pasted to the sheet and under each was a description of the man. "The count and Monsieur Duval!" gasped Ruth. From the paper the girls learned that Duval was a French criminal who had served several terms in prison, but who was usually clever enough to escape detection. His real name was Jacques Dupin. The "count," whose name was Latour, was merely a tool of Dupin's. "This says," cried Ruth excitedly, scanning the paper, "that Dupin can assume any disguise he wishes. He is a linguist and a trained actor and is known as Gentilhomme Jacques, or Gentleman Jack. He plays only for big stakes." "How did the countess become involved in this, Mr. Stuart?" asked Barbara, and at the question Mollie's pretty face clouded. "The countess has asked us to the villa to-morrow afternoon to offer an explanation," replied Mr. Stuart shortly. At noon the next day Ruth rushed up to her companions with exciting news. "Girls, the count, or Latour, was arrested this morning when about to board a train and has confessed that he had plotted to marry Maud, obtain control of her fortune, and then desert her! Duval was the brains of the plot. Mrs. Smythe was helping them, and, listen girls, she's been arrested as a professional swindler!" "Oh, poor Marian!" exclaimed Mollie sympathetically, to be echoed by the others. But just at that moment Marian came up to them, her face radiant. "Oh, girls, such news! Mrs. Smythe accused me last night of spoiling her plans, and in her anger she let out that she's not my mother! My mother, who died when I was a baby, was her neighbor. Some money was left me and Mrs. Smythe was made my guardian. She used the money, of course, and kept the truth from me. My name is Marian Dale. I'm poor, but I'm free for the first time in my life, and I'll work!" Mr. Stuart had come up and heard the last part of the tale; so he now broke in: "You are not friendless, my girl. You must stay here as my guest with my other girls for a while, then we'll discuss your future." "You are kind, Mr. Stuart. But I can't be a burden. I must find work at once. But, oh, I'm grateful to you!" and her eyes were misty. "I must turn my other girls on you, I see." Maud Warren was a changed girl when she realized the danger her headstrong conduct had placed her in. Her father, feeling that a real reformation had begun, asked Marian Dale to come to them as Maud's companion and encourage her in a saner view of life. This appealed to Maud, and the two girls became close friends, much to the happiness of both. That afternoon when the "Automobile Girls" arrived at the countess's villa they were introduced to the Baron von Lichtenberg, who, the countess told them, bore a message from her father. To the girls' amazement and fluttered delight, the countess was in reality the Princess Sophia Adele von Nichtenstern. The princess wished to marry the Count de Sonde; and when her father insisted that she marry instead a noble of advanced years for reasons of state, she fled to America under the protection of her cousin and second mother, the Baroness von Lichtenberg, whom the girls knew as Madame de Villiers. "But since then, my friends, my father has met the Count de Sonde and he has also learned how greatly the man for whom he intended me has persecuted me, so he has given his consent to my marriage with the count. You can imagine my consternation when I met the false Count de Sonde and learned that he was trying to marry your friend Maud. I then sent to Paris and learned the identity of these two men. I wish to tell you, too, that both Monsieur Duval and my other persecutors have been using my maid, and that on several occasions she has taken my clothes and impersonated me. "Mr. Stuart, I did wrong to involve the pretty Mollie in my affairs; but my father had not then forgiven me and I feared to have him learn at that time of my whereabouts. Will you forgive me?" The princess was to start for home almost immediately under the protection of the Baron and Baroness von Lichtenberg, but before leaving Florida she exacted a promise from each of the "Automobile Girls" and from Maud Warren as well that they would visit her when she should become the wife of the Count de Sonde. After the princess had left Palm Beach a package was handed to Miss Stuart. In it was a gift for each of the Automobile Girls. Mollie received a handsome bracelet beautifully ornamented and set with jewels. Inside was inscribed "S von N.--F. de S." "Oh," cried Mollie, "the count gave her this! How she must have loved it, and she gave it to me!" Barbara's gift was a gold filigree star of exquisite workmanship; Ruth's a splendid oriental scarf embroidered in gold and silver threads, and Grace's a beautiful gold chain. The "Automobile Girls" spent two more gay and happy weeks at Palm Beach, then turned their faces northward once more, each going to her own home. It was not until the next winter that they were together again, and what befell them then is told in the sixth and last volume of "The Automobile Girls Series" under the title, "The Automobile Girls at Washington; Or, Checkmating the Plots of Foreign Spies." THE END 
36179	----	[Illustration: THE ARRIVAL AT THE BARLOW FARMHOUSE.] THE ROVER BOYS ON A TOUR OR _LAST DAYS AT BRILL COLLEGE_ BY ARTHUR M. WINFIELD (Edward Stratemeyer) AUTHOR OF THE ROVER BOYS AT SCHOOL, THE ROVER BOYS ON THE OCEAN, THE PUTNAM HALL SERIES, ETC. _ILLUSTRATED_ [Illustration] NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Made in the United States of America BOOKS BY ARTHUR M. WINFIELD (Edward Stratemeyer) THE FIRST ROVER BOYS SERIES THE ROVER BOYS AT SCHOOL THE ROVER BOYS ON THE OCEAN THE ROVER BOYS IN THE JUNGLE THE ROVER BOYS OUT WEST THE ROVER BOYS ON THE GREAT LAKES THE ROVER BOYS IN THE MOUNTAINS THE ROVER BOYS IN CAMP THE ROVER BOYS ON LAND AND SEA THE ROVER BOYS ON THE RIVER THE ROVER BOYS ON THE PLAINS THE ROVER BOYS IN SOUTHERN WATERS THE ROVER BOYS ON THE FARM THE ROVER BOYS ON TREASURE ISLE THE ROVER BOYS AT COLLEGE THE ROVER BOYS DOWN EAST THE ROVER BOYS IN THE AIR THE ROVER BOYS IN NEW YORK THE ROVER BOYS IN ALASKA THE ROVER BOYS IN BUSINESS THE ROVER BOYS ON A TOUR THE SECOND ROVER BOYS SERIES THE ROVER BOYS AT COLBY HALL THE PUTNAM HALL SERIES THE PUTNAM HALL CADETS THE PUTNAM HALL RIVALS THE PUTNAM HALL CHAMPIONS THE PUTNAM HALL REBELLION THE PUTNAM HALL ENCAMPMENT THE PUTNAM HALL MYSTERY 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, New York COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY EDWARD STRATEMEYER, _The Rover Boys on a Tour_ INTRODUCTION MY DEAR BOYS: This book is a complete story in itself, but forms the twentieth volume in a line issued under the general title, "The Rover Boys Series for Young Americans." As I have mentioned in other volumes, this line was started a number of years ago with the publication of "The Rover Boys at School," "On the Ocean," and "In the Jungle." These stories were so well received that there was an immediate cry for more, and so, year by year, they were followed by the publication of "The Rover Boys Out West," "On the Great Lakes," "In the Mountains," "In Camp," "On Land and Sea," "On the River," "On the Plains," "In Southern Waters," "On the Farm," "On Treasure Isle," "At College," "Down East," "In the Air," "In New York," "In Alaska," and finally, "In Business," where we last left our heroes. The Rover boys have, of course, gradually been growing older. Dick and Tom are both married and doing what they can to carry on their father's business in New York City. Sam, the youngest of the boys, is still at Brill College. The particulars are given of some winter sports around that institution of learning, and then of a great baseball game in which the youngest Rover distinguishes himself. Then Sam graduates from college, and all the boys, with some others, go on a long automobile tour, during which a number of exciting adventures occur. The party is caught in a storm on the mountains, and later on are caught in a great flood. What the Rover boys did under such trying circumstances I leave for the pages which follow to disclose. Once more I wish to thank all my young friends for the many gratifying things they have said about my books. I trust that the present volume will fulfil all their expectations, and that the reading of the same will do them good. Affectionately and sincerely yours, EDWARD STRATEMEYER CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE SNOWBALL FIGHT 1 II SOMETHING ABOUT THE ROVER BOYS 14 III WHAT HAPPENED TO SONGBIRD 25 IV THE CHASE 35 V AT THE RAILROAD STATION 46 VI AT THE SANDERSON HOME 57 VII SAM AND GRACE 67 VIII SOMETHING ABOUT BLACKIE CROWDEN 78 IX IN WHICH TOM ARRIVES 90 X THE FEAST 100 XI TOM FREES HIS MIND 111 XII OLD GRISLEY COMES TO TERMS 121 XIII SAM ON THE ROAD 133 XIV DAYS OF WAITING 143 XV BASEBALL TALK 154 XVI THE OPENING OF THE BALL GAME 166 XVII HOW THE GAME ENDED 176 XVIII GOOD-BYE TO BRILL 187 XIX GETTING READY FOR THE TOUR 201 XX A MOMENT OF PERIL 211 XXI NEWS OF BLACKIE CROWDEN 221 XXII ON THE TRAIL 232 XXIII BACK AT ASHTON 242 XXIV AT THE FESTIVAL 252 XXV A CALL FOR ASSISTANCE 262 XXVI SAM FREES HIS MIND 272 XXVII A TELEGRAM FROM NEW YORK 282 XXVIII CLOUDBURST AND FLOOD 292 XXIX THE RESCUE ON THE RIVER 304 XXX MRS. SAM ROVER--CONCLUSION 314 THE ROVER BOYS ON A TOUR CHAPTER I THE SNOWBALL FIGHT "Now then, boys, are you ready?" "I am!" "Been ready for the last five minutes!" "Sure you've got all the snowballs you can carry?" "I couldn't carry any more if I tried," came from Sam Rover, with a grin. "Just see how I am loaded up," and he glanced down at both hands, which were filled with snowballs, and at the snowballs held under either arm. "I've got some dandy hard ones," put in Spud Jackson. "Oh, you can't use soakers, Spud!" cried Stanley Browne, who was the leader of the snowballing contingent. "That's against the rules." "They are not soakers, Stanley," was the reply. "They are only good and hard, that's all." "Hi, you fellows! When are you going to start things?" came a cry from behind a snow wall up the slope of a hill. "We can't waste the whole afternoon waiting for you." "We're coming, don't fear," answered Stanley Browne. "And when we arrive you won't know what's struck you," announced Sam Rover gaily. "It's all vell enough to brag, but you'd chust better start dot fight," came in German-American accents from behind the snow wall, and a merry face appeared in sight for an instant and a fist was shaken playfully at those beyond. "Sound that bugle, Paul!" yelled the leader of the attacking party, and an instant later the mellow notes of a bugle floated out on the crisp, wintry air. It was the signal for the attack, and with merry shouts the students at the foot of the hill charged upward through the snow toward the wall above. The occasion was the annual snowball fight at Brill College. Snow fights there were, of course, without number, but each year there was one big contest in which the freshmen and sophomores attempted to hold a snow fort located on the hill back of the institution against the attacks of the juniors and seniors. According to the rules, three charges were allowable, all of which must be made inside of two hours, and if all of these failed to take the fort, then the victory went to the defenders, and they were permitted to crow over their success until the following winter. A little over an hour and a half had been spent in the sport and two attacks had been made and repulsed, much to the chagrin of Stanley Browne, the senior in charge of the attacking army. Juniors and seniors had fought nobly, but the freshmen and sophomores outnumbered them, and, being strongly intrenched behind the snow wall of the so-called fort, had succeeded in forcing a first, and then a second, retreat. "Say, fellows, we've got to do it this time, sure!" cried Sam Rover, as, side by side with Stanley, he led the attack. "If we don't oust them they'll never get done talking about it." "Right you are, Sam!" answered Bob Grimes, who also had hands and arms full of well-made snowballs. "Remember what I told you," came from Stanley, as he turned slightly to address his followers. "Don't throw any snowballs yet. Do as the soldiers did in Revolutionary days--wait until you can see the whites of their eyes." "And then make those whites blacks!" burst out Spud Jackson, gaily. "Come ahead, and no turning back." Up the snowy hillside sped the crowd of students, while a number of professors and visitors watched the advance from a distance. "Get ready for 'em! Don't let them come too near!" came in a rallying cry from behind the snow wall. And then, as the attacking party came closer, a volley of white spheres came flying through the air into the faces of the juniors and seniors. It was a sharp and heavy volley, and for the instant the air seemed to be filled with flying snowballs. Many of them, of course, went wild, but others landed on the heads and bodies of the attacking party, and for the moment the advance was checked. "Wow!" came from one of the juniors who had been hit in the ear. "Why can't we do some throwing ourselves?" "That's the talk! Give it to 'em!" came from another student who had had his cap knocked off by a snowball. "No, no," answered Stanley. "Save your snowballs until we get closer." "Come on, we'll soon be up there," put in Sam Rover. "Only a hundred feet more, fellows!" There was a yell of assent, and forward the charging party went again in the face of another volley of snowballs. By bending low the juniors and seniors protected themselves as much as possible from the onslaught, but many were hit, two so stingingly that they had to retire to the rear. "Hurrah! We've got 'em on the run!" came from the leader of the fort contingent, who had mounted a tree stump located behind the wall. "Give it to 'em, fellows! Give it too 'em hot!" "Now, then, boys, all together!" yelled Stanley at the top of his voice, and then the eager juniors and seniors launched their snowballs with all the swiftness and accuracy of aim at their command. The two previous attacks which had been repulsed had taught the advancing students a lesson, and now in this third attack scarcely a snowball was wasted. Those in the front ran directly up to the wall of the fort, while those farther back spread out, as directed by their leader, to the right and to the left, sending in cross fires at points where the fort was supposed to be weakest. It was a thrilling and spirited fight, but, although the students were greatly excited, there was little more actual roughness than there would have been at a football or other athletic contest. "Over the wall, boys! Over the wall!" burst out Sam Rover, and the next instant he was up on the wall of the fort, quickly followed by Stanley, Bob, Spud, and several others. "Back there, you rebels! Back!" came in a yell from the interior of the fort, and then a wild fusillade of snowballs struck Sam and his chums in various parts of their bodies. "Jumping hambones!" spluttered Spud, as a snowball took him directly in the chin. "What do you think I'm built of, iron?" "Get back or you'll get worse!" was the cry from the fort, and then another snowball took Spud in the ear. In the meantime, Sam Rover had dodged a ball which was coming directly for his face, and now he returned the fire with a hard one that took the sophomore below him in the ear. Then Sam jumped down into the fort, quickly followed by eight or ten others. "Clear them out! Don't let them stay here!" was the wild cry. "Everybody around the flagpole!" was the command of the fort leader. The flagpole was a small one located in the center of the enclosure, and from it fluttered the banners of the freshmen and the sophomore classes. Those making the attack would have to haul those banners down before they could claim a victory. Snowballs were now flying in all directions, and it was quite probable that in the excitement many of the students let fly at their friends instead of at the enemy; but it was all good, clean sport, and everybody enjoyed it greatly. "Now, then, fellows, for a center rush!" came from Stanley, when he and Sam and about twenty others had forced their way to within ten yards of the flagpole. "Avalanche them, boys! Avalanche them!" came suddenly from one of the sophomores, and then without warning huge chunks of loose snow were sent flying through the air on the heads of those who were battling to get to the flagpole. "Great Cæsar's ghost!" spluttered Bob, as some of the snow went down inside his collar. "What is this; a snowslide?" "Oh, you mustn't mind a little thing like that," answered Sam Rover. "Come ahead, everybody! Push!" There was a wild scramble, with many yells and shouts. Student after student went down in the mêlée, a few to be trampled upon, but fortunately nobody was seriously hurt. There was such a congestion that to make or throw more snowballs was out of the question, and the most a fighter could do was to snatch up a handful of loose snow and thrust it down the neck of the student opposing him. Sam and Stanley, with four others close by them, had now managed to get within a few feet of the flagpole. Here, however, the freshmen and sophomores had planted themselves in a solid mass, and it looked for the moment as if nothing could budge them. "Only six minutes more, boys! Only six minutes more!" came from one of the sophomores who had been detailed as a timekeeper. "Save those banners for six minutes and we'll win." "Hit 'em, fellows, hit 'em!" roared Stanley. "We've got to get those banners this year." "And we're going to do it," added Sam. He turned to Bob and Spud. "Boost me up, fellows, and I'll walk right over their heads to the pole." "All right, if you want to take the chance," answered Spud, and in a twinkling Sam was shoved up into the air onto the shoulders of the boy in front of him. This student let out a cry of alarm, but before he could do anything Sam made a leap forward, landing on the shoulders of two students close to the pole. "Fire him back! Don't let him reach the pole!" came in a yell from several throats. "Hold him by the ankles! Don't let him jump!" cried out the leader of the fort defenders. Several students turned to clutch at the ankles of Sam Rover, but he was too nimble for them, and with another leap he reached the flagpole and clutched it tightly. "Hurrah! Rover has reached the pole!" "Get those banners, Sam! There is no time to spare!" "Hold him!" "Pull him down!" "Maul him!" cried the fort defenders. "Don't let him climb up the pole!" Several turned to clutch at Sam's legs and feet, but he thrashed out wildly and all but one fell back, fearing injury. The undaunted student caught Sam by a heel and held on very much as might a bulldog. "Let go there," came from Spud, and the next instant he raised a chunk of snow and shoved it directly into the open mouth of the boy who had the grip. This was too much for the student, and he fell back among his fellows. "Only two minutes more!" yelled the timekeeper. "Two minutes more!" "We won't need more than fifteen seconds," came triumphantly from Sam, and as he spoke he commenced to climb the pole. A sophomore followed, clutching again at one of his feet, but now the Rover boy had his hand on the first of the banners, and down it came in a twinkling, and the second quickly followed. "Here you are, boys; catch them!" Sam cried and, wadding the banners into something of a ball, he hurled them out into the midst of a group of seniors. "Hurrah! we've got 'em!" was the triumphant cry. "We've got 'em!" "Time's up!" yelled the timekeeper. A cheer arose from the juniors and seniors, who quickly held the captured banners aloft. The freshmen and sophomores were, of course, keenly disappointed, and a number of them showed it. "Let's drive them out of the fort, anyway!" was the sudden cry. "Give it to 'em! Send 'em flying!" "Wait, wait, this contest is at an end," said a professor who was one of the umpires. "Never mind, let's have some fun anyway." This cry was taken up on every side, and while some of the seniors retired with the two captured banners, the other students continued the contest, those who had held the fort doing all they possibly could to overcome and expel their enemies. As soon as he had thrown the banners Sam slid down the pole, and was now trying his best to make his way out of the crowd of freshmen and sophomores. These students were very bitter against the Rover boy, and several did all they could to trip him up and cover him with snow. "Say, Sam, that was great!" cried Spud. "Best I ever saw!" "Out with 'em! Out with 'em!" was the yell. "Don't let 'em stay in the fort even if they did get the banners." "Come on!" cried Sam quickly. "Now we have the banners let us drive them clean down the other side of the hill." This suggestion received instant approval and, in spite of all that some of the professors could do to stop it, the fight went on as furiously as ever. Some of the students who had retreated to a safe distance came back with a fresh supply of snowballs, and the air was once more filled with the flying missiles. "Come on, let us teach them a lesson," cried Bob Grimes. "They should have stopped fighting as soon as the banners were captured. Let us give the sophomores and freshmen all they want." This cry was taken up on all sides, and around and around the enclosure which had been designated the fort went the various crowds of students. The blood of the juniors and seniors was now up, and slowly but surely they forced the younger students to retreat. Then came a break and something of a panic, and a few minutes later the fort defenders were retreating down the other side of the hill, which led through some brushwood to a road that ran to Ashton. "After 'em! After 'em! Don't let 'em get away!" cried Sam, and was one of the first to go down the hill after the retreating students. On the way he paused only long enough to make several snowballs. Having reached the road which led to the town, the freshmen and sophomores divided, some going behind a barn and others taking to the woods beyond. Not knowing exactly what to do next, Sam and several with him halted to consider the matter. "There they go!" was the cry a moment later, and a number of students were seen speeding around a corner of the road. "That's Bissel, the fellow who hit me in the ear," cried Sam. "I'm going after him." "And, yes, there is Dutz, who filled my mouth with snow," cried Spud. "Come on!" Sam was already on the run, and, coming to the turn in the road, he let fly several snowballs. "Here! Here! What do you mean by such actions?" came suddenly from behind some brushwood which lined the roadway and then, as the students advanced still further, they were surprised to find themselves confronted by a tall man wearing a heavy, fur-lined overcoat. He had likewise been wearing a beaver hat, but the tile now lay in the snow. "Belright Fogg!" exclaimed Sam in dismay. "That lawyer who tried to get the best of us! And I thought he was one of the students!" "Ha! so it is you," snarled the man in the fur overcoat harshly. "What do you mean, Rover, by attacking me in this fashion?" CHAPTER II SOMETHING ABOUT THE ROVER BOYS "Say! that isn't one of the students." "Not much! Why, that's the lawyer who used to do business for the railroad company--the man the Rovers had so much trouble with!" "Who knocked his hat off?" "I don't know--Sam Rover, I guess." Such were some of the remarks made as a number of the juniors and seniors began to congregate around Sam and Mr. Belright Fogg. All of the students could readily see that the lawyer was very much put out over what had occurred. "I say, Rover, what do you mean by attacking me in this fashion?" repeated Belright Fogg, with a savage look at the youth before him. "If I knocked your hat off, Mr. Fogg, I am sorry for it," answered Sam, as soon as he could recover from his surprise. "Knocked my hat off?" roared the lawyer. "You hit me a hard one on the head; that is what you did!" "Let me see if you are hurt," put in Stanley, stepping forward. "Where did the snowball hit you?" "You keep your hands off me," returned Belright Fogg. "I've a good mind to have the law on such loafers as you." "We are not loafers, Mr. Fogg," answered Sam, the color coming quickly to his face. "We were having our annual snowballing contest, and we did not know that any outsider was on this back road. If I hit you and hurt you I am very sorry for it." "Humph! I think you will be sorry for it if I bring a suit for damages," muttered the lawyer. "I don't know why Dr. Wallington permits such rowdyism." "This isn't rowdyism, nor are we loafers," put in Stanley, somewhat sharply. "You seem to forget, Mr. Fogg, that this road runs through the property belonging to Brill College, and we have a perfect right to hold our snowballing contest here. If you want to report the matter to Dr. Wall----" "Bah! I know you students, and I wouldn't expect any sympathy from your teacher. He's too afraid of losing any of his students." Belright Fogg snatched his beaver hat from the hands of Spud, who had picked it up. "I'll settle with you for this later, Rover," he added, and then turned on his heel and hurried down the road. "I wonder what brought him on this back road on foot?" observed Bob. "He isn't on foot. He has his horse and cutter beside the barn," answered another student. "There he is now, picking up a robe out of the snow. It must have fallen out of the cutter and he walked back to get it." Which surmise was correct. "This looks like more trouble for me," said Sam, soberly. "I'm mighty sorry it was Mr. Belright Fogg I hit with that snowball." "You can wager he'll make out a case against you if he possibly can," remarked Spud. "Lawyers of his calibre always do." "Well, this settles the snowball fight for us," put in Stanley, as he looked up and down the road. "The freshies and sophs are clear out of sight. Let us go back to the campus and celebrate our victory;" and then, as Belright Fogg drove away in his cutter, the students walked over the hill in the direction of Brill. To my old readers the youths already mentioned in these pages will need no special introduction. For the benefit of others, however, let me state that Sam Rover was the youngest of three brothers, Dick being the eldest and fun-loving Tom coming next. They were the sons of one Anderson Rover, a rich widower, and had for years made their home with their Uncle Randolph and their Aunt Martha at a beautiful farm called Valley Brook. From the farm, and while their father was in Africa, the three Rover boys had been sent by their uncle to school, as related in the first volume of this series, entitled "The Rover Boys at School." This place was called Putnam Hall Military Academy, and there the lads made many friends, and likewise several enemies, and had "the time of their lives," as Tom Rover often expressed it.* * For particulars regarding how Putnam Hall Military Academy was organized, and what fine times the cadets there enjoyed even before the Rover boys came on the scene, read "The Putnam Hall Series," six volumes, starting with "The Putnam Hall Cadets."--PUBLISHERS. The first term at school was followed by an exciting trip on the ocean, and then another trip into the jungles of Africa, where the boys went looking for their parent. Then came a trip to the West, followed by some grand times on the Great Lakes and in the Mountains. Then the boys returned to Putnam Hall, to go into an encampment with their fellow-cadets. This term at Putnam Hall was followed by a never-to-be-forgotten journey on Land and Sea to a far-away island in the Pacific. Then they returned to this country, sailing down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. After leaving the Father of Waters, they took an outing on the Plains, and then went down into Southern Waters, where they solved the mystery of a deserted steam yacht. After so many exciting adventures the three brothers had been glad to journey to the home farm for a rest, after which they returned to Putnam Hall, settled down to their studies, and graduated with considerable honor. "Now for college!" Dick Rover had said. But before setting out for Brill, a fine institution of learning located in the Middle West, the boys had become involved in a search for a fortune left on Treasure Isle. During their days at Putnam Hall the Rover boys had become well acquainted with Dora Stanhope, who lived near the school with her widowed mother, and also with Nellie and Grace Laning, Dora's two cousins, who resided a short distance farther away. It had not been long before Dick and Dora showed a great liking for each other, and at the same time Tom often paired off with Nellie and Sam was frequently seen in the company of Grace. A few miles away from Brill College was located Hope Seminary, an institution for girls, and when the Rover boys went to Brill, Dora, Nellie and Grace went to Hope; so that the young folks met almost as often as before. A term at Brill College was followed by an unexpected trip Down East, where the Rovers brought to terms a rascally ex-schoolteacher, named Josiah Crabtree, who had given them much trouble while at Putnam Hall. In those days the art of flying was attracting considerable attention and, through the indulgence of their father, the Rover boys became the possessors of a biplane and took several thrilling trips through the air, their experiences in that line coming to an abrupt finish when the flying machine was one day wrecked on the railroad tracks. This had brought on a sharp contest between the Rover boys and the railroad lawyer, Mr. Belright Fogg. The Rovers had claimed all that was coming to them, and the railroad had been made to pay up, much to Belright Fogg's disgust. Later, the lawyer had been discharged by the railroad from its services. About this time Mr. Anderson Rover, who was not in the best of health, was having much trouble with brokers in New York City who were trying to swindle him out of some property. The brokers were Pelter, Jackson & Company, and it was not long before the Rover boys discovered that Pelter was in league with Josiah Crabtree. In a struggle poor Tom Rover was hit on the head by a wooden footstool thrown by Pelter and knocked unconscious. This had so affected his mind that he wandered off to Alaska, and Sam and Dick had many adventures trying to locate him. When he was found he was brought home and placed under the care of a specialist, and soon was as well as ever. Dick Rover was now growing older, and, with his father in such poor health, it was decided that the youth should leave Brill, become married to Dora, and settle down in charge of the office in Wall Street, New York. This plan was carried out, as related in detail in the volume preceding this, entitled "The Rover Boys in Business." At that time, Sam and Tom still remained at Brill, but an urgent message from Dick brought them quickly to the metropolis. A large number of unregistered bonds belonging to the Rovers had mysteriously disappeared, and all the boys went on a hunt to recover the securities. In the end it was learned that their old enemy, Jesse Pelter, was the guilty party, and he was brought to justice. Then it was felt that Dick needed assistance in the office, and it was decided, much to Tom's satisfaction, that he might get married to Nellie Laning and move to the city. "That will leave me all alone at Brill," said Sam Rover at that time. "Well, you shouldn't mind that so much," Tom Rover had replied. "Remember, Grace will still be at Hope," at which words the youngest Rover had blushed deeply. When the Rovers had gone to Brill College they had been accompanied by their old-time school chum, John Powell, always called "Songbird" on account of his propensity for writing doggerel which he insisted on calling poetry. At the same time there came to Brill from Putnam Hall one William Philander Tubbs, a very dudish student with whom the boys often had great fun. It did not take the three Rover boys long to make a number of friends at Brill. These included Stanley Browne, a tall, gentlemanly youth; Bob Grimes, who was greatly interested in baseball; Will Jackson, always called Spud, because of his unusual fondness for potatoes; and Max Spangler, a German-American youth, who was still struggling with the language, and who had failed to advance in his studies, so that at the present time he was only in the sophomore class. They had also made several enemies, but these had for the time being left Brill. "You'll be the hero of this occasion, Sam," remarked Stanley, as the students tramped in the direction of the college campus. "Hero of the occasion, I suppose, for hitting Mr. Fogg in the head," returned Sam, with a slight grin. "Oh, forget that!" burst out Spud. "I don't think he'll do a thing. Remember the affair occurred on the college grounds, just as Stanley said." "Say! where is Songbird to-day?" asked Paul Orben. "He ought to have been in this fight." "He wanted to come very much," answered Sam, "but he had a special errand to do for Mr. Sanderson, who is laid up with a broken ankle." "Was he doing the errand for Mr. Sanderson or for Minnie?" questioned Stanley; and then a short laugh went up, for it was well known among the young collegians that Songbird Powell and the daughter of Mr. Sanderson, a prosperous farmer of that vicinity, were much attached to each other. As Sam Rover and his friends reached the college campus, a great cheer arose. "There he is!" "Here the conquering hero comes!" "Let us put him up on our shoulders, fellows!" and a rush was made towards the youngest Rover boy. "Not much! Not to-day!" returned Sam, and slid back behind some of his friends. "Aw! come on, Sam!" cried one of the students. "You are the hero of the occasion, and you know it." "Forget it, Snips," answered Sam. "What did the fellows do with those banners?" "Lentwell has them. He is keeping them for you. I suppose you'll nail them up in your den?" "Surest thing you know!" "Maybe the freshies and sophs will want them back," put in another youth in the crowd. "Not much! They can have them back after I graduate next June," answered Sam. "They have got to understand---- Stop it, fellows, stop it! I don't want to---- Well, if you've got to, I suppose I'll have to submit." And an instant later Sam found himself hoisted up on the shoulders of several stalwart seniors, who tramped around and around the college campus with him while all the other seniors, and also the juniors, cheered wildly and waved their caps. "Doesn't that make you feel proud, Sam?" asked Spud, during a lull in the proceedings. "It sure does, Spud," was the quick reply. "I've only got one regret--that Dick and Tom aren't here to share this victory with us." "Yes, it's a shame. And just to think of it, after next June, when we graduate, we'll all be scattered here, there, and everywhere, and the good old times at Brill will be a thing of the past." "Don't mention such things," put in Stanley. "It makes me sick clean to the heels every time I think of it. But I suppose college days can't last forever. We've got to go out into the world, just as our fathers did before us." "Yes, and I've got to get into business," answered Sam. "I want to help father, as well as Dick and Tom, all I can." "Hi, fellows!" was the unexpected cry from the lower end of the campus. "Here come the freshies and the sophs back! Line up and be ready to receive them!" "That's it! Line up, line up, everybody!" ordered Stanley. "Give them our old song of victory!" CHAPTER III WHAT HAPPENED TO SONGBIRD It was fully half an hour later before Sam Rover could break away from his college chums and run up to room Number 25, which he had formerly occupied with his brother Tom and which he now shared with Songbird Powell. Nearly a week before, the youngest Rover had made a date with Grace Laning, inviting her, if the snow remained on the ground, to a sleighride that afternoon and evening. At that time Sam had forgotten completely that this day was the date set for the annual snowballing contest. "I think I'll go anyway," he had remarked to Songbird, the day before. But then had come word to his roommate that Mr. Sanderson wanted him on a matter of importance, and Stanley, as the leader of the seniors, had insisted upon it that he could not spare both of his chums. "All right, then," Sam had answered finally; "you can go, Songbird, and do what Mr. Sanderson wants you to, and I'll put off my sleighride with Grace until after the contest;" and so it had been settled. There were no public turnouts at the college, but Sam had arranged with Abner Filbury, who worked around the place with his father, to obtain for him a first-class horse and cutter from the Ashton livery stable. "That horse is some goer, believe me!" remarked Abner, when he came to the door of Sam's room, to tell him that the turnout was in readiness. "You'll have to keep your eye on him, Mr. Rover." "All right, Ab. Trust me to take care of him," returned Sam lightly. "Don't forget that I was brought up on a farm, and my Uncle Randolph had some pretty spirited animals." "Have a good time, Sam!" cried Spud, who was present to see his chum depart. "Wish I was going to see such a nice girl." "Oh, your time will come some day," answered Sam. "Are you going directly to Hope?" "Yes." "Alone?" "I expect to unless you want to ride along that far." "Say! I'd like that first-rate," returned Spud, eagerly. "I know some of the girls up there, and I'd like to call on them. I wouldn't mind walking back later on." "Then come on if you are ready. I haven't any time to wait." "Oh, I'm always ready," came from Spud; and he lost no time in bestowing himself beside Sam. The latter gathered up the reins, gave a slight chirp to the horse, and away they sped out of the college grounds and on to the highway leading past Hope Seminary, which was about two miles distant. The air was cool and bracing, and the snow on the highway well packed down, so that the cutter slid over it with ease. As Abner Filbury had said, the steed was a mettlesome one, and soon Sam found he had all he could do to hold the horse in. "Some goer, that!" remarked Spud, as he pulled his cap down tighter to keep it from flying off. "Puts me in mind of a race horse." "Yes, I shouldn't wonder but what he could make a mile in almost record time," responded Sam, as they flew along past the trees, bushes and occasional farm buildings which lined the roadway near Brill. "You want to watch yourself with a horse that goes as fast as that," returned Spud, with a chuckle. "If you don't, you'll get a mile or two past Hope before you know it;" and at this little joke Sam grinned. Early in the ride they passed one or two cutters and several farm wagons. Then they reached a turn in the road, and to their surprise saw ahead of them a sign resting on a large wooden horse: ROAD CLOSED "Hello! What does this mean?" queried Sam, as he brought his horse to a standstill. "I didn't know this road was shut off." "Oh, yes, I heard something about this, come to think of it," returned Spud. "They are going to move that old Jackson barn from one side of the road to the other, and they must have closed the road for that purpose. You'll have to take the old road on the left, Sam." "I suppose so," grumbled the other. "Too bad, too, for this road was just about perfect for sleighing. But never mind, I suppose I can get through on the other road well enough." They turned back a distance of less than two hundred feet, and then took to the side road which Spud had mentioned. This was more hilly than the other, and ran through a long patch of timberland on which no houses were located. "Hark! Don't I hear another sleigh coming?" questioned Spud, a minute later. "Something is coming, that's sure," answered Sam. "Gracious me! Look at that!" Coming to another bend of the woodland road, the youngest Rover had barely time to pull his steed well toward the right hand and almost into some bushes when another cutter hove into sight, coming along at a furious rate. The horse was on a gallop, and the man driving him, a fellow wrapped up in a heavy overcoat and with a fur cap pulled far down over his forehead, was using his whip freely. "Wow! That fellow must be in some hurry," observed Spud, as the other turnout flashed past. "He isn't sparing his horse any." "It's a lucky thing for me that I pulled in here as I did," returned Sam, and his tone of voice showed his anger. "If I hadn't done it he would have run into us, sure pop." "You're right, Sam. That fellow had no right to come along in that fashion. He ought to be arrested for reckless driving. But maybe he wants to catch a train at Ashton or something like that." "No train he could catch for an hour and a half, Spud. And he could walk to the station in that time;" and thus speaking, Sam chirruped to the horse, and they resumed their ride. A little farther on the woodland road made another turn, and here the way was uphill. The numerous rains of the summer previous had washed the rocks bare of dirt, and often the cutter bumped and scraped so badly that Sam was compelled to bring his steed down to a walk. "Well, one satisfaction, we'll be back to the main road before long," observed Spud, as they finally reached the top of the hill and could get a view of the surroundings. "There is the other road just below us." "Hello! What's that ahead?" cried Sam, pointing with his left hand. "Looks to me like somebody lying in the snow." "It is somebody!" exclaimed his chum. "Say! do you suppose that other horse was running away, and this fellow fell out?" "Not much, with that other fellow using the whip as he was!" returned Sam. "This fellow ahead probably had nothing to do with that other cutter. Excepting he may have been knocked down by the horse," he added suddenly. "That's what the trouble is! That rascal knocked this fellow down and then hurried on, Sam! Poor fellow! I wonder if he is much hurt?" By this time the cutter had reached a point opposite to where the person in the snow rested. All the boys could see was some person, wrapped in an overcoat, lying face downward. A cap that looked strangely familiar to Sam lay close at hand. Stopping the horse, Sam leaped from the cutter, and Spud did the same. "Say, Sam!" burst out the latter, "it looks like----" "Songbird!" burst out the Rover boy. "It's Songbird, Spud, and he's badly hurt." It was indeed poor Songbird Powell who rested there in the snow by the roadside. He had on his overcoat and his fur-lined gloves, but his head was bare, and from a cut on his left temple the blood was flowing. The boys turned their college chum over, and at this Songbird uttered a low moan. "He has either had an accident or been attacked," was Spud's comment. "I wonder how badly he's hurt?" "I'm afraid it's pretty bad," answered Sam, soberly. "That's a nasty cut. And say! his chin is all swelled up as if he had been hit there with a club!" The two boys knelt beside their unconscious chum and did what they could to revive him. But Songbird did not open his eyes, nor did he make any other sound than a low moan. "We'll have to get him somewhere out of this biting, cold air," observed Sam. "There is a farmhouse just below here on the main road. Let us put him in the cutter and carry him there." When they picked Songbird up he uttered another moan and for an instant his eyes opened; but then he collapsed as before. They deposited him on the seat of the turnout, and Sam picked up his cap and several books that lay scattered around. With sober faces the boys led the mettlesome horse down the slope to the main road. Both kept their eyes on their chum, but he still remained insensible. "Maybe he won't get over it," suggested Spud. "Oh, don't say that!" cried Sam in horror. "It can't be as bad as that." And then he added: "Spud, did you notice the looks of that horse when he dashed past us?" "I didn't have time to notice much," was the reply. "Did he wear white stockings?" "What? Oh! I know what you mean--white feet. Yes, he had white feet. I know that much." "And did he have any white under his neck?" "Yes, I think he did. Do you think you know the horse, Sam?" "I know Mr. Sanderson has a horse with white feet and a white chest--a dark horse, just like that one was." "Then it must have been Mr. Sanderson's horse and cutter!" cried Spud. "If it was, do you think that man was running away with the outfit?" "I don't know what to think, Spud. To my mind it's a mighty serious piece of business. But our first duty is to do all we can for poor Songbird." Arriving at the nearest farmhouse, Spud ran ahead and knocked on the door. A woman answered the summons, and as she happened to know the youth, she readily consented to have Songbird brought in and laid on a couch in the dining-room. Hardly had this been done when the sufferer slowly opened his eyes. "Don--don't hit m-m-me again!" he murmured. "Ple-please don't!" "It's all right, Songbird. Don't you know me?" said Sam, quietly. The injured collegian opened his eyes again and stared at the youth before him. "Sam! Wh-where did you co-come from?" "Spud and I found you on the road, face down in the snow," answered Sam. "What happened? Did you fall out of the cutter, or were you attacked?" "I--I---- Oh! how my head spins!" muttered Songbird. He closed his eyes again and was silent for a moment. Then he looked once more at Sam. "I was attacked," he mumbled. "The man--he hit me--with a club--and hauled me out of the cutter." "It must have been the fellow we saw on the road!" exclaimed Spud. "Songbird, why did he do it?" "I--I--do-don't know," mumbled the sufferer. "But maybe I do!" he suddenly shouted, in a strangely unnatural voice. Then with a sudden strength born of fear, he raised his left hand and dived down into the inner pocket of his coat. "The package! It's gone!" "The package! What package?" queried Sam. "The package belonging to Mr. Sanderson!" gasped poor Songbird. "The package with the four thousand dollars in it! It's gone!" and with another groan Songbird lapsed once more into unconsciousness. CHAPTER IV THE CHASE It must be confessed that Sam and Spud, as well as the woman of the house, were very much surprised over the statement made by Songbird. "Attacked and robbed!" murmured Sam. "What an awful thing to do!" "He said he had been robbed of four thousand dollars!" broke in Spud. "Where in the world would he get that much money? He must be dreaming, Sam." "I hardly think so, Spud. I know he was to go on a very important errand for Mr. Sanderson, who is laid up at home with a sprained ankle." "Well, if Songbird was robbed, it's more than likely the fellow we saw in the cutter did it." "Exactly! And the chances are he will get away just as fast as he possibly can," added Sam, bitterly. "What do you think we ought to do?" "I think we ought to notify the authorities, Spud." "Hadn't we better wait until we get some particulars from Songbird?" "Not much! The quicker we get after that fellow the better. Remember he is running away not only with the money but also with Mr. Sanderson's horse and cutter. Many people living in this vicinity know Mr. Sanderson's animal, and that may help us to locate that rascal." Sam turned to the woman of the house. "Have you a telephone?" "No, we haven't any; but the folks in the next house up the road have one." "Then I'll go there and telephone," said Sam. "You do what you can for Songbird, Spud. I'll try to get a doctor, too, while I'm at it." In a few seconds more Sam was on the way, using his horse and cutter for that purpose. Arriving at the next farmhouse, he readily received permission to use the telephone, and at once got into communication with the authorities in Ashton, and asked the official in charge to send word around to the various towns and villages within the next ten or fifteen miles, and he also sent word to a physician at Ashton. Then he managed to get Grace on the wire. "I'm afraid I'll be late," he told the girl. "And maybe I won't be able to get there at all," he added. "Songbird has been knocked down on the road and robbed, and he is in pretty bad shape." "Oh, Sam! isn't that too bad!" was Grace's reply. "Do you mean that he is seriously injured?" "We can't tell yet, Grace. I have just telephoned for the doctor, and now I am going back to the Bray farmhouse, where Songbird is, to wait for him." And after that Sam gave the girl as many details of the affair as he deemed necessary. "Oh! I hope he gets over it, Sam," said Grace. "And to think he was robbed of all that money! If they can't get it back, what ever will Songbird and the Sandersons do?" "I don't know," he returned. "It certainly is a bad piece of business. But now I've got to go back, so I'll say good-bye." "Good-bye, Sam, and you stay with Songbird just as long as you please. We can have our sleighride some other time." When Sam returned to the Bray farmhouse he found that Spud and the lady of the house had washed Songbird's wound and bound it up. The lady had also brought forth some simple home remedies, and these had been so efficacious that Songbird was sitting on the couch, propped up by numerous pillows. "Did you catch him?" asked the sufferer eagerly, as Sam entered. "I've sent word to the police, Songbird, and sent word for a doctor too. Now you had better take it easy until the doctor comes." "But how can I take it easy with that four thousand dollars missing?" groaned the youth on the couch. "Why, I can't make that amount up, and Mr. Sanderson can't afford to lose it." "How does your head feel?" "It feels sore all over, and sometimes spins like a top. But I wouldn't care about that if only I could get that money back. Can't you and Spud go after that rascal?" "I'm willing if you want us to, Songbird; but you'll have to promise to stay here until the doctor comes. We don't want you to attempt to do anything while you are in your present condition." "Oh, I'll stay here, don't fear," answered Songbird, grimly. "I just tried to stand up, and I went in a heap, and Spud and the lady had to put me back on this couch." "Let's take that horse of yours and go after that fellow, Sam," burst out Spud, eagerly. "That horse is a goer, as we know, and we ought to be able to catch that man sooner or later." "Providing we can follow his trail, Spud," answered Sam. "You must remember there are a good many side roads around here, and he can take to any one he pleases." "But we might be able to find the footprints of the horse in the snow." "Possibly, although I doubt it, with so many other horses using the highway. However, come on, we'll do the best we can." Sam turned again to the sufferer. "Now, Songbird, you keep quiet until the doctor comes, and then you do exactly as he orders." "Maybe Mrs. Bray will see to that," ventured Spud. "I will if you want me to," responded the woman of the house. "That cut on his head is a nasty one, and if he doesn't take care of himself it may make him real sick." In a moment more Sam and Spud were out of the house and into the cutter, which was then headed up the side road where they had found Songbird. Here they stopped for an instant to take another look around, and picked up two more books which had escaped their notice before. "Books of poetry, both of 'em," remarked Spud. "Songbird thinks more of a poem than he does of a square meal," and he smiled a bit grimly. It did not take long to reach the spot where the other cutter had passed them. They went straight on, soon reaching the point where the woodland road joined the main highway. "Now, you see, here is where we are going to get mixed up," announced Sam, as they moved in the direction of Brill. "Did the fellow go straight to Ashton, or did he turn off to one of the other places?" "The folks traveling along the road must have seen him," returned Spud. "Let us make some inquiries as we go along." This was a good suggestion, and was carried out. They found a farmer who had seen the strange man in the cutter drive toward Ashton, and a little later they met two ladies in a sleigh who declared that the fellow had turned into a side road leading to a hamlet known as Lester's Corners. "If he went there, we ought to have a chance to catch him," cried Spud. "This road I know doesn't go beyond the Corners." "Yes. But he could take a road from there to Dentonville," answered Sam, "and you know that is quite a railroad station." "But if he went to Dentonville and to the railroad station, couldn't you telephone to the operator there to have him held?" "Maybe, Spud, providing there is any telephone at the Corners." Onward they went once more, through some heavy woodland and then over several small hills, finally coming in sight of the Corners, where were located a general store, a blacksmith's shop, a chapel, and about a dozen houses. "Did I see a feller in a cutter goin' as fast as he could?" repeated the storekeeper, when questioned by Sam. "You just bet I did. Gee whiz! but he was goin' to beat the band!" "And which way did he head?" questioned the Rover boy, eagerly. "Headed right straight for Dentonville." "And how long ago was this?" put in Spud. "Oh, about quarter of an hour, I should say. Say! he nearly skeered old Mrs. Rasley to deth. She was a-crossin' the road comin' to my store when he swung aroun' that corner yonder, and he come within a foot of runnin' over her. She wanted to git Joe Mason, the constable, to arrest him, but, gee whiz! there wasn't no arrestin' to it--he was out o' sight before you could say Jack Robinson." "Have you any telephone connection with Dentonville?" questioned Sam. "Ain't got no telephone here at all. The telephone fellers promised to put a line through here three years ago, but somehow they hain't got around to doin' it. You see, Squire Buzby owns some of their stock, and he don't think that we ought to----" "That's all right, Captain," broke in Sam, hastily. "Then if we want to catch that fellow, all we can do is to go after him, eh?" "Thet's about the size on it," returned the storekeeper. "Now you see if we had thet telephone here, we might be able to----" "That's so, we might. But as the telephone is missing, we'll go after him in our cutter," broke in Sam; and a few seconds later he and Spud were once more on their way. The road to Dentonville was not much traveled, and for a mile and a half they met no one. Then, just as they reached a crossing, they came in sight of an old farmer driving a box-sled filled with milk cans. "Did you meet a man driving a horse and cutter very rapidly?" questioned Sam, after he drew up. "A dark horse with a white breast and white feet?" "I jest guess I did!" replied the farmer. "He come pretty close to runnin' into me." "Which way was he headed?" "Headed straight for Dentonville." "Can you tell me when the next train stops there?" "The train is due there in about fifteen minutes, and she won't stop more'n long enough to put my milk cans on board. I jest left 'em there, and got these empty ones," explained the farmer, pointing to the cans behind him. "Fifteen minutes!" cried Spud. "And how far is it from here?" "Nigh on to three miles." "Is it a good road?" queried Sam. "Pretty fair. It's some washed out on the hills, but the snow has covered the wo'st of the holes. Want to ketch that feller?" "We certainly do. That horse and cutter belongs to Mr. Sanderson." "By gum! You don't say! Did he steal the turnout?" "He certainly did," answered Spud, "and nearly killed a young fellow in the bargain." "Then I hope you ketch 'im," answered the farmer, and stood up in his sled to watch Sam and Spud as they sped once more along the highway leading to Dentonville. The boys had a long hill ahead, and before the top was gained the horse attached to the cutter was glad enough to settle down to a walk. But once the ridge was passed, he did not need much urging, and flew along almost as rapidly as ever. "This horse must have been in the stable for quite some time," remarked Spud. "He evidently enjoys the outing thoroughly." "Listen!" cried Sam, a little later. "Isn't that the whistle of a locomotive?" "It sure is, Sam! That must be the train coming into Dentonville!" They were passing through a small patch of timber, and directly beyond were the cleared fields and the buildings of a tidy farm. As the boys came out of the woods they looked over the fields in the direction of Dentonville and saw a mixed train, composed of several passenger coaches and a string of freights, entering the station. "There she is!" cried Sam. "Oh, if only we can get there before she leaves!" He spoke to the horse and did what he could to urge the steed forward at a greater rate of speed than ever. Much to the astonishment of several onlookers, they dashed into the outskirts of Dentonville and then along the main street leading down to the railroad station. "Hi! Stop!" roared a voice at them, just as they were crossing one of the side streets, directly in front of a sleigh and two wagons. "Hi! Stop, I tell you! You ain't got no right to drive that fast here in town," and a blue-coated policeman, one of the four of which the place boasted, shook his club at the boys and ran out in front of their cutter. [Illustration: A BLUE-COATED POLICEMAN SHOOK HIS CLUB AT THE BOYS.] "Say! officer, you are just the man we want," cried Sam, hurriedly. "Come on with us. We want to have a man arrested down at the depot before he has a chance to get away on the train." "What's that? Want a man arrested?" queried the bluecoat. "What has he done?" "A whole lot of things," broke in Spud. "Jump in; we haven't any time to explain now--that train may pull out at any moment." "That's so; so it might," replied the officer; and then, as Spud made room for him, he sprang into the cutter, sitting on the boy's lap. "But you look out that you don't kill somebody," he added to Sam, who was now using the whip lightly to urge the horse to greater efforts. They were still two blocks away from the railroad station when there came a whistle, followed by the clanging of a bell, and then they saw the train moving away. "There she goes!" groaned Spud. "But she isn't moving very fast." "Maybe we can catch her yet," returned Sam; and then the race continued as before. CHAPTER V AT THE RAILROAD STATION "See anybody, Sam?" "Nobody that looks like that man, Spud, but there is Mr. Sanderson's horse with the cutter." "Yes, I spotted those right away. Look how the poor nag is heaving. He must have been driven almost to death." "That may be. Although we got here almost as quickly as he did. But he may have been used quite some before this trip," returned Sam; and this surmise was correct. The two boys, with the policeman, had done their best to catch the departing train and have it stop, but without avail. When they had reached the depot the last of the cars was well down the line, and soon the train had disappeared around a curve of the roadbed. "What's the matter, Ike? What are you after?" queried the freight agent, as he came up to the policeman. "We are after the man who was driving that cutter yonder," explained Sam. "Did you see him--a big fellow with a heavy overcoat and with a fur cap pulled down over his forehead?" "Why yes, I saw that fellow get aboard," answered the freight agent. "I was wondering what he was going to do with his horse. He didn't even stop to put a blanket over the animal." "That fellow was a thief," explained Sam. "I wonder if we can't have him captured in some way? What is the next station the train will stop at?" "Penton." "How far is that from here?" "About six miles." "And after that?" "She'll stop at Leadenfield, which is about six miles farther." "Then I'll send a telegram to Penton and another to Leadenfield to have the train searched and the man arrested if he can be spotted," said Sam; and a few minutes later he was in the telegraph office writing out the messages. He described the man as well as he could, but realized that his efforts were rather hopeless. "Maybe Songbird could give us a better description," he said to his chum; "but as Songbird isn't here, and as we can't get him on the telephone, we'll have to do the best we can." The policeman was, of course, anxious to know some of the details of what had occurred, and when the boys told him that their college chum had been knocked senseless and robbed of four thousand dollars he was greatly surprised. "It's too bad you didn't get here before the train started," he observed. "If you had we might have nabbed that rascal and maybe got a reward," and he smiled grimly. "We don't want any reward. We simply want to get that four thousand dollars back," returned Sam. "And we would like to put that fellow in prison for the way he treated our college chum." "What will you do with the horse and cutter?" "If there is a livery stable handy, I think I'll put the horse up there," answered Sam. "He is evidently in no condition to be driven farther at present. I'll notify Mr. Sanderson about it." And so it was arranged. A little while later, after the two boys had walked around to the police station with the officer and given such particulars as they were able concerning the assault and robbery, Sam and Spud started on the return to the Bray farmhouse. When they arrived there, they found that Dr. Havens and Dr. Wallington had come in some time before. By the directions of the head of Brill the physician from Ashton had given Songbird a thorough examination and had treated him with some medicine from his case. "The cut on his head is rather a deep one," said the doctor to the boys, "but fortunately it is not serious, nor will there be any bad effects from the blow on his chin. He can thank his stars though that the crack on his head did not fracture his skull." "We are going to take him back to Brill in a large sleigh," said Dr. Wallington, "and then I think the best he can do will be to go to bed." "Oh, I can't do that!" broke in Songbird, who was still on the couch, propped up by pillows. "I've got to get to Mr. Sanderson's and explain how the thing happened." "You had better let me do that, Songbird," answered Sam, kindly. "I can drive over there and Spud can go with me. You just let us know exactly how it occurred." This, of course, was after the boys had related the particulars of their failure to catch the fleeing criminal at Dentonville. "It happened so quickly that I hardly realized what was taking place," answered the would-be poet of Brill. "I was driving along from Knoxbury, where I had been to the bank for Mr. Sanderson, when I came to the spot where I suppose you found me. Just as I reached there a man in a heavy overcoat, and with a thick fur cap pulled over his face so that I could hardly see him, stepped in front of the cutter. "'Say! can you tell me where these people live?' he asked me, and thrust a sheet of paper towards me. 'I've lost my eye-glasses, and I can't see to read without them.' "I took the paper he handed out and started to look at some writing on it which was very indistinct. As I bent over the paper the man swung a club or something in the air and struck me on the head. Then, as I tried to leap up and defend myself, he hit me another blow on the chin. That seemed to knock me clean out of the cutter; and that is all I know about it." "Then you don't know where that fellow came from?" queried Spud. "No more than that he came from the bushes beside the road." Songbird seemed to meditate for a moment. "Now I come to think of it though, maybe that's the same fellow that watched me go into the bank at Knoxbury and get the money for Mr. Sanderson!" he cried, suddenly. "It was a very unwise move on Mr. Sanderson's part to have you get that money for him in cash," observed Dr. Wallington. "I do not understand why he could not have transacted his business with a check, especially if it was certified." "I don't know much about that part of it," answered Songbird, "excepting he told me that the old man with whom he was doing business was something of a crank and didn't believe in banks or checks, and said he wanted nothing but solid cash. It's a pity now that Mr. Sanderson didn't use a check," and Songbird heaved a deep sigh. "But what did you just say about a man watching you when you went into the bank?" questioned Sam. "Oh, I noticed that fellow hanging around the building just as I went in," returned Songbird. "He was asking the janitor about the trains out of town, and the reason I noticed him was because he had a peculiar stutter and whistle when he talked. He went like this," and Songbird imitated a man who was stuttering badly, ending in a faint whistle. "Great Scott! A fellow ought to know a man who talked like that anywhere," was Spud's comment. "Should be able to pick him out in the dark," and at this sally even Dr. Wallington smiled faintly. "Of course I'm not sure that that man had anything to do with it," went on Songbird. "But he was the only fellow around who seemed to notice me when I got the money. When the bills were passed over to me, there were forty one-hundred-dollar bills. I took them to a little side stand, to place them in a wallet Mr. Sanderson had lent me, and then I wrapped the wallet in a piece of paper with a stout string around it. As I did this I noticed the man who stuttered and whistled peering at me hungrily through a side window of the bank." "And the fellow wore a heavy overcoat and a fur cap?" questioned Sam. "Yes, I am sure of that." "Then it is more than likely he was the guilty party," remarked Spud. "But hold on a minute!" broke in Sam. "You got the money at Knoxbury, and this attack took place on the road above here, which is at least seven miles from that place. Now, if the man who did the deed was at the bank when you drew the money, how did he get here in time to hold you up?" "I don't know about that, Sam; but I didn't leave Knoxbury immediately after getting the money. I had an errand to do for Minnie. She wanted me to pick out a--er--a necktie for my birthday, and I--well, I looked around two or three stores, trying to find something nice to take back to her. I bought two books of poetry, but I don't know where they are now." "We found them on the road, and they are out in the cutter," answered Sam. "Spud, you might bring them in and give them to Songbird." "The errands kept me in town for about half an hour after I was at the bank," continued the youth who had been attacked. "And where had you left Mr. Sanderson's cutter in the meantime?" "Right in front of the bank building, the horse tied to a post." "That would give the man time to get another turnout in which to follow you," said Sam. "But if he did that, I don't see how he got ahead of you." "Well, maybe he didn't, and maybe it was some one else who did the deed," returned Sam. "You had better not worry your head too much about this affair, Mr. Powell," said Dr. Havens. "That crack on the head might have been more serious, but at the same time you ought to take care of yourself for a day or two at least." "Then you don't think I ought to go to Mr. Sanderson's?" queried the would-be poet of the college. "Not just yet. If you feel stronger you might go there to-morrow, or the day after." "Then will you go, Sam, and try to explain matters?" questioned Songbird, eagerly. "Of course I'll go, Songbird." "And I'll go with him," added Spud. A large sleigh had been brought to the farmhouse by Dr. Wallington, and Songbird was placed in this and made as comfortable as possible among the robes and blankets which it contained. Mr. Bray, the owner of the farm, had been up in the timber bringing down some firewood, and now, when he approached, the others saw that he had tied behind his sled an extra horse. "Hello! Where did that horse come from?" cried Sam. "Is it yours?" "No, 'tain't mine," said Timothy Bray. "I found it up in the woods right near the road yonder," and he pointed with his hand as he spoke. "Found that horse in the woods!" cried Spud. "Then that explains it." "It sure does," returned Sam. "Explains what?" demanded Timothy Bray. "What's goin' on down here anyway?" he continued, looking at his wife and then at the others. "Oh, Timothy! an awful thing has happened!" cried Mrs. Bray, and then she and the others gave the farmer a few of the particulars. He listened with mouth wide open, and then looked at the horse which he had found. "I guess you are right!" he exclaimed. "That feller got this horse in Knoxbury. It's one that belongs to Hoover, the livery stable man. I know him on account of this brand on his left flank. It's a horse Cy Tamen used to own and swapped for a bay mare." "Then I think that explains it," declared Sam. "That rascal saw Songbird get the money, and he at once went to the livery stable and hired the horse and followed Songbird to the spot where the attack was made. More than likely he passed Songbird on the road." "That's just what he did!" cried the youth who had been struck down. "I remember now! I was busy composing some poetry when I noticed a fellow on horseback go past me and disappear around a turn in the road, and that was just a few minutes before that fellow came up with a sheet of paper, and knocked me senseless." "I believe you have made out a pretty clear case," was Dr. Wallington's comment. "Now if we can only reach that man who stuttered and whistled, I think we shall have the culprit." "We telephoned ahead from Dentonville. If they can only locate him on the train it will be all right," answered Sam. "But you must remember we didn't have very much of a description to go by." "Yes, and that fellow may be fixed to change his appearance a good deal," added Spud. "A man isn't going to get his hands on four thousand dollars without doing all he possibly can to get away with it, especially when he knows that if he is caught he will be sent to prison." "What am I going to do with this horse?" questioned Timothy Bray. "You had better keep that animal in your stable until the livery man from Knoxbury calls for him," answered Dr. Wallington. "He'll have to pay me for doing it," was Mr. Bray's reply. "Every time I go to Knoxbury, Hoover charges me an outrageous price for putting up at his stable, and now I can get even with him," and he chuckled over the thought. CHAPTER VI AT THE SANDERSON HOME It was just about supper time when Sam, accompanied by Spud, drove into the lane beside the Sanderson farmhouse, which was lit up from end to end. Evidently Minnie Sanderson, the pretty daughter of the farmer, had been on the watch, for as they approached the house she came out on a side piazza to meet them. "Why, Songbird! what kept you so long?" she cried, and then added: "Who's that with you?" "It isn't Songbird, Minnie," answered Sam, after he sprang out of the cutter, followed by Spud. "We've got some news for you." "Oh, Sam Rover!" exclaimed the girl. "And Will Jackson! Whatever brought you here? Where is Songbird--do you know anything about him?" "Yes, we do; and that is what brought us here," answered Sam. "Oh, Sam! you don't mean that--that something has happened to John?" faltered the girl, turning pale. "Yes, something did happen, Minnie, but don't be alarmed--he isn't hurt very much. Come into the house and we'll tell you and your father all about it." "Hurt! Oh, are you sure it isn't serious? Now please don't hold anything back." "I'll give you my word, Minnie, it isn't serious. The doctor said he would be as well as ever in a few days, but he is rather knocked out, and the doctor said he had better not try to come here. So then he asked Spud and me to come." While Sam was speaking he and Spud had led the girl back into the house. She was very much agitated and her manner showed it. "But what was it, Sam? Do tell me. Did that horse run away with him? I know John isn't much of a driver, and when he gets to composing poetry he doesn't notice things and becomes so careless----" "No, Minnie, it was not that. Where is your father? We'll go to him and then we'll tell you the whole story." "What's this I hear?" came from the dining-room, where Mr. Sanderson rested in a Morris chair, with his sprained ankle perched on a footstool. "Where is John? And what about that money he was to get for me?" "Good evening, Mr. Sanderson," said Sam, coming in and shaking hands, followed by Spud. "We've got some bad news for you, but please don't blame Songbird--I mean John--for I am sure he was not to blame." "That's right!" broke in Spud. "What happened might have occurred to any of us. I think we ought to be thankful that Songbird--that's the name we all call John, you know--wasn't killed." "Oh, but do tell me what did happen!" pleaded Minnie. "And what about my money--is that safe?" demanded Mr. Sanderson. "No, Mr. Sanderson. I am sorry to say the fellow who attacked Songbird got away with it." "Gone! My four thousand dollars gone!" ejaculated the farmer. "Don't tell me that. I can't afford to lose any such amount. Why! it's the savings of years!" and his face showed his intense anxiety. "Oh, so John was attacked! Who did it? I suppose they must have half killed the poor boy in order to get the money away from him," wailed Minnie. "We might as well tell you the whole story from beginning to end," answered Sam, and then, after he and Spud had taken off their overcoats and gloves, both plunged into all the details of the occurrence as they knew them. "And he was hit on the head and on the chin! Oh, how dreadful!" burst out Minnie. "And are you positive, Sam, it was not serious?" "That is what Dr. Havens said, and he made a close examination in the presence of Dr. Wallington." "He ought to have been more careful," said Mr. Sanderson, bitterly. "But, Pa! how could he have been?" interposed the daughter. "Oh, in lots of ways. He might have placed that money inside of his shirt," answered the father. "It don't do to carry four thousand dollars around just as if it was--a--a--book of poetry or something like that," he added, with a touch of sarcasm. "Pa, I think it's real mean of you to talk that way!" flared up Minnie. "John told me that he didn't much like the idea of bringing that four thousand dollars in cash from the bank, but he undertook the errand just to please you." "Humph! Well, I was foolish to send him on the errand. I should have got some man who knew how to take care of such an amount of cash." "Mr. Sanderson, I don't think it's fair for you to blame Songbird," broke in Spud. "He did the best he could, and, of course, he had no idea that he was going to be attacked." "It's all well enough for you to talk, young man," broke out the farmer, angrily; "it wasn't your four thousand dollars that was stolen. I wanted that money to pay off the mortgage on this farm. It's due to-morrow, and the reason I wanted cash was because old Grisley insisted on cash and nothing else. He lost a lot of money in the bank years ago, and that soured him, so he wouldn't take a check nohow. Now what I'm going to do if I can't pay that mortgage, I don't know. And me down here with a sprained ankle, too!" he added with increasing bitterness. "You'll have to tell Mr. Grisley to wait for his money," said Sam. "When he learns the particulars of this affair he ought to be willing to wait." "If I could only walk I'd get on the trail of that thief somehow," muttered Mr. Sanderson. "It's a shame I've got to sit here and do nothin' when four thousand dollars of mine is floatin' away, nobody knows where." "We have notified the police and sent telegrams ahead, just as I told you," answered Sam. "I don't see what more we can do at present. Songbird was attacked so suddenly that he isn't sure that the fellow who did it is the same fellow he saw around the Knoxbury bank or not. But if he is the same fellow, we have a pretty fair description of him, and sooner or later the authorities may be able to run him down." "Oh, I know the police!" snorted the farmer. "They ain't worth a hill of beans." "Well, Songbird told me to tell you that if the money is not recovered, he will do all he can to make good the loss," continued Sam. "Make good the loss? Has he got four thousand dollars?" questioned the farmer, curiously. "Oh, no! Songbird isn't as wealthy as all that. He has only his regular allowance. But he said he'd work and earn the money, if he had to." "Humph! How is he going to earn it--writing poetry? They don't pay much for that kind of writing, to my way of thinking." "Now, Pa, please don't get so excited," soothed the daughter. "Let us be thankful that John wasn't killed. If he had been, I never would have forgiven you for having sent him on that errand." "Oh, now, don't you pitch into me. Minnie!" cried the father. "I've lost my four thousand dollars and that's bad enough. If I can't pay that mortgage, Grisley may foreclose and then you and me will be out of a home." "Nothing like that will happen, Mr. Sanderson," said Sam. "I don't know why." "The mortgage is on this farm, isn't it?" "Yes." "Is it the only mortgage you have, if I may ask?" "It is." "And what do you consider the farm worth?" "Well, I was offered eight thousand dollars for it last year, and I refused to sell." "Then I think it will be an easy matter to arrange to have the mortgage taken up by somebody else. Possibly my father or my uncle will do it." "Will they?" demanded Mr. Sanderson, eagerly. "Well, of course, that would be some help, but, at the same time, it wouldn't bring my four thousand dollars back," he added glumly. After that Minnie demanded to know more concerning Songbird's condition, and the two youths gave her every possible detail. "If I had a telephone here I might send word to Ashton to find out if they had tracked that rascal yet," said Mr. Sanderson. "But they asked so much money to put a telephone in over here I didn't have 'em do it." "Where is the nearest telephone?" questioned Spud. "Nothin' closer nor the railroad station at Busby's Crossing." "That's only half a mile away," put in Sam. "We might drive over there now and see if there is anything new." "You wait until you have had your supper," interposed Minnie. "It's all ready. I was expecting John, you know," and she blushed slightly. "But if your father is anxious to get word----" began the Rover boy. "Oh, I suppose you might as well wait and have somethin' to eat first," said the farmer. "That will give the authorities time to do somethin', if they are goin' to." In the expectation of having Songbird to supper, Minnie, with the aid of a young hired girl, had provided quite an elaborate meal, to which it is perhaps needless to state the young collegians did full justice. Then the youths lost no time in driving off in the cutter to Busby's Crossing, where they were lucky enough to find the station agent still in charge, although on the point of locking up, for no more trains would stop at the Crossing that night. The boys first telephoned to the college and to Ashton, and then to Dentonville and the railroad stations up the line. To get the various connections took considerable time, and to get "information that was no information at all," as Spud expressed it, took much longer still. The sum total of it was that no one had been able to trace the man in the heavy overcoat and with the heavy fur cap, and no one had the slightest idea about what had become of that much-wanted individual. "It's going to be like looking for the proverbial pin in the haystack," remarked Spud. "It's too bad," returned Sam, gloomily. "I did think we'd have some sort of encouraging word to take back to Mr. Sanderson." "Say! he's pretty bitter over the loss of that money, isn't he, Sam?" "You can't blame him for that. I'd be bitter too." "It looks to me as if he might make Minnie break with Songbird if that money wasn't recovered." "Possibly, Spud. Although he ought to know as well as we do that it was not Songbird's fault." "I'm glad to see Minnie sticks up for our chum, aren't you?" "Oh, Minnie's all right and always has been. She thinks just as much of Songbird as he does of her. Once in a while she pokes a little fun at his so-called poetry, but Songbird doesn't mind, so it doesn't matter." When the boys returned to the farmhouse Minnie ran out to meet them, and from their manner saw at once that they had no news worth mentioning. They could see that the girl had been crying, and now it was all she could do to keep from bursting into tears again. "Oh, Minnie, you ought not to take it so hard," said Sam, kindly. "Of course, to lose four thousand dollars is a terrible blow, but maybe they'll get the money back some way, or at least a part of it." "It isn't the money, Sam," cried the girl, with something like a catch in her voice. "It's the way papa acts. He seems to think it was all John's fault. Oh! I can't bear it! I know I can't!" she suddenly sobbed, and then ran away and up the stairs to her bedroom, closing the door behind her. CHAPTER VII SAM AND GRACE "This whole affair is certainly a tough proposition," remarked Sam, when, about half an hour later, he and Spud were on their way back to Brill. The time had been spent in telling Mr. Sanderson how they had failed to obtain any satisfaction over the telephone, and in listening to the farmer's tirade against poor Songbird. "Old Sanderson certainly pitched into Songbird," returned Spud. "I declare if anybody called me down that way, I think I'd be apt to get into a regular fight with him." "He is very much excited, Spud. I think when he cools down he will see matters in a different light. Just at present the loss of the four thousand dollars has completely upset him." "I suppose he pitched into Minnie even more than he pitched into us." "Maybe he did. I must say I am mighty sorry for that poor girl." "What are you going to tell Songbird?" "I suppose we'll have to tell him the truth, Spud, although we'll have to smooth over Mr. Sanderson's manner as much as we can. There's no use in hurting Songbird's feelings, especially now when he's broken up physically as well as mentally." When they reached the college they found that Songbird had insisted upon it that he be taken to the room he occupied with Sam instead of to the sick ward. He was in bed, but wide awake and anxious to hear all they might have to say. "Of course I knew Mr. Sanderson would blame me," he said, after asking a great number of questions. "Four thousand dollars is a heap of money." He knitted his brows for a moment, and then cast an anxious glance at Sam. "How did Minnie really seem to take it?" he continued. "She sided with you, Songbird, when her father talked against you," answered Sam. "She did, did she? Good for her!" and Songbird's face lit up for an instant. "She's true blue, that girl is!" "Now, the best thing I think you can do is to try to go to sleep and get a good night's rest," went on Sam. "This worrying about what can't be helped won't do you any good." "Yes, but, Sam, what am I going to do if that money isn't gotten back? The Sandersons can't afford to lose it, and even if I went to work right away, it would take me a long, long time to earn four thousand dollars." "I have been thinking that over, Songbird, and as the money was to be used in paying off a mortgage, I think I can arrange the matter, providing the holder of the present mortgage won't extend the time for it. I think I can get my father or my uncle to take the mortgage." "Very good, Sam, so far as it goes. But that wouldn't be getting the money back. If it isn't recovered, I'll feel that I am under a moral obligation to earn it somehow and give it to Mr. Sanderson." "We'll talk about it later. Now you've got to go to sleep," were Sam's concluding words, and after that he refused to say any more. He undressed and threw himself on his bed, and was soon asleep. But poor Songbird turned and twisted, and it is doubtful if his eyes closed until well along in the early morning hours. On the following day Sam had several classes to attend, as well as to work on a theme; but as soon as these tasks were over he obtained permission to leave the college to find out, if possible, if anything had been done in the matter of the robbery. He visited Ashton and had an interview with the police, and then used the telephone in several directions. But it was all of no avail; nothing whatever had been seen or heard of the rascal who had made the attack upon Songbird. "I'm afraid it will be one of those mysteries which will never be explained," mused the youngest Rover boy, as he jumped into the cutter which he was using and drove away from Ashton. "It's too bad! Oh! how I'd like to get my hands on that rascal, whoever he may be!" It was not until two days later, when Songbird was once more able to be about and had insisted on being driven over to the Sanderson place, that Sam had a chance to go on the sleighride with Grace Laning. He drove over to Hope Seminary about four o'clock in the afternoon, having sent word ahead that he was coming. Grace was waiting for him, and the pair speedily drove away, wistfully watched by a number of the girl students. "It's so nice of you to think of me, Sam, when you've got so much to think about on poor Songbird's account," said Grace, as they were speeding out of the seminary grounds. "How is he?" "Oh, he's doing better than we expected, Grace. He insisted on being driven over to the Sandersons this afternoon. Stanley took him over, because none of us thought Songbird was strong enough to drive himself." "I want you to give me all the particulars of the attack," said the girl, and this the youth did readily. "It must have been the man who stuttered and whistled--the fellow Songbird saw at the Knoxbury bank," declared the girl, positively. "Wouldn't it pay to get a detective on his track?" "Perhaps so, Grace. I think Songbird is going to mention that to Mr. Sanderson." Sam did not want the girl to worry too much over what had occurred and so soon changed the subject. They talked about college and seminary matters, and then about affairs at home, and about matters in New York City. "I just got another letter from Nellie to-day," said Grace. "She says that the apartment she and Tom have rented is perfectly lovely--every bit as nice as the one occupied by Dick and Dora." "I'm glad they like it, Grace. But, believe me, it will be some job for Tom to settle down and be a staid married man! He was always so full of fun." "Why, the idea, Sam Rover! Don't you think a man can be married and still keep full of fun?" "Well, maybe, if he got such a nice girl as Nellie. Just the same, I'll wager Tom sometimes wishes he was back in good old Brill." "Indeed! And do you think you'll wish you were back at Brill if ever you get married?" she asked slyly. "Oh, I didn't say anything about that, Grace. I--I----" "Well, it's just about the same thing," and Grace tossed her pretty face a trifle. "Oh, now look here, Grace! You haven't any call to talk that way. I suppose when I get married I'll be just as happy as Dick or Tom. That is, providing I get the right girl," and he gazed at the face beside him very ardently. "Sam Rover, you had better watch where you are driving, unless you want to run us into the rocks and bushes," cried the girl, suddenly. For, forgetting the steed for a moment, Sam had allowed the horse to turn to one side of the somewhat rough highway. "I'll attend to the horse, never fear," he answered. "I never yet saw the horse that I couldn't manage. But speaking of letters, Grace, I had one from Dick day before yesterday and he made a suggestion that pleased me very much." "What was that?" "He suggested that if I graduate from Brill this coming June, as I expect to do, that we make up a party to occupy two or three automobiles and go off on a regular tour this summer, taking in the Middle West and maybe some other points." "Oh, Sam, how grand! Of course he was going to take Dora along?" "Yes. His idea was that if matters could be arranged at the offices in New York, that he and Dora, as well as Tom and Nellie, would go along and that we would go too, along with some others--say enough to make at least two automobile loads." "Oh, I'd love an auto tour like that! Couldn't we have just the best times ever?" and Grace's pretty eyes sparkled in anticipation. "When I got the letter I thought the same, and I also thought we might ask Songbird and Minnie--Dora and Nellie could chaperon her, you know. But now I don't know what we'll do about them. Most likely Songbird wouldn't feel like going if that money wasn't recovered, and more than likely Mr. Sanderson wouldn't let Minnie go." "Oh, dear! I suppose the loss of that money will hang over Songbird like a big cloud forever," pouted the girl. "It's too bad! I don't see why Mr. Sanderson couldn't have paid that mortgage with a check." "Just exactly what we all say now, Grace. But that doesn't do any good." "Are you sure you are going to graduate, Sam?" "I certainly hope so. I am going to try my best not only to graduate, Grace, but to get as close to the top of the class as possible. Dick and Tom had to leave before they had a chance to graduate, so I want to make a good showing for the Rover family." "It's the same with me, Sam. Nellie left to get married, and so did Cousin Dora, so I've got to do the best I can for our family next June." "Then you hope to get through too?" "Of course." "How are the teachers treating you these days? Have you had any more trouble with Miss Harrow, or the others?" "Not the least bit. They are all perfectly lovely, and Miss Harrow is so sorry that she ever thought Nellie had taken that diamond ring." "Well, she ought to feel sorry," responded Sam. "It certainly put Nellie to a lot of trouble. Did that gardener who put the diamond ring in the inkwell ever come back to work at the seminary?" "Andy Royce? Yes, he is working there. I have seen him several times. He is quite a changed man, and I don't think he drinks at all." "Well, that's one good job done, Grace. That man's worst enemy was liquor." Sam had arranged that they might remain out until nine o'clock that evening, and so drove Grace over to Knoxbury, where they went to quite a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Here they met several young men and girls they knew, and all had a most delightful time during the repast. When Sam went outside to get his horse and cutter, which had been placed in a livery stable near by, he was surprised to encounter the very man he had mentioned but a short while before, Andy Royce, the gardener who had once been discharged from Hope Seminary for not attending properly to his duties and who, through the intercession of the Rovers and the Lanings, had been reinstated in his position. "Good evening, Mr. Rover," said Andy Royce, respectfully, as he touched the cap he wore. "Hello, Royce! What are you doing here?" asked the youth. "Oh, I just drove over to Knoxbury to get some things for the seminary," replied Royce; and then stepping closer he added in a lower tone: "I saw you going into Meeker's restaurant a while ago and I stayed here to see you when you came out. I'd like to talk to you a bit." "All right. What have you to say?" returned Sam, briskly. "I haven't got much time to waste." "I wanted to ask you about the young fellow who was knocked down and robbed the other afternoon," went on Andy Royce, as the two walked away, out of the hearing of the others in the livery stable. "Somebody told me that the fellow who was robbed said a man did it who stuttered and whistled." "Well, we rather think that man did it, but we are not certain," answered Sam. He glanced sharply at the gardener. "Do you know anything of that fellow?" "I think I do, Mr. Rover. You see it's this way: Several years ago I used to live out West, in Denver and Colorado Springs, and I used to know a man out there who went by the name of Blackie Crowden. He used to stutter fearfully and had a funny little whistle with it." "Out in Denver, you say? That's a long way from here." "I know it is, sir, but after I left I heard that this Blackie Crowden had come to Center Haven, and that's only twenty miles from here. And that ain't all," continued Andy Royce, earnestly. "I was in this town about a week ago and I am almost certain I saw this same Blackie Crowden on the street. I tried to reach him so as to speak to him, but he got away from me in a crowd that had come up to see a runaway." "This is interesting," returned Sam. "Tell me how this Blackie Crowden looks," he went on. And then as Andy Royce described the individual he added slowly: "That seems to tally with the description Songbird gave of the fellow who looked at him through the bank window when he was placing the money away. More than likely that fellow was that same Blackie Crowden." "Well, if it was Blackie Crowden, why don't you have him locked up?" queried the gardener. "Perhaps I will, providing he is still in Center Haven," answered Sam. CHAPTER VIII SOMETHING ABOUT BLACKIE CROWDEN When Sam returned to Brill late that evening, after having spent a most delightful time with Grace, he found that Songbird had returned from the Sandersons' homestead some time before. The would-be poet of the college was working hard over some of his lessons, and it was plainly to be seen that he was in anything but a good humor. "Sanderson treated me like a dog--like a regular dog!" he burst out, in reply to Sam's question. "Why! to hear him talk you would almost think I was in league with the fellow who attacked me!" "It's too bad, Songbird; but you shouldn't take it so much to heart. Remember, Mr. Sanderson is a very hard-working man and one who has probably never allowed another fellow to get the best of him in any kind of a deal. The amount that was lost represents probably the savings of a good many years, and to lose it so suddenly and in such an underhanded way has completely upset him. When he has had time to think it over calmly he'll probably see that you were not to blame." "I don't think so--he's not that kind of man, Sam. He was very bitter and he told Minnie that she wasn't to see me any more. Minnie was dreadfully upset, of course, and she rushed off to her room, so I didn't have any chance to say good-bye to her." "As bad as that, eh? Well, you can write her a letter anyway." "So I can; but maybe her father will see to it that she never gets it," responded the smitten youth, gloomily. "I've got a little news that may prove encouraging," pursued Sam after a slight pause; and then he related the particulars of his meeting with Andy Royce, and what the Hope gardener had said regarding Blackie Crowden. "Say! that's great!" burst out the would-be poet. "If I could see this Crowden I'd know at once if he was the man who watched me when I was at the Knoxbury bank, and if it was it would certainly pay to put the authorities on his trail." "I was thinking the same, Songbird. I wonder if we couldn't get permission from Dr. Wallington to drive over to Center Haven to-morrow and find out what we can about this Blackie Crowden?" "Oh, he'll have to give us permission--at least he'll have to let me go," returned Songbird. "I can't settle down to any lessons until something is done, one way or another. Here I am, trying to study, and I hardly know a word of what I'm reading." "Let us go to the doctor at once if he is still up and ask him," said Sam. Permission to leave the college was readily granted by Dr. Wallington, who, however, cautioned Songbird about overexerting himself while he was still suffering from the attack that had been made upon him. "I'll depend upon you, Rover, to look after him," said the head of Brill, kindly. "And let me add, I wish you every success in your search for the offender. I certainly would like to see you get Mr. Sanderson's money back." The two young collegians had breakfast as early as possible, and by eight o'clock were on their way to Center Haven in the automobile belonging to the Rovers, and which had now been left in Sam's care. Heavy chains had been put on the wheels so that the automobile made its way over the snowy roads without much trouble. Of course in some spots where the frozen highway was uneven, the boys got some pretty hard bumps, but this they did not mind, their one thought being to get to Center Haven as soon as possible and learn all they could concerning Blackie Crowden and his doings. Center Haven was a town about the size of Knoxbury, and among other things boasted of a large hotel which was generally well patronized during the summer months. Andy Royce had said that Crowden had been seen at this hotel and probably had some sort of position there. When the boys arrived there they found that the main building of the hotel was completely closed. The only portion that was open was a small wing with an equally small dining room used for the accommodations of the few transients who came to Center Haven during the winter months. "We came here to find a man named Blackie Crowden," said Sam to the proprietor of the hotel, who came forward to meet them when they entered. "Can you tell me anything about him?" "You won't find him here," returned the hotel man, brusquely. "I discharged him two weeks ago." "Discharged him?" queried Songbird, and his tone showed his disappointment. "Any trouble with him?" "Oh, yes, lots of trouble. Are you friends of his?" "We certainly are not," answered Sam. "But we'd like to find out something about him." "I'm glad you are not friends of his," continued the hotelkeeper. "I feel very sore over that man. I took him in and gave him a good job, and paid him a good deal more than he was worth. But he wouldn't work--in fact he was the laziest man I ever saw--and so I had to discharge him. I paid him all that was coming to him, and when he got out he was mean enough to sneak off with some of my clothing, and also a pair of my gloves and my rubbers. If I could lay my hands on him, I'd be strongly tempted to hand him over to the police." "Did he take an overcoat of yours and a fur cap?" demanded Songbird, quickly. "He certainly did. A heavy, dark-gray overcoat and one of these fur caps that you can pull down over your ears and over the back of the head." "He must have been the same fellow," remarked Sam. "And the fact that he robbed this man here goes to prove what sort of rascal he really is." "Did he steal anything from you people?" asked the hotelkeeper, curiously. "I think he did," answered Songbird. "Did you hear anything of the attack that took place a few days ago on the road near Ashton, in which a young fellow was robbed of four thousand dollars in cash?" "Oh, yes, I heard about that from the police captain here." "Well, I am the fellow who was robbed," continued Songbird. "And I'm strongly inclined to think now that it was this Blackie Crowden who was guilty--in fact I am almost certain of it. When I was at the Knoxbury bank getting the money and putting it away in my pocket I saw a man watching through a window of the bank. He had on a dark-gray overcoat and a fur cap pulled far down over his face. Then, later on, just after I was attacked, my friend here with a chum of ours came driving along and saw this same man with the heavy overcoat and the fur cap drive off with the horse and cutter that I had had--and he was the same fellow who had knocked me senseless." "Is that so! Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head, and if you catch this Blackie Crowden you'll have the right fellow. Anybody who would run off with my things as he did after he had been treated as well as I treated him wouldn't be above committing such a crime. But the question is, where did he go? Have you any idea?" "We know he got on the train at Dentonville," said Sam. "That's as far as we've been able to trace him so far. But now that we know that this criminal is Blackie Crowden, maybe the authorities will be able to run him down sooner or later." "This Crowden was very friendly with one or two of the men around the stables," went on the hotelkeeper. "Maybe you can find out something about him from them." "A good idea!" answered Songbird. "We'll see what they have to say." The hotel man took the two youths to the stables, and there they talked with several men present who had known Crowden. From these they learned that the man had been very much dissatisfied with the work assigned to him, and had frequently spoken about the good times to be had in such large cities as New York, Chicago and Denver. "He said he thought he would go back to New York first," said one of the stable men, "and then he thought he would go on to Chicago and after that visit some of his old places and cronies in Denver. But, of course, where he really did go to I haven't the least idea." "What you say is something of a clue anyway," returned Sam. "Now if we only had a photograph of this Crowden, it might help the police a great deal." "We've got a picture of him," said one of the men present. "It was taken by one of the visitors at the hotel this fall. He came out here to take a picture of some of the horses and we helped him, so all of us got into the picture, Crowden with the rest. I'll get it," he added, and disappeared in the direction of his sleeping quarters. The photograph was a fairly large one, showing three men and as many horses. The man in the center was Blackie Crowden, and the stable man and the hotelkeeper declared that it was an excellent photograph of that individual. "Will you let us have this photograph?" asked Songbird. "I would like to have that picture of Crowden enlarged, and then you can have it back." "Sure you can have it," answered the stable man. "As that fellow is a thief, you might as well tear that picture up afterward, because I don't want to be in no photograph with a criminal," and he grinned sheepishly. "All right then, I won't take the trouble to return it," answered Songbird. "Suppose you accept this dollar for it," and he passed over a banknote, which the stable man took with thanks. A little later the two youths started on the return to Ashton. "Well, that's one step nearer the solution of this mystery," announced Sam. "Now I think we had better stop at Knoxbury and find out about that horse which belonged to Hoover, the livery stable man." They reached the banking town about noon, and went directly to the livery stable. As they did so a man in a cutter drove in, leading a horse behind him. "There is the horse now!" cried Sam. "He must have just gotten the animal back from Mr. Bray." "Are you Mr. Hoover?" questioned Songbird of the man in the cutter, as he came to a halt near them. "That's my handle, young man. What can I do for you?" "I would like to know something about that horse, and who hired him from you;" and then he introduced himself and Sam. "I don't know who got the animal," answered Mr. Hoover. "I was away at the time, and a stable boy let him out. He declares the fellow said he was a friend of mine, and that it would be all right." "And was the fellow dressed in a heavy, gray overcoat and a heavy fur cap?" asked Sam. "Yes, that was the description the stable boy gave. When he found I didn't know anything about the man he was scared to death, because I told him that if the horse didn't come back I'd make him pay for the animal." "Then that's all we want to know, Mr. Hoover," answered Songbird. "I'm pretty sure now I know who it was that knocked me down and robbed me." "He was a rascal, all right," answered the livery stable man. "I had to pay old Bray four dollars to get my own horse back," he added, sulkily. As the long ride in the open air had made them hungry, the two youths went to the restaurant in Knoxbury for dinner. Then the automobile was turned once more in the direction of Ashton. "I'll have that photograph enlarged by Clinger," said Songbird, referring to a photographer in the town who did a great deal of work for the Brill and Hope students. "Then I'll have copies sent to the various police stations, even to New York, Chicago and Denver, along with a description of Blackie Crowden." "That's the talk, Songbird. Oh, I am sure we'll get on his trail sooner or later," said Sam. But though he spoke light-heartedly for his chum's benefit, he knew that to trace the criminal would be by no means easy. With the four thousand dollars in his possession, Blackie Crowden would probably make every effort to keep from being discovered. As they sped along the road, Songbird could not help becoming poetical, and despite his blueness he managed to concoct the following doggerel: "The engine hums--advance the spark, Turn on the throttle--what a lark! Away we go like a flash of light Over the hill and out of sight." "Not so bad, Songbird," was Sam's comment. "That's right--keep it up and maybe you'll feel better." But that was the only verse to be gotten out of the would-be poet for the present. Arriving at Ashton, they went immediately to the photographer's shop and told him what was wanted, and he agreed to re-photograph the picture of Crowden and then enlarge the same and make as many copies as Songbird desired. "I'll do it this afternoon," said Mr. Clinger, "and you can have a dozen or more copies by to-morrow morning. I'll make the head of the fellow about as large as a half dollar, and that ought to make a picture for any policeman or detective to go by;" and so it was arranged. While the youths were at the photographer's an express train had come into Ashton and now quite a few people were coming away from the railroad station. As the boys walked towards the automobile, Songbird suddenly uttered a cry. "Look, Sam! Look who's here!" "Why, it's Tom! My brother, Tom!" exclaimed Sam, as he rushed forward. "What in the world brought him here to-day?" CHAPTER IX IN WHICH TOM ARRIVES Tom Rover, tall and broad-shouldered, looked the picture of health as he came toward his younger brother and Songbird. He smiled broadly as he shook hands with them. "Why, Tom! What brings you here?" remarked Sam. "You didn't write about coming on." "Oh, I thought I'd just drop in and surprise you," returned Tom. "You know I can't quite get used to being away from Brill," he continued, with a grin. "Want to get back to your studies, I suppose," was his brother's dry comment. "Well, come ahead; you can help me on a theme I am writing on 'Civilization in Ancient Central America.'" "Wow! that sounds as interesting as a Greek dictionary!" cried Tom. "Thank goodness! I don't have to worry my head about themes any more. But just the same, Sam, don't make any mistake. I am as busy these days as I ever was in my life, trying to help Dick and dad to put our new organization on its feet." "And how is that getting along?" "Fine. We incorporated this week and have our papers, and now I am the secretary of The Rover Company," and Tom strutted around with his thumbs under his arms. "Some class to me, eh?" "And what is Dick?" questioned Songbird, curiously. "Oh, Dick is treasurer," answered Tom. "Dad, of course, is president, but he expects to hold that position only until Sam comes in. Then Dick is to become president; myself, treasurer; and Sam, secretary." "Say! that's all right," responded the youngest Rover, his face showing his satisfaction. "That is, provided you want to come in, Sam. Dad doesn't want you to give up your idea of becoming a lawyer unless you want to." "Oh, I might become a lawyer and remain secretary of the company too," was the answer. "One thing is sure, if you and Dick are going to remain in that company you'll have to take me in." "Well, what's the news?" went on Tom. "Had any fun lately? How is Grace?" and he looked rather sharply at his brother. "Oh, Grace is all right," answered Sam. He hesitated a moment. "I suppose you didn't get the letter I sent to you and Dick yesterday--the letter about Songbird here?" "Why no. I left the office night before last." "Songbird is in trouble, Tom," returned the brother. "Are you going up to the college? If you are you can go with us in the automobile and we'll tell you all about it on the way." "Yes, I'll go up, and I might as well take my grip with me, for maybe I'll stay over until to-morrow if they have room for me," and thus speaking Tom turned back to the railroad station to get his dress-suit case. The three youths were soon on their way to Brill, and as Sam manipulated the car he and Songbird gave the new arrival the details concerning the attack. Tom, of course, listened with deep interest. "That's a rank shame, Songbird!" he cried, at the conclusion of the narrative. "I know just how you feel. If I could get my hands on that Blackie Crowden, I think I'd put him in the hospital first and in prison afterward." "I told Songbird not to worry as far as the money was concerned," went on Sam. "If that old fellow who holds the mortgage won't wait for his money, I told Songbird that I thought we could get our folks to advance the cash." "Sure thing!" responded Tom, promptly. "You give me the details and I'll see about the money when I go back." "Mr. Sanderson said he would know about it early next week," answered Songbird. "He expects a visit from old Grisley and Belright Fogg." "My gracious! You didn't tell me anything about Fogg being connected with this," burst out Sam. "I forgot all about it," answered Songbird. "It seems that as soon as old Grisley heard the money was stolen and that it wasn't likely the mortgage would be paid, he hired Belright Fogg to take the matter up for him. He is an old man and very excitable, and he somehow got the notion that Mr. Sanderson would try to swindle him in some way. So he got Belright Fogg in the case, though as a general thing he has no more use for lawyers than he has for banks." "Well, he's very foolish to put his case in the hands of such a fellow as Belright Fogg. Tom, I guess you'll remember the trouble we had with that fellow." "I sure do, Sam!" "And Sam had more trouble with him," cried Songbird. "Don't forget how you hit him in the head with a snowball." "That's right. In the excitement of the attack on you, Songbird, I forgot all about that," answered the youngest Rover. "I suppose he is laying back to bring that up against me." They soon reached the grounds surrounding Brill, and Tom looked at the college buildings with interest. "Looks almost like home to me," he said somewhat wistfully. "My, but I had some good times here! I wish I had been on deck for that snowballing contest." "Sam was the hero of that occasion, according to all accounts," answered Songbird. "He captured the banners of the freshies and sophs, you know." As the automobile rolled into the grounds a number of students recognized Tom and waved friendly greetings to him. Leaping out, he was soon surrounded by a number of his old chums, all of whom wanted to know where he had been keeping himself and how long he was going to stay with them. "Can't stay longer than to-morrow noon," he announced. "You know I'm a business man now," and he puffed up and grinned in a manner that made all of the others smile. "You just came in time, Tom," cried Spud. "Your old friend, William Philander Tubbs, who has been away on business to Boston, got back here this morning." "What! My old friend Tubby here? I'll be glad to shake his flipper," announced Tom, and grinned more than ever as he recalled the practical jokes that had been played at different times on the dudish student who had been mentioned. Of course the students present wanted to know what had been learned by Sam and Songbird on the trip to Center Haven, and many were the speculations regarding Blackie Crowden. "The authorities ought to be able to catch that fellow now that you have his photograph and a good description of him," remarked Stanley. "It would be a good idea to send that description and photograph broadcast." The boys reported to Dr. Wallington, and Tom went with them. The head of Brill was glad to see his former student, and readily consented to allow Tom to remain with the others that night, an extra cot being put into room No. 25 for that purpose. "Are those the banners you captured, Sam?" questioned Tom, when the boys entered the room, and as he spoke he pointed to two banners which were nailed up on the wall. "Yes, Tom, those are the ones we captured," was the reply of the youngest Rover, with considerable pride. "The freshies and sophs wanted them back the worst way, but I told them there was nothing doing, that I intended to keep them at least until I graduated. They sent a committee to me to get the banners, and I can tell you that committee was pretty sore when they went away without getting them." "You watch out that they don't take those banners on the sly, Sam." "Oh, Songbird and I are looking out for them. Didn't you notice we had the door locked? We always lock up now, and no one has a key but the janitor, and we have cautioned him not to let any one in here without our permission." "I'll tell you what I'd like to do to-night," said Tom. "I'd like to smuggle something to eat into this room and give some of our crowd a spread, just for the fun of it." "All right, I'm willing, Tom," answered his brother. "Of course you'll have to keep rather quiet about it, because I don't want to get into the bad graces of any of the monitors or of Dr. Wallington. I want to graduate next June with the highest possible honors." It was arranged that while Songbird and Sam studied some necessary lessons, Tom was to return to Ashton in the automobile and bring back a number of things which would be needed for the proposed spread. Tom took Spud and Stanley with him. Out on the campus the three came face to face with William Philander Tubbs. "Hello, Tubblets, old boy!" cried Tom cordially, as he caught William Philander by the hand. "How are you making it these days?" "I--er--er---- How do you do, Rover?" stammered the dudish student. "Why, I am--er--am quite well, thank you. I thought you had left college?" "Oh, I couldn't leave it for good, you know, Tubby, my dear. They wouldn't be able to get along without me." "Why--ah--why--ah--somebody told me you were going into business in New York." "That's right, Tubbette." "Oh, Rover! please don't call me by those horrid nicknames any longer," pleaded William Philander. "You promised me long ago you wouldn't do it." "Only a slip of my memory, my dear Philander Williams. I really----" "No, no! Not Philander Williams. My name is William Philander." "That's right! so it is. It's always been Philander William--No, I mean Willander Philiams--no, that isn't it either. My gracious, Tubblets, old boy! what have you done with the front handles of your cognomen, anyway? You twist me all sideways trying to remember it." "Really, how odd! My name is William Philander Tubbs. That's easy enough." "If I had it engraved in script type on a visiting card and looked at it daily, maybe I would be able to remember it," answered Tom, mournfully. "You know my head was never very good for history or anything like that. However, now that I know that your name is Philander Tubblets Williams, don't you think you'd like to ride down to Ashton with us? We are going to have a little spread to-night, and I want you to help me pick out the spaghetti, sauerkraut, sweet potato pie, Limburger cheese, and other delicacies." "Oh, by Jove! do you really mean you are going to have those things for a spread?" gasped William Philander. "That is, if they are just the things you like," returned Tom, innocently. "Of course, Stanley here suggested that we have some fried eel sandwiches and some worm pudding. But I don't know about such rich living as that." "Eel sandwiches! Worm pudding!" groaned William Philander, aghast. "I never heard of such things! Why don't you get--er--er--some cream puffs and chocolate éclares and er--and--er--and mint kisses and things like that, you know?" "Not solid enough, my dear Willie boy. The boys love substantials. You know that as well as I do. Of course we might add a few little delicacies like turnips and onions, just for side dishes, you know." "I--I--really think you had better excuse me, Rover!" exclaimed William Philander, backing away. "I am not feeling extra good, and I don't think I want to go to any spread to-night," and William Philander bowed and backed still farther. "Oh, all right, Philly Willy," responded Tom, dolefully. "Of course if you don't want to participate you don't have to, but you'll break our hearts if you stay away. Now you just come to room twenty-five to-night and we'll give you the finest red herring and mush ice cream you ever chewed in your life," and then he and his chums hurried away in the automobile, leaving William Philander Tubbs gazing after him in deep perplexity. CHAPTER X THE FEAST When Tom came back accompanied by Stanley and Spud, all had their arms full of the things purchased in Ashton. "And this is only the half of it," announced the fun-loving Rover to his brother, in answer to a query. "We've got to go back and get the rest out of the automobile." "We'll bring that stuff up," said Stanley. "You stay here with your brother. Come on, Songbird, I see you are doing nothing, so you might as well give us a lift," and off the three boys trooped to bring up the rest of the things purchased for the feast. "I'm mighty glad you are going to give this, Tom, on Songbird's account," announced Sam, when he and his brother were left to themselves. "Songbird is about as blue as indigo. You see, it isn't only the money--it's Minnie. Her father won't let him call on her any more." "Tough luck, sure enough," responded Tom. "Well, let us do all we can to-night to make Songbird forget his troubles." Tom took a walk up and down the room, halting in front of a picture of Grace which was in a silver frame on a chiffonier. "Pretty good picture, Sam," he observed. "Yes, it is." "Did you say that you had been out with Grace lately?" "Oh, yes. We had a fine sleighride only the other day." "She's made quite a friend of a Miss Ada Waltham at the seminary, a rich girl, hasn't she?" "She has mentioned Miss Waltham to me. I didn't know that they were particularly friendly," answered Sam. "You know this Miss Waltham is very rich." "So I heard, Sam. She is worth about a quarter of a million dollars, so somebody said. But she has a brother, Chester, who is worth even more. An uncle died and left nearly his entire estate to the brother." "Is that so? Lucky young fellow! But I don't see how that interests me, Tom," and Sam looked at his brother inquiringly. "You act as if you had something on your mind." "So I have, Sam; and that is one of the reasons I came here to-day," announced Tom. "I'll tell you about it in the morning," he added hastily, as a tramping was heard in the hallway; and the next moment the door burst open and in came Stanley, Songbird, Spud and one or two others, all loaded down with bundles and packages. "Make way for the parcels post and the express company!" proclaimed Spud, as he dropped several packages on one of the cots. "Say, Tom, you must have bought out half of Ashton." "Only three-eighths, Spud," answered the fun-loving Rover, gaily. "You see I knew what an awful appetite you had, and as I had an extra twenty-five cent piece in my jeans I thought I'd try to satisfy that appetite just once." "Twenty-five cents! Wow!" commented Stanley. "I'll wager this spread costs you a good many dollars." Word had been passed around to a number of Tom's old friends, and they were all requested to be on hand by ten o'clock. "Tubbs says he begs to be excused," announced Paul Orben when he came in. "He says he has got some studying he must do." "Nonsense! He's afraid we'll treat him to some sauerkraut pie and some pickled pastry," returned Tom. "I don't want him to stay away and miss a good time. What room is he in?" "Number eighteen." "Then come along, some of you, and we'll bring him here," announced the fun-loving Rover, and marched off, followed by Spud and Bob. In the meanwhile, Sam, Songbird and Stanley brought the things from the closet and began to prepare for the feast. Tom and his friends found William Philander busy folding and putting away half a dozen gorgeous neckties. He was rather startled at their sudden entrance, and did his best to hide the articles. "Hello! I thought you were boning away on trigonometry or mental science," was Tom's comment. "Say, old boy, that's a gorgeous necktie," he added as he picked up a creation in lavender and yellow. "Did you buy this to wear at the horse show, or at a meeting of mothers' helpers?" "Oh, my dear Rover, please don't muss that up!" pleaded William Philander, snatching the necktie from Tom's hands. "That is one that was--er--made--er--a--a present to me." "Oh, I see. That's the one that blind young lady gave to you. I admire her taste in picking it out." "Blind lady? I--er--have no blind lady friend," returned William Philander. "Oh, yes, I remember now, Tubby, she was deaf--not blind. It's a wonder she didn't pick out something a little louder." "Oh, Rover, I really believe you are poking fun at that necktie," returned the dudish student. "We came to get you to come to the feast, Willie," announced Spud. "We don't want you to miss it." "We wouldn't have you miss it for a peck of shelled popcorn," put in Bob. "Yes, but really, I've got some studying to do, and----" "You can study after the feast is over, my dear boy," broke in Tom, as he caught William Philander by the arm. "You'll be surprised how much quicker you can learn on a full stomach than on one that is half vacant. Come on!" "Yes, but I----" "We haven't any time to spare, Tubblets. You are going to the feast, so you might as well make the best of it. Come on, fellows, help him along. He's so bashful he can't walk," and thus urged, Spud took William Philander's other arm while Bob caught him by the collar and in the back, and thus the three of them forced the dudish collegian out of his room and along the hallway to Number 25. By this time something like fifteen students had gathered in the room, and the advent of Tom and his chums with the somewhat frightened William Philander was greeted with a roar of approval. The dudish student was marched in and made to take a seat on a board which had been placed on two chairs. On the board sat several students, and William Philander was placed on one end. "Now, then, everybody make himself at home," announced Tom, as soon as a look around had convinced him that his brother and the others had everything in readiness for the feast. "I believe you'll find everything here except toothpicks, and for those we'll have to chop up one of Sam's baseball bats later on." "Not much! You're not going to touch any of my bats," announced the younger brother, firmly. "Sam wants to keep them to help bat another victory for Brill this spring," put in Spud. "My! but that was one great game we had last season." "So it was," put in another student. "And don't forget that Tom helped to win that game as well as Sam." While this chatter was going on various good things in the way of salads and sandwiches had been passed around, and these were followed by cake and glasses of root beer, ginger ale and grape juice. "Why, this is perfectly lovely," lisped William Philander Tubbs, as he sat on the end of the board-seat, his lap covered with a paper napkin on which rested a large plate of chicken salad and some sandwiches. In one hand he held an extra large glass of grape juice. "Everybody ready!" announced Stanley, with a wink at several of the boys. "Here is where we drink to the health of Tom Rover!" "Tom Rover!" was the exclamation, and at a certain sign all the boys seated on the board except William Philander leaped to their feet. The result was as might have been expected. The dudish pupil had been resting on the end of the board, which overlapped the chair, and with the weight of the others removed, the board suddenly tipped upward and down went William Philander in a heap, the chicken salad jouncing forward over his shirt front and the glass of grape juice in his hand being dashed full into his face. [Illustration: THE BOARD SUDDENLY TIPPED AND DOWN WENT WILLIAM PHILANDER.] "Hi! Hi! What--er--did--er--you do that for?" he spluttered, as he sat on the floor, completely dazed. "Say! why didn't you tell me you were going to get up?" and then he started to wipe the grape juice from his eyes and nose. "Hello! Salad's going down!" cried one student gaily. "Say, Tubbs, there is no use of throwing such nice food as that away even if you don't want it," chimed in another. "Don't you know enough to stand up when a toast is to be drunk?" queried a third. "I--I--didn't quite understand," stammered William Philander, and then with an effort he extracted himself from the mess on his lap and slowly arose to his feet. "My gracious! I believe I have utterly ruined this vest and trousers!" he added mournfully, as he gazed down at the light gray suit he wore. "Oh, a little gasoline will fix that up all right," said Spud. "Don't let a little thing like that interfere with your pleasure, Tubbs. Come on--here's another glass of grape juice. No use of crying over spilt milk--I mean juice," corrected the youth. "Tom Rover! Everybody up!" came the call, and then amid a subdued murmuring of good luck the boys stood around Tom and drank his health. "Thank you, fellows, very much," answered Tom, and there was just a suspicion of huskiness in his voice. "Speech! Speech! Give us a speech!" came from several. "Speech? Great guns! I never made a speech in my life," announced Tom, and now for the first time he looked a bit confused. "Oh, you've got to say something, Tom," cried Stanley. "What shall I talk about--earthquakes in India, or the spots on Tubbs' pants?" queried Tom, with a grin. "Never mind what you talk about so long as you say something," came from Bob. "All right then--here goes!" announced Tom after a little pause. "Catch this before it's too late. I'm glad to be here, otherwise I wouldn't be here. I'm glad you are here, otherwise you wouldn't be here. I think Brill College is the best college any fellow could ever go to, if that hadn't been so I'd never have gone to Brill. I'm sorry I couldn't stay here to graduate, but I've left the honor to Sam here, and I trust he'll get through and make a record for the whole family. Boys, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. And here's wishing you all success at graduation and success through life," and thus concluding his little speech, Tom took a generous drink of ginger ale, while the others applauded vigorously. "Very good!" cried Sam, but then added quickly: "For gracious sake! don't make too much noise or you'll have one of the monitors here and we'll get some black marks." "That's right, fellows," announced Stanley. "After this we'll have to be as noisy as a mouse in a cheese factory." "Now that I have been called on to make a speech," announced Tom, after quietness had been restored, "I am going to call on Songbird for one of his choice bits of poetry." "Oh, now, Tom! please don't do that," pleaded the would-be poet of Brill. "You know I'm in no humor for writing poetry now." "All the more reason why you should write some," announced Sam. "Come on now. You must have something tucked away in your system--I mean something brand new." "Well--er--I've got something new, but I hardly think it is appropriate for this occasion," answered Songbird slowly. "Never mind; give it to us no matter what it is," cried one of the students. "Let her flutter!" "Poetry for mine!" "Let her flow, Songbird!" "That's right. Turn on the poetry spigot, Songbird;" and thus urged the would-be poet of Brill began: "The world is black and I feel blue, I do not know what I'm to do, That fellow hit me in the head And left me in the road for dead. I go around from hour to hour And I am feeling mighty sour. I am consumed with helpless woe----" "Because I lost that heard-earned dough," completed Tom, rather suddenly, and this abrupt ending caused a general laugh. CHAPTER XI TOM FREES HIS MIND The party in Number 25 did not break up until some time after midnight, and all present declared that they had had the time of their lives. Only one interruption had come, made by a good-natured monitor who had begged them to make less noise, and this fellow, well known to Tom, had been bought off with several sandwiches and a bottle of ginger ale. "And how do you fellows feel this morning?" asked Tom, who was the first to get up after a sound sleep. "Oh, I'm first rate," announced his younger brother. "I thought I'd dream, with so much chicken salad and sandwiches and cake in me, but I slept like a log." "I didn't sleep extra well," came slowly from Songbird. "But I don't think it was the feast kept me awake." Tom walked over to where the would-be poet of Brill sat on the edge of a cot and dropped down beside him. "Songbird, you take the loss of that money too much to heart," he said kindly. "Of course we all know it was a great loss. Yet it won't do to grieve over it too much. And besides, there is hope that some day the authorities will catch that Blackie Crowden and get at least part of the money back." "It isn't the money alone, Tom; it is the way Mr. Sanderson has treated me. And besides that, I'm worried over that mortgage. I'd like to know just what old Grisley and his lawyer are going to do." "I'll tell you what I'll do, Songbird. If you wish me to, I'll call on Mr. Sanderson and tell him what we are willing to do, so that he can rest easy about paying the mortgage off if he has to." "I wish you would go, Tom--and put in a good word for me, too," cried Songbird, eagerly. "Oh, I'll do that, never fear. I'll go this morning before I start back to New York;" and thus it was arranged. "You said that you had something to tell me, Tom," remarked Sam, as the three were going downstairs to breakfast. "What was it?" "Oh, it may not amount to much, Sam. I'll tell you about it as soon as we can get by ourselves," answered Tom. The morning meal was quickly disposed of, and then Tom and Sam returned to Number 25, the former to repack his dress-suit case before leaving for the Sandersons' place and for New York. "I don't exactly know how to get at this, Sam," began his brother, slowly, when the pair were in the bedroom and the door had been closed. "It is about Grace and the Walthams." "About Grace?" and Sam showed his increased interest. "What about her?" "Well, as I mentioned last night, this Ada Waltham is very rich, and she has a brother, Chester, who is older than she is and much richer. In fact, I've heard it said that he is a young millionaire." "Well?" queried Sam, as his brother paused. "Oh, I really don't know how to get at this, Sam," burst out Tom, and his face showed his worry. "Maybe there is nothing in it at all; but just the same I thought I had better bring it to you at once. I knew you would rather have it come from me than from some outsider." "But what in the world are you talking about, Tom?" "I'm talking about the attentions this Chester Waltham is bestowing upon Grace. It seems that his sister, Ada, introduced him to Grace a couple of months ago, and since that time I've heard that he has been up to Hope several times, ostensibly to call on his sister, but really to see Grace. I understand he has taken both of them out riding several times." "Taken Grace out riding!" cried Sam, and his face flushed suddenly. "Are you sure of this? Grace never mentioned it to me." "I think it's the truth, Sam. You see, ever since Nellie left Hope she has kept corresponding with several of the girls there, and one of these girls knows Ada Waltham quite well, and she mentioned the fact of the sister and Grace going out with Chester. She said that she quite envied Grace being invited to ride out with a young millionaire. Then Nellie spoke to Dora about it, and Dora said she had heard practically the same thing from another one of the seminary students. Now I don't like to butt in, Sam, but at the same time I thought you ought to know just how things were going." "I don't understand it at all," returned the younger brother, and for the moment he looked rather helpless. "If Grace received an invitation to go out with this Chester Waltham, I am quite sure she would mention it to me." "Perhaps she merely went as a companion of Ada's," suggested Tom, "and she might have thought it wasn't necessary to mention it." "Have you heard anything more than that, Tom?" "Not much, except that in one of the letters this girl said that she would envy Grace all the nice flowers and boxes of candy she might expect from such a wealthy young man as Waltham. Now, as I said before, Sam, it's none of my business, but I just couldn't help coming out here to put a flea in your ear. We--Nellie and I--know just how you feel about Grace, and both of us would like nothing better than to have you double up with her after you graduate." "Thank you, Tom; it's fine for you to talk that way, and it's fine to have Nellie on my side. But I don't understand this at all. If Grace has been going out with this Chester Waltham, why hasn't she said something to me about it? She has spoken to me about Ada a number of times, but I never heard this Chester mentioned once." "Well, I can't tell you any more than I have told you," returned Tom. "If I were you, I'd see Grace and find out just what this fellow has been doing. You know a fellow who is worth a million dollars is some catch for any girl." "Yes, I know. It's a good deal more than I'll be able to offer Grace." "True, but money isn't everything in this life, Sam. I didn't look for money when I married Nellie, and I don't think she cared a rap how much I was worth." "That's the way it ought to be done----" "I always supposed that you and Grace had some sort of an understanding between you," went on Tom, after rather an awkward pause. "Of course, Sam, you haven't got to say a word about it if you don't want to," he added hastily. "We did have some sort of an understanding, Tom. But you know how it was with you and Nellie--Mrs. Laning wouldn't think of your becoming publicly engaged until after you had left college. She has told Grace that she will have to wait. So she is free to do as she chooses." There was but little more that could be said on the subject, and so Tom turned to pack his suit case while Sam got ready to attend one of his classes. The youngest Rover heaved a heavy sigh, which showed that he was more disturbed than he cared to admit. A little while later Tom had said good-bye to his brother and to his numerous friends at Brill and was on his way in a hired turnout to the Sanderson homestead, which he had promised to visit before leaving on the train at Ashton for New York City. Tom went on his errand alone, none of the others being able to get away from the college that morning. The Sandersons had heard nothing about his arrival at Brill and, consequently, were much surprised when he drove up. Minnie greeted him with a warm smile, and even Mr. Sanderson, considering his great loss, was quite cordial. "Ain't comin' back to complete your eddication, are you, Mr. Rover?" questioned the farmer, with a slight show of humor. "No, Mr. Sanderson. I'm through with Brill so far as studying goes," answered the youth. "I just took a run-out to see how Sam and the others were getting along. They told me all about your loss, and I'm mighty sorry that the thing happened. Poor Songbird is all broke up over it." "Humph! I reckon he ain't half as much broke up as I am," retorted the farmer. "This has placed me in a fine pickle." "Now, Pa, please don't get excited again," pleaded Minnie, whose face showed that she had suffered as much, or more, as had her parent. "Ain't no use to get excited now. The money is gone, and I suppose that is the last of it. What I'm worryin' about is how I'm goin' to settle about that mortgage. Grisley at first said he would put it off, but yesterday he sent word that he was comin' here to-day with his lawyer to settle things." "And here they come now!" interrupted Minnie, as she glanced out of a window. The others looked and saw two men drive up the lane in a cutter. They were old Henry Grisley, the man who held the mortgage on the farm, and Belright Fogg. The girl went to the door to let the visitors in. Old Henry Grisley paid scant attention to Tom when the two were introduced to each other. The lawyer looked at the visitor in some astonishment. "Huh! I didn't expect to see you here, Mr. Rover," said Belright Fogg, coolly. "Are you mixed up in this unfortunate affair?" "I may be before we get through," answered Tom. "You weren't the young man who lost the money?" "No." "I've got an account to settle with your brother," went on Belright Fogg, rather maliciously. "He took great pleasure the other day in hitting me in the head with a snowball, almost knocking me senseless. I've had to have my head treated by a doctor, and more than likely I'll sue him for damages." "I reckon you'll do what you can to make it hot for him," returned Tom. "It's your way, Mr. Fogg. But just let me give you a word of advice--you take care that you don't get your fingers burnt." "Ha! Is that a threat?" "Oh, no. It is only a word of advice. Please to remember that we know all about you, and we won't stand any nonsense from you. If my brother really hurt you, he'll be willing to do the fair thing; but if you think you can gouge him in any way, you've got another guess coming." "Looky!" came in a shrill voice from old Henry Grisley. "I thought we come here fer my money on that er mortgage," and from under a pair of heavy gray eyebrows he looked searchingly into the faces of Mr. Sanderson and the lawyer. "Yes, Mr. Grisley, that's what we came for," returned Belright Fogg, "and the sooner we come to business perhaps the better." "As I've told you before, the money is gone--stolen," said Mr. Sanderson. "I can't pay--at least not now, and I'd like an extension of time." "Mr. Grisley isn't inclined to grant any extension," said Belright Fogg, somewhat pompously. "The mortgage is too big for this place anyway, and he feels that he ought to have his money." "And if Mr. Sanderson can't pay, what then?" questioned Tom, before the farmer could speak. "Why, we'll have to foreclose and sell the place," answered the lawyer, quickly. "That's it! That's it!" came shrilly from old Henry Grisley. "I want my money--every cent of it. If I don't git it, I'm goin' to take the farm," he added in tones which were almost triumphant. "But see here----" began Mr. Sanderson. "Oh, Pa, don't let them sell the farm!" burst out Minnie, and as she spoke the tears started to her eyes. "You won't sell the farm, Mr. Grisley," said Tom, coolly. "Why not, if the money isn't paid?" cried the old man. "The money will be paid--every cent of it," answered Tom. CHAPTER XII OLD GRISLEY COMES TO TERMS All in the room looked at Tom in some surprise because of the plain way in which he had spoken. "Mr. Rover, you are sure of what you are saying?" questioned Mr. Sanderson, quickly, in a low voice. "Yes, Mr. Sanderson, we'll take care of this mortgage. Don't you worry a bit about it." "Did you say you would pay off this mortgage?" demanded Belright Fogg, glaring at Tom. "I didn't say I'd pay it off personally. But my folks will take care of it." "The money is due now--has been due for several days." "Yes, sir, that's right!" came shrilly from Henry Grisley. "And I want you to know that I want the full amount with interest up to the day when it is paid. I ain't goin' to lose nothin'--not a cent." "Mr. Grisley, I have an offer to make to you," went on Tom addressing himself directly to the old man and utterly ignoring Belright Fogg. "You don't know me, but let me say that my father and my uncle are worth a good deal of money. I am in business in New York with my father, and our concern has a great deal of money to invest. Now, if you will agree to hold this mortgage for thirty days, I will guarantee to have it paid in full at that time with every cent of interest. And in addition to that I will pay you twenty-five dollars for your trouble and for your lawyer's fees." "Ha! What do you think I am? What do you think I work for?" demanded Belright Fogg, with a scowl. "My fee will be more than twenty-five dollars in this case." "What? What?" shrilled Henry Grisley, turning his beadlike eyes on the lawyer. "Twenty-five dollars? Not much! I'll give ye ten dollars and not a cent more." "That's the way to talk, Mr. Grisley. You give him ten dollars and you keep the fifteen dollars for your own trouble," cried Tom. "So far as I can see he hasn't done anything for you excepting to come here to see Mr. Sanderson, and certainly such a trip as this isn't worth more than ten dollars." "My services are worth a good deal more!" exclaimed Belright Fogg. And thereupon ensued a war of words between him and Henry Grisley which lasted the best part of a quarter of an hour. The lawyer saw the case slipping away from him, and at last in deep disgust he said he would have no more to do with the affair. "Don't want ye to! Don't want ye to!" piped out Henry Grisley. "Lawyers are a useless expense anyway. I'll settle this case myself, and for what you've done I won't pay more'n ten dollars, jest remember it!" and he shook a long, bony finger in Belright Fogg's face. "I won't be insulted in this manner!" cried the lawyer, and then in a dudgeon he stormed from the house, leaped into the cutter, and drove away. "A good riddance to him," murmured Mr. Sanderson. But then he added hastily: "Was that your horse, Grisley?" "No, it wasn't," was the answer. "And how I'm to git home now, I don't know," added the old man, helplessly. "Where do you live?" questioned Tom. "The other side of Ashton, on the Millbury road." "All right, then, I'll take you there when I go down to the depot," answered Tom. "That is, if you want to ride with me." "I want to know jest how we stand on this mortgage question first," announced Henry Grisley. "I want your offer down in black and white." "You shall have it, and the others can be witnesses to it," answered Tom, and in the course of the next quarter of an hour a paper was drawn up and duly signed by which Tom agreed that the mortgage should be taken over by the Rovers within the next thirty days, with all back interest paid, and that Henry Grisley should be paid a bonus of twenty-five dollars for his trouble and for his lawyer's fees. To bind the bargain Tom handed the old man a ten-dollar bill on account, which Henry Grisley stowed away in a leather wallet with great satisfaction. "Oh, Tom! it's just splendid of you to help us out in this manner!" said Minnie, after the transaction had been concluded and while old Grisley and Mr. Sanderson were talking together. "I'm glad to be of service to you," answered the youth. "I only hope for your sake, and for the sake of Songbird, that the money that was stolen is recovered. Songbird is going to get on the trail of that rascal if it is possible to do so." "I hope they do locate that fellow, Tom. If they don't I'm afraid pa will never forgive poor John." "Oh, don't say that, Minnie. 'Never' is such a long word it should not have been put in the dictionary," and Tom smiled grimly. Now that he felt fairly certain that he was to get his money, Henry Grisley was in much better humor. "I suppose I might as well have left that mortgage as it was," he mumbled. "It was payin' pretty good interest." "Well, that was for you to decide, Grisley," returned Mr. Sanderson. "Personally I don't see how you are going to make any better investment in these times." "Well, I've got thirty days in which to make up my mind, ain't I?" queried the old man. "If I don't want to close out the mortgage I ain't got to, have I?" "Certainly you've got to sell out, now that you have bargained to do so," put in Tom. "You can't expect us to pull our money out of another investment to put it into this one and then not get it." "Hum! I didn't think o' that," mused old Grisley. He thought hard for a moment, pursing up his lips and twisting his beadlike eyes first one way and then another. "Supposin' I was to say right now that I'd keep the mortgage? What would you do about it?" "Do you really mean it, Grisley?" asked Mr. Sanderson, anxiously. "Depends on what this young man says, Sanderson. One thing is sure; I ain't goin' to give up that ten dollars he give me--and Fogg is got to be paid somehow." "Look here! if you want to keep the mortgage just say so," declared Tom. "It's a good mortgage and pays good interest. You can't invest your money around here to any better advantage." "All right, then, I'll keep the mortgage," announced Henry Grisley. "But understand, young man, I'm to keep that ten dollars you give me too," he added shrewdly. "Well, I don't see----" began Tom, when Mr. Sanderson interrupted him. "All right, Grisley, you keep the ten dollars, and you settle with Fogg," announced the farmer. "And it's understood that you are to make out the mortgage for at least one year longer." "Can't ye give me more'n the ten dollars?" asked Henry Grisley. "Mebbe I might have to pay Fogg more'n that." "Don't you pay him a cent more," said Tom. "His services aren't worth it." "I won't pay him nothin' if I can git out of it," responded the old man, shrewdly. "If I keep the mortgage, then what has he done for me? Nothin'. Mebbe I'll give him half of the ten dollars. I've had jest as much trouble as he has." Following this discussion the paper formerly drawn up was destroyed and a note written out and signed by Henry Grisley, in which the old man agreed to renew the mortgage for one year from the date on which it had been due. "To tell ye the truth, I wouldn't have bothered about this," explained old Grisley, in a burst of confidence; "but, you see, Fogg knew the mortgage was due and he come to me and asked me what I was goin' to do about it. And then when word come that your money had been stolen, he told me that I'd better foreclose or otherwise I might git next to nothin'." "The underhanded rascal!" was Mr. Sanderson's comment. "That's just what he is," answered Tom. "You know we had a lot of trouble with him last year--and evidently we are not done with him yet," he added, as he thought of what Belright Fogg had said concerning the snowball thrown by Sam. Tom wanted to say a good word for Songbird, and the opportunity came when, a few minutes later, and before their departure, Minnie invited them to partake of some cake and hot coffee. While Grisley sat down in the dining-room, the youth talked to the farmer. "Now, Mr. Sanderson, I have done what I could for you," he said, coming at once to the point; "and now I want to say a word or two about poor Songbird. He feels awfully bad over this matter, and he thinks that you are doing him an injustice. And let me say I think so too," and Tom looked the farmer squarely in the eyes as he spoke. "Yes, I know, Rover, but----" "Now, Mr. Sanderson, supposing you had been in Songbird's place and had been knocked down and nearly killed; what would you say if you were treated as you are treating him? Wouldn't you be apt to think that it was a pretty mean piece of business?" At these plain words the farmer flushed and for the instant some angry words came to his lips. But then he checked himself and turned his eyes away. "Maybe you are right, and maybe I was a bit hasty with the lad," he said hesitatingly. "But you see I was all worked up. It took me a good many years to save that four thousand dollars, and now that I am getting old it won't be no easy matter for me to save that amount over again." "You won't have to save it over again, Mr. Sanderson. Songbird insists upon it that just as soon as he gets to work he's going to pay you back dollar for dollar." "Did he tell you that?" "He did. And he told the others the same thing. He'll make that loss up to you if it takes him ten years to do it. I've known him for a good many years now. We went to Putnam Hall Military Academy together before we came to Brill--and I know he is a fellow who always keeps his word. He's one of the best friends we Rover boys have. He's a little bit off on the subject of poetry, but otherwise he's just as smart and sensible and true-blue as they make 'em," went on Tom, enthusiastically. "And not only that, he comes from a very nice family. They are not rich, but neither are they poor, and they are good people to know and be connected with," and Tom looked at the farmer knowingly. "I see, Rover." Mr. Sanderson drew a deep breath, and then looked through the doorway to where Minnie was pouring out the coffee. "If I was too hasty I--I--am sorry." "And you will let Songbird come here and call on your daughter?" "I--I suppose so, if Minnie wants him to come." "Thank you, Mr. Sanderson. I am sure you won't regret your kindness," said Tom, and insisted upon grasping the farmer's hand and shaking it warmly. Then he went in to have some cake and coffee before taking his departure with old Grisley. "So you are going back to New York, are you, Tom?" said the girl while he was being served. "Yes, I am going to take the train this afternoon," he answered, and then continued: "I've got a loose button here on my coat, Minnie. Will you fasten it before I go?" "Sure I will," she returned, and a few minutes later led the way to a corner of the sitting-room, where was located a sewing basket. "I wasn't worrying much about losing the button, Minnie," he whispered. "I wanted to tell you about Songbird. I have just spoken to your father about him, and he says he can come to see you the same as he used to." "Oh, Tom! did he really say that?" and Minnie's eyes brightened greatly. "Yes, he did. And as soon as I get to Ashton I am going to send Songbird a telephone message to that effect," returned Tom. "Oh, Tom! will you?" and she looked at him pleadingly. "Surest thing you know, Minnie. And believe me, Songbird, when he gets that news, will be the happiest fellow in Brill." "I don't think he'll be any happier than I'll be," answered the girl; and then of a sudden blushed deeply and finished sewing on the button without another word. Ten minutes later Tom bade the Sandersons good-bye, and, accompanied by Henry Grisley, drove away in the direction of Ashton. Old Grisley was left at his home, and then Tom took himself to the depot, where, from a telephone booth, he sent a message to Songbird telling the would-be poet of Brill how it had come about that Grisley had agreed to renew the mortgage for one year, and how Mr. Sanderson had said that Songbird could renew his calls upon Minnie if he so desired. "Tom, you're a wonder!" said Songbird over the telephone, "you're a wonder, that's all I can say!" "Never mind what I am," returned the fun-loving Rover, kindly; "you just see if you can get on the trail of that fellow who stole the four thousand dollars, and at the same time you get busy and make up for lost time with Minnie. Good-bye!" and then he hung up the receiver, and a few minutes later was on board the train bound for the metropolis. CHAPTER XIII SAM ON THE ROAD The next few days were very busy ones for Sam because he had a number of important classes to attend, and he was hard at work finishing his theme on "Civilization in Ancient Central America." It was impossible to call on Grace, and so he did nothing to find out the truth about Chester Waltham because he did not wish to ask the girl about this over the telephone, nor did he see his way clear to expressing his thoughts on paper. Sunday came and went, and Monday morning brought a letter to the youngest Rover which he read with much interest. It was from Belright Fogg, a long-winded and formal communication, in which the lawyer stated that he had been under medical treatment because of being hit in the head by a snowball thrown by Sam, and he demanded fifty dollars damages. If the same was not paid immediately, he stated that he would begin suit. "Anything wrong, Sam?" questioned Songbird, who was present while Sam was reading the letter. "You look pretty serious." "Read it for yourself, Songbird," was the reply, and Sam passed the communication over. "Well, of all the gall!" burst out the would-be poet of Brill. "Fifty dollars! Of course you won't pay any such bill as this?" "Not so you can notice it," returned Sam, sharply. "If he had sent me a bill for five dollars or less I might have let him have the money just to shut him up. But fifty dollars! Why, it's preposterous!" "What do you propose to do?" "I won't do anything just yet. I want time to think it over and to talk it over with some of the others and, maybe, with Dr. Wallington." When they heard of this demand for money from the rascally lawyer, Stanley and Spud were as angry as the others. "I don't believe he's entitled to a cent," came from Stanley. "We were having that snowballing contest on the college grounds, and while the highway runs through that end of the grounds, I believe Fogg passed through there at his own peril, as a lawyer might put it. If I were you, Sam, I'd put the whole case up to Dr. Wallington, and I'd remind the doctor of your former trouble with Fogg, and let him know just what sort of an underhanded rascal he is." "All right, Stanley, I'll do it," answered Sam. "I'll go to the doctor immediately after classes this afternoon. Will you go along?" "Of course, if you want me to." Four o'clock found them at the door of the doctor's study. He looked at them rather curiously as they entered. "Well, young men, what can I do for you?" he questioned pleasantly. "I've got into some trouble over that snowballing contest," answered Sam; and, sitting down, he gave the head of Brill the particulars of the occurrence, and then produced the letter received from Belright Fogg. "Hum!" mused the worthy doctor, as he knitted his eyebrows. "He must have been pretty badly hurt." "I don't think he was hurt at all, Doctor," interrupted Stanley. "I was present, and so were a number of the other students. Mr. Fogg had his hat knocked off, and that was about all. He wasn't stunned or anything like that. He talked to Sam just as rationally as I am talking to you, and all those standing around heard him. Of course, he was very angry, not only because he had been hit but because the fellow who had thrown the snowball was Sam Rover. He, of course, remembered how the Rovers foiled his plot to do them out of what was coming to them when their flying machine was wrecked on the railroad, and also how they got the best of Fogg and a company of brokers in New York City." "Yes, yes, I remember about the wrecked flying machine," returned Dr. Wallington. "I know nothing about this affair in New York." "Well, it was a very serious matter, and Fogg came pretty close to going to prison," answered Sam, and gave a few details, as already related in the volume entitled "The Rover Boys in New York." "Very interesting, Rover, very interesting indeed," murmured the head of Brill. "But even that did not excuse your hitting this man in the head with a snowball and hurting him." "There is another point I would like to mention," said Stanley. "We were having the contest on the college grounds, and Mr. Fogg was struck on the roadway where it runs through our grounds." "Ah! I see. That might make a difference. The highway is more or less of a public one, it is true, but it has never been turned over to the county authorities, so it really forms a part of our grounds still. But of one thing I wish to be sure, Rover--did you aim at Mr. Fogg, or was the snowballing unintentional?" "I didn't see him at all," answered Sam. "Some of the fellows rushed behind the bushes and I simply let drive along with a number of others. Then Fogg appeared and claimed that I had hit him in the head. I rather think he tells the truth, although I am not positive." "In that case he would have to prove that you were guilty. Besides that, if it came to a matter of law, he would have to prove actual damages, and I do not see how he could claim fifty dollars if he was not hurt more than you say. If you wish, you can leave the whole matter in my hands and I will have it investigated." "Thank you very much, Doctor Wallington," returned Sam, warmly. "This lifts a load off my mind. Of course I will pay whatever you settle on;" and so the matter was allowed to rest. A thaw had set in and the snow began to disappear rapidly from the roads and fields around Brill. There was a good deal of slush, which rendered some of the highways almost impassable, so that it was not until a week later that Sam had an opportunity to visit Hope. In the meantime, however, he had sent a nice little note to Grace in which no mention was made of the Walthams. He had looked for an answer but none had come. "Where bound, Sam?" questioned Songbird, when he saw his roommate getting ready to use his automobile. "I'm going for a run to Hope. Do you want to come along?" and Sam's eye had a twinkle in it. "You might run me around to the Sanderson place. It won't take long in the auto," returned the would-be poet. "If I can get there, I won't mind walking back this evening. I've been wanting to go for a long while, but the roads have been so poor I couldn't make it." "All right, Songbird, come ahead," was Sam's answer; and a little later found the pair on the road. It did not take long to reach the Sanderson farm, and as they entered the lane Sam tooted his horn loudly. "I've brought you a visitor, Minnie!" cried the Rover boy, as he brought the machine to a standstill. "Here is somebody I know you won't want to see, but I'm going to leave him here nevertheless," and he grinned broadly. "Oh, John!" burst out the farmer's daughter, and blushed deeply. She came forward and shook hands with both youths. "I am more than glad to see you." "I am on my way to Hope, so I won't come in," went on Sam. "How is everything, Minnie?" "Oh, about as usual," answered the girl, and then went on: "Of course you know all about what Tom did for us? It was splendid!" "You haven't heard anything more regarding the money?" "Not a thing, Sam. I thought maybe you had something to tell," and the girl turned from Sam to Songbird. "We have sent out the photographs and the description of Blackie Crowden," answered the latter. "They are going to the police in all the large cities, so if Crowden turns up at all he'll be arrested sooner or later." After a few more words Sam left the Sanderson place and headed directly for Hope. Although he would not admit it even to himself, the youngest Rover was a good deal worried. What Tom had told him concerning Grace and the Walthams had been continually in his mind, and time and again he had wondered how he should broach the subject to Grace and what the answer of the girl would be. "Of course she's got a right to go out with whom she pleases," he told himself. "But still I thought--well I thought it was all fixed between us, that's all." Sam was so occupied with his thoughts that he paid scant attention to the running of the automobile. As a consequence he went over a number of sharp stones, and a minute later there came a loud report from the rear of the machine. "A blowout! Confound the luck!" he exclaimed, as he brought the automobile to a standstill. "And just when I was in a hurry to get to Hope!" There was nothing else to do, so, stripping himself of his overcoat and donning a jumper, Sam got out, taking with him some of the tools from under the automobile seat. It was a tire on one of the rear wheels which had blown out, and this wheel he now jacked up for the purpose of putting on a new shoe and inner tube. As luck would have it, the tire that had been cut fit very tightly, so that it was all the Rover boy could do to get it off the rim. He tugged and twisted, perspiring freely, but it was some time before he could even get the injured shoe started. "If I can't get it off, what ever am I to do?" he mused. "I must be at least half a mile from even a telephone, and the nearest garage is at Ashton. At this rate I'll never get to Hope." He continued to work over the tire, at last doing his best to pound it off with a bit of iron and a hammer. Then he gave a final wrench, which brought the tire off so suddenly that Sam was sent flat on his back in the dirt and slush of the road. It was an occurrence to try anybody's patience, and Sam arose in anything but a happy frame of mind. His back was covered with mud, and a good deal of the slushy water had penetrated to his skin. "Ugh! of all the rank luck!" he muttered, as he shook himself. "If I ever get this wheel mended I'll be a fine sight to present myself at a fashionable ladies' seminary. Why in the world didn't I look where I was driving, instead of rushing right over such a prime collection of rough stones?" But finding fault with himself did not mend matters, and so, casting the cut tire aside, Sam unstrapped one of the extra shoes he carried and got out another inner tube. As if everything was to go wrong that afternoon, the new shoe proved to be as small as that which had been taken off, and as a consequence Sam had to work like a Trojan for the best part of half an hour before he finally got it into place. "And now I've got to pump it up by hand," he observed to himself, grimly, as he remembered that the power pump which had been installed on the engine was out of order and could not be used. Then he brought out the hand pump and set to work to fill the new tire with air. Sam had the tire about three-quarters pumped up and was working away as vigorously as his somewhat exhausted condition would permit when he heard a honking of an automobile horn, and the next moment a machine came in sight around a turn of the highway. The car was a large and powerful one of foreign make, and was driven by a young man stylishly dressed, in a full suit of furs, and wearing automobile goggles. Behind him were two young ladies, also wearing furs, and with veils covering their faces. "Tough luck!" sang out the young man at the wheel of the passing car, and he waved one hand pleasantly towards Sam. The youth had been bending over the hand pump, but now, as the other automobile swept by, he straightened up suddenly and stared with open eyes after the vanishing turnout. He had not recognized the young man who was running the machine, but he had recognized the two young ladies in the tonneau of the car. "Ada Waltham! And that was Grace with her!" he murmured. "And if that's so, it must have been Chester Waltham who was running the car!" CHAPTER XIV DAYS OF WAITING As Sam gazed after the vanishing automobile a pang of bitterness swept through his heart. He remembered all that his brother had told him concerning Chester Waltham, and he also remembered that Grace had never mentioned the young millionaire. "And she knew I was coming over to Hope just as soon as the roads made it safe and pleasant for automobiling," he murmured to himself. Neither of the young ladies in the tonneau of the car had looked back, so it was more than likely they had not recognized him as he was bending over the hand pump, inflating the new tire. "But maybe she saw me after all and did not want to let on," he thought dismally. "Maybe she thought I wouldn't recognize her." What to do next was a problem for the young collegian. If Grace was not at the seminary he had no desire to call there. He continued to work over the tire, and soon it was properly inflated, and he put away the tools he had used. His face was a study, for he was doing some hard thinking. "Well, I'll go to Hope anyway, and if she isn't there I'll leave my card, so she'll know I called. Then I'll see what she has to say about matters," he told himself; and setting his teeth somewhat grimly he started up the automobile and continued his trip. At the door of the seminary he was met by a maid, who brought him the information that Miss Laning was out. Then several girls who knew Sam came up, and one of them explained that Grace had gone automobiling. "She went with Ada Waltham and her brother, Chester," explained the girl student. "You see, Chester has a brand new foreign car--a beauty--and he was very anxious to give his sister and Grace a ride. We thought he might have asked some of us to go along, but he didn't," and the girl pouted slightly. "You don't suppose they were going to stop at Brill?" questioned Sam, struck by a sudden thought. "I don't think so, Mr. Rover. Ada said something about riding to Columbia and having dinner there this evening. That, you know, is quite a distance, and the road doesn't run past your college." "Then I suppose they won't be back till late?" "They had permission to stay out until ten o'clock," put in another of the girls who were present. "Oh! I see." As the girls were looking at him rather sharply, Sam felt his face begin to burn. "Well, I hope they have a good time," he added somewhat hastily. "Good-evening," and then turned and walked quickly towards his automobile; and in a minute more was on his way back to Brill. "I'll wager Grace Laning has got herself into hot water," was the comment of one of the girls, as they watched Sam's departure. "I don't believe he likes it one bit that she went off with the Walthams." "Humph! You can't expect a girl to hang back when she is asked to take a ride in a brand new automobile, and with such millionaires as Chester Waltham and his sister," broke in another girl. "I just wish I had the chance," she added rather enviously. In the meantime, Sam was driving along the country road in rather a reckless fashion. His mind was in a turmoil, and to think clearly just then seemed to be out of the question. "Of course she has a right to go out and dine with the Walthams if she wants to," he told himself. "But at the same time----" And then there came up in his mind a hundred reasons why Grace should have refused the invitation and waited for him to call upon her. "Hello! you are back early," remarked Spud, when Sam appeared at Brill. "I thought you were going to make an evening of it." "I had some bad luck on the road," replied Sam, rather sheepishly. "I had a blowout, and in trying to get the tire off I slipped and went flat on my back in the mud and slush," he continued. "Is that so? Well, that's too bad, Sam. So you came home to get cleaned up, eh? I thought your girl thought so much of you that she wouldn't care if you called even when you were mussed up," and at this little joke Spud passed on, much to the Rover boy's relief. The only occupant of Number 25 who seemed to be happy that night was Songbird, who came in whistling gaily. "Had a fine time with Minnie," he declared--"best time I ever had in my life. I tell you, Sam, she's a wonderful girl." "So she is, Songbird." "Of course, you don't think she's half as wonderful as Grace," went on the would-be poet of Brill; "but, then, that's to be expected." "How did Mr. Sanderson treat you?" broke in Sam, hastily, to shift the subject. "Oh, he treated me better than he did before." Songbird's face sobered for a minute. "To be sure he feels dreadfully sore over the loss of that four thousand dollars. But I assured him that I and the authorities were doing all in our power to get the money back, and I also assured him that if it wasn't recovered I expected to pay it back just as soon as I could earn it. Of course he thinks I am talking through my hat about earning such a big amount, but just the same I am going to do it just as soon as I graduate from Brill. I'd go to work to-morrow instead of staying here if it wasn't that I had promised my folks that I would graduate from Brill, and as near the top of my class as I could get. If I left now, my mother would be heartbroken." "Of course your folks know about the loss, Songbird?" "Yes. I wrote them the whole particulars just as soon as I could, and I've let them know what we are doing now." "Do they blame you for the loss?" "My father thinks I might have been a little more careful, but my mother says she thinks it is Mr. Sanderson's fault that he let me get such an amount of money in cash and carry it on such a lonely road. But dad is all right, and in his last letter he said he could let Mr. Sanderson have a thousand dollars if that would help matters out." "Had Mr. Sanderson heard any more from old Grisley, or Belright Fogg?" "Yes. He saw Grisley and the old man said the lawyer was boiling mad because he had agreed to let the mortgage run for another year. Fogg wouldn't accept the five dollars that old Grisley offered him for his trouble, so then Grisley would give him nothing; and there the matter stands." "He'll get something out of Grisley if he possibly can. My opinion is, since Fogg lost his job with the railroad company, and made such a fizzle of his doings in New York City, he is in bad shape financially and eager to get his hands on some money in any old way possible." "Have you settled the snowball affair with him yet?" "No. I'm going to see Dr. Wallington about it to-morrow," answered Sam. The Rover boy had rather expected some sort of a communication from Grace the next day, and he was keenly disappointed when no letter came and when she failed to call him up on the telephone. Several times he felt on the point of calling her up, but each time set his teeth hard and put it off. "It's up to her to say something--not me," he told himself. "She must know how I feel over the affair." When Sam called upon Dr. Wallington, the head of Brill met him with rather an amused smile. "I suppose you want to see me in regard to that claim of Mr. Fogg's," he said. "Yes, sir." "Well, I have had one of the professors call on the lawyer and bind him down to just exactly what happened and how badly he was hurt. It seems that he did not go to any doctor at all, although he did see a friend of his, a Doctor Slamper, on the street." "Doctor Slamper!" cried Sam. "Oh, I remember him. He's the fellow who came here with Mr. Fogg at the time we put in our claim for damages on account of the wrecked biplane." "Ah, indeed! I remember," and Dr. Wallington nodded knowingly. "And what does Mr. Fogg want us to do?" questioned Sam. "At first, as you know, he wanted fifty dollars. Then he came down to twenty-five, and at last to fifteen. Then we brought to his attention the fact that the snowballing contest had taken place on the college grounds, and that it was his own fault that he had become mixed up in the affair. This brought on quite an argument, but in the end Mr. Fogg agreed to accept six dollars, which he said would pay for three consultations with Dr. Slamper at two dollars per consultation," and the good doctor smiled rather grimly. "And did you pay the six dollars, Doctor?" "Not yet, Rover. I expected, however, to send him a check for that amount to-morrow, provided you are satisfied." "I think I'll have to be, Dr. Wallington. I suppose it's rather a cheap way out of the difficulty, although as a matter of fact I don't believe he is entitled to a cent." "You may be right, Rover. But six dollars, I take it, is not so very large a price to pay for so much fun--I mean, of course, the fun of the snowballing contest in which, so they tell me, you were the one to capture the banners of the opposition." "You're right, sir. And I'm satisfied, and you can place the amount on my bill," answered Sam; and then he bowed himself out of the doctor's office. Another day passed, and still there came no word to Sam from Hope. He was very much worried, but did his best not to show it. "Call for all baseball candidates at the gym to-morrow afternoon!" announced Bob, during the lunch hour. "I don't think I want to go in for baseball this spring," returned Sam. "I heard something of that from some of the other fellows, Sam," interrupted Bob. "It won't do. We need you and we are bound to have you." The roads were now drying up rapidly, and that afternoon Spud asked Sam if he did not want to walk to Ashton. "I've got a few things I want to get at the stores," said Spud. "Come along, the hike on the road will do you good." "All right, Spud, I'll go along, for I am tired of writing themes and studying," answered Sam. But it was not his theme and his lessons that worried the boy. Thinking about Grace, and waiting continually for some sort of word from her, had given him not only a heart ache but a headache as well. When the boys arrived at Ashton they separated for a short while, Spud to get fitted with a new pair of shoes while Sam went to another place in quest of a new cap. The Rover boy had just made his purchase, and was leaving the store to rejoin Spud when he heard some one call his name, and looking around saw Andy Royce approaching. "I just thought I'd ask you if you had heard anything about that Blackie Crowden yet," remarked the gardener from Hope, as he approached. "Not yet, Royce. But they have sent out a good description of him, along with copies of his photograph, so the authorities think they will get him sooner or later." "I've heard something that maybe you would like to know," went on Andy Royce. "I've heard that Crowden was over at Leadenfield, to a small roadhouse kept by a man named Bissette, a Frenchman." "When was this?" demanded Sam, with interest. "Either the day of the assault or the day after. Bissette didn't seem to know exactly. I happened to be there buying some potatoes for the seminary--you see Bissette is a kind of agent for some farmers of that neighborhood. I mentioned the robbery to him and spoke about the suspicion about Crowden, and he was very much surprised. He said Crowden was there for a couple of hours using the telephone, and then he left the place when somebody drove up in a cutter." "Do you mean that Crowden went off with the other person in the cutter?" "Bissette thinks so, although he ain't sure, because as soon as Crowden went out, Bissette turned to do some work inside and forgot all about him." "Did Bissette have any idea who the man in the cutter was?" "He wasn't sure about that either, but he kind of thought it was a lawyer who used to work for the railroad company--a man named Fogg." CHAPTER XV BASEBALL TALK "Fogg!" cried Sam, in astonishment. "Do you mean Belright Fogg?" "That's the man--the fellow who used to do the legal work for the railroad here." "Was this Bissette sure it was Fogg?" "No, he wasn't sure, because he didn't pay very much attention. But he said if it wasn't this Fogg, it was some one who looked very much like him," answered Andy Royce. This was all he could tell Sam of importance, and the Rover boy went off, to rejoin his chum in a very thoughtful mood. "That's rather a queer state of affairs," was Spud's comment, when told of the matter. "If Fogg met this Blackie Crowden, what do you suppose it was for?" "I haven't the least idea, Spud." "Do you think he was mixed up in this robbery?" "No, I can't say that. The assault was committed by one man, and so far they haven't been able to find any accomplices." When Sam returned to Brill he at once sought out Songbird and told him of what he had heard. The would-be poet of Brill was even more surprised than Spud had been. "I wouldn't put it above Belright Fogg to be in with a rascal like Blackie Crowden," was Songbird's comment. "He did his best against you in that flying machine affair and in that affair in New York City." "I've got an idea," said Sam, after a slight pause. "I am to pay him six dollars' damages for hitting him in the head with that snowball. Doctor Wallington was going to send him a check. I've got a good notion to ask the doctor to let me pay the bill and get Fogg's receipt for it. That will give me a chance to pump him about this matter." "Do it, Sam! And I'll go along," burst out his chum, quickly. "If this Belright Fogg knows Blackie Crowden I want to know it." Permission was readily granted by the head of Brill to Sam to pay the bill, and that evening the Rover boy and Songbird took the former's automobile and rode over to where Belright Fogg boarded, on the outskirts of Ashton. They found the lawyer just preparing to go out, and he showed that he was very much surprised to see them. "I suppose you are here to pay that bill you owe me," he said stiffly to Sam. "I am, Mr. Fogg," was the answer. "I believe you agreed to accept six dollars. If you will make out a receipt for the amount I will give you Doctor Wallington's check." "Humph! isn't the check receipt enough?" demanded the lawyer. "Perhaps. But I would prefer to have a receipt showing exactly what the money is being paid for," answered Sam. "As a lawyer you must know it is best to have these things straight." "Oh, very well. Come in and I'll write out your receipt for you," announced Belright Fogg, coldly, and ushered the pair into a sitting-room. Sam had asked Songbird to say nothing about Blackie Crowden until the matter of the snowball injury was settled. A receipt for the money was quickly penned by Belright Fogg. "There, I presume that will be satisfactory," he said, as he showed it to Sam. "That's all right, Mr. Fogg," was the answer. "And here is your check." Sam paused for a moment while the lawyer looked the check over. "By the way, Mr. Fogg, I understand you were in Leadenfield a few days ago at the tavern kept by Bissette." "What's that?" shot out the lawyer, somewhat startled. "I said that I understood that you were in Leadenfield a few days ago at the tavern kept by Bissette." "And that you met a man there named Blackie Crowden," broke in Songbird, quickly. "I--I was in Leadenfield some days ago on business," answered Belright Fogg, hesitatingly, "but I wasn't at the Bissette place, or anywhere near it." "But you met a man named Blackie Crowden?" queried Sam. The lawyer glared at the Rover boy and also at Songbird. "Blackie Crowden? I don't know such an individual--at least, not by name." "He is a fellow who used to work in Hoover's livery stable in Center Haven--a man who stutters greatly." "Don't know the fellow," was the prompt response. "You mean to say you didn't meet Blackie Crowden at Bissette's?" cried Songbird. "Look here, young man, what are you driving at?" stormed Belright Fogg, in a sudden temper. "You've no right to question me in this manner. What is it all about?" "We have it on good authority that you met this man, Blackie Crowden, outside of Bissette's place," answered Sam, stoutly. "Who is this man you mention?" "Being a lawyer and interested in public affairs, you ought to know that, Mr. Fogg," answered Songbird. "He is the man who, we think, knocked me down and robbed me of Mr. Sanderson's four thousand dollars." "Ah! I--I remember now. And so you are trying to connect me up with that rascal, are you? What do you mean by that?" "Never mind what we mean," declared the would-be poet of Brill, stoutly. "I want to get at the facts in this matter. If you say you didn't meet Crowden, all right, we'll let it go at that. But there are others who say you did meet him." "It's false--absolutely false!" roared Fogg, but as he spoke his face paled greatly. "I--I don't know this fellow, Crowden--never met him in my life. This is all a put-up job on your part to make trouble for me," and he glared savagely at both Songbird and Sam. "It's no put-up job, Mr. Fogg. We intend to get at the bottom of this sooner or later," answered Sam, as calmly as he could. "Come on, Songbird." "See here! you're not going to leave this house until I know just what you are driving at," roared the lawyer. "I won't have you besmirching my fair name!" "Your fair name!" returned Sam, sarcastically. "There is no necessity for you to talk that way, Mr. Fogg. I know you thoroughly. If you want to rake up the past you can do it, but I advise you not to do so." "I--I----" began the lawyer, and then stopped, not knowing how to proceed. "We might as well go," broke in Songbird. "But perhaps, Mr. Fogg, you haven't heard the end of this," added the would-be poet of Brill; and though the lawyer continued to storm and argue, the two chums left the house and were soon on the return to Brill. "I'm afraid we didn't gain anything by that move," was Sam's comment, as they rode along. "He'll be on his guard now, and that will make it harder than ever to connect him with this affair--provided he really is mixed up in it." "He acted pretty startled when we put it up to him," returned Songbird. He heaved a deep sigh. "Well, maybe some day this matter will be cleared up, but it doesn't look like it now." Several days passed, and Sam stuck to his lessons as hard as ever. Once or twice he thought of calling up Grace at Hope or of writing her a note, but each time he put it off, why, he could not exactly explain even to himself. But then came a rift in the clouds and the sun shone as brightly as ever. A note came from Grace, which he read with much satisfaction. A part of the communication ran as follows: "I was thinking all manner of mean things about you because you did not answer my note of last week, when--what do you think? The note came back to me, brought in by one of the smaller girls here, Jessie Brown. Jessie was going to town that day, and I gave her the note to post and she put it in the pocket of her coat, along with several other letters, so she says. Well, the pocket had a hole in it, and, as you might know, my own particular letter had to slip through that hole into the lining of the coat. The rest of the letters were mailed, but my letter remained in the lining until this morning, when Jessie came to me with tears in her eyes to tell of what had happened. I felt pretty angry over it, but glad to know that you were not guilty of having received the note and then not answering it. "In the note I told you how sorry I was to find that you had called here while I was away. You see, Ada Waltham's brother, Chester, came on in his new automobile--a big foreign affair, very splendid. He wanted to give Ada a ride, and invited me to go along, so I went, and we had a very nice time. Chester is an expert auto driver, and the way we flew along over the roads was certainly marvelous. He insisted upon it that we dine with him. And, oh, Sam! such a spread as it was! "You know he is a millionaire in his own right (Ada has a great lot of money too). We certainly had one grand time, and I shall never forget it. He got a beautiful bouquet for the table, and also bouquets for Ada and me to take home, along with boxes of the most beautiful chocolates I ever ate. But just the same, I am awfully sorry I wasn't at the seminary when you called, and I don't understand why you haven't been up since, or why you didn't telephone to me. "One of the girls here says they are organizing the Brill baseball nine for the coming season, and that they want you to play as you did last year. If you do join the nine, I hope you have the same success or more. And you can rest assured that I will be on the grandstand to offer you all the encouragement possible. I hope that Dick and Tom come on to see the game and bring Dora and Nellie along, and then we can have the nicest kind of a jolly party. Ada Waltham, as you may know, loves baseball games too, and she says that she is going to have Chester here at that time to take her over to Brill, unless somebody else turns up to accompany her." "All right, as far as it goes," mused Sam, on reading this note. "But I wish Chester Waltham would stay away. Of course I can't blame Grace for liking a ride in a big, foreign car and being invited out to such a first-class spread as she mentions, but, just the same, I wish she wouldn't go with him." However, the communication brightened his thoughts considerably, and it was only a little while later when he talked to the girl over the telephone and made an arrangement for a ride in the automobile on the following Saturday afternoon, Songbird and Minnie to accompany them. The four went off to Center Haven, where Sam spread himself on a dinner which was certainly all that could be desired. Grace was in one of her most winning moods, and when the young couple parted the cloud that had hovered over them seemed to be completely dispelled. As winter waned and the grass on the campus took on a greener hue, baseball matters came once more to the fore at Brill. Bob Grimes, who played at shortstop, was again the captain of the team, and it was generally understood that Spud Jackson would again occupy the position of catcher. "We're going to miss Tom Rover a good deal this year," said Bob to some of the others. During the year past Tom had been the candidate for head twirler against both Bill Harney and Dare Phelps and had shown that he was the superior of both of the others. "Well, you haven't got Tom Rover, so you've got to make the best of it," answered Stanley. "Phelps has been doing pretty well, I understand, so you might as well give him a chance." "Yes, I thought I'd do that," answered the team captain. "Harney isn't in it at all, and doesn't want even to try. I'll give Phelps a chance and also Jack Dudley." Dudley was a sophomore whose swift pitching had become the general talk of the college. He, however, was rather erratic, and liable to go to pieces in a crisis. As my old readers know, Sam had joined the team the year before only after considerable coaxing, and then merely as a substitute. During the middle of the great game he had been assigned to left field in place of a player who had twisted his foot. In that position he had caught a fly in a thoroughly marvelous manner, and he had also managed, when at the bat, to bring in a home run. "We've simply got to have you on the team, Sam," said the captain, a little later, when he caught the Rover boy in one of the corridors. "Your hanging back this year is rather hurting our chances of winning." "But, Bob, I want to pay attention to my lessons," pleaded Sam. "I can't afford to get behind." "You'll not get behind," was the answer. "Aren't we all striving to graduate? You ought to be willing to do as much as Spud and myself." "All right, then, Bob, if you are going to put it that way," was the answer, and thereupon Sam allowed his name to go on the list of prospective players and at once began training. After that matters moved along swiftly. The committee from Brill met with the committee from Roxley and arrangements were perfected for the coming game. As the contest had taken place the year previous at Roxley, it was, of course, decided that the game this year should be played at Brill. Then men were set at work to place the diamond in the best possible shape for the contest, and the grandstand was repaired, and a new set of bleachers put up to accommodate a larger crowd than ever. "This is a baseball year," announced Bob Grimes, "so we can expect a big rush of visitors." The nine had already won three games of minor importance. "They tell me Roxley has got the best team it ever put in the field," announced Stanley one day, after he had been over to the other institution. "They've got three dandy pitchers, and two outfielders who are crackerjacks at batting. One of their men told me that they expected to walk all over us." "Well, we'll see about that," returned Bob Grimes. "We've got a good team of our own, and I know every one of us will try to play his head off to win." CHAPTER XVI THE OPENING OF THE BALL GAME The day for the great baseball game between Brill and Roxley dawned clear and bright. Sam had received word that both of his brothers with their wives would be on, reaching Ashton early in the morning. He drove down to the depot in his automobile to meet the newcomers. When the train rolled into the station Dick Rover, as tall and handsome as ever, was the first to alight, quickly followed by his wife, Dora. Then came Tom and Nellie. "Hello, Sam, my boy!" exclaimed Dick, as he strode up and shook hands, quickly followed by his wife. "How are you these days? But it is needless to ask, for you look the picture of health." "Oh, I'm feeling fine," answered Sam, smiling broadly. "Ready to play winning baseball, I presume," came from Dora, as she gave him a warm smile. "Surest thing you know, Dora," he answered. "Oh, we've got to win from Roxley to-day!" "Yes, but you haven't got me to pitch for you to-day, Sam," broke in Tom, as he came up and shook hands. "Who is going to do the twirling for Brill?" "They are going to try Dare Phelps first, and if he can't make it, they will try Jack Dudley, one of the sophs." "Oh, yes, I remember Dudley when he was a freshman," answered Tom. "Pretty clever fellow, too." "How is it you didn't bring Grace with you, Sam?" questioned Nellie, as she took his hand. "I'm to take you two girls up to Hope after I leave Tom and Dick at Brill," explained the youngest Rover. "Then we are to get all of you girls directly after lunch. Grace wanted it that way." "My! but this is a touch of old times," remarked Dick, as he climbed into the automobile. "Let me take the wheel, Sam." "Certainly, if you want to," was the quick reply, and a few minutes later, with the oldest Rover running the machine, the whole party set off for Brill. "How are matters going in New York, Dick?" questioned Sam, while they rode along. "We are doing quite well, Sam. Of course, we are having a little difficulty in certain directions, but that is to be expected. You must remember in Wall Street the rivalries are very keen. I suppose some of our competitors would like to put us out of business." "What about that tour Tom mentioned?" "I think we can make it, Sam. I'll know more about it a little later. There is no hurry, you know, because you've got to graduate first," and Dick smiled knowingly at his brother. Songbird and some of the other collegians were waiting to welcome Dick and Tom, and as soon as they had left the automobile Sam continued on the way to Hope. "Oh! I'm so glad to see you!" cried Grace, as she rushed out and kissed her sister and her cousin. "Come right in. We are going to have a special lunch in your honor. Sam, I'm sorry I can't invite you, but you know what the rules are." "Never mind. Tom will be on hand at one-thirty promptly," answered the youth. "I hope you'll all be ready, for we can't delay, you know." "We'll be ready, don't fear," answered Grace. When Sam returned to Brill he found a crowd of the seniors surrounding his brothers, telling them of the many things that had happened in and around the college since they had left. "It's a jolly shame we can't have you in the box to-day, Tom," said Bob Grimes. "I'm afraid we'll need you sorely," he added rather anxiously. "Why don't you put William Philander Tubbs in?" suggested Tom, with a grin. "Don't you remember what a famous ball player he was?" And then there was a general laugh, at the recollection of a joke that had once been played on the dudish college student. The air was filled with talk of the coming game, and but scant attention was paid to the lunch provided for the collegians and their guests. As soon as the meal was over, Tom took the Rover's automobile and started for Hope to bring Grace and the others. When he arrived there he found his wife, Dora and Grace talking to Ada Waltham and her brother Chester, to whom he was introduced. "We are going over to the game," announced Chester Waltham. "Ada and I are going to take half a dozen of the young ladies." "Fine!" returned Tom. "The more the merrier! Don't forget to tell the girls to whoop her up for Brill." "I think the most of them will do that," said Ada Waltham; "although one or two of them are Roxley sympathizers." "Well, Brill can't have everything its own way," answered Tom. A few minutes later he was on the return with Grace, Nellie and Dora. When he arrived he found Sam awaiting them, and all walked down to the grandstand, where seats had been provided for the party. Grace and the others had just been made comfortable when Chester Waltham arrived with his sister and a number of others. The young millionaire came forward with a broad smile and was quickly introduced, and he lost no time in seating his sister next to Grace, while he sat directly behind the pair, with all the other girls he had brought close by. This arrangement did not altogether suit Sam, and he hurried off to the dressing-room to get into his baseball uniform in rather a doubtful frame of mind. A little later there was a grand shouting at the entrance to the field, and into sight came a large automobile truck containing a drum and fife corps and carrying a large Roxley banner. The truck was followed by a dozen or more automobiles containing the Roxley team and their fellow-students. The students had tin horns and wooden rattles. "Zip! Hurrah! Roxley!" was the cry, and then followed a great noise from the horns and rattles. "Brill! Brill! Brill!" was the counter cry, and then the furious din was taken up by the other side. After that the grandstand filled up rapidly and so did the bleachers, until there was not an available seat remaining. In the meanwhile, a parking place for automobiles and carriages at the far end of the field was also well patronized. "Some crowd, and no mistake!" was Stanley's comment, as he looked at the masses of humanity waving flags and banners and tooting their horns and using various other devices for making noise. "This is by far the biggest crowd we have ever had." "Roxley has sent word all around that they are going to bury us this year," returned another student standing by. "They claim they have a team that can't be beaten." Down in the dressing-room Bob was giving some final instructions to his men. "I want you to play from the word 'go,'" he said. "Sometimes a game is lost or won in the first inning. Don't let them get any kind of a lead if you can possibly help it." It had been decided almost at the last minute that instead of covering left field Sam should cover third base. There was a big cheer for the Roxley team when it made its appearance on the field, and another cheer when the Brill nine showed itself. Then came the toss-up, and it was decided that Brill should go to the bat first. The first man to the bat was a tall fellow who played center field, and as he came forward many of the Brill sympathizers cheered him lustily. "Now show 'em what you can do!" "Knock it over the back fence!" The ball came in and the batter swung for it and missed it. "Strike one!" "That's the way to do it, Muggs!" Again the ball came in, and this time there was a foul tip. "Foul! Strike two!" Following this second strike came two balls, over which the Brill contingent cheered. Then came a swift inshoot, which the batter missed by the fraction of an inch. "Strike three! Batter out!" sang out the umpire. "That's the way to do it, Muggs!" came the yell from the Roxley cohorts, and there followed a din of horns and rattles. The second man up for Brill managed to get to first, but the next one went out on a pop fly, and then the man on first was caught trying to steal to second. "That's the way to do it, Roxley! Keep it up!" And as a goose egg was put up for Brill on the score board the opponents cheered as wildly as ever. But if Roxley had hoped to score in that first inning, her expectations were doomed to disappointment. The first man up went out on a pop fly, the second on a foul, and although the third managed to reach second base on what should have really been a one-base hit, the fourth man up knocked an easy one to first which ended their hopes. It was not until the second inning that Sam came to the bat. There were two men out when he grasped the ashen stick and took his stand beside the home plate. He had a strike and two balls called on him, and then sent a clean hit between first and second bases. "Run, Sam, run!" yelled Dick. "Leg it, old man, leg it!" added Tom, and the youngest Rover certainly did speed for first, arriving there just a second before the ball. "Oh, if only he can get in!" cried Grace, clapping her hands. "It's a long way around to home plate," put in Chester Waltham. "He's got to have help to do it." A moment later the next man to the bat knocked an easy fly to second and that ended the chances for Sam's scoring, and another goose egg went up for Brill on the score board. In the end of the second inning Roxley was fortunate enough to open the play with a neat drive which brought the batter to second. Then came another one-base hit, and amid a wild yelling the runner from second slid in over the home plate. "Hurrah! Hurrah! A run for Roxley!" "That's the way to do it! Keep it up! Snow Brill under!" Bob Grimes walked up to Dare Phelps, who was occupying the pitcher's box. "Take it easy, Dare," he pleaded. "Don't let 'em rattle you." "They are not going to rattle me," responded Dare Phelps, and pitched the next batter out in one-two-three order. In the meantime, however, the man on first managed to steal second. A moment later he tried to reach third. The pitcher threw the ball to Sam, who leaped up into the air and caught it, coming down on the runner while he was still a foot from the bag. "Runner out!" cried the umpire, and Roxley's player arose rather crestfallen and limped off to the benches. "That's the way to do it, Sam. Nab 'em every time!" cried Tom. When the inning was ended Roxley had only the one run to its credit. Brill came to the bat for the third time with a sort of do-or-die look on the faces of the players. It was plucky little Spud who started a batting streak, getting safely to first and followed by another player who managed to reach second, landing Spud on third. Then came two outs. Before the inning was ended, however, two runs were placed on the board to the credit of Brill. "Two to one in favor of Brill!" cried one of the students. "Just wait, this inning isn't over yet!" cried one of the Roxley sympathizers. Then Roxley went to the bat, and because of a bad fumble on the part of the Brill second baseman, they managed to secure another run. "Two to two!" was the cry, as the figures went up on the big score board. "Anybody's game, so far," said Dick Rover, soberly, "but I do hope Brill wins." "And so do I," answered his brother Tom. CHAPTER XVII HOW THE GAME ENDED In the fourth inning Brill did its best to get in another run. There were two one-base hits made, but these were followed by a strike-out and two pop flies, so the hits availed nothing. "Such playing as that isn't helping us any," was Dick's remark in a low tone to Tom. "Well, those first two men up managed to find the ball," returned Tom, hopefully. But if Brill had not fared well in that inning, Roxley did no better, so far as bringing in runs were concerned. But the Roxley batters found Phelps quite easily, pounding out numerous fouls. "The score is two to two," remarked Chester Waltham, when the Brill team came up to the bat in the fifth inning. In this, with one man out, Sam managed to send a neat drive directly past the Roxley shortstop. He gained first with ease, and then, taking a desperate chance, slid safely to second. "Good work, Rover! Keep it up!" came from one of his chums. "That won't do him any good. They can't bring it in," called out a Roxley sympathizer, and he proved to be a true prophet, for the inning came to an end with no additional runs, Sam getting no chance to advance beyond the second bag. "Now, then, Phelps, keep cool," admonished Bob, when in the second half of the fifth inning the Brill pitcher passed the first batter on balls. "All right, I'll do my best," answered Dare Phelps. "But I must confess my arm is beginning to hurt me," he added. "Do you want to drop out?" questioned the captain, quickly. "Oh, no, not until they hit me more than they have," responded the Brill pitcher, grimly. There followed one out, but after that came some free hitting which brought in two runs. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" shouted the Roxley students. "Two to four in favor of Roxley! That's the way to do it! Snow 'em under!" "Steady, Phelps, steady," warned the Brill captain. But it was of no avail, and the only way Brill could bring that inning to a finish was by the clever work of two of the fielders in capturing two flies which looked as if they might be home runs. When the board showed the score of 2 to 4 Roxley went wild once more, while the followers of Brill looked correspondingly glum. "Maybe you had better give Jack Dudley a chance," suggested Bob to Dare Phelps, when the two walked into the benches. "Oh, let me try it just once more!" pleaded the pitcher. "Anybody might have let in those two runs." "All right, Phelps, I'll give you one more chance," answered Bob, somewhat sharply. "You know we don't want this game to go to Roxley if we can possibly help it." In the sixth inning Brill scored another goose egg. Then Roxley came once more to the bat, and on the first ball pitched by Phelps scored a home run, amid a yelling and cheering that could be heard for a great distance. "Whoop! That's the way to do it! Five to two in favor of Roxley!" "Keep it up, boys! Snow 'em under! Snow 'em under!" And then the Roxley crowd began a song, the refrain of which was: "We're here to-day to bury them!" The cheering was still at its height when Bob motioned to Jack Dudley, who had been warming up in a corner of the field, to come forward and take Dare Phelps' place. There was a cheer from Brill for the new pitcher, while Phelps retired rather crestfallen. "Now, then, Dudley, put 'em out in one-two-three order!" was the cry. "We've killed off one pitcher; now kill off the next!" came the cry from the Roxleyites. "Take it easy, Dudley," warned Bob. "Give 'em your inshoot and that new fadeaway." "I'll give 'em all that is in me," returned Jack Dudley, with a determined look on his lean, and somewhat angular, face. The first man up got two balls and two strikes. Then came a foul tip, followed by another strike. "Strike three! Batter out!" called the umpire. "Hurrah! That's the way to do it, Dudley!" The next man managed to get to first, but then came two more outs, and the sixth inning came to a close with the score still standing, Brill 2--Roxley 5. "That's some lead," remarked Chester Waltham. "Brill has got to get busy pretty quickly if it expects to win this game." "Oh, we'll get there, don't you worry," answered Tom, quickly, and then he shouted: "Go to it, fellows; go to it! Lambast the life out of that leather!" and at this cry there was a general laugh. The seventh inning proved a blank for both teams. Brill, however, managed to reach second, while Roxley was pitched out in one-two-three order by Dudley. "Well, Dudley held them down that time," remarked Dick Rover. "I hope he manages to keep the good work up." "Yes, but a pitcher can't win a ball game alone," answered Chester Waltham. "You've got to have some good batters." "Go to it, Brill! Go to it! This is your lucky inning!" yelled Tom, enthusiastically. "Get busy, everybody!" In the eighth inning the first man up for Brill went out on a pop fly. But then came a fine hit that took the next player safely to second. Then Sam walked to the plate. "That's the way to do it, Brill!" "Now, Rover, hit it for all you are worth!" It must be confessed that Sam felt a trifle nervous, so anxious was he to make some sort of a showing. He swung his ashen stick at the first ball pitched. "Strike one!" came from the umpire. "Take your time, Sam!" yelled Tom. "Make him give it to you where you want it!" Whether Sam heard the cry or not it would be hard to say, but he let the next ball go by, and then repeated this action. "Ball two!" called the umpire. "Oh, say! That was all right!" grumbled the Roxley catcher. "What do you want?" "Too far out," returned the umpire sharply, and then added: "Play ball!" The next one was a straight drive, and Sam swung at it with all the strength and skill he possessed. Crack! The ashen stick hit the leather, and the sphere went sailing far down into center field. "Go it, Rover, go it!" "Come on in, Orben!" Paul Orben, who had been the player to reach second, was already streaking up to third, and by the time Sam reached first Paul was legging it for the home plate. "Throw that ball up here! Throw that ball up!" yelled the second baseman to the center fielder, who was still chasing after the bouncing leather. Then amid a cloud of dust Paul slid in over the home plate while Sam, having reached second, was legging it rapidly for third. Up came the ball from the field to second, and then to third, but before it got there the youngest Rover was safely clutching the bag. "Whoop! Hurrah! That's the way to do it! One run in and another on the way." "Keep it up, Brill! You've struck your winning streak!" "Oh, dear! I do hope Sam can bring that run in!" came from Grace. "It might have been a home run if he had only run a little faster," remarked Chester Waltham. "Faster!" retorted Tom, quickly. "Why, he legged it like greased lightning! Most players would have gotten only two bags out of that hit." Following this batting came another out, but then the next man up managed to reach first, and amid a wild cheering on the part of the Brillites, and a loud tooting of horns, Sam rushed over the home plate. "Hurrah! Hurrah! Another run!" "That makes the score four to five!" "Keep up the good work, Brill!" But that was the end of the run getting for the time being. Then Roxley came to the bat, and amid the most intense feeling Jack Dudley managed to pitch out three men in succession and the score went up on the board: Brill 4--Roxley 5. "Now, fellows, this is our last chance," said Bob, as the team came in for the ninth inning. "Remember, one run will tie the score and two runs may win the game. Now every man up on the job." The first batter for Brill in the ninth inning was plainly nervous. He let two good balls go by and thereby had two strikes called on him. Then he made a wild pass at the next ball, knocking a short foul which the first baseman for Roxley gathered in by a sensational running leap. "One man gone! One man gone!" chanted the Roxley followers. "Now, then, get the other two." "Take your time, boys, take your time," cried Bob. "Make them give you just what you want." This advice was heeded, and as a result the next man got to first and on another one-base hit managed to reach third. Then came a one-bag drive that brought in a run and took the man on first to second. "Hurrah! Hurrah! That ties the score!" "Keep it up, Brill! Bring in all the runs you can!" Following the bringing in of the tying run, there came some field play between the pitcher and the basemen, and as a result the man who had reached first was called out trying to steal second. In the mean time the other runner tried to steal home, but had to stay on third. "Be careful, boys, be careful," pleaded Bob, and then a few seconds later came another base hit which brought in another run. "Good! Good! That's the way to do it, Brill!" "That makes the score six to five in favor of Brill!" "Bring in half a dozen more while you are at it!" "Hold them down. Don't let them get another run," pleaded the captain of Roxley's nine to his men. "We're going to make a dozen more," announced Tom Rover, gaily. But this was not to be, and a few minutes later the inning came to an end with the score standing: Brill 6--Roxley 5. "Now, then, Roxley, one run to tie the score and two to win the game!" was the cry from the visitors. "Lam out a couple of homers!" "Show 'em where the back fence is!" In that ninth inning Roxley came to the bat with a "do-or-die" look. "Now watch yourself, Dudley," whispered Bob to the pitcher. "Don't let them rattle you." "They are not going to rattle me," answered Dudley. Yet it was plainly to be seen that the sophomore was nervous, and that the strain of the situation was beginning to tell upon him. Nevertheless, amid a wild cheering on the part of Brill, he struck out the first man up. "That's the way to do it, Brill!" "It's all over but the shouting!" shrieked one Brill sympathizer. "Not much! Here is where we make half a dozen runs!" yelled a Roxleyite. The next batter up was a notoriously hard hitter. Dudley was afraid to give him something easy, and as a consequence the pitcher had four balls called on him and the batter went to first. Then came a drive to center field which took the man on first to second, while the batter reached first with ease. "That's the way to do it, Roxley! Now you've got 'em going!" With only one man out and two men on bases, Jack Dudley was more nervous than ever. Yet Bob did not have the heart to take him out of the box, and, besides, he had no pitcher on hand who was any better. "Hold 'em down, Dudley! Hold 'em down!" pleaded the captain. "Don't feed 'em any easy ones." And the pitcher nodded grimly, being too nervous to even answer. A ball was called and then a strike. Then Dudley fed the batter a straight one. Crack! The ashen stick met the sphere and sent it along just inside the third base line. "Run! Everybody run!" was the yell from the Roxley contingent, and while the batter dropped his stick and sped toward first, the man on that bag legged it for second and the man on second rushed madly toward third. For one brief instant it looked as if one, and possibly two, runs would be scored. But then, Sam, playing a little off third, made a wild leap into the air and pulled down the ball. Next, like a flash, he tagged the man sliding in toward the third bag. [Illustration: SAM MADE A WILD LEAP INTO THE AIR AND PULLED DOWN THE BALL.] "Batter out! Runner out!" announced the umpire. "Hurrah! Hurrah! Brill wins the game!" "Say! that was a dandy catch by Rover, wasn't it?" "Yes. And how neatly he put that runner out, too!" And then as the score, Brill 6--Roxley 5, was placed on the big board a wild yelling, tooting of horns, and sounding of rattles rent the air. Once more Brill had vanquished its old opponent. And everybody said that Sam Rover was the hero of the occasion. CHAPTER XVIII GOOD-BYE TO BRILL The celebration at Brill that evening was one long to be remembered. Bonfires blazed along the river front, and the students marched around them, and around the campus and the college buildings, singing songs and having a good time generally. The others had insisted that the Rovers take part in these festivities, and so the boys had taken the girls to Hope, where Dora and Nellie were to remain until the next day. "I must say I am mighty glad I came," said Dick to his brothers, as he surveyed the shouting and marching students. "This certainly takes me back to the days when I was here." "I'm going in for some fun," announced Tom, and was soon in the midst of the activities. The students played jokes on William Philander Tubbs, old Filbury, and on a number of others, and the fun-loving Rover helped them all he could. An attempt was also made to get the captured banners of the freshmen and sophomores from Sam's room, but this failed. "The boys are rather noisy to-night," said one of the professors to Dr. Wallington. "I agree with you, sir," returned the head of Brill, "but then they have something to be noisy about. Their victory was certainly well earned," and the doctor smiled indulgently. Many had come forward to congratulate Sam on his fine work in putting through a double play unassisted in the last inning. "It saved the day for Brill," announced Stanley, and many agreed with him. The great game had taken place on Saturday afternoon, so, as the next day was Sunday, Sam could do as he pleased. The Rovers had an early breakfast, and then lost no time in riding over to the seminary, where they found the others waiting for them. "Oh, Sam, your playing was simply wonderful!" declared Grace, as she beamed on him. "How you ever caught that fly in the last inning is beyond me." "Yes, and what do you think?" put in Grace's sister. "Mr. Waltham said he thought it was quite an ordinary play--that any good, all-around player could have done what Sam did!" "Maybe he was a bit jealous of Sam," was Dora's comment, and as she spoke she looked rather keenly at Grace, who, of a sudden, blushed deeply. "I suppose Waltham brought his sister and those girls back here last evening," said Sam. "Oh, yes," answered Nellie, "and they insisted that we join them in a little treat. Mr. Waltham drove down to Ashton for some ice cream, fancy crackers and candy, and we had quite a spread under the trees. It certainly was very nice of him to do it." "I suppose he's got so much money he doesn't know what to do with it," was Dick's comment. "He was asking me about that tour that we propose taking this summer," said Dora. "He added that he and his sister and maybe others were going to take a tour in his new car, but he hadn't decided on where they were going, and he thought it might be rather jolly if he joined our touring party." "Humph! I don't see----" began Sam, and then broke off suddenly. "It would be lovely to have Ada along," said Grace. "She is a splendid girl, and we've become quite chummy since Nellie and Dora went away." "Well, we haven't any time to settle about that tour just now," announced Dick. "Our train leaves in a couple of hours and you girls have got to pack up before we start for the Ashton depot." The mention of Chester Waltham, along with the fact that he might join them on their proposed automobile tour, put rather a damper on Sam's feelings. He acted very soberly, and his remarks to Grace were not half as cordial as they usually were. Evidently Sam's "nose was out of joint," although he was not willing to admit it, even to himself. All drove down to the Ashton depot, and there Sam and Grace said good-bye to the others, who were going on to the home farm at Valley Brook and then to New York City. On the return to the seminary Sam had hoped to have a long talk and an understanding with Grace, but unfortunately two girls turned up who wished to get back to Hope, and there was nothing for the Rover boy to do but to invite them to ride along, so that the confidential talk between them had to be abandoned. After the great ball game matters quieted down at Brill. All of the seniors were hard at work getting ready for the final examinations, which would start on the week following. "If you make as good a showing in the examinations as you made on the ball field, you sure will prove a winner," declared Bob to Sam one day. "Well, I'm going to do my level best, Bob," was the reply. "You see, neither Dick nor Tom had a chance to graduate, so I've got to make a showing for the entire family." During those days nothing further had been heard regarding Blackie Crowden or the missing money. Sam and Songbird had met Belright Fogg once on the streets of Ashton, but the lawyer had marched past without deigning to speak to them. "He's a foxy customer," was the comment of the would-be poet of Brill. "If he had anything to do with Blackie Crowden, he'll try his level best to keep it to himself." At last the examinations began. They were to continue for the best part of two weeks, and during that time Sam cut out all sports and confined himself to his studies with greater diligence than ever. He had several important papers to hand in, and he worked over these early and late, rewriting and polishing until there seemed to be absolutely nothing more that could be done. Songbird also was busy, for in addition to his studies and themes he had been asked by the class to write a poem in honor of the coming occasion. "I only wish I could write something that would bring in some cash," remarked the would-be poet one afternoon. Although he had not apprised Sam of that fact, Songbird had copied off several of his best poems and sent them to various publishers, hoping that they might prove acceptable and bring in some money which he might turn over to Mr. Sanderson as an evidence of what he hoped to do in the future. So far, however, he had not heard from any of the poems but one, which had been promptly returned. At last came the day when the examinations ended. All the themes written by the students had been handed in, and Sam found himself free to do as he pleased. He at once sought Grace by means of the telephone, hoping to get her to take an automobile ride with him. "I am sorry," she answered over the wire, "but I have still another examination to take and a theme to finish, so I don't dare to think of going out." "How have you made out so far?" questioned the youth. "I don't know, Sam. Sometimes I think I have done very well, and then again I am afraid that I missed a great many things. How did you make out?" "Oh, I think I'll pass, but how high up I don't know. I am hoping for great things, but I may be mistaken." And there the conversation had to come to an abrupt end, for a professor came in to use the Brill telephone. It must be confessed that Sam slept rather uneasily on the night before the morning on which the announcement concerning each student's standing was to be made. "I'm scared to death," came from Spud. "I missed a whole lot of questions." "So did I," put in Paul. "And I boned hard too," he added dismally. Finally came the announcement. Out of a class of sixty-five seniors, sixty-two had passed. Sam's name was at the head of the list with a percentage of ninety-seven; Songbird came fourth with a percentage of ninety-three; Spud had ninety-one, and Stanley the same; while Paul, William Philander Tubbs and a number of others were listed at from eighty to eighty-eight per cent. "Sam, allow me to congratulate you!" cried Songbird, as he came up to wring his friend's hand. "You certainly made a splendid showing." "You made a pretty good showing yourself," answered Sam, his face beaming. "Your folks will be mighty glad to hear of this," went on the would-be poet of Brill. "Why don't you telegraph to them?" "Just what I'm going to do," answered the Rover boy. "And I'm going to telephone to Hope, too," he added. "That's the talk. I wish I could telephone over to the Sandersons." "Never mind, Songbird, I'll drive you over there when I drive to the seminary," replied Sam. The days to follow were delightful ones for Sam. True to his promise, he took Songbird over to the Sanderson homestead and then visited Grace. The girl had passed third from the top of her class and was correspondingly delighted. "We had such dreadfully hard questions I thought I should never get through," she confessed to the youth when they were alone. "And you came out on top, Sam. Oh, it's wonderful--simply wonderful!" and she caught both his hands. "Well, I'm glad--glad for myself and glad for you, Grace," he answered, and looked her full in the eyes. She looked at him in return and blushed prettily. "Oh, Mr. Rover, allow me to congratulate you," came from somebody near by, and Ada Waltham came tripping up. "Grace told me all about your wonderful showing." "Ada made a splendid showing herself," answered Grace, before Sam could speak. "I was one point behind Grace," answered the rich girl, "and that certainly was wonderful for me. I never was very keen about studying--in fact, I didn't want to go to college, only I had to do it if I wanted to inherit the money that my uncle left me." "Oh, Sam! and to think our days of studying are over at last!" burst out Grace. "I can scarcely believe it." "I can't believe it myself, Grace," he answered. "It seems to me I've been going to school all my life. Just think of the years and years I put in at Putnam Hall Military Academy before I came to Brill!" "Yes, and to think of the years I put in at the Cedarville school before I came to Hope," returned Grace. "Now it is all over I feel quite old," and she laughed merrily. As was the usual custom, it had been decided that graduation exercises at Hope should take place two days before those at Brill, which would give ample opportunity for those desiring to do so to attend both functions. "My folks are all coming to the graduations," announced Grace, a day or two after the conversation just recorded. "Yes, and my folks will all be on hand," answered Sam. "Even Uncle Randolph and Aunt Martha are coming. Dear, old Aunt Martha!" he said. "She has been a regular mother to us boys ever since I can remember. I'm awfully glad she will be present, and I'll be mighty glad to have Uncle Randolph too, not to say anything about dear, old dad." After that there seemed to be so much to do and so many things to think about that time sped with amazing swiftness. The Rovers and the Lanings had engaged rooms at the leading hotel in Ashton, and arrived on the day previous to the graduation exercises at Hope. "Tell you what, education is a great thing!" remarked Mr. John Laning when speaking of the matter to Mr. Rover. "I didn't have much of a chance at it when I was a boy--I had to go out and scrap for a living--but I'm mighty glad that I had the means to give the girls the learning they've got." "You're right--it is a great thing," answered Mr. Anderson Rover. "I am only sorry now that Dick and Tom didn't have the chance to graduate as well as Sam. But, you know, I was very sick and somebody had to look after our business affairs. And what those boys have done for me is simply wonderful!" "The greatest boys that ever lived," announced Randolph Rover. "They used to bother the life out of me with their fun and noise, but now that they have settled down and made men of themselves I forgive them for all the annoyances." Sam's father had brought for him as a graduation present a very fine diamond scarf pin, while his uncle and aunt presented him with a handsomely engraved cardcase and Dick and the others brought him a ring set with a ruby. Grace's folks and the others had also brought several gifts of value for the girl, and to these Sam added a bracelet and the finest bouquet of flowers he could obtain in Ashton. The graduation exercises at Hope were exceedingly pretty. All the girls were dressed in white, and they formed a beautiful picture as they stood in a long line to receive their diplomas. The onlookers clapped vigorously, but no one with more fervor than did Sam when Grace received her roll. The exercises were followed by a reception that evening at which the fair girl graduates shone as they never had before. "And now for the big event at Brill!" said Dick, when on the way back to Ashton that evening. "Sam, aren't you a bit sorry to leave the old college?" "I certainly am, Dick. At the same time, now that you and Tom have buckled down to business, I feel that I ought to be doing likewise." "Yes, but all of you young folks are going on that tour first," announced the boys' father. "I think you have earned it, and I want you to have it. I'll supply all the funds necessary, and I'll see to it that everything goes right at the office while you are away." Never had Brill been so crowded as it was at those graduation exercises. Every seat in the college hall was occupied, and every doorway and open window held its group of eager onlookers. The Rover family had seats almost in the center of the auditorium, and all of the Lanings were with them. "Oh, it's grand! just grand!" murmured Aunt Martha, as she saw Sam and the rest of the senior class gathering. "Oh! how proud I am of that boy!" and the tears coursed freely down her cheeks. The valedictory address had been written by Sam and was delivered by the class orator, Stanley. This was followed by a class poem written by Songbird and delivered by a student named Wells. Sam's valedictory was received with loud clapping of hands. "A well written paper--very well written, indeed," was Dr. Wallington's comment, and a great number of visitors agreed with him. Songbird had worked hard over his class poem, which contained many allusions to local matters, and was received with many smiles and expressions of good humor. "Songbird is certainly becoming something of a poet," was Dick's comment. "If he keeps on, some day he'll become the simon-pure article." At last it was over, and Sam, with his sheepskin rolled up and tied with a ribbon, joined his folks. His father was the first to congratulate him, and then came old Aunt Martha, who wept freely as she embraced him. "I'm proud of you, Sam, proud of you!" she said, in a voice trembling with emotion. "What a pity your own mother couldn't be here to see you! But the good Lord willed it otherwise, so we must be content." "Sam, you've certainly done the family proud this day," announced his oldest brother. "To graduate at the top of the class is going some." "Well, I've got to do something for the Rover name," said the happy youth, modestly. There was another reception that night, and again the bonfires blazed along the bank of the river. The undergraduates "cut loose" as usual, but those who were to leave Brill forever were a trifle sober. "It's been a fine old college to go to," was Dick's comment. "You're right there, Dick," came from Tom. "A fine place, indeed!" "The best in the world!" answered Sam. He drew a deep breath. "No matter where I go in this old world of ours, I'll never forget my days at Brill." CHAPTER XIX GETTING READY FOR THE TOUR "And now for the grand tour!" "That's the talk, Sam! We ought to have the best time ever," returned his brother Tom. "Just to think of such an outing makes me feel five years younger," came from Dick Rover. "I like work as well as any one, but a fellow has got to break away once in a while." "And to think we are going away out to Colorado Springs and Pike's Peak!" burst out Dora. "And all the way in our automobiles!" added Nellie. "I hope we don't have any breakdowns." "So it's decided that we are to start Monday morning, is it?" asked Dick's wife. "Yes, Dora, provided it is clear," answered Sam. "Of course there is no use of our starting our trip in a storm. We'll probably get enough rain while we are on the way." "Look here, Sam, don't be a wet blanket!" cried Tom, catching his younger brother by the shoulder and whirling him around. "This trip is going to be perfectly clear from end to end. I've ordered nothing but sunshine and moonlight," and at this remark there was a general laugh. The young folks were assembled on the lawn in front of the old Rover homestead at Valley Brook. About two weeks had passed since Grace and Sam had graduated, and during that time the various arrangements for taking the tour to the West had been completed by the Rover boys. In the meantime, Fourth of July had been spent in Cedarville, at the Laning homestead, where all had had a glorious time. "I'm awfully sorry that Songbird and Minnie can't go with us on this trip," remarked Dick, "but I know exactly how poor Songbird feels." "Yes, he told me he felt he had to go to work," returned Sam. "He wants to do his best to earn that four thousand dollars." "That's some job for a fellow just out of college to undertake," was Tom's comment. "What is he going to do for a living?" "He has had a place offered to him by his uncle. He is to start at fifteen dollars a week, and he says his uncle will advance him as soon as he learns something about the business." "They haven't heard any more about that Blackie Crowden or the missing money?" questioned Nellie. "Not a word. And it looks to me now as if they never would hear anything." "More than likely that fellow has got out of the country," was Dick's comment. "Especially if he has learned that the police are after him." "Oh, you can't tell about that," broke in Tom. "He may be hiding within a mile or two of where the crime was committed." It had been decided that the touring party should take two automobiles--that belonging to the Rovers and a new machine which was the property of Mrs. Stanhope, Dora's widowed mother. The party was to consist of Dick and Tom and their wives, Sam and Grace and Mrs. Stanhope and Mrs. Laning. Uncle Randolph and Aunt Martha had also been invited to go along, but both had declined, stating that they preferred to remain on the farm. "I have some important scientific data on farming to gather," had been Randolph Rover's explanation, "and, besides that, I must oversee the building of that new addition to the house;" for since the marriage of Dick and Tom it had been decided to build a large wing on the old homestead, so that the young folks might be accommodated there whenever they cared to make a visit. Aleck Pop, the faithful old colored servant of the Rovers, was still at the farm, as was Jack Ness, the man of all work, and both did all they could to aid the boys and girls to get ready for the tour. "It's most won'erful how you young gen'lemen has done growed up," was Aleck Pop's comment. "It don't seem no time at all sence you all was boys at Putnam Hall," and he grinned broadly, showing a mouthful of ivories. "And to think two of 'em are married now and settled down!" added Jack Ness. "I can't hardly believe it. First thing you know we'll have a lot of young Rovers runnin' around this farm." "Well, if they is any young Robers aroun' yere, I's gwine to serve 'em jest like I served the others," answered Aleck Pop, and then went off, nodding his head vigorously to himself. The only drawback to the proposed tour, so far as Sam was concerned, was the fact that Chester Waltham and his sister Ada were going to accompany them as far as Colorado Springs. Then the Walthams proposed to continue to the Pacific Coast, while the Rovers were to return to the East. "Are those two people going in a big touring car all by themselves?" questioned Sam, when he heard of this arrangement. "They are not going to take the touring car, Sam," answered Grace. "Ada wrote me that her brother had purchased a new runabout--a very speedy and comfortable car--and they are going to use that instead." "Humph! I don't see why they had to stick themselves in with our crowd," grumbled the youngest Rover. "Why didn't they take the trip by themselves?" "Well, maybe I am to blame for that," answered Grace. "I told Ada all about our proposed trip, and said I was sorry that she couldn't go with us. You must remember she treated me very nicely while we were at the seminary, especially after Dora and Nellie left." "Oh, I don't object to Ada," answered Sam. "Just the same, I think it would be nicer if we could go off by ourselves. Chester Waltham and his sister don't seem to fit in with us exactly." "Well, I think Chester Waltham is a very nice young man, and certainly he has given me some splendid rides," answered Grace, and then walked off to join the others, leaving Sam to do some thinking which was not altogether agreeable. The start was to be made from the farm, and the Walthams had written that they would be on hand early, stopping for the night at the hotel in Cornville, some miles away. On the Friday before the Monday set for the start, all three of the Rover boys went down to New York City, to the offices of the newly formed Rover Company in Wall Street. They found their father in charge, and also several assistants, and everything seemed to be in good running order. Dick and Tom went over a number of business matters with their parent, and Mr. Rover declared that he could get along very well without the boys for at least a month or six weeks. After the visit to the offices Dick and Tom took Sam up to their apartments on Riverside Drive, where they packed a number of things wanted by themselves and Dora and Nellie. "Certainly a beautiful location," remarked Sam, as he walked to one of the front windows, to gaze out on the Hudson River. "It certainly is a fine place, Sam," answered Tom, "and Nellie and I enjoy it just as much as Dick and Dora do." Tom looked at his younger brother questioningly. "I suppose now that you have graduated, Sam, you and Grace will be joining us here some day?" "I don't know about that, Tom." Sam's face flushed painfully. "You see I--I----" and then he broke off, unable to proceed. "You don't mean there is anything wrong between you and Grace, do you?" demanded the brother, coming closer. Dick had gone to another room and so was out of hearing. "I can't say that anything is wrong exactly, Tom," returned Sam, hesitatingly. "You see, I--I----" "Is it that Chester Waltham?" demanded the other, quickly. Sam nodded. "Of course I can't blame him, and I can't blame Grace, for the matter of that. It isn't every girl who gets the chance to marry a young millionaire." "What! Has he proposed to her?" cried Tom. "Oh, no, I don't think that, Tom. But he has been very friendly." "Well, I wouldn't stand for it, Sam. I think Grace ought to marry you, and I would tell her so and have it settled." "That's all well enough to say, Tom. But just the same I haven't any right to stand in her light. I haven't got any such money to offer her as this millionaire----" "Rot! You've got enough money to make any girl comfortable, and that is all that is necessary. You go on in and win!" and Tom clapped his younger brother on the shoulder encouragingly. Then Dick entered, along with a maid left to take care of the apartments, and the talk came to an end. While the boys were doing this, the girls had gone to Cedarville, and there assisted Mrs. Stanhope and Mrs. Laning in getting ready for the tour. Dora's mother had a hired chauffeur to run her car, and this man was to bring the party to Valley Brook in the Stanhope machine. "I am very glad you are going, Mother," said Dora to her parent. "I am sure this trip will do you a world of good." For Mrs. Stanhope was not in the best of health and sometimes grew quite nervous when left too long to herself. "It will be a wonderful trip, no doubt," answered the mother, "and I am sure I shall enjoy it greatly, especially with all you young folks along to brighten matters up." "It will certainly be a wonderful tour for me," declared Mrs. Laning, who had always been more or less of a home body. "Gracious! Why, I can remember when I used to think a trip of ten or twenty miles on the steam cars was wonderful. Now just to think of our going hundreds and hundreds of miles in an automobile!" "The most wonderful part of it to me is that we can afford to have you take such a trip as that, Mother," chuckled John Laning. "Sakes alive! when I was a young man the height of my ambition was to own about fifty acres free and clear, along with a couple of horses and half a dozen cows. And now look at us--here we own over three hundred acres, got over fifty head of cattle, over two thousand chickens, and the finest orchards in this part of the state. I tell you we've got a lot to be thankful for," he added with great satisfaction. "But I'll miss you, John, while I'm away," said his faithful wife. "Don't you worry about me, Mother. I'd just as lief stay here and see all them big crops a-comin' in," announced the farmer. "That's fun enough for me. You go ahead with the young people and enjoy yourself. You've been in harness long enough and you deserve it." Mr. Laning had had his ears wide open during the visit of his daughters and Dora, and before his wife and the others left for Valley Brook he called Mrs. Laning aside. "What's this I hear about Grace going out with a young millionaire named Waltham?" he asked, curiously. "I can't tell you much more than what you've already heard, John," she answered. "I thought Grace had her eyes set on Sam Rover," went on the husband, looking sharply at his wife. "That is what I thought myself. But it seems this young millionaire has been calling on his sister at Hope, and he's been taking his sister and Grace out in his automobile and acting very nicely about it. Grace seems to be quite taken with him." "Huh! A young millionaire, eh? Maybe he's only amusing himself with her. You had better caution her about him." "No, John, I don't think that would do any good. In fact, it might do a great deal of harm," declared the wife. "Grace is old enough to know what she is doing." "Yes, but if she has made some promises to Sam Rover----" "I am not sure that she has made any promises. Sam has been very attentive to her,--but just because Tom married Nellie is no reason why Grace should marry Sam." "Oh, I know that. But, somehow, I thought they had it all settled between 'em, and I certainly like Sam. He's a nice, clean-cut boy." "Yes. I like Sam, too." Mrs. Laning heaved a deep sigh. "But, just the same, we had better not interfere. You know how it was when we got married," and she looked fondly at her husband. "You bet I do!" he returned, and then put his arm over her shoulder and kissed her gently. "Well, let us hope it all comes out for the best," he added, and walked off to go to work. CHAPTER XX A MOMENT OF PERIL "This is the life!" "That's right, Tom. This kind of touring suits me to death," returned Sam Rover. "Tom, how many miles an hour are you making?" broke in his wife. "Remember what you promised me--that you would keep within the limit of the law." "And that is just what I am doing, Nellie," he answered. "But it's mighty hard to do it, believe me, when you are at the wheel of such a fine auto as this. Why, I could send her ahead twice as fast if I wanted to!" "Don't you dare!" burst out Grace, who sat in the tonneau beside her sister. "If you do I'll make you let Sam drive." "He's got to let me drive anyway after dinner," said the youngest Rover boy. "That's the arrangement." It was the second day of the tour, and Valley Brook Farm, and in fact the whole central portion of New York State, had been left far behind. The weather had turned out perfect, and so far they had encountered very little in the way of bad roads. Once they had had to make a detour of two miles on account of a new bridge being built, but otherwise they had forged straight ahead. Tom and his wife, with Grace and Sam, occupied the first automobile, the remaining space in the roomy tonneau being taken up by various suitcases and other baggage. Behind this car came the one driven by Dick Rover. Beside him was his wife, with Mrs. Stanhope and Mrs. Laning behind them. Some distance to the rear was the third machine, a brand-new runabout, containing Chester Waltham and his sister Ada. Waltham had at first wished to take the lead, but had then dropped behind, stating he did not wish to get the others to follow him on any wrong road. "You go ahead," he had said to the Rovers. "Then if you go wrong you will have only yourselves to blame." "Well, we don't know any more about these roads than you do, Waltham," Dick had replied. "We are simply going by the guide book and the signs." "I hate to use up my brains studying an automobile guide," Chester Waltham had returned with a yawn. "When I am on an outing I like to take it just as easy as I possibly can." "It's a wonder you didn't bring a paid chauffeur along," had been Sam's comment. "I thought something of doing that, but my sister objected. She said if she was to go along I must run the car. You see, she wants me to risk my neck as well as her own," and the young millionaire had smiled grimly. They had been running for several miles over a road that was comparatively straight. On either side were tidy farms, with occasional farmhouses and barns. Now, however, the road became winding, and they soon passed into a patch of timber. "Four miles to the next town," announced Sam, as they rolled past a signboard. He looked at his watch. "Quarter after eleven. Do you think we had better stop there for dinner, Tom?" "No, we are going on to Fernwood, six miles farther," was the reply. "They say the hotel there is much better. And, believe me, when you get away from the big cities the best hotel you can find in a town is none too good." It had been rather warm on the open road, and all those in the automobiles welcomed the shade of the woods. "It's a pity we didn't bring our lunch along," said Dora to Dick, as they moved along at a slower rate of speed. "We could have had a good time picnicking along here." "Yes, we'll have to dine out in the woods sometimes on this trip," put in Mrs. Laning. "I like that sort of thing much better than taking all our meals in hotels or restaurants." The first automobile had reached a spring by the roadside, and here Tom came to a halt, presently followed by the others. Collapsible cups were handy, and all were ready for a drink of the pure, cool water which the spring afforded. "Fine! isn't it?" exclaimed Dick, after the ladies had been served and he had had a cupful himself. "You're right," answered Tom. "A good deal better than that bottled water we have down in the New York offices." "But it can't beat the water on the farm," said Sam. "I must say no matter where I go the water doesn't taste quite as good as that at Valley Brook." "Oh, that's only sentiment, Sam!" cried Grace. "Now, I think the water at Cedarville is just lovely." "I think you are taking a little chance in drinking from a spring like this," was Chester Waltham's comment. "It may be pure, and then again it may be full of all sorts of germs." "Sure! it may be full of tadpoles and bullfrogs, too," added Tom, gaily. "But you've got to take some chances in this life, as the fly said when he flew down into the molasses jug and got stuck there," and at this little joke there was a general smile. Beyond the spring the road went uphill for a long distance, and then took a turn to the southward, past more farms and over a bridge spanning a tiny stream. Then they came to a small town, looking dry, dusty and almost deserted in the midday, summer sun. "I am glad we didn't arrange to stop here," was Nellie's comment, as she glanced around. The sleepy little town was soon left behind, and once again they found themselves passing over a series of hills, dotted here and there with farms and patches of woodland. Then they came to a place which was very uneven and filled with rocks. "Got to be careful here unless we want to get a puncture," announced Tom, and at once reduced speed. They were running on another winding road which seemed to bear off to the northward. Here there was something of a cliff, with great, rocky boulders standing out in bold relief. Suddenly, as Tom reached a bend, he saw a man coming towards them. He was an Italian, and carried a small red flag in one hand. "Back! You-a git-a back!" cried the man, waving his red flag at them. "Blas'! Blas'! You git-a back!" The grade was downward and the man had appeared so suddenly that before Tom could bring the first automobile to a standstill he had gotten at least a hundred feet beyond the Italian, while the second car, run by Dick, was by the man's side. "What's the trouble here?" demanded Dick. "You git-a back! You git-a back!" exclaimed the Italian, frantically. "Blas' go off! You git-a back!" "Hi, Tom, come back here!" yelled Dick. "This fellow says there is a blast going off." Tom was already trying to heed the warning. He had stopped so suddenly, however, that he had stalled his engine and now he had to take time in which to use the electric starter. In the meanwhile, the Italian workman ran still farther back, to warn Chester Waltham and anybody else who might be coming along the road. "Oh, Tom! can you turn around?" questioned his wife anxiously. "Maybe you had better run the car backward," suggested Sam. He had noted the narrowness of the roadway and knew it would be no easy matter to turn around in such limited space. Besides that, there was a deep gully on one side, so that they would run the risk of overturning. "Yes, I'll back if Dick will only give me room," muttered Tom, as he pressed the lever of the self-starter. Then after the power was once more generated he threw in the reverse gear and allowed the car to back up. "That's the way to do it, Tom," yelled Dick. "Come on, I'll get out of the way," and he, too, began to back until he was close on to the Waltham runabout. "Look out! Don't bump into me!" yelled Chester Waltham, who for the moment seemed to be completely bewildered by what was taking place. "What's the matter anyway?" he demanded of the Italian. "Oh, Chester, there must be some danger!" shrieked his sister. "Say! they are both backing up. Maybe you had better back up too." "All right, if that's what they want," answered the young millionaire, and then in his hurry tried to reverse so quickly that he, too, stalled his engine. "Back up! Back up!" called out Dick. "We've got to get out of here! There is some sort of blasting going on ahead!" "Oh, Dick, be careful!" cried Mrs. Stanhope, and sprang up in the tonneau of the car in alarm, quickly followed by Mrs. Laning. "You will run into Mr. Waltham, sure!" wailed the latter. "Don't smash into me! Don't smash into me!" yelled the young millionaire in sudden terror. "If you bump into me you'll send me into the ditch!" By this time Dick's car was less than three feet away from the runabout, while Tom's machine was still some distance farther up the road. Boom! There was a distant explosion, not very loud; and following this came a clatter as of stones falling on the rocks. None of the stones, however, fell anywhere near the three machines. "Oh!" cried Grace. "Is that all there is to it?" queried Nellie, anxiously. "I don't know," returned Tom. He had now brought his automobile once more to a standstill. All in the three machines waited for a moment. Then they gazed enquiringly at the Italian who stood behind them. "Say, is that all the blasting there is?" demanded Chester Waltham. "Dat's heem," responded the foreigner. "He go off all right, boss. You go," and he waved the stick of his flag for them to proceed. "Some scare--and all for nothing," muttered Tom. "The way he carried on you would think they were going to shake down half of yonder cliff." "Oh, Tom, they don't dare to take chances," returned Nellie. "Why, if we had gone on we might have been showered with those stones we heard falling." "You fellows want to be careful how you back up," grumbled Chester Waltham. "You came pretty close to smashing into me." "Well, you should have backed up yourself when you heard us yell," retorted Dick, sharply. "We didn't know how bad that blast was going to be." Tom had already started forward, and in a moment more Dick and Chester Waltham followed. But hardly had they done this when the Italian on the road suddenly let out another yell. "Boss! Boss! You-a stop!" he cried. "You-a stop queek! De two-a blas'! You-a stop!" and he danced up and down in added alarm. Those who had gone on paid no attention to him, and an instant later passed around a corner of the cliff. As they did this they saw a man on the open hillside waving his arm and shouting something they could not understand. "Tom, something is wrong----" began Sam, when, of a sudden, his words were swallowed up in a fierce roar and rumble that seemed to shake the very ground beneath them. They saw a flash of fire in an opening of the cliff, and the next instant a burst of flames and smoke was followed by a rain of rocks all around them! CHAPTER XXI NEWS OF BLACKIE CROWDEN It was a moment of extreme peril, and what made it seem worse was the fact that the Rovers and the others could do nothing to save themselves. Rocks, small stones and dirt flew all around them, striking with loud noises the hoods and other metal parts of the automobiles, and even landing in the tonneaus of the larger cars. "Hold up the robes! Protect yourselves with the robes!" yelled Dick, but before the ladies could heed his words the rain of rocks, small stones and dirt had come to an end. "Great Cæsar! that's a fine happening!" groaned Tom, who had been hit on the shoulder by a fair-sized stone. He looked quickly at those in the car with him. "Any of you hurt?" "I got hit in the head with something," returned Sam. "But it didn't hurt very much. How about you?" and he looked at Grace and at Tom's wife. "I--I don't think I am hurt any," faltered Grace, as she looked at some stones and dirt on the robe over her lap. "I'm all right," answered Tom's wife. "But, oh dear! something--I think it must have been a big stone--flew directly past my face!" "I hope the others got off as well as we did," remarked Tom. "Let us go and see," and, suiting the action to the word, he left the machine, followed by his brother. The second car had a dent in the hood made by a stone as big as Tom's fist. All those in the automobile had been hit by some smaller stones and also covered with loose dirt, but no one had been seriously injured, although Mrs. Laning declared that some of the dirt had entered her left ear and also her eye. "Let me look at that eye," cried Mrs. Stanhope, as soon as she had recovered from the shock of the second blast. And then she went to work on the optic, and presently Mrs. Laning declared that the eye was as well as ever. As Chester Waltham and his sister had been farther back on the road, around the turn of the cliff, they had not felt the effects of the second explosion excepting a slight shower of dirt which had covered the front of the runabout. But the young millionaire and his sister were greatly excited, and the former got out of his machine to run up to the Italian with the red flag and shake his fist in the man's face. "You--you rascal!" he spluttered. "What do you mean by sending us into such peril as this? You ought to be put into prison!" "I-a, I-a forget heem," faltered the foreigner helplessly. "I tink only one blas'. I forget two blas'," and he looked very downhearted. But this time the man who had been up on the hillside came running to the scene of the mishap, followed by several of the workmen. "Anybody hurt?" sang out the man, who was an American in charge of the blasting gang. "Nothing very serious," answered Dick. "But it might have been," he added sharply. "You fellows ought to be more careful." "I told Tony to keep everybody back for two blasts," answered the man. "Why didn't you stay back until you heard the second blast?" "He told us to go on," answered Tom. "I make mistake," cried the Italian. "You forgive, boss," and he looked pleadingly at Dick and the others. "Well, you don't want to make any more mistakes like that," returned Dick. "If we had gotten a little closer somebody might have been killed." "That's the second time you have failed to obey orders, Tony," said the gang master, sternly. "You go on up to the shanty and get your time and clear out. I won't have such a careless man as you around." At these words the Italian looked much crestfallen. He began to jabber away in a mixture of English and his own tongue, both to his boss and to our friends. But the boss would not listen to him, and ordered him away, and then he departed, looking decidedly sullen. "I can't do anything with some of these fellows," explained the man in charge of the blasting. "I tell them just what to do, and sometimes they mind me and sometimes they don't. I'm very sorry this thing happened, but I'm thankful at the same time that you got through as well as you did," and he smiled a little. "You're not half as thankful as we are," put in Sam, dryly. "I hope there is no damage done to your cars, but if there is I'm willing to pay for it," went on the man. "A few dents, but I guess that is all," answered Dick, after a look at both the car he was driving and the one run by his brother. "We'll let those go, for we are on a tour and have no time to waste here." "All right, sir, just as you say. But here is my card; I don't want to sneak out of anything for which I'm responsible," continued the man. "If you find anything wrong later on you let me know and I'll fix it up with you." "We ought to sue this fellow for damages!" cried Chester Waltham, wrathfully. "It's an outrage to treat us like this." "Were you hurt in any way?" asked the man, quietly. "We got a lot of dirt and stones on the runabout," growled Waltham. "Oh, Chester! don't quarrel over the matter," entreated his sister, in a low tone. "The man didn't want to do it." "Oh, these follows are too fresh," grumbled the young millionaire. "The authorities ought to take them in hand," and then he reëntered his runabout, looking in anything but a happy mood. "Do you think we can go ahead on this road now?" asked Dick, after a few more words had passed between the Rovers and the man who had the blasting in charge. "I think so," was the reply. "Just wait a few minutes and I'll have my gang of men clear a way for you." He was evidently a fair and square individual who wanted to do the right thing in every particular, and the Rovers could not help but like him. "It was all that Italian's fault," remarked Sam to Tom, while they were waiting for the road to be cleared of the largest of the rocks. "If he had kept us back as he was ordered to do there would have been no trouble." "He looked mighty mad when he went off," was Tom's answer. "If that fellow in charge here doesn't look out, that chap may put up some job on him." Inside of ten minutes the man in charge of the blasting told them they could go ahead, and so on they went as before, with Tom again in the lead. As they passed by they saw numerous places along the face of the cliff where other blasting had taken place. The man had explained that the work was being done by the contractors in order to widen the road in that vicinity. About a mile and a half beyond the cliff, nestling in the midst of a number of pretty farms, they came to the town of Fernwood, the place at which they were to stop for their midday meal. They had the name of the leading hotel on their list, and found the hostelry a fairly large and comfortable one. "I think we'll want a good washing up after that experience," remarked Dick, when the automobiles had been placed in the hotel garage. "My! but that was a narrow escape!" and he shuddered at the recollection. "You fellows were mighty easy with that man," observed Chester Waltham. "He ought to have been made to suffer for his carelessness." "Well, if you want to sue him, Waltham, you go ahead and do it," said Dick somewhat sharply. He was beginning to like the young millionaire less and less the more he came in contact with him. A table had been reserved for the entire party, and soon the well-cooked meal put even Chester Waltham in better humor. Now that the danger from the blast was a thing of the past, they could afford to smile over the somewhat thrilling experience. "Maybe after this it would be a good idea to ride with the tops up," said Tom. "Only we'd have to make them stone proof as well as rainproof," and at this remark there was a general smile. "Remember, Tom, I'm to be at the wheel this afternoon," announced Sam, who thus far had not had much chance to do any steering on the trip. "All right, little boy, you for the pilot act!" returned his fun-loving brother, gaily. "But remember what the girls told you--no speeding. The law in this state is four and one-eighth miles an hour, except on turning corners, where it is two and one-sixteenth miles," and at this little joke there was a titter from the girls. As it was so warm during the middle of the day, it had been decided that they should not proceed on their tour until about three o'clock. This gave the ladies a chance to rest themselves, something which was particularly satisfying to Mrs. Stanhope and Mrs. Laning. "I think I'll take a look around the town," said Tom, after the ladies had gone to one of the upper rooms. "Will you go along?" and he looked enquiringly at his brothers and Chester Waltham. "I am going to write a letter to dad," answered Dick. "I think I'll write a letter myself and enjoy a smoke," came from the young millionaire. "I'm with you, Tom," returned his younger brother. "Let's go out and see if we can't capture a nice box of chocolates for the girls." Tom and Sam were soon on the way. The main street of Fernwood contained less than four blocks of stores, and there was a cross street with half a dozen other establishments. But the place was a railroad center and, consequently, was of quite some importance. Having walked up and down the main street, and procured a box of chocolates and a few other things, the two Rovers wandered off in the direction of the railroad station. A train had just come in, and they watched the passengers alight and then others get aboard. They were particularly interested in the discomfiture of a fat traveling salesman who came puffing up on the platform, a suitcase in each hand, just in time to see the train depart. The fat man was very angry, but this availed him nothing. "It's a shame! a shame!" howled the traveling salesman, as he threw his suitcases down in disgust. "I know that train left at least two minutes ahead of time," he stormed to the station master. "You're wrong there, mister," was the ready answer. "She was a minute late." "Nonsense! Nonsense!" stormed the disappointed individual. "I tell you she left ahead of time. I ought to sue the railroad company for this," and he shook his head savagely. "Gosh! we are up against people who want to sue everybody," was Sam's remark. "That fellow ought to join Chester Waltham, and then they could hire one lawyer to do the whole business." "I might have been here five minutes ago if I hadn't been a fool," stormed the fat salesman, as he looked for comfort at the two Rovers. "That comes from trying to be accommodating. I was headed for this place when down there at the Ludding House I met a fellow who wanted to know how to get to Stockbridge. He stuttered so that it took me about five minutes to find out what he wanted." "Stuttered, did he?" questioned Tom, curiously. "He sure did! He had an awful stutter with a funny little whistle in between. I wish I hadn't waited to listen to him. I might have had that train, confound it!" went on the fat salesman, pulling down his face. "Did you say that fellow stuttered and whistled?" broke in Sam eagerly. "He certainly did." "Will you tell me what kind of a looking man he was?" "Sure!" answered the salesman, and then started to give as good a description of the individual as his recollection would permit. "It must have been Blackie Crowden!" cried the youngest Rover, before the man had finished. "I don't know what his name was," said the salesman. "We want to catch that man the worst way," went on Sam. "Have you any idea where we can find him?" "He asked me the way to Stockbridge, so I suppose he was going there," was the reply. "Where is Stockbridge?" "It's down on the road past the Ludding House. It's about five miles from here." "Do you suppose the man was going to walk it?" "I don't know about that. You must remember I was in a hurry to catch the train. Hang the luck! I wish I hadn't stopped to talk to that man," went on the fat salesman. "And I'm very glad that you did stop to talk to him," returned Sam. He looked at his brother. "Come on, Tom, let us see if we can find Blackie Crowden." CHAPTER XXII ON THE TRAIL The Ludding House was on the side street of the town, about three blocks from the hotel at which our friends were stopping. When the two Rovers arrived there they found the dining-room had just closed and only two men and an elderly woman were in sight. "We are looking for a man who was around here--I think his name was Blackie Crowden," said Sam. "He is a man who stutters very badly." "Oh, yes, I remember that fellow," returned one of the men who worked around the hotel, "He was here for lunch." "Can you tell me where he is now?" "No, I cannot." "That man who stuttered so terribly said something about going to Stockbridge," put in the woman. "Perhaps he was going there." "On foot?" "I don't think so. Most likely he took the stage. That left about ten minutes ago." "Was the man alone?" asked Tom. "I think he was, although I am not sure. He came in during the lunch hour and after that I saw him talking to a salesman who had been staying here--a man who just went off on the train." "You mean a man who went off to catch the train," grinned Tom. "He didn't get it, and he's as mad as a hornet on that account." The two Rovers asked several more questions and found out that the stage which left Fernwood twice a day passed through Stockbridge on its way to Riverview, six miles farther on. "They used to use horses," explained the hotel man, "but last year Jerry Lagger got himself an auto, so he makes the run pretty quick these days." "Come on, Sam, let's get one of our autos and follow that stage," cried Tom, and set off on a run for the other hotel, quickly followed by his brother. They burst in on Dick just as the latter was posting the letter which he had written to their father. "Say! that would be great if it was Blackie Crowden and we could capture him," cried Dick, on hearing what they had to say. "You get the auto ready while I tell the others where we are going." "It's a pity Stockbridge and Riverview are not on our regular tour," was Sam's comment. "Oh, it's just as well," answered Tom. "We may have lots of trouble with this fellow Crowden, and it will be just as well if the girls and the ladies are not in it." One of the touring cars was quickly run to the front of the hotel, and a moment later Dick, who had rushed upstairs to explain matters to the others, came out and joined his brothers. Tom was at the wheel, and he lost no time in speeding up the car, and on they went along the dusty road in the direction of Stockbridge. "I do hope they catch that fellow and get back Mr. Sanderson's money," was Grace's comment, as she watched the departure of the touring car out of one of the upper windows of the hotel. "What's it all about?" asked Ada Waltham, who had not been present when Dick had burst in on the others. She was quickly told and then asked: "Why didn't they take my brother along with them?" "I don't know, I am sure, Ada," answered Grace. "Perhaps he wasn't around." "He was down in the writing-room with Dick." "Well, I am sure I don't know why he isn't with them," was the reply. "I don't think they are treating Chester just right," retorted the rich girl, rather abruptly, and then left the room with her nose tilted high in the air. "What a way to act!" murmured Nellie. "I am afraid that sooner or later we will have some sort of rupture with the Walthams," was Dora's comment. She gave a little sigh. "Too bad! I should hate to have anything happen to spoil this tour." "Well, I don't think the boys treat Chester Waltham just right," returned Grace, somewhat coldly. "They treat him as if he were a stranger--an outsider," and then she, too, left the room, leaving her sister and Dora to gaze at each other questioningly. Along the dusty road sped the touring car, Tom running as rapidly as safety would permit. Soon Fernwood was left far behind and they began to ascend a slight hill. Presently they came to a crossroad, and here they had to stop to study a much-faded signboard, so as to decide which was the proper road to take. Even then, as they continued their way, they were all a little doubtful. "That signboard was so twisted it didn't point right down this road," was Sam's comment. "It would be just like some boys to twist it out of shape just for the fun of sending folks on the wrong road." "Well, I played a joke like that myself, once," confessed Tom. "Then if we are on the wrong road on account of some boys' tricks, Tom, you'll simply be getting paid back for what you did," returned his older brother. Half a mile more was covered, and then the road grew rapidly worse. Tom had slowed down, and was just on the point of stopping when a low hissing sound reached the ears of all. "Good-night!" was Tom's comment. "What is it, Tom, a puncture?" queried Sam. "Oh, no, it's only a gas well trying to find its way to the surface of the ground," was the dry comment. "Everybody out and to work!" They leaped to the ground and soon saw that Sam's conjecture was correct. A sharp stone had cut into one of the front shoes, making a hole about as large in diameter as a slate pencil. "Might know a thing like this would happen just when we were in a hurry," grumbled Dick. "Never mind, now is our time to make a record," came cheerfully from Sam. He glanced at his watch. "Four minutes after two. Come on, let us see how quickly we can get that new tire on." All threw off their coats and caps and set to work in the shade of some trees. While one jacked up the car, another worked to get off the damaged shoe and inner tube. In the meanwhile, the third got ready another shoe with an inner tube, and thus working hand in hand the three got the new tire in place and pumped up in less than ten minutes. While Dick and Sam were putting away the tools, Tom walked a bit ahead on the road. He looked around a turn, and then came back much crestfallen. "Well, I'm paid back for monkeying with those road-signs years ago," he announced. "The fellows who fixed that sign some distance behind us have got one on me. This is nothing but a woods road, and ends in the timber right around the bend." "Which means that we have got to turn back and take the other road," put in Sam, quickly. "That's it! Some fun turning around here," was Dick's comment. "It's about as narrow as it was on that road where they were doing the blasting." "Oh, I guess I can make it," answered Tom; and then all got in the car once again. By going ahead and backing half a dozen times, Tom at last managed to get the touring car headed the other way. Then he put on speed once more and they raced off to where they had made the false turn. But all this had taken time and as a consequence, although they ran along the other highway at a speed of nearly forty miles an hour, they saw nothing of the auto-stage which had gone on ahead. "I guess this is Stockbridge," was Dick's comment, a little later, as they came in sight of a straggling village. Several buggies and farm wagons were in sight and likewise a couple of cheap automobiles, but nothing that looked like a stage. "Has the auto-stage from Fernwood got in yet?" questioned Sam of a storekeeper who sat in a tilted chair under the wooden awning of his establishment. "Yes, it got in some time ago," was the drawled-out reply of the storekeeper. "Then has it gone on to Riverview?" queried Dick. "Reckon it has, stranger." "Do you know if any passengers got off here?" asked Tom. "Old Mrs. Harrison got off." "Anybody else?" "I didn't see anybody else,--but then I wasn't watchin' very closely," explained the storekeeper. The only other persons in sight besides the storekeeper were two children, too small to be questioned about the stage passengers. The Rovers looked at each other questioningly. "Might as well go right through and follow that stage," said Dick. "If he is on board, there is no use of letting him get away. If he isn't, we can come back here and look for him." The others deemed this good advice, and in a moment more they left Stockbridge at a rate of speed which made the storekeeper leap up from his comfortable chair to gaze after them in amazement. "Some of them speeders," he murmured to himself. "If they don't look out they'll be took in for breakin' the law." For a mile or more the road outside of Stockbridge was fairly good. Beyond, it grew poorer and poorer, and Tom had to reduce speed once more for fear of another puncture, or a blowout. As they sped along the highway all the youths kept a sharp lookout for Blackie Crowden, but no one came in sight who answered in the least to the description of that individual. "I'm sure I'd know him if I saw him," said Sam, who had studied a copy of the man's photograph. "So would I," answered Tom. "He's got a face that is somewhat unusual;" and to this Dick agreed. On and on they went, the road now being little more than a country lane. Here the dust was about six inches deep, and a big cloud floated behind the machine. "Almost looks as if we were on the wrong road again," observed Dick. But hardly had he spoken when they came out to another crossroad. Here a signboard pointed to the left, and the highway was as good as any they had yet traveled. "Only one mile more!" cried Sam. "It won't take long to cover that," answered Tom, and then turned on the power, and in less than two minutes more they were approaching the center of Riverview, a fair-sized town located on the stream which gave it its name. "There is the auto-stage, drawn up in front of the hotel," announced Sam. "Yes. And it's empty," answered Dick. The driver of the auto-stage was at the town pump getting a drink of water. He looked at the three Rovers curiously as they confronted him. "Did I have a passenger that stuttered?" he repeated in answer to their question. "I sure did have such a fellow. Why, he stuttered wo'se than any man I ever heard. And he whistled too. Awful funny. Why, I had all I could do to keep from laughin' in his face." "We want to find that man very much and right away," announced Dick. "Will you let us know where you let him off?" "That's a funny thing, mister," announced the auto-stage driver. "You see, after we left Stockbridge I didn't have nobody in but that man. He paid me the fare to this place before I started. Then when we was about half-way here I looked around in the back of the stage and, by gum! he was gone." "Gone!" came from the three Rovers. "Yes, sir, he was gone. I looked back and there he stood on the side of the road. As soon as he saw that I saw him, he waved his hand to me and disappeared." CHAPTER XXIII BACK AT ASHTON The three Rovers listened in astonishment to what the auto-stage driver had to say concerning the sudden disappearance of Blackie Crowden. "Then he must have jumped from the stage while you were running," remarked Dick. "That's just what he did do, mister. And he took some chances, too, believe me, for I wasn't runnin' at less than twenty miles an hour." "Did he have any baggage with him?" questioned Tom. "He had a small handbag, that's all." "Would you remember the place where he jumped off?" came from Sam, eagerly. "Yes, it was on the road back of here--just before you turn into this highway." "You mean the road that was so thick with dust?" remarked Tom. "That's the place. He jumped off at a spot where the bushes are pretty thick, and there are three trees standin' close together just back of the bushes." "I think I know that place," said Dick. "There is a small white cottage on the hillside just behind it." "You've struck it," answered the stage driver. "I reckon as how he was goin' to call on somebody at the cottage. But why he didn't ask me to stop is a mystery. Why! he might have broken a leg gettin' off that way." "That man is a criminal, and he did it to throw you off his track," announced Sam. "Do you know what I think?" he continued to his brothers. "I think Blackie Crowden must have gotten on to the fact that we were at Fernwood, and made up his mind to clear out as soon as possible. Then he got afraid that we might question folks, including this stage driver, and so jumped from the auto-stage to throw us off his trail, provided we should follow the stage." "I guess you have struck the nail on the head, Sam," answered his oldest brother. "But come on, let us see if we can find some trace of him." And in less than a minute more they had turned their machine around and were heading for the spot mentioned to them by the stage driver. It was only a short run, and soon they halted beside the bushes hedging in three tall trees. Eagerly they looked around in all directions, but not a soul was in sight. "I'm going up to the farmhouse," announced Sam. "And I'll go with you," added Dick. "Tom, you stay down here and take a look around. If you see anything of him blow the auto horn three times." At the farmhouse the two Rovers found themselves confronted by an elderly man and his wife, who looked at them rather curiously. "No, there hasn't been anybody around here so far as I know," announced the farmer. "We haven't had a visitor for several days." "I was out to the well about five minutes ago," put in his wife, "and if anybody had come up to the house or the barn I'd have seen him." "The fellow we are after is a criminal," explained Dick, "so if you don't mind we'll take a look around for him." "A criminal!" cried the farmer. "Say, that's bad! Certainly look around all you please, and I hope if he is anywhere near you'll catch him. I'd go around with you myself, only I can't very well on account of this rheumatism of mine." The two Rovers walked around the cottage and the out-buildings but found not the least trace of Blackie Crowden. Then, rather crestfallen, they returned to the automobile. "Perhaps there's some mistake and it wasn't Crowden at all," was Sam's comment. "Well, it was a man who stuttered, anyway, and the general description fitted Crowden," answered his brother. When they reached the automobile, they found Tom gazing curiously at a piece of newspaper which he had picked up from the ground. It was rather crumpled, as if it had been used for wrapping purposes. "See anything of him, Tom?" asked Dick. "No," was the answer. "But look here. Do either of you recognize this print?" He held out the paper, which was the lower half of a newspaper page. Part of this was devoted to reading matter and the rest to advertisements. "Why, sure! I know that paper," cried Dick. "See that advertisement of The Russel Department Store and that advertisement of Betts' Shoe Store? That's a part of the _Knoxbury Weekly Leader_." "That's just what it is!" ejaculated Sam. "Where did you get that paper, Tom?" "Found it right here beside the bushes. It looks as if it had been used to wrap something in." "Then that proves two things," announced Dick, flatly. "One is that the man who stutters was really Blackie Crowden, for who else could have been here with something wrapped in a Knoxbury newspaper? And the other thing is that he did as the stage driver said--left that stage somewhere near here." "Right you are, Dick," returned his youngest brother, "but that doesn't answer the question--where is he now?" "I think he got on to the fact that we were in Fernwood, and that it was his business to get out just as quickly as he could," said Tom. "And if that is true it is more than likely that he is a good distance away from here by now and keeping to side roads where he thinks he will not be followed." "But what brought him to Fernwood in the first place?" questioned Sam. "Give it up. Of course, he may have friends or relatives here. But I don't know how we are going to find out the truth about that, and what good will it do us if we do?" A half hour was spent in that vicinity, the boys tramping up and down the road and through the fields and woods looking for some trace of the missing man. Then they returned to Fernwood. "I'm going down to the post-office to post our letters," announced Dick. "I'll see if the postmaster knows anything about Crowden." The postmaster of Fernwood was a young man and glad enough to give what information he could when he heard what Dick had to say. "Yes, that man was here several times," he remarked. "He seemed very anxious to get some letters, and he posted several letters himself, although whom they were addressed to I don't know." "You haven't any idea where he was stopping?" "Not the slightest." And this was all the postmaster could tell them. "No use of our staying here any longer," announced Tom, when the boys had rejoined the others at the hotel. "I guess Crowden just came to this out-of-the-way place to get and send mail." "Don't you think he'll come back, thinking there'll be some letters for him?" questioned his wife. "We'll take care of that," was the reply. "We'll notify the local authorities and also the postmaster, so if Crowden turns up again he'll be arrested at once;" and this matter was attended to before they left the town. Chester Waltham grumbled somewhat because the Rovers had not taken him along on the trip to Riverview, but the three brothers paid little attention to this, although Sam showed that he was rather anxious because of the way in which Grace stood up for the brother of her seminary chum. It had been planned that the tour from Valley Brook to the west should be taken through Ashton, so one morning a few days later found the whole party in the old college town. "Too bad that Brill and Hope are both closed for the season," remarked Dora. "We might have met some of our old friends." "Well, it doesn't make much difference to me," grinned back Sam. "It seems like only yesterday since I graduated." "I am glad my school days are over," announced Ada Waltham. "I never did care for studying." Before proceeding farther, the Rovers had decided to call on the Sandersons, so they went away from the hotel at Ashton, leaving the Walthams behind. A letter had been sent ahead to Minnie, so she was not much surprised at their arrival. Her appearance, however, shocked them greatly. From looking round and ruddy her face had taken on a pale and careworn look. "We are having all sorts of bad luck this year," she said, in answer to an inquiry of Dora, and while the boys had gone off to find Mr. Sanderson, who was at the barn. "First came the loss of that money. Then father was taken sick, and now he tells me that the crops this year are not going to be nearly as good as usual." "That is certainly too bad, Minnie," said Dora, sympathetically. "I wish we could do something to help you." She paused for a moment. "I suppose you hear from Songbird occasionally?" "Oh, yes, he writes to me regularly. He is hard at work, and last week he sent father a check for one hundred dollars. This, of course, is a good deal of money for the poor fellow to scrape together, but it isn't much towards four thousand dollars." "It certainly is too bad about the crops not being good," said Nellie, who, being the daughter of a farmer, knew exactly what such a calamity means to the average man who depends on the soil for his living. "Father wouldn't mind it so much if it was not for this interest on the mortgage. You see he had expected to pay the whole amount off and that, of course, would stop the interest. Now he has to pay the usual amount, two hundred and forty dollars a year, which, you see, is twenty dollars a month. It worries him a good deal." "Did you say Songbird sent him a hundred dollars?" questioned Grace, curiously. "Yes. It was money he had earned and some that his folks had given him. I am glad to say father didn't think much of accepting it at first," added Minnie, her face brightening a little. "But poor John urged it, so that at last he took it and sent it over to the bank." "Then I suppose Songbird and your father are on fairly good terms now," remarked Dora. "No, I am sorry to say that is not true, Dora. At first father seemed to get over it, but lately he has been as bitter as ever. You see, his sickness, and the bad crops, and the interest money to be paid on the mortgage, worry him a great deal, and he takes it all out on poor John. He sticks to it that John should have been more careful while he was carrying such a large amount." Minnie turned her face away and two tears stole down her cheeks. "It's a shame--an awful, burning shame! But what in the world am I to do?" "It surely is too bad, Minnie," said Dora, kindly, placing her arm around the girl's waist, while Nellie and Grace looked on sympathetically. "If we could help you at all we would do it. We have some news of Blackie Crowden, and the others have gone out to tell your father about it," and then she related what had occurred during the stop at Fernwood. "Oh! if only they could find that fellow and get back the money!" sobbed Minnie. "But maybe the most of it has been spent," she added, dolefully. "Oh, let us hope not!" cried Nellie. "He couldn't spend any such amount as that in so short a time." "He might if he drank and gambled it away," put in her sister. "Oh, wouldn't it be too bad if they did catch this Blackie Crowden and then found that he had squandered all that money!" CHAPTER XXIV AT THE FESTIVAL While Dora and her cousins were talking to Minnie the others had sought out Mr. Sanderson, who was down in the barn superintending the stowing away of some grain. The farmer listened with interest to what they had to tell him about Blackie Crowden, but shook his head dolefully. "I'm pretty well satisfied that they'll never get that money back for me now," he announced. "A fellow of that character would use up cash about as fast as he could lay hands on it." "Well, let us live in hopes," returned Dick, not knowing what else to say. The farmer asked them about their tour, and said he trusted that they would have a good time. Then Sam ventured to mention Songbird. "Better not talk to me about that young man," declared Mr. Sanderson, drawing down the corners of his mouth. "He may mean well enough, but he's not my kind, and I've told Minnie she had better stop having him call and also stop writing to him." "Oh, Mr. Sanderson! I think you are doing our chum an injustice," cried Sam. "It wasn't his fault that he was robbed of that four thousand dollars." "Humph! That's as how you look at it," grumbled the farmer. "I've said what I think, and I'll stick to it." And nothing that the Rovers could say would alter his decision in this matter. "Oh, I'm so sorry for Minnie I really don't know how to express myself," were Dora's words, when the party were once more on the way to the Ashton hotel. "If her father compels her to give up Songbird it will just about break her heart." "I don't believe she's the one to give up Songbird," answered Sam. "She isn't that kind of girl," and he looked at Grace. But her eyes at that moment were turned in another direction. He followed the look and saw that she was gazing at Chester Waltham, who, with his sister, had driven their car to meet the others. "There is one thing about this whole matter that worries me," said Dick, "and that is that when they catch this Blackie Crowden--and I think they'll land on the fellow sooner or later--most of the money may be gone. There will be some satisfaction in placing such a rascal behind the bars, but that won't give Mr. Sanderson his cash back nor lift that mortgage." "We've just got news and we thought we would let you know about it," cried Ada Waltham, as the runabout came to a standstill close to the other automobiles. "There is to be a grand festival at Larkinburg this evening, and if it is not necessary to stay in Ashton to-night we might as well go to that place and attend the festival. I received a letter at the Ashton post-office from two girls who used to go to Hope, and they are to be at the affair, and they write that it will be well worth attending." "Oh, yes, let us go to Larkinburg by all means!" cried Grace. "I know the two girls--Jennie Cross and Mabel Stanford. The festival will certainly be well worth while if they say so." "Let me see--how many miles is it to Larkinburg?" questioned Tom. "Only sixty, so we can make the run with ease if we start directly after lunch," answered Chester Waltham. The matter was talked over for a few minutes, and as a result it was decided to go ahead and make the town mentioned in ample time to attend the festival. "They are going to have a concert and some outdoor tableaux, with refreshments," said Grace. "Ada was telling me all about it." "Well, that will be much better than staying in Ashton doing nothing," returned Dora. "And, besides, we must be getting along on our trip. Dick says we are really a day behind in our schedule." During the stop at the Ashton hotel for lunch, Chester Waltham had been very attentive to Grace and had asked her if she did not wish to change places with his sister on the run to Larkinburg; but she had declined, offering some excuse which was far from satisfactory to the young millionaire. "I thought you were going to put in part of this tour with me," he had said, rather reproachfully. "Besides, if you will come in with me it will give Ada a chance to visit with the others." "Well, I'll ride with you some time," Grace had answered. "I want Ada to have as good a time as any of us." The long hours spent on the road had proved rather tiring to Mrs. Stanhope and Mrs. Laning, and when Larkinburg was reached they were glad enough to rest in a comfortable room which Dick engaged for them. "You young folks can go to the festival," said Mrs. Stanhope, with a smile. "We are going to stay here and go to bed early;" and so it was arranged. The festival was held in a large grove bordering a beautiful stream and located some distance from the center of the town. As soon as our friends had arrived they had called up the two former students of Hope, and it had been decided that these girls, along with their escorts, should join the others and all should attend the festival together. "We can easily pack the whole crowd in our three cars," announced Dick. "I can't carry any extra people in my runabout," complained Chester Waltham. "Of course, one of the fellows might stand on the running board, but----" "We'll take them, don't worry," answered Sam. "We've got some vacant seats, you know, and four extra won't count." The girls from Hope were a jolly pair and so were the two young men who accompanied them. All got in the Rovers' machines, and away they went, followed closely by the Waltham runabout. A parking space had been set aside, and there our friends found themselves surrounded by machines of all sorts, and a jolly, laughing crowd numbering several thousands of people. "Oh, how pretty!" burst from Grace's lips, as they strolled toward the place where the concert and the tableaux were to be given. A stage had been constructed among some trees and bushes with a background of the river, and here scores of lamps and lanterns twinkled forth. The seats were placed along a sloping bank, and soon the whole crowd was gathered to listen to the opening number of the concert. As soon as the machines were parked Chester Waltham, almost ignoring his sister, had devoted his attention to Grace, doing this while Sam was busy talking over some matters with his brothers. Waltham had walked over to the seats with Grace beside him, and now he saw to it that she was placed where he could talk to her with ease. This, of course, did not particularly suit Sam, but he was helpless in the matter and so made the best of it. The concert was a fine one and the tableaux, which were interspersed between the various musical numbers, were intensely interesting. "Certainly well worth attending," was Tom's comment, when that portion of the festival came to an end amid a loud clapping of hands. "And now for some refreshments," announced Dick. "Come on, let us hurry or the tables may all be filled," for some long tables decorated with lanterns had been set under the trees at one side of the grove. "My! but it is rather chilly here," was Grace's comment, when they were moving toward the tables. "I feel positively cold." "Didn't you bring your jacket?" questioned Sam. "Yes, but I left it in the auto." "I'll go and get it," he returned, and ran off to procure the garment. He found that more machines had come in, and it was some little while before he could locate their automobile and pick out the jacket. In the meanwhile, Chester Waltham, leaving his sister with the other girls from Hope, had gone on with Grace and seated her at one of the tables, with the others of the party opposite. There was but one vacant seat left next to Grace, and this the young millionaire appropriated. "I don't know what Sam will do when he gets here," remarked Grace, anxiously. "Oh, I guess he'll find a seat somewhere," answered Chester Waltham, coolly. The youngest Rover was rather surprised on getting back to find every seat filled and the young millionaire sitting beside the girl who was so dear to his heart, but he made no comment. He helped Grace don the jacket, and then stood back until there was a vacant seat at a table some distance away. "I think it was rather mean of Chester Waltham to appropriate that seat," whispered Nellie to Dora while they were being served. "I think so myself, Nellie," was the low reply. At last the festival came to an end, and all those in the crowd prepared to go home. "I hope you enjoyed your refreshments," said Sam, rather coolly, as he came up to Grace's side. "Why, yes, I enjoyed them very much," answered the girl. She looked at him rather pointedly. "Didn't you think the sandwiches and cake and other things were very nice?" "Nice enough," he grumbled. "Come on, let us get back to the hotel, I'm as tired as a dog," and he started to walk away, leaving the others to follow him. His words and the manner in which they were spoken rather nettled Grace, and she walked toward the automobiles in silence, with the others in front and behind her. But Chester Waltham remained at her side, and as they approached the machines he caught her by the arm. "Say, Grace, come on and take a ride with me," he half whispered. "It's a beautiful night. Come on, you don't want to go back to the hotel yet." "But what about Ada?" she questioned. "Oh, she can take your place in one of the other autos, can't she?" "I--I--suppose so," faltered Grace. She hardly knew how to go on. She did not wish particularly to take a ride with Waltham, and, at the same time, she was hurt over the way Sam had spoken to her. "See here, Sis," cried the young millionaire, "I am going to take Miss Laning back in my runabout. She says you can take her place with the Rovers." "Oh, all right, Chester," answered the sister. "Hope you have a nice time of it," she added to Grace. There was a large crowd down among the automobiles, and our friends had all they could do in the semi-darkness to get their machines out on the road in safety. "Where is Grace?" demanded Sam, as some of the others came up to him. He had just turned on the lights of both cars. "She is going to ride back with Chester," answered Ada Waltham. "You'll have to let me ride back with you," and she laughed lightly. "Oh, all right. Come ahead," returned the youngest Rover. He spoke as lightly as he could. He did not wish to let the others know his true feelings. There was a strange bitterness in his heart, and for the moment he wished that he had never come on this tour. CHAPTER XXV A CALL FOR ASSISTANCE Ada Waltham did all she could to make herself agreeable to Sam and the others, but the youngest Rover was in no mood for raillery, and on the way back to Larkinburg had but little to say. Chester Waltham had lost no time in assisting Grace into his runabout and in getting his car out of the congestion in the parking space. Then he put on speed, and soon the pair were whirled away out of the sight of the others. "It's a dandy night for a ride," was Tom's remark. There was some moonshine, and the stars glittered clear in the heavens overhead. "That is true, Tom," answered his wife, "but don't you think we had better get back to the hotel and go to bed? I heard Dick say something about a long day of it to-morrow." "Oh, yes, Nellie, we'll get back. It wouldn't be fair to go off and leave mother and Mrs. Stanhope alone." When they reached the hotel at Larkinburg the Rovers expected to find the Waltham runabout in the garage, and they were consequently somewhat surprised when they saw no sign of the machine. "We certainly couldn't have passed them on the road," observed Dick. He turned to his youngest brother. "You didn't see them, did you?" "No. They went on ahead," answered Sam, shortly; and his manner of speech showed that he was thoroughly out of sorts. Having placed the touring cars in the care of the garage keeper, the Rovers joined the others on the piazza of the hotel. Then Dora slipped upstairs to see if her mother and Mrs. Laning were all right. She found both of them sleeping soundly, and did not disturb them. Sam could not content himself with sitting down, and so lounged around in one place and another, and finally said he would go inside and write a letter to the folks at home. He was still writing when Tom came in to join him. "Sam, did Chester Waltham say anything about where he was going to take Grace?" asked Tom, as he sat down beside his brother. "No, he didn't say a word to me," was the short reply, and Sam went on writing. "Did Grace say anything?" "No." Tom said nothing for a moment, drumming his fingers on the writing table. At last he heaved something of a sigh. "Seems to me if they were going on a long ride they might have said something to us about it," he observed. "Nellie is rather worried." "Oh, I guess they've got a right to take a ride if they want to," came rather crossly from Sam. He finished his letter with a flourish, folded it, and rammed it into an envelope which he quickly addressed. "Oh, of course, but----" Tom did not finish, and as Sam, after stamping his letter, arose, he did the same. "I wonder if we had better stay up for them." "I think I'll go to bed." "Sam!" and Tom looked sharply at his younger brother. "Well, what's the use of staying up?" "A whole lot of use, Sam Rover, and you know it. If I were you I wouldn't let Chester Waltham ride over me." "Who says I am letting him ride over me?" retorted Sam; and now his manner showed that he was quite angry. "I say so," answered Tom, bluntly. "If you have got half the sand in you that I always thought you had, you wouldn't stand for it. All of us know how matters were going on between you and Grace. Now to let this fellow step in, even if he is a young millionaire, is downright foolish. If you really care for Grace it's up to you to go in and take her." "Yes, but suppose that she cares for Waltham and his money more than she cares for me?" asked Sam, hesitatingly. "Do you think Grace is the kind of a girl to be caught by money, Sam?" and now, as the two were in a deserted part of the hallway, Tom took his brother by both arms and held him firmly. "N--no, I--I can't say that exactly," faltered Sam. "But just the same, why does she favor him at all?" "Maybe it's because you haven't been as outspoken as you ought to be. It's one thing for a girl to know what you think of her, but just the same the average girl wants you to tell her so in plain words. Now, it may not be any of my business, but you know that I want you to be happy, and that I am unusually interested because of Nellie. It seems to me if I were you I'd go to Grace the first chance I had and have a clear understanding." "I--I can't go to her now. She's out with Waltham," stammered Sam. "Then hang around until they get back and see to it that you have a chance to talk with her before she goes to her room," returned Tom; and then, as some other people came up, the conversation had to come to an end. A half hour passed and Ada Waltham excused herself. "Chester and Grace must be having a fine ride," she observed on retiring, "otherwise they would have returned by this time." "Maybe they had a breakdown," observed Dick. "I've been told that some of the roads around here are far from good." "Oh, don't say that!" cried the girl. "Chester hates to have to make any repairs when he is alone. Time and again he has run to a garage on a flat tire rather than put another one on himself." Another half hour dragged by, and now Dora turned to whisper to Dick. "Don't you think we had better retire?" she asked. "I never supposed Grace was going to stay out as late as this." "No, we'll stay up," he answered. "Nellie has told Tom that she isn't going to bed until her sister gets back, so it won't do for us to leave them here on the piazza alone." "Mr. Rover! Telephone call for Mr. Rover!" came the announcement from a bellboy, as he appeared upon the piazza. "Which Mr. Rover?" demanded Sam, eagerly. "The party said any of 'em would do," answered the bellboy. "I'll go," said Sam, eagerly, before either of his brothers or their wives could speak. "All right, Sam. I'll follow in case you want me or any of the others," answered Tom. The telephone booths were located in the lobby of the hotel, and Sam was quickly shown to one of them. While he talked Tom stood by, but caught only a few words of what was said. "Hello!" "Oh, is this you, Sam?" came over the wire in Grace's voice. "I'm so glad! I have been trying to get somebody for the last ten minutes but they couldn't give me the hotel connection." "Where are you?" questioned the youth. "Has anything happened?" for the tone of the girl's voice indicated that she was very much agitated. "Oh, Sam! I want you or some of the others to come and get me," cried Grace. "The runabout has broken down, and I don't think Mr. Waltham can fix it. And we are miles and miles away from Larkinburg!" "A breakdown, eh? Why, sure, I'll come and get you, Grace. Where are you?" "I am at a farmhouse on the road between Dennville and Corbytown--the Akerson place. If you come, take the road to Dennville and then drive toward Corbytown. We'll hang a lantern on the stepping block, so you will know where to stop." "All right, Grace, I'll be there just as soon as I can make it," answered Sam; and then he added quickly: "You weren't hurt when the breakdown happened, were you?" "Not very much, although I was a good deal shaken up. Mr. Waltham had his face and his hand scraped by the broken wind-shield." "Well, you take good care of yourself, and I'll start right away," returned the youngest Rover, and after a few words more hung up the receiver. It did not take Sam long to acquaint the others with what had occurred, and then he ran down to the hotel garage to get out one of the touring cars. "Don't you think I had better go along?" asked Tom. "Chester Waltham may be in a fix and need assistance. And, besides, they may both be more hurt than Grace said." "Yes, I guess you'd better come," answered his brother. And soon, having received directions from the garage keeper as to how to get to Dennville, the pair were on the way. "How did Grace seem to be when you spoke to her?" questioned Tom, as Sam ran the car as rapidly as the semi-darkness of the night permitted. "She seemed to be all unstrung," was Sam's thoughtful reply. "Then the accident may have been worse than she admitted, Sam." "I hope not, but we'll soon see." And then, as a straight stretch of fairly good road appeared before them, Sam turned on the power and the touring car sped onward faster than ever. Inside of half an hour they reached Dennville, a sleepy little town, located in the midst of a number of hills. All the houses were dark and the stores closed up, and not a soul was in sight. They ran into the tiny public square and there found several signboards. "Here we are!" cried Sam. "Corbytown four miles this way," and he pointed with his hand. "We'll look at the other signboards first to see whether there is another road," answered his brother. But there was only the one, and so Sam turned the touring car into this, and they sped forward once more, but now at a reduced rate of speed, for the road was decidedly hilly and far from good. "What possessed Waltham to take such a road as this," remarked Tom, after they had passed a particularly bad spot. "Don't ask me!" was the reply. "It's no wonder he had a breakdown if he took this road on high speed." They were going up a long hill. At the top a large and well-kept farm spread out, and, beyond, the hill dropped away on a road that was worse than ever. "Hello! there's a light!" cried Tom, as they approached the house belonging to the farm. "I see it," answered his brother; and in a few seconds more they ran up to the horse-block and brought the touring car to a standstill, Sam, at the same time, sounding the horn. But the summons was unnecessary, for their approach had been eagerly looked for by Grace, and hardly had the machine come to a standstill when she flew out of the farmhouse to meet them. "Oh, I'm so glad you've come!" she burst out. "If you hadn't, I don't know what I should have done!" She was somewhat hysterical and on the verge of tears. "Are you sure that you're not hurt, Grace?" asked Sam, quickly; and as he spoke he caught her by one hand and placed an arm on her shoulder. "I--I don't think I am hurt, Sam," she faltered, and then looked rather tearfully into his face. "But it was an awful experience--awful!" and then as he drew a little closer she suddenly burst into a fit of weeping and rested her head on his shoulder. CHAPTER XXVI SAM FREES HIS MIND In spite of his fun-loving disposition, Tom Rover was a very wise young man, so as soon as he saw Grace resting on his brother's shoulder he promptly turned away, to interview the farmer and his wife who lived in the farmhouse and who had answered the girl's knock on their door. "I can't tell much about the accident," said Mr. Akerson. "Me and my wife were just goin' to bed when the young lady knocked on the door and begged us to take her in, and then asked if we had a telephone. She said she had been in an automobile breakdown, but she didn't give us many particulars, except to say that she thought the front axle of the machine was broken." "Well, a broken axle is bad enough," was Tom's prompt comment. "They are lucky that no necks were broken." "The poor girl was dreadfully shook up," put in Mrs. Akerson. "She just went on somethin' terrible. I had all I could do to quiet her at first." "Didn't the young man come here with her?" questioned Tom. "No. She said she had left him down on the road with the machine. She said he was all worked up over the accident." "I should think he would be," returned Tom, and said no more on the subject. Yet he thought it very strange that Chester Waltham had not accompanied Grace to the farmhouse and thus made certain that help was summoned. Tom and his brother had entered the sitting-room of the farmhouse. Next to it was a lit-up dining-room and to this Sam and Grace had walked, the latter between her sobs telling of what had happened. "Oh, Sam, it was dreadful!" cried Grace. "Mr. Waltham was so reckless. I couldn't understand him at all. When I said I would ride with him I supposed we were going right back to the hotel. But on the way he said it was too fine a night to go in yet, and begged me to go a little farther, and so finally I consented. Then he drove the car on and on, ever so many miles, until we reached Dennville." "But if you didn't want to go that far, Grace, why didn't you tell him?" "I did--several times. But he wouldn't listen to me. Of course, I didn't want to act rude, and when I told him to turn back he only laughed at me. Then, when we got to Dennville, and I told him that I positively would not go any farther, he said, 'Oh, yes, you will. We are going to have a good, long ride. I am going to make you pay up in full for not riding with me before.'" "The mean fellow!" murmured Sam. "I'd like to punch him for that." "Oh, but, Sam! that wasn't the worst of it," went on the girl; and now she blushed painfully and hung her head. "Then he started up on this side road and he ran the car as fast as ever. I was dreadfully scared, but he only laughed and told me to enjoy myself, and when the car bumped over some stones, and I was thrown against him, he put his arm around me and--and he did his best to kiss me!" "What!" "But I didn't allow it. I pushed him away, and when he laughed at me I told him that if he tried it again I would box his ears. Then, just after we had passed this place, he reached over and caught hold of me and tried to pull me toward him. Then I boxed him, just as I had said I would. That made him furious, and he put on a burst of speed, and the next minute there was a terrible bump and a crash, and both of us were almost thrown out of the car. The wind-shield was broken and also, I think, the front axle, and he was scratched in several places. Oh, it was awful!" And again Grace hid her face on Sam's shoulder. "Well, it served him right if he got hurt and if his runabout was ruined," was the youth's comment. He drew Grace closer to him than ever. "Then you didn't really care for him?" he whispered. "Oh, Sam, Sam! how can you ask such a question?" she murmured. "Because I didn't know. I thought---- You see, he--he is a millionaire, and----" "Why, Sam Rover! do you think that money would make any difference to me?" and now she raised her face to look him full in the eyes. "I am mighty glad to know it hasn't made any difference," he returned quickly; and then caught and held her tight once more. "I suppose you young men are goin' back to help the fellow with his busted machine," remarked Mr. Akerson to Tom. "I--I suppose so," returned Tom, slowly, and then looked toward Sam and Grace. "Oh, I don't want to go back!" cried the girl, quickly. "I want to return to the hotel in Larkinburg." "All right, I'll take you back, Grace," answered Sam. "If you say so, we'll leave Waltham right where he is." "I think it would be the right thing to do, Sam, under ordinary circumstances," was the reply. "But then we mustn't forget about Ada. She will be greatly worried if I come back and let her know that we left her brother out here on the open road with a broken machine." "I'll tell you what we'll do, Grace. You stay here and Tom and I will go down and see what Waltham has got to say for himself." He turned to the people of the house. "She can stay here a little longer, can't she? We'll make it all right with you." "Certainly she can stay," answered Mr. Akerson. "And there won't be anything to pay outside of the telephone toll, and that's only twenty cents." "Please don't stay too long," implored Grace, as the two Rovers hurried away. "Not a minute longer than is necessary," returned Sam. On the way down the hill to where the accident had occurred Sam gave his brother the particulars of the affair, not mincing matters so far as it concerned Chester Waltham. "I was thinking that that was about the way it would turn out," was Tom's dry comment. "With so much money, Waltham thinks he can do about as he pleases. I reckon now, Sam, you are sorry you didn't talk to Grace before." "I sure am, Tom!" was the reply, and Sam's tones showed what a weight had been taken from his heart. "I'm going to fix it up with Grace before another twenty-four hours pass." "That's the way to talk, boy! Go to it! I wish you every success!" and Tom clapped his brother on the shoulder affectionately. Even though all the lights were out, it did not take the two Rovers long to locate the disabled runabout, which rested among some stones on the side of the highway. As Grace had stated, the wind-shield was a mass of smashed glass, and the front axle had broken close to the left wheel. "They can certainly be thankful they didn't break their necks," was Tom's comment, as he walked around the wreck. "Waltham doesn't seem to be anywhere around here," returned Sam. "Wonder where he went to?" Both looked up and down the highway, and presently saw a figure approaching from down the road. It proved to be Chester Waltham. He was capless and walked with a limp. "Hello! Who are you?" challenged the young millionaire, and then as he drew closer he added: "Oh, the Rovers, eh? Did Grace get you on the 'phone?" "She did," answered Sam, and then added sharply: "You've made a nice mess of it here, haven't you?" "Say, I don't want any such talk from you," blustered the rich young man. Evidently he was in far from a good humor. "I'll say what I please, Waltham, without asking your permission," continued the youngest Rover. "You had no right to bring Miss Laning away out here against her wishes. It was a contemptible thing to do." "You talk as if you were my master," retorted Chester Waltham. "This isn't any of your affair and you keep out of it." "We are perfectly willing to keep out of it if you say so, Waltham," broke in Tom. "We came down here merely to see if we could help you in any way. But I see your front axle is broken, and you will have to get the garage people to help you out with that." "Where's Grace?" asked the young millionaire. The subject of the broken-down runabout did not seem to interest him. "She is up at the farmhouse on the hill," answered Tom. "And we are going to take her back to the Larkinburg hotel in our auto," added Sam. "Oh, all right, then, go ahead and do it." "Do you want to ride with us?" questioned Tom. "I don't know that I do. I'll stay here and take care of my runabout. If you'll tell my sister that I'm all right, that is all I want." "Very well, just as you say," answered Tom. He took his brother by the arm. "Come on, Sam, there is no use of wasting time here." "I'll be with you in a minute, Tom," was the younger brother's reply. "You go on ahead, I want to say just a few words more to Waltham." "No use of your getting into a fight, Sam," returned Tom in a low voice. "There won't be any fight unless he starts it." Tom walked slowly up the road, and Sam turned back to where Chester Waltham had settled himself on the mud-guard of the broken-down runabout. "See here, Waltham, I want to say a few words more to you," began Sam, and his tone of voice was such that the young millionaire leaped at once to his feet. "I want to warn you about how you treat Miss Laning in the future." "To warn me!" repeated Chester Waltham, not knowing what else to say. "Exactly! Up at the farmhouse she told me all of what took place between you. She was all unstrung and quite hysterical. Now this won't do at all, and I want you to know it. After this if you are going to travel with us you've got to act the gentleman and treat her like a lady." "Humph!" "No 'humph' about it. I mean just what I say. If you don't behave yourself and don't treat her like a lady I'll--I'll----" "Well, what will you do?" sneered Chester Waltham. "I'll tell you what I'll do," and now Sam shook his finger in the young millionaire's face. "I'll give you the soundest thrashing you ever had in your life!" "Ah! do you mean to threaten me?" "I certainly do." "When it comes to a thrashing, maybe two can play at that game," observed the young millionaire; but it was plainly to be seen that Sam's decided stand had disconcerted him. "All right, Waltham, I'll be ready for you. But remember what I said. We came out here to have a good time, and I am not going to allow you to spoil it for Miss Laning or for anybody else." "Humph! you make me tired," sneered the rich young man. "Go on, I don't want to be bothered with you any longer. The whole bunch of you is too namby-pamby for me. I think my sister and I could have a much better time if we weren't with you." "As far as you personally are concerned, you can't leave us any too quickly to suit me," returned Sam. "Is that so? Well, I guess you can call it off then so far as my sister and I are concerned. But if you think, Rover, that you have seen the last of this affair you are mistaken," went on the young millionaire, pointedly. "You think you are going to run things to suit yourself, don't you? Well, I'll put a spoke in your wheel--a spoke that you never dreamed of! You just wait and see!" and then Chester Waltham turned back and sat down once more on his wrecked runabout, leaving Sam to walk up the road to rejoin Tom in a very thoughtful mood. CHAPTER XXVII A TELEGRAM FROM NEW YORK It was not until the small hours of the morning that the two Rovers and Grace returned to the hotel in Larkinburg. They found Dick and his wife and Nellie anxiously awaiting their return. "Oh! I am so glad that you weren't hurt," cried Nellie, as she embraced her sister. "I was so worried," and she hugged her again and again. "You can rest assured, Nellie, that I'll never go out with Chester Waltham again! Never!" cried Grace. "Come on, I am going to my room. Good-night, everybody," she called back, and in another moment had retired from their view, followed by her sister. "Why, Sam! what does it mean?" cried Dora, as she looked on in bewilderment. "It means that Chester Waltham ought to have had a good thrashing," declared the youngest Rover; and then he and Tom told of what had occurred. "I guess it will be a good job done if we part company with the Walthams," remarked Dick, after the subject had been discussed for some time. "He is not of our class, even if he has money." "I feel rather sorry for his sister," added Dora. "Although once in a while she shows the same haughtiness of manner that Chester displays. It's too bad, too, for they might be really nice company." With so much excitement going on, it was small wonder that the Rover party did not come downstairs that morning until quite late. Sam was the first to show himself, he being anxious to know how Grace had fared. "Here is a letter for your brother, Mr. Rover," said the clerk at the desk, when Sam approached him. "It was left here by that Mr. Waltham." "Hand it over," returned the youth, and then added: "Did Mr. Waltham bring his wrecked runabout to the garage here?" "No, sir, he just came here, got his sister, paid his bill, and went off." "Oh, I see." Sam could not help but show his surprise. "I'll take this letter to my brother," he added, and hurried off. The communication was a short one, yet the Rovers and the others read it with interest. In it Chester Waltham said that in consideration of the way he had been treated by some members of the party he considered it advisable for his sister and himself to continue their tour separately. He added that he trusted Miss Laning did not feel any ill effects because of the breakdown on the road. "And just to think that Ada went off without saying good-bye!" cried Grace, when she saw the letter. "I didn't think she would be quite so mean as that." "Probably she took her brother's part. She usually did," returned her sister. "Well, I think we are well rid of them." "So do I," put in Tom. "Personally I don't care if we never see them again." "He said he was going to put a spoke in our wheel," mused Sam. "I wonder if he'll dare to do anything to harm us?" "Oh, it's likely he was talking through his hat," returned Dick; but for once the oldest Rover was mistaken. Now that our friends were by themselves there seemed to be a general air of relief. The only one of the party who was rather quiet was Grace, but Sam did everything he could to make it pleasant for her, and before nightfall she was as jolly as ever. The run during that day was through a particularly beautiful section of the country, and about one o'clock they stopped in a grove and partook of a lunch which had been put up for them at the Larkinburg hotel. Then they moved forward once again, with Dick and Tom at the steering wheels of the cars. "Still seventy-three miles to go if we want to make Etoria to-day," announced Dick, after consulting the guide book. "I'm afraid that will be quite a ride for you ladies," he added, turning to Mrs. Stanhope and Mrs. Laning. "Oh, yes, let us go on to Etoria by all means," pleaded Sam. "Any particular reason for going to that city?" asked Tom, quickly. "Yes, I've got a reason, but I'm not going to tell you," returned his younger brother. And then, as both Dick and Tom looked at him questioningly, he blushed and turned away. "Oh, go ahead. I think I can stand it," said Mrs. Stanhope, with a smile. "I am getting used to traveling," declared Mrs. Laning. "It's much more comfortable than I at first supposed it would be." Nightfall found them still ten miles from Etoria and Dick asked the others if they wished to stop anywhere along the way for supper. All declared, however, that they would rather keep on until the city was reached. "They tell me that they have got a dandy hotel there--something new," said Sam. "We ought to get first-class accommodations there." Etoria was a city of some fifty thousand inhabitants, with a long main street brightly lighted up. The new hotel was opposite a beautiful public park, an ideal location. Sam seemed to be in unusual haste to finish his supper, and immediately it was over he asked Grace if she would not take a walk with him. "We are going to do up the town, so don't worry if we get back a little late," he told Mrs. Laning, and then whispered something in her ear which made her smile and gaze at him fondly. They pursued their way along the main street of the town, and while doing so the youngest Rover kept his eyes on the various shops that were passed. At last they came to a large jewelry establishment and here he brought the girl to a halt. "It's open!" he cried. "That's what I call luck! I was afraid they would all be closed." Grace looked at the store, and at the display of jewelry in the window, and then looked at Sam. "I guess you know what it's going to be, Grace," he said rather tenderly, and looked her full in the eyes. "I want you to have just as good a one as Dora or Nellie." "Oh, Sam! I--I don't understand," she stammered. "It's an engagement ring. We are going in here and see what sort of rings this man has got. It looks like a reliable place." "Oh, Sam!" and now, blushing deeply, Grace clung to his arm. "An engagement ring?" "Sure! You ought to have had it long ago, then maybe we wouldn't have had any trouble." "There wasn't any trouble, Sam--at least, I didn't make any trouble," she repeated; and then, as he caught her arm and dragged her into the shop, she murmured: "Oh, I--I feel so funny to go into a store for a thing like that! Don't you think I had better wait outside?" "You can if you want to, after the jeweler has measured your finger, Grace. But what's the use of being so backward? As soon as we get back home you are going to be Mrs. Sam Rover, so you might as well get used to such things first as last." Fortunately for the young couple it was a very elderly man--quite fatherly in appearance--who came to wait on them. "A diamond ring?" he queried. "Why, certainly, I'll be pleased to show everything we have;" and then he measured Grace's finger, and brought forth several trays of glittering gems. Grace would have been satisfied with almost any of the rings, but Sam was rather critical and insisted upon obtaining a beautiful blue-white diamond which was almost the counterpart of the stone Dick had bestowed upon Dora. "Now you've got to promise to have this engraved by eight o'clock to-morrow morning," said the youngest Rover to the jeweler. "We are on an automobile tour and we can't wait any longer than that." And thereupon the shopkeeper promised that the order should be duly filled. "Oh, Sam, how extravagant you are!" murmured Grace, when the pair were returning to the hotel. "Why, that ring cost a dreadful lot of money." Her eyes were shining like stars. "It isn't a bit too good for such a girl as you," he declared stoutly, and then gave her hand a squeeze that meant a great deal. When they left Etoria the next morning Sam had the engagement ring tucked safely away in his pocket. He had confided in Dick, and the oldest Rover managed it so that that noon they stopped at a large country hotel and obtained the use of a private dining-room. This, Sam had decorated with flowers, and just before the meal commenced he slipped the engagement ring upon Grace's finger. "Oh, Sam! Oh, Grace!" shrieked Nellie when she saw the sparkling circlet on her sister's finger. "Oh! so that's what's going on, is it?" cried Dora, joyfully. "Grace, allow me to congratulate you," and then she kissed the girl and immediately afterward kissed Sam. Numerous other kisses and handshakes followed, and for the time being Sam and Grace were the happiest young people in the world. "Let us send telegrams home, announcing the affair," suggested the youngest Rover, after the meal was at an end. "I know dad, as well as Aunt Martha and Uncle Randolph, will be glad to hear of it." The telegrams were quickly prepared and sent off. In the messages Sam notified those at home where the touring party would be for the next ten days. After that several days slipped by quickly. The tourists had covered a good many miles and were now approaching the Mississippi River. The weather had been ideal, and not a single puncture or blowout had come to cause them trouble. Sam and Grace were much together, and, as the youngest Rover declared, "were having the time of their lives." "It's queer I don't get more word from New York," remarked Dick one evening, when they had reached a city which I shall call Pemberton. "Dad acknowledged that telegram of Sam's, but he didn't say a word about that Lansing deal or anything about the Bruno bonds." "Well, let us hope that no news is good news," returned Tom. "Anyway, I'm not going to worry until I know there is something to worry about." That evening came word from Valley Brook, stating that everything was going along well at the farm and that Mr. Anderson Rover was confining himself closely to business in New York. The Mississippi was crossed, and then the tourists headed in the direction of Colorado Springs. It was their intention to make the Springs the turning point of the trip, with a side trip by the cog railway to Pike's Peak. They would return by the way of Denver. Some days later found them in Topeka, where they had decided to rest up for a day or two. During that time only one short telegram had come from Mr. Anderson Rover, stating that the Bruno bonds had been sold at a fair profit, but that the Lansing deal was still uncertain. "We stand to win or lose quite a lot of money on that Lansing deal," Dick explained to Sam. "It's rather a peculiar affair. The whole thing is being engineered by a Wall Street syndicate." On the morning of the second day in Topeka, when Sam and Grace and some of the others had gone shopping, Dick heard one of the bellboys call his name. "Telegram," he said to Tom. "I hope this is from dad and that it contains good news." The telegram proved to be what is known as a Night Letter, and its contents caused the two Rovers much astonishment. The communication ran as follows: "Have been following up the Lansing deal closely. Affairs are getting rather clouded and I am afraid we may lose out. A new opposition has appeared, a combination headed by your former friend, Waltham. He is still in the West but his agents are working against us. He has also bought controlling interest in the Haverford deal. Evidently means to hit us as hard as possible. Will know more in a day or two and will let you know at once of any change in affairs. "ANDERSON ROVER." CHAPTER XXVIII CLOUDBURST AND FLOOD "I see it!" cried Tom. "That's the spoke Chester Waltham told Sam he would put in our wheel." "I guess you are right," returned his older brother. "Evidently Waltham is a meaner fellow than I took him to be. Just because Grace would not put up with his ungentlemanly attentions he evidently is going to do what he can to make trouble for us." "I don't understand what dad means by the Haverford deal," went on Tom, as he studied the telegram. "I thought that deal was closed long ago." "They thought of closing it, Tom, but at the last moment something went wrong and the men who were going into the matter withdrew. That put a large part of the burden on our shoulders. We have at least forty thousand dollars invested in it. Now, if Waltham has bought a controlling interest, as dad says, he will be able to swing it any way he pleases, just as he may be able to swing the Lansing deal, too." "How much money have we got locked up in that? The last I heard it was only about eight thousand dollars." "When I left, dad said he expected to put in another twelve thousand, which would make a total of twenty thousand dollars, Tom." "Phew! Then that makes a grand total of sixty thousand dollars in the two deals. Chester Waltham must have a lot of loose money, if he can jump into deals as big as those are at a moment's notice." "Oh, a young millionaire like Waltham can get hold of cash whenever he wants it," answered Dick. He ran his hand through his hair thoughtfully. "This looks bad to me. Perhaps I had better take a train back to New York without delay." "Oh, if you did that it would spoil the trip for Dora," protested his brother. "It's better to spoil the trip than to let Chester Waltham get the better of us." "Why not send a telegram asking if it will do any good for you to come home?" questioned Tom. And after a little discussion Dick decided to do this, and the telegram was sent without delay. A few hours later word came back that if Dick was needed his father would send for him. The stay in Topeka was extended to the best part of a week, for that night a furious rainstorm set in which lasted two days. The downpour was unusually heavy, and as a consequence many of the outlying roads became well-nigh impassable. During the last day of the storm Sam received a long letter from Songbird in which the would-be poet told of how he was working to make his way in the world and also earn some money that he might pay back the amount lost by Mr. Sanderson. He added that so far the authorities had been unable to find any further trace of Blackie Crowden. "It's too bad!" was Sam's comment, after he had read this communication. "Poor Songbird! I suppose he feels as bad as ever over the loss of that money." At last the sun once more broke through the clouds and the journey of the tourists was resumed. Close to the city the roads were in fairly good condition, but farther out they soon found evidences of the tremendous downpour of the days before. Deep gullies had been cut here and there, and occasionally they came across washed-out trees and brushwood. "We'll have to take it a bit slowly, especially after dark," remarked Dick. When they passed over some of the rivers they found the rushing waters reached almost to the flooring of the bridges; and on the second day out they found one bridge swept completely away, so that they had to make a detour of many miles to gain another crossing. "What a tremendous loss to some of these farmers," remarked Mrs. Laning, as they rolled past numerous cornfields where the stalks had been swept down and covered with mud. "I am glad to say we never had anything like this at Cedarville." "And we never had anything like it at Valley Brook either," returned Dick. "This is the worst washout I ever saw." At noon they stopped at a small town for dinner and there they heard numerous reports concerning the storm. In one place it had taken away a barn and a cowshed and in another it had undermined the foundations of several houses. "The water up to Hickyville was three feet deep in the street," said one man at the hotel. "The folks had to rescue people by boats and rafts. One man had four cows drowned, and up at Ganey Point a man lost all his pigs and two horses." The party had scarcely left that town when it began to rain again. The downpour, however, was for a time so light that they did not think it worth while to stop or to turn back. "We'll put the tops up," said Tom, "and maybe in a little while the clouds will blow away." But Tom's hopes were doomed to disappointment. The downpour was comparatively light for about an hour, but then, just as they were passing through a patch of timber, it suddenly came on with great fury. "Great Scott!" burst out Sam, as a gust of wind drove the rain under the automobile tops. "We'll have to put down the side curtains." "Right you are!" answered Dick; and then the machines were halted and all the curtains were lowered and fastened. But even this did not protect them entirely, for the wind drove the rain in between the numerous cracks of the covering. "How many miles to the next stopping place?" queried Nellie. "About thirty," answered Tom. "That is, if we go as far as we calculated to when we left this morning." "Oh, I don't see how we are going to make thirty miles more in such a storm as this!" cried her sister. "We'll be lucky to make any kind of stopping place," announced Dick, grimly. "Just listen to that!" There was a wild roaring of wind outside, and then came a flash of lightning followed by a deafening clap of thunder. "Oh! Oh!" came in a shriek from the girls; and involuntarily they placed their hands to their ears. "Richard, do you think it is safe to stay under the trees in such a storm as this?" questioned Mrs. Stanhope, fearfully. Before Dick could reply to this question there came more lightning and thunder, and then a crash in the woods as a big tree was laid low. "Oh, dear! Listen!" cried Nellie. "Suppose one of the trees should come down on the autos!" "That is what I was afraid of," added her mother. "I think we had better get out of here." "All right, if you say so," answered Dick. "I was only thinking about the awful wind. It's going to hit us pretty hard when we get out on the open road." The automobiles had drawn up side by side, so that those in one machine could converse with those in the other. Now Dick started up one of the touring cars and was followed a minute later by Tom, at the wheel of the other automobile. Once in the open air, those in the machines realized how furiously the wind was blowing and how heavily the rain was descending. The automobiles fairly shook and shivered in the blasts, and despite their efforts to keep themselves dry all those in the automobiles were speedily drenched. The downpour was so heavy that the landscape on all sides was completely blotted out. "Oh, Dick! what in the world shall we do?" gasped Dora, and it was plainly to be seen that she was badly frightened. "I'd turn in somewhere if I only knew where," answered her husband, trying his best to peer through the rain-spattered wind-shield. "I don't see anything like a house anywhere around, do you?" "No, I can't see a thing." Dick was running along cautiously, and now, of a sudden, he put on the brakes. Just ahead of him had appeared a flood of water, and how deep it was there was no telling. "Listen!" cried Mrs. Stanhope, when the automobile had come to a standstill. "Did I hear somebody calling?" Scarcely had she spoken when there came another vivid flash of lightning followed by more thunder, and then a downpour heavier than ever. As the lightning flashed out Dick was surprised to see a girl splashing through the water on the road and running toward them. "Look! Look!" he ejaculated. "Unless I am mistaken it's Ada Waltham!" "It is! It is!" exclaimed Dora. "What in the world is she doing out alone in such a downpour as this!" As the girl on the road came closer to the touring car Dick threw up one of the curtains, opened the door, and sprang out to meet her. "Oh, Mr. Rover!" gasped Ada Waltham, "is it really you? How fortunate! Won't you please help me?" "What's wrong?" he demanded quickly. "Chester! He's lost!" "Lost! Where?" "He tried to cross the river yonder in the storm, and the bridge broke and let the automobile down. I managed to save myself and jumped ashore, but he was carried off by the torrent." The rich girl clasped her hands nervously. "Oh, please save him, Mr. Rover! Please do!" By this time the second automobile had come up, and Dick waved to Tom to stop. Seeing that something was wrong, Tom quickly alighted, followed by Sam. "What's wrong?" came from both of the new arrivals, as they gazed at Ada Waltham in astonishment. "Miss Waltham says her brother is lost--that he has been carried off in the flood of yonder river," answered Dick. "Oh, please hurry!" burst out the girl eagerly. "Please hurry, or it will be too late! I don't think Chester can swim." "All right, we'll tell the others where we are going and then we'll do what we can," answered Dick. "But if that flood is very strong we may have----" Dick was unable to finish his speech. Just then there came more lightning followed by a deafening crash of thunder. Then the very heavens seemed to open, to let down a torrent of water which seemed to fairly engulf them. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" came from the women and the girls. "Oh! what a terrible storm!" "It is a cloudburst! That's what it is!" gasped Sam. "You're right!" ejaculated Tom. "Look! See how the water in the river is rising! It's a cloudburst and a flood!" Tom was right--there had been a cloudburst, but fortunately not directly over the heads of our friends, otherwise they might have perished in the terrible downpour which immediately followed. The catastrophe had occurred at a point about a mile farther up the river, and now the waters from this flood were coming down with great swiftness and rising higher and higher every instant. "We've got to get out of here," was Sam's comment. Already they were standing in water up to their ankles. "We've got to find higher ground." "Oh, Sam! Sam! please don't let my brother drown!" pleaded Ada Waltham, catching him by the arm. "We'll do what we can to save him, Ada, but we've got to save ourselves first," he answered. "See! there is a little hill ahead," came from Dick, as he did his best to look through the rain, which was coming down as heavily as ever. "Let us run to the top of the rise, then we'll be in less danger from the flood if the river gets much higher." He turned to the distracted girl. "Come, you had better go with us, then we will see what we can do for your brother." "Oh, Dick! Dick! If you don't hurry we'll be swept away, sure!" cried Dora, and then made room so that Ada might get in beside her. In a moment more the three Rovers had re-entered the touring cars, and then the machines were sent forward through the water, which was now nearly a foot deep on the roadway. "Oh! I never saw such a storm in my life," was Mrs. Laning's comment. "If only we get out of this alive!" breathed Mrs. Stanhope. Being naturally a very nervous woman, she was on the verge of a collapse. Running with care through the swirling water that covered the roadway, they at length reached a rise of ground several feet above the flood. Here they stopped at the highest point they could gain, bringing the machines side by side. When the storm had started in earnest the three Rovers had donned their raincoats. Now, with rain caps pulled well down over their heads, they once more alighted. "If you can show us where your auto went into the river we'll see if we can locate your brother," announced Dick to Ada Waltham. "Maybe he got out and is walking somewhere around here," he added, by way of encouragement. "Oh, dear! I'm so nervous I can scarcely stand!" gasped the girl, and when she reached the ground they had to support her. Splashing along through the water that covered the roadway, they slowly progressed until they gained a point where the youths felt it would be impossible for Ada Waltham to go any farther. "There is what is left of the bridge over yonder," cried the girl, pointing with her hand. The Rovers looked in that direction and saw a few sticks of timber sticking out of the swirling waters, which were running down stream as turbulently as ever. "I don't think there is any use of looking for Chester around that bridge," was Tom's remark. "Most likely he was carried down stream--how far there is no telling. I think the best thing we can do is to take a look farther down." "That is just my opinion," returned his older brother. "I think you had better return to the autos. It won't do any good for you to remain out in this storm," he continued to the girl. When the party got back to the cars they found a farmer and his grown son standing by the machines. "I was just telling the ladies you had better run your automobiles up to my place," said the farmer. "It's about ten or fifteen feet higher than this, and, consequently, just so much safer. Besides, the ladies can come into the house." "We want to find this young lady's brother. He was swept off the bridge yonder," returned Dick. "So the ladies were telling me," returned James Barlow. "You come up to the house, and I'll go out with you. We've got a big rowboat that may come in handy. Say! ain't this some storm? Worst let-down I've ever seen in these parts." CHAPTER XXIX THE RESCUE ON THE RIVER It did not take long to run the automobiles down the road and up a side lane leading to the farmer's house. Here the ladies got out, and then the machines were placed in a barn. "You will do all you can to find my brother?" wailed Ada Waltham, anxiously. "Yes, we'll do our level best," answered Dick; and Tom and Sam said practically the same. The Rovers consulted with Mr. Barlow and his son, James, and all five walked down as close to the edge of the river as the effects of the cloudburst would allow. They saw bushes, trees, and parts of buildings coming down the swiftly-flowing stream, the waters of which were now thick with mud. "Here is my rowboat," announced the farmer, pointing to where the craft was tied fast to a large tree. "You can use it if you want to, but it looks to me like rather a hopeless matter to try to do anything while the river is raging like this. You had better wait until it calms down a little." "The trouble of it is, it may then be too late," answered Tom. He looked at his brothers. "I think we can manage it," he added. The matter was discussed for fully a quarter of an hour, and during that time the storm seemed to let up a little. The first awful effects of the cloudburst were passing, and the water was going down slowly but surely. "We'll try it," announced Dick, at last. "If we can't manage the rowboat we'll come ashore farther down the stream." The craft was a substantial one, and there were two pairs of oars, and to these James Barlow added a sweep to be used as a rudder. Then the three Rovers embarked, Tom and Sam to do the rowing and the other brother to guide the craft. It was hard, dangerous work, as they realized as soon as they struck the current of the swollen stream. They were sent along pell-mell, and it was all they could do to keep themselves from crashing into one object or another on the way. "Look out, or you'll get upset!" yelled James Barlow to them, and then his voice was drowned out in the rushing and roaring of the elements around them. A half hour passed--which to the Rovers just then seemed almost an age. During that time the three kept their eyes wide open for a possible sight of Chester Waltham or anybody else who might have been carried away by the flood. "There is somebody!" suddenly called out Dick. "A man caught in a tree!" "Is it Waltham?" demanded Tom, quickly. "I can't make out. He is crouched in a heap on some limbs and is waving frantically for us." Not without additional peril did the Rovers turn the rowboat across the river, for the tree in which the man was crouching was on the shore opposite to that from which they had embarked. "Hello! there are two fellows in the tree!" announced Tom, as they drew closer. The second man crouched behind the trunk, so that they had not at first been able to see him. "Help! Help!" came from the fellow who had been waving so frantically to them. And now, as they drew still closer, they saw that the individual was Chester Waltham. The young millionaire was capless and coatless, and his face and hands were much scratched. "We're in luck, that's sure," was Tom's comment, in a low voice. "And I'm glad on his sister's account," added Sam. "When we bring the boat up beside the tree you lower yourself into it, Waltham," directed Dick. "But be careful how you do it or we'll upset. The current here is very swift." "Yes, yes, I'll be careful," answered the young millionaire in a voice which trembled so that he could scarcely speak. He was, of course, much surprised to discover that it was the Rovers who had come to his assistance. He was so exhausted that to get out of the tree in safety was all but impossible, and finally Dick had to assist him while Tom and Sam did all they could to hold the rowboat in position. "It's fine of you to come for me!" panted Chester Waltham, when he found himself safe in the rowboat. "Di-did my si-sister get you, or what?" "Yes, she escaped and told us of your plight," answered Dick, briefly. "Good for Ada! Now get me safe on shore once more and I'll pay you handsomely for your trouble." "You won't have to pay us a cent, Waltham," was Sam's quick reply. "Just sit still so that the boat doesn't go over." "Can I help you in any way?" "No. Sit still, that's all," came from Tom, sharply. The idea of having Waltham speak of paying them at such a time disgusted him. In the meantime the second fellow in the tree had moved down a limb or two with the idea of following Waltham into the rowboat. But now, as he looked at the three Rovers, he suddenly drew back. "Hi there! don't you want to come with us?" cried Dick, considerably astonished over the man's actions. To this the individual in the tree made no reply. He kept behind the trunk and finally waved a hand as if to motion them away. "Say! is that fellow crazy?" questioned Sam. "He must be," was Tom's comment. He turned to Chester Waltham. "Do you know him!" "No, he's a stranger to me. I tried to speak to him, but he was so scared and cold from the ducking he got he did nothing but chatter, so I couldn't understand him." "See here, it's foolish to stay up there," called out Dick. "Come on down and we'll take you ashore." "D-do-don't want to g-g-go," came the stuttered-out reply. "G-go-wheep!" came in a funny little whistle. "G-g-go a-away!" "Well, of all the scared fellows----" commenced Tom. "Great Scott! I wonder if that fellow can be Blackie Crowden!" ejaculated Sam. "G-g-go a-wa-way!" stuttered the man in the tree, and then tried to say something more, but the words only ended in a strange little whistle. "Sam, do you really think it can be the fellow who robbed Songbird?" demanded Dick. "What would he be doing away out here?" "Why, Blackie Crowden came from Denver or Colorado Springs," announced the youngest Rover. "Remember, we are not so many miles away from those places." He raised his voice. "You come down out of there, Crowden. We know you and we want you." At this command the man in the tree seemed much disturbed. He tried to speak, but because of his natural stutter and his terror of the situation through which he was passing, his effort was a failure. "If you don't come down, we'll haul you down," ordered Dick, finally, and then, after a little more urging, the fellow finally consented to come out of the tree, and dropped into the rowboat. "Blackie Crowden, as sure as fate!" murmured Sam, as soon as he got a good look at the fellow's features. "Well, if this isn't luck!" "Evidently you know this fellow," came from Chester Waltham, curiously. "We sure do!" declared Sam. "He's the man who knocked our college chum, John Powell, down on the road near Ashton and robbed him of four thousand dollars." "I di-didn't r-r-rob any bo-body," stuttered Blackie Crowden. "It's all a mi-mis-mis-mista-ta-take!" and he ended with his usual queer whistle. "We'll see about that later, Crowden," put in Dick, sternly. "Now you sit perfectly still or else maybe you'll go overboard and be drowned." It would be difficult to describe the joy with which Ada Waltham greeted her brother on his safe return. She flew into his arms and, as wet as he was, hugged him over and over again. "Oh! I was so afraid you'd be drowned, Chester!" and then she added quickly: "How grand it was for the Rovers to go to your assistance!" "It certainly was very fine of them to do it," returned the young millionaire. And now it must be admitted that he seemed very much disturbed in mind. "I'm going to pay them back, you see if I don't," he added, after a thoughtful pause. Blackie Crowden had done his best to make them believe that he was not guilty of the attack upon Songbird, but the Rovers would not listen to this, and put him through such a grilling that finally he broke down and confessed all. "I wouldn't have done the deed at all if it hadn't been that I was worried over another matter," he said amid much stuttering and whistling. "I ain't a bad man naturally, even though I do drink and gamble a little. If it hadn't been for a lawyer named Belright Fogg I would never have robbed the young man." "Belright Fogg!" came from the Rovers. "What has that shyster lawyer to do with it?" added Sam. "Do you know he is a shyster lawyer?" "We sure do!" added Tom, promptly. "Then you will understand me when I tell you how it was. Some time ago I was mixed up in a land transaction. It is a long story, and all I need to tell you is that Belright Fogg was in it, too. I did some things that I oughtn't to, and that gave Fogg a hold on me. Finally he claimed that I owed him three hundred dollars, and he said if I didn't pay up he would make it hot for me and maybe land me in jail. That got me scared and I said I'd get the money somehow. "Then by accident I saw Powell get the money from the bank, and I followed him on horseback, passed him, and took the cash, as you know. As soon as the deed was done I was sorry for it, but then it was too late," stuttered Blackie Crowden, and hung his head. "And did you go to Belright Fogg and give him the three hundred dollars?" queried Sam. "Yes. I met him in Leadenfield, at a road house kept by a Frenchman named Bissette." "Then I was right after all!" cried Sam. "I accused Fogg of meeting you, but he denied it." "Well, he got the three hundred all right enough," stuttered Crowden. "And how was it you tried to keep out of our sight in that flood?" asked Sam curiously. "Did you know us?" "I knew you--saw you follow me to the depot at Dentonville. You thought I got on that train. But I didn't--I took a night freight." "I see. That is why the authorities didn't spot you." "That's it. But you were asking about Fogg," continued Blackie Crowden, speculatively. "And did he know you had stolen the money?" demanded Dick, sharply. "I'm pretty sure he did, although he didn't ask any questions. He knew about the robbery, and he knew well enough that I didn't have any three hundred dollars of my own to give him." "What did you do with the rest of the money, Crowden? I hope you didn't spend it?" questioned Sam, anxiously. "Spend it!" came in a bitter stutter from the criminal. "I didn't get any chance to spend it. All I had was two hundred dollars!" "Then what became of the other thirty-five hundred?" questioned Tom. "It's in a room at the Ashton hotel, unless somebody found it and stole it." "At the Ashton hotel!" cried Sam. "That's it. You see, after I met Fogg I stopped at Ashton for one night and put up at the old hotel on the Cheesley turnpike. I hid the money in an out-of-the-way corner of a clothes closet, because I didn't want to carry it on my person. Then, when I was on the street, I heard that you were on my trail, and I got scared and I was afraid to go back to the hotel to get it." "Can you remember what room it was?" queried Tom. "Yes, it was a back room--number twenty-two. I put the money in a hole in the wall back of an upper shelf." "We had better notify the authorities at Ashton of this," said Tom to his brothers. "Let us telegraph to Songbird and tell him to go to Ashton," suggested Sam. "If the money is there, Songbird ought to have the fun of getting it and returning it to Mr. Sanderson." "All right, let's do it!" cried Dick; and so the matter was arranged. CHAPTER XXX MRS. SAM ROVER--CONCLUSION "Well, that's good news and I'm mighty glad to hear it." It was Dick who spoke, three days after the incidents recorded in the last chapter. Our friends had been staying at the farmhouse of Mr. Barlow. Blackie Crowden had been turned over to the local authorities, the oldest Rover making the charge against him. Crowden had pleaded for mercy, but the boys, while sympathizing with him, had thought it best to let the law take its course. Chester Waltham and his sister had also remained at the farmhouse, which fortunately was a large one, so that the whole party was not particularly crowded for room. The rescue of the young millionaire from the river had worked wonders, and he was now heartily ashamed of himself, not only for the way he had treated Grace but also on account of the instructions he had sent to his agents in Wall Street. "You can rest assured, Mr. Rover, that my opposition to your plans in New York will be withdrawn," he said to Dick. "I am going to telegraph to my agents as soon as I get a chance. And I want you and your brothers to understand that I appreciate thoroughly your goodness in coming to my rescue. It was a splendid thing to do. I am not going to insult you by offering you any reward--all I can say is that I thank you from the bottom of my heart." And that evening Chester Waltham and his sister had taken their departure, stating that the accident at the bridge had ended their idea of touring farther, and that they were going to take the first train they could get for the East. The thing that Dick called "good news" was a long "Night Letter" sent over the wires by Songbird. The former poet of Brill had received their message concerning Blackie Crowden, and also Belright Fogg, and had at once hurried to Ashton and to the hotel on the Cheesley turnpike. There, in room twenty-two, as mentioned by Crowden, he had found the package containing the thirty-five hundred dollars. Next he had called on Belright Fogg and had scared the shyster lawyer so completely that Fogg had returned the three hundred dollars received from Crowden with scarcely a protest. Then the happy youth had driven over to the Sanderson place. The Sandersons had been surprised to see him and amazed to learn that he had recovered so large a portion of the stolen money. "As I had already paid Mr. Sanderson one hundred dollars," wrote Songbird, "it made a total of thirty-nine hundred returned to him, and he told me that I need not bother about the other hundred. But I paid it just the same, for I had just been fortunate enough to sell six of my poems--two to a magazine and four to a weekly paper--for one hundred and sixty dollars. "Of course we had a grand time, and Mr. Sanderson has forgiven everything. He and Minnie think you are mighty smart fellows, and I agree with them. Minnie and I have fixed matters all up between us, and we are the happiest couple you ever saw. I don't know how to thank you enough for what you have done for me, and all I can add is, God bless you, every one!" "Good old Songbird!" murmured Sam, as he read the communication a second time. "I'll wager he feels a hundred per cent. better than he did." "And to think he sold six of his poems!" commented Tom. "I shouldn't wonder if he thinks more of that than he does of getting the money back," he added, somewhat drily. On the following day came another telegram, this time from Mr. Rover, stating that the opposition of the Waltham interests in Wall Street had been suddenly withdrawn. But he added that business matters in the metropolis were becoming more and more arduous for him, and he asked when Dick expected to get back. "I'm afraid it's getting too much for dear, old dad," was Dick's comment, on perusing this message. "I think the best thing I can do is to get back and help him." "Well, if you go back, I think I'll go back myself," said Tom. "Anyway, this tour seems to have come to a standstill, with so much rain." "I'm willing to go back if you fellows say so," put in Sam. "I'll wager he and Grace want to get ready for their wedding," remarked Tom, slily. "That's just what we do," returned Sam, boldly. "We're going to be married early this fall, aren't we, Grace?" and he gazed fondly at the girl, who nodded, and then turned away to hide her blushes. But the tour did not come to an end as quickly as might have been expected. On the day following it was such fair weather that they left the Barlow farm and started once more on their trip westward. Colorado Springs was soon gained, and, passing on to Manitou, they left the automobiles, and took the cog railway to the summit of Pike's Peak. Then, on the day following, they motored up to Denver. "We can ship our automobiles home by freight," said Dick, "and by returning by train we can be back in New York in no time." A week later found the entire party once more in the East. While Dick and Tom settled down to help their father at the offices in Wall Street, the others returned to Valley Brook and to Cedarville, to prepare for the coming wedding. "And where is it to be, Sam?" questioned Tom, when the brothers were on the point of parting. "Oh, it can only be in one place," was Sam's answer. "And I guess I know where that is," returned Tom, with a grin. Both Dick and Tom had been married in the Cedarville Union Church, a little stone edifice covered with ivy, which was located not a great distance from the homes of the Lanings and the Stanhopes, and also Putnam Hall. As before, it was a question if the numerous guests who were expected to the ceremony would be able to get into the building. But both Grace and Sam said they would have to make the best of it. As soon as the wedding invitations were issued, the presents began to come in, and they were fully as numerous and as costly as had been the gifts bestowed upon Dora and upon Nellie. From Mr. Rover came, as was to be expected, a bankbook containing an amount written therein which was the duplicate of that he had bestowed upon Dick and Dora and likewise upon Tom and Nellie. "You can always depend on dad," was Sam's comment, his voice choking a little. "The best dad anybody ever had!" "Indeed you are right!" answered the bride-to-be. "And I'm going to love him just as if he were my own father." Sam's own present to his bride was a gold wrist-watch set in diamonds and pearls--a beautiful affair over which the happy girl went wild with delight. At last came the eventful day, full of golden sunshine. All of the Rovers had arrived in Cedarville and were quartered at the hotel. Many other guests were at the Stanhope homestead and at the Laning farm, and still others--former cadets--had come back not only to attend the wedding but also to take another look at dear old Putnam Hall. Among the old guard who had thus presented themselves were Fred Garrison, Larry Colby, Bart Conners and Harry Blossom. Among those who had attended Brill were Stanley Browne, Spud Jackson, Bob Grimes and, of course, Songbird. "I'm engaged to Minnie," whispered the latter to the Rovers at the first opportunity. "We are going to be married just as soon as my income will permit. And what do you think? I've sold four more poems--got eighty dollars for them," and his face beamed as they had never seen it shine before. "I congratulate you, Songbird," returned Sam, heartily. "I certainly hope you get to be the best-known poet in the United States." "Oh, I don't know about that. I am going to buckle down to business. My uncle thinks I am doing wonderfully well, and he says if I keep on he is going to give me a substantial increase in salary after the first of the year. I'm going to write verses just as a side issue." As at the other weddings, the ceremony was set for high noon. Soon the guests began to arrive, and before long the old church was crowded to its capacity, with many standing up in the aisles and in the rear and even at the side windows, which were wide open. Captain Putnam, in full uniform and looking a little grayer than ever, was there, and with him, George Strong, his head assistant, with whom Sam had always been very friendly. There were also numerous girls there who had formerly attended Hope Seminary, and of these one was a flower girl and two were bridesmaids. Sam's best man was his old Putnam Hall chum, Fred Garrison, while among the ushers were Songbird, Stanley, Spud, Bob, and some others of his former classmates. Presently the organ pealed out and the minister appeared, followed a moment later by Sam. Then up the aisle came Grace on the arm of Mr. Laning, and daintily attired in white with a flowing veil beset with orange blossoms. "Oh, how pretty she looks!" said more than one; and they spoke the truth, for Grace certainly made a beautiful bride. The ceremony was a brief but solemn one, and then, as the organ pealed out joyously, the happy pair walked forth from the church, to enter an automobile which whirled them off to the Laning homestead. To that place they were followed by a great number of invited guests. An elaborate wedding dinner had been prepared, and an orchestra from the city had been hired, and all sat down to a feast of good things with music. "We'll have to give them a send-off--same as they gave me," said Tom to his brother Dick, while the festivities were at their height. "They'll be getting ready to go away soon." "Sure! we'll give them a send-off," returned the oldest brother. "Come on, let us get busy." Down at the barns an automobile was in readiness to take Sam and his bride away on their wedding trip. This car Dick and Tom and a number of others lost no time in decorating with white streamers and a placard which read: _We are on our wedding trip. Congratulate us._ "Aren't you going to stay to have a dance?" questioned Nellie of her sister, a little later. "Of course," answered Grace; and shortly after that she and Sam tripped around to the tuneful measures of a two-step. All of the young folks present joined in, the older folks looking on with much satisfaction. "I can hardly believe it," declared old Aunt Martha, as she took off her spectacles to wipe her eyes. "Why, it don't seem no time since Sam was just a baby!" The dancing continued for some time but then, of a sudden, came a cry from Dora: "Where are Sam and Grace? I don't see them anywhere." "They are gone! They have given us the slip!" "No, they've gone upstairs. Wait here, and we'll give them a shower." The young folks gathered in the hallway and out on the piazza, and a few minutes later Sam and Grace appeared, both ready for their tour. Then came a grand shower of rice and confetti, mingled with two or three old shoes, and in the midst of this the happy, laughing young couple escaped to the automobile which was now drawn up before the door. The chauffeur was ready for the start, and in an instant more the machine shot down the lane and out into the roadway. "Good-bye! Good-bye and good luck to you!" was the cry. "Good-bye, everybody!" came back from the touring car, and Sam and Grace stood up to wave their hands to those left behind. Then the touring car disappeared around a turn of the road, and they were gone. * * * * * And now let me add a few words more and thus bring to a close this long series of adventures in which the three Rover boys, Dick, Tom, and Sam, have played such an important part. A number of years have passed and many changes of importance have occurred. Mr. Anderson Rover has retired from active participation in The Rover Company, and Dick is now the president, with Tom secretary and Sam treasurer. The concern is doing remarkably well and all of the Rovers are reported to be wealthy. The father has returned to the farm at Valley Brook, where he lives in peace and comfort with Uncle Randolph and Aunt Martha, who, despite their years, are still in the best of health. A year after Sam's marriage to Grace, Songbird Powell married Minnie Sanderson. The would-be poet has made quite a business man of himself and, what perhaps is of even greater pleasure to himself, has had many of his poems accepted by our leading periodicals. When Sam was first married he went to live in an apartment close to those occupied by Dick and Tom, but two years later the three brothers had a chance to buy a beautiful plot of ground on Riverside Drive, facing the noble Hudson River, and on this they built three beautiful houses adjoining one another. "I guess we are in New York to stay," was the way the oldest brother had expressed himself, "and if that is so we may as well make ourselves as comfortable here as possible." Before the young folks moved into the new homes Dick and Dora were blessed with a little son, who later on was named John after Mr. John Laning. Little Jack, as he was always called by the others, was a wonderfully bright and clever lad and a great source of comfort to his parents. Later still the young couple had a daughter, whom they named Martha after Dick's aunt. Tom and Nellie had twin boys that were speedily christened Andy after Mr. Anderson Rover, and Randy after Tom's Uncle Randolph. Then Sam came along with a daughter, who was called Mary after Mrs. Laning and with a son, whom he called Fred after his old school chum, Fred Garrison. The young Rover boys had a great many qualities similar to those displayed by their fathers. Little Jack was as strong and sturdy as Dick had ever been, and young Fred had many of the peculiarities of Sam, while Andy and Randy, the twins, were the equal of their father, Tom, for creating fun. "I don't know what we're ever going to do with those kids," remarked Tom, one day, after Andy and Randy had played a big joke on Jack and Fred. "Some day they'll pull the house down over our ears." "Well, Andy and Randy are simply chips of the old block," laughed Dick Rover. "I suppose we'll all have to do as our folks did with us--send the lads off to some strict boarding school." "If I ever do send them off, I know where it will be," answered Tom Rover. "Our old Putnam Hall chum, Larry Colby, has opened a first-class military academy which he calls Colby Hall. If I ever send them away I think I'll send them to Larry." "That wouldn't be a half bad idea," put in Sam Rover. "Larry was always a first-class fellow and I don't doubt but what he is running a first-class school." "Well, those boys are too young yet to leave home," was Dick Rover's comment. "If they are to go to boarding school that must come later." A few years after that Jack, Andy and Randy, and Fred were sent to Colby Hall, and it is possible that some day I may tell you of what happened there to this younger generation of Rovers. Dick, Tom, and Sam were happy, and with good reason. They had the best of wives, and children that they dearly loved, and though they worked hard they were surrounded with every comfort. Every summer, and at Christmas time, they left New York either for Valley Brook or for Cedarville, there to receive the warmest of welcomes. Life looked rosy to all of them, and here we will leave them and say good-bye. THE END _This Isn't All!_ Would you like to know what became of the good friends you have made in this book? Would you like to read other stories continuing their adventures and experiences, or other books quite as entertaining by the same author? On the _reverse side_ of the wrapper which comes with this book, you will find a wonderful list of stories which you can buy at the same store where you got this book. _Don't throw away the Wrapper_ _Use it as a handy catalog of the books you want some day to have. But in case you do mislay it, write to the Publishers for a complete catalog._ THE FAMOUS ROVER BOYS SERIES By ARTHUR M. WINFIELD (EDWARD STRATEMEYER) Beautiful Wrappers in Full Color [Illustration] No stories for boys ever published have attained the tremendous popularity of this famous series. Since the publication of the first volume, The Rover Boys at School, some years ago, over three million copies of these books have been sold. They are well written stories dealing with the Rover boys in a great many different kinds of activities and adventures. Each volume holds something of interest to every adventure loving boy. A complete list of titles is printed on the opposite page. FAMOUS ROVER BOYS SERIES BY ARTHUR M. WINFIELD (Edward Stratemeyer) OVER THREE MILLION COPIES SOLD OF THIS SERIES. Uniform Style of Binding. Colored Wrappers. Every Volume Complete in Itself. THE ROVER BOYS AT SCHOOL THE ROVER BOYS ON THE OCEAN THE ROVER BOYS IN THE JUNGLE THE ROVER BOYS OUT WEST THE ROVER BOYS ON THE GREAT LAKES THE ROVER BOYS IN THE MOUNTAINS THE ROVER BOYS ON LAND AND SEA THE ROVER BOYS IN CAMP THE ROVER BOYS ON THE RIVER THE ROVER BOYS ON THE PLAINS THE ROVER BOYS IN SOUTHERN WATERS THE ROVER BOYS ON THE FARM THE ROVER BOYS ON TREASURE ISLE THE ROVER BOYS AT COLLEGE THE ROVER BOYS DOWN EAST THE ROVER BOYS IN THE AIR THE ROVER BOYS IN NEW YORK THE ROVER BOYS IN ALASKA THE ROVER BOYS IN BUSINESS THE ROVER BOYS ON A TOUR THE ROVER BOYS AT COLBY HALL THE ROVER BOYS ON SNOWSHOE ISLAND THE ROVER BOYS UNDER CANVAS THE ROVER BOYS ON A HUNT THE ROVER BOYS IN THE LAND OF LUCK THE ROVER BOYS AT BIG HORN RANCH THE ROVER BOYS AT BIG BEAR LAKE THE ROVER BOYS SHIPWRECKED THE ROVER BOYS ON SUNSET TRAIL THE ROVER BOYS WINNING A FORTUNE GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK WESTERN STORIES FOR BOYS By JAMES CODY FERRIS Individual Colored Wrappers and Illustrations by WALTER S. ROGERS Each Volume Complete in Itself. Thrilling tales of the great west, told primarily for boys but which will be read by all who love mystery, rapid action, and adventures in the great open spaces. The Manly Boys, Roy and Teddy, are the sons of an old ranchman, the owner of many thousands of heads of cattle. The lads know how to ride, how to shoot, and how to take care of themselves under any and all circumstances. The cowboys of the X Bar X Ranch are real cowboys, on the job when required but full of fun and daring--a bunch any reader will be delighted to know. THE X BAR X BOYS ON THE RANCH THE X BAR X BOYS IN THUNDER CANYON THE X BAR X BOYS ON WHIRLPOOL RIVER THE X BAR X BOYS ON BIG BISON TRAIL THE X BAR X BOYS AT THE ROUND-UP THE X BAR X BOYS AT NUGGET CAMP THE X BAR X BOYS AT RUSTLER'S GAP THE X BAR X BOYS AT GRIZZLY PASS THE X BAR X BOYS LOST IN THE ROCKIES GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK Transcriber's Notes: --Handful of punctuation and printer inaccuracies were silently corrected. --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. --The author's long dash style has been preserved. 
45790	----	[Illustration: TOMB OF AGNES SOREL AT LOCHES By permission of Mansell & Co.] WINGED WHEELS IN FRANCE BY MICHAEL MYERS SHOEMAKER Author of "Islands of Southern Seas," "The Great Siberian Railway," "The Heart of the Orient," "Prisons and Palaces of Mary, Queen of Scots," Etc. ILLUSTRATED G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON The Knickerbocker Press 1906 _Copyrighted 1906 by Michael Myers Shoemaker_ TO MY DEAR FRIEND MRS. W. P. HULBERT OF CINCINNATI PREFACE This is not a love story. These wings are wings of motion, not of Cupid, yet there is much of romance and story in these pages,--for who can travel the _plaisant pays de France_ and not dip deeply into both? When I entered my red machine at Nice no route had been laid out,--to me there is small pleasure in travel when that is done,--so I told Jean to start and left the direction to him. Being French he naturally turned towards his own country, and knowing whither the superb highways and enchanting byways could lead one, I tacitly agreed, and we glided away by the level sea and on into the olive-crowned hill of Provence, to where Aix--the home of politeness--dreams the years away and the air seems still to echo to King René's music. Arles, Narbonne, fantastic Carcassonne, Lourdes, and Pau followed in rapid succession, and then we rested awhile at Biarritz with short journeys into Spain. Turning northward we rolled off into Central France, pausing daily in some ancient city or quaint village, climbing mountains to long forgotten castles, or rolling into valleys in search of deserted abbeys. So we wandered through Auvergne, through courtly Touraine, sad Anjou, and stormy Brittany, until Normandy and Picardy smiled into our faces and Paris received us within her gates. Exploring the surroundings of that great city as one can do only in an auto, we finally glided off through the forest of Fontainebleau and Côte-d'Or to the mountains of the Vosges and thence over the Schlucht to the Rhine Valley to Freiburg, and up to Baden-Baden. There the spirits of the woods seized upon us and we promptly got lost in the Black Forest, and so rolled on into Switzerland to Geneva and finally to Aix-les-Bains, where the journey ended and I bade goodbye to my staunch car which had carried me without mishap or delay for near five thousand miles. To its winged wheels the highest mountains of France were no barrier. If all this pleases you, read these pages--if not, drop the book. M. S. M. Union Club, N. Y. June, 1906. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I. MONTE CARLO 1 CHAPTER II. OUR DEPARTURE FROM NICE--THE ROAD TO AIX--THE CITY OF KING RENÉ 8 CHAPTER III. THE ROAD TO ARLES--THE CAMARGUE--RUINS OF ARLES--THE "ALISCAMPS" 17 CHAPTER IV. THE ROUTE TO TARASCON--CASTLE OF KING RENÉ--BEAUCAIRE--NÎMES--MONTPELLIER--AN ACCIDENT--NARBONNE, ANCIENT AND MODERN 22 CHAPTER V. THE APPROACH TO CARCASSONNE--ITS PICTURESQUENESS--ITS RESTORATION AND HISTORY 29 CHAPTER VI. THE ROUTE TO TOULOUSE--GREAT MACHINES ON THE ROADS OF FRANCE--DELIGHTS OF AN AUTO--TOULOUSE--ITS UNIVERSITY--THE CHÂTEAU DE ST. ELIX 36 CHAPTER VII. THE DEATH OF A DOG--ENCOUNTERS ON THE HIGHWAY--TRAVELLERS BY THE WAY--PEOPLE OF THE PROVINCES--LOURDES--HER SUPERSTITION AND HER VISIONS 43 CHAPTER VIII. PAU AND THE LIFE THERE--DELIGHTFUL ROADS--ANCIENT ORTHEZ--MADAME AND HER HOTEL--THE CHÂTEAU OF BIDACHE AND ITS HISTORY 49 CHAPTER IX. THE ROUTE TO BIARRITZ--BIARRITZ--THE HÔTEL DU PALAIS 58 CHAPTER X. THE ROAD TO THE MOUNTAINS--ST. JEAN-PIED-DE-PORT--ST. JEAN-DE-LUZ--MARRIAGE OF LOUIS XIV--ISLAND OF PHEASANTS--THE ROADS IN SPAIN--THE SOLDIERS OF SPAIN--SAN SEBASTIAN 62 CHAPTER XI. DEPARTURES FOR THE NORTH--CRAZY CHICKENS--GRAND ROADS--DAX--RIDES THROUGH THE FORESTS--FRENCH SCENERY AND PEOPLE--MARMANDE--AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF FRANCE AND ITS WORK 69 CHAPTER XII. RAPID MOTION--BEAUMONT--RACES AND DASHES--CADOUIN AND ITS CLOISTERS--THE ROUTE TO TULLE 76 CHAPTER XIII. THE GREAT COURSE OF BELMONT--DIFFICULT STEERING--THE "CUP GORDON BENNETT"--THE MOUNTAINS TO CLERMONT-FERRAND 82 CHAPTER XIV. CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN IN AN AUTO--THE CHÂTEAU OF TOURNOËL--ITS HISTORY--DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAIN 86 CHAPTER XV. ANCIENT TOWN OF RIOM--THE ROUTE TO VICHY--CHÂTEAU DE BOURBON-BUSSET--VICHY--THE LIFE THERE--DANGER OF SPEEDING--ARRIVAL AT BOURGES 95 CHAPTER XVI. ANCIENT BOURGES--ITS CATHEDRAL--HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR--LOUIS XI. AND THE HÔTEL LALLEMENT--THE HÔTEL CUJAS--THE RIDE TO MEILLANT--ITS SUPERB CHÂTEAU--ITS LEGEND 102 CHAPTER XVII. DEPARTURES FROM BOURGES--THE CHÂTEAU OF MEHUN--THE DEATH OF CHARLES VII--THE VALLEYS OF TOURAINE--ROADS BY THE LOIRE--ENTRANCE TO TOURS 113 CHAPTER XVIII. RIDE TO LOCHES--AN ACCIDENT--THE CASTLE OF LOCHES--ITS HISTORY--THE CAGES OF LOUIS XI.--THEIR COST TO THE KING--AGNES SOREL--THE MISTRESSES OF FRENCH KINGS VERSUS THEIR QUEENS 116 CHAPTER XIX. AUTOMOBILES IN TOURS--DEPARTURE FROM THE CITY--THE ROAD TO CHINON--ROMANCE AND HISTORY OF CHINON--THE ABBEY OF FONTEVRAULT--RICHARD COEUR DE LION AND HIS TOMB--THE DEAD KING HENRY II 130 CHAPTER XX. THE ROAD TO ANGERS--CATHEDRAL AND TOMB OF KING RENÉ--CASTLE OF BLACK ANGERS--CRADLE OF THE PLANTAGENETS--HISTORY--TO CHATEAUBRIANT IN A STORM--A FRENCH INN--RENNES AND THE TRIAL OF DREYFUS--THE ROADS IN BRITTANY--ARRIVAL AT ST.-MALO--THE RIDE TO MONT ST.-MICHEL--INN OF THE POULARD ÂINÉ--THE CATHEDRAL AND CASTLE--THEIR HISTORY 138 CHAPTER XXI. ARRIVAL AT CAEN--WILLIAM THE NORMAN AND CHARLOTTE CORDAY--CHURCH OF ST. ÉTIENNE--PEOPLE AND RAILROADS OF NORMANDY--ROUEN AND ITS CHURCHES--THE MAID OF ORLEANS, HISTORY OR LEGEND?--CASTLE OF PHILIPPE LE BEL--DEPARTURE FROM ROUEN 149 CHAPTER XXII. THE RACE THROUGH PICARDY--AMIENS CATHEDRAL--ITS VASTNESS--THE ROAD TO BOULOGNE 161 CHAPTER XXIII. THE RIDE TO BEAUVAIS--DEAD DOGS--GREAT CHURCHES--BEAUVAIS BY NIGHT--VAST WEALTH OF THE CHURCHES OF FRANCE--WONDERFUL TAPESTRIES 166 CHAPTER XXIV. THE ROUTE TO SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE--THE PEOPLE--THE CASTLE AND TERRACE--THEIR PICTURESQUE HISTORY--FIRST VIEW OF PARIS 174 CHAPTER XXV. PARIS AND HER SO-CALLED REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT--NECESSITY FOR AN AUTOMOBILE--THE RIDE TO CHARTRES--CATHEDRAL NOTRE DAME--THE AQUEDUCT AT MAINTENON AND ITS BURDEN OF SORROW--THE CASTLE OF MAINTENON--MADAME AND LOUIS XIV.--ST. CYR AND HER DEATH--RETURN TO PARIS 180 CHAPTER XXVI. MY CHAUFFEUR SUMMONED BY THE GOVERNMENT--THE NEW MAN--YAMA'S OPINION OF PARIS--SPEED OF AUTOS IN PARIS 194 CHAPTER XXVII. DEPARTURE FROM PARIS--THE CEMETERY OF THE PICPUS--RIDE THROUGH THE FOREST OF FONTAINEBLEAU TO SENS--THE CATHEDRAL--TOMB OF THE DAUPHINS--THE GREAT ROUTE TO GENEVA--STONED BY BOYS--TONNERRE 198 CHAPTER XXVIII. DIJON--THE FRENCH AND FRESH WATER--THE ANTIQUITIES OF DIJON--RIDE THROUGH THE CÔTE D'OR--ARRIVAL AT BESANÇON 208 CHAPTER XXIX. THE FORTRESS OF BESANÇON--AUTOS IN HEAVY RAINS--DREAMS--BELFORT--ENTRANCE INTO THE VOSGES--THE RISE TO BALLON D'ALSACE--SUPERB RIDE TO GÉRARDMER 215 CHAPTER XXX. GÉRARDMER AND THE MOUNTAINS--A WEDDING--FRENCH COURTSHIP--EXCURSION TO ST. DIÉ--OVER THE COL DE LA SCHLUCHT--GERMAN CUSTOM HOUSE--"ALWAYS A GERMAN"--COLMAR--RHINE VALLEY--ARRIVAL AT FREIBURG 222 CHAPTER XXXI. FREIBURG--FANTASTIC CITY--THE YOUTHS OF GERMANY--MUSIC AND LEGENDS OF THE OLD TOWN--CATHEDRAL BY MOONLIGHT 227 CHAPTER XXXII. FROM FREIBURG TO BADEN-BADEN--THROUGH THE WOODS TO GERNSBACH--SUPERB ROADS--PEOPLE OF THE BLACK FOREST--CROSSING THE DANUBE--CUSTOMS REGULATIONS AS TO AUTOS--AN OLD SWISS MANSION--THE RIDE TO GENEVA AND AIX-LES-BAINS 232 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE TOMB OF AGNES SOREL AT LOCHES _Frontispiece._ By permission of Mansell & Co. INTERIOR OF THE CASINO AT MONTE CARLO 2 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein CLOISTERS OF THE CATHEDRAL AT AIX 14 From a photograph THE PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL OF SAINT TROPHIMUS, ARLES 16 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein EXTERIOR OF THE AMPHITHEATRE AT ARLES 18 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE ALISCAMPS AT ARLES 20 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein GENERAL VIEW OF THE CHÂTEAU OF KING RENÉ AT TARASCON 24 From a photograph THE FORTIFICATIONS AT THE OLD TOWN OF CARCASSONNE 30 From a photograph THE GROTTO AT LOURDES 46 By permission of Messrs. Lévy THE BRIDGE OVER THE GAVE AT ORTHEZ 52 By permission of Messrs. Lévy CHÂTEAU OF BIDACHE 54 From a photograph MAISON DE L'INFANTE AT SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ 64 From a photograph INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF SAINT JOHN AT SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ 66 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE HOME OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ AT VICHY 96 By permission of Jules Hautecoeur RUE DE L'ÉTABLISSEMENT AT VICHY 100 From a print THE SOUTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT BOURGES 102 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE PALACE OF JACQUES COEUR AT BOURGES 104 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein HÔTEL LALLEMENT AT BOURGES 106 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein CHÂTEAU OF MEHUN NEAR BOURGES 108 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CHÂTEAU AT MEILLANT 110 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE GRAND SALON OF THE CHÂTEAU OF MEILLANT 112 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CHÂTEAU OF LOCHES 116 From a photograph THE ENTRANCE TO THE CHÂTEAU OF LOCHES 118 From a photograph THE CAGE IN WHICH JEAN DE LA BALUE WAS IMPRISONED FOR ELEVEN YEARS 122 LOUIS XI 126 From the engraving by Hoopwood GENERAL VIEW OF CHINON 132 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein PAVILION DE L'HORLOGE AT CHINON 134 From a photograph THE COURT OF THE CLOISTERS, ABBEY OF FONTEVRAULT 136 By permission of J. Kuhn TOMBS OF RICHARD I. AND ELEONORE OF GUINNE AT FONTEVRAULT 138 From a photograph THE STATUE OF KING RENÉ AND THE CHÂTEAU AT ANGERS 142 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein MONT SAINT-MICHEL, FROM THE SOUTH 144 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CLOISTERS OF THE ABBEY OF MONT SAINT-MICHEL 146 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CRYPT DE L'AQUILON IN THE ABBEY OF MONT SAINT-MICHEL 148 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein LA TRINITÉ, ABBEY OF WOMEN, AT CAEN 150 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE ABBEY OF MEN AT CAEN 152 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein CHARLOTTE CORDAY 154 After the painting by Raffet MONUMENT OF CARDINAL D'AMBOISE IN ROUEN CATHEDRAL 156 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TOMB OF LOUIS DE BRÉZÉ IN THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN 158 From a photograph THE CATHEDRAL AT ROUEN 160 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein A HOUSE OF THE 15TH CENTURY AT ROUEN 162 From a photograph THE GREAT CLOCK OF ROUEN 164 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TOWER OF JEANNE D'ARC AT ROUEN 168 From an old print THE CATHEDRAL AT AMIENS 170 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE GRAND PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL OF BEAUVAIS 172 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein OLD HOUSES ON THE RUE DE LA MANUFACTURE, BEAUVAIS 174 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TERRACE AT SAINT-GERMAIN 176 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CHÂTEAU OF SAINT-GERMAIN, FROM THE NORTH 180 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE NORTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES 182 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE SOUTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES 184 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES 186 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein STONE CARVINGS SURROUNDING THE CHOIR OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES 188 From a photograph THE VIERGE DU PILIER IN THE CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES 190 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE VIADUCT OF MAINTENON, NEAR CHARTRES 192 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CHÂTEAU OF MAINTENON, FROM THE NORTH 196 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TOMB OF LAFAYETTE IN THE PICPUS CEMETERY, PARIS 200 From a photograph THE CEMETERY OF THE PICPUS. LAFAYETTE'S TOMB ON THE RIGHT, TABLET TO ANDRÉ CHÉNIER ON THE LEFT 202 From a photograph by the author THE CATHEDRAL AT SENS 204 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TOMB OF JEAN SANS PEUR AT DIJON 210 From a photograph THE WELL OF MOSES IN THE ABBEY OF CHARTREUX AT DIJON 212 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TOWER OF STATE, PALACE OF THE DUKES OF BOURGOGNE, AT DIJON 216 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein LA SCHLUCHT. THE TUNNEL ON THE ROAD TO MÜNSTER 224 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CATHEDRAL OF FREIBURG, BADEN 228 By permission of F. Firth & Co. A CORNER IN THE BLACK FOREST 236 From a photograph THE MANOR HOUSE AT WÜLFLINGEN, NEAR WINTERTHUR 238 From a photograph INTERIOR OF THE MANOR HOUSE AT WÜLFLINGEN, NEAR WINTERTHUR 240 From an old woodcut WINGED WHEELS IN FRANCE CHAPTER I MONTE CARLO "Monsieur smiles." To begin a journey with the greeting of a little child should be a happy omen. I am leaning over the terrace at Monte Carlo, watching the sparkle of the shifting sea. Away to the eastward glisten the villas on Cape Martan, to the west rises the ancient city of Monaco, behind me towers the Casino, the scene of more misery than almost any other spot on earth. Beyond and above it, rise the hills tier on tier, dotted with hotels and villas, while far in the blue dome of sky soar the eternal snows. A scene of beauty, yet one so familiar that I scarcely note it; neither are my thoughts of the nearby misery in the Casino when the little voice murmurs "Monsieur," and I see at my feet, seated on the marble of the terrace with masses of rhododendrons all around her, a mite of a girl, with sunny hair and blue eyes, who laughingly holds up for my acceptance a pink rose. It evidently is not considered proper for a young lady of her age to be talking to a strange man and she is accordingly hustled away, her wondering and rebellious eyes gazing back at me as she waves a farewell. Bless her little heart, it must be almost the only innocent thing in this sink of iniquity. With her disappearance, I have the place all to myself, the town gives up no sounds of life and soon even the sea has murmured itself to sleep, while yonder building, from the outside, is silent as a tomb now; yet as I enter I find every table in all the vast rooms so hemmed in by a struggling humanity, that I must wait my turn almost before throwing away good money if such is my desire. All the nations of the earth come here, and to manage and keep them in check, hundreds of detectives in plain clothes are always present. Yonder a man has dropped a pocket-book, which is at once pounced upon, and he is hustled through some door in the wall which has escaped your notice. Probably he is a thief, and will not return. If you end your life at the suicides' table--the last on the right on your way out--your body will be hustled off in a like manner, and the crowd without turning to look after you will close in again, leaving no sign that you have ever been. It is said that there is a carriage belonging to this establishment especially arranged so that a dead man may be driven away seated erect as though alive without shocking the senses of those who are here for pleasure. These people would rather you did not kill yourself and will give you a ticket home if you will go, but if you must pass to the great beyond, there will be no high mass said over your silent face and no further attention paid to your stiff fingers which have ceased to pour gold on the green tables. This world has no use for one whose pockets are empty--his day is done and he might as well be dead. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CASINO AT MONTE CARLO By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] You will not be impressed with the misery of Monte Carlo unless you walk this terrace after dark and note the dejected figures huddled up on the benches beneath the rhododendrons. The sea does not seem to receive many of them, yet it is a better mode of exit than to throw one's self beneath the wheels of the trains rushing east and west just beneath here. Yesterday a man was literally swept off the wheels of a locomotive--there was nothing to pick up. Inside these halls everything is done quietly and in order. There is never any confusion or noise, and you must check hat, overcoat, and stick before you enter. Save for the orchestra in the outer hall there is nothing to be heard but the subdued call of the croupier, the click of the rakes against the heaps of gold on the tables, and the whir of the wheels. The game does not interest me, as I always lose, but the circles of silent, intent faces form a study I never tire of until the perfume-laden air drives me out of doors. To-night there are some windows opened, the air is purer and as yet the crush is not too great; so let us watch for a time this world of Monte Carlo. As I wander through the over-decorated and gorgeous rooms there is space to move about, the people are not so absorbed in play and occasionally raise their eyes from the "green carpet," affording one a glimpse of the souls behind them--gay, desperate, indifferent--sodden with misery or drunk with the love of gambling; they are all here, the only impassive face is that of the man at the wheel who in both garb and countenance strongly resembles a funeral director, and his long rake generally buries your hopes as effectually as the spade of the grave-digger. What queer figures are hereabouts. Look at that old, old man intent only on the whirling of the wheel. His daughter stands behind him stowing his gains away. It is pure business with both of them. Beyond stands a woman who has not been young for years and who was never beautiful, though she may perhaps have possessed the fascination of the devil, with that red hair and those green eyes; but to-night at least, there is nothing about her which will make clear to you why a Russian Grand Duke should have gone crazy for her. She is gowned in soft sea green and trailing mosses, as though she had risen from the unsounded sea gleaming in the moonlight yonder, while upon neck, arms, and head is one of the most wonderful displays of diamonds I have ever seen. Both in size and brilliancy, they rival any of the crown jewels of Europe, and were, so it is said, all given her by that Grand Duke. She is under the constant watch and ward of two armed detectives. She has the face of a vampire, and that word probably describes her character. The Grand Duke is not here and has probably gone the way of all men of his kind long since. Near her, and most intent upon the game, is a young American, who is called the easiest victim that has come to Monte Carlo in many a day. He has a face which most American mothers would be apt to trust, a smiling countenance, with dark eyes and hair, while his slender figure tells of his youth. It is said that he has dropped one hundred thousand dollars on these green tables within a short time. To-night he is certainly dead to all around him save that whirling ball. Poor fool! Near me moves a smartly gowned, chic, French, auburn-haired woman, delicate in form and features, and wedded to that man near her, a huge edition of Louis XVI. Cupid's mind was preoccupied when he made that match. She is the author of several novels which have made some stir in the world, especially in English high life which she handles without gloves. A woman behind me, evidently an American, is telling of her desertion by an American and of her destitute state. She will not fool the man who is with her now, as I discover by a glance. But what fools we mortals be, especially we men mortals! The other day in London I was dining at Prince's. The dinner was well advanced when I became conscious of a voice behind me, evidently an American and as evidently young. He was pouring out his life story to the woman, oblivious of all around him. To please his mother he had married a woman he could never love; in fact, he never had known what love was until he met his present companion. "How old are you," he asked. "How old do you think?" "Twenty-eight." "Not yet twenty-four," came the reply. I managed by much manoeuvering to catch a glimpse of her face; the usual thing, painted and dyed, certainly forty if a day. As I passed out, I asked the head waiter who she was. "Bless your soul, sir, one of the most notorious women of London; used to live at the Savoy; has ruined more men than she can count; age, well forty-five if a day; why she was old when I first saw her and that was long ago." As he was talking, the couple passed me, the poor fool of a boy flushed with wine, the woman such a palpable fraud that it was of no interest to follow. In the glare of the street lamps she gave him a look and me a look, which fully told her story. While one may excuse such infatuation in a young man, one cannot do so in a man of middle life, for he surely knows that, while it is possible for him to attract the respect and even love of a good woman, a bad woman will have use for him only so long as his money holds out and he is a fool if he does not understand this. There are many such fools and homes are constantly being wrecked, lives destroyed by them. There are many such women in these rooms at Monte Carlo, and the ruin they strew broadcast is only a shade less in degree than that of the spinning wheels. As I pass outside, the air is full of the balmy odor of the orange and lemon; the sky, deep blue, is spangled with myriads of stars and a new moon gleams over Monaco; while the waters of the sea lap a lullaby, and the world seems full of peace. The scene is beautiful past description and I linger a while on one of the many benches facing the Casino, linger until I discover that its other occupant is huddled up in the far corner with a face full of staring misery, and then as I pass onward I realize that almost every bench holds one or more such hopeless wretches. But enough of Monte Carlo with its glitter and misery. Let us pass to Nice, stretching away on the shores of the sea with its pale yellow and green houses glowing in the sunshine and its promenade full of everything that can move. CHAPTER II OUR DEPARTURE FROM NICE--THE ROAD TO AIX--THE CITY OF KING RENÉ I had greatly desired to make a long auto tour, but being alone save for Yama, my Jap servant, I had scarce the courage to start, so I decided to go by train to Paris, and was in fact booked by that of Saturday week. As I stand on the porch of the Hôtel des Anglais gazing with regret at the flashing machines as they glide by, an old acquaintance comes out and asks me to "take a spin in his," which I gladly do, with the result that before I return to the hotel I have engaged that same machine and driver by the month. So it is settled. I offer the owner some payment in advance, but he waves it aside, "Any friend of Mr. E. is all right." However, we shall see what we shall see. I secure, as is wise, a written agreement to the effect that I am to have the auto at the rate of six hundred dollars per month, everything included except the board, lodging, and _pourboire_ of the driver, also that I am in no way to be held responsible for any sort of accident or breakage. This is necessary as otherwise one would certainly be charged with every scratch. So it is settled that we start two days hence and I have some consultations with the chauffeur. Everything is arranged for an extended tour through Southern France or wherever I will, and then "Jean," the driver, says that the owner would like "half a month's pay in advance." I thought that smile of the other day meant something. He reminded me of Monsieur Blandois in _Little Dorrit_ whose "nose came down over his mustache and whose mustache went up under his nose," but a pleasant man withal. Having disposed of my railway tickets and forwarded my heavy luggage to Paris, and all being ready, we start, stopping a moment to pay Monsieur half a month in advance. That is of course as it should be. Off at last. Away over the beautiful Promenade des Anglais we roll with all Nice glittering and gleaming a goodbye at us, while the sea joins in in a soothing monotone. Our route leads over the long Corniche road, "Autos de course" thunder by us at an appalling speed, would we plod on at a modest gait of forty-five miles per hour. A moment's pause at Cannes to say goodbye to a friend, and we are en route once more. Cannes is beautiful, but agreeable only if one owns a villa and knows the people. Hotel life there is desolate. It is the Newport of this coast. Gorgeous yachts lie in its harbor, splendid villas gleam amidst the olive trees, and the people are mostly English. Here we leave the coast and sail,--that seems the best way to describe our motion,--up into the hills of Provence until the olives vanish and we are surrounded by the peaceful mountains, while the air is laden with the balsam from the pines. We do not sight the sea again, but the ride is glorious. The racing machines are now few and far between, so one does not hold on for dear life and is not choked in dust,--one's own dust never bothers. The roads are simply superb, hard as a floor and magnificently made. They appear to have been sprinkled with petroleum. Towards evening as we are gliding into the peaceful land of Provence, high on an adjacent peak stands a Madonna (which forces from Jean the confession that he has not been a good Catholic). The setting sun turns her crown into glittering gold and the sad green of the olive trees into silver. The peasants' horses are plodding peacefully homeward, with their tired masters sleeping soundly in the rumbling vans. It has always been a desire of mine to visit Aix, but it seemed a sacrilege, almost, to enter it in a train of cars. To-day, however, sailing onward, soundless and with no sense of motion save that of gliding, it is almost as though we are borne on wings until the first paving stone of the city jostles us down to earth once more. But even so we are spared the usual porters and omnibus and all the paraphernalia of an hotel in the twentieth century, and moving up to the portals of the quaint hôtel Nègre Coste, are welcomed by Madame in a black gown and a white cap. Here my first day in an auto comes to an end, and rising, I shake myself, and, rubbing my eyes, step out, and instantly the auto, Jean, and Yama vanish, and I stand,--almost wondering whether they have ever been--gazing up at the statue of King René who died four hundred years ago, and who seems to smile and hold out his bunch of grapes as he welcomes me to Aix in his fair kingdom of Provence. The voice of Madame recalls me from the royal presence, asking, "Is it Monsieur's wish to have a chamber for himself and one for each of his domestics?" "Yes." (Jean might go to a cheap hotel, has even so suggested, but my life is in his hands and I want good service, such as can come only from good nature. Therefore Jean will stop in the house with me.) This hôtel Nègre Coste has made no changes since before the great Revolution, and I doubt not but that members of the Committee of Public Safety or Revolutionary tribunals have entered this same door, nay, slept in that same bed where I shall presently forget all about them. It is my day now, theirs is done, and most of them have not even graves alone, but rest in the public fosses. From my window I look down upon the Cours Mirabeau, though it bore no such name in his day. In this city King René lived and reigned in peace, the centre of all the music and romance of this section and apparently unaware of that werewolf Louis XI, awaiting just outside for his death in order to seize the kingdom. The "Cours" is long and narrow, with a promenade in its centre, the whole being sheltered by double rows of plane trees cut square over the tops, and forming beneath a long tunnel where the sunlight filters through the green gloom of the leaves, as thick here as in Vallambrosa. At the head of the Cours the statue of the king gazes downward upon the two old moss-grown fountains, where all form and shape has long since been lost in the passing years and plashing waters. To the music of one just outside my window in the quaint little hotel, I sink to sleep and dreams of King René and Margaret of Anjou intermingle with those of wild rushes over long highways. The morning sunlight shines brightly, and Jean would like to move on, but Jean has not that sort of a man to deal with. The twentieth century and the automobile must wait while I spend some hours in exploring this quaint town, a decision of which Madame, mine hostess, approves, as she smiles from a seat near the door where she sits knitting and watching her hotel. Madame is old and knows many things, amongst them, that "Monsieur would visit the Cathedral, it is ancient and very curious, and is to be found far up by the first turn to the left." Modern Aix holds some thirty thousand people, and to the great outer world is but little known. One hears much of Aix-la-Chapelle and of Aix-les-Bains, but little of Aix in Provence, yet to my thinking it is more interesting than either of the others, certainly than Aix-les-Bains, though the German city with its memories of Charlemagne holds its own for interest intense and abiding. [Illustration: CLOISTERS OF THE CATHEDRAL AT AIX From a photograph] The Cours Mirabeau divides the modern city from its ancient fellow, and as I leave the hotel, I plunge at once into the dark and narrow streets of the latter where in René's day the poets, troubadours, and gallants held high revels. Aix was the home of politeness, the theatre of the courts of love, which in the valley of the Rhone can never be platonic--and there were held fêtes and tournaments, and life was all a song. It is not always the well-known objects which attract one most in these old mediæval towns but the quaint bits and corners, fountains and monuments unnoted in any guide-book. Yonder stately façade was surely the dwelling of some one of importance in the old days. To-day it is occupied by many of a far different order. An arched portal gives entrance to a courtyard with an old fountain. A stately façade beautifully carved rises beyond; and through a distant archway one catches a glimpse of a deserted garden where the trees form a wild tangle around broken statues, and there is the murmur of water, but the soul of the house has long since passed away. Perhaps in the days of the terror those doors resounded to thunderous knocking while the silence of the night and the peace of the house vanished forever at the dread summons, "Open in the name of the nation," a sure bidding, in those times, to the guillotine; and I doubt not that, with the courage of their class, Monsieur le Marquis and Madame la Marquise went forth to their doom calmly and with great dignity. One could stand and dream forever in this town of old Provence, but the boys are gathering in curiosity as to why I gaze at a spot that has never attracted a passing interest in their minds. "No one save Jacques the huckster lives there, why should he excite any attention?" The faded gilding in the ceilings of the great salon visible through the dusty window tells no tale of bygone splendour to the boys, no picture of Watteau figures in high heels dancing around that broken god Pan in the garden pass before their mental visions. To-day one shaft of that old cart rests upon his flute and a blossoming plum tree casts its white shower over his head, but his music is silent for ever. [Illustration: CLOISTERS OF THE CATHEDRAL AT AIX From a photograph] In the square beyond stands the Hôtel de Ville which shelters in its courtyard an excellent statue of Mirabeau, and just outside rises one of the old towers of the city, now dedicated by a tablet to the souls of those who have lost their lives for their country. A young woman under its shadow tells me that I shall find the Cathedral just beyond, and in company with the archiepiscopal palace and the little university, there it stands in a square by itself. The Cathedral of St. Sauveur is very ancient. As I enter, the whole interior rests in silence save for the droning voice of some priest. Candles twinkle before the many altars, and the sunlight filters through the trees outside and the painted windows, casting wavering shadows down upon the empty aisles and many tombs. In the nave one may see the portraits of King René and his second wife Jeanne de Laval, and as you gaze upon them, the picture of his life unrolls itself across your mental vision. Born in the grim castle of Angers in 1409, René was married when but twelve years of age and his eldest child came on earth when the father was but eighteen. Eventually René, Duke of Bar and Lorraine, became Duke of Anjou, Count of Provence, and King of the two Sicilies. Though he held the last-named honour but eight years he never surrendered the title. He was a friend of Agnes Sorel and of Joan of Arc, women much more to his liking than his fierce daughter Margaret. René gave all his love to this land of Provence where his palace stood intact--here in Aix--until destroyed most wantonly in 1786. His progress thither was by state barges up and down the rivers--on the Loire to Roanne and thence over land to the Rhone at Lyons and so to Tarascon. Music and flowers, sunshine and happiness seem to have been his portion, yet there was one shadow--that of Louis XI. then the dauphin, whom he met for the first time in the Castle of Tarascon. At Tarascon he instituted the Order of the Crescent and held a fête which is remembered to this day. To his credit it is recorded that he gave protection to Jacques Coeur, fleeing from the ingratitude and treachery of Charles VII., and enabled him to escape into Italy. Having already said farewell to France and Anjou, René plainly saw the absorption of his beloved Provence by King Louis. His picture--some say painted by himself--here in the Cathedral does not impress one strongly. He was too old when it was done and while interesting and beautiful in detail one does not linger long in its contemplation. This cathedral was four hundred years old when René was born and portions of it date far before that, being of Roman origin. Especially is this the case in the baptistery whose superb columns came from the temple of Apollo. The cloisters are quaint and most interesting, and the temptation to linger is strong upon me, but time presses and so I pass outward and down the queer streets to where Jean solemnly seated in the Red Machine awaits my pleasure. Yama has the luggage already packed in the auto when I reach the hotel and we are shortly off, jumping instantly back, or rather forward, from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. Madame smiles an adieu from her seat by the door and keeps on knitting, as those women of France have ever done through sunshine and sorrow, days of happiness and days of blood. As we speed away, Jean catches sight of the Madonna high up on the mountain and heaves a great sigh, regret I suppose at the recollection of all those neglected confessions. CHAPTER III THE ROAD TO ARLES--THE CAMARGUE--RUINS OF ARLES--THE "ALISCAMPS" Leaving Aix down in her bowl in the hills with the silvery olive and flowering almond and plum trees framing her quaint old face, we roll on over the finest stretches of highway I have ever imagined. This is the level land of the mouth of the Rhone and in the next two hours we have three bits of road of ten miles each, and all as straight as a string drawn taut. What speed we seem to make; how the wind sings, and how exhilarating! The machine, a ---- of some twenty-four horse-power, makes now about forty-five miles an hour; yet we feel when one of ninety horse-power passes as though we were at a stand-still. During the morning hours our route lies through many old towns; each of which has its memories. This one of Salon holds the castle of the astrologist Nostradamus and in her church of St. Laurent he lies buried. From Salon our way leads directly west and we skim along for twenty miles through the flat land but see nothing of the Rhone until we reach and pass through Arles. Then we bring up suddenly upon its very brink with its yellow floods rolling southward at our feet. On our right are the gateways of the famous old city of Arles, but my eyes are drawn off and away across the river and out over the fantastic land of the Camargue, a land more akin to Africa than to Europe,--that great "Field of Reeds" between the two branches of the Rhone, only a few feet above the level of the sea, where the ibis, Egyptian vulture, and the flamingo are to be found. The whole is so low and so covered with salt that it glistens and glitters under the morning's sunlight, while the air quivers and shifts above it, and is full of the mirage, taking on strange forms and fantastic shapes as the eye wanders over it. [Illustration: THE PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. TROPHIMUS, ARLES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The people out there are as wild as the cattle which roam its plains, and their manners and customs as oriental as those of the Arabs who invaded the land centuries ago, while its one town, Les Saintes-Maries, has all the characteristics of an African town of the desert, and there Mary Magdalene, Mary of Salome, and Mary the mother of James, landed to escape persecution. We cannot go further into the Camargue now and so turn to where, on our right, the entrance to the ancient city of Arles is guarded by two great low round towers, beyond which stretches a vista of narrow shadowy streets full of attractions and inviting exploration. The main features of the old Roman town are too well known to justify description, but every street holds some relic of the past worth inspection, and on our way to the very comfortable inn, where we dine in plenty, my eyes are constantly on the alert and yet much is missed. There are two inns in this city of Arles situated at right angles to each other in the same corner of the public square and it would appear that whichever the traveller selects he will be subjected to the pitying glances of the proprietor of the rival establishment watching from the door of his own house; however, I find nothing to complain of either in the house I enter or in the dinner service. The day is one of blinding sunshine as we draw up before the amphitheatre. Its great arches glitter against the blue sky and the white city all around us is as silent as a tomb. There are two pictures which must arise to the thoughts here: one, that of the place in the voluptuous splendour of its Roman days. The vast crowds thronging every space; the silver netting to protect them from the beasts in the arena; the fountains in these arches casting up scented waters; the sunlight filtering through awnings of gorgeous silks; the heat; the smell of perfumes and of fresh blood; the roar of the beasts and the murmur of the multitudes,--all these made Rome what she then was and kept the people from thinking. The other picture is so widely different that it is difficult to believe it can be of this same structure, choked from the summit to far underground with the hovels of the poor, every archway closed up, the whole centre a veritable rabbit warren--thousands of outcasts found their homes in this spot. To enter it was scarcely possible save to the initiated, to leave it also was well nigh impossible. A murderer from the town had but to disappear here and all trace of him vanished. If any ventured to pursue him they never returned to tell of what they had seen. Upon this mass of vileness the plague descended in 1640--It came many more times to Arles--none were allowed to come out and the dead and living crowded the place to its utmost hidden recesses. Finally they were summoned forth to quarters beyond the town and only the dying and the dead were left to occupy this amphitheatre of Arles. We have the scene of those horrors and of former gorgeousness to ourselves to-day and we wander in and out at pleasure. [Illustration: EXTERIOR OF THE AMPHITHEATRE AT ARLES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] All the world knows of the Greek theatre here of which there is much left, but of the quaint Cathedral of the middle ages less is spoken though it is of interest, especially the cloisters, where you may spend a pleasant half hour back in the myths of the past. You are told again that Martha and Mary came here from the Holy Land for there are their figures carved in stone, and also here that Mary conquered the dragon by a piece of the true Cross. The portal of the Cathedral is simple, yet so beautiful that I venture to reproduce it that you may judge for yourself. Enter, and you will find a very lofty, very plain, but very dignified nave of the twelfth century. As I leave the sanctuary, I am greeted by the priest in a dignified solemn salutation,--he does not raise his eyes, and I am evidently completely forgotten before he has turned away. A lot of boys, shut up in school in one of the chapels for some hours back, stop to stare at me for an instant and then go whooping away down the quiet streets of the old city. Arles is truly a Roman town--aside from the Cathedral,--all Roman; her amphitheatre impresses you with its majesty, her theatre charms more in its ruins than it could have done two thousand years ago in its prime, and you will linger long in that beautiful avenue of the dead, "Aliscamps," (avenue of death) just outside the gates where stately lines of cypresses march away on either side, shading in a sad sort of fashion rows of ancient sarcophagi, ruined and empty. The place is vast in extent and in the days of its splendour, the dead were brought here even from Lyons. It is mentioned by Dante in his _Inferno_. Pagans and Christians sleep here side by side until the day breaks and the shadows flee away. [Illustration: THE ALISCAMPS AT ARLES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The weather has all to do with one's impressions of a country. I always associate France with a golden sunlight, for so many times I have left London, stifling under its black fogs, and literally sailed into the sunshine on the coast of France. So especially does sunshine form a part and parcel of Southern France, somewhat too strong and blinding in summer, but in the spring with its blossoms of fruit trees and in the autumn with its splendour of color and the dreamy odor of over-ripened fruits, the sunlight of France is,--well, just the sunlight of France, and those who have seen it will remember it always. To-day in the high tide of spring all nature rejoices. These ruins gleam white and pure, the city, like an ancient dame of high degree, bears a gracious aspect, the river dances and sparkles, and the long highways stretch off and off until lost in the midst of olive groves and blossoming fruit trees. CHAPTER IV THE ROUTE TO TARASCON--CASTLE OF KING RENÉ--BEAUCAIRE--NÎMES--MONTPELLIER--AN ACCIDENT--NARBONNE, ANCIENT AND MODERN Leaving Arles we speed northward to Tarascon and so drop downward a thousand years in history as Tarascon belongs to the Middle Ages. To me these mediæval cities and fortresses are far more charming, far more interesting than the Roman remains with which this land abounds. The latter seem cold and the lives led in them so far different from our own, that with it and them we can have but little sympathy, but this does not hold with the France of the middle ages. There, all is warmth and color and distant music. So it is to-day at Tarascon; I can almost fancy that King René and his troop of minstrels yet hold high revels in yonder castle and I should not be greatly astonished to see its portals open and give egress to Margaret of Anjou on her departure for England. How, by the way, came such a woman, as history paints her, to be daughter of a king who cared only for music and grapes, and the joy of laughter? This castle of Tarascon was King René's palace of pleasure to which he came from Aix and held high revel; here you may still see his chapel and there are many apartments of his time, amongst them his private rooms all of which I did not see, for the fat jailer would under no circumstances permit my entrance. My inclination for a fight in order to secure an entrance was strong, but then it occurred to me that the quarters to which I would be consigned might not be those of King René and my sojourn therein might be protracted. It is shameful that such a place should be used for such a purpose and our intentions to effect a change are great as we roll off to inspect the town. I must confess that in Tarascon it is not so much King René as Daudet's "Tartarin" who occupies my thoughts. On the whole, the place is very lonely or the people all asleep. Certainly it does not seem a spot to offer much adventure, but then, who can tell? As we repass the portals of René's fortress, the jailer sits sound asleep and his prisoners might escape without difficulty. The river is not very wide awake. I feel sleepy myself, and Jean and the auto are in like condition. Here, here, now! Wake up there, get your winged wheels and let's off and away! So we spin past the frowning towers and crossing the Rhone by a fine bridge, pass through Beaucaire, where high above the river are the ruins of another castle once belonging to the Count of Toulouse. Wars and time have left nothing save its tower and the arches of a chapel, where Saint Louis prayed on his way to the Crusade. The Castle's last tenant was Duke François de Montmorency, the last of his line and a victim of Richelieu's. Our ride to Nîmes is hot and dusty and under a glaring sun. Nîmes is another spot too well known to need mention, and, like most of the places well known and greatly talked about, it is not so interesting as one of which one has heard but little. Certainly Nîmes, a bustling, prosperous city cannot approach Aix or Arles in interest of story and romance, and she has aside from her Roman remains nothing to detain us. I find that I am not alone in my opinion of these Roman remains. James in his _Little Tour in France_ speaks of them as monotonous and brutal, and not at all exquisite. He referred especially to the amphitheatres at Nîmes and Arles. They are cold and cheerless even under a brilliant sunlight; perhaps the memory of their wild beasts and all the blood and slaughter have much to do with this. Certainly here at Nîmes, while one must admire the splendid arches and sweeping lines of the whole, one does not linger with any such pleasure as, for instance, in Heidelberg or among the ruined abbeys of England. The Maison Carrée is beautiful to look upon and you feel glad that there is such a gem, yet it is cold and you soon leave it with no regret. It stands on the busy street of a too large town, and trams rattle and rush by its door. You cannot picture men in togas and sandals on those steps to-day. The rest of Nîmes, while probably a comfortable city in which to live, will not hold your interest for a moment and I roll off and away with no desire ever to return. How different our feelings at Avignon! Leaving Nîmes we roll southward for some hours until Montpellier is reached at half past five. The roads have been fine but the ride not so pleasant as that of yesterday. Montpellier is simply a place to spend the night with nothing to see, a busy place of some sixty thousand people. The streets and sidewalks bubble and sparkle until a late hour with the life that is so dear to these people,--open cafés and tables all over the sidewalks, much wine but never a case of intoxication. No matter in what part of the world you find this nation, they will arrange some portion of their abiding place to resemble their beloved Paris. It is so here, it is so in Saigon, and would be so on a desert island. This afternoon, during an enforced stoppage of fifteen minutes, I saw Jean smile, and looking round beheld a group for a picture. In the middle of the long dusty highway stood my little Jap servant gazing up into the face of an old French woman perched high on a pile of rubbish which loaded a small cart almost to the breaking point, the whole being drawn by the most diminutive donkey I have ever seen. Surely there was a strange juxtaposition; she who might have been a descendant of the Vixen in Dickens' _Two Cities_ gazing down upon a representative of the far-off rising Empire. Yama is greatly amused by the carts drawn by small dogs, and in many ways he finds France different from the Land of the Morning. [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE CHÂTEAU OF KING RENÉ AT TARASCON From a photograph] This is our third day and we are leaving Montpellier, having passed from Aix to Arles, Tarascon, and Nîmes, and thence here, and have had but one mishap, not at all our fault. In a long, straight stretch of the Corniche, between Nice and Cannes, two men were walking away from us and we fortunately were not moving at high speed. Our horn was blown constantly and there were no other machines in sight. One of the men, knowing we should follow the law of the land and pass him on his left, kept his side of the road, but the other completely lost his head, and dodging from one side to the other like a chicken, forced us either to run over him or into the ditch. Of course we did the latter. Jean managed the auto so well that no injury was done, as the ditch was but a few inches deep, but then came the problem, how to get out. The soft mud rendered our own power useless, we simply churned holes. Finally a van came along, drawn by two stately Normandy horses, the driver, after a moment's inspection of our plight, calmly hitched on to our springs and drew us on to the high-road, after which the horses stood nodding their great heads at us as though to say, "After all you have to come to us when in trouble, as you are most of the time." A few francs called down a benediction upon us from the old driver and we skimmed away, the horses still holding converse concerning us as we vanished in a cloud of dust. Jean takes as much interest in this auto as one does in a horse. He knows all its good points and one discovers its bad ones only by noting his watching of certain parts. The tire of the right hand rear wheel seems to bother him and late in the day that tire collapses. He claims that that wheel, being mostly off the crown of the road, or rather being forced off when we meet or pass anything is subject to a greater strain than the others, and we have some trouble until at Montpellier he buys some new ones, and to-day towards Carcassonne there has been no trouble--but I anticipate. The ride from Montpellier to Narbonne, where we have luncheon, is pleasant but not of much interest. In one village the people are _en fête_ for the return of Monseigneur, and we shortly meet his Reverence in a coupé, the only sign of affluence I have noted in all the land. When I ask Jean who is with his reverence, he suggests "his niece," and adds that it is marvellous how many "nieces" these priests have. Now that is the suggestion of Jean, who, as I have before stated, is not a good Catholic and does not go to Mass. I know, for I saw him, that the black-robed figure beside the one in purple was a priest. Narbonne is only five miles from the sea, and one may scent the salt marshes even in her streets. In the days of her birth, five centuries before our era, she was surrounded by lakes and so connected with the sea, making her one of the most important ports of the great Roman Empire. She is described as beautiful in the year 95, possessed of theatres, temples, baths, a superb capitol, and all that in those days made the splendour of a Roman city. All this has vanished utterly in the passage of Visigoths, and Saracens,--who defied Charles Martel and Pépin until treason aided the latter. Its history onward is that of France, but its decay began one hundred years before day dawned on America, at which time the Jews were expelled and the port began to fill up through the bursting of a dike. To-day we roll into a commonplace town with but two relics even of the middle ages, and nothing at all of the more ancient periods. A fragment of a cathedral and a bishop's palace alone attract the eye. Of the former there is little of interest, though it would have been a great shrine if completed. The palace has a stately façade, but nothing inside worthy of note. We find a comfortable hotel here with a garrulous old lady seated near its door, who immediately asks me where Madame is, and on my telling her that I am not married, offers to bring forth several applicants for the empty post, adding that I am none too old, as she herself married again but lately at sixty-five, and I am but a boy. However, I decline the proffered assistance, and we roll away out of the very ancient city, leaving the old dame shaking her head at the "queer ideas of those Americans." CHAPTER V THE APPROACH TO CARCASSONNE--ITS PICTURESQUENESS, ITS RESTORATION AND HISTORY The ride from Narbonne via Béziers proves most enjoyable. As we leave the town, the air becomes cooler, and from the summit of a hill the Pyrenees range into view, a long line of glittering snow marching in stately procession across the southern horizon. The air is full of the buoyant freshness of the hills, and one's thoughts turn to pine forests and rushing waters. Over the superb highway where in ancient days stately processions passed to and fro from Spain, our machine glides on with a sweeping, flying motion, until I find myself leaning over and looking for the wings which should project from the centre of each wheel,--winged wheels, surely. What intense satisfaction such a journey brings, how different from that of the most luxuriant train, where, no matter how comfortable our bodies may be made, our eyes are constantly irritated by being shut off from some desired view of mountain, town, or castle, by a deep cut or long line of freight cars. One has a proscenium box always when in an automobile, and is enabled to ring down or up the curtain at will. So to-day with not eyes enough to see the beauties of this fair land, we glide onward to the beating of the wings when suddenly on a hill before us sharply silhouetted rise the towers of Carcassonne. The old poem is at fault this time--I have "seen Carcassonne" even though I approach no nearer and surely the prospect is enchanting. [Illustration: THE FORTIFICATIONS AT THE OLD TOWN OF CARCASSONNE From a photograph] But is that Carcassonne, or any town built by man's hands? I have seen many a mirage in distant deserts like unto this before me. Through the fantastic dancings of the afternoon's waves of light, the old city looms up as though cut out of black cardboard. Sharply and clearly against the tawny background stands forth every tower and pinnacle, cathedral spire and parapet. Behind it, rise the yellow hills, the green mountains, and the eternal snows, while to the north, east, and west, stretch the undulating valleys of France, clothed now in a blanket of spring blossoms, and over all arches the deep, fathomless, southern sky. Occupying the top of a hill in the middle fore-ground, yonder dream city of the dark ages needs but the flaunting banners of its ancient lords and the call of trumpets to make the picture perfect. But it is ghostly and silent as we roll by, taking no note of the passage of this strange machine, which, in the Middle Ages, would have produced great commotion amongst its defenders and peopled the walls and towers with thousands to see us pass. To-day no living thing gives evidence of life, not even a dog barks, and as we glide onward and leave it, I wonder again--"Was that Carcassonne, or indeed its mirage? Shall we find it ahead of us; are there two such places in this world of the twentieth century?" Crossing a fine bridge, we pass through the streets of a comparatively modern town, and draw up at the excellent Hôtel Bernard. It does not take long to wash the dust off and I am shortly en route in a carriage to investigate the old _Cité_. How ridiculously slowly these horses move, how the trap jolts! It is hot and dusty and there is no singing of the wind as we do _not_ rush along. I would advise those who would retain their romantic impressions of Carcassonne to content themselves with the vision which greets their eyes in the approach and passing. Then the _Cité_ will dawn and vanish clothed in all the romance of its centuries, but when you really approach its walls and, crossing its drawbridge, enter its portals, all the romance vanishes in a flash. I suppose, as an example of a walled and fortified town, it was well to restore Carcassonne, but from a picturesque and romantic point, such restorations are always a failure. Carcassonne in ruins and covered with trailing vines would yet speak and relate its story, holding you enthralled for hours as you clambered over ruined towers and churches and the abodes of those so long dead. There are the foundations laid by the Romans, with the superstructures of the Visigoths and the battlements of later periods. In yonder citadel there are dungeons under dungeons, and a prison of the Inquisition. That cathedral was founded in the fifth century, rebuilt in the eleventh and twelfth, and restored in 1853. In fact to-day you will find a perfectly restored city, (and still the work goes on), its angles are all sharp, as though cut out of cardboard. You may not enter its citadel used as barracks, but you will in the tour of its walls mount perfectly new stairs, unlock new doors, and find sound floors beneath your feet. Not a shadow of romance or interest attaches to any of this, nor can you re-people in your imagination the place with the life of long ago. As a most perfect example of a walled town it is worthy of inspection, but Viollet-le-Duc has done so much for it and written so much about it, that it would be useless to enter here into detailed description. Loches which we will visit later, is to me of far greater interest and it cannot be said that that is merely a castle and this a whole city, for within those walls is an entire town, and there the ghosts are ever present to one's thoughts. Carcassonne dates from the days of the Romans, but its higher and greater wall was erected by Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, upon the site of the Roman structure. With the advent of the Moors (713), silence descends upon its history, and does not raise the curtain for four centuries. Of this occupation there are no traces; which is most unusual--not a horseshoe arch or a bit of Arabic in all the town, yet it is said to derive its name from a Saracen Queen named Carcas. The next we learn of it is in the year 1209 when it is besieged in the name of the Pope by Simon de Montfort. The result of the Albigensian "heresy"--this revolt against the symbolism and mysteries of the Church of Rome--fell heavily upon all this section but most terribly upon Carcassonne when Simon de Montfort with a French army attacked this French fortress. Baptism, the Mass, the Adoration of the Cross, and the sale of indulgences were absolutely rejected--with what effect one can imagine;--all this some centuries before Luther. The danger of this to the Pope and his Church promptly moved the powers of Rome to action. Béziers, through which we passed this morning, was the first point of attack, when forty thousand were slain. No quarter was given--orthodox and infidel, in all one thousand were put to death--"God will know his own," shouted the Abbé of Cîteaux; "slay them all." Into its great Church of St. Nazaire crowded both men and women, and the priest tolled the bells until all were dead. The news of this horror caused every town to open its gates save Carcassonne, which for fourteen days was the scene of continual slaughter before it fell through want of water and famine. It is stated that three hundred thousand from all over Europe assembled here, drawn by the promises of pardon and indulgences. How peaceful the scene to-day! How green the grass, and how blue the heavens! It was Louis IX, who made the "Key of the South" impregnable, clearing away the surrounding town and establishing it across the river where it now is. He had the outer line of the fortifications constructed around the _Cité_, forming a sure refuge in all the wars with Spain. Carcassonne was never again taken by storm and when the Black Prince devastated the lower town, the _Cité_ did not open its gates. It is stated that it required one thousand four hundred men to defend these walls and to this must be added some two thousand workmen, servants, etc.--To-day a few cannon would soon blow these towns into dust. The custodian rolls all of this off to you as he pilots you around the inner wall, up and down ladders and staircases, and into all sorts of impossible places, which would be of interest if they were not all so new; but the theatrical effect is beautiful, and so theatrical that one is surprised to find this tower of stone, not canvas, and yonder battlement entirely safe to lean upon. From the ramparts, the traveller will observe that between the outer and inner walls the space was once occupied by the hovels of the poor, but they are all gone now, and also that, around the outer circle where the moat once was, the grass mounts to the wall itself, so that one may encircle the _Cité_ and find nothing to distract one's attention from the old town save the wonderfully beautiful panorama of the distant mountains or far stretching valleys, all violet and pale rose in the light of the fading day. In his inspection of the _Cité_ one finds nothing of interest save the church, as the houses are those of the middle classes. The church holds some interesting monuments. There is no semblance of palace or "hôtel de ville," and the château seems but an empty shell. I am not allowed to enter it, which I do not greatly regret, and so turning again I pass one of the portals,--and emerge from the walls of the _Cité_, the outer circle of which is some sixteen hundred and the inner twelve hundred yards in circumference, so that the space enclosed is not so great as that at Loches, I think. Carcassonne has but two portals, each over double draws and many portcullises. Its towers are all named and, as I have stated, they have not forgotten to call one the Tower of the Inquisition, with, I doubt not, much truth, but its walls are new, its door and floors both new, and when one enters into comparisons--which at all times are odious--with Loches, Nuremberg, or Salzburg, one quietly turns from Carcassonne, gets into the carriage and drives away, wishing again that one had been contented with that first fantastic panorama spread against that tawny sky. CHAPTER VI THE ROUTE TO TOULOUSE--GREAT MACHINES ON THE ROADS OF FRANCE--DELIGHTS OF AN AUTO--TOULOUSE--ITS UNIVERSITY--THE CHÂTEAU DE ST. ELIX There is nothing of interest between Carcassonne and Toulouse and so we speed along at thirty-six miles an hour on the wide highways reaching Toulouse at eleven o'clock A.M.; seventy-five miles in just two hours is quite fast enough, for the wings again come out and the sensation is therefore as near angelic as mortal man is permitted to enjoy. The projection of our hood prevents that incurling of dust, which is the curse of autos without these tops, and I find that my linen keeps remarkably clean. I could have gotten along with much less clothing, and I have only a shirt case full as it is. A dress-suit case with perhaps the addition of a hand-bag, will hold all that a man needs. Such a ride as that of to-day demonstrates one of the many advantages of an auto over a carriage and horses. One can loiter when desirable, but one can also pass quickly over the tedious stretches which must occur in all journeys. To-day, for instance, we covered the seventy-five miles with actual pleasure, while the journey in a carriage would have taken two long, hot dusty days of absolutely no interest. An auto is also cheaper than a team. I could not have hired any sort of horses and a comfortable trap for less than ten dollars a day and could use the team certainly not longer than ten hours per day, whereas this machine, a 25-horse-power, at twenty dollars per day, costs me less than a dollar an hour and can be used every hour of the twenty-four. So that ride of seventy-five miles, all expenses included, cost about two dollars. Of course, the expense of renting an auto by the month counts in the possible delays by sickness, or otherwise, but I have so far had none of these occur, and if I may be allowed to anticipate, can state that in the three months' tour covering nearly five thousand miles, I was never laid up save when I so desired. If I had owned the machine, my expenses would have been enormous. Mr. B. of New York, whose auto (a new one) met him at Naples, told me that he had spent one thousand dollars in tires between that city and Paris. I have paid my twenty dollars per day, and no extras save the board and lodging of my chauffeur. If I lived in Paris I should own an auto, but under no other circumstances. It is always cheaper and more satisfactory to rent than to own. This holds good with electrics as well as gasoline. For three seasons I rented an electric in Newport. It was brought in the morning and taken away at any hour I desired, late or early, and all expenses were covered by the two hundred dollars per month. For two seasons there I owned an electric which cost me certainly one hundred dollars per month and I had it barely half the time and was never sure of it. It ended by my giving it to my brother-in-law, who has scarcely spoken to me since. If you own, your chauffeur, like your butler, is forced to be in league with the tradesman. If you rent, he makes nothing by accident or delay and runs the risk of being dismissed by _his_ employer if the car meets with accidents or delay through his fault. Of course, the pleasure, and a great one, of running the car is lost. I have not and shall not attempt that at all, as I well know that if I ran it but ten feet and all went well, any accident which occurred during the after time would be attributed to that ten feet. I should certainly wish to feel very sure of myself before running a great car on these roads where those of tremendous speed are constantly passing me. The slightest nervousness or error as to handle bars would mean death to all. I neglected to add that owners of cars must insure against all accidents, and also insure the life of the driver, whereas renting, as I did, from a responsible party, all that was upon his shoulders, not mine. If the car had been wrecked past repair and the chauffeur killed, in fact, from every sort of accident, I was held blameless. When I dismissed it at Geneva, I asked George whether it would be of service for another long tour. "Certainly, sir. It would be well to expend about one hundred dollars on it, but it would go all right without even that. We have covered nearly five thousand miles and it is in very good condition. Also we have met with no losses, save a few pneumatics." But I anticipate-- I noticed at Montpellier, when Jean thought a new envelope was necessary for one of the rear wheels, he telegraphed to the owner at Nice before he bought it. Toulouse, a city of 150,000 people, is one of the most prosperous in France, but it is not a place of interest for the tourist, and if the automobilist finds dusty, disagreeable roads anywhere in France it will be around this city of the Southwest, because of the very high winds prevailing in this section. Its past dates back some centuries before its capture by the Romans, and around and in it history has been made hard and fast throughout all these passing years until the present, when it is happy, contented, and prosperous, even if commonplace. It possesses probably the oldest literary institution in Europe, dating from 1300, and one which observes the singular custom of distributing flowers of gold and silver to its laureates; all of its prizes take the form of different flowers in gold or silver. But this does not interest the ordinary mortal and as we roll into the city over her rough pavements, I feel ordinary,--the high, hot winds irritate, and I am glad, after a very comfortable luncheon at a very good hotel to start forth towards Pau. The people of Toulouse have evidently never seen a Japanese before and I feel sorry for Yama, so great is the crowd around us at all times, but if he objects to the scrutiny his stolid, expressionless face gives no sign thereof. The day becomes hot as we turn southward toward St. Gaudens. About an hour and a half out, an ancient château, evidently unpolluted by restoration, is seen on the right. I hesitate as to whether I shall stop, but it is hot and we are moving so well that I give up the idea, when, _pop!_ a tire is torn wide open. Now we must stop and not three hundred yards from the château, which an old peasant, washing clothes in a brook, tells me is well worth a visit, and the lord of the manor willing to allow one. In the meantime poor Jean is down in the dust and when he pulls out the pneumatic finds a hole as large as a dime. Heat is the worst enemy of these pneumatics as the delicate rubber will not stand it. However, the work is finally done and we move off to the entrance of the Château de St. Elix. It is surrounded by its village and one approaches through an avenue guarded by stately gates. A wide moat in which water still flows is crossed by an ancient bridge, and beyond rises a structure of the date of Francis I. A central portion with an enormously high mansard roof is supported by two huge round towers, one on either side, crowned by cone-shaped tops. A winding step leads to the main portal, where a servant stands awaiting my approach. "I am a traveller, will it be permitted to inspect the château? I am told it is of great interest." I hand in my card which is carried to the master off somewhere in the out-buildings, which on one side appear to be stables, on the other, gardener's cottages and hot-houses. When he comes I meet a pleasant-faced young Frenchman, who smilingly conducts me to the house, his home, to which he seems much attached, and to me it proved most interesting. A long wide hall leads straight from the front door out upon a rear terrace which overlooks a great square garden holding many rows of cedar trees cut in all sorts of fantastic shapes, no two alike. One represents a huge bird upon its nest, another a layer of mushrooms, while a third is round as a ball, and a fourth square as a box. "They have been trimmed that way for centuries and would not know how to grow otherwise." But to return to the house. We enter a vast apartment with heavy rafters gilded, and in blue. Its walls are hung in ancient Flemish tapestry and a huge fire-place occupies one end. There are many curious pictures and ancient objects of art. Evidently the place has remained unchanged for centuries. What a sense of repose these places afford one, how far off the bustle of the world seems! I mention this to mine host, but he shakes his head replying, "There is little peace in France." In one of the great round towers is a library, and behind the salon a wide drawing-room where things are of the fashion of the great Louis, and where that monarch would not feel the lapse of years or out of place if he could return. Crimson damask, fast going to tatters, cover the walls, from which ladies in high wigs and gentlemen in court dresses question "your presence here in such a costume." The Grand Mademoiselle is in great array, but Marie Antoinette knows the vanity and sorrow of all things and smiles sadly at you. Here I discover that the present family have owned the château for only one century. The portraits are all of the ancient race who died out long ago. That painting under the groined roof of the great hall is of the last of that line, the Baron de St. Elix, who died childless and so the house passed to strangers. Whether the Terror was the cause of his death or not, I could not discover, but that man in the hall would have gone to the guillotine with dignity, of that I am sure. If his shade ever returns, he must feel grieved at the sadness of these old towers of his race. Some of that same sadness is reflected in the face of the present owner as he watches us speed away into the greater world of which he knows so little and which means life and progress to him. The sunlight strikes athwart the ancient portal and the stately towers, turning the garden into green and gold, lighting the village and its ancient dames in a sad sort of fashion, emphasizing the silence which is a part of it all. A turn in the long avenue and we are off and away down the dusty highway, leaving the Château de St. Elix to its dull repose. CHAPTER VII THE DEATH OF A DOG--ENCOUNTERS ON THE HIGHWAY--TRAVELLERS BY THE WAY--PEOPLE OF THE PROVINCES--LOURDES--HER SUPERSTITION AND HER VISIONS Later in the day as we speed down a long incline the only thing in sight is a huge van drawn by three horses tandem. Jean sounds his horn constantly, which has the effect of causing them to straggle all across the road. No man is in sight--nothing save an old dog that is working his best to get the horses into line and out of our way. This he succeeds in doing, but alas, though Jean does his _best_ to save him, he goes down under our wheels and I distinctly feel the crunch, crunch, as we pass over his poor old body, driving the life out. As I look back, it is only an old dog dead in the dusty highway with some old horses gazing down at his quiet figure. They have been friends for so many years,--it is all over now. When we see the stupid driver emerge from beneath the van, where he has been asleep in a swinging basket, we almost regret that it was not he instead of the old dog. My man did his best to save the dog and felt as badly as I did over his death, but he must have ditched the auto with danger to us and wreck for the machine to have done other than he did. These vans are the terror of these highways and the government should either banish the automobiles or force the van drivers to attend to their charges. We passed dozens to-day with the drivers fast asleep underneath, as was this man, or if not asleep then yards behind their teams. Several times serious wrecking was prevented only by Jean's cool head and prompt hand. There should be a law passed and enforced with a fine, that would correct matters. The death of that poor old dog saddened the whole day. About five o'clock in the afternoon, as the shadows lengthened and we were passing slowly through the streets of Lannemezan, on rounding a corner we were confronted by two hogs and a driver--the lesser beast fled away in terror, but the larger--a good-sized porker,--kept his place firmly planted in the middle of the road, while with his ears pointed forward and snout lowered, he gravely regarded our approach as much as to say, "Let me see, let me see, what have we here?" Just then Jean ran the machine gently against him and bowled him over, whereupon the air was rent asunder by squeals from his astounded and indignant pigship, and a volley of oaths in the patois of this section from his master, which together with remarks from Jean and shrieks of laughter from Yama rendered the spot anything but tranquil. The personalities and profanities of these two Frenchmen would certainly have caused their telephones to be removed if passed thereover. Our route all the afternoon is glorious, on a high table-land, overlooking the Garonne and commanding the sparkling Pyrenees as far as the eye can reach both east and west; the air is fresh and full of life. St. Gaudens and Montréjeau are passed in turn, and Tarbes reached at six o'clock, where we descend at the Hôtel de la Paix on the main square. The hotels in all this section show the influence of Spain. This one has a _patio_ and the one at Carcassonne also possessed one with a raised platform at the end over which a vine was twined and under which Carmen might have carried on her flirtations. Three autos arrived while I was in Carcassonne, a large one with three Englishmen, which had destroyed three tires that day and caught on fire; a small one of twelve horse-power with three men, and one just like ours, of twenty-four horse-power. This held a lady, a maid, and two dogs. Imagine travelling in an auto with two dogs. Jean says the lady is an American countess and seems surprised when I tell him that we have no titles in America. He might have replied that we try to marry as many as possible, which is quite true, to our sorrow generally. This person looked like a painted countess of the stage. One must journey through the provinces in France to find her men and understand the source of her past power. Those we meet with daily are a fine, manly looking lot of fellows, bright eyes and erect, sturdy figures, nothing effeminate about them, in all ways superior to the men of the towns who would seem to be descended from the old men and boys, all Napoléon left in the land in his wild race for self glory. What a magnificent figure his would have been in history had he placed France first and remained First Consul! How absurd that play at Emperor! Of his military and executive genius there can be no question, but for his own glory he deliberately sacrificed France and hundreds of thousands of her best men. His family playing at royalty always reminds one of some stage performance; "Belles of the Kitchen", for example. I think we made a mistake in coming via Toulouse. It would have been more interesting to have gone via Montreal, Pamiers, and St. Gaudens. If I ever come this way again, I shall keep nearer the Pyrenees. The run to-day has covered from Carcassonne at nine o'clock to Tarbes at six, one hundred and seventy-five miles. It is but thirty miles further into Pau, but man and master both are weary and the auto must be hot, to say the least. [Illustration: THE GROTTO AT LOURDES By permission of Messrs. Lévy] In Tarbes,--at the Hôtel de la Paix,--we find our last stopping place before Pau, a town with a comfortable little inn and but little else of interest. From there we turn southwest for an inspection of that centre of the greatest superstition of the nineteenth century, Lourdes. The ride is a pleasant one down, or rather up, a valley with a rushing river. Lourdes is found nestling in a nook of the foot-hills of the Pyrenees while high in its centre rises an ancient castle with the distant range of snow as a background. The location is beautiful, much like Salzburg, but Lourdes is a bustling busy city full of fine shops and big hotels, though I think I should have to be paid handsomely to sleep in any bed in the town. This is not the season, and therefore we perhaps have a better opportunity to inspect the theatre of the place, for one can call it by no other name. Beyond the castle and in a valley one first sees a sweeping circle of arches forming an approach to a species of Pantheon, at least shaped like the Roman structure and on a rock directly behind and above towers a Gothic church. Both are crammed with votive offerings of all sorts and descriptions. Passing around to the right one comes upon the sacred grotto. It is directly under the higher church, in fact, in the rock upon which that edifice stands, a simple grotto of slight depth and some thirty feet high. In a niche on the right is an image of the Virgin in white with a blue scarf. Hundreds of votive candles blaze and smoke in the grotto, smudging the whole with nasty soot. The sacred and healing spring issues from a spigot, in the front centre of the grotto, and the faithful are constantly drinking its water. Rows of benches occupy the space before the cave, which is enclosed by an iron grill, wherefore! one wonders. Certainly there is no one who would steal those candles and there is nothing else. On the left one sees a tablet upon which is inscribed the words of the peasant's dream as uttered by the Virgin, "Go to Lourdes, bathe, drink, and be cleansed," while the entire space and roof of the grotto is hung thickly with the discarded crutches, wooden legs, &c., &c., of those who, following the divine instructions, were healed. The water has been conducted into adjacent baths for men and for women, and I fancy it is the unusual cleanliness which produced the cures. Certainly there are many past all hope of cure even here, for the place is full of disgusting beggars. The whole affair is, as Jean announced, "good for commerce and politics." It is the greatest evidence of the superstition of the Middle Ages which Europe can show to-day. Let us leave it. Lourdes as God made it and its ancient rulers left it, is beautiful; Lourdes as that name means to-day is vile. No one with any regard for his health would venture near there while a pilgrimage is in progress. It is a relief to get off into the country where disease does not seem to hang in the air. CHAPTER VIII PAU AND THE LIFE THERE--DELIGHTFUL ROADS--ANCIENT ORTHEZ--MADAME AND HER HOTEL--THE CHÂTEAU OF BIDACHE AND ITS HISTORY Our ride to Pau is down the banks of the Gave de Pau, past quaint towns and churches and many mineral baths. Near noon, that well known watering-place of Southern France comes into view, her famous terrace rising high over the river; crowned by a line of hotels and villas, and with the ancient castle, the birthplace of Henry IV, rising majestically at its further end. In the valley rushes the Gave and beyond the foot-hills the higher Pyrenees rise tier on tier to the snows and clouds. The prospect is enchanting. I should imagine that one might become very fond of Pau. It is a quaint old city, delightfully placid, and its promenade like one great proscenium box with God's theatre of the mountains holding perpetual performance before you, and most of your time will be passed on that terrace watching the lights and shadows as they chase each other past the many mountain peaks into far-off valleys leading into Spain. You will find yourself quoting _Lucile_ on the slightest provocation, and will become romantic if you remain too long. The window of my room in the Hôtel de France,--a good hostelry by the way,--overlooked terrace, valley, and mountains, and I found myself hanging out of it in a most dangerous fashion at all hours of the day and night, until sleep and the murmuring river drove me to bed. The lover of golf will find in Pau, I am told, the best links in Europe. The hunter may follow the paper fox any day and the drives must be endless and all beautiful. Yet I fancy the stranger in Pau has little time to spend on them,--the social life being more attractive. It seems to be a pleasant existence, not too strenuous, and composed of pleasant people. The usual run of tourist does not come here, which is greatly in its favour. Its château, which has been judiciously restored, holds many beautiful rooms and much of interest within its wall, but I shall not describe so well known a building. Monday, April 3d. The day of our departure opens cloudy with threatening rain and I am in doubt as to going forward. However it may clear by ten, and as Jean has been "summoned" for fast driving and is now in court, we must wait at all events. I do not know why they have selected Jean for a victim. We are not of the great racing community and never have gone more than thirty-eight miles an hour. Perhaps it is because of the killing of the poor old dog, or maybe because of the old lady who climbed a tree,--then again that porker may have entered protest at our too close attentions. However, it will be but a small fine if anything. Jean returns disgusted. It was all because of a "spurt" a month ago between Nice and Monte Carlo when Mr. E. had the auto. They made no move during the weeks in Nice but tracked him by his number all over our crooked course from Nice here. We are finally off after having bidden mine host of the Hôtel de France _au revoir_, with thanks for the pleasant days passed in his excellent establishment and having insulted the little fat porter by asking him if he is not a German,--an insult wiped out by a franc. We roll off through the streets of this ancient capital and for a dozen kilometers fairly skim over the long white road, when an appearing sign-post shows Jean that he is off his route and we must perforce return until we find a cross-road that will put us on our way once more, a course which proves to be one of the longest stretches of straight road which we have encountered and for mile after mile the auto fairly flies. It is cloudy and there is no dust, so the sensation is delightful. It is marvellous how quickly the nerves become used to this rapid motion, so that one minds it no more than in a railway train, nor is the speed realized until the auto begins to slow down. One certainly loses all fear and ceases to hold on for dear life, and also is no more alarmed for the safety of men and beasts,--not that auto cars instill a desire for murder, but one certainly does become a species of Nero, and had that gentleman possessed an auto, Rome would not have been forced to endure so many quiet days under his rule as history relates. There would at least have been greater variety, and the game of nine pins, with useless Christians as the pins and autos as the balls, would have been much in vogue. We halt in the town of Orthez for luncheon and I note an ancient tower which will be visited after the inner man has become satisfied. The Grand Hôtel is another of those comfortable little inns with which France abounds and the smiling landlady assured me that when she saw us rush by she knew we would return, for there was no more comfortable inn than hers and no more agreeable landlady than herself in all France. How impossible it would be in America to find in our small towns such accommodations. Here is a scrupulously clean house and I am served with a most appetising luncheon. Two kinds of native wines, a good soup, shirred eggs, an entrée, a nice piece of steak with potatoes, a pastry, cheese, fruit and coffee, all good, and for three francs. Orthez, the ancient capital of Béarn, is a very quaint old town. Its tower is a remnant of the château of the Counts of Béarn and its streets, bordered by ancient dwellings with high slate roofs, belong to long past days. The world would never have returned to these old towns of France but for the autos, and under their passing all the post-houses are opening their eyes once more, like old gentlemen aroused from a nap, and the horns of the modern machine are not unlike in sound the ancient post-horns. [Illustration: THE BRIDGE OVER THE GAVE AT ORTHEZ By permission of Messrs. Lévy] After luncheon I mount the hill to the tower, which I find in stately seclusion amidst a grove of trees and still surrounded by its moat full of stagnant water. I have it all to myself and the old stones seem desirous of telling their store of legends from the days of chivalry. The tower reminds me of Niddry, from whose windows the Scotch queen gazed downward on her first day of freedom after Lochleven. Like Niddry this is but an empty shell now, but the view from it is characteristic of France. Long lines of white highways bordered by stately Lombardy poplars, a smiling river wandering here and there, now through quiet meadows and just there where it passes through Orthez, under an ancient bridge with a tower in its centre. The steep roofs of the old town cluster around the base of the castle hill and a tall church spire points the way to heaven. On the green slopes of the hills are numerous châteaux embowered in blossoming fruit trees, lilies bloom in the stagnant moat of the castle, tall and fair, and some yellow flowers yonder cast a cascade of gold over the delicate tracery of a ruined archway. Descending the hill, I express to Madame at the hotel my feelings that she lives in an interesting old town. "Oui, Monsieur, mais très triste." Surely, but places that have watched the passing of so many centuries, with all their joys and sorrows, must seem sad. Our ride during the afternoon is delightful, not by the direct route to Bayonne but via Sauveterre and Bidache. As we approach the latter place, a turn in the road brings in view a magnificent mansion, part castle and part palace. As it rises majestically on its terrace above the river it resembles Linlithgow, is as stately as Rheinfels, and, like both, is all in ruins. An old peasant on the highway tells us that many visitors go there and so Jean turns the auto into a shady lane and drives past some old cottages, near one of which the custodian stands smiling and is more than willing to go with us to yonder stately mansion, through whose empty windows the birds are flying and over whose walls the ivy tumbles in dark green masses. It is the property of the Ducs de Gramont, though they seldom come here. We wander into the court of honour, into the banquet hall, open now to all the winds of heaven; stop a moment to gaze upon the majestic keep, and passing on emerge upon the terrace from which another vision of the fair land of France is spread before us. Seated here the old custodian tells her story. "This is the Château de Bidache, Monsieur, et de Gramont." It is not certainly known when it was founded but it was so long, long ago that it seems to have been here since time was. It is known to have existed in the eleventh century at which period its masters, the Barons de Gramont, were in continual strife with their neighbors, the Seigneurs d'Asqs and de Guiche, or uniting with them against the neighbouring city of Bayonne or any other which offered the show of an exciting encounter,--the necessary breath of life to the lords of those dark ages. England and Navarre both claimed its allegiance and its history has been the history of Navarre and France throughout all the years. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF BIDACHE From a photograph] One of the most adventurous of the lords of Bidache would appear to have been Arnaud Guilhem II. de Gramont (1275). In wars with England, Navarre, and Spain, he sustained two sieges in the Château which was taken and burned. Then followed exile and departure for the Crusades, and a return at sixty-nine years of age. His tomb in the church of Villeneuve la Montarie was opened in 1860, when his long sword, casque, and spurs of gold were found in good condition after a lapse of five hundred and eighty-five years. He was but one of the many who made Bidache the theatre of their lives. The Château was reconstructed in 1530, upon what scale and in what fashion you may see to-day even in its ruins. In 1610, Louise Comtesse de Gramont, for an "intrigue galante", was tried by her husband's order before the parliament of Bidache, convicted, and executed. The endeavours of her father to save her, even by the aid of the King of France, were without avail, though the Count was later forced to grant her sepulchre in the tombs of his ancestors where she was interred with much state and ceremony. On this condition he was guaranteed relief from all attempts at revenge by the blood kin of the unfortunate lady. Mazarin was entertained here in great state when he returned from negotiating the treaty of the Pyrenees; then the Château and all the country round about was _en fête_ for days and Bidache was in the heyday of its popularity. Years of silence settled after that upon the Castle, during which in the days of the great Louis this terrace, where I sit writing these notes, was constructed. Whatever sorrow this Louis XIV. brought upon France, the land certainly owes much of its beauty of architecture, which still abides, to him. Not alone in the Royal palaces but in or around almost every château of the land, one is sure to find something beautiful of his day. This terrace redoubles the charm and stateliness of Bidache, and when mortals lived within these walls it must have been a continual joy; it is so to-day to all who come this way. Most of the improvements in the private châteaux were accomplished while the owners thereof suffered banishment from the court. Such was the case here with the lord of Bidache during the reign of Louis XIV. As usual another affair of love. To the terrace he added orangeries, fountains, and vast stables,--the latter still exist,--and Bidache reached the acme of its splendour in his day. Its library, placed on the ground floor of the great tower, was lighted from above by a dome more than thirty feet in diameter; below was a magnificent gallery of paintings (all destroyed in the final conflagration save those which had been taken to Paris) while the ground floor of the castle formed a vast armory, full of ancient and modern weapons. In the Revolution, the Château was not greatly disturbed and certainly was not destroyed in that convulsion. It remained for a dishonest agent to commence this work during the period of the emigration and for a great conflagration on a night of 1796 to reduce the immense structure in ten hours to the state in which we find it to-day. However, no fire or storm can entirely destroy Bidache and as I wander through its superb court of honour and gaze upon its mighty towers and walls there is enough left, bowered as it is in curtains of ivy and many flowers, to impress itself upon the memory for many a day, to be remembered always as a thing of beauty, even after its death. Turning reluctantly away, I bid the custodian farewell; she tells me she is very old and will not be here if I return, "save yonder where Monsieur can see the crosses on the hillside." I depart under her benediction, and, while Jean is at work and the auto beginning to breathe, I turn curiously to the present dwelling of the Duke of Gramont. He comes here every year and occupies this very unpretentious structure just outside the park gates,--a long low, two-storied house. There is certainly a satisfaction to him in knowing that he has just claim to that stately ruin yonder with its history and its wealth of associations, and he shows his good taste in not attempting a restoration. Moving swiftly, the auto glides down a hill and off and away across the valley, while I turn for one last glimpse of the stately mansion, the Château de Bidache. CHAPTER IX THE ROUTE TO BIARRITZ--BIARRITZ--THE HÔTEL DU PALAIS The route thence into Bayonne is hilly and winding but good withal. Our car moves rapidly forward with all wings spread until that prosperous city is reached and passed, and we are on the route to Biarritz. The deep and powerfully-flowing river Adour near by shows the influence of the neighbouring ocean and there is that sense of spaciousness, that freedom of body and spirit to be experienced only by the sea, on the higher mountains, or upon our vast Western plains. The traveller does not see the ocean itself until his machine mounts the last hill before reaching Biarritz. Nature has found it necessary to erect a huge barrier against the onslaught of all that water which just here in the right angle formed by the coasts of France and Spain rolls in with such terrible force that no wall built by man is able to withstand it. Hence the God of the earth erected these hills to protect his domain in the eternal warfare with the God of the sea, and Biarritz has set herself down on the outer side of the hills to have a good view of the conflict. Her green and pink villas and many hotels spread out before one on either hand, and down below cluster the hotels close to the water where even on "a quiet day" their windows are splashed by the attacking waves. Fortunately the God of the earth has made this coast a rocky one, using these foot-hills of the Pyrenees as buffers against the sea; otherwise, the town would vanish some stormy night. In fact, even a rock barrier does not appear to have protected at this point, for surely in some wild moment of rage the storm dragon did seize a large mouthful from just this corner of Europe,--thus forming the Bay of Biscay,--and turning, dropped it in the shape of the Island of New Foundland in the dreariest portion of the Western Atlantic. (Examine the map for yourself.) There he hides his plunder in perpetual mists, where the fishermen from this coast go down to their graves annually by the hundreds. Here to-day all is glorious sunshine with no thoughts of disaster. Off to the southwest the sparkling mountains of Spain stretch out and out until they blend with the swirling waters of the Bay of Biscay gleaming blackly, while to the northward the coast of France bears away on guard against further encroachments. As we roll into the outskirts of the town of Biarritz, the route is mostly between high walls draped in trailing vines and pierced with iron gateways, through whose trellis-work stiff walks bordered by formal flower beds, are to be seen leading up to much more formal villas. There are some quaint signs on the many little hotels; here, for instance, is the "Inn of the Parlor of Love" in a shady corner all by itself. Jean seems inclined to stop, but I veto the inclination, and rolling swiftly onward, we shortly draw up at the door of the Hôtel du Palais, recently opened and so new that its magnificence hurts both the sense of smell and sight. It was originally the palace of the Empress Eugenie and stands just over the sea. Turned into an hotel in 1893, it was burned down two years ago, and this is the rebuilt structure. Part of the palace remains. The main staircase is the original, and that woman in the days of her power and vanity must have swept down it many times. Even now she is not forgotten, as all the chandeliers bear the letters "N" and "E" in monogram. The location is magnificent, on the rocks right over the sea, whose waves in stormy times dash on the terrace and spray all the windows. This is the so-called little season in Biarritz, the great season comes in July, August, and September, when the place is crowded, but now it is only pleasantly full, though this new hotel is not half filled. This Grand Hôtel du Palais is evidently the Sherry's and Ritz's of Biarritz. The same life, exactly the same amount of gold lace and the same eternal dinner parties. As for the people, I fancy they are always English, Russians, or Americans. No German would pay the prices, much less a Frenchman. Yet they do not seem exorbitant. I have a very large front room with a commodious and complete bathroom, both having all the modern improvements, for which I pay twenty francs. The dinner is eight francs, and coffee and eggs three francs; add two oranges to the coffee and eggs and in New York it would be ninety cents, here certainly not more than seventy cents. The house is a spacious structure, with grand marble halls, with an attractive dining-room almost on the water, and there is certainly one feature which to my taste could be adopted to advantage in our hotels. The old table d'hôte has vanished from Europe, with all its weary details. The long tables are gone and now the dining-rooms are filled with small tables. In most of the houses, as here for instance, one may dine at any time from seven to nine and the dinner is excellent, all one could wish to offer to any guest. I have been many times wearied and disgusted by the long bills of fare offered at our best hotels; what to order, and to be obliged to order _at all_ is to me the great drawback. How much more attractive to find a good dinner ready whenever you desire and without words or thought. Let someone else do that for you, as the Shah said about our dancing. The dinner here costs only eighteen francs, and it is better than many a so-called feast at our American houses. The tables are beautifully decked with all that can be desired from flowers to linen and the service excellent. CHAPTER X THE ROAD TO THE MOUNTAINS--ST. JEAN-PIED-DE-PORT--ST. JEAN-DE-LUZ--MARRIAGE OF LOUIS XIV.--ISLAND OF PHEASANTS--THE ROADS IN SPAIN--THE SOLDIERS OF SPAIN--SAN SEBASTIAN The Bay of Biscay roars in a sullen monotone this morning, but the clouds are high up and in the warm sunshine the valleys glow with the blossom of the fruit trees while the air is laden with the perfume of flowers and sweet grasses. We are bowling along toward St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, some fifty miles away at the base of the Pyrenees. The road is fine and the machine in good condition. Jean sings as he turns on full speed until we fairly fly down and up the hills and over long stretches of curving road. This is quite off the grand route and we meet no autos all the distance. The natives are more than usually surprised at our advent and the animals have evidently not known enough about such machines to be afraid of them. As we speed down a hill I notice in the road what appear to be small piles of brush; but as we near them, they begin to move and, as Jean with a swish and a jerk passes to one side, some small ears and a nose or two emerge from the bundles which have paused in a startled sort of fashion and a loud, scared "Hee-haw, hee-haw" rends the soft spring air. Those are quite the smallest donkeys I have ever seen impressed into service; in fact, later on, one sturdy boy simply picks up his beast and deposits it in a place of safety. They are always amusing animals to me. They never lose their ruminating tendencies inherited from ancestors bred in the silence of distant deserts, and save, as now, by the pointing of an ear or by a loud "hee-haw," take no notice of our rushing progress. They were here before auto cars and will be here when autos are things of the past. We find St. Jean-Pied-de-Port deep in a dell in the foot-hills, and in a quaint little inn, furnished chiefly by dishes hung on the wall, we are served with refreshment for the inner man. As I enter the little dining-room, I find there two groups; in one is an Englishman and his wife, in the other, two Frenchmen. The former studiously avoid a glance, when I am looking in their direction; we must be in no way aware of the existence of each other--we have "never been introduced." The Frenchmen both bow as they meet my eye and in a few moments we are pleasantly conversing. You can make your choice, but to me the latter custom is more agreeable in travelling. Not that I do not like the English, for I most certainly do, still one cannot have too many of these small courtesies in one's fleeting life, and after all, it is the minute things which make our sunshine. After luncheon I am recommended by the landlord to visit the castle which rises on a hill near the hotel. I have mounted but part way to the height where it stands when a soldier warns me off, "It is not permitted." I suppose the same regulations must hold all over the republic, but it would certainly seem an altogether useless rule off in these mountains, and one would have imagined from the peremptory gestures made that that old ruin was the key to France. On our return trip we make a long detour to the west, where the roads are not so good and we are glad to strike the main highway once more and speed back to Biarritz. While Spain is not commended for an auto tour, one can at least go so far into the ancient kingdom as the city of San Sebastian, her great watering place in the north. The route hence, as far as the French frontier, is a delight to the automobilist. It rises and falls like the lines of a roller coaster or "Montagnes Russes" and you sail up on one side and down the other with a most delicious motion. Hills rise and fall, one's heart is gay and the scene is charming. To the right sparkles the deep blue Atlantic, while to the east and in front and far off to the westward, along the Spanish coast, range the sparkling Pyrenees. [Illustration: MAISON DE L'INFANTE AT ST. JEAN-DE-LUZ From a photograph] As we roll into the plaza of St. Jean-de-Luz the people are dancing a fandango and I pause awhile to view the sight. The quaint old place is surrounded on three sides by its ancient houses. That of King Louis XIV. is to your left, while the square towers of the one which sheltered the Infanta are across the plaza, and those are seen in the accompanying illustration. Through the portals of the queer old church the fragrance of frankincense rolls out to you, while the air is full of the wild barbaric music of the land and the sound of the neighbouring ocean. In couples or singly as the humour seizes them, the people are dancing, dancing with a life and a motion known only to the Spaniards and Italians. Flashing eyes and snapping fingers keep time to the shaking of the many tambourines and the clash of sabots. Then the music changes to that of the beautiful Spanish _danza_; fingers cease to snap and the eyes to flash, and the motion becomes wavy and dream-like, as the dancers float hither and thither over the grass. Then suddenly the multitude falls upon its knees with bowed heads and crossed hands as the Host is borne along to some passing soul. Passing onward, we pause a moment, to inspect the house where the grand Louis rested the night before he bestowed his affections, together with the crown matrimonial, upon the Infanta of Spain and then turn to her old palace, a quaint red and white brick structure, to which it is said strangers are admitted. A dainty maid answered my clamors of the bell but would not admit me; even the silver key had no effect. I think, had I been younger, matters might have prospered more to my advantage--as it was, I failed ingloriously and took refuge in the church of St. Jean, a very quaint old edifice where the influence of Spain is plainly evident in the rich gilding of the entire choir. Here also the men and women may not worship God together. The women have the whole body of the church while the men are confined to three galleries which rise one above the other on either side. The custom is still in force, but one wonders whether these galleries are over-crowded. If so, the men must be more religious than those in America. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF SAINT JOHN AT SAINT JEAN-DE-LUZ By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The marriage of Louis and the Spanish princess was celebrated in this church of St. Jean, to which the bride advanced over a raised platform from yonder palace of the Queen-mother, Anne of Austria. Robed in white with a mantle of violet-coloured velvet, she is described as undersized, but well made, of fair complexion, and having blue eyes of charming expression; her hair was a light auburn. If she had been taller and had had better teeth, she would have been one of the most beautiful women in Europe. Louis at that period was at his best, and is described as a head taller than either of his ministers. Of the celebrated Island of Pheasants, where the Treaty of the Pyrenees and the contracts for this marriage were signed, there is little left. We passed it later on our ride to San Sebastian, turning off to Fontarabia for the purpose. Here, in a room half in France and half in Spain, French in its decorations in one half, Spanish in those of the other half, the Kings of Spain and France met, each advancing from doors exactly the same distance from two arm-chairs, two tables, and two inkstands--one of each in France and one of each in Spain. Neither monarch left his own kingdom but they embraced each other at the border line. We do not enter the Kingdom of Spain here but at Irun where we spend quite half an hour getting the auto and ourselves admitted. We must pay a toll of three francs and also deposit seven francs for the auto with the customs, but this is returned when we come back. Irun is a spot where the millions who have passed this way have paused in their progress to and fro. From the stately caravans down to these automobiles what a procession it has been. How instantly the type of the people changes as we cross the border! What superb-looking women gaze at one over the line of this frontier! How deep and magnificent are their great black eyes! Yonder is a Spanish blonde with golden hair and brown eyes; what a subject for a painter, in that picturesque dress and framed by that window, draped in wisteria in full bloom! The little soldier guarding here is funny to look at,--one cannot imagine his meeting fire and ball. Were our late opponents such boys? If so, we committed rank murder. His features are regular and he has fine eyes, but he certainly does not weigh one hundred and twenty pounds and is not five feet tall. However, his conceit is colossal, and he struts up and down with all the dignity of a Don Carlos, paying no attention to me until I happen to dismount near him and he gasps at my six feet and over. After a little, he attempts conversation, and asks if I am English. "No." And I hesitate to add "American," and when I do his eyes look doubtfully into mine until I smile and offer him my hand, which he smilingly accepts, and two francs seal our acquaintance; rather cheaper that than the unnecessary twenty million dollars we paid his country for a possession very doubtful in profit to us, some think, but----. We are off over the road into Spain and at once note the difference in its quality, bumpy and dusty and dirty, all the way, and I think on the whole that the people would rather like a break-down on our part. However, we roll into the modern town of San Sebastian and after a pause of some time turn back to France. San Sebastian has no interest for the traveller unless there is a bull fight on at its fine amphitheatre, but there is none now and this is not the season here, so we coast back to the protection of the French republic, pausing an instant at the frontier to receive the seven francs. The little soldier then shows me a wife and baby which he knows is more than I can do. So he smiles at me in happy content and would not think of changing places--that is if he had to leave wife and baby. At all events there is no envy in his glance as my red car speeds off towards France. CHAPTER XI DEPARTURES FOR THE NORTH--CRAZY CHICKENS--GRAND ROADS--DAX--RIDES THROUGH THE FORESTS--FRENCH SCENERY AND PEOPLE--MARMANDE--"AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF FRANCE" AND ITS WORK To-day we start for the heart of France. It is misty as we leave the hotel at Biarritz, but mist generally portends a fine day later on. Our road to Bayonne passes along by the sea and is a delightful highway, running much of the time through fragrant pine trees. There are two routes between Biarritz and Bayonne, but this is much to be preferred to that by which we entered the former town. It is that to the right after passing the walls of Bayonne. In the other, to the left, one is bothered by trams and much traffic. The route by the sea must have been especially constructed for autos, and it is a splendid piece of work. Jean is evidently of the same opinion and much pleased, for he grunts, and the machine flies. Yesterday in one of his wild moments he actually took off the tail feathers of a chicken, with no further injury, so far as we could determine, to her ladyship, who flew to a neighbouring wall, where, missing the accustomed balance of said tail, she ignominiously tumbled into the dung heap on the other side. As we drew away, her lord and master, certainly a Bourbon, stood gazing down upon her very much as the grand Louis must have glared at de Montespan as he turned her out of Court. Jean absolutely declines to pause or change his course for chickens, but he will do so for dogs. As for cats, the machine has yet to be invented that can take a tabby unawares, much less catch one; on the whole, they can beat an auto on a straight course, and yesterday a hobbled pony gave us a lively brush for an instant and at a fine gait too. Occasionally one meets a dog whose spirits are so broken that he cowers behind any available object moaning in fright, but it is not so generally, and the young steers, of which there are many, never give way. As for geese, they simply retire to a point of safety and scoff at us. The mist shifts about us all the way to Bayonne, and when we have passed that city, seems to have settled into rain, but we are no sooner made snug by the cover and lap-robes than the clouds break and the sun shines warmly and pleasantly. The same superb condition of the highway noted between Biarritz and Bayonne continues here. Broad and solid as a floor, it stretches away before us for miles on miles in a perfectly straight line and between Bayonne and Dax I do not think there are a dozen curves. Most of the way is through a thick pine woods where the trees are being tapped for the pitch and the air is heavy with the balsam. The bed of the road is elevated some four feet above the forest, and as I gaze off on either side, I am reminded of Florida; even the same kind of trees and climbing vines are all around us. I have heard many who have not travelled in automobiles in France express their fears that these long stretches of straight roadways would prove monotonous, but such is far from the case, and it cannot be, I think, with the delicious rushing motion one's car attains upon them. The run to Dax is rapidly covered and we descend at the Hôtel de la Paix for luncheon, though it is rather early. It is only in the small towns that one finds the pleasant little inns. This one at Dax is dark and dirty and I am greeted by a slovenly old woman who conducts me into an unattractive _salle à manger_, where the food is none too good. From Dax our route lies towards Mont-de-Marsan, and nearly the whole way is through the forest of pine. Accidents will happen, even to autos, and while we are speeding up a hill, Jean discovers by some signs that there is trouble with our left rear wheel, where we have never had any before, and on examination the ruin is very apparent. We have picked up a crooked nail which has punctured both envelopes and pneumatic. So another pneumatic must be put in place. It gives me an opportunity for a stroll in the pine forests, where I find that every tree has been blazed and to each is affixed a small concave cup; most of these are nearly full of the thick white sap. It is evident that many of these forests have been planted, as the trees stand in regular rows. During most of the day, our route lies through these forests, and is, in consequence, rather monotonous, as we cannot see beyond them, but as we pass Casteljaloux the scene changes to one of those characteristic French prospects, so familiar to most of us; a far-reaching, smiling green valley traversed by the many high-roads along which march the stately rows of Lombardy poplars, a church-crowned town here, and there a smiling river which is crossed by a graceful viaduct in light colored stone, over which a train is speeding; a sense of peace and prosperity over all, and above that a fair blue sky. That is France. One would fancy in contemplating such a picture, that trouble and sorrow never came to such a spot, and yet no land on earth has seen more of horror and bloodshed than this fair land of France. The French are a queer people, and it would take but little to erect the guillotine in any or all of these towns where the people are dancing now so merrily. It was but the other day in Paris that the police were forced to disperse a mob found dancing and singing around a guillotine (from some chamber of horrors), in the Temple Square. How long would it have been before the sound of the Carmagnole would have drawn the bloodhounds from the slums of the city, transforming that mob from monkeys who mocked to tigers which tore. The sight of that instrument to these people is as the smell of blood to a wild beast. My Japanese boy "Yama" excites the keenest kind of interest and curiosity, and to-day as we were forced to stop a moment in Casteljaloux where a fair was being held, I really felt apprehensive for a moment,--not that they would do anything to him, but as to how long his blank Oriental face could retain its utter lack of expression before changing to one of sudden fury, as I knew the faces of these Japs could do. The people pressed around the automobile and almost fingered him, yet he never for an instant lost his Buddha-like expression, or lack of expression. Let out amongst that crowd he could floor any number, for he is a master in _jiu-jitsu_. Last winter in Washington an English valet boasted to him that he could handle him with ease. "Let's try," said the Jap, and, no sooner attempted than the stalwart Englishman lay sprawling on the far side of the room. Again, when a burly priest weighing certainly two hundred and fifty pounds insisted upon calling for my cook at the main door of the house, upon my expressing my distaste thereat, the Jap, who weighs I should say one hundred and ten pounds, promptly offered to "put him out" if he came again, and he could probably have done so with great ease, but I declined to allow a priest of the Church to be treated in such a summary manner. Our stopping place to-night is Marmande, an uninteresting town, with a dirty hotel. There is absolutely nothing to see or to do save to watch the inhabitants and their manners and customs. How placidly the lives of these people seem to flow in these provincial towns. The café of this hotel--I suppose the Waldorf of the place--is the rendezvous of the wits and beaux of society hereabouts. It is a large room with sanded floor upon which are marble-topped tables ranged against the leather divans which line the walls. Madame presides in stately form over the whole and welcomes her _habitués_. The old gentleman in shiny black, the young gentleman in queer cut habiliments, the middle-aged gentleman with the pointed beard, all come and engage in a mild game of cards until the dinner hour. Do they dine here? Bless your soul, no; or, if so, in the outer room. "Madame" conducts me through to an inner sanctum where only the elect may break their fast, and here it is better than I had expected, judging from the hotel. This is certainly a spot in France to which not a dozen foreigners come in a year. There is no reason for their doing so unless the night overtakes them. We could have gone farther, but it was evident that Jean was tired. The strain upon a chauffeur must tell in time as it does upon the driver of an express engine. So we stopped over and are very well off. The waiter is surprised that here, where it is made, I let the wine alone. Jean comes around as usual after his dinner and we arrange our route for the next day. It is an intense satisfaction to travel in this country. The Automobile Club of France has mapped out all the Republic and every cross-road, every hill, or dangerous curve has its iron or stone sign post with names and distances or warning. These together with the excellent charts published by A. Taride, 18 Boulevard Saint Denis, Paris, under the directions of the "Union vélocipédique de France" render it almost impossible to go astray, or to get into trouble, yet in the rush of our auto we have several times gone a few kilos wrong, having passed the posts so quickly that we could not read the names, but that matters not with these cars which move so quickly or in France where it is a pleasure to get lost. CHAPTER XII RAPID MOTION--BEAUMONT--RACES AND DASHES--CADOUIN AND ITS CLOISTERS--THE ROUTE TO TULLE _April 7th._--We are late in starting from Marmande. Jean has just sped by with the auto, waving his hand in some sort of explanation. However, time is nothing on this trip and when we are _en route_ the world is so beautiful that one soon forgets any irritation which the unavoidable delay has occasioned. Nature has opened another eye during the night--all the valleys are clothed in that tender green which one associates with France, the fruit trees have suddenly put forth all their beauty and the landscape is radiant with the glory of white and pink blossoms. Almost every hill is crowned with the tower of some ancient windmill, whose arms have vanished long since; old châteaux and churches preside in stately fashion over quaint villages. Jean sings as we roll over the white roads and I ask him why. "Why, Monsieur! but the world is beautiful, it is spring, and I am young and a boy." Surely, Jean, sufficient reason for joy with any breathing mortal and it is well you appreciate that which never comes but once and goes so quickly. We are moving rapidly, for us, forty miles an hour for four hours. Yama is the time keeper and announces our record from his throne in the rear amongst the baggage. His excitement was most intense when just now we passed in a whirl over a black hen. The feathers flew in all directions, but when last seen the hen had rejoined her friends none the worse for her encounter. Can the naturalists inform me why all animals on the approach of a train or auto will, if possible, cross the track? For instance, that hen left the safety and seclusion of a neighbouring dung heap and did her best to throw dust in our eyes. One can have no regret for a creature that will deliberately run such risks, but when an old dog is killed doing his duty, while his lazy master sleeps, one's regret is great. The ancient town of Lauzun with a grand château and church are passed, and shortly thereafter, a tire gives up the ghost and we stop for repairs. We have expected it for some time as it is the one that bothered in starting. However, new ones having reached us at Pau, it is only a matter of a few moments' delay. _En route_ once more, we leave the meadows and mount to a more sterile region, stopping at Beaumont for luncheon. The inn is certainly not in the habit of receiving many strangers,--it is the dirtiest place we have encountered and I wonder what the meal will be. The table shows the wreck of a former feast which "Madame" with a dirty napkin sweeps onto the floor. But the vegetable soup is hot and good, followed by some sort of game, of which I eat and question not. Then comes a _pâté de foie gras_ made in this section and after that some cold mutton done up with onions and some fried fish, of all of which I eat. Coffee in a big glass with cognac follows and "Madame" even then wants me to partake of some other hot meat which a fat cook brings up smoking. But there is room for no more if I would not go to sleep. I can hear the people in the streets talking about Yama. The fat cook is greatly excited; never having seen a Jap before, she is surprised that he is not a monkey. She thinks she would rather have him little than big,--enough is as good as a feast. Beaumont is one of those quaint old walled towns long since forgotten of the world. It has its old church and gateway, the latter once taken by the English. Its houses project over the sidewalks like those of Chester, but life has left it long ago, and we pass onward and away. The ride all the afternoon is a delight, the roads are as fine as ever, and the air is cool and fresh. Our route lies over the hills and at last in a long descent through beautiful valleys. Much of the last hour or two Jean shuts off all the power and we coast like the wind down the floor-like roads. Many a dog joins in the race and one kept pace with us for some hundreds of yards. I laid ten francs on the dog but there were no takers. Another poor beast met instant death. We were going at a tremendous speed down hill, when he rushed from a doorway straight at the wheels and we passed over him like a flash. I looked back, but he never moved. Both "Madame" and her cook at Beaumont insisted that we stop at Cadouin and visit an old cloister there, which we promised to do, and on entering the town while its people are basking in the sun of this quiet day of rest we pass the ancient church and are directed by an old dame, who is washing her pans at the town pump, to a door in the rear whereby we enter an ancient kitchen garden, and wandering amongst its cabbages and sweet peas, find three portly priests who greet us smilingly. One conducts us to the ruined cloister, now a mass of broken carvings, tottering pillars and sad looking saints, around and over which nature has thrown a beautiful veil of trailing vines and flowers. Yonder saint is embowered in morning-glories, while red poppies spring from the soil in the centre where the dead sleep on and on. The whole is charming and one is taken far back into the past and reminded of the present only by the distant puffing of one's automobile. The garrulous old priest tells his story, but the place is too enchanting to listen to details. However, he pays no attention to my distraction; he has his story to tell and will not be gainsaid. Once out again into the garden I press a coin into his palm, which, glancing to see if the other priests have observed my act and will insist upon a division, he quickly pockets, assuring me that it is for the poor only that he accepts. Surely yes, father, for the poor only. I fully understand, but mentally I add that in this case charity begins at home. As we roll away, the smiling fathers stand watching us, six fat hands reposing upon three fat stomachs within which the succulent vegetable growing here but yesterday and the chickens which lately strutted these walks sleep side by side, but the end is peace. About four this afternoon, our auto stopped for no reason that I could see. Jean insists that he was not sure of the route, but the only other way ran into a church of no interest. However, as we stopped, there came from an open doorway a very pretty woman. I happened to glance at Jean's face and found it flaming red. Off came his cap and he seized the dame by both hands. The confab is not for me; so I do not listen but I do look. Presently Jean says that the lady would be pleased if we would stop and refresh ourselves. He looks sheepish as he puts the question. Really what does he take me for, does he think I am going to delay my journey for an hour or so that he may flirt with what I suspect is an old sweetheart? He tells me that her husband is fatigued and is upstairs, also that he is a client of his. (Just what sort of clients do chauffeurs have?) But I am obdurate and we move on. Then Jean acknowledges that he has known the lady when both were younger,--all of which his face told me half an hour ago. It is very evident that Yama has also sized up the situation, his remarks are to the point. That Jean was disappointed is proven by the movements of the car, which are jerky and uneven all the afternoon, until we enter ancient Tulle, which, like Carlsbad, is down in a gully with the river flowing through its centre. Tulle is well off the beaten track, and but few autos come this way, though by so doing they would pass over one of the most delightful roads in France. It has not the appearance of a place of importance though full of life and bustle and boasting some twenty thousand inhabitants. The evening shadows are falling as we enter its streets and all the people are abroad, while the cafés glitter with the life so dear to the French. As we pause a moment in the great square, the stately spire of the cathedral rises before us, backed by the fantastic old houses, piling up tier on tier and all sharply outlined against a lilac sky where the crescent of the new moon gleams faintly. But I am too tired with our rushing ride to examine the town to-night and so seek the quiet of my room at the Hôtel Moderne, and rest until dinner is served, though on the whole I think I should prefer to go to bed than to eat. CHAPTER XIII THE GREAT COURSE OF BELMONT--DIFFICULT STEERING--THE "CUP GORDON BENNETT"--DOWN THE MOUNTAINS TO CLERMONT-FERRAND The day opens cloudy, cold, and threatening and, as our way to Clermont lies over the high lands, good weather was to be desired. However, the fortunes of war vary. The entire journey is amongst the hills, mounting higher and higher, until the snow appears on the large peaks and it is cold, but no rain falls. We move forward very briskly; the weather must have instilled new life into the car though it was not needed. At Bourg we strike the great circuit, a circle from Clermont of some ninety kilos considered very fine for autos, though why I cannot understand. The road-bed is good and there are no trees on the side, but it is very circuitous and dangerous for fast machines. I am forced to call a halt on Jean as we are moving at a mile per minute down grade. That's not bad on a straightaway course such as we have found many times, but on these curves it is another thing. To my mind we have passed dozens of roads to be preferred to this for speeding. We reach Rochefort at half past twelve and after racing through the wind since half past eight are too cold to go farther without something to eat, and so we stop at a wretched little inn where, however, the welcome makes up for its appearance. Two Angora cats immediately adopt me as their father, and decline to leave my chair. While the food is simple it is good, and much better than one would find in such places in our land. This is the land of prunes. You do not know how delicious they can be until you come here, and I must say that the "dirty little inn" has put up a very good meal for us. Pity we can't have that cheese at home, though I am almost ill because of it. The route from here on leads over the high mountain table-lands until the valley of Clermont-Ferrand comes in view far below us. From this point the descent is rapid, circuitous, and zigzaggy. I cannot imagine a worse one for high speed. It must have been selected because of the difficulty it presents in handling the great cars. Certainly the chauffeur who succeeds in driving such machines at a speed approaching the rapid, should receive a gold medal, and I doubt not that in the coming contest in July for the "Coupe Gordon Bennett" there will be numerous accidents, and I fear fatal ones. I should not care to be in a machine on that occasion.[1] While all this is in consideration we reach the brow of the hill from whence the view down into the Valley of Clermont-Ferrand is superb. From its centre rises the city on a hill with its cathedral in the midst and the whole surrounded by an extended plain, encompassed by a circle of domes, all craters whose life died out almost before time began. [1] Strange to relate there were no casualties and few accidents. Our flight down the mountains is swift and we soon arrive at the excellent little Hôtel de l'Univers. As it has begun to rain, the shelter is very acceptable, and I am cold with my ride of two hundred kilos from Tulle. We left there at nine o'clock and reached here at three, with an hour's stoppage for luncheon, curving up and down the mountains most of the route. That's about forty miles an hour, quite fast enough. On reaching Clermont we learn that already, to-day, there has been a smash-up on the circle. A big auto, with three men, crashed into a tree and then over a bank. Result, three men in the hospital and one expensive ninety horse-power machine a total wreck, loss up in the thousands. The owner had brought the auto here to try the course before the races come on, and yesterday departed for Italy, leaving it in charge of a young man of fifteen. Said young man took two of his friends out in it to-day and essayed the zigzags, with the result above mentioned. Clermont-Ferrand, the ancient capital of Auvergne, is now a city of some fifty thousand people,--a city on a hill in the midst of encircling mountains rising to some five thousand feet above, extinct volcanoes all of them. The city possesses a stately cathedral, surrounded by a maze of narrow crooked streets where the lover of the artistic finds many a bit of beauty to delight the eye,--both beauty in stone and beauty in flesh and blood, for the maidens of Clermont are pleasant to look upon, and also in all her streets and almost every court you will come across some ancient façade or delicate staircase of stone most beautifully carved and mellow with age, and you will spend many hours wandering at will until darkness drives you within doors. CHAPTER XIV CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN IN AN AUTO--THE CHÂTEAU OF TOURNOËL--ITS HISTORY--DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAIN. Morning breaks with a cloudless sky and brilliant sunshine. This little city bubbles all over with life and, it being Sunday, every one is out for a good time. It is all so attractive that I decide to remain over for the day and night. That is one reason, but the second is the greater. I think it is absolutely imperative that the chauffeur have a day off now and then. The responsibility and strain is very great upon him. I can plainly detect it in Jean's face after a long day's run, more especially when the route has lain up and down the mountains like that of yesterday. Each instant of the day, every faculty is on the alert,--not only for the route ahead and behind but for what is going on in his machine. Every sound is full of meaning to his ears and anything unusual immediately attracts his attention. Yesterday while we were speeding at a rapid rate he suddenly stopped and got out, stating that there was a noise he could not account for. It turned out to be the clink of my umbrella handle on his air-pump, both of which lay in the hood; of course of no importance, but he was not sure, hence the stoppage. That is merely an incident told to show how careful a good chauffeur must be, and also how great the strain. Therefore if you desire continued perfect service you must give him a day off now and then. Jean is of the best of natures, and does not take advantage, as he might, of the whole day, but comes to me and states that we had better go this morning to a most interesting old castle and town some kilos away, as it may rain to-morrow. My man is better than a guide-book for he knows what is good and what of no interest, and I find that I do not miss anything. We start out after coffee and roll off into the hills nearby, mounting higher and higher every moment, until we come to the village of Volvic, where a route is pointed out, which leads to the old Château of Tournoël, far up in the mountains. I prepare to foot it, but Jean objects and turns the auto up hill. The route is but a country lane and not intended for machines, but up we go, turning and twisting ever higher and higher and I wait, wondering how long we can keep it up. Twenty-four horses have considerable power and when that power is condensed in one machine, it can do something, even considering the weight it must carry. So it proves now, for we climb like a cat and at a good pace until the castle walls frown directly above us, but even then Jean does not pause, but circles the ruins and mounting still higher comes to a halt directly under the great gateway and on a small platform not much larger than the automobile. How are we to get down, is a question which arises in my mind, even now, but do not cross a bridge until you reach it. Look rather at the superb panorama spread out before you. You are high up upon one of the domes which encircle Clermont. The vast plain stretches away below you, dotted here and there with picturesque towns, crossed by long highways, and overspread with splashes of pink and white fruit-tree blossoms. In the middle distance rises, upon a hill like that of Edinburgh, the city of Clermont, with its stately Cathedral crowning the summit. Immediately beyond is the Puy de Dôme and, stretching far away and up to the snow tops, circles the chain of mountains. Over all a brilliant sun sends glittering showers of light, and, though this is central France, Mt. Blanc can be seen on a clear day resting cloud-like on the horizon. The auto has ceased its puffing and we have been very silent for a long time gazing on that scene, and breathing the delicious perfume of spring arising from the valley, and the balsam of the pines from the woods around. It is Sunday and all the world up here is either asleep or gone to church. The little village of half a dozen houses, which clusters around this rock, gives no evidences of life. There is not even the bark of a dog, and the walls of the castle dominated by the great keep rise in silent majesty, while some white clouds drift by far up in a blue sky. The peace is intense and I regret to break in upon it, but there is the castle to be examined and I jangle an ancient bell at the great gateway, jangle and jangle, but no answer comes, until finally the bark of an old dog inside replies to my summons. He comes to the inside and barks again, plainly intimating that he is alone. It is Sunday and he was asleep and he wishes we would go away; _he_ cannot open the gate, any one should have sense enough to see that. The custodian, evidently a woman from the flowers in that window, must have gone to church and locked him in, but did she carry the key to that great lock? I doubt it and settle the question by lifting a smooth stone near the arch. Underneath are the keys and Jean and I are shortly on the other side of the great gateway with all the world, save the old dog, locked out. How charming! No one to bother one with useless tales of that of which they understand nothing, and full opportunity to wander at will over this enchanted place. The old dog returns to his slumbers before the door of a room where the custodian has evidently made a home for herself as though to tell us that there at least we must not enter. As for the rest, we may do as we desire. To his decision we pay due respect and leave him to his slumbers. The court of honour was once a splendid inclosure and its door-frames and windows still hold masses of fine carvings. On the far side, the donjon keep, a vast circular structure, rises more than one hundred feet above us. Mounting a flight of broken stairs, one comes to the ancient chapel, where the old custodian has erected an altar for herself and adorned it with some flowers and a picture of our Lady. These walls still show traces of painting and we find like traces in many of the rooms as we gaze up into them through the places where the floor used to be. The heavily carved chimney-places still retain their positions, tier above tier; that in the great hall with its pent-house roof could hold an ox. Reaching the battlements, we pass thence to the donjon, and find in its top two prisons, secure enough for the Iron Mask. In the floor of the lower one is an oubliette, through which, dropping a lighted paper, we watch it float downward until it rests far below, quite at the base of the tower one hundred feet beneath us. Those who went that way in the old days never returned to describe their experiences. This great tower holds nothing save those two donjons on top and that awful empty space downward; black as midnight, having no loopholes for any gleam of sunlight, though probably it mattered not. On descending by the outer wall we discover an opening leading into the base of that oubliette, and used, I should say, by the lord of the castle to discover whether life yet remained in his victims after that drop from the hole glimmering faintly far above us. There are other dungeons under the castle but nothing like this, which was the court of last resort, and one can picture the grimly smiling face of the jailer as he conducted his unsuspecting prisoner upon that rolling stone above. Even yet the blackness seems to resound with the shrieks of the poor wretch as he plunged downward, then, silence forever; while above the flag waved a summons to the Crusades "In the name of Christ" the compassionate, and the clouds drifted as idly by then as now. Gomot, in his interesting history of this castle, resents the generally accepted theory of this oubliette--holding rather that the tower was a last refuge for the besieged in this castle and this opening, yawning black before us, but the means of entrance from a ladder. I think him wrong, for all the vast space below shows no signs of any rest for a ladder, indeed the walls are smooth as a stone well for the entire one hundred feet. It is impossible to fix the date of the foundation of the Château de Tournoël, but like all old castles it was back in the time when such places were needed to protect the surrounding land from the barbarians of the adjoining mountains and used as often as an instrument of oppression. The name in Latin was Turnolium and has passed through many changes until to-day it is Tournoël. It is first mentioned in the eleventh century, but was very ancient at that period. Durand, Abbé of Chaise-Dieu, preached a crusade at that time. Bertrand was then Seigneur of the Château and such were his offences against the Church that Pope Grégoire excommunicated him, which promptly brought him to time. With Philip Augustus on the throne in 1180 we find him using Robert, Bishop of Clermont, as a weapon against his (Robert's) brother Guy, Count of Auvergne, and Lord of Tournoël, perhaps the most picturesque figure of that age and section, and long celebrated in song and story by the wandering minstrels. Audacious, brutal, gigantic in stature, and with long red hair, he knew no will save his own and reigned here like a king. His own brother, being betrayed into his hands, was confined in this donjon frowning above us and that created war in all the province, in which the Pope and the Church and State were involved. Count Guy did not fear the anathema of the Church in the least, and locked his Bishop brother up whenever he could catch him so that the journeys by force of Robert between his ecclesiastical city of Clermont, glistening in the sun over there, and this frowning fortress were frequent. War was forever on between them save when they united in a Crusade, but that was but a temporary interruption. Guy was finally summoned by the King to appear before him and answer for his sack of the rich abbeys of Marsat and Mozat. Refusing, war was declared against him by Church and King. Tournoël was considered impregnable with its lofty rampart, deep moat, and many towers, the whole placed so high upon the mountain that only the birds, one would think, could reach it. Three times the soldiers of the King made attacks only to be repulsed. Disease broke out amongst the royal forces and almost caused the siege to be abandoned. However, during a sortie by the garrison, the sons of Count Guy were taken prisoners, which finally caused a surrender of the fortress, and in the little chapel where the old custodian has her altar to-day were found all the stolen riches of the convents recently sacked. Those were gay days in France when knights would rather fight than eat, and bishops with great pleasure threw aside their copes for the sword. Here at Tournoël the castle was confiscated because of the felony of its lord. It passed to the care of Comte Guy de Dampierre and his successor restored it to Alphonse, Comte de Poitou, brother of St. Louis, and it became an appendage of the land of Auvergne. During the invasion of the English, Tournoël was several times attacked, but always without success. Later on we find the hands of Louis XI. at work, as ever, against the power of his nobles; in this case, by giving a charter to that little town of Volvic yonder and exciting it to rebellion against its high lords in Tournoël. As the years drift past, the history of the castle is painted also with the faces of many women, some good, mostly dissolute. During the reign of Francis I. it was repaired and restored by the Maréchal de St. André who had married its young _chatelaine_. Nothing was spared to make the work monumental and durable, yet the castle has been a ruin now for more than a hundred years. We spend a long time upon the tower and still there is no sign of life; no angry summons on the old bell from an astonished custodian, until one wonders whether there ever was any one save the old dog, or whether he alone is the custodian and if so, what shape he assumes on dark nights when the wind shrieks like lost souls around the Castle walls. It is warm and sunny to-day and we finally pass downward and out, locking the dog in and depositing the key where we found it, together with two francs. Just outside the gateway I pause to inspect an outer tower--one of the most curious bits of architecture I have ever seen. It is circular and formed by square, heavy blocks of lava, closely fitting together. Each block has carved upon it the half of a ball. There is a well in the enclosure and evidently this was the water supply for those in the Castle. I decide not to get into the auto until Jean has turned it around and I watch this manoeuvre with much interest and some fear as to results, for a sudden spurt would mean a fall of fifty feet and destruction all round. However, he manages it all as easily as I could a baby carriage, and we are shortly _en route_, skimming down the mountains and out onto the long white highways of the valley. CHAPTER XV ANCIENT TOWN OF RIOM--THE ROUTE TO VICHY--CHÂTEAU DE BOURBON-BUSSET--VICHY--THE LIFE THERE--DANGER OF SPEEDING--ARRIVAL AT BOURGES Returning to Clermont, we pass the old town of Riom, a very interesting relic of the days of Francis I. The walls have been removed but the town stands unchanged as it was constructed, and being built of blocks of lava from the Volvic quarries it will endure with time. Riom holds a beautiful chapel like the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, and many stately mansions with façades of the renaissance period. On a flight of steps are a group of Auvergne women with strong faces--faces one could trust. They are spinning and give no heed to our passing. As we are speeding through the streets, without warning, we are upon a baby carriage,--so near that it is impossible to stop and we strike it with great force. Believing that it holds a helpless child, one can fancy our feelings of horror, and also our feelings of thankful relief when out of it roll two empty milk cans. The old woman who owns it certainly makes more racket over her cans than she would have done over a baby. Our ride to Vichy is uneventful and short, over the usual fine roads. Dropping Yama and the baggage at the very excellent Hôtel Internationale we run out twelve miles to visit the Château de Bourbon-Busset, standing on a high plateau with a fine view of the valley of the Allier. The Château has been restored, which destroys the interest to my thinking and as we are not allowed to enter I can give no descriptions nor shall I attempt any description of Vichy. It is evidently a very gay place during the summer season and one which would never interest me in the least. And yet one cannot but pause an instant to compare Vichy with the great American watering-place, Saratoga, and very decidedly to the disparagement of the latter. Nature has not endowed Vichy as she has Saratoga. The French Spa lies flat--very flat--the surrounding country is not of interest and is the least beautiful through which we have passed. Yet what do we find? The entire section of the springs has been parked and finely cultivated. It holds the most gorgeous and largest casino in Europe--a building comprising vast halls for promenades, concerts, and balls, great halls for card-playing, the whole being surrounded by beautiful terraces. Of its kind the place is a fairy-land,--where art has done all that can be done. This holds with all the other spas of Europe. [Illustration: THE HOME OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ AT VICHY By permission of Jules Hautecoeur] What do we find in Saratoga? Nature there has done her best, and it should be the greatest sanatorium of our country. Where Vichy is only tolerable in summer, Saratoga's climate is superb the year round; and especially is this the case in winter, when it is in all respects equal to that of the Adirondacks, and it is within four hours of New York. Its hotels are so superior to those in Vichy that no comparison is possible. Its surrounding scenery is beautiful,--I do not refer especially to that on the lake side, though that might be made a superb drive at no great expense,--but rather to the many charming roads to the north and west. That scene from Mt. McGregor is a gem even in America, and it is totally neglected and the road thereto abandoned. The scenery to the westward of the town is in its way equally fine, yet how many of the thousands who go to Saratoga know anything about it. As for the springs, where are they and how are they used? A very few are in the park, which at one period with its detached white pagodas, was lovely. Observe the gimcrackery which adorns it now. The other springs are spread through a valley upon which all the back-yards, stable and otherwise abut,--a disgrace to the place. The waters are swallowed by the mob utterly regardless of their medicinal qualities or their effects--and with dire results. As I stated above the place might be the great sanatorium of our country the year round if our physicians would take it in hand. That has been done at the Hot Springs of Virginia, and has _made_ that place what it is, yet the waters there are as nothing when compared to those of Saratoga, which, according to the medical fraternity of Europe, has more and better springs than almost all of the spas of the old world put together. In Europe the visitor is warned to consult a physician before drinking the waters--so also at Hot Springs, Virginia. Nothing of the sort is attempted at Saratoga. The whole place is given over to gamblers and horse-racing. Reputable people, until within the last year or so, have been forced out of the great hotels and the future holds out no hope for the better. The people of the village have killed the goose provided by nature to lay their golden eggs. When they might make the place profitable the year round, they have deliberately sacrificed that opportunity for the few weeks--often dead failures--of midsummer. I speak strongly and feelingly, for I remember our beautiful "Springs" when they were the resort of all the best people in our land; and while many will not even to-day desert the spot, they are lost in the flood of the undesirables. [Illustration: RUE DE L'ÉTABLISSEMENT AT VICHY From a print] We start from Vichy on a threatening morning, but aside from a splash or two, have no rain, and a splendid trip all day. The roads are fine and we meet one or two autos. I do not know of anything more Satanic in appearance than a great auto passing one at full speed. Just now one came upon us unheard because of the high winds and passed with a swerve and a swish that made us gasp. Long, low and rakish, and dark grey in color, it sped by like a spirit of evil making our motion appear as nothing. The occupants clothed in furs and goggled turned, mouthing and shrieking upon us because we had not given way, which we should have done had we been aware of their approach. The appearance of the whole thing was devilish. There was no danger in the passing as the road was of ample width and we were upon our own side. It seems a question to me in great emergencies as to what a man in a great machine is to do. Mr. Croker, for instance, certainly sacrificed his life to the man on the motor cycle, who, to my thinking, had no business on a course where he knew those great machines were speeding and where they had come for that purpose only. On a highway it is another matter. Mr. Croker certainly knew also that when a machine is making such tremendous speed it is dangerous in the extreme to swerve. Of course it is horrible to run down a man and one would scarcely recover from the effects of so doing, yet self-preservation is the first law of nature. He certainly gave his life to save that of the other man who had no business on the course. I think I should have saved my own life and I do not consider that I am cold-blooded in saying so. It was another case with us to-day. If, on the highway, in approaching from the rear you cannot securely pass on you _must_ stop, there is only one law as to that. We should have slaughtered no end of men and beasts had we done otherwise and as the roads are open to all from the little work dogs to the great machines, each must exercise discretion and obey the laws of the land. So we shrieked back defiance at the mouthing monsters and kept upon the even tenor of our way. As for these very fast machines on the main roads, they should not be permitted. Every railroad is forced to maintain gates at the crossings or to pass over or under the highways, though these trains rarely exceed forty miles an hour. Yet great autos are permitted to exceed sixty miles an hour down the crowded highways. There certainly would appear to be an inconsistence in allowing the latter to traverse the length of the roads at high speed, while the former may not even cross them without gates. Again, if the tremendous speed is to be permitted, then certain routes should be set apart and the traveling world advised as to what they have to expect; otherwise loss of life, of man and beast, will occur constantly. Yet, again, if such speed is permitted the authorities should hold those who avail themselves of this permission blameless for accidents which the authorities know are bound to occur. Our route lay all day long through smiling valleys guarded by ancient towns and picturesque castles, which I should like to have inspected but we have lost much time in stupid Vichy and the day is fine. Also my letters are waiting at Tours. So we pass Moulins, lunch at Nevers, which is interesting, and reach Bourges in due time. No rain and a glorious run, all ill health, if there was any, driven completely out of one by the rushing winds of spring. We enter Bourges on a bright afternoon. The ancient city is steeped in sunshine and the towers and flying buttresses of the great cathedral glitter as though coated in gold. Our modern machine looks strangely out of place here as it rolls noisily through the narrow streets and one almost expects to be challenged by the sentries of the King and the reason for our intrusion demanded. But the gabled houses make no complaint; no men at arms sound rude alarms from the ancient palace of Charles VII.; and we descend at the Inn of the Boule d'Or amidst all the busy chatter of a provincial establishment. A "Madame" as usual welcomes us, but while she is showing my room to Yama I slip off on foot for a tour of the ancient city. CHAPTER XVI ANCIENT BOURGES--ITS CATHEDRAL--HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR--LOUIS XI. AND THE HÔTEL LALLEMENT--THE HÔTEL CUJAS--THE RIDE TO MEILLANT--ITS SUPERB CHÂTEAU--ITS LEGEND Bourges, the ancient capital of Berry. The very name brings to the mind visions of stately days, panoramas of mediæval France, and those who come here will find the theatre of those times still intact. The great cathedral around which every thing centres remains unchanged in all its majesty; crooked streets, narrow and dark, yet in this sunshine cheerful withal, wind off and away from it down into the old city. If you take that one to your right you will find the house where Louis XI. was born; or the one to the left will lead you straight to the palace of "Jacques Coeur" as they call him; turn in any direction and these old streets will show you houses and palaces of the long ago, smiling down upon you or retiring in magnificent seclusion behind high walls. You may here have, if you so desire it, memories of Julius Cæsar, as he besieged this city, but the figures which flit across the shafts of sunlight move in stately procession into the cathedral or steal stealthily off into the shadows are to me those of the Maid, of the weak Charles, of the generous Jacques,--or of the malign and terrible Louis XI., the latter bent perhaps upon an urgent errand to poison his father a little more in yonder Castle of Mehun on the river Yèvre. [Illustration: THE SOUTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT BOURGES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Bourges was evidently a Court City, a home of the aristocracy; even to-day with its air of seclusion it impresses the beholder as very much the fine gentleman. Your automobile clothes worry you, you feel an inclination to return to your hotel and don silks and velvets, a plumed hat and sword and high-heeled shoes, as you may be summoned into the presence of the King to be questioned as to your purpose in coming here and also about that strange and devilish machine which in old times would have brought you to the stake promptly, unless you could have first induced His Majesty to take a ride through the sunny lands stretching out on all sides of the ancient city. After which Louis would probably have locked you up in one of his cages and kept the machine. In these days of flying, many pass this way to whom the stones of Bourges are dumb, but such is often the case. At Monte Carlo I met the owner of a great machine, who stared at me in dumb amazement when I asked him what he thought of Carcassonne. Actually he had not even seen it,--had sped by under the very walls of that vision on the hill and not known it was there,--remembered nothing save that he did not like the hotel in the modern town. Likewise later in Tours, when I asked one of the ancient faith, from America, what he thought of the châteaux which make Touraine an open book which he who runs may read, he replied that he would not give two dollars for the whole lot. He had "left Biarritz at eight o'clock in the morning" and "would reach Paris on record breaking time." _His_ machine "was the best on the road"--a swish, and a swirl, a cloud of dust, a starting, and a getting there, that was his idea of what automobile life should be, causing one to regret that so many at home through lack of means can never see these places save in dreams, while unstinted gold is thrown away upon those who cannot appreciate them. But all that has little to do with the ancient city of Bourges. It is to-day a town of some fifty thousand inhabitants, and its modern section holds a great arsenal and a gun foundry. Its streets are gay with the uniforms of many soldiers; its cafés bubbling over with life. Until the Maid delivered Orleans it was the capital of France. It possessed a university upon whose rolls appeared the names of Calvin and Cujas. It has been devastated by fire and sword, but I think its darkest day must have been that upon which Louis XI. first saw the light in yonder curious Hôtel Lallement; but let us pass on now and visit first the cathedral, considered by these people to be the most magnificent in France, and as one stands before its five great portals, each crowned with superb carvings, while far above soar the flying buttresses and great towers, the whole bathed in the mellow light of a setting sun, it surely is majestic, most impressive, and while perhaps not so perfect as Chartres it must delight the soul of an architect. Its location is especially fine. It stands high and is approached by long flights of steps up which the people are crowding for Vespers, to which the mellow tones of the old bells are summoning the faithful. As I enter and pass forward under the lofty arches, an ancient clock raps out the passing hour with a cheery tone and the great organ floods the silence with waves of melody. The church is especially rich in ancient glass through which the sunlight filters in long streams of colour touching here the living, bowed in prayer, and yonder an effigy of one long since dead,--dead for the sake of the Cross and holy Jerusalem. One is permitted to wander unattended wherever fancy dictates, which is always a pleasure to the lover of these old shrines, and so one may enter into their soul and spirit until the stones almost speak. Here to-day it is quiet enough, back in the chapel of the Virgin behind the high altar, where it would be dark but for the trembling lights before the sacred image, and deserted, save for one old dame muttering her petitions. Gazing backward the majestic double aisles reach away until lost in perspective and the roof of the nave in the fading light is so far above one as almost to seem a portion of the sky. Kings, princes, and people have passed by and left no mark, and the flying centuries have added to the beauty of this sacred edifice. A subdued murmur with the scraping of many chairs tells that the service is ended, and I pass with the people out on the great square to the south, gay with spring flowers and the brilliant scarlet of many uniforms. This is the hour when Bourges takes its pleasure and all the phases of that life so peculiar to France go on where once the walls of the city stood. That black _caniche_ is taking excellent care of the baby in the wagon while its nurse flirts with the soldier boy. Those two officers, gorgeous in scarlet and gold, have so far made no impression upon those girls in yonder window, while from the cathedral come the black-robed priests to bask awhile in the sunshine of this world. The old dame in the _kiosque_, after selling me many postal cards, and giving me many bits of information about those around us but which I shall not repeat here, assures me that I shall find the "most interesting house" of Jacques Coeur far down yonder crooked street and that there is yet time to inspect it before the day ends; so I wander on to where it stands, a monument to the enterprise of one of the best of French citizens, also a monument to the ingratitude of one of the poorest and weakest of French kings. [Illustration: THE PALACE OF JACQUES COEUR, AT BOURGES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Jacques Coeur was a famous silversmith of vast wealth, to whom Charles VII. applied for funds and who was taken at his word that "all that I have is thine." Jealousy and the sense of obligation on the part of all from the king down caused his destruction. He was accused of debasing the coinage, and of poisoning Agnes of Sorel. Sentenced to death he was saved by the Pope, and banished, and he finally died while leading a naval expedition for the Pontiff against the Turks. In this little Place you will pause a moment, ere you enter his still perfect palace, to gaze upon his statue which stands facing the house. The countenance is beautiful while stern, yet it possesses none of those attributes of craft necessary to meet such enemies as are raised up only to envy and jealousy. The house, as you see, shows a stately façade to the street and stands unchanged to-day, having been spared in the great revolution because of its history. One may even pull the same handle which jangles the same bell hung there by Jacques Coeur when the Maid of Orleans was alive. His misfortunes made him immortal on earth and his generosity to France has preserved his house to us, a quaint and curious structure of the olden days. Note the courtyard and its curious carving, also the ceilings of the guard-rooms shaped like inverted boats. The reception-room of Jacques is now a court-room and where he gave all to his country and received no justice in return, justice is administered impartially, let us hope, to the French of to-day. After all, his life was not a failure, as he is not forgotten, and the desire to be remembered on this earth is, I think, greater than the desire to enter heaven. Certainly, it is the source of all ambition. Bourges, however, possesses another figure in history which is better remembered by the world than that of Jacques, probably because wickedness always carves more deeply than goodness upon the pages of history and the life of a nation. Few in the world will remember who Jacques Coeur was, none can ever forget the crafty King Louis XI. and here in Bourges his sinister shadow was first cast athwart the life of France, for here in the Hôtel Lallement he was born. [Illustration: HÔTEL LALLEMENT AT BOURGES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] It is more fitting to inspect such a spot after dark, and, as the moon shines brightly to-night, let us go. Leave the hotel and pass up the second crooked street to your left, the Rue Lallement, and you will find a queer old façade, with no evidence of life anywhere near it. The street is so narrow that one can almost touch the houses on either side and the moon can scarcely illumine the centre, much less the dark corners. A French officer, leaning from a casement, asks what I am looking for, and tells me to pull the old bell handle. Doing so brings the custodian who is surprised at a visit by night and suggests that daylight would be better. "Not for _this_ house surely," and I insist upon entering. I follow him across the quaint courtyard, which is alternately in deep shadow or the intense light of the moon, where carved faces grin at us as the wicked old king used to leer at his nobles. The house is not large but it possesses some curious apartments. Note the little chapel and the room near it, a good-sized chamber with heavy beams crossing a sagging ceiling and holding a deep fire-place facing the door. Here Louis was born to the delight of his father, Charles VII, who later on starved himself to death in the neighbouring castle of Mehun through fear of poison by this same son. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF MEHUN NEAR BOURGES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The old house is oppressed with these memories and the shadows are deep upon it, while the stealthy foot-falls in the street without might belong to the emissaries of that dreadful King. However, they are those of the law-abiding citizens of the Republic in this year of grace, 1905, and one may move without fear of any soul through the ancient city, and if your interest takes you to the museum in the old Hôtel Cujas, once the residence of the great Juris-consul, of that name when the University existed here (from 1465 to 1793,) you will find a statue of Louis, probably the best portrait extant, and you will remember the evil face for long thereafter. This Hôtel Cujas holds much that is curious, but it is itself of more interest than its contents, and the streets of Bourges are lined with many interesting structures, and those who pass by Bourges in the rushing mode of this twentieth century pass by one of the gems of France. The old dame in the _kiosque_ told me that I should not depart without a visit to the neighbouring Château of Meillant, now the property of the Duc de Mortemart. So, as it is but twenty-eight miles to the south, we are off and away, delaying our onward progress until after luncheon. The roads are superb and the morning divine. From Bourges to St. Amand the highway is a straight line and, as we descend, it stretches away until lost in perspective, a magnificent route for high speed, and as Jean puts the auto to its best; we skim along scarcely seeming to touch the earth,--hills rise and fall, and the motion is joyous, while the spring winds sweep the dreams of dead kings off and away, leaving only the smell of the grasses and blossoming fruit trees. We pause but once, and then, as we pass one of the many curious groups to be found on these highways. This time there are half a dozen mounted police gorgeous in high boots and blue and black uniforms, gravely regarding a travelling circus. The dancing bear, erect by his owner, solemnly contemplates our passing, while the trained ape glares and evinces a desire to go along. Indeed, I should not have been surprised to find him enthroned in the place of Yama, left behind in Bourges, nor, if he had donned Yama's blue glasses, could I have been certain which was which, save that the ape possesses a more expressive countenance. The Château of Meillant stands in a pleasant park on the road to St. Amand-Mont-Rond. It is in perfect condition and is occupied by its owner every summer. It is a Renaissance pile of great antiquity, the original portions dating from 1100. The illustration gives one a better idea of its exterior than any description can furnish, while its interior shows a succession of rooms splendid in themselves and full of objects of beauty and interest. [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU AT MEILLANT By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The façade in the illustration is not the oldest part of the château. Pass around to the other side and, overlooking the forest, you will find the Tour des Sarasins, the only remaining portion of the feudal castle and evidently forming at one period a part of the outer fortifications. There is also the Ladies' Tower and the Tower of the Chatelaine, but the most beautiful,--that shown in the illustration--is the Tower of the Lion, with its great spiral staircase, by means of which the traveller will enter the great drawing-room with its gorgeously coloured and heavily raftered ceiling, and its fire-place, with an immense mantel, that holds a gallery for musicians. The château is not only magnificent in itself and superbly furnished, but it is one that can be used and is used to live in. It is called the most splendid of its kind in France, and as you mount to its towers and look abroad, you discover that it stands in the heart of a vast forest, twenty thousand acres in extent, so the custodian tells me, and, as we sit perched high up among the grotesque gargoyles and strange carving of the tower, he weaves the château's legend into this. They say that this forest of Meillant is haunted by wolves of the demon order, and that one of them holds the spirit of a woman, who prowls these shadows nightly and pauses ever under the window of the former chamber of the Chevalier Bayard, who once came here to see the king and who did not respond to her advances,--in revenge for which she inserted a dreadful bit, of fangs of iron, into his horse's mouth before the battle of Milan, and so, nearly caused the death of Bayard and the loss of that conflict. Pursuing him even to his death, in the Battle of Pavia, he escaped her only by kissing the cross in his sword hilt as his spirit ascended to God and she fled shrieking away into the darkness. Now she must forever haunt the aisles of this ghostly forest in the shape of a werewolf, and it is said that on misty, moonless nights you may even see the fire of her eyes and hear her dismal howls. As I listen to this legend I wonder whether she has not perchance taken for to-day the shape of that ape which glared so malignantly at me on that hill yonder as we came down here. The world of travel does not come often to Meillant, but perhaps now in the days of auto cars the traveller may discover it. If so he will be amply repaid. I pause a moment as I depart to inspect an exquisite little chapel in the court, and then pass away to the outer gate, where I find a dark-eyed daughter of France sitting on the steps of my machine. She has allowed Jean to bring it within the gates, and smiles pleasantly at my recognition of her courtesy, and so we glide away into the dim aisles of the forest on the return ride to Bourges. [Illustration: THE GRAND SALON OF THE CHÂTEAU OF MEILLANT By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] CHAPTER XVII DEPARTURES FROM BOURGES--THE CHÂTEAU OF MEHUN--THE DEATH OF CHARLES VII.--THE VALLEYS OF TOURAINE--ROADS BY THE LOIRE--ENTRANCE TO TOURS After luncheon in Bourges, we set out for Tours, bidding the old city a reluctant farewell. Jean's interest in his country seems great, and he is always delighted when I bid him slow down or stop to visit some spot in passing. Ten miles out from Bourges we do so to inspect all that is left of the Castle of Mehun-sur-Yèvre where Charles VII. passed many years of his life with Agnes of Sorel, the earlier ones in indolence and the latter in horror of Louis, until, as I have stated, he starved himself to death for fear of poison by that same son. The accompanying illustration shows this château as it stands to-day. It suffered in the Revolution, but not until 1812 were the rooms of Agnes and the King destroyed. To-day two of the towers of the castle alone remain to testify to its former state. They are majestic structures built of very beautiful granite, rising in massive grandeur from the bosom of the swift flowing Yèvre, and on the whole, are the finest towers I have seen in France. We glide away through a stately gateway and off on our ride to Tours through the province of Touraine. It is, of course, beautiful. We are in the valley of the Cher almost the entire distance. Picturesque old towns and châteaux smile upon us from every nook and hill, and the river sings merrily. Yonder is Chenonceaux with its fantastic pinnacles and odd construction spanning the river. I visited it years ago before the old furniture had been sold and when it stood unchanged as it had been for centuries, so I do not care to see it now when it would be found full of modern stuff, a Court dame in an Edgeware Road frock, as it were. Towards three, the towers of Tours Cathedral and the older tower of St. Martin's loom up before us and as we mount to the summit of a hill the city lies spread out before us. Here at the junction of the Cher and the Loire our route is just above the water, a long smooth road with no trees, winding away before us, over which the auto flies as though anxious to reach its goal and have done with the day's journey. We enter the busy streets of the city, and passing on to the Hôtel de l'Univers, we leave mediæval France and rural life behind us. Here all is bustle and roar. How the times have changed the place; When I first knew Tours it was a sleepy old town where people came to rest and to learn French. It was also a cheap place in which to live. Now, with the coming of autos, all that is gone. This hotel is one of the most expensive in France and the city roars with the passing machines. There are twenty in and around this house now, making it at times difficult to be heard and most unpleasant. This is on the highway to Spain and the châteaux bring many travellers to Touraine. It is a singular sight to see an auto puffing and snorting just within the arch of an ancient castle with the teeth of the portcullis projecting above and seemingly about to descend upon it,--but--letters and papers from home drive thoughts of Europe off and away and I spend the rest of the day back in my own land once more and dream of it all night long. CHAPTER XVIII RIDE TO LOCHES--AN ACCIDENT--THE CASTLE OF LOCHES--ITS HISTORY--THE CAGES OF LOUIS XI.--THEIR COST TO THE KING--AGNES OF SOREL--THE MISTRESSES OF FRENCH KINGS VERSUS THEIR QUEENS Life is all sparkle to-day in this fair city of Tours, her people are evidently happy and we are not the least so as the car flies down the wide avenues, through her Champs-Élysées, and crossing the river, turns south-eastward through smiling meadows, where the sheep are grazing and the people wave at us as we pass. Some miles out on a long stretch of highway we are rapidly approaching a train of a dozen empty carts, each bearing a man and a woman, and, between the rattle of the carts and the clattering tongues of their occupants, I fancy the outer world and its sounds are completely drowned. However, we have a clear stretch to their left, can easily pass without danger, and are skimming onward with little thought of a catastrophe when, as we reach the last cart but one forward, it quietly draws out immediately across our track, evidently to allow the occupants to gossip with greater ease with those of the cart in front. Jean shuts off all power, puts on all breaks, we all shriek and horn and trumpet, to the utter confusion of the peasants, who drive in every direction save the right one, like a flock of chickens. There is no averting a collision, but we minimise as far as possible its danger and it results in nothing worse than a bent lamp as we bang into the tail-board of the cart, causing the old lady and gentleman therein to turn complete somersaults and land by the wayside,--reeds shaken by the winds, as it were,--but the winds of heaven were like unto a dead calm when compared with the clatter and shrieks which arose around us. I am afraid the remarks were personal, though the ancient dame who was dumped into the grass, when I told her her tongue was as long as her arm and had caused all the damage, looked at me in grand amaze and said--nothing. She knew that it was true and she knew also that the others would tell her that it _was_ true after we had vanished. At least I think the unfortunates of her village will be safe from the organ for a day or so. [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU OF LOCHES From a photograph] The day changes as we move onward, and under clouds and through a gloomy forest we near the towers of Loches,[2] the most remarkable relic extant of the darkest days of the Middle Ages, the favourite abode of Louis XI. Doubtless he had many times approached over this same road and down this way his victims must have passed, the most of them to disappear forever,--certainly Cardinal Balue came this way from Plessis-lès-Tours, to occupy a cage of his own designing for many years. The forest drops away, and off across a valley we obtain our first glimpse of the château, its great square towers rising dark and forbidding, while all around it clusters the ancient city with its convent, church, and palace. The panorama is not so fantastic as that of Carcassonne, there are not so many pinnacles, barbettes, and curious towers, it is not backed by a glowing sky, but the whole is somber, majestic, and gloomy,--a fitting appearance for a château with such history. [2] Pronounced "Loche." As we roll onward up its narrow streets, the clouds lower and we are forced to take refuge under cover; but the rain does not last long and shortly we come out again, leaving the church and palace to our left, and noting as we move onward that while Carcassonne possessed few, if any, private houses of the nobility, these streets present many even to-day. Interesting façades rise around us at every turn, but with the castle before us we do not pause until under the shadow of its great gateway. I know of nothing in Europe more impressive of its kind than this entrance to the Château of Loches. It is absolutely unchanged by the flight of years. The moat, the drawbridge, the low-browed heavy portal, with the great square donjon rising above, inspire me with a greater respect for the power of that old King Louis, and, as I clang the bell, I wonder whether I may come out again once these portals close behind me,--a question I put to the bright-eyed French woman who smilingly admits me and as smilingly assures me that I may indeed go hence. [Illustration: THE ENTRANCE TO THE CHÂTEAU OF LOCHES From a photograph] Once inside, the great tower, which replaced an ancient Roman fortress in the eleventh century, rises one hundred and thirty feet before me in all its majesty. One does not see from here that it is but an empty shell, yet on entering it loses none of its impressiveness as one gazes upward through its vastness, noting where the floors were, and even from below descrying the many inscriptions carved by the weary prisoners of the King. I can distinctly see from here one deeply cut, "Help--God or man," which tells its own story. In this donjon--except the floors--there is nothing which could be consumed by fire. Its walls are nine feet in thickness at their base and six at the summit. The interior shows a deep well which communicated by subterranean passages with all the feudal châteaux in the neighbourhood, and was used to re-victual the Castle in times of siege. That this great tower was the royal residence in feudal days can be seen by the divisions on the walls. Such prisoners as were here confined were of little importance as they possessed light and fresh air. The little donjon adjoining the greater served as the residence of the Governor and communicated with the former tower by staircases in the thickness of the walls. It was in this section of the castle that history was made throughout so many centuries. We first hear of it when Foulques le Roux, Count of Anjou, acquired it by marriage in 879--but of all the lives lived out here before this date there is no tale remaining to us. It became the cradle of the Plantagenet race. John of England ceded the Castle to Philip Augustus in 1192, but Coeur de Lion on his return from captivity objecting, took it by storm; again it passed to France after a year's siege by Philip Augustus in 1205. Bells rang out for the wedding in this queer place of James V. of Scotland and Madeline of France, but that was after the days of Louis XI, and really nothing else holds the attention of the traveller here to-day save this King, sordid and devilishly horrible. The great donjon does not contain the most famous and fearful of Louis's prisons. You must pass on to the right and enter the smaller towers to find the cages where he placed those high in his favour. Both in the round tower and the Martelet and every tower of the outer walls, you will find dungeon under dungeon, high up or far underground, where the sun never shines and where men learned to see in the black darkness, as the carvings and names testify, for, rest assured, Louis allowed no lights to his guests in Loches. Passing onward, the traveller enters the round tower built by Louis. It is still in very excellent condition. Here one finds all the original floors in place. Here are the guard-rooms and many prisons,--used as such by the town to-day,--amongst them the great conical chamber where hung the famous iron and wooden cage of Cardinal Balue--an invention of his own, in which for conspiracy with Charles le Téméraire he spent eleven years, though some authorities state that it was but three. The tower is shaped like a vast cistern with a conical top, its walls are circular and there are slit-like apertures, through which the wind moans, and the sunlight could never come save in stray shafts, making the shadows deeper by contrast. [Illustration: THE CAGE IN WHICH JEAN DE LA BALUE WAS IMPRISONED FOR ELEVEN YEARS] Down the passage yonder, which communicates underground with the great donjon, Louis and his Tristan entered to torment the Cardinal, swinging like a huge bird in his cage. The walls still show two holes in each side into which the beams supporting the cage, were inserted,--the chains from each corner thereof met in a ring at the top, which was fastened into the beams and turned on a pivot. The cage composed of wood, bound and riveted with iron, formed a cube four feet in size, wherein its occupant could neither lie down or stand up, and there the Cardinal spent eleven years exposed and yet confined. A singular refinement of torture that. This cage in Loches, in which the historian Philippe de Comines was also confined, was very different from that in the Bastille,--the prison for fourteen years of the Bishop of Verdun. The expense account of the period holds the following item concerning that cage: "For making a great wooden cage of heavy beams, joists, and rafters, measuring inside nine feet long by eight broad and seven high between the planks, mortised and bolted with great iron bolts, which has been fixed in a certain chamber of one of the towers of the Bastille St. Antoine, in which said cage, is put and kept, by command of our Lord the King, a prisoner that before inhabited an old, decayed, and worn-out cage. Used in making said new cage ninety-six horizontal beams and fifty-two perpendiculars, ten joists each eighteen feet long; employed in squaring, planing, and fitting all the said woodwork in the yard of the Bastille, nineteen carpenters for twenty days,--used in the cage two hundred and twenty great iron bolts nine feet long,--with plates and nuts for fastening of said bolts, the iron weighing three thousand seven hundred and thirty-five pounds,--besides eight heavy iron _equières_, for fixing the said cage in its place with cramp-irons and nails weighing all together two hundred and eighteen pounds, without reckoning the iron for the trellis work of the windows of the chamber in which said cage has been placed, the iron bars of the door of the chamber and other articles. The whole amounts to three hundred and seventeen livres, five sol and seven deniers." A great, cubical mass of masonry, iron, and woodwork, its windows so thickly latticed with bars of iron that no glass was visible,--its door, one large flat stone like a tomb,--a door for entrance only! "Our Lady!" exclaimed the King, "here is a cage out of all reason." Therefore he curtailed expenses and space when he caused to be constructed the habitation for his Eminence of Balue, and then again there was exercise for the Cardinal as the cage was swung to and fro or whirled on its pivot at the bidding of Louis. What a picture! The great, gloomy, conical shaped prison, with the cage swinging to and fro, now in dense shadow and anon in the rift of sunlight shooting in through the slits in the wall,--the grotesque figure of the wretched old King crouching on the incline in yonder passage mumbling prayers before the leaden figures of the Virgin with which his greasy old hat is laden, and stopping now and then to command Tristan to "further agitate his Eminence." It is not reported that any remarks came from the Cardinal in the cage for he knew he had been guilty of treason and hope was not for him. Cages would appear to have been the fad of King Louis. There were two in Loches, and one at the old palace of the Tournelles. The one in the Bastille was evidently too spacious (9 x 8 x 7 feet), and it was considered necessary to attach a ball to the ankle of the unfortunate Bishop of Verdun, who, it is also stated, was the originator of these cages and not Cardinal Balue. It was a distinction scarcely coveted, I fancy, to be confined in one of these "filets du Roi." The cages in Loches existed in perfect condition until the days of 1789, when they were destroyed and the wood given to the poor, but a relic of one still exists in the barred door through which you pass into the corridor just outside. That is the same door which shut in the Cardinal for so many years, and you feel like leaving one of your number--not your heir at law--on guard, to see that it does not do likewise for yourself. Knowing Louis, one is quite certain that these prisoners were not allowed to feel forgotten, as Louis XIV. probably forgot Matthioli, the Man of the Iron Mask, whose master, Charles of Mantua, was in Paris when he died in 1703. It is very doubtful whether master or captor would, at first, have remembered who the poor wretch was who was being dragged to his grave in the Cemetery of St. Paul whilst they feasted in the Luxembourg. The Bastille witnessed few such horrors as those so common within the walls of Loches. Passing up the corridor to lesser prisons, one comes to a chamber with a vast chimney where the question, ordinary and extraordinary, was applied, and where one still finds many of the instruments of torture. I know of no more gruesome spot on earth than this castle, unless it be those chambers at Nuremberg, where chamber after chamber is filled with every conceivable instrument of torture until one stands shuddering before the Iron Virgin. Still, after all, those chambers and their instruments meant a speedy death, but Louis knew that life, as he could dole it out here, was more horrible than _any_ death. It is a relief to mount a winding stair in the thickness of the walls and emerge into the free fresh air. The panorama over city and rolling country is charming, and my red auto down there at the portal re-assuring, but neither can hold us long from a renewed contemplation of this château. Passing down into the court, we cross a grassy enclosure towards the walls, and the tower of the Martelet, where we descend ninety-six steps into prisons cut in the solid rock, passing four floors of them; the first was for ordinary prisoners and is of no interest, as there is too much sunlight and air. In the dungeon just below was imprisoned for ten years Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, a prisoner of Louis XII. in 1500. These walls are covered with carvings made during those ten years. There are many inscriptions and this carved face before us is said to be his portrait. Below is the name: "Ludovico." A sort of shadow of daylight penetrates through a small, heavily barred window in the wall twelve feet thick, and opposite this Ludovico deeply engraved in the stone a dial plate, which permitted him to know the passing of the hours. Further downward in the rock you find another prison where Francis I. confined the father of Diane de Poitiers, whose hair whitened in a single night. This prison is more gloomy than the one above it. We find here the name of one of the officers in the Scotch guard of Louis XI., "Ebenezer Kelburn." In the centre of the chamber there is an oubliette to the darkness below. Down there are the fosses waiting for more victims, which in the days when this chamber above was used for the torture, were not slow in coming. [Illustration: LOUIS XI. From the engraving by Hoopwood] Pontbrillant, governor of Loches, who certainly knew all the secrets of the donjons found an iron door which, upon being forced open, led in to a long passage cut in the rock, which conducted to a chamber far under ground, where was seated upon a stone a gigantic man, holding his head in his hands. The admission of the air reduced him instantly to dust, and in like manner, there crumbled away a little coffer of wood which had enclosed some linen, very white and carefully folded. Who or what he had been was never known. In the oubliette of the tower, is to be read an inscription which shows that the Revolution placed its seal upon Loches: "Without fear, we destroy the high walls, break the chains, and cause to disappear the tortures invented by the King, too weak to arrest a people moving to liberty.--1785" Doubtless this fortress would repay weeks of research and yield up many a present unknown dungeon, each with its grizzly horror and tale of distress. Against modern artillery it would have little show, but in the Middle Ages it was almost impregnable. The great donjon and inner sections surrounded by its immense wall, with many towers, is in its turn encompassed by a moat completely isolating the whole. The second line of fortifications established subsequently by Philip Augustus comprised also a moat "twenty-five metres in depth," and bastions flanked by round towers and "tours à bec." On the top of the bastions which were a mile and a half in circuit was a road protected by double walls. One of its outer gates is called the "Gate of the Queen," because Maria de Medici entered there after her escape from Blois in 1619. That there is so much of Loches standing to-day is probably due to the knowledge of the destroyers of 1793 that Louis, while he would hang a few of the people now and then, turned most of his attention to the upper classes. One was sure of good company if one went to the gibbet or to jail in those days of the fifteenth century. Loches does not appear to have been inhabited often by royalty after the reign of Louis XII. when the usefulness of such fortresses passed away, but it stood in perfect condition until 1793, and what is left will endure while time lasts, an object of intense interest to all who behold it. The clouds lower darker and darker as we move to leave this forbidding spot. The air is heavy as though laden with the sorrows of those who never left it, even after death; the winds sough through the ghostly trees, causing their branches to rattle against the walls of the great donjon like skeleton fingers,--and it is with a feeling of relief that we hear the outer portal clang behind us and know that we are outside. As I pause a moment, I can distinguish the sound of the foot-falls of my late guide, dying away fainter and fainter inside, and then silence deep and unbroken settles over the Château of Loches. In the town there is a cathedral and a royal palace and the whole was at one time surrounded by a great outer wall. Though the general effect is not so picturesque as Carcassonne, it is far more majestic, and its inspection amply repays all the time one can give while Carcassonne is a disappointment from the time one enters its inner portals. There is another name, Agnes of Sorel, connected with Loches,--the only mortal who ever produced one manly act in the weak Charles VII. All the good of his reign appears to be traceable to her influence and it is easily believed that she could not be acceptable to the dark spirit of Louis XI. Insulted and driven from the Court, she died, many assert by poison from his agents. She left a large dower to the Church of St. Ours here, and there she was buried. In the succeeding reign, the monks, after having secured the inheritance, alleging scruples as to her life, requested permission to remove her remains, which Louis granted, provided the inheritance was returned. That placed a different light upon the matter and she rested in peace until the Revolution scattered her ashes to the winds. Her tomb now stands in one of the towers of the Royal Palace. If that face is a portrait, she had claim to some of the beauty attributed to her,--of her good influence over the weak king there is no doubt. In the history of France, how insignificant a part her queens have generally played and how important that of many of these "lights o' love." One hears nothing of the Queen of this Charles VII., but how much of this Mistress Agnes. In the case of Louis XI. there would seem to have been no woman of importance though he had a queen--Did that figure of leather ever know passion or love? With Louis XII. one does hear of the Queen, Anne of Brittany. But with Francis I. it is all Diane de Poitiers, and again the same Diane with his son Henry II. Poor little Francis II. knew none save his Queen, Mary of Scots, and it was not until after his death that Queen Catherine de Medici came to the front on the stage of France. With Henry IV. and all the Louis, save one, we hear much of the mistresses, little of the queens, unless there be a touch of wickedness, as with Maria de Medici. True, there was Anne of Austria, but she came forward only when a widow and as regent. It is difficult to remember even the names of the queens of Louis XIV. and XV., but none forget La Vallière, Montespan, Maintenon, Pompadour and du Barry,--women who had so greatly to do with hastening the downfall of the throne and producing the horrors of the Revolution, when again a queen comes into view and we stand with bowed heads as Marie Antoinette moves to her doom. In all the long years from the time of Charles VII. until to-day there was but one of the royal favourites, his own Agnes of Sorel, who exerted her powers for good. As I stand in the old tower to-day gazing down upon her graven image, I quietly blow the dust away and leave a flower. Louis XI. ended the feudal period by breaking the power of the independent barons and establishing that of royalty. The traveller from Orleans to Blois may notice to-day opposite Meung the heavy square masses of the Church of Notre Dame de Cléry. There Louis XI. built his own grave and was wont to occupy it now and then during life, though he did not rest there for many years after his death as the tomb was destroyed by the Huguenots in 1563. Entering our car, we are off and away, rattling through the narrow streets, and gliding out on to the wide high-road for Tours. It was near Tours at "Plessis-lès-Tours" that Louis XI. met the grim destroyer. I have before this fully described that Château,[3] and will pass it now. [3] In _Palaces and Prisons of Mary Queen of Scots_. G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York and London. CHAPTER XIX AUTOMOBILES IN TOURS--DEPARTURE FROM THE CITY--THE ROAD TO CHINON--ROMANCE AND HISTORY OF CHINON--THE ABBEY OF FONTEVRAULT--RICHARD COEUR DE LION AND HIS TOMB--THE DEAD KING HENRY II. A bright, sparkling morning. The courtyard in Tours is alive with men and machines and every moment someone departs until we are almost the only travellers left here, but our time comes, and Jean, seated in state on our red car, sails out of the garage and draws up at the main portico, where Yama directs the loading of our luggage, and then seats himself in great grandeur in the midst thereof. Then I am allowed to take my place, which is always by Jean's side in front, and we start off on our day's ride--not on the grand route towards Paris but away to the south-westward, to Chinon and Angers and so into Brittany. Our road lies in from the Loire and through Azay-le-Rideau to where Chinon's towers circle the hilltop like a crown dominating its ancient city and wide-spreading valley. The place above is sweet and pure, while the towers with the passing rains of many centuries, glisten white in the sunlight. [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF CHINON By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Wandering up the steep ascent I clang the bell at the great entrance, kept still in good preservation. A sweet-faced little girl answers my summons and conducts me from tower to tower. There are many of them, some with dungeons under dungeons, some with one solitary oubliette; others holding chambers of state and one where the Maid slept before her departure for Tours and Orleans. But Chinon's crown to-day is one bestowed by nature. The whole hill is embowered in lilac trees, whose bending boughs brush our hats with white and pale purple blossoms and all the air is fresh and sweet with their delicate perfume so sacred to spring. Surely a fitting bloom to adorn the spot where one so pure as the Maid offered her life and service to her country. In contrast with the dismal, sordid Court of Louis XI. the gay court of his father Charles VII. stands forth in strong relief, and it reached its most spectacular period here in Chinon. The white château embowered in lilac blossoms formed a fairy background to the moving picture of the times. One imagines that Charles wore his gold pointed crown all the time, that his robes were of blue spangled with the silver fleur-de-lis, and that he used up many sceptres, never being without one, and that so fashioned he paced these alleys between the great white towers, the lilacs touching him now and then as though to contrast their colours with his. With him there moved the fair Agnes of Sorel in pink and silver, the many courtiers in velvets and cloth of gold, the men at arms in grim array and far above against the blue of heaven waved the white banner of France bearing its silver lilies, while from the door of yonder tower came a simple maiden to the King,--with none of the glory of his Court in her attire, but with all the glory of God in her face. One can picture the weak, smiling countenance of the monarch, the beautiful eyes of Agnes of Sorel, the scowling, contemptuous faces of the Court as they watch the Maid approaching, all unconscious of everything save her mission to save France. Ah well! we know the whole story now, but then at Chinon there was nothing of the sadness of her after days to cloud the face of this Maid of Orleans, to dampen the spirits of Jeanne d'Arc as she moved forward to kneel at the feet of this King here under the lilacs. Here then she induced him, amidst all the jealousy and ridicule of his voluptuous Court to rise in behalf of his country. History does not tell us that Agnes of Sorel had any part in this movement but such was probably the case; neither does it state that she made any effort to save the King and France the disgrace of that death in Rouen, which almost inclines one to believe that the story of that life and death is indeed but a fable. Leaving the castle we descend by the narrow, crooked street named for the Maid, undoubtedly the one she used four hundred and fifty years ago, though it did not bear her name at that time. This old gabled house of the town was surely here, and she may have stopped a moment by that ancient fountain which still gives its waters to the chattering women of Chinon. In the little hotel where we luncheon there is a parrot which speaks French. That seems an outrage,--Spanish, yes, but French for a parrot should not be allowed. Leaving Chinon, we return to the banks of the Loire. As we speed along this wide road on the dykes above the river, the waters go singing along beneath us and telling of spring and life and hope, pausing ever and anon as though to call our attention to some ruin from which life and hope fled long ago,--or to some stately château where both still abide amidst the surroundings of centuries. Reaching Candes, standing by its babbling brook whose waters rush on to the Loire, we pause a moment to inspect its quaint church of the twelfth century, where St. Martin of Tours died,--though Tours will dispute the truth of this claim,--and where they show us his tomb and recumbent effigy. Just across the brook stands the Castle of Montsoreau, once the abode of the counts of that name, who were but executioners of the bloody decree of the kings. The place to-day is an abode for the very poor, of which there appear to be many in this section. Here we turn southward some three miles to the secluded valley where rest the town and Abbey of Fontevrault. The scene behind us is so attractive that we almost hesitate to leave it, but to all lovers of history, history in its most romantic and picturesque years, the name of Fontevrault will conjure such a series of kingly tableaux that all else will be forgotten. Down in a valley, three miles from the Loire, the traveller comes upon the celebrated Abbey, the ancient shrine of the Plantagenets, where to-day reposes the dust of Henry II. and Richard Coeur de Lion, and while I am not tempted to do violence upon my swiftly moving machine, I certainly do enter protest against such an entrance to such a spot and command the slowest progress of which it is capable. The way should be lined with broom corn and there should be many knights and "ladyes" abroad; and towering above them all (they say he was six feet six), dressed in mail, with the sign of the Leopard on his shield--one more stately than the rest, with a lofty brow, blue eyes wide apart, reddish yellow hair and curling beard, both cut short,--Richard Coeur de Lion, Count of Anjou, King of England. The scene was undoubtedly picturesque in his time, but it is sombre and dull to-day. The Abbey stands long, low, and gloomy in the midst of the sad little town, and where the King found a religious establishment of great importance, we find one of the largest prisons in France and must obtain a permit to visit even the church. I wait in the little place while Jean is off to the Mayor for that purpose. It is a dull, sad-looking little place, and one not often intruded upon by those who move in autos, as I discover through the attention bestowed upon my machine, though save for those imprisoned in yonder buildings, there do not seem enough people here to make a crowd. Fontevrault is as forgotten of the world as those who are sent here at the expense of the State. [Illustration: PAVILION DE L'HORLOGE AT CHINON From a photograph] It is said that King Richard came here to pray by the body of his father, King Henry, who died at Chinon, and that he was met at the head of the cathedral steps by his brother John, who succeeded him on the throne. The edifice in those days evidently stood in an open square; to-day we approach it by a covered way, through whose openings we see the prison buildings. Richard came in all humility and in deep remorse for the war he had waged upon his father, and, it is said, that when he knelt and touched the corpse it bled and shuddered. What a picture! The high altar in shadow save for its one blinking light, the many candles around the dead king on his bier, with the dark stain on his face, the living king with Count John peering in terror over his shoulder, and all the Court with the Abbess and her nuns shrinking away, while over all the great church, which even at that day (1189), had neared its century, rose dim and shadowy full of the chill taint of darkness. Here Richard took up the Cross, and we know what followed in Palestine. To-day you must force yourself to bring to mind any of these pictures, for the church has little of romance about it. The structure is in the form of a Roman cross, with no aisles, and with short transepts having two chapels. The choir has three chapels. Where the royal dead originally slept does not appear,--certainly not in the south transept where one now finds the monuments restored after the Terrorists had done their work upon them. As for the nave, it is boarded off and divided into floors for dormitories for the prisoners. The place is more desecrated than Stirling, for that is a barrack, not a prison. The royal effigies are however of great interest, especially that of Coeur de Lion, as it is considered to be a portrait, and certainly fulfils one's idea of the appearance of that king. The traveller of to-day who does not stand long in contemplation before this figure in stone must be lacking in many ways; but the effigy of Henry II. will not hold his attention in the same degree, though he will pause a moment over that of Eleanor, queen to Henry and the mother of Richard. [Illustration: THE COURT OF THE CLOISTERS, ABBEY OF FONTEVRAULT By permission of J. Kuhn] The Abbey of Fontevrault was founded in 1099 by Robert of Arbrissel and held one hundred and fifty nuns and seventy monks, all under the rule of an Abbess of high degree, and the establishment existed as such throughout seven centuries to the days of the Revolution. Its cloisters and chapter house are still beautiful and in perfect preservation, and in the latter are some interesting old wall paintings. France prizes too highly her historic places to allow Fontevrault to remain long in its present state. The day will come when the traveller will find it restored almost to the state in which it stood when King Richard came over the downs and down this long avenue of poplars to visit it. [Illustration: TOMBS OF RICHARD I. AND ELEONORE OF GUINNE AT FONTEVRAULT From a photograph] We are speeding away now and shortly are again by the placid Loire, and rolling beneath the ruins of the Castle of Dampierre, given to Margaret of Anjou by Louis XI. Louis had his weak moments (which he undoubtedly regretted) or he would never have expended fifty thousand crowns in the ransom of a woman, who could be of no possible service to him, whose day was done, and whose life was to end in sorrow and bitter tears in yonder towers. As we move onward, the cliffs above us form a veritable rabbit warren inhabited by the poor. This stone is soft and easily cut and sawed so that many of the houses present pretentious façades to the highway and are nothing but dark holes behind. Now Saumur comes into view white and pleasing to look upon with its castle dominating the town--but the interest of the place is in this panorama before which we roll slowly on and, turning northward, cross the Loire. CHAPTER XX THE ROAD TO ANGERS--CATHEDRAL AND TOMB OF KING RENÉ--CASTLE OF BLACK ANGERS--CRADLE OF THE PLANTAGENETS--HISTORY--TO CHATEAUBRIANT IN A STORM--A FRENCH INN--RENNES AND THE TRIAL OF DREYFUS--THE ROADS IN BRITTANY--ARRIVAL AT ST. MALO--THE RIDE TO MONT ST. MICHEL--INN OF THE POULARD ÂINÉ--THE CATHEDRAL AND CASTLE--THEIR HISTORY. The country becomes more barren and unpleasing as we enter Anjou, and Angers is an uninteresting busy town. It holds some quaint old houses, and King René sleeps in its cathedral, being probably the only king of France--prior to 1793--who lies where he was interred. The furies of the Revolution did not discover his tomb, therefore it was not molested. I would rather sleep in fair Provence; but if he had been buried there, his ashes would long since have been scattered to the winds of heaven. As the traveller approaches the Castle of Angers over the long bridge, it presents a most impressive, majestic appearance. Its seventeen great round towers and lofty walls seventy feet high fairly oppress the beholder. In its prime this fortress was called the key of France, and bears a key upon its shield. It commanded the outlet of the rivers of Brittany when rivers were the open highways. The château dates only from the days of Philip Augustus, but it looks ancient enough to have sheltered Cæsar. It was the birthplace of the Foulques of Anjou, the ancestors of the Plantagenets, and the place still resounds with tales of their times. There was Foulques the black-hearted, also his son. One hears of a Geoffrey made by his father--the Black Falcon--to crawl for miles with a saddle on his back, of this same Geoffrey having led his wife, dressed in her most gorgeous robes, to the stake where he burned her swiftly and well for infidelity. He was all powerful. There was Foulques the Fifth, King of Jerusalem and his son Geoffrey Plantagenet, who married the Empress Matilda and so the countship of Anjou passed to England through their son Henry II., only to be returned to France in the next century. We read of Bertrade of Monfort so enchanting two husbands that they sat at the same table with her here. Roland's name is woven into the warp and woof of its history,--Charlemagne's also, though the present château is not of that date; still it is claimed that the "Tower of the Devil" is part of the early Celtic castle. It is certain that Robert the Strong, founder of the Capet family, lived here. It came finally to King René, who with his court of love and minstrels surely felt strangely out of place within yonder gloomy walls; at least fate would appear to have thought so, for it passed Anjou on to Louis XI., a more fitting custodian for this sullen fortress of this "Black City." [Illustration: THE STATUE OF KING RENÉ AND THE CHÂTEAU AT ANGERS By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Disenchantment awaits one on entering the castle for it is but a vast, empty shell. There is nothing for the traveller of to-day save the panorama of its outer walls, and I confess the disappointment drove me hence and away. As we enter Brittany, the weather darkens, and rain sets in, so that we reach our stopping-place for the night, Chateaubriant, in a driving storm, not wet but very glad to get under cover. The little hotel has a blazing fire and the cook in cap and apron is enjoying a game of cards with one of the guests. He asks me to come in, but I do not care for cards, and so look on. The conversation is brisk. "Madame" joins in, and the cat takes her place by the fire, making the family complete. Outside the wind howls and the rain pours in torrents off the roofs of the old gabled houses. It is a night and place when one might hear such a story as that of "The Bells," but the faces all look friendly and we chat on until dinner, about anything save murder. It is a good night for sleep and I am not long in seeking that tonic of nature. Next day the ride is through storm and clouds. The people are more opposed to automobiles than in the other sections and we have several conflicts with old women who, with their cattle, insist upon occupying the entire road. We lunch at Rennes--a bustling, prosperous city of no interest save as the theatre for the trial of Dreyfus the Jew. One meets with soldiers everywhere in France and I have taken occasion to talk with many of them concerning this man, famous, or infamous, as the case may be, and from general to private I find but one opinion, "guilty." When I ask what they make of Esterhazy and Pâté du Clam, they do not hesitate to say that they were bought by the Jews, and that Dreyfus's entire case has been governed by money from the chosen people. I was not surprised at this opinion from the officers, but coming also from the rank and file it was unexpected, to say the least. It is early in the afternoon when St. Malo is reached and there we pass the night, almost the only guests within the Hôtel de France. All the world knows St. Malo, the ancient town on an island, where one must have a room on the third floor in order to see over the walls. Though it is picturesque as one approaches, St. Malo is gloomy and depressing when one enters within its gates. The whole town reeks with moisture and one is not tempted to remain, at least at this season. The route from there onward lies over roads not in very good condition, at least for France, though they would be considered prime in America. In fact the sections of Brittany through which we have passed do not possess the superb highways universal all over the rest of the Republic, and her climate just now is rainy and cold, though the rain is more of a mist from the sea. Occupying the long cape-like projection lying between the stormy Bay of Biscay and the equally unquiet Channel, she is swept by the winds of both, alternately, and at times it would seem from both at the same moment. But when one enters Normandy, all the land is as smiling as Touraine, and one goes on rejoicing. Brittany is picturesque, but with a sad sort of picturesqueness. In all of her churches you will find a catafalque ready for the dead, and she knows all the wild, sad legends, and truths sadder than any legend, of the neighbouring ocean. Normandy smiles at you seemingly happy. Her valleys are all abloom with millions of fruit trees, and spring is well advanced. As we turn out towards Mont St. Michel, a fussy little train makes great to-do over its no miles an hour and puffs indignantly as we, leaving it far behind, speed on over the broad high dyke, which connects St. Michel with the main land. On either side stretch the sands over which, when the tide races in, it outstrips a fast horse, but the sea is far out to-day, so far that its murmurs do not reach us, and there is no sound save our own on-rushing. Mont St. Michel, pinnacle on pinnacle, rises directly before us five hundred feet into the blue sky and becomes more and more distinct as we approach until we finally reach a stand-still with the nose of our auto poked against--a blank wall. Where to now? Above rises the wall with no sign of a gate, and on either side and below us stretch the wet sands,--no thoroughfare there surely. However, over an elevated foot-bridge come a man and a woman, the former covers up the auto, while the latter assures us that the Hôtel Poulard Âiné is the only place for a gentleman to breakfast, a statement which causes high words with the runner of another house who arrives a moment late. But "Madame" carries the day and we follow her over the foot-bridge which the high tides cover, and rounding a corner pass under a gateway and into the quaintest spot in France. The way is narrow and steep, disappearing upwards under a second gateway, but our guide turns us promptly into a great kitchen with a bell above its entrance clanging for the meal about to be served. One finds these kitchens in France, but I have no memory of them elsewhere. Always spotlessly clean, the walls hung with shining copper utensils, while the cook, in snowy cap and apron, turns the spit where some fowls are roasting before a roaring fire, whose glow is most acceptable after our swift ride through the air. These cooks are personages in France and the proper making of an omelette an affair of State, as it were. This man greets us with a salutation so magnificent that I return it in kind as nearly as I know how--but feel that I fall short. [Illustration: MONT SAINT-MICHEL, FROM THE SOUTH By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Every house in St. Michel climbs up the rocks. This one climbs high and I must mount four flights of stairs to find the lavatories. As for a lift, Mont St. Michel permits no such desecration of her ancient usages. If you come here you will use the legs God gave you. After breakfast, which by the way was excellent, I descend to the street with the intention of exploring the place alone, but I reckon without my host, who, in this instance, proves to be the old lady who met us on arrival. She waves aside my gentle remonstrance, tells me that I may never come again and had best see it all, and no one can do as well for me as herself. I yield perforce, also because of her cheery old face; God bless her! I have no doubt but that she is a good mother to some one. So I start, Yama and Jean following closely. The latter will fully appreciate all he sees, but the former will not know any more two hours hence than he does now. But let him come; as my instructor in German used to say when I could not remember the dative case, that she should continue to pour it into one ear in the hopes that some of it would stick before it passed out of the other. I think she was wrong, for I never knew how I got into that case and was always at a loss as to how I was to get out. The old lady mounts to the lower battlements and begins her story. Her French is so distinct and so slowly spoken that all must understand her. She should command a high salary in some school at home. One could not help but learn even without studying. So she rolls out the history of the celebrated spot until we reach the portals of the fortress, a lofty donjon flanked by two projecting turrets. There she must consign us to its custodian, cheerily housed with his family in the great guard-room, and under his guidance we mount the wide and stately staircase of the Abbots, and for another hour wander through gallery after gallery, crypt over crypt, here in a donjon in the rock, and there in a prison spacious and cheerful. From every casement glimpses of the beautiful panorama without greet one's eyes, but the full glory of that is reserved until, having mounted five hundred steps, we emerge upon a platform where stands the Cathedral, lifted far above the sins of the earth, a fitting place for the worship of God. Gazing downward one sees the fair land of Normandy to the left, while Brittany stretches away to the right and the glistening waters of the English Channel are behind one. The sunlight comes in long rays through the cloud rifts and the land sparkles and the sea dances where it strikes far out towards England. High above us rise the pinnacles of the Cathedral, while on the topmost point of its Gothic spire the gilded statue of St. Michael seems to shout his hosannas upwards far towards the blue of heaven. The wind is strong and fresh and full of life, for this is spring, and the world rejoices; this is Holy Week with its divine resurrection and its hope for all men! Lilies and apple blossoms deck these altars, while in far off New Zealand autumn leaves will crown this festival. How strange a circumstance! There may be those in Europe and America who do not know the history of this famous spot, but it has been so often described that there can be but few so uninformed, and I fancy that its picture is certainly known to all.--A conical rock rising from the sands close to the sea and covered by houses, abbeys, and fortresses with the whole capped by a great Cathedral, which flings its gilded statue of St. Michael five hundred feet into the air where, on the apex of the delicate spire, it seems, especially on a cloudy day when the support is invisible, to float in the air. The Holy Monks of the Order of St. Benedict founded the abbey here in the year 709, and until the Revolution of 1793 it flourished and was a prime factor in most political events from the Norman conquest downward. Here again we hear of Louis XI. and Cardinal Balue who occupied one of these prisons for two years, probably before the King had conceived the happy thought of that cage,--and in fact, this same rock prison may have suggested the cage, for both were a singular combination of confinement and exposure. This in St. Michel, however, was spacious and supported by many columns, as you may see it in its perfect state to-day and from its loop holes the prisoner had spread out before him a page from the book of nature whose interest was inexhaustible and from which he could not be shut away save by chains or blindness. If I must go to prison I hope it will be in Mont St. Michel, for here I could scarcely be lonely. On sunny days one could see much of the world below and many stately ships on the seas, and on stormy nights what awe-inspiring sounds one must listen to, and listening, wonder whether even this fortress of stone will not be blown into high air, mere dust before the tempest, and then when the moon comes out, casting long rifts of light into the darkness amongst these arches, what strange shadows of kings, priests, knights, and prisoners must flit to and fro. In the cathedral above, Louis XI. founded the knightly order of St. Michael, but long before his day the city on the rock was called the "City of Books," and here is a cloister in perfect condition, where many of the books were written, I doubt not. Note the exquisite capitals of the columns of polished granite and the double arcades. In the crypt below, forming a cemetery, there is an old wheel of gigantic proportions used as a windlass to haul provisions up into the castle. [Illustration: THE CLOISTERS OF THE ABBEY OF MONT SAINT-MICHEL By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The guard tells the history as he moves onward, and I notice that those of the party who evince the least reverence for the sacred places are two priests, who laugh at everything. The refectory interests them most--one of the finest Gothic halls in France--and time is spent in the inspection of the three great chimneys in the kitchen with many sighs and much patting of capacious stomachs,--in regret, I doubt not, at not having been on hand at all these feasts throughout the centuries. This portion of the monastery dates from the year 1203, and if you descend into the crypt beneath the church choir you will find pillars twelve feet in diameter. Though one sees much, I fancy, that as at Loches, there is much one does not see. If you could only come alone and be permitted the freedom of the place. But you might get lost,--it is quite possible I should think. If Louis XI. did not have some particularly choice and horrible prison hidden away in Mont St. Michel then he was not the king history paints for us. The cathedral is being restored by the State. France seems desirous of preserving her historic spots in the proper form and gives a good example to her neighbour, Great Britain, who allowed the great hall of Edinburgh Castle to be restored by a private citizen, and still permits the desecration of Stirling Castle. There are plenty of places which would serve as well and better for barracks and it is a disgrace to Scotland that she permits such a use to be made of Stirling, whose great halls are cut up and divided by common partitions to form accommodations of such a character. Royal Stirling of all places! For the sake of the history of the nation and the students thereof it should be cleared out, it would be far more instructive than any history extant. [Illustration: THE CRYPT DE L'AQUILON IN THE ABBEY OF MONT SAINT-MICHEL By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] But time passes,--we must move on. Descending the rock, we enter our machine and are soon speeding along the wide high dyke, which forms also the dividing line between Normandy and Brittany. These people look glad to see us. In Brittany we met with many frowns. As the day wears onward the air becomes perceptibly colder. We have a short storm or two and one burst of hail, so that the ancient city of Caen is not an unwelcome sight, nor the comfort of her hotel "Place Royale" objectionable. CHAPTER XXI ARRIVAL AT CAEN--WILLIAM THE NORMAN AND CHARLOTTE CORDAY--CHURCH OF ST. ÉTIENNE--PEOPLE AND RAILROADS OF NORMANDY--ROUEN AND ITS CHURCHES--THE MAID OF ORLEANS, HISTORY OR LEGEND?--CASTLE OF PHILIPPE LE BEL--DEPARTURE FROM ROUEN There are two names connected with the history of Caen which obliterate the memory of all others: one of a king and warrior, the other of a woman who gave her life for her country,--William of Normandy, and Charlotte Corday. How far apart their lives lay, how widely different their history! While the story of the man is full of interest and glory, my thoughts rest longest on that of the girl, and I seem to see her stepping from the door of the old house in the Rue St. Jean and flitting away, down the long highway towards Paris and the guillotine; her figure clothed in quiet gray stuff, a white kerchief crossed on her bosom, and fastened by a bow of black ribbon, while a mass of wavy black hair is crowned by a white cap bearing a black bow, and great dark eyes light up a pallid face,--eyes glowing with that intense love of country much more common to women than to men. That is to my mind Charlotte Corday and in a simple house of the bourgeoise in this quiet street she passed most of the years of her life. Its façade is changed but the interior remains and one can picture the simple provincial household with its scant furniture, its necessary economies, the old aunt confiding to the family friend her "fear for Charlotte," the meeting with her young patriots, and the last quiet closing of the door of her home with no farewells to any one--the flitting away down this long bright highway where we are speeding joyously to-day. Follow her and you will go to the garden of the Palais Royal where she bought the knife; go with her to the chamber of Marat where she slaughtered his vileness; see her in the hands of the furies of the Revolution; watch her as she mounts the scaffold. Surely if ever murder was forgiven by God, that girl went spotless into His presence,--pure as the Maid of Orleans. [Illustration: CHARLOTTE CORDAY After the painting by Raffet] But Charlotte did not walk to Paris. She travelled in the diligence, and seems to have had a very good time of it. She is a case in point showing that vanity in women, especially in French women, is strong even in the face of death by violence. We find her smiling upon the artist who sketched her during the trial and turning her face towards him, while, as the executioner waited, she gave a sitting for her portrait in the Conciergerie. In this portrait which still exists she is clothed in the red robe in which she met her death, as she called it, "the toilette of death arranged by somewhat rude hands, but it leads to immortality." It rained in torrents as she moved out to her doom, and then the sun shone forth. "Its departing rays fell upon her head, and her complexion heightened by the red of the chemise, seemed of an unearthly brilliance. Robespierre, Danton, and Camille Desmoulins watched her on her way, a celestial vengeance appeased and transfigured." How different the story of the other name which makes Caen famous! Pomp and glitter, the call to arms and a throne! While the girl's grave is unknown her death was attended by a nation, though the King sleeps in the choir of the majestic Church of Saint Étienne and his descendants rule in his stead, his death was neglected and he was buried by charity. But which name stands first in the great court of God? As the traveller enters Caen the first object which greets his eye is the Church of St. Étienne, the Church of the Abbey of Men, which was founded by the Conqueror in 1036, the same year his Queen Matilda founded the Church of the Abbey of Women,--La Trinité, which one sees over yonder, both as an expiation of the sin they had committed in marrying within the forbidden degree of consanguinity. While singularly majestic, St. Étienne is simple to severity, but what do architects think about its façade and the odd-looking spires? To me they appear as though brought by some giant on a dark night and set upon the wrong church, after which it was not worth while to take them down. Certainly to one who is not an architect, they seem oddly placed on that façade. [Illustration: THE ABBEY OF MEU AT CAEN By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The interior however, the nave that is, satisfies by its dignified simplicity and was a fitting resting-place for a king like the Norman. I say "was" because the tomb under the black marble slab before the high altar is empty. The King formerly slept beneath the great central tower, but both Huguenots and Revolutionists desecrated his grave and his bones have never rested in that tomb or choir. Caen possesses many fine churches, especially that of Saint Pierre, also the "Trinité" or "Abbaye aux Dames" founded by the Queen of the Conqueror; but while that church is fine, its crypt is unique. [Illustration: LA TRINITÉ, ABBEY OF WOMEN, AT CAEN By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Our way through Normandy is as though driving through a beautiful park. The long highways stretch off into the smiling country like great white ribbons turning and twisting on a bed of delicate green satin and the brooks bubble and sing along happy in the ever increasing life of spring. Tall poplars clothed in the pale green which seems peculiar to France in this season, march away in stately procession, while the quaint thatched cottages are all a-blossom with the flowers of peach and pear trees trained over their faces, and through which the windows twinkle out at you like the eyes of a maiden from under the frills of a white sunbonnet. There are many Evangelines abroad in this smiling country, still wearing their Norman caps and kirtles of homespun. Ancient dames sit by the open doors thankful that they may bask in the sunshine of another year, and that they will not as yet add another cross to the many on the hillside yonder. One with whom a black-robed priest is talking is evidently so old that she must say farewell to all this brightness before very long. We pass many curious groups. Here comes one on a make-shift of a wagon, evidently of home construction. It is hauled by three poor dogs, one on each side and one underneath it. A stolid-looking girl pushes behind, and in it sits enthroned a beast of a man, evidently a cripple in his legs, but with bestiality written on every feature; such a man as Quilp must have been. A wretched baby completes the party, but such groups of misery are the exception, most of the people of Normandy look happy. Our route lies through Lisieux, a prosperous little city, earnestly engaged in its own affairs, and having no time to waste on a passing show like ourselves. But we note as we glide by that Lisieux possesses a church and many bits of curious architecture that would interest, but to-day is one of those days when it is good to be alive, when there is great joy in motion, so we sail onward almost like the flight of a great flamingo, onward and onward, until from the top of a hill the Seine comes into view, winding through its fair valley on the way to the sea; and, off in the other direction, with her spires glittering in the sunlight, sits Rouen, the pride of all this region which would appear to have placed the town in its centre, and arranged its hills like a vast amphitheatre all around it, that the looker-on might the better observe the pageant of history as it swept through the ancient city. As we move onward and into her streets we discover that the Rouen of to-day, while evidently a "member of one of our oldest families" is not a dead town. The Seine sweeping through her midst bears on its waters ships from all over the world as well as the quaint barges and puffing little steamers which come down from Paris. The old walls have vanished, giving place to wide boulevards, which encircle the ancient town and are in turn surrounded by far-spreading suburbs. Light and life is everywhere and the cafés over-flow far into the streets with their little tables and merry throngs. Evidently the fortune of the ancient city was great, for its heir of to-day is certainly in affluent circumstances,--so that there is nothing of the sadness which envelops so many of the ancient towns of the Republic, and yet few, if any, of them preserve intact so much that belongs to the Middle Ages. Leave the wide, gay boulevard by the river and enter any of the adjoining streets and you slip at once backward for hundreds of years,--large sections stand unchanged by the flight of time,--ancient mansions gaze down upon you still bearing their coats of arms in stone,--still showing the high peaked roofs and heavy carving of a distant age. Moving on, you will pass the exquisite Church of St. Maclou and at last pause with a feeling of satisfaction before the majestic façade of the great cathedral. This temple holds perfect beauty in its plan, is a poem in stone, which satisfies the mind and the eye ever more and more. When the traveller passes into the shadowy interior he is forced to pause in deepest admiration. The majestic pillars of its nave stretch away hundreds of feet before him until merged in one of the most beautiful choirs in Europe; centuries old all of it, and never having been restored it possesses that mellow beauty which only the passage of the years can bestow, and the artist lingers long in its shadows drinking in the charm around him, with scarcely a desire to enter into an examination of details,--nor shall I attempt such descriptions here. [Illustration: MONUMENT OF CARDINAL D'AMBOISE, IN ROUEN CATHEDRAL By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] As you move on into the choir, you will pass over some small lozenge-shaped pieces of marble, marking the spot where rested once the lion heart of Richard, and the body of his brother Henry. Here they found the former in a greenish taffeta bag inclosed in a case of lead,--it is now in the Museum. The gorgeous monument of George, Cardinal of Amboise and Louis de Brézé will hold the attention in one of the chapels,--both stately affairs. Brézé was the husband of Diane de Poitiers, who is here represented clothed in deep mourning and shedding many tears. An inscription upon the tomb states that she was faithful in life and will be with him in death. Doubtless Francis I. or Henry II. helped her erect the monument and compose the epitaph. As for her sepulchre, it was built in her Château of Anet and there she was buried. As for her faithfulness to her husband, those two kings, father and son, can testify better than we can. One wonders why the furies of the Revolution did not pull that tomb to bits,--for even in our day, a complacent husband is not a pleasant object. As one wanders out into the quiet streets of the old town, one wonders much as to whether things in those days were after all very different from things in our own time. Certainly those husbands did not think it worth while to kill themselves. [Illustration: THE TOMB OF LOUIS DE BRÉZÉ IN THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN From a photograph] In the Church of St. Ouen, Rouen possesses another cathedral, beautiful in every line, but part is new and much restored, and, while the architect will be charmed with it, the artist and historian will find much greater pleasure in the Cathedral. So I wander in and out of it, and off into the winding streets of the old town, where a tide of life flows on making them cheery, cheerful places where even the ancient houses, with their weight of years, smile downward upon the passing throng like the "old, old, old, old lady at the boy just half-past three." The great clock in its ancient gate-house tower has something to say to me as I pass it by, as it has had something to say to kings and princes, to black-cowled monks and purple-robed bishops, to the Maid in her forbidden armour, to the child Queen of Scots when she slept in this ancient city,--perhaps to Charlotte Corday. "Time hath wings; how, O mortal, hast thou spent thine?" [Illustration: THE GREAT CLOCK OF ROUEN By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Hearing its bell, you are reminded of that fragment in the Museum, once a part of the great bell of George of Amboise, which was melted by the Terrorists into sou pieces, bearing the inscription "Monument of Vanity, destroyed for utility, in the second year of the equality." Passing onward the traveller comes to the Church of St. Gervais--the oldest in Rouen and in the priory of which William the Conqueror died. The royal dead in France were generally treated with scant respect on their final journeys. Francis II. and Louis XV. were carted in old wagons by night to St. Denis, and even this English king owes his burial to a stranger. After the siege of Nantes, wounded to death, he retired to this priory of St. Gervais to die. Deserted by his sons and plundered by his servants when scarcely dead, his body lay naked and uncared for until in pity and charity, a neighbouring knight assumed the obligation of his funeral and escorted his body to the Church of St. Étienne in Caen. St. Gervais has suffered restoration, so let us move onward to where the Maid of Orleans is supposed to have ended her life at the stake. Which story are we to believe as to this maiden,--that given by history and with which every schoolboy is familiar, or that related by M. Lesigne, who terms the former "a beautiful legend?" He points out that it is incredible that people should seriously believe that the English were driven out by a peasant girl even though inspired and he shows that just then the power of the French was strengthened, while that of the English was weakened by dissensions at home; that Jeanne was taken up by the war party,--not to lead its armies but to instill religious fervour and courage into the hearts of its soldiers, that she was not even aware of the first action between the contending armies but was in fact in bed at the time; that Orleans fell because the English had been abandoned by their allies of Burgundy, and he gives credit for that to "the astute policy of Charles VII.," which, by the way, is the first move denoting any brains on the part of that monarch of which we have ever been made aware; that Jeanne's triumph came during the rejoicings at Orleans, and when Charles was crowned at Rheims. Taken by the Burgundians, she was transferred to the English, whose king, as a Christian monarch, was under obligations to hand her over to stand trial before the proper ecclesiastical court, but that court had no power to inflict punishment, death, or torture. The judgment of a secular court was necessary. On threat of being consigned to that court, Jeanne signed a recantation, which was accepted, provided she promised henceforth to wear woman's dress. Condemned to life imprisonment, she passed again into the hands of the English as a prisoner of war who represented a large ransom. Left to herself she soon assumed male attire and was again handed over to the Church for trial. Again recanting, she was recommended by that court to the mercy of the secular powers, the English, who had never pronounced judgment upon her. The legend of her burning was due to a desire to make her fulfil the whole prophecy of the ancient Merlin, who was supposed to have said that the islanders would put her to death, but she seems to have subsequently married Robert des Armoises, and we possess a document drawn up in the names of Robert des Armoises, Chevalier, Seigneur of Trichiemont and "Jehanne du Lys la Pucelle de France," wife of said Trichiemont. The identity of Jehanne du Lys and Jeanne d'Arc is proven by several documents, among these a part of the chronicle of Saint Thibault de Metz, describing her meeting with her brothers and mentioning her marriage. This is the substance of M. Lesigne's book, proving that every story has two sides. However, the world in general and the Church in particular accept the story as history gives it. She is now a regularly canonised saint of the Church of Rome and I should not like to suggest to many healthy schoolboys at home that she was not burned to death. If that did occur, it was not where this meaningless and absurd monument stands to-day, but on the site of the Théâtre Français. The scene of her imprisonment, trial, and condemnation was the ancient Castle of Philip Augustus in 1204, of which nothing now remains unless, as is claimed, the donjon tower shown to-day as the prison of Jeanne d'Arc be part thereof. It certainly was not her prison as that was torn down in 1809,--a year, by the way, which seems to have been more fatal to many of these old buildings than the period of the Revolution. [Illustration: THE TOWER OF JEANNE D'ARC AT ROUEN From an old print] This Castle of Philip was immense in size, possessed of many towers, and would be of intense interest to-day, as the illustration shows. It is said to have stood intact until 1809. Few of the old houses which crowd these streets and point their aristocratic gables towards the sky stood here in 1400, though many of the less pretentious did do so. The great churches were here, and in whatever direction you may stroll in Rouen, you will arrange to pass through one at least of these beautiful shrines, carrying away with you into after life the memory of something which you would not forget. [Illustration: A HOUSE OF THE 15TH CENTURY AT ROUEN From a photograph] We leave the city on a glorious morning. As we glide away down her wide boulevard stretching by the river, the world is all astir about its business, and this Rouen is all of to-day, but as we speed off up the encircling hillside, the modern town drops down toward earth as it were, while the majestic cathedral and her sister churches lift their dark walls and spires higher and higher, towards the sky. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT ROUEN By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] CHAPTER XXII THE RACE THROUGH PICARDY--AMIENS CATHEDRAL--ITS VASTNESS--THE ROAD TO BOULOGNE So we bid farewell to Rouen, deep down in her valley by the river, and rolling swiftly through the fair country towards Neufchâtel, we pause a moment to render homage at the altar of their great god, cheese; and so onward past many picturesque spots and interesting ruins. But the day is too fair to pause for the dead past. This air is the wine of life and the rush of our car drives it into and through us until, on arriving at Amiens for luncheon, we are ready to eat anything. One really runs a risk of being ruined by dyspepsia on such a journey, as one's appetite becomes great and one gets no exercise. After a long day's ride and a hearty dinner, bed becomes most attractive at an early hour, and I often find myself snugly ensconced at eight o'clock and awakened at two in the morning by vivid dreams of my ancestors, entangled in flying wheels. There are few in the vast tide of travellers between London and Paris who do not note, as their train speeds across the plains of Picardy, the towering gables and gigantic roof of the great cathedral of her capital, Amiens. It rises so far above the surrounding city that it appears to have nothing in common with it, nor are there any other structures round about to detract from this impression. In common with millions of others, I had heretofore found no time for closer inspection. The tide of life sweeps too strongly through here to allow one to do more than gasp at the immensity of this church. To-day as we roll onward from the smiling country into the streets of the town, the cathedral looms up grander and grander until all thought of anything else passes from the mind. The busy tide of life and the city of seventy thousand souls does not and will not hold your attention for half an hour while within its limits. "It is a great manufacturing town, weaves cotton velvets for Spain, spins woolen yams, makes satin for ladies' shoes, and was the cradle of cotton manufacture in France." [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT AMIENS By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Yes, yes, yes,--perhaps so, perhaps so, but, what is that to us? Leave it all and move faster, into that square. Now,--stop.----What are all the cotton mills of earth compared to this stately shrine? Look at those three deeply recessed and majestic portals towering as high as an ordinary church before you, the destroyer has passed them by and they are crowded with statues, prominent amongst which, dividing the central doors is that of the "Beautiful God of Amiens." Over the central doorway is the Last Judgment in high relief,--the twelve Apostles, the wise and foolish virgins. Yonder is the Virgin crushing a monster with a human head, and above it the expulsion of Adam and Eve. One sees the burial and assumption of the Virgin in another spot, and row after row of kings, bishops, and priests, with the great towers rising far above and equally rich in carvings to their very summit. There would appear to be too much of carved work and yet the church is so huge that it would look barren without it. Entering, you are at once impressed with the vast dimensions, which are surpassed only by St. Peter's and the Dom of Cologne. The nave rises one hundred and forty feet above you. Its height and breadth are so great and the pillars so majestic that one wonders whether this church was not built by and intended for a larger, grander race of beings than we who now walk this earth. Passing onward down the nave and into the choir, you are again struck with the beauty and richness of the carvings both in the stalls in wood and in the stone screens and altars, all around you. The rose windows are glorious, and yet--you feel that you have dropped your sense of delightful satisfaction somewhere. What is it,--why? It is absurd to criticise such a temple, yet Amiens, notwithstanding its majestic interior, does not fascinate, is not so satisfying as the great churches of Rouen, and I think it is because there is too much light. There, all is subdued; here a glare of white light detracts from the majesty, if such a thing be possible. Certainly one shivers and is cold and fully realises that ancient coloured glass has a wonderfully beautifying effect in these old churches. Amiens has her history also. Henry IV. from a seat up yonder watched the retreat of the Spaniards and Isabeau of Bavaria here married the idiot Charles VI. There is nothing in the city to interest, save the cathedral, and I come again and again, and finally take a swirling view as my auto flashes around it, and off and away to the northward. As we move farther and farther afield, I turn again and again to look backward and each time the cathedral has risen higher and higher until it reigns supreme in a kingdom all its own,--a thing not made by man. The route from Amiens to Boulogne is very unpleasant for France, narrow and badly marked, so that we several times go astray, especially before reaching Abbeville. The way is also crossed frequently by stone gutters which will in passing destroy the springs of the auto unless extreme caution be used. These should be changed, one does not find them south of Paris. As it would be impossible to pass through Brussels without a thought of Waterloo so at Abbeville the mind wanders away from the noisy town and off to the neighbouring battlefield of Crécy whose forest we see at our right as we speed northward. Reaching Boulogne at about three o'clock, we are almost blown backward by the winds off the Channel, and seek shelter in a draughty, desolate hotel. Yama thinks that we have come to the end of the world, and will be lost if we attempt to go out on that churning sea. He asks if England is five days off, and seems very doubtful of my truthfulness when I say it is but an hour's sail. CHAPTER XXIII THE RIDE TO BEAUVAIS--DEAD DOGS--GREAT CHURCHES--BEAUVAIS BY NIGHT--VAST WEALTH OF THE CHURCHES OF FRANCE--WONDERFUL TAPESTRIES Two days of gloom and mist in London, London during the holidays, which means a desert, rendered our return to France doubly agreeable. The sun streams out its light as we enter the harbour at Boulogne, and Jean waves his cap at us while the auto is snorting a welcome. The important custom-house officials insisted upon examining my bundle of home papers but finding the _Enquirer_ harmless, passed it and we sailed away. Collecting the wash and traps at the windy, disagreeable, and most expensive Hôtel Pavilion Impérial we started off once more, gladly shaking the dust of Boulogne from our wheels. It's a sadly dreary place where indigent English come over to enjoy the risk of gambling at a dead sort of casino,--good church members at home, very pillars of the sanctuary, who gamble like street arabs all the time they are here. Let us leave it and roll off and away into the fair land of France. The ride to Beauvais proves to be one of the most delightful of the journey. The roads are superb and we meet many autos which, while they add to the danger, also give zest to the sport as they go shrieking past us. Just now we killed one poor dog so suddenly that he never knew what hurt him. Rushing at us from an out-house he got his neck just in the spot for our flying wheels to pass over it, and he never moved after that. It was over in a flash, all his wild rollicking life snuffed out like the flame of a candle. We regretted the accident but could in no way have prevented it. Skirting the town of Abbeville and leaving Amiens well to our left, we go directly south via Poix, Grandvilliers, and "Marseilles the Little." Once during the afternoon, though the sun shines brilliantly the air becomes suddenly very cold and a short, sharp shower of hail forces us to slow down and draw up the cover. We are moving very rapidly and our momentum added to the force of the hailstones causes us to feel as though suddenly subjected to an assault of the enemy, but it lasts for a moment only, and with top again thrown back, we are speeding onward. If you would feel the elixir of life and youth pouring into your veins, take such a ride on such a day. There is nothing with which to compare it, save the wild flight of a toboggan. An eagle may know the sensation as he soars through space, but until mortals shall have put on immortality or wings we can know it only in auto cars or toboggans, for I am told that in a balloon one feels no motion unless one falls, and it does not last long even then,--mercifully so. The ride is superb all the way to Beauvais. It is Easter Sunday, all the villages are rejoicing. Giddy-go-rounds are in full swing, and the Beauvais hotel is occupied by boys from Paris and their best girls, the latter are not above flirting even with an elderly gentleman like myself. The fact that _his_ arm is around her waist and _his_ head on her shoulder does not in the least interfere with her double actions,--she can squeeze _his_ hand while she throws languishing glances at me. But dinner is over and the old town presents greater attraction to me than these passers-by within her limits. Darkness has come down upon the narrow streets, where, as I wander along, the lamps cast queer shadows under the eaves of the gabled houses. There is a mass of something over there that should be the cathedral, it towers so high into the sky and I pause before it in doubt. Part is Gothic and as the light will permit, I fancy very beautiful. The remainder is evidently a building of another century, certainly of a totally different style of architecture. While I am pondering, a foot-step draws nearer and nearer, the only sound of life in the city, and its owner, a little man, in answer to my question, assures me that this is not the Cathedral, but St. Étienne--a structure as old as the greater church which stands quite on the other side of the town, and "If Monsieur visits it, let him go at noon and ask for the old clock, it is well worth an inspection and very curious." So he patters off into the silence of the night, and I wander on through street after street until the Cathedral looms up before me. Only a piece of a church, but what a piece, how gigantic! Why, since there would be few if any rivals on the earth, does not the nation complete it to its own glory? It may lose some of its majesty by daylight,--that often happens,--but to-night it is superbly solemn and most majestic, even though but a fragment. These great religious temples are all in place here in old Europe, but I cannot but think that the erection of a vast cathedral for the Episcopal Church in America is money ill spent and but to gratify vanity. These structures were built when great temples were almost a necessity for the processions of the Church of Rome, but they are of little use, save the choir, for any other purpose even in that church of to-day and, aside from the Cathedral of Westminster in London, the Church of Rome has erected no such structures since that of Orleans. The good people of Beauvais in the year 1225 evidently bent upon building a church which would dwarf that of their neighbors in Amiens, began this one before me; and if they had completed it they would have succeeded in their intention, for that vast edifice could then have been placed bodily within this structure, as the ridge pole of this roof is one hundred and fifty-three feet above the pavement or thirteen feet higher than that of Amiens, and three feet higher than the Cathedral of Cologne; but, money and the genius of the architect both failed,--the former want calling a halt on further progress, and the latter, through his desire to have as few inner supports as possible over-shot his mark, so the walls bulged and roof collapsed in 1284. With the repair of that damage came a cessation of all work, and so the cathedral stands to-day. As I wander around it in the darkness, I stumble upon a little structure at its western end, evidently much older than its gigantic neighbour, as it is Roman in design, and in the shadow farther on rise two great round towers of some château; exactly what it is one does not know or care to inquire, leaving all facts for the plain daylight of the morrow and allowing the darkness of to-night to claim what it may. Even in the shadows one may discern that Beauvais is a very curious old place. Ancient it certainly is, as Cæsar mentions this district, but its most memorable day was that upon which it closed its gates in the face of a vast Burgundian army, and kept them closed until succour arrived from Paris. Women took such a prominent part in the siege that Louis XI. complimented them and declared that they should forever march first in the commemorative procession,--this they do in this year, 1905. One can well imagine that Louis cared little for the women, but it gave him another opportunity of humiliating his noblemen. On my return to the inn, I have the great square all to myself save for a rising moon,--in fact, I wonder whether I have not the whole of Beauvais to myself, for I have not met a dozen of my kind since I started out,--but as the air is cold and the moonlight seems very old to-night, let us to bed, where I, at least, dream of disjointed churches and queer round towers when I dream of anything at all,--which is not often, for sleep after these rushing rides is as profound as death. Daylight brings another state of affairs. The inn is alive with the noise of departing autos, and there is much wonderment that I will linger in this "queer place," with Paris and all it holds so near. There are even doubtful glances cast at my red car and insinuations that it will not go. It certainly will not now, nor for several hours to come. Passing out into the sunny street I find a busy little bustling city, alive to its own concerns. Yonder old gentleman in that postal card shop is very much alive to the fact that I have not patronised his wares, which I do at once, and he is delighted that I really take an interest in his beloved old town. His preference is for the ancient city but he does not forget her attractions of to-day and trusts that I will not depart without an inspection of the factory where the tapestries are made. This factory was established before the Gobelins, and these good people of Beauvais consider their work far superior to that of the better known fabric near Paris. [Illustration: THE GRAND PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL OF BEAUVAIS By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] As I enter the Cathedral, even the majesty of the building is for a time secondary to the interest excited by the splendid specimens of this work, which hang upon the walls. They are vast in size and very rich in colouring, as well as beautiful in design, and represent the histories of St. Peter and St. Paul after the cartoons of Raphael. These tapestries are worth a million and a half of francs, and it has been proven by the returns made to the Minister of Fine Arts from all over France, that the art treasures of the churches far surpass in beauty and value those of the great public institutions of Paris, Versailles, the Louvre, Luxembourg, de Cluny, and Carnavalet. In fact those vast collections are but a small part of the artistic wealth of France. Its real wealth is in its churches, and if brought to a sale would realise the fabulous sum of six thousand millions of francs, or twelve hundred millions of dollars. The little Roman church of Conques, hidden in the mountains of the Aveyron, possesses a treasure,--shown at the Exhibition of 1900, for which a syndicate offered thirty-two million francs. It is well for France that it is inalienable. It holds the finest enamels in the world, reliquaries given by the kings, and Roman statues in gold and silver. For the silver Virgin of Amiens, eight hundred thousand francs was offered, and the one at Le Mans is valued at a million, while the Cathedral of Rheims possesses in its panel, representing the Nativity, the most valuable piece of tapestry extant. That these treasures were not dispersed by the Terrorists is a marvel; they certainly would have produced far more money for their cause than the melting down of a few bells. The colouring of these pieces in Beauvais is of a freshness and strength which surprises one. They evidently have been shut off from the light through most of the many years since they were made. This cathedral in the daytime still impresses by its immensity, and now one sees the painted glass of the sixteenth century. There is so much of it and the windows are so close together that the effect is like that of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris enlarged enormously, and the church has the appearance of a glass house as the stone work is far less prominent than in other cathedrals. I spend some time in the adjacent château. The great round towers observed last night are but the guardians of the entrance to the court, across which rises the old palace of the Archbishop, now the Hôtel de Ville. The whole is picturesque, but the interior is not of interest. [Illustration: OLD HOUSES ON THE RUE DE LA MANUFACTURE, BEAUVAIS By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] There is much indeed of the picturesque in Beauvais and one may spend many hours wandering through her streets, but the attraction of motion is upon me and I am certain to secure it in yonder red car, which to-night will deposit me in the capital. But before that we shall have a delightful ride, all too speedily a thing of the past. CHAPTER XXIV THE ROUTE TO SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE--THE PEOPLE--THE CASTLE AND TERRACE--THEIR PICTURESQUE HISTORY--FIRST VIEW OF PARIS It is close to high noon when we enter the ancient and once royal city of St. Germain-en-Laye, after some miles speeding through the aisles of her forest, where they say wild boar may be found to this day. As we enter the town, the people are streaming out of the churches and off and away in every sort of vehicle for the festal part of the day. How happy they all look, especially the children, whose faces are, as it were, mirrors reflecting the sunlight. Here are the funny little donkey and dog carts, both such serious-looking concerns. Yonder is a bridal coach with its happy party, and in this tram-car is another bridal party not at all ashamed of its costumes, and all around it seem bent upon making it happy for this one day at any rate. The morrow and its sorrows will come soon enough. This is a work-a-day world, and this festival will be looked back upon throughout all the coming years. I saw last spring in one of the Parisian gardens a bride in full regalia, veil and all, proudly seated on an elephant, and very happy over the admiration of the groom and the others around below her. Passing rapidly through the streets of Saint-Germain we emerge upon the castle square, with that picturesque structure to our left, while far beyond it, along the brow of the hill, stretches the stately and famous terrace, its balustrade, vases, and statues glimmering white against the squarely trimmed, pale green trees bordering the walks, and behind all rise the darker masses of the forest. Off and away before us the land drops to where the Seine twists and winds through the valley of rich green. Yonder are the heights of Marly and the forest of Vésinet and beyond, the white city of Paris, glittering in the sunshine, spreads away over hill after hill, crowned on the one side by the Cathedral of Montmartre and on the other by the Fortress of Mt. Valerian. There is no fairer scene in all the world than this before us,--as there is no such fair city on earth as Paris in the month of May. All the world is abroad to-day. Here in the square of the palace of St. Germain the tide of people is quite tremendous, beating its human waves against the walls of this ancient abode of the kings of France and streaming far out upon the wide walks of her terrace. If Louis le Grand should return and visit this favourite promenade, favourite until he grew old enough to find the plainly to be seen towers of St. Denis disagreeable of contemplation, what would he think of this democratic assemblage where two centuries ago all was state and ceremony, velvets and laces? However, there are women here as lovely as La Vallière or de Montespan, and he would probably arrange a later meeting with some of them. After all is said, the people are about the same, notwithstanding the lapse of centuries. There are plenty of La Vallières and Louises in plain air on yonder terrace to-day where the gay god of love reigns just as supreme as in the days of le grand Monarque. [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU OF SAINT-GERMAIN FROM THE NORTH By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] This old castellated château before us was built by Charles V. and finally completed by Francis I. It was more of a fort than a palace, and far too sombre to please the gay Henry of Navarre, who had constructed a gorgeous palace near where the terrace now stands, and wherein Louis XIII. died. This was destroyed by Charles X. But there were gay days even in this château before us. Louis XIV. was born here, and it was here that he came down through the trapdoor in the ceiling in search of La Vallière sleeping probably on straw. These old palaces were not always furnished and the king's bed was hauled from house to house many times. This is said to have occurred especially here at St.-Germain, to reach which it was in those days somewhat difficult. [Illustration: THE TERRACE AT SAINT-GERMAIN By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The terrace was inaugurated when Louis XIV. was in the height of his glory and with a splendour we can scarcely conceive, surely a contrast to the very democratic crowds which swarm its alleys and hang over its balustrade in this year, 1905. James II. of England and his Queen lived and died here and in this church to our right he lies buried. The sadness and misfortune of the fated Stuarts never forsook them for an instant even after death, for the bodies of Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I., and her daughter Henrietta were the first to be torn from their tombs in St. Denis and cast into the fosse. Before all this, St.-Germain witnessed the reception of the little Queen of Scotland and historic faces were clustered thickly around her fair head. One can picture that stately assemblage as it came from yonder portal to greet the very weary, tired out little girl, whose brows already ached with her Scottish crown; Henry II., the gay gallant; Catherine de Medici,--queen as yet in name only,--with the smouldering fires of ambition and the gleam of an indomitable will in her black, velvety, opaque eyes,--eyes which held no pupil yet saw all. One always pictures her as in her latter days, garbed in sweeping black with a long veil of sombre hue sweeping down from a black cap whose white frill comes to a point in the centre of her brow. But here she was clothed in brilliancy. Henry allowed no black in his court. In the throng came the boy princes whose short lives were to be so full of tragedies. Nostradamus also appeared with his prophecies of blood for the little princess. The head of the house of Guise and all who made history in those days together with the glittering courtiers,--poured in gorgeous array from yonder archway onto this square, crowded to-day with its plebeian humanity, and, as the eye wanders past the château and rests on the far-reaching terrace, the mental picture, shifting downward through the years is filled with a throng even far more brilliant. Masses of Watteau figures headed by Louis le Grand in his high red-heeled shoes and vast wig, and clothed with pomposity, advance out of the past; then the furies of the Revolution like a pack of great gaunt wolves sweep them away as though chaff, and passing onward give place to the beautiful if mock courts of the Napoléons, and then, the picture merges into this of to-day where the stage is the same, but how different the players thereon. Yonder, glittering in the sunshine lies the cauldron of Paris, which has produced and destroyed all who have performed on this stage of St.-Germain. Even with the gaiety of the scene around us we cannot altogether forget what has occurred here, or wonder what may not yet occur, for it is quite within the possibilities that future revolutionists may carry out the intention of Robespierre and establish the guillotine within this court as a permanence,--an intention thwarted only by his death. Certainly he was nothing if not picturesque. The grim court of this old fortress would form a picturesque surrounding for his pet instrument of destruction, and the last glimpse afforded its victims of the world they were to leave would be one of the most beautiful that the world contains. The contemplation of it holds me long to-day, but time flies, we must move on, and so, entering our red car, we drop away from St.-Germain speeding down the hillside, rushing through village after village, crossing and re-crossing the river, skimming onward through the beautiful Bois de Boulogne, where all Paris is coming outward to the races, and so through the grand avenues, past the Arch of the Star, and into the court of the hotel where the auto vanishes and we rest for a season. CHAPTER XXV PARIS AND HER SO-CALLED REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT--NECESSITY FOR AN AUTOMOBILE--THE RIDE TO CHARTRES--CATHEDRAL NOTRE DAME--THE AQUEDUCT AT MAINTENON AND ITS BURDEN OF SORROW--THE CASTLE OF MAINTENON--MADAME AND LOUIS XIV.--ST. CYR AND HER DEATH--RETURN TO PARIS. Paris is _en fête_ for the coming of the little Spanish King, and as the shadows lengthen, he passes in state, down the Avenue of the Champs-Élysées,--a delicate, pale-faced boy, with apparently no constitution. The French nation may be on the downward path, but this city of Paris is gay to-day with no fear of the handwriting on the wall. One seems to _live_, here, as in no other capital in the world; all the others are work-a-day where, to their credit be it said, business and the serious side of life are ever foremost; but here, all is pleasure and for pleasure, while work is shoved far off into the distant quarters of the city. To a citizen from a real republic, this of France seems one in name only. These people so dearly love the pomp and glitter of fine pageants that the simplicity of our republican nation could not be endured. One would judge that there are as many titles in France at the present time as before the great Revolution and I doubt the arrival of the day when they will be things of the past, to-day at least they are recognised in France and receive all due respect socially and politically. I have visited Paris many, many times in the years gone by and thought I knew the city thoroughly. So I did and do, the immediate city within the walls, and many of the points without them, but that is far from the whole of Paris. So much lies around it which it is bother-some to reach and that I never saw or should have seen but for an auto, that I feel deeply grateful to the puffing, conceited thing, which, so to speak, swallows one up and rushes off in any and all directions, and at a moment's notice; so that day after day glides by in skimming the country round about of its rich cream of interest. To-day we are off for Chartres,--a short run of fifty-five miles each way. I had asked an acquaintance to go along and warned him to bring his heavy wraps. He appeared in low shoes, silk socks, a light spring overcoat and wearing a delicate orchid in his buttonhole. Before we reach Chartres I have to wrap him up in about everything the car holds save the gasoline, and I think he is inclined to swallow some of that and to touch a match to it so hard are the shivers. However, a bottle of whiskey sets him on his legs again, but I fancy the next time he is warned he will take heed. The day's ride is beautiful and proves one of utmost interest, one in which the pages of France's history are unrolled all too rapidly before us. The air is fresh and life-giving as we race past the Arch, and so on into the shade of the Bois, which this morning is so entrancing that we speed through many of its avenues before starting onward for the real ride of the day. The machine skims over these level roadways soundlessly, and so smoothly that one may write if one were so disposed on such a morning. Other autos rush past us and we hold on to our caps and almost to our hair; thousands of bicycles flash along the by-paths; Paris is out to enjoy itself as only Paris knows how to do. Yonder is Bagatelle, to my thinking the most exquisite portion of the Bois, and one so little known, to Americans at least. Enter its gateways, and there, in the very centre of this French wood, you find a great park intensely English in its characteristics. One might imagine one's self in some English estate in the heart of that country, for, save for the villa, there is nothing to remind one that this is France. The villa itself is not of a size to greatly mar the picture, and as it is empty and closed you will spend your time in the winding walks and under the shade of the trees. There are two statements as to the building of yonder villa, one, that it was done by the Comte d'Artois on a wager with Marie Antoinette that he would build a château in a month's time. This he accomplished. The other statement makes the wager by that same nobleman with the Prince of Wales and the time sixty days. Whichever is true, the villa was built and for many years with its park belonged to and was the home of Sir Richard Wallace, who housed his superb collection, now in London, within its walls. Bagatelle now belongs to Paris and is part of the Bois, though still shut off by its walls and gateways, and you are only permitted to enter on foot. It would be pleasant to linger longer here to-day, but with Chartres in our minds we move off, passing en route the Café de Madrid, which, to the many thousands who visit or pass it by, means simply a place to get something to eat and yet it occupies the site of the villa built by Francis I. on the model of his prison in Madrid (hence the name). Here the gay monarch first caused ladies to become a necessary part of his Court, insisting that "a court without women is a year without spring time and a spring time without roses." With such power of compliment is it a marvel that he was a favourite of the fair sex, or that his taste was so perfect that his son could do no better than make his father's fair Diane the first lady of his Court? "Madrid" was a house of pleasure. After Francis, Henry II. used it with Diane de Poitiers, Charles IX. with Mlle. de Rouet. Henry III. changed it from a menagerie of women to that of beasts. Here the gay Marguerite divorced by Henry IV. spent her latter years; how, we can well imagine. History is silent concerning it after that, though it was probably used for the same purpose by the succeeding Louis until Louis XVI. ordered its demolition. There is not a vestige of it left to-day, but on its site stands the pink restaurant with its green benches and shading trees, its white covered tables and laughing throngs, but it is too early in the day for them as yet, and the place is rather silent as we flash by it towards the murmuring river. As we pass through Louveciennes, we pause a moment before the pavilion, all that remains of the Villa of Madame du Barry. Everything else has vanished and it is only the exterior of the pavilion that remains as she beheld it. What was her real character,--the daughter of a dressmaker, the mistress of a king, the power before which all the Court bowed, and whose influence over the aged monarch was unbounded? How did she use it? Should we pity her fate, or turn in disgust from a thing so degraded? Some authorities state that from the first to last she was all bad,--the mistress of one Comte du Barry, she was, by the King's orders, married to another, and so presented at Court where her power soon eclipsed that of all others. The Court was at its lowest stage of depravity during her time. She cost France thirty-five millions of francs, and died a coward, showing more fear and terror on the scaffold than any other woman who mounted its fatal platform. The only thing in her favour was her patronage of art and of the men of letters. The other side of the picture, told by an eye-witness, Madame Campan, is far different, at least as regards the standing of the frail du Barry. Therein we find her treated with indulgence by Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, and we are told that with the latter she was, during the dark days of the terror, in constant communication, giving the queen all the information which she worked so hard to obtain,--that her grief over the tragedy of the Queen was intense, and that she desired to dispose of all she possessed in their favour, in re-payment for the infinite goodness of the King and Queen towards herself. Returning to France to join the man she loved, de Bressac, she was forced to gaze upon his severed head carried on a pike past her windows in Versailles. Betrayed at last by the negro boy Zamore, whom she had benefited and protected for years, she was guillotined. She was evil, doubtless, but was there not enough good there to admit of the hope of a greeting in another world such as came to the woman of Palestine, "Neither do I condemn thee?" The figures of history come trooping to us as we roll onward towards Versailles, to which we give but a passing glance. Later on, we glide through the woods where Racine first learned the language of poetry and so on to Rambouillet, where Francis I. ended his days murmuring to his son, "Beware of the Guise." The château is a gloomy pile of red brick, and it was in a chamber in its great round tower that the soul of the merry monarch sailed forth on its long journey, scarcely faster I think we glide away from his palace to-day. To me, properly dressed, this ride is delightful. I find a lined leather jacket to be of all things the most comfortable, but poor Narcissus is chattering with cold and so we leave the Château de Maintenon for inspection on our return. There is much rushing water around the château and its little village, and we come soon upon a majestic aqueduct spanning the river,--a structure which might be considered one of the immediate causes of the French Revolution. Rising from the placid river and its bright green banks, the arches are picturesque and beautiful to-day, and yet, to build them, forty thousand troops were employed. The spot was so unhealthy that the mortality was immense,--many thousands,--and the dead were carried away by night that the workers might not be discouraged or the pleasure of the King delayed, for this was to furnish life to his fountains at Versailles. The King intended to carry the waters of the river through a new channel eight leagues in length, and hence this aqueduct, as it was necessary to connect two mountains. However, before it was completed, the work was abandoned for the hydraulics at Marly. This structure was partly demolished to build the Château of Crécy for Madame de Pompadour. Of the forty-seven original arches, fourteen remain, each eighty-three feet high with a forty-two foot span. The loss of life caused in the building of this canal of thirty-three miles does not appear to have excited much attention at the time,--such was the power of the King, but the people remember, and the grandchildren of these did remember in 1793, when, as usual, the innocent suffered for the guilty. Leaving the aqueduct with its burden of sorrow and the softly murmuring river, we mount the hills and enter upon La Beauce, the finest corn land in France. It spreads away from us, a vast plain, gently sloping off for miles, until far in the hazy distance of this lovely spring day the twin towers of the famous Cathedral of Chartres pierce the sky, and from now on with scarcely any power, and soundless, the car speeds on and on, ever faster and faster, until the wings come out on its hubs once more, and we are flying, fairly flying. If Sheridan had possessed an automobile that day at Winchester, T. Buchanan Reid would have lost the opportunity to make him immortal, but still "hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan, hurrah, hurrah for horse and man," and one feels like returning to boyhood's days and giving utterance to some wild whoops as this car rushes onward and onward. The vast plain spreads away, spangled with daisies. The hedges are all a-blossom, the air is full of perfume and this old world seems young once more, until, as we enter the ancient city of Chartres and pause before her Cathedral, we suddenly drop back again into the Middle Ages. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] This Cathedral of Notre Dame is considered by architects to be the most perfect in France. Its "vast size" is also mentioned. As to the former opinion, it arises, I think, so far as the exterior is concerned, from its simplicity of outlines. One comprehends the whole at a glance, and the eye is not confused and tired by a vast conglomeration of styles, as is the case with many churches. If one were to see this at Chartres first, many of the other cathedrals would impress one as over-dressed, so to speak. As for its size, after the churches of Rouen, Amiens, and Beauvais, this does not impress me, as it is on a far smaller scale than any of those edifices. For instance, the height of the nave is thirty-four feet less than in the Cathedral of Amiens and forty-seven less than that of Beauvais. Neither is it so long or wide as those of Rouen and Amiens. However, while it is not so vast, it is in its interior much more impressive than Amiens. Because of its ancient windows, it holds a "dim religious light" under its arches soothing to mind and heart. "Peace, be still," pervades the silence and follows you as a benediction when you go hence. But before you go, gaze a while upon the glory of these windows. Europe holds nothing like them. They are perfect, and they are eight hundred years old. Other cathedrals have a few or a few fragments, here are one hundred and thirty perfect windows; and from the great rose circle forty feet in diameter to those surrounding the aisles, all are full of that beautiful painted glass, such as we are not able to produce in this latter day. After all, the glory of this Church of our Lady is in such details as this, and in her exquisite lace-like carvings in stone, surrounding the outer wall of the choir. These, together with the Gothic porticoes on the north and south side, form the objects of the greatest beauty and interest in Chartres. [Illustration: THE NORTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] [Illustration: THE SOUTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] [Illustration: STONE CARVINGS SURROUNDING THE CHOIR OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES From a photograph] The cathedral has been the object of vast pilgrimages because of a sacred image of the Virgin, which stood in its crypt,--it was destroyed in 1793. Henry IV. was crowned here, and here one still sees the celebrated black image of the twelfth century which was crowned with a "bonnet rouge" during the Terror, but is now restored to its ancient occupation of receiving the veneration of the faithful. [Illustration: THE VIERGE DU PILIER IN THE CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] We were not impressed with the town of Chartres and so after a good dinner and much whiskey for the frozen youth of the orchids, we bid it farewell. While there we met some friends who had come from Naples in their own car, a new one, and had spent a thousand dollars for it in tires alone. It was now on the way to the shops in Paris, to be "thoroughly overhauled" and it is not two months old. My red car is not so gorgeous, but I enter it with every satisfaction, and my enjoyment of my tour is not rendered any the less by the knowledge that though I keep it a year or for ever, I shall have no such items to pay when it leaves me, nor shall I have an old car on my hands, and that means much, for the fashions of these machines change so from year to year that a "last year's car" is worth little when you try to sell it. However, as I have stated before, Jean says that this car is of such sturdy make that it should last for years with small additional expense. [Illustration: THE VIADUCT OF MAINTENON, NEAR CHARTRES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] As we near again the aqueduct of Louis XIV. its arches frame most picturesquely the Château de Maintenon, which stands some distance beyond it, on the river's bank. Built by Cocquereau, the treasurer of Louis XI., the castle was given by Louis XIV. to de Maintenon, and here in 1685 in its little chapel, he is supposed to have married her, though it is generally conceded that that ceremony occurred at Versailles but that they came here immediately afterwards. The King was but forty-seven and she fifty years of age, so that he lived with her thirty years. She certainly possessed charms past understanding to have enchained such a man at that comparatively youthful age, to have enchained and held him as she did for thirty years. We picture the widow Scarron as a pinched-nose, pale-faced woman of sour expression. She must have been far different and far more to have held this Louis, who probably was as nearly natural as it was possible for him to be, here in these rooms which to-day are, so they tell us, as she left them. If so, how did the Terrorists overlook them? Here is the sitting-room with its frayed green satin furniture, and yonder the bedroom and several other apartments. There was no great state maintained in Maintenon and I doubt not that the worthy couple often strolled down the banks of this placid river to look at the work on yonder aqueduct outlined against the sky. The King is described as always majestic, yet sometimes with gaiety, leaving nothing out of place or to hazard before the world. Down to the least gesture, his walk, his bearing, his countenance, all were measured, decorous, grand and noble, and always natural, which the unique, incomparable advantages of his whole appearance greatly facilitated. In serious affairs, no man ever was more imposing, and it was necessary to be accustomed to see him, if, in addressing him one did not wish to break down. The respect, which his presence at any place inspired, imposed silence and even a sort of dread. When the mob tore him from the tomb at St. Denis they found a "black mass of spices,"--the man was lost after death in perfumes, as during life in pride, and his body was flung, together with all the other royalties of France, into the great ditch at St. Denis, and, if the story be true, his heart swallowed by a canon of Westminster was interred with the very reverend gentleman in that sacred place. It probably killed him. Another tale is to the effect that one Philip Henri Schunck, a royalist did, in the year 1819 in Paris, make the acquaintance of an artist named St. Martin, a friend of one of the officials who superintended the opening of the royal monuments in the Jesuits' churches. St. Martin states that he was present on the opening of several monuments in order to secure the royal dust to be utilized as "Momie" a valuable dark brown pigment which was often obtained from mummy cases and ancient tombs. St. Martin converted part of the heart of Louis XIV. to this use but returned the rest together with the heart of Louis XII., intact to Schunck through whom they reached St. Denis where they now are. St. Martin made this surrender during his last illness--a time when he would scarcely have perpetrated a practical joke on posterity. At the opening of the monuments two painters were present; the other was Droling, and between them they bought eleven hearts including those of Anne of Austria, Maria Theresa, Gaston of Orleans, the regent, and Madame Henrietta and all were made into "Momie." There is a picture in the Louvre by Droling--"Intérieur de Cuisine"--whose rich colours may owe their brilliancy to these hearts of dead royalties. The heart of Louis le Grand mashed up by a painter's knife and spread on canvas--where now is your greatness, O King? But of all this these murmuring waters at Maintenon told the anointed of God nothing, but reflected his image as placidly as they do ours to-day. Madame is described as a woman of very stately elegant figure and bearing. Possessed of infinite tact she never lost her temper even before de Montespan had been banished from Court. Nothing appeared to vex her, and she would smile past and through all obstacles until she obtained what she desired. With all, she would appear to have been an austere woman, caring little for dress or the pageants of the Court and much for power. In that, she bore a certain resemblance to Catherine de Medici. As time wore on, she so influenced the King that we find the red heels, diamond buckles, laces and plumes almost all gone. That she ever loved the man is doubtful, and she certainly did not forgive his dying reference to her age, which exceeded his by two years. Her last words as she deserted him, which he probably heard--and which she intended he should hear--were as heartless as only a woman of that stamp could make them,--"There lies a man who never loved any one but himself." [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU OF MAINTENON. FROM THE NORTH By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] To the students of history, Maintenon and its seclusion would seem a place more to the liking of its austere mistress than Versailles, and it is probable that she spent much time in the château. It may be that here she induced Louis to sign that revocation of the Edict of Nantes which so affected the fortunes of our own land, by driving the best of the population of France down the Rhine valley and out on to the ocean. On our return to Paris we pass by St. Cyr, the immense collection of buildings which Louis built for Madame as a wedding gift and wherein she held court at the head of a convent of two hundred and fifty noble dames. The place is at present a military school and we are not permitted to enter, but there is after all nothing to see save the black marble slab which covers her tomb. To St. Cyr she came a day before the king died, leaving him to enter upon the great hereafter alone. Here she lived the simplest and most austere of lives and here she ended her days. A rushing ride through the afternoon brings us again to Paris, in the twilight and into the Élysées Palace Hôtel where at least two hundred of the gayest women of the under world are taking tea, and I am surprised to find the majority of them speaking English, many, by their accents, coming from our own country. It is a strange sight this; London has some such scenes, but I know of none in New York, to its credit be it said.[4] [4] In view of the present conditions in one of New York's greatest hotels, I must qualify that statement.--M. M. S. With the auto disappeared also, but into the subway I think, the youth with the spring suit and the orchid, both sadly drooping. I believe he got into a boiling bath and filled up on what whiskeys and sodas Paris had left, for twenty-four hours, resting the while at the bottom of a deep, deep bed. CHAPTER XXVI MY CHAUFFEUR SUMMONED BY THE GOVERNMENT--THE NEW MAN--YAMA's OPINION OF PARIS--SPEED OF AUTOS IN PARIS. While I am dressing for dinner, Jean comes in with a flaming face and a telegram. He has been summoned for military service, and though it will last but two weeks it must be performed at Gap, near the Italian frontier, and what shall I do in the meantime? Certainly I do not propose to pay for an idle auto car, and can another chauffeur be gotten? Jean has wired to Nice and thinks that "George" may be sent, and if so, I will be all right as he states that George is a better chauffeur than he himself. All this is very annoying but cannot be helped, and one does not desire to growl at the government of a country where one receives so much kindness, especially when all this is for a very necessary service. Still, to lose a chauffeur that one knows, and can trust, is a serious business, and I am almost tempted to end the tour now, but the idea of foregoing the Vosges and the Black Forest, to say nothing of what may follow, is not any more acceptable, so I decide to see what can be done in Nice, and await the reply to Jean's telegram to the owner of the auto, Monsieur le Jeunne. It comes promptly and states that George is already _en route_ to us, and will arrive that night on the express. In the interval I take my last ride with Jean, rambling all over old Paris, which he seems to know and love, and he is so delighted that it interests me. Yama still insists that the capital does not look respectable. That from one _of a nation_ which maintains the Yoshawarra, as a national institution and which does not know the meaning of the word morality, is severe. Still, I doubt whether Japan could be considered as immoral as that great Yoshawarra called Paris; rather they are _un_moral. The order of things is certainly reversed in the two countries. In France, a girl is shut up in a convent until she marries, but after that, well the less said the better (I do not hold that this is the case in the provinces); whereas in Japan there is no morality, as we understand that word, before marriage, while there certainly is, after that ceremony. The Jap women are faithful wives and faithful mistresses. We consider Japan as a semi-barbarous nation and do not judge her people by our standards but France is another so-called Christian nation, yet I think _that_ slave market in the hotel is worse than any our Southern States knew of in their darkest days. I asked Yama which city he liked the better, New York or Paris. "Why certainly, New York, sir. Here there are such funny-looking men talking to disreputable-looking women at those dirty tables all over the street; the place is not respectable and you ought to go home." I quite agree with him but I do not go; but then to him the other side, the fair side of Paris, is a closed book. All its beauty, all its intense historical interest he does not see and cannot comprehend, but it is difficult to understand how any living being can fail to see and feel the beauty of Paris, when the horse-chestnuts are in bloom, when the trees in the Bois are of that tender green which seems peculiar to France, when the Seine dances and sparkles in the sun, and all the world goes for an outing. For my part, I most intensely enjoy the actual living when my carriage rolls between the horses of Marly up the Avenue of the Champs-Élysées past the arch and into that fairy-land beyond it. And yet I never pass the Place de la Concord that I do not remember its terrible history, see in my mind's eye the white-robed queen moving to her death, or the shrieking tumultuous mob which carried Robespierre to justice. The prancing stone horses from Marly which the gay world passes every day looked down upon both those scenes. Those old houses in the Rue St. Honoré saw the passing of both King and Queen and the saintly Madame Elizabeth. What were even French brutes made of to destroy a woman like that? George arrives at six o'clock in the evening, and Jean brings him to my rooms and then departs, with regret, as one can tell by the catch in his voice. Escorted by George and Yama he disappears into the "underground," and is gone to serve his country. As it turns out, that is the end of his service with me, though I have agreed to have him back when his time expires at Gap. But I anticipate--George seems to know his business and the first run through these crowded streets places my mind at rest on that score. Motor cars in Paris are lords of the way,--the police pay no attention to them, and just why each day is not marked by fatal accidents all over the city passes my comprehension. Apparently there is no limit placed upon their speed. Yesterday I saw one enter the city and fly up the Avenue of the Grand Army at certainly fifty miles an hour. That wide thoroughfare was crowded, yet no accident happened, and the car, rounding the arch, fled away down the avenue of the Champs-Élysées at the same furious pace. In the old days, Paris was considered dangerous for pedestrians, because of its cabs and carriages. To-day one waves them aside as one would a fly and pauses only for an auto car, for _it_ will not pause for you and it is very heavy. I confess my first ride down this Avenue in the car of one living in Paris tested my nerve. I held on for dear life, and fairly shrieked two or three times at what I thought was wilful murder. When we reached the Hôtel Ritz I descended in a shaking condition, and I had been used to a high rate of progress for two solid months. Personally, I do not care for such speeding and will not permit it with my car for many reasons aside from the danger, but most of these people have taken as their motto, "A short life and a merry one,"--all of which may have one good result, it will save tremendous funeral expenses, for there will be little left to bury. CHAPTER XXVII DEPARTURE FROM PARIS--THE CEMETERY OF THE PICPUS--RIDE THROUGH THE FOREST OF FONTAINEBLEAU TO SENS--THE CATHEDRAL--TOMB OF THE DAUPHINS--THE GREAT ROUTE TO GENEVA--STONED BY BOYS--TONNERRE To those who love her, Paris shows even yet glimpses of the olden days, and as we flash past the Louvre and along the banks of the Seine, many a stately façade rises above us. This section was Royal Paris for many centuries, and it is to be regretted that the government of the city does not assume control and preserve what is left of the private hotels, at least preserve their exteriors. To build a modern city is at all times possible, but once down, these ancient houses can never be replaced, and their existence brings thousands of strangers and much money to this capital of France and its people. Something of such preservation has been done, but there is much which should be preserved which stands in danger. The Hôtel de Sens, unique and perfect but a year or so ago, is gone, and for what? We leave the Column Bastille well to our left, and speed off down the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine to the Place du Trône,--now, Place de la République--a vast open space guarded by two stately columns and from which broad avenues stretch away until lost in perspective. Here Louis XIV. erected a throne and received the homage of Paris when he returned from his Spanish marriage. All the gorgeousness and glitter of his capital gathered then with no shadows on their sky of what was to come. Just here where he was enthroned stood, later, a scaffold holding two long high posts with a glittering knife flashing up and down, a hedge of steel surrounded it and a howling mob thronged the place. When the Place de la Revolution became too slippery with blood, the guillotine came here, and here, between June 14 and July 27, 1794, fell thirteen hundred of the most illustrious heads of France. For any reason or for no reason, whole families came together and were glad to be allowed to go "together." It is related that a little child, a girl, at the Luxembourg, then a prison, came racing and shouting from the door to the waiting trumbril with the cry, "O Mama, Mama, my name _is_ on your list and I can go too." Close by in what is now the neighbouring cemetery of the Picpus they found rest. Leaving the Place du Trône on the city side, by the first street to the left we enter a quiet quarter of Paris which the tide of life rarely invades. These streets are of the oldest in Paris, and this convent before us, now called the Sacred Heart, was once that of the Bernardin-Benedictin, into which Jean Valjean penetrated, and I must confess that it is with him rather than the illustrious dead that my thoughts are busy as we draw up before the gates. The whole neighbourhood seems deserted, the yellow streets are as silent as the convent and its grave-yard, and one wonders over which of these walls Jean Valjean made that wonderful escape into this abode of Perpetual Adoration, of Perpetual Silence. [Illustration: THE TOMB OF LAFAYETTE IN THE PICPUS CEMETERY, PARIS From a photograph] But our George has jangled the porter's bell and the gate is shortly opened by a sad-faced Sister, who, with down-cast eyes conducts us through the long convent gardens, past the buildings which one may not enter, and into an oblong enclosure crowded with flat tombstones, upon which as we pass down the walks we read the most historical names in France, until upon reaching the last in the line, the name of La Fayette is before us. Two little American flags adorn it and hang motionless in the quiet air. But even La Fayette's tomb cannot hold our thoughts long here. The eye is irresistibly drawn to a small door in a wall just beyond it, guarded by an iron grill and surmounted by a tablet bearing a simple inscription. Gazing inward you see a space some seventy-five feet square and guarded by high walls. Its grass is shaded by some cypress trees, a simple iron cross rises in the centre. There are no stones or monuments of any sort to mark this last resting place of the flower of the French aristocracy. Thirteen hundred and six were brought here from the Place du Trône and were cast pell mell into the fosse. [Illustration: THE CEMETERY OF THE PICPUS. LAFAYETTE'S TOMB ON THE RIGHT, TABLET TO ANDRÉ CHÉNIER ON THE LEFT From a photograph by the author] Amongst them, the figure of the poet André Chénier will probably be remembered the longest. His only crime lay in his beautiful verses, in his life and character, all of which were a reproach to the wolves of the Revolution. The night following his execution a cart loaded with twenty-five headless corpses left the Place du Trône and wended its way to this deserted quarry, into which for six weeks had been tumbled pell mell, stripped of their clothing by the men in charge of the work, the victims of these last days of the Terror. This fosse remained open from day to day awaiting further executions and no day passed without its additions to the mournful assemblage. Here André Chénier was buried unknown to his family who sought for his grave, for the work was done in secret and these grave diggers never spoke of their task as to do so would have insured their joining the silent throng. The secret was discovered by a poor workwoman, Mlle. Paris, who followed the cart containing the body of her father, and each week she would repair thither to pray on the brink of his grave. The days of Robespierre accomplished and the Terror ended, the plot was bought by an inhabitant of the Faubourg de Picpus and enclosed in walls, after which it was blessed by a rebellious priest, rebellious against the Commune, in hiding in Paris. In 1802, when Mme. de Montagu Noailles returned to France, her first care was to discover the grave of her mother guillotined in 1794. Her search was fruitless until she heard by accident of this workwoman, and so in the end succeeded in buying this sacred plot of ground. The ancestor of Prince Salm Krybourg, who now owns the spot, was the last victim of the guillotine and sleeps here with all the others. None have the privilege of sepulchre in the outer enclosure unless they be of blood kin to those who suffered in the Terror and were buried in this fosse. If there be any aristocracy in death it is here in this cemetery of the Picpus. As I turn for a last glimpse, the spring sunshine is filtering down through the thickness of the trees caressing the grass within, and the tombs without, in a tender sort of way, as though to make up to the dead, in some small degree, for all the horrors which had been hurled upon them when alive. So we leave them under the benediction of spring and follow our sad faced guide who utters no word or sound, but stands with bowed head and crossed hands at the great gateway until we pass outward and away. After such a spot it is well to come down to the cheerful commonplace streets of this farthest corner of Paris on our way to the South, and yet as we roll onward through the sunshine, it is some time before we recover our usual spirits and the world seems gay once more, and here is one of the charms of automobiling. If all goes well with your machine, and such has been the case with mine, you cannot long remain sad or gloomy, ill or desponding. The rushing air and the glory of living wraps you round about and you cannot but be joyous. Care may be back there somewhere, but with good luck he cannot catch you. To-day the air is moist and warm and with the smell of the asphalt comes the odour of wood violets. The market women, as they rattle past us with their loads of bright yellow carrots and well washed turnips appear jolly and good-natured. Doubtless they could enjoy a good day at the guillotine, but they are not bent upon that now. So we roll onward through mile after mile of streets and a quarter of Paris heretofore unknown to me; rather uninteresting on the whole and yet to me no section of this city is without great interest, and the panorama of her people is an inexhaustible study, and one of which I never tire. Paris, like its wickedness, lays fast hold upon those who would leave it, as the traveller in an auto will find to his discomfort. Of all the exits from the great city there is but one, that to Brittany, which is open and straight away. As we entered two weeks ago from Beauvais we were entangled in a maze of streets which appeared to have no outlet, and so again as we leave for the south. It is all fair sailing down the magnificent avenues of the city, but once past the walls our trouble begins. George gets lost several times and it is with great relief that we at last leave the houses and roll out once more on one of the splendid highways of France. One half the day is misty and rainy with two short, sharp showers, but with all, the ride is beautiful, passing by the lovely Seine and through the forest of Fontainebleau. It is dark as we roll into the quaint old town of Sens and seek shelter in the comfortable Hôtel de Paris. Again I am welcomed by "Madame" who shows me to a comfortable room and soon has a fire blazing,--acceptable, though this is the sixth of May. After all, I enjoy these quaint hotels. They are so honest, their people so wholesome, and the whole such a relief after the perfume-laden air of Paris. Dinner at this hotel is served at a long white covered table, with its palms and bottles of wine, around which sit serious-looking provincials with their napkins tucked up under one ear and spread over ample stomachs. What am I writing, they wonder. They say nothing to each other but all stare at me. The newsman comes in and sells the Paris papers and high overhead chime softly the Cathedral bells noted for their silvery tones. The importance of Sens in other days is attested by its ancient and majestic gateways, but the Sens of to-day is a small place clustering around the portals of its Cathedral, which is supposed to be the parent of the Choir of Canterbury, that church having been built by Williams of Sens. There is a resemblance but I shall not enter into description here, after having described so many other cathedrals of France. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT SENS By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Passing its portals, one will linger a moment before the tomb of the Dauphin, father of Louis XVI., speculating as to whether he was a stronger character than his son, and as to what effect he would have had, had he worn the crown, though realising that nothing could have prevented that deluge of 1793. A Napoléon in command would have dispersed many of the mobs, spared the world much of the horrible bloodshed, but the Bourbon throne was doomed. Again, if the king had possessed a modern fire department he could have gained time if not saved his head. There is no mob which can stand against water as applied by a fire-engine. It has been tried and always with success. It would have saved the day at Versailles and the Tuileries and would do so at the present time in Russia--but to return to Sens. There is another monument not mentioned in the books and one of great beauty. It is to some archbishop whose name I have forgotten. The statue kneels on a black marble sarcophagus and is of white marble. It is not so much in the statue itself that the beauty lies, but in the wonderfully natural arrangement of the robe which flows behind in billowy folds, until one touches it and marvels that it is really marble and not heavy satin. Thomas à Becket fled to Sens to escape Henry II., and you may still see his robes and mitre in the treasury of this church. You may say your prayers if you desire at the same altar where he knelt, one wonders whether it was in adoration of himself or of God. In Sens you again encounter the work of Viollet-le-Duc, who has restored wherever he found it possible, but there are bits which escaped his eye if you care to hunt them out. I find myself before one now, off in a quiet corner. It is only a detached head on a column and the eyes gaze into mine in a sidewise fashion as though desirous of telling me its story,--just as the lips of the deserted Buddhas in the forests of Java seem ever quivering to speak. They say you were Jean du Cognot,--but will you pardon a wanderer in these latter days if he asks, who was Jean, and why his head is here all alone on this column? Was there ever any more to him? Did he listen to the booming of these great bells rolling out their summons above us? The eyes gaze downward at me in a sad sort of fashion and seem to follow me reproachfully as I pass outward. The people are streaming in for High Mass and it would be more respectful to get our car away from the sacred edifice, and so we move off down the streets of the little city and on into the fair land about it. As we leave Sens her beautiful bells shower a benediction upon all mankind. Their tone is wonderfully soft and mellow and follows us far out over the misty meadows and by the placid river. A light rain sets in and the skies give no hope of a pleasant day, but an hour later the blue patch appears, and when we stop for luncheon, the sun is shining. This is the main route to Geneva, the highways are superb, and great machines are rushing past us to and from Paris. Later on, speeding moderately, we are approaching a bridge where some boys are standing, when, as we move by, one of them casts a handful of small stones straight in our faces. Fortunately they did not strike our eyes, or there would have been a catastrophe more or less serious. Quickly stopping the car, George rushes after the fleeing culprits, but without success, those remaining on the bridge calmly tell us that we have no right to go so fast, and we reply that another time we shall answer by shooting. We were not going faster than fifteen miles an hour and the bridge was not in town, making the act one of pure deviltry. It was the first of its kind which we have encountered since starting from Nice. These towns nearly all have signs by the highway regulating speed within their limits and we have always obeyed the notice. Later we entered a very beautiful avenue of trees leading into Tonnerre, a melancholy old place with little of interest, save the Great Hall of a hospital founded by Marguerite de Bourgogne, seven hundred years ago,--a vast chapel resembling St. Stephen's hall in Westminster and quite as large. CHAPTER XXVIII DIJON--THE FRENCH AND FRESH WATER--THE ANTIQUITIES OF DIJON--RIDE THROUGH THE CÔTE D'OR--ARRIVAL AT BESANÇON. As we roll onward, Dijon comes into view, picturesquely placed at the foot of the vine-clad hills of the Côte d'Or, backed in turn by the Jura Mountains. The sun shines brightly as we roll into this ancient capital of Charles of Burgundy. It is only since motor cars have commenced to fly over this land that any one has thought of stopping at Dijon. Its glory has long since departed. It was absorbed into that of France under Louis XI. after the death of Charles, when ceasing of importance as a capital it has remained merely a prosperous provincial town, associated in one's mind, together with its province, with much that is rich and red and good in the shape of wine. Judging by the fat bottles all down the dinner table of this hotel, that reviver of mankind is cheaper here than water. We have descended at the Hôtel du Jura, which holds out a special inducement of "baths on every floor," an inducement I must confess, for aside from the greatest hotels in the largest cities, one finds no bathrooms in beautiful France,--and on arriving at an inn after a long auto ride, a bath is an absolute necessity, unless you are so utterly tired out, which I have never been, that nothing save bed is of the slightest importance. Where and how does the vast mass of the French nation bathe? I am not scoffing, I would like to know. It is a fact that until the advent of English and American tourists there were no baths in any hotel in France from Brest to Nice, and even with the building of the Hôtel Continental in Paris, in 1878, if one wanted a bath one must descend to the basement. In 1900, there were but one or two in all the hotel part of that vast establishment, and the rooms containing them were usually used as bedrooms. That condition is slowly improving, but even now they cannot understand the necessity of a bath with every bedroom. The plumbers' bills would drive them to drink, and even in the present Élysées Palace Hôtel, with all its paint, glass, and glitter, unless one has a large suite one has to walk a distance down the hall to the bath and often wait half an hour. The day may come when Europe will boast the convenience of such hotels as one finds in every American city, but she cannot do so now, and in Berlin it is reported that the Royal Palace has no bathrooms, that his Majesty's tub is behind a curtain at the end of a hall. The Empress is said to have exclaimed, when reading of a New York hotel, "I should think myself in heaven if I had such luxury around me." She evidently understood that luxury in its truest sense does not mean gorgeous pageants, pomp, and glitter, but a bathroom of your own less than a block away. How was it at Versailles in the days of the grand Louis? One reads much of the state function called "the toilet" where the King is represented as washing his eyes in some spirits of wine, but one has never read of a bath being part of the royal establishment, consequently one cannot but imagine that under all its pomp and majesty, the Court of France must have been a very dirty place. In fact it is necessary to look to the extremities of Europe, Turkey and Spain, to find evidences of the proper appreciation of fresh water as applied to the human frame. The Turks--though unspeakably vile in all other respects--do bathe and southern Spain holds mute testimony to the love of the Moors for water--a trait they certainly carried away with them when they crossed the straits. [Illustration: THE TOWER OF STATE, PALACE OF THE DUKES OF BOURGOGNE, AT DIJON By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] As I sally forth for an inspection of the city of Dijon the first glances show an entirely modern town of wide streets and rattling trams, while just below me the trains rush to and fro from Paris, but pass onward on to the left, and while you will not find a Bourges or Rouen, you will discover many quaint relics of another period. On the corner of the Rue du Secret and the square of the Duke of Burgundy is an ancient mansion with a turret at its angle and an image in the niche over its doorway. The whole is black with the passing ages and one wonders what the lives were which were lived out there in the old days of chivalry. It's a shop now and from the windows of the adjacent palace no faces look down. It might have housed some dainty mistress of the duke. In the little garden which separates it from the palace there is a fountain and under the trees the people sleep when they will and there, as the museum is not open just yet, I wait listening to the bells of Notre Dame and watching the progress of a love-making between a man and girl on the same bench. They pay no attention to me. The work in hand is too serious for any notice of a passing stranger. Poor fool! He is a bright-eyed, honest-looking lad and she is one of the streets in every sense of that word. They finally move away and I turn to enter the Hôtel de Ville where I find the ancient palace of its dukes, and where there is something of interest even now. The vast kitchen and its six great chimney-places, all unchanged is a curious spot. There the feasts for the "Wild Boar of Ardennes" were prepared, where whole oxen were cooked at once. Above it you may still see his Noble Hall with its richly carved stone work and great chimney with flamboyant traceries, and in its Museum, the gorgeous tombs of Philippe le Hardi and Jean-sans-peur will hold your attention by their beauty of carving and colour. Being in a museum, one can pardon their restoration which has been most successfully accomplished. I have never seen anything so exquisite as these carved draperies. [Illustration: THE TOMB OF JEAN SANS PEUR AT DIJON From a photograph] Passing outward, pause a moment before the Church of Notre Dame, and allow its curious clock, brought from Courtrai by Philippe le Hardi, to speak. If it is a quarter to the hour, it will be struck off by a child, if a half, by a "hammer woman," if the full hour, by a "hammer man," and all have been doing like service for the citizens of Dijon for six hundred years and more, and will do so for thousands long after you are dust and ashes. We would probably pull down the church and erect a skyscraper upon the premises, but these Burgundians love their ancient city, and so this old shrine will stand and yonder quaint figures continue to ring these people into life and through life and off into the realms of heaven, where I doubt not their souls will rest more in peace if sometimes the winds from earth waft to them the tones of their ancient bells. As I wander through the streets of the town it is plain to be seen that it was a Court city, for there are many stately and interesting façades lining the way. Passing onward beyond the railway station and its puffing locomotives, one comes to the ancient Chartreuse, once the ducal burying-place for the house of Burgundy. Charles the Bold slept here until carried off to Bruges. The only relic left here now is what formed once the base of a Calvary,--a group of stone figures surrounding the pedestal where formerly rose the crucifix. The figures of Moses, David, Jeremiah, Zachariah, Daniel, and Isaiah are life size, beautifully carved and very majestic. Formerly the whole Calvary was richly gilded and was the object of many pilgrimages, for which was accorded the remission of sins. I certainly feel better after my pilgrimage, but I fear it is for no religious feeling, but rather the brisk walk and the many hours of interest I have passed this sunny morning in the fresh air of this capital of Burgundy. [Illustration: THE WELL OF MOSES IN THE ABBEY OF CHARTREUX AT DIJON By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] However, luncheon is ready, and the auto waits, it would seem impatiently, judging from the row it is raising and so we speed away from Dijon, and enter upon the richest section of France, the Côte d'Or, where the yellow hills for league after league are smothered in vineyards, and all the prospect is green and gold, with villages nestling here and there, clean and delightful to look upon. As we ascend the terraces and speed off and away on the wide highway, winding along the table-land on their summits, the air is full of the freshness of the mountains and on reaching the top of a hill, George points out Mt. Blanc far in the distance. It is Sunday, the people are abroad and all the world goes singing onward. Everybody seems glad to see every one else. The chickens are more reckless than usual and even the machine moves joyously. If you pass this way during the season of the vintage, the air will be laden with the odour of the over-ripened grapes, and the vines will fairly shake out at you the fragrance of Chambertin, Pommard, or Volnay, until your senses swim as though in truth you had been drinking, but to-day in May there is only the fragrance of green leaves and the smell of the rich yellow earth wafted to us as we rush onward. Our route lies through Auxonne, which held out successfully against the Prussians in 1871;--and so on towards Dôle. Turning for a glimpse of the land behind us, we see the spires of Dijon far down in the valley, while before us and to the north stretch the mountains of the Vosges, and far in the hazy distance, the greater Alps are beginning to assume form and shape. Dôle is passed at a rapid rate, and turning northeastward towards Besançon we fairly fly along and all goes well until four o'clock when a storm, which has blackened the heavens in front of us breaks in heavy rain and--then a tire gives out. While I write, George is down in the mud putting on a new one. He does not seem to mind the work in the least. To-night we stop at Besançon. It is in sight all the time, but that tire must be replaced at once. So George takes refuge under a tree until the worst of the storm is over and then goes to work in the mud. Yama gets out to assist and is a good second,--the flow of French, Japanese, and pigeon English going on all the time. The work done, we roll on again. CHAPTER XXIX THE FORTRESS OF BESANÇON--AUTOS IN HEAVY RAINS--DREAMS--BELFORT--ENTRANCE INTO THE VOSGES--THE RISE TO BALLON D'ALSACE--SUPERB RIDE TO GÉRARDMER Besançon is so old that Cæsar thought it of the utmost importance as a basis, and France thinks so to-day. As we approach it, we note that every hill (and it is surrounded by hills) holds its fortifications and even the river assists in the work of defence, by enclosing the town in a complete horseshoe. At the opening of the horseshoe, is a hill crowned by the citadel. If you explore the town you will find relics of the Romans on every hand, even a triumphal arch, rich with statues and bas-reliefs. The Christian martyrs, St. Ferréol and St. Ferjeux, were slain in A. D. 212 in the amphitheatre whose remains one may see here. The wars of France have raged around Besançon to the present day. It is the most important stronghold on the Swiss frontier, and last but not least, it was the birthplace of Victor Hugo, who would seem to have acquired some of his ruggedness and strength from these surrounding mountains and yonder rushing river. The town is black and forbidding in appearance, as though strangers were not wanted, and we pass onward over the river Doubs and find refuge from the storm in the very comfortable "Hôtel des Bains," near the Casino, for Besançon is also a watering-place, has springs, a season, and a casino. Thank the Lord we are too soon for the season, and in consequence have the huge draughty hotel to ourselves. The air is cold here and a wood fire is most cheering and acceptable. It is storming hard, and as I look downward upon the dripping trees, three autos rush past, autos without tops, and whose occupants are fairly drowned out. While a fixed top is a great weight to carry, and very hard on pneumatics, one should certainly have a calash. We are so provided and could never get wet save in a water-spout. The poor women who are coming out of these veritable bath-tubs below there are forced to pause in the rain and allow some of the accumulated water to run off them. Wearily they struggle to the lift and disappear for the night. I have the _salle à manger_ all to myself, and gather my feet up upon the opposite chair to escape the draughts. Ensconced at last on a sofa in my room before a great blazing log, I look up the history of Besançon and while I read, the warm air gets into my brain and holds consultation with the cold air which has been rushing through it all day long, producing a drowsy effect. The dancing flames are full of shapes and fantasies, and as I watch them, the door opens and a queer figure dressed in sandals and short skirts and wearing a breast plate and helmet enters. He carries a green wreath in his hand, which, having doffed the helmet, he puts on: it has pointed leaves which stick forward over his big nose. I ask him if he likes Besançon, and he promptly tells me that it is called "Vesontio," at which I differ and we argue, finally deciding to go out and inquire. I take the auto which he scoffs at, preferring a thing shaped like a coal scuttle, with knives on its wheel hubs and drawn by three horses abreast--with a shout we are off through the storm, sweeping up and down the streets of the ancient city, past closed houses, and through silent fortresses, and even out on the face of the river, where car and auto hold a wild race, cheered by ghostly multitudes on the banks. Cæsar loses his wreath, and Yama stands up and yells a desire to have him in Manchuria. The race is mine and the Emperor of Rome is so enchanted with my red devil that he announces that it is his, and I will "just get out." Again discussion follows and he waves to his assistance some thousands or so of shadows, but a word to George and we rush right through them, and off and away until we come up with a bang somewhere, and I wake to find the fire out and the room very cold. Ah me, how one does sleep and dream after a rushing ride! Our entrance into the Vosges was not propitious. Heavy mist and some rain attended all our morning progress until we neared the luncheon hour. The roads were fine and the scenery picturesque, what we could see of it. At one we reached Belfort, another great army post, with soldiers everywhere,--necessary to prevent the gobbling up of one Christian nation by another. In the very good "Hotel of the Ancient Post" I have an excellent luncheon served by a waiter who scarcely speaks French. He is an Alsatian, speaks English, and was at Chicago in 1893, says he is going back to America "just as soon as he can get there," was "a fool to leave," says this place is no good save for soldiers and there would be no soldiers if it were not for the fine clothes. Yea, verily! The Emperor William would find his army melt away if he put the men in plain clothes. Vanity and ambition form the basis of most empires. Belfort is the last military post of great strength in this direction. If the traveller will mount to the foot of the old ruined tower which rises on a hill some twelve hundred feet above the town, he will obtain a view of all the fortifications, amongst them the famous "Intrenched Camp," capable of holding twenty thousand men. Off to the north, he will see the Vosges Mountains, and to the east, the Black Forest, while the Bernese Alps gleam in the south, rising above the Jura. The siege and capture of Belfort by the Germans in 1871 forms an interesting chapter in the history of that conflict, and one would judge from the warlike appearance here to-day that the place would not be taken unawares if a struggle came on. From Belfort to Ballon d'Alsace there is a rise of some four thousand feet. As we leave the former place, the clouds roll away and the sun streams out warmly. The road commences to mount soon after we quit the town and at one of the first hills the auto balks and refuses to go farther. George gets out and fusses and fixes for ten minutes and then away we go,--all of our twenty-four horses put their full speed forth and we sail up the mountains, skimming like a bird. The higher we mount, the steeper the grades, the faster we move. Really this is a sturdy machine. In all the long journey, save a burst tire now and then, we have had no accidents and now it is lifting itself and ourselves up and over these mountains as easily as it rolled along the level. It is good to be alive in such air and amidst such scenery. These mountains of the Vosges are very much like those at the Horse Shoe Bend and our Allegheny Mountains would be just as charming if we had such roads to reach them by. Here at an elevation of four thousand feet the highways are as fine as those in Central Park. Reaching the summit, a magnificent panorama is unrolled on all sides, but there is snow abroad and we do not linger long. Our route lies past Le Thillon. Farther on, we begin to ascend again and are soon high up in the snow line. As we round the shoulder of the peak, far off to the westward, between two great green mountain pyramids, the sun is setting in a golden glory high overhead the new moon sails in a pink sky, while far below, deep down in the valley sparkles an emerald lake on whose shore lies Gérardmer, where we shall stop for the night, the most beautiful spot in the Vosges. The descent is rapid and very crooked, but George manages the turns as easily as with a hand cart, though I confess I hold on tightly now and then, feeling that that will help matters. Waterfalls tumble all around us and the sunlight rolls down through the pine boughs in a golden glory. Far below, the land is spread out like a map and dotted thickly with villages, while above, the sky bends, a blue arch without shadow of a cloud,--a blessing after the mists of this morning. With all power shut off, our car glides down the white highway stretching in long curves and zigzags far below. The hills on either side are spangled with yellow easter lilies, and the glowing buttercups; the air is wine, which adds to one's lease of life; and again it is good to be alive,--one of those days and scenes which would force an atheist to believe in God. The road winds through dense forests of pine trees where no sound breaks the silence, save that of our on-rushing and the music of the many waterfalls; and as for the sound of our wheels, this auto on the down grade is almost noiseless. It is nearly as silent on the level, but on the up grade when the speed is changed its motor talks quite loudly,--does not hesitate to discuss the change. The journey to-day impresses me again with the advantages of motor cars over all other methods of locomotion for pleasure. We have run away from the storm and my perseverance in coming has had its reward. It was so wretched when we started and the prospects looked so hopeless that nothing save stubbornness and pride prevented my giving the order to turn southward towards the sun--if sun there could be--and give up the Vosges. My reward for not doing so has been a ride that I shall always remember as one of the most glorious of my travels. My own land holds many scenes of equal beauty, but as I have already stated we have not the roads by which to reach them. Then again we would find such wretched inns and poor food that the pleasure would be all gone, whereas here I draw up at the Hôtel de la Poste, where "Madame" shows me to a room, simple but clean, and later I sit down to a dinner which would do justice to any New York restaurant. To be sure, we are but a century old, whereas Cæsar fought for this section two thousand years ago, and I have a hazy recollection that he returns hereabouts every now and then. CHAPTER XXX GÉRARDMER AND THE MOUNTAINS--A WEDDING--FRENCH COURTSHIP--EXCURSIONS TO ST. DIÉ--OVER THE COL DE LA SCHLUCHT--GERMAN CUSTOM HOUSE--"ALWAYS A GERMAN"--COLMAR--RHINE VALLEY--ARRIVAL AT FREIBURG Gérardmer (pronounced _Je-rah-may_) is considered one of the loveliest spots in these mountains. It nestles deep down in a valley by a smiling lake, and lies far apart from the rush of the great whirl of life; yet life does come here, as the several pretty half Swiss hotels proclaim. Gérardmer has its season, but not until July, and to-day the place is placid and peaceful, as though knowing that there are good times in store, and I found later in Paris that the spot is well known in the great capital--but only to the French. I fancy few Americans ever come this way. Had I reached here yesterday, so "Madame" tells me, I would have been present at a wedding. It was here in her hotel, and she has the air of having added another leaf to her crown of laurels. She tells me that yonder middle-aged bachelor was one of the guests, and promptly lost his heart to one of the _demoiselles_. To-day he returns with his mother and that huge bouquet, and will shortly request the honour of the maiden's hand. But, I exclaim, you say he never saw her until yesterday? Certainly, Monsieur, but that is long enough surely, for at his age he must know his own mind. A statement which I do not think is always a true one. I watch him as he moves off into the garden of the hotel and wonder whether love can find any place under those prim angular black clothes. But the sunshine is too attractive to allow one to remain indoors, and to "Madame's" regret, who dearly loves to talk, I wander off into the streets of the town, lifting my eyes up to the hills all around it--for over them, we are told, cometh peace. The departing sunlight gilds the forests into gold, and sparkles on the cross high up on the village church, whose portals stand invitingly open bidding me enter. One of the attractions and beauties of the Catholic Church in Europe is that its sanctuaries are never closed; one may wander in at any and all times and be at rest and peace as long as one wishes it. Here in the heart of the Vosges, amidst this, busy little town is this one which I have all to myself save for the divine face looking downward from the cross and the painted saints in the windows. It is a simple structure, yet withal very impressive. Its Norman columns and arches must be very old, and very dear to these people, as the place where they have been baptised, married, and buried, throughout all the centuries. As I leave, two ancient black-robed priests greet me with smiles like a bit of late October sunshine. This afternoon has been passed in an excursion to St. Dié, a beautiful ride to an uninteresting town, noted merely as the place where Amerigo Vespucci published his account of the land now bearing his name. Coming back, we left the beaten track, climbed mountains, and descended into valleys where autos rarely go, and our appearance created much astonishment; only two machines have passed that way this year. That route is not down on the map but plunges through the mountains to the west of St. Dié, passing Laveline, Le Valtin, and other towns. Just a run of seventy-five miles for the fun of it. We finally leave Gérardmer on a glorious morning. George is well on time and the auto is snorting before the door at nine o'clock. Yama has become an expert in packing our goods and chattels in it, and they fit like a puzzle of his own land. The road begins to mount as soon as we leave the town, and when we reach the Col de la Schlucht we are far above the valley, and on one of the highest points of the Vosges. The road winds directly along the precipice. On one side, the pine forests mount above us, while on the other, the fall is sheer to the valley below, some three thousand feet and the panorama of the Rhine land and these mountains is magnificent. Here we enter Germany. George shuts off all power and for the next half hour we coast down the mountain in superb fashion to a village near the base where we are halted by a dapper little man in a German cap to pay a duty of one hundred francs for the auto, which will be returned when we leave the country. The number and make of the machine are taken and also my name, which I give with its present spelling; but the little man promptly changes it to that of his own land. When I venture to fear that it will cause confusion and that the spelling given has held in America for two centuries, he waves my objections aside, "Your name is Schumacher,--the fact that your family has spent _the last few years_ away from _home_ does not change it,--once a German, always a German." Well, perhaps, but in those two centuries and more, other strains have entered, which may claim a showing, and at least you could never get my mustache into that Kaiser fashion and I am very certain that I am exempt from military duty. [Illustration: LA SCHLUCHT. THE TUNNEL ON THE ROAD TO MÜNSTER By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] So we move on. The entire characteristics of the land have changed. All the neat, sweet appearance of France is gone, and the daintiness has vanished. Germany is a work-a-day world. No matter how interesting, and the interest is, of course, very great, at its best it cannot be called an elegant country, and that word does apply to France. The soldiers with their spiked helmets are an improvement over the rank and file of the French, but the French officers are _chic_, elegant. The same holds with her women, while in Germany, the word "dowdy" certainly suits the dress from the Court down. In Colmar at the Hotel of the "Two Keys" we find as much English spoken as German, and have cabbage, boiled mutton, and carrots for luncheon. Many German officers enter and, pausing at the dining-room door, take out pocket combs and carefully arrange their hair. I noticed a change in the highway, the moment we entered the Empire, and only trust it will not hold throughout. The excellent road-beds, well rolled and oiled to prevent dust, vanished, and we jolted on over an ordinary pike, dirty and rough, until it was agreeable to stop at Colmar. All this was before luncheon. Now that the meal has placed me more at peace with the world, my point of view is different and I am forced to retract at once. The road from Colmar to Freiburg is an excellent one, well marked, and well kept up. We make quick time, crossing the Rhine at Breisach, and then on through its wide green valley until we reach Freiburg, nestling under the hills which form a lovely background for the stately red stone spire of the great Cathedral. CHAPTER XXXI FREIBURG--FANTASTIC CITY--THE YOUTHS OF GERMANY--MUSIC AND LEGENDS OF THE OLD TOWN--CATHEDRAL BY MOONLIGHT I cannot overcome the feeling in strolling through these old German towns that I am on the stage of a theatre. Painted houses never look solid or ancient and especially when they are fantastic in decoration and brilliant in colour and are kept up. This city certainly is ancient but it is too well scrubbed and done up to be pleasing. Even the very superb cathedral is subject to the same objection. All the images inside and out glow with colour, and all the monuments likewise, and when compared to a cathedral like Westminster, for instance, or many in France, it lacks dignity and for that very reason. If you can banish from your thoughts all this and remember only the beautiful lines of the church, then you will appreciate the structure, but you will never enjoy it. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF FREIBURG, BADEN By permission of F. Firth & Co.] The Cathedral is interesting and very stately, but in its inspection there is no such deep satisfaction, like unto a draught of spring water on a hot day, which one experiences in England and France. After I had wandered around the outside, which must appeal to every one, and through the nave, I approached the choir, to be greeted by the smell of soap and wet rags. Just inside the grating in the south aisle sat half a dozen scrub-women as loudly dirty as only scrub-women know how to be, munching great hunks of bread. I was told that I could not enter the holy of holies without the Sacristan. He was not to be found, but from the glimpse I had beyond, I don't regret it,--the chapels are full of monuments coloured to the last degree of gorgeousness,--saints in red, green, and blue with heads much too large for their bodies--which is generally the case with German statues--stand and lie around in all directions. The statues in this great church are nearly all of plaster, which at once detracts from their interest. How they escaped throughout the centuries is a marvel. There are many quaint structures in these streets, all freshly painted, and I find myself poking them, half expecting to discover canvas. To-day the charm of Germany does not fasten upon me until the shadows gather and the lights come out in her ancient city of Freiburg. Perhaps the spirits of the neighbouring Black Forest then descend upon the place. It is still theatrical, but one is in the mood for theatres after night falls, and as one moves through the fantastic place one would not be surprised to be accosted by any of the figures from Grimm's _Fairy Tales_. There are many old fairy godmothers and Rumplestiltskins wandering about. The throng is all moving in the same direction, and if you follow you will find a vast concert hall. There are thousands there, and, not knowing the customs of the university towns, I take a seat in the central section of the hall, only to be told promptly that it is reserved, and to be waved to the surrounding galleries. Then I discover that the centre is filled by the students, hundreds of them, divided into societies, the members of each wearing a different coloured cap, and every man with a great stein of beer before him. Groups of red, blue, yellow, green, and purple caps, worn all the time, make splotches of brilliant colour all over the hall, and shade bright wholesome faces,--the hope and strength of Germany, such boys as these,--manly young fellows all of them; and I cannot but feel sad when remembering that I saw no such scene throughout all my long tour in France. There must be young men there, but where are they? All through the provinces whenever I saw any and could talk with them, I found them bent upon going to Paris, which is not usually to their advantage. They did not seem to possess the strong feeling for "home" which keeps these Germans where they were born until they leave the fatherland for ever. Certainly Berlin is very much farther from being Germany than Paris is from being France. Here to-night, two hours are spent in listening to superb music from an orchestra of a hundred and more musicians, and the contrast between the vicious, lascivious gardens and halls of Paris is borne in upon one most markedly. Pondering upon what the future holds for these two nations, I pass off into the night with this German multitude and hear on all sides, "Good-night, good-night," and in fact, every one does seem to have gone off to bed and I shortly have this ancient university town of Freiburg all to myself, though there may be Fausts and Mephistopheles about; I should not be surprised to have the latter suddenly appear and, drawing liquid fire from yonder beer keg, sing his famous Song of Gold. The moon is at the full and the place looks more than ever like a scene in a theatre. Indeed, I think if you pushed, you could shove aside the front of yonder house and show us the interior, but, rounding a corner, I come suddenly before the great minster. Its lace-like majestic spire soars far up into the blue of heaven and seems to hold a diadem of stars around its cross. If there are any witches about, they are in the deep shadows of its great portals yonder which, being closed, protect them from a sight of the holy interior, and they may have their evil way for a time, but I see nothing save a large black cat and I do not think to-night that her mistress is evilly disposed. I am certain yonder fat King Gambrinus on the walls of that drink-hall is chuckling at me as I move off into the silence of the shadows, and so to bed where honest people should be at such an hour, leaving the moon to see what she may. Amidst the electric lights of the great cities, the moon is not of much account nowadays, but in these quiet old towns she is of importance, and to-night has thrown the shadows of yonder lace-like spire so sharply athwart the great square that I stop to trace its pattern with my stick, and looking up find her laughing at me, it would seem. She wrote a book once about what she has seen. I have it somewhere. It is in quaint old German and called, "Hear what the Moon Relates," and from its pages, I judge her to be an old gossip, for she tells much which she should keep silent about, but, to bed, to bed, or one may meet a committee of the _Vehmgericht_. CHAPTER XXXII FROM FREIBURG TO BADEN-BADEN--THROUGH THE WOODS TO GERNSBACH--SUPERB ROADS--PEOPLE OF THE BLACK FOREST--CROSSING THE DANUBE--CUSTOMS REGULATIONS AS TO AUTOS--AN OLD SWISS MANSION--THE RIDE TO GENEVA AND AIX-LES-BAINS The ride from Freiburg to Baden lies along the foot of the Black Forest Mountains through the Rhine valley and is hot and dusty, rough and without interest of any kind until we enter the valley of Baden-Baden, and find that lovely spa nestled under the shadow of the mountains. All the world knows the town. The portion which man has made is just like a hundred other resorts in Europe; an old section full of curious structures and a new part all great hotels, casinos, and pagodas. On entering the grounds of the Hôtel Stephanie, George takes a wrong turn and brings up on one of the fancy foot-bridges in the park. For an instant we are in dismay as to whether the structure will hold the great weight of the car, but it does, and George does not allow of any change of mind but backs promptly off on to safer ground. In Baden-Baden the traveller falls at once into the clutches of hotel porters and waiters, each of whom levies some sort of blackmail. This Hôtel Stephanie, for charges, quite surpasses any other of my tour. For a simple dinner of soup, roast beef, mashed potatoes, and asparagus, I pay $2.50. As usual, the dining-room is hermetically sealed, such is the dread of fresh air, and what air there is, is rent and tattered by the noise of the Hungarian band. The surrounding mountains are very beautiful, very romantic. Many of the crags hold ruined castles, which the people have had the good taste not to restore, simply preserving them as best they may. That of the Alten Schloss is especially romantic. The view from its tower embraces the Rhine Valley with the Vosges to the west and the Black Forest to the east; and there I spend an hour or more talking to the custodian who interlards his description with bits of personal history, until things are somewhat mixed. The sun has set beyond Strasburg and the mountains become dense in shadow before I seek the carriage. The woods of the Black Forest cover these mountains so thickly that only the light of the moon shows from above and it is far past the dinner hour before we reach the hotel, where the usual dinner parties are in full swing, and the fact that I do not order almost everything on the bill of fare causes the waiters to regard me as of little moment and not to be greatly bothered over. The spirit of the mountains abides too strongly to make the dining-room agreeable and I soon retire, and then for the next three hours am forced to regret that this is not a Moslem country. How softly on this delicious night air the voice of the muezzin would mingle with the sound of falling waters and music of the winds in the neighbouring forest over which the moon is sending downwards her cascades of silver light! How beautiful the scene is! How rudely the whole beauty is destroyed by the harsh tones of the brazen bells of the neighbouring church! Not only are the quarters marked with a double chime, but the full hours are struck _twice_ on different bells in the same steeple. The clangour and noise is such that sleep is an impossibility until utter weariness compels it. Such things are a stupid nuisance, a menace to health, and a death to any religious feelings one might possess. They should be suppressed. There is nothing more beautiful than a soft-toned bell or more discordantly disagreeable than harsh tones jangled out of tune. Those bells drive me out of Baden. The auto is at the door at nine o'clock and, though the day threatens rain, we are off and away through the woods. Our route lies via Gernsbach and Forbach to Freudenstadt, over these picturesque mountains. The road is good and well marked, and we swing along at a rapid pace, sailing upwards and downwards with a most intoxicating motion. The ride to Freudenstadt is very beautiful, all the way by a rushing stream, past the Schwarzenberg and through the forest, with glimpses of old castles high above us and red-roofed villages in the green valleys far down the distance. In Freudenstadt in Würtemberg, at the Schwarzwald Hotel which I have all to myself apparently, I am served by the host who talks English all the time. He says that while he does not approve of the French distaste for children he considers that Germany is overdoing in that respect, that there are too many,--they are "eating each other" so to speak. Well, they are sending one thousand a month, generally those who have been trained as soldiers, to Brazil, and they will be ready to meet us when that question arises. Freudenstadt is a quaint old town, high up in the hills. It has an antique market square and is somewhat of a watering-place. It was founded by Duke Frederick as a refuge for Protestants expelled from Salzburg. Our host here proves of service in directing our route onward as one can easily get lost in these mountains without watchfulness. While the routes are marked, the charts are not nearly so excellent as in France. That republic is divided into squares, each numbered and with a chart of the same number for each square, showing distinctly _first_ the roads, then the rivers and towns and all so simply that a child can understand at once, whereas the German charts are like an ordinary map with all its colours, mountains, etc., and the route not so plainly marked. The chart is too elaborate. However, both are good, only one is better, so do not growl. Our afternoon's ride takes us through the finest section and over the best roads of the Black Forest, and includes an extra spurt of some forty versts caused by our having lost our way during an animated discussion between George and myself over the comparative merits of American and French women. About that time two of our pneumatics give up the ghost in rapid succession, announcing that act by a report which makes George say things. We are near a secluded village around which the forest closes in thickly and, it being Sunday, we are shortly surrounded by all the children of the place; and what a lot of them there are, good-natured, respectful, little, yellow heads, whose chubby faces try to become solemn, as a funeral _cortege_ approaches, but with little success, and I must say that shortly that _cortege_ was diminished by half, said half coming to inspect my machine. I feel as though I were the owner of a successful rival show. These new comers are all men and all interested in my car, not superficially, but with comprehension of its parts. They tell me that they live here or hereabouts, and when I ask if they do not desire to go to Berlin or Munich they look at me wonderingly and ask, Why? There spoke the hope of Germany. This was near Triberg where we lost the route and we may as well go forward via Furtwangen and Villingen and so to Donaueschingen. When once you know the Hartz Mountains and the Black Forest you understand where these people got their knowledge of fairies and elves, witches, Christmas trees, and music. The woods are to my imagination full of funny little people who hurry away as this machine advances, and if I stop to listen I find the brooks are singing all sorts of carols to which the pine trees furnish the undertones; also I doubt not if you put a crank to yonder funny little white church its windows will glow with lights. Take the top off that pink house and you will find it full of candy. All this is because there are children everywhere and because of the children there are homes and home life--a gain--the hope of Germany. [Illustration: A CORNER IN THE BLACK FOREST From a photograph] It is getting cold as we roll into Donaueschingen where we cross the Danube, but as we are assured that it is down hill all the way to Schaffhausen and a splendid road, we speed onward, only to find shortly some of the steepest grades of our tour, one so steep that George turns the auto around and runs it up backwards, then stopping, he arranges matters and that will not have to be repeated. At the Swiss frontier, we deposited two hundred francs, which will be returned when we leave the country, and so passing Schaffhausen we draw up for the night at Neuhausen, having made two hundred and eighty kilometers during the day. When such a day is finished, there is little inclination left one save for dinner and bed, and I am soon through with the one and in the other. We had been told on paying that one hundred francs when we entered Germany, that it would be repaid whenever we left the Empire, but, on demanding it in Schaffhausen, the pompous officials in the German Custom House informs us that our papers stated that we would leave from some other town than Schaffhausen, and consequently he will not repay the money. When we assure him that the error, if error it is, is not ours and that our seal on the machine shows that we have _not_ left the country since we paid that money, he waves us off and will say no more. We must write to the town where we entered and so may get back the cash. I may state here that I turned the papers over to George and understand that he never did get it back. The whole thing was absurd and most irritating and kept me kicking my heels for hours around the post-house before they would decide one way or the other. [Illustration: THE MANOR HOUSE AT WÜLFLINGEN, NEAR WINTERTHUR From a photograph.] While the town of Winterthur aside from its quaintness is not of much interest, there stands on its outskirts an ancient and curious Manor House called "Wülflingen," a stately stone structure somewhat back from the highway. We visit it on our way to Zurich and the ancient dame in charge seems delighted that any one from the outer world should take an interest in her beloved old charge. She appears to be the only soul in the house and was I believe born here. It is deserted now by the family whose ancestors built it at a period when castles had ceased to be of importance and the protection of a town more to be desired. "Wülflingen" became the home of the Steiner family about 1620 A.D., when their castle on the mountains was deserted for this more cheery habitation. We enter through a curious old doorway into a large square hall wainscotted and ceiled in oak blackened by the flight of years, and we can hear the mice in the walls scamper away as the unusual sound of foot-steps breaks the profound silence. Opposite the doorway a tall old clock built into the wall has grown weary with telling of the flight of time and given up its work--useless work now that it is deserted by all those whose lives it regulated and whose faces were friends to it. A stately staircase with carved balustrade mounts to the floor above, but before going thither we inspect the lower rooms. Both are large square apartments entirely encased in polished oak; but the old dame draws us on and upward to what she claims were the state apartments. Of these also there were two of large size and interest connected by a large square hall like the one below. In that on the left the walls and ceiling are heavily panelled and black with time. Each panel is decorated with Swiss scenes and there are some antique brass drop-lights. In one corner stands one of those great porcelain stoves of elaborate make which are found all through Germany and Russia; this one we are told, is one hundred years older than the house, having been brought from the castle on the mountains when the family migrated. It is very curious and interesting and one discovers that the panels of the room have been decorated to correspond with those of the stove. This was evidently the state apartment, if one may use the term here, yet, for the day in which it was built and for a Swiss house, "Wülflingen" was considered a great mansion. In the Switzerland of three hundred years ago, the family who could produce sufficient funds to abandon one house and build such another as this were people of wealth and importance. In passing again into and across the upper hall one notes the arms of the family carved over the doorways--they are also found in the great hall of the Castle of Chillon on Lake Geneva. Entering the other room, an apartment occupying the entire side of the house and evidently at one period a salon or ball-room, one meets the questioning gaze of some old family portraits. Crossing the polished floor, which causes my foot-falls to resound through the empty house with a solemn sound, I throw open the window and let in the flickering sunshine and the song of birds, and seating myself on the sill, turn to these faces on the walls. There are several of them but I note especially a stately dame and an old gentleman whose eyes meet mine in a questioning gaze seemingly demanding the reason for my intrusion upon their solitude, time was when open-hearted hospitality reigned supreme here, but in these later days visitors have been few and far between and my violation of their solemn state does not appear altogether welcome. However I whisper a fact or two which produces an expression of lively interest. It was either this or the flickering sunshine drifting over their faces. Who or what yonder ancient dame in the high cap was, there is no record, but beneath the portrait of the old gentleman one reads in Latin the following: "Henricus Steinerius Med. Doct. Poliater, Inspector Scholae et Bibliothecarius Ano 1730, Aet 55." And what, my dear Sir, may "Poliater" mean? The rest is plain enough. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MANOR HOUSE AT WÜLFLINGEN, NEAR WINTERTHUR From an old woodcut] In one corner of this portrait are his family arms, a steinbock on a white shield; above, a coronet on a closed helmet with a steinbock pawing the air, as crest. I am not versed in heraldry or I might read much from this coat-of-arms. The owner wears a suit of black velvet, a great white ruff and vast yellow curly wig. His hands, delicate and shapely, rest on a pile of books and are shaded by lace ruffles. He wears two signet rings. The custodian tells me that he was born in this house and also that his nephew, the Rev. John Conrad Steiner, also born here in 1707, was sent by the great council of the Reformed Church to that Church in Philadelphia in 1749, and I discover later that that church stood in what is now Franklin Square in that city. He was also in charge in Frederick, Maryland, but returning to Philadelphia to the same church, he died there in 1762, and was buried in what is now Franklin Square--in company with Wesley "Winkhams" and "Hendal" some ten feet below the surface on the north-east side of the fountain, they alone being left there when the place was changed into a public square. It certainly required great fervour in religion on the part of a young man with a family to leave a home like this in sunny comfortable Winterthur and face the ocean and the blackness of America in 1750. He should have his reward now in a brighter land than either Europe or America. This old _Herrenhaus_ smiles down upon us in a friendly manner as we leave its portal and as our car speeds off into the greater world, the ancient dame who cares for it waves us an adieu with the hope that we may return to "Wülflingen." Our route lies hence through Zurich to Geneva and so on to Berne. While we have no rain, it is chilly and disagreeable, and as for mountains, if I had not seen them often before, I should not believe that in Switzerland there were any, for from first to last we do not get a glimpse of their grandeur. The roads are good at all times, and the peasants friendly, but it rains heavily as we reach Berne, and the shelter of the hotel is not objectionable. The following morning, George comes in and announces that the incoming chauffeurs proclaim the route from here to Geneva is so deep in mud that I had better go on by train, as he may be stuck anywhere and delayed. I decide at first to do this, and then my distaste for the train overcomes all and I order the auto. That ride proved that you cannot trust these statements. There was little or no mud, the roads were excellent, the ride delightful, and we rolled into Lausanne and so on down to Ouchy in ample time for luncheon. From there on to Geneva the sun shone all the time and by three o'clock we descended at the Hôtel Beau-Rivage. Not a drop of rain during the whole day, no dust, and no mud. Here I find some friends and together we go to Aix-les-Bains. There are few more beautiful rides than that from Geneva to Aix-les-Bains, and, especially on the return, one is impressed with the enchanting vistas over mountain, valley, and lakes. The roads are both good and indifferent. The former in France, the latter in Switzerland, and one is again impressed with the belief that France is the land for auto touring. To the lover of flowers this section is fairy-land just now; especially is the wisteria beautiful; such masses of it over almost every cottage and church, and the terrace at the Hôtel Splendide in Aix is festooned from end to end with the dainty fragrant blossoms. Masses of lilacs bank the houses, while apple blossoms are abroad over all the land round about. Lake Bourget gleams like a vast emerald framed by the shadowy mountains, and there are some glimpses of the greater glory of the snows. The auto sings and hums and rushes down the slopes into the streets of Geneva, and swirls up before the door of the Beau-Rivage and the long tour is over. In my memory it will rank with that winter on Old Nile in a dihabiah. To-day as George came in to say goodbye and as I watched my red carriage rush off and disappear down the streets of Geneva, I felt a positive bereavement, even as though a friend had vanished forever, and truly that car has been a friend. It has carried me safely nearly seven thousand kilos. The journey has been all sunshine and pleasure; rushing over broad highways, under the shadows of stately mountains, by fair rivers, through smiling meadows; pausing here to loiter in an old château, or again to wander the streets of a mediæval city full of romance and story; yet again amidst the beauties and glories of the capital and then off to the mountains and forests; all joy, all delight, yet I do regret that old dog dead down on that long dusty highway under the shadows of the Pyrenees. INDEX Abbaye aux Dames, 151, 152 Abbeville, 164, 167 Abbey of Men, Church of the, 151 Abbey of Women, Church of the, 151, 152 Adour, the, 58 Aix, 10-16 Aix-les-Bains, 12, 242 Albigensian "heresy," the, 33 "Aliscamps," the, 21 Alphonse, Comte de Poitou, 93 Alten Schloss, the, 233 Amboise, George, Cardinal of, 155, 156 Amiens, 162-164, 169, 172 Anet, Château of, 155 Angers, 130, 138 Angers, Castle of, 14, 138 Anjou, 138 Anne of Austria, 66, 128, 191 Anne of Brittany, 128 Arbrissel, Robert of, 136 Ardennes, Wild Boar of, 211 Arles, 17-21 Armoises, Robert des, 159 Artois, Comte d', 182 Asqs, Seigneur d', 54 Automobile Club of France, 74 Auvergne, 84 Auvergne, Count of, _see_ Guy, Count of Auvergne Auxonne, 213 Aveyron, mountains of the, 172 Azay-le-Rideau, 130 Baden-Baden, 232, 233 Bagatelle, 182, 183 Ballon d'Alsace, 218 Balue, Cardinal, 118, 120, 121-123 Barry, Madame du, 129, 184 Bastille, the, 121-124 Bayard, Chevalier, 111 Bayonne, 54, 58, 69, 70 Béarn, 52 Beaucaire, 23 Beauce, La, 186 Beaumont, 77-79 Beauvais, 167-173 Belfort, 218 Bernardin-Benedictin, Convent of, Paris, 199 Berne, 242 Berry, 102 Bertrade of Montfort, 139 Bertrand, Count, 91 Besançon, 214-216 Béziers, 29, 33 Biarritz, 58-61, 64, 69, 70 Bidache, 53 Bidache, Château de, 54-57 Biscay, Bay of, 59 Black Forest, the 218, 226, 228, 232, 233, 236 Black Prince, the, 34 Blanc, Mt., 88, 213 Blois, 129 Bois de Boulogne, the, 179, 196 Boulogne, 164, 166 Bourbon-Busset, Château de, 96 Bourg, 82 Bourges, 100-109 Bourget, Lake, 243 Bourgogne, Marguerite de, 207 Breisach, 226 Bressac, de, 185 Brézé, Louis de, 155 Brittany, 130, 139, 140, 141, 142, 145, 148 Bruges, 212 Burgundy, Duke of, 210 Cadouin, 79 Caen, 148, 149, 151, 152, 157 Cæsar, Julius, 102 Calvin, John, 104 Camargue, the, 18 Campan, Madame, 184 Candes, 133 Cannes, 9, 26 Carcas, Queen, 32 Carcassonne, 27, 30-35, 45, 103, 118, 127 Casteljaloux, 72 Catherine de Medici, 128, 177, 192 Champs-Élysées the, Tours, 116 Champs-Élysées the, Paris, 196, 197 Charlemagne, 139 Charles V., 176 Charles VII., 15, 101, 106, 108, 127, 128, 129, 131, 158 Charles IX., 183 Charles X., 176 Charles le Téméraire, 120 Charles of Mantua, 123 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 208, 212 Chartres, 105, 181, 187-189 Chartreuse, the, 212 Chateaubriant, 140 Chénier, André, 200, 201 Chenonceaux, 114 Cher, the, 114 Chillon, Castle of, 240 Chinon, 130-133 Cîteaux, Abbé of, 33 Clermont-Ferrand, 82, 84, 85, 88, 92, 95 Clermont-Ferrand, Valley of, 83, 84 Cléry, 129 Cocquereau, 189 Coeur, Jacques, 15, 106, 108; palace of, 102, 106 Colmar, 225, 226 Conciergerie, the, 150 Concord, Place de la, Paris, 196 Conques, 172 Corday, Charlotte, 149, 150, 151, 156 Corniche, the, 9, 26 Côte d'Or, the, 208, 213 Courtrai, 211 Crécy, 164 Crécy, Château of, 186 Croker, Mr., 99 Cujas, 104 Dampierre, Comte Guy de, 93 Dampierre, Castle of, 136 Danton, 151 Danube, the, 237 Dax, 70, 71 Desmoulins, Camille 151 Diane de Poitiers, 125, 128, 155, 183 Dijon, 208, 210-213 Dôle, 213 Donaueschingen, 236, 237 Doubs, the, 216 Dreyfus, 141 Droling, 191 Durand, Abbé of Chaise-Dieu, 91 Edict of Nantes, _see_ Nantes, Edict of Eleanor, Queen, 136 Elizabeth, Madame, 196 "Field of Reeds," 18 Fontarabia, 66 Fontevrault, Abbey of, 133-136 Forbach, 234 Foulques V., King of Jerusalem, 139 Foulques le Roux, Count of Anjou, 119, 139 Francis I., 93, 125, 128, 155, 183, 185 Frederick, Duke, 235 Freiburg, 226, 228-231 Freudenstadt, 234, 235 Furtwangen, 236 Garonne River, 45 Gave de Pau, the, 49 Geneva, 206, 242, 243 Geoffrey Plantagenet, 139 Gérardmer, 219, 222-224 Gernsbach, 234 Gramont, Arnaud Guilhem II. de, 55 Gramont, Ducs de, 54, 57 Gramont, Louise, Comtesse de, 55 Grandvilliers, 167 Grégoire, Pope, 91 Guiche, Seigneur de, 54 Guy, Count of Auvergne, 91 Hartz Mountains, 236 "Hendal," 241 Henrietta, Madam, 191 Henry II., 128, 134-136, 139, 155, 177, 205 Henry IV., 49, 128, 164, 176, 188 Hugo, Victor, 215 Iron Mask, Man of the, 123 Iron Virgin, the, 124 Irun, 67 Isabeau of Bavaria, 164 James II. of England, 176 James V. of Scotland, 120 James, Henry, _Little Tour in France_, 24 Jean du Cognot, 205 Jean-sans-peur, 211 Jeanne d'Arc, _see_ Joan of Arc Joan of Arc, 15, 103, 104, 107, 131, 132, 150, 157 John, King of England, 120 John, Count, 135 Jura Mountains, 208 Kelburn, Ebenezer, 125 Krybourg, Prince Salm, 201 La Fayette, Marquis de, 200 Lannemezan, 44 Lausanne, 242 Lauzun, 77 Laval, Jeanne de, 14 La Vallière, 129, 176 Laveline, 224 Lesigne, M., 157, 159 Lisieux, 153 Loches, Castle of, 35, 117-127 Loire, the, 114, 130 Louis IX, 23, 33 Louis XI., 15, 93, 102-104, 108, 109, 117, 120, 123, 126-129, 131, 140, 146, 147, 170, 208 Louis XII., 124, 128, 191 Louis XIII., 176 Louis XIV. (Louis le Grand), 56, 64-66, 70, 128, 175, 176, 189, 191, 199 Louis XV., 128, 157, 176 Louis XVI., 183, 184 Lourdes, 46-48 Louveciennes, 184 Luxembourg, the, 199 Lys, Jehanne du, 159 Madeline of France, 120 Madrid, Café de, 183 Maintenon, Madame de, 129, 189, 190, 192 Maintenon, Aqueduct at, 186 Maintenon, Château de, 185, 186, 189, 190, 192 Maison Carrée, the, Nîmes, 24 Margaret of Anjou, 12, 22, 136 Maria de Medici, 126, 128 Maria Theresa, 191 Marie Antoinette, 129, 182, 184 Marly, 175 Marmande, 73, 76 Marsat, Abbey of, 92 "Marseilles the Little," 167 Martan, Cape, 1 Martel, Charles, 27 Mary Queen of Scots, 128 Matilda, Empress, 139 Matilda, Queen, 151, 152 Matthioli, 123 Mehun, Castle of, 108, 113 Meillant, Château of, 109-111 Meung, 129 Monaco, 7 Mont-de-Marsan, 71 Mont St. Michel, 142-147 Monte Carlo, 1, 3-7, 51, 103 Montespan, Madame de, 129, 176, 192 Montfort, Simon de, 33 Montmartre, Cathedral of, 175 Montmorency, Duke François de, 24 Montpellier, 25, 27, 39 Montreal, 46 Montréjeau, 45 Montsoreau, Castle of, 133 Mortemart, Duc de, 109 Moulins, 100 Mozat, Abbey of, 92 Nantes, Edict of, 192 Napoléon, 46 Narbonne, 27, 29 Neufchâtel, 161 Neuhausen, 237 Nevers, 100 Nice, 7, 26, 51 Nîmes, 24, 25 Noailles, Mme. de Montagu, 201 Normandy, 142, 152, 153 Nostradamus, 17 Notre Dame de Cléry, Church of, 129 Nuremberg, Castle of, 35, 124 Orleans, 104, 129 Orleans, Gaston of, 191 Orleans, Maid of, _see_ Joan of Arc Orthez, 52, 53 Pamiers, 46 Paris, 175, 180, 181, 193, 195-197, 199, 202, 203 Pau, 46, 49, 50 Pavia, Battle of, 111 Pépin, 27 Pheasants, Isle of, 66 Philip Augustus, 91, 120, 126, 139; Castle of, 120, 159 Philippe de Comines, 121 Philippe le Hardi, 211 Picardy, 162 Picpus, Cemetery of, 199-202 Plantagenets, the, 120, 134, 139 Plessis-lès-Tours, 118, 129 Poix, 167 Pompadour, Madame, 129, 186 Pontbrillant, 124 Promenade des Anglais, 9 Provence, 10, 11, 15, 138 Puy de Dôme, 88 Pyrenees, the, 29, 46, 49, 59, 64, 243 Pyrenees, Treaty of the, 55, 66 Racine, 185 Rambouillet, 185 René, King, 11-15, 22, 23, 138, 139 Rennes, 140 Republic, Place de la Paris, 199 Revolution, Place de la, Paris, 199 Rheims, Cathedral of, 172 Rhine Valley, the, 224, 232, 233 Richard Coeur de Lion, 134-136 Riom, 95 Robert, Bishop of Clermont, 91, 92 Robert the Strong, 139 Robespierre, 151, 178, 201 Rochefort, 83 Roland, 139 Rouen, 154-160 Rouet, Mlle. de, 183 St. Amand-Mont-Rond, 109, 110 St. André, Maréchal de, 93 St. Cyr, 192, 193 St. Denis, 175, 177, 190, 191 St. Dié, 224 St. Elix, Baron de, 42 St. Elix, Château de, 40-42 St. Étienne, Church of, Caen, 151, 157 St. Ferjeux, 215 St. Ferréol, 215 St. Gaudens, 40, 45, 46 St. Germain-en-Laye, 174-178 St. Gervais, Church of, Rouen, 157 St. Jean-de-Luz, 64-66 St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, 62, 63 St. Maclou, Church of, Rouen, 154 St. Malo, 141 St. Martin, an artist, 191 St. Martin, of Tours, 133 St. Nazaire, Church of, Béziers, 33 St. Ouen, Church of, Rouen, 156 St. Ours, Church of, Loches, 127 St. Sauveur, Cathedral of, 14 St. Thibault de Metz, 159 Saintes-Maries, Les, 18 Salon, 17 Salzburg, 235 Salzburg, Castle of, 35 San Sebastian, 66, 68 Saumur, 137 Sauveterre, 53 Scarron, Widow, 190 Schaffhausen, 237 Schlucht, Col de la, 224 Schunck, Philip Henri, 191 Schwarzenberg, the, 234 Seine, the, 153, 154 Sens, 203-206 Sforza, Ludovico, Duke of Milan, 124 Sorel, Agnes, 15, 106, 113, 127, 129, 132 Steiner, Henry, 240 Steiner, Rev. John Conrad, 241 Tarascon, 15, 22, 23 Tarbes, 45, 46 Taride, A, 74 Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, 32 Thillon, Le, 219 Thomas à Becket, 205 Tonnerre, 207 Toulouse, 36, 39 Touraine, 104, 114, 115 Tournelles, Palace of the, 123 Tournoël, Château of, 87-93 Tours, 100, 104, 113, 114, 116, 129, 130 Tours Cathedral, 114 Triberg, 236 Trichiemont, 159 Trinité, La (Church of the Abbey of Women), 151 Tristan l'Ermite, 121 Trône, Place du, Paris, 199-201 Tulle, 80, 81 Valerian, Mt., Fortress of, 175 Valjean, Jean, 199, 200 Valtin, Le, 224 Verdun, Bishop of, 122, 123 Versailles, 192, 210 Vésinet, forest of, 175 Vesontio, 217 Vespucci, Amerigo, 224 Vichy, 96-98, 100 Villeneuve la Montarie, Church of, 55 Villingen, 236 Viollet-le-Duc, 32, 205 Volvic, 87, 93, 95 Vosges Mountains, 217-224 Wallace, Sir Richard, 183 William the Conqueror, 149, 152, 157 "Winkhams," Wesley, 241 Winterthur, 238 Wülflingen, 238-241 Würtemberg, 235 Yèvre, the, 114 Yoshawarra, the, 195 Zamore, 185 Zurich, 238 By MICHAEL MYERS SHOEMAKER Islands of the Southern Seas With 80 Illustrations. Second edition. Large 8^o. Gilt top. $2.25. "The author has not only a cultured style and highly descriptive power, but a quiet, delightful humor. Moreover, he is always interesting, even when describing the daily incidents of a tour through New Zealand and Tasmania.... 'Islands of the Southern Seas' is one of the few books of modern travel that are worthy of being kept and read over and over again. The illustrations throughout are excellent and as fittingly clear and incisive as the author's style demands. A more readable book on the nowadays somewhat hackneyed subject of travel in the Southern Seas has never been printed, and we unhesitatingly commend it."--_London Chronicle._ Quaint Corners of Ancient Empires Southern India, Burma and Manila. With 47 illustrations. Large 8^o. Gilt top. $2.25. "Mr. Shoemaker writes descriptively, entertainingly, with ease, one would say. He carried to the 'quaint corners' which he visited a very inquiring mind, as well as a photographic eye, and sought out answers to many queries as to the why of things he saw, so that his observations and recollections are interesting and well considered."--_Interior._ The Great Siberian Railway from Petersburg to Pekin 8^o. With 30 Illustrations and a Map. By mail, $2.20. Net, $2.00. "The descriptions of people and places are always interesting; the personal impressions are striking, and a great deal of valuable information, not easily accessible, is given."--_Independent._ Simple, direct, and graphic. Emphasizes the commercial and national possibilities of Russia's industrial development."--_Literary News._ "The only authority of its kind on a great subject."--_Literary World._ Palaces and Prisons of Mary Queen of Scots Revised by _Thomas Allen Crowell_, F.S.A. (Scot.) With 8 photogravure plates and about 50 other illustrations. Large square 8^o, handsomely bound, net, $5.00. _Large Paper Edition_. Limited to 375 copies. With portrait of Mary Stuart in colors. Photogravures printed on Japanese paper, and other full-page illustrations on India paper. 4^o, decorated parchment cover, in box, net, $12.00. This sumptuous work is now offered at very greatly reduced prices. "Nine people out of ten if asked to name the most romantic figure in history would without hesitation select the beautiful Queen of Scots, round whose tragic career more controversy has raged than concerning any other personage in the history of these islands.... Those who are fascinated by the great romance, who have as yet made no detailed study of the period, will find the story here outlined by a trustworthy hand, and adorned by a wealth of artistic illustration worthy of so picturesque and royal a theme."--_St. James's Gazette._ The Heart of the Orient Saunterings through Georgia, Armenia, Persia, Turkomania, and Turkestan, to the Vale of Paradise. 8^o. With 52 illustrations. Net, $2.50. These pages and pictures are descriptive of the heart of the Orient, from high life at the Persian Court to low life in the tents of Kirghiz. They include also a description of a tarantass journey through Central Asia. "Mr. Shoemaker's descriptive powers are of the best. He writes entertainingly, he is never tiresome, and is always enjoyable; his observation and statements of fact are unusually accurate, his style is pleasant. For big and for little, with all that makes up the intermediate, 'The Heart of the Orient,' with its excellent illustrations and its cultured letterpress, is one of the best books of travel that we have read in a long time."--_Times._ Winged Wheels in France 8^o, with about 60 Illustrations. Net, $2.50. The record of a motor-car trip of nearly 5000 miles over beautiful highways and enchanting byways of the Rhine Valley and Switzerland. It is in no sense of the word a guide-book; no set itinerary is followed with feverish haste; but, as fancy directs, the traveller pauses in ancient cities or quaint villages, climbs mountains, visits long-forgotten castles, or goes in quest of deserted abbeys. _Send for descriptive circular._ G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Other | | errors are noted below. | | | | Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant | | form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. | | | | Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. | | | | Mid-paragraph illustrations have been moved between paragraphs and | | some illustrations have been moved closer to the text that | | references them. The List of Illustrations paginations were not | | corrected. | | | | Italicized words are surrounded by underline characters, | | _like this_. | | | | Corrections: | | Bologne (pp. viii, 161) changed to Boulogne. | | Montmorenci (pp. 24, 249) changed to Montmorency. | | Chateau de Mehum (p. 102) changed to Château de Mehun. | | Trichemout (p. 159) and Trichiemout (p. 251) changed to Trichemont. | | Abbey of Meu (p. 152) changed to Abbey of Men. | | Andri Chenier (p. 202) changed to André Chénier. | | St. Ferrea and St. Farjeux (pp. 215, 250) changed to St. Ferréol | | and St. Ferjeux. | | Col de Schluct (p. 222) changed to Col de la Schlucht. | | Chapter XXIII (p. viii) in the Table of Contents was incorrectly | | labeled Chapter XVIII. Chapter XXII (p. 161) was incorrectly labeled| | XXI. Chapter XXIII (p. 166) was incorrectly labeled XXII. These | | errors were corrected. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+