yard gate and on to the rough road,
Peggy's thoughts kept time to the rhythmic pulsations of the motor:

"A-twenty-dollar-bill-with-a-red-round-O.
A-twenty-dollar-bill-with-a-red-round-O."

CHAPTER VIII.

MR. MORTLAKE LOSES SOME DRAWINGS.

Dashing along the rough country road, with every sense on the alert, Peggy
found mental occupation enough to drive gloomier thoughts from her mind.
The Prescott's car was a good one, with a powerful, sixty-horse motor, and
splendidly upholstered. It was painted a dark blue, and was known in the
surrounding country as "The Blue Bird." It had been purchased with the
money made by the brother and sister from their shares in James Bell's
desert mine.

Far above them sailed the aeroplane, its two occupants from time to time
waving at their pretty sisters below. But in the upper-air currents, it
would have been dangerous to drive at a pace slow enough to keep level
with the automobile, and so the aeroplane soon dashed on ahead. From time
to time, however, it made circles and swoops, which brought it sometimes
in seemingly dangerous closeness to the tree-tops.

All at once Peggy stopped the automobile with a jerk which almost threw
Jess, who was unprepared for the shock, out of the car.

"Good gracious, Peggy, what are you trying to do?" she gasped.

"Look!" cried Peggy, pointing with wide eyes.

In the center of the road lay a rolled-up bundle of papers secured with a
rubber band.

"Somebody has dropped something from another auto or a wagon," cried Jess.

"I think so," said Peggy in excited tones, as she descended from the car,
"and I've an idea that these papers have been dropped from Mr. Harding's
car. It must have been the only one to pass here recently, as this road
runs direct to the farm and nowhere else."

She stooped down in the road and picked up the bundle and then, with a
beating heart, she opened it. But for an inward intuition of what its
contents would prove to be, Peggy, with her rigid ideas of honor, could
not have brought herself to do this. As her eyes fell on the first sheet,
and she saw that it was covered with annotations and sketches, she gave a
little cry.

"Oh, Jess! The luck! The wonderful, wonderful luck!"

"Why, what is it? A bundle of thousand-dollar bills, or----"

"It isn't that or anything," cried Peggy; "it's--oh, Jess--it's the
sketches and plans of our aeroplane that Mortlake and his accomplice
Harding were spiriting away."

"Th