innie and the two girls to search the barn and outbuildings,
Jack hurried off to get reinforcements. He thought of Warren as a
tower of strength, cool, level-headed Warren who could manage any
situation.

Warren and Richard had finished the last chore and were beginning to
change, when Jack burst unceremoniously into their room.

"Warren!" he hurdled the wall of misunderstanding that had grown up
between them in one agile leap. "Warren, they say Sarah Willis is
lost. She didn't come home to supper. Mrs. Willis is in Eastshore
with Hugh to-night and we have to find Sarah without letting her mother
know."

Warren agreed that Rainbow Hill was to be searched from one end to the
other. He and Richard and Jack went in different directions and Mr.
Hildreth took a fourth. Winnie stayed at the house, in case the lost
one returned, and Rosemary and Shirley went down to Miss Clinton's to
ask if Sarah had perhaps been there that afternoon. She had not and
when they came back Winnie put Shirley to bed for it was past her bed
hour and she was tired and sleepy.

No trace of Sarah was found on the farm and no better luck was
encountered at the Gay farm, whither Jack went, or at the two nearest
neighbors, queried by Warren and Richard, cautiously, lest the alarm
spread and be relayed by the garrulous and unthinking to the little
mother.

"Say, Warren," Jack stopped him as he was setting out again. "Old
Belle isn't in her pasture."

"Old Belle!"

"And the light runabout and one set of single harness is gone--I
looked."

"That kid couldn't harness without help and get off this place--don't
tell me!" Warren's tone was half skeptical, half alarmed.

"Sarah can do anything you don't expect her to do," declared Jack.
"Take it from me, that's what she has done this time. But how are we
to find out the direction she took?"

"She'd go to Bennington," said Warren quickly. "If she had gone toward
Eastshore someone who knew her would have been sure to spot her;
besides, she is crazy about Bennington, always teasing to go with Hugh."

Old Belle was the oldest horse on the farm, a shambling, half-blind
creature whose days of work had long been over. In summer she reveled
in clover pasture, and the warmest box stall and choicest oats were
hers in winter. Sarah had ridden her around the pasture a number of
times, but it had never occurred to anyone that she would attempt to
drive her. Indeed the boys had not known that Sara