" said Tom, passing his hand
over his head, which was still paining him. "Am I near Albany?
That's where I started for this morning."

"Albany? You're a good way from Albany," replied the farmer. "You're
in the village of Dunkirk."

"How far is that from Centreford?"

"About seventy miles."

"As far as that?" cried Tom. "They must have carried me a good way
in their automobile."

"Was you in that automobile?" demanded the farmer.

"Which one?" asked Tom quickly.

"The one that stopped down the road just before supper. I see it,
but I didn't pay no attention to it. If I'd 'a' knowed you fell out,
though, I'd 'a' come to help you."

"I didn't fall out, Mr.--er--" Tom paused.

"Blackford is my name; Amos Blackford."

"Well, Mr. Blackford, I didn't fall out. I was drugged and brought
here."

"Drugged! Salt mackerel! But there's been a crime committed, then.
Jed, hurry up with that lantern an' git your deputy sheriff's badge
on. There's been druggin' an' all sorts of crimes committed. I've
caught one of the victims. Hurry up! My son's a deputy sheriff," he
added, by way of an explanation.

"Then I hope he can help me catch the scoundrels who robbed me,"
said Tom.

"Robbed you, did they? Hurry up, Jed. There's been a robbery! We'll
rouse the neighborhood an' search for the villains. Hurry up, Jed!"

"I'd rather find my motor-cycle, and a valuable model which was on
it, than locate those men," went on Tom. "They also took some papers
from me."

Then he told how he had started for Albany, adding his theory of how
he had been attacked and carried away in the auto. The latter part
of it was borne out by the testimony of Mr. Blackford.

"What I know about it," said the farmer, when his son Jed had
arrived on the scene with a lantern and his badge, "is that jest
about supper time I saw an automobile stop down the road a bit, It
was gittin' dusk, an' I saw some men git out. I didn't pay no
attention to them, 'cause I was busy about the milkin'. The next I
knowed I seen some one strikin' matches in my wagon shed, an' I come
out to see what it was."

"The men must have brought me all the way from the church shed near
Centreford to here," declared Tom. "Then they lifted me out and put
me in your shed. Maybe they left my motor-cycle also."

"I didn't see nothin' like that," said the farmer. "Is that what you
call one of them two-wheeled lickity-split things that a man sits on
the middle of an' goes like chain-l