calling
frantically upon the robber, whether thief, or tempest, to stop.

And the girls kept bravely up with the men. Or one of them did! For all
the spice of her chowchow name was afire in Pemrose Lorry now; and she
would have tackled the thief, single-handed, to get back her father's
record.

Into the core of darkness--in among the ebony spruce-boughs--the jetty,
frowning trunks, the snarling, brambly underbrush, dashed the chase, the
hue and cry, not daring to turn on a flashlight and in its glare lose
the one little piloting blink ahead, which now seemed to have
considerable odds on them, as it fled helter-skelter through the woods.

"My word! this--this beats anything I ever dr-reamed of," gurgled the
college boy. "The Thing, whatever it is, has us nicely fooled.
There--there, it has switched off the 'glim' now--the little, telltale
battery. Now--where are we?"

No one could tell, as they floundered about, three men, and two girls,
in the mysterious night-woods--without a clew--Pemrose clinging
desolately to her father now, Una to hers--while Andrew, the Church
Elder, muttered weird Highland curses.

Nobody could tell where they were, indeed, figuratively, of course,
except--except that the experiment was a failure, so far as any proof to
the World was concerned!

Except that Toandoah's hopes were dashed,--if not broken!

The first record from Space was stolen,--or lost.

CHAPTER XX

THE SEARCH

No! She did not think the nickum had taken it,--that mysterious Jack at
a Pinch!

This is what the bleeding heart of Pemrose told her over and over again
within the next twenty-four hours,--and after that, too!

True, she had robbed him of his oars and a dance,--or had been
responsible for the trick!

She had not made her scout-knights return those ashen blades until the
morning after the dance, when they were surreptitiously deposited upon
the opposite shore of the lake in the neighborhood of the camp near the
insects' egg-boats.

And she had enjoyed herself hugely as the guest of the White Birch Group
at the wind-up of the June carnival, while he, twice a rescuer, a friend
in a pinch, was drifting helplessly out upon the dark night-waters of
the Bowl, trying to paddle with his hands, within hearing of the festive
dance music, until some good Samaritan from his own shore rowed out and
gave him a homeward tow.

But all this, as the girl passionately told herself, was an everyday
trick,--just a