looking upset. Maria Angelina had not returned, to the
clerk's knowledge. No one had telephoned any news.

"I'll go up and make sure," offered Ruth, and sped up the stairs only to
return in a few minutes with a face of dawning excitement.

"They must be lost!" she announced in a voice that drew instant
attention.

"Did you look to see if her things were there?" said her mother in an
agitated undertone.

Bob Martin met her glance with swift intelligence.

"Johnny's car is out there," he told them. "It isn't _that_--they are
simply lost, as Ruth says. Wait--I must tell them before they get away,"
and he hurried out into the increasing downpour.

Mrs. Blair turned on her daughter a face of pale misgiving.

"I knew it," she said direfully. "I felt it all along. . . . She's
lost."

"Well, she'll be found," said Ruth lightly, with an indisputable lift
of excitement. "The bears won't eat them."

Mrs. Blair's eyes shifted uneasily to meet the advancing circle from the
fire.

"There are worse bites than bears'," she found time to throw out, before
she had to voice the best possible version of Maria Angelina's
disappearance.

Instantly a babble of facile comfort rose.

They would be here any moment now.

Some one had picked them up--they were safe and sound, this instant.

There wasn't a thing that could happen--it wasn't as though these were
_wilds_.

Just telephone about--she mustn't worry. As soon as it was light some
one would go out and track them.

Why, Judge Carney's boys had been lost all night and breakfasted on
blueberries. It wasn't uncommon.

And nothing could happen to her--with Johnny Byrd along.

Oh, Johnny would take care of her--by morning everything would be all
right.

But how in the world had it happened? That was such an _easy_ trail!

And that was the question that stared, Argus-eyed, at Jane Blair. It was
the question, she knew, that they were all asking themselves--and the
others--in covert curiosity.

What had happened? And how had it happened?

CHAPTER X

FANTASY

She awoke to fright--some great hairy beast of the forest was nosing
her.

Then a light flashed in her eyes, and as she closed them, drifting off
to exhaustion again, she half saw a figure stooping towards her. Then
she felt herself being carried, while a barking seemed to be all about
her.

The next thing she knew was light forcing its brightness through her
closed lids and a great warmth beating up