st get Mollie out of that room. She has
certainly fainted, and when she comes to she will be horribly frightened
if we are not with her. Try the door again, Betty."

Betty did so, but it would not give.

"We must break it down!" decided the chaperone, resolutely. "Is there
anything we can use?"

"There's a chair in that other room," said Amy, indicating the apartment
they had looked in, only to find it untenanted. "We might use that."

"The very thing!" declared Mrs. Mackson. "We'll get it!"

She started for the other room, followed by the others, when Grace
cried:

"Hark!"

They listened.

"What is it?" asked Betty.

"The sound of carriage wheels out in the road. And I heard a man's voice
speak to his horse."

"Maybe it's the--one who caught Mollie, and he's taking her away,"
faltered Grace, who seemed to have a faculty of suggesting unpleasant
possibilities at the wrong time.

"Then we must stop him!" cried Betty. She turned toward the front door,
but a short distance away. The others hurried on after her and saw, out
in the road, the dim outlines of a carriage. There was a driving-light
on the dashboard, and by its gleam the girls could make out the dark
form of a man alighting.

"At least he's not--a ghost!" whispered Amy.

"Help! Oh, please help us!" screamed Grace.

"Hello, there! What's the trouble?" asked a pleasant voice. "I'll be
with you in a minute. Whoa there, Jack, old man! Don't get uneasy. Show
your light, please, so I can see where you are."

Betty flashed her lantern, and in its rays a man came up the weed-grown
path. The girls were almost crying for sheer relief.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PRISONER

Mollie tumbled in a heap on the floor of the room, into which the
white-robed figure had thrust her. She gasped once or twice, for her
breath had grown short, not alone from fright--though she admitted that
she was terribly scared--but from the rough treatment she had received.
Then, as she endeavored to get to her feet in the darkness--for her
lantern had fallen from her hand and been extinguished--she fainted, and
fell back. Her heavy mass of hair, uncoiled and loose, served as a
cushion, and so saved her as she crashed backward.

This much of Mrs. Mackson's theory was correct. Mollie could not answer
the frantic calls of her chums, for she was insensible.

How long she remained in this condition she could not afterward tell,
but it could not have been for long, since she was