eing no patient was that she has evidently gone away, possibly in a
delirium, and in that case we had better search for her, for she may be
badly hurt, or do herself some injury. You say she was in this room?"

"Yes," answered Mrs. Meckelburn.

"And you sat here in view of the door all the while?"

"Yes," spoke Betty. "She never came out of that door, I'm sure." Amy
said the same thing.

"Then the only other possible solution is that she got out of the
window," went on the physician, "for there is no other door from the
room. We must look outside," and he crossed the apartment to the
casement. It had been raised, and the shutters were open when the
unconscious girl had been left alone.

"The window is low--she could easily have dropped to the ground," said
Dr. Brown. "It is not more than four feet."

He leaned out to look at the ground underneath, and uttered an
exclamation.

"That is what she did!" he cried. "There are the marks of feet landing
heavily--small shoes--and unless some of _you_ young ladies have been
indulging in gymnastics."

"And see!" added Betty, standing beside the physician, "here are some of
her long hairs," and she picked some from the window sill. "Oh, she did
have the longest, most glorious hair!" and Betty sighed in memory, for
Betty loved long tresses and her own, while they became her wonderfully
well, were not very luxuriant.

"But I don't see how she could have gotten away, unconscious as she was,
and injured," said Grace, with a puzzled air.

"She may have regained consciousness," spoke Dr. Brown; "or, as I said,
she may have wandered off in a delirium. In that case we must try to
find her. Again, she may not have been as badly hurt as you supposed,
and also she may have simulated an injury hoping she would get a chance
to escape unobserved. Was there anything strange about her?"

"Yes, there was," admitted Betty, slowly, and she gave the details of
the accident, how, most unexpectedly the girl had toppled from the
tree, the subsequent swerving of the auto, and how, several times, the
girl had murmured something about not going back to a certain man.

"Hum!" mused Dr. Brown, "it is rather odd, I must admit. What do you
suppose she was doing in the tree?"

"We haven't been able to guess," confessed Amy; "perhaps she climbed up
to avoid a dog--we have met several dogs to-day."

"It's possible," Dr. Brown commented.

"And the tree was an easy one to climb," spoke Mollie. "I a