m not a very
good climber, but that tree offered temptations."

The doctor smiled.

"Well, let us make a search," he proposed. "Is there any special place
where a girl, who might wish to escape observation for some unknown
reason, could hide around here, Mrs. Meckelburn?"

"There's the barn."

"Very good, we will search there, and we may be able to trace her
footprints. Please do not any of you walk under the window, nor in a
line from it until we have made some observations. We will play a little
detective game," and he smiled frankly at the girls.

But if he had hoped anything from the clue of the footprints he was
doomed to disappointment for, though there were plain indications where
the girl had landed when she jumped from the window, the marks were soon
lost sight of on the harder ground a short distance from the house.

A search of the barn revealed no trace of her, and one of the farm
hands, coming to the house a little later, joined in the search. He
reported that there had been seen no hatless, injured--or apparently
injured--girl crossing the fields.

"Then she must have made a circle about the house, and gone out on the
road," suggested Betty. "She is probably far enough away from here by
this time, poor thing!"

"Perhaps we ought to search for her," spoke Mollie. "Of course it was
not our fault, since we are sure the car did not hit her; but perhaps it
scared her so that she fell."

"I should not blame myself if I were you," said the physician, kindly.
"It was evidently not your fault. You did all you could for the girl. If
she did not want further treatment that is her lookout. Of course, if
she wandered away in a delirium, that is another story, and perhaps it
would be well to search down the road. She did not pass us, or we would
have seen her, coming from my office along the main highway as we did,"
he said to Mollie. "A search in the opposite direction would be the only
feasible thing to conduct."

"Then let's do it!" cried Mollie. "And you please drive, Dr. Brown, I
haven't yet gotten over my nervousness."

Mrs. Meckelburn refused an invitation to go in the car, but the four
girls started off, Dr. Brown at the wheel. They went as far back as the
tree which was the scene of the accident and saw no trace of the girl.
Nor had any of several other autoists, or drivers of horse vehicles, to
whom they appealed, seen her.

"She has just disappeared--that's all," said Betty. "I wonder if we had