ins are alive, anyway."

"How do you know?" they queried breathlessly.

By this time they had reached the top of the bluff and were all, Mrs.
Ford included, hurrying toward the house.

"They received a letter," Mollie explained, sinking down on a step of
the porch while the others crowded about her eagerly, "from some old
rascal--oh, if I could only get my hands on him!" she paused to glare
about her ferociously, but they impatiently hurried her on.

"Yes! But the letter!" Betty urged.

"It was from a man who demanded twenty thousand dollars--" she paused
again, while the girls gasped and crowded closer, "for the return of the
twins."

"Then they were kidnapped!" cried Grace.

"Yes. But they ran away first," explained Mollie, almost beside herself
with anger and excitement. "And this old--brute! found them, and, I
suppose because they were well dressed, thought he saw a way to make
some easy money. Oh, my poor darlings! My poor little Paul and Dodo!
Girls, we've just got to find them, that's all. I can't sit here and do
nothing a minute longer."

"But the police--" Amy suggested.

"Oh, the police! Of course they are on the job--or think they are,"
interrupted Mollie scornfully. "But I don't believe they will be able to
find our babies in a thousand years. And every time I think of them,
frightened to death! Oh, our precious babies!"

"I wonder how he found out where they lived," broke in Grace, who had
been following her own train of thought.

"They told him, of course," said Mollie. "Poor little trusting angels,
of course they would think any grown person was their friend. Oh, if
they had only fallen in with some respectable person instead of
that--that--" she could think of nothing bad enough to call the man who
had stolen the twins.

"Of course," said Mrs. Ford--it was the first time she had spoken--"your
mother showed the letter to the police."

"Of course," Mollie agreed, two angry spots of color in her cheeks. "And
equally of course they have promised to do all in their power to
apprehend the villain. But it makes me wild to just sit here and do
nothing!"

"But I don't see what there is to do," said Amy.

"Neither do I," cried Mollie, jumping to her feet and beginning to pace
restlessly up and down the porch. "That's the worst of it. I feel so
absolutely helpless. And all the time I have no way of knowing what
horrible thing may be happening--"

"Oh, the man is probably treating them pretty de