fice
painted if they will let us film a session of the society with our
principal character actors mixed in with the local group. The sun is good
to-day."

He went away, and a little later Ruth heard the automobiles start for
Herringport. She had the forenoon to herself, for the rest of her party
had gone out in a motor boat fishing--a party from which she had excused
herself.

Eagerly she began to examine the scenarios submitted to Mr. Hammond. The
possibility that she might find one of them near enough like her own lost
story to suggest that it had been plagiarized, made Ruth's heart beat
faster.

She could not forget the quotation on the scrap of brown paper. Somebody
on this Point--and it seemed that the "somebody" must be one of the moving
picture company--had written that quotation from her scenario. She felt
that this could not be denied.

CHAPTER XVI

RUTH SOLVES ONE PROBLEM

Had Ruth Fielding been confronted with the question: "Did she expect to
find a clue to the identity of the person who had stolen her scenario
before she left the Red Mill?" she could have made no confident answer.
She did not know what she would find when she sat down at Mr. Hammond's
desk for the purpose of looking over the submitted stories.

Doubt and suspicion, however, enthralled her mind. She was both curious
and anxious.

Ruth had no particular desire to read the manuscripts. In any case she did
not presume Mr. Hammond desired her advice about selecting a script for
filming.

She skimmed through the first story. It had not a thing in it that would
suggest in the faintest way any familiarity of the author with her own
lost scenario.

For two hours she fastened her attention upon one after another of the
scenarios, often by main will-power, because of the utter lack of
interest in the stories the writers had tried to put over.

Without being at all egotistical, Ruth Fielding felt confident that had
any one of these scenario writers come into possession of her lost script,
and been dishonest enough to use it, he would have turned out a much
better story.

But not a trace of her original idea and its development was to be found
in these manuscripts. Her suspicion had been needlessly roused.

Ruth could not deny that the scrap of paper found in the sand was quite as
mysterious as ever. The quotation on it seemed to be taken directly from
her own scenario. But there was absolutely nothing in this pile of
manuscri