control herself for the moment.

Against Tom Cameron's uniformed shoulder she sobbed frankly. His arm stole
around her.

"Don't take on so, Ruthie," he urged. "Of course we'll find it all. Wait
till this rain stops----"

"It never blew away, Tom," she said.

"Why, of course it did!"

"No. The sheets of typewritten manuscript were fastened together with a
big brass clip. Had they been lose and the wind taken them, we should have
seen at least some of them flying about. And the notebooks!"

"And the pen?" murmured Tom, seeing the catastrophe now as she did. "Why,
Ruthie! Could somebody have taken them all?"

"Somebody must!"

"But who?" demanded the young fellow. "You have no enemies."

"Not here, I hope," she sighed. "I left them all behind."

He chuckled, although he was by no means unappreciative of the seriousness
of her loss. "Surely that German aviator who dropped the bomb on you
hasn't followed you here."

"Don't talk foolishly, Tom!" exclaimed the girl, getting back some of her
usual good sense. "Of course, I have no enemy. But a thief is every honest
person's enemy."

"Granted. But where is the thief around the Red Mill?"

"I do not know."

"Can it be possible that your uncle or Ben saw the things here and rescued
them just before the storm burst?"

"We will ask," she said, with a sigh. "But I can imagine no reason for
either Uncle Jabez or Ben to come down here to the shore of the river.
Oh, Tom! it is letting up."

"Good! I'll look around first of all. If there has been a skulker
near----"

"Now, don't be rash," she cried.

"We're not behind the German lines now, Fraulein Mina von Brenner," and he
laughed as he went out of the summer-house.

He did not smile when he was searching under the house and beating the
brush clumps near by. He realized that this loss was a very serious matter
for Ruth.

She was now independent of Uncle Jabez, but her income was partly derived
from her moving picture royalties. During her war activities she had been
unable to do much work, and Tom knew that Ruth had spent of her own means
a great deal in the Red Cross work.

Ruth had refused to tell her friends the first thing about this new story
for the screen. She believed it to be the very best thing she had ever
originated, and she said she wished to surprise them all.

He even knew that all her notes and "before-the-finish" writing was in the
notebooks that had now gone with the completed manuscript.