m the truth, that she was in a log cabin.

Every inch of the walls and ceiling, except the windows and doors,
was plastered. The doors and windows were fitted in the crudest kind
of casing. A few unframed, colored pictures were pasted on the walls.
The furniture of the room consisted of a few chairs, a table and an
old trunk. A kerosene lamp on the table lighted the room.

"Here's one of them, Mag," said Bill, addressing a large, coarse
featured, but remarkably shrewd-eyed woman who opened the door and
received them. "Can you keep her safe?"

"You bet your bottom dollar I can keep her safe as long as there is
any dough in it for me," was the reply in almost a man's voice.

"Well, get into good practice on this one a-keepin' prisoners," the
first speaker advised. "We're goin' to have a dozen more here before
long, and then you will have some job."

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIX.

THE SUBTERRANEAN AVENUE.

For more than half an hour Mr. Stanlock waited upstairs nervously,
eagerly, expectantly, apprehensively, for a report from Lieut. Larkin
and the four men who remained in the cellar of the Buchholz house to
move the pile of scrap lumber, under which it was suspected might be
found a clew as to the whereabouts of the missing twelve girls.
Interest in the search within the building had suspended other
activities in the neighborhood, as it was felt that further progress
must depend upon results at this point.

So the score or more of uniformed and citizen policemen waited as
patiently as they could in or around the house of mystery, becoming
more and more impatient as the minutes grew into the twenties and then
the thirties, and still nobody came upstairs to announce indications
of success or failure. The noise of the striking pieces of lumber
against one another had not been heard for more than twenty minutes.
In fact, no sound of any kind came up the cellarway following the
first quarter of an hour of rapid labor on the part of the five active
searchers below.

At last one of the men, more nervously eager for information than the
rest, shouted down the cellarway to the lieutenant, inquiring how he
and his helpers were getting on. There was no answer.

He shouted again. Still no reply. Then he announced his intention to
descend into the cellar to investigate.

"Wait," said Mr. Stanlock. "There are some tracks in the dust on the
steps, and Lieut. Larkin doesn't want them distur