hanged. "There's another outlet to this place
somewhere, isn't there?"

"Yes, there is," was the reply of the officer in charge. "This gallery
runs on for another hundred yards, piercing Holly Hill right through
the center. You know the bluff and the rocky slope behind the old
mill. Well, it seems that this mine was cut right through at that
point, but there was a cave-in that filled up that opening. These
rascals that kidnapped the girls evidently were associated with the
people that rented the Buchholz place and cut the passage through. The
girls have been here all right, but they're gone. They've been taken
out of this end of the mine and spirited away in some manner. This
means that the scoundrels have a larger and more effective
organization than we have ever suspected. Such a case of wholesale
kidnapping was never heard of before."

"How can you tell they passed through here?" Mr. Stanlock asked.

"By this principally," the lieutenant answered, holding up a woman's
handkerchief that he had picked up; "and by the fact that there is a
trail in the snow from the opening of the mine to the alley behind the
old mill."

Mr. Stanlock's face shone deathly pale in the glare of the flash
lights. The new element of suspense had brought him again to the
danger-point of a collapse that had compelled him to withdraw from
the active search nearly an hour before.

His voice reflected the distressing strain under which he was laboring
as he put his next question:

"What became of them then?"

"That's the problem we've got to solve," Larkin replied. "Apparently
they were loaded in automobiles and rushed off to some retreat of the
scoundrels."

"How in the world could they do it without somebody's seeing or
hearing what was going on?"

"Oh," said the lieutenant without a suggestion of doubt in his voice;
"that wasn't very difficult if there were enough of them working
together. The evidence of cleverness and skill is not nearly so much
in the handling of this affair at the mill end of the mine as at the
house end. That was a mighty smooth piece of work, getting all of
those girls into that old house, however it was done. Mark my word,
you'll find that a very clever trap was set for them. But come on,
we've got to get busy before the snow makes it impossible to follow
them."

* * * * *

CHAPTER XX.

TWELVE GIRLS IN THE MOUNTAINS.

Ethel Zimmerman and Ernestine Johnson fainted.