rie and grove, alone in the one-horse wagon.

Link ran out to meet him, swinging his cap and shouting for the news.

"Good news!" Rufe shouted back, while still far up the road. "Tell the
folks!" And he held up the pocket-book.

It was good news indeed which he brought; but the mystery at the bottom
of it all was a mystery still.

The family gathered around, with intense interest, while he told his
story and displayed Rad's pantaloons.

"The eighty dollars, which you had counted out,--you remember,
father,--was loose in the pocket. I left that with Jack; he will send it
to Chicago to-day. The rest of the money, I believe, is all here in the
pocket-book."

"And you've heard nothing of Radcliff?" said Mr. Betterson.

"Not a word. Jack made me stop with him over night; and I should have
come home the way we went, and looked for Rad, if it hadn't been so far;
we must have driven twelve or fifteen miles in that roundabout chase."

"Some accident must certainly have happened to Radcliff," said Mr.
Betterson. And much wonder and many conjectures were expressed by the
missing youth's not very unhappy relatives.

"I bet I know!" said Link. "He drove so fast he overtook the tornado,
and it twisted him out of his breeches, and hung him up in a tree
somewhere!"

An ingenious theory, which did not, however, obtain much credence with
the family.

"One thing seems to be proved, and I am very glad," said Vinnie. "It
was not Zeph who took Jack's compass."

"Rad must have taken that, to spite Jack, and hid it somewhere near the
road in the timber, where it would be handy if he ever wanted to make
off with it; that's what Jack thinks," said Rufe. "Then, as he was
driving past the spot, he put it into the buggy again."

"Maybe he intended to set up for a surveyor somewhere," Wad remarked.
"He must have taken another pair of trousers with him."

"I am sure he didn't," said Cecie.

"And even if he did," said Rufe, "that wouldn't account for his leaving
the money in the pocket."

The family finally settled down upon a theory which had been first
suggested by Jack,--that in fording the river Rad had caught his wheels
in the tree-tops or timbers of the ruined bridge, and, to keep his lower
garments dry, had taken them off and left them in the buggy, while he
waded in to remove the rubbish, when the horse had somehow got away from
him, and gone home. It also seemed quite probable that Rad himself had
become entangled in drift