ting
adjourned. I can smell harvest apples all the way up here. Is there
anything better than those juicy early apples!"

The girls made that opinion unanimous, and what was left of Michael's
apples fifteen minutes later would not even make pickings for Jennie's
pet gray hen.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE SHADOWS

"Cleo, come here," Grace beckoned her chum, as Mary and Madaline
started for a fishing trip to the little brook that capered through the
Cragsnook lands, at the foot of an ambitious group of hills. "I am
just so anxious to talk to you," Grace almost implored.

"And I am just dying to talk to you," declared Cleo, "so we ought to
have a lovely time. Come on for a walk down to the stone bridge. No
one is going that way at this hour."

"Because lovers are scarce around here, I suppose," Grace guessed, "for
twilight, lovers and stone bridges are always combined in the movies."

"Then we will be the lovers," proposed Cleo. "Come along, darling,"
and she twined her arm around the shoulders of her friend, in sincere
affection, if in pretended affectation.

"I know what you are going to say," Grace began. "It's about Mary's
secret."

"Of course," admitted Cleo. "I have been breathless with excitement
since she told us. Grace, do you see what may have happened? Just
what _may_ have, of course."

"You mean she may belong to people in America who would love to know
about her?"

"Yes, that is an easy guess. But why should Professor Benson deny her
identity?"

"He is also denying his own. Why does he do that?"

"And there is not the slightest possibility he could ever have
committed a crime. No man with his personality is ever a criminal."

"No, indeed," vouched Grace, quite unconscious of posing as an expert
on character.

"It's very mysterious," went on Cleo, "and when Mary mentioned the name
Dunbar to him he seemed to recall it somehow. I asked him if he ever
knew anyone named Dunbar, and he passed it off on his brain playing
queer tricks on him. But all the same he did seem to have a memory of
it."

"Now, Cleo Harris, don't you dare go getting Mary in your family,"
ordered Grace, jokingly. "It would be just Cleoistic to have it turn
out that way. No, Mary is going to be a princess, to suit Madaline
this time. Let's sit down here on the bridge and try to figure it all
out," she proposed.

The broad stone coping over the little stream offered an attractive
resting place for the se