"

"Where is your wagon?" demanded Ruth, suddenly hopping out into the road
and looking all about.

"Down yonder," said the woman, pointing below. "We follow the lower
road. Just there. You can see the top of it."

"Oh! A bus! It's like Uncle Noah's," declared Helen, referring to the
ancient vehicle much patronized by the girls at Briarwood Hall.

"Who are you?" demanded Ruth, again, with keen suspicion.

"We are pedlars. We are good folks," laughed the woman. She did, indeed,
seem very pleasant, and even Ruth's suspicions were allayed. Besides,
it was fast growing dark, and there was no sign of Tom on the hilltop
ahead.

"Let's go on with them," begged Helen, seizing her chum's hand. "I am
afraid to stay here any longer."

"But Tom will not know where we have gone," objected Ruth, feebly.

"I'll write him a note and leave it pinned to the seat."

She proceeded to do this, while Ruth lit the auto lamps so that neither
Tom, on his return, or anybody else, would run into the car in the dark.
Then they were ready to go with the woman, removing only their personal
wraps and bags. They would have to risk having the touring car stripped
by thieves before Tom Cameron came back.

"I don't believe there are any thieves around here," whispered Helen.
"They would be scared to death in such a lonesome place!" she added,
with a giggle.

Ruth felt some doubt about going with the woman. She was so dark and
foreign looking. Yet she seemed desirous of doing the girls a service.
And even she, Ruth, did not wish to stay longer on the lonely road.
Something surely had happened to detain Tom.

In the south, too, "heat lightning" played sharply--and almost
continuously. Ruth knew that this meant the tempest was raging at a
distance and that it might return to this side of the lake.

The thought of being marooned on this mountain road, at night, in such a
storm as that which they had experienced two or three hours before, was
more than Ruth Fielding could endure with calmness.

So she agreed to go with the woman. Tom would know where they had gone
when he returned, for he could not miss the note his sister had left.

At least, that is what both girls believed. Only, they were scarcely out
of sight of the car with the woman, when one of the rough-looking men,
who had walked ahead of the Gypsy caravan, appeared from the bushes,
stepped into the auto, tore the note from where it had been pinned, and
at once slipped back into th