Finally the train started up again, the private carriages and hired hacks
had been driven off with scores of passengers and their baggage. Then, and
not until she had looked up and down the deserted platforms, did Dorothy
admit to Nat:

"She hasn't come!"

"Looks like it," replied the lad, plainly very much disappointed.

Ned, who could see what had happened, clapped his gloved hands in unholy
glee.

"Didn't I tell you she'd duck?" he demanded triumphantly. "Didn't I tell
you so?"

"Aw shut up!" growled Nat in pardonable anger.

"Ha! ha!" laughed his brother.

"Well, you're enough to hoodoo the whole thing," retorted Nat.

But Ned simply had to laugh--he couldn't help it, and when Dorothy and Nat
took their places again in the machine Ned was chuckling and gasping in a
manner that threatened to do serious damage to his entire vocal apparatus.

"It would have been a pity to have disappointed you in your fun," remarked
Nat sarcastically after a particularly gleeful yelp from Ned. "What you
would have missed had she come!"

"But I can't understand it," said Dorothy. "There is no other train until