"Let me lead now, Cora?" asked Daisy. "I am just dying for Aunt
May to see us come up. And say, girls, I've got the dearest,
darlingest cousin - a young doctor!"

A scream went up from every throat. Daisy had not told of her
attractive cousin until the party were within very sight of him.

"Me first!" shouted Belle. "I have been a perfect angel ever
since we left Chelton; didn't even speak to the nice man with the
short thumb - Clip's friend."

At that moment an auto dashed by. Tillie seized Cora's arm.

"That's the man who talked about Hastings!" she exclaimed. "The
man who took tea in our house yesterday."

"And that's the very man we met on the road the day Paul was help
up," Cora declared. "Oh, now I see the coincidence. Of course
they heard of the hold-up, they being on the road about the time
it happened, and when they were at your house they might have been
discussing the latest account of the affair - there was something
in the daily paper about it, you know."

Cora was not sure she believed herself, but at the moment she
decided it would be best for the happiness of the party to think
lightly of the meeting with the strange men. Rob Roland's voice
still rang in her ears like a threat, and while she was no coward
neither did she invite trouble.

There seemed now to be clearly some connection between the missing