dicially. "But why the lease? Plenty
of farms still owned by widows or old maids, and they'll fairly throw
the land at you if you handle 'em right."

There was an exclamation from the dark-eyed man.

"Just what I was telling Jack this morning," he chortled. "Buy a
farm, for farming purposes only, from some old lady. Pay her a good
price, but get your land in the oil section. Old lady happy, we
strike oil, sell out to big company, everybody happy. Simple, after
all. Good schemes always are."

Jack Fluss grunted derisively.

"Lovely schemes, yours always are," he commented sarcastically. "Only
thing missing from the scenario, as stated, is the farm. Where are
you going to pick up an oil farm for a song? Old maids are sure to
have a nephew or something hanging round to keep 'em posted."

"Now you mention it----" Carson fumbled in his pocket. "Now you
mention it, boys, I believe I've got the very place for you. I've
been prospecting around quite a bit in Oklahoma, and this summer I
ran across a farm that for location can't be beat. Right in the heart
of the oil section. Like this----"

He took an envelope from his pocket and, resting it on his knee,
began to draw a rough diagram. The three heads bent close together
and the busy tongues were silent save for a muttered question or a
word or two of explanation.

Bob began to think that he had heard all he was to hear, and
certainly he was no longer in doubt as to the character of the men he
had followed. He had decided to go back to Betty when the older of
the two gray-suited men, leaning back and taking off his glasses to
polish them, addressed a question to Carson.

"Widow own this place?" he asked casually.

"No, couple of old maids," was the answer. "Last of their line, and
all that. The neighbors know it as the Saunders place, but I didn't
rightly get whether that was the name of the old ladies or not."

The Saunders place!

Bob sat up with a jerk, and then, remembering, sank back and turned a
page, though his hands shook with excitement.

"Faith Henderson, born a Saunders--" The words of the old bookshop
man, Lockwood Hale, who had told Bob about his mother's people, came
back to him.

"I do believe it is the very same place," he said to himself. "There
couldn't be two farms in the oil section owned by different families
of the name of Saunders. If it is the right farm, and they're my
aunts, perhaps Betty's uncle will know where it is."

He strained hi