at the young girl
has disappeared. Martha Poole says she has run away and that she does
not know where she went to. The girl seems to have no relatives or
friends. But I have my doubts about her having run away. I think she
has been hidden away in some place by the two women or by the
lawyer."

"Oh, Daddy!" exclaimed Jessie, who had been listening with interest.
"That is just like the girl I tried to tell you about the other
night--little Henrietta's cousin. _She_ was carried off by two women
in an automobile. What do you think, Daddy? Could Bertha be the girl
you are looking for?"

CHAPTER XV

CAN IT BE POSSIBLE?

"What is this?" Mr. Norwood asked, staring at his eager daughter.
"Have I heard anything before about a girl being carried away?"

"Why, don't you remember, Daddy, about Henrietta who lives over in
Dogtown, and her cousin, Bertha, and how Bertha has disappeared,
and--and----"

"And Henrietta is the champion snake killer of all this region?"
chuckled Mr. Norwood. "I certainly have a vivid remembrance of the
snakes, at any rate."

"Dear me!" cried Momsy. "This is all new to me. Where are the snakes,
Jessie?"

"Gone to that bourne where both good and bad snakes go," rejoined her
husband. "Come, Jessie! It is evident I did not get all that you
wanted to tell me the other evening. And, it seems to me, if I
remember rightly, you got so excited over your radio business before
you were through that you quite forgot the snakes--I mean forgot the
girl you say was run away with."

"Don't joke her any more, Robert," advised Momsy. "I can see she is in
earnest."

"You just listen here, Daddy Norwood," Jessie cried. "Perhaps you'll
be glad to hear about Bertha. She is little Henrietta Haney's cousin,
and Henrietta expected Bertha to come to see her where she lives with
the Foleys in Dogtown.

"Well, the day that Bertha was expected, she didn't come. That was the
day Amy and I first thought of building our radio. And when we were
walking into town we heard a girl screaming in Dogtown Lane. So we ran
in, and there was this girl being pulled into an automobile by two
women."

"What girl was this?" asked Mr. Norwood, quite in earnest now. "A girl
you and Amy knew?"

"We had never seen her before, Daddy. And I am not positive, of
course, that she was Bertha, Henrietta's cousin. But Amy and I thought
it might be. And now you tell about two women who want to keep a
servant girl away from you, and it m