d, with a last lifting
of his cap and waving of his hand, was gone.

"Isn't he nice?" sighed Amy, as they started toward the Hostess House,
Grace limping a little and bringing up the rear. "Meeting a man like that
gives you new faith in human nature."

"Goodness, Will had better look out," chaffed Mollie, a little gleam of
humor shining through her weariness. "I always thought you had it in you
to run off with a chauffeur, Amy."

Before Amy had time to retort they saw a stalwart and familiar figure
swinging toward them and recognized Sergeant Mullins.

"Good afternoon," he called to them, with the smile that always so
surprisingly lighted up his usually grave face. "You look as if you had
had rather an exciting time of it."

"Oh, we did almost have such a beautiful adventure!" cried Mollie, her
eyes sparkling with the memory of it.

"And all we really got," said Grace gloomily, "were four pairs of sore
feet."

Sergeant Mullins laughed at her with the rest, then asked, with real
interest:

"But the adventure that you almost had,--would you mind telling me about
it?"

Whereupon Betty launched into a full and graphic account of the chase in
somebody else's automobile after an unknown criminal who, at the last
minute, had escaped in an apparently impossible manner.

"And that's all there is to it," she finished plaintively. "After all our
trouble and everything, we find ourselves just where we were before."

The sergeant looked very grave.

"The man was a cad," he said, "to knock down an old woman that way and
then not stop to see how badly she was hurt. I wish you could have won out
to-day. Could you give a good description of him?"

"Yes, I can," cried both Amy and Grace in the same breath, and thereupon
proceeded to do it without delay. At the description the sergeant's
interest grew and his face flushed with excitement.

When they had finished, Betty, who had been watching his face closely,
unable to restrain her curiosity longer, burst forth an eager question.

"Have you seen the man, Sergeant?"

"I think I have--often," he replied slowly, adding as they turned
incredulous eyes upon him. "If I'm not mistaken, this criminal of yours is
one of the most famous card sharpers of the day."

CHAPTER XXII

STARTLING DEVELOPMENTS

For a moment the girls stared. Then Sergeant Mullins was besieged with a
veritable flood of questions.

"He hangs out mostly at Thomasville, a town about fifteen mile