look!" declared Betty. "But did you learn anything about her?"

"Nothing much. She seemed all right, as far as her health was concerned,
but she did not seem happy. The cut on her head was nothing. I asked her
if the fall from the tree had hurt her, and she said not much."

"Did she say why she climbed up it?" asked Amy.

"No, Miss, she did not."

"And she didn't tell you anything about herself?" It was Grace who asked
this.

"No, only in a general way. I thought, from what she said, Miss, that
she had seen trouble, and was trying to get away from it. She was well
dressed, and had some money. She let fall that she was traveling about,
trying to find some friends she had lost track of. There was some
mystery about her, of that I'm certain."

"I am too," declared Mollie. "Poor girl!"

"I'm going to look at the register," said Betty. "That may give us a
clue, as the boys say."

The girls dressed for dinner, and then visited the hotel office. The
maid fortunately had a good memory, and could tell the date of the
girl's stay. The register of that day contained several names, but the
clerk recalled the incident of the girl applying for a room. This hotel
made a speciality of catering to women patrons.

"That's her name," said the young man, pointing to one in the book.
"Carrie Norton."

"And it doesn't say where she is from," remarked Amy.

"I asked her about that," spoke the clerk, "and she said it did not
matter. So I did not insist."

"Carrie Norton," mused Mollie, as the girls went into the dining room.
"Well, I hope she has found her friends. Poor girl!"

They talked and speculated about her, but that was all they could do.
They could arrive at no conclusion. It was plain that she had not been
as badly hurt as they had feared, and, after leaving the farm house,
must have gone to some other place of shelter. She must have also
changed her garments, for the dress the maid described was not the one
she wore at the time of the accident.

She had left the hotel, after stopping there one night, the maid said,
and had left no directions for any mail to be forwarded, nor had she
given any clue to where she was going.

"She seems to have come into our lives in a most mysterious way," said
Mollie, "and then to have vanished. We get a glimpse of her, as it were,
and again she vanishes. I wonder if we will ever solve the mystery?"

"Perhaps she is--the ghost of the haunted mansion of Shadow Valley,"
suggested Be