expect the boy was
badly frightened, although the man was only a cheap bully. So we don't
know what to think--whether Billy has deliberately run away, or that
some accident happened to him on the lake."

"Chet and Lance Darby were looking for him Saturday over at Cavern
Island," said a twin. "But they met with an accident. We're all going
over to the island again this coming Saturday, and we'll search the east
end for him."

"How would he live over there?" gasped his sister.

"Oh, there are berries this time of year. And of course, he could fish,"
said Dora eagerly.

"There's a man hiding there, anyway," added Dorothy, but then remembered
that the information might add to Alice's fright, so said no more.

"We'll do everything we can to find Short and Long," Dora assured the
boy's sister. "And we are telling everybody that we don't believe Billy
would do such a thing as they say. As though there wasn't any other boy
in Centerport who could have crawled through that window at Stresch &
Potter's."

The twins parted from Alice Long, and ran home. They slipped to bed
without encountering Aunt Dora and counted that day well spent because
the old lady had not yet caught them so that she could identify Dora.

But on Tuesday Aunt Dora appeared at Central High and met Miss Grace G.
Carrington--otherwise "Gee Gee."

"I wish to hear my nieces recite," she said, with sharply twinkling eyes
behind her glasses.

"It doesn't matter what class--any class will do."

Miss Carrington politely asked the prim old lady to sit beside her on
the platform, and Aunt Dora listened to the recitation then in progress.
Both Dora and Dorothy took part; but for the life of her the
near-sighted lady could not tell when Dora spoke, and when Dorothy
answered!

"I suppose you know them apart?" she ventured, to Miss Carrington.

"Oh, no; but I believe they usually answer to their names. They stand
about alike in their classes and we have put them on their honor not to
answer for each other. They are good girls and give me little trouble,"
added Gee Gee, which was a concession from her.

"So if you called one of them to the desk you could not be sure that the
one you called really came?" asked Aunt Dora.

"Not as far as physical appearances go," said Gee Gee, shaking her head.

So Aunt Dora was thwarted again and went back to the cottage to invent
some other method of tripping the twins. It had become a game, now, that
both sides were dete