hing for some letter or
scrap of paper to throw light on her exit. He went to the trunk which
contained some sheets of music and a few books. These he scattered
about searching, searching between their leaves.

His mother, trembling before him, spoke tremulously. "Did she have any
money to go away?"

"No," he growled.

"You can see she didn't expect to go, Rufus," said the old woman
timidly. "All her things are here. Why--why don't you take the car
and--and go after her?"

"Because she went up in the air, that's why; and I'll kill him!" He
shook his fists in impotent rage. "He'll find he didn't get away with it
as neat as he thought."

He stormed out of the room, and lucky it was for Pete that that
threshold could tell no tales.

The old woman stared after him in a new terror. Her son, the most
important man in the county, had lost his mind, and all for the sake of
that girl who had managed in some mysterious way to give him the slip.
"Gone up in the air!" Poor Rufus. He had gone mad. She managed that
night to get an interview in the woodshed with the grief-stricken Pete,
and in spite of his incoherence and renewed sobs she learned what had
happened. The dwarf believed that his goddess had been kidnapped. It
never occurred to his dull brain to connect her disappearance with the
letters he had conveyed to her.

The next day Carder was amazed to have the boy seek him. Never before
had Pete ventured to volunteer a word to him. He was sitting in his den
gnawing his nails and revolving in his mind some scheme for Geraldine's
recovery when the dwarf appeared at the door. His shock of hair stood up
as usual and his eyes were swollen.

"Can't we--can't we--look for her, master?" he asked beseechingly. "They
may hurt her--the man that stole her. Can't you--find him, master?"

Carder's scowl bent upon the humble suppliant.

"I ought to have shot him the first time he came," he said savagely.

"Did the--the areoplane ever come before?" asked Pete, amazed, his
heart's desire to see again and save his goddess supplying him with
courage to speak. His dull eyes opened as wide as their puffiness would
permit.

"No," snarled Carder; "but it was that damned fool on the motor-cycle
without a doubt. I don't see how he got at her. No letter ever came."

The speaker went back to gnawing his nails in bitter meditation and
forgot the mourner at his door whose slow wits began to
remember--remember; and who, as he remembered, be