something," the tall man said with a nod of
approval, picking up several bits of paper from the basket. "She's
torn it up in pretty small pieces, but if we all get busy we ought to
be able to put them together in a short time."

"Let's go out to the dining room table," Mrs. Stanlock proposed,
leading the way as she spoke.

In a few moments all were seated around the large fumed oak table from
which the spread had been removed as the hard wood surface was much
better for the task of piecing the letter together.

It was, indeed, a tedious task, but with so many working together
progress was fairly rapid. Within fifteen minutes half a dozen
sentence sections of several words each had been joined in their
phrase order. These were soon followed by three or four more and
presently one of the girls found a connecting link between two
sections thus forming a complete sentence. Imagine the thrill that
went through everyone as Mr. Stanlock read the following:

"Get your friends out of Hollyhill as soon as possible."

"I bet this letter was written by the same person who wrote the
skull-and-cross-bones letter to me," Marion ventured confidently.

"That's the very idea that just occurred to me," Miss Ladd declared as
she fitted "no" and "difference" together and then tried to find a
connecting edge on the pieces held by her neighbor to the left.

Fortunately the letter had been written on only one side of a large
sheet of paper, so that they could be pasted in correlative positions
on another sheet provided for the purpose.

Finally the patchwork was completed, in so far as the material at hand
made completeness possible. A few of the bits of torn paper were
missing, so that a word was wanting here and there in the text, but
apparently the idea and purpose of the writer did not suffer from
these vacancies. The letter as read at last by Mr. Stanlock was as
follows:

"Dear ...r

"You have failed to do what I ... you to do. I told you that it was
... dangerous to bring the girls here. The letter of warning to Miss
Stan ... did no good.... I want to warn you again and ... ... last time.
Get your friends out of Hollyhill as soon as possible. I won't be
responsible for what occurs. It makes no difference if you have given
up your original purpose. Some of the men are so worked up that they
are liable to do almost anything. If you can't get the rest out of
town go yourself, or you may get hurt.

"D...."

"Ah, ha!" exclaim