The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car | Page 9

better search for her, for she may be
badly hurt, or do herself some injury. You say she was in this room?"
"Yes," answered Mrs. Meckelburn.
"And you sat here in view of the door all the while?"
"Yes," spoke Betty. "She never came out of that door, I'm sure." Amy
said the same thing.
"Then the only other possible solution is that she got out of the
window," went on the physician, "for there is no other door from the
room. We must look outside," and he crossed the apartment to the
casement. It had been raised, and the shutters were open when the
unconscious girl had been left alone.
"The window is low--she could easily have dropped to the ground,"
said Dr. Brown. "It is not more than four feet."

He leaned out to look at the ground underneath, and uttered an
exclamation.
"That is what she did!" he cried. "There are the marks of feet landing
heavily--small shoes--and unless some of you young ladies have been
indulging in gymnastics."
"And see!" added Betty, standing beside the physician, "here are some
of her long hairs," and she picked some from the window sill. "Oh, she
did have the longest, most glorious hair!" and Betty sighed in memory,
for Betty loved long tresses and her own, while they became her
wonderfully well, were not very luxuriant.
"But I don't see how she could have gotten away, unconscious as she
was, and injured," said Grace, with a puzzled air.
"She may have regained consciousness," spoke Dr. Brown; "or, as I
said, she may have wandered off in a delirium. In that case we must try
to find her. Again, she may not have been as badly hurt as you
supposed, and also she may have simulated an injury hoping she would
get a chance to escape unobserved. Was there anything strange about
her?"
"Yes, there was," admitted Betty, slowly, and she gave the details of
the accident, how, most unexpectedly the girl had toppled from the tree,
the subsequent swerving of the auto, and how, several times, the girl
had murmured something about not going back to a certain man.
"Hum!" mused Dr. Brown, "it is rather odd, I must admit. What do you
suppose she was doing in the tree?"
"We haven't been able to guess," confessed Amy; "perhaps she climbed
up to avoid a dog--we have met several dogs to-day."
"It's possible," Dr. Brown commented.
"And the tree was an easy one to climb," spoke Mollie. "I am not a very
good climber, but that tree offered temptations."

The doctor smiled.
"Well, let us make a search," he proposed. "Is there any special place
where a girl, who might wish to escape observation for some unknown
reason, could hide around here, Mrs. Meckelburn?"
"There's the barn."
"Very good, we will search there, and we may be able to trace her
footprints. Please do not any of you walk under the window, nor in a
line from it until we have made some observations. We will play a little
detective game," and he smiled frankly at the girls.
But if he had hoped anything from the clue of the footprints he was
doomed to disappointment for, though there were plain indications
where the girl had landed when she jumped from the window, the
marks were soon lost sight of on the harder ground a short distance
from the house.
A search of the barn revealed no trace of her, and one of the farm hands,
coming to the house a little later, joined in the search. He reported that
there had been seen no hatless, injured--or apparently injured--girl
crossing the fields.
"Then she must have made a circle about the house, and gone out on
the road," suggested Betty. "She is probably far enough away from here
by this time, poor thing!"
"Perhaps we ought to search for her," spoke Mollie. "Of course it was
not our fault, since we are sure the car did not hit her; but perhaps it
scared her so that she fell."
"I should not blame myself if I were you," said the physician, kindly.
"It was evidently not your fault. You did all you could for the girl. If
she did not want further treatment that is her lookout. Of course, if she
wandered away in a delirium, that is another story, and perhaps it
would be well to search down the road. She did not pass us, or we
would have seen her, coming from my office along the main highway

as we did," he said to Mollie. "A search in the opposite direction would
be the only feasible thing to conduct."
"Then let's do it!" cried Mollie. "And you please drive, Dr. Brown, I
haven't yet gotten over my nervousness."
Mrs. Meckelburn refused an