"Vida Melburn."
"It is not Isa Isban?"
"No, sir."
"Did I not change two fifty-dollar bills for you on the Pacific Express, shortly after leaving Ogden?"
"I never saw you till this morning."
"That settles it!" cried Frank; "the other girl is Isa Isban, and she is queen of the counterfeiters. She was the one for whom I changed the money, and she completely fooled me by her innocent face and manner."
"And I mistook her for Miss Melburn," said Bart. "Such a thing seems impossible, but it actually occurred."
"But how Miss Melburn came to be here is what I cannot understand," asserted Frank.
"I came up to Tahoe with my father, an uncle, and an aunt," said the girl, who was recovering from her terror. "My uncle and aunt live in Carson, and father and I were visiting them. We hired a sailboat of a big hermit who lives somewhere on the shore of the lake, and sailed over here, coming ashore to have a picnic dinner. The wind went down, and we could not get back. That evening I took a little stroll from camp, and I was suddenly seized from behind, nearly smothered in a blanket and carried away. I was held a captive in a cabin, far up on a high cliff. Back of the cabin was a cave through which the men reached the spot. Last night, or this morning, before daybreak, a man with a heavy dark mustache came to see me. I had not undressed, and he made me get up, so he could look me over. After some minutes, he cried, 'I swear she is handsomer than the queen!' Then he told me how he had seen me in Carson, and had mistaken me, at first, for some one else. How he found out his mistake, when he received a message from the other, who had been away to the east. How he vowed to know me better, and how, when he found our party were going to visit the lake, he sent word to friends of his to kidnap me. The monster! Then he tried to make love to me. I repulsed him, and he went away in an angry mood, swearing he would come back. He did so, in the morning, and once more tried to make love to me. I was filled with terror, and, clutching the big umbrella, I rushed out of the cabin. When he followed, I opened the umbrella and jumped from the cliff."
"You did not meet me in Reno, as you agreed," said Bart.