"Come on!" Polly said, quickening her steps, "we may be near her."
"Hold on!" Betty cried, "look, something happened here; it looks as if she'd fallen down!" A big dent in the snow, as if a body had been lying on the ground, showed up in the prints of Maud's snow shoes.
"Here's a queer thing," Lois pointed out, "one shoe's going in one direction and one in another."
Polly walked on a little way, and then called to the others, excitedly:
"Here are the prints and look, side of them there's a mark as if she were dragging something along with her."
"What's that black spot farther on?" Lois demanded.
They looked in the direction in which she pointed and saw, a couple of hundred yards farther on, something that showed black against the snow.
"It's a man's hat! Oh, Poll, I'm scared to death," Lois said, trembling, when they came up to it. Murder and every possible form of highway robbery passed through her mind.
Betty turned white, and Polly bit her lip.
"Come on!" she said, bravely, "we've got to find her."