"A child stolen!" cried Frank. "This goes to dad's sheet right now!"
"Boy or girl?" asked Oliver. "Age, please!"
"Boy," answered Ned. "A boy belonging to one of the ambassadors! Age seven!"
"But why should the mountaineers steal such a child?" asked Jimmie.
"I said the boy belonged to one of the ambassadors," Ned corrected himself. "I should have said he belonged at one of the foreign embassies."
"The son of one of the attaches?" asked Teddy. "That's strange! Why?"
"Teddy," reproved Jimmie, "you can ask more questions in a minute than a motion picture machine can take in a hundred years."
"The stolen boy is in no ways related to any one in this country," Ned answered, "yet his safety is of the utmost importance. It is up to us to find him."
"But why should the mountain men make a grab at a kid?" insisted Jimmie. "I've asked that question numerous times now," he added, with a wrinkled nose.
"It is not believed that the mountain men know anything about the matter," Ned replied. "No one suspects them of taking the child. Mountain men are not up to that sort of thing, as a rule. They will make moonshine—some of them will—and may hide a counterfeiter, but they don't steal children!"