“Then Otto and I will help you home—to our house yet,” said the farmer. “We were hunting a stray cow. My name iss Sitz. I lif’ back up de road—yonder. Two of your girls friendts bought milk at my house to-night.”
“Yes. I know who you are,” admitted Laura. “Do you suppose you could get me to your house and then send word to the city so that my father or brother will get it—without frightening mother?”
“Ach!” ejaculated the farmer. “We can carry you—Otto undt me; if he iss a fool-boy, he iss strong. Undt we haf de telephone. Sure we can carry you.”
They made a “chair” with their four hands, in which Laura sat, leaning back against their arms, and so maintaining her balance. She carried the lantern to light the way, and very soon after her girl friends had left the plateau in their stampede, she was being carried across the brook and up the country road to the Sitz farmhouse.
Laura had recovered from her fright ere this; but the mystery of what had happened to her continued to puzzle and amaze her.
Who had done this to her? What had been the object of the attack? And why should anybody desire to so maltreat and frighten her? These questions were repeated over and over in her mind, even while she was talking with Mr. Sitz and Otto. And there seemed to be no sane and sensible answer to them!
It surely was not any of the M. O. R.’s who had done this. They had all been just as frightened as they could be by the light of Mr. Sitz’s lantern. Of course, Mary’s foolish story of the ghost had started the girls off on the stampede when Jess and Nellie and Dora had run from the haunted house.
Laura remembered very vividly what she had seen in the room after her friends had left her. The figure in white had tied her hands and adjusted that veil across her mouth.
Surely, she must have some enemy—some person who really hated her. For nobody else, it seemed to Laura Belding, could have done so cruel a thing. She had no idea who this enemy could be, however.
Nevertheless, she had stuffed the veil into the front of her blouse and intended to hold on to it. That veil might prove to be a clue to the identity of the person who had bound and gagged her.