"Ruth," said Barbara, after the girls had reached the outskirts of the city, "do you think there really is a hidden treasure and if we could find it your father——"
"I haven't much faith in the treasure, and if one should come to light, it would be Mr. Presby's and not father's."
"Mr. Presby would use it to help himself, and that would draw your father out, too."
"Bab, you ought to be on the Exchange; you'd make a good trader," laughed Ruth. Then she went on: "No, Bab, I'm afraid we'll lose all we have. I don't care for myself. I can be poor, just as daddy and my mother were once. But I grieve for father."
"Ruth, darling," whispered Bab.
On their arrival at Treasureholme the girls found that Mr. Stuart had telephoned to Miss Sallie about what Bab had tried to do for her two hosts. The girls tried to make a heroine of her, but she steadfastly refused to think she had done anything extraordinary.
When Barbara was finally alone in her room she drew out of her pocket the slip of yellow paper, spread it on her lap and regarded it intently.
"'The span of a minute is sixty seconds,'" she read. "What can that mean?"
She got up and paced the floor thinking deeply, trying to solve the meaning. She at last went to a window and spread the paper on the pane for the purpose of getting a better light on it. Her gaze, at first careless, suddenly became keen. All at once she whirled about and dashed from the room.
"Girls, I have it!" she screamed, bursting in on the others, who were in Ruth's room. "I've solved the mystery! I've found the key! We must get Mr. Stevens! We mustn't lose a minute! Everything's at stake!"