"Isn't it queer?" observed Betty.
"A strange enough happening," Amy commented.
"Quite a mystery," asserted Grace.
"And really she was a pretty girl," declared Mollie. "I wish I had her hair," and she sighed as Betty had done.
Grace strolled into the room where the girl had been, and half idly she looked about it, as though in that way she might solve the mystery. A piece of paper in one corner caught her eye and she picked it up.
"I found this in there," she said, coming out. "It has some writing on it. Perhaps this is yours, Mrs. Meckelburn," and she held out the scrap.
"No, I'll guarantee there was not a piece of paper in that room when you carried that girl in," said the farmer's wife. "I had just swept," and she tossed her head in pardonable pride of her housework.
"What does it say?" asked Amy.
"It's evidently a piece torn from a letter," answered Grace, as she accepted the paper from the woman, "and all I can make out are the words—'not go to Shadow Valley even if'—and that's all there is to it."
"How odd!" exclaimed Mollie. "Shadow Valley is not far from here."