"Then, not long after, Mamie Rutger, a friend and schoolmate of the missing Nellie, also disappears. While it is yet daylight, or at least hardly dark, she vanishes from her father's very door-step, and is seen no more. Now, let me call your attention to some facts. Farmer Rutger's house stands on a bit of rising ground; the road runs east and west. To the east of the house is a thick grove of young trees planted as a wind-break for the cattle. This belt of trees begins at the front of the house and extends northward, the house being on the north side of the highway, past the barns, cow stables, and sheep pens. So while a person in the front portion of the house, on the porch or in the door-yard, can obtain a clear view of the road to the west, those farther back, in the kitchen, the stables, or the milking sheds, are shut off from a view of the road by the wind-break on the one hand, by a high orchard hedge on the other, and by the house and thick door-yard shrubbery in front. For over an hour, on the night of her disappearance, Mamie Rutger was the only person within view of this highway. The hired girl was in the kitchen washing up the supper things. Mrs. Rutger, who, by-the-by, is Miss Mamie's step-mother, was skimming milk in the cellar, and Mr. Rutger, with the two hired men, were watering and feeding the stock and milking the cows. When the work for the night was done and the lamps were lighted, if they thought of Mamie at all it was as sitting alone on the front piazza, or perched in her chamber window up-stairs, enjoying the quiet of the evening. It was only when their early bed-time came that the girl's absence, and more than that, her unusual silence, was noted, and that a search proved her missing. Was she murdered? That theory in this case is so unreasonable that I discard it at once."
Carnes nodded his head approvingly.
"Was she abducted? Possibly; but to my mind, it is not probable. Mamie Rutger was a gypsyish lassie, pretty as a May blossom, skittish as a colt, hard to govern and prone to adventurous escapades. Her father was kind and her step-mother meant to be so, but the latter perpetually frowned down the girl's innocent hilarity, and curbed her gayety, when she could, with a stern hand. They sent her to school to tame her, and the faculty, after bearing with her, and forgiving her many mischievous pranks because of her youth, at last sent her home in disgrace, expelled. If this girl, wearied of a humdrum farmhouse existence and thirsting for a broader glimpse of the gay outer world, had planned an elopement or runaway escapade, she could have chosen no better time. While all the others are busy at their evening task, she, from the front, watches for a swift horse and a covered buggy, which comes from the west. Sure that no eyes are looking, she awaits it at the gate, springs in, with a backward glance, and when she is missed, is miles away."
"Yes, I see," comments Carnes, dryly; "it's a pity your second sight couldn't keep 'em in view till ye see where they land."
I curb my imagination. That useful quality is deficient in the cranium of my comrade; he can neither follow nor sympathize.
"Well, here is the condensed truth for you," I reply, amiably: "for this much we have ocular and oral testimony: Four young ladies attend school at Amora; all are pretty, under the age of discretion, and, with perhaps one exception, little versed in the ways of the world and its wickedness. During their sojourn at school, where they are not under constant discipline owing to the fact that they all board outside of the Seminary, and all together, they are much in the society of four young men, two of whom are students of the Seminary. This quartette of youths are more or less good looking, and all of them notably 'gay and festive,' after the manner of the stereotyped young man of the period."
"Right you are now," ejaculated Carnes.