Into the loft she climbed, but he was not there. As she stood on the hay, she became aware of a peculiar sound. Music! That was what it resembled, and across her mind flashed the words of Bob. For some seconds she listened in bewilderment, and then the little wrinkles of perplexity cleared from her forehead. She climbed higher upon the hay, until she reached a tiny window, far up near the roof. Over its opening were stretched several taut elastics—the work of her little brother. With each gust of breeze they vibrated and twanged, making sounds not unlike the music of a harp or a zither.
Descending from the loft, she hurried out of the barn. The man whom she loved must have taken advantage of her absence to hasten away, she reasoned, that he might carry out his resolve to surrender himself to the authorities. So down the dusty road she hurried, determined to overtake him ere he should reach the town.
A great gray touring car hummed its way along the country road, a continuous cloud of dust, like rising smoke, trailing in its wake. A big, burly man, with tanned features, and whose eyes were obscured by masking goggles, gripped the wheel; while beside him sat another man, not so big, but with a bristling black mustache and keen piercing eyes.
“Remember, Mac!” the big man was saying; “if we find him I don’t want the newspaper men or anybody else to ever hear a word of this. I called on you for help because you are a friend of mine as well as a police inspector, trained in the ways of tracing men.”
“Don’t you worry, Owen!” the other replied. “Never a word will get out. Nine times out of ten a young fellow who has committed a crime, or thinks he has, will risk a trip to his home or old surroundings. If we don’t find the boy somewhere about Farmhill, we’ll change our tactics. He must have landed quite a crack on your skull,” he added.
“He surely did,” the big man agreed. “I was unconscious for a half hour or more; and I guess your idea, that he imagined he’d finished me, and was thus frightened into running away, is right.”
The man with the wiry mustache nodded and tightly gripped the side of the car as they jounced over a particularly high bump in the road.
“But if the experience proves to be the shock necessary to break the boy away from the drink and that gang he was traveling with,” continued the big man; “why, I’ll be mighty thankful that he struck the blow. He’s not only a wonderful pitcher, but I like him. He—look, Mac, look! So help me, John Rogers! Look ahead, there!”
Appearing around a bend in the roadway, from behind the trees of the roadside, a solitary figure was tramping toward them.