CHAPTER XII.

THE FINDING OF THE “BUTTERFLY.”

“Well, what next?” asked Jimsy.

“Make a search of those woods, I suppose,” replied Roy; “there’s nothing else to do.”

“No, the trail has brought us here,” replied Peggy energetically; “we must make a determined effort to find the Butterfly.”

“Maybe they’ve damaged it so that we won’t be able to do anything with it when we do get it,” spoke Jimsy presently.

“Whom do you mean by they?” asked Roy.

“As if you didn’t know.  Is there any doubt in your mind that that fellow Cassell is at the bottom of all this?”

“Not very much, I’ll admit,” replied Roy; “I wonder if that accounts for the inactivity of the police.”

“In just what way?”

“Well, the fellow’s a local politician and has a lot of ’pull’.”

“He must have, to get away with anything like this,” was Jimsy’s indignant outburst.

“Well, don’t let us waste time speculating,” put in Peggy, in her brisk manner; “the thing to do now is to get back the Golden Butterfly.”

“You’re right, Peg,” came from both boys.

By this time they were out of the car, which they left standing at the roadside while they examined the vicinity for tracks.  But the grass in the field was fairly long and no traces remained.  Yet, inasmuch as the tracks of the Butterfly ended at the gap in the hedge, it was manifest that that was the point at which it had been wheeled off the road.

“What next?” asked Jimsy, as it became certain that there was little use in searching for a trail in the meadow.

“It’s like looking for a needle in that proverbial haystack,” struck in Peggy.

“In my opinion we need the patience of Job and the years of old Methuselah,” opined Jimsy.

Roy alone was not discouraged.

“It can’t be so very far off,” he urged; “it stands to reason that they can’t have come much further than this since midnight, supposing the machine to have been stolen about that hour.”

The others agreed with him.

“We’ll search all around here, including those woods,” declared Peggy.

“Well, they can’t have taken it very far into the woods,” declared Jimsy; “the spread of its wings would prevent that.”

“That’s so,” agreed Roy; “I think we are getting pretty ‘warm’ right now.”

“All I am afraid of is that they may have damaged it,” breathed Peggy anxiously.

“It would be in line with their other tactics,” agreed Roy; “men who would try to burn down a stable with two boys in it, just to obtain revenge for a fancied insult or injury, are capable of anything.”

Without further waste of time they crossed the meadow and came to the edge of the wood.  At the outskirts of the woods the trees grew thinly and it was plain that it would have been possible to wheel an aeroplane into their shadow, despite the breadth of its wing-spread.