For a long time the girls stared straight before them, deeply troubled.  It was not so much the thought of losing the old lady, although, having grown fond of her, they would miss her badly, as it was the realization that here was one person in deep trouble, whose burden they could not seem in any way to lighten.

“And we haven’t been able to get hold of that motorcyclist,” mourned Mollie.  “It makes me simply ferocious,” she added, with sudden vigor, “to think of his getting away with a thing like that and not even a day in prison to show for it.”

“And now with the boys gone,” added Amy, “I don’t suppose we’ll have a chance in the world of capturing him.”

“Humph,” groaned Grace disgustedly, the temporary glow of success fading before the torture of aching feet, “I don’t see that they helped very much when they were here.  We did the suggesting, and all they did was to laugh at our suggestions—­”

“Well, there’s no use in saying things about them now they’re gone,” said Amy, but Mollie caught her up indignantly.

“Goodness, Amy,” she cried, “it may not be your fault that you have a gloomy disposition, but you don’t need to sound exactly like a funeral!”

At this moment they were startled by the sound of a machine coming behind them at furious speed.  Some chickens, crossing the road and pecking lazily as they went, scurried with alarmed squawking into the woods on either side.

The girls, turning, started, gasped, then stared at each other.

“The motorcyclist!” cried Mollie, as they turned and ran after the fast disappearing machine.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CHASE

“I—­I—­don’t know what we’re running after him for!” gasped Mollie.  “We haven’t got a chance—­in the world—­of catching—­him.”

“Look,” panted Betty, pointing to a machine at the side of the road with a man in chauffeur’s uniform sitting behind the wheel, “maybe we can get him!  Quick—­”

Betty’s action always followed hard upon the heels of impulse, and before any of the girls had time to realize what she was going to do she had darted across the road, had said a few excited words, and was tumbling into the tonneau.

Without stopping to question, the girls followed, jumping in beside her, and the chauffeur, after one surprised look, touched his cap and the machine leapt forward like a wild thing.

Mollie had time, even in her excitement, to wonder how Betty had managed it.

“I think she hypnotizes them,” she muttered to herself.

And all Betty had really said to the man was, “Please follow that motorcyclist!  We mustn’t lose sight of him!” and the man, obeying that impulse for adventure that is in all of us, had complied.

The motorcyclist had sped around the corner and darted into one of the side streets.  A few minutes later the chauffeur turned the same corner with a recklessness that made them gasp, turned it just in time to see their quarry disappearing round another corner.