While fathers, mothers, and other relatives were gathering up their own children, or children of whom they had charge, to see that they were safely loaded into the two big trucks to go home from the picnic, the Bobbsey twins—­at least Bert and Nan—­were searching for their father’s coat.  Flossie and Freddie were too small to pay much attention to anything of this sort.  The smaller twins were talking about the merry-go-round and starting over again the dispute as to who should ride on the wooden lion.

“Are you sure you left your coat hanging on the tree limb?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

“I’m certain of it,” her husband answered.  “And this old coat never was mine—­I wouldn’t own it!”

He dropped to the ground the ragged garment that had been found lying beneath the tree.

“I thought maybe you had hung your coat over by the ice cream shed,” went on Mrs. Bobbsey.  “You may have done that and have forgotten about it.”

“No, I didn’t do that,” said the father of the Bobbsey twins.  “I remember hanging my coat on the tree, for I recall noticing what a regular hook, like one on our rack at home, a broken piece of the branch made.  My coat was here.  But it’s gone now, and this old one is left in place of it.”

There was no question about that.  Search as Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey and the children did, over the picnic grounds, the lumberman’s coat, with money in one pocket and papers in another, was gone.

“Who do you s’pose could have taken it?” asked Nan, as her father looked about him with a puzzled air.

“I don’t know,” he answered, “unless——­”

“Maybe it was tramps!” interrupted Bert.

“There weren’t any tramps here on our picnic grounds,” said Mrs. Bobbsey.  “Some of the drivers of the merry-go-round trucks looked like tramps, but they didn’t get off their seats, did they?”

“Not that I noticed,” her husband answered.  “Well, there’s no use looking farther.  My coat is gone—­stolen I’m afraid.  This old one is left in its place.  I haven’t any use for this,” and he kicked it to one side.  “Never mind.  It isn’t cold.  I can ride home without a coat.”

“There’s a lap robe in the auto,” Mrs. Bobbsey said.  “You can wrap that about you if you get chilly on the way home.”

“Yes,” agreed Mr. Bobbsey, “I can do that.  Trot along, Bobbsey twins.  Get into your picnic truck, and we’ll see who gets home first.”

“Like Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf,” laughed Flossie.

While Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey walked over to where Mr. Bobbsey had left the runabout auto in which he and his wife had come to the picnic grounds, Bert, Nan, and the other children took their places in the big truck.

     “Merrily we roll along—­roll along—­roll along!”

Some one started that song as the trucks rumbled out of the picnic grove.  On account of the broken bridge a different road home had to be taken; a longer one.  Having a lighter car than the trucks, Mr. Bobbsey and his wife could go faster than the loads of merry-makers, and the twins waved good-by to their parents, who were soon lost to sight.