“Our rings!  Our rings!” the twins were wailing, and Connie, awakened by the noise, was crying beneath the covers of her bed.

“Maybe we’d better phone for Mr. Allan,” suggested Fairy.  “The girls are so nervous they will be hysterical by the time we finish searching the house.”

“Well, let’s do the up-stairs then,” said Prudence.  “Get your slippers and kimonos, and we’ll go into daddy’s room.”

But inside the door of daddy’s room, with the younger girls clinging to her, and Fairy looking odd and disturbed, Prudence stopped abruptly and stared about the room curiously.

“Fairy, didn’t father leave his watch hanging on that nail by the table?  Seems to me I saw it there this morning.  I remember thinking I would tease him for being forgetful.”

And the watch was not there.

“I think it was Sunday he left it,” answered Fairy in a low voice.  “I remember seeing it on the nail, and thinking he would need it,—­but I believe it was Sunday.”

Prudence looked under the bed, and in the closet, but their father’s room was empty.  Should they go farther?  For a moment, the girls stood looking at one another questioningly.  Then—­they heard a loud thud down-stairs, as of some one pounding on a door.  There was no longer any doubt.  Some one was in the house!  Connie and the twins screamed again and clung to Prudence frantically.  And Fairy said, “I think we’d better lock the door and stay right here until morning, Prue.”

But Prudence faced them stubbornly.  “If you think I’m going to let any one steal that fifty dollars, you are mistaken.  Fifty dollars does not come often enough for that, I can tell you.”

“It’s probably stolen already,” objected Fairy.

“Well, if it is, we’ll find out who did it, and have them arrested.  I’m going down to telephone to the police.  You girls must lock the door after me, and stay right here.”

The little ones screamed again, and Fairy said:  “Don’t be silly, Prue, if you go I’m going with you, of course.  We’ll leave the kiddies here and they can lock the door.  They’ll be perfectly safe in here.”

But the children loudly objected to this.  If Prue and Fairy went, they would go!  So down the stairs they trooped, a timorous trembling crowd.  Prudence went at once to the telephone, and called up the residence of the Allans, their neighbors across the street.  After a seemingly never-ending wait, the kind-hearted neighbor left his bed to answer the insistent telephone.  Falteringly Prudence explained their predicament, and asked him to come and search the house.  He promised to be there in five minutes, with his son to help.

“Now,” said Prudence more cheerfully, “we’ll just go out to the kitchen and wait.  It’s quiet there, and away from the rest of the house, and we’ll be perfectly safe.”  To the kitchen, then, they hurried, and found real comfort in its smallness and secureness.  Prudence raked up the dying embers of the fire, and Fairy drew the blinds to their lowest limits.  The twins and Connie trailed them fearfully at every step.