“My!” exclaimed Tavia, later. “There is a whole lot to making up a plot; isn’t there? And how wise you are,

Doro!”

“But you see, my child, you can’t go ahead with this scheme as you first mapped it out,” observed Dorothy, drily.

“Oh, I see,” agreed her friend. “Mr. Somes can’t arrest the man who calls himself ‘John Smith.’”

“Of course not. Nor can anybody else arrest him. He has committed no crime in trying to get money for his

information about Tom Moran.”

“But how will you fix him?”

“You see, if Mr. Somes will allow the clerk at the general delivery window of the post-office to make some signal

when a person comes to call for this letter I have written, we will have somebody on the watch to follow John Smith.

Then we’ll find out who he is——”

“If it is a ‘he,’” interposed Tavia.

194 “Of course it is,” returned her friend. “It’s a man’s handwriting. And a very bad, ignorant man, I am

afraid.”

“He doesn’t belong to Dalton, then,” declared Tavia, earnestly. “Since the liquor crusade, when the saloons were

all shut, we haven’t had many men of bad character in Dalton.”

“That’s right,” agreed Dorothy. “But you see, there is always a ‘floating population.’ Work such as your

father’s company is doing brings in irresponsible men from outside. They have no interest in the fair name of

Dalton, so we mustn’t be surprised if they misbehave,” said sensible Dorothy.

“But who is going to watch all the time at the post-office?” demanded Tavia.

“The window for the delivery of letters is open from eight till eight. We’ll get the boys to help us take turns.

There are you and me, Johnny, Joe and Roger—even Roger isn’t too little to follow the man and find out where he

lives,” said Dorothy, briskly. “Then we can pull my cousins, and Bob Niles, and Abe Perriton into it. That makes

nine of us. Nine in twelve hours—— What does nine in twelve make, Tavia?”

“One hour and twenty minutes each—about. Oh, all right!” exclaimed Tavia. “Of course we can watch. But the

question is: Will that do any good?”

195 Dorothy would not listen to any croaking. She wrote the decoy letter, and the two girls went down town and saw

Mr. Somes privately. He knew both Tavia’s father and Major Dale; and when the girls from Glenwood disclosed to the

postmaster just why they wished to find Tom Moran, and all about Celia, and the letter Dorothy had received from

“John Smith,” he agreed to help them.

It was arranged, however, that the letter should not be put in the mail until the following morning, so that the

girls might fully arrange the “watch-and-watch” on the general delivery letter window.

Their boy friends fell into the scheme with alacrity. Dorothy and Tavia did not explain entirely their interest in

Tom Moran, nor why there was such a hue and cry after that red-haired young man; but——

“It doesn’t matter,” said one of the lads, cheerfully. “If Dot says she wants to find the chap—and this fellow

who wrote the bum letter—we’ll do just what she says. Dot’s all right, you know, fellows!”

But that very morning there came word over the telephone to Abe Perriton’s house that started the excitement in a

new quarter. A man named Polk, who ran a sawmill on Upper Creek, asked Mr. Perriton to hire several men in Dalton if

he196 could, as he had work that must be rushed and he needed an extra force of hands.

“And I haven’t been able to hire a soul up here, except Tom Moran, who came along last night. And I’m afraid he

won’t stay. He’ll not promise to.”

“Here, Abe,” said Mr. Perriton. “Didn’t I hear something about your friends wanting to see Tom Moran? He’s up

to Polk’s mill.”

That was enough. The boys started with the Firebird inside of ten minutes picking up Dorothy and Tavia on the way.

But nobody thought to telephone to the mill man to ask him to hold the red-haired man until the Firebird party

arrived.

It was over another rough road to Polk’s mill on Upper Creek. “Dear, dear,” complained Tavia, “I am half in

doubt whether the geographers have got it right. Perhaps the world isn’t round. I don’t see how it can be when it

is so awful bumpy!”

“You feel like Nat did, I guess,” chuckled Ned. “That was when my lovely brother was a whole lot younger than he

is now—hey, Nat?”

“What’s the burn?” asked Nathaniel White, Esquire.

“’Member when Miss Baker put the poser to you in intermediate school? ’Member about it, boy?”

“Oh, that’s an old one,” grunted Nat.

197 “Let’s hear it—do,” cried Dorothy. “Did Nattie miss his lesson?”

“He wasn’t paying much attention, I reckon,” said Ned, just scaling a corner post as they took a turn, and

scaring ............