“Oh, stop the car, Miss Alling, please!” cried Jessie, on impulse, and automatically Miss Alling responded.

The car slowed to a standstill before the store upon the porch of which Amy had seen the strange girl.

“She is gone, worst luck!” cried Amy, as she opened the car door and leaped to the ground. “Did you see the look she gave me, Jess?” she added, as her chum followed her and together they approached the store. “Just one long stare, and then the disappearing act.”

“Oh, hush,” cautioned Jessie, as she laid a hand upon the crazily-swung screen door at the entrance to the store. “She may be just inside, and we don’t want her to know we are talking about her.”

But the strange girl was not within, as Jessie and Amy soon found out, and a guarded questioning of the languid storekeeper brought forth no information as to her whereabouts.

There was a door at the rear of the store, and to this Amy ran, opening it and peering out into the littered yard. Jessie followed more slowly, for she had no desire to arouse either the curiosity or the suspicion of the sleepy-eyed storekeeper.

Back of the small cleared space that served for a back yard and which was crammed with old packing boxes and rubbish of all kinds, was a vegetable garden and beyond that, the woods. If the strange girl had fled in this direction there would be scant chance of finding her.

Disappointed, the girls turned away and Jessie stopped to buy a box of crackers and some sorry-looking candy from the man behind the counter, who seemed as if about to be shocked into wakefulness by their peculiar actions.

“There was a stairway going up from the back of that store. I saw it,” Amy said in a low tone to her chum, as they returned to their curious companions. “If that isn’t the way that girl disappeared, then I am no good as a detective.”

“We could hardly have gone up those stairs without being arrested for housebreaking,” Jessie argued reasonably, but Amy shook her head.

“I would be almost willing to risk spending a night in the county jail for the pleasure of talking to that girl again,” she said.

Nell and the three boys greeted them with curious questions when they returned and listened with interest when they told of their fruitless search for the girl who had passed the counterfeit bill.

Darry was obviously excited and upset, and asked them so many questions that Amy finally snapped out at him with:

“For goodness’ sake, Darry, we have told you all we know about four times over. Now, if you want to find out anything else, you will have to turn sleuth yourself.”

“I intend to,” retorted Darry, with decision adding, as he turned toward the store: “Excuse me for a few minutes, folks. I have a consuming curiosity to talk with the owner of this place.”

The girls and boys looked after him until he had disappeared within the store, then exchanged curious glances.

“Darry sure seems all ‘het up’ over this girl,” remarked Burd, with a chuckle. “Never knew him to take so much interest in a stranger before.”

“Maybe he is in with the gang of counterfeiters,” suggested Fol, grinning, “and is afraid this mysterious young thing may give him away.”

“Here comes Darry now. Let him speak for himself,” said Amy.

But Darry seemed to have no intention of speaking for himself or for any one else. He looked as black as a thundercloud as he flung down the steps, and had hardly a word to say in answer to their eager questions.

“I found out a good many things that don’t help me any,” he said, taking Burd and Fol by the arm and heading them back toward the roadster. “Let’s get started. Something tells me we are wasting more time than is necessary.”

The only one who agreed with him was Miss Alling. Mildly interested in the account of the counterfeit bill and the girl who had passed it, Aunt Emma was much more vitally concerned with the passage of time and that stretch of mountain road that they would have to cover at the end of their journey.

So as Darry herded the boys into the roadster she stepped on the starter and Jessie and Amy had no alternative but to climb hastily into the car before she released the brake and threw in the clutch.

Amy looked regretfully at the blank face of the store as they moved away.

“I have an idea there are just slathers of mystery surrounding that girl, Jess,” she said, in a low tone. “I hate to go away and leave it all unsolved.”

“Perhaps we can come back here some day before long,” remarked Jessie, absently. Her mind was busy with the problem of Darry and his strange behavior. “Gibbonsville can’t be such a very long drive from Forest Lodge.”

“Humph, by the time we get back here that girl will have had ............