For a moment after they were made prisoners Dave and his chum thought to try an attack upon the door, in an endeavor to batter it down. But then a command from the corridor made them pause.

“Now, you keep quiet in there and behave yourselves,” said a voice in fairly good English. “We are armed, and we mean business.”

“Who is it who is talking?” asked Dave.

“That’s none of your business, young man. You keep quiet or it will be the worse for you.”

“Say, Tony, you are wanted downstairs,” put in another voice out in the corridor. “There may be more of those spies around.”

“All right, Carlos,” was the quick reply. Then the gypsy called Tony raised his voice. “Now you fellows settle down and don’t try any funny work. Remember we are all armed and know how to shoot.”

“Look here, we want to talk this matter over,” said Dave, as he heard the gypsy prepare to go below.

278“I haven’t got time now. I’ll be back later. Now, no funny work remember, or you’ll get the worst of it!” and then those in the room heard the gypsies tramp downstairs. Mother Domoza had joined them, and all seemed to be in an angry discussion among themselves.

“Oh, Dave, do be careful!” pleaded Jessie. “They are dreadful people, and I am afraid they will shoot us!”

“Yes, you must both be very careful,” put in Laura. “I heard one of them say that if our folks attempted to follow them, there would surely be some shooting;” and the girl shuddered.

“Have they done you any harm?” questioned Roger, quickly.

“They have treated us very rudely, and they have given us awful food,” answered the daughter of the jewelry manufacturer.

“They wanted us to aid them in a demand for money, but we would not do it,” explained Laura. “We have had some dreadful quarrels, and that old Mother Domoza has been exceedingly hateful to us. Just now, when she brought in some food, she said we must write a letter home for money, and when we said we wouldn’t do it, she caught Jessie by the arm and shook her.”

Each of the girls was chained to a ring in the flooring by means of a heavy steel dog-collar fastened around her ankle and to a chain which had 279another steel dog-collar on the other end passed through a ring in the floor.

“They keep us chained up about half the time,” explained Laura.

“But not at night, I hope?” returned Dave.

“No. At night Mother Domoza releases us so we can go into the adjoining room where there is an old mattress on the floor on which we have to sleep. Mother Domoza, or one of the other gypsies, remains on guard in the hallway outside.”

“What about the windows?” questioned Roger.

“They are all nailed up, as you can see. Once we tried to pry one of them open, but the gypsies heard it, and stopped us.”

The two youths made a hasty inspection of the two rooms in which the girls were kept prisoners. Each apartment was about twelve feet square, and each contained a window which was now nailed down and had heavy slats of wood taken from the tumbled-down piazza nailed across the outside. The inner room, which contained the mattress already mentioned, had also a small clothing closet in it, and in this the girls had placed the few belongings which had been in Laura’s suit-case at the time they had been kidnapped.

“They took our handbags with our money away from us,” explained Jessie.

Of course the girls wanted to know how it was 280that Dave and Roger had gotten on the trail, and they listened eagerly to the story the chums had to tell.

“Oh, I knew you would come, Dave!” cried Jessie, with tears in her eyes. “I told Laura all along that you would leave Montana and come here just as soon as you heard of it;” and she clung tightly to our hero, while the look in her bedimmed eyes bespoke volumes.

“Yes, and I said Roger would come,” added Laura, with a warm look at the senator’s son.

“There’s one thing we can’t understand at all,” said Dave. “How was it that you left that train at Crandall, went to the hotel there, and then walked out on that country road to where the automobile was?”

“Oh, that was the awfulest trick that ever was played!” burst out Laura. “They must have planned it some days ahead, or they never could have done it.”

“Tell me,” broke in Roger suddenly, “wasn’t the driver of that car Nick Jasniff?”

“I think he was,” answered Dave’s sister. “We accused him of being Jasniff, but he denied it. Nevertheless, both of us feel rather certain that it is the same fellow who robbed Mr. Wadsworth’s factory.”

“We suspected Jasniff almost from the start,” said Dave. “But go ahead—tell us how they 281got you to leave the train and go to where they had the automobile.”

“You see, it was this way,” explained Laura. “At the very first station where the train stopped, a messenger came through the car calling out my name. He had a telegram for me, which read something like this: ‘We are on an auto tour to Boston. If you want to ride with us, leave train at Crandall and meet us at the Bliss House. Telegraph answer from Glenwood.’ And the telegram was signed, ‘Mrs. Frank Browning.’”

“Mrs. Frank Browning?” repeated Dave. “Do you mean the girl you used to know so well—Edith Parshall?”

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