"Headstrong?" he repeated, plainly puzzled.

"Yes. You see Bess and the others think I am so--so--well, so scared I can't keep them in my possession. Well," Nan drew a deep breath, "I am scared. But, just the same, I'm not so scared as all that--and I'm going to prove it to them, so there!"

Walter gazed at her in open admiration for a moment.

"Nan, you're a brick!" he cried.

CHAPTER XXVI

WORTH A FORTUNE

Mr. Mason, by inquiry, had found out that the district known as Sunny Slopes was about sixty miles from Palm Beach, and the next morning they set off by motor for the place, Mrs. Mason having declared to her husband the night before that "it was of no use to put the thing off any longer. The girl's nerves were all on edge over that queer widow's mysterious papers. He may not have noticed it, but she had been watching Nan very closely."

So it came about that a big machine, carrying Mr. and Mrs. Mason, Nan and Bess and Rhoda, and enough luggage to last them at a hotel for a few days, and a torpedo-shaped little car bearing Walter and Grace set out bright and early to make the trip to Sunny Slopes.

Walter had taken it for granted that Nan would ride with him, and had seemed inclined to sulk when she decidedly refused. For Nan had taken herself very severely to task when she had reached her room the night before. She had broken her rule never to go anywhere with Walter unless the girls were along, and she would never, never do it again. She was particularly hard on herself to-day--and on poor Walter--because of the fact that she had enjoyed that dreamlike sail over the moonlight waters of Lake Worth more than she had ever enjoyed anything before.

So Walter, coming behind the big machine with Grace, sulked, and Grace scolded because, in his preoccupation, he nearly ran her and himself into a ditch.

Their route lay over the lake to West Palm Beach and then along a beautiful highway lined on either side with gorgeous palms.

"I don't wonder the place is called Palm Beach," remarked Rhoda. "I never dreamed of seeing so many fine palm trees before."

They had made careful inquiries concerning the route, and once the houses and bungalows were left behind they "hit it up" to a very respectable rate of speed. The roads, for the most part, were very good, and the only spots covered where they had to be careful were where there had been washouts.

"It is certainly a pretty landscape," remarked Grace, as they sped past one settlement after another. "I don't wonder that you said you'd like to make sketches, Nan."

"But I haven't made any yet," was Nan's answer, with a slight shrug of the shoulders.

They reached Sunny Slopes about noon, and decided--at least their ravenous appet.i.tes decided for them--that they had better have something to eat before they inquired further into the mystery of Mrs. Bragley's papers.

Nan was the only one who seemed very much excited, and the others did not notice that the girl scarcely touched her lunch. It seemed an age to her before the meal was finished and Mr. Mason declared that they were ready to make their investigations.

Nan and her friends would have been very much surprised had they known that they were being followed on their trip to Sunny Slopes, yet such was a fact. The two men who had tried so hard to gain possession of Sarah Bragley's doc.u.ments were growing desperate.

"We've got to do something and do it quick," snapped the tall, thin man.

"Do you hear me?"

"I certainly do," growled the other.

"If we fail we won't get a cent of the cash that was promised to us."

"I know that, too," answered the short man, and scowled deeply.

Mr. Mason had once, in his less affluent days, been a real estate broker himself, and so pooh-poohed his wife's suggestion that he get some one who knew the country to direct them.

"My dear," he said, "if this Mrs. Bragley has any property around here, I'll find it."

He had, with Nan's consent, examined the doc.u.ments the widow had given her and had seemed, to Nan's eager eyes, to have been considerably impressed by them.

So now as they crowded out of the restaurant--it was the first one they had come to, and they had been too hungry to argue about its elegance or lack of it--and climbed into the cars again, Nan could hardly keep still in her eagerness to know the truth at once.

They pa.s.sed down a short business street, and then, making a turn, came out on a broad country road.

"Sunny Slopes begins about a mile from here," said Mr. Mason. "It covers quite a bit of territory, I am told. While one end is quite barren, the other end is excellent for orange growing and is covered with bearing trees."

"Oh, dear, I hope Mrs. Bragley's end is the orange-growing end!" cried Nan.

"Don't be too much disappointed if it isn't," said Mrs. Mason kindly.

Suddenly Bess, who had been laughing and talking with Rhoda about school affairs, gave a little bounce and cried out excitedly:

"Look there! Isn't that an orange grove?"

"It surely is," Mr. Mason called back to her, adding in a voice that showed his rising excitement: "Your widow's property ought to be somewhere in here, Nan. I think I'll stop the car and we can go forward on foot."

"Oh!" said Nan softly, as, a moment later, she jumped out into the road.

"I never saw an orange grove before. Isn't it wonderful!"

"Goodness!" said Bess, as Grace and Walter drew up behind the big car and ran around and joined them, "it looks as if they had all been drawn after the same pattern--the trees, I mean. Did you ever see anything so symmetrical in all your life?"

It was the first time any of them, except the Masons, had been close to an orange grove, and they all went forward for a closer look at it. The grove was set quite a way back from the road and seemed to cover many acres of ground, stretching symmetrically back as far as the eye could see.

The orange trees were not tall, and were shaped very much like the little toy trees the children use to build their landscape gardens--broad at the bottom and tapering up almost to a point at the top.

From his examination of the doc.u.ments carried by Nan, Mr. Mason had jotted down a number of facts and figures. Now the lawyer walked forward slowly and presently examined a number of stone markers he found set in the ground. Then he walked to a side road and read the signs thereon. A smile of satisfaction crossed his face.

Nan, standing close to Mr. Mason, touched his arm timidly.

"Is this Mrs. Bragley's property?" she asked in an awed tone.

"These are most certainly the orange groves mentioned in her doc.u.ments,"

he said gravely. "How much of it she owns will have to be determined by an attorney. But I guess," he added, looking down at Nan with a kindly smile, "that the property she holds here is worth a tidy sum, several thousand dollars at least. Of course the orange grove itself is worth a fortune."

"I'm so glad!" cried Nan happily. "I just can't wait to let poor Mrs.

Bragley know about it."

"Well, I must say," said Bess, "that this is the first time I've really thought those old papers were worth anything, Nan. Perhaps now we can get rid of them so we won't have any more trouble."

"Then there was a real reason for those men shadowing Nan," said Walter, adding with an unusually fierce scowl: "If they turn up again, I will kill them, that's all, even if it lands me in jail."

"My, aren't we dangerous," said Nan, laughing at him.

Nan never afterward knew just how it happened, but some way or other, among the orange trees, she managed to get separated from the rest of the party. She was so engrossed with happy thoughts of the success of her plan to help Mrs. Bragley and so absorbed in imagining the woman's surprise and joy at the news she was about to receive that it was some time before she woke up to the fact that she was alone.