At eleven o'clock the next morning the major's guests a.s.sembled for a late breakfast. The boys were stiff from their encounters with the tramps, and Jimmie, especially, was an object of pity. The major looked serious. He had a disagreeable duty to perform, and he wished to avoid it as long as possible. Miss Sallie, alone, was animated and talkative.

She had been entrusted with no confidences, and she felt the burden of no secrets. Neither did she guess that something was impending that was bound to surprise and horrify her.

Jose had not made his appearance and the major was relieved. The hour of reckoning was at hand, and he wished it over and done with. His old friend's son! Was it possible that a child of Jose Martinez could have so far forgotten the laws of hospitality as to rob and intrigue, and play tricks on his fellow guests?

"What a quiet, dull lot of people you are," exclaimed Miss Sallie, who at last began to notice the gloom that had settled on the party. "What is the matter?"

"I think it must be the weather, Miss Stuart," replied Stephen, coming to the rescue of the others. "It's a very oppressively warm day, and the air is so dry it makes me thirsty."

"It's the sort of weather, I imagine, they must have in plague-stricken southern countries," observed Ruth, "where there's no water," she continued drawing the picture which held her imagination, "and people are dropping around with cholera or the bubonic plague."

"Cheerful!" exclaimed Jimmie.

"I wonder where Jose is this morning," said Stephen, voicing the thought of everybody in the room except the unconscious Miss Sallie.

"Suppose you run up and see," suggested the major. "Tell him, Steenie,"

he added, patting his nephew affectionately on the shoulder, "that I wish to see him in the morning room when he finishes his breakfast. And, Stephen, my boy, don't be rough with him. Remember what an ordeal we'll have to put him through later. Good heavens!" he groaned, "such a lovely boy! If it only had not happened in my house!"

"Perhaps he can explain, in spite of everything," replied Stephen.

Presently he returned to the library.

"Jose is not in his room. He didn't sleep there last night. His bed is made up and there's not a wrinkle on it."

"Why, where can he be?" cried the major. "He couldn't have run away, could he?"

"Perhaps he is taking a morning walk," suggested Martin.

"Did he take anything with him!" asked Jimmie. "I mean are his things in his room?"

"I didn't notice," replied Stephen. "We'd better ask some of the servants, first, if they have seen him this morning, and then go back and have a look for ourselves."

But the servants could give no information. On examining Jose's room they found everything just as he had left it. He had taken nothing in his flight, not even a comb and brush.

"Even his pearl shirt studs are here," said Jimmie.

"How about his leather motor clothes?" asked Stephen.

"Here they are," replied his friend.

"How about his motor cycle?" asked the major with a sudden thought.

They ran down stairs and through the open door, followed by "The Automobile Girls," who were filled with excitement. At the garage the chauffeur was busy cleaning the motor cars.

"Is Mr. Martinez's motor cycle here, Josef?" demanded the major.

"Yes, sir," answered the chauffeur looking up from his work, surprised at the visit of so many people at once.

"Have you see him this morning?"

"No, sir."

"Strange," said the major. "I can't understand it. He must simply have slipped out of the house and gone for a long walk."

"Uncle," said Stephen, "suppose we wait until after lunch."

"Wait for what, my boy?"

"Why, for Jose, I mean. And then, if he doesn't turn up, we had better search for him."

The party sat about listlessly until lunch time. It was too hot to talk and the oppressiveness of the atmosphere gave them an uneasy feeling.

Jose had not taken even a hat, so Stephen said, and it turned out that only the day before the Spaniard had entrusted the major with a large sum of money to be locked in the family strong box until his visit was over.

"Stephen," exclaimed the major, finally, as the afternoon began to wane, "I can't stand this any longer. The boy may have wandered into the woods and been attacked by some of those tramp ruffians. Order the horses.

We'll ride to the Gypsy camp and take the road to town. Tell the girls to explain the situation to Miss Sallie while we are gone."

CHAPTER XX-THE FIRE BRIGADE

Ruth and Barbara related to Miss Sallie their adventures of the day before. She went through a dozen stages of emotion, and fairly wrung her hands over the tramps. The part about Jose she could not believe.

"That nice boy!" she exclaimed. "It is impossible." Then she grew indignant. "What does John Ten Eyck mean by bringing us into this lawless country, I should like to know?"

"But, auntie, the major declares it was never like this before. The woods have always been perfectly safe. When Stephen and Martin were little boys they used to play in them with only Old Jennie to look after them."

"Ruth," cried Miss Sallie, "the major is one of the nicest men in the world, but he always would overlook disagreeable things. He runs away from anything that hurts. He may have overlooked the tramps and robbers, just as he has been blind to ugliness whenever he could."

"He's a dear," said Mollie.

"Dear or no dear," cried Miss Sallie, "this time we really must go. Tell the chauffeur to fix up the machine, Ruth, my child, for to-morrow we shall leave this barbarous place."

"All right, auntie," replied her niece, relieved that they were not to go immediately, since they all wanted to see the episode of Jose through.

Time pa.s.sed, but the four hors.e.m.e.n did not return. The girls were sitting with Miss Sallie at the shady end of the piazza, watching the sun sink behind the forest. There was a smell of burning in the air that the sensitive nostrils of the chaperon had sniffed immediately.

"The wind must be blowing from the mountains to-day," she observed. "I smell burning as plainly as if it were at our gates."

"But, Miss Sallie," said Grace, "remember that it smelt like this in New York last week."

"My dear," replied Miss Sallie, "I am perfectly familiar with the smell of burning forests, I have smelt them so often in imagination. Why, see, the air is filled with fine ashes," she exclaimed, shaking out her lavender skirts with disgust. She had hardly spoken before a tall figure was seen hurrying across the lawn.

"It's blind Jennie," cried Ruth. "Perhaps she can give us news of the major or Jose."

As old Jennie approached they could see she was fearfully excited. Her face was working and several times she waved her stick wildly in the air. Just then a strange thing happened. Half a dozen terrified deer appeared from the direction of the forest, dashed madly across the lawn and disappeared in a grove on the other side. Squirrels and rabbits followed by the dozens, while distracted birds flew in groups and circled around and around the tops of the trees.

"What has happened, Jennie?" cried Ruth, shaking the blind woman by the arm.