"Wish she'd been up there in that house to get scared." muttered Jess.

"And Laura seems to have taken a car back to town, likewise," said Nellie.

Laura's absence began to trouble Jess. She searched among the other girls, but could get no word of her chum.

"She beat us," laughed Mary O'Rourke, when Jess approached her with the question. "She's gone home."

There was a deal of bustle and laughter as the girls climbed into the special cars. They had recovered from their fright now, and some laughed at it. But not a girl could say what the light was they had seen bobbing over the ground. And the three who had been in the house were half tempted to believe that they had seen something supernatural in that uncanny east room.

"At any rate, I _felt_ there was something there the moment I went in,"

declared Nellie.

"It was an awfully spooky place," agreed Dora.

"And it smelled-just like a tomb," said Jess.

"I wouldn't go into the house again for a farm!" declared Nellie.

"Not after dark, at any rate," Jess said, more bravely.

"Never again-dark or light," declared Dora. "And I guess the seniors and juniors were scared just as much as we were. They can't laugh at us."

"My! I hope the rest of the initiation won't be as bad as this," said Nellie.

"If it is, I'll want to renig," said Dora. "It costs too much to be an M. O. R."

"We certainly are a brave lot of 'Mothers of the Republic,'" laughed Mary, who heard the soph.o.m.ores conversing.

"That's all right!" spoke up Jess. "But you didn't go into that house yourself."

"Quite true. It wasn't my place. I was only sending you infants there,"

returned Mary.

But when the girls all left the cars on Market Street and Jess finally separated from the others at the corner of Whiffle Street, she began to worry about Laura again. It seemed strange that her chum should have run right home.

There was the Belding house ahead. There were figures on the porch. Jess halted at the gate.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Chet Belding. "Where's Laura, Jess?"

He and Lance came down the walk hastily. Jess leaned weakly on the gate, smitten now with the fear that something must have happened to her chum.

"Isn't she here, Chet?" she asked.

"Of course not."

"Didn't she come home with you?" demanded Lance, hastily.

"No. Oh, oh! Something dreadful has happened. Tell me honest, boys-isn't she here?"

"No, she's not," they both a.s.sured her, and Chet opened the gate.

"Tell us what's happened," he said. "But speak low. Mother's gone to bed with a head-ache and father's gone to the lodge. Why! Jess! you're crying!"

And Jess _was_ sobbing nervously. She could not help it. Her fear for Laura's safety had taken form now, and for a minute she could not answer the boys' excited question at all.

CHAPTER XVI-WHERE IS LAURA?

Launcelot Darby was rather impatient with Jess Morse. He would have shaken her had not Chet interfered.

"Hold on! hold on!" said Laura's brother, yet quite as anxious as his chum. "You tell us your own way, Jess. But _do_ hurry. We're dreadfully anxious."

"I-I mean to tell you," sobbed Jess. "Something dreadful has happened-and I ran away and left her."

"Ran away and left who-Laura?" gasped Lance.

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Up in Robinson's Woods."

"At the picnic place?"

"No."

"Back in the woods, then?" demanded Chet.

"Up on the side of the mountain. You-you know that-that old house--"

"The haunted house!" exclaimed Lance.

"The old Robinson house?" cried Chet.

"Yes."

"What under the sun were you doing there?"

"I-I can't tell you. It-it was something about the initiation--"

"Those blessed Mary O'Rourkes!" cried Lance, smiting his hands together.

"The M. O. R.'s," said Chet. "You girls were all up there?"

"Ye-es."