The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point Part 28

"Don't try to get up," commanded Mollie, as Amy tried weakly to raise herself on her elbow.

"Just lie still and you'll feel better in a minute," Grace added, while Amy looked from one to the other of them with wide, bewildered eyes.

"What happened," she asked, then, as memory came sweeping back to her, she gave a little cry and covered her eyes with her hand.

"Oh, girls," she cried, "I thought I was going to die!"

"Yes, yes, we know," said Betty soothingly, as though she were talking to a little child, "but you're all right now, dear."

"Don't try to tell us about it unless you want to," added Mollie.

"I swam out farther than I meant to," Amy went on, as though they had not spoken. "And when I tried to get back I found that something was wrong with my right leg." She was shivering with exhaustion and the memory of the awful experience she had gone through, but when the girls tried to stop her she would not listen and hurried on feverishly.

"It was a cramp I guess, and the harder I tried to get rid of it the worse it got till finally I got panic-stricken. I called to you girls, but you didn't seem to hear me. Then--" she paused, and the girls held their breath as she looked around at them. "Then--I went down. I came up again and called, and--and--I saw you, Betty. Oh, it was terrible!"

"Then," cried Betty, her voice trembling, "when you went down that last time--"

"I didn't go down," Amy contradicted her. "I struggled so hard that I succeeded in getting my head above water and--that was when you reached me--Betty--"

"Thank Heaven," said Betty, with a little sob, "that I was there!"

CHAPTER XXII

DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN

"Well," said Mollie, with a sigh, "I fancy there isn't very much use of our sitting around here in our bathing suits. I, for one, don't feel like swimming any more to-day."

"Nor I," agreed Grace.

"And I," said Amy, turning away with a shudder from the water where she had so closely come to death, "feel as if I never wanted to see the water again."

"Oh, but you will get over that," Betty a.s.sured her quickly. "I don't blame you a bit for feeling that way now--I do myself--but after a while you will be just as crazy about it as ever."

"I don't know," said Amy slowly. "When you have once come face to face with death like that, you are not anxious to do it again in a hurry."

"But you have never had a cramp before," reasoned Mollie, "and you probably never will have one again."

"But I am not sure of that," insisted Amy.

"There's no reason why you can't be sure of it after a while," Betty pointed out. "You see, we girls are pretty well out of practice. It's a long time since we did any swimming to amount to anything, and our muscles are weak and flabby. Why, we all got tired out to-day twice as quickly as we ordinarily would."

"And you tried to swim too far," added Mollie. "That's the reason your poor old muscles protested."

"It might have happened to any one of us," Grace agreed. "All we need is a little practice to swim as well as ever again."

"Oh, do you think so?" asked Amy eagerly, while the color came back into her pale cheeks. "If I could only be sure of that!"

Betty was about to reply, but at that minute a voice hailed them from the direction of the house and they jumped up to see what was wanted.

"It's mother," said Grace. "And she seems to be waving something at us."

"It's an envelope," cried Mollie. "It may be a letter from mother."

She started running toward the house, with Grace, thinking of Will, at her heels, while Betty helped Amy to her feet.

"Are you feeling stronger now?" she asked. "Or would you rather rest a little longer?"

"Oh, I'm all right," Amy a.s.sured her, though for a minute she had to cling to Betty for support.

They made their way rather slowly after the others. Before they had reached the foot of the bluff Mollie came scrambling down again and ran toward them wildly.

"What do you think has happened now?" she cried, taking Amy's other arm and helping her along.

"Oh, Mollie," cried Amy, standing stock still to gaze at her, "what--"

"The twins haven't been found?" Betty questioned eagerly, but Mollie shook her head.

"No such luck," she returned. "But we have found out one thing. Those blessed little twins are alive, anyway."

"How do you know?" they queried breathlessly.

By this time they had reached the top of the bluff and were all, Mrs.

Ford included, hurrying toward the house.

"They received a letter," Mollie explained, sinking down on a step of the porch while the others crowded about her eagerly, "from some old rascal--oh, if I could only get my hands on him!" she paused to glare about her ferociously, but they impatiently hurried her on.

"Yes! But the letter!" Betty urged.

"It was from a man who demanded twenty thousand dollars--" she paused again, while the girls gasped and crowded closer, "for the return of the twins."

"Then they were kidnapped!" cried Grace.

"Yes. But they ran away first," explained Mollie, almost beside herself with anger and excitement. "And this old--brute! found them, and, I suppose because they were well dressed, thought he saw a way to make some easy money. Oh, my poor darlings! My poor little Paul and Dodo!

Girls, we've just got to find them, that's all. I can't sit here and do nothing a minute longer."

"But the police--" Amy suggested.

"Oh, the police! Of course they are on the job--or think they are,"

interrupted Mollie scornfully. "But I don't believe they will be able to find our babies in a thousand years. And every time I think of them, frightened to death! Oh, our precious babies!"

"I wonder how he found out where they lived," broke in Grace, who had been following her own train of thought.

"They told him, of course," said Mollie. "Poor little trusting angels, of course they would think any grown person was their friend. Oh, if they had only fallen in with some respectable person instead of that--that--" she could think of nothing bad enough to call the man who had stolen the twins.

"Of course," said Mrs. Ford--it was the first time she had spoken--"your mother showed the letter to the police."