The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-09-27
When AGirL
 M0rries
CHAPTER CCCIIxX.
By ANN LIsLE.


 back from the wreck of Sheldon Blake's car. Those heavy leather straps, used to hold baggage, had not been torn, nor had they burst. They were cut. The tank was undamaged. i It was the forward part of the car that was crump1ed.
 I tried to recall how the car had looked this morning. Sutting my eyes I made an effort to visualize the appearance of the tank ten hours be- fore. I could almost recollect-but just when I thought had it, I realized :, that I was trying so hard that I saw what I thought rather than what I re- membered.
 Then I recalled the sensation I'd had a few minutes before-the feel : ing that something heavy and inani- mate had brushed against me. A ghostly feeling, but one I knew very well must have been produced by inanimate thing. A piece of leather luggage. The figure I'd seen crouch ing at the top of the hill? I knew now that I had actually seen it, and that it wasn't a figment of my imagination Who could it have ' been?
 had any motive for removing any tell tale piece of evidence? Evvy Mason! ] But if Evvy Mason had been there before me, what motive could she i done out of pity for Val and in friendship for Lane? Evvy's part in the whole terrible business was my sterious, undeclared.
 My feeling of ghosts and haunting fear seemed suddenly to crystalize. All this had been premonition. l l had feared eviL And now I had the answer.
 Evvy had come to work it.
 I knew now that the figure I had glimpsed at the top of the hill was imagination. but Evvy. The heavy thing that had pushed me was some thing she had carried away from the doubtedIy what had come to get and i hide-the only piece of evidence that could condemn Val
 What was Evvy doing with it? Why had she gone toward Dream wold the Harrison place with it? I dreaded her malice. Val was in her { power and the Evvy I knew would her own ends. What those ends were I didn't know. Mischief might in- spire Evvy Mason to cruelty. A deep CT motive would make her even more
 Again I examined the heavy leather straps on the tank They had been hacked viciously until they had given way. I made my way cautiously around the car turning my f1ashlight on it as I went. Under the wrecked side, tucked away carelessly, l mo- i ticcd trailing leather strap. Ginger ly I pulled it out. A bulk of sole leather came with it and marked in i black against the tan were staring black letters: IS. B." ,, whispered to my soul. I'm too late. Too late to count. Evvy did this for purposes of her own"
 Then I turned and fled up the bank. When got to the plateau, I stopped, . breathless, looking back over the ! sheer side of crumbling clay up which I had rushed But with hardly a moments halt I started to force my way up again through the tangley of underbrush on the upper bank. 'I must hurry-hurryi'
 It danced through my brain, re- beating itself over and over again with dizzying insistence. ( For now the probable solution of the whole thing had come to me. "a
 ed to obtain and to destroy before other eyes fell on it and had rushed off to Dreamwold with her telltals z it, or Haunt it before Pat and Jeanie That was possible But what was : more> likely was that she would carry i the injured woman how completely she was in the power of one Evelyn Mason.
 Once, long months ago, Evvy had marriage. She had gloated over that tale of how poor Loretta Cosby went mad and how she had done away with herself at last, influenced probably by Lanes infatuation for the beautiful girl whose father was Lanes friend.
 Evvy might have used that story to ruin Val and Lane in the eyes of all whom respect was giving them the ! position and prestige they craved ir the new environment where they had come to make their way. So far she had refrained. But Uncle Ned anC Aunt Molhe, after meeting Evvy Mason at a shore resort. had Journey
 ed at once to the city. At the time I felt that they came to protect the Cosbys. But, even so, Jim and haC wondered at Evvy's- silence. She hat
 bided her time. She had made nc move Now Evvy's time had come.
 Evvy had only to revive that olt
 story to twist her facts and suspic
 ions about today into strong enougl
 tale and Val Cosby would be don ] for. There wouldn't be a corner o
 our vast country tiny enough to hid
 Val from scandal and scorn.
 No wonder then that l scramblet
 breathlessly up the hill, burst throug
 the underbrush and raced up the httl Eneen path as if all the ghosts I'd con