"Come on, Miss Lucinda!" cried May. "You can't get down any other way, you know. Look out! Here I go!" One by one the others followed, and Miss Lucinda could not distinguish them as they merged in the laughing crowd at the base. Delay was fatal; they would lose her again if she hesitated. In desperation she gathered her skirts about her, and let herself cautiously down on the floor. For one awful moment terror paralyzed her, then, grasping her skirts with one hand and her hat with the other and closing her eyes, she slid. Miss Lucinda did not "hump the bumps"; she slid gracefully around them, describing fanciful curves and loops in her airy flight. When she arrived in a confused bunch on the cushioned platform below, she was greeted with a burst of applause. "Ain't it great?" cried Floss, straightening Miss Lucinda's hat and trying to get her to open her eyes. "Dick says you are the gamest chaperon he ever saw. Sit up and let me pin your collar straight." But Miss Lucinda's sense of direction had evidently been disturbed, for she did not yet know which was up, and which was down. She leaned limply against Floss and tried to get her breath. "Excuse me," said a man's voice above her, "but are either of you ladies Mrs. Lura Doring?" The effect was electrical. Miss Lucinda sat bolt upright and stared madly about. Tom Speckert had told her to be sure to answer to that name. It would get him into trouble if she failed to do so. "Yes, yes," she gasped; "I am Mrs. Lura Doring." The members of her little party looked at her anxiously and ceased to laugh. The slide had evidently unsettled her mind. "Why, this is Miss Perkins--Miss Lucinda Perkins of Locustwood, Ohio," explained Dick Benson to the officer, "She's rather upset by her tobogganing, and didn't understand you." "I did," declared Miss Lucinda, making mysterious signs to Dick to be silent. "It's all right; I am Mrs. Doring." The officer looked suspiciously from one to the other, then consulted his memorandum: "Small, slender woman, yellow hair, gray eyes, answers to name of Mrs. Lura Doring. Left Chicago on June 10." "When did she get to New York?" asked the officer. "A week ago to-morrow, on the eleventh," said Floss. "Then I guess I'll have to take her up," said the officer; "she answers all the requirements. I've got a warrant for her arrest." "Arrest!" gasped Benson. "What for?" "For forging her husband's name, and defrauding two hotels in Chicago." "My husband--" Miss Lucinda staggered to her feet, then, catching sight of the crowd that had collected, she gave a fluttering cry and fainted away in the arms of the law. * * * * *