"I seem to have two or three doubles around the country," he remarked. "I am continually being taken for somebody or other. Sorry not to have had the previous pleasure of your acquaintance, but I hope that we may follow up the little we have made." He left her with a deferential bow, and she ran to tell Patricia and Ilga of her blunder. How Harold would have laughed! But he had left for home as soon as it had been ascertained that the trains were running on time. The next day, returning to her apartment for a light wrap, after the evening meal, Mrs. Illingworth passed her dressing-table, and stared in amazement. The girls, in their room, heard her peremptory call. "Patty, have you been meddling with my jewel cases again?" "No, mamma, I haven't touched them," she answered comfortably. "Are you sure? Think! Come here quick!" Patricia sprang to obey. Her mother's voice was tense and sharp. More than once she had made free to appropriate necklaces and bracelets for her own adornment in plays with the children, but this time she was quite innocent of any misbehavior. "Why!--why!" she gasped, gazing, big-eyed, at the beautiful empty cases, "where are all your jewels? I haven't taken a single thing! Have I, Polly? We were playing tennis early, and then we went to ride, you know. Why, what could--" But Mrs. Illingworth waited for no more; dashing from the room, she hurried to the office to report her loss. She was only one of many. While supper was in progress the rooms of the guests had been rifled of money and jewelry to the amount of thousands of dollars. The thief had entered the apartments by means of a skeleton key, for most of the doors had been locked. "Oh, I wonder if he took my lovely coral bracelet!" cried Patricia, who had followed her mother downstairs. The girls scampered back, to find their fears true. Patricia's pretty bits of jewelry, as well as Polly's pansy pin, were gone. They were distressed over their loss, but their excitement was a small part of that throughout the hotel. The authorities were not long in placing the charge. The men who had accompanied Harold from the railway wreck had vanished, and although they were traced to a neighboring town, there they seemed to be utterly lost. Perhaps nobody grieved more than did Polly. "And the man was so pleasant to me!" she mourned. "To think he should go and steal my pretty pin--Chris's present!" The occurrence actually made her homesick, and she longed for the day when her month should be up. It had been arranged for her to travel in company with an elderly gentleman who must pass through Fair Harbor on his way home, and she would have hoped that his business would hasten his going, only that she had promised the entire month in return for the fifty dollars.