The first mile was a long drag uphill, but the girls struggled gamely on. Presently, to their relief, they found themselves on high but fairly level ground, and were too hot with their exertions to feel the chill, penetrating damp that was settling upon everything. They made short work of the next couple of miles. Up till now they had met no sign of habitation. Here, however, at the corner of a cross-road, was a small, thatched cottage. The place looked deserted, but remembering the directions given them, they held on to the left. The road dropped down into a little hollow. Here they came across another house, a square, stone farm-house this time, with three or four children and a couple of dogs playing about in the roadway. They dismounted and inquired of the eldest child if she had seen a girl of about her own age, riding a bicycle, pass by within the last half-hour. The girl shook her head, and on being questioned declared that they had been playing in the road for quite a long time, but that she had seen no one pass except Farmer Wootten's wagon. The smaller children said the same. Duane looked at Kitty rather perplexedly. "Funny they should have missed her. She can't have passed here very long ago." The girls mounted again, but had not gone very far--only round the next bend--when they came across a horse and cart and two road menders, just preparing to leave their work of laying down granite and start their return journey to Frattenton. Here the two cyclists were brought "up against it" very definitely, for both men stated positively and convincingly that no one had passed that way for the last hour save a man driving a farm wagon, for they had been working on the road all the time. CHAPTER X A NIGHT ON THE DOWNS The two girls stood and looked at each other in dismayed silence. Kitty thought rapidly. "If she _has_ come this way, it must have been in the last half-hour. I remember seeing her leave the tea-table when the other girls did, and thought she was with them when they went to get their bikes. I wasn't more than twenty minutes mending that puncture, so that we weren't more than half-an-hour behind when we left. And we've most likely reduced that, for we've covered the ground quicker than she could, I bet." "Then, if she has not passed here," Duane demanded, "where is she?" "There's only one turning she could possibly have mistaken for the Frattenton road. You remember the one where that cottage was." She turned to one of the men. "Where does the road to the right, a little way back, go to?" "That!" replied the man. "That don't lead to nowhere, miss. That be only a road fur th' farm carts. It ends in a sheep track across th' downs." "And how far on is Frattenton?" inquired Duane. "Barely two miles, miss." "Well, if she has passed here she's there by now all right," remarked Kitty. "Only, supposing she's taken the wrong road and is wandering over the downs now? I know what downs are."