"Oh, you can laugh. Don't you dare laugh!" expostulated Agnes, quite beside herself, and scarcely knowing what she said. "But somebody must certainly have stolen Dot." "That might be," confessed Neale. "But who in the world would want to steal Sammy? I can't imagine anybody wanting a youngster like him." "Do be serious if you can, Neale," admonished Ruth, who had likewise been weeping, but was critical of the ex-circus boy as usual. "I am," declared Neale. "Only, let's get down to facts. Who saw them last and where?" He listened seriously to the story. His remark at the end might not have been very illuminating, but it was sensible. "Well, then, if Mrs. Kranz and Joe Maroni saw them last, that's the place to start hunting for the kids." "Didn't we go there?" demanded Ruth, sharply. "I have just told you--" "But you didn't find them," Neale said mildly. "Just the same, I see nothing else to do but to make Mrs. Kranz's store the starting point of the search. The whole neighborhood there should be searched. Start running circles around that corner of Meadow Street." "Didn't Luke and I go as far as the canal!" and Ruth was still rather warm of speech. "But I guess Neale is right, Ruth," Luke put in. "I don't know the people over there or the neighborhood itself. There may have been lots of hiding places they could have slipped into." "It's the starting point of the search," Neale declared dogmatically. "I am going right over there." "Do get out the auto," cried Agnes, who had uncanny faith in the motor car as a means of aid in almost any emergency. "And I'm going!" "Let's all go," Cecile Shepard suggested. "I think we ought to interview everybody around that shop. Don't you, Luke?" "Right, Sis," her brother agreed. "Come on, Miss Ruth. Many hands should make light work. It isn't enough to have the constables on the outlook for the children. It will soon be night." Although Ruth could not see that going to Meadow Street again promised to be of much benefit, save to keep them all occupied, she agreed to Neale's proposal which had been so warmly seconded by Luke. The boys got out the automobile and the two older Corner House girls, with Cecile, joined them. The car rolled swiftly away from home, leaving Tess in tears, Mrs. MacCall, Aunt Sarah, Uncle Rufus and Linda in a much disturbed state of mind, and poor Mrs. Pinkney in the very lowest depths of despair. They had all had a late luncheon--all save Neale. He had eaten only what he had put in his pocket when he left for his fishing trip to Pogue Lake that morning. It was approaching dinner time when they reached Meadow Street, but none of the anxious young people thought much about this fact. The news of the loss of Dot Kenway and Sammy Pinkney had by this time become thoroughly known in the neighborhood of the Stower property on Meadow Street. Not only were the tenants of the Corner House girls, but all their friends and acquaintances, interested in the search.