Seeing that she was actually nervous, the girls went outside, but the boys were not yet satisfied with their investigations. "What on earth is this rig-a-my-gig for?" asked Walter, indicating the big sloping circular platform which occupied nearly all the space in the shack. It was on a pivot and could be turned around. "Why, that's--let me see, that's----" but Jack couldn't just say what it was. "I know," exclaimed Ed, suddenly. "That's a treadmill." "A thread mill?" asked Walter. "No, a treadmill--a mill that was treaded. They used to make butter in olden times by having a sheep or a dog travel around on that sort of wheel, which was geared to a churn." "See page one hundred and eight Encyclopedia Fosteria," put in Jack, with a good natured slap on Ed's broad shoulders. "When you don't see what you want--ask Ed," he finished. Feeling that they had actually solved the mystery of the circular platform, the boys spent some time in examining the strange machine. Meanwhile the girls were peering in the broken windows of the old house, for Bess insisted that Nellie and Rose might have fallen ill after their long tramp from the strawberry patch, and that they might actually be lying within the tottering mass of mortar, beams and stones. But, of course, the fears of Bess were soon proved unfounded, and, at the urgent order of Cora, the party started again on the road to Squaton to get that "much delayed" crate of berries for Mrs. Perry Robinson. "Keep a lookout along the road for the girls," Cora directed, as they started off. "We might spy them resting under a tree." "You will never spy them," insisted Jack. "I am going to find Rose--my Rose, and Walter has his heart set on Nellie--_the_ Nellie. So you girls may go to sleep, if you wish, for all the good your looking will do." Only a joke--but many a jest begets a truth! So the motor girls thought, in their long search for the unfortunate runaways. CHAPTER VIII A STARTLING DISCOVERY All was confusion at the strawberry patch. The two orphan girls, Rose and Nellie Catron, had disappeared the night before, it was said, and not until shortly before the arrival of our friends in the automobiles, was another loss discovered--that of a pair of very valuable diamond earrings, the property of Miss Hanna Schenk, otherwise known among the pickers as "Mrs. Blazes." So it was that the Chelton young folks, as Jack said, "struck a hornet's nest," for Mrs. Ramsy, somehow, seemed to be of the opinion that Cora could tell, if she would, something about the runaways. "What could give you that idea, Mrs. Ramsy?" demanded Cora indignantly. "I only saw your nieces while I was here the other day, and I am sure I would have advised them to stay where they were, had they ever mentioned to me their intentions of leaving."