"Well, I tried to be on the lookout," she stammered, "and so I could not keep under shelter." "What on earth happened?" asked Ed, following Jack's example, and assisting Mrs. Robinson and Miss Steel over the rough mounds into the pathway. "Suppose we delay investigations," suggested Walter. "The ladies have certainly had a most unpleasant experience." "Unpleasant!" repeated Bess. "It was simply dreadful!" "How long have you been here?" asked Jack. "A life time!" ejaculated Belle. "And we were just approaching the re-incarnate state," added Cora, with a desperate attempt at frivolity. "Did you see any ghosts?" asked Ed, almost lifting the little Miss Steel over a rough spot. "Did we!" mocked Belle. "Oh, I mean the kind that--shine," explained Ed. "Not the mental species." "Belle had a regular series of apparitions," declared Bess, now running from the terror state into one of extreme hilarity, the natural reaction from her awful experience. "But we have to wait for that--chauffeur," wailed Mrs. Robinson. "Why should we wait for him?" asked Jack. "He has gone for something,--Cora knows," concluded the woman helplessly. "Why, when I found my starting system was out of commission he said it was best for him to go and get new batteries. So he hurried off in his car, to go to the shop we passed out on the turnpike. It was then we discovered we were in the graveyard. He had turned in here by the merest accident. It was so dreadfully dark." "He mistook this road for the one to Wayside," interrupted Belle. "And ran off and left you in a cemetery," said Ed with a sneer. "But we couldn't go on without the _Whirlwind_," argued Cora. "Had it been one of the smaller cars that failed we might have managed." "And he didn't try to fix your batteries?" inquired Walter. "Why, he said he--couldn't," answered Cora in a tone of voice that betrayed her own suspicions. "We really cannot go on without him," declared Mrs. Robinson, feeling that it was due to her matronly reputation to stand firm for the chauffeur. "We really _must_ go on without him," declared Jack. "Are we to catch our deaths of cold here, waiting for the return of a man, who should never have gone away? I have an idea that the fellow was simply scared, and so left his post----" "Oh, indeed!" interrupted Belle, "he did everything he could to fix the _Whirlwind_, but Cora declared it would not spark, and so he said he had to go for batteries. You see we could not possibly go on without the big car." "Well, we will start off. If we should meet him on the road we might--speak to him," said Jack with a sort of growl, "but personally I don't think the fellow worth that much consideration." "There will be plenty of room in all the good cars now," added Ed, "and we can come out to-morrow and get the _Whirlwind_." "But I cannot go, and leave my car behind," objected Cora. "I have never left it--on the road yet!"