“Not yet,” said Billie. Her eyes, become more accustomed to the dim light, had lighted upon something interesting among the junk. What had caught her attention was a large, clumsy-looking thing like a queerly shaped wooden box. The girls watched her curiously as she bent over to examine it. “You haven’t found your ghost, have you?” asked Vi, in a voice that was meant to be sarcastic. “No,” said Billie, a thrill of wonder and excitement creeping into her voice. “But I may have found something! Girls, come here and have a look at this!” The girls picked their way over the rubbish that littered the floor. What had seemed like a peculiarly shaped box proved on closer inspection to be some cunningly fashioned wooden machinery. The girls looked at each other in awed silence. To them all in an instant had come the same thrilling thought. “The lost invention!” murmured Billie. “And we thought there was nothing here!” CHAPTER XX—STOLEN “Oh, but how do we know?” protested Laura. “It looks like machinery of some kind, but we have no way of proving that it is the stolen invention.” “No,” said Billie, still in a kind of daze. “It may be just some old worthless thing that has been put up here because it is of no use to anybody. But then again——” “Oh, I think Laura’s right,” put in Vi, to whom this new find of Billie’s was not very interesting. It seemed absurd to put any value on that queer-looking thing. And besides, she was anxious to get out of that musty, ill-smelling place. “I thought of Mrs. Haddon at first too, but——” “Hello! I wonder what this is,” Laura interrupted her. There had been some blue prints lying on the floor near the wooden machinery. In the poor light they had remained unnoticed until Laura had stumbled upon them quite by accident. In her eagerness, Billie forgot to be polite. She snatched the papers from her chum and made her way to the nearest dust-begrimed window. She scanned the prints eagerly and finally came to the thing she had so wildly hoped to find. It was only a name, but it told a great deal. The blue prints were evidently the design of some sort of machinery, and down at the foot of one page the designer had put his name—Henry Haddon. “Girls, girls, look!” cried Billie, almost beside herself with excitement at her discovery. “Now maybe you’ll dare to say I’m crazy and I don’t know what I’m talking about. I dreamed of it two nights in succession, and now my dream has come true——” “Well, for goodness’ sake, stop waving that thing around and tell us what you’re raving about,” commanded Laura, snatching the blue print from Billie in her turn, while Vi crowded close, looking curiously over her shoulder. “Here! At the bottom of this page!” crowed Billie, pointing out the name. “See it? Henry Haddon!” “Henry Haddon!” repeated Laura excitedly. “Then it looks as if that really were his invention.” “It is the knitting machinery model!” cried Vi, forgetting that a moment ago she had scoffed at the idea.