How her heart pounded!  It did not seem to beat, but rather to strike at her breast and almost to strangle her.

It was getting quite dusk, but once on the road and she would feel safe.

“Hey there!” came a call in a familiar voice.

The boys were just coming out of the woods at the far end of the oaks.

“What’s your hurry!” demanded Nat.

Dorothy felt like sinking down.  The relief was almost as overwhelming as had been her fear.

“Oh, do hurry!” she called rather feebly.  “I am almost dead!”

CHAPTER V

THE SEARCH

When Dorothy told her folks of what had happened, the boys could scarcely believe the strange story.  That any one should actually make such a wild-west attempt at robbery, within reach of the Cedars, certainly did seem incredible.  However, there was no disproving the marks on the girl’s arms, where they had been rudely tied, nor could any one deny that in the attempt to remove her bracelet her delicate wrist had been badly bruised.  At first it was thought best to at once notify the police, but, upon further consideration, Major Dale advised keeping the matter quiet, hoping that some one in the neighborhood would fall upon a clue to the daring young highwayman.

“I do hope the mystery will be cleared up before I leave for camp,” remarked Dorothy, as the family sat in the beautiful library at the Cedars, discussing the strange affair.  “I should never be satisfied with a written account of what may happen, when you find the culprit.”

“Oh, we can tell you that right now,” declared Nat, warmly.  “When we find him we will lynch him, burn him at the stake, and have him imprisoned for life.  When that sentence shall have been served we will make a fresh charge against him, and perhaps——­”

“Put him in a reformatory until he is twenty-one,” finished Ned.  “Well, he deserves it!  And to think that we should be almost within call!  Dorothy, I am inclined to question the wisdom of your silence.  Why didn’t you yell like thunder?”

“And have him put some terrible gag down my throat?”

“And get all sorts of germs therefrom,” added Joe.  “Doro, you did just right, and we are thankful that you got off as well as you did,” and her brother shook his head proudly, as if to say that a mere cousin could hardly know how a closer relative would feel on such a matter.

“I wish I could have seen him,” mused Roger, to whom the whole story seemed like a wonderful tale of the West.

“Just for effect,” put in Nat, with a laugh.  “Roger is rather sorry he missed the show—­he always falls for the scary part.”

But Dorothy did not mind the child’s natural curiosity.  In fact she told him again just how the strange robber was dressed, and how fierce he looked at her through the holes in the red handkerchief.

“Maybe he’ll come around to the camp,” said Roger hopefully.  “I’m going to have my rifle all ready.”