now?” Judy asked.

Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed monster coming between her and her handsome husband, Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It is. It’s the very same one.”

“But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!” Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”

“I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home. But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way. If she did, she pretended not to.

“Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”

“I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically. “Do you recognize it, too?”

“I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little more closely the picture they had found. “It looks like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”

“The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned. “Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny all the way to Farringdon.”

“Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”

“Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them. “I never thought it led to a house, though. There isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents took?”

“Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?” Lois suggested.

CHAPTER III

Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to it under one condition. They were not to drive all the way to the house which, she said, was just over the hilltop. They were to park the car where no one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.

“But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.

“You’ll remember it, won’t you?”

Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure. She and Lois both argued that it would be better to inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.

“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they started off in the blue car she was driving.

It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed and said if they did find the fountain she thought she’d wish for one exactly like it.

“Well, you know what your grandmother said about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you let people know about them instead of muttering them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”

“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur coat he gave me last year.”

“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.

The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they had covered the distance that had seemed such a long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s wagon.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t explain what happened afterwards. When I woke up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse, wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”

“How could they?” asked Lois.

“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to see how beautiful everything was before—”

Again she broke off as if there were something she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.

“Before what?” questioned Judy.

“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You were telling us how you woke up in the hammock, but you never did explain how you got back home,” Lorraine reminded her.

“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it, but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember driving home along this road. You see, I thought my grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise and would return for me. I told you I was all alone. There wasn’t a house in sight.”

“The Brandt house is just over the top of this next hill,” Lois put in.

“I know. You told me that. Now I know why I couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally, I followed it. There’s something about a path in the woods that always tempts me.”

“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”

“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where the hammock was and then through an archway,” Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes peered out at me from unexpected places. I was actually scared by the time I reached the old tower. There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he was driving off without me.”

“He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise, and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like that?”

“I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered. “The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”

“I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate.

“Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s another car coming.”

As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind Judy until the car had passed. The man driving it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered most of his hair.

“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for playing hide and seek?”