"Look!" cried Peggy, pointing with wide eyes.
In the center of the road lay a rolled-up bundle of papers secured with a
rubber band.
"Somebody has dropped something from another auto or a wagon," cried Jess.
"I think so," said Peggy in excited tones, as she descended from the car,
"and I've an idea that these papers have been dropped from Mr. Harding's
car. It must have been the only one to pass here recently, as this road
runs direct to the farm and nowhere else."
She stooped down in the road and picked up the bundle and then, with a
beating heart, she opened it. But for an inward intuition of what its
contents would prove to be, Peggy, with her rigid ideas of honor, could
not have brought herself to do this. As her eyes fell on the first sheet,
and she saw that it was covered with annotations and sketches, she gave a
little cry.
"Oh, Jess! The luck! The wonderful, wonderful luck!"
"Why, what is it? A bundle of thousand-dollar bills, or----"
"It isn't that or anything," cried Peggy; "it's--oh, Jess--it's the
sketches and plans of our aeroplane that Mortlake and his accomplice
Harding were spiriting away."
"They must have dropped them from their automobile," said Jess.
"Or, more likely, from the pockets of one of them. See, the ground is
trampled about here. It looks to me as if they had had a break-down, and
were fixing it when the papers fell out and were left behind unnoticed.
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