Free The Witch Tree Symbol by Carolyn G. Keene Page A

enough to go on,” Ned asked her solicitously. “Not faint or anything?”
    Nancy assured him she was fine. “I can’t miss this chance to nab Roger Hoelt!”
    Suddenly the carriage they were following turned into a wooded road.
    “This may be a trick,” Nancy warned, “if the driver knows we’re following him.”
    The girl pulled gently on the reins to slow the horse’s gait. Meanwhile, the carriage ahead stopped and its driver got out. Nancy reined in their mount, turning him into the woods.
    From among the trees, she and Ned could see a moving light along the road. Was the driver looking for them? As the light played about the nearby area, the hidden couple hardly dared to breathe. Nancy patted the horse soothingly to keep him from pawing the ground or making any sound.
    In a few minutes the man turned, retraced his steps, got back in his carriage, and rode off. Nancy and Ned took up the trail again, hoping the hoofbeats of the man’s horse would drown out those of their mount.
    “I’m sure that fellow knows he’s being followed,” Nancy said. “We’d better watch out. He may try to trap us!”
    Just then the man’s horse began to gallop and the carriage swayed from side to side. Nancy and Ned expected it to turn over at any moment.
    “That fellow must be crazy to drive so fast,” Ned said, “or else he’s trying to lose us.”
    He nudged their horse and it began to run, bringing them closer. After a chase of a quarter of a mile, the carriage stopped abruptly, blocked by a stream. The vehicle swayed a moment but did not go over.
    “You stay here,” Ned ordered, sliding off the horse. “I’ll go ahead and find out what’s going on.”
    Nancy insisted upon following Ned. After securing the horse’s reins to a tree trunk, they tiptoed forward, hidden in the shadows of the trees. In a few minutes they reached the carriage.
    No one was in it!
    “Where did the driver go?” Ned said softly.
    Nancy was listening to detect any sound in the nearby woods that might indicate where the man was. She could hear nothing but the chirping of crickets.
    “Ned,” she whispered, “will you stand guard while I examine the furniture in the carriage? I want to be sure it’s part of the Follett collection.”
    “Go ahead,” he urged.
    The pieces of furniture were small, and Nancy lifted them out of the vehicle and carried them, one by one, to the carriage lamps to look them over. Each resembled items on Mrs. Tenney’s list, but there was no way to identify them positively as the stolen articles.
    Disappointed, Nancy had returned all but one piece, which she now examined. It was a small hassock with mahogany legs and a petit-point top with a design of red roses and festoons of green leaves. It fitted the description of a footstool taken from the Follett mansion!
    “Ned,” Nancy whispered, excited. “We’re surely on the right track. This is exactly like one of the stolen pieces on the inventory. And this horse is black, like the one Hoelt took. I think we have enough evidence to report him to the police.”
    “Great!” Ned exclaimed, but he reminded her that by the time they could get to a phone, the thief might return and drive away with the evidence.
    Nancy nodded. “You’re right. Then we’ll have to take the horse and carriage with us!” she declared. “You ride the horse and I’ll drive the buggy.”
    Ned did not think this was a safe thing for Nancy to do. The man who had been driving the carriage might be waiting in ambush and would prevent them from reporting the incident to the police.
    “That could be,” Nancy said, “but I think he’s not very familiar with this area. He didn’t know about the stream and when he reached it, he was afraid to cross over.”
    Ned said that sounded logical, and added that the man probably had known someone was on his trail and had fled in fear of being caught. The question was, Where was he now?
    Nancy got into the carriage and urged the horse into a full