Breakfast was eaten aboard the train just before coming into Hannibal, and at the first stop Ringold sent off his telegrams. A more complete search of the train, by daylight, failed to disclose Munson, or any suspicious characters whom he might have engaged to trail our friends, and steal from them.
"Well, we'll be there soon, now," Joe said, as he rose from the table in the dining car. "We'd better get our things together, Blake."
"That's right. Say, it's raining again!"
"So it is!" agreed Joe, looking out of the car window. "This is fierce! Isn't it ever going to let up?"
It had rained at intervals for the last two days, and that fact, coupled with the knowledge that it had been pouring more or less steadily before that, did not give much assurance that the flood would soon abate.
"The Mississippi will be higher than ever," murmured Blake. "It's going to make it bad all around—bad for us and bad for those who are lost. We'll have hard work finding them."
"We'll never find them," broke in the gloomy voice of C. C. Piper. "They are gone forever."
The faces of Blake and Joe, no less than that of Mr. Ringold, were grave. There were grown men and women in the party of players reported
