feet moving up and down as if you're climbing."

"A poor substitute," Jo Ann returned, smiling.

"Before you begin sewing, I'll give you an active job that'll bring into use more of your muscles--measuring windows. Be sure to get the exact length. Nothing looks worse than draperies that're too short."

After Jo Ann had finished measuring windows, she set to work basting and stitching the hems in the draperies. By this time her thoughts had wandered from sewing to the mystery man and the smugglers. Was that smuggler still lurking around the mine and had the other one reached the border without being caught? And was the mystery man still safe and sound? She must get word someway to him when the smugglers were to make their next trip, so he could follow them. If only he could catch those ringleaders and break up that gang!

So engrossed was she in these thoughts that she did not heed Peggy's sudden outburst of laughter several minutes later till Florence called out a merry, "Jo! Will you look what you've done! You've hemmed all your draperies upside down, so that the parrots or parrakeets--or whatever kind of birds they are in the design--are all standing on their heads."

"They'll look comical with their tails perpetually in the air," giggled Peggy. "I'm getting dizzy already even at the thought of those poor birds hanging head downward that way."

"Oh dear!" groaned the discomfited Jo Ann on viewing her mistake. "Now I've got to rip out every hem. Oh, woe is me!"

"I'll help you," Florence offered, taking one of the draperies from her. 

"Next time concentrate on your sewing instead of on the mystery man and those----" Peggy stopped talking abruptly on seeing Miss Prudence enter the room.

As soon as José came to the house that evening, Jo Ann slipped to the kitchen to ask him if he had seen the smuggler hanging around the mine. At his reply that he had not, Jo Ann felt relieved till the next moment, when he added, "We have much trouble at the mine today. No get out much ore." He went on to explain that the tram-car wrecked the previous day had torn up the track badly and that there had been trouble with some of the mine machinery. 

"Have they found out who wrecked the car?" she asked. 

"No. One man told me he saw Luis, a bad workman _El Señor_ discharged last week, near the track 

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