“Say, that’s a nice trick to play on a fellow,” declared Sandy, indignantly, when he found that Bart and his friends were safe and snug at home. “We’ve been hunting all around that swamp in the dark for you, and we’re all wet and muddy. Why didn’t you stay there?”
“Didn’t think it was healthy,” observed Bart, with a chuckle. “You told us you wouldn’t be back for an hour, so we concluded to leave. You should tie your ropes better, Sandy.”
“We weren’t going to leave you there an hour,” went on the president of the secret society. “That was only a joke on you.”
“Well, our coming away was only a joke on you,” declared Ned with a grin. “Are we full-fledged members now, Sandy?”
“I suppose so,” was the somewhat ungracious answer. Then as Sandy’s chums declared that the manner in which they had been outwitted by the four chums was perfectly fair, it was agreed to call the incident closed, and consider the initiation finished.
“You’re now regular members,” declared Sandy, “and you can come to the meeting to-night, if you want to.”
The chums went to a “hall” that had been fitted up over the barn of Sandy’s uncle. It had all the features of a regular secret society meeting room, with inner and outer sentinels, a hole cut in the door, through which doubtful visitors could be scrutinized; and once inside a more or less blood-curdling ritual was gone through with. But the boys enjoyed it, and, his good nature restored by presiding at the function, Sandy told how he and his friends had been much alarmed at finding Bart and his companions missing, and how they had searched in vain for them.
A thaw, a few days after the storm, removed most of the snow, but it remained long enough for some coasting, in which our heroes took part. Meanwhile they had made some guarded inquiries regarding the mysterious man, but had learned nothing. No one else seemed to have observed him, or, if they had, they thought nothing of it.
Nor was any trace found of the missing diamond bracelet. The police had practically given up work on the case, but the boys had not. They felt the stigma that still attached to them, and they resolved, if it was at all possible, to remove it. The parents of the lads were somewhat indignant that there should be even a suspicion against them, but there seemed to be no help for it, and Mr. Long, thinking to better matters, offered a reward for the return of the property. But he had no answers.
“Well, Bart, what about camp?” asked Ned, one cold morning in December, when an overcast sky gave promise of more snow.