"There wasn't a ripple in the leaves of the trees," declared Bristles.
"And if it did blow off, wouldn't he have stopped to look for it in the moonlight?" remarked Sid Wells.
"Colon is too careful of his things not to make a hunt for his cap," came from Semi-Colon, who ought to know if any one did, about the peculiarities of his own cousin.
"Well, the cap was here," Fred said; "and we found it; now why was it lying in the ditch as if it had been thrown there, or knocked off in a scuffle?"
"Wow! now perhaps we ain't gettin' down to brass tacks!" ejaculated Bristles.
Fred bent over to examine the road, along the edge of the ditch.
"Looks like somethin' might have been going on here," Corney suggested.
"You're right," Sid added, excitedly. "Why, anybody with one eye could see there'd been a scramble around here. Look at the scrapings in the dust; would you? just like a pack of fellows had set on one; and the bunch were jumping around him, trying to get away, and the others holding on. Fred, here's where it must have happened, sure!"
"I think so myself," returned the leader of the five boys, gravely surveying the tell-tale marks in the dust of the road.
"Eureka! ain't we the handy boys, though, to get on the track of the kidnappers so quick?" exclaimed Bristles, proudly.