"We went over on the seven-ten train this morning. The agent will tell you so, for he sold us tickets, and was chatting with both of us. Mr. Goodenough met a friend over there who invited him to stay to dinner. So I said, rather than wait until noon, I'd just pump it on foot for home. I thought it might be a good way to tune up for the afternoon whirl, without breaking my word to mother. That's all."
"And it's enough," said Fred. "Fall in, Wagner, and come along with us. We might be glad to have another fellow along, if it happens that after all tramps carried Colon off, as some people say."
"All right, fellows, I'm with you," remarked Felix. "And I declare, if here isn't just the stick I'm looking for, sound enough to send in a home run with. Must have been waiting for me."
With these words Wagner joined the little group that hurried along the road. As they reached a certain place Sid, who was in the lead, suddenly turned aside. It was what had once been a serviceable lane, but which was now overgrown with weeds and underbrush.
"Wait a minute," Fred remarked, in a low voice.
They saw him looking closely at the ground, and almost immediately he raised a smiling face toward the balance of the group.
"We made a center-shot when we guessed about this old mill, boys," he observed, nodding; "because here are the plain tracks of a wagon; it came in lately too, and went out again. The tracks show that it was here since that last little shower, which was two nights back. Now for the mill, Sid."
Gripping their cudgels tightly in their hands; and with compressed lips, as well as determined-looking faces, the little bunch of boys followed the sunken lane as it left the main road, and ran into a wilderness of woodland.
Then suddenly they realized that there was a musical sound of dripping water close by. It seemed to thrill every nerve, and make six boyish hearts beat at a double pace.
Two minutes later, on emerging from the tangle, they saw the ruined old mill before them. And it certainly did look just as "spooky" as Sid had declared, when he suggested that they might find their missing comrade hidden there.