“What, mother! Pass up a place like that, with all those attractions—a wild man—a mysterious old mill? I guess not! What is the secret of the old mill, anyhow?”
“Ask your father,” advised Tom’s mother. “He knows the story better than I do.”
“Let’s have it, dad,” begged our hero. “Say, this is great! A mystery and a wild man in camp! Maybe the boys won’t like that! I must write and tell ’em to hurry up and come on. Oh, I can see some great times ahead of me this summer, all right!”
[CHAPTER II]
THE STORY OF THE MILL
“Let me see if I can remember the story of the old mill,” mused Mr. Fairfield, as Tom stood expectantly waiting. “It’s quite some years since I heard it,” and he gazed reminiscently at the ceiling.
“This is better luck than I expected,” murmured Tom, and, while he is thus waiting to hear the story of the secret of the old mill, I will take the opportunity to tell you something more about him and his friends, and the two previous books in this series.
My first volume was entitled, “Tom Fairfield’s Schooldays,” and in that I related how our hero came to go to Elmwood Hall. It was because his parents had to go to Australia to claim some property left by a relative of Tom’s father.