[CHAPTER XX]
LONELY DAYS
“What in the world can have happened?” asked Tom, speaking aloud to himself. He had to do that to drive away some of the loneliness that thrust itself upon him as he walked around the deserted camp. “There’s something queer been going on, and I’m going to find out about it,” he added determinedly. “Maybe they’re hiding away from me for a joke.”
He made a round of the little spot there where they had camped in the wilderness, but there were few places for his chums to have hidden save in the woods themselves—the woods that were on three sides of the tents, the lake forming the fourth boundary.
“Well, if they’re in there they’ll wait a good while before I go hunting for them,” he said. “If it’s a joke they can come back when they get ready.”
And yet, somehow, he felt that it was not a joke. He and his chums were as fond of fun as any lads, and, in times past, the boys had played many a trick on each other. But there was a time for such antics, and Tom realized that this occasion was not now. He knew his comrades would realize the strain he was under, in losing his boat, and in trying to solve the mystery of the mill against the activities of Mr. Skeel and the two cronies.
“I don’t believe they’d do it,” mused Tom. “There is something wrong here. Hello, fellows!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Dick! Bert! Jack—Jack Fitch! Where are you?”
The echoes from the darkness were his only answers.
“They’re gone,” he said, “and yet, by Jove, I don’t believe they’d go willingly—unless—”
He paused, for many thoughts were crowding to his brain. He had a new idea now.