“You do?” cried his chums in a chorus.
“I sure do,” replied Tom, with conviction. “And I’m sure either Skeel, or the hermit, dropped this. It wasn’t there on the path before they held their confab, and neither Sam nor Nick was near the spot where the paper lay. Boys, I believe we’ve got a valuable clue here!”
“Let’s see it,” requested Jack, and Tom passed it over. His chum gazed at it thoughtfully, turned it around, and peered at it upside down. Then he remarked, as he passed it back: “Well, if you can make anything out of that, Tom, you’re a good one. What does it say?”
“That I don’t know yet,” spoke our hero. “It’s going to take some studying to ferret this thing out, but we’ll do it. Meanwhile we’ll just forget all about it for a little while, and have some grub. Get busy, fellows, and have dinner.”
They ate with exceedingly good appetites, while the motorboat speeded on her way toward the lake. Between bites they talked of their experience, and kept a lookout for any possible signs of their former professor, his cronies and the hermit.
“It must be that there are short cuts through these woods that we know nothing about,” said Tom, “or otherwise they never could have been on the ground at the same time we were, from where we last saw them. Still, I don’t think they can get ahead of us this time.”
And this was so, or, at least, our friends saw nothing of the four whom they were trying to circumvent.
“Well, I know one thing,” declared Jack with a grunt. “I’ll be glad when we get back to camp, and I can rub some liniment on this leg of mine.”
“It’s too bad,” consoled Tom. “I hope you’re not laid up with it.”
They emerged from the river into the peaceful lake and in due time were back at camp, without further incident having occurred.