“Strange,” said Claxton, “I didn’t see Miss Ditson or Miss Midhurst at the game. They usually attend. Were they there, Dick?”
“I didn’t see them myself,” confessed Merriwell.
“Nor I,” said Buckhart. “I reckon they were not there.”
No one observed the faint smile that flitted across the face of Casper Steele as he bent over the steering wheel.
“I fancy you’re right,” he said. “I looked around at the crowd in the stand, and I saw nothing of those girls.”
The sun had vanished, and purple shadows were spreading in the east. They stopped to light the lamps, and then bowled on again. Night enfolded them softly, and the bright glare of the lamps grew more and more effective as the darkness increased.
“We’re getting near Meadwold,” Steele finally announced.
A few moments later they swung in at a gate with high stone posts, and followed a private road that wound between long lines of gnarled old trees.
“We’ll see the lights in a minute,” said Casper.
Surmounting a little rise, they beheld before them the gleam of many lights, and Steele told them that was Meadwold.