As before, they did not keep together long. Each one had his own ideas as to where the birds were to be found, so presently they broke up and continued on their way alone.
Merriwell did not get much pleasure out of it, however. The day was perfect, the birds fairly abundant, but his mind persisted in flying back to the farmhouse and the mystery it contained, decidedly to the detriment of his gunning.
He kept wondering whether Jellison had returned to the house, and, if so, what he was doing there. Did Jellison know of the money under the hearth? What had taken Mac to the village?
He was so preoccupied with all these questions that he made a number of wretched misses, and at last he broke his gun with a snap and slipped out the shells.
“That’s about all for to-day,” he grumbled. “I can’t do a thing with this on my mind. I’m going back.”
Now that he had at last come to this decision, he wished he had done so long ago. There was no telling what might be going on in the house by the lake. He was a fool to have come out at all and left the treasure unguarded.
As he tore his way through the tangle of briars and undergrowth it seemed as if the very bushes were trying to hinder his progress. He could not get along fast enough, and the result was that when he emerged into the more open forest back of the house he was a mass of cuts and scratches and his hands were full of thorns.
He did not stop for that, however, but kept on his way through the trees at a dogtrot. The woods were pleasantly free from undergrowth, and underfoot the soft, springy moss carpeted the ground as far as the eye could reach and made his progress almost noiseless.
He had almost reached the cleared ground about the house—had just caught a glimpse of the bright sky line ahead, in fact—when he made out the figure of a man slipping through the trees in front of him.
“Who the mischief is that?” he muttered, with a perplexed frown.