Elmer could feel his heart beating like mad as he watched them drawing nearer and nearer.
CHAPTER IX.
FAITHFUL TO HIS FRIEND.
Now they had stopped again, and seemed to be conferring in whispers.
If Elmer had had the least doubt before concerning their evil intentions, it was no longer in evidence. Honest men do not creep around the house of a rich man at such an hour of the night, and put their heads close together.
He flattened himself out on the ground, having dropped like a stone, though without the least noise.
"How lucky that I happened to come along this way!" was the thought that seemed uppermost in the mind of the scout as he crouched there, waiting. "If my wheel had stayed all right I would have been far away right now, and never known a thing about this. And it was that tool house that made me go around to the back."
He even grew bolder, and began to speculate as to how he might creep closer to the pair. If he could only overhear what they were saying, it might help more than a little. And, somehow, his desire to be of some assistance to his good friend the colonel, urged him to make the attempt.