"I've been following Nat's trail for miles," answered Elmer, "and sure I ought to know what his footprint looks like. Here it is on this clay just beside the sluice. Wait till I cross and see if he made the other side all right."
"He must, because he ain't in the sluiceway," remarked the tall boy.
A minute later and Elmer, who had carefully crossed over, testing each board before trusting his weight on it, called out:
"The marks are here, all right, fellows. Nat did start to look into the old mill. Come over, but be careful. Go slow, Chatz," he warned again, as the impetuous Southern boy slipped, and might have landed in the slimy sluice only that Lil Artha threw out a hand and clutched him.
They were now almost in the shadow of the deserted mill. It looked gloomy and forbidding to the eyes of at least Elmer and the tall lad, though Chatz may have considered it an object well worth coming a long distance to see.
"Wow! I must get some pictures of this same old ruin while we're up here," said Lil Artha, who carried a little pocket camera along, and was a very clever artist indeed.
"A fine idea," remarked Elmer; "but there are a lot of good people in Hickory Ridge who would think a picture of Munsey's mill very tame and incomplete without the ghost showing in it."
"Ah!" said Chatz, his face aglow.
"Oh, well," Lil Artha went on, "perhaps now I might be lucky enough to tempt that same ghost to pose for me. Anyhow I mean to ask him, if so be we happen to run across his trail."
He looked at Chatz, and then winked one eye humorously at Elmer. But the Southern boy did not deign to take any notice.