"Shall we try to go in by way of the house door?" asked Lil Artha.
"No," replied Elmer, "he went in through that opening where some boards are off the side of the mill. Perhaps we'd better do the same."
"A good idea," remarked Chatz, with the air of one who could not get inside the walls of the mill too speedily to please him.
"Just as you say, Elmer," the lanky scout observed; for having been in the company of the other when the latter was acting as pathfinder to the expedition, Lil Artha was more than ever filled with admiration for his wonderful talents in discovering things supposed to be lost.
So Elmer without further hesitation ducked through the opening, with his two allies keeping close to his heels.
At any rate it was somewhat more restful inside the mill.
Those walls, even if now going rapidly into a condition of decay, shut out some of the noise caused by the falling water.
Lil Artha and Chatz both looked about them eagerly, even anxiously, as soon as they found themselves within those walls which had once resounded to the clatter of the grinding.
Their motives, however, were probably as far apart as the two poles; while the long-legged scout hoped, yet dreaded, to see the figure of Nat Scott lying somewhere about, Chatz, on the other hand, was anticipating discovering some token of ghostly visitors.
Nothing rewarded either of them, however. The interior of the mill was of course in a generally dilapidated condition. What remnants of the crushing and milling machinery remained were rusty and broken, as though tramps may have made the place a refuge, and tried to destroy what they could not carry away to sell.