Looking about him hastily in the dull light, he found a door that seemed to lead to the other parts of the house. Tiptoeing across the uncarpeted floor one careful step at a time, he reached the door and entered a long hallway. This he followed for a yard or two, feeling his way along the wall, until his hand touched a railing that seemed to be part of the front stairs. He would have to climb those stairs to reach the bedrooms. He advanced one foot cautiously, and was just climbing the first step, when a loose board in the floor creaked with a sickening noise. It sounded to the terrified boy like the crack of Doom.
Instantly his feet were knocked out from under him as a heavy body leaped at him like a football tackle, and he fell with a toppling crash to the floor. Someone was upon him, holding him in a resistless clutch! The wind was knocked from his lungs, and he gagged and fought for breath. The stabbing glare of a flashlight hit his eyes.
Then the strangest event of all that strange night happened. His unknown assailant gave a little whistle of surprise, and broke forth into speech. Only one word, but that word the boy’s name.
“Blackie!”
The flashlight twisted around; the stranger was showing it upon his own face. Blackie gasped, and almost shrieked with relief. The person who had captured him in that dark, lonely farmhouse was his own tent leader, Wally Rawn!
CHAPTER XIV
THE SPRING-HOUSE
“Wally! What are you doing here?”
Wally Rawn relaxed his iron grip and helped Blackie to his feet. In the glow of the flashlight the boy could see that Wally was fully-dressed in corduroy trousers, blue flannel shirt, and high woodsman’s boots with laces dangling. The councilor must have thrown his clothes on in a hurry.
“I might ask the same of you, Blackie,” he said with a slight grin. “Have you become a burglar all of a sudden?”
The words recalled Blackie to his mission in the farmhouse. “Shh! Not so loud—they’re still outside!”