“And to-morrow, some time, we’ll smuggle in some decent clothes, and a razor, and everything,” added Jerry. “Anything else you want?”
Burk, his mouth full of food, shook his head.
“Well, then, good night! And to-morrow——”
The two boys went to the door. Burk rose and ran to them, seized their hands. His voice shook, and he made no effort to hold back the tears that welled in his eyes.
“Good night, boys—and God bless you! God bless you!”
When Sherlock Jones awoke in the cold, gray morning, a few minutes before Reveille, he had a feeling that something tremendous was going to happen that day. The first thing his prying eyes lit upon was one of Jake Utway’s boots, lying carelessly on the floor of the tent. The boot was caked with sticky black mud almost to the knee. He pondered this mysterious circumstance at odd moments during the morning, without any satisfactory conclusion as to what Jake might have been doing in the dead of night that would put his footgear into such a state.
His feeling that great things were impending returned to him again and again as the morning passed. The customary line-up for the flag-raising was held on the lodge porch, as the rain was still dripping from low-lying banks of cloud; but along toward morning swim-time the sky cleared slightly, and by lunch a watery sun had appeared, to dry up the muddy campus.
All the time Sherlock had been on the job. Not once had the Utway twins been out of his sight.
At lunch, however, he came upon another clue. Jake appeared to be unusually hungry; it seemed almost impossible for him to satisfy his appetite. The long-nosed detective did not link this fact with the further fact that Jake’s blouse, when he rose from table, bulged suspiciously in front.
After the meal, Sherlock moodily retired to the dark-room, his favorite spot in which to think over his information, and to “deduce” results therefrom. So far, he had little to go on.