Not one of them had seen Bill. They all knew him and they felt sure that if he had gone through in daylight some of them would have seen him.
"I'll tell you what we'd better do," said Jim, finally. "I don't believe that he came this way, but, to make sure, the Gang will work north from here and ask at every house. You go back and look between here and the village. If he left there and didn't get as far as this, then he must have turned off somewhere."
We went back, stopping at every house we came to, on each side of the road. We couldn't find a person who remembered having seen him or any one like him. You see, if he passed at all, it must have been soon after seven o'clock in the morning. The men had gone to work in the mills and the women were busy in the back parts of the houses.
Then we started back again, not knowing what to do next. There was one house, larger than the others, which we had not visited, because it stood high above the road on a hillside and could be reached only by a long driveway. It was about halfway between the Gingham Ground and our house in the village. We couldn't think of anything else to do, so we went up there.
"I don't remember seeing any one," said the lady who met us at the door. "Of course, there are boys passing at all hours of the day. I might have seen him."
We looked at Skinny in despair.
"This one," said he, "was probably making a noise. Maybe he was cawing like a crow."
"I saw him, Mama," shouted a little girl, who had come up and stood listening. "I saw a boy go past, making an awful racket, and it sounded something like a crow."
"Was he carrying anything?" I asked.
"Yes, he had a rolled-up blanket on his back. I remember thinking he looked funny and wondering what he was going to do with it. Oh, yes, he had on a uniform, too."