"They must have gotten into some trouble!" cried Mrs. Laning. "You found no trace of them?"
"We did not," said Tom. "But we tried hard enough, I can assure you."
"Oh, what shall we do?" wailed Mrs. Stanhope, and then she fainted away, and it was a good quarter of an hour before she could be restored.
All the boys were highly excited, and Sam was for making a search for the missing houseboat without delay.
"They may have gone on board and Captain Starr may have sailed off with them," said the youngest Rover. "Remember, he is a queer stick, to say the least."
"That doesn't explain the screams I heard," said Tom.
"I dink me dot Paxter got somedings to do mit dis," said Hans. "He vos a rascals from his hair to his doenails alretty!"
"The only thing to do is to make a search," came from Songbird Powell.
"I'm ready to go out, rain or no rain."
They were all ready, and in the end it was decided that all of the boys should prosecute the hunt, leaving Mrs. Stanhope, Mrs. Laning, and Grace with the wife of the proprietor of the stock farm. The proprietor himself, a Kentuckian named Paul Livingstone, said he would go with them.
"If there has been foul play of any sort I will aid you to have justice done," said Paul Livingstone. "To me this whole thing looks mightily crooked."