“Ye will not forgit, Uncle Elk, that it was mesilf that told ye about the beast that took a promenade by the spot,” reminded Mike Murphy.
“No; I am not likely to forget that, but I am forgetting the claims of hospitality. I can’t offer you the elbow room you have at the clubhouse, but you are none the less welcome.”
He twitched the latchstring, the door being so balanced on its hinges that it swung inward of itself. He stepped across the threshold to the mantel where Scout Master Hall was sure he saw him take a small article, glance at it and then shove it into his pocket. Facing about he called to his friends to enter.
They crowded into the room. The host did not draw aside the curtain which shut off the other half of the lower floor and which was his sleeping quarters.
You have read a partial description of the home of the hermit,—the most surprising feature of which was the well-thumbed volumes of scientific and scholarly works, in addition to several high class magazines and publications. Mr. Hall noticed that while the visitors were gazing around with natural curiosity, Uncle Elk stopped for a moment in front of his book shelf, glanced at the volumes and then quickly stooping, picked up what seemed to be a speck of dust from the bare floor. It was all done so quickly that the Scout Master would never have recalled it but for that which followed.
There were not enough seats for a third of the company and the youths kept their feet. Perhaps it was a harmless touch of vanity, with which all of us are more or less endowed, that led Uncle Elk to make a display of his skill as a detective.
“Yes,” he added a few minutes later; “there has been a caller here during my absence this forenoon.”
Scout Master Hall had the tact to humor the harmless weakness of the old man.
“Can you tell me whether he was an Indian or a white man?”
“He was of the same race as ourselves and is about forty years old. He carried no weapon,—nothing more than a fishing tackle. He is well off in the world’s goods, has been three days in the neighborhood and is friendly toward me.”