"I don't know," was the reply. "It doesn't seem as if an American lad, and a Boy Scout at that, would play a treacherous game against his own countrymen."
"No, it doesn't; yet what is he stopping here for? He ought to be as anxious as we are to get over the ground."
Then Sandy came stumbling to the door, on the inside, and asked the boys, through the rough boards, to come in with their lights.
"There's somethin' mighty strange here," he said.
"This may be a trap!" Jack said. "Shall we go in?"
"We may need this boy as a guide," Frank observed.
"All right, then. In we go."
There was only one room to the shack, which was of mud, with thick walls and a leaky roof. There was a table, a chair, a heap of clothes in a comer, and nothing else, save for a puddle of water on the floor.
Sandy stood in the middle of the floor, his feet in the puddle, when Frank's searchlight illumined the bare room. His eyes were staring in a strange way and his face was deadly pale.
"Look there!" he exclaimed, his lips forming the words badly. "The old woman who fed me when I was broke an' sick lies under the clothes, stupid from some dope. The house has been poked over. I saw a face at the little hole in the wall as I came in. What does it mean?"