"Oh! I took care of that part," chuckled Tom Betts. "I saw you were talking with Jack and old Hans, so I just stepped up, and walked around the boxes. There isn't a thing on 'em but the name of the professor, and Jack's dad's address in Stanhope."
"And they didn't look much like animal cages to me," muttered Bobolink; upon which both of the others emitted exclamations of surprise, whereupon the speaker seemed to think he ought to make some sort of explanation, so he went on hastily: "You see, Jack, I somehow got a silly idea in my mind that p'raps this little professor was some sort of an animal trainer, and meant to come up here, just to have things quiet while he did his little stunts. But that was a punk notion for me, all right; there ain't any smell of animals about those boxes, not a whiff."
"But what in the wide world gave you that queer notion?" asked Tom.
"Don't know," replied Bobolink, "'less it was what Jack said about the professor writing up from Coney Island near New York City; that's the place where all the freaks show every summer. I've been down there myself."
"Listen to him, would you, Jack, owning up that he's a sure enough freak? Well, some of us had a little idea that way, Bobolink, but we never thought you'd admit it so coolly," remarked Tom Betts, laughingly.
"And the wild animal show down there is just immense," the other went on, not heeding the slur cast upon his reputation; for like many boys, Bobolink had a pretty tough skin, and was not easily offended; "and I guess I've thought about what I saw done there heaps of times. So Coney stands for wild animal trainin' to me. But that guess was away wide of the mark. Forget it, fellows. Only whenever Jack here learns what was in those boxes, he must let his chums know. It's little enough to pay for draggin' a lame scout all the way out here tonight; think so, Jack?"
"I sure do, and you'll have it, if ever I find out," was the reply. "Perhaps, after they've been taken away by the professor, my father mightn't mind telling me what was in them. And we'll let it rest at that, now."
"But you mark me, if Bobolink gets any peace of mind till he learns," warned Tom.
Chatting on various matters connected more or less with the doings of the Boy Scout movement, and what a fine thing it was proving for the youth of the whole land, Jack and his chums presently brought up at the church which had the bell tower; and where a splendid meeting room had been given over for their occupancy in the basement, in which a gymnasium was fitted up for use in the fall and winter.
In that tower hung a big bell, whose brazen tongue had once upon a time alarmed the good people of Stanhope by ding-donging at a most unusual hour. It had come through a prank played upon the scouts by several tough boys of the town whose enmity Paul Morrison and his chums had been unfortunate enough to incur. But for the details of that exciting episode the reader will have to be referred back to the preceding volume.