The afternoon passed almost before they realized it; and more than a few declared that the sun must have dropped like a plummet, when they found twilight creeping upon the forest.
Both Ted and Ward had long since gone away, as though disgusted. They had tried to sneer at the work of Stanhope Troop No. 1; but every one knew this humor was assumed; and that secretly they were eating their very hearts out for envy.
No doubt there would be a hot time among their followers, when the leaders endeavored to drive them to beat the record Wallace Carberry had set in his fire starting, and water-boiling test.
"Suppose you come to supper with me, Paul," suggested Jack, when they were more than half way back to town, with the double column moving along like clockwork, every right leg thrust out in unison, as though forming a part of a well-regulated machine.
Paul looked quickly at him when Jack said this.
"Oh! I can see through a millstone, when it has a hole in it," he remarked.
"Which is one way of saying that you can guess I have a motive in asking you?" returned the other, smiling queerly; "well, I have, in fact, several. In the first place my mother told me to ask you. I rather think she wants to pump you about that affair last night. Father wouldn't tell her all she wished to know. Then again I'm still all broken up about those lost coins; and I thought perhaps you might have guessed the answer to the riddle."
"What's that? More of them gone, Jack?" asked Paul, lowering his voice, so that the two scouts at the tail end of the line might not hear.
"Don't know yet. Didn't have the nerve to go up into my den since this morning. To tell the truth that place has lost all charm for me. Whenever I find myself there I get to shivering, and looking around, just like I half expected to see a ghost step out, and pick up one of those miserable coins right before my very eyes—ugh! it's horrible to feel that way, and I used to be so fond of my den, too."
"Oh! I hope and expect you will be again, Jack, when we've settled this little thing. You say none of them were ever taken in the night?" said Paul, earnestly; while his knitted brows told how much he felt concerned over the mystery.