Lanky Wallace looked at Frank, and Frank looked at his chum. Across the face of each stole a smile, just a wee smile of one who knew his honor could now be vindicated.
No sound of warning had come from below, yet Frank quietly closed the lid, strewed the hay over the box as carefully as it had been done when they found it, and led the way toward the ladder leading to the floor below. Down he went first, followed very closely by Lanky.
In a few minutes more they were on the trail leading up from the river, beckoning to Buster, Paul and Ralph to join them. Not a word thus far had been spoken by either.
Not knowing what had been found, completely at a loss to understand why Frank and Lanky said nothing, Paul and Ralph and Buster followed meekly behind, picking their way along the trail, until they had reached the Rocket’s landing place.
“Let’s get it out into the stream as quietly as possible,” whispered Frank as they climbed aboard, and Lanky, whose particular business it appeared to have become, waited to push the Rocket well into the river.
Away it shoved off, Lanky grabbed an oar from its convenient place to pole the boat out against the fouling of the propeller blades, and Frank headed the Rocket toward midstream, trying to get far enough to drift with the river’s current before starting the engine.
Still not a word came from either of the two boys as to the happenings within that barn on Jed Marmette’s place.
Having gotten a full eighth of a mile below the landing, Frank gave Lanky the signal to start the motor, and the muffled exhaust set up its song.
“Well?” Paul could hold himself no longer. “Please tell what you saw up in the barn! You must have seen something of interest or you wouldn’t be so quiet.”
“All right, fellows,” replied Frank graciously (for he surely could afford to be in a gracious mood right now) “gather close up and we’ll tell you what we saw.”