“Say, could we try it to-night, Frank?” asked Lanky, eagerly.
“I’m willing to come,” replied his companion; “if your folks will let you out. Look over here to the right, and you’ll see a little rise of ground. And, Lanky, if a fellow sat on top of that, with a pair of field glasses in his hands, what would hinder him from seeing everything that happened in the camp?”
“There’s a clear line between, as sure as anything,” admitted the other.
“And if they have their fires going, as they generally do in the early evening, why, the glass would work O. K. I’ve looked through it at the moon, and Jupiter, Venus and that crowd of worlds in the night sky. Is it a go, Lanky?”
“Put her there, Frank,” replied Lanky, thrusting out a hand with a boy’s impetuosity. “Why, I’d back you up, no matter what sort of a harum-scarum scheme you gave me. But this isn’t anything like that; I consider that it’s the boss idea. Why, we can crawl up there and just watch for keeps, without a single gyp bein’ any the wiser. Call it a go, Frank!”
“Then that’s settled, and I’ll meet you at the big elm at, say, seven,” Frank proposed. “It doesn’t get real dark till after eight nowadays, you know; and we’ll have plenty of time to wander up this road.”
Lanky was greatly pleased over the new development. Coming on the tail of his recent gloom, it was all the more acceptable to him. When he later on parted company with his chum, his last words were:
“Don’t fail to be there at seven sharp, Frank! It’d knock me into flinders if you didn’t show up. I’d be tempted to come alone, and make the try, though chances are I’d only turn it into a foozle by my clumsiness.”
“You can depend on me,” was what the other said, positively.
Frank would have liked to take his father fully into his confidence, and get his sanction for the strange little errand that was about to occupy the time of himself and Lanky that night. But it happened that Mr. Allen had stayed at the house of a friend whom he had been visiting that afternoon; and Frank’s mother was lying down, with a headache; so it seemed that even had he wanted to, he could not have taken either of his parents into his secret just then.