"What do you see?" demanded Hazelton.
"This," answered Prescott, pointing down to the ground. His chums peered, too, and made out a very distinct footprint in the soft soil of this wild, little-used road through the woods.
"There's been a horse and wagon along here, too," Dick went on excitedly. "See the fresh wheeltracks, and the marks of the horse's hoofs?"
"But only that one bootprint," objected Tom. "It doesn't seem to me that it means much."
Dick gazed reproachfully at his grouped chums, his eyes blazing with excitement in the meantime.
"Say, don't you fellows remember how Greg ripped off the lower part of his left bootheel at football practice Friday afternoon?"
"Yes," admitted Dan Dalzell. "But how does this print prove——"
"I see!" broke in Dave Darrin tremulously. "This print, at the rear end, is from the same sort of heel."
"It surely is," nodded Dick. "Dan, you wear a number-four shoe like Greg's. Come here and let me measure the length of your left shoe with this string. Sit down first."
Young Prescott took the measure with his string, then applied it to the print in the ground.