“Now, then, what does this mean?” said Blake.
“And where is the carriage?” chimed in Forester.
Sure enough, where was it? Like the house of which they were in search, it was nowhere to be seen. It had been driven noiselessly away while their backs were turned. Even then the truth did not dawn upon them until after they had compared notes.
“Now, what does that mean?” exclaimed Blake. “That darkey never brought us out here for nothing. There’s something back of it, but what is it?”
“It hasn’t got anything to do with our dinner, has it?” inquired White.
His companions looked blankly at each other, but made no reply. They hadn’t thought of that.
“I am almost sure it has a good deal to do with it,” continued White; “and we mustn’t stand idling here while there may be bad work going on in the city. You remember what Lester Brigham did last term, don’t you?”
The sound of that name seemed to put life into all the boys at once. With one accord they started on a keen run down the hill, scrambled through the fence at the imminent risk of ruining their fine uniforms, and began following up the tracks made by the carriage when it was driven away. For a time the trail was plain enough; but presently it ran into another road that had been badly cut up by heavy log-wagons, and there it was lost. They spent half an hour or more trying to find it, knowing that it would lead them out of the woods by the shortest route, and then gave it up in despair, and ran about in every direction looking for the road that would lead them to the city; but that, too, seemed to have disappeared as mysteriously as the carriage-tracks. Then they tried to retrace their steps to the fence, so that they could take a new start, but soon found that they couldn’t even do that. Sam had done his work well, and Blake and his committee were as effectually lost as Endicott could have wished them to be. They talked the matter over while they were roaming about, and had finally arrived at the conclusion that Lester Brigham and some of his particular friends had sprung a trap on them; but what the object of it was, they could not determine. The idea that he intended to run off with their dinner never once entered their heads.
“Blake, have you done anything during the term to make him angry at you?” asked Forester, who was first corporal of his company. “Have you, White? Well, I haven’t either. I put him into an awkward squad once by the superintendent’s orders, and gave him a pretty sharp drill in the manual of arms to teach him to mind what he was about when he was on dress parade; but I didn’t haze him.”
“No matter,” returned Blake. “He thought you did, and this is the result. He means to cheat us out of our dinner; but if he succeeds, I’ll give him a dressing-down the first time I meet him that will do his heart good.”