“Aw, what’s the use of anyone staying?” he growled. “The car’s safe enough.”
“What is the use of running risks?” rebuked Phil. “After what we went through back at Griffin we must take no more chances.”
Worth resigned himself to the inevitable, but it was evident that he would much rather have gone with the others.
As the three boys disappeared Billy blinked a while, finally stretching out in the tonneau, pulling over himself Paul’s big rug and—though he did not mean to—he soon fell asleep. The woods were unusually quiet; no wind, much shade, with a soothing buzz and hum of insects that was in itself conducive to drowsiness.
The other three, not deeming it necessary to actually visit the old tavern just then, took the compass with which Paul had provided himself and struck out due south.
“How will we know when we have gone half a mile?” suddenly questioned Paul. “It’s too thick with underbrush to pace off so many yards. Say, how many yards in half a mile? Anyone know?”
“Seventeen-sixty in a mile,” said Dave, drawing from his pocket one of those circular shielded tape measures. “Figure it out for yourselves.”
“Eight hundred and eighty, you gander!” This from Paul, looking after Phil, who had gone on ahead with the compass. “Gimme hold of one end! How long is the thing, anyhow?”
Stretched out, it seemed that the tape was ten yards long. With Paul linking a finger in the ring and Dave holding the circular shield, the boys began their march after Phil. Paul, breaking a twig when he came to a stopping place, would forge on again with Dave carefully following, keeping the line taut until Paul, stumbling, jerked the reel from Dave’s hand and thereby created some confusion. Both had been keeping count of each ten yards, but there was a difference of one length of the tape between.
“Aw—why didn’t you hold to your end? I tell you my count is right!”