Hardly had they vanished within the gloomy, deserted mansion, however, before two faces appeared above the surface of the ground, peering up from the mouth of one of the concealed passages which Mr. Blake had mentioned as existing on the old place.
Could the boys have seen those two countenances, they would have been greatly interested, for one of them was Freeman Hunt’s and the other was Jack Curtiss’s. To explain how they came to be there, it is necessary to revert for a moment to an occurrence which took place some weeks before on a fishing expedition. Driven by bad weather to shelter in the little cove not far from the De Regny place, the party, consisting of Freeman Hunt, Dale Harding and Lem Lonsdale, had hastily sought a shelter from the pelting rain, as their boat was an open one. In a low, rocky cliff, a half-obscured opening showed.
“Looks like there might be a cave in behind there,” Hunt said, and, on his suggestion, they set to work moving away several big rocks that encumbered the opening. The place proved to be a cave, and an ample one, running back to a great depth, seemingly.
An exploration party had been formed at once, and, after traversing a narrow passage, running back underground for some distance, the lads emerged, to their astonishment, in the clump of bushes in which Rob had just heard the rustling sound.
On this particular day, Hunt and Jack Curtiss had visited the cave alone to explore it more thoroughly. The branch passages they expected to find were not there, however, but, threading the original one, they had emerged into the clump which thickly screened its opening, in time to overhear most of the conversation of the Boy Scouts and the army officer.
As the door of the old house slammed, its echoes reverberating through the tangled, overgrown grounds, Jack Curtiss turned to his companion with a grin of satisfaction.
“Here’s the chance we’ve been looking for,” he exclaimed, wiping the sweat and dirt from his forehead,—for burrowing in long disused passages is dirty work.
“You mean a chance to get even?” asked Hunt in a puzzled tone.
“Yes. We can fix that Rob Blake up so that he’ll be in disgrace from this afternoon on.”
“I don’t understand,” rejoined Freeman, who, while he had chosen Jack Curtiss for a companion, had not a tenth part of the other’s evil ingenuity.