Both gave a hasty look, and shook their heads in the negative.
“Never saw it before,” Toby went on record as saying; “and it’s an unusually fine piece of material, I should say, just such as a gentleman who cared a heap for his personal appearance and clothes would be likely to carry.”
“Well, you picked that up first of all, and it excited your suspicions; is that it, Steve?” queried Jack.
“It started me to looking around the spot,” explained the other, “and right away I saw the 54 tracks of shoes–long shoes in the bargain, making prints entirely different from anything we’d be likely to do. So says I to myself, ‘hello, Mister Man! I see you’ve been snooping around here while we slept like the babes in the woods!’ And so I came in to let you fellows know about it. Want to see for yourselves, don’t you? Then just follow me.”
They were soon examining the imprints. Just as Steve had said, there could be no question as to the tracks having been made by some one other than themselves. More than this, Jack could easily tell that they were comparatively fresh.
“Let’s follow them a little bit, and see what he was up to,” he suggested, which they accordingly set out to do, and found that while the stranger did not actually enter the camp he did scout around it as though desirous of seeing all he could.
“Wanted to know if Toby here spoke the truth when he said we were only a bunch of fun-loving boys off on a vacation camping trip, didn’t he, Jack?” Steve asked, as if to confirm his own suspicions.
“Yes, he actually went completely around our camp, and in several places seems to have approached pretty close,” Jack went on to say, after they had given up following the trail of the unknown man. “I think he must have even heard some of us breathing inside the tent, and perhaps he could count our number that way. But after all no great harm has been done; only it goes to 55 show we must keep our eyes open all the time we’re up here.”
Toby heaved a great sigh.
“Whew! but it’s getting some exciting, let me tell you, fellows. All the while you’re gone today I’ll be nervous and think I heard footsteps every time a gray squirrel whisks around a tree, or barks at me so sassy like.”