All of a sudden Harry Donnelle said, “What started you up to Elm Center near Kingston, when our wandering warrior lived away up near Plattsburg?”
“Oh, yes,” Brent said; “I forgot the best part of it. Quite some time after we read that accursed article, little Willie here and I happened to drop in at a movie show in Newburgh—ten cents counting the war tax. Cheap but filling. There was a picture in the Pathe jigamerig of an aviator landing in the village of Elm Center near Kingston, New York. I had never heard of Elm Center before. But anyway, an aviator had to come down there and so Elm Center got on the screen. There were a lot of people standing around looking at the machine and little Willie wide-awake here, said to me, ‘Do you see that soldier in the film? The one leaning against the fence and kind of glancing this way? He’s the fellow whose picture was in the paper.’ I took a good squint at him and, by jingoes, it was! It was Horace E. Chandler. ‘Caught at last,’ I said.”
“So here we are on our way home from Elm Center. It’s a pretty little village—post office, two stables, a hardware store where you can buy cake, and a watering trough. One of the nicest watering troughs I ever saw.
“And Horace E. Chandler? Oh, they never saw him or heard of him. Maybe he went up in the airplane, huh? If I only had a Curtis biplane, I’d search the skies.”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE LIGHT IN THE WOODS
Gaylong just rested his leg on his other knee and clasped his hands in back of his head and kept looking up at the sky. He said, “So that’s the story of the adventurous Church Mice. The next time we go in for a hundred dollars, we’re going to get jobs in grocery stores. Hey, kids?”
I could see he thought an awful lot of those fellows.
All the while Harry Donnelle was whistling to himself, as if he didn’t care much. Pretty soon he said, “You had your fun; what more do you want? What’s a hundred dollars?”
“It’s a good deal to us,” Gaylong laughed.
“You said something about treasure hunting,” Harry said; “you don’t suppose anybody ever goes treasure hunting on account of the treasure, do you? They go on account of the adventure. So treasure hunting is always a success; even if you only find a tin spoon. You had your hike; you had your fun; you made a hundred per cent profit. That’s the difference between a scout and a detective. It’s going after something that makes the fun; not getting it.”