“I don’t like the idea of talking about these matters with the crew,” Brent said. “If Tommy is just lost of course it would be all right, though I suppose they’d wonder why he went up the mountain. Blame it all, it’s hard to know what to do. Trouble is, I have a feeling—I just can’t help it—that something is going to come out about this place, that something is going to happen. What kept Tommy away all night with that lantern burning in the window? It would be pretty tough, after all the work that’s been done here, if anything happened to give the place a black eye. People are queer, when you come right down to it. There’s many a good house standing empty because it has the reputation of being haunted.”
His thoughtfulness made me thoughtful also. “Sure enough,” I agreed. “If anything happened to hurt the prospects of this camp it would be a harder blow for poor Tom than any personal mishap that could befall him.... I tell you what let’s do, Brent. Let’s go right now, before any one is about, and drive the flivver out into the road and down a little distance. Then they’ll think that you and Tom and I went to Harkness early; they won’t think twice about it. We can cut up through the woods and get into the mountain trail that way. We’ll be out of sight before they’re out of bed. We can follow the trail up, and if the worst comes to the worst, and we find that something has happened, it will be time enough then to tell them. What do you say?”
This seemed to be the best plan and we were soon cutting up through the woods approaching the sheltering rocks from a new point. It was hard to reach them by this route, but they stood out in plain view so we had them to guide us through the dense, trailless thicket. No one was stirring about the camp when we looked down from this romantic spot. A mist lay over the lake and my thoughts recurred, as they so often did (especially in early morning), to the shocking accident which had occurred there.
There was but one little sign of Tom at this spot. On the edge of a certain flat stone was a sort of stained or scraped area which Brent said was where a knife had been sharpened. This supposition was soon confirmed by the blazings on trees above the rocks. Evidently Tom had found no trail beyond this point and had plunged into the thicket, blazing his way as he ascended, so that he might be guided on his return. This made our own progress easy, or at least enabled us to follow his own path on up the mountain.
After about half an hour’s climbing through bramble and thicket and up minor precipices and rocky ledges, Brent suddenly reached forward laying his hand on my shoulder.
“Shh! Listen!” said he.
CHAPTER XXI—DESPAIR
Somewhere not far off was the sound of falling water and ten or fifteen minutes more of difficult progress brought us to a long, narrow cleft crossing our line of travel. Into this tumbled a rushing brook which wriggled down in its boisterous course from high up the mountain. I thought that Tom might have heard this falling water from a long distance and come thither intending to follow the course of the brook. We wondered how he had crossed the cleft, for as far as we could see, it did not seem to narrow in either direction. Brent walked on ahead a little way.
“We might as well see how far this cleft goes,” he called.
“You’re right,” I said. “There might be a turn we can’t see from here.”