“That’s stupid of us, Brent!” I exclaimed, and suddenly remembering. “He must be the man in the gully. They went around the other way, you see. That explains it!”
“Sure,” said Tom, “but I wonder where the lynx went?”
“We saw his tracks on both sides of the cleft,” Brent said.
“Well it’s too stormy to go up there again to-day,” Tom said. “Furthermore, the poor fellow can’t come to any further harm where he is now.”
“Do any of the boys know of our morning excursion?” I asked Tom. No, he hadn’t told them. Neither had they any idea but that Tom had returned safely the previous night from Harkness.
“Would you suggest our telling the boys about what you saw in the gully?” Tom asked Brent.
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “As long as they don’t know where we were this morning, I don’t think it would be wise to say anything now. This mystery has to be cleared up first. We don’t know positively whether the body in the gully is that of the hermit or not. It’s bad enough to have to tell when we are sure without circulating any false reports now.”
“But the hermit didn’t come back,” Tom repeated, persistently. “And it’s perfectly logical for me to suppose he went back the same way you fellows came this morning. You thought when you saw the body, I had tried to cross before daylight and missed my step. Couldn’t he have done the same thing?”
“I’ll tell you better to-morrow, Tommy,” Brent said in drawling tones. “Meanwhile you better think up a good excuse to give the boys for our absence from camp in the morning. You could say (if you can’t think of anything else) that our fountain pen adventurer here wants to get some material and we have to go help him carry it back.”
“That’s not so bad either,” I said, refusing to take Brent seriously.