"I never happened to go through the experience," confessed Frank; "but I'm pretty sure it would give me a fierce jolt."
"But who can the sneaker be, Frank; some darky chicken thief prowling around in hopes of picking up some of our camp duffle?" asked Jerry.
Will turned on him with the scorn an expert photographer always displays when he meets crass ignorance.
"Why, can't you see from the dark shade of his face in the negative, Jerry, that he's a white man?" he demanded. "If it were a negro you'd see his face almost white here. That point is settled without any question."
"All right, Will, I acknowledge the corn," Jerry hastened to say; "but that doesn't bring us any nearer a solution of the mystery. Why should a white man, and one with a white beard at that, be wandering around our camp in the night?"
They looked at Frank. It was an old habit with the three chums. Whenever an unusually knotty point arose that needed attention, and their powers seemed baffled, Frank was always depended on to supply the needed answer.
"So far as I'm concerned, fellows," he told them, "I can think of only one old man around this vicinity, and that happens to be Aaron Dennison."
"Ginger! why didn't I guess him right away?" grumbled Bluff. "Seems as if my wits go wool gathering nearly every time there's some sudden necessity for thinking up an answer. Course it's Aaron, and nobody else!"
"Yes," Jerry went on to say, as though not wholly convinced; "but what under the sun would Aaron be doing here, tell me, and acting suspiciously like a thief in the night?"
"Of course we can't say what tempted him to come out," Frank observed; "we've never met the gentleman face to face, but we have heard that he's a queer one. Besides, if you stop to think, you'll remember a little circumstance that seemed to connect old Aaron with this cabin on the Point many years ago."