“Oh! we’d have to stand for that,” was his cheery remark.
“I think I could tell you how to go.”
“Then please do it, Mrs. Heffner,” said the scout master. “Here, Jack, Bud and you, too, Don Miller, stand by and listen, because you’re elected to keep me company on this trip.”
“And how about me?” asked Billy, trying to throw all sorts of entreaty into his voice and look.
“You’re nominated to stay right here and stand guard,” Hugh told him. “Fact is, we’ve got to have athletes on this trip, Billy. Now, Mrs. Heffner, let’s hear the directions, please.”
“First head into the woods where Peter came out,” she explained. “You’ll run across a stone wall. Keep that to your right. About the time you reach the end of the wall you ought to see the dry bed of a creek. Sometimes in the spring, water runs there, but just now it’s as dry as a bone.”
“Do we follow the bed of the dry creek?” asked Hugh.
“Yes, all the way. I should say it was all of half a mile before you’ll strike the Dry Spring. Once it fed the stream that ran there, but now only the rocks lie there. Peter must have left the Barger children among those rocks.”
“We understand, Mrs. Heffner,” said Hugh. “Just tell us on which side we will find the Dry Spring.”
“Keep watch on your right as you go from here,” she told him, “and while you’re gone I shall pray that you find the poor little innocents safe and unharmed.”