“Ben Zook! Old Ben Zook. Ben Zook—Zook.”
As the echo trailed away in the distance, a foreboding came over Johnny. There had come no answering call.
Still he tried to cheer himself. “He’s asleep,” Johnny told himself. “Little wonder, too. I was out here till near morning.”
After that he trudged in silence over the piles of broken brick, sand and clay.
As he came at last within sight of Ben’s place he was cheered by the sight of red coals on the grate.
“It’s not been long since he was here, anyway,” he said.
Yet his feeling that Ben was not in his house proved true. The place was empty.
“Probably gone for a stroll down the beach,” was his mental comment as he dropped down in Ben’s big arm chair.
The chair was a comfortable one. The fire, with a chill breeze blowing off the lake, was cheering too, yet there was no comfort for Johnny. He had not been seated two minutes when he was again upon his feet.
“I don’t like it,” he muttered.