“Hey! say that over again, won’t you, Landy! I sure believe my ears must have fooled me!” exclaimed Lil Artha.

“Hen Condit robbed his uncle and guardian, are you telling us, Landy?” gasped Toby; “aw! come off, now, you’re just giving us taffy, thinking it smart.”

“I tell you I just came from their house,” continued the perspiring scout, mopping his reeking forehead with a suspicious looking handkerchief that may once on a time have been really white. “You see, Mr. Condit didn’t get up as early as he generally does, because he had a terrible headache. And say, they even think he might have been given a dose of chloroform to make him sleep longer.”

“Hold on, fellows,” snapped Toby just then, “as luck will have it here comes Elmer in his father’s little runabout. He said he had to go over to Rockaway on an important errand for his dad this morning, which was the only reason he couldn’t join us for a swim. Let’s hold him up, and Landy can tell the whole story then.”

When they made urgent gestures to the boy in the swift-flying runabout, he hastened to pull up, laughing at the same time.

“I hurried over and back on purpose to follow you fellows to the olé swimmin’ hole,” he told them; “but I didn’t expect to meet you on the way. Don’t delay me; I’ll jump on my wheel to chase after you.”

“But, Elmer, something awful has happened, and you ought to know about it,” declared Toby, at which the boy in the small car looked searchingly at each of the others in turn, and seeing how grave they appeared, he demanded what it meant.

“Why, you see,” explained Lil Artha, “Landy here was late in joining us. He just came along on his machine, pegging it for all he was worth, and looking like he had seen one of the ghosts some people believe in. He only started to tell us when you came in sight; but it’s terrible. What d’ye think, he says our Wolf Patrol comrade, Hen Condit, has run away from home, and robbed his guardian in the bargain!”

Elmer instantly jumped to the road. He faced Landy as a lawyer might a witness on the stand; and Elmer knew just how to “pump” a fellow so as to get the principal facts without much loss of time, as his chums understood.

“Go on and tell us about it, Landy,” he commanded. “How did you happen to learn about the fact in the first place?”

“Why, you see,” answered the other, only too willing to explain to the best of his ability, “ma, she sent me over on an errand to the Condit house. I was madder’n hops about it, too, because I just knew I’d be keepin’ the fellows waiting here under the Grandaddy Oak.”

“What did you find when you got there?” asked Elmer, who knew Landy to be long-winded, and that often the quickest way to learn facts from him was to put him on the grill.

“Why, they were all upset,” admitted Landy. “Mr. Condit was as mad as a bull in a china shop, and his wife was looking as white as chalk, yes, and scared, too. Seems that when he went into his library after eating breakfast he found the safe open and everything gone. It was an ‘inside job’ the Chief said, because nobody had busted the safe.”

“Then the Chief was there, was he?” questioned the patrol leader.

“Sure he was; Mr. Condit had ’phoned to him. There were a dozen neighbors in the house, too, and more acomin’ right along. Biggest kind of excitement. Oh! it’s going to be town property before night, I guess, and lots of people’ll be pointing their fingers at every fellow wearing khaki, and saying they always knew scouts was no better than the law allowed. Oh! wouldn’t I like to get hold of that Hen Condit, though.”

“What makes them believe it was Hen” continued Elmer.

“Say, that’s the queerest part of it all,” answered the fat boy; “the silly gump gave the whole business away himself-went and left a note behind him telling that he was the guilty villain, and that they needn’t ever expect to see him again, because he had lit out for Chicago.”

“Whew! you don’t say!” gasped Lil Arthur, apparently half stunned by this later intelligence; “I never would have thought Hen could be such a fool as to convict himself like that.”

“When was he seen last?” demanded Elmer, still after information.

“He went to bed last night, they said, just as usual; but shucks! it would be the easiest thing agoing for Hen to climb down from his window if he took a notion. I’ve known him to do the same dozens of times just for fun, rather than take the trouble to go around to the stairs.”

“Then Hen has disappeared, and no one has seen him this morning?”

“Never a soul. His aunt went to his room when he didn’t show up, but not finding him expected Hen had gone off to my house. And his uncle is whopping mad over it. He nearly took a fit when the expert Chief said he reckoned someone had chloroformed him. He called Hen a viper that he had fostered, and said if he could only ketch him he’d see that he got his deserts.”

“Listen, Landy, did you see that note?” asked Elmer.

“That’s what I did, let me tell you,” came the prompt reply, “and it was in Hen’s well-known fist, too; I could tell that a mile off if I saw it. Haven’t I heard the writing teacher at school tell him he was well named, because his paper looked like a hen had dabbled in the ink, and then strolled around every-which-way.”

“Then you can tell us about what it said, can’t you?” continued the patrol leader.

Landy laid that ready forefinger of his alongside his nose, as though that action would aid his memory. Then he closed one eye, another singular habit he had; after which he slowly went on to say:

“Course the exact words have slipped me, Elmer, but it ran something like this. He said circumstances which he couldn’t control had forced him to do this thing; that he was sorry, but it couldn’t be helped. He hoped his uncle would forgive him, and forget there was such a fellow in the wide world as Hen Condit. There was also some more that I can’t just recollect; but it was to the effect that he believed he had money coming to him, so Mr. Condit could take it out of that and call it square. But just think what all this is going to do to the scouts, Elmer! Never since the troop was organized has it met up with such a terrible blow.”

All of them looked serious. They knew that a certain element in Hickory Ridge would only too eagerly seize upon this incident to prove what they had always claimed, which was that scouts, after all, were no better than other boys, and that when put to the test they could turn out bad as well as the rest.

“Yes, the honor of the Wolf Patrol is hanging in the balance, Elmer,” said Lil Artha. “Are we going to just stand by and not lift a hand because it was one of our chums who did this mean job? If it was anyone else and they called on us to track him, wouldn’t we respond to a man? Here’s a supreme test before us that’s going to prove how much our honor means.”

“I say the same, Elmer,” urged Chatz, indignantly; “let’s all get busy and see if we can run Hen Condit down like a fox we’ve got on the trail of. Let’s fetch him back to face his uncle, and prove to all Hickory Ridge that the boys of the Wolf Patrol can never stand for wrong doing in their ranks. Yes suh, it’s surely up to us to show our colors.”

Elmer rubbed his forehead. He looked thoughtful, as though possibly he might see a little further into this mysterious happening than any of the rest.

“Listen, fellows,” he told them; “I’ve known for some little time that Hen was acting queerly. He failed to attend the last two meetings, and when I asked him about it he avoided my eye. I’ve been wondering what it all meant, and intended to have a good heart-to-heart talk-fest with Hen as soon as I got a chance.”

“Hold on,” said Toby. “I wonder now if that man I saw him with could have had anything to do with this ugly business.”

Elmer turned on him like a flash.

“It may have more to do with it than you think, Toby,” he remarked; “when was it you saw them, and where?”

“Just yesterday morning,” replied the other, “and down at the bridge over the creek. Hen nodded to me when I rode past on my wheel, but it struck me even at the time he acted like he hoped to goodness I wouldn’t bother stopping to say anything.”

“And a man you didn’t know was with him, you say?” questioned Elmer.

“Well, I didn’t just glimpse his face, for you see he turned his head away as I passed, but I made up my mind he was a stranger in these regions, so far as I could see.”

“That looks mighty suspicious, I should say, suh!” declared Chatz, positively. “That stranger is the nigger in the woodpile, according to my mind, suh.”

“Mebbe poor weak Hen has been cowed and bulldozed into doing the whole thing,” suggested Lil Artha, sagely.

“Now, I wonder if that could weally be tho?” remarked Ted.

“We ought to get busy and do something right away, Elmer,” observed Toby Jones.

“I’m glad to know that’s the way you feel about it,” continued the patrol leader. “This is a bad piece of business. It’s up to the boys of the Wolf Patrol to find out the truth. I had laid out another scheme for our last outing of this vacation, but everything must give way to tracking our comrade down, and learning the whole truth!”

“Bully for you, Elmer!” ejaculated Lil Artha, looking delighted.

The others were almost as exuberant in their expressions of approval. Just a brief time before some of their number had been wondering what could be done to give them a short siege in the woods to wind up the vacation period; and here along comes this necessity calling to the other members of the “Wolf Patrol to awaken and defend the honor of their organization.

“Here, jump aboard all of you but Landy, and he can come along on his wheel,” ordered Elmer, making room after he had seated himself back of the steering wheel.

“Are you meaning to go to Hen’s house?” called out Landy, looking worried because he was to be left behind, and would have to straddle his wheezy old wheel once more.

“Yes, if you care to toss your machine in those bushes, Landy, and can get aboard, come along!” called out Elmer, relenting when he caught that piteous expression on the other’s rosy face.

In another moment they were off, Landy having been hauled aboard. The runabout had never been made to carry such a full cargo of passengers; but then boys can hang on like monkeys, and are ever ready to accept chances.

They were quickly at the Condit house. Like the home of Landy, it stood on the border of the town, with a back gate opening on a side road. Altogether, there may have been two acres in the place.

By now fully two dozen curious people were in and around the house upon which such a sudden catastrophe had fallen. They talked among themselves, asked questions, examined the queer note signed by Hen, and shook their heads pityingly as they observed the white face of the boy’s suffering aunt.

Mr. Condit was a rather severe man. He looked very angry, and kept calling the boy hard names as he told how Hen must have known the combination of the safe; and doubtless doubled at least the amount taken in hard cash, as it is human nature to make even troubles seem many times as large as they are.

Elmer and the others managed to see the convicting note. They were all of the same opinion as Landy; and agreed that no one but Hen could ever have written those fateful words.

“I never would have believed he could ever be such a silly gump!” was what Lil Artha remarked, after surveying the crooked writing, which, of course, he knew only too well.

After they had hung around for some time, and Elmer had asked all the questions he could think of, the boys went outside to talk it over.

“Right now some of those people are looking at us in a sneering way, suh,” observed the touchy Southern boy, indignantly; “and I give you my word fo’ it they’re beginning to say among themselves that Hen Condit belonged to the wonderful Wolf Patrol. Elmer, we’ve suttinly got to do something to clear the good name of our patrol.”

“We will,” replied the other, simply, and yet with that earnestness which carries conviction in its train. “Already I’ve got a suspicion. There may be nothing to it but it’s given me an idea where we ought to look first of all.”

“Please tell us about it, Elmer?” begged Toby.

“I just knew Elmer would get on the track in double-quick time,” asserted Landy, who always believed there was nothing impossible to the patrol leader, once he set himself to a task.

“It all came about from hearing a boy talking when I was down in the market yesterday morning. You know who he is, Johnny Spreen, the fellow who always ships out a raft of dried ginseng roots every year, and in the Spring sends a bunch of muskrat skins to the city.”

“Sure we know Johnny,” assented Toby, quickly; “he comes to town with a load of hay once every two weeks. His folks live a long ways off, up beyond the two lakes where we used to go camping.”

“That’s right, Toby,” said Elmer, “and their farm borders that terribly big Sassafras Swamp lying beyond Lake Solitude. Well, I happened to hear Johnny tell how he had taken a look through the swamp the other day, just to find out how the muskrats were coming on, so as to get a pointer on his winter business this year. He said he honestly believed there must be some man hiding there, because in several places he had come on tracks.”

“But people sometimes go in Sassafras Swamp to hunt, don’t they, Elmer?” objected Lil Artha.

“Not in August, because there are no woodcock up there, you know, and nothing else can be shot at this time of year,” Elmer continued; “but Johnny had something else to say that interested me considerably. It seems at one place he found ashes that told of a fire, and while rooting around he picked up a piece of steel that he allowed me to see. It had evidently been filed; and boys, can you guess what it made me think it must have once been?”

Although all of them looked eagerly interested, they shook their heads in the negative, as though unable to hazard even a guess.

“Go on, Elmer, and tell us,” urged Toby.

“Yes, let down the bars and relieve our anxiety, please, Elmer,” added Lil Artha.

“Unless I’m away off in my reckoning,” said the other, solemnly, “it was part of a pair of steel handcuffs such as officers fasten to the wrists of prisoners when taking them to the penitentiary!”