It was about four o’clock on the following afternoon when a wagon drawn by a pair of husky horses moved along the shore of Lake Solitude, many miles away from the town of Hickory Ridge.

This vehicle was filled with lively lads, all of them in the faded khaki uniforms that, as a rule, distinguish Boy Scouts the wide world over.

Counting them it would be seen that they numbered just seven, and this included all of those whom we met on the road under the spreading branches of the big oak, and Mark Cummings in addition. Since the entire membership of the Wolf Patrol consisted of eight, it was plain that the only one now lacking was the unfortunate Hen Condit.

After making up their minds to exert themselves to the utmost in hopes of finding the runaway, and bringing him back home, Elmer and the others had set to work preparing for the campaign.

The patrol leader gave such advice as was required by some of the others, telling them to go as light as possible, since they would have to be moving around, and ordinary camp material could not be considered.

If they were compelled to remain out in the open for one or more nights, there were plenty of ways whereby they could secure shelter without carrying along such a cumbersome thing as a tent.

Each fellow had his rubber poncho strapped to his pack. Elmer and Lil Artha carried a gun each, not that they expected to shoot any game, but to use as a threat should they be faced by a desperate escaped jail bird. Besides this the boys had seen to it that each one had some sort of food supply, in the shape of sandwiches, dried beef, and such things as could be most easily packed.

As Lil Artha had gaily declared, they expected to be like “Sherman’s bummers,” and live off the country as they went along, though willing to pay ready cash for any and all eggs, fowls or bread secured from farmers’ wives.

Josh had arranged to “tote” a coffee pot along, together with a supply of the ground bean; while Landy had a capacious frying-pan fastened to his pack, which the others just knew would be frequently tripping him up, and making all sorts of noises when they wanted to steal silently along.

Just what they meant to fry in that pan no one fully knew; but they were strong in “hopes,” and believed that things would turn up to satisfy their hunger when the sensation became too acute.

The team had been hired at the town livery stable, and they had been on the road now since early in the morning, for it was a long way up to Lake Solitude.

As this region had been the scene of some of the earliest camps of the Hickory Ridge scouts, of course, the conversation covered many memories connected with those experiences.

The horses had shown signs of playing out some miles back; but Lil Artha proved himself to be an artful as well as clever driver. He managed to coax them along, and there was little doubt now that they would reach their intended destination inside of a short time.

This was a farmer’s place that lay adjacent to the swamp at the head of the solitary lake. Here they would arrange to leave their team while searching the dark recesses of the swamp. As all of them had had considerable experience in such unsavory places they believed they knew fairly well how to go about the hunt.

“Well, we ought to fetch that old farm mighty soon now, I should think, Elmer,” remarked the driver, as he flecked the back of the off-horse to disturb a big green fly that was trying to stab the sweat-covered animal in a tender spot.

“From what I’ve been able to find out, and what I know in the bargain from my own experience up here,” the patrol leader explained, “the head of the lake lies just beyond that patch of willow trees, and we’ll see the farmhouse as soon as we make the next turn. Easy there, Art, you came near dumping us then.”

“The pesky old road is so narrow it’s hard to keep going straight,” complained the other, in disgust; for one wheel had, indeed, slipped over the edge, and their escape from a bad spill had been what Lil Artha himself would have called a “close shave.”

“I reckon suh, Sassafras Swamp must lie over in that direction then?” remarked Chatz, pointing as he spoke.

“Just what it does,” replied Elmer.

“It looks particularly gloomy, I should say,” remarked Toby.

“Swamps always do, you must know,” Elmer told him; “some of them are always half dark even in the middle of the day. That’s because of the jumble of vines that hang from tree to tree, and the canopy of branches overhead. Why, down South, as Chatz here can tell you, where Spanish moss covers the trees, it’s almost dark in some swamps.”

“But, Elmer, there’s one thing I just don’t understand,” suggested Landy.

“Out with it then; and if I can explain I’ll be only too willing,” he was told.

“Supposing now for the sake of argument that stranger was a bad man who had escaped from a sheriff somewhere, when being taken to the penitentiary; and that he managed to get a strangle hold on our chum, Hen Condit, so that the other just had to do whatever he was told-get all that, do you? Well, if they skipped out of Hickory Ridge night before last, how under the sun could they get away up here in a day or so?”

“Yes, it’s something like thirty miles, I should say, Elmer, and it takes that boy Johnny a day and a night to get to our place with his load, all down-grade, too. You remember that Hen Condit never was anything to brag of in the line of a long-distance walker.”

“He may have made up his mind that he had to do some tall sprinting,” said the other, “when he realized what a hornets’ nest he’d stirred up back there.”

“Yeth,” remarked Ted Burgoyne who had been listening to all this talk with certain ideas of his own, “and lots of times it ithn’t tho very hard to get a lift on the road. Wagons and autoth happen along, you know, and the farmers around here are thoft things, you thee.”

“I was just going to say that same thing, Ted,” Elmer remarked, “when you took the very words out of my mouth. Yes, they may have had a lift; or else Hen had to stretch himself to do the tallest walking of his career. All of which is based on the supposition that they did come away up here, and are hiding right now somewhere about Sassafras Swamp.”

“You’re figuring on what Johnny said, eh, Elmer?” asked Mark.

“I’m figuring on a whole lot of things,” replied the other; “and among them is the fact that some unknown man has been using the swamp for a hiding-place of late.”

“P’raps we’ll learn a heap more about it after we stwike the farm we’re heading for,” suggested Ted.

“And there, if you look now you can see the house among those trees, with smoke coming out of the chimney at the kitchen end,” said Elmer, pointing ahead.

Lil Artha deliberately took chances by removing one hand from the lines, and vigorously rubbing his stomach with it.

“Oh! I know something of what bully suppers farmers’ wives c’n serve up,” he hastened to say, throwing all the longing he could into looks and words; “and here’s hoping we get an invite to stay over there till morning. If they are very pressing, Elmer, I entreat you not to hurry us off. Things can wait that long, and we don’t expect to do much in the night-time, you remember.”

The patrol leader made no rash promises. He simply smiled, and started to talk of other subjects; so poor Lil Artha, who did feel so empty after such a little lunch by the wayside, was left in suspense.

“What’s this farmer’s name?” asked Toby.

“Trotter,” replied Elmer. “You know Johnny Spreen is really a bound boy, and he has to work for the farmer until he gets a certain age, when he is supposed to be given a sum of money, and be his own boss. That’s the law.”

“Well, all I hope is that we pick up some decent clue around here,” said Lil Artha; “Yes, and a bully supper in the bargain, that’ll fill a horrible vacuum, and put us all in fighting condition.”

Their arrival created something of a sensation. Dogs began to bark, roosters to crow, cows to moo, and even a donkey started to bray in a fearful fashion. Immediately Johnny Spreen, the boy who trapped muskrats in the winter, came running out from the big barn where he was probably milking some of the cows, for he held a three-legged stool in one hand as though it might be a weapon of defense.

The farmer, a long, lanky individual with a keen face, also bobbed in sight, holding a currycomb; while at the kitchen door could be seen the buxom figure of his wife, evidently bound to learn what was happening even if her dinner did burn in consequence.

Three tow-headed, wild-eyed little Trotters, who had been playing at teeter with a plank laid over a carpenter’s “horse” for a seesaw, ranged themselves all in a row, and gaped their fill at the strange spectacle of a wagonload of boys all dressed pretty much alike.

“Are you Mr. Trotter?” asked Elmer, as he jumped down, and the other came forward toward him.

“That’s my name, son; what fetches the hull lot of you up this way? Ameanin’ to camp on the lake-shore, it might be? I’ve heard about the scouts daown at Hickory Ridge; Johnny yonder’s been apinin’ to jine ’em this long time back, but, of course, it ain’t to be thunk of, with him so far away.”

“Yes, we are the members of the Wolf Patrol, Mr. Trotter,” said Elmer, who wanted to make a good friend of the farmer in the start. “I’m Elmer Chenowith; perhaps you know my father, or some of the other fellows’ parents.”

He thereupon introduced each one of the boys by name, and even mentioned the fact that the father of this one or that occupied a prominent place in the business or professional world of Hickory Ridge town.

“We haven’t exactly come up here to camp out this trip, Mr. Trotter,” continued the patrol leader, after bowing to the farmer’s wife who had first darted indoors to see that her supper was not burning, and then hurried to join them.

Elmer knew that the truth might just as well come out in the beginning as later. On this account he did not intend to hold anything back, but be perfectly frank with the owner of the lake farm.

“What might be your object then, son?” asked the tiller of the soil, possibly feeling a bit of natural curiosity in the matter.

“Ask him first of all, won’t you Elmer,” pleaded Lil Artha, as though he feared lest this important matter be lost sight of in the confusion of affairs; “whether he c’n spare us some eggs, and a few broilers to take into the old swamp with us?”

“I guess ma c’n let you have what you want along them lines,” replied Mr. Trotter, “though seems like somebody’s been amakin’ free with her layin’ hens lately. They keep disappearin’ right along. Sometimes I think it’s a mink that’s gettin’ ’em, but they ain’t any signs of sech a critter around; ’cause you know a mink’ll kill as many as a dozen fowls in one night, and jest suck their blood.”

Elmer exchanged suggestive looks with his mates.

“From what you say, sir,” he remarked quickly, “your fowls are carried off bodily. Is that it?”

“They jest keep on gettin’ less an’ less right along,” the farmer admitted. “Me and Johnny here was thinkin’ o’ settin’ up with guns to see if we could get a crack at the chicken thief, whether he was a mink, a badger, or a two-legged raskil.”

“That’s what we was meanin’ to do,” agreed the said Johnny, glad to have his name mentioned in the matter at all.

“Well, we’ve got a hunch, Mr. Trotter,” said Lil Artha, bound to get his say in the affair, “that we might put you wise about that same thief.”

“I’d shore be glad to hear it,” declared the farmer; “Johnny here has been asayin’ as heow he b’lieves thar’s a feller ahidin’ out in the swamp, ‘cause he seen his tracks. I even reckoned on sendin’ for a neighbor o’ mine, Bay Stanhope, that’s got some hounds used to follerin’ people, an’ see if we could run him daown.”

“Well, Mr. Trotter, that is exactly what we scouts propose doing,” said Elmer. “And now if you’ll listen to something I’ve got to tell, you can understand what sort of interest we’ve got in this thing.”

So in as few words as possible he narrated the story of how Hen Condit had acted in such a queer way, robbing his uncle and guardian, and actually leaving a silly letter that fastened the crime on his own shoulders.

“He was seen by one of my chums talking with a strange man just the day before this happened,” continued. Elmer. “We believe that man was the same unknown party who has been hiding in Sassafras Swamp for a time past, and as you’ve just told us, living off your flock of fowls. Johnny here, down in the hay market, gave me something he picked up in the swamp near some ashes. Here it is, Mr. Trotter, and all of us believe firmly it is part of a steel handcuff which was filed in half, showing that the man must be a desperate character escaped from jail.”

At that the farmer’s wife uttered a little shriek, and began to look frightened.

“Hennery,” she told her husband authoritatively, “you go git your gun right away. And Johnny, chain the bull-dog close to the kitchen door. After this I’m meanin’ to make sure the bar’s in place when I’m left alone, and Moses kept inside the house along with me.”

Elmer guessed that the said Moses must be the bull-dog. He also figured that, as a rule, the animal was kept indoors nights, which accounted for his not having interfered with the carrying off of the farmer’s chickens.

Mr. Trotter was plainly deeply interested by this time in the story connected with the coming of these seven scouts.

“Sure I’ll do all I kin to help you land the critters, boys,” he assured them. “But that swamp is some big, an’ I guess as haow you’ll have all you want to do achasin’ through the same. Supposin’ naow you let things rest till tomorry, and make an early start. Mebbe we might bag the raskils this very night, if so be they try to make another haul on my feathered stock, aimin’ to git a turkey this time.”

Of course, Elmer could see through a grindstone that had a hole in its center. He knew very well that the shrewd farmer wanted to make use of them in order to protect his property; but it served Elmer’s purpose just as well to readily agree to the proposition.

As for Lil Artha, his eyes were almost popping out of his head with suspense; he was also licking his lips after the manner of a hungry dog when scenting a bone.

“We’ll stop over with you then, Mr. Trotter,” agreed the patrol leader; “and before morning try to figure out our plan of campaign looking to rounding up the chicken thieves who are believed to be hiding in Sassafras Swamp.”