“The further we go the more mysterious this becomes,” mused Dick, as he and Darrin stood together over a clump of faintly-marked footprints, a quarter of an hour later.

“How does the mystery increase?” Darrin inquired.

“For one thing, we don’t always find the bootmarks of the men who were with Mr. Dodge.  Yet once in a while we do.  There are the prints of all three.  When Theodore Dodge passed by this way the other two men were with him, or had him in sight.  And our course shows that the three were plunging deeper and deeper into the woods.  But come along.  There must be an end to this, somewhere.”

Ten minutes later Prescott and Darrin felt that they had come to the end of the mystery.  For the faint trail had led them up a slight, stony slope, and now the two boys lay flat on the ground.

Below them, in a bush-clad hollow, two miles from the world in general, stood a little, old, ramshackle shanty.  The location was one that seekers would hardly have found without a trail to lead them to it.

To the door of this shanty a broad-shouldered, rough-looking and powerful fellow of forty had just come.  The man, who was poorly clad, wore brogans, and held in his right hand a weighty, ugly-looking club.  The fellow was smoking a short-stemmed pipe, and now stood, with his left hand shading his eyes, peering off at the surrounding landscape.

Dick and Dave hugged the ground more closely behind their screen of bushes.

“It’s all right, Bill,” announced the lookout in the doorway.

“’Course this,” growled a voice from the inside.  “Too far from the main line o’ travel for anyone to be spying around.  Besides, no one guesses-----”

“Well, you can go to sleep if ye wanter, Bill.  I’m goin’ ter sit up and smoke.”

With that the brogan-shod man disappeared inside the shanty.  Dick and Dave glanced at each other with eager interest.

“I wonder whether they have Mr. Dodge in there with them?” breathed Dick, in his ear.

“If Mr. Dodge is in there he’s keeping amazingly quiet,” Darrin responded doubtingly.

“Within a very few minutes,” Prescott rejoined, “I’m going to know whether Mr. Dodge is in that shanty.”

“We found his footprint close enough near here,” argued Dave.

“Yes, and I feel sure enough that Mr. Dodge is there.  But why don’t we hear something from him?  The whole business is so uncanny that it gives one that creepy feeling.”

For a full quarter of an hour the two chums remained hidden, barely stirring.  From the shanty, at first, came crooning tones, as though the man in brogans were humming over old songs to himself.  Occasionally there was a snore; evidently Bill was drowsing the day away.

“Now, I’m going down there,” whispered Dick.

“Look out the big fellow doesn’t catch you,” warned Darrin.  “I’ve an idea he’d beat you to a pulp if he caught you.”

“I’m not as big as he is,” admitted Dick, grinning, “but I think I might prove as fast as he on my feet.”

As Prescott started to steal down into the hollow Dave reached about him, gathering all the fair-sized stones within reach.

“If Dick has to come from there on the rim,” soliloquized Darrin, “a few stones hurled at the face of that ugly-looking customer might hold him back for a while.  And I used to be called a pretty fair pitcher!”

Prescott, in the meantime, was stealing around the shanty, applying his eyes to some tiny cracks.

At last he turned, making straight and cautiously up the slope.

As he came near, Dick sent Dave a signal that made that latter youth throb with expectancy.

“Yes!  We’ve found Theodore Dodge!” whispered young Prescott eagerly.  “He’s in there, lying on the floor, bound and gagged.”

“Whew!  And what is Mr. Brogans doing?”

“Sitting on the floors smoking and playing solitaire with a dirty pack of cards.  The other rascal, Bill, is sleeping at a great rate.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“Dave, are you willing to stay here, hiding and keeping watch on the place?”

“Surely,” nodded Darrin, with great promptness.

“I’ll follow ’em, of course.”

“And leave a paper trail,” nodded Dick.

“Here is all the paper I have in my pockets,” he added.

“I have some, too,” muttered Dave.

“I’ll be back as speedily as I can get help.”

“You ought not to be gone more than an hour.”

“Not as long as that, I hope.  Goodbye, Dave, and look out for yourself.”

After going the first hundred yards Dick Prescott let himself out into a loping run, very much like that used by the “soreheads” in getting back to town.  With a trained runner the cross-country style of running is suited for getting over long distances at fair speed.

Twenty minutes later young Prescott reached a farm house in which there was a telephone.  He asked permission to use the instrument.

“Go right in the parlor, and help yourself,” replied the farmer’s wife.

As Dick rang on, and stood waiting, transmitter at his ear, he first thought of calling for the police station.

“No, I won’t, either,” he muttered.  “This belongs to my paper.  Let them tip off the police.  Hello!  Give me ‘The Blade’ office, Gridley, please.”

Dick waited patiently a few moments.  Then: 

“Hullo!  ‘The Blade?’ This is Prescott.  Is Mr. Pollock there?  He is?  Good!  Tell him I want to speak with him.”

Then Mr. Pollock’s voice sounded over the wire.

“Hullo, Prescott!  Why aren’t you on hand, with that big Dodge story hanging over our heads?  Why, it brought me down hours before fore my time.”

“What’s that!” broke in the editor’s excited voice.  “You’ve found Dodge?  Alive?”

As rapidly as he could young Prescott told the story.  Mr. Pollock listened gladly.

“Now, where are you, Prescott?”

Dick told Mr. Pollock the name of the farmer from whose home he was telephoning.

“Just you wait there, Prescott.  And, oh! –­pshaw!  I came near forgetting to tell you the biggest news of all –­for you.  Mrs. Dodge this morning offered a thousand dollars’ reward for the finding of her husband, dead or alive.  You’ll get that reward –­you and Darrin!  But I’ve no more time to talk.  Stay right where you are until I reach you.”

Nor was it long before Dick, pacing by the farmyard gate, saw an automobile approaching at a lively clip.  In it were the chauffeur and Editor Pollock.

The latter waved his hand wildly when he caught sight If his High School reporter.

Right begged this automobile sped another, in which sat Chief Coy, Officer Hemingway and a uniformed policeman, in addition to the chauffeur.

“We didn’t lose much time, did we?” hailed Mr. Pollock, as the first auto slowed up “Jump in, quick!  Show us the way.”

“I suppose there’s some excitement down in Gridley, about this time?” laughed Dick, as the two autos raced along once more.

“Not a bit,” replied the editor.  “And for the very simple reason that no one knows that Dodge has been found.”

“His family know it, of course?” queried Dick.

“No; not a word.  Chief Coy kept it quiet, and asked me to do the same.  He didn’t want the Dodge family all stirred up by false hopes in case you had made a mistake.  The silence will keep ’The Evening Mail’ from learning the news for a while.  And I’ve had our forms left standing.  We’re all ready to run out an extra –­in case you haven’t made a mistake, Prescott,” added Mr. Pollock quizzically.

Dick smiled resignedly at this implied doubt.  But the autos were making fast time, and soon the machines had gone as far on the way as they could be used.

“Now we’ll have to get out and strike across country, through the woods,” Prescott called.

So far Dick had resolutely tried to keep out of his mind any thought of that thousand-dollar reward.  It sounded too much like “Blood money” to take pay for helping any afflicted family out of its troubles.  Besides, it had been the glory of doing a piece of bright newspaper work that had allured the two High School boys at the outset.

“Yet a thousand dollars is –­a thousand dollars!” Dick couldn’t help feeling, wistfully, as he piloted his party across fields and through the woods.  “A thousand dollars!  Five hundred apiece for Dave and me!  What a fearful big lot of money!  What we could do with it, If we had it!  I wonder whether it would be right and decent to take it?”

Then, as he neared the place where he had left his chum on post Dick Prescott found other and anxious thoughts crowding into his mind.

Was Dave Darrin, staunch and reliable Dave –­still there, on post, and unharmed?

Was Theodore Dodge there?  Were his captors still with him?