Warde had always his wits with him. “Shh, don’t wake up the troop,” he whispered. “Come outside.”

“We’ll need them all–alarm–” Roy whispered excitedly.

“Shut up and come outside,” Warde whispered emphatically. He picked up Blythe’s coat and, tiptoeing, led the way out into the night. “He hasn’t gone away,” he said more freely. “Don’t you see this coat? Do you think he’d go away without his coat? Stick your flashlight here, quick; here’s our chance.”

Warde held the collar of the poor threadbare coat close to Roy’s light. There, on the inside was sewn a little cloth square on which was printed:

“I see,” Roy whispered, not knowing what he said.

“Give me the light and wait a second–shh,” said Warde.

Before Roy knew it Warde had re-entered the shack and was folding and replacing the coat where he had found it. In a kind of daze Roy saw the bright spot near the empty balsam couch, saw his companion’s quick, silent movements, saw the scouts lying asleep in the dim light. Then all was darkness within and he saw no more.

“Did you feel in the pockets?” Roy asked as they betook themselves through the darkness to a safe distance. He still whispered, though there was no need of it now. He was nervous, agitated.

“No, I’m not in that line of business,” said Warde.

“I guess he’s Claude Darrell all right,” said Roy. “What shall we do? Try to find him? There’s that voice again. Do you hear it? It’s over there–west.”

“Not find him but follow him,” said Warde. “If we can.”

“You stay here,” said Roy; “give me the light, I’ll track him.” Roy was master here and Warde could only accede.

“What are we going to do when we find him?” Roy asked.

“We’re going to find out what he’s doing,” Warde said.

Nimbly, as silently as a panther, Roy retraced his steps to the shack. For a few minutes Warde stood alone, waiting, conscious of Roy’s experience and superiority in those more active arts of the scout. He had not the slightest knowledge in which direction Blythe had gone and his patrol leader was going to wrench this knowledge from the darkness. Off in the distance the unearthly voice crooning and whining in the night. The very air seemed charged with something impending.

Presently Warde saw two quick flashes of the light, then two more. He was glad that he knew the Silver Fox patrol signs well enough to know the meaning of that one. It signified “Come.”

“He went in his bare feet,” said Roy; “look there. See?”

Upon the soft ground was the imprint of a bare heel with the additional imprint of a diagonal mark upon it. Perhaps Warde would not have recognized this for a heel print, nor the faint suggestions of another print two or three inches distant, for a toe print. But these were easily recognizable by Roy and they indicated the direction also.

“I’m glad he didn’t have his shoes on,” he said. “Now we know he’s got some kind of a scar on his foot. Come ahead, follow me.”

Eight or ten of these prints, among many others which Roy did not pause to distinguish, brought them to the concrete road which runs through the old reservation, the Knickerbocker Road, as it is called. Here the leader of the Silver Foxes was baffled. There was no following footprints here.

They paused for a moment, considering. The white road stretched like a ribbon straight north and south. The temporary makeshift cross streets could be seen in black outline with their silent, ghostly, gloomy buildings, standing in more or less regular order. Here and there was an area of lesser darkness where some boarded side had fallen away revealing the fresher wood of the interiors.The two scouts moved northward a little way along this permanent, central road, the backbone of the old camp. Still they could hear that strange, unearthly voice.

Suddenly out of the darkness near them sped a form. It crossed the road, entered one of the old buildings and hurriedly emerged, entering another. It seemed like some lost spirit of the night. It passed within ten feet of the scouts, never noticing them. It seemed intent with a kind of diabolical intentness. Meanwhile the voice continued, now mournful, now petulant, now clear, now modulated, according to the rising wind.

The two scouts paused spellbound as if in a place haunted. The figure had disappeared but they could hear the patter of its running, and once or twice a fleeting dark shadow. The breeze was freshening and conjuring every sound about the ramshackle buildings into spectral wailings. A fragment of glass falling from a window startled the listeners. Agitated, their nerves tense, they strained their eyes for glimpses of the hurrying apparition and listened to the ghostly concert.“It’s he,” said Warde; “we’ve got to catch him. Do you think that sound is a tree toad? Listen!” He pulled his hat on tighter because of the rising wind.

“First I thought it was,” Roy said. “But it isn’t. They make funny noises but not like that. It’s off there and up high. It’s not any animal–or loose boards or anything like that. Come on.”

Suddenly out of the blackness arose a piercing scream. Its echo resounded from the dried boards of some building and re-echoed from another as if its terror-stricken owner had three voices. It mingled with that wailing voice, distant, aloof. Then they heard human words, sounding strange and unhuman.

“I’m coming! Wait, I’m coming!”

It sounded farther and farther off until it was drowned in the distant moaning.

“It’s he,” Warde whispered, his voice tense.

“I know where it is; come on,” said Roy.