“How do you know that, Steve?” asked the startled Toby.

“Guess I can read tracks when I see them!” snapped the other.

“Then you’ve come across some sort of trail, I reckon?” ventured Jack.

“Just what I have,” came the quick reply, “and here’s the way I happened to hit on it. Tell me, do either of you chance to own this pocket handkerchief?” and as he spoke Steve flipped the article in question from its hiding place, and held it up before his comrades.

Both gave a hasty look, and shook their heads in the negative.

“Never saw it before,” Toby went on record as saying; “and it’s an unusually fine piece of material, I should say, just such as a gentleman who cared a heap for his personal appearance and clothes would be likely to carry.”

“Well, you picked that up first of all, and it excited your suspicions; is that it, Steve?” queried Jack.

“It started me to looking around the spot,” explained the other, “and right away I saw the 54 tracks of shoes–long shoes in the bargain, making prints entirely different from anything we’d be likely to do. So says I to myself, ‘hello, Mister Man! I see you’ve been snooping around here while we slept like the babes in the woods!’ And so I came in to let you fellows know about it. Want to see for yourselves, don’t you? Then just follow me.”

They were soon examining the imprints. Just as Steve had said, there could be no question as to the tracks having been made by some one other than themselves. More than this, Jack could easily tell that they were comparatively fresh.

“Let’s follow them a little bit, and see what he was up to,” he suggested, which they accordingly set out to do, and found that while the stranger did not actually enter the camp he did scout around it as though desirous of seeing all he could.

“Wanted to know if Toby here spoke the truth when he said we were only a bunch of fun-loving boys off on a vacation camping trip, didn’t he, Jack?” Steve asked, as if to confirm his own suspicions.

“Yes, he actually went completely around our camp, and in several places seems to have approached pretty close,” Jack went on to say, after they had given up following the trail of the unknown man. “I think he must have even heard some of us breathing inside the tent, and perhaps he could count our number that way. But after all no great harm has been done; only it goes to 55 show we must keep our eyes open all the time we’re up here.”

Toby heaved a great sigh.

“Whew! but it’s getting some exciting, let me tell you, fellows. All the while you’re gone today I’ll be nervous and think I heard footsteps every time a gray squirrel whisks around a tree, or barks at me so sassy like.”

“Do you think this could be the same man who talked with Toby yesterday, Jack?” Steve inquired.

“We can guess that it must have been,” came the answer. “He wasn’t wholly satisfied with things, and dropped over in the night to learn if this camp was actually run by boys. You see how wise the lady was, after all, for if this party had run upon three men in camp up here, the chances are he’d be more apt to suspect their motives.”

Steve shook his head as though ready to give it up. He never in all his life had been so thoroughly mystified as just then. Toby, too, had an anxious expression on his face, as though he would give considerable if only Jack felt disposed to explain the whole matter. But Jack held his peace; apparently nothing could induce him to betray the confidence of the lady who had trusted him. When the right time arrived, he would divulge the secret; but until then both his chums must content themselves with taking it out in speculations.

Finally, Jack began to collect his photographic 56 paraphernalia as though about to get ready to start forth on his tramp. Steve had meanwhile looked after a “light lunch,” which he facetiously called a “snack”; though it filled two of his coat pockets, and Jack had some difficulty in stowing away his portion.

Toby eyed these amazing preparations with something akin to awe.

“Say, do you really expect to come back tonight, or are you figuring on staying out a whole week?” he asked plaintively; at which Jack, taking compassion on him, hastened to assure Toby there was no cause for worry.

“You know Steve’s weakness,” he went on to say aside, “and of course he is always in deadly fear of starving to death. That’s why he loads himself down so with grub on the least provocation. But never expect to see a crumb come back, for that would be against Steve’s principles, you know. He thinks it a shame to waste food; and so he’d stuff himself until he could hardly breathe rather than throw anything away. We may be a little late in the afternoon, but we’ll bob up serenely long before dark comes.”

So they set out, Toby waving them goodbye with his dish towel, for he had started in to do the breakfast things.

For a whole they walked along, observing everything that seemed worth their attention. Then Steve took note of a certain fact which he deemed significant. This was that Jack was heading in 57 an almost straight line, as though he had arranged a plan of campaign for that day; and also that if they kept along that course, sooner or later they were bound to fetch up in the neighborhood of the place where that strange booming sound had originated.

This fact agitated Steve, and made him think many things. He even found himself speculating upon the chances of their running across the stranger who was taking such a deep interest in their presence in the Pontico Hills country.

Jack did not make any pretense at hurrying. He was taking his time, it seemed, and enjoying the scenery around him. A thousand things called for exclamation of delight, for the woods looked especially grand with the sun glinting on the green foliage of the various trees, some of which were veritable forest monarchs.

Once before noon arrived, Jack stopped short. The largest tree thus far encountered confronted them. Just what size butt it had I should be afraid to say, for fear I might not be believed, but it was perfectly enormous.

“I must try to get a shot at that dandy oak,” said Jack, with bubbling enthusiasm, such as becomes an amateur photographer who loves his calling. “Never have I set eyes on such a majestic king of the woods. I’m sure it will make a splendid picture with you standing alongside, Steve, just to show its enormous girth. The pity of it is that I can’t dream of trying to get the whole tree 58 in the picture, for no camera could do that in these dense woods, where you can’t get far away from the object you’re photographing.”

He found that the side toward the sun was after all the best for his purpose, and accordingly, after a little maneuvering, Jack secured a picture of the tremendous monarch of the woods.

“I guess now he was a pretty hefty old tree when Columbus discovered America,” said Steve, afterwards, as he tried to measure the butt by passing around it many times with his arms fully extended. “Just think of all the stirring events in history that this giant has outlived. It makes a fellow look up with respect, and feel as if he wanted to take off his cap to the patriarch, doesn’t it, Jack?”

“You give him the right name when you say that, for a fact, Steve; because there’s no way of our telling just how many hundred years he has stood right in this same spot.”

“Well, I’m glad I’m not a tree,” grinned Steve, “because it must be terribly monotonous staying all your life rooted to the ground, and never seeing anything of this beautiful world. As for me, I want to travel when I grow up, and look on every foreign land. Going on now, Jack, are you? Soon be time to take a little noon rest, and lighten the loads we’re carrying in our pockets.”

“Given half an hour more and it’ll be noon,” Jack informed him, after taking a look aloft to where the beaming sun was high in the heavens. 59 “I never like to eat lunch until then, so let’s wait a bit. Besides, I’m not quite as hungry as I ought to be to do justice to all that stuff you put in my pockets.”

After that Jack did not seem anxious to snap off further pictures, though they came across a number that would have made excellent ones. Steve wondered whether he might not be saving his film for something more important. Even the thought gave a delicious little thrill, his imagination was so highly excited by now.

Then came the time when Jack, taking another look aloft, announced that the sun had reached his zenith, or nearest point overhead. That was good news for Steve, although truth to tell he had for some time been slily nibbling at the contents of one of the packages he carried in his pockets, unable to resist the temptation while the opportunity was within his grasp.

Fortune favored them again; but then possibly the presence of that sweet singing little rivulet that meandered through the forest may have had something to do with Jack’s decision to stop for lunch; he was always seeing these small but very important things, as Steve very well knew.

They found a mossy bank and sat down, Steve with a great sigh of contentment; but whether this was caused by the fact that his lame foot was hurting him a bit again, or just from plain delight over the arrival of “feeding time,” it would be hard to say; nor, indeed, fair to big Steve, who 60 might have his weaknesses, but on the whole was a real good fellow.

Here the pair sat and ate and drank of the cold water until they had fully satisfied the inner man. After all, Steve was compelled to wrap up part of his lunch again, being utterly unable to devour it.

“Huh! guess that time my eyes were bigger ’n my stomach,” he grunted, being too full for much speaking; “but, then, never mind, we are quite a ways from camp, and I often take a little bite around three in the afternoon, even when I’m home. So it isn’t going to be wasted, believe me.”

“Only waisted,” laughingly said Jack, and then apologized for getting off such an atrocious pun.

They decided to lie around for an hour, and then push on a little farther before turning back. That Jack figured would bring them to the camp by the triangle oaks an hour or so before darkness came on, which was time enough.

It was very pleasant for Steve, lying there on his back, and feeling the gentle breeze fan his heated face; for around about noon the sun’s rays began to grow pretty fervid, and Steve often mopped his perspiring and beaming face, though taking it good naturedly.

Both of them shut their eyes and rested, though not meaning to even take what Steve was pleased to call a “cat nap.” It was peculiarly still just at that hour after the middle of the day. The little woods animals must all be sleeping in their burrows, 61 or the hollow trees where they had their nests. Even the inquisitive squirrels were only noticeable by their absence. A scolding bevy of crows alighted in a tree some distance off, and kept up what Steve called facetiously a “crow caucus.”

The time Jack meant to remain there resting, had almost expired when both of the boys suddenly sat up, and held their heads in a listening attitude.