In the midst of troublesome dreams, Ned Osgood, half-awake, fancied he heard hail beating against the windows of his sitting room. Fully awake at last, he lifted his head from the pillow and listened; but, hearing it no more, he decided that it must have been a figment of his distasteful dreams.

He heard something else, however. Far away the voices of men were calling, but as he listened and wondered, the sounds grew more distant, became fainter, and died away.

Returning to his pillow, he settled down, seeking to compose himself, and praying that those rest-disturbing dreams might trouble him no more. But thoughts of Hooker would not let him sleep, and presently something else brought him bolt upright on the bed, startled and wondering.

It was a clamor of bells, beginning with a peal from the steeple of the Methodist church down the street. The night air vibrated with the sounds, which seemed to pour in upon him through the partly opened window of his bedroom. Why were those church bells ringing at such an hour? He could distinguish the tones of the academy bell, as well. In a moment he knew it must be an alarm meant to arouse the town, and out of bed he sprang, catching his trousers up from the back of a chair and getting into them as quickly as he could, trembling slightly all the while with excitement.

Below he heard Mrs. Chester calling to the maid, and, opening the door of his room, her words came plainly to his ears:

“Sarah! Sarah! Get up quick! I’m frightened. There must be a big fire. The bells are ringing.”

“So that’s it,” muttered Osgood, hastening to a window. “There’s a fire in the village. They sound the bells to give the alarm.”

Looking from the window, he failed to observe any glow of light against the sky to indicate where the fire might be. Through a momentary lull of the bells, he fancied he heard some one shouting far away in town. Surely some terrible thing had happened or was taking place.

Lighting a lamp, he rapidly finished dressing, and pulling on his turtle-neck sweater he grabbed up his cap.

As he bounded down the stairs, Mrs. Chester called to him from a partly opened door at the end of the hall:

“Where is it, Ned? Where’s the fire?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I looked out, but I couldn’t see any fire. Don’t be alarmed; it must be a long distance away, in another part of the village.”

A man was running down the middle of the street as Osgood dashed from the house, slamming the door behind him. He called to the man, but received no answer. Then he took to the street and followed.

The bell in the Methodist steeple hammered and banged as he raced past the church. Lights were shining everywhere from the windows of houses. Men and boys came running from side streets, questioning one another excitedly without getting satisfactory answers.

There was a crowd in the village square, and, contrasted with the agitated people who came running to join it from every direction, it was strangely calm.

Ned grabbed some one by the arm, as he demanded:

“What is it? What’s the matter? Why are they ringing the bells?”

He recognized Jack Nelson, as the person he had questioned turned to answer.

“It’s Hooker!”

“Hooker!” choked Osgood, aghast.

A fearsome thought smote him. Hooker was dead! But why should they ring the bells in the middle of the night and bring all the people out?

“Yes,” Nelson was saying, “Roy has disappeared. He was left, apparently asleep, and later, when some one looked into his room, he was gone.”

“Great Scott!” breathed Ned. “I thought perhaps he was dead.”

“Oh, no. In that case, it wouldn’t be necessary to turn the whole village out. He’s wandering around somewhere, half dressed and probably crazy. They’re getting the people out to search for him.”

“Is it necessary to turn out the whole town this way?”

“Perhaps so. They’ve tried to find him, but can’t. Now they’re asking everybody to join in the search. You see, there’s no telling what the result may be if he’s not found soon. In his dotty condition he may do himself harm; and, anyhow, with only a few clothes on, he’s liable to get pneumonia.”

Some of the men who had early learned the cause of the disturbance were now seen bringing lanterns, and in the midst of the gathering in the square, William Pickle, the deputy sheriff, was suggesting a plan of search, by which four parties should spread out in different directions.

“You want to look everywhere, feller citizens,” the officer was saying; “look into sheds and barns and under fences, and every old nook and corner where the boy may be hidin’. He’s plumb loony, ye know, and he’s li’ble to crawl into any old place. Mebbe he’ll be scat of ye and want to fight when ye do find him, so handle him gentle.”

At this juncture two men came panting down Main Street. “We know where he is!” shouted one. “We’ve seen him!”

“Yep, we’ve seen him,” gulped the other. “We almost ketched him, but he got away from us somehow.”

“Where is he? Where is he?” cried twenty voices.

“We was goin’ up the street, lookin’ for him, and we’d almost got to the Widder Chester’s, when we see somebody scoot across the road, jump the fence and put off inter the field above Cedar Street. When we hollered for him to stop he run faster.”

“And he could run some,” gasped the smaller man. “We chased him into a strip of trees and bushes, and he must be hid there right now, for we couldn’t find him.”

“Come on,” commanded William Pickle, taking the lead—“come on, everybody. Show us the way, Turner and Crabtree.”

Forgetting the original plan of search, the crowd poured up the main street, straggling out into a long, irregular body. Osgood, keeping close to the leaders, felt some one press against him, and recognized Billy Piper.

“This is bad business,” said Piper in a low tone.

“You’re right,” agreed Ned instantly. “No one can feel any worse about it than I do.”

“But feeling bad,” retorted Billy grimly, “doesn’t make amends; it’s got to be something more than that.”

As the searchers turned from the road near Mrs. Chester’s house, climbed the fence and streamed across the field, Ned began to understand that the shouting, which had seemed to break in upon his troubled dreams, had been real. And with this conviction came the thought that in his delirium Hooker had sought to return to the place where he had been injured. It was a disagreeable thought, which Osgood tried to put aside.

The rising moon, breaking now and then through ragged clouds, promised aid to the searchers. Directed by Pickle, they spread out and practically surrounded the long, narrow strip of trees and bushes. This done, a body of men entered the growth and worked their way through it, leaving scarcely a yard of ground uninspected. But when they had passed over it all in this thorough manner, it became known that not one of them had found the slightest trace of the missing lad.

“He must have hid till Turner and Crabtree left,” said the deputy sheriff. “As soon as they were gone, he prob’ly hit out for somewhere’s else.”

“Too bad one of ’em didn’t have sense enough to stay and watch while t’other one went for help,” said Abel Hubbard, the constable.

The posse gathered in a group, seeking further instructions from their leaders.

“Don’t believe they’ll ever find him this way,” said Billy Piper. “They’re not going about it with any sort of method.”

“Yeou’re so all-fired clever at sech things,” said Sile Crane, “why don’t yeou suggest a plan?”

“They wouldn’t listen to me if I proposed anything.”

“If you have a plan, Piper,” said Nelson, joining the little cluster of boys that surrounded Billy, “just tell us what it is. If it sounds reasonable, we’ll carry it out.”

“Let me think a moment—let me think,” said Piper, tapping his knuckles against his forehead. “The report is that Roy was talking some along about nightfall, though his words were jumbled, without much sense in them. He kept repeating certain things, such as ‘poker,’ ‘five aces,’ and ‘cabin.’”

“You know what Professor Richardson said,” put in Rodney Grant. “It’s thought that Roy was playing cards for money when he was hurt.”

“If so,” said Billy, “that would explain the words ‘poker’ and ‘five aces’; but why did he keep talking about a cabin? Ha! I have it. I happen to know that once on a time a certain little bunch of fellows went over to the old camp in Silver Brook Swamp to play poker, and Hook was one of the crowd. Cabin—that’s what he meant; he had something in his muddled mind about that old camp in the swamp. Come on, fellows, perhaps we’ll find him there.”

“You’ve always been so lucky in your guesses,” said Nelson, “that there’s a chance you may be right this time. If you should happen to be, your reputation as a great detective will be established on a firm——”

“I don’t want any such reputation!” snapped Billy shortly. “I think I told you so once before, Jack.”

“Geewhilikens!” exclaimed Crane, astonished. “What’s happened to yeou naow? Yeou’ve alwus been red-hot to play the detective, and some folks have begun to say that yeou’re purty clever at it.”

“I haven’t time to explain my reasons for cutting that tommyrot out,” retorted Piper. “Let’s get a move on.”

There were eight boys in the party that set out for Silver Brook Swamp, led by Piper. Striking across the fields, they passed to the south of Turkey Hill and reached the Barville road. The clouds were dispersing and the moon was shining clear and bright when they drew near Silver Brook and came to the old path that led into the swamp.

Phil Springer and Chipper Cooper were disposed to lag behind somewhat, although something seemed to draw them on after the others.

“I’ve been expecting Piper to blow the whole thing any minute,” said Cooper, speaking to Phil in a low tone.

“Wonder why he hasn’t?” speculated Springer. “He sus-swore to us that he would if Shultz or Osgood didn’t own up pup-pretty quick.”

“Guess he’s waiting for what he’d call the psychological moment. You know Pipe’s always great for dramatic effects.”

“There can be only one outcome to this thing now. We’re all in the sus-sus-soup.”

“Billy says it’s our duty to think of Roy, not ourselves.”

“I’ve been th-thinking of him too much. It’s made me sick. I’m thinking of him now, and what we’re liable to fuf-find in this old swamp if Pipe’s guess is right about the way he went. Being crazy enough to jump out of bub-bed and run off half-dressed, anything may huh-happen to him.”

“That’s right,” agreed Chipper dolefully. “I wonder where Charley Shultz is? Didn’t see anything of him with the crowd.”

“Yah!” growled Springer. “He hasn’t got any fuf-feelings. I’ll bet he’s in bed, sleeping like a log, this very minute. Probably not even the ringing of the bells woke him up.”

“He must have a heart of stone,” said Cooper.

Had they known all that had happened to Shultz in the last two hours, could they have seen him in his present painful and wretched condition, their judgment of him might not have been so harsh.