Part 16 (1/2)

The expected difficulty of getting Blythe down froe was itation subsided he beca to place himself in the scouts' hands He seemed utterly exhausted and bewildered With this exception he showed no trace of what he had been through, and appeared not to reet up, he stared at Roy's flashlight for a lare of the light one of the scouts lifted a sled on a cord around Blythe's neck, and several of the boys looked at it Blythe either did not knohat they did, or he did not care At all events he did not object This see before

They saw that it was quite useless to question him about the matches and the wisps of straw or about why the sounds hadto hi had aroused anything in his crippled nificance was only in his disordered ot him down the ladder and he acco his head, and never speaking Westy Martin, who clasped his arave no sign of his hallucination and insane agitation They pitied hinance to hi Their hearty liking for hirown into a kind of affection, passed now to a feeling of pity

Before they reached the camp he made the one re the shack on which they had last been working, he said, ”That's where I found the robin, under that floor

Hollender thought I would kill it He thinks I'

They got him back to his couch, where he almost immediately fell sound asleep After ten minutes or so, when Roy entered to look at his bare heel in the brightness of his flashlight, he was breathing heavily, wrapped in the sleep of utter exhaustion and oblivion The diagonal mark seen in his foot imprint was plainly noticeable as a scar on his heel

Doc Carson felt his pulse and it was al to escape that night His coht have been intended to throw the true; it was as good as a cordon of sentinels But for the scouts there was yet no sleep and they raked together a few chips from the scene of their former happiness and sat about the poor disconsolate little blaze talking in undertones, trying to decide what they had better do Of one thing they were resolved, and that was that the county authorities in Bridgeboro should be informed that this Blythe was none other than Claude Darrell

CHAPTER XXIV

THE WARNING

They talked late and their decision before turning in was that the three patrol leaders, Roy, Connie Bennett and Arthur Van Arlen should go to Bridgeboro late in the afternoon and tell their scoutmaster, Mr

Ellsworth, of their discovery They chose the e the responsibility upon their leaders where it belonged, and also with the thought of having the three patrols participate equally in what see, view it as they would

Pee-wee voiced the general senti to prove he's the one they're after, and then all of a sudden so happens so as to kind of make us like him and trust hi, and I like him and I'm not afraid to say so” And he added, ”The Silver Foxes are crazy if it comes to that”

”They're crazy about you, Kid,” Roy said in forced good hu, to their utter astonishathered chips for the breakfast fire, and sat a the bacon which Roy had cooked, as if nothing had happened

He seemed to expect the usual entertainment of wit and wisdom from Roy and Pee-wee, and he smiled in his old hen Roy said with a poor atte powder, we'll all scras” Blythe heard only the pleasantry, but to the others the re

Altogether they were not at all satisfied with the to do was nothing less than their plain duty Their new friendshi+p, their fine plans of a helpful turn, bringing pleasure and profit, had ended in a sordid s

They had no heart for work thatThe three eboro until afternoon because their scoutmaster would be there then They would feel easier and less conte to him than to the authorities

After breakfast Blythe was the first at work His energy was never equal to his willingness, but on this , perhaps because the others seemed half-hearted, he was up on the roof of the third shack ripping off boards before they ell started Others followed hi and hauling away the loosened floorboards below Most of the troop busied the up the site of the second shack The work proceeded silently, al on in this way for about an hour when one of the scouts working down at the edge of the roof called to Blythe as up at the peak that the roof beneath hihts within the shack had been too soon removed, which put a strain upon the all too slender horizontal timber which they had supported This had been pieced mid-way, an instance of hasty and fliht of Blythe at this point caused the strip to sag

The slanting ti froed at their lower ends by the scouts, which operation, of course, withdrew their support fro He acknowledged the warning by springing the bea and splitting was heard

”Look out up there,” Roy called from below

”Get off there Blythey they--_quick!_” another shouted