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.