"Oh! splash! now you've got me worked up with guessing, and I'll never be
able to sleep till I know all about it," grumbled Bobolink.

"You're just as curious as any old woman I ever heard of," declared Jack.

"He always was," said Tom Betts, with a chuckle, "and I could string off
more'n a few times when that same curiosity hauled Bobolink into a peck
of trouble. But p'raps your father might let out the secret to you, after
the old boxes have been taken away, and then you can ease his mind.
Because it's just like he says, and he'll keep on dreamin' the most
wonderful things about those cases you ever heard tell about. That
imagination of Bobolink is something awful."

"Huh!" grunted the one under discussion, "not much worse than some
others I know about right now; only they c'n keep a tight grip on
theirs, and I'm that simple I just have to blurt everything out. Both of
you fellers'd like to know nearly as much as I would, what that
mysterious little old man has got hid away in those big cases. Of course
you would. But you jump on the lid, and hold it down. It gets away with
me; that's all."

"All the same, it's mighty good of you fellows, coming all the way out
here with me tonight; and even when Bobolink's got a stone bruise on his
heel, or something like that," Jack went on to say, with a vein of
sincere affection in his voice; for the boys making up the Red Fox Patrol
of Stanhope Troop were very fond of each other.

"Oh! rats! what's the good of being a scout if you can't do a comrade a
little favor once in a while?" asked Bobolink, impetuously. "But there's
the mill looming up ahead, Jack, in the dark. Half a moon don't give a