“Hoist our banners, and let them proclaim:  ‘Down with the muckers!’” laughed Hudson, rolling up the hem of his sweater.

“We want a good, not too fast but steady jog back to town,” announced Bayliss.

At the first sign that the “soreheads” were preparing to leave the spot Dick had taken advantage of their noise to slip away.  Dave had followed him successfully.

Then, from another hiding place these two prowling juniors, grinning, watched the “soreheads” move away at a loping run.

“We certainly know all we need to about that crowd,” muttered Dick, a half-vengeful look in his eyes.  “The snobs!”

“Oh, they’re cads, all right,” assented Dave.  “Yet that bunch of fellows contains some of the material that is needed in putting forth the best High School team this year!”

“Humph!” commented Dave disgustedly.  “Yet, Dick, I was almost surprised that you would stop and listen, without letting the fellows know you were there.”

“It does seem sneaky, at first thought,” Prescott admitted, almost shamefacedly.

“Hold on there!” ordered Dave.  “I don’t believe you’d do a thing like that, Dick Prescott, unless you had an honorable reason for it.”

“I did it because the honor of the High School is so precious to me—–­to us all,” Dick replied.  “We want to put forth a winning team, as Gridley High School has always done.  Now, these ‘soreheads’ aim to defeat that by keeping a few of the best players off the eleven.  I listened, Dave, because I wanted to know what the trouble was, and just who was making it.  Now, I guess I know how to deal with the ‘sore-heads.’  I’ll make them ashamed of themselves.”

“How?”

“One thing at a time, Dave.  In our excitement we’ve almost forgotten that we started out to find Theodore Dodge and clear up the mystery of his disappearance.”

CHAPTER V

AT THE END OF THE TRAIL

“The further we go the more mysterious this becomes,” mused Dick, as he and Darrin stood together over a clump of faintly-marked footprints, a quarter of an hour later.

“How does the mystery increase?” Darrin inquired.

“For one thing, we don’t always find the bootmarks of the men who were with Mr. Dodge.  Yet once in a while we do.  There are the prints of all three.  When Theodore Dodge passed by this way the other two men were with him, or had him in sight.  And our course shows that the three were plunging deeper and deeper into the woods.  But come along.  There must be an end to this, somewhere.”

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.