“We ought to call this Camp Surprise, then,” announced Ralph.

“That’s what,” echoed Bud.

“Now let us go in again,” suggested Hugh.  “It seems as if the fireworks might be all over for this particular night.  Even the aeroplane has gone off where none of us can hear the motor working any longer.”

“Perhaps she dropped to the ground,” remarked Bud.  “There might be another open place not far away, like the old field where we tried out my little model this morning.  And say, doesn’t it strike you as funny that just one solitary meteor should take a notion to explode each night?”

No one answered this question, though Bud was too busy pondering on the run of strange events that had fallen to their share of late to notice the lack of interest his comrades seemed to take in the matter.

Once inside, they again sat around talking.  It was Ralph this time who gave utterance to a certain fact that had been in his mind, which interested both his chums as soon as they heard it.

“I don’t know,” he started to say soberly, “whether either of you happened to notice it, but there seemed to be something foreign about the voices we heard after the big noise.  Not a single word could I understand, either, and yet they seemed to be pretty near by.”

“I didn’t happen to notice that, Ralph,” Hugh observed seriously; “but if the men who spoke were your mysterious friends of the other day, one thing is sure—–­they weren’t the ones who sat in that speeding monoplane.”

“Eh?  How do you know that?” queried Bud, becoming deeply interested.

“Well, in the first place,” suggested Ralph, not waiting for Hugh’s reply, “the sound of voices came from the same level as our own location.  I’m dead sure of that fact.  Then again we could hear the swish of brush, and I even caught the sound of men crashing through thickets and falling over logs.”

“Yes,” added Hugh, “and it struck me that they were in something like a blue fright, as though the nearness of that explosion had given them a bad scare.  Only a sudden panic could make men rush through thickets as recklessly as they were going.”

“Everybody may not like meteors to drop all around ’em,” Bud muttered; “and I can’t blame the fellows much, either.  I came near being knocked flat on my back, myself, when that one let go with a bang.  My ears are ringing yet, and I’m afraid I’ll go deaf if I have to hear much more of that sort of cannonading.”

Although they continued to sit up for some little time and talk, Hugh did not see fit to mention certain suspicions that had taken root in his own mind.  He believed he was on the track of the truth, but until he had a little more positive evidence he hesitated to speak out boldly.

They finally settled down and tried to sleep.  Bud seemed to find little difficulty in forgetting all his troubles and triumphs, for his heavy breathing quickly announced that he was dead to the world.  With the other two it was a more protracted task, and possibly they turned over as many as half a dozen times before surrendering drowsily to the god of slumber.