Hugh happened to awaken some time afterwards, and as the flames lazily lighted up the big room occasionally, he lay there watching them play upon the wall.  So he allowed himself to figure what strange scenes these same rooms must have witnessed in those bygone days when the old judge and his young prisoner wife occupied the monstrosity of an imitation feudal castle.

When Hugh was about to turn over and compose himself to sleep, he heard a peculiar sound that caused his heart to beat much more rapidly than its wont.  He suddenly sat up and listened again.

CHAPTER IV

SCOUTING AT MIDNIGHT

It was certainly a queer sound that floated to the strained hearing of the boy as he crouched there on the floor of the room amidst the folds of his blanket and listened with might and main.

There followed a brief period of silence and then he felt a thrill, for it came again, a peculiar whimpering that would have given Billy a spasm of fright had he been awake to catch it, instead of calmly sleeping close by.

“What in the mischief can it be?” whispered Hugh to himself as he allowed his hand to grope around for something he wanted, and which he remembered placing conveniently by at the time he prepared his crude bed.

The fire had died down again so that the big apartment on the main floor was almost wrapped in darkness.  Still, when tiny tongues of flame played at hide-and-seek about the charred log, they caused all sorts of odd shadows to run athwart the walls.

Hugh gave a grunt of satisfaction when his fingers closed upon the object he sought.  It was only about the size of two fingers, and nickel-plated at that.  In fact, Hugh had made himself a trifling-present lately of a small vestpocket edition of a flashlight, controlled by a battery, and had thought it worth while to carry it along with him on this expedition, though not saying anything about it to the others, thus far.

“I’m bound to find out what makes that noise, as sure as anything can be,” was what the boy was telling himself resolutely, even while he crept out from among the folds of the warm blanket endeared to him by reason of many associations of the past, of which so much has been written in previous volumes.

That was just like Hugh Hardin.  A good many boys would possibly have concluded that going wandering about a great imitation castle like Randall’s Folly, after midnight, trying to discover the origin of strange sounds, was no business of theirs, and would have cuddled down closer, even drawing their blanket over their heads in order that they might not hear a repetition of the noise.

Hugh was built on a different order.  He knew full well that sleep with him was entirely out of the question so long as that chilling whimpering and rustling continued at regular intervals.

Now Hugh was only a boy, it must be remembered, and many a strong man would have declined committing himself in the way the scout master intended doing.