[Illustration:  “DID EITHER OF YOU FELLOWS DO THAT?” TOM ASKED.

Tom Slade on Mystery Trail.  Page 151]

Moreover he believed that some scout or other had visited this now memorable spot and marked his initials on the mud, squatting on the log the while.  To be sure, the absence of footprints close by, save those easily recognizable as Skinny’s, was perplexing, but since there was no other explanation, Tom accepted the one which seemed not wholly unlikely.  At all events, what other explanation was there?

For an hour or more that same night Tom lay under Asbestos’ elm pondering on his singular discovery.  Then realizing that his duties were many and various, he put this matter out of his head altogether and went to work in the morning at the strenuous work of lowering and rolling up tents.

The papers which the boys brought up from Catskill that afternoon were full of the kidnapping.  Master Harrington’s distracted mother was under the care of a dozen or so specialists, six or eight servants had been discharged for neglect, Mr. Harrington offered a reward of five thousand dollars, somebody had seen the child in Detroit, another had seen him in Canada, another had seen him at a movie show, another had heard heart-rending cries in some marsh or other, and so on and so on.

In New York “an arrest was shortly expected,” but it didn’t arrive.  The detectives were “saying nothing” and apparently doing nothing.  Master Anthony Harrington’s picture was displayed on movie screens the country over.

But out of all this hodge-podge of cooked up news and irresponsible hints there remained just the one plausible clew to hang any hopes on and that was trainman Hanlon’s recollection of seeing a child in a mackinaw jacket and carrying a jack-knife in the company of two men who alighted from a northbound train at Catskill, within ten miles of Temple Camp.

One other item of news interested the camp community, and that was that boy scouts throughout the country had been asked to search for the missing child.

Meanwhile, the kidnappers sat tight, expecting no doubt that their demands for a large ransom would be more fruitful after the chances of legitimate rescue had been exhausted.  The great fortune of Anthony Harrington of Wall Street was quite useless until a couple of ruffians chose to say the word.  And meanwhile, Master Anthony, Jr., might be hacking himself all to pieces with a horrible jack-knife.

It was just when matters were at that stage that Pee-wee Harris, Elk Patrol, First Bridgeboro Troop, went in swimming for the last time that summer in the cooling water of Black Lake.  He gave a terrific cry, jumped on the springboard, howled for everybody to look, turned two complete somersaults and went kerplunk into the water with a mighty splash.

CHAPTER XXVIII

WATCHFUL WAITING