“Look here, fellows, here are some clothes,” Will called out suddenly, and the boys rushed over to where he stood, a tattered old hat and an equally ragged coat in his hands.  “Maybe there will be something in the jacket to tell us where the poor fellow has been staying and what he has been up to.”

They searched through the coat and finally pulled out a wallet.

“Now if it only has some writing in it,” said Mollie breathlessly.

There was a card, and the card bore the words which they expected, yet dreaded, Arnold Dempsey, Ph.  D. But there was nothing else, and suddenly tears dimmed their eyes and they had to turn away.

“It will be mighty hard on Jimmy and Arnold,” muttered Roy, gazing somberly at the fast-flowing river.  “To have their dad go that way!  They’ll take it mighty hard—­ those boys.”

CHAPTER XXIII

 A moonlight apparition

“Let’s look around a little anyway,” Betty suggested.  “He may possibly have been swept up on the shore farther down the river.”

“If such a thing were possible he would probably be dead anyway,” Frank protested, but the girls paid no attention to him.  The mere suggestion that the professor might still be alive and in need of assistance was enough for them, and they set about feverishly to scour the woods on both sides of the river and for a considerable distance down its shores.

After an hour of vain search, however, they were forced to conclude that the old man was indeed dead, and so reluctantly and with heavy hearts they turned their steps back toward Wild Rose Lodge.

They talked very little on the way back, for they were too occupied with their own gloomy thoughts.  Only once Betty spoke what was in the minds of all of them.

“It seems such a terrible waste—­ such a pity,” she said.  “Just a mistake on the part of the Government to have resulted in this tragedy.  Arnold and James Dempsey coming home, safe and well and hopeful to find their father—­ dead!”

The boys stayed on for several days at the lodge, and for all the Outdoor Girls but Betty their stay was unmitigated joy.  But in the heart of the Little Captain, hard as she tried to fight against it, was a little sense of injury to think that her chums had got their boys back and she had been denied hers.

To be sure, all the boys made much of her and petted her—­ for there was not one of them who had not competed for her favor in the old days before Allen had shouldered them all out—­ but no amount of attention from any one else could make up for one little word from Allen.

At each sunrise she awoke thrilling with the thought that perhaps Allen would be with her before the sun went down.  And as each evening came without him she sighed and thought, “Perhaps to-morrow.”

Since the tragic death of Professor Dempsey they felt that they need no longer fear the woods, although they never ventured near the river or the falls without a heartache and the fervent wish that they might have reached the poor demented man with the glad news of his sons’ safety in time to avert the tragedy.