"I asked these fellows," said Elmer, seriously, "and both Toby and Ty gave me their word of honor that no game or joke was set up between them. If Nat is playing a prank then he's doing it on his own account."

"And Nat ain't generally the fellow to think of playing a joke on his chums," declared Larry.

"Gee, this is getting wild and woolly now!" remarked Landy; "I'm all of a tremble. What if the poor fellow fell over this dam here, struck his head on a rock, and lies right now at the bottom of that black pool where the foam keeps on circling around and around. Ugh! It makes me shiver, fellows, honest and truly."

George, as usual, scoffed at the idea of anything having happened to Nat Scott.

"He'll show up as soon as he feels like it, make sure of that," he declared.

"Have you called him!" asked Matty.

"Yes, all of us did," replied Lil Artha, whose customary rollicking good nature seemed subdued in a measure for once.

"And he didn't answer?" demanded Chatz.

"We never heard a word, and that's a fact, boys," declared Toby Jones, uneasily.

Then they all looked around again, their eyes naturally roving in the quarter where, near the farther end of the dam, the old mill stood.

Its day was long since past. The great water wheel at the end of the sluice had partly fallen to pieces with the pa.s.sage of time and the ravages of neglect. What was left seemed to be almost entirely covered with green moss, among which the clear little fingers of water trickled.

Suddenly a discordant scream rang out. It was so fearful that several of the fellows turned pale, and all of them started violently.

"There!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Chatz.

His manner was almost triumphant; just as though he would like to demand whether these chums of his could not find some reason to believe as he did, after such a manifestation.

"Oh, glory, what was that!" quivered Landy, as he clutched the arm of Elmer Chenowith.

"But it didn't come from the mill," declared Larry. "Sounded to me like it was out there on the pond."

"Good for you, Larry," remarked Elmer.

"Then I was right?" asked the other.

"You certainly were, and if the whole of you turn your eyes aways up yonder, perhaps you'll notice a big black-and-white bird come to the surface. It dived just after scolding us for disturbing its fishing excursion."

Following the direction indicated by Elmer's extended finger the scouts all watched eagerly.

"I see something moving just behind that bunch of lily pads," exclaimed one with keen vision.

"There it swims out now, and it's a big water bird, too. Looks like a goose to me," Landy remarked, earnestly.

"That's a loon, fellows!" exclaimed Red.

"Is it, Elmer?" they demanded in a breath.

"Just what it is, and nothing else," replied the acting scout master.

"They are very common up in the Great Northwest. And once you've heard their wild laugh you'll never forget it."

"Huh, sounds just like the shout of a crazy man to me," ventured Lil Artha.

"Everybody says that," Elmer declared. "And I never knew a single fellow who liked to hear a loon call. Some say it's a sign of ill luck to be scolded by a loon."

"Ill luck!" echoed Chatz, once more looking in the direction of the ramshackle old mill.

"But see here," remarked Matty, "tell us about Nat, won't you? When was his queer disappearance first noticed, Elmer?"

"Well, when Lil Artha and myself arrived here we found Toby and Ty throwing stones out in the pond, scaring the little red-marked turtles that were sitting by dozens on every old log and rock, and great big bullfrogs as well."

"Never saw so many whopping big frogs in all my life," declared Ty.

"You see," explained Toby, "we missed Nat, but thought he had just wandered off to look around. Ty and me, why, we felt too tired to explore things till the rest came along."

"Oh, but you could amuse yourselves throwing things into the water, eh?"

Matty remarked, with such a vein of sarcasm in his voice that Toby immediately aroused to defend himself.

"'Twa'n't that at all, Matty Eggleston; prove it by Ty here if either of us was afraid to go inside your old haunted mill, was we, Ty?" he exclaimed, with a fine show of righteous indignation.

"Course we wasn't," Ty hastened to declare, with a decided shake of his tousled head. "We walked along the sh.o.r.e till we came to a nice shady place, and then squatted down, meanin' to wait till Elmer showed up.

Then I popped a rock at a sa.s.sy little turkle, and pretty soon both of us were letting fly."

"When did you miss Nat, and where was he the last you saw him?" asked Matty, who was expected some day to become a lawyer.

"Oh!" answered Toby, "he said he'd hang around the dam here and look into things. You know Nat always did want to pry into everything he saw."

"What then?" Matty went on asking.

"Why, we saw Elmer and Lil Artha coming, and went to meet 'em, that's all," replied Ty.

"Have any of you been inside the mill?"

"Why, no," Toby spoke up. "Elmer and Lil Artha sat down to rest, and you see we expected Nat to pop out on us any minute, so we just didn't say anything about it till they asked."

"And that was just about the time we first heard your voices close by,"

said Elmer, "so we made up our minds to wait till you joined us, when we could scatter and search."

"Search!" echoed Larry. "Good gracious! do you think Nat can be lost?"

"It doesn't seem possible," admitted Elmer, "but I blew the bugle, and sounded the a.s.sembly. If Nat heard that he is scout enough to know it was a command for him to come in--if he could."

"Whew! this is something we didn't expect to run up against--a mystery right in the start," remarked Matty, mopping his face with his big bandana handkerchief, which he wore about his neck, cowboy fashion, with the knot behind.

"You never can tell, suh!" said Chatz, in a solemn manner; and somehow none of the boys seemed quite as ready to scoff at the Southerner's superst.i.tious belief, as usual.

"But hadn't we better be looking around?" remarked Matty. "Nat may have gone into the old mill, bent on investigating, and some accident have happened to him."

"As what?" queried George, cautiously.