"Now, that's hardly fair, Elmer; you know I don't take any stock in fairy tales or hobgoblin yarns. But something sure moved."

"A big rat I guess, perhaps a muskrat from the pond above. They sometimes find a burrow leads them to some old, unused cellar."

"But look over there, and you'll see a lot of white bones, Elmer,"

pursued Lil Artha.

"That's a fact. Some animal must have fallen in here, starved to death, and been eaten up by the rats."

"But, Elmer, are you sure they are animal bones?"

"I noticed the skull, and I think it must have been a large dog,"

replied Elmer.

Then he and the tall scout scrambled hastily to their feet, for Chatz had suddenly given utterance to an exclamation that seemed to contain much of both surprise and mystification.

CHAPTER V.

THE TRAIL GROWS WARMER.

"Say, just look up there, fellows!"

Chatz pointed a quivering finger upward as he gave utterance to these words.

Of course both Elmer and the lengthy scout followed his directions, and turned an inquiring gaze toward the dimly seen rafters of the old deserted mill.

"Gee whittaker! what in the d.i.c.kens are they?" exclaimed Lil Artha, as his startled eyes rested on what seemed to be countless numbers of queer little bunches of dusky gray or brown hair.

They looked for all the world like some farmer's wife's winter collection of herbs, tied up in small packages, and fastened in regular order along the different beams.

"Well, I declare," laughed Elmer.

"You know what they are, Elmer; let us in on it, won't you?" demanded Chatz.

"Nothing whatever to do with the ghost, but all the same often found in haunted houses, church belfries, and old towers. See here."

He stooped and picked up quite a good-sized stone that happened to be lying on the floor.

Elmer was a pitcher on the Hickory Ridge baseball nine, and could hurl a pretty swift ball.

When he shot that stone upward it went like a young cyclone, struck the rafters with a loud bang, clattered around from one beam to another, and finally fell back to the floor with a thud.

This latter sound was certainly not heard by any one of the three scouts, for it was utterly drowned in a tremendous rush as of st.u.r.dy wings, and several openings above were filled with some rapidly flying objects.

"Wow, did you ever see the like of that now!" cried Lil Artha.

"What were they, Elmer?" asked Chatz, who had really been too startled to think fairly.

"Bats!" replied the scout leader, promptly.

"I supposed as much," declared Chatz, "and as you remarked just now, they always seem to like a building said to be haunted."

"Well," remarked the tall boy, "sometimes I've had the fellows hint to me that I had bats in _my_ belfry; but sure not that many. Why, I reckon there must have been well-nigh a thousand in that gay bunch, Elmer."

"I guess there were, more or less," replied the other.

"And now what?" asked Chatz.

"Let's look further here before we go into the house itself," the scout master made reply.

So they went from one end of the deserted mill to the other, peering into every place where it seemed there might be the slightest hope of discovering their missing comrade.

Elmer even entered a small room off the main floor, and which had possibly been used as an office when the grist-mill was in business.

"Nothing doing, Elmer?" announced Lil Artha, as the other came out again.

Elmer shook his head in the negative.

"Don't seem to be around here at all," he said.

"Well, let's try the house," suggested Chatz; and it was easily seen from his manner that he was eager to make the change.

After one more careful glance around, as if to make absolutely positive that nothing had been neglected, the scout leader nodded his head.

"Come on, then, fellows," he said.

So the others once more fell in his wake, like true scouts who knew their little lesson full well, and were ready to follow their leader wherever he might choose to go.

Elmer had previously noticed a door leading, as he believed, from the main mill into the cottage that had once been the miller's home.

Toward this he now pushed. He wondered if he would find the door fastened in any way. One touch told him it was not.

And so, without hesitation, Elmer strode across the threshold into what had once been the happy home of a contented miller, until trouble came, and tragedy ended it all.

Like the mill itself the house was fast falling into a state of decay.

It was only a cottage of some four rooms, all on the one floor. The boys pa.s.sed from one apartment to another until presently they had been over all the territory comprised within those four walls, so far as they could see.

Both Chatz and Lil Artha uttered exclamations that breathed their disappointment.

Because each of them had failed to discover that upon which he had set his mind he failed to see anything else.

Not so Elmer, who carried out the principle which he was forever holding up before the others as a cardinal virtue which should govern a true scout always.

He noted a number of things that the other two might have pa.s.sed by, simply because they refused to let their minds work outside of a certain groove.