t,
dark pond closing over the young man and his mother, whose sad story
Willie Creek had told them.

Farther on, at the spot where all their own troubles had had their
beginning, the two lads stopped. Filled with vain regrets they looked
again all about the place where the Six went down. But if they expected
to make any new discovery, they were disappointed. The road was dry now.
The broken fence rails still lay at the foot of the embankment. The
trampled grass and weeds still told of what had happened, but no one had
been near; no human creature, it was to be believed, had visited the
scene since the boys last saw it.

Returning to their car, the friends soon reached the house where they
had stopped to make inquiry that first day of their trouble--the house
where lived the lonely, old man, all his thoughts in the days of long
ago. They now knew the story of the faded dwelling, the crumbling
condition of every structure. Curiously they glanced about, thinking
they might see the lonely, old gentleman and give him a friendly
salute--just a hand thrown up for an instant--as they passed.

Ah, there he was! Seated in the kitchen doorway, he saw the machine even
before Paul and Billy saw him. Their wave of a hand seemed to please
him, and he waved a beckoning signal in return. Billy jumped down and
walked up to see if something was wanted.

"No, no!" the old man replied, far more pleasantly than at that former
time. He meant only to acknowledge their greeting, he said. Then he
asked if the owner of the runaway car had been found.

This led Billy to tell all about the misfortune that had followed the
picking up of the strange automobile. The farmer ruefully shook his
head. There were many days together that no vehicle went along this
road, in these latter years, he said. He could hardly understand how so
strange a thing should happen almost at his door. And he had been
disturbed in other ways. Only last night, as he sat in the kitchen door,
he had seen a crouching figure in the moonlight slip from one tree to
another. It was after midnight. Visitors he little expected to have at
any time, much less at such an hour. So he called out, "Hello, there!"
The figure hastened away and he saw it no more.

"It fretted me some," said the old gentleman slowly, "but I didn't see
anything more, clean to daylight."

Somehow the picture of the aged, unhappy man sitting all night in the
kitchen door, as his imagination presented it, to