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 sturdy
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 h