the paper, blurring the work of the lead pencil
stub.

"Boys, perhaps you'll get this--he says he counted seven and everyone
wore a khaki uniform--he thinks you must be the militia--course I know
better--but it's no use, you just can't help me--I'm a goner, and the
most miserable boy on earth--but I say on the honor of a scout I never
meant to do it--I've just got to disappear--maybe I'll let you hear
from me if ever I get Out West where they can't find me. Oh! what hard
luck, but I have to do whatever he says, no matter what I want. I'm
meaning to leave this behind in the scout way, and don't I hope you'll
find it. There, he's calling to me to hurry, for we're going to quit
this hide-out and try to escape. I'm awful hungry, too. Better leave
me to my fate unless you can find a way to seal his lips. That's all.
Hen."

"Great Caesar!" exclaimed Lil Artha, who had hung on every word spoken
by Elmer. "That proves one of two things. Either our poor pard is
looney, or else he's got in the power of a rascal who controls his
mind. I always knew Hen was weak in the upper story just a teenty
mite. Poor old chap, we've got to find him if it takes us till
Christmas. You hear me talking now!"

"Yeth, and we all thay the thame!" burst from Ted, as he doubled his
none too expansive fists, and looked as savage as he could.

Indeed, a hasty glance around just then would have told any observer
that this strange message, filled with despair and yearning, left by
Hen Condit in the crotch of a stick thrust into the ground, had renewed
their former resolution not to give over the search until they had
either found the missing chum or exhausted every known device looking
to success.

"If you asked me," said Elmer, "I'd say the answer to the riddle lay
between the two things you mention, Lil Artha. Hen is crazed almost,
but it is with fear. He finds himself in the power of a brute who is
using him for his own purposes. How it's been done, of course, we can
only guess, but the boy believes he has been forced to rob his
guardian, and that a posse is searching right now for him, with the
intention of putting him in jail. That explains his panic."

"And say, he tells us right at the end of his note that he's some
hungry," Lil Artha went on to remark; "and, according to my notion,
that condition is next door to being insane. Why, mebbe the poor
fellow hasn't had a solitary bite for a whole day or even two of 'em.
I pity him