Elmer?" begged Toby.

"I just knew Elmer would get on the track in double-quick time,"
asserted Landy, who always believed there was nothing impossible to the
patrol leader, once he set himself to a task.

"It all came about from hearing a boy talking when I was down in the
market yesterday morning. You know who he is, Johnny Spreen, the
fellow who always ships out a raft of dried ginseng roots every year,
and in the Spring sends a bunch of muskrat skins to the city."

"Sure we know Johnny," assented Toby, quickly; "he comes to town with a
load of hay once every two weeks. His folks live a long ways off, up
beyond the two lakes where we used to go camping."

"That's right, Toby," said Elmer, "and their farm borders that terribly
big Sassafras Swamp lying beyond Lake Solitude. Well, I happened to
hear Johnny tell how he had taken a look through the swamp the other
day, just to find out how the muskrats were coming on, so as to get a
pointer on his winter business this year. He said he honestly believed
there must be some man hiding there, because in several places he had
come on tracks."

"But people sometimes go in Sassafras Swamp to hunt, don't they,
Elmer?" objected Lil Artha.

"Not in August, because there are no woodcock up there, you know, and
nothing else can be shot at this time of year," Elmer continued; "but
Johnny had something else to say that interested me considerably. It
seems at one place he found ashes that told of a fire, and while
rooting around he picked up a piece of steel that he allowed me to see.
It had evidently been _filed_; and boys, can you guess what it made me
think it must have once been?"

Although all of them looked eagerly interested, they shook their heads
in the negative, as though unable to hazard even a guess.

"Go on, Elmer, and tell us," urged Toby.

"Yes, let down the bars and relieve our anxiety, please, Elmer," added
Lil Artha.

"Unless I'm away off in my reckoning," said the other, solemnly, "it
was part of a pair of steel handcuffs such as officers fasten to the
wrists of prisoners when taking them to the penitentiary!"

CHAPTER III

A PROMISING CLUE

It was about four o'clock on the following afternoon when a wagon drawn
by a pair of husky horses moved along the shore of Lake Solitude, many
miles away from the town of Hickory Ridge.

This vehicle was filled with lively lads, all of them in the faded
khaki uniforms that, as a rule, distinguish Boy