door of the farmhouse and knocked loudly. It
was the farmer himself who came to the door.

"We've found the boy that all the searching parties were out looking
for," Dick announced. "May we use your telephone to send the word into
Gridley?"

"You sure can," rejoined the farmer. "Come this way." Then, with a side
glance at young Holmes, "I guess you're him."

"Yes," nodded Greg.

"And you hain't had a bite to eat for a day or two?"

"No."

"Mother," called the farmer, leading the way into the living room,
"here's that missing youngster that there's been all the fuss over. He's
hungry. You know what treatment that calls for."

Dick, in the meantime, had espied the telephone and was engaged in
ringing up. He called for the police station and sent the news to the
chief.

"And say that I'm hitching up a team and am going to bring you all in,"
added the farmer. So Prescott added that item of information.

"Hark! Hear that?" broke in Dick a minute later, while nearly all the
others were talking at once. Despite the distance there came to their
ears the sound of Gridley's fire alarm whistle, sounding the recall for
all searching parties.

"Now, goodness knows I'd like to offer you a lot more to eat, young
man," said the farmer's gray-haired wife, patting Greg's head. "But,
after fasting so long you don't want to eat too much at first. What
you've had ought to be enough until you've had your drive and are at
home with your own folks."

"I feel fine, ma'am," responded young Holmes gratefully. "I don't know
how to thank you. And I'm glad you stopped my eating too much for my own
good. I'll be all right now, when I get home."

The farmer drove up to the door and called out. All of Greg's friends
wanted to help him outdoors, but he insisted that he could walk all by
himself. Into the farm wagon piled the Grammar School boys, after having
thanked the woman of the house most heartily.

"This is a lot better'n walking, after all," murmured Greg gratefully.

Even with his late start the boys were ahead of the searchers under
Captain Hall, who had heard the signal and were now returning.

"Turn down one of the side streets, will you, please?" begged Greg, as
the party neared the outskirts of Gridley. "I don't feel exactly like
meeting a whole crowd."

For, even at a distance, it could be seen that Gridley was swarming with
thousands of people who had not joined the searching parties.

Thus Greg was delivered at his