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can be lost?"
"It doesn't seem possible," admitted Elmer, "but I blew the bugle, and sounded the assembly. If Nat heard that he is scout enough to know it was a command for him to come in--if he could."
"Whew! this is something we didn't expect to run up against--a mystery right in the start," remarked Matty, mopping his face with his big bandana handkerchief, which he wore about his neck, cowboy fashion, with the knot behind.
"You never can tell, suh!" said Chatz, in a solemn manner; and somehow none of the boys seemed quite as ready to scoff at the Southerner's superstitious belief, as usual.
"But hadn't we better be looking around?" remarked Matty. "Nat may have gone into the old mill, bent on investigating, and some accident have happened to him."
"As what?" queried George, cautiously.
"Oh, well, perhaps he tripped and fell, striking his head as he went down. Then again, a rotten plank might have given way under him, and let him get an ugly fall," Matty replied.
"That sounds reasonable enough," said Elmer, "and now I want some of you to scatter around and see if you can discover any trace of our missing comrade. Red, you get a long pole and poke down in that deep pool, though I feel pretty sure you won't find any sign of him there, because there isn't a mark of blood on the rocks, as there would be if he had fallen from up here on the dam."
The boys looked aghast.
Up to this point perhaps Landy and several others may have indulged in a hope that after all perhaps this might only be a little finish to the remarkable game of fox and hounds which they had been playing.
Indeed, Red and Larry had once or twice even exchanged sly winks. They actually suspected that Elmer had secretly ordered Nat to conceal himself, up among the branches of a tree, perhaps, so as to have the whole party guessing, and running around like a pack of dogs off the scent.
Now the last vague hope in this particular seemed shattered by Elmer's thrilling suggestion.
And more than Red's horrified eyes roved in the direction of the ugly black pool, across the surface of which the foamy white bubbles kept circling constantly, as the surplus water ran over the dam.
"Where will the rest of us look, Elmer?" asked Matty, breaking the awful silence that had gripped them after hearing the scout master's suggestion.
"Any old place," replied Elmer; "only I guess you needn't go far along that farther shore, because Toby and Ty were there where you see that big oak tree."
"They couldn't see the dam from there, could they?" asked Red, quickly.
"No, that's true," answered Toby.
"And so they wouldn't know whether anybody knocked poor Nat over here; or if he went across to the old mill," Red continued.
"Right you are, Red," replied Ty; "but neither did we hear any shout. An old bluejay was screechin' in the woods near us. Yep, a feller might 'a' called out and we not noticed it."
"I want two of you to go with me to the mill," said Elmer.
"Count me for one!" cried some one, instantly; and of course that was the eager Chatz, who would have started a new rebellion had he been debarred that privilege.
"And I'm the second victim," declared Lil Artha, with a grin, but at the same time looking very determined.
"All right," said Elmer; "fall in behind me, and we'll see what the inside of the mill looks like."
CHAPTER IV.
THE SEARCH FOR A CLEW.
Following the lead of Elmer, the tall lanky scout and the wiry Southern boy quickly found themselves at the other end of the mill dam.
Lil Artha had cast his eyes about him as he cautiously made his way along. He seemed to be figuring on what chance there might be for an active chap like Nat Scott slipping on one of the wet and moss-covered stones, to go tumbling down toward that suspicious black pool.
Not so Chatz Maxfield.
Apparently he had made up his mind from the start that this strange vanishing of their comrade must have some connection with the mystery of the old mill.
Did they not admit that three separate times people had tried to live there in the dwelling that was part and parcel of the mill; and on every occasion they had given it up as a bad job?
Why?
Well, it seemed to be understood that none of them could stand the sights and sounds which had come to them while under that roof.
People might scoff at such things all they had a mind to, but surely it seemed as if there must be something in it.
At any rate, everyone of those three families believed the mill house haunted. And for many years now, no one had had the nerve to occupy the