hing
like that, Dick Prescott, unless you had an honorable reason for
it."

"I did it because the honor of the High School is so precious
to me---to us all," Dick replied. "We want to put forth a winning
team, as Gridley High School has always done. Now, these 'soreheads'
aim to defeat that by keeping a few of the best players off the
eleven. I listened, Dave, because I wanted to know what the trouble
was, and just who was making it. Now, I guess I know how to deal
with the 'sore-heads.' I'll make them ashamed of themselves."

"How?"

"One thing at a time, Dave. In our excitement we've almost forgotten
that we started out to find Theodore Dodge and clear up the mystery
of his disappearance."

CHAPTER V

AT THE END OF THE TRAIL

"The further we go the more mysterious this becomes," mused Dick,
as he and Darrin stood together over a clump of faintly-marked
footprints, a quarter of an hour later.

"How does the mystery increase?" Darrin inquired.

"For one thing, we don't always find the bootmarks of the men
who were with Mr. Dodge. Yet once in a while we do. There are
the prints of all three. When Theodore Dodge passed by this way
the other two men were with him, or had him in sight. And our
course shows that the three were plunging deeper and deeper into
the woods. But come along. There must be an end to this, somewhere."

Ten minutes later Prescott and Darrin felt that they had come
to the end of the mystery. For the faint trail had led them up
a slight, stony slope, and now the two boys lay flat on the ground.

Below them, in a bush-clad hollow, two miles from the world in
general, stood a little, old, ramshackle shanty. The location
was one that seekers would hardly have found without a trail to
lead them to it.

To the door of this shanty a broad-shouldered, rough-looking and
powerful fellow of forty had just come. The man, who was poorly
clad, wore brogans, and held in his right hand a weighty, ugly-looking
club. The fellow was smoking a short-stemmed pipe, and now stood,
with his left hand shading his eyes, peering off at the surrounding
landscape.

Dick and Dave hugged the ground more closely behind their screen
of bushes.

"It's all right, Bill," announced the lookout in the doorway.

"'Course this," growled a voice from the inside. "Too far from
the main line o' travel for anyone to be spying around. Besides,
no one guesses-----"

"Well, you can go to sleep if ye