these same rooms must have witnessed in those bygone days when the old
judge and his young prisoner wife occupied the monstrosity of an
imitation feudal castle.

When Hugh was about to turn over and compose himself to sleep, he
heard a peculiar sound that caused his heart to beat much more rapidly
than its wont. He suddenly sat up and listened again.

CHAPTER IV

SCOUTING AT MIDNIGHT

It was certainly a queer sound that floated to the strained hearing of
the boy as he crouched there on the floor of the room amidst the folds
of his blanket and listened with might and main.

There followed a brief period of silence and then he felt a thrill,
for it came again, a peculiar whimpering that would have given Billy
a spasm of fright had he been awake to catch it, instead of calmly
sleeping close by.

"What in the mischief can it be?" whispered Hugh to himself as he
allowed his hand to grope around for something he wanted, and which
he remembered placing conveniently by at the time he prepared his
crude bed.

The fire had died down again so that the big apartment on the main
floor was almost wrapped in darkness. Still, when tiny tongues of
flame played at hide-and-seek about the charred log, they caused all
sorts of odd shadows to run athwart the walls.

Hugh gave a grunt of satisfaction when his fingers closed upon the
object he sought. It was only about the size of two fingers, and
nickel-plated at that. In fact, Hugh had made himself a trifling-present
lately of a small vestpocket edition of a flashlight, controlled by
a battery, and had thought it worth while to carry it along with him
on this expedition, though not saying anything about it to the others,
thus far.

"I'm bound to find out what makes that noise, as sure as anything
can be," was what the boy was telling himself resolutely, even while
he crept out from among the folds of the warm blanket endeared to
him by reason of many associations of the past, of which so much has
been written in previous volumes.

That was just like Hugh Hardin. A good many boys would possibly have
concluded that going wandering about a great imitation castle like
Randall's Folly, after midnight, trying to discover the origin of
strange sounds, was no business of theirs, and would have cuddled
down closer, even drawing their blanket over their heads in order
that they might not hear a repetition of the noise.

Hugh was built on a different order. He knew full we