midst the folds of
his capacious red-and-black striped blanket, and laughed, for somehow
he reminded them of a cautious old tortoise trying to spy out the
land before entrusting his flippers beyond the confines of his shell.

"Nothing doing in the ghost line, Billy," Hugh told him, "so you can
stretch yourself as much as you please. Hurry up a little! Alec here
was just suggesting that as the morning looks so fine we might as well
go outside and build a cooking fire under the trees for a change"

Billy thereupon threw the blanket aside and hopped to his feet.

"When you say anything about _eating_," he observed as he started to
finish his dressing with feverish haste, "seems like my whole system
responds. Alec, I want to tell you the idea isn't half bad either.
Dining in this musty old room seems too much as if we were still at
home, you know. Nothing like being under the trees when you're taking
an outing. I haven't got any gypsy blood in me that I know of, but I
do like the big outdoors a heap, better than anything else
going---that is, except eating."

Monkey Stallings was by this time also awake and fixing himself to defy
the chilly morning atmosphere.

They abandoned the castle, taking their belongings with them. At the
time it was looked upon only as a little incident, and no one dreamed
that afterwards they would find themselves very thankful for having
done this very thing.

Back of the building the trees grew thickly, and it did not take the
scouts long to discover a very good location for a temporary camp,
where they could build a fire and cook breakfast.

"Another thing," said Alec, "if the weather holds good I'm going to
suggest that we hunt a place back there, half a mile, perhaps, away
from the castle, to spend the night in. Like Billy here, I don't
fancy sleeping under a roof when I can have a chance to camp out under
the stars and hear the whispering of the trees."

The others were quick to seize upon the idea.

"It's our only chance to sleep out," said the Stallings boy, "because
we've got to make tracks to-morrow afternoon, you remember."

"I should say that Alec ought to be able to take all the pictures he
needs of this old rookery this morning," remarked Arthur. "As for me,
I've seen all I want of the place. It makes me feel sad, because I
can't help thinking of what happened up here so long ago. It was a
crazy man's scheme to start with, and then there was the terrible
tragedy