Once more Chet stopped. "Listen!"

"What now?" asked Joe with some impatience.

"I thought I heard something rustling."

25 "For Pete's sake!" Joe grinned at Chet. "It's your dungarees' legs rubbing against each other. Come on! We'll never get to the bottom of this hollow."

The trio resumed its way down the trail.

"Hold it!" There was a tense note in Frank's voice.

"Hear anything?" Chet demanded eagerly.

Warily the alert youth's eyes scanned the trail behind them. "I just can't shake the queer feeling that somebody or something is following us."

"Must be stopping every time we do," muttered Chet. "I can't hear a thing."

After switching positions, the boys continued down the trail. Now it was Joe who scrambled forward in the lead. Frank, watching every tree and rock suspiciously, brought up the rear.

At last the steep path leveled off onto the floor of the hollow. Quickening his pace, Joe plunged forward. Before he knew it, his legs were caught by many vinelike bushes. Innumerable tiny p.r.i.c.kers bit through his dungarees, grasped his sweater like claws, and dug into his exposed wrists and hands like fishhooks.

"Ow!" he shouted, struggling frantically. "What's got me?"

"You're in a brier patch," called his brother, laughing. "Simmer down. Stop fighting it. Go through it slowly. Take off one vine at a time."

By doing this Joe succeeded in freeing himself.

26 Carefully he worked his way through the patch, with Chet and Frank following.

Suddenly he stopped once more.

"Frank! Chet!"

"What's the matter? Caught again?"

Grinning triumphantly, Joe turned to face his comrades. "Maybe I did rush in here without looking. But I wasn't the only one. Take at look at this!" With a flourish, he held up a piece of bright plaid material about two inches square.

"It was clinging to this bush," he announced. "Looks like part of somebody's flannel shirt. Maybe the captain's! It hasn't been here long. Not faded a bit by the weather."

"Let's see it" called Chet, struggling forward through the briers.

"Can't wait now," returned Joe as he emerged from the bushes. "Captain Maguire may be right near here!" He rushed headlong down the forest path, leaving Chet and Frank to catch up as soon as they could.

Just as they, too, worked clear of the tenacious p.r.i.c.kers, another triumphant shout came from Joe, which caused them to set off on the double.

A wide, rock-strewn brook, apparently running the length of the valley, came into sight. Joe, kneeling beside it, was fishing something out of a little eddying pool on the near bank.

As Frank and Chet pounded up, he showed them an empty matchbook cover. It was wet, but still bright colored and fairly firm. "Hasn't been here long," he commented.

"It's a find, all right," Frank agreed soberly. "It may not prove that Captain Maguire pa.s.sed this way! But some human being did. Now let's follow the brook and keep our eyes open!"

The soft ground, covered with a brown carpet of pine and hemlock needles, disclosed no footprints. But as Frank Hardy approached a large dead trunk which had fallen directly across the path, his trained eyes picked out two distinct cup-like indentations in front of it.

At the same time, something shiny just off the trail attracted Joe's attention. Reaching in among the thick vegetation that grew beside the stream, he drew out a pair of empty shotgun sh.e.l.ls!

"Must've been shot recently," he noted, sniffing. "I can still smell gunpowder."

Meanwhile, Frank carefully placed one of his knees in each of the sunken marks in front of the fallen tree.

"Whoever was here knelt in this spot and fired across the log," he concluded.

"One of Captain Maguire's guns is missing. Maybe he fired the shots. But at what?"

"This trail is really getting hot!" Joe exclaimed, starting off.

The path continued to follow the bank of the brook. Suddenly Joe, in the lead, drew up to a sharp halt. "Whup! On your guard! p.r.i.c.kers 28 again! And hey, another piece of plaid flannel shirt!"

"And that's not all," Frank broke in excitedly. "Look at the way these nettles have been crushed down in this one spot, as though something heavy had fallen on them!"

Now it was Chet's turn to make a discovery. With a yelp the stout boy bent over to s.n.a.t.c.h up a bent metal flashlight. Fragments of the shattered lens lay on the ground nearby.

"It's Captain Maguire's!" he declared excitedly, pointing out the initials T.

M. scratched into the barrel of the flashlight.

Frank, in the meantime, had dropped down to examine the crushed nettle stalks more closely. "I'm afraid this is serious," he announced at last. "Some of these leaves are stained dark."

"Blood?" queried Chet in a worried tone, and the Hardys nodded.

At that moment the boys heard a slight noise just above them. Jerking their heads abruptly upward, they were startled to see a face gazing down at them from the height of a boulder on the bank.

It was a strange, wild-looking, sun-browned face, framed with scraggly black hair. The fierce dark eyes glared at the watchers as the wide mouth shaped itself into a weird grimace.

CHAPTER IV.

The Windowless Cabin the Hardys and Chet stood frozen for a moment, as if entranced by the fierce stare of the wild face above them. Then suddenly the person back of the boulder was gone.

"The witch!" breathed Chet, who had turned chalk-white. "It must have gotten Captain Maguire!"

"Witch or no witch, it can't have gone far!" Joe cried out, leaping to his feet. "Come on!"

Frank sprinted forward with his brother along the forest path. The two boys ran through the dark woods, turning and twisting with the unfamiliar trail, dodging trees, and hurdling small bushes.

From up ahead came the sound of somebody crashing through the underbrush.

Suddenly Frank caught a glimpse of a tall, rangy figure in dark flannel trousers and a green sweater, darting swiftly in and out among the huge trees.

11 "That's no witch." Frank panted. "But he sure can run I"

In fact, the long-legged stranger seemed to be pulling away from the Hardys, though they were both strong runners. Unexpectedly he cut sharply to his left, leaving the path and darting in a straight line across the forest floor. With amazing agility he leaped over fallen trees and ducked under low-hanging branches.

"Keep him in sight!" Joe yelled. "We'll trap him against the hillside!"

But the strange figure, upon reaching the steep, wooded side of the hollow, did not pause. Grasping at the small trees and bushes with his long arms, he clambered swiftly up the hillside from one foothold to another. Apparently he knew the route well.

Frank and Joe, meanwhile, were forced to waste precious time battling their way up. Doggedly they kept on, but the gap between the pursuers and their quarry widened.

At last, halfway up the valley wall, the man broke into the open onto the gray sunlit rock forming the upper rim of the hollow. Skillfully he moved diagonally from rock to rock until he disappeared from sight beyond the rim.

Frank and Joe, who had just emerged from the trees, sat down on a rock to catch their breath.

31 "There's one witch that doesn't need a broomstick," observed Joe, shaking his head ruefully.

Frank had removed his binoculars from the leather case hanging in front of him. He trained them on the rim of the valley where the strange figure had vanished.

Meanwhile, Chet had reached the side of the hollow. After a toiling climb the panting boy hove into view. "Whew! I thought I'd never catch up with you fellows. But old Chet wasn't going to stay down in those woods by himself.

Say," he asked, looking around at the rocks apprehensively, "where's the-the guy with the face?"

"Escaped," Joe replied.

Frank, unable to spot the figure with his binoculars, moved up higher on the rock. He began to examine the entire perimeter of the little valley systematically. By means of the gla.s.ses every fissure, every possible hiding place in the rock rim could be studied. Nothing suspicious appeared beneath Frank's scrutiny. Finally he turned the gla.s.ses upon the floor of Black Hollow.

"See anything?" Joe called.

"Lots of trees, that's all."

As Frank continued to sweep the binoculars through a slow arc toward the end of the hollow, he was surprised to see a small clearing.

"Hold on-here's something!" he called down. Joe and Chet started upward.

32 "Well, what do you know about that!" declared Frank in an astonished voice, as Chet and Joe clambered up beside him. Silently he handed the gla.s.ses to his brother and pointed the direction with his finger. At first Joe saw only the little clearing at the edge of the trees.

"Look at the base of the rock wall," Frank said. "Look very closely at the pile of tree trunks and rocks you see there."

Wondering, Joe did so. Suddenly it occurred to him that the rocks and logs had been put together in a careful, regular manner.

"Why," he burst out, "that's not a pile at all. It's a little building! There aren't any windows, but I'd say it was a very cleverly camouflaged cabin."

"You're right, fellows," Chet agreed, when it came his turn to look. "Who would want to live in a place like that, anyway? Say, do you suppose it's the queer guy with the creepy face?"

"Could be," Joe answered. "Anyway, whoever lives there may be able to tell us where Captain Maguire is. Let's go and find out-right now."

"Aw, way down there to the end of the hollow? Have a heart, fellows. What about lunch?"

12 But Chet's protests fell on deaf ears. As the hungry boy knew from past experience, when the Hardy boys were following up a promising clue, ordinary things like lunches did not count!

Leaving the bright sunshine of the exposed 33 rocks, the trio descended once more into the gloomy hollow. Frank and Joe quickly reached the forest floor.

As they waited for Chet, they heard a crashing sound from above and a familiar voice booming, "Help! Gangway!" As they jumped to one side, Chet came sliding down the steep hillside. He tumbled in a heap on the moss below.

"Jurnpin' toads!" Joe exclaimed. "I thought the whole rock face was caving in on us!"

"Can I help it if I'm not made for these pesky mountains?" demanded Chet in an injured tone.

While Joe helped Chet get up, Frank scouted ahead to find the path once more.

In a few minutes he located it.

"It isn't much of a trail any more," Frank reported. "But it's going in the direction we want."

Half an hour's walk brought them to the edge of the little clearing where Frank, raising his hand, signaled a halt. Even from there the mysterious little house was difficult to see, though it was not more than a dozen yards away.

Warily the boys scrutinized the clearing, as well as the odd house built of rocks and logs. It had a dark-brown door. Seeing no one, the boys stepped into the open, crossed the intervening s.p.a.ce, and knocked boldly on the wooden door.

"n.o.body home," muttered Joe as Frank knocked again and again. "I'm sure I heard something, though."

34 Chet, meanwhile, had poked his head around one corner of the log cabin.

"Wonder what's fenced in over there?" He walked to the high palings of a strange, three-sided enclosure.

"What do you see?" called Joe, as the stout boy peered through the fence.

"Baa!"

"There's your answer. Sheep!" Chet grinned. "Guess I scared 'em."

"Well, n.o.body's inside the house, that's certain," Frank concluded. "Let's take a look at the rest of the outside."

Accordingly, the three proceeded around the other side of the mysterious structure. Abruptly they found themselves face to face with the rock wall of the hollow. The strange little house had no fourth man-made side!

"Do you suppose whoever built this house was just lazy?" Joe wondered. "And used the rock for his wall? Or could there be some other reason?"

"The house certainly blends in with the rock," Frank reminded him. "You couldn't distinguish it from a distance without field gla.s.ses."

"We might as well head back," said Joe. "There isn't anything doing here.

Personally, I'd like to find out who owns this house. In fact, it would be interesting to know who owns Black Hollow."

"Let's not forget Captain Maguire," Frank reminded them gravely. "This house and the per35 son who was spying on us may or may not have something to do with his disappearance. Of one thing we are sure-something happened to the captain here in the hollow. The sooner we get to town and report it to the sheriff, the better!"

An hour's vigorous hiking brought them back to Captain Maguire's cabin on the opposite rim of the hollow. While Chet grabbed a box of crackers and three apples, Frank penciled a brief note.