Billy was taking things easy after getting up the midday meal, as he felt he had earned a rest.  At the same time the fat scout’s mind was busily employed.

“I was just thinking,” he finally broke out with, “what a lot of queer things have happened to us since we came up here.  I wonder what we’ll strike next.  We’ve rubbed up against raiding tramps, mewing owls, ghosts in the night, and guards hunting for an escaped insane criminal.  Besides, there are still a few more hours left for a new batch of exciting happenings.  I tell you, boys, this little side trip proposed by Alec and engineered by Hugh bids fair to equal anything we’ve endured in our whole checkered career.”

CHAPTER VII

FACED BY A MYSTERY

To tell the truth, Hugh was thinking something along those same lines himself, so that he felt in a mood to quite agree with the enthusiastic Billy.

“Take it all in all,” he remarked, reflectively, “we’re one of the luckiest lot of scouts that ever wandered down the pike.  Most fellows experience a regular rut, and never run up against anything out of the way.  But I have to shake myself very time I look back over our calendar, for fear it’s only a dream.”

“We certainly have had more than our share of things happening to us,” admitted Alec, proudly, “but the wheel of the mill will never run again with the water that is past.  So I forget the things that are gone, and keep looking hopefully forward to other glorious events that lie waiting for us in the dim future.”

“Hear! hear!” exclaimed Billy, clapping his hands, “Alec is getting quite poetical these days.”

“I only hope,” continued the other, with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes, for one of Alec’s weak spots was a love of flattery, “that our latest venture will turn out just as successful as many others have done before it.”

“No reason that I can see why it shouldn’t,” spoke up Arthur Cameron.  “We’ve run across the lonely castle your aunt is negotiating for, and it seems to fill the bill to a dot.”

“Yes,” remarked Monkey Stallings, anxious to have a hand in the discussion, “and your pictures, you tell us, are turning out dandies at that.  You ought to be as happy as a clam at high tide, as they say, though I never asked one of the bivalves just why he felt that way.”

“Oh, I am!” declared Alec; “and I reckon the chances are three to one Aunt Susan is going to enjoy this delightful quiet up here, where not even the squawk of a crow, or the, crow of a squawking rooster can be heard the livelong day.  Still, somehow I seem to feel a queer sense of oppression bearing down on me.  I hope now it isn’t a bad omen of coming trouble, and that, after all, my rich aunt is doomed to lose out in the deal for Castle Randall.”

The others laughed at the idea.

“Why, it’s a cinch for your side, Alec,” said Hugh.