As they came out of the eating house the streets were still far from crowded.  Laborers were going to their toil, but it was yet too early for the business men of the city to be on their way to offices, or clerks to the stores.

“Now, let’s get out of the town in a jiffy,” proposed Dick.  “We don’t want to have many folks observing which way we go.  We’ll travel fast right up along the railway track.”

Once started, the two boys kept going briskly.  Both had been drowsy at the outset, but the impulse of discovery had them in its grip now, and fatigue was quickly forgotten.

Something more than half an hour after the start the boys halted beside the tie that Prescott had whittled in the dark a few hours before.

“There are the footprints,” quivered Dave, staring hard.

“They’re not as distinct as they were a few hours ago,” replied Dick.  “Still, I think we can follow them.  I’m glad they lead toward the woods.”

“Yes,” Darrin agreed.  “The direction of the footprints shows that Mr. Dodge and his companions didn’t have any notion of boarding a train and getting out of this part of the world.”

Yet, though both of these young newspaper hounds were keen to follow the trail, they did not find it any easy matter.  Dick and Dave reached the edge of the woods.  Then, for a short time, they were obliged to explore carefully ere they came again upon one of the bootmarks of fastidious Banker Dodge.  It was a hundred feet further on, in a bit of soft mould, that the next bootprint was found.  Had these two High School boys been more expert trackers they would have found a fairly continuous trail, but their untrained eyes lacked the ability to see other signs that would have been evident to a plainsman.

So their progress was slow, indeed.  They could judge only by the direction in which each last footprint was pointed, and they had to remember that one wandering through the woods might travel over a course whose direction frequently changed.

“Dave,” whispered Prescott, “I think we had better separate a little.  We might go along about a hundred feet apart.  In that way there is more chance that we’ll come sooner upon the next print.”

There were perhaps six hundred feet into the woods, by this time, and stood looking down at the fifth footmark they had found.

“All right,” nodded Darrin.  “We’re a pair of rank amateurs at this kind of work, anyway.”

“Amateurs or not,” murmured Dick, with a smile? “we seem to be the only folks in Gridley who are on the right track in this mystery at present.”

“I’m full of misgivings, anyway,” muttered Dave.

“Why?”

“I can’t help feeling that we should have turned our news over to Chief Coy or Hemingway.

“Again, why?”

“Well, if we lose our man now, we’ll soon feel that we ought to have turned the whole thing over to the police while the trail was fresh.”