The affair of the kidnapping created quite a sensation at camp, partly, no doubt, because stories of missing people always arouse the interest of scouts, but chiefly perhaps because the thing was brought so close to them.

Catskill Landing was the station for Temple Camp.  It was there that arriving troops alighted from boat or train.  It was the frequent destination of their hikes.  It was there that they bought sodas and ice cream cones.  Scouts from “up ter camp” were familiar sights at Catskill, and they overran the village in the summertime.

Of course it was only by reason of trainman Hanlon’s doubtful clew that the village figured at all in the sensational affair.  At all events if the Harrington child and its desperate companions had actually alighted there, all trace of them was lost at that point.

The next morning after the newspaper accounts were published a group of scouts hiked down to Catskill to look over the ground, hoping to root out some information or discover some fresh clew.  They wound up in Warner’s Drug Store and had a round of ice cream sodas and that was all the good their sleuthing did them.

On the way back they propounded various ingenious theories of the escape and whereabouts of Master Harrington’s captors.  Pee-wee Harris suggested that they probably waited somewhere till dark and proceeded to parts unknown in an airplane.  A more plausible inspiration was that they had crossed the Hudson in a boat in order to baffle the authorities and proceeded either southward to New York or northward on a New York Central train.

The likeliest theory was that of Westy Martin of Roy’s troop, that an automobile with confederates had waited for the party at Catskill.  That would insure privacy for the balance of the journey.

The theory of one scout that the party had gone aboard a cabin cruiser was tenable, and this means of hiding and confounding the searchers, seemed likely to succeed.  The general opinion was that ere long the child would be forthcoming in response to a stupendous ransom.  But this means of recovering the little fellow did not appeal to the scouts.

Perhaps if Tom Slade, alias Sherlock Nobody Holmes, had accompanied the group down to the riverside village, he would have learned or discovered something which they missed.  But Sherlock Nobody Holmes had other business on hand that morning.

“Do you want to see it?  Do you want to see it?” little Skinny had asked him.  “Do you want to see those tracks I found?  Do you want to see me follow them again?  Do you want to see how I did it—­do you?” And Tom had given Skinny to understand that it was the dream of his life to see those famous tracks, which had proved a path of glory to the golden gates which opened into the exalted second-class of scouting.

“I’ll show them to you!  I’ll show them to you!” Skinny had said eagerly.  “I’ll show you where I began.  Maybe if we wait till it rains they’ll get not to be there any more maybe.”