Mr. Fenton looked at him in surprise. "I can't imagine, Harry," he replied. "He told me, yesterday, he would take supper with McDonald, and come home shortly afterward. He might have stayed there overnight, I suppose. Still, that's not like Randall. He would have telephoned me from the village, I think. It seems curious, doesn't it? I'll send to McDonald's at once, and we'll see. Will you ask Peter to slip the mare into the buggy, please; and you go with him, Harry, and show him the way? I don't doubt you'll find Dick there."
It was an hour later when Allen reëntered the room, the lack of good news showing in his face. "He wasn't there," he cried, "and what's stranger still, McDonald wasn't there either, or the boy. What can it mean, Mr. Fenton? You don't suppose McDonald--"
Mr. Fenton finished the sentence for him. "Would have caused Dick to vanish?" he said. "I don't know, Harry. Your guess is as good as mine. Probably it's some very simple circumstance which we're not bright enough to see. But I confess I'm puzzled. I shall go down to the village directly after breakfast, and see what I can discover there. But I've no doubt everything's all right. McDonald and Dick must be together, wherever they are."
Allen paused, with his hand on the knob of the door. "Shall I tell the fellows, sir?" he asked.
Mr. Fenton deliberated. "I think not," he said at last. "We don't wish a tempest in a teapot. You know what the newspapers are, these days. No, I think you'd better say nothing, for the present. Perhaps Dick will turn up at Hopevale, if he doesn't come back here before then. No, I think, on the whole, I wouldn't alarm the boys," and Allen, nodding, left the room.
At the selfsame hour that this conversation was taking place at the school, Dick Randall sat moodily in a chair, in what had been the harness-room of Jim Smith's big barn, now long disused, and falling to decay. The gag had been taken from his mouth, but his arms and legs were still bound. Opposite him sat his captor, the brawny thick-set man whom Joe had seen in the woods on the previous night. He had coaxed a fire into an unwilling start in the old, rusty stove, and was laboring hard to produce a dish of coffee in an old tin dipper. A couple of sandwiches lay on the floor beside him. Finally, with the fire going to his satisfaction, he turned to Dick. "Well, now," he observed, "I call this doing pretty well. Real nice and sociable like. Two regular old pals, we're getting to be. You've promised not to holler, which is sensible, because no one would hear you if you did, so you've got your jaws free to eat; and if you'd only promise not to try to get away, I'd untie them arms of yours, and you'd be as fine as a fiddle. Come now, give me your word, and I'll cut that rope in a minute. That shows what a trust I've got in you."