The four boys in the boat sat silently and watched the flashes from the
house across the water. They knew that the signals were being made with
a mirror, into which the descending sun was pouring its last rays. Flash
followed flash, some of them long and some of them short. To Rhodes and
Terry they meant nothing, but to the Mercer brothers, who had once been
very familiar with the telegraph code, it was plain that two words were
being repeated. When the flashes had ceased they looked at each other,
startled.
"What did you make out of it?" asked Don.
"Why--why, it seemed to me, if I was reading correctly," stammered Jim,
"that whoever it was was signalling the words 'No progress.' Is that
what you got?"
"Yes," his brother nodded. "That is just what I got. 'No progress' is
right."
"But what in the world can 'no progress' mean?" asked Terry.
"I don't know," answered Don. "But it means that something is going on
in that old hall."
"But there is no one in the place," objected Rhodes.
"Tell Charlie what you saw the day you got here, Terry," suggested Jim.
Terry told his story and Rhodes was very interested. "That certainly is
queer," he commented, when Terry had finished. "It has always been
understood here that no one was in the place. What an old man with a
plate of food and candle could be doing in there is more than I can
see."
"I wonder where that signal was going?" mused Don, who had been watching
the building intently. "It must have been directed to some point in the
woods directly back of us. The message was in reality going right over
our heads. Is there any kind of a building in the woods near here,
Charlie?"
"As I remember it, there is an old farmhouse just back of us in the
woods," said Rhodes, after a moment of thought. "I recall seeing it on
one or two hikes we took. That signal might easily have been directed to
the farmhouse, at least to the upper windows of it. That is the only
building anywhere within a radius of five miles."
"Then that was the place where the message was received," declared Jim,
with conviction. "Can't we hike over there now and take a look at the
place? Is it very far?"
Rhodes shook his head. "Not very far. We can get there in fifteen
minutes, and we can land from the boat here without being seen, thanks
to the overhanging trees. Want to go?"
The others agreed at once and the boat was pushed to shore, where they
got out and tied it firmly. Then, under the leadership of the upper
classman, they took their way through the thick trees that grew back of
the lake front.
They walked on for fifteen minutes through the dusk of woods, until,
coming to a slight rise in the ground, they came in sight of the
farmhouse. It was an old clapboard house, but kept in order
nevertheless. The doors were in place and the windows were unbroken. A
few unpainted boards of lighter color showed some attempt at repairs had
been made. Weeds grew about the back yard in profusion. Standing in the
rough yard near the back door was an expensive looking car. The boys
halted in the shelter of some large trees to consider, well out of sight
of anyone in the house.
"Look at the upper back windows," directed Rhodes. "They are above the
level of the tree tops, and from them anyone could plainly catch a
signal from Clanhammer Hall. What shall we do, now that we are here?"
"I don't see that there is anything to do," returned Don. "We can't go
up to the place, and we know that it isn't deserted. Perhaps----"