"Oh, hush," pleaded Billy. "There is no need of fooling with things like that." "This house ain’t lived in," said the Watermelon, as he slipped from the car to straighten his cramped legs. "Folks gone to bed," explained Bartlett cheerfully, since he was not the one who had gone to bed. "We will just have to rout them out." He shut off the power and alighted from the car, pulling off his gloves. Alphonse came up in the other car and peered out at the dark, quiet, lonely house and shook his head with forebodings. "There isn’t any one here," insisted the Watermelon, "asleep or awake." The general climbed out. "If we had consulted the book—" "My dear sir," interrupted Bartlett, a bit irritated, "the book could not possibly have told us that the family had moved since last fall when I spent two weeks here, hunting." "Certainly not," laughed Henrietta, who spent a good part of her life steering with infinite care and constantly growing skill between the Scylla of her father’s wrath and the Charybdis of the hurt feelings of those whom the general had offended. "This is simply one of the unforeseen misfortunes of the road." "Besides," said Bartlett, "we don’t know that the Higginses have gone!" "Don’t you see that there aren’t any signs of life?" demanded the Watermelon. He had lived by his wits so long that he noticed instinctively the little things which mean so much and are generally overlooked. "If there was any one here some window would be open on a night like this, wouldn’t it?" *CHAPTER X* *THE DESERTED HOUSE* "Wonderful, wonderful!" murmured Henrietta in the tones of the famous Watson. Bartlett looked at the house and nodded gloomily. "I guess you are right. Funny they should have left without writing me about it. I have known them for years." "I will get the blue book," said the general, with the calm satisfaction of one who at last comes into his own. "We can return to the nearest village—" "What do we want a blue book to do that for?" sneered Bartlett. "I should think two motor-cars could do it, provided we followed the road." "Hold on a shake," said the Watermelon. "I will get in a window and open the door." "We had better not," objected Henrietta, "Wouldn’t that be house-breaking?" The general agreed. "Certainly. It is warm and we can spend the night outside quite comfortably if you do not want to return to the village." Billy shuddered and glanced appealingly at the Watermelon. A deserted house was bad enough, but outside where the owls called dismally from the woods and where bats flitted by in the dark held possibilities infinitely worse. "I have known these people longer than I have Billy," said Bartlett. "I used to come here when I was a kid. It will be all right to break in. They are like my own folks."