Walking softly Larry approached closer to where the men were at work. He could not see what they were doing, except that they were making a hole in the ground. One man stood a little distance back from the others and held what seemed to be a small box in his arms.  
“Maybe there’s been a murder committed and they’re burying the corpse,” thought Larry. Then he laughed at his thought. The box the man had would hardly hold a dead cat.
 
The men were working fast now, and seemed anxious to get through.
 
“That’s deep enough,” said one. “Get a flat stone to put on top.”
 
In his curiosity Larry forgot the caution he had hitherto used. His foot touched a piece of wood, dislodged it, and rattled it against a stone. It made quite a noise.
 
“What’s that?” exclaimed the man with the box.
 
“Someone’s coming,” replied the one with the pick.
 
223 “I’ll see what it is,” the third man said, as he started toward Larry. But the boy did not wait to note what would happen when the man got to him. He sped off softly through the darkness, and when he saw a part of a wall just ahead of him he dropped down behind it. The man passed him on the run, but did not think of looking behind the masonry. After looking about him, as well as he could in the darkness, the man returned.
 
“What was it?” asked his companions.
 
“A cat or a dog, I guess,” was the reply. “Nobody after us, anyhow. Go ahead and bury the stuff or, first thing we know, someone will spot us, and that would never do.”
 
“They evidently don’t want whatever they are doing known,” thought Larry in his hiding place.
 
The men worked a little while longer, and then the boy could hear them throwing back the dirt and packing it down. Soon they finished and then, blowing out the light, they departed. Waiting a few minutes to be sure they were out of the way Larry crept cautiously over to where he judged the men had been digging.
 
But, in the darkness he could not find the place. It would have done him little good if he had, he thought, as he had nothing with which to throw out the dirt again.
 
He resolved, however, to come back the first chance he had next day, and see if there was anything mysterious in the actions of the three men.224 In order to better locate the spot Larry took his handkerchief and weighted it down on the ground by a stone.
 
“This is somewhere near the place,” the boy thought. “I guess I can easily find it in the daytime.”
 
Then he went home. His mother and the others in the family had gone to bed, and Larry was glad of it, for he did not want to be questioned as to why he was so late coming from night school.
 
Larry hardly slept for wondering what the men had buried. He thought they might be hiding the evidences of some crime, and then again he reasoned that perhaps, after all, it might turn out to be nothing more than a pet dog or bird that had died.
 
“I’ll find out though,” Larry thought. “Don’t I wish it was a big treasure like gold or diamonds! But it’s foolish to think such things as that.”
 
Larry thought the next day would never come to an end. Though he was very busy at his duties in the Leader office he kept watching the clock, for he had determined upon a plan of action.
 
He made up his mind he would go home as usual to supper, and prepare to go to his night class. On his way there he would purchase a small shovel at a nearby hardware store. This225 he could conceal under his coat until he got to the lot, and he could then hide it under the fence. He also got a small lantern that burned a candle, and this he intended hiding with the shovel.
 
Once these two important things were hidden away Larry meant to walk across the lot just at dusk, before going to school, and see if he could not locate the place where the men had dug. If he could he would mark the spot more accurately with his handkerchief and then, coming home from his class, he could dig in the darkness and no one would be likely to observe him, as the spot was lonesome and people seldom went there except in daylight.
 
Larry’s plan worked out well. He got the shovel and lantern and hid them under a fallen wall, in a convenient place. Then he strolled across the big field, just at nightfall, when it was difficult to distinguish forms fifty feet away. There was no moon and the sky was cloudy.
 
Larry pretended to be idly walking across the lot. Occasionally he would stoop, pick up a stone and cast it into the air, as boys have a habit of doing. He thought if anyone noticed him, they would not attach any importance to his presence.
 
He found his handkerchief where he had left it, but it was not near any place where the earth seemed to have been recently dug up.
 
“I guess I must be a little off the track,” the boy thought. “Let’s see. If I can find the wall I226 hid behind, I think I can locate the place where the men were.”
 
After looking about a little Larry found the fallen wall. He recalled that, as he had stooped down behind it he had seen, over the top, the spire of a church. And he recalled that the three men were in a direct line between the stone and the church steeple.
 
“Then if I walk out in a straight line from the stone, toward the church, I ought to come across the place,” said Larry to himself.
 
Taking an observation from behind the stone he located the church spire. Then, walking as straight as possible, he passed out from the fallen wall.
 
“It ought to be about here,” he said. As he spoke his foot sank down into a soft spot in the ground. Larry lighted the candle and flashed his lantern on the place.
 
“I’ll bet this is it,” he remarked. “Anyway, I’ll mark it.”
 
He had prepared a short stake with a piece of white cloth on it as a guide, and this he stuck in the earth. Then he hurried from the lot to go to school.
 
 
AT THE BOTTOM HE COULD SEE, IN THE DIM LIGHT OF THE LANTERN, A SMALL BLACK BOX
From Office Boy to ReporterPage 228
227
 
It would have been better for Larry’s lessons if he had not been thinking so much of what was buried in the lot. He did not pay proper attention to what was going on in the class. When he answered questions with statements such as that Columbus was President of the United States, that Balboa discovered the Hudson River and that New York was the capital of Indian Territory, the teacher remarked:
 
“Well, Larry, I guess you are still dreaming. You had better wake up.”
&nbs............