“All right—silly idea, is it?” said Fred. “Then who’s that?”
He pointed up the road, and Polly gasped while Ward’s mouth opened and stayed that way from sheer surprise.
Coming toward them, waving his hands and evidently most pleased to see them, was the missing Artie!
“Artie Marley! where were you?” cried Polly, while he was still two yards away.
“Did you think I was lost?” beamed Artie, in reply.
“We didn’t think anything about it,” said Fred, grimly. “You weren’t on that load, so we knew you’d fallen off. But where did you tumble?”
“I didn’t,” said Artie, walking back with them—they had rounded the second turn by now and could see Mr. Meade waiting with the team. “I didn’t fall off,” declared Artie, earnestly.
“Next, I suppose, you’ll say you were sitting next to me all the time,” said Ward, suspiciously.
“No, I was down in that hole where the lunch basket is,” explained Artie. “My feet got cold and I climbed down there and—and I went to sleep, I guess.”
And that was all the mystery of his disappearance. He had crawled into the hole left in the center of the wood pile, made comfortable by heavy horse blankets, and had promptly gone to sleep. When the sleigh stopped he had wakened and had amazed the waiting Mr. Meade by crawling out behind him and asking where the “other children” were.