Hugh could feel Linda’s hand tighten on his arm as though, in spite of herself, she winced under the last words. He stepped in front of her to face their common enemy, but she spoke before he could.
“The Edmonds are not friendless,” she declared. “No matter what all the world may say there will still be some of us who know they are honest and who will find and save them in the end.”
She moved to the door, and Jake, seeing that he could no longer block her way, suddenly stepped back and flung it open with a great flourish.
“I wish you luck,” he said; “it will be a long task, finding and saving two men who either have fled the country or are already dead.”
Linda turned back to speak her last word as she and Hugh and Carl went out together into the dark.
“I know they have not fled the country,” she said, “and I am certain they are not dead. Had anything happened to them, their dog would have been here to tell us. So I know they are alive since Nicholas has not come back.”
CHAPTER III
LAUGHING MARY
Hugh sat in his little room for a long time that night, reviewing his adventures of this scant half day in Rudolm. He found it very difficult to decide what to do, in the light of this unexpected turn of his affairs, the disappearance of the two Edmonds. Of one thing he was hotly certain, that John Edmonds had not vanished of his own will. The very fact of Hugh’s being there, urged to come by both the brothers, showed that their absence was entirely unplanned. He was less certain, however, of the chances of their ever coming safe home again. Linda Ingmarsson was sure they would, but she was only one woman holding her opinion against a score of men. He wished that he could make some effort of his own to find his friends, wished it more and more as he went slowly over the situation and realized how desperate it was. What could he do, a boy, alone, knowing nothing of woodcraft and the cruel mysteries of the forest? Nothing, reason told him plainly, absolutely nothing.
Quite evidently he must go back to that cousin in New York who was to help him if things went wrong. That things had gone wrong, from the moment of his getting off the train, onward through his terrifying interview with Half-Breed Jake, was not to be denied. This seemed to be one of the few certain facts in the whirling confusion of his affairs. He recollected now how the friendly porter had felt misgivings as to the length of his stay in Rudolm and had reminded him that the train that would carry him back to the world he knew, would go through at six o’clock in the morning. After long pondering, he decided to take it.