"Dot's vot I dinks," assented Otto, whose only discomfort was his exceeding hunger: "Vot you dinks, Mrs. Carleton?"
"I hope you will not be disappointed; that is the most I can say. Jack's feeling that you are going to succeed is simply his pleasure over the prospect of a ramble in the woods. We will eat breakfast, after which you can go home and make your preparations for the journey."
When they were seated at the table and Otto's hunger was nearly satisfied, he told his friends with a grin, that it was the first food he had tasted in twenty-four hours. They were shocked, and both took him to task for his failure to make known the truth the evening before. He made the philosophic reply that if he had done so he would have missed the boundless enjoyment of such a meal as that of which he was then partaking.
Mrs. Carleton on rising in the morning felt that Otto ought not to be allowed to go on the expedition until after a further talk with his parents, who, despite what they had said, might be unwilling for him to engage in such an undertaking; but when she learned how the poor fellow had been made to suffer with hunger her feelings changed. It was hard to repress her indignation, and she made up her mind to talk to the cruel folks as they had never been talked to before; but she allowed no impatient word to escape her in the presence of their son. She simply advised him to depart as soon as he could upon the hunt for the horse, and not to return, if possible, until it was recovered or another obtained.
"Dot is vot I does," replied Otto with a shake of his head and a determined expression; "Otto doesn't comes back till he brings some kind of animal—if it's only a 'coon or 'possum."
When he walked over to his own home (the building for which was precisely the same as that of widow Carleton), his father and mother were eating their breakfast. They looked surlily at him as he entered, and the mother showed her incredible heartlessness by asking her only child in German:
"Where is Toby that you lost?"
"How can I tell, mother, except that he is in the woods? I tried hard to find him again, and had it not been for Deerfoot I would have lost my life; but he is gone."
"Did I not tell you to go and not come back until you brought him with you?" demanded the father, glaring at his boy as though he was ready to throttle him.
"So you did—so you did; but I couldn't do much last night, when it was so dark and stormy. I have come over to get my gun and ammunition."