The bow was whirled further around, and pointed straight for the vagrants. Zip was tremulous with eager expectation. Resting his paws on the gunwales, he twitched his ears and growled. One good look at the canine was enough for the men. They turned about and dived among the trees as terrified as when the bullets of Doctor Spellman’s revolver whistled about their ears.
“Howld on!” shouted Mike, “till we can talk politics wid ye, and thry to agraa as to whether the Bool Moose ought to be the next President.”
But the scamps paid no heed, and Mike looked commiserately at the dog.
“’Tis a cruelty thus to disappint ye, Zip, as me dad said whin he walked five miles to have a shindy with Terence Googhagan, and found he’d been drowned; but ye may git a chance at ’im later on.”
A few minutes afterward the nose of the canoe slid up the bank, and the boys stepped out. It being early in the afternoon, Doctor Spellman was seated in his camp chair in front of his house, smoking a cigar and looking over the Boston Globe. His wife, having set things to rights, had come forward to join him, with Ruth directly behind her.
The meeting was a pleasing one. When Burton remarked that he had time for only a call, the doctor and his family put so emphatic a veto upon it, that he was obliged to yield and agreed to remain until morning.
After mutual inquiries and answers had been made, Burton told of the forenoon’s test of Zip’s marvelous power of scent. The story was so remarkable that even Sunbeam, as she sat on Burton’s knee, silently listened. The two were old friends. The little girl was the only one besides his master whom the hound would allow to become familiar with him.
“I wish I had a dog like him,” remarked the doctor.
“That is impossible, for there isn’t another like him,” replied the owner.
“I have been so annoyed by a couple of tramps that I should like to get Zip on their track and have him drive them out of the neighborhood.”