"Sh! No. Perhaps not. But you never can tell what will happen to kids like them—nor what they will do. Whew! there's an idea. Sammy was always threatening to run away and be a pirate."
"The funny kid!" laughed Luke. "But Dot did not desire such a romantic career, I am sure."
"Did you ever find out yet what was in a girl's head?" asked Neale, with an assumption of worldly wisdom very funny in one of his age and experience. "You don't know what the smallest of them have in their noddles. Maybe if Sammy expressed an intention of being a pirate she wasn't going to be left behind."
He laughed. But he had hit the fact very nearly. And it seemed reasonable to Luke the more he thought of it.
"But on a canalboat?" he said, with lingering doubts.
"Well, it floats on the water, and it's a boat," urged Neale. "Put yourself in the kid's place. If the idea struck you suddenly to be a pirate where would you look around here for a pirate ship and water to sail it!"
"Great Peter!" murmured Luke. "The boundless canal!"
"Quite so," rejoined Neale O'Neil, his conviction growing. "Now, on that basis, let's ask about the barges that have gone east out from Milton to-day."
"Why not both ways?" queried Luke, quickly.
"Because most of the canalboats coming west go no farther than the Milton docks; and if the kids had got a ride on one into town, they would long since have been home. But it is a long journey to the other end of the canal. Why, it's fifteen or eighteen miles to Durginville."