“Now,” he said with assumed confidence to his wife, “we’ll soon have ’em back. It’s daylight and they will soon reach some town and a ’phone. I’ll get the automobile out and be ready to go for them.”
Mr. Graham had just left the house on his way to the garage when his wife called him excitedly.
“They’re at Osceola—they’ve been asleep in that thing all night,” she screamed, bursting into tears; “but they’re all right.”
“Is he on the ’phone?” called back her husband in a peculiar tone.
“No,” she answered, “they’re coming in on the electric car.”
“There’s no car till six o’clock,” exclaimed Mr. Graham. “Osceola is only twelve miles out. I’ll have ’em here in an hour,” and in a few minutes his big roadster was humming south toward Osceola.
It was fortunate that Frank had walked two miles to Osceola in the early dawn, for scarcely had Mr. Graham started on the rescue of the castaways, before Mrs. Graham saw the result of her husband’s two hours’ vigil in the newspaper office. The newspaper carrier even ran up the walk to hand Mrs. Graham the Herald. Alert journalism had quickly turned Mr. Graham’s apprehensions into an almost certain tragedy.
Under a two-column head the disappearance of the boys was narrated in detail. The failure to hear from them; the violence of the wind and rain, and the conceded risk of all aëroplane flights, were all used as justification that the boys were undoubtedly dead.