“Farewell—a long farewell,” said Guy to himself as his friend moved away. “You’ll never see me again or the ‘Boy Trappers’ either, for I’ve got it safely stowed away in my valise. I need it more than you do, and you’ve so many you won’t miss it. But didn’t I come near being caught, though?” he added, drawing a long breath as he thought of his very narrow escape. “In half a second more I’d have been over the fence and into a scrape that I could not possibly have lied out of. But what’s the odds? A miss is as good as a mile.”
Guy remained standing on the fence for ten minutes—long enough to allow Henry time to reach home and go into the house—and then jumped down into the garden after his valise and bundle. This time he succeeded in scaling the fence without being seen by anybody, and with a few rapid steps reached the corner of the block, where he stopped to take a last look at his home. He ran his eye quickly over its familiar surroundings, and without a single feeling of regret turned his back upon it and hurried away. A walk of fifteen minutes brought him to the corner above his father’s store, where he found Bob waiting for him. The latter had a well-filled valise in his hand, and was as cool and careless as ever. He peered sharply into Guy’s face as he came up and seemed satisfied with what he saw there.
“You look better than you did the last time I saw you,” said he. “Have you got it?”
Guy replied in the affirmative.
“Father hasn’t left the store yet,” continued Bob, “so we’ll have plenty of time to go down to the dock and engage passage on a propeller. The Queen of the Lakes sails to-night, and we’ll go on her.”
“All right,” said Guy with a show of eagerness he was very far from feeling.
“We’ll have to leave our luggage somewhere, for when we get our guns and other things we’ll have as much as we can carry, and we might as well leave it on board the steamer as anywhere else. We mus’n’t be seen together with these valises in our hands, or somebody will suspect something, so you had better go back and go down Elm Street and I’ll go down Ninth. We’ll meet at the foot of Portage Street, where the Queen of the Lakes lies.”
The two boys separated and pursued their different routes toward the dock. Guy reached it ten minutes in advance of his companion, and the first vessel he saw was the propeller of which he was in search. Her name was painted in large letters on her bow, and over her rail was suspended a card bearing the words, “This steamer for Chicago to-night.” Her crew were engaged in rolling barrels and hogsheads up the gang-planks, and Guy, watching his opportunity, dodged in and ascended the stairs that led to the cabin.
“Now, then,” exclaimed a flashily-dressed young man, who met him at the top and looked rather suspiciously at the bundles Guy deposited on the floor of the cabin, “what can I do for you?”
“Are you the steward?” asked the boy.