There they dismissed the cab, at the corner of the main street, and walked along looking for the two men they suspected of hostile intentions.
In the middle of the first block they came upon them, walking slowly, and peering to right and left, as if anxiously searching for some one.
“That settles it!” Clay said. “We’ll go back to the Rambler and disappear. Once we get started, there isn’t a boat on the river that can catch us. We’ll fool these fellows for once.”
When the story of the morning had been told to Alex and Case, they rather wanted to remain in the city, just “to get a line on the fellows,” as Alex explained, but they finally consented to an immediate departure.
That night the Rambler lay at anchor at the mouth of a small creek on the south side of the St. Lawrence river. Just above them lay a wooded island, occupied at this time by a colony of vacationists.
The Rambler had fought her way through the canal, and now lay only a short distance below the border of Lake St. Frances.
The boys built a roaring fire on shore and cooked supper there, but made no arrangements for sleeping out of doors. The blaze brought several people from a little settlement not far away, and the boys rather enjoyed their company. After a time Clay whispered to Jule:
“Stick your nose up in the air, kid, and see if you can get a scent of the lost channel in this crowd!”
“Nothing doing!” Jule answered with a grin.
“Now we’ll see whether there is or not,” Clay said.