Rob laughed as the fellow slunk off, but as Hunt strode up the street with as much bravado as he could assume the boy’s face grew grave.
“Like father, like son, dad says sometimes,” he murmured. “I heard in the village that Freeman Hunt had been after rabbits yesterday. Now I know who owns the pointer. What a pair of rascals!”
Paul looked blank. He had scarcely understood the scene that had just transpired. Unacquainted with the routine of a telegraph office he had failed to detect that the required marks were lacking on Hunt’s forged dispatch. He looked at Rob in a mystified way.
“What’s it mean, Rob?” he asked, wonderingly. “Was Hunt trying to bunco me?”
“I guess that’s the word, old fellow,” said Rob, throwing his arm affectionately around the younger boy’s neck, “but we checkmated him just in time.”
CHAPTER XV.
A BOY WHO FLEW.
One of the features of winter life at Hampton was the annual bob-sled races down the steep, long hill outside the town, known as Jones’s Hill. Other villages on Long Island, notably Huntington, had the same sort of carnivals, and they were always attended by people from a wide radius around. Neighboring villages sent teams and sleds to compete for prizes, and much merry sport resulted. For weeks beforehand the events were talked about, and sometimes—in the case of a spill—the contestants had reason to remember the day for weeks afterward. Although the “Bob Sled Carnival,” as it was called, would not come off till three days after Christmas, the boys of Hampton were busy over their preparations for some time before.
“Going to enter a sled this year, Rob?” asked Tubby, one afternoon in early December, as they were on their way home from the Academy.
“Of course,” rejoined Rob, “there’s that big ten-seater. We might enter her with an Eagle Patrol team, and race her against a Hawk sled.”
“Bully,” cried Merritt Crawford, “that would be a great scheme.”