“Across the border, do you mean, Rob?” exclaimed Andy gleefully, for being of an adventurous spirit, nothing could have pleased him more than this.
“There seems to be no other way to foil those desperate conspirators. The Canadian authorities are none too friendly to us right now on account of numerous things that have happened and which they lay to German sympathizers crossing over secretly from our side. Yes, we must try to help our fellow scout do his duty to his country, which he loves just as much as we do our own native land.”
“Oh, it makes my heart fairly jump to hear ye say that! It’s braw lads ye air, baith o’ ye, and I’ll never forget it, never! My leg hurts, but I think it will get better after I use it a while. No matter how it pains me, I shall go on and on, even if I have to crawl and drag it after me, for I must carry the news to the guards. I would gie ten years o’ life if only there was a way to flash it across the border to them richt now.”
“First we must go back to the cabin,” said Rob.
“Is it necessary, then?” asked Donald anxiously, as though fairly wild to be on his way.
“Yes, because there are several reasons,” he was told. “We have a chum there who would never forgive us if we started on such a glorious expedition and left him behind. Then again, I have some salve that, rubbed on your leg, would do a lot of good and relieve the pain considerably. So let’s start.”
Donald may have had a good Scotch will of his own, but as he too was a scout, he had also learned to yield to those in authority. He seemed to guess intuitively that Rob must be a leader, perhaps from his positive way of saying things and possibly from Andy’s deferring to his opinion.
They were soon hurrying along, Donald suppressing any groan as he continued to limp more or less.
“I hae not tauld ye all,” he was saying. “I learned from what I heard them say while I hid in the bushes that they expected to set a mine under the trestle and connect it with a battery by a long wire. Then from a distance they could destroy the bridge just when the heavy freight train was passing over. Ye can understand what I suffered when I tell ye that my fayther is an engineer in the employ of that same railway and that he pulls the munition freight this verra nicht!”