“Whew, but that’s doubly tough, I should say!” ejaculated Andy, when he heard this astounding declaration on the part of the boy whose cause they were about to champion.
Rob, too, was deeply concerned.
“Then it’s easy to understand why you were so wild to get there in time to stop this horrible act,” he told Donald. “It might be bad enough for the wretches to do something to cripple the railway services, so as to stop the flow of munitions; but it means a whole lot more to it when it’s your own father whose life is placed in danger.”
“Yes, and a fayther like mine, in the bargain,” said Donald, so proudly that it was plain to be seen that the engineer was not without honor and love in his own family.
“If you hadn’t thought that you possibly could get help here at the old logging camp,” said Rob, “and cut across this way to see if the hunting party was still there, I suppose you’d have taken a different route?”
“Oh, ay,” promptly answered the other.
“In that case you wouldn’t have found yourself caught in that trap?” asked the leader of the Eagle Patrol, as the quartette hastened toward camp.
“I couldnae well be ketched in the auld bear trap set by me cousin Archie if it was half a mile awa’ I ran, ye ken,” Donald asserted naïvely.
“Well, we will be at the camp in a few minutes now,” Rob went on to say, thinking to further encourage the poor chap, whom he knew to be suffering more mentally than he was physically. “Once we make it, we needn’t be detained very long. I’m going to depend a whole lot on you to take us across the boundary by the shortest route possible.”
“Ye can wager your last bawbee that I’m capable o’ doin’ it,” came the reply, in such a tone of positive conviction that if Rob had been entertaining any doubts on that score they were quickly put to rest.