"That I don't know. He keeps them chained in daytime, of course, but whether the scoundrel looses them at night or not I never heard. It would be just like him."
The boys rode on in silence. Suddenly Syd drew up with a jerk. "Here's the gate into Johnson's, and I tell you what it is I must go this way, dogs or no dogs. I'm in honor bound to try to keep my promise as nearly as I can, no matter what lies in the way. You can ride down the hill; I'll wait for you at the house."
"No, sir; I'm with you," feeling himself every inch a man at the chance of an adventure. "Open the gate, Syd. Now come on!" and giving their horses the rein they struck into a gallop down the road leading close by Johnson's house and stables. It was so heavily covered with tan-bark that the sound of the hoofs was deadened, and the boys spoke in whispers, afraid to stir the midnight silence.
Syd nodded toward a low kennel, back of the stables.
"There!" he motioned with his lips. "There's where they were when they took them to hunt Boosey."
But kennel and stables were silent and motionless in the cold moonlight.
The tan-bark was replaced by pebbles near the house. The boys took their ponies up on the short velvet turf, on which their swift feet fell with a crisp, soft thud, a noise hardly sufficient to rouse the most watchful dog, but which drove the blood from Godfrey's cheeks. His short-lived courage had oozed out.
"A man one could fight," he thought. "But to be throttled like a beast by a dog." The gladiatorial fights of Rome did not thrill him so much now as the thought of them had sometimes done.
Thud—thud. Every beat of the hoofs upon the grass sounded through the boys' brains. They were up to the kennels—past them—safe. Two minutes passed and not a sound. Godfrey drew a long breath, when—hark!