For a few seconds Glen gazed into the brown-bearded face without answering. Was he awake or dreaming? Had the words been spoken? "Do you really mean it, sir?" he almost gasped, at length, "or are you only making fun of me!"
"Mean it? of course I do," was the reply. "I generally mean what I say, and if you really care to explore Kansas and Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California in my company, I shall be most happy to have you do so. I am also authorized to offer you a position, a humble one, to be sure, but one that will pay the same salary that you would have received as a member of the locating-party, in the division I am to command. I don't suppose there will be many chances for you to run locomotives out there; but I have no doubt there will be plenty of swimming to be done, as well as other things in the line of your peculiar abilities. But you have not answered my question yet. Will you accept my offer, or do you wish a few days in which to consider it?"
"Oh, Mr. Hobart!" cried the boy, who was standing up in his excitement. "It seems almost too good to be true! I can't realize that this splendid chance, that I've been trying so hard not to think about, has really come to me. Why, I'd rather go on that trip than do anything else in the whole world, and if you'll only take me along, in any position, I don't care what, I'll be grateful to you all my life."
"But what do you think your father will say? Do you suppose he will let you go?" inquired the engineer, soberly.
Glen's face became grave again in an instant. "Oh, yes, he's sure to," he replied, "but I'll write this very minute, and ask him.
"There won't be time to receive an answer," said Mr. Hobart, "for we must start from here to-morrow; but perhaps this letter will make things all right. You see," he added, "I thought it was just possible that you might care to accept my offer, and so I took the liberty of writing and asking your father if he were willing to have you do so. I also asked him not to say anything about it in Brimfield until after we had started, for fear I should be flooded with applications from other boys, who might imagine I had the power to give them positions. Your father's answer reached me here an hour ago, and with it came this letter for you."
No own father could have written a kinder or more satisfactory letter to a boy than the one Mr. Matherson sent to his adopted son. It readily granted the required permission, and congratulated Glen upon the splendid opportunity thus opened to him. At the same time it told him how they already missed him, and how they hated the thought of not seeing him for a whole year. It closed with the information that Binney Gibbs was making extensive preparations for his departure to the far West, and that the famous expedition, of which he was to be a member, was the all-absorbing topic of conversation in Brimfield.
Mr. Hobart watched the boy's glowing face as he read this letter with genuine pleasure; for he had taken a real liking to him, and was not only glad of this opportunity for affording him such unalloyed happiness, but also that they were to be companions on the proposed trip.
Matters being thus happily settled, the engineer told Glen that they would start the following evening for the end of the track, nearly two hundred miles west of that point, where the expedition was to rendezvous, and where he was to establish a camp for their reception.
The information that interested and pleased Glen the most, though, was that Mr. Brackett was to be assistant engineer of the new division, and that most of the members of the party with whom the boy was already on such friendly terms, were also to join it.