“This farmer keeps a black bull, Buster. I saw him in an enclosure, and seemed to me the bars looked mighty slender!” observed George, maliciously.
“Excuse me, I think this fire feels mighty comfy,” grinned Nick.
The two boys found Mr. Fosdick waiting for them. The woman who did his household work, a black mammy, had been over at a neighbor’s when they were there before; but had later on returned, and cooked supper.
Things even looked a little cheerful, with the lamp-light flooding the comfortable livingroom of the big farmhouse.
“Sit down, boys,” said the farmer, pointing to two chairs, he himself reclining on a lounge. “You’re wondering now why I wanted to see ye again. I’m beholdin’ to you for the prompt assistance you gave me. But there’s somethin’ more’n that. Did ye say as how ye was bound for Lake Superior way soon?”
“Why, we are going as far as the Soo,” Jack replied, readily; “and we may take a notion to prowl along the northern shore for a short distance. I’ve always heard a heap about the big speckled trout to be taken around the mouth of the Agawa river and other places there, and since we have the chance I thought I’d like to try to land a whopper, if so be the rest of the boys are willing to go.”
“The Agawa!” repeated Mr. Fosdick, eagerly. “I wonder if that might be the place now. ’Twas somewhere along that northern shore he said he saw my Andy.”
“That was your son, I take it?” ventured Jack.
“Yes, my only boy or child. His mother died after he ran away, and I’m gettin’ old now. I want Andy to come home; but try as I would, I never could get a line to him.”
Then he went on to tell about his boy, and for a long time Jack and George had to listen to an account of Andy’s childhood life. Gradually he came to the point where the highstrung boy had refused to be treated as a child any longer. A violent quarrel had followed, and Andy left home.