“We’ll have the picnic, anyway!” laughed Bob Niles. “I bet trout baked in the ashes beats woodchuck all to pieces!”
Dorothy had come close to the sawyer now and tapped him on the arm.
“Oh, sir!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t Tom Moran here with you?”
Polk’s face clouded. “The red-haired rascal wouldn’t stay. He don’t like sawmill work. He worked for me yesterday and started in this morning; but an hour before you came he lit out.”
“Gone?” gasped Dorothy.
“Yes, ma’am!”
“And you don’t know where he’s gone?” broke in Tavia.
“Couldn’t tell ye,” said Polk. “He lit out—walkin’—toward Pollinary. But that’s twenty mile from here. Dunno as he’ll go that far.”