“Well, take him where he belongs,” interrupted the young lady. “We don’t care where it is. We simply can’t have him howling here.”
“Oh, take him, Dan!” said Freddy. “Let us take him home with us.”
“Mr. Wirt must be around somewhere,” reflected Dan. “He said perhaps he would come to Killykinick. We’ll take him,” he agreed cheerfully, as he handed out his basket of fish to the pretty, young campers. “And I think his master will come along to look him up.”
And the boys started on their homeward way, with Rex (which was the name on their new companion’s collar) seated between them, still restless and quivering, in spite of all Freddy’s efforts to make friends.
“He wasn’t this way on the boat,” said Freddy as, after all his stroking and soothing, Rex only lifted his head and emitted a long, mournful howl. “I went down on the lower deck where the big man had left his dogs, and they played with me fine,—shook paws and wagged their tails and were real nice.”
“I guess he knows he is lost and wants to get back to his master,” said Dan. “Dogs have a lot of sense generally, so what took him over to that girls’ camp puzzles me.”
“He didn’t like the girls,—did you, Rex?” asked Freddy, as he patted his new friend’s nose. “My, he is a beauty,—isn’t he, Dan? Just the kind of a dog I’d like to have; and, if nobody comes for him, he will be ours for keeps. Do you think Brother Andrew will let us have him out in the stable at St. Andrew’s? Dick Walton kept his rabbits there—”
“Until a weasel came and gobbled them up,” laughed Dan, as he steered away from a line of rocks that jutted out like sharp teeth from a low-lying, heavily wooded shore.
“They couldn’t gobble Rex,—could they, old fellow!” said Freddy, with another friendly pat.
But, regardless of all these kindly overtures, Rex sprang to his feet, barked in wild excitement for a moment, made a plunge from the boat and struck out for shore.