“The road runs around that,” said Archer, “the other side.”
“We’ll follow the road,” said Tom, “but we’ll keep in the brook till we get about a couple of hundred feet from the road. Come on.”
“You heading for Dundgardt?” Archer whispered.
“Don’t talk so loud. Yes—I got to find some people there named Leture—I can’t pronounce it just right. That’s nothin’ but a tree——”
“I thought it was a man,” said Archer.
“We ought to be there in an hour,” and again Tom felt for his precious button. “If they’ll keep us till to-morrow night we can get a good start for the Swiss border; I—I got some—some good ideas.”
“For traveling?”
“Yes—at night. They’ll do—anything after I tell ’em about Frenchy. Quiet. Bend your toes over the pebbles like I do.”
But did they ever reach Dundgardt—once Leteur? Did they make their way through fair Alsace, under the shadow of the Blue Alsatian Mountains, to the Swiss border? Did Tom’s “good ideas” pan out? Was the scout of the Acorn and the Indian head, to triumph still in the solitude of the Black Forest, even as he had triumphed in the rugged Catskills roundabout his beloved Temple Camp?