Mr. Smithson had carried his prisoner off, after he, too, had partaken of the hospitality of Kamp Kill Kare.
"Boys," he said, in leaving, "I'm sure under obligations to you for all this, and any time I can repay the debt don't hesitate to ask me. To get Bismarck back safe and sound after such a storm, is going to be a feather in my cap. And only for you I'd be hunting him yet, with only a slim chance of success."
"Why, that's all right, Mr. Smithson," Frank had declared heartily; "we've enjoyed helping you, though it does make a fellow feel bad to see as clever a man as that laboring under such a ridiculous fancy."
"He was once a professor in a college, and lost his mind through overstudy," remarked the keeper, as he moved off, with "Bismarck" at his side.
"There, see that!" exclaimed Bluff, triumphantly. "Just what I've told my dad many a time when he complained that I was falling behind my class. I'll make certain to hold this up as an awful warning."
"Talk to me about you losing your brain by overstudy! There's about as much chance of that as my being made king of England," laughed Jerry.
"But still it has happened, you see. That establishes a precedent all right, and my father, as a lawyer, is always talking about such things," declared Bluff, not in the least abashed.
"Now suppose you sit right down here, Jerry, and let us have the whole yarn from Alpha to Omega. What you haven't been through since you left us yesterday morning isn't worth mentioning, to judge from the hints you let fall. A deer, four wild dogs, lost in the big timber, storm bound, rescuing our most bitter enemy; and now helping to land an escaped lunatic—say, you ought to feel satisfied, old fellow," observed Frank.
Jerry laughed aloud.
All his recent troubles, as viewed from the pleasant seat by the campfire, with his three chums around him, seemed to fade into insignificance.