“Do you dare to trust it all to Dave?” I asked Cyrus, wonderingly, as I saw that the cloud of care had lifted from his face.
“Yes, with the proper backing; he is a great fellow, Dave, you know!” said Cyrus.
It was a gala day in Palmyra when those hateful placards were taken down and the large force of men that had been discharged was hired again to work in the shipyard. Dave did not seem to me to be as happy as he should be, but then happiness was dampered a little for us all by anxiety about Rob.
“I haven’t neglected that matter of old Lucifer,” Dave said to me. “I have been telegraphing to different places where Alf Reeder might have located, but all in vain. Ned Carruthers has gone up to New Hampshire now, and I’m going to follow just as soon as possible, though it seems like a wild goose chase.”
I didn’t dare to tell him that I thought Uncle Horace knew the whole truth. I did not know how he would feel when he knew that all his sacrifice made to protect Rob from his father had been made in vain.
“It has come to the point where nothing but that horse will save Rob’s life,” continued Dave, “and if I can find him I am simply going to bring him home with me.”
“But Uncle Horace——?” I questioned.
“I think we have all been infected with Rob’s terror of his father,” said Dave. “I have a right to own any horse that I please.”
“You will have when you are twenty-one,” I retorted. For a defiance of Uncle Horace seemed to me a reckless thing.
Dave adhered to his determination, and was starting off one morning to catch the steamer, when, borne upon the breezes to our ears, as we stood in the porch, came the sound of the horn with which Hiram Nute always announced his arrival in Palmyra.