Just then the engine bell set up its clangor and, from the distance, came the warning "All aboard!" of the conductor.
"Dot means us, Matt!" cried Carl.
Turning away from the shed the boys dashed through the fringe of bushes and off across the tracks. As they bounded to the station platform the last car of the train was flickering past.
Carl gained the steps of the last car at a flying leap, and Matt was close behind him.
The train rolled eastward, and the boys, leaning across the hand-rail and breathing themselves, watched the little patch of brush and timber encircling the tool-shed fade from sight.
"Be jeerful, eferypody!" jubilated Carl. "Ve missed our preakfast, aber it vas vort' der brice. Hey, Matt?"
[CHAPTER VIII.]
MATT INTERVIEWS TRUEMAN.
Ottawa is as pretty a little town as there is in all Kansas. The streets are wide, and level, and shaded, and through the town runs the historic Marais des Cygnes, the "river of swans"—so named by the ancient French explorers.