"We'll come back some day--some day when we've at last got out of this awful ocean of bad luck we seem to be in, and we'll put up a little stone to mark the grave," said Billy. "If ever a dog deserved it, Scottie does. I only wish we knew to whom he rightly belonged before Mr. Knight ever saw him. They'd like to hear, I think, that he was a hero, whether they cast him off or not, or even if he was a runaway." Going on toward Ferndale, the little town two or three miles beyond where the Big Six was ditched, Billy and Paul again deeply felt the lonely influence of the unfrequented road. Even in the bright sunshine the old mill-pond, the mill, the big, empty icehouse, the weeping willows near them--all seemed to tell of that dreadful tragedy of many years ago. The boys both noticed as they passed how the road's bank sloped down, and their active imaginations plainly pictured the frightened horses, the overturned carriage and the flood of the great, dark pond closing over the young man and his mother, whose sad story Willie Creek had told them. Farther on, at the spot where all their own troubles had had their beginning, the two lads stopped. Filled with vain regrets they looked again all about the place where the Six went down. But if they expected to make any new discovery, they were disappointed. The road was dry now. The broken fence rails still lay at the foot of the embankment. The trampled grass and weeds still told of what had happened, but no one had been near; no human creature, it was to be believed, had visited the scene since the boys last saw it. Returning to their car, the friends soon reached the house where they had stopped to make inquiry that first day of their trouble--the house where lived the lonely, old man, all his thoughts in the days of long ago. They now knew the story of the faded dwelling, the crumbling condition of every structure. Curiously they glanced about, thinking they might see the lonely, old gentleman and give him a friendly salute--just a hand thrown up for an instant--as they passed. Ah, there he was! Seated in the kitchen doorway, he saw the machine even before Paul and Billy saw him. Their wave of a hand seemed to please him, and he waved a beckoning signal in return. Billy jumped down and walked up to see if something was wanted. "No, no!" the old man replied, far more pleasantly than at that former time. He meant only to acknowledge their greeting, he said. Then he asked if the owner of the runaway car had been found.