“Reddy’s with him,” answered Jack, decidedly. “An’ there’s no tellin’ what scrape that reptile’ll git him into. I dare say, Reddy thinks Nolan’s his best friend. That’d be natural enough, since he’s got to thinkin’ that all his old friends are his worst enemies.” “If we could only find him!” said Allan, wistfully “and bring him home again. The poor fellow will never get well if he’s left to wander about like that.” But there seemed no way of finding him. Allan was the last person who had seen him. That was at the moment, in the early morning, when he had slunk away from under the engine. Some warning of the search for him must certainly have reached him, for he had never again appeared at home. His wife, nearly heart-broken by the suspense, imagining him suffering all sorts of hardships, yet went about her work with a calm persistence which concealed in some degree the tumult which raged within her. The children must be fed and cared for, and she permitted nothing to stand between her and that duty. The division offices had never been so clean as they were since Mrs. Magraw had taken charge of them. A day or two later, Allan fancied he saw something which proved the truth of Jack’s theory. It was one morning as he was returning from his regular trip that he reached the embankment along the river and glanced over at the willows on the farther side, as he always did when he passed the place, for it was there that he and Jack had first seen Reddy in Nolan’s company. His heart gave a leap as he saw two men there. He stopped and looked at them, but the early morning mist rising from the river hid them so that he could discern nothing beyond the mere outline of their forms. He stared long and earnestly, until they passed behind the clump of willows and disappeared from sight. Something told him that it was Reddy and Nolan again, but he could not be sure, and at last he went slowly on his way. Perhaps they had a place of concealment somewhere in the woods that stretched eastward from the river-bank. He mentioned his suspicion to Jack, as soon as he reached home, and the latter was all on fire in a minute. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” he said. “Next Sunday we’ll take a walk through th’ woods over there, an’ it’s jest possible we’ll run on to ’em. Mebbe we kin save Reddy from that rascal yet!” So, bright and early the next Sunday morning, they started out, taking with them a lunch, for they did not expect to return until evening. They crossed the river by the bridge which they had used on the night when they had tried to capture Nolan, and struck at once into the woods. “It’s like huntin’ a needle in a haystack,” said Jack, “but my idea is that they’ve got a hut somewheres back in th’ hollers behind this first range o’ hills. They’s mighty few houses back there,—nothin’ but woods. So mebbe we’ll run on to ’em, if we have good luck.”