[Illustration: Bruce delivers a lecture on botany.—_Page 122_.]
“We’ll stop and get them on our return,” said the tutor, “and I shall tell Mr. Van Kuren when they are served at dinner to-night that it was you who showed us how to distinguish them.”
They were drawing nearer the Dexter mansion as he said this, and Bruce took occasion to say to the tutor “By the way, I have a little errand here and if you’ve no objection I would like to stop a few minutes. There is an old gentlemen who sometimes sends magazines and books down to our quarters for the men to read, and I must see him for a moment.”
“Certainly,” replied the tutor “where does he live?”
“In the next house—that one with the big hedge in front of it,” replied the boy.
Mr. Reed stopped short, and the smile disappeared from his face and was replaced by a queer look of annoyance and anxiety.
Mr. Reed looked at his watch, and then said quietly: “It’s rather later than I thought it was, so I think we will return to the house. We shall walk slowly, so you may overtake us if your visit is not too long, Master Decker.”
Bruce and Laura exchanged glances but did not dispute Mr. Reed’s order, and then, while the others turned their faces toward their home, Bruce darted through the gateway, and sped along the winding path through the fir trees.
Ten minutes later, Laura, who had exhausted her ingenuity in devising excuses for delaying their return, heard with delight Bruce’s familiar voice behind them, and stopped to wait for him. As he approached she saw that his face, which had been so bright and smiling all the afternoon, was sober and pale now, and the thought flashed across her mind that perhaps he had encountered the ghost of one of his relatives in the old house, some long-veiled woman flitting up and down the old staircase as spirits always did in the romances with which she was familiar.
“I was just too late,” said the boy with something like a sob in his voice, “Mr. Dexter sailed for Europe yesterday, and there’s nobody there but an old couple who are taking care of the house. They don’t know when he will be back or anything about it. There goes my last and only chance.”
One afternoon Bruce Decker was seated in front of the quarters reading a newspaper, and waiting for the men to return from a fire to which they had been summoned half an hour before. So engrossed was he that he did not hear the footsteps of three gentlemen who were crossing the street directly in front of him, and he was startled to hear his name suddenly pronounced in a quick, imperious way.