our debt. There was Old Phin
himself, who felt so interested in all you told him about the Boy Scout
movement; then there was Polly, who might have had her face badly
scratched, not to mention other wounds, if we hadn't just happened to
get there in time to chase that savage mother bobcat off. And now you've
gone and saved the life of Polly's own uncle. Oh! p'raps, suh, we won't
have to get into any fuss at all about that prisoner of the Still;
p'raps Old Phin might feel that we'd done his family enough good to
change his mind about keepin' that revenue man up there any longer,
aworkin' his life out; and let him go away with us, if he promised never
to tell anything he'd learned. And let me say to you both, I'm feelin'
somethin' right here, inside, that seems to tell me it's going to be all
right, all right!" and Bob repeated those last two words softly,
caressingly, as though they meant everything in the wide world to him.

CHAPTER XXII.

WHEN BOB CAME BACK.

THE other boys of course shared in Bob's deep feeling of satisfaction.
Perhaps he might be expecting too much from the old mountaineer; but
then, Bob had lived among these people during a good portion of his
life, and ought to be able to judge as to the amount of gratitude they
were capable of feeling.

"But you ought to be off across the valley yourself, Bob," ventured
Thad, presently.

"I know it, suh," the Southern lad replied, quickly; "and let me tell
you I'm starting right now in better spirits than I ever dreamed would
be the case. I want to get back heah in good time, so as to go up yondah
with you, and meet Polly."

"If you're not too much played out," suggested Allan.

Bob drew his figure up proudly, as he went on to say:

"I'd have to be mighty nigh a collapse, suh, let me tell you, to keep
from goin' to where I've got a chance to hear about _him_!" and they did
not need to be told who was meant, for they knew Bob was thinking of
his missing father, whom everybody had long believed to be surely dead.

And so he presently vanished, with a farewell wave of the hand.

The other scouts gathered around the fire, chatting on various subjects,
but principally in connection with the recent happening. They thought it
the strangest thing in the world how two girls came to play a part in
the affair which their good comrade, Bob Quail, was trying to put
through; and of such vastly different types too, the one a plain
mountain maid, and the othe