“Then we ought soon to be getting there, at this rate,” continued Horatio.  “Let’s hope nothing happens to our old car.  We’d have a jolly walk back to town if we broke down here and couldn’t fix things.  I’d prefer making a fire and spending the night in the woods to taking such a tramp, which would debar us from all hope of making that big run to-morrow.”

“With K. K. out of the game the chances for Scranton High begin to flicker some,” admitted Julius.  “He was showing unusual stamina right now, and secretly I was backing K. K. to bring home the bacon for our school.  Of course, with Hugh and Horatio and ‘Just’ Smith still in the ring it isn’t hopeless by any means; but they do say those Allandale chaps have unearthed several wonders at long-distance running, and they are dying to knock Scranton down this time.”

Again Hugh stopped the car and bade the others listen.

“It isn’t that I thought I heard anything suspicious, fellows,” he went on to explain, when they manifested a certain amount of excitement; “but, on general principles, I think we ought to stop oftener, and find out if there’s anything doing.”

After testing their combined hearing to the limit, and without any success, Hugh again started up.  It was Thad who spoke next, and apparently he had been considering something that he would like to have made clear.

“What if we pass all the way through to the other road, without learning a single thing, Hugh?” he went on to say; “do you mean to give it up, and head for home then and there?”

“Well, I should hope not, Thad!” burst out Horatio; “we’re none of us built that way.  Because a fellow gets a single knock-down in a fight ought he to throw up the sponge right away, and own himself beaten?  Why, we started out to find K. K., and sleep isn’t going to visit my eyes this night until we succeed.  That’s the way I look at it, and I reckon the rest of you are in the same boat.”

“If such a thing should happen, Thad,” said Hugh, sturdily, “we’ll simply turn around and come back again; only, under the new conditions, some of you will have to turn out with the lanterns, and search alongside the road as we go slowly along.”

Horatio gave a gasp that was plainly audible.

“Do you really mean, Hugh,” he went on to ask, in a voice that trembled more or less despite Horatio’s effort to control the same, “that you half expect to find K. K. lying alongside the road, either dead, or else insensible from the pain of his broken leg?”

“Well, I wasn’t just thinking things would be as bad as all that,” Hugh hastened to say.  “What I had in mind was the chance of coming on his footprints, and then trying to follow the same.  We could easily tell them, for K. K. had on his running shoes, you remember.  By tracking him, step by step, don’t you see, we could tell just where he met with his trouble, even find out, perhaps, the nature of his accident, and continue to follow him up.”