Meeting the dog now, gave a new animation to Bart’s thoughts.

The sequence of its appearance, here, ten miles away from home, was easy to pursue.  It had broken away from its new owners—­Buck and Hank Tolliver—­and they were somewhere further up the road.

Christmas was making for home.  It was hardly possible that the animal knew Bart, for, although he had seen it several times, he had never spoken to it before.  The call of its name, however, had checked the animal, and now as Bart drew a cracker from his pocket and extended it, the dog began to advance slowly and cautiously towards him.

Bart saw the importance of making a friend of the animal.  He stood perfectly still, talking in a gentle, persuasive tone.

Christmas came up to him timorously, sniffed all about his feet, and suddenly wagged its tail and put its feet up on him in a friendly manifestation of delight.

Its keen sense of scent had apparently recognized that Bart had been a visitor to the Wacker home that day.  It now took the cracker from Bart’s hand, then another, and as Bart sat down again stretched itself placidly and contentedly at his side.

“This looks all right,” ruminated Bart speculatively.  “If I can only get Christmas to go back the way he came, I feel I have found the right trail.”

Bart finally arose, and the dog, too.  The animal turned its face east, wagged its tail expectantly, and eagerly studied Bart’s face and movements.

As he took a step up the road the animal’s tail went down, nerveless, and its eyes regarded him beseechingly.

“Come on, old fellow!” hailed Bart encouragingly, patting the dog.  It followed him reluctantly.  Then he made a rollic of it, jumping the ditch, racing the animal, stopping abruptly, leaping over it, apparently making Christmas forget everything except that it had a friendly companion.

At length Bart induced the dog to go ahead.  It led the way with evident reluctance.  It would stop and eye Bart with a decidedly serious eye.  He urged it forward, and finally it got down to a slow trot, sniffing the road and looking altogether out of harmony with its forced course.

Christmas was about twenty yards ahead of Bart at the end of a two miles’ jaunt, when he shied to the extreme edge of the road and drew to his haunches.

Here wagon tracks led into the timber.  The road had been used lately, Bart soon discerned.

“Come on, Christmas!” he hailed, branching off into the new obscure roadway.

The dog circled him, but could not be induced to leave the main road.  Bart made a grab for the trailing rope.  The animal eluded him, gave him one reproachful look, turned its nose east, and shot off, headed for home like an arrow.

“I’ve lost my ally,” murmured Bart, “but I think I have got my clew.  Christmas does not like this road, which looks as if he left his captors somewhere down its length.  I’ll try to locate them.”