Was he dead or alive?  Hundreds of times had the boys and their uncle pondered that question.  Each mail was watched with anxiety, but day after day brought no news, until the waiting became an old story, and all settled down to the dismal conviction that the daring explorer must be dead.  He had landed and gone into the interior with three white men and twenty natives, and that was all that could be ascertained concerning him.

At the time of Anderson Rover’s departure Randolph had been on the point of purchasing a farm of two hundred acres in the Mohawk Valley of New York State.  The land had not changed hands until a year later, however, and then Dick, Tom, and Sam were called upon to give up their life in the metropolis and settle down in the country, a mile away from the village of Dexter Corners.

For a month things had gone very well, for all was new, and it seemed like a “picnic,” to use Tom’s way of expressing it.  They had run over the farm from end to end, climbed to the roof of the barn, explored the brook, and Sam had broken his arm by falling from the top of a cherry tree.  But after that the novelty wore, away, and the boys began to fret.

“They want something to do,” thought Randolph Rover, and set them to work studying scientific farming, as he called it.  At this Dick made some progress, but the uncle could do nothing with Tom and Sam.  Then the last two broke loose and began to play pranks on everybody that came along, and life became little short of a burden to the studious Randolph and, his quiet-minded spouse.

“I must send them off to a boarding school, or somewhere,” Randolph Rover would say, but he kept putting the matter off, hoping against hope that he might soon hear from his lost brother.

CHAPTER II

AN ENCOUNTER ON THE ROAD

“I’ll race you to the path,” said Sam, when the woodshed was left behind.

“All right,” answered Tom, who was always ready to run.  “Toe the mark here.  Now then —­ one, two, three!  Go!”

And away they went across the meadow, leaping two ditches with the agility of a pair of deer, and tearing through the small brush beyond regardless of the briers and the rents their nether garments might sustain.  At first Tom took the lead, but Sam speedily overhauled and then passed him.

“It’s no use —­ you always could outrun me,” panted Tom, as he came to a stop when Sam crossed the footpath ten yards ahead of him.  “I can’t understand it either.  My legs are just as long as yours, and my lungs just as big, too, I think.”

“You want to do your running scientifically, Tom.  That athletic instructor in New York —­”

“Oh, bother your scientific things, Sam!  Uncle gives us enough of that, so don’t you start in.  I wonder if Dick has got a letter from Larry Colby?  He promised to write last week.  He is going to a boarding school soon.”