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Dick's reading of the telegram there was silence among the campers. They all imagined something had happened to Mr. Hamilton, Dick's father, and they hesitated to give voice to their thoughts.

"Well, I'd offer to take you home in my chariot," said Henry Darby, with a suggestion of a smile, "only I know you'd be two days on the road. Though it might be a good thing," he added "for your father would hear us coming long before he could see us, with the way this old iron rattles. I wish some one would invent noiseless scrap iron."

"Do you—do you s'pose your father is—is hurt?" asked Walter, finally putting into words what all the others thought.

"Not a bit of it," replied Dick, stoutly. "Dad knows me well enough to say right out what he means. He wants me home, for some reason or other, but I don't know what it can be," and he looked at the telegram in a puzzled sort of way, as if the slip of paper would solve the mystery for him.