The cook shook his touseled head.

“Thet critter is sure a terror, an’ I orter know,” was all he would say; but the boys could imagine that there was some sort of a story back of it.

Less than ten minutes later, while Jerry was prowling around looking at the bunks in which the lumberjacks slept when in camp, the sound of voices came to Frank, who was watching outside, and looking down the crooked road he caught sight of the wagon, with the two colored men on the seat.

A shout brought Jerry plunging out of the door, and he joined in noisily greeting the coming of the team.

It had been previously arranged that he was to take Erastus on his machine over to the station on the railroad, about two miles away, so that he might get the afternoon local, which would stop upon being flagged.

Meanwhile, Frank would escort the wagon to the camp, feeling quite able to take good care of the supply train, as Jerry called it, when he tired of saying “chuck-wagon.”

Jerry got away first, with Erastus perched behind him, and grinning from ear to ear with the novelty of the experience.

“H’m, he won’t think it so funny if they strike a root and take a header; but then Jerry’s a cautious driver, and he knows something of the lay of the land; so I hope they’ll get along without a spill.  Now, Uncle Toby, do you think you can stand a mile or two of rough sledding; for the ‘tote-road’ is hardly meant for a wagon with springs?” Frank asked, as the other vanished from sight, going back along the way they had come from Centerville.

“‘Deed an’ I specks I kin, Marse Frank; dis chile is able to stan’ a heap o’ knockin’ ’round on ’casion.  S’long as I keeps my shins safe, I don’t seem to keer ‘bout much else.  Say de word, sah, an’ I’se ready to hit um up ag’in right peart,” was the reply from the old, gray-headed Toby, who had worked for Frank’s father many years—­indeed, he was fond of saying he had been a slave in the Virginia branch of the Langdon family “befo’ de wah.”

The horses had not had a very hard pull up to this time, and were, therefore, in pretty fair condition to attempt the last quarter of the journey.

And they needed all their strength to drag that heavily-laden wagon over the half-broken road, where so many obstacles stuck up to jolt the poor driver until he almost lost his grip on the seat, though the boys had been able to avoid most of these because they could steer aside with the single line of wheels.

But the vehicle had been well made, and the horses were full of vim, while the venerable black man who gripped the reins was a “sticker,” as he expressed it, after being once tossed out upon the back of the near horse by the sudden stoppage of the wagon.

After rather a trying experience they finally sighted a column of smoke, and, calling Toby’s attention to this, Frank said: 

“That’s as far as we go this time, Toby.”