Suddenly he gave a cry.
"What"s the matter?" demanded Van.
"There! There on the tree!" He pointed before him with trembling hand. "Your sweater!"
Van pushed past him.
"Sure as fate! My sweater! Blamed if it isn"t."
They both laughed weakly.
"Then we"ve found the trail!" Bob almost sobbed the words.
"We sure have! And hark, don"t you hear voices? It"s David, as I"m alive; and your father!"
Aid had indeed come.
"Father!" Bob shouted the word and then laughed again--this time a bit hysterically.
"The rescuing party"s right here!" called Mr. Carlton.
He said it lightly, but as he came up and joined them Van saw that his face was drawn and his eyes suspiciously bright.
"David has the sledge just at the foot of the hill," he remarked, appearing not to notice the boy"s fatigue. "I guess you"d just as soon ride the rest of the way."
He slipped an arm around Bob.
"It"s not much farther, son. Move right along as fast as you can.
Hurry, boy. Your mother"s pretty worried. Thank goodness we found you in time."
CHAPTER III
SUGARING OFF
The next morning, incredible as it seemed, Bob and Van were none the worse for their mountain trip, and Mr. Carlton, who had worried no little about them, and who was still feeling the effects of his hours of anxiety, remarked somewhat wrathfully:
"You two fellows come to the surface like a pair of corks! Any one would think that being lost on a mountain was an every-day occurrence with you. That is the difference between sixteen and forty-six, I suppose. My poor old nerves rebel at being jolted in such casual fashion."
Bob smiled.
"We"re fit as two fighting c.o.c.ks to-day, Father," he declared. "In fact, this very minute we"re going out to help David collect sap.
They are going to boil a lot of it down to-day."
"I imagined as much when I saw the smoke rising from the sugar-house chimney. Well, you seem to have your morning"s work mapped out. Just don"t get lost again, for I have no mind to go scouring the country a second time to find you."
"We"ll take good care, Mr. Carlton," Van replied, giving a final tug at his long rubber boots.
"You may not lose yourself, Van," Bob chuckled, "but I am morally certain you"ll lose your boots. You will just walk off and leave them in some snow-drift or mud puddle and never miss them. They are big enough for an elephant. Where did you get them, anyway?"
"They"re an old pair David lent me; your father said I"d better wear them."
"He"s dead right, too. The snow is still deep in spots, and it is thawing everywhere. It is not the boots I"m quarreling with; it"s their size. I guess, though, you can get on somehow. We want to cut across the road and make for that hill over to the right. That"s where the sugar-house is; it stands in the middle of an orchard of maples which were planted by my grandfather. Of course we have other maple trees scattered about the farm and David taps those, too; but most of our sugar comes from this orchard."
"Did your grandfather make maple-sugar to sell?"
"Goodness, no! He made it to use. White sugar, you must understand, was not so common in the olden days as it is now. Very little of it was grown in our country; and so, as it had to be brought from the East Indies, Spain, and South America, it was pretty expensive.
Grandfather told me once that when he was a boy people used brown sugar or maple-sugar to sweeten their food, and sometimes they even used cheap mola.s.ses. White sugar was looked upon as a great luxury."
"I don"t think I ever realized that before," said Van thoughtfully.
"Why, even my father remembers when, as a little shaver, he used to have white sugar spread on his bread for a treat."
"Seems queer, doesn"t it?" Van mused.
"Yes. But it isn"t so queer when you consider that all the sugar-cane now growing in America first had to be brought to the West Indies from Spain, the Canary Islands, or Madeira and then transplanted along the Mississippi delta. Dad says that originally sugar-cane came from Africa or India and that doubtless it was the Crusaders who introduced it into Europe."
"Do you mean to tell me that people never knew about sugar until then?" inquired Van incredulously, halting in the middle of the road.
"The Chinese were practically the only people who did, and they did not use it at all as we do; they just sweetened things with the thin sap."
Van regarded his chum steadily for a moment.
"Say," he demanded at last, "how did you come to know so much, Bobbie?"
"What? Oh, about sugar? I don"t know much. I just happen to remember a few sc.r.a.ps Father has told me from time to time. He"s in the sugar business, you know."
"Really? No, I didn"t know. You never said anything about it. Cane-sugar?"
"Yes." Bob watched Van curiously.
"That"s odd."
"Why?"
"Oh, because my father is in the sugar business too. Don"t you recall my telling your father so? Yes, my dad makes beet sugar."
"Then that"s how my father happened to know your father!" exclaimed Bob quickly. "I suppose they"re business friends. I"ve been wondering why Father kept watching you. Probably he sees in you some resemblance to your father. Do you look like him?"
"I hardly know. Some people think I do. My mother says so," was Van"s indifferent response. "But say, tell me more about sugar.
You"d think with my father right in the business I"d know something about it; but I don"t. Do they get sugar from anything beside beets, and sugar-cane, and maple sap?"
"Oh, my, yes. There"s sugar in ever so many other things: in grapes, and milk, and the date palm, and in maize; but it is from the beet and cane that the most sugar can be extracted."
Van nodded.