Of course the first questions that were asked and answered were in regard to the missing pointer, but no one had seen or heard anything of him.

David seemed to take the loss very much to heart.

The animal was a valuable one, and he felt that he was in some degree responsible for his safe-keeping.
Three pairs of willing hands made light work, and by two o'clock in the afternoon a dozen traps were completed and ready for setting.

The boys then stopped long enough to take a hasty lunch, which they ate in the shop, in order to save time, and after that one of the mules was hitched to a wagon and brought before the door.

The traps, a basket containing the "figure fours," with which they were to be set, a bag of corn for bait, an axe, with which to clear away the underbrush, and a spade to dig the trenches, having been packed away in the vehicle, the boys got in and drove off.