He started on a run, to get up a circulation; for, despite all his labor while in the pit, his blood seemed to have become fairly chilled.
At first he thought he would head straight home, as he was only a couple of miles or so away from Riverport. Then suddenly he found his thoughts going out in the direction of Arnold Masterson and his daughter, Sarah. He had not been to see them for several days now, since the man was able to leave his bed and hobble about the house, in fact.
A sudden notion to drop in on them, and explain about Buck's coming, seized upon Fred, though he never was able to tell why he should give way to such a strange resolution. But changing his course he headed toward the Masterson farm.
CHAPTER XIX
GLORIOUS NEWS
The more Fred thought of it the stronger became his conviction that Buck and Billy would be a long time in finding the lonely Masterson farmhouse, that was off the main road.
They had left him going in a direction that was really at right angles to the shortest way there. But then possibly Buck knew of another route. And after all it was none of his business.
Evening had now settled down in earnest. There would be a moon later; but darkness was beginning to shut out the last expiring gleams of daylight.
Fred was feeling pretty "chipper" as he himself expressed it. So far as he could ascertain no serious result had accompanied his fall into that hole, and the exposure that followed the mishap.