Rising cautiously he stepped to the flap of the canvas shelter and peered out. In the dying glow of the camp fire he saw an old man silently walking toward the tents.
“For gracious sake!” breathed Tom to himself. “If that isn’t the old hermit of the mill I’m a lobster! I wonder what he’s doing here?”
With anxious eyes he watched, and as the moon came out from behind a cloud, to add to the glow of the campfire, Tom saw the light glint on a gun.
“He’s looking for us!” whispered Tom. “I wonder what I’d better do?”
[CHAPTER VIII]
OLD ACQUAINTANCES
For a moment the lad stood there at the flap of the tent, pondering over the situation. He realized that he might have a desperate character to deal with—a man who would not listen to reason, and who was impulsive, as evidenced by his leap into the water after the motorboat.
“But I’ve got to do something,” thought Tom. “If I don’t he may take a shot at us, not meaning to do any harm, but just because he’s erratic. And that sort of a bullet does just as much harm as any other. If he should fire into the tent——”
Tom did not finish out his thought, for at that moment there was a movement on the part of the old man. He had been standing still, silently regarding the camp, and now he again advanced.