“What if it’s the wild man?” ventured Andy Hale, thus voicing the alarm that had begun to hammer at every heart.
“Wow! get your clubs, everybody, and stand ready to repel boarders!” snapped Peg, immediately pouncing on the handy camp hatchet.
“Hold on, fellows,” Dick called out. “It’s a man, you can see, and he looks to me as though he might be more frightened than we are. See, he’s waving his hands.”
“Why, seems as if I ought to know that man!” exclaimed Fred Bonnicastle just then. “Yes, sure as you live, it’s the farmer we got the butter and eggs from.”
“Say, I bet you he’s run across the monster that gave us the scare the other day!” ventured Nat Silmore. “Now, mebbe you’ll believe what we told you.”
The farmer soon reached the camp. He was breathing hard, but tried, as best he could, to talk. It was to Mr. Holwell he addressed himself, for he saw that the minister was older than any of the rest and looked as though he might be in charge.
“I thought you were camping on the other site,” he stammered; “so I landed at the wrong place. Oh! I want somebody to go back with me and try to stop the bleeding, or I’m afraid the poor lad will not last long, and I never could get to town, for my horse is sick.”
“What does this mean, my friend?” asked Mr. Holwell, laying a kindly hand on the agitated farmer’s arm, to calm him, for he was very much excited.
“My little boy managed to cut his foot frightfully with the axe,” explained the man, drawing a deep breath; “and I’m a poor hand at anything like binding up a bleeding artery. My wife has done the best she knew how, but in spite of the rags she tied around his leg it keeps on bleeding. Say you’ll come back with me, please, and do something for my poor little Josh!”
“To be sure we will!” cried the minister. “It’s Sunday, but the better the day the better the deed. One whom we love and worship went about doing good on the seventh day of the week. I’ll be ready in a minute, my friend. Dick, I’d like you—yes, and Leslie also, to accompany me. Perhaps Mr. Rowland will come with us, if you, Harry, can get along here with both of your assistants gone.”