“You had better go home this minute, Will,” Charles said, kindly. “As for Herriman, Steve, I guess he has strained his voice and his muscles and his joints enough already. Well, Will, I’ll go home with you, and tell all about Herriman as we journey along. Stephen, I suppose you will stay here to go on with the necromancy business, which was so meanly interrupted. Be sure to bring home Will’s paddles and everything else.”
“Yes, the necromancer must be routed,” Steve replied. “I’ll see to everything; good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said Charles and Will, as they plodded off.
“I say, Will,” Charles said, with a grin, as soon as they were out of hearing, “I say, Will, by to-morrow I guess I’ll be the only one to see any fun in this business; for Jim ran howling away, Bob got the worst of it, you robbed the hole of much mud, Steve’s dog was insulted several times, and before Steve gets through with the Sage and Marmaduke, all three will be sick of it.”
Thus let them go.
The sport seemed to have lost much of its zest after all these interruptions and departures; but George and Stephen mended the bow as well as they could, and then the former, with due solemnity, shot an arrow through the tree lately occupied by Herriman.
If the complicated plot of this and the preceding chapter has not proved too great a strain on the reader’s memory, he will probably remember that the next thing to be done was to dig.
Marmaduke came up with the paddles, and tried to make a spade of one of them; but it rebounded and jarred his hand till it ached.
“Stop!” screamed the Sage. “You’ll spoil the charm! The sods must be raised with something sharp, of course. Boys,” solemnly, “they must be raised with a knife that has slain something!”