“Yaw!” said Hans, gravely; “but you didn’d come near bein’ here uf I toldt der truth apout it. Dot bowder parrels britty near sent you high sky ven it tried to exbloded you ups. Mine gootness! I hat rudder peen seek a ped indo in Prownville than to half a parrel tied to me so I vos in danger uf exbloding und plowing it up. Yaw!”
“Well,” observed Hodge, “I think we have seen enough of the Maine woods. If we stay in this part of the State longer I’ll have nervous prostration.”
CHAPTER XVII.
FRED FOREST, OF HARVARD.
“Frank Merriwell of Yale! Frank Merriwell—here in this region! Am I dreaming? Is this an optical illusion?”
“I am Frank Merriwell of Yale,” laughed Merry himself, standing on the platform of the railroad station at Mattawamkeag, in the State of Maine. “You are right about that. But you—you cannot be Fred Forest, the Harvard man!”
“I am, just as hard,” laughed the other, a stout, healthy-looking youth of nineteen, roughly dressed in woolen clothes, a red sweater, blue cap, long-legged boots, with trousers thrust into them, while he wore no coat at all. “But you, the famous fullback of Yale, the great pitcher on the college ball team—you are the last person I could have dreamed of seeing here!”
“And you, the most elegantly dressed man of Harvard, the favorite in the swell society of Cambridge, whose apartments were said to be the most luxurious student rooms in this country, with a single possible exception—you here, in this rig! I am the one to be astonished.”
“It seems to be a case of mutual astonishment. Sure you have me daffy, old man. I can’t believe my eyes even now.”