He looked at Oscar’s recovered rifle hanging on the wall and thought with satisfaction of how glad he would be to see it. He felt a good deal of pride in having been able to get it back, but, as he sat thinking, he began to feel his pleasure give way to a certain lingering doubt. Had he really been wise in returning to the Pirate’s house, was the value of the rifle greater than the value of the help he could give the two exhausted Edmonds, help that they would have lost had his venture ended in his being shot? It was an unwelcome thought, yet he was forced to conclude that this was another of those errors in judgment of which his father had accused him, a rash failing to count the cost at the critical moment.
“Oh, dear,” he sighed, quite out loud, “when will I ever get sense enough to qualify for a soldier?”
Nicholas, hearing his voice, raised his head to look at him inquiringly. He seemed to hear something else also, for he got up, went to the door and stood listening intently. Then he turned to Hugh and whined to be let out. Hugh listened, but heard nothing save the rushing of the stream and the sighing of the wind in the trees.
“There isn’t anything,” he said to Nicholas, but the big dog still insisted, so at last he opened the door.
He stood before the cottage, looking in every direction, north, south, east; the sun was in his eyes so that he shaded them with his hand to look across the open meadows to the west. Was that something moving, was it a distant, plodding, weary figure slowly making its way up the slope? He could not be mistaken. It was Oscar!
With a shout of joy Hugh ran to meet him, but stopped short in surprise and dismay when he came close. Oscar’s forehead was cut and had been bleeding; his cheek was discolored with a great bruise; he carried neither pack nor gun, and he limped as he came toiling painfully up the hill.
“I had a fall,” he explained briefly, in answer to Hugh’s anxious questions.
Long after, Hugh learned the real details of the mishap, how Oscar had taken shelter from the storm under a mass of overhanging rock, how the fury of wind and water had loosened it above him and how he had been swept down in the midst of an avalanche of plunging bowlders, sliding earth and uprooted trees, to lie stunned for he knew not how many hours, but—
“I had a fall,” was all he said, then added quickly, “What is that? Nicholas, Nicholas!”
He sat down abruptly on a fallen tree as though sudden relief had weakened his knees; he put his arms around the great dog’s neck. Nicholas, in turn, overwhelmed him with endearments, licked his face, nuzzled his hand, nearly pushed him from the log in his clumsy efforts to show his joy. There seemed no need to tell Oscar that the two brothers had been found, for he seemed to guess the whole of the good news from the mere presence of the big wolfhound. Hugh, as he stood looking at the greetings of the two, had a sudden understanding, from Oscar’s overwhelming relief and delight, what was the real depth of the friendship he bore John Edmonds.