But Mr. Sip did not finish. A new figure came into action.
“What under the canopy is that?” cried a boy who was so much older and larger than little Gerald that he might almost have been called a young man. He was standing by the well up in the Woodens’s dooryard waiting for the horse he had been driving to finish drinking. In another moment he grasped the situation and was leaping swiftly and noiselessly down the long slope over the stubble.
Tramps had been plentiful lately. His voice rang out to comfort Gerald and warn Mr. Sip. Gerald looked up, but with a white, set little face ran past him. Mr. Sip, taking in the height, weight, and courage of the frightened boy’s new ally, turned and began running toward the low oak trees.
A strong ash stick, thrown with excellent aim, struck Mr. Sip squarely in the small of his back. He staggered for an instant, but rallied, and, a coward to the last, vanished in the thicket with a parting curse. Within an hour he might have been seen drinking buttermilk thirstily at a cottage a mile away. The good-humored farmer’s daughter gave it to him, pitying a man who was “walking all the way from Wheelborough Heights to Paterson, in Jersey, marm, to find my old boss and git a job he’s promised me.”
And now good-bye, Mr. Sip! You have done something to-day that would surprise your lazy self immensely. You have done a stroke of work. Thanks to your being a brutal vagrant, there is just coming about an acquaintance that is of the utmost import in the carrying on of this story—without which it would never have been worth writing or reading.
“Well, upon my word!” ejaculated the new-comer, wheeling about as if disposed to waste no more pains upon a man of Mr. Sip’s kidney, and coming back to Gerald Saxton. “I am very glad I heard you! What did that rascal want of you? His kind have been uncommonly thick this autumn.”
“Why—he was after my watch, I think,” replied Gerald, sitting down on a flat rock, a smile re-appearing upon his startled face. “I was standing down at the bottom of the path in the glen when he began talking to me. First thing I knew I saw that he meant mischief. I suppose it wasn’t wonderfully brave of me to run from him.”
“Brave in you!” exclaimed merrily the solid-looking older lad. “As if a brute like that was not as big as six of you! You acted precisely as any sensible fellow of your size would do. ‘He who fights and runs away,’ you know. Did he do you any harm?”
“Not a bit, thanks. He didn’t get close enough to me”—this with a chuckle.