"Help! help!" came faintly to their ears.
"Don't leave me, please! Help!"
"It's some person calling," said Shep. "But where is he?"
Both boys gazed around in perplexity. Then the cry was repeated, and following the sound they made their way to some brushwood growing between several trees. Here they found a man crouched before a tiny fire. He was dressed in a tattered suit and an even more tattered overcoat, and his shoes were bound up in potato sacking. A slouch hat full of holes was drawn down over his forehead, and he looked to be exactly what he was, a tramp.
"What's the matter?" asked Shep, not unkindly, for the fellow was evidently suffering.
"Don't leave me," cried the man. "I'm sick and I'm hungry, and I nearly froze to death last night. Please don't leave me!"
"Have you had anything to eat?" asked Whopper.
"Not a mouthful since yesterday noon. I had some stuff wrapped in a newspaper, but I lost it in the snow." The man did not add that he had been intoxicated and had not known where he was going or what he was doing.
"Well, here is a piece of venison steak and some crackers," said Shep.
"That's all we can give you just now."
"Ain't you got anything to drink?" asked the man, wistfully.