A few minutes of walking brought them to the stream of water, and they walked along the bank of this a distance of quarter of a mile, when Tom called a halt.
"There is the boy now—sitting on a rock, fishing," he whispered.
"Don't scare him off."
They crept into the shelter of the trees and came out again directly behind the boy, who had just landed a good-sized fish and was baiting up again. He was a small boy, with an old-looking face covered with a fuzz of reddish hair. He had yellowish eyes that had a vacant stare in them.
"Hullo!" cried Tom.
The boy jumped as if a bomb had gone off close to his ear. His fishing pole dropped into the stream and floated off.
"Out for a day's sport?" asked Tom pleasantly.
The boy stared at him and muttered something neither Tom nor Songbird could understand.
"What did you say?" asked the fun-loving Rover.
"Poor fishing pole!" murmured the boy. "Now Peter can't fish any more!"
"Is that your name—Peter?" asked Tom. He saw that the boy was not just right in his mind.