“Be the same token I heerd two men, but they were not the tramps.”
“How do you know that?”
“Uncle Elk told me so.”
There was reproof in Mike’s tones, for he resented the slightest reflection upon the hermit, whom he held in high regard. The doctor made no reply to the words of the youth, but smoked his cigar hard and seemed to be turning over something in his mind that was of a displeasing nature.
Mike knew of course of the unaccountable antipathy that Uncle Elk showed toward the physician who was spending his outing in this part of Maine. Alvin Landon and Chester Haynes were as much mystified as the Irish youth, and the doctor himself claimed to have no theory that would account for it. The last remark of the medical man sounded as if he reciprocated the dislike of the hermit. Not only that but doubtless he mistrusted him.
“You don’t seem any nearer the solution of the tramps’ behavior yesterday than you were at the time, and it looks to me as if you will have to wait until Uncle Elk is ready to tell you.”
“There saams no ither ch’ice, docther, though I’m riddy to make another try for the same. Will ye jine us?”
“No; there will be danger of Uncle Elk and me meeting, and I am no more anxious for it than he is. I don’t believe you will learn anything.”
“We sha’n’t by standing here, as Mickey Lanigan said whin the bull was charging down upon him—whisht! what have we now?”
Alvin Landon and Chester Haynes walked out of the wood and smilingly made the Boy Scout salute.