“That was a good scrap, wasn’t it?” laughed the visitor. “My, but my nose and a dozen parts of my body hurt like thunder. You’re some pugilist and with the weight all against you.”
THE TWO BOYS WENT ON A FISHING TRIP
“Look at my eye,” answered Ted. “I think you can do some teaching yourself.”
“Say, Ted,” said Syd, straightforwardly, “I came to apologize. That was a mean display of temper on my part.” He stopped for a moment. “I don’t know why I’ve been this way, but I want to be friends from now on.”
Ted smiled and reached out his hand. “I was just going over to see you and have it all out, for I have wanted to be friends all along. Well, it’s all over—we’re friends.”
They talked for a long time after that. Syd confided that he wanted to join the British army. Ted, he found, hoped some day to be the kind of man John Dean was. Ted told the other boy of the ranch, of Red and of Smiles, and also all about Chicago. They separated at the first call for dinner.
Not so many days later the two boys, now fast friends, went on a fishing trip to a neighboring lake.
The town of Wayland was an important railroad center; it was one of the keys to the far Canadian West. The boys had to go through the town and stopped off to make some purchases and also watch the incoming train. There were several people who got off and, as is usual in a place of the size of Wayland, the newcomers were observed rather closely.
The boys had to cross a bridge on their way back, as they were making a short cut home and were not going through the town. As they passed, Syd said to Ted, as he motioned to a man sitting a little way off, “There is one of the people who got off the train a little while ago.” Ted looked at the man curiously and wondered what had brought him to Wayland, as the train that had stopped was a through train and it meant that the man must have come some distance. The man seemed to be drawing or writing, and he kept looking up at the bridge. He saw the boys, but paid very little attention to them as they stopped to watch him.