“We’ll lead him away from the camp,” said Jim, “without telling him any deliberate untruths—send him off on a false scent. Aunt Betty is right, you know; we can’t let him go back to a life like that.”
“No,” said Gerald; “it would be a pity. If his uncle’s treatment was bad enough to make Len take to the mountains in the night time, it must have been at least a mild sort of an inquisition.”
The boys congratulated themselves later on planning matters out in advance, for the forenoon was barely half gone when two horsemen rode out of the woods to the south of the camp and turned their horses in the direction of the tents.
Jim was the first to see them.
“Don’t be startled, folks,” he said, “and please don’t turn and ‘rubber,’ for there are two men coming toward camp on horseback.”
“Oh!” gasped Molly. “Poor Len!”
“Poor Len, nothing!” Jim returned. “I know it is hard for a girl to refrain from doing something she’s been asked not to, but if you turn your head, Molly Breckenridge, or let on in any way that you’ve seen those horsemen, you need never call me your friend again. We must act like we haven’t seen them, until they hail us. Ephraim, you sneak into the tent, without looking to the right or the left. Then hide Len under the cots or somewhere where they won’t find him. Gerald and I will talk to the men when they arrive.”
The girls and Aunt Betty kept their presence of mind very well, considering the fact that they were laboring under no little excitement.
Ephraim went carelessly into the tent, as Jim had bade him, where he concealed the runaway lad in a very natural manner under a heavy quilt. It mattered not that the weather was excessively warm this time of day; the old negro figured that the exigencies of the case demanded desperate measures, and as for Len, he accepted his punishment without a whimper.
By the time the men had drawn rein before the tents, Ephraim was sitting calmly in a chair, an illustrated paper in his hand, puffing complacently at his pipe.