Archie lost his way once or twice, and it grew quite dark. He was wondering what he should do when he noticed a light spring up not far away, and commenced walking towards it. It came from the little window of a rustic cottage, and the boy knew at once now in which way to steer.
Curiosity, however, impelled him to draw near to the window. He gave just one glance in, but very quickly drew back. Sitting round a table was a gang of half a dozen poachers. He knew them as the worst and most notorious evil-doers in all the country round. They were eating and drinking, and guns stood in the corners, while the men themselves seemed ready to be off somewhere.
Away went Archie. He wanted no nearer acquaintance with a gang like that.
In his way home he had to pass Bob Cooper’s cottage, and thought he might just look in, because Bob had a whole book of new flies getting ready for him, and perhaps they were done.
Bob was out, and his mother was sitting reading the good Book by the light of a little black oil lamp. She looked very anxious, and said she felt so. Her laddie had “never said where he was going. Only just went away out, and hadn’t come back.”
It was Archie’s turn now to be anxious, when he thought of the gang, and the dark work they might be after. Bob was not among them, but who could tell that he would not join afterwards?
He bade the widow “Good-night,” and went slowly homewards thinking.
He found everyone in a state of extreme anxiety. Hours ago Tell had galloped to his stable door, and if there be anything more calculated to raise alarm than another, it is the arrival at his master’s place of a riderless horse.
But Archie’s appearance, alive and intact, dispelled the cloud, and dinner was soon announced.
“Oh, by the way,” said Archie’s tutor, as they were going towards the dining-room, “your old friend Bob Cooper has been here, and wants to see you! I think he is in the kitchen now.”