“I don’t know. If he’s the boy I mean he needn’t be afraid to go home because of his torn pants. You tell him so if you see him again.”
“Sure. I didn’t know he was running away. He didn’t say anything.”
“Didn’t he have a bag with him—sort of a suitcase?”
“Didn’t see it,” replied the boy. “We all went home to supper and he went his way.”
“Which way?”
“Could not tell you that,” the other said reflectively, and was evidently honest about it. “He was coming from that way,” and he pointed back toward Milton, “when he joined us here at the slide.”
“Then he probably kept on toward—What is in that direction?” and Neale pointed at the nearest road, the very one into which Sammy had turned.
“Oh, that goes up through the woods,” said the boy. “Hampton Mills is over around the pond—you follow yonder road.”
“Yes, I know. But you think this fellow you speak of might have gone into that by road?”
“He was headed that way when we first saw him,” said the boy. “Wasn’t he, Jimmy?”