“Look here, mother,” answered the boy soberly. “You know the only way for us to get out of this mess is to find someone to tell us where we are and what we’ve got to do. There is certainly someone coming toward us. Do you want to meet whomever it is, or run away and hide in the bushes?”
“I suppose we ought to wait,” answered his mother meekly.
“Wait nothin’,” exclaimed the boy. “We’ll march right up to the relief party.”
Leaving their baggage in the road, the boy took his mother by the hand and, despite her alarm, marched her forward along the road. The suspense was soon over. In a few moments, a figure emerged from the shadows. While it was yet a hundred yards away, the anxious boy, partly to keep up his courage, sang out a bold “Hello!”
“You folks get off that train?” was the response in a man’s voice.
“We did,” answered the boy. “Where’s Valkaria?”
“Valkaria?” repeated the approaching stranger good-naturedly. “Why, you’re right on the main street now.”
The man, who by this time had reached them, was unquestionably neither robber nor tramp. He was past middle age, well but roughly dressed, and wore a yachting cap on top of a good growth of silvery white hair, which lay above a face bronzed by the sun and wind.
“We are from the north,” hastily explained the woman, “and we are looking for the place where my brother-in-law, Mr. Abner Leighton, lived—”