Immediately he drew back in alarm.
He had seen, coming directly toward him in a lumbering old wagon and hardly more than a hundred yards away, Farmer Pratt and his son Tom.
"They're huntin' for me!" he said to himself as he crept farther among the bushes to conceal himself from view, and a secure hiding place had hardly been gained when the travellers came to a full stop at the little brook which ran on the opposite side of the road, in order to give their horse some water.
As a matter of fact Farmer Pratt was in search of the two who had left his house so unceremoniously; but now he had no intention of taking them to the poorhouse.
Quite by accident a copy of a newspaper containing an account of the explosion on board the "Atlanta," and the information that Mrs. Littlefield would remain in Portland in the hope of gaining some information regarding her child, had come into his hands, and it did not require much study on his part to understand that in the greed to possess himself of the boat by ridding himself of the children, he had lost the opportunity of earning a valuable reward.
There was a stormy time in the Pratt household when this fact became known, and even Master Tom came in for more than his full share of the scolding because the children had been allowed to go away.
"It would have been as good as a hundred dollars in my pocket if I could have lugged them youngsters into town," the farmer repeated over and over again as he blamed first his wife and then his son for what was really his own fault. "I thought a boat worth twenty dollars would be a mighty big haul for one mornin', but here was a show of gettin' five times as much jest by holdin' them two over night, an' you had to let 'em slip through your fingers."
Farmer Pratt dwelt upon this unpleasant fact until he finally convinced himself that he would have acted the part of a good Samaritan had the opportunity not been denied him, and very early on this same morning he started out for the purpose of earning the reward by finding the castaways.
Jack, crouching among the bushes where he could distinguish the movements of those whom he considered his enemies, heard the farmer say, while the half-fed horse was quenching his thirst,—
"I reckon we've got a day's work before us, all on account of you an' your mother, for that hunchback couldn't have walked as far with the baby. Most likely he found some one who gave him a lift on the road. The chances are he's in Biddeford by this time, other folks have heard the whole story."