“So, that is your Marsters, is it?” demanded the other, as he discovered a slim man standing at some little distance from them, and with a satirical smile on his dark face.
“Yes, and don’t you think he looks like he’d stop at nothing in order to get to the end he had in view?” asked Hiram.
“He looks like an impudent fellow to me,” Rob advised, “and according to my mind he’s gone to all this bother just to feel that he’s had his nasty revenge on you for treating him so shabbily. To be beaten in a battle of wits by a mere boy must have riled Mr. Marsters a whole lot. Depend on it, he doesn’t expect to go any further than this in the game. He’s shot his bolt.”
“What makes you think so, Rob?”
“The very fact that he’s taking all the pains to stand there and let you see him grinning like an imp,” replied the scout leader. “Now, if he really meant to chase after you on the trip, don’t you see he would be doing everything he could to keep you from knowing he was around, and on the watch?”
Hiram, after he had been shown, began to see it that way, too.
“Seems as though there might be a good lot of truth in that view, Rob,” he admitted. “So let him grin all he wants to. I’ll laugh, too, if only to show the feller that he hasn’t made me squirm a whit.”
With that Hiram bent almost double, like a hinge, and seemed to be tickled half to death over some imaginary joke. He also turned and looked straight in the eyes of the man he had called Marsters, as if to let him know he did not care a snap of his fingers about his continued leering.
“You’ve settled his case, and cooked his goose for him,” commented Rob, a minute later. “See, there he goes over yonder, and I’ll be a whole lot surprised if we set eyes on Marsters again.”
“But, Rob, I’m determined to act as though I fully expected him to be creeping around all the time. I’m playing up to the old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth more’n a hull pound of cure.”