"We hav' not done bad," congratulated Jean when, at twilight, they halted to prepare supper. "We hav' meet no one that hav' the wish to 'arm us. M'sieu' Tom he get better all the time. Mebbe now because he get better an' we so near camp, after supper he tell about wil' man. Then we turn in; go to sleep quick, an' to-morrow we are safe."
"You are right, Jean. I am getting better every minute, thanks to you fellows. Since I have your permission at last to talk about myself, I'll tell you what I've been crazy to say ever since I heard the call of the Elf's Horn and you found me." Tom gave an involuntary sigh as the events of the past few weeks came to his mind.
Supper was somewhat hastily disposed of. Both David and Jean were as anxious to hear Tom Gray's story, as the latter was to tell it. Self-denial in this respect had been hard to practice. Yet all three had acquitted themselves with credit. Seated on a log, with his friends on either side of him, Tom started his strange narrative with:
"At the very beginning I'll say that I'm primarily to blame for my own troubles. The afternoon I landed in that little village nearest to the camp, I had made up my mind to get to camp that same day. When I found I couldn't get any kind of conveyance to take me there, I decided to walk. The station master warned me that a big storm was coming, but I thought I could make the trip before it came. The sky didn't look very threatening to me.
"He was a better weather prophet than I, for I hadn't gone two miles when the storm broke. And such a storm! It was a terror! At first it was a gale of wind, and maybe it didn't hit the trees, though. The way they came crashing down made me sick at heart. You know how I feel about trees. That I might get hurt didn't bother me half so much as to see the way those magnificent old wonders were being demolished.
"Though it was summer it grew pretty dark in the woods and, for the first time I ever remember, I lost my way, I didn't know it just then. I thought I was going north, when all the time I must have been going west. I didn't want to stop. I thought I would be courting just as much chance of getting hit by a falling tree if I stood still as if I kept on going. Besides I was anxious to reach the camp. I had been following a narrow trail, as well as I could under the circumstances, and I supposed I was still on it. It was not until long afterward that I realized that I had made a mistake.
"Well, I plodded along for hours thinking I'd soon reach the camp. It was then pitch dark and raining hard. I was beginning to tire, too. I wasn't in the least worried about not finding the camp. I knew, of course, by that time that I was lost, but I knew, too, I'd be all right when morning came. What bothered me was to hunt some place where I could get out of the rain and spend the night. But I couldn't find even an overhanging rock, though I kept my pocket searchlight going constantly.
"The last time I turned it on my watch I saw it was ten o 'clock. After that—well here comes the queerest story you ever heard. I was stumbling along in the dark, when all of a sudden the ground seemed to disappear under my very feet. I felt myself falling. I don't suppose it was more than ten feet, but it seemed a mile. I struck something hard, all in a heap. After that I didn't remember anything until I opened my eyes, groaning terribly. It was just getting daylight. I was lying at the bottom of a gorge. Bending over me was the most terrifying person I had ever seen in all my forest wanderings. It was a man and he was a regular giant. He had a head of long snow-white hair and a long white beard that made him look like Father Time. But his face was young, almost child-like, except his eyes. They were big and black and wild. When he saw my eyes were open he gave a kind of leap into the air and shouted at the top of his lungs: 'He is alive again! My son has come back!'
"Before I could say a word he stooped and grabbed me up in his arms. As my left leg hurt me terribly, I knew it must be broken. I groaned and tried to tell him, but he hung me over his shoulder as though I were a feather and went crashing through the woods. I fainted with pain and didn't come to myself again for quite a while. We were still traveling along as though the fellow had on seven league boots. The pain in my leg became even worse and I fainted again. When I came to myself the second time, the sun was shining down through the trees. I was lying on the ground and this crazy fellow—I was sure by that time that he was crazy—was circling around me, muttering and laughing to himself.
"I tried again to talk to him, but I was suffering too much to do more than mumble. I don't know how long we'd been there. I suppose he'd only stopped to rest, for before long he hoisted me over his shoulder again and away we went. Quite a while after that we struck that little valley where the hut stands. He carried me into the shack and laid me on the floor. I hadn't the least idea of what he was going to do, and I was too sick to care. I knew he was crazy and that I could expect almost anything to happen. What really happened was the biggest kind of a surprise. He undressed me with the greatest gentleness and then examined my broken leg, and afterward set it and fixed it up with the skill of a doctor, in spite of the fact that he had no conveniences to help him. You can imagine how I suffered during the process. I groaned a good deal and he must have really sympathized with me, for he crooned and lamented over me all the time he was doing it. He kept calling me his dear son and said over and over, 'God has given you back to me at last.'