The Golden Boys on the River Drive

by L. P. Wyman

How still it was in the solitude of the vast forest. Not a breath of air stirred the branches above them. The boys were tired from their long tramp and, as Jack declared, did not have to be rocked to sleep.

How long Bob had been asleep he did not know, nor did he know what had awakened him. He was conscious of no sound as he started up fully awake in an instant. And yet he knew that a noise of some kind had disturbed his sleep. Raising himself on his elbow, he listened.

“There, I knew it was something,” he whispered to himself, as a low sound stole through the darkness.

At first he could not make out what it was.

“Sounds, for all the world, like a baby crying,” he thought. “But, of course, it can’t be. Jimminy crickets, but it is too,” he muttered a moment later, as the sound reached his ears more plainly.

Moving as quietly as possible, so as not to disturb the others, he got out of his bag and, listening a moment to make sure of the direction, he stole softly away through the woods. He had not stopped to put on his snow-shoes, and although a crust had formed on the surface of the snow it was not yet strong enough to bear his weight and he sank to his knees with every step.

Stopping every few steps to make sure that he was getting nearer the source of the sound, which he was now certain was a baby crying, he flashed his electric torch ahead. He had not gone more than about thirty feet when, close to the trunk of a big pine, he found that for which he was searching. It was indeed a baby, being not more than four years old. The child was sitting on the snow, the crust being strong enough to support its weight, at the foot of the tree, sobbing as if its little heart would break.

“Now what do you know about that?” Bob asked himself, as he hastened forward and, despite the struggles of the child, picked it up in his arms.

“There, there, now baby, I’m not going to hurt you.” He soothed the child, which was, he noticed, dressed in a thick warm cloak.

Gradually, under the influence of his words and tone, the child seemed to lose its fear.