For some time the pointer had been running back and forth in the road, turning at intervals to gaze inquiringly at his master and whine beseechingly. Apparently the dog was wondering why the boys should linger there, with the woods all about them and their success thus far giving ample evidence that there was plenty of game to be had for the hunting.
Absorbed once more in the search for birds, both lads seemingly dismissed all thoughts of the stranger and his puzzling behavior; but, had he possessed the faculty of reading his companion’s mind, Hooker would have been surprised to discover that, far from dismissing such thoughts, Sage was not a little troubled by them. Indeed, so deeply plunged was he in mental speculations that he failed to note when the dog next made a point, and he flushed the bird unexpectedly by the careless manner in which he stumbled forward through the underbrush. Taken thus unawares, he could not recover his self-possession in time to shoot, and, Hooker being in no position to fire, the game got away untouched, not a little to the disgust of Spot.
“What’s the matter with you, Fred?” called Roy sharply. “You almost stepped on that one. Didn’t you see Spot point?”
“No,” was the regretful confession, “I didn’t notice it.”
“I started to call to you, but I thought you knew your business and were ready to pepper away when the bird flushed.”
Later, when they ran into a covey of woodcock, Fred was astonishingly slow about shooting, and Hooker brought down two birds to his one, which seemed rather remarkable, as Sage was much the better wing shot. It was Fred, too, who, seeming the first to tire of the sport, finally proposed that they should go home.
“There’s time enough,” objected Roy. “Practice doesn’t begin until three o’clock, and it’s not yet noon.”
“But I’ll need to rest up a bit after this tramp. I’ve got enough, anyhow.”
On the way back to the village Sage suddenly asked Hooker once more to describe the stranger, and when Roy had complied he again asserted that he had not the least idea as to the man’s identity.
It was nearly one o’clock when Sage reached his home, a comfortable, well-kept story-and-a-half house on the outskirts of the village, but he found that his mother had kept dinner waiting for him, for which he scolded her in a laughing fashion.