“Hello,” he said, “I—I guess I know you. Let go—what’s the matter? Weren’t you at Temple Camp last summer?”
The stranger, a young fellow of perhaps eighteen, shook his head.
“With one of the troops from——?”
“No,” said the young man.
“Hmn,” said Tom, still holding the lantern up; “I thought——Don’t you fellows remember him?”
Connie shook his head; Garry also.
“Never saw him in my life,” said Doc.
“Hmn,” said Tom. “Maybe I——just for a minute I thought——I guess you fellows are right.”
The stranger was dressed in the regulation camping outfit—the kind of costume usually seen on dummies in the windows of sporting goods stores in the spring, with a spick and span tent in the background, a model lunch basket near by and a canoe crowded in. His nobby outfit was very much the worse for wear, however, and he looked about as fresh as the immaculate Phoebe Snow would look after a real railroad journey.
“Maybe I can be rescued now,” he said imploringly, clinging to Tom. “I saw the lights way down there. There was only one till tonight and tonight I counted seven—little bits of ones. I tried to get to them, but I got lost. You can’t go to them. It looks as if you can, but you can’t. They’re just as far away, no matter how far you go—they get farther and farther. Nobody can ever get away from here. Are you afraid of dead people?”