“You mean when we had the chance to help the wounded strikers,” said Hugh. “Well, it may have been, but I’m sure I never set eyes on that boy before to-day.”
“Do you know what this game makes me think of, Hugh?”
“Prisoners’ base, with the fellow you thought to grab slipping right out of your hands?” suggested the other.
“I was thinking of something else,” resumed Walter; “you know when you’re in the marsh at a certain time of year, and the night’s dark, often you’ll discover a queer light that dances just ahead of you. When you stretch out your hand and think to take hold, it disappears, only to bob up again somewhere else.”
“Yes, I know what you mean, Walter,” admitted Hugh. “They call it a Will-o’-the-wisp, or a jack-o’-lantern, and tell us it’s caused by some kind of phosphoric condition of the atmosphere. Standing on the deck of a moving steamboat and looking down into the water I’ve seen streaks like that shoot away as fish fled from the boat.”
“Well, that’s just the way this name keeps on eluding me,” Walter confessed.
Something came up then to call for Hugh’s attention, and the subject was dropped; but when Walter walked away later on, heading once more toward the amusement reservation, where the fakirs also held forth, his face looked unusually serious, as though he could not get that puzzle out of his mind.
The boys were called on to attend several more cases of necessity during the balance of that first afternoon. Fortunately none of these proved to be of a serious nature, however.
One elderly woman fainted, and was speedily brought to her senses with the help of a sprinkling of cold water, and some ammonia held under her nostrils. A boy had his finger cut by handling something he had no business to touch, and they brought him, crying, to the emergency tent, where Arthur soon stopped the bleeding, and did the finger up in such a neat way that even the kid was soon smiling through his tears.
The aëroplane exhibition had passed off successfully, and as usual it gave considerable satisfaction, because everybody was showing great interest in the modern methods of harnessing the air currents to the use of mankind.