“We’ve had our fill of it, all around, I should say,” remarked Ned Twyford.
Hugh cornered Arthur Cameron.
“How did you come to let Peter get away from you?” he asked the amateur surgeon.
At that Arthur chuckled.
“I guess he was a little too smart for me that time, Hugh,” he started to explain. “I looked after his burns, and eased them with some of that lotion that is so fine to draw the fire out. Then I happened to turn my back for just three minutes. When I came around again I missed Peter, and one of the boys told me he had seen him slip away.”
“Did you guess where he had gone?” asked the scout master.
“Well, it didn’t take me long to do that,” came the answer. “I had seen how nervous he was, and heard him saying to himself over and over: ‘I sure hope they find the kids.’ So I could size it up. Peter had disappeared and no one saw him go, but I felt pretty sure he’d come back with you; and I was right. He thinks a heap of the kiddies, Hugh.”
“Yes, and they do of Peter,” added Hugh. Whereupon he began to tell Arthur just what he and some of the others had decided they must do to try and make the bound boy’s path in life less thorny.
Unnoticed by either of the scouts, someone had drawn closer to them at the time they began chatting. It was the “hired man,” he whose face was so streaked with grime from the smoke and cinders that his best friend might have had more or less difficulty in recognizing him.
Evidently he had been drawn there by some subtle attraction. The subject of the boy’s conversation must have deeply interested him, too, for he could be seen to nod his head in the affirmative every time one of them made some remark that did him credit.