At first he thought it might be some wild beast prowling through the woods, but it was not long before a human figure burst into sight.
There was little of beauty in the youthful stranger who had thus unceremoniously appeared, but Jack had never been so glad to see any one in his life.
At sight of his woebegone countenance the newcomer came to a sudden halt in his impetuous advance, exclaiming in a voice with a peculiar and characteristic nasal twang:
“Consarn ye! who air yeou scrouched down there in that way? Aair yeou the feller who has been wasting ammunition so like a scart peon?”
The speaker’s tone was not unfriendly, and Jack was nearly overjoyed to find that the new-comer was not a Peruvian.
Springing from his seat on a fallen tree, where he had sunk in his respair, he cried in genuine gladness:
“You’re an American!”
“No more’n yeou air!” replied the other, brushing back his long blonde hair from his forehead as he spoke, and looking straight into our hero’s countenance with a pair of deep blue eyes.
Then, when the two had stared upon each other for fully a minute, both burst into a fit of laughter.
“Shoo neow!” exclaimed the Yankee boy, “who air yeou and what air yeou doing here?”