“Not—the—tramp?” gasped the other, incredulously.
“Shucks! no,” retorted Wee Willie, disdainfully; “who but that cunning Felix Gould, the chap you may remember those uniformed guards were looking for when they knocked at our cabin door the other night.”
Perk was seemingly much impressed by this startling information.
“Gee whiz! tell me all about it, Wee Willie,” he hastened to cry. “How did Elmer know; what happened later on; and how did you manage to get rid of the crazy man without having trouble?”
This was just the opening wedge for Wee Willie. He took the center of the stage and proceeded to spin the whole exciting yarn; while Perk stood there, his face expressing alternate awe and then amusement. Several times when so far as Elmer could see there was no occasion for such a thing he seemed to be overwhelmed with a wild desire to laugh; which would end in a coughing fit, during which Wee Willie considerately “held up” his explanation.
“What can ail Perk?” Elmer was asking himself, unable to understand such unusual actions on the part of the chum who in times past had always been frankness itself. “He’s certainly keeping something important back, meaning to give us all a surprise. I wonder what it is. He’ll bear watching, I reckon, Perk will.”
By degrees the story was told, down to the point where Elmer woke the other two up, to inform them his little trap had worked, and how Felix had taken himself off, unwilling to wait until those blue-coated guards from the big institution run by the State came along to renew acquaintance with “Doctor Hitchens.”
“Well, you did have a thrilling experience for a fact,” Perk blurted out in his customary breezy fashion, when Wee Willie finally subsided. “I should say it was a lucky thing he skipped out, and never tried to do you any harm. Ugh! I was always afraid of crazy people; they make me feel cold through and through. So I’m mighty glad he saw your blaze, and not my little fire. Fancy spending a night alone in the woods with a wild man, watching to see when you went to sleep, so he could mebbe throttle you!”
“It was an experience none of us is likely to forget, for a fact,” Elmer candidly admitted; “but we came through it all safe and sound, so we feel as if we had a lot to be thankful for.”
“Now,” remarked Perk, presently, “if a stranger came to my fire, and wanted to be taken in, I’d give him the glad hand; but all the same I’d ask him for his credentials. It isn’t safe to believe everybody a friend in these parts, Wee Willie. You think you’ve got a story to tell that’s going to make the fellows down Chester-way sit up and take notice. Well, I can match you, understand!”