“We’ll have to put out a sign, and invite the chap to step up to the captain’s office and prove property,” Wee Willie argued whimsically after his fashion. “No questions asked, and no reward expected for finding the lost trusty blade; only we’d like him to clear out, and leave us alone. I’ve seen a bunch of tramps, and a mussy lot they are, taken as a whole. I always try to get to windward of ’em when watching how they manage to cook a meal in tomato-cans and such.”
“But we saw no sign of his having had a fire in the cabin,” Perk went on to remark, reflectively; “and there wasn’t the first evidence of his having made a bed out of brush. How do you account for that, Elmer?”
“Oh! he may have arrived only an hour before we did, and was so tired he just lay down to smoke and rest,” came the ready answer; for Elmer always seemed to have a faculty for meeting objections.
“What will you do with it?” continued Perk.
“I haven’t decided,” Elmer told him. “I may hit on a way to get it back into the possession of the owner without hunting him up. Leave that to me.”
“There’s Amos coming along,” Wee Willie added; “somehow he seems to be looking a whole lot happier than this morning. It must have been his success at snapping off the bear in the beechnut tree.”
“Yes, that was what did it,” Elmer agreed; though his brow clouded, for this unexplained mystery that seemed to be always hanging over his comrade, making him so unhappy, was beginning to worry him considerably; he wanted to be of service to Amos, yet could not muster up courage to break in upon the other’s reserve, since it would seem so much like thrusting himself into business that did not at all concern him.
Amos was actually smiling as he approached, and few of the Chester boys could truly say they had ever seen such a genuine look of delight on his sad face.
“What do you think?” he burst out, excitedly, “I managed to get a glimpse of Mr. Mink, the very first of his kind I ever had the luck to see alive! Oh! but he’s a slick article, let me tell you, with his beady little eyes, and soft furry hide. And I planned it all out just where we ought to set the camera-trap to-night, Elmer, so’s to coax him to pull the cord, and set the flashlight going.”
Elmer looked at him with affection. Somehow he had come to care a great deal for Amos, which in one way was rather strange; for to most of the fellows the newcomer in Chester had not appealed at all, owing to his being such a moody fellow. But as is usually the case with such serious persons, when his face did light up in a smile it was wonderfully “fetching.”