“How should we know?” cried the plebes.
“Do you mean,” put in Rogers, in amazement, “that you didn’t set him on us?”
That cleared up the mystery; Mark saw it all in the twinkling of an eye.
“I understand now,” he said, turning to his friends. “When this crazy man attacked them the other day they thought we told him to.”
“Of course!” cried Rogers. “Weren’t you in the cave?”
“I understand,” laughed Mark, not stopping to answer the question. “And you were so mad that you didn’t tell a soul but watched and brought the sheriff up here to catch us with him. You never did us a better service in your life. That wild man would have murdered every one of us!”
“And my œsophageal and laryngeal apparatus feels as if it had been through a clothespress,” observed the Parson. “By Zeus, let us go back to camp; I’m in no mood for hunting lunatics.”
And they started for camp before anybody could stop them.
All had had enough of the wild man and were content to let the sheriff do the rest of the searching alone.