badly burned I don’t believe I can take a step.”
“As if we’d let you even think of walking!” exclaimed Fred. “We’ll rig up a litter in short order.”
So Davy was carried into the village in state by seven of the boys, while the two others went on ahead to tell Miss Potter what had happened and engage the services of a doctor.
And it was not until his wounds were all dressed, and he was lying quietly in bed, with Fred Bassett and Tom Harper sitting beside him, that Davy happened to think that the “turn” for which he had waited so long had come at last, and he had failed to take the revenge he had so ardently desired.
But he never regretted this, for he never had to complain again of unkind treatment from either his aunt or his schoolmates. For Miss Potter, in taking care of her young nephew during the three weeks he was confined to the house, found good qualities of head and heart the existence of which she had never before even suspected, and she made up her mind that she had thought Davy a burden because she had never really understood him.
As to the boys—well, they made a hero of Davy, and the “Mystic Nine” became the “Mystic Ten,” by the admission to membership of the shy, freckled-faced boy who was always at the bottom of his classes.
And affection and encouragement brightened up Davy’s wits so much that he ceased before long to occupy that unenviable and lowly position, and astonished his teacher by his rapid progress.
No punishment was ever meted out to old Sim; but it is scarcely necessary to say that the boys were careful to let him severely alone after that memorable Saturday on which Davy became a hero.