By dint of much questioning the Cubs managed to discover quite a lot about him. That he had once been an artist, for one thing, and could still draw fascinating little pictures with bits of burnt wood on smooth, flat stones. He seemed to like drawing little girls better than boys, which was a pity. They also discovered that once he had lived in a little house on the edge of a wood, and could make the calls of cuckoos and wood-pigeons by blowing through his clasped hands. Also he knew all sorts of things about the habits of fox cubs and squirrels and hedgehogs.
The sun sank down behind the distant woods. The autumn evening closed in, blue and misty. The harvest moon crept up, orange-coloured and enormous above the trees. But still the Cubs and the mysterious tramp sat in the red glow of the fire. Nipper was on the tramp’s knees, and Hugh and David sat pressed up against his legs. Bill, the practical one, kept stoking the fire so as to prevent the party coming to an end.
Suddenly David gripped the tramp’s leg. “Look—a ghost!” he whispered; but Danny laughed. “It’s Miss Prince coming to look for you,” he said.
Miss Prince, a white scarf thrown over her dark hair, stepped out of the shadow of the trees into the circle of light.
“You are having a late birthday party, kiddies,” she said. Then she saw the stranger by the light of the fire, and stared at him in surprised silence.
“This,” said Nipper, putting his arms round the man’s neck, “is our mysterious tramp, and that,” he said, with a nod of his head, “is Miss Prince. She’s very nice, really.”
The mysterious tramp got up and stepped back into the blue darkness beyond the bright glow of the fire.
“It’s time you kids were in bed,” he said, “and that I was back on the roads.”
“Yes,” said Miss Prince, “come along.”
The Cubs were about to raise a cry of protest, when Danny whispered “Cub Law.” This was the secret sign between them when they forgot.