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The High School Boys' Fishing Trip, a fiction by H. Irving Hancock |
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Chapter 24. Conclusion |
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_ CHAPTER XXIV. CONCLUSION "Where's that man you wanted us to look at?" demanded a farmer whose trousers were tucked into his boots. It was about ten o'clock the next forenoon when this man, accompanied by another man with the same kind of boottops, strode into the camp of Dick & Co. "Are you a constable from the village, sir?" inquired young Prescott. "No; we haven't any constable in the village," replied the farmer, chewing at a straw. "I'm the Overseer of the Poor." "We'll take you to where we think the man is hiding," Dick replied. "Tom and Dave, suppose you two hurry ahead of us, around the woods, and stand where you can head our man of mystery off in case he tries to run the other way. Dave knows where the place is." Reade and Darrin promptly departed. "We can start in two or three minutes from now, after they get in position, if that suits you, sir," Dick suggested. "Suits me," nodded the Overseer of the Poor. "I'm in no great hurry. Snug camp you boys have here." "We've enjoyed ourselves greatly," Dick admitted. "Going to stay here long?" "No, sir; we're due back in Gridley soon." After a little more chat Dick stated that he believed it was time to go forward to the hut in the woods. He and Greg went, accompanied by the two farmers. All four trod stealthily. Prescott, in advance, went straight to the bushes that surrounded the brush hut. Still in the lead, Dick, found the doorway, screened by a tattered blanket, pushed it aside and peered in. On the floor of earth lay the Man with the Haunting Face. He was so still that at first Dick thought him dead. Dick motioned to the others to come forward. "Humph!" grunted the Overseer of the Poor. "That's Ed Hoskins, who lives over Pelham way." At sound of the voice the sleeping man quivered, opened his eyes, then, with a scream, sat up, trembling violently. "You've got me!" he screamed. "You've found me---and I'm not yet fit to go!" Dick stepped aside to let the farmers in, while Darrin and Reade approached the spot at a run. "Keep quiet, Hoskins," ordered the Overseer of the Poor. "Quiet, man; I tell you!" "Oh, I didn't mean to do it!" moaned the unhappy captive. "I didn't mean to do it, I tell you! And now I must lose my life before I'm fit to go." "'Touched' here," murmured Prescott, tapping his forehead. "What are you making such a fuss about, Ed Hoskins?" demanded the Overseer of the Poor. "I never meant to harm my wife!" screamed Hoskins in an agony of fear. "We had had words, and I meant nothing but to push her aside so I could pass. But she fell downstairs. It wasn't my fault that her neck was broken!" "Whose neck was broken?" demanded the farmer. "My wife's. But I never meant to do it." "Humph!" remarked the Overseer of the Poor. "If your wife broke her neck, Ed Hoskins, she doesn't know it yet. She's doing some pretty husky work. She's the hired help over at St. Ingram's. She went there to work after you went away." "Don't try to fool me," trembled Hoskins. "Don't! My wife's dead, and now I've got to go and pay the penalty of a crime I never meant to commit." "What you need, Ed," observed the Overseer of the Poor, "is a bath, a couple of square meals, a little daylight, and a freight load of common horse sense. Come out of this place. We'll take you to your wife, and you'll find that she's very much alive, and heart-broken over your running away from her. She's fretting because she thinks her own conduct made you run away from her." "I guess we don't belong here," murmured Dick to his chums. "Suppose we hurry down to the camp." Five minutes later the two farmers also reached camp, holding Hoskins between them. "It all shows what a man's fool way of reasoning---or, rather, not reasoning---can bring him to," explained the Overseer of the Poor in a low voice to the boys. "Ed Hoskins isn't exactly one of life's heavyweights, but he was always a good enough fellow, and industrious. He married a good-hearted, simple-minded girl, and they were mighty devoted to each other. But, back the last of May, Ed and his wife had a little bit of a tiff. They were standing near the top of the stairs in their house. Ed, according to his own story, went to push her aside so he could go downstairs, when his wife lost her balance and fell half way down the stairs. She fainted, I reckon, and Ed, in a great fright, thought she had broken her neck. So he ran down the stairs past her, got out of the house with a pair of blankets, a little food and a hatchet, and started up this miserable road in the night time. He says he knew he'd have to go to the electric chair some day for his deed, but he wanted to come up here and prepare his soul before he gave up his life. He says he got along all right until you boys came up here on purpose to find him and run him down for the law. He tells me that the first time some of you crossed the lake in a canoe he rigged up some bushes to a wooden frame, and swam, with his head inside the frame, hoping to get close to you and hear what you had to say about him. Then, he tells me, you moved your camp across the lake, and he knew you were here on the law's business. He says he has known, for certain, all along, that you'd get him sooner or later, but he couldn't get up the strength of mind to leave here. What I told Ed about his wife was true. She got nothing worse out of her fall than a bruise on one elbow. Gosh! Ed's wife will be as tickled to see him alive as he'll be to see her strong and well." "Hoskins is a little touched in the upper story, isn't he?" Dick asked. "Maybe he has been lately," replied the Overseer of the Poor. "But when he finds I haven't lied to him he'll be O.K. right away. Ed was never too strong in his mental works, but he's a good fellow, just the same, and he's bright enough for his trade---blacksmith's helper. Now, I guess I'd better be going back with him, for Ed will be all excitement and dread till he gets the first word from his wife. Miss. Hoskins wife be terribly obliged to you young men. I am, too, 'cause I'll be glad to see that couple together again. They're so fond of each other that they've no business apart. So I reckon, Master Prescott and the rest of you young men, we'll be a-going now." The visitors had soon left the camp behind them. The last seen of Hoskins, he was walking with the dazed air of a man who knows he's dreaming and is mortally afraid to wake up. But that same day Mr. and Mrs. Hoskins were reunited and began life anew together. "It all goes to show," the Overseer of the Poor afterwards explained philosophically, "what a fool a fellow is to be afraid to go back and look at his work. It's the same spirit that makes automobile cowards afraid to stop the machine and go back to look at the child they've hit. Any fellow that's afraid to go back and look at his mistake is bound to be mainly unhappy in life." A very few days afterwards Dick & Co., still propelling the push cart by turns, arrived in Gridley toward dark one late July evening. They had so much to tell their relatives and friends that none of them got to bed very early on that occasion. However, the month of August lay before them. These boys now planned the greatest summer vacation trip that they had ever enjoyed. Part of the trail of this vacation lay over in Tottenville. So, by ten o'clock the next morning, Dick Prescott, alone, hurried up the side street on which he lived. Just as he neared the Main Street corner he beheld a trolley car labeled "Tottenville" pass the corner. Dick's shrill whistle rang out, but the conductor failed to hear it. Away raced Dick in the wake of the speeding trolley car. Down the street for two blocks he dashed after it. At first it looked as though the high school boy would overtake the car. But when he saw the car turn a corner and go off on the Tottenville road, young Prescott slowed down, panting and wiping his perspiring face. "Hey!" called a man standing in a group of others on the curbstone. "Were you trying to catch that car." "Was I trying to catch the car?" echoed Dick Prescott, his eyes opening wide in amazement. "No, sir! I made a wager that I could chase that car right off of Main Street! And I won the bet," Dick added proudly. "You all saw me do it!" Then, while the man who had asked the question reddened under the laughter of his companions, Prescott strolled slowly back up Main Street to watch for the next car bearing the "Tottenville" sign. "Good morning, Prescott," came a greeting from Lawyer Ripley, just then coming out of a store. "How did you young men enjoy that collapsible canoe?" "That canoe, sir? It made the vacation trip a perfect one. But were you the one who sent it, Mr. Ripley?" "Yes," assented the lawyer, "though acting as agent for another. You remember how much Mr. Page wanted to do for you boys, after your splendid work for him last summer? Mr. Page wanted to do something for you this summer, and he and I hit upon the collapsible canoe as a remembrance so simple and inexpensive that you young men were quite likely to accept it." "Mr. Ripley," begged Dick earnestly, "will you accept the very best thanks of us all for that canoe? And will you please convey our deepest gratitude to Mr. Page? We couldn't have had anything that would have delighted us as much." Readers of the preceding volume of this series are well aware of the reason of Mr. Page's great gratitude to Dick & Co. The next Tottenville car that came along had Dick Prescott for one of its passengers. This narrative, however, has been finished. That trolley, to Tottenville really belongs to the next and final volume in this series, which is published under the title, "_The High School Boys' Training Hike; Or, Making Themselves 'Hard as Nails_." This new story will be found to contain the full record of a most wonderful vacation jaunt taken by six young champions of the Gridley High School football squad. Yet this jaunt did not consist wholly of training work, for Dick & Co. fell in with a lot of tremendously exciting adventures. What these were and how Dick & Co. acted under amazingly strange circumstances will be set forth fully in that volume. [THE END] _ |
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