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T
ENDOUS
TEDH
IN SIX CHAPTERS. CHAPTER ONE.
if you were taking a
party of boys camping
out she wished we
could go, t00.”
“But did this aunt of
yours know when you
started 27
“No,
word, so she
worry.”
“Neither your father
nor mother knows?”
“No, sir.”
“And how about the
money for your railway
and stage tickets?””
were accepted, we
should believe that
every one born into this
earthly life has a guardian
angel to pilot him through
the dangers that beset his
path. 1f T have a guard-
ian angel, he was inly
asleep when I promised to
take thirteen city boys on
a camping-out trip in the
Maine woods!
My first promise in the
matter related to four boys
only; but two others im-
mediately begged into the
party, and on one plea or
another boys were annexed
to it, until finally, when
we met in rendezvous at
Bangor, Maine, we were
thirteen, including a lively
little brown Japanese lad
who was belng educated in
I F the beautiful old fable
needn’t
America. . And still we
were under our full
strength, for when the
train had borne us north-
ward up the Penobscot
to Mattawamkeag station,
there were two more boy
who, with no sort of inv
tation _or encowragement
from me, had actually run
away, stolen on in advance,
with the hopeful _notion
T WAt L wouldmior tu thient
back after such proof of
enterprise and enthusias
Whether they
or wrong in this
me did not become clear,
for in the shouting and
uproar when we took the
stage from Mattawamkeag
for Medway 1 was not
@ of this aldition to
the party. The two runa-
ways kept roguishly quiet
and climbed on top of the
stage. It was not till we
had been carried six miles
that they began to peep
down on the others and
make remarks. 1 then asked who they were.| “Oh, we had that saved up all right, sir.
At first none of the “thirteen limited” con- | We are going somewhere by this public stage,
sed to a knowledge of them, but Pinkham |anyway, and so we don’t exactly feel that we
Stearns, one of the later reeruits, laughed | are intruding on your party. But we should
guiltily, and so I questioned him. Dbe glad to join if you will take us in.”
“Indeed, 1 did not tell them to come,” | 1 was far from satisfied, and had no mind
he replied. “I told them I didn’t believe you | to lead any runaways into the wildern
would have them, but they wanted to come.”
“Yes, sir,” ventured another of the irre-| been increasing with every mile of the journey.
proachable thirteen, “they were just Iying awake | In my pocket I had seven or eight letters from
nights to come!” the fond parents of some of my charges—
“WHO ARE YO
Altogether, it looked so much like a case of | letters which had been sent to me at Bangor, |
truants from home that I stopped the stage, | and which T had as yet found no time to
got out, and ealled a parley | consider thoroughly. But hasty glances at
“Who are you two boys?”” I asked. “And | them had increased my fecling of uneasines
what do you mean by joining us in this way, | On the way up to Mattawamkeag another
without giving me your names ?” | missive in a dainty white envelope had been
They were boys of good appearance, well- | slipped into my hand by Herbert Fitzgerald.
dressed and evidently well-bred—the older one| “Mother wanted me to give it to you, sir,”
apparently fourteen or fifteen years old, the | he whispered. “She’s afraid T shall get up in
other two or three years younger. That they | mysleep. But T sha’n’t,”” he added, with scorn,
would try to force themselves, uninvited, into | “and don’t you bother, sir!”
my party seemed most improbable. And now here were these runaway Knox
"T'he older boy gavea gulp of embarrassment, | boys! Tlhe younger wa
then faced the situation.
Maleolm Knox, he said, and the younger boy | honestly; and partly from shame that he had
was his brother Jimmy. Their home was in | misbehaved, partly from dread of being rejected
Boston. | by me, two unshed tears gathered in his
“I know that T ought to have spoken to you | appealing eyes.
about cotning,” Malcoln acknowledged, “but | “I must think this over,” T said. “Mean-
I didn’t get a chance; there wasn’t time to | while, you are coming to Medway with us,
write.” anyway.”
“But your people,” I said, “your parents—
do they know of it?”
“Mother isn’t at home,” Malcolm replied.
“She is at Narragansett Pier, and my father is
in New York. But they both said we might
go somewhere in the country this vacation.
My Aunt Emily, who is at our hous
bespoken were to join us ; and here I established
the whole party overnight at the one little
tavern. The boys fairly stormed the place.
Never before had T seen such an effervescence
of high spirits! At sight of Mount Katahdin,
| Indeed, my sense of dreadful responsibility had |
somewhat frail lad, |
Ilis name was | but his frank brown eyes searched my face
At Medway the two guides that I had |
turned handsprings and shouted. The
people at the tavern looked on in great
astonishment, and the dimensions of my
undertaking revealed themselves to me
hour by hour.
From Medway I sent the following
telegram to the father of the Knox boys,
directed to his hotel in New York City:
“Your sons have joined my party here.
What are your wishes? Please wire reply.”
T also sent o message to their mother at Narma-
gansett Pier: “Your sons are with me here.
They are safe and well. Do you wish them to
20 on with us?”
In addition to my other troubles, my arrange-
| ments for journeying farther went out of gear
when the one on whom T mainly reliec
party, he was dismayed.
“Exeuse me!” he exclaimed.
Wy
“I had no
idea, ‘ou was fetching such a big erew of
boys! I wouldw’t go out with ’em on my
hands for ten dollars a day! There needs a
| guide to every one of em! T know what green
| city boys are when you take ’em off in the
U TWO BOVS?
woods. They know just nothing! If T was
in your place, sir, I wouldn’t take ’em, really
T wounldn’t.”
“The other guide was an elderly, rather stupid
backwoodsman, named Green. Ile was will-
ing to go, but stood about grinning helplessly
at the boys, who inmediately “sized him up.”
Within an hour they were addressing him with
familiar distespect as “Daddy Green.”
At that season the best guides were already
engaged, and it was only after many inquiries,
and a good deal of walking about the place,
that T succeeded in hiring a young woodsman
of nineteen years, named Shadwell, and a
Canadian Indian, known as Louis. It was
nerly eleven o’clock at night before I had
arranged matters for the start the next day and
ot my boys housed and quiet for the night.
Then, in the privacy of my own room, I read
the letters from fond mothers and trusting
fathers.
First came the touching epistle which lerbert
tzgerald had bronght to me from his mother—
written pages, explaining how
delicate ITerbert had been up to his eighth year,
and informing me about his somnambulism,
and when and from what dietetic causes he
was liable to walk in his sleep. She anxiously
appealed to my watehfulness:
Do pray bear it in mind, will you not, Mr.
Stephens,” the letter concluded. At home I
always lock his room door at night, but in a
tent that cannot be done, of course, for there i
no door. Ah me, I feel we ought not to have
let him go! But he was so set on it! T
suppose the tent may often be near river-banks
or rocks or ravines. If he got up I am so
afraid he would fall in and be drowned, and
VoLume
$1.75 A Year.
75. Nuuser 36.
SingLe Cories 5 CeNTs.
Stephens, after you had all lain down, put a
little string from his wrist to yours? The
others perhaps needn’t know, if you thought
they would laugh too much at Ilerbie—he is
| such a proud, sensitive little fellow! It could
be tied after the lights were out, and be very
small and inconspicuous. I have made one.
Ilerbie has it in a little envelope. Tle will give
|it you. Tt is small, but it is of white silk and
ver And it has two little snaps, one
“:lt each end, so that you will not have the
| trouble of tying it in the dark.”
| There was more in the same appealing vein.
| Langhable, was it! That depends on the point
of view. Certainly I was far from amused. 1
was beginning to realize what a mother’s love
r. But weleft | Both guides were awaiting us at Medway, but | means, and to feel the moral burden that rests
on one who takes a beloved child away from the
sphere of that mothe care and affection.
| The other letters which had followed me to
Bangor were not unlike Mrs. Fitzgerald’s.
Seven were from mothers, for in anxieties of
| this kind fathers are seldom prolific. Each
| mother wished me to be a little more careful of
| er dear boy than of anything else, because, to
her fond heart, there seemed
to be especial need of it.
“I want to beg as a par-
ticular favor that you will
look out that my Frank
doesn’t sit”or sleep in a
draft anywhere,” young
Mrs. Merritt wrote. “Ile
had croup dreadfully when
he was little. Ile hasn’t
had it now for two years,
and we are hoping he is
outgrowing it; but if he
should get wet or sleep in
a draft it might come on,
and oh, what would you
do, away off in the woods
and no doctor! Could you
get his feet in hot water
and wrap a warm blanket
round him? And if ybu
have mustard, pleasé” put
some in-the water.” Six
little dose packages of qui-
nine accompanied this
letter.
Another of the solicitous
mothers, Mis. ITelen T
fany Lindenheim, had an
anxiety lesther son, Brooks,
should wet his feet and put
on damp stockings in the
morning; and she begged
me to be sure and have a
fire every night, and see to
it that the boys, especially
Brooks, warmed their feet
and dried their stockings.
Murs. Lindenheim also sent
|a small box containing scores of little sugar-
| coated pills, to be used in case Brooks wet his
| feet and took cold.
Murs. Porter Canfield was more anxious, with
good reason, about guns, and she cautioned me
| in @ majestic mann “When I reflect,” she
wrote, “on your design to have accompany you
|'in the forest such a number of youths, and
when I further reflect on the nature of fire-
arms, and consider how excited are the young
at beholding the wild inhabitants of the wood-
lands, 1 ponder, Mr. Stephens, on the question,
“What will you do to prevent aceidents?” My
father, Colonel Canfield, who was addicted to
the chase in its various forms when younger, is
| of the opinion that you would do well to exclude
| Toaded guns from your cump, or rather insist
that the cartridges be removed from the
| weapons. Furthermore, he observes that no
more than two ought to proceed in hunting
| together, and that you would do well to impress
| upon all the unwisdom of shooting before they
see plainly what they are firing at. I have
exacted from my two boys, Porter and Ernest,
positive promises in this matter, and I do hope,
Mr. Stephens, that you will require the others
to observe the necessary precautions.”
| Mrs. Shelley Ames’s greatest fear was lest
the canoes might upset. She had lost a dear
Dbrother, by drowning, in the Adirondack region
la year previously, and felt that canoes were
very hazardous craft. She pleaded with me to
make sure that good order was preserved on the
water, and to see to it that the boys sat low in
the canoes.
“If my son, Gordon, does not observe this
rule, I give you full permission to punish him,”
wrote this Spartan mother. “For Gordon is
, said that | looming to northward, several of them literally | perhaps nobody hear him! Couldn’t you, Mr. | really a very nervous boy, and he may often
wept V £
gouse sU
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