Two Boys and a Fortune Part 24

There seemed to be no way out of it but to telegraph home, and he had better do it, he decided, before he was too ill to attend to it.

But there was no place now from which to send a message. He must keep on till he came to the next town.

He rose to his feet and had taken but a few steps when some one came up from behind and touched him on the shoulder.

He turned quickly, in fear of another tramp. It was a tramp truly, but a mere boy, not much older than himself. He was very pale and sickly looking, his clothes were torn in two or three places and his shoes were worn clear down to the uppers.

He did not speak. He stood there looking at Rex, amazement depicted in his gaze.

"I-- I made a mistake," he stammered out at last "I thought you were one of us. I saw you lying down there under the tree. Your shoes were all dusty. I knew you'd been tramping."

But Rex did not feel astonished. He felt so ill and faint that his head swam, and he began to totter.

"I'll have to lie down again, I guess," he said weakly.

He had just time to move aside out of the dust when he fell like a log.

"What's the matter? Are you sick?"

The shabby looking youth had dropped to one knee beside Rex and was looking down at him with pitying eyes.

"Yes," was all Rex had strength to murmur.

Then he closed his eyes and did not care what became of him. The strange lad let his other knee sink to the earth and remained in this att.i.tude for several minutes, gazing earnestly at Rex.

"Poor chap," he muttered. "I can't make out what he's doing tramping the country this way. He don't look poor. What'll I do with him?"

The first thing to be done, evidently, was to get him out of the sun, which beat down on the spot where he had fallen with fierce intensity.

The stranger bent over, and exerting all his strength lifted Rex in his arms and bore him back along the road to the gra.s.sy strip under the trees where he had recently been lying.

Rex opened his eyes for an instant when he felt himself raised from the ground. Then, when he saw the pity in the plain face looking down into his, he closed them again with a little sigh.

And now once more the strange youth sat contemplating the boy, who seemed to be a tramper like himself, but who, in every other respect, was so vastly different.

He noted the fine, delicately chiseled features, the smallness of his feet, the whiteness and smoothness of his hands. He had seen boys like this before, but he had never before touched one, never had one of them dependent on him, as it were, as this fellow appeared to be now.

Miles Harding did not know just what to do with the responsibility.

And yet he was happy at having it; he felt glad that he had been able to do that little thing of carrying the boy from the sun into the shade.

It was not often that he was able to do anything for anybody. He was always in need of having something done for himself.

He tried to think of something else he might do. He noticed that Rex's head did not seem to rest very comfortably.

He took off his coat and started to make a roll of it for a pillow.

But he stopped when he had it half finished.

"Maybe he wouldn't like that," he muttered, looking down at the garment as he unrolled it again.

It had been made for a man. There were rents in two places and plentiful sprinklings of grease spots.

The day was growing steadily warmer. Even under the tree one felt the heat.

"He wouldn't catch cold without his own," Miles murmured, and he bent over Rex and lifted him gently while he tried to take off his coat.

Rex opened his eyes and looked at him again as if in protest.

"I was going to make a pillow for you out of your coat," Miles explained. "You don't feel able to walk till we get to a house, do you?"

Rex slowly shook his head. He was in that condition which sometimes comes to those in seasickness, when he didn't care whether he lived or died.

"Have you got pain?" went on Miles.

"Only when I walk," answered Rex; then, as if talking, too, hurt him, he closed his eyes and sank back upon the pillow the other made for him out of his coat.

Meantime clouds had been gathering in the west. Miles had been too much occupied with his unexpected charge to notice them. But now he looked up and saw the threatening aspect of the heavens with troubled countenance.

He rose to his feet and strode out into the middle of the road, looking first in one direction, then the other.

His eye brightened as he saw a buggy coming from the westward.

He watched impatiently, till it came up, and then saw that it contained two men. He held up his hand as a signal for them to stop.

But the driver, who had been talking earnestly with his companion, cut the horse with his whip, shook his head and drove on.

Miles remained there, standing in the road, a hopeless droop coming over his whole figure.

"They think I want to beg of them, I suppose," he told himself. "What shall I do?"

Already the sun had gone under the cloud ma.s.ses and the air was much cooler. The wind rose and began to rustle the leaves.

Quite a distance off down the road, in the direction whence the buggy had come, the red tops of two chimneys could be seen peeping above the trees.

"He can't stay here in the rain," Miles muttered. "I must try to get him to that house."

He turned to Rex again. He took the coat from under his head and made him put it on.

"It's going to storm," he said, "I'm going to carry you to that house."

"You can't," was all Rex had strength to say.

"I'm going to try," returned Miles, and he gathered Rex up in his arms just as the wind came sweeping down upon them in a gust that was ominous of that which was to follow.

CHAPTER XXI

MILES HARDING

It was physically impossible for Miles Harding to carry Rex very far without stopping to rest. The life of a tramp, with insufficient nourishment, was not calculated to strengthen the long arms which could easily wrap themselves about the other boy, but had little power to retain him in their embrace.

But Miles fought to do his best. He only consented to stop and deposit his burden on the gra.s.s when he felt that, did he not do so, he would be compelled to drop it.