Chapter XII: Held

Hervey never knew that it was a special train to which he owed his life. Twelve minutes after it had passed southward along the main line, the regular Wainboro train passed over the reclosed switch and off to the southeast along the branch. On any other night our blithesome wanderer would have been left mangled, probably dying, beside the tracks. As it was, his foot was sorely bruised and he was thoroughly shaken from his experience.

Crippled as he was, the balance of his journey home seemed long and wearisome. When he passed through the little village of Weston’s Green, he knew he was more than half way. Yet here he must pause in limping pursuit of a cat that scampered under the milk can platform. For five minutes he poked his stick under this refuge for no better reason than to see the cat make a frightened exit. He threw his stick after the startled fugitive and replaced it with a rail which he wrenched out of a picket fence. Having completed this nocturnal assault on the sleeping village, he set forth again along the tracks for Farrelton.

It was midnight when he limped into the living room of his home where his stepfather sat beside a marble-topped center table at which he had been reading fitfully during the long hours of waiting.

“Well, Hervey,” he said, with a note of discouragement in his voice, “your mother has only just gone to bed; wait here a minute.”

He went quietly upstairs and presently returned, closing the door. It seemed to Hervey that this had been to announce his own return to a worried mother.

“Well, Hervey, where have you been?” Mr. Walton resumed his seat, speaking not unkindly, but with a look of patient resignation at his stepson.

“I was down at Tanner’s Corners,” said Hervey blithely. “I got a hitch there; there was a ball game and, oh bimbo, it wasn’t over till nearly dark--_some game_”

“Hmph. Did you go there on account of the game?”

“No, I bunked into it.”

“Just went there, eh?”

“I got a dandy ride. Oh bimbo, I wish we had a car!”

Mr. Walton was one of those conservative, old-fashioned men who did not care about a car.

“You had no money?”

“Nope, I walked the tracks home and I got my foot caught in a switch and believe _me_, I had one narrow escape all right. The switch opened just before a train came along, gee I’m lame yet! Some adventure with the capital A underlined.”

“Is your foot cut?”

“No, but jimmies, it was pinched--_good night_! It’s getting all right now.”

Mr. Walton studied him a few moments and seemed to be debating whether to take a serious view of the mishap. Finally he struck a balance between Hervey’s rattle-brained narrative and the evident facts of the case. “Let me see your foot,” he said.

Hervey blithely removed his shoe and Mr. Walton felt of the foot.

“See, it’s all right now,” said Hervey, wriggling his toe.

“Well, so you walked home.”

“Sure, some walk.”

A pause followed. Mr. Walton pursed his lips and seemed to be thinking. He was a serious man, thin and raw-boned, and of all things fair and considerate. His policy with Hervey had always been fraternal rather than paternal. He suggested rather than commanded. His manner was always that of a comrade. He had thought of this motherless boy when he married again. He was a typical New Englander and not given to levity, but he had a quiet, half smiling appreciation of Hervey’s nature. He was disposed to leniency as far as his New England conscience would permit.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t think anything you’ve done to-day justifies the worry you have caused your mother to-night. If you had asked me I’d have given you the fare to and from Tanner’s Corners. Then you would have been home for supper.”

“I didn’t know I was going there till I got there,” said Hervey in his blithesome way.

“And you didn’t know how you were going to get back at all,” Mr. Walton paused, considering. “Well Hervey, you’ve been back two nights and out both of those nights. Eleven o’clock, and now, to-night, after twelve o’clock. Before you came down from camp, I made up my mind that I’d give you a chance to act like other boys; I thought maybe you’d be a little different after your summer up there. But if you’re going to go on causing us worry, if you’re going to be just heedless and never use your balance-wheel, why we’ve just got to do something, Hervey. At night, you’ve either got to be at home or we must know where you are. And you must be here at meal time, always.”

“Believe me, I could say it with eats right now.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Well, your mother is getting up out of bed to come down and get you some supper; of course, we can’t expect Myra to stay up till midnight. So you see your mother has to get up. What do you think about that, Herve?”

“I bet you Myra would do it. Didn’t I climb down the old well-hole looking for her wrist-watch?”

“Didn’t you promise me you wouldn’t cause your mother any worries? Didn’t you promise me you’d be thoughtful and obedient just as you would with your own mother? Didn’t you?”

Hervey was sober for a moment. And in the pause Mrs. Walton could be heard descending the stairs. She entered with a shawl about her and embraced the boy and brushed his hair back affectionately and said, “Never mind about anything now till you’ve had a nice warm supper.” Then she went out into the kitchen.

“Well, Hervey,” said Mr. Walton, “while you were getting a hitch to any one of the points of the compass, a couple of boy scouts found out who sent in that false fire-alarm the other night.”

“What?” gasped Hervey. “They found--did they get the robber too? What fellers?”

He seemed so excited that Mr. Walton looked at him rather curiously, for he knew Hervey’s propensity for losing interest in every matter which had become a day old.

“Why, let’s see; Hobson--isn’t there a Hobson boy?”

“Sure, Craig Hobson.”

“Well, he and another boy were sitting on a porch over there on New Street the other night not far from the fire-box. Let’s see, I think the paper said--Lewis?”

“Yop, Kinky Lewis,” said Hervey. “He’s in the same patrol with me; I think he’s patrol leader.”

“You _think_? Don’t you _know_?”

“I should worry--go on, what did they see? If those fellers----”

“Just a minute--you asked me. A boy named McCullen is the one they saw. He was fooling around----”

“Oh,” gasped Hervey in relief.

“He was fooling around the fire-box and these scouts saw him,” said Mr. Walton. “They knew him by a cap he wore. They thought he must have heard them, because all of a sudden he ran away. They went down to the police station to-day and told the chief about what they saw and they helped him find this young what’s his name. It’s all in this afternoon’s paper. They’ve got the little rascal in the lockup and they’re going to hold him so in case they make an arrest for the robbery, they’ll have him to identify the criminals.”

“Chesty McCullen, I know him,” said Hervey excitedly. “His father goes fishing; once he let me use his father’s boat----”

“Is that the way he makes his living--fishing?” asked Mr. Walton.

“Sure, he’s only got one eye. Most of the time he’s drunk, but the rest of the time he goes fishing.”

“Hmph.”

“Sure, Chesty, I know him; he gave me a fishing-reel.”

“Well, I guess that’s the boy,” said Mr. Walton. “I take it they’re a poor lot. The point I wanted to make, Herve, is that you told me--as much as said that scouts don’t amount to anything. Now you see here are a couple of wide-awake fellows who saw something and rendered a service.”

“Not to Chesty McCullen, they didn’t.”

“No,” Mr. Walton chuckled, “but to the authorities, to the town, to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. That’s worth doing, isn’t it? You remember you said anything a scout could do, you could do something better----”

“Do you mean you dare me to?” Hervey vociferated.

“No, heaven forbid. Only I’d like you to remember that while you were off and your mother and I were worrying about where you were and what you were doing, these two scouts _did something_.”

“Telling on somebody isn’t doing something.”

“Oh yes, it is.”

“How do they know he did it?”

Mr. Walton shrugged his shoulders.

“If it comes to that,” persisted Hervey.

“They’re holding him,” said his father, with a little conclusive gesture of his hand.

“They’re a couple of tin-horns, that’s what they are,” said Hervey.

“Well, you’d better go in and get your supper,” said Mr. Walton.