Chapter XIII: Met on the Highway

Upon reaching home that afternoon Dick found that his mother had an errand she wanted him to do. This was to take his old wheel and ride out a mile or so into the country, to get some fresh eggs that had been promised by the wife of a farmer.

“And be very careful, Dick,” she cautioned him as he was ready for the start. “Don’t try any fast riding while you are carrying my precious eggs, for once they are scrambled nothing can undo the damage.”

The boy laughed merrily at the picture she drew.

“I promise you I’ll go carefully enough, Mother,” he told her. “Luckily enough I’ve just fixed the old tire of my wheel so I think it’ll hold out. If it breaks loose again why I’ll hoof it home rather than take any chances.”

“Tell Mrs. Brown to pack the eggs in sawdust as she did the last ones, and the chances of their breaking will be small,” were the last words Mrs. Horner called out after him as he jumped into his saddle and rode away.

Dick was very proud of his little mother, and of late she had been made happy in noticing what a great change had come over her boy. He had always been considerate of her comfort, but at the same time frequently caused her gentle heart to bleed through the tricks he so dearly loved to play. But all that seemed to have undergone a great change since he had joined the Boys’ Department of the Y. M. C. A.

Dick managed to reach the Brown farm without a puncture, though he more than half expected one at any moment. The eggs were duly packed in his basket, and the farmer’s wife saw to it that the messenger had a slice of gingerbread as well as a glass of cold milk while he sat a few minutes and watched her place the fragile eggs in the sawdust.

“I guess I’ll take the other road home,” Dick told himself, as he trundled his rather dilapidated wheel out through the gateway on to the road.

It was but an idle fancy, because every road for many miles around Cliffwood was as familiar to Dick as the commons in the center of the town. At the time he could not guess that even this little change of plan was fated to be fraught with consequences that were bound to have a decided influence on his life; yet such proved to be the case.

Hardly had the boy gone three hundred feet from the gate of the Brown farm when he had the expected puncture. The tires on his wheel had been mended so often that they could never be depended on; and Dick found it hard work earning enough money to buy himself a new pair at the sporting goods store in town.

“Just my luck to have it hit the rear wheel,” he remarked, as he jumped down, not forgetting to be exceedingly careful how he handled that precious basket of new-laid eggs.

As he could not very well ride on the rim the rest of the way home there was only one thing left to do, which was to trudge along on foot. Dick was rather a philosophical boy, and could accept a bad turn without showing very much chagrin. So whistling some school air he walked sturdily onward.

Less than ten minutes later, while near the outskirts of the town, he came upon a tramp, as he believed, sitting under a tree. At least the man seemed poorly dressed, and his beard was gray, and Dick imagined he looked wan and hungry, as if he might have been recently sick.

The man stopped Dick as he was passing, after nodding cheerfully. Perhaps something in the frank look of the boy’s face attracted him.

“This town is Cliffwood, isn’t it, lad?” he asked; and somehow the tone of his voice pleased Dick, and he turned and came back to where the old man was seated.

“Yes, that’s Cliffwood,” he replied. “Is there any one you want to find in the town?”

The man was staring very hard at him all the while.

“Might I ask your name, boy?” he inquired, not insolently, Dick thought, but as if for some reason he really wanted to know.

“I’m Dick Horner,” the boy frankly told him. “I live with my grandfather and my mother on the outskirts of Cliffwood. Grandfather Horner is an army veteran, you see, and everybody around here knows him, I guess.”

He wondered why the tramp should start and look at him more keenly than ever, at the same time mumble something to himself.

“Now, I’m of the opinion,” the old man went on to say, presently, “that the mother of such a fine lad as you must have a gentle heart.”

Dick fell into the trap headlong. If any one ever wished to win his good opinion there was no shorter road to success than through praise of his little mother.

“She’s the best mother in the whole country, and that’s right!” he declared in his boyish way.

“Do you think, lad, she would give me a bite to eat if I walked along with you?” continued the trampish looking stranger, eagerly.

Dick drew a long breath. It suddenly dawned on him that perhaps the other had been working matters to suit some hidden purpose of his own. Still, Dick stuck to his guns; he had never known his gentle mother to turn a poor tramp away from her door if she really believed him to be hungry, and ready to do some slight service in return for being fed.

“All right!” Dick declared, on the spur of the moment. “You just come along with me, and I guess my mother will be able to give you a sandwich anyhow. I hope you can walk, though at that it’s only a little way off.”

“I’ve been pretty sick lately,” said the other, shaking his head. “Fact is one time I thought I was going to cash my checks in, and it spurred me to doing something I’d long been figuring on. Thank you, my boy, for your kindness to a total stranger. The bread cast upon the waters may return again before many days.”

Now Leslie, being of a more suspicious nature than his chum, Dick, might have suspected that the stranger was simply taking advantage of the boy’s good nature to impose on him. Dick, as he walked along, the other hobbling painfully at his side, even offered to relieve the tramp of his shabby little bundle.

“You see, I can lay it on the saddle of my wheel, and alongside the basket of eggs I’ve been getting at a farm house,” he explained; and the man looked keenly at him, though Dick did not suspect this fact, wagging his beard as though somehow this thoughtful consideration for his age and infirmities touched his heart.

They soon came to the little Horner home. It was a neat cottage close to the bank of the Sweetbriar River. Indeed, when the wind set from upstream one could plainly hear the murmur of the fretful waters at the place where they formed the rough rapids that gave the several mills their water power.

Grandpop Horner was sitting in the light of the dying sun, because the day had been quite mild for the late season, and he loved the sunshine very much. As Dick and the trampish looking old fellow came through the gate, Mrs. Horner issued from the doorway of the cottage to urge upon the old veteran the necessity for coming in before the chill of approaching evening affected his rheumatic limb.

Dick saw the look of wonder on both their faces as he led his strange companion up the walk to the front porch.

“Mother,” he started to explain, now half afraid that possibly he had done the wrong thing in bringing a total stranger home with him, and at that one who rather looked as though he might be sick and penniless, “this is a poor man I met on the road. He is hungry, and has been sick. I told him I believed you would not refuse him a bite to eat; and that perhaps he could sleep in the hay in our little barn.”

The mother looked a little worried. Then she smiled as though on second thought she could not find it in her heart to refuse to help any one in distress, even though food was never too plentiful at the Horner home.

“Why, certainly, my boy. We can find something to satisfy his appetite; and if you think best he shall pass the night in our barn.”

The stranger started to speak as though trying to express his gratitude. Something, however, stopped him; perhaps he choked, for he coughed severely several times, so that Mrs. Horner became visibly anxious.

“You have indeed been sick, my poor man,” she hastened to say. “Come directly into the house and get warm. What you need is a cup of hot coffee, and something to eat. Dick, you did the right thing to bring him home with you.”

Even Grandfather Horner, who had been shaking his head while this was going on, seemed to be ready to echo the kind words of Dick’s mother.

“Only one who has been a soldier for four long years, and endured the pangs of hunger many times, knows what it is to want,” he declared earnestly. “When I escaped from Libby Prison I spent six weeks in the swamps, being hunted like a dog; and I had to live on nuts and roots and berries most of the time, except when some slave managed to give me a sheaf of cornbread. Nobody ever passes the Horner home hungry as long as we have a bit to spare.”

The stranger was visibly shaken with emotion. He started toward Mrs. Horner and held out both his trembling hands.

“Polly, don’t you know me?” he demanded, at which remark Dick’s mother bent forward, stared closely into his seamed face, and then almost shrieked:

“Oh! it’s my older brother Silas, whom we believed died years ago in Alaska!”