CHAPTER XIV.

A RECRUIT.


The stranger ahead of the two boys was Herbert Watrous, the city youth
upon whom Nick had sat down so hard three years before.

He was unusually tall when visiting the country school, and during the
intervening time he had continued to grow upward, until his height
equaled that of an ordinary man. He was scarce fourteen years old, but
he lacked very little of six feet in altitude.

He was correspondingly slim, so that he looked as if a smart blow on the
back would snap him in two. He was arrayed in a most gorgeous hunting
suit of green, with all the paraphernalia which the hunter from the city
thinks necessary when he honors the country with a tramp for game.

Herbert, beyond question, was fitted out in fine style, and there was
nothing lacking, except perhaps skill. He carried one of the finest of
breech-loading rifles, which would have been very effective in the hands
of a party who knew how to use it.

The face of the lad had not changed in expression to any extent since
Nick Ribsam drove him into the earth, but there was some downy furze on
his upper lip and chin, while his voice was of that squeaky and
uncertain tone heard when "changing."