CHAPTER I

The man on the bridge

“Look there!  I believe that man is actually going to try to cross the trestle.”

Roy Pell pulled his sister Eva quickly toward him as he spoke, so that she could look up between the trees to the Burdock side of the railway bridge almost directly above their heads.

“Why, it’s Mr. Tyler!” exclaimed Jess, who had a better view from where she sat on the log that spanned Riddle Creek.  “Oh, Roy, something’s sure to happen to him!  He’s awfully feeble.”

“And there’s a train almost due,” added Eva.  “What can he be thinking of to attempt such a thing?”

“Oh!” and Jess gave a shrill scream.  “He’s fallen!”

Roy said never a word.  He quickly passed his fishing-line to Eva, ran nimbly across the tree trunk to the Burdock side of the creek, and then started to climb the steep bank.  The girls sat there and watched him breathlessly, now and then darting a look higher up at the spot on the trestle where the figure that had dropped still lay across the ties, as if too badly hurt to rise.

The two Pell girls and their twin brothers, Rex and Roy, had gone down to sit on the log in search of coolness on this blazing hot July afternoon.  Rex had been giving vent to his disgust because he wasn’t able to accept the invitation to join a jolly party of friends for a trip to Lake George and down the St. Lawrence.  Cause why?  Lack of funds.

“You ought to have known you couldn’t go when Scott asked you, Rex,” Roy had told him.  “You would need at least fifty dollars for the outing.  And that sum will clothe you for almost a year.  And clothes with you, Rex, ought to be of sufficient importance to be considered.”

“I suppose I might as well go and tell Scott about it and have it over with,” Rex had replied, creasing his handsome forehead into a frown.  “I dare say he’ll be calling me ‘Can’t Have It Pell’ pretty soon.  It was only two months ago I asked for a bicycle and didn’t get it, and there was the new pair of skates I wanted last winter.”

“Don’t be late for tea,” Eva called out after him as he made his way to the shore.

She kept her eyes on the trim figure till it was hidden by the trees which grew thick along the road that led up to town.

“Well, if anybody in this world ought to have money it is that good looking brother of ours,” remarked Jess with a sigh.  “He’d appreciate it so thoroughly.  I don’t wonder he’s crabbed this afternoon.  Just think of the chance for a good time he’s had to let slip just for lack of a little money.”

“Fifty dollars isn’t a little money, Jess,” returned Roy, casting his line.

“I know it isn’t to us, but it is to most of the people we know, Scott Bowman for instance.  Do you suppose we shall ever be rich, Roy?”

“We are rich now; at least you and Eva are, in my opinion.”