Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/364

 poignantly the pirates of Watterson's Creek learned what a helpless and dependent animal is man, in the natural state.

What, eventually, would have become of those eleven mud-smeared young savages, left thus unconsciously destitute, it would be hard to say, had not the Lone Star come churning and puffing and grunting once more up the river, with a scow-load of red brick for the new Chamboro courthouse.

The fat old engineer happened to hear their sudden woeful chorus of cries—indeed, they could have been heard two good miles away, through the quiet and cooling evening air. Poking his astonished head out of his warm little engine-room, he beheld eleven gaunt, grayish-hued figures huddled forlornly about a tiny fire on the breezy river-bank. He had to look several times, before he could quite make them out, for the remnants of their blue-clay coating tended to give them both an unfamiliar and an uncouthly exotic appearance.

If that sight awoke in his honest and generous old soul any stray sign or sense of merriment, he thoughtfully had his laugh out alone, in the quietness of his engine-room,