The Great Oakdale Mystery

“What? Sage? I should say so!”

“Ah!” breathed the man. “There is a family by that name in Oakdale?”

“Yes.”

“How long have they been there?”

“Let me see. About three years, I think.”

“Where did they come from? Do you know?”

“Not exactly, though I believe they came from somewhere in New York State. Why, Fred Sage is my chum.”

“Oh, is he?” The stranger’s eyes were now bright with interest and his manner eager.

“You bet he is,” nodded Roy. “He’s a fine chap, too. We’re gunning together to-day. He’s the fellow I spoke of. I left him back yonder with his dog. Do you know the Sages? If you do, perhaps they might give you a recommendation that would help you get work.”

At this moment the report of a gun, only a short distance away, rang through the woods.

“That’s Fred – that’s him now,” cried Hooker. “I’ll bet he bagged that old biddy.” Then he lifted his voice and shouted: “Hey, Fred! Here I am, out in the road. Did you get anything?”

“I didn’t miss that time,” came back the triumphant answer. “It’s a partridge.”

“The one I was after, I reckon,” said Roy, with a touch of chagrin. “She must have run on the ground so that I lost track of her. Here comes Fred now.”

There was a sound of someone pushing through the underbrush, and Roy, facing the woods, waited for his chum to appear. In a few moments, followed by the dog, Sage came out of the woods, triumphantly holding aloft a dead partridge.

“The other one fooled me and I lost her,” he said; “but I got a good open chance at this old biddy. She didn’t get away.”

“She got away from me,” said Roy. “I’m sure that’s the one I chased, but she gave me the slip all right. I was so hot after her that I came near shooting – ”

He stopped abruptly, his mouth open as he looked around for the mysterious stranger. To his astonishment, the man had disappeared.

CHAPTER III.

THE HOME OF THE SAGES

“Well, what do you know about that?” muttered Hooker wonderingly. “He’s gone.”

“Who?” questioned Fred, reaching the road.

“The man – the man I was talking with. He was sitting right here on this stone when I came sneaking down through the woods, and I almost shot his head off. He rose up into view just in time. Where the dickens has he gone?”

In both directions a strip of road lay in plain view, but, save themselves, there was no human being to be seen upon it.

“When did he go?” questioned Sage.

“After you fired; while I was watching for you to come out of the woods. He was right here within five feet of me. I can’t understand how he got away so quickly without my knowing it. He must have put off into the woods on the other side.”

“What made him do that?”

“You’ve got me. He was a stranger around these parts, and said he was looking for work. There was something queer about him, too. He was a good, healthy looking specimen, and he didn’t seem like a hobo, though his clothes were rather rough. He talked like an educated man. Say, Fred, he asked about you.”

“About me?” exclaimed Sage in surprise. “Why, how was that?”

“Don’t know. He asked if there was a family by the name of Sage in Oakdale and how long they had been there. He must be someone who knows you, Fred.”

“Describe him.”

Roy did so as well as he was able, but his friend did not seem at all enlightened.

“I can’t imagine who he was,” said Fred. “The description doesn’t seem to fit anyone I know. Did he give his name?”

“No; I forgot to ask it. He talked like a Socialist or an Anarchist, although he didn’t look to be a very desperate character. And he seemed nervous and troubled about something or other, but perhaps that was because he fancied he had come so near getting himself shot. When he saw me, with the gun leveled straight at him, he turned pale.”

“I don’t wonder,” said Fred, with a laugh. “It was enough to give anyone a start. I don’t see what made him run away, and I wish he’d waited until I could have taken a look at him.”

“Perhaps he was somebody who knew you before you came to Oakdale.”

Sage frowned a bit. “It doesn’t seem likely, and yet, of course, it may be so. Well, we can’t fret ourselves about him. Let’s go on with the hunt. Spot is getting restless.”

For some time the pointer had been running back and forth in the road, turning at intervals to gaze inquiringly at his master and whine beseechingly. Apparently the dog was wondering why the boys should linger there, with the woods all about them and their success thus far giving ample evidence that there was plenty of game to be had for the hunting.

Absorbed once more in the search for birds, both lads seemingly dismissed all thoughts of the stranger and his puzzling behavior; but, had he possessed the faculty of reading his companion’s mind, Hooker would have been surprised to discover that, far from dismissing such thoughts, Sage was not a little troubled by them. Indeed, so deeply plunged was he in mental speculations that he failed to note when the dog next made a point, and he flushed the bird unexpectedly by the careless manner in which he stumbled forward through the underbrush. Taken thus unawares, he could not recover his self-possession in time to shoot, and, Hooker being in no position to fire, the game got away untouched, not a little to the disgust of Spot.

“What’s the matter with you, Fred?” called Roy sharply. “You almost stepped on that one. Didn’t you see Spot point?”

“No,” was the regretful confession, “I didn’t notice it.”

“I started to call to you, but I thought you knew your business and were ready to pepper away when the bird flushed.”

Later, when they ran into a covey of woodcock, Fred was astonishingly slow about shooting, and Hooker brought down two birds to his one, which seemed rather remarkable, as Sage was much the better wing shot. It was Fred, too, who, seeming the first to tire of the sport, finally proposed that they should go home.

“There’s time enough,” objected Roy. “Practice doesn’t begin until three o’clock, and it’s not yet noon.”

“But I’ll need to rest up a bit after this tramp. I’ve got enough, anyhow.”

On the way back to the village Sage suddenly asked Hooker once more to describe the stranger, and when Roy had complied he again asserted that he had not the least idea as to the man’s identity.

It was nearly one o’clock when Sage reached his home, a comfortable, well-kept story-and-a-half house on the outskirts of the village, but he found that his mother had kept dinner waiting for him, for which he scolded her in a laughing fashion.

“No need to put yourself to so much trouble, mother,” he said. “I could have done just as well with a cold lunch from the pantry.”

“It was no trouble, my boy,” she replied, affection in her tone and in the glance she gave him. “We knew you would be home, for you said there was to be football practice this afternoon, and it was your father who suggested that we should wait for you.”

She was not an old woman, but her hair was snowy white, and there was something in her face and the depths of her gentle eyes which indicated that her life had not been wholly free from care and sorrow.

Fred’s father, who had been reading in the sitting-room, put aside his newspaper and came into the dining-room, rubbing his hands together as he peered at the boy over the gold-bowed spectacles that clung to his nose.