The guide smiled as he walked away. "Don't understand!" said he. "You've got the boot on the wrong leg."
Arrived at his tent, Matlack found Bill Hammond, a young man in Sadler's service, who informed him that that burly individual had sent Martin away in the stage-coach, and had ordered him to come and take his place.
"All right," said Matlack. "I guess you're as good as he was, and so you can settle down to work. By-the-way, do you know that we are all hermits here?"
"Hermits?" said the other. "What's that?"
"Why, hermits," said Matlack, "is individ'als who get up early in the mornin' and attend to their own business just as hard as they can, without lookin' to the right or left, until it's time to go to bed."
The young man looked at him in some surprise. "There's nothing so very uncommon in that," said he.
"No," replied the guide, "perhaps there ain't. But as you might hear them talkin' about hermits here, I thought I'd tell you just what sort of things they are."
When a strange young man assisted Matlack at the supper-table that evening, Mr. Archibald asked what had become of Martin.
"Peter Sadler has sent him away," answered the guide. "I don't know where he sent him or what he sent him for. But he's a young man who's above this sort of business, and so I suppose he's gone off to take up something that's more elevated."
"I am sorry," said Mrs. Archibald, "for I liked him."
Mr. Archibald smiled. "This business of insisting upon our own individualities," he said, "seems to have worked very promptly in his case. I suppose he found out he was fitted for something better than a guide, and immediately went off to get that better thing."
"That's about the size of it," said Matlack.
Margery said nothing. Her heart sank. She could not help feeling that what she had said to the young man had been the cause of his sudden departure. Could he have done such a thing, she thought, as really to go and ask Mr. Sadler, and, having found he did not mind, could he have gone to see her mother? Her appetite for her supper departed, and she soon rose and strolled away, and as she strolled the thought came again to her that it was a truly dreadful thing to be a girl.
Having received no orders to the contrary, Matlack, with his new assistant, built and lighted the camp-fire. Some of the hermits took this as a matter of course, and some were a little surprised, but one by one they approached; the evening air was beginning to be cool, and the vicinity of the fire was undoubtedly the pleasantest place in camp. Soon they were all assembled but one, and Mrs. Archibald breathed freer when she found that Arthur Raybold was not there.