Both Hugh and "Just" Smith were consumed with curiosity to know how Claude happened to get into such a strange predicament, and he hastened to explain.
After all, there was nothing so very singular about it.

His mother had stopped in to see an old nurse, who had been in the family many years but was at the time lying sick at her sister's place.
Something influenced Claude to get out of the big car to take a little stroll.

Perhaps the sight of all those happy lads running and jumping and throwing weights had made him feel more than ever his own narrow, confined life, kept out of the society of all the other boys after school hours, and made to play the part of a "mollycoddle," as Roosevelt called all such fellows who have never learned how to take care of themselves when a bully threatens.
Unused to the woods and hills, of course the first thing Claude did was to lose all sense of direction.

He became alarmed, and that made matters worse than ever.

So he had roamed about for almost a full hour, dreadfully tiring his poor feet and limbs, since he had never before in all his life walked so far and done such vigorous climbing.
Then he had come to that precipice, and, thinking he might glimpse the cottage where the old nurse lived, somewhere down in the valley, he had incautiously crept too close to the brink, when his weight caused a portion of the soil to give way.