or,

The Story of a Brave Boy.

by JOHN RUSSELL CORYELL,

Author of "Cast Adrift," "Andy Fletcher,"
etc., etc., etc.

CHAPTER XXIII.

It is not an uncommon occurrence for a rascal to overreach himself. It
is the thing Arthur Hoyt did when he refrained from shooting Harry and
resorted to the more cruel but longer device of starving him to death.

If he had gone away from the cave within ten minutes of reaching it, he
would not have been seen by a lurking witness among the rocks.

This person had been hurrying along the trail, more than ten minutes
behind Hoyt, and came upon him as he was toiling with the ponderous
boulders.

At the instant of seeing him, the stranger darted behind a rock and
watched him with a deep interest.

He kept himself hidden until Hoyt had gone, and then seemed for a moment
undecided whether to follow him or to investigate the reason of the
piling up of the stones in the cave.

"I can follow him after I've taken a look," he muttered.

With this determination he ran over to the cave and looked in and tried
to make out the meaning of the heap of stones.

"Now, what in the world did he do that for?" he asked himself. "Well,
whatever he did it, for, it'll be worth my while to learn it, for I know
he'd never 'a taken all that trouble for nothing. He isn't the sort to
work like that for fun."

So the newcomer went over to the pile and studied it; but making nothing
of it, owing to the care with which Harry had been covered up, he
doggedly set to work to remove and undo all that Hoyt had done.

He had not gone far with his labors before he caught sight of something
that looked like a garment. He turned pale and hastened to satisfy his
fears.

"He's murdered somebody and hid him here," he said. "I wonder--" he
stopped and leaned up against the pile; "but no, it couldn't be."

Whatever it was that he felt could not be, evidently kept recurring to
him, as he worked with feverish haste, until he had uncovered so much of
the body as enabled him to feel it and to discover that it was still
warm.

"Only just killed him, too!" he ejaculated.

The horror of it stopped him for an instant, and then he returned to his
task with redoubled energy; so that he was undoing in seconds what Hoyt
had taken minutes to accomplish, being assisted to that end by a
strength that Hoyt had lacked.

"Alive! Harry Wainwright!"