's steps, and the judge, puffing like an
overworked engine, came close upon his heels. In this way they continued
to advance for an hour or more, then the boy paused.

"Go on!" commanded Mahaffy.

"Do you 'low the judge can stand it?" asked Hannibal.

"Bless you, lad!" panted the judge feelingly.

"He's got to stand it--either that, or what do you suppose will happen
to us if they start their dogs?" said Mahaffy.

"Solomon's right--you are sure we are not going in a circle, Hannibal?"

"Yes, I'm sure," said Hannibal. "Do you see that star? My Uncle Bob
learned me how I was to watch that star when I wanted to keep going
straight."

There was another long interval of silence. Bit by bit the sky became
overcast. Vague, fleecy rifts of clouds appeared in the heavens. A wind
sprang up, murmuring about them, there came a distant roll of thunder,
while along the horizon the lightning rushed in broken, jagged lines of
fire. In the east there was a pale flush that showed the black, hurrying
clouds the winds had summoned out of space.

The booming thunder, first only the sullen menace of the approaching
storm, rolled nearer and nearer, and the fierce light came in blinding
sheets of flame. A ceaseless, pauseless murmur sprang up out of the
distance, and the trees rocked with a mighty crashing of branches, while
here and there a big drop of rain fell. Then the murmur swelled into a
roar as the low clouds disgorged themselves. Drenched to the skin on the
instant, the two men and the boy stumbled forward through the gray wake
of the storm.

"What's come of our trail now?" shouted the judge, but the sound of his
voice was lost in the rush of the hurrying winds and the roar of the
airy cascades that fell about them.

An hour passed. There was light under the trees, faint, impalpable
without visible cause, but they caught the first sparkle of the rain
drops on leaf and branch; they saw the silvery rivulets coursing down
the mossy trunks of old trees; last of all through a narrow rift in
the clouds, the sun showed them its golden rim, and day broke in the
steaming woods. With the sun, with a final rush of the hurrying wind, a
final torrent, the storm spent itself, and there was only the drip from
bough and leaf, or pearly opalescent points of moisture on the drenched
black trunks of maple and oak; a sapphire sky, high arched, remote
overhead; and the June day all about.

"What's come of they trail now?" cried the judge agai