ourse I shall not answer any. You needn't be afraid. I
shan't mention your name."

"Kase if you're thinkin' of puttin' up a job on me, Davy," said Dan,
shaking his finger at his brother, "you won't never see that pinter
ag'in so long as you live. Keep still now. Here comes the ole woman."

Dan settled back on the bench again, and David took his hands out of
his pockets long enough to throw a fresh log of wood on the fire--not
because it was needed, but for the reason that he wanted to hide his
face from his mother for a minute or two until he could call to it a
more cheerful expression than the one it was then wearing. He had
never said a word to his mother about his suspicions regarding his
father and Dan, for he wanted to talk to her about nothing but
pleasant and agreeable things. She had enough to trouble her already.

David had everybody in the cabin up at an earlier hour than usual the
next morning, and after eating a very hasty breakfast, he took his
gun under his arm, bade his mother good-by and disappeared down the
road that led to General Gordon's. Dan sat on the bench and watched
him as long as he remained in sight.

"It's a heap easier to have a feller to 'arn your money fur you nor
it is to 'arn it yourself," thought Dan. "Here's Dave a toilin' an' a
slavin' fur them hundred an' fifty dollars, an' when he gets 'em,
they'll go plump into pap's pocket an' mine, an' he'll never see no
good of 'em at all. I'll have ten dollars in my pocket this very
night. It's 'most too frosty to go slashin' round through the bushes
now, so I'll wait till the sun gets a little higher, then I'll go
arter that pinter."

David kept on down the road, until he was out of sight of the cabin,
and then he climbed the fence and plunged into a dense thicket of
briers, through which he made his way with great difficulty,
following nearly the same path that Clarence Gordon followed on the
morning he went through there to release his cousin Don from the
potato-cellar. Reaching the woods at last, he took a straight course
for Bruin's Island, and half an hour's rapid walking brought him
within sight of it.

David's first care was to satisfy himself that it was a man and not a
bear that Don's hounds had driven off the island; and in order to set
all his doubts on this point at rest, he looked for the footprints
which the man or animal must have made when he left the water and
climbed the bank. David found the tracks after a few minutes