the sun was hardly more than
risen when Father Le Claire and the crowd of boys, reinforced now by
Tell Mapleson and Jim Conlow, started bravely out, determined to find
the boy who had been missing for what seemed ages to us.

"If we find O'mie, we'll send word by the fastest runner, and you must
ring the church bell," Le Claire arranged with Cam. "All the town can
have the word at once then."

"We'll go to the Hermit's Cave first," I announced.

The company agreed, but only Bud Anderson seemed to feel as I did. To
the others it was a wasted bit of heroism, for if none of us had yet
found the way to this retreat, why should we look for O'mie there? So
the boys argued as we hurried to the river. The Neosho was inside its
banks again, but, deep and swift and muddy, it swept silently by us who
longed to know its secrets.

"Philip, why do you consider the cave possible?" Le Claire asked as we
followed the river towards the cliff.

"Aunt Candace says so," I replied.

"Well, it's worth the trial if only to prove a woman's intuition--or
whim," he said quietly.

The same old cliff confronted us, although the many uprooted trees
showed a jagged outcrop this side the sheer wall. We looked up
helplessly at the height. It seemed foolish to think of O'mie being in
that inaccessible spot.

"If he is up there," Dave Mead urged, "and we can get to him, it will be
to put him alongside Judson's baby this afternoon."

All the other boys were for turning back and hunting about Fingal's
Creek again, all except Bud. Such a pink and white boy he was, with a
dimple in each cheek and a blowsy tow head.

"Will you stay with me, Bud, till I get up there?" I asked him.

"Yeth thir! or down there. Let'th go round an' try the other thide."

"Well, I guess we'll all stay with Phil, you cottontop," Tell Mapleson
put in.

We all began to circle round the bluff to get beyond this steep,
forbidding wall. Our plan was to go down the river beyond the cave, and
try to climb up from that point. Crossing along by the edge of the bluff
we passed the steepest part and were coming again to where the treetops
and bushes that clung to the side of the high wall reached above the
crest, as they do across the street from my own home. Just ahead of us,
as we hurried, I caught sight of a flat slab of the shelving rock
slipped aside and barely balancing on the edge, one end of it bending
down the treetops as if newly slid into that place. All about the st