all about this island. You said so yourself. I just told
him we'd get some grub to him to-morrow."

"How?"

"Told him we'd leave it at the foot of that tall pine at the far end of
the island. Then he slipped out of the kitchen and disappeared."

But Blent was a crafty old party and did not easily give up the pursuit of
the young fellow he had come to the island to nab. The coat of fresh snow
over everything made tracking the fugitive an easy task.

After a few minutes of sputtering anger, the real estate man organized a
pursuit of Jerry. He made sure that the forest youth had run out of the
kitchen at about the time the visitors came up from the dock.

"He ain't got a long start," said Blent to his satellite, the constable.
"Let's see if he didn't leave tracks."

He had. There was still an hour of daylight, although the winter evening
was closing in rapidly. Jerry had left by the back door of the lodge and
had gone straight across the yard, through the unbroken snow, to the
bunkhouse used by the male help.

There he had stopped for his rifle and shotgun, and ammunition. Indeed, he
had taken everything that belonged to him, and, loaded down with this
loot, had gone right up the hill, keeping in the scrub so as to be hidden
from the big house, and had so passed over the rising ground toward the
middle of the island.

"The track is plain enough," Blent said. "Ain't ye got a dog, Preston? We
could foller him all night."

"Not with our dogs," declared the foreman.

"Why not?"

"Don't think the boss would like it. We don't keep dogs to hunt men with."

"You better take care how you try to block the law," threatened the old
man. "That boy's goin' to be caught."

"Not with these dogs," grunted Preston. "You can put _that_ in your pipe
and smoke it."

Blent and the constable went off over the ridge. Ruth was so much
interested that she stole out to follow them, and Ann Hicks overtook her
before she had gotten far up the track.

"Ruth Fielding! whatever are you doing?" demanded the girl from the
Montana ranch. "Don't you know it will soon be night? Mrs. Tingley says
for you to come back."

"Do you suppose those horrid men will find Jerry?"

"No, I don't," replied Ann, shortly. "And if they do----"

"Oh! you're not as interested in him as I am," sighed Ruth. "I am sure he
is honest and that Mr. Blent is telling lies about him. I--I want to see
that they don't abuse him if they catch him."

"Abuse him! And h