ett lowered
himself down, and forced his way through the tangle of little shrubby
boughs growing round him, to the dead trunk, and found himself within a
breastwork of rotten bark as high as he could reach, and which crumbled
away as he tried to get up, one great green mossy patch breaking down
and covering him with damp, fungus-smelling touchwood.

"Fred! Where are you? Don't be stupid, and play with a fellow. Do you
hear?"

Still there was no reply, and Scarlett gave an angry stamp on the soft
ground.

"He's hiding away. I won't trouble about him," muttered the boy. Then
aloud--"Very well, lad. I shan't come after you. I'm going back to the
lake side."

Scarlett began to struggle back, making a great deal of rustling and
crackling of dead wood; but he had not the slightest intention of
leaving his companion behind, in case anything might have happened to
him. So he clambered back through the brush of oak shoots on to the
sound limb, and walked slowly back to the folk to try and walk along the
dead portion of the tree; but before he had progressed six feet, he
began to find that it was giving way, so he descended, and then slowly
creeping in and out among the dead branches, sometimes crawling under
and sometimes over, he began to make his way to the spot where Fred had
disappeared.

It proved, however, a far more difficult task than he had imagined, for
pieces of the jagged oak boughs caught in his jerkin; then he found that
in stretching over one leg he had stepped into a perfect tangle of
bramble, whose hooked thorns laid tight hold of his breeches, and
scratched him outrageously as he tried to draw his limb back. Finding
that to go forward was the easier, he pushed on, and took three more
steps, vowing vengeance against his companion the while.

"It's horribly stupid of me," he muttered. "I don't see why I should
take all this trouble to help a fellow who is only playing tricks, and
will laugh when I find him. Oh, how sharp!"

Still there was the latent thought that Fred might have hurt himself,
and Scarlett pressed on; but, all the same, seeing in imagination Fred's
laughing face and mocking eyes. In fact, so sure, after all, did he
feel that his companion was watching him from somewhere close by, that
he kept thrusting the rough growth aside, and looking in all directions.

"I'll give him such a topper for this," he muttered; and then as he
struggled on another foot, he suddenly stopped short