had not stirred him; he had had no breakfast; and if a fight was before
him, he felt most decidedly that he would rather not. In this spirit
then he kept on telling himself that he might as well turn back now, but
all the same he kept trotting on after the dog, putting off the return
till he had gone a little farther and a little farther, and always
keeping on, till all at once it seemed to be a little lighter on ahead,
and he strained his eyes in the full expectation of seeing Pete Warboys
waiting for him.

"And if he is," he half thought, half muttered, "as sure as I live I'll
get David to help me, and we'll trap and half kill this treacherous
brute."

Another hundred yards, and he was looking wonderingly about him, for the
place was strange. He had never been there before.

Then he grasped the meaning of the strangeness. The storm had evidently
come down here with terrific force, making a path through the
pine-forest, some of whose trees were laid like wheat after a heavy
wind; while just in front one huge tree had been blown right over, and
in falling had crushed down a dozen or more in the path of its fall,
letting in light, and strewing the soft earth with broken limbs, and
trunks lying like jack-straws on the ground.

"That's why he has brought me," said Tom, half aloud. "Halloo, where is
he? Here! here! old boy, here!"

He was answered by a furious barking, and the dog sprang up into sight
on the trunk of the big tree close up to its roots, barking furiously at
him, and then turning and leaping down out of sight; while Tom felt as
if all of a sudden his blood had begun to turn cold, and his legs
beneath him had grown weak.

For a horrible thought had suddenly flashed across his mind, like a
meteor over the field of the great telescope. He knew now the dumb
language of the dog, and why it had fetched him; and as if to endorse
his thought, there came from about a dozen yards away so wild and
blood-curdling a yell, that for the moment he could not believe it to be
the dog, but that it came from some one in mortal peril.

CHAPTER FIFTY.

That cry was "help!" in its meaning as plainly as if it had come from a
human throat, and with eyes hot and dry, Tom dashed forward with his
worst fears confirmed.

The tree had been blown over by the storm, and he knew it now. It was
the great pine whose roots overhung Pete's cavern, and now the hollow
which formed the entrance was filled up by the roots, the