for what
greater intelligence could dumb beast have shown than, after struggling
out of the cave, to have made its way not to its regular home, where it
could only have appealed to the feeble old grandmother, but straight to
one whom, though no friend, it had seen more than once with its master?

"See," he said to himself, "how, in spite of all driving away, the poor
thing kept on coming back to the cottage, and how wonderfully it led me
here, and worked by my side. He'll do it. I'm sure he will, and before
long I shall see uncle coming."

Then the time wore on, till these hopes were dashed again, and a
despairing fit of low spirits attacked the watcher. "It's of no use,"
he said, half aloud; "I must go;" and he bent over the still open hole,
to try and think out some plan of keeping back the sand. But all in
vain; he felt that there was no way. Either he must stop there to keep
on scooping the place free every few minutes, or leave it to take its
chance while he went for help.

"No, I can't," he cried; "it's throwing away the very last hope. I must
stay. Oh, why does not some one come?"

Tom's face darkened now, for his over-strained imagination had painted a
fresh picture--that of the miserable-looking cur somewhere close at
hand, settled down in a hollow to deliberately gnaw the sandy bone. For
it was too much to expect of a dog that, after perhaps starving for
eight-and-forty hours, it would leave the meal for which it hungered,
and go and deliver such a message as that upon which it was sent.

"Oh, how long! how long!" he groaned. "I could have gone there and back
half-a-dozen times."

It was a moderate computation according to Tom's feelings, for it seemed
to him half the day must have glided by in the agony he was suffering.

But it had not. Time had been going steadily on at its customary rate,
in spite of the way in which the lad in his excitement had pushed on the
hands of his mental clock.

"I must go," he cried at last, "or no help will come. That brute is
somewhere close by, I'm sure. Here, hi!" he shouted; but there was no
reply--no dog came bounding up; and after listening for a few minutes he
began to whistle loudly, when his heart seemed suddenly to stop its
beating as he leaned forward listening, for, faint and distant but quite
clear, there came an answering whistle.

He whistled again, and he pressed his hand upon his breast, feeling half
choked with emotion.

The signal was a