“Oh, Tom! Maybe he'll be sucked right down into this awful mud.”
“Not likely. There aren't many quicksands, or the like, hereabout. Never heard tell of 'em, if there are. Old Tobe lost a cow once in some slough.”
They came to a small opening in the forest just then. Here a great tree had been uprooted by the wind and leaned precariously over a quagmire beside the roadway. Fortunately only some of the lower branches touched the road line and Tom could get his team around them.
Then the person in trouble came into sight. Nan and her cousin saw him immediately. He was in the middle of the shaking morass waist deep in the mire, and clinging to one of the small hanging limbs of the uprooted tree.
“Hickory splits!” ejaculated Tom, stopping the team. “It's old Tobe himself! Did you ever see the like!”
Chapter XXVIII. THE GIRL IN THE HOLLOW TREE
Just why old Toby Vanderwiller was clinging to that branch and did not try to wade ashore, neither Nan nor Tom could understand. But one thing was plain: the old lumberman thought himself in danger, and every once in a while he gave out a shout for help. But his voice was growing weak.
“Hey, Tobe!” yelled Tom. “Why don't you wade ashore?”
“There ye be, at last, hey?” snarled the old man, who was evidently just as angry as he could be. “Thought ye'd never come. Hearn them horses rattling their chains, must ha' been for an hour.”