“Did he stay right there with you?”
“Let me see. No, he did not stay right there in the brush all the time. As I remember it he went out on the logs once or twice and monkeyed around there when he thought he heard something suspicious, but, as I said, he was right in sight all the time. Of course I did not suspect him then and did not watch him as close as I would now.”
“Don’t remember where he went in the pond, do you?”
“Yes, I remember that, because he always went in the same direction, always over there toward the east side of the pond.”
“Then I guess that is where we had better look first.”
On that side the log pond was separated from the swamp by only a very narrow neck of land which was densely covered with brush. They made their way along this neck, fully expecting to find a narrow channel through which the logs had been floated, but there was no such passage there.
“I have a hunch,” Murphy said as he cut a long pole and made his way back to a point where the neck was not more than three feet wide. There he poked into the bank just below the surface of the water with his pole and struck a hole at almost the first jab. With a shout of triumph he gave the pole a shove into the hole and turned around to look behind him. There was a slight commotion in the waters of the swamp and the pole shot up to the surface some feet from the shore.
“But how did they get the logs down through there?” Scott asked.
“Just like this. I may break my neck trying to ride these logs without my calks, but if I don’t, watch.”
He cut another pole and jumped nimbly on to a log near the edge of the pond. He poled it toward the shore, headed directly toward the tunnel. When the front end of the log was about to touch the bank he jumped to that end, ran toward the other end and jumped quickly to another log. His weight on the front end had caused the log to dip down to the opening and his running along it had given it an impulse which sent it sliding through the tunnel just as the stick had done and it floated free in the open swamp.