Andrew dropped the axe. He rested rigid as stone, open-mouthed, in sudden alarm and consternation. "What!" he exclaimed. "Great Heaven! Can it be that—that a human creature—a man—was hid in the thicket, and that when the oak fell——"
"Help! help! for the love of mercy!" The appeal, fainter than the first cry, rose from the densest crush of the shattered oak branches. There could be no mistake. Some one had been slinking in the bushes near young Boyd; possibly a Hanoverian spy! Through his own unaccountable carelessness the unseen person had allowed himself to be suddenly trapped by the boughs of the falling tree. He was pinned in a torturing, if not a fatal trap.
Andrew's sharp eyes could not penetrate the barricade of dark green. "Hi, there! Halloa!" he shouted. "Are ye under the oak? What has befallen ye, man, or whatever ye be?"
No answer. To catch up his axe and plunge boldly into the tangle was his next impulse. He hewed and trampled a path toward the centre of the felled tree, which had been young but very vigorous and leafy. No trace of any unusual object imprisoned beneath the knitted boughs, no new cry for help guided him.
He began to doubt whether to press to right or left, or to go round about and continue his examination from another point of the oak's circumference, when a low but distinct groan spurred him to more active work in the same direction. Forcing aside the strong branches by his knees, he caught sight of a dark object just beyond. He next discerned a cloth garment, covering a man's back. The yet invisible wearer had been all this time in a faint, and was now able to betray but small sign of interest in his own deliverance.
"This way, this way," Andrew heard him moan, as if articulating with real anguish; "I am hurt badly, I fear. I cannot stir."
The accent, not so Scotch as Andrew's, seemed gentle. The mysterious interloper might then be some well-bred prowler. Andrew thrust away the last intervening twigs. There lay on the turf a man, at full length, and face downward, with one arm and a part of his right shoulder held as if in a vice by the oak's grasp. His well-turned neck and figure implied to Andrew's hasty survey that he was young and comely.
"Whatever you do, man, don't try to move!" exclaimed Andrew; "leave your outgetting to me. I'll set you free in a trice."
He went to work cautiously but swiftly to do it.
"And my ankle is fast too"—came the smothered complaint. "Look—you will see how—my leg—is held!"