“I wonder whether that could have been done on purpose,” remarked the parson.
“No,” said Ruggles; “the leftenant couldn’t know anything about our being purty near the right spot to catch it.”
“I alluded to Indians,––not to him.”
But Ruggles and the captain did not deem such a thing credible. A whole tribe of red men could not have loosened so enormous a mass of stone, while, if poised as delicately as it must have been, they would have known nothing of the fact. Sometimes an immense oak, sound and apparently as firm as any in the forest around it, suddenly plunges downward and crashes to the earth, from no imaginable cause. So, vast masses of rock on the mountain side which have held their places for centuries, seem to leap from their foundations and tear their way with resistless force into the valley below. This was probably one of those accidental displacements, liable to occur at any hour of the day or night, which had come so startlingly near crushing the three men to death.
Captain Dawson drew a match from his pocket and scraping it along his thigh, held it to the face of his watch.
“Just midnight and we are not more than half a dozen miles from home.”
“And how far do you suppose they are?” asked the parson.
“Probably five times as much, if not more.”
“But they will not travel at night, and by sunrise we ought to be considerably nearer to them than now.”