Looking down to the ground the bright-eyed lad was able to see where Bud had stirred the leaves, as he carelessly walked along, no doubt oblivious of the fact that his own thoughtlessness might be used against him.
"He's the only one who has been here lately, and I think I can track him through the wood. If he had been as careful as I, he wouldn't have left such tell-tale footprints."
The work of trailing Bud, as it may be called, was not such an easy matter as Fred had supposed, for he soon found places where it was hard to tell whether or not the leaves had been disturbed by the boots of a person or the hoofs of some quadruped.
But Fred persevered, and at the end of half an hour, by attentively studying the ground, he reached a point a little over two hundred yards from where he himself had been hiding, and where he was certain Bud Heyland had been.
"Here's where he stopped, and after a while turned about and went back again," was the conclusion of Fred; "though I can't see what he did it for."
It was no longer worth while to examine the ground, for there was nothing to be learned there, and Fred began studying the appearance of things above the earth.
There were a number of varieties of trees growing about him—oak, maple, birch, chestnut and others, such as Fred had looked on many a time before, and nothing struck him as particularly worthy of notice.
But, hold! only a short ways off was an oak, or rather the remains of one, for it had evidently been struck by lightning and shattered. It had never worn a comely appearance, for its trunk was covered with black, scraggy excrescences, like the warts which sometimes disfigure the human skin.
Furthermore, the lower portion of the trunk was hollow, the width of the cavity being fully a foot at the base. The bolt from heaven had scattered the splinters, limbs and fragments in all directions, and no one could view this proof of the terrific power of that comparatively unknown force in nature without a shudder.
Fred Sheldon stood looking around him until his eye rested on this interesting sight, when he viewed it some minutes more, with open eyes and mouth.