“What dat for?”
Edwin, too, looked an inquiry, but George said he had a good reason, and accordingly it was done.
CHAPTER VIII.
The party turned about as if to retrace their steps; but the moment they had descended the hill, so as to be out of sight of the Enchanted Island, Inwood dismounted, and said to his friends:
“Now, you walk the horses as slowly as you can, and when you get beyond that grove of trees, wait for me, but don’t halt until you are there.”
Jim and Edwin looked wonderingly at him, but he waved them impatiently away, and trailing his rifle, ran rapidly around the brow of the hill from which he had taken his view of the lake, and, gaining a position where he could still see it, he screened himself from observation, and carefully awaited the confirmation of his suspicions.
He had been here about twenty minutes, when he observed an agitation in the bushes between the hill and the lake, and the next minute the head and shoulders of a man rose to view. One glance identified him as the individual whom he had surveyed through his telescope, and it is hardly necessary to say that our young friend watched his motions with intense interest.
Looking cautiously about him, as if to satisfy himself that he was unobserved, the stranger soon came fully to view, and commenced ascending the hill with a silent, cautious step. Reaching a point almost to the summit, he sank down on his hands and knees, and looked over. Watching the horsemen, who, by this time, were a third of a mile distant, for a few moments, he laid his rifle across a mound of earth, and took a long, deliberate sight.