CHAPTER III.
AN ABORIGINAL PLOT.
The boys tried the plan of Fred Linden; he swerved slightly to the left, while Terry Clark made a sharp angle to the right. They never thought of getting beyond hearing of each other, and, but for the plentiful undergrowth they would have kept in sight. They had taken but a few steps when Fred looked around and found that he was alone. He could hear his young friend pushing his way among the trees, and once or twice he caught snatches of a tune that he was whistling—that being a favorite pastime of the lad when by himself.
"It's curious how he could make such a blunder," thought Fred, with a smile to himself; "he will go tramping around the woods only to find that he was nowhere in the neighborhood of the cow. Ah, the storm is not yet over."
He was looking to the eastward, where the sky, as he caught a glimpse of it among the treetops and branches, was as black as if overcast with one huge thunder cloud.
"It was there it raged so violently last night, and the rain is falling in torrents again. We shall find the creek a river when we go back."
The sturdy youth pressed on fully two hundred yards more, when the old suspicion came back to him. There was something wrong. When he could not explain some things he was satisfied that it was because there was an element of evil in those things—something that boded ill to both him and his friend.
"I have traveled far enough since hearing that bell to pass a long ways beyond it," he said, compressing his lips and shaking his head; "and if that was Brindle that rang it the first time, she would have done it the second time."
Twice before Fred fancied he heard something moving among the undergrowth a short distance in advance, and a little to one side. The noise was now so distinct that he could no longer deceive himself; there was some specific cause for it.
"I guess Terry has worked over this way, finding what a mistake he has made—no! by gracious! it isn't Terry!"