"Go, Mas Robbut, and little Missus, and Mas Frank; go all o' you. Don't be 'fraid for me; s'pose Injin come, he nebber trouble nigger."
This remark was based upon the well known fact that Indians seldom interfere with negroes. And encouraged thus to leave him a second time alone, the young people resolved to go in a body to the coast; agreeing with him, however, that if he saw any danger he should give them timely warning by setting on fire a fallen pine-top.
Carrying what arms they could, and sending their dogs on either side as scouts, they walked swiftly along their well known path to the seacoast. No accident happened, no sign of danger appeared; everything was as usual on the way, and at the place of their old encampment. But scarcely had they reached the oak, before Harold, pointing to the earth, softened by a rain two nights before, cried out:
"Look here, Robert! The tracks of two persons wearing shoes!"
Robert's unpractised eye would never have detected the signs which Harold's Indian tuition enabled him so readily to discover; he could scarcely distinguish, after the closest scrutiny, more than the deep indentation of a boot-heel. But that was enough; a boot-heel proved the presence of a boot, and a boot proved the presence of a white man. That one fact relieved them from all apprehension that the visitors were Indians.
They fired their guns, to attract if possible the attention of the strangers; giving volley after volley, in repeated succession, and scanning the coast in every direction; but it was without the desired result--the persons were gone. Their dogs had by this time gone to a spot near the bluff, where there had been a fire, and were engaged in eating what the boys discovered, on inspection, to be a ham-bone and scattered crumbs of bread. On descending the bluff, where footprints were sharply defined in the yielding sand, Frank exclaimed:
"Here is William's track! I know it--I know it is William's!"
The others examined it, and asked how he knew it was William's.
"I know it," said he, "by that W. When father gave him that pair of thick boots for bad weather, William drove a great many tacks into the sole; and when I asked him why he did so, he said it was to make them last longer, and also to know them again if they should be stolen, for there was his name. In the middle of one sole he drove nine tacks, making that W., and in the other he drove seven, so as to make an H.; for he said his name was William Harper. Yes, look here," pointing to the other track, "here is the H., too."
There was now not the shadow of a doubt that the track thus ingeniously identified was William's. Then whose was that other, formed by a light, well shaped boot? Every heart responded. The elder boys looked on with agitated faces; Mary burst into tears, and Frank, casting himself passionately down, laid his wet cheek upon that loved foot-print, and kissed it.