He stopped short as he spoke, watching the scuttling away of a rabbit, whose white cottony tail was seen for a moment before it disappeared in a tunnel beneath a hazel clump.
“No; we’ll have a few while we are here,” said Scarlett, making a bound on to the trunk of a huge oak which had been blown down and lay horizontally; but while one portion of its roots stood up shaggy and weird-looking, the rest remained in the ground, and supported the life of the old tree, which along its mighty bole was covered with sturdy young shoots for about thirty feet from the roots. There it forked into two branches, each of which was far bigger than the trunk of an ordinary tree; but while one was fairly green, the other was perfectly dead, and such verdure as it displayed was that of moss and abundant patches of polypody, which flourished upon the decaying wood.
Opposite the spot where Scarlett leaped upon the tree-trunk—that is to say, on the other side—the thicket was too dense to invite descent, and the lad began to walk along toward the fork, pressing the young branches aside as he went, followed by Fred, who had leapt up and joined him.
“Here, I’m getting so hot,” cried the latter. “What’s the good of slaving along here! Let’s go back.”
“I don’t like going back in anything,” replied Scarlett, as he walked on till he reached the fork, and continued his way along the living branch of the old tree, with Fred still following, till they stood in the midst of a maze of jagged and gnarled branches rising high above their heads, and shutting them in.
These dead boughs were from the fellow limb to that on which they stood, the two huge trunks being about six feet apart.
“There, now we must go back,” said Fred.
“No. It looks more open there,” cried Scarlett. “If we could jump on to the other trunk, we could go on beyond.”
“Well, anybody could jump that,” said Fred.
“Except Fred Forrester,” replied Scarlett, mockingly.