“’Tarn’t no good, Master Fred,” said Samson, chuckling. “You might just as well go to a rabbit’s hole, and shout down that, ‘Hoi! bunny, bunny, come out and have your neck broken.’”
“Don’t talk so,” said Fred, angrily.
“No, sir, not a word; but you forget that we’re enemies now, and that it’s of no use to call to Master Scarlett or our Nat to come, because they won’t do it. There’s two ways, sir, and that’s all I can make out, after no end of thinking.”
As Samson spoke, he held up his hand, and went back a few yards to reconnoitre.
“Don’t see nor hear nothing, Master Fred,” he said, as he returned; “but we’re making a regular path through the wilderness, so plain that soon every one will see.”
“Then we must go for the future to the opening by the lake, and try what we can do there.”
“And get wet!”
“What did you mean by your two ways of finding out whether they are there?”
“Well, sir, one’s by putting bread and meat bait afore the hole, and coming to see whether it’s been taken.”
“But we’ve tried that again and again, and it is taken,” said Fred, impatiently. “What’s the other way?”