“Shall I fire?” asked Dean, at last.
“No; wait a few minutes;” and Mark rested his piece which he had discharged upon a projecting buttress-like root of the nearest tree.
“Hah! What’s that?” cried Dean excitedly.
“That” was the soft pat, pat, of a bare foot upon the moist, leaf-strewn earth, and showing his white teeth in a satisfied grin, Mak glided into their sight and tapped each of the lads’ extended hands.
“Come,” he said quickly. “Come ’long.”
Both tried to answer, but no words would come, and trying hard to shake off the emotion which troubled them, they followed their rescuer as he regularly glided in and out amongst the trees, till all at once they were standing in a small circular clearing not twenty yards across, and there they involuntarily stopped short, staring in wonderment at the dimly pictured scene that greeted their weary eyes.
After what the boys had gone through it seemed something dream-like, and they were ready to fancy that in that terrible dark forest they had stumbled upon some strange abode of the fabulous gnomes or kobolds described by the old German romanticists as being the haunting inhabitants of the mines and cavernous underground regions.
As the two lads followed their guide into almost nocturnal darkness they became aware of the fact that they were surrounded by some five-and-thirty little beings, not one of whom seemed to stand above four feet high. There was nothing dwarf-like about them, or sign of deformity, for they were comparatively slight, though muscular and in every way well built.
Their appearance was threatening, for each man amongst them was half sheltering himself behind a tree, and standing holding a little bow with arrow having its neck in the string and drawn nearly to the head as if ready to let fly at the white strangers.
The two boys stopped short, involuntarily raising their rifles ready to fire, and in the quick glance Mark swept round the little arboreal circus he caught sight of as many more of the little people, much smaller and slighter, as they cowered behind their companions.