Tom did not go far though without stopping, for he had aimed to reach the pit into which he had fallen, and here he stood gazing down, evidently puzzled, for there was something particular about the place which attracted him; while, to increase his interest, all at once there was a rustling noise, and Pete Warboys’ long lean dog thrust out its head from the side hole beneath the fir-tree roots, which hung out quite bare, looked up, saw who was gazing down, turned, and thrust out its long bony tail instead. This, however, was only seen for a moment and then gone.
“That’s strange,” thought Tom, as he walked on back pretty fast now, for it suddenly occurred to him that his uncle must be out of patience, and that he had been longer than he thought for.
He found too that he had run farther than he thought, and he was getting pretty hot and breathless by the time he trotted out of the wood, and into the sandy lane, where, instead of his uncle’s face as he sat looking back impatiently in the chair, there was the bare road and nothing more, save a red admiral butterfly flitting here and there and settling in the dust.
“He must have asked somebody passing to wheel him back,” thought Tom, who immediately began to play Red Indian or Australian black, and look for the trail—to wit, the thin wheel-marks left by the chair. But though he found those which had been made in coming plainly lining the soft sandy road, and ran in different directions toward home, there were no returning tracks.
“Then he must have gone on,” thought Tom; and he ran back to where he had left his uncle, to see now faintly in the hard road a continuation of the three wheel-marks, so very distinct from any that would have been left by cart or carriage, being very narrow, and three instead of two or four.
He went on slowly trying to trace the wheel-marks, but the road soon became so hard that he missed them; a few yards farther on he saw the faint mark made by one, then again two showed, and then they ceased, but he was on the right track, he knew; and walking rapidly on down the hill, with his eyes now on the road, now right ahead toward the river and the ford, he began wondering who could have come along there, and where his uncle had made whoever it was take him.
“Why it would be miles round to get home this way,” thought Tom. “Perhaps he was thirsty, and asked some one to take him down to the river, and is waiting.”
It was not a good solution of the problem, and he was not satisfied, for there was no sign of the chair near the ford. But there were traces again in the sand which had been washed to the side, and here the chair had made a curve and run close to the bank for a few yards; then out into the hard road, and he saw no more for a couple of hundred yards, and then they were on the left-hand side, and Tom’s blood began to turn cold, as they say, for the tracks bore off to the side road leading down into the sand-pit.
“Why the chair ran away with him, and perhaps he’s killed.”
At this thought Tom’s legs ran away with him down into the thick sandy road, where the wheel-marks were deeply imprinted, showing that the chair had been that way.