Bending his head forward in a listening attitude, after a minute’s anxious wait, he said:
“I though I heard some step. But I must have been mistaken. Isn’t that a building over yonder on the swell?”
“I should say so,” replied one of his companions.
“I have a mind to go up there.”
“My eye has been on that pine tree for some time. What a view one could get from its top! Let’s go up a little nearer anyway.”
They soon came in plain sight of a large, old-fashioned farm-house with outbuildings adjoining, the whole looking deserted and sadly out of repair.
The buildings stood on the crest of quite an eminence of land.
On one side reaching nearly down to the woods where they were concealed extended a line of dense shrubbery.
A short distance from the house, its dark, gigantic branches overhanging the roof was a huge pine towering far above any other tree in the vicinity.
It was this tree Lieutenant Boggs wished to reach, knowing that from its summit he could look down upon a wide circle of the surrounding country.