This was nothing more than the boys had been accustomed to all their lives. Such sounds were not new in the country in which they had been brought up, and when any settler heard a sound like that coming from the woods he said: “Now we are going to have falling weather.” An old “deadening” is the best place to watch for omens of this kind. The farmer, not having the time or force to clear his land, cuts away all the underbrush and uses his axe to “circle” the trees so that he can put in his crop. The trees stand there until they dry and rot, all the vitality being taken away from them, and finally drop all their limbs until the trunk stands bare. Nat, after he had taken time to think twice, knew in a moment what had caused the poplar to shed its limbs, and was aware that it was one of the incidents of his everyday life; but Peleg, who had been warned that something was going to happen if they found the trail of the papers, was frightened out of his wits. After it struck the ground he remained motionless.
“What did I tell you?” whispered Nat. “Didn’t I tell you that you would hear something drop?”
“Whew!” stammered Peleg. “I have seen enough of this place. I am going home as quick as I can go.”
“Hold on, Peleg,” exclaimed Nat, who was overjoyed to hear him talk this way. “We will hear something else pretty soon, and that will let us know that we are close to the papers.”
“You can stay and look for them until you are blind,” said Peleg, who was taking long strides toward the other side of the brook. “You will never see them papers. I believe you are cahoots with the ‘Old Fellow’ himself.”
As Peleg said this he pointed with his finger toward the ground. He did not care to mention who the “old fellow” was. When he was across the brook he broke into a run and dashed up the hill. He did not even stop to take with him his gun, ammunition or the provisions he had brought up from Manchester. He kept clear of the bushes—you could not have hired Peleg to go through them alone—and when he struck the open field he increased his pace and was out of sight in a moment. Nat waited until he was well under way and then followed him to the top of the bank. He was just in time to see Peleg’s coat tails disappear over the bars; and then he dug out at his best gait for home.
“There!” said Nat taking off his hat and feeling for the extra money he had stowed away. “I am well rid of him, thank goodness. Now I will go to work and make a camp, get something to eat, and to-morrow morning I will go down and get the spade and pick-ax; that is, if the ghosts leave anything of me. But I don’t believe there are any ghosts. The storekeeper said that just to frighten him.”
But before Nat began his lean-to he wanted to see the stone that covered his fortune. It seemed strange to him that all he had to do was to pry the stone out of its place, dig for a few minutes and then he would be worth more money than he ever saw.
“There is one thing that I forgot,” said he, after he had tested the weight of the stone by trying his strength upon it. “But I will get that to-morrow. I must cut a lever with which to handle this weight.”
For the first time in a long while Nat was happy. He would be so that night—there would not anybody come near him after dark—but the next morning he would come back to himself again—sly and cunning, and afraid to make a move in any direction without carefully reconnoitering the ground. Jonas and Caleb had got him in the way of living so.