Dan’s thoughts ran on in this channel as he was dressing the squirrel and preparing it for the spit, and while it was roasting he sat with his elbows on his knees and his head resting on his hands, looking steadily into the fire. But after the squirrel was done to his satisfaction and he had eaten a portion of it and his ravenous appetite had been somewhat appeased, he began to take a more cheerful view of things.

“I’ve got the money, anyhow,” thought Dan, holding a leg of the squirrel in one hand and running the other through the leaves that were piled against the log on which he was sitting. “That’s something I kin crow over. It’s a heap of comfort to know that that thar mean pap an’ Dave of our’n didn’t cheat me outen my share of them greenbacks as slick as they thought they was a goin’ to. Wal, now, whar’s them greenbacks gone to?”

Dan laid his squirrel carefully down upon a piece of bark which he had provided to serve as a plate, and kneeling beside the log, scraped away the leaves, but without discovering the object of which he was in search. The expression of astonishment which came upon his face gradually gave away to a look of alarm, and the rapid movements of his hands grew more rapid still as the fact seemed to dawn upon him that the box which contained his treasure had most unaccountably disappeared. At last the leaves were scraped away the whole length of the log, and Dan, with a wild yell, bounded to his feet. He stood motionless for a moment, and then dropping on his knees again, looked under the log, thinking that perhaps he had pushed the box under farther than he had intended, and that it had fallen into some little hollow out of sight. But there was no little hollow under the log that Dan could discover, although he ran his fingers over every inch of the ground. Dan’s eyes seemed ready to start from their sockets.

“It’s gone, an’ I’m a busted man,” he exclaimed, casting frightened glances on every side of him. “One of them thar haunts that lives in the gen’ral’s lane has done come here an’ run off with it. This ain’t no place fur me!”

Dan reached rather hurriedly for his rifle, and was about to desert his camp with all possible haste, when he happened to discover something that made him take an altogether different view of the matter. The bushes behind the log had recently been disturbed—Dan was hunter enough to see that—and a second look showed him that some heavy body had passed through them. With his cocked rifle in his hand, Dan stepped over the log to make a still closer examination, and found that the trail that led through the bushes was so plain that he had no difficulty in following it. It conducted him directly to the place where Bob Owens had been concealed while he was watching Dan; but from that point it gradually grew fainter, and, when it reached the more open woods, it disappeared altogether. Almost the last sign of it that Dan could find was the print of a boot-heel in the soft earth. This he examined as closely as he could, through eyes blinded with tears of vexation and disappointment.

“’Taint pap, nor Dave, nuther,” said he, at length. “Nary one on ’em couldn’t git them big hoofs o’ their’n into a boot with sich a heel as this yere; but somebody was snoopin’ around not more’n five minutes ago, an’ who could it have been? Somebody ’sides pap knowed I had the money; but who was it?”

This was a question that Dan could not answer, nor was it answered at all until long months afterward. The loss of the money was a severe blow to him, and he could see nothing but a gloomy future before him. Up to this time he had felt comparatively safe, for he knew that, if he made up his mind to do so, he could win his way into his mother’s good graces and David’s very easily, by simply returning the latter’s money; but now this chance for a reconciliation was taken from him, and the thought almost drove him wild. How he lived through the next few days he could not have told to save his life. He roamed the woods day and night—his gloomy thoughts tormented him so that he could not keep still—shivering in the cold morning air, going hungry more than half the time, and all the while tortured by fears of some impending evil. At last the day came when his matches were all expended, and he had not a single charge of powder left in his horn. He had resolved to make a raid on Mr. Owens’s hen-roost that night, although he could not for the life of him tell how he was going to cook the chickens after he got them, and was on his way to the plantation, when he came to the road which led from Rochdale to the county-seat. As he was about to climb over the fence, he heard the clatter of hoofs close at hand, and drew back into the bushes just in time to escape discovery by the approaching horseman.

CHAPTER XVII
CONCLUSION.

THE horseman came in sight a moment later, and Dan looked at him in the greatest amazement. It was his brother David; but what a change had come over him since Dan last saw him at the cabin! If he was always dressed as he was now, the people in the settlement could no longer speak of him as “that ragamuffin, Dave Evans.” He wore a new suit of gray jeans, a pair of serviceable boots without a hole in them, and—which Dan did not fail to notice—were neatly blacked, a wide-brimmed felt hat, and, more wonderful than all, a collar and necktie. He was mounted on a high-stepping colt which Dan had often seen running in General Gordon’s stable-lot, had a saddle and bridle that looked as though they might just have come out of the store; and, strapped to the saddle was a mail-bag which Dan had seen so often that he recognised it at once. David passed swiftly along the road and was out of sight in a few seconds, but Dan had plenty of time to take in all these little details, and to note that his brother’s face wore a happy, contented look, as if he felt at peace with himself and all the world. Dan contrasted his situation with his own, and grew angry at once.