Arriving at the oak tree they were at a loss. They saw no sign of any human being. They picked up Smithers' plaid cloth cap which he had lost in his wild flight homeward. Beecham began to beat it against a young sapling to rid it of some of the mud.
“We must go farther yet. This is not the place," said Ambrose.
Fully one-third of the great oak tree had been riven from the trunk. It lay across their path, necessitating a detour amid the still dripping underbrush to pass it. The oak was in the full of its early summer foliage, forming an impenetrable green wall across the hillside path.
As they were threading their way through the thick low growth on the upper side, Jack Beecham glanced into the dense mass of fallen foliage. His eyes were caught by something black beneath the green. Thinking it was perhaps an old log, blown there by the storm before the lightning damaged the oak, he was about to pass on, but gave a second look.
The black thing under the leaves was surely not a bough! Again he peered into the tree-top.
“Great heavens! there he is under that oak,” he said.
The three pushing aside the boughs saw the bleeding, white face of some one who was apparently dead.
“Poor Mr. Shalford,” exclaimed Shealey.
“Nonsense! Don't you see that's not Mr. Shalford at all. It's one of the boys. Who can it be?”
They all looked again into the leaves, and were satisfied that it was not their prefect.