“Come on. What’s the matter, Jumbo?” exclaimed Rob.
“It look powerful spooky in dar, Marse Blake.”
“Well, I guess the spooks, if there are any, will do us less harm than that gang behind us,” commented Rob.
Jumbo, without more words, followed him. But he rolled his eyes from side to side in evident alarm at every step. On and on they plunged, making their way swiftly enough over the forest floor. From time to time they stopped to listen. But there was no sound of pursuit. In fact, Rob did not expect any. With the ladder destroyed, there was not much chance of the Hunt crowd clambering over the cliff tops.
At such moments as they paused, Rob felt, to the full, the deep impressiveness of the forest at night. Above them the sombre spires of the hemlocks showed steeple-like against the dark sky. The night wind sent deep pulsations through them, like the rumbling of the lower notes of a church organ. All about lay the deeper shadows of the recesses of the woods. They were shrouded in a rampart of impenetrable darkness.
“I hope we’re keeping on the right track,” thought Rob, as it grew increasingly difficult, and finally impossible, to see the north star through the thick mass of foliage above them.
The boy knew the danger of wandering in circles in the untracked waste of forest unless they kept constantly in one direction. Without the stars to guide him, it grew increasingly difficult to be sure they were doing this.
“Golly! Ah suttinly hopes we gits out of dis foliaginous place befo’ long,” breathed Jumbo stentorously, stumbling along behind Rob over the rough and stony ground that composed the floor of the Adirondack forest.
All at once, as Rob strode along, he stopped short. Some peculiar instinct had caused him to halt. Just why he knew not. But he was brought up dead in his tracks.
“Wha’s de mattah, Marse Blake?” quavered Jumbo, “yo’ all hain’t seein’ any hants or conjo’s, be yoh?”