He seemed, all at once, to have lost the trail.
Vinnie drew her blanket closer about her face and shoulders, and crouching close up against the trunk of a large tree, watched him eagerly.
He ran back and forth several times along the base of the acclivity, searching for the lost trail; then paused at last, with a quick, glad yelp, before a large rock that, almost hidden by the thick overhanging shrubbery along the hillside, seemed to be firmly imbedded in the earth. Then for several minutes he made no sign.
Had he lost the trail again?
He whined, and began to scratch away at the earth about the bottom of the bowlder.
Vinnie, at a loss to account for his strange behavior, drew the blanket up over her head, and creeping closer up under the friendly shelter of the great tree-trunk, looked on in wonder.
It did not occur to her that the flat stone might conceal the entrance to the cavern beyond—for she was indeed at the opening that led into the place where Leander Maybob, the giant hunter, had carried her father but a little while before.
Soon the blood-hound stopped digging, and sat down, with another long, low whine, keeping his red eyes fixed immovably on the dark surface of the rock before him.
“What can it mean?” Vinnie asked herself. “He does not search for the trail any longer. Why does he stop here? What is there about that rock? I wonder if it is immovable. Perhaps it covers the trail some way. I am going to attempt to move it. It looks very ponderous. It must be very heavy.”
She examined the bowlder closely, but could see nothing to indicate that it had ever been stirred from the place where it seemed so firmly imbedded into the earth.