“Plenty!” said Billy, shouldering the bags of fish, and departing at a run. Billy had learnt early the futility of wasting words.
“Come along,” said the Hermit, laughing.
He turned off into the scrub, and led the way again, taking, it seemed to Norah, rather a roundabout path. At length he stopped short, near a dense clump of dogwood.
“My back door,” he said politely.
They stared about them. There was no sign of any door at all, nor even of any footprints or marks of traffic. The scrub was all about them; everything was very still and quiet in the afternoon hush.
“Well, you’ve got us beaten and no mistake!” Jim laughed, after they had peered fruitlessly about. “Unless you camp in the air, I don’t see—”
“Look here,” said the Hermit.
He drew aside a clump of dogwood, and revealed the end of an old log—a huge tree-trunk that had long ago been a forest monarch, but having fallen, now stretched its mighty length more than a hundred feet along the ground. It was very broad and the uppermost side was flat, and here and there bore traces of caked, dry mud that showed where a boot had rested. The dogwood walled it closely on each side.
“That’s my track home,” the Hermit said. “Let me help you up, Miss Norah.”
He sprang up on the log as he spoke, and extended a hand to Norah, who followed him lightly. Then the Hermit led the way along the log, which was quite broad enough to admit of a wheelbarrow being drawn down its length. He stopped where the butt of the old tree, rising above the level of the trunk, barred the view, and pulling aside the dogwood, showed rough steps, cut in the side of the log.