"The place is nigh here," said the hunter.
They rested on their paddles for a moment in the shadow of a great boulder that stayed the downward drift of the canoe. Ande and the pilot instinctively felt for their maps and tried to refresh their memory in reference to the directions, but the dim light almost made it useless. Hunter Tom, in the meantime, was scanning the stream and shores and seemed to be ill at ease.
"The mouth of the little run is but a dozen rods up stream. Ye can put away the maps, lads, for I know the place." At the words of Hunter Tom both Ande and the pilot dropped their maps in the canoe, and all bending to the paddles while the hunter with his keen sight directed their movements, they moved on. Then came the babbling, rippling sound of a little run as it leaped, gurgling with delight, into the stream, like a child into the arms of its mother. The craft was turned to shore and soon grated on the pebbly beach. They stepped ashore and stretched their cramped limbs, while Hunter Tom tied the canoe to a swaying pine, and then pursuing his directions, they followed up the run. Ten yards up the run a divided oak was located.
"Now," said the Hunter, as he gazed around uneasily, "fifty yards due north."
Dick, having a pocket compass, now took the lead, following a course due north, and in the rear was the pilot balancing his divining rod, while Ande as closely as possible measured the distance. Hunter Tom, taking little interest in the affair, seemed to concentrate his attention on the trees, underbrush and regions around about.
"'Tis here, as near as I can calculate it, that the fifty yards end," said Ande.
"And the divining rod says the same, and it tells truth," said Hugh, the pilot, with a little triumph in his tones.
"My calculations, heretofore, located the spot a bit beyond," said the hunter, with the first interest he had betrayed since they landed. "Ye may be right."
Dick and the pilot grasped the pickaxes and set to work with vigour, while Ande used the shovel and occasionally removed with his hands some large boulder that impeded their work. The hunter seemed to constitute himself watchman and was incessantly on guard. The work went on for an hour, and considerable debris was removed when Dick's pickaxe slipped from his hands and disappeared from sight. With an exclamation he leaned forward and found that it had disappeared in an old excavation a few feet in depth. The excavation was widened and the pilot, leaping in, began to work with increased vigour. Hunter Tom now became as deeply interested as the others. It was at a spot that he had not investigated before. That old excavation must mean something, he thought.