“What’s that?” exclaimed Dan, under his breath. “A hollow tree?”
“Stump, I said. About twenty feet high. It was a big tree once, you bet,” whispered Billy. “When Lettie and I were ashore here the other day we found it. I know it’s only a shell, for I pounded on it.”
He lifted his fist, but Dan stopped him. “Don’t pound on it now, you chump!” ordered the older boy.
He put out a tentative hand himself and touched the black tree trunk. He had already noticed that no snow clung to it. The bark was still on the wood and there was no mark to show that the big stump was hollow.
But when Dan placed his bare hand upon the bark it seemed to him as though the hollow stump was warm!
CHAPTER XVI
THE UNEXPECTED
This was both a startling and unexpected discovery. Dan gripped Billy’s arm again, enjoining silence, and the two boys crept away from the vicinity of the hollow stump.
The rosy glow above its summit—the smoke rising above the tree-tops—the warmth of the dead tree, so that the snow did not stick to it while the rough bark of the live trees was now crusted with the fast falling flakes—these facts were all to be pieced together. And the dovetailing did not take long when Dan put his mind to it!