But they wanted to be sure of that. Billy wasn’t desirous of “mixing in” with those three masked robbers who had treated old John Bromley so roughly.
And so thinking, as he crept on over the higher part of the island above the hollow stump, Billy suddenly stepped right out into space. At least, so it seemed. He put his foot upon a bank of snow, and “slumped right in”!
The snow had treacherously filled a narrow cut between two boulders. Billy dropped to his chin in the soft, cold mass, and then found that he was wedged so tightly that he couldn’t get out.
He dared not shout to Dan. That might be their undoing indeed. If there were men about whom they must perforce consider enemies, Billy was determined not to bring them out here.
So he struggled, and panted, and wrenched himself from side to side, and tried his very best to seize upon the edge of the rock above him and draw his body up. All to no purpose!
He was just as much a prisoner as though he were bound with cords. The snow was fast drifting over him, too. Billy was already badly chilled, and the thought of being covered completely by the snow made him shake all the more.
Indeed, he was in a bad way. He was too courageous to yell for his brother and thus run the risk of attracting others in the neighborhood; but it did seem to Billy as though he were doomed to be smothered, standing erect between the two rocks.
Above the imperilled boy the snow whirled in ghostly forms. Like shrouded figures of lost spirits the snow drifted through the open grove, passing the frightened lad in a dreary procession. The “sh-sh-sh” of the falling flakes seemed now like an actual voice.
There came a white figure more certain in its outlines than the others. Billy struggled to raise himself again, his lips parted, tempted to shriek. The figure came nearer.
“Goodness gracious! what’s the matter with you?” gasped Dan’s anxious voice. “I’ve been hunting for you everywhere.”