Then Phil raised his head to listen. He smiled, and nodded, as though satisfied his long vigil was about to be rewarded.
Yes, plainly now he caught the peculiar crunch of advancing snow-shoes. The sound came from the quarter away from the lake; and it was in that direction they believed the waif’s people had their lonely cabin, deep in the recesses of the bush, so that only with the greatest difficulty could any venturesome game warden ever find the home of the poacher who scorned all their warnings, and defied arrest.
Nearer the sounds came. Whoever it was advancing he was apparently in a desperate hurry; and that seemed to fit in with Phil’s way of figuring. Indeed, with the fate of that little darling of a boy hung up in the balance he could not see how any father who cared at all for his child would linger on the snow-shoe trail.
Phil arose quietly to his feet. The sounds were close at hand as a huge form loomed up in the light of the firelight; and Phil drew a breath of relief as he realized that the crisis had come; for that could be no other than the poacher Baylay, come to ask in his anguish if they had seen the lost boy.
[CHAPTER XVI—BAYLAY’S HOME-COMING—CONCLUSION]
As Phil stood there, he saw the big man who had terrorized the Bodman camp so recently, swiftly advance.
There was no evidence of braggadocio about Baylay now. He had a gun in his hand, but this he held up as though to let those in the camp understand that he came in peace.
Phil wanted the other to show his colors. Great was his amazement when he caught a half-choked appealing emotion in the other’s tones. Evidently all the fight had been suddenly taken from Anson Baylay when he arrived home and learned of his terrible loss.
“I’m acomin’ to ask ye to help me,” he started to say. “I can’t find him in the snow; an’ ma says p’raps somebody might a picked him up. I hopes so, sure, ’cause we sets a store by the kid. Hev ye seen my Kinney?”
“Are you the man they call the Terrible Baylay?” asked Phil.