For some moments no one spoke, and even the ravings of Hawker were stilled.
Then Tug Blackstock spoke, while every one, as if with one consent, turned his eyes away from the face of Sam Hawker, unwilling to see a comrade’s shame and horror.
“This is a matter now for jedge and jury, boys,” said he in a voice that was grave and stern. “But I think you’ll all agree that we hain’t no call to detain this gentleman, who’s been put to so much inconvenience all on account of our little mistake.”
“Don’t mention it, don’t mention it,” protested the book agent, as his guards, with profuse apologies, released him. “That’s a mighty intelligent dawg o’ yours, Mr. Blackstock.”
“He’s sure done you a good turn this day, mister,” replied the Deputy grimly.
III. THE HOLE IN THE TREE
I
It was Woolly Billy who discovered the pile—notes and silver, with a few stray gold pieces—so snugly hidden under the fish-hawk’s nest.
The fish-hawk’s nest was in the crotch of the old, half-dead rock-maple on the shore of the desolate little lake which lay basking in the flat-lands about a mile back, behind Brine’s Rip Mills.
As the fish-hawk is one of the most estimable of all the wilderness folk, both brave and inoffensive, troubling no one except the fat and lazy fish that swarmed in the lake below, and as he is protected by a superstition of the backwoodsmen, who say it brings ill-luck to disturb the domestic arrangements of a fish-hawk, the big nest, conspicuous for miles about, was never disturbed by even the most amiable curiosity.