"There it is, if I can only start it coming this way!" he observed, still imbibing renewed courage from his habit of talking to himself.
It proved that he could readily manage to move the heavy gun; and almost immediately his eager fingers were clutching the butt of the musket.
"Now, after all, I'm little the worse off for it all," declared Bob, as he hastened to scramble further away from the pillar of fire before rising to his feet; "and the next thing is—Sandy!"
He seemed to feel a sudden sinking in the region of his heart just at thought of his brother, and yet, if the boy had followed his instructions to the letter, surely no ill could have overwhelmed him.
"That tree was sounder than the one where the bear had his den," he kept muttering to himself as he hurried along over the blackened ground in the direction where he believed he must find the hollow oak given over to Sandy; "and after it was all over he could come out much easier than I did. But why have I not heard his signal call? Would he not follow after the fire, seeking some sign of me?"
Bob had just come through a very extraordinary adventure, for some time his life had actually hung in the balance; but he quickly forgot all about this in the new anxiety about his brother.
More than once he had to cast about him to be sure that he was heading the right way. Somehow, since the fire had burned over the ground, eating up the masses of dead leaves and other inflammable growths, things did not look the same as before.
"But the wind came down from the north," he kept saying, as he pushed doggedly on over the smoking ground; "and that is the way I'm going back now. Only, I seem to be in a new part of the forest, things look so different. But hold on, Bob, there's that cross formed by two trees that fell toward each other. I remember that plainly, and it was just after I left Sandy, too."
Now he was sure that the hollow tree must be somewhere close by. He raised his voice, and called the name of his brother.