36. A little after daybreak, being then about a quarter of a mile from home, in a hilly place, he thought he would leave his sled, as the load was so hard to draw, and run ahead and tell the folks about the Indians. So he pushed it under some bushes; and then, to mark the spot, he took one of his shoe strings and tied one of his mittens high up on the limb of a tree.
37. Just as he came to the brook, he heard some strange sounds, and climbed up into a hemlock tree, which overhung the brook, to hide and to look about. He lay along a branch listening, and presently saw Nathaniel, with the workbag around his neck, hurrying toward the brook, leading little Polly.
38. Philip was just going to call out, when he caught sight of three Indians standing behind some trees on the other side watching the two children. Little Polly was afraid to step on the ice. Philip moved a little to see better, and by doing this lost sight of them a moment; and, when he looked again, they were both gone.
Indians watching the two children.
39. He heard a crackling in the bushes and caught sight of little Polly's blanket flying through the woods, and knew then that those Indians had carried off Nathaniel and little Polly. Without stopping to consider, he jumped down and followed on, thinking, as he afterward said, to find out where they went and tell his father.
IV
40. Philip, by one way or another, kept on the trail of those Indians the whole day. Once it was by finding the stick that little Polly dropped; once it was by coming across a butcher knife the Indians had stolen from some house: and he had wit enough to break a limb or gash a tree now and then, so as to find his way back; also to take the bearings of the hills. When the Indians halted to rest, he had a chance to rest, too.