But the boy's hat lay on the ground beside his upturned "billy," and the fern about the spring looked as if it had been much trampled upon.
"There has been a struggle here," said Hugh Jervois, his face showing white beneath its tan. Stooping, he picked up a scrap of dyed flax and held it out to Fred Elliot.
"It's a bit of the fringe of the mat Horoeka was wearing this afternoon," he said quietly. "The Maori must have stolen on Dick while he was filling his 'billy,' and carried him off. A thirteen-year-old boy would be a mere baby in the hands of that big, strong savage, and he could easily stifle his cries."
"He would not dare to harm Dick!" cried Fred passionately.
Dick's brother said nothing, but his eyes eagerly searched the trampled ground and the undergrowth about the spring.
"Look! There is where the scoundrel has gone back into the bush with Dick," he cried. "The trail is distinct." And he dashed forward into the dense undergrowth, followed by Fred.
The trail was of the shortest and landed them on a well-beaten Maori track leading up through the bush.
The two young men, following this track at a run, found that it brought them, at the end of a mile or so, to the chief kainga, or village, of the Aohanga Maoris.
"It looks as if we had run our fox to earth," cried Fred exultingly, as they made for the gateway of the high wooden stockade—relic of the old fighting days—which surrounded the kainga.
The Maoris within the kainga met them with sullen looks, for their soreness of feeling over the Government surveys now going on in their district had made them unfriendly to white faces. But it was impossible to doubt that they were speaking truth when, in answer to Hugh's anxious questioning, they declared that no pakeha (white man) had been near the kainga, and that they had seen nothing of Horoeka, their tohunga, since noon that day. They suggested indifferently that the white boy must have lost himself in the bush, and, at the same time, gave a sullen refusal to assist in searching for him.